The Book of Paul -- A Paranormal Thriller (24 page)

Michael was so overcome with the madness of the moment that he didn’t know whether to nod or faint. Paul understood. It was, after all, his first time. Paul looked down the street to see whether Martin and Rose were out of earshot. He watched as they approached an apartment building more than fifty yards west, and satisfied that he and Michael had some measure of privacy, he picked up the headless body and stuffed it into an empty trash can as easily as he was tossing out an oversize bag of kitty litter. He shoved another plastic bag of garbage from a neighboring can on top to cover the crumpled legs, then pushed down the lid so tightly that the lazy sanitation workers would have to screw it off when they carted the trash away two or three days later.

Michael’s legs were so wobbly he almost collapsed in the street. Paul walked over and gave him a hug that almost brought him back to the edge of sanity—then he robbed him of that fleeting equilibrium by picking up the head by its blood-oiled hair, speaking to both the head and Michael like an anatomy professor.

“Here’s a little-known fact…little known, that is, to anyone who wasn’t around during the Reign of Terror,” Paul began, sucking in a huge draft of air while he planted his oak-thick legs a yard apart. He cradled the head gently, then tossed it softly from one hand to the other as he continued. “There’s enough oxygen left in the brain after a particularly swift decapitation, let’s say from a guillotine during that aforementioned terrible time, or my own modest invention here, that the poor lad’s head remains not only conscious for a considerable period, but also acutely aware of his surroundings. You can look into his eyes…and they look back. Better yet, you can even ask him questions, as you’ve just witnessed yourself.”

Paul chuckled, then opened Tony’s eyelids with his thumbs. With this latest desecration, Michael felt more giddy than nauseous. He was beginning to acclimate himself to the Dada-esque absurdity of his circumstances.

“And here’s another little secret about vacationing heads that I daresay you couldn’t learn from any other person on the planet…” Paul paused and Michael’s heart might have stopped beating in response. “They almost always answer you.”

“Whoa!” said Michael. What else could he say?

“Oh, the things that I could tell you, m’boy,” Paul said, shaking his head in wonder. “The things that I have learned!” Then he drop-kicked the head across the street and over a chain-link fence into a vacant lot.

Michael half expected Paul to yell out,
“Goaaal!”
but he casually wiped his bloody hands on his overcoat, wrapped a burly arm around Michael’s panicked shoulder and whispered, “And you know something else, Michael?”

“What?” Bean gulped.

“No matter how many times I’ve been lucky enough to witness that little miracle, I just never get tired of seeing it.”

They say ignorance is bliss. Rose’s case was a mixed bag. If she’d known Tony was pointing a gun at Martin’s head, she wouldn’t have wanted the kiss to linger for quite so long. That would have been a shame. On the other hand, if she’d seen Paul slice off Tony’s head with all the aplomb of a master sushi chef, she might have wisely abandoned Martin and his benefactor right on the spot, sparing herself all the suffering to follow.

So, quite oblivious to the danger still surrounding them, and anxious to remove herself and Martin from the crime scene before the police sirens began wailing, Rose wrapped her arm around Martin’s waist and led him toward the stairs of their apartment building.

Usually one to forgo any assistance, Martin draped an arm across her shoulder. Surprisingly, he was also unaware of Paul’s presence, though for completely different reasons. Part of Martin’s lack of awareness could be attributed to all the trauma he had experienced in the last few hours. But the biggest reason for Martin’s decline in observational prowess was due to the fact that he was practically deaf from all the close-range shooting.

I, on the other hand, was all too aware of my surroundings.
Okaaaaaay,
I thought after Paul decapitated Tony as happily as someone else might dislodge a champagne cork. I didn’t mind being a fly on the wall with Martin and Rose, but I was definitely not in the mood for an encounter with Paul. I put my hands in my pockets and eased down the street as quietly as I could, trying to stay in the shadows until I was cleanly out of sight. As I reached the deli on the corner of Avenue B, I finally dared to sneak a peek over my shoulder…and ducked inside.

Paul was running down the street. And man, that sucker was fast.

“He’s been shot,” Paul said to no one, watching Martin struggle to climb the stairs.

Michael thought the comment was intended for him. He was formulating some lame response like, “How can you tell?” when he realized Paul was already gone, zooming ahead in that silent “Ghost Riders in the Sky
”
gallop. He tried to catch up.

When Paul’s voice cut through the muffled numbness in Martin’s ears, it sounded more like a songbird than a full throttled yell. “Hey!!!” the voice peeped. Martin turned to see where the “Hey!!!” was coming from. He was only mildly surprised to see it was Paul. What was he doing here? “Following you home,” said a little voice on Martin’s shoulder. It sounded a lot clearer than Paul’s bellowing yell had. “Yeah,” he agreed, “but why?”

Who cares?
Martin thought, grumbling that he could have used his uninvited company about six minutes earlier. Right now he didn’t care much about what Paul wanted. His primary objective was stuffing some gauze into the ragged wound in his back.

