by G X Todd
‘No more brain damage than usual.’
‘It’s not me you’re talking to, is it?’ The man’s voice trembled; Pilgrim could feel it vibrate through the blade he held at his throat.
Pilgrim’s lip twitched at the irony. In the absence of Voice he was answering his own thoughts. Old habits die hard, it seemed. ‘Yes, I’m talking to you,’ he told the man. ‘We’re going to move to the barn door. And when we get there you’re going to call to your . . .’ He stopped, unable to think of the word he wanted. ‘. . . to that other guy waiting out there, and tell him you found her and that he’s to come take a look.’
‘Did you kill her?’
Say yes.
‘No. Now move.’ Pilgrim stepped back and swung the rifle up, shoving the muzzle between the man’s shoulder blades. With the gun, he guided his captive around the car and to the front of the barn, where he jabbed him hard again. ‘Open the door wide enough so he can see you, but not all the way.’
Crouching again and staying out of sight, Pilgrim leaned after the man as the door creaked open. Pilgrim pulled the gun up against his shoulder, grabbed the back of the man’s belt so he couldn’t run off and slid the knife up between his legs, letting the point prick the guy’s balls.
The man gasped. ‘W–wait! I’m like you! I . . . hear a voice. I’m sure I do.’
‘Goody for you. Now, just as I told you now. Unless you want me to make you a soprano.’
‘You could join us!’ the man rushed out. ‘If you hear, the Boss’ll take you in. No questions asked.’
‘That’s nice, but I don’t play well with others. Now call.’ To speed things along, Pilgrim pricked his balls again, harder.
‘Lou!’ the man yelled, his voice coming out high, as if the castration had already been performed.
Pilgrim couldn’t see anything, crouched down behind the door as he was, but he imagined the older man turning to look towards the barn. ‘That’s a good boy,’ he murmured. ‘Keep going.’
‘Lou, I found her! She’s here! Come take a look!’
Pilgrim tugged him back inside before he could reveal anything else, pulling on his belt and making him walk backwards. He slid the knife away, picking up the rifle with his good right hand and standing up. Safely away from the door, Pilgrim dragged the guy around to face him, swinging the heavy stock of the gun in the opposite direction, letting both meet in the middle. They connected with a loud thonk, as though Pilgrim had whacked a coconut instead of a human head. The man’s eyes rolled up, and he dropped to the floor. But he wasn’t out. He moaned feebly.
Hit him again, he was told.
Pilgrim lifted the gun straight up and, as if he were digging a grave with a shovel, chopped the stock down on the man’s head.
The moaning cut off.
The pickup truck was approaching, the noise of its engine getting louder. Pilgrim grabbed the man’s feet and dragged him out of the way of the barn’s doors. Taking the rifle with him, he went back to the barn door, spying through a hole as the truck’s engine cut off and the grey-bearded man (Lou, his voice supplied for him) jumped down from the cab. He looked older, but he moved with a sinuous ease that belied his age. Pilgrim checked the rifle, making sure there was an unfired cartridge in the breach. He slid the bolt home.
Pilgrim breathed heavily. Sweat trickled out from under the scarf wrapped around his forehead and dripped from his jaw. He felt light-headed and floaty, and he had to place his feet carefully, each step feeling like it was falling through the ground, an unexpected drop that made his stomach lurch.
Keep it together, old man. Almost done.
When he looked again, Lou had dragged the girl out of the truck and was holding on to her wrist. In his right hand, he held a sawn-off shotgun.
He’ll cut you in half with that, that small voice warned.
‘Only if he fires it,’ Pilgrim said.
Pilgrim didn’t look too closely at the girl. He didn’t dare. He had to focus.
Lou was holding the gun casually down by the side of his leg.
Taking a deep breath, steadying his heart rate, needing to still the shaking in his limbs, Pilgrim kicked the door open, the stock of the rifle locked in good and tight against his shoulder, but already his left arm was trembling too much, the barrel stuttering as he sighted down it at the grey-haired man. Pilgrim didn’t shout, didn’t tell the man to lay his weapon down, but squeezed off a shot and felt straight away that his weak hand had failed him, the barrel kicking up too far, the bullet flying high.
