Currency of Souls (6 page)

Without warning, Kyle does as he is asked. The Reverend stands where he is for a moment, then topples. The echo of the gunshot rivals the rage of the storm and the sound of blood dripping could be the rain tapping on the window. What used to be Reverend Hill's head is now spread across the wall next to where Flo is standing, spattered in his blood. She doesn't seem at all put out, merely inconvenienced. Her eyes, white periods in a gore-smeared face, widen. "There's no way it can be that easy."

"Doesn't matter," I tell her. "He's down, and that's the end of it."

And yet no one moves. Instead we watch Hill's corpse warily, waiting for some sign of the power that has kept us bound for years. We half-expect the brains splashed across the wall to fly back into the man's ruined skull, the blood to return to the cavity Kyle's bullet burst open, the wound to heal. We wait for the Reverend to rise, murderous rage contorting his sallow face as he chooses which of us to destroy first. We wait. We watch.

But what happens is infinitely more surprising.

Nothing.

The all-powerful Reverend just lies there, minus most of his head, and deader than dog shit.

"I've never in all my years seen so much blood," Gracie says, and it sounds like a comment that should be followed by tears. But this is Gracie, and I'm willing to put money down that she's already stressing over the cleanup. "Guess he was just a man after all."

"I want to go home," the girl on the bar says, and that pulls us from our trance-like state of expectancy.

"We'll get you there, honey." Flo's hands tremble as she sleeves some of the priest's blood from her face.

"It's gonna be all right babe," Brody soothes, though he's in too much pain to sound sincere. "We'll be out of here soon, then it'll just be you, me and Dino."

Kyle is still holding the gun out, still pressing it against the ghost of Hill's temple, and I put a hand on his forearm, urge him to lower it before it goes off and adds someone else to the rapidly rising number of dead. For a moment he resists, then the tension ebbs away.

"It's okay son."

"Kyle," he mutters.

"What?"

"You don't get to call me 'son'."

"Okay."

Wintry is still tending to Cobb. The old man has downed half a bottle of whiskey. I'm sure wherever his mind is, it doesn't know what just happened, and maybe that's for the best. Wintry locks gazes with me and in that brief glance, we're like two old farts trading war stories. What's happened here tonight won't ever be forgotten, no more than will the things that led us here, the errors in judgment, the wrong turns, the simple little mistakes that all add up to an express elevator ride right into a nightmare no amount of waking up can cure. But this is a lull, and a welcome one, and I figure everyone (except maybe Brody and the girl) is going to savor it before the next unwelcome development. For however briefly, this is Eddie's bar, the only functioning water hole in a near-dead town, and right now, for the first time ever, these people truly are my friends.

Wintry goes back to silently consoling the inconsolable Cobb. Gracie heads into the ladies room and emerges with a mop and bucket that are filthier than the floor but don't, to my knowledge, have human remains on them. Flo tries to get the girl to stand up. It isn't going to happen.

"We need to take him too," I tell Kyle with a nod in Brody's direction.

"No."

"Why?"

"Yeah," Brody adds. "Why? If it's because you shot a perfectly nice guy like me, and don't know how to apologize...hell...that's all water under the bridge." He grins and there is blood on his teeth. "I don't hold grudges."

"He's a murderer," Kyle says.

I lean in close. "For fuck sake, Kyle.
Everyone
here is a murderer."

"Not like him we're not. He enjoyed it. Did it on purpose."

His logic makes my head swim, and the only thing I'm really sure of is that I don't agree with it. "Listen, you have to—"

"Leave him," Cobb says dreamily, as if our banter has woken him from a doze.

Everyone looks in his direction. He, however, does not look at us.

"Cobb..."

"Leave him. I'll take care of him."

I can't be blamed for taking that like it sounds. Sure, Cobb can heal folks, but considering we're talking about the man who just killed his wife, I don't imagine healing has anything to do with it.

"Take care of him how?"

"Fix him up, Sheriff. What else?" His eyes are swollen from crying, his face almost as pale as Brody's.

"Any number of things," I reply. "He can die on his own if that's what you're figuring to help him with."

"I said I'll fix him up. Weren't like he killed Ellie on purpose."

"You don't know that."

"No. I don't." He takes another slug of whiskey. "But why are we here?"

I don't know how to answer that. Seems no one does. But for the low whimpering of the girl, the room's awful quiet.

"We come here to try to make peace when there ain't none to be had. We come here to be forgiven. Way I figure it, Sheriff, is if I don't do what every ounce of me wants to do to this kid, and instead I fix him up, like I want to be fixed up myself, like I can never be fixed up, then maybe it'll count for somethin' in this great goddamn plan we're all so fuckin' tangled up in. What do you think?"

I consider that for a moment because it's worth considering. Then: "I think you may be onto something," I tell him.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah." I look at the girl. "What about her?"

"Nothing I can do for her. Maybe Hendricks can pull a miracle out of his hat, but not me." He glances down at Brody. "She's too far gone."

Brody sighs shakily, tries to stand and fails. Although Cobb has agreed to help the kid, I figure we've just seen his revenge. Telling the kid his girl is going to die is about the only weapon he has left to use, I guess. Hurt him as much as possible before he heals him.

"All right."

Cobb nods, and goes back to his drink. "Don't leave Ellie out there on the road, Tom. She deserves better."

"I'll see to it."

"You're leaving me here with
him?
" Brody asks, appalled.

"It's the one good option in a dump truck full of bad ones," I remind him. "Take it or leave it."

Gracie comes around the bar, flips that lock of hair out of her face and sets the mop and bucket down by the priest's body. "Think we should burn him?" she asks, as casually as she might inquire about the weather. "Bury the ashes and salt the earth?"

