Will the Sun Ever Come Out Again? (5 page)

Discarded cans and fast food wrappers fill the floor. He kicks them out of the way, and he hears a squeak as a rat runs from his sweeping foot.

“Jesus Christ.”

“Don’t think so,” comes the answer.

Walker doesn’t want to take his time. He wants to leave the apartment just as fast as he can. He needs to talk to Ricky, though. Needs to know what the dealer knows.

He reaches the bedroom door, and a smell like an outhouse slams into him. He brings a hand to his face, and the lighter dies. It doesn’t matter, because Ricky has a candle burning on the night stand. It illuminates the dealer’s gaunt, naked body, the wild look in his eyes, and the shit-stained bedclothes he’s tangled in. Its dancing flame glints off the chromed automatic that lies at its base, reveals the melted stumps of the dozen or so candles that have burned down already, their wax trailing down the front of the night stand like a tumor.

And the candle illuminates the dead girl, too. She’s maybe sixteen, maybe a little less. Her wrists are ragged wounds caked with dried blood. One of her arms rests against the wall, just a foot or so below the smeared words.

HE STEPPED THRU

“Hey, Walker,” Ricky says. “Jesus don’t roll here no more.”

2Bit curls into a ball beneath the shower’s burning spray and shivers. Flitting memories cut him like blades. Darkness that moves. Blood. Knives doing horrible things.

Strange words.

Writing with his bloody palm.

2Bit cries.

Megan stands outside the house, at the end of the broken walk. She stares at the empty street while the assigned detective combs through the pile of bodies in the living room. She doesn’t know why she’s out here. It’s not fair. Detective Bagley told her to keep the scene clear, but the street remains empty. Only squad cars line the curb. And she gets to guard them. Bullshit.

She thinks about the words.
He stepped thru. A Darkness Below.
What do they mean? She knows it all fits together somehow, and she knows with every last bit of her brain that she can figure it out if they’d just let her look at them some more.

“You okay?” Christian asks. He’s regained some of his color and doesn’t look so much like bad cheese anymore.

“Fine.”

“You sure? That was some freaky shit.”

“I’m fine. Pinky swear, okay?” She gives him a glare so he’ll get the fucking picture.

“All right.”

She turns her eyes back to the street, but in the back of her mind she still sees the words.

He stepped thru.

“Ricky? What the fuck, man?”

“Walker. Always good to see a slice I know.”

“Jesus Christ. What the hell is going on here? I sure as fuck hope you don’t expect me to clean this mess up for you.”

“What mess?” Ricky looks around in a daze. Walker watches his eyes bounce around the room, lost. Finally, the dealer catches a glimpse of the dead girl beside him and the shit they’re both lying in. “Oh, that. That’s a real bitch of a story, Walker man.”

“Why don’t you tell it?”

“Don’t think I should. You won’t like the ending much.”

Walker feels the first fingers of anger tickle his spine. The prick’s trying to play him, string him along for some unknown reason.

“Don’t give me that shit, Ricky. How many streets have I opened up for you? How many times have I steered the department in a different direction so you could keep operating? You fucking owe me.”

Ricky stares into space for a long moment, and Walker can see the rusty gears turning in the man’s head. He wonders if this will be the moment when Ricky’s mind breaks. Maybe everything will crash in on the dealer’s brain and shatter it like porcelain.

“Fine,” Ricky says. His voice rings with surrender. “Was Dobbs got the whole thing rolling.”

“So Dobbs is still in charge? This isn’t some new guy proving he’s got cajones?”

“Naw. All this shit is Dobbs. That nigga gonna run the world.”

“What’s going on, Ricky? Get to the heart of it, okay?”

“So the big man says he got something new, says he found religion and shit. Says it’s gonna put Gray Street back on top of things. A lotta niggas was snickering about that shit. What? We gonna go preach our corners back from the Locos and Niners? Fuck that shit, man. These niggas wanna come correct, wanna roll up on a muthafucka and take they shit back. They don’t wanna be using God or some shit to do they dirty work.

“So Dobbs calls a meet couple weeks back, gets the whole fucking tribe together. Pulls everybody into a warehouse, and suddenly I’m surrounded by niggas I ain’t seen in ages, folks I didn’t know was even in the life no more.

“We all standing around for a while, and then Dobbs comes in with this book. It’s one of those big fucking leather jobs, but it don’t look like leather. It looks like some nigga’s skin was used on it. That can’t be right, though. Least I thought so then.”

Ricky takes the dead girl’s hand in his own. Walker wants to look away but finds he can’t. He watches as Ricky places the corpse’s finger in his mouth and sucks.

“Ricky.”

The dealer lets the hand drop. “Yeah?”

“Keep talking.”

