Satellite trucks lurking outside the gate. The occasional hovering helicopter. Carol looked out a window across the manicured grounds of the Spider Estate and sighed.
“Somebody’s going to have to face them, and I’m pretty sure I know who it is. Charlie’s only three days gone, and already they’ve found out.” She called a house meeting.
“Okay girls, the hyenas are at the gate and the vultures are circling.” All eyes on Carol. She savored the moment, a new experience.
“Time to call a press conference.”
♦
The media was ravenous. Reporters licked their lips. Video cameras growled like empty stomachs. Micro-recorders waved in the air like hungry serpents. It was a slow news day the morning after a full moon, an often dangerous combination in journalism.
The tears were easy enough. Just thinking about all the work she would have to do to ensure a healthy cash flow for herself and the other Witchettes caused Carol genuine anguish. Underneath her drab cult clothes she could feel the little something she’d just bought. Something to keep her spirits up, as it were. Carol and the others had prepared a statement.
“Charlie Spider, spiritual beacon to thousands and pioneer on the path to the link with infinity, has gone on ahead.”
Carol thought about how she was going to have to get up before noon everyday. A sob escaped. She held the statement notes lower to cover her other hand giving the concealed Frederick’s silk a quick caress. She bravely pulled herself together.
“Though Charlie explored the mystery of awareness, the mystery of dreaming, and the ultimate mystery of mysticism, much work remains. A magical door has been left open. The Witchettes and I shall continue Charlie’s legacy for those seekers who have read his inspiring and reasonably-priced books, which are still available at better bookstores everywhere, as well as online.”
She conveniently failed to mention Charlie’s legacy of party animal, and the fact that his biggest potential problem these days was freezer burn. Carol did fire up the faithful, though, with news of a soon-to-be-published last book of Charlie’s called More Dreams for the Easily Led.
The press conference was an experience. All those anxious eyes staring intently. The media feeding on her words. Carol liked the almost sexual feeling of power. Of control.
♦
Lawyers were another matter. The executor of Charlie’s will was a well-practiced asshole. Carol expected trouble, but the Witchettes did all right in the will nonetheless. The mansion was theirs as long as they were in residence, and each of them would receive a small monthly allowance.
But the will stipulated that if they wanted any of the serious royalty money from the books, they were going to have to continue the workshops that had been so important to Charlie. Carol’s ingrained reluctance to put out any more effort than absolutely necessary was swept away when she talked to the Spider Cult’s accountant. The workshop tours had been knocking down some serious bucks.
The money and power thing. The power was something new, but Carol already knew what to do with money. She started getting the other women whipped into shape for giving lectures and running the lucrative T-shirt, book, and souvenir concession at the workshops while she explored the inner realms of self-awareness that could only be experienced in the boutiques and salons of Rodeo Drive. The new leader of the Spider Cult had several years worth of repressed apparel-shopping issues that needed to be dealt with.
♦
Charlie’s handwriting was the worst, so it took Carol a while to figure out the story of the Chacmools. The little diary contained a lot of information though, and even mentioned a little bonus sorcery trick. Carol read her benefactor’s words.
“The Chacmools of the Ancients are the Key to the Last Gate of Dreaming. According to legend, anyone who has mastered lucid dreaming can lie on their back and place a Chacmool by each ear, then take the third and place it inverted over the eyes. When the dreamer enters into lucid dreams, they will be guided by the three Chacmools.
“This person would have control over the dreams as in a normal lucid dream, except with the Chacmools guidance, the dreams would not be a fantasy world, they would be real and affect the everyday world of waking consciousness and the people in it.”
She couldn’t help but think about the possibilities. To steady her nerves, Carol decided to answer the call of the Bavarian chocolate sampler that had followed her home from the last trip to Rodeo Drive.
“This is some serious shit, the big thing he said was coming. One more Chacmool and dear old Charlie could have done anything he wanted.”
