“I believe you.”
“I got a janitor gig at this office building a few blocks from my crib. I was going crazy but I showed up on time every night, did my thing and minded my own business, played by the rules, closed my eyes to the demons and the screams and that woman always staring at me. I’d walk there, work the overnight shift then walk home in the morning. I’m there about a week when I notice this old dude following me one night. Skinny little white cat with glasses. Real Poindexter-looking motherfucker. At first I think maybe he’s a cop, but he don’t look like no cop I ever seen, looks more like a professor or some shit. He shows up every night, tails me from my apartment to work, and then he’s gone. So one night I get a lead on him, take a corner and duck into a doorway. He comes by and I grab his narrow ass.” Snow ran a hand over his face. He too had begun to perspire. “I’m about to rack me some old white man when he starts talking about that night at the farmhouse, all the shit I’m going through and how he can help me. Motherfucker knew more about me than I did, man. Said he had answers, said he knew what happened to us that night. He said it was time we knew the truth. And that’s exactly what he laid on me. Only now sometimes I wish he didn’t. Sometimes not knowing was better.” He bowed his head in an attempt to mask the tears filling his eyes. “Ain’t that a bitch? We never had a goddamn chance, man, none of us.”
“Who was this guy?”
“What they done to us wasn’t right, Rooster, it wasn’t right. We did some bad shit but we’re human beings, man, we fucking
“What who did to us? What are you saying?”
Snow reached into his jacket, put something on the table and slid it over to him. When he pulled his hand away a small key was revealed. “Opens a locker at the bus station downtown,” he said. “Take it. Use it.”
Rooster nonchalantly covered it with his palm. “What am I gonna find?”
“Everything I know. Everything you need to know. All the proof I got from Poindexter.” He checked the door once, then again just a second or two later. “They’re after me, man, and they know I’m trying to pass the information to you. Once they know you got it, they’re gonna come after you, too.”
“Why are you giving this to me, why not one of the others?”
Snow shrugged. “Carbone’s dead. Nauls is a retard. Landon’s an asshole, and Starker—shit—that boy’s stone psycho. Whatever Hell them motherfuckers are burning in they deserve.”
“I’m not so sure anybody deserves to burn in Hell.”
“Makes sense if you’re the one burning.”
Rooster slid the key to the edge of the table then pocketed it. “You know where any of them are?”
“Last I heard Nauls and Landon were still in the city and still in the life. Starker supposedly caught his old lady banging some guy. Put a .38 in her pussy and pulled the trigger, then he beat the dude into a coma, ripped his junk off and stuffed it so far up his ass they had to do surgery to get the shit out. Couple days later they both died. Starker got away. Word was he headed down to Mexico or some shit.”
“They ever catch him?”
“Don’t know.” He wiped the tears from his eyes then killed his beer. “Don’t care.”
“What happened to us that night, Snow?”
“Go open that locker.”
“Why don’t you just tell me?”
Snow smiled, but it was the smile of the damned. “You wouldn’t believe me even if I did.”
“Try me.”
“You got to see for yourself.”
Across the barroom, the restroom door opened with a scraping sound and Rooster saw the same man exit, wander back to the bar and return to the stool he’d vacated moments before. As the door slowly swung shut, he saw a moist and filthy tile floor littered with scraps of toilet paper and trash, and something else moving along the wet tiles toward the toilet stalls on the back wall of the bathroom. Like the severed appendage from some scale- covered creature, it slithered about in a snakelike motion, revealing a pale tentacle several inches thick and at least three feet long. Rooster sat up straighter, squinting through the shadows in an attempt to bring the thing into focus, but the door had closed. He glanced at Snow, who hadn’t seen it but looked as if he had. Rooster turned away, hopeful he might be able to obliterate what he’d just seen and knew to be impossible, but when he returned his gaze to the bar he saw the man grinning at him with malicious glee. Both he and the bartender began to laugh.
Rooster shuddered. “We need to get outta here.”
“Don’t matter for me no more.”
Rooster reached across the table, took hold of Snow’s wrist. It was cold as ice. He let go. “I’m not leaving you here, man.”
“I’m already dead. Been dead and buried for years.” Snow’s eyes suddenly looked empty, even more hopeless than before. “And so have you.”
-4-
He’d stood in the bus terminal for more than an hour. There was no sign of the Crown Vic or anyone following him on foot, but Rooster couldn’t shake the feeling he’d been tailed. So he stayed put, watched and waited.
People came and went, maintenance workers and ticket agents busied themselves with various duties, an occasional policeman drifted through, and a handful of homeless people sat in corners or, like many of the waiting passengers, occupied one of the numerous plastic chairs bolted to the floor in clusters and rows throughout the station.
The entire place smelled like a combination of filthy socks, urine and body odor, all of it made more oppressive by smothering bursts of forced hot air from an archaic heating system set far too high.
Directly across from the wall Rooster was leaned against stood a bank of lockers. He’d been fingering the key in his pocket since he arrived, and though he’d yet to approach it, he’d already zeroed in on the appropriate locker. He still couldn’t be certain he wanted to know what was waiting for him behind that little metal door. His life was complicated and confused enough. Did he really need to up the ante? Then again, could he afford not to? Snow had assured him the answers to his torment could be found within and he had no reason to doubt him. Even if it was a Pandora’s Box (and Rooster was certain it would be), how could he
Fuck it.
Pushing away from the wall, Rooster walked toward the lockers, casually sliding his hand from his pocket and holding the key down by his thigh.
No one seemed to notice as he closed on the locker, pushed the key into the slot then pulled the latch.
Rooster swung open the door, saw a black leather briefcase inside.
Heart racing, he reached inside, yanked it free and walked away, leaving the locker open and the key still in the lock.
Moving through the sliding front doors and into the cold but fresh air, Rooster hurried down the block and slipped into the first alley he came to, using it to cut through to the next busy street, where he disappeared into the flow of the crowd on the nearest sidewalk.
Night fell across the city as darkness swept through him, awakening demons eager to tear at a soul already in ruin.
The fires of Hell burned on.
He’d always felt relatively safe at the apartment. Now he wasn’t so sure. As he’d crossed town he noticed no tails, but knew he was being watched. Even when he’d hurried across the courtyard and into the projects, the area cold and empty but for one lone child sitting on a stoop a few buildings down, he still felt an overwhelming
