Currency of Souls (10 page)

I wait for her to continue.

"He laughs. That cocksucker laughs in this hysterical girly laugh and tells me this is my place, nowhere else right for me, and then gets right back to laughin'."

"So he could have done something about it if he'd wanted to?"

"Don't know. Maybe he knew how to lift the curse, maybe not, but I didn't give him a second chance to tell me."

I drain my glass, and damn that whiskey's hitting the spot now. I 'm even wondering if Gracie will object to letting me take another bottle off her hands for old time's sake. But her eyes are all glassy. She's back in that room with her daddy for the moment so I guess it's best to hear out the end of her account.

"You kill him?"

"You bet I did," she says, the fire in her eyes hotter than the one at my back. "Fucker had it comin'. Should've done it years ago, first time he came into my room reekin' of bourbon with his pants around his ankles. Should have stashed a knife and cut off his prick, but I never dreamed he'd do it. Could've done it any night after that but I guess I was too afraid, too stuck on the Bible and what it tells you about vengeance and righteousness and all that bullshit. He unlearned me of those lessons, I can tell you. My only regret now is that I left him off easy. Smotherin' him with a pillow was a hell of a lot better than he deserved. I should have tied him down and..." She waves away the thought. "S'all the same now."

"And here you are. Still."

"Here I am."

"The hell happened in here tonight, Gracie?" I want more than anything for her to be able to give me a straight answer, tie up the whole goddamn mess in one quick sentence, because she died, and surely that gave her the opportunity to see who pulls the strings in this little nightmare.

But all she does is shrug. "Don't know.

"So what now?"

She looks around at the fire outside our little magic tunnel. "Guess I'm gonna have to start putting this place back together. Not gonna stand around in a pile of ashes for the rest of forever, and a girl's gotta make a livin'." This time she does smile, just a little.

"I'd be glad to help."

"Appreciate the offer, Tom, but it's not like I don't have the time."

"Not a matter of time, Gracie."

"I'll figure out what needs doin', and the way I see it, if I can blow cold bubbles that keep the fire from eatin' me up again, I can sure as shit make myself some walls and a roof."

"I guess that's true."

"Besides," she says, shoving aside her empty glass and taking a long swallow from the bottle. "You've got problems of your own."

I sigh. "Don't I know it."

"Not yet you don't."

Setting down my glass, I feel the return of the cold. You can dispute bad news from just about any source, but when it comes from the dead, who I figure are more likely to know the score than anyone living, then you best listen. So I do.

Gracie's dark eyes hold me in place. "Tonight," she says. "This tavern, this whole town, has been rotten for a long time, Tom, and so are most of the people in it. Some more than others."

None of this is news to me, but she's building up to something, and I find myself getting edgier with every word. She's trying to be gentle with me, and that's not in her nature, so it doesn't work, and that's the worst thing of all, because if she's trying to soften a blow that's coming, it's going to be a bad one.

"Tell me."

She puts the bottle in front of me, nods for me to take it. I do, and with it comes the feeling that it's a parting gift, that she suspects one of us isn't going to be here when the sun comes up. That lock of hair falls over her eye. I wait for her to tuck it back. She doesn't.

"It's your boy," she says. "You have yourself a Judas."

Part Two: Sunday Morn' in Milestone

Chapter Nine

Wintry's in agony and it's not the kind of pain he's accustomed to carrying with him. This isn't the same as walking around with guilt pinned to your chest like Sheriff Tom's badge, or keeping it in your eyes like Gracie, or in your heart like Flo, or like Cobb trying to shed it with his clothes as if sins are snake skins. It's not the same as waking up every morning to find the faces of a few murdered men glaring at you in the mirror. This is a different kind of pain altogether. Oh yes. This is like being dragged for ten miles naked across a gravel highway until you tumble into a mound of salt and fire ants after being skinned alive and havin' boilin' water poured over you.

He sits atop a rock on the bank of the river, eyes closed, rocking like a child and whispering for forgiveness that isn't likely to come any time soon. Most of his body's burned, and burned bad, but despite the insistent demand inside him for self-pity, he figures maybe he deserves the scalding pain. Figures he should probably be dead so that those waiting for his end would finally get what they've been praying for. He knows for a fact that there's a widow down in Atlanta who'd be overjoyed and more than a little relieved to hear the fire took him, or that he died right here crying like a baby on the bank of a foul-smelling river. Of course, Wintry doesn't smell anything but the aroma of fresh-cooked flesh.

The problem is, that poor widow down in Georgia hasn't gotten her wish, at least, not yet. Seems her prayers, just like Wintry's, aren't going to be answered for a while. But sitting here with the rain falling down around him and the black waters of the gurgling river rising up, he wishes to God they had been, that he'd joined Flo wherever she got off to when the fire was done with her and the child.

The child.

