Bob's Greatest Mistake_Part Two of The Journals of Bob Drifter Read online

“So you just watched,” Bob accused. “How many does he have?” How many souls are lost forever?

  “We don’ know,” Drisc said. Bob could tell the man’s anger was starting to boil. He just couldn’t convince himself to care. “A lot ‘o the fogies were afraid he was up ta someth’n terrible, but none ‘o us, none of us, Bob, knew he’d pull that sor’of stunt.”

  Bob heard the cup of water splash against the wall before he realized he’d thrown it. “Did you think he was baking cookies with Blacksouls?” he shouted. “You could have told me!”

  “I was sworn ta silence!” Drisc argued.

  “Oh, like you’re such the good Senior Journeyman; tell me, was that before or after your fifth shot of bourbon?”

  “There are some people ye don’t say no to,” Drisc said with a warning tone. “And ye certainly don’t lie to them.”

  “Them or him?” Bob asked. “You get all this information from someone. I know six Senior Journeymen, and none of them seem to be able to find things out as quickly as you.”

  “Ye don’ know what ye’re talking about,” Drisc said a little too quickly.

  “I know enough to know you’re answering to someone,” Bob yelled again. “Someone bigger than the Council.”

  “Why can’t ye ever put that enormous brain of yours ta better use than look’n for the most trouble ye could find?” Drisc yelled.

  “Because I can’t trust you to be honest with me.”

  “And if aye lie to someone else to tell you what aye know, that makes me honest?”

  “No, it makes you my friend and not someone’s lap dog.”

  “Ye watch yer tone, lad, or I’ll—”

  “You’ll what?” neither of them had heard Patience enter. Bob tried to remember what he might have said and what she could have learned from it. “You’ll do what to a man who’s just been through hell?”

  “It’s OK,” Bob lied. “I was angry. I shouted first.”

  “That didn’t give me permission ta yell back,” Drisc admitted. “Bob, ye’re the only lad dumb enough ta call me ‘friend’. Ye’re hurt and angry. You’ve seen ... ” Drisc had a faraway look in his eyes for a moment. “Well, no one should hav’ta go through what ye did.”

  A memory flickered in Bob’s imagination. Drisc, huddled next to a house as the Big Wind took the roof off the building. “Did you ...?” Bob began to ask. He reached for the water before he remembered he’d just thrown his cup across the room. His throat felt like it was filled with ashes. “That night, the first big job we worked together,” he continued, emphasizing the word big. “That was for you like yesterday was for me. Wasn’t it?”

  Patience looked from him to Drisc. She was clearly confused, but, thankfully, she didn’t ask any questions.

  Drisc turned away. He opened the door as if to leave, but he stood there for a moment. “It was th’ first time aye saw someth’n like that,” he said quietly as he left the room.

  Patience took Bob’s hand and sat by him quietly. Bob wanted to do something. He wanted to cry, to hold her, to let her hold him, to yell out in rage. Only, he lacked the energy to do any of it. In the end, nothing changed. None of it mattered. He’d let forty-three souls disappear forever. He wanted to weep, but instead, he sat quietly and felt the warmth of Patience’s hands around his.

  19

  A Meaningless Gesture

  November 21, 2007

  I just stood there today while my failures were laid before me. What hurt the most was that she pitied me for my failure, and she didn’t even know it.

  “Are you OK?” Patience asked, holding Bob’s arm. He wasn’t. He didn’t answer her. She didn’t let his hand go. He watched the casket drift slowly into the blackness. He was at his fourth funeral. The casket, once an empty box, now had an empty shell inside it. The shell used to be an eight-year-old girl with bright blue eyes and golden hair. But Calista was gone. Her soul would never reach wherever it was supposed to go, and no shred of her would ever find its way to whomever it should have. Someone would live out his or her life with a piece missing from his or her soul. It was all Bob’s fault, and he couldn’t even muster the strength to hate himself the way he should or pity himself the way he wanted.

  He used his free hand to reach into the pocket of his black suit. He pulled out the hosta flower Calista had given him. “She gave this to me a few days ago,” Bob whispered. He felt his grip tighten around the green stem of the flower.

