The Fifth Death of Phoenix Esposito

My grandfather was twenty-four the first time he killed Phoenix Esposito.

I remember the story like I was there. The night, the storm, twin headlights winding between the forest. The rain, falling in sheets, the din on the cabin rooftop, the weak crackling radio. Lightning, a corner, a long stretch of road. And then there it is.

Like it was waiting for him. 

His headlights flicker and die. He pulls the Buick to a stop, steps out into the storm’s cacophony. The rain strikes, freezing crystals hammering, and in an instant he’s soaked. He’s a young man, a rough man, six-one and sharp-haired, sawdust and muscle, blue jeans and a chequered shirt. A packet of cigarettes sits rolled up beneath his sleeve, forgotten. Everything forgotten. He stands alone between walls of Tennessee pines and looks down upon a nightmare.

A thousand shining eyes. Row upon row, men and women standing motionless, staring up from the dark. An army of the damned; and a demon in their centre. A thin, grinning man standing emperor atop a truck, gazing down with wild eyes and white, gleaming teeth.

My grandfather was not a superstitious man. If you’d asked him, before that day, his thoughts on the supernatural, he would’ve fixed you a scornful stare and said he didn't read pulp. Likely there were many in Murphy who would've scoffed similar. But there was no scoffing now. No laughter, no dismissal. Just endless rows of empty faces, standing wordless in the howling storm, eyes glowing in the night.

My grandfather never believed in magic until he saw it, and he never believed in fate until fate put him where he needed to be.

If I close my eyes, I can hear him tell it. I see it happen. On a forgotten road in the towering forest my grandfather stares upon dread legions and the cackling figure at their core. His senses swim with earth and rain, cold seeps through his clothes, and for an instant the world lights white with lightning. He doesn’t understand how, or what, or why, but somehow he understands enough. He tears the knife from his belt, the petty carpenter's tool, and lets loose a cry that’s swallowed by thunder. He charges.

Phoenix Esposito sees no danger. He throws back his head, his long dark hair, and laughs, delirious. He raises his hand as my grandfather runs between lines of unwilling soldiers and commands him to stop.

And in that moment, he loses. Phoenix Esposito bets on being all‑powerful, gambling for one more unnecessary servant, the glee of feeding bravery humiliation. Too late, he realises his hubris. Too late, Esposito's eyes widen, and he screams to his unwilling thralls.

Too late he raises his hands, and my grandfather leaps and plunges the knife into his heart.

*

I open my eyes in the retirement village. The hero in the story dissipates, reforming into my grandfather as he is now. Thin‑cheeked, vulture-nosed, hair reduced to wisps. Liver spots on his hands and scabs on his cheeks where paper-thin skin has worn through. His eyes focus unsteadily on nothing, pin-prick pupils glazing across the world like an ice cube sliding across a wooden floor. A drop of saliva pools from the corner of his mouth, unnoticed. His body is eighty‑six years old and failing; but his mind is still sharp.

He has summoned me back, for Phoenix Esposito has returned, and he must kill him once more.

*

“Tickets?”

“Booked.”

“Money?”

“I took care of it.”

He licks his cracked lips.

“I coulda-”

“It’s fine,” I reassure him. I focus on the duffel bag in front of me, stuffing his medicine and dressings between hiking clothes and boots. Between other essential items. His little black book of memories and the disassembled pieces of a gun. “Rosalie’s insurance came through. Twenty‑thousand dollars.”

“Hngh.” He falls silent at that, which ain’t surprising. His eyes drop a little and I see him seem to slump beneath the weight. A lifetime of losses, and now mine piled on top. Unbearable heartache.

I’m young for a widower, at twenty-three.

*

My grandfather never spoke much of what he did after that first fight. Stood there in the rain, I think, shaking as the light drained first from Esposito’s eyes, then everyone else’s. Soon people start crying, shouting, wondering where they are. The liberated soldiers channel terror into orders and soon military men take charge. My grandfather left Esposito’s body where it lay, and at the time bore no regrets.

The regrets came later.

When Phoenix Esposito came back, he came vengeful. Furious, I think, incensed at the indignity, the audacity of being slain. At a two-star motel outside Charlotte, on a sweat-soaked summer night, three white-eyed policemen drag my grandfather out of his room and force him kneeling on the asphalt. Fireflies dance in the moonlight. My grandfather shouts, but there’s no one coming. He tells this story from the black book too, though less often, and with hollowness.

Surrounded by thralls, Esposito taunts him. Kicks him, spits at him, though he never holds a weapon himself. That honour he gives to my grandmother. He makes her stand between him and her husband, holding a Ruger to his head. Her white sundress has red roses on it; the colour matches her heels. He pleads with her, sobbing, but she doesn’t waver. Can’t. Esposito laughs, makes vulgar promises about what he’s going to do to her once he’s dead. My grandfather whispers that he loves her, and that he’s sorry. His hand finds the gun hidden at his ankle. One bullet takes them both.

After that, my grandfather dismembers Phoenix Esposito in a mosquito-covered field and burns him all to ash.

*

The conductor, a Latina woman, takes our tickets with a raised, pencilled eyebrow.

“You sure he’s right to travel?”

