Currency of Souls (25 page)

Time draws out, and Brody is desperately aware of every second that's lost to him. Any moment now he expects to hear sirens, drowning out the screams of the dying deer.
Should have kept walking. Nothing but bad luck in this goddamn town. Should have just kept on walking
. He imagines the faces on the cops as they jump from their cruisers, pistols trained on him, ready to bring him down, only to find themselves watching a wooden Indian pegging a bunch of homicidal deer.

"Every day it's the same," Blue Moon says wistfully. "And will be until they force me to take my own life, or step outside to meet them, whichever happens first."

"Then why not make a deal with the old man? The guy who makes the deals."

"Because I have no interest in the kind of peace he has to offer."

More arrows tear flying deer from the air, their bodies thumping down hard on the car, making it rock on its wheels, denting the hood, the roof, decorating the pale blue metal with dark blood. Brody watches, mesmerized, until the death of the animals begins to feel monotonous, a tiresome display of a hunter's brawn. He's even starting to feel a bit sorry for those poor bastards. He stands, brushes splinters and dirt from his already ruined suit. "I'm leavin'. I have to. Pissed away too much time already in this freakshow of a town."

"Better wait, boy. Won't be safe till they're gone."

Brody puts his hands on his hips, glances at Red Cloud, who ignores him. "Tell me something, Blue. If you've got your goombah here with his endless supply of arrows, why can't you come out, at least as far as the porch? That tribe of yours don't seem to be bothering me none. Not up here."

To Brody, it's a short forever before he gets an answer, and when it comes, it is in the form of a door easing open and not a voice. Brody peers at the widening crack between door and jamb. It is dark inside. Low to the ground, as if Blue Moon's been sitting on the floor all this time, the old man's hand emerges from around the door. In it is held an old-fashioned revolver, which he sets on the porch. Then the hand withdraws and the door is quickly shut.

Brody stands there, staring at the grooves in the door, at the memory of what he thinks he has just seen.

"Take it. It's loaded."

Brody nods, but doesn't reply. Instead, he stoops, collects the gun and checks to see if the old man is pulling a fast one on him. It's an old Colt, but it's fully loaded and looks serviceable. "Why are you helping me if you know so much about what I've done?" he asks at last.

"Because I'm no judge, boy, and I'm certainly no better. I know there are always two roads, but the right one ain't always necessarily the good one. I've traveled both, and I still can't tell 'em apart."

"All right then," Brody says, feeling dazed as he slips the gun into his waistband and slowly descends the porch steps. Arrows cut the air over his shoulder, but he doesn't flinch. Deer rain down on the Dodge, smack hard against the ground, kick and protest imminent death. The gun is cold against his belly, as cold as he imagines the old man's hand was.
They stole something precious from a rival tribe. A statue of a deer, made from obsidian and wood.

Obsidian and wood
.

He wonders how many nights his sleep will be plagued by what he has seen in this town, how often he'll be dragged out of his dreams by the wooden Indian, the tribe, and the old man's hand. He stops short of the car and ducks low as a deer launches itself up over the hood, watches it jerk back at the behest of Red Cloud's arrow and drop heavily. Blood speckles his cheek. Antlers scratch the bottom of the driver-side door. The dust devils spin away, elongated faces within twisting in torment, and then disappear. The passenger side door is facing him, so this is where he's heading. He expects it to be locked; another trick, another inconvenience, but it isn't and swings open with a labored groan. There are cobwebs on the steering wheel, beer cans and used condoms on the floor. A pine tree freshener spins lazily from the rearview mirror but the interior smells of rotten meat. He's inside, hand on the keys when another deer, eyes wide in fury or panic, Brody can't tell which, and doesn't much care, rams the side of the car, its head colliding with the glass on the driver side, inches away from Brody. It cracks, but doesn't shatter.

With shaking hands, he turns the keys. The engine whines, then catches and roars into life. He yanks back the gearshift. The grinding noise is not encouraging, but then the car bucks once and heaves backward, throwing up dirt that sprays across the porch, where an old wooden Indian is tirelessly defending an old man made of black glass.

He shakes his head, looks back to the path. The deer are crowded there, watching him, blocking his way.

"To hell with this," Brody mumbles and jams his foot down on the accelerator.

Chapter Twenty

The pain begins at sundown.

I'm walking, not even a half a mile clear of Winter Street when my guts turn to liquid fire. A gasp and I'm doubled over; another, and I'm on my knees, my shoulder against the graffiti-riddled wall of the long-abandoned Brautigan's Drugstore, my hand splayed on the concrete before me. My vision begins to blur, then it paints everything red, as if I'm wearing crimson shades, or there's blood in my eyes.

Another wave of pain and then I realize the first few rounds were nothing. Nothing compared to the incredible torture that comes with the sensation of my bones narrowing, shifting, bending, poking at the skin in an attempt to reshape me. My muscles protest as they're played like cello strings. My nerves sing in torment, jarring the thoughts from my head. It's as if I've been bound in barbed wire and someone is tightening it, ever so slowly.

I fall forward, both hands flat on the ground. Dark blood leaks from my mouth. In my peripheral vision, I see my arms shrink, grow thin. My gut no longer strains against my belt. It's a deflating balloon.

I throw up and can't face the gruesome sight of what's emerged.

Jesus Christ, I'm dying
, is all I can think, because surely this is what death feels like.

My hair falls out; my vision fades.

My throat is burning, but a hand raised to massage it meets cold hard metal. My nails
scritch
against it, then they too fall out.

I scream, or at least try to, but the power of that anguished scream is somehow diminished, robbed of its power by the metal box in my throat, and so emerges as little more than a forced whisper.

