House of Rain

by Greg F. Gifune

  He slows his pace, comes to stop across the street from the building. He can see a fire burning inside, giving off enough light that he can make out the silhouettes of the three boys warming themselves around the large metal barrel in which the fire has been set.

  This is his jungle now.

  Moving through curtains of rain, Gordon crosses the street and slips inside the blown-out first-floor entrance, no longer concerned with stealth as he steps over piles of debris and trash and heads directly for the fire.

  The three teens see him immediately, but just stand there, warming their hands and staring at him with looks somewhere between disbelief and indifference. There were five or six teens in the group that attacked the homeless man, but these are three of them. Gordon is sure of it. One is short and stocky; the other two are taller, thinner. None appear to be more than perhaps nineteen.

  When Gordon is about ten feet from the barrel, he stops. Standing there dripping, his hands stuffed deep in his raincoat pockets, he stares back at them but says nothing.

  “Fuck you want, old man?” the heavyset one finally says.

  Gordon takes a step closer, but again, says nothing.

  The young men exchange confused glances; then the tallest of the group squares his stance and slowly reaches around to the back of his pants, where presumably he has stashed a weapon of some sort. “You deaf?”

  “Probably is,” the skinny one chuckles, “old-ass motherfucker.”

  “What are you doing here?” the tall one asks.

  In his coat pocket, Gordon grips the revolver tight. “Do you know who I am?”

  “We supposed to know you?” the heavy one asks.

  “Hold up.” The tall one looks him up and down. “Yeah, I seen you around the neighborhood. You live across from the park.”

  “That’s right,” Gordon says. “My windows face the street.”

  “So?”

  “So I saw what you and your friends did this morning.”

  The teens again exchange uncertain glances. The storm rages just outside, soaking down the city.

  “I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about,” the tall one snaps. “But you need to get out of here and go home before I end your ass. You feel me?”

  “No,” Gordon says evenly. “I don’t feel you at all.”’

  The other two start toward him, but the tall one stops them with a fierce look. His hand slowly emerges from behind his back. It clutches a 9mm handgun. “What do you want?” he asks. “Fuck you doing here talking shit? You got a death wish or something?”

  “I saw what you did to the homeless man.” It occurs to Gordon for the first time that he has never learned the man’s name, and he is ashamed. I should know his name, he thinks. We should all know his name. “Did you know he’s on life support? You did that to him.”

  The heavyset boy waves his hands about angrily. “We didn’t do shit. Fuck off and get outta here.”

  “I saw you,” Gordon says again.

  With the 9mm held down by his leg, the taller boy takes a step closer to Gordon, closing the already small gap between them. “You know who you’re playing with? Why you wanna come around here fucking with us?”

  “I’m not afraid of you, son.”

  “I ain’t your son.”

  “Figured you were my grandson.”

  “Why the hell would you figure that?”

  “Because every time I fuck your mother she calls me Daddy.”

  The other two boys burst out laughing.

  “Ba-zing!” the skinny one howls.

  The heavyset kid nearly falls over laughing. “You just got served, boy!”

  The tall young man doesn’t react, and instead appears more baffled than angry or embarrassed. “You crazy? Is that it? You got that oldzimers shit or something?” He points the gun at the hole in the wall Gordon entered through. “Go on. I mean it. Get outta here.”

  “Fuck him, man,” the skinny one says, becoming serious again. “Break your foot off in his ass before the stupid bastard calls the cops.”

  “Ain’t nobody gonna listen to this senile fool. Besides, you not about to call the cops, are you?”

  “I don’t need the police,” Gordon assures them. “You do.”

  The kid narrows his eyes, as if he still can’t quite be sure what he’s looking at. “You better bounce while you still can, old man.”

  “Yeah,” the heavy one says, “before you go missing your Matlock reruns.”

  The skinny kid laughs as he and his buddy slap hands. “Hurry, it’s Matlock marathon night, bitch!”

