Spirits of the Charles

by Paul C. K. Spears

  She silenced his whimpered with a quick, sharp blow to the skull, just above the nape. He fell to the sand, concussed. She was weak from her battle, and the cold was numbing her… but she was still strong enough to carry him.

  She dropped her weapon. “You know why.”

  Up above, there was the growl of an engine—something big and expensive. Fischer pulled up to the top of the dunes, flashing the headlights. In the distance she could hear sirens howling: reinforcements, on their way down the coast. If the two of them were quick, they could get off this bottleneck of land before the area was locked down.

  She began dragging Palmer’s limp form over the sand. Mithras had a way, she thought, of making things right. Fixing the world, piece by bloody piece.

  Anarchy prevails.

  W.B.E.T. Radio

  July 30th, 1926

  “Folks, we interrupt baseball for an emergency bulletin… Our state has been the target of an anarchist strike… I’m having a hard time believing what I’m reading. We have reports the Mayor’s gala in Atlantic House has been attacked… Noxious gas was used to bomb the crowd… We have reports of men and women attacking each other… A satanic beast was sighted, dubbed the ‘Red Devil’ by authorities… Police say there are links events to a Mithras cult…”

  “The list of dead includes… at least twenty-five people, including the Mayor’s fiancé Margorie Williams, and State Speaker John Hull… Several dozen were wounded in the attack… Con artist Carla Ponzi was also arrested at the scene… The body of Mario Buda, prominent anarchist, was also recovered… the Bureau of Investigation declined to comment. This may have something to do with the explosion at Wollaston Quarry…”

  “Hold on… we’ve got new material coming in. The Mayor has turned in a resignation letter, and the National Guard has been activated. Thank the Lord someone’s doing something! Those Reds deserve a pounding—kill ‘em all! Sorry, Enid, just saying what we’re thinking. Twenty-five dead… God, it’s worse than the Molasses Flood.”

  “An emergency session of Congress has been called… As of now, a bill is being passed banning possession of Mithraic runes. Good idea, boys … Another bill, declaring the consumption of any form of Humour a federal offense, is moving through the House. It is expected to pass unanimously…”

  “That’s, uh, that’s all we’ve got for you right now… Bad times, folks. Seems like Boston’s turned rotten under our noses, but luckily the authorities are here to stop it… On top of that, any listeners who have Draughts or Noxious habits may want to, ha-ha, find a new hobby.”

  “We now return to sports, where the Yankees are set to sweep the Pirates … I’m no traitor to the Sox, but that Gehrig’s a hell of a guy. Can you believe his numbers? That fella’s gonna live on forever—a god of baseball! We lost our chance at that when we sold Ruth, I always said so… Didn’t I say so, Enid? We’ll get you the scores, right after we hear from our sponsor today, Bromo Seltzer!”

  PART 3: THE NEW GODS

  May 12th, 1927

  CHAPTER 1

  SPRING CAME at last.

  The National Guard troops departed, barracks emptied, as the fresh buds of a new year pushed from dead trees. There was no denying the Guard was needed, after that awful business down in Hull—but most Bostonians were glad to see them go. Despite all its problems, Boston was a city that kept to its own, and folk there had no love for outside meddling.

  Besides, the Draught trade had almost vanished. Most speakeasies had closed, and Myths were getting rare—either skipping town, or smart enough to keep their fangs and fins out of sight. Good on them, most agreed.

  The ‘Red Devil’ was never found. Token arrests were made, but the Feds were quickly preoccupied by mining strikes in the Carolinas. Palmer and Fischer stayed missing, as they had been since the attack. The gas bombing stayed unsolved. And after a while, the criminals’ sketches faded from the papers.

  Life went on, despite the horror.

  The city’s pulse shifted; power changed hands again. Mayor Curley, unseated by Nichols in January, roared back into office during a special election when Nichols resigned. Curley resumed his old habits, chasing construction projects with money he didn’t have, and promising to bring back “law and order” while doing absolutely nothing. Rose didn’t vote for him; she wasn’t allowed. Besides, she had more personal concerns to worry about.

