The Wrong Goodbye

20.

“Hey, Sam? I think I got something.”

We’d been at the library maybe twenty minutes. The first five of them I’d spent online searching the local paper’s database for any mention of sulfur or further instances of naked wandering. I spent the next fifteen wrestling with the fucking microfiche machine, because it turns out if you want to read more than a line or two online, you have to pay for it. Gio watched over my shoulder for a while as I cursed and scowled and occasionally rapped the obstinate piece of junk on its side in an effort to get it to work, all to no avail. When he tired of chuckling at my expense, he returned to the bank of computers on the far wall, leaving me to stew in peace.

I craned around in my seat to face him, and in so doing, knocked a spool of microfilm onto the floor, where it dutifully unraveled. I’m pretty sure I heard the old lady making bake-sale flyers at the photocopier snicker. “I swear, Gio, if you’re calling me over there to watch another video of a monkey dancing, I’m going to be pissed.”

“No monkey this time, honest. Stop fucking with that thing and come over here, would you?”

Turns out, Gio had found something: a series of hits about an old hospital nestled in a narrow box canyon a few miles outside of town. Abandoned since the Fifties, its sandstone façade was crumbling and decrepit, and it had been all but reclaimed by the desert that surrounded it. He had enough windows open to make my head hurt —I think people born into the digital age must be wired differently to process so much shit at once —but most of the hits were pretty useless: a piece from the local historical society, too dry to bother reading; a couple hikers’ websites, chock full of photographs of the hospital and the surrounding desert; a video piece from the local NBC affiliate on the perils of teen drinking that highlighted a story of a kid who, several years back, fell to his death from a window of the abandoned structure while he and a bunch of his friends were out partying in the desert. I began to wonder what the hell Gio dragged me over here for.

But as I read, there were others that were more illuminating. The minutes from a city council meeting in which the purchase of the old hospital was discussed. The results of a formal land survey —complete with map —submitted to the city by the developer, who declared his intent to build a resort upon the land in question, to take advantage of the natural sulfur springs that bubbled up from beneath the canyon floor. And the subsequent announcement on the city’s website that all construction of the resort had ceased due to lack of funds.

For each of them, the developer was listed as Walter Dumas.

I clapped Gio on his borrowed shoulder, and fought the urge to do a little end-zone dance. His meaty face broke into a grin. “Nice work, Gio —this is perfect.”

“So what now?”

“Print it. Print it all.”

It was dusk when we arrived back at the squat, and the house was submerged in shadow, the nearest working lights over two blocks away. The second we pulled into the driveway, I heard Roscoe screaming “HELP!” over and over again, to no one. He must’ve been carrying on like this a while; his voice was hoarse, and his calls sounded more rote than plaintive, as though his heart wasn’t really in it anymore. He picked up a bit when he heard us coming in, but when he spotted me through the open bathroom door, he slumped against his restraints, and his shouting ceased. Seeing him there, glaring at me in petulant defeat from atop the unplumbed toilet, he looked for all the world like a child sentenced to a time-out.

“Oh,” he said. “It’s you.”

“You been shouting like that the whole time?”

“No,” he said, too quickly.

“I’ll take that as a yes. Don’t worry —it doesn’t bother me any. It’s just there’s no one around to hear —you really could’ve saved your breath.”

“You two are gonna kill me, aren’t you?”

I laughed. “Roscoe, if we were going to kill you, you’d be dead by now —if only to save ourselves the trouble of carrying your ass around. Look, I know this sucks, OK? But tonight, I’ve got some business to attend to, and once that’s done, me and Gio will be on our way. So just sit tight a while, and everything’s gonna be just fine.”

“Fine. Right. Says the guy who thinks he’s a Grim Reaper.”

“Roscoe, look at me. Whatever it is I think I am, I’m telling you, it ain’t your time to die. Now, maybe I’m nuts, or maybe Gio was just fucking with you, but either way, I promise you you’ll be just fine, OK?”

He locked eyes with me a moment, and then he nodded. “Shit,” he said, though it sounded more like SHEE-it. “I guess I believe you. And it ain’t like I got nothing better to do, I suppose. But do an old man a favor, would you?”

I smiled. Roscoe had no way of knowing it, but I had a few decades on him easy. “Name it,” I said.

“Whatever damn-fool thing you’re fixin’ to do tonight, you be sure to get it done and come back in one piece. Last thing I need is to die strapped to a toilet ’fore my divorce is even finalized —then that thieving devil-woman would wind up with everything insteada just half.”

I smiled. “It’s a deal.”

“Oh, and one more thing —if it ain’t too much trouble, that is.”

“Yeah?”

“I could sure as hell use another beer.”

“So what’s the plan?” Gio asked, once I got Roscoe settled down.

Gio and I were in the midst of a convenience store feast, polishing off the last of the junk food we’d picked up that morning and washing it down with lukewarm beer. Truth be told, it was making me kind of queasy —or maybe that was the thought of what I was about to do.

“The plan?”

“Yeah —like, are we goin’ in guns blazin’, or what?”

“Last I checked, Gio, we didn’t actually have any guns.”

“You know what I mean. Whaddya use to take down a demon, anyway? You stake ’em or some shit? Hit ’em with holy water? There some kinda prayer you gotta say?”

I shook my head. “None of that stuff works.”

“Then what does?”

“Aside of a mystical object designed specifically to kill a demon? Pretty much nothing.”

A pause. “You got one of those?”

“Nope.”

“Know where we can find one?”

“Nope.”

“So what the hell’re we gonna do then?”

“We’re not going to do anything. You’re going to stay here and babysit Roscoe, while I go out there and see what I can find out.”

“So lemme get this straight: I’m supposed to sit here on my hands while you go pokin’ around a demon crack-house fulla scary monsters that want you dead with no strategy, no backup, and no weapons of any kind?”

“Yup.”

“Actually, you know what? My end of this plan don’t sound half bad.”

“You sure?” I asked. “Because it’s not too late to trade.”

Gio laughed. I took a pull of beer, and wished that it were something stronger.

“Listen,” I said, “there’s a damn good chance I won’t come back from this–”

“Aw, come on, man, don’t talk like that.”

“– and if I don’t, you let him go and then you run, you hear me?”

But Gio shook his head. “No need, man. You’ll come back. And Sam?”

“Yeah?”

“Make sure you come back.”