Get Blank (Fill in the Blank) (26 page)

Near the back wall and off to the left, the scuffed wooden floor opened up into a stairway down. “Dressing rooms and so on. I really want to show you something.”

That line was enough to make me feel like I was getting tickled by a ghost. If someone ever offered to “show me something,” it was either a kid wanting me to check out some roadkill or it was someone about to show me my future murder weapon. I shrugged. I pretty much collected those now.

The hallway was cramped down here, and painted the same Bohemian black as the theater proper. It looked like whoever had taken over had done a few repairs, given the place a coat of paint, and called it refurbished. There were doors on the either side of the hallway and Brenda headed unerringly toward a specific one. Second door on the right.

She opened it up, revealing a dressing room. One side had two tables with lighted mirrors, where someone would put on stage makeup. A bench bolted to the floor, like in a locker room, stood on the other side. Large closets were just beyond, and a couple full-length mirrors leaned against a third wall.

“You’re going to love this,” she said.

I tensed for a fight. Not that I can fight. I pretty much have one move, and since Brenda lacked testicles, that meant I was down to zero.

She rummaged through the nearest closet. I heard a soft clink.
Here we go.
VC might be with me, he might not. I would be committed.

“Behold, the Savior!”

She whirled around, and I might have flinched. She brandished a gray costume with big wings and a terrifying face topped with two huge red eyes. It was a face I’d seen before.

That thing had killed Burt Shaw.

ALLOW ME TO DIGRESS TO 1961
in a small town called Point Pleasant. It’s on the West Virginia side of the Ohio border, with the Silver Bridge spanning the river. Things were going fine until one night when a couple was driving home and saw what looked like a man crouching in the middle of the road. Only when he stood up, stared at them with giant glowing red eyes, and unfolded a pair of wings did they start to suspect he wasn’t a man at all. The monster, who would later become known as Mothman, took to the skies, following the car as it reached speeds of a hundred miles an hour. And the monster never once flapped its wings.

Mothman popped up from time to time after that, getting variously ID’ed as an angel, a crane, a butterfly, and once as Batman. Things kicked into high gear in ’66, when Mothman was sighted first at a private residence (carrying off a dog in the process) and later at a local abandoned munitions complex (where it was eating a dog). Mothman was described in roughly the same way every time: manlike legs, no real head, hypnotic red eyes seemingly growing right from its chest, and a pair of giant wings. It moved around in a stiff shuffle, or flew at dizzying speeds and not at all like an organic creature. It shrieked or squeaked at times, and mesmerized people with its gaze.

Mothman continued to bother folks in the Point Pleasant area, generally acting like a curious drifter. Its presence, other than being unnerving, made electronic devices go haywire. Televisions tumbled into zigzag static while radios played a speeded-up voice muttering gibberish.

This is when Mothman got his name. It started out as “the Bird,” but that didn’t really carry the necessary mystique for a cryptid as unique as that. Then they went with “Big Bird,” but since there was no accompanying Snuffleupagus, that had to be jettisoned as well. Finally (and partly due to the Batman incident), they went with Mothman.

Only one person ever got a clean look at his face, and she described it in the most unhelpful terms: “Like something out of a horror movie.” She also suffered Klieg Conjunctivitis, sort of an eye sunburn commonly afflicting people who see UFOs too close. Unsurprising, since Point Pleasant was in the middle of a serious UFO flap, with accompanying cattle mutilations, poltergeists, and Men in Black. This has associated Mothman with the Little Green Men, but that’s not really accurate, at least from what I know.

Anyway, at a certain point during the paranormal chaos in Point Pleasant, people started getting phone calls from something identifying itself as a UFO entity. It warned that on December 15, 1967, the Silver Bridge would collapse. Other people hypnotized during Mothman sightings reported reoccurring dreams of Christmas presents floating in the Ohio River.

Sure enough, at 5:05 p.m. on December 15, 1967, the Silver Bridge did indeed collapse, dumping Christmas shoppers into the frigid water. Forty-six people died. Mothman promptly vanished.