  They laugh hysterically, but the tall kid remains serious and calm, his dark eyes locked on Gordon’s. “Go home,” he says quietly, raising the gun and leveling it at him. “I ain’t gonna tell you again.”

  “Shoot.” Gordon slowly leans closer, into the gun, until his right eye comes to rest against the barrel. “Do it. It’ll be all right. Just do it. Please.”

  He holds the 9mm steady, his face a grimace of confusion.

  “Please,” Gordon whispers.

  Gordon…

  Gordon can smell the rain, the trash and filth, the shit and piss and sweat, the spent needles and soiled spoons and broken pipes, the empty cans and bottles, the despair, the hopelessness. All his senses are heightened, and he can see and hear and taste and smell like he could years before. “Do you know what I was doing when I was your age?” he asks softly.

  Hell in the jungle…firefights and screams…blood and death…

  “Do you know what they taught me to do?”

  A body pulled from tunnels outside the village…the dirty, bloody, headless torso of a man, the rest of him blown to pieces…Gordon watching as his sergeant yanks the body from the mouth of the tunnel, and holds it up like a trophy, dangling it there for all to see…nearby, an old woman wails in agony and drops to her knees at the sight of her son’s remains…

  “Do you know what they told me to do?”

  The hooch…the fire…the young Vietnamese boy…Gordon holding a gun to his head…demanding things the boy cannot or will not give him…the screams, the chaos, the young man’s tears…blood spraying from the boy’s temple and his body falling…falling…collapsing into the dirt and dying at Gordon’s feet…

  “Do you know what I did?”

  What have I done? My God, what have I done?

  Gordon reaches up with his damaged hand. His fingers, protruding from the tape and towel, gently touch the young man’s wrist and push the barrel of the 9mm tighter against his eye socket. “Do it, son.”

  A shattered mirror…sprayed with blood and pieces of brain and skull...

  “Do it.”

  “Get off me, man!” The kid yanks his hand back, pulling the 9mm from Gordon’s face.

  I can’t make it…

  “It was your only chance,” Gordon tells him.

  “Fuck you talking about?”

  In a single fluid motion, Gordon pulls the revolver from his pocket, levels it and fires, shooting him in the center of his forehead.

  The discharge is deafening and leaves Gordon’s ears ringing, but by the time this registers, he has already pivoted to his left and shot the other two young men, one in the throat and the other in the chest.

  Gordon stands there a moment, his gun hand still out in front of him, arm locked, the revolver smoking. Three shots. Three hits. All three young men are on the ground. Two are dead. Only the heavyset one has survived. But he won’t live long. Shot in the throat, the bullet has severed his carotid artery, and he writhes about on the ground whimpering, his hands pressed frantically against the wound and already drenched in blood that pumps free of him in unbelievable, cartoonish quantities, soaking his chest and stomach.

  Gordon lowers his arm, holds the revolver down by his leg and watches him awhile. “Who do you fear?” he asks flatly. “Who do you cry for?”

  The kid begins to gag and tries to get to his knees, but flops over onto his back and coughs, spraying blood from hi
s mouth and nose.

  Gordon steps closer and shoots him again. This time in the face.

  He dies quickly.

  After a little while, the buzz in Gordon’s ears lessens, and he can hear the rain again. He walks over to the opening in the wall and looks out at the street. It’s empty and dark.

  He looks back over his shoulder at the three bodies lying around the barrel. The fire continues to burn, pop and spark.

  Mr. Cole, this is Dr. Lynch. I regret to inform you that your wife Katharina passed away just a few minutes ago. I’m very sorry for your loss, sir.

  Thunder rumbles in the distance.

  The ghosts are all around him now, circling, crawling across his skin like insects, whispering their blasphemous inverted prayers as Satan smiles, watching patiently from his throne of human skin and bone.

  But Gordon is already gone. The night has swallowed him whole.

  EIGHT

  The world is an alien landscape now. He is lost and alone. Dead.

