Halfway House

by Weston Ochse

  Lucy raised the pistol and fired eleven rounds into the trunk of the beast, aiming for the eyes and the areas around them. The fat pupils exploded, but not before a tentacle reached out and wrapped itself around him. He dropped the pistol and pushed against the flesh, but couldn’t budge it. Unlike before, nothing pierced his skin, and for a moment he held out hope.

  Then it raised him up and dropped him onto the barrel with the Bruja. His weight tipped them over and he fell with her to the ground. She slid free from the barrel. She reached out and touched his arm, and as she did, Lucy knew entropy.

  Everything went black as his life was sucked away.

  * * *

  Lucy slid free down a waterslide, headfirst from a great height into a pool of broken glass. He couldn’t scream. He couldn’t make a sound. He was powerless to do anything except let gravity pull him down.

  He crashed into the pool with cataclysmic force, sending shards of glass splashing across the Mariachi bands below, impaling them, halting their music in a clatter of broken guitars and tinkling glass. His body was cut in a thousand places. Jagged shards stuck from his face and torso and arms. He couldn’t move. The pain was so galactic it encompassed him and pressed upon him until he was his own private black hole of hurt.

  He was about to close his eyes until he bled out when he saw a distortion through the crimson-colored glass beneath him. The distortion was human-sized, and it moved.

  Lucy couldn’t help himself. He moved his arm through the glass. Every inch earned was a meter of pain. He screamed as he pried his other arm free and dug deep through the glass.

  The distortion moved again. It was a child.

  Lucy dug harder, screaming…

  * * *

  The sky screamed above him.

  Bobby stopped.

  It began to rain glass.

  Bobby watched as crimson-colored shards smashed on the ground all around him. He brought his hands up to protect his head.

  He glanced at Jimmy, and noticed the boy staring upward. Gone was the smile. In its place lived a grimace of such distaste, Bobby couldn’t help but follow the other’s gaze.

  And it was at that moment that a bloody Mexican whale broke free from the bright blue sky and plummeted to the earth between them.

  * * *

  Blockbuster hurtled down the stairs, leaping from the back of the dead monster to the floor. He fell and rolled, coming to his feet unsteadily midway into the room. Lucy lay on the floor across the body of a woman who was beginning to look younger and younger with every passing second. Wounds in her forehead were healing before his eyes. Lines softened and disappeared as she lost decades.

  He surged forward to help, but realized as he got a clear view of his leader and his thousand-mile stare that Lucy was dead.

  The Bruja finally stopped changing. Now she looked twenty-five years old and radiated power. Lucy’s body was a shell of itself, hollow and empty. She pushed it off of her and tossed it aside. The body hit the floor and rolled to Blockbuster’s feet with as much mass as an empty corn husk.

  Blockbuster trembled as he dumped the contents of the backpack and rummaged through them. Two dozen bones clattered to the floor.

  The Bruja sat up and seemed to notice him for the first time. A look of surprise marked her face.

  Manolo rushed up and knelt beside him. Seeing Lucy, his voice choked. “We need to hurry!”

  “Then get something lit. We need fire and we need it now.”

  Manolo produced a two liter bottle of gasoline which he poured on a rag-wrapped length of wood to fashion a torch. Once lit, Manolo handed it to Blockbuster, who wielded it as if it were a sword, he was St. George, and the Bruja was the dragon—which wasn’t far from the truth.

  “Light her!” Manolo screamed. “Light the bitch!”

  Blockbuster held the fire out with trembling hands. He pushed it toward her, then felt something enter his body. He glanced at Manolo, and saw the same thing happening to him. It was as if ice crystals were forming on their skin, but that was impossible. After all, this was Southern California. It never snowed here.

  Then why was he too frozen to move?

  * * *

  Lucy struck the pavement with a great splat. But instead of showering those around him with body parts, he retained his shape: that of a great bloody Mexican man, his skin pincushioned by a thousand shards of glass.

  Jimmy Hixon touched him and the glass vanished. As did Lucy, who shrank into the form of a pudgy little boy, his head shaved, clothes so big he had to hold the pants up with his hands. But the features were still familiar.

  “Lucy?”

  The boy got to his feet and held up a fist. “Who the fuck are you?”

  Bobby stepped back. “It’s me, Bobby.”

  “Bobby?” Lucy glanced around him. “But you’re on the floor back in the house. You can’t be here.”

  “I could say the same thing to you.”

  “But the difference is...” Lucy glared at Jimmy Hixon. “That I’m dead.”

  “I’m not dead?”

  “No. You’re doing the kicking chicken.”

  Bobby shot Lucy a surprised look.

  “It brought you here.”

  “Then I can leave, right?”

  “When the seizure stops, why not?”

  “Come on, Bobby,” Jimmy Hixon said, “Let’s go.”

