by Alex White
Hiram’s blood spatters became crimson skids dragged across the concrete. His feet weren’t rising and falling the way they should have been. He was dying. Loxley felt a pang of disappointment that she hadn’t made the killing blow herself. What if he died before they got to him? How long would he take to make a ghost? Would he be like Nora’s ghost? She’d have to run the second he drew his last breath, or he would ravage her with dead hands.
The trail led them into the furnace building, which rumbled like an endless peal of thunder. Blood was harder to spot on steel gratings, but there was so much of it now. They passed a fleeing worker, who took one look at Quentin’s pistol and darted away. Had Hiram scared the man before they arrived?
The blood drops scattered through an open steel bulkhead, which glowed with reflected fire. Just being close to it was like the sun beating down on her back on a hot summer’s day. The heat surrounded her, pressed against her, and it took all her conviction not to stop and savor its embrace on her aching bones. The static rushed forward at her small comfort, and she blinked and flapped it away. Quentin stopped and looked her over and she gestured down the corridor with her knife.
“He’s getting away,” she said.
They wound through the dense forest of pipes and tanks inside the furnace building, Hiram’s trail far harder to follow across the metal grates. Twice, they nearly took wrong turns. They climbed a set of stairs and found a long catwalk, several offshoots leading away through the almost-impenetrable pipes to the right, to the left, the hellish fires of the steel furnace. Loxley peered over the side and saw viscous, bubbling fluid, bright white and orange, at least sixty feet below. Its heat stung her face and exposed hands, and she had to look away. It was like laying down on asphalt in the summer. Even her knife felt overly hot in her palm.
Quentin reached back and patted her arm, then gestured to the end of the catwalk. She followed his line of sight to a doorway, past the thick maze of ducts and pipes, and spied the tip of Hiram’s bloody boot. A pool of crimson had spread under it, and its toe was up, as if Hiram lay just around the corner on his back. Quentin glanced back at her and she nodded. They began to move up, weapons at the ready. She only hoped he was not yet dead, so she would have time to escape before his ghost emerged. They could rush him, stick him with Cap’s knife and be done.
One hundred paces and they’d be on him. The furnace’s blaze seeped into her, becoming less bearable by the second. Sixty paces. Quentin locked back his hammer. Forty paces. The boot hadn’t moved. Quentin craned his neck for a better look.
When he took his next step, a hail of gunfire erupted from the blind alcove to his right, and he shouted in surprise: five shots in all. Each pop jolted Loxley, and she instinctively jumped backward. Quentin went stumbling toward the railing before sinking down against it, a look of horror covering his face. Red poured from his neck, and several dots appeared upon his shirt.
The click that came at the end of those five shots was deafening.
Her mouth full of rage and terror, she dashed around the corner to find the grinning Hiram lying on his back, clicking his empty pistol at the air. His own shirt and jacket were soaked with his life, and his skin was ashen even in the scorching light. He was wearing only one shoe.
“Oh, fuck,” he chuckled. “I didn’t think you’d come with –”
The knife hot in her palm, she lunged at him. He raised his arm to stop her, and the blade sank into his forearm, glancing off bone. He screeched, clawing at her with his free hand as she straddled his hips. She stabbed again, still blocked by his feeble defense. She ripped aside his arm, now as weak as a child’s, and plunged the knife sidelong into his chest. Hiram’s ribs guided it into his softest parts, and she yanked it free before stabbing him again. His cries became gurgles, and his smile transformed into terror. A dozen more times she pierced his chest, face, neck and stomach.
By the time she’d finished, he wore no expression at all.
Once his screams had faded and fury subsided, she became aware that she was crying. Her shuddering breaths burst from her in long, mournful sobs, and she released the knife, still buried in Hiram’s heart. She hadn’t seen the dying man in the limousine, but she’d felt his blood. This time, she’d been able to touch the whole thing – to see him as he changed from a person into nothing more than meat. She’d ripped him into a tattered husk.
Her first thought was to run. He’d be coming back soon.
When she turned around, she saw Quentin, his convulsing hand held to his blood-slickened neck. His eyes rolled back in his head, and his hand fell to the ground, allowing his life to pour from him like water from a tap.
