Spirits of the Charles

by Paul C. K. Spears

  SPIRITS OF THE CHARLES

  Paul C. Spears

  SPIRITS OF THE CHARLES

  Copyright © 2018 by Paul Spears

  All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system without the prior written permission of the author.

  All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Editor: Paul Spears

  Cover design: Michael Mitton

  ISBN 978-0-692-09974-2

  Ebook ISBN 978-0-692-09974-2

  Published by

  KINDLE DIRECT PUBLISHING

  Dedication

  To my family, who have always supported my creativity, even when my head’s in the clouds. And to Cori, who does the same, but never hesitates to bring me back to earth when I need it.

  Thank you all.

  “Ev’ry mornin’, every evening, ain’t we got fun?

  Not much money, oh but honey, ain’t we got fun?

  The rent’s unpaid, dear, we haven’t a bus…

  But smiles were made, dear, for people like us.”

  -- “Ain’t We Got Fun,” vaudeville song by Egan and Khan, 1921

  "The history of human growth and development is at the same time the history of the terrible struggle of every new idea… in its tenacious hold on tradition, the Old has never hesitated to make use of the foulest and cruelest means to stop the New… in whatever form, or period, the latter may assert itself."

  -- Emma Goldman, "Anarchism and Other Essays"

  Prelude

  In 1867, Florence Nightingale built the first emotional distillers, hoping to “drain” excess feelings from shattered veterans of the Crimean War.

  It didn’t work.

  However, Florence and her assistants had stumbled on something unnatural: the process, while dangerous to the soul, produced a substance unknown to mankind. It was an impossible, non-Newtonian liquid, beautiful and strange. It was the essence of human feeling, condensed into physical form. It was revolutionary.

  It was also easy to make, and highly addictive.

  The secret to its production spread across Europe, and into America. Certain runes from a Roman cult circulated in the black-market, becoming crucial to the process. Distilleries churned to life, condensing ‘Draughts’ in great numbers. By the turn of the century, condensed emotions had replaced alcohol as the United States’ drug of choice, and exotic varieties spread like wildfire.

  The Great War arrived, slaughtered a generation, and went. Soldiers guzzled flasks of Rage at Verdun; the survivors found Joy more to their liking, and drowned themselves in it. New Year’s Eve, in 1918, was toasted with champagne flutes of Hope and Nostalgia, mixed with bubbling champagne—and a touch of Despair, for its bittersweet flavor.

  By this time, the mutations caused by Draughts were well-known… but America kept drinking anyway. Breweries claimed the effects were temporary. The fact the brewers had no idea what they were selling, or even how it worked, didn’t stop people from indulging. New Draught companies cropped up every day, breeding fear and panic in rural communities. It was as if the Devil himself had arrived in person to corrupt their youth. Not only were young people dancing to “colored music” and smoking, now they were literally changing, warping into living Myths. And sometimes, they didn’t change back.

  Fear gathered. Marches were held, distillers dragged into the streets and beaten. In response to an unstable market, the Draughts grew more powerful, more unpredictable. Myths were now a frequent sight. Wives no longer recognized husbands; preachers rejected their flocks. People drunk on Lust grew horns, or indulged in Love and became cackling cherubs, complete with wings. It was a theological crisis. Something needed to be done, before the country tore itself to pieces. The debate rose through the ranks of power, and in the face of the strangeness devouring their nation, Congress finally took action.

  In 1919, the Volstead Act passed, making the selling of Draughts illegal. Prohibition was now the law… but it wasn’t enough.

  The party of mankind’s demise had only begun.

  PART ONE: NO SENSE OF HUMOUR

  June 29th, 1926

  CHAPTER 1

  IT HAD BEEN A MORNING JUST like this, Rose Sweetwater thought, the day they’d burned her hometown to the ground.

