Currency of Souls

by Kealan Patrick Burke

  Words. That’s all they are. More words.

  I close the space between us with one lunge, and insane animal sounds fill the hall, like there’s a pack of crazed starving jackals pouring down the stairs. Takes me a moment, but as soon as my hands find Cadaver’s coat, and then his neck, I realize that sound is coming from me. Spit flies from my lips into the old man’s face, flecks of foam stippling his sallow cheeks, and still, still he doesn’t look threatened, and that refusal to be afraid, to at least pretend I have a hope of ending all of this by ending him, is going to drain the fight from me if I don’t do what I need to do and fast.

  “Bring him back,” I snarl, grunting with the effort of trying to strangle a man whose throat is mostly metal. He shakes when I throttle him, but his eyes, one living, one dead, stare at me with aggravating calm, his hands by his sides.

  “Bring him back.”

  “And what will you do for me?” he whispers.

  “Just bring back my son.”

  He mouths the words, “I can’t,” and then the bastard smiles, adds a silent, “I won’t” to it and my hands fly from his throat to his face, to those eyes. He jerks back, and somewhere inside me I’m celebrating the first reaction I’ve gotten from him, but I’m too focused, to driven to rejoice for long. His skin is cold—but not cold enough to indicate he’s already dead and therefore can’t be killed—and my hands brace his face, thumbs finding his eyes.

  “If you won’t fix it,” I growl at him. “You won’t ever again see what you’ve done to people.” And as if I’m pressing them into fruit to test for ripeness, I let my thumbs sink into his wrinkled sockets, into the too dry but soft orbs of his eyes.

  He doesn’t make a sound, but he’s beginning to sag. The feeling of victory increases, filling me with cold fire, igniting some part of me that’s been buried for far too long, the part of me that knew once upon a time how to make others pay for their sins.

  And goddamn it, I’m not stopping until someone has paid.

  Cadaver’s legs buckle beneath him. He’s kneeling, arms still by his sides, face still cradled in my hands, a queer hissing noise coming from the box in his throat. That little microphone clatters to the floor.

  “Fight me,” I command him, because I want him to. I want him to fight for his life like everyone in Milestone has had to do because they were too blind to see it when it deserted them.

  He gasps as his eyes give way beneath my thumbs. I increase my grip, letting them sink farther, drilling toward his brain, or whatever ugliness fills his rotten skull. Even without his eyes, he could be dangerous.

  Sweat trickles down between my shoulder blades.

  Cadaver mouths something as watery blood streams down his face, but I can only feel his lips move against the heel of my palm now. Dry and dusty, like the wings of a moth. I lean close. “Fix it.” It can’t be this easy. But it seems it is. Three years being governed by an old man and a lunatic priest and they were both made of flesh and blood at the back of it all. What utter fools we’ve been.

  Cadaver, who hasn’t struggled from the beginning of this, gasps one more time and I feel his weight pulling away from me, his body headed for a resting place in the corner by the door.

  Milky fluid squirts and reflexively, my grip loosens. There’s a gruesome squelch as my thumbs slide free of the man’s eye sockets. He falls back, legs folded beneath him, his skull thudding against the hall wall.

  He’s still smiling.

  I wipe my hands on my pants, and stand over him. The fresh air drifting through the open door cools the sweat on my brow but I’m shaking so hard I’m afraid it will shake me to pieces. My guts seem about to escape through my throat. They’re headed off by desperation. “How do I make this stop? How do I get him back?”

  He gives the smallest little shake of his head.

  “Goddamn it, tell me or I’ll carry you out of here in a basket.”

  He does, but I have to bend low to hear the words. “It wouldn’t interest you,” he says.

  “What wouldn’t?”

  The fist he brings up is trembling, and for a moment he looks like an old man about to waggle it at some pesky kids who’ve left a flaming bag full of dog turds on his stoop. But then a twig-like finger springs free and bends toward him, indicating he wants me to come closer.

  I hesitate, and in that hallway where the light is hesitating too, time passes unmeasured by the fall of the old bastard’s coins. I hunker down, knees crackling, my gut straining against my belt.

