The fi rst thing Seth did was vomit. Then he stared around himself, wildly, trying to fi gure out where the hell he was. Then he realized that his fi fty-six year old body had been run long past its normal endurance, compounding the bleeding and the shock. He stumbled to a chair and sank into it, heedless of the blood he smeared all over it.
Morbidly fascinated, he stared at the two corpses. The woman, on top, had a hole in her belly the size of both his fi sts. It looked like whoever did this (which, he dazedly realized, must mean himself) had shot her, then shot the man behind and beneath her through the original blast hole.
He shook his head, squeezing his eyes shut. When he opened them, his head was pointing down at the ugly carpet and it seemed like there was a dark tunnel closing in on either side of him.
He took a deep breath and willed himself not to pass out. It didn’t work.
When he came to, he was still slumped in the chair. His neck was stiff and painful, but nothing next to the dull throb in his leg and his hand. The sun was up outside, barely. The two corpses didn’t look any better by daylight. He took a deep breath.
“Okay,” he thought. “If the cops aren’t here yet, that means no one heard the gunshots.” He checked his watch and pinched a tiny button on the side. The digital numbers reformed into the word “SAT.”
“Good, good,” he thought. “It’s the weekend, so they’re less likely to be missed at work. Unless they work on the weekends. But I’ve still got time.”
It wasn’t until he was in their kitchen, opening the fridge, that he realized his stomach was rumbling fi ercely and he was still light headed. He fi nished off a quart of milk and tossed the carton in the sink. Seeing a red and white bucket, he looked inside for leftover fried chicken. It was extra-crispy, his favorite, and he dazedly thought, “Well, at least one thing’s gone right.”
As he sat down at the table to eat left-handed, he mulled over his situation.
“Do I know where I am? No. Do I know who I just killed? No and no. Did I leave evidence all over the place? Hell yes. Is there any way I can know what my body did while I wasn’t using it? Who it might have talked to, or what dumb screwups it might have made that reveal my guilt? No, no and no again. Am I fucked? Yes. I am fucked good.”
Seth grabbed a couple dishtowels and wiped off everything he’d touched in the kitchen. He was wiping off the shotgun when he saw dirty smudges on the fl oor.
They corresponded, of course, to his shoes.
He looked through the house and determined that his victims were Scott and Sally Henschele, residing on rural route 2 near Dubuque, Iowa. No sign of any kids, he noticed with acute relief.
After some long, hard thought, he pulled a card out of his wallet. It had three letters and nine numbers on it. The numbers were to a phone in a Chicago area code. The three letters were “TNI”.
The voice that answered was cool, female and only marginally polite.
“Hello?”
“Hi. This is Dobbs. Seth Dobbs.”
“Should that mean something to me?”
“Yeah, really it should.”
“Right. Please hold while I punch up your fi le.”
While he waited, Seth poked his leg wound idly with his injured fi ngers. The hold music was Vivaldi.
“Unbelievable,” he thought. “The biggest, baddest, scariest occult conspiracy in the freakin’ world, and they act like an insurance company. I suppose I’m lucky they don’t have a voice mail thingie. ‘If you’re calling about demonic possession, press one.’”
The music stopped and the woman spoke.
“Mr. Dobbs. I’ll be transferring you through to my supervisor.”
Another few bars of Vivaldi, then a man’s voice, clear, deep and professional.
“Mr. Dobbs?”
“Uh huh.”
“I see from your fi le you discussed employment with one of our recruiters and… conditionally declined.” His voice sounded disapproving. “At that time, you established a password with that recruiter to verify your identity?”
“That’s right. ‘Pigeon.’”
“‘Pigeon’ is correct. May I assume from this call that you’ve reconsidered working with us?”
“You could say that.”
“May I ask why you’ve changed your mind?”
Seth sighed.
“Well… the thing is… I’m in kind of a jam.”
“Ah.”
“I hear you guys are real good at getting people out of this kind of jam.”
