This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Otherwise, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Text copyright © 2023 by Jason Mott

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

Published by Amazon Original Stories, Seattle

www.apub.com

Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Amazon Original Stories are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

ISBN-13: 9781662516719 (digital)

Cover design by Faceout Studio, Spencer Fuller

Cover illustration by Phantom City Creative

“You ever hear the one about the man with the bad luck?”

“Can’t say that I have.”

“You mind if I tell it?” Will asked.

“Considering the circumstances,” Barry replied, “I’m open to lightening the mood.”

A grin flashed across Will’s face. Perhaps there was even a little regret in it. “Okay,” he said through a sigh. He leaned back in his chair just a little, thoughtful as a sphinx. The chair, like everything else here, was expensive. One of those things that Will would never have. “A good joke is just a small story, you know. Only difference is the delivery.”

“I guess.”

“Okay,” Will said. He was the type to talk with his hands. He knew that about himself. So he finally put the shotgun down. Turned it away from Barry’s chest and placed it gently in his lap like bedding down a child. “I got it now.”

“Let’s hear it,” Barry said, finally able to breathe a little now that he wasn’t looking into the hollow eyes of the double-barrel. He rubbed the tension from his brow and cleared his throat, but the gun, and the fear that came with it, didn’t go away.

“So there’s this farmer,” Will began. “A solid enough kind of guy. Hardworking. God-fearing. Salt of the earth. All that. Maybe a little prickly and cold, but no more than the world can handle. And after years and years of slaving away at his farm, he realizes he’s never had a vacation. Not once. When he looks back on his life, he sees that every day has been nothing but work. Sweat and toil and blisters and a bent back from one sunrise to the next, every one stacked atop a million others, and all of it calling itself a life. And he’s at that age when you start to be able to see the end of the tunnel, you know? A life don’t go on forever. So he makes the decision to take a vacation, all by himself. He asks a friend to check in on his farm, and he hops a plane and flies off to the Bahamas. Yes sir! Freedom and sunshine and lazy days for the first time in his life! He sits on the beach for a whole week and basks in the sun like a damn alligator. Drinks anything anyone says he should try. Eats food he can’t even pronounce. For the first time in decades, he dances. He even cracks a happy, snaggletoothed smile. Best seven days he ever got his hands on.

“And then, because of how all things tend to come to an end, his vacation runs out and he gets on a plane to home, and before he knows it, he’s driving down that same old road towards that same old life. Back to cornfields and cow shit. It’s like the great times on the beach were all just a dream.

“When he’s almost home, he swings through his small town and stops off at the feedstore to pick up some supplies. Fertilizer. Dog food. All that kind of stuff. He’d bought enough before he left but, you know, animals are always going through things.”

“Everything’s gotta eat,” Barry said.

“Yeah,” Will said softly. He rubbed his stomach through his shirt. Then he continued: “Anyhow, Our Farmer’s loading up his truck, and one of his friends walks up to him. In fact, it’s the same guy that he asked to check in on his farm while he was gone. You know, just keep things running. ‘Welcome back,’ the Neighbor says.

“‘Everything work out okay while I was away?’ Our Farmer grumbles, ornery as a bear with a bad tooth.

“The Neighbor adjusts the wad of chaw in his mouth and spits and says, straight out, ‘Broke your shovel. Here’s a new one.’ He tosses a shiny new shovel into the back of Our Farmer’s truck and spits again.

“‘God damnit!’ Our Farmer yells. ‘My shovel?! My granddaddy made that shovel! Carved it hisself and give it to me. Been using that shovel for almost my whole damned life. I’m gone one week and you break it?’

“‘That’s about the size of it,’ the Neighbor says.

“‘Jesus on the cross!’ Our Farmer barks, still riled. ‘How’d it happen?’

“‘I hit a rock.’

“‘How?’

“‘Digging!’ the Neighbor says. ‘How else?’

“‘What was you digging for, ya blame idiot?!’

“‘I was digging the grave!’

“They both fall silent.

“‘Oh,’ Our Farmer says, a flash of shame quenching his fury. ‘What grave?’ He’s sheepish for the first time his neighbor can remember. Maybe the first time in his whole life.

“‘The one for the dog,’ the Neighbor says.

“‘What dog?’

“‘I guess now I gotta tell you your dog died,’ the Neighbor says, without so much as blinking.

“‘My dog died!’ Our Farmer shouts, his voice cracking. ‘How?!’

“‘Ate some bad horse.’

“‘Some bad horse?!’

