Mansion of High Ghosts

by James D. McCallister

  The light. The flash of light. Like in the pool that day, too. The light; the death rattle from the man, and from Libby, huh, into his screaming face. Cold water. Blazing hot sunlight. Fire into ice.

  Devin, a horrific yelp of recognition. Rearing back on the stool, snatching up his fresh drink, gulping and gasping like a dying man in a desert more arid than the devil’s own. Howling up to the ceiling, pressed tin panels that may or may not have been authentic. “Oh, fuck all your mothers, you motherfucking ghosts—!”

  “What the fuck, dude.”

  He flung his empty glass at the bartender, who ducked as it went tumbling and clunking down the bar onto the tile floor behind. Devin’s spine, cracking with the effort of the throw, diseased warmth sweeping into his extremities, a fever, his thin blood raging, pumping.

  Alive and awake.

  Strangling out a tortured series of words. “I thought I killed you all. But you keep coming back. You keep coming back…”

  The young bartender, brandishing his slicing knife, shouted, “I should have listened to my gut about you. Now get out,” in a voice more tremulous than steadfast.

  “Boy, I will knock your ass three blocks over onto queer street.” Devin, sliding down the aviators onto the craggy beak. He felt a drop of snot fall out of his nose. “Now pour me a fresh goddamn drink before I feed your nuts to the squirrels in them trees out front.”

  Dropping the weapon onto the cutting board, the barkeep now pleaded rather than threatened. “Pay up and get out.”

  Devin, trying to smile, the muscles in his cheeks jumping with spasms, drew out money with a trembling claw—the last of his cash—and placed the folded bills on the bar. Wheezing, barely able to get out the words: “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry about the glass.”

  The bartender, snatching up the cash. “You drunks suck.”

  “You little dick-weed. ‘Drunk’—you say it like it’s a bad thing. If it weren’t for drunks like me, you wouldn’t have no damn purpose in the world.”

  “This is a part-time gig, asshole.”

  “Am I a drunk? Is this a bar? Is this real? Is this really real?”

  “I’m calling the cops.” The kid, snatching at the cordless with his own shaking hand, dropped it onto the floor with a clatter.

  “Well call them, then.” Devin, pounding the bar and hurling invective, primal and piercing and ravaging his ruined throat, cocktail napkins and swizzle sticks leaping into the air; pushing back, kicking over a few of the heavy stools, clattering onto the carpeted floor, he began screaming epithets, hurling invective-laden threats at the floor, the walls, the ceiling, and the doorway leading outside into the light.

  In the light.

  You will.

  Always.

  Know.

  Devin, the mad vestiges of his bitter and occluded memories torn asunder, knew his purpose here. Now his primary mission in life redefined, the quest now consisting of finding and killing Billy Steeple, lay beyond that door. Steeple the liar, lying all week, as he’d done so many years ago. Devin, sensing a wearing out of the welcome at The Parlor anyhoo.

  “Catch ya on the flip side,” he shouted, high-stepping his way outside, ready to go and get himself killed, finally. “Bigger fish, and all.”

  Those three drinks had settled nicely on top of the breakfast vodka. And getting enraged about all the shit from his past, why, he almost felt human again. Now all left was to make some trouble about it all. He’d start, as always, with himself, and another drink somewhere. Then he’d know what to do.

  Thirty-Five

  Billy

  The phone buzzing interrupted the first normal crap Billy had taken in a week, caused him to jerk and pull a stitch in his lower back. He grunted out what more he could. His diet, a wreck for days, now. Too enervated to cook a proper meal. Too much cheese, bread, processed foods.

  The hits kept coming. Roy Earl, aggrieved, called to explain that a bum he’d ejected from the Beanery earlier looked a lot like Ruck; he wondered if they could be back in South Carolina already? How he’d run after the guy, but the skeletal figure wearing aviator shades had disappeared, wraithlike, into the afternoon shoppers and weekenders strolling about on the sunlit sidewalks of the commercial village.

  “Did I fuck this up?”

  “We got back last night. So—yeah. Could be him.”

  “When I said to vamoose, he got this look on his face. Like he was hurt. I finally seen his eyes, then. That part don’t change about a person, even when the rest does.”

