Mansion of High Ghosts

by James D. McCallister

  Through a hot, acid belch: “Bless your heart, Jimbo. A real drink at last.”

  The ballgame on the muted high-mounted TV set ended, and the late news began with a headline story about an alleged drunk driver having plowed into a van-load of innocents on their way to church. With an angelic six-year-old girl cold on a slab and additional victims in near-critical states of bodily distress, outraged community members howled on-camera for the perp’s literal blood.

  “This scofflaw has three prior DWIs,” a middle-aged activist, someone’s grandmother, shouted in the hospital driveway where others clutched signs demanding justice. “Something’s got to be done.”

  “See, that’s why Chubby’s keeps our list of cab companies taped over here.” Pointing to a laminated card taped next to the wall-mounted pay phone, an old one they’d kept at Chubby’s as decoration rather than as functional technology, Jim nodded with grave responsibility: “Have your fun, drink your fill. But arrive alive. That’s what I say.”

  Devin, noting with disgust how his bottle-boy spun it all so positive, felt desirous of having himself a good solid raging volcanic puke all over the bar. As well as another drink. It was a Zen-like place of consciousness to dwell, familiar and frequent. Soon as he got drunk enough, he’d drive back home and get some decent shuteye.

  His stomach burning and sloshing, Devin stayed swilling and bullshitting with Jim and the other drunks all the way up to witching hour. He felt better, but not quite there. As such, he sat bitching and moaning at last call, trying not to sound as desperate as he felt.

  “I know you’re gonna be in here counting down and sweeping and shit. Lemme stay.”

  Jim always turned frosty in the run-up to last call, and more so afterwards. “That’s why it’s called ‘closed.’”

  “Let me drink a couple more, ya stingy goat. I ain’t broke.”

  Steadfast. Jim, a meaty limb pointing to the door. “Closed. Out.”

  “Make me, fratboy.”

  In under a minute Jim, larger than the recalcitrant drunk by fifty pounds and six inches, manhandled the situation all the way into the parking lot. In Devin’s condition the action seemed magical, an act of teleportation. They were at the bar; they were by the car—snap.

  Devin’s intuition tingled. This was the Moment. He would goad this dumb fuck into killing him. Finally—a plan.

  He took a boxer’s stance. “All right, you simple-minded fuck. Let’s go. Dirt, prepare to meet dick.”

  “Dude. Not this again.” Jim stood watching with sad eyes. “I’m-a call a cab.”

  The first actual threat came. Devin, with a few under his belt, planted fast his feet and held up a fist. “Don’t you pity me. And don’t let that bullshit on TV earlier make your nuts draw up, boy. I’m right as anyone.”

  “I’m calling Checker. Don’t move.”

  “Da-fuck you are.”

  “Got to.”

  “Wait, wait, wait—look here.” Devin, patient, calm and now impossibly, lucidly sober, kept his words measured instead of rushed to avoid the inevitable sibilance coming with alcoholic anesthesia: “I don’t live but a half a goddurn mile on the other side of the slab,” gesturing in the general direction of his apartment complex across the freeway, a rough, dusty slog on foot: Commerce City, a place of industry and warehouses, burgeoning vinyl villages, and to the east behind them, nothing but motels and the expanse of DIA, and beyond that, the fecund infinitude of the American prairie. “I’ll go. But it don’t make sense to take no cab.”

  “Ruck—you sure?”

  Devin, a supplicant, palms out: “Steady as rocks.”

  “I dunno.”

  “Relax, pal. It’s me. It’s Ruck.”

  Sighing. “You got yourself one hollow leg. All I know.”

  “It’s one for the books. I’ll see ya tomorrow or next-day. Like normal.”

  The bar door slammed. The lock clicked. The light in the sign high up went dark.

  In his car, a battered, nearly twenty years young VW Jetta, Devin found himself shaking, sick and scared. Knowing that the pussy Jimbo would give him grief about driving, he had held off. Hadn’t had his fill.

  And, now? Not only late, but also Sunday, with no liquor stores open, and none to be for a ghastly and unimaginable thirty or more hours. Colorado, as it turned out, hadn’t been much more progressive than South Carolina on liquor laws.