“‘Yeah,’ the Neighbor says. ‘After your horse died.’

“‘My horse?!’

“‘When your barn caught fire.’

“‘My barn!’

“‘Must have been a cinder from where the house burned down. Never seen a fire that big before.’ He whistled in amazement.

“‘What?!’ Our Farmer, he’s trembling with shock at this point.

“‘Yeah,’ the Neighbor says. ‘Pretty sure your wife started that fire on her way out. When she left you, I mean.’

“‘Ellie?!’

“‘Something about you never taking her on a vacation. That’s what the note said, at least. She left it in the mailbox with your name on it. But, you know, I’m not the kind to pry.’

“‘Sweet Jesus!’ Our Farmer howls, barely able to breathe, barely able to get the words out. He crumples slowly to his knees. Right there on the sidewalk.

“‘Now, now,’ the Neighbor says. ‘It ain’t all bad. You’re missing the good news!’

“‘What’s that?’

“The Neighbor reaches into his pocket and fishes out the wife’s farewell note. He points a gnarled old finger at the last sentence of the letter. It read: ‘P.S. I left you that damned shovel you love so much.’”

And for the first time since Barry woke up and found his best friend holding a shotgun on him, for the first time since his best friend told him he had come to kill him, Barry Whitmore laughed. He and Will both did.

But like most things in life—even though it was wonderful and glimmering—it wouldn’t last.

“That was pretty funny,” Barry said, still chuckling.

“I’m surprised I remembered it all,” Will replied. As he spoke, his voice shifted from amused to strained. He bent forward in his chair a little and held one hand over his stomach and tightened all over like a piece of old clothing being wrung out.

“You okay?”

“I wouldn’t go that far,” Will replied.

Sweat glistened on Will’s brow, and for the first time tonight, Barry was able to really get a long look at his friend.

He had always been tall, tall and lean. But now his leanness had morphed into something else, something more hollow and yearning. He was thinner than he should be. His eyes were sunken to the skull, and his teeth were silhouetted in his cadaverous cheeks. He looked like loneliness and hunger given form. Like the two things could throw on a pair of jeans and a shirt and shamble through the darkness of the world and come hold a gun on you in the late hours of the night. Anytime he moved, the muscles in his neck rose to the surface in striations like corded wheat.

As Barry took in the sickly image of his friend, Will heaved all of a sudden. He covered his mouth like he was fighting off vomiting and made an awful, guttural sound. That brought out the smell again.

That smell.

It was the same rancid smell that Barry couldn’t escape since his friend first woke him up and marched him downstairs—thankfully, his wife and children hadn’t woken up in the process. It was a sour yet sweet smell. Old milk with a hint of cedar. Curdled Christmas.

It was earthy and horrible . . . and it was the smell of rot. Of something living and dying at the same time.

As Will worked to keep himself from vomiting, the smell billowed, filling the room and burning Barry’s nostrils. He reached for his friend.

“No,” Will said, grabbing the shotgun from his lap. He aimed the barrels at Barry’s head. “No, no.”

“Don’t! Please!”

As the pain subsided, Will wiped the sweat from his brow, and he clenched and released his fist. He exhaled slowly, his body relaxing through the breath. “Okay,” he said. “I know, I know. I’m getting there.”

“What?” Barry asked.

Will sat up straight, finally released from whatever was going on in his stomach. He cleared his throat and turned and looked around Barry’s home. “You’re doing so well,” he said.

“Listen,” Barry said. “Whatever this is, it’s got to stop. My family is upstairs, man. I don’t know if you’re drunk or what, but you need to stop this.” Again, he reached for his friend.

Then came the two crisp metallic clicks of the hammers of the shotgun being cocked.

“It’ll part you in two,” Will said quickly. “You know that. We been hunting enough times for you to know that.”

Barry froze.

“I’ve kept them out of it this far,” Will said, raising his eyes upward, indicating the family sleeping upstairs. “Ain’t I?”

Barry went to speak, but Will shushed him.

Will rested the end of the barrels of the gun on the table, still aimed at Barry, still cocked and ready, still just a finger twitch away from the end of the world. He exhaled and rolled his head from side to side, stretching his neck muscles. Then his attention caught on something. “Just look at this place,” Will said. He stood, turned, and looked at Barry’s home. “I mean really stop and look at it. Come here.”

Barry followed Will out of the kitchen and into the living room as the two of them gazed around.

Barry’s house was a marvel.

