by Joey Ruff
One of the Damned
A story of the Midnight Defenders
by Joey Ruff
It was the middle of the night when I got the call.
Naturally, it woke me, and I fumbled around in the dark, trying to find my phone.
For a minute, I couldn’t remember where I was. Must have been something to do with the alcohol.
Something to do with the girl. I remembered that much. Her scent still lingered in the sheets, and part of me was disgusted by it. But it didn’t matter. She was gone. They usually leave after they’ve gotten their money.
I answered the phone, still not sure where I was. A hotel somewhere.
“Yeah?” I said into the phone. I’d barely gotten it to my ear. It was the middle of the night, and my head still swam with too much rum. My voice cracked. My breath felt heavy and thick. My mouth tasted like an ash tray with a hint of vomit.
“Austin, that you?”
“Jesus, Hunter. What time is it?”
“Late or early, depending on how you look at it. Haven’t been to bed yet.”
I pulled the phone away from my ear. The screen showed just after three.
“What’s with the language?” he asked. “Never heard you say it like that before…”
“What are you, my priest?”
His laugh was disarming. “There was a time that you were mine.”
“The times, they are a’changin.”
“Where are you at?”
“So…this is more than just a social call.” I sat up a little and clicked on the lamp. The room was empty and felt cold. Cheap wallpaper, a full-sized bed. Spots on the carpet, an old box-type television. An armchair in the corner. “A hotel,” I said. “Not the Ritz-Carlton.” My mouth felt dry and sticky. “Outside Denver.”
“Okay, good. So you’re not that far.”
“Of course, you’d call me about a job.” I ran my hand through my hair. It was greasy. “Hang on a second.”
I put the phone down without waiting for a reply and climbed out of bed. Standing there, my legs felt weak and uncertain. My head spun. Maybe I was still drunk. I stretched a little and hobbled over to the sink, catching my reflection in the mirror. The only light was from behind me, but even the shadows couldn’t hide what I didn’t want to see – dead pink tissue, smooth and hairless like plastic, covering the right half of my face and one of my hands, battle scars from where I’d nearly melted like a candle – but that wasn’t it. It was more than a year since the injury. I was used to the scars. What was new to me was the cold in my eyes where something else had died. Faith, maybe. Hope. I barely recognized who stared back at me.
“Jesus…,” I said in a tone that Hunter wouldn’t have questioned.
The water came on colder than I wanted, but it felt good on my skin. On the parts that still had feeling. I rinsed my mouth out, gargled, and spit. My tongue still tasted like ashes. I took a long drink and walked back to the phone, careful not to look again at my reflection.
“What do you need?” I asked Hunter.
“Ever hear of a town called Valentine?”
I thought about it. “No. Should I?”
“Small town in north central Nebraska, not too far from the black hills. It’s a frontier town, mostly. Bunch of cattle farmers.”
“And I care, why?”
“A string of murders over the past five weeks. Arrows to the heart. Victims always in pairs: lovers reported to have been seen quarreling.”
“Let me guess, first one on February fourteen?”
“How’d you know?”
I didn’t say anything. Just sighed.
“Seems pretty straight forward,” Hunter said. “The town, as you can imagine, has a pretty popular Valentine’s Day celebration. We’re thinking a rogue Erote was lured by the festivities and lingered past his time. Seems like he’s got a malicious agenda, maybe something to prove. Maybe trying to fill a quota.”
Erotes – the children of Eros, Roman god of love. Chubby little naked babies with wings and bows.
“Bastards love mischief,” I said. “A rogue Cupid in a town called Valentine.” I shook my head. “Either that or someone’s twisted attempt at humor. Either way, not really my speed. Send someone else.”
“There’s a lot going on right now,” he said. “We’re spread pretty thin as it is. You’re really all I’ve got.”
“Sorry to disappoint you. I’m just passing through to Philadelphia. The Pope will be there in three days. I need…”
“Look, Austin. I didn’t want it to come to this, but we are paying you to do a job. When an assignment comes in, I expect you to take it. As a courtesy…and as your friend…I agreed not to give you too much, but I need you on this. If you turn it down, the paychecks stop. Simple as that.”
“You don’t have to be a dick about it.”
“Maybe I do. Check it out, shut it fucking down, and then go meet the Pope with my blessing.”
I sighed. I needed the money. Traveling wasn’t cheap these days. “How far?”
He told me.
“Why the delay?”
“What do you mean?” he asked.
“Killings started five weeks ago. Why move on it now?”
“We thought it would stop on its own. Killings have been weeks apart. But the latest one was just a few hours ago.”
“I’ll check it out. Be there tomorrow.”
He didn’t say thanks – didn’t say anything – just hung up the damn phone.
I set the receiver down, clicked off the lamp, and lay back, but I wasn’t tired and couldn’t sleep.
For the past six months, I’d lived in one hotel room or another, just moving from place to place because I couldn’t settle down. I couldn’t stop. Because then I’d have to think. I’d have to come to terms with what happened. I wasn’t ready for that. Mainly because there wasn’t an answer for my problem. And I couldn’t face that.
