The Strange Adventures of Rangergirl (16 page)

She went to the center of the room and turned around to get a picture of the interior wall. She felt a bit nervous turning her back to the rear wall, the one with the door that led nowhere . . . but it was just a door, covered up with boards besides, and altogether harmless.

The mural was painted across the wall and the door that led to the kitchen, and depicted a distant dune with a coyote howling in silhouette, and sharp rock outcroppings in the distance. Marzi took a photo.

She put the camera down on top of a pile of boxes and turned her attention to the rear wall. This was the sticking point, wasn’t it? The real test. Now that her memory had been restored, Marzi remembered placing the boards there to block the door, leaning them against the wall with zombie-like efficiency, already repressing the memory of what she’d seen behind the door. She should have nailed the boards up instead, but she’d been working in shock, after all. It was amazing she’d done even this much. She started moving the boards out of the way.

When the wall was one-third uncovered, Marzi noticed the difference.

The door was still blocked, but she’d cleared away enough of the shelving on one side to see the painting. It was not as she remembered. There should have been more boulders, more scorpions and dunes, more of the same desert-scape that adorned the other walls. Instead, the painting depicted buildings, weathered wooden storefronts with hitching posts out front, the classic view-down-Main-Street scene from a thousand Westerns. This was the street where the comical sidekick would die in the second act, where the hero and the villain would shoot one another in the third.

I’m just remembering it wrong,
Marzi thought. After all, the buildings
did
look familiar—she’d drawn them in the first issue of
Rangergirl,
as part of the ghost town that lay beyond the Western Door. She’d assumed she was drawing on a lifetime of experience with Western movies, but apparently the scene was an outright theft from Garamond Ray. Was impaired memory a suitable excuse for plagiarism? Unless the wall hadn’t
always
been like this . . .

No. The wall hadn’t changed—that was absurd.
As absurd as a mud-girl,
she thought.
As absurd as ghost cowboys in the Red Room.

Marzi went to the other side of the still-blocked door and cleared those shelves away. More buildings, marching off to the vanishing point, painted in perspective. She moved on to the middle, took a breath, and moved the boards away.

She stood back and looked at the whole wall. The door was still there, tarnished brass knob and all—she’d been careful not to touch that knob when clearing the shelves away, careful without acknowledging the reason for her care. The middle of the mural depicted the street itself, a dusty stretch lined by buildings. She’d expected to see a shadowy figure painted at the end of the street, a man in a hat and a long duster, but the street was empty. Otherwise, it was perfectly familiar, the land just beyond the Western Door, which she’d drawn so many times. Marzi was profoundly shaken—she didn’t remember the mural looking like this at
all
. She’d take her last picture, and get out of here, and then seriously consider getting professional help. Again.

Marzi stepped back and lifted the camera, peering through the viewfinder. Her finger depressed the button, and the shutter clicked, obscuring Marzi’s view for a fraction of a second.

When the shutter opened, the painting had changed.

Now a shadowy man stood at the far end of the street, visible through the viewfinder. A blob of mold obscured his face.

Marzi gasped and dropped the camera to the floorboards.

When she looked at the wall with her own eyes, the man was gone. She picked up the camera, which seemed undamaged by the fall, and almost put it to her face again. But no. She didn’t want to see if the figure came back. Nor would she look at the developed photographs, if she could avoid doing so. She didn’t want to know if the figure appeared in them.

Without putting the boards back, unwilling to stay in the room a moment longer, she reached behind her and opened the door to the kitchen. She backed out of the room, never taking her eyes off the rear wall. Once outside, she flipped the light off quickly, and then slammed the door.

Marzi leaned her forehead against the cool wood and breathed deeply. She would have to go back in eventually, she knew—it was imperative that she nail boards over the door—but she couldn’t face it again, not so soon.

She headed outside to get some fresh air before her shift started.

Lindsay was deep in her canvas, slashing color across the upper third of the painting, when Alice came in. This painting was a cadmium-and-cobalt scream of primal defiance, a repudiation of the dark that seemed sometimes to be pressing in from all sides, an act of violence committed against her own growing melancholy.

