by Khurt Khave
Awww shit, Jimmy.
His shoes sat next to his sleeping bag. Ain’t none of us leaves our shoes sitting out. He lay facing the store’s glass door, his back to the street.
“Hey Jimmy?” I said, knowing there’d be no answer.
I squatted down next to him, alcohol giving the sidewalk a slow spin and dulling the fear of what I might find. I reached out and shook his shoulder. He was already stiff and toppled toward me like an off-balance log in a fire.
My head spun with more than just the booze when I saw his face all cut up like that. I balled my fists. My eyes closed; my thoughts recoiled.
No! My cotton-stuffed brain tried to twist from the sight, to jink to the side of a memory cut off and stuffed into a mental garbage bag.
I didn’t hear Malius step up behind me, and then he spoke, “Ah daaamn, Chuck. That Jimmy?”
I stood, a little too fast. The sidewalk rocked under me. Malius was taking a pull at his liquid prayerbook, his gnarled hand wrapped around the brown paper bag. He breathed out, fuming like a can of Sterno. He looked at me, brown irises floating on a couple of undercooked egg whites, “Shit, Chuck. Who’d do something like that to Jimmy?”
I took a long drink when Malius offered, “I dunno, man. That’s bad shit.”
But I did know.
It’s just my head was trying to sprout legs and run away like in that movie about the shape-shifting monster in the arctic.
I’d seen it before in Afghanistan, when my Deep Ops team hit a small village called Andarakh, that lay at the foot of the mountains in the northeast. All the men in the village were dead. Their faces carved like clay tablets, sharp angular slashes. All the women were nailed to thick posts ringing a muddy pit, iron spikes driven through their chests, holding them upright. Their throats slit, dark brown stains traced down their bodies to the chalky dirt where grooves were gouged into the ground, draining into the pit.
I knew those symbols carved in the flesh of Jimmy’s face. Chiseled in crimson angled slashes that split skin, fat and muscle down to the white bone. I sure as hell didn’t want to look at what was inside that bag; and I damn well didn’t want to see what wasn’t inside that bag.
My legs were shaking from more than the chill fog that was blowing gray eddies down Judah street.
Malius took his bottle back, “We should call the cops, right?” he asked.
I’d already turned and started to walk away, “Yeah Mal. Call the cops.”
I felt the callouses on his hand snag the fabric of my shirt as he grabbed at my shoulder, “Hey man, ain’t you used to be some soldier or something? You gotta stay for Jimmy’s sake.”
I shrugged his hand off. “Use to be’s ain’t worth shit,” I said, walking away.
“Chuck?”
I didn’t look back. Just turned my collar up and kept walking all the way to the Presidio.
There were no kids in that village in Afghanistan. The dead were everywhere, but only adults. There were trinkets and toys and small clothes wrapped up in bundles in many of the stone and clay houses. Tiny sandals sat outside in the dust next to most of the rough wooden doors.
Where were the kids?
I spent that night sitting hunched next to a steam grate on Chestnut. I woke up to the early morning sun blazing off the windows of the stores across the street. My mouth felt like I’d spent the night sucking on a wool mitten, and a headache lanced from the shining glass straight through my skull.
I shook the stiff pain from my limbs and stood. The sun was still low, only the dog walkers were out.
I kept a $25 a month vet’s membership at the Presidio Y, so I headed over for a shower and shave. I paused briefly after running the electric shaver over my chin, then ran it over my entire head. The guy staring back at me from the mirror looked like shit, a busted up version of what’d been a staff sergeant of 3rd Special Forces. Broken nose, broken down, broken dreams.
I stared at my reflection for a long time. The soldier was still in there, buried deep and drowned in a slurry of alcohol and avoidance. Kicking ass and taking names? Kill them all and let God sort them out? Was that man still in there? Maybe used to be’s could be worth a shit?
I unlocked the combo on my locker and pulled out the fresh clothes I kept stashed there. Looking around, I pulled out the PSS pistol and its horizontal draw shoulder holster from the lock box on the shelf at the top of the locker. I strapped it on quickly and settled my worn bomber jacket over everything. Don’t ask me where I got the Russian silent pistol. I couldn’t tell you if I wanted to. It was truly silent; used specialized captive-piston ammunition. When fired, the gun made little noise other than the clack of the metal hammer. But where did I get it? Who knew? I had so many holes in my memory, my brain was like a beehive after colony collapse.
