Darker Than Noir Read online

  The last look his eyes ever gave told me he’d give it all back.

  I answered his unspoken plea with a shake of my head. Then I grabbed his head, pulled him close, and sank my teeth into his neck. Blood spurted everywhere as the first hunk of meat tore free in my jaws. He was so hypnotized with fear that he barely even whimpered at first. Then the pain hit and he began to wail and thrash around.

  I tore his throat out with my second bite. Soon enough, the strength bled out of him, and I continued my meal unperturbed.

  Thump-thump.

  Thump-thump.

  Thump…thump…

  ***

  “I’m scared, Truman.”

  “No need. I told you. They were nothing but con men. I confronted them with their flimsy attempt at Gaslighting you and they folded. Like the proverbial cheap table. Said they were sorry, pleaded with me.” It was an effort to abstain from any punning about their hearts not being in it. “The Order is dissolved. Blown away with all the fallen leaves.”

  I could almost feel her, through the phone. Feel her lean against me for support, feel her hair brush against my face. Feel the warmth of her body seep into my cold, cold flesh as she presses against me, for comfort, for solace. I almost feel something, for half a second. Just the phantom sensation of an amputee, really. “If that’s true,” she said, “then why am I not coming back?” I can hear her smile, hear her eyes shine with unshed tears.

  “Because,” I said, “there’s nothing here for you, and everything out there. Because you should take this shitty, callous, cruel mind-fuck of a year and put it in your rearview mirror, and make something positive out of this. And because I’m the bottom of the barrel in this business, and maybe I don’t know what the hell I’m talking about. Better safe than sorry.”

  “Yeah,” Susan said. She’s not afraid anymore, not really. Stronger than Reggie Renzer ever imagined. “I’ll contact you again, as soon I’m settled in here. My cousin is going to help me get set up with a job, and I’ll be able—”

  “Susan,” I said, “your account’s paid in full, and this case is now closed.” And she starts to say something else, but I’ve already hung up the phone. And here I sit. Terrified to go out.

  Thump-thump.

  I’m tired of this. I need…I need a drink. Bourbon. I need a bloody-rare T-bone, fresh apples, mint ice cream with chocolate syrup on top. I need to hear a song that makes me cry. I need that first cigarette in bed after the first time with a new woman. I need to know what I’m missing.

  Thump-thump.

  I hadn’t eaten in years, before last night.

  Thump-thump.

  You live with an ache for so long, you get used to it. It becomes normal. When the pain lifts for an hour, you don’t know what to do with yourself. Can’t believe anything could feel so good.

  Thump-thump.

  Goddamn you, Malcolm. And goddamn me, for killing you so quickly. You deserve to share this exquisite gift with me.

  I stare at it, lying inside the glass jar within the wall safe, the same jar Malcolm dropped it into after he cut it out of me. How many years now, how many decades? You could still set your watch to it. For the millionth time this month, I tell myself this is the day. Burn it, stab it, anything to stop that sound.

  I swing the safe door shut. Spin the dial. I can hear it.

  Thump-thump.

  I can feel it.

  Thump-thump.

  Pulsing. Beating.

  Thump-thump.

  Maybe tomorrow. Tomorrow might be the day.

  Yeah.

  Sure.

  I slump into the chair behind my desk. The beating of my heart. The maddening taste of his flesh and blood as it slides down my throat. Nothing else. Don’t call back, Susan. Don’t you dare call this number.

  Outside my window, the fucking spring sunshine warms the smiling faces of those who haven’t forgotten the knack of living. The phone rings once.

  Twice.

  Three times.

  Four.

  BACK-UP MAN

  By Justin Gustainis

  Winter had finally loosened its death grip on the city, and Spring was in the air. The sun shone brightly, gentle breezes blew through the trees, and the suburban lawns were finally starting to look more green than brown. Outside the house at 441 Chestnut Street, birds were probably singing, but I can't say for sure—we had the windows tightly closed, so that all the screaming, shouting, and cursing wouldn't frighten the neighbors.

