Silver and Salt(25)

Usually it was Grendels peering through those gaps in between the slats of the blinds. Tonight, it was Mr. Invisible, back lurking in the window, trying for a look. I didn’t know how he’d known Nik was already asleep and it was safe to show up, but he had. I met the hateful glisten of his eyes and yawned, bored. Let him go scare little girls. He didn’t scare me. I’d stood up to him once. I would again. Yawning again, I pulled the covers over my head while Niko shifted, breathing deeply on the mattress that rested on the floor beside mine. I dropped off in less than three minutes and slept like the dead.

That was as funny as me naming him the invisible man.



Recognize




I didn’t work at it. I let him come to me. To balls up, quit following me like a sheep after the shepherd I’d never be. He’d want me alone, of course. Had to be. He knew my schedule by now as well as I did, especially when I was home alone before Nik’s shift at the dojo ended. And it wasn’t long. He’d been getting closer all the time since my Chester the Molester insult, until several days later when there was his John Doe face staring at me through the glass inset in the front door; no window today. I waited for a knock, but there wasn’t one. I gave him a grin, showing my teeth as lions do, and opened the door for him anyway. “Want in? I’d ask if you want a Coke, but three more days until payday. No luxuries.”

He walked past me to stand by the couch, not far. Ten feet away, I thought. I closed the door and turned back to him. “So, no Coke. No snacks, either. Sorry. What else can I do for you?” I asked, obliging as anyone could hope. “I like to be helpful. Fucking helpful as they come. How can I help you?”

His face darkened and twisted with fury, Foam flecked his lips as his throat convulsed with words he couldn’t seem to push out. No smiles, ponies, or beer this go-round. Rude.

“Whoa.” I shoved my hands in the front pocket of my black hoodie. “I don’t see any pamphlets, but if you’ve come to talk about our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, I think you need to work on that yourself first. Anger-management shit, maybe?”

He glanced down at his stomach, still supported by his hand after all these days, then back up at me with eyes filled with the blackest of hatred, violence, and rage. He wasn’t so invisible with that rushing out of him. Anyone would see him now…or they wouldn’t. Maybe it was only me that could.

My hand. My knife. My intent.

His hand dropped from his abdomen. I could see through the long slice in his shirt the blood of a gushing artery and the bulge of spilling intestines that I’d last witnessed behind those park bushes. The hand rose to the height of my throat and formed into an accusing hook for choking, strangling, clawing, who knew? Nothing I was interested in, that I did know.

“Yep. I did that.” My grin widened, and if it was pleased, I didn’t mind. I’d done a good job. “Looks nasty, I know. The intestine thing wouldn’t have killed you, but the abdominal artery is a bitch. It gets you every time, or so I’ve heard.” I’d heard right. “You bleed out just like that.” I pulled out a hand to snap my fingers before pushing it back in my pocket. “And you did. I didn’t even have time to open one of your beers.” My grin was Cheshire-quality now, wide, wicked, and taking up most of my face.

What? It was a good memory. Worth a smile.

“And then I dumped your piece of shit dead body down a hole in that hellacious smelly dog food factory.” It had been a recessed tank in the floor with a rusty but movable container lid that could be pushed back in place. Now you see him, now you don’t, and a better grave than he deserved. No one would find him. No one would risk the stench to step foot in that place. “I spit on you first, though. For Mels. Then I went home, ate leftover pizza. It was pretty good. Meat-lovers’. And I didn’t think about you again, not once.”

The hand approached closer. I shook my head. “But you didn’t learn your lesson.”

And I’d forgotten mine. Imagine everything. Be prepared for anything. Cover your bases. But I was only human…okay, not only human. No claws, no red eyes, no silver needle teeth, but not human enough either to let this son of a bitch get away with what he’d done. And he…he was a monster who didn’t know the same when he was face-to-face with it.

“But you came back for more.” I studied his hand curiously as it inched closer. “Hell, I don’t think you could touch me, no matter how much you wanted to, much less kill me, or you would’ve already. But I’m just guessing. I don’t know anything about ghosts. My bad.” I rocked on my heels. “I take that back. I didn’t know anything. I now know two things. I know my brother doesn’t believe they exist. And I know that if he was wrong and they did exist, salt would purify and destroy them. Hopefully painfully.

“Seems stupid to me, that something I could swipe from the table of any restaurant could obliterate a monster,” I added. The hand stopped moving and a wary, uncertain, fearful shadow passed over Mr. Not-So-Invisible-Now’s face. Fear is plain to see. If he was alive, I would be able to smell it on him. Fear made him one of the herd he preyed on and easy to see from a mile away.

“But you never know what will happen until you try,” I said with the darkest of verbal warnings, the vicious cheerfulness of the last attempts to send him on his own way, and a belly full of voracious hope that he wouldn’t listen.