Michael Langlois - Bad Radio

Anne spoke up. “I get that you’re helping people who are being held captive by bags and all, but how are you finding them? I mean, this isn’t a big city, but it’s still a whole town. There must be thousands of houses and apartments here.”

Greg put his mug down on the table and leaned back in his chair. “I think that’s enough free information from me tonight. Chuck said he brought you here because you claim to be able to help, and you’ve obviously run into these things before. Now it’s your turn. What do you know?”

I smiled. “I know that we’re lucky to have found each other, Greg. You know the battleground and where the enemy is, and I know who the commander is, and why the battle is being fought in the first place. The man behind it all is Piotr Rafal Ostrowski.”

Greg laughed. “Pete Ostrowski? I don’t think so.”

“You know him?”

“Well, not personally, but I know plenty about him. He’s a sweet old man and everybody loves him so much they call him Saint Peter. You practically need an insulin shot after shaking his hand.”

“Everybody knows about him?”

“I guess so. I mean, after all, he is the mayor.”

Greg went to the fridge, popped a round magnet off the door and tossed it to me. On the front was a cartoon picture of an older man with a halo around his head, sitting on a fluffy white cloud against a baby blue background. In rounded yellow balloon letters underneath the figure it said, “ST. PETER FOR MAYOR!” I recognized the face. Even as a campy drawing it gave me a chill. Anne took it from me to have a look.

Greg sat back down. “You can have it, I have a bunch. Pete’s lived here forever, and been mayor for the last, I don’t know, seven years? I’ve met the man. A stiff breeze would blow him over, and there’s not a mean-spirited bone in his body. I seriously think you have the wrong guy.”

“No. That’s him, I recognize the face. He’s older than the last time I saw him, and it’s been awhile, but I’ll never forget him.” A vivid memory popped into my head of Piotr walking between two hanging bodies, pushing them aside like heavy hanging curtains. His face frozen in self-righteous anger and his hands stained pink with scrubbed off blood. I could remember every detail as if I were still there.

Greg sat back down at the table. “How long is awhile?”

“The last time I saw Piotr it was 1945, in Warsaw.”

Greg froze. There’s a look that people get when they suddenly discover that they’re trapped in a room with an actual crazy person. You can see their eyes go batshit, while disconnected smiles solidify on their faces.

“I’m not crazy, I’m just older than I look.”

He raised his hands and made patting motions in the air. “Of course, Abe! I never said you were crazy. I wouldn’t do that.”

Anne stifled a laugh, which I did my best to ignore. “Look. You believe that your friends and neighbors are being mind controlled by freaky tentacle-faced worms that live inside them, right? You’ve seen that?”

“Well … yes, but that’s different.”

“No, it isn’t. I got caught up in the last operation that your mayor was running, and this is what happened to me. I haven’t aged a day since. It’s the truth. And frankly, it’s not that weird compared to the other stuff you’ve seen.”

His eyes flicked to the ceiling and back to me so fast I almost didn’t see it. “I guess I have to give you that. I mean, why the hell wouldn’t an immortal guy show up here out of the blue to help me fight body snatching worm people? Why the fuck not?” He sniggered, and then laughed, and then roared, slapping his hand on his leg over and over.

“I mean, shit, at this point you could have swooped in on a fucking dinosaur and things wouldn’t be any weirder!”

He laughed until he had a coughing fit. Now it was my turn to get the crazy person heebee-jeebies. He stopped and wiped his eyes. “Sorry, sorry.” He giggled one more time. “Oh, that felt good. I can’t remember the last time I had a good laugh like that. You’re right, of course. If you say you’re immortal, and you’ve been fighting Saint Peter since the forties, then who am I to say different? I’m just glad you’re here. We even have something of an advantage, since Peter doesn’t know you’re here.”

“About that. Even if he doesn’t know I’m here tonight, he knows I’m coming. After all, he’s spent the last couple of weeks leading me here by the nose.”

Anne and Greg blurted out, “What?” at the same time.

I turned to Anne. “Think about it. When Dominic took the pieces from us at the hospital, he was away clean. The only reason we were able to track him down was because Peter ordered Dominic to leave some goons behind. He knew damn well those guys weren’t a real threat.”

She rolled her eyes at me. “Yeah, three guys with guns were totally no threat.”

I shrugged modestly. “And you remember what happened to them, right? Their real purpose was to lay a trail to Dominic, who Piotr conveniently failed to kill after receiving the altar pieces from him. Which, of course, gave us the final to Belmont.” A thought struck me. “Greg, you said this has been going on for a year now?”

“Or longer. I only got wind of it a year ago. Who knows how many people went missing before that?”

“That’s what I thought. So if he’s been operating under the radar for a year or more, why would he expose himself now?”

Anne got it first. “Because he’s ready. Whatever he’s been setting up all this time is done, and he needs the last parts to make it happen. And if you’re right about drawing you here even after he has the altar pieces, then he must need you to make it work.”

“That’s my guess. Only I don’t think he’s completely ready yet. If he were, he would have had an army of bags lurking around the hotel and all the restaurants to grab me the second I showed up. Hell, the bag in the diner would have grabbed me, come to that. No, he’s not finished, but he will be soon enough that he wants me close at hand.”

Anne said, “You obviously took some power or something from that blood pit. Maybe he needs it back to finish what he started?”

“Why, when he’s been making another pit for at least a year? Why not just use that?”

Greg used his coffee cup like a gavel on the thin table. “Hold up. Blood pit? Power you stole? Clue me in, here.”

So, for the next hour, Anne and I filled Greg in on the whole mess, starting with the war and ending up with our arrival into town. It finally sank in, as I was telling the tale. The past that I had been running from all these years was finally catching up to me.

Piotr was no longer years and miles away. He was here, in this very town, right now, and it didn’t matter how cute his nickname was, or how harmless he looked on his campaign button. There was something in him, something driving him, that was beyond sanity or good or evil. He was wrong. Twisted out of step in a way that made the hair on your neck instinctively rise.

I didn’t know what Piotr was planning for me or this town, but I was terrified of it.

There were no unoccupied bedrooms in the small house, so Greg made us a pallet of sleeping bags and blankets on the living room floor. By the time we had unloaded our duffel bags from the car and gotten settled in, the rest of the house was asleep. Soft darkness made the impromptu bed cozy and snug, with the white noise of the ceiling fan overhead adding to the pleasant sense of isolation. Anne leaned her head against my chest, warming me.

“Abe?”

“Yeah?”

“We’re going to beat this Peter guy, and we’re going to make it out of here alive. All of us.”