Currency of Souls

by Kealan Patrick Burke

  He tears his fascinated and heartbroken gaze away from her to the burning Indian in the corner, watches as it topples and falls to the floor. The flames are mirrored a thousand times in the shards of black glass scattered around the floor like frozen puddles of oil. Blue Moon and Red Cloud. Dead. He feels a pang of sadness, but it is no more resonant than a gunshot on a battlefield. There is too much else to see, to understand.

  Then he does.

  Standing a short distance behind his mother is a gaunt old man dressed in a dark raincoat, one eye milky white in the light from the flames, the other staring at him.

  Cadaver. The puppeteer.

  Kyle steps into the bar, the gun held out before him, aimed at the old man. “You son of a bitch.”

  His mother drifts aside, her face filled with pride and pain.

  Kyle glances at her. “He brought you back?”

  “It’s not her,” Cadaver tells him.

  “You shut the fuck up, all right? I’m talking to her.”

  “Yes,” his mother tells him, “but it was a trick. He tricked me. Tricked your father too.”

  Kyle stops dead. “Where is he?”

  “He killed him.”

  He returns his gaze to the old man, who suddenly looks scared and helpless, and that encourages him. “I asked you a question.”

  * * *

  There are no words to make him understand, no way to make him believe me, because all the things I could say about his life, the things only a father would know, are a mystery to me. He stands there, Lian Su watching with malevolent glee, and the fire in his eyes does not come from the blaze that has consumed Red Cloud and is rapidly spreading, licking at the walls. This fire is his and I recognize it immediately. When I brought him back from the dead, it might have been forgotten, replaced by the shock of his resurrection, but it never left him. That same fire has marked the worst times of his life, and I’ve been there for them all, been the genesis of most of them.

  But there is nothing I can say. Instead, I change the focus from me to the grinning witch to my left. “She’s not your mother.”

  “That so?”

  “Yes it is so. Her name is Lian Su. She tricked all of us into believing she was Gracie for years, but she isn’t. She murdered our friends and now she’s trying to destroy everything else. Don’t let her fool you.”

  “Fool me?” He grins crookedly, comes closer, the gun held steady in his grip, the muzzle aimed at my face. “You’re the only one who did that. Was it you who brought me back from the dead after I refused your deal?”

  “No. Your father did.”

  “And in return…?”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “The hell it doesn’t.” Agony makes a melting mask of his face. In an instant, he has closed the distance between us and the muzzle of the gun is a hard cold circle pressed between my eyes. “Start talking.”

  “There’s nothing to say. If you believe that woman is your mother, then you’ll die.”

  “And what do you suggest I do?”

  “Start believing the truth.”

  There are faces at the door, animal faces, but they’re not interested in this little showdown. All their eyes are cast down, toward the remains of Red Cloud and Blue Moon. I guess for them, the hunt is over. Kyle’s is too; he just doesn’t know it yet.

  “Your voice…” he says, frowning.

  Maybe he does know; maybe he suspects. I say a silent prayer.

  “What about it?” With my good eye, I stare hard at him. C’mon kid. See it. See what’s there in front of you.

  “You’re not using the…whatever it was.”

  “Do you want to know why?”

  He shakes his head, swallows. “What was the bargain? Tell me.”

  “Him for you.”

  “Did you kill him?”

  “No.”

  “Then…then what happened? Where is he?”

  Right here, son. Right here, if you’d only open your eyes.

  “You were always a smart kid, Kyle. Figure it out.”

  At length, he does. The gun lowers just a fraction, but the expression of confusion on his face tells me that somewhere within him, he is trying to understand, considering the possibilities. Like the possibility that his father would trade places with Cadaver to get his son back.

  For a long moment nothing is said, but the gun drops another inch lower and the hand holding it is no longer so sure. He closes his eyes, shakes his head as if to deny the suggestion that I am willing him to believe.

  “He wouldn’t do it. He didn’t have the guts.”

  “Yes I did.”

