The Edge of Madness Cafe (The Sea and the Wasteland Book 2) (26 page)

“And then there was one.”

Lucas spun at the sound
of the voice from behind him, recognition turning his blood to ice, his joints
to rust, his heart stopping for a moment. It took all of his will not to start
shaking. “
Goose Man
!”

Feet balanced neatly upon
the weld-cut edges of the oil drum, Goose Man stared down at Lucas, the fire
licking at the tail of his overcoat and the soles of his boots. But the fire
could not burn him, or even illuminate his face. It was as if Goose Man was a
ghost, a revenant returned from the dead to make Lucas beg for his soul.

Or maybe he was the
devil.

“You, of them all, should
be glad to see me,” Goose Man remarked. “Think of the meaning I bring to your
otherwise useless existence. I am the force behind your life without which you
would have no purpose or meaning, no reality. This morning you left me for
dead, but I am risen. Imagine how fucking incredible I’d be if I’d waited until
the third day.”

“You’re crazy, asshole!”
Lucas snarled, the remark childish; boasts of bravado to mask his fear.

“Come on, Lucas. Don’t be
that way. We have things to talk about, you and I.”

“There ain’t nothing we
got to talk about.”

“No? Don’t you have
questions for me? I would in your shoes. Though if I were in your shoes, I’d
spend all of my energies trying to find a way out of my condition, or barring
that, a convenient and relatively painless way of killing myself. No offense,
but your existence bores the hell out of me.”

“So die, motherfucker.
Whaddo I care?” Lucas awkwardly retreated, convinced more and more that Goose
Man—or Crazy Moses or Mumbling Shepherd, call him what you will—was completely
insane. Not goofed-up insane like Marco, or even hell-bent insane like Matty,
but insane like Hitler and Manson and Son of Sam. Goose Man was out on Pluto
looking back at the human flock with a red eye and a sharp hook concealed in
his sleeve. It was all meat to him. The whole human race just meat, and he was
hungry. “There ain’t nothin’ I need from you ‘cept for you to let me walk outta
here alive. Ain’t no one have ta know nuthin’.”

“Alive. Now there’s a
topic,” Goose Man said jubilantly, stepping from the edge of the oil drum,
still carrying his strange six-foot staff of metal, flanged and inscribed and
resembling, for all the world, a strange cross between a television aerial, a
decorative steeple crown, and a lightning rod. And Lucas guessed that the
sharpened tip might be just about right for punching a hole through a once-stockbroker’s
heart. “Have you any idea the irony of you worrying about leaving here alive?
Enlightenment, like death, is a stone’s throw away, so the question you should
be asking me is not whether I killed Matty and Marco and Johnny. That’s plain
enough. The question you need to answer—and quickly—is why I took their eyes,
the windows to their souls, the doorways to their dreams? Why take them? Why
eat
them?”

“You
ate
their—”

Lucas’s heel caught the
outstretched hand of the late stockbroker and he slipped into a tangle of old
boxes and particleboard, warped and fragile from the elements. The entire mess
gave way beneath him with a loud
carumph
.

Goose Man stepped closer.
“Don’t bother trying to run away from me, Lucas. You can’t. As it is written,
so shall it be done. Sucks to be a sad victim in a second-rate hack’s novel.
But don’t fret. Maybe in your next life—Jack Lantirn’s next tiresome sequel—you’ll
come back as something less trite.”

Lucas flailed
frantically, cardboard and particle sheets scattering as he tried to right
himself. “Stay away from me, ya hear! Just quit all this stupid crazy shit, and
stay the hell away from me!”

Lucas’s hands scrambled
across everything in reach, hoping to latch upon something useful: a long
stick, a length of metal, a brick,
anything
. Instead, he found only sodden
cardboard and musty-smelling fragments of drywall. “What the hell you wanna
kill them for anyway? They can’t hurt you. They can’t hurt nobody. They’re just
a bunch of dumb, worn-out nobodies. You coulda just left ‘em alone.”

“I’m afraid I couldn’t,”
Goose Man said matter-of-factly. “Loose lips and sinking ships, cabbages and
kings. I like secrets, and the best kept secrets are the kinds that no one
knows but me.”

Lucas watched as Goose
Man stood crookedly, explaining himself as he leaned upon his sharpened staff.
Beneath his fingers, something hard, something solid amidst the rubbish: a
narrow length of pipe or a core rod from a piece of concrete or maybe just a
rusty spindle of rod iron; it didn’t matter. Eyes fixed upon Goose Man, he slid
his fingers around the metal until it nestled across his palm. “Whatever your
secret is, I don’t know and I don’t care. It’s safe with me like it woulda been
safe with them. We don’t tell nobody nothing; that, I swear. And nobody’d
listen to the likes of us, anyway.”