  Patience put her head on Bob’s shoulder. She had her hair tied back and wore a simple, dark-blue skirt and blouse with a long jacket to protect herself from the winter air. “You should keep it,” she whispered.

  Bob almost didn’t hear her. Calista’s parents were weeping together. “Why?” he asked.

  “Because it’s a part of her,” Patience answered.

  No, it’s not. Every part of her is corrupted and in the hands of a monster. “OK,” he said. Bob started to walk toward Calista’s parents. He meant to go alone, but Patience wouldn’t let his hand go. He wondered for an instant when she had taken his hand. She helped him hobble across the grass. He had a single crutch to move around, and Patience kept an arm around him for balance.

  Bob stopped in front of Calista’s mother. I’m so sorry, a voice inside of him whimpered. Instead of speaking the phrase, he hung his head.

  “You were there,” the older version of the dead girl said. It felt like a knife in his gut. He nodded his head.

  “The doctors said ...” Calista’s father said, his voice shaking. “They said it was fast. My little girl didn’t suffer.”

  She’s still suffering. She’s screaming in agony and will for the rest of time.

  Bob realized the man was looking for reassurance. “It happened so fast,” he said. Something caught in his throat. He tried to cough to clear it out, but his mouth was too dry. Calista’s mother buried her head into her husband’s chest.

  “I ...” Bob stuttered. I watched her soul scream and did nothing. “I don’t think she felt any pain,” he lied.

  “Thank you,” the father said. He planted a firm hand on Bob’s shoulder. “Thank you,” he repeated.

  I forced your daughter to spend eternity serving a monster, and you thanked me. Bob couldn’t take it. He nodded in a half-hearted attempt to be polite before hobbling toward the parking lot as quickly as he could. He made it about ten steps before Patience stopped. She refused to let him go, so he had to stop or try to drag her to the car.

  “You’re not to blame,” she said gently. She was wrong.

  “I know,” he said. He tried to move again, but she gently grabbed his chin in her hand, pulling his eyes to hers.

  “Not yet,” she said frowning. “But you’ll believe me sooner or later.” She lifted herself up on her toes to lightly kiss his cheek again.

  Someone forced a cough that took Bob’s attention. He turned around to find Drisc a few paces away. His eyes were red, and Bob was sure alcohol had nothing to do with it, whatever the Senior Journeyman said.

  “Ah’m sorry,” Drisc said in a way that implied more than a simple interruption.

  “Did you want to talk to Bob?” Patience asked. She’d watched how Drisc had tried to be there for Bob. He hoped she would see the same thing Bob saw in his best friend: A lazy, but wonderful man more interested in celebrating life than doing anything productive. When someone needed a friend, Drisc was there. The poor bastard never really knew what to do, but he was there. Maybe that loyalty would earn Patience’s respect.

  “Only if ye’re OK with it,” Drisc answered in a way that said he needed her to be OK with it. The part of Bob that couldn’t stop thinking wondered what was so important.

  “You bring him back to me soon,” she said softly. Her tone told Drisc he wanted very much to bring Bob back to her soon, or he’d suffer the consequences.

  “Why do you need me at a Council?” Bob asked when they pulled into the bowling alley. Drisc didn’t respond.

  He knew Bob already understood why the
y both had to be there. He’d never seen Bob in that state. Of course, he’d never seen forty-three Blacksouls born at one time, either. Drisc figured space and time was what the man needed. Unfortunately, the Council needed information.

  Drisc hurried around his car and helped Bob get out. Drisc felt terrible. His cuts and bruises seemed to be multiplying more than healing. Bob, on the other hand, looked as if he’d just played the role of an aluminum can at a recycling center.

  Todd, Peter, Martin, and Robin were already at the far left lane of the bowling alley. Drisc rented a pair of smelly shoes and walked alongside Bob, who hobbled determinedly on his single crutch. The man was given two, but he insisted on using just one. Drisc wasn’t worried enough about it to give his friend any grief over it.

  “You complete idiot,” Robin said, bristling.