  Terror-struck at having no further drinks at hand, at not knowing why he was still here, or why he’d come in the first place, years ago—it’d been ‘away,’ he supposed, with him and Prudy on the lam—but mostly the no-drink part, he considered options.

  Prudy. But now it was only him.

  Better this way. No responsibility. Devin had finally left it all back East, where it belonged.

  To the West? The mountains. Through which he found he could not pass; could bring himself to traverse. Even after so many years, the Pacific remained unseen. This brown desert, as far as he’d made it from his Carolina home. Got to Denver one afternoon, took a hard glance at those white peaks, thought about Libby and something she had said this one time, got shitfaced, and woke up here in this moment. Whenever it was. Two thousand zero-zero-something.

  Why here?

  Devin, if he were a narrator, saying, Well-sir. I’ll tell you all. The roads in this part of the country—so flat and straight. A motherscratcher could see his ass for miles in every direction. Could see for himself what was coming. That all ended once you got past the mile-high city, though.

  Devin, thinking that those bad-boy peaks, and the bigger ones farther west, made the tiny Carolina hump-hills back home seem puny indeed. As small as he felt. If only he could feel less than that—if he could feel nothing—then Devin Rucker might receive the one true revelation he craved most.

  Back at the apartment complex—safe as a kitten, no accidents, no DUIs despite seeing multiple center lines down the highway—he admired its cracked stucco, with a ghastly ochre paint job now faded to a xanthous, dull cast, the units boxy and crude and functional and cheap, especially when compared to the newer nicer condos farther up the hillside, which were the absolute jewel of Commerce City. Devin, climbing two flights of exterior wrought-iron stairs with a pair of reluctant stumblebum legs that threatened to give out by the first landing, trudged upward with the kind of grim determination born from the bleak dregs of having no other choice at hand.

  Inside, he squinted out a grimy window at his most decent view of the night-lit Denver skyline, and he remembered, yea, oh, did he remember how he’d found his way here: A good spot, this, a prime vantage point from which to debate the conundrums and vagaries of existence; the skyscrapers, Devin thinking, like his own accusatory fingers pointed ever upwards into the violet void.

  Devin, flipping on the light in the wrecked and disastrous kitchen, liquor bottles and beer cans stacked and gathered in slick black yard-trash bags, diverted slitted eyes from the plastic mat upon which his dearest Prudy had eaten her food; her water dish sat in its spot outside the kitchen, never moved since the time of her passing.

  Time.

  Time passing, yes.

  But wounds yet to heal; the sight of the dish, avoided. If possible.

  Please.

  But the disposal of said cat’s food dish not possible, the thought of doing so causing Devin’s thin breath to vanish with a wheeze, and a wellspring of revulsion to gurgle up from his wasted gullet like landfill methane. Screaming through his teeth. Not crying anymore, no matter what. These days he’d been getting so drunk he’d pass out before getting to the crying phase. These days had turned into years, when he allowed himself to admit this horrid truth.

  Years. Only a couple since Prudy died. Near as he could reckon.

  Prudy led to Libby. And there wasn’t no going there. Nuh-uh, beau.

  Devin, desperate, snatched up bottles from the glass forest standing upon the counters. He foraged backwash out of several, dribbling each remnant into a tumbler until managing a finger or s
o of diluted alcohol flavored with fermenting saliva. A decent hint of a smidgen of whiskey, a wee taste to splash into his parched throat.

  Drinking, slurping. Bemoaning the now empty glass.

  Trembling.

  The dusty food dish.

  Prudy.

  A long night ahead, now, lying on his rank mattress, wishing he’d gotten to That Place: drunk enough to get the spins, and finally unconsciousness. But instead, nowhere close to passing out, what he lived for.

  Devin, preparing to sweat it out. Maybe he’d go ahead and detox. Had to happen one day.

  Didn’t it?

  Maybe he’d sprout fairy wings, flutter around like a big, drunken redneck butterfly, too.

