Grayland: Chapter Three of the Dark Chicago Series

by David Ghilardi

The raghead Kmart was easy to smash into. Throwing three ornate stones built in a circle around what looked to be a fountain did the trick. Impact of stone one starred the glass, the next provided a small hole while the latter shattered the pane, all pieces scattering onto the store tiles.

  Beauty was, nothing was heard over the sound of the roar of the blizzard. It appeared as if the electricity was still out, so no loud alarms. No juice, no noise. No reason to fiind someway to piss offf law enforcement anymore than he had to. The CPD would kick his ass back to Joliet.

  Anyway, these Indian Punjabs were asking for it. Before he had gone to the can, this was a pretty much damn ass white neighborhood. With him around, it was going to stay that way.

  Craig Deshirlia had just gotten out of Joliet having hitched a ride with a couple of buds from his old

  neighborhood. Leave it to the damn city to be frozen solid. A bunch of them had to walk across town to catch one of the last remaining buses from the area. All the screws were laughing as they exited the drop offf at 27th Street. Yeah, walking in sub-zero temps was a laugh-riot. Their crew started out with seven. Staying together had helped them stay warm. Pack mentality was something Craig was used to. Little by little though, the guys peeled offf in the direction of their old neighborhoods. He was glad to lose the four black gangbangers even though their bodies blocked the wind. They would probably be dead by dawn, he mused. Hate kept Craig warm.

  Screw everybody else though. He needed his cigarettes. A damn beer would be nice. Nothing was open. After seeing that raghead scribble on the windows outside and the ‘We accept WIC’ sign outside, Deshirlia decided the Brown people gotta ante up.

  “Welcome me back, why don’t you?” Craig muttered, flipping the bird to the inoperable cams overhead, to the cardboard cutout of the sexy bikini model hawking red-eye energy drink, even to the small pile of teddy bears outfiitted for Christmas.

  He grabbed cartons of Marlboros jamming them into a plastic bag. There were a bunch of airplane-sized liquor bottles that caught his eye. Beef jerky, a six pack of Bud, and the entire roll of Easy Pic lottery tickets. Craig glanced up making sure the red dot on the Cameras was offf.

  “Merry goddamn Christmas to me.” He scratched his skull cap. Pulling it o fff revealed the deep purple face tattoos. He’d gotten them inked by Alvin Fletcher, the white power leader at Joliet. The Illinois swastika branded his neck covering most of his jaw line. A good 250 pounds of proud angry white man, thought Craig. Chicago changed but white power was forever.

  Craig toted his stolen swag out the open doorway of the market. There was the YMCA across Kildare Street. He would be bedding down there tonight. A couple of old OG’s still ran the joint. He still had pull with some of those old Simon City Royals. Shit, thought Craig, he’d been part of their crew since he was a kid. Some of the old reprobates hung out there. Unable to get their acts together, they all stuck around the old neighborhood. Some of the yuppies and wealthy urban scum hated seeing jail-tatted bodies working out in the back alley, actually complaining to management.

  The Young Men’s Christian Association listened to the complaints, yet their Democratic souls kindly kept the old white gangbangers around.

  The old-timers were told to keep out of sight. The OG’s kept to the shadows now, keeping the building in tip-top shape. Out of sight, out of mind. No problem. Cheap room and board. After hours, keep it mum, do what you wanted.

  Damn, it was ball-freezing cold! No way Craig Deshirlia was going to punk it raw on the streets. He had big ideas. “Armed robbery was in your future, son.” That’s what his papa told him back in 8th grade after Craig had come home with not one but two stolen cars that summer night. The old bastard was proud of him, even drunk offf his ass. Pop had showed Craig how to chop a car that very night, even while half in the bag.

  Deshirlia wiped tears roughly away. Damn holidays always brought sweet memories of larceny out of his heart. That was his problem, too emotional, too sweet-natured.

  It was true. Craig cared too much. He was a lover. Using his teeth, two Budweisers popped open, sluicing beer down his gullet. He tossed away the empties beaning the cutout model in her breasts. She toppled to her side. He paused listening to the wind outside. That lonely sound was almost romantic. The floor stand model was good-looking. If he thumbed a hole where her cardboard kootchee was, would bonking the cut-out be too weird?

