Memphis Streets 4: Skeletons

Chapter 7- Lucifer

"I don't understand."

I take a step back and nearly trip over air. "This isn't happening. This can't be happening." I'm seeing things. I have to be seeing things.

Mason's ghost moves forward. "I know that you're in shock right now," he says. Fuck. He even sounds like Mason. But it can't be him. I go for the gun again. In no time, I have it cocked and leveled at the intruder.

"Don't you fuckin' move," I snap. For the first time in my life, I'm visibly shaking with my finger on the trigger. Mason, or whoever the fuck he is, doesn't make any sudden moves. In fact, he slowly lifts his hands.

"All right. Calm down."

"Don't fuckin' tell me to calm down!" Shit. I need to get it together so that I can think. "Who are you?"

"You know who I am," he says.

"But that can't be. You're . . . dead."

"I should be dead," he agrees. "But I could've died a lot of times before . . . and would have if you weren't around to save my ass."

"Snake's car. The explosion," I insist. "I saw it flip off that bridge. Everyone saw it. It was all over the news. But you were dead before then. I know it. I know what I saw."

Mason sighs. "My memory is still spotty about that night. I remember our accident—chasing Snake on the highway—the car flipping—the fight with Snake. Then he must've knocked me out. After that, I remember fire and then suddenly being submerged underwater. The rest . . . like I said, is a blur."

"And what?" I ask. "You're going to tell me that you've been swimming around in the Mississippi for two months?"

"No," another voice barks out of the darkness. "Me and my grandson fished him out the river." I jump and swing my weapon to three o'clock.

"Who's there? Who are you?"

"Leah, it's okay," Mason says. "He's with me."

Footsteps pad across the carpet to the window, where stripes of moonlight splash onto an old, gray-haired black dude. "Name's Eddie," he says, flashing a remarkable set of white teeth.

"Like I said, me and my grandson grabbed him up out of the water two months back. I have a small place out in the woods in Osceola—Arkansas. Small town—a river town about an hour out from Memphis."

Nervous, Eddie glances over at Mason. "He was messed up pretty good when we found him, barely conscious—but alive." My heart sinks. He was alive. How could I have gotten that so wrong?

My mind flashes back to that night, but it's no longer reliable. It's playing tricks on me and adding things that I hadn't previously remembered. Did the rain obscure my vision? Could there have still been a light in his eyes? Eddie rocks on the soles of his feet as he slips his hands out of his pockets and looks at Mason.

"I guess these still had some healing in them. I used to do a whole lot of doctoring back in my army days," he boasts. "Now they mostly work on cattle and other farm animals."

"Why didn't you take him to a doctor?"

"We were gonna, but, uh, the patient here wouldn't hear of it." Eddie chuckles. "He might not have been able to say much, but he did make it clear that he didn't want to be taken to no hospital." Mason laughs with him like they are sharing an inside joke.

"And the cops? The feds dragged that river for a while. Surely they checked your neck of the woods?"

"Yeah," Eddie says. "They came snooping around, but I don't care too much for police. Not since they killed one of my nephews ten years ago. He was unarmed and walking home from the store one night. Apparently that's an unwritten crime when you're black. They pumped thirty-six bullets in him. I guess they wanted to make sure that they got him. Of course they claimed that they mistook him for another random black man and gave the family their sincerest apologies. Micheal was a good boy, wanted to be a doctor someday—like his favorite uncle." Eddie lowers his head with a humble smile.