I understand her concern completely. No one wants to see that son of a bitch get back up. "If he was anything as dangerous as he led us to believe he was, he'd already have done something. And if he still plans to, then I don't reckon cooking him or seasoning the mud's going to do us a whole lot of good."

She sighs, and it's the most human I've ever seen her look. There's the urge again, to hold her, but this time I know it's because
I
need it, not her. So again, I restrain myself.

"Why didn't we do this three years ago?"

It's a good question, but I leave it unanswered.

I walk to the center of the room, Cobb and Wintry's table to my right, Cadaver still lost in the shadows by the door to my left.

"You okay, Cadaver?"

"Just countin' what's left," the electronic voice from the dark replies, followed by that familiar clink of pennies.

"Let's get this done," Kyle says behind me, and I'm glad to hear it. It means two things to me: First, he's still in control. The shock of shooting two men in the space of twenty minutes hasn't yet reduced him to the wreck it makes of others, and eventually will make of him when he least expects it, and second, it represents action, movement, right when my bones are threatening to turn to jelly and leave me a quivering, sobbing mess on the floor.

We move.

I'm stronger than Kyle, so I slip my hands beneath the girl's arms; he takes her feet.

"Hurry, for God's sake," Brody moans. "Don't let her die."

We carefully time the move, and with Flo ahead of us, we're out the door and loading Carla into the back seat of my truck before the second hand of the clock has made a full sweep.

We leave a trail of pinkish blood behind us.

Chapter Five

The rain is pelting down like machine gun fire, the wind trying its best to wrench the truck doors right off their hinges as we bundle inside. Makes me wonder if this is the Reverend's 'boss' gathering his fury, preparing to blow us all to whatever the alternative hangout is for the kind of deities that would consider Hill a valued employee.

I'm still too scared to believe this is over. It's an ugly feeling I know well, and can only hope will abate as soon as we have Carla at the door of the good doctor, provided she lives that long. As I gun the engine into life, and look at Kyle, who's wiping the condensation clear and peering out at the rain, it occurs to me that if this is really the end of the nightmare, I have no idea what to do with myself. There won't be any glorious sunshine through my window in the morning, marking the equally glorious beginning of a new chapter of my life. I'm still a murderer; there's still the guilt, and there's my son, who thinks I'm dead and doesn't mind. All that will really change will be the venue into which I bring my suffering. I don't imagine next Saturday I'll be at Eddie's. Instead I'll sit at home without those faces to act as mirrors for my own self-loathing.

I guide the truck out of the parking lot, careful to avoid the other cars, and turn out onto the road that will bring us to town, and to the doctor who I know won't take too kindly to being roused at this hour of the night, especially to tend to an injured whore with needle marks parading up her emaciated arm.

"Faster, she's not looking too good," Kyle says, looking over his shoulder as if he's been peeking in on my thoughts. "Think the baby'll make it?"

"Hope so." I resist the urge to remind him what Cobb said about her chances.

It's damn near impossible to see anything beyond the glass, the high beams like swollen ghosts staying three steps ahead of the grille. I'm going fast, aware that at any time I might inadvertently fulfill my obligations to the dead Reverend and run somebody over, or mash the truck into some poor drunk driver's car as he struggles to make his way home.

"C'mon for Chrissakes, she's bleeding bad."

It isn't a long drive, but the storm buffeting the truck and Kyle's endless needling make it seem like hours. Lightning turns the world to rainy daylight as I turn off the main road onto Abigail Lane, where the good doctor has his home.

Hendricks' place used to be a farmhouse, through the windows of which long gone farmers watched the world fall victim to the voracious appetite of progress. Mining companies bought out the land for the families of their employees, and people got greedy. Then the money ran out, and so did the people. Hendricks, an M.D. from Alabama who claimed he was "just passing through," saw no reason to move on when he caught sight of the sickly state of those who'd stubbornly refused to leave Milestone in the great exodus of '79, and when he heard the asking price for a house nobody wanted.

As we pull into the drive that slopes upward to the block-shaped two-story house, there are no lights in the windows, which doesn't come as a surprise. I find myself wondering, if we had kept going instead of turning into Hendricks' drive, how long it would have taken us to come upon the twisted wreck of Eleanor Cobb's Taurus.

Despite the forbidding darkness of the house that looms over the car, Kyle's already hurrying to get the girl out. Not the smartest move considering the Doc might not even be here, so I leave him to his grunting and trot to the door.

Knock, knock. No sound from within.

"Leave her there," I call back to Kyle, who's as good as invisible behind the car's lights.

"What?"

"I said leave her
be
. If Hendricks doesn't answer, what good will dragging her out in the rain do?"

"What else
can
we do?"

"I don't know. We'll deal with that if and when— "

"Sheriff?"

The front door is open; the storm deafened me to the approach of the bespectacled man now standing there squinting out. "That you, Tom?"

He's a reed-thin man and heavily bearded. I've always suspected that, just like the deceased Reverend, vanity has driven the doctor to dying his hair to keep from looking his age. And though in this light he doesn't look much healthier than the girl in the back of my truck, I'm glad as hell to see him.

I summarize the situation as calmly as I can. It doesn't sound calm in the least by the time it reaches my lips, but Hendricks steps back, his face a knot of concern. From upstairs, his wife calls out a demand to know what's going on. The doctor turns on the hall light. It's the warmest looking light I've seen in quite some time, and the shadows it casts are gentle. "Bring her in. I'll see what I can do." He reaches the stairs and yells up, "Queenie, I'm going to need your help down here."