CHAPTER SIX

 
 

 

Lott Carey woke from strange dreams every hour. That was when fatigue got to him so much as to allow him to drift off into the fitful thing he called sleep. He dreamt of blood and battles, of swords and death, of love and pain. It was his calling, his destiny, and his gift. He knew he'd never know peace. So he flipped through the motel cable channels as if on this third time through there might be something on worth watching. Better the perils of late-night television than the visions that tormented him whenever he closed his eyes lately. A baleful glare over a reptilian spread of teeth, no more than a glimpse, but the familiar sensation sent terror spreading through his soul like embalming fluid poured into a corpse.

  On the outskirts of Speedway, the Speedway Lodge, formerly a Howard Johnson's, cost just over a hundred a week to stay. Just off the Crawfordsville Road thoroughfare that led to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, the stretch was tourist-friendly year-round; but if there wasn't a race going on, the motel was largely deserted. And worse, it offered few amenities to alleviate boredom. Lott couldn't even distract himself with his cell phone as it had been cut off earlier that day. He had let his cousin talk him into sharing a plan with him because his cousin couldn't get a plan on his own. Ignoring the voice warning him not to do business with family, Lott agreed. The first bill arrived and his cousin had run up over three hundred dollars in texting charges alone and offered to pay him fifty bucks on it out of his next check. Lott never even received the fifty. Another in the long list of reasons for him to stay away from family.

  His mother was a fiend. Always working an angle, she named him for a missionary in hopes of impressing some deacons at the church. It worked until they caught her breaking into the office to steal the petty cash. They moved into Section 8 housing, his moms little more than an industrious junkie who knew how to work the system. Even now, Lott suspected that her head bobbed up and down in the lap of a neighbor so that she could score enough to get back to sucking on a glass dick. Of his two brothers, one was barely functional and the other in the ground. He was staying with his sister, but she abruptly kicked him out. He couldn't tell if she was bipolar or simply back on drugs.

  Turning off the television, Lott decided to indulge his one vice and went out for a smoke. It was needless, too, because he wasn't addicted. There was no physical urge, his brain didn't get the rush others did. He smoked… just cause. It was something to do and gave him time to think. The outside view didn't offer much by way of distraction. His neighbors mostly paid for their rooms by the hour. One glance of his concrete dour expression and they let him be, though he took no joy in appearing hard. At the thought of having to adopt that affectation, he spat on the sidewalk. However, the role of being hard was a community expectation, a fixed mask, though he had no heart for death, his or anyone else's. Occasionally, he forced a smile for one of the regular pros whose faces he'd come to recognize, otherwise he continued the pantomime of armor needed for survival. Thus he rose up quickly on the streets with a reputation for being a loner until he hooked up with King. They had been boys for a minute, though, truth be told, while Lott was tougher and a better fighter, King had greater heart and will. He'd told King to stop through, but the parking lot remained empty and bleak.

  His evening's boredom sufficiently broken up, Lott flopped on his bed and opened one of the six books he picked up from the library. Tom Wolfe's A Man in Full. Walter Mosley's Futureland. Machiavelli's The Prince. Sun Tzu's The Art of War. Gary Braunbeck's Destinations Unknown. And the book which caught his attention this evening, Joseph Campbell's The Hero With a Thousand Faces. He remembered his fifthgrade teacher who rarely spoke to him and never called on him in class. She had already written him off as another street tough and had no expectations of him beyond, hopefully, him not disrupting class so that the other students could learn. Public school became a death by discouragement with him, the memory of which often had him wondering how many boys she'd derailed by not believing in them, by teaching them that they had already been written off. College was a dream he clung to as he struggled to pull together ends. Once he passed his GED. After he got his license. After he paid off the tickets from driving his sister's car without a license. There was always some roadblock in his map of plans.