Success and fame had come to Barry a few years back, great and reaching. Possibly even the type of prosperity and accolades—and wealth; a person couldn’t forget the wealth—that might reach beyond the confines of a single life. Success immemorial maybe. Success that his children would grow into and, after them, maybe even Barry’s grandchildren. And with this success had come Barry’s new home—also great and also reaching.

Still high on new money, a few years back Barry found and hired an architect up in Boston who specialized in houses designed in the spirit of Frank Lloyd Wright. The design took nearly a year and the construction nearly three. But the result was the stuff of legends.

Barry’s home—“the Whitmore Home,” as folks too new to town to know any better had come to call it—was full of angles and open space, “full of air and opportunities.” At least, that’s how the architect described it.

The house had an infinity of nooks and crannies. A person could come visit with Barry and his family a dozen times and, each time, find some new storage pocket or hidden shelf or even a hidden room or two that the family kept mostly to themselves. To come and visit Barry’s home was to be welcomed into a space filled with secrets, a space that wanted to be explored a little more each time. “That’s what a friendship is supposed to be,” Barry had told Will once when he mentioned how there was always something new to learn about Barry’s house. “I feel like there are parts of this place even I don’t know about.”

And, of course, it wasn’t just the architecture that made Barry’s home special. It was all the things he’d filled it with. In the last few years, as his star rose higher and higher, he filled his manicured home with the adornments and ornaments of his success, of his growing legend. The walls were crammed with magazine covers, awards, photographs: Barry with Hollywood celebrities, their smiles glimmering like the bright lights of their town; grinning politicians who, with only their eyes, seemed to be asking for your trust and raising your suspicion at the same time; exiled writers and hunted artists and flavor-of-the-month disposable icons who smelled just as much of new money and fear of returning to poverty as Barry did.

And all the stars now hanging on the walls of the Frank Lloyd Wright–style home designed by an eccentric from Boston—who charged Barry double because he knew Barry was fresh money and didn’t know any better—every single person in every single photo had all come here to Barry’s home to have their picture taken. They sought him out—and his grand, overpriced house built in the Carolina backwoods—like the destination of a pilgrimage. They all stood within its manicured walls in the middle of a nowhere town that Barry had grown up in and, when success rained down upon him, refused to leave, and they brought bodyguards and entourages and Secret Service agents as if they couldn’t resist the allure of Barry, his fame, and his good fortune.

The mountains of this world came to Muhammad.

And maybe that’s what Will had become to his friend: just another mountain come calling. Only this one threatened to come crumbling down on Barry’s head.

The two men moved quietly through the house, Will walking ahead a little, but always with his body turned at an angle so that the shotgun was just a twitch away from ending Barry.

“Look at these paintings,” Will said, standing in the living room, his neck craning around and his eyes wide.

The one over the mantel was worth at least $50,000. The one on the eastern wall? Twice that. The one in the hallway that led to the office? Probably four times as much. Enough money to change the lives of a dozen people hung in silent, private repose.

“I remember when you bought this one,” Will said.

He stood before an Italian seaside: languid shore, blue-and-white homes etched into the mountainside, a lone child sitting on the beach gazing out over a motionless sea. The two men stared, and for a moment, they could both hear the sea breeze cascade over the mountains, smell the salt air, feel the young boy’s worry about his future.

“What was the first thing I asked you when you got this?”

“Will . . .”

“No, c’mon. What’s the first thing I asked you? And I know you remember, because you lectured me about it.”

“How much it cost?”

“Yeah,” Will said. “‘How much did it run you?’ Because that’s the kind of shit people like me want to know when they see something like this hanging up in a house instead of a museum. Don’t get me wrong, I like art as much as anybody. But paintings don’t get you to work. They don’t help buy your son the third pair of shoes this year because he’s hit a growth spurt. You can’t burn them when the power company turns you off in the middle of January and your daughter gotta sleep with five blankets and gets a bladder infection from holding her piss every night because it’s too cold in the house to get up and go to the bathroom. Well, then again,” he chuckled, “I guess you could burn them, but in that case, you’re just burning money. Which means you shouldn’t have bought them in the first place.” He shook his head.

“Beautiful things like these, they’re not for people like me—maybe they were once, but then . . . Well, the point is they don’t keep the lights on. They only ever make you money when you sell them, and if you get to the point where you gotta sell them, well, all you did was spend money to have your heart broken because you know you’ll never get it back. That’s a type of heartbreak I’d rather do without. And who the fuck in this world can afford to have anything that don’t earn its keep? You ever thought about just how much time and energy and years of their life most people spend just trying to stay alive?”

