Modern Gods. Nick Laird

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       PROLOGUE

      “I am a man of constant sorrow.”

      The microphone right up at his lips and the black Stetson tilted back, Padraig was going at it full tilt. He liked to start a capella with that long and twisted first note, just the way Ralph Stanley did.

      “I’ve seen trouble all my days.”

      Around the bar the drinkers were two or three deep. Each of the snugs was occupied and the wee round tables by the dance floor were pretty much full. No one was dancing, not yet, but you could see it was about to start. When Alfie kicked in on the banjo the shoulders of a couple of women began swaying. In a matter of moments the floor would start filling up.

      The lounge bar on the other side of the counter—you reached it through the side entrance—looked to be busy too. The front door banged against the high side of the first booth—some sort of scuffle broke out—and then there were two eejits in plastic Halloween masks.

      “I bid farewell to old Kentucky.”

      One, a vampire, the other a Frankenstein’s monster. The gipes. But it was Halloween soon enough and sure why not.

      “The state where I was born and raised.”

      Padraig hooked his thumbs in his belt and did a quick two-step to the side as Alfie and Derek harmonized.

      “The state where he was born and raised.”

      He pointed to Derek, who nodded and grinned and hit the hi-hat, then to Alfie, who closed his eyes and flicked the neck of the banjo vertical and back again.

      “For six long years I been in trouble.”

      A car backfired outside was it? And again, and then a young fella in a hooded top standing near the fruit machine seemed to fall into the wall. The vampire had his arms straight up and at the end of them was a pistol. Frankenstein strode out fast into the middle of the dance floor and in his arms he carried a semi-automatic. A surge of bodies away from the door now, pushing across the lounge bar and much screaming. Dozens of customers were pressed up against the front of the stage. Padraig sang, No pleasure yet … and trailed off. Alfie strummed on for a couple of chords, but then he stopped too.

      Frankenstein spun round and round on his heel, firing. There was a loud dull pop-pop-pop-pop, and a little puff of redness erupted from the side of the head of an old man seated at the bar. Down he went off his stool like the string was cut inside him. A woman sitting at a table clutched at her breast and fell into her husband. He was shaking her by the shoulders, holding her head up. A wee fella trying to get down the corridor towards the toilets stopped when a large darkness flowered on the back of his shirt.

      The screaming. Jesus, the screaming.

      Alfie came to life and jumped over the drums and the whole kit went toppling backwards off the stage, taking Derek with him. The gunman became a centrifugal force—all the people threw themselves outwards, away from him, against the walls of the bar, scrambling, scrabbling—against the tables, the booths—trying to get farther and farther away as he turned round and around. Fut-fut-fut-fut went the gun.

      A young woman wearing red spectacles ducked down under her table. Two women were already under there, but four had been sitting in the alcove. Wine glasses empty and half empty all slid down now, smashing onto the floor.

      The shooting stopped and a man’s voice, hoarse with delight, shouted, “Trick or treat!”

      Then the shooting started again. A pause and a different kind of gunshot: clipped, duller, efficient. The other man was firing now with a handgun. The vampire. Frankenstein was in the middle of the dance floor, loading the magazine on the semi-automatic. Bodies moved slowly on the ground.

      Here was one moaning where the carpet met the dance floor. The vampire with the pistol fired another shot into it. The head just exploded everywhere.

      Here was a man in a sports jacket curled into a ball. Here was a lady gripping the legs of a bar stool and wailing hysterically. Here was a scatter of archipelagic blood on a “Guinness Is Good for You” mirror.

      Here was a man lying over his wife; more blood flowed out from under their huddled crying form in competing dark runnels across the parquet dance floor. Vampire fired at them again and fut, the huddle lay flat. A woman banged against the door of the ladies’ toilets, but the three women inside held the door closed. “Trick or treat,” the voice shouted hoarsely. “Trick or treat.” The woman screamed, “Please, please, please, please,” but then a very fast piece of metal entered the side of her head and she stopped.