I'm afraid, petrified, and shouldn't be because I asked for this. This is the bargain. This is what Cadaver wanted, what I wanted, and now I'm getting it. He's out; I'm in,
let's call the whole thing off!
my thoughts chant cheerfully, and its almost enough to draw a smile from me, but the agony scrubs that notion away in record time.

I glance to my left as tears roll down my sallow cheeks, into the soaped-over plate glass window of Brautigan's Drugstore.

Cadaver is a pale ghost, on his knees, sobbing.

I weep for us both.

Abruptly, the pain in my head that seems intent on cracking it open subsides, and I'm flooded by memories and knowledge not my own. It's almost as bad as the pain. Such an alien feeling, it's as if my brain has become a theater, open to players I've never met. I bring my hands up and clamp them to the sides of my skull in an effort to contain them. When I close my eyes, I see myself as a bird, soaring high above the town, cocking my head occasionally to listen to the pleas that drift in dreams through the roofs of sagging houses. Where I land, is up to me. There is no shortage of time, no quota on the amount of promises I can make, or lives I can alter. Everyone can have whatever they desire most, if they are willing to offer me something in return. It is then I know, as the bird swoops down toward the tavern on the hill that was once burned but is burned no more, that all of us have been, and will continue to be, slaves, not to God or the Devil, but to ourselves, to our innate need to make things right, to attain what our lives tell us we cannot have, and do not deserve. Cadaver—
I
—am a mechanic in the clockwork of man, but I am nothing without the cogs that make it run. But no...I am not Cadaver, not entirely. I am still here, still stumbling around inside. My old self claws at the walls, looking for the exit, just like always.

At last I go numb, pinprick specks of light making my sagging skin glow from the inside, and when finally I trust my legs to lift me, I stand, and let myself lean against the drugstore window.

This is what I wanted
, I have to remind myself from the depths of this alien skin.
This is what had to happen. It was the only way
. Every time I blink, I'm somewhere else. Flying, soaring, spying at lovers who have plans to kill each other, gazing into the eyes of elderly folk who have all but given up but would jump at the chance to escape, detecting the scent of long buried bodies in long forgotten plots, reading the minds of the lovelorn, the desperate, the lost. Every house in Milestone is a vault of secrets, but it didn't take for this change for me to know that.

Now behind my closed eyes I'm standing atop a rotten post by a deserted parking lot, peering at the reflection of a raven, and beyond that, at the willowy woman in the gray dress who's praying for my death as she scrubs another man's blood from the floor.

* * *

He awakes in a bathtub, raises his head, and winces in pain. He has been sleeping. This much he knows, but it is all that he knows. His neck hurts from the awkward way he's been lying. Cold water from the showerhead drip-drip-drips down the back of his neck, making him shiver. His joints ache; there's a taste in his mouth that repulses him, makes him want to gag. It's as if he's been sucking on road kill. With no little effort, he manages to sit up, tries to look around and yelps as a bolt of pain shoots from the back of his head down to the base of his spine. "Jesus..." he moans, and reaches a hand back to try and negotiate his comfort with whatever muscle is holding it hostage. As he does so, he jerks his neck a little, the hand bracing the tendons and muscles there should they decide to unravel, and notices the faded flowers on the wall.
Tulips
, he thinks, and remembers the crude joke about them that he composed but never remembered to share with Iris. It doesn't seem funny now, only cruel. He starts to shake his head and flinches as once again pain reminds him he has not yet been cleared for such a move. He moves his hand to his throat, gingerly probes the flesh there. It's raw, tender. It hurts, and the feel of it combined with his discomfort starts to lead him ever so slowly back to the memory of what happened to him.

"I was—" He's not sure where the rest of the thought goes, or what it's supposed to make him see, but now his nostrils are filled with the scent of oil. The creaking of a strained rope resonates in his head and his eyes widen. "I was—"

"Dead."

He turns too quickly and cries out as the muscles contract protectively around a not yet healed break.

"You were dead," Iris says, from the doorway. "And now you ain't."

Her voice is cold, which seems to suit the situation, though he has never heard it from her before.

"What happened?"

"You daddy saved you. Now get up and get yourself together."

"I can't...I'm—"

"The only law we have around here now." She tosses something at him. It glances off the side of the tub and tumbles into his lap. He recognizes the chipped and grimy gold star as his father's. "And you got work to do."

* * *

The sun is down.

On a post in the parking lot at Eddie's, opposite one of the formerly broken windows, stands a raven. He caws and bobs his head at my approach, but I don't know whether the greeting or warning is meant for me, its own reflection in the smoked glass, or if the bird is a familiar of the woman inside. It makes little difference, I suppose.

I open the door and step inside.

The smell of soot and smoke rushes to greet me like the extension of a ghost that can't wait for me to join it. The room looks smaller than it ever has before.

Gracie is on her knees, both hands clamped around a sponge soaked rusty brown by the blood that has gathered in a wide ragged circle beneath a toppled stool.

"Vess," I say, and she looks up. Her face is wan, and sweaty, her eyes narrowed as she tries to focus on my shadowy form. Cadaver, and people like him, like me, I have found, are not friends of the light.

"Come to gloat?" she asks, returning to her labors.

I let the door swing shut behind me. "There'd be little sense in that." I suppress a shudder. It horrifies me every time I speak to hear that grated hollow whisper, though I am not dependant on that ugly little microphone for volume. Eventually, perhaps, but not yet. "It would be as pointless as cleaning up the blood of a man to hide it from me when I'm standing right in front of you." The voice is my own, of that I am sure, but the throat through which it has to pass certainly is not.

Gracie's scrubbing slows, her hair obscuring her face. I am struck by the desire to brush it out of her face, a lingering impulse from not-so-better times, but that brief surge of need is enough to confirm what I already know. I am still here. I am still
me
. Somewhere.