  Lucy turned and glared at the blond-haired kid. Then he sneered. “Bitch, he ain’t going nowhere.”

  “Sure he is.” Jimmy Hixon smiled beatifically.

  Lucy spat on him.

  Jimmy Hixon’s smile evaporated and so did the visage of the little boy.

  “You’re too much the fool, Louis Cabellos.”

  The Bruja reappeared, but now instead of the old woman, she was a young twenty-five-year-old girl, evil eyes blazing red. She towered over the children.

  Lucy turned to Bobby. “Listen to me. You have the power to change. You have the power to stop her. I think you always have.”

  Bobby was about to ask what he meant, when the Bruja grabbed Lucy and began to twirl him about her head as if he were nothing more than a sack of coins. When she let him go, Lucy spun through the air and hit the spinning vortex that still surrounded them. Bobby had thought it gone, but realized it had always been there.

  He also realized he held the power.

  He willed himself to return to his natural age and form. He didn’t need that kid of yesteryear anymore. He didn’t need Elvis Paper Dog. He didn’t need any memories of superheroes. He had Kanga. He’d had Laurie and Lucy. He had the Angels and much, much more.

  “What the hell have you done?” he shouted.

  “Don’t make me do the same to you, Bobby Dupree.”

  He shook his head. “If you could have done it, you would have. Somehow you need me to agree to something and I’m not going to do it.”

  She sneered, but behind her sneer, Bobby could see fear.

  He stepped toward her. She stepped back.

  Then he leapt. He grabbed her and flung his arms around her. She felt so cold he burned. Still, he held on and squeezed until he felt something snap.

  * * *

  Blockbuster could move again. The fire had eaten most of the stick and was almost touching his fingers, but the cold had vanished. He pushed the stick close to the Bruja and finally touched her. But instead of catching the dress on fire, the flames died as if they had been doused with water.

  “Fuck!” Manolo cried. “Try one of the bones!”

  “Which one? There were two bodies in the grave Lucy’s abuela showed me, so I took some of each.”

  The Bruja was fighting to pull herself to her feet. Her legs were twisted beneath her, and all her attention was on getting them to work.

  Bobby moaned behind them.

  “Hurry!”

  Blockbuster snatched up one bone, then another, but couldn’t decide. He finally grabbed a handful and stood.

  “What are you doing?”

  �
�Don’t ask." Blockbuster’s heart was about to burst with fear and he struggled to control it. One by one he touched the Bruja with a bone with no effect. Any moment she was going to try and grab him, he knew it. He tried another, touching her on the side of the neck, but again, no effect. He had a sinking feeling about this great plan of theirs. Within moments the witch was going to get enough strength to climb to her feet and stand. Seeing the effects of her touch on Lucy, they could kiss their Angelic asses goodbye if she became mobile.

  “This had better work,” he said to no one in particular. He tried a fifth bone. This time her hand was lightning fast and grabbed him around the wrist. He screamed, but managed to hang onto the bone.

  And that touch...oh, that touch was filled with such cold. He tried to jerk free, but weakness slipped down his body. As he tried again to pull away, the edge of the bone in his hand grazed the wrist of the Bruja and it was like lightning. She jerked back, letting him go. Her hand began to smoke.

  Blockbuster staggered back and held out the foot-long bone. “Here. Make this into a torch and burn the bitch.”

  Manolo doused it in gasoline and tossed it at her knees. The Bruja screamed and began to flail away from it. He emptied the rest of the gasoline on the remaining bones and tossed each of these into the growing pile. Then he flicked open a Zippo and tossed it after.

  Her dress caught first. She tried to extinguish the flames but her finger caught. She watched with horror as the fire climbed up her legs and down her arms. She tried to scream, but erupted in flame instead. Her porcelain face shattered into a million pieces revealing a yellow-green glow within the shell of her body. Soon she was completely engulfed.

  Manolo and Blockbuster felt a tug as everything in the room was sucked toward her. They grabbed for a handhold, falling to their knees, using Lucy’s great size as their anchor. Just as they began to skip toward her, she suddenly exploded. A rush of hot wind shot through the room, and with it came a feeling of hope and goodness that they hadn’t felt in ages.

  Chapter 37

  Bobby woke from a dark dream.

  She’d been there, speaking to him, just out of reach, but no matter how loudly she spoke, he couldn’t quite catch her words. But at the very end, he heard it: one, small word.

  Live.

  “What? What is that? Lucy?”

  Live, Bobby Dupree, live!

  “Laurie? Is that you? I hear you, but I can’t see you. Is Lucy with you?” He felt a brush against his cheek and a hammer in his heart, then she was gone. He gasped as his head rose and his mouth opened in a sob.

  He got shakily to his feet. He saw the smoking remnants of the witch’s dress. The fire had already spread to the floor and wall and would soon engulf the whole room. He’d awoken just in time.

