Paint It Black, page 9
part #3 of Sonja Blue Series
I am sitting on a picnic bench - where? Where? Backyard? Which house? The one in Connecticut? There are lots of balloons and brightly colored crepe-paper streamers and other children running around dressed in party clothes. I'm wearing a pink dress with lots of ruffles and petticoats. I don't like the petticoats because they're itchy and make it hard for me to put my arms down to my sides. There's a man dressed like a clown walking around making wiener dogs and bunnies out of balloons for all the children. Another man is leading a pony around in a big circle. Some of the older kids cling to its mane and wave to their moms. Or maybe they're their stepmoms. Or nannies. Everybody's wearing silly cardboard hats and carrying party-favor noisemakers. How old am I? Four? Five? And suddenly everyone's smiling and pointing behind me and I turn around and look. There is my mother, standing in the doorway that leads from the house to the backyard and she's holding a big cake with lots of pink icing and big roses made out of white marzipan. She's smiling and she looks so happy and beautiful and everyone starts singing "Happy Birthday" and gathering around the picnic table. Someone says "make a wish, Denise" and I have to stand up on the seat to blow out the candles. l don't remember whether I made a wish or if it came true....
"Ma'am - are you all right? Did you hurt yourself?"
I look up at my stewardess, still too stunned by the weight of the memory I've unearthed to do more than grunt. "What-?"
"Ma'am - your hand."
I glance down at my left hand. One of the perks of first-class service is that your drinks are served in actual glassware, as opposed to crappy plastic cocktail cups. My fist is full of shattered glass, melting ice, and Seagrams VO.
All I can say is "Oh."
"Are you hurt?" the stewardess asks again, and I can tell she's trying to figure out if I'm drunk, stoned or stupid. She can't see past the sunglasses and it's making her uneasy. I don't want her watching me the rest of the trip, so I reach into her skull and plant an explanation.
"There must have been a flaw in the glass. What with the cabin pressure changes and everything - I'm just lucky I didn't get cut."
"You're really lucky, ma'am," she clucks, her head bobbing in agreement as she takes what's left of my drink out of my hand. "You could have gotten a had cut."
"Yeah, I'm really lucky," I mutter, moving my hand so she does not spot the gaping, bloodless slice across my palm.
- from the diaries of Sonja Blue
* * * * *
It was daylight by the time she reached her destination. Her bones ached from spending close to forty-eight hours in a cramped sitting position. The flight from Yucatan took six hours, then she'd spent six hours in Los Angeles, waiting for the proper domestic carrier. She could stay active during the day, but it took its toll. It made her slower - more vulnerable to the tricks and pitfalls that might come her way. Although her body might crave its sleep - rather, the regenerative coma necessary to repair any physical damage suffered over the course of the night - at least she didn't have to worry about contracting immediate and lethal skin cancer from being exposed to the sun's rays. Not yet, anyway.
She rented a car at the airport and drove into the town that, until 1969, Denise Thorne had called home. Although her first instinct was to unlock the trunk and crawl inside, she climbed in behind the wheel instead. As she drove through the suburbs into the city, she passed the Thorne Industrial Complex. It was even bigger than she - that is, Denise - remembered. She had to hand it to the old man - he always knew how to make a buck and a half.
Light poured into the car, making Sonja's skin prickle a little bit. She told herself that she wasn't used to direct sun anymore, although she kept eyeing her hands, looking for signs of quick-blooming melanoma. She'd seen
a couple of vampires die of sunlight poisoning - not a pretty sight. Their skin burned and was quickly covered in blisters that swelled and swelled until they exploded. Then the vampires simply withered away, like earthworms on a hot sidewalk. It only took a couple of minutes - five, tops - for a dead boy to bust `n' bake.
Yep, not a pretty sight.
The clipping had said Shirley Thorne was staying at St. Mary's Hospital, over on the Upper East Side. It was the same hospital where Denise had been born. Sonja parked in the public garage attached to the hospital and made her way to the information desk. An aged nun wearing bifocals looked up at her, frowning quizzically.
"May I be of some assistance, young lady?"
"Yes, sister. I'm looking for a relative's room - Thorne? Shirley Thorne?"
