The Z-Zone
Mangaspace Vector: >Unlisted<
Dragonmind was the Sysop tonight. It was his shift. Tigerspleen was off-duty in some corner of Mangaspace. Camille Cloudchamber hadn't come on board yet.
"Hello, Jake--" The jade-green dragon signaled Jake Hill as it raced through the heavens holding a giant glowing pearl in its mouth. "There've been some structural changes in M-space since you were here last . . . ."
But Jake Hill was moving too fast to hear the system updates. He was already gone, light years ahead into the Void. Besides, he didn't need any coordinates to get to the Z-Zone. Any obscure landmark would do. Like that one coming up ahead--
Jake's ecto-'toon entered the 'Forest of Stick-Men.' A graveyard full of them. Survivors from the War of Angels fought eons ago. They were just match-heads now, drooling wayfarers down on their luck. Thousands of stix rushed against each other, rubbing their heads together until flames erupted like wet dreams from their thickskulled caps. He sped away from this forlorn place.
From here on, the terrain was less recognizable, yet strangely familiar. He'd been doing research for one of his stories around here, hadn't he? When he hit that invisible tripwire?
Where the fuck was it? Oh, shit! Oh, yes. Oh, no. Here it comes. Brake hard. Then pray like the devil.
The devil ruled here.
>>>>B-O-O-O-M<<<<
Zzzzt . . . Zzzzt. A moment of blackness as the electric straw sucked out the marrow of his dreams. Then the live ghost cam switched on in his head. Neon nothingness flooded him. Here, time was blind. Space, a dimensionless cripple.
He looked around for the outward signs. There were always signs. You could be sure of that. Everywhere, ghosts. Ghosts of the living, ghosts of the dead, ghosts of those not born yet. Ghosts of his own thoughts. Especially those.
Jolted to his core, Jake Hill knew he was inside the Z-Zone. This was his fourth visit, by his reckoning. Or was it his first, second, and third visit combined into one? Time meant nothing in the Z-Zone. Everything was garbled here.
Temperature today: Total meltdown of body tectonics.
"Fuck me, I'm back!" Jake's ecto exploded into a tsunami of nervous tics. Catch enough of those tics, he thought, stitch 'em together, and maybe you could rebuild your entire body.
He was about to pitch forward into the cesspool of his own reflection. But something steadied him, even as it whispered into his blistered ear.
"Careful." Jake saw a grin on two legs. It whispered again into his ear. "I've. Been. Waiting. For. You . . . ."
That Z-thing again! Always waiting for him to set foot on its accursed turf. His maitre d' to hell.
Jake swung around to get a better look at whatever it was. Vanished, the motherfucker. Anyway, he couldn't see properly. Too soon to focus, he reminded himself. Blinking, he saw glittering gobs of oozing black glass everywhere. He vaguely discerned a smoldering niche in the sound-space where the grin whisper had come from.
The grin scuttled away, like a rat running into a department store where they gift-wrapped darkness and sold you mannequins that mugged you in the back-alley.
He heard a familiar buzz. It was his reception committee. Friends, thank God.
Blink-blink-blink. Reorientation paranoia. Prepare to present yourself.
The Jigoku 'Hell' Butoh dancers gathered around him. He knew all their names by now. Necroangel was their leader. He recognized Vim ('Vengeance is Mine'), Hazeltot, Rune, Brain-jin, Calabash, and that other Butoh dancer. The blank one that kept following him around . . . .
The blank one that Jake Hill suspected he was in the process of becoming. Or vice versa.
Jake ignored him. Easy to say about your shadow. Especially when your shadow exhibits unmistakable narcissistic tendencies. A tailor-made shadow that wants its human suit back.
Fuck it. Fuck it for now. They'd have their showdown later, Jake and his shadow.
Jake stumbled his first steps into the Z-Zone. But Necroangel encouraged him. "The thread must go through the eye of the needle each time." That was her standard greeting to him whenever he jacked-in.
"Maybe I'm the needle." Jake's speech was slurred. "A blunt needle. I still don't know why I keep coming back here. I'm not that fond of thread."
"But you do know why, Jake," Necroangel laughed mirthlessly. "We need English conversation lessons. And you need to perfect your Butoh technique."
"Thanks a lot. You mean I'm not a child prodigy anymore?"
"You are our American Butoh," Vim declared. "The shadow of our shadows."