“Right. So Dobbs talks about this book he found, how it’s full of secrets and dark shit, talking about other worlds and things humans ain’t supposed to know. ‘There’s something out there,’ he says. ‘A darkness below. Everything and all.’ He reads from it, and it weren’t in no language I ever heard before. Weird thing is, I could
feel
those words. It was like they crawled through the room and grabbed me. I could feel they fingers wrapping around my heart, and suddenly I just wanted to kill something. I could see it in them other gangstas eyes, too. Everybody in that place was going crazy. One nigga beat down the homeboy standing next to him, just knocked him to the floor and started stomping until the nigga’s head split open.”

“Nobody did anything?”

“Plenty of niggas did stuff, Walker. I watched one homeboy jerk off while the shit was going down. Another waited for homeboy’s skull to crack, and then he grabbed a handful of brains and started eating. Yeah, folks was doing all kinds of stuff.”

“Holy shit.”

“Nothing holy about it, man. Nothing at all.”

“You sure it’s not a drug, Ricky? Maybe he pumped the air full of shit. Hell, I don’t know.”

“Drugs wear off, man. These niggas been getting crazier and crazier. See, when Dobbs was talking all this shit about other worlds and shit, these homeboys got to talking about going there, about sending somebody to check it all out.”

“Sending Dobbs, you mean.”

“Give the cracka a prize.”

“You can’t be serious.”

Ricky chuckles, a cold sound like stones colliding. His chest jumps a little. “What you see today, got you in my place? See some weird shit? You asking ‘bout some nigga flashing his balls around, something bad musta jumped up. What you see, Walker man?”

He shakes his head. He doesn’t want to talk about the giggler or his little hobby. He sure as hell doesn’t want to talk about the homeboy eating a little boy’s heart.

“What I thought,” Ricky says. “I know you, man. You one of them muthafuckas likes to talk. You clam up like this, you musta seen some new shit. Probably witness something you don’t think us gangstas was capable of. I right?”

“Maybe.”

“What I thought. Shit done got deep, Walker. Get a shovel, man. Ain’t nothing to do now but dig.”

“That what you think?”

“Shit jumpin’ off, it means they did it. They put Dobbs through.”

“There was a plan? Tell me about it.”

“They was gonna do it last night. Heard some niggas saying they had to ‘Weaken the walls’ or some shit. Said they’d snatched a bunch of Locos for a sacrifice. You believe that shit? Goddamn sacrifice. That shit’s crazy, right? I want to think so, but I been seeing things since that meet. Shit you wouldn’t believe, man. You ask me, I think the walls already be weak. I think Dobbs just needed a push.”

“Fuck.”

“Yeah.”

“He stepped through. So that’s what it means? They believed this shit enough they were gonna try.”

“Looks like, homie. Looks like they pulled that shit off, too.”

Walker feels the ice spread through his system. He refuses to believe the shit Ricky’s trying to spoon-feed him. “Where’s Dobbs going to be now?”

“Who knows? Might not even be in this world no more, right?”

“Let’s say he’s in the here and now. Where would I find him?”

“Safe house off Rose.”

“I know the one. How many guards?”

“One or two at most.”

“You’re joking.”

“Shit, Walker. Dobbs don’t need guards no more.”

“That was before he started fucking up my town.”

“Right.”

Ricky’s head droops, his chin meeting his chest. He sits that way for a long time, and Walker thinks maybe the dealer’s passed out. He should get out of the apartment. He’s getting used to the smells of shit and blood and decay, and that can’t be a good sign.

He turns to leave, and Ricky jumps in the bed.

“Hey, Walker?”

“Yeah.”

“The sun come out today?”

“No.”

“What I thought.” Ricky snatches the gleaming pistol off the nightstand. Walker steps forward, but the dealer already has the barrel under his chin. The man’s eyes are haunted but somehow calm.

“It rises.”

Ricky pulls the trigger, and what’s left of his mind paints the ceiling.

EVENING

Walker stands beside Rawls in a dark corner of the motor pool. He looks into his partner’s eyes and sees lingering traces of fear. He figures Rawls sees the same in him.

“They took the guy to Mercy, but he died in transport. Just bled out.”

“Jesus.”

“The tongue was the worst part. Fucking thing kept moving for almost a half hour.”

“Ricky’s wasn’t a pretty scene, either.”

“And Thomas still isn’t gonna work on getting us a warrant.”

“Bullshit.”

“I mean, I see it. We don’t have any direct ties to this shit, but still.”

Walker rubs his face with hands that need to be washed. It’s been too long a day, and he knows it isn’t near done. “It’s got to stop though, man. This fuck pile we saw today is only gonna get worse if gangbangers are on the streets trying to go voodoo on us.”

