INTO THE DARK MARKET

  Tracey Lander-Garrett

  Copyright © 2020 Tracey Lander-Garrett

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  ISBN 978-1-7334545-3-7 (print) | ISBN 978-1-7334545-2-0 (ebook)

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  First printing, 2020

  Glass Carousel Press

  Pflugerville, TX 78660

  Cover Design: Steven Novak, Novak Illustration

  FOR RIC SATERSTROM

  (1955 – 2016)

  who spun dreams for me to grow on

  PROLOGUE

  A DARK-HAIRED WOMAN IN SCRUBS FINISHES medicating a young child and tucks him in. The room is dimly lit. Her hand lingers on his forehead and her face takes on a wistful expression. The windows are large and dark behind her as she exits the child’s room.

  In the hall, she feels eyes on her back: that uncanny feeling of someone watching her.

  Because it is the graveyard shift, the hospital corridors are quiet. She turns slowly, and at the end of the hallway, the lights flicker. She sees a figure. The silhouette of a large man. The silhouette looks just like that of her late husband.

  She gasps, a shock running through her. Her co-worker, standing at the nursing station nearby, calls to her in concern, startling her. “Hannah? Are you okay?”

  When she looks back, the figure is gone.

  The next time it happens, she is at the grocery store, a small basket of various items cradled in one arm. She turns a corner and again—this time at the end of an aisle—there stands her husband. She steps backward involuntarily, knocking over an endcap display of canned peaches. After the bewilderment and embarrassment of the tumbling, clanking avalanche, she looks again.

  He’s gone.

  Her therapist suggests it is wishful thinking. That she is seeing men with the same general shape as her husband, but it cannot be him. The therapist puts in a call to Hannah’s doctor, who prescribes sedatives.

  It is raining steadily outside when Hannah is home the next evening, with occasional rumbles of distant thunder. While making dinner at the stove, Hannah once again has that uncanny feeling that she is being watched. She turns slowly.

  “Hank? Hank, is that you? Are you here?” she asks softly, fear and hope intermingling in her voice.

  Just then, lightning strikes nearby, illuminating the sky. It silhouettes a figure standing outside the kitchen window, casting light on his face. There can be no doubt this time. It is her husband, his hair drenched, his skin pale, his lips a dark purple.

  The color drains from Hannah’s face. The figure is repulsive to her. An abomination that looks like—yet is nothing like—the man she loved. She screams, “Just leave me alone!” as the night outside her window goes dark again.

  But she cannot look away. Her eyes stay fixed on the window, fearing what she’ll see the next time lightning ignites the sky.

  When it does, showing nothing but the empty yard, she slides to the floor, sobbing.

  A body lies in a mortuary room.

  Its dark hair is disheveled in greasy clumps.

  Its eyes are gone, as are its ears. All that remain are bloody, blasted pits.

  A handsome face, a wide forehead, chiseled chin, with full lips.

  The body is shirtless. Long cuts, burns, and missing strips of skin on the pale torso reveal levels of torture that are horrific to contemplate.

  It wears leather pants, and its feet are bare. Vulnerable.

  The mortuary room is cold, sterile, impersonal. So is the body.

  Then it sits up.

  And somewhere across the city, an old man plans.

  CHAPTER ONE

  “ANOTHER ONE?” JULIE ASKED, GAPING AT THE green tentacles of the aloe plant in the kitchen window.

  Our new roommate, Sylvie, had a strong liking for green, growing things. She’d begun with a few plants in her bedroom, then a few in the living room, and now, the kitchen. “Are you sure that thing’s a plant and not, you know, like an alien or something that’s going to rise from its clay pot and kill me in my sleep?” Julie said while fixing herself a cup of coffee.

  I was sitting at the table, finishing a bowl of cereal. “It’s an aloe,” I offered. “She said the juice from the leaves is good for sunburn and rashes and things.”

  Julie stared at me suspiciously over the rim of her I’M NOT A MORNING PERSON mug. “Has she gotten to you too? Are you a plant person now?”

