Stefan Petrucha - Dead Mann Walking

“Your butler’s fine,” I said. “Just had the wind knocked out of him. I want to talk to you about your brother Frank Boyle. I was with him last night. I gotta wonder, do you know what he was going to do with all that money? Can you guess?”

She didn’t guess. She just screamed.

“Hold on!” I said. “Relax! I’m not going to hurt you.”

But she didn’t relax, either. She kept screaming.

I took a step toward her, hands out, trying to calm her down, but that only made her scream louder. “Hey! I just want to talk to you! You know a man named Turgeon?”

No narrowed eyes. No sloppy giveaways. Just screaming, long and loud.

A glimpse at a gilded-frame oval mirror next to one of the Chayces gave me a picture worth a thousand words. There we were, she stately as a statue, me a monster, hovering over her servant, lumbering toward her.

Shit. I knew I wasn’t alive anymore. I mean, it’s a hard fact to miss, but inside, even when my brain didn’t work, I was still, deep down, acting and thinking like I was the same. I don’t think I really realized until that moment exactly how much I wasn’t.

I made for the stairs and ran down as fast as I was able. Even in the alley, I could still hear her screaming. I thought I could still hear her two blocks away, but that was probably my imagination.

Looking back, I probably could’ve played it better.

10

Fans were running, the shades were drawn, but the office was only a little cooler than a furnace. Worse, it stank like an indoor swimming pool at a morgue. Having gotten back home a lot sooner than expected, I was, as promised, helping Misty with the cutting. I couldn’t hold the knife steady enough, so I held the flashlight. I was always the one holding the flashlight. It never stopped me from giving advice.

“Christ, Misty, careful; he needs that muscle to move the arm.”

I was being a little rough on her, but I was antsy. Long day.

“Heh-heh.”

She gave me a withering look. “I’m trying to be gentle, but you know I’ve got to get it all.”

She was in a funny position, kneeling by Ashby, holding his arm up, going at the underside with a small X-Acto blade. After every scrape, she dipped the blade in an ashtray filled with bleach.

“Damn, it’s in a weird spot, nearly in his armpit. Move the ashtray closer, will you?”

“Ashby, ashtray. Heh-heh.”

“No wonder Boyle missed it,” I said.

“Frank, heh-heh.”

“Hold still, Ashby. Hess, can you tell him to hold still?”

I looked at him. “I can try, but it sounds better coming from you. I think he likes you.”

That got me another look. After a few more scrapes and grimaces, I had to ask, “How bad?”

“Not terrible,” she said, twisting her neck. “Not even an inch deep. I think I’ve almost got it all.”

She flicked the blade. A dollop of rot fell into the ashtray. When she started scraping again, she must have hit clean muscle. Ashby twitched.

“Heh-heh-heh-heh-heh . . .”

“Where did you go, anyway, Hess?”

I made a face. “Anything on the news about a chak breaking into a ritzy apartment in the center of town?”

She stopped working to stare at me. “No.”

“Then I don’t want to talk about it.”

She sighed and waved me closer. “That’s it. Pretty sure I’ve got it all. Hold his arm, will you? And hand me the needle and thread.”

I pulled them from the kit and forked them over. “Just don’t ask me to thread the damn thing.”

“Don’t worry; I won’t. But you have to keep him still.”

I grabbed his elbow and shoulder and held tight. Needle between her lips, Misty pinched the skin together good as I’ve ever seen a doctor do, held it with thumb and forefinger, then grabbed the needle with her free hand and sewed.

As the point disappeared, then reappeared on the other side of the skin, the kid gawked at his arm like it didn’t belong to him. It’s not good for a chak to think that way. Makes you careless. I snapped my fingers to get his attention.

“Look at something else, Ashby.”

He listened, shifting his attention to the stinky blobs of gray-green pus floating in the ashtray.

“That’s how we all wind up, pal,” I said. “Efficient fuckers, microbes.”

“At least it wasn’t maggots,” Misty said.

“Hell, yeah.”

We almost never get those, unless we try eating. We don’t need to eat, but some of us like to go through the motions, like Jonesey with his espressos. Not enough protein in black coffee to do much damage, but a chak eats a burger, he’s asking for an infestation. I’ve seen it happen. Think the living are stupid? I agree, but chakz make them look like geniuses.

“Heh-heh.”

“Hess, he’s twitching.”

“Easy, kid, you’re in good hands. The best. I’ve seen her reattach a foot with some Krazy Glue and a staple gun. Course, it didn’t stay on long.”

Ashby writhed, did his nervous laugh, and went back to watching his arm.

Misty tsked. “Did you have to tell him that last part?”

I wasn’t kidding about him liking her. Since we’d started, every time she opened her mouth, he calmed down a little. It gave me an idea.

“Kid, instead of the arm, why don’t you look at her? She’s not so bad to look at, right?”

Ashby looked at me, puzzled, then turned to Misty. An intense expression came over him, a kind of fascination, almost the same way he stared at the lights on the computer game.

“Told you he likes you.”

“Hess, you’re making me blush. Not a good idea while I’m sewing.”

“Frank never cut me.”

We both stopped and looked at him. It was the first coherent sentence out of his mouth since I’d brought him back from Bedland, subject, object, verb, everything. Misty did have a knack for bringing the human side out in people, even the walking-corpse kind. Then again, most chakz are shocked when any LB is nice to them.

She gave him a slow smile. “I’m sorry, honey, but I had to use the knife. If I left any rot in there, it’d keep growing, infect you. You could lose a lot of muscle.”

“And those boyish good looks,” I added. But it was like I wasn’t even in the room.

He kept staring at Misty, scrutinizing her as she made her last few stitches. I watched him watch her. Finally he turned his head nearly sideways and asked, “And then I’d die?”

Misty looked up at him. He waited to hear from her, but she didn’t know how to put it. “Hess, you want to answer that?”

I shook my head. “I think you should. Probably doesn’t matter what words you use. Maybe he’s remembering puberty.”

“Hess!”

“Well . . . maybe he’s remembering something .”

“Fine. No, Ashby, it won’t kill you, but it can eat away at your flesh, make you mostly bone. You don’t want that, do you?”

Her motherly tone made me wonder if she had a kid of her own out there. Misty wasn’t much for talking about her past, and I wasn’t much for asking.

He shook his head. “No, I don’t want that.”

She made a few more stitches and said, “There, all done.”

I let go. He twisted his arm, looked at the line of plastic thread, and grinned. “All done, heh-heh. Do I look okay?”

“Of course you do,” Misty said.

I nodded. “Like you’re all set for your junior prom.”

Halloween prom, maybe.

His eyes followed her movements as she stretched her arms and back, then returned the needle and thread to the little kit. I almost enjoyed watching her myself.

“Misty, you’re a real Frankenstein Nightingale. And I mean that in the nicest way.”

I pulled one of the envelopes out of the desk drawer and pulled out a few more bills.