Low Red Moon

by Kiernan, Caitlin R.

  “Deacon?” Sadie whispers, afraid, still crying, her blue eyes the antithesis of the blonde woman’s sickly golden stare. “Can you hear me?”

  “I’m here,” he says, and the nurse is helping him into the pea-green chair.

  “Do you need me to call a doctor?” she asks, and “No,” he tells her, his last bit of strength to muster enough insistence that she’ll believe him. “I’ll be fine. Just give me a minute or two to catch my breath, and I’ll be fine.”

  “Are you an epileptic?” the nurse asks.

  “No, I just got a little dizzy, that’s all,” and Deacon shuts his eyes and waits for the pain to begin.

  He finds Chance sitting in the lobby downstairs; rows of Naugahyde chairs the color of Thanksgiving cranberry sauce, furniture that hasn’t been fashionable since the early 1970s, low tables scattered with piles of old magazines—Reader’s Digest and Prevention, Woman’s Day and Southern Living—and Chance is pretending to read from a National Geographic with a frog on the cover. His head is already so bad that throwing up is beginning to seem like a good idea, and frantic purple fireflies have started to flit before his eyes. Past the information desk, and the low murmur of people around him seems distant and unreal, the loved ones of the dying and the sick, plate glass and potted plants, too much sunlight for the fireflies’ liking, and Deacon moves along in his migraine bubble, apart from them all.

  “Are you done?” she asks him, not bothering to look up from her magazine.

  Deacon sits down beside her, slumps into the cranberry chair, rests his head against the back. “I’d give my left nut for a shot of Jack,” he says.

  “That’s not funny,” and she tosses the National Geographic back onto the table with the rest.

  “That’s why you don’t see me laughing.”

  “Your head?” she asks, and he frowns and shuts his eyes for an answer.

  “She could have been killed,” Deacon says. “I almost got her killed.”

  “She’ll be fine.”

  “Will she? That arm will probably never be right again. Just because she went to the goddamn library for me. And then I had the gall to fucking laugh at her when she tried—”

  “Why does your head hurt, Deke? What happened after I left?”

  “It’s nothing,” he says, but puts one hand over his closed eyes to keep out the light slipping through his lids, stabbing rusty needles at his pupils.

  “So what’d she try to tell you yesterday that made you laugh at her?”

  “Nothing, Chance. Nothing at all.”

  “Why don’t you just tell me to fuck off and get it over with?”

  Deacon opens his right eye and squints at her, shading his face with his hand. The last thing he needs or wants right now, a fight with her, but the headache is growing a will of its own, and it isn’t half so reluctant.

  “Don’t you think for a moment it hasn’t crossed my mind,” he says, and then the quick and subtle changes on her face to tell him that he’s hit home, bull’s-eye, bingo, and already Deacon’s wishing he could take it back.

  “The way you were looking at her up there, the way you fussed over her—I’m not blind, Deacon.”

  “Jesus, Chance, someone tried to kill her last night.”

  “Did you ever sleep with her?”

  Deacon covers his eyes. “I am not going to have this conversation,” he says.

  “Were you in love with her?”

  “I’m going to pretend that’s just the hormones talking.”

  She grabs his hand and pulls it away from his face, letting in the sunlight again, the rusty, stabbing needles, and her eyes are bright and wet. Her anger like a mask, so thick, so solid, impenetrable contempt, and he thinks for a moment she’s going to hit him.

  “Don’t you do that, Deacon. Don’t you fucking do that to me.”

  “Do what?”

  “You know exactly what I’m talking about. Don’t you dare start condescending to me like that.”

  He pries her fingers loose from his wrist and sits up, looking her in the eyes now, her furious green eyes like living emeralds, and glances at the two receptionists watching them warily from the information desk.

  “Tell you what, babe,” he whispers, speaking low now so maybe no one else will hear, so maybe the women will decide to mind their own damned business and not call security. “We’ll make a trade. I’ll tell you the truth about Sadie Jasper if you tell me how many times you and that sour old dyke Alice Sprinkle got it on. Sound fair enough to you?”