  It was a beautiful day for an exorcism.

  He'd been at it for about nine hours, and things seemed to be going okay, if I'm any judge—and I guess I should be. I've been present at five of these things over the years. Five, not counting this one—the one that went bad.

  I'm a private investigator, not a priest. But the diocese likes me to be around when these things go down, as kind of a back-up man. We have an arrangement that goes back quite a long time.

  Like I said, the ritual had been proceeding pretty much the way you’d expect. Father Dwyer had gone through the Invocation, and the Naming, and we were into the third series of prayers of the Denunciation.

  Then the Father dropped his crucifix, and the whole thing went to shit.

  ***

  I start out my career in law enforcement, if you want to call it that, as a cop. Chicago P.D. I go through the academy and everything. I do okay on the job, too—nothing spectacular, but over the course of three years I manage to pick up a couple of commendations and not screw up too bad—until the night at the crack house.

  We don’t know it’s a crack house going in, you understand. Our patrol car is sent to investigate a report of “suspicions activity” (whatever that is) at an address in a residential neighborhood. After we pull up in front, my partner Charlie Mulderig and I do a quick “rock-paper-scissors” and I lose – which means I’m going in the front door while Charlie checks around back.

  Nobody answers my knock, so I try the door. Unlocked. I go in quiet. It’s a living room, deserted except for one guy who’s zonked out on the couch. I’m checking him for weapons when a guy who is armed comes around the corner with a shotgun. He sees me, and before I can even say “Police, freeze!” he’s got the weapon to his shoulder, aimed right at me. I drop to the floor, and the shotgun blast is too high. I return fire and put two in the dude’s chest.

  I’m temporarily deaf from the shots in an enclosed space, so I can’t hear anything while I’m checking the shotgun guy for signs of life—but I see movement out of the corner of my eye. I’m so pumped with adrenaline by then that I forget everything they taught us at the academy about target recognition. So I open up and put three rounds into Charlie, who’d come up behind me, probably trying to lend a hand.

  They don’t indict me—it’s pretty clear to everybody what happened—but once the hearing’s over, I’m not a cop anymore.

  It’s thirteen months later, and I’m pretty new to the private eye business. I could’ve left law enforcement entirely, but I guess I have something to prove, mostly to myself. That probably explains why I decide to kick open the door of that warehouse where the kidnapped kid is being held, instead of waiting outside for the cops, who I’ve just called.

  I go charging in there, waving my Colt .38 around like it was some kind of talisman, only to find that there are a few more kidnappers than the two I was expecting. Four more, to be exact. And these guys are all so well armed you’d think they were planning to invade Bolivia.

  Shots are exchanged, as they say on TV—quite a few shots, before the cops finally show up. A couple of the kidnappers are seriously wounded, and things don’t work out too good for me, either.

  There’s a line Wild Bill Hickok used to say at the end of some of his tall tales, like the one he’d tell about the time he was surrounded by two hundred hostile Comanches and had just run out of ammo. He’d pause, and wait for somebody to ask “Well, what happened, Bill?” Then he’d give everybody a big grin and say, “Well, boys, they kilt me!” />
  Which is pretty much what they did in that warehouse. Kill me, I mean.

  **

  Dropping the crucifix isn’t really a big deal during an exorcism. I mean, it isn’t like you have to start over, or anything. Normally, the priest just picks the thing up, wipes it off if need be, and continues with the ritual.

  But Father Dwyer had let his crucifix fall onto the chest of our possession victim, a middle-aged guy named Stimson. The vic was tied hand and foot to the bedposts, of course. Demons always resist being cast back into Hell, and they’ll hurt you if you give them the chance.

  Rule number one: don’t give them the chance.

  Dwyer broke the rule.