  At the moment he was trapped in that cycle: needed money for a car, needed a car for a job, and needed a job for money. He accomplished the first goal and he got a job. The blue FedEx uniform was like a second skin at this point. He used to work down by the airport, trying to save up enough money to get a car and full get on his feet, but his kin were bleeding him dry for ride money, charging twenty-five bucks for a ten-minute trip. Another reason to add to that list. Life would be easier if he could walk to work or if he worked along a bus line, so he had hopes of transferring to a closer branch. Soon he'd be able to apply to school, maybe IUPUI or Ivy Tech, something to get started.

  The room lights flickered, interrupting his reading. Briefly he wondered if rats chewed on the wiring, as such was the natural order of things. Finding his place in his book again, he found comfort in the slightly chilly room by curling up and covering himself with a blanket. Fully dressed and it being the waning days of summer, Lott found himself pulling the comforter further around him. A creeping numbness settled into his feet so slowly he didn't realize the deep ache of cold in his bones at first. Movement skittered on the edge of his vision. Against the contrast of the dark blanket he realized he could see his breath. He was ready to adjust the thermostat or call the super when he noticed something else. Smoke billowed in from under the door.

  Lott rolled out of his bed. The heavy fog had a measured creep to it, its movement contrary to the laws governing mists. Cloudy torrents seeped under the door and through the slits of the window with nary a smoke detector going off. Rushing to the bathroom, he scooped up several towels, returning to find that the wisps had formed a hand with a raised finger, wagging at him for having any thoughts of stemming it.

  With that, the mist dispersed in a puff then coalesced into a screen of sorts. The picture of a woman formed, one unfamiliar to Lott though her beauty – despite the smoky portrait – was quite evident. Tall and proud, hair pulled back into a ponytail, she had a fragility and strength all at the same time. His heart filled with an ecstatic longing. Soon, another shape entered the scene. Clearly it was Lott, the two recognizing each other. They moved like guilty people not wanting to be caught, yet desiring the other all the more. They embraced, cloudy fingers fumbling over each other, probing, undressing. Lott stepped nearer, his hand raised in front of him as if to touch the entwined pair.

  Suddenly, the tendrils of mist took hold of him, whip-like cords wrapping around his hands, squeezing him with such force he winced despite his surprise. The fog rope lifted him from the ground, his arms pulled over his head. Lott kicked at the fallen cloud, each kick dispersing it briefly only to have it re-form. It formed a teeth-filled maw, opening and closing, with dark indentations giving it the appearance of eyes as it drew Lott toward it. A tongue lolled out, snaking its way to him, its serpentine undulations writhing up his body until it arrived at his face. It licked about him, its ephemeral touch both cold and light. Lott pulled away from it, straining from its touch as much as its tight embrace allowed. The coil reared up, a cloud cobra, then it rammed itself into his mouth. The coldness seeped into Lott. Its essence pushed down his throat. He gagged as it forced itself into him, filling him. Growing light-headed, unable to breathe, his eyes fluttered as they sank back into his head.

  The door buckled as something with a lot of force behind it slammed into it. The crash roused Lott back to near lucidity. He turned his head to see what manner of beast would follow next. Interminable seconds passed as the mist both drained and filled him. With the next blow, the door flew off its hinges followed by King and Merle tumbling in.

  King came to a stuttering halt as it took him a moment to get his head around the sight of his longtime friend suspended on tendrils of smoke. Gathering himself, he swung madly to break the beast's grip. Merle stood, near motionless, as if a patron at an art exhibit taking in the beauty and scale of the machinations as only a true connoisseur such as he could appreciate.

  "What is this thing?" King cried out as he punched in vain. "Merle?"

  Merle arced his hand as if throwing up a mystical gang sign, and an arc of green light struck the room. The tentacles of vapor collapsed, their tethers cut, dispersing like fog under morning rays. Merle's complexion turned suddenly pallid and gray. He reached out to a lampstand for purchase, but missed it, instead falling from sheer exhaustion.

