Wetbones

which was lost somewhere in the middle distance. 'Maybe not. No I don't think so. If you haven't talked to the kid.'

Goddamn it, Prentice thought, I want to know. 'We haven't talked to Mitch lately. But I know what really happened to a little girl named Wendy and her mother, for example.' That was mostly a bluff.

Jeff looked over with puzzled surprise. One of Kenson's eyes stopped its roving on Prentice. 'Do you? Well then. Okay. Let's talk.'

'Drandhu to Pediatrics…' A nurse's voice from some distant intercom speaker.

'Oh my gosh,' Dr. Drandhu muttered. 'They are calling me.' He took a tape recorder from his pocket, no bigger than the kind of transistor-radio that mental patients carry about with them, and hung it on its little leather strap from the IV stand, just under the bottle of glucose water. 'Please – I have to go upstairs and check in. But it is I think all right if I record this?''

Kenson gave a leathery sigh. 'Fuck I don't know. I guess so. I don't 'know why I'm bein' so careful. I guess it's habit. Thirty years of hiding things…'

Drandhu switched on the tape recorder, then fluttered around Kenson for a few moments, writing down his pulse and temperature.

After the doctor had gone, Kenson told them about Mrs. Stutgart, and the Akishra. Jeff listened with polite amusement. Obviously not believing a word of it. But Prentice felt the rightness of the story. And he could almost hear Amy, somewhere, saying, I suppose you know your girlfriend is one of them. A pleasure vampire, in more ways than one.

'I was one of them for a long time,' Kenson was saying. 'But after a while, see, it's not enough for the Akishra just to be there to take their share of stuff psychically. They move in on your body. They get to be part of you. Physically. And I couldn't hang with that. So I started backing off – and then Denver started holding me prisoner. Using me for their games. Which sure, I deserved, I can see that. It's karma energy, you know? But I waited for a chance, and I stole a car. Denver's toy-boys came chasing after me and I took off into the desert and the car died under me and then this crazy old desert rat came along. He says he was watching us the whole time, following along. He puts me in his pick up and takes me to his place and the toy-boys leave off the chase. They're kind of scared of this old guy for some reason. Denver says the old guy's an unknown quantity and he's protected so they stay away from him. His name's Drax. So anyway, Drax brings me to town and leaves me at a doctor and they send me here.'

'The Akishra…' Prentice said. He could almost visualize them. Why? Why did it seem familiar?

'You have to understand about the Akishra, man, or you don't understand anything. I mean, the real nitty gritty about these fuckers. Hand me that water glass, will you, I need to wet my… thanks.' He paused to sip the water. Took a deep, weary breath and went on, 'The name Akishra, see, is from Hindu mythology,' Kenson was saying. 'People in the Orient, they know all about 'em. They're astral parasites. They're… they look like worms, big transparent worms. Sorta silvery. Bunches of them. Never only one, except the Slabfathers. The Akishra Prime. You can't see Akishra with the naked eye. Your hand goes right through 'em without feeling a thing. But they're there. They seem immaterial, like less than fog, but they're material in a way. Some kind of subatomic particle stuff they're made out of, Judy says. And yeah, they're here. They're all around people. Especially addicted people. Mythical! Shit. I wish to fuck they were, fellas.'

There was just a touch of theatrical delivery left in Kenson. The actor in him seemed to enjoy telling the story, despite his wretchedness. 'You have to get this clear: the Akishra are everywhere and always have been. Everybody – and I mean everybody – who is addicted to anything, well, the Akishra's involved. Cigarettes? Right. The ones we call the Alpha Flutters are there. The smaller Astral worms. If you could see a cigarette smoker the way a trained eye can see him -' He laughed bitterly. '- cigarette addict has this… it looks sort of like an Indian chiefs head-dress made out of these floating astral worms. They're stickin' out of the smoker's head, see. Attached to him at one end – their bodies floating up there like seaweed.

'Your moderate drinker, he's generally free from astral parasites. But real alcoholics, they got a bigger kind of worm looks sort of like a tapeworm. A line of 'em running up their spine to their heads, streamin' back there. Cocaine addicts got another variety, looks like a big corkscrew. Mean, manipulative little fuckers. Heroin addicts get another kind look like leeches. You can have two or three different kinds at once of course. A whole fur of 'em. Barely see some people for the worms on 'em. Walk through a crowd downtown, it's enough to make you puke, once you learn to see 'em.

