Misisipi

by Michael Reilly

  “Was you ever intending to go home?”

  “Maybe not then. But you know, the funny thing… what scared me into leaving in the first place, the fear that Scott would find me out and be disappointed by me, that’s why I have to go back now. I don’t have a choice.”

  “You lost me.”

  “Scott knows me better than anyone. Even if I never saw him again, he got much more of me than I ever dared allow. The stuff I wrote him, that’s just facts, words on a page. The truth of me, that’s what’s waiting for me back in Peabody. And when these doors open in the morning, I could walk away forever and it wouldn’t change the fact that the best part of me is and always will be Scott. Everything I am, was, or will be means nothing if I keep it to myself. What good is a story if you don’t have someone to hear it? So, I need to make an account of myself. I choose him, if he’ll still have me.”

  “That’s your long-assed way of saying that you love him, huh?”

  “Though you can’t see it, I’m so giving you the finger right now.”

  For the first time in 25 years, we laugh with innocence reclaimed. All that remains is to count the hours til dawn. I settle in and stare the darkness down.

  Monday

  A shrill ringtone brings me to half-wake wareness and I glance about for whoever won’t answer their goddamn phone. In the dim light, every silhouetted head is looking at me. When I pull the bleeping cell from my pocket, Monica whispers in the dark.

  “Don’t, Juliana. Let it be.” Bathed in the phone’s screen light, her face is deathly frozen.

  “It’s not Henry, not any more,” I assure her. “It’s Denny.”

  The screen clock says three-something am. I rub my bleary eyes and press ‘Answer’. “Don’t you ever give up, asshole?” I snap.

  The momentary silence on the line is broken by a gasp and what almost sounds like a laugh.

  “I thought you loved me for my tenacity,” my husband responds.

  “Scott!” I leap from the seat. Heck, I almost leap onto the seat. “Scott. Oh my god. Is it you?”

  “Jules! Jesus! Oh my god! Yes! It’s me! Oh my god, I can’t believe I found you.”

  I can’t breath. “How? I don’t…” I can barely find a thought or my tongue to take it. “I don’t understand.” A cry escapes me.

  “Yes! I know.” He sounds so faraway on the connection. “I never thought… I’m in New Orleans. Jesus Babe. I’ve been looking for you all night.”

  “You came?” I feel Monica’s hand take mine and I clench it for dear life.

  “Yes! You don’t have enough stones in that pouch of yours to keep me from your door. Just give up, Jules. You know I got you beat.”

  I can’t keep it in. Another cry from me and the torrent comes quickly behind it.

  “I didn’t mean it, Scott. Any of it. I’m so sorry. Oh God, Babe! I can’t believe I let it all happen this way.”

  “It doesn’t matter!” His voice is strong now. The connection’s no better but it’s his voice, his strength punching through the static. “Listen! Jules! I know! Don’t ask me how. I know and I don’t care. I don’t give a fuck about any of it. I just want…”

  My heart holds.

  “You, babe!” he barks. “I just want you to come home. I love you! You hear me? You’re not getting off that easy.”

  Monica butts in. “Get him get his ass up here. Where he at anyway?”

  “Scott? Where are you? Where did you”—my heart chills—“get this number?” Oh God in Heaven.

  “I found this phone. I’m at some house downtown we got the address off—”

  “Scott! Get out! Get out now! It’s not—”

  There is a crash at the end of the line. I hear the sound of an impact. I think I hear a barely-human roar. I know I hear an abrupt yell from my husband.

  The line goes dead.

  “No. Scott? No. No. No!”

  I redial.

  “What’s happening?” Monica asks.

  “It’s just ringing out,” I stammer. “I have to go. I have to go to him.”

  “You can’t. The storm. You can’t go out in that.”

  “Scott’s at Thibeaux’s. So’s Denny. Then so am I. End of story, Monica.”

  Pistol. Cellphone. Keys. In the dark, I embrace my oldest friend. “I’ll come back, Sis. You wait for me, ok?”

  “Be careful,” she calls after, as I fumble to the aisle and climb toward the exit. It is the last time I ever see Monica alive.

  The foyer is still lighted but the main doors are locked. Beyond them, the security shutters are firmly down. Dammit.

