The Drayton Chronicles

by Bertauski, Tony

  XXXI

  Parker fumbled with the keys in his front door.

  He just wanted to get inside. He wanted to get away. His chest about to cave under the weight. He needed to breathe. He needed to forget.

  This can’t be happening.

  The door swung open, crashed into the wall and closed with its own momentum. Parker dropped the keys and started for the kitchen. Licking his lips. Wiping his forehead.

  Drayton was at the table. Legs crossed.

  “How the hell did you get in here?”

  “I have come to tell you what has happened to your life.”

  Parker looked around, trying to focus. The floor seemed to sway. “What are you doing in my house?”

  Drayton remained still. Placid eyes like ink.

  Parker licked his lips, again. When he was steady, he pulled a chair from the table and sat carefully, afraid to disturb the frail balance of his teetering mind. He poured a drink. The bottle rattled against the rim of the glass like the earth was shaking.

  He drank.

  When he was done, he poured another.

  He had trouble swallowing the second one. His stomach was knotted. He forced it to untangle and take the second drink. So he could pour a third.

  He looked around the room, acting oblivious to Drayton. What was more interesting was the sudden strangeness of his house. It didn’t feel like his. He had the queer sensation that he was a stranger sitting in someone else’s home. Almost like he broke inside. Like he didn’t belong here. It wrapped around his guts like a twisting wire.

  He was halfway through the third drink when his stomach revolted.

  He clamped his lips.

  Slapped his hand over them.

  Vomit gushed under his tongue. Squirted between his teeth.

  He ran through the bedroom and emptied his guts until he puked green slime into the toilet. He continued to retch, all the way from his toes, feeling the muscle between his balls clench. He pressed his forehead against the cool floor tiles.

  He pulled up on the sink. Stumbled into the bedroom.

  The family photo on the dresser, it was sitting up. Facing him.

  He blinked.

  The faces. They were the same. Except his.

  Leaned closer. Had to focus, to be sure. Be sure what he was seeing. That he was seeing another man in the photo with his family.

  His fucking family!

  He sat on the bed, rubbing his thumb over the glass. Shook his head. Blinked and blinked. It didn’t change. He realized, before, when he looked at it, that his face was blurry. But now, the face in the photo, the one that was not him, it was as clear as the others. Like it belonged.

  He also noticed the ring on his finger felt heavy. Skin beneath, chapped.

  He stopped in the doorway.

  “Did you do this?” He held up the frame.

  “Please, have a seat.”

  Drayton stood, pulled a chair out from the table. Waited.

  Parker realized his legs were partially numb. Not from drink, but fear. It was cold and stinging. He touched the wall, the couch, the table on his way to the chair. Drayton sat opposite of him. He tried to pour another drink, but his hand was now convulsing. The liquor splashed on the family photo. Parker wiped it.

  “His name is Andrew Drummond,” Drayton said. His voice soothing. The words like jewels. “He died six months ago in a car accident.”

  Parker moaned. He thought he was going to be sick again.

  “Three years ago, he owned his own business. He had a wife and two young girls.” He gestured around the room. “They lived here.”

  Parker knew where here was. He meant this house. They lived here. Parker looked around with the urge to flee.

  “Three years ago, Andrew Drummond went away on business. He was out of town for the evening. He spoke to his wife before he lay down for the night. She put the girls on the phone. They told him about school and about a birthday party. They blew kisses when they said goodnight.”

  Parker shined the photo with his fingers. He had a thought, remembered the door at his office. On the glass, facing the street. The name. It wasn’t Samson. Drummond Protective and Investigative Services.

  Drummond.

  Not Samson.

  He tried to remember how it looked when he was there. Samson, it said. It was there, Samson was on the door. It was fuzzy when the rest of the words were clear. Like the picture.

  But now it said Drummond.

  “When he returned, he found his family in his house. They were dead.”

  The family photo clattered on the table.