Malius was still asleep. I shoved his shoulder with my boot. Groan and a “fuck off.” I kicked harder. “Malius! Rise and motherfuckin’ shine.”
“Chuck? What the hell, man? Leave me alone.”
“Malius, c’mon. Get the fuck up. I’ve gotta talk to you.”
Malius spit and rolled over to face me, “Holy shit, Chuck, you’re fucking bald!”
“Yeah, it’s morning, I’m bald, and still ugly as shit. But I need your help, man. Now c’mon. Get up.” I pulled a wad of bills out of my pocket. “Red Roof Cafe, Mal? I’m buying.”
Malius crawled to his feet, unsteady, like the sidewalk was shifting. “Why didn’t you say so, instead of kicking me in my goddamn shoulder?”
I started crossing the street. I wasn’t looking back but I could hear Malius’ shuffle-walk behind me, trying to keep his two-sizes-too-big shoes on his feet. “You stick around for the cops last night?” I asked.
“Sure I did, Chuck, I’d never leave poor. . .”
“They say anything about Jimmy’s face?”
“Whatdya mean, Chuck?”
“Look Mal, I mean did they say anything about Jimmy’s cut-to-fuck-all face?”
“I guess. I mean sure, I think they was saying some stuff.”
Stepping up on the opposite curb, I turned around and grabbed Malius, yanking him up onto the sidewalk in front of the Red Roof.
I leaned in close, “You wanna end up like Ol’ Jimmy? Your face carved up, your heart ripped out and your balls cut off?” Malius was shaking his head. “Then you’re gonna spill what you heard the cops saying,” I said.
“Yeah Chuck, yeah. . .just lemme think, man.” Malius scrubbed at his face. “The cops said, uh, they was talking about that there was a couple other bums what got killed over in the Haight. And they was saying how it was some kind of serial murder cause there was the same kinda letter things carved in their faces too. And their hearts tore out too and uh. . .how you know about the heart thing, Chuck? I didn’t know 'til them cops pulled poor Jimmy out of his bag and you was already gone.”
I stared at Malius, but instead, I saw the crumpled forms of the men in the Afghan village. When we rolled one of the bodies over, the man’s heart had been ripped from his chest. Not cut, ripped. Who the fuck rips into a human body?
Malius shifted his weight back and forth. “Uh. Yeah. . .oh I think they was talking about another coupla guys in the Tenderloin too.”
“Tenderloin? Same shit?”
“No. Uh. I dunno. These guys were missing their women or something. I couldn’t keep it straight, Chuck. Sorry.” Malius’s eyes floated on unshed tears, “I know I ain’t worth much, Chuck, but I don’t wanna get cut up dead.”
“You ain’t gonna get cut up, Mal. I’m gonna stop this.” I pulled open the door to the diner. The owner looked up and glared daggers 'til I pulled out my wad of cash and waved howdy. The waitress walked us back to the furthest table, the one by the bathroom. It smelled like urinal cakes was the catch of the day. Before he sat down, I said, “You get yourself cleaned up in the bathroom here, ya got it?”
“Sure, Chuck, sure.”
“And then you order whatever you want to eat. I’ll clear it with th
e grill jockey.”
“Where you going, Chuck? You gotsta eat too, man.”
I turned and started toward the front counter. “I got some shit to take care of Mal. Enjoy the grub.”
The guy at the grill came out as I approached the front counter. He said, “Look fella, we’re not a food pantry or a. . .”
I leaned over the counter, “I know pal, but my friend here needs a break, you know?” I laid the bills on the counter. Forty bucks. “He’ll be outta here before your rush starts this morning, and it’ll mean a shitload to him.” I pushed the bills across the counter.
He scooped the bills off the counter and stuffed them into the pocket of his stained apron, “Sure fella. I got it.” He looked over at the waitress, “Mary, go get this fella’s friend some coffee, and get his order in.”
I turned and shoved my way through the door, back into the dull cement glare of morning.