  A guardsman notices me. He has freckles and looks no older than 19. He should be serving nachos here on Sundays, not thumping around in full combat gear.

  “Ma’am?” he calls over to me.

  “I need to leave.”

  “We’re in lockdown til daybreak.”

  “My husband is out there. I need to get out now.”

  “That ain’t gonna happen. I’m gonna need—”

  I walk along the outer wall. The guardsman’s clunky steps match my direction. “Ma’am? I need you to go back inside.”

  I up my pace. There’s an access door ahead.

  “Ma’am? Hold up. Hey Collins!”

  I’m trotting now. “Hold it Lady!” Guardsman Collins orders.

  I bolt for the door. Heavy bootsteps react behind me. Please don’t be locked.

  I burst through the door and enter a concrete service corridor circling the arena. As I race down the brightly-lit tunnel, the booming strides of my pursuers join mine, echoing off the walls.

  The corridor curves right. The arena is right so escape is left. I look to that side as I pump my legs, praying from some exit to appear, what sounds like a whole battalion on my heels now.

  A side corridor looms ahead. Sprinting harder, barely slowing, I scramble around the corner, glance against the far wall, bounce back, right myself.

  No! I meet a dead-end, a large metal shutter. The ribs of it ripple from the gusts outside.

  Doubled over, my chest burning. The thundering stampede skids to a halt behind me.

  I wheel around and desperately pull the gun.

  “Whoa! What the fuck?” someone reacts.

  As five guardsmen level their rifles on me, I back into the shutter.

  “Stand down, Lady! Lower your weapon!” The freckled-faced guardsman advances from the group.

  “Open this gate. I need out. My husband’s out there.” As I prod the gun at each word, I don’t look determined. I look batshit crazy. If that does the trick, I don’t care. I focus on Freckles, hoping he realizes I mean it.

  “Lady. No one’s gonna shoot you. Just… don’t shoot nobody,” he blurts.

  “Please…” I whisper. Behind his rifle sight, his twitchy expression is the only response—that and the black core of his muzzle trained between my eyes.

  My arm goes limp as I release the gungrip and the gun spins upside-down on my finger. Freckles lowers his weapon, steps forward, extends his free hand. I offer him the handle, with it any last chance I have. As he seizes it, all hell breaks loose.

  Ella leaps between us. She locks her jaws around Freckles’s forearm and pulls him down. The three of us collapse in a pile. She’s growling, he’s screaming, and I’m a gasping mess on top of all.

  “Slug it! Get it offa Tim!” someone yells.

  Freckles—the more incentivized—screams, “Kill this mutt!”

  I wrestle my gun free and aim up at the group. “Don’t! Don’t even think about it, buddy! Don’t you dare touch her!” My arm wraps around Ella’s neck, pulling hard. She’s strong as sin. “Ella! No! Let go! Let him go!”

  It’s all I can do, to hold the group back as I yank on Ella. She has a meaty hold of Freckles’s forearm and he wisely comes along as I coax her into the corner.

  “I want out now!” I scream at the nearest man standing. “Use that thing and shoot this lock off or so help me, I’ll set her to his throat!”r />
  “I can’t!”

  “Just shoot it!”

  “He can’t!” pants Freckles.

  “Well, what’s he’s holding, a water-pistol?”

  “It ain’t loaded. We ain’t been issued ammo.”

  I look at Freckles, incredulous. “You’re not armed?” Now I’m angry. “You sneaky son of a bitch. Well I am. Back off, all of you. Goddamit, I’ll do it myself.”

  I point the gun at the padlock and shut my eyes.

  “Fire in the hole,” someone shouts. Every boot scatters around the corner.

  “Not the lock,” Freckles yells. “Shoot the plate, under the eye.”

  I open my eyes. Freckles points furiously at the square plate secured to the floor, on which sits the loop through which the padlock is threaded. “Shoot the plate, Lady! And keep your head down, Jesus.” He keels over, curls into a ball and, though Ella still has his arm in her maw, manages to stick his fingers in both ears.

  “Right.” I press the muzzle to the plate, scrunch my eyes shut, and pull the trigger.

  The bang is deafening as it bounces an eternity around the solid walls. Ella releases Freckles and yelps. A sharp metal smell fills my nostrils and a killer ringing spears my hearing.