  “A hug probably would’ve been better. Yeah.”

  “I thought he was—just a drunk.”

  “We both know Ruck’s more than that.”

  “I’m as dumb as a bag of ball-peen hammers.”

  “No, Roy. It’s on me. I shouldn’t’ve left him alone like this.”

  Billy, suggesting they pool forces to track Ruck down in the Old Market. Finish getting him delivered to Edgewater County. “You bear no responsibility.”

  “I’ll fix it. Fix it all.”

  “You will?”

  His worm had turned. Confidence, now; his words came flat and cold like black ice. “I’m the bossman,” Roy Earl said. “Bossman solves problems. Our boy’s as good as found.”

  “Word.”

  Billy’d been ignoring the Devin Problem all day now, instead getting stoned, calling Melanie over and fucking the shit out of her a few times and trying to watch DVDs, but getting bored with every movie he chose. He had a number of messages on his phone he’d also ignored—his area chair from the conference in San Antonio, a fellow film archivist and colleague from San Jose State, sputtering with concern because Billy had bailed on the Big Lebowski panel without a word.

  Yours was the showcase paper, Steeple. Our big gun. Jesus, man. Well—I hope you’re all right.

  Embarrassing, but unimportant. Deleting the message unreturned. What was he doing wasting time with these movies, these fictions? Libby awaited.

  He meant Creedence.

  Billy, Melanie, and Roy Earl Pettus all stood in foot-shuffling stasis in the open doorway of the Beanery. All clutched comped coffees courtesy the bossman.

  He had circled the block, Roy reported, but hadn’t seen Ruck.

  Billy, sniffing the air. “He’s close. He’s real close.”

  “What’s the plan?”

  “We think like a drunk and start crawling—he’s in Lupo’s. Or, Little O’s. McHaffie’s. The Back Porch—”

  “—or Eddie’s Saloon, The Patio, or The Parlor; Lucy’s, The Red Tub, or Yesterday’s.”

  “Right. The task in this neighborhood is somewhat herculean.”

  “We should wait here,” Melanie chimed in. “Maybe he’ll come back by.”

  Billy, staring down the Lebowski-esque bowling lane of forty, questioned his sanity—what was he doing with this ignorant child? He restrained himself, barely, from snatching Melanie out of the chair and turning her into a broken Pez dispenser.

  Savage and abrupt: “Why don’t you keep quiet and let the grownups sort this out?”

  Her angst, tumbling out in a rush. “But Billy I haven’t seen you all week, and then you show up with this awful drunk? And, like, I want to be alone with you but now we have to find him and do what, then do what with him—?”

  Roy Earl, bug-eyed. “If y’all got something else on the sked, I’ll look for him. Drive him home to see Creedence. I don’t mind,” nodding with bright-eyed vigor.

  “You need help. Trust me.”

  “If I can’t settle him down, y’all sure as hell ain’t gonna. Me and Devin, we used to be tight.” Explaining with wistful pleasure to Melanie, “We were kids together.”

  But Billy, thinking Roy Earl suffered a condition of overstatement in conveying the depth of his friendship with Devin. Billy and Ruck, they had been real running buddies. For a while, anyway. Deep conversations. Couple months, anyway, before it fell apart.

  Meaningful as hell.

  The sharing of Libb
y.

  But when that drunk took her away from them all, yeah. That’s when he and Devin became the closest. Until the day Ruck split for keeps. Sad times all the way around.

  Melanie, plopping down at one of the tables, rocked a fuzzy Ugg boot while sipping her giant iced mocha. “You can’t help someone who doesn’t want it. Unless, of course…”

  “Now this I have to hear.”

  “You think he might hurt himself. Or someone else.”

  Billy, seething. “Ruck would not hurt a goddamn fly. I could be persuaded to hurt somebody, however. If pushed any further.”

  “Please quit fussing at me about every little thing. I didn’t do any of this.”

  “We all have our parts to play.”

  “True—we are co-creating this scene together, you and I. And you too, Mr. Pettus. And my part is all about love and light, whereas yours, hon? Stress and strife. You need to chill and allow rather than trying to control this chaos.”

