Part 8

In darkness, the house looked like the stuff of legends. No doubt, children dared each other to approach the doorstep. This one building in a neighborhood meant for families and retirees would be dark as sin on Halloween. There would be dares and broken windows and visits from the police on that night. The overgrown hedges, said the neighborhood kids, were planted to conceal the bodies of children who had gone missing in the neighborhood. The man inside talked to the devil. And the man inside was crazy and evil and hated Christmas.

Father Clancy, Hector knew, was not evil. But he was crazy and hated Christmas.

Hector stalked up the cracked driveway and onto the creaking porch. When a spider web caught his face, he wiped it away quickly, then stood stock-still as he categorized his sense of drive and perseverance. Convinced, finally, that it was not a Spider-Ass web, he knocked. The sound rolled through the house like an old man’s cough.

The lock clicked, the knob turned, and the door opened an inch. A single pale blue eye stared at Hector for a long moment. “The fuck do you want?”

Hector smiled charmingly. “Heya, Clancy. In a bit of trouble.”

“The hell do I care,” came the voice. And the door shut.

“Clancy! Shit.” Hector rubbed at his forehead and tried to ignore the itching throb that came from his bleeding shoulder. “Jesus, Clancy. I’ve been shot.”

The voice pushed its way through the thick wood of the door. “Doesn’t look serious.”

“I’m bleeding, chief.”

Silence.

Hector sneered and shut his eyes tight, then opened them wide. “Mike says to give him a call.”

“Talk to Mike, did you?”

“Yeah.” He put a hand to his shoulder, pressing, wincing at the pain and at his stupidity for not having done it earlier. “His guy Roy’s missing.”

Silence again.

“I was the last person to see him.”

The door opened again, this time revealing a worn, old face with wrinkles that looked like they’d been carved there by the Creator’s own hand. A pair of the stark blue eyes leveled on Hector. Then the door opened all the way. Clancy was naked from the waist up – leathered and flabby – and wore a pair of pajama pants older than Hector. “Get in, damn you.”

Hector smirked and stepped inside a dark, Spartan house. The front room sported only a fake leather easy chair and a short coffee table. The walls were bare. The floorboards groaned. “Finally moved in, I see.”

A crooked, jabbing finger pointed into Hector’s face and wavered like the edge of a sword. “You shut your meat hole, you swine. And stop bleeding on my floors.”

Hector narrowed his eyes. “Bandages.”

“Bathroom.”

Hector clopped his way into the hall, easily finding a tiled room in the small house.

“And bring me a beer when you come back.” He heard the creak of fake leather and old joints.

Hector found the bandages, wondered if they’d been used to patch Allied troops in WWII, snatched a bottle of peroxide, then grabbed two beers from the squat refrigerator. He walked back into the front room to find an old man glaring at him.

“I say you could have one?”

“Padre, c’mon.” And the room went cold. Hector winced. “I’m sorry.”

Clancy lowered his face, eyes driving roofing nails into Hector’s forehead from beneath bushy white eyebrows. “Put it back, you Philistine. Be grateful for the bandages and try not to get yourself killed while you’re here.”

Hector opened his mouth to speak.

Clancy pulled a revolver from the seat of the easy chair.

Hector put the beer back, returned, and sat on the floorboards to disinfect and wrap his shoulder.

“Where’d you see Roy?”

Hector cringed as he doused his shoulder in peroxide, eyes watering up fiercely. “Alley. The Dark Man had him up against a wall.”

Clancy scratched his stubble. “You follow the Dark Man?”

Hector, only now realizing he had the sweatshirt on wrong, pulled it off himself. He poked gingerly at his shoulder and hissed in pain. “Few blocks, yeah. East. Maybe southeast. Then I lost him.”

Clancy tried not to search through the darkness to see the teeth on Hector’s chest. He tried not to imagine that maniac grin where there should be only breastbone. “What alley did you find Ray in?”

“Not sure,” Hector said as he slowly began binding the wound in the ancient mummy wraps. “Wasn’t really in my head at the time, you know? Fed Guido earlier that night.”

“Don’t you say that thing’s name like it’s a person, you idolating cretin.” Clancy leaned forward, framed in slits of moonlight, sneering like his face was coming off his skull. “That thing is not a person. That thing does not deserve a name. And you’re a stupid, stupid fool for treating it like a God-damned pet.”

