Ghostlands

FIFTY

Soon you’ll be past the pain…where no one can touch you, Ely Stern had said.

It had been night then, too, but not bone-cold like this, no, sticky-hot and humid, where the summer air plastered your clothes to your skin and all you wanted to do was shear a hydrant clear off its base so the cooling geyser would give you some momentary relief.

Not that he’d been wearing clothes by then…unless you counted the pebbled, iridescent black leather that was a second skin to him; his appalling, magnificent dragon’s hide.

He had flown up to perch atop the night-wreathed tower overlooking the dying city that had been New York. Flown up with the delicate mutating girl whom he had fancied his guest, although other, less generous souls might have dubbed her his captive. She was shaking, wracked with delirium, blue devil fire eddying about her, altering her cell by cell, remaking her into something new and strange and fine.

Incredible that, at that point, she’d been the only one he’d seen touched by the hand of destiny like himself; he’d even fancied the two of them might be the only such in the world. Now he knew there were thousands, millions like them; the post-human beings.

Not that the knowledge made him feel any less alone.

In his fear and impulsiveness and solitude, he had seized her away from her home and the brother who raised her, the one who had once been his employee, and brought her to this barren rooftop to complete her metamorphosis, not merely into this new, inhuman form, but into his companion, his confidante.

What madness.

He had worried she might be frightened, but if she was she’d masked it and-in spite of her fever, of the pain coursing through bone and muscle and flesh-had substituted defiance.

“‘What monstrosities would walk the streets were men’s faces as unfinished as their minds,’” he’d exulted, quoting the philosopher Hoffer, and adding that, to him, they wouldn’t be monstrosities but rather masterpieces, rendered beautiful by their undeniable truth.

Then he’d offered her the world.

“I don’t want your world,” she’d replied, and ran staggering to fling herself off the building.

What fire, what glorious certainty and contempt.

She hadn’t known then-couldn’t have known-that in time, like him, she’d be able to fly. And at that moment, still more human than not, she couldn’t have; she’d have plummeted a thousand feet and died.

She would have, too, if not for the timely arrival of her brother, with his bravado and ridiculous sword, intent on saving her from the monster.

From him.

So he and Cal Griffin had gone on their wild ride flying through the black skyscraper canyons of New York, the aerobatic danse de mort that had culminated in his big-shouldered reptilian self getting skewered like a shish kebob at a sidewalk falafel stand.

A night of surprises all round, as he, not the girl, had fallen eighty stories to the unyielding pavement below, to hear his bones smash like a bag of glass and have nothingness enfold him like leather wings.

Then, like a tentative touch on his shoulder, rousing him to agonized half-consciousness, the sound of echoing light footsteps, a tapping cane.

And the querulous words “How we doin’ there?…” in a voice that crackled like autumn leaves.

“I’ve had…better days,” Stern had croaked through the pain, which elicited a laugh that had no meanness in it, that shared a wealth of understanding and suffering.

“Well, you just take it slow,” Papa Sky had answered, putting a gentle hand on his bloody, broken hide. “We gonna see what we can do about that.”

The old blind man had been a fool. To take him in, to nurse him back to health. What could it possibly bring him, except the likelihood of an abruptly shortened life and painful death?

Not that Stern would have wanted that; it was just the way things tended to sort themselves out. It was a violent world, and to survive one had to take violence on.

But that wasn’t how things had worked out.

Immobilized, lying in Papa Sky’s ludicrously cramped flat, in his absurdly small bed, Stern had found himself with nothing to do with his time but talk.

And Papa Sky had been more than willing to listen.

Not that Papa seemed to have any agenda, nor even any judgment-or at least, judgment he expressed.

And absurdly, impossibly, after a dozen pointless years of therapy, in which the only discernible change to his life Stern had perceived had been the financing of a yacht and any number of Caddies for the sedentary quack who’d sat silently listening to him those interminable hours, with none of the empathy nor wisdom this old black music man brought to bear…

Ely Stern found himself changing.

Not that he didn’t still have that same burning rage that drove him to smash and destroy, to lash out blindly…

But now there was a new thing within him, like Papa Sky’s gentling hand on his bloody, fractured self, urging him to pause, to reconsider, to look at the world with fresh eyes.

Incredibly, Papa Sky, that old blind man, had given him new sight.