  Morning dew rose off the fields in a slow, hazy mist. The chill of pre-dawn was full of sleepy birdsong, the chitter of insects and the babbling of brooks. The damp fog hung around her, making her skin cool and clammy. She’d risen this morning full of fading dreams and scraps of nightmare; bad memories, Southern memories. Luckily, she had a fresh gig to distract her. She’d shined her shoes and donned her mechanic’s cap, rising earlier than the rest of Boston to do the city’s dirty work for them. The kind of work that better people, respectable people, preferred to happen in the shadows.

  Mood-legging work.

  At least it was predictable… usually. Cash changed hands, booze rattled in hidden compartments and glowed with infused emotional essence. Today was a trade-off like any other—a shivering, cold dawn, a quiet back-roads deal with scumbags and criminals.

  At least it’s a paycheck, she thought.

  Standing on a muddy country road, Rose checked the safety on her Mauser for the hundredth time. She’d never fired it, and hoped she’d never have to. Contrary to what folks thought, Draught-running wasn’t a violent business—until somebody fucked up, of course.

  The safety was still on. Slipping the stubby gun into her overalls, she rocked on her heels, her boyish frame too energetic for all this sitting and waiting. She and Gus Henderson were standing on the edge of dense, overgrown woods and fields, listening for the sounds of their supplier. Or the sounds of the police.

  “They’re late,” she said, glancing at Gus.

  Her partner’s craggy, sideburned face was bent over a handful of baseball cards, assessing their worth. He was a big Myth with burly shoulders, ugly as sin, but loyal. As long as someone else wasn’t paying better.

  “They’re always late,” he said, his voice a guttural growl.

  “Today’s a bad day to be late.”

  “Every day’s a bad day to be late. Just stay loose.” He shuffled the cards, tucking them into his shirt pocket. A racketeer and shyster, he’d probably sell them for ten times their original price later. The Greed he drank with his coffee made him good at schemes like that… and it also made him ugly.

  But Rose could deal with ugly. He might look like a lizard, but Gus could throw a haymaker like no one else. Sometimes, you needed a fella like that backing you up.

  In silence, they glanced at the milk truck behind them. Its glass jugs stood empty, coated in white paint. They’d rented the truck from Watertown Dairy, for camouflage, but it was a sloppy disguise. Liquid Grief was purple, not white, and once they filled the bottles anyone who checked would be able to see through their ruse.

  Rose brushed a coil of hair out of her eyes, watching the quiet country road. Gus was lighting another cigar, despite it being five in the morning, and the click of his cigar-cutter was deafening in the quiet.

  She wrinkled her nose at the fungal smoke that followed. “Those things will kill you. You ought to quit ‘em.”

  His pebbly, distorted face bunched into folds as he smiled, and razor teeth glimmered in his mouth. “Faster than the stomach cancer? Good.” He drew in a breath and exhaled, clouding the dawn with blue smog. “It’s my guts, not my lungs I’m concerned for. Let the stogies have ‘em.”

  Rose shrugged.

  They were a strange pair,
the two of them: a lithe, youthful black woman wearing bricklayer’s coveralls, and a guy who looked like the offspring of an alligator and a circus strongman. It was a wonder they’d even landed the gig, looking the way they did, but their reputation had been enough. Rose was best getaway driver in New England, and Gus refused to do jobs without her. Since he was the craziest bundle of muscle money could buy south of Concord, the two of them came as a pair. And so here they were.

  Just waiting.

  Rose stuck a toothpick between her front teeth. Her left pocket was full of them. She was very serious about her hygiene—if she was going to be a criminal, she might as well be a clean one. “Damn Fomeroys are probably drunk.”

  “They’ll come.” Gus spat into a ditch, the saliva sizzling on impact. “Maybe not sober, but they’ll come.”

  “Huh… sounds like you’re right.” The rattle of a car engine boomed through the birch trees, coming closer. She smelled the exhaust before she saw their truck: a thick, vile stench, almost as bad as the Fomeroys themselves.

  The woodlands of western Massachusetts were not well-settled. The ground here was full of stones, bad for farming. A long time ago, moonshiners had settled here, populating the dense pines. Those moonshiners had gotten ahold of an emotional distiller—somehow. Overnight, they’d become the biggest supplier of knockoff Draughts in the state. Those who couldn’t afford to smuggle from New Hampshire or past the Coast Guard had to go through the Fomeroys, and it wasn’t easy.

