Free These Unquiet Bones by Dean Harrison

barreled down the steps. Heart racing, she ran down the driveway.
    A cloud of dust rose around her feet. She didn’t stop until she hit the dirt road. Hunched over with her hands on her knees, she struggled to catch her breath.
    Petrified, she glanced at the Halloween decorations in the yard, and at the sheeted ghosts swinging in the passing breeze. She felt a sickness churn in her stomach.
    Am I crazy? Vomit rose up her throat. She swallowed it down.
    Or did that actually happen?
     
     

Chapter 19
    Inside Eddie’s Bar & Grill it was happy hour. Pool balls clacked as southern rock blasted from the jukebox by the entrance.
    Hank sat at a barstool with a shrinking cigarette in one hand and a small, perspiring glass of Southern Comfort in the other. He was brooding over the mess he had made of his life when he felt a hand drop on his shoulder and squeeze blood-red nails into the threadbare fabric of his shirt.
    His stomach churned in revulsion as Ruth Jackson dropped a clunky, green purse on the glossy surface of the bar a sat her chunky, denim ass down on the stool by his side.
    “Hiya, big guy,” Ruth said. “Ain’t seen you ‘round here in a while.” She shifted her weight around. “Eddie! Vodka tonic!”
    Eddie, the droopy-faced barman, slapped his issue of Hustler down on the counter and glowered at Ruth.
    Hank raised his drink to his lips. “You touch me again with those plastic claws of yours, Ruth, and I’ll stick Eddie’s .45 up your twat and pull the trigger. Understand?”
    “Now that ain’t nice.” Ruth lit a cigarette. “Having a bad day, are we?”
    “We are.” Hank sipped his drink. “Now fuck off.”
    Ruth— a ratty-haired junkie with a goblin’s devilish face— accepted her drink from Eddie. “That ain’t no way to talk to a lady.”
    “Deaf slut,” Eddie grumbled, retrieving his magazine. “Man said leave him be. Now stop pokin’ the bear. Get!”
    With a puff of smoke, Ruth grabbed her purse and slid off the stool. “All right, all right. I know when I ain’t wanted.”
    “And how many times I gots to tell you, stop turnin’ tricks in my bar. This ain’t no whorehouse, woman!”
    Clicking away on six-inch heels, Ruth gave Eddie the middle finger.
    “Dumb bitch.” Eddie leaned against the counter with his pink, bulbous nose stuck back in his magazine.
    With melting ice cubes clinking in his glass, Hank sipped his whiskey and returned to his troublesome thoughts To his daughter, and what he had done to her life.
    Placing his drink down on a damp napkin, he took another drag from his cigarette and savored the nicotine filling his lungs. Exhaling a ghostly plume of smoke, he peered into the somnolent eyes of the burly man staring back at him from the yellow-spotted mirror bolted to the wall across the counter.
    If eyes were indeed windows to the soul, then those belonging to the man in the mirror were as haunted as a battlefield long after the last shot was fired.
    So many dead. Wish they’d leave me the hell alone.
    But they wouldn’t. If they hadn’t let up in the last four years, they sure as shit weren’t going to start now.
    And then there was Amy. What the hell was he going to do about his daughter? Keep her chained to her bed? He was truly tempted.
    Should’ve been honest with them all from the beginning. None of this shit would be happening now.
    The barstool next to him was dragged back. Hank recognized the tall, gray-haired man instantly.
    “Eddie,” Joe MacCallum called, “Club soda, please. And give us a little privacy, if you’d be so kind.”
    Meeting MacCallum’s eyes in the mirror, Hank nodded his head as smoke clouded his reflection. “Been on the green?”
    “Yeah, I managed to get out there this mornin’,” MacCallum said. He accepted his drink from Eddie, who scurried back into the kitchen, making himself scarce. “How’s Amy?”
    Hank lowered his eyes into his drink. “I hit her.”
    MacCallum was silent for a moment. Hank gave him a glance.