Hector wrapped his shoulder again, then looked sidelong at Clancy. “It’s kept me alive.”

“Why, you ignorant bastard? Why? Because it’s only looking out for itself. That hellmouth is probably waiting for you to go into heat so it can germinate!”

“What?”

“Hellmouth, you unlearnéd Chaldean!”

“What? No. It’s not going to germinate.” And he sounded almost convinced.

“Then what point does it serve? Get your head out of your ass and ask what the point is.” Clancy gulped his beer. “If it’s some kind of sterile, disposable soldier then it’ll take to killing like you take to being an idiot.”

“It’s not going to kill anyone!”

“And just how do you know that?”

Hector grit his teeth. “Because it won’t eat anything bigger than a cat.”

Particles of dust lazed their way through the moonlight. Clancy sat back in his chair. He took another gulp of beer. “Cats now?”

Hector went back to wrapping his shoulder.

“Cats, you stupid Hittite? Because the last I heard, you were scrounging for rats out in the west end. That curséd thing is growing, you swine, and it’s a matter of time before there’s nothing of you left.” He drank. “And that’s a shit job you’re doing.”

Hector rolled his eyes and proffered the remaining bandages. “Care to help, old man?”

“May your spit turn to blood in your mouth.”

“I’ll take that as a ‘no,’ then.”

“You find the Dark Man. And this time you help the poor, dumb bastard he’s got. You follow him to wherever he goes.”

“And what are you going to do?” Hector tied off the bandage. “Drink to my success?”

“I’d expect someone with a Trojan name to say something like that.”

“I’m not Trojan.”

“’Course not. The Trojans died with dignity. You get to be a demon’s meat-puppet.”

Hector sneered. “You could always help.”

Clancy leaned forward slowly, acid in his voice. “Help? Help you, you bastard?” He retrieved the revolver and gestured with it, causing Hector to throw his hands up in front of his face. “Now why in God’s green fuckup would I do that? You started this!”

“I didn’t start anything, Padre!”

“You opened my eyes, you swine! You fell ass-first into an ocean of evil shit stains and decided misery does, in fact, love company. You opened my God-damned eyes when I didn’t ask you to and you took everything from me!”

“You were supposed to help!” Hector stood, feeling the blood rushing behind his eyes and through his ears. “You were supposed to do something!”

“What was I supposed to do?!” And Clancy stood as well, still gesturing wildly with the gun. “Exorcize them? All of them? All the filthy, rotten monsters in this brave new world you’ve shown me? There isn’t enough holy water in the River Jordan!” He stepped forward, shoving Hector hard in the chest, inadvertently putting his hand on rigid teeth. As Hector leaned against the wall, Clancy stared at his hand, remembering that sensation, knowing full well what it was. “You were a genetic hiccup, Hector. Your biochemical processes were out of whack and you were born crazy. You only got by in this world by luck and the kindness of others.” He looked into Hector’s eyes, those eyes he’d stared into for hours and hours on end, so many years ago. “And that… thing… is also a mistake. Neither of you have a chance in hell.”

“We’ve done alright so far.”

“Then you don’t fucking need me, do you? And if you think I’m going to up and volunteer, like I have some obligation, like I have some… some destiny… then you’re just as crazy as you always were.”

Hector heard the words. He heard them in Father Clancy’s voice. His eyes got hot and wet and his throat burned and clenched like he had just thrown up. He heard Father Clancy say those words and his heart seized and shook. On autopilot, he walked to the door, opened it, and walked out into the night. He heard the door slam behind him. He strolled out onto the driveway, then the sidewalk when he heard the door open again. Probably just Clancy getting one last grateful look of goodbye. His shoulder – that same tortured shoulder – lit up in bright, staggering pain and Hector dropped onto the sidewalk, groaning in agony. A beer can sputtered nearby as it rolled past him on the concrete. Hector lay there, in a growing pool of frothy beer, fresh blood and an alcohol spray marring his clean white bandage, and he wept.

Part 7

As he stood trying to rinse the blood out of his sweatshirt, he mused over and over about Guido’s appetite. Two days ago, Guido would never have bothered with something so big. Rats and cats, a few squirrels and one raccoon were all it had managed to sink its teeth into. And usually Hector had enough time to lift his shirt before things got nasty.

