Paint It Black, page 7
part #3 of Sonja Blue Series
* * * * *
Once again Palmer found himself in the other-place he and Sonja shared during their trysts. As he moved through a gray space that was neither air nor water, he was uncertain whether he was flying or swimming. It was warm and comforting, like he imagined the womb must be.
Sonja emerged from the gray, as swift and sure as a shark in its element; her features were blurred by speed, her arms and legs impossibly tong and tapered. Her hair was a dark blur, trailing behind her like jet exhaust. She looked more like a nude painted by an Impressionist than a flesh-and-blood woman.
She wrapped herself around Palmer, and he wrapped his own limbs about her, pulling her into himself. Thoughts, feelings, perceptions jittered between them like static electricity. Their inner voices grew alternately louder and softer as they merged. This sharing of self and experience, more than anything else, was how they managed to `catch up' with one another after so many months apart. Sonja's face floated inside his mind's eye, the features softened by release as she flowed into him and he into her.
(missed you...)
(need you...)
(love you...)
(worried... )
(gone so long...)
(love you...)
(Judd...)
(?Judd?)
Sonja's eyes went hard and cold and suddenly Palmer was no longer in the warm gray place, but falling, plummeting through space as if he had stepped from the edge of a cliff into the deepest, darkest pit in the Carlsbad Cavern. It felt as if he were spiraling down, down, down into the mouth of Hell itself. The transition was so sudden that he didn't even have the time or breath to scream for his life.
He hit hard, but because he was not a physical thing, there were no broken bones. He groaned and got to his feet, surveying his new surroundings. The first thing he felt was the wind, cutting into him like a flaying knife. He was in the middle of a vast arctic ice field; a dark, moon-haunted sky stretched over his head. In the far distance he could make out the humps of vast glacierbound mountains. As he turned around, shuddering in the frigid mind-winds, he marveled at the frozen desolation surrounding him. Nothing could be seen but an empty tract of ice, gleaming blackly in the moonlight. As far as he could tell, he was the only living thing for thousands of miles in any direction.
(Sonja?)
There was no answer to his mind-call as it echoed across the frozen sea.
(SONJA!)
Nothing moved or waved or responded to his cry.
Exasperated, and starting to get a little scared, Palmer struck off in the direction of the full moon on the horizon. He didn't know why - it simply seemed like the thing to do. He had never gotten lost inside anyone before - at least he assumed the icebound tundra was Sonja's mental construct, not his own. But he was certain he would have to rely on his instincts if he wanted to get out of this mess.
The ice was smooth beneath his feet, at least ten feet thick, but he didn't have any trouble moving across the glasslike surface. He had gone a mile, possibly more, before he realized he was being followed by something below the ice.
It appeared to be a shadow - black and amorphous beneath the thick layer of ice. For a moment Palmer experienced a surge of blind fear, recalling a nature documentary he'd once seen on PBS where a killer whale stalked a seal sunning itself on a floe, smashing its way through several feet of ice to snatch the hapless beast and drag it to its death.
Struggling to remain calm, he reminded himself that he was nowhere near the Arctic Circle and that whatever might be lurking beneath the ice, it certainly wasn't a killer whale. Marshaling his courage, he dropped to his knees, wiping with numbed hands at the fine layer of dry snow covering the ice, peering intently at the thing beneath. It was probably Sonja, no doubt trying to find him.
(Sonja?)
Twin fires ignited underneath the ice, glowing like embers from hell's furnace. Only then did Palmer realize what he'd stumbled across. He opened his mouth to scream for help, but it was too late. The Other knew he was there. And unprotected.
Arms burst through the ice floe, the skin cold and hard and blue. The hands were those of a crone, with hooked, cracked nails. They flailed about blindly, seeking purchase on the slippery surface. The Other pulled itself out of its frozen grave, like a woman wriggling free of a girdle. The head emerged after the arms, the hair transformed into a dark sunburst by rapidly forming icicles. The eyes burned with anger, and the lips seemed obscenely full, like freshly fed leeches. They pulled back into a predator's grin of anticipation, revealing shriveled black gums and the teeth of a killing thing. Yet as demonic as the Other's features were, there was a horrible familiarity to them - like those of a loved one's picture torn to shreds and pasted back together by inexpert hands.
