Solomon banged the bell in the window with his spatula. “Eggs is up, my sweet tulip.”
~21~
MANTA
THE SOLDIER RODE OUT ON A BLACK MARE named Manta. She was a quick horse, both in stride and wit. He didn't know where the riders had been headed, but she seemed to know, and he let the horse take him where it would, only spurring her to ride faster into what was left of the night.
The road she chose was long and the trees were thick. At times it was little more than an ancient trail and much less like a road. There were many hoofprints that had been laid before Manta pressed her own into the mud, and what was left of signs up the trail spoke to the soldier that this had at one time been a mining road. His own broken Spanish was not the best, but Manta seemed to agree, and the soldier did not argue with his mare.
His thoughts were muddier than the road he traveled. The sheriff had played him well, knowing that the items he possessed were important to the man he'd sent to find the wizard. The Soldier considered them to be more than things; they were doorways to him. They were the few portals left to him that led into his soul. Many doors had been closed to that place — most of them by the Soldier himself.
He didn't like to remember her. When he did, he saw her red hair blowing in the windstorm that the tornado had kicked up. She hadn't been scared of it, and her hair blew with the force of the winds, just like the wildflowers did on that field of smoky clouds that overlooked the funnel cloud miles in the distance.
“It's beautiful.” He always saw her looking back at him, one hand pointing towards the force of nature's anger in the distance and the other hand on her swollen belly. “How can something so wrathful and destructive be so damn beautiful?”
The Soldier hadn't had an answer for her that day, and he still did not have an answer on the night he rode Manta through the brambles as fast as he could spur her on.
She had never really married him. There had been no preacher and no readings from the holy books. There had been no party and no witnesses to their union. “We are together through this child in me. How can a ring and words hold any more promise than the hopes and dreams he's having in the darkness inside me?”
The Soldier hadn't had words to argue with her.
He saw that red hair blowing in his mind, and the tornado in the distance through its strands, when Manta reared and threw him. He crashed into a grave of mud and soaked the pistol that the sheriff had given him. Just big enough to catch and chill him, not deep enough to drown in.
Drowning had always seemed a peaceful death.
Manta was still rearing as the men in tattered cloaks grabbed her reins and quieted her, speaking in a language that the Soldier had never heard come from a human mouth. Two of them grabbed his arms and hoisted him out of the mud. The Soldier was fast, though, and he still pulled the pistol.
The clicking it made as the hammer struck no spark and the gun refused to fire sounded a lot like the dire chirp of language that the dark men used. The laughter they sent into the world was universal, however.
Laughter is the same joyful chorus in any tongue, even tongues that licked at the thick neck of night itself like a blood starved wolf. Laughter sounds the same, even when you are its joyless prey.
“You chase night things on a black mare?” The voice was jagged and burst from the pipes of the hooded figure as if those pipes had something permanently caught in them. There was a shrill whistle that was carried with the rumbling words. “This is a strong horse. The lady will be pleased.”
“You bring her gifts?” This voice was from another, who somewhere under all her tattered wraps seemed to be a woman. She stepped in closer to the soldier; her cheek was disfigured with burns that cut deep into soft flesh. Her eyes were darker than the disfigurement, and this made the half of her face a blessing to the Soldier. He was blessed, he felt, that he could see no more of her.
“She can have the horse,” he said. The dark men had the Soldier firmly in their grips and they plucked the impotent pistol from his hand. There was no need for the Soldier to struggle as they took it from him. “If that will make her happy, then it's hers.”
The woman put her hand under the Soldier's chin and lifted his face. “Do you have all your teeth?”
The Soldier felt her calloused hands close on his chin and face and forcibly open his jaw as she looked. “You are mostly intact for a desperate man.” She pulled her hands from him and he closed his mouth.
“Lady, the horse is my gift. If that'll make her happy.”
“It will take much more than the gift of a mare to make her pleased. Why do you follow us?”
Another of the dark men was tying his hands behind his back with a jagged rope that cut into his wrists the tighter it was pulled. “I come for the Wizard, the old man.”
Much hacking and high chirped laughing followed. “What could you possibly want with that sack of gnawed bone?”
“I made a deal. Got to make a trade.”
The woman moved away from the Soldier. She took the reins of Manta and stroked her neck. “We like to trade. We are intimate with the art of such. None caress a bargain as we do.” She looked back to the soldier. “What is it you hope to gain in this trade?”
“You wouldn't understand. Sheriff's got my soul in a bag. I need the Wizard to trade up for whatever's left of it.”
The dark woman kissed Manta's neck, then set her boot into the stirrup and rose. “You don't need a wizard for that trade. She can give you what you ask if you're willing.”
The men-things climbed onto their horses. One tied the end of the Soldier's rope to his saddle horn.
“Willing to what?” The Soldier started to push down the muddy path as the horses began to move.
“The secret to keeping hold of a soul, even a jagged one, is as simple as being willing to fight for it.” The dark woman who had stolen the Soldier's horse spurred him on as the path went up toward the mountain.
“The question you should be asking yourself, human, is if there's anything left of it worth fighting for.”