"I'm not sure what that means," Jake said. "I think I'm just some kind of wind-up toy for you. I'm the first human being ever to visit you, right?"
Brain-jin covered the gaping hole where his mouth had been and smuffed. "I like you very muff."
"I like you too, but you're all exploiting me."
"What means 'exploiting'?" Rune asked. Rune was the slowest learner in their English conversation group.
"Exploiting means: You say, 'Welcome, dozo.' All that shit. Then you start picking my pockets."
"You have no pockets," Hazeltot observed.
"Oh, yeah, that's right," Jake said as he glanced at his chalk-white naked body. "So I don't."
"Naked means you wear all the clothes of the invisible world," Hazeltot laughed heartily.
"You sure this isn't too formal?" Jake asked as he pointed at his nakedness. But he knew the answer already. Each time he came back, he was stripped of everything he used to be. Or thought he was.
They were all naked here, starting with Necroangel. Jake always started with Necroangel. She was beautiful. Her naked body was white, her head was shaved, and her eyes were dark and luminous. Her nipples were like tiny brown cartwheels frozen in flight. She was naked except for the dead moon she wore as a pubic covering.
The Butohs wore thongs of various designs. Hazeltot had a wilted lettuce glued to his crotch. Vim was always playing with himself. His thong was an old Toshiro Mifune flick, 'The Seven Samurai,' or something in that genre. There was a lot of sword-stuff going on, the clash of blades and horses galloping. His cock probably enjoyed the stimulation.
Calabash, well, that was self-explanatory. He had a gourd on, held together by a string of sparkling crystal Buddhist rosary-beads. Rune wore a jockstrap made of shark's teeth, a bouquet of them. Brain-jin had the most ethereal outfit. His thong was mentally wired to theirs. It was a pastiche of all their thongs. Voyeurware.
Even his eyes were connected to the group's optix. You couldn't look into them too long without Brain-jin borrowing your eyes as well. He saw what they all saw, then gilded that vision with a darkness that was clearly his own birthright. All the light had been sucked out of him. The Butohs knew that.
So they shared their eyes and their thongs with Brain-jin. He never publicly acknowledged the fact, but he always stuck close by them.
"Anyway," Jake said as they strolled Butoh-style away from his landing-zone. "You only think that I'm giving you free English language lessons. Wrong."
"What langwuff you teef us?" Brain-jin asked Jake.
"Carbolic Farsi. Much more useful in this joint. What do you want to learn English for anyway?"
Necroangel stopped. "We want you to get the message out. To the world outside."
"You're doing fine on your own, aren't you?" Jake glanced at her. "You've been getting around a bit. Or so I've noticed. You visit me on the other side from time to time."
"Images only." Necroangel sighed. "The world has had enough of powerful images. It's time for decisive inaction."
"Ha!" A typical Butoh crack. Jake Butoh-crawled with them as they moved along the path. He splayed his feet, collapsed his ribcage, and fervently twisted the appendages that passed for his hands. Even his shaved head pitched forward against the cardboard wind.
The wind felt foul, tasted foul. Their whole world was foul. How could he blame them for wanting to pierce through the membrane that separated the Z-Zone from that other world outside?
But times were changing even here. Each time Jake visited the Zone, the Butoh dancers demonstrated new skills. Their movements were suppler. They radiated a warped physicality of their own. They were actually gaining weight.
He wasn't naive enough to think they were primarily interested in the "language lessons" he gave them. No, it had to be more than that. They were more interested in learning how he breathed.
Necroangel could now project her dream-self into Jake's world. That's why he built that little Butoh shrine in the garden outside his San Francisco studio. He thought the tableau of mummified crows would appeal to her. It seemed to. He would love to take her to dinner to his favorite Italian place. Maybe one day, he would. Maybe one day . . . .
Jake was falling in love with Necroangel. In fact, he felt that they'd been in love once a long time ago. Wasn't that ironic? Even hell had its lovers' lane. What was foreplay like here? He hated to imagine. A combination of embalming each other and cuddling, he supposed.
"Move properly," Necroangel frowned at him. "You may think lewd thoughts if you like. But you must learn to move like a corpse in springtime. Otherwise, you'll never get anywhere. Butoh 101, Jake."
"Sorry," he said. "I'll pay more attention."
Behind him, like moth's wings fluttering at his neck, Jake felt the razor shadow of the blank Butoh scraping at his heels. Vim, Hazeltot, Rune, Brain-jin, and Calabash brought up the rear of their strange procession.
