Currency of Souls

by Kealan Patrick Burke

  “Yeah, seems everyone but me does.”

  “Your wife loved you though. No doubt about that.”

  “Hope so.”

  “I saw it in her eyes every time she looked at me. ’Course, we weren’t friends or nothin’ but you can tell a lot by the way someone looks at you. She was wonderin’ if you’d ever spent time with me, or if you wanted to, if maybe when you were in bed you were thinkin’ about me, and every time I saw that look, I shook my head, and she’d smile just a little bit. The kind of smile someone gives you when they’ve accepted a whore’s wisdom but don’t want them to know it.”

  Our eyes meet and something powerful passes between us, maybe it’s some of that same power she has that knocks lights out. Maybe it’s trying to quench my soul before I do more damage.

  “You should go” I tell her. “Get the hell out of Milestone. Find some place where the people are still alive.”

  “I’m still alive, Tom. And with all the things I got stuck in here,” she says, tapping a finger against her forehead, “it don’t matter where I go. They’ll follow. So I might as well stay right here. Same as it don’t matter where you’re headin’. You’ll still be the same man tryin’ to run away from his shadow in a place where the sun never stops shinin’.”

  “Iris…”

  “Now you best get on if you’re goin’.”

  “Take care.”

  “Take care yourself.”

  She turns away from me, and I guess that’s my cue to leave, so I do.

  Three steps from the bottom of the stairs, I hear her sobbing.

  * * *

  Cadaver dreams of two young boys, one blond, the other raven-haired, sitting in vibrant green grass, the sun warming their legs as they play with toy soldiers, which are scattered around them in the frenzied order unique to combat. The blond boy giggles as his plastic tank appears from nowhere and mows down his brother’s army. The raven-haired child swats him, hurt and frustration on his face.

  This particular war is defused in an instant by the soft calming voice of the woman sitting in a lawn chair a few feet away, a magazine spread open, obscuring her face. “No fighting,” she says, “Or you can go right back in the house and help your father clean out the attic.”

  The boys are quiet, sulking, but once the raven-haired child locates a soldier the tank missed in its calamitous charge, a victorious smile crosses his face as he guns down his brother’s ranks. They are caught unaware and fall accordingly. The blond boy shrieks, and calls in reinforcements. The battle is on.

  The woman in the lawn chair sighs, but it is a ‘boys will be boys’ sigh, and not at all annoyed.

  In this summer-lit yard, life is good.

  Cadaver awakes, and he is smiling too.

  He is sitting on a smooth flat limestone rock at the bottom of the hill, head bowed, and though his eyes are gone, the cool breeze invigorates him, reminds him of all he has lost and all he will soon gain.

  Minutes pass. Night sounds carry on waves to his ears. He waits, ragged breaths whistling through the rent in his throat above the box that gives him his words.

  It grows dark.

  And then, ice crawls through his veins, chilling him from the inside out. As anticipated, there is pain, for he is aware that he cannot be released from his duties without being reminded of the suffering that has been his stock-in-trade. These are secondhand agonies, all of them hard earned, all of them real. He grunts. Something touches the back of his hand, then again. The breeze seems to be blowing through him now and he relishes the feel of it.

  “Soon,” he says and the smile cracks his face. Teeth drop into his lap, tumble and hit the floor with a sound like pebbles. The flesh begins to slide. The box in his throat starts to rust, disintegrate.

  “Soon,” he says, one last time, his hair shedding and tickling what remains of his face as it falls.

  Flesh withers; organs shrivel. Bones begin to crumble.

  Cadaver sighs.

  In his mind, the woman in the lawn chair is peering at him above her magazine. He can tell by the wrinkles around her eyes that she is smiling—Boys will be boys—and when next the breeze blows, there is only an old raincoat full of dust for it to attend to.

  Chapter Nineteen

  “If you’re plannin’ on goin’, now’d be the time, boy.”

  The animals have filled the yard now, necks straight, eyes glittering, but still they make no noise. It’s as if they’re waiting for something. The sight of them standing there motionless, ears pricked up, is unsettling, but Brody knows better than to be threatened by so docile an animal, no matter how many of them there are. Hell, for all he knows the old man’s got a vegetable patch out back and they’re here to raid it. The only threat they could possibly present is if they stampeded and rushed him, but even then the car’s much closer to him than they are.

