Bad Men

The guy on the john had been shot where he sat, a bloody cloud behind what remained of his head. There wasn’t much of his face left either, but Harry figured from his stringy legs, his gray hair, and sagging flesh, that the guy was well into his seventies. His white T-shirt was sweat-stained yellow in places, and blood had soaked into the shoulders, leaving marks like epaulettes. His skin was split by gas blisters.

Harry wanted to run, but there was still the sound of Elvis coming from what was probably a bedroom at the end of the hall. He walked slowly to the door and looked inside.

The couple in the bedroom were younger than the old man in the can, much younger. Harry figured them for their late twenties, at most. The man had been shot on the floor and lay naked by an open drawer, its contents littering the floor. A box of ammunition had fallen and scattered around him, but there was no gun. There was a bullet hole in his back, barely recognizable amid the damage that had been done to his body. Harry retched, but he had nothing left inside and so he just belched acidic gas.

The woman had dark hair and sat slumped sideways against the pillows and the headboard. She too was naked. The sheets had been pulled away from her body and she’d been cut up pretty bad as well. Despite himself, Harry stepped closer, and something registered in his head. This wasn’t a frenzy, thought Harry. No, there was purpose to these wounds. There was-

“Jesus,” whispered Harry.

She had chunks of flesh missing from her thighs and buttocks, where someone had hacked them out. There was flesh missing from the man as well: less flesh, admittedly, but then he was scrawny and muscular, a little like the old man in the john.

A mental image flashed in Harry’s mind: the refrigerator, empty but for a carton of sour milk.

And meat. Fresh meat.

Harry ran.

He hit the stairs at speed, taking the steps two at a time. The front door was still open and he could see Veronica sitting behind the wheel, her fingers tapping an impatient cadence on the dashboard. Her eyes widened as she saw him emerge.

“Open the door,” shouted Harry. “Quickly!”

She reached for the driver’s door, still staring at him while her fingers fumbled for the handle. Then she was no longer looking at him but beyond and behind him. Harry heard her scream his name before the world spun around in a circle, and Harry found himself looking first at the car from a sideways angle, then at the ground, then the sky and the house and the grass, all tumbling in a crazy mixture of images that seemed to go on forever but in fact lasted barely seconds.

And Harry couldn’t understand why, even as he died and his severed head bounced to a halt by the porch steps.

And out on Dutch Island, the man known to some as Melancholy Joe Dupree lay on his bed and watched the rain fall, harder and harder, until at last his view through the window was entirely obscured. His bones, his teeth, his joints, they all ached, as if the effort of supporting his great bulk were slowly becoming too much for them. Joe moaned and buried his face in his pillow, tears forcing themselves from the corners of his eyes.

Make it stop, he begged. Please make it stop.

A face appeared in the darkness beyond his window, a boy’s face, the skin blue-gray, the eyes dark. The boy reached out as if to touch the glass, but made no contact. Instead, he watched the man in uniform curl in upon himself on the huge bed, until at last the pain began to ease and Joe Dupree fell into a troubled sleep, tormented by the sound of whispering, of gray figures and tunnels beneath the earth, and a boy with tainted skin who gazed upon him as he slept.

The Second Day

Not a shred in the papers,

Becoming all too clear

Not a one cares that she got away.

Now the fear of being found

A little less profound

On a face that’s never been

Fit to laugh.

– Pinetop Seven, “The Fear of Being Found”

Chapter Three

Know me, wife.