  But he knows the way. He finds the basement nightclub. Or what was once a nightclub. The sign is gone, replaced by another touting a consignment clothing shop. It sits dark and quiet, as does the rest of the neighborhood, as if everyone and everything has ceased to exist while he’s in their midst.

  Gordon thinks he hears that angelic singing again, but it’s so very far away and sounds sad. It sounds…hopeless…and yet, it stirs something deep within him, begging him closer to…to what? God? Love? Forgiveness? Or something else? Is it a song of hope he hears, or one of sorrow for all that is lost?

  “Gordon,” Lucy whispers from behind him, wrapping her arms around his waist, then sliding them up across his chest. “I can give you anything you want. Anything. You know that, don’t you?”

  He knows he will not resist this. He will not resist her. It is meant to be. All of this has been preordained. He convinces himself of this as she kisses and licks his neck, gliding her warm, wet tongue up and into his ear. A chill courses through him, and they fall. Together, they fall.

  Around the corner from the Night-Rain Club, in a dirty little motel room most rent by the hour, they collapse onto hard, scratchy sheets that smell like bleach. But Lucy’s scent overpowers it all, and Gordon allows it to intoxicate him, even when he realizes what he’s really doing, what will really happen.

  She tears at his clothes, wrapping her legs tight around his back and locking them at the ankle as she scratches at his bare chest with her bloodred fingernails, begging him to do it, to do it now and everything he has ever wanted will be granted.

  Even as he fucks her, Gordon doesn’t believe it. He knows, but he doesn’t believe it. She is a lost and frightened soul the same as him. Some oversexed woman he picked up at a bar. He tells himself the rest are just thoughts in his head, wishful thinking that will bring Katy to him forever.

  “Give her to me,” he gasps.

  “Will you give yourself to me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Say it.”

  “I will give myself to you. If you give her to me, I will give myself to you.”

  As he cums, she screams—ripping into his back with her nails and whispering in his ear what must happen to seal their deal—bucking her hips and taking him deeper as he empties himself inside her.

  “I…can’t.”

  “Do it, Gordon. Do it.”

  He rises up, still inside her, and slowly closes his hands around her throat.

  “No,” she croaks. “There has to be blood.”

  Gordon raises a fist, closes his eyes, and slams it down into her face…

  “Veniat ad me et corpore,” she says, her lip split and already bleeding, running over her chin in glistening crimson. “Come unto me, body and soul.”

  “I can’t do this, I…”

  “Take her heart,” Lucy says, only it isn’t her voice anymore. It belongs to something else. “Take the little cunt’s heart.”

  Muffled screams echo down a dark corridor.

  Gordon backs away, watching the dark stairs that lead down to what is now a consignment shop. He didn’t realize it prior, but there is someone down there in the shadows, someone watching. He can hear them laughing.

  He crosses the street and hurries off through the rain, knowing now where he must go. He does not look back.

  By the time he reaches his old street, the rain has turned to ice and the beginnings of snow. It falls in heavy thick drops that blur his view of the building across the street. But he can see. There, a light on the fourth floor, in the window facing the street. The bedroom, their old bedroom. His and Katy’s. It was such a warm and cozy apartment. Katy made it a home—she’d made it their home—and now it’s all been reduced to memories imprisoned in a tortured mind, teetering on the precipice of madness and damnation.

  Halfway down the street is the church Katy attended. A large white cross on its roof glows in the night, through the sleet, a beacon in the otherwise dark night. Gordon reaches inside his shirt and fingers the small gold crucifix he wears on a chain around his neck. It belonged to Katy. He only began wearing it after her death, as a way of having something of hers close to him at all times. He’s never expected it to save or protect him, as he’s never had much use for such things. He finds comfort in none of the spiritual trinkets so many are fascinated with. It all horrifies him, the good and the bad, the holy and the profane. Where others find power or peace, he finds only chaos, penance and suffering.

  He remembers Katy’s soft hair against his lips…the taste…the smell…

  God, why have you forsaken me?

