by Dana Donovan
Man, did that piss him off. He fell back to wipe his face and began screaming at me, using language that I’m sure Ursula never heard in her century. He came back to me on a march and slapped me across the mouth, cutting my lip with his ring.
“YOU FUCKER!” I yelled. “YOU DWEEB PUNK BASTARD! YOU’RE FUCKED NOW!”
That earned me a backhand across the other side of my mouth.
“We’ll see who’s fucked, Ms. Adams,” he said, curling his upper lip. His words were hushed and filled with a tone of finality. He picked up the rope ends and tossed them over the thickest branch on the tree. From behind a bush, he retrieved an old wooden chair, one he apparently had put there only hours earlier just for the occasion.
“Up on the chair,” he ordered, to which Ursula and I politely declined. He pulled the gun from his shoulder holster and pointed it at my head. “I said get up on the chair.”
I stared straight down the barrel and laughed. “You’re funny, aren’t you?”
He crowded his thick brows into a matted knot. “What are you talking about?”
“You think I would sooner hang than get shot? Come on, a bullet to the head is a much quicker way to go.”
He reeled back his gums to expose a row of yellow teeth caked in plaque as thick as stucco. “Who said anything about shooting you in the head?” And he lowered the gun to my left breast.
“Oh, you didn’t,” I said, gritting my teeth, “now you’re asking for it.”
He pushed the muzzle against me until it hurt. “No, Ms. Adams, you’re asking for it. I won’t tell you again. Get up on the chair, both of you.”
I had made up my mind to do what he said, and I know Ursula did, too, but I guess we just didn’t move fast enough to suit old Putnam. Before we could lift a foot, he snatched a fistful of our hair and yanked us both up onto the chair.
Tears began spilling from Ursula’s swollen eyes, and her sobs robbed me of feelings for any other soul on this earth but hers. All I wanted to do was get her out of that noose and free her of the pain of hanging twice for a crime she did not commit. But with the witch’s stone around Putnam’s neck, things seemed altogether hopeless, and though I don’t believe in miracles, I believed that nothing shy of one could have saved us then.
Fortunately, sometimes fate disguised as miracles comes to us when we least expect, and in the cutest packages.
Putnam finished tying off the rope ends around the tree trunk and he pulled taunt the slack in our nooses. Now Ursula and I were standing on tip-toes to keep from choking. As best I could, I said goodbye and apologized, promising her that Tony would not rest until he killed Putnam or brought him to justice, whichever he could get away with.
That’s when I saw him; Dominic, alone and determined, silhouetted against the pale moonlight. He was moving up the hill, keeping low but scurrying quickly, having no cover to conceal his advance. I could see him trying to keep the tree between his line of sight and Putnam’s, dropping occasionally onto his belly when that was not possible. But time was running out and I feared he wouldn’t make it. I called to Putnam, hoping to buy his attention and possibly distract him from Dominic’s advance.
“Yo, how badly you want those names?” I said.
He came around the chair to face me, and in doing so, turned his back on Dominic. “Come again?”
“You want to know who the witches are, don’t you? I’ll tell you.”
He seemed suspicious, but curious. “Why the change of heart, Miss Adams?”
“I thought it would be nice to have a little last chat, Asshole. Now do you want to write it down?”
“No.” He stepped closer. “I’ll remember.”
“You sure, `cause there’s a lot of names.”
“Look, if you’re just trying to buy some time—”
“No, I’m good. I’ve got plans for the afterlife. I’m ready to go.” I could see over the top of Putnam’s head that Dominic was almost there. He had started into a full run up the hill and was closing fast. “Unlike some of us, I’m not afraid to die.”
“What’s that suppose to mean?”
“Nothing, it’s just that you seem preoccupied with death.”
“Me? How do you figure?”
“You’re always in the middle of it.”
“It’s my job.”