~22~
“ANY JACKASS CAN KICK DOWN A BARN, BUT IT TAKES A GOOD CARPENTER TO BUILD ONE.”
— SAM RAYBURN
LISSANDRA OPENED HER EYES SLOWLY to see the ramp lowering at the back of the aircraft. She wasn't sure where she had been taken or how long she had been out. Her head was filled with cobwebs, no doubt left behind by the spiders she had dreamed about. The dreams had been intense, horrifying, and most likely drug fueled. Her neck ached like it had been burned.
Lissandra had learned that taking a taser to the neck was a pain that even she wouldn't have been able to fully realize until it had happened to her. She felt that was saying much, since her life had been one painful episode after the other since her grandmother had left this world to cross the sea back to the old gods.
Moon was standing over Lissandra — her military guard was marching past them both with their guns, gear, and black helmets. “Am I going to have to leave you cuffed for this? You'll be just one more thing that slows me down and annoys me if the answer is yes.”
“You could always just shoot lightning into my neck again if I misbehave.” The two girls shared a long knowing look between them.
“You misbehave again and I'm going to have these cutthroats butcher baby fawns in front of you. Then I'm going to force feed you venison for dinner.”
Lissandra knew she was outmatched and outgunned. She nodded. “I'll be a good girl.”
Moon pulled her up from her seat and walked her down the ramp. Lissandra tried her best to gauge where she was as two of the men uncuffed her. It was hot here, even though it was the middle of the night. The countryside was rolling hills and she could make out many large barns and out-buildings — in the distance was what looked like an oversized farmhouse. There were no lights in any of the buildings. It was completely dark beyond the half-moon and the lights from the plane.
Wherever they were, this place had been abandoned long ago.
>
“Is this a farm? Are you a farmer's daughter?” Lissandra rubbed her wrists.
“My father was a sword maker,” said Moon. Lissandra took in fully the two samurai style swords that Moon wore across her back. “And this isn't a farm. You're in Texas, sugar; they call them ranches.”
“Texas?” Lissandra had never imagined she'd ever be standing on Texas soil, surrounded by armed military personnel and having girl-talk with a psychotic Asian girl with a sword fetish. “So, is this your secret lair?”
“Doesn't belong to me. It was LBJ's ranch.”
“The president?”
“Former president. Your people have elected a few more since then.”
“I don't really watch the news.”
Moon shook her head. “Filthy hippie.”
Moon took the lead. Lissandra figured having all those guns at her back was just as good as having them pointed at her front, and increased her strides to walk with her. “When do I get cool leather pants and boots and a sword?”
Her new best girlfriend looked Lissandra over. “You could stand a new wardrobe, and a pair of jeans that isn't ground zero for the great bacteria wars.”
“I don't get out to shop much.”
“We'll see to it that you get a shower in something a little better plumbed than a drainage culvert.”
Lissandra kept her eyes focused on the big barn they were marching towards — it had doors the size of an airplane hangar.
“What's the health plan like if I take a job with evil? Do you offer dental?”
“We usually just electrocute until you forget your tooth hurts.”
“I feel better about my oral well-being already.”
“You should — you don't want me or any of my associates pulling any teeth. That usually happens when you're being bad and not telling us things we want to know.”
“With all your fancy bells and whistles, I'd have thought that torture would have advanced beyond that.”
Moon raised her hand and made a motion in the air. Lissandra watched as part of the brigade filed out and ran up ahead of the rest towards the super-barn.
“Oh, it's advanced well beyond that. Once we're done pulling out all the teeth, we re-attach them all and then do it all over again.”
Lissandra watched as the forward soldiers went to work on the doors. She watched several of them set charges, while others pried open a panel to the left of the doors to reveal some type of power junction box.
“So, what are we stealing?” Lissandra stopped because Moon stopped and was busy overseeing the work of her soldiers.
“Souls.”
Lissandra folded her arms. “I'd always heard Texas was hot as Hell.”
“You've no idea just how hot it gets.”
Lissandra had no idea why she had been kidnapped from the forest and stolen away on a plane to Texas. And what could Moon want at a ranch that had belonged to LBJ? The only thing that Lissandra remembered about the man from her brief time at school that was remarkable about him were his ears. Still, there she was, and she was going to have to play along with this madness for the time being.
She cut her eyes up to the stars and thought of her grandmother — surely this wasn't the path which Lissandra was destined to be on.
Half the soldiers at the door broke and ran left, the other half went right. With no warning, the explosives they had rigged to the door went hot, and Lissandra turned her head and covered her ears — both actions a little too late.
Moon just stood staring.
There was a great noise from within the structure of metal snapping and rending as the great door mouth split down its center and began pouring black smoke and sparks.
Lissandra pulled herself up as the last of the sparks flew from the opening in the doors. The soldiers all filed past the two women in double-time towards the barn.
“I'm surprised that you didn't just walk up to that door, Moon, and stare at it until it split apart by sheer force of your will.”
Moon began following her soldiers towards the barn. “Well, I'm kind of in a hurry.”
II.
