“Yeah, but is it to keep us out or to keep whatever you got going on in here in?”
Billy hadn't ever thought about it like that. Of course, Billy left most of the thinking to dudes that painted pictures to hang in museums and zoos.
“Well, what you say doesn't matter. You don't live here and don't know nothing about me and my people.”
“Oh, I know all about you, Billy Purgatory.”
Billy stood up from his skateboard bench. “Hey, how do you know how I am?”
“I know that you were just missing and that you've been in Africa. I also know that whatever you might think about this expensively decorated freak show of a compound you live on, it's not Heaven on Earth.”
“You been spying on me, curly-top?”
“Your mother came to my grandmother when you appeared in Africa. Grandma is a fortuneteller and she read the cards for your mother.”
“Yeah, well, just because you eavesdropped on my mom being concerned about my adventures, it don't mean you know nothing about me or this place. I don't care what the Jack a'Diamonds or the Ace a'Clubs had to say to your Magic Trick Granny.”
“Grandmother told me to stay away from this place, because it's evil.”
“Yeah, how come you ain't listenin’?”
Lissandra shrugged as she sprang back into the air. “Evil has a trampoline.”
“Yeah, and you're way past what the nickel you didn't put in the slot'll buy ya.”
Lissandra came down on the stretchy fabric of the trampoline, then pushed up with her legs and shot higher than she had before. Nimble fingers grabbed one of the branches hanging over the wall. Pulling up with her arms, she swung her legs and wrapped them around the tree, then twisted her body over it where she was hugging the branch and looked down at Billy. “It's all yours.”
“Yeah, and stay off it with your trash-talkin’ tree hugging.”
Billy moved towards the trampoline to take over major bouncing operations.
“You're lucky the man hasn't grabbed you up yet, Billy Purgatory.”
Billy stopped and looked up as Lissandra rose off the branch. Balancing herself as if on a tightrope, staring down at him.
“What man?” Billy figured this was some crazy girl who didn't know nothing and was raised in the forest by badgers or some such.
“Grandmother saw that in the cards too. You should get out of this place before the evil gets you. The man is coming for you, Billy. Your mother is using you as bait.”
“My mom cares about me, stupid. Lookit all the stuff she bought so she could take care of me and Pop.”
Lissandra smiled at Billy like he was stupid. “Stuff.” Then she shook her head. “It's not you she wants, Billy. It's the man who fell out of the sky.”
“People don't fall out of the sky.”
Lissandra moved nimbly, vanishing into the embrace of the tree branches. “Oh really? Didn't you?”
Billy ran his eyes along the high stones of the wall. He pressed his foot to the edge of his board and grabbed it by the truck.
He didn't feel like bouncing anymore.
~5~
SCHRÖDINGER LOST HIS CAT AT THE STUPID ZOO
“WHAT'RE YOU GONNA DO with those dumb mannequins?” Billy had wandered into the stables when he got tired of thinking about men falling out of the sky. He'd been looking across the pond on the back forty. The pond was kind of peaceful, and there weren't any alligators in it, so Billy didn't sit there and reflect very long. Peaceful water was really boring, and it made him think about death.
Dr. Luna had dragged two mannequins out of somewhere or another. He was fastening a kind of metal collar around their necks that he was dangling alarm clocks from. “The nature of my experiments has changed. You've actually given me insight into them, Billy.”
“Whatever insight is, you owe me five bucks for it.”
Dr. Luna haphazardly reached into his pocket to retrieve his wallet as Billy knocked on one of the legs of the plastic standing mannequin. “These things don't move around like robots, huh?”
Billy pressed his ear to the mannequin's torso and took the five bucks the distracted Luna passed his way.
“They are just stand-ins for people. I'm running my first test tonight.”
“Yeah? If they don't move around and just stand here all dumb, what are you gonna do with them?”
“Well, they aren't going to move around in dimensional space like you and I would — but if I'm correct, they are going to move. I am going to impact one with an energy field.”
“Like punch it? It can't even fight back, dude.”
“Punch it with energy, Billy.”
