Currency of Souls

by Kealan Patrick Burke

  But I can’t ignore it. Can’t just leave. The clock might tell me it’s a new day, but Saturday night won’t end until all that’s come about because of it has been dealt with. Wintry’s alive, and still fighting. I’ve got a prisoner in the back. And I’ve still got too old pennies in my pocket from a loan I’m going to have to pay back whether I want to or not.

  In the time it takes me to get back in the truck, the sun has dragged its head up over the hills, sending streams of fire through the trees. The road’s become a latticework of red-orange light. I sit there for a moment, wishing I had the kind of brain that could appreciate such a scene, but it still feels the same as it has for as long as I can remember: Like a flashlight beam washing over corpses. It doesn’t help that one of my passengers stinks of barbecued flesh.

  “The hell are we doing here, Wintry?” I ask.

  “Watchin’ the sun.”

  It’s not what I meant, but I figure it’s as good an answer as any, so I let my hand slip away from the keys to my thigh, and I sit back, just watching that pumpkin colored light burning off the dark, chasing it underground, reflecting itself off windows that looked like dead eyes not twenty minutes ago.

  Brody snorts in his sleep. It’s almost mirthful, and as I reach down, fingers touching the cold metal of the keys dangling from the ignition, I catch a flurry of movement in the rearview and my seat is nudged from behind.

  In the mirror, Brody is suddenly a hell of a lot closer.

  Wintry’s looking at me, agonized expression deepening.

  I’m somewhat surprised to realize Brody’s no longer wearing the handcuffs, and that one of those newly liberated hands is holding something cold and sharp to my throat.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Hendricks tips the cup and spills what’s left of the cold tea onto the rug. Ordinarily he’s the kind of man who’d abhor such sloppiness. He’s always tried to keep a clean house, as hard as that’s been considering how long it has harbored sickness, and how many years the town has striven to shove its filth under his door. But none of that matters any longer, and there is a great sense of liberation in watching the muddy brown liquid darkening the rug. It signals the beginning and the end.

  He sets the cup on the mantel, and with quaking hands, reaches up until his fingers find the cold wood stock of the Winchester rifle. The fire, though all but dead, still warms his feet as he lifts the gun free of its brackets. It’s an old weapon, meant to spend its final days as an ornament, but today it will get a chance to live again, to blast the killing shot from a cartridge, and breathe the smell of gunpowder into the stale air of this old house.

  Hendricks lowers his arms, breeches the stock, his eyes moving to the couch, and the maroon stains on the towel crumpled there where the whore died. He feels a pang of regret that he couldn’t prevent her suffering, but then he thinks of Queenie, how she woke up and spun into an immediate panic-driven rage when he crept into the room an hour later, trying not to disturb her. She looked at him as if he’d come to rape her.

  Tears well in his eyes.

  He couldn’t save the whore.

  He hefts the rifle.

  But he can save his wife.

  With a shuddering sigh, he makes his way upstairs. The steps are thickly carpeted and so his ascent is a silent one. The wood is old but doesn’t creak, perhaps out of respect for his grim mission.

  The gun is loaded. It has always been loaded, sitting there above the fire, waiting, as if it’s known he would need it someday.

  Silly. Silly thoughts. He shakes his head and a tear trickles down his cheek. He has thought of other ways, other options, but all of them have meant Queenie will be taken away from him, to die as she would die here, in agony. And if they let her stay, what choice would he have but to enter her bedroom each and every morning, his heart shattering, hope fading, each and every time she looked at him in terror.

  Top step.

  The landing.

  He does not worry about visitors. It has been an unusually busy night, but no one will bother him now. Most people will be at church, he assumes, waiting for a priest who isn’t coming. But no one will come here, not in time to prevent what must happen here.

  He opens the bedroom door.

  Queenie is sitting up, eyes narrowed against the brilliant glow of morning sun through the windows. She raises a hand to shield her tired eyes so she can see him.

