Authors: John Skipp Cody Goodfellow
“The bitch was sweet on you. So what.” Natalya hadn’t heard Gray move or breathe. “She didn’t think it through—”
“But she believed!” Jake lifted her upright by her neck until she sat up in his arms. She felt his heart pounding against her, like a wild animal in a cage. “She believed in me, don’t you see that? Not in God, but in me! She gave her life, but she gave me her soul.
“I can feel it, Gray. It doesn’t just float off, if you know how to hold on to it. If they love you more than they love life itself…you can do miracles.”
Gray cackled until he coughed and spat his cigarette into a glass. “You’re losing your fucking mind, man.”
Natalya tried to curse him, to speak up and prove her beloved was not a madman, but a prophet. If she could have spoken right then—if she could have said a word—how different it would have been.
Jake would have seen the power of his own hand, demonstrated in the fertile soul of her heart.
What might have grown—what might have been—if only he had looked into her eyes, and seen that he had reclaimed her from death.
But he didn’t look down. His fist knotted up in her hair as he snapped her head back on her brittle neck.
“Don’t you ever fucking call me crazy!”
He stood and jerked her up as if he meant to throw her at Gray. She was a petite girl even before Gray stopped feeding her, and Jake effortlessly lifted her to her feet.
I live! I am recalled to life through your grace, O
lord!
She willed herself to stand and speak, but she floated off her feet in his grip
.
And before she could part her lips to suck in a breath, he slammed her head into the glass and chrome coffee table between himself and Gray.
She lay facedown in jagged shards of tempered glass. She felt every gritty razor edge digging into her skin. But somehow, she could not move, could not react, when he stepped on her head and ground her face into the glass, like crushing out a cigarette.
There was a long silence between the two men.
“I’m sorry, man,” Jake muttered at last. “I’m just tense, what with the wedding, and…all this.”
“Forget it, Jake. It’s cool.”
“Right on,” Jake said, clapping his hands to clear the air. He wiped his shoe off on her hair. “Clean up this fucking mess. I have to go call my fiancée, and ask her how her party’s going…”
Evangeline’s wrists and forearms were beginning to itch: not just on the surface, but deep inside the veins, the throbbing veins now so much louder than the wind as they resonated with the thundering of her heart.
She could not move her legs, or turn her head away. But her hands came up, as if idly, to drag their nails across her wrists.
Left to right, and right to left.
And the only other sound in the world was Natalya’s voice, whispering the last of her secrets…
Natalya might have died again. She might only have gone to sleep.
But when hearing and feeling returned, it was as if layers of gauze were wrapped around her head: a balaclava filled with sizzling coals and broken glass, through which the world came
down a long, dark tunnel she could barely focus on through the pain.
She was in the trunk of Gray’s car. The huge, heavy door swung up and he reached down to drag her body out, bathed in the deep crimson glow of his taillights.
Perhaps it was only dumb luck; that she had survived herself and Jake’s callous resurrection was another peasant’s daydream. As hard as their lives were, Russians were notoriously hard to kill.
Or perhaps it really was another miracle
.
But again, it was much too little, and much too late
.
She spoke. “No, please don’t—”
“Jesus Christ!” Gray dropped her and pulled a gun out of his jacket
.
“Please…take me back to Jake…”
He shot her twice
.
She was almost grateful for the warmth when the bullets punched through her chest and belly. She heard a loud hissing she thought was her lungs deflating, but Gray had shot through her and ruined the spare tire under her hastily dressed body
.
Cursing, Gray took hold of her again and dragged her out, dumped her onto a tarp, in which he rolled her up, and kicked into a shallow grave.
As he shoveled the broken sandstone and gravel into her hole, she wished she could scream that she was, even now, still alive. But she knew better than to speak up.
Perhaps, in the grave, the magic of Jake’s touch would wear off, and she would escape this life, and go where she belonged
.
And in the fullness of time, she did go where she belonged
.
Right back to Jake
.
And there they were, the two of them. Doomed, and doomed, and doomed.
Two foolish girls. Two stupid whores.