  Billy, trying to breathe, wished for Superman’s heat vision to roast this recalcitrant disrespectful slit right where she sat. The gall of her insulting New Age platitudes and self-help crap. Soaring, operatic heights of indignity at the thought of expending breath trying to explain Ruck; Ruck and Libby; Ruck, Libby and Billy, and the past and everything else to this, this youthful trollop would take more honesty than Billy could dredge. He had that much self-awareness.

  Billy, risking a deep-dive into her moist, pleading eyes, felt a glimmer of human contact. She held out her hand, which he took.

  “I’m sorry, angel.”

  She squeezed. “I know; I know.”

  Blowing out his lips, he continued in a tone kinder and gentler. “Ruck’s like my own brother. You can’t fathom the mental duress he suffers. It’s more than the booze—the mania I’ve witnessed goes beyond that.”

  “It started young,” Roy said. He fretted and paced. “When I was getting a buzz off two beers, Devin was already pounding hot liquor.”

  “We’ll get him into alcohol treatment. That’s the easy part.”

  “But will it take? There’s the rub.”

  Melanie, a quiet grace note. “It’s all about connecting with the higher power.”

  Billy, at fault for so much that’d occurred, or so he’d now begun to understand, ignored her sentimental hoodoo about a benevolent God waiting nearby to heal hearts. Billy was the one who made up stories. Not her.

  “If it takes more than one facility; if he needs more than one chance, the one thing we won’t do is give up. No, sir.” His voice cracked like Jimmy Stewart finishing up a stem-winding populist soliloquy from classic cinema about which Billy professed deep and abiding insight as well as trivial knowledge, yet hadn’t actually watched with any keen or specific interest, if at all.

  He held up a finger, kept his eyes on Melanie. “Here’s the deal: I wasn’t there for Ruck, when it counted the most. I let him down. I let him get away, all those years ago. And I won’t to do it a second time. We won’t debase our history and friendship and debt to Devin Rucker by turning our backs on him again. I won’t have it. The thought sickens me.”

  Roy Earl, fired up, clapped Billy so hard on the back that a pen leapt out of his shirt pocket: “Who said anything about giving up?”

  “That’s the spirit,” Billy wheezed as his breath left his body.

  A police cruiser rolled down the street; its siren blipped in staccato salutation. Inside, a bulky cop lifted a veritable tree-limb of an arm at Roy Earl.

  Roy waved back. “McWhorter’s been on the Market beat for twenty-five years now. Better hope we find Ruck before he does.”

  “I remember the good officer ran my lead singer Mucky Turnbull downtown on a D&D one night during load out. We had to bond him out later with cash from the gig. Hard to believe the same cop’s still around busting balls.”

  Roy, staring down the street, gape-mouthed. “Holy shit, there’s Devin reeling down this way—but looks like McWhorter’s made him.”

  Melanie, raising her hand. “Remember what I said about staying put?”

  Billy, whipping around. The prowler, pulling over a few car-lengths down the block, disgorged an enormous, African-American cop whose shape and gait Billy remembered well.

  And sure enough, there on the sidewalk, Ruck, still in his same denim jacket and greasy dungarees from the long drive home. Waving his arms and shouting at the huge cop, whose body language stiffened and froze… except for his hand, which drifted to the butt of his service revolver.

  This could get out of hand.

  “You people stay here,” Billy ordered with a slashing gesture.

  He trotted down the sidewalk toward Ruck and the cop, barking orders at Devin Rucker to halt in his tracks. But no, Ruck, drunker than shit it seemed, kept coming down the sidewalk hollering invective, calling the cop a fascist pic, hurling epithets at Billy, until finally they ran into one another.

  It was an explosion of energy, like Hulk and Abomination crashing into each other. A flash of red light, a huge crushing release of energy. Sky-rockets in flight, afternoon delight: Ruck, the skinny drunken bastard, had clocked him a good one.

  The force of the blow had sent them both to the sidewalk. Billy, crumpling in a heap of khaki and loafers, heard the cop’s shouting voice calling for backup all filtered and faraway, like in a dream sequence.