  “Andrew Drummond buried his family on a day with the sun shining. He lived without them for the years that followed. And he suffered greatly.”

  Parker covered his mouth. His eyes bulged.

  “He suffered greatly.” Drayton repeated.

  Someone knocked.

  Parker jerked in his seat. His head shook. Tried to push away from the table. Tried to escape. Thoughts were folding their wings and diving on him. He waited for the room to stop spinning. Waited to see a new reality. But it spun. It spun.

  Until he looked into Drayton’s eyes.

  Open. Deep. And liquid.

  He looked. He saw. And he remembered. He remembered.

  Parker Samson did not live on Wentworth Avenue.

  He owned three tattoo parlors. He lived in the back of the one on King Street where he moved drugs and other elements of illegal nature. Like crack cocaine to the likes of the military vagrant he saw a few weeks back. The one that knew him. Of course, he knew him.

  Andrew Drummond was the investigator that helped Parker’s wife arrest him. Andrew Drummond helped the police put him in jail. He helped his wife take everything from him.

  Parker Samson lost it all.

  But he wasn’t afraid to go to jail. He wasn’t afraid to die.

  And he wasn’t afraid to kill.

  And he was determined to make someone pay. If not his whore wife, then the motherfucker that helped her.

  The night he made it happen, he disconnected the alarm system. Snuck into the house and stood in the bedroom. He watched Andrew’s wife sleep. A squeak escaped her throat, but nothing else got past the garrote pulled tightly against the cords in her neck. Cutting off the breath. Crushing the larynx. She twitched. Scratched. She became a lump.

  Parker felt a rush through his groin, surge into his legs. Spinning his guts. It gave him strength. Power. And he liked it.

  He took it to the bedroom down the hall. The girls slept soundly. Like little girls do.

  “Mr. Samson.” The knocking on the front door was louder. “Mr. Samson, could you answer the door. We have a few questions.”

  Parker looked at the door. It was blurry. He wiped his eyes. Suddenly, he couldn’t get enough breath into his lungs. The loss. The emptiness. The agony of losing his wife. His children. But they’re not my wife. Not my girls. NOT MY FAMILY!

  But they were, now. They felt like family. The loss was his, no matter what he tried to tell himself. He felt the raging emptiness. The bottomless pain. The endless gray sky.

  Drayton stood. “Now you will carry his burden.”

  Knocking. The doorknob jiggled.

  “Please.” Parker tried to stand. His legs could not. “I can’t.”

  Drayton turned. Parker grappled his hands, pulled him back. “Kill me. I don’t deserve to live, I deserve to die. I need to die.” He closed his eyes, shaking. “Kill me.”

  Drayton touched Parker’s forehead. With that gesture, Parker knew that death would not come to him. His fate was much worse. He didn’t want to die because he deserved it. He wanted death because he was afraid. He didn’t want to live with the suffering inside him, the suffering he brought to Andrew Drummond. But Drayton’s touch told him different. That death he did not deserve. That it would not come. Andrew’s suffering, and the suffering of all his family, was his to carry, now.

  His cross to bear.

  Drayton opened t
he door.

  The police came into the house.

  They found their man hunched over at a table. Weeping.

  XXXII

  Butchie, Daryl and Marlene were on the sidewalk. The dark Suburban behind them, between police cars. They watched Parker Samson led out of Andrew Drummond’s house.

  Andrew, their former employer. Their dead friend.

  When his family was murdered, Parker was on a list of suspects. But there was never enough evidence. Only suspicion. And as the case grew colder, Andrew became more distant. He was coming in hungover. He began drinking at the office. Then he stopped coming to work. He sobered up, but when he fell off the wagon, he fell hard. They were talking about an intervention when he died.

  They closed the door to his office. It hadn’t been opened since.

  They didn’t know why Parker Samson had slipped in there. Or how.

  Butchie wanted to kill him, right there. On the spot.

  Marlene convinced him, otherwise.