  Devin, knowing that none of his choices sat well, lay twitching and nauseated in his sour bed for who knew how long. He begged for an answer, feared the detox to begin anytime now.

  Up from hell the answer blew.

  Invigorated and optimistic, he sprang out of bed on his skinny chicken legs, pulled clothe onto his wasted, bony frame and hurled himself downstair and out driving in search of a bar, any bar, that might still be open.

  But carefully—driving real, real steady and good. No way would he be responsible for anyone getting killed. Not unless it was himself. Which wouldn’t be an accident at all. Now would it.

  Two

  Billy

  Fade in.

  Words on a glowing LCD screen typed by big boy Billy Steeple, y’all, sitting here in whitey-tighties, dude-bro repping a tight, bronze, sculpted body like that of a magazine model.

  Like a god, a golden god. But on the inside? Not so godlike.

  Billy, suffering, anxious and enervated at the notion of starting yet another screenplay, yet finding the work on scripts as the only activity which felt wholesome, productive.

  And so, what else a practitioner of ass banditry to do?

  Get high and watch the tube?

  Commit another in a series of murders?

  Wait—scratch that. Accidents. Not murders. Revision: Let another one of those pesky accidents happen?

  That’s better. No good writing, they say; only good re-writing.

  Billy made no apologies for spending endless hours a day farting around on his alleged writing career. Failures aside, the effort took him back to a happier time, and in that sense, had become an end in itself. Satisfying.

  Most of the time.

  Well—often.

  Often enough.

  Mostly.

  His head swimming with THC, Billy became distracted listening to a jamband cover version of ‘Will It Go Round in Circles’ broadcast on Southeastern University’s WSEU only a few blocks away. “Will it fly high like a bird up in the sky.” The uptempo tune, a tenacious bastard of an earbug, would stay stuck in his head for hours.

  Billy, bathed in the cool light of his laptop screen, stared straight ahead. The scribe, with two strawberry glazed donut holes for eyes, tried to empty his mind.

  Willing the muse to submit.

  Saying AUM like Melanie, with her ridiculous white-girl meditation routine.

  Nothing.

  Chanting: “Sky. High. Bird.”

  Crickets.

  The floor creaked in the room next door—current bedmate Melanie Pinckney had begun to stir from her half-hour trance session, the Indian incense she burned but a bare whiff subsumed within the sharp, smoky pall in the office. Billy sighed—now she’d want him to screw again.

  And with the act of coitus, always a risk. Of an accidental accident occurring.

  And then? The rest of the night, and possibly the next day, mired in removal, recovery and cover story concoction. Steam-cleaning the Mercedes after dealing with the remains. Planting clues and evidence to support alibis. Searching through the blank spot in his memory for the trigger.

  It had been a few years now since the last accident, but like riding a bike. A problem, a wrinkle, an occasional twist for a man who so loved women; who theorized how he completed them by his presence alone. Add in the pendulous meat hammer, and—well.

  But, those eyes of hers, Melanie’s—imploring. Sincere.

  He could see the train coming. Three months with this one. The talk was coming. It will start with hints about giving up the lease on her own apartment.

  No surprise, this growing affection. Not only had he taken Melanie to the highest highs right out of the gate, the first night, total control over all functions including accidental ones, but expected considering the awesome Billyness of both technique and physical stature brought to the table.

  He’d succumb, of course. Give her what she was after. But grudgingly, and rougher than she liked it, which for a six-and-a-half footer like him offered a sound method of scaring off distaff adherents like Mel, but, damn if their feints toward S&M weren’t skating along the keen edge of stoking an accidental accident.

  You talk about blade running—Billy’s has to be, like, times-infinity ice-cold frozen razor sharp tippy-toe traverse over the icy stream, yo, to keep from slipping and falling into accident country. It’s the method most guys use to keep from coming as soon as they shove it in there—Billy distracted himself.

  Thought about great scenes from classic movies.

  Ones his old pal Libby had loved.

  Movies they had watched together, back in the day, the 80s; all the greats.

  Yeah.