“I’ll take care of him,” I reassure her with a smile. We settle into our seats and my grandfather’s eyes close, his mouth drifting open. He sleeps fitfully, twitching and muttering, plagued by feverish dreams.

Every challenge he’s met, he’s answered, be it loss or raising me. Always compassionate, always kind, even as his condition worsened. I will not fail him. I will carry him this final step of his bitter, lifelong quest. It is the least I can do.

*

It’s another twenty years before Phoenix Esposito returns. My grandfather is remarried now; a raven-haired woman, my biological grandmother, though he reinforces often to ignore the distinction, that I should love the memory of both. “Love widely, love freely,” he tells me often growing up. Don’t limit love, carry affection for all mankind. Evil spreads without remorse, so good should too.

Good should always strive.

It’s Tuesday in October and my grandfather is listening to the radio. A story comes on, some consternating about a cult growing out Raleigh way. Somehow, my grandfather knows. Wordless, he finishes his sandwich, folds his newspaper, drains the last of his milk; then stands, leaves the kitchen, and drives seven-hundred miles with a gun.

My grandfather never could say how Phoenix Esposito did what he did. Didn’t try to neither. How does a butterfly reform from a chrysalis, or make an ants’ nest care for its young? It simply is, and so was Phoenix. So too was my grandfather. This, as he came to understand it, was how magic worked. No power had no answer. No poison lacked an antidote.

Hair greying at the temples, my grandfather approaches the homestead from the west as Esposito struts between rows of sunflowers. Their eyes meet, and to my grandfather’s surprise there is no animosity, no recognition. Phoenix Esposito has regrown, reset, but into the same manner of evil. For the second time Esposito, surprised, tries to control my grandfather’s mind, and for the third time my grandfather kills him.

He adds salt to the pyre this time, as well as iron, holy water, and anything else he can think of. The smoke smells of hickory and my grandfather spends fifteen days driving, spreading the ashes to the corner of every state.

*

“Wait.”

The word is hoarse, the first he’s said in hours. I stop, leaning firm support beneath my grandfather’s arm.

He draws breaths, wet and ragged, then hacks up something that looks like blood. I say nothing, think nothing, endlessly patient. The alpine air is crisp and I savour its prickling on my skin.

I will carry him up this mountain, if I have to; to where he assures me Esposito waits. I was never a good husband, but I can still be a good son.

*

“Here.”

I glance around with some confusion. The summit is featureless and bare, withered roots and weathered stone. I help him sit.

“Where is-”

“He’ll come.” The words drip empty from my grandfather’s mouth. There is no passion left, no sparks. There is silence. Clouds drift through the sky, and the valley floor stretches out before us.

“The gun.”

I pass it to him without hesitation. His bony fingers tremble and he holds it to his side.

More silence.

“I thought I could…” he whispers. I turn to him, but he doesn’t seem to notice. “…that there might be another way.” His shoulders slump. “I was wrong.”

“What other way?” I ask, “What do you mean? You’ve done it – you’re here.”

But my grandfather shakes his head. “I never told you,” he murmurs, “The fourth death.”

*

The fourth death. I barely remember. My grandfather rarely speaks of it, and when he does it’s in sparse, averted detail. He was sixty-three. Esposito had returned. There was a chase, a miss, a lake-house. And at the end, Esposito lay dead once more, along with the whole of my grandfather’s family. Save for me, a baby. The last remnant of his sons.

*

“Wrong.”

I look at him; swallow my questions and wait.

He tells the story. “I took him to pieces. Gathered every scrap, burnt it secure, made sure nothing snuck or blew. Locked it in a box. Waited. Days and weeks. Months. Til finally I heard a stirring. Before I opened the box, I knew.”

My heart catches.

He stares ahead. “A baby. Real and true. And I sit there, in this dusty, derelict kitchen, alone and sixty-four, and know I can’t keep doing this. Know there’s only one hope.”

And slowly, for what feels like the first time in months, he looks at me. “I take a blank slate of a monster, and hope I can raise it good.”

There falls utter silence. The wind whips round my fingers, but I no longer feel the cold.

“Pa-”

“Tell me about Rosalie.”

I recoil as if stung. The world seems to swim.

“I… she…”

“Lovely girl. Beautiful girl. Three years married. Still young. Shine wears off I guess. Maybe your eyes wander, maybe hers. Doesn’t matter.”

“I-”

“I didn’t want to believe when I heard it. But deep down I knew. Nurture a wolf-pup right as you can, one day it’ll still snap blood.”

“You don’t-”

“Young girl like that. No sorrow nor sickness. Walkin’ straight in fron’ of a bus. And you with a little insurance packet.”

My grandfather looks towards me, and his red-ringed eyes leak with tears.

“Deep down, you know. Even if you didn’t at the time.” He turns back to face the mountain pass. “But you’ve got a taste now. Won’t be able to resist.”

We’re alone in the wilderness, in the deep and quiet, and my grandfather’s words are the loudest thing I’ve ever heard.

“It took everything,” he whispers. Then: “God; I failed. I had meaning, a purpose, and I failed it, sure as before. You’ll just come back.”

“Pa, I-”

But my grandfather shakes his head.

“My life earns nothing.” He closes his eyes. “Buys nothing but time.”

I open my mouth to protest; but there is a bang and pain, and for the fifth time in a lifetime I fall down into the dark.