gnosopharm
165
We’ll consider your political needs and put your
talents to better use.
23:15:57: DESIGNATE VERITAS: Look at the win-
dow. Look at the window!
23:16:00: DESIGNATE LOGOS: What?
23:16:01: DESIGNATE TALION: The reflection!
23:16:02: DESIGNATE CARDINAL: Oh my God.
23:16:03: DESIGNATE THREAT B3: (untranslat-
able)
23:16:04: DESIGNATE THREAT B1: Not God. Gods. We are gods.
In that time it took me to stand, the little man in the crumpled suit reached the
other side of the room. I didn’t even see him run the distance. He took the one who
had yelled about the reflection by the throat. The Strict made a little wringing mo-
tion with both hands and the guy’s whole body jerked. His neck broke and his head
whipped back and down.
The guard pulled his gun and started shooting. So did I; my bullets busted right
through the glass. I wasn’t really aiming, but I hit one of Logos’ people in the leg. I got
the guard in the face, too, but at first, it didn’t do anything. It put a hole right below his
nose. A bunch of things broke in him. Teeth tumbled out, but he didn’t even twitch. He
carefully wiped blood out of one eye, aimed and shot the man I had hit in the chest.
They fell at the same time. The guard hit the floor. The other one smashed into this
delicate, expensive-looking end table and busted it up.
I threw open what was left of the door, took a step in — then I flew to the ground.
Somebody had hit me so hard I saw double. I turned and saw him; he was the last
of the Pylon’s people except for Logos. He had a marble rolling pin in his hand, but
it almost slipped out when he raised it overhead. He was going to cave my head in.
I punched him in the thigh with my gun and pulled the trigger. I did twice more while I
pulled my way up, hitting and shooting. I would have done it one more time, too, but
the gun just clicked. It was empty. I dropped it on him and picked up that goddamned
rolling pin.
I staggered over to Logos, but I was having trouble with my balance. I slipped on
the guard’s blood. For a second, I looked right into the wreckage of his face. I saw he
had some kind of makeup on. Underneath it, he was very pale. I think I saw a little
white grub slide out from the wound. After that, there was a little wisp of the red
smoke. That scared me more than anything else. I got back up.
Logos and the little man stood across from each other, staring. Logos was sing-
ing in that terrible language. The little man was so pale up close. He was screaming, so
I could see a bunch of twisted, sharp teeth in his mouth.
I picked the rolling pin up again, but I realized that was dumb, because I had my
knife in my waistband. While I made that mistake, the little guy stopped yelling. He
166
walked over to the busted end table, picked up a leg as casually as you might grab
the newspaper from your doorstep and started stabbing himself in the chest with
it, over and over again. Logos stopped singing and started laughing. His nose was
bleeding, though, and there was sweat all over him. Whatever he had done took
something out of him.
He even closed his eyes. He only opened them when I started stabbing him.
That wasn’t hard at all. It wasn’t like John, or like the possessed kids.
Victor, I’ve rewritten this next part over and over again because I want to be
honest with you. I have to be honest with someone. In the first draft, I wrote that
I didn’t feel anything. A part of me that urged me to say that and make this a
morality tale where there’s no satisfaction in revenge. I thought I could get away
with dignified numbness, but that wasn’t truthful. Then I spent a couple of drafts
pretending that killing him felt good, but bad, like a hot, disgusting pleasure I could
beg forgiveness for having. That way, I could confess that I didn’t feel so righteous
after all and pretend I was scrambling for some shred of compassion after the fact.
That’s a lie, too.
I think this is the truth: it was the greatest experience of my life. It wasn’t like
love or sex, or even the kind of pride you feel once or twice in a lifetime. It was a
crystalline sensation: pure, precise, laid out in straight edges and brilliant facets. I
think it’s what New Age types describe when they talk about “enlightenment.” I was
in a place without doubts and fears, but I wasn’t really happy in any way you could
fixate on and mess up with words. His blood even got on my face, on my tongue, but
it was all right.
23:19:19: DESIGNATE LOGOS: You’re the woman
from the ministry meeting. Oh God! Oh God!
23:19:22: DESIGNATE ASSET J: I am? (laugh-
ter?)
23:19:23: DESIGNATE LOGOS: You were 12’s wife,
too! No. Don’t.
23:19:24: DESIGNATE ASSET J: Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah.
Victor, you should know that witches, or whatever they are, can make their
injuries go away. The first couple of times I stabbed him, the wounds sort of
wriggled back together. That was okay — I kept going. But he was still strong
enough to look at me, just like he had stared at the monstrous little man.
