by T. Braddy
It was a good sight to see him laugh, too, because his laughter was contagious. He laughed with his whole body, all squinted eyes and open mouth.
That was about the time he collapsed to the ground, screaming.
In my altered state, I couldn’t quite react in real-time. I knew something bad was happening, knew the gunshots were meant for me, but I had trouble reacting.
Limba Fitz spared me the opportunity.
He had put two in Deuce and was dragging me away while the big man gurgled and spat on the ground. Fitz turned and fired another two rounds. I didn’t hear Deuce fighting for life behind us anymore, and so I did something I hadn’t attempted in some time: I prayed.
“We’ve got somewhere to be,” Fitz said, interrupting my silent pleas for the life of my friend to be pardoned. “I mean, I hate to be rude and all.”
“No problem,” I echoed. “We’ve got somewhere to be.”
My voice was an echo of an echo, and it seemed to come from someone outside of myself, but the words nevertheless managed to appear in the air in front of me.
“Right. Somewhere to be.”
On the upside, Fitz had slowed his roll. Dude wasn’t dying, but slamming into Deuce’s rental had put him at a disadvantage. Had a few injuries. Limping, that sort of thing. Maybe a few cracked ribs. One red patch in his shoulder told me I had struck him with at least one round from my gun.
I didn’t need much. Enough to level the playing field, which, at this point, meant taking a few of his digits. I’d also accept a broken arm or a fractured leg. I might not have all my fingers, but I had all my toes, and if I could get away, I had a shot, at least to fight another day. He wasn’t playing, even if he was toying with me, and he meant to kill me slow. I couldn’t let him do that.
Whatever that ended up being.
“River Street,” he said. “We’re only a few blocks away.”
“Public,” I said. Every one of my syllables came out in a barely coherent rasp. I was drunk and broken, half a man. Half of me just wanted to lie down and die, and that was the part I had to fight as much as Fitz.
“At this point, I’m not worried. They’re looking for you, not me. I can disappear into a crowd while you fight it off. Keep your shit together, and we’ll be fine.”
Well, we won’t be fine, I wanted to say. You’ll be peaches and cream, but I– I’ll end up in a shallow grave somewhere, condemned by public opinion as a murderer.
* * *
Even on a Sunday night, River Street was lit up like a dark carnival. People walking along the cobblestone streets, some lounging by the railing, peering over at the black water flowing into the ocean. Down the road a ways, I heard the not atypical woo from a group of college kids downing shots on the patio of a bar that changed owners like I changed my mind. The Talmadge Memorial Bridge loomed in the distance like an oversized ship, a giant, illuminated monument of a thing.
It all looked so nice, so peaceful. Just a night on the town. Why couldn’t I just be a normal man, with normal predilections, someone who could have a few beers and stumble home in the chilly Fall air?
I wanted to stop, wanted to lie down just for a minute, just long enough for all of the hurt to settle into the right spots.
The gun against my ribs pushed me forward.
Worse comes to worst, I could make a big commotion, wave my arms and run away like a lunatic. Might end up with a round in my brainpan, a coup de grâce from the evil son-of-a-bitch, but at least I’d be done with this, and he’d be a phantom, a ghost, no longer.
But no, I couldn’t do that. Beyond the fact that my legs wobbled underneath me as I shambled along the cobblestone streets, I feared Fitz would merely begin to gun down strangers until I returned to his strangling grasp. This was my own Faustian bargain; I had to deal with the devil in my own terms.
At least the crowd seemed to be oblivious to my suffering.
Vacationers and locals alike sauntered by without the slightest awareness that a maniac was in their presence. Blitzed to the ears on grain alcohol concoctions from Wet Willie’s, bumping into us as if nothing were amiss, they barreled into the night. Thousands upon thousands, and nary a one aware of the blight that walked among them. Fitz wouldn’t shoot me first. No, he’d take down a woman, maybe her kid – maybe an entire family – before allowing me to keep walking with him.
I wasn’t going to test it.
