by Weston Ochse
He’d been allowed to sit inside the recessed doorway a few times to catch a moment’s slumber. But besides the bathroom, he wouldn’t go any farther into the house. The wardens seemed to understand and smiled patiently at his fear, as if they’d seen it all before. They fed him too—energy bars and electrolyte drinks measured out through the day to keep him from getting seriously hungry.
The others residents seemed to be in the same situation.
Ralph whispered to his dead partner, John Henry Watson, thinking his secret life was safe, but to the people of the house, nothing was secret.
Polo wept inconsolably, his wife almost gone except for a few strains of an old Spanish song.
Theopolis trudged around like he didn’t care about anyone but himself. He didn’t really care about Lashondra, but the boy was too scared to leave. Kanga believed the boy thought the spirit of his dead girlfriend would follow him if he left, so he stayed and waited until the house did what her own knife had failed to do—silence her forever.
Mattie, Figuero and Johanna had all gone home, as had the three crazy sisters. The latter he was more than happy to see gone. They were trouble verging on evil. They made him nervous and he hated to hear them talk.
The nature of the halfway house, now that Kanga had unlocked his ability to communicate, was that spiritual conversations were broadcast to everyone. Just as his private moments with Laurie were heard by the others, so were their moments heard by him. With the three sisters, he’d heard their brother begging them to leave him alone the entire time they were there. He wanted to be left in peace, which was the whole reason he’d killed himself. But the sisters were malicious and patient in that special way only tormentors can be. Evidently their brother had sexually abused them when they were children. They’d waited thirty years, and then tracked him down to the docks where he’d worked. One day he was an employed longshoreman with money and possessions and prestige in the union, the next he was held captive inside a shipping container buried in the backyard of his home and fed through a tube in the ground. This lasted twenty years until his recent death, when he’d finally succeeded in killing himself by drinking a stash of stored urine.
But they wouldn’t let it go. They’d known about the house and the curse, and they’d looked forward to torturing his soul. So while everyone else was busy grieving with their loved ones, the three sisters were celebrating each moment of continued torture until the house finally consumed every last vestige of their brother.
Which was also happening to Laurie.
But what could he do?
Kanga accepted that there was magic at work. He suspected that it probably had something to do with the altar with the fifty gallon drum with the bloody cross painted on it. But he was just a surfer and a bum, and not much of a father. All he could do was be here with her, talk to her like she was in a hospital bed withering away to nothing and him sitting beside her, her hand in his, as he told her stories.
“Tell me again about how you met Momma,” she said.
And so he told her. Walking a figure eight, his back bowed, his face pressed to the sky, he described her mother and the way the sun had caught the droplets of water in the long black hair, miniature prisms of light winking, as the earth turned that morning so long ago.
* * *
The cops had an APB on Lucy so Bobby arranged to meet him at the Lighthouse Deli. They sat in a booth near the back door, so if a black-and-white pulled up, Lucy would be able to walk out without anyone the wiser.
Lucy’s face was puffy from lack of sleep. His eyes were red and visibly irritated, set within dark shadows. His left arm was bandaged.
“What’d you do? Drink all night?” Bobby asked.
“I wish. More like took care of things.”
Bobby already knew about the battle on Cabrillo. He also knew about the Angels who’d fallen. According to Manolo, Lucy had gone to each of their homes and had spoken with mothers and fathers and wives and lovers, giving his personal condolences. It had taken him all night, but he’d managed to stay one step ahead of the cops who were looking for him. Captain Fiesler was pissed about the turn of events. Whatever benefit of the doubt Lucy had earned through the years had been crushed in the events of last night. She’d sent out an APB, and if not for an old retired cop who’d been monitoring the airwaves, Lucy might have been picked up already.
Bobby waited for Lucy to order a Jamaican jerked lamb omelet before he said anything. “What now?”
Lucy shrugged. “I can’t show my face around here for a while. I don’t want to end up back in county.”
A tall Brazilian waitress brought Lucy a bottle of Visine. He leaned his head back and squeezed until he was crying chemical tears. When the bottle was empty, he tossed it on the table.
“What about Kanga? What about Laurie?” Bobby asked.
“What about them?”
“They say that there’s a spell on the halfway house. Kanga believes it. All those other people believe it. I don’t know what to believe, but I’d feel horrible if it were real and I had the chance to do something about it and didn’t.”
Lucy stared out the window at a black-and-white that patrolled slowly down the street. He shifted slightly in his seat, angling for the back door in case the cop car stopped, but it drove on.
“Bet you think that’s crazy,” Bobby offered with a weak grin.
Lucy shook his head and presented a look that couldn’t be more serious. “Not so crazy.”
“What?”
“There’s something to what you say. My grandmother has some of the magic, you know. Not much, just a little. Nothing more than reading people’s thoughts and making things grow.”
Lucy sipped at his coffee as Bobby remembered the woman pointing at him and sending him into a fit. That in turn reminded Bobby that he should take a Topomax, but he’d left the bottle down at the beach. Lot of good it did him there.
When Lucy finished his coffee, he continued. “She says there’s a spell and there is magic. She told me about the Bruja who cursed the land and uses the souls of the dead to power the curse.”