Back in Seattle, I was a priest for the Catholic church. Five years of vigils, confessions, and mass. Of course, the entire time, I was also a member of a group of Night Hunters called the Hand of Shanai. We didn’t actually hunt the night, but the assorted gallery of monsters and nightmare things, most of them nocturnal, were collectively known as the Midnight. The Hand hunted them, trained me to do it. Hunter was a big part of that process. He’d been a friend of mine. A mentor. I had a great deal of respect for him.
The problem was, I had a great deal of faith and obligation for both offices I held, and as the Good Book says, a man cannot serve two masters. After years of my dual roles running parallel to each other, one day, everything changed. I took a confession as part of my priestly duties, one that my tenure with the Hand made it impossible to forget or ignore. And so I acted, breaking my vows and excommunicating myself from Heaven.
There was no coming back from that. Save a personal appeal by the Pope himself. But that hadn’t worked out so well. He would be in the states in three days. A special appearance in Philadelphia for a global pro-life campaign. Yet, for the second time in ten years, my role with the Hand interfered with my role as a priest.
Even though I’d been trained to know better, it really started to feel like God hated me. Maybe even had a personal vendetta against me. I didn’t understand why.
Over the past months, I kept moving because I had to do something. Sitting around wasn’t an option. I traveled and took the occasional assignment. I hunted whatever else crossed my path. Mostly out of anger and distraction. But when there wasn’t anything to hunt, I turned to other things: the vices I’d heard confessed so many times. I absolutely hated myself for the things I’d done. It wasn’t me.
Hell, I wasn’t me. I had been a priest. Now, I was just one of the damned. Condemned from Heaven, no matter what I did, thought, or tried. No matter how long I’d served prior, no matter my intentions. And it just wasn’t fair.
Eventually, I realized I was thinking too much, realized I didn’t want to be doing that anymore. That’s when the need for hookers grew strongest. There was no distraction like a woman. She didn’t even have to be beautiful. Just warm. But I didn’t have time for that. Instead, I masturbated into the already-soiled sheets. It didn’t make me feel better, though. I felt just as empty, just as alone. And my thoughts were still there. The haunting, lingering shadows of the past few months.
I didn’t lie there any longer. I knew it was futile, that sleep wasn’t coming anytime soon.
I threw my bag together and dressed in the dark, then took the twin M1911 Colts out of the drawer and slid them into holsters at the small of my back. They were silver with black handles and canary yellow slides that matched the trim on my leather jacket. Then I climbed onto my motorcycle and drove on into the night.
***
I stocked up on ammo and refueled the motorcycle before heading out of town. I took I-76 East into Nebraska where it merged with 80, then north on US-83 which would run me right into town. Four hundred and fifty miles. It was lunchtime when I arrived.
About two miles out, I stopped at a roadhouse. Jordan’s Sports Bar. Not much of a place, just a long, flat building that looked like a few planks of wood thrown together over a modular trailer. The parking lot was dirt and had only a few cars and a tractor.
I was on a deadline, but I was hungry, and a place like this was usually a font of information. Two birds, one forty-five-caliber bullet.
The place was one large room with a bar in the center of it all. Tables and chairs filled the rest of the space, and booths lined the walls. There was a dart board, a pool table, and a juke box in the corner. With the shades drawn and the house lights dim, it was dark inside. The main glow came from the TVs everywhere, showing sports scores and replays, though their sound was drowned out by the classic rock from the loudspeakers. Only a few patrons sat and sipped on frosty mugs or sodas while noshing on burgers or chicken wings. There was a time I cared about the kind of food I put in my body, but these days, it didn’t really seem to matter.
The few occupants were all men, five in total, none of them sat together. Four of them sat at tables, three of those in booths. Those three wore trucker hats and overalls, flannel, light jackets to brace against the cool spring air. They looked like rancher types, maybe just into town for supplies, feed or prescriptions or groceries. Tobacco. They looked like pipe smokers.
The fourth man, who sat alone with a newspaper, was an old African-American gentleman. He looked out of place, not simply because he was black, but because he was distinguished. He wore a three-piece suit, with a gold chain hanging out of his breast pocket. He read from a newspaper and folded down a corner to glance at me and smile as I entered.
The fifth man sat at the bar. He was blonde with glasses and dressed in a white button-up shirt with a collar, sleeves rolled to his elbows, khaki pants and a brown leather vest. He watched me with a humorous expression on his face until I took a stool opposite him, then tipped his beer to me, drank, and turned his attention to one of the many flat-screen TVs mounted on the walls.
I looked around, but didn’t see a bartender. I just shrugged, leaned into the counter a little, and tried to focus on the game. The man across from me turned and said, “If you’re thirsty, just help yourself.”
I laughed a little. “Not sure that would go over so well. Where’s the bartender?”
“In the back,” he said. Then as if to prove a point, he reached around with the half-empty glass in his hand, shifted the lever on one of the beer taps, and topped off his beer. Then he moved the lever back and sat back down as if nothing happened. “We all do it.”
“I’m not exactly from around here. Wouldn’t want to ruffle any feathers. Never know who I might need to talk to.”
