American Nocturne

by Hank Schwaeble

  “If you could only see yourself, Danny-boy. How atavistic you look. Head in one hand, home-made spear in the other. Any cave drawings to show me?”

  “I said, shut up!”

  “That temper of yours, Danny. You need to do something about that. Therapy, maybe. I don’t remember it being this bad before. Therapy! I crack myself up sometimes.”

  Daniel muttered something under his breath that was unintelligible even to him, and headed for a spot in front of the charred remains of the small building.

  “The hours you spend researching this crap, Danny. Think of how much more productive your life could be. With my guidance, you could be anything. Captain of Industry. Movie producer. Congressman. Senator. That’s why I’m here.”

  “I’m not listening to you.”

  “That’s my point, Danny.”

  Daniel picked out a spot and set the head on the ground next to it. He stabbed the pole into the earth and leaned into it with all his weight, switching his hands over and raising them higher to pull down on it and to keep the pole straight, twisting it until it would dig no deeper. Then he lifted the skull and impaled it on the top. It made a crunching, squishing sound as the sharpened tip sunk in.

  “A head on a pike. Never gets old, huh? I guess the classics really don’t ever go out of style.”

  The bogey stepped up to the head and placed his hands around it, lifting an eye open with his thumb.

  “Hey! Get the fuck away from that! You can’t interfere!”

  “Relax. You’re going to die of a stroke before your time if you don’t calm down, and you know we can’t have that. I’m just checking something.”

  “I told you to leave it alone.”

  “William Cargill. Friends call him Will, or did, because he hated the name ‘Bill’. Married. Two children. A boy and a girl. Eleven and thirteen.”

  “And obviously not a very good father,” Daniel said. He regretted the words the moment he spoke them.

  “My, my… awfully judgmental for a serial killer, aren’t we? Still can’t get over the fact your mother was a flesh-and-blood woman, can you Danny? Can’t stand the thought of that cock spewing inches away from you, Mom allowing herself to be defiled that way, a pregnant slut.”

  “This has nothing to do with that.” Daniel lowered his head and counted off paces from the pole, stopping at thirteen. “Except for it being the reason you’re here, maybe.”

  “Sure, Danny. Sure.”

  Daniel pulled a zip-loc bag from the pocket of his jeans. He tapped the white crystalline powder into one corner of it then set about sprinkling the powder into lines on the ground, forming a five-pointed star with the pole at its center.

  “Don’t you remember the times we had, Danny? How I used to make sure you got good grades without having to study? How I always knew how to protect you from bullies? Whatever happened to us, Danny?”

  “I told you to shut up.”

  “You were the youth I could make diabolically perfect, free from confusion. I was the future you were to embrace. Oh, Danny, don’t you remember all the fun?”

  Daniel raised up, shooting the demon a look, clenching and unclenching a fist.

  “I remember you constantly cajoling me to do things. I remember you never just letting me be. I remember getting blamed all the time for things that weren’t my fault. I remember them finally institutionalizing me when I couldn’t take it anymore. That’s what I remember.”

  “Ah, but who got you out of there, huh, Danny? Who let you waltz right through the front door? And this is the thanks I get? You spending hour upon hour studying spells and demonology, Satanism and black magic, all so you could pay me back this way? I could have made you as powerful as a Kennedy. You decided to join the Manson family instead. Kennedy’s get away with it. Manson’s don’t. Remember that, Danny.”

  “Shut up!”

  Sounds came from the back of the pick-up, a thump and a shuffling noise. Daniel stuffed the baggie into his pocket and hurried back to the truck, checking his watch in the light from the cab as soon as he got there. Eleven fifty-five.

  The woman was bound in a heavy canvas mailbag. Daniel removed a key from his pocket and unfastened the padlock at the end of a bar threaded through the metal ringed loops along the top of the bag. He pulled the bar out and slid the opened end of the bag down off her head and past her body, letting it bunch around her thighs as he stretched her limbs out. Her belly was swollen to twice a normal girth, like she had swallowed a small beach ball. She was stirring, but still unconscious. He left her there and circled to the front cab. From the glove compartment he retrieved a Bowie knife, removing it from its leather sheath. The blade glistened as he checked it, flashing in the interior light from above the rearview.

