The Forest Bull (5 page)

I sat on the dock with Gyro
, listening to traffic across the canal. Lights of different colors smeared the dark water lapping at the pilings, ever in motion, even during the quiet hour, when the tide went slack and the wind was still. After seeing such a gruesome death, we all retreated to our safe harbor to digest the bitter rage that sickened us. Risa would sit in the shower, each stinging minute of spray focusing her hatred of immortals ever more pointedly. Wally would run until she threw up or dissolve into quiet sobs on her bed, clutching her sheets in hands that went white with hate. I chose to sit here, by the water, trying to spare the world my disgust and brittle temper, until the sun began to rise and the first ducks began their endless patrol of the seawall. These were the moments when we were weakest, when our humanity and desire for vengeance subsumed our years of experience.

Defining my existence is difficult. My morality is even less easy to describe
, although I like to think that, despite the chaos that removing immortals causes, it is, in fact, serving the greater good. Liberating the personal effects and holdings of our targets may be construed as theft, but those gains are largely applied to continuing our efforts. Beyond the simple removal of evil, we were all personally motivated by loss. For Wally, it was a friend of the family who had been as close as blood. For Risa, it was an uncle she loved so much that the story was something I had heard exactly once in the fifteen years I’d known her. Three murders, three people, miles and years apart. At the time, the crimes only had one thing in common.

Each death turned us
into hunters.

Risa

There is never a good day for a funeral, yet the light wind through the bottle brush and palm trees made it bearable, but only just. The early summer Floridian heat had not begun in earnest. It was March, 1991, and the sadness surrounding the open grave of my aunt Ruth had remained intense but studied. We loved her quiet strength and, out of respect for her, we kept our grief as contained as was possible, although, inside, I felt like crying so hard that I would shatter.

For my whole life
, she had been near, kind, a presence so dignified that I didn’t know how well any of us would find life without her smiles and caring touch. Ruth was a healer in every sense. She brought unity to the family during arguments that shook the walls, and not once did we feel reproved by her, even though she made us all want to be kinder merely by watching her live. Her husband, my uncle Lev, was her perfect compliment. Wiry, energetic and giving, he found in Ruth the fulcrum upon which he brought his will to bear on the orange grove they had planted by hand, after immigrating to Florida from Israel. His boundless enthusiasm and drive built a sea of trees where, before, there had been scrub palmetto and abandoned pasture. For forty years, he had paced the rows of trees, his dusty chinos stained with the perspiration rings of a man who knew every inch of his farm. When I was sixteen, Ruth felt a twinge in her back while loading oranges onto a scale, and, three months later, she was in an austere medical office being told that the cancer was in her bone and that she might not see another birthday. Lev had nearly broken right there, weeping into his hat outside the room in a crouch while we watched from down the hall. I knew that the wall was the only thing holding him up at that moment, but this was a man who had fought in the Sinai with broken bones in his shoulder from a crashing artillery shell. We watched him gather himself and duck into her room to tell her to fight and live.

And live she did, for six more years. She lost some ribs and her hair
, twice, to the chemo, but Lev held her hand while she vomited into steel pans during the grim cycles of near death that we call treatment. Finally, she told Lev that she could not go on, and he sat heavy on her bed with the breath crushed out of him by five decades of memories.

So we streamed out of
the graveyard, all sifting our own memories and worrying about Lev, and in a few minutes,  Rabbi Frank was led away, his steps tottering and his eyes brown and sad. From within the crush of our family, my cousins, Rebekah and Beth, were holding Lev’s jacket like he would fly away. I caught his eye, and he gave me a smile that made me realize he would again walk his grove. We would have him still. It was something I could cling to, and, for the first time that week, I saw a hint that his life would go on.

Lev announced that he needed a moment as we began to scatter towards the cars parked along the main pathway. He veered off towards the oasis in the middle of the graveyard, where
, under a gazebo, a water fountain sat discreetly between planters filled with small gardenia bushes. I stayed back to watch him go, a small man who seemed whittled by grief, his face all planes and hard angles. Only his tears made him seem soft. When he reached the fountain, a silver car slid quietly up the path, its windows tinted nearly black. The door opened and released a woman dressed for grief, her lithe elegance apparent even from my vantage point. What she said to Lev I do not know, but she walked to him and embraced him, perhaps offering words of consolation to a man who had lost everything moments before.