  I cannot grant my own wishes, can’t make my own world change its axis, but nevertheless I’ve used every ounce of wishful thinking I’ve got to summon from my rotten throat those three words, spoken in a voice that is unmistakably mine.

  “Pop?”

  I allow myself the tiniest of smiles, a mere tug of my lips as I’m lit from the inside by a flare of hope I haven’t felt since Reverend Hill’s corpse hit the floor. Things will never be the same; they can’t be, but if I die or go wherever I’d bound for with the knowledge that my son knew I loved him, it will be enough.

  “Welcome back,” I tell him, and he lowers his head, a gesture of defeat. For the moment I’m uncertain why, or what it is he’s mourning. Perhaps he’s finally letting go of the fire. Perhaps he came here hoping to find me dead. I don’t know and it doesn’t matter.

  “Kyle. I’m sorry.”

  It takes him a while to look at me, and when finally he does, there are tears in his eyes. “Why?”

  “You know why, and if you don’t, it’ll come to you eventually. Right now we—”

  I trail off.

  Lian Su is no longer by the wall, but my frantic search for her is a short one.

  She’s standing right behind Kyle, and before I have a chance to call out a warning, her hands are slithering over his shoulders, clamping onto the sides of his face. Fear fills his eyes. “Give your mother a kiss,” Lian hisses. Blue veins begin to spread across my son’s face. Fog fills his eyes. He shudders. “What’s—?” is all he manages to say before his lips turn blue. He begins to sag.

  “No!” I step forward, reaching for them both.

  With little effort, and a sound like glass crunching beneath a boot heel, Lian Su wrenches his head around to face her.

  Chapter Twenty Four

  It doesn’t matter whether you’re God, or the devil, or an agent of one or the other, you always know the consequences of your actions. Even I did, though I chose to ignore them. Lian Su knows too what she has set in motion, and calls upon every trick in her book to evade my fury. She’s smoke through my fingers, fire on my skin, ice in my bones; she’s a legion of exotic bugs crawling over my flesh; blades cutting me to pieces, but I can’t die. All I can do is flail wildly at whatever form she chooses to take.

  In the end it’s Kyle she becomes, a last-ditch effort to play on my grief, just as she distracted my son by becoming his mother. But I know her. I have stood idly by and watched everyone die and everything burn. I have heard from her own mouth and seen with my own eyes the soulless evil thing she is behind the succession of masks and costumes. And this costume is my son.

  With a cry of rage I should not have the strength to unleash, I tear that costume apart, snap its bones, sunder its face, all the while shutting out his voice lest it shatters me like her hands shattered Blue Moon.

  “You won’t win; you can’t,” Lian tells me in Kyle’s voice.

  Once more, Eddie’s is in flames. Smoke fills the bar. The deer at the door have moved away.

  I drag Lian to the floor, shove her face into the fire.

  She laughs.

  I grab fistfuls of charred wooden arrows from Red Cloud’s quiver and bury them in her chest.

  She taunts me.

  I slash her throat with a shard of obsidian.

  She grins.

  Exhausted, but driven by rage that is almost enough
for me to erupt into flames of my own, I grab her hair. She turns to black tar to escape me, spins her limbs into threads that shoot out in all directions, latching onto unstable wood, the floor, the crumbling roof, anything to keep her inside this place. But the place won’t hold, and neither will she, not under the opposing weight of my anger.

  Head lowered, I run through the flames. Joints and muscles protest in screaming agony. I ignore them, make claws of my hands.

  Kyle, I’m so sorry.

  Lian Su turns to stone.

  I tried.

  I barrel into her, breaking my nose, my jaw, my fingers, cracking open my skull.

  I love you.

  I feel none of it as I force her into the air.

  Please forgive me.

  And over the threshold.

  * * *

  “I’ll set you free.”

  Outside, their faces made a rusty red by the roaring flames, stand the deer. One of them, its antlers more viciously intricate than those of its brethren, moves a little closer, eyes me with caution, inspects the writhing woman at my feet who is a mesmerizing kaleidoscope of colors and forms. Blood and fluids of every shade leak from the gaping hole in her belly. Threats in an alien tongue slither from her mouth.

