Secrets of the Hanged Man (Icarus Fell #3) (An Icarus Fell Novel) (14 page)

Then he took off into the bushes, heading up the grade leading to the street above.

“
Shit.” I glared over my shoulder at Dee with her hand on the corpse’s shoulder and a surprised expression added to her repertoire. “Don’t just sit there.”

I splashed across the six-inch-deep stream—not too deep, but enough to kill, apparently—then blundered my way up the hill in pursuit of the wayward soul.

I reached the top to find he’d paused, waiting for a break in traffic before crossing. A fresh spirit’s lack of realization that cars and other solid objects can’t hurt them, and walls can’t stop them, came in handy for me more than once.

My fingers wrapped around his arm at the elbow, firm but not too tight. He didn’t try to get away, but looked at me with sadness evident in his eyes.

“What’s going to happen to me?”

“
Well, if memory serves me,” I said, thinking back to the address on the scroll, “we’re going bowling.”

He looked confused; I smiled.

“It’s where you go after that’s important. Don’t worry, it’s all good.”

Dido made her way up the hill and arrived beside us. I gave her a dirty look and led Tom away, escorting him to a bowling alley downtown to meet an angel who’d be clad in a pristine white suit and have white-blond hair to take him the rest of the way.

As we walked along the side of the road, I glanced across the street and saw a person standing where we’d just been. Maybe someone waiting for a ride, a curious on-looker wondering why I’d crawled up out of a drainage channel, or a homeless person with nothing better to do than stare at cars. None of those options rang true.

I stopped and stared back through the passing traffic at the figure. The dark made it difficult to see the person’s clothes, but I’d swear whoever it was wore a black overcoat and a wide brimmed hat pulled low. I gritted my teeth, the muscles in my cheeks bulging, and swallowed hard. A second later, the shape grew hazy, as though surrounded by twisting shadows, then disappeared.

“Carrion,” I whispered.

The TV was off.

Cory looked from the blank screen to his mother’s bloated face and back three times. He didn’t think she’d moved—she couldn’t on her own, of course—or been moved. He didn’t really think she’d decided death was entertaining enough and had switched off the television, but perhaps her bulk shifted far enough to depress the remote control’s power button.

After returning to close the front door, he crossed the short entrance hall into the living room where he leaned on the back of the couch and looked at the bottom cushion. The remote control still rested beside her thigh where he’d left it. Cory frowned.

“
What have you been up to, Ma?”

He straightened and scratched his head. Maybe a blackout; that would shut the TV off, but not turn it on again when power resumed. He’d check the alarm clock in his room because, when a power interruption occurred, it left the numbers flashing.

Mud crumbled from his boots as he pivoted on his heel and went back to the hall. He stopped in the arched doorway, staring at the open bedroom door he was sure he’d left closed.

Someone’s been here.

Cory took a step into the hallway, breath held, and cringed at the clomp of his boots on the floor. If an intruder was still in the house, they’d hear his every move. Cory bent, unbuckled his boots, and removed them with quiet care, leaving them lying in the hall as he approached his bedroom door.

Like a child playing hide and seek, he peered around the doorway and into his room. Empty and exactly as he’d left it. And the numbers on the digital alarm clock weren’t flashing.

He hesitated on the threshold with one foot in the hall, the other in his room, debating his next move. Anyone who entered his house would have called the cops when they found his mother stinking up the place. If not, why not? He pondered the question for a few seconds before deciding that standing in the doorway to his empty room wouldn’t provide the answer. He crept along the hall, sock feet whispering on the floor, and looked into the bathroom. Nowhere to hide, except behind the closed shower curtain. He stole up to the tub like a cat stalking a bird, and threw the curtain aside.

Nothing but soap scum.

Fifteen minutes later, Cory had finished a thorough search of the house: kitchen, dining room, both bedrooms, bathroom and, finally, living room. He even pushed against the access to the unused attic space, but found it painted shut. Satisfied he was alone with his mother’s rotting corpse, he locked both doors and returned to the living room, intending to slouch on the sofa and watch some crappy TV show with his dead mother to distract himself from his recurring thought:

Someone is looking for me.

At first, he suspected Manny, the teenage thug who picked on Trevor, but dismissed the possibility. Surely when presented the opportunity to call the cops and report a dead body propped up on the couch watching TV in Cory’s house, the gutless bully would have jumped on it. Cory looked at his watch and saw he’d been home for over twenty minutes. If someone sneaked out the back door while he searched for them, the cops should arrive any second...if they’d been called.

