Chapter 19
The paper plate of ham and cheese grits was slightly heavy and oily in my hands. Needlessly polite, I knocked on the door.
"Ray, I brought you some dinner."
He snarled at me from his bed, and jerked on the handcuff, but the heavy railing snapped his arm back. He was not having a good moment. His hair was wild, his skin was pale, and his eyes were unfocused. He looked as if he was listening to something far away.
"Ray? Are you with me, buddy? Hello… anybody home?" I set the plate of grits next to him. Once again, all I gave him was a plastic utensil, and if he could take me out with a spoon, he deserved to escape.
Gradually his face returned to normal. His eyes focused on the food, and then he looked up at me.
"Sorry. I was having an episode." He sounded slightly confused.
"Not a problem." I had no idea what medications he had been on at the asylum, but we had nothing to help him with here. "I brought you dinner."
"Thanks." He took the plate and dived into the food with gusto.
"Have you given any thought to telling us some more information, Ray?" I asked politely.
"Have you given any more thought to letting me go?"
"We're talking about it," I lied. "If you gave us a little more to go on, a little something to show good faith effort, we would probably be more inclined to just turn you loose."
"I'll tell you everything I know as soon as I'm free. I'll call you from a payphone or something," he answered as he swallowed his food without chewing. Bits of grits ran into his facial hair. "Honest."
"Sure. I believe that."
"No, really. Look, once I'm free, having the world destroyed doesn't exactly fit my plans. I can't hang out with the pretty senoritas if the clock for the universe isn't ticking. I'm talking about a win-win situation."
I tried a different tack. "We found Byreika's journal. We know all about the Cursed One. We're going to figure it out without you, Ray. We'll figure it out soon enough. You help us now, you get on our good side, and then we can try to help you out."
He laughed at me. "Do you think I'm stupid? Jeez, kid. I may be a little crazy but I still have an IQ of 160. I've read that book too. All you know now is how serious your problem is. That old Jew had a lot more questions than answers. Besides, he's stuck in your head anyway, so you should already know all of this stuff."
"Why is he stuck in my head? How can he communicate with me?" I pressed for any information that I could, hoping that he would slip.
"You can't be serious? Really? Damn. My first impression was right, you are stupid. Earl must be hiring strictly by the bench press now. If you haven't figured out how that Old Man is trying to help you, then you really are up a creek. Even if I told you where to meet the Cursed One, you wouldn't know what to do when you caught him."
"What do you mean?"
"No mystery here, kid. I'm not Hannibal Lecter. I'm not trying to play mind games with you. I'm just surprised is all. You don't even know who you are, do you?"
"I know exactly who I am."
"If you did, then we wouldn't be having this conversation." He laughed at me again. "Oh shit. The world is screwed. Good night, kid. Shut the lights on your way out. Talk to me when you have a clue."
I was heading to bed when I heard the raised voices. I hurried toward the noise, thinking that it might be some sort of emergency, but slowed down when I realized it was Grant arguing with Julie in her room. She sounded rather calm, but he sounded upset.
Probably should have kept walking, but showing a real lack of character, I decided to eavesdrop through the door.
"-could have at least tried."
"Darné and his wights were right there. I swear, there was nothing I could have done except die along with him," Grant pleaded. "I don't like him, but you know I would never abandon another Hunter if there was a chance to save them, but there was no chance!"
"Well, he made it, so apparently you were wrong."
I suddenly felt very smug.
There was an awkward pause on the other side of the door.
"I know…" Grant sounded tired. It was the first time I had heard genuine emotion in his voice. "I've been dwelling on it every minute since it happened. I misjudged, and that mistake left a man to die. I left a fellow Hunter to die alone…"
Was he crying?
"Grant, it's okay, everyone makes mistakes."
"I don't… Sorry. I've got to go. See you in the morning," Grant said. I moved away from the door as fast as I could remain silent, and made it about ten feet before the door opened. I spun around, as if I had been coming from the other direction.
Grant was in fact wiping his eyes as he closed Julie's door behind him.
"Evening, Grant."
"Pitt." He nodded, then walked quickly in the other direction, his pride not able to show weakness to a rival. Especially a rival whom he had accidentally condemned to a horrible death, but I could tell by looking at him that it wasn't an act. He really was torn up by his failure. Torn up, and hurting.
