Page 5 of Curse the Flame

It’s probably not the most sensible decision I’ve ever made, but sensible decisions haven’t done much for me lately. The sensible thing would’ve been staying in Brooklyn and getting word to Teddy after Johnny disappeared. The sensible thing would’ve been leaving the office with my soul intact the first time he asked me to kill a man, whether they deserved it or not.

But men like me don’t get very far by doing what’s sensible. We do what’s necessary, and I agreed to this. So I step around the dead creature and start walking. It’s only fair. I killed the enemy before they killed me, and with Johnny Wallace somewhere in these woods with me, I have to go and finish my job before I begin to think about how I’m getting back to Brooklyn.

Because, one thing for sure, this ain’t Brooklyn.

We don’t have some weird horse-crab monster attacking citizens in good ol’ New York, I tell you that much. Magic mirror, huh? Maybe, but Johnny’s here, and that’s all that matters right now.

And I believe that the entire time I attempt to track him down.

The farther I walk, the stranger the forest gets. Some of the trees have faces in the bark. Not carved faces, either. Real ones. Eyes closed. Mouths twisted as if they’re dreaming about something unpleasant. Vines crawl across the ground when I get too close, pulling themselves out of my path like they know better than to tangle around my boots.

I decide not to look too closely at anything, acting as though I’m used to this unusual place. On the plus side, I’m not attacked again, by anything from Brooklyn or this weirdo place. I just keep walking, and when I hear water somewhere up ahead, a little voice inside my head tells me to go that way.

I still keep my gun up and out, though.

Once I reach a break in the trees, I step through it and curse under my breath.

I’ve stumbled upon a lake. It stretches farther than I can see, smooth and black beneath the enormous moon. There isn’t so much as a ripple across the surface. The stars overhead are reflected perfectly, making it hard to tell where the world ends and the water begins.

There’s a body crumpled at the side, fingers outstretched toward the dark water lapping at the shore.

I march over there, overcoat flaring as I look down at Johnny Wallace, his eyes wide and staring, his face twisted in a look of shock, delight, and despair all at the same time.

He’s dead. Dead as a fucking doornail.

And I didn’t do it.

I don’t understand. He’s not wet. He didn’t drown. I don’t think he even went inside of the lake. It’s like he reached the edge of the shore, peered down and saw his reflection and⁠—

—died, supplies a deep, somber voice inside of my head. It’s like a funeral dirge echoing against my skull, and my free hand flies up, knocking my hat back as I clutch the side of my head. The hunter was trapped by his reflection, but because it’s been so long since he’s seen his true soul, it was too much for him. Rather than waste away, he was dead the moment he saw his own eyes. Poor soul just doesn’t know he’s mine yet.

“Get out of my head,” I snap, tugging on the slicked-back strands of my black hair. After three years at war, there are too many memories I wish I could forgot, and too many screams that I hear in my nightmares.

But this? This is something different.

This is something new.

I shake my head, rapping my temple with the butt of my Colt. Thankfully, it quiets that deep, ominous voice, but it doesn’t erase what it said. The voice is right. Johnny Wallace is dead, even if I don’t understand how ‘cause I didn’t do it. Because, one thing for sure, no way did he look at his reflection and croak. That just… that doesn’t happen.

Just like being pulled through a mirror and landing in a world with hungry monsters and a killer lake doesn’t happen…

I look down at Johnny Wallace’s corpse. “Jesus Christ. What the hell did you see?”

“The end of his story.”

I turn so fast I nearly lose my balance.

A good-looking beast of a man stands several yards away. He’s at least twice my width. He’s got a head on me, and without a hat, I can see that his thick hair is a gleaming silver color. His eyes are pale, his clothes a suit similar to mine, though the way his bronzed skin glows like the light of the moon up above tells me that this fella… he ain’t no man, is he?

I don’t know how he got there, or how he snuck up on me without me noticing. One second, the lakeshore was empty. The next, he’s not that far, watching Johnny Wallace and me with an expression I know all too well.

Grief.

It’s the quiet grief of someone who already knows he’s too late.

He’s older than me, though I can’t guess by how much. He’s forty. Maybe fifty. As I look closer, I notice that his strikingly handsome face has a few of the hard lines men earn from carrying too much for too long. Nothing about him should seem that unusual after all of the things I’ve seen tonight, but that glow… that does.

He walks toward us, paying no attention to the Colt in my hand.