“I wish I could believe
that, Lucas. I really do. But I haven’t time for pipe dreams; I leave those to
others better suited than myself. I killed Matty because he wanted something I
couldn’t let him have. Killing Marco was just a mercy. Which brings me to the
two of you.”

Lucas tightened down upon
the rough piece of metal, unsure if he could get it out in time, but damned if
he wouldn’t try.

“Sooner or later, you
would have missed your friends,” Goose Man said. “Sooner or later, you would
have asked where they were. Sooner or later, they would stop ignoring you and
listen. Sooner or later, they would discover what became of them. I don’t
really care one way or the other about what comes later because I won’t be
here. I’ve seen the signs, felt the convergence in my bones, and when it comes,
I’ll be long gone. That said, I don’t have the time to mess around with what
might happen if sooner comes before later. Do you follow me, Lucas? I hope so
because I really want you to understand.”

“I understand,” Lucas said, the bar turning easily in his
grip—
maybe a weapon, maybe just a distraction while he escaped!
“You’re
cr—!”

The rest died in his
throat, one hand still behind his back, fingers gripping the shank of a useless
five-inch lag bolt.

Like a jag of lightning,
Goose Man’s staff arced the distance between them, the steel glinting malefic
blue light that did not reflect from its surface so much as emanate from the
very metal itself. And Goose Man was there, his movement completed within the
span of an eyeblink. One moment he was leaning on the staff, the next he was
forcing it through Lucas’s chest, silencing his heart, stilling his lungs,
leaving his mouth to gape like a speared fish. Lucas felt his hand tighten then
relax, losing the bar of steel, that ephemeral hope that danced now far beyond
his sight like a soap bubble bursting in the sunlight. His vision traveled up
from the lance that felt like an icicle punched into his chest to the mad eyes
of the one they called Goose Man, the crazy two-colored eyes that looked down
upon him with the feigned sorrow of a demon. Goose Man spoke, words chasing
Lucas down the long spiral of darkness closing around him.

“
It’s nothing
personal, Lucas. Ain’t nobody
want
to be here
.”

Jack woke up twice that
night.

The first time was from a
dream—not quite a nightmare, but still one that forced him awake in a panic. He’d
been frantically searching for something, but, as was so often the way with
dreams, could not remember what. Sometimes it was something lost in the wind, a
spirit obscured by clouds. Other times a shimmer in the water, the traces of a
mermaid lost in the folded dark of the briny sea. No matter. That he could not
find what he was looking for did not change the fact that he could not stop
looking.

He knew what it meant.

Ellen.

How long ago he lost her,
he no longer knew, time irrelevant in the Wasteland. What was anything measured
against eternity? He had sent her away, the realization like a white-hot razor
across his soul. He told himself he had no choice; it was her only chance, the
only way to keep her safe, to use all of the tickets and keep them—keep the
Nexus—safe from the Cast Outs. Justifications blew empty like wind from the desert,
and when he dreamed, the loneliness and guilt fell down upon him like iron.

Across the open loft
where he slept, the computer screen pulsed. Oscillations of red in the darkness,
it drove sleep even further away, and brought the dream ever closer to the
surface of his mind like a body dragged from the water.

Don’t go there, Jack;
that’s a bad place. No telling who you might find.

It was only natural to be
afraid of death, especially your own. But there was another possibility, and it
scared him more. How would he survive if she was gone, some mythic bird from a
creation myth, flying away and taking love and hope out of his world with her?

The computer screen pulsed
black and red, startling in the otherwise total darkness of the loft where the
only light came from the soft pale florescence of the Pepsi machine below and
the blue-white screens out in the junkyard. It was the one thing about the
Wasteland he had grown accustomed to: absolutes. Absolute silence where every
breath, every heartbeat, was a violation, absolute darkness that made miracles
out of sparks in the night, and absolute stillness where the living did not
belong.

He alone lived here, and
perhaps that was the biggest lie of all.

Jack got up, his narrow bed suspended from the ceiling like
an afterthought, and carefully navigated the walkway, the wood rough and cold
against his feet. Something about the flashing computer screen was wrong. It
was the first time he had sensed such a thing in the Wasteland since driving
away the Cast Outs and sending Ellen away. He hated that he knew this world so
well, but he did. In so many ways, it was his, and while strange and
mind-bending, never before had it been
wrong
. He felt a prickling on the
back of his scalp, a feeling like eyes upon him.

