Dirty South

25

It was dark again and I knew I’d slept through the day. I awoke to a cracking sound rattling my warehouse. It sounded like the floor, but in the darkness I heard a deep roll of thunder and knew the storm from the Gulf was blowing over the city. The air smelled of ozone and salt. The bank of windows facing Julia Street shook and I turned back into my pillow, hearing Annie get to her feet and start into a low growl. I’d been dreaming about Maggie. I was at her house in Taylor and we’d been staring up at the branches of a huge pecan tree and the blue sky beyond.

“Annie,” I whispered. “Annie. Lay down.”

I pulled the pillows over my head, waiting for the sleep that would come to me so easily from the tap-tap-tap of rain against the windows and roof above me. Another flash of lightning broke close and the air became charged with electricity and white light. The brightness startled me and I opened my eyes to see Annie had disappeared.

She was growling near the front door.

I padded my way through the warehouse, scratching the hair that was sticking up on my head and calling her name.

Another flash of lightning.

A man stood in the corner. He had a gray face and wore a tattered overcoat.

He looked to be a thousand years old.

I didn’t even break stride. I ran for the kitchen in the darkness, feeling my way through the drawer where I kept my Glock.

I wanted to make it to the switches and light up the floor. I couldn’t see shit. I thought maybe I was just tired, dreaming of ghosts the same way I did when I was hunting old blues singers. Robert Johnson at the foot of my bed.

But there was a different smell to my room. It smelled of fish oil and mothballs and tattered winter clothes left too long in storage. A musty basement odor.

I held the gun strong in my hand.

Annie kept growling.

Then she yelped.

Hard.

I fired off a round in the direction where I’d seen the apparition. High above the range of my dog.

She trotted back to me and I felt her stand at my side. Her back was wet and sticky.

My eyes adjusting in the darkness and then lit up again with lightning.

The sliding door rolled back. I heard it. I saw a flash of brown coat and then it disappeared into my stairwell.

I ran to the door and flicked on the lights. I stooped down to Annie and looked at her bloody flank. She’s been scratched hard but not deep, like another animal had clawed her.

I left her and ran down the steps with my gun. The door to the street was wide open and I saw a sweeping mist of rain hitting the asphalt outside in the dull glow of the city’s crime lights.

I carefully peered out, making sure I didn’t get my head blown off.

A block away and across the road, I saw the darkened shape of a man in a long tattered coat, his face hidden into the lapels. He seemed to be made of nothing but shadows. His weight did not shift. He did not move.

I squinted into the rain as I walked to him, half in a dream, half expecting his shape to dissolve into my hands when I touched him.

He turned and walked into the hole of another warehouse covered in plywood. The wood over the lower windows ripped away by the homeless. I guess I needed to know if this was one of Cash’s boys back for more or some crack addict from the Hummingbird ready to make a score.

I held the gun in my hands.

On the lower floor, the vacant building shined silver from the crime light. My feet were still bare. I felt discarded pieces of wood and wet cardboard on my toes. The air smelled the way it had in my warehouse and I tried to slow down my breathing, already growing nauseous.

The silver light leaked through like vapor.

I could not see the man.

No shadow. No ghosts.

I found stairs leading to the level above me. But I did not follow.

The light had ended. My heart beat in my chest so fast.

I could not think. The smell overpowering.

I walked back through the wind and rain to my stoop.

At the base of my stairs, there was a gold pocket watch hanging from a tarnished chain.

When I flicked open the cover, the old blues song “Love in Vain” played. I could not breathe. I felt someone had entered my head.

I snapped shut the cover, walked back upstairs, and bolted my door three times before calling the police.