  After the anarchist attack, she’d fled with Lucas back to Roxbury. Police investigators snooped around, and even took Lucas in for questioning—but his record was spotless, and there was no record of her ever being at the Atlantic. Witnesses might place her there, but no one had her name—no one but Ponzi, who was in jail and unusually tight-lipped, and Fischer, who’d disappeared. So the cops had to take Lucas’ word that she was his date, come up from Georgia to join the church.

  And that should have been the end of things. She should have gone back to her life, and left Lucas to his moralizing. But it didn’t work out that way. As things cooled down, she started dropping by his house in Dorchester, drinking coffee and talking shop. Nothing too heavy—just shooting the breeze about Boston, and mood-legging, and that awful night at the Atlantic.

  After a while, she became a regular at his church, and if the congregation suspected she was a Myth, they didn’t say anything. She appreciated their silence. After the gala, she’d had a choice: try and run Draughts in Boston’s brutal smuggling industry, or lie low. She chose the latter. Lucas backed her up, and offered support while she looked for a new job—one with less gunfire.

  Rose was surprised to find she still trusted him. Which was surprising, especially after what he’d done on the beach. None of those men had survived, thanks to his deadly aim. That moment still frightened her… but if Lucas hadn’t pulled the trigger, she would be in jail right now, or dead. She gravitated to him, despite his cagey attitude, his refusal to tell her about Hosts and Humours—anything to do with Myths, really. Despite his strange faith, his constant quoting of scripture… dammit, she liked the guy. He was sweet, and smart, and patient. A girl could do worse.

  Eventually she moved out of her tiny apartment, and in with with him. She didn’t make a big choice; it just… happened. Lucas was easy to live with; he was funny when she needed a laugh, and as comfortable as she was with silence. She wasn’t looking for marriage, and he never proposed—but they cared about each other, all the same. In the pews, and in the bedroom.

  It was a shock to her, how easy intimacy was. She shared his sheets on cold-weather days, and discovered he was capable and persistent there. But beyond these entanglements—tumbling into bed, then lying awake as the wind howled down Washington Street—they didn’t grow closer. They didn’t talk about the future. They simply existed, side-by-side. Surviving the city.

  And surviving wasn’t easy. After Mitchell Palmer’s disappearance, the National Guard had locked down everything, from Lynn to Braintree. Biplanes had roared over Boston Harbor, and the police swept Boston, picking up mood-leggers and anyone who even looked like an immigrant in their misguided search for justice.

  Lucas and Rose did what they could to stay out of trouble. Rose got a job selling newspapers; once the paper-boys were done making fun of her, they adopted her, calling her “Glad-Rags” for her tendency to wear trousers. The job had her running around town, keeping her busy from dawn to dusk. It even gave her a chance to right some wrongs. Raids were being conducted, in broad daylight, and whenever Rose witnessed one, she stepped in. Quietly.

  Her method was to Twist emotions—gently. She’d stir mercy in a cop, or patience in a panicked Ukrainian Jew being arrested on phony charges. Suddenly the pitiless police sergeant would develop a kind heart, or a furious Italian would put down his knife and try to talk things over with the cops.

  Sometimes it helped; sometimes it didn’t. But when the ghettos didn’t fight back, she learned, the cops didn’t shoot.

  Usually.

  Whenever she Twisted someone, she found something fresh, a tri
gger or hidden kernel of feeling. She played with complex emotions now: hope, tolerance, sympathy. She stirred them wherever she could, struggling to keep her city away from riots. She steered clear of darker emotions, especially anger. She never wanted to make another Myth like that. The thing she’d created haunted her nightmares.

  As for Lucas… she never tried to Twist anything from him. It would have been wrong, but on top of that, she didn’t need to. Being close to people was not a skill she excelled at: she was distant and solitary, and preferred hard work and cash to human beings. But Lucas didn’t push her, or wax romantic. He never asked her to get serious, never suffocated her… and when she asked one very important favor from him, he said yes. Which meant a lot to her, considering what she’d done.

  She needed him to launder her cash.

