Part 3 (2/2)
”Out here, you say? Oh, we're outside?” Harry asked with a smirk, staring at the oppressive armagla.s.s walls surrounding them.
”I mean, in here, I guess,” Ryan added lamely. Fireblast, but he feltbroken. Drugged. Weary. All fought out.
”You'll do, Ryan! You'll do fineyou always have, d.a.m.n your luck,” Harry boomed. ”Last time I saw you, you left me and my men a.s.shole deep in a blizzard back among the skysc.r.a.pers of my beloved Newyork, Newyork.”
”It wasn't personal, Harry. Otherwise I never would have left you stuck there alive. You saved my a.s.s. J.B.'s, too.”
”Glad to know you remember. h.e.l.l, I had to, Ryan. We had a history. I was there, you know, only a few weeks after you first joined up with the Trader. d.a.m.n, you were a sight back then,” Harry mused, his ruddy face glowing with the memory. ”You were too busy keeping the cheeks of your a.s.s pressed together and walking tough to notice me, except as a potential enemy.”
”My instincts weren't that far off.”
”Yeah, me and the Trader, we go way back,” Harry continued. ”And since you were there in training pants running along behind, you and I, we go back, as well.”
”Trader used to say a man with a long history was a walking corpse,” Ryan said.
”Trader used to say a lot of things, most of it useless, but d.a.m.n, it was entertaining. Life with the Trader was many things, but it was never boring.”
Harry crooked a finger, and Ryan slid over closer. ”I have something to tell you. Six degrees of separation is all that exists between any of us.”
”Huh?” Ryan asked dully.
Harry sighed. ”In between launching your salvos of bullets, you should think about reading a book every now and then.”
”I have. I must've read The Night before Christmas fifty times,” Ryan protested in a voice that sounded remarkably childlike. The timbre of his words frightened him enough to make him fear taking a look down upon himself, fearing he might see the fleshy body of an eight-year-old kid with proper depth perception.
”Let me put it this wayit's a small world after all, but we're all connected in some form or fas.h.i.+on,” Harry said. ”Not like spokes on a wheel, either. More like a patchwork quilt.”
”Okay.” Ryan coughed, suddenly impatient. He wasn't sure where Harry was going with this latest crock of s.h.i.+t about wheels and quilts, and he didn't care. Time to change the topic of discussion before he was forced to get to his feet, stagger over and strangle the talky b.a.s.t.a.r.d with his bare hands.
”How's the vid collection coming along, Harry?” Ryan asked, recalling the stacks and stacks of old videotapes Harry had shown him during his time in the man's lair beneath the streets of Newyork. Some of the vids were in protective plastic cases or tight cardboard boxes, but most were openpiles and piles of black plastic sh.e.l.ls filled with spools of endless miles of recording tape.
”Coming along quad-triple fine!” the overweight man replied, excited to talk of his hobby. ”I guess every man, woman and child must've owned a vid machine in the old days. More tapes floating around than a man would ever have time to watch. I can't figure out the logic behind some of the s.h.i.+t people recorded and saved, but any tape is usually a gem. You want to know what I find the most?”
”Not really, Harry. I was just trying to make conversation,” Ryan retorted. ”And you picked a lousy time for a visit.”
”All depends on the interpretation.”
”Yeah, right. Why did you pop up here anyway?”
Harry rapped a gloved fist on the top of his own head. ”Why, I'm a cheesy fragment from your subconscious mind, Ryan, here to tell you to keep your possessions closeand your loved ones closer.”
Ryan exhaled noisily. ”f.u.c.k, Harry. I already do that.”
”Or so you think.”
”No thinking necessary. I don't think. I do.”
Harry fell silent, looking around the fiery walls of the hexagonal chamber. ”Looks like you're in a b.a.s.t.a.r.d fix, Ryan my boy. Yeah, One-eye Cawdor's not going to fight or trick his way out of this one. h.e.l.l, I don't know why you're acting so surprised. We both know you were expecting this to happen sooner or later.”