“No!” She scrambled over to him. “No, you can’t!” She pressed a palm to his neck, but the wounds covering his chest were myriad and catastrophic. His sticky blood coated her arm, mixing with Hiram’s. He was going to die. The world was ending again.
The din of the furnace mingled with Quentin’s gurgling, and her hands shot up to her ears to cover them. Quentin’s eyes had become unfocused. He wasn’t looking at anything anymore. She reached out and touched his face, but he didn’t react.
You can’t leave me. You can’t die right now. I’m sorry. Please, I’m so sorry. I just want you to get up.
His wounds were no bigger than coins, but they’d downed the large man. His whole body shuddered, then his breath ceased to flow. His chest wound no longer sucked at the air. Behind him, the furnace roared, drowning out Loxley’s cries.
Two men lay mortally wounded at her feet. It was time to leave.
She forced herself to stumble down the catwalk. Duke would die for this – for Nora and Quentin. She’d go to his house this very night and gut him in his bed. She’d spill his blood across his rich floors and sheets and walls and curtains and anything else she could find.
But she’d never get that far. Quentin had died helping her because he’d been right about her. She couldn’t kill on her own. Hiram would have murdered her with little trouble if it wasn’t for Quentin. Her body ached; her mind was fried. Duke would have a far easier time with her.
Below her feet, the diamond grating seemed to undulate with each step. It made a pleasing pattern in her vision, offering her a way to calm down. She could pick out diagonal lines in two directions, but also straight, fat, horizontal lines and long, thin, vertical ones. She liked the way threads interlaced when she lined up the diamonds in her mind.
She shook her head. Hold off the static. Just get out before the ghosts come. Otherwise, they’ll...
She stopped and turned to look back at Hiram. When she’d been invaded by Nora’s ghost, she’d found herself able to emulate her friend’s behaviors. What if she let Hiram touch her? Her eyes drifted to the empty gun at his feet – something she could never hold. Every shot terrified her, but if she was more like Hiram...
Her feet refused to carry her back to the corpses. Her instincts begged her to run. She began to sense a distortion, a sour note in her surroundings. The furnace became deafening, though its orange light dimmed before her. She heard the clang of the Foundry, closer than ever, keeping time underneath the chaos. The dead stirred.
One foot plunged forward, then the other. Loxley fought her dread, pushing against the flow of a river as each footfall carried her closer to Quentin’s body. The crackles jolted through her hands and into her arms, swirling around her spine. She stopped and kicked her toes against the grating. She came to rest in front of her friend and knelt down.
Two spirits might kill her outright. No, there couldn’t be two ghosts – Hiram, not Quentin. Her friend had been strong, but she needed the man who killed him, the man who knew everything about Bellebrook and murder. She grabbed his shirt and pulled him onto his side. He was heavy, but she had carried many heavy burdens. She ran a hand over his sweat-slickened cheek, his stubble scratchy over his soft skin. His deep, brown eyes regarded some distant sight, and she covered them so she wouldn’t have to look.
“I’m sorry. I’m just.
..”
The dead only stayed with their bodies when they were juicy. She didn’t want Quentin to be one of those horrifying things. She wanted to put him in the column, to rise into the steam. The heat of the furnace below intensified, hungry, as she positioned her friend’s body at a gap in the bottom of the railing. She pushed his torso through so that his weight would drag him off the moment she let go. She could almost see the flames below, reaching up for them.
And then, the only thing that held Quentin’s corpse in this world were Loxley’s slender hands. She opened her fingers and let him fall. His legs slid from the grating and he was gone with a fiery hiss and an arc of bright, orange flame. She regarded her splayed, bloody fingers for a long time, tears streaming from her eyes. Gone forever in an instant, like so many others before him.
She felt a presence over her shoulder, like someone staring at the nape of her neck. She sucked in a breath and held it. She turned to see Hiram’s ghost, his eyes hollow, his skin ashen, groping for her. She ducked under its clutches; its nearness to her felt like an infected wound – feverish and aching. She couldn’t let him take her here.