My head started to hurt — actually, hurt is an understatement. I felt like
there was something slithering and bucking in my skull, trying to disconnect all
the bones. It was enough to make me drop the knife. Logos reached up and
grabbed both sides of my face. He pulled me close and spat. The pain kept
gnosopharm
167
getting worse and worse, until the man in the ski mask grabbed him by the hair
and pulled him away.
He threw Logos down and stomped on his face with a big boot. That knocked
him out. I finished stabbing him. The man in the ski mask just stood there.
Red smoke started filling the room. I’m talking about the smoke I saw be-
fore, that moves like it’s alive. It came out of the guard. The little man was laid
out on the floor with the table leg in his chest. I tried to get up, but I couldn’t;
my legs felt so weak. I guess I passed out.
I don’t know what happened to man in the ski mask. I was out cold until you
got me.
23:50:05: DESIGNATE ASSET J: I know you. You
can kill me if you want, but show me your face.
23:50:11: DESIGNATE ASSET J: See? I was wired,
but I turned it off. Nobody can hear us now.
23:50:13: DESIGNATE THREAT B3: This will not
give you peace.
23:50:15: DESIGNATE ASSET J: Oh, John.
23:50:13: DESIGNATE THREAT B3: No, but I know
him. He wouldn’t leave this body. His (untrans-
latable) fought me. I sent it to (untranslat-
able), but part of him will still not leave. I
know you. Why should I know you?
23:50:21: DESIGNATE ASSET J: John? John?
23:50:23: DESIGNATE THREAT B3: No. He’s made
me impure. His body rots, but I cannot abandon
it. I should kill you and
please myself with fresh flesh, but the desire
disgusts me. Why is this? Your name
is Janice.
23:50:31: DESIGNATE ASSET J: Yes. What are
you?
23:50:35: DESIGNATE THREAT B3: You cannot know.
I took this corpse to investigate the other body
stealers, because one of them used it as his ser-
vant. Your John has poisoned my (untranslatable).
Now, I feel with his heart. But when the rot eats
168
that heart completely, I will be free. I will
take a better body and forget these emotions.
23:50:47: DESIGNATE ASSET J: I won’t fight
you. I did what I needed to do. You helped me.
23:50:52: DESIGNATE THREAT B3: I have to take
the blood drinker with me. He’s our slave. If you
see blood drinkers and other signs, stay away. I
love you, Janice.
23:51:03 DESIGNATE ASSET J: John? Oh God,
John!
23:50:52: DESIGNATE THREAT B3: He loved you.
He’s dead. Don’t follow me.
janice,
i guess i saW you in the enD. i’m sorry there Was no
cavalry. there’s just me, anD i Wasn’t even supposeD to come
get you, because We Don’t Want to expose ourselves to the
enemy.
this is a War of liars. they have connections, money anD
unnatural abilities, but lies are their best Weapons — anD
our best Weapons, too. Without the element of surprise,
We’re nothing but flesh, bone anD brittle human feelings. We’re
so fragile, but i guess that’s the price We pay for staying
human.
i’ve maDe some arrangements for you. the cops Won’t be
looking for you anymore. your family thinks you’ve been in a
mental hospital. this folDer also contains a bunch of Data We
gathereD about you. if you Don’t knoW What We knoW, some
of my colleagues might give you some problems further DoWn
the line.
you’re a recovering mental patient noW, so, naturally, you
shoulD attenD group therapy. i’ve founD a support group filleD
With people Who’ve haD experiences like yours. i think it Will
help you.
thank you.
victor
p.s. my real name is martin.
case file hrg 00009
the Market
170
Bo04/15/08
Some days, I don’t have to look for the shadows. The shadows come to me.
I’ve seen some strange things when I’ve joined the others, but this is the first
time anything’s happened to me directly. It just goes to show that all of this is
just below the surface.
I’m getting ahead of myself. I need to keep things in order, get my thoughts
in order. When I get everything in order, maybe I can make sense of what actu-
ally happened.
A man came to my desk at the bank. To be honest, I didn’t think he looked
like the kind of guy who’d have an account with us. We’re hardly the most
exclusive bank, but he looked like he hadn’t changed his clothes in a month, and
his bed was a Dumpster. Told me he needed to speak to the manager. Jenny —
that’s my manager — was off sick today, I told him, hoping he’d leave it for now.
