Poppy Z. Brite - 1992 - Lost Souls (27 page)

 
          
Sometime
in the dull gray afternoon, somnolent and weary of silence, Ghost put down the
map he was drawing with crayons and said, “I’m
gonna
bike to town. I want some wine.”

 
          
Steve
looked up from his book. “Shit, Ghost, its freezing. I have to go to work in
half an hour. I’ll drive you in.”

 
          
“I
don’t need a ride. I’m dressed warm.” Ghost pulled his drab layers of clothing
around him. “I like the wind in my eyes.

 
          
“Suit
yourself.” Steve unfolded himself from the couch and pushed the straw hat more
firmly down over Ghost’s head. “Call me if you get icicles on your balls. I’ll
come pick you up.

 
          
As
Ghost rode, the wind sluiced over his face, froze the winter-tears in his
eyelashes, whistled through the spokes of his bicycle wheels like a lonely
song. His hair whipped across his face, pale and cold.

 
          
The
grocery store was painfully bright after the dark day. Ghost wandered among the
shelves, studied candy bars and magazines, finally chose a bottle of
scuppernong wine. It took most of the change in his pocket—Ghost hated to carry
cash, hated buying things at all—but the wine was forty proof, good and high.
Wino wine, the kind he always drank, even though Steve ragged him to hell and
back for it.

 
          
He
put the bottle in his saddlebag and walked his bike down Firehouse Street,
looking into dusty shop windows, stepping over the cracks in the sidewalk.
Outside the hardware store he stopped to talk to the old men who congregated
there, playing checkers with orange and grape
Nehi
bottle caps and a beat-up checkerboard. The men were as dry and tough as hard
nuts and would not move their gatherings inside until snow flew. The grape team
was winning today.

 
          
Ghost
greeted the old men by name. “Hey, Mr. Galvin, Mr. Berry, Mr. Joe.”

 
          
“Hey
there, Ghost. How you?”

 
          
“I
feel bad times coming on,” he told them. He hoped one of them would know
something about it.

 
          
But
the old men just laughed at him. “You and your long-haired friend been
smokin
’ that dope out at your place, Ghost?”

 
          
“
Naw
, he’s
Miz
Deliverance’s
grandkid. If he says bad times
comin
’, then there’s
bad times
comin
’.
Mebbe
we’ll be dead by the time they get here.”

 
          
The
oldest, most wrinkled man shot a stream of brown spit into the gutter.

 
          
“Shit-fire,
save matches.”

 
          
Ghost
took the long way home. It was twilight now, and the streets of Missing Mile
were deserted. The hills were checkered with the yellow light of faraway
houses.

 
          
Steve
would have gone to work by now, but Ghost hoped he had left a light burning. He
rode past the town-limits sign. The fields that stretched away on either side
of the read were bare and dry, already stripped of their harvest. Across the
furrows a window glimmered on the dusk.

 
          
He
thought of the twins he had seen up at the hill, the twins who should have been
shrivelling
in their graves but were instead vibrant
and alive. He hoped the bad times that were coming didn’t have anything to do
with them. He was pretty sure they had been nothing but shades, things only he
could see, maybe even brought to brief life by the dream he had had about them.
But they had terrified him for no good reason. And they had known about the
little boy dead on the road, had even implied in the sly manner of spirits that
they had killed the boy.

 
          
At
the corner where Burnt Church Road met the highway, a tall figure sat hunched
behind a sign that said ROSES. The flower-seller the same one he had seen on
the way back from
Miz
Catlin’s. He was sure of it. A
few huge frothy bouquets shivered in the wind.

 
          
Some
stunted pumpkins and gourds were piled around the base of the stand.

 
          
Ghost
tried to ride past without seeming to notice the flower-seller, but as he drew
close, the figure got to its feet and spread its arms wide … wider … immensely
wide, stretching. The sleeves of its long dark cloak billowed. Ghost slowed his
bike. Everything in him screamed danger, but be had never been one for turning
away from things that seared him, or running from them. He would talk to this
person, try to figure out what the sick feeling and the worry were about.

 
          
“Roses?”
asked the flower-seller. “Or a jack-o’-lantern to light your path?”

 
          
Ghost
pulled his hair in front of his face. He had seen people who looked a little
like this, their pale gauntness and loose black clothes vaguely similar. Such
people had sometimes visited his grandmother, bringing her mysterious powders
and oils in murky bottles or buying herbs from her. They had scared him;
sometimes he saw the skulls beneath their faces, long pale orbs, or the bones
of their hands as clear and luminous as an X ray. Sometimes he felt their
thoughts focusing on him for an instant with a flicker of cold interest like a
flame in a dark tunnel of wind.

 
          
But
none of those had worn sunglasses and gloves in hot September weather; none had
sold roses and pumpkins at the side of the road. And none had had eyes quite so
cold … or so desolate.

 
          
“I
don’t have any money,” he said, “or I’d buy a pumpkin. But you ought to pack up
for tonight. It’s too cold to sit out here.” Even as he spoke, a night wind
seemed to be whipping up, carrying the russet smell of autumn in from the
fields.

