|
Display a printable version Marked
Within seconds of taking his seat, he leaned across the counter and introduced himself to her in a high-pitched, reedy Irish lilt. Not the done thing, thought Hannah. Not the done thing at all. And he smelt funny; he gave off a distinct odor of smoke, with faint undertones of scorched flesh, cinnamon and pond scum. She gave his outstretched hand a perfunctory shake and went back to wiping down the counter. Usually customers would do a double-take at the sight of her face and then let their glance slide away, settling on a point somewhere just over her shoulder, but he stared, for a full minute, and then asked, without apology or preamble, "How did you get that?" Oh, please, she thought. Not another creepy middle-aged scar fetishist. Her fingers flickered self-consciously over the thick, ropy red scar that started at her left temple, crossed her cheek, and wound down over her chin and neck before disappearing out of sight under the collar of her shirt. "Lightning strike," she said. "Are you going to order something or what?" Silver nodded as if he met lightning strike victims on a daily basis. "I've got a scar too," he said. "Do you want to see it?" Without waiting for an answer, he pulled open the grimy striped scarf around his neck to reveal a pale puckering of skin in the hollow of his throat. "And yes, I'd like a coffee, please. Black. Five sugars. How far down does it go?" "What?" Hannah frowned and stopped in mid-pour. "Your scar. How far down does it go?" "All the way to my right foot. That's why I walk with a limp." He was starting to piss her off now. "That must have hurt." "I don't really remember. It happened fifteen years ago. I was only four." Silver was still staring at her, his eyes glittering in his thin homely face. "Like being touched by the hand of God," he said dreamily. "Can I touch it?" He reached a hand out to her chest. "No!" she said, slapping his hand away. He sat back in his chair, looking so much like a wounded puppy that she felt an unwelcome pang of guilt. "Here's your coffee," she said, slopping the cup across the counter. "I've got to go – it's the end of my shift." *** He turned up nearly every day after that. He never mentioned Hannah's scar again, but he talked a lot about his own scar, each day telling a different story. One day he said he got it in a motorcycle accident. Another day he said he sustained it from the injuries that ended his career as a professional boxer. Taking in his gangly frame, Hannah greeted this with barely concealed skepticism. Despite his apparent lack of employment, he had an endless supply of bicycles, parking a different color and model each day outside the café. Hannah suspected that he supported himself through petty thievery, but as long as he paid for his coffee and kept his hands off her stuff, she didn't much care. After a while she became used to his harmless brand of madness, and they settled into a routine of sorts, Silver holding a random one-way conversation between sips of coffee and Hannah doing her best to ignore him. When he didn't show up for over a week, Hannah started to worry. Although he had told her several different versions of his life story, she realized that she knew virtually nothing about him. If something had happened to him, she didn't know if he had any close friends or family who could help out. And she didn't know his address, his phone number, or even his last name to check on him herself. So when he stepped out from behind a minivan as she was crossing the deserted car park at the end of a late shift, she didn't know whether to be frightened, angry or relieved. "Jesus, Silver!" she said, punching him on the arm. "You nearly scared the shit out of me!" "Hannah," he said, "I've got to show you something." He took hold of her elbow in a surprisingly powerful grip and propelled her towards the shadows of an alleyway on the far side of the car park. His customary loopy smile had disappeared, replaced with a grim frown of concentration that etched deep lines into his face. Hannah eyed the alleyway ahead. Her heart beat faster in trepidation and she fought in vain to free herself from his grasp. A police siren wailed a few streets away, and Hannah looked around hopefully, but it faded into the distance. "Are you on something?" she said, struggling to keep up with his long-legged stride. "Come on, Silver, stop mucking around and let me go." He stopped at the entrance to the alleyway, raised his finger to his lips to indicate silence, and pointed. Hannah looked and saw a tiny child, clad only in a nappy, rummaging around in the overflow of rubbish from a skip bin. She looked to be barely two years old, with tight blonde curls framing a cherubic face. Silver darted forward and grabbed the girl by the hair, holding her out at arms length. Hannah tensed in expectation of the scream that was certain to follow, but the girl remained silent; her contorted face the only clue to the pain she must be feeling. Silver gave the child a vicious shake. "Do you see, Hannah?" he said. The child wriggled and squirmed, tears spilling down her cheeks. "Do you see?" "What are you talking about, you fucking lunatic," sobbed Hannah. "Let her go!" She grabbed the child and yanked her away from Silver, leaving him standing with a fistful of the little girl's hair. "Poor little baby," she crooned, hugging the girl close and turning her back on Silver. "I won't let the bad man hurt you." Hannah looked down at the child in her arms and gasped. Suddenly, she did see. The girl's face had gone slack and expressionless. Beneath her now translucent skin, a dark, grimacing monster pulsed and stirred. *** Silver caught the girl as she fell from Hannah's nerveless arms, bundled her into a sleeping bag and slung her over his shoulder like a pig in a sack. Numbly obedient, Hannah followed him down a labyrinth of dimly lit streets to a small workshop in a light industrial area. He unlocked a side door and ushered her in. The inside of the workshop was immaculate. Blue gingham curtains decorated the windows. A vase full of daisies sat next to a folded newspaper in the centre of a red