Forgotten Blood: chapter two
The Forgotten Angel
Table of Contents: for all available episodes.
Chapter Two
In the dark border of dead streetlamps, headlights of passing cars lit a horse and its rider. From behind ratty curtains, Caroline watched.
Tommy’s grip tightened on her arm. “Who is it?”
A soft whimper escaped her throat. Neither man nor horse moved. Shadows of the night obscured the rider’s face, but he was hunched over and thin, like death itself.
Tommy spun her around and pressed the barrel of the gun against her cheek, the reek of burnt powder still pungent, a taste of the hell which had just swallowed the cheapest dealer this side of Tennessee. She knew better than to close her eyes again, but she couldn’t bring herself to look into his puffy face and dilated eyes. Everywhere else, she saw blood. It dotted the floor and the ancient couch. It grew in an arrangement upon the wall and blossomed on the ceiling.
Tommy shook her. “What’s he doing here? You call him?”
Tommy shoved her onto the trash-strewn floor, and she skidded on carpet and food wrappers sticky with blood and who knew what else. She bit back a scream and looked up, expecting death but finding only the window and nothing visible through the window but a hint of moonlight upon clouds.
Tommy stood at the door.
“Don’t do nothing,” she said. “We ain’t done nothing.”
Outside, the horse snorted.
Tommy danced in the doorway’s wide-open maw, his gun an extension of his hand, pointing, demanding. Yet, the threats and bellows Caroline expected didn’t come.
“He looks a hundred,” Tommy said. “Your old man’s really an old man.”
“He’s got nothing to do with me.”
Tommy raised his voice, only for it to be lost to the city. “You best be moving on. You ain’t wanted here.”
Caroline pushed herself to her knees and crawled to the window. The rider swung over a leg and dropped to the strip of grass between the sidewalk and the street. His eyes met hers and left no question.
Words escaped her lips. “I think he’s come for Gunther.”
“Uh?”
“Old man on a horse, outside the house where he’s just murdered?”
“Self defense,” Tommy muttered.
“That man’s come collecting souls.”
“Bullshit.”
“Either that, or he’s just an old man on a horse.”
The old man moved.
Tommy stepped back, muttering. “Some senile coot.”
The old man stood in the doorway. His eyes moved from Tommy’s gun to Caroline’s face.
The old man spoke. “He do that to you?'“
The gun fire. A windshield shattered. The horse bolted down the street, and Tommy dangled from the end of the old man’s grip, blood frothing at his mouth.
“Sorry, Tommy,” Caroline said. “It was your time, I reckon.”
Tommy’s body fell to the floor, and Caroline waited for the old man to vanish in a roiling puff of black smoke. The old man stared into the room, his eyes wide and confused, just an old man after all.
Caroline pulled herself to her feet. “Come on, Mister. Let’s find that horse of yours.”
-END-
Thaddeus Thomas
Discover all my flash pieces here.