  Not his fault, really. An exorcism is incredibly stressful on everybody involved, and nine hours of it is enough to make anybody pretty damn tired. Tired, and maybe careless.

  As Dwyer bent forward to retrieve his cross, it occurred to me that he was getting dangerously close to our victim. I was about to yell a warning when the demon inside Stimson made its move.

  ***

  As I find out later on, one of the cops responding to the warehouse knows CPR. Took the Red Cross course and everything. Although he can’t find a heartbeat, he keeps my systems going through a combination of mouth-to-mouth and chest compression.

  The ambulance shows up quick, for a change, and it’s a short ride to the nearest hospital.

  Where I proceed to die in the emergency ward.

  That stuff you hear about dying— the white light, the sense of floating above your own body—it’s all true. In my case, the light gradually seems to be getting closer, or maybe I’m drawing closer to it, I don’t know. I can hear voices, too, and they sound familiar somehow, but I can’t quite make out what they’re saying.

  “Well, if this is what checking out’s like,” I think, “it ain’t so bad, really.”

  But it turns out the doctor running the trauma team hates to lose. Just hates it. So he keeps the rest of them trying things on me for several minutes after the EKG machine is showing flatline.

  And damned if he doesn’t pull it off.

  The white light starts to recede, and the pleasant voices in my head get fainter. The next voice I hear sounds a lot closer: it’s some woman yelling, “Doctor, we’ve got a heartbeat!”

  They tell me later that I damn near beat the record, the length of time I was gone. And the fact that I came back without brain damage or some other major impairment is considered a miracle all by itself.

  Of course, it turns out there is one major impairment, but nobody knows about that at the time, including me.

  Everybody in the ER is eighteen kinds of happy about how they brought me back from the dead. The doctors and nurses on the trauma team are all grinning, exchanging high fives, all that.

  Nobody ever asks me how I feel about it.

  ***

  The demon possessing Frank Stimson must have noticed fairly early on the flaw in the piece of rope that was tying Stimson's right hand to the bed post. It felt the weakness, and waited.

  Demons know all there is to know about waiting. They've had a lot of practice.

  And they can move like lightning, when they want to.

  Before I could even twitch, the demon had broken the rope and grabbed Dwyer by the back of the neck, gripping with the strength the damned often impart to their victims. By the time I came around the big bed, it had shaken Father Dwyer the way a terrier shakes a rat—and with the same result.

  Dwyer, his neck broken, was probably dead before the demon let him fall to the floor.

  The first thing I did was use my handcuffs to re-secure Stimson’s freed hand to the bedpost. The demon probably could have fought me over that and won, but I move pretty fast myself, and it wasn’t ready. It had assumed that, like any normal, sentimental human, I would run to Dwyer immediately, to try and help him.

  I had counted on that assumption.

  I mean, sure, I had liked Dwyer well enough. We’d worked together a couple of times before. But I knew he was either dead or dying. I figured the best thing I could do for him was to salvage what I could of the task he’d been trying to accomplish.

  Trouble was, I didn’t know what to do next.

  ***

  I’m still in the hospital, recovering from the gunshot wounds and my cancelled trip to the Pearly Gates, when the Archbishop comes to see me.

  I don’t know him by sight, of course. For me, he’s just some guy wearing a black priest suit with the funny collar, although I do notice the red skullcap he has on. So he introduces himself. Archbishop Anthony Costello, and I’m betting to myself that nobody ever calls him “Tony.”

  He pulls a chair up next to my bed without waiting for an invitation. “How are you feeling, Mister McBride? Or may I call you Tom?”

  “Call me anything you like, within reason.” I try to shrug, and immediately wish I hadn’t, since it hurts so much. “Not bad, I guess. Some of the nurses are pretty, and I get all the dope I want.”

  He leans a little closer, looking very serious. “What I meant was, how are you feeling, uh, spiritually?”

  I just look at him. “Aren’t you a little too important to be making sick calls to lapsed Catholics? The chaplain’s already been around, and I told him I wasn’t in the market.”