  Drisc was in her face before he realized he meant to say anything. “Yer goin ta listen to me very closely,” he whispered, the volume of his words cool. The meaning behind them could melt steel. “That man is me friend, and he couldn’t have done anyth’n about what happened. Ye’re going to treat him very nicely.”

  “Or what?” the multi-time martial-arts champion asked.

  Drisc looked her straight in the eye. “Ya mean ta hit me, Robin?”

  She responded by clenching her fist.

  “Feel free. Ye c’n probably beat both of us up at once. Yer welcome to pound me to a pulp, if ya really think you can.” Drisc had at least one hundred years on the next-oldest Journeyman there. No one knew what he did back then. He counted on that. “But ye say one fucking thing against me friend again, and aye’ll tell them.”

  The threat implied a secret Robin very much wanted to keep quiet. Three people knew. The Clockmaker might give him hell for telling that secret to the world, but Drisc wasn’t worried about it. A memory trickled in the back of Drisc’s mind. I fear that ... the pending event is just the beginning.

  “You wouldn’t dare,” Robin said. Her eyes betrayed her fear.

  “Ya know who says things like ‘ya wouldn’t dare?’” Drisc asked. “People who’re afraid someone would dare. You so much as look at me friend harshly, and I’ll dare ta do anyth’n that hurts you, and aye’ll welcome the consequences.”

  She stared at him for another moment. Drisc imagined she was looking for a hint of a bluff, but it didn’t come. She turned away and sat down.

  “Grimm’s outta control,” Drisc said, sitting down to put on his bowling shoes. “Aye came here ta see if he meant to make Blacksouls, and aye find out he’s already got an army of them. We’ve already taken his powers, but assuming we be behind the curve, as usual, we can’t know what that’s done to help us. In the meantime, ye five each have some experience with Blacksouls. Tell me what ye know.”

  “I don’t think we know anything other than how they’re born,” Martin said. He picked up a ball and slid it down the lane without so much as looking to see where it ended up. The game was a pretense no one cared to pay attention to at the moment.

  “Just tell me what ye do know,” Drisc said. “Aye’ll worry about what Grimm knows.”

  “From what you’ve already told us, it looks like a Journeyman can—I don’t know how else to say it—Bond a Blacksoul,” Todd said. “The one I saw,” he looked at Bob. “The one I let sour,” Todd continued, looking humiliated. “It floated around for a few moments but then ran off.” Todd tossed a gutterball down the lane.

  Todd hadn’t actually let the soul sour the way Grimm did. He was late to a suicide. He arrived just in time to see how Blacksouls are born. It took Drisc a full year to track Todd down and find out what happened.

  “Where do they go?” Robin asked, being very careful to keep her eyes on Drisc. “If they aren’t bound to one of us?”

  “That’s a good question,” Drisc asked.

  Peter, who never spoke about his encounter with a Blacksoul 421 years ago, got up, threw a ball down the lane, and sat down before it slammed into the pins.

  “Aye need to know,” Drisc told Peter. “We’ve all seen it happen. We can’t just pretend it didn’ happen anymore.” Drisc didn’t add that he wanted to do just that.

  “They’re twin-born,” Peter said quietly. “The sour part eats the remnants of the real soul. If there’s another soul nearby, an unspoiled one, the Blacksoul will devour it as well and make another.”

  Peter was supposed to Transport a serial killer and his victim. Peter chose to Take the victim’s pain and ease her passing instead of taking the killer’s soul right away. “They sour so quickly. It was a minute. One lousy minute.” The killer’s soul turned black. Peter said the soul went through him to get at the victim’s soul. “It was the worst pain I ever felt.”

  Drisc looked over to Bob, who was trembling. He’s been through enough, Drisc told himself. Everyone else had had decades to recover from encountering a Blacksoul. Bob had had a day. It wasn’t fair.

  “Ye can go if ye want,” he told his best friend.

  Robin gave him a shocked look, but one glare at her made her shut her mouth before any words could escape. He’d have to remember that trick the next time she got preachy.

  Bob shook his head. “I’m OK,” he whispered. Someone tossed another ball down the lane, but Drisc didn’t look to see who.

