Chapter 1: The Spoils of Fourth Street

Chapter 1: The Spoils of Fourth Street

The stench was a physical thing, a wall you had to push through. It clung to the humid night air, a rancid perfume of rotting gourmet food, sour champagne, and wet cardboard. Reginald ‘Reg’ Carter breathed through his mouth, the taste on his tongue no better than the smell in his nostrils. His fingers, calloused and grimy, sifted through the slick plastic of a torn garbage bag. A feast for a king had been discarded here, in the grimy back alley of the St. Augustine Hotel and Museum, and now it was a feast for the flies.

“Anything?” The whisper was thin and reedy, cutting through the low hum of the city.

Reg didn’t turn. He knew the voice, the nervous energy coiled within it. “‘Toeless’ Tom,” he grunted, his voice a gravelly rumble. “If I find a gold watch in a pile of shrimp tails, you’ll be the first to know. Keep your eyes peeled.”

“Always am,” Toeless muttered, the sound followed by the scrape of his worn-out sneaker against the pavement. He shifted his weight, his unique, slightly lopsided gait a constant reminder of the winter that had tried to claim him. Nineteen years old and he already walked like a man three times his age.

Reg felt a familiar pang of something he refused to name. Responsibility, maybe. Or guilt. The kid was loyal, and that was a currency more valuable than gold on these streets. It was also a liability.

He continued his excavation, his movements methodical. He wasn't just searching; he was mapping the contents of the dumpster with his hands. The soft give of spoiled produce, the sharp edge of a broken bottle, the squelching horror of unidentifiable slop. This was the ritual. The daily gamble. Most days they found just enough to quiet the gnawing ache in their bellies. But tonight, behind the St. Augustine, the hope was for more. Tourists with loose wallets and looser morals often discarded things of value—forgotten souvenirs, discarded electronics, impulse buys regretted in the sober light of morning.

His fingers brushed against something hard, smooth, and unnaturally cold. It wasn't the slick cold of wet plastic or the clammy cold of metal. This was a deep, dense cold, like a shard of river ice. Curiosity piqued, he closed his hand around it. It was heavy. Substantial. Not a bottle, not a piece of tile.

With a grunt, he worked it free from a clump of what looked like wilted salad greens and pulled it into the dim light spilling from the alley’s single, caged bulb.

He sucked in a breath.

It was a small statuette, no more than six inches high, carved from a material that looked like polished bone or milky alabaster. It rested in his palm with a surprising weight, its cold seeping directly into his skin. Wiping away the grime with his thumb, he saw that it was shot through with deep red, thread-like veins, like blood suspended in crystal.

The sculpture was of a man, but the head was the strangest part. It had four faces, each carved with unnerving, lifelike detail, each facing one of the cardinal directions. One face was contorted in a mask of pure, screaming rage. Another was a portrait of bottomless sorrow, tears seeming to glisten in the stone. A third was frozen in a rictus of absolute terror, eyes wide, mouth a silent O of horror.

“What is it?” Toeless limped closer, his eyes wide with a mixture of awe and suspicion.

Reg turned the object over in his hands. “I don’t know. Looks old. Feels… important.”

And then he saw the fourth face.

Unlike the others, it was utterly, horrifyingly blank. There was no nose, no mouth, no eyes. Just a smooth, featureless expanse where a face should be, as if the sculptor had run out of time, or courage. The emptiness of it was more disturbing than the rage or the sorrow or the fear. It was a void. An invitation.

A sharp, low whistle cut through the alley. The lookout’s signal.

“Crap,” Toeless hissed, his body instantly tensing. “Flashlight.”

Reg’s hand closed instinctively around the statuette, shoving it deep into the cavernous inner pocket of his worn army jacket. The cold of the object pressed against his ribs, a solid lump of dread and hope. He vaulted over the side of the dumpster just as a bright beam of light sliced through the darkness, pinning Toeless against the graffiti-scarred brick wall.

“Well, well. Look what the rats dragged in,” a voice oozed with smug authority. A security guard, young and overzealous, swaggered into the alley. His uniform was crisply ironed, his shoes gleamed. He looked like he’d stepped out of a different world, one that didn’t smell of garbage and despair. “What do you think you’re doing, gentlemen? Looking for a midnight snack?”

Toeless squinted into the light, raising a hand to shield his eyes. “Just moving on, man. No trouble.”

The guard, Marty, if his nametag was to be believed, chuckled. “Oh, I think you are trouble. You’re trespassing. And you,” he said, swinging the beam to Reg, “you look like you were enjoying our fine hotel’s refuse a little too much. Empty your pockets.”

Reg’s heart hammered against his ribs, right where the cold stone effigy rested. Giving it up was not an option. This thing, whatever it was, felt like a ticket. A meal ticket, a warm bed ticket, maybe even a way out ticket. The hope was a fragile, desperate flame, and he would not let this glorified mall cop snuff it out.

“We don’t have anything,” Reg said, his voice flat and hard. He took a half-step forward, drawing the guard’s attention. He knew Toeless, knew the kid’s tells. The nervous tic in his jaw, the way his fingers drummed against his leg. He was getting ready to bolt.

“Don’t lie to me,” the guard sneered, taking a step closer to Reg. “I know your kind. Always hiding something.”

That was the signal.

In a flash, Toeless kicked a loose pile of aluminum cans, sending them clattering across the concrete with a deafening racket. The guard flinched, his flashlight beam jerking towards the sound.

It was all the opening Reg needed. “Go!” he roared.

He shoved past the startled guard, his shoulder connecting hard. He didn’t run with Toeless’s frantic speed but with the long, ground-eating strides of a man who knew that survival was a marathon, not a sprint. He heard a curse and the pound of footsteps behind them, but the alley opened onto Fourth Street, and they melted into the shadows of the city’s underbelly.

They ran for three blocks, a frantic, weaving path through side streets and darkened doorways, Toeless’s uneven gait a syncopated drumbeat against Reg’s pounding heart. Finally, they ducked into the relative safety of a recessed loading dock, their breath coming in ragged, burning gasps.

“Did he… follow?” Toeless panted, leaning against the cold corrugated metal, one hand pressed to his side.

Reg peered back the way they came. The street was quiet, filled only with the distant wail of a siren and the hum of a city that never slept. “I don’t think so. We’re clear.”

For a long moment, they just breathed, the adrenaline slowly draining away, leaving behind the familiar ache of exhaustion. Then, with a shaky hand, Reg reached into his jacket. He pulled out the statuette.

In the dim glow of a distant streetlight, it seemed to drink the light, the milky crystal looking darker, the red veins pulsing like living things. It was still cold, a pocket of winter in the summer night.

Toeless stared at it, his fear momentarily forgotten, replaced by a greedy excitement. “That was close. Man, Maggie at the pawnshop will give us a bundle for that. A real bundle. We could eat steak tonight, Reg. Real steak.”

Reg nodded, his mind racing. The kid was right. This could be it. This strange, heavy little man with his faces of fury and grief could be their salvation. But as his thumb drifted over the statuette’s surface, it came to rest once more on the blank, featureless fourth face. A profound unease settled over him, cold and heavy as the stone in his hand.

It wasn’t salvation he was holding. It felt like something else entirely. Something ancient and hungry. And he couldn’t shake the chilling thought that the blank face wasn’t unfinished. It was just waiting.