  "Merle, are you all right?" King caught Lott as best he could, propping him up until his legs steadied themselves enough for him to bear his own weight. "What was that?"

  "Each action costs." Merle gulped air between words. "Someone called the dragon's breath."

  "The what? Why attack Lott?"

  "Someone wishes to cut off your support before you can assemble it. Nice."

  "You can marvel at it later. Let's get out of here before it comes back."

 

Loaded with hundreds of songs from his father's childhood, doo-wop mostly, but a mix of tunes through the '70s, the music on King's iPod was the last connection to the father he barely remembered. He had no distant memory of his father, only the idea of him. His mother treasured a few items he'd left with her between visits. Of the few records left at her place, her favourite was Isaac Hayes' Hot Buttered Soul. She played it over and over, often saying how the record reminded her of him and how out of his own time he seemed to be. An old soul. Only in these moments, between battles and with his music, did he feel like his father's son.

  Lott slept, exhausted but otherwise none the worse for wear after being attacked. As if around a campfire taking the first watch, King plopped down on his couch. Merle laid on the floor, head propped up in his hands, and stared at the dancing lights of the iPod with childlike fascination.

  "What the hell was that?" King had been waiting to ask but had decided not to open the topic until he had a chance to digest what he'd seen.

  "The dragon's breath," Merle said with a matter-of-factness.

  "Oh. Well, now that you've laid it out for me, that explains everything."

  "It's the same for every hero's journey. You're only told as much as you're ready to accept."

  "And what couldn't I accept?" King poured himself a glass of water, tilting the pitcher to Merle who waved off the offer.

  "That magic is real. That mystery has power and truth."

  "Uh huh."

  "This would be you still being not quite ready." Merle rolled over, a mad light in his eyes. Clearing the countertop that doubled as a table, he spread a few coasters along it. "The city, like many places, is swathed by ley lines, what some might call fairy chains. Think of them as lines of force that connect places of power."

  "This better not be some Satanic shit."

  "No, no. This is older than that. Think of the magic that I describe as energy." Merle traced a line from one coaster to the next. "A natural energy that runs along power lines."

  "These ley lines…"

  "Exactly. And they connect places of power."

  "Like power stations."

  "Some people, or elementals, can naturally harness that energy better."

  "Like you?"

  "Me? I'm an old man in a tinfoil hat. Barely capable of a glamour here or there, though I've got a few tricks left in me."

  "I'm having a hard time getting my mind around this."

  "We live in precarious times. No room for magic. Or dragons. For the line of the serpent to continue, it must adapt to the age. For now I have it on good authority that we need to wait."

  "On whose authority?"

  "Sir Rupert's, of course."

  "Great." King stared at his empty glass he didn't remember draining and refilled it. It was going to be a long evening.

 

• • •

 

A couple of nights a week, volunteers from Outreach Inc. did what they called a street night. Patrolling the streets, they searched for teens who might be at risk in order to inform them about Outreach's services. Tonight, Wayne and a female volunteer wore the vests emblazoned with the Outreach logo and toted the flashlights that doubled as batons if they got into a scrape. As her case manager, he wanted an excuse to check up on Lady G. He couldn't shake the feeling that she was in trouble.

  There was a perception that the poor want to live the way they did, victims of their laziness or poor life choices. As was usually the case, the truth was a little more complex, the stark shades of such black and white judgment tempered by the reality of a system that often erected walls against folks when it didn't abandon them outright, and allowed them to fall through the cracks. To fall into that other world of shadow and societal malice, the forgotten places in the shadow of downtown. The survivors – and truly they survived more than lived – made use of any abandoned space to stay warm and carve out the semblance of an existence. It hadn't been so long since Wayne transitioned out of the streets. Other family members pitched in, one, because when they saw someone working so hard to make it they had to help when they could; and two, his charitable spirit put them to shame. Once he graduated from college, he strove to help as many over the wall as he could.