  “Move for Chrissakes,” hisses the old man.

  “Because of a bunch of deer? Man, take it easy.” But as the words leave his mouth, the calm he has forced into them sounds utterly false.

  “To you, maybe, but right now you’re blockin’ Red Cloud’s shot.”

  “Shit.” Instinctively Brody ducks, arms covering his head, and swivels on a heel to see where the hidden shooter is. He scans the house, then the yard, and it is here his gaze halts. The blood drains from his face. Somehow, the deer are closer now, almost level with the Dodge, and one of them has mounted the hood like some unfunny parody of a hunter’s prize. It stares at him with black eyes, head cocked a little to the left, thick antlers like a bleached tree branch reaching for the stars.

  Brody feels the air change, a sensation he is accustomed to only when he is presenting the threat. But to feel it now means there is a very real danger here, and that mystifies him, until he recounts the events of the past few hours and realizes that nothing should, or ever will, surprise him again.

  This belief continues for a few moments more, until the deer on the hood of the car begins to speak. “Come out Blue Moon.” The voice is a croaking whisper much like Cadaver’s, but stronger, and its lips don’t move. Nevertheless, despite how insane it makes him suspect he might be after what he’s gone through, Brody has never been more sure of anything in his life.

  The fucking deer is talking.

  Behind him, there’s a sound like a stick swishing through air and then a thump and clatter as the deer on the Dodge tries to keep its balance, then crumples and rolls, hooves beating a tattoo against the metal. Blood smears the hood, and now the creature is making all-too-normal animal-in-pain sounds, which surprises Brody, who almost expected to hear it scream in a human voice. The deer hits the ground, still moving, and Brody can see there’s a long stick protruding from the side of its neck. An arrow.

  “Stay down, boy.”

  Brody does, but looks over his shoulder.

  The formerly inanimate cigar store Indian pays him no mind as it thumbs another arrow into its bow and draws back the string.

  Brody breathes disbelief, and pushes himself away until he collides painfully with the porch railing. “No way in Hell.”

  The whispering has spread, pouring from the unopened mouths of the deer herd like a breeze through the canopies of leaves overhanging them. More sharp reports as hooves meet metal and Brody is forced to resign himself to the incredible reality of the situation: In the yard, there are talking deer. Pissed off talking deer, and all that’s keeping them at bay, for the moment at least, is a wooden Indian whose every move is accompanied by a creak as flakes of dead wood fall like dandruff from his shoulders.

  “Jesus.”

  “Just stay d—”

  “Yeah, I heard for Chrissakes. What the hell is happening here?”

  The Indian lets his arrow fly. It hits home; another deer stumbles and falls.

  “The short version: Long time ago my father and his friend made a mistake that got a lot of their tribe killed,” Blue Moon tells him from behind the door. “They stole somethin’ precious from a rival tribe.
A statue of a deer, made from obsidian and wood, supposed to contain the spirits of every animal the tribe had killed. When caught, they put a curse on Red Cloud. They turned him to wood. My father escaped his bonds and stole a horse. They never caught him. Days later, the rival tribe attacked my father’s people, massacrin’ them for the theft of a sacred statue.”

  Brody’s eyes drift to the wooden Indian. Grim-faced, time-roughened joints creaking, the creature loads another arrow.

  “My father spent the rest of his life runnin’ from his tribe in their various guises: coyote, hawk, cougar…deer. When he died, the curse was passed on to me. They’re punishin’ me for his crimes. And they’ll punish you if you get in their way.”

  Brody looks over his shoulder. Incensed, the herd pours over the Dodge on a wave of frantic whispers. The sound of them now is deafening. He scrambles away from the railing, puts his back to the door, wishes he had his knife, or better yet, his gun. He has never felt so vulnerable, and in truth, afraid, as he is at this moment. Sweat trickles into his eyes; he blinks it away. But, Death by deer, he thinks, and splutters a laugh. No one will ever believe it. He elbows the door.” Let me in, man.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Then toss me out a weapon or something. Anything.”

