Southern Ouroboros

by Matt Kilby

  “What the Hell is this?” she asked and something heavy hit the floor. He looked past his feet to where she dropped the Godstone. Now, it didn’t look like anything more than a black brick.

  “I’ll have to figure out a way to tell you,” he said and didn’t look forward to it. Maybe John would do better, but someone had to explain him to her too. “The short version is it’s the reason you’re alive.”

  Something forced a sharp breath from her mouth and a wobble in her knees. She caught herself on the crates closest to her and leaned until steady. He knew better than to ask what caused it, figuring he would wait until she was comfortable talking about it, if ever. In the meantime, he had the feeling she just remembered what happened to her.

  “We need to go,” he said and picked up the Godstone, holding his other hand out for her. She considered in a way he expected, as if he offered anything more than to help her walk. If she was like him and John now, she didn’t need it, but she took it anyway. They walked out together, passing the man whose mind was ruined trying to rationalize how a second person got in and out of the room without him knowing. Vick could have explained, at least the part where he almost helped dispose of a body, but passed without a word. They got in the elevator, and he pushed the button for the ground level, dropping against the wall as soon as the doors closed.

  “I was dead,” she looked at him. “I killed his brother and he killed me.”

  He didn’t understand what she meant but shook his head and met her eyes.

  “You were almost dead, but we both know you’re too strong to die easy.”

  She smiled, but it didn’t last. The corners of her mouth trembled, but a slow breath pulled her together long enough for the elevator to reach their floor. There, she let him take her hand again, walking with him outside.

  Part of him expected to find the parking lot swarming with police, the fog in their heads cleared by the stone’s sulking. The stillness belied the chaos he and John brought with them. Vick wondered what happened to the men who followed from the motel, betting most fled into the woods when he cremated a line of security guards. The places he left them were marked by footsteps in the snow that would be easy to follow, though he and Suzanne walked past the cars to the one on its hood.

  “Is that your car?” Suzanne asked and he nodded, dropping her hand as they approached.

  “Give me a minute,” he walked to where he left John. The cowboy was still there, though Vick doubted anyone was stupid enough to put fingerprints on a knife trying to pry it out of a man’s head. With his already there, he grabbed the handle, putting his other hand on John’s hat as he pulled, the scrape of the blade on bone enough to force his eyes away. When the knife yanked free, he waited for the cowboy to rise. John sat up and brushed snow off his clothes, glancing around in a haze that cleared when he saw Vick.

  “What did you do?” he patted his shoulder for the messenger bag as he realized it was gone.

  “What I had to,” Vick held out the Godstone.

  “Give it to me,” John said, his eyes sharp as he reached an open hand.

  “Promise something first.”

  “What promise do you think I owe you?” the cowboy seethed. “Do you understand what you did? I was supposed to kill every one of those men to keep them from Carly. How many did I manage before you put me down?”

  “Not enough,” Vick said. “I’m sorry. Whatever that’s worth, I am. I’ll sit outside her house or hunt down everyone who got away. For what I did, I’ll make it right.”

  “And what was that?” John muttered.

  “Suzanne,” Vick called and found satisfaction in the way it surprised the cowboy. He wore the same look as the night Brandon Marshall opened his door.

  The crunching snow announced her before her bare feet rounded the Charger’s bumper. Vick thought she was more beautiful now. There was something in her face, her eyes, some part of her that understood what she was without knowing a word of it.

  “You did it,” John said with a twitch of his right eye, “after all this time.”

  “But nothing’s changed.”

  “Of course not,” John smiled. “Did you think I would vanish into smoke and the world put itself back together? The future is still ahead and a long one at that. A lot can happen between now and the end, and you have to keep her alive long enough to matter.”

  “I won’t let you kill her.”

  “You never let me do anything,” John scowled, “and don’t think you’ll find it easy to put another knife in my head. No, I won’t kill her because I never did, though routine went out the window when those drug dealers got away. Still, I give you my word on one condition.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Give me the stone and let me do what I came to.”

  “I thought you came to kill those men.”

  “Because you wouldn’t understand the rest,” John said. “You would refuse, but this is the cost you’ll pay to keep me from putting a bullet in your girlfriend.”

  “I’m not his girlfriend,” Suzanne said.

  “I don’t care. Make your choice.”

  “Fine,” Vick offered the stone. He second guessed his trust when John took it, expecting him to shoot Suzanne anyway. Instead, the cowboy tucked the Godstone under his arm and got to his feet, tugging the brim of his hat.

  “Now,” he said, walking between them toward the building. “You can come see what your choice means or stay here. That doesn’t matter either, but if one of you gets in my way again, I will kill the girl.”

  The warning should have meant something, but Vick was too tired to think. He wondered whether it was noon yet, if everything that happened since Brandon’s house had taken more than a morning. He thought he could feel all the time Wolgiss used trying to reach this moment with Suzanne beside him, knowing she was finally and forever okay. Now that he had what he wanted, he didn’t wonder why he or Suzanne would get in John’s way. As far as he was concerned, their part was over, but he was curious and followed. Because he did, so did Suzanne.