  Daniel looked up as he shut the door to see the bogey sitting atop the roof of the truck, cross-legged, elbows on his knees, resting his chin on interlocked fingers.

  “How many times are we going to go through this, Danny?”

  “As many as it takes.”

  He lowered the gate to the back and slid the woman toward him, pulling her free of the mailbag. He wedged the sheathed knife behind his belt near the small of his back and helped her to stand, jamming a hand beneath each of her armpits. Her eyes fluttered and her head hung limp. It took most of his strength to keep her from collapsing in a heap. He grabbed her arm and lifted it over his neck, pulling it down by the wrist. Her other arm automatically curved to cradle her engorged belly. Her feet moved only a few times in a pantomime of walking as he carried her toward the pole in the ground.

  “Even if it did work, Danny, even if you somehow found him, how would you know?”

  Daniel stopped. He turned back, despite the difficulty of doing so with the woman hanging off his shoulders. “I’ll know.”

  The demon stepped down the front of the truck, the talons of his toes clicking off the hood. Bathed in the brightness of the headlights, he was the most repulsive thing Daniel had ever seen. Hairy, scaly, ridden with sores and calluses. His penis hung from between his legs like a fat, desiccated snake.

  “But how? Enquiring minds want to know.”

  “I just will. I’ll be able to tell.”

  “Before you kill the next one, Danny? Or after?”

  The woman said something incoherent, and Daniel felt her try to catch her footing. He helped her stand more on her own, still keeping a firm hold.

  “Take it easy,” Daniel said, softening his voice. “You’re going to feel dizzy for a few minutes. The stuff is strong.”

  She nodded and reached an absent hand toward his face, caressing it the way one would a dear, cherished friend.

  As she started to bear more of her own weight, he steadied her and removed her arm from behind his neck. He held it out in front of him, straightening it, and pulled the sleeve of her blouse back.

  “This is going to hurt a little. I’m sorry.”

  He drew the knife from the sheath behind him and sliced the edge of it along her wrist. She winced and made a sour face, grabbing the arm with her other hand. She blinked her eyes open and glanced around.

  “Where am I? What are you doing?”

  “I need your blood. I’m sorry.”

  “My blood?”

  “Yes.” He tightened his grip on her and began to walk her in a circle around the perimeter of the pentagram, squeezing her arm and dripping blood from it every step of the way. She stumbled as they walked, seeming to look in random directions, trying to grasp some sense of place.

  About three-quarters of the way around, she regained enough presence of mind to notice the piked head. She screamed and contracted her body, hunching over as much as her globed belly would allow, pulling away from Daniel. He maintained his grip, forcing her to continue the circle until it was complete.

  She kept screaming, sobbing wildly into the palm she held over her mouth.

  “Will! Oh my God! Will! You cut off his head! Oh God! Why would you do something like that? Oh God! Will! Will!�
��

  The bogey slithered around her, popping his head over her shoulder.

  “Why don’t you tell her, Danny? Go on, explain it to her.”

  The woman continued to scream. She pulled and squirmed as Daniel tried to keep hold of her arms.

  “Look, lady, that baby you’re carrying, it’s been marked. Marked because you fornicated with that man while it was in the womb.”

  “You’re sick!”

  “No. I had no choice. Your baby was marked. The adultery stripped its soul of its chance for grace. If I didn’t do this, he’d be born with a bogey.”

  The woman’s eyes expanded. “What did you say about my baby? Oh God! My baby! Leave my baby alone! Oh God!”

  “I’m not trying to take your baby from you. I’m talking about a bogey. A type of demon, seen only by its human familiar, linked to him forever. It would prey on your child’s mind, warp his humanity. Turn him into a sociopath to be used for evil.”

  The bogey clucked a disapproving tongue. “Oh, Danny, Danny, Danny. You’re leaving out the best part.”