He looked at me on that one. “You a cop or something? No. FBI?”
I smiled. “Is it obvious?”
He shrugged. “So you’re here for the killings, then?”
There was a rustle from the newspaper, the black man in the suit. The other man and I turned to look at him, but he just cleared his throat and pretended not to notice.
“Don’t mind him,” the man said.
I nodded. “How did you know?”
“What, you’re a Fed? Not much else happens around here. Why else would you come to town?” He took a drink. “Actually been wondering when you’d show up.”
“You from around here, then?”
“Me?” He laughed. “Do I look like a local?”
I glanced around at the three men in overalls who sat, mildly oblivious to us, in the solitary booths. “I just rolled in to town. Been here about five minutes. Not sure I’m qualified to say what locals look like.”
“You just saw them, man. Ranchers, mostly. Cattlemen. Flannel and overalls. Cowboy hats, boots. It’s a real wild west town.”
“So what brings you here?”
“Same thing as you, I guess.” He took a long drink. “That maybe sounded a bit suspicious, didn’t it? Am I a suspect now?”
I didn’t say anything, but he didn’t look like a chubby baby with wings.
“I’m a reporter,” he said. “I came originally for the Valentine’s festival. It’s kind of a big deal around here. The biggest thing this town has going, anyway. The murders started around the same time and my editor told me to stick around.” He arched an eyebrow. “What happened to your face?”
I ignored him. “Where are you from?”
He laughed. “Guess we’re not talking about that.” He shrugged. “From the Dakotas.”
“What paper? I didn’t realize the murders were national news.” I thought maybe if I could keep him talking, he might have something useful to say.
“It’s not a big paper. Just not much else to report. But…holy hell, am I getting sick of this town. Every time I pack up to leave, somebody else gets knocked off.”
“What does the local law say?”
“They don’t say much, honestly. Just that it’s really odd. Like, who uses a bow any more?” He took a drink. “You know what I say? I say it’s the movies. You get a young, hot actress in a popular film franchise to shoot a bow, and all of a sudden, archery surges in popularity. Know what I’m saying?”
I nodded. “You think it’s that simple?”
“Nothing’s simple. The arrowheads are shaped like hearts, for crying out loud. You ask me, this whole thing will be over in three days.”
“Why is that?”
“Cuz three days is April first.” He took a drink. “April Fool’s Day.”
“That’s an elaborate prank. A lot of planning.”
“What else would it be? Think about it. Ten victims, all lovers quarreling, all shot with heart-tipped arrows, all in the town of Valentine, with the killings beginning the night of February fourteen.” He shrugged. “You got a better explanation, I’d like to hear it.”
“Like you said, nothing’s simple.”
“Seems like some idiot teen trying to make a name for himself. Watch the news. It’s all school shootings and crime sprees. That shit’s been done to death, but why does it keep happening? Youtube, man. We live in a society where every little shit with a half-unique idea becomes celebrity overnight. But that fame dies fast. You want something that will last, you gotta make the news. It’s not enough to be famous. You have to be infamous. From Columbine to Connecticut. They happen every couple of months somewhere, just most don’t make the news. It’s all about terror level. How big of a travesty can you make it? Thing like this, a town like this…the smartest thing the law has done has been to keep it quiet. Not make it national news. I half-expected nobody to show up at all. But now you’re here.” He shrugged, turned back to the TV, and said, “Where the h
ell is my burger?”
Almost on cue, I heard footsteps on the tile behind me and turned to see a woman coming around the corner from the kitchen. She had paper-lined baskets filled with tall sandwiches, a platter with onion rings stacked up like a tower.
She wore jeans and a black t-shirt, a pen tucked behind one ear. Her long brown hair was pulled back into a pony tail and the smile on her face looked forced over a mask of stress and frustration.
She was strikingly pretty, and something about her was familiar. She’d been looking down as she walked, focused on balancing the three plates she carried, but as she neared the bar, her big eyes turned to me, and there was a split-second before realization took over. She startled as if I were a rat that just ran across her path, and then in a great clatter of noise, all of the food she’d been carrying leapt slightly into the air and crashed all over the floor.
For a moment, I wondered if she’d recognized me, or if the scars had thrown her off. But then, she was on my left side. She hadn’t seen the scars.
She looked up at me with fresh pain in her eyes, as if somehow it had been my fault, and then she turned quickly and disappeared back into the kitchen.
“Great,” the reporter said. “Now I’ll never get my burger. Guess I’m drinking my lunch.” He reached around and poured himself another beer. “You want one?”
I shrugged, and he grabbed another glass, began to fill it.
“Girl looked like she saw a ghost.”
“In a way.”
He turned the tap off and walked the beer around to me, set it on the bartop.
“You know her, then?”
“She was my fiancé,” I said.
“Was,” he said. “Ouch.”
I didn’t say anything.
“Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, you had to walk into hers…”
“I should probably go.”
“You probably should. It takes too damn long to get a burger around here.”
I nodded to him, drained my beer and slapped a twenty on the counter. “Thanks for the drink,” I said.
He nodded. “Good luck with the murders. Maybe I’ll see you around again.”
