B.A. asked Face if he could borrow the camera. The conman, who'd been gathering his things to head up to bed, looked askance at him. The black man counted to ten, like he did with Murdock, and with effort softened his voice.
"I just wanna study that photo you took again," he explained. "You were right about the church door and it bein' similar, and I'd like to see it again."
Face handed over the camera.
"And a few more sheets of paper?"
The corners of Face's mouth turned down just a fraction, but once again, B.A. let just a little of his natural threat bubble to the surface. Once again, Face reluctantly gave him a handful. He asked,
"What're you doing with it?"
"Yer not the only one keeping notes," B.A. answered cryptically.
Finally Face shrugged, and trudged upstairs. After making sure the camera wasn't going to need new batteries, B.A. followed and disappeared into his own bedroom.
It was the middle of the night. He was tired. He'd fallen into bed and was asleep almost immediately; usually he slept like the dead until it was time to get up. That was a handy trait in a war and on the run. But tonight, even though he'd gotten much less sleep the previous night and they'd been driving and working and everyone was acting just little crazy, he was suddenly awake.
His palm was itching like mad, and absent-mindedly, B.A. scratched at it.
The house was quiet. There were some normal noises coming from around him: the old place settling, the night insects outside his screen, an oddly rhythmic creaking of springs from somewhere in Face's bedroom's direction—B.A. didn't dwell on that too much—and some indistinct mutterings coming from Murdock's bedroom. He dismissed that sound too. Just like mattress springs from Face's bedroom, nonsensical mumbles from Murdock were commonplace.
There must have been something to wake him up, but his ears weren't giving him the answer. It must just be this damnable itching. Maybe he'd gotten some kind of bug bite when he was out on his walk the night before?
B.A. reached for the lamp beside his bed. He meant to examine his hand when the bulb came on, but his eyes caught the little statue he'd set there before falling asleep.
His assessment in the twilight had only been a little right. It was made of stone worn smooth, but its color was a deep, deep red that was almost black. His comparison between it, that church door, and the photo Face took confirmed what he suspected. It was the same thing in a different medium.
He picked up the statue. It was comforting, and the itch in his hand abated.
Turning it over and over, he was again amazed at how much detail could be made in such a small thing. The crude lines on the church door to represent legs? They were tentacles, complete with round suckers. Some of them ended in solid or cloven hooves, and one was tipped with talons. The hollowed spots meant to be eyes? That was true, but they were three lobed, and goat-irised, and there were so many more than denoted on a flat surface. There were eyes everywhere, all around, including within the tentacles.
As much detail as the carving held, it also contained amorphous, soft edges that were a little off-putting. B.A. knew that it was meant to represent something unknowable, like God. He wished he could capture its true essence, however.
His only foray into art was spray-painting graffiti in his youth. His mama didn't encourage her son to concentrate on something that wasn't going to get him out of the ghetto, and art was not the ticket. Hard work, sports, and the military were.
But he'd had a latent talent for it, and the paper and pen he'd taken from Face were put to use in his attempts to copy the statue and give it more.
The photo that Face took helped.
B.A. sat up in bed, propped his pillows against the headboard and took up the pen again. He didn't set the statue aside; he laid it on his chest and the warmth of it made the corresponding spot there warm too. He used a couple of books and old magazine he'd found as a clipboard and started sketching again.
Just like holding the statue, drawing made the itch subside too.
He was so focused on his work that he didn't know Murdock was in the room until he spoke.
"Bosco," the pilot whispered.
B.A. jumped and choked back a cry, then glowered. Murdock had come in and stood one foot away, just angled enough to not get a good look at the penned drawing. His hair was mussed and he only wore a frayed pair of pajama pants. His lean torso was marked with thin smears of blood from his hand; Crazy never liked bandages on his hands or wrists and obsessively picked them away. The wound on his palm had oozed and wherever he laid his hand, a smudge was left.
A thought flashed through B.A.'s head. What would that blood taste like, licked off?
Disgusted by the unbidden self-imposed question, B.A. started again. He lost his grip on the books-cum-clipboard, and they dropped.
"What're you doin' sneakin' up on me like that, fool?" he spit. "Why're you up, anyway? Go bug Faceman."
"That book is in Face's room," Murdock replied, as if that explained his appearance here.
"So what. It's just a fuckin' book. Go the fuck away." If he was being more harsh than usual, it was because Murdock made him think about licking him, for fuck's sake. Funny, though. It wasn't a sexual thing, because he wasn't aroused in the least . . .