  The woman looked at the head, then at Daniel and started screaming and pulling again.

  “You’re insane! Let me go! Help!”

  “Listen, if you just wait one more minute…” He checked his watch. Eleven fifty-nine. “Less than one minute, you’ll see for yourself. I promise. I’m sorry. There was no other way. Your son might be the one.”

  “The one what? Let me go! Let me go! Oh God!”

  “The Antichrist. I have to find him. If I can just stop him, if I can just…”

  The bogey draped his arms over Danny’s shoulders, brushing away imaginary dust and lint from the front of his shirt as he spoke softly into his ear. “Tell her, Danny. Go ahead. Tell her why it’s so important you find him. How you dream of a new beginning, of being rid of me forever.”

  The woman screamed again, shouting for him to keep his hands off her baby. She yanked violently, pulling with all her weight. Daniel started to say something else, but he felt the earth shift beneath him.

  He tugged the woman tight against his side. “Watch.”

  A spear of coppery-orange light burst through a spot on the edge of the circle, shooting into the sky. It was followed by another. Then another. A second later, an eruption of brightness flashed around the perimeter, like a spark traveling around a rapid fuse. The section of ground inside the circle began to rise, higher and higher, a monolith of earth, thrusting itself toward the sky – an endless canyon wall of dirt and rock exploding from below, faster and faster, until the entire core of it shot toward the heavens and a searing explosion of flames roared out of the chasm it had vacated.

  The bogey shook his head and slid forward. As he crossed into the woman’s line of vision, he turned to face them. The woman recoiled, terror stretching her face, and she pulled even closer to Daniel.

  Behind the bogey, an ocean of insects, a huge cloud of flying, hissing beetles, swarmed upward from the abyss, surging toward him.

  “See you in a fortnight, Daniel,” the bogey said, leaning forward, leering at the both of them. “Now that she’s seen me, do you think she knows?”

  The beetles converged on the bogey, swallowing him in a solid mass of buzzing, clacking blackness. The swarm held the vague shape of an enormous tombstone for a moment, then machine-gunned back in sections, top to bottom, an unraveling thread, until there were no more. The bogey was gone.

  As the last beetle dive-bombed over the edge of the void, the core of earth plummeted from the sky, slamming down into place, throwing Daniel and the woman to the ground and causing the earth to shake for several seconds. Daniel covered the woman’s face and tucked his own next to it beneath his arms until the rumbling stopped. When he looked up, the dust and debris were swirling down, settling. The impaled head of Will was flush with the ground, now a bare skull, the pole sticking all the way through it.

  Daniel scrambled to his feet and ran to his pickup. He adjusted his side mirror to look at his face. Then he looked at his hands. Then his face again.

  “What just happened?” the woman asked. Her tone was different now. The voice of a person stunned into believing the next thing she heard. Whatever it may be.

  He stared at the image, holding his jaw between his thumb and fingers. Looking for a difference. Any difference. “Your son’s not the one.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He’s not the Antichrist.”

  The woman pushed herself into a sitting position, one leg extended, the other bent inward. She wrapped her arms around her belly like it was a giant football, looked at the ground as if she might find an answer there. “That’s what this was about? Finding the Antichrist?”

  “Partly.”

  Her eyes drifted over to the skull sitting on the ground with a sharpened pole through its crown. A freshet of tears streamed down her face. “So, you killed Will… for nothing?”

  “No. You bore the markings. The signs of your sin. Those markings would soon fade and be transferred to your son at birth. He would have had a bogey.”

  She looked down and adjusted her hands over her midsection, delicately this time, one above, one below. “Am I supposed to thank you?”

  “No.”

  “I… I didn’t know I was pregnant then.” She raised a hand to wipe at her cheeks, one side with her palm, the other with the back of her hand. “I was separated from my husband. I didn’t… I had no idea.”

  Daniel continued to look at himself in the mirror. “I understand.”

  “Can… will you just leave me here? I… promise I won’t tell them anything about you.”

  “I know you won’t.”

  He watched himself for a few more seconds, then turned away from the truck and walked in her direction.