“All of it,” Barry replied. “Life’s hard. There are people out there who spend every second of it just trying not to go under. But . . . I offered you help, Will.”

Will sucked his teeth. “What were you going to do? Adopt me and my family? Fund us for life? It was like the bottom of my life opened up and everything drained out, day by day. What was your money gonna do about that?”

Barry sighed.

“That’s right,” Will said.

Then, without warning, his body clenched and he leaned forward and vomited blood onto the floor in front of him, drops and flecks of it splattering the very painting he was admiring. The sound of his vomiting was otherworldly. Like some horrible creature off in the distance of an unknown and haunted land.

The blood pooled at his feet. But all the while he kept his attention on Barry, in case he tried to escape.

When it was over, he spit a glob of phlegm and blood and wiped his mouth on the back of his hand and wiped his hand on the leg of his pants and said, with heaving breath, “Every second of every day, all people like me think about is staying alive.” Will looked at the painting now splashed with his own vomit. “Sorry,” he said solemnly, as if speaking to the painting itself.

Barry grimaced. “Will,” he said softly. “Whatever’s wrong with you, we’ll figure it out. I promise we’ll get help.”

“I’m past that,” Will replied. “We both are. One thing I’ve come to understand in life is that, sometimes, you just have to accept the way things are. Sometimes, no amount of hoping or praying will change a situation.” He turned back to the paintings on the wall. “Do you have any idea what it was like watching you get all the success?”

“It couldn’t have been easy.”

“It was wonderful,” Will said. “Every day was better than the last for my friend. Felt like Christmas morning over and over again. It was beautiful.”

“So where does the shotgun come into all that beauty?”

“Fair enough,” he said. “Let’s go back into the kitchen. I don’t think I have much time left.”

The two men walked back and sat again at the table.

“Where did I leave off?” Will asked.

“Before or after the joke?” Barry replied. His voice was solid for the first time since Will woke him up out of his slumber and led him quietly down the stairs to the kitchen table at gunpoint. He didn’t know why, but he was less afraid all of a sudden. Maybe he was just getting used to the situation. He knew that, given the proper lack of alternatives, anything could be gotten used to.

“Before the joke,” Will replied.

“You said that someone named Henry started making you think about me,” Barry said.

“Yeah,” Will said. “That’s about right.” He rubbed his stomach through his shirt again. “Even now,” he said, “you’re the only thing on his mind.”

Barry asked, “Are you ever going to tell me who Henry is?”

“You already know,” Will replied.

“No, I don’t,” Barry replied. “Why are we doing this? Why torture me like this?”

“Because of Henry.”

“Jesus, Will. Who the fuck is Henry?”

Will began to unbutton his shirt. He grimaced a little, looking anxious as each button came undone. “I’ll reintroduce you,” Will said.

And then, both slowly and somehow suddenly, his shirt was open and Barry finally saw Henry. Now it was his turn to vomit.

Barry barely made it to the sink in time.

As the water ran, washing away the bile, images danced in Barry’s mind: where Will’s stomach should have been, there was only a fleshy purple and red mass. Flesh and bone and teeth and tendrils flickering and wavering and reaching, and Barry thought he heard a sound, like air moving through reeds. It sounded, almost, like lungs and throats and mouths beginning to speak.

Whatever it was shifted in form, switching from roiling, fleshy stomach to this otherworldly horror. Gone one moment, then there the next, as if seeking a way to unfurl in the too-tight quarters of Will’s gut.

But even before the sight of it, there was the smell. Earthy and hideous. Venom and rot. The stench had seeped into Will’s skin and hair, perhaps even his soul. It knocked Barry on his heels.

Then, almost as quickly as it began, Will’s shirt was closed and there were only afterimages, like shutting your eyes after looking into the sun. Barry still saw visions of hideous flesh. Tendrils and hair. Viscosity. Talons and teeth. A collage of all the horror that, now that he was retching into the sink again, he could not fully remember. All he knew for certain was that he would never be the same.

“Yeah,” Will said. “Tell me about it.”

“Christ!” Barry yelled.

Will shushed him. “Quiet now. You got a family upstairs sleeping.”

“What the fuck is that?”

“Did you know that cancer patients are told to name their tumor?”

“What?”

“Yeah,” Will said. “They name their tumor. I learned that with Hayden. I think the idea is that it makes it less scary. You can make it less scary if you think of this horrible thing as just a person that you’re trying to send away, instead of thinking of it as death itself living inside your body. So it goes into remission, and you say you’ve sent So-and-So home. Then when you go to the doctor because it’s come back, you can say, ‘So-and-So came back,’ instead of saying your death is at the door again, knocking a little harder this time. It’s a way to cope, I guess. But, from what I hear, it helps. Can really make it feel not quite as scary as it might be.”