Each time he visited them, the Butohs introduced Jake to some new spot in this broken landscape. "Pilgrimage shopping," Vim called it. "Death tourism," Rune smiled blandly.
Not to be outdone, Brain-jin smuffed. "We giff you new num, Juk."
"Oh yeah?" Jake turned around. "I could use another alias. What is it, Brain-jin-san?"
"'An-an-an--'" But Brain-jin's hollow mouth couldn't wrap itself around the word.
"'An-an-an-what?" Jake shrugged his shoulders. "Is it vegetable or mineral?"
Necroangel swiveled her slender fingers and placed them like delicate flowers into the vase of his right hand. "We're going to call you 'Ankoku-jin' from now on."
"Ankoku-jin," Jake rolled the syllables on his tongue. "Sounds nice, I'm flattered. What does it mean? 'Supreme Toilet Archetype'?"
Necroangel paused on the flowing riverbed of broken glass. She touched his forearm.
Her touch felt more human to him than it ever had before. There was less symbolism, and much more emotion in it. "You are a special person, Jake," she told him gently. "More special than you realize. 'Ankoku-jin' means 'A man of superior darkness.' It is a high Butoh compliment."
"A man of superior darkness, huh? Is there, like, inferior darkness?"
Brain-jin chuckled. "Infuf dakfuff. No fuff."
"You mean there is?"
Necroangel smiled again. "The name suits you. You have a dark spirit, but you are filled with light. A dark light. But still it's light. Light has many spectrums."
"Copfeffs run muffthon," Brain-jin volunteered.
"Say again?"
"It's a Butoh proverb," Necroangel translated. "Brain-jin says, 'Corpses run the marathon.'"
"Oh, that's what I thought he said. Does that apply to me, too?"
"Only to good-looking corpses, Ankoku-jin," Necroangel teased him. "Like you."
The blank Butoh bumped into him from behind. "What's your problem?" Jake snapped at him. The damned shadow was getting on his nerves.
"Keep at least three paces behind me," Jake warned it. "Otherwise I'll push your death mask into a plate of wet plaster. Then we'll see what you really look like."
"I don't think you want to do that, Ankoku-jin Jake," Necroangel looked anxious.
Jake hadn't seen Necro alarmed since his first trip to this infernal region. She had mistaken him for a commuting ghost. A squatter with evil intentions.
"Look, Necro, this guy doesn't talk much, but he's always leaning into me," Jake complained. "I'm starting to get calluses on my ass."
"He doesn't mean any harm," Necroangel replied. "He's lost his 'shen.' His soul. Until he gets it back, he is just a clumsy shadow."
"That's tough," Jake sympathized. "That's happened to me a few times. If you like, I can recommend some reliable vendors. They ship overnight."
The blank Butoh lunged at Jake angrily. Necroangel stepped between them. "That's enough, Johnny!" she ordered. "Enough!"
Gray energy swept from the Butoh's vacant ecto-shroud then chilled into a neutral space. He obeyed Necroangel.
Jake felt an ancient paranoia stir inside him. "What did Necro just call you?" he challenged the blank Butoh.
"Never mind, Jake," Necroangel nudged him. "It's a terrible thing to lose your soul. More terrible than all this--" She waved her hand at the emptiness that stretched out in front of them in endless waves.
"Even the horizon gets a transfusion when the sun rises," she declared. "But not a person. The soul is like the sun inside us. But when it sets inside us, it sets forever."
Jake shivered as he looked at the crumpled horizon. Necro's remark took him back to the first time he came to Z-Zone. If that meant anything here. Everytime was the first time in the Z-Zone.
He had landed with a thud on a patch of fossilized human tongues. Yikes.
Optix aflutter, Jake was up to his neck in frightening visions that seemed to be stitched together from polyester peyote.
What the fuck WAS this place?
It was a hellish scene of a city devastated beyond recognition. Walls were flattened for miles, buildings were smashed like paper-lanterns. An eerie silence of utter desolation hung over everything.
He was so cold. It was raining broken reflections of shattered glass. On closer scrutiny, he realized that the puddles were human remains that floated like static tide-pools. Bodies were smashed like cardboard, bunches of eyeballs dangled like grapes from the scattered thermal-energy lines.
Christ, it felt like Hiroshima. Jake tried to remember his escape code. There had to be a way of bailing out of this nightmare . . . .