  They caught up with John at the elevator, riding with him in silence to a hallway a few floors up from the lobby. When the doors opened with their single chime, John got out and then Vick, taking a step before fingers touched his palm, sliding to interlace with his. He glanced back at Suzanne, but she didn’t look at him. She pulled him to a stop, and he stared a silent question. John went ahead through a set of glass doors, walking through a laboratory to a door with the name Benjamin Tolbert stenciled on it. Suzanne stared at the man on the other side, a short, wiry scientist with thin lips and an intense gaze. John walked to him and said something they couldn’t hear before showing the man the Godstone. The scientist’s eyes bulged but with a trace of recognition, as if he somehow knew what he held in his baffled stare. He at least knew enough to put gloves on before he took it from John’s hand.

  Vick felt like the only one who didn’t understand, especially when John left the laboratory without the most powerful object in the known universe. He returned to the hall as if it was nothing, and Vick was about to ask what it was all about when Suzanne’s fingernails gouged his hand. He jerked his attention to her shocked face, realizing what it meant. He didn’t need another look at the man to know he was who put her in that metal crate to burn. The little man who now had the Godstone was responsible for all his suffering in Pine Haven and after. The suffering to come. His rage boiled over as John grabbed his shoulder.

  “That is her price,” he said in a voice not much louder than a whisper. “You letting him go is the only way I’ll let her live.”

  The elevator dinged, but Vick kept still, watching the man inside the laboratory until he turned to look at him. His eyes bulged again, wider this time in something closer to horror, but not for him. He looked past Vick to Suzanne, the girl who was meant to be ashes. Vick looked too and saw that disgust had replaced her terror. She held onto the expression a moment. When it was gone, she looked at Vick as if she would follow whatev
er he decided to do. If Tuck Marshall can survive, so can she. So he let her, the two of them following John into the elevator.

  Outside, they stayed behind the cowboy until he was past the Charger, heading toward the dirt road and Creek Hollow beyond. Vick stopped beside the overturned car and called after him.

  “We’re not done.”

  “We are unless you want to explain what happened here,” John said over his shoulder but didn’t slow a step. “I don’t know how long the stone can keep the local law driving in circles, and Orion can’t work on a cover up with us hanging around.”

  “I can’t leave yet,” Vick said and hoped he didn’t need to explain.

  By John’s face, he wouldn’t make him, but his sympathy didn’t compensate for the shake of his head.

  “There isn’t time. You wasted too much getting me out of your way.”

  “I don’t care,” Vick said. “We can’t leave them in a trunk. If you want it quick, come help. Maybe you owe them that.”

  A hard breath passed Suzanne’s lips as she put the pieces together, but Vick didn’t try to hide it from her. He would have to talk about Eric soon enough but wanted to decide the best way. Before any of that, he needed to do something with the body. To his relief, John walked back so he didn’t have to alone.

  “Suzanne,” Vick met her tear-filled eyes. “I need you to pop the trunk.”

  “What?” she looked at him as if he spoke some other language.

  “Please, just go to the driver’s side and stay there.”

  “Eric,” she said, shaking her head as if that made it less true. “Oh God, Maribeth.”

  “You don’t want to see him,” he said, hoping it would be enough. “I’ll tell you everything, but let me do this first.”

  She looked like she might argue but instead nodded and went to do what he asked. John stepped beside him, and they waited in silence for the trunk to open and two bedsheet-wrapped bodies to tumble into the snow. Vick took Eric’s smaller frame in his arms as the cowboy did the same to the warden’s bulkier corpse. They didn’t discuss where they planned to carry them, but Vick took the lead and John followed him back to the elevators. Though there was plenty to discuss on the ride down, where to go and what to do next, there would be time after. For now, Vick stared at Eric’s covered head, resting in the crook of his arm, and told him a silent goodbye.

  When the elevator stopped, they got out and Vick found the same lone worker painting boxes as if he didn’t witness a man and woman burned alive and made whole again. Though he seemed to shrug off the day with a soft whistle, he remembered Vick. Stumbling over the case, he almost went to the floor before he found his footing. Vick walked past him and into the room where he saved Suzanne, setting Eric’s body in her place before letting John do the same for the warden. The metal case fit them head to foot, the cowboy moving away so Vick could close the lid.

  “How much should I hate knowing I end up in a box with him?”

  “That depends on if you would rather be locked with him in the trunk of your car at the bottom of a swamp,” John turned as if it was the only eulogy he had for them. Vick stared a few seconds longer before he followed.

  “So it’s always been him and me like that at the end.”

  “Why not? You’ll understand each other more than anyone else in this world. Who else could?”

  “You,” Vick said outside the elevator.

  “I’m millennia past remembering what it was like to be you or Joe Richards.”

  “Suzanne then,” Vick said as the elevator opened and they went inside.

  The cowboy nodded once and slow. “You do have her now.”

  “What does that mean?” Vick asked as they crossed the lobby.

  John turned to him then, a hard smile curling his lip as he adjusted his hat and walked out through the busted glass doors.

  “You were smart enough to save her,” he called back. “Now figure out what to do with her.”

  “What are you going to do?” Vick followed.

