The Bone Triangle Page 8

  “I think something deeper is going on. The government is covering up something big, and a lot of people are in on it. All these objects—the Beast. Someone has to be keeping a lid on it all.”

  “Maybe,” I agreed.

  “But how do you know it was the bomb tests?” she asked after thinking for another moment. “Have you been out there? To Indian Springs and Camp Mercury? They used to have tours, you know.”

  “Yeah, I need to get out there someday. But I’ve been too busy battling otherworldly invaders, paying bills, and just plain staying alive.”

  She smiled. “I guess I’ve been too busy having fun with my own power. You were right. It’s almost addictive, like some kind of drug. Once I started doing it, I kept coming up with more ideas. I’ve taken things, played tricks, all sorts of stuff. I feel a little bad about it now.”

  “All rogues need to learn self-discipline,” I told her seriously. “We’re doomed otherwise.”

  I spun her a few grim tales, such as the story of Robert Townsend, a man I’d hunted down months ago. He’d lost his way and overused his powers as well. Some people did seem to be able to control it better than others. I put myself in that category, and McKesson. I wasn’t sure why I had a stronger resistance than most, but I knew that I did.

  After another round of drinks, we moved on to discussing how the objects themselves had been created and how they functioned. I presented a number of theories to her, most of which were based on conjecture. The best theory I’d heard was that they were related to the intersplicing of other realities or dimensions. According to this logic, the nuclear tests that had gone on here in our little slice of desert for over forty years had done some kind of damage to our local reality. Cracks in the universe had appeared, fractures between existences. The barriers between our continuum and others had broken down and thinned.

  Over time, it had become possible to venture between these alien realities. The other worlds were similar to ours, but there were always differences. Some worlds followed different physical laws. Others just seemed to be alien planets.

  The theory on how the artifacts worked went like this: if a fracture was created between two worlds, one where metal was soft and another where metal was rigid, an object at that point of intersection between the two worlds might be made. The item would have the power to change the realities of one world, interchanging them with those of another. This example attempted to explain the origins of my sunglasses. They must have been present at the exact moment a fracture was created between our world and one with soft metals. Now I could use my sunglasses to soften metal at will, thus opening locks and the like.

  Jacqueline listened to all this intently. In time, however, she began to yawn. This started my own yawns.

  “You’re yawning, too,” she said, pointing a finger at me. She threw down the last of her drink and stood up. She swayed for a moment, but only slightly.

  “You mean it’s time for bed?” I asked.

  “Ha! No way. I mean I’m getting bored. Let’s go find something to do. I can show you things…Do you want to see something new?”

  I sat up and smiled. “Okay. Show me something new.”

  She led me out of the hotel and into the streets. I followed along, feeling fine. The night breezes were cool and woke me up. She turned north, then west. After a while, I became concerned.

  “You’re heading into a bad neighborhood,” I said. “They call this the Triangle.”

  Jacqueline laughed. “Don’t be a sissy. There’s no such thing as a bad neighborhood for me. If I get into trouble, I vanish. What I like about the low-rent streets is the lack of cameras. These people don’t have the money for modern surveillance.”

  “Great.”

  I wasn’t worried about myself, but it was well after midnight. I wasn’t sure I could protect her if things went badly. There were more dangerous things than muggers on these streets. Things that might not be stopped by invisibility. I decided to make it look as if I was worried about my own safety.

  “You can disappear, but I can’t,” I said. “I took a few good punches on these streets just hours ago.”

  “Oh yeah, you said that. I thought I saw few a bruises on your face when we first met—they have faded now…Anyway, if you see the bad guys again, just grab my hand. I’ll save you.”

  “How?” I asked.

  “By making us both vanish.”

  “It works for two?”

  “Sure.”

  “Show me. I want to see what it’s like.”

  She took my hand and I smiled. I figured I couldn’t go wrong. At the very least, I had an excuse to hold her hand.

  When the effect came over me, I stumbled. For a moment, the world went dark, as if my vision had faded then slowly returned. It was a disorienting effect. Later, I wondered if my eyes had to adjust somehow to be able to see under new rules governing light and vision.

  My surroundings looked the same when my vision cleared. But when I looked at Jacqueline…she wasn’t there. It was disconcerting. I could feel her hand in mine, holding tightly, but I couldn’t see either of our hands. My eyes traveled, and I realized I couldn’t see my own legs.

  I stumbled. Not being able to see my own feet threw me off. I felt like I was walking with my eyes closed.

  “Don’t look down,” she told me. “You’ll get used to it.”

  I followed her advice, and things went more smoothly. Simply staring straight ahead made things feel more natural.

  “This is really strange,” I said. “You can do this indefinitely? Without any side effects?”

  “No, not exactly,” she admitted. “If I keep it up too long, we’ll go blind.”

  I laughed at that. It wasn’t very funny, but it seemed amusing to me. This was probably due to the alcohol in my system.

  Right then, it occurred to me we were fools to be out here late at night, wandering around invisible. It was exhilarating, but I thought it might all end badly. Like a billion young males before me, I went along with it anyway. Attractive ladies, booze, and foolish adventures always seemed to go together.