  It was a simple process. They dug up her money from under an old oak,, and added it little by little to donation bowls every Sunday. It went to the church coffers—tax-free, thanks to Uncle Sam, and there it stayed. Occasionally, she’d make a withdrawal, and deposit the now-clean cash in a bank account Lucas had opened for her. It felt like progress… even though it was certain to raise some questions. What was a ‘colored couple’ doing with that much money? She had to force herself not to be paranoid. She’d gone straight—well, mostly straight, anyway.

  If only her family believed her.

  She wrote letters to them, after months of silence. One night she tracked down her father’s new phone number, and made an enormously expensive call to Florida. When the telephone operator finally connected them, Freddie Sweetwater was furious—Rose had, after all, run off with mood-leggers and abandoned him. But the bridge between them wasn’t entirely burned, and she managed to get past the “how are yous” before he exploded. Her mother Ruth tore the phone away, begged her to come back south.

  Rose refused.

  There was work in Boston, she said. Good, honest work. She didn’t tell them about the laundering, or about her plans for Ocoee, and she definitely didn’t tell them about the Humours in her blood. They hung up without reconciling.

  Stubborn old fools.

  Well, they could bury their heads in the sand if they liked. She wasn’t going to let her dream die. She and Lucas built up their congregation. The church grew, even as the streets outside grew uglier.

  Mood-leggers began to show up dead—on street corners, in fields, under bridges. Most folk blamed the B.O.I., but Rose knew better. The Gustin Gang never bothered her again, but she got mail sometimes, with no return address. They were always nice postcards, with pictures of Jamaica Pond or Fanueil Hall. The contents were much less innocent. They told her what places to avoid, in the quiet gang war outside.

  “Stay out of the Back Bay.”

  “Keep off the rail tracks in Lynn.”

  “Streets will be safer, after Lent.”

  Obituaries the next day always bore out the warnings. Gang members and smugglers were found dead, with throats slit or their bellies shot open. Yeah, the streets were getting safer, alright… Gus was making sure of it.

  He never called her, never spoke to her in person. She had the sense he was done with her: he’d ascended some hidden ladder to the very top of the trade, further than she’d ever gone, or could go. Part of her was mad he’d stayed in the game without her, and part of her was glad she wasn’t involved. She also found herself jealous of his success, which was absurd, considering everything she’d seen and been forced to do. And yet…

  She couldn’t help it. Despite all the fear, mood-legging had fulfilled her: it had given her power over her life, letting her take her livelihood rather than beg for it. Once she’d lurked in the shadows with a knife in her teeth—now, people spat on her, when they found who was delivering their papers.

  She was tempted try and to find Gus. But things were hairy, with the B.O.I. crawling around. They’d formed an alliance with the cops, and many times she caught undercover officers chasing leads in Egleston Square. She would Twist their laziness, or impatience, or exhaustion, sending them home as quietly as she could. But they never stayed away. She couldn’t Twist her way out of this: sooner or later, some knucklehead was going to do the math, and figure out who’d really been at the Atlantic that night.

  In the meantime, she was happy to remain nobody. A ghost. Even if it meant getting the boot, once in a while… and listening to Lucas preach, the rest of the time.

  At least he was good at it.

  “Open your minds, ladies and gentlemen. Open your minds, and let the grace flow in.” It was a bright, hazy Sunday morning: the church was packed with parishioners, and Lucas was in glory at the pulpit, wearing the white robes of his faith. “The ladder to divinity ain’t a goal to be won. It comes to you. Do you feel it, rolling down? Rolling down from Mithras?”

  “Yes!”

  Dozens of voices answered him, but Rose was not among them. She sat in the back pew, hands folded neatly in her lap, wearing a modest dress and fine hat. She sat through these sermons every Sunday, but none of them moved her. Not because Lucas was a bad preacher—he was quite good, very passionate and witty. It was just hard to believe in the love of a God when you’d seen a man’s brains split open on white marble, human bodies thrown like rag-dolls through the air. Things like that tended to quash your spiritual fervor.

  “Let it come down! Reach for it, my brothers and sisters!” Lucas, for his part, clearly believed in his own routine. “There is no other way, but the Quadrinity—the Father, the Son, the Holy Ghost, and Mithras himself. The Bringer of Paths and Guidance. It’s okay, folks… Let go of your doubts. Let go of your fears.” He seemed to look at Rose as he said this, and she glanced down at her lap. “He’s with us!”