Lou had released the girl and was lifting the shotgun even as Pilgrim slid another cartridge into the rifle’s breach. Before he could fire it, both shotgun barrels burst with flame and Lou’s gun boomed.
PART THREE
The Girl Who Was Found
and
The Man Who Was Lost
CHAPTER 1
‘What’s he doing now?’ Lou said as the beige car accelerated to pull level with them.
Lacey leaned forward, but all she could see was its roof and a very small part of the empty passenger seat. The colour was very familiar, though, and her heart contracted, then swelled to twice its size before expelling all its blood back into her system. Her head throbbed.
‘Oh my God,’ she whispered.
Be careful, Voice told her. Hope can be dangerous.
She knew that; she didn’t need to be told.
The car pulled in front of them and drifted back into their lane. It was Alex’s car, Lacey knew it. It had to be. She still couldn’t fully see the driver, could only make out the vague shape of him sitting in the driver’s seat, but whoever it was, he was tall.
‘Shouldn’t we go after him?’ Rink said.
Lou didn’t answer. He was hunched over the steering wheel, eyes fixed on the rear of the car. For a dreadful moment, Lacey thought he would say yes, but he slowly eased back in the seat, his tension uncoiling.
He shook his head. ‘No. We stick to the plan. We find the girl and get back.’
‘But he might have stuff we need,’ Rink said.
‘Unless he’s got the keys to the world’s biggest hoard of fresh food and canned goods, I don’t give a flying fuck what stuff he might or might not have.’
‘I just mean maybe we should—’
‘I said no.’
They had only detoured from their plan once, when they’d spotted the Boy Scout’s bike and decided to stop and bring it along. She was thankful for its presence and found herself turning around to glance at it every now and then. It made her think of the miles she had spent sitting on the back of it, holding on to the waist of the strangely reserved man, when she’d still thought it would be an easy task to travel the seven hundred miles from the west side of Texas all the way to Mississippi and her sister’s home. She had been an idiot. She knew nothing of the world, and the world knew nothing of her. And now she understood with a painful clarity that her ignorance had brought a whole mess of trouble and suffering down on those she cared most about.
Voice started to sing.
Woes are found and evil’s sown in a troubled town.
It’s easy to cry there, easy to run, and even more easy to say that you’re done.
In a troubled town, where all looks grey, night follows night and never follows day.
The rest faded into the background as Lacey’s thoughts shifted away from Voice. She had never felt so far away from anything and everybody she knew. She watched the back of that beige car dwindle into the distance and cursed herself for being a sucker who was so quick to hope. How could he know she would be heading back this way? He couldn’t, that was how. It would be impossible for him to know.
Voice stopped singing and said, And yet, when you have discarded all impossibilities, however improbable the answer you are left with is, it must be the truth.
– It could just be another man who’d found Alex’s car, and took it. Just like these jackasses have taken the motorbike they happened to find.
That’s . . . pr
obably a more likely answer.
Lacey sighed and Voice went back to singing. A different song this time. The lyrics were haunting and, as Lacey listened, tears filled her eyes and melded the road and sky into one.
Lazarus rises, Lazarus falls, Lazarus listens whenever he’s called,
He has no coffin, no dirt, no door,
Only two boots and the sand on the floor.
He may be dead, but he’s not yet done,
He’s risen again with the dawning sun.
‘You’re the most depressing thing in all the world,’ Lacey said.
Lou looked at her, but she didn’t turn her head and continued to stare out through the windshield. Thankfully, he kept his silence, and it stayed that way until Lacey lifted her hand and pointed out the barn.
‘There,’ she said.
‘I see it,’ Lou mumbled.
‘See the overturned car, too? That’s hers.’
‘You never said she’d gone and wrecked the car.’ Lou began to slow the truck, glancing over his shoulder as he cut across the left-hand lane, the wheels juddering and crunching over the gravel at the side of the road. He stopped ten yards away from the upside-down rear bumper.
