Kingdom of Shadows

“Let’s get off the street.” He motioned to the bar behind them. “Catch some heat.”

* * *

The bar was dark, with scarred linoleum floors, low ceilings and only two small windows on the front wall. A scattering of tables and chairs filled the area, while a row of dark booths lined one wall and a bar filled the back. A jukebox kitty-cornered nearby sat quietly. The bartender, an overweight guy with a shock of unruly salt-and- pepper hair, chatted quietly with what was probably a regular, both staring at a small television suspended in the corner showing an old black-and-white horror movie. Otherwise the place was empty.

Rooster and Snow ordered a couple beers then took them over to the booth farthest from the bar and sat down.

“It’s good to see you, man.” Snow slowly caressed his beer bottle, focusing on it rather than Rooster. “Just sucks it has to be like this.”

After a long swallow of beer Rooster slid a black plastic ashtray from the corner of the table into the center and lit a cigarette. “What’s going on, Snow?”

He was about to answer when a bloodcurdling scream exploded through the bar.

Rooster reached to his belt for a gun that wasn’t there, a gun that hadn’t been there in years. Snow cocked his head in the direction of the television, where a ghoul was staggering through a cemetery shrouded in mist, closing in on a buxom young maiden with the ability to scream at octaves capable of shattering glass.

“Jesus H.” He rubbed his temples. “Could’ve lived without that.”

“Never seen you so jumpy, Rooster-man. You were always cold as ice.”

“The priest, who was he?”

“I don’t know.”

“He knew me. And I knew him. I just can’t remember how.”

“You’ll figure it out.”

“Can’t figure out much of anything lately. The strangest shit’s happening. I can’t make sense of any of it.” He took a deep drag on his cigarette, blew out a cloud of smoke and watched it climb toward the ceiling. “Look, I —”

“Feels like you went to sleep and woke up in the middle of your life,” Snow interrupted, voice unusually quiet, “and now you can’t remember how the hell you got here.”

Rooster stabbed the cigarette between his lips and left it there so he could put his hands flat on the table between them and better conceal the fact that they were shaking. He nodded. “What’s happening to us?”

Up close Snow’s eyes were bloodshot and heavy, like he’d been crying recently, hadn’t slept in a while, or both. He smelled vaguely of cheap aftershave. “What do you know about demons?”

“Demons? You mean like—”

“Like all kinds of crazy shit runs through your head, then you start hearing things. Screams mostly, or whispers that don’t make no sense. And just when you think it can’t get no worse, you start seeing shit. Not people, not…not exactly. But they look like people…least until they don’t.”

The receptionist, Rooster thought, shrugging off a chill. “I don’t believe in demons.”

“Yeah neither do I but they don’t seem to give a shit.” Snow downed some beer then let out a quiet belch under his breath and looked to the door as if expecting someone to burst through it at any moment. “Not too long ago I got some information.” He leaned closer, across the table. “And ever since then these other motherfuckers have been following me. Never up close, always a ways back, watching from their cars, Crown Vics—big black bastards—that’s what they drive.”

“Cops?”

“These ain’t cops.”

“Who are they?”

“They been following me for weeks. After today they’ll be following you.”

“Why?” With manic repetition Rooster puffed his cigarette. “What do they want?”

“You remember the night Carbone died?”

Rooster began to perspire as flashes of farmhouse, blood and scarecrows filled his memory. “Some.”

No longer able to contain his nervousness, Snow abruptly stood up and made a beeline for the jukebox. He dropped a coin in, made a selection then gave the bartender and his friend a long look that said: This is going to make hearing the television more difficult but let’s not make a big deal about it or you’ll force me to do some really unpleasant shit to you. Both men looked away without comment and Snow slowly strode back to the booth as The Police’s Spirits in the Material World kicked in.

“You said I needed to know what you know.” Rooster crushed his cigarette in the ashtray. “So tell me.”

“What do you remember about the night Carbone died?”

“Come on, man, what the hell’s going on?”

“Do it.”

“The armored car robbery, the last job we pulled as a crew,” he said. “Everything went according to plan until Carbone fucked up and blew the back doors too early. The third guard was waiting on him. Carbone took a shotgun blast dead in the gut. Starker wasted the guard, shot him in the face, killed him instantly.” He remembered the young man’s head as it exploded, a crimson mist of blood, brains and skull spraying everything, and all of them. “You got Carbone back to the van while Nauls and I handled the other two guards and took care of the swag. Landon was the wheelman. We got out ahead of the cops, ended up in the middle of nowhere at some deserted old farmhouse. Carbone died in the van.”

Snow nodded. “Then what?”

“You were there.”

“Pretend I wasn’t.”

Rooster fidgeted in his seat. It felt like thousands of insects were scurrying over every inch of his body. He scratched at his head and suddenly found himself checking the door every few seconds as well. “I don’t…”

“You don’t know.”

Shadows along the ceiling shifted, elongated.

“We split the take,” he finally said. “Then we took off.”

“That how you remember it?”

“I think so but I can’t…” Rooster took another swig of beer. “I can’t remember exactly, it…the whole thing seems like a dream.”

“I couldn’t remember nothing either.”

The man at the bar, a middle-aged guy wearing some sort of workman’s uniform, hopped down from his stool and slipped through a nearby door marked RESTROOMS.

“The more I thought about it,” Snow continued, “the worse it got. I couldn’t remember the rest of that night no matter how hard I tried. It was like it was just…gone. All I knew was whatever happened scared the shit out of me, made me scared like I never even knew I could be. I’m talking about the kind of fear you feel right down to your nuts, man. The kind that makes you shit in your pants like a baby sliding out lunch. You know what I mean.”

Rooster did know. He swallowed so hard he gagged.

“Like you, I thought I was losing my goddamn mind.” Snow sat back with an air of defiance. “It’s like there was something right on my ass, something evil. I couldn’t take no more. I stopped sleeping, stopped eating, just locked myself up in my apartment and hid out. I wanted to kill myself but I was afraid of the other side. Ain’t exactly lived the life of a saint, right?”

The bartender was staring at them intently. When he realized Rooster had caught him he quickly looked away and busied himself.

“That’s when that woman started hanging outside my apartment wanting to talk to me all the time.” His face twisted. “I didn’t know who she was, didn’t know what I’d done. I don’t even remember it. I was on H when it went down and was hurting so bad for a fix I was out of my mind. I never meant to hurt her.”

“I never knew you did heroin.”

Snow sighed helplessly. “Neither did I.”

“You’re not making any sense. What the hell are you talking about?”

“I tried to do straight time, man, for real. I tried.”