  “She offered to give me a small plant—” I began.

  Julie’s perfectly-shaped eyebrows rose. “And?”

  “And I said I didn’t know how to take care of it and she said she would. It’s in the living room.”

  Julie shook her head, looking perturbed. “Well, I guess it’s better than having a baby screaming all night. But seriously, she needs to cut down on the plants. It’s like living with . . . help me out here. Aren’t there some plant villains in comic books?”

  “Sure. Swamp Thing, Poison Ivy—”

  “Yes. It’s like living with Poison Ivy!”

  “But better than living with Oscar the Grouchy baby and his under-slept Mommy. Poor Kara. Have you talked to her lately?” The last time I’d spoken with our former roommate, the baby would not stop wailing in the background. She had moved in with her boyfriend in her last month of pregnancy, a relief for me and Julie, but also a stress that necessitated locating a new roommate to help pay the rent.

  “Oh, she posted the cutest picture on Instagram yesterday! I commented on it. You want to see?” Julie asked.

  “Sure?”

  Julie scrolled through photos on her phone until she found the one she was looking for and handed it to me. The screen was dominated by an image of a baby and a pug sleeping next to one another in matching striped shirts.

  “Oh my God. That is the cutest.”

  “See what you’re missing?”

  She was always teasing me about getting a smartphone and connecting to social media, saying I needed to join the 21st century.

  I had bought a used silver flip phone at the end of the summer, but it was apparently very 20th century. It could text and take pictures, but it didn’t have the internet.

  “Photoshoot today?” I asked, changing the subject. She was dressed in black slacks and a dress shirt instead of pajamas, a pretty good indication that she was working.

  “Yes, a catalog job. I’m hoping it will lead to more later. Oh! Speaking of Poison Ivy, she’s the redhead wearing green leaves, right? What do you think of that for my Halloween costume?”

  “What about the Red Riding Hood outfit you showed me—with the red cloak and basket? You looked really cute in it.”

  “Yeah, I don’t know. The dress was a little big on me.” A petite woman who was larger on top than she was on the bottom, Julie sometimes had issues finding clothes that fit her just the way she wanted them to.

  She glanced at her watch. “God, look at the time! Gotta run!” She finished her coffee in a gulp, set the mug into the sink, and left.

  After I washed up the breakfast dishes and put them in the rack to dry, I left for work too.

  Christopher Street Comics, as advertised, sells comics on Christopher Street in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village. Those of us who work there call the store Chris Street, which seems to annoy the owner, Mac. When I arrived, Mac was unloading our weekly Marvel shipment from cardboard boxes with the help of Jackson, our newly-hired assistant manager. I greeted them both, receiving a grunt from Mac and a lifted-chin acknowledgment from Jackson.

  Mac wore his typical uniform of jeans and a dress shirt rolled to the elbows. He had a slight sheen of perspiration on his ever-growing forehead, which nearly reached his ponytail. He was counting the spines in the stack of comics he held. “You’re cashier again today, Madison,” he said as I passed him to clock in and put my backpack in the office.

  “Thanks for that,” I heard Jackson say. Since Jackson was something like six-foot-three, built like a string bean with long arms and legs, he didn’t exactly fit in the niche behind the cash register and had to hunch. Maybe he was a little shorter than that, and it was just his hair that was tall, his dreadlocks tightly bundled in a knit cap he always wore.

  “How’s your first week?” I asked him once I’d taken up my station behind the register.

  “Can’t complain,” he replied. He had just a bit of an accent when he spoke—an almost lilting musicality—that made his voice pleasant to listen to.

  “I meant to ask you. Where are you from, Jackson?” I asked.

  “Brooklyn, but I was born in Jamaica—not the one in Queens. Where are you from?” he asked, removing a bound stack of comics from a cardboard box.

  “Oh, haven’t you heard?” Mac said. “She’s our own Bucky Barnes.” He flipped the box he’d just emptied and scored the tape on the bottom, then flattened it.