The ghost’s face distorted, desirous of her life. Loxley sobbed as its empty sockets bored into her. It swiped, its arms blinding fast, but she had already jumped back. She stumbled to the ground and it got ahold of her ankle.
Crushing pain rushed through her unlike any ghost’s touch she’d felt before. Her leg went numb, but she kept her breath and jerked her foot away. She clambered back, and as she rose, she broke into a loping, wounded sprint.
Hiram’s ghost was so much more than she’d prepared herself for, but she needed what he knew. She made it to the blast door and rounded it without looking back. What if it killed her? She banged down a flight of stairs, out of the heat. What would be left of Loxley if that happened? Her hip felt like she’d torn a muscle inside it, and the more she ran, the more feeling returned to her leg. But how could she kill Duke without Hiram? Was this the price of her revenge?
With that thought, she stopped, and a tide of bleak horror rose around her. She waited for the spirit’s touch, and it did not disappoint.
Chapter Fifteen
Wheelbarrow
WAR OF THE Worlds – the pages felt good in Hiram’s hands, browning though they were. He took a long drag on his cigarette before starting the next paragraph. The alien tripods had just emerged with their heat rays and began frying the populace of Earth. His eyes flicked to the cherry on the end of his smoke, trying to imagine what the heat rays did to a person’s skin. An old Duke Ellington record hissed on the player as if to imitate the noise.
Hiram’s stone cottage at Bellebrook may have looked like a servant’s quarters on the outside, but the interior boasted a posh elegance. It held thousands of books and records, collected anywhere he could find them. The high fidelity system could really bang around, too. Back in the day, the cottage was used as a kitchen for the main house, in case of fire, and it still had the wine cellar, which Duke kept stocked. His house was positively sedate when compared with the mansion across the green; Hiram preferred it that way. He filled the space to the brim with loud music, smoke, booze, drugs and pussy as often as he could, and the ostentatious Southern royal bullshit tended to get in the way of that.
Duke was less than understanding of Hiram’s predilections when he gave him the place, as though that was supposed to stop him from indulging. Constant admonitions, invitations to church, meals and other lunacy were extended to Hiram, but he couldn’t stand Duke or his people. The dumb bastard could stay inside and pray the day away; the night belonged to the smart folk.
The Bell family hadn’t bitched about Hiram’s activities when he’d been working out of Nashville ten years prior. They couldn’t give two shits what he did in his off-time, provided the right people got what was coming to them in a prompt and professional manner. It was a fun start to his career, running jobs against the Con, blood in the streets every night. The Bells were righteous warriors, just like Duke. The big difference was that they were union boys, not Bible thumpers. All good things came to an end, though, and Hiram had sold out the Bells for a better gig at their hated enemy. Once at the Con, he’d ended up assigned to Duke, another asshole working a coup. Sometimes things were just too easy.
They didn’t have to like each other to do business. Being Duke’s favorite pet killer was worth a lot of money, and it was about to be worth a lot more. The old fucker was losing his grip, coming unhinged over this Loxley bitch. Hiram supposed he could understand the man’s frustration: the limousine would never be the same after the freak had torn open Ray’s leg in there – plenty of blood for a perfectly-white leather interior.
Loxley was decently creepy, too; she knew things she shouldn’t have known. She’d laughed when they had her naked at gunpoint. She’d split Ray open when they hadn’t searched her for a knife. No part of her sat well with Hiram.
And then there were the things Marie said: chilling things about supernatural feelings or some such. He shook his head and took another drag. And to think he read books for their crazy stories.
Duke was falling to pieces, and a lot of guys would have followed him to the end of that tunnel, but not Hiram. He knew everything about the forming coup, the locations of resources, the names of most of the players in Nashville and Atlanta, potential targets and strategies. He’d carefully documented it as it unfolded, just in case things started to slip, and to his delight, they had. A great trader can make money in any market, and Hiram thrived on change. The Consortium would pay him handsomely for his information, and he’d already started working the back channels to broker the exchange. Duke would pay him for his current services, then die. The Consortium wasn’t a group to fuck with.