I did not know what I was seeing
that day. I do now. Her grace branded her as a Pranic or Sylph, and, had I known that, I would have run at her with murderous intent. But I knew nothing of her world and stood mute as they embraced. She enclosed him in long arms, her bearing one of compassion. Under the shadow of the gazebo, a messenger tendril of light and air emerged from her chest, shimmering so faintly that I could barely see it. The diaphanous probe wrapped sinuously around him, pausing for a hesitant second before plunging soundlessly into his back. Lev stiffened, and his knuckles went white on her sleeves. This was how she fed, his grief and his will being siphoned away while he sagged in her grasp. The appendage swelled slightly with dark sparks and motes, memory and soul all splintered into chaff that she greedily stole. I knew Lev was being consumed; I just could not logically fathom how it could be happening. At a visceral level, I recognized this as murder of the most egregious sort. With a chaste kiss on his cheek, she broke contact and stepped briskly away to the waiting car, all semblance of caring gone in a shift from mourning friend to sated predator. Her car door closed, and, by the time Lev had walked four steps towards me, he fell dead, the screams of my family threatening to obliterate any memory of the woman I had just watched consume seven decades of my uncle’s spirit with the grace of a viper.

I knew in that instant that I could see her, and
that meant I could find her. I also knew in my bones that I would never again be an observer, not when parasites like the unknown woman walked among my world.

From that minute, I would hunt. And I had
an excellent idea of where to begin.

Florida

Morning found me ragged and needing some separation. Wally and Risa were still in bed when I left to go to the beach, where the water would be painfully bright in the winter sun. It was the type of jolt that I could build upon in order to process what we had seen the previous night. The implacability of the ocean is an excellent base to revive my belief that I can, in fact, defend myself from the rigors of my life. The sea can forget and persevere, regardless of the severity of the storms. I seek that same type of renewal each time I walk the sand, stomach churning at the recurring visions of death that color my memory. It would be capricious to fully dismiss the experiences that I have, and my conscience would not allow it even if I had the availability to drink from the river Lethe. It is this growing hall of impressions that I turn to in order to shift the fantastic into the ordinary. Or at least ordinary to a select few who realize that the wall between civilization and entropy is a thin barrier indeed. The sand, revised with each wave, felt hard-packed and moist under my feet. I thudded with heavy heels, using my steps to purge my body of the fear that I had for the unknown. When I felt reasonably prepared to share my day with the swarm of the city, I turned toward the parking lot and walked. Gulls cried over me, aloft on the onshore wind that erased my footprints even as I dug for keys. My thoughts turned to the problem of forests and oaks and who would bring them here, and why doing so cost a man his life.

Wally and Risa were on the dock when I got home, Gyro stretched between them with a palm frond in his mouth, slobbering contently.  Empty cereal bowls sat between
them, along with Wally’s phone. Wordlessly, Wally handed it to me. On it was a blurred picture of a tattoo. It was a snake, black and silver, position on the body unknown, but there was a liquid quality to it that was both admirable and unnerving. I raised an eyebrow in inquiry.

“What is it?”

Risa spoke first. “I think it’s African. It’s on the shoulder of a guy that Angel fired last week for being drunk on the job.”

Angel was the last tenant in Hardigan Center, a brown bulldozer of a guy with a shock of black hair and hands like five digit bricks. He stood just over five feet tall but weighed well over two hundred pounds, slabs of muscle a testament to his years as a mason. He w
as an artisan, too, working river rock, corals and marble with a deft, experienced hand. He never lacked jobs, so he hired crews to do basic brick and block jobs under his supervision, which was exacting. A Cuban immigrant, Angel made the most of his skills, and he would not tolerate lazy or sloppy helpers. Being drunk on the jobsite was beyond the pale for his crew. I wouldn’t have been surprised if he had thrown the guy into the street.

“Who sent the picture? Angel?” Wally nodded at me as Risa tapped the
screen.

“Look closer. This isn’t ink. And
, once Angel calmed down, he started to think that maybe the guy wasn’t drunk, but sick from the tattoo. One small problem. The guy didn’t get it from any needle. Angel said they were on a site and, during a break, a friendly Haitian
Tante’
next door offered them drinks. The next day, Angel says the guy, Denis, came to work late, acting like he was hammered. He was aggressive, slurring his speech, and threw his tool belt when Angel asked him why. My question is, just what was in that drink from the kind-hearted neighbor, and are there four more guys on the crew who are going to lose it and go batshit crazy?”

