The boy opened his mouth to answer, stopped, closed his mouth and, face as blank as a new sheet of typing paper, closed the door on her. He locked all the same deadbolts behind it and turned off the light in the front hall so that now she was shut out, locked out and in the dark. She could hear him pad away in his stupid shoes but there was no conversation or commentary from inside. The brothers both simply settled back their quiet little exile amongst the downtrodden as though she had never knocked.
The Bull’s Eye couldn't believe she'd just been cold-shouldered by weird twin brothers who were, in their own way, utterly out of place in a neighborhood she would patrol. Her curiosity was piqued. It was beyond piqued: it was halfway to pissed off. She could find out more about them another time, she told herself. It would just require finding the right people to ask, and for that she'd have to come back tomorrow.
The next day was one of those bright October days when the temperature is just fine but the light is all too sharp, like glass that's cracked and going to shatter in the next little gust of wind. I don't see those days anymore myself but I remember them from many years ago.
The Bull’s Eye had thought about The House the rest of that night and all of the next morning and decided there was something more going on than a couple of white dudes moving into the neighborhood to flip a house. She was off from her job on Saturdays, so she got up early and walked her usual route, dressed this time in one of the reversed fleeces so that she looked more “normal” in her own mind: blue jeans, bright pink fleece, white tennis shoes. She wanted to wear the plain black ball cap because, honestly, she couldn't imagine going on patrol without it but this time she wore a blue and white and orange Durham Bulls hat instead.
What The Bull’s Eye had pondered the night before was that everywhere you go, whether it's a street in Durham or a village halfway up some gods-forsaken mountain in Afghanistan, the kids are the ones who know what's really happening. They always know the most because they’re curious about everything and they’re always watching. Kids like the new and the different but it’s possible to cross a line into being so different they detect you as a threat. That had made The Bull’s Eye’s job hard sometimes in Afghanistan, in Iraq and in other places she'd sworn never to name, but in the context of that one neighborhood she hoped she was in the sweet spot of trustworthy and being an outsider. She was an African-American woman who could look like anyone else the average Durham kid had seen a hundred million times. The guys about whom she wanted to know more, on the other hand, didn't look or talk or act the way those kids had learned to expect of their neighbors.
The Bull’s Eye knew she wasn’t guaranteed to get anywhere with the neighborhood kids. She might look like them and the other people they knew, sure, but these were kids who had been raised in the simmering cultural war zone of a neighborhood continually unsure whether it was going to climb back out of the economic trenches or tumble over into being an explicitly “bad” block. That meant becoming someone they would associate with trust rather than nosy questions.
There was a small park – a little slide and a sandbox and a couple of benches – a couple of blocks away from The House. The Bull’s Eye put on the disguise of Ann and sat in that park for a couple of daylight hours, reading a paperback and looking at her phone. A few kids were there pretty much continuously, but larger packs came through for a few minutes at a time every once in a while. She didn't bother to approach any of them; she was just making sure they had seen her before.
The next day she did the same thing, and by the two-hour mark she figured she had established herself as enough of a presence to be allowed to approach one. He wasn't having any of it, though, and took off as soon as she walked up and opened her mouth. She blinked, and stared after him. She'd gotten that reaction before, sure, but in places where no one spoke English. She wasn't sure what to do at that point. Having a Pashtun kid run off when she approached was no surprise; having it happen in her hometown, on the other hand, was a confidence shaker. Her next two attempts were more hesitant and that didn't help any – she got the same lack of results: either kids who took off or kids who just pretended she wasn't there.
Finally she noticed a kid of maybe 13 or 14, just old enough to be trying to look bored at the park, and she walked up to him.
“Hey,” she said.
“Hey,” he replied.
“I need some information.”
The kid was dressed in a generic black hoodie with an indecipherable pattern of swirling and swooping art, everyday objects with thick contrails all looping around one another across the chest. It probably had a lot of significance of some sort, but it was all just shapes to her. He was wearing black sweatpants and near-featureless black shoes from a discount chain. The shoes failed in their attempt to masquerade as a more stylish name brand. The kid squinted up at her in that sharp autumn sunlight. “You a cop?”
“Furthest thing from it,” she said. She folded her arms over her chest and struck her battle-ready-soldier pose: feet apart, shoulders squared, not backing down, not taking no for an answer. Thugs in the biker bars of movies and storybooks try to intimidate their prey by leaning in close and invading personal space; good guys intimidate their prey by becoming a wall that can't be climbed or tunneled through. Goons promise a fight; heroes let the absence of threats speak volumes. “I just need a little info, that's all.”
The kid looked her up and down – she had half a foot on him, and she meant business, and she wasn't a cop, and maybe he figured why the hell not do something today that he didn't do yesterday? It took him some time to work through those conclusions, but he got there. “What's in it for me?”
The Bull’s Eye considered this for a moment. She had been asked that plenty of times by kids in places where talk cost lives. She’d simply bribed them in the end: every kid wants something. She wasn’t sure how to appeal to or buy off a kid here at home, though. What's in this is getting to walk home with your head held high, she thought to herself, but she knew that didn't convert well on the local exchange. “Five bucks,” she said.
