“Or toward somethin’,” Iris says.
* * *
Brody drives, the night like a dark bubble around the car. He’s hunched over the wheel, sweating and waiting, just waiting for something to jump out in front of him, maybe a vulture made of razorblades or a clown made of fog, or some other trick the town keeps stashed up its sleeve to torment those desperate to escape it. The car makes clunking noises beneath his feet and there’s a barely visible stream of smoke coming from something under the hood, but that’s okay, that’s all right, he’s still moving and that’s what counts. A hawk feather suspended from the mirror by a black leather thong flutters toward him, then away, trying to distract him, trying to coax his eyes from the road so he’ll crash, maybe end up sinking in a quagmire where the sand sings as it takes you down. This godforsaken place has pushed him about as far as he can go. It’s taken his woman and run him through the grinder, and all he wants now is to be gone. Prayers tinged with reluctant promises of reform suggest themselves as a viable way to kill the time until he hits the edge of town, but he’s not quite ready for that yet. Him and the Almighty haven’t exactly been on speaking terms over the past four years or so, and there’s a good reason for that. Brody doesn’t like the uncaring sonofabitch, not after losing so many people he loved, and figures if God has any sense, he’ll feel the same.
Black tangled trees race past the car in a blur.
Brody blinks sweat from his eyes, wipes a sleeve down his chin where something has tickled him. The interior of the car feels awful small and getting smaller, and a glimpse of his reflection, lit only by the ghoulish green glow from the dash, forces him to keep his eyes on the windshield.
And then.,.there, up ahead, a sign, a big white sign with black letters, and Brody eases his foot off the gas. Hope tenses his muscles. The placard is the only pale sight in a night thick with dark, and as he lets the car coast up to it and stop, a smile splits his face. It reads:
YOU ARE LEAVING MILESTONE! HOPE YOU ENJOYED YOUR STAY!
Underneath, in a childish scrawl, someone has added: IN HELL.
“Amen,” Brody says, and closes his eyes, just for a moment, to thank the only thing he truly does believe in: Luck.
It’s only when the passenger side door opens with that awful grating shriek and a horribly familiar face pokes in to grin at him that he realizes, not for the first time in his uneven life, that belief is a misguided one.
“No,” he moans and begins to hammer his fists on the steering wheel in frustration. “This isn’t happening. Goddamn it all, this isn’t happening!”
The dashboard light makes his passenger’s grin a green one as he slides into his seat. A foul smell rolls in with him. “Aw, c’mon now. Don’t you go getting yourself all worked up, friend,” Dean Martin tells him, eyes wild above sallow skin. “There’s nothing wrong here the right number can’t fix.”
* * *
“It’s done,” I tell her.
“Just like that?”
“Just like that.”
She looks doubtful. “Nothing feels different.”
“It isn’t supposed to. It’s still the same jail cell. You won’t see the difference until you try to step outside.”
She stares hard at me. “If you’ve tricked me…”
“Then I’ll be stuck with you, which wouldn’t make much sense, now would it?”
“Oh you’ll be stuck with a lot more than that, Sheriff.” The hardness doesn’t leave her eyes, which stay fixed on mine, as she steps back, slips the straps of her dress down over her narrow shoulders, and lets the drab gray dress fall soundlessly to the floor. Both of us look down. The scar, the angry welts that have kept her here, are gone, and she runs her fingers over the unmarked area, a satisfied smile on her face.
“I know what you thought,” she says. “When you saw me do this earlier. When you saw the mark. You had to struggle not to be turned on. You wanted me.”
“Seems to me,” I reply, “That it’s very important to you to believe that. Well, believe what you like as long as you’re going.”
She looks up, feigns hurt. “Is that any way to talk to a lady?”
“I wouldn’t know. I’ve never been that good at it.”
Her fingers glide over her dark erect nipples. “That’s too bad. You have no idea what I could—”
“Get going.” I have to clasp my hands on the counter to hide their shaking from her. “My part of the bargain is fulfilled. Time to fulfill yours.”
“You’re no fun at all, Sheriff. It’s no wonder everyone hated you.”
That’s a jab that hurts, and hurts deep, but I do my damndest to make sure she doesn’t see it.