“Yeah, right.” I looked up over his head again. Dominic was now only forty feet out and slowing down, reaching for his weapon. I brought my eyes back to Putnam, but immediately sensed something wrong. He was not looking at me. His eyes were off to the side. He had heard Dominic, or seen that I was looking at something beyond. Either way I knew he knew. I saw him reach slowly for his gun. Dominic had picked up his pace again, advancing on us with his weapon leveled at Putnam’s back.
“Dominic, no!” I cried. “He knows you’re––”
Putnam pulled his gun and spun around sharply. Dominic crouched into a shooter’s stance, but fearing he might hit me or Ursula, did not take the shot. A lick of fire from Putnam’s .357 lit up the hilltop in a brilliant flash of orange and white. Dominic fell to the ground, the mule kick from the bullet knocking the weapon from his hand and sending it tumbling into the night.
“Dominic!”
Putnam turned back on his heels, the .357 still smoking and smelling of burnt gunpowder. “That’s your last trick,” he said to me. “The undertaker will collect your remains at sunrise.”
Naturally, I responded the only way I knew how. “Putnam?” I said. “Go fuck yourself.”
He smiled as if pleased with that, and after removing the witch’s stone from around his neck he draped it over mine. “No, Miss Adams,” he said. “You go fuck yourself.” And he gave the chair a good hard kick, dropping it out from under Ursula and me.
Our bodies fell with immeasurable sufferance, so much so that I thought Putnam had grabbed on to our legs and was swinging along with us. He wasn’t, of course. Within seconds, my world faded to black, but I hadn’t passed out; that much I was sure of, for the pain would not have been so great had I been rendered unconscious.
Overhead, late autumn leaves shook loose and rained down upon us. Who knew how many had burdened its majesty before? I forced my eyes open, and in a squint could see the rut of a hundred ropes grooved into its bark. Where does it end, I wondered, here? I tried to swallow but found it impossible with the rope burning into my neck, its every fiber like tiny teeth cutting deeper into my skin as my body swung with Ursula’s in a phantom breeze. Off in the distance I heard Putnam’s sickly laugh. He was walking away, and I found solace in knowing he would not see me die.
For the first half minute or so, I felt Ursula kicking her feet, perhaps involuntary. When she stopped, I thought she had given up. I’ve often thought about that moment since. It’s the only time in my life when I also thought of giving up. But in that brief instant, when the rope around my neck conspired with gravity to deprive me of another breath, fate intervened. Spinelli, whom I thought had died for certain, positioned himself below Ursula and me and began to thrust us upon his shoulders, relieving the worst of the weight from our ropes.
At last I could swallow. I coughed and rejoiced at my ability to reclaim air into my lungs. Soon Ursula gasped, too, her breathing more labored than mine, but constant.
“Dominic, you’re all right,” I whispered hoarsely.
He staggered wildly to catch his balance, and in his struggle I heard grunts of pain. “For now,” he said. “I don’t know how long I can hold you.”
“Where are you hit?”
“Don’t worry `bout me. Are you all right?”
Each time he staggered away from center, I felt the rope tug at my neck like a rusty chain. I knew he could not hold out much longer. “I’m all right,” I told him. “Can you reach the chair?”
He turned with some difficulty toward the chair, but the sigh in his voice told me to give that up. “It’s busted,” he said.
“Can you shoot the rope?”
“Sorry, no gun.”
“How `bout your phone? Can you call Tony?”
“Negative. I tried calling him when I first got here. There’s no reception.”
“Damn it. All right, listen, can you reach this witch’s stone around my neck? I need you to yank it off me and pitch it as far as you can.”
“I’ll try,” he said, and he did, but he couldn’t reach high enough to get it, and with the noose around my neck, I could not lean over to lower it to him.
“Dominic, you’re going to have to go and get help.”
“No. I can’t leave you.”
He stumbled again, and the rope tightened against mine and Ursula’s neck so hard it nearly jerked us off his shoulders.
“Dominic.” My voice began to falter, choked to a harsh whisper by the noose. “You can’t hold us up indefinitely. If you’re hurt badly you might bleed to death.”