The kid snorted.
“Ten.”
He thought about it for a second and then said, “Let me hear your question. That way I'll know what the answer's worth.”
The Bull’s Eye shifted her weight and started to slip into her reflexive response – suggesting that there is no room for negotiation – but she stopped herself before she opened her mouth. She was trained to deal with hostile populations but this population didn't have to be handled like the enemy. She eyed him up and down one more time and said, “It's that house.” She nodded in a vague direction. “The House.” She wanted to see if she would need to be more specific. She bet he would know the one she meant. She was right.
“The new guys.” The kid didn't ask it, he said it. “Twenty bucks.”
“Ten or nothing.” She knew how this part worked. She pulled out her wallet and took ten dollars out, so he could see the money he was turning down. “Not a lot of time to decide. Plenty of other kids in the neighborhood.”
He watched her hand, and then she sighed and started to put it away. “Okay,” he said. “Ten.”
She smiled. No reason not to be nice about it. “Deal.” He held out his hand but she shook her head. “When you're all talked out.”
He shrugged. She didn’t care if she seemed paranoid. The Bull’s Eye knew this kid would very likely never understand how someone who'd fought wars that never had names because they never officially existed would look at the world around her. “They're new. Moved in a couple months ago. Nobody ever stays very long in that house, but they've stayed the longest of anybody. Two white dudes, and we don't get a lot of that. Weird, too. They're twins. Nobody wants to talk to them and they don't want to talk to nobody, either.” He shrugged again. It was the resting state of the teen male.
“Why doesn't anyone want to talk to them?”
“Like I said: they’re weird.”
“What's weird about them?”
The kid was visibly uncomfortable. Whatever it was, he didn't want to say. The Bull’s Eye folded the bill and lowered it. “Sounds like you're a long way from talked out.”
He opened his mouth again and looked away for a second, then back. “They're all... they're like cigarette ash. They look gray in their skin. They look like something's eaten at them, all the time. Every family that moves in there looks that way, one by one, and then they go away again, but these guys got that way and then just stayed sick. My mom says there's radon in the house. Says there's radiation in the basement making them sick. My grandma says the place is cursed and got radon in it. All the kids know those guys aren't okay, and nobody wants to catch what they got. There's a sickness to them, and they don't seem to know or care, so we just leave 'em alone.”
The Bull’s Eye knew the sound of a meth house when she heard it. She hadn’t smelled it when she was there, though, and a meth house stinks to high heaven. “Do they ever have company? Maybe a lot of people coming by at night for just a few minutes?”
“Hell no,” the kid said. “They ain’t some crack house. Nobody ever comes and nobody ever leaves and they just sit in there in the dark. Sometimes they watch TV, most times they don't. No friends, no visitors, no parties, no nothing.”
“They sound like pretty ideal neighbors.” She smirked a little, but she knew she was feeling something that jibed with what the kid had said: a wrongness way down in her gut when they answered that door.
“There's something bad about that place. We don't go there, the little kids don't go there, nobody will go trick or treat there on Halloween, nobody goes there to sell candy bars for school or none of that shit.” He shook his head. “There's something wrong with that house and if those guys stick around then there must be something wrong with them, too. It just makes sense. Most of the people who move in there seem nice or whatever, but then they leave again real fast. These guys weren't cool when they got here and they haven't gotten any better since.”
“What wasn't cool about them when they got here?” That part surprised her just a little. The notion of a house that turns its occupants sick or bad wasn’t necessarily anything new – the doomed manse, the cursed hut or the haunted cabin are not new concepts – but this business about them being unusual when they got here was at odds with the gentrification theory and went nicely with her sense there was something deeper going on. She looked up and the sun was high overhead. She had hours of warm autumn light left but she knew the night would arrive soon enough. Something about seeing that ashen skin and those sunken eyes in darkness made the back of her brain itch.
The kid looked away and kicked a rock. “They were... it was like they were hiding in there. We'd see them peek out the curtains sometimes. I mean, we went and looked at the place, you always go look at a place when somebody new moves in, and they would peek out. They had to see us but they never said hey. They'd just close back up and not look again for a real long time. It didn’t seem like it was ‘cause they were white, though. It seemed like they were afraid of something else. They didn’t look scared of us. They looked like they’d been scared before they got here.” He rolled his shoulders. “I don’t know what to say.”
“Do they ever go out?”
“Once in a while.” He shrugged. “Just once in a while they go somewhere together and they're gone for a couple of hours before hey come back, but that's it. The kids say they're going grocery shopping but I seen them one time. They bring back huge bags from the store, like lots of bags, more than two people need.”
The Bull’s Eye knew how questioning someone worked, so she circled back to a point she'd visited already once before. “And they never have visitors?”
He started to say something else but stopped himself. “It's... No. No visitors. They're just weird.”
“Tell me what you were about to say.” The Bull’s Eye didn't hesitate to press the moment. She held out the money, out of his reach but where he could see it. “Whatever you were about to say, whatever you’re afraid to tell me, that's what I am willing to pay to hear. The thing you choose to hide at the last moment is the truth someone will be looking to find.” She looked deep into his eyes. “Remember that.”