Necroangel stepped out of a wall of white dust. She'd been taking one of her morning walks, collecting strays. She held a charred rabbit in her arms. A charred bunny rabbit without ears. It looked more like a mole on a spit. It remained perfectly still, its pink-black eyes resigned to its fate.
Necroangel cooed into the rabbit's charred ear-holes. "Goo-goo-goo, I'm taking you home . . . You're safe now, little one," she caressed its blackened hump. Even as she held the rabbit tightly against her naked breast, she kept a wary eye on Jake.
He had the feeling that if he made a single wrong move, he'd be in a lot worse shape than that poor rabbit. At least, the rabbit was a survivor. Jake wasn't so sure about himself. 'Tranquility in the face of carnage.' That wasn't a motto emblazoned on his coat-of-arms.
"Where did you come from?" Necroangel's voice had an edge to it.
It took Jake a second to realize that her words were strung up like a line of glowing Chinese paper-lanterns. She wasn't speaking in words. She was corresponding to his optix on a purely visual-thought level.
"I'm . . . I'm not sure," he replied. He was surprised to see his own string of paper-lanterns light up in response to her question.
"Stay where you are, don't move." There was no mistaking the warning in Necroangel's voice.
Oh shit, he was in trouble. Last time Jake landed in some unlisted vector by accident, he'd managed to establish rapport with the natives by pleading ignorance of local dogma. It couldn't hurt to try. People were always willing to set you straight. Convert you to their favorite voodoo.
"I'm lost," he said cheerily. "Do you know where I can get a Tibetan 'Dorje Dakini' initiation?"
Necroangel wasn't alone. Another beastly type stepped out from behind a blackened ruin. He wasn't a pretty sight. It was Hazeltot. He wore a hooded see-through plastic raincoat and a cotton facemask. He wielded a sharpened pilgrim's staff with bells that jangled and a woven bamboo alms basket that served as a codpiece.
Muscular, tall, thoroughly menacing, Hazeltot was Necroangel's back- up. It looked like he was ready to spear Jake in the neck with his staff.
"No," Necroangel said to Hazeltot. He lowered his staff. "Excuse my friend," Necroangel's tone was suddenly less belligerent. "We're not accustomed to visitors here."
She flashed him a friendly grimace. That was a hopeful sign. "Did you say you wanted a 'Dorje Dakini' initiation?"
Flustered, Jake Hill nodded. "I seem to have taken a wrong turn somewhere."
Hazeltot snickered as he waved his staff in the general direction of Armageddon. "Aisle six," he said. "You can't miss it. I think they're having a special."
"Well, I'd better be pushing off then," Jake said, as he dusted off his shanks. "Thanks for pointing me in the right direction."
He took a step and nose-dived to the ground. Rubbery legs, rubbery concrete. Shit, they didn't make it easy for strangers here.
Necroangel laughed. "You've never been here before."
Hazeltot grunted. "He's a gaijin. A foreign devil."
"Help him up, Hazeltot," Necroangel said as she continued to caress the charred rabbit. Hazeltot leaned over Jake's body, and hoisted him up to his feet with a single jerking motion.
"Unggg. . . . " The rubber-treads of this world ran right through Jake's heart, up his throat, and out his mouth. His body felt like it needed a smog-check.
Hazeltot gave Necroangel a questioning look. "What are you planning to do with him?"
She laughed again. "We're collecting rabbits today, aren't we? Come with us," she motioned to Jake. "Bunnyman."
"My name's Jake," he replied as he straightened his back. "Jake Hill. From far away, obviously."
"Necroangel," she acknowledged. "This is Hazeltot . . . And this--" she cooed into the charred rabbit's ear-holes again. "I think I'll call him 'Pelt.'"
"Nice name," Jake said. "I'm sure we'll get along. Tell me, do all rabbits around here look like that? Or is it a special breed? A Belgian stump perhaps?"
"There are no rabbits here," Necroangel replied. "This is the first one I've found. It's a miracle. Usually, I find only Pekinese cockroaches. They breed like photons here."
"Fabulous," Jake said. "I used to have a Pekinese cockroach when I was a kid."
"Where did you grow up?" Necroangel questioned him.
"My childhood is a classified secret," Jake said. "But between you and me, my best years still lie ahead." He paused. "You're not going to kill me, are you?"
"Kill you?" Hazeltot scoffed. "We don't kill people here unless they're already dead."