  “Bill?”

  It does her voice so well.

  Her eyes find the gun. The color drains from her face.

  His heart breaks and he levels the rifle at her quickly, before she can fool him into believing everything is all right, that this brief period of lucidity is the rule and not the exception. Before the parasite can use his love for her against him.

  “Bill…” Her voice wavers. She stiffens, gaze dropping to the Winchester’s double barrel stare. “What are you doing?”

  He eases back the hammer. “I won’t let it do this to you,” he says.

  “Please…” she sobs, scooting back until she’s pressed against the ornate mahogany headboard. “Please…don’t.”

  She raises her hand and it looks like a blood-drained spider, splayed for dissection.

  “I love you,” he tells her. “So much.”

  She wraps her arms around her head, her knees drawn up below her chin, as if she fears the roof might fall in.

  “So much,” Hendricks says and brings the rifle up to his shoulder, one eye closed to ensure his aim is accurate.

  “Oh God,” Queenie whimpers, and begins to pray, then drops her arm. Looks pleadingly at him. “Don’t. We can get help. You’re not—”

  Hendricks pulls the trigger.

  The blast deafens him as the barrel coughs fire. Through the plume of smoke he sees his wife rise up as if she’s going to leap from the bed. But just as quickly she falls and the face that looked at him with such alien terror is gone in a burst of crimson and gray. Blood and bone rains down around her. She settles on the bed, kneeling, propped up against the headboard, her arms twitching, and suddenly he is deathly afraid that the ruin above her neck will turn toward him.

  He is surprised to find that what has erupted from the addled shell of her skull is not black.

  He weeps, bites his lower lip hard enough to draw blood and closes his eyes. It hurts, the pain of what he’s done. It’s so much worse than what he imagined it would be, worse almost than having to look at his wife dying every day in this room, turned against him by the invader that made its home in her head, an invader that’s now splattered across the wall and can harm her no more.

  “There you go,” says a voice that barely filters through the ringing in Hendrick’s ears, and his eyes fly open.

  In front of him, between where he stands and the bed where his wife’s body still twitches, is an old man.

  Hendricks recognizes him, but that recognition makes his presence here, now, no less baffling. No less unwelcome.

  “What…?” he starts to say, but falls silent as Cadaver’s gnarled hand, the hand not holding that stubby little metal microphone to his throat, reaches out and forces him to lower the rifle so it’s pointing at the floor.

  Confusion becomes fear and desperation as Hendricks realizes the old man might attempt to stop him from finishing what needs to be done. He is not a murderer, no matter how this might look to anyone who doesn’t understand what he’s lived with. This isn’t a crime. He does not deserve to go to prison. Can’t go to prison. He intends to die, to join Queenie on the other side. There are no parasites in the afterlife. All that’s left to do is to reload the rifle and set it up so he can end his own miserable existence.

  Cadaver looks at him. “Damn shame that,” he says.

  Hendricks swallows, backs up a step, collides with the jamb, sidesteps and moves out into the hall. “She was sick. It was eating her brain. I had to do it.”

  “You’re a bit confused, friend,” Cadaver says, and follows him step for step. “Weren’t nothin’ wrong with
her.”

  “She was dying. She wasn’t right.”

  “The cancer’s in your head, Doc,” Cadaver tells him. “Care to come downstairs so I can show you all the envelopes you’ve been hidin’ from her? All the test results and hospital correspondence that testifies to what’s gone crooked in your brain?”

  “Get out of here,” Hendricks says, heat flushing across his cheeks. This is preposterous. He has never had much business with this man, and certainly hasn’t treated him. Why now he should break into his house and make such cruel and preposterous claims while his poor wife lies dead a few feet away is beyond him. He knows what those letters he keeps locked in the bureau say. He knows who the patient is and what the diagnosis was. Therefore, he knows Cadaver is lying. Thankfully, he has the means to do something about that right here in his hands. “Get out of my house and leave us alone.”