  They made a strange pair, Wayne and the volunteer: he with his broad, muscular frame and unforgiving face, a scar on the back of his neck and a tattoo of a pentacle on the front. She, a head and a half shorter than him, with her bookish glasses and chin stud. A study in contradictions. Wayne thought she was the type who had to try out the streets for a minute, long enough to make herself feel better about her place in the greater scheme of things. Young, pretty, and privileged, a typical white girl, ready to get back into her daddy-bought BMW or something parked around the corner. At least she didn't drop her "g"s and put on a slang affectation. That level of condescension would have just pissed him off.

  A scree of rocks led up to the railroad tracks used to get to the black-tarped rooftops of the abandoned warehouses. Each measured step tested for soft spots, with Wayne treading first, though in an anxious sweat about whether the roof would support his, much less their combined, weight. Dubbed the Hispanic railroad because of the high Hispanic population typically found there, rotted cherry tomatoes, discarded beer cans, and free floating trash mined the rooftop. Moldy sleeping bags, rugs, and crocheted blankets doubled as doors to block the biting wind, from the smashed-in roof compartments squatters now called home.

  A group of Hispanic men sang along to Tom Petty's "Free Falling," their accents delighting in the chorus as they held what they called a "dance contest". The contest amounted to them smoking while drinking beer, bouncing as the music blared from a duct-taped radio. They accepted Wayne's offer of water, but one man fixated on the female volunteer and began proclaiming how "I hate me some Jesus." A couple of the man's friends pulled him away, chastising him for saying such things. Wayne fixed his hard stare on the man, putting himself between her and the homeless man, allowing her to make her way back to the tracks before he backed away.

  They next went to West Street and Kentucky Avenue to what was known as "The Tubes". The buildings across from the water station had been tagged. ESG. Treize. MerkyWater. HeadCase. ICU (the letters written within a circle). Torn-up quarry remains littered a field that led from a sanitation workstation to a path down the bank of the White River. Concrete tubes normally used in sewer work had sheets of plastic draped across their ends. A man with dirty blond hair and a week's worth of facial growth sat in front of a small fire. His USA sweatshirt and blue jeans looked nearly new, but he had neither shoes nor socks.

  "How you doing, sir?" Wayne asked after having announced that Outreach had arrived with food and water. With a head nod, he sent the volunteer back to the van to grab a few pairs of socks.

  "Good, good." The man studied the small dancing flames, his hands absently scouring for more brush.

  "How long you been out here?"

  "A couple weeks. I'm in the Army and I'm due to be shipped out in a few days. Then me and my wife will be straight." A feminine mumble asking who was there was met with harsh whispers about Outreach and water. The volunteer returned with some socks.

  "Have you seen any teenagers around?" She handed the man the socks. "We're especially on the lookout for teenage girls."

  "I hear there's some under the bridge. A group of them. We came up here to have some quiet."

  "Thank you." Wayne left the man an additional bottle of water and a few snacks.

  Downtown was the medium of rats and lies. A parade of headlights scurried to nowhere, slowed by the occasional horse-drawn carriage, a quaint throwback to an earlier age's gentility. The steam from the downtown grates, shallow graves for the beasts that lived within the bowels of the city. The Bridge meant either the McCarty Street bridge or the Washington Street and they got lucky on their first try with the Washington Street bridge. Not too far from one of the downtown strolls, the tresses under the bridge were used as small apartments: quiet places where folks could stay warm. Not so quiet if Rhianna had her voice raised.

  Wayne hated navigating the steep incline, especially at night. Concrete slabs jutted out at irregular intervals forming a make-shift stairwell down the embankment. The thick growth of trees hindered easy movement. He stayed at the top shining his flashlight so that the volunteer could go first then he proceeded down largely in the dark. Funny, he always felt stronger at mid-day; now his movements seemed clumsy. The tall bonfire by the riverside, surrounded on all sides by trees: the scene looked picturesque.

