by Kevin Wright
“Well, why? What the hell’s going on?”
“Do me a favor, will you, Pete? Just sit there and shut it for a second. Yeah, keep bagging Matlock there, too. Still looks like shit. Look, you’ve had a rough first day, and, I’m sorry, Pete. I fucked up. I’m really, truly sorry, but I’m about to make your day worse.”
“Great.”
“Just listen, Pete,” Carmine said. “The guy that bit you was not what you think he was. No, he wasn’t a junky, or one you’ve heard about, at least. And he wasn’t an overdose. The reason he wasn’t breathing and had no pulse was because he was dead.”
“Dead?”
“Look, I know this sounds insane,” Carmine raised a hand, “and you probably think I’m messing with you, or soft,” he tapped a finger against his temple, “but I’m not. The guy that bit you is what, in this town, we call a ghoul.”
The siren wailed.
Peter nodded, barely a twitch. Something awful was coming, he could feel it sitting like a ball of lead squeezing down on his stomach.
“Ghouls, anyways. Some call them ghouls, some call them vampires, leeches, whatever. They’re all the same. Thing is what happens to you if … if you get bit.”
“Yeah?”
“One of two things, kid.” Carmine looked out the side window. He swallowed. “If they’re lucky, they … they rot. Fast. And then they die.”
“And if they’re not lucky?”
“They become ghouls.”
“Like in movies?”
“Yeah, kid, like in the movies.”
“What? How much — how long does it take? Are you serious?”
“Three or four days, I guess. Yeah, I’m serious, but I ain’t no expert. Sometimes it’s longer, though, Pete.”
“This is for real?”
“I’m so sorry, Pete. If I could…”
Peter bagged Salazar, once every five seconds or so. Salazar’s chest rose with each compression of the BVM. His skin was less blue now. Peter said nothing; he didn’t know what to say, how to take it, what to think. “There’s no cure?” Peter asked suddenly.
“No, not that I know of,” said Carmine. “Here, let me take a look at it.”
Carmine cut Peter’s sleeve, pulled the bandages back, and examined the bite. His eyebrows tensed together, and he frowned at what he saw. “I’ll put a clean dressing on.” He tore open a package and applied a clean dressing quick and secure with tape. He shook his head, “I seen worse. It throbbing? Kinda numb, but kinda warm, too?”
“Yeah, it’s weird, now that you mention it,” Peter said. “Wh-what’s it mean? Am I definitely infected? Maybe I’m not. Maybe I’ll be okay. Am I going to die?”
“I don’t know, Pete. I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m no doc, and I ain’t no priest. Tomorrow, first thing, I’m taking you to see the Padre. Maybe he can help.”
“The psycho-priest?”
Carmine nodded.
“Look, I can’t. I have to go to the police station. Then, I’ve got to get my dad out of that hellhole. Place is a death trap. Did I tell you what that nurse said?”
“Kid, the psycho-priest is your best shot now,” said Carmine. “And better sooner than later.”
“Well, why not the hospital again?” Peter asked. “That doc—”
“Already sold you out, Pete,” Carmine said. “How do you think the cops know about you?”
“Detective Winters?”
“Would have come to you personally,” Carmine said, interrupting. “He ain’t the type to make appointments. You don’t want to go to the cops, kid, trust me. And the docs don’t know shit.”
“So then why’d we go?“
“They know enough, kid. And I was hoping I was wrong.”
“But the doc said I—”
“Are you fucking slow? Do you realize what’s going on? Did you see what they did up in that apartment? That’s what the cops do in this town.” Carmine took a deep breath. “I tried to keep you out of it. And I failed, and now you’re in it.”
“In what?”
“This town. This story. This fucking mess. You’re part of it, whether you like it or not. Just like me.”
“Just like you?” Peter asked. “What’s that mean? You get bitten, too?”
“No, Pete, I wish it were that simple.”
“Yeah, you’re right, I’ve got it easy.”
“Colton Falls gave you a problem, kid, and the only solution to it is in Colton Falls,” Carmine said. “Well, kid, Colton Falls gave me a problem, too, a long time ago, and I ain’t leaving.”
“So what’s your problem, Carmine?” Peter asked. “Cha Chi’s? Burritos? Cholesterol a bit high? A bit overweight?”