One way or another, he realized he’d have to get rid of her.

But who wouldn’t call them if they saw her?

Cory’s forehead creased with thought as he sagged onto the couch to figure out how to proceed, but inhaled a sharp breath when his ass hit the cushion. He bounced to his feet and reached around to touch the lump at the base of his spine with careful fingers. It seemed smaller, more painful, and its shape had changed.

Thoughts of the cops and someone looking for him left Cory’s mind as he headed down the hall to the bathroom. He entered the small room, closed and locked the door out of years of habit, and pulled off his shirt. Reaching for the button at the top of his pants, he hesitated, staring at a square of black above his bellybutton reflected in the mirror, and another beside his right nipple. He tapped each with his finger and found them hard like the one on his back.

What’s happening to me?

He pondered the hard squares for a moment before undoing his pants, turning his back to the mirror and dropping his jeans and underwear to the floor. Any other time, he’d have been shocked by the six new black patches spread across his back at irregular intervals, but the bump at the top of his ass crack distracted him from their presence.

Rather, the lack of a bump.

Cory stared at his reflection in the mirror, breath captured in his lungs and pulse beating in his ears.

Instead of the red, irritated lump he’d become accustomed to seeing at the base of his spine, the skin had broken and a black protrusion three inches long hung from the spot. Two inches wide at the base and tapered to a narrow end, the thing resembled the business end of a whip.

Cory stretched his neck to see it over his shoulder or around his side, but couldn’t, so he returned to staring at its reflection.

Then it moved.

“Fuck me.”

The thing flicked and slapped the fleshy cheek of his ass, then dangled against his crack. It lay upon his flesh, touching him like some foul, perverse phallus. He watched it wide-eyed, until it snapped like a whip again.

Or a tail.

Cory stumbled yanking his feet out of the tangle of pants and boxers around his ankles. He steadied himself with a hand on the edge of the sink until he got free of them, then grabbed the knob to open the bathroom door, cursed himself as he fumbled with the lock, then threw it open hard enough to bang against the wall. He hurried into the kitchen clad in nothing but his socks and yanked the top drawer open. Cutlery jangled and he pushed aside errant forks and spoons, table knives and a plastic set of measuring cups. The silverware clanking and clinking sounded a racket in his ears.

Where is it?

He slammed the drawer, fuming that his mother didn’t clean up after herself, and spied the handle of the chef’s knife sticking out from under a pile of soiled dished. Cory pulled it free, careful not to send the teetering stack of dishes crashing to the kitchen floor.

The implement, a Henckels, was the one expensive piece of cooking equipment they owned, and they only had it because Ugly Robert refused to cook without a good quality knife in his hand. He’d never used it for more than chopping onions as a topping for his speciality meal, and the only one he made—hamburgers—but it served its purpose. At that moment, Cory was glad they had it. He turned to go back to the bathroom, but paused when he saw the dark gunk smeared across the blade.

Remnants of chocolate cake and God alone knew what else clung to the steel.

Cory cursed under his breath and took the knife to the sink. As he scrubbed the blade, the appendage flicked against his ass as if suspicious of the teen’s intentions. He scoured faster.

A minute later, he’d returned to the bathroom and leaned in, his face close to the mirror as he looked deep into his own eyes. His hands rested on the edge of the sink, his fingers choking the handle of the chef’s knife hard enough to turn his knuckles white.

“You can do this,” he said aloud and filled his lungs, then let the air out, fogging the bathroom mirror.

Cory straightened and inhaled again, pulled his shoulders back. He put the nail of his left index finger under the bottom edge of the black square beside his right nipple and lifted it away from the skin. It tugged on the flesh beneath with bearable discomfort. He flipped the knife around and raised the tip toward his chest.

The blade quivered in his grip. He hesitated, blew the air from his lungs through pursed lips, and moved the tip of the knife toward his chest, intending to insert it beneath the square. The point ticked against the hard surface. Cory took a second to calm himself, then re-aimed and tried again.

The tip sank into the soft flesh under the hard shell and pain shot through Cory’s pectoral muscle. He withdrew the knife and a drop of blood flowed from beneath the hard spot, tracing a trail of red down the side of his chest. Cory wiped it away with his left hand, smearing it across his ribs.

“Fuck it.”

