Bones are Made to be Broken Read online

  He stumbled to it on legs that didn’t feel like his own. Nothing did anymore; it was as if his body had been hijacked and his consciousness was a captive passenger. He pressed the button marked DOOR and stumbled back to the couch without asking who it was.

  He heard the door open and a familiar voice started to say, “Jakey—” when it suddenly choked off. “Jesus!”

  Jake heard the door slam closed and then Mansfield was coming around the couch, his legs like snapping scissor-blades, his face unbelieving. “Christ, what happened to you?”

  Jake looked down at the scarecrow he’d become. His clothes—old khakis, an older Penn State sweater—were thoroughly stained. “The Doorway Man.”

  Mansfield gaped. “The Doorway Man did this to you? How?”

  Jake swallowed. The question—the essential question—blazed to life in the hollow of his head. “What’s his real name?”

  Mansfield turned towards the windows. “We gotta get you to work. I’ve held off the Board so far, but your PM’s climbing the wall—”

  “What’s the Doorway Man’s real name?”

  Mansfield turned back. “That doesn’t matter, man. We gotta get you to work—”

  Jake got to his feet faster than he would’ve thought possible. For the first time in God knew how long, he felt something other than pain—anger, and it was hot and lively, bubbling through his blood. Mansfield was not going to keep this from him. “His name, Bradley. I need his fucking name.”

  Mansfield’s face screwed up into an expression of incredulity. “Dewey Herbert. The whole ‘Doorway Man’ thing’s just a schtick. Why? It doesn’t matter—your career does.”

  Jake stopped; it seemed everything stopped—his heart, his body, his brain. His breath caught.

  It doesn’t matter. No, it didn’t. A name wasn’t a symbol of power and this wasn’t some cheap fantasy novel. A name was just something your parents handed you. It couldn’t help him.

  His body kick-started, a rumbling engine fueled with high-octane rage.

  “Where can I find him?” he said, stepping forward, boring holes into Mansfield with his gaze.

  Mansfield sighed. “Don’t you get it? You’re going to be fired—”

  “Shut up!” Dots of red pulsed in front of his eyes. “It’s your fault this happened. If you hadn’t taken me to the party, hadn’t bet on me—” Pain suddenly erupted through him, closing his throat. He doubled-over and hugged his chest, grinding his teeth.

  “Jesus!” Mansfield yelled, but it seemed to be coming from far away.

  Jake’s lips peeled back as he uttered a nasally eee-eee-eee sound.

  And then the muttering came.

  And it was different—still distant but somehow understandable.

  And, from that low rabble, an idea came.

  An idea of … touching Mansfield and—

  The rest wouldn’t come, but that was enough. His throbbing, broken body sang for it the way a dying man’s body craved for a glass of water.

  He looked up and Mansfield recoiled.

  “Tell me where he is,” he growled.

  Mansfield’s mouth opened, but nothing came out.

  His hand stole out. Mansfield jerked away, but not fast enough. Jake’s fingers touched his right elbow—

  —and then sank in.

  The reaction was immediate. Mansfield shrieked as if he’d been stabbed, jerking away.

  The muttering voices in Jake’s head became a single, triumphant howl. At the same time, the pain became focused, like a laser trained on something. And suddenly the pain, while awful, became somehow more tolerable.

  Jake Reznic’s lips twitched in a smile. “Tell me where he is.” He advanced another step.

  Mansfield backed away and his ass smacked the windowsill.

  Jake reached for him again and Mansfield flinched. Mansfield’s chiseled face was flushed and sweating. He seemed smaller, as if he’d shrunk within his expensive clothes.

  Jake raised a hand towards him. “Where, Mansfield?”

  “Bentley District!” Mansfield shrieked. “He’s in the Bentley District! North Street! Apartment 4G—”

  “Shut up,” Jake said, and his hand sank lightly into Mansfield’s arm again. Mansfield screamed.

  Jake pulled away. It was hard—he didn’t want to pull his hand away. The muttering in his head became a rumbling, inhuman nnnnnn-nnnnnn-nnnnnn sound.

  “Empty your pockets,” he said, barely hearing himself. The pain was twisting, the rumbling slowly pushing aside all rational thought.

