by David Haynes
It was easy enough to dodge. Phil was simply too slow and too drunk to be a real threat, and Wilson stepped to the side at the last minute. Courtney, standing behind Wilson, wasn’t so lucky.
Phil plowed into her like a train, knocking her off her feet, sending her skidding across the floor with the obese drunk on top of her. It was unexpected but as he turned, he saw Phil raise a fist and pile it into Courtney’s ribs. Only mark them where it won’t show, that was clearly a way of life for his ex-wife.
He took a step but Donovan was faster. He brought the pool cue down on Phil’s back like a whip. The wood splintered but didn’t break. He hit him again, this time across the neck. Phil rolled off Courtney, backing himself up against the pool table, using it as leverage to stand up.
Donovan was laughing. Actually laughing. Was he drunk?
He wasn’t done. He threw the pool cue at Phil and then charged into him, using his shoulder like a linebacker, driving the wind from the bigger man. Donovan’s cell phone skidded across the floor, stopping only when it wedged itself against the bar.
Phil brought a clubbing hand down on Donovan’s back. It sounded like a bass drum but Donovan seemed not to notice and brought a knee sharply up into Phil’s groin. He did it three times before Phil dropped to his knees, groaning.
The rage had gone now, only pain remained. Phil was huffing and puffing like a steam engine. Donovan was bent double, hands on knees, still smiling.
This was a pointless few minutes. Nothing had been achieved. It made Wilson angry. “You moron!” he said, walking toward Courtney but addressing Phil. “You stupid, fucking moron.”
He knelt beside her. “You okay?”
She nodded, tears running down her cheeks.
“Come on,” he said giving her a hand. “We’ll get you back home.”
“Moron!” Donovan shouted.
Wilson lifted his head just in time to see Donovan pull Phil’s head back with one hand then drive a fist into his nose. Blood sprayed everywhere.
Donovan laughed and did it again. This time there was a cracking sound, whether it was nose or fist Wilson didn’t know.
“John!” he shouted. “Enough!”
Donovan looked up briefly, his face covered in a fine aerosol of gore, his teeth bloody, then stood up and drove his knee into Phil’s face. It was with such force that the pool table shifted a couple of inches.
Wilson jumped up and grabbed his friend. “I said enough. He’s had enough. Can’t you see that?”
Donovan tensed against him. The look in his eyes as terrible as the broken cartilage on his cheek.
Phil muttered something, voice garbled through the ragged mass of jagged and unhinged teeth.
“What the hell’s got into you?” Wilson shouted.
Donovan leaned closer, his breath sour and hot. “Death,” he said, blood dripping from his lips. Their eyes locked and Wilson saw something that made his blood run cold. There was capacity for something more. Donovan looked down at Moody and smiled.
“You guys better get out of here,” Sonny shouted, running over. “If you’re lucky he won’t remember any of it.”
“What about the cops?” Wilson asked, finally able to look away from his friend.
Sonny shook his head. “I’ll put him on his feet, give him a drink and send him home. He won’t know any different.”
Wilson looked down at the crumpled man. He was still conscious. Maybe the booze had pickled his brain so much he didn’t know which way was up. He sometimes thought his own brain was in a similar state.
“I don’t know. We ought to get him to the hospital. He’s...”
“He’s fine.” Sonny knelt beside Phil and slapped him around the face. “Want some more beer, Phil?”
Phil nodded and said something unintelligible.
“See, he just wants a beer,” said Sonny.
Wilson grabbed Donovan whose rictus smile was truly horrible. He pushed him toward the door and gave his hand to Courtney. How much she’d seen, he didn’t know. He didn’t want to ask.
“Don’t forget his phone.” Sonny pointed at the foot of the bar.
Wilson picked it up and put it in his pocket. He gave Donovan another push. “Go on,” he said. “Just get out, John.”
Outside in the cool air Courtney shivered, wrapping her arms about her like a shield.
“Are you okay?” Wilson asked. “I’ll drive you to the nearest hospital. I don’t know how far...”
“It’s okay,” she said. “I’ve had worse.”
