Devil Said Bang (Sandman Slim 4)

“No. Sorry. He never told me anything.”

“Have you been getting some stabbings in here?”

“Are you talking about the girl? No. No stabbings. From what I hear, if she cuts you, you die. I heal people. She kills. There’s no point in me treating the dead.”

Candy comes in and crooks her thumb over her shoulder.

“Can I talk to you a minute?”

“Sure.”

We walk outside into the cool, crisp L.A. afternoon. The sky looks a little strange. Clouds are rolling in fast and it’s like the light is strobing behind them.

“I have to take a rain check on your suite. Rinko got a taste of blood last night and now she’s kind of in withdrawal. I need to take her home.”

“I understand.”

“Sorry. I keep seeing you and running off.”

I shrug.

“Maybe I deserve it. I ran out first. Anyway, you have to do the right thing by your friend.”

“Doing the right thing usually sucks.”

“Almost always.”

She kisses me and goes back inside. Through the glass I see her giving Rinko a potion and leading her into the treatment room.

There’s another reflection in the glass. A ghost.

I turn and the little girl is standing there. Frilly blue party dress and a knife as big as her leg. She stares at me like I’m a rat on her birthday cake.

“Who are you?” I ask.

She doesn’t say anything.

“What the hell is wrong with you? Why are you killing people? You pissed off? Hungry?”

Still nothing.

I take a step toward her. She takes one back. I take another. There’s an earth tremor, like a small earthquake. I look down at my feet. When I look up again, the girl is gone. I walk out to where she was standing. Then to the far wall. I get on my knees to look under all the vehicles. The ground gives way and I land flat on my back. I was run over by a pickup truck about thirty minutes ago. It hurt. Falling six feet onto a sore back hurts more. I lie in the fresh dirt, trying to catch my breath.

“Hi, Stark.”

The voice is breathy. Barely a whisper and hard to hear over the traffic.

I’m lying in a hole as deep as a grave. There’s another hole like a tunnel leading off into the dark. The voice is coming from there.

“What is this?”

A desiccated corpse, gray parchment skin stretched like tissue paper over brittle bones, sticks its head out of the hole like a turtle and draws it back in when the light hits it.

“Don’t you recognize me?” says the corpse.

“You’re a fucking skeleton. How am I supposed to recognize you?”

“Once upon a time you wanted to kill me. Then you wanted to save me. You didn’t do either. You let Parker murder me.”