City of Heretics (30 page)
Crowe nodded.
He said, “The Heretics killed him. I didn’t… I didn’t even know anything about them, Crowe. I didn’t know, until Dallas told me everything. I didn’t know, I didn’t know. And there’s nothing I can do, you understand? They… they have people everywhere. They killed my son and there’s nothing I can do about it.”
Crowe wondered if Chester knew why they’d done it, why they’d killed the boy in his bed. He wondered if he knew it was Dallas’s punishment, not his.
Suffer the children
, Welling had said.
He sat back down, and all the will in him, all the strength, seemed to evaporate right before Crowe’s eyes. His face went dull and he sat there and gazed blindly at the wall.
Crowe left him. In the living room, Dallas was his lifeless twin, staring dumbly at a spot on the carpet, the glass in her hand. She didn’t look up at him when he passed through the room.
In the car, Crowe opened the bottle of pain pills and threw three of them down his throat. He wasn’t in any particular pain, but he needed to be numb. He started the engine and drove away.
On his way out of Memphis, he got stopped at the light right before the freeway entrance at Danny Thomas. To the left, the overpass loomed, cars and trucks making it whine and thrum. A dog came lopping out of the shadows under the overpass, stopped and looked at him.
It was a greyhound, but it was hard to tell unless you looked closely. Its fur was matted with blood and bile. Part of its head was gone, skull sticking out whitely, and its hanging tongue was black with age.
Crowe said through his window glass, “I see you, boy.”
The tail was little more than a bloody, segmented bit of bone, but it wagged anyway. The dog’s mouth moved, a bark of acknowledgment, but of course there was no sound.
Crowe watched, and the dog cocked its head at him before turning around and trotting away, back into the shadows. For a second Crowe thought he saw the boy there, in the shadows waiting, his round white face glowing and cocked at an angle, just like the dog.
But no. There was nothing.
About the Author
Heath Lowance is the author of the cult novel THE BASTARD HAND, as well as a short story collection called DIG TEN GRAVES. His other stories have appeared at Crime Factory, Shotgun Honey, Chi-Zine, Pulp Metal, The Nautilus Engine, and others. He has been a movie theater manager, a tour guide at Sun Studio, a singer in a punk band, and a regular donor of blood for money. He lives in a quiet neighborhood near Detroit.
.
About Snubnose Press
Snubnose Press is the ebook imprint of Spinetingler Magazine.
The snubnose revolver dominated visual crime stories in the 20th century. Every cop, every detective, every criminal in every TV show and movie seemed to carry a snubnose. The snubnose is a classic still used today.
The snubnose is easy to conceal and carry.
The snubnose is powerful.
The snubnose is compact.
That’s how we like our fiction.
Snubnose Press Titles:
Harvest of Ruins by Sandra Ruttan
The Chaos We Know by Keith Rawson
Monkey Justice by Patti Abbott
Dig Two Graves by Eric Beetner
Hill Country by R Thomas Brown
Cold Rifts
by Sandra Seamans
Nothing Matters by Steve Finbow
Karma Backlash by Chad Rohrbacher
To Die Upon a Kiss by Craig Wallwork
Bar Scars by Nik Korpon
The Jones Men by Verne Smith
City of Heretics by Heath Lowrance
Ghost Money by Andrew Nette
Wild Child by Josh Stallings
Moondog Over the Mekong by Court Merrigan
The Subtle Arts of Brutality by Ryan Sayles
A Healthy Fear of Man by Aaron Philip Clark
Dope Sick: A Love Story by JA Kazimer
Blood on Blood by Frank Zafiro & Jim Wilsky
Broken Glass Waltz by Warren Moore
Choice Cuts by Joe Clifford
Wake the Undertaker by Joe Clifford