  Been long time since he had a woman. No cameras, who would know? Craig imagined the ragheads crawling in fiinding the messy store, the bikini cut-out covered with semen. The image made him gufffaw. Craig picked up the model stand. His thumbs began poking holes in the cardboard.

  He popped two more beers guzzling them at the same time. Standing back, admiring his handiwork, Craig saw movement outside. Who was freezing his ass in the cold? He wondered.

  A guy was throwing snow all over his back, his head. Was the faggot making a snow angel? Drunk enough to take a shower in this weather?

  This dark haired fairy was dousing flames on his clothing by covering himself with snow. Patting his body down even as smoke continued rising from it. Deshirlia snorted, spitting out a stream of beer. Some drunk ass Pollack probably locked his ass out of his house, dropped a cigar on himself then whoof! Maybe the dumbass was drinking potato vodka, spilled it on his chest and then shit got reals! He’s seen it happen before.

  “Hej Dupek!” Craig shouted again in Polish. “Ty pizdo.” The dillweed Jeremiah Johnson kept extinguishing smaller fiires on his body. Maybe this idiot got something to donate to the Gilly club. (Craig’s version of the boys club, but the only member was his penis after whom Craig nicknamed Gilly. He was about to introduce the cutout model stand to Gilly).

  Sick and twisted were the corners of his mind. Deshirlia accepted this fact, being more than happy to show others how dark his imagination was.

  This Pollack guy was big. He had been hunched over a snow mound. Now erect, the drunk loser was taller than Craig by a good two feet. Not to worry, he thought. He’d given a great beat down to many others twice his size before.

  “Yo dickhead. You’re blocking my way.” Gray turned to see a short stubby mass of angry white hate. The human before him was all tubby muscle. His face was adorned by tattoos traversing his neck and skull. Four teardrops ringed his cheekbones. His smile was ruined by missing teeth and a black front molar. There was a silver ring in his nose. Gray’s eyes grew wider as he took in the oddity standing at his feet. He had known a fellow like this one more than a century ago. Raul was his name. He wept like a turnbuckle bitch after Gray had begun eating him under the stars in a fiield near here. Chicago was named for ‘Field of Wild Onion Grasses’ by the Indians, nameless savages best forgotten by time. Indeed, thought the Gray.

  “Indeed.” Rumbled the dark derelict before Craig. Craig Deshirlia drained the last beer tossing the crumpled can against the Pollack’s chest. His crooked smile exposed rotten teeth. A good fiight always got his blood up. Damn cold as it was, bare knuckling would warm him up. Brawling got him hard. Sex was over-rated. Violence got Craig offf. The rotund fiiend uppercut into the dark man’s belly following the blow with four rabbit punches to his ribs.

  “You ain’t shitting where I live, ‘Kurwa’!” Deshirlia pounded away at the dark Pollack. Smoldering, the large man bore the rain of blows expelling tiny grunts each time he was hit. Black boots slowly stepped back towards a nearby sapling. The poor tree had been unwatered for months. It had been left stunted and dead by the YMCA stafff. Christian mercy did not extend to the world outside. It had grown a withering six feet. Gray smiled as the angry human spent his wrath against him. These frail things had spunk. Character was rare, thought Gray. But enough playing with the livestock. He was hungry after all.

  Gray drove his right arm back into the sapling’s trunk. The force snapped the dry sapling with ease. He pushed Craig away from his body with his left hand. The human slid back a step as Gray hoped. Pulling away the useless top half of the tree, Gray revealed the sharded end o
f the trunk.

  Craig was in high lather, actually foaming and spitting from aggressive posturing. He was happy. It was the best Christmas present yet: fiighting this dumb ass with a beat down. What valuable stufff would this moron have in his pockets? Was that a watch chain hanging from his pocket?

  Craig charged forward looking to tackle and pummel. The dark man greeted his foe with a smile. Ducking with ease the bullish frontal assault, Gray grabbed Craig as he passed by the seat of his pants. Deshirlia was lifted. His chest pivoted around, up in the air and then was violently impaled upon the tree trunk. The ground-spear tore through Craig's stomach, ripping out his intestines. His body hung a good four feet from the snowy earth.

