Currency of Souls

Chapter Twenty Five

The Indian’s car gives up the ghost sixty miles past the border and Brody figures that’s more luck than he has any right to expect. After all, he’s out of that goddamn Twilight Zone and close enough to a normal town to get the junker fixed, or find himself a new one. Hell, if there’s time, maybe he’ll take a stroll down Main Street, try to find a doctor he can wake up to get a patch-job done on his finger.

Maybe. That clock is still ticking at the back of his mind, and even sixty miles isn’t far enough away from that hellhole he just came screaming out of.

Prioritize, kid, he tells himself. There’ll be plenty of time to chill out when I’m clear on the other side of the Mexican border.

After a perfunctory glance at the corroded innards of the Dodge, he slams the hood down and starts to walk. A few miles back he encountered a—mercifully graffiti-free—sign that told him he was entering Saddleback, and that’ll do him just fine. Had it said MILESTONE, then he’d know for sure he’d died and gone to Hell.

Ahead, block-shaped buildings cast jagged shadows across the narrow street. At first glance Saddleback seemed just as desolate and dismal as Milestone, but there are lights on in a lot of those buildings, and laughter echoes hollowly from an alley. Above him, the stars are a welcome sight, and help to light his way until he reaches the amber glow from the houses. Even the air feels different here, lived-in, as if normal people pass through it every day and their words linger long after they’ve gone home to bed. There is no sense of gloom, of hopelessness.

It’s just a town, with regular folks. No glass or wooden Indians, no mad preachers, fire-handed healers, or homicidal deer. Just regular folks.

He walks a bit further, as relieved and calm as the lacerating pain in his broken finger will let him be. A new wave of voices catches his attention. He follows it, drawn to the sound of normal human conversation, and it brings him to a small bar, with brightly lit mullioned windows and a garishly painted sign above the door that proclaims it THE FALLRIGHT INN. Brody groans silently at the joke, but makes no move to go inside.

It’s just a tavern, and a normal looking one, with the animated shadows of customers spread across the drawn blinds beckoning to him to come inside.

He chews his lower lip, regards his broken finger, and sighs deeply.

“To hell with it,” he says at last and tugs at the door, which he half-expects to be locked from the inside. It swings open without a sound and a wave of heat welcomes him, chasing the chill from his bones.

As soon as he steps foot into the tavern, he smiles. There is no gloom here, no shadow of death, no lunatics, just a bar with polished brass rails and gleaming glasses stacked in a classy looking row of mahogany shelves on the wall behind the counter. The roof is lofty, and devoid of cobwebs; the walls clean and adorned with pictures of past visitors, winning racehorses, and sports heroes.

But it is the light Kyle notices most of all. It’s clean, and bright, and there is more than one. Here, the shadows are flat and unthreatening.

There are more people here too, at least twenty at a guess. They turn to look at him as the door swings shut. Relief overwhelms him. “Name’s Brody,” he blurts, then immediately hides a wince. Way to go asshole. Why not say: Hi, I’m Brody, the murderer? You might have seen me on the news? But if anyone recognizes him, it doesn’t show, and the air stays the same. Still, Brody reckons his mouth may have just put paid to the thought of staying for more than one drink. He edges up to the counter, and the barman, a stout man with ruddy cheeks, a bushy gray moustache and a peeling pate, nods in greeting.

“Evenin’.”

“Whiskey,” Brody tells him. “Make it a double.”

“Right,” says the barman, and goes to get the bottle. Brody glances at the mirror behind the bar, and nods his satisfaction. Normal folks; normal town.

Except maybe, for one man, who appears to be sobbing over his drink, his face wrinkled up so badly that his eyes have disappeared. No one seems to be paying him much attention though, so Brody feels no guilt in asking the barman about him when he returns with his whiskey.

“What’s his story?”

“Who, Kelly?”

“That his name?”

“Yeah. Thad Kelly. He’s a regular. Runs the auto shop.”

The barman begins to wipe down the counter, a sure sign that there’s a story here he loves to tell. Brody takes a sip of whiskey, relaxes a little, and nods his encouragement, but all the man tells him is, “He wasn’t supposed to know your name,” and walks away.

Brody frowns, and looks back to the mirror.

Only then does he notice the car keys on the man’s table, the grief in Kelly’s eyes when he finally opens them and looks at Brody’s reflection.

Only then does he notice the wild-haired priest sitting in the shadows, and the sad-eyed cop watching him from the corner.

“Oh Jesus…” Heart pounding, he licks his lips. Stands.

Takes in the rest of the “regulars”.

Suddenly the lights don’t seem so clean, so bright.

And from a small transistor radio set atop the counter between a woman who looks like some silver screen siren whose name he can’t remember, and a naked old lady with shriveled breasts and a garishly painted grin, Dean Martin starts to sing.

Iris sits on the edge of her bed, a cigarette clamped between her fingers. Through the boards over the window, she can hear Horace and Maggie arguing down on the street, but after a while their raised voices blend in with the natural ambience of the night and she no longer notices.

The Sheriff is gone. Kyle too, and despite what they might have come to realize about their roles in the town, Milestone will die without them. It has no pulse, no reason to go on breathing, to keep pretending, and right now, as she sits here alone with only the shadows for company, the temptation to empathize is strong.

She slides off the bed, the cigarette held at a safe distance from the bedclothes, and drops to her knees. Despite the candles, the darkness beneath her bed is thick. On all fours, she fumbles, fingers outstretched until they touch cold metal. With a satisfied sigh, she tugs, pausing to jam the cigarette between her lips, then, back on her feet, and with both hands clamped around the handle, hauls the heavy object into the light.

There’s a fine film of dust on the box, which is roughly the size of a small refrigerator, or a child’s coffin. She brushes it away, traces with gentle fingers the initials that have been branded into the lid: K.V.

A whoop of laughter from Maggie informs Iris that the argument on the street has ended. Either that, or Horace has made a remark in his defense that has proved inadequate. With a faint smile, Iris shakes her head, draws on her cigarette, and scoots back on her knees. There is only one latch on the box, and it looks ancient, but Iris knows it is still functional. Tonight will not be the first time she’s opened it.

She snaps the latch, absently wiping the dust on her shirt, and eases open the heavy lid.

Inside, snug in their cotton beds, are a dozen small jars.

Each one bears a label, but they all say the same thing: TIME FLIES.

Trapped within all but one of the Mason jars are insects, miraculously still alive despite the amount of time they’ve been cooped up in there. Iris has kept this box beneath her bed for years, ever since she discovered it buried beneath a loose concrete slab in the ruin of what passes for the building’s back yard.

At first, she’d thought it was exactly what it looked like: a small chest freezer, or a cooler, but then her imagination led her by the hand to more extravagant and exciting possibilities. Maybe some bank robbers hid their loot in there. Maybe it’s packed to the brim with jewelry. Impatient, and at the mercy of childish excitement, she opened it, only to find it full of nothing but what she assumed were lightning bugs.

The flies press against the glass, as if they know they’re in her thoughts. Their bodies begin to glow a queer violet color. Iris smiles. They never fail to cheer her up, even when the weight of her sadness seems too much of a challenge for them.

“Hello, my friends.” She picks up one of the jars and holds it in front of her face, watches them take flight again inside their little glass prison.

She wonders what would become of these strange little creatures, should she dare to let them out. It is an idea that has occurred to her before, but she has always managed to convince herself to wait. Someday, she has always promised herself, she’ll find out what they are, and whether or not it’s safe to release them.

Someday.

Her smile disappears.

Always someday, never now.

And now everyone is gone.

With an uncertain smile, she walks her fingers up the glass toward the lid.

The insects follow.