“I don’t care. I’d die for you, Lilith.”
“Baby, that’s sweet—but stupid. Listen, if you die then we die. You get it?”
“Lilith, I can’t leave you.”
“Okay, look, maybe there’s another way. If you can make a spark, I think I can get us out of this.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s the witch’s stone. I can work some magic if we can just figure out a way to interrupt the magnetic field around it. I just need a spark.”
“Like from a lighter?”
“No. It needs to be electrical, like from a stun gun.”
“Sorry, no stun gun.”
I could feel Dominic’s strength weakening by the second. His breathing had grown labored, and his hardly noticeable grunting noises had become very noticeable gasps of pain.
“Dominic, is your car down the hill?”
“Yeees, uuhh.”
“Can you take the battery out and bring it up here?”
“What?”
“The battery; we can make a really big spark from it, can’t we? Go down and get it.”
“Lilith, I can’t get the battery. I’d have to leave you hanging here too long. Besides, I have…” He stopped there to cough and spit up blood. “I have no tools to remove it.”
“Then we’re all dead,” I said. “You need to drop us. Drop us and try to get yourself to a hospital.”
“Lilith I…. Wait.”
“What?”
“My phone.”
“Yeah, I thought you said it wouldn’t work.”
“No, I said it wouldn’t call out.”
“So, what good is it?”
“You don’t understand. It has a dual resonance flux compression magneto. If I can reverse its polarity and off-sync it with the capacitor regeneration modular, I can induce a static charge of….”
“Geesus, Dominic! All right already. Just do what you need to do, will you?”
I had no idea what the hell the boy was talking about. I only knew that he took the back of his phone off, flipped something around and then told me to count to three. I did, and when I got to three the device blew up with the biggest damn spark of blue and white light this side of St. Elmo’s fire.
At that instant, I exercised a spell that turned the noose ropes into straw, and like a house of cards we tumbled to the ground, Dominic on bottom, me on top of him and Ursula on me. Immediately after getting up, I removed the witch’s stone from around my neck and pitched it into the night as far as I could.
I helped Ursula to her feet, next. She seemed unsteady, dazed and I’m sure sore as hell from rope burns and bruises. I asked if she was all right, but my own voice came out sounding so shredded and hoarse that I don’t think she understood.
It was not until I bent over to help Dominic that I realized the gravity of his situation. He told me he had been hit, but I had no idea. After lifting his jacket away, I saw that Putnam’s bullet had entered his chest dangerously close to his heart and exited his back, punching a hole there so large I could almost put my fist through it. How he managed to hold Ursula and me up on his shoulders in spite of his wound is an unprecedented testament of human will and sacrifice. I think at that point I knew exactly what I had to do.
Ursula had already begun tearing off segments of her blouse to use as bandages and applying them with pressure to Dominic’s wounds. I gave her some words of encouragement and assured Dominic he was in great hands before telling them that I was going off to find some help. I didn’t think she’d notice, but it turns out Ursula is a bright individual. She caught me heading off in the direction of Putnam’s retreat and called me back.
“I believe Mister Spinelli’s coach is waiting down the hill that way,” she said, pointing.
I nodded. “It is, but I have a quick errand to run first. You keep pressure on those wounds now. I’ll have help up here before you know it.”
Naturally, I’m not at liberty to discuss what my errand was, but suffice to say it was a necessary task that did not take me long to accomplish. After all, I do hate it when loose ends are not tidied up.
Tony Marcella:
I felt like a fool. Why didn’t I listen to Spinelli? He tried to tell me that he thought Putnam had the girls up on Gallows Hill, but I wouldn’t listen. I was so Goddamn pigheaded, and because of it, all three of them nearly died. Hell, I don’t know what I would have done if I ever lost Lilith and Dominic.
