The Art of Arrow Cutting Page 4

  “I did,” he replied, returning his attention to the register. Nothing. “They wouldn’t tell me a damn thing. You wouldn’t have a friend who’s a nurse, would you?”

  “No.”

  He shrugged. For all its skyscrapers, Calgary wasn’t New York, but it wasn’t Totem Rock either; the chance of a Greyhound cashier remembering one girl, however beautiful, was negligible, and even the chance of finding the right cashier was damn slender. What the hell to do next?

  “What time is curfew?”

  “Two. Desk closes at twelve.”

  He glanced at his watch: ten past eight. “I’ll be back.”

  The girl gave him a “Who cares?” shrug and he walked out, wondering vaguely if he were losing his touch.

  To find a needle in a haystack, he knew, you use a magnet. Finding a blonde in a wheatfield might be infinitely more rewarding, but not as easy. There was a quarter-column of Sharmons in the White Pages, seven with the initial “A.”

  He thought furiously. Was Sharmon her real name? Almost certainly. People rarely gave false names to hospitals. And even if it wasn’t, he had nothing else to go by.

  Was Calgary her hometown? Probably, but again, people usually went to the nearest hospital where treatment (what treatment? and for what?) was available. There were, he presumed, hospitals in Saskatoon and Regina, both of which were much closer to Totem Rock than Calgary. So she wasn’t from Totem Rock… .

  He remembered suddenly that there hadn’t even been a telephone in her apartment in Totem Rock, just an empty jack. Of course there were unlisted numbers, and communal houses popular with students—was there a university in Calgary? He riffled through the phone book again until he found it. Maybe if he phoned the admin office tomorrow … what was tomorrow? He had to look at his watch to remember that it was Friday.

  There had to be some way of finding her. Didn’t there?

  The tobacco-brown Toyota was parked across the road from the hostel when Mage returned. Yukitaka watched him enter the building, looked at his watch and nodded.

  “Back to the hotel,” he told the driver.

  “But—”

  “He won’t be going anywhere else tonight. He’ll be quite safe in there.”

  The driver shrugged resignedly and started the car. He didn’t see the smile on Yukitaka’s face, and would have been none the wiser if he had.

  Amanda hesitated when the car pulled over to the curb ahead of her. It had local plates, but it was too new to belong to any of her student friends and Alex refused to drive anything Japanese because of the lack of legroom. She stood there, prepared to run, as the front passenger door opened.

  “Amanda?”

  The voice was familiar, and she nervously took a step forward. “Jenny?”

  “Come on, get in. You must be freezing out there! When did you get back?”

  She walked to the side of the car, glanced in and recognized Jenny’s broad, rather plain features and huge round glasses. “Where did you get the car?”

  “It’s my boyfriend’s,” came the reply, with a slight undertone of giggle.

  “Your—”

  “Come on. I have to pick him up at work. I’ll tell you all about it while we drive.”

  6

  Ninjo

  The dorm had six beds, all but one unoccupied. The exception, the lower bunk nearest the window, sagged slightly under the weight of a small rucksack that might have been black a thousand miles ago. Its owner hadn’t appeared at ten when Mage dropped the key, his Saint Christopher, his passport pouch, his wallet and his watch into his camera case, switched the light off, scrambled into his sleeping bag, turned his back to the window and resolved to sleep.

  A few minutes after two, he heard a faint scratching sound behind him and rolled over. The window was being edged open from the outside. He froze, then relaxed slightly when he remembered that he was on the second floor and that there were vertical bars outside the window, only slightly wider than his head.

  The window continued to edge up, and a pair of black-gloved hands appeared between the sash and the sill. Mage unzipped his sleeping bag slowly, quietly; it would mean running through the hostel half-naked, but he was sure that stranger things had happened.

  The window opened as far as it could, and Mage could see a face beyond the bars. The details were vague, but he noticed off-the-collar black hair and slightly flat, Oriental features. The head squeezed between the bars, then twisted until the figure’s shoulders were parallel with the sides of the window. Mage watched, fascinated, as the intruder slithered into the room like toothpaste from a tube, then stood, closed the window quietly, crept over to the nearest bunk, placed the rucksack on the floor and unzipped his leather jacket.