Then the source of her melancholy appeared. Alice walked in, her chunky motorcycle boots clomping against the floor. She looked shy and out of her element among the covered canvases, the neat workbenches, the jars of turpentine and soaking brushes. But beautiful, too, her strong features, cropped hair, slim body in a leather jacket, plain white shirt, black leather pants, a little silver charm of a gorgon’s head hanging on a green thread around her neck. She’d ridden with a lesbian biker gang called The Gorgons for a while. Lindsay loved those stories, loved hearing Alice recount her vivid history. Lindsay put her brush and palette down and smiled. She wanted it to be a dazzling melt-her smile, but couldn’t manage it; the look on Alice’s face was so odd, confused and determined all at once.

“Hi, tall, dark, and handsome,” Lindsay said, wishing she’d held on to her brush so she’d have something to do with her hands. Her voice was too loud in the quiet studio.

Alice stopped, a little too far away even for a conversation between strangers, much too far to stand from a lover, and the distance made Lindsay ache.

“Lindsay,” Alice said, her voice wavering. “I’m really sorry about last night.” Alice Belle, uncertain—it was as wrong as a fish flopping on the salt flats, incongruous as a cursing monk.

“It’s okay. Stuff comes up.” A beat, a twisting moment. “What came up?”

Alice looked around, found a stool, pulled it over, and sat. She slumped, seemingly exhausted, and Lindsay noticed the bags under her eyes, like faint smears of ash, like war paint for a dispirited brave. “I wanted to talk to you about that. I’m . . . did Marzi tell you she saw me, that we talked?”

“She mentioned it, but she didn’t say much, just that you had a lot on your mind.”
Like I’m too young,
Lindsay thought.
Too femme, too perky, I try too hard, I’m bad in bed. . . .
Which of those? Something else? Would Alice lie, try to spare her feelings; would Lindsay know it for a lie?

“I told Marzi I’m afraid of becoming a pyromaniac,” Alice said, and
that
was unexpected. Lindsay was flummoxed, then abashed at her own self-absorption, and, finally, confused and alarmed.

“What?” Lindsay said.

Alice shrugged. “I think I’m going crazy, is all. I’ve always liked fire, but lately it’s been more than that. These past couple of days I’ve thought about
starting
fires. That’s why I didn’t go out with you last night. I went riding, tried to clear my head, and . . . it doesn’t make sense . . . but once I got a few miles away from town, I felt better. I felt like myself again, not some crazy firebug. So I came back, and it started to happen again, that
urge,
like there’s a huge speaker downtown blaring the word ‘Burn’ over and over, a thousand decibels, and as I get closer it gets louder and louder until I can’t hear anything else, it fills up my head . . .” Alice, amazingly, was crying, tears spilling from the corners of her eyes, and Lindsay went to her without thinking and held her, wrapped her arms around Alice’s body. She was so much smaller than she seemed.

Alice was so stiff, it was like hugging a light pole, but then she relaxed suddenly, stood up from the stool, and embraced Lindsay fiercely. “I’m so
scared,
” Alice said. “I’m so scared of
me,
” and Lindsay couldn’t think of anything to say to that, could only think of Marzi’s brief breakdown, when the sight of a closed door was enough to make her weep uncontrollably. Both Marzi and Alice were
strong
—Lindsay would have bet her eyes they were stronger than she—and yet they’d both broken in such peculiar ways.

“Alice, it’ll be okay, we’ll work it out,” but Alice pulled away, shook her head.

“No,” Alice said. “What, I’ll go to therapy, they’ll say my mom and dad hurt me, which they did, and that’s why I want to start fires? But it’s
not,
not now. This is coming from
outside,
and I know that’s crazy, that thinking it makes me even crazier, but I believe it’s true.”

It did sound crazy—paranoid, specifically. But how could she say that, especially when Alice acknowledged it herself? How could Lindsay help?

Alice said, “Something wants me to burn down Genius Loci, the coffeehouse. I dream about it, I daydream about it, I almost
plan
—oily rags, gas cans, smoke and flames belching out the windows, the roof lifting off like a rocket, Lindsay.” Alice’s eyes were bright, glassy; Lindsay realized that talking about this
excited
Alice, even as it disturbed her. “And I see something beautiful, rising from the flames—a phoenix, a dark angel made of fire, with a beautiful face and snakes made of smoke for hair, a goddess of fire, cleansing, taking everything down to ash and the end, a goddess with supernova eyes—” and then Alice grimaced and shook her head. “Shit,” she said. “You see? I’m almost talking myself into it. You see?”