And screw Duke’s glorious revolution, too. Sure, he needed hitters when he wanted power, but as soon as everyone was holy-rolling there wouldn’t be any room for men who got their hands dirty. Hiram would have his turn against the wall first. Get paid, don’t get betrayed. It was a matter of playing chicken until the time was right. Wait too long, and Duke would ice him. Take action too soon, and there’d be no money in it.
Loxley was a sign of the times, and Duke was done. Time to sell the old fucker out. He glanced over at his bookshelf where he’d hidden his notes inside an old copy of Dracula. He could take them to the Consortium’s man on the fifth ring, get paid and get out.
There was a knock on the door. He stood, switched off the record player, strode to the door and opened it. Marie stood on the other side with the mildly disinterested look she always had around him. When she’d been hired, he’d given her Hell about her lip, hoping to get a rise out of her. She only responded by becoming more polite and withdrawn. Once, he’d asked her how she sucked a dick, and Duke had jumped all over him after, but Marie never said a thing. She didn’t usually look him in the eye, either. At least, not until she’d helped them move Nora Vickers’s body out of the cellar.
“Shiner’s still looking as nasty as ever, Marie.”
“You called for me?”
“What’d she hit you with, anyway? Like a bottle or something?”
“A rock,” she looked him over. “What do you want?”
He snickered. “Rude as ever. I need your help moving another body. Cellar. Same place as before.”
Her eyes met his, and he felt a jolt. She was a rebellious little freak, that Marie. He enjoyed watching this new side of her awaken. If it wasn’t for her lip, she might be a looker, and Hiram liked a girl with attitude. Nora had been pretty sparky; he hadn’t enjoyed executing her. If she’d started spying for Duke, maybe they could’ve hooked up. It seemed as though she liked him at the time.
He stepped aside so Marie could enter, then followed her to the stairs. In the spacious wine cellar, racks upon racks of dimly-lit bottles stretched before them; some open holes where a bottle had been removed. He’d made more than a few of those holes, particularly in the dry reds.
They rounded the corne
r to where he’d shot Nora and Marie stopped short. No corpse awaited them, only a blank stone wall. She bowed her head, and Hiram figured she knew the score.
“Why?”
“The usual reasons. You know too much, and you’ve been talking to that Loxley girl. Can’t afford for the Con to get wise.”
“Is Duke going to take care of my son?” she whispered.
He untucked the gun from its hiding place in back of his pants. It had been uncomfortable waiting for her to arrive with it stowed like that. “Yeah. Said he was going to put your kid up in a fancy school in England. You know this is nothing personal, right?”
“Then he’ll be better off with me dead. May I pray?”
Hiram shrugged. “Why not?”
Marie sank down onto her knees in front of the wall and clasped her shaking hands together. She closed her eyes. “Dear heavenly Father,” she began, but Hiram’s gunshot stopped the rest of her sentence.
The woman’s body crumpled forward, and he put a second shot into the back of her head. He waited for the twitching to stop, which didn’t take long. He glanced over at the wall, which had been painted a sticky red, flecked with bone.
“Just being nice,” said Hiram. “Thought I’d spare you all the suspense. I’m sure Our Lord and Savior got the message.”
He stuffed the gun into his belt and spun on his heel to head back upstairs. Duke was going to tell him to clean all of this up, he was sure of it. Fuck that. He’d be long gone by tomorrow, after he took care of Loxley. Hopefully, the Consortium would let him come back and get his books after they raided Bellebrook.
Hiram stopped at the foot of the stairs and chuckled. “Thanks for helping me move your body down here.”
Misdirective
HIRAM ROLLED OUT of bed to the sound of his alarm clock hammering his skull. He silenced it, ambled over to the sink and spat a wad of yellow, smoked phlegm into the drain. He then took a big pull of gold mouthwash and swallowed it, feeling it burn its way into his stomach. It slammed into his guts a bit harder than he was used to, and he swore loudly. His stomach had been heinously irritated recently, and he knew why: today was the day to make his move. After he met Loxley at the stacker, he’d disappear. Better to quit this job before he was shitting blood.