"Well, that's a relief." Jake thought for a moment. "You mean to say >you're< dead?"
"It's a long story," Necroangel said. "You got time to hear it?" Hazeltot snickered at the irony.
Necroangel gave Jake his first history lesson about Z-Zone as they walked together. Jake wobbled on his feet, but he managed to hold it together as best he could.
"Look at that shadow over there," she pointed out a wreath of leaden crust to him. "All fused to the ground. After Big Boy fell on Hiroshima, all that remained of people's lives were silhouettes of their human forms. Just like film negative exposed on concrete. But these are >electromagnetic< shadows."
For a moment, Jake was confused. "This is Hiroshima?"
Was this place a vectorized theme park dedicated to the site of the world's first atomic bomb-blast in 1945? He'd heard of stranger things. He had even seen a few of them. Mangaspace was filled with ugly surprises. Like that Aryan disco named 'Dachau' in the Third Reich vector. Dress code: German shepherds at your throat. Electrified barbed-wire gowns. Casual barbarity.
"No, not Hiroshima," Necroangel corrected him. "Kobe."
"This is KOBE after the earthquake?" Jake looked pale. "The 'quake of 2052?"
Necroangel smiled, showing her blackened teeth. "Yes. That one."
Jake was stunned. "What the hell happened?"
"Ten million people died." Necroangel lowered her eyes. "We were sleeping inside our Butoh dojo when we felt the blast. Just like that it happened."
The enormity of the catastrophe hit Jake. "Are you telling me that an EXPLOSION triggered the seismic shock that destroyed Kobe?"
Necroangel nodded and shook her head at the same time. "Highly charged scalar EM field-generated plasmas ruptured. It was not a natural earthquake."
Jake trembled, but it wasn't from the cold anymore. Besides, he knew it wasn't his body. He had no body here. He was wearing ectoderm right off the rack. "Someone set the 'quake off deliberately?"
The history books had recorded the vaporizing of Kobe as the result of a Meta-'Quake. Not as an act of war. Obviously, the whole thing had been hushed. Jake sneered inwardly. History was just posthumous propaganda anyway. "Who did it? Was it the West?" he pressed Necroangel.
At first, Necroangel didn't reply. Then she said, "No, not the West. It was . . . " She paused. "An accident."
"Was it the New Nippon government? But they weren't at war with anyone at the time."
"Not New Nippon government." Necroangel shook her head again.
Jake felt nauseated. "WHO did it?" But Necroangel turned her head away and refused to answer.
Taking a shortcut, she led Jake to their hidden Butoh dojo. Or what was left of it. It was a small stage where the Jigoku Butohs performed their dance under the collapsed awning of the Hanshin Expressway. Jake found himself surrounded by the grotesque creatures that would soon become his friends. They shuffled out of the rubble like liquefied plastic dolls holding out their hands to him.
The blank Butoh stepped up to Jake as if he had been expecting him. Jake couldn't make out any of the details of his face. His features appeared to have been erased by some toxic blast of radiation. Somehow Jake intuitively recognized the dark energy that lay inside that misshapen shadow.
It was the same hunger that drove Jake every day, no matter which vector he found himself in. On Earth as it is in Mangaspace. Yes, he knew what it was and it shocked him into a deep numbness of spirit. It was the hunger for becoming.
The blank shadow whispered hoarsely to Jake. "You want to know WHAT caused this?"
Jake tried to avoid its eyeless stare. But he couldn't take his gaze off its death mask. "Tell me."
He heard the name hissed at him like an accusation. It burned like a thousand suns reflected on the side-mirror of the ecto-comet that had sped him into this vector of the damned.
"It was 'Fingermoon.'"
There was a collective hush as the Butoh dancers scrutinized Jake's face when the dreaded name was mentioned. Necroangel went into a half-nod, her eyes hooded yet focused on Jake with an intensity bordering on a sheer drop into some parallel Void.
"You have heard of Fingermoon, yesssss?" the blank Butoh wheezed. "I think maybe you heave heard of Fingermoon."
Jake Hill felt giddy. "I . . . ."
"Say it! Say the name!" the blank Butoh seethed at him.
"That's enough!" Necroangel interrupted. But she halted in her tracks when she saw Jake's mouth open in an involuntary spasm. The Butohs gasped when they saw Jake's lips being stung by a winged nanobe that crawled out of his orifice.