  "Nine o'clock in the morning ain't no booty call," Rhianna's rasp strained.

  "I ain't gonna trip," Lady G retorted. "Believe what you want to believe. Don't matter what time of day it is, some fool call and all he has is sex on the mind, it's a booty call."

  "You just jealous cause Prez don't call you," Rhianna said behind her G-funk nose and slightly bucked teeth. She nursed the pus pocket on her finger from where she got stabbed. They could've stayed with Rhianna's people, but this close to rent day, tensions boiled over, toilet paper sheets counted, and food carefully guarded. Sometimes the drama just wasn't worth it. She'd been couch-surfing with friends who lived over in the Phoenix when she met Trevant. But it was Prez who stepped to her.

  Lady G clucked under her breath. "Girl… boo. You stand by yourself, you stay by yourself."

  "I'm glad to hear you say that, G," Wayne interrupted.

  "What you doing down here?" Lady G gave Wayne a hug.

  "Looking for you."

  "How you been?" Lady G turned to hug the volunteer. She was awful with names, but the volunteer had been present enough to warrant a hug. Trust wasn't a commodity easily given. Even Rhianna would more easily trade her body than risk trusting someone.

  "Better now." The volunteer squeezed an additional time before releasing her. Rhianna moved in for her hug.

  "You ladies need anything?" Wayne huffed as he stumbled down the last few steps of the hillside.

  "Rhianna needs better taste in men," Lady G offered.

  "Oh?"

  "She's trippin'," Rhianna said.

  "Don't show out cause you hanging around that retarded boy," Lady G said. "He up there, topside, him and his boy, Trevant. Surprised you didn't see 'em. Wannabe dope dealers."

  "Rhianna…" Wayne thickly laid on the sound of disappointment in his voice.

  "They ain't real drug dealers. They just playing."

  "Call themselves ESG," Lady G said.

  "What's that stand for?" Wayne asked.

  "Eggs, Sausage, and Grits."

  "Ain't that some shit?" The words flew out of Wayne's mouth before he received a scolding glance from the volunteer. They tried not to use profanities in front of the clients, trying to walk the line of being real yet being an example. Wayne bristled at the idea of being an example, uncomfortable with the idea of being a role model.

  "That ain't the worst. They up there selling burn bags to folks." Lady G still had her "I'm gonna tell" air about her.

  "You can get a beat down behind that mess," Wayne said.

  "You telling me? That's why I keep telling Rhianna to drop his sorry behind."

  A car screeched to a halt above them. The quartet froze where they stood. Slamming doors were soon followed by raised voices. Wayne moved to shield them, as if protecting them from anything that might fall from above. The shouts, the trumpeting of machismo attempting to get the other party to back down, curdled into abrupt screams. Lady G stifled her own scream, then pointed to the trestle above them. Wayne ushered the girls up there, and they scrambled into one of the holes in the bottom of a support structure. The small alcoves formed a series of tiny compartments with the holes acting as the entrance, though it reminded Wayne too much of sticking his head through an attic door into unknowable darkness. Knowing that he stood no chance in hell of squeezing through the hole, Wayne signaled that he was going topside to investigate. The volunteer shot him eyes pleading for him to stay, but realized he was too exposed to whatever was out there. Rhianna thrust her thumb into her mouth and put her other hand against an ear as she began to rock back and forth. Her mother had warned her to quit sucking her thumb before it bucked her teeth.

  Wayne slowly lumbered up the hill.

 

Prez didn't care what you called him as long as he got called. Though Green had brought him on, he felt it was on an interim basis until he proved himself. In the meantime, until he saw some real money, he still had to make ends so he financed what he termed "independent entrepreneurial enterprises": burn bags. Dried-out baking soda passed for crack and stepped-on oregano for weed – the pair had an assortment of burn bags they sold to newbies. After every sale they set up somewhere new should anyone decide to come back on them. Unfortunately, their current location didn't have much by way of foot traffic, but Prez was more interested in hooking up with his girl. Rhianna was all right enough, not as fine as her girl, Lady G, but she had a fat ass and threw her back into her work.

