Low Red Moon

by Kiernan, Caitlin R.

  “I’m not saying a word. This is between you, your pregnant wife, and the bottom of a bottle.”

  Deacon stares at the two glasses and then stares at Sheryl, then stares at the beer and the bourbon a little more.

  “What’s that crap on the jukebox?” he asks and wipes sweat off his forehead.

  “Someone else’s quarter,” she replies.

  “Well, it sucks ass. You know I hate that hip-hop shit.”

  “So find somewhere else to get smashed,” and then someone shouts at her from the other end of the bar, and Sheryl leaves him alone with the two drinks. He touches the rim of the shot glass, a single drop of whiskey on his index finger, and then places his finger to the tip of his tongue. The sweet, hot taste of Heaven, the fire to burn away his headache, and Deacon shuts his eyes and tries not to listen past the monotonous whump-whump-whump from the jukebox to the soft rise and fall of voices and laughter, the careless clink of glasses, the reek of cigarettes and alcohol, all the sounds and smells of The Plaza at 6:25 P.M. on any Sunday evening. Seedy bar symphony to calm his jangling nerves and soothe the edges off the migraine, if it weren’t for the goddamn rap music. He thinks about getting up and unplugging the jukebox, but Sheryl would probably kick his ass out on the sidewalk if he did. And this is where he told Scarborough Pentecost to meet him—The Plaza at 6:30, or I tell the cops every goddamn thing I know.

  Deacon opens his eyes and the two glasses are still there, waiting patiently on the scuffed and dented bar, gold and amber, and he picks up the shot of Jack and sets the edge of the glass against his lower lip, taking a breath, drawing the aroma deep inside himself. “Coward,” he whispers, trying hard to think of Chance instead of the decapitated body dangling from the warehouse rafters, instead of the things he saw when he gripped the doorknob. Enough to send fucking Superman scuttling back to the booze, even a whole mouthful of kryptonite better than the memories and the pain and knowing what it all might mean, not being certain what any of it means.

  “Fucking pussy,” he mutters, no longer sure if he’s trying to bully himself into or out of taking the drink.

  “You’re talking to yourself, Deke,” Sheryl says as she walks past and keeps on going.

  “Never a good sign,” Scarborough says and sits down on the empty stool next to him; the raggedy thrift-store girl named Jane is standing behind him. “Fella starts carrying on the circular discussions and next thing you know, it’s Thorazine and electroshock therapy.”

  “You’re early,” Deacon says.

  “I’m a busy man.”

  Deacon draws another deep breath, imagines the whiskey molecules absorbed directly through his nasal passages, his lungs, one big toe in the pool just to see how cold the water is before he takes the dive.

  “Yeah,” he says. “I just had a good look at some of your handiwork. Do you get paid for that, or do you do it just for kicks?”

  “Six of one, half dozen of the other,” Scarborough Pentecost replies and shouts at Sheryl to bring him a beer. Deacon, the shot glass still held up to his trembling lips, turns around, and the girl smiles a sheepish, guilty smile at him.

  “You really don’t have to do that,” she says.

  “Why? Don’t you think he’s earned a drink or two?” Scarborough asks her. “You’ll have to forgive her, Mr. Silvey. Someone let her read The Lives of the Saints once upon a time, and she hasn’t been the same since.”

  Deacon sets the glass back down on the bar.

  “Who was he, anyway?”

  “Who?”

  “The man we killed and left for the police to find,” Jane says before Deacon can answer. “That’s who he means.”

  “Hey, now, why don’t you just climb up on a table and tell the whole goddamn room about it?” Scarborough snaps, and she frowns and glances back towards the door.

  “Maybe that’s not such a bad idea,” Deacon says. “Maybe that’s exactly what I ought to do.”

  “Maybe you should just have that drink there, and then have a few more after it, and then, Mr. Silvey, think long and hard about Chance and the baby.”

  Deacon laughs and rubs at his aching head, the grinding, infinite expansion of pain in his skull, turning circles trapped inside turning circles and no limit to the largest or the smallest wheel.

  “Mention Chance one more time, you dickless freak, I’m going to break your goddamn neck.”