He turned the faucet off and wrung out the sweatshirt before mopping over his chest and the gleeful teeth that smiled there. He figured it was stupid to assume Guido wasn’t growing somehow. Hector had kept it decently well-fed and they had managed to survive the monsters of the world. But Guido was an accident. Hector’s very survival was an accident. The rules were meaningless.

He shut his eyes tight against sudden brightness. Squinting through his eyelids he saw the side of the house, the sidestreet, and himself clearly illuminated. Quickly covering Guido with the sweatshirt, he looked into the light, half-blind, and barely managed to make out the shine of hubcaps. He looked down at himself, at the ruddy sweatshirt clutched in his hands, and at the spots of vivid crimson glistening on the pale skin of his shoulders and sides. There was no mistaking the blood.

The police car started pulling into the sidestreet. Hector ducked and ran, throwing his head into the sweatshirt, clumsily forcing his arms through (one of which into the hole in the chest made by Guido’s teeth), and darted around a garage.

His feet were heavy and stuttering, every pound of flesh clinging to his skeletal frame felt thick and sluggish. He cursed the placating chemicals in his system, cursed Guido for its quaint rewards for being fed, and tried to hop a fence. With one leg over, the other caught the fence pole in the thigh, and Hector tumbled to the grass, landing hard on his shoulder. He rolled and scrambled to his feet, imagining himself thrashing as wildly as the pit bull, and bolted across the manicured backyard. He jumped onto another fence and would have cleared it had the spotlight not distracted him. He fell again, onto the same shoulder, and shouted in pain. He practically rolled over another fence to get back to the alley. The cops would have to back up and make a nail-biting five-point turn to be heading in the right direction. He trucked as hard as his boots would carry him, the gravel shifting uncertainly under his steps. Hector weaved his way through the alley, clawing at the cotton in his skull, to clear his head, to get his body right, to get his blood rich with adrenaline. Only Guido didn’t see the cops as a threat.

Hector raced across a street and made it as far as the other alley before he heard the screech of tires. A fleeting glance back showed another patrol car quickly reversing. He then ran into a garage door, bounced off it, and dropped onto his rear. He scrambled on all fours until he had enough velocity to lift up and run, this time on solid concrete that bore him without complaint. Flashes of bright red and blue flickered across the tops of garages. He darted into another sidestreet and tripped over a bicycle, flipping head-over-heels until making his Olympic landing. He cursed under his breath and floundered again, continuing down the sidestreet until he stopped suddenly in his tracks. Pausing a moment to call himself a lot of vulgar names, he turned, ran back to the bicycle, and picked it up.

Hector prayed to the blind, idiot god that shat the universe that “like riding a bicycle” wasn’t just a patronizing quip people say to make themselves feel better. As it was, the otherworldly taint in his blood wasn’t doing his sense of balance any justice, and the coarse concrete threatened to reach up and scar him if he didn’t put all his focus on steering. He sped recklessly down the street and almost screamed when the cars he passed began to quickly shine red and blue.

Off to the left, he saw it: a large, complex building he had passed many times on the bus. He still had no idea what the place was, but its different-sized additions and wings promised plenty of dark corners and hairpin turns around its exterior. More importantly, he saw the large, yellow, concrete cylinders in its asphalt drive that prevented cars from going a certain distance.

Hector then bicycled into a parked car. The thin metal chassis gave way to both his weight and speed, cradling him awkwardly on the car’s trunk and rear window. Knowing full well the bike was now useless, he huffed across the street toward the large building, limping heavily, a patrol car almost flattening him in pursuit. He trundled between the concrete cylinders, hearing the screech of tires again, and ducked around a corner.

Darkness greeted him. Good. He ran as well as he could between two sections of the building, looking forward to seeing a quiet street as he turned the corner. And because he had – in his drug-induced rationale – forgotten that most buildings tend to be solid blocks of brick and frame, he was genuinely surprised when the little passage dead-ended at a double door. He tried the knob and found it locked. He spun quickly and found a flashlight in his eyes.

“Stop where you are! Turn around and get down on your knees!”

