Currency of Souls

“I offered to bring back the woman he loved. I offered to bring back Flo and grant him safe passage from this town.”

“That’s quite an offer. I’m flattered you thought it would take so much for him to sell me out. He’d probably have done it for a six-pack.” I can’t keep the ugly tone from my voice.

“You don’t know your son very well, Sheriff.”

“Either do you, apparently.” I draw my fingers down my face. “So if he made the deal, how come I’m still breathing?”

“It interests me that you assume he did.”

“What?”

“Situations reversed, would you have accepted the terms?”

“This isn’t about me.”

“You couldn’t be more wrong about that.”

“I want to see him.”

“I understand, but let me have a few more moments of your time.”

I also want a drink, but even though there’s a fancy decanter in view on one of the bookshelves, I’m not going for it. I don’t want to be drunk for whatever’s coming, and I don’t want anything Hill might have touched. So I wait, and listen, and picture Kyle in a room somewhere above my head, sleeping, unaware that his father’s downstairs, chatting with the devil.

Or whatever he is.

“Is this what you do for fun?” I ask.

He looks surprised, maybe even a little insulted. “Fun?” He scoffs. “Hell…I wish that were the case, Tom.”

“Then why?”

He scoots forward a little, an intense look on his face, one eye like a white marble, the other in shadow. “I don’t enjoy what I do anymore than you enjoy livin’ in your own skin when your spirit’s already shriveled up and died inside it. I do this because I have to, not because I want to.” He sits back, drums his fingers on the arm of the couch. “You want to know what I am. I can’t tell you that, and not because I ain’t allowed to, but because no one’s ever explained it to me. What I can tell you is what I used to be. It may surprise you.”

I shrug as if I couldn’t care less, but I’m interested. “A preacher?”

He grins and his cheeks vanish. “A salesman.”

“Let me guess—bibles.”

“You need to abandon the religious angle, Tom. I was a door-to-door carpet products salesman. Damned good one too. In my spare time I liked to paint. Still life’s mostly.”

I frown at him. He laughs and it sounds like a gust of winter wind through the eaves. “I know. Hard to picture, ain’t it?”

“No shit. And when was this?”

His smile fades. “Can’t remember.”

I’m appalled to find myself feeling sorry for him. I have to remind myself why I’m here, and whose fault it is. But that’s not so clear, no more than it’s ever been. I can’t be sure Cadaver wasn’t toying with me by planting the seed of doubt in my brain. He hasn’t said Kyle took the bargain he was offered. He hasn’t said he didn’t either. The fact that I’m alive is about the only thing keeping me from being convinced the latter holds true.

“Had a wife, and two children too,” he continues, as wistfully as his artificial voice will allow. “Can’t recall their names, or their faces. I know I cared about them a great deal though.”

“So how did you get demoted to this position?” I’m hoping to get a rise out of him, simply so I won’t have to feel sympathy for the old bastard anymore.

It’s his turn to shrug. “Can’t rightfully recall that either, but I’m sure it began with the scandal. See, I mentioned I was good at my job. Turns out I was maybe a little too good. I could talk the talk like no one else in the company. Had a ninety-six percent success rate you see, which means almost everyone who opened the door to me bought whatever I was sellin’. Which is good, unless it’s discovered that what you’re sellin’ emits toxic fumes, which when inhaled, causes seizures, and eventually a very painful death.” He shakes his head. “Sold an awful lot before the company recalled it, Tom. That’s an awful lot of dead folk.”

“And that’s why you’re—”

“No idea. You could say the death of all those people wasn’t my fault, but we might have to argue about that. I’ve had plenty of time to think it through, and I suppose there could be any number of reasons why I ended up doin’ what I do now. Could be because I shot my father to keep him from beatin’ my Momma to death with a shovel, or because I shot a few bluejays with my BB gun when I was a kid. At the end of the day, don’t really matter why. I still am what I am and always was: a salesman sellin’ death to whoever opens their door to me.”

“And that’s what we’ve done? Opened our doors to you because we fucked up our lives?”

“Because you fucked up the lives of others. Why do you think you’re involved here? We both know you didn’t murder your wife, but you keep tellin’ yourself you did. Why?”

“I figured you’d already know.”

“Humor me.”

“Why should I?”

I search for words, but like the answer he’s seeking, I can’t wrench it free of the dark that’s coiling inside me like oil in a spinning barrel.

“Who’s the victim of your sins, Tom? Kyle?”

“Maybe.”

“No.” The word is flat, dead, delivered like a hand slammed down on a table. “It’s you. You’re the victim. You’ve let yourself drift on a tide of bad judgment, let this town suck the marrow from your bones and the ambition from your heart because it was easier’n puttin’ up a fight. You’re a quitter, Tom.”

I’m a little stunned at the vehemence in his artificial voice. Whatever the motive behind his little rant, I’m inclined to believe he’s just accused me of an unforgivable crime, not on some malignant whim, but because he desperately wants me to know. Because I have to know.

I’ve heard some people say that when they were faced with extreme danger their lives flashed before their eyes. That’s who Cadaver is, or at least a part of what he is. He’s a reminder of all you’ve done, and should have done. He’s an accountant who keeps track of how much you’ve squandered and how much you owe. He’s a debt collector of the most ruthless kind because he deals in the currency of souls.

“You’re a failure.”

I’m getting angry, and that’s about par for the course. I can’t walk away from this like I’ve walked away from everything else, and with no distance to put between me and the man judging me, and no gun to shove between his eyes to force him to reevaluate, I have no choice but to defend myself with words.

“Is this supposed to make me see the light? Change my ways? Am I supposed to leave here with an arm around my boy, both of us skipping to the tune of The Andy Griffith Show, all because I was fortunate enough to heed the wisdom of a mass-murdering parasite? Fuck you old man. You brought Hell to this town just as much as Hill did. You infected it, infected us, and then have the gall to sit there like God himself judging everyone you’ve set out to destroy. Why not just wave a magic wand and blow the fucking place off the earth and be done with it. Why drag it out like this unless you like the suffering, unless it’s how your limp dick gets to twitching?”

Cadaver seems unaffected by my outburst, but right now I want to wring his scrawny neck, or at the very least rip that goddamn box out of it so he’ll stop talking.

“I’ve done nothin’ in this town the people didn’t ask for, Tom. I’m as cursed as everyone else, maybe even more than they are. I don’t get to make choices. I just get to grant power to people who make them too freely, and without thinkin’ them through. And I don’t get to change them.” He frowns. “So no, I don’t expect you to see the light. That star burned out a long time ago. But whether or not you choose to understand what I’m tryin’ to tell you, you’ll learn to appreciate the message when the choice is taken away.”

“Riddles.” I stand, muscles trembling, hands clenched into fists I want so badly to use but know I won’t. I