He blinked at her, not getting it, not seeming to understand, but he spoke. He whispered, like he was worried someone would hear them on an empty street next to an empty park. “Some of the kids say that if they stay up late and watch out their window they see a man in an old coat come walking down the middle of the street.” The kid licked his lips, suddenly chapped in the autumn air. “He’s not on the sidewalk, just walking out in the street. There’s never any traffic when he does it, and everything gets real quiet. He always goes straight to that house, nowhere else. He lets himself in and he's in there for a while then he leaves again. I never saw it, so I can't say, but the kids who claim they've seen him say he's the boogeyman.” The kid’s eyes weren’t on the money and they weren’t on The Bull’s Eye. They were far off, in a memory of something he’d seen but couldn’t own, something so scary when he witnessed it he now attributed it to others, to nameless kids up and down the street. “He wasn’t alone, though. He had a bunch of little kids with him, all in hoodies. Like, all in the same kind of hoodie. They stand on the sidewalk while he’s in there like they’re his bodyguards or something. They just stand there and if anyone looks at them too long they make like they’re going to walk over to you.” He drew a thin breath. “They all have the darkest eyes…”
He abruptly remembered who and how old he was and tried to shake it off by forcing a chuckle but it faltered in his throat and he fell back into hurried gusts of speech. “The little kids say the man’s real bad. They're real scared when they see him. They say sometimes he looks up at them – like, they can be in their room with the lights out in the middle of the night and he’s out there in the street and he looks right at them. They say he can feel them looking and when he looks back they can feel it, too. They say it feels cold.” The kid shuddered suddenly, drew a breath and said, “I want my ten bucks.”
“You earned it.” The Bull’s Eye handed the money over. “Thanks, kid. What's your name?”
“That costs extra.” He paused before asking, “You're The Bull’s Eye, ain't you?”
She smirked. “Have a nice afternoon.” She crossed her arms to indicate she wasn’t going anywhere and thus was not the one who should walk away now they had concluded their business. The money disappeared into the kid’s outfit somewhere. He started to say something else but closed his mouth, turned around and walked away and around a corner.
She smiled to herself: The Bull’s Eye had just worked a connection on the street. Damn, she thought to herself. Bad-ass.
Too bad everything she’d learned bothered her so damned much.
5
I’d spent a week debating whether to tell Roderick about my encounter with El Diablo and with Ross, the blue-skinned guy with devil horns. My uncertainty stemmed from all manner of sources: a little fear of ridicule for having an experience so strange, a little shame over having taken so long to bring it up, a little embarrassment over how I’d reacted to El Diablo when he was just some naked hot guy and I’d found myself playing the part of voyeur.
I was mostly worried about this Ross guy, though, and how Roderick might react to that part of the story. Ross was clearly a demon: the horns and the weird skin and the disappearing in a flash are a dead giveaway. At least, that’s how it seemed to me. Polite society might call the walking dead “Steeplechasers” but we all knew they were zombies and a guy with horns and weird skin disappearing in a puff of smoke was surely a demon if ever one there was.
I am not a religious person, I should say. That’s true for lots of reasons, not just for the distaste with which I regard the notion of someone going to the trouble of becoming a vampire only to spend eternity feeling guilty about it. I mostly rejected religion as a mortal because I was force-fed so much of it as a boy. My experiences as a vampire simpl
y affirmed my atheism. I have seen too many lives gutter and go out like a candle in a cold wind to believe there is a god somewhere who gives a damn or would do anything if they did. If the gods were ever real they must surely have wandered off millennia ago in search of a drink big enough to make them forget the things they have seen. Heaven as the destination of what humans have ever been truly good would be the loneliest place in the universe.
That there is no Heaven, though, does not mean there is no Hell or nothing like it. I wouldn’t have dared hazard a guess regarding where demons come from. I was only willing to entertain their possibility because of the circumstances in which I discovered my cousin Roderick amongst the vampires of Seattle in the first place. I originally went out there at the request of my maker, Agatha, to satisfy a favor from one of her allies, who had been asked by a friend to provide an assist, and so on and so forth. That’s how things work in the bizarre professional network that is freelance immortality. It’s not uncommon for us to do time acting as our makers’ fixers in one arena or another and it’s not uncommon for the ones who like to climb local ladders to barter their available resources for favors and prestige. For a while – several decades – I was Agatha’s best source of violence on demand. I wasn’t a great diplomat but I was perfectly happy to make a buck running questionable goods around in a fast car or putting my fist through the face of someone who almost certainly had it coming anyway.
When I killed off the last of the Bobs and declared myself the boss of North Carolina, though, that was that. I’d established my own territory. I couldn’t be Agatha’s errand boy anymore. We still passed news back and forth and spoke once in a great while but I’d had to cut those apron strings or the vampires around me never would have respected what I only grudgingly will admit is my authority over them. It isn’t that I love the idea of giving orders, but damned if I’m going to let anyone else give them to me.
Deal with the Devil (Withrow Chronicles Book 3) Page 6