  “I will. In a moment,” Cadaver says, his voice an inhuman whisper. “Despite what you might be thinkin’ right now, I didn’t come here just to enlighten you.”

  “You have five seconds to leave.” To emphasize the threat, he raises the rifle.

  “You haven’t reloaded.”

  He’s right of course, but Hendricks stands his ground, does not lower the weapon. If it comes to it, there’s nothing to stop him from swinging the Winchester and crushing the old man’s skull. “What do you want?”

  “You’re a murderer now, Doc. And as such you’ve opened yourself up to certain obligations.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Cadaver glances over his shoulder, takes in the mess on the bed, clucks his tongue, then looks back to the doctor. “Call it an act of contrition.”

  “I want you out of here right now.”

  Cadaver reaches into the pocket of his coat and produces a set of keys. Hendricks recognizes them as the keys to his house and his Buick.

  “What are you doing with those?”

  “Nothin’,” Cadaver says and smiles. “You’re goin’ to drive.”

  “I’m not going anywhere.”

  The old man’s shoulders drop a little and his expression changes to one of regret. “I don’t enjoy this in the least, you know—”

  “Then leave.”

  “—But if I don’t do it, then the consequences for us all would be catastrophic.”

  “Get out of my fucking house.” Spittle flies from Hendricks’ lips. Terror worms its way through him. He has rehearsed this scenario a thousand times and not one of them had a mad old man standing in his way.

  Cadaver raises the keys between them. “Here’s how it goes. You drive, you kill a man, and you get to go back to what you were plannin’ to do before I rudely interrupted this very intimate execution.”

  “Kill a man? No.”

  “What difference will it make? You’ve killed once already today, and if you really do have the stones to kill yourself, no one’ll be able to make you answer for it.”

  Hendricks shakes his head. “Not in this life, maybe. But afterwards…”

  Cadaver reaches out a hand, pats him on the shoulder, ignoring the fact that the muzzle of the rifle is a half-inch from his chin. The doctor feels the cold hard cylinder of the old man’s microphone digging into his flesh. Then Cadaver withdraws his hand, presses the mike to his throat again. “I don’t offer many assurances, Doc, but one I can give you is that where you’re headed, you won’t have to answer for a damned thing.”

  “You can’t know that. No one could know that.” He swallows. “Who are you?” The rifle is slipping from his sweaty grip.

  Cadaver’s still holding the keys in his other hand. Now he gives them a little jingle, nods as if everything has been settled. “Time to…”

  * * *

  “Hit the road, Jack.” Brody’s got the knife to my throat, but he’s looking at Wintry, who isn’t moving. “C’mon, beat it. And I don’t think I need to tell you what I’ll do to your friend here if you try something, right?”

  Wintry still doesn’t move. I’m overcome by a peculiar sense of deja vu, then recall the standoff back at Eddie’s, how Brody kept barking commands at Wintry, which Wintry disregarded in his attempts to help the girl. I’m hoping to hell he doesn’t try that trick again. Chances are it’ll only get me killed first before the kid turns the knife to him, and though he looked fired up and capable of anything back in that field, Wintry doesn’t look like he could bat away a fly right now.

  “Just…take it easy.” I raise my hands so Brody can see I’m not about to try anything. “You don’t need to do this.”

  “Well, I appreciate the advice, Sheriff. Really. But if it’s all the same to you, I think I’m probably the most qualified of the three of us to decide what I need, don’t you think?” He looks back to Wintry. “The fire cook your fucking eardrums too? I said get the hell out.”

  “He’s hurt bad, kid. We need to get him some help.”

  “My heart bleeds.”

  “He’s also the reason you’re not dead.”

  “Which is the only reason I’m letting him out here. Now for the last time, big guy, move!”

  Only Wintry’s eyes obey. He looks at me. Apology and regret swim like rockfish through the pools of his pain, and with excruciating slowness, he reaches for the door release.