  “Yes, I’ve heard as much. Regrettable, but your privilege, of course. However, this isn’t a sick call, in the usual meaning of the term.”

  “What, then?”

  “Mister McBride, did you know that you were clinically dead for several minutes, shortly after arriving at the hospital?”

  “Yeah, so they tell me. I’m supposed to be one for the record books. No offense, but what do you care?”

  He looks at his hands for a few seconds. “It’s important because of an old and rather obscure church teaching that says a person who is truly dead and then returns to life may, under certain circumstances … lose something in the process of coming back.”

  Something a lot colder than the night nurse’s fingers starts working its way down my spine. “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about, man. All I lost were a few pints of blood, and they’ve already replaced those.”

  “No, I’m talking about something even more important than blood. Considering the length of time that you were wavering between this world and the next, I’m afraid there’s a very good chance that you may have become separated from . . . .” His voice trails off, and he looks away.

  I sit up a little, even though it hurts like a bastard. “Your Eminence, or whatever your title is, you are really starting to piss me off. Separated from what?”

  He’s looking at me again now, and it’s when I see the genuine pity in his face, that I start to get really frightened—even before says quietly, “Your soul.”

  ***

  The demon inside Arthur Stimson looked at me pensively. “I’ve got a wonderful idea about what you should do,” it said.

  “What, go fuck myself?” I produced a tight smile and shook my head. “Tried that as a kid. It didn’t work then, and I’m even less limber now.”

  “No, what I was thinking is that you should let me go. There are other sensations I want to experience with this body, and I can’t pursue them while tied to this ridiculous bed. So why don’t you turn me loose, and we’ll call it quits between us?”

  “You don’t even expect me to say yes to that, do you?”

  “Why not? You can’t continue the exorcism—“ it sneered the word “—yourself. You’re not a priest.” Another sneer.

  “You’re right, I’m not. But there are other priests available. One of them will finish the work of sending you back.”

  “But I don’t want to go back,” it said, as if explaining things to an idiot. “So, I prefer not to wait for the next delegation of shamans to shake their rattles and feathers over me. That’s why you’re going to set this body I’m using free.”

  “Why am I going to do that?”

  “Because you’re
intelligent—for a human. And you realize there are only two choices here.”

  “I do, huh?”

  “Yes, Eve-spawn, you do. Either you turn loose this body I’m currently occupying, or…”

  “Or what?”

  “Or I’ll take yours, which is fortunately free of fetters.” It grinned at me. “I hope you appreciate the alliteration.”

  I shook my head again. “You won’t possess me,” I said, as calmly as I could manage.

  “What’s to stop me? That worthless crucifix you’re holding? It didn’t save the late Father Fuckface over there.”

  I put the crucifix down, reverently, on top of a nearby bureau. “No, you won’t possess me because you haven’t got the guts to do it. You’re all bluff and brimstone—and I hope you like that alliteration, shithead.”

  It’s not often you see a demon taken aback. “You dare to taunt me? You miserable thing of clay and spit, you dare?”

  “Sure, why not?” I took a step closer to the bed. “I figure Frank Stimson was easy for you. He was an agnostic, wasn’t he? Never prayed, never went to church, his wife says. But you know better than to make a move on a man of real faith, because you realize I’d chew you up and spit you out, like the piece of rotten meat you are.”

  The demon made an enraged screech, and then the shit really hit the fan. Frank Stimson’s body remained in place on the bed, but something left it—something I could almost but not quite see, nearly but not quite smell. But I could sense it, nonetheless. It came roaring out of Stimson like a charging leopard, and headed straight toward me.

  ***

  It's about five weeks since Archbishop Costello visited me in the hospital, and now we're talking again—this time in his office at the Chancery building. He's got another priest there, too, an old guy named Monsignor Galvin. Costello introduces Galvin as his "resident theologian."