Some people claimed he was harmless, that he just wanted to communicate. Chances are, they were right. The poor guy was too alien to make himself understood or just didn’t get that he was scaring people. Although the dog thing was still weird.

Granted, my own encounter with Mothman wasn’t so grandiose, but the big guy saved my life. Not once, but three times, including once when he appeared in person, dragging Burt Shaw, high-ranking member of Quackenbush Security, into the sky and possibly another reality. Thanks to Heather, I found out I had gotten the blame for this, but better that than what Shaw had planned, which was to put a bullet in my head.

And now these dime-store Satanists had a Mothman costume.

“This is the savior?” I asked.

She grinned. “He is risen! Lucifer Himself walks the earth!”

“This is Lucifer?” I rephrased. “Somehow I imagined something more... shining Greek god. Less Guillermo del Toro.”

“Lucifer is an angel. Read the Bible. Angels don’t look as we picture them. That’s a construct of artistic tradition. They were much more inhuman than we imagine.”

“I see.” According to the Bible, angels looked like rings with eyes on them, or else like four-faced monsters. Then again, if I expected everyone who said “read the Bible” to actually have read the Bible, I’d probably go insane.

“And He’s here! Makes sense, right? It’s the City of Angels, after all.”

Fighting the creep-me-out vibes Brenda was throwing my way, I said, “So how about we go back topside?”

She rehung the Mothman suit, tossed another smile at me, and led the way back into the main theater. Emerging from backstage, I first noticed how many more people were in the theater. Other than the director, his two companions, and the actors onstage, the seats were now peppered with other people. They were pretending to watch the rehearsal, but as we came out into the muted lights, I felt eyes on me. Phones came out, some dialing, others texting.

“So, what did you think?” Brenda whispered.

“Just fantastic,” I said, picking up the pace for the door.

“I’m so happy you’re joining us, Eli,” she whispered, quickening her own steps.

I glanced around. Some of the audience had gotten up. They were openly staring now, speaking into their phones quietly so as not to disturb the rehearsal of the terrible play. “I’m thrilled, too.”
You might be changing your mind soonish, though.
I hit the door, glad this room was empty. VC came abreast of me, using an admirable g-man quick-walk. He would have looked good closing in on John Dillinger at the Biograph Theater.

“Do you have to go?” Brenda asked.

Her phone buzzed with a text.

“Yeah, I think I should go.”

“Well, okay. It was great seeing you.” Brenda pulled out her phone to look at it. I was through the door and on the street when she shouted after me, “Eli, hang on!”

I broke into a run and VC did the same. The Sons didn’t come boiling out of the theater like I thought they might. We made it to the black Caddy a block over and VC pulled into traffic on Hillhurst.

“Input destination.”

“I’m hungry. Are you hungry?” I desperately needed some calories to run my brain, try to navigate this maze I’d found myself in.

“This unit requires five hundred calories per day to function.”

“That’s a yes. Wait, five hundred? That’s it?”

“Affirmative. This unit has an efficient metabolism.”

“Well, this unit doesn’t. Go to Chinatown.”

I’ll admit it. I was morbidly curious to see VC eat. There were so many stories of Men in Black being baffled by everyday objects, including food. If any food were already a little weird, it was dim sum, so I figured it was worth paying for a dim sum brunch over at the Empress Pavilion to find out.

VC pulled into the parking garage, where there were only a handful of cars, and we walked down the stairs into the odd, one-building outdoor mall housing the restaurant. The parking garage surrounded the few storefronts on the three-level building. Tables were set up along one walkway, selling knickknacks, and in the store that sold bamboo arrangements, there was a guy who would tell you how you’d die if you bought a jade Buddha from him. As I came up on the restaurant, I saw a Closed sign on the glass doors. Peering through them, it looked like the restaurant had been completely abandoned, along with every other shop in the shopping center. A year is apparently a longer time than I thought. Long enough for your favorite dim sum place to close with nary a word. Depressed, I led VC back to the car and we went a block down to a little place situated inside a ground-level courtyard.