“I should warn you: Our phone lines are secure, but I can’t speak to the line you’re calling from. Do you understand me?”
“Uh, yeah, I get it.”
“So don’t say anything you might later regret.”
“I said I get it.”
“With that warning in mind, can you tell me the kind of problem you’re having?”
Seth glanced through a doorway into the crime scene.
“I guess you’d call it an OJ kind of problem.”
“I see.”
“So I’ve reconsidered your previous offer. I’m ready to come aboard. I get a new identity and all that, right?”
“Well Mr. Dobbs, it’s not quite that simple.”
“‘Not quite that simple’?”
“Right. We offered you a job, you said no, all well and good. But now your circumstances have changed. Surely you don’t expect to enter our employ under the same terms?”
“What, as soon as I’m in trouble you don’t want anything to do with me?”
“You’re misrepresenting me, Mr. Dobbs.”
“Oh, well I’m very fucking sorry.”
“Mr. Dobbs, there’s no need for such language. I understand you’re under a lot of stress and pressure. But you should understand this. If you annoy me enough, my next call is to the Dubuque police.”
“You traced this call?”
“Oh Mr. Dobbs.” The voice sounded positively paternal, dammit. “We trace every call.”
“Okay, fi ne. You want me to sweeten the deal? I’ll sweeten the gosh darned deal. I understand you people have had a few problems with the Freak. Like, Jeffrey Dahmer style problems. How would you like to know the source of the Freak’s power?”
“We already have an extensive dossier on… that particular individual. You’ll have to raise the ante, Dobbs.”
“All right. Did you know the Freak’s not just a cut nut, it’s a godwalker? Not only do I know which archetype, I know the name and location of a kid who was
literally born to replace it. A godwalker waiting to happen, and no one even knows it. Somehow, I suspect you’d like to yank the rug out from under the Freak by replacing it with another avatar, now wouldn’t you?”
There was a pause on the other side of the line.
“How did you fi nd out about this child?”
“I got hired to fi nd him. Hired by someone who knows what I’m really worth.”
“I see. And why should we trust you to come to us when you’re selling out your previous employer?”
“Hey, he sold me out. Way I see it, turnabout is fair play.”
“You’re starting to interest me. But what’s to stop us from checking your credit card records, seeing where you’ve been recently, and then fi nding this ‘golden child’
ourselves? I appreciate the tip, but you still haven’t made the risk of consorting with an ‘OJ style problem’ worth my while.”
“Shit, you are a hardass, aren’t you?”
“Language, Mr. Dobbs.”
“All right, I’ll go you one better. I got me a gadget that locates avatars of a certain stripe—the Mystic Hermaphrodite, which means the Freak and this kid.
The Freak can hide itself from just about anybody, but it can’t hide from this thing.
How’d you like to track it down? Learn where it lives? Find out all its secrets? I can hand you the Freak on a silver platter, dammit! How much more do you want?”
“Can I put you on hold for a moment?”
Dobbs dropped his face into his hands as the Vivaldi came back on. It played through to the end of the song and started again before the man spoke to him again.
“We’ll have a team at your location soon. Call us back in exactly one half hour.
Until that time, don’t answer the phone. Welcome aboard, Seth. Anything you’re going to need?”
“Yeah, be sure to send a doctor.”
“A doctor? Are you all right?”
“No, I’m really pretty damn far from being all right. Send a doctor. An’ another thing. The guy who did this to me? I want him to have a problem. Like… a Lee Harvey Oswald kind of problem.”
There was another pause.
“That can be arranged.”
The voice was cool and patronizing.
* * *
While Seth was waiting for his TNI rescue squad, the Mundy family was just waking up. After a long night of debating, in which nothing was decided, Leslie and Kate had gone back to their room on another fl oor of the same hotel.
Leslie woke up and showered fi rst, thinking long and hard about whether to shave or not. Not shaving would leave him a short but discernable stubble—a male sign. If he was going to have a female day, he’d need to carefully shave, and do his legs too.
