“This is why we aren’t supposed to panic,” Han panted to himself, “so we don’t run down an alley that’s as tight as a coffin.” As he had predicted, multiple phantoms began appearing at the mouth of the narrow alley. He turned back to see that the entrance was now populated by even more phantoms, squeezing in an unholy traffic jam as they moved toward him. “Okay. Shit.” He looked upward and saw an empty night sky high above. “I guess I’m going up.”
Han placed his back against one of the alley walls, and then propped his feet, one at a time, against the other wall. He started walking upward as quickly as possible, displaying impressive agility. “Gotta concentrate. Come on, you son-of-a-bitch!”
The ghosts watched the display with curiosity at first, craning their necks to glimpse the human travelling upward, making a desperate bid for escape. As Han moved rapidly toward the open fissure, however, they quickly began to pursue him. An elderly man began to crawl up the wall on all fours in an ascent that would have made Spider-Man envious, while two other phantoms began to float upward as though they’d suddenly been filled with helium.
As he watched the old man close in, Han cursed. “Damn. I need to work out more,” he puffed to himself as the sweat began to run down his forehead and into his eyes.
The old man reached him first, grabbing his right leg and tugging it hard so that Han nearly tumbled all the way to the hard pavement below. He caught himself with his left hand, using it to stabilize himself between the two walls as he executed an unexpected but extremely powerful kick that knocked the phantom backward and into the two other ghouls who’d been floating upward. They dematerialized before they hit the ground, and Han couldn’t help but smile at the memory of the solid impact his boot had made on the old man’s face. “That felt good.”
Han readjusted himself and began climbing once again toward the open fissure, now only a meter and a half out of his grasp. “Almost there. Focus.” It was then, of course, that the old man reappeared, rubbing his severely broken jaw with one foot on each of the rooftops. He looked down at Han, who froze when he saw him, with black fury in his eyes. “Ah shit,” Han whispered.
The old man didn’t say anything. He simply jumped up and curled into a cannonball position, hurling his bodyweight toward Han, who had only a precarious grip three stories above the pavement.
18
Cipher kept his eyes open as he watched the school bus speed, headlong, into Han’s car. The headlights seared as the bus’s front grill neared until it was close enough that he could see the dead bugs. Instead of a massive collision, however, there were a series of thuds on the hood, roof, and trunk of the sedan. Cipher watched as the bus passed right through the car, temporarily dematerializing while its riders leapt onto the car. Half a dozen young schoolboys, still dressed in their school uniforms, landed on the car and hooted with glee as they watched the bus rematerialize and roar away in the opposite direction. “Fuck,” Cipher cursed as he saw the numbers turn against him. Cipher pulled himself, along with his gun, onto the roof of the car and kept his back against the cool steel.
The boys turned on him quickly and smiled. “You’re gonna die today, mister!” yelled the tallest boy, and his smaller counterparts hooted in gleeful agreement.
“Kid, it wouldn’t be anything new,” Cipher replied before he flashed the UV light and scorched the cherubic face of the leader.
The boy screamed and fell backward into one of the other boys, and they tumbled off the car and onto the ground, their bodies rolling along the pavement, bones snapping in a sickening staccato rhythm.
Cipher smiled. “Who’s next?”
There were still four boys left on the roof with Cipher. They were pale, with dark eyes and lips so blue that they were nearly black. They smelled like maggots, as ghosts so often did, and their white skin became opaque when they were angry, revealing the crisscross pattern of blue veins underneath. Two boys jumped onto each of Cipher’s arms, pinning him down. Their weight and strength made it impossible for him to aim his rifle or the UV light at them. The car continued to speed along the dark, empty streets, and Cipher looked straight up at the black sky, catching a glimpse of oak tree branches every so often. He grunted as ghost teeth bit through his jacket and into the flesh of his arms.