  Mage heard footfalls in the hallway outside—and so, apparently, did the intruder; he was out of his boots and into his sleeping bag so quickly that he almost blurred. The door opened a moment later and the warden looked in suspiciously. The intruder was lying in the sleeping bag with his back to the door, apparently dead to the world. Mage looked up blearily at the light. The warden glanced in his direction dismissively, then backed out of the room and shut the door. The intruder waited, then rolled over with a quiet sigh of relief.

  “Sorry if I woke you, man, but I never was very good with curfews.” He twisted around inside his sleeping bag, then dropped his black jeans on the floor beside the bed.

  “Do you do this often?” asked Mage dryly, and just as quietly.

  The intruder grinned. “Sometimes, yeah.”

  “Why didn’t you use the fire escape?”

  “Leads into the girls’ dorm. Besides, it’s a family tradition.”

  “Climbing walls?”

  “No, that’s my mother’s side,” the intruder said, dropping his socks on the floor. “I meant the window. Like when the fuzz busted the Family, they couldn’t find my father. So they searched again and one of the cops saw long hair hanging out of this little cupboard above the hand basin. It looked much too small for a human being, but not for the old man.” He shrugged. “It can be a useful skill. It’s the only way he’ll ever get into Heaven.”

  Mage closed his eyes. The story sounded familiar … and then he opened his eyes very wide. “Manson?” he whispered. “Charles Manson? He’s your father?”

  “Charles Willis Takumo, at your service, and good night.” His roommate rolled over to face the wall and was silent.

  Mage slept badly, and his little sleep was slashed and riddled with bad dreams. Excessively ordinary-looking assassins, armed with silenced machine pistols with muzzles like cannons, crept in through barred windows and locked doors and spin-dryers, while beautiful blondes disappeared as he reached for them, leaving only a few long strands of hair (and black hair at that). He was awakened by the scraping sound of the window being opened yet again.

  “What’s up, Charlie? Midnight snack?” he murmured, still half asleep, and rolled over. Takumo was in his sleeping bag, facing the wall—or at least something Takumo-sized was in the sleeping bag, and something black-haired and head-shaped was sticking out of the appropriate end. Mage glanced at the window and saw another pair of black-gloved hands easing it up from the outside. Oh, Jesus, he thought, what is this? A convention?

  The sash rose by a few inches and the hands crept underneath it. Mage was horrified to see that they were just that—hands, ending at the wrists in bloodless stumps, but working as a pair. He looked beyond the window and saw a face, obscured by blacking. The hands opened the window and the head squeezed in between the bars. It was a broader head than Takumo’s, with less hair, and though the skillfully applied camouflage blurred his features, Mage could tell that the man (head? headman? manhead?) was older than Charlie—probably in his late thirties—and Asian. Probably Japanese.

  The head floated into the room and the hands closed the window behind it. Then head and hands crept toward Mage’s bunk, staying close together, almost as though they were connected by an invisible body, but hovering just above
the floor. Mage tried hard to convince himself that he was still dreaming, and failed.

  Takumo rolled over and opened one eye as the hands glided past his bed. He opened his mouth to speak, then closed it again. His left arm flopped over the edge of the bed, the hand describing a slow spiral until it reached his leather jacket.

  The hands slid slowly and silently over to Mage’s bed and reached for the strap of the camera case. Suddenly, without taking time to think, Mage grabbed one of the hands by the wrist. It squirmed in his grasp, but it couldn’t match his strength. The right hand hovered out of Mage’s reach, and the head appeared slowly above the bunk like a horrible moonrise. Mage lifted his head to grin nervously back at it and swung his pillow overarm. It enveloped the blackened face, batting it closer to the floor and temporarily blinding it.

