Cadaver clucks his tongue. “You will if you want to be with your beloved when death does come for you.”
“Can’t fight.”
“You can and will. It’s the only way.”
Wintry frowns, winces. The expression yanks on burnt nerves. “Who?”
Cadaver is by his side again, breathing foul breath in his face that ignites the ruined flesh. “Tonight, my friend, you’re goin’ to fight the fight you dreamed of for years through frustrated adolescent tears.”
Wintry bares his teeth, feels anger cocooned in pain squirrel its way up his throat. “Who?”
Cadaver leans in close, his blind eye like a distant view of an icy sun. His whisper is almost reverential in tone. “Daddy.”
I should sleep. I’m dog-tired, and stinking of grave dirt and old blood that’s going to stay now that the rain’s finally giving up the ghost. I don’t look back at the tavern, though the heat’s dropping. Eddie’s’ll finish it’s burning soon enough. Whatever Gracie’s putting back into that place isn’t anything the fire’s going to be able to touch. Not tonight, or more accurately—as a quick check of my watch tells me—this morning.
Not this fire, but maybe the next catastrophe that blows in when folks’ sins start outweighing virtue.
Out there, past the willows and pines and beech and scrub, the sky’s starting to lighten like someone’s holding a flashlight down under the bedclothes. It won’t take long to spread, but when it does and that horizon catches fire proper, it won’t make Milestone any prettier. It’ll only send long shadows racing toward the borders.
There’s dirt caked beneath my fingernails and my knuckles are throbbing something fierce. Should’ve asked Gracie if she could conjure me up a shovel, but it’s a little late. The whore’s not buried deep, but she’s planted all the same. If I put all my weight on the earth when I pack it down, it sinks until if I poked a finger into the grave I’d be able to feel her under there, so I go gentle, patting it with my hands until there’s only a slight soggy hump in the earth to say anyone’s here at all.
In a few hours there’ll be stragglers on the streets as folks make their way to the church on Hymn Street. They don’t want to go, not when they know God has fled the place, but they’ll be there same as they always are, afraid Reverend Hill will come find them if they don’t, as he’s done in the past. They don’t yet know he’s dead, of course, so maybe if there’s time and I’m still breathing I’ll cruise on by the place and let them know. It’ll be worth it just to see their relief that the old bastard is finally gone from their lives.
But what’s gotta be done’s gotta be done soon before there are too many people around to see it. Business of this kind always goes on when the town’s quiet, so people can wake up in the morning and tell themselves nothing strange has happened while they’ve slept and the world’s just as dark and shitty as it ever was without being helped along by sinners.
I finish patting down the grave, then retrieve the bottle of whiskey Gracie was good enough to send along with me without me asking for it, and I head for my truck.
I’m going to drive with the windows down so the cold keeps me awake, and alert, so I can try to pull some inspiration from my ass and figure out how I’m going to handle Kyle, who Gracie tells me is all set to sell me out.
“Can I get out?”
I know what Brody wants, and I guess I should give it to him. The man has a right to say goodbye to his woman. But I’m not going to. I doubt he gave the family and friends of the people he’s killed such consideration.
Rich coming from me, I know.
“Just sit back and keep quiet.”
“C’mon man…just a few minutes. I’m not going to run.”
“Maybe later. Right now I’ve got some business to attend to.”
I put the truck in gear and ignore his protests from the back seat. He’s putting on quite a show, thrashing, spitting, cursing, but for all of that I’ve got the strangest feeling he really doesn’t care all that much that his girl’s dead. Not sure why that suspicion takes hold of me, but there it is. Maybe I’m way off base; maybe not. For now there’s no way of knowing.
“I can’t believe you, you hick son of a bitch. This isn’t fair and you know it.”
“Yeah, I do, but your little crime spree took away any privileges you might think you deserve.”
“She told me it was a mistake coming this way, you know. Should have listened to her.”
“Yeah, you should have.”
The truck rolls down the hill, the tires splashing through potholes in the dirt road that have filled with rain. Eddie’s burns but the light is growing dim, the flames appear caged behind walls that grow more solid as their shadows band together. Brody keeps talking, but I’ve stopped listening. There’s too much else on my mind. Kyle, for one, and where I might find him.
I decide to head for Winter Street, and Iris Gale’s place of business.
Most folks think Doctor Hendricks came to Milestone to make his fortune, ignoring the fact that most of what he gets are corpses, or the living dancing at death’s door, like the dead girl the Sheriff and his boy brought earlier. There’s no money to be made here, but just because he insists on dressing real nice and being respectful toward anyone who crosses his path, he’s labeled a gold digger. It’s almost funny. There hasn’t been anything worth having in this town for as long as he’s lived here.
Good thing then that he came here to die.
As he sits watching the embers dying in the fireplace, a freshly brewed cup of tea warming his palms, he’s aware, as always, of the long shadow above the mantel. It’s his father’s Winchester rifle. Now there was a man who decided young that he was going to be rich and didn’t stop until he was, no matter how many people he had to step on to get there. There was your 48-carat gold-digger, a man who only ever smiled in the company of people he was going to ruin.
At home, Hendricks saw his father smile a lot.
A breeze against the window makes the curtains shift a little. There is no keeping it out. The house is old and draughty. Upstairs, Queenie’s asleep, piled beneath enough covers to ensure she stays warm. She’s not alone though. Never alone. She’s got the cancer to keep her company, infecting her dreams with its promises of death, eating away at her brain while she snatches as much peace from her final days as she’s permitted. For Hendricks, who despite his profession can do nothing but sedate her and feed her painkillers in near-lethal doses, it’s become a lottery. First, he wonders if this morning will be the one he goes up to the room to find her dead. Then he wonders, if she does wake up, will she attack him, or scream hysterically because she’s forgotten who he is? And lastly, he wonders if today’s the day he takes that shotgun down and puts them both out of their misery once and for all.
He intends for it to happen, accepts that it must. The gun’s loaded, ready to go. It’s just a matter of when, and how many bullets he’ll need. The thought does not disturb him. He has watched his beautiful wife lapse into psychotic rages and foul-mouthed fits for almost two years now. He has sat with her while she wept, and thanked the Almighty Jesus for her spells of lucidity and apparent health. For the past two weeks, there have been no episodes, no late night panic attacks or spells of spouting gibberish like a possessed thing. It’s almost as if she’s been his, and his alone. As if he hasn’t had to share her with a parasite.
The lull won’t last though. It never does, and he fears that this is merely the calm before the final devastating storm that takes her for good. If it does so before he takes that shotgun down, so be it, but he has no intention of surviving her.