Two lost souls, sharing a common fate.
At the hands of the same master.
But there was no denying that the ugly walls of the holding cell receded with every scrape of fingernail on flesh, the itch giving way to scratch.
And the wetter it got, the easier it became…
Somewhere, a dog barked. Only a few miles to the north, lightning flashed and thunder like a vault door slamming, but no sounds of alarm from the surrounding homesteads. One thing you could say for desert folk—they minded their own business.
Gray ushered Esther and Eddie back inside. Jake strolled back up the path with a jaunty spring in his rigor-palsied step, smiling up at the moon as if someone up there couldn’t get enough of him.
Praying and spitting tobacco juice, LeGrange dragged Peet’s body toward the cruiser by the collar of her uniform and started loading her into the backseat. Normally, the sheriff kept a close watch on his emotions, but he let slip a barking laugh, every now and then, among the grunting and “God bless its” that passed for curses when Deputy Peet’s dead weight slipped out of his blood-slick, arthritic hands.
Mad, rampaging joy knocked down the last barriers in Bill LeGrange. He was done enforcing man’s laws. He’d been anointed to serve a higher power.
When Millie died, leaving him alone with their barnyard exhibit of a daughter, Bill LeGrange turned to drink. Not so anyone in the department noticed,
but he drank himself sick before lunchtime, more days than not.
He knew he was chasing death, and sure to catch hell. No one else could understand. None could grant the kind of absolution he needed. None but Eternal Life could strike the bottle from his hand, and assure him that he’d be with Millie again on earth.
In short:
he had taken confession, too
.
He arranged Peet’s hands across the blasted ruin of her bosom in a serene tableau. She might only have nodded off in the backseat of the cruiser on a long, third watch. She might just tell herself that, LeGrange thought, if she woke up—
When she wakes up
, he told himself. The pastor had come back. Tomorrow, the whole world would wake up.
One by one, if need be—
Jake finally reached the front door, looked around with that satisfied leer distorting even his silhouette, and went inside.
Still huddled in the shadows just beyond the reach of the porch light, Emmy slowly came to realize that she’d gone unnoticed. Her dark hair hung down in her eyes, plastered to her face by snot and tears.
Lucky I decided to wear black, ha ha—
Her mind still wallowed in a quicksand of panic, but she gathered herself up and crawled away, with nowhere to run. She left her shoes in the studio. Her purse was in the living room. Mathias’s keys must have been in his pocket—
She bit her fingers, hard, making her whine, but clearing her head.
To see her now, to hold her again, almost undid him.
Eddie would have jumped Gray, if she were not here.
He could face the gun, and maybe even take him, with no fear for himself. He doubted Jake needed any more improvements on the house, and he knew there’d be a settling of accounts before Jake played with his women. He’d talked himself down to a silent, permanent present, awaiting only the opening.
Gray barely covered them, for pacing and staring down the door. Probably nursing a king-size case of blue balls because he didn’t get to hurt anybody.
Softly, Eddie pulled Esther close and whispered, “I won’t let him hurt you anymore. I swear.”
She wanted to believe him. She nodded against his neck, sniffling and balling her hands up against his chest like she was looking for a secret door inside him. Her eyes kept kicking fretfully back to the door.
He took both of her shaking hands in his and said, “You don’t belong to him. Not anymore…”
She jumped back when Jake barged in, still waxing a big shit-eating grin that flickered not a wink as he sized them up. “I gotta say,
that
worked out pretty good!”
Gray uncorked like cheap beer in a paint shaker. “Are you out of your mind? I hate that motherfucker!” Waving the gun. “Worse, that motherfucker hates
me!
”
“He’s one of us now. A righteous apostle. You better get used to it…”
A man of destiny never looks down. Jake tripped over the toolbox, launching hammers, screws, and drill-bit cases pinging across the floor. “Oh, God DAMN it!” he howled.
A long Phillips-head screwdriver skidded against Eddie’s feet. He stepped sideways to cover it without looking down.
“Fuck that!” Gray got up in Jake’s face. “Jake, this shit is out of control, and you know it!”
