The Devil, The Deed, and the Denouement

Raker's restless steps reach the end of the road.

 

The Devil, the Deed, and the Dénouement

 

            The Dead Man paces for the last time amid the broken wreckage that was his life. Glinting shards of glass littered among the cast-off remnants of all that he once was. And now? He is only a husk wrapped in black canvas, carrying a smoking gun.

            The shadow of Death presses her slim form against his as he paces, curling herself about him. She puts his hand in hers and whispers softly into his ear, a beautiful litany of promises. For the first time, the Dead Man feels just how exhausted he really is. “Come home,” she says.

            “Soon. Not yet.”

            Dead blue eyes, still alight with vengeful flame, drift toward the red bladder of gasoline. He’d loved this place, and like everything else he loved, it would have to burn.

            Each man kills the thing he loves; by each let this be heard. Some do it with a bitter look, some with a flattering word. The coward does it with a kiss, the brave man with a sword. Some kill their love when they are young, some when they are old. Some strangle with the hands of lust, some with the hands of gold. The kindest use a knife because the dead so soon grow cold. Some love too little, some too long, some buy and other sell. Some do the deed with so many tears, and some without a sigh.

The Dead Man leaves the place he’d called home a blazing ruin, flame licking behind the lich-lighted windows and scorching the red-brick exterior with the ardor of its flame.

For each man kills the thing he loves. Yet each man does not die.

†

            Alexander Aries had no idea why he woke up at a quarter to midnight on that particular night. No one could have been more surprised than he when his eyes cracked blearily in the grating glare of the blue numerals of the alarm clock on the imported teak night-stand. Usually he slept the untroubled sleep which only the obscenely wealthy or powerful can afford to experience.

            He exhaled heavily in a sort of groggy dismay. It was far too early. Why the hell had he jolted awake?

            Vainly he attempted to grope for what he might have been dreaming about that could have woken him so suddenly. This night, like the thousands of others he had slept through, seemed to have been utterly dreamless. He knew, deep down, that he did in fact dream, but the intangible fabric of those dreams was as fleeting as sea-mist.

            Not a dream then.

            He rolled onto his side and stretched a hand over the sheets until it brushed against the warmth of flesh. Monica still slept soundly beside him, the steady in and out of her breathing coming in soft little swells of her side. He drew his hand back slowly, across the warmth and softness of her shoulder and through the blood- colored silk of her long hair.

            And that’s when the noise came.

            It was soft. Had the house not been enveloped in the shroud of night-time silence which fall across the suburbs at that hour of the night, Aries might have missed it. Instead, his ears pricked up to the sound of footsteps on hardwood. Not far outside the cracked bedroom door.

            He sat up. Listening. Monica slept on, a little murmur passing her lips as she dreamt.

            Seconds gave way to a full minute and still the sound did not reappear…still, he was not getting back to sleep with the thought of an intruder prowling around his home. He had to check it out.

            He swung his legs from the jealous embrace of tangled blue sheets and padded across the floor to his discarded black slacks. He stepped into them, drew them up, and fastened the Italian leather belt as though it were second nature. After a moment of careful consideration he made his way to the nightstand and retrieved a silver pistol.

            He ejected the magazine from the SIG P226, the sleek, stylish home-defense weapon which some of his less than reputable business dealings had required he invest in, checking to be sure that the twelve .40 caliber slugs nested neatly in the anodized aluminum clip. With an ease borne of familiarity, he slid the magazine back home and worked the slide, feeding the first bullet into the chamber.

            Monica stirred at the sound, turning with a sleepy look of confusion. She brushed a wayward lock of crimson hair from her green eyes, fathomless even in the gloom.

            “Alex? What’s wrong?”

            Alex pressed a finger to his lips and indicated the door with a smooth motion of his head. “I thought I heard something,” he replied in a low whisper, “I’m going to go have a look.”

            Monica sat up, squinting at the door as Aries tiptoed toward it. She watched him pull it noiselessly open and sweep the hall outside, the silver barrel of the Swiss pistol leading. He moved quietly, gracefully, for a man of his size. Had she not been looking at him, she would not have even known that he was moving. Like a wraith, he vanished from sight.