  And then Scarborough Pentecost leans very close to Deacon, smiling his wide and toothsome grin, wicked-mean smirk like some cartoon Big Bad Wolf. “Personally, though, it’s no skin off my nose, one way or another,” he says.

  “Both of you stop it,” Jane hisses under her breath, and then Sheryl brings a bottle of Pabst for Pentecost.

  “Are these two supposed to be friends of yours?” she asks Deacon, glaring suspiciously at the tall man and the ragged girl.

  “Not especially,” Deacon mumbles and picks up the glass of bourbon again. “Maybe you should bring the bottle.”

  “Maybe I shouldn’t,” and she looks back up at Scarborough and then slips away with a wet gray bar rag in one hand and an inky shot of Jägermeister in the other.

  “I know you think you know the score,” Scarborough says. “You think a killer’s a killer, a monster’s a monster—”

  “You set me up, asshole. You made me a fucking accessory to murder.”

  “We only helped you show the cops what we needed them to see.”

  “It was necessary, Deacon,” the girl says, tracing something on the bar with the ring finger of her right hand, watery geometry of condensation and surface tension. “It had to be perfect. We couldn’t take any chances.”

  On the jukebox, the rap song finally ends and is immediately replaced by Nick Cave crooning about God and Tupelo.

  “We need you,” Scarborough Pentecost says, his smile fading like a sunset. “And you still need us. She’s still out there.”

  “Everything I need, Mr. Whoever-the-hell-you-really-are, well, I got it right here in my hand,” and Deacon tips the shot of Jack towards the tall man, make-believe toast to end the charade, all the charades that hold his life together, and then Scarborough plucks the glass from his fingers before it even gets halfway to his mouth.

  “You think you know the score, Deacon,” the girl says, gazing intently at the invisible things she’s drawn on the bar. “Where the darkness ends and the light begins, all the sins that turn angels into demons. But you don’t. Not yet.”

  Scarborough drains the shot glass and sets it down in front of Deacon, wipes his lips with the back of his hand, and the tip of his tongue darts out to catch a stray drop of liquor lingering at the corner of his mouth.

  “Best listen to her, buddy,” he says and jabs a thumb at the girl. “She’s nutty as squirrel shit, but every now and then she starts making sense.”

  Deacon nods his head and then wraps his left hand around the empty glass, making a fist, imagines it shattering and the splinters burying themselves deep inside his palm. A long time since he’s been in a fight, but not so long that he’s forgotten anything that matters, anything important, and he swings so hard and fast that Scarborough Pentecost doesn’t have time to dodge the blow. Deacon’s knuckles connecting with the tall man’s nose, the faint snap of bone a second before the shot glass breaks and blood spurts from his hand and Scarborough’s nose in the same red instant. Scarborough grabs for the edge of the bar, misses and tumbles backwards off his stool.

  “Did you hear that, buddy?” Deacon asks, and when he opens his hand, the few pieces of glass that aren’t embedded in his skin fall to the floor; fresh pain to clear his mind a little bit, welcome counterpoint to the headache’s incessant throb. “How about it, Jane? Am I starting to make sense?”

  The raggedy girl glances at Scarborough lying on the floor, cursing and clutching his bleeding nose, and she frowns and looks up at Deacon. “You’re just wasting time,” she says.

  “You don’t say?” and when Scarborough tries to get to his feet, Deacon
kicks him in the crotch. “Seems to me, I got time enough. Hell, I got just about all the time in the whole goddamn world. Ain’t that right, buddy?”

  “We have to find Narcissa tonight,” the girl says.

  “Who or what is Narcissa and why, exactly, do I give a shit?” he asks and realizes that almost everyone in The Plaza has stopped whatever they were doing and is now staring at him and the man writhing on the floor. Sheryl’s reaching for the phone near the register.

  “Stop her, Deacon,” the girl says. “Stop her or I’ll have to.”

  Deacon looks down at Scarborough, curled into a moaning, fetal lump at his feet.

  “I can’t let her call the police,” Jane whispers, and there’s an edge in her voice more threatening times five than anything Scarborough’s done or said to him, a promise, and Deacon stands up and yells across the room at Sheryl.