Rawls nods.

“But if we take down Dobbs tonight, it could stop. Somebody with a good head on their shoulders moves up, and the streets go quiet again.”

“Who moves up?” Rawls asks.

“Whoever we back. That doesn’t matter until tomorrow.”

Rawls stares at the pavement for a long moment. Thoughts cross his face as creases of worry. His breath is a slow, purring thing.

Finally, he looks up.

“Great. Let’s grease this asshole.”

Megan lifts the yellow crime scene tape and enters the house for the second time. The dead Mexicans are gone, carted off to the county hospital and deposited in the morgue, but no one has come to clean the scene yet. That’s good.

With night coming on fast, darkness saturates the house. She sees faint shapes, but no details. She steps onto the soaked carpet and hears it squelch beneath her shoes. The scents of death remain. She breathes deep and feels the aroma creep through her body, latch onto her bones and work its way into her very structure.

She clicks on the flashlight in her hand and aims it at the wall. The words scroll from ceiling to floor. They’ve dried a little more, and now they’re a dark brown against the yellowed paint.

Why am I here?
she wonders.
Why on earth am I doing this?

Because you want to.

She begins to read.

“We are everything and, and we are one and the same....”

Walker pulls onto Rose and slows the car a little. They’re three blocks away from Dobbs’ safe house, and he feels insects crawling through his belly. He thinks about one banger playing games with a girl’s intestines and another eating a child’s heart. He thinks about the empty apartment building and the dead girl in Ricky’s bed, the look of quiet horror in the dealer’s eyes in the second before he pulled the trigger. He thinks about all of it, and he wonders what might be waiting for them three blocks down the street.

“You ready for this?” he asks Rawls.

“Sure thing.”

He takes his eyes from the road and gives his partner a look. “I’m serious. Are you ready for this?”

A shrug. “I think so. Shit, I don’t know. What are we gonna see at this place? What’s Dobbs gonna be up to?”

“I wish I knew.”

“I wish I didn’t have to find out.”

“Amen.”

“I’m not gonna lie, man. The shit we’ve seen today, it’s got me spooked pretty bad.”

“Me too.”

“Yeah?”

“Swear. Look, there’s the majority of my brain. It says this is just a bunch of strung-out gangbangers talking out their asses and acting crazy because they got a bad cut of dust or something.”

“But?”

“But then there’s the part of my head that saw the look in those bangers’ eyes. They believed this shit, I mean really believed it. I think about that—about the sheer
belief
I saw in their faces—and it gets me thinking.”

“I know what you mean.”

“I know you do.”

He hears Rawls take a deep breath. The man lets it out slow. “So what do you want to do?”

“I want us to be careful. You watch my back, and I’ll watch yours. Same deal as always.”

Rawls nods. “Deal.”

“Okay.” He pulls the car over to the curb and yanks the ski mask down over his face. “Time to go to work.”

2Bit doesn’t want to go back in the house. He wants to run away. He wants to hurt himself, put a gun to his head and pull the trigger, blast any more memories all to hell. He can’t do it, though. His legs keep pulling him toward the house.

He remembers what he put in the pot on the stove. He remembers cutting them off the dead Mexicans one at a time. Normal homeboys don’t do that shit. Crazy motherfuckers do.

He don’t want to be crazy.

But his legs won’t stop dragging him forward.

He sees the yellow tape criss-crossing the open door. He thinks the door should be shut, but then he sees the light inside, a single beam that roams back and forth, pointing at the living room wall. He sees images of himself dipping his finger in a shallow puddle of blood and writing letters on the wall. He grinds his teeth, closes his eyes, and the images disappear.

It could be a cop in the house. He knows it’s dangerous, but his legs just keep moving. Somewhere in his mind, he knows he’s lost control. The house has him now. The things he did there changed him, and it doesn’t matter if he remembers all of them or not. Now, he’s playing a part. He wants desperately to break free, but he fails again and again.

He grabs the yellow tape in both hands and rips it down. The flashlight’s beam moves, finds his face. The white spot blinds him, but he don’t blink.

“Hi,” a voice says. Female. Deep. The light returns to the wall, and somehow he can see her. She’s tall, pale. She stands naked in the middle of the blood-drenched room. He sees a uniform discarded at her feet. Five-oh. He watches as she shifts her weight and old blood smears her toes. He hears her voice repeat words he barely remembers writing. He turns and follows the flashlight as it roams words he’d never imagined before last night.

“I wrote those,” he says.

“I know. They’re beautiful.”

He approaches and stands at her side. He places a hand on the small of her back and feels sweat on her smooth skin.

“Why you here?” he asks. He hears his voice shake, and he realizes his body is burning with anticipation.

“For you,” she whispers.