  The Fomerys had gone a little… funny, brewing Draughts for so long. Rumor had it they were all cracked in the head. Rose wasn’t one for rumor, but she hated dealing with the clan anyway. She preferred to barter with people who were more… Well, human.

  Their supplier’s rickety pickup truck appeared round the bend, its truck-bed shedding chicken feathers like a comet’s tail. She saw Gus reach for the Winchester, in the back of their milk truck—the Fomeroys were coming on fast, too fast. But she didn’t flinch, and the squeal of corroded brakes sounded just as the Fomeroys stopped inches away. The driver-side door banged open.

  “You’re late,” she said.

  “Eh, keep your skirt on.” Dick Fomeroy, the eldest, hopped down from the cab with an unsteady wobble. He was a thick man with twisted arms and beetle brows, a ragged derby hat clinging to his scalp. His eyes wandered, watery and distracted. Dick stumbled to the back of the truck and began unloading a cargo of covered buckets.

  “We can be as late as we want,” Edgar Fomeroy, the younger, clambered out the passenger side. “We got us a monopoly.” He was a gangly youth with an excess of pimples—and an excess of temper.

  “Yeah? Good for you. Now give us the merchandise.”

  His lip curled. “Bossy, eh? Little treat like you ought to know better.” His shirt and overalls bulged, shifted—his skin was covered in mutations, the reward for mixing Draughts with shoddy equipment. Skin contact wasn’t usually enough to turn someone into a Myth, but the Fomeroys were so careless they’d turned themselves into freaks simply by brewing their product.

  “You oughta do your job,” growled Gus, moving up to stand by Rose. He towered over all of them, six feet of ex-boxer. “Or do you need a reminder, about who works for who here?”

  “All right! Calm down. City-slickin’ palooka…” Edgar joined his brother, pulling a hand-beaten copper funnel from the cab. They took the milk bottles Gus offered, and set them up in a line. She backed off as the brothers did their work, wrapping kerchiefs over their mouths.

  “Thanks,” Rose said to Gus. “I hate working with these two.” The brothers had begun pouring streams of Grief down the funnel and into the counterfeit bottles. “I don’t know which is worse-their attitudes, or the smell.”

  “Definitely the smell.” Gus stayed close to the Winchester, watching the moonshiners with reptilian eyes. “Maybe it’s the Greed talking, but our boys seem weirder than usual today.”

  “Yeah. And that takes some doing.” The Fomeroys were muttering to each other, and the stench of Grief—like a mix of licorice and seawater—was rising in thick waves, choking and foul.

  The hairs on Rose’s neck began to rise. She’d had this feeling right before the riots in Florida: that creeping, crawling sensation that something was wrong. It seemed to come from everywhere, triggered by a change in the wind, a distant sound… something on the edge of perception.

  A far-off rumble reached her, echoing through the trees.

  “Gus. Someone’s coming.”

  “I hear ‘em.” Gus had taken the rifle from the truck, holding it in the crook of his arm. “Boys! Hurry it up!”

  “Can’t rush Draughts,” said Dick, muffled under his handkerchief. “It’s a delicate art...”

  “He’s right,” Eddie said. “Spill this juice, and your payment disappears. Betcha Mr. Wallace won’t be pleased with that!”

  Rose winced at the mention of her employer. Frank Wallace was a brutal thug whose brothers had promised her solid payment, for land-shipped Draughts.. The Wallaces were con men and murderers, bent on starting an Irish mob and taking over the city… but they paid well, and sometimes good pay meant strange bedfellows.

  She had no love for Frank or his “lads,” but she needed his money—badly. And so did Gus. “Screw the payment,” she said. “Hurry this up, or we’ll give you a reason to hurry.”

  The Fomeroys glanced at her… and then kept pouring, at the same glacial speed. They knew she was no bruiser, and they were calling her bluff. But she could put on a mean poker-face, and the gun looked serious enough. She pulled the Mauser.