A couple hours later I stood at a picnic table in the park, a tourist map of San Francisco spread out across the uneven, worn wood. The four corners of the map were held flat by two Mickey’s, a pint of Jim Beam and a roll of black duck tape. Felt-tip pen cap in my mouth, I ran my finger down the police reports in the San Francisco Chronicle. I’d picked everything up at the gas station, along with one of those aging hot dogs they always got rolling on those metal tubes by the register. I crammed the dog into my mouth as I put another mark on the map.
Including Jimmy and the other three Malius heard the cops talking about, I had six black marks on the map. They formed a circle with one in the center near the end of the Golden Gate Park Panhandle. Leaning over the map, I rubbed my forehead. Five black dots around a central one.
The sun was bright, and the reflection from the white map was building a dull ache behind my eyes. The ground twisted with passing vertigo as I drew black ink across the map. Not in a circle, but across, back and forth. My hand moved, tapping a memory I recoiled from. Back and forth, one dot across to the next. I set the marker down, looking at the figure I’d made. It was a bent five-pointed star. The kind a kid might draw in a night sky. The center dot sat in the middle of the pentagram made by the crossing lines.
An Elder fucking Sign. That’s what the shrink at the VA hospital said I was rambling about during a hypnotherapy session: an Elder Sign. He said I had many memories locked in my head but we could open them through hypnosis. There’s so much I don’t remember from the last month of deployment in Afghanistan, so many locked doors, I’m a fucking condemned hotel.
That was the last hypnotherapy session I ever went to. Last time I went to the VA at all. The only therapy I needed was at the bottom of every bottle. Opening locked doors was dangerous.
What was that joke? In Mother Russia, door kicks you down? It looked like the Mother Russian doors had found me and they were wearing their ass-kickin’ boots.
I sat down hard on the wooden bench attached to the table, my hands clenched at my temples. Writhing electric worms were dancing at the corners of my vision. A fucking migraine coming on. I twisted the cap off one of the wide mouths and downed it in a single pull, tossing the empty green bottle into the recycle next to the table. I folded my arms over the map and laid my head down.
My unit found the old man on the side of the road that led into the hills to the village of Andarakh. Caked in crumbling dust, his face looked like a disintegrating mummy. His beard was a dirt pillar laying beneath his chin. We could see the trail he’d made along the dirt road. Dragging himself meter by meter, leaving a groove in the dust and a trail of blood. He was holding his intestines, shoving them back into the ragged wound in his belly, trying to pinch the skin shut to keep them there. His breathing was shallow, almost non-existent as I walked around searching for signs of an IED booby trap. They sometimes hid bombs inside bodies. His head was resting on one outstretched arm. He’d drawn a figure in the dirt. Scratching it into the rocky surface below the dust, staining it dark with the blood from his torn fingertip. It was the image of a five-pointed star. He whispered, in English, “Elder Sign.”
At 1am, I stood in front of the parking garage. It was the kind of garage they have throughout the city, a converted building where you drive in through the loading dock and the attendant parks your car. Only this one was completely boarded up. Loading dock, windows, doors, everything. It was the location indicated by the dot in the center of the diagram I’d mapped. The sign above the closed roll-down door said “Abe’s Garage.” Rings a fucking cathedral bell in my head, but my mind slipped away from the memory.
I held a five-gallon gas can. Had to pay an extra twenty bucks to rent the goddamn can from the gas station. I set it down and pulled the Jim Beam from my back pocket. I stared at the garage as I spun the cap off the bottle and took a long drink. The booze burned a hot trail down my throat, taking the edge off. I moved across the street and walked along, looking for access to the back of the row of buildings. At the end of the block there was an empty lot surrounded by chain link fence where a building had been demolished. The water and sewer pipes stuck up from the ground like the rib bones of a rotted ox carcass in an Afghan poppy field. I double-checked the seal then tossed the gas can over the fence. I followed. A few fence-hops later and I stood behind Abe’s Garage. There was all kinds of shit piled in back, like someone’d been clearing out the interior. Cement and rebar, peeling papered dry wall, twisted lengths of electrical wire and lots of wood beams and 2x4s.
The old man died. Once we pulled more of his robes away, we could see the tear in his abdomen was surrounded by small purple bruises. Like what you might see on a strangulation victim’s neck. Only smaller. And so many. He had more tears, rips in his flesh all over his body, and always surrounded by the small angry purple bruises. His flesh was pierced with small semi-circular punctures that looked like a very tiny person had bitten into an apple and then decided not to take the bite. We photographed the site, and the body, then continued up the road following the blood-spattered groove.