  Craig had no words. Grunts and shallow panting were all he had left. Gray rubbed his hand sensually along the human’s stout form spewing crimson love. He drank spray from the human with his hands. No wish of his to resurrect this quarrelsome nettle. The human whimpered. Gray ran his fiingernail across the back of its neck. Blood spurted from the force of heart chambers pumping out. Gray used Craig like a blood fountain. Burgundy liquid ran down the trunk of the tree. Gray bent down and drank his fiill.

  Gray’s body began restoring itself. Damn getting old, he considered. It took longer to repair oneself. He stood, planning his next moves. The wind gusted in protest their presence covering both fiigures with frost.

  He still had days here in Chicago without the sun. Humans huddled in each one of these homes. This land was mine. So, I may enter wherever I wish. All the inhabitants of Olde Irving Park were his chattel now. Recalling fondly, children tasted best of all.

  Deshirlia yelped, spasms in pain, his last moments on earth. Gray looked up at the brick building this human said he lived at. It was tall, with many windows. Gray knew many humans slept in that edifiice, ripe for plucking.

  Idly, as Craig continued to mew, Gray stepped on the man’s back forcing his body down. A horrible piercing shriek began as Craig's body descended the trunk. It was a fiive count concerto played with vicious vibrato. The tubby man shuddered face down in the snow. A red puddle spread out from the trunk. Looking up at the building, Gray crushed the annoying human’s skull. It grew quiet then, no more sound uttered forth from the crimson mound. Silent again with only the snow roaring in his ears. As the World should be, he thought.

  Gray smiled. So much more pain to share this Christmas Day.

  Chapter 12

  Biting down on the cork, Doug spat it away into the bathroom sink, then took a swig from the vodka bottle he had found in the front room. God knows where Cray had found it. His friend had always been good at scrounging. Cray was a thieving ass. He might have lifted it from the Brits’ mansion. Doug had taken another quick shower to warm up and scrub Charles’ gore offf of his body. He scoured his scalp. He tried to rein in his thoughts. Doug couldn’t believe his allies were gone. They were the ones who brought him into this. They had all the intel on these creatures.

  He was outnumbered. Should he continue the fiight? Was Cray one of them? Doug drank deep, vodka igniting his insides. He slapped his cheeks until they stung. Being tired was not an option. He toweled offf, dressed, then went downstairs to refuel on something light and edible.

  The papers he found at the Brits were an absolute mess. It looked like it would take some time to rearrange them. Some were yellowed, brittle with age. One page, actually looked like it was written on vellum. That script held the oddest writing.

  It appeared the problem was centered around the Race Mansion. And contracts belonging to a man called Gray. That might help explain things. But Doug knew no amount of paper was going to stop such an unholy force. After meeting Gray tonight, he knew he needed help. Doug had been dragged into a war with things he knew nothing about.

  He took another swig. No use guessing. He had someone close by who could help him. What she could do to possibly stop this, he tried not to think about. He was warm, ready and prepped. Nodding, he mumbled.

  "No time like the present.” Five minutes later, af ter locking up the house, Doug was using the discreet signal Mavis told him to use. They lived next to each other but visibility was so bad, the handrails of his parents’ home disappeared a mere fiifty feet away. The Blizzard was over. This Ice Storm was just as bad. Douglas knocked again. It was odd. The barricade was completely diffferent now. He no longer recognized the wood and metal placed there. Cray and he had done a decent job last night. It had looked nothing like this, what he was looking at.

  He remembered not to cross further across the porch towards the broken swing. Mavis had booby-trapped it last night. The old woman was full of surprises. Doug looked around. No neighbor was out. Nothing moved. He leaned in to tap on the wood again when the barrel of a gun slowly extended to his face.

  “What you want, freak?” A voice intoned. It wasn’t Mavis. It sounded more like a nervous kid. Young voice unsure of himself. Great, thought Doug. Go through all this to be plugged by an amateur.

  “Mavis, here? I need to speak with her.”

  The whiny voice peeped up.

  “Well, maybe she don’t want to speak with you.”

  Doug shook his head. It was too cold. This crap was old.

  “Listen, kid. Tell her Doug needs to see her.” The click in his ear made him turn. Doug wasn’t fast enough and got socked in the left ear sinking him down to his knee. What he would give for an hour without pain. Thoughts broke free from the dull vodka-anchor. Mavis had sons. He hadn’t seen them for ages, but that was who this was. Make a guess, man.