  She watches him a minute, not a word, just her hot green eyes and the tremble at the downturned corners of her mouth, Chance’s voiceless rage building up and up until the air around them seems to crackle and hum, and finally Deacon looks away.

  “I’m sorry,” he says. “I didn’t mean that.”

  “There are two policemen outside,” she replies calmly, calm to mock her anger and the pain in Deacon’s skull. “Detective Downs wants you along when he goes to that address you gave him.”

  “What the hell for?”

  “Ask him. I’m going home.”

  “You know I didn’t mean that, Chance. My head hurts and—”

  “Forget it,” she says and gets clumsily to her feet before he can turn and help her up. “Whenever this is done, I’ll be waiting for you,” and she leaves him then, and the receptionists go back to their computer screens and clipboards.

  Past downtown and into the maze of back streets and warehouse ruins on the decaying north edge of the city, Deacon riding up front with Downs in an unmarked car. There are two black-and-whites close behind them, no sirens or flashing lights, but it’s still a long way from inconspicuous, and Deacon wonders if that makes any difference. The sky has turned from blue to gray, the ash and charcoal cloud wall of an advancing cold front sliding like a velvet curtain across the world. There’ll be rain before dark, he thinks around the jagged shards of his headache, staring up past the buildings at the clouds while the detective asks questions Deacon doesn’t want to answer.

  “Since I was a kid,” he replies. “When I was eight, I found my mother’s car keys.”

  “No shit? If you don’t mind my saying so, that’s not a very auspicious beginning for someone with your rep.”

  “We all gotta walk before we can run,” Deacon says, reciting his lines like someone in the movies. Better that way, canned dialogue to match whatever lies and misdirection Scarborough Pentecost has laid out for the cops.

  “What’d your folks think about their kid being, you know, psychic?”

  “As little as possible.”

  They turn up a narrow, unpaved alley, and a thick cloud of red-brown dust almost obscures his view of the two cars behind them.

  “You really don’t like talking about it, do you?” Downs asks, and Deacon rolls up his window because the dust is getting in.

  “Nothing slips by you, does it?” he says.

  “Look, man, I’m just trying to make a little polite conversation. Ain’t no cause for you to go gettin’ nasty on me.”

  The car bumps through potholes and over an old set of trolley tracks, half buried by gravel and dirt and weeds. Deacon covers his eyes, wishing the clouds were heavier, wishing the sky were as black as pitch and then maybe the pain would back off an inch or so.

  “I think there’s an extra pair of sunglasses in the glove compartment there,” Downs says, but when Deacon looks he can’t find them. Nothing but piles of receipts, a box of .38 Smith & Wesson cartridges, and a rolled-up copy of Hustler.

  “Deke, what’s waiting for us at the end of this alley?” the detective asks him, and Deacon shrugs his shoulders and closes the unhelpful glove compartment.

  “If I knew that, I’d have told you. It might not be anything at all. I’ve been wrong before.”

  “Well, right or wrong, we’re here,” and Deacon looks up as the car comes to a stop beside a concrete loading platform crowded with rusting green barrels and the battered remains of a drill press. “X marks th
e spot,” Downs says and points at the huge red swastika spray painted on the wall of the building.

  “Do these things really stop bullets?” Deacon asks and pokes doubtfully at the heavy Kevlar vest that Downs made him put on over his shirt before they left the precinct.

  “That depends whether or not some asshole decides to shoot you in the head.”

  “Thanks for the peace of mind.”

  “You just stay real close behind me, Mr. Silvey, and odds are you’ll be right as rain,” and then Downs checks his service revolver and opens the car door, letting in the dust. Deacon coughs and opens his own door, wondering if there’s a word for the taste in his mouth, the metallic-flavored residue of pain and adrenaline, dread and uncertainty. Chance might know, he thinks, and steps out into the day.

  There’s a fleeting moment of light before the abandoned warehouse swallows them all. No electricity in the building, just the bright flashlights of the policemen, restless white beams to bob and sway and divide the darkness; Deacon does as he’s told and stays between the detective and a tall street cop named Ledbetter. It’s cold inside, musty, mildew-soured air, air that hasn’t seen the sun in years, and he’s trying not to shiver.