Lissandra followed Moon and the flashlight beams from her army through the enormous barn/hangar. The gypsy didn't see any cows or the remnants of many Old McDonald artifacts, aside from a rusting tractor. There were planes, though, most of them in various stages of degradation— many of them incomplete and missing wings or engines. It was hard to get a good look at anything. Lissandra could barely make out the concrete floor of the place, and she merely caught flashes of things in stray beams of light projected from mounted LED torches moving ahead of her.
It was as if the place was haunted by the ghosts of conspiracy theories past.
They seemed to be making a relatively straight shot down the center of the structure. Lissandra looked back to see that the stories-high crack of the big doors illuminated by half a moon seemed small now, and ever further away.
The flashlights stopped up ahead and focused together on a railing of rust and chipping yellow paint. Lissandra heard a lot of banging, and then the muzzle flash from several pistols illuminated the haunted barn, like lightning on a dark and stormy night. The sound of the gunfire echoed around the vast empty room like thunder.
“What are they shooting at?”
Moon looked back to Lissandra; reflections from the gunfire lit her face. “They're just impatient. They want to have everything ready when we come walking up.”
Blam! Blam!
“Have what ready?”
Lissandra heard one of the soldiers call back. “Mistress, we've accessed the control circuits.”
“Mistress?” Lissandra rolled her eyes and knew that Moon could see her do it, even in such low light.
“It has a more menacing ring to it than Commandress.”
“I have never met another person who was so full of themselves.”
Moon grinned to Lissandra as they were about to join the soldiers at the railing. “Lissandra, we both know that's not true.”
And Moon was right, it wasn't true.
The yellow metal railing made a rectangle around three sides of a vast metal plate in the floor. Lissandra tried to rationalize the size; four eighteen-wheelers could park on the plate side by side and still have room to spare. The metal railing fence did not extend across the side of the plate where Lissandra and all her captors now stood. Several of the soldiers had a control box open — the locking mechanism of the door which was lifted up off the control box had taken all the gunfire.
Moon gave a nod and one of the soldiers reached into the box and pulled a lever. There began a rumbling noise beneath the floor. The sound of machinery which hadn't been set into motion for many years groaned reluctantly to life. Lissandra watched as Moon stepped onto the ridiculously large metal plate in the floor and the soldiers began following her onto it. With a soldier on either side of her, Lissandra was lifted up and set onto the section which was slowly sinking beneath the rest of the barn's floor.
Soldiers began to break up and take positions around the perimeter of the enormous descending lift. Moon walked towards the center, and Lissandra's new bodyguards coaxed her to follow. Moon turned to Lissandra with a slightly excited look on her face. “Isn't it fantastic?”
“Isn't it an elevator?”
“No, not this.” Moon drew circles in the air with her hands, pointing down at the lowering metal plate they rode on. Then her hands went straight out to her sides and her fingers pointed as she did a little spin like a ballerina. “This!”
“I don't mean to sound all unimpressed…” Lissandra didn't finish her sentence as she took note that pockets of the soldiers which had taken forward points were assembling really big guns — like rocket launcher big guns. “What are they…?”
Moon had stopped her spin and followed Lissandra's outstretched arm to the soldiers arming themselves for war. “Oh, don't worry about them. We're just not really sure what we're going to find down here.”
Lissandra looked up;
the plate had sunk about forty feet into the ground. The walls that it slipped past were plain, smooth, reinforced concrete. “How deep does this thing go down?”
“Deep.”
“How deep?”
“Really, really, really deep.”
Lissandra gave up asking. “What might be down here that merits bazookas?”
“Dinosaurs.”
“Bullshit.”
“You're starting to talk more and more like a Texan every minute — and yeah, you got me, there aren't any dinosaurs. We wouldn't need such heavy artillery for that.”
Lissandra crossed her arms and looked back up again. She couldn't make out the hole they had stepped into any longer. All she could see were the concrete walls seeming to rise out of the floor in the flashlight beams — even though she knew just the opposite was happening.
“I don't mean to be a buzz-kill…”
“Then don't be.” Moon was gleeful, and would have been completely at ease and unfazed had she not been so excited to be doing whatever really wrong thing it was that they were doing. “Can't you just enjoy it? When you woke up in the woods behind that bar this morning, reeking of squirrel droppings and unanswered prayers, could you ever have imagined that tonight you'd be in Texas about to embark on the adventure of your life?”
“Never in my wildest hopes and dreams.”
Moon held up her fingertip and Lissandra imagined biting it off and blood shooting up so high it'd squirt God right in the eye. “This, mind you, is only the first of many adventures to come.”
The flashlight beams of the soldiers were suddenly re-directed front and center at the forward concrete wall. Lissandra watched as a yellow circle began coming into view, and then as the elevator plate moved down, it was revealed that it was the numeral 1 inscribed in a circle.
Then a metal framework began, and the top of a vault door as big as the elevator began to form.
“We've reached Level 1, Mistress,” the soldier at the forward apex called back to her.
“Yes, I can see that, thank you.”
“Finally.” Lissandra began to walk forward; dinosaurs or not, she couldn't wait to get off this thing. Moon put out her hand and stopped Lissandra's forward motion.
Billy Purgatory and the Curse of the Satanic Five Page 21