Wally then handed me her
phone with another picture on it. It was a serpent nearly identical to the first picture, but this was painted on a reed mat of some sort. Underneath it was the caption
From the University Collection, Benin 1989
. Risa peered closer at the screen. “You notice how that serpent seems . . . flat? Like a husk? I know what it needs. A host. And Denis was a nice warm body to be exploited.”

She scrolled down slightly. There, under the university caption, was an identifier for the picture. It read simply
Parasitic Spirit: Negwenya
. Wally unlimbered, stretching as I helped Risa to her feet and picked up the bowls. Gyro padded ahead towards the sliding glass doors. Wally glanced at her phone again.

“Let’s go visit our Aunt
ie for a drink, shall we?”

We considered our visit and decided a simple reconnoiter was in order. The address was in a working class neighborhood of tidy homes that were built in the 1960s. Immigrants from the Caribbean had opened shops and restaurants in nearly every
nearby strip mall. One innocuous home, painted white with teal trim, was our target. We were pleasantly surprised to see a small sign in the garage window offering psychic readings from Miss Jean, Seer. That was our ingress. Risa narrowed her eyes briefly, looking back at the house while she punched the number on the sign into her phone.

             
“I’ll see if
Tante’
Jean is taking appointments today. Should I ask for a nighttime visit? We would have less exposure.”

Risa was nothing if not careful. We usually went in two vehicles for the odd quick exit, but
, if the house had anything of value that we opted to liberate, it made sense to leave as small a footprint as possible. Given that charlatans were notoriously leery of banks and taxes, it stood to reason that we would have to comb her property for her ill-gotten gains. Frauds preyed on the working class in a complicated dance. They could steal, but not to excess from one mark, opting to incrementally fleece the confused or gullible. I suspected Jean would be a textbook huckster with a stash prized from the hands of hardworking families in her very area. I intended to find those funds for our own crusade. The karmic balance would ultimately end in our favor.

             
Risa called and spoke briefly to the talented Jean, her voice oozing hope and a hint of desperation. She was an excellent actress on the phone, her supple voice capable of a gifted range of characters.

“Eight o
’clock. I’m the last appointment of the day. I think that we’re about to become quite close with Jean--close enough to know secrets, like where she learned how to place a spirit into an innocent man.” Risa’s tone did not bode well for her newfound psychic advisor.

             
“I plan on finding her loot. I could use a new purse or three for spring,” Wally’s tone was even less forgiving.

             
Wally and I waited, observing the local traffic at a convenience store two blocks away, while Risa kept her appointment with the netherworld, courtesy of Jean. Through the beauty of online real estate deeds, we found that Jean’s actual name was Yohanna and that she was a native of New Jersey. Apparently, her only true otherworldly quality was the appalling concrete statuary that littered her yard. I couldn’t imagine what décor she had selected, but I knew we would see it soon enough, after Risa had defanged our resident medium. We had decided that some of Yohanna’s stolen funds would finance the art department at the elementary school up the street from our place. They had been hawking baked goods door to door, and their financial shortfall had infuriated Risa. So, we made a note of their teacher’s name and decided an anonymous donation was in order.

The air in the car
was stale with waiting, so I opened the door and asked Wally if she wanted anything from the store. I had a craving for some sort of beef jerky, but she just shook her head and leaned back, her earbuds streaming a soccer game from our satellite radio. Walking in between two cars, I saw a battered tomcat holding one paw slightly elevated. He meowed plaintively at me, and I leaned down to see if he could be picked up or if he was too skittish. I can’t stand to see hungry animals, let alone injured hungry animals, and he arched his back and began to purr as soon as I laid my hand on him. I was absorbed in scratching his wide, scarred head, too absorbed, it would seem, because I felt two thin fingers brush my cheek and, instantly, my mouth and gut were awash with a burning that made my breath leave my body in a shuddering wheeze. I went to one knee, a piece of the sun searing through my ribs and stomach in a merciless wave, tears washing my sight into a curtain of smudged colors and light. A woman’s voice, her tone light and mocking, was at my ear.

“Compassion is so human, and
so risky. Pity, that.” I heard heels echo on the concrete and collapsed against the nearest car, my head crashing against the door panel with a meaty thump as the hot metallic bile began to fill my mouth and nose. I bit my tongue as my teeth met with a hard
clack
and felt the grit of the parking lot on my face. With my hands scrabbling against the ground, I felt my strength leaving like water through sand, and in a moment, I felt nothing at all.