Neither Gray nor Jake paid any attention to Eddie,
who gave Esther a look and nudged her toward the back door.
“You want to settle up accounts and off these pigs, I’m only too happy to help. But…what the hell are we trying to do here, Jake?”
Gray’s back was to Eddie, as Eddie picked up the screwdriver…
“What the fuck are we waiting for?”
…and buried it in Gray’s back.
The blunt nose of the screwdriver punched through Gray’s blazer, but skidded down his shoulder blade, till Eddie drove it home with his whole weight. Abruptly, the seven-inch steel shaft punched through and slid in to the hilt in his right lung.
Gray screeched: a high, sharp, almost feline sound, cut off by his gun going off in his spasming hand.
Esther turned to look as she ran, screamed, nearly tripping over the end table.
Eddie twisted the screwdriver in Gray’s back, ripped it free and jumped back.
Gray dropped onto his side, roaring as loud as one lung allows. He squeezed off two more wild shots in the direction of the kitchen. Esther screamed, ducking down, unsure of which quavering way to go.
Jake smiled and popped his knuckles. Finally, the party would really get started.
Eddie rushed at Jake, stepping on Gray and leaping off the moaning gunman with the screwdriver upraised in both hands like a sword.
“RUN!” he screamed.
Jake threw wide his arms, grinning like a demonic date rapist, welcoming Eddie into his embrace.
It was exactly the opening Eddie was praying for: ridiculously overconfident, completely underplayed.
Eddie aimed for the right eye socket, the brain behind it, throwing his whole body into the thrust.
Then Jake whipped one arm around and caught him by the throat in midair.
The screwdriver whickered down, raked Jake across the cheekbone, chipping off mortuary putty and makeup, nothing more. Eddie’s legs kicked out, catching Jake in the shins. The monster yelped, sagging forward under Eddie’s weight.
Then Eddie fell backward, straight for the floor.
And Jake came down on top of him.
Hitting the floor was bad enough. Then Jake landed, pinning him on his back, knocking the wind out of him, and straddled him hard.
Grunting, noxious fumes belched out of Jake, but he was not breathing, either. Just choking Eddie with one hand, holding Eddie’s right arm down with the other.
The talon on his throat crushed his windpipe, pinched off his carotid artery. Eddie almost instantly began to see spots. Heavy leaden waters closed over his head. He could barely see Jake’s snarling white-green face hovering over his own.
Groping blindly around with his free hand, trying to find something useful, Eddie caught the rubber grip of a claw hammer and seized it, striking Jake a glancing blow upside the head.
“OW! SONOFABITCH…!” Jake howled, while the flesh at his temple tore like moldy paper, but the only damage Jake felt was to his vanity.
The fist clamped around his throat winched down tighter, until Eddie’s neck bones creaked, then jerked his head off the floor and drummed it back down.
Eddie swung again, weak, wild, but the claw end first. Jake released Eddie’s throat to block the swing. It wasn’t that hard; Eddie’s strength was waning fast.
He gasped, bucking under Jake, wracked by painful coughing fits and an even deeper sense of loss.
Jake scooched up, held down his arms, hunched over to bring his face right up to Eddie’s.
Jake roared. No words would begin to capture it. None were necessary.
Eddie screamed, staring up into hell.
The sight seemed to please Jake, the way a lion must be pleased when its prey has been downed: drunk on bloodlust, ready to feed. He smiled down, baring teeth, then looked quickly around at the glistening tools scattered all around them.
Jake let go of the hammer-hand, went to snatch something off the floor to his right. Eddie swung again, one last burst of desperation. Jake easily blocked it with his forearm.
And came up with something shiny, which he waggled in front of Eddie’s eyes.
It was the handsaw: just a steel grip with a ten-inch tapering blade. Jake angled it like a malformed mirror, reflecting Eddie’s terror back at him in warped-out funhouse form.
He saw himself; but even worse, he saw Esther reflected behind him. She was still standing there—SHE WAS STILL STANDING THERE—mesmerized by the horror, too frightened to move.