  “Your arm doesn’t look made of metal,” Jackson said.

  “He means I’ve got amnesia. I don’t know where I’m from.”

  “Oh, come on. You’ve got to be kidding.”

  “She’s not-not-not,” sang Nidhi, a film st

udent who manned the bag check area directly across from me. “We think maybe she’s a government assassin. Possibly from Canada.”

  “I doubt I’m from Canada. I don’t really know anything about it.”

  “Except that they say eh a lot,” Nidhi offered. “And play hockey. And love maple syrup, am I right?”

  “Wolverine and Deadpool are Canadian, you know,” Mac said. “Not to mention Alpha Flight, or Northstar who was one of the first gay superheroes to come out of the closet. And obviously Captain Canuck.”

  “Wait, Deadpool is Canadian?” Nidhi said. “How did I miss that? I would think he wasn’t polite enough.”

  “Nice job going all in on those stereotypes, Nidhi. You’re sure to offend someone soon.” Mac handed her a stack of comics. “Shelve these, please.”

  “Ten-four,” Nidhi said. She held the stack with both hands and got to work putting them away.

  “I’m just . . . boring, I guess,” I said. “If I could say, ‘Oh, I’m from New Jersey,’ at least you could imagine something about where I’m from. But yeah, I don’t know.”

  Jackson shook his head. “So you don’t know anything? No memories? At all?”

  “From last year on October 13th to today, I have memories. That’s it though.”

  “I can’t imagine. Everything I am is my family and where I’m from. You see these dreads? I’ve been growing them my whole life. Not having them as a connection to my past? Let alone no connection at all? I would be lost.” He shook his head again and continued unboxing.

  “Oh,” I said. I wondered if I should feel more lost than I did.

  “Didn’t mean to offend,” he said. “Can you take these?” He extended a stack of comics as a peace offering.

  I told him I wasn’t offended and went to shelve the stack.

  The day passed quickly as the regulars came in to get the newest issues of their favorite titles. At the end of the night, Jackson locked the front door and began sweeping, while Nidhi straightened the comics on the shelves and I worked on replacing the register tape and counting my drawer. Nidhi and I had been chatting off and on all night. Now she was complaining about her parents, who had recently announced that while they agreed that Nidhi should finish college, they also agreed that upon graduation she should marry a nice Indian boy they had in mind.

  “Like, why would I do that?” she asked. “I want to meet someone and fall in love! But oh no, if arranged marriage was good enough for them, it should be good enough for me!”

  “Their marriage was arranged?” I asked.

  “By my grandparents, yep.” She stood on her tiptoes to arrange some stacks on the top row.

  “And they’re still married?” asked Jackson.

  “Yeah, they’re still together,” Nidhi said.

  “And they get along?” I asked.

  “Pretty much. I mean, my mom’s an educator. She teaches psychology, so I always feel like she’s five steps ahead of whatever I might say or do, which also goes for my brother and my dad. She kind of manages all of us.”

  “So if it worked for your parents, what’s the problem?” Jackson asked.

  “It just isn’t, you know, romantic,” Nidhi said. “Like, where is my prince? Where’s the guy who’s going to ride in and save me from the dragon? Who will make my heart beat faster and my breathing stop because he’s so handsome?”

  “Oh brother,” Jackson said, sweeping a small pile of dirt and detritus into a dust pan. “You watched too many Disney movies as a kid.”

  “I did not! Oh, I know, that’s not reality, but what about a meet-cute? What about sharing milkshakes and stealing each other’s fries, laughing at inside jokes, running to meet each other at the train station?”

  “I take it back.” Jackson laughed. “You didn’t watch too many Disney movies. You watched too many with Meg Ryan.”

  “What’s a meet-cute?” I asked.

  “It’s a film trope: A romantic situation in which the main character and his or her love interest meet for the first time in a cute, memorable way. Cute meeting, meet-cute.”