He could choose to be the destroyer, could act upon his blazing dark impulses, and be utterly alone.

Or he could try another path, one far more dangerous to him, exhilarating and fraught with peril.

But did the world, at this absurdly late stage of the game, allow the possibility of such change?

Silly question.

The world of late had been nothing but change.

Which left him with the question of who he was, and what precisely he was going to do with the rest of his life.

As Papa Sky served him hot chicken soup and serenaded him with soaring saxophone medleys of Gershwin and Irving Berlin and Cole Porter, Ely Stern had looked into himself for an answer, for meaning, and to his amazement discovered…

Christina.

To find her, to protect her, that and nothing more, was all his soul desired.

Remarkable.

It was self-interest driving him, of course, as it always had been, but now bent to a different purpose.

He knew by then where she would be drawn, inevitably, and knew the only course that would lead him to her.

He opened his mind to the voices, to the One Voice, to the Source. The wind would carry him there, and the barrier he had seen in his dreams, the barrier that would burn lesser creatures, would not burn him.

He rose before he was properly mended, groaned with the effort…and found Papa Sky facing him on the doorstep.

“I figger you gonna need me around to keep you honest,” the old man said.

Stern laughed. Like his own monstrous self, it was the undeniable truth.

And as the two of them traveled their scorching road, Ely Stern found to his amazement that Papa Sky held within him not only wisdom but power, too, that he could more than stand on his own two feet, as well as ride on the back of a dragon.

They made their way to South Dakota, and knocked on the Devil’s door.

“You really expect us to believe that?” Cal Griffin asked Stern, as he sat around the big circle with the others-Colleen, Doc, Mama Diamond, Papa Sky, Shango, Enid and Howard Russo, Inigo and his mother. Christina floated nearby like a bubble containing all the world’s rainbows, while the other inhabitants of the sanctuary, the Indian families and the shamans, the holy ones and medicine men, busied themselves in the deeper recesses of the cavern.

“No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to die,” Stern replied, in his best Ernst Blofeld Goldfinger impersonation. He crouched low in the vast cavern, wings tucked in against his body, arched cathedral-like above his demon head, a black thing in the blackness. He glowered at Cal, showing switchblade teeth. “You really expect me to give two shits what you believe?”

“Now, now, we not gonna get anywhere like that,” Papa Sky soothed. “We all on the same side here.”

“I must admit, I find that a challenging concept to accept,” Doc Lysenko remarked.

“Yeah, lizard boy,” Colleen added, “if you’re such a reformed character, how come you’ve been the Source Project’s delivery boy? What’s with all the smash-and-grab in those gem shops?”

Stern fumed, but Papa Sky said simply, “Tell the folks, Ely.”

Stern sighed, glanced at Christina, who hovered glowing nearby, her face a mask that betrayed little of her feelings. “It wasn’t going to let her go, that was certain from the gitgo, and It had half a mind to atomize Papa and my humble self right fucking there and then, it’s touchy that way….”

Stern looked off, and his eyes narrowed, remembering. “But then I realized-it was a potential client. So the pertinent question wasn’t what I needed but what It would need. I had to put myself in Its shoes, even if It didn’t have shoes anymore, or feet to put them on.”

His eyes slid back to Cal and the others. “This was all surmise, you understand. I wasn’t really seeing It, just a manifestation, that fucking glowing scarecrow that changed from one to another to another….”

“And what precisely did you discern was Its need?” Doc asked.

Stern shrugged. “Even though It was growing in power, It still had limitations, vulnerabilities. It had plans, ways to safeguard Itself and gain primacy, but It needed someone to put matters into motion, and those gray mental midgets It ruled”-here he glanced at Inigo and Howie-“no offense, didn’t have, let us say, the initiative to run things on the ground.”

He looked at Christina, and his expression softened. “So I cut a deal with It. Reconstitute her as human, or at least looking human, before she was burnt up like coal in an oven, fodder like the rest of the flares, set her up in digs like she had back home.

“Round about then, I came upon this one,” he flicked a clawed finger at Inigo, “stuck like a fly in jelly. He couldn’t get out, but It didn’t seem inclined to pick him off, either. He was under the radar, It wasn’t paying attention to him. So I figured I’d give him a job….”

