Expired

by Evie Rhodes

  Maybe more than once, now that Michael thought about it.

  Lonzo yelled out to Tracie, his tone almost musical, “It’s time for atonement.”

  Tracie tilted her head. Her eyes flashed an incredibly haunting gold at Lonzo.

  Nastily he said, “You know what atonement is. It’s the shedding of blood. It’s the payment for sin. But no Savior is going to pay for yours. I’m going to see that you pay for your own.

  “You and you alone must atone for what you’ve done, Tracie. You and nobody else.”

  Tracie stepped to Lonzo. Sweat dripped down her face. Her eyes were glazed. Her entire posture and demeanor were different. Her sons were staring at a stranger. Tracie was locked in an immortal battle with Lonzo.

  Dre struggled against his bonds. Michael started to struggle against his as well, but it was to no avail. Lonzo was an expert. They could not free themselves to help their mother.

  Lonzo removed three vials from his inner jacket pocket. Each of them was labeled. There was blood in each of the vials. The names of Tracie’s sons and of one other person glistened brightly from the labels. Lonzo lifted one of the stoppers.

  It popped loudly. He lifted it to his lips. He had acquired a taste for the red, slippery substance long ago.

  Rashod scrambled for a better view through Me’s eyes. Me had had a serious clamp on the spirits for all the time they had been here but Rashod finally managed to break through. He had heard his mother’s voice.

  Like a guiding beacon he had latched on to it, until he could rise to the surface.

  The scene that loomed up before him was terrifying. His mother and his brothers were at the mercy of the maniac who had murdered him, and he was stuck in the vacuum of the monster that had swallowed his spirit whole.

  All the players were here, or so he thought. There was little he could do, but he tried with all his might. His voice finally reached the recesses of Tracie’s mind.

  “Fight, Mommy. You can win. Fight.”

  That was all he could manage. Maybe it would be enough. He had a small victory, though, because for the first time Me had not noticed what he had done. Rashod had passed through him without notice.

  Tracie turned around in startled amazement.

  She had heard Rashod’s voice. She’d actually felt his breath near her ear. “Fight, Mommy. You can win. Fight,” he’d said.

  Her dead, misunderstood son wanted her to win. He was rising from the grave to help her. Tracie drew strength and comfort from the contact.

  Then she had a very crazy thought.

  She decided to see if she could talk back to Rashod. “I love you, Ra. I love you,” she whispered back through the recesses of her mind, using the nickname she had called him when he was a little boy.

  Rashod had heard her. “I love you too, Mommy. I love you, too.”

  Tracie could have fainted with relief, but now was not the time. It was enough to know he was somehow there in spirit.

  Tracie brought her attention back to Lonzo. She bit her lower lip and found herself hyperventilating. This monster was drinking her son’s blood right in front of her eyes. He was disgusting.

  Lonzo’s eyes glowed like dark coals in the midst of the shadows on the roof.

  Dre watched, mesmerized, as blood trickled down his neck. He clung tightly to Souljah Boy’s words: “Your family is under the protection of Jesus Christ, Dre.”

  Lonzo took another drink from the vial. He took a long swallow this time. He licked his lips. “Ah. That must be Randi, the Shooter. He made his last shot from this roof. Just like his daddy, Raymond.

  “Remember, Tracie?”

  Tracie remembered Raymond’s broken body. The image of him loomed up large in front of her eyes at Lonzo’s words. Lonzo stuck the knife in Dre’s neck again, a little bit deeper and longer this time.

  Disgusted, he threw the vial at Tracie. “Payment for your sins. All the sins of the world have been paid for with blood. It was the blood of the innocent. You said so yourself.”

  Tracie flinched. Her breathing slowed. She locked eyes with Dre. Michael was safe for the time being. Lonzo, for some reason, didn’t seem to be concentrating too hard on him except to make sure that he stayed bound.

  Lonzo tipped the other vial to his mouth. “Hmmmmmmm, Raymond.” He licked his lips after sucking down the fifteen-year-old blood.

  “Dark taste. Just like his life. He was an NBA contender, too, wasn’t he, Tracie?”