He looked into her eyes for a long few seconds. Yes, he thought, you’ve had a lot worse. His heart hurt for her.
Donovan put his arm around her. She shrugged it off. “No, don’t,” she said and then turned to Wilson. “Will you walk me across the street?”
“Of course,” he said.
“What’s wrong? What did I do?” Donovan asked. He sounded genuinely confused.
“Just go back to the hotel, John. I’ll be there as soon as I’ve taken Courtney back home.”
Donovan opened his mouth to speak. Wherever he’d been a few minutes before, he was back. He looked like the young lad who’d come to Wilson’s house years ago, looking for a job.
“I mean it, John. Just go.”
Donovan looked at Courtney. “I... err... I...” He turned and walked away. He looked confused.
“Come on,” said Wilson. “Let’s get you home.” He took one last look through the bar’s window. Phil was leaning against Sonny, walking back to the bar. He led Courtney across the deserted and silent street toward the diner.
“Never seen him like that before,” he said. It was as much to himself as it was to her.
20
Wilson made sure Courtney wasn’t just putting a brave face on things. He had a feeling she was pretty good at that. He gave her his cell number to call if she needed it. After two more attempts at trying to take her to the hospital, or at least allow Dr Hamilton to look at her, she shooed him out of her apartment. It was above the diner, and contained furniture that probably belonged to her mom but was spotless and smelled of cinnamon.
Back outside, he glanced over at Sonny’s. The neon sign flickered as it swung in the wind. A weak light limped onto the sidewalk from inside. No sign of the police. That was good. No sign of an ambulance either, that was even better. He stepped onto Main Street and crossed over, walking quickly toward the motel.
Phil Moody had come looking for a fight. Nothing could have altered that desire, that need in him to take out his frustration on someone. If it hadn’t been them, then Sonny would have no doubt taken the brunt of it, something he appeared to be used to. But custom was custom, and without Phil Moody, Sonny would be gone in a week let alone six months.
The guy was beaten by the first punch. A good clean blow that Wilson knew had rocked him. After that all Phil had left was pride and anger, and neither of those two things assisted a man where fighting was concerned. Both could be easily used against him.
He had never seen Donovan fight before. They had stood together when there was a chance it might go that way, but never before had he seen him hit someone. He never thought he would see the day when he hit someone when they were down and out, and vulnerable. That was another kind of person from the John Donovan he knew.
He crossed the Big Mill Motel’s empty parking lot. A single orange sodium light cast a weak and depressing hue over the cracked concrete. What happened tonight wasn’t Donovan, not the real John Donovan. It was the man who’d watched Richard Pace blow his brains out, it was the man who had watched a terminally ill man throw himself through a pane of glass and then insert a shard of glass into his eye. It was the same guy who had listened to the echo of an old lady’s bones being smashed to bits by a rusty chain in the cavernous mill.
He opened the door, expecting to see Donovan sitting on his bed awake, but the room was in darkness. A crumpled shadow outlined his sleeping form on the bed. Sleeping or passed out. They were very different animals.
In the harsh strip-light above the sink, he looked like the walking dead. His skin was waxy with the sickly color of stomach bile. The shower curtain was pulled back, revealing the whole bath. Nothing hiding in there. He splashed tepid water on his face and rubbed toothpaste around his gums with his finger. On the edge of the sink there were flowery spots of blood, turned pink by the water. The spots ran into each other like a gory tie-dye. There were dark spots too, almost black. He looked away. Blood washed off John’s fists. Phil Moody’s blood.
It was time to get out of this place; time to go back to Boothbay and sleep in their own beds. Hemlock didn’t have anything to offer and what it did was toxic. To both of them. Apart from the meatloaf, of course.
His pocket vibrated and then emitted a bing. Donovan’s cell was in his pocket.
He spat into the sink, dried his face and hands, and pulled out the cell. The screen showed the bathroom floor and his shoes. The camera was on and he had no idea how to turn it off. In the bottom right of the screen was a small square. Inside the square was the inside of Sonny’s bar, a figure slumped against a pool table. He pressed his thumb to the square and it grew, filling the screen. Behind him, the strip-light buzzed. He pressed play.