  Gus growled deep in his throat. “Engine’s getting closer.”

  “Engines. There’s more than one.” Rose covered her mouth and nose; the fumes from the Grief were making her sleepy. Depressed. “Wait a second. That stuff is gray!”

  “So?” Ed said, defensive. But his eyes shifted to Jack for a moment, and back.

  Gus was livid. “Grief is purple, you backwoods sunsabitches! That stuff’s Misery, not Grief!” He raised the Winchester. Rose felt the prickle in her spine turn into a hum of anxiety. “What’re you trying to pull?”

  “Our Grief is… always gray,” said Ed. “It’s just… it’s just how the batch comes out!” But they’d stopped pouring. Both moonshiners seemed frozen, lacking even the creativity for more lies.

  “It’s a move,” said Rose. The pieces snapped into place so quickly she felt stupid for not seeing it. “Gus, they’re selling to someone else. Someone paid them to meet us here—knock off the competition!” Her throat went dry as the roar of the approaching cars drowned out her voice. “This is an ambush!”

  The Fomeroys bolted for their truck. Rose saw Edgar tug a pistol from his pocket. Gus raised his rifle, and put a round through the Fomeroys’ fender. The booming crack of the gunshot jolted her, and she ran for the milk-truck.

  Gus shot again, sparks striking from the moonshiner’s hood. “Get back here, you lying little cowards!”

  “Gus, leave ‘em! We gotta roll!” She cranked the starter-handle on the front of their truck—too quickly. It leapt from her fingers, swinging around and bashing her hand. Her knuckles went numb and she bit back profanity.

  “Two-timing finks!” Gus followed her as Ed steadied his corroded revolver on the pickup’s steering wheel, firing wild. The gunshots rattled her, threatened to stun her to inaction; instead, she grabbed the starter and shoved it hard as she could. Each second of delay brought them closer to death—the Fomeroys couldn’t shoot for shit, but whoever was coming down the road probably could.

  Finally their old milk truck sputtered to life; she leapt behind the wheel, as a bullet whizzed through their canopy, leaving a shaft of dawn-light in its wake. “Got it! Let’s go!”

  “I needed that cash!” But he jumped in the passenger side as the Fomeroys went into reverse and pulled away.

  “Not now, Gus!” She jerked the truck to forward-gear just as two big Ford cars came roaring down the road—one from each direction. It w
as a smart move: their milk truck was trapped, at a bend in the road. There would be no cross-fire.

  The approaching cars swerved and stopped, forming a blockade. Men piled out—men with big polo coats and blank faces. They carried a small arsenal between them. She saw Colt pistols, Springfields, even a massive Browning chopper, its ammo drum pregnant with death. Fear twisted her guts to jelly as she stomped the gas and drove towards one of the firing squads; the eyes of these men were cold and detached. Whoever they were, they’d done this before. Many times.

  They were eighty feet from the enemy now, barreling along the potholed road. Rose kept her foot down.

  “Those are Family cars!” Gus pumped the lever on the Winchester, balacing the barrel on a side-mirror and squinting down the sights. “We hit the Family, we’re dead—”

  Sixty feet. “We’re already dead! Shoot, goddammit!”

  Gus squinted… and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. “Shit, it’s jammed! Cover me!”

  Thirty feet.

  Rose leaned out the window, pistol in her hand, and froze. The blank faces ahead of her were fearless and hateful, but she’d seen what bullets could do to people. Tearing them apart like paper, like shredded trash. Back in Florida, she’d seen bodies turned into chunks, human lives reduced to piles of meat. Those memories were visceral and stamped on her mind so firmly for a moment it was all she could see. The road vanished and there was blood, only blood…

  Then reality snapped back. She pushed her pistol at Gus. “Use mine—I’ve got the wheel!”

  Gus leaned out the passenger side without question, and started shooting. He was ex-military, and unlike her, had no trouble dishing out lethal force. One, two, three—the shots came with measured regularity, sending a fusillade of lead through the morning mist.