  “Tell me what to do.”

  With that maddening smile still mangling his lips, he brings his head close and whispers in my ear. “You have to give me what I want.”

  * * *

  Wintry’s been near-death since the fire, but in Milestone, even if you don’t have an old man’s pennies in your pocket, you can draw the time out just enough to get your business done. I’ve been doing it for too many years to count, and Wintry’s doing it now.

  With his last reserves of strength, he leans against the doorjamb, awaiting my word. He says nothing, offers no condolences, asks no questions, just stands there, eyes narrowed against the gnawing pain, watching as I return from the kitchen, a bread knife clutched in one hand. When I ask for his help in cutting Kyle down, he dutifully steps over the threshold where Cadaver is playing possum, and accompanies me upstairs.

  My boy is as I found him, though he’s stopped swinging, his shadow like a painted thing on the polished floor. The wounds mask the emotion on Wintry’s face as he supports Kyle’s legs while I drag the bed away from the wall and far enough into the middle of the room to allow me to mount it and reach the noose. There is little give in the mattress, though I can feel the hard springs pressing through. The rope has been looped three times around one of the rafters. It won’t be hard to cut and the blade is sure.

  “Lift him,” I instruct. Wintry does. The sound of his breathing is like a steam train leaving the station.

  Kyle is turned away from me, and I’m thankful for that. All I can see is the back of his head, the dark unruly hair. I can’t remember the last time I touched it, but I won’t touch it now. Later, maybe, when Wintry’s gone.

  I begin to saw at the rope, tears or sweat running down my face, I can’t tell which.

  The first loop snaps with a labored groan.

  Then the second. When the third gives way the boy is free, and falling, but this time it is not a noose that catches him, but Wintry, whose eyes now seem to contain an emotion I have never seen in them before. It’s the same look he once drew from me whenever Flo lavished attention on him.

  Envy.

  And it’s directed at the boy cradled in his arms.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Wintry carries the boy downstairs. He goes slowly because of the pain, and because he doesn’t want to drop the boy. Doesn’t want the Sheriff to have to try to hide his mourning any more than he’s already doing.

  So he takes the steps easy. Kyle isn’t heavy. It’s like carrying a baby, and right now Wintry wishes he knew magic, or had the power of healing, because he’d bring that kid back for the Sheriff lickety-split. But he doesn’t know magic, and he doesn’t have Cobb’s power to heal. If he did, he’d surely use it on himself, and make the awful burning go away.

  Though the stairs seems to go on forever, it has an end, and when Wintry reaches it, it feels like he’s just come down off the mountain he calls home—used to call home—into the valley.

  He stands there for a moment, ignoring the raging fire in his arms and the terrible pain from the muscles beneath, and he pictures Flo, who might walk in that door any second, smiling, delighting in his surprise. Just like the night he asked if he could walk her home and she agreed, except it was his home he walked her to. Just like she surprised him by refusing a drink, or anything but the short walk to the cot in the corner. Just like she surprised him by weeping all the way through their lovemaking, then asking him to marry her afterward. And sure, Wintry was no fool, he’d heard the
stories, heard that she’d killed her husband, but at that moment it didn’t matter. He’d said yes, and in the morning, when he watched her leave, watched her until she had descended the mountain and was little more than a speck, he decided that if she did kill her man, he must have deserved it. And maybe he would too, but he could think of worse ways to die than at the hands of the woman he loved.

  Burning, for example.

  Grimacing, he turns to look at the Sheriff, whose face is almost the same shade as his son’s, and nods. For a moment it doesn’t seem as if the man understands what Wintry’s trying to tell him, so he adds, “Take him.”

  The Sheriff reaches out with the kind of look a man not used to holding babies might have when presented with one. But he takes his son in his arms, anguish rippling across his face, and brings the boy close to his chest.

  “Let’s go,” he says, as firmly as a voice broken by tears will allow him.

  But Wintry doesn’t move. Instead he glances down into the corner by the door, where the man he wants to see, the man he came here to see is still sitting.

  “Just a sec,” he says to Tom, and leans over the man with no eyes.

