Page 133 of Lord Have Mercy Part Four: Big Son

“Felix,” a woman’s voice chided, somewhere out of sight. Oh, God, the bitch was here, too.

Mercy chuckled – but it sounded strange. “Yeah. Alright. Up we get.”

Huge hands hooked him under each arm, and Harlan was too weak to struggle or to help. No matter: Mercy lifted him as though he were a baby, and stood him up on his feet. Harlan cried out when his own weight compressed his smashed knee to smaller fragments. Mercy supported him, and he managed to straighten his good leg and hold himself up.

This isn’t real. This isn’t happening. The self-soothing words of a man whimpering like a beaten puppy.

But when he opened his eyes, it was, in fact real. He stood at the end of the dock his very own team had fortified and restored, the one that led up to a clearing where the same team had picked a cabin apart, board by brick. The place where, fifteen years ago, the man who held him had dumped fifteen bodies into a deserted stretch of swamp, and let the gators tear into the evidence of his murders.

“God,” he murmured.

“He’s not here right now,” Mercy said, “only men.” Then, without dropping him, he stepped around behind Harlan, grip moving the whole time, steadying him, trapping him. And Harlan saw their audience, standing just a few paces up the dock, right where it butted up against dry land.

Ava he had expected, thanks to her voice. And the brothers – Bonfils and O’Donnell, standing shoulder-to-shoulder behind her – weren’t a surprise.

The boy was.

Remy Lécuyer, dirty, and pale, long hair tangled around his eerie, doll-blank face, stood in front of his mother, her handson his shoulders. He stared at Harlan, unblinking, and Harlan, belly shriveling with shame, looked away. He couldn’t…he just…

Voice raspy with pain, he said, “Your kid’s already just as fucked up as you.”

“Yeah,” Mercy said easily. “He’s already had to learn that no matter how much he minds his own business, some weird fucker’s gonna want a piece of him.” Before Harlan could respond, he said, “Col?”

“Yeah,” O’Donnell said, and sidled past Ava. He was holding three large rocks.

Shit, Harlan thought. If they were going to kill him – and of course they were – he’d prefer to be shot.

But O’Donnell didn’t pummel him with them. Instead, he stepped over to the edge of the dock, cocked his arm back, and hurled the first rock into the water. Harlan heard its deepplopas it hit the surface.

O’Donnell drew a deep breath and bellowed, “Big Son!” He chucked the next rock.Plop. “Big Son! Come and get it, you big son of a bitch!”

The third rock.Plop.

Silence.

O’Donnell propped his hands on his hips, and looked up over Harlan to meet Mercy’s gaze. “It’s been a long time, Merc. He might not come.”

“He’ll come,” Mercy said, sounding sure.

Who?Harlan wondered.Who’ll come?Dread welled up in his stomach, as powerful as the pain, because, really, he knew. Not the specifics, not who, or what, or how, but he wished, suddenly, that O’Donnell had bashed him in the face with a rock.

Mercy said, “How many hours – how many days, weeks,yearsdid you spend watching me? Wanting to be my friend. Wanting to be me. But you didn’t everlearnanything, did you?You admired a swamp man, but it never even occurred to you to go out and learn the swamp for yourself.”

Harlan’s pulse galloped; sweat slicked his body beneath his clothes. He felt…reduced. Second by second, his confidence, his training, his sureness in his mission, drained out through the soles of his feet. He felt clumsy and drunk, his tongue thick in his dry mouth. He started shaking. “I – I don’t – I didn’t–”

Then he heard the movement in the water. Subtle. Sinuous.

“Heh,” Mercy breathed, hot against the back of his neck, his ear. “There he is.”

“Who?” Harlan rasped, unable to help himself. He thought he was having a heart attack. His vision swam; turning his head seemed to take forever.

“Jeeeesus,” O’Donnell breathed, and took a step back from the edge. “He’s real.”

“Pfft. Of course he’s real,” Mercy said. “You think I was making him up?”

O’Donnell sent him a raised brow look. “You tell stories like a Southern grandma, so, yeah.”

The water disturbance, a gentle swish-swish along the surface, moved closer.

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