She drops the flashlight, and her arms close around him.

Walker rushes down the sidewalk in a crouch. His service pistol feels warm in his hands. He hears Rawls’ nearly-silent footsteps right behind him.

Rose Street is quiet, dark. No voices or music or television programs. No cats yowling into the night or dogs barking at yowling cats. Something has turned Compton into a ghost town.

He reaches the gate that leads to Dobbs’ safe house. He remembers the last time he was here, delivering a witness to some of the Gray Street rank and file. He kept a lid on a war with that delivery. He hopes his presence here tonight will do something similar. He reaches out to open the front gate and realizes he doesn’t have to.

Rawls taps him on the shoulder, points to the home’s front door.

“Shit.”

It’s standing open, yellow light spilling into the night. From his spot on the sidewalk he can see the legs sprawled in the opening. It reminds him of the kid with a hole in his torso.

Something awful has already happened here.

Walker motions for Rawls to follow. “C’mon!”

Together they rush toward the front door.

Waves of pleasure surge through Megan’s body. She bucks on top of the stranger, grinding her hips harder and harder against his. She digs furrows in his chest with her nails. Her breath hitches in her throat, and sweat traces cooling trickles down her body.

Something rumbles deeper in the house, a sound like an angry lion stalking prey through high grasses.

A spike of ecstasy pierces her spine, and she cries out. The man beneath her grunts in a steady rhythm.

“We are everything and all,” she says between panting breaths. She can sense the blood that soaks the carpet creep toward their heat. It’s almost time. She’s never felt more alive. More needed.

“Darkness below!” she gasps.

“He stepped through,” the man says.

The rumble becomes a roar.

The yellow light pulses as Walker crosses the threshold. He recoils from the body in the doorway. Basketball shoes and baggy track pants give way to a torso that’s been skinned. Bloody muscle catches the sick light and spins it off in different directions. The corpse lacks a head, and Walker wonders if they’ll find it in the house.

“Mother of all hell,” Rawls whispers as they enter the living room. Half a dozen corpses line the room. Somebody’s nailed their wrists and throats to the walls. They stand in a mockery of life, their faces glazed with something that’s both wonder and horror. A woman whose legs have been torn away wears her dying scream like a mask. The bare spaces that remain between the bodies have been filled with writing.

“Fuck,” Rawls says. “That’s the sort of shit that banger spouted in interrogation.”

“Quiet.”

Walker watches the bodies. Dobbs isn’t one of them. He imagines them tearing loose from the wall and shambling toward him. He shakes the thought away. Until he finds Dobbs, he needs to concentrate.

Another light pulses from the kitchen doorway. It cycles faster than the living room’s bulb, almost quick enough to be a strobe light. It matches the speed of his racing heartbeat. He feels it pull him like a strange, false gravity.

He catches Rawls’ eye and then cocks his head at the doorway. His partner nods.

Walker steps into the kitchen, his pistol up and his trigger finger itching.

A muscular, naked man stands at the sink, facing away from them. The flesh of his back ripples as he breathes in and out. Blood smears his skin. More coats the cracked linoleum.

“Malcolm Dobbs,” Walker says. “Turn around nice and fucking slow.”

The man’s skin ripples again. Walker sees something that looks like a thick cord wriggle beneath the flesh. He blinks, and it disappears.

“You ever wonder what’s behind the world?” the man asks. He starts to turn around.

“Hands up!” Walker orders. “Behind your head, asshole.”

The man keeps talking as he follows Walker’s command. “I used to wonder all the time, used to really want to learn that shit.” His voice sounds strange. Maybe wet. “I knew this wasn’t all there was, man. There had to be something else, something below. A darkness.”

Malcolm Dobbs smiles. Blood runs from the corners of his mouth, from his nose and ears and eyes. Something rips.

Walker thinks it’s too hot in the kitchen. The air closes in on him. Somewhere far away, he hears somebody blubber. Maybe Rawls. Who knows?

“I opened a door in the wall,” Dobbs says. He coughs once, and a wet morsel splats against the floor. “And I stepped through.”

Walker senses Rawls falling to his knees. He feels tears sting at his eyes. “You’re under arrest,” he says, but the words leave his mouth as a croaking sob. He knows he should pull the trigger, but he can’t find the strength. He can barely stand.

“The door doesn’t close, though. It just hangs open. I tried, but I can’t budge the motherfucker.”

The light strobes faster and faster. Walker sees fingers claw at the inside of Dobbs’ body, fighting to break free. He feels his mouth fall open. A sound comes out, and he thinks he might be screaming.

Dobbs’ smile splits at the corners. Holes appear in his chest.

Walker shoves the pistol in his hand past his lips to cut off the scream.

Darkness.