Hector squinted into the light. The options were quickly collapsing. He grabbed the bottom of his sweatshirt, lifted, and yelled “Run!” Guido hissed.

And because he forced an armed man to choose between fight or flight, the gunshot didn’t catch him completely off-guard. He spun, catching the bullet on the edge of his abused shoulder. He screamed. He crouched, jumped up, grabbed the roofing, and pulled himself up in mere moments. There were shouts from below. He leapt to his feet and saw gray trees and gray road signs and the alternating gray and gray flash of police lights. His eyes were clear. His head was clear. His hands were shaking.

Hiss. Click click click.

Hector turned and saw the Spider-Ass on the roof behind him. It was man-sized, if not a touch bigger. Its lower quarters bore the eight spindly legs of a spider, tipped in sharp points like Guido’s tongue. Its upper body was like that of a man: torso, arms, and a featureless head that sported eight shiny eyes on its otherwise empty face. He knew those eyes were ruby red. He knew its mouth was under its chin. He knew somewhere nearby was a nearly invisible spider web that could easily span between buildings. He knew this web sucked hope and confidence and this thing would feed on them later when it ate the strands.

It clicked along the rooftop toward him, hands slowly raising. From its wrists, long blades slid out from the underside of its forearms, clicking into place, gleaming violence in the light of the moon. Hector didn’t know about that.

He raised his sweatshirt and Guido’s barbed tongue slid between its vicious teeth. The knifelike point wavered in the air like a snake’s head, dancing in the moonlight but not striking. Hector didn’t half blame it as he looked over the Spider-Ass’ blades. But the creature dropped into a defensive position, lowering its torso on its eight legs and raising its arms up like a boxer, blades out. The distraction was enough, and Hector sped along the other side of the roof, no longer feeling the ache in his hip and thigh, or even the burning pain in his shoulder.
Guido needed him now.

He slid down the rooftop and caught the edging as Guido’s tongue fled back behind hard, sharp teeth. With his sweatshirt falling back into place – save his arm still through the wrong hole – he dropped down onto asphalt, landed deftly, and turned to race off.

“Freeze!” The flashlight hovered over him, shaking wildly.

Hector turned and sneered at the light and the policeman’s shadow. The cop was slowly advancing, gun leveled. Then Hector felt his eyes adjust, refocus, until they could see the tiny, sticky strands that stretched from the building’s rooftop to the side of the house next door. Hector smiled and took a step back.

“I said freeze! Turn around and kneel, dammit! And if I see that… that thing I—“

The officer stopped. The flashlight spun sickeningly. He was clawing around his face and head. Somewhere, eight eyes studied hungrily.

“Run!,” screamed Hector. “Run back to your safe car and your safe job and your safe home!”

The officer’s silhouette clawed more, turned, then ran, trailing tiny soul-sucking filaments in its wake. Hector turned and ran as well, only his right leg wouldn’t move. Off-balance, he dropped to his stomach on the asphalt, barely keeping his face from kissing the driveway. He rolled onto his side to see a milky strand trailing from his ankle to a dark shape on the rooftop. Without needing to be asked, a sharp tongue sliced through his sweatshirt, tearing a new hole, and slit the strand effortlessly before retreating back into its sneering mouth.
Hector left the Spider-Ass to try and web itself a police car.

Part 6

The meeting was going well, highlighted as it was by a coarse alcoholic who attacked his disease with a razor-sharp wit and the kind of defiant, militaristic confidence of a man who has seen the worst life has to offer. The speaker, Tom, was so engaging Joseph even gave up shooting Hector dirty looks.

Tom was just getting started on telling how his wife, finally fed up with him drinking their rent, moved out to her brother’s place in Tennessee. And Tom, “like the certified jackass I am,” decided he didn’t want her taking his car. He chained the car to a nearby tree with a forbidding lock. She got his bolt cutters. By the time she got the chain off, he had literally removed a wheel of the car and was sitting on it on the curb, nursing his flask. The police who showed up got a good laugh out of that, and even said he should work in the pits at NASCAR for getting a wheel off that fast. Then they arrested him.

