The Dampness Of Mourning

by Lee Thompson

  Before he could stand, Mike pulled the trigger.

  Blood and brain matter jetted from the exit wound in the back of his head, splattered over a grayish-white birch behind him, but Lucas kept smiling for a moment before his eyes went blank and he raised his hand, glided his fingers over the shattered part of his skull and slumped into the grass.

  I said, “Fuck,” fingers hurting from clenching the Remington, brain jumping to images of Mike in prison, all the good things he’d done for nothing. Heart racing, I turned the shotgun back on Nutley, and waited to hear the chopper’s heavy thrum building above the drizzle. I said, “Take us to Duncan.”

  Nutley pulled his hands from his pockets and rubbed them on his damp pants. He said, “You shouldn’t have shot him. He adored both of you.”

  Mike stepped forward and stopped an arm’s length from the preacher. Mike’s leg flashed, his boot catching Nutley in the shin, and as the preacher bent in reflex, Mike grabbed a handful of his hair and jerked him into a vicious knee that popped the old man’s nose like a twig. He let Nutley go and jammed the AR15 into his face.

  “You are taking us to our friend. No more stalling. No more bullshit.”

  Nutley’s face slackened and his eyes filled with tears, but he smiled. He looked down the length of the barrel and said, “They’re all the same, you know, angels and demons. They’re greater than any of us could ever dream of being.” Tears wet his cheeks. “I want to see. I want to know what it’s like again. I want a reunion. That’s all.”

  I said, “You can’t kill him. We might never find Doug.”

  Mike said to Nutley, “Start walking.”

  I glanced over my shoulder. The mist flickered as if lightning dwelled within it, alive with anguish as the preacher’s brides wept over Lucas.

  Nutley extended his arms, jerked his sleeves up one at a time, and spat in Mike’s face. I recoiled but Mike didn’t move. I moved closer and stared at the preacher’s wrists—open, ragged wounds like twin mouths speaking as he flexed his forearms. The wounds whispered, You don’t have to run anymore. You don’t have to be afraid.

  Mike lowered the rifle, let it drape over his left arm. The only thing that frightened him was the truth of what his mother had done to his sister.

  Nutley said, “What makes you two so special?”

  Mike shrugged and pulled the trigger. The bullet ripped through the old man’s knee and tore the back of his pant leg open. Mike kicked him in the chest and Nutley somersaulted over the rotten stump and hit the ground with the sound of breaking bones.

  Darkness swirled above the trees.

  Mist thickened.

  The preacher dug at the hole in his leg, fingernails scraping ruined bones. The wounds in his wrist wept. He said, “Your friend is dead. I sank my dick so far down his throat it burst his goddamned heart. He enjoyed it when I chewed on his lips and Lucas cut his scalp free to fashion a purse to carry dreams.”

  Something snapped inside of me before I could stop it or even begin to rein it in.

  I pulled the trigger and Nutley’s chest exploded in a haze of red, obscuring his pale face.

  The mist rushed forward and hit me like a wall.

  I stumbled and dropped the shotgun and screamed.

  Mike jerked a knife from his boot and lashed at the growling darkness.

  On my side, I saw Nutley hit the ground, trying to draw buckshot from his torso, and somewhere close by glass shattered and ravens cawed as sunlight cut through the branches and the preacher and the boy trembled, shaking leaves from trees before both of them vanished as if they never existed.

  I tried to get my hands under me but slipped in the mud. Tried to wrap my mind around what had just happened but I could barely see straight and my lungs burned with each breath.

  A state trooper broke through brush and fog from the direction we’d traveled. He leveled his shotgun on Mike and yelled, “Hands up! Now!” He wasn’t one of the men from the compound with McCoy. The cop yelled again, his voice garbled, eyes darting from Mike to me and back again. I was on one knee. Mike stood near where Nutley had fallen but remained no more. The cop kept his weapon on Mike but screamed at me to back away with my hands on my head. I did, sick to my stomach because all he had to do was reflexively pull the trigger and he’d kill Mike or Mike would kill him.