He didn’t particularly want to. He wondered if his parents—or, he reminded himself, “the Mundys”—would give him a hard time about skipping another female day. He fi gured they would. He was almost tempted to do it just to give them something in common, something they could agree on. If they weren’t fi ghting with him, he fi gured they’d fi ght with each other. But in the end he lathered up his legs and reached for the razor.
Growing up, Leslie’s parents had stressed obedience. That and mercy and justice and peace, but they’d always seemed to have an easier time teaching obedi-ence. Obediently, their son got out of the shower with smooth legs and armpits, and lathered his face while waiting for the mirror to clear off. Leslie shaved with total intensity, knowing that a single nick could shatter the illusion.
He heard his mother rising as he scraped off the last of the foam, unthinkingly grateful once again that he was blonde and had a thin beard. Next he combed out and dried his shoulder length hair, pulling it straight back. He wound a headband around his forehead, got it good and tight, and pulled it back to the hairline. The old actress who’d shown him that trick called it “instant facelift” and it went a long way towards feminizing his features. True, his long face didn’t look good with the hair going straight back, but the point wasn’t to look pretty. The point was to look authentic.
Foundation followed, along with light lipstick, a little rouge and eyeshadow. A scarf went around his neck, fl ight attendant style, concealing his adam’s apple. He squinted at the mirror. Yes, from the neck up he could pass.
His mother knocked on the door. “Leslie? You gonna be long?”
“Just about out, ma.” He wrapped a towel around his waist and left the bathroom. Seeing the makeup, his mother smiled and gave him a little kiss on the cheek.
In the bedroom, Leslie smoothed the covers before putting his suitcase on the bed. Part of it had his “man clothes”—t-shirts and jeans, sneakers and a ratty Braves baseball cap. The rest of it was blouses, skirts, fl ats and (of course) falsies.
Leslie had, in his life, met a lot of transvestites. Many of them had, in his opinion, caricatured femininity more than they had enacted it. On his female days, Leslie had no desire to be a “tramp” or a “hottie.” Where other TVs dressed for attention, Leslie considered it the highest compliment when he could pass as a she and never be suspected.
When he heard the shower go on, he dropped his boxers to the fl oor and (with a little sigh) tucked his penis and scrotum back between his legs, reaching for the Ace bandage. Then panties, padded bra, blouse, slacks, stockings, a cardigan and
a pair of low-heeled boots. Rings, earrings and a small pendant completed the picture.
He looked in the mirror and concentrated on being a she. Hip cocked slightly to the side, not rolled forward. Ankles and knees together. Hands by the face or the hair, not in the pockets. Looseness in fi nger joints, the elbows and wrists and shoulders, but tightness in the neck and eyes.
There.
She was ready, not to look, but to be looked at. Hopefully, to be looked over and overlooked.
When Kate came out of the bathroom, wearing a Greenpeace t-shirt that came to her knees, she said, “You look nice, honey” and gave Leslie a kiss on the cheek.
Leslie’s hand automatically touched the other woman’s arm and she smiled in return. “Thanks mom,” she said in a soft voice.
* * *
Fred had woken from a nightmare—something about a blonde woman and a heavy machine with a button on the front—and hadn’t fallen asleep again. He wondered what had happened to Seth, and tried to tell himself that it probably wasn’t that bad. After all, when he’d called up the ghost it had sworn up and down that all it wanted to do was protect its little girl. Still, he’d had quite a turn listening to it scream at Seth and watching it take him over. That voice… anyone who heard would know that nothing human made that voice. He’d been mad as hell at Dobbs, but in hindsight he wondered if he hadn’t overreacted.
“Shit,” he muttered. “That weak-think ain’t doing no good now.”
He tossed and turned for a few moments, then got up for a glass of water. As he turned around, he saw pants cuffs peeking from under the bed. He bent over, wincing as he felt his spine pop a little, and pulled out the bundle of clothing. In the dim, midnight light you couldn’t see the bloodstains at all. He supposed he ought to wash them—or better yet, burn them—but another idea came to mind.