  "I wish some fool would try to come up on us." Trevant, all of thirteen years old, still retained much of his baby fat, especially about the neck. Prez thought it apropos to start calling him Turkey because of all of his would-be gangsta gobbling. "I'd tell him, 'It's Li'l Nam, shortie. It's how we do this bitch.'"

  Li'l Nam was the nom-de-guerre of the area just south of the Phoenix Apartments. Trevant was an east side nigga who'd come to truck with Prez and some of Night's boys on the west side because no one else would have his dusty ass. Well, Prez's either, which was why they were left dealing burn bags and calling themselves ESG.

  "Damn, fool, you can't keep going off on every fiend we deal with," Prez said.

  "Why not? It's not like they're going to quit buying."

  "Customer service, nigga. Ain't you ever heard of it? It's not like we the only ones selling." Prez might as well have been speaking in Mandarin judging from the vacant stare Trevant returned.

  After chewing on his words, and with them spit out his other ear, Trevant continued. "I seen niggas get smoked right in front of me."

  "Yeah, you hard, brotha." Prez eyed the street. Knowing he'd been dismissed, Trevant slipped on a set of headphones to listen to the new Nas.

  A Ford Focus screeched to a halt. Prez tapped Trevant on his jacket and nodded toward the idling vehicle. They prepared their wares but also checked their escape route should things go bad. Two people, a man and a woman, stepped out the car, the suspension on the Focus squawking in relief at their exit. They couldn't be dissatisfied customers. They'd have remembered selling to these two.

  "They must be part-Samoan," Prez whispered.

  "Some ugly-ass Samoans, then," Trevant said, not nearly quietly enough. "Nice suits though."

  "What you need, money? ESG can set you up with whatever," Prez said.

  "ESG? What weak-ass shit you selling?" the woman asked. Well, Prez presumed her to be a woman.

  "Don't matter none. Dred don't like it, so the shit's got to stop," the man's voice boomed.

  "Free country. Live and let live," Trevant said.

  She whirled and grabbed Trevant by the throat and lifted him into the air like so much a sack of leaves. "Move, or worse, make me have to chase you and you'll get what your friend's about to get. We've got a message for Night and you're just the man to deliver it."

  "Wha-what's that?" Prez asked.

  The woman grabbed Trevant's arm and pulled. The skin around his shoulder stretched, the bones shifted at odd angles until a dull pop freed the joint. The flesh ripped, the last bits of frayed tendons tearing free amidst a spray of blood. The boy screamed over the cries of "holy shit, holy shit, holy shit" repeated by Prez. She waved the bloody stump at him, trying to refocus his attention on her.

  "You with me? Good." Blood gurgled out the arm, ribbons of veins and shorn flesh dangled. She fixed her eyes on him and raised the arm to her mouth. Not blinking, she took a huge bite from it and chewed slowly. The smell of piss from Prez let her know she had his full attention. "Tell your folks what you saw. Let them know the Durham Brothers are in town and Dred's done fucking around with them. And just so you don't forget…"

  With her nod, her brother upended Trevant and the two of them each took a leg in a hand. Being around bridges always had the Durham Brothers especially enervated. Trevant's next scream scored itself into Prez's mind, even as the image of his flesh unzipping before him would forever scar his psyche. Trevant's insides splayed out in spools as he was ripped from ass to sternum.

  "Go." The woman licked her lips.

  Prez ran off into the night, forgetting all about Rhianna.

  "Fe, fi, fo, fum," the man said and sniffed in the direction of Wayne, who thought himself well hidden by the foliage lining the bridge.

  "Leave him, we've made our point," Michaela said. "Besides, the tale will spread faster with more witnesses."