He looked at his stomach again.

“I met Henry about a year ago, I guess. Just showed up out of nowhere one day. At least, that’s what I thought at the time. But I’ll get back to that. He didn’t look quite like this, though. At first, he looked like just a rash. I thought it was eczema or something because, you know, I get that off and on. Even when he started growing, I wasn’t too worried about it. I went to the doctor, and they thought the same thing I thought: hives or something. So they gave me prescriptions for creams and salves. Sometimes it seemed to work. But, looking back on it now, obviously it was never working. Henry just did what he wanted to do. Sometimes he wanted to be small, hidden. Sometimes he didn’t. Overall, though, he kept getting a little bigger each day. I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t a little fascinating—in its own way, you know?

“Here was this rash that got bigger at this slow, imperceptible pace. One skin cell at a time, it seemed like. And when I went to the doctor again and they looked at it—and maybe even marveled a little bit—they just gave me another prescription and sent me home, and I was just stupid enough to think that it was going to work. And then the days turned into weeks, and it kept not working and Henry kept getting bigger and bigger, and then something changed. I can’t even really say exactly what. All I can say is that it did. He started to take on a personality. Started to keep me up at night. I couldn’t sleep on my stomach because it felt like I was hurting someone. Like I was smothering him.”

“Jesus,” Barry said.

“Henry started to become this person that I knew. He started to become a friend. He had thoughts. He had a voice. He had a name: Henry.”

“And you think I did that to you?” Barry asked. “Just to be sure, you think your rash turned into this thing. And then it told you that I gave it to you?”

“You did. You did this and all the rest.”

“The rest of what?”

“First, Hayden got sick. Six months later she was gone.” His voice cracked as he spoke his dead daughter’s name.

“That was cancer, Will,” Barry said. “Actual cancer.”

“And then there was Tommy,” Will said, and again his voice faltered. “How the hell does an eleven-year-old boy have a heart attack? Just out playing baseball and drops dead right there in the middle of the field. How does that happen? You ever stop and ask yourself that? I did. For months after. For years.” He wiped away a tear. “A father is supposed to protect his children from the world, you know? How come we have a word for a child that loses their parents but no word for a parent that loses their children? That seem right to you?”

“It doesn’t,” Barry said.

“Henry told me it was you,” Will said. “Told me everything. I didn’t believe him at first, but he’s a persistent guy. Got a patience like you can’t believe. Not the type to really get in and yell at you about anything. Just sorta makes his case. Quietly. Over and over again until, finally, you don’t have much choice but to listen. It took me a long time to understand what Henry was trying to tell me. And even as he laid it all out for me, it took me even longer to believe it. But I think, deep down, I knew it the whole time.”

Then there was that sound again: wind and air and mouths. A shiver ran down Barry’s spine. He thought he heard words.

“I hate the word ‘karma,’” Will said. “I think people don’t really have any clue what the word means. We’ve just turned it into something it was never meant to be. When people think about karma, it’s basically ‘anytime bad things happen to someone you don’t like.’ But that’s not really what karma is. Karma is about balance. Hell, the whole universe only exists because of balance. For any one thing, there’s an equal amount of an opposite thing, you know? And that’s how we all get along. We move through all of this balance.

“But let’s not confuse balance with justice. Those are two different animals. Justice is all about fairness, and I never said the universe was fair. No sir. Nothing about this universe is fair, and the only people who believe that are the people who haven’t lived long enough to have their stupidity corrected by life.”

“So what does this have to do with me?”

“This brings me exactly to you,” Will said.

He leaned back in his chair and placed his hand on his stomach for a moment. “Sometimes you have good luck. Sometimes you have bad luck. Everything can ultimately be traced back to luck in some form, right?”

He actually waited for Barry to answer.

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

“Not maybe,” Will replied. “Definitely. Think about it: You were born a man, right? Men have it easier in this world than women, right? That’s lucky for you.”

“I don’t think that’s the same thing,” Barry said.

“You were born an American. Born into the wealthiest nation in the history of human civilization at a time when it has the highest standard of living of, again, any civilization in the history of humanity. Don’t you think that’s at least a little bit lucky?

“Good health,” Will continued. “That’s usually genetics. And what are genetics? You can’t plan to be born into a family of alcoholics or a family of straight edges. There’s no point before you come into this world where you’re given a list of options that you can pick through. I mean, can you imagine if you were? Which boxes would you leave unchecked? You ever think about that?”

