Unseaming Read Free

corner of the table, going through motions he’s long accustomed to, have a seat here, let’s look this over. Beside the desk and your chair is a long coffinlike box. You study it, wonder what’s in it, why he wants you to sit next to it.
A long wooden chest of some dark wood, with what appear to be elaborate Polynesian designs carved on its side–you see a horde of faces peering out through a thicket of strange trees, their gaze aimed to the right, where a large figure is stepping out from a yoni-esque opening in a wall of reeds. The lid of the chest is open, perhaps even removed. Inside, small objects glitter like treasure in a pirate movie.
You peer more closely. The chest is filled to the brim with buttons, of just about every kind you think could exist, every conceivable size and color: sky blue, gold, oak brown, blood red, sea green, India ink, rose pink, oil swirls, crystal prisms, basalt opaque; some like grains, some larger than silver dollars, disks, cubes, knobs, triangles and stars, even crosses, moons, little grinning skulls, twining oriental dragons, snarling demon heads. The entire conglomeration shimmers as if the weak glow from the lamp transmutes to moonlight across their many surfaces.
Lenahan says, It’s amazing what you can find in there. Still amazes me.
You realize your attention wandered, you aim your focus and your Glock back where they belong.
Where is she?
He leans forward, his shadowed bulk alarming, his face a gibbous moon. I just gave you a hint.
You blink. His eyes have changed. You could swear when you looked at them before they were dark, not that eerie bright green.
You emphasize the command with a wave of your pistol. Don’t move. Don’t do anything other than tell me where she is.
Then what?
You inhale slowly. You tell yourself it’s not your plan to kill him, you just have to know.
You say, Depends on what you tell me.
He sits still, but his fingers on the desk twitch spider-like, drum softly in some random Morse code. He leans back a little, face going from gibbous to full, and you see his eyes are different, unquestionably burning bright green, like seeing your own eyes in a mirror.
He’s playing games, not taking you serious.
The little cushion full of pins trembles as his fingers drum. You shoot it.
The Glock hiccups in your hand, the sound like a sledgehammer smashing concrete. The cushion is simply gone, a long second before Lenahan jerks his hand away. The moment punctuates with the clatter of the spent shell casing on the floor.
Lenahan holds up his hand, stares, his sensuous lips parted. There’s a needle jutting from the tip of his ring finger. His expression makes you squirm inside.
He puts finger to mouth, grips the needle in his teeth, pulls. It protrudes from his incisors like a toothpick. Then he tosses it away.
He doesn’t seem frightened, but your heart is pounding crazy against its cell of ribs.
Under the lamp, a bead of blood wells from his fingertip. I don’t want to make trouble for you, he says.
A flick, the blood is gone. Why does the skin of his broad hand seem smoother, paler, the hairs between the knuckles somehow absent, reverse-werewolf?
Stop moving, you say.
He obeys, watches, waits.
You still haven’t answered, you say.
Answered what?
You scream an obscenity, put the gun almost to his chin.
His eyes flick to the button bin.
Just as with his eyes and hands, the buttons in the bin have changed. It’s hard to quantify what’s different, but you hit upon it: they look more real, more like the things they represent. The sea blue disks look like circles of ocean, the skulls gleam like real bone, the laughing demons seem to wink, the moons and suns shine with their own light, the faces on the fake coins frown or grin or simply breathe.
He knows your name. Shaun, he says. You reach in there, you’ll find her. You’ll know what happened.
You aim the Glock in his face and say, You do it.
* * *
     
Don’t you remember what Billy Willett told you? So