The Haunting of James Hastings (41 page)
Read The Haunting of James Hastings Online
Authors: Christopher Ransom
Tags: #Fiction, #Action & Adventure, #Suspense
Everything gone.
Stacey is dead. Ghost is dead
.
.
Except . . . and this was everything . . . Ghost didn’t drive Stacey’s car. Ghost didn’t stay at the house with Stacey. Ghost got away.
James did his job. James Hastings took the fall.
James Hastings died with her in that alley.
That was me. That was me up there on the wall, on the TV screen. That was me in the alley, the star. That was me with blood running from my nose, my ears, my mouth. I am laid to rest.
I’m no longer here. I’m here no longer. I’m—
A series of heavy thudding noises came from somewhere above the basement and then down. Something moved in the basement, off in the corner. A bright light flashed, yanking me back from the abyss, blinking, squinting.
Something moved in front of me. A man in black pants. I squeezed my eyes shut, the echoes of her screams and the moaning and gunshots overlapping in my ears. I was floating, going to be sick.
‘Do you see?’ he was saying. ‘Do you see?’
I opened my eyes. The man was standing in front of me in the bright room.I worked my mouth around and ground my teeth.
‘The Hastings couple. Do you see what you have done?’
‘What?’
‘They died for your sins. Like the boy. You are the pale demon.’
He was dressed in all black, his face flushed, black paint around his eyes.
‘Who?’
‘And now we have you.’
‘Who?’
‘There were two of you but now there is only one. This is the inescapable truth.’
‘What happened to me?’
‘You got caught.’
‘I was supposed to help her—’
His arm went back and when his hand came from behind him a slim tab of metal gleamed briefly in the light. His arm waved past like he was chasing a mosquito. He stepped back and waited.
I didn’t understand what he was waiting for. I stared at him, my vision blurry.
‘The pale demon bleeds,’ he said.
Something on my chest began to itch. I looked down. The red tracksuit jacket was halved. A thin red line stretching from my left shoulder to my right nipple opened and a rake-shaped comb of blood began to flow. I scrambled away from him, up and to the side, my body clumsy, numb all over as I leaped over the end of the couch. I was halfway to the door at the bottom of the stairs when something small and quick sliced across my back, harder and deeper, down to my waist. The taut skin between my shoulders went slack. I grabbed the doorknob and it slipped in my clammy grip, unyielding. He roared and I turned around.
The man. The bad policeman was standing behind me holding something small and sharp. Oh, dear God, is that - it’s a scalpel. He cut me with a scalpel. He cut me with a scalpel. He cut me—
His nostrils flared.
I feinted left, then bolted right, running past him, toward the far end of the basement, where there were no exits. His arm lashed out and my bicep opened like a fish’s mouth. I screamed, wetness warm and sliding down to my wrist.
He walked after me, his voice slow. ‘You can’t get out that way, sport model.’
There was a bathroom at the end of the basement. I had used it the day we got drunk together. If I could get inside and shut the door, I could hide. The long shiny top of the shuffle-board table was beside me. I dragged my left hand through the powder as I ran until I got to the end and scooped up one of the steel pucks and I turned and threw it and it hit him in the chest and he laughed and the little metal blade cut sideways at my nose, just missing as I ducked and spun away. The sting bit into my ear and sliced across the nape of my neck. I hit the bathroom door and slammed it behind me. The door was light in my hands, too light, but it latched. I fumbled with the knob but my arms and hands were sheeted with blood sticky and slipping. I thumbed the brass tab to the vertical position and staggered back into the plastic shower stall.
A splintering hole blew inward and his fist followed, then his other fist, and then the door was tearing, the hinges squealing as he ripped the entire door from its frame as if it were made of Styrofoam. He turned and stamped on the bottom of the door, pulled his fists back through the hole, and flung the door into the two empty beer kegs leaning against the wall.
‘Cool it down now,’ he said. ‘Before I cut your fucking eyeballs out.’
I did not understand why this was happening, who these people were, or what I was supposed to do. They killed Stacey. Was he punishing me for letting her die? Had he loved her, too? Is this where she had gone all those days? To this evil side of the world? I stood in the shower, shivering, and my blood pooled around the drain and bubbled, threading in.
‘You’re going to bleed to death,’ he said. ‘Come out and I’ll give you a bandage.’
He stepped aside and invited me to pass. I couldn’t make my body do anything other than shiver.
‘I’m sorry, okay?’ he said. ‘This wasn’t supposed to happen yet. Annette told me to take care of you until she got back and I got excited. Because . . . because
where is she!
Right? Okay, okay. I won’t. Just come out.’
where is she!
Right? Okay, okay. I won’t. Just come out.’
Everything was cold and I was bleeding and I turned and reached for something, a weapon, the towel rack, and my hand seemed to float out in front of me, someone else’s hand, red up to the elbow.
That’s my arm.
The shower was empty. There was nothing in here. I pawed at the rubber curtain.
That’s my arm.
The shower was empty. There was nothing in here. I pawed at the rubber curtain.
‘You can’t stay in there,’ he said. ‘You’re bleeding in at least seven places.’
He was enormous, his head filling the entire doorway. The scalpel he had used was not in his hands. He was holding his hands out, opening and closing them. He looked very worried.
‘You have to come out, Ghost. You’re dying. I promise.’
Ghost. Was I playing Ghost? Was this an act? I must be acting. I must be involved in something. This was planned, set up, another skit. Trembling, holding my ear, I walked out of the shower. My feet were slippery and cold.
‘Please don’t,’ I said. ‘Please don’t hurt her, okay? Promise you won’t hurt her again?’