  Mage jackknifed his body out of the sleeping bag and dropped to the floor, armed only with the pillow. The head flew toward him, teeth bared in a snarl, and Mage instinctively shielded his groin with the pillow. The head avoided the shield and went for his forearm, sinking carnivore-sharp teeth into the muscle. Mage flinched, swung around and bashed the head into one of the wooden bedposts. The right hand wrapped itself around his throat while he struggled with the left. Mage swung the head into the bedpost again, dropped the pillow and pried at the choking hand. He looked around the room hurriedly for something that might be used as a weapon: an electric heater, a hand basin, a fire extinguisher, anything.

  Nothing.

  Takumo slipped quietly out of bed and crept toward him. Mage heard a faint click and saw a short black blade suddenly appear in Takumo’s hand. Takumo looked at the struggling left hand and then at the bedpost. Mage blinked and nodded slightly. He waited until Takumo was in range, then swung his arm so that the left hand slapped the bedpost. Takumo lunged with the butterfly knife, pinning the hand to the post. The head opened its mouth to scream, and Mage brought his knee up into the base of its skull.

  The head flew up with the force of the blow, then dropped, bouncing off the bed and onto the floor. The right hand relaxed its grip on Mage’s throat, very slightly but enough for the photographer to pry it loose with both hands. The head rolled under the bed before Takumo could grab it.

  “Nice friends you have,” muttered Takumo.

  “I thought he was with you!”

  Takumo glanced at the right hand and noticed the gashes in Mage’s arm, which were far too deep and bloody to have been made by human teeth. He suddenly felt very naked, and looked down. His cock was as rigid as an iron bar, if rather less useful, and his skin was goose-bumped and ivory-pale and slick with sweat.

  The monstrous head flew out from under the bed and up to the ceiling, where it glared down at them. Mage tightened his grip on the hand, ensuring that it couldn’t slip out of the glove.

  The head swooped down at Mage’s groin again, and the photographer slapped its face with the gloved hand. The head bit down slightly and the hand jerked violently, twisting out of Mage’s sweaty grasp. The leather took the worst of the damage, but Mage could see what looked like drops of blood in some of the rents. The head retreated slightly, and Takumo high-kicked it with all his strength, sending it spinning toward the ceiling.

  The right hand groped around the bedpost, apparently looking for the hilt of Takumo’s knife. The head righted itself and drifted back to the corner of the ceiling, its features contorted by pain and fury and a good measure of confusion, as though it could not believe what was happening to it.

  “You watch the hand, man; I’ll watch the head,” murmured Takumo.

  The right hand stopped as though the head had heard him; then it, too, leaped toward the ceiling.

  “I think they’ve had enough,” whispered Mage hopefully.

  The hand crept down toward the door handle and turned it. The door opened a crack, and head and hand vanished through it. Takumo kicked the door shut hurriedly.

  “Do we follow them?”

  “What?” hissed Takumo as he grabbed the only chair in the room and jammed it under the door handle.

  “They may attack someone else.”

  Takumo stopped, then shook his head, feeling warm blood returning to his face. “No way. It was after you, wasn’t it?”

  “What gives you that idea?”

  “It didn’t attack me. Not even when I was fighting back. What’s in that bag of yours, anyway?”

  “Just my camera.”

  Takumo raised an eyebrow, diverting a stream of cold perspiration down the bridge of his nose. “Oh, yeah? What in hell’ve you been photographing?”

  “If you’d asked me yesterday, I’d have said girls.”

  “I’m asking you now.”

  “I don’t know.”

  Takumo nodded. Mage walked carefully toward the window—he was still shivering uncontrollably and his legs felt like overcooked spaghetti—and muttered, “I wish I’d gotten a shot of it. No one is going to believe this.”

  “Who were you thinking of telling?”

  Mage slid the window shut, then shrugged. “I don’t know. I wouldn’t even know what to call it.”

  “It looked like some kind of Japanese vampire. Or ghoul. I used to know the name. But does it matter?”

  Mage, who hadn’t expected an answer, brightened. A name, he considered, could occasionally be as useful as a photograph. “It might.”

  “We can go to a library after they throw us out of here—and they will, y’know. D’you have anything that can fix that window? Knife?”

  “No.”

