Poppy Z. Brite - 1992 - Lost Souls (42 page)

 
          
And
sometimes … sometimes they spoke of him. At those times he thought his ears
would pull loose from his head and fly away, so hard did they stretch to
listen.

 
          
“He
won’t ever have it easy, Deliverance. The boy’s gift is just too damn strong.”
That was
Miz
Catlin. She meant him, Ghost. The gift
was the things he knew, or felt, without having any way to know. The things he
couldn’t tell just anybody, the things his grandmother always understood.

 
          
“I
know it, Catlin. Nobody with the gift ever has an easy time, ‘specially not
when they’re as open-hearted as my Ghost. Let that boy try to tell a lie and
his forehead turns to glass.” That was his grandmother, her voice softer than
Miz
Catlin’s, her words softer too. “But I trust him to use
it well. He’ll never hurt anybody with his gift.” Her voice had lowered then.
“The only thing I worry about is, his gift might hurt him. He’ll spend his life
feeling everybody else’s pain. Takes a lot of strength not to lay down and be
crushed under that weight.”

 
          
Ghost
jerked awake and tossed his head. He was being lulled to sleep by voices from
the past, by the night road, by the spirits drifting between midnight and dawn.
As he drove past the graveyard outside Corinth, Ghost saw the humped stones
palely gleaming, the rags of mist that rose from the cold ground.

 
          
He
felt the hair at the back of his neck trying to stand up. Lie down and be
quiet, he told it. Those graves weren’t dangerous. Even if spirits roamed
there, they were just people.

 
          
Frightened,
maybe, because their bodies were rotting and drying and dusting away.
Frightened and maybe even angry. But still people. They couldn’t hurt him or
Steve. Not like some things.

 
          
Some
of the monsters were alive.

 
          
Ghost
thought of Miles Hummingbird. Did Miles roam tonight? Did his spirit soar on
the night winds like the roar of the ocean? And would Miles have to return to
his grave at dawn, summoned back by some rooster crowing, some train whistle
blasting far away in the cold morning? Ghost tried to send his mind into the
night, out where Miles or
Miz
Deliverance might hear
him. Help me, my dear dead, he thought. Help me stay awake.

 
          
Help
Steve wake up without a really bad hangover. Let him want to drive because I
don’t know how much longer I can keep this steamboat on the road. Help me if
you can.

 
          
It
didn’t work, not right then. But an hour later, as U.S. 1 took them down into
South Carolina, Steve unfolded himself, groaned, and said, “What the fuck are
you doing driving my car?”

 
          
Thank
you, thought Ghost as he went to sleep, his bead leaning against the window,
his eyes blessedly shut. Thanks. And good night.

 
          
Speeding
away from midnight, Steve felt good. Good because they had found a truck stop
where four cups of bitter black coffee had sent his hangover to headache
heaven.

 
          
Good
because he’d tuned in to an FM station that played classic rock all night long.
He sang along with the old tunes loud enough to keep himself awake, soft enough
to let Ghost sleep.

 
          
But
good most of all because they were on the road again. He was not thinking about
Ann, or green-eyed Zillah (that little
jerkoff
,
Steve’s mind automatically subtitled him), or even New Orleans. He was not
brooding over the way the last few months had turned to shit. He was not
thinking at all. He was only singing along with the radio, letting the cold
wind whip his hair across his eyes, letting the road wash his soul clean.
Heaviness fell away with each mile he left behind. He felt weightless. God, he
could road-trip forever. He knew what lay at the end of the road: more of Ann’s
bullshit, more fury, more pain. But the highway was home.

 
          
After
a while something began to nibble at his happiness. I’ve got maybe thirty-five
bucks on me, he figured. My last paycheck from Whirling Disc, less beer money.
And Ghost never carries any cask Were
gonna
need
money soon.

 
          
Okay,
but there was a way to solve that problem. Dangerous.
Fuckin
’
renegade business.

 
          
But
so easy, if he could pull it off.

 
          
Steve
started scanning the roadside. Used-car dealerships, orange sodium lights
glinting on rows and rows of
souped
-up wrecks, making
them look like cars in an old black-and-white movie. A
railyard
,
tracks crossing and diverging like some tangled puzzle of wood and iron,
boxcars casting long square shadows. There, up ahead-that was what he wanted. A
ramshackle little gas station, closed down for the night. And outside, the dim
glow of a Coke machine. The old-fashioned kind. The kind you could jimmy. Steve
pulled up in front of the store and killed the lights.

 
          
“Don’t,”
Ghost said thickly.

 
          
“Go
back to sleep,” Steve told him. “It’ll buy our beer in the French Quarter.”

 
          
He
fished through the mess in the backseat and found his trusty coat hanger,
knelt, and fed it into the coin-return slot. It was about to catch … there … he
could feel it nearly catch. If the Coke machine had been a girl, Steve would
have been getting ready to make it come like a banshee.

 
          
“That’s
it, baby,” he muttered, and then something with a lot of weight behind it
slammed into his back. Pain flared deep in his kidneys. Steve lost his balance
and spilled backward into the dust of the parking lot.

 
          
“Looks
like we got us a trick-or-
treater
.”