Burning them would be the safest, certainly. But the danger the clothes posed also offered him the chance to take a risk. Not just any risk, but a particularly stupid and dangerous risk. Meaning, in his circumstances, a powerful risk.
He’d seen a laundromat not far away—quite near, in fact, to the place he’d ditched the gun. A prickle combining fear and excitement tickled his neck hairs and made him smile in the darkness. He glanced at the clock.
Three A.M. didn’t offer much in the way of witnesses, but anyone who was there would certainly remark on a stranger doing such a tiny load. Not to mention what would happen if someone walked by the washer—right out in the open!—and saw the stains. He didn’t have much of an alibi, since the only people he knew in town could attach him to Dobbs and… oh yes, this was shaping up into a tasty
chance indeed. The odds in his favor were quite good, but the stakes were also quite high. After all, he was a convicted felon, and any investigation into Dobbs’ stab wound would likely focus on the jailbird he’d come to town with…
Yes, the safe thing was defi nitely to skip town and go to ground. Fred immedi-ately decided to stay and do laundry.
As it happened, there was no one in the laundromat, no one even saw him enter or leave: But even as he was leaving the hotel to run across the highway, he felt his squirreled-away store of mojo increase.
This put him in a pretty good mood when he got back, and he was able to sleep several more hours before the alarm went off, awakening him for his date with his not-wife and not-son.
Waiting was not easy, however. His interrupted sleep had left him feeling groggy and dull, and time to think over his past with Leslie and Kate never put him in a good mood. At the diner he bit his nails and ordered coffee and looked at his watch a lot. When they walked in, he stood up and waved, but his smile was pure refl ex.
“Hey ladies,” he said, and it felt completely natural. “Breakfast is on me.”
“Big spender,” Kate grinned.
They sat, had coffee, runny eggs, salty hash browns and waffl es soaked in syrup. When the waitress left, Fred cracked his knuckles, grimaced and spoke.
“So… where we at, here?”
“You mean in regards to… uh, Joe Kimble?” Kate’s eyes fl icked over at Leslie as she spoke.
“Yeah.”
They were quiet for a moment.
“Do you really think it’ll do any good to fi nd him?” Leslie asked quietly, not even looking up from her waffl es.
“How y’mean?” Fred was working at a piece of sausage gristle that had gotten lodged in a back molar.
“I mean this: I have spent the better part of twenty years—or at least the bigger part—trying to attune myself to the Mystic Hermaphrodite. I was raised to do it and have done little else.” A tiny edge of resentment crept into her voice, but she pushed it back. “I’ve been fairly successful. But look around you. If I had to pick a place in America that was least conducive to either mysticism or sex-crossing, this would be a strong contender. Never mind mixing both together.”
There was quiet for a moment, then Fred replied “Well yeah, but… I mean, he was kind of born to do it. We think, anyhow.”
“And we come back to nature vs. nurture.” Kate gave a short laugh. “What’s the old joke? ‘Either way, it’s mommy’s fault’?”
“Who brought up fault?” Fred asked. “I mean, shit happens. I thought we’d agreed that the switch was, you know, just one of those things. Blowback.”
“Calm down Fred. No one’s blaming anyone. I guess I’m just with Leslie a little bit here. Is it going to do any good to start from scratch?”
Fred squinted. “Somehow, I don’t think you’d have driven all the way out here if you didn’t want to at least see how the ‘big experiment’ turned out. I’m gonna fi nd him with or without you. I hope it’ll be with you.” He turned to Leslie. “You, in particular, could help me a lot when it comes to gauging how far he is on the path.”
“If he’s on it at all,” Kate said in a low voice.
“Okay, yeah, I’ll grant that. Maybe the whole thing’s a screwup and there’s nothing special about him whatsoever.” Despite his agreeable words, his tone made
“Okay, yeah, I’ll grant that. Maybe the whole thing’s a screwup and there’s nothing special about him whatsoever.” Despite his agreeable words, his tone made