“Yeah, that’s it. Just keep bagging, will ya? He ain’t dead, yet.”
Peter looked down and started ventilating Salazar again. His face was pink as they pulled into the hospital.
* * * *
It had not taken long. Detective Winters glanced at his watch. Less than five minutes. Fast swimmers, even with a foot lamed.
Upon the bank Detective Winters watched.
With a gasp, it crashed through the surface of the black river, churning it white. A wounded sloth, it crept, squirming and gibbering from the dark depths, crushing weeds and sputtering through the mud. It glistened slick black in the night. Clumsily, up the bank it pulled its deformed body, its webbed claws dragging it through the hole torn in the chain-link fence. Great gurgling bellows were its gasps for air. Long, twisted hair drangled in front of its froggish-yellow eyes, locked upon the silver nail embedded in its footprint. It sputtered and gurgled, dragging its way up the path.
Detective Winters stood and slid behind the shambling horror. Between it and the depths of the river that was its lair, Detective Winters knelt. From an inside pocket, he withdrew a lead tile.
Upon the mud, within the hole of the fence, Detective Winters placed the lead tile, the Elder Sign. Etched deep into its concave surface, far deeper than the tile was thick, were sigils that moved and twisted in the night. Security. Detective Winters stood, glaring out over the water. Security, for a time.
“How many?” Detective Winters turned, his hands clasped behind his back.
The creature froze, prostrate on the ground, shivering; its scaled left leg curled up in pain. Huge frog eyes, softball-sized, focused on Detective Winters, then down to the Elder sign. It recoiled, its fish mouth sneering, thin needle teeth revealing themselves embedded within black gums. Its legs drew up underneath.
“How many what?” it asked in a high-pitched gurgle. Its gaze flitted to the nail and back to Detective Winters, judging. “Seconds until you die? Fingers I’ll pull from your hands? Times I will rape your rotting corpse? Which?” The creature ambled awkwardly forward on all fours, struggling towards the nail, very close now.
“How many have ended their lives within your foul grasp, kappa?”
The kappa grinned, all gums and splinter-teeth. It was not pleasant. It sneered, drooling, then lunged toward the nail. It turned to face Detective Winters and opened its slimy paw. “I have your nail, man.” The silver nail lay within, glistening.
Detective Winters barely noticed as he turned nonchalantly toward the river, the kappa at his back. It shuffled toward him again, rasping air over its gills.
“Keep it, kappa.” Detective Winters withdrew another nail and whipped it point down into one of the kappa’s new-formed footprints. It stuck. “I have plenty.”
The kappa gurgled in pain; its right hand crippled closed.
“Truly, no trouble, kappa.” Detective Winters turned, advanced, whipping another nail into another footprint.
The kappa screamed. Its right foot crumpled underneath, and it fell to its side, writhing in the mud. Its eyes gleamed up with hate, dual reflections of the waxing moon. It gurgled one word, barely comprehensible, “Winters…”
“You know me, of course. You all know me. Good. We can dispense with the chatter and end this, by you answering my questions, deep one
.” Detective Winters stepped again towards it. “No, do not look to the water. They cannot help you now. The Elder Sign is set, and they cannot come.”
The kappa was hate, and pain, and fear. “Ask, rrrrg, ask.”
Detective Winters kneeled. “What do you know of the Railwalker?”
Confusion, fear, contorted its face. “Why … ask … me?”
“You hunt here, he hunts here.” Detective Winters fingered another nail, glittering in the dark. “Paths cross.”
“I know nothing.”
“Someone does? Who?”
“Ask … rrrrg … leeches.”
“I have,” Detective Winters said. “Try again.”
“Ask Brudnoy … rrrrrrg. Hear much with dog ears.”
“Better. But I was going to try him anyway, so I cannot count it.”
“RRRRRRRRRRRg!” The kappa, hobbled forward.
Detective Winters sidestepped as it wailed past like a chainsaw-felled tree. Detective Winters pressed another nail into another print.
“Foolish kappa, too intent upon meals to cover your tracks.”
“Let me go,” pleaded the kappa, jelly-tears streaming down its face.
“Give me something, and I will end it.” Detective Winters tore on a pair of black leather gloves.