  And the lock is history!

  I pull the shutter up and the punchy wind almost floors me. Freckles tries to sit, looks ready to puke. I help him straighten. There’s a lot of blood seeping through his sleeve but at least his hand is still at the end of it. I spot an army flashlight clasped to his shoulder—the rubberized swivel-headed type—and I grab it.

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “Thank you. Thank you.”

  Freckles returns a dazed nod.

  “Ella! Time to go, girl.”

  We leap from the loading dock.

  I am out.

  The four-mile drive to Thibeaux’s is like braving the ‘Cataclysm Car-Wash’, a city-wide vortex of wind-swirled rain and trash. Branches, sheeting, plastic furniture—all scurry across my lights. At one surreal point, an entire billboard cartwheels into an intersection. As I slow to go around, it leaps up, revealing a giant cut-out black SUV for a local auto dealer. It pirouettes on one corner in the wind and off it flies into the night. Ok…!

  Ella whimpers in the passenger seat. When I turn off Cortez onto Bienville, she senses familiar turf and agitates.

  At Thibeaux’s, I spin the car, throw the headlights right on the house. Ella scrambles into my lap and butts my door.

  “Ow, Ella! Wait, for Chrissakes.”

  I snap the door open and she bolts, leaps the steps, and disappears though the open front door.

  He’s still here.

  I charge after, the headlights showing the way. “Scott!”

  I meet the smash-and-smithereens wreckage of the living room. As I survey the mess, Ella barks from farther in.

  I go around the center fireplace. As I peer down the corridor, my vision swims, not believing what it sees. Feet protrude from a doorway. Ella sniffs their bare soles. As I step closer, my balance goes askew, not wanting me to find my fears.

  “No. Scott? No.”

  He’s dead. I’m too late. Halfway, I collapse to my knees and crawl the rest, grabbing his ankle and pulling myself through the doorway.

  I can smell blood. Wetness seeps around my hands and knees. So much blood. My husband, butchered. My hands are barely able but I make myself turn him on his back and feel for his face. I fumble the army flashlight on, not wanting to see, needing to see.

  Seeing… Denny?

  It’s not Scott.

  There is blood, to be sure, but the light reveals it’s a pinky bloom on the water-drenched floor. Denny has a neat group of bullet holes through the belly of his undershirt and my first weird thought is, Scott shot someone? When did my husband get round to shooting people?

  I regroup. This time cautiously—armed and illuminated—I sneak upstairs and check the bedrooms. Nothing.

  Henry’s cell still has no signal. The telephone in the front living room is dead. Ella follows me to the back kitchen. Bingo! A wall mounted handset, just like Monica’s. I snatch it and listen. Nothing either. I pop the cradle repeatedly but it’s just as dead.

  The moment I replace the handset, the light from my car dies. Save for the flashlight, the house is swallowed by the dark.

  I can still hear the muscle engine idling. Someone has shut the headlights off. I hunker against the wall and clasp my hand over the flashlight lens.

  “Ella,” I whisper. “Here girl.” I see nothing except the blood-light seeping through my fingers.

  Risking a sliver of the beam, I find her, rigid on the spot, her head cocked toward the living room.

  Outside, the Trans-Am’s engine splutters and dies.

  “Ella!” I hiss. She snaps her head, the goblin-green points of her eyeshine locked on me. A deep growl rumbles from her ribcage. Her leathery black lips part, baring the white feral daggers of her fangs. With one sharp bark—a beartrap snap that freezes my blood—she trots from the kitchen and back up the corridor.

  As I waddle closer to the doorway, the wind pitches up. It becomes a tortured shrieking woman, rises, then abruptly cuts out.

  The absolute still is fleeting. A flash from somewhere outside ignites the blackness. For a heartbeat, I see everything in the kitchen—upturned chairs, drawers tossed, papers strewn—in magnesium-white outline. Then a grey nothing. And as my vision fades to black, I hear the world break around me. Trees explode, their spines split as easily as straw. Branches crack with staccato rage. Sounds so close, like an inferno in the very walls of the house.

