Brambleman (69 page)

“I just want you to know—”

“I am sincerely tired of you wanting me to
know things. Goodbye, Mr. Sherman.”

“I want to pay for your daughter’s
funeral.”

“No thank you. Your money’s cursed.”

“Just promise me you’ll consider it, and I’ll
go.”

“All right, fine. I’ll think about it!” she
snapped. “Now, good night, Mr. Sherman! Good night!” She stepped
inside the house and slammed the door.

Charlie walked to the car, thinking that
God’s bitter curse, which he knew by heart, was coming true: …
upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them
that hate me
.

How much longer would it go on? Charlie
counted out on his fingers. Minerva, Shaundra, and D. And the one
to come. Closer to home, Evangeline, Susan, Beck and Ben … and
their children, too.

It was true: The deal he’d made had been a
trick. The house he’d been hired to tear down was his own. And it
was falling in on him, sure enough. He tried to shut that thought
out of his mind, but it kept knocking. And maybe the reality was
even more terrible, given the way he felt about God. Perhaps he’d
started his own curse, and the only hope for Ben was to be
Scudder’s son, after all.

He had no doubt to hide behind anymore. The
devil, once just a convenient straw man, was now his only hope.
After all, if he was indeed working for God, he could do no worse
by switching sides. If he wasn’t in hell at this moment—cut off
from the wife he’d once loved and stripped of his children,
completely alone and publicly reviled, repellent to women, his
vision turned to blindness, his only gift the Reaper’s touch—he had
but to take one tiny step in any direction, and to hell he’d surely
go. And it was a step he’d have to take, for there was no other
place left for him.

As he pulled away from Minerva’s house, the
moon vanished behind a thick patch of swift-moving clouds, and a
moment later, rain splattered the windshield. With the old car’s
wipers squeaking and thumping, Charlie turned onto Memorial Drive.
He tried to think of something pleasant and calming, but all such
thoughts had fled. Instead, he saw Shaundra’s puffy face in the
morgue’s pale light and smelled her death, just as he’d heard her
die. For he knew now that the terrible screams he’d heard Saturday
night could have been nothing else.

He hated Trouble, the deadbeat deceiver, and
his boss, that vengeful, unlovable God that tricked desperate fools
for fun and prophecy. If he could just do something to end this
bloodbath he’d initiated before Beck and Ben were ground up into a
pulp along with everyone and everything else he’d touched … but
how? He had no answers. He was helpless. Hopeless. Worthless,
clueless, useless.

As he drove past Redeemer’s church, a
lightning bolt cracked the eastern sky, illuminating a skulking
figure bending over a trash barrel near the soup kitchen. Just who
Charlie needed to see. Of course. He’d first found Trouble lying by
a Dumpster where he’d been scavenging like a carrion feeder. Which
should have been the tip-off.

Charlie slammed on the brakes and jerked the
steering wheel to the right, skidding into the church’s far
entrance, then drove across the gravel lot toward the Hunger
Palace, figuring he was back to square one, with nothing left to
lose. Time to get a new deal. Or die trying.

The place seemed abandoned. Another window
had been boarded up, and the church was dark inside. The lot had
sprouted patches of weeds and unruly tufts of grass. Charlie left
the headlights on and scrambled out of the Volvo into needles of
rain. “I need to talk to you!” he shouted. “You got some explaining
to do!”

As Charlie strode purposefully toward a
confrontation, the figure turned and shielded his eyes. Another
trick: Charlie was certain he’d seen Trouble, but this guy looked
like Alice Cooper, with dark eyes and stringy hair. He gave Charlie
a cruel, calculating look and stuck two fingers in his mouth,
letting loose a piercing whistle.

Charlie stepped back. “My bad. I thought you
were—”

His apology was short-circuited by a blow to
the back of his head. Charlie staggered and turned to see a wiry
man silhouetted in the headlights’ glare, wielding a two-by-four
embedded with nails.

The assailant, missing two front teeth,
lisped, “You juth been thpiked, bith.”

Charlie lunged and punched him in the face. A
second later, the whistler jumped on Charlie’s back and started
choking him. Charlie cried out a garbled “Help!” and stumbled
backward, crashing into the Hunger Palace’s cement wall. He
repeatedly pounded the guy against it. With a groan, his attacker
fell off.

