through his mouth. Something floated and spun in the circling pattern of drain water. He waited until the water finally turned from light gray to clear, and then he stepped onto a fluffy sage green bath mat and toweled himself until his flesh stung.
He dressed in one of Anna’s oversized T-shirts and sweatpants and went into the living room while she worked in the kitchen. He took a photo album from the bookshelf, sat on the couch, and flipped through its pages. Here stood Anna as a girl with a smiling man and woman, in front of a Tudor with well-trimmed shrubs; Anna in a softball uniform; vacations with white sand beaches and cruise ships the size of small continents; a series shot against a lush mountain backdrop with another woman with similar features. They wore backpacks with sleeping bags strapped to the sides. Each shot perfectly captured a smile or look, a gesture or a thought held in someone’s expression.
The smell of food made his mouth water. In the kitchen, Anna had placed a full plate of chops, rice, and beans on the wooden farmer’s table. She watched him rip into the meal with a half-formed smile on her face. “It’s almost morning, but I thought you needed something meaty. At least someone will eat my cooking.”
“Right now, I’ll eat anything.”
She elbowed him in the ribs and tucked one foot under her in the chair. “So where were you coming from tonight?”
“I had to take some photos of the waterfront for a client. They’re going to rebuild.”
“You didn’t have a camera.”
“Yeah, well.” He shrugged. “I was scouting the location.”
“Are you seeing someone else, Ian?”
“Of course not.”
“Then why won’t you tell me the truth?”
“It’s none of your business, Anna.”
“When I’ve been sleeping with someone for a while I kind of expect things to move forward. I like you, Ian, you’re funny, sweet, sensitive. But I don’t like your secrets.”
“I’ve got a dark side.”
“I want to see that, too.”
“You’ve got to understand something about me. My work, it’s like another woman I’m in love with. I can’t just let her go, and I can’t share her with you. The two of you wouldn’t mix.”
“How do you know? Maybe that could be fun. You should try me, you might be surprised.” She took a deep breath as if gathering courage. “You know what I think? You’re scared of a boring life. Wife, kids, house in the suburbs. You think it’s death. You think you can’t have that and still do what you do. Maybe you need the darkness, depression moves you, am I right? If you were happy, you’d lose your hold on that creative muse. But what good is it to shut yourself off from everyone who loves you, just because you’re afraid of what might happen?”
“It isn’t like that.”
“No? You tell me, then. I’m in love with you, Ian. I’m willing to take the next step. I’d like to meet that other woman. But I can’t be in a relationship like this, not anymore. You let me know if you ever decide to let me in.”
He had left the blinds in his apartment closed. But when he opened the door they had been pulled back, bright early morning sunlight streaming down onto the stinking flesh on his sheet-metal stage. A moment later, Fowler came strolling out from the little kitchen alcove, eyes hidden behind dark glasses. “Magnificent,” he breathed. His jowls trembled with something like lust. “You’ve topped yourself yet again. I didn’t think you had it in you.”
“You son of a bitch,” Ian said. “If any of them followed you here — ”
“Get real.” Fowler swept a hand toward the window. “It’s light out, or haven’t you noticed? Tends to hurt my eyes, and it makes them scream. If they want to know where you live, they’ll find you without any help from me.”
Ian grabbed his camera from the table. He fixed Fowler through the sticky lens, found the image of the man with his palms up, gesturing. “Hey — ”
“What the hell did you do that for?”
“You looked good standing next to it.”
“Yeah. Well, don’t do it again.” Fowler’s eyes momentarily glowed red through the dark lenses and then faded. “You ain’t so cute either, you know that? You ought to look in the mirror once in a while.” He moved to the door. “Get me those prints.” He stole one more glance back at the creation lying still upon the bloodied silver platform, the longing plain in his face. Ian imagined him caressing its gory flanks, leaning down to touch his lips to slippery flesh. And then he was gone.
Ian pounded a fist into his palm. Fowler was not yet a Taratcha, and would not be as easy to trap as Frost had suggested. He would have to find another way.
Late that night the solution came to him. Like most solutions born of desperation, this one came upon him by chance.
He had long since gone to bed, but sleep wouldn’t come at first. He couldn’t yet bring himself to disassemble his masterwork. And so it sat, alone on its altar like the remains of blood worship. Ian had begun to think of it as more than his Art, a testimony to all he had accomplished, a showcase of his talent. More than that, it was his child; and as frightened as he was with that thought, he no longer had the strength within himself to be disgusted by it.
He did not know when he slept or when exactly he awakened, but for a moment the flitting shadow shapes and crawling, tentacled dream creatures remained with him. The huge loft sat black and silent as a tomb. He lay there blinking up into the dark until his bladder forced him out of bed.
When he flicked on the bathroom light he almost screamed at the image glaring back at him through the mirror. Heavy brows overshadowed sunken, bruised eyes with a spark of red at their centers. He flicked the light off again and stood blinking in the dark. Fowler was right. He hadn’t noticed how far it had progressed. But it was a reversible transformation. It had to be.
Something nagged at his mind. It was all too easy to think of the Taratcha as simply evil given form and substance, part of an ongoing underworld war, a system of checks and balances between lightness and dark. But that alone did not give them definition. It did not make them real. Now, with the image of his own face floating like a ghost in the blackness that surrounded him, he began to understand their true essence. Creatures born from a collective unconscious. Trace memory of a human race too savage to bear the light. The monster under the bed, the spark behind a pedophile’s eyes. The stuffing of a madman’s brain. They were
He was almost too late. When he heard movement behind him he whirled, aware of a dim, reddish glow that wholly human eyes would never have registered. The bathroom door hung open, and from beyond it came the sound of something sliding across a slick surface.
Padding silently on bare feet he slipped around the door frame, and kept to the wall as he felt his way around the circumference of the room. His camera hung with the rest of his tools. With one motion he turned, stepped forward, and brought it to his eyes. Only then did he look at what it was he had created.
It dragged itself slowly along, tiny child arms waggling, grasping with bony fingers at the place he had been. Seams of black thread joined and divided an endless expanse of puckered flesh, opening and closing like a thousand tiny mouths. Ends of bone poked out like porcupine quills. Eyes like white-fisted tumors bulged and rolled under skin stretched tight as a bruise. A snail’s trail of dark fluid marked its path from the metal stage to the floor.
His second thought was less defined. As the creature turned and sought him with some blind sense and a