“Such a waste. But I guess you’re wearing the only costume now that suits you, and that’s really all it comes down to, wouldn’t you agree?” She gives me a bow, and spits on the dress lying at her feet. “But it will get old,” she remarks, with a wink, and slowly makes her way around the bar, moves up close to me. There’s a peculiar smell from her, not entirely unpleasant, but strange and offensive all the same. Her pale hand alights on my arm. I repress a shudder. There is no appeal here; her nakedness does nothing but repulse me, and even if it didn’t, all I can think of is all she’s done, all she’s made come to pass in this town, even as I was bumbling around pretending I knew how to protect it.
Lian’s right breast brushes against my sleeve. Her fingers find my hair. “I should really kill you,” she says in a low voice. “What would what’s left of the town say if they heard I’d been hiding here all these years and didn’t go out with a bang?”
If that’s what she does, and assuming I can be killed, I’d consider it a mighty friendly gesture on her part, but of course, she knows that, and it’s not in her nature to do anyone any favors, which is why I’m certain she has no intention of leaving Milestone. I’m willing to bet those few copper pennies in my pocket that as soon as she steps outside and gets all the confirmation she needs that she’s well and truly free, she’ll raze this town and everything in it. Then maybe I’ll die, but for now, all I’m hearing is big talk from a small lady.
“But we’re friends,” she adds, perhaps because she’s had her fingers in my mind, and can taste the doubt on them. “And a friend wouldn’t do such a thing.”
I choose to take that as fear that whatever she thinks I’ve done for her will be cancelled by my death. Whatever she has in store for me, it won’t happen until she’s sure she’s off the hook. Makes me glad I took precautions.
“For a woman eager to be out of here, you’re sure taking your sweet time about it.” I draw the bottle toward me, fill up my glass and down it quickly. There’s not going to be time for another refill so I guess it’s best to get one while the going’s good. Too bad I don’t feel a damn thing. Might as well be drinking water.
“Then I guess this is sayonara,” she says, with another small bow. This time her eyes don’t leave mine, and her smile is decidedly unpleasant. She leans close; I try not to flinch. Her lips are like slugs against my cheek, her hair like catgut on my skin. When she draws back, her pupils have filled her eyes, making them look full to bursting with black ink. She moves away, toward the door, the dim light not dim enough to hide the black and blue shapes that are swimming beneath the milky pond of her skin. On the threshold, she hesitates. I can’t see her face; her back is to me, and I find myself wondering what might be running through her mind at this moment. Whether to kill me now, or later? Whether or not to trust the promise of an undead salesman? Whatever it is, it passes, and takes the tension from her shoulders with it.
Her hand finds the door, massages the wood grain as if it’s become a lover’s skin, then slides lower, lower, toward the knob, circling it playfully, letting her fingertips brush against the cold brass. A nail clinks against the metal. She’s toying with it, teasing it, as if enough foreplay could draw a reaction from a hunk of old wood. Her sigh too, comes from the mouth of a woman in the throes of passion and a ripple passes through her, but
the satisfied chuckle that follows is not at all feminine, and even less human.
She grabs the knob. Giggles with delight.
“See you soon,” she says over her shoulder, as thorns begin to poke forth from her skin.
Then the creature that is Lian Su opens the door to the night.
Chapter Twenty Two
Kyle kills the engine at the bottom of the hill. He is quiet as Iris brusquely pins the Sheriff’s badge on his breast. Wearing it doesn’t feel right, and that’s to be expected. But Iris’s frosty attitude doesn’t feel right either, and he figures maybe he’ll get a chance to quiz her about that later. Right now, there isn’t time, or the breath required to force those questions out, because what he sees before him reminds him of a painting he once saw in an art magazine at the dentist’s office in Saddleback: A bunch of shadowy things flowing up a mountain toward a cabin with a single light shining in the window. He remembers wondering who in their right mind would hang something like that in their home, or even in a museum. It gave him the creeps just like the sight of it happening now in real life makes his heart slow and the hair rise to attention all over his body. But while it was too tough to make out what that dark mass in the painting was, he can see all too clearly what’s racing toward Eddie’s.
It’s the deer, a whole herd of them, the same ones he almost plowed into back at the intersection. But that’s not all that’s robbed the breath from him. He raises a finger, presses it to the windshield glass. “Isn’t that—?”
From the corner of his eye, he sees Iris nod.