Instead, he told me he needed into his safe-deposit box, right that minute. Just
my dumb luck. I got him to sign, checked his photo — he looked just as bad in the
picture — and handed over the key to box 101. The stupid thing is, I saw his name
on the screen, and I don’t remember it.
I didn’t trust the guy. I mean, his photo came up associated with the box, and
the rent was paid every month, but I got a strange feeling about the whole thing.
The smell didn’t help, like rotten meat. That’s not to say I looked — if I knew what
some of our customers had in their boxes, I’d be fired a hundred times over.
You know how sometimes you don’t do the normal thing? You don’t put the
weird shit behind you; you don’t keep your nose out of things? Well, that’s what
happened. Donnie, the security guard, owes me a couple of favors. I couldn’t
get a copy of the tapes, but he did let me review the camera in the vault while he
went for a coffee. The guy stuffed a paper bag into his box, and it dripped. Dark
liquid.
Donnie’s a decent enough guy, even if he does like his job a little too much.
He once told me, “Everyone wants to make something that works, so it takes a
special kind of mind to think of ways to break things. That’s why nobody thinks
about security.” Take the safe-deposit boxes. I’ve got one, and it’s a moment’s
work to get into the vault on the pretext of updating a document. If you don’t
think you’re doing something wrong, you stop acting suspicious. Which is how
I came to accidentally swab up some of that spilled liquid on a scrap of paper.
Looking at it now, it doesn’t take a forensics expert to tell that it’s blood. I dread
to think where from.
04/16/08
Donnie printed me off a still from the video. It’s enough to remind me of
what the guy looked like. I still can’t remember his name. At work today, I tried
to look up the owner of box 101, but the database was down. I mentioned the guy
to Jenny, and she just shrugged. He pays the rent on his box — why should we
bother him?
the market
171
172
BoI’ve got this feeling before. The others at the support group have mentioned it
as well. There’s something there, something strange and quite possibly very scary,
and everyone ignores it. Weird guy comes in to stick a bloody package into his
safe-deposit box? Shit happens. He’s got the right to privacy. Some serial killer
leaving his victims entirely drained of blood? Freak, sure, but the word “vampire”
is entirely taboo.
It’s like we’re sitting on a beach with a vast ocean of truth right behind us
and most people shrug off the spray as just an early rain. Janice called. My cell
was downstairs, so Helen answered. It was the first time she’s spoken to any of
the group. I might be paranoid, but I thought I heard a note of suspicion in her
voice. What should I expect? I’m the one who’s taken to staying up late, keeping
a secret journal, and going out at a moment’s notice. I’m lucky it’s been this long
before she got suspicious. I just hope she could see the truth in my heart when I
told her I wasn’t having an affair, that Janice is just someone from my support
group.
I had to go see Luke’s principal after work. Apparently, my son’s been get-
ting in a lot of fights — not starting them, not yet, but the way he’s reacting to
insults means it’s only a matter of time before he’s picking on other kids. It’s the
first time I’ve been able to go; Helen’s always dealt with it in the past. The school
counselor thinks Luke’s after attention. Only now do I see that I’m starting to
drift away from him. Or is that just another spark of paranoia?
Two in the morning. I’m tired and overanalyzing things. I need to sleep on it.
04/20/08
Box 101 got even more interesting today. Two police officers stopped by and
presented me with a warrant for the search. Jenny told me to go along with
them, as I was the one who’d dealt with the box last.
I opened the vault, and the detectives took a crowbar to the box. What they
found inside scared me. No mysterious bag, no stains, no nothing. Just a fist-
ful of 20-dollar bills and a birth certificate in the name of Morgan Black. I’m
pretty sure the detectives didn’t notice me studying it hard.
Once they’d gone, I checked the logbook. Nothing. The only boxes anyone
had checked since this Morgan had been in were on the other side of the vault. He
hadn’t come back, and nobody else had been in box 101.
I mentioned the name to the others at the support group, but nobody knew
anything. Didn’t recognize his picture, either. Most of them don’t doubt some-
thing really quite strange is going on, but they can’t shed any light on it. I’ve
asked them to keep a lookout and to let me know.
When I got home, Helen was waiting for me. To put it simply, we fought.
“I don’t want you going to the support group,” she said.
“Why not?”
the market
173
“Because I said not! They’re a bunch of kooks and it ain’t healthy for you.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I didn’t mean to shout, didn’t
want to shout, but that’s how it came out.
