Free The Light is the Darkness by Laird Barron Page B

last statement.
    Souza nodded. “Yes, she visited me. Several years ago.”
    “Did you give her the serum?”
    “Your sister is a persuasive woman. Of course I gave her what she asked. Do you possess the triggers?”
    “I have two. Do you know them?”
    “No, I’m but a humble chemist. Even with the serum you’ll need the third.”
    “Then stick me. I’ve got names. I’ll track down another trigger.”
    “Ms. Imogene already had them when she came to me. She was prepared and primed for the next step.”
    “She’s the fucking Boy Scout of the family,” Conrad said. “How did Tony find you, by the way? Disappearing from the cop radar is a talent I’d like to cultivate.”
    “Your amigos found me because I wished it so. I don’t worry about the authorities, or men such as yourself. I take pains to conceal myself from Dr. Drake. It is at terrible risk to myself that I emerge to deal with you in this place.”
    “You’re hiding from Drake.”
    “Oh, yes.”
    “Why?”
    “Do you not understand the way of this world you’ve entered? The strong eat the weak. Me, you, your lovely sister. The good doctor would be happy to devour us, one by one. He’s already begun.” The old man sighed and snapped his fingers. “To business. I am pleased you brought the manuscript. I’ve sought it for…well, forever and a day, more or less. Ms. Imogene never let on that she’d acquired it when we were negotiating. I believed all she had to offer was a pound of flesh. So clever, that one.”
    “Yeah. Makes me wonder what she traded instead.” Conrad hefted the cloth bundle, weighed it in a final calculation. He rose and handed the manuscript to Souza. He smiled a loose, friendly smile, having decided to kill the chemist at his next opportunity.
    Souza grinned and fondled his prize. “Perhaps you’ll have the opportunity to ask her. I think this would be an unhappy outcome. I think you would be better served to slink away into the night and forget her, forget Dr. Drake.”
    Night had fallen. The lamp clicked off and they sat silently in the perfect darkness of the motel room. A tongue of red and black flame rolled from Souza’s long fingernail and made his expression wicked in the shadow play. He said, “Boy, I could walk into the dark and you’d never see me again. I could reach across the small space between us and take your heart from your chest, devour it like an apple while you stared in amazement. The strong devour the weak and grow stronger. Your Quixotic impulse amuses me, however. Also, Dr. Drake would be mightily offended were I to gobble his special provender. So, I restrain myself. I simply wanted you to know I could. I really could.” He closed his hand and the fire went out. “Shall we go, boy? Shall we go and introduce you to the Great Dark?”
    X
     
     
    The Rattlesnake Animal Clinic was a dead black rectangle off an unpaved street. A solitary lamp illuminated the service entrance, the merciless grilles of several parked cars. The night wind smelled of radiator fluid and cooked insects. Occasionally dust spattered the lamp while deformed tumbleweeds careened by on their migratory paths to oblivion.
    Inside the blistered stucco and cement, the lair of knocking pipes and quiescent wires, at the very heart of the squalid box, was Operating Room #2. Brutal, fluorescent light seeped beneath the rumpled seal of the double doors. A radio played dim, unintelligible music, distorted the ebb and flow of whispered conversation.
    The light snuffed. A man began to shriek.
    XI
     
     
    Time is a ring,” Imogene said. “Bye, bye.”
    Conrad missed her already.
    They want in. They want in. They love you, Connie.
    “Super collage. Supercollider. The Drake Technique in action. There is no center and the edges are telescopic.”
    The walls were dirty. How could a clinic be so dirty. Flies circled a bulb, crawled on the dangling chain. Somebody was shrieking to the accompaniment of an opera diva.
    “Daddy, I’m