But my hand hurt. It really hurt, so much so that sweat had begun to bead up and slather my entire body. The injection Fitz had given me relieved some of the pain, but it couldn’t help everywhere. Beyond the knuckles, a crushing sensation now overtook spectral versions of my digits, leaving me with an ache that could not be cured but only endured. Not unlike the spirits with whom I contended whenever I slipped past a graveyard at dusk.
The pain grew to a point I had to try to quell it, but when my right hand reached for where it hurt, I came up with only air.
Fitz blew a snort of hot, foul-smelling air into the back of my neck.“Hell of a fucking feeling, I bet,” he said.
I nodded. It was all I could do to acquiesce. I wasn’t in the mood now for hatred or acrimony. A thundering ache was working its way up my arm, leaden and throbbing, punctuated by the seemingly unrelated feeling of pincers gnawing a nerve in my shoulder. If he was going to kill me, the least I could do was hurry it along by maintaining my cool. Maybe he’d end up taking pity on me.
You know better.
And then the frat boys entered this little scene. I had seen them coming, but I didn’t pay any particular attention to them, because I thought they would duck into a bar before they reached us. Even when they drew close, they had veered onto the other side of the cobblestone pathway, shrieking about some “killer buzz, bro” or some such nonsense. Seemed implied that they’d be a non-issue.
Then one of them lurched to one side, giggling and screaming the lyrics to a song I’m sure I’d hate, and ran headlong into me, his red cup sloshing something that might as well have been battery acid on my disfigured hand.
I stumbled and fell into a puddle of beer-soaked water. Up to my elbows in it.
A scream worked its way out of me, despite my best efforts, and the shaggy-haired kid laughed and tilted his cup up for a heroic swig.
“Sorry, bro,” he said in passing, tottering in the opposite direction. He collided with one of his dude-bros, but none of them got very far after that.
They had begun to bray wildly at the hilarity of this encounter, leering down at me while I screamed, so they didn’t notice Fitz and his pistol. A few passersby screamed, but Fitz didn’t react. He turned and stepped toward the college kids, who suddenly became aware of him and started to say something.
“What, mother–”
The first one got a kiss from the pistol butt. He ended up spitting teeth into his drink. The second backed up, preparing for a swing, when he got the same treatment. He was unconscious before he hit the ground. The third, the kid who had knocked me askew, was too much in his cups to be able to react whatsoever. He caught a couple blows to the face before crumpling in on himself. He lay in a heap, arm folded over his shattered face, screaming unintelligible plosives at no one in particular. Blood poured from the open wound that used to be his mouth.
A crowd began to surround us, a few brave souls filming Fitz’s outburst with their cell phones. Most of them had fled down the street, disappearing into the dark, cavernous holdings of the nearest bar..
One way or another, this was going to be over very soon.
Fitz the movie star wasn’t going to be able to slip away unnoticed this time. The bridge troll that he was, he was about to be hit with a giant spotlight by the Savannah PD.
Once he was done dispensing justice to his coed frat buddies, Fitz helped me out of the puddle. He dragged me, bleeding and nearly unconscious, into Mickey’s bar. I stared down at the bloody mess of a thing I called my hand and slipped into a mild state of shock, if I weren’t already there. I felt the throbbing pain of
the missing fingers, and I tried to wiggle them unsuccessfully.
Mickey towered over the bar, and he was the only warm body in the joint when we entered.
His eyes widened, and he didn’t wait for me to introduce him to Limba Fitz. Instead, he dropped behind the bar, and I heard the distinct sound of a shotgun racking a shell into place.
“Rolson, you okay?” he screamed.
He was an old man ready to go.
“I’m okay,” I said.
Sorry I got you into this, I thought. If I ever get a chance to apologize properly, I will.
“I don’t believe I need to ask for any service this time around,” Fitz said. “Rolson and I have been properly acquainted, so as friends we’re just going to take down a bottle of your finest bourbon, and Rolson here is going to drink it up.” Fitz repeated this in a raspy, sonorous wail. “Drink it all up!”
