Penny Dreadful by Will Christopher Baer Read Free Book Online Page B

his arms. Then he went for the tongue.
    The others were so greedy for tongue that they killed without pause.
    The wind rose, flooding Mingus with a sickening spectrum of odors, each of them dense with borrowed memory. Mingus pinched his nostrils between thumb and finger and watched as Chrome knelt beside the Fred, brushing bits of filth from his clothing. He gently buttoned the Fred’s jacket to the throat, then patted him on the cheek with the odd, faraway smile of a father who is about to strike.
    Mingus closed his eyes because he didn’t need to watch, to see.
    He could imagine well enough. Chrome would take the man’s face in his strong hands and bend forward, as if to kiss the mouth. He would force the jaw open, wide enough to count the Fred’s teeth. He would suck the Fred’s tongue from his mouth as if it were an oyster, then bite it softly at the pink root and stop himself just short of severing it but still he would draw blood. He would own the Fred’s already blurry soul. He would swallow, his eyes flashing silver. Mingus could already hear the Fred screaming, or trying to. His hollow, shrunken voice like the bark of a baby seal.
    Mingus opened his eyes and Chrome stood tall over the Fred, skinny and shining. His arms hanging loose. His face and chest were bloody, streaming red and black. Mingus felt cold and rushing dizzy as he saw but couldn’t believe what he saw.
    The Fred lay motionless, his throat ripped open.
    Chrome has killed the man, truly killed him. Mingus coughed, staring. There was a shivering fist in his throat. He felt like he was falling down a brightly lit elevator shaft. This couldn’t be. This was a game, a fantasy. The taking of tongues was painful, yes. A little bloody sometimes. But it wasn’t real, it wasn’t real. What had the motherfucker done. What had he done.
    What have you done?
    He looked away, then back. This couldn’t be what it seemed and now Chrome walked toward him, his face a red mask. He held something shiny in one hand, like a badge.
    Mingus, he said. Je me suis égare.
    Long shadows. I reached for the jug of Canadian Mist and took a small, bitter swallow. Moon grunted and pulled himself up to an approximate sitting position now, with considerable effort. I ignored him, tried to digest his story. The thing was decomposing in my head and it sounded perfectly fucked up. It sounded like the paranoid tale of some accident-prone cross-dresser who had played with himself too much as a boy and his Baptist mother had burned his fingers on the iron when she caught him at it. In a few months or years, Moon would sound like any other twitchy bastard with a theory about how the phone company had started the Gulf War.
    But maybe there was something to this. Maybe cops were disappearing and no one cared. Anything was possible.
    Anyway.
    I had a pretty good idea what Moon was asking for. He wanted me to be a canary, a fragile seeker of bad air. Moon wanted to send me underground, then watch to see if I would come back or disappear. And why not, right? I was a nonperson. I was untouchable. I had no money, no hope. I wasn’t officially dead yet, but I was close enough. I knew the terrain, as well. I swallowed another mouthful of Canadian Mist. I had spent more than one day undercover busily deconstructing myself. What was another day, or two? But I couldn’t quite see Moon’s eyes. I couldn’t trust him. I flicked on a reading lamp that I had moved out of Moon’s path of destruction an hour ago. It provided a small circle of light that Moon now leaned into.
    You can sleep here, he said. For a while. You’ll need another address if you go under.
    I shrugged, undecided. Yeah.
    What do you say?
    What is it that you want me to do, exactly?
    Moon chewed at his lips, rabid. I want you to find Jimmy Sky.
    What about the other twelve guys, I said.
    I’ll get you a gun, said Moon. A car, maybe. Any equipment you want.
    The other guys? I said.
    Fuck the other guys.
    What’s so special