Murdock, of course, ignored or didn't recognize the increased callousness of B.A.'s response.
"What're you doing?" he asked, stepping closer and tipping his head to properly see the papers.
"Nothin'—" B.A. started to say, but the pilot cut him off.
"What is that?" he asked, in a tone that says he already knows what it is, but he's asking to verify it. "Bosco, what are you doing?"
B.A. was offended. He was no professional, but his artwork wasn't that bad. "Just drawin', fool. You're not the only one with hidden talents or odd hobbies."
The tone shifted from surprise to horror-struck. "Bosco—stop. Don't do that. Please! Why would you do that—it's awful and vile and I've seen that, I've seen that in my dreams—you have to stop, don't you see? It's there, it's in my head and I don't want it in your head too—you have to stop, please stop, please—"
Startled for the third time since Murdock made a ghost-like appearance in the middle of the damn night, B.A. wasn't quite sure what to do. Face or Hannibal brought Crazy back down when he started off on one of his non-stop ramblings, and this was amped, this was a desperate, dismayed plea that he'd never heard before. It was growing worse, too, now between the begging words came a high pitched keen, similar to what noise he made when Face was in that church.
B.A. grabbed the papers and moved them to the opposite side of the bed, away from Murdock. As he shifted, the statue tumbled too. With cat-like reactions, he caught it, but its lazy flash in the light from the lamp caught Murdock's eye too.
The words dissolved and the keening became an open-mouthed wail.
Murdock grabbed both sides of his head and pulled his elbows together in front of his face. B.A. knew that was false protection, and even as he scrambled to get out from under the blankets Murdock leaned forward and slammed his forehead soundly on the bedside tabletop's edge.
B.A. wrapped him up in a bear hug before he could repeat the motion and flipped him onto the mattress.
Faceman brought him down with soft words and soothing promises; B.A. ordered him to shut up and knock it the fuck off. Murdock didn't thrash against him like typical, but B.A. held him in such a position that he was still able to pull his hair. B.A. squeezed him tighter, deciding hypoxia was a form of restraint and it shouldn't be long before the crazy fool had passed out.
Fuckin' idiot! B.A. thought to himself. What kind of crazy fucker does shit like that! Barging in here, scaring him half to death, then commanding he quit the only thing that stops that infernal itching—it was none of his business, anyway!
And now, along with the old, dried blood painted on his chest, there was the sharp tang of fresh blood running down the fool's face from the wound he'd created punching himself with a table edge.
Scalp and head wounds bled like a motherfucker. The blood smeared across Murdock's forehead and into his hair, and down onto the sheets.
The urge to lick and suck that blood—and even rip into the wound with his teeth, so it'd flow even more—was suddenly so overwhelming B.A. barely had enough wherewithal to release Murdock and shove him unceremoniously back to the floor.
The thump of landing knocked the rest of the air out of Murdock's lungs and he lay for a second, trying to catch his breath. B.A. lay quietly too, in an attempt to calm himself down and push away the swirling thoughts of how blood in his mouth would taste so good and how he'd like to—to . . . B.A. shook his head and shoved the heels of his palms into his eye sockets so hard he saw stars.
By the time he'd calmed his own breathing and thoughts, Murdock was sitting cross-legged on the floor.
He'd made no attempt to wipe off the gore. He looked up at the black man on the bed with haunted eyes.
"Please don't draw that anymore," he beseeched in a quiet voice.
It was the sanest, most sincere statement B.A. had heard from him in a long time. He got the distinct vibe that Murdock would get on his knees and beg if that's what it took. B.A. sighed and nodded.
"Fine, fool. I won't draw that anymore. Cool?"
Murdock nodded too, although he wasn't as happy as B.A. would have expected him to be with the agreement.
"You need to clean yourself up. You're a bloody mess. And not that British English way either, so don't be makin' stupid ass accented voices right now. Got it?"
Murdock nodded again.
"You need help?" It grated on B.A.'s nerves to have to ask that, but he knew Face or Hannibal would offer.
Murdock shook his head.
"Clean up and git back to bed."
Slowly Murdock obeyed. He didn't say anything more as he shuffled out. He closed the bedroom door quietly behind himself, and soon B.A. heard the water in the bathroom running.
He sighed again, and knew he should change his sheets. As he got up to pull them off, however, he found the red-black statue hidden in the wrinkles. It warmed his palm again, and he kept hold of it as he tugged at the top sheet. A metallic odor wafted to him, and he decided there was no harm in spending one night in a bed that smelled of blood.