Chris Holm - The Wrong Goodbye

“What exactly are we looking for?” asked Theresa. “Uh, metaphorically speaking, of course.”

“I’m not sure,” I admitted. “Gio, where are we going?”

He considered the question, his face sweat-slick and deathly pale. “That way,” he said, indicating the direction most of the foot-traffic was headed —the direction of the festival.

Theresa frowned. “How do you know?”

“’Cause my gut is screaming bloody murder to run the other way.”

“Yeah,” Theresa said, flashing a wan smile, “you never were one to listen.”

We pressed on. As we did, what had begun as the odd passerby coalesced into a crowd. Into a party. Into a sea of deathly faces staring back at us. The neighborhood to our right gave way to a city park, its rolling lawn flush with people dancing, its parking lot a makeshift marketplace where booths sold sugar skulls and loaves of pan de muerto, cheap sombreros and calaca figurines.

The rooftops of the booths and tents were alive with crows —silent, watching. Tree limbs sagged beneath their weight. Occasionally, some celebrant would snap a cell phone pic of them, the flash piercing the night and reflecting off the liquid black of their feathers —but still, they did not move. They remained as stock-still as the Yeomen Warders who stood guard before the Tower of London, Charon’s own dark sentinels of the In-Between.

“Why come here?” Theresa said. “What attracted your Danny to this place?”

“Belief is a powerful thing,” I said. “If everyone you see here tonight believes a little bit —even if it’s only in that deep, primal place in their mind that still fears the dark and makes them cross themselves when lightning strikes —that this night provides a window between the land of the living and of the dead, their combined force of will is enough to nudge the universe such that it’s closer to being so. Believe me when I tell you,” I said, my thoughts turning to my encounter with Abyzou in the nightmare realm I’d traveled through to return from my unintended skim-trip, “you have no idea what might be pressing up against the glass right now and looking back at us. Or how easy it might be to crack that glass and unleash a cleansing fury on this world. And I hope to God you never find out.”

“Dear Lord,” she said, “I bet you’re fun at parties.”

Gio clutched his chest and took a knee. A woman in a tattered orange ball gown and a matching veil looked down at him as she pressed past us through the crowd, a churro in each hand. As she noted his obvious distress, her bone-white painted face creased with worry.

Her eyes met mine, her intent clear —does he need help? —but I shook my head and smiled what I hoped was a reassuring smile, the shotgun tucked behind my back out of her line of sight. She hovered for a moment until Theresa took Gio by the elbow and helped him to his feet, and then she disappeared into the teeming throng.

“You OK, hon?” Theresa, her voice tinged with worry.

“We’re close,” he said, sucking wind like he’d just run a marathon, his face gray and slick with sweat. “Too close, if you ask me.”

I caught a glimpse of flashing red and blue two blocks to our east, and shook my head. “Not close enough,” I said.

“Could he be masked? Mixed in with the crowd?”

“I doubt it. The kind of ritual he’d be working would require space. Someplace where he wouldn’t draw too much attention. Somewhere he wouldn’t be disturbed.”

“So… somewhere like that?”

My eyes tracked to where Gio was pointing. Diagonal across the park from us stood a construction site, three-odd floors of half-finished building —all concrete, steel girders, and plastic sheeting, which billowed like curtains in the breeze. It was surrounded by a high chain link fence topped with three lines of barbed wire, which slanted outward overhead. Floodlights shone at ground level to deter any would-be trespassers. I shouldered through the horde of celebrants to get a better look, drawing my share of half-hearted Spanish curses —and shouts of alarm from those few who noticed the shotgun in my hands. One passerby, who looked for all the world like an undead bullfighter, shouted “ ¡Escopeta! ” and panic rippled through the crowd. As I’ve said, I don’t know a lot of Spanish, but that’s one word I understand. Means shotgun. Means our chances of staying hidden in the crowd just dropped to nil. So I said to hell with hiding, and took off full-bore toward the building —the crowd parting before me, Gio and Theresa following close behind.

When we reached the fence, I saw the building was of a peculiar structure. Something about it set my Spidey-sense a-tingling, though at first, I couldn’t put my finger on why. Then I spotted it: a sign, graffiti-spattered and bolted to the chain link fence, proclaimed the site as the future home of Asphodel Meadows Condominiums, with a projected completion date of three years back. The sign was illustrated, showing an artist’s rendering of the completed building —six stories tall and complete with landscaping, rooftop pool, and smiling, happy tenants. And from the angle of the illustration, it was clear the footprint of the building was a five-pointed star —also known as a pentagram.

A pentagram is a common focal object for all manner of mystical rights. Upright, it’s said to represent the wounds of Christ. Inverted, the pentagram is the sigil of the demon Baphomet, long rumored to be but one aspect of the Morning Star himself, also known as Lucifer.

No telling from where I stood which way this pentagram faced. But it was fucking big . Which meant it was capable of channeling some serious power.

And lest I think it was a coincidence I stumbled upon a giant fucking pentagram in the middle of this Dia de los Muertos celebration, the name of the place had Danny’s fingerprints all over it. He always was a cheeky motherfucker.

According to Greek myth, Asphodel Meadows is the land in the afterlife dedicated to the dead whose lives straddled the boundary of good and evil without ever tipping to either side. Guess that classics education of his was finally paying off. But this building, if it were his, represented years of planning, investing, careful construction —maybe decades . The Danny I knew couldn’t be counted on to plan lunch.

I was beginning to think I’d never really known Danny at all.

Something else about the building troubled me, but it took me a sec to figure out what it was. The buildings across the street were covered in crows. Ditto the ones on either side, and the three barbed wires that topped the fence surrounding it. But despite the fact this place —with all its nooks, crannies, and exposed girders —should have been a perfect roost, its every perch was bare.

Then I noticed the birds perched atop the fence weren’t watching Gio, Theresa, and me like the others. To a one, they faced away from us.

They were looking at the building.

At Danny’s mammoth pentagram.

I couldn’t help but feel they were waiting for me to do something. I wished to hell they’d tell me what. Because if the red and blue that spilled across the crowd on either side of us was any indication, I didn’t have much time.

The music cut out to the angry protests of the deathly crowd nearest the stage, who were not yet wise to the crazed gunman in their ranks. Over the PA, one of the boys in blue insisted they disperse. He said they were in danger. That there was a killer in their midst. Both those things were true enough, I suppose —they were in danger, and God knows I’d killed plenty —but tonight, at least, the killer they should be worried about wasn’t among them, but hidden somewhere within the skeletal frame of the building before me.