  (—nnnnnn-nnnnnn-nnnnnn—)

  Mansfield yanked everything from his pockets and dropped it. A palmful of loose change bounced and clicked against the hardwood. His smartphone bounced. He reached behind him and, after a moment’s struggle, pulled out a small black pistol in a nylon holster, then set it on the floor.

  Jake would’ve laughed, if he could’ve. The bastard had a gun and hadn’t even thought to use it. One look at his face said he still wasn’t thinking of using it.

  Mansfield’s eyes were shocked and empty. “You … you won’t hurt me, anymore?”

  The rumbling was reaching its apex, threatening to split his skull open.

  (—nnnnnn-nnnnNN-NNNNNN—)

  “No, Brad.”

  He spread his narrow arms and wrapped them around Mansfield. At that instant, the muttering rose into an exultant scream.

  (—NNNNEED!)

  His arms sank into Mansfield like a hot knife through soft butter. A crickling-crackling sensation swept through him, reminding him of Pop Rocks candy and how it snapped and popped on your tongue.

  Mansfield stiffened, but could not pull away. He was three inches taller and fifty pounds heavier, but it felt like Jake was handling nothing more than a wet pillow. Mansfield’s skin paled to the color of milk then beyond, becoming almost translucent.

  Jake never saw the moment Brad Mansfield winked out of existence. He blinked as the crackling sensation reached its apex—a mental feeling of YES!—and then Mansfield was gone. He heard a pop as air rushed to fill the space Mansfield had occupied.

  Jake staggered away. Where the hell? His brain felt sharper, clearer, than it had in weeks and he stared at the scene before him like someone who had no idea how he’d gotten here.

  Where the hell had Mansfield gone?

  (the pain ate him)

  Jake’s stomach cramped. He made it to the toilet just in time, sliding across the tiles like a break-dancer. His face grew hot and his stomach and throat worked, but all that came up were threads of discolored drool.

  He slumped against the tub. A part of him relished the lack of pain, but, in its place, was this dissatisfaction, as if what he’d done to Mansfield was right … but not enough. It was as if a part of him—the thing the Doorway Man had given him—was disappointed.

  (it doesn’t kill you, you know)

  What am I? he thought, but of course there was no answer.

  He went back out to the living room. I didn’t eat him, he thought, walking over to the pile of crap on the floor.

  (then what did you do?)

  (I open the way to things I didn’t come up with it)

  “I bet you didn’t,” Jake whispered, hunkering down. “Someone else did, maybe eons ago.” He picked up Mansfield’s holstered pistol. “And now I do, too.”

  I’m the Doorway Man, he thought. I pulled Mansfield through to … wherever.

  He pulled the pistol from its holster. It was compact and blocky. Along the side of the slide was .380 SEMI-AUTO. He fumbled with the grip until he found the lever that disengaged the magazine and pulled it out. Full house. He slammed it home.

  If I wanted a way out, he thought, I got it now.

  Jake looked from the pistol to the pile. Mansfield’s iPhone lay on top, its screen activated.

  His eyes locked on the Maps app.

  Slowly, he set the pistol down and picked up the phone. North Street, he thought. Apartment 4G.

  He looked at the gun. He�
��d take it with him. He’d have the option afterwards.

  He turned back to the phone.

  Somehow, the apartment door fit Dewey Herbert’s personality to a T. The paint had peeled and cracked and darkened to a bile black. The keyplate had the looks of being unsuccessfully jimmied.

  The new Doorway Man couldn’t hear a single sound within.

  (he’s dead he’s rotting inside and this was foolish to do)

  Jake looked around. Herbert’s door was at the end of a long hallway and he was alone. A smeary window looked out onto the street to his left. Dusk was drawing down, making the Bentley District, the city’s poor neighborhood, look even grayer.

  He turned back to the door, raised a foot, and slammed it home against the door.

  The impact shot through his entire body and wood cracked, but the lock still held firm. He drew his foot back and slammed it home again.

  The lock snapped and the door shuddered open, revealing a wedge of darkness.