Blue Moon Running Bear, the obsidian man, running like the hounds of Hell are snapping at his heels. Three feet behind him, there’s someone else, someone who doesn’t seem to be moving quite as fast and yet never falls behind. His arms are flapping wildly, at least that’s how it seems to Kyle, until he realizes there are pockets appearing in the herd as they scramble to get to him. Red Cloud.
“What the hell?”
“Here,” Iris says, drawing his attention away from the windshield. He looks down and sees she’s put a gun in his hand, still warm from wherever she’s kept it hidden. “You’ll need this.”
He shakes his head, not to deny that he thinks she’s right, but because right now, as he looks back out to the chaos on the hill, he can’t figure out how a gun, or anything else, is going to give him an advantage over what appears to be a thousand angry deer.
“Go.” Iris pokes him in the shoulder.
“Go where? What am I supposed to do?”
“You’re the Sheriff now. Go help the people who need one.”
He looks at her for a long moment, at how her eyes still manage to sparkle in the gloom, and he wishes just once, that he could read her mind and see what it is he’s done wrong, see how to fix it, because it occurs to him that hate, in leaving him, has opened his eyes to a lot of things he has let go to waste, a lot of things he’s squandered, and Iris is one of them. He’s known her for most of his life, and doesn’t know her at all.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers.
“Me too,” she tells him, only her words don’t sound like an apology. “Get movin’. And keep your eyes open up there.”
* * *
Lian Su screams and every one of those glasses behind the counter explodes. I don’t quite flinch, don’t quite duck, but I make damn well sure my head is turned the other way when that blizzard of shards comes toward me. And as the glass needles my back, I see what’s become of the woman in the open doorway. Down on her knees, Lian Su is no longer a woman, but a slideshow. There are so many shapes and colors and different forms slouching back into the bar, all of them pushing against her skin in an effort to escape, it’s hard to focus on any single one of them without it making my head hurt. Her face is a misshapen blob, mapped with dark veins, her hair more like snakes that rage around her skull as branch-like arms claw at the floor, dragging a body that no longer has the strength to carry it back to safety.
Her mouth, little more than a dark hole leaking worm-like things onto the floor, opens wide, and from that ancient and rotten gullet fly words in a language I don’t understand. The force behind them though, makes it clear they are not compliments.
I back away from the bar.
Back on this side of the threshold, Lian Su looks a little more human. The shape of her has settled, even if the activity beneath her skin hasn’t. There are still all manner of things pulsating and pushing at her from the inside out, making her seem like a rubber glove filled with cockroaches.
The head she raises to regard me is pitted with dark spots, like a negative image of chicken pox. Dark stuff runs from every hole in it. She convulses, grunts with pain, and I feel something inside me respond in sympathy. “Youuuuuu,” she says, grabbing another hand full of floor and pulling. “Welsshhhhhhed.”
That’s not exactly true. After all, isn’t death an escape in itself? And it’s not as if she didn’t provide me with the means to make this happen. Back here, after the fire, while still in her Gracie costume, she told me something she didn’t have to share, and I didn’t think I’d ever need to know: First time I tried stepping over the threshold of this place, it made me sterile and ejected the baby that was busy growin’ in my belly, and then: I put it down to coincidence and tried again. That one gave me such a pain it dropped me to the floor and left me there for two days, paralyzed and bleedin’ from every hole in my body. So I gave up, figurin’ if I tried a third time, it might be the last. She had no reason to tell me all of that, but she did, and I used it.
This will be her third try.
“I’m giving you what you wanted,” I explain, moving to the center of the room.
She gurgles something I can’t understand, and hauls herself closer until she’s lying about two feet from my shoes. If she stretched out her arm, she could touch me.
I trust her injuries to keep her prostrate for a moment and raise my head.
The door to the tavern is wide open. Beyond, I can hear rumbling as Blue Moon’s tribe try to run him down, the thwick-thwick-thwick sound as Red Cloud’s arrows take them out. They’re getting closer.
* * *
Kyle’s feet pump the crumbling earth as he races alongside the deer. They move like maddened things, their hooves barely scraping the earth, but much to his relief, they pay him no mind. It’s the two Indians they’re after, though Kyle can’t begin to fathom what they could possibly have done to invoke the rage of a dumb bunch of animals. Then again, neither man is made of flesh and bone, so trying to gauge the severity of their transgressions seems a bit ridiculous. As he runs, gun heavy in his hand, heart heavy in his chest, he realizes he’s glad to be alive. There was nothing in death but a vast empty space, now a small dark pocket in his memory, and despite the confusion that clings to him like a shroud, he’s here, and running, tasting life with a sense of purpose. He doesn’t know how long that will last, or if it will at all, but reminds himself that tonight, if nothing else happens in that tavern up ahead (which seems unlikely), he will swallow his bitterness and thank his father, who will no doubt shrug it off with embarrassment. The guy could win the lottery and he’d shrug like he knew it was coming.
