Blood & Spirits Read Online Free PDF

life.
    ***
    It’s ten at night on a lazy Tuesday in the near Southside of Pekin. A semi truck pulling a twenty-eight-and-a-half-foot trailer creeps to a stop in front of a long since abandoned Masonic Lodge in the seediest neighborhood this town has to offer. The glossy black of truck and trailer reflect with a sheen of overstated anonymity. The local work-from-home chemical merchants and their overly protective ‘friends’ simply can’t help but take note and stare curiously from the front porches and picnic tables that line the street.
    Several men in black clothes, who undoubtedly obliterated the inventory of a military surplus store somewhere, begin moving furniture and countless large crates into the condemned brick building with heroic swiftness.
    Two black SUVs, each with a car hauling trailer in tow, park on the secondary street next to the lodge and spew forth even more men who enter and head for the basement. Noises and flashes of light begin to pour out into the stillness of the humid evening air.
    In the corner of the basement, a scruffy lump of man stirs to consciousness from under a pile of cardboard. His eyes widen at all the activity around him.
    His name is Shakes; he smells of urine and twitches and jerks from too many years of using automotive fluids to get high, and this has been his home for going on four years now, and no one has ever even set foot in this basement before tonight. Now, there are half a dozen men setting up a bank of generators against the far wall; he’s at a loss for what to do.
    Finally, it’s just too much for him and he has to ask, “What are you guys doing down here?”
    A dozen eyes lock on him at once with deadly focus. They move like lightning, snatching him up from the floor with his few meager belongings and begin dragging him toward the door. He yells and struggles for a moment, but it becomes painfully obvious there’s no stopping them. He slumps down, resigned to whatever fate they have for him, and becomes two hundred pounds of deadweight.
    “Stop.” The order comes from a silhouetted form in the doorway. “Put him down.”
    The men react immediately and Shakes crumples into a smelly heap on the floor. He flails around, pulling his bag and other treasures close to his body, before looking up to see the face of his would-be savior.
    The man takes a few steps further into the room, letting the dim light in the room illuminate his face. He’s dressed in dirty ripped jeans, a white t-shirt, and a leather trench coat. If not for his well-trimmed facial hair, Shakes thought he could be the twin brother of the guy who lived in the dumpster behind the old grocery on Sixth Street.
    Looking down at him more kindly than felt natural, the man asks, “Who are you?”
    “They…they call me Shakes.” He points to the corner of the room. “I live here.”
    “Then I’m you’re new landlord, Shakes. C’mon.” He offers a hand to help him up. “These men need to get back to work and I think we should get to know each other better. My name’s Garrett.”
    ***
    The Jefferson House sits back from the street behind a row of evergreens that let only the third floor windows of the 1880’s Victorian look out over the worn-out west-end neighborhood. A hidden oasis of lush creature comforts that promised beautiful sights, intoxicating temptations, and of course, the most intense of physical pleasures seven nights a week. Soft light leaks from the stained-glass windows, and the delicate smell of Japanese incense drifts out like a spiritual invitation.
    There really isn’t one true name for the place, but the Jefferson House is the most recognized title. It’s not as though I can really get a LLC in that name for the kind of business it is. Its name could be attributed to the fact that it’s on Jefferson Street. It could also be because, as far as anyone outside the place is concerned, it’s run by Julie Jefferson. Either way, a name’s just a name. The place is what’s