  A scream from Melanie snapped him out of a painful, foggy reverie. Billy, realizing that his face lay upon the gritty concrete, a smushed cig butt only an inch or so from his eyeball, had only been hit one other time in his life. And that had been Devin as well, come to think of it.

  McWhorter leapt over Billy’s sprawled body and straddled Ruck, who’d rolled onto his stomach. The cop, twisting one of Devin’s small forearms back while grabbing the other wrist, cuffed his detainee in a flash of practiced movement.

  “That’s the last punch you throwing today, my man.”

  Now a flopping, subdued sidewalk seal, Devin said, “Let me up, motherfucker.”

  McWhorter, breathless, lamented the sorry scene. “Saturday night underway already, but the sun ain’t down yet.” To Billy, in a more officious tone: “Sir, are you all right?”

  Billy climbed to his feet as Roy Earl and Melanie blustered onto the scene. “Yes, I’m fine.”

  “Knocked you on your booty, he did.”

  Billy squirted the cop with smarm. Fingering his jaw he said, “Oh, is that how we’re writing this up?”

  McWhorter seemed unaccustomed to processing Gen X sass. “We would probably call it ‘assault’.”

  Billy shook his head with vigor, no no no. “Officer, this man is ill; he’s under my care. So if you don’t mind, I’ll have to insist you allow me to handle him from here.” Billy, folding his arms and expecting only acquiescence from this servant, whom he considered one notch above the Mexicans who kept up the landscaping around campus, stared and wiped grit from his cheek. Cops—pains in the ass; to be avoided at all costs. Especially at three in the morning with a warm body in the trunk of the Mercedes, heading over toward the Green Hole.

  McWhorter answered a voice on his shoulder-mic with a staccato bit of police code. “Your patient here just clocked you one, doc. We got multiple eyewitnesses.”

  “So you keep pointing out.”

  Considering a bald-faced lie but after a millisecond's deliberation thinking better of doing so, Billy gestured toward the campus. “All right, dammit. I’m not a doctor. I’m a librarian. Up the hill.” His inflection meant to indicate superiority as part of the august tenured class of learned employees of mighty and venerable Southeastern University, a long way from the police academy. “A media archivist, to be precise.”

  “A do-what, now?”

  “But what I do for a living’s beside the point. The point is that—that—”

  “Here’s my perspective, sir. This man’s not only D&D, but looking at assault. He matches the description of someone who threatened a bartender not ten minutes ago,” cocking an e
lbow back up the block, “at The Parlor over yonder.”

  Billy, irritated beyond measure. “So a national emergency, in other words.”

  Another cruiser, pulling up. McWhorter waved and went to drag Ruck to his feet. “Sir, can you stand up?” he shouted. “Help me help you, all right?”

  Ruck’s sad expression, a contortion of possessed agony. “Just shoot me right here, you fucking pig.” Pleading and pitiful. “Do it do it do it do it.”

  “Oh, my goodness,” Melanie said.

  Roy Earl, his eyes swollen and face the color of a brick, stepped in. “Alvin, don’t listen to him—our friend’s sick. But we can help him.”

  Skeptical. “Mr. Roy—you can?”

  “Billy’s right. Let us help him. Let’s not put him in the pokey.”

  The cop, pissed. “Now Mr. Roy, when you was president of the neighborhood association, I sat across the boardroom table and you looked me in the eye and says, ‘Alvin, I want you to lock up all these drunks, and I don’t want to hear no excuses from the CPD, all going on till y’all merchants was bluer in the face than this uniform.”

  “C’mon. It wasn’t that bad.”

  “So let’s clarify: Do you want me to lock up the drunks? Or not?”

  “I might not still be president, but I can assure you I speak for this neighborhood.” Roy Earl gave the cop a do-my-bidding glare. “And in this case, no arrest is happening here. That’s the end of it.”

  Damn. Billy had never seen this side of his old buddy.

  McWhorter greeted the backup cop, Boykin, a hard-eyed whiteboy dwarfed in size by his fellow officer. Drawling, a good old boy from someplace like Edgewater County, he wrinkled his nose at Ruck. “Smells like somebody done messed their drawers.”