The diary went on to say that the two golden idols that went by the ears had open mouths and closed eyes. The one that covered the eyes and fit over the bridge of the nose had a closed mouth but open eyes. Carol checked her two idols. Both had open mouths.
Nibbling a delicate truffle, the new head of the Spider Cult tried to grasp the big picture. The money and power thing she had going on with the cult was shaping up nicely, but this!
“This rocks! I get my hands on a full set of these little idols, I can kick some ass! Literally!”
While pacing the room, she popped a mini bon-bon and thought about which ass’s would get kicked first. Start with some of those crooked politicians on television, maybe work up to some dictators.
“I could have the power of a queen!”
Carol issued an un-queen-like burp and went back to the truffles. She ate the whole thing in one bite and was blind-sided with guilt and self-doubt. She sat down hard.
“Who am I kidding here? I can’t even lose five pounds, how am I going to find a lost ancient idol and rule the world, or even Westwood?”
But before she could slip too far into the void, Carol remembered the bonus sorcery trick.
♦
The bonus: Instructions in the back of the diary for a technique called the “Black Eye”. That was a nice surprise. Carol figured with all she’d been through, she was due.
After a few days of practice, Carol started getting the hang of it. It didn’t always work, but she could sometimes mesmerize others into doing her bidding if she could get them to look long enough into her left eye, the one with the black contact lens.
Though it seemed the dim-witted were the most susceptible, the trick gave Carol’s confidence a much-needed boost. She would quest for the third idol, on her own if necessary, as soon as she took care of some business. Then she just had to figure out where to look.
One of the people the Black Eye definitely wasn’t going to work on was Wesley S. McGreed, the lawyer for the will. Though the executing of the will had turned into a long, drawn out affair, Carol and the lawyer wasted no time developing an intense dislike for each other. McGreed looked like a prime example of all the really bad things too much money could do to a person. She really hated the trips to his lavish office.
“You’ll see, my dear, towards the bottom of that page a provision concerning Mr. Spider’s nephew.”
Carol didn’t like the sneering smile she saw across the table. It had to be something really bad to be giving the lecherous old fart such pleasure. She found the place in the will, and tried to decipher the lawyer legalese.
“We have to give him a job? Is that what all this means? What does ‘until the first party is rendered non-resonant’ mean?” McGreed gave Carol an impatient look.
“It means, my dear, that you have to gainfully employ Mr. Jeremy Donner, for life.”
Carol hadn’t ever met Charlie’s nephew, but this didn’t sound good at all.
“Judging by the twisted little smile on your face, McGreed, I’m guessing it would be safe to assume the guy’s a real loser.”
The old buzzard had the creepiest laugh she’d ever heard.
♦
Wal-Mart. Retail Hell. Carol thought she was going to die. Jeremy stood right where she’d been told she’d find him, though. He was a greeter at the most bottom-end Wal-Mart in the country, conveniently located in one of the parts of LA bes
t known for its riots.
Worried about what being seen in a place that far down the shopping food-chain might do to her reputation, Carol prepared for her journey into the armpit of retail with a blonde wig and sunglasses. She slipped inside the store unnoticed by following a group of giggling high school cheerleaders, and found a suitable place to observe Jeremy in action. The man had no style, or looks for that matter. Balding already, going to fat. No family resemblance with Charlie, not even close. The only similarity seemed to be they were both short, and judging by the obvious way Jeremy was checking out the women as they came in the store, he was just as much a horndog as his uncle.
♦
Witchettes, workshops, lawyers, accountants, and then several employees. Carol was a busy girl. She hardly had time to read more of the diary in between shopping excursions. But there was something very important she needed to know, and her heart sank when she finally got through the last page. It wasn’t there.
“This sucks, Charlie! I need to know where to find the third Chacmool!” Yelling didn’t help. She tried throwing the diary against the wall. That didn’t help either.