  “Well . . . you haven’t met this nice Indian boy yet, right? What if he turned out to be your meet-cute? Maybe you bump into each other in the street on your way to meet and you think he’s funny and amazing and perfect for you?”

  She snorted. “Yeah, right. How likely is it that the perfect guy for me lives in India and is the son of my mother’s best friend from when she was a little girl? Plus, I have met him. We used to play together as kids when I would visit in the summer. He’s kind of . . . I don’t know. Boring. Plain.” She frowned and straightened a stack of Movie Fan magazines with a picture of a handsome man with dark hair on the cover. “Not like Tom here. I could eat him up with a spoon.” She made an Mmm-mm noise at the cover and grinned. “Did you ever get a chance to listen to those poems he recited on YouTube? So yummy. I could listen to his accent all day.”

  “Which Tom?” I asked. It seemed like all of the actors she liked were either named Tom or Chris. I had no idea who any of them were.

  Nidhi snatched up the magazine she’d been drooling over and showed me the handsome, dark-haired man on the cover. He was wearing a horned crown made of gold. “He played Loki in the Avengers and Thor movies!” she said.

  “Is he the one who always plays bad guys?” I asked. “Vampires, murderers, supervillains?”

  “So?” she asked.

  “Don’t you think that’s a bad sign?”

  “Oh, come on, bad dudes are super sexy, especially vampires. Now if I could just find one who likes short, dark, and curvy, I’m all set.”

  Vampires. I know a few things about vampires, and none of it is good. Not that I could actually tell her about it. There was no way she would believe me.

  Jackson, who’d seemed ready to chime in about the wisdom of dating “bad dudes” suddenly changed expression and walked off in the opposite direction. Wait, was he crushing on Nidhi?

  “So what else is your type besides bad?” I was done wrestling with the register tape and started counting bills.

  “Hmm. Tall, handsome. Rich would be nice, of course. And he should cook. And not listen to country music. And love dogs.”

  Jackson was sweeping over an area he’d already swept, listening in.

  “And a dreamy accent you could listen to for hours?” I asked, watching him for a reaction. He noticed me watching and quickly looked away.

  “You know it,” she said, straightening the X-Men and Zombie Boy comics on the bottom row of the last shelf. “All done!” she announced, wiping imaginary dust from her hands.

  “Me too,” I said, dropping the last of the pennies into their slot. The total matched the register tape perfectly, as usual. “Drawer’s good.”

  “Same-same?” Jackson asked.

  “Same-same.”

  He took the cash drawer to the office and put it in the safe, and Nidhi and I left him to lock up. She headed off to meet some friends, and I walked towards the F train.

  I liked my co-workers fine, but I missed Billy. Billy and I had worked together at Chris Street for several months. He was always cracking jokes and looking out for me. He had sold me his old laptop cheap and bought me soup sometimes when I was broke. Maybe he’d had a crush on me, maybe he hadn’t. I could never quite tell.

  Back in late April, Billy had called Mac out of the blue to say his parents had moved upstate and he was moving with them. No two-week notice, no goodbye party, nothing. And here it was, nearly October, and we hadn’t heard anything from him. I called his number a few times, but it always went to voicemail. This is Billy. Say something. I never did.

  I suspected that the upstate move story wasn’t true. I wasn’t even sure that it was Billy who had called, though Mac said it sounded like him. Then again, it was unlike Billy not to show up on his last payday.

  Was he even alive? The question might seem melodramatic, but not if you know what I know. A couple of weeks before Billy disappeared, my life had turned upside down when I’d learned my apartment was haunted. I tried to find out the identity of the ghost and the person who killed her.

  I got way more than I bargained for. My investigation led me to Sleepy Hollow and that was where I learned that vampires were real. And so had Billy. Because of me, he’d been attacked by a vampire named Michael Adderly. Adderly had some kind of hold on Billy, a weird interest in me, and a hideout in the sub-basement of the Empire State Building. The last time I had seen Billy, he literally disappeared into thin air after jumping off the 86th floor observation deck. No body, no witnesses, nothing.