Concerning a Rusty Bullet

  Dirty fog blew over like a black blizzard. Hoell stumbled into it from the thicket of streets and alleys profuse with river smells. He navigated by habit, by the little light offered by struggling lamps and grizzled neons skulking in the darkness. He kept to the walls and shadows, coming to a nonagenarian building jutting like the bow of a ship from the swirls of mist. He climbed the steps at the side beneath the ghostly gaze of a black cat placidly lounging on a brick windowsill.
 Inside was dark, quiet, wooden steps creaking and the gentle sigh of pipes. The cat had hopped from the window in a flash and already started up the stairwell. Hoell followed. The loft apartment he sought wasn’t his. Hoell wasn’t sure whose it was, even if the plate said “Cavanaugh.” Any number of a motley assortment moved in and out of the apartment at any given time. Tonight he was hoping to find the Houngan, who frequented the flat to drink stale bourbon mixed with a tincture known only to himself. The Houngan was elusive, impenetrable, unless he was in a bourbon fit.
 The door was unlatched when Hoell reached it, dark within save pale light refracting off the peeling paint chips. He approached slowly, quietly, nudging the door open with his boot. He could tell no one was inside; the atmosphere was cold and empty. Still he fingered the cracked handle of the knife in his pocket, taking cautious steps.

 Pulsing radiator hum. Creak of the building settling. The black cat scampering across the hardwood. Someone hammering nails below. The apartment was only occupied by curtains rippling in the ghosts of wind hissing through the gaps in the window, and a small bauble glinting in the little light on the island countertop. Hoell picked it up gingerly.

&nsbp;A thick bullet of ungainly and striated lead, the casing splotched with rust and black. Hoell turned it under the light, then moved to flick a hole in the curtains. No one was there in the fog, but he knew this card. He dropped the bullet into a pocket, and retreated.

 The wind whipped up when he stepped outside like it had been laying in wait, blustery personal ambush. It moved with purpose, funneled down the street towing portent in its wake. Hoell listened to it for a moment, trying to hear the voice. Then he scuttled off toward the pier.