Monk left the bar well before midnight, feeling too much stout and whiskey sloshing around in his gut, and too many ghosts in his head. But what he’d learned at the bar kept him on the icy side of sober. The story Andrew Duncan told him scared the piss out of Monk.
Another missing tattoo? Another set of memories gone?
He stood in the rainy darkness and shivered. Not from the cold but from bad thoughts and shapeless uncertainty. He’d been in Pine Deep less than two days and already knew the place was wrong, but wrong how was beyond his understanding. A sound pulled him from that thought and he looked up to see the nightbirds clustered together on the rooftop of the vape shop across the street, looking like refugees at a closed border. It was too dark to see their eyes, but he could feel the weight of their stares. He wondered, not for the first time, if they could see the ghosts around him. Real ghosts, not just the bad thoughts in Monk’s head. Those spirits were always there. They traveled with him. Some of them screamed at him all through the day, all through the night. Mostly at night. He could see them, hear them, feel their various degrees of coldness all the time. A little less so when he was hammered, as he was now.
Could these birds see them, too?
As if in answer, one of the nightbirds cawed softly. It was such a sad, lonely, lost sound that it came close to breaking his heart.
Were these things even birds at all? Or, he wondered, were they as lost as the ghosts who haunted him? The birds rustled but gave no other cries, and for a moment all of the souls around Monk fell silent as a wet storm breeze blew past. He turned into the wind. Far down the street, along the edges of the coming storm, the night was thickening like a chest filling with air. Monk shifted his stance, widening his legs, balancing his weight onto the balls of his feet as if bracing for a wave. Or a punch.
But the wind blew wet and long and did not attack.
Monk closed his eyes and blessed the night, aching to set the ghosts free, to unchain his own longing and let it flutter like a piece of torn cloth on the breeze. He wanted to find the end of night and place his many hurts on the altar of dawn and be forgiven for all the harm he had ever caused. Especially the deeper injuries inflicted every time he tried to do good in the world. The GPS of his good intentions was faulty and there was no road map through this landscape. Not in this half of his life.
“Help me, mister.”
The words came from behind him and Monk whirled.
The street was empty except for parked cars. No one walking. No one anywhere in sight. He walked a few paces to change his perspective, but there was nothing. He heard the words as an echo in his mind.
Help me.
The voice was female. Young. And … familiar?
Monk fought to place it. Not Patty’s voice. No, this was a girl.
“Is someone there?” he called, his right hand touching the zipper of his leather jacket. He could unzip and draw his gun in a heartbeat. He’d done it many times.
There was no answer and his words died in the damp air.
Monk took a few careful steps in the direction of where he thought the voice came from.
Nothing.
There was a sudden sharp pain in his chest. Not deep, though. Not his heart. This was on the surface of his skin. Like a scrape or cut. It was intense, but fleeting. There and gone.
“That fuck…?” he asked the night.
The nightbirds rustled nervously on the rooftop.
“If you’re playing some kind of joke, kid,” Monk called, “then you’re making a bad choice. Trust me on this.”
“Please, mister … help me.”
Once more it sounded like it came from behind him and once more he spun, this time pulling the heavy automatic. He raised it into a two-hand shooter’s grip, finger laid ready along the trigger, but there was no one to threaten. The clouds began spitting at him.
Help me.
This time the echo felt very close, like a damp whisper in his ear, clammy as the grave. The pain flared once more in his chest. Monk shifted the pistol to his left hand and let it hang at his side. With his right he rubbed the spot on his chest. Beneath the fabric of his sweatshirt he could feel the tattoo. One of many faces he wore. It seemed to ripple and writhe, as if the inked mouth was trying to open. To scream.
Or … to whisper.
Please, mister, help me.
The drizzle turned to rain and Monk Addison stood there, touching his chest, knowing that it was the voice of a girl long dead who spoke to him. Who begged for help.
He pulled down the neck of the sweatshirt, yanking it, tearing it so he could see the face, just to the left of his sternum. He knew the name of every face on his skin. Each name, each life, each death.
“Angie,” he breathed.
The rain fell on the face of Angela Bailey. Fifteen. Raped and murdered eleven years ago. Dismembered and left like garbage in a dozen public trash cans. Angela. Angie.
Hers was the third face Patty had inked onto him and the eleventh face overall. Sweet little Angie. Torn to pieces and thrown away.
He stared at her face.
Her dead eyes were open.
Her dead lips moved
Help me, she screamed.
But it was not Angela Bailey’s voice. Looking into her eyes, he knew that. She was screaming, but hers were not the screams that filled the air around him. No, those were made by another voice. Younger. With a heavy accent. Or … speaking in another language.
He touched Angela’s face and then the bare spot next to her. There was no tattoo there.
Except there was.
There should be.
He pressed his fingers into his skin, scrabbled at a mark, a swirl of muted colors that faded even as he looked at it. Eluding his attempt to hold onto the memory of it.
Whose face had it been? He fought to remember. A name was almost there. Almost. Not Angela. Whose?
The rain ran down his chest and smeared the remnant tattoo, washing away the features, washing away the name.
And the memories.
He watched in total horror as the tattoo faded from his sight, from his experience, from his mind. Disappearing.
Monk spun, looking for her ghost among the crowd that surrounded him.
“Đừng để cô ấy quên tôi!”
Those words filled the air and each one hit Monk in the chest.
Don’t let her forget me.
“Little girl!” he roared, calling her that because all traces of the name were gone. Not a first letter, or the number of syllables. Nothing.
He strained to hear her in the wet darkness around him, but now even her ghostly voice was gone.
What was her name?
What did she look like?
He spun wildly, counting specters, but there were no ghosts missing from his entourage. He looked down again, straining to see that spot on his chest. Directly over his heart. There should be a tattoo there. There had been one. An old one. One of the first of that kind he ever got, or … maybe the first.
“Đừng để cô ấy quên tôi!”
The words made the bare spot throb with pain. Not sharp. Dull, like a bruise fading to nothing.
“Don’t let who forget you?” he yelled. He staggered toward the nearest car and squatted to see his chest in the sideview mirror. The skin looked unmarked. Only a faint blur, like some of the other places on his body where he’d had old military tattoos lasered off.
There was no face in that spot on his chest.
There was no …
Monk stood in the rain, touching a dead spot on his chest. An empty spot. A place that connected his thoughts to no one. He waited for the voice to speak, but it was totally gone now. He sagged against the car as a sob broke from deep in his chest.
The pistol fell from his left hand and clattered on the concrete.
Around him, the other ghosts screamed. All of them. Every single ghost screamed. And he did, too.