“You’re history,” Matt shouted from the next room.
“You know what?” Sitting in the living room,
Cory stared at the chessboard and admitted that, short of something
miraculous happening, Matt was about to kill him again. “One of
these days I’m actually going to beat you.”
“Not in this lifetime, you’re not.” Matt came
out of Brian’s kitchen carrying two coffee mugs. He set them on
the glass coffee table, looked down at the chessboard and
grinned.
“I’ve beaten you a couple of times.” Cory
sighed and tipped over his king.
“When we were what? Twelve?” Matt leaned
over and started to collect the chessmen, tossing them into the wooden
box.
“Want to play cards?”
“And ruin my winning streak? In your
dreams.” Matt dropped in the last piece, then folded the board
and returned it to the box. “Besides, we’re leaving soon.”
“If Brian ever gets out of the shower.” Cory
glanced at his watch. It was almost ten o’clock. They’d
been here for almost two hours now, and he was anxious to start
exploring.
“So I was wondering.” Matt closed the box and
slid it under the coffee table. “Does it feel like we’ve been here
before?”
“Is this another one of those past lives
things?” Cory got up from the couch, grabbed his coffee, and
headed for the window. He pulled the curtain aside and stared
into the thick gray fog outside.
“Maybe.”
“Figures,” Cory said.
“Brian says I’ve been here before,” Matt said.
“So it wouldn’t surprise me if you were too.”
Cory was actually beginning to
worry about him. At first, he’d chalked it up to Matt going off
on one of his weird religious tangents again, like when he decided to
become a Muslim in tenth grade, or when he got hooked up with those
Jesus freaks a few years ago. The tangents never lasted long, a
month or two at the most, and after they graduated, he expected Matt to
come back to his senses, but that hadn’t happened this time. Matt
had been caught up in the whole eastern philosophy bit for almost a
year and a half now.
“You know what?” Cory turned around and leaned
against the wall and took a sip of his coffee. “I think you’ve
finally gone off the deep end.”
“Spoken like a true skeptic.” Matt moved across the
room to the bookshelf taking up most of the back wall. It was covered
in books and burning candles, with all kinds of weird
knickknacks--pewter and crystals and stuff.
“Spoken like a guy whose best friend thinks he’s
some kind of whacked out new-age guru.”
“Brian’s the expert. I’m just learning.”
Matt reached for a book. “If you didn’t want to attend the
seminar with us, why’d you want to come this weekend anyhow?”
“Somebody’s got to keep you out of trouble,” Cory
said. “Besides, I’ve never been to San Francisco.”
“Brian says it’s beautiful.” Matt returned the book
and reached for another one. “He says it has the highest level of
psychic energy of any city on the West Coast, so it attracts artistic
people.”
“Yeah.” Cory jabbed a thumb at the window.
“Well, I just hope the fog clears so we can see some of it.”
“It will.” Brian suddenly appeared from the bedroom,
leaning on the doorjamb. “It’s supposed to burn off by noon or
so.”
Drying his long blonde hair with a towel, Brian
stepped into the living room, wearing torn jeans, a loose fitting white
shirt with baggy sleeves, and sandals--absolutely the perfect
new-age-guru-spiritualist cliché. Even though Cory had
known Matt for most of his life, he still couldn’t believe his friend
could fall for such a load of crap.
“How long did you say you’ve known each other?” Brian wrapped the towel over his shoulder.
“Since we were five.” Matt put away the
book. “We pretty much grew up together.”
“That doesn’t surprise me.” Brian squinted,
moving his eyes back and forth between the two of them. “Your
auras are complimentary.”
“I told you Brian could read auras.” Matt looked over at Cory.
“Right.” Cory did his best to stifle a
laugh. “That whole karmic bond thing you keep telling me about.”
“What’s this?” Matt turned around, holding
something that looked like a cheerleader’s baton, but it had crystals
at the ends, one clear and one light purple. Some kind of new-age
magic wand or something. “Take a look at this, Cory.”
“Be careful with that,” Brian said. “I picked it up
at a shop on the pier about a month ago, but I don’t know much about it
yet. You’re not supposed to touch the crystals.”
“OK. I’ll bite,” Cory said, moving toward Matt to get a better look. “What is it?”
“It’s a channeling device for psychic energy.” Brian
lifted the towel off his shoulders and went back to drying his
hair. “She said it was really powerful. I was going to
bring it to the seminar tomorrow and have some people look at it.”
“Wow,” Matt said, holding out the wand for Cory. “Feel this thing.”
“Why not?” Cory shrugged and set his coffee on
the table beside Matt’s. “So, what exactly am I supposed to
feel?”
He reached for the wand…
...and suddenly couldn’t hear anything over the
explosions and machine gun fire. All the gas lamps were dead, but the
street was aglow in writhing shadows cast by the flames. Blackout
curtains covered most of the shattered windows in the surrounding
buildings, and everywhere he looked, burning automobiles were
overturned, horses were running wild, and dogs were howling.
People were screaming.
He was screaming.
They didn’t prepare him for this in training.