  “And what do you want in return?” the deer whispers, turning its head sharply to silence the sibilant dissension from the herd. “We didn’t come here for her.”

  “Blue Moon and Red Cloud are dead. This…woman…has caused many people great pain, and in killing your quarry, has denied you justice, condemned you to search for something you’ll never find. There is no place I can think of to keep her that will stop her from returning. If you take her; if you keep her with you, I’ll set you free of the hunt.”

  “What makes you think the land of the dead can hold her?”

  “Because for a long time, this tavern was enough.”

  Maybe Lian Su will come back, and maybe she won’t, but what I’m asking of this creature now is all I can think of and it’s better than nothing.

  After a moment, the deer takes a step forward and slowly lowers its head, cocks it, and prods Lian Su’s wound with one curved tip of its antler. She convulses and shrieks as dark blue light flares, lighting up every nerve and blood vessel in her body.

  The deer turns away. The rest of the herd follow suit. They have taken only a few steps when the wind rises and they become dust in its arms, whirling away in eddies. They leave a curious emptiness behind them.

  I look down at Lian. The blue light is eating her away. She fights it, screeching, baleful eyes trying to will a slow and painful death on me as she spasms and struggles. White-knuckled hands claw at the earth; her legs kick. Then the struggling subsides. A faint sigh escapes her twisted lips as her hair turns to water and seeps into the ground. A single shiver, then the eyes are gone, draining back into the hollows that held them. Her fingers become trickles, the nails dewdrops, and in what seems like only a couple of seconds, Lian Su is gone, turned to water that quenches the thirst of the earth at my feet.

  Behind me, Eddie’s collapses.

  The fire rages on.

  * * *

  Iris is waiting at the foot of the hill, shivering in the cold breeze, her eyes focused on the blaze. When I reach her she says nothing, just shakes her head and gets into the car. I expect her to leave, to haul ass out of here and never look back, but she waits. Goes right on waiting until I come around to the passenger side and slide in beside her. We sit there in silence, watching the tavern burn for the second time.

  At length, she turns to me and studies my face, tentatively touches the already healing wounds. “Did you tell him?”

  “Yes.” I take a deep breath that feels like sand going down my throat, and wait a moment, debating whether or not the question needs to be asked, then I ask it before I can decide. “Why didn’t you?”

  “It wouldn’t have mattered.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  She smiles sadly. “I’m afraid I do, Tom. Maybe someday I’ll tell you about my life and you’ll understand why.” She lets her hand fall away, brings it to the ignition and starts the car. “Where should we go?”

  I look out the window, my mind already drifting along the road, to the remains of a car with a dead woman still inside.

  “I have to bury Cobb’s wife. Promised him I would.”

  “Okay,” she says quietly. “Then where?”

  I haven’t the heart to tell her that whatever the destination is, it won’t be one we’ll share, so I close my eyes and try to find sleep that, like so many simple things, will forever remain out of reach for people like me.

  Part Four: There’s No Tomorrow

  Chapter Twenty Five

  The Indian’s car gives up the ghost sixty miles past the border and Brody figures that’s more luck than he has any right to expect. After all, he’s out of that goddamn Twilight Zone and close enough to a normal town to get the junker fixed, or find himself a new one. Hell, if there’s time, maybe he’ll take a stroll down Main Street, try to find a doctor he can wake up to get a patch-job done on his finger.

  Maybe. That clock is still ticking at the back of his mind, and even sixty miles isn’t far enough away from that hellhole he just came screaming out of.

  Prioritize, kid, he tells himself. There’ll be plenty of time to chill out when I’m clear on the other side of the Mexican border.

  After a perfunctory glance at the corroded innards of the Dodge, he slams the hood down and starts to walk. A few miles back he encountered a—mercifully graffiti-free—sign that told him he was entering Saddleback, and that’ll do him just fine. Had it said MILESTONE, then he’d know for sure he’d died and gone to Hell.