  “He’s gone,” the Sheriff says quietly, and there’s a certainty to his voice that only the man who killed him can have.

  “He welshed then,” Wintry murmurs. “Didn’t do what he promised he’d do.”

  “If I were you I wouldn’t be surprised. The devil doesn’t keep his promises.”

  Wintry straightens, a hard black knot of bitterness caught in his throat. With a sigh, he leads the way out into the sunshine, still taking it slow out of respect for Sheriff Tom’s grief. It ain’t fair. Ain’t fair at all. He’s real sorry for Tom, that’s for sure, but he’s sorry for himself too and impatient to be done with it all.

  It feels like hours before they reach the end of the path, and here they stop.

  “Thanks,” the Sheriff says. “For…” He shakes his head, brings the boy’s head close to his chest with one grubby, bloodstained hand. His eyes are filled with the kind of agony Wintry knows all too well.

  Sheriff Tom blinks, as if to dismiss further conversation, or acknowledgment of his gratitude, and moves around the front of the truck, to where the sun through the overhanging leaves makes dancing patterns on the road, and he motions for Wintry to open the side door. Kyle’s head begins to turn, as if he wants to see what Wintry’s up to, or where he’s going to be stowed, and the Sheriff gently puts a hand on the boy’s chin, directs his gaze back to the gold star on his father’s uniform. The light breeze ruffles the boy’s hair, making him seem alive. But anyone who might come along this road need only look at Sheriff Tom’s face to know the truth about the situation.

  And then the sound of an engine getting closer tells Wintry that someone is coming along. He hopes, for the Sheriff’s sake, that whoever it is doesn’t stop to offer help, or ask questions. But then, this is Milestone, and people rarely do. Can’t rightly be afraid of death if you’ve never had to look at it, which is why most folks in this town don’t look anywhere but inside themselves.

  “Wintry…”

  It’s Wintry’s turn to apologize for being distracted by the car. “Car comin’,” he says, and sets about opening the door for Tom. “We best hurry ourselves outta the road.”

  He feels a cold lance in his side at the thought that maybe the kid—Brody—managed to get his hands on a car and is racing to put them out of their misery once and for all. Wintry wouldn’t mind, but he figures that’s more than the Sheriff deserves.

  “Best hurry,” he says again.

  The sound of the car grows louder. Should be just past the bend now, and it’s coming real fast. Wintry’s hand is on the door, on the handle, and has it cracked, just a little, when the engine roars, making him turn to look once more.

  It’s a red Buick. He recognizes it as Doctor Hendricks car, and as it gets closer, still going way too fast, sunlight flashing across the windshield, Wintry sees that he was right. There, hunched behind the wheel, is the doctor himself.

  “It’s the Doc,” he tells Tom. “But I don’t think—”

  Even from back here, Wintry realizes two things: Hendricks either doesn’t see them, or doesn’t care. Whatever the case, he’s not stopping. And in a matter of seconds, the men standing in the way are going to be road kill.

  He has time for one thought only: This is where it ends, and it is not a frightening thought. He has never feared death, and that’s just as well because here it comes now, bearing down on him, the Buick’s silver grille like grinning teeth about to yawn open and swallow them all wide, the headlights wide like the terrified eyes of the pale man behind the wheel.

  The sound of the engine fills the world.

  The Sheriff cries out a warning. There is a hand on Wintry’s arm. He ignores the pain it causes, grabs hold of the Sheriff’s wrist, turns and thrusts the man, still cradling his boy, clear across the road, where the lawman staggers and falls flat on his ass on the verge of the slight embankment leading down into the woods. Kyle tumbles away from him, lands sprawled on his back in the grass, shoes pointing straight up at the sky.

  “Wintry!”

  There is nothing but red in his vision.

  See you soon baby.

  Wintry bends low, as if he’s going in for a football tackle, head lowered, eyes forward, shoulders angled forward. He does not wait to die. With his last breath rushing from his mouth in a strangled cry, he rushes to meet it.