  Jake swallowed and reached in, pawing the wall for the switch-plate. He tried not to think about Herbert’s body, sprawled on the floor in the darkness; or Herbert’s body crawling forward, empty eyes locked on Jake’s silhouette; or Herbert’s body reaching for Jake’s hand, ready to yank him into the darkness—

  He found the light-switches and flicked them with a soft cry.

  The overhead splashed on, so bright Jake blinked, revealing a dirty, disheveled, empty living room.

  Jake stepped inside. The room was large and filled with crap; his feet crunched over garbage. A 1980s television, complete with tinfoil-tipped rabbit ears, hooked up to a marginally more modern DVD player, squatted in the corner like a tinpot dictator. A kitchen alcove to his left. Two doors to his right, one opening to a closet with delusions of being a bedroom, and the other a bathroom.

  No Dewey Herbert, AKA the former Doorway Man.

  He exhaled loudly. He’s not dead—

  (he’s not dead here)

  He pawed through the crap on the loveseat, tossing aside TV-dinner trays and old bills. There had to be something saying where the little bastard was. He kicked aside clothes, revealing a carpet pockmarked with cigarette burns.

  His eyes drifted to the corner. Beneath a pile of papers and un-opened envelopes was what Jake thought was an old rolltop desk. He pushed all the crap off the top and rolled it open.

  He blinked.

  The desktop was neat and organized, almost anally so.

  Camouflage, he thought. He obviously cared for this, but he didn’t want it getting boosted and destroyed if someone broke in, so …

  Pain twinged in his midsection. Nothing like the explosions from before Mansfield, but enough to make him hunch.

  Cubby holes liked the back of the desktop. A wide-rectangular envelope that could’ve only housed a card stuck out of one.

  He pulled it out. The return address was from Pennsylvania. Dewey’s middle name was Philip.

  He pulled out the birthday card within. A bulldog in spectacles on the front. Not Hallmark, but a cheap knock-off found in a Mom & Pop store.

  Jake opened the card and read beneath the basic HAPPY BIRTHDAY message: I know you’re busy in the big city but when you get a chance give your old man a call, OK? It was signed DAD.

  He tossed the card aside and folded the envelope in half to stick in his pants pocket.

  (you don’t know Herbert went there)

  He’d saved a birthday card his father had mailed him years ago; not only saved it, but kept it in the one place not covered in garbage. If Herbert was alive and on the run, he would’ve gone home. Besides, what other option did Jake have?

  His hand went to Mansfield’s gun, wedged into the small of his back, as another twinge of pain came. His hand tightened over the grip.

  I’m going to find Herbert, he thought, and he’s going to fix whatever it is he did to me. Or I’ll kill him myself.

  Outside, thunder boomed loud enough to rattle the barn.

  Jake stared at Herbert, his gun still trained on Herbert’s frozen father. The pain dug and tore and chewed but was completely forgotten. “You’re not dead,” he said with something like wonder.

  “Not yet,” Dewey Herbert said. Lightning flashed. In spite of being free of whatever it was he’d given Jake, the former Doorway Man looked dead; his skin was sallow and clammy. The neck holding his head up was a stem.

  His eyes flicked past Jake and widened. “Dad—”

  Jake turned, flinching. The farmer’s meaty, callused hand missed his shoulder by an inch.

  “Hey,” the farmer said, blinking. It was as if he’d just awakened. “You can’t be here. My boy’s sick and you gotta go. Scat.” He took a step towards Jake.

  Jake backpedaled, towards the barn door, feeling the pain in his center again grimacing. The freezing-cold rain slanting soaked his shoulders. He raised the pistol, but it was an absent gesture.

  The farmer’s face tightened. “You ain’t usin that or you woulda already.”

  Out of the corner of his eye he saw Herbert make a grab for his father—which his father avoided—and stumble. “Dad, don’t—”

  “Get back inside, Dewey,” the farmer said. His eyes never left Jake’s and a thought—Like staring down a dog—shot through Jake’s mind.

  Jake made his pistol hand straighten, until he looked down the stubby barrel into the farmer’s face. “Don’t make me use this,” he said, his voice nearly lost in the muttering in his head.

  “Don’t worry, boy,” the farmer said, “you won’t.” He battered at the pistol.