“How do you do that?”
Dr. Luna had just finished strapping clocks around the neck of the second mannequin when he smiled down to Billy and held up a finger. “Temporal-Mirrors, as we have seen with your ill-fated trip to Africa, have potential, but are unstable…”
“Yeah Luna, about that whole trip to Africa thing…”
Dr. Luna double-checked that the clocks on both mannequins were synchronized and was on the move. “So, if we can harness the energy and direct it…”
“Luna, I'm talking to you down here…”
Dr. Luna was at his table and turned. He lifted the biggest space-looking ray shotgun contraption that Billy had ever seen into the air. Its barrel was filled with blinky lights and there were thick heavy electrical cables coming out of the stock, which snaked across the floor and into a massive junction box on the back wall of the lab.
“What kinda Buck Gordon space-badassary is that?” Billy had to admit, he was pretty damned impressed with whatever that thing was. It was a big gun; Luna strained to hold the thing up even using both hands. Billy was pretty sure you could kill a dinosaur with that thing.
“This, my young friend, is what will change the nature of how people and information travel across the world — heck — across the universe!”
“Why do mannequins need to travel? They're not real, right?”
“This is my Time Gun.” Dr. Luna proclaimed it proudly to the entire laboratory, which consisted of himself, Billy, and a couple of dumb mannequins with clocks strapped to their necks.
“Who needs a gun to tell time?”
Dr. Luna motioned for Billy to come closer. “Stand behind me, Billy. I don't want to accidentally get you caught up in the scatter-shot.”
Billy looked up at the mannequins and then at the big gun. He figured getting behind Luna was a good idea. “Is that thing loud when it goes off?”
Luna began to aim the weapon once Billy was safely behind him. “It makes a Big Bang.” Dr. Luna laughed; Billy had no idea why.
Dr. Luna flipped some switches and the lights in the room dimmed as the Time Gun began to pull lots of juice. As Dr. Luna lowered the weapon, big red crosshairs were projected at the mannequin on the left. “Isn't it historically ironic, that the first time/space traveler will not have the capacity to tell us about the wonders they have seen on the other side?”
“Oh good, those things can't talk either. That'd be creepy.”
“Brace yourself, Billy Purgatory!”
Billy grabbed onto one of the legs of the stainless steel table. The hairs on the back of his neck began to stand up as the Time Gun began to make a high-pitched humming noise. “Is that normal?”
“Residual static electricity. We're about to push the limits of the town's power grid.”
“You sure this is safe, dude? I thought you were gonna test this thing tonight'er?”
“Too late to stop now — the music of science is conducting the show.”
Billy held onto the table leg tight. If something was gonna grab him and haul him back to Africa, it was gonna have to pull like hell.
He watched as Dr. Luna's finger squeezed the trigger. The gun created a bright flash, like a sun, and the recoil sent Luna and the gun tumbling backwards and over the table to bang hard into the floor. Billy watched the blue, crackling orb of energy the gun had released
slip across the room silently and then impact the plastic man. The energy turned the skin of the thing a bright-hot glowing blue, and vast tendrils of arcing electrical energy began to branch out and leap into the air, striking points all about the laboratory. Every place one of them hit singed and sparked, then took on the same blue glow of whatever crazy bullet Luna had fired out of that gun.
Dr. Luna peeked his head up over the table and watched the energy-tendrils flying about the air and striking the roof of the stable.
Billy heard Dr. Luna say the word, “Mira!”
Billy looked out towards the mannequin and then up to the railing at the doors to the stable. Mira was standing there, eyes wide. The stack of papers she had let slip from her hands were slowly sailing down towards the lab floor. The energy danced around dropped pages of physics equations and too much math, and then one of the blue tendrils was upon her.
Dr. Luna and Billy watched helplessly as Mira went from orange to blue. Then, as quickly as it had all begun, Mira, Mannequin Number 2, and half the lab vanished into time and space.
Billy slowly let go of the table. Clutching his skateboard to his chest, he cautiously began to walk into the lab. The hair on the back of his neck wasn't standing up anymore, but there was an unexplained ache in his chest — a longing.