  “They sour if you save a person from dying when he or she should,” Robin said. The rest of the group looked at her in shock. Drisc had known about it for some time; he had to fix her mess. It was the most humiliating thing Robin had ever done, except for the secret Drisc and the Clockmaker kept for her.

  She saw an old man dying. His wife was older than he was, and Robin had felt sorry for the couple. She convinced the old man to take his wife on a date instead of riding the bus that she later learned would have hit him. His soul soured on the drive home. “The soul is the conscience,” Robin explained. “If it sours inside a living person, there’s nothing human about that person anymore.”

  Her Transport killed his wife and shot himself on the date Robin sent them on. Ironically, she had stopped him from dying because she thought it would be better if husband and wife could die together. Since that day, no Journeyman was a bigger stickler for the rules, nor harder on anyone who broke them.

  “The husband’s Blacksoul ate his wife’s soul and took off right in front of me,” Robin said. “We have to assume Grimm knows that.”

  “We call ‘em Living Blacksouls,” Drisc said. “Luke ran inta one. Some lunatic in Arizona last year. That’s when he killed himself. He ended up saving a kid, but the Living Blacksoul got away. Martin heard about it when he moved there after Luke’s death.”

  Luke was a bit of a legend to the Journeymen. In addition to saving a young boy’s life, he was the first Journeyman to ever kill himself, as far as Drisc knew. How Luke managed it was something Drisc didn’t understand. It had been some eighty years since a Journeyman had died before Luke, and God willing, there wouldn’t be another death in the ranks for centuries. Most Journeymen took their longevity for granted. Drisc knew exactly how mortal they were.

  “You can’t track a Living Blacksoul or anyone it means to kill,” Martin said. “It’s like we’re blind to whatever they do, which means those souls turn sour and die without us even knowing about it.”

  “I don’t think Grimm knows about that,” Drisc said, sending a ball down the lane. “Otherwise, he might just make a Living Blacksoul and let it do all his work for him.” Drisc prayed the bastard didn’t have that bright idea.

  “What happened to that Living Blacksoul?” Robin asked.

  “Damned if I know,” Martin said. “Like I said, we can’t track him. He got arrested in some pit-stop town in Arizona and escaped before I could pick up his trail. God knows what he’s up to.”

  “Do they know what they are?” Peter asked.

  “They damn sure know they’re different,” Martin replied. “But I don’t think they know what they are exactly. I don’t know that two Living Blacksouls exist, or if they
do, whether or not they’ve met to compare notes.”

  “We’re off track,” Drisc said. “Is that it?”

  “What did you learn about them?” Todd asked.

  “That no one should e’er have ta know they exist,” Drisc replied. He looked over at Bob again and thought about what the Clockmaker said. It won’t be pleasant for you, or your friend.

  20

  Difficulties in Gathering Information

  Richard set down his third cup of tea to give himself time to cool off. He’d visited three houses that day and ten in the last two weeks, trying to connect Drifter to any of the children. He even talked to the bus driver’s widow to no avail.

  “So the teacher involved in the accident, he was at the funeral?” Richard asked.

  “Yes,” Christine Engee replied. Her eight-year-old son was in Drifter’s class and died in the recent collision. She wiped some tears out of her eyes. Richard tried to give her some time to calm down before continuing.

  “How did he seem at the funeral?” Richard asked.

  “Hurt,” she said. “And sad.”

  “Did he seem like he felt guilty?”

  “Why would you ask that?”

  “Sometimes a person involved in an accident feels guilty. It’s common survivor’s guilt,” Richard said, not sure if he was lying or not. He was pretending to be an accident investigator. He could only visit families he didn’t already interview when he first arrived in Syracuse. He wondered how anyone kept track of his or her lies. His mind hurt from trying to keep his story straight. So how does Drifter do it?

  Christine sipped some of her tea, and Richard followed her example. It was a good, fancy blend of tea that tasted sharp and was darker than any tea he’d seen before.

  “He might have,” she admitted.

  “Might have or did?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “How ...” Richard stopped himself before he could raise his voice. He let his head drop in shame. Her son is dead, and I only care about a man who might have been involved. Kyle would be shocked.