Forget it. I’m not going there. There were already enough tears to go around at the base of Gallows Hill when Carlos and I drove up on the scene thirty minutes too late to make a difference to anyone, except maybe for Lilith. She seemed so genuinely happy to see me that even I started to cry. And Carlos? Gees, forget about it. When he saw Dominic all strapped into the ambulance gurney with the oxygen mask over his face and yards of white bandages around his chest, well, that big old teddy bear wept like a baby.
“Can I see him?” I remember Carlos asking, his face strung like taffy and his eyes like two leaky water balloons. “Can I see him?”
“He’s sedated now,” said a paramedic, whose name I recall only as Pete. “Let us finish getting him stabilized.”
“Is it bad?”
“Yeah, it’s serious. He’s been shot in the chest,” Something big, too. It blew right through him.”
“It’s a .357, I bet.”
“Maybe, or a small cannon.”
“Oh, God. How could I let this happen?”
“Look, Detective, your friend has a condition known as dextrocardia, and he’s—”
“Dextro…. Oh, no. Tony did you hear that? Dominic’s has dex-o-trada.”
“No,” said the paramedic, “dextrocardia; it’s a genetic condition where a person’s heart forms on the opposite side of his chest. He was born with it.”
“Really?” Carlos turned to me with his hand covering the right side of his chest. “His heart’s over here?”
I shrugged. “Who knew?”
Pete said, “It’s more common than people realize. In some cases it’s not just the heart, but all the internal organs. It doesn’t affect their quality of life, and most who have it never even know. I mention this because, in Mister Spinelli’s case, it’s a lucky thing. If his heart were on the left side of his chest where yours and mine is, he would be dead right now.”
“So he’s going to be all right?”
Finally the reassuring smile that Carlos (and yes, I) needed, inched across Pete’s face. “Well, he’s lost a lot of blood,” he said in a confidential tone. “But yes, I think he’ll make it.”
“Oh, good God,” Carlos sighed, and I with him.
We stepped back as Pete closed the door on the ambulance and watched him jog around to the passenger side. He was barely in when the driver dropped it into gear and sped off with lights flashing and siren wailing. I patted Carlos on the back and mumbled something about how everything was going to be all right. He nodded, but kept his head down so that I wouldn’t see his tears, which worked out well, as he couldn’t see mine either.
Across the lot sat another ambulance where Lilith and Ursula were being
treated for rope burns, contusions and possible internal injuries. I say that now with some reservations, as Lilith seemed vocal enough to complain about her treatment without too much apparent discomfort. Fearing a no-win confrontation between her and the paramedics, I excused myself from Carlos and hurried over to see if I could calm the situation.
“Lilith, what’s wrong?”
“This guy,” she said, pushing away a young-looking EMT with a chin full of peach fuzz. “He keeps trying to take my blood pressure even after I told him not to.”
“But that’s his job. He’s got to take your vitals.”
“No, he’s got to get out of my fucking face before I go all witchy on his ass.” She reached up and pulled me in by my lapels. “What do you think he’ll say when he sees that my blood pressure is only forty over twenty?”
I rolled back a curious grin. “Really?”
“Yes.”
“Huh, he’ll probably wonder why you’re not in a coma.”
“Exactly.” She let go and pushed me away. “Now tell the twerp I don’t need my blood pressure checked.”
I walked the paramedic off to the side a few steps, putting my arm around his shoulder for an air of confidence. “Look,” I said, “the young ladies are not up to getting her blood pressures checked right now. But I’ll tell you what. Just as soon as we get them back to New Castle, I’ll take them to the emergency room for a thorough check up. We’ll get their blood pressures checked then, along with their pulse and everything else. What do you say?”
The kid brushed my hand off his shoulder. “Forget it,” he said. “I heard her. You do whatever the hell you want with her. The woman’s a bitch.” He marched off toward the front of the ambulance. I turned and went back to Lilith, trying to hide my smile.
“Well?” she said. “What did he say?”
I couldn’t help it, the smile came back. “He said he knows you.”
She gave her hair a flip back over her shoulder. “Of course, they all say that.” She hopped off the bumper and put her hand out for Ursula. “Come on, Urs, let’s go home.”