  And the back of his hand slid into Jake’s.

  The contact was for an instant, but it felt much longer. The farmer’s face constricted, and his body jolted as if he’d touched a live wire.

  For Jake, the pain throughout immediately focused on the farmer as a burst of that crinkle-crackle feeling swarmed his hand and all thoughts were buried in the absolute need to draw the farmer closer, to suck him in—

  The farmer stumbled back. The farmer held his hand at the wrist and Jake, absently, noticed the farmer’s hand was dead white, as if sucked bloodless.

  “Demon,” the farmer said, his eyes eating up his face.

  A parody of a grin twisted Jake’s face as he came forward. “Close enough,” he said and plunged his hand into the center of the farmer’s chest.

  The intense sensation of pins-and-needles exploded up his arm and he shrieked as it burst brilliantly—wonderfully, joyfully—in his head. Distantly, he heard Herbert shrieking, too.

  The farmer’s face went pale, the color of his skin blending with the whites of his eyes. His hair lost luster; the gums inside his working mouth turning a bubblegum pink then white.

  With a yank, Jake slammed the farmer into him and Dewey Herbert’s father winked out.

  Jake staggered back, blinking. The gun fell from his hand and discharged a round into the night. The pain was gone and in its absence, horror at what he’d done—joyfully, blissfully—filled the void, warring with the certainty that while the farmer felt right, it wasn’t enough.

  Herbert collapsed against an old workbench, his long, narrow hands dangling as his slight body shook. He looked at Jake, his eyes streaming and face red. “That was my father. He was the only reason I didn’t kill myself, you bastard.”

  “I didn’t do it!” Jake snapped. “It was what you gave me! You did this! You! This is all your fault!”

  “Don’t you think I know that?” Herbert shouted back. “I gave it up! I let it go and now I have nothing! I had nothing before and now I have even LESS!”

  He stomped forward. “How do I get rid of them, Dewey?”

  “You pass it on!” he screamed. “Jesus—you know that! If the others had a different way, I don’t know it because they’re dead! After it’s given away, the holders kill themselves! The fact that you and I are standing here—you the current holder and me the former—that has never happened! The holder …” His voice softened. “… the holder misses it. It’s
all the holder has left, by the end. It seeks out and we don’t know it at the time, but we become a part of something—for most of us, that’s the first we’ve ever felt that way.” He looked away. “And … and we miss it.”

  Jake grabbed Herbert and shook him like a ragdoll. “You ruined my life and you want me to feel SORRY for you?”

  Herbert fought back, but Jake’s grip was iron. “Don’t you think I know that? My life’s no better than yours!”

  Jake shoved him against a workbench. “But you’re free, you son of a bitch, so what is it?”

  Herbert glared insolently and Jake thought of grabbing the gun, emptying it in the former Doorway Man’s face. How dare he look at Jake like that? Herbert couldn’t lay the bill for this at his feet.

  “It’s old,” Herbert said. “The texts of the old legends—most of them completely forgotten—say it was created by them, what was here before sentience, when the universe was still young and reality was soft.”

  He straightened, a hand going to his back. “Reality is perception created by sentient thought—the Sophists thought so, anyway. And those things—you can’t begin to imagine them—were here first. Not sentient. A kind of hive-mind, I guess. But, when life as we know it began, the change made a line between they’re black empty void and our reality. But they want back what we took; they want it all and they left a little bit of them, the doorway, like a dog marking its territory.”

  “Why me?” Jake yelled, then gestured at Herbert. “Why us, why all the others?”

  Herbert offered a blade of a smile. He began to move, circling. His eyes gleamed in a way Jake didn’t like. “We’re outsiders, Jake. In the grand scheme of things, we’re barely there. Like them. This means we’re susceptible, but not enough to let them through. I don’t know what would be enough. None of the legends knew. If it was enough, we wouldn’t be here.”

  Jake kept turning, kept facing him. “What about the people I’ve … taken?”

  Herbert shrugged, and started closing the circle, towards Jake. “Does it matter? They’re gone and we’re stuck. I’m stuck, without a career, or family, or even them.”

  Jake backed away. “What’re you doing?”