  He climbed up the shattered stairs. All evidence of the house being alive had disappeared. He made it through the twisting hallway to the front door and the street where bodies lay strewn.

  The first police and emergency workers were coming on the scene. The dead MS 13 outnumbered them all and would be blamed for the ruined building, the overturned trailers, the fire in the harbor...everything.

  Bobby was too much in shock to do much more than plod between broken pieces of the halfway house. A paramedic ran up and checked him for injuries. Seeing nothing more than a few scratches, he moved on, but not before handing Bobby a bottle of water. He opened it and drank deeply. Up on the hill a home was ablaze right about where Shrewsbury lived, smoke smearing the pastels of a morning sky; the results of Vincent’s phone call to Gabe.

  Sister Agnes.

  Jimmy Hixon.

  Elvis Paper Dog.

  Lucy.

  And Laurie.

  He’d loved them all. In her last moments before her soul soared free, Laurie had spoken to him and commanded him to live. In that instant of communion Bobby finally understood that it was in the loving not the losing that made him whole. To have never loved was far worse than to have loved and lost.

  Even his father, in his own secret way, had shown him love, leading him on a path across the country to a kind old woman who needed as much as Bobby did. Although his father had never publicly acknowledged him as his son, Bobby’s birthright was the reason for all this.

  Without it, he’d never have crossed the country.

  Without it, he’d never have found himself.

  Then Bobby saw something he’d never thought he’d see. Beside a Lexus SUV stood Vincent, his arm in a sling, a bandage across his head and a patch over an eye. Beside him, his father sat in a wheelchair. Bobby watched as Kanga stood in front of the other man, arms hanging at his sides, shoulders quaking with sobs, staring at his old and broken friend. Kanga eventually knelt beside Marley. They embraced with the tenderness of lovers and each held the other for a very long time.

  Epilogue

  The drive to Malibu had been a long one, giving Bobby time to watch the ocean and remember the last few weeks. He’d fallen in love and lost. He’d fought gangs and supernatural entities, one because of a single man’s ambition to be rich, the other because of a dead woman’s desire for an eternity of revenge. He’d made the best friend of his life in Lucy, and then, according to Blockbuster, lost him in the horrendous last seconds of the battle with the dead witch. Kanga, who’d exiled himself from humanity for a quarter century, had lost a daughter but regained a friend. Bobby still held the image of the two old men embracing in his mind’s eye.

  The Angels were now in the hands of Manolo, with Blockbuster as his second. Kanga was staying with Marley as the two relearned what life would be like without the shame of past deeds.

  Which left Bobby.

  He’d been invited to stay with each group, but had declined. There was someone who needed him as much as he needed her. That his birthright led him to her was too much of a coincidence.

  Mrs. Welker wanted the son who’d been taken from her. Bobby wanted the mother he’d never had. Perhaps together they could find each other and teach themselves how to become that which they weren’t.

  He now stood in the living room of the large home staring at the coast. Windows that had been long closed had been opened and he watched as she pulled into the driveway, returning from her trip to the market. She wanted to cook for him. She had recipes she hadn’t tried in decades.

  “You never asked what was wrong with me,” he’d said to her when she opened the door at his return.

  She’d stared at him for a few moments before she’d answered, “That’s because it’s none of my business.”

  “But I want you to know.” He adjusted his hold on his duffle bag.

  She shook her head. “I don’t know if I want that kind of responsibility.”

  “I’d like it if you did.” He tried to speak several times, but each time his voice wouldn’t catch. He finally managed to blurt out something that hardly resembled the carefully crafted speech he’d devised during the drive over. “I’m not your son. And I’d never try and replace him, but I need someone right now to help me figure out who I am. You said something when we first met. You said that we have to make sure that our personal dramas don’t define us. My dramas have made me who I am for so long now, I don’t know who the real me is. I know this is too much to ask, but I was hoping I could stay here a while. All I have to offer is my friendship. I don’t know if it’s enough.”

  She closed her eyes for a long time. A tear escaped.

  “Why are you crying?”

  Instead of answering, she opened the door and let Bobby into her life.

  He’d stay for as long as it took.

  * * *

  Excerpt from the Los Angeles Times

  LOUIS RAFAEL CABELLOS, son of Ernesto Rosario Cabellos and Margerita Epifina Navarro, passed away on Sunday of wounds sustained while trying to save the residents of the halfway house in San Pedro. Known for his leadership of the 8th Street Angels, an organization created to encourage entrepreneurship in young Latinos, Louis was celebrated for his efforts to ke
ep San Pedro clean and free of crime. A parade will begin at ten o’clock on Saturday, starting at the Port of Los Angeles and ending at Green Hills Cemetery. Graveside services will be held in English as well as Spanish. The public is invited to attend.