Boss Authority—no, he wasn’t boss of anything now, so I’ll just call him Bobby Felix from here on out—stood there, wide-eyed and vacant, nothing but a little tattooed fella now. He sat down on the floor, just slumped over and hunched there, breathing all heavy. No one quite knew what to do with him.

Pop walked up to Bobby Felix.

“Bobby,” said Pop, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry for how I treated you. It wasn’t right.”

Pop stuck his hand out to Bobby Felix, like he was gonna help him up. Bobby Felix stared at Pop’s hand a minute, like he didn’t hardly know what it was. That white eye of his was swirling in its socket, and something seemed to be broken deep inside him.

“You’re sorry?” said Bobby Felix. “That’s what you’re saying?”

“Yes sir,” said Pop. “I’m apologizing to you, best as I know how.”

“Huh,” said Bobby Felix, staring at my pop’s outstretched hand. “Davey Boy’s sorry now.” Then I saw a little something harden in Bobby Felix’s face, a last flint-spark of meanness glimmering in his left eye. “Well you know what, Davey Boy? I ain’t sorry for what I done, not one bit,” he said, and whipped a pistol out from his pants pocket. It was a cowardly little thing, as all pistols are, a one-shot popper no bigger than my fist. When it went off I didn’t even have time to scream. Pop staggered backward, his hand over his face, blood streaming down his cheek.

“You little jerk,” screamed Pop. “You shot me right in the cheek.”

“You okay, Pop?” I said.

“It was a weeny little pistol,” he said. “Hardly broke the skin on me.”

Pop moved his hand from his face, and there it was, the lead ball sticking right out of his cheek like a weird metal tick.

“Does it hurt?” I said.

“Like the dickens,” he said.

“Stupid toy,” hollered Bobby Felix. “It should have blown your whole durn face off.”

He turned tail and sprinted out the front door, but something stopped him in his tracks.

On Marina’s dock there stood Sinclair, the Creepy himself, gray and skeletal and skin-blistered, rising up out of the water like the spirit of the swamp itself.

“I come for you, Bobby,” he said. “I’ve come to take you under.”

“But you’re free,” he said, stammering, his voice gone high and mealy. “The hex is broken. I ain’t got any magic anymore.”

“That ain’t gonna keep me from ripping you into little Bobby Felix pieces,” said Sinclair. “It ain’t gonna keep me from making sure your bones stick in this mud for good.”

Bobby Felix hit the ground, and covered himself with his arms. He was terrified, he was, quaking away, like nothing you ever seen before.

“Come on now, Sinclair,” said Pop. “That ain’t any way to treat our old buddy.”

“Do you know the agony he put me through?” said Sinclair. “Do you know what kind of hell I’ve had to endure?”