Halfway House (41 page)

Where was he? He should have been in the basement of the halfway house, but that couldn’t be right. He was in some Nashville club, run down, pictures of long forgotten singers hanging tattered along the wall.

But as he looked, it changed.

He was in a zoo.

At a circus.

On a cruise ship.

He was everywhere he’d ever seen and everywhere he’d wanted to go.

As fast as he’d realize where he was it would change. But what remained consistent was the stage and the
Bruja
standing atop it singing his daddy’s song in a sultry voice.

Something brushed against his feet.

He glanced down, then stepped away. He saw himself rat-a-tap-tapping in full grand mal. His hands went to his chest. If he was there, then who was here?

His hands went to his throat.

He realized he wasn’t breathing.

He pried at his chest. He couldn’t feel his heart.

He glared at the
Bruja
who never faltered as she grinned around the words of the song.

* * *

Lucy sneered at the
Bruja
. Her power was waning. She was an undead shell of her own vitriolic self. She had little power over him. He chose to chance her magic to help Bobby. With diminishing fear, Lucy turned his back on her and attended Bobby.

Just in time, too, the kid was beginning to choke. Lucy grabbed the pistol from where it had fallen from Bobby’s grasp and wedged the wooden grip in his mouth to keep it from snapping shut. Then, using his forefinger, he shoved his hand down Bobby’s throat, rooted around a second for the tongue, and pulled it free. Bobby gasped and coughed and breathed. Next Lucy removed the boy’s belt and put it in place of the gun.

Still caught in the throes of the seizure, at least Bobby wouldn’t choke to death. For now.

* * *

As Bobby’s breath returned to him, so did his ability to think. He remembered where he was. He was in the basement of the halfway house and before him, stood the
Bruja
. She might look like something out of a rock and roll legend’s porn calendar but he knew her to be as evil as they came. Just a snap remembrance of the memory of the Japanese soldiers cursed to live upside down in the dirt for half a century was enough to shatter any doubts that the mirage before him could be anything but evil.

He stepped forward as the world around him dissolved in a whirlwind, the detritus of his illusions caught and swirled until everything was unrecognizable in a multicolored vortex. Moans of the tortured wound up like a record player gaining power and became a background orchestra for the
Bruja
, who continued singing.

But a single thought crystallized that gave Bobby power. Laurie’s soul was here somewhere and the
Bruja
was eating it.

He stepped forward once more, held out his hand, and pointed to the gyrating bitch.

But as he did, she disappeared and in her place was Sister Agnes. Gone was the stage. Gone were the hands with the lighters. Gone was the song. They were now in the hallway of the orphanage. The golden-paneled wood smelling of oil and the linoleum floors smelling of disinfectant, all taking him back to the place that had been his only true home.

Sister Agnes knelt, her habit surrounded her head like a halo. She held out her arms. A look of sadness grew in her eyes.

“I’m so sorry they didn’t want you, Bobby. I’m so sorry you’re defective.”

Bobby felt his heart break as a parade of all the parents who’d tried him out and returned him when they discovered he was broken strode by, arm in arm, like they were on a catwalk of his nightmares. None of them waved at him. Instead, they averted their eyes, as if even the sight of him was too disgusting.

Bobby struggled to remember where he was. He fought to retain his grip on the moment, but his emotions took over. He felt his face crack and his skull open wide. He reached up and peeled back his skin until it puddled around his knees. When he stepped from it he was ten and nobody wanted him.

“Look, Bobby.” Sister Agnes stood now in her sparsely decorated room near the back of the orphanage. On the wall were dozens of pictures of animals. She pointed to one with a huge, white Great Dane. “This one is yours. It’s Elvis Paper Dog, remember?”

Bobby did remember. It was his best pet ever. It never peed, it never made doody, and most of all, it never ran away. It was the most loyal creature in the universe and it was all his. It was his best friend.

Bobby felt his feet propelling him forward. He heard some rattling behind him, but ignored it. All his attention was on Sister Agnes and Elvis Paper Dog. His heart suddenly filled to bursting with love and longing.

