Old Ghosts, page 7
Delilah’s voice was a stream of consolations in the darkness, assuring Chance that everything was okay, that he’d be fine. I wondered if he’d bleed out. I wondered if I cared. One arm at a time, I pulled off my shirt and tossed it back to use as a tourniquet. I saw only teeth and the reflection on her eyes.
I blew through a red light without thinking and it wasn’t until I heard squealing brakes and the whine of a horn that realization came crashing down on the point of my skull: I could have died. I could have widowed my wife, abandoned my child. Trying to protect my new family by appeasing my old family, I could have ruined not only my life but the lives of those whom I loved most. Because I couldn’t hold the present tight enough, I almost stomped out the future.
Somehow, we’d gotten back to the job site. Moths to the flame. I shut off the engine. The house was empty, full of ghosts. Delilah whimpered in the back, helping Chance down to the ground and around the side. His skin was the color of old milk. Hers was malaria.
I dropped the keys on the floor of the van and hung his other arm over my shoulder. An involuntary glance above us, half-expecting to see Dwaine watching our sad procession. These two, though, they were no longer family. They were nothing more than harbingers of death. They were people who invited you into their home and hugged you to get in position to slide their knife between your ribs cleanly, in order to keep blood from falling to their carpet.
Chance slumped against the canary dining room wall, the bottom of his leg resembling some morbid tropical flower. The tourniquet had staunched the bleeding, but barring any medical attention, he would die before the sun set. Part of me wanted to sit next to him, to smooth his hair and laugh about pushing Del into the Commons Pond, to make peace with my feelings toward him. The other part begged to sink the claw end of a hammer into his temple.
Del skittered around like the room like a hummingbird on meth. She’d already ransacked the upstairs, looking for something to help her brother. Her face hung almost as pale as his, though hers was horror and panic where his was a body running dry. I crouched before Chance, holding his hand, watching his breathing run shallow, eyes flittering like they held a thousand butterflies behind them.
“Open your eyes,” I whispered. “Open your eyes and release them.”
Static-white dots clouded my vision when she smacked the back of my head.
“Fucking help me find something. Jesus, you’re worthless.”
A thin blue slit appeared between Chance’s eyelids. His lips quivered. I leaned towards him. “Don’t worry. She can be such a cunt, sometimes.”
And before I could bite it back, before I could gnaw on my hand or swallow it to the pit of my stomach, a thunderclap cry escaped my mouth. Tears coated my face. I began to dry-heave, I cried so hard.
Delilah’s boots were a terrified heartbeat. Her voice, a stiletto through my eardrum. “Is he dead? Is he dead?”
“No, he’s not dead, you fucking cow!”
She tumbled to the floor, holding both of us between trembling arms. Chance lolled his head forward, touching his forehead with ours. I tried to control my breathing, so an errant sob wouldn’t give anyone a concussion.
I squeezed them until I thought my head would explode, then made my decision. Made my peace. I whispered to Delilah, “Check in the basement.”
“What?” Her voice ragged with tears.
“I cut my hand the other day. There are supplies in the basement.”
She jumped up as if electrified and hurried downstairs.
I kissed Chance’s forehead, said, “I’m sorry, brother, but nothing will threaten my family. Not even you,” then followed Delilah.
She searched even more frantically than upstairs, throwing tools as if she was in a cartoon. A hacksaw landed by my feet, and if I believed in Providence, I’d say it was one sick fuck. To think of using a saw made me ill. The nail gun she loved so much was on the other side of the room; the revolver tucked into her waistband shimmered like oil.
She was rifling through the toolbox, scattering nails and screws, and didn’t hear me pick up the wrecking bar. I opened my mouth to make some apology, a half-start eulogy, something to justify my actions but when she turned around, only a single synapse fired, and it resonated throughout my skull.
Swing.
The first time it sounded like hitting a melon or biting into an apple yet was markedly different from ribs and fingers. She fell to the floor, arms and legs akimbo. She almost rolled over, but I closed my eyes because I couldn’t handle seeing her watch me again, seeing that look of recognition, and just swung and swung and heard metal strike concrete and swung and swung and swung until my arms were tired and face was sticky.
I turned in the direction I thought was the steps and cracked open my eyes, relieved that I was correct. I peeked downward. Blood covered my shins, legs, hands, boots. I didn’t look behind.
Upstairs, Chance’s breathing had become weaker yet. Flecks of spittle at the corner of his mouth. I kneeled again, body operating on autopilot, like I was one of the videogames we’d played for so long and picked him up as if he was several bags of cement. Walking to the basement took more than five minutes, each step an exercise in fine muscle mechanics. As we got to the bottom, I closed my eyes again, so I wouldn’t see what was left of Del. His horrified gasps said it wasn’t anything good.
But I underestimated the walk.
I thought the penultimate step was actually the last, and as my foot tried to plant on damp concrete, Chance and I tumbled forward. His grunt was little more than an exhalation as we crashed to the ground. My eyes opened by reflex. Del’s head looked like a watermelon after a shotgun blast, her body blackened by bruising and blood.
