The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All - By Laird Barron Page 0,58
curtains aflame, fueling the blaze with the crystal decanter of booze. I wrapped Dad’s awful hand in a kerchief and jammed it into my pocket. Wasn’t going to leave even this small, gruesome remnant of him in the house of Satan.
An excellent thing I made my escape when I did, because I met a couple of Blackwood’s boys on the grand staircase. “Hello, fellas,” I said, and sprayed them with hellfire of my own, sent them tumbling like Jack and Jill down the steps, notched the columns and the walls with bullet holes. I exulted at their destruction. My hand didn’t bother me a whit.
Somebody, somewhere, cut the electricity and the mansion went dark as a tomb except for the fire licking along the upper reaches of the balcony and the sporadic muzzle flashes of my trench broom, the guns of my enemies, for indeed those rat bastards, slicked and powdered for the performance, yet animals by their inbred faces and bestial snarls, poured in from everywhere and I was chivvied through the foyer and an antechamber where I swung the Thompson like a fireman with a hose. When the drum clicked empty I dropped the rifle and jumped through the patio doors in a crash of glass and splintered wood, and loped, dragging curtains in my wake, across the lawn for the trees. I weaved between the mighty lines of the burning pentagrams that now merely smoldered, and the trailing edge of my train caught fire and flames consumed the curtains and began eating their way toward me, made me Blake’s dread tyger zigzagging into the night, enemies in close pursuit. Back there in the yard echoed a chorus of screams as the top of the house bloomed red and orange and the hillbillies swarmed after me, small arms popping and cracking and it was just like the war all over again.
The fox hunt lasted half the night. I blundered through the woods while the enemy gave chase, and it was an eerie, eerie several hours as Dan Blackwood’s pipe and his cousins’ fiddle and banjo continued to play and they drove me through briar and marsh and barbwire fence until I stumbled across a lonely dirt road and stole a farm truck from behind a barn and roared out of the Hollow, skin intact. Didn’t slow down until the sun crept over the horizon and I’d reached the Seattle city limits. The world tottered and fell on my head and I coasted through a guardrail and came to a grinding halt in a field, grass scraping against the metal of the cab like a thousand fingernails. It got hazy after that.
* * *
Dick sat by my bedside for three days. He handed me a bottle of whiskey when I opened my eyes. I expressed surprise to find him among the living, convinced as I’d been that he and Bly got bopped and dumped in a shallow grave. Turned out Bly had snuck off with some patrician’s wife and had a hump in the bushes while Dick accidentally nodded off under a tree. Everything was burning and Armageddon was in full swing when they came to, so they rendezvoused and did the smart thing—sneaked away with tails between legs.
Good news was, Mr. Arden wanted us back in Olympia soonest; he’d gotten into a dispute with a gangster in Portland. Seemed that all was forgiven in regard to my rubbing out the Long and the Short. The boss needed every gun in his army.
Neither Dick nor the docs ever mentioned the severed hand in my pocket. It was missing when I retrieved my clothes and I decided to let the matter drop. I returned to Olympia and had a warm chat with Mr. Arden and everything was peaches and cream. The boss didn’t even ask about Vernon. Ha!
He sent me and a few of the boys to Portland with a message for his competition. I bought a brand spanking new Chicago-typewriter for the occasion. I also stopped by the Broadsword where the manager, after a little physical persuasion, told me that Helios Augustus had skipped town days prior on the Starlight Express, headed to California, if not points beyond. Yeah, well, revenge and cold dishes, and so forth. Meanwhile, I’d probably avoid motion pictures and stick to light reading.
During the ride to Portland, I sat in back and watched the farms and fields roll past and thought of returning to Ransom Hollow with troops and paying tribute to the crones