(Look who's come to pay me a visit!)
The Other's mind-voice sounded like a clotted kitchen sink trying to approximate human speech. It made Palmer ill to feel its cold, hateful venom leaking into his consciousness.
(give me a kiss, loverboy!)
He smashed his fist into its face as hard as he could. Blood the color and consistency of transmission fluid flew from the Other's nostrils. It laughed - a sound that resembled a cross between a lion roaring and a toilet backing up. The Other's laugh made him hit it harder - and harder - but all it did was laugh and laugh and laugh.
Suddenly Palmer was back in his own body. He landed two more blows before he realized he was hitting Sonja.
Somehow he had gotten astride her and pinned her throat with his left hand while his right rose and fell, rose and fell. She lay underneath him, her face smeared with something sticky. Her sunglasses had fallen off, revealing eyes the color of a dying sun. In the dark, the pale ichor that passed for blood among her kind looked almost normal. Palmer stared at his lover's bruised and swollen face - the damage already righting itself before his stunned eyes - then at his right hand. It was still clenched in a fist. He slowly opened it, as if expecting a stinging insect to fly out.
"Oh, God. God. I'm sorry Sonja - I don't know what happened. I was - I thought I was fighting - I must have flipped out. I didn't mean to hurt you!”
She smiled then- the slow, lazy smile of satiation-and placed a finger on his trembling lips, halting his babbled apology.
"Hush."
"But-"
"I said hush." She pulled him down to her, pressing his face between her breasts. He could not have escaped her embrace even if he tried.
They lay together for a long time until Palmer finally fell asleep. In his dreams he heard the groan of approaching glaciers and the echo of inhuman laughter.
5
They had sex every night after that - sometimes more than once. But the telepathic communion they had once shared was now strained, bordering on the nonexistent. Sonja was always guarded during their trysts, her psionic defenses at ready. It was as if she did not dare allow herself to relax, even during the most intimate of moments. Palmer was uncertain whether she was afraid of the Other getting out or him getting in.
She became a blank wall as far as he was concerned - unreadable and impenetrable, shrugging off his attempts at psychic rapport. While her mental frigidity bothered him, Palmer never pressed the issue. Whatever secrets Sonja kept locked inside herself were hers and hers atone.
As the telepathic aspect of their relationship dwindled, the sadistic side grew. The first time she came to him with the whip, he threw it down. He yelled his defiance. He did not want to play that game. He refused to hurt her. Then she took off her sunglasses and looked at him with those terrible eyes mutated beyond tears, and something within him broke.
He beat her until the blood flew, stippling the walls and spotting the bare lightbulb hanging over the bed. He beat her until his arm ached and the whip fell from numbed fingers. All to meet her need. She needed his blows. Needed them as much as his caresses. Maybe more. Palmer did not know what sins she hoped to expiate with stinging leather kisses and roses fashioned of swollen flesh and splattered blood, nor did he want to. Some things are sacred. Even to monsters.
* * * * *
About a week after her arrival home, Palmer awoke to find the bed empty. His first thought was of Lethe, and his heart leapt in fear. He hurried to the child's bedroom, but Lethe was sound asleep. He felt a surge of shame. Sonja would no more harm Lethe than he would. He looked out the window at the nearby forest. No doubt she was out hunting. After all, she was nocturnal. He returned to his room to find her crawling in through the window. She was completely nude, her mouth and belly smeared with fresh blood. "Sonja?"
She turned like a startled cat, hissing a warning. The hairs on his testicles stood on end as he realized he was looking into the face of the Other.
The Other spoke in a gravelly, slurred baritone, sounding like a cleverly remixed version of Sonja's normal voice. "So - loverboy's still up! Why does she keep you around, Palmer? It can't be the way you fuck!"
The Other laughed as Palmer flinched. She licked the blood smearing the back of her hand, as if she were a cat cleaning itself.