My body moved, though I wasn’t sure who controlled it. It walked across the basement, avoiding the slick of blood next to what had been Del’s bright shining face. It picked up the nail gun, then crossed the room again, kneeling by Chance. The silence in the room was crushing. I kissed his forehead, said, I loved you, brother, I loved you both. But I love them more, then pressed the tip against his temple and pulled the trigger three times. His eyes twitched, breath skipped like a scratched record, then stopped. My body cupped his, then grabbed Delilah’s heel and pulled her in.
I remembered the feeling of their skin on my face. I remembered brushing their hair back behind their ears. I remembered telling Del that I found out who the girl in that movie was, the shimmering one who she looked like. I remembered hearing what might’ve been insects gnashing inside my skull or shuffling footfalls on the floor above us. I remembered squeezing their fingers between mine, and how we were connected, finally, for the last time, like a circle, like an ouroboros. And, surrounded by my old family that had to die so my new family could live, drowning in the rising tide of blackened unconsciousness, I remember hearing Dwaine’s disembodied voice.
“Oh, Jesus. Jesus fuck, Beto.”
Chapter 9
A grunt whispered cursing. Stomping on wooden stairs that echoed off damp concrete walls. I lay on the couch, adjacent to canary walls, trying to grab a quick nap before I had to go back to work. Luz came through the door, her pregnant belly visible before the rest of her as she crossed from the basement to the living room, two cans of beans and corn in hand. She hadn’t really shown for the first four months, then ballooned the last two. We speculated how far a body could actually expand before exploding. I refrained from making any jokes about Alien.
“That basement is a death-trap,” she said, rubbing the back of her head.
I pressed my palms against my eyes, saw Chance’s crumpled body, Delilah’s ruined head in the carnival of dots that formed. “Why’s that?”
“Every time I go down there I hit my head on the ceiling. It’s always damp. And it gives me the creeps.”
I sat up, looked at her. “It’s the basement of a rowhouse that was built in 1920-something. People were shorter back then. And this whole neighborhood is haunted anyway.” I pushed myself up and followed her into the stainless-and-rosewood kitchen, wrapped my arms around her belly, holding our child. “Are you asking me to fuck up Slimer? Because I will. I’ll protect you.”
She swatted me with a towel, told me that she put my lunch in the fridge.
I couldn’t argue with her. Since we moved in four months ago, I’d felt the hint of a presence in here. Especially in the basement, especially around noon. I hoped that I hadn’t cursed our house to eternal haunting. And I didn’t mean to make the space feel so claustrophobic, but Dwaine and I had to pour seven inches of the extra concrete in order to bury the bodies, to make sure they’d stay buried this time. For once, I’d been glad his Spanish sucked.
I gathered my stuff and kissed Luz’s cheek, whispered to her belly for a minute, then left for work.
The seasons felt schizophrenic. There was an iced-over winter, with winds that could shear flesh from bone, which was immediately replaced by a sweltering spring that left the streets warped with heat vapors. I drank a whole water bottle walking to the job site. At least the work was inside.
In a typically Chance move, he’d coerced some lawyer to have the house put in my name, understandably worried that his might flag unwanted attention or that something untoward might happen, like someone discovering a basement full of trafficked humans. The fucker even paid for the place up front. I had to hire my own lawyer to have it sorted out, to make sure that Luz and I owned it outright and had been working off our debt for the last three months, turning the lawyer’s basement into a man cave. Fate had a fucked-up sense of humor. The job would’ve been easier with some of my old help, but I thought it better to keep this private. It also allowed me to hide from the shadow of Chance that followed me all over the city.
After I packed up my tools for the day, I headed down to Santo Sangre to cool off. It was the same as ever, as if you could blink and time-travel to any point within fifteen years without feeling disoriented. I stood by the door, then saw Dwaine at the far end of the bar, hunched over his drink like it was a sacred oasis. I took my drink and slid into the stool beside him. He didn’t look up at me.
“Hey.”
He grunted.
“How’s the crew doing?”
He grunted again.
“You guys getting a lot of work?”
He took a swig from his glass. I took one from mine and swished it around my mouth, feeling the bubbles pop on my tongue.
“You going to use actual words or just communicate like a gorilla?”
Slowly, he turned to look at me. His skin hung slack from his skull. He looked tired, like a man ready to surrender.
“I told you I want nothing to do with you, Beto,” and his head dipped to the bar again.
“Yeah, I know that, but I thought we were square.”
“Ain’t nothing square.”
“I mean—”
“I mean, ain’t nothing ever happened, so nothing to square,” he said. Then, for emphasis, “So nothing keeping us talking.”
“Dwaine.” I trailed off, not having the slightest idea of what to say. How to say anything.
He dumped the rest of his beer down his throat, wiped his mouth with a shirt sleeve.
“I’ve done some things in my day, but that shit?” He just shook his head.
“I thought nothing happened.”
He jabbed his finger in my chest. “You got some goddamned voodoo on your back, boy. I can feel the room shiver when you come near. So please, Beto, I’m asking you again.”