He spun around and positioned himself to see the black thing dangling from the base of his spine, lying against his pale flesh as though trying to hide in the crack of his ass. He reached for it with his left hand, hesitated an inch away and scrutinized its reflection in the mirror. Shallow ridges ran around its circumference, its surface shiny, making it resemble a piece of wet hose or a thick, black worm. Cory balked at the thought of touching the thing, didn’t want to look at it or think about why it grew from him or where it came from, but he forced himself to continue.

His fingers touched its black surface and the tail-thing flicked away.

Cory relaxed, let his arms dangle at his sides, inhaled deeply and smelled the tang of his own nervous sweat. The knife’s cold steel brushed the outside of his thigh and he flinched at its touch; the black protrusion fell back against his ass and lay unmoving on his flesh. Eyes narrowed in concentration, Cory tensed, his jaw clenched tight, and his left hand darted out to grab the tail in his fist.

It flicked again, but Cory held on. The hard ridges pressed against his fingers; though it glistened, its surface was neither wet nor slimy. He squeezed it tight without noticing the grip, as though the appendage was independent of him, with its own nerves and feeling. The thought brought a little relief.

Cory brought the knife up, intending to lay the sharp edge on the thing, but using the mirror’s reflection proved difficult and he missed. The tail strained against his grip; he held on tight and raised the knife again.

He pulled the end of the tail away from his body, stretching it out, and set the edge of the blade against the black appendage near the base. It was an awkward position, and difficult to put enough pressure on the knife for the blade to cut. He gritted his teeth, determined to remove the thing from his body.

The blade pressed hard enough against the protrusion he felt the pressure in the base of his spine, but the thing’s tough flesh didn’t so much as dimple under the edge of the knife. He exerted more pressure with the same result. Cory lowered the knife, still gripping the tail in his fist.

There must be a better way.

He changed his hold on the knife’s handle and brought it back up, this time finding the base on the first attempt. He adjusted its position, moving the cutting edge closer to his spine, then pushed the knife across in a sawing motion. The sound of steel grating across the tail’s hard surface found his ears and tingled his teeth like he’d chomped on a piece of aluminium foil. Cory swallowed hard and did it again.

Nothing.

The pressure pulled on the skin of his back and he heard it scrape, but there was no cut, no more pain than a vague pinch.

Cory gritted his teeth and drew the knife back and forth, a macabre carpenter laboring over an unusual board. The knife scraped and skittered as though attempting to cut stone, then found a dip between two ridges and settled in. Back and forth, back and forth.

The first twinge of pain shot up Cory’s spine and slammed into the base of his brain. He gasped a sharp breath between his teeth and stopped sawing to look over his shoulder at the tail, but saw nothing past the blade. Cory set his feet and resumed the sawing motion, each pass of the knife sending another jolt up his back, a shock similar to bashing your funny bone. The pain increased with each swipe of the edge across the tail.

Sweat stood out on Cory’s brow as the pain grew more intense. It spilled out from his back and into his belly, crept down his abdomen into his groin; his penis shrank from it, his scrotum drew his testicles toward his body, seeking protection.

The hard covering gave way under the blade of the knife and pain exploded through Cory, engulfing him like a sandstorm howling across the desert. He opened his mouth and screamed as black mucus spattered against the white porcelain sink.

***

Something cold and hard pressed against Cory’s cheek, but he didn’t open his eyes. Instead, he lay unmoving, wishing for the pain to go away. This wasn’t the pain he experienced every day upon waking—the pain of having to face the world one more time—but real, physical pain. His head hurt, his arm hurt, his ass hurt.

If he attempted to count them, he thought the list of body parts not hurting might be shorter than the tally of the ones in pain. He shifted a little, the same cold and hard touching his shoulder, his side, his thigh. He considered opening his eyes to see what it was, but decided against it, worried he’d discover himself alive, and he didn’t want that.

“
Took a fall, did you, Cory?”

The words echoed against the bathroom walls, the tub, the sink, the tiles, making it impossible to judge where they came from; he didn’t recognize the voice. Against his better judgment, Cory opened his eyelids a crack: white linoleum spotted with dirt, hair balls collected in the distant corner. A glob of black fluid lay on the floor a few inches from his face, prompting him to remember the tail, the knife, the pain. His ass throbbed, like someone held a cattle prod to the base of his spine.

The pain had been too much when he cut the appendage off and he’d passed out, falling to the bathroom floor. Lucky he didn’t hit his head.

Lucky. Right.