Free Half-Resurrection Blues by Daniel José Older Page A

Everything else becomes blissfully petty in the face of all that. No wonder Riley seems to have gotten his swagger back too.
    I open the door slowly, hear nothing, sense nothing frombelow and sidestep, blade first, down the basement stairs. It’s dark as fuck, but the ickiness hangs in the air like a chemical cloud. From out of the emptiness, someone yells. It’s a living human yell, at once terrified and triumphant. The urgent shriek of someone who has absolutely lost his mind. Beneath it all, there’s another voice, a softer one, blubbering and whimpering.
    I flinch and then flail for a dangling light chain. The voice is sobbing now, sobbing and gurgling, and that thickness in the air keeps getting thicker. I finally swat the chain and then catch it in my hand and pull. It takes a second to sort through the tangled tableau in front of me. The naked man stands on top of something, lifting one pale foot and then the other. He’s hunched forward like he’s about to pounce, and his mouth opens and closes around a series of shouts, sobs, and cackles. A black tangle of greasy hair hangs down over his face and shoulders. His long arms stretch to either side; one hand is wrapped around the face of a soulcatcher, who’s hovering there miserably. Then I realize that the thing the naked man is standing on is actually a person—the one who’d been doing the whimpering. A very tall person. “Moishe!” I say, more out of sheer surprise than anything else.
    “Mr. Delacruz,” Moishe whimpers. “Please . . .”
    Soulcatchers flush down the stairs and form a circle around where the naked man is howling. In about five seconds, Riley will give the signal and they will burst forward like a single death-dealing machine and end this whole horrible situation. Just before they do though, the naked man gets eerily quiet and turns to me. His beady little eyes glare out from the squinched-up gray face, and instead of the fermenting hysteria of a madman, I seesomething much worse: intelligence. He seems somehow familiar, a junky I’ve bumped into a few times around the way, I think. The guy smiles, a horrible, toothy grin, and I see the muscles flex on that long pale arm and I know what’s about to happen right before it does: the soulcatcher writhes and then spasms and collapses. That shadowy glow diminishes and then fades completely; he’s gone.
    The other soulcatchers don’t need a cue from Riley anymore. They take the first step in, but stop in their tracks when the horrific shrieking of the ngk tears through all of our minds. It caught everyone off guard, and I see a few soulcatchers stumble and collapse from sheer shock. They won’t last long. Beside me, Riley gives the pullout signal. I know he’s cringing, hating himself for it, but it’s the right move. This ngk, wherever it’s hiding, is either stronger or angrier than the other one; its screech is twice as grating.
    The soulcatchers retreat, but I figure I have a little longer left in me. I steady myself, try to block out all the terror and screaming, and let my blade fly. It cuts through the air, a little harder than necessary perhaps, but the aim is on the money. I hear that telltale
sploitch
sound and watch with satisfaction as the point enters the naked guy just below his rib cage. He stumbles backward, looks down at it. I wait for him to collapse, but he doesn’t. He looks back up at me, and now he’s smiling. His beady eyes drill into mine as he pulls the blade out of himself and then puts the tip against Moishe’s head and pushes down. I close my eyes, cringing, as the sound of tearing flesh and bone and that final scream fill the air.
    Dark red blood stains the basement floor. Moishe’s head has vomited its contents in a chunky, steaming mess. Thenaked man is still staring at me, still smiling, still holding my blade.
    There’s nothing more to be done here. The ngk shrieks again, nearly doubling me over. I take a step backward, then another. Then I do