  They followed him. As they did, incriminating evidence just seemed to appear — fingerprints, DNA, a weapon. It happened so fast, like a fairy was planting it. They built a case in weeks.

  Now they watched him stumble down the steps in handcuffs, wailing like a broken man.

  “What got into his skull?” Daryl mumbled.

  Butchie and Marlene didn’t have an answer.

  The lead officer came over to Butchie. They discussed where they were taking him and how they wanted to collaborate on the case. No one noticed the young man that walked out of the house. The young man that moved with grace down the steps, down the sidewalk.

  XXXIII

  “Here you go, sir. Can I get you anything else?”

  “No, thank you. That’s very kind of you,” Drayton said.

  “You from around here?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  The Poogan’s Porch waitress crossed her arms. “Well, how long you in town?”

  “For awhile longer, I believe.”

  The waitress was in her twenties. A college student. She bent over to take the silverware off the table, exposed the low cut of her blouse and the curves of her breasts. Drayton tugged at the string hanging out of his cup, steeping the tea bag. She looked over at him with a smile and made direct contact with his eyes. His lovely black eyes. Her hand slowed.

  Drayton looked away.

  She moved slowly back inside the yellow house that served as a downtown restaurant. She went to help other customers, forgetting the thrill of Drayton’s gaze.

  He sat alone at a table for two. The upper porch facing Queen Street.

  It was late.

  The downtown sounds of nightlife were alive.

  Andrew Drummond was not.

  Parker Samson was.

  Andrew wanted him to pay. He wanted him dead. But Drayton knew the ends of revenge. That the blood of payback was cold, indeed. Drayton knew because he’d spent hundreds of years paying for the suffering he inflicted on his victims, back in a time when he was ruthless. When he was an animal. When he was, what a novelist would call, a vampire. He destroyed lives at will, drank the blood from their arteries rich with essence. And the longer he existed, the heavier the chains became. He owed for his indulgence. His insolence. Ignorance.

  Not until he learned to bear his victims’ suffering had he been delivered from his own.

  And it had taken far longer than a human life.

  Drayton may have been an immortal, but he was not a god. He did not know where the dying went, whether there was a heaven or hell or their awareness was merely spread among the cosmic winds like ash. Maybe Andrew was sitting next to him, right there on Poogan’s Porch.

  His last request, fulfilled.

  Drayton removed the teabag, squeezed the contents and placed it on the saucer. A sip.

  A sigh.

  A couple walked up the steps to find a table at Poogan’s Porch. They were in their 50s. The woman was dainty, walked with short, quick steps. The man appeared reasonably fit. He walked with a limp from a recent accident. He broke an ankle falling off a bike.

  Drayton’s nostrils flared.

  The taste of his essence pulsed beneath Drayton’s tongue. It had been six months since Andrew Drummond’s passing. Six months since Drayton had fed. His skin was drawing tight.

  “How’s your tea?” The waitress leaned over.

  “Savory.”

  “Good. I just want to tempt you one last time. We’ve got the best crabcakes in the area. I could bring you out an appetizer to prove it.”

  “Very kind, but no thank you.”

  She pouted. “Are you sure you’re not hungry.”

  The limping man stopped at the doorway. Sweat was building on his shiny head. Cheeks flushing. The host greeted them brightly, gestured to a table toward the back of the house. The limping man took a deep breath for the trip inside, unaware that a blood clot had formed in his artery. Drayton could feel it on a path for his heart.

  “I think I’ll have something a bit a later.”

  Perhaps around midnight.

  Swift is the Current

  Some bad seeds are worth saving.

  I

  Condor Current stabbed the smoldering butt into a pile of spent cigarettes, blew smoke into a ceiling fan wilting in the South Carolina humidity. The veranda overlooked a square courtyard contained by three sides of a mansion and overlooked the ocean off Kiawah Island, a chunk of South Carolina that Condor Current did not own, but was in line to inherit. If he was lucky, it would all be his in the next couple hours.

