“I smashed the glass on the vending machine in the teacher's lounge.”
“I'm sure that was fulfilling for you on so many levels.”
“If that means that boyhood dreams came true — then yeah, it was.”
Anastasia began reading what Billy had been writing. The fact she was doing so with it upside down and reversed was not the challenge; Billy's handwriting was.
“I'm sort of impressed that you can make anything that looks like words.”
“I know how to read and write just fine. I just don't have much use for either.”
“The world wouldn't have you any other way.” She focused on all the drawings he was making off to the side: Crosses, “X”s, roads intersecting. “What's all that?”
“That woman, Chimera, who gave me this tape, it's her grandfather singing. He was friends with my Grandpa, ‘Catfish’ Purgatory.”
Anastasia raised an eyebrow. “Seriously?”
“Yeah. This Walter Hoof Scratch guy talks about crossroads and Catfish and deals a lot. Well, most of the time, some girl leaves him and he's going down to the place where three roads meet up.”
“That sort of thing is called hoodoo, but the stories usually just have to do with where two roads intersect.”
Billy nodded and took his pen and drew two lines intersecting each other. “Right. Like this.”
Anastasia touched the end of each road. “North, South, East, and West.”
“Or,” Billy looked up, “Earth, Fire, Air, and Water.”
“The elements.”
“Yeah, he talks about them a lot too. Especially in the early songs on the first side of the tape. It starts out like you said, with just two roads crossing. It's all earth, fire, air, and water. Then he starts talking about ether.”
Anastasia pointed to the center of the two roads. “This point, the summoning place, that would be ether.”
“He goes on like that for a long time, yeah. Then, he changes what he starts calling the roads.” Billy took the end of his pen and started hitting the four points. “Flower, Moon, Owl, and Broom.”
Anastasia leaned back. “The Satanic Five? Wait…”
Billy touched the center with his pen. “Key.”
“He says that specifically in those songs?”
Billy flipped back a page and started to read:
You wish the door, you wish the gate
Know it's the hour and not the date
Nighttime slumbers ‘round the five pecked tomb
Flower, Moon, Owl, and Broom
Billy flipped the page back to the drawing and then drew an X and intersected the center with a straight line. “Now, this is three roads crossing, or it's how I see it in my head. Now we have six legs.”
“Seven areas, if we're counting the center.”
“It's some kind of code. Chimera said that it all means what the opposites of the Satanic Five are. Like for every one of them, there's something that can defeat them.”
“Billy, you realize that you must be one of these opposites, don't you? You did kill Broom.”
Billy nodded. He had been so busy trying to figure out what the lyrics were trying to say, he hadn't factored him or anything else into the equation. The only thing he had considered so far was The Devil Bird, and how Chimera had hinted that not only was it real, but that it would seek Billy out.
“I guess, Anastasia. Chimera said that she and Mudder were going to go and find some of these other opposites. They also told me to stay put while they did it.”
“We do need to find a secure place so we can study this more and keep you out of sight. This school won't be abandoned forever.”
Billy reached across the table, set a book down before Anastasia, and flipped it open. Anastasia realized it was an atlas, and the pages that spread out before her were of Mexico.
“Seriously?”
“Isn't that where outlaws always head when they're on the run?”
“In western movies, yes.”
“I cannot believe you've ever seen a western.”
“I like horses.”
Billy shook his head. “It's perfect. And if Mexico is too hot, we're just a border jump away from all of Central and South America.”
“It would seem to limit the reach of the FBI a bit.”
“Right, and we just make one more stop on our way out.”
Anastasia looked up at him. “What stop?”
Billy flipped to the next marked section in his Atlas. He'd drawn all over the coastline with his ballpoint pen. “I know the bunch that Lissandra was kind of running with. They're biker thugs that make this run through the mountains and then along the coast…”
“We've already looked for Lissandra and her goddess, and you saw the trouble it caused. Why is any of this relevant?”