Next, the CEO of Spider Cult International worked up a good case of self-pity and threw herself on the bed. Crying made her hungry, so she popped a handful of Bavarian Delights. Then a little more crying before wiping tears and chocolate off with the bedspread.
“Charlie was such an anal old bastard, he would have written down everything he knew about the third idol. It’s got to be here somewhere.”
Carol allowed herself a good belch, then dug out the metal box with the idols for another look, but there were no false bottoms or secret compartments. She went for the diary on the floor.
“Come on Charlie, you knew what that third Chacmool could do. I know you had to be looking for it!”
Some careful work with a knife dissecting the cloth covers of the diary didn’t revel squat. No microfilm, bus station locker keys, or coded messages. Nothing but blank cardboard inside. Nothing.
Carol was ready to board Bavarian Cruise Lines for a long, bloating voyage into the designer-chocolate sea of despair. She still had the knife in her hand and stared at the diary laying on the bed, its covers slit and peeled back obscenely. She had checked everything, everything except the thin little spine.
Just a little edge of onionskin paper was all that showed at first.
∨ Key Weird ∧
9
The Last Chance Trailer Park
Crickets in the night. A light breeze. An almost full moon rising above the trees as the front door of a trailer burst open and a very young woman in an extremely short dress stepped out and screamed back inside, “Fok you, you foking pervert!!! Dat ez de mose desgusteng foking theng I ever foking hear of!!!”
She slammed the door hard and marched over to the dusty, deserted road alongside the mobile home park and stuck out her thumb. Immediately an old Chevy full of dark male faces appeared out of nowhere, picked her up, and was gone.
Jeremy Donner, head of shipping and receiving for the Spider Cult’s T-shirt division, and former part-time greeter at Wal-Mart, lay on the floor of his dimly lit trailer in a pool of vomit and tequila. As he slowly pulled himself into a sitting position, he rubbed the welt on his forehead recently delivered by the Vaseline-covered baseball bat lying next to him on the floor. Jeremy could hardly speak.
“Maaaaan that hurts! I swear, if I live to be a hundred, I’ll never understand women!”
He found a half-full bottle of tequila, took a slug, and shook his head like a wet dog before wiping his face on a dirty towel. A devilish smile appeared below hooded eyes; he’d obviously decided he wasn’t nearly drunk enough yet, and still wanted to party.
The little man looked around the room through the debris from his latest week-long bender until he found the phone and a business card. But before he could hit the number for Murray’s Dial-A-Ho, there was a flash of lightning, the lights flickered off, the phone rang once, and the front door slowly opened.
♦
A curvaceous form in a black lace teddy with black cape, fishnet stockings, and riding boots stood in the doorway, silhouetted by a lone streetlight. Carol had been practicing her entrances.
“Trick or treat!”
She glared at the pathetic figure cowering on the floor of the trailer before her. A wicked, knowing smile on her face, Carol was holding a roll of duct tape and a riding crop in her right hand, which she slowly tapped against a shapely thigh. Her other hand absently scratched an ample ass-cheek, where the silk teddy was giving her a rash. Jeremy sat speechless, a look of stark fear and sheer animal lust on his face. Carol stepped into the trashed trailer, grabbed him by the hair on the back of his head, and dragged him to the coffee table next to the couch.
“Let’s get this show on the road. I’ve got a party to go to, but I need to take care of this first.”
Carol slammed Jeremy’s head down on the low table, and wrapped a generous amount of duct tape around both his head and the corner of the table. With his head securely fastened facing the couch, she wrapped his hands and feet as well, then lit a candle sitting on the table. The head of the Spider Cult stood back and looked down at the wretched, moaning figure below her.
“Okay, listen up loser, I’m only going to explain this to you once. Since we had to hire your sorry ass to work for us a few weeks ago, you’ve been nothing but trouble. I’ve got enough to deal with without having to go around and clean up your messes. Speaking of which, don’t you ever clean this pigpen?”