The red light did not
emanate from the computer, but was a reflection off the screen, its source
somewhere outside like dawn through the turning slats of a windmill.

That
would mean the sun was rising in the
west, and in the middle of the night.
Impossible
.

So states the sole inhabitant
of the Last Stop Gas Station and the Edge of Madness Café, places perched on
the borderland between reality and madness. Your whole world begins at the line
where possible ends.

Jack peered through the open
corner of the garage.

Atop the needle-thin
spire of the
radio
antenna serving as the new focal lens to the Nexus, a red light, the kind used
to warn off approaching aircrafts. It turned slowly, a distant lighthouse, a
beacon in the darkness, a dwarfed and dying sun. Someone had haphazardly
fastened it to the top of the antenna with a twisted length of bailing wire.

Someone? There is no
someone
, Jack; there’s only you.

He circled the narrow walkway, and stepped out upon the fire
escape landing that led to the Scarlet Cinema and the stairs down. The red
light was not his doing; reality had settled down around the Nexus. Occasional
surprises still bubbled up, but even their sporadic inspiration had cooled of
late with no more spillovers into the world around him.

So how do you explain an aircraft warning light in a world
with no aircrafts?

Perhaps another had sent this, a neighbor in this layered
reality of ill-defined rules and boundaries? Maybe this was insanity’s version
of the welcome wagon, dreams and madness having dispensed with bundt cakes in
favor of a volunteer fireman’s light?

He climbed to the roof for a better view, the light still
winking at him, not some knowing eye, but a simple mechanical device, dead and
blind. A beacon, nothing more; a guide for fellow travelers, maybe. Or a
warning.

So when did I stop writing the story and become a part of
it?

The rooftop was cold against his feet, the air turning his
skin to goose flesh. The moon shone down from the cloudless sky—
full; the
moon was always and forever full
—reflecting off the damp area of capstone
as though someone had stretched out, soaking wet, and left an outline of where
they were.

A mermaid cast upon a distant shore, perhaps, lost and
left to perish.
The notion crept into his head, eased along by the late
hour and the disquiet of the red light and everything it entailed.

In the morning, he would
ask Hammerlock to take the light down and bring it to him. He didn’t expect to
learn much from the broken beacon, but it wouldn’t do to leave it lying around
either, someone else’s reality corrupting his own. The Wasteland was difficult
enough without that.

He drew closer to the wet
outline on the rooftop, drawn by the faintest of smells that dredged up an
entire childhood of family vacations: the smell of salt water and brine and the
limitless sea. In his dreams, the mermaid looked like Ellen.

Every dream is of
Ellen, Jack. It means nothing except that you are obsessed.

Still.

He laid down atop the wet
area of stones, eager for the little bit of her that might linger there: a
small taste, the memory of her lips, the feel of her hair in his fingers or the
small of her back where the flesh dimpled, so smooth and sensitive to the
touch. Maybe, in a manner of speaking, he could be with her.
Maybe
.

Dreamers live off hope
and little else.

Jack rested his head on
the smooth capstone near the roof’s edge and closed his eyes, amazed at the
residual heat, as if this place was still occupied, someone keeping it warm. He
liked the idea of that, and allowed it to carry him back to sleep where he
could linger with Ellen in that perfect place of his dreams for just a little
bit longer.

I’ll take what time
I’m given. As to the rest, I’ll steal what more I can. Just try and stop me.

*     *     *

It was the crash of music
blasting up from the diner that woke him the next time. Distorted by layers of
cinderblock, he could not even make out the words or the song, only that it was
loud enough to make the walls tremble.

He scrambled down the
service ladder then the stairs to the garage below, every surface cold and
jarring to his skin. The eastern
sky had turned pale with the coming of dawn. He ran through
the garage and out to the sidewalk, the music growing ever louder, the diner
windows shivering in their frames, threatening to shatter.

“
GET OFFA MY CLOUD …
GET OFFA MY CLOUD … GET OFFA MY CLOUD
!”

Hands clapped to his
ears, Jack kicked open the doors. He could actually
feel
the music
thrumming against his bones, throbbing in his chest. The popcorn machine
jiggled on the countertop while glasses and plates rattled on the shelves. The
glass coffeepot bobbled upon the warmer plate, ready to shatter. The Wurlitzer
itself vibrated, the air around it shimmering like a wave of afternoon heat.