  “James. Hey man. That you?” There was a pause that the roaring wind fiilled in. “Yeah. Oh. Hey. You’re the screwed up kid next door had his drunk parents die in a header offf Keeler ramp, right? That was hard rummy. Here, what you doing down there on your knees?”

  Doug grasped James’ hand allowing him to pull him up. He was seeing stars again. Head felt like liquid was running out of her ears. Doug hoped it wasn’t his brains. James looked like he remembered. A wiry viking with a dirty blonde mullet. Thanks to the recent explosion and Cray’s vodka, it took a moment for three images of James to become just one again.

  “Let’s get inside, man. Ain’t you cold?” James disappeared over the side of the porch dropping down underneath it. His eyesight stabilizing again, Douglas followed after him.

  Mavis and her clan stood pouring over Doug’s papers laid out on the kitchen table.

  “Those limeys liked their secrets, didn’t they?” Mavis complained, muttering in the silence. Jimmy was drinking hard liquor like water. It looked like moonshine. George tried to imbibe. Jimmy brushed him away after poring him an inch in a grape glass.

  “You unner stand it, ma?” George asked. Doug remembered George. He looked the same too: shoulders hunched, longer mullet, like an apologetic, underfed coyote.

  Mavis fumed, exhaling plumes in frustration. “Huh. Lotta bits and pieces here. Way it looks, this character, the Gray owns Race Mansion and a lot more of the old plots of land from when Old Irving park was founded. Safe to say, the dark bastard is the Gray, aforementioned. You ran into him, huh?”

  “Will anything in their help us kill him?” Douglas ignored her question.

  Mavis considered.

  “Naming a demon is the fiirst step in defeating him. The question is how.”

  “Demon. Ma, the hell you get yourself into?” whined George. “Why us?”

  “I don’t follow,” replied Mavis.

  “Why do we have to do it? It’s Christmas Day. Me and Jim just gotta outta the can. Why should we run around, gettin’ our balls froze offf for a buncha strangers?” Jimmy looked at his brother. He slammed the moonshine bottle into his chest. George winced. Mavis pufffed on her cigarette, the red glare of its end angrily pointed at her son.

  “Haven’t learned when to shut the hell up and learn from your surroundings? Locked in that steel cage for thirtyseven months ain’t learned you none? Dragged along with your big brother—repeat offfending, Still nothing got inside your n
oggin?”

  Mavis stormed on. “People will die on Christmas Day. And you both don’t give a rat’s ass. Only about yourselves! Thought I raised you better than that. Sweet Jesus, I blame myself.”

  Douglas looked ashamed for the brothers. Mavis held her hand over her mouth. She began to cry.

  “Maaaaa. Please don’t do that.” George whined even when he pleaded. Jimmy came over to his mother smothering her small body with his embrace. Mavis wasn’t having any of it. She leaned up, slapping the wiry viking across his cheek. Jimmy didn’t say a word. He just held his defiiant mother who squirmed a bit, yet after some gentle rocking gave in to his brutal afffection.

  Doug fought back tears of his own. His mother was a distant memory now. He struggled to remember when the last time was that she had hugged him. Doug’s mother wasn’t a mean woman. His family, like many in the bluecollar,working-class were emotionally distant. A brief hug and pecks on the cheek were all you got. A pat on the back for a good job done. If you were looking for efffusive displays of afffection, you were going to wait a good long time.

  His father had always told him if it was love he wanted, look around. Love was displayed by the house Doug lived in, a car used to cart his ass around places, plenty of hot food to eat and clothes on his back. Proof is what you saw people do, not just girly emotions or lip service.

  Tears swelled up, making Doug’s lip quiver a bit. Last time his mother showed emotion was when he traveled down for basic training in San Diego. He was 18 and had friends out West. Joining the military and being with his warrior-pals was his Life’s plan. Doug had blurted it out, had been already packed and was ready to bolt. Doug’s dad, already deep in his cups, clapped when he told them defiiantly of his plans, mock saluting when he did so. It was his Mother, tipsy as well, red-eyed, who became stolid in her desire and grabbed him by the arm. Again and again, she tried to shake sense into her son. Doug had gently pulled away from her grasp. His dad’s clapping continued, following Doug out the door to wait for his ride to the airport.