Song of the Sandman Read online

  Like a flare of burning magnesium, light exploded at her fingertips. Venus’s phone, for all its faults, had a decent enough flashlight, though the damn thing would drain the battery so fast, it might have been a race.

  The Gazette article had stood out because of the unusual circumstances of Gauthier’s disappearance. By all accounts, he’d been inadvertently pushed in front of an oncoming subway train. An unusual delay in the schedule had caused a sizeable number of would-be passengers to accumulate on the platform, waiting for the next train. Some sort of commotion had occurred just as the subway emerged from the tunnel and, according to witnesses, there was a thud and a screeching of brakes as the train stopped suddenly.

  Yet, despite hundreds of people present, some standing just a few feet from Gauthier at the moment of impact, the victim had completely vanished.

  The Montreal police assumed the accident hadn’t been that bad and that Sylvain Gauthier must have walked away, vanishing into the crowd, preferring not to draw attention to himself.

  Already, that part of the story didn’t ring quite true to Venus.

  When she was about twelve, a few months before she and her parents moved to Saint-Ferdinand, the McKenzies had been on a trip to Montreal, enjoying the many festivals that took place downtown in the summer. On the subway ride home, just before transferring from the green to the yellow line that would take them to Longueuil, their train had come to a sudden halt.

  After a lengthy pause, passengers were finally allowed off. The train had hit someone, a woman who’d leaned too far over the tracks. Her body had been lying on the ground, a single transit cop directing people away from her.

  It didn’t prevent Venus from looking. The victim’s face seemed almost intact. Everything still in the right place. Her skin, however, was the color of crushed Lac Saint-Jean blueberries, a red tint at the edge of the bruising. She was lying on her side, arms in an uncomfortable but still not unnatural position. She might have been unconscious, or just wounded, if not for her eyes. Open and glassy, they seemed to be stuck on the verge of crying. Her face was frozen in a final, aborted expression of distress.

  Whatever had happened to Gauthier, Venus knew he hadn’t simply walked it off.

  The article was quick to confirm it. Family and friends had reported him missing and now, through the media and a forgettable few paragraphs, authorities were calling on the public to report any sightings of a wounded, possibly disoriented man.

  The flashlight on her phone cut through the darkness. A bright circle of illumination poured onto Gauthier’s corpse. He looked identical to what Venus had expected, down to his brown jacket and striped fuchsia tie. The beam of light stopped on Gauthier’s bloated face, giving Venus the final confirmation that she was on the right track.

  Someone had gouged out his eyes.

  The retching came suddenly. The vomit followed fast and unstoppable. One moment, Venus was looking down at the white glare blowing out the gray skin and crimson wounds, a portrait of roses upon snow; the next moment all the contents of her stomach erupted forth from her mouth. The muscles of her lower abdomen spasmed and her throat burned from the bile and stomach acid.

  Why, she wondered, spitting out the dribble of half-digested food, would her stomach turn on her now? Had she not grown a thick enough skin to endure this sort of thing?

  After all, she’d been witness to the execution of Nathan Cicero at the Saint-Ferdinand Circus Massacre. She’d seen Inspector Stephen Crowley gun down half a dozen performers and stage hands before being stabbed in the neck by his own son. She’d seen his body dissolve, consumed by shadows like a voracious swarm of beetles.

  The aroma of decay, thick and wet like garbage on a hot summer day, combined with the gruesome bloated cheeks and lifeless skin, all adorned with the red buds of absent eyes replaced by writhing white maggots, had somehow pushed her over the edge.

  My stomach is a traitor, she thought.

  Gathering her wits, Venus tried to get a better look at the body and its surroundings. She’d want to take pictures, go through his pockets, and try to better understand who he was and what connection he’d had with this so-called Church of the Sandmen.

  And the man she suspected of hunting its members down.

  But every time she looked up, Venus would feel her insides again turn upon themselves. The floodgates were open now. The smell of her own vomit, mixed with the pungent stench of Gauthier’s decomposing remains and postmortem bowel movement, made breathing difficult.