“I see,” Lindsay said, willing herself not to step away. She touched Alice’s hand. “Don’t hurt yourself, baby.”

“What I don’t get is how specific it is,” Alice said, scowling. “It began as a vague thing, you know? I wanted to fire-dance more, then I wanted to play with open flames, but then for the past couple of days it’s been so strong, and it’s this one particular place I want to burn. What’s so special about a coffee shop?”

Lindsay shrugged helplessly, strange connections knitting together in her mind. Jane had tried to break into Genius Loci, howling about an imprisoned goddess, and Beej had calmly pledged fealty to an earthquake god while
he
tried to break in, and now Alice had visions of a phoenix-gorgon-goddess—Why? Why were all these people drawn to this ordinary place? Lindsay had an open-door policy when it came to strange ideas, and she’d dabbled in tarot, Eastern healing practices, numerology, astrology, and various forms of divination, but nothing really
stuck,
and she had no strong attachment to any particular mystical system—but surely this mass obsession with Genius Loci meant
something
.

“So I’m going away,” Alice said, almost but not quite too softly to hear, and Lindsay blinked at her, then shook her head and said, “Oh, no,” unable to summon any laughter or offhandedness, none of her many protections coming easily to hand. She had no illusions about forever or eternal love with Alice, but they’d just
begun;
there was so far yet to go before the end, and now it was over?

“I feel better when I’m farther away,” Alice said. “Please understand, it’s even hard to be here, this close. I don’t trust myself, and that’s terrible. I hate this feeling, but I had to say good-bye to you. I had to see you before I left.”

“Alice,” Lindsay said, and nothing else; there seemed to be no words. Protests were futile, and what could she say? So “Alice” again, and Lindsay kissed her lover’s eyelids, her fore-head, her lips. They shared a hungry kiss and an embrace, and there was heat; so much heat.

Alice broke away, and smiled shyly, that unlikely smile she had. “Maybe—” she began, then stopped and shrugged.

Lindsay nodded, understanding, her lips still warm from Alice’s. “I know. Maybe.”

Short-trigger Man

When Marzi gave him the camera, Jonathan said, “Thanks again.” He looked down at the camera and said, “Oh, there’s only one picture left. Smile.” Before Marzi could protest, he snapped a picture of her.

“I bet my eyes are half closed and I look like a pug dog,” she said.

“I’m sure you’re very photogenic.”

She snorted.

“I’m going to get these developed,” Jonathan said. “I’ll see you later.” He went down the steps quickly, almost skipping. It was nice to see him excited. She suspected it wasn’t a side of him that most people saw, and she felt privileged to glimpse it.

Hendrix was gone for the night, and the only other person working was Pouty Peter, who had long bleached-blond bangs and almost never talked—he was nice enough, she supposed, but uncommunicative to the point of pathology. The café was dead empty, only two or three customers who were in for the long haul with their laptops, books, and magazines; most of the student clientele had fled for the summer, and everyone else apparently had better things to do with the evening than hang around here. Pouty Peter sat on a chair near the refrigerated drink case, reading a book written in German, sipping intermittently on a Red Bull. Marzi tried to think of some manager-type stuff to tell him to do, but really there was nothing. It had been a slow day, too, apparently, and everything was as neat as it ever got, except for the stuff they would clean up after closing.

The first hour was uneventful. Marzi served exactly one beer, and spent the rest of the time reading, until she finished
The Wood Wife
—there were desert spirits in that book, but they were different from the one she had to contend with. Then she doodled in a notebook, sitting on a stool behind the counter, keeping an eye on things, though there wasn’t much to keep an eye on—Beej behind bars, Jane scared away or no longer interested or maybe busy being crazy someplace else, Denis no doubt humiliated down to the soles of his boots. A boring night like a thousand others, but not since last summer had it been
this
quiet, and Marzi had forgotten what it was like. It took some effort to get her mind down to the proper cruising speed.

Around seven, Pouty Peter said, “Shit, do you hear that?”

Marzi cocked her head, but didn’t hear anything except someone faintly tapping on a laptop in the Teatime Room. There wasn’t even music playing; the last CD had stopped, and she hadn’t even noticed. “No, what?”