The boys were impossibly strong, but they were still just boys, and that meant they were stupid and didn’t know how to fight. They weighed down on his arms, but his legs were still free, and Cipher waited for the right moment to pull his legs up and catch all of the boys underneath their chins, two boys to each leg, and put them into a chokehold. The ghosts struggled in the leg locks, trying uselessly to scream, and Cipher took his time as he pulled the rifle and UV light into position. “It’s been too long since I’ve roasted marshmallows,” Cipher said as he burned the boys. They quickly dematerialized before they were completely destroyed.
“That was...satisfying,” Cipher said to himself as he rolled onto his stomach and eyed the right front corner of the roof. Underneath, that stupid bitch was speeding along, probably sure that Cipher was being horribly devoured by cherubic demons and blissfully unaware of what was about to come. I’m going to enjoy this, he thought.
He Army-crawled on his belly and elbows until he was secure right above her, being careful not to appear in her side mirror or to give her any hint that he was about to strike. When he was set, he lunged out, sliding down the front window and catching her by surprise. The UV light blasted her, frying her face and eyes in an instant. She emitted a searing scream of agony, then disappeared. The car continued moving forward, but slowed rapidly in the absence of the ghost’s foot. It veered to the right and into the slight decline of a grassy ditch on the side of the road.
When it finally came to a full halt, Cipher tumbled off in the grass. He sat up quickly and looked at the empty car, the engine still running and the damage negligible, and dared a hint of a smile. “That was really fucking satisfying.”
19
The old man drove his weight into Han’s sternum, and all was lost. The air was knocked out of Han’s chest, and there was no way that he could keep his body wedged between the two walls of the alley. He began to tumble, painfully ricocheting from one wall to the next, the back of his head and then his face alternating in their unpleasant rapid meetings with the rough bricks. It was as though Han were being hit with an alternating succession of sandpaper and hammers, and he simply went limp as he rolled and tumbled downward.
As painful as the wall had been, it was nothing compared to the hurt of landing hard upon the paved floor of the alley. Han’s eyes opened wide as the pain of the impact shot through his body. A second later, his UV flashlight hit the ground and exploded on impact like a flash grenade.
The light scorched all the ghosts at once, and in unison they let out a heinous scream; the phantoms dematerialized and left Han alone, broken but alive on the cold pavement. Ghosts could not exist in the daylight, as the sun’s energy was antithetical to their existence; the UV light damages their essence, and it never heals. The phantoms would not return and risk another dose of the light.
Han wanted to stand up and run away before more phantoms arrived, but he couldn’t. It was several moments before he caught his first breath, a breath he hadn’t been sure would ever come. He rolled to his side, moving into a fetal position, and closed his eyes as he gave himself a few moments before trying to slowly crawl away. He was able to get to his knees and had made it only a few strides before he heard his cell phone ring. With great difficulty, he was able to pull it from his pocket and see that Cipher was calling him. He hit the talk button.
“Han, are you okay?” Cipher’s voice asked.
Han thought about the absurdity of the question, which was just as absurd as the answer he was about to give. “Yes,” he replied.
“Good. This will be our last phone call. They’re tracking our phones. Go to the place where it all started. We’ll meet there. As soon as I hang up, throw your phone away.”
&nbs
p; “I can’t do that, Cipher, I have the phone numbers of many hot women in my phone, so—”
“Throw it away.”
Click.
Han looked at his phone and grimaced. “As if it couldn’t get any worse, now I have to lose my little black book. I hate you, God.” Han tossed his phone as far down the alley as he could before he slowly drew himself up and began to limp away in the opposite direction. “Where it all began,” Han whispered to himself as he moved out of the narrow alley and into the night.
20
Cipher waited impatiently in the darkness. He sat in the car, parked outside the gates of the sanitarium where he’d first met Han, and stared down the endless black street. He couldn’t turn on the radio to amuse himself; he needed to remain completely aware of all that was around him. With no cell phone, he felt reasonably safe that God and His Earthly authorities wouldn’t be able to locate him, but there was no way to know for sure. Forty minutes after he’d made the call to Han, he watched his friend step out of a late-night bus and hobble toward the car. Cipher started the engine and drove over to pick him up.
