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“Un-huh. No fresh air is going to pollute my lungs.”
I shake the Maledictions from my coat pocket.
Julie stops.
“Put those away. This is fire country. One spark and you could burn the whole canyon.”
I stick the cigarettes back in my coat.
“I’d say I was back Downtown, but at least in Hell I could smoke.”
“I like it here,” says Vincent.
“I can’t go on. Leave me here and save yourselves.”
“Hush,” says Julie.
“Yes, boss.”
It’s another solid hour of climbing over, well, nature. Fucking trees, and fucking vines, and across fucking creeks, until we come to an old wooden ranch house that’s held together with nothing but cobwebs and dry rot. Soon the trail opens up out of the trees. We bear left.
“A quarter mile more,” says Julie, studying her GPS.
Vincent looks back at a stable.
I say, “It looks familiar?”
“I’m not sure. Maybe. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t sweat it. I can’t tell one goddamn thing from another out here in broad daylight. They ought to tear down this place and put up a mall. Pizza and a pedicure sound good about now.”
Candy looks over Julie’s shoulder at the map, then jogs ahead of us around a bend.
“We’re here,” she yells.
The rest of us follow her around the corner. When we do, I stop.
Ahead of us is a concrete building, a broken-down two-story freak-show hovel that’s been tagged by every hippie, goth kid, skate rat, art twerp, and metal head in Southern California. Spray-paint eyeballs, monsters, naked ladies, gang signs, and names cover the front of the place. It’s such a shit shack that if I didn’t know better, I’d think it was a Sub Rosa mansion.
“Where the hell did you drag us to?”
Julie doesn’t turn around. Candy runs up and grabs my arm.
“Isn’t it a charmer? And for just a small down payment, it could all be ours.”
“What the hell is it?”
“Welcome to Murphy Ranch.”
Julie says, “We think this is where Vincent walked from.”
I look at him.
“Is she right?”
He walks to the front of the building. The entrance is up a few steps from the ground. He grabs the metal handrail and slowly pulls himself up the stairs. He’s moving slow. I can’t tell if he’s being careful or if the sight of the place is frying his brain.
When he gets to the building’s entrance—a wide black gullet where double doors used to stand—he hesitates, then steps inside. Julie walks up after him, and Candy and I follow.
