Kiss Of Evil

12

I am carved of moonlight.

I follow the jogging figure at a distance of no more than one hundred feet, sliding from shadow to shadow, heading south on Lee Road, waiting for the long stretch of gloom we will both soon enter, the colonnade of darkness leading into Cain Park.

The jogger makes a left, past the squat stone columns, past the huge dedication rock, into the all-but-deserted park. I follow on the access path that winds down the hill.

To the casual observer we might look entirely unconnected, two hardy citizens of Cleveland Heights, Ohio, out for a late-night winter workout, one maintaining a slow jogger’s pace; the other-the one carrying the odd-looking device-an even slower, but still quite graceful, power walk.

And yet we are connected in a way that most casual observers-indeed, most people on the planet-could never imagine nor understand.

The noise flourishes the moment I move within range of the jogger. This time: fat claps of thunder on the inside of my skull, a desperate pummeling of bloodied hands in a sealed coffin.

The jogger stops at the shuttered kiosk near the Alma, the smaller of the park’s two theaters. I approach from the west. In my right hand is a small-caliber pistol, loaded with hollow-point rounds. In my left I carry a four-quart pail, bottomed with a three-inch layer of hard rubber and wire mesh, a handle on its side.

I step to within five feet of the jogger.

The jogger, a handsome young man clad in an expensive-looking olive and black Nike jogging suit and black wool gloves, doesn’t see me. The reflective stripes on the elbows of his jacket made it embarrassingly easy to follow him.

“Hey,” I say.

The man freezes in place. A veteran of the streets, it seems. He doesn’t turn around. “My wallet is in my waist pack,” he says. He spins the nylon belt around his waist, slowly, until the pack faces me.

I step closer, take the wallet, say: “I have a message for you.”

The man swallows hard but remains very still. “What are you talking about?”

I place the barrel of the gun near his left temple. “She’s mine.” I lift the pail by the handle-as if wielding a giant coffee mug-and position it on the other side of the man’s head. “Mio!”

I pull the trigger.

The puff of smoke is insignificant in the darkness, as is the popping noise, no louder than the sound of a child flicking his thumb out of an empty soda bottle. What is significant is that the pail catches not only the bullet-a feat accomplished without putting a hole in the bottom-but also a good portion of the man’s brain. The police will not find a slug nor a shell casing, nor more than a drop or two of vaporized membrane on the shrubbery.

I look at the figure on the ground, then into the pail, at the pink tissue, the off-white bone, warm and gaseous in the December night air.

For my cauldron, I think. My nganga.

For the spell.