 
          
“Pity?
For pity you may have a rose. And I was just packing up.” The figure stepped
closer and tucked a deep red bud into the lapel of Ghost’s army jacket. When
one of those long thin hands brushed the bare triangle of skin at the base of
his throat, Ghost shivered. Even through his gloves the flower-seller’s fingers
were as cold as bone, as loneliness. Ghost looked up into the flower-seller’s face.
Those cold eyes glittered somewhere deep in shadowed sockets.

 
          
Ghost
looked quickly down at his own torn white sneakers.

 
          
But
it was too late: all at once he caught a rush of images, not words but
feelings. The first thing he sensed was age and dark wisdom beyond his ability
to measure; he knew this was no man. The second was a terrible, resigned
loneliness, a longing for someone he thought might never come. The
flower-seller’s mind was like a sentient void, too empty even to be sad, colder
than the night. Without thinking, Ghost said, “You’ll be warm when your friends
get here.”

 
          
The
pale face snapped up. “What friends? Have you news of Zillah?”

 
          
Ghost
stumbled backward. “No—I mean, I only know somebody’s coming—I mean, somebody
must be coming to pick you up. Or I guess maybe you live around here—” He shut
his mouth before his words could get any more tangled. Ghost seldom had to make
excuses for the things he knew. Not everybody wants his heart looked into, his
grandmother had told him when he was very young. So look if you have to, but
learn to keep your mouth shut. Since her death six years ago, he spoke of such
things only to Steve, or to no one at all. But sometimes things just
materialized in his head, and he said them out loud before he could stop
himself. As soon as he felt that emptiness pouring out of the flower-seller, he
had known that friends were coming, already on the way. And as much as he
feared to wonder what sort of friends they might be—the resurrected
dream-twins, or worse?—he had had to say it. Comfort might warm those cold
eyes.

 
          
But
the eagerness glittering in those eyes put a stupid panic into Ghost, panic
like a moth beating itself against a window, panic that made him want to hide
anything he might know, hide his own head. This is the bad times coming, he
realized. The start of it, anyway.

 
          
“You
don’t know them,” the flower-seller said flatly.

 
          
Now
Ghost was no longer afraid. Now he felt only a terrible empathetic loneliness.
He might have been as hollow as a gourd. What if nobody in the whole world
loved you? What if you were alone?

 
          
“I’m
sorry, I’m sorry,” Ghost said wildly.

 
          
The
flower-seller leaned across his wooden stand. His eyes met Ghost’s, and his
tongue darted out over his pale lips. The long thin hands trembled. Then that
cold gaze darted toward the moon, and the flower-seller drew himself up and
knotted his fingers together. “Get away from here,” he said.

 
          
“What—”

 
          
“Go.”
Now there was a light of desperation in the deep-set eyes. Hungry desperation,
it looked like. “Go now if you want to live.”

 
          
The
last light of day disappeared from the sky. The flower-seller’s face was
partially obscured by the growing dark, making it look pointed, feral. He made
a half-despairing, half-starved sound deep in his throat, and seemed about to
lunge right over the stand. But Ghost was already straddling his bike, shoving
at the kickstand, reaching up with one hand to steady his hat and pedaling as
hard as he could. After a few minutes he stopped and looked back over his
shoulder. But the flower stand and the lone figure, if there, were hidden in
shadow.

 
          
The
T-bird was still parked in the driveway when Ghost rode up, though the house
was unlit. He leaned the bike against the side of the house, where the paint
was flaking away. By now it was almost too dark to see, though weak moonlight
limned the edges of the clouds. On the porch Ghost almost fell over a crate of
beer bottles that Steve had dragged out of the house. Then he pushed the door
open and was inside, throwing the deadbolt lock, turning on lamps. There must
be light. Light to keep him from thinking about the flower-seller out there in
the deepening night.

 
          
Steve
lay on the couch, blearily rubbing his eyes against the sudden brightness,
several empty beer bottles on the floor beside him. He had been using a pile of
dirty sweatshirts for a pillow, and his face still bore the faint pattern of
seams and creases. Ghost felt something under his foot—Steve’s
keyring
lay by the door as if Steve had hurled it across
the room. He picked it up, rubbed his thumb over the plastic tab that said
Budweiser, held it in his hand. The keys jingled faintly against one
another—the house key, the keys to the T-bird and the Whirling Disc record
store where Steve worked, other keys obsolete and useless but too venerable to
be thrown away or tossed into a drawer. There was a feeling on the
keyring
like the object’s aura, Steve’s emotion as he had
last touched it. Disgust and nausea. It gave the metal a cold, faintly slimy
feel.

 
          
“Did
you call in sick?” he asked.

 
          
Steve
nodded. “Was just
gonna
have a beer before I went to
work. Next time I looked down, four of ‘
em
were gone,
so I just kept on drinking. Might as well call in drunk for all the difference
it makes.”

 
          
“What
happened?”

 
          
“I
fell asleep and had this dream… about Ann. I dreamed her face was all bloody
and some of her teeth were knocked out. I reached out to touch her and saw my
hand was bloody too.

 
          
I’d
done it to her. You know what I really did to her? Do you know about it,
Ghost?” Ghost looked at the floor. “I guess you raped her.”

 
          
“I
guess I raped her too. I guess she didn’t mind. I guess she liked it pretty
good.”

 
          
“Come
on, Steve. That’s a shitty thing to say. She didn’t like it.”

 
          
“Whose
side are you on?”