Aries padded, barefoot down the hallway, pausing every so often to listen. The steps had moved downstairs. He made to follow, doing his best to avoid the tell-tale signs of covert movement. No shuffling of feet, no sliding against a wall. No stupid action-movie mistakes.

He came to the glossy oak banister which overlooked the marble-tiled entryway and scanned the shadows for movement, swinging the gun before him from left to right. Nothing moved down there. Slowly, carefully, he made his way to the stairs. He paused on the landing and pricked up his ears once more.

A door shut. Not slammed like a hasty burglar, but gently closed. Either he was dealing with a professional, or someone who was simply unaware of his presence.

It came from the direction of Aries’ library.

Alexander Aries descended the steps with slightly more hurried steps. If he managed to catch the intruder in the library, he could be sure that his quarry had no means of escape. The library was a solid box, encapsulated on all sides by sturdy walls with nary a window or portal to be found save the heavy double doors which served as the only entrance. Trapped like a rat.

Aries took a firm double-handed grip on the SIG, walking with a purpose now. He passed over the chilly tile of the entry-way, not even pausing as the cold crept through the soles of his feet and made his tendons tighten uncomfortably. Then he descended the three steps into the sunken great-room hung with expensive portraits which lost none of their luster in the late-night gloom. Like a hunter who had run his prey to ground, he fairly jogged to the heavy oak-paneled doors which had become the noose about the intruder’s throat.

A man who had never fired on another human being might have shaken. A man with a hint of compassion might have given a warning. But Aries simply pulled open the door and leveled the gun at the silhouette of his intruder.

A heartbeat’s hesitation gave him time to confirm that this figure was no one he knew. The SIG coughed and spat three rounds of high-caliber death. They streaked across the space separating the shady business-man and the trench-coat silhouette at 1050 feet per second, crossing the distance in less than the blink of an eye.

The figure spun just in time to take them in the shoulder, chest and face.

†

The sound of the gunshots ripped through the house like an ill-favored wind, echoing through the halls like the cracking of an old wooden bridge, leaving no corner without the sharp ring of its resonance.

Monica tensed at the first report. Had Alex fired the shots, or was he the target? Was he curled up around a sucking wound vomiting black blood? Her ears strained in the following silence, desperately searching for any further sound.

Her attempt met only with fathomless silence.

That’s it then.

She had to know. Her legs swung themselves out of bed almost of their own accord as she stepped into her slippers and pulled on a silk robe over her naked form. She tied a hasty knot on her way to the door.

It wasn’t smart, she knew. But she couldn’t very well just wait and see.

So she’d find out for herself.

†

Aries took a cautious step into the room, reaching out with his left hand to flick the light switch. The SIG still held level in the direction of the corpse which was, in all probability bleeding out on the expensive Persian rug which covered the hardwood floor behind his writing desk

Incandescent lights snapped on at the flick of his finger and the room was washed in the buttery light of 60 watt bulbs. The smell of spent gunpowder and blood intermixed with the pungent aroma of his first editions and their aging bindings. But it was, perhaps, the sound which Aries found most arresting.

Not groans of pain as he might’ve expected. Something lower and more rhythmic. Too regular to be the scrape of a spasming body over carpet. Too resonant to even be a death rattle. And then it hit him all at once.

Laughter. The man who had taken the three bullets to the torso and face was chuckling deep in his throat. And it was not a nice sound.

And then there came a groan, “Ouch.”

The man stood slowly, straightening behind the desk with the stiff-jointed movements of a man twice his apparent age.

“I’m going to hazard a guess and say that you’re Aries.” The man who stood behind the desk could not be human. Though he had been shot three times, and the wounds were clearly visible, there wasn’t a drop of blood on him. One of the bullets had flayed a trail across his left cheek, clear and crimson against the pallor of his skin, but not a droplet of blood threatened to fall.

“What the hell?” Aries stared with the careful calculation of a man who lived without fear, but rather studied it; probing to find some sort of weakness.

