Flesh and Coin (The Mulrones Book 3) Read online

“Jim Wayne. Two sugars.”

  “How did you…?”

  “It’s a trick. Good ears and a good eye.”

  Jim found it easier to believe a more outlandish explanation than this simple one. Ma was beyond ancient. She looked like a grinning mummy stripped of her bandages. Looked like she might turn to little more than dust. Even her bones must have withered at some point.

  And still strong enough to send the man packing with just a flap of the hand, Jim reminded himself.

  Jim only then noticed an ugly dog, curled at the old woman’s feet. Like her, hard worn. The dog looked at Jim and wagged a stumpy tail. It had one eye and one ear.

  Ugliest damn dog he’d ever seen.

  He looked back to the old woman. “Then thank you for the tea. And for speaking to me.”

  “Don’t mean nothing,” she said. “Drink your tea. Say your words.”

  “Don’t quite know where to start, Mrs. Mulrone,” he said. Honesty seemed far and away the best policy, because this woman wasn’t stupid. Quite the opposite, he thought, when he looked into her eyes. One eye was milky and clouded. The other? Sharp enough to make you bleed.

  “Paulie,” she said. “That’s where you start.”

  Jim nodded. “Okay. This may sound…odd…”

  “I’m happy enough with odd.”

  He nodded again. “The hospice where he died. There’s something going on there. Something I can’t quite grasp. Can’t see the shape of it at all. But something’s odd. There’s a woman there, reads to an empty bed. People have been dying, but not naturally. I’m looking for answers…but I don’t know the questions to ask.”

  Ma nodded. “Good. Honest’s good. Go on. Ask and we’ll see.”

  “Did you like him? Your son said he was ‘wrong’…”

  “No. He was a bastard to Pauline, and he was wrong. Took a man’s face, you know that? ’Course you do. You’re here. You got records, history. That kind of thing…”

  “That’s right, ma’am. I know what he did. I just…I don’t know…”

  She nodded. “Me neither. He weren’t mine, I didn’t have no hold over him. He was a Small. Bad family. We ain’t rosy, either, Mr. Wayne, but I keeps ’em in line. In line, you understand?”

  Jim could have easily argued about that one, but he nodded.

  “Weren’t my Pauline that did it,” she said. “Was me.”

  Jim felt something shifting within him. Maybe the place, maybe the tea, hot and strong on an empty stomach. But it felt like the caravan was bigger, Ma, Mrs. Mulrone, was bigger. And he was just a tiny speck in the face of it all.

  “Did what exactly?”

  “Bound him, Jim Wayne. It was me, bound him to that bed.”

  That sense that the world was growing, and that Jim was shrinking, continued until before him, this woman, this lady, was big as a cloud must look to a bird above or below.

  “I’m not traveler stock,” said Mrs. Mulrone. “Not way back like I was born. Romany.”

  “Gypsy?”

  “Close enough,” she said with a toothless grin. “I chained him to that bed. Bought and paid. Flesh and coin.”

  “I’m not sure I understand,” said Jim.

  “I’m not sure you need to. Best you need to know, whatever it is you’re looking for, Paulie Small ain’t it. He can’t get up and out of that bed.”

  “I’m sorry…are you…are you saying he’s a ghost, chained…to a bed?”

  “Sure I am.”

  Jim, a sane, straight man, felt that kick again, like the world got just a bit larger, and that he got just a little smaller. It was an awful feeling. Shrinking, his experience, his value, his…worth.

  Here was an old woman—wizened, even—who was telling him she’d chained a ghost down for…for how long? Did it matter?

  The thing of it was…the nurse read to that bed. He’d seen her. Heard her. Like she was reading aloud to someone.

  Was everyone else nuts or was he?

  The worst thing, though? The worst was that he believed the old mother. He believed her.

  “Mrs. Mulrone…I’m way out of my league here. Can you help? Can you…unbind him? Or see…ghosts…or…shit. I don’t know. Like a medium or something?”