“Dude, bring her back.”
Dr. Luna stood with his hands gripping the edge of the table, weeping. “Mira.” He cried her name quietly.
“Luna, shoot the gun again and bring Mira back.”
“It doesn't work like that.” He said this through sobs.
Billy had reached the center of the lab and was turned back to Dr. Luna. “Then how does it work?”
“Billy…”
“How does it work? What did you do?”
“I don't know.”
Luna fell back to the ground, curled up into a little ball, and wouldn't stop crying.
Billy was getting angry. Science had zapped Mira out to who knows where — Africa maybe. Mira wasn't tough like him; she couldn't fight off lions and that Shark Cult. “Alright Luna, you're my friend, but I'm coming over there and I'm gonna smack some sense into you until you quit crying like a baby and figure out how to get Mira back!”
Billy only took two steps before he heard the quiet impact of feet onto the concrete floor behind him.
Billy spun around with a smile on his face to welcome her. “Mira!”
The dark figure of the crouching man, who had just jumped the balcony railing and landed like a big cat about to spring, was definitely not Mira.
“The man who fell from the sky.”
The man didn't pay any attention to Billy Purgatory's words and shot up into a run. He was headed right for the boy, and Billy didn't have any time to run away. Billy widened his stance a bit and raised the tip of his skateboard to his lips and gave it a kiss for luck. “Get ready, board, it's time to crack a spaceman right in the airlock.”
Billy raised his board in both hands and fell into a batter's stance, just like Pop had taught him to do. This guy didn't know what was about to hit him, and would soon be wishing he'd have run the opposite of the way that Billy Purgatory was.
The man wasn't so dark anymore; Billy could make out a body armor vest, black T-shirt beneath. Muscular arms with lots of tattoos and black fingerless gloves. Military boots and dark camouflage. As Pop would have said, “This guy's seen some action. He's vacationed at Hotel Shit.”
Billy watched him like a three-eyed hawk. Any second now, he'd be close enough for Billy to swing and take the guy's knees out. Once he was on the ground, it'd be sneakers to the face.
The dark man who'd fallen from the sky didn't pull any of the knives he had strapped to him. He wore a light pack and had a sword jutting up from it — or just a holster for a sword. The big guy's hand reached back and Billy let his knees go loose. “Come to Billy Purgatory and see how we do things on the ground.”
Billy saw the dark man pull his skateboard into view. It was a good looking board, and Billy was impressed for a half-second — this guy had class, knew how to fight and what to use to fight with. Both his hands took hold of the weapon and he began to swing as Billy began to let his own weapon of choice fly.
Billy Purgatory saw the scar across the man's face just as Dr. Luna boomed in the biggest voice he could muster, “STOP!”
Billy lost his balance and fell back, dodging the swipe of the dark man who now towered over him. Billy looked up into the face of the man who let his own board remain in one hand and fall to his side.
“It worked.” That's what the man said to Billy Purgatory. “You're real.”
“Dude.” Billy Purgatory couldn't stop staring at the scar. “Who the hell are you?”
The man seemed like he didn't know how to respond, but finally gave a half-hearted smile. “I'm Billy Purgatory.”
Dr. Luna had rushed beside the two of them and had his arms spread out wildly. “Back away! Do you hear me! Both of you back up and don't get too close to one another.”
Billy stared up at Billy from the floor. He saw a lot of Pop in the other Billy. He looked like Pop, and that meant that he looked like Billy, and that Billy really was Billy and there were two of them.
Billy's ten-year-old brain hurt like it had just jumped into a slushie-freeze river. The other Billy, the older one, pointed a thumb at Dr. Luna. “What is this guy talking about? Should I punch him?”
Billy started to pull himself up from the floor. “No, don't punch him — he's kinda cool. I don't know what he's talking about, but he knows a lot about science stuff.”
Dr. Luna was standing between the both of them now, still talking at the top of his lungs. “This is very dangerous! We're in danger of causing a singularity that might destroy everything we've come to regard as our universe.”
