Dead Matter

I found Co

“Oh, my God,” Jane said, straining under Co

I propped Co

“At his age, they’re called Depends,” I said, finally finding the right key.

Jane laughed, and Co

“I can still hear, you know,” he muttered. “And when I’m feeling better, I’ve got an ass kicking ready just for you, kid.”

“You’ve had enough ass kicking for today,” I said, “most of it on the receiving end.” I turned the lock and the door swung open. “Let’s get you inside and sit you down.”

I reached just inside the door and felt around, flicking the switch I found to light up Co

“This is better than the IMAX at Lincoln Center,” she said. Jane stepped into the room but stopped immediately. I wondered why, but a second later, I knew.

Something sour filled the air, like milk or cheese gone bad. Half-empty pizza boxes were stacked everywhere like a creepy game of trash-inspired Jenga. This level of disarray was a total departure from Co

“Sorry ’bout the mess,” he said. “If I had known I was having company, I would have bulldozed.”

A lone leather couch ran along the opposite wall and we deposited Co

“You wa

“Is that part of your nurse fantasy?” she said, but headed off into the apartment to find the bathroom.

“Ix-nay on the urse-nay in front of our work colleague, hon,” I called out after her.

“Seriously,” Co

I pulled off my coat and laid it over one of the theater chairs before kneeling down next to Co

“So, I said, looking for further signs of damage. “Is that the sort of thing you’ve been doing with your time off?”

“What the hell do you care?” Co

“That’s the thing, Co

Co

“Will this do?” she asked, dropping it all on the couch next to Co

I nodded. “Thanks.”

I grabbed the bottle of hydrogen peroxide, poured it onto one of the larger gauze pads, and used it to wipe away some of the blood on Co

“Sorry,” I said.

“No worries,” Co

“Yeah, about that,” I said, switching to a fresh pad of gauze. “Just what the hell was all that about in the graveyard, anyway? Were you trying to get yourself killed?”

Co

Jane had also taken up some gauze and dabbed at one of the cuts on Co

Co

Jane looked horrified. Her eyes crunched up with distaste. “Why on earth would you do something like that? Why would anybody?”

She poured hydrogen peroxide into one of the deeper cuts across his knuckles. Co

Jane turned to me and I felt the sudden pressure to perform like a trained animal, but I needed to know, too. What had brought Co

“This is about your brother, isn’t it?”

Co

After a few moments, he finally spoke up. “We had Aidan’s address…”

“No,” I said, interrupting. “We had an envelope we found in the madness that was Cyrus Mandalay’s messed-up art show invitations.” Aidan had disappeared twenty-two years ago at the beach, and no one had ever been able to turn up a lead… until we’d found that envelope.

“We had an address,” he repeated, almost as if he wasn’t hearing me. His eyes looked frantic, mad.

I grabbed Co

Co

“I don’t get it,” I said, standing up. I turned to Jane. “He’s always been stronger than this. Why now? His brother was already missing for twenty-two years. I can’t believe that one piece of false hope now has driven him to all this.”

Seeing my frustration, Jane put her hand on my shoulder and squeezed. We stood there listening to the sound of Co

“The dreams…” he said, wiping at his eyes.

Jane and I looked at each other, then down at Co

“What was that?” I said, leaning closer. He started to shake a little, making him look like a junkie just about ready to crawl out of his skin. “Hey, easy, now… What did you just say?”

Co

“I’ve been having the same dream lately,” he said. “I don’t know if we’re talking prophecy or what, but it just keeps happening over and over.”

I let out a sigh of frustration. Dreams were a huge source of interpretable material. According to one of the Departmental pamphlets I had read, “Honk-shus & Hibernation: A Guide to Interpretation,” they could mean any number of things. And sometimes they meant nothing at all.

Jane continued to soothe Co

Co

“You remember that book with the vampires taking over that small New England town?” he asked. “They did, like, two different movies of it.”