  Lonzo was enjoying torturing Tracie. “His rebound skills were good, Caramel. I threw him a shot. He leaped like a gazelle right off the side over there.” Lonzo pointed to one side of the roof.

  Tracie had had enough.

  Not only had Lonzo killed Raymond, but he was also trying to destroy his memory in front of his remaining sons. Making him out to be some punk.

  Tracie lunged. Lonzo plunged the knife deeper in Dre’s throat. Dre winced in pain. Tracie landed on her knees, directly in front of Lonzo’s feet.

  “I wouldn’t, slut. We’re not done yet.”

  Lonzo rubbed the knife scar on his neck slowly. “Raymond gave me this scar. Now his son will have one just like it, because of you, Tracie. You and your fantasies and your dreams of legends.”

  “Please. Stop it.”

  Lonzo tilted another vial.

  He poured the blood on Tracie’s hair. “I told you before. I detest whining, Li’l Caramel. Oh, this is Rashod. You know, your son, the crackhead. Some legend. He’s not worth drinking,” Lonzo said as he continued to pour Rashod’s blood over Tracie’s head.

  Tracie gazed up slowly at him, her son’s blood dripping down her face. She had a crazed look on her face. It was one step away from insanity. Livid hatred spewed from her eyes. She licked her lips to taste Rashod’s blood.

  Souljah Boy, the doppelganger, had arrived. He hovered just above Tracie and Dre.

  “My son Rashod was a better man than you’ll ever be, Detective. No matter how many of my sons you kill, you’ll never taste me, Pee Wee, because you can’t.”

  Lonzo sliced with the knife down Dre’s throat, a seamless stream, leaving a trail of blood. Dre looked ready to faint from the pain.

  Lonzo leaned down. He hit a button on the boom box he had saved for just this occasion. Slow music filled the roof of Lenox Terrace.

  Lonzo looked at her. He pushed the knife ever deeper in Dre’s throat. “How about that dance, now? Did you save the last dance for me, Tracie?”

  Tracie glanced at Dre. She saw his incredible pain. She floated to her feet and into Lonzo’s arms, even though Dre begged her not to with his eyes. Lonzo took the knife away from Dre’s neck as Tracie floated into his arms.

  He held her tightly, mesmerized, lovingly, but cautious and at the ready as they danced precariously close to the edge of the roof. Lonzo sniffed, loving the smell of her.

  Rashod’s blood was dripping down Tracie’s neck; the knife was now to her throat, and as Lonzo dipped Tracie low, the street whizzed far below them.

  Lonzo whispered in Tracie’s ear, “I saved myself for you, Tracie. A virgin. I’m pure. I should do you right here in front of your sons, where there’s plenty of blood to purify our union. Don’t you think?”

  Revulsion rose in Tracie’s stomach, but she only smiled. She’d see him in hell first.

  Lonzo suddenly released Tracie.

  The music came to a halt. All the unseen parties were at a standstill. None of them knew what to expect. Dizzy, Tracie whirled a little distance away from Lonzo. She dropped to her knees.

  Something dark and black rose up inside her. She looked up at Lonzo, then hissed at him. She bowed her head for a moment, lifted it, and looked for a long time at her sons. Her gaze lingered on Dre, bleeding and bound. Then her eyes found Lonzo.

  Raw hatred welled up inside her as she thought of Randi and Rashod. She bellowed out, “This is the final chapter!”

  Lonzo looked confused. He was calling the shots. He hadn’t called the final curtain.

  �
��Let me introduce you to ‘expired.’ Drink this, Pee Wee!” Like a blur her hand dipped to her waist. In slow motion she glided to her feet, smooth as silk, and in one swift, sensual motion, with the blade in her hand, she sliced Lonzo’s face, knocking him off balance and over the roof.

  Lonzo’s surprised screams ripped through the night air. Tracie raced to look over the side as Lonzo hung from the ledge. The traffic lights glittered far below him on 135th Street as he hung over the same deadly grave that had claimed Tracie’s son, Randi.