This was the point at which, during the whole of this affair, I felt most vulnerable. Standing in the middle of an almost-empty bar, caught between two men wielding guns. This action movie sequence was a bit on the nose, even for Limba Fitz.
My captor pushed me forward, using me to knock aside tables and chairs that had the audacity to get in our way. I was a pretty bad human shield, what with me trying to keel over and bleed to death on the floor, but Fitz kept me upright long enough to sit us at the bar.
“Two drinks,” Fitz said. “If you won’t serve us, we’ll serve ourselves.”
“I’ll serve you something, motherfucker,” Mickey replied. He was not a man to be cowed.
“Not with Rolson right here in front of me,” Fitz replied. “Come on, now. No need to be inhospitable. I imagine we only have time for a nightcap before we are escorted away. Just get up, old man, and pour us all a round. It looks undignified for you to be lying down back there.”
“I don’t drink,” Mickey said.
“You will tonight,” Fitz replied. “Just a quick one, and we’ll be on our way.”
Mickey slowly found himself standing at the bar, holding the shotgun with one massive hand, the other searching shakily for a bottle of booze. He held the shotgun in the crook of one elbow.
“Anything’ll do,” Fitz said. “Bartender’s choice.”
Of all the descriptors I could throw at Mickey in that moment, “afraid” wasn’t one of them. He was shaking, sure, but adrenaline is a hell of a drug.
“Hell,” Mickey said, “might as well bring out the good shit.” Without looking behind him, he managed to find a bottle of Johnnie Walker and spin the cap off with one thumb, his eyes never leaving Fitz or the pistol.
“Make ‘em doubles,” Fitz said.
“Rolson seems like he might be hitting his limit.”
“He’s off the wagon a little bit, but what’s one more going to hurt? Seems to me if those sirens can be heard in the distance – and I think they can – it’ll be a while before our boy here has another chance to tie one on. Isn’t that right, Rol?”
“Don’t call me that,” I sputtered.
“Rolson. Mr. McKane. Soon, it’ll be an etching on a headstone or, at best, a number on an orange jumper. Either way, let’s have that drink.”
Mickey lined up three glasses and filled each to the brim. My mouth filled with bile at the thought of imbibing any more alcohol tonight.
“That’s more than a double.”
“This is more than a regular situation,” Mickey replied, raising his glass. “To our newfound friendship?”
“To friendship,” said Fitz, clinking his glass against the barkeep’s.
Meanwhile, I had begun to slip into an altered state of consciousness. I wanted to pass out, wanted to sleep off this feeling and forget about it and my fucking hand, but Fitz wouldn’t let me. He raised me up by one armpit and slid the shot glass in my direction.
Over his shoulder, I saw a smoky black presence, and I relaxed a little bit. The figure’s appearance comforted me in the way I imagined I would feel if I was in a strange place, in a strange town, when an old friend suddenly happened to stumble through the door.
Whatever had possessed me in Lumber Junction, it was coming back in full force. Fitz had wanted to see the great and spectacular show, and now he was about to get it. I suppose in the excitement surrounding the wreck and the River Street revelation, the freak show had slipped his mind.
My sobriety had kept the monster at bay, but now the thin tether had been snipped.
It wasn’t the ghosts I controlled with my drunkenness. It was the monster at the heart of the supernatural force that followed me.
And now it was headed directly for Limba Fitz.
I smiled, and Fitz glanced once over his shoulder. Eyes squinting. He looked slightly nervous, even.
Good, I thought, smiling an even more knowing smile at Fitz himself, who drank down the Johnnie Walker in two measured gulps.
“Here goes,” I said.
First, I downed the double Mickey poured, and then with my good hand, grabbed the bottle itself. The sirens were approaching quickly, but I hoped we’d be gone by the time they arrived. Wasn’t anything but business left to attend to.
I gulped. My throat opened, and the Gates of Hell did, too. Fire consumed me, and I hoped it would consume the whole of this place, as well.
My brain...shifted. Something was happening, something that had become commonplace in the old hometown but was slightly foreign now. I let whatever sensation it was wash over me, and I basked in it as I drank.