‘I promise. Let’s go, let’s go. We have to get you out, Ghost. The show’s about to start.’
My feet didn’t work right. I glanced to the side, then back at his face, the yellow moon hovering in front of me. I moved between him and the doorway, our faces less than a foot apart. I took another step and he winked and bit his tongue and three or four quick stings climbed my ribs and I looked down to see his fingers with the scalpel jutting from them prodding as if he were entering purchases into a cash register.
Noises came out of me as I ran making a trail of blood back to the bar where I tried to lift a barstool bolted to the floor. The scalpel went in behind my left knee and swirled around, raking bone. My leg buckled and I fell and the warden hauled me up by the arm and spun me around.
‘Not her boyfriend now, are you, motherfucker! You’re not anybody’s boyfriend, you’re mine, motherfucker mother fucker mother fuck fuck fuck—’
The scalpel made silver trails in the air around me as his face took on pointillist dabs of wet maroon and I lost the ability to scream or fight back or raise my arms to defend myself. I collapsed on my side, a wet, shivering hump. He screamed as he punctured my body again and again. The pain belonged to someone else and the house quaked around us and I knew she would be there to meet me soon. My senses misfired, strobed, shut down. The human body performs miracles and this was one:
My mind simply refused to allow me to witness the rest of what happened.
37
What I eventually recall.
I sleep a lot. I wake up on the couch again, day or night, in a cocoon of soreness, itching and nauseating drug high. I pat my arms and legs and chest, checking for more bleeding. I am dry and the gauze he wrapped me in before is now replaced or supported by an additional layer of cloth athletic bandages. I am constricted.
What is he waiting for?
Vague snatches of the conversation, talking about her again as he tends my wounds in the bathroom, kneeling at my feet and bracing me against the wall of the shower stall that is my slop trough. She’s not at her house.
But I will find her. And you fuck, you better pray to God she’s not hurt. You better pray she decides not to let me do it. Because I will do it. End this now if it were up to me. Cut your filthy fucking tongue out and mount it to my—
But I will find her. And you fuck, you better pray to God she’s not hurt. You better pray she decides not to let me do it. Because I will do it. End this now if it were up to me. Cut your filthy fucking tongue out and mount it to my—
Time slips.
Sometimes I am on the floor, sometimes I am on the couch. I bleed freely, at random times, no matter how he tries to patch me up. My back is a nova of pain shining light into every corner of my body. When the drugs wear off, I ascertain that my shoulder is dislocated, my ribs cracked, toes broken, face road-burned, throat swollen like a snake bite victim’s. I cough and it is like being hit on the heart with a mallet. Too weak and in too much pain to get up, I lose control of my bladder several times per day. I itch. He adds blankets beneath me and the couch thickens. My piss nest. Chicken bones. Splinters in my lungs. My tongue fills my whole mouth. The needle. Sleep. Sleep and pray for death.
Time slips like a morphine drip.
Hands, the hands on me. Waking in the middle of a delirium in the dark and checking my body, under my shirt, under my pants. My hands. They are only my hands. But someone else’s were here first. The bandages moist. The clothes stiff. My pubic hair shaved and growing back, itching. He can do this, he can do anything.
Time slips.
I never know if he will be gone for two minutes or three hours and his boot steps clunk above me at all hours. He paces holding conversations with himself about how much longer to keep me alive. Would be so much easier to dump me in the desert. Do it, fucking kill me you big redheaded cocksucker.
The side of my face is swollen and burning from the road, my body rejecting particles of asphalt through a yellow and purple glaze.
When he is upstairs, the activity varies. Often there is only silence, but at other times the sound of power tools shakes the walls and ceiling. He sings songs to himself in the kitchen. He swears and shatters furniture. The water runs for six hours. One night I hear gunshots erupting in the backyard. Hundreds of them. When he comes down after, I can smell the powder on him from thirty feet away and blue smoke is rising from his hands and hair.
Slip. Slip. Slip.
He comes crawling across the floor on his hands and knees. Look here, look here. He opens the safe and shows me a nickel-plated .45 and calls it Aaron’s gun. He says it was an accident. He was only trying to show the boy. He was only trying to teach the boy. He was always present. He weeps. How was he to know the boy would watch him, memorize the combination? He lost his temper, that was all. Saw the boy holding the gun, a circuit blew. He screamed and lunged and the boy wouldn’t let go, he wouldn’t let go. It was an accident, you can see that. He tried to explain it to Arthur but Arthur couldn’t be trusted. They showed Arthur the music and said, see, see where he got the idea? It’s a sickness, this music.
Arthur never liked him. Arthur had an accident, too.
He puts the .45 in my mouth. He weeps.
Time slips.
He misses another dose. Late at night and I am screaming in the dark, begging the warden. He comes down the stairs looking sleepy and sticks another needle in my shoulder. It isn’t working. It might be vitamins. Or air.
My shoulder swells like a balloon. He pets my hair and says I should stop making those noises, the ones I don’t know I am making. He sits with me through the night and calls me Ghost because James is dead and it has always been this way and that’s the truth. I know what you’re in for. I’m in holding, too. He says we are cell-mates, we will get through this stretch together.
Time . . .
He says all of the cuts are shallow. Except for the one that took the lobe of my left ear. I cry and ask about my ear, please, I want my ear back. No one is allowed to have my ear. I pat the ragged edge where it was and he looks for it for almost ten minutes before he finds it in the shuffle-board sand. When he brings it back to me it looks like a miniature ball of pizza dough rolled in flour. He asks me if I want it and when I shake my head he eats it like taking communion.
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