  He was barely hanging on. Lonzo began to taunt her. “Come on, Li’l Caramel, finish the job. Push me over like I did your sons. Like I did Raymond. Get some guts. Come on. Finish the job, Tracie.”

  Lonzo heard Tracie’s friends hooting, mocking, and laughing at him all those long years ago.

  He screamed at her, “Do it, Tracie Burlingame! Get some guts!” Tracie’s knife swung in an arc through the air to deliver the final blow.

  Suddenly Souljah Boy loomed in front of her eyes. He was hovering at the edge of the roof. “Tracie. Tracie, don’t,” he told her calmly.

  “The only way you’ll win is if you rise above him. To live in the past is to have no future. Have faith, Tracie. Have faith. You’re going to need it now. Redemption must be given if it is ever to be received.”

  Tracie hesitated.

  She tried to blink the black from her eyes. Suddenly she reached down, and with all her might, she grabbed Lonzo and hauled him back onto the roof.

  Lonzo stared into Tracie’s eyes as he balanced himself on his feet. He took a silver heart locket from his jacket pocket. He threw it to her.

  “I left you two sons, Tracie. I could have taken them, too. Checkmate, Li’l Caramel.”

  Then he jumped from the roof, airborne.

  Me still stood in the shadows, observing the strange chain of events. There would be no reason to meet with Lonzo now.

  Souljah Boy released the bonds that held Dre and Michael. He put a hand to Dre’s throat to stanch the flow of blood. The blood stopped instantly.

  Dre stared at him.

  Tracie ran to the edge of the roof just as Lonzo’s body hit the ground.

  Monica and her crew arrived on the street just in time to view the broken body of Alonzo Morgan as he lay twisted on the sidewalk, a silver locket clutched in his hand, broken open, with a picture of Tracie Burlingame inside it.

  As Monica looked down, she noticed that Lonzo didn’t have any shoes on his feet.

  What she didn’t notice was Legion dumping Lonzo’s body of his spirit, deciding he didn’t want to use it anymore.

  And what she didn’t see was the little boy behind the broken shell of Lonzo. The little boy with the life story that had been written in pain and heartache since his birth.

  The dim streetlights cast shadowy, blurry streaks of light in the small room of the decaying Harlem building. The air was tight, humid, sweltering. It smelled like old mildew mingled with the smell of feces.

  A strangled, gurgling sound caused the small child to cover its ears. The sight and smell of death layered itself over the room, a thick coating of it.

  The beaten, withered man in the corner coughed. He looked at the child he could not help. He beheld the child for a last time as the light of life drained from his eyes. All over a horse and a dollar bill.

  The men who had been sent to administer the beating laughed. They were small-time street hoodlums. The dying man was a notorious gambler who owed and ducked out on one debt too many.

  Grayson Mounds who controlled all the gambling activities in Harlem had ordered the hit after discovering he was not to be paid once again.

  When he spoke it was word. So Joe had played his last horse. They kicked him a last time for good measure. Briefly, they considered the child. Then they discarded any idea of dealing with the child themselves.

  They left the room. There was no threat. The child was too young to tell anybody a thing.

  The whimpering child crawled over to the leftover carnage of the human being on the floor. The child put out a small hand to touch Joe’s face.

  Instantly the small hand was covered in a red, slippery substance. That was when it had happened. It was a tiny rushed explosion of separating microcosm, splitting off into different beings, an open vessel for the domination of spirits.

  An open vessel for Legion.

  The child could no longer emotionally inhabit this space where it had witnessed a man being beaten to death, tortured, and torn apart. No. It would leave this place for safer ground. Taking flight and journey into a different realm.

  It was a realm the average human being would never cross. Along the line it would satisfy its saturation, hunger and lust for the red slippery substance. Blood.

  Three days later when the remains of the man and the child who was still alive, were found the child sat happily slurping from a bottle of soured milk.

  The child was a true orphan now because its mother had died a while ago from poverty and a broken heart. It was just as well because this child’s existence would not be predicated on human emotions.

  The scene the child had just experienced would mold and create its future. It was the last nail in a coffin that would cripple, as well as rule what would become a shell of a human being on the outside, and nothing but pure black malevolence salivating on the inside.