Two black men, also small and thin as
whippets, rushed to join the fray. One held a length of chain, the
other a brick. Charlie stepped forward. The four men closed in
around him. “Let me go,” Charlie said. “I’ll give you my
money.”

“We’ll get to that,” the whistler grunted,
grimacing and holding his side.

“We don’t need you to give it,” said the
third. “We’ll take it when we’re through.”

Charlie made a break for the car, laying a
shoulder into the brick-wielding man, who struck him on the head.
Charlie also took a shin-cracking blow from the chain just as the
stringy-haired man again tackled him from behind. Charlie yelled as
he stumbled. Another man piled on and the three of them crumpled
into a pile a dozen feet from the Volvo.

Charlie managed to roll over and kick one
attacker, who smashed the brick in his face, cracking his nose and
breaking his glasses. He screamed when a nail on the spiked board
punctured his right knee. As he struggled to his feet, the chain
lashed the side on his head. Then somebody kicked him in the
crotch, causing him to double over. His attackers took a moment to
enjoy his discomfort. This gave him a chance to recover slightly.
This time, Charlie saw the chain coming—though it was a blur—and
grabbed it, jerking his attacker off balance. After he took a hard
blow to the back of his head, Charlie no longer had a clear idea of
what was happening.

He went down and the hits kept coming. A
terrific blow set his left eye on fire with blinding pain. He put
his hands over his face to shield it. Then came a kick in the ribs.
Another and another and another and another. There was blood in his
mouth. He couldn’t see. Above him, they laughed and admired their
work, but they weren’t through yet.

“Got a message from your friend,” said the
stringy-haired scavenger. “He says, and I quote, ‘Did you think I
would let you live after you broke the deal? Forgiveness ain’t my
style.’”

“I don’t even know what the deal is,” Charlie
whimpered.

“Keeping it all for yourself, you greedy-ass
fool.”

“Finish the motherfucker off!”

Blows rained down and Charlie gave up,
thinking the end would be a blessing. He mumbled what Beck said
when the Halloween candy bag was empty: “All gone.”

Then he heard a child’s voice from the
deepest of distances. “Charlie, are you hurt again?”

There was a shuffling of feet around his
head. Some great commotion and yelling. “Get her! She’s the one!”
Footsteps crunched on gravel.

Bang
! A gunshot rang out, followed by
a banshee scream. Then a woman’s voice, also incredibly far off:
“Get away from him.” A board clattered to the ground.

“Bitch, we’ll kill your infected ass if you
don’t give us the little one.”

Bang
! Someone fell beside Charlie and
growled, “What the fuck you waitin’ for? Get ’em!”

Bang
!

“Get up, Charlie! Get up! Get up!”

Apparently, someone wanted him to get up.
Charlie struggled to his feet. He heard a yelp of pain and squinted
his right eye to see one of the thugs disappear behind the Hunger
Palace. The others had retreated into the shadows, except for the
one writhing on the ground, clutching his bleeding leg. As his
attacker tried to rise, Charlie recovered his senses enough to grab
the two-by-four. He clocked the guy with a clumsy swing. The man
crumpled to the ground, hissing softly, like he was deflating.
Charlie gave him a kick in the ribs, bringing a cry of pain, then
followed with a kick to the head. The man fell silent. “I oughtta
kill you,” Charlie said, contenting himself with spitting blood on
his assailant.

Charlie wiped his face with his forearm and
turned toward the church. With his wits slowed and his vision
blurred in one eye and gone in the other, it took him a moment to
realize that Tawny was standing in front of him holding a pistol,
braced against the corner of the building. Romy stood beside her.
He shook his head to clear it, but whatever was stuck in there was
stuck in there good. He staggered toward the two of them.

“My God, they fucked you up bad. We need to
get out of here.” She kept the gun pointed at the man lying on the
ground. When Charlie didn’t answer, she yelled, “Charlie. Charlie!
We gotta get out of here! Can you drive?”

She was talking to him. He should say
something. “I can try,” he said, but it sounded like someone else
talking.

Tawny turned her head and cried out, “Wyatt!
Run to the car!”