  “This place is fucking huge,” one of the cops whispers, not Ledbetter, someone else. “What the fuck are we looking for, anyway?”

  “What’s that over there?” Downs asks, and the cop aims his light at a wooden door hanging loose on its hinges. Another swastika, and this time there’s something else scrawled beneath it—the familiar red circle and straight black line. The detective touches the swastika and then looks at his fingertips, as if checking to see that the paint is dry.

  “I’d say this is what we’re looking for, wouldn’t you, Deke?”

  Deacon doesn’t answer, steps to one side as Downs tries the knob. It isn’t locked, but the sagging door drags loudly on the cement floor when he pushes it open.

  “Oh hell,” the detective mutters. “Holy fucking Moses,” talking more than half to himself now, the voice of a man who’s seen his share of bad shit, but maybe this is the worst yet. Maybe this is the worst by far, and he takes a deep breath and crosses the threshold into the room behind the door.

  “Simpson, you get on the radio and get an ambulance out here. You tell forensics to get their fat asses over here fucking yesterday.”

  Ledbetter steps into the room after Downs, and Deacon follows them, more afraid of being left behind than of what’s inside, disoriented and his heart beating much too fast; this room even darker than the hallway, and he blinks and follows the flashlight beams as they play back and forth across something pale hanging from the ceiling. The sudden, cloying stink of shit and blood, and Deacon covers his nose and mouth.

  “Is he dead?” Officer Ledbetter asks.

  “That supposed to be some kind of goddamn joke? The son of a bitch doesn’t have a head, so yeah, he better be fucking dead,” and now Deacon can see the ragged stump of the corpse’s neck, the wet glint of bone and gristle. The man’s naked body is suspended from the high ceiling by its ankles, and there’s a steel washtub sitting on the floor directly underneath. Deacon sees that it’s at least half full, a dull skin forming on the surface as the blood cools and begins to clot.

  “Motherfucker’s still bleeding out,” Downs says. “He hasn’t been dead long,” and Deacon turns his head and gags, squeezes his eyes shut tight and leans against the doorframe.

  “Hey, man,” Downs shouts at him, “if you’re gonna puke, do it out there in the hall.”

  “No, I’m okay,” Deacon says, even though he’s far from okay, and rests his dizzy, aching head against the wall.

  “Don’t nobody touch jack shit,” the detective growls. “You hear me?”

  “So where the fuck’s the rest of him?” one of the cops asks, and “Over there,” Downs says, “and over there, and over there,” and Deacon doesn’t turn around, easy enough to imagine, he doesn’t have to see it for himself.

  “And you’re telling me you didn’t have any idea this was here,” Downs says.

  “No,” Deacon replies, and then he gags again. “I didn’t know this was here.”

  “Just look at the fuckin’ walls,” Ledbetter says, and Deacon raises his head slowly, so much agony from such a simple act, and glances to his right. The unsteady flashlight beam to reveal the graffiti frenzy scarring the brick and plaster: leering demonic faces and blazing eyes, wolf jaws and SS insignia, at least a dozen more swastikas. A Confederate battle flag, and there are long shelves lining the wall, crude things built from cinder blocks and warped and sagging two-by-fours, jammed to overflowing with books and pamphlets. Deacon looks down at the floor and tries to concentrate on not vomiting.

  “I have to get out of here,” he says and takes a step towards the hall, stumbles and grabs the doorknob for support.

  “Deke, I need to know if you’re getting anything,” Downs says. “I mean anything at all,” and then a jolt like an electric shock from the brass knob, something cold that burns, and Deacon cries out and tries to pull his hand back. The blackness flinches, then surges hungrily around him, pulsing like a rotten heart, and he sinks to his knees on the cement floor. The policemen are talking again, talking still, calling out his name, but that’s already some other time ago, some time that hasn’t happened yet and might never happen now, so he doesn’t try to respond.

  The Land of Dreams is better far…

  The boundless, heaving blackness—India ink and razor-sharp obsidian flakes, poisonous roiling smoke and seawater a mile or more down, all those things and not one even half this perfect black—tugs at the softest parts of Deacon’s brain, and then it melts suddenly away, and he’s watching Scarborough Pentecost hoisting the dead man’s body. The nylon rope tied tight around his ankles, and somewhere overhead a rusted pulley squeaks noisily.