  In the absence of spirit there would be only darkness.

  That child had been Alonzo Morgan.

  That man had been his daddy.

  In the absence of spirit, there had been only darkness. The name of that darkness was Legion.

  Michael and Dre ran to Tracie as police helicopters, sirens, and a host of riot vehicles descended on the area.

  Me waved his hand, putting a block on the helicopters’ view of them on the roof, and disappeared.

  “Come on, Mommy,” Dre told her. “We’ve got to get out of here.”

  “Why?” Tracie asked. “It’s over.”

  Souljah Boy stared sadly in her eyes. “No, Tracie. It’s only just beginning. Lonzo was only a small piece. Dre and Michael are still in danger. The danger to you and your sons is much greater than Lonzo. You must go.”

  “Where?”

  “Follow me.”

  Tracie had known deep in her soul that it wasn’t done. The dreams and visions would not be vanquished.

  Besides, Renee Santiago had fed her an incredible story, one that she couldn’t ignore. It had come straight from the day’s headlines.

  But she had hoped, after confronting Lonzo, that she was wrong . . . that this was it. But it wasn’t. It was far from over. And her remaining sons might be in even greater danger than the two who had been killed, as Souljah Boy had said.

  Tracie was learning that there were some fates worse than death—such as the pain and affliction of Alonzo Morgan’s life.

  She now knew she would have to go to war on a different level and on a different ground in order to preserve that which must be preserved.

  Unknowingly she’d been preparing ever since she’d seen all those little black babies sailing through the air.

  As Tracie Burlingame prepared to leave, the old preacher in sackcloth and ashes continued to pray.

  He would soon be coming up on the third day.

  48

  Rashod had finally broken through the barrier and walls of separation. Although the walls were invisible, the barriers and blockages contained within them were like steel. Breaking through them had been a most difficult task.

  Finally he had prevailed and reached Ms. Virginia. He had discovered that many, many others were there, too, contained within the different walls.

  Many of the sequestered spirits had names he had read about in history books or had been taught about in schools. Some of the most famous names in African-American history were residing in this spiritual prison.

  There were also new spirits that had been recently added. They were in quite a state. There was a lot of crying and wailing and fear
among them. They didn’t know what was going on. They were scared.

  Some of them he recognized, since they were all from his stomping grounds in Harlem. Rashod wondered why they’d all come from the same place so recently. He knew it was somehow connected with Me’s plan. He just needed to understand what that plan was.

  If he could understand, then maybe he could defuse the demon. For the time being he focused on Ms. Virginia, because he believed that between the two of them they might find some answers.

  Besides, she was a real smart old lady, and Rashod had grown into a new respect for her as he had watched her stroke Me to keep him calm and to keep him from hurting the others. Me had actually come to gain comfort from the old woman.

  It was as though he thought a demon could have a grandmother, or something. The big, bald monster was really a complicated piece of work as far as Rashod could tell.

  Right now Me was curled up in the dark of the closet, surrounded by raw meat. He was in a state of rest, which worked out just fine for Rashod, because that meant he could talk to Ms. Virginia without interruption. He wouldn’t have to be on high alert.

  He had finally grown to the level of bypassing Me, but it wasn’t easy. It took intense levels of focus and concentration. He had had to learn how to block Me’s sensors in order to accomplish the feat.

  For right now things were in a relaxed state. He and Ms. Virginia needed to figure out something because time was running out. Me was resting up for the next event. That event included his mother.

  Rashod had seen her again in Me’s thoughts after the incident on the roof, when she had held her ground with Lonzo and then escaped with Souljah Boy before the police could detain her. He had wanted to reach out to Michael once again, but it was too risky at the time, and besides, they were safe for the moment.

  But he didn’t know for how long, and he knew for a fact that Lonzo wasn’t the only enemy.

  Me had been called to some foreign place that Rashod didn’t recognize, and he was terrified. He had bowed before the power and trembled in his shoes. That meant big trouble because Rashod knew that this big, bald gobbler was afraid of nothing. He was fear itself, so for something to scare him, it had to be awesome. Rashod needed to know what it was.