“But that’s all bullshit, right. Something about Japanese men slitting the throat of her daughter.”
“Not just Japanese men, but soldiers when they attacked Los Angeles.”
“The Japanese never attacked the mainland.”
“What do you think those footprints are about? Just because you didn’t read it in school, doesn’t mean it didn’t happen, Bobby Dupree.”
Bobby laughed but abruptly stopped when he saw that Lucy wasn’t joking. “There are not Japanese soldiers upside down under the prints.” He shook his head. “I refuse to believe that.”
“Refuse all you want, but we’re going to dig them up and find out once and for all.”
Bobby stared at Lucy for a long time. He’d always afforded the gang leader an immense amount of respect. Not only did Lucy wear his authority like an invisible robe, but he was fair and just and had everything in a leader that Bobby liked. If Bobby had lived in San Pedro he’d have been an Angel, of that he had no doubt. To hear Lucy voice his belief in the unbelievable crystallized the possibility of what Bobby had just a moment ago thought impossible.
“When are we going to do this?” he whispered.
“Tonight.”
Bobby licked his lips. “What happens if we find upside-down Japanese men?”
“Then we burn them and then burn down the fucking halfway house. Whatever the magic was meant to be, it’s become evil. I can’t have it eating the souls of my Angels. Not Split. Not Mojo. Not Laurie. None of them!”
The waitress returned with their plates. She set them in front of the two men, along with buttered bread and a bottle of ketchup for the home fries. She left for a moment, then returned with a pot of coffee and refilled their cups. It wasn’t until she’d left and they’d decimated most of their meal that Bobby spoke.
“What about the wardens? I bet they’ll have something to say about that.”
“I bet they will.”
As Bobby ate, he wondered if his journey to Los Angeles had been for this. To defeat a long dead witch, rid a community of a curse, and free the soul of the damned was something right out of a comic book. He’d seen the Fantastic Four, the Defenders, the Avengers and the X-men all fight similar battles between the pages of his comics. Bobby had always thought that coming to Los Angeles was to find out his heritage, but maybe it was more than that. Maybe he’d been pulled here. Bobby could have settled anywhere in Los Angeles. The metro area had fourteen million people. So why had he chosen a backwards, hidden place like San Pedro to live?
Was it destiny, just like in his comics?
He watched Lucy eat and pondered this. Something he’d done his whole life was compare real people to comic book characters. He couldn’t help it. It came automatically. He’d never tell anyone because they wouldn’t understand. They’d think it was a childish thing, not realizing the maturity of the characters in comics and how they reflected modern society. He’d tried to keep from doing that while in San Pedro, but his traitorous mind worked at it anyway.
While Kanga reminded Bobby of the Silver Surfer, the gangbanger reminded Bobby of Namor. Not in appearance, because the immense, overweight size of Lucy was far removed from the svelte, underwater muscle builder of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, and especially Sal LaRocca. No, it definitely wasn’t the look. What solidified the comparison for Bobby was the stoicism and the responsibility Lucy carried with him, as if those values were the rock of Sisyphus that could never be put away, that the gang leader was cursed to push up an endless hill. Like Namor, Lucy had to look out for people, and the task weighed heavily on him. Namor was a tragic character, much like Ben Grimm. But Namor was lonelier. He had no one to talk to. No one to whom he could relate his feelings.
Was that who Bobby was? Someone for Lucy to talk to outside of his crew? Of course. Bobby had become so enamored that he’d forgotten that Lucy thought of Bobby as an equal. They had a friendship different than anyone else. After all, they were about to save the world.
As they finished in silence, Bobby remembered when Namor had battled the Fantastic Four and won. He’d withstood the full firepower of Johnny Storm, went mano-a-mano with The Thing, shattered the Invisible Woman’s force fields and turned Reed Richards into the world’s largest rubber band. People might never have heard of the Prince of the Sea, but that didn’t make him any less powerful.
Chapter 30
Three in the afternoon saw them all in one-armed Polo’s van. It wasn’t a comfortable ride, but they were trying to keep a low profile. Inside were Lucy, Trujillo, Manolo, Blockbuster, Bobby, two Angels Bobby didn’t know, and one-armed Polo. Polo had just come from the halfway house where he said his wife had finally stopped talking. Bobby and Lucy had exchanged knowing looks.
The day had turned gray. An offshore storm huddled just past the breakers. Catalina Island was hidden. Whitecaps tipped the waves. Wind blew hard enough to toss the fronds of the palms like a cheerleader’s pom-poms.
When they pulled to the curb near Jap’s Cove, Vincent was waiting for them, dressed in a dark running suit. Bobby had called him earlier, then told Lucy. At first the gang leader had been pissed, but after Bobby explained the complex relationship between Kanga and Marley, he’d acquiesced and allowed the man’s participation.
Still, it didn’t mean that Lucy had to like it. When he’d seen the teardrops beneath the eye, he’d made sure to have a private word with Trujillo. Bobby couldn’t hear their conversation, but he was sure it had to do with watching Vincent closely and making sure he didn’t do anything funny.