“That’s why you don’t go running after a ghost,” Cipher said as Han fell limply into the passenger seat of the car.
Han’s face was bloodied and bruised, and he didn’t have the strength to turn to regard Cipher. “Go to Hell.”
“If only I could be that lucky,” Cipher replied as he pulled away from the curb and began driving into the black night.
“What’s the plan?” Han uttered in a weak voice.
“We need to hole up someplace friendly. Any ideas?”
“One. There’s a whorehouse I know. Nice people there…if we give them a few bucks.”
“Beats any of the ideas I’ve had. Then we call Father Hurley and warn him. Hopefully they haven’t connected us to him yet.”
Meanwhile, Caiaphas stood a meter away from the obliterated wooden fence, dabbing his bottom lip with chai lip gloss before placing the stick into the back pocket of his sleek, flat-front trousers; he’d selected them for their versatility, thanks to their light cotton; he would need that versatility tonight by the looks of things.
“My guys haven’t found much. Nobody but the owner of the house saw the perps, and he says they were whacked out of their minds on heroin and were seeing things before they tried to take him hostage. Are you sure these are the guys you’re after?” asked Officer Roche. The scent of Caiaphas’s lip gloss made him think of vanilla ice cream with chocolate shavings on top, and his already-full stomach growled.
“Most definitely. These men are...delusional,” Caiaphas replied. “Hallucinations are to be expected.” He watched the red and blue alternating lights atop Officer Roche’s car. Several police officers milled about the scene, most of them doing nothing in particular other than catching up on gossip with their co-workers.
“Two of ‘em, huh? So your guy picked up a partner?”
“Yes. Han Lee, an ex-medical student turned paramedic turned…nothing. Apparently he’s been living off the generosity of his computer-hacker accomplice.”
“Hmm. Well, one thing’s for sure.”
Caiaphas’s eyebrow cocked in readiness for Officer Roche’s pronouncement. “What’s that?”
“If yer boys are whacked out enough to be driving through fences and attempting to take hostages, then they shouldn’t be too hard to find tonight,” asserted Roche.
Caiaphas looked at the empty street and deftly removed a Cuban cigar from the front quarter-top pocket of his pants and began to unfurl the plastic. “Do you really think so, Officer Roche?” asked Caiaphas as he regarded two officers in particular who sported flaming angel wings on the Third Plane. One of them nodded to him surreptitiously as he jawed with another officer.
Roche paused for a moment, unsure of what to do; Caiaphas had never been asked for his opinion before. “Uh...yeah. Seems pretty obvious, actually.”
“Elementary, you might say.”
“Uh...sure. Elementary.”
“Congratulations, by the way.”
“For...?”
“Your promotion. You’ve been promoted to Detective now, haven’t you?”
“Um, no. No, I haven’t.”
“Oh, you haven’t been promoted?” Caiaphas replied in mock astonishment, not even turning to acknowledge Roche, a creature too far beneath him to deserve such a gesture. He inhaled the first breath of his delicious Cuban stogy.
“No,” Roche answered, bowing his head in embarrassment.
“Then, in that case, Officer Roche, do me a tremendous service and shut up.”
21
“Rex says it’s $1,000 for the room for the night or $2,000 for the room and two girls,” Essence informed Han and Cipher.
“Just the room,” Cipher replied, looking past the hooker and at the impressive downtown view from the three-bedroom condo/whorehouse Han had brought them to.
“Whoa! Wait. Let’s think about this for a second, Cipher—”
“Is he gay or something?” Essence asked, wrinkling her overly-tanned nineteen-year-old nose up in disgust at Cipher.
“Sometimes I wonder,” Han replied, suddenly energized.
“You’ve got a problem with gay people?” Cipher turned to Essence, challengingly.
“I love gay men. My hairdresser is gay. I have a problem with straight guys who act gay.”
Cipher grimaced, ready to unload a vitriolic salvo on a young woman he’d just met, but decided it wasn’t worth it. They needed a place to hole up and there was no sense rocking the boat. “Just the room,” Cipher repeated.