The scene was familiar enough, the viewpoint less so. A tangle of legs. One set belonging to Phil Moody, the other Donovan’s. Nothing shown above the waist. Muffled grunts and then the sharp movement of Donovan’s knee upwards. Twice more and then Phil Moody sliding down the thick leg of the pool table, the contorted expression of a man having had his balls mashed by a kneecap. Wilson winced for him.
Donovan’s thrift-shop boots and his lower legs stood beside Phil. The bar’s floorboards were dusty but giving perspective to Phil’s rapidly-blinking eyelids. Up and down, up and down, trying to clear some space in his beer-addled and bruised brain.
A second, two, three more passed and then the rest of Donovan appeared, slowly sliding down the camera lens. Looking directly at the camera.
Looking directly at the camera and smiling. His eyebrows raised and then a snarling chomp of his teeth. Blackness covered his face. No, not covered his face, crawled across it. Oozed across his eyes, nose and mouth like some hideous carnival mask. Only without features, just black. As if Donovan’s face didn’t exist anymore. As if he didn’t exist.
His fist was driven into Phil Moody’s nose. Bone pushed through the flesh and an aerosol of bloody matter sprayed in the air, so fine it stayed floating around Phil’s head. It might still be there for all Wilson knew.
The shadow-mask parts around Donovan’s mouth, just enough for Wilson to see … to see what? Teeth? No, there were none. There was just a hole, a never-ending drop into nothing. Just more blackness.
“Baphomet,” came out of the void, out of the place where Donovan’s mouth should be, but wasn’t anymore. The fist slammed into Phil’s face. But there was nowhere for his head to go. No way of lessening the blow. His head was piled into the sturdy, blockish leg of the pool table. Might as well be a slab of concrete behind him.
There was a muffled shout. Donovan looked to the camera and then stood up slowly before pulling his leg back and smashing it, yes, smashing it into Phil’s butcher’s-block of a face. It was no gesture to prove the victory. It was brutal. A life-extinguishing blow.
Wilson felt something shift in his chest. His heart was racing. Racing toward what? The finishing line?
“Baphomet,” he repeated, his finger hovering over the ‘Play again?’ question on the screen. Had he really heard it? Every other sound on the video was muted, unclear. But that? That was as clear as... as it had been in the hideous dream.
And Donovan’s mask of shadows? The cell had a lousy camera, that was all. It was all just an echo, some residual crap leftover from the dream. His heart and the temperature were both running. He touched his forehead. It felt cool. He pushed the cell back inside his pocket and walked to his bed. He would look at it again in the morning, they both would, when everything was clearer.
*
Black and gray swirled together in the morning sky, making a dismal attempt at a sundae. He vaguely recalled Donovan shuffling about in the room a while ago. How long ago he couldn’t say. It had still been dark though. He had drifted in and out of sleep since then.
He forced himself to look away from the sky and rolled over. It had held him in a sleepy thrall for what felt like hours.
“Jo...”
Donovan’s bed was empty, the sheets piled up against the wall in a sweaty ball. Wilson hadn’t heard him leave. Hopefully he’d gone to fetch coffee. He hoped Courtney wouldn’t be too hard on him about last night. He had been through a lot.
Somewhere in the midst of the dreamy half-sleep, he’d decided they were leaving this morning. It had been a mistake coming in the first place. This was nothing to do with them, literally not their business, and now Donovan was paying for it. They both were. Frances Pace had never been their responsibility.
He rolled out of bed and slid into his Levi’s, the bulk of Donovan’s cell a reminder of last night. He wouldn’t watch it again, at least not here in Hemlock. He didn’t want to see it again and anyway, he wasn’t sure his eyes or ears were being entirely honest with him.
No, they would drive out of town, the same way they came in. Maybe drop in at Sonny’s on the way out just to check on Phil. Then straight back to Boothbay and work on the Knucklehead in the workshop. Get Donovan thinking about something other than people killing themselves.