Colleen shook her head. “And you did all this ’cause you’re wearing the white hat now?”

Stern’s eyes blazed. “You may not have noticed, but this isn’t a comic strip. Christ, I am so glad I didn’t have to travel with the lot of you.”

“Now, now, Ely,” Papa Sky crooned. “We all gettin’ hot under the collar here. You remember your blood pressure.”

Stern nodded, and Cal could see him struggling to force calm.

“You’re telling us,” said Cal, “that you stole all those gems, helped set up the Spirit Radio, just to keep Christina safe?”

“Not just that…”

“What then?”

May Catches the Enemy spoke up. “That Thing in the mountain, it’s crazy scared, wants to swallow up the four corners, swallow up everything, so it can be safe.”

“How do you know that?” Shango asked.

May Catches the Enemy shrugged, the firelight catching highlights in her black hair. “You feel it. It’s in the air, the water, in everything.”

“So eventually, there’d be no more dragons,” Stern added, “no more people or grunters or flares-just It, a totality of everything.”

He glared at Colleen. “So if you don’t want to believe I did this all to help her”-he nodded toward Tina-” you just tell yourself I did it for self-preservation.”

A tense silence descended over them.

“So It designed the Spirit Radio…” Doc prompted.

“Stuck here in the Black Hills, It knows It’s a target,” Stern observed. “But if It can open up conduits to other locales, exist simultaneously in a number of places-”

“No one thing can kill it,” Shango finished.

“Give the man a set of dishes,” Stern said. “The one in Iowa’s the first of many. There’s a bunch more in the planning stages all across the U.S. That’s why we have to move now.”

“Why didn’t you just kill It?” Colleen asked Stern. “I mean, Judas Escariot, you’re the one who can breathe fire.”

“It never let me close enough,” Stern replied, with a hint of ire. “I dealt solely with Its projections, all those images that look human. I saw It once, you know-what It really is, just for a second.” Stern shuddered then. “Just a blur, I couldn’t say exactly. Then It slammed the lid. But It could have killed me anytime it wanted. It doesn’t suffer fools gladly, or anyone, for that matter.”

“Wouldn’t it have been simpler,” Shango asked, “just to bring Christina back to Griffin, and tell us the whole deal?”

“Did people get stupider while I was away? I told you, It wouldn’t let her go.”

And maybe, Cal thought, you liked having her to yourself. Sharing her only sporadically with Inigo and Papa Sky; a contained world of four.

“So you brought us here,” said Cal, nodding toward Inigo and Papa Sky. “Using them.”

Inigo began, “I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you-”

Stern cut him off, addressing Cal. “Had to play a close hand, bunky. The Big Bad Thing can get into your mind, read it like the morning paper-particularly little peanut human minds like yours. Couldn’t risk It getting the drop before you got here.”

Doc looked concerned. “But It must have…. After all, It closed the portal behind us.”

“Mm? Nah, that was me. I kicked the shit out of your damping equipment, let the whole thing run wild.”

There was an explosion of outraged protests. Stern shouted them down. “I didn’t kill anyone, all right? And that was a major bitch to manage, believe me.”

Silence settled again, like snow in winter light.

Finally, Papa Sky said, “Let ’em know the rest of it, Ely.”

Stern blew a contemptuous breath from his reptilian nostrils, but surprisingly Cal could detect something like regret in his gravel voice. “There’s what you might call a downside…. We’ve kind of jump-started things. It’s spreading out there in Iowa, the Bad Thing’s power, Its control. Slowly at first, but once It gets a head of steam up, It’ll gobble up everyone and everything.”

Cal was horrified, saw his emotion mirrored on the faces of the others. He thought of the ones he had left in Atherton, the ones who had made their journey here possible-Rafe Dahlquist, Krystee Cott, Mike Kimmel and the rest. To have them subsumed into the Source, crumbled to nothing and destroyed…

Like Goldie.

Despair surged up in him again, the impulse toward hopelessness and defeat. Then his eye caught Mama Diamond’s, and she gave him a wink. He had thought her lost, too, and she had returned. Not every surprise was a bad one, and the Source Entity wasn’t the only one holding a hand of cards that could still be played.

“How long will it take?” he asked Stern.

The dragon shrugged. “Let’s just say if we’re gonna do something, it’d be advisable not to take an extended lunch.”