  “Get it together, Venus.”

  Her name came back to her, hollow after bouncing on the cold walls, but it brought no comfort, only highlighting her solitude.

  Gauthier, her only companion, lay silently at her feet, and with every moment he was becoming more difficult to ignore.

  Upon pushing the home button on her phone to turn the light back on, Venus was met with the bright smile of two young girls on a sunny afternoon. Both were making silly faces as one extended her arm to take the picture. Venus’s gray-green eyes were full of life in a way they hadn’t been for a while now, Penny’s a deep cerulean that would make the sky jealous.

  Venus’s fingers traced the few quick motions it took to unlock the phone, navigate to Penny’s contact info, and call her.

  “Finally come to your senses?” Penny’s groggy voice answered, eschewing all preambles.

  It had been their arrangement, Venus’s safety net while she was in Montreal. If ever she felt in too much danger or threatened, got sick of it or scared, or any number of other situations they had discussed, all Venus had to do was call Penelope and her friend would race to Montreal to retrieve her.

  “Not quite.” The timid words echoed across the tunnel.

  “Veen? It’s three a.m. on a weeknight. I’m driving to Montreal. If it’s not to pick you up, it’s to kick your ass.”

  “I’m sorry, okay? I need someone to talk to, and you’re the only person who gets why I’m even here.”

  Penny let out a long sigh. It wasn’t yet capitulation, but they were on their way.

  “Wrong, Veen. I don’t get why you’re there.”

  Venus took a deep breath, both to collect herself and to deliver her explanation in its entirety. Nerves were getting the better of her, forcing the words out faster than she’d intended.

  “I don’t know what else to do? That thing from my shed wiped out my—our—families! The only way I’m keeping it together is focusing on stopping that monster, and I need Peña to do that.”

  Lucien Peña.

  It was one of the names Venus had picked out of her grandfather’s notes. The name that came up the most. Peña had traveled with Neil McKenzie, explored the world with him, gathered knowledge at his side. If anyone knew about the monster from Saint-Ferdinand, it would be him.

  “He won’t let me get close enough, but at the same time, he’s always lurking nearby, like he’s hovering over my shoulder. But I think he’s changed his pattern.”

  “What do you mean ‘lurking’? You mean you’re being stalked by a giant magic hobo and I’m supposed to just brush that off?”

  “He’s not exactly stalking me,” Venus said. “But whenever things are getting dicey, he’ll turn up somehow. Like last week, some real creeper was tailing me for a couple of nights, always hanging outside the hostel and giving me really gross looks. But then the guy completely vanishes and next thing I know, I’m talking to this other girl he’d been harassing and she said the guy got the shit beat out of him by”—her friend’s words repeated in her mind—“a ‘giant magic hobo,’ as you put it.”

  Another deep sigh came over the line, interrupted by the terrible connection.

  “Six foot five, probably knows some of the same hocus-pocus as your uncle. What else would you call him? And if that story was meant to make me feel better, it was a complete failure,” said Penny.

 
“I’m just saying, the guy is like some sort of guardian angel to homeless kids.”

  “Right, a regular superhero, and you’ve got him figured out.”

  “I do! There’s been a series of accidents. Weird things that pop up in newspapers about people disappearing and then being found dead a few days later. Get this: every one of these people belong to a so-called ‘Church of the Sandmen,’ and it all started right after the circus massacre. I’ve tracked down the last victim: Sylvain Gauthier. Some big-shot lawyer.”

  Venus could hear the sounds of mugs being moved around, a cupboard slamming shut, and coffee percolating on Penelope’s end. “All right,” Penny said, tired but sincere. “Where’s this guy’s body now? Did you already call the cops?”

  “He’s right here. At my feet. Unless he ran away, which I really hope he didn’t. I’m not equipped to handle the undead right now.”

  “I’m sorry, what?”

  “I mean, emotionally.”

  “No. I mean, you’re with the body right now? Like, as we speak?”

