Currency of Souls

The sound of the car grows louder. Should be just past the bend now, and it’s coming real fast. Wintry’s hand is on the door, on the handle, and has it cracked, just a little, when the engine roars, making him turn to look once more.

It’s a red Buick. He recognizes it as Doctor Hendricks car, and as it gets closer, still going way too fast, sunlight flashing across the windshield, Wintry sees that he was right. There, hunched behind the wheel, is the doctor himself.

“It’s the Doc,” he tells Tom. “But I don’t think—”

Even from back here, Wintry realizes two things: Hendricks either doesn’t see them, or doesn’t care. Whatever the case, he’s not stopping. And in a matter of seconds, the men standing in the way are going to be road kill.

He has time for one thought only: This is where it ends, and it is not a frightening thought. He has never feared death, and that’s just as well because here it comes now, bearing down on him, the Buick’s silver grille like grinning teeth about to yawn open and swallow them all wide, the headlights wide like the terrified eyes of the pale man behind the wheel.

The sound of the engine fills the world.

The Sheriff cries out a warning. There is a hand on Wintry’s arm. He ignores the pain it causes, grabs hold of the Sheriff’s wrist, turns and thrusts the man, still cradling his boy, clear across the road, where the lawman staggers and falls flat on his ass on the verge of the slight embankment leading down into the woods. Kyle tumbles away from him, lands sprawled on his back in the grass, shoes pointing straight up at the sky.

“Wintry!”

There is nothing but red in his vision.

See you soon baby.

Wintry bends low, as if he’s going in for a football tackle, head lowered, eyes forward, shoulders angled forward. He does not wait to die. With his last breath rushing from his mouth in a strangled cry, he rushes to meet it.

* * *

“Didn’t used to be this hard,” Cadaver says, easing himself onto a stool. “Didn’t used to be like this at all. Guess I’m either losin’ my touch or people are gettin’ smarter.”

“The hell happened to you?” Gracie asks, her hands flat on the counter, eyes cold.

“The boy is dead.”

“Shame.”

Cadaver raises his head, and smiles at her, though the absence of eyes and the raw bloody holes where they should be negate any semblance of humor from it. “You almost sound like you mean it.”

“Who says I don’t?”

“I don’t know, but if you’re lookin’ for character witnesses, you’re runnin’ kind of low. ‘Specially with you killin’ ’em an all.”

“Vess would have told them.”

“Could be they already know.”

Gracie leans in, teeth clenched, red-veined eyes wide. “The only way they’d know is if you told them.”

“Yeah.” He nods slowly, picks a speck of soot from the counter and inspects it, which, considering he’s blind, or at least should be, would seem amusing to Gracie under different circumstances. But she’s far from amused. In fact, she’d love nothing more than to rip the old guy’s head clean off his shoulders and preserve it in a pickle jar as a warning to future customers not to fuck with her. But of course, there won’t be any future customers. She’s getting gone and Cadaver’s her ticket, so for now at least, she has no choice but to let him keep that rotten head of his, and to bide her time.

Gracie’s hands become claws on the polished mahogany. “You dirty son of a bitch. Why? ”

“Because you ain’t the only one who wants out, and I’ve been plyin’ my wares an awful lot longer than you have. Comes a time when it has to end, you see, when you start goin’ to bed at night and instead of seein’ nothin’ you start seein’ the faces of people you used to care about—”

“I don’t believe I’m hearing this.”

Cadaver ignores the interruption. “—Then you realize, one mornin’ while your busy materializin’ in people’s livin’ rooms right when they’re desperate enough to say yes to Hell itself if it means they get more time, that there might be salvation for you after all, an escape route you never believed existed. And then you start to want it, start plannin’, until at last the time comes when you have no more faith in what you do, only in what you can do to be done with it all.”

“You’ve got to be kiddin’ me.”

“For me that time is now.”

Gracie brings her face close to the old man’s, stares hard into his dead eye sockets. “Not before you get me out it isn’t.”

“I’m not a welsher. You’ll get what I promised if your side of the bargain is met. All of ’em, you said, correct?”

She nods, struggling to restrain herself from raking his sallow face with her nails.

“Well then,” Cadaver says, rising from the chair with a tip of an imaginary hat. “Let’s hope the Sheriff doesn’t live to see another sunset.” He turns and walks toward the door. “Or you’ll be watching a million of them from behind these windows.”

* * *

I’m winded, and not altogether sure what I’m seeing is actually happening. Could be I’m dreaming it all. Since finding Kyle strung up in Hill’s house, everything seems just the slightest bit off kilter. When I move my eyes, the world takes its time following.

But the sound, the earth-shattering explosion as steel meets flesh meets steel is enough to let me know there can be no mistaking this as reality. I saw Hendricks as the car approached, hunched over the wheel, shoulders raised as if he was manning a jackhammer. He was talking to himself, the sun making the tears in his eyes sparkle, face contorted in agony, the roots of which I’ll never know. Maybe it was simply the knowledge that he was about to kill someone.

And that look stayed on his face until Wintry let out a roar, fists held at his sides, and rushed forward like a bull, head and shoulders ramming into the car as if he hoped to stop it. I swear he almost did. The car seemed to stagger a little. There was smoke from the wheels, a horrible sharp screech before the car slammed into the wounded giant, crushing him against the front of my truck, his upper body snapping back like a jack-in-the-box. Blood flew. Flesh was torn away. But that wasn’t the end of it. The speed and the interruption Wintry presented to its passage didn’t stop the car. It’s front wheels reared up as if it was going to simply drive on over my truck. It didn’t make it. Gravity intervened. Hendricks’ car stalled and rolled back down on all four tires, the Buick bouncing on its chassis, but in doing so, crushed whatever was left of the big man beneath it.

The impact was so severe, I expected to see it had ejected the doctor from his car, but though the windshield was obliterated, he’s still in the driver seat, though what’s sitting there isn’t recognizable as anything human.

Can I call this an accident or assume it’s the result of another of Cadaver’s little bargains? Guess it doesn’t matter. The only thing that does is lying three feet away from me, spread-eagled, head cocked at an unnatural angle.

I have to leave here, but my truck isn’t going to move. There’s steam gushing out from beneath the crumpled hood and oil pissing from beneath it. It’s done, as is Hendricks’ Buick, so I guess I’m walking, unless someone comes along who doesn’t feel compelled to use their car as a weapon. And in Milestone, at least over the past few hours, such people are rare.

I stand up, check on Kyle to make sure he’s as comfortable as he needs to be, that he’s not just lying there like a buck waiting to be skinned, then I look at the road, at the twisted metal, the blood, the chaos.

Wintry’s gone, and though I know I should mourn him, I reckon he’s exactly where he wanted to be. At least his suffering’s over.

I step out onto the asphalt.