  “Hey, Sher, there ain’t gonna be no need for that. Cross my heart and hope to fuckin’ die. My friends and I were just leaving,” and she glares furiously back at him, her fingers resting indecisive on the telephone’s touch pad.

  “I absolutely do not need this crap tonight, Deke,” she says and he apologizes and drops a twenty on the bar.

  “That’s cool. We’re already out of here,” and he squats down beside Scarborough. “You been listening to all this, buddy? That nice lady over there wants us out of her bar, tout de suite.” And then Deacon seizes him by his ponytail and begins dragging him towards the door. Jane follows, keeping an eye on Sheryl. Scarborough flails and snarls and grabs at the strong hand tangled in his hair until Deacon kicks him in the ribs and he stops.

  “Thanks, Sheryl,” Deacon says as he opens the plate-glass door painted over in messy crimson strokes to keep out the sun.

  “Fuck you,” she replies. “I ought to make your sorry ass come back and mop the blood off the floor.”

  “Someday, baby, I’ll make it all up to you, and then some,” and he hauls Scarborough Pentecost out into the gravel parking lot, into the streetlight shafts coming down through the trees and kudzu crowded around the little bar. Jane eases the door shut behind them and sits down in the gravel next to Scarborough.

  “You sure she won’t call the police?”

  “Yeah, I’m sure,” Deacon says. “Sheryl fucking hates the cops. She used to be married to one of the motherfuckers.”

  Scarborough groans and rolls over onto his back, stares up at the night sky through the branches, his face streaked with blood and snot and spit. Every time he exhales, fresh droplets of gore spray from his broken nose.

  “You shouldn’t have done that,” Jane says to Deacon. “We’re going to need him later on.”

  “Who said I was finished?” and Deacon plants a boot squarely in the center of Scarborough’s chest, pinning him to the ground.

  “You can’t go up against Narcissa alone.”

  “There’s that name again,” Deacon says and puts a little more weight on Scarborough’s chest. “When do we get to the part where I stop asking questions and you tell me what the hell you’re talking about?”

  “Not here, not out in the open like this. She might have spies,” and the girl looks warily up at the trees. “There are always spies.”

  Deacon follows her gaze, but all he can see are dead leaves and a few strangling kudzu vines, the sky gone dark so soon, a moment of confusion until he remembers the time change—spring forward, fall back—Sunday, so it’s an hour later than it was this time the day before. He shakes his head and looks back down at Scarborough, who’s smiling his wolfy smile again and pointing a large handgun at Deacon’s head.

  “Now move your goddamn foot,” he growls, and Deacon does as he’s told, but keeps his eyes on the barrel of the gun. He takes a step away from the man lying in the gravel, and Scarborough tightens his grip on the trigger.

  “Jane, you better hope no one else sees him waving that thing around out here, not if you’re really so worried about the police showing up.”

  “He’s right, you know,” she says to Scarborough. “You’re not helping things any.”

  “You just shut up a minute, little birdie, and let me deal with Mr. Joe Badass here. You broke my goddamn nose, you son of—”

  “Put away the gun, Scarborough,” Jane says very calmly, the way someone tells a child it’s time to turn off the television and go to bed, and Deacon takes another step backwards.

  “Don’t think that we can’t do this without you,” Scarborough snarls. “Don’t think for a minute there’s any reason in the world for me not to pull this trigger and blow your goddamn head off.”

  “The thought never crossed my mind,” Deacon says very softly.

  “Just put it away, Scarborough,” and Jane’s voice is still calm, but firmer this time. “You’re not going to shoot him, and we both know it.”

  “Maybe what you know and what I know are two entirely different things,” he replies and starts to sit up, moans and slumps back into the gravel.

  “Maybe you need to try a little harder to remember what we’re doing here,” the girl says sternly, and then she snatches the gun, moving so fast that Deacon almost misses it altogether—one second Scarborough’s holding the pistol and the next it’s in her hands.

  “I didn’t come all the way from Providence to watch you get into a pissing match,” she says, and Scarborough curses them both and shuts his eyes, covers his bleeding nose with his left hand.

