Downtown basked in morning sunshine, people went on their way, focused on their own concerns and foibles. Cars passed, workers worked.
Rufus followed Mac as the older man walked past shops, galleries, cafés and restaurants.
He followed, brimming with questions.
* * *
“What did you mean, hiding something?”
Mac didn’t slow at all.
“When?”
“Back there, at Tunes, you said Howard was hiding something… His tattoos…”
“Oh, sure. That… Well… he is.”
Rufus pulled alongside Mac, took a glance to try and read his expression, finding only a poker player’s mask.
“Thing is,” Mac continued, “I’m not sure whether he’s one of them or hiding from them.”
There it is again, Rufus thought.
“Them?” he asked.
Mac didn’t respond, just kept walking. At the crossing, he looked both ways.
“She lives on Shaw, right?”
“Right.”
“Past the cop shop.”
“Right.”
Mac turned to his right, away from the direct route to Shaw Street.
“Come on,” he said.
* * *
They walked past boarded up shops, plywood windows and drifting trash.
“It ain’t hard to spot them,” Mac said, “it’s always been easy.”
Rufus thought back, remembered Mac’s tale of schizophrenia and medication.
Delusions, he thought, inside the mind of the paranoid.
The scratches around his ears throbbed.
Is that it, he wondered, is that really all it is?
He decided to humor the older man.
“Them?” he said. “The doctors?”
Mac scoffed.
“They’re not doctors! They never were! They…”
He stopped walking, grabbed Rufus’ elbow, turning him until they stood face-to-face. Mac’s face was a stone, carved in serious crags and gullies.
“They pretend,” he said.
“They?” Rufus felt his concern; for himself, for Danni, for Mac’s sanity.
Mac pushed him hard on the shoulder.
“Wake up!” he yelled, never dropping his gaze from Rufus’ eyes.
“Ow!”
“Wake up!”
Mac hit him again, hard.
“Stop!”
“You have to see them!” Mac yelled, readying both hands to shove Rufus again.
Rufus was quicker though, and dodged the attack, walking away from Mac at speed.
This is crazy, he thought, he’s crazy!
Rufus walked at speed, expecting at any moment to be grabbed by the older man, whirled around, attacked.
“They can’t make the masks work!” Mac yelled.
Rufus stopped dead.
He remembered Mac’s story, about the doctor’s the injection and how the old man had described floating in the…
“… black,” Rufus whispered.
He turned back to look at Mac, found him standing, staring.
“You didn’t imagine them,” Rufus said, so quietly that Mac didn’t hear him.
“Huh?”
“The doctors,” Rufus said, louder now, walking back towards Mac, “you didn’t imagine them.”
Mac shrugged.
“I told you,” he said.
“I know, I know, but…”
Rufus stopped, looked over his shoulder, finding the street empty; beyond it, the town was…
“Quiet,” he whispered, “it’s quiet. Like it’s listening.”
Mac tilted his head.
“Like they’re listening,” he corrected, “we need to keep moving.”
He walked past Rufus, heading out of downtown.
* * *
“Mostly, they’re not that interested,” Mac said, “if you keep yourself to yourself, don’t pry to deep, don’t ask too many questions, they’re… Tolerant.”
“They watch,” Rufus said.
“Huh?”
“I don’t know,” he continued, “I just… I’ve seen them, watching. At my gigs.”
“They’re like a parasite… Drawn to us, “Mac nodded, “attracted, you know?”
Rufus didn’t respond. He was thinking about the distorted deputy, about the warning to get out of town, the way the confrontation had seem pre-ordained, how he had known who was approaching even before he’d turned to look.
“Like a mosquito,” he said.
“Maybe,” Mac agreed, “that’s close, but… more like ticks to me. Kind of attach themselves, take what they want and you’ll never know they were there. Unless you catch them while they’re…”
He stopped suddenly, grabbed Rufus by the arm and pulled him into the doorway of a boarded-up shop.
“What?” Rufus exclaimed.
“Shhhhh,” Mac calmed him, “look.”
He pointed up the street, where an old woman was crossing the street. Clothes dirty and ragged, she pushed a shopping cart full of plastic bags; unrecycled plastic bottles.
“Her?” Rufus said, confused.
“No,” Mac whispered, “behind her, in the car at the lights.”
Rufus switched his attention to the car; a powder-blue Chevy.
Reflected sunlight glowed on the windshield, but he could see the man sitting behind the wheel; heavy-set, a walrus moustache resting on porky jowls. Little piggy eyes and his nose…
“What is that?” he said.
“You see it, right?” Mac encouraged him on.
“His eyebrow,” Rufus whispered.
“Right.”
The man’s left eyebrow was at least an inch higher than his right; two-thirds along it’s length it suddenly turned upwards towards his forehead as if the skin had been stretched.
“He could have had an accident,” Rufus said, trying to make sense of what he was seeing, “plastic surgery! They could have stretched his skin to…”
“Or he could be wearing a face that doesn’t fit right,” Mac said, completely deadpan.
Rufus looked at him.
“Wearing?”
Mac nodded.
“But they never get it right,” he said. “That’s how come it’s so easy to spot them.”
“You just have to open your eyes.”
The old woman pushed her cart up onto the sidewalk on the far side of the crossing, and the Chevy began to move towards them. Rufus watched slack-jawed, transfixed by the man’s eyebrow. As the car approached, the man began to turn his head towards Rufus.
“Look at me,” Mac hissed. “Now! Look at me!”
Rufus did so on instinct.
Mac stared at him; stared and stared and stared.
Eventually, he broke the gaze and glanced towards the road.
“It’s OK,” he said, “you can look now.”
Rufus did, saw the car moving away from them.
“I told you,” Mac said, “they’re tolerant if you don’t pry to deep.”
“I wasn’t!” Rufus protested. “I was just looking!”
Mac watched the car for a long moment.
“That’s the thing, my friend,” he said finally, “you’re already a marked man.”
Rufus had nothing to say. Mac’s words rang in his head, setting off fire-crackers of energy.
You should be leaving, the distorted deputy had said.
You should be leaving.
You’re already a marked man.
“Danni,” Rufus whispered.
“Huh?”
“Come on, we’ve got to get to Danni!”
RUFUS – A NOVEL is a novel-in-progress by Vincent Tuckwood, a Brit author living and working in Waterford, Connecticut, USA. Read more by Vincent Tuckwood.