  We reached a dark street of residential homes. All up and down the street the bluish light of televisions and computers glowed in the windows. She led me to a house that had every light turned off.

  We paused at the door. I heard keys jingling. I figured she must have gotten them out of her purse. She let go of my hand, and we both became visible. I watched as she scratched at the lock.

  I reached out my hand and pulled her back gently.

  “What?” she asked.

  I shushed her and whispered into her ear, “Do you have a roommate?”

  “No,” she said, looking over her shoulder at me.

  I looked down at her and couldn’t help but notice for the tenth time the shape of her eyes and nose. She was very close, and I recalled that tricky kiss she’d given me. Moments like this, when she was surprised and had her eyebrows raised high—those were the best.

  I lifted my finger and pointed at a nearby window. Inside, a flashlight moved and played over the walls.

  She made a little whooping noise, and she reached up to grab my hand with hers. At first, it seemed like I’d been blinded somehow, but then I realized she’d used her power. She’d made us invisible again.

  “Time for me to do a trick,” I said. Holding onto her hand, I put my sunglasses on and gently opened her door. It didn’t creak, and for that I was grateful. I let it swing inward and stepped inside. Behind me, Jacqueline followed.

  She hesitated in the hallway outside the kitchen. Someone was crashing around in there, searching for something. Her hand wriggled in mine.

  “Let’s get out of here,” she whispered.

  I dipped my head down to whisper in her ear, but missed. I bumped my chin on her head. Standing close to someone while invisible was awkward.

  “We’ll be okay,” I whispered.

  “Ow, that hurt. Was that your teeth?”

  “Who’s there?”
called a voice.

  The voice was deep and the accent was strong. I was shocked to realize that I recognized it. The voice was that of a certain gangster I’d recently become acquainted with, a man who called himself Cartoon.

  “That’s you, isn’t it? You that crazy bitch, you been following me again. Well, this time I followed you, woman. How’s that?”

  Cartoon made this little speech standing in the kitchen. I knew he couldn’t hear us while he was shouting, so I dragged Jacqueline forward. I walked past the kitchen entrance into the main room. She tugged back, obviously wanting to run instead. I figured she’d gotten me into this, and we were going to see it through. I also figured I needed her in order to stay invisible.

  There was a problem, however. Cartoon was shining his flashlight toward the hallway as we slipped by. He caught us with the glare of his light—and saw our shadows, splashed on the far wall.

  “Holy shit!” he said, not sure of what he was seeing, but certain it was weird. “Are you some kind of freaking ghost?”

  I smiled and considered whispering his name, but I didn’t want him to freak out and start shooting at the “ghosts.” Instead, I pulled Jacqueline into the living room. Cartoon turned away, not able to see us, and searched the kitchen, banging around the furniture.

  In the living room I met with an entirely new shock. A single dim light burned in the room, a naked bulb in a lamp. The lamp sat on top of a massive pile of small boxes. It took me a moment to realize what the boxes were: shoeboxes. Hundreds of them, perhaps a thousand. They filled the living room of the house and were stacked nearly to the ceiling. There were cats, too, two of them, climbing over the boxes like an artificial mountain.

  I tried not to laugh, but failed. My sides began to hitch. Finally, I laughed aloud.

  I felt a pinch in my side. “Shut up,” Jacqueline said. When I kept snorting with laughter, she said, “Okay, fine.”

  I felt her hand slip out of mine. She was gone, and I was visible and standing there in the living room full of stolen shoes and hungry cats.

  “Hey, not cool,” I whispered. “You’re the one who stole, like, a thousand shoes.”

  She kicked me in the leg. I winced and rubbed at it. Having an argument with an invisible person was unpleasant. I found I kept squinting and wanting to duck.

  “I’m giving them back!” she hissed. “All of them. I just wanted to show you before they were gone, and you don’t even care.”

  I grimaced. Somehow, I’d come out of this as the bad guy. “How are you going to return them to the stores? They’ll be watching.”

  “Yeah, I know can’t just drop them off at the stores. I’m giving them to every charity in town. People will at least have shoes.”

  “What about the cats?”

  “They’re mine. I brought them from home. Mom’s always going on trips and forgets to feed them.”

  As if on cue, one of the cats began rubbing her chin on my leg, begging urgently. She had big green eyes that gazed up at me with great seriousness.

  Cartoon walked out of the kitchen and stared. He ran the flashlight over me, grunting in recognition. He had a butcher knife in his other big, balled-up fist.

  “You sure don’t know how to stay out of my business, do you?” he asked.

  Caught red-handed, I decided to play it cool. “Sorry. I didn’t know this was your place. When did you move in?”

  Cartoon stepped from one foot to the other uncertainly. “You know the crazy chick who lives here?”

  “I certainly do. Jacqueline is my girlfriend. I’d heard she was looking for a roommate, but…” I looked over Cartoon doubtfully.

  He stared at me for a moment, but slowly his eyes narrowed. “You’re full of crap,” he said, “but how did you get in here, anyway?”