“Calm down, Luna.” Billy stood, trying to look around the doctor's wildly flying hands at his older double. “We're not gonna hug and kiss.”
The gunshots were much louder than the Time Gun had ended up being. Billy held his skateboard up instinctively to his chest and Luna fell backwards. They came in rapid succession. Billy saw the shooter up by the railing and watched as his older self was pushed this way and that by the impact of many rounds fired, striking him in the back.
Ten-year-old Billy stared as he watched his older version's eyes roll back in his head and then come falling face first to the ground at his feet. The body armor proved to have remained intact, but Billy saw the three darts which had struck old Billy in the back of the neck.
“I'm dead.”
Billy looked up to the railing and watched as the Russian, Broom, lowered the weapon. Around either side of Broom, his troops in helmets and black armor came rushing into the stable and down the flights of stairs to swarm the lab.
Billy raised his fist into the air and pointed with his other hand. “Dammit, Russian! You killed me.”
“He is not dead, Billy Purgatory.”
Billy watched as Brooms troops jackbooted their way around his fallen older self and grabbed him up.
“The darts,” said the Russian, “they are for him to sleep.”
Billy didn't like what was playing out around him at all. There were way too many of these guys for Billy to take all of them out. Dr. Luna was picking himself up off the floor. Billy stared up at Broom with fire in his eyes. He knew this guy had been up to shenanigans of a bullshit sort. Billy's heart suddenly sank — what about Mom? Billy would kill this guy if he even thought about laying one hand on his mother.
Then, in her flowing white, Billy's mother, Emelia, appeared at the landing to stand beside Broom. She looked down and watched the shock troops carry old Billy towards the back wall of the lab and into the entryway that led to the storage tunnels.
“Mom!” Billy redirected his finger at Broom. “Get away from that guy. That Russian is up to no good.”
Billy's mother looked to Broom and smiled. “I've always known that, darling. Don't worry, we're safe now.”
Billy suddenly found himself surrounded by shock-troops. He got in some good hits, but their armor wasn't the cheap stuff. Two of them easily hoisted Billy up by his arms.
“Mom, are you gonna let these guys capture me?”
Billy's mother stopped her conversation with Broom at the railing just long enough to answer her son. “Take him to his room. Make sure he doesn't get away from you this time.”
Broom and his mother turned from the railing and vanished into the night. Billy Purgatory kicked and fought all the way up the stairs.
II.
Billy Purgatory's room sucked more now than it ever had before. “Going to your room blows.” Pop had never once told Billy to go to this room, much less locked him in there. Billy had banged on the door until he'd worn the paint off the bottom of it. “So that's how it's gonna be?” Billy focused his telescope on the stables and found that that big dumb tree was in the way of him looking into the door. He tried not to pay any attention to the stone picnic table, because that just made him think about Mira and made him sad.
He gave up and sat down on the floor next to his skateboard. “Well board, looks like that curly-Q who stole my trampoline time was right after all. This place is definitely evil.” Billy thought about how his mother had been all nice to Broom, even after the Russian had shot the other him in the back with a dart machine gun. He didn't want to say the words, but he knew he couldn't lie to his board; it was the only friend he seemed to have left.
“Looks like Mom doesn't really care about me, or you.” Billy wasn't gonna cry like Luna had when he zapped the only girl who was probably ever gonna pay any attention to him off into time and space. Billy didn't feel like crying anyhow; his own mother had tricked him into thinking that she loved him. That didn't make Billy Purgatory all melty-marshmallow hearted. That made Billy Purgatory angry.
“She might be classy and smart and have a ton of hired guns that do whatever she says, but she ain't got what we got, board.”
The skateboard said nothing, but Billy continued because he figured it was probably curious.
“We got street smarts. That's more important than any of those big numbers that Luna draws on his chalkboard.” Billy had grown up on the other side of the tracks, and even better, he'd had Pop to guide his way. “I wish you were here with me now, Pop. This time it's bad, and I could sure use ya.”
Billy Purgatory and the Curse of the Satanic Five Page 8