  * * *

  “Didn’t used to be this hard,” Cadaver says, easing himself onto a stool. “Didn’t used to be like this at all. Guess I’m either losin’ my touch or people are gettin’ smarter.”

  “The hell happened to you?” Gracie asks, her hands flat on the counter, eyes cold.

  “The boy is dead.”

  “Shame.”

  Cadaver raises his head, and smiles at her, though the absence of eyes and the raw bloody holes where they should be negate any semblance of humor from it. “You almost sound like you mean it.”

  “Who says I don’t?”

  “I don’t know, but if you’re lookin’ for character witnesses, you’re runnin’ kind of low. ‘Specially with you killin’ ’em an all.”

  “Vess would have told them.”

  “Could be they already know.”

  Gracie leans in, teeth clenched, red-veined eyes wide. “The only way they’d know is if you told them.”

  “Yeah.” He nods slowly, picks a speck of soot from the counter and inspects it, which, considering he’s blind, or at least should be, would seem amusing to Gracie under different circumstances. But she’s far from amused. In fact, she’d love nothing more than to rip the old guy’s head clean off his shoulders and preserve it in a pickle jar as a warning to future customers not to fuck with her. But of course, there won’t be any future customers. She’s getting gone and Cadaver’s her ticket, so for now at least, she has no choice but to let him keep that rotten head of his, and to bide her time.

  Gracie’s hands become claws on the polished mahogany. “You dirty son of a bitch. Why?”

  “Because you ain’t the only one who wants out, and I’ve been plyin’ my wares an awful lot longer than you have. Comes a time when it has to end, you see, when you start goin’ to bed at night and instead of seein’ nothin’ you start seein’ the faces of people you used to care about—”

  “I don’t believe I’m hearing this.”

  Cadaver ignores the interruption. “—Then you realize, one mornin’ while your busy materializin’ in people’s livin’ rooms right when they’re desperate enough to say yes to Hell itself if it means they get more time, that there might be salvation for you after all, an escape route you never believed existed. And then you start to want it, start plannin’, until at last the time comes when you have no more faith in what you do, only in what you can do to be done with it all.”

  “You’ve got to be kiddin’ me.”

  “For me that time is now.�
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  Gracie brings her face close to the old man’s, stares hard into his dead eye sockets. “Not before you get me out it isn’t.”

  “I’m not a welsher. You’ll get what I promised if your side of the bargain is met. All of ’em, you said, correct?”

  She nods, struggling to restrain herself from raking his sallow face with her nails.

  “Well then,” Cadaver says, rising from the chair with a tip of an imaginary hat. “Let’s hope the Sheriff doesn’t live to see another sunset.” He turns and walks toward the door. “Or you’ll be watching a million of them from behind these windows.”

  * * *

  I’m winded, and not altogether sure what I’m seeing is actually happening. Could be I’m dreaming it all. Since finding Kyle strung up in Hill’s house, everything seems just the slightest bit off kilter. When I move my eyes, the world takes its time following.

  But the sound, the earth-shattering explosion as steel meets flesh meets steel is enough to let me know there can be no mistaking this as reality. I saw Hendricks as the car approached, hunched over the wheel, shoulders raised as if he was manning a jackhammer. He was talking to himself, the sun making the tears in his eyes sparkle, face contorted in agony, the roots of which I’ll never know. Maybe it was simply the knowledge that he was about to kill someone.

  And that look stayed on his face until Wintry let out a roar, fists held at his sides, and rushed forward like a bull, head and shoulders ramming into the car as if he hoped to stop it. I swear he almost did. The car seemed to stagger a little. There was smoke from the wheels, a horrible sharp screech before the car slammed into the wounded giant, crushing him against the front of my truck, his upper body snapping back like a jack-in-the-box. Blood flew. Flesh was torn away. But that wasn’t the end of it. The speed and the interruption Wintry presented to its passage didn’t stop the car. It’s front wheels reared up as if it was going to simply drive on over my truck. It didn’t make it. Gravity intervened. Hendricks’ car stalled and rolled back down on all four tires, the Buick bouncing on its chassis, but in doing so, crushed whatever was left of the big man beneath it.