Whispers in the Night by Brandon Massey Page A

to start up again. Can’t be done, most times.”
    â€œThat what happened to you? Is that what happened to all of us here?” I asked him.
    He shrugged, retreating. “I can only speak for myself. We tell our own tales here, Lou. It is ‘Lou,’ isn’t it?” His eyes followed Browder to the far end of the bar.
    I nodded as a terrible dawning burned my mind.
    Old Man Solomon leaned close to me and whispered, “A word to the wise. The coffee here isn’t the best by any means, but there aren’t any demons in the pot.”
    I would have settled for knowledge of where the hell I was and what the story was with the place. I didn’t feel ready to know everything Carter apparently knew. He was getting too damn bold, and I didn’t like it. The way he saw it, he told me, it was all he could do not to lose his last few shreds of sanity. The way I saw it, his last shred of sanity flew over the cuckoo’s nest the minute he killed his first victim. The topic had evolved into one of those things that friends who want to stay friends just don’t talk about.
    I reminded myself he wasn’t a friend anymore as a crash rang out. Carter had emptied his drinking glass and busted it over the head of the biker he was talking to. The bandanna-clad man went down and didn’t move. Blood like burgundy sauce spread over the floorboards to halo his head. No one reacted.
    â€œCarter, man, what the fuck you think you doing?” I shouted at him, getting to my feet.
    Fixing me in place with a look I ain’t never seen on a man who had more than ten seconds of life left in him, he answered, “I’m learning in death how to live.”
    I replied, “I don’t know about Indian curses or what in hell’s going on round here, but ain’t nobody dead except maybe for that dude lying at your feet.” I don’t know what made me think he’d buy what I was selling. I didn’t even buy it.
    â€œSometimes, Lou, dying is the highest, truest form of living. I’ve often wondered whether the dead imitate the living, whether everybody we’ve ever loved and lost are still kicking around somewhere, carrying out the same habits and mannerisms they did when they was alive. I know now that they do, ’cause I’m one of them. And like it or not, so’s you.”
    He’d finally struck me speechless. All I could do was gape at him and wonder whether it hurt to go insane.
    â€œLet me teach you how to live,” he told me.
    Time slowed down as he remembered the pistol in his belt, swung it up fluidly to align it with my right eye socket, and blasted away the rear portion of my skull.
    Â 
    Â 
    An ass-kicking in a glass. That’s what you got on any night Browder was pouring drinks at Paradise Pub. But I’d had enough for tonight. I was headed home.
    Climbing into my car, I recalled a conversation I’d had with the seer. I’d figured on finding someone other than crazy fucking Carter to talk to tonight. I figured on that not long after heading into the men’s room to take a whiz and finding him crouching in the room’s only stall with his dick embedded in the frothing, gore-caked eye socket of some sweaty redhead prone to selling blow jobs in that very same bathroom after she’d had a couple of highballs.
    If you coulda seen the grin on that fucker’s face when he looked up and seen me watching him, you’d know why I left early tonight.
    Drive home seemed to take twice as long as usual. Night driving around these parts always felt like driving through a mausoleum. Desert was so damn sterile and soundless. It sucked to be the poor bastard driving through the Baja at night with a busted car stereo. Music tended to kill some of the monotony of my drive, which varied between forty minutes and an hour, depending on road conditions. Tonight, when I turned the stereo on, I found Nick Cave wailin’ “Your Funeral .