"I want to talk to Sonja."
"Tough titty, asshole," the Other growled, dropping onto the bed. "She ain't here."
"Then I'll wait until she gets back," Palmer said, folding his arms.
"Back off, renfield!" the Other snapped, baring her fangs in ritual display. "I'm not in the mood!"
There was a sound from the direction of the door, and the Other fell silent, something resembling fear flickering across its face. Palmer glanced over his shoulder and saw Fido standing on the threshold, his eyes glowing in the dark. When Palmer turned his attention back to the Other, Sonja was sitting there, looking puzzled. Fido turned and lumbered back toward Lethe's room.
"Bill?" She frowned at the blood drying on her belly. She swiped her finger along the smear and tasted it, grimacing slightly. "Don't worry, it's not human-" She glanced back up at him. "Why are you looking at me that way?”
.
"You went out hunting and the Other came back."
She shifted uncomfortably. "Did - did it say anything?"
"About what?"
Her eyes flashed angrily and for a heart-stopping moment Palmer was afraid the Other had returned. "Did it talk?"
"Yeah, but it didn't say much. Told me I was a lousy lay, if that's what you mean.”
"That's not true, you know that."
"Do I?" Palmer knelt beside her on the bed, taking her hands into his. "Sonja - what's wrong? What happened in New Orleans that you're not telling me-?"
She looked at him, her dark-adapted pupils so dilated they filled her eyes. The sadness inside her pressed against him, wrapping him in stifling grayness. Her depression filled his lungs, crushing the breath from him. His heart seemed first to swell, then to wither as the misery inside her sought to pull him down into its depths. Palmer knew that if he succumbed to the vortex, he would be lost. Marshaling all his strength, both physical and mental, he drew back and punched her as hard as he could, right in the face.
He told himself it wasn't cruelty. It was self-preservation. The gray pain had retreated from his mind. In its place was a red-hot coal of anger, betrayal - arousal.
He hit her again. And again.
And again.
His orgasm took him by surprise. He looked down, blinking in confusion, at his wilting penis. He hadn't even touched himself. Sonja lay, face down, on the bed, her body twisted in sheets smeared with her blood and sweat and Palmer's spent seed. She didn't seem to be moving.
"Sonja?"
No response. His fists ached from the pounding they'd administered. His body trembled like a plucked guitar string.
"Sonja?"
He rolled her over. Her body was so heavy, so limp. Her face was a mess of blood, pulped cartilage and shattered bone. The walls looked as if someone had tried to clean a dirty paintbrush by flicking it dry. Her brain sounded like a radio tuned to an empty channel.
Bile rising in his throat, Palmer lurched to his feet and headed for the bathroom. He locked the door behind him and splashed water on his face. When he looked up, he found himself - haggard and drawn - staring out from the mirror. There was a mad gleam in the eyes - one he recognized. He'd seen its like in the eyes of the humans in the service of the vampires Pangloss and Morgan. Renfields. They called them renfields.
The Other had called him renfield.
Palmer placed his bruised and bleeding hands against his eyes. The screech and squall of the world-mind pressed against his head, threatening to breach his barriers and inundate him with others' fears, hopes, dreams, secrets and sins until his individuality, his consciousness was erased.
"Stop it!" he yelled at an old lady in Poughkeepsie, who couldn't decide whether or not to put down her cancer-ridden poodle. "Get out of my head!" he screeched at an aging businessman in Taipei, who was worried about his waning potency. "Leave me alone!" he bellowed at a Nazi war criminal in Paraguay, who was certain he was being followed by an Israeli task force.
"Bill?"
He jerked open the bathroom door. Sonja was standing on the other side, her cheekbones already restructuring themselves, her lips deflating, the bruises covering her eyes fading from black to blue to yellow.
"You alright in there?"
He had failed her. He would always fail her. She was insatiable. How could he hope to satisfy a woman who healed within minutes? Palmer wondered if he would ever be able to fuck a woman again without trying to kill her.
As he lay beside her on the bloodstained bed, watching the dawn chase the shadows across the walls of their room, he wondered what was worse: thinking that he'd killed her, or being disappointed she was alive.