A siren wailed. It wasn’t the mill’s fire alarm, it was a police siren. A cold chill ran down Wilson’s back, making him shiver. He closed his eyes. Not another, please God not another.
He opened the door and watched the Sheriff’s cruiser flash past, then take a right at the intersection down toward the cookie-cutters and the Kennebec. It could be anything but Wilson already had a bad feeling. A cop car with sirens screaming and lights flashing at seven o’clock in the morning couldn’t mean Santa was coming early.
He looked up the street. No sign of Donovan. He closed the door again. Whatever Sheriff Taylor was going to, it was without him or John this time. Small mercy. A second siren, a different tone this time, screamed past the motel and rolled down the hill following the Sheriff.
The bad feeling in his stomach doubled in size and then tried to crawl up his throat and deposit itself on the carpet.
Where the hell was Donovan?
21
Cavendish listened to the siren and smiled. This time it wasn’t forced or coerced into painting his face, it appeared naturally. One of his teachers had once described his smile as a natural disaster. The more natural he tried to make his smile, the more of a disaster it was. At the time it had seemed desperately unfair comparing it to an earthquake or a tsunami but now it felt strangely apt.
He took a bite of his toast and followed it up with a mouthful of coffee. A second siren screeched through town, probably the ambulance. They had found him.
The trouble with people like Phil Moody was that they were too obvious. It wasn’t just his size either, although that made him hard to miss. No, the guy was sour in almost every part of his pathetic existence. He was an alcoholic, he ate fried food for breakfast, lunch and dinner, and he was always in such a foul mood that even if you didn’t see or smell him coming, you could feel his presence in the air. He didn’t like anyone.
But there were some positives. Well, one at least. They were easy to manipulate. Phil Moody was perpetually looking for someone to fall out with. Inside that pickled, thick head of his was a nasty little black seed that had fuck you running through the middle of it like a parasitical worm. It was his standby position. Fuck you.
The only thing Phil cared a damn about was beer. If you promised him enough beer, the se
ed would feel nurtured. In the short term at least. If you gave him beer and someone to fall out with, well, the guy was in seventh heaven. Bliss.
That was more or less what he’d given Phil last night. He had given him his heart’s desire. Someone to punch and something to drink. Or rather twenty dollars to buy the beer. The man had experienced a spiritual awakening. Albeit a brief one.
Of course, he hadn’t been quite so obvious with what he’d said to Phil.
What a surprise to see you, Phil, I just so happened to be taking my evening stroll and you just so happened to be arriving at Sonny’s. What a surprise! Oh and did you know the two guys sitting inside the bar were trying to buy up half of the town? I overheard one of them talking about knocking Sonny’s down and building themselves an office. Can you believe it, Phil? Our wonderful little town, without a single place where a man can buy himself a drink. I’d come in and join you for one, Phil, but you know how it is. Hey, now why don’t you take this and buy yourself a pitcher on me. Maybe you could ask those two gentlemen to be on their way while you’re at it. With the end of that boot of yours! Only joking! Must get on anyway. Enjoy your drink, Phil!
As easy as pie. Phil delivered to his own slice of heaven and a couple of fags shown the door. It hadn’t quite worked out like that though. Not that there was anything wrong with the way things worked out, but he’d rather not have got his own hands dirty.
Or bloody.
He didn’t think anyone had ever threatened to rip his tongue out before. Plenty of people had threatened to do all sorts to him in his time in the Marines. Mostly in Arabic, of which he understood very little, but you didn’t always need to understand the words to get the gist. The eyes told you an awful lot.
But never his tongue. He had brooded on those words for a while. Brooded on them while he watched the three of them walk across to Sonny’s, all happy and smiling. Even the little whore-bitch who tried to burn him. He wasn’t finished with her, nor would he have been if they hadn’t turned up. There was something about that John Donovan he really disliked. It wasn’t just a passing dislike or a whimsical hatred. No, there was something that went over and above common loathing there. Something almost sexual in intensity. He cringed and shoved his plate to the side. Just connecting that word to another man made him feel physically sick. It didn’t matter now anyway, Donovan would end up in custody before the end of the day.