  “Upsy-daisy,” Scarborough says and tugs on the rope again.

  “Do you think they’ll come?” the girl asks, the girl sitting cross-legged on the floor, cradling the head in her lap. Blood up to her elbows, her clothes washed red-black and a crimson smear across her mouth and chin.

  “They’ll come,” Scarborough says. “Don’t you worry. They’ll come.”

  “I didn’t expect him to fight so much,” she says and gently strokes the dead man’s hair with her sticky fingers. “Why’s a bum gonna fight so hard to stay alive? I mean, he ate out of garbage cans.”

  “Everyone fights, little bird,” Scarborough says and strains at the rope. “Nobody ever goes down to the night-lands without a struggle.”

  “I won’t fight,” she says and reaches for the trash bag lying on the floor nearby. “There are worse things than dead.”

  “You say that now, but just you wait. Just you wait till it’s your turn, then we’ll see how much you fight.”

  “Madam Terpsichore told me it won’t be so bad.”

  “With all due respect, Madam Terpsichore hasn’t ever died, now has she?”

  “I could ask Miss Josephine,” she says and lifts the head by its matted hair. “She would know, wouldn’t she?”

  “Will you please just put the head in the goddamn bag,” he tells her, and now the body hangs ten or fifteen feet above the floor of the room, above the washtub, swaying slightly like a pendulum carved of flesh and bone. “We haven’t got all day.”

  “Put the head in the bag,” she sulks. “Put the head in the bag,” mocking him or merely repeating what he’s said, and the plastic bag makes an empty, rustling sound. She ties it shut and looks up, directly at Deacon. Her lips part and her eyes grow wide.

  “He sees me,” she whispers.

  “He’s fucking dead, Jane,” Scarborough says. “Trust me. He doesn’t see anyone anymore.”

  “No, not him. Him,” and she points a red index finger, and Deacon tears his hand off the doorknob, wonders how much of himself he’s left behind as the blackness swallows him again. The kind and sightless abyss to wrap him in its ebony amoeba folds and rock him
senseless, acid night to dissolve his soul if he only knew how to hold on long enough. But he doesn’t, or it won’t let him, and when he opens his eyes there’s only the headache, worse than before, and Detective Downs is squatting there beside him.

  “You still with us, man?”

  “Yeah,” Deacon replies, his throat so dry it burns, and he sits down on the floor.

  “That’s good. Thought for a second there maybe we’d lost you,” Downs says. “Think you can walk back to the car? We ought to get you out of here before the circus starts.”

  “Yeah,” Deacon says again, though he isn’t at all sure if he’s telling the truth. The cop puts an arm around his shoulder and helps him to his feet. Deacon’s head swims, and he slumps against the door, careful not to touch the treacherous brass knob.

  “One of you guys give me a hand over here,” the detective says. “We gotta get Mr. Silvey back outside.”

  “I’m okay,” Deacon tells him. “Just give me a minute.”

  Downs nods and spits on the floor. “I don’t know what you got goin’ on in that head of yours, mister, but I’ll tell you, this shit’s the damnedest thing I’ve ever seen. You did good, Deke.”

  “Did I?” he asks. “Is that what you think I did here?” and then the doorway leading back to the hall, the hall leading back out to daylight, bleeds a hundred satin tendrils that slip unseen past the detective and wrap themselves about Deacon, drawing him back down to the floor and merciful, numb oblivion.

  CHAPTER NINE

  In Caverns of the Grave

  “You’re sure about this?” Sheryl asks again, and this time Deacon doesn’t even bother to answer her, his glare worth at least a thousand words, his eyes saying everything that needs to be said, and she sets the mug of Budweiser and the shot of Jack down on the bar in front of him.

  “Fine,” she says. “You’re a grown man, Deacon Silvey.” And then she takes a step back from the bar, crosses her arms, and watches him.

  “What? You’ve never seen a drunk fall off the wagon before?”