Total pages in book: 209
Estimated words: 196141 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 981(@200wpm)___ 785(@250wpm)___ 654(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 196141 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 981(@200wpm)___ 785(@250wpm)___ 654(@300wpm)
As deep as the body is buried, George’s words still linger.
Tristan, betraying everyone he’s ever loved, hurting everyone he’s ever loved. Does Tristan have a soul left to defend?
The shadow of the willow tree twists suddenly, and from it, the shapeless face of Wendy appears. “Haven’t you gone too far?”
Tristan is never surprised by her surprise appearances. You have been absent for so long, I nearly thought you took a vacation.
“I bear some disquieting news. There was an unfortunate … scene … made upon a certain highway in northern Arizona. The scene involves Brock, his wife, and his son. The wife is no more.”
Tristan, his mind already a mess of conflict, zeroes his eyes down upon Wendy. Please tell me …
“Brock is wandering the desert. He has been seen by no souls. He is …” Wendy searches for the word. “Bloody.”
And the son?
“Run away. Lost. There is no knowing.”
Tristan sits upon the ground suddenly, overwhelmed. In other words, no, I did not go too far, George very much deserves his fate.
“George loved to tend this part of the garden. It is almost a thoughtful kindness, to bury him here.”
I added a sprig of rosemary. He detests rosemary. I pray the healthy roots grow over his grave in a matter of hours.
“I do not think anything grows that fast. Except hatred.” Her shadow swirls away from the tree and rises out of the cobblestone, becoming her familiar hooded form. “George did open the box, I can also report. What he said is true. There was no entity inside. No dark power. Nothing I could detect with my own.”
I very much doubt there was nothing inside.
“I presumed you wished me to clean up the scene on the highway. There is no more car. No more wife. Though in truth, there was little ‘wife’ left to clean up.”
Tristan could have done without that detail. You are working overtime these days, dear Wendy.
“Only fulfilling my terms of the contract.”
Admittedly, he forgets about the contract too often. Without being reminded of it, he could simply assume they’re friends. As it turns out, Tristan is in short supply of them these days.
He peers at her. Have I ever hurt you? Ever betrayed you?
“There’s still time,” says Wendy.
Signal Mance for me. There is no more time to spare. Actions must be taken. I believe I have something far more enticing to offer him. He peers upward at the glass dome, at the moon and the thousands of tiny, faraway suns. More enticing even than Lord Markadian’s head.
26.
Pay the Pipers.
—∙—
Tristan walks the Strip.
Crowds of drunk people. And sober. Quiet individuals getting on with their nights. Lonely people. Others trying to make a buck. Costumes. A guy with a sign around his neck that reads: “Tip me to kick me in the balls.” Homeless on the street who don’t have a cent to pay to kick that man in the balls, let alone feed themselves.
Tristan slips through the side door of the casino unnoticed by anyone, walks down a dim narrow hallway, passes an opened office door and a small, smoky lounge that is host to a suited man passed out on a couch. Tristan moves to a door and sees himself through to a lonely back section of the casino, where it seems no one at all is playing any of the penny slots on this late Monday night—except one man in a trench coat and tattered cowboy hat, seated all by himself at a short row of machines, a glass of melted ice next to him that once held an inch or so of whiskey, a sad, bent nub of a cigarette hanging from his lips.
“Well, well,” grunts Mance, “don’t you look like shit.”
I’ve had a complicated night, answers Tristan, stopping a safe number of paces away, and you’re not even looking at me.
“I got eyes on the side of my head. Back of it, too. Eyes all around me, don’t matter where I look or don’t look, I see it all.” He grabs the lever with his odd, greyish fingers, sends the reels rolling. “The machines here are tighter than a nun’s pussy.”
Is it a sign of your increasing arrogance that we’re meeting here at night instead of the day, asks Tristan, or a sign that you trust me?
“How can I trust you? You can’t even be trusted to deliver a fuckin’ gift.”
And why should I have delivered your gift when my resurrected friend is now a blood-hungry beast who barely knows who he is?
“He’s alive, ain’t he?”
I wouldn’t consider your job well-done. It is a good thing I’m not compelled to write you a review on Yelp.
“Well, you let the wrong motherfucker open the box, then buried him under a tree,” he says, pulls the lever again, watches the reels go, “so it looks like neither of us get what we want.”