  “You don’t need one. In protectin’ me, Red Cloud will protect you too.”

  Helpless to do anything but watch, Brody draws his knees up as the deer that have made it onto the Dodge leap toward the house only to be struck down in mid air by the arrows from the wooden Indian’s bow. Red Cloud’s feet haven’t moved from his small rectangular pedestal; only his arms look alive. They reload the bow, faster and faster, until they become a blur, and above them, the Indian’s painted eyes are narrowed, mouth down-turned in a grimace. The wooden points of the arrows cleave the air, thudding into the hides of the seemingly endless ranks. As they fall, the deer turn to clouds of dust, which in turn swirl upward as if caught in a vortex. And in those miniature twisters, there are screaming faces.

  Time draws out, and Brody is desperately aware of every second that’s lost to him. Any moment now he expects to hear sirens, drowning out the screams of the dying deer. Should have kept walking. Nothing but bad luck in this goddamn town. Should have just kept on walking. He imagines the faces on the cops as they jump from their cruisers, pistols trained on him, ready to bring him down, only to find themselves watching a wooden Indian pegging a bunch of homicidal deer.

  “Every day it’s the same,” Blue Moon says wistfully. “And will be until they force me to take my own life, or step outside to meet them, whichever happens first.”

  “Then why not make a deal with the old man? The guy who makes the deals.”

  “Because I have no interest in the kind of peace he has to offer.”

  More arrows tear flying deer from the air, their bodies thumping down hard on the car, making it rock on its wheels, denting the hood, the roof, decorating the pale blue metal with dark blood. Brody watches, mesmerized, until the death of the animals begins to feel monotonous, a tiresome display of a hunter’s brawn. He’s even starting to feel a bit sorry for those poor bastards. He stands, brushes splinters and dirt from his already ruined suit. “I’m leavin’. I have to. Pissed away too much time already in this freakshow of a town.”

  “Better wait, boy. Won’t be safe till they’re gone.”

  Brody puts his hands on his hips, glances at Red Cloud, who ignores him. “Tell me something, Blue. If you’ve got your goombah here with his endless supply of arrows, why can’t you come out, at least as far as the porch? That tribe of yours don’t seem to be bothering me none. Not up here.”

  To Brody, it’s a short forever before he gets an answer, and when it comes, it is in the form of a door easing open and not a voice. Brody peers at the widening crack between door and jamb. It is dark inside. Low to the ground, as if Blue Moon’s been sitting on the floor all this time, the old man’s hand emerges from around the door. In it is held an old-fashioned revolver, which he sets on the porch. Then the hand withdraws and the door is quickly shut.

  Brody stands there, staring at the grooves in the door, at the memory of what he thinks he has just seen.

  “Take it. It’s loaded.”

  Brody nods, but doesn’t reply. Instead, he stoops, collects the gun and checks to see if the old man is pulling a fast one on him. It’s an old Colt, but it’s fully loaded and looks serviceable. “Why are you helping me if you know so much about what I’ve done?” he asks at last.

  “Because I’m no judge, boy, and I’m certainly no better. I know there are always two roads, but the right one ain’t always necessarily the good one. I’ve traveled both, and I still can’t tell ’em apart.”

  “All right then,” Brody says, feeling dazed as he slips the gun into his waistband and slowly descends the porch steps. Arrows cut the air over his shoulder, but he doesn’t flinch. Deer rain down on the Dodge, smack hard against the ground, kick and protest imminent death. The gun is cold against his belly, as cold as he imagines the old man’s hand was. They stole something precious from a rival tribe. A statue of a deer, made from obsidian and wood.

  Obsidian and wood.