They couldn’t have--impossible. It was horrible, unimaginable,
terrifying. He needed a place to hide, to escape this
insanity. Ahead of him lay a brick building that had somehow
managed to escape the flames. He let his rifle fall to the
street and started to run.
“Get back here!” someone screamed.
He kept running.
“Halt or I’ll shoot!”
Without slowing, he glanced over his shoulder and
saw a rifle pointed at him. And then suddenly everything went
silent, nothing but the sound of blood pounding in his ears and the
clattering of his heavy boots as he desperately sprinted toward the
safety of the building ahead.
Then came the explosion.
The impact threw him forward, a bright splash of red
spewing out the front of his flak jacket. He stumbled, almost
fell, but somehow managed to regain the use of his legs just as the
pain began to register. At first it was just a warm spot in the
middle of his back, but it grew quickly, and within moments it seemed
to spread through his entire body. His knees buckled and he
dropped face-down onto the cobblestones. The fall knocked the
wind out of him, choking off another scream as his cheek slammed
against the hard street with a loud crack.
For a moment he just laid there, trying to catch his
breath, hands wrapped around his stomach. He spat out a mouthful
of blood and a broken tooth, took a deep breath that brought tears to
his eyes, raised himself to hands and knees, and began to crawl.
The safety of the building ahead still beckoned, but it was no
good. He collapsed and rolled onto his side, shattered
cheekbone once again lying against the slick surface of the street.
It was oddly quiet. All around him, fires still
burned and explosions continued to go off, but he couldn’t hear
anything except his ragged breathing, and then the sound of boots
approaching. They stopped a few feet away, but all he could do
was lift his eyes and look into the face of the man who had just shot
him in the back and…
…“I think he’s coming around,” someone said. “Hey, Cory.”
Looking around, trying to bring his vision back in
focus, he realized he was sitting on Brian’s beat up orange couch
again, but didn’t have the vaguest idea how he’d gotten there.
His head was pounding and there was a foul taste in his mouth.
Matt sat beside him. Across the coffee table stood Brian, arms
folded across his chest, a concerned look on his face.
“What happened?” Cory asked, wincing as he rubbed his throbbing temples.
“You fainted,” Matt said.
That explained why he couldn’t remember how he
ended up back on the couch, but it was weird--he’d never fainted in his
life. Maybe he was getting sick, the flu or something, or maybe
he was just more tired than he thought. After all, they’d driven
all night to get here, so he hadn’t slept for almost two days
now. Maybe he just needed some sleep.
“You all right to stand?” Matt asked.
“Yeah, I think so.”
Brian leaned over the table and held out his
hands. Cory grabbed them and pulled himself off the couch while
Matt gave him a shove from behind, and as he got to his feet, he felt a
sharp pain in the middle of his back. Too many hours sitting in a
cramped car with uncomfortable seats. Still feeling a little
unsteady, he rubbed the spot for a minute until the pain started to
fade.
“I think I should go lay down for a few minutes,” he said.
“Should I get a doctor?” Matt asked, sliding an arm around Cory’s back.
“No. I’m fine. I just need to stretch out and take a nap.”
“Let’s get him into the bedroom.” Brian
grabbed Cory under the arm. “He doesn’t look so good.”
With Brian supporting one of his shoulders and Matt
on the other, he moved toward the spare room…
…where the Sheriff was feeling pretty damned good
about the way things turned out. A circuit judge wasn’t due for
another month, and there was no way the posse would let the man live
that long anyhow. They were too liquored up and excited. Besides,
this town hadn’t had a hanging in more than two years. Those were just
excuses, though, because truth was, guilty or not, he wanted this man
dead.
The rope was wrapped around a thick oak branch on
one end, the other tied in a noose around the man’s neck. With
hands bound behind his back, the man sat on the very same horse the
townsfolk said he’d stole. It was a good touch. The sheriff
looked over his shoulder at the sun. It was almost gone now, and
he could feel the crowd, staring, waiting, itchy.
“Now, Sheriff?”
“At sundown, Micah. At sundown.”
Micah looked disappointed, but he would wait.
They all would. This was the Sheriff’s town, and they did things
his way, mostly. He continued to stare at the sun until it
finally slipped behind the horizon, the sky turning from orange to
red. A cold wind slapped at his jacket. He shivered and
nodded to the man in black.
“A few words, reverend?”
“Won’t do him no good!” Micah yelled.
“And it won’t do you no harm to listen, Micah,” the Sheriff said.
The crowd laughed for a spell, then hushed up and
let the reverend through, an open Bible in his hands. “Is there no man
among you who would stop this?”
A few laughs and grunts, but no one replied,
so the reverend went on. “The Lord tells us that we should not steal,
and yet, he also tells us it is wrong to kill. If you do this thing,
only the Lord is to say whose actions will be judged.”
“The law says we hang a horse thief!”
“Whose law?” the Reverend asked.
The sheriff kicked his horse forward through the
crowd, stopping between the Reverend and the man on the horse. “Just
say a prayer, Preacher. Let’s just get this done.”
The Reverend closed his eyes and recited the Lord’s
prayer, then walked away, the crowd opening a path to let him through.
The sheriff shivered again, but not from the cold this time. He
couldn’t seem to shake the feeling that he’d met this man before.