  As the last lightning strike dies, Ella reappears, backing warily into the kitchen. Cords of saliva hang from her gums and her hackles are up. Her guard never leaves the corridor as she lowers her haunches and backpedals past me. When she looks at me and whimpers, it’s as though she’s sorry. As she flees to the back door and claws it in animal terror, I hear footsteps approaching and I realize what she’s sorry for.

  “Juju?” he calls.

  Ella goes rigid as a stuffed trophy and soils herself. Nothing else she can do, nowhere to go.

  “Juju?” he calls again, the visitor I have always expected.

  I set the gun down. This is nothing it can kill.

  When he halts at the doorway, I peer around the corner, keeping the flashlight beam and my gaze low on him. He wears black shoes. I wonder if they hurt his feet, his malformed toes no doubt wedged into the narrowed ends.

  I look higher. There is no definition to his hands. They have matured as solid blocks, the fingers long fused together, as formless as mittens.

  He looks smart, in sensible black pants and a clean white shirt. He could be one of the shy kids, going to the Prom in clothes his mother picked. But his mother was a drug-addicted child who was raped to death and he was her shame, a thing that died before its first birthday.

  “BG?” My voice is remarkably calm. It should be. I’ve imagined this encounter for a quarter century. And now BG stands over me, come for me, the unearthly form of the man I stopped him becoming.

  “Hello Juju.” His speech is nasal but clear. I stand and play the light to his face. His mouth still cannot close, his upper lip curled in a high arc. Even on his adult face, it’s an expression of perpetual wonder. What must he be thinking?

  “BG? Is it really you?”

  “Yes Juju?”

  “How?”

  “I got out. Papa came home. When he say me you here, I go for a walk find you.” BG fixes me with his good eye. It’s blue and kind. The other is dull, disinterested, looking elsewhere. I daren’t imagine what it has seen in his life beyond life.

  “Henry?” I don’t understand.

  “Papa with Mama now.”

  “He was a bad man, BG.”

  “He worse now.”

  “I… you know I never meant to hurt you? I’m a good person. You know that, don’t you?”

  “Papa say you said I his freak.”

  “No.
No!” I shake my head. “I said that to hurt him, not you. I never stopped thinking about you, BG. Never stopped loving you, wishing I could take it all back.”

  Only when BG traces my cheek with the back of his stunted hand do I realize I’m crying. “Never stopped the sad,” he whispers.

  “Didn’t know how. Didn’t know I could.”

  “You make him sad.”

  “Scott? BG, you have to help me find him.”

  “You didn’t want him.”

  “I do. I swear by Christ, I made a mistake. Tell me it isn’t too late. That’s why you’re here, isn’t it, to help me?”

  “He scared to find you. I said come too but I sick him. I sick everyone.”

  “No, sweetheart, that’s not true. He wouldn’t understand. Not like I do.”

  “Juju, I want stay here with you. Not make me go back.”

  I place my hands on his shoulders. “BG. You have to take me to Scott. He’s hurt. Help me find him and I promise I’ll take care of you. I won’t leave you again.”

  “You promise?”

  “Yes. I swear.”

  “Cross your heart?”

  “Crossed and double-crossed. Please, show me where he is.”

  BG turns and walks toward the front door. Before I follow, I remember Ella and go to her and wrap my arms around her. I clutch her as though she were my own child.

  “Ella. Stay. Wait here. Stay. Wait for light. My big bad bodyguard. Good girl.”

  On the street, I gesture to the Trans-Am. “Can you… I can drive us.”

  “It’s not far. Are you ok if we walk it?” He doesn’t wait for an answer.

  I trot to catch him up. “Where are we going?”

  “He’s waiting in the cemetery.”

  I already know which one. “Greenwood?”

  “Yes.”

  “At your… where you came from?”

  “In my furnace, crumbling,” BG muses absently as he marches on.

  In silence we walk. I use the flashlight to watch my footing, struggling to match his determined stride. Soon I’m panting yet there is no sound to his breathing.

  On Canal Street, the shearing winds slam me sideways. As I flounder in the blackness, I find BG’s extended arm, and in that instant, the storm abates. The squall’s fury, the driving stinging rain, all diminish around us. While I hold to him, nothing touches me. I’ve known this peace before, the last time I held him, as we sank into the deep silence together.