 
          
Steve
twisted to meet the two most emptily gleeful pairs of eyes he had ever seen.
These two made Zillah’s thug friends look like geniuses … or at least
subgeniuses
. They had sloping foreheads and tattoos that
wound down ropy-muscled arms and spread dark tendrils over the backs of grimy
hands. One of them was broad-
chested
with features
that seemed too large and sensual for his face—a redneck Dionysus. The other
was scrawny; his colorless hair fell straight and fine from under a mesh
baseball cap stitched with the Coors logo, a trusty asshole indicator if there
ever was one. In one
knuckly
fist he gripped a
hammer.

 
          
He
grinned at Steve, showing crooked little teeth. “We got anything for
trick-or-treaters, Willy?”

 
          
Willy
laughed. The sound made up in malice what it lacked in humor. “Shit, I didn’t
save no candy. You got any candy, Charlie?”

 
          
“Yeah.”
Charlie swung the hammer. It whistled past Steve’s head, inches away. “I got me
a big jawbreaker right here.”

 
          
“Fuck
off,” he said, struggling to his knees. “I wasn’t bothering you.” His voice
sounded thin and seared. He cursed it.

 
          
“Now
will you listen to this?” Willy’s face was suddenly the picture of shocked
innocence. “Asshole was
fixin
’ to rip off my daddy’s
Coke machine in the parking lot of my daddy’s store. And he thinks we ought
fuck off and leave him be. What you say, Charlie?”

 
          
“Uh-uh.”
Charlie let loose a high, toneless giggle. “I think we better beat the shit out
of him.”

 
          
The
gas station didn’t belong to Willy’s daddy. With a sudden helpless fury, Steve
was sure of that. They were carrying a hammer, for fuck’s sake. Why would you
carry a hammer around a deserted gas station in the middle of the night? To
bash in the skull of some punk city kid you caught ripping off the Coke
machine? Not likely. To bust a window, maybe? To pound hell out of the cash
register? Bingo, Steve congratulated himself. You win the prize. Willy’s
gonna
give you the Golden Ticket.

 
          
Steve
sputtered laughter. It came with no warning, hysterical and beyond control.

 
          
He
leaned against the Coke machine and tried to catch his breath, but he couldn’t
help it.

 
          
Willy
was going to give him the Golden Ticket, and bang-bang, Charlie’s silver hammer
was going to come down upon his head. Then maybe they could make him
sqeeeeeeal
like a pig.

 
          
Steve
knew he’d better stop laughing, knew things might get real unpleasant around
here if he kept laughing, but he couldn’t quit. Not until Charlie’s fist
smashed into his cheekbone and the sole of Willy’s boot came down on his ribs.
Or maybe it was Willy punching him in the face and Charlie stomping his ribs.
It didn’t matter.

 
          
He
grabbed a thick jeans-clad ankle and yanked. Charlie went down. The hammer flew
out of his hand and
thunked
into the dust six feet
away. Steve smelled shit. It was masked under the smell of cheap beer and
redneck sweat, but it was shit all right. He thought of saying Pardon me, but
which one of you stepped in shit? and snorted more laughter, crazy laughter,
through the pain in his face and his ribs.

 
          
Willy
was coming for him again. He brought his legs up and
pistoned
both boot heels into the greasy crotch of Willy’s jeans. Willy doubled up with
only a loud grunt; apparently he was more of a man than Charlie. But here came
good old Charlie again, and he’d got his silver hammer back, could you say amen
and hallelujah, and he was raising it high above his head.

 
          
Steve
wondered briefly whether maybe he should have had his soul saved after all.

 
          
And
then Ghost shot into the fray, screaming like a mad thing and swinging his own
hammer, the one Steve always kept under the front seat of the car. Ghost’s
hammer connected with Charlie’s elbow, and Steve heard something crack. He just
managed to get out from under Charlie’s hammer as Charlie dropped it, howling
and clutching his elbow.

 
          
Steve
grabbed the stray hammer, rolled, and came up on his feet. Now he and Ghost
both had hammers. They faced the rednecks, keeping each other covered.

 
          
The
rednecks didn’t seem like much of a threat now, cringing back against the wall
of the building. Willy’s hands were still cupped tenderly around his crotch.

 
          
Charlie’s
right arm dangled uselessly; his face had gone the color of bad cheese. They
stared at Steve and Ghost like cornered possums, too stupid to be really
scared, but wary.

 
          
“We
ought to bash your cracker brains in,” Steve told them.

 
          
“But
we’re not,” Ghost said hurriedly. “We’re just
gonna
get back in our car and leave.

 
          
Don’t
make any fast moves.” He brandished his hammer at them.

 
          
Steve
waved his too, but he was beginning to feel he had lost control of the
situation. He edged around the front end of the car and pulled his door open.
Out of the corner of his eye he saw Ghost doing the same. They threw themselves
in and both doors slammed at once. Steve thumbed the lock button. Ghost was
ranting at him. “Hurry, hurry, let’s get the hell out of here before they stomp
both our asses—”

 
          
The
engine started on the first try. Steve gunned the car across the parking lot
and had the satisfaction of seeing Willy and Charlie scrabble out of his way
like crabs in boiling water. He thought he might have clipped one of them,
hoped so. Then the gas station was dwindling in the red glow of the taillights.
He glanced at Ghost, who was sprawled backward in his seat, half-grinning. He
thought he could see Ghost’s heart pounding through the thin cloth of his
T-shirt. “You just saved my ass,” Steve told him.

 
          
It
was a rare moment of awkwardness between them. “I owe you one.”