Han sighed and slumped his shoulders. He turned to Essence and smiled. “Just the room for now, baby, but I’ll be seeing you tonight, okay?”
“Okay, baby,” she replied, smiling at Han with that look of satisfaction that only a woman who has gotten what she wants can muster. “Follow me, baby.” She turned and waddled on her high-heeled platform shoes into the condo and took Cipher and Han toward the bedroom in the far left corner. The condo smelled strongly of marijuana, and there were candles burning in the vacant living room.
Cipher’s arm brushed against something in the darkness, startling him as he jumped away. An elderly man with long, black dreadlocks and dark sunglasses stood against the wall, his mouth opening into a wide circle.
“It’s just Rex,” Han informed Cipher. Rex’s mouth continued to open into a wide gape.
“Oh. I thought he was one of them for a second,” Cipher responded as he and Han turned and continued to follow Essence into the dark bowels of the whorehouse.
“This is it,” Essence announced in her nasal, teenage voice. She held her hand out, gesturing toward a room that would’ve been nice if it had been furnished at all. It was almost completely bare, other than an old, twin-sized mattress in one corner and a mirror on the floor opposite.
Cipher absorbed the sights of the room and then looked at Han, who kissed the big, sparkly lips of the teenage prostitute. She sashayed away from them, and Han watched her hungrily, his eyes resting on the fake tan of her back and the sparkle of her glittery, sweet-smelling skin lotion. “You’re disgusting, Han.”
“Your judgment means nothing to me, Cipher,” Han replied.
“I CAN SEE!”
“What the fuck?” Cipher reacted to the shriek from the darkness.
“I CAN SEE!” the shriek came again.
Han and Cipher went to the source but were beaten there by Essence and another girl, who was naked except for a cheap, see-through nightie that she held to her chest. “What’s the matter, Rex?” asked Essence.
“Nothing’s the matter! Didn’t you hear me? I can fucking see!” The old man was holding his sunglasses in his hand, regarding the majestic downtown view with his wide, wild eyes.
“You can see, Rex? That’s wonderful!” exclaimed the naked hooker, who promptly dropped the nightie and any pretense of modesty and embraced Rex.
Essence quickly joined their embrace and both of the young women b
ounced with the enthusiasm of teenage girls on a shoe-shopping expedition. “It’s a miracle!” Essence shouted with excitement.
Rex paused, his mouth opening once again as he made a realization. He turned slowly, and his eyes locked on Cipher. He pointed the handles of his sunglasses at Cipher and shouted, “It was you!”
“You sure this guy’s cool?” Cipher urgently whispered under his breath to Han as he slipped a hand into his jacket to grip the handle of his gun.
“Pretty sure. I think,” Han replied, astonished.
“You touched me, and I could see. I’ve been legally blind for thirty-three years…and now, you come along, and I can see…perfectly. You have the gift of God!” Rex exclaimed.
“The gay guy did it?” Essence asked, her voice carrying the same confused tone that she’d used ages ago in math class.
“Okay, enough with the gay stuff,” Cipher replied sternly, glaring at Essence.
“Cipher, did you just cure that guy’s blindness?” Han asked.
“What? Are you serious?” Cipher responded, shocked that Han would even consider the possibility.
“You can cure the sick? Like Jesus?” asked the naked hooker.
“Think about, it man. He just said you have the touch of God. You actually touched God a couple of hours ago,” Han whispered to Cipher.
“This man actually touched God?” Rex said, astonished. He kept his wild eyes locked on Cipher, stepping quickly toward him and placing his wrinkled, worn hand on Cipher’s shoulder.
“How did you hear that from way over there?” Han asked.
“I guess I kept my good hearing,” Rex replied.
Cipher gently removed the old man’s weathered hand from his shoulder and attempted to muster a smile, something he was no longer very good at. “Listen, friend, I’m sure it was a coincidence.”
The God Killers Page 6