What Comes Around

CHAPTER 8

HE MUST HAVE passed out from the pain. Everything was foggy, out of focus. The room was dark, the rain beating hard against the windowpanes. Just a single lamplight from a table over in the corner.

Crystal, still naked, was sitting with her back to him at the foot of the bed, smoking a cigarette and talking to the doctor in hushed tones. Her head was resting on the doctor’s shoulder. He couldn’t make out what they were saying. He was bathed in a cold, clammy sweat and the pain had spread from behind his breastbone into and out along his left arm. Fucking hell. His wrists were still tied to the bedposts? Was she insane?

He heard a sob escape his own lips, and then a cry of pain caused by the elephant sitting atop his chest.

“Sshh,” the doctor said, getting to his feet and coming to the head of the bed to stand beside him. He was naked, too. He put his finger to his lips and said “Sshh” again.

“You’ve gotta do CPR or something, Doc,” Harding croaked. “My pills! They’re in the right pocket of my trousers. Please. I feel like I’m going to die…”

“That’s because you are going to die, Harding,” the man said.

“What?”

“You heard me.”

“Wait. Who are you?” He squinted his eyes but couldn’t make out the physician’s features.

“Vengeance, sayeth the Lord, Harding. That’s who I am. Vengeance.”

“You’re not a doctor… you’re…”

“Dr. Death will do for now.”

“Who… no, you’re not… you’re somebody else. You’re…”

“Don’t you recognize me anymore, Harding? I’ve had a little surgery recently. A bit of Botox. But, still, the eyes are always a dead giveaway. Look close.”

“Spider?”

“Bingo.”

“No, can’t be… You’re fucking Spider, f’crissakes,” the dying man croaked.

“Right. Spider Payne. Your old buddy. Come rain or come shine. Tonight, it’s rain. Look out the window, Harding. It’s goddamn pouring out there. Ever see it rain so hard?”

“Gimme a break here, Spider. What are you doing …”

“It’s called poetic justice. A little twist of fate shall we say?”

Pain scorched Torrance’s body and he arched upward, straining against his bonds, coming almost completely off the bed. He didn’t think anything could hurt this much.

His old nemesis knelt on the floor by the bed and started gently stroking his hair. When he spoke, it was barely above a whisper.

“You fucked me royally, Harding. Remember that? When I needed you most? When the French government, whom you always claimed to have in your pocket, nailed my balls to the wall? Kidnapping and suspicion of murder. Thirty years to life? Ring a bell?”

“That wasn’t my fault, f’crissakes! Please! You gotta help me!”

“That’s my line. Help me. You don’t get to use it. Way too late for that, I’m afraid, old soldier. You’re catching the next train, partner.”

“I can’t… I can’t breathe… I can’t catch my …”

“This is how it works, Harding.”

“What—”

“It’s so simple, isn’t it? Judgment Day. How it all works out in the end? In that dark hour when no bad deed goes unpunished.”

“I can’t… can’t…”

Harding Torrance opened his eyes wide in fear and pain. And as the blackness closed in around him he heard Spider Payne utter the last words his addled brain would ever register:

“You fuck me, right? But, in the end, Crystal and the Spider, they fuck you.”