* * *

When Lucy finally stood, his Angels had subdued Kanga and Theopolis with lengths of sheets they’d grabbed from the two bedrooms nearby. They were tied at the shoulders, waist and ankles. Lucy nodded. It would do for now.

He grabbed a chair and pulled it forward. When he was about five feet away from the woman, he turned the chair around and sat cowboy style, one hand dangling over the other, the 9-mm on top.

The
Bruja
pointed at him. She didn’t screech any longer. Cracks had begun to appear in her perfect face as if she were made of porcelain. She seemed ready to break apart. Lucy took this as a good sign.

“Listen, bitch. You’ve fucked us for too long. It’s time for you to go. I know you can hear me. So either leave peacefully, or I’ll burn this whole fucking place down.” He really didn’t expect her to respond.

She continued to stare as the cracks spread and thickened along her skin.

He stood and aimed the pistol at her head determined to help the process along. He prayed, then fired. The bullet pierced the center of her forehead, but did nothing more.

He fired again.

Then again.

Yet again.

Four smoking holes did little to remove the life from her dead face.

And as he watched, the holes closed upon themselves and the cracks began to repair themselves.

* * *

But then Sister Agnes disappeared as she melted into a puddle, falling flat with a splash.

Bobby’s heart caught and a cry wrenched free as even the picture of Elvis Paper Dog disappeared.

But in her place, rising from the puddle, was the grinning face of Jimmy Hixon. He wore cut-off jeans shorts, a white tank top and no shoes. His skin was tanned from playing outside, just as Bobby’s was, he noticed, looking at his own ten-year-old arm.

“My daddy can kick your daddy’s ass!” said the boy.

“Wait a minute. You can’t talk. You’re...”

“Don’t say it, Bobby. Don’t you dare call me dumb!”

“I wasn’t gonna. I was gonna call you
dead
.”

The boy broke into a grin as infectious as the plague. “Do I look dead to you?”

“No. But where’d Sister Agnes go?”

“She left me to talk to you. Do you remember what I told you back in the home? Do you remember what I did with my power to talk?”

Bobby did remember, as if it was yesterday.

“I was born not being able to speak or hear because of my father. I have the power of the cosmos, too. One day, when I’m ready, I’ll be able to read minds. I’ll be able to tell when people are thinking bad thoughts and when they do, my father will come. All I have to do is wait and my father will come.”

“Your daddy is the Silver Surfer.”

“That’s right. And he’s come for me. I told him to hold off until I could find you. But it was hard. You’ve been hiding from everyone, Bobby.”

“I wasn’t hiding, I was looking.”

“For your father, right?”

Bobby nodded, remembering all the notes they’d written back and forth between each other as they talked about comic books and their lives.

“My daddy knows where your daddy is. He says we can take you to him if you want to go.”

“What? Are you serious?”

“Cross my heart and hope to die.”

“But you’re already dead.”

“We faked my death so I could go undercover and become a superhero like my father.”

Bobby remembered how everyone had gathered around the trash dumpster. He’d never actually seen Jimmy’s body. Even when it was loaded in the back of the ambulance, it had been covered from head to toe with a sheet.

“What do I have to do?”

“Nothing. You’ve already done it by dying. Just grab my hand and we’ll get out of here.”

“I’m dead? Wait.”

“We can’t wait, Bobby. We have to go.”

“But how did I die.”

“In the fire. The house burned down. But that’s okay. It means I can take you to your daddy.”

“How?”

Jimmy looked at him for the first time as if he was losing his patience. “By the power of the cosmos, stupid. Remember?”

“You mean after all this time... just like that?”

Jimmy Hixon nodded. “Just like that.”

Bobby smiled and stepped forward.

* * *

Lucy turned to his men. “Anyone seen Blockbuster?”

Blank stares and shaking heads.

He turned on his phone and made a call. Blockbuster answered.

“Where the fuck are you?”

“In the house.”