His sins are forgiven, and he’s arisen, Voice sang. Long live the prince of bedlam.
‘Shut up,’ Lacey said impatiently.
Lou turned to her, his dead eyes staring.
He’s like a snake, she thought. And no amount of anti-venom would prevent his poison from spreading. His bite would be deadly.
‘Time for you to talk, you sneak-mouthed brat.’ The words drawled out of Lou’s old-man mouth. ‘You’ve dragged us all the way out here, so now you tell us where the fuck she is.’
‘She was right there the last time I saw her.’ Lacey pointed at the empty patch of glass-flecked ground next to the missing side window. ‘I swear. She was lying there, all her teeth pulled out of her head. It was horrible. Who would do that to her?’
Lou and Rink shared a look. Lou jerked his head at the younger man. ‘Let’s take a look. You,’ he told her, ‘don’t move an inch. You move it, I slice it off.’
They both climbed out, taking their guns with them, but Lacey didn’t look away from the keys Lou had left in the ignition. Before he closed the door, Lou leaned back in, plucked the keys out and pocketed them, giving them a pat through the front of his jeans.
‘You won’t be needin’ them any time soon.’ He gave her a mean little smile.
‘Shithead,’ she muttered as soon as he’d shut the dented door – it took him three attempts to get it to catch.
She watched as they poked around in the wreckage. She could see the long scuff marks in the dirt where a coyote had probably dragged Red away. It made her feel sick, thinking of how it must have torn at her with its teeth and claws. She swallowed thickly, averting her eyes from the darkened dirt where the girl had bled.
The sun boils down and the bugs alight.
They nibble and chew in feastly delight.
Nothing is left but skin and bone;
When all life’s gone, the creepy-crawlies roam—
‘God, what is it with song time all of a sudden?’ she said angrily. ‘Give it a rest already.’
He paid her no mind.
Bite and suck, drain us all dry.
Snacking on us till we’ve all gone and died.
Lacey began humming loudly to herself to drown him out.
Voice stopped singing. What’s that?
‘You’re not the only one who can sing, you know.’
But what is it? I like it.
‘“Dear Prudence.” By the Beatles. Have you heard of them?’
. . . No.
She continued humming her second-favourite Beatles tune while Voice listened, and watched the two men talk, their mouths moving with no audible sound coming out. ‘We should have buried her,’ Lacey said.
Dirt’s too hard. And what would you have dug the grave with? Spoons?
‘It would’ve made them work for their prize at least.’
Rink set off up the track towards the barn, the toes of his right boot turned inwards slightly, as if God hadn’t screwed his leg on properly. What with his stoop-backed posture, Lacey suddenly felt sorry for him. Maybe he hadn’t wanted to join Dumont and his gang but it was the only way he could survive in a world where hunchbacked, gimpy men mostly ended up dead.
I love how your brain works.
Lacey paid no attention to Voice and slid over the seat to move behind the wheel. She cranked down the window, feeling a breath of warm air brush over her sweaty brow. She stared at the barn. The wooden outbuilding looked imposing somehow, even with its roof caved in and gaps in its sidings. Lacey couldn’t remember the name of it, but there was a human condition that caused people to see faces in everyday items. Grammy had told her about it once, about how someone thought they’d seen the face of Jesus in a grilled cheese sandwich (someone else believed it, too, because they bought it for $28,000), and how car designers used it to design the nose of vehicles, knowing they had to make their sports cars look aggressive, with angry eyes (headlights) and mouths (grilles), to appeal to male buyers. Now she could see the face in the barn’s fascia: its huge mouth of double doors waiting to eat anyone foolish enough to come too close, and the two smaller hatches on its second level – once used to store hay in the loft space – wooden eyes that watched its prey approach.
Rink reached the door and pulled it open, and the barn readied itself to eat.
‘If we don’t find the girl, you don’t get to go nowhere.’
Lacey stared at the dirt track leading up to the barn, studying the wheel ruts in it, not looking at Lou as he leaned up against the truck’s fender next to the driver’s door.
‘In fact, if we don’t find her, I’m sure the Boss won’t mind if me ’n’ Rink punish you for all your black-tongued lying.’