  “It’s all right,” I mutter. “It’s going to be fine.”

  “That’s right,” Brody adds. “Everything’s going to be peachy if we all do as I say.”

  “Hey,” I call after Wintry as he eases himself out of the truck, his legs wobbling as he looks back at me. I lick my lips. “Name that tune.”

  He nods, gives me a flicker of a smile. “Good luck with that.”

  “The hell does that mean?” Brody asks, annoyed, and the blade digs a little deeper into the flesh at my throat.

  “An old joke. Can you ease off a bit with the knife, kid? I’m not going anywhere, trust me.”

  “Trust you? Trust the guy that psycho priest said was supposed to kill me? The guy who left me with The Man with the Flaming Hands and buried my girl in a shallow grave behind a dive bar? Yeah, shit, Sheriff, we’re the next best thing to pals, you and me. Let’s not even start in on the whole you being a cop thing.”

  “Just listen.”

  “Go right ahead.”

  “I have no interest in turning you in.”

  He scoffs. “That so? Jeez, the handcuffs might not have been the best way to show that.”

  “I did, sure. But not anymore. All I care about now is getting to my son in time to help him. He’s in trouble.”

  “That doesn’t surprise me. Guy likes to ventilate skulls that much is bound to get his ass handed to him sooner or later. Hell, I know what that’s like. I’ll be lucky to live to see the Mexican border, and I’m all right with that. But what I can tell you right now is that I’m sure as shit not going to be run down in a backwater hole like this. So I’m taking your truck, Sheriff, and whether or not I leave you as a corpse in the dust all depends on what you do in the next five minutes.”

  “You can go. I won’t stop you. I give you my word on that.”

  “Good.”

  “But you’re not taking the truck.”

  “Say again?”

  “I need it. It’s the only way I can get to Kyle.”

  “Yeah well, that’s touching as all hell but you’re not going to be in much shape to do anything for the little prick if your head’s no longer attached.”

  Our eyes meet in the mirror. Both of us are sweating, for different reasons. He’s getting ready to kill me; I’m getting ready to die.

  “Take the truck,” I suggest then. “Just take me with you as far as Hill’s house. After that you can get gone and you’ll never hear from me again.”

  “No dice.”

  “Why the hell not?”

  “Because I don’t like you.” The blade pins my Adam’s apple in place, biting the flesh there, drawing blood I can feel trickling down into my shirt.

  “We did everything we c
ould for your girl.” I’m hoping shifting the focus of the conversation might buy me some time. That’s not something I was trained to do; it’s just plain old common sense.

  “It wasn’t enough.”

  “Hey, you brought her here. If you hadn’t—”

  “Don’t feed me that bullshit. We were here tonight because we were supposed to be here. I don’t much like the idea of not being in control of what I do, but that’s pretty much tough titty right now, right? Whatever juju you and your friends were doing up in that bar, it was what decided where we’d be, who would die and…” He shakes his head. “I’m getting out of here now.”

  Trying to grab hold of a coherent thought right now is like to trying to find a licorice whip in a bucket of snakes, so I quit trying and let myself relax. He’s not getting the truck; that much I’m sure of. Everything else is up in the air, so I decide I’m going to end this, right after I ask him something that’s been on my mind since last night. “Did you kill Eleanor Cobb on purpose?”

  “I didn’t kill her at all.”

  “How’s that?”

  “She came at us. Almost as if she was sitting there around that corner, engine idling, waiting for the first sign of headlights coming in the opposite direction so she could plow into them. Into us. Crazy old bitch.”

  No, I think and close my eyes. Not crazy. Lost. Stuck with a husband who grew older every time he took someone else’s pain away, a man afraid to love her too much because he was going to die soon, whether because of his gift, or because of his sins and Hill’s regulating, it didn’t matter. She was going to lose him soon, and both of them knew it. Hell, everyone knew it. So she went first, and he followed.

  “I have a favor to ask.”