An old man hunched in the crack between two buildings looked up to squint suspiciously at Jonah as he passed. His eyes, bloodshot and with the start of milky cataracts dotted in the pupils, flicked past him to Ram. The florid color drained from his face and left him gray-lipped and sickly. He crossed himself with a swollen, scabby hand and turned away, his shoulders hunched and his head pulled down as he muttered something into his collar.
Jonah broke stride for a second to try and catch it.
He’d been punched and had his truck shot up in the last couple of days. A year off had obviously left him rusty, but he was done being caught off guard. The old man’s voice was thick with a heavy accent, but Jonah caught the tail end of what he said just as he looped back to the start.
“… but deliver us from evil…. Our Father…”
The Lord’s Prayer. It was always a good choice—the one prayer even most atheists could make a stab at—but the echo of the AA meeting made the back of Jonah’s neck prickle. He reached into his jacket and pulled out the crumpled, bloodstained twenty that Luke had left him.
“Here,” he said as he held it out. The old man just hunched down deeper in his coat, eyes closed tight enough to crease new wrinkles in the dirt on his face. He worried at a beer can tab strung around his neck on a bit of twine, turning it between his fingers like a rosary. Jonah stepped over and bent down to stuff the note in the greasy pocket nearest him. “Find somewhere else to sleep.”
“… as we forgive those who trespass against us…” the old man went on.
Jonah left him to it. He’d given his advice. The old man could take it or not. He jogged to the steps outside of Luke’s and took them two at a time. The intercom set up by the door had six buttons and six names on it. None of them had gone for the first-name-on-the-door approach.
The third button down was labeled Beiler. Jonah pressed his thumb down on it and waited until someone answered.
“Hello?” a woman said, her voice pinched with the expectation she was going to be annoyed. She probably didn’t know why, but something unnatural was building, and like when a storm blew in, everyone would be on edge until it broke.
“Hey,” Jonah said. He let the country back into his voice and tipped his head down. “I’ve your takeout here?”
She sighed, her expectations confirmed. “I didn’t order anything.”
“No, this is the address,” Jonah said. “Salt and chili boneless ribs and chicken balls for… umm… Luke. Something. I can’t make it out. Look, we don’t do free if it’s late, so—”
“It’s not my order,” the woman snapped. “Luke? That’s Luke Guzman. He’s in the basement.”
She hung up.
Jonah ran his finger down the buttons. He found the right one by the process of elimination. None of the other buttons said Guzman, but the final one had gotten damp. The paper had swollen and mildewed, the name lost. He leaned on it.
“It’s not a good time,” Luke said.
“Yeah, well, it’s not going to get any better.”
“Frank.”
There was probably a psychological reason that Jonah had decided to call himself the one thing he wasn’t going to be. He rubbed his thumb between his eyebrows.
“You don’t get to tap out of a curse,” he said. “Hags don’t take sick notes.”
The intercom went dead; then the door clicked and popped open a crack. Jonah paused for a second and then stepped over the threshold. He closed the door behind him.
This time it didn’t work to keep Ram out. He’d not be able to enter the apartments, but the halls were fair game. He squeezed under the door and slid along the floor to hook himself to Jonah’s heels, still wrapped in his shadow.
It might get him through the door.
There was an elevator. The lights fluttered as Jonah approached it, a brittle buzz of electricity trapped in the bulbs. There was a sour smell, hot and sickly sweet like candy melted onto asphalt, and a wet, greasy stain in the corner of the box.
Jonah took the stairs instead.
It was barely dark outside. To have manifested so quickly, the hag had come loaded for bear. Although Luke’s apartment being underground had given her a head start. The back of Jonah’s neck itched with awareness of howcloseandthickthe shadows in the stairwell were.
At the bottom of the stairs, the door had been left open. Jonah stopped on the threshold in surprise. There were no windows in the apartment, but it was brightly lit with fluorescent light strips mounted on the ceiling.
A leather recliner stood in the middle of the room. Luke sat in it, head tilted back and a handful of bloody tissues pressed to his face.
“What happened?” Jonah asked.