  The quiet. Most of all, he remembers the quiet. Their quiet. Their peace.

  Why have I forsaken you?

  A car horn blares in the distance, and then an eerie silence returns to the street. Gordon is alone in the icy rain. Sated, the others have faded now, returned to the shadows and retreated into the dark holes from which they crawled.

  Do you even exist beyond the piece of you in each of us we call our souls?

  Gordon leans against the building for fear he might otherwise collapse onto the sidewalk. He watches the light in the window across the street, hoping to see someone—anyone—but there is only the light.

  And then, at the top of the block, a taxi comes to a stop and a man gets out. As the cab pulls away and drives off, Gordon realizes who the man is.

  Harry—wrapped tight in a heavy coat, his hat low in front to shield his eyes from the icy rain—hobbles toward him. Having seen Gordon in the shadows, he stops in the street, hands in his coat pockets, like he expects him to say something.

  After a moment, Gordon accommodates him. “You shouldn’t be here, Harry.”

  “Neither should you.”

  “Go away. Go home.”

  He looks up and down the street, and then up at the apartment window. “I knew I’d find you here,” he sighs. “You need to come with me, Gordo. You need to get out of this storm.”

  “Leave me alone.”

  Harry notices the bloody towel wrapped and taped around Gordon’s arm. “What happened? You’re hurt.”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Look, I—”

  “You think I don’t know you’re in on all of this too?”

  Harry shakes his head. “In on all of what?”

  “You’re the one who recommended Dr. Spires to me.”

  “I heard he was a good psychiatrist. You needed help, Gordo. You need help.”

  “And he led me to Dr. Amaya. Do you know what Amaya means in Japanese?”

  “I haven’t the foggiest idea.”

  “Night Rain.”

  “And is that supposed to mean something to me?”

  “That night, all those years ago. The one we’ve never talked about. The woman I…I met her at a little joint called the Night-Rain Club.”

  Harry shuffles his feet in an attempt to ward off the mounting cold. “It’s a coincidence, that’s all. You’re seeing things, making connections and finding conspiracies w
here there are none.”

  “No, I—”

  “So I’m the enemy now too? Me? For Christ’s sake, I’m your best friend.” He moves a bit closer. “Maybe you’ve forgotten. I was the one you called that night.”

  Gordon bows his head. “And I’m sorry, Harry.”

  “We need to talk about that night. We never have. It’s time, Gordo.”

  “You don’t understand.”

  “No, I’m afraid it’s you who doesn’t seem to understand. You never have.” Harry pushes his hat back a bit, so that Gordon can see his eyes. “You called me that night from the motel, frantic, out of your mind. I’d never heard you like that. Later, when I went there to help you, I’d never seen you in such bad shape. You’d suffered some sort of breakdown, Gordo, you were a wreck.”

  “I don’t want to talk about that night.”

  “You told me there was a woman, and something terrible had happened. You told me you’d hurt this woman, that you—”

  “Stop it, Harry!”

  “That you’d killed this woman, that you—”

  “Stop!” Gordon pushes away from the building, joins Harry in the street.

  “You said you’d killed her. You’d beaten her to death and torn her heart from her chest and that you’d done it to be with Katy, that it was some sort of twisted satanic ritual or some similar nonsense.” Harry reaches out, puts his hands on Gordon’s shoulders. “Gordon, you were out of your mind. You said the body was in the bed, that the entire room was covered in blood, and that you needed me to help you clean the place up and dispose of the body.”

  “Harry—”

  “Only there was no body. There was no blood. There was only you and I in an empty motel room.”

  “She said her name was Lucy, don’t you see? A sick joke. Lucy—Lucifer, Harry—Lucifer, it was all a demented and evil joke, a—”

  “There was no Lucy, Gordon. You didn’t hurt anyone that night but yourself. The room was mussed, you’d had some sort of violent episode, but there was no one else there, no blood and no body. I helped you straighten the place up and we got out of there.”