“I don’t think I do,” Barry replied.

“Nobody does. At least, not consciously. But it happens. It happens when they see a news story about something terrible happening to someone, and they think to themselves how glad they are that it didn’t happen to them. Or they see somebody born with some sort of defect, and they think to themselves how lucky they are that they didn’t have that fate.”

“That’s horrible,” Barry said.

“I know,” Will replied. “But it’s true. Nobody wants it to be true, but it is. Most people won’t ever even admit it to themselves, but that doesn’t make it any less true. Just because nobody wants it to be true doesn’t mean it’s not real.”

He laughed then. It was a dark, ominous laugh.

“What’s so funny?” Barry asked.

“I know the feeling. The feeling of knowing something but not wanting it to be true, and so you just sorta pretend that, well, that everything isn’t the way you know it is. That’s how I felt when Hayden got her diagnosis. That’s how I felt when I held Tommy out on that ball field and the only heat in his body was from that fucking summer sun. That’s how I felt when Sam finally left because all we seemed to be doing was reminding each other of the fact that we’d both lost our children and lost each other along the way . . .

“Then came Henry. And for every question I had about my life and all my bad luck, he had an answer. He told me what you did. He told me how you’ve been taking my luck for all these years. Siphoning it off and building up your own. Because of you, I’m like that old farmer in the joke. Everything just keeps going wrong, again and again, the longer my story goes on. Meanwhile, your star never stops rising. Burns brighter and brighter every fucking day.”

“Jesus, Will.”

“All of this shit you have, all of it . . . it’s because of me. It’s because of me!” His fist slammed on the table. “Stolen from me like a damn vampire!” The gun shook in his hand. “You get all of this, and I get nothing but bad luck,” Will said. “Bad luck and hard times and two dead children and an empty house and nobody to greet me in the mornings but this fucking rot in the pit of my stomach.” He shook his head. “It’s not right. It ain’t balanced.”

“You’re right,” Barry said, seeing the gun shake. Hearing the dark whispering sound again. “It’s not. You’ve had a lot of bad luck. I’m sorry about that.”

“Are you?”

“Of course I am,” Barry said.

“But are you willing to admit that you’re the cause of it?”

“Admit that I stole your luck?”

“You took it all. Little by little over the years. Stole my family.”

“Wait!” Barry said, seeing an opening. “If I stole all your luck—which I didn’t, by the way—but if I did, what does that have to do with Sam and the kids? Your children died. And that’s horrible. I cried with you, for God’s sake! After all of that, you’re going to blame me for what happened to them?”

“Yes,” Will said. “I was infected. You infected me. And my infection killed them. I was like a carrier for it. Whatever good luck they might have had in their lives, I swallowed it up. I took it from them, and that’s your fault.”

Will’s hand began to twitch nervously on the stock of the shotgun.

“Henry told me. He told me that he swallows up all of my luck and then gives it to you. I don’t know how. It don’t really matter how. But it’s true. He works for you, making you fatter and fatter with luck, making you rich because of my luck. Making you famous because of my luck. Making you healthy because of my luck. All the while my world falls apart, brick by brick.

“When he told me all this, I didn’t believe any of it. I’ve had shit luck for over a decade. And that’s when it hit me: I only met Henry about a year ago, but he’s been with me for years. I think maybe he’s just finally running out of things to take from me.

“You met your wife right around the time mine left. Your children came into this world a year after each of mine left it. I even wonder sometimes if you stole their souls. Well,” Will said, “it’s about time to put a stop to all of this. It’s about time that I got my luck back. And if I can’t get mine back, I’m not gonna let you just walk off with it.” Will looked down at the gun in his hand. “Say the words.”

“Will,” Barry said. “This shit isn’t funny. Twenty damn years we’ve been best friends. Yeah, I know, you’ve had a shitty last few years. I’ve seen it. I was there for it. I was there for you! But that doesn’t mean that I’ve seen anything that would lead you to do this. We’ve been together for too long for whatever is going on to end up like this.”

“Stop,” Will said.

“Listen,” Barry continued, seeing his friend in pain. “I know that things have been bad. You’ve lost it all. And I’m sorry about that. I’m so, so, so damn sorry about that. What you’ve been through . . . I wouldn’t wish that on anybody. Not a single damned person. But this, whatever this is, this whole saying you’re going to kill me . . . it doesn’t make sense. Why would you kill me?”