  Except Mel, she liked their tumbles rough and ready. Almost as though his dream girl had come along. One who beamed love to him in every movement and motive, each angelic glance and delicate gesture the beautiful young woman seemed capable of offering.

  The thought made Billy feel kicked in the stomach.

  She had to go.

  Before he accidentally accidented her and her sweet self.

  Yeah. No. Seriously.

  Billy opened the vertical blinds to better enjoy his view of the diminutive, twinkling skyline of ten- and twenty-story structures glowing orange from thousands of streetlights casting heavenward: Columbia, South Carolina, a capital city to be sure, but by any standard a modest one. His condo, the galactic center of the metropolitan area, a corner unit in one of the quote-unquote skyscrapers. He lived about as high as one could get around here.

  By day, Columbia, like a slice of Southern heaven: the light of morning would find the neighborhoods and thoroughfares redolent and verdant and color-splashed, shot through with clusters of honeysuckle and dusted yellow by pollen; Bradford pears blooming white, dogwoods blazing pink, Confederate jasmine like a spray of baby’s breath in an April wedding bouquet. Springtime, the first season in which he’d seen the city and the Southeastern campus, with its ungodly endless bevy of beautiful young women like no collection he’d experienced. Not growing up in the Northeast, in boarding schools full of born-to-the-manor bluebloods thinking they were the center of the universe. Especially the birds all a-feather with their birdiness.

  Did they not know who was in their midst?

  Arisen, a pole star.

  Billy.

  His true feelings about women—a pained, grudging acceptance of their disgusting, suppurating wet holes, which he attributed to myopia—mellowed as he hit his bubbler, gurgle-gurgle. Got a little mind-tickle as he held in the rich, vaporous smoke.

  The notion occurred to look up ‘myopic.’ Nah. He was using it right. Words. Helluva problem for a would-be writer, keeping them all straight.

  But spring offered a chance, always and eternal, to begin again; a season filling Billy—a man of sentiment, though loathe to admit so in mixed company—with peace and an arguable sense of nearly permanent satisfaction, a feeling impugned upon only by the ineffable, occasional twinge of what was missing, which was everything: Libby.

  Ignoring Melanie’s calls to rejoin her in bed, Billy instead concentrated on the screen. He cursed the cursor, drummed his fingers and wondered if he needed a better idea. Home from the archive for hours, he ought to be farther along on this new script than Fade In. With his job as media lib
rarian keeping him stuck down in an annex south of campus, he could work on screenplays all day, if he chose.

  Not that he got them finished. The pages and scenes were ghosts of the past, tugging at him.

  Wondering about Devin—what had become of him, where he was. Googling his name, and not for the first time, but like always, never finding a single hit. As though his old buddy didn’t exist.

  Cool.

  Reminding himself: Libby’s not here, Libby’s not coming. Devin could walk in any day, maybe; Libby, not so much. No amount of screenplay writing would resurrect her.

  Decades of stewing over this crap.

  His goal of late had been to achieve a type of psychic comity with his pernicious past troubles by the age of forty, which loomed in a few more transits around the sun. Between that and grandfather being sick—finally—Billy’d be hitting his prime years in time to receive his full inheritance—millions. He’d head west like he’d planned so long ago. Write scripts, direct, perhaps act in a few, like Fritz Lang and Sam Fuller working for Godard. Take over the movie biz.

  He had to try. For Libby. To achieve her dream. He’d been telling himself this since the last century.

  But didn’t achieving a dead girl’s dream entail being chained to the past?

  So what. Life, meaningless. Nothing is true; everything is permitted.

  No—nihilism will queer the deal, and turn accidents into willful acts of malice. Billy had no such bone in his body. He needed to seek polarity, a cosmic balance, in accepting the fact he’d never get to fuck Libby Meade. But after almost twenty years of trying, he still failed daily to get over this incontrovertible fact.

  And so to stave off the terrors of acceptance, the work of his waning youth, endless in its calling: all Billy needed was a new, fresh screenplay idea, marketable, sellable. A rom-com, let’s say, modest in scale; ninety, a hundred pages tops, with an HEA. Commercial. A winner. An audience pleaser.