The Apothecary

By Danny Johnston

Dead should mean the end of your problems. Sometimes it is just the beginning. To Yanni, the pharmacist was an icon and a bit of a mystery in the neighborhood of Detroit known as Greektown. When the old man disappears and mutilated corpses start piling up, Yanni races to end the carnage before he gets nabbed for the murders.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Danny Johnston
• Release date: Apr 27, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476061139

Book preview

The

Apothecary

by

Danny Johnston

Copyright 2010

This is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer's imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales, or organizations is entirely coincidental. All rights are reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the other.

Smashwords Edition

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Old Anna did an arthritic shuffle through the septic puddles of the alley. She came to a dented and graffiti-ridden door. She mashed her gnarled root of a finger into the buzzer mounted on the cinder block. She could hear large bolts being thrown back from within. The door opened just wide enough for her to waddle in.

The eyes of the elderly pharmacist seemed almost back lit in the gloom of the darkened room. His wavy silver locks were tucked behind his ears, giving him the appearance of an eccentric orchestra conductor. He snapped open the ancient padlock that guarded his cabinet of special remedies. He reached past bottles filled with herbs and retrieved a small cloth pouch, cinched closed with primitive hemp twine.

What did that buffoon, Pomeroy, say your husband suffered from?!

A mass. Anna averted his stare, ashamed, knowing that her answer was a confession. She had gone to a conventional physician for a second opinion. She had been in the new country many years, and had come to favor its modern ways over those of the old country.

Hah! Even Pomeroy's patients suffer from mysteries! He just gives them a scientific name. Here. He handed her the pouch and closed her hand around it.You will boil water and steep this in it. Your husband will inhale the vapors. But of more importance is what you must prepare beforehand. Listen...

****

Anna held the steaming bowl under the towel-covered head of her deathly-ill husband. He coughed wetly from under the cloth, and gagged. He hugged the bucket between his legs like a woman with a lover. He began to gag violently. Anna threw the bowl aside and grabbed a pewter plate. She gripped it tightly with both hands like a shield. His shoulders heaved as he fought to expel his sickness. All at once his body spasmed. A dark mass dropped from under his hood and splashed into the bucket. Anna stared in horror into the water. A shadow swam about in the depth of the bucket. A splash of dark water broke over its rim, soaking his sleeping clothes. She slammed the plate over the mouth of the bucket.

****

Oh God! Yanni blurted. He slowly unfolded his legs from their cramped position, jammed into a space too small for them in the bus seat. He stepped off the bus and into the sunlight of the bus station parking lot. He felt like an astronaut returning from an endurance-taxing spaceflight. Not a modern astronaut in one of those roomy Winnebagos, the space shuttles. But, rather one of the original Apollo astronauts, jammed into a tight capsule, with all his critical instruments packed around him.

It was with an astronaut's sense of discovery that he passed into the bus station. In some ways Detroit was like another planet. It was a strange new world where he would have to learn the landscape, and the potential dangers it camouflaged.

He waited in line for his baggage. He hoisted the dirty green canvas bag to his shoulder. While he adjusted the weight on his back, he watched the others exiting the bus. One large woman with