"G-a-a-a-a . . . " Jake choked on his pain. He tried to close the raw wound of his mouth. But the nanobes continued to exit from the hive of his face in a funnel of venomous stings. The air was filled with an arabesque curtain of swirling stingers.
That's when they realized--all of them--Necroangel and her merry band of Butoh ghouls: That Jake Hill was the 'Unchosen One.'
Unchosen because he had no choice.
The blank Butoh cackled as he danced an obscene jig. "I told you so, but you didn't believe me! I summoned him! And now he's here! He's here! Ha ha ha . . . ."
Jake Hill's tears burned in his eyes even as his taste buds sizzled. What was the taste of Hiroshima? What was the taste of forgetting? What was the taste of reliving your own death? What was the taste in a cobra's eyes before it stung the end of the world?
Now Jake is here again. Correction: Had never left. Except that his new name now is 'Ankoku-jin.' Man of superior darkness. Hombre of Nada. Butoh-sliding along with Necroangel at his side.
"Say, what's on the program for today?" Jake turned to Necro. "Are you going to teach me to dance 'The Hat of a Kind God'? You promised!"
She'd been giving Jake lessons in Butoh movement. He was a slow learner, which was the best way to master the meaningless intricacies of the art form.
"Not today," Necroangel responded. "Today we . . . ."
"Hey, Necro, look at this . . . " Jake convulsed beatifically for her. He wanted to impress her. "This is from 'Smoke.' The whole body is a lung filled with smoke, then emptying. Play with different pockets of smoke. Repeat until asphyxiated . . . ."
"I already taught you that piece," Necro replied. "I taught you all the movements you need to know. 'Leaping Across A River.' 'Picking Flowers.' 'Stamping.' 'Carrying.' 'Sensitivity.' 'The Worm.' 'Water.' 'Masks.' 'Birthing' . . . . "
Brain-jin, Vim, Hazeltot, Calabash, and Rune chuckled. Only Jake's alien shadow remained sullen as it clung to his tailbone.
They came through a clearing and stood on a ridge of warped washing machines that had toppled out of a flattened high-rise. Amazingly, the washing machines formed a series of steps that led to an amphitheater down below.
"What's that?" Jake pointed at a mound in the middle of the arena. He saw a stone cenotaph with an inscription of kanji ideograms that ran down its granite spine.
"This is your last visit to Z-Zone for a while, Ankoku-jin," Necroangel informed him in a dispassionate tone. "I wanted you to see this sacred site before you go."
"Go where?" Jake felt the dread run through him.
"You will be going to Tokio Metro soon," Necroangel turned to him. Her black eyes were fixed on him like suction cups. "There you must be brave. There will be tests and challenges."
"But I don't want to go anywhere," Jake protested. "I want to stay here with you."
"You must go," she gripped his hand. "You must unfailingly go."
"Why is it so important to you?"
"You will know the reason, Ankoku-jin, when you get there . . . ."
Jake's eyes followed Necroangel's gaze as it settled on the stone cenotaph. It was a memorial of some sort. For the first time, he noticed that the monument stood beneath the glazed gray-black arc of a monochromatic rainbow.
He let go of Necroangel's hand. He stood alone now gazing inwardly at his future. He was aware that he was saying goodbye not only to his ragtag group of friends but to himself as well. He was saying goodbye to goodbye. To all goodbyes . . . .
A funny expression appeared on Necroangel's face. She caught his swift transformation. "You have made great progress, Ankoku-jin. You are able to read the inscription on that stone all the way from here. None of the others are able to read it even when they stand right in front of the stone."
Jake felt the hungry nanobes flutter inside his breast like restless genies bent on escaping the bottle that imprisoned them. He was aware that the Butohs were watching him with reverence and awe. He had crossed some strange boundary.
"What does the inscription say, Ankoku-jin?" Hazeltot asked him cautiously. "We have wondered about it for a long time now."
"Hasn't Necroangel told you?" Jake asked them. Then he saw her face and realized that she, too, was waiting for him to pronounce its invisible meaning.
None of them could read the engraving except for Jake Hill. He heard his blank shadow snicker behind him.
Of course, the shadow knew. Who wouldn't recognize their own name when they saw it on a gravestone? It was the name they both went by. The shadow and Jake. Written on the fault line of their heart.
He felt the shadow move behind him. Closer and closer. Until it slipped inside him like a moth swallowing a lightbulb.