Not that it mattered any. In just another minute, the man was
gonna be dancing at the end of a rope, and the Sheriff was satisfied
with that. Just seemed like the right thing to do.
When the preacher was done, the Sheriff slapped the
horse just behind the saddle. The crowd whooped as the horse ran
off, the rope got tight, and then the old oak branch creaked under the
man’s weight...
…and he woke up with a sore throat.
Cory looked around the room and spent a minute
trying to reorient himself. Then it came to him--he was in
Brian’s spare room, and from the look of the sunlight shining through
the vertical blinds, he’d been asleep for a while now because the fog
had burned off. The last thing he remembered was Brian and Matt
putting him to bed.
He cleared his throat and threw off the blankets and
headed for the kitchen to get a glass of water.
“You OK?” Matt asked as Cory entered the living
room. “You’ve been out for almost four hours now.”
“Just thirsty.”
“There’s juice in the fridge,” Brian said,
looking up from a set of Tarot cards spread across the coffee
table. “Can I get you anything?”
“Just a glass of water.”
“You look bad,” Matt said, getting off the couch and
moving toward him. “Go back to bed. I’ll bring you one.”
Cory shrugged and headed back to the
bedroom. He was too tired to argue, and besides…
...it was a beautiful warm morning, the sun a
brilliant white orb in the blue Caribbean sky. Not even a breeze
to testify to the storm that had tossed the ship so violently for the
last three days. The ropes chafed his wrists, but that would pass soon
enough.
“Have at it, mate,” the new captain said, pulling a
flintlock out of his sash. “Don’t force me to shoot ye first. There’s
no honor in that now, is there?”
From out on the plank, he looked down at the sea, as
calm and smooth as a glass. Forcing a swallow, he reminded himself
that, sooner or later, every sailor returned to the sea for the last
time. He just never figured the way she’d choose was mutiny.
“When ye drop, then,” the new captain said, “take a
deep breath quick as ye can. That way ye won’t feel the sharks bite.”
He turned and looked into the eyes of the new
captain, the man he used to trust, wondering why it had to turn out
this way.
“It’s a kindness, ye know, mate,” the new captain
said, pulling back the hammer. “I could have strung ye up and let the
gulls have ye.”
“So you are a gentleman as well as a scoundrel.”
“Don’t I know that, forsooth. Me heart is too soft.
Like as not, it’ll be me own undoing some day.”
“Goodness is always rewarded.”
“I’ll make it easy for ye.” The new captain held the
flintlock steady despite angry murmurs from the crew.
He looked at the new captain, and then across the
deck at the windburned faces of the men that used to be his crew.
He knew what they wanted. They wanted him to jump so they could
wager on what would kill him first--the sea or the sharks. Well,
this crew of traitorous bilge-rats was going to be sorely disappointed.
“I’ll give ye to the count o’ three.”
He stood his ground on the creaking plank, moving
not a step closer to the end. Damned if he was going to give his
mutinous crew the satisfaction of watching him jump. He’d rather
take the ball. It would hurt, but it would be over quick enough,
just like before.
“One...”
And then he had the strangest feeling.
“Two...”
Like he’d been through this before.
“Three!”
The lead ball ripped into his shoulder and spun him
around. He teetered for a moment, trying to regain his balance,
and then the second ball entered his left thigh, sending him crashing
into the...
...cold sweat soaked sheets, with his shoulder
burning, gasping for breath. In the darkness, it took a minute for him
to remember where he was. On the nightstand to his right, a digital
clock said three-thirty. He’d slept through the whole day and
half way through the night. The seminar started at eight, so Matt
and Brian were probably in bed.
He rolled onto his side, trying to remember what had
woken him, a bad dream maybe, but the details were already
gone. Maybe it was just this pain in his shoulder. He
must have slept on it funny because now that he’d moved, the pain was
fading. He was still tired, and since it was still the middle of
the night, he might as well go back to sleep. Hopefully, he’d
feel better in the morning, and then…
...he felt the knife as it slipped under his
ribcage…and the agony as the flaming oil charred the flesh off his
bones...and his body convulse from the poison...and the sudden loss of
consciousness as his fall was broken on the rocks below...and each time
he died, he saw the face of his killer…and so he closed one eye and
lined him up in the sights, let out a breath and squeezed the
trigger...and felt the car lurch as it mangled the body on the
pavement...and saw the cutting edge of his battle ax shine red as a
head flew off into the bushes...and each time he saw his victim die…
...he woke up feeling refreshed and relaxed, and
suddenly everything became clear. He looked at the clock.
Only four-thirty. Matt and Brian would still be asleep. He
had plenty of time. Getting slowly out of bed and leaving the
bedroom, he saw Matt curled up under a blanket on the couch, sound
asleep. He moved on to the kitchen, quietly pulled open a drawer,
reached for the largest, sharpest knife he could find, then returned to
the living room. On the coffee table lay the wand, crystals
glowing in the moonlight shining through the front window. He
stood there, admiring it for a few moments, and then making sure he had
a firm grip on the knife, started toward the couch. Checkmate.
Thanks for Visiting!