“Slow down, partner,” Mickey said, trying to muster a smile, but his eyes never left Fitz’s weapon. The standoff was in full effect.
I clanked the bottle back on the wood of the bar.
“I’m all right,” I said, or at least I thought I said. The words weren’t coming the way normally did, and all the lines that used to be real had begun to grow wavy, uneven.
The shadow behind Fitz, which sounded very much like a thunderstorm in E-minor, slipped its wet, gray-black tendrils around my captor.
Things were about to get a whole lot more interesting.
Fitz flinched. I winked. He could feel it, whatever it was.
I asked, “You ever listen to The Blues, Mr. Fitz?”
“Never. Never been blue enough to want to listen.”
“Well, something tells me you’re about to,” I said.
With a quickness I didn’t believe myself to be capable of, I reached for Mickey’s shotgun. Felt like I was swimming through the air, but I managed to get my hand on it before Fitz put me down. Looked like the guy was moving in slow motion, raising the pistol for a shot at me. Damned thing was pointed right at my head.
The world around me became something halfway between reality and dream, and the booze helped ease the transition. I existed somewhere in the middle of those two worlds, and Fitz appeared to be far away, but he wasn’t. He was right here, and he was about to shoot me in the face.
But he didn’t. That’s when things got real weird.
Fitz’s firing hand bent sideways. The resulting sound could have been an M80 going off, and Fitz actually countenanced surprise when his wrist snapped.
You wanted this, I thought. You wanted to see what the hype was about. Now you’re about to get it.
I aimed and fired on Fitz, point-blank. He was thrown to the ground as if yanked by some unseen bungee cable, and his screams sounded like the sorts of things my mom said banshees elicited when angry.
“You hear that?” I asked, but Mickey shook his head.
“Goddamned shotgun is still echoing in my ears,” he replied.
He had only been injured in the places where the force hadn’t been touching him, which meant the scream I’d heard hadn’t been Fitz at all. That, I was coming to realize, was the force itself.
I looked around. The grayish fog had dissipated, and only its remnants could be discerned in the low illumination of the bar’s lights. The closer I looked, the more I realized it wasn’t a winding fog at all, but a collection of people melded together, like a
n amalgamation of souls. I thought I recognized a man in an old suit and hat, finger-strumming a guitar, but wasn’t sure. Could have been a trick of the brain. The music the shape produced sounded very real, however.
Mickey moved slowly to where Fitz had fallen. The bastard was still breathing. His chest rose in shallow breaths, but damned if he weren’t still clinging to the frayed end of his rope.
“Son-of-a-bitch is indestructible,” Mickey said.
“I don’t think so,” I replied.
I leaned on the old man, sort of standing behind him, trying to get my senses back together. Every cell in my body begged for me to lie down and just stay there. I needed physical help to even stay on my two wary feet.
“Maybe not in a minute, he won’t be,” Mickey said.
He stepped forward, meaning to kick the gun out of the stone-cold killer’s hand, but it had the opposite effect, like stabbing an OD patient with a syringe full of adrenaline.
The bastard’s eyes opened, and he was smiling, blood soaking his teeth.
Fitz raised up and unloaded his weapon. Four shots, all in a single burst. Blood and something hotter hit me. Mickey staggered back and fell, making wet, hoarse gagging sounds.
I’d been grazed but not severely. A trickle of blood stained my pants, but I didn’t have the time or the wherewithal to check on it. I was scrambling for the back of the bar while the son-of-a-bitch reloaded. My heart thumped so loudly in my ears, I didn’t hear what Fitz yelled above the clack of him replacing a clip.
He repeated it. Voice was thin and ragged, which made me happy. “I’ve decided against killing you slow. Come on out, and I’ll just put one in your skullcap. Maybe two. I haven’t figured that out yet. You better–”
While the murderer was talking, I peeked around with the shotgun and fired. Fitz screamed and fired back, wasting ammo.
The sirens grew ever closer.
He must have taken this as a sign, because I heard him back out toward the exit. From my vantage point, I couldn’t quite see him, but he was there. A snake with broken rattles.