The nun scribbled down the name on a slip of paper and turned to consult a computer terminal. She clucked her tongue and shook her head and turned back to face Sonja, her bifocals making her eyes look strangely warped. "I'm so sorry, dear - but I'm afraid Mrs. Thorne isn't with us anymore."
"She's been released?"
"She died yesterday afternoon, according to the computer."
Sonja stared at the terminal, at the name highlighted in amber against a black screen. The cursor blinked like a stuttering firefly.
"I - Is there any notation on where to send memorials?"
"It says flowers should be sent to the Bester-Williamson Funeral Home." The nun pursed her lips and offered Sonja a sympathetic smile. "I'm dreadfully sorry, dear - was she a close relative?"
"No. Not really."
* * * * *
Sonja called the funeral home from the lobby of the hospital. The receptionist informed her that the loved one's services were scheduled for the next day, during the late afternoon. The graveside services were to be held at Rolling Lawns Cemetery. Sonja didn't have to ask where that was - it was the same graveyard Claude Hagerty was buried in. And Chaz.
After finding out all she needed to know concerning her mother's funeral, Sonja drove the rental car out to a suburban shopping mall and crawled inside the trunk to sleep away the remaining hours of daylight.
* * * * *
She wasn't certain that what went on inside her head when she was not awake qualified as "dreaming." She saw things. But were they dreams, or shadows of things that had happened before or of things to come? Sometimes she found herself inside other people's dreams - or their nightmares. Or their madness.
She was walking through a dreamscape made of dripping moss and rotten lace. Sitting on a canopy bed adorned with mildewed satin draperies was a woman dressed in a white bridal gown. She seemed to be adjusting her dress. As Sonja drew closer, the bride looked up, like a fawn surprised while drinking at a stream. Her face was almost obscured by the heavy veil. She spoke without opening her mouth. It was the voice of a five-year-old girl.
He made me dirty.
She looked down at the woman's lap, expecting to see a bouquet. Instead she saw the woman's hands - they were those of an aged crone, with long, crooked nails. She clawed at her crotch with hideous witch-fingers. The material of the gown tore away, exposing her withered thighs and her gray and wrinkled sex. It was all bloody because she'd scratched away her labia and clitoris.
* * * * *
When she woke up, she knew something had happened while she was asleep, because the car was in motion. She pressed her ear to the dividing wall that separated the back seat from the trunk and heard the heavy, rhythmic thump of rap music and, above that, laughter.
Males. Two of them. Adolescent from the sound of their voices and taste in music. Two kids on a joyride? She concentrated harder, tuning out the intrusive music and background noise, focusing on their conversation.
"-The Chopper will pay five, mebbe six bills for this baby-"
"What about The Red? He ships cars over to the Russian black market...."
"He only takes Japanese and Euro shit. This thing's American."
"Fuck!"
"Shit, there's no point in lettin' Chopper get everything. Maybe there's something in the trunk we can take over to King Fence for a quick buck or two, huh?"
The car slid off pavement onto gravel. She bounced around for a few minutes more until everything came to a stop. As she thought about it, she realized she was pretty damn hungry. She hadn't eaten in almost seventy-two hours and she was beginning to grow irritable. The car doors slammed and shoes crunched on gravel, heading back for the trunk.
"Think there's anything back there?"
"Maybe just a spare tire and some jumper cables. Then again, mebbe some cunt left her bags from Nordstrom's."
There was a scraping sound as one of the car thieves worked at the lock with a screwdriver. Probably the same one he'd used to force the door, open the ignition cowl and start the car. The lock gave with a loud pop and the trunk swung open - and Sonja was on them in six seconds flat.
They were young. Their surprise and fear made them seem even younger. They were suburban white boys with had haircuts, dressed in clothes four sizes too big for them. One of them had a gun stuck in the waistband of his pants. She grabbed him first, taking him to the ground hard enough to break his back. He screamed like a little girl - high and pure - as she tore into his throat.