  I said, softly, “Mike, put the rifle—”

  “Now! Drop it and put your hands on your head.” The cop held his ground, spittle sticking to his lips and a nervous bounce to his knee.

  Brush broke as feet trampled a path behind us. The cop flitted nervously as if he didn’t know whether to stay or run, hanging on with all his might to what he knew—they were looking for some cop killers and he’d found two men with weapons in the immediate vicinity. But Mike wasn’t showing any aggression, his eyes full of sorrow, mouth quivering as he whispered something and shook his head. Mike stared beyond the cop, his clothes sopping wet, face pale. I followed his line of sight behind the cop to a gigantic ash.

  One of the sisters opened her hand and uncoiled the crimson thread. She held it as if holding a snake just behind its head. She held scissors in her right hand, crafted of bone and glistening as if washed in the tears of the dead.

  The fog thickened around us.

  I thought, Christ, no.

  The cop opened his mouth to speak and I did the same but couldn’t find any words as the state trooper’s finger tightened on the trigger.

  The sister stared at Mike as she slid the thread between her shears.

  I scanned the forest for the other two.

  She snipped the thread.

  Thunder bellowed and the ground trembled. The cop’s face slackened and he dropped the shotgun, placed a hand over his heart and stumbled back a step, tilting his head toward the bleeding heavens. His eyes widened with the recognition that this was the night he wouldn’t return home to whatever existence had usually waited for him, and it darkened his features. He fell face-first to the forest floor and beyond him the sister’s blank eyes assessed us.

  Closer, more cops trampled the woods, preceded by the rustle of clothing, their ragged voices, and the clank of steel.

  I said, “We have to do something.”

  Mike leaned his rifle against the rotting log Nutley had been sitting on when he’d appeared. He faced the coming storm and put his hands on his head. It was the right thing to do in a normal situation, but I didn’t want to turn my back on the sister, my mind weighted with possibilities, wondering if it was the dead cop’s fate to die out here, just doing his job, or if the sister had somehow saved Mike from taking a blast of buckshot in the chest.

  McCoy and the others came upon us fast, their guns raised. They ordered us to lay face down, their eyes stealing past us to another fallen comrade. From where they stood they were unable to see if we’d shot him. Then recognition dawned on their faces and McCoy ordered them to lower their weapons. They did so, but reluctantly, because they needed an enemy they could face, somewhere to direct all the anger roaring through them.

  McCoy strode forward, walked between Mike and me, and knelt next to the dead state trooper. He pressed his fingers against the man’s neck for a moment and cursed. He rolled him over. The lean cop who’d cuffed me at the compound said, “What the hell happened?” The other one walked over to McCoy as he talked into the walkie-talkie strapped to his shirt pocket.

  I told him that I couldn’t sit at home and wait for news when it made more sense to come looking for Duncan, hopefully lend a hand. McCoy and the others glared at the ground. I said, “This officer came up on us, probably thinking we were part of Nutley’s crew and—”

  “What are you doing bringing weapons out here?” McCoy said.

  “After what you saw at the compound would you come out here unarmed?”

  He wiped at his face and sighed. “You’re obstructing justice. Jesus Christ.”

  The lean one asked, “What was with the gunfire earlier?” He glanced toward the wasted cop as if wishing
holes would magically appear in his chest. I understood they were angry and frustrated; they needed someone within arm’s reach to put the hurt on. But I didn’t know how to answer his question. If I told him we killed Nutley and Lucas and the mist carried them away the police would have us committed.

  The cops shivered, huddled around each other as if to gather warmth and comfort in their shared heartache and fury, and I knew how that went, had seen good men die for no apparent reason, and Mike had seen far more, things I wouldn’t learn until later.

  The wind swept through branches and pushed rain sideways. I was as cold and wet as everyone else but standing there, waiting, doing nothing, made it a hell of a lot worse. I said, “McCoy? Can I talk to you a moment?”