Cal rounded on him with a sudden fury. “What the hell made you do that?”

“Two reasons,” Stern answered, the regret giving way to cold pragmatism, the lawyer in him. “First, it’s like Hitler with the Russian front. Establishing a second beachhead, gaining dominance, weakens It, takes Its attention and resources. That’s why It couldn’t stop you getting to the Stronghold here. It gives us a window of opportunity.”

“And second?” prompted Shango.

“There’s this Lakota thing called Napesni…”. Stern looked to May Catches the Enemy.

“The No-Flights,” she explained. “Warriors who staked themselves to the ground in battle so they’d have to triumph or die.”

Stern nodded. “I figured, no back door, you’re gonna take it to the max.”

“Lovely,” said Colleen.

“Why us?” Cal asked. “Why me?”

“I’m not a people person,” Stern replied. “You are, cupcake.”

May Catches the Enemy canted her head in apparent agreement. “Folks generally fall to pieces or rise to their best depending on who’s around to lead them.” She turned to Cal. “Way I hear it, you done pretty good on your way here from New York.”

“Besides…” Stern hesitated. “I had this dream.”

He spoke lower now in his sandpaper rasp, and Cal could see the memory shook him. “It’s dark all around, and you’re at the heart of it, holding that damn sword, and everyone’s begging you to do something….”

Cal found he’d broken into a sweat. “And do I?” His voice was barely audible.

“I don’t know,” Stern answered frankly, looking at him with a gentleness, a humanity, Cal had never seen before. “But you’re the only one who can.”

Mama Diamond could see that the others were having a hard time taking this all in, just as she herself had, soon after Ely Stern had plucked her from amidst the buffalo of the living dead and saved her bacon.

Even so, she had learned this was a world that demanded you looked at it for what it was rather than what you thought or wanted it to be.

Whatever he might seem, in the end Stern had been no thief, merely a conservator and strategist, setting a pace that led them all here, and kept them effective and whole.

It was whatever dwelt at the Source that was the real thief, that wanted to steal away not only all they possessed, but their precious selves as well-while the journey Ely Stern had set in motion had served only to bring Mama Diamond to her own true self.

As for what awaited them at the Source, if they succeeded in reaching and confronting It, might It be as different from what Mama Diamond imagined as Stern had turned out to be?

She didn’t know.

On the way here, as Stern had borne her through clouds blown along the frigid eastern winds, the dragon had told her that the strongest person was the one who could look anything in the eye and not blink.

Now, sitting here in the belly of the earth that had enthralled and beguiled her for so long, Mama Diamond prayed for the strength to see (with the unclouded eyes so recently brought to humming clarity by the dragon’s gift) what lay at the Source for what It truly was.

“Let’s recap, shall we?” Colleen said. “We’re trapped in the Badlands with dwindling food, almost no weapons, buried under the ground with a dragon and a bunch of Indians. Yeah, we’re on rails here.”

May Catches the Enemy bristled. “Lady, you could use some spirituality.”

Colleen bulled up to May, getting right in her face. “First, I’m no lady, and second-”

Cal stepped between them before it could escalate into a knife fight. “Drop it,” he said to Colleen.

Cooling, she backed off. Cal took May aside, away from the others, and spoke softly. “You got a problem with any of us, you bring it to me, okay?”

“Yeah, sorry…. Guess I’m not Little Miss Centered all the time.”

Despite the urgency, despite the weight of grief like a stone in him, Cal smiled. “It’s just what you told me. No divisions between people anymore, we don’t have time for it. We want to live, we get over ourselves.”

She smiled back. “You’re a good listener…and a fast learner.” She cocked her head quizzically. “How are you at dancing?”

“Dancing?” he asked, puzzled.

She led him along with the others to a big steamer trunk and unlocked it. Cal saw that it was filled with fringed garments made of leather that were painted white with various markings. She held one up to him.

He knew it for the forbidden thing it had been, had seen one like it in a museum once. Long ago, it had been the last, sad expression of a ravaged, defiant people, and the sorcery it had claimed had been only an empty promise, like a dry wind on parched lands.

But whether May Catches the Enemy thought this was a new world or not, Cal knew the rules of the game had changed greatly…and this garment once made of dreams might hold a very different substance indeed.

It was a Ghost Dance Shirt.