  “Yeah. That’s why I’m calling. I don’t know what to do next. Or rather, I know exactly what I’m supposed to do, but I can’t bring myself to do it.”

  “Oh my god. Venus. Call the freakin’ cops! What are you thinking?”

  “I’m not calling the cops! I don’t want to spook Peña just as I’m getting close to him. Besides, how well did the police getting involved work out at Cicero’s Circus?”

  Lucien Peña had vanished from society, erasing as much of himself as he could in the process. The only clue they’d found about his whereabouts was an article dating back fifteen years, deep in the online archives of the Montreal Gazette. Peña, described as a disgraced professor of anthropology and archeology, had attacked an unidentified man in a fast-food restaurant. Witnesses had described him as “rabid” and “unhinged.” He was never apprehended, nor had he been heard from since.

  “Speaking of cops,” Venus continued, procrastinating. “Any news from Daniel?”

  “What? No! And who cares?” Penny said. “You called me because you didn’t know what to do? Well, I’m telling you. Call. The. Cops. Please.”

  “Fine. I just need to do something first.”

  It wasn’t so much that she’d found her lost courage. The thought of looking at maggots crawling out of a dead man’s eye sockets still made her empty stomach do acrobatics. But if there was one force in the universe that could silence even that level of revulsion in Venus McKenzie, it was curiosity.

  Missing eyes were not a foreign concept to a resident of Saint-Ferdinand. They had been the calling card of Sam Finnegan, the Saint-Ferdinand Killer. Now it appeared to Venus as a signature from Peña.

  “Venus?” Penny called out. “What are you doing?”

  “I don’t want to leave empty-handed.”

  With a deep breath to brace herself, Venus plunged her hand into the dead man’s pants pocket, hoping to find a wallet. The fabric was cool to the touch and a little damp. All she pulled out was a set of keys that included a fob adorned with the BMW logo.

  Carefully leaning over the body, trying to touch it as little as possible, Venus put her phone on the ground so she could use both hands. The light from the screen projected upward. Cables and tubes running the length of the tunnel stretched up into inky black shapes. Before she could search Gauthier’s other pocket, however, Venus noticed another dark shape. Red and irregular, it seemed pulled from beneath the body. Clumsy brushstrokes of burgundy and brown traced the concrete in front of her. If there was any doubt that Lucien Peña was sending a message, it was obliterated by what she saw.

  A sideways football drawn using the blood of the victim, but with a smudged spiral in the middle. Like an eye.

  “Venus? Veen?” Penny’s weak voice came in and out on the speaker of the phone. “What’s going on?”

  Venus ignored the phone, reaching out instead with a trembling hand, intent on tracing the pattern of gore on the wall. Images from the murals in her backyard shed flooded back in a traumatic torrent. The more she tried to blink them away, the more persistent they became.

  Spirals within spirals of a convoluted design, framing a crude image of an eye. The mural of coagulated blood wasn’t identical to the one that had been drawn on the walls of her backyard shed, but it was similar enough. This design would have been one of the last things her father had seen before he was killed by the god.

  The moist walls had not permitted the blood from drying out completely, so it remained wet to the touch. Venus’s stomach wanted to do another somersault but was instead gripped with cold dread. Memories of that summer were as palpable as the blood sticking to her finger, and she could almost feel the god’s presence in the nearby shadows.

  “Hey!” a woman’s voice called out from deeper in the tunnel, accompanied by a bright light. This wasn’t subway security. The voice carried with it the weight of genuine authority.

  “Penny,” Venus said, picking up her phone. “I don’t think I’m going to need to call the cops after all.”

  ABRAHAM

  The cracks were like a spider’s web. Thin and white, they radiated from a central point of impact. Each spoke on the wheel was randomly connected by other fissures along their length. Tiny shards had fallen off since he’d first dropped the phone a little over a week ago.