Instinct makes him want to rub his wounds, to soothe them, but he can't. Even the slightest touch makes the raw oozing flesh on his body sing, so he keeps his hands pressed to the sodden grass, wishing the cold would help, but he's beyond believing it will. He's already washed himself in the river once, and for one brief moment, when the shock of the icy water hit him, there was relief, but then the fire returned with renewed force, eating him up from the inside out. So here he sits, and suffers, still sending up prayers to the Almighty to make the agony stop, if just for a little while.

And when, after some immeasurable length of time, with the rain coming down even heavier than before, hurting rather than helping every part of him it hits, he almost doesn't feel someone touching his shoulder. With eyes filled with rain because the flames have burned his tears away, he looks first at the hand, silently hoping it's the hand of a savior, or his executioner, both of which have come to mean the same thing in this night world of unprecedented suffering, then up into the face of the woman standing over him.

A smile splits his charred face.

"You alive?" says the woman. As brief as the first dip in that freezing river, Wintry feels love wash over him, easing his pain. He thinks of the child, he thinks of getting away, of second chances and God's grace. He doesn't consider the memory of that raging blue fire spreading from the hole in Flo's belly, burning her up as if she was made of straw, or the horrible choking sound she made when finally she dropped to the floor and lay still. He doesn't consider any of this and it doesn't matter a lick. She's here; she's alive, and he's not alone.

But then the raging red waves return and he gasps, not at the sight of his beloved Flo changing into a withered old man with a rusted box in his throat, but at the severity of the agony that consumes him.

The hand on his shoulder now is a gnarled one, and the grip is like a glove of fire, prompting Wintry to speak for the first time in years. "Who are you?" he croaks and the words are like glass scratching free of a scorched throat. He is not looking for a name, for it is one he knows. He's looking for the truth.

"Opportunity," Cadaver answers. "And punishment."

Wintry thinks of drowning, or bashing his own head in with one of those slimy black rocks at his feet. He should be dead, he knows that, and he knows too that it isn't going to take much to end it properly, especially now there's someone here to make sure he doesn't back out or come crawling back for the second time, even if it's not anyone he considers a friend. He reckons he's died with the only people he'd consider close once already tonight and shouldn't be too fussy about not being able to do it again. He figures suffering of this kind is made to have an end, and surely Cadaver won't stand in his way.

His head feels like it weighs a ton as he raises it to look at the old man, who smiles at him. "You might not think it, Wintry, but you've been through worse."

"You do this?" Wintry asks. "You bring me back?"

"No. You brought yourself back. Crawled out in a hurry once you saw there was nothin' could be done for your woman, or anyone else in there for that matter. Survival instinct got you out. Just like it got you out of prison. Just like it got you through life so far."

Wintry understands what he's being told, but he disagrees. He's never suffered like this before, and suffering is no stranger to him.

"You're a fighter," Cadaver says. "Always have been, my friend."

Wintry swallows a burning breath, and though his new kind of pain has inspired him to use his voice for the first time in fourteen years, it won't come.

There is the creak and pop of old bones and Cadaver is suddenly hunkered down next to him, his eyes pockets of shadow in a pillowcase face, the smile still twisting lips that look sewn from dirty thread. "I can help you," he whispers. "I can end this for you. Give you what you want. It's why I'm here."

Wintry shakes his head. Cadaver is the devil. He knows that now, and though what education he has comes from the street, the dingy alleys and shaded corners back in Atlanta, his fists the pen, hard faces his pages, he's smart enough to know the devil never offers anything without taking something in return.

"Let me be."

Cadaver sighs. It's the sound of a cold breeze on a summer's day. "You don't want me to do that."

"You...don't know what I want, and can't tell me neither. Go. Let me alone."

"I can end your sufferin'. All of it. I can free you from the ghosts. I can give you the chance to clear your soul. I can help you save yourself."

Wintry tries to smile but it's as if fishing hooks are holding the skin of his face together. His flesh sings with agony. He shudders, restrains a gasp. At length, he sags, adopting the repose of death, though that mercy stays maddeningly out of his reach. "What you want from me?" he asks, licking his lips with a sandpaper tongue. "What will you take?"

Cadaver shrugs. "Nothin'."

"You lyin'."

"That's one thing I never do. There's never any call for it."

"So you goan...set me free just cause you a nice...guy, huh?"

"No. You're goin' to free yourself. All I'm goin' to do is tell you how."

Before Wintry has a chance to say more, Cadaver stands and peers off toward the amber glow of the fire on the hill. Eddie's is still burning, the air still reeks of smoke and burned flesh, though how much of that is from himself, Wintry can't tell.

"You taught kids how to fight, Wintry. You trained them to defend themselves and inadvertently made them murderers. You beat a man to death with your bare hands, usin' what your no-good father made you learn from him. He compensated for his abuse of you by teachin' you how to use violence to get what you want. He hoped you'd use it on him someday if he pushed you hard enough. Hoped more than anythin' that you'd deal him a fatal blow and set him free of his misery. But you never did. You let him die by his own clock because it was the kind of fight you were guaranteed to win. Tonight, if you want an escape from your own skin, you're goin' to have to fight one last time, use those hams of yours and beat your demons into submission."

"Can't," is all Wintry can say.

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.