A woman’s scream drifts down the hill and Kyle falters. Stops dead. He waits, listening for it to come again, and despite the thunderous passage of the deer only a few feet away, does not feel compelled to move.
Up ahead, Red Cloud turns and hurries, his stiff-legged gait carrying him into the tavern.
There is no sign of Blue Moon Running Bear, which suggests to Kyle that he has already made it inside. Then again, the man has been sculpted from the night itself and his eyes are stars, so it could be he’s up there somewhere and hidden within the folds of darkness.
Kyle stands alone, the grass damp with dew, crickets sawing their songs around him, birds making unenthusiastic attempts at nightsongs for an unappreciative audience. Some of the deer, heads lowered, antlers like daggers of bone aimed at the wood, assault the door of the tavern. The
rest spread out around the long narrow building, encircling it, trapping the men inside. Still Kyle waits. He knows Iris has sent him here to help his father, to repay the personal debt they’ve established between them, and that time is of the essence, but he finds himself unable and unwilling to move. He waits, tells himself that despite the urgency of the situation and the obvious need for his help, he will continue to stand here until he hears the scream again and is proved wrong in thinking it came from his long dead mother.
* * *
When Dean gets done crooning some song Brody’s never heard, he flashes that famous smile, then, with a deft move like a magician shucking back his sleeve to demonstrate there’s nothing concealed inside it, his hand flashes out and he breaks one of Brody’s fingers.
Brody cries out with pain and doubles over, hitting his head hard on the steering wheel. Tears flow as he cradles the wounded digit. “Jesus, man. What the fuck?”
Dean sits back, admiring the night beyond the windshield. “The problem wasn’t so much you killing that guy pretending to be me, sonny. Problem was when you whacked him, you took away another reason for folks to remember me.”
His face contorted with pain, damp forehead pressed against the wheel, Brody tells him, “He was trying to rob me, for Chrissakes. Guy had a knife to my throat.”
Dean nods his understanding and spreads his hands. “Hey, he was a punk. I know that, but it still upset me. After all, no one wants to think about some dumb old dead crooner, now do they?” He purses his lips, then continues. “Oh sure, the old farts play us on their radios, but they don’t think about me or Frankie, or any of the old boys. Not any more, even though it don’t cost ’em a dime. Not one dime, friend. They just keep us locked away with memories of the first time they got laid.” He narrows his eyes at Brody, as if he’s worried that it’s too complicated for the kid to understand. “The proud moments, y’know? Life’s moments. But it don’t matter what the music playing in the background was. Oh no. That gets forgotten. We get forgotten.” He sighs, looks back out at the road. “Then you have the crazies, the guys who got hit on the head one too many times in the ring, or came back with busted heads from one war or another, and just because I was singing on the radio while they waited to get their brains put back in, they decide I’m God. They decide they’re going to be me, and damned if they don’t walk around like little mirror images, singing and dancing and reminding people of the good ’ol days. Highballs in one hand; smoke in the other. Reminding people of Dino.” He rubs his hands together in delight and grins. “So here you have some goddamn yuppie couple who are eating cavier, sipping champagne in the park while Tommy wonders how many deadbolts there are on the woman’s underwear and she’s wondering when’s he gonna stop wondering how many deadbolts there are on her underwear because she’s not wearing any, when up the street comes waltzing the ghost of Dino, looking like me right down to the smile and the sparkling eyes, right down to the snazzy shoes. Only he smells like dog shit and old pizza, but hell, the job’s already been done, because the girl sees him and starts remembering, and she tells the guy about how she’s free next Sunday and maybe he’d like to come over and watch a movie, and its one she remembers seeing as a kid, something about some lecherous but handsome lush, and it sounds like a prime opportunity for Tommy to bang the broad, so he agrees. Cut to Sunday, my friend, and both of those jerks are squatting by the TV watching me do my thing, and they’re enjoying it. And I’m getting off on it.
Currency of Souls Page 20