The rolling chuckles of the audience finally died down and everyone listened as Tom started in on what he affectionately called the “drunk farm,” beginning yet another two-year stint in prison. Hector heard the woman in front of him sigh and wondered how the hell she could be bored with Tom. Tom spoke with an unfaltering, sardonic half-grin that dripped regret and determination. He didn’t talk over their heads. He was the hardnosed, compassionate alcoholic they all wanted as a sponsor because he would rather strangle them himself than see them take another drink. Then Hector realized it wasn’t the woman sighing.

He put a hand to his chest and felt the teeth move under his sweatshirt. At least it wasn’t clicking. Yet.

As subtly as possible, he crouched out of the line of tables and into the nearby aisle, making his way to the rear exit. Thankfully, Mike was too wrapped up in Tom’s patented method of brewing prison hooch to notice his hasty escape.

In spite of oncoming autumn, it had not cooled any outside. Hector peered around the traditionally German-Irish neighborhood and started down a sidestreet. He jogged his way through a line of freestanding garages and into an alley, eyes adjusting quickly to the velvet blue darkness that shifted starkly into a whole world of clear grays. The land of night came into focus, color sacrificed to this preternatural awareness. He strode quickly, scanning the fenced backyards, no longer troubled by the thoughts of housewives and children mourning “runaway” cats. Foreign chemicals lacing his blood, he no longer thought about the lost pet posters that used to draw his guilty eyes with their condemning pictures and pitiful reward offers. Click click click.

There was a rustle of metal and a thin plastic bag. Hector froze and instinctively crouched. After moments of silence, there was another rustle of plastic. Hector crept to the corner of a garage, moonlight tracing the gritty surface of an aluminum trash can. Just when he had got his hopes up for a raccoon, a pit bull stalked into view, pausing only once to look over Hector with disdain, then return to its scrounging.

Hector rolled his eyes, sneered, and relaxed. Too big. He took a moment to rifle through the nearby torn trash bag, opening a few cigarette packs to find them depressingly empty. Guido’s hunger alone kept him from squatting in the shadows and looking over this unknown family’s bills and junk mail and receipts, all the discarded evidence of their own hunger.

He stood, kicked a bit of gravel at the dog, and made to turn until a long, barbed tongue split through his sweatshirt and dug expertly into the pit bull’s neck. The dog yelped and dropped to its side, then scrambled for its feet. Hector, eyes wide and gaping, hands open and shaking at his sides, looked down at the textured, snakelike tube of musculature that stretched between his chest and the snarling dog that was up again and snapping viciously at the long tongue that had by now popped barbs into its neck. The ropy length swayed in the humid air, waving frantically in the darkness to dodge the gnashing, powerful jaws that sought, time and again, to sever it. Frustrated, pained, and scared for its life, the dog turned and ran, its pads awkwardly pressing against the gravel in escape until the tongue tightened and jerked backward. The barbs in its neck held fast, mercilessly tearing flesh as the dog was whipped off its feet and cruelly deposited on its back. Hector lurched forward a foot, still gawking like a voyeur, hands hovering uncertainly near the mouth on his chest and the tongue that reeled its dinner closer. In a last-ditch act of violence that would have shamed samurai, the dog got to its feet again and made straight for Hector.

Hector crouched and fell backward, catching the pit bull by its powerful shoulders even as murderous teeth snapped inches from his own neck. He pushed backward, knees pressing against the dog’s low belly to get those flashing teeth away until a sharp pain in his chest made him stop. The tongue was drawn tight, winching the dog’s bleeding neck closer to his chest. Horror flashed across Hector’s eyes before he threw his head and face back and away from the arterial spray and the distinct sound of a wet, soggy crunch as Guido’s teeth bit through his sweatshirt and into the dog’s neck. The dog sounded like a fish trying to yelp. Another wet crunch, and the dog was still and silent.

Hector lay on his back, suddenly feeling happy and tired, a stupid, druggy smile creeping onto his face as hot, thick liquid slid over his chest and pooled into the alley around him. There was a continual, pumping slurp sound. Hector sprawled out in the alley, feeling the cotton lining his skull and the trickling bliss moving down his spine like a cool rainfall in this warm night.

Part 5

The basement of St. Andrew’s Church had the too-bright phosphorescent bulbs that Fitz swore turned people into zombies. The rows of tables and stern metal chairs stood vigil in a mostly-empty room meant for the dozens smoking outside. When Louisville passed the smoking ban, one more thing went wrong in the lives of its drunks. Three percolators against the wall pumped thick, black coffee with a sound that reminded Hector of the thing living in his sink. It was one of the last warm days of autumn, but the coffee promised strength and comfort even if it came with a little unnecessary heat. It smelled great.

