Who Is Brian Quinn?

Cody Quinn...

The three shots had come in quick and terrifying succession. First Dale, then Hiram then Dale again. The order may have been slightly different but the effect remained unchanged. Both Dale and Cody lay in widening pools of blood while Hiram sagged against Reggie's towering frame, a bullet lodged in his hip. "Damn," he breathed.

Reggie grabbed him under the shoulder and steered him to the chair behind the desk.

Hiram slumped down and exhaled hard. "I'm alright," he winced.

Dale had somehow produced a second gun swinging it up beneath his other arm and firing to the side at Hiram while Hiram's bullet, fired a split second earlier, sunk into his neck.

The boy, Cody, had taken a bullet straight in the temple the side of his head exploding in a spray of pink flesh and blood.

Reggie found himself panting. He was in shock, leaning against the desk watching Hiram pull his pants away from the wound and beginning to apply pressure with a strip from his shirt. "It doesn't make sense, Reggie. None of it."

"You got that right," said Reggie. He gazed at the boy on the floor. He thought of his own boy, Bailey, a few years younger but still a good sized boy and filled with activity and life.

Reggie stood and walked over to the two lifeless forms sprawled on the floor. One of the boy's hands still lay entangled in Dale's tie. "What we gonna do with them?"

"I don't know," replied Hiram.

"I feel bad for this boy here, we should bury him. This other we can leave here maybe. Dirty old fool. He's crazy. We'll leave him for the rats," said Reggie.

Hiram sighed and tried to stand. "We still gotta find that ring, Reggie."

"Yeah," the big man said. "Madge," he whispered. "Maybe she's back. Back in bed, sleeping. She came back before." He scratched his forehead. "Anyway, we gotta bury this boy. I don't know why. I just got a feeling."

Hiram had hobbled over to the mess of blood and corpses and began rifling through the boy's pockets.

"What you doing?" said Reggie.

"Gotta find out who he is. Gotta find some identification. Maybe a wallet." He huffed and winced as he bent to the floor inspecting the boy's pockets. He pulled a red leather wallet from the boy's pants pocket. Flipping it open he perused the contents. Dragging himself back over to the desk he plopped back down in the chair. "Not much in here," he said. "No license, nothing, not even a library card. Just this," he paused reading something.

Reggie leaned in to look at the card in Hiram's hand. A super market club card with a name on it. Cody Quinn.

"Well I'll be," breathed Hiram.

Reggie rocked slowly on his heels eyeing the ceiling trying to make sense of the situation. "Don't make no sense," he finally said. "Dale talked about a Quinn. Boy could be this Quinn's son, maybe his nephew. Some kind of blood kin."

"I tell you what we're going to do. With the body. We're sending it back where it came from."

"Came from?" replied Reggie.

"The river."

"The river? He didn't come from the river."

"How do you know?" said Hiram. "That finger came from the river. And those rings. The ring your wife used, and now she's gone. We gotta make this right, Reggie."

The big man stood thinking, moving his lips tapping his foot. "You're right, Hiram. You're right. That boy gotta go back where he come from, where Quinn come from. That other dimension, or world or whatever. We gotta send him back. I'm thinking maybe he was right, maybe he was dreaming and if we send him back maybe he'll just wake up, alive and well and happy as a clam."

Hiram nodded. "We're going to drop him in one of those sneak-holes of yours, Reggie. That's the only way."

Reggie ran a hand along his jaw. "Sneak-hole. Yep. Watery burial."

"But first," said Hiram. "I gotta get this bullet out."