“Where in the house?”

“In the hallway.”

“Come downstairs.”

“I can’t. There’s this big fucking green tentacle monster climbing down the stairs and I’m not getting anywhere near it.”

The stairs gave out with a groan and disintegrated. Two ten-foot tentacles wavered out of the dust and wood, all that was left of the halfway house’s great man-o-war except its head.

Lucy raised the pistol and fired eleven rounds into the trunk of the beast, aiming for the eyes and the areas around them. The fat pupils exploded, but not before a tentacle reached out and wrapped itself around him. He dropped the pistol and pushed against the flesh, but couldn’t budge it. Unlike before, nothing pierced his skin, and for a moment he held out hope.

Then it raised him up and dropped him onto the barrel with the
Bruja
. His weight tipped them over and he fell with her to the ground. She slid free from the barrel. She reached out and touched his arm, and as she did, Lucy knew entropy.

Everything went black as his life was sucked away.

*  *  *

Lucy slid free down a waterslide, headfirst from a great height into a pool of broken glass. He couldn’t scream. He couldn’t make a sound. He was powerless to do anything except let gravity pull him down.

He crashed into the pool with cataclysmic force, sending shards of glass splashing across the Mariachi bands below, impaling them, halting their music in a clatter of broken guitars and tinkling glass. His body was cut in a thousand places. Jagged shards stuck from his face and torso and arms. He couldn’t move. The pain was so galactic it encompassed him and pressed upon him until he was his own private black hole of hurt.

He was about to close his eyes until he bled out when he saw a distortion through the crimson-colored glass beneath him. The distortion was human-sized, and it moved.

Lucy couldn’t help himself. He moved his arm through the glass. Every inch earned was a meter of pain. He screamed as he pried his other arm free and dug deep through the glass.

The distortion moved again. It was a child.

Lucy dug harder, screaming…

* * *

The sky screamed above him.

Bobby stopped.

It began to rain glass.

Bobby watched as crimson-colored shards smashed on the ground all around him. He brought his hands up to protect his head.

He glanced at Jimmy, and noticed the boy staring upward. Gone was the smile. In its place lived a grimace of such distaste, Bobby couldn’t help but follow the other’s gaze.

And it was at that moment that a bloody Mexican whale broke free from the bright blue sky and plummeted to the earth between them.

* * *

Blockbuster hurtled down the stairs, leaping from the back of the dead monster to the floor. He fell and rolled, coming to his feet unsteadily midway into the room. Lucy lay on the floor across the body of a woman who was beginning to look younger and younger with every passing second. Wounds in her forehead were healing before his eyes. Lines softened and disappeared as she lost decades.

He surged forward to help, but realized as he got a clear view of his leader and his thousand-mile stare that Lucy was dead.

The
Bruja
finally stopped changing. Now she looked twenty-five years old and radiated power. Lucy’s body was a shell of itself, hollow and empty. She pushed it off of her and tossed it aside. The body hit the floor and rolled to Blockbuster’s feet with as much mass as an empty corn husk.

Blockbuster trembled as he dumped the contents of the backpack and rummaged through them. Two dozen bones clattered to the floor.

The
Bruja
sat up and seemed to notice him for the first time. A look of surprise marked her face.

Manolo rushed up and knelt beside him. Seeing Lucy, his voice choked. “We need to hurry!”

“Then get something lit. We need fire and we need it
now
.”

Manolo produced a two liter bottle of gasoline which he poured on a rag-wrapped length of wood to fashion a torch. Once lit, Manolo handed it to Blockbuster, who wielded it as if it were a sword, he was St. George, and the
Bruja
was the dragon—which wasn’t far from the truth.

“Light her!” Manolo screamed. “Light the bitch!”

Blockbuster held the fire out with trembling hands. He pushed it toward her, then felt something enter his body. He glanced at Manolo, and saw the same thing happening to him. It was as if ice crystals were forming on their skin, but that was impossible. After all, this was Southern California. It never snowed here.

Then why was he too frozen to move?