  “Find a quiet place to wait,” John said, passing between the cars with melting snow sloshing under his boots.

  “For what?” Vick asked. Suzanne must have heard, walking around the Charger to meet them. The cowboy glanced at Vick with a half-smile that didn’t say he was in awe or even impressed. It was the kind Mitch Hafferty once wore when Vick was five and reached for the stove, refusing to listen to warnings about what would happen when he touched it.

  Epilogue

  An hour after John and Vick left, Brandon drove Carly to her car. From his porch, she heard a percussion of distant gun shots and pretended it was hunters, even as a boom answered as distinct as the cowboy’s voice.

  At Vick’s hotel, she stared out at her car, remembering the stink of urine and stale sex inside. Her only chance of driving it meant rolling down all the windows in the bracing winter air. The thought forced her shiver, and Brandon looked over with curiosity and concern.

  “You okay?” he asked, but she didn’t know what part of the past month he referred to specifically.

  “I will be,” she nodded, confident it would be true one day, “as soon as I’m home.”

  “I hope so for both of us,” he said with an unconvincing smile. She saw in it his doubt his story was over. He escaped his past once for it to find him again, living in his attic until trouble followed suit.

  “Maybe it’s the town,” she looked into the sky towards Creek Hollow. “You came home to face your past, so it found you. You think it would in El Paso or Las Cruces? If I were you, I would take out a map, point to some random place, and move there.”

  “You make that sound easy,” he sighed, leaning his head back.

  “Why can’t it be?”

  “I have a congregation,” he looked at her.

  “Fuck them.” She laughed when his cheeks went red. Whatever bad he once did, he was well past it now, but no one could tell him that. He had to decide for himself, his only chance at being free from the person he used to be.

  “I can’t—,” he started to defend his faith or his church or whatever chord she struck wrong, but she had too far to drive on little sleep. So she reached to where his hand lingered on the gear shift.

  “I’m just saying there are more towns than Creek Hollow that need a pastor. If you ever find yourself in one called Pine Haven, look me up.”

  He nodded but didn’t say anything else, putting any remaining words into his smile as she got out. They were two spots from her car, and she didn’t look back until inside, glancing with a short wave as she drove away.

  North was all she had but didn’t mean she made any decision about her future. The interstate went to Bishopville, South Carolina as well as to Pine Haven, North Carolina. She had thirteen hours to make up her mind but only needed one to realize nothing remained in the apartment where Snead died. All she would find were bad memories and worse habits with a certainty anyone who survived John Valance would find her there. That left Pine Haven, but the idea scared her as much as any drug-addled hitman.

  She reached Atlanta before stopping, her eyelids sticking together too long and often. The guy at the motel desk probably thought she was on something by the way she swayed and focused on keeping her blinks from becoming naps. She recognized that smug judgment but met it without shame, snatching the key to go collapse long enough to manage the rest of the drive. She didn’t think about John and Vick or what happened after they left until she woke up ten hours later and turned on the television to hear what the news said. If John killed all the men Mr. Ciasto sent for her, it meant some kind of massacre, the kind of thing all-day news networks covered until the next one happened. The room’s TV got all of them, but none mentioned Louisiana at all. Her thoughts built toward dread before she remembered the cowboy who once sat beside her bed. A man who couldn’t die promised her past problems wouldn’t live long enough to become future ones. If she trusted anyone, it was him, so she went to the bathroom to rub cold water over her face, de
ciding to save the shower for when she finished driving.

  She passed the Pine Haven town limits at 9 am, a full day since she told John Valance goodbye. She thought she was nervous crossing into North Carolina for the first time in ten years, but that didn’t compare to what built with every progressive inch towards downtown. If she pinpointed the source, she might talk herself through or tamp it down far, but it was everything. Seeing her mom again after what she put her through. Meeting Lita for the first time and finding out how she measured to her fantasy of what a mother should be. That should have been the scariest part, but when she dug deep, what terrified her most was standing in front of her father to tell him sorry. No matter what anyone else did, whether her mother wept and daughter screamed pure joy or vice versa, his reaction mattered more. If he couldn’t forgive her, there’d be no chance for her there. She almost sobbed at the pressure but kept it together as she slipped around the courthouse and west toward her childhood home.

  Though there’d been plenty in the news about what happened last summer, it didn’t feel real until she drove among the burned-out frames and construction sites that were once the landmarks of her childhood. Beyond the courthouse scaffolds, the ruins of the Hovington House should have prepared her for what she would find when she turned down her old street. She followed her memory to the house where she grew up and found a blackened shell in its place. There wouldn’t be any nervous walk to the front door or a last choice of whether to ring the doorbell, only soot and a collection of keepsakes too damaged to salvage. Part of her wondered if that was fair warning from what she called the universe and Brandon Marshall called God, an invisible arrow pointing from the sky at the wreckage to say “This is you.” Those thoughts led her down her old pathetic path in the first place, figuring no version of a good life existed that she deserved. As disappointed as she felt not being able to be done, she knew all along redemption wouldn’t come easy. So she drove to the end of the street and turned back the other way. She didn’t know where her family lived now but always knew where to find one of them.