  He wonders how many nights his sleep will be plagued by what he has seen in this town, how often he’ll be dragged out of his dreams by the wooden Indian, the tribe, and the old man’s hand. He stops short of the car and ducks low as a deer launches itself up over the hood, watches it jerk back at the behest of Red Cloud’s arrow and drop heavily. Blood speckles his cheek. Antlers scratch the bottom of the driver-side door. The dust devils spin away, elongated faces within twisting in torment, and then disappear. The passenger side door is facing him, so this is where he’s heading. He expects it to be locked; another trick, another inconvenience, but it isn’t and swings open with a labored groan. There are cobwebs on the steering wheel, beer cans and used condoms on the floor. A pine tree freshener spins lazily from the rearview mirror but the interior smells of rotten meat. He’s inside, hand on the keys when another deer, eyes wide in fury or panic, Brody can’t tell which, and doesn’t much care, rams the side of the car, its head colliding with the glass on the driver side, inches away from Brody. It cracks, but doesn’t shatter.

  With shaking hands, he turns the keys. The engine whines, then catches and roars into life. He yanks back the gearshift. The grinding noise is not encouraging, but then the car bucks once and heaves backward, throwing up dirt that sprays across the porch, where an old wooden Indian is tirelessly defending an old man made of black glass.

  He shakes his head, looks back to the path. The deer are crowded there, watching him, blocking his way.

  “To hell with this,” Brody mumbles and jams his foot down on the accelerator.

  Chapter Twenty

  The pain begins at sundown.

  I’m walking, not even a half a mile clear of Winter Street when my guts turn to liquid fire. A gasp and I’m doubled over; another, and I’m on my knees, my shoulder against the graffiti-riddled wall of the long-abandoned Brautigan’s Drugstore, my hand splayed on the concrete before me. My vision begins to blur, then it paints everything red, as if I’m wearing crimson shades, or there’s blood in my eyes.

  Another wave of pain and then I realize the first few rounds were nothing. Nothing compared to the incredible torture that comes with the sensation of my bones narrowing, shifting, bending, poking at the skin in an attempt to reshape me. My muscles protest as they’re played like cello strings. My nerves sing in torment, jarring the thoughts from my head. It’s as if I’ve been bound in barbed wire and someone is tightening it, ever so slowly.

  I fall forward, both hands flat on the ground. Dark blood leaks from my mouth. In my peripheral vision, I see my arms shrink, grow thin. My gut no longer strains against my belt. It’s a deflating balloon.

  I throw up and can’t face the gruesome sight of what’s emerged.

  Jesus Christ, I’m dying, is all I can think, because surely this is what death f
eels like.

  My hair falls out; my vision fades.

  My throat is burning, but a hand raised to massage it meets cold hard metal. My nails scritch against it, then they too fall out.

  I scream, or at least try to, but the power of that anguished scream is somehow diminished, robbed of its power by the metal box in my throat, and so emerges as little more than a forced whisper.

  I’m afraid, petrified, and shouldn’t be because I asked for this. This is the bargain. This is what Cadaver wanted, what I wanted, and now I’m getting it. He’s out; I’m in, let’s call the whole thing off! my thoughts chant cheerfully, and its almost enough to draw a smile from me, but the agony scrubs that notion away in record time.

  I glance to my left as tears roll down my sallow cheeks, into the soaped-over plate glass window of Brautigan’s Drugstore.

  Cadaver is a pale ghost, on his knees, sobbing.

  I weep for us both.

  Abruptly, the pain in my head that seems intent on cracking it open subsides, and I’m flooded by memories and knowledge not my own. It’s almost as bad as the pain. Such an alien feeling, it’s as if my brain has become a theater, open to players I’ve never met. I bring my hands up and clamp them to the sides of my skull in an effort to contain them. When I close my eyes, I see myself as a bird, soaring high above the town, cocking my head occasionally to listen to the pleas that drift in dreams through the roofs of sagging houses. Where I land, is up to me. There is no shortage of time, no quota on the amount of promises I can make, or lives I can alter. Everyone can have whatever they desire most, if they are willing to offer me something in return. It is then I know, as the bird swoops down toward the tavern on the hill that was once burned but is burned no more, that all of us have been, and will continue to be, slaves, not to God or the Devil, but to ourselves, to our innate need to make things right, to attain what our lives tell us we cannot have, and do not deserve. Cadaver—I—am a mechanic in the clockwork of man, but I am nothing without the cogs that make it run. But no…I am not Cadaver, not entirely. I am still here, still stumbling around inside. My old self claws at the walls, looking for the exit, just like always.