  “Can’t unbind him, Mr. Wayne. He’s bought. Flesh and coin. I can break the flesh, but that bed cost twenty grand. You pay that back, he’ll be done. Free. Go wherever the dead go.”

  Twenty grand? Christ.

  “I haven’t got that kind of money,” he said. He didn’t even have close to that, not without remortgaging his own house, or stealing it.

  Why are you even thinking about it, Jim?

  He wondered.

  “Well…find someone who has, or leave it be.”

  “I don’t think I can leave it be, Mrs. Mulrone. Ever get the sense things are going to go wrong?”

  “All the time.”She nodded. “All the time. It ain’t being a clairvoyant, nothing like that. Called being a mother.”

  Jim looked down for a moment. Thinking hard. Thinking of something to say that would make sense, a question to shed some light.

  He tried, he really did, but he couldn’t. He was a tiny speck of nothing, drifting on the earth. Like she’d put something in his tea, but he knew she hadn’t. Just a shift of perspective. Not subtle, but big enough to throw him. Like this woman, this old, old woman from a different world and a different people knew more than he did. Understood more, had experienced more, done more, was more powerful than he was. He could call out policemen to do his bidding, put people in prison for life.

  She’d put a man in prison in death.

  He didn’t have to try to believe her. He had to try not to.

  “Mrs. Mulrone…” he began, not sure where to go. He looked at her while he spoke, his gaze roaming from her milky eye to its sharp, deadly counterpart, filled with and intelligence dancing somewhere deep within. He dried up. He had nothing more to ask. He could beg, but she wouldn’t budge. He knew if ever a man deserved to be chained, it was Paulie. Man was wrong. He’d taken another man’s life, and his face.

  He couldn’t have killed anyone in death…because he was chained and Jim entertained no doubt that Ma Mulrone told no lie.

  “Thanks for the tea,” he said, finally.

  “Pleasure,” she said, lips pursed in a line made jagged by wrinkles on even her lips.

  The ugly dog on the floor looked up as Jim stood, farted, grunted, and went back to sleep.

  Jim let himself out.

  *

  Jim walked across the muddy field, barely noticing his surroundings. Lost in thought, he covered the car pedals in mud before thinking better of it. He didn’t have the sense he was in danger anymore. He got the impression that if Mrs. Mulrone said to let him alone, they would. She ruled. No doubt.

  For how much longer? he wondered. But then, that wasn’t his problem, was it?

  “How the hell do you chain a ghost?” he said aloud as he keyed the ignition.

  You’re thinking crazy thoughts, Jim.

  Now, away from the Mulrones, away from Ma’s powerful glare, he could almost convince himself that the whole thing was insane.

  Almost.

  “Christ, I don’t even believe in ghosts,” he told himself as he checked in the rear view mirror, just in case someone was following him. There was no one there. No one in a car behind, no one hiding in the backseat. Nothing. Just that memory, that sense, that he’d shrunk and the world had grown.

  IX.

  A Sword Named Vengeance

  Do the dead dream?

  Charlie wondered, from within the dream, if the things he saw and felt were real or imagined, solid or nothing more than morphine vapors; a mirage within the mind.

  His dreams of the castle were steadily becoming more detailed. His vision, it seemed, had cleared as though cataracts had been lifted from his eyes. The mortar between the great slabs of porous rock that formed the castle walls, the pennants up high still and limp, the thick planks from which the brid
ge was made, the great rusted chains that held it shut. Everything in such great detail it could only be real. Even, Charlie noted, clouds above, but clouds like a painting; utterly still and lifeless. A world without weather or sun, but with blue skies and green grass. An anomaly Charlie could not understand. How could something that looked, felt, smelled real, be an illusion or a mere dream?

  And still, with the abundance of sensations, there was no sound. No sign of people or horses, or the nephilim or cherubim, of angelic mounts gracefully wheeling about the battlements. No peal of trumpet to herald his arrival.

  And when he cried out in agony and despair for them to lower the bridge?

  Nothing. No sound. As always.

  A sense of weight from the gear he wore. Heavy iron armor, helm, gorget, pauldrons, breastplate and on, down to the pointed iron boots that shod his feet.