  “Amen!”

  The amen came from all the parishioners, except for her… and one small figure near the door. The man was craven-looking and wore a rumpled coat. His most distinctive feature was a cherry-red nose. Rose realized she’d seen this man before, but not for years—his name was “Easy” Eddie, one of Henderson’s contacts in the North End slums.

  Eddie was a street-corner hustler, selling knockoff Glee and Delight to anyone stupid enough to pay. He also sold information: Eddie was ugly as sin, but a great listener. However, this wasn’t his usual stomping ground. What the hell was he doing here?

  “My brothers and sisters,” said Lucas, somber, “I know times are hard. I know it seems like Phobos and Demos are gonna swallow us up, any day.” He played the crowd better than a church organ, the cool-mannered men and rising out of their seats to hang on his word. “But we will surpass the darkness. Mayor Curley himself came by the other day, in the midst of all this violence in our streets. You know what he said?” His high cheeks beamed with pride. “That our church was a pillar of this community. That we were ‘a shining beacon to colored folks.’” Lucas snorted. “I didn’t have the heart to tell him,” he said, leaning over the pulpit, “that Mithras and Jesus were black. Would’ve lost our tax exemption!”

  Chuckles filled the pews. Rose rolled her eyes, but smiled. Lucas genuinely loved the people here, in a way she never could. As the laughter died down, she noticed Easy Eddie going for the door. He’d had a bad case of the jake, ever since he started sampling his own product a few years ago, and it gave him a sinister waddle. Like some sort of hunched imp. Rose got up and followed him, conscious of Lucas’s eyes as she slipped outside.

  If Easy Eddie was here, someone had sent him. And Rose wanted to find out why.

  Outside the crowded church, cool spring air felt like a blessing on her cheeks. A sweet stillness hung across the day, despite the presence of an Army blimp hanging in the sky. The Los Angeles, now a constant presence above the waters of the harbor. The Guard might be gone, but the Navy’s eye in the sky remained.

  There was a ring of cops outside Mr. Drozdov’s bakery, and she gave them a wide berth. She saw Eddie stumping into the road, giving the finger at cars which beeped and blatted at him. He slouched up the sidewalk and out o
f sight, behind a row of hedges.

  She hustled after him. When she ducked behind the bushes, Eddie was waiting for her, wielding a sharpened potato peeler.

  “Back off, Sheba!”

  She looked down at the peeler, and at Eddie. His wide, bloodshot eyes did not broadcast courage. Sunday clothes or no, she could probably kick his ass up and down the street. “Are you kidding me, Ed?”

  “Hey. I don’t play around.” He waggled the blade. “I’ll cut ya.”

  “Put that away. I ain’t no cop. What were you doing in our church?”

  “Your church? Ha! That’s rich.” He spat on the ground, but lowered the peeler. “I’m on orders, Rose. Ain’t gotta tell you nothin.”

  “Gus sent you, didn’t he? What’s this about?”

  The mood-legger grinned; his smile was all rotten teeth and gums. “He said to watch ya, not tell ya my life’s story.”

  She scowled. “You ever been hit by a woman?”

  “Naw. Why?”

  “You’re about to. Tell me why you’re here.”

  He whistled. “You never did have no feminine graces. Fine—I’m just keepin’ an eye on the joint, to make sure no po-lice take you. You ought to be thanking me.”

  She crossed her arms. “I can handle that myself. I’d feel safer without you stinking up our joint. Where’s Gus? I want to talk to him.”

  “Jee-yeezis! How d’you like that!” Eddie pulled a flask from his pocket, nursing it. “They told me I’d need Patience for this job … Look, Mr. Henderson ain’t in a ‘visiting’ mood lately. Hence, why he hired me. He don’t do house-calls no more.”

  Rose felt a chill trickle down her spine. “What’s wrong with him?”

  “Nothing’s wrong. It’s… It ain’t a public affair.” She felt a curling tendril of fear, pushing up to the surface of his heart. Whatever was going on with Gus, it scared the heck out of Eddie. She didn’t push the issue; Lucas’s sermon was almost done, and she needed to get back inside.