Formica-topped table. Half a dozen bicycles in various stages of repair rested against one wall. An adjacent wall was taken up with a huge furnace. Its interior was ablaze. Silver motioned her to sit on a camp stretcher. He dropped the sleeping bag on the floor and kicked it closer to the furnace. He picked up a four foot long metal pike, its tip sheathed in what looked like gold. Despite the oppressive heat in the room, Hannah hugged herself tightly and shivered. Without warning, Silver opened the furnace door, reached into the bag and pulled out the child by the foot. He flung her into the flames. Hannah screamed. The child's skin blackened and shriveled almost instantly. Hannah's scream became a whisper of pure distilled terror as the creature within emerged as if from an obscene chrysalis. It perched toad-like on the lip of the furnace door, its lumpy bruise-purple skin impervious to the heat. Red slanted eyes glared from the sides of its hairless misshapen head. Two vertical slits sufficed as nostrils. Thin crooked fangs crowded its wide lipless mouth. Each bony hand and foot had four digits ending in curved yellow talons. The creature tensed its haunches as it prepared to spring at Silver. Before it could leap, he skewered it through the chest with the pike. It writhed on the end of the pike for a moment before slumping to the ground. Hannah gagged as it dissolved into a puddle of putrid ooze which rapidly evaporated, leaving behind a cloying smell of cinnamon. Within minutes, there was no trace of either child or monster. Silver shook off his overcoat, hung it over the back of a chair and sat next to Hannah. His hair stuck to his forehead with sweat and he was trembling slightly from his exertions. All the menace that had exuded from him in the alleyway was gone. "What was that thing?" asked Hannah. "A Voraku," said Silver. "A manifestation of malevolent energy that takes possession of human form by invading the bodies of very young children. The child that you saw was only a shell. The way I found it wandering around at night alone like that, it must have recently killed its host parents. I've been keeping them at bay for years, but there's been a sudden upswing in their numbers, and I'm starting to lose the battle." "If these monsters are possessing children and killing the parents, how come it isn't all through the news?" "It is." He picked the newspaper up off the table and tossed it to her. 'Dozens Dead From Spate of Arsons', the front page headline claimed. "Of course, the cops don't know the truth of it. They'd think I was crazy if I tried to explain it to them." "They're not the only ones," muttered Hannah. "I can't do it on my own," said Silver. "I need to find more people who have the ability to see through Voraku disguises. Like you. You're Marked, Hannah." He gestured at her scar, and she flinched away from him. "No," she said. She stood and crossed to the door. "No, no, no. I don't care what I've seen, or think I've seen tonight. I am not about to start bumping off little kids. Stay away from me, or so help me, I'll go to the cops myself." The chill night air blasted her as she opened the door and hobbled away. Silver didn't pursue her, but his parting words stung as he shouted after her. "But you're Marked, Hannah. You're Marked..." *** Two weeks later, Hannah retraced her steps to Silver's workshop. She knocked on the door. Silver opened it almost immediately and let her in. He looked much smaller by day, almost harmless, thought Hannah. She lowered her backpack to the floor and slumped at the table. "You bastard, Silver," she said wearily. "Ever since you showed me that thing, I can't stop thinking about it. I can hardly sleep, and when I do, I have nightmares. If I get one more warning at work, I'm going to get fired. And I...I saw another one. I didn't just see another Voraku; I saw it take over a child. It was a little boy, maybe eighteen months old, and he was playing in the park. He chased a ball into some bushes, and this mist rose up and just sort of soaked into him. I don't know how to describe it exactly, but it was as if the mist hollowed him out from the inside." She looked to Silver for confirmation. "Did you puke?" he said. "I did the first time I saw it." She gave a small, hysterical giggle. "Yeah, I puked." "And then what did you do?" "What else could I do?" She bent and opened the top of her backpack. A dark-haired toddler stared impassively up at them. His face was the only part of him that was clearly visible, the rest being obscured beneath knotted lengths of rope that encircled his body. "I didn't want him wriggling around in there," Hannah explained. "Lucky his babysitter was too busy sucking face with her boyfriend," she said, sounding anything but lucky, "or I might not have got away with it." Silver sighed and looked down at the floor. When he looked up, his eyes were brimming with tears. "Are you ready for this?" he said. She shook her head. "Will I ever be?" She opened the furnace door and threw the child into the fire. END
Story by Tracie McBride, Copyright 2007 |
| Last updated on 1/3/2008 8:46:14 PM by Jennifer Brozek |
| Return to the Library. Go to Guest Quarters Archives. |
| Other documents at this level: 09 - The Monster Inside 10 - Indelible Ink 11 - The Man in the Globe 12 - I Do Not Fight Monsters 13 - Live From the Serpent Room 14 - Wolf Den 15 - The Enthusiast 17 - Shadow 18 - Reflections 19 - What You Need 20 - Seasonal Work |
Hannah knew Silver wasn't right in the head from the moment he first came into the café. 
Tracie McBride lives on the Kapiti Coast in New Zealand with her husband and three children. She completed a diploma of creative writing in 2005 and is a member of the Wellington-based Phoenix Science Fiction Writers' Group. Since receiving her first acceptance email from AlienSkin in 2004, her poetry and short stories have appeared (or will soon be appearing) in over 30 print and electronic publications, including Pulp Net, Gambara, Electric Velocipede, Bound Off, Kaleidotrope, T-Zero and Fictitious Force. Although she dabbles in mainstream and literary fiction, speculative fiction remains her first love.