“Because it’s your fault!” Will shouted. “All of it. Every bit of it. I lay it all at your front door. In the last few months the thought came to me. Really came to me. Stuck in my head that you were the one that caused all of it. Maybe Henry put the thought there, but either way the thought was the same. Piece by piece, little by little, over the years, you’re the one that’s been the cause of it all. You’re the one that’s really been doing all of this to me.”

“So you’re going to kill me because the voice inside your head—inside your stomach—told you to kill me?” Barry asked.

“That’s about the size of it,” Will said.

Barry thought for a moment. The two men looked at one another over the table. Barry could see Will tightening his grip on his gun. “Say the words,” Will said.

“Will . . .”

“Say the words.”

“No.” Barry shook his head. “No. I’m not going to say them. You’re going to have to kill me in cold blood, with my whole family sleeping upstairs, so that they can hear the gunshot and come running down and see Uncle Will standing over what used to be their daddy.” Barry sat up straight. “I’m not going to admit to something I didn’t do. If you’re going to come into my house and kill me, if you’re going to be that kind of a monster, then I’m going to make you go all the way. I’m going to make you be the monster.”

And then the long moment came. It was a moment that stretched back across decades of life and laughter and friendship. A moment that called to mind all that was and would never be again: Barry and Will spending late nights in drunken laughter, the years when they both found love and got married and settled down quietly, the tears when Will’s children died and Barry held his friend in the late hours of the night as the man shuddered and wept and called out to God and the rest of the universe in anger. All of it came and went. All the jokes, all the secrets, all the nothings that make up a friendship that spans decades.

They all came and went in the moment just before Will’s finger squeezed the trigger.

They all came and went in the moment just before Will’s finger stopped a hair’s distance away from the gun going off.

And then the moment was gone and there was Will sitting there, his hands unable to move on the gun, his eyes going wide with fear and confusion.

And there was Barry, watching.

“I’m sorry,” Barry said. “I really am.”

“What?” Will replied, his voice quaking. He tried to pull the trigger again, but his finger still did nothing.

“This next part is going to hurt,” Barry said. “And I’m sorry for that.” Then he stood and walked around the table and carefully pried the gun from Will’s hand. “I always hate this part.”

Will’s body trembled. He grabbed his stomach, only it was not his willingness that caused the action. His body moved of its own accord in sudden jolts and awkward jerks, like a badly choreographed marionette.

His hands folded stiffly over his stomach. He opened his mouth to scream, but the only thing that escaped was a low, ghastly exhalation that did not sound as though it came from his body. It was like the sigh of something else.

Everything was about to go poorly for Will, but it couldn’t be avoided. It was an inevitability. It was the thing that was always going to happen. He stared at Barry with pleading eyes. And when Barry only watched coldly, Will slowly began to understand. Slowly began to come to grips with reality.

“What . . . what’s happening?” he asked, his voice barely more than a whisper. No matter how hard he tried to pull air into his lungs, it came in thin waves, like being underwater and breathing through a straw that was slowly leaking.

“Don’t try to speak,” Barry said. “Just let this part happen. It’ll be over soon, and you won’t have to worry about anything. But, for what it’s worth, you were right. I hope that . . . I hope that helps, Will.”

“What’s happening?” Will asked, his body trembling and convulsing.

“The end of the pain,” Barry said, sitting again. And that was the truth. It was painful, Will’s life. Barry had watched it for several years now, and the pain had hurt him just as much as it hurt his friend. “I’m sorry,” he said. “For all of this. I’m sorry for what happened to your family. It’s no one’s fault, really. It’s just the way the world is. Like you said: there’s a balance to all of this. A balance to the way things work. It’s like that joke you told about the man with all the bad luck. That’s all this is.”

“You killed them?” Will asked.

“No,” Barry said. “Will . . . no. I loved them. They were family to me. You know that.” He leaned back in his chair, trying to find a way to make himself understood. “There is no evil here,” he said. “You’ve got to understand that. I’m not here to harm you. I just . . . have to live, don’t I? And Henry, as you call him, helps me live. Just like your body helps me live. I didn’t kill them. I didn’t do anything to them. They were just too close to you and your misfortune. That’s all. They were caught up in the turmoil that was going on with you, like a swimmer pulled out to sea by a riptide, unseen and inescapable. And when they died, I cried just as truly as anyone.”

Will was bent fully in half with pain. His hands were still wrapped around his stomach, and he could feel something moving inside. He could feel Henry . . . doing . . . something.

“It’s almost over,” Barry said.

