Midnight Meeting

A buoy clanged in the distance, and an unsettling shiver clawed its way down Harry's spine. The sensation he'd been having, lately, of feeling as though he was being stalked, came seeping back into the pit of his gut, stirring his ulcer. He dismissed his growing paranoia, rubbing his potbelly, irrationally trying to rub away the pain shooting through the extra twenty pounds hanging over his belt. A tall, cold one was in order once this meeting was over and done with.

Harry licked his dry lips, craving a beer. He squinted, gazing around at the ghost of a wharf. Abandoned warehouses sat like hollow shadows. Patches of grass grew high enough to claw at first floor windows. Every other lamppost eked out light as dull and jaundiced as the lamppost he stood near. He shook his head in pity at how hard times a few years back ruined the once vibrant section of the riverfront. The market where Harry gutted fish for a living when he was Molansky's age never recovered.

Where the hell was that kid, anyway? Harry glanced at his watch. “Ten to midnight,” he sighed. Molansky was twenty minutes late. He thought of making another call on his cell phone, but decided to just keep waiting. Molansky said he was on his way when he'd first called.

Harry started pacing. Doubt sneaked into his thoughts as he treaded back and forth. Had he made a mistake after all by recruiting the twenty something man to help him kill Jenkins?

As soon as he'd spotted Paul Molansky, he'd known he was down on his luck. He was a perfect additional stitch in a scar of a place like The Dying Pelican, helping to keep the watering hole on life support. The bar crawled with a certain kind of clientele; usually men who, despite being close to losing what little they possessed in life, would still spend their last bucks on a beer or a shot of whiskey. Paul was younger than most of the men who trudged in, but sensing his familiar despair, Harry took the chance and reached out.

It was a gamble that paid off; unlike the others he'd been taking over the past few months. Paul liked him, and got a kick out of his tales of past transgressions. Including the job he and his longtime partner had recently pulled.

Harry gained Paul's trust, and came to learn that the kid needed a wad of cash to pay his debt to his crystal meth dealer. Soon after the pair met, they found themselves hunched over a rocky table with uneven legs as Harry filled Paul in on his latest scheme and asked him if he wanted in on it, leaving out, of course, details like why he truly wanted to kill Jenkins, and that he planned on getting rid of the man sitting across from him, too, after their deal was done.

Philip Jenkins had been dead for two weeks. Tonight, Harry was going to murder his newest accomplice.

He knew he'd have to make it quick. He'd already diverted Molansky's suspicions about him wanting to deliver the money out here, along the decrepit part of the wharf, by convincing the younger man that neither of them knew where the other lived and that they should keep it that way. He was sure Paul would show up, and when he did, a bullet or two was going to be planted between his eyes before he could realize there wasn't a bag filled with thirty thousand dollars waiting on him as promised.

The buoy sounded off again as a breeze whipped across the water, brushing Harry's face as it whisked by.

He stumbled backwards, caught off guard by the icy fingers reaching from within the wind to scrape across his jaw.

He shoved his hand beneath his jacket, and then yanked the revolver from his shoulder holster.

Two minutes ticked by before he laughed at himself poised in a shoot-to-kill stance, his bowed legs slightly parted, his arms outstretched, the gun clasped in his hand and aimed at the water. “Get a grip,” he mumbled, “It sure ain't The Jenkins you're expecting to climb outta that river, is it? Not the son or the father.”

Harry laughed aloud, his belly and shoulders shaking in unison. If he'd been surrounded by soil, he would've been more concerned about imagining an otherworldly visit. But since that wasn't the case, he slid his gun back into its holster, and then dug a cigarette from the crumpled pack in his jacket pocket.

With the pad of his thumb, he flicked the tiny wheel of his plastic lighter. A blue flame as quick as a serpent's tongue darted out, and ignited the cigarette's tip. As white coils of secondhand smoke contorted and lingered in the air above his head, he thought of Philip Jenkins. Of how they'd been friends for so long, he'd forgotten how many years they'd actually known each other. Time never mattered as long as the jobs they pulled kept them living how they desired--nothing too fancy, just houses of their own, new cars every couple of years, and cash in their pockets to lure the women in the bars or to pay the women from the street corners.

But maybe they should've kept a closer eye on time. The years fell away, and before they knew it, their mirrors reflected wrinkling skin, balding heads, gray hair, and fat bellies.

He and Philip had grown into two pathetic, old men who'd gambled away the small possessions they'd managed to hold on to in their later years.

Philip had urged Harry to try to come to terms with the mess they'd ultimately made of their lives, but Harry had other plans. He wanted to rob the safe where he knew Frank Jenkins, his pal's father, kept cash and other expensive goodies.

After a couple of weeks of feeding and boozing up Philip to convince him to join him, his friend finally gave the green light the night he showed up, banging on the door of Harry's one room efficiency apartment, his pounding fist threatening to knock the door off its hinges. Philip's millionth and one argument with Frank was what it finally took. But Philip had rearranged the job, hiring Harry to help kill his father.