  Ahead, block-shaped buildings cast jagged shadows across the narrow street. At first glance Saddleback seemed just as desolate and dismal as Milestone, but there are lights on in a lot of those buildings, and laughter echoes hollowly from an alley. Above him, the stars are a welcome sight, and help to light his way until he reaches the amber glow from the houses. Even the air feels different here, lived-in, as if normal people pass through it every day and their words linger long after they’ve gone home to bed. There is no sense of gloom, of hopelessness.

  It’s just a town, with regular folks. No glass or wooden Indians, no mad preachers, fire-handed healers, or homicidal deer. Just regular folks.

  He walks a bit further, as relieved and calm as the lacerating pain in his broken finger will let him be. A new wave of voices catches his attention. He follows it, drawn to the sound of normal human conversation, and it brings him to a small bar, with brightly lit mullioned windows and a garishly painted sign above the door that proclaims it THE FALLRIGHT INN. Brody groans silently at the joke, but makes no move to go inside.

  It’s just a tavern, and a normal looking one, with the animated shadows of customers spread across the drawn blinds beckoning to him to come inside.

  He chews his lower lip, regards his broken finger, and sighs deeply.

  “To hell with it,” he says at last and tugs at the door, which he half-expects to be locked from the inside. It swings open without a sound and a wave of heat welcomes him, chasing the chill from his bones.

  As soon as he steps foot into the tavern, he smiles. There is no gloom here, no shadow of death, no lunatics, just a bar with polished brass rails and gleaming glasses stacked in a classy looking row of mahogany shelves on the wall behind the counter. The roof is lofty, and devoid of cobwebs; the walls clean and adorned with pictures of past visitors, winning racehorses, and sports heroes.

  But it is the light Kyle notices most of all. It’s clean, and bright, and there is more than one. Here, the shadows are flat and unthreatening.

  There are more people here too, at least twenty at a guess. They turn to look at him as the door swings shut. Relief overwhelms him. “Name’s Brody,” he blurts, then immediately hides a wince. Way to go asshole. Why not say: Hi, I’m Brody, the murderer? You might have seen me on the news
? But if anyone recognizes him, it doesn’t show, and the air stays the same. Still, Brody reckons his mouth may have just put paid to the thought of staying for more than one drink. He edges up to the counter, and the barman, a stout man with ruddy cheeks, a bushy gray moustache and a peeling pate, nods in greeting.

  “Evenin’.”

  “Whiskey,” Brody tells him. “Make it a double.”

  “Right,” says the barman, and goes to get the bottle. Brody glances at the mirror behind the bar, and nods his satisfaction. Normal folks; normal town.

  Except maybe, for one man, who appears to be sobbing over his drink, his face wrinkled up so badly that his eyes have disappeared. No one seems to be paying him much attention though, so Brody feels no guilt in asking the barman about him when he returns with his whiskey.

  “What’s his story?”

  “Who, Kelly?”

  “That his name?”

  “Yeah. Thad Kelly. He’s a regular. Runs the auto shop.”

  The barman begins to wipe down the counter, a sure sign that there’s a story here he loves to tell. Brody takes a sip of whiskey, relaxes a little, and nods his encouragement, but all the man tells him is, “He wasn’t supposed to know your name,” and walks away.

  Brody frowns, and looks back to the mirror.

  Only then does he notice the car keys on the man’s table, the grief in Kelly’s eyes when he finally opens them and looks at Brody’s reflection.

  Only then does he notice the wild-haired priest sitting in the shadows, and the sad-eyed cop watching him from the corner.

  “Oh Jesus…” Heart pounding, he licks his lips. Stands.

  Takes in the rest of the “regulars”.

  Suddenly the lights don’t seem so clean, so bright.

  And from a small transistor radio set atop the counter between a woman who looks like some silver screen siren whose name he can’t remember, and a naked old lady with shriveled breasts and a garishly painted grin, Dean Martin starts to sing.