His companion shouted something and tried to drive a six-inch screwdriver into her back. The leather jacket deflected the blow - but it was enough to make her look up from her feeding. She grinned at him, displaying her fangs, and hissed in disapproval. The kid dropped his weapon and wet himself. It took less than a second to snap his neck. Sonja finished draining the first youth, then took as much as she could handle from the second. She then kicked their emptied bodies into a nearby ditch. How thoughtful of them to pick such a nice, secluded spot for their own disposal.
* * * * *
The ignition was hanging from its socket, so she had to hot-wire the car to get it started. No doubt the rental company would not be pleased. Like she cared.
It was still early, by her standards - just after midnight. She decided to cruise the old hometown, to see if anything triggered a memory from what was left of Denise Thorne. It worried Sonja, at times, that she felt so little of her previous self's pain. Denise used to be more a part of her personality, decades ago, but over the last few years her voice had grown gradually weaker until it had been drowned out by the increasingly strident Other. Maybe a visual cue would spark something inside her - generate an emotion that corresponded to the memories in her head. Because without those flashes of sentiment, all Sonja had were dry and flavorless souvenirs of another's life; shadows of the dead rendered meaningless to her - like watching someone else's jerky, disintegrating home movies without the benefit of sound or reference to the players.
She drove around and around, but so much had changed in the twenty years since Denise Thorne walked those streets. Nothing seemed familiar. Suddenly the gates were in front of the headlights, casting striated shadows. Son) a blinked and looked around, uncertain as to how she'd gotten there. Had she deliberately steered the car in this direction? Or was something besides her subconscious behind her arrival? The gate was rusty and the twelve-foot brick walls that screened the estate from the road were overgrown with creeping ivy and covered with graffiti. A heavy chain coiled around the gate like a chrome python, secured by a padlock the size of a baby's head. A metal sign read: No Trespassing. Violators Will Be Prosecuted to the Full Extent of the Law.
Sonja killed the headlights and slid out from behind the wheel of the car. She held the lock in her right hand, judging its heft; it was a beauty, all right. It would even give a New York bicycle thief reason to pause. Sonja yanked on it twice and it came away in her hand, the chain unspooling at her feet. The gates to the Wheele estate swung inward with a rusty squeal. She walked in the direction of where the main house once stood, her bootheels crunching on the overgrown drive. Weeds and small trees poked their way through the slowly dissolving layer of bleached shells.
She scanned the area for signs of derelict habitation or teenage lovers and came up empty. This surprised her. The abandoned five-acre estate was perfect for suburban youths to hide from the apathy of their parents and practice their drinking and sex, but she couldn't pick up the faintest trace of such activity. Instead, as she neared the blackened remains of the Wheele mansion, she began to receive psychic signals similar to those she'd experienced at Ghost Trap. The place was haunted. Big time.
Sonja wrinkled her nose. Even though the place burned to the ground five years ago, it still smelled scorched. There wasn't a lot left of the house - she'd made sure of that when she set it on fire. She'd also killed everyone in it beforehand. And a lot of people in the surrounding area, for that matter. Sonja a still felt kind of bad about that part of the massacre. But it wasn't really her fault - the Wheele bitch was the one who'd kidnapped her and kept her in that shithole of an insane asylum for six months. Wheele was the one who'd started it. But she had finished it, by damn. Besides, the psychic shockwave she'd released that night only affected those with true darkness in their souls. At least, that's what she liked to tell herself.
A light moved among the ruins. It was a cold, unnatural luminescence, glowing greenish-white against the darkness. At first it was formless - a glob of pulsating light hovering amid the collapsed timbers and fallen masonry of the destroyed house. The will o' the wisp fluttered for a few seconds, then began to change, taking on shape and substance. It was a woman - or something that had once been a woman.
It had no eyes, no ears, no tongue - its skin hung from its phantom bones like an empty sack. Although it had arms and an upper torso, its legs ended in glowing tatters. Even though it had no eyes in its sockets, Sonja knew that it could see her. And that it recognized her.
"Hello, Catherine. It's been a long time, girlfriend."
The ghost of Catherine Wheele, erstwhile televangelist and faith healer, raised its glowing arms and howled like a damned soul. Which was only natural, since that was what it was.
"Can the spook routine, sister. It might work on teenagers looking for a place to screw and bums out for a midnight tipple, but it doesn't cut any mustard with me."