'The addict see, is losing life-force. He's basically using up his life energy on his addiction – little bit by little bit. The Akishra suck that run-off. They get developed enough, they can encourage the addict to go farther and farther. Mostly, though, the Lower Akishra just ride along and stay quiet, take what they can get. Now, the Akishra come in lots of varieties, and there's the Prime Akishra – got one of those hatin' me and suckin' at me right now. They're coiled around you, those Primes. Any of the worms get big enough, they do that: twist around you like pythons. Now the Primes, they're the ones that we know how to communicate with, we can make deals with them, and they can have a lotta psychic influence on people. Those you got to sort of invite in – they're special. They got to be brought in on you with ritual, see.

'And – we make these deals with 'em. What we do is, we bring in fresh people and put the plaything, as we used to call the people, through all kinds of sick fun and hell that releases the life-energy run-off. The Akishra suck that up and then re-route some of the pleasure-impulses back to us. And they addict us, and pick one of us out to follow around, start drainin' off of us too. You followin' me? And if we let them actually move into our bodies, well, they regenerate the cells. On the outside, anyway. They keep an old body running. But the price for that's nasty to see, when it goes too far. Judy…'

He shook his head and paused to rest, panting slightly. He reached up to a rack behind the bed and drew down an oxygen mask, making a 'wait a minute' gesture with his free hand. He inhaled oxygen for a full minute, while Jeff fidgeted on his chair, embarrassed by Kenson's ravings, and Prentice shifted from foot to foot, wanting a drink. And feeling strange about wanting a drink, in light of what Kenson had been saying…

Kenson put the oxygen mask aside and said. 'I'm sorry. I'm so tired.'

'Maybe we should split,' Jeff said. 'Let you rest.'

'No! No, let me get this out. It's been years I've been wanting to… part of me wanting to tell someone…' He swallowed a little water and went on, 'Now, some of the Akishra will let the victims wander out into the city in search of, well, sensation I guess you'd say. Just… sensation. Stimulation. They get to be sucked dry – like me.'

Like Amy, Prentice thought.

Jeff heaved a sigh of aggravation. Kenson didn't seem to notice. He continued, 'The Akishra withdraw after the victims are used up and too far gone to be helped. And not coherent enough to be listened to. They become withered up street people, if they live that long, you see'em dying in vacant lots, babblin'… It's kind of funny, though. I mean, it's not as if every kind of pleasure attracts the Akishra. Only the kind that's… like a sickness in you. That's the kind that uses up bits of your soul, y'know. Sometimes if you change direction you can break away from them. the addict voice they plant in you gets fainter and fainter, like, and they give up and leave. But if you were one of us, with the real psychic communication – well, eventually you come back to 'em. And that's because you're addicted to the Akishra connection itself. Addicted to the ecstasy. The Reward. It's… more than you can imagine, when you play along with the Primes. That's all I can say in my defense – some of the things I took part in, man, with no hesitation and no thinking, it's sickening to remember and it's easy to judge me but once your pleasure buttons are pushed like that, you're fucked. You get programmed. You get addicted. And the fuckin' Akishra take advantage of that. So it's like it's this addict part of your brain conspirin' with the fuckin' worms…'

'That's it,' Jeff said, standing up suddenly. 'That's all of this bullshit I can handle. I'm sorry, Mr. Kenson. You were great, by the way, in The Bishop's Daughter. Now I gotta hit the road.' He turned to Prentice. 'I'm gonna call Blume again. You won't believe this message he left on my machine. He's playing with my head, the fucking drunk.'

'You like prostitutes, Mr. Teitelbaum?' Kenson asked, pausing to cough afterwards. 'It's hookers, right? Maybe two a day sometimes.'

Jeff turned to gape at him. 'What?'

'I can see the sex addict worms on you, man. And it's a kind people get from using women in a professional way. Sick sex. Impersonal and nasty in your car. They give you head, most of the time, probably, right there in the car. Lots of guys with dough are addicted to it. The women are so accessible and some of them are surprisingly