“Sounds like quite the deal,” I called out. “Anyone get in on this who doesn’t have five grand?”
The henchman pistol-whipped the back of my head. I put my hands up, performing the actions of the wounded. My legs tensed beneath me.
“Ignore this heathen,” the moot continued, unfazed. “He is unworthy of the gift God has bestowed upon him. Embrace the darkness when it comes, it shall last merely a moment. And then...” the smile of a kindly Samaritan creased its face as it gestured to the wooden messiah “...you shall know the rapture of his righteous love.”
“Rapture?” I shouted. “That’s the grift?”
“I said!”
Another blow to my head.
“Be!”
Another wallop.
“Quiet!”
I pushed up with my legs. The knife resisted, its blade carving into me, sliding off a rib. I yanked myself left and fell free, dodging the next blow.
Off-balance, the henchman lurched forward into the pews. I grabbed the knife, now loosened in its berth, prying it free. Before the henchpriest could regain his footing I blundered toward him, knife out, an ample flap of me dangling loose beneath my arm. The blade met his chest as Marion’s barrel met mine.
He pulled the trigger twice as I plunged the knife in. I felt one of my lungs deflate. He fired once while he fell, once more while he bled out. I pried Marion from his grip as he died.
The organist was scrabbling for something beneath his robes. I put a bullet in his neck before he could draw. O’Shea managed two steps before I shot out its kneecap.
I climbed over the worshippers. Isabel’s head was chin to chest. I slapped her face. Her eyes fluttered.
“You’re too late,” O’Shea said. It’d propped itself up against the organist and was examining its lack of knee. “It’s over. It’s all over now.”
I pried her eyelids open with my fingertips. She pushed at my hands, moaning.
“Isabel, stay with me,” I said. My voice was thin, harsh. My one lung pushed harder. “Carmen wants you back. I’m here to take you home. Stay awake.”
“She’s already dead.”
I shook her shoulders. “Cora’s waiting for you, Isabel.” Saliva dribbled from her mouth. Her breathing shallowed.
I stood, reloading Marion as I strode to O’Shea. “Antidote?”
It shook its head. I plugged the bishop’s other kneecap. It took the violence quietly.
“Why?”
It sighed, picking at the new wound. “Because they want this existence. They crave it. They come here begging to be moot. Who am I to deny someone their fondest wish?”
“How many?”
“Hundreds. Thousands.” I shot it twice more in the chest.
“How many have come back?”
It dismissed the question with a weak wave of its hand. “Not that many. After they die, we leave. When we come back, any rebirths are gone, we clean up the leftovers and divide the cash. I give my share to the few bastards I’ve left around. I can at least do that.”
“Seeking absolution?”
“Absolution no longer exists. I could tell them this, but it would make no difference. They simply cannot accept the truth of it.”
“Truth?”
“That there is nothing beyond this world. No Heaven, no afterlife. No God.” It snorted a laugh. “After all I’ve done, all the people I hurt, I couldn’t even suffer the torments of a hell.”
I knew it was right. I had experienced the nothing, and returned. I had spent years outrunning the dark that awaited me.
I looked to Isabel. Her breathing had stilled.
“They’re so jealous,” O’Shea continued. “They think we’re God’s children. Every moot a messiah. It offends them. They can’t bear to be ignored. Not when they’re so deserving. So they seek me out, they make a payment for past sins, and I remove their pain.”
I sank into a pew and cradled my head in my hands.
“You fool them,” I said at last, furious. At Isabel. At O’Shea. At me. “No-one would willingly do this to themselves.” I fought to get the words out, refusing to believe the fundamental untruth of them.
O’Shea looked at me, philosophical. “I’m only an instrument. They’re just afraid to do it themselves. I give them a show and help them cross the river.”
The congregation died as I watched. One by one.
“Faith doesn’t move mountains, Detective. It just obscures the view.”
I checked my gun. Three bullets left. Thought things over.
“I hadn’t heard you’d died,” I said.
“I was shivved in the yard. Nasty business. After I returned, I played doornail. The prison didn’t want me, so the church dropped me off in Greytown. As I suspected they would. It didn’t take long to find gentlemen willing to fund my new church. Even less time to find clients.”
“And Nex?”
“Short for necrophilia. My own little joke.”
I stared at Isabel. Looked at her life. Wondered what she could have become.
Thought about Marion. About So and Jo.
“What now, Detective?”
I counted my bullets again.
“You won’t let me go unpunished, will you?”
I looked to the Bishop. Its eyes were pleading.
“I deserve punishment.”
I looked back to Isabel.
“You want to do it.”
I caressed my scars.
“End me.”
One for So.
“End me!”
One for Jo.
“I’m going to wait,” I decided. “Until something happens.”
I waited a long time.
#
I called Miss Lopez, told her I quit, Isabel’s trail had gone cold. I hung up when she asked for specifics.
I pass the days now shuffling through Greytown’s streets, gun by my side. Most moots avoid eye contact, lurch to the other side of the street. They’ve heard the stories; even if they haven’t, self-preservation demands the response.
I ignore them. If they are cognizant enough to avoid me, they’re plainly capable of making up their own deteriorating minds.
Once in a great while one will get it in its head to take me on. It’ll lumber up to the sidewalk beneath my Greytown apartment window and groan a threat, sometimes heave a brick ineffectually into the air.
It’s usually the new arrivals. They haven’t figured out yet what it means to be dead. They think me a vigilante. A sheriff no one elected in a town no-one wants to live in. I give them a chance to leave me alone. Then I let Marion speak for me.
Sometimes, they’re older moots, looking for a way out, knowing I’ll provide one. All they’d have to do is ask. But they believe it better to go in a blaze of glory than a mewling plea to end it all.
To moots, I am the avenging angel now. Or the nightmare of nightmares.
Same result either way.
Other days I can’t bring myself to face the grey. I stay in my apartment, waiting out existence, O’Shea’s brain set companionably beside me in its bowl. I fancy I can hear the man within shrieking into the void.
Neither of us deserve to escape our hells.
I stare at the wall. Feeling myself slowly rot away. Wishing it were quicker. Glad that it isn’t.
On the wall in front of me, two photos make up my world.
Sophia and Josephine: the two I couldn’t save.
Isabel: the one I did.
About the Author
Corey Redekop’s debut novel Shelf Monkey won Best Popular Fiction Novel at the 2008 Independent Book Publishers Awards and was declared one of the “Top 40 Novels of the Decade” by CBC Canada Reads. His follow-up novel Husk was shortlisted for the 2013 ReLit Award and chosen as one of the top books of the year by the editors of Amazon.ca and January Magazine. It was later released in a French translation as Mister Funk (Les Éditions XYZ Inc.) and as an audiobook (Audible).
His short stories have appeared in anthologies such as
The Exile Book of New Canadian Noir, Licence Expired: The Unauthorized James Bond, The Bestiary, Superhero Universe: Tesseracts Nineteen, and Those Who Make Us: Creature, Myth, and Monster Stories.
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