Billy looked up. “Well, for one, Hoof Scratch sings about fortune tellers and gypsies a lot. Second, Lissandra's grandma knew all about this kind of stuff, and I was thinking that maybe the three roads crossing might have to do with laying out tarot cards or something. She used to lay the cards out in this pattern sort of…”
“You don't need her.”
“No, I think we do kind of need her. I think she could help us a lot in figuring all this out.”
“I certainly don't need anything from her, and you definitely need even less.”
“Ana, the goddess talks to her.”
“That same goddess has spoken to both you and I, and nothing that came out of her mouth helped either one of us not to end up in this mess. Lissandra was a silly girl who had some minimal ability in fortune telling. She was much more skilled in parlor tricks, moping about pretending she was in tune with nature, and drawing you right into that web.”
“Are you jealous of Lissandra?”
Billy watched as Anastasia's fingernails sliced into the map. “I am most certainly not jealous of Lissandra. What I am tired of, is every time you're presented with a problem that you have to use your brain to solve, you use her as a crutch.”
“I think she can help us.”
“I know that she cannot.” Anastasia removed her hand from the shreds of paper that half the atlas had become and brushed the hair from her face. “We had a plan.”
“We never came up with a plan.”
“I thought we understood the plan. You and I were going to figure this all out, and stay alive until we found a way to fully remove ourselves from danger, and then…”
“Then what?”
Anastasia pushed herself back from the table and stood. “Fine, we look for Lissandra on our way to the border, but we don't tarry.”
She turned in a blur of red shirt and black sweeping hair and faded into the darkness across the library. Billy listened to the doors that led to the hallway close behind her, then reached across the table to press play.
Billy heard the last notes of the song he had been listening to when the tape played out. Then, over the static, he heard the speaking voice of Walter Hatchett:
“Do you know about the place where three roads cross?
“Ain't some place you decide to go, it's someplace you end up. Everybody's lost somehow. Men's hearts got broken compass and backward road signs.
“When you find this place, it ain't never daytime, always night. It's just like love: you find the place when you stopped looking for it.
“You can look down the road as far as you want. Got six directions you can stare in. Don't none of them lead no place special.
“Only two ways out of three roads' cross. Up or down.
“You can't never find your way back the way you came, because you ain't never the same once you done got in the middle there.
“I was a bluesman by trade and by design. My daddy was a waiter on a riverboat All he ever done was go up and down that river. He seen lots of places from the water, but it was just like looking at a long hallway of paintings. Daddy never got off the boat.
“He stopped off long enough once in a place where he found my Mama and coo
ked me up. Neither Daddy or Mama wanted me. Mama said she got me out of a spell she made. In a big gumbo pot full of witchin' herbs.
“She said I fell out the smoke.
“I seen two men fighting over a guitar when I was a baby boy. They fought hard, and didn't seem like they would never stop. So I got tired a watchin' them and realized I done grown up. I took that guitar and started walking, leavin' them fightin', wondering where I come from and where I was going to.
“I let them do the wonderin'. I didn't much know. I just knew I was leaving.
“I wanted to see all the places Daddy never paid no mind to. I never once did set foot on a riverboat.
“A girl taught me how to play that guitar, and I loved me some girls ever since.
“I found me a girl that'd tell me my fortunes and all she asked was a song in trade. She'd only let me come' round during the day. I had to make tracks at dusk.
“‘My old man,’ she told me, ‘they call him Crooked Crowtoe. He used to be a Indian, but times is tough.’
“I asked her what a man's job turns into when he stops being an Indian?
“She said, ‘He stopped being more than that. He done changed his whole outlook on life. He just takes and takes now and don't never give nothing back.’
“‘Robbin' clothes, diamonds, and guns,’ I sang to her ‘bout him.
“‘Firewater tradin’ what he does now,' she told me. ‘He keep a stash in the knot hole of a dead tree. Knot hole full of the sweetest honey man can lose.’”