Quickly approaching, Paul assessed Martin’s injuries (“He’ll live,” he concluded at fifteen yards and closing). He would have continued at his same hurtling pace nonetheless, were it not for the glare Rose gave him. A glare that asked: “Who the
fuck
are you?”

Paul froze in place, no small feat considering the speed he was traveling, and stared at the young woman, her face gleaming with metal.

Rose was expecting a similar unspoken retort, communicating something like, “No, who the fuck are
you?”
What she never would have expected was the look of recognition she received, followed by a bemused, contemptuous sneer Paul voiced out loud. “Hhmph!”

She wasn’t sure how to react. Did this guy know her from someplace? No way. She would have remembered a face like that.

Martin reacted to Paul’s look much differently. He couldn’t see the recognition in his eyes. Just the hate. Martin had seen that look so many times it wouldn’t have registered as even a blip on his radar screen were it not for the fact that he was directing it at Rose.

Unlike Martin, who knew all too well who they were dealing with, Rose was determined not to let the sneer go unanswered, and kept her fuck-you expression locked in place for a few more beats until Michael finally caught up to them. Bean held on to the railing, trying to catch his breath, much to the further disgust of Martin and the added confusion of Rose, who replicated her “who the fuck are you?” look to no avail, because Michael had his head lowered, sucking in lungfuls of air. After a few more anxious seconds, all three of them opened their mouths to speak, but Paul cut them off at the pass.

“Well then, Martin,” Paul sighed, completely disregarding everyone else. “Would you be needing a hand with that exit wound?”

Martin thought about it. The bigger wound was in his back, not the best place for self-administered care. Paul certainly had his bad points—in fact, almost all his points were bad—but when it came to emergency medical care, no one was more qualified, except perhaps the head of triage at Mt. Sinai. On the other hand, did he want Paul coming inside his home? With that punk? With Rose? With the look he was giving her? Did he want Paul in his life at all anymore? Given his recent experience with the nail and the knife and the kid, he would have to say no. Absolutely not. And yet…

When he saw Paul in the park it felt like an old wound had opened, or maybe his heart. It was hard to tell, they felt so much the same. Pathetic as it was, Paul was the only person besides Norine who ever told him he was special, who thought he mattered at all. Paul taught him how to survive. Protected him. Maybe even loved him. For all those years. When Martin finally left, it was Paul’s idea, not his.

They were huddled under an interstate highway overpass where they had taken refuge from a thunderstorm. It rained for hours as they sat shoulder to shoulder in the shelf-like alcove directly below the heavy, green steel beams supporting the crossroad. Their pickup truck had broken down shortly after they stashed their loot from Firth. It began raining almost immediately after the engine seized up, which Paul, of course, interpreted as another omen. An omen about the two of them.

“Talk to me, boy,” Paul goaded him after many minutes passed in silence. “I know what’s eatin’ you.”

“I keep thinking about that girl,” Martin said softly, unable to erase the image of Firth’s daughter from his mind. “Why did you do it?”

“I’ve told you that before, Martin, and I’m getting tired of repeating myself,” Paul said after a heavy sigh. “It goes in one ear and out the other.”

“I know what you told me,” he replied. “I just don’t like what you did.”

“I’m quite aware you didn’t
like
it. Your complaint was duly noted the first time.”

Martin hugged his knees tighter to his sinewy teenage chest, bracing himself against the chill and Paul’s icy reply. His next words were much more harsh.

“I think the time has come to dissolve our partnership,” Paul said, voicing the words Martin so often ached to say, but still couldn’t. “When your heart’s not in your work…well, that’s when accidents happen…and neither of us wants that.”

Martin trembled. Paul was telling him to go? “But you promised to take me to the…”

“All da little birdies have to leave da nest,” Paul interrupted. His Irish lilt was still trying to twinkle, but a sadness Martin had never heard in his voice burdened the words that followed. “Even so, a promise is a promise —that’s one thing you can always count on from me. We’ll meet again another day and take that final journey. But for now, you’ll have to make your own bed…and lie in it.”

Martin wanted to cry, but he couldn’t. He didn’t want to leave, but he knew he had to. Paul made it easier. Not the way Martin would have guessed, with a cruel shove into the pouring rain, maybe followed by a gun blast or two if he kept moping, but instead with a warm arm draped across his shoulder. He kept his arm there in silence as the rain dripped and splattered all around them. Martin made no move to discourage him. They sat there together for the better part of an hour, saying nothing. Martin’s mind was empty, not in itself an unusual thing, but given the tightness in his chest, he was surprised there weren’t at least a few words in his head to accompany it.

When the rain finally stopped, Paul spoke again, pulling his arm back, letting him know it was time. “If you find yourself in the mood to see me, you’ll never have far to look,” he said gently. “And don’t ever forget how special you are.”

Martin stared at him blankly, then picked up his backpack, shouldering the strap over his worn-out denim jacket. The sack bulged with one change of clothes and four-dozen Greyhound locker keys where they had stashed his share of the precious treasure. He rose in a stoop to avoid knocking his head into one of the beams and looked at Paul again. He tried to think of something to say, but nothing came to mind. Paul nodded slowly, for once at a loss for words himself.