The music kept skipping,
the one phrase repeated over and over: “
GET OFFA MY CLOUD … GET OFFA MY
CLOUD … GET OFFA MY CLOUD
!
”

He stabbed the cancel
button on the Wurlitzer, but nothing happened. He jabbed it again, harder.
Still nothing.

Flatware skittered across
the metal countertops and clattered to the floor, the noise lost in the
cacophony. Salt and pepper shakers walked the tabletops, and in the kitchen,
pots fell from the shelves and crashed upon the floor, soundless in the
deafening noise.

“
GET OFFA MY CLOUD …
GET OFFA MY CLOUD … GET OFFA MY CLOUD!
”

Jack shouldered the
Wurlitzer to one side, grabbing the plug and pulling it from the wall.

And the music stopped.

First a beacon light, now
this. There was no such thing as coincidence. Not here. On some level,
everything was intentional.

It’s a message from
the neighbors, Jackie boy. Or whatever they are out here in the middle of
insanity and dreams. Listen to the message. Remember the warning light.
Remember first and foremost that each one was a wakeup call; you’re treading on
someone’s toes and they don’t like it. Go easy from here on out. Don’t force
anything. Or the next one may be more than an inconvenience.

It was only a theory,
logic applied to the illogical, and he knew better than to place too much stock
in reason.

Still…

He looked through the
glass front of the Jukebox; saw the CDs in the carousel. But the reader was
empty. And the song wasn’t even listed.
Why would it be?
He plugged the
jukebox back in, but the song did not start up again. For the moment, normalcy
was restored … or a reasonable facsimile thereof.

“Next time,” he grumbled,
“try a ringing telephone. I’ll get the message.”

Jack went back to the
loft and got dressed before returning to the diner, the first sliver of sun
cresting the flat horizon of bone-white sand. Sometimes, when he tried, he
could almost make himself believe that everything here was normal. Just another
day along a lonely stretch of desert highway where no one stopped and no one
left and business was simply a matter of getting by, and nothing more.

And then there were other
times when faking normalcy was impossible.

He was barefoot. He had
forgotten to put on shoes. It didn’t matter.

As he walked into the
silent diner, florescent lights flicked on by themselves. The coffeepot was
already brewing hazelnut-flavored coffee—his favorite—and the Wurlitzer started
up a song he liked, the volume normal:
Wish You Were Here
. Jack went
behind the counter and selected a cup of yogurt and a banana from the
refrigerator case, placing them on the counter. He found orange juice in the
walk-in cooler, poured a glass, and got his coffee.

Sometimes, it was almost
easy to believe this was all normal.

But it wasn’t. Not this
place. Not him. Not Ellen Monroe. And most certainly not the world that she was
living in right now, the one he had misled her about.

He sat at the counter
listening to the mournful refrains of Pink Floyd and sipping at his coffee
while the sun rose behind him. On impulse, he took one of the postcards out of
the nickel-rack on the edge of the counter: a faded picture of the Café on one
side, the other blank but for the address lines and a square requesting
postage.

Jack looked at the empty
back of the card for a time. Such a delicate thing, a beginning. So many ways
to make it go wrong. So many ways to lose it all. It was every writer’s biggest
hurdle. Or maybe just his. Maybe he wasn’t as good as he believed.

Or maybe you’re just
so arrogant that you believe every word you commit to paper has substance, the
spiritual nourishment of generations not yet born. Maybe that’s it. Maybe a
beginning is simply a place in the middle where you pick up the story, an
invitation to come along and enjoy the ride.

Jack wrote a quick
message on the back of the postcard, and got up from the counter, walking out
into the street and the full blaze of the rising sun to place the postcard into
the mailbox. He raised the flag, much as he had done with the book. He didn’t
bother with a stamp; there was no post office in the Wasteland to care about
insufficient postage. Jack knew where the postcard was going; that was all that
mattered.

He walked back into the
diner and took his breakfast over to the corner booth overlooking the
nothingness of the chasm, the diner only feet from the edge. There was a
typewriter on the table, the new dawn glinting off the polished metal keys, the
strange casement an amalgam of typing machines, a David Chronenburg contraption
combining an old 1920’s typewriter, a screen from a laptop, a jump drive port
fashioned from a drive-slit in the side, and an iridescent black surface
textured like the carapace of a jeweled scarab. Jack fed a sheet of paper into
the back of the machine while sunlight ignited the steam rising from his
coffee.