Carol reached for a black lace hankie sticking out of her boot and dropped her little whip next to the couch. She bent over to pick it up, giving Jeremy a close-up of a lot of ass and a little bit of black silk. Jeremy started making a different kind of moaning noise.
Carol straightened up, saw the look in his eyes, and gave him a pop with the whip. “No way, hotshot! This is prime stuff here!” She gave herself a little pat on the ass. “I’m saving this for the large number of tall, handsome, and well-endowed hotties I expect to meet on very favorable terms in the near future.”
Carol sneezed from the dust and held the hankie to her nose.
“Which brings me to the point of our little get-together, loser. You’re always after me to teach you how to do the ‘Black Eye’, correct?”
Jeremy’s eyes got big and he started nodding his head. Carol sat down on a relatively clean part of the couch, leaned in close, and closed her right eye.
“Well, if you make a run down to Florida and find a certain little statue that I would very much like to have, maybe I’ll teach you. How about it?”
∨ Key Weird ∧
10
Jeremy Hits the Road
Jeremy just knew it was something bad. He was less than an hour out of LA, doing his best to keep up with traffic in his blue Pinto with the one red door, when the noise started. It was just a small scraping noise at first, which seemed to be coming from the front of the car. After first worrying himself into a sweat, Jeremy slipped into denial.
“Hey, no problem, these older classic cars got all kinds of little noises, it’s part of their charm!” The noise started to get louder, so Jeremy turned up the radio.
An hour later Jeremy had put little balls of tissue in his ears and the radio blared at full distort. He noticed people in other cars were starting to stare and sometimes point at the front of his car when they went around. Jeremy finally pulled into a rest stop with the Pinto sounding like a thousand fingernails dragging on the world’s biggest blackboard. The rest stop was doing a big business, and everyone in the place stared at the little car pulling in.
Too embarrassed to stop, Jeremy screeched the Pinto on through the rest stop, then another quarter-mile down the shoulder of the road before stopping. He casually got out and stretched, scratched himself, issued a manly belch, and gave a cautious test kick to the smoking left front wheel.
“Probably just a little hot, nothing to worry about.”
Afte
r a much needed trip to the bushes, Jeremy checked himself out in the hand mirror he always carried and, as usual, he liked what he saw. He combed a few strands of hair over the vast expanse of barren real estate on top of his head. The mirror reflected Danny DeVito, but Jeremy’s eyes saw Brad Pitt.
“Looking good! Hey, might be getting a little light on top, but maybe workout a little, lose a few pounds, and I’ll be ready to read for the remake of Fight Club!”
Jeremy came out of the bushes and saw a small pair of legs sticking out from under the front of the Pinto. He hurried over to give whoever was obviously doing something bad to his car a solid kick. Just as he was about to deliver a good one to a skinny leg with his pointy-toed cowboy boots, the leg moved out of range and a little brown Indian kid popped out holding a wad of twisted rusty wire in his right hand.
“Hey mister! Here’s the problem! You must have picked up this road trash, and it got wedged in against the wheel and the brake lining! Amazing this could make so much noise!”
Jeremy looked at the grinning kid holding up the rusty wire and wondered where he came from. There wasn’t anyone or anything else around.
“Yeah, great, kid. You can keep it, okay?” Jeremy got in the car and pulled back into traffic. He looked in the rearview mirror, but the kid was gone. Lighting a cigarette, he told himself he knew it was just some wire or something all along and started rummaging around in the pile of stuff on the front seat looking for the map.
“Look out Florida! Here I come!”
∨ Key Weird ∧
11
Taco Bob’s First Trip to the Everglades
“This sure don’t look like Miami.”
I left out of Flagler Beach early, drove on down south thinking about checking on Miami. I stopped at a little roadside fruit stand and bought a mango and some guavas, and started to ask the old Indian fella working there the best way to get to Miami. This little Indian kid popped up out of nowhere and didn’t hesitate, told me right off like he was used to giving directions. So off I went.
Key Weird Page 4