  He couldn’t feel it. Encased, head to toe, though dead to sensation.

  And yet…something was coming. A feeling, a sense of abiding dread that settled on him heavier than his rough iron armor.

  There…

  There was sound. Muffled through the chain hood and wool skullcap that Charlie sensed beneath his slit-visor helm, but definitely a sound. He strained physically to hear it, to make some sense of the deadened noise coming to him through the still air.

  It was metallic. Not the chains grating, nor the drawbridge falling open to show the way inside. But it was metal, for sure.

  It was the sound of metal on rock.

  Footsteps within the castle.

  Even within the dream Charlie’s excitement rose, and his hope, at last, of cessation from pain and suffering.

  The footsteps continued, until a head, then a body, rose to the top of the battlements.

  Charlie could only see the top half of the man—surely a man—because of the walls, and his angle.

  A man, but like no other Charlie had ever laid eyes upon. Not in life, in imagination, nor in the imagined worlds of television, movies, books. No fantasy creation, but a creature, a man-shaped thing of dreams and nightmares.

  He, it, was not large, but granted greater size because the monstrosity was covered in huge black armor. Dangerous-looking armor, with heavy spiked shoulders, a large crest upon the full helm that covered the dreadknight’s face and lent him greater height, until he seemed towering, indefatigable.

  Charlie was silent, still, but even had he a voice it would have been dry, cracked, broken, at the sight of the terrible man, a man or beast or mythical thing who held the castle from him.

  “The time is coming,” said the dreadknight. A man’s voice, and yet…something like the croak and dusty creak of a cadaver, like a corpse might speak should it be raised from the grave. A throat as parched as Charlie’s own.

  Charlie wanted to ask, to plead. He could no more speak than move forward or back in the weight pushing down on him.

  “You will give back what you stole. Or I will take it.”

  Charlie’s voice was lost, gone, and then the knight in his awful armor said, “Speak.”

  Charlie coughed, struggled not to vomit in his helm as his mouth suddenly flooded with saliva and it tasted like bile and dead men’s blood on his lips, on his tongue.

  But at last his voice was free. He was full of questions, but spoke only that which came first.

  “What did I steal?” called Charlie, his head back so he could see the man through the slits in his helm.

  The man’s armor changed, then, like it was angry. Like the armor was anger itself. Like a shadow, like tendrils of smoke intertwined around him.

  “Me,” replied the man, and the weight of his fury was heavier than the iron against Charlie’s skin.

  Such weight that his knees buckled and he fell to the ground. Knees, then, onto his hands, too, until even with all his strength he could not stop his head from kissing the ripe green grass, smelling the mud beneath…

  *

  Charlie, he heard, in his dream, iron-clad feet pounding stone steps.

  Then, “Charlie,” in his head, and the castle was gone.

  “No. No…”He saw Cathy beside him, calling his name. He was holding out his weak hands and arms from under the covers.

  Still in prison. Still chained. Still no way across the bridge.

  “Charlie? What’s wrong?”

  Charlie wanted to cry so badly, but nothing other than ghost tears would come. Despair, overpowering, held him tighter than the bonds that held him to the bed.

  It was Cathy’s concern, Cathy’s soft voice, that eventually helped him to speak.

  “I’m afraid. I’m afraid I’m falling apart. Coming to nothing. Nothing at all. Just dust.”

  “I see you, Charlie. You’re…”

  “Don’t,” he said, but softly. She didn’t, he saw, take offense. He was glad. She was the only one.

  For a time, he gathered his thoughts and his courage. Finally, looking up, he asked the thing he never thought he would, or could.

  “Cathy, would you hold my hand?” he said.

  She didn’t shake her head, or deny him. He loved her for that.

  “You know…this…magic between us?” she replied, after a moment’s pause. “This insanity? I’m afraid that…”

  “It might break the spell?” he said.

  She nodded.

  “I don’t care. If I fade, I’ll know peace.”

  He held out his hand, no more than a wrapping of skin over bone. With a sad smile, she took it.