“‘Can't nothing we got be that sweet,' I told her before robbing a kiss.’ Nothing sweeter than you.'”
“‘Lots is sweeter than me. Souls,’ she come back. ‘Sweet, sweet souls.’”
Billy started to run the tape back, but before he could get hold of the switch the music started up again and he found himself caught up in the new words and rhythms:
Black eyes coming, bushel presents coming too
Black eyes dreamin', that you ain't gon' know what to do
If you get a wish, don't let crow whisper words untrue
Black eyes dealin', but he can't mark your X for you
~38~
PERVERTS
SHERIFF RUPERT DEVERAUX DID NOT LIKE PERVERTS. He had sworn by the good tax payers of the county to uphold the “no pervert” policy he so firmly believed in. Far as he'd ever been concerned, the founding fathers of this great land could have just put one damn sentence in the constitution, and if you had half a brain and was only kind of paying attention, it'd be plain enough what was right and what was wrong.
We the people of the United States of America decree: No perverts.
Sheriff Rupert had thought about swinging by Hollis's house and rousin' him out of bed to come help him take this one in.
Hollis was a good boy though, and a decent deputy; if he said he had the flu, then Sheriff Rupert didn't guess he had no reason to perjurize himself. Besides, Sheriff Rupert was a big guy and farm fed. He had a big black beard like a grizzly; his wife called him her “big fuzzy-scruffy bear”.
This one was tall and lanky, but he didn't have nowhere near the meat on his ribs that Sheriff Rupert did. He hadn't pepper-sprayed then blackjacked anyone since before the last election anyhow, and it might look good in the local paper if he took this old boy down like that.
It was an election year after all, and this pervert looked like he come from California.
Sheriff Rupert looked him over. Seemed a normal enough fellow at first glance, wearing a black suit. The short white hair kinda gave the pervertdom away, though. It wasn't long like a hippie's, but cut a little too prim and proper to pass mustard.
Sheriff had got the call over an hour ago: man was just standing out in front of the school staring at it. Blatantly disregarding the fact that there were signs posted everywhere to keep away. The Sheriff had found the front gates open and hadn't seen a car.
Idiot was just standing there, staring. He didn't even quit staring when Sheriff Rupert walked right off to the side of him. “Listen feller, I ain't sure how stuff happens off in Hollyweird or wherever you come from, but we don't take kindly to people we don't know trespassing and staring down a school ‘round here.”
The man looked at him. He didn't bear any sort of expression that anyone could easily pin down. Sheriff Rupert figured it was the dope. Which was always a good thing, made ‘em slow and easy to take down.
“So we can do this easy like, and you can just put your hands behind your back while I cuff ya, or we can do this the hard way. My arthritis ain't playing along today at all, so I can promise you that if you rile me, I'm gonna have to beat on ya.”
“You're the sheriff, then?” His voice was clean and his accent didn't sound like nobody the sheriff had ever heard. The man nodded towards the gold star Sheriff Rupert had pinned to his shirt.
“Did all that sparkle give me away so quick? Ain't like I'm undercover.”
“Sheriff, there are two very dangerous felons who are hiding in your school building, and the less you disrupt my investigation the better off we will all be.”
The Sheriff looked at the school and then pulled at his salt and pepper beard. “Dangerous felons? Like who?”
“Billy Purgatory and the girl he runs with, Anastasia.”
It took the sheriff a second, but he had surely pulled that fax from the FBI himself just a night ago. He and Hollis had laughed about the name — it was a hard handle to forget. “That ex-army fellah with the post-tragic stress complexities?”
The man in the black suit nodded. “The very same.”
Sheriff Rupert started to take a step towards the building, then looked back to his patrol wagon. He pulled his beard again, looking at the man. “Hold on now, just who the hell are you, and how do you know any of this, and what business is it of yours?”