* * * * *
Later that day, while Palmer was building yet another shipping crate - this time for obscene pull-toys: terra-cotta figurines sporting enormous penises with wheels affixed to the glans - Lethe came out onto the patio to watch him. She was carrying the black mask he'd kept from the previous shipment. "Where's Auntie Blue?"
"Auntie Blue's sleeping. You know she sleeps during the day, Lethe."
"Not all the time."
"You're right - sometimes she's awake during the day. But only under special circumstances."
Lethe held up the mask so that it covered her face. Her eyes, golden and pupil-less, shone in the empty sockets. For some reason it made Palmer's flesh creep.
"Put that thing away!"
Lethe flinched at the sharpness in his voice, and Palmer inwardly cursed himself. His problems with Sonja were beginning to reflect in his attitude toward others. He opened his mouth to tell Lethe he was sorry - that he hadn't meant to bark at her like that - but she was already back inside the house.
Lefty crawled out from under a pile of excelsior and began playing with one of the pull-toys, rolling it back and forth on its wobbly hand-carved wheels. Palmer set aside his tools and massaged the back of his neck, grimacing down at his former incarnation's left hand.
"Well, I screwed the pooch that time, didn't I, Lefty? Just like last night. I should have toughed it out - ridden out the depression until I got to the heart of what's been bugging Sonja, but I was weak. I freaked and took the easy way out, because I was afraid of being alone with the Other again. It's not that I don't want to help her, it's just that she's making it so damned hard...." Palmer shook his head and grimaced in disgust. "Jesus! I must be crazier than I thought! I'm telling a disembodied hand about my woman trouble!"
* * * * *
Lethe stood in the house and looked out the window facing the courtyard. Daddy was squatting down, talking to Lefty and looking sad. Lethe knew Daddy didn't want to be mean to her. She knew he was having problems - something to do with Auntie Blue. Still, Lethe's feelings were hurt. She looked down at the black mask she held in her hands. It was turned toward her, the empty eyes and mouth staring up at her, as if awaiting an answer.
Sighing to herself, Lethe placed the mask on her stepfather's work table, where she'd first found it. She wondered what she would do to pass the day. She was tired of playing by herself and she'd read all her books so many times she'd lost interest in them. Daddy tried hard to keep up with her needs, but at thirty months she'd long outgrown Laura Ingalls Wilder, Frank L. Baum, and Robert Louis Stevenson. Even David Copperfield and Huckleberry Finn were no longer challenging.
She wished Daddy would let her go into town with him. She really wanted to see other children, other people, other places. There was the video player and its monitor, but seeing pictures of things wasn't the same as experiencing them. All her life - for as far back as she could remember - she had been kept away from what Daddy called "normal people."
Daddy and Auntie Blue agreed that "normal people" would not understand her. She was different - and "normal people" don't like things that are different. They would look at her eyes and get scared. They'd want to take her away from Daddy and Auntie Blue and put her in some horrible place where they would experiment on her. The other reason Daddy refused to take her anywhere was fear of the Bad Man finding her. Lethe knew the Bad Man's real name was Morgan, and that he'd done something to hurt Auntie Blue a long time ago. She also knew that he was, somehow, related to her. Like a grandfather. Auntie Blue said the Bad Man killed Lethe's real mommy and daddy, back when Lethe was a little baby.
Lethe couldn't remember much of what happened back then. What memories she did have were of being hungry or cold or wet - baby stuff. If she thought about it really hard, she could dredge up a memory of someone warm and dark, who smelled like milk. When Lethe told Auntie Blue about it, she told her she was remembering her real mother, Anise. When Lethe asked if Anise was Auntie Blue's sister, she said they'd had the same father. So did Lethe's real daddy, Fell. Lethe couldn't remember him at all. The first time she'd been told that Daddy wasn't really her flesh-and-blood father, she'd burst into tears and clutched his pants legs, terrified that she was going to be taken away. But that was back when she was a little kid and didn't know any better - twenty months ago.