I quietly shifted as much of the wood up against the back of the building as I could. I pulled a stack of short cuts of 2x12 to the side. Underneath were several bundles of small clothes. Children’s clothes. The memory bit and chewed, scratched to rise to the surface. A small sandal rolled from the bundle and my mind staggered. I dragged a hand across my face and pulled a piece of drywall to cover the tiny clothes so I wouldn’t look at them.
There were no lights and no movement visible through the dirtypaned windows in the building’s wall. I poured gasoline over the wood, letting the dry boards soak up as much as they could. I moved over to the window in the door on the left of the rear roll-up and pulled the duct tape out of the pocket of my jacket. Taping around the outside of the glass, I made an X across the middle of the pane. I pulled my pistol out of its holster and smacked the glass with the grip. There was soft crack and the tape sagged. I pulled the glass out of the frame and looked inside. Four rows of narrow parking slots were painted on the old cement floor. Toward the front there was a small corrugated steel structure, a small hut, probably where the attendant sat when they weren’t parking or fetching cars. Between the hut and the side wall there was a lot of junk. I could see light coming from the structure, but it was coming from down low, like a lantern on the floor.
I pulled some wire from the debris and tied a slip-knot in one end. Passing it through the broken window, I swung it around a few times and hooked the slide lock. The door swung open, making a short metallic creak. I slipped inside and ran over to a cement column, putting it between whomever might be in that hut and me. I pulled the whiskey out and downed the rest of the pint. Tossing the empty, it shattered by the doorway.
It was dusk when my unit stood in the center of Andarakh. At first we couldn’t understand what we were seeing. Just wooden posts surrounding a pit. But the charnel house stink of blood mixed with shit and piss was overwhelming. What we thought were heaps of clothes by doorways were dead men, curled around their horrible wounds. Icy wind swept down from the
mountains washing swarms of blow flies around us, like black buzzing hail that denied the pull of gravity. They flew into our eyes and mouths, tried to crawl in our ears and creep along our sweat soaked necks. We swatted and batted with little effect. We walked right past the poles and their grisly displays pinned like butterflies. We found ourselves near the pit before the horror penetrated the fog that clouded our vision. Across from us there moved figures dressed in black robes, faces shrouded by deep hoods pulled low.
It might have been Smitty who opened fire first, but the staccato cracks of gunfire from our SCARs and M4 automatics filled the night air. The robed figures scattered and our weapons fell silent. Laser sights flickered in the gloaming, painting corners and doorways with red dots. Below the low howl of the wind and the buzz of the blow flies, I heard something. Sucking sounds like hundreds of boots squelching through rain-soaked Kentucky clay at Fort Knox. I flicked on the tac light on my M4, and pointed it toward the source of the sounds. Toward the pit. A couple other guys trained their lights near mine, illuminating the blood-soaked edge of the pit.
Something was dragging itself from the pit. Glistening and wet, indistinct forms like dozens of arms clawed and pulled and dug at the collapsing edge of the pit. The flashlights swung and moved in unsteady hands leaving sharp afterimages of dozens of tiny heads with gaping mouths pushing up from a dark quivering mass. Screaming, howling mouths filled with tiny wicked teeth.
The sounds of gunfire erupted again, and over that, ragged screams ripping from our own throats.
I don’t know when the choppers arrived, or even who called them in. For a long time after that I only remember bits and pieces of what happened as I worked my way through the army hospital psychiatric system. At some point they dumped me in San Francisco with a medical discharge.
A creak of old springs and the bang of a door slamming told me someone had come out of the attendant’s hut. A flashlight beam cut through the darkness, played around the open parking area, then settled on the back door. The broken bottle looked like glass from the broken window pane. I heard footsteps coming across the floor. A figure in black robes moved past me. I raised the PSS and pulled the trigger. There was a metallic clack and the figure dropped to the ground, dead. Pulling the body outside, I grabbed the gas can and went back inside. Near the attendant’s hut was various equipment, compressors, shovels, and a 200 gallon propane tank. Perfect. Propane isn’t explosive on its own, that’s just in stories, you gotta mix it with oxygen, and you gotta let it build up. It’s heavier than air and would pool at the bottom of a closed building like this.