Hector slid into a chair near the percolators and nodded at the thin black man who did the same.

“Joseph,” he said.

“Hector.”

They shook.

“Hey,” said Joseph. “You’re one of Mike’s, right?”

“Hm?” Hector scratched at an armpit, tilting his head to the side.

“Mike’s your sponsor, right?”

“Oh. No. Friend of a friend of his.”

“Ah.” Joseph nodded solemnly.

“Why?”

He leaned forward in his chair, lowering his voice confidentially. “No one’s seen Ray for weeks. You know Ray?”

Hector nodded. And instead of picturing the man grinning with missing teeth, his trucker cap pulled low over his forehead, clad in flannel and denim as when he first met him, Hector pictured him kneeling in a pile of broken, green glass, his hands against an alley wall, weeping as an oily shadow-man put its fingers into his back and lovingly held his spine. That was Ray as he last saw him.

“Anyway,” Joseph continued. “We’ve been worried.”

“Damn right,” came a grating voice from behind. A vicelike grip landed like talons on Hector’s shoulders and squeezed in some sadist’s idea of a massage. “Need to get his ass back to the meetings. Just like you.”

Hector, still cringing, looked up into the mustachioed, balding head that smirked down at him. “Heya, Mike.”

“’Heya,’ nothing. You staying, or just here for the coffee?” Mike jerked out a chair, planted one foot in the seat, and posed like a superhero. Some men are just waiting to choke on their own virility.

“It’s warm outside.”

“Air conditioning, then.” When Hector nodded, Mike simply shook his head. “Try getting yourself a good t-shirt instead of wearing them sweatshirts all the time.” He snorted at himself, then frowned the next moment as he flipped his own “serious” switch. “Listen. I know you’re not one of us,” the one of us sounding pregnant and thick with the fraternity of Those Who Survive The Harrowing (i.e. alcoholics), “but you can still come more regular if you like. ‘The only requirement for membership—‘”

“’Is a desire to stay sober,’” Joseph and Hector finished.

“So sayeth the Big Book.” And Mike nodded as if the laws of science weren’t so true. “Anyway,” he said, sliding his footstool back in place, “I’d better go rustle up the folks outside. Nice seeing you, Hector.” He gave Hector a too-hard slap on the shoulder, turned to strut away, then turned back. “And if you see the Padre, you tell him to give me a call, okay?”

Hector would have reminded him that “the Padre” didn’t like to be called that anymore, but the man had already made his exit. Mike never did anything halfway.

“Who’s ‘Padre’?”

Hector turned back to Joseph, then glanced at the percolators. Still not done. “The friend. Of Mike and mine. Used to be Father Clancy. Now just Clancy.”

Joseph nodded somberly again. “Shame.”

“Yeah.” And thinking about Father Clancy only got him thinking about Ray again. About the greasy darkness that dared to imitate the silhouette of a man. About how its head tilted back in ecstasy as it milked Ray for all the misery he was worth. About watching the blood from Ray’s knees trace the sharp edges of the broken malt liquor bottles. “Happiness is fleeting.” He didn’t know why he said it out loud.

“Doesn’t have to be.” Joseph looked down at his lived-in crosstrainers.

Hector ran a hand through his dark mane, jerked out a tangle, and said, “Yeah, I think it does.”

Joseph lifted an eyebrow.

“If we weren’t always chasing happiness, we wouldn’t be doing anything at all. I mean, that’s the point of life, isn’t it?” Hector had spent the better part of his crazy years trying to explain himself. He got used to it. He leaned forward like Joseph, waving his hands like a magician’s misdirection. “Point of life used to be to procreate. That was happiness. Only now we want to live on through our ideas. We want to be remembered. Look,” he said, gesturing at Joseph, who sat up attentively. “Take our generation, for instance. You want kids?”

Joseph smirked. “I have kids. Two.”

“Not what I asked,” Hector said with a smirk of his own. “Do you want them?”

Joseph frowned, said “Go fuck yourself,” stood, and walked away without getting any coffee.