They all got out of the van except Polo, who was still disconsolate from the death of his wife and the loss of her soul. Lucy gave him a cell phone and ordered him to stay behind the wheel and be lookout. “If anyone as much as farts in our direction, press this button and let us know.”
Then Bobby introduced Vincent. After a few tight greetings, everyone agreed to get this over with while there was still light. Trujillo sent one of the nameless Angels down the path to discourage anyone from using it until their task was complete.
Five minutes later, with shovels in hand, they stood over the six sets of footprints. They appeared to be made from some type of dark mineral. Bobby had once touched them and jerked his hand away when he’d felt a strange warmth. Kanga had explained it by saying the dark rock had absorbed the sun’s rays. At the time it had seemed logical. Yet the footprints had always bothered him. Not only did they have ridges as if they were the bottoms of boots, but they were cast as if six men had been walking down the trail. It would have made more sense that if these footprints had been cast and then set in the path, they would have been placed side-by-side. That the ridges were facing up was a detail he was surprised most people missed.
Lucy finally spoke. “What we’re about to do has never been done before. If Bobby and I are right, then there are people attached to these prints.” He and the rest of the Angels crossed themselves. “We’ll find out soon enough. All I ask is that you stay cool. No bolting at the first sign of freaky dead things. No pissing in your pants. All that I ask is that you suck it up and help us get through this excavation, because if there are Japanese soldiers, we have an even bigger problem to take care of when we’re done.”
All eyes stared at the prints.
“Let’s get on with it,” Bobby said. He brought down the shovel and scored the hard-packed earth.
The rest joined in, three on one side, four on the other. The earth was hard as rock. Bobby had to chip away at the first few inches with the sharp edge of the shovel before he could begin hauling away the dirt.
Manolo cursed as his shovel slipped and scraped across a footprint. Everyone paused for a long breath to see if anything would happen. When nothing did, they resumed their picking, each digger keeping a fair distance from the prints.
Blockbuster and Lucy worked right across from Bobby and he couldn’t help but overhear their whispered conversation.
“When I saw all the shovels and the look on Trujillo’s face, I thought you were going to kill me, Lucy.”
“That’s stupid. I thought it was obvious we were digging up upside-down Japanese.”
“I didn’t believe it. I thought you guys were just fucking with me.”
“So why’d you come?”
“Because you ordered me to, Lucy. I was stuck between a rock and a hard place and had to find my own way out of it.”
They dug for a while before Lucy responded. “You can’t pick your relatives.”
“Especially your in-laws. My wife’s cousin’s husband is in MS 13. It didn’t take them long to make the connection from her to me.”
“So when you disappeared...”
“I was getting her out of the city. We have friends in Chula Vista and I took my wife there. She’ll be safe, at least until things die down.”
“You should have told me this before,” Lucy said.
“I thought you’d be mad.”
“Why? Did you do anything?”
“No. They wanted me to, but I didn’t do anything.”
“Some people think you got Split killed.”
Blockbuster choked. “How could I have done that? We were best friends. I would have died for him.”
“That’s what I thought.”
“You put me on the roof with Rafa to keep an eye on me, didn’t you?”
“I did. There were too many questions and not enough time to wait for the answers.”
“I’m an Angel, Lucy. An Angel first and last. Nothing will ever change that.”
“Good. We’re glad to have you back.”
“I never left.”
A minute later, Manolo jerked away. He dropped his shovel and fell to his knees. Crossing himself, he whispered over and over, “Jesús Cristo!”
It didn’t take long for all eyes to take in the target of Manolo’s fear, the pointed edge of his shovel that glistened wetly in the after
noon light. What looked like oil could have been anything. Dr. Pepper. Baby lotion.
Blood.
Each of them seemed as extraordinarily out of place as the other, but the mind was drawn to the possibility of the last, and the realization that as clumsy as Manolo was, that’s what it had to be.
“I guess that answers our question,” Bobby muttered.
“Come on. Dig you pringao motherfuckers. We knew it was going to be this way so stop acting all surprised.”
With that Lucy began digging with renewed vigor. The rest followed suit, as did Bobby, but he couldn’t help but notice the continual looks Lucy gave Manolo’s shovel. Blood. It meant they were alive, which meant they were really there. Bobby was unable to suppress a shudder that shook him from his ankles to the worried look in his eyes.
Vincent and Trujillo, who were working on the set of prints in the front, were the first to uncover an ankle. By working on either side of the footprints, they’d managed to scrape away dirt without hurting the body. Both men were on their knees, grasping their shovels near the blade for better control. Before them were two feet encased in rotting leather. Laces fell to dust as they no longer had the dirt to hold them in place. Gray leggings like gauze served as socks. Here and there skin showed through the rotted fabric, the protrusion of the ankle bone most recognizable.
Bobby put aside his shovel and knelt next to Vincent. They exchanged a hollow look, then stared again at the ankles sticking out of the small excavation in the earth. Surfers, fisherman, romantic couples and people of all walks of life had trod across these prints for more than sixty years, never once thinking there was anything more to them than plaster and concrete.
Lucy cleared his throat. “Let’s concentrate on this one. Try not to cut it up too badly. We don’t know what we’re going to find when we get to the...you know.”