”What are you talking about, Santa?” Ryan had decided to give up on trying to maintain a semblance of a true conversationhe was saying whatever came into his mind now, flowing with the fever-dream logic being presented to him.
Harry beamed at Ryan, running his fingers through the snowy white beard the fat man was now sporting. ”Come, now. In the darkest part of your heart you antic.i.p.ated this happening. Now, there's no more dread, ho-ho-ho.”
Ryan digested this latest piece of information. Harry had seemed to tap into a private dread, and from the looks of things, the evidence was clear. Was Santa Harry right? Did Ryan's fear of ending up trapped in a gateway cause this? Ryan pondered the concept, his own hidden fears peeled away and put on display in such a destructive fas.h.i.+on before his own remaining eye.
Then he rejected such a.n.a.lysis. No way. Every rea.s.sembled atom of his being rejected such a notion.
”No way, Harry Claus. I'm not dead yet.”
”No, you're not. Not yet. Soon, mebbe. Sooner than you think. But jolly jumping Jesus, boy, take off the patch and look around you, because everybody else is stone-cold dead in the marketplace, one hundred and ten percent chilled!”
With that, Harry Santa Stanton Claus, the once and future King of the Underworld of Newyork, laid a finger up the side of his nose, and with a nod and a wink, up the brick-and-mortar chimney he rose.
Ryan gaped. He managed to crawl over to the mantel, his knees uncertain as he crossed J.B.'s lifeless leg, for a better look at the flickering fireplace, the source of the strange light and shadows that had been bothering him since he arrived here, in this place, in this state of mind. His gaze delivered more details about the fireplace.
There were photographs on the mantel, framed pictures of himself as an older man, with a hint of silver in his hair; of himself and Krysty together, smiling, at ease, with a tiny red-haired child held proudly between them; and of Dean, only Dean at the age of thirty, with the lines of maturity and age set in his cheeks and forehead.
Photographs. Memories. Visions of things to come?
Ryan took all of this in and was moved to speak a final time.
”I didn't know there was a fireplace in here,” he whispered, half-hypnotized by the flickering of the flames, and then he woke up.
Chapter Four.
Even through his closed eyelid, Ryan could still see the light.
A second ago, he had opened his right eye and immediately snapped it shut. In the instant Ryan had looked up into the blinding light, he'd been struck down hard by the coruscating illumination surrounding him. His lone orb ached, like someone with a ma.s.sive fist had smashed a hairy knuckle into his lone good eye socket.
That wasn't a light caused by smoldering embers glowing inside a jump-dream-inspired fireplace. The light seemed to come from all sides, was.h.i.+ng down from above and splas.h.i.+ng up from below, bathing him from all angles in white brilliance.
Flat on his back, Ryan willed himself to reach down blindly for the weapon holstered at his hip and was rewarded with the comforting feel of the b.u.t.t of the SIG-Sauer in his palm. He pulled the weapon free of its holster and scooted backward until the base of his spine hit the solid surface of what he figured to be the mat-trans armagla.s.s wall.
The nova-hot light had begun to slowly fade to a more reasonable wattage. Through the spots dancing in front of his vision, Ryan was able to make out the forms of his companions, all of them scattered like discarded sh.e.l.l casings across the floor around him, their positioning identical to how he'd seen them in his mat-trans induced nightmare.
Krysty was to his right, facedown and unmoving. Her flowing red hair was s.h.i.+ning bright in the brilliant illumination. Near her was Dean's tense body. Ryan gathered that the boy had also come to consciousness and been exposed to the sheer ferocity of the lighthe was on his side, his eyes clenched shut like a fist. A dark streamer of blood covered his lips and chin, the standard nosebleed the mat-trans jumps so frequently induced. Ryan had come to consciousness many a time to find a smear of red across his face.
”Dean, you all right?” Ryan barked.
”Yeah, Dad. Got a triple-bad hammer going at my head,” the boy replied. ”Eyes feel awful. Like somebody rubbed ashes in them.”
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