I didn't feel so smug anymore.
Grant stayed the night. I still didn't like the man one iota, but it was rather nice to have one more person to pull guard duty. While it was dark, it did not do us much good to have somebody on patrol outside, so instead, we all clustered in one suite of rooms centered around Ray Shackleford's little prison. One person was awake at all times to walk the hall. The sensors had been rigged to alert us if anything bigger than a rabbit came within twenty feet of the house. We could have moved that perimeter back, but the number of deer in the woods would have been setting off alarms all night long.
Julie had taken extra precautions with Ray's room. She had put motion detectors all around his bed. If he even thought about making an escape we would all know.
Personally, I didn't think we had anything to really worry about. Nobody outside of Julie's immediate circle of friends and family knew about the home. The Heart of Dixie Historical Preservation Society was an effective front, so even if the Feds did have somebody leaking information to Lord Machado, they didn't know about this place.
I turned in for the evening. I put my armor on the ground next to the bed, weapons sitting on top. If I needed to find them quickly in the dark, it would not be a problem. I even left my pants on in case I needed to move in a hurry. My watch wasn't until 2:00 a.m. I heard Holly's boots echo in the hall. All of us were close enough that if anything bad happened, we would all know. The only people who slept far apart in a situation like this were the suckers in the horror movies.
Before I drifted off to sleep, I comforted myself that at least Grant was sleeping in a different room than Julie. I had no idea if that meant they weren't as close as I feared, or if their relationship was currently on the rocks, like I hoped, or-worst-case scenario-Julie was just trying to be polite to the rest of us. I did not really know why or how I had fallen so hard for Julie Shackleford, but I had. She was by far the most interesting, smart and attractive woman I had ever known. I cringed when I remembered seeing her kissing Grant through the rifle scope. Now that was an unpleasant thought to fall asleep on.
"Hello again, Boy," called the Old Man. He was still sitting on the stone steps of the crumbled and partially burned church. "Watch this as it goes now." He spun his little carved toy on the steps. This time it stayed upright for nearly two whole seconds before it fell over. "See, is much better this time," he said with obvious pride.
"Bravo," I said as I walked through the snow toward him. Once again I was barefoot, but the cold was not uncomfortable beneath my soles. "And I always thought ghosts floated around in white sheets and rattled chains."
"Ha. Boy thinks he is funny man now."
"You are, or were, Mordechai Byreika. Born in Lodz, Poland. Monster Hunter." He did not betray any noticeable reaction when I said that.
"Is good name. I not hear whole name in long time."
"I guess. If you were alive you would be almost a hundred and thirty."
"Is all? Time pass so slow when is stuck."
"So you're not alive, but you're stuck. Just what are you?"
"I say before. Is no important. I just friend." The Old Man scooped up his little makeshift dreidel and placed it in my hand. "Here, you take. Give to your childrens some day. Maybe they play with, and say, oy is fun."
I held the little toy in my palm. It really did look awful, but I did not have the heart to tell him since he seemed so proud. In his defense, he had been dead for sixty years. I imagined that would make a man's carving skills a little rusty. "Thanks." I tucked it into my pocket.
"Welcome. Now for me, you not worry. You stop Cursed One, you help me just fine. Maybe I get not stuck." He shrugged his narrow shoulders. "Who knows?"
"That was your mission in life. Stopping the Cursed One."
"Is hard to remember." He tapped one bony finger against his cranium. "Few things I know. Some I only think I know. But I know for sure one thing that is true. Time is short."
"Ray Shackleford says three days. I suppose two now."
"Yes. Sounds right. You must learn much very fast. Is up to you, no one else, Boy."
"I know," I answered. At this point, arguing about my purpose in life seemed rather silly, especially against the ghost in my head. "If you don't mind me asking, how did you die? Last anybody heard, the Nazis had taken you."
He hawked and spat a wad of phlegm into the snow. "Bastards. Some monsters are just men. Sometimes, worst kind of all is men. How I die? Is hard to say, is not important now."
"Did it hurt?" It seemed a stupid question.
"Is stupid question. Of course hurt. Hurt when you died, yes?"
"Yeah, I guess." Even in my dream state, the scar tissue that coated so much of my body was still thick and coarse. I thought that I had understood what pain was, until that day in my office showed me that I still had a lot to learn.