  *

  In the instant of connection, Cathy had the sense that she was falling through the earth, through to the other side, and out, floating in space, drifting toward the stars. Charlie’s hand in hers brought her back, speeding, toward solid ground. Swathes of grass on a great plain that stretched as far as she could see, flowing like waves as they passed, two souls made of no more than wind, flying toward a speck in the distance, then…

  A castle. A castle on the plain, rising from the grass. Gray stone in a sea of green.

  Cathy had never seen a castle like it. She only knew ruins and television, where everything was ancient and pocked with weather and time.

  The castle was new, pristine, formidable in size and design. It could have been built that very day.

  With Charlie’s hand in hers, before she could panic or wonder or even think, they stood before a moat. In front, a drawbridge, the only entrance.

  And as they stood before the bridge, Charlie’s hand began to feel heavier, in hers.

  He’s more real in this place, she thought.

  And it was true. When she turned her head to look, he was entirely solid, casting a shadow in no sun, and armored in iron like some knight of old.

  And as they stood, she heard footsteps. Slow, heavy, sure. They came from within, the sound steadily growing louder.

  With the sound of metal grinding against metal, the chains holding the drawbridge loosened, and finally, after so long for Charlie, moments for Cathy, the drawbridge fell at last.

  And in armor black and bloody, the tip of his great sword resting on the thick wood of the drawbridge, stood a man made of shadow.

  *

  Something called to Cathy from outside her dream, or vision. It pulled her from whatever this thing was that she and Charlie shared. The dreadful knight made of shadows, Charlie in his rusted armor, the great castle; all faded away. She flew backward, her hand torn from Charlie’s. A sense of flying, across a great wide ocean made entirely of grass, and then…

  She woke, still holding Charlie’s hand. He remained on the bed, a ghost-soul in invisible chains, with no way out, no release from his endless pain. But this time, when she looked at the hand she held, she could see her own palm…the weight of his hand was real. The bones she felt beneath his wasted flesh. But wane, pale. Ethereal, like a ghost she might imagine, rather than feel.

  He was fading.

  Part of her wanted to cry, the other, to rejoice.

  Peace for him at last. She did cry then. Nothing mo
re than a few drops. Maybe, somehow, she’d left him there, to move on.

  And then her mind dredged up the remnant of her vision and she remembered the man made of shadow, that terrible warrior of the darkness.

  Remembered Charlie saying Shadowman, as though he was afraid.

  And suddenly, she was afraid, too.

  I left him there, by that awful thing…

  Desperately she squeezed Charlie’s hand, even pinched his ear, trying to bring him back, not even sure if it was the right thing, but afraid for him. But he didn’t come back. Of course he didn’t. He was no more than a shadow of a life himself. A ghost couldn’t feel a pinch on the ear.

  Charlie did not stir, did not return.

  Something else came back instead. She heard, at last, the thing that had woken her…

  A piercing, cutting scream.

  *

  At five in the morning the ward remained swaddled in the low light the staff used by night, winter’s sun late to rise. Outside the ward, bright fluorescent lights brightened the halls and offices, the nurses’ stations and visitors’ areas, the toilets, the kitchens, staff and residents both.

  In the office the lights were on, and Hattie was just realizing she had pushed Bartholomew Caulden too far as his hands squeezed around her throat and her vision swam with dark spots that danced in the unnatural light.

  Bartholomew saw spots, too, his heart beating faster and faster while he choked the life from the girl who was ruining everything. The girl who’d mocked him, blackmailed him, taken his money, and now his business, too. His chest pounded.

  Fucking bitch, he thought, rage blinding him, turning him into a monster. A man under pressure cracking absolutely and beyond repair.

  He carried right on killing her despite someone shouting at him from outside the blackness, the roaring waves in his ears, as he began to black out himself, as his heart kicked hard in his chest.

  For some, death comes slow, the bridge is a long, hard slog. For some, instant, like a path over a mere trickle.

  Caulden fell backward, the pain in his chest waking him up to the shouting, to what he was doing. His hands fell away from Hattie’s throat and clutched at his breastbone instead, futile, grasping, then slack.