The man in the black suit kept staring at the building. “I'm Special Agent Brau Ahl'Drow of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”
“Listen, that's all fine and honey baked ham, but what are you doing just standing out here if you got a couple a' dangerous perverts that's took my school hostage? Shouldn't there be tanks and dogs and helicopters swoopin' in?”
“We actually have already tried that tactic. Not as effective as you might think it would be. My force is here though, an entire legion. They had to make a stop in your picturesque town to gather the armor they'll need.”
“Shouldn't I be calling someone, official-like…” Sheriff Rupert looked back towards his car. Calling someone at the state police was probably a good idea; if this got out of hand it could turd float his whole election.
Then the Sheriff just stared. Every woman and child who was either old enough to walk good or not too old not to be able to was marching in through the gate. The women he went to church with and passed in the grocery store, and the kids he waved at from his patrol wagon, running around the farms and down at the lake. Face upon face that he'd known for years and saw every day.
Sheriff Rupert cussed under his breath and then held up his arms. “Hey folks, we got a situation here and I'm gonna need you all to step back and head home. Keep your doors locked…”
They ignored him, each and every last one of them. Marching lifelessly through the open gates and forming into lines in the courtyard silently. Sheriff Rupert turned and headed back to Special Agent Drow and found a woman he didn't recognize standing with him. She had hair pulled into leather braids down her back and eyes black as coal lumps.
“Oh, so I get the fat one?” She turned up her nose at the Sheriff.
“Yes, you'll be riding Sheriff here into battle. I hope he works out better for you than the blonde you chose before.”
“Billy Purgatory is no fire oracle.” She was sizing the Sheriff up and down like she was picking out a rump roast at the supermarket.
“Hey, listen here. I don't know what all these kids and lady folk is doing here, but this is dangerous. I'm gonna call up my deputies and get them rounded out and sent home.”
<
br /> Special Agent Brau Ahl'Drow put his arm around Sheriff Rupert and turned him towards the crowd of women and children. “Billy Purgatory is not a monster, Sheriff. He has very human weaknesses. While this is a man that's been in combat and is used to man versus man, he doesn't have the stomach to murder women and children.”
“I don't like this. I don't like the FBI. Tell my people to go home.” Sheriff Rupert looked into Special Agent Drow's eyes and found them to be just as black as the eyes of the woman, who was moving ever closer towards him.
“If I tell them to go home, our dear fluffy-scruffy bear, then who exactly will my legion use as puppets to storm the castle?”
Sheriff Rupert ran his eyes over the faces of his neighbors' wives and children. Their eyes were black.
Sheriff Rupert tried to pull away, but Brau Ahl'Drow's pervert grip was far too tight on him. He tried to call out, but the woman took hold of his face and then grabbed his jowls and forced his mouth open wider than he would have ever imagined was possible. “Wider, you fat sow. Pretend I'm something delicious and fried in lard.”
Brau Ahl'Drow had the back of the Sheriff's neck in his grasp. The woman pressed her hand into Sheriff Rupert's mouth as he squealed. Then she forced her arm down his throat as he hacked and gagged. “What's the matter? Don't you like the way I taste?” She smiled devilishly as the Sheriff's knees gave and slammed into the ground.
She forced her other hand into his mouth; his jaw cracked and threatened to snap. “You're turning blue and I haven't even gotten the other arm down your throat yet.” She pressed in and his eyes welled shut with tears. He could feel her hands in his stomach.
The woman with the black eyes touched her nose to his. “The worst part is the head.” He felt her hair press into his upper lip and he screamed to himself. “This is what your whore mother would have felt, had you been born the gargantuan, lazy waste of blood and piss you so predictably blossomed into.”
Sheriff Rupert swallowed the demon woman's head whole in spite of himself. The demon pulled herself all the way into him like a snake swallowing its own soul.
~39~
THE MISSION OR THE PLAN OR WHATEVER SHE'S CALLING IT
Billy Purgatory and the Curse of the Satanic Five Page 35