Since it was a weekday, we got a table easily (although I strongly suspect it was partly because the mostly immigrant staff believed us to be from the government). Unlike the Empress Pavilion, which had picture windows overlooking Hill Street, this place was as dark as a tomb, most of the light coming from a fish tank stuffed with lazy koi. As the carts stopped in front of our table bearing a variety of Chinese pastries and dumplings, I picked my favorites and ate in silence, watching VC the whole time.

“This unit eats a thick paste made from peanuts and fish oil.”

“Then you should be thrilled for a change. Try one of the big white fluffy ones. There’s pork inside.”

Seeing him insert the chopsticks in his ears and eat the dumplings with his fingers was strangely calming, like tuning into a public access show in the middle of the night to get to sleep. My mind wandered as I shoveled food into my mouth. Empress Pavilion was closed. That’s what happens when you leave town for a little while: your favorite brunch place in the whole city closes. I had eaten there so much, I was almost offended they hadn’t sent me a condolence card.

I initially found Empress Pavilion after a job. It wasn’t much of anything, really. INT-13 had me in an empty brick apartment building overlooking the 101 freeway. I had to stay up, keep the door locked, and at five in the a.m. the next day, I had to let the guy in who knew the password (I still remember it because it made me laugh: “Rear Admiral.” Yes, I’m in the fifth grade). Anyway, that was the entire job. I mean, I worked out what I was actually doing there pretty quickly, because despite all the blows to the head I’ve suffered, I’ve miraculously escaped any permanent brain damage. I was keeping the place clear as a sniper’s nest.
It was an empty apartment building, and I brought something to read, and that’s how I spent the night, hunkered against one freshly painted wall, reading old issues of
Tales From the Crypt
by flashlight like some kid.

Come morning, I got the knock, heard the password, tried not to snicker, and let in a woman who looked like she had been freshly dug up just for this purpose. The bag with the rifle in it wasn’t fooling anyone, but there was no way I was going to mention it. Not to someone who looked like they quit sleeping sometime in the ’80s.

I left her to it and went to find some breakfast, ending up in Chinatown. Later, I looked into it, just out of curiosity you understand, and found out that someone had been shot on the 101. Here’s the weird part: that person had no apparent connection to anyone. A citizen. But they somehow needed to be rubbed out by INT-13, which is one of the nicer conspiracies out there. And, like most of hits, they weren’t happy until the killee had been rendered extremely dead.

Empress Pavilion closed. End of an era.

On the other side of the table, VC had expertly dissected several shu mai, creating a remarkably detailed map of the Earth as seen from space. There were a couple extra continents, but he was just trying to be accurate.

Woolgathering had apparently freed my subconscious to do the real work of deduction, because the answer hit me square between the eyes then and I felt a little dumb for not seeing it sooner. There was someone out there who knew both the names Nicky Zorotovich and Erick Levitt. Someone who hated Mina and Oana. Someone who absolutely despised me. And who at least knew people who’d witnessed Burt Shaw’s departure from this reality.

Ingrid Brady.

If I had a reflection (in one of those skinny carnival mirrors, but still), it would be Ingrid Brady. A member in good standing in at least two shadow groups, she had connections to a half-dozen more. She was the nominal leader of the Gang of Five and did the whole trick in drag, complete with a little blond mustache. They didn’t even know her first name, let alone her gender. She’d contracted Vassily for a hit on Mina on behalf of the Guardian Servitors of the Anorectic Praxis and she had tried to kill me at the Ana Temple when Mothman intervened. She’d also worked for Burt Shaw and might be a wee bit upset about the whole “feeding him to a monster” thing.

Confronting Brady would be a trick. She was formidable in her own right, and had the resources of her pseudo-government contacts to fall back on. VC and I wouldn’t have a prayer of subduing her, so we’d need backup. I rattled through my mental list of the Information Underground, trying to figure out who I could depend on. When that list came up blank, I tried to figure out who I could bargain with. The answer came quickly, and I might not like it, but it would have to do.

“So, Victor Charlie, how did you arrange meetings with your little group?”

“The inquiry does not match existing parameters. Abort, retry, fail?”

“Your group. Brady, Oana, Vassily, that group.”