Harry tilted his head backwards, and blew smoke to the starless sky above the wharf. He grinned, remembering the magic numbers when Philip had informed him of Frank Jenkins' life insurance policy. “A hundred and fifty thousand,” Philip had whispered, his face close enough for Harry to feel and smell his hot, scotch breath as they drank and schemed at a corner table in The Dying Pelican.

“Frank's taking a shitload of pills, these days, trying to cheat death,” Philip had gone on with a smirk. “He's bound to get confused about what to take, when to take it, and how many.” Harry'd nodded, listening intently as the elder Jenkins' death was planned so it appeared as natural as possible.

A week later, Frank Jenkins was dead of a heart attack caused by a fatal overdose of potassium.

After as little money as possible was spent on the funeral, the men were still left with more than a hundred thousand to split. But Harry had changed the plan. Again. Without Philip's knowledge.

Harry knew Philip would not part with more money than what he'd agreed to part with. But Harry owed his bookie nearly seventy thousand, thanks to outrageous interest charges on late payments. Even with the fifty thousand Philip promised him, Harry still fell short of what he needed by twenty big ones. And there was only one other way for him to get his hands on more money. There was only one other way for him to keep from being beaten and shot, and then having his body hacked into pieces by his bookie's goons.

Water rippled at the wharf's edge, snatching Harry's attention. He half-ignored the quivering water.

Until the water vibrated as though something stirred from the depth of the river's mud.

Harry flung his cigarette into the water. He inched forward, his palm stuffed beneath his jacket, and resting on the butt of his gun.

A small wave crashed onto the wharf, thrusting water onto his shoe. He staggered backward. Afraid of falling into the chilly river, he quickly steadied himself, and then turned to rush away.

His cell phone rang from inside his jacket pocket. He ripped out the phone, and then flipped it open. “Molansky!” He squinted as he glanced at his watch. Both hands pointed upward to twelve. “Where the--”

Molansky's frantic cry cut him short and plastered his feet to the wharf.

“Help me!”

Harry swore the words echoed through the air as they roared through his phone. Molansky must've been nearby!

Crackling static drowned guttural screams.

Harry pitched the phone into the water. Heard it land with a splash as he tried to run the remaining length of the wharf that would've meant his safe escape. But he tired after jogging only a few steps.

As he stood, struggling to catch his breath, sucking in air through his nose and mouth, he spied a shadowy figure.

The buoy's bell chimed incessantly.

“Go away,” Harry shouted. Pain gripped his chest with a searing fist.

The figure lunged toward him.

He pulled out his gun. And squeezed the trigger. Once. Twice. Gunshots boomed like cannonballs in the silence.

The shadow dissipated, thinning to wisps of black smoke before fading.

Keeping the gun trained on the area before him, Harry lifted his free hand and massaged the left side of his chest. He drew deep breaths, fighting to stay conscious. Autumn air chilled his brow as it blew across his sweat-dampened forehead. If he was going to die on this wharf, he was going to be taken out by a massive coronary, and nothing else.

Through the haze building in his eyes, he gazed at a more human, yet still shadow-shrouded, figure striding up the wharf. He readied himself to shoot once more, trying desperately to concentrate, to steady his gun-toting hand.

Frank Jenkins floated from the cloak of darkness.

Harry gasped, and fired his gun.

His dead friend's father kept advancing, shape shifting as he forged ahead.

Patches of Frank's decayed skin sloughed to the ground. Bones snapped as Frank's corpse morphed. His head grew into a misshapen skull five times larger than a human skull. His lifeless eyes darkened into two sunken pools of glistening crude oil.

Harry's eyes bulged in fear. He gagged on the odor of rotted fish left to bake in the sun.

Frank completed his change, transforming into massive, malformed skeletal arms, twisted ribcage bones, and thick, skeletal legs.

The pain in Harry's chest ballooned. He collapsed to his knees, his index finger still frantically pressing against the gun's trigger, the gun firing off a clicking echo, now, instead of bullets. His hand went limp, and the useless weapon tumbled from his palm.

On the brink of passing out, he squeezed his eyes shut. Remorse trickled through him as he felt a sliver of sorrow for having sentenced Molansky to be punished by his demons. A morsel of regret simmered in him for having sent Philip and Frank Jenkins to hell, for having a part in turning the man into the creature before him. A thud fell on Harry's ears, and he inched his eyes opened.

The bloodied, dried-mud edge of the shovel met his gaze. The shovel he'd beaten Philip to death with, and then buried along with his ex-friend.

Harry craned his neck to glance up.

Gnarled, skeletal claws gripped the shovel's soil-encrusted handle. Raised the shovel. Then, brought it crashing down onto Harry's head.