Marc Zicree - Ghostlands

Inigo hesitated, debating his answer. Then he said quietly, “You want to let me go.”

“Aw no, I don’t think that’s the sine qua non of the ideal answer, pardon my French. Two more to go.”

Inigo looked at his feet.

“And while you’re ruminating on a verb or two, let me just add an inquiry as to precisely how you knew to lead us to the delightful hamlet of Imaginary Corpse Town. Or for that matter, how you grokked what went down in Wind City, and the enigmatic little tchotchke Colleen laid with such refreshing venom on Primal. Why, you’re just a walking yellow pages of mysteries and miracles, you are, Boy Wonder.”

The babbling, effervescent torrent of words warned Goldie that he was inching way over into the red zone, majorly in danger of full-tilt out-of-control-dom.

And didn’t this infuriating, distorted, stunted, sad little boy only know he was throwing fuel on the fire by pulling this wordless Jesus-before-Herod crap?

“Okay,” Goldie sighed. “I’m gonna turn over all the cards.”

He reached out his hands, and crazy energy bubbled out of them, building in intensity.

Soon, he knew, Inigo would begin to scream.

I don’t want to do this, the tiny soft voice inside Goldie said.

But then came the answering self, the grim, dark presence that was increasingly finding purchase in the desolate stone landscape within him.

You ain’t got a choice, Jack. Not and get to the church on time.

On other occasions, he had heard the murmuring voices in his head, the iron railroad spikes driven deep into his mind, had known them for the dissonant thrum of the Storm, the Source like the ultimate Benzedrine-mainlining Stravinsky chorus, the distant chaos land of power and enslavement and release. He had scuttled frantically away then, pushed his consciousness far from them to survive, to salvage some distinct notion of himself, of who he was and (here he had to force himself not to laugh) what he stood for.

Get thee behind me, Satan…and don’t push.

For Herman Goldman, this was anything but academic.

For long ago, in a galaxy far, far away known as Manhattan, New York, he had met the gentleman with the inimitable headgear and sunburn to die for.

And wasn’t that a topic for casual after-dinner conversation….

He had been a grad student in his penultimate year, teaching-and please stifle your guffaws, ladies and germs-a course at NYU in Beginning Psych (having by then jettisoned his equally laughable pursuit of law) for the third dismal semester in a row, spewing it out by rote, no improvisation allowed, please, he had the patter down cold. Transference, anima and animus, borderline personality disorder, chronic narcissism, you name it, A to Z in the DSM-IV.

Droning on to the bored undergrads with their butts planted in those uncomfortable wooden amphitheatre seats because they’d rather have a marginal shot at a future than just eat the damn twelve-gauge now. Herman (he was called Herman then, not yet Goldie) smiled again at the cute Anorexia Lite girl in the third row like Feiffer’s Dance to Spring, when he suddenly noticed-

The Devil, sitting right there in the front row, grinning at him like…well, like the Devil.

Herman blinked his eyes, hard, then blinked them again.

But the sonofabitch was still there.

Not such a bad-looking guy, actually. But then Satan began to needle him, really get his goat, heckle the hell out of him. It took all of Herman’s concentration to keep lecturing, to act like he was ignoring the bastard.

Didn’t the freak with the wings have any better place to be?

At which point, the Dark Angel pulled his trump card, levitated the whole damn class right up to the ceiling and held them there.

So Herman kept lecturing up at them where they floated. In due time, they settled back down en masse into their seats, still as shit-ass bored-looking as ever, and the bell rang.

One of them, a pimply sophomore named Lenny Hoff-mayer, sidled up to him at the lectern. “’Scuse me, Mr. Goldman, um, why were you talking up at the ceiling for a while there?”

“Well, because that’s where you were, ” Herman shot back, offended.

Lenny didn’t stick around. The rest of the students had filed out, too. Only the Devil remained.

In fact, he stuck around for days. Going everywhere Herman went, engaging him in long philosophical debates. Herman was surprised to find out the guy was actually more optimistic than he was himself.

And because Herman Goldman had his line of patter, his syllabus, so stone-cold down, he found he could continue his lecture schedule without breaking a sweat, punch his clock same as regular, in essence pull the wool over everyone’s eyes.

After that first class, no one tumbled to the fact that Herman Goldman had an extra passenger aboard.

Then, after a few days, he clicked back to normal like the reset button had been pushed, and realized he’d been hallucinating. Which surprisingly, rather than filling him with dread, gave him an odd sense of security.

He’d always feared that if he ever went crazy, he’d stay that way.

But some inner equilibrium had kicked in, brought him back to the air-bubble-smack-dab-in-the-center-of-the-liquid level of sanity.

And here was the key thing, the relevant part-he realized that Satan had not been anything other than…himself.

Just as in this breathless moment, in the flat heart of the country a thousand feet down, in the vast, dead home that had ever-so-recently housed a chummy nuclear family of MIRVs, the implacable voice telling him to torture this helpless Changed boy was none other than-

Himself.

And he had no idea, no idea at all, if this time he could reel it back in.

On the road to Atherton, the new recruit to the fold, the little gray brother named Brian Forbes, had told Inigo everything Herman Goldman had done to the fake policeman in the snowstorm night outside the Gateway Mall.

Standing now in the missile silo, his stunted back to the gunmetal wall, with absolutely nowhere to run and Goldie staring at him with an intense, anguished expression while his open hands erupted hot radiance like a pair of Fourth of July sparklers on steroids, young Master Inigo Devine had a nasty feeling he was about to be on the receiving end of a sensation a whole hell of a lot like it.

He screwed his eyes tight, tried to brace himself for what was coming, something far worse than riding a hell-bound train, or climbing down a freakin’ missile silo….

But then there was a cry that came, not from Inigo, but from nearby, and went echoing off into the void. Inigo opened his eyes in time to see Goldie collapse onto his knees, see the light from his hands flicker out.

“I’m sorry, oh God, I’m sorry….” Goldman reached out to him in supplication and shame-although, Inigo realized, Goldie had stopped himself, had not done anything (short of scaring the shit out of him).

Which was when the Big Zap happened.

It was like Inigo’s mind was a battery suddenly discharging, shooting a flood of raw images into Goldie’s mind, one huge, mentally migraining mindburst, a zillion-mile-an-hour blur made up of bits and pieces that might (or might not) be Tina, Papa Sky, New York or something like it, and…and…

“The Source.” Goldie was gasping, dry-mouthed. “You came from the Source.”

Inigo didn’t need to say anything. Goldie knew. At least, that much of it.

And Judas Priest, this was dangerous, because now that it was out of his mind and into Goldie’s, it was way possible-

You Know Who might be able to hear it.

“Quiet,” Inigo hissed, sitting up now, every nerve like burnt insulation and sizzling wire. “The Big Bad Thing-”