  He approached slowly as if the mere act of taking one step after the next pained him. I pulled him further from the group while the other two cops saw an opportunity to question Mike. He hung his head because he felt like a failure, like somehow he thought we could have defused the situation and saved the cop’s life but had let it slip between our fingers.

  McCoy said, “I’ve got half a mind to arrest you both. Out here shooting at shadows. You could have injured or murdered one of us. Was that part of your plan?”

  “I know.” I crammed my hands in my jacket pockets and hunched my shoulders. “But Nutley wants me. You’ll never catch them.”

  “Are you saying we need to abandon this? If so, you’re out of your goddamn mind.”

  “I’m saying you keep some of your best men rested and away from here, keep the others searching, maybe they’ll get lucky, but I doubt it.”

  “You think they’re going to keep Doug alive?”

  “I have no idea. But I think Nutley knows if he kills him then he’ll never get what he wants.” There was so much more I wanted to say but sometimes fewer words are better. Sometimes talking too much only creates more heartache.

  McCoy nodded, rain streaking his face. “They come hunting you and you don’t see them coming, what then? You’re in your bed dreaming of demons and wake to your hands wrenched behind your back, your feet bound, and a pillow case slipping over your head, then what? People like this can’t be reasoned with, McDonnell. They’ve already killed three of my men. They have a shared friend.”

  The other cops crowded Mike.

  I said, “I don’t know what else to do.”

  “Go home. If I see you guys out here again I’ll lock you up.” He turned his back on me. He pulled Rienald away and left the young cop with the body to wait for the coroner. Me and Mike grabbed our guns. The youngest of them said, “Give me your ammunition.” We did. He said, “Get out of here.”

  Walking back to the gravel lot, Mike remained quiet. The rain let up but the sky remained a smeared gray. I said, “Do you think they’re dead?”

  “Those cops? Yes.”

  He was right. They didn’t stand a chance. They had no idea what they were up against. “Did we kill Nutley and Lucas? Or was it only an illusion?”

  “Time will tell.”

  I wanted to ask him what was wrong but Mike didn’t like being pushed. He got downright ugly whether he loved you or not. He’d tell me what was on his mind when he was ready. The repercussions of our actions would catch us later. In ways we hadn’t expected.

  * * *

  When we pulled into the manor’s circle drive, Mike said, “Do you want to stay here until this all blows over?” He smiled at me, making a joke in his way, a bad one. This shit wasn’t going to blow over. It was only going to get brutal and we’d be lucky if we had any sanity left by the week’s end.

  Mike opened the door. “Even if Nutley and the kid are dead, the others are going to come after us—either in revenge, or to see their prophet’s will done.”

  I rubbed my temples, imagining a moonless night, waking to the women and men around my bed, all of them naked and coated in Doug’s blood. There would be nowhere to turn, no room to fight, and no time to react.

  I followed Mike inside and he closed the door and the manor sighed around us, welcoming us home as a fire flared to life in the living room fireplace. Mike said, “We’re in this together. We can fight from here. No sense in dying alone.”

  SEVEN

  Later that evening, as I stood at one of the manor’s bays window, wearing dry clothes Mike had loaned me, I watched headlights cut through the gathering murk down the hill and pull into my driveway. The distance was too great to make out the vehicle. Part of me wished it was April coming home, bringing Ethan back, so that we could pick up where we’d left off the night I fought a demon and Division went berserk.

  But she was gone. She wasn’t coming back and her kid, my brother’s kid, who I loved as if he’d been my own son, would never know love or heartache because she stole that from him. I rolled beneath angry punches, trying to lessen the impact, deflate the rage I felt toward her when I thought about what she’d done to Ethan. Despite all the good in her heart, she’d taken the coward’s way out and made her son pay the price as well.

  The air stirred like a soft breath against the back of my neck and I wiped my eyes. I could picture her below, in the graveyard where Mark lay, a shattered woman with large X-ing welts slashed across her back, her eyes black and lips blood red, whispering that all she ever wanted was to discover peace—to know it in her bones and feel it spreading through her heart.