Charlie thought he saw a pair of fiery eyes
glinting at him from behind a junked washing machine by the
abandoned laundromat next door. Then he heard a thump as a piece of
brick hit the church wall near his head. The boy scampered out,
holding a plastic bag. Tawny pushed both children toward the car
and grabbed her backpack. “Hurry! Just keep moving!” She shoved her
children into the back seat, climbed in after them, and slammed the
door. “Go! Go!”

The man Tawny had shot in the leg was up,
lurching toward the car. He stooped to pick up the chain, then
continued his advance. Charlie started the engine and hit the gas,
striking the man with the front bumper, knocking him away as the
chain rained on the car’s hood. Charlie slammed on the brakes and
shifted into reverse, turning the Volvo around to face the street.
A white man appeared from the shadows and ran toward the passenger
side of the car, pointing a pistol. “Get down!” Tawny shouted.

A shot rang out as the Volvo’s wheels went
over the curb. The car careened into the street with a
thump
that jolted everyone inside. Car brakes squealed behind them and a
horn honked. More shots were fired as Charlie raced away. Wyatt
started crying loudly. Romy was eerily quiet.

“We’re out of there!” Tawny told her kids.
“We’re never going back, I promise!”

A second later, Tawny stuck her head between
the front seats, hyperventilating as she spoke. “The kids are OK, I
think. Oh, God, Charlie. Those men took over the soup kitchen last
week. I heard a woman screaming Saturday night, and then yesterday
the police pulled a body out of the Dumpster. I’m sure it was her.
It was horrible. That could have been me and the kids. They kept
trying to get in. It was weird. They could have broken out a
window, but they kept trying to unlock the door.” She took a few
breaths and swallowed. “I’ve been thinking of you. I prayed you’d
come back for us. Sure took you long enough. I heard a brawl and
before I knew it, Romy had slipped outside even though she knows
not to. I grabbed the gun and chased after her, and I saw your car.
Had to help you. You’re a mess. Your eye looks real bad. You need a
doctor.”

“I’ll be all right,” Charlie mumbled, even
though he had no idea what he was talking about. He was more than
half-blind and could barely hold the road.

“Here. Keep this up there, away from the
kids.” She handed him the nickel-plated revolver, which was warm
and smelled of shooting. He laid it on the passenger seat, then
covered it with a plastic bag. She leaned back and buckled in the
kids as best she could. “We need a place to stay.”

“You can stay at my place,” Charlie said, his
voice heavy and dull.

“We’ve got a place to sleep,” she said softly
to her son. “So quit crying.”

“I’ve got to move out in a couple of days,
though.”

“You can afford a new place, right?”

“Yeah.”

“We need to call 911. Got a cellphone?”

Charlie reached into his pocket, then saw a
convenience store ahead and pulled his hand out empty.
No
cops
. “Use the pay phone. Don’t mention my name. I’m already
mixed up in one shooting,” he said. “Maybe more.” He pulled into
the store’s parking lot, which was bathed in fluorescent light, and
parked near the pay phone, located near the end of the
building.

“I’ll tell them I know where the men are who
killed that woman Saturday night,” Tawny said.

Charlie dropped his forehead on the steering
wheel. “Do that.”

Tawny stepped out of the car. Charlie watched
her walk away in her Daisy Dukes, pink tank top, and high-heeled
sandals. He placed the gun in his lap and pulled the mirror down to
check his face. It was a mess. An alien configuration of blood and
pulp. His new rimless glasses were busted and had only stayed on
because they’d been mashed into his face—now more like a monocle
with antennae than specs.

And the pain was almost unbearable. To take
his mind off it, he pivoted the mirror to check on the kids. Their
watchful gazes met his. “You’re hurt bad,” Romy said.

“It’s not as bad as it looks.”

“It looks bad.”

“Do you have any food?” Wyatt asked. “Do you
have a TV?”

“Yes and yes.” As he spoke, Charlie became
aware of pain in new places.

Tawny returned. “We should get some food,”
she said. “They haven’t eaten all day. I was afraid to go out with
those men there.”

“I’ll feed them at my place,” Charlie said.
“Let’s go.”

He pulled out of the lot onto Memorial,
barely avoiding getting T-boned by a pickup truck. Tawny muttered,
“Don’t kill us now, man.”