Part 4

Louisville, Kentucky has a reputation for taking care of the homeless. And if you didn’t mind the panhandling, you could maybe see this for the good thing it was. I-64 and I-65 crossed in the heart of downtown, a stone’s throw from the Ohio River, and they brought people with them. Just like its public transportation busses, Louisville was greedy. It kept people.

Hector knew a young punker named Fitzroy who had only set foot three times in his whole life outside the city limits, and two of those were to go to shows in Cincinatti. Fitz used to say Kentucky’s founding fathers knew what they were doing: tobacco, bourbon, horse racing, and prime weed. They knew how to keep you coming back. Thomas Jefferson didn’t strike Hector as much of a marijuana smoker, but it could not be said the man didn’t have vision.

Either way, the unattached drifted like silt through the murky waters of the Ohio until they clambered their way up its banks and into the city. Better that than get swept out to sea entirely. Otherwise the Ohio would spew its guts out into the Mississippi, and then it was just a straight shot to the Gulf of Mexico. One had to grow roots to stand against the carving, eroding waters, and Louisville opened its arms to those who wished to do so.

The systems had been in place for years. James Graham Brown had donated so much money to the city he practically owned it – what you give, you get – and a lot of that money filtered its way into metro grants for shelters. Different ones had different rules. Some you could stroll into rip-roaring drunk. Others would only take you sober. They didn’t bother with promises they couldn’t deliver. They were shelter: in a primal, animalistic sense (if you could ignore the minimal heating and air conditioning).

Only no one in the country could figure out how to keep social workers for these people. The national turnover rate for social work was humbling, which would have been a step up for Kentucky.

The shelters then, too, were greedy.

Part 3

The trick to avoiding Brain Balloons was to keep wary of groups of people. Any group of at least three people and maybe up to as many as ten could have a Brain Balloon hiding above them like a living stormcloud or, like the inspiration for the nickname, a parade balloon gone horribly wrong. Something about a small group of people allowed the Brains to stay invisible. But if circumstances forced the mob to disperse – say, down to two – the Brain would slowly materialize in the air, and Hector could see its ropy tentacles stretching down like those of a jellyfish, just barely touching the foreheads of its two anchors.

They mated, or something, by playing a very polite version of Red Rover. It took four months for Hector to figure this out. A group of Brain-buddies would send one of its members in another direction and another group of Brain-buddies would intercept and pick up the stray as their own. Maybe it was some kind of communication, but he got the distinct impression of eggs being fertilized somewhere in the courier’s thoughts.

Once, Hector had seen one of the Brain Balloons get lost. It was funny, up to a point. Apparently the Brains are more like backseat drivers to their buddies, instead of actually being at the steering wheel. It was the wee hours of morning, a touch west of downtown, and Hector was standing outside the shelter getting a smoke. A group of three unlikely traveling companions meandered their way onto a street corner, then stood in confused, shuffling silence, looking in different directions. A well-dressed fellow smiled apologetically to the other two, said something, nodded, and walked east. The Brain Balloon shimmered into view. As usual, none of the other guys outside the shelter took notice. The Asian lady with the grocery bags shook her head like she was clearing it of cobwebs, then strutted off south. The last poor bastard, red-haired Irish as the day is long, leaned hard against a streetlight and clutched his head. The Brain’s other tentacles started whipping about in the air, seeking purchase. The Irishman’s nose started bleeding, and one of his eyes gave into to an arrhythmic blink. He looked up, hands still on his head, and staggered toward the shelter.

“No way, chief,” Hector called out. “Not here.”

Two of the other smokers turned on him, frowning as they huddled into their thick jackets. One of them said, “Mercy House is for everyone, man.”

Hector sneered and stamped out his cigarette. “Look. This dude’s got problems. Just look at him!” He gestured at the shambling Irishman who boiled some sounds from the back of his throat: “Kh ngh. Kh ngh…” He had made it halfway across the street. Hector’s fleeting prayer for some late night traffic to smear him over the road went unanswered.

The Irishman neared. The Brain’s tentacles managed to calm their flailing enough to start reaching out.

Hector ducked and ran. The smokers stayed where they were, huddling in the cold of morning, their minds heavy and full and preoccupied: so dense they easily served as anchors for something alien to this world.