“Yes! Yes! I have seen him. He is a soul-biter, the Devourer of Souls.”
“Devourer of Souls? Hmmm. His appearance? Specifics.”
“You all look alike,” said the kappa, shivering.
“Something, give me something to ease your suffering,” Detective Winters said, scanning the ground as he talked. He knelt and pressed another nail into another print; the kappa curled into a ball of quivering pain.
“He has hair like you, rrrrggg, bigger though, hhhrrgg. He is very tall, no meat, like a man-cross,” said the kappa. “Used to … used to hunt here. Reeks of man-food. A pistol … uses a pistol. Nothing more. I know nothing more! RRRRRG! Now let me go!”
“You know me, and so you know your fate.”
Detective Winters clutched the kappa by its long slimy hair and dragged it struggling through the mud to a picnic table close by the river.
“Release me! He will hear, he will come!”
“Your squid-god slumbers. You dream.” Detective Winters gazed across the river and then down at his gap-jawed prey. “You have seen the Elder sign, and know they cannot come, and if they could, they would not.” He hurled the kappa, thrashing, onto the table. “Now hush, hush, deep one. Where you are going it is deep, and it is black, and it is cold.” He placed the sock full of nails on the table.
The kappa’s pupils constricted in fear.
Detective Winters pulled a hammer from within his coat.
In the black river, not far, an audience of yellow eyes watched.
Detective Winters started hammering.
The kappa started screaming.
Chapter 12.
A BLAST OF MUSTY AIR greeted Peter and Carmine as they pulled the iron-bound doors open with a crow screech. A voice echoed, eons away, incomprehensible, as dust swirled. Stone gargoyles, horrible, indifferent, watched from above. The morning sun shone outside, but as they stepped into the mouth of the great granite beast, their pupils dilated, starving already for light. The air was stale and cool inside the massive gothic cathedral. Darkness within the great hall greeted them as they entered, and the doors slammed shut behind.
“Damn.” Peter looked up and around. His voice, though low, echoed long and far. They walked. Twin rows of pews shot straight ahead, their ends lost in the shadows.
Far ahead, like a jewel, bright and sparkling, caught by a single ray of sunshine, stood a pulpit. Behind it towered a man garbed in black, the white collar of the priesthood at his throat. His deep voice resonated within the midnight halls, echoing long, uncomfortable. Whispers and whimpers scattered about the pews indicated the preacher held a penitent audience hostage for his sermon. Peter squinted in the dark.
The Padre spoke, his voice thunder, “And you who before me kneel are as guilty of the arbitrary condemnation of the one God as any who walk the streets of this sloth-heap city. Our Lord, His heavenly Father, stands poised above, ready to smite the unbeliever and faithless, and cast them into the very bowels of hell. He that believeth not, already is condemned.
“Know you this before your tread carries you beyond the protection of these thick, hallowed walls. The enemies of thy Lord are many, and they are both cunning and fierce. They shall tempt you with pleasures of the physical. Then shall they take your flesh, and with it, they shall take your soul. They are to be feared.
“Remember, though, in your time of need, the Lord is all-powerful, and the most fierce and deadsome of the fallen one’s minions are naught but shriveled worms before his might. The heel of our Lord, your God, is poised above all of we shriveled worms, and it is by His grace, His divine indifference, that He does not bring that heel down to grind us, or our enemies, into the earth.”
The Padre’s voice echoed for what seemed minutes. He collapsed across the pulpit, spent. Ragged breaths tore from his mouth as his bunched shoulders rose and fell.
Suddenly, light shone in upon the church as shutters boomed open in succession above. Dust swirled in tendrils of green, red, and blue, caught within the beams of light that shone through the stained-glass windows.
“Wowzers.” Peter rubbed his eyes at the brilliance.
Carmine shook his head in disgust and lead him further down the aisle.
The troop of Brownies who had been held hostage by the Padre was led away crying by their Troop Leader. Eyes wide, streaked with run mascara, she hurried past the pews and toward the double doors that lead to freedom. “You’re sick … sick.”
As the first child reached the door, the Padre’s voice rang out, shaking the very foundation of the mighty church, “Bingo shall be held downstairs tonight at 7:00, not 6:00. Inform your parents, for that is the word of the Lord.”
