Half-Resurrection Blues_ A Bone Street Rumba Novel - Daniel Jose Older Page 0,71

pillars. It’s looking down at us, or pointing down at us, I should say, because the eyes are closed. That huge mouth is twisted into an unmistakable frown, and canyons stretch from either side of the nose past the edges of its lips.

The mouth opens and I crouch a little, thinking it might swoop down and gnaw on my head. “Dreams of tales untold,” the ghost mutters.

“Excuse me?”

“The dreams, the dreams of tales untold, the weak empty-handed can defeat the bold.”

“That a little poem you wrote?” Riley asks.

Those great big eyes squint open the tiniest sliver. “Just a thought.”

“Who are you?” I say.

The ghost doesn’t answer, just hangs there above us, flickering slightly.

“Yo!” Riley shouts, and the eyelids open all the way to reveal cloudy, cataracted pupils tainted by a labyrinth of squiggly veins. “What’s your name, ghost?”

He seems to consider this for a moment, sighing deeply. I’m about to get really annoyed because I can’t stand it when people ignore me, when the ghost says, “Pasternak.”

Riley makes a face. “Pasternak? The fuck kinda . . .”

“How long you been here?” I ask.

Pasternak squints into the night. “How long have you been here?”

Riley looks at me. “This guy’s really irritating me, Carlos.”

“Me too.”

Riley turns back to Pasternak and points at me. “You ever see this dude before?”

Pasternak swivels his giant murky eyes toward me for the first time and I shudder. A moment passes, during which Riley probably considers just slicing the fool and being done with it, and then the head nods slightly and Pasternak says, “Mm-hmm.”

My heart jiggles. “When have you seen me? What happened?” I have to physically restrain myself from vomiting all my swirling questions out into the night.

Pasternak looks back at Riley, frowns, and then closes his eyes again.

The fuck, I want to yell. But I don’t. I hold back. Because I want to know, and I don’t think bullying it out of him will do any good.

“The fuck?” Riley yells. “He asked you a question.”

“Hm?”

Riley throws his arms up. “I can’t with this dude. I just can’t. We want to know about what happened here, three years ago, to my friend. I was here. I found him. He was dead. It was raining. Do you remember? Anything?”

“So many days, so many nights. Rain, water, ocean, water, life . . . water. Dreams and daydreams. Nightmares.” His eyes still closed, Pasternak seems to suck his face inward for a moment, suddenly becoming all sharp lines and creases, and then relaxes again.

I’m almost at breaking point. “Enough poetry! Tell us what happened, man.”

“There were seven of you, but only five survived.”

“That night? Here?”

“There were seven of you, and none survived. And then”—melodramatic pause in which Riley and I both consider many acts of violence—“there were five.”

I had thought the ghost was frowning before, but turns out that was just his face, because now the edges of his mouth slide even further down, the lines etch deeper, and his eyebrows raise toward each other. “There were seven of you, and none survived,” he says again. “And then there were five.”

“Who? Who were the five?” I say. “Who was here?”

The eyes open wide again, suddenly terrified. Little spasms run along the side of Pasternak’s face like lightning against the night sky. “Sarcofastas!” the ghost wails. His eyes roll back in his head, and when he speaks again, it’s in Sarco’s voice.

“I release you, my children, into this rain-soaked night. You are free, for now. But one day I will again come calling. You will fear me, but you will be drawn to me too. I have given you life and you are indebted to me. It may be in a year or ten. I will call upon you, and together we will alter the course of the world.

“Now scatter.”

Pasternak blinks. His eyes are watery and dart around. He glares at me for a good ten seconds, and then the darkness envelops him and he’s gone.

The night seems very dark. Even those bright plaza lights only barely hold off the endless black sky. And inside, I’m empty once again. On the edge of knowledge and then lost. “Let’s go,” I say. “He’s not coming back.”

Riley looks around warily. “The fuck was all that about?”

“My rebirth, apparently. But let’s get out of here. I don’t like any of this.”

We’re about to walk away when something snaps into place. “Gah! Of course!” I yell, stopping short.

“What?”

I walk quickly around to the front of the arch and stare up at it. “The