‘Just try it, and you’ll end up like Jeb.’
Lou moved faster than she thought possible, his hand a striking viper, fingers gripping her lower face, painfully digging her cheeks into her teeth.
‘You and your sassy mouth,’ he whispered, breath hot and rank in her face. ‘Is it even you doing all the talking? I bet it isn’t. I bet it’s some black-tongued thing hiding behind those pretty peepers, telling you what to say.’
Lacey couldn’t help her eyes from widening a little.
‘Don’t you get how this all works yet?’ he said. ‘We do whatever we want with little pieces of ass like you, don’t matter what you got hiding inside. We fuck you till you’re dry and eat the rest. Roast you up while you’re still alive so we can hear you scream as your juices cook.’ He squeezed her face tighter, his fingernails gouging into her skin. ‘You’re nothing but a walking meat puppet to me.’
She didn’t breathe, didn’t move. Surely he was just trying to scare her. They wouldn’t really do those things to her. Maybe to Princess, but not to her.
Voice didn’t answer, but she felt that his silence revealed more than it hid.
‘Lou!’
Lou’s fingers released her, and Lacey immediately scooted away from the window and out of his reach. She rubbed at her stinging face. She could feel dents where his fingernails had dug into her skin.
‘Lou, I found her! She’s here! Come take a look!’
Lacey didn’t take her eyes off Lou as he climbed in, but slid her butt all the way back over the seat to press up against the passenger door, as far away from him as she could get. Lou didn’t spare her a glance. He drove them up the track, cut the engine and snaked a hand around her wrist. She whimpered as he pulled her out of the truck after him. She tried to wrench her arm away, but all he did was yank on her harder. She cried out, almost twisting on to her knees to ease the cruel pressure on her creaking wrist.
Pilgrim, Voice whispered. Lacey thought she heard astonishment in his tone, but her head was a pressure cooker filled with her gasping breaths so she couldn’t be sure.
The barn’s mouth ope
ned and a tall, scarlet-headed man came out, rifle pointed at them. It went off, and Lacey ducked instinctively, surprised when Lou released her wrist. She fell into his legs and wrapped her arms around his knees, dragging him off balance. The boom of the shotgun slapped her ears, knocking her deaf. The rifle fired again, the shot muffled in the ringing in her head. Half tangled in Lou’s legs, Lacey heard a funny, smacking thud and felt the man jerk. Then he was falling, his knee clipping her chin, her teeth nipping the edge of her tongue. Tears flooded her eyes. When she swallowed, she tasted blood.
Lou’s shotgun landed a few feet away.
Lou landed on his back.
She scrabbled away from him, going for the gun, fumbling it into her hold and pumping another round into the chamber, spinning to face the man who was dealing out all the death. She froze, breathing hard through her mouth.
The Boy Scout stared back at her.
Pilgrim, Voice breathed, and this time there was no mistaking his wonder.
CHAPTER 2
BOOOOM!
The dirt in front of Pilgrim’s boots burst in a spray of grit, pellet-like bits pelting his legs, but this time his left hand was locked steady around the stock – he wouldn’t miss twice.
Pilgrim had watched the girl fall into the man’s legs, sending him stumbling, and realised it was the only thing that had saved his life, the shotgun’s buckshot hitting the ground in front of him. Pilgrim squeezed off his second shot, and this time it flew straight and true, the bullet smacking the older man on the right side of his chest, shoving him sideways and back, the shotgun flying out of his hands. He dropped, sprawling on his back, Lacey landing in an untidy heap at the man’s feet.
Pilgrim chambered a third cartridge, still moving forward, surprised by how quickly the girl scurried to the side and snatched up the shotgun, spinning to face and point it at him.
‘Pilgrim?’ she said.
He was surprised – but then she’d always had the power to surprise him – but he had no time for it now and skirted around her and leaned over the downed man, giving him a prod in the chest with the rifle’s barrel. Blood was blooming in a large circle on the right side of his shirt, spreading rapidly like an ink spill. His breathing came fast and choppy.