The last of the children filtered out.
“You sure this guy’ll help?” Peter shrugged his shoulder to loosen it. It was throbbing.
“Look, kid, I admit, the guy is a psycho,” Carmine said, his mouth full of juicy taco, “but he uses it for good, mostly, I think. And I told you before, you go to the cops, and you’re dead. Same with the hospital. Who do you think they report to?” He swallowed. “They’d cut your head off, tear your heart out, and that’d be that. Less paperwork, another ghoul off the street, and hey, it’s Miller Time. Hell, cop who brings you in’ll get a bonus.
“But this guy’ll help you until you turn into a ghoul. Then he’ll cut your head off.” Carmine grabbed Peter’s arm as he turned to bolt out the door. “Wait! We’re staying positive. Hell, no ghoul’d ever walk into this place, so you’re still okay. You’ve got a few days, and if anyone knows what to do, it’s him.”
The Padre, pale, haggard, draped across the pulpit like a boiled crow, raised his head as Carmine lead Peter forward.
“How goes the Lord’s work, Carmine?” The Padre’s voice echoed.
“Wouldn’t know, Padre,” Carmine said.
“Of course you would.” The Padre’s gray eyes now rested their gaze upon Peter. “And we, too, have met, though not formally introduced. My name is Father Lonigan, though, as you must know, some simply call me, Padre. What is your name, my son?”
Peter’s eyes twitched down at the Padre’s cane, hanging by the handle on the pulpit. Peter’s voice cracked, “Peter Reynolds.”
“Ah.” The Padre stood and beckoned them. “Come. A strong name, Peter. A historic name. A difficult name to measure up to in this day and age. Do you know its significance? Its meaning?”
“Ah, no,” Peter said.
“Are you Catholic?” The Padre turned.
“Uh, not for a little while.”
“Not for how long?”
“Since I was confirmed, sir. Six years, or so, I guess.”
The Padre nodded. “The name Peter means, the rock. Symb
olic of the man upon whom the Catholic church was built. Its foundation. Its strength.”
Back behind the altar, down a tight corridor, and into a small room, they went. Old metal folding chairs greeted them, along with a table; bookcases lined the wall. “Please, be seated. Why have you come?”
“We need your help, Padre.” Carmine glared at Peter. “Relax.”
“You seek the aid of the Lord.” The Padre winced as he crossed his arms. “Now, how is it that I may be of service? What aid do you seek? Peter?”
Peter glanced at Carmine for a second, who nodded.
“Okay, I was bitten, Padre, by a ghoul. Two nights ago. At that apartment on Essex street.”
“Yes.” The Padre nodded. “Show me the wound, Peter.”
Peter glanced at Carmine.
“I shall not harm you, Peter. Do as I bid.”
Peter pulled his shirt up over his infected shoulder.
The Padre pulled his chair forth and donned a pair of glasses. Hawk-eyes examined the wound. He prodded it, smelled it, all the while asking questions. “Can you feel this? Does this hurt? Make a fist. Good. Now relax. Hmmmm…”
He leaned back, finally, a hand upon his chin. “The unholy taint grows within it, festering, metastasizing. This is certain,” the Padre said finally. “The police know?”
“I fu — I screwed up, Padre.” Carmine glanced at Peter. “Yeah, the cops know. They’re looking for him. I took him to the hospital. Stupid. The doc must’ve squealed. Cops’ve been looking since last night. Should’ve come here first.”
“What has been done is done, as they say.” The Padre shook his head. “This is not good, Peter. It will get worse.”
“Look, I was going to go to the police,” Peter said. “I’ll go down now if—”
“You mistake my meaning, Peter,” the Padre said. “Carmine is correct. Avoid them at all costs. They can only mean you harm now.”
“And what about you?” Peter glanced down at the Padre’s cane, remembering its secret. “What are you going to do?”
The Padre unsheathed the blade from within the cane and laid it across the table. “That depends upon you, Peter. An evil wind scourges this city. More virulent than ever before. The four horsemen hold sway. Pestilence. Famine. War. Death. In the throes of war, disease runs rampant, as it has always been. As you have found. Your debt, Peter, is to the demon whore, Pestilence. You have but days.”