  Takumo reached for his jeans and removed a Swiss Army knife from a pouch on his belt. “Better get dressed first. There’re innocent little girls out there; you could scare the hell out of ’em with that.” He shrugged. “Whereas, who’s going to tell anyone they saw a head and a hand floating through the place?”

  “Can they get out? The head and hand, I mean.”

  “No problem. There’s a transom above the main door.”

  “Sounds like you cased this place pretty well yourself.”

  “I’ve stayed here before,” muttered Takumo. “Going to be lucky to leave with our membership cards this time, though.”

  “Is that all that’s worrying you?”

  “If I worry, I don’t have time to panic.”

  “I fight better when I’m panicking.”

  Takumo smiled. “Besides, it wasn’t trying to kill me. Someone is after you, neh?”

  “Yeah.”

  Takumo sat on the bed and reached for his jacket. “I’m still on an adrenaline high — too buzzed to try to sleep. Tell me about it.”

  When Mage had finished, Takumo shook his head as though making sure it was still attached to his neck. “Far freakin’ out.”

  “I’m finding it hard to believe, myself,” replied Mage.

  “Yeah, but having the beast with five fingers pinned to your bed makes it sort of hard to be skeptical. But you say this joker’s gun jammed on the first round?” Mage nodded. “Weird. Maybe it wasn’t loaded, or loaded with the wrong caliber ammo, or he still had the safety on—easy enough to do—or maybe he just wanted to scare you.”

  “He succeeded,” Mage admitted flatly, wrapping his jacket tighter around himself. It didn’t stop his shivering. He had never before encountered a threat that had followed him after he’d left town, and he would have liked to dismiss the whole affair as a serial nightmare, a shared hallucination, but his eyes had always served him well in the past and he found it difficult to distrust them now.

  “And the horseless headman went for your camera case, not for you, like he wasn’t heavily into killing you either. Did this lady give you anything?”

  “Only the key to her apartment.”

  Takumo raised his eyebrows at that. “Did you try it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Anything in there?”

  “No … and it was only a cheap lock. Anyone with a credit card could’ve broken in. I think someone did before I got there and gave the place the
once-over, but didn’t take anything.”

  “How d’you know?”

  “They didn’t disturb the dust.”

  “Man, have you got some pair of eyes. So they were looking for something and it wasn’t there, so they think you got it, right?”

  “Looks that way.”

  “Or like they think you know where it is, so they don’t want to kill you yet?”

  Mage shrugged, an eloquent Italian shrug that exercised most of the muscles in his upper body.

  “So wha’do we do now?”

  Mage stopped in mid shrug and mid shiver. “We?”

  “For sure. Like safety in numbers, dig? Like they’re going to want my ass too.”

  Mage considered this. Takumo’s appearance did little to inspire trust, even when he was dressed, and he was hardly inconspicuous—but he could fight, and maybe he knew something about the mysterious “they.”

  “Is Manson really your father?”

  “I don’ know, man. I was kind of young at the time. But it’s what my mother told me, and I think she believed it. Like, I was probably conceived at the Family’s monthly orgy at the ranch, Spahn Movie Ranch, before the Tate-LaBianca murders went down. My real father could’ve been any one of a half-dozen bikies—Straight Satans — or one of the Family males. I was born a couple of months after the arrest but before the trial. My mother thought they were all innocent and so she named me after Charlie … well, after one of his aliases.” He grinned humorlessly. “She was sure she’d been careful, and said that made me a karma baby, or a miracle child, or something. Guess I’m lucky she didn’t call me ‘God’ or ‘Jesus.’ God Jesus Christ Takumo. Got a ring to it, neh?”

  Mage nodded. “And Takumo—isn’t that a monster or something?”

  “You speak Japanese?”

  “No, I just know something about monsters—my Uncle Dante writes horror stories.” He glanced at the helplessly wriggling hand. “Pity he’s not here.”

  Takumo smiled. “Well, kumo just means spider. Hirata-kumo is a huntsman spider—you know, the kind that lassoes its prey—except that it’s about a yard across. Totate-kumo is a trap-door spider, about the same size. Some of them can shape-shift into human. What do people call you?”