  Deacon looks longingly at the front door of the bar, the burnt-out neon sign that’s always been hung upside down so that it reads , the panes of red glass and the GO AWAY—WE’RE OPEN placard, hoping that maybe Sheryl called the cops anyway. But there’s no reason to think his luck should start changing now, no point in spoiling a perfect losing streak, so he kicks Scarborough in the ribs again.

  “That’s for pointing a gun at me,” he says, and then, to the girl, “What do you say I just take my toys and go home?”

  “You called us, Deacon.”

  “Yeah, I know, but I think I’m over that now.”

  Jane sighs and wipes a trickle of blood off Scarborough’s chin, then wipes her hand on her jeans.

  “She’ll kill you before the night’s over. And then she’ll kill Chance. You’ve seen her. You know what she can do.”

  “Narcissa,” Deacon says, and Starling Jane nods her head.

  “She came here to kill you both and take your child. It’s the child that really matters to her.”

  “Like Mary English.”

  “We really shouldn’t talk out here in the open, Deacon. She—”

  “—has spies. Yeah, I know. I heard you the first time around.”

  “There is so much at stake here,” the girl says and wipes more blood from Scarborough’s face. “You cannot begin to imagine.”

  “What if I took Chance and went somewhere else?”

  “Then she’ll follow you, dickhead,” Scarborough mumbles. “She’ll follow you all the way to Hell and back, if that’s what it takes. You can’t run from this shit, any more than we can.”

  “Can you walk?” Jane asks, and Scarborough grunts, either a yes or a no, but Deacon isn’t sure which.

  “We have to go someplace where it’s safe to talk,” she says. “There’s not much time. Help me get him up, Deacon.”

  Deacon looks down at his mangled left hand, a few shards of the shot glass still buried in his bleeding palm, no telling how many stitches he’s going to need, and he realizes that it’s beginning to hurt more than his head. Well, at least that’s something, he thinks, and offers Scarborough his good hand.

  “I don’t need your help,” Scarborough tells him.

  “Yes, you do,” Jane says. So Deacon takes him by the sleeve of his leather jacket and hauls him roughly to his feet.

  “Do you two have a car or broomsticks or what?”

  “That isn’t funny,” Jane replies. “We have a car, right over there,” and she points at the line of vehicles parked in the shadows and streetlight puddles along
the road. Something sleek and white slips out from under the front bumper of an old Volkswagen Microbus and seems to glide over the asphalt, vanishing quickly beneath the wheels of a battered pickup truck, and Deacon tells himself it’s only a cat, or maybe a possum, nothing that shouldn’t be out on an October night, then looks back to Jane and Scarborough.

  “I have to call Chance first,” he says.

  Scarborough spits at the ground and licks his lips. “Five minutes and then we’re out of here, Mr. Silvey,” he says, “with you or without you.”

  “Five minutes,” Deacon replies and heads for the door.

  “Are you dying, Narcissa?” her grandfather whispers in her ear, and she opens her eyes, flinches at the pain, and lies staring up at the ceiling of the bedroom in the old house on Cullom Street. It’s finally dark outside, so it’s dark inside, too, and it takes her a moment to remember why she hurts.

  “No,” she says. “I was only sleeping. I was dreaming about the night I burned the house.”

  “She got away,” the old man taunts. “The pretty girl got away from you. No one’s ever gotten away from you before, Narcissa.”

  “I was standing out in the dunes, in the snow, watching the flames.” And she starts to roll over onto her right side, but it hurts too much, so she lies still and watches the yellowy windowpane reflections on the white drywall overhead.

  “You look like a big ol’ lobster someone left boiling in the pot too long,” her grandfather snickers. “And the pretty little girl got away from you, didn’t she?”

  Narcissa shuts her eyes again, only wanting to go back to sleep, to slip away, back down to the numb place by the sea where the snow whipped through her hair and the fire was much too far away to ever reach her. She imagines the icy, howling wind off Ipswich Bay, so loud she can’t hear the breakers or the blazing demon picking the house apart. So loud there’s nothing else that matters, the memory alone almost enough to deaden her blistered face and hands, that frigid wind she thought would sweep the world away.

  The first night that Aldous’ ghost came to her, charred and skulking across the snow-dappled sand, leaving no footprints but leading the way for the loping, yellow-eyed things that had come out of their holes to watch the house burn. Leading them to her.