HP Lovecraft's Magazine of Horror - Weird Tales

36 H .P . L O V E C R A F T ’S M A G A Z IN E O F H O R R O R
out to sleep in the store room. He poured me into a cab and
took me home where I sobbed out the pain hanging on to
Monigue, screaming how I should have taken better care of
Timmy, and now both of us were dead. She got me into bed,
sympathetic but scared. She’d never seen me so soul-bleeding
helpless before and couldn’t handle it: Good, white-bread
Monique who had no darkness in her.
That’s when everything changed for me, when it all started,
what I did next and what I do now. The voice was tiny at
first, a whisper in my mind: Timmy was calling me. All through
the day, at work or with Monique, the thought kept coming
back stronger each time. Timmy and I could always read each
other with just a look, think the same thought together, but this
was twilight zone.
I started dreaming it, Timmy reaching out to me and
mouthing my name with no sound. Again and again I dreamed
it, not silent any more but Timmy pleading, calling to the only
soul he ever had in this world to love or trust. Monique started
to rag on me big time: Where was my head at? Why didn’t I
ever think of her feelings sometimes, and she’d have no more
of me coming home wrecked from Feeney’s, that place catered
to a bad element . . . you get the picture. Sure, there was a bad
element in Feeney’s, mine. She was beginning to nag like a wife.
That split us for good. I kissed Monique bye-bye and moved
back into the ’hood, but the dreams kept coming. One day I’m
eating lunch in Burger King and Timmy’s voice came through
so loud that I jumped.
Danny, help me!
I put down the sandwich and closed my eyes around the
thought: Okay, Timmy. I hear you.
I never thought for a minute I was crazy, just desperate
enough by now to talk to Father Joe Reilly at St. Malachi’s, who
confirmed Timmy and me when we were kids. Weird as it
sounded, I gave it to him straight: Wherever Timmy was, he
still needed me, and what could I do about it? Father Joe’s an
understanding priest but wasn’t much help beyond suggesting
the prayer for the dead that I couldn’t ever remember. Out of
habit, I headed for Feeney’s because that’s where homeys went
for company and consolation, gossip, connections, who’s heard
from relatives in Belfast, and anything else they might need to
share.
Clarence Feeney, bless him, is a hands-on owner and operator.
Friday and Saturday nights he puts on extra bar help,
maybe a waitress on St. Pat’s Day, but mostly he’s there himself
watching the register because he doesn’t trust the help all
that much and it gets him away from Mrs. Feeney who was
born a living bitch and still is. But Clary I always liked. Come
evening he dims the lights over the back booths with a remote
switch and lets his regulars drink in peace. He was a pal of my
dad’s in the old days and sort of inherited me.
I remember, that was a Tuesday after Timmy died, a slow
night, so Feeney leans over the bar—fat since forever with silver
hair that never combed right and a worn-out face like every
old mick who ever came through Ellis Island—and he asks me,
“Ah, y’ look bad, Danny. Troubles?”
“You wouldn’t believe.” My question was important but I
kept it casual. “Charley Lenihan been in?”
e
Feeney took a napkin to a ring of wet on the mahogany
bar. “Not since.” Which meant not since Timmy died. In our
‘hood a lot of things don’t get spelled out. “Place smells better
without him.”
I finished my Bushmill’s and chased it with beer. “Amen.”
“Here, have one for Timmy, rest his soul.” Feeney pours
me a fresh Bush, but his expression is dead serious.
“Someone’s going to remove Charley one of these days. Simple
sanitation, people say.” And he holds my eyes with the clear
meaning in his own: Who better than you? Then like an afterthought:
“He’s hanging out at P.J. Clarke’s now.”
“Who said?”
“Little geek in a cheap suit. Comes in now and then. Don’t
know his name.”
I got the message. The job was mine to do, and from the
looks I got from homeys, Feeney was speaking for everyone.
Easy to say but a lot to think twice about at home later. I’ve
been outside the law often as in but nothing like this. Could I
put a gun to Charley Lenihan’s greasy head and do him? The
Westies would take a contract on anyone, but those humps did
messy work; I couldn’t afford them anyway. Do it myself, I’d
pass the point of no return, and there was enough church left
in me to know there’d be heavy dues. While I was mulling all
this before bed, it happened again—Timmy’s voice clear as if
he were in the room.
Danny, help me!
“I’ll try, honest,” I promised out loud. “Tell me how.”
Carlos knows. He’ll find you.
Whoever and whatever, I’m no hero. I wondered if I could
handle it. “Gotta know one thing, little brother. Was it Charley
with you at the warehouse?”
Who else? A real stand up guy, Charley. He ratted out when he
heard the cops and left me swingin’ in the wind.
“How’d it go down?”
Dark. I couldn’t see. Had an armload of DVDs, tripped up and
went ass over tea kettle. First cop in is this rookie kid. Says to put my
hands up, and all I’m holding is this stupid DVD. He thought I was
pointing a gun. Timmy’s laugh slid down the scale, dry and bitter.