  Fortunately, the damage hadn’t affected the device’s functionality. Abraham could still make calls, listen to music, and play the occasional game. Even through his thick, calloused skin, he could feel the texture of the cracks when he swiped over them. It bothered him. The pattern of his fingertips would map out the creases in the glass, reminding him that this new toy, already damaged, was either too fragile or that he was too much of a clumsy oaf. Knowing his luck, it would fail him when he needed it most.

  With a heavy sigh, he tossed the device onto the kitchen table, half hoping it would fall apart on impact. The little piece of technological wonder was an anachronism at the Peterson farm. Right now it lay motionless next to an empty cereal bowl that was older than Abraham, on a wooden table made by Petersons three generations ago. Even the silverware, though not fancy, was an antiquity. Abraham could imagine the spoon in his bowl had once been a gleaming, polished utensil. Now, after decades of scratching against dishes and teeth and brushes, it was a pale, flat metallic gray.

  Abraham shifted his heavy frame, the chair and floor responding with a chorus of creaking wood. The farmhouse itself was also ancient. Thick, sturdy hardwood floors ran throughout most rooms. They had been refinished now and again, but they still hinted at the house’s history. There was a dark spot on the kitchen floor where water had seeped into the grain. A few boards had been changed in the living room, so the color of the wood didn’t match the rest of the original floor.

  It gave the Peterson home character.

  With a grunt, Abraham got to his feet, laboriously pushing on the table with his hands. He was a large boy for his age, over six feet two inches tall, with hair the color of a maple tree’s trunk, brown but dull. His eyes were a little too close together on his large face and he tended to slouch to hide his height. On his best days, he gave off the air of a gentle giant, powerful and well-meaning.

  Looking around, he observed how all the cabinets in the kitchen were wide open again. They’d been doing this for a while now. The first time Abraham had noticed was a few days after the massacre. He’d been too busy to give it much thought back then, with all the coming and going and answering questions from cops. By the time things had calmed down, he’d all but gotten used to the random doors creeping open and slamming shut. For a while he’d worried it was his father, the cancer finally eating at his mind.

  Strange though it might have been, it was a relief to one night see half a dozen cabinet doors yawn open in front of him while knowing his father was sleeping on the living room couch. Whatever the cause, it
had nothing to do with Harry or the slow progression of his illness. In Abraham’s mind, that left two possibilities: the house was settling, or there were ghosts. Sighing again, Abraham picked up a stack of papers from the table. This was Saint-Ferdinand: as long as they limited their activities to the kitchen, the ghosts could wait.

  Abraham thumbed a quick text message on the phone to let Penelope know he was on his way.

  There was a shortcut to Penny’s place he used to take, through the fields and part of the forest. But he had neglected to take care of the grounds all summer. Fertile soil had gone unchecked, and now the whole area—from the farmhouse to the edge of the forest—was overgrown with weeds. Abraham just couldn’t bring himself to step onto that part of the land. A scant couple of months earlier it had been a killing field, the site of the now notorious Saint-Ferdinand Circus Massacre. Ultimately, seven people had lost their lives after Inspector Crowley, the local chief of police, had gone on a shooting spree.

  Walking to Penny’s house would take him up Main Street. Though the trek would take over half an hour, Abraham didn’t expect to see a single car, perhaps not even another human being.

  The Richards farm was the first property Abraham walked by. The photo of a middle-aged woman’s face looked back at him from a real estate sign planted on their lawn, right next to the long driveway. The word sold had been added atop. There were many signs like it all over town. Though few were crowned with the appended sold, most of the owners had already left.

  The sun was bright, the sky marred by only a few wispy clouds, but Main Street still felt like it was in twilight. Abraham wasn’t greeted by the smell of burgers and grease from the fast-food joint near the gas station. The restaurant, his favorite, had closed its doors for good. It wasn’t the only one. As he crossed the street, Abraham could see all the way to the other end of the village. Some stores, like the flower shop, had their windows boarded up; others had signs pasted to their windows declaring that they were now closed for business. Only the grocery and convenience stores were still open, though at this hour, they remained deserted.