“So which comes first, Aries? Pain or Panic?” The black canvas scarecrow reached into the voluminous folds of his coat and was half way to drawing his revolver before Alexander Aries’ finger convulsed on the trigger. He emptied the remaining nine rounds in the magazine into the form which was now starting to drift forward with surreal surety. His every motion caused the spent brass shells tied in his long black hair to clink together like wind chimes in a gentle breeze.

Nine bullets screamed across the gap, turning the air between them into a wall of daggers. The thing which wore the face of a man took eight of the nine without so much as a hitch in his step. The ninth passed harmlessly by his right ear.

When he coughed twice and hung his head, Aries let a flicker of relief wash over his face. But as the thing straightened, the cold claw of true fear began to take root in his gut.

“Ouch,” the scarecrow repeated, heartier than before. Not a groan now, but a biting hiss.

Aries’ gun was empty. The God of War had run dry and stood holding a thousand dollar brushed steel paper-weight in front of a steadily-encroaching nightmare.

“I’m guessing Panic, then.”

“What the f**k--?”

The monster didn’t even wait for the question to be finished. Instead, he crossed the room with slow, patient, ground-eating strides. The soles of his boots clicked evenly against the wooden floor when he had left the rug behind.

But it was the eyes that bored into Aries’ very soul which held him transfixed. Blue. Fountains of pure glacial murder; a slow suffocating death beneath a layer of pack-ice with air only a frantic half-inch scrabble away.

The once-man’s lips curled into a snarl as he came face to face with the man who wore the name of the God of War. His breath was like the sickly sweet smell of rain over rotting vegetable matter.

 “I’m the sum of your sins, Aries. And I’ve come to bury you.”

And his hand closed, like an iron collar fresh from the forge, around Aries’ throat.

†

Monica stood on the last step, overlooking the ocean of black and white checkered marble. A thin crescent of light shone from across the great-room, carrying with it the faint rumble of low conversation.

She was close now.

†

It was a beautiful day at the Windsor Building. From behind the double-paned glass, stretching seventeen stories above street level, Alexander Aries could truly appreciate the natural beauty of an overcast sky and torrential rain. Sky and cement blurred together into a uniform gray mass, only differentiated by the sprawling cityscape which stretched on in all directions from his corner office and toward the horizon. Bullets of rain pelted down past the glass to land on scurrying wage-slaves far below.

A beautiful day.

The Windsor was a standard business building of the “space-for-rent” variety. Psychiatrists, entrepreneurs, and law firms rented sections, even whole floors, to service their respective clienteles. Aries himself retained a large corner suite complete with a well-furnished corner office in order to intimidate the prospective victims of his expanding conglomerate empire.

Aries did it all these days. He had a hand in pharmaceuticals, natural resources, real-estate, the hospitality industry…even a few things which fell comfortably within the only quasi-legal realms. Shady little words like migrant labor industries and street pharmacopeias. And the money kept rolling in.

He ran a hand over his well-groomed hair, salt and pepper edging toward the color of well-forged steel, as he turned toward the door. His newest client had just stood him up. Never a good idea. He thumbed a button on his desk and gave Cheryl, his receptionist the orders to mail a few less-than-tasteful photographs to his client’s wife in a plain manila envelope.

No one stood up Alexander Aries.

And now, lunch. With the confident stride of a man of means, sharp and dashing and just a hint intimidating in his three-piece Armani, he left his office and walked through the reception area. Cheryl, a blonde beauty, five nine in her three inch pumps, offered a cheery farewell. He gave her a wink and a smile to make devils cry.

He took the elevator, pressing the little ivory button on the gold panel marked L. And when the doors opened, he condemned a man he did not know to death.

He didn’t know her name yet, but the fire-haired beauty in the black pinstripe number which sidled by and opened the door to the little gallery which occupied the western half of the Windsor’s first floor was going to be his. She saw him looking and offered a sly little smile, her green cat’s eyes catching the light from the golden latch as she turned it. Oh, she was going to be his alright.

No one said no to Alexander Aries.

†

“Your soul rots, Aries.” The Dead Man’s lips twisted into something half-way between pity and accusation. “But fear not.”

The muzzle of the gun slipped up under the business man’s chin.

“Its cure is near.”