  “Through the front door.”

  “No, I mean—I saw something…Never mind.” He looked confused, and I didn’t blame him. “Are you calling the cops, or what?”

  “Should I be?”

  “No,” he said. “No, I guess I could leave…But tell me why you came in here. This isn’t your girlfriend’s place. I’ve never seen you around.”

  “Are you sure about that? Maybe we should just call the whole thing a misunderstanding and go our separate ways.”

  “Okay then, you leave,” he said. I saw a stubborn look growing on his face.

  I frowned. I’d expected him to take his opportunity to avoid the cops and run out of the place. But he clearly didn’t want to budge. “Why are you here, anyway? Are you planning to open your own shoe store?”

  He laughed at that. “Yeah, mostly size six, too. No, I uh…I saw something outside.”

  I eyed him for a moment. His face looked troubled, and I began to catch on. “One of those orange lights you warned me about?”

  “Right.”

  “When you see these anomalies, do they ripple like dark fire?”

  “Yeah…” he said. “You’ve seen them, too, haven’t you?” As he spoke, he walked to the kitchen window and put the knife down on the counter. He leaned over the sink and stared outside into the darkness, mumbling something about crazy mofos and shadows.

  “Jacqueline, are you still here?” I asked aloud. “If you are, then don’t go outside.”

  “Is she in here somewhere?” Cartoon asked.

  “Maybe.”

  Cartoon looked confused again. But he soon got over it and continued staring outside. I understood the situation better now. He hadn’t come in here to rob the place. He’d come in to hide. There was something out there, and he was scared to death of it.

  I felt a stealthy presence at my side. I could feel Jacqueline’s body warmth, and a prickling sensation along the hairs of my arm. It was an odd sensation. I thought that this was what it must feel like to be haunted by a ghost.

  “What the hell is going on?” she whispered near my ear.

  “I should have brought a gun,” Cartoon said. “Some people say it’s bad to do that. Some say guns only attract the Beast. But I think a gun might help.”

  “Tell me about the Beast.”

  He glanced back at me and shrugged. “Nobody knows much. Except maybe for that detective you were talking to tonight. He seems to show up every time someone gets eaten.”

  “Are you sure it’s a living thing? Like a monster with a mouth?”

  “No, but it acts like that. Like a dragon, or something. Almost every night now someone is taken. Sometimes, the Beast spits out the bones and leaves them out on the street.”

  “Does it come into houses?”

  “I don’t think so. That’s why I’m in here.”

  Jacqueline tapped at my back. My vision faded in flashes, then came back again. I looked down toward where she must be standing.

  “Can’t you get rid of him?” she hissed in my ear. “Use your gun.”

  I shook my head. I had no plans to do so. Cartoon was giving me valuable information. And I wasn’t about to throw him into the streets while something stalked outside.

  Instead, I walked into the kitchen and stood beside the big man, staring out into the night. “You can stay here, man,” I said. “As long as it takes to feel safe.”

  “Thanks, that’s totally cool of you.”

  I thought I heard a tiny huffing sound behind me. I ignored it.

  Cartoon turned off his flashlight and kept his eyes on the street out front. I stood beside him, and we talked in quiet voices. It gave me a creepy feeling to stand there, watching for a monster I’d never seen. I felt a surge of superstitious dread—not so superstitious in this case, I reminded myself. It made my neck tingle. I wondered how many times in the old days men had stood in the dark, watching the night, suspecting danger lurked outside.

  “Is your girlfriend here?” Cartoon asked a few minutes later. “Is she like…some kind of ghost?”

  “Yes and yes,” Jacqueline said. She appeared then, standing quite close to me.

  Cartoon jumped as if the Beast itself had yawned beside him
.

  “Only,” Jacqueline went on, “he’s not really my boyfriend.”

  “Is there something in your fridge?” I asked Jacqueline. “Besides cat food, I mean?”

  Jacqueline offered us soft drinks, and we helped ourselves. She stayed out of Cartoon’s reach, and he treated her with equal respect. I’d seen this sort of behavior before, when people who knew a little about the objects met up with one another. The gangster knew the fantastic was now occasionally real, but he wasn’t sure enough of his knowledge to challenge others. He simply avoided them and the subject. He did not want to offend those whom he didn’t understand. I felt it was a wise policy on his part.

  “This is silly,” Jacqueline said several minutes later. “I’m going outside.”

  “Don’t,” I said.

  “It can’t touch me. It won’t even know I’m there.”

  “We can’t be sure of that.”

  Cartoon ignored us. He continued staring outside.

  “What am I supposed to do then? I brought you here to show you my collection.”

  “The shoes? I’m suitably impressed.”

  “Really?”

  “Oh yeah. But your cats—I think they’re hungry.”

  “They’re always hungry,” she complained, then she went to feed them anyway.

  “You’ve got weird taste in women, man,” Cartoon said to me quietly as she spooned food into dishes.

  “I can’t argue about that.”

  “There!” Cartoon said, suddenly leaning forward and tensing. His eyes stared out at the street. “Kill the lights.”