“It’s like . . . I dunno . . . a black buzz. Bees or flies or a fan that’s almost broken . . .” This was more than Marzi had ever heard Peter say at one time, and it wasn’t proving him a lucid or interesting conversationalist. “Almost like it’s words, but I can’t quite make it out . . .” He looked bothered; more than that,
spooked
. “Maybe it’s just somebody listening to headphones, or something playing down the street.”

“Maybe,” Marzi said. “You’ve got better ears than me, I guess.” She listened—after all the strange things she’d been through lately, she couldn’t dismiss
anything
out of hand—but still didn’t hear anything.

Peter stood up. “Look, I don’t feel so well, do you think I can take off? I know you’d be here all alone, but—”

Marzi waved her hand. “I’m going to close early anyway. Go on.” She’d been thinking about sending him home for a while anyway. It was that kind of night. She couldn’t imagine there being a rush here that she couldn’t handle by herself.

Peter gathered his things. “If you get super busy, call me on my cell, I’ll just be at home.” He lived in a shared house not far from the café.

“Sure, don’t worry about it.”

Then Marzi was alone, bored, listening to the nothing-at-all noises, certainly no black buzzing. She wished Jonathan would come back, even though he would want to show her the pictures; she wished Lindsay would come in, smelling of bubble gum and vanilla, bringing some radiance with her.

All at once, the handful of people in the café stood up, rattling their chairs, stuffing books into bags, closing laptops with snaps. Marzi frowned, wondering at the synchronicity, coming around the counter to glance into the other rooms. Everyone was leaving, looking suddenly worried or furtive or curiously Buddha-blank-faced. They all left without a word, even though a couple of them were regulars with whom Marzi ordinarily exchanged greetings. “Hey, guys, where’s the fire?” she said as they left, but no one spoke, or even glanced back; they didn’t hurry, just left as if they’d remembered someplace else they urgently needed to be.

Marzi thought of animals spooking before an earthquake. People said the animals always knew first, felt the vibrations before they even happened, that the animals
knew,
without even knowing what it was they knew. So why didn’t she feel anything?

“Shit,” Marzi said aloud, mostly just to hear herself speak. It didn’t help, and in fact seemed inappropriate, like cursing in the ruins of a possibly haunted church. Marzi considered putting on some music, really blasting something up-tempo, but couldn’t quite bring herself to do so. What if there were something she needed to hear? Something like Pouty Peter’s black buzz, or whatever made the customers leave?

The Fiesta-plate clock ticked loudly. Marzi shivered, hugging herself. Had the temperature in the room suddenly dropped, or was that her imagination? She thought of shutting the front doors to block the breeze, if there was a breeze, but it would also make it harder to run away, if . . .

If what? She was being ridiculous. She was—

Something flickered in the front window, the big one that looked over Ash Street. It was a flash of light, an incomplete reflection. Marzi frowned, coming around the counter, squinting. It looked like someone was trying to project film on the window, which wouldn’t work, of course, not really, since the window was transparent. But the darkness beyond the window and the dirt on the glass allowed hints of dancing light and shadow to briefly resolve. Marzi turned and looked behind her, and of course there was nothing, no dancing beam of light, no projector. It was just something outside, the reflection of a reflection of headlights, maybe, or—

We should talk,
a voice said, emanating from nothing, from the walls, from the blackness of the spaces between Garamond Ray’s painted stars.
Chew the fat.
The voice was gravelly, and underlaid by a faint hiss, as if it were a severely degraded soundtrack.

Marzi spun around, looking behind her, toward the Desert Room beyond the kitchen, but no one was there. She looked back toward the window, where the flickering on the glass was more obvious now, more substantial, as if something were gathering substance from the air.

“Who am I talking to?” she said, amazed at how calmly the question emerged. She thought,
What would Rangergirl do?
It didn’t seem at all like a foolish question.
She would be brave,
Marzi thought. She wondered if she could manage that.

I don’t have a name. I come from a time before names, a place without them. You’re the one who names things.
The voice was more substantial now, too, and seemed to emanate from that thickening patch of air, a space above the couch where the light seemed to stick together and swell.
You could never decide what to name me. You call me lots of things.

“The Outlaw,” Marzi said. “You’re telling me you’re a character from my comic book?”