As the dead man thumbed back the hammer on the heavy revolver, Aries saw flashes of all of the pain and rage that had come as a result of his whim that fateful day. A ragged breath escaped his lips as his mind reeled under the avalanche of images.

“Raker?” He breathed the word with disbelief, unable to fully face his assassin with the pressure of the gun’s barrel against the soft skin of his throat, but rather only able to catch a hazy glimpse of the walking corpse of the murdered man through the very bottom of his vision. The blurred effect made him look more like a shadow, an insubstantial phantom.

Raker didn’t answer.

The draw on the .357 was silk smooth. Raker didn’t jerk, but rather squeezed gently; evenly. The cylinder cycled with a butter-supple motion of well-machined steel and a fresh round cycled into line with the striking hammer. The firing-pin transferred the force of the hammer’s blow into the percussion-cap at the trailing end of the sleek brass round. The jarring force ignited the primer and the fire quickly spread through the 145 grains of smokeless powder. The heat and pressure build inside the metallic casing until, finally, the steel slug which crowned the brass shell shot forth, a miniature comet trailing sulfur smoke and gouts of flame.

The crown of Alexander Aries’ head exploded outward like a party-favor.

Raker let him drop, bonelessly limp and dead before he ever touched the floor.

“God grant you the mercy that I could not,” he spat. “Four, now.”

One more bullet. Then it’s done.

Eyes the color of a bonfire through a blue stained-glass window slipped upward toward the doorframe, just in time to see the slim figure of a woman turning to run.

†

Oh God!

Monica ran as though her life depended on it. She hadn’t spared even a heartbeat to turn back to see if the thing which had killed Alex, the thing that wore the skin of her dead lover, was pursuing. Deep in the pit of her stomach, she knew that she didn’t have to look. She knew he would follow.

She angled for the front door, thoughts of modesty lost in the headlong rush. She wasn’t dressed for the chill night, but she’d survive longer in the cold and rain than she would in the house with the monster. Her slippers rasped over the carpet with the rasp of dead skin under steel wool as she sprinted toward her escape.

Her heart hammered in her chest, the pulse thudding in her temples, in her neck. Her extremities burned from the rude awakening and the quick sprint, so close together. Adrenalin washed away these petty hurts.

But not the sight of Aries, decimated by the bullet, blood and gray-matter painting the textured ceiling of their library. Not the look of disappointment, betrayal, in the eyes of the thing which wore her Raker’s face. These sank into her bones, turning the marrow into crawling maggots. It settled in the pit of her stomach, tugging at her gag reflex.

Through the great room she ran, dodging the expensive lion-footed coffee table and the soft leather couches. Up the three stairs into the entry-way and toward the heavy oak and glass doors. Her hand reached out for the latch.

The hand of the monster reached her first, fastening on the soft red silk collar of her robe.

It’s over. Oh God, it’s over.

“You don’t seem pleased to see me, Monica.” The voice was wrong, the inflections too cold and mechanical to be a living thing. Each word was acid which dripped from the corpse’s lips to sizzle and hiss against her eardrums.

She turned slowly until she faced him, pulling against the insistent pressure at the nape of her neck. When her eyes drank in the details of the grim phantom, the bullet wounds, the callous sneer, the dark eyes which had replaced the rich blue she remembered so well, she had to suppress a scream.

            This wasn’t her Raker. This was a Devil.

            Words failed her. Her tongue was a sodden stump nailed to the floor of her mouth. No matter how she tried to force it to move, it sat there; a dead thing.

            “You look good.” The Devil’s eyes gloss over her, paying special attention to the creamy expanse of her exposed thigh, the sway of her chest as her breathing hitched. She did indeed look good, clad in nothing but a red silk robe and an expression of terror.

            She forced down a shudder of revulsion as the Devil’s hand came up to stroke back an errant lock of crimson hair and tuck it behind her ear. The gesture was sweet, even intimate. The look in the Devil’s eyes, those glinting doll’s eyes, was anything but.

            “Why?” Monica managed to find the will to squeak the question, placing all of her confusion, all of her pleas, all of her fear into the single syllable.

            Raker cupped her face in his left hand as the revolver and its last bullet drew level with her breastbone.