I cleared my throat. “If you think what didn’t happen actually happened, and you think I did it,” I said, “then I’d suggest you watch the way you talk to me.”
Dwaine let that settle a moment before dropping a crumpled bill and some coins on the counter. “Just—Just stay away.” He shuffled away from me, ignoring the senoras’ catcalls. I waved at Consuela for another drink.
Halfway through my third, the stool next to me scraped along the floor. I didn’t bother to look up. Someone asked for tequila and a beer. His voice was heavy, sounded like gravel in a washing machine.
“Can always tell how a neighborhood is by bars.”
“Yeah.”
“Is best way to see people. They are at less guarded.”
“Totally.” I tilted my glass to catch a glimpse of him the reflection, but saw only distorted shapes.
“I buy you drink?”
I looked up, a cold fist kneading my stomach. The man was a ghost, no one I recognized, but carried the air of someone who would recite TS Eliot before shooting you in the kneecap. His wrinkles were deep enough to hide a coin.
“You are Beto, yes?”
With a quick glance, I checked behind him for anyone else I didn’t recognize. The bar was as it ever was.
“I’m—” the name Chance wavered on the edge of my tongue, ready to roll out but I bit it back.
“Yes,” he said before I could respond. “Yes, I know you name. You friend of Mr. Chance and his wife.” He pushed a shot of tequila to me. It wasn’t until he motioned to drink with him that I realized he had only one hand and a frozen blade of terror struck my chest.
“I thought you were supposed to drink vodka.” I gave a weak laugh. I knew this man.
He shrugged, said, “When in Rome. Or now, Guadalajara.”
The drink was sweet and singed my throat going down, but still my icicle body felt ready to shatter. In the gentle afterburn of liquor, I smelled the salve that Luz rubbed on my scar. The desire to be home with my family was so strong I could taste it. I began to stand but he cupped my forearm with his claw and pressed it to the bar top. He gave a grandfather’s smile, shook his head.
“Mr. Chance left some arrangement unfinish.”
Luz.
“Please, Mr. Beto,” the man said to me. “We must talk.”
Luz Luz Luz Luz.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thank you to Eric, Lance, and Stacia for giving this book new life.
Thank you to Pablo, Brian, and Boden for the early support.
Thank you to Amanda, Donovan, and Ruby for everything else.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Nik Korpon is the author of The Rebellion’s Last Traitor, Queen of the Struggle, and The Soul Standard, among others. He lives in Baltimore.
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BOOKS BY NIK KORPON
Stay God, Sweet Angel
By the Nails of the Warpriest
Old Ghosts
The Memory Thief Trilogy
The Rebellion’s Last Traitor
Queen of the Struggle
Wear Your Heart Like a Scar (*)
The Soul Standard
(*) Coming Soon
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Here is a preview from All the Way Down, a thriller by Eric Beetner.
Click here for a complete catalog of titles available from Down & Out Books and its divisions and imprints.
CHAPTER 1
As Dale rode up in the elevator he thought, This is it, they know everything. I’m fired and then off to jail.
He wiped damp palms down the front of his pants as the elevator doors dinged and opened. The pebbled glass door faced him, stenciled writing in an arch announcing this was the office of the chief of police. Dale went inside and spoke to the secretary.
“Dale Burnett to see the chief.”
She gave him an expressionless look. “Yes, he’s expecting you, Detective. Have a seat.”
Dale moved to the row of four chrome and leather chairs, no magazines on the shin-busting low coffee table. Behind him the secretary pressed a button on the intercom. “Detective Burnett to see you.”
Whatever answer she got Dale couldn’t hear through the headset she wore, but he wasn’t invited immediately in. He sat.
Fifteen years on the force. Seven since he left the beat to become a detective. All about to be thrown out the window because he’d been so goddamn stupid. A dirty cop. How the hell did that happen?
He’d seen it over the years. You can’t be on the force and not catch a glimpse in the periphery, hiding in the shadows, creeping up the back stairs. But he’d resisted. At least he’d convinced himself he had. In truth, no one had made him an offer. And when they did…
Dale was still small time, as far as the greased palm set goes. But his stock had risen in the past year when two other cops on the same payroll to the same kingpin had died, and died badly. Two bullets in the head for one of them, the other went missing for eight weeks until his body was found in the trunks of three different cars. Dale had gotten a promotion from the kingpin to the number one seat and it didn’t sit well on him. He felt the pressure, saw how it ended for most dirty cops. He wanted out. On the days an envelope of cash didn’t settle in his hand, anyway. But easier said than done. And with money flowing in, breaking free always got pushed off until next month.
And now this.
He looked up and caught the secretary watching him with upturned eyes, her neck tilted down to her computer screen pretending to type. Dale felt the bottom drop out. His stomach roiled. The descent started before he was ready. Shit. No time to cover up, obscure his tracks. Probably too many to do much about anyway.
Dale clutched his gut.
“Excuse me.” He stood and sure as shit, whacked his leg on the table as he made for the door and the long sprint down the hall to the bathroom. Chief Schuster’s private commode wouldn’t do for this mess.