  The house staff was dragging plastic bags through the courtyard and picking up plastic cups with extended grabbers. The shrubbery looked raped, but that was the cost of a good party. A fundraiser, he reminded himself. The only difference between a fundraiser and a depraved good time was the money it raised for a local no-kill animal shelter. Imagine that, a killer party that was responsible for the death of thousands of brain cells also supported a no-kill cause.

  Condor dug his thumb into his right temple. That’s a lot of grey matter.

  If Condor’s father taught him anything, it was to have a good time. His father, the same guy that drove his Maserati into an oak tree while his girlfriend was plowing him with her mouth. The same guy that gave him the name Condor. Your grandfather’s name, he said. Something to be proud of, a name like that.

  Then why don’t you take the name, Robert?

  Because you’re taking one for the family, son.

  That little conversation was all in Condor’s head. Just thoughts. But he’d been having conversations like this in his own brain for so long he could no longer recall if they actually happened or not. Condor knew they were thoughts, but he believed them and they hurt because Robert Current used to finish every conversation with a devilish chuckle that sucked the soul right out his ears. Robert Current owned people with that laugh.

  Condor raised his glass and drained the icy remains. Here’s to you, Robert. You dead fuck.

  He popped out another soldier from the cigarette pack. His phone vibrated on the glass table. He waved away the smoke to focus on the text.

  Where r u?

  He didn’t recognize the number. Then he realized it must be the girl sleeping in the guest room. Well, passed out. Condor slipped something in her drink when the party began to wind down. She was coming onto Condor the second she stepped through the front door, her eyes lighting up on the palatial foyer. A house on the beach made one out of three girls wet, that was a fact in Condor’s book. Even Condor – short and fat and black straw hair – could score with a house like that. Money is the world’s best aphrodisiac.

  Nonetheless, Condor liked them to be asleep when he had fun. He owned a brown bottle of chloroform, but he didn’t have the nerve to use something that potent. Not yet. He wanted them to wake up in the morning and not die. But he had it, just in case the roofy wore off.

  As long as she was sleeping, she wouldn’t have any evidence to convict him of rape
. Technically, he didn’t touch her so it wasn’t rape, but he doubted a judge would see it that way. It wasn’t illegal to put her in different poses. Maybe it was tiny-bit illegal to undress her…

  There were times he knocked out two or three girls and stacked them like flapjacks. But he never touched them. Never, ever. Sometimes he wasn’t even in the same room; he just arranged them like dolls then hid in his closet and peeked through the slats of the door. Any evidence of foul play went into a tissue and got double-flushed down a toilet. Always double-flush.

  “Sir.” Stanley the Man-servant stepped onto the balcony. “A call.”

  He handed Condor the house phone and turned toward the sliding door. He stopped at the sound of rattling ice. Condor was holding a glass tumbler above his head, crushing an ice cube between his teeth. Stanley the Man-servant retrieved the glass. Condor waited for the door to slide shut before he said hello.

  The call was short. Not more than a minute. Condor didn’t say much, just a few uh-huhs and then a sure. He added to his vocabulary when he hung up.

  “Fuck.”

  Stanley the Man-servant returned to the balcony and passed Condor a fresh Bloody Mary. He took the phone in exchange for the drink.

  “Good news?”

  “Fantastic,” Condor said, flatly. “Grandmother is coming home this afternoon.”

  “You sound ecstatic.”

  “Hmm.”

  Stanley paused in case Condor had more to say. A memory suddenly popped into Condor’s awareness. It was Christmas and he was expecting a Range Rover to be waiting for him in the morning with a ribbon tied around it. Instead, it was BMW, used. He remembered the sinking feeling, like something untouchable was slipping between his fingers. He had the same feeling now.

  II

  Ruthie Current adjusted the oxygen tube chafing her upper lip. Her other hand scratched at the leather of the back seat like the hand didn’t belong to her; like some mutated spider, spotted and wrinkled, trying to escape the end of her arm.