“A character from your comic book is
me,
more like,” it said, and now the voice was no vague emanation; it came from right in front of her, a rough, human voice. The curling whiteness—the glare of light reflected off a window, but with edges—was taking on a roughly human shape, two tendrils spinning down into legs, a widening torso, arms, something like a misshapen head.

Marzi retreated behind the counter. “You can’t get out,” she said, her jaw tight. “You’re
behind
me.”

“I’m
not
out. Not that I can’t
get
out—you can’t fence me in—but I’m not out yet. This is nothin’ but pretty lights on a screen. I’ve been hammerin’ on that old door, darlin’, and I’ve managed to open it a crack, to reach out a little, and touch the world. But this?” It stepped forward, having feet to step with, now, looking like a white man-shaped balloon, featureless, but the head was all wrong, lumpy, strange. “This is nothin’. I just thought we should have a powwow, is all, sit down and talk man-to-man. Or what have you. I’m not a man, and neither are you, but I don’t care overmuch about the particulars.”

“Why are you talking like that? Like some B-movie cowboy?” Marzi wasn’t afraid, exactly—it was almost too surreal to be terrifying. Or else, on some level, she’d been prepared for this, expecting it.

“It’s not up to me, how I talk. I don’t talk at all, given my druthers, but you make me want to ramble on. I’m callin’ you out, but you’re the one who chooses the time and place and weapons.”

“I don’t understand you.”

Improbably, the thing spat, turning its lumpy head and spewing a neat stream of whiteness that disappeared before it hit the floor. “No. I reckon not. Listen, I’ll make you a deal. You’ve got until sunup to get out of town, free and clear, and no one will follow you. There’s no shame in walking away from a fight you can’t win.”

What would Rangergirl do? Well. That was easy, now. “I’m not walking away from anything. Besides, last time I checked, you were still locked up. What are you going to do to me? I guess you’re the one who’s been pushing Beej, and Jane, huh, making them do things?”

“Nobody makes anybody do anything. I just help them do what they want to do anyway. They’re just getting in good with the winning side. But yeah, they’re my gang, even if they don’t know that, exactly.”

“Well, Beej is
locked up,
just like you, and Jane is gone. Not to mention crazy. And I’m here, and I’m going to keep you in. Tomorrow I’m coming back with boards, and I’m nailing your door shut, and that’s going to be the end of it.”

The thing laughed, cruel and mocking. It reached up, lifted the top of its head away, and rubbed its arm across its forehead.

Marzi burst out laughing, and the thing’s own laughter suddenly stopped. “What’s funny, missy?”

“Is that thing supposed to be a
hat
? That big lumpy thing on your head, that’s supposed to be a
cowboy hat
?”

“There’s no call to insult my hat,” it said in a wounded tone, and suddenly Marzi wasn’t in the middle of a dramatic movie anymore, she was in a comedy, something like
Blazing Saddles,
maybe, and the thing before her didn’t seem dangerous at all, just foolish, a nothing dressed up in a cowboy’s clothes, nothing to be afraid of at all.

“Oh, go to hell,” Marzi said. “Screw you and the nag you rode in on.”

The thing diminished, slumping on one side like a punctured beach ball, and began to dissolve, the light that made up its body dispersing, giving way to everyday shadows. “You have until sunup, missy. If you’re still here tomorrow it won’t go easy on you. I’ll see to that. I’ve killed your kind before. You’re not the first one to guard my door.” It sank to its knees, which came apart underneath it, and its ludicrous lump-hat lost what feeble definition it had.

“We’ll see about that,” Marzi said, feeling boisterous, watching the light-puppet come apart. “You’ve never had to fight me before. There’s a new sheriff in town.” She leaned on the counter, and added, as an afterthought, “Bitch.”

The thing came apart completely, and then there was nothing.

Maybe that wasn’t exactly how Rangergirl would’ve handled it, but Marzi thought she’d done pretty well, all things considered.

She turned away and saw someone coming up the steps, slowly, and it took her a moment to realize it was Lindsay, because Lindsay didn’t shuffle, she didn’t plod; even when she was exhausted from being up for a night and a day working or partying, she didn’t walk like this. She came into the café, and there were tears on her face. “Oh, Marzi,” she said. “Alice left. She left town. She’s gone.”