“What are you?”

“Your friend,” Barry said. “As for the rest, I’m pretty sure he already told you.” He sighed. “I’m not the villain here. There isn’t one. This is just nature at work. This is truly just life doing what life does. You see, if it’s any consolation, you’re not crazy. You never were. Believe it or not, I think it’s important to say that aloud. I think it’s important that you know that you were right, this whole time, you were right. All of it. I’m sorry that I had to lie to you like that in the beginning. It’s just that, sometimes, this moment comes when the thing inside you wants to return to me early, and I don’t like it when that happens. So I had to deny it all for as long as I could in case our friend, the one you call Henry, could be talked out of all this. But it’s clear that he can’t. And that’s fine. It’s all part of the process.”

“What . . . ?”

Will’s hands finally uncurled from his stomach. Of their own accord, his hands made their way up to his mouth. His right hand opened his mouth by the upper jaw and his left hand grabbed his lower jaw. And then the two hands began pulling.

Will tried to scream but, again, there was no air, no control. Only pain as he felt the muscles and flesh begin to tear under the pressure of his own hands pulling his mouth open wider and wider. When he heard the gruesome pop and felt the pain of his jaw dislocating, he finally screamed.

It was a scream so loud and terrible that it seemed to shake the walls of the house.

“His name’s not Henry,” Barry said, ignoring the scream. “The thing inside you. I’m not sure what its name is. I don’t know where it came from. I don’t know much about it. Only that it is terribly, impossibly ancient. Older than humans. Maybe even, somehow, older than this world. I don’t really know. It feeds on luck and good fortune. And it keeps me and my family on the right side of fate as long as I keep it fed by moving him from person to person over time. It can never devour too much luck.”

Will was pleading with his eyes.

“I gave him to you a few years ago. Yes, right before things in your life started to go so badly and mine started to go so well. I didn’t really think that it would lead to the death of your children, your family. But by then it was too late. And I’m sorry for that, Will. I really am. But I had a family of my own to start. And I needed all the good luck I could get for them.”

By now Will’s jaw had fully separated from his mouth. Blood flowed out and covered the table, and the tendrils—hairy and searching—came forth from his gaping maw and covered his face, pushing against him, bringing Henry—or whatever the thing was—out of Will’s body.

For Will, the pain was unbearable. He would not survive this, and there was nothing he could do to stop it.

“Just bad luck,” Barry said. “That’s all. Nothing malicious. Just . . . just bad luck, Will. I’m sorry.”

It was Barry’s oldest daughter, Angela, that came downstairs first. She always was a light sleeper, and Will’s final scream must have woken her. When she turned the corner into the kitchen, she almost let out a scream of her own. There was her father’s friend, Uncle Will, slumped across the kitchen table, a table covered in blood and gore that pooled onto the floor beneath.

Her breaths came hard and fast.

“Shhh,” Barry said softly. He came around the table and wrapped his arms around her. “Shhh. It’s okay.” He kneeled beside her and rubbed her head. “Now, whatever happens, don’t scream,” he said.

“What . . . ?” she asked.

And then she saw it. In the corner of the kitchen, at the end of a grisly trail, was the timeless creature, waiting, looking at her.

Her breaths came quickly again. “Is that it?” she said, finally.

“It is,” Barry said. “Just like I told you. He keeps us safe, and now we have to keep him safe.”

Angela was pale and looked as though she might scream or faint or, somehow, both. So Barry took her hand. Her breathing slowed. “We . . . we have to find him another home now?” she asked.

“That’s right,” Barry said. “Or else we might lose all these nice things we have.” He sighed. “I’m glad it was you that saw this. One day you’ll have to take care of him, and then all good things can happen to you and your family. So you need to learn this.” Then Barry stood and lifted his daughter in his arms. She was still trembling, still staring at the creature as that familiar sound—like lungs and breaths and teeth beginning to speak—filled the kitchen.

“You and me,” Barry said, “we’ll clean this up before your mother and your sister wake up, and then we’ll find a new home for our friend, and then things will go right back to normal.”

“And we’ll have the best of luck, right, Daddy? Just like you said?” Angela asked.

“That’s right, honey. And then we’ll have the best of luck, like always.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Photo © 2021 Mallory Cash

Jason Mott is the New York Times bestselling author of four novels, including the National Book Award winner Hell of a Book, The Crossing, The Wonder of All Things, and The Returned. Jason was also a nominee for the Pushcart Prize and the NAACP Image Award, as well as longlisted for the Carnegie Medals for Excellence.