“This is just what I mean,” Helen said. “You come back full of weird ideas,
you spend all your time talking to them or working on things for them — things
you haven’t told your own wife about. And then if anyone dares question you,
they’re just flat-out wrong.”
“That’s not true.”
“Yes, yes, it is. When did we last go out for dinner? When was the last time
you went to a PTA meeting at Luke’s school? When’s the last time you helped
him with his homework?”
To my shame, I couldn’t remember. “It’s just not a good time —”
“There’s no such thing as a good time, not since you started going to that
damn group. So you saw a ghost. Lots of people do. But they don’t ignore their
family. They don’t turn into a completely different person.”
I could see the tears in her eyes, but they didn’t stop me. “Of course. I don’t
act like you want me to, so I’m the problem. You never try to see the bigger
picture.”
“You’re not the man I married. Not now. It feels like I don’t know who you
are anymore.”
I didn’t need her to tell me that I’d be sleeping on the couch tonight. Sitting
here with late-night basic cable and my journal, I can’t help but wonder: what if
she’s right?
04/23/08
Things remain frosty with Helen. We’re speaking, but it’s just functional. I
thought it’d be a one-night flash of anger, but apparently I was wrong. Luke
can tell, but he doesn’t ask. He just looks at me, accusing me of making his mom
upset.
I’ve heard nothing more from the detectives who wanted in to box 101.
Jenny, my boss, doesn’t think anything will happen. Transfer the old stuff into
a new box and it’s as good as new. At least, that’s what I thought. On my way
home, I caught a glimpse of the man in the photo, Morgan Black. I was wait-
ing for the bus home when he walked past. I thought about leaving it, just letting
him go. No. He’s the one responsible for the problems with Helen. We were fine
before this shit started.
Perspective. Think before you write, Andrew. Get it straight.
I followed him. He didn’t make it easy, but every time I thought I’d lost
him, I saw him again. After 20 minutes, I got too close. Either that or he got
suspicious. I ducked into a store, bought a pack of gum for no good reason. The
air in the store was still and dead, and I could smell the cigarettes on the old guy’s
breath. Back outside, my head started to throb. There was something big in the
air, like a storm waiting to hit. I could feel it.
174
BoBlack cut down a couple of alleyways, turning left and right on a route he’d
obviously walked plenty of times before. I tried to remember which turnings he
took, tried to make note of landmarks along the way, but there were precious few
to see. If I’d been prepared, I’d have brought a stick of chalk or a piece of string.
Hell, maybe I could take the GPS out of Helen’s car to record the route. I should
remember that.
We ended up behind a warehouse of some kind. He snuck in through the
back door, and I followed before it closed. Only now do I figure that he knew I
was there. I’d have been pushing my luck to think I could follow him all that far
without him seeing. The warehouse was set up like some market for dropouts and
wasters, stalls with nothing but worn-out old junk. A few just had signs and cov-
ers, like the fortune-tellers. I didn’t see much more. The whole thing was just too
much. I had to leave, though I took a few leaflets with me.
Still on the couch. Helen wasn’t too happy with me getting back from work
at the wrong side of 11.
From: Bryan Rafferty
To: Andrew Kaplinski
Date: Fri, Apr 25, 2008 14:12:13
Subject: Re: Market of Junk
On 04/25/2008, Andrew Kaplinski wrote:
> The market’s in a disused warehouse. I couldn’t tell where.
>
> People were selling and buying everything. Everything from
rusty old knives to broken toys. Professionally weird. Attached is a
scan of a flyer. Thoughts?
I don’t know of any warehouses in the area, and certainly not
anywhere big enough to hold a market of the size you describe.
Regarding the flyer, it could be a bunch of nutjobs. Some
kind of student prank? But it certainly does warrant looking into:
you could be on to something. If you can remember your way
back, take a camera. Try talking to someone, see what’s on offer.
There’s bound to be evidence when strange shit is going on.
I won’t be there tomorrow, but see what the others say.
the market
175
176
Bo04/25/08
Helen called me at work today. She asked me to come straight home, said
we needed to talk. She might as well have held a knife to my balls. No way I’m
talking to her when she’s in this state. It’s just a bad patch. I’ll be off the sofa
soon enough. Let’s face facts: the market’s far more important than any of that.
I made my way back there tonight. I didn’t have to follow anyone. It took
me three attempts to find the right alleyway, but once I did, the rest came flood-
ing back. I’d been there once. For some reason, I felt like it wanted me to be
there.
The warehouse is bigger than I first thought. I couldn’t see the other walls
from the doorway, mos
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