HELLHOUND on MY TRAIL

Chapter 1: (part 2 of 2)

"Die, beasty!" Adrian howled, and then Mike was alone in the hall, with a bathroom door, a payphone missing its handset, and the mixed stink of roadhouse piss and his own fearful sweat.

He staggered to lean against the wall, needing the feel of the cold concrete against his forehead and the solidity of the wall under his arm. The concrete was real. He clutched at the knot of charms around his neck-a cross that had meant a lot to his grandfather, a rabbit's foot, an ankh-he knew it was all junk, it had never helped him before, but it made him feel better to touch it. He pulled out the switchblade and flicked it open. The knife was useless-he'd stabbed other people more than once as a kid, but he knew it wouldn't do anything to the monster rampaging in the bar, and he knew that he didn't have the guts to slit his own throat with it, either.

Then he threw up, all over his own shoes. The gas station tuna sandwich tasted on its way up exactly like it had tasted on its way down, Mike thought, his mind still reeling, no better or worse.

He could hear the rattle of gunfire in the bar, and an enormous animal howling, something like a lion's only more throaty, like the creature had a saw blade in his vocal cords or was a chain smoker. He wiped sweat from his eyes and blinked at the hall he was standing in, looking for an exit.

Chuy stood there. Grinning.

"You gonna knife me, cabrón?" Chuy asked. He had Grandpa Archuleta's smile, and like Mike, he'd learned to curse from the old man, chewing tobacco out in the weeds behind the trailer in between long hauls in his big rig. What Chuy had that Grandpa Archuleta didn't, which had broken Grandpa's heart when he had dragged Mike down to the city morgue and forced Mike to help him identify the body, was all the wounds.

Chuy's scalp, long black hair still attached, hung open like a flap covering a pocket, exposing the bloody skull beneath. Blood ran down from the scalp and the flesh around it, but quickly became indistinguishable from all the rest of Chuy's blood. He'd been cut everywhere, not stabbed or slashed but carved artfully, like he'd been tattooed or even simply written on from head to toe by someone who was an artist. Chuy's throat had been slit-that was the last cut, the police had said, the one that had finally put him out of his misery-all the way to the spinal cord. Every cut bled, and Mike would have sworn he could smell the reek of Chuy's ghostly blood.

It was the stink of guilt.

"No," Mike said weakly. He really wanted a drink.

"Is that how you treat family, Mikey?" When he spoke, blood spilled from Chuy's lips, too. "I mean, you went and left mom alone, now you gonna knife me? Is that what you meant, with all that bullshit about being a man?"

Chuy hadn't aged, after all these years. He still looked sixteen years old, under all the blood.

Mike tried to ignore his brother, though both his hands trembled with the adrenalin and he felt like throwing up again. He wiped sweat out of his eyes again and examined the hallway-no exit, unless maybe the john had a window.

"What, you don't want to talk to me? You feeling guilty, pendejo? Maybe what you need is a woman, huh? Well, hey, brothers gotta help each other, don't they? When I needed a woman, you got me one ... I think I still know where to find her!"

Horrified at the thought of what Chuy might produce next, Mike fled from his brother's ghost, heart racing. He slammed back into the chaos of the bar, elbow first and knife at his hip, ready to jump up and into the belly of anyone getting in his way. Except Chuy, of course. Mike had tried attacking his brother's ghost once, years ago, and the only effect had been to make Chuy even angrier.

Butcher's was on fire. Smoke filled the upper half of the room, so Mike coughed and bent over to run. His gut got in the way, and his lack of stamina, but fear propelled him and he scuttled as fast as he could.