Greg Gifune: Kingdom of Shadows

“Feels like you went to sleep and woke up in the middle of your life,” Snow interrupted, voice unusually quiet, “and now you can’t remember how the hell you got here.”

Rooster stabbed the cigarette between his lips and left it there so he could put his hands flat on the table between them and better conceal the fact that they were shaking. He nodded. “What’s happening to us?”

Up close Snow’s eyes were bloodshot and heavy, like he’d been crying recently, hadn’t slept in a while, or both. He smelled vaguely of cheap aftershave. “What do you know about demons?”

“ Demons ? You mean like—”

“Like all kinds of crazy shit runs through your head, then you start hearing things. Screams mostly, or whispers that don’t make no sense. And just when you think it can’t get no worse, you start seeing shit. Not people, not…not exactly. But they look like people…least until they don’t.”

The receptionist , Rooster thought, shrugging off a chill. “I don’t believe in demons.”

“Yeah neither do I but they don’t seem to give a shit.” Snow downed some beer then let out a quiet belch under his breath and looked to the door as if expecting someone to burst through it at any moment. “Not too long ago I got some information.” He leaned closer, across the table. “And ever since then these other motherfuckers have been following me. Never up close, always a ways back, watching from their cars, Crown Vics—big black bastards—that’s what they drive.”

“Cops?”

“These ain’t cops.”

“Who are they?”

“They been following me for weeks. After today they’ll be following you.”

“Why?” With manic repetition Rooster puffed his cigarette. “What do they want?”

“You remember the night Carbone died?”

Rooster began to perspire as flashes of farmhouse, blood and scarecrows filled his memory. “Some.”

No longer able to contain his nervousness, Snow abruptly stood up and made a beeline for the jukebox. He dropped a coin in, made a selection then gave the bartender and his friend a long look that said: This is going to make hearing the television more difficult but let’s not make a big deal about it or you’ll force me to do some really unpleasant shit to you . Both men looked away without comment and Snow slowly strode back to the booth as The Police’s Spirits in the Material World kicked in.

“You said I needed to know what you know.” Rooster crushed his cigarette in the ashtray. “So tell me.”

“What do you remember about the night Carbone died?”

“Come on, man, what the hell’s going on?”

“Do it.”

“The armored car robbery, the last job we pulled as a crew,” he said. “Everything went according to plan until Carbone fucked up and blew the back doors too early. The third guard was waiting on him. Carbone took a shotgun blast dead in the gut. Starker wasted the guard, shot him in the face, killed him instantly.” He remembered the young man’s head as it exploded, a crimson mist of blood, brains and skull spraying everything, and all of them. “You got Carbone back to the van while Nauls and I handled the other two guards and took care of the swag. Landon was the wheelman. We got out ahead of the cops, ended up in the middle of nowhere at some deserted old farmhouse. Carbone died in the van.”

Snow nodded. “Then what?”

“You were there.”

“Pretend I wasn’t.”

Rooster fidgeted in his seat. It felt like thousands of insects were scurrying over every inch of his body. He scratched at his head and suddenly found himself checking the door every few seconds as well. “I don’t…”

“You don’t know.”

Shadows along the ceiling shifted, elongated.

“We split the take,” he finally said. “Then we took off.”

“That how you remember it?”

“I think so but I can’t…” Rooster took another swig of beer. “I can’t remember exactly, it…the whole thing seems like a dream.”

“I couldn’t remember nothing either.”

The man at the bar, a middle-aged guy wearing some sort of workman’s uniform, hopped down from his stool and slipped through a nearby door marked RESTROOMS.

“The more I thought about it,” Snow continued, “the worse it got. I couldn’t remember the rest of that night no matter how hard I tried. It was like it was just… gone . All I knew was whatever happened scared the shit out of me, made me scared like I never even knew I could be. I’m talking about the kind of fear you feel right down to your nuts, man. The kind that makes you shit in your pants like a baby sliding out lunch. You know what I mean.”

Rooster did know. He swallowed so hard he gagged.

“Like you, I thought I was losing my goddamn mind.” Snow sat back with an air of defiance. “It’s like there was something right on my ass, something evil. I couldn’t take no more. I stopped sleeping, stopped eating, just locked myself up in my apartment and hid out. I wanted to kill myself but I was afraid of the other side. Ain’t exactly lived the life of a saint, right?”

The bartender was staring at them intently. When he realized Rooster had caught him he quickly looked away and busied himself.

“That’s when that woman started hanging outside my apartment wanting to talk to me all the time.” His face twisted. “I didn’t know who she was, didn’t know what I’d done. I don’t even remember it. I was on H when it went down and was hurting so bad for a fix I was out of my mind. I never meant to hurt her.”

“I never knew you did heroin.”

Snow sighed helplessly. “Neither did I.”

“You’re not making any sense. What the hell are you talking about?”

“I tried to do straight time, man, for real. I tried.”

“I believe you.”

“I got a janitor gig at this office building a few blocks from my crib. I was going crazy but I showed up on time every night, did my thing and minded my own business, played by the rules, closed my eyes to the demons and the screams and that woman always staring at me. I’d walk there, work the overnight shift then walk home in the morning. I’m there about a week when I notice this old dude following me one night. Skinny little white cat with glasses. Real Poindexter-looking motherfucker. At first I think maybe he’s a cop, but he don’t look like no cop I ever seen, looks more like a professor or some shit. He shows up every night, tails me from my apartment to work, and then he’s gone. So one night I get a lead on him, take a corner and duck into a doorway. He comes by and I grab his narrow ass.” Snow ran a hand over his face. He too had begun to perspire. “I’m about to rack me some old white man when he starts talking about that night at the farmhouse, all the shit I’m going through and how he can help me. Motherfucker knew more about me than I did, man. Said he had answers, said he knew what happened to us that night. He said it was time we knew the truth. And that’s exactly what he laid on me. Only now sometimes I wish he didn’t. Sometimes not knowing was better.” He bowed his head in an attempt to mask the tears filling his eyes. “Ain’t that a bitch? We never had a goddamn chance, man, none of us.”

“Who was this guy?”

“What they done to us wasn’t right, Rooster, it wasn’t right. We did some bad shit but we’re human beings, man, we fucking human beings .”

“What who did to us? What are you saying?”

Snow reached into his jacket, put something on the table and slid it over to him. When he pulled his hand away a small key was revealed. “Opens a locker at the bus station downtown,” he said. “Take it. Use it.”

Rooster nonchalantly covered it with his palm. “What am I gonna find?”