  Mike moved to the piano, lost in his thoughts until I asked if I could use his phone. He pointed at the desk on the other side of the living room where an ancient rotary perched near the corner. I’d never known him to have a cell, and doubted he’d get up to speed with the rest of the world anytime soon because his days were occupied with god-knew-what, working out maybe, training, throwing knives, hunting criminals and making them pay a price that no one else had the skills or courage to take from them. After I’d healed from the knife wound he’d put in my chest, I’d asked him, both of us down by the river where we’d played as kids, “Do you want me to buy you a phone?” Even though I didn’t have the money, even though he did, he’d said, “I’ve had enough communication to last me a lifetime.”

  Sometimes I’d catch reruns of him acting in an old soap opera. I’d shake my head in wonder, unable to believe he’d done something so lame and cheesy, because he was brutal, straightforward, and believed in objectives. If he couldn’t strike you from one angle, he’d hit any that presented itself until the fatal one he wanted opened. But I realized that it said something about the depth and complexity of his character. Mike could fit any role needed.

  He hadn’t changed a thing in the manor since his mother died in Our Lady of Mercy, strapped to a bed because she couldn’t stop screaming or clawing at her eyes because the demons had shown her what her life amounted to. Mike took some comfort in that, and yet hated himself for it.

  I sat at the desk and dialed Kimberly LaPorte’s number, ready to tell her that I’d be in tomorrow because there was nothing else I could do. She answered immediately and asked where I was, said she tried to call my cell but it went directly to voice mail.

  “The battery died, so it’s charging,” I said. “I’m at a friend’s house.”

  “I’m at your place right now,” she said. “Do you have time to talk? Are you up to it?”

  I told her that if she took the road right by my house and drove up the hill she’d find me, then I hung up and scratched my arm, so tired suddenly I could barely move. I stood even though it hurt, thinking Kim just wanted to hear it from me—Tripper’s dead and Duncan’s gone, it’s not a joke, you’re not dreaming, you didn’t hear wrong—since she didn’t seem the type to beg false hope, and maybe they were all she had to turn to when the stress bore down on her.

  I cleared my throat. Mike stared at his hands balefully as if they’d let him down. I sat on the couch. I said, “Did you see the woman with the thread?”

  He nodded.

  “Do you think she killed that cop?”

  Mike frowned. “If she has threads with our names
on them we’re fucked. Is that what you’re hinting at?”

  The possibility hadn’t even occurred to me until he’d spoken it.

  Mike said, “What was your point? You want to hear that you’re not seeing things? She was there. The cop died. We shot Nutley and the kid because we had to, but the fog carried them away.” He raised his eyebrows and waited for me to answer.

  “Just making sure we experienced the same thing.” I cleared my throat again, wanting a drink but too exhausted to grab one. “They’re like Proserpine and One of Three of Seven. They exist.”

  “I think they exist more than we ever could.”

  Headlights slashed the window and glared off the grand piano. I forced myself up and walked to the front door. Kim was still dressed professionally, and I wondered if she’d finished up her work day before she’d found out what had happened. She had an easy smile that started in her eyes and worked its way to her mouth. She shut her car door and wiped tears away. I thought, They told her about Tripper, too, imagining her looking down on his body in some cold room as I’d had to do with April and Ethan. And I remembered how horrible that was, how every laugh you ever shared echoed hollowly and you cried and lashed at them to hang on but…

  She approached the steps with her hands stuffed in her jacket pockets, gaze on the manor, impressed like everyone was by its architecture. She reminded me of a child who lay awake at night, threatened by stillness. She shifted her weight from leg to leg as if no matter where or how she stood it hurt. I gave her a quick hug and asked, “Do you want a drink?”

  She nodded. I offered my hand and helped her up the steps. Inside, she marveled at dark walls, marble floors, the paintings in the hall and the piano and antique furniture in the living room. She said, “Your friend has quite the place.”

  Mike wasn’t around. He’d either gone to lie down or to work on a plan.

  I said, “It was the first house built in Division. Some relative of Mike’s built it in the 1800s.” I pointed to the sofa, said, “Have a seat.”