The ghost shrieked like an owl with its tail caught in a blender and swooped toward her, fingers crooked into claws. Sonja held up her right hand, and a burst of electric-blue light flew from her palm, catching the ghost in its reconstituted midsection. Catherine Wheele rolled up like a window shade, reverting to the form of the pulsating ball of light.
"You're as ignorant dead as you were when you were alive," Sonja sighed. "The Dead cannot physically interface with the mortal plane except on Mardi Gras, the vernal equinox, and All Hallow's Eve. And just because you're dead doesn't mean I can't kick your butt, lady."
Catherine Wheele reassembled herself, scowling at Sonja from across the Divide. Smaller, feebler lights began to appear, floating through the night air like fireflies. One of the ghostly balls unraveled itself, taking on the appearance of Dr. Wexler, the corrupt psychiatrist who first steered Shirley Thorne in Catherine Wheele's direction, then arranged to keep Sonja locked up in his sanitarium. Sonja was glad to see he was being forced to spend his afterlife in the company of his former lover. The other, lesser lights took on human forms as well, turning into the Wheelers, Catherine's private cadre: a mixture of religious fanatics, hired muscle and studmuffins. Sonja had killed each and every one of them.
"It's nice to see you're not lonely," she smirked, carefully searching the wanly glowing faces in search of one in particular. When she did not find it, she heaved a small sigh of relief and turned to go. But she couldn't resist one last jab. "Y'know, they called it "Jonestown in America." All the stuff about your parents dying under mysterious circumstances, your late husband's fraud convictions, the graft and corruption in your church - all of that got into the papers. But now the Wheeles of God Ministry is gone - kaput. All your worshippers jumped ship for other, less controversial preachers. And since Waco went down, you're old news. You're trivia for atrocity buffs, nothing more. Just thought you'd like to know."
The ghost of Catherine Wheele threw her mouth open so wide it struck her breastbone and issued an agonized shriek that told Sonja she'd better watch her ass come Halloween.
Sonja chuckled to herself as she sauntered back to the car. Who says you have to be nice to people simply because they're dead?
* * * * *
Rolling Lawn Cemetery unlocked its gates at dawn. By that time, Sonja had been inside the grounds for a couple of hours. But before crashing in a suitable tomb, she had a couple of visits to make.
She did Chaz first.
She wasn't sorry she killed him. She'd felt a little guilty about it, at first, but she never really felt sorry. Chaz had been a deep-down, dyed-in-the-wool bastard. He'd betrayed her - sold her out for a suitcase of money. Not that it did him any good, in the end. Instead of running off to South America, like he'd always dreamed of, the idiot hung around town, frittering his fortune away on hard drugs and rough boys. It was like he'd been waiting for her to find him.
Just like he was waiting for her now, perched atop his gravestone. "Hello, Chaz. You're looking well."
Truth to tell, he looked like shit. Composed of a grayish-purple fog, his features were beginning to soften, the eyes turning into empty smudges, the nose a hint of shadow. If she hadn't known him already, it would have been difficult for her to identify him. He was still smoking, though. He remembered enough about his former life to cling to its habits, at least.
"Judd's dead. I guess you already know that, though." She expected some sign of malevolent glee on his part, but he gestured dismissively with one hand, leaving trails of ectoplasm in its wake. He remained as ambivalent in death as he had in life.
"Why haven't you moved on? What holds you to this plane? Is it me?" Something flickered in the smudges that were once his eyes. As Sonja looked at the tattered shadow, memories rose inside her. Memories of when they had been friends - times when they had been lovers. She closed her eyes to ease their stinging, but she still couldn't find it in her to feel sorry. When she opened her eyes again, Chaz was gone.
* * * * *
Claude was nowhere to be found near his grave. For that she was relieved. His death had been an unpleasant one, and often such traumas keep the Dead tethered to the mortal plane for years - even decades - after their deaths. But it seemed Claude Hagerty had managed to move on to whatever it is that awaits humans when they die. The same could not be said of all of Rolling Lawn's internees, whose after-selves flickered amid the tombstones and vaults like phantom fireflies.