  He pulled her to her feet and searched her eyes. “Do you believe that God can forgive all sins? That you can have second chances, no matter what wrongs you’ve committed in the past?”

  The woman stared at him, and then he saw it. The look of horror, of recognition. Saw the whites of her eyes become round, even as she tried to hide it. His gaze dropped to her tiny Adam’s apple, which bobbed as she swallowed. Most people believed women didn’t have Adam’s apples, but he knew they did. Theirs were just smaller, more delicate.

  “Answer me. Do you believe that?”

  “Y-yes. Anything can be forgiven. I was taught that. I believe that.”

  He raised his knife, pressed the handle against his heart. “I do, too. So, please, forgive me.”

  He stabbed her in the throat, thrusting the knife deep, sawing it a bit, until he was sure the wound was fatal. Then he pulled it out and she dropped to the ground into an expanding puddle of blood. He found a clear section on the back of her blouse and wiped the knife clean on it before heading back to his truck.

  Two weeks, he thought, climbing into the cab. He quickly corrected himself. Less than two weeks. The cycle was already accelerating. Maybe by an hour this next round, who knew how much after that. He would still have to go the full fourteen days, still have to wait until midnight each time to keep the spell from being broken. Would have to put up with the bogey for longer and longer, until he either found the one, or was forced to accept his fate. He climbed into the truck, slammed his hand against the steering wheel. No. He would not accept any such thing. No fucking way.

  He rubbed his hand over his face and adjusted the rearview. He stopped moving as he thought he heard something, something like a whisper, a faint voice asking, Why don’t you go check the skull, see if it’s really been stripped clean… check the ground, see if it’s been disturbed. Find some physical evidence. Then you’ll know. Then you can be sure…

  He shook his head and avoided looking in the direction of the pole as he backed the truck up, deciding it was just the sounds of the night, starting to get to him.

  Gomorrah

  BECAUSE HE WAS the new guy, Cory’s job was to hold the homo’s head and shoulders down while Pepper cut open
the man’s stomach and took a dump in it. That, of course, assumed Pepper knew where to find him, something Cory was having doubts about. Pepper looked nervous, even more so than usual – like he’d done one too many lines of coke after a sleepless night. His arms were high and stiff on the wheel, his eyes darting from side to side. Pepper was obviously scared of his own plan, but Cory knew the psycho would rather race his Monte Carlo off a cliff and plunge straight to Hell than lose face to a swish. Cory had met guys like Pepper before – shifty eyes and hair-trigger tempers, a bit touched in the way only insecure, wiry white trash can be, as prone to snapping as an inbred Doberman. Cory was starting to think the crazy son of a bitch might actually go through with it.

  Pepper glanced again at the rearview mirror then adjusted it. Cory assumed that meant the cop that had fallen in behind them a couple of blocks back must have turned onto a side street. He shot a look over his shoulder from his cramped position in the back middle rear. As he did, he felt a subtle bump through the seat beneath him and a moment later caught sight of a snake Pepper had run over, its exploded carcass shrinking into the distance. It looked like dozens of tiny serpents were squirming through the splatter of guts oozing from the end of its tubular body. Cory’s first thought was it had ejected a brood, but then he remembered hearing somewhere that snakes were cannibals, and that made more sense. Most cold-blooded things ate their own. As he let go of his last glimpse of it he noted that they were also hard to kill – somehow, the snake still seemed to be alive.

  Pepper sped up to beat a stoplight, taking the turn onto the Strip too quickly. The sudden change in direction caused the tires to screech and sent Dino and Cory piling into Fish in the backseat. Fish groaned, kicking and shoving.

  “Are you, uh, sure he’ll be there?” Fish asked. Extra careful with his tone, Cory noticed. The pudgy teenager obviously didn’t want to risk it sounding like a complaint. Pepper had dubbed him Fish because he said he sounded so much like a woman he could smell his cunt. Cory knew the kid didn’t want to have anything to do with this, but that he would do whatever Pepper told him to. Fish was a pussy. So was Dino.