            And she saw.

†

            “He doesn’t deserve you.”

            They were still lying in the tangled sheets of his bed, still pungent and sweet with their commingled scents. It was the first time he’d brought her home, unafraid of the gossip which might spread among his staff.

            She shifted until she could look him in the eyes, green meeting gray. She twisted her lips into something resembling a disapproving frown.

            “Don’t talk like that, Alex.” She whispered, though they were alone, as though someone might be listening.

            “He doesn’t. If he cared for you at all, you wouldn’t be here…with me.” 

            She unconsciously put a gulf between their skin, drawing away from his heat, the moisture still clinging to his frame. “He’s been busy. I…”

            “Too busy to make time for you, Monica?” A beat. “Do you love him?”

            “Of course I do.”

            “Then why are you here.”

            It struck her then. This was all wrong. She shouldn’t be here. Dorian was the world to her. She could never bear to lose him. “I should go.”

            Alex’s features beetled and he reached out to take her wrist between his thumb and forefinger. “No, you shouldn’t.” He tried to draw her closer, back toward his narcotic warmth; toward the scent and feel which made her brain hazy.

            “Dorian…” she mewed in protest.

            “Forget about it for now.” He wormed his arms about her, cocooning her as a spider might a fly. She was his, just as he’d predicted. “We’ll talk about it later. Let’s just enjoy this for now.”

            There would be some calls to make later. Things to be arranged.

†

            When her eyes fluttered open, Monica met the gaze of her Raker. The eyes were no longer dark and opaque, but crystal blue and brilliant; lit from within. For a moment, she was held transfixed, her stomach filling with butterflies just as they had when she’d first met him.

            And then her vision drew back, taking in the bullet-wounds and the crimson gouge taken from his right cheek, exposing the barest ivory hint of teeth beneath. Her Raker was dead and gone. Or dead, at least.

            Tears welled up in her eyes, the realization of what had happened beginning to dawn on her. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

            “I love thee with the breath, the smiles, the tears of all my life. And if God choose, I shall but love thee better after death.” The voice was Raker’s, her Raker’s, soft and satin as the night air. His forehead dropped forward until it rested against hers. The gun dipped from her breastbone, coming to rest at his side, still clenched in one pallid hand.

            “God, Raker,” she wrapped her arms around his neck and shut her eyes. The tears continued to flow, unwilling to be dammed by the scant obstacle of her eyelids. They coursed their salty path down her cheeks to pool at the bluff of her tapered chin.

            “Do you remember, Monica? The time you said ‘Forever’?”

            She nodded softly, scraping her warm skin against his own chilled sheath.

            “And I said, ‘Just forever?’” 

            Monica swallowed a lump in her throat, silencing a sob which threatened to eclipse her faculty of speech. “Then I said, ‘Forever and ever.”

            Raker’s head slid to the side, rubbing a cold cheek against hers. The ebon raven’s tresses of his long unbound hair slid like spider-silk against her jaw as he rested his chin on her shoulder. Every motion conveyed the weariness of a man who had no more will to put one foot in front of the other.

            It’s time, Raker.

            He pressed his corpse-cheek to hers relishing the warmth, one last time. He put the muzzle of the gun to his own temple, thumbing the hammer back.

            Two birds. One more bullet.

 “It’s forever today.”

The click of the hammer and the roar of combusting powder was the last thing either of them heard.

Three bodies.

Only two would ever be found.

Coda

The Dead Man has finished the puzzle. The Devil in the back of his skull readies for departure, his bloodlust sated. His vessel’s body sublimates into a fog of white ectoplasm, wispy strands of silver smoke.

To those who do not know better, the body never left the grave.

Two young men know better.

Armed with holy water and pilfered silver, they sojourn to the Dead Man’s sepulcher to ensure that he does not rise again. The wards are strong. They will hold.

He has no reason to walk any further, anyway.

Darkness now, as the weariness slips away, fading into the fitful dream of a opium-eater. He sleeps beneath newly consecrated soil, a sad voodoo smile for a death-mask

Five brass casings tangle in his hair.

             

One owes respect to the living.

To the dead, one owes only truth.

                        -Voltaire