The Dead Man: Ring of Knives

the long run.'

'Listen to me, Doc.' Matt knelt in front of Dindren and gripped him by his rickety arm. 'I'm not gonna stick my fist in your mouth, so forget that shit. But I will do my best to spring you from this place—if you can help me understand what I'm up against.'

Dindren stared at him, searching Matt's eyes for sincerity. Found it. His queer act fell away, and the bee- stung lips, gray teeth, and bloody eye rearranged themselves in an approximation of cautious attention.

'Proceed,' he said quietly.

'All right. You've heard my story. And you treated someone like me for years. So give it to me straight: these things I've seen—Mr. Dark and his rotting touch—are they real? Or am I . . .' He took a shaky breath. 'Am I nuts?'

Dindren pursed his chapped lips and closed his eyes. 'You might be nuts, Matt.' He opened them. 'But not for seeing Mr. Dark. He's real—as is Rotting Jack. Whether they are identical—that I don't know. But it's safe to say, if nothing else, that they are different manifestations of the same creature.'

'Yeah. Yeah.' Matt's skin crawled at the thought of what he'd just seen. 'But . . . what is it?'

'I'm not sure of that, either. But I have a theory. Both you and Jesse spent a long time underground. And both of you returned with something—a parasite—that you picked up on your journey. Something that feeds on suffering; that hungers for sorrow, loss, despair, and death. And this isn't new: if memory serves, there have been references to such a creature in myth and folklore throughout history. Many cultures told stories of a night hunter that drove its prey mad before devouring it. The Greeks called it Pan. The Irish had the banshee. The Ojibwe, windigo. I suspect that whatever you call it, it is the spirit of hunger you've awakened; the god, if you will, of starvation. And it seems to have a never-ending thirst for chaos, madness, bloodshed, and massacre. A spirit that literally feeds off of carnage.'

It seemed plausible to Matt. But then, this was coming from a guy who had been willing to suck his fist just a minute before. He shook his head. 'Look, assuming you're right . . . why me?'

Dindren shrugged. 'Usually, a spirit like this needs an invitation to take up residence.'

Matt let out a cough of disgust. 'I can guarantee you that I never invited Mr. Dark to set up shop in my neighborhood.'

'Maybe you did but don't remember.'

Matt shrugged. 'Whatever. That's not the real issue anyway. The real issue is'—and here he leaned towards Dindren, palms up—'how do I kill the Spirit of Starvation?'

'Good question. Jesse certainly never figured that out. But then, he was stuck in here.' Dindren clacked his gray teeth together thoughtfully. 'But . . . if it truly does feed off bloodshed and carnage, then if you could prevent the destruction of innocent lives—deprive it of its prey, in other words—it might be possible to starve it to death.'

The very idea of shriveling his parasitic ghost into nothingness appealed to Matt. But: consider the source. Dindren was clearly crazy. Still, if there were any way to exorcise Mr. Dark . . . He shook his head at the enormity of the thought. 'But how? How do I stop it? How do I find out where it's going to strike next?'

Dindren blinked. 'I thought that would be obvious. Just look around. It has attached itself to you. It will go where you go.'

Matt felt a creeping prickle along the back of his neck.

'Are you saying that my presence is what unleashes it on people? By me just being around them?' Matt looked away, gritting his jaw. If it were true, where did that leave him? Alone. Forever. With no hope of ever settling down again, or spending time with the people he loved.

He balled his hands into fists. 'I guess that leads us to the million-dollar question.'

Dindren raised an eyebrow. Going to make him say it.

Matt took a deep breath.

'If this—spirit, creature, whatever you call it—really has attached itself to me, and is going to follow me wherever I go, wouldn't the problem be solved if I just offed myself?'

'Well, that depends.' Dindren seemed in no hurry to complete the thought.

'On . . . ?'

'On whether you are the spirit's host—or its locus.'

Matt stared at him. 'Um, in English?'

'Right: if this spirit is inhabiting you physically—like a parasite in a host—and has no way of inhabiting another, then your suicide would indeed solve the problem.'

'Great.'

'But . . . if it has the ability to move on to another person, and you are simply its preferred locus, or location—like a vulture's favorite tree—then killing yourself will accomplish nothing. Another way to look at it is that the spirit is either serving you—because it's a part of you—or serving itself.'

Matt nodded, relieved. 'Makes sense. So: how do I find out which?'

Dindren gave a little shrug. 'You could always ask.'

'Ask?' Matt couldn't believe his ears. 'That's your advice? That I fucking ask it who it serves?'

'In a word, yes.'

'Why the hell would it answer? How would I know if it told the truth?'

'Because that's the way these things work. The Otherworld, Matt, has rules like ours. Under special circumstances, its citizens are required to answer truthfully.'

Matt gave him a skeptical look. 'So there's, like, some user's manual for the supernatural?'

'In this matter there is, if you know where to look. Are you familiar with the legend of the Holy Grail?'

'Not really. Should I be?'

'Of course.' Dindren pressed his hands together, fingertip to fingertip. 'The story goes like this. There's a king. And the king is dead. Only he isn't. He's been cursed, and he can't fully live, and he can't fully die. All he can do is lead a ghostly half-life. And as long as he's under the curse, his land will remain barren and desolate: full of famine, madness, and death.' He paused meaningfully. 'Ring a bell?'

He'd caught Matt's attention. 'Go on.'

'So a hero comes to the dead king's castle. Sits down to dinner with the king. Then, in the course of the meal, he sees a strange procession: a youth walks past him holding a spear that's dripping blood. Another comes with a huge candelabra. And then, the last: a beautiful woman. And in her hand, glowing with power and light . . . a chalice shining with holy, divine, sacred'—he closed his eyes and lifted his shaking hands, as if he himself held such a chalice—'life.'

Matt swallowed hard, weirdly affected by the tale. 'The Grail.'

'Right you are. And when he sees this, the young hero is full of wonder and wants to ask its purpose. But he doesn't. When he wakes the next day, the castle and everything in it has vanished. He soon learns that because he didn't ask the right question—didn't ask what the Grail was, and who it served—because he remained silent, the king remains suspended in a living death, and the land cursed. The hero lost his chance to heal the land quickly, and so he must dedicate the rest of his life to doing it the hard way.'

Dindren settled back, and with a meaningful look, crossed his thin, bruised arms.

Matt's jaw dropped. 'That's it? That's the end? That makes no sense! Why didn't he ask the question when he had the chance?'

A shrug. 'It could be he followed bad advice or dozed off. It could be he didn't want to reveal his ignorance. Or it could be . . . that he was afraid of the answer.'

Matt considered this. It could be the key to the entire mystery. It could also be complete and utter bullshit. But what did he have to lose? He shrugged. 'Okay, I get it. The next time I meet up with Mr. Dark, I'll ask him who he serves. No big deal.'

'Actually, it is a big deal,' Dindren said, searching him with shadowed eyes. 'In the Grail legend and others like it, the hero is only given one chance to solve the problem by asking the right question. There's no second shot.'

Matt shrugged. 'Well, I can guarantee you I'll ask question if I get the chance. Even though I'm more like the dead guy than the hero.'