Billy Purgatory: I am the Devil Bird

by Jesse James Freeman

  Chapter 11

  Disciple

  I had told myself that I would simply watch the boy and not get involved in his affairs. For much of his life, I stayed true to this promise. It was not Billy Purgatory who first caused me to interfere in the first place, it was the girl – Lissandra.

  I am Artemis, and interventions are my goddess prerogative.

  Try as she might, the night after Lissandra saved Billy Purgatory from the vampires in snow, she not only called herself to my attention, but she experienced her first taste of what it means to have a crush. She did a well enough job of avoiding the boy in the weeks after, as he healed from his mostly self-inflicted wounds, but she couldn't help from letting her mind wander towards him. Even if she wouldn't allow her physical form to be anywhere near his own.

  I had watched her make the woods her own. She was not a hunter then; if anything, she was jealous of the game of the forest. She so wanted to lose herself within the trees and join with the most primal cycle of nature. I got the sense that she recognized that the world man had built for himself was, at best, an unhealthy poisoned cage.

  I could feel her young emotions so strongly then. I was almost overtaken with the longing within her to abandon the false castles of her race and to run free with my deer.

  Though I would not show myself to her at first, I sent the herd in my stead. I did this as a gift.

  I shared her initial views on Billy Purgatory. He was an ignorant ruffian of a boy, but in all honesty, he never had much of a chance to be otherwise. Things would have been different had his mother remained in his world to balance his upbringing.

  There had been nothing I could do to save her. She had not been my charge for a very long time when the boy was conceived.

  Besides, the Sword Witch had been warned of her fate.

  The universe unfolds as it should, and it had deemed that Lissandra and Billy would find one another. It had also marked her in regards to the night she would find herself in danger. Nevertheless, just because the universe speaks doesn't always mean that my kin fold our arms and listen while bowing to it.

  Billy Purgatory was nowhere to be found when Lissandra needed him most.

  The place in which Lissandra lived was abhorrent to the gods. It was a false Olympus set high atop a hill and decorated in faux fineries. There was a true darkness that hung prideful over the grounds of the home of the man named Brickstaff. It was nothing that most humans could recognize, their eyes too filled with the shiny distractions and simple dreams of how much more fulfilling their days would be were they to share in such wealth as he possessed.

  Wealth, in the case of families like Brickstaff's, always comes with its own price. A price that was paid in more than coin and hard work.

  Lissandra recognized that something was not right atop the hill from the first night she stepped into its shadow. This revelation is what first sent her to the trees.

  I was as happy to have her as my only disciple as her Aunt was to have Lissandra away from her and out of her sight. The Aunt had long ago fallen in love with the idea of perfection presented by the house on the hill and the family who owned it – and owned my Aunt.

  So, Lissandra had more and more remained with my deer for days and nights on end and avoided the little servant's cottage she shared with the Aunt. None of this seemed to matter to anyone, until Lissandra became increasingly interested in Billy.

  It had become harder and harder not to notice that Billy Purgatory was seeking Lissandra out. The girl was unsure how she really felt about this. They'd not had an actual conversation since that winter night when Billy had almost died.

  The night he had kissed her.

  It was summer and Lissandra hadn't been home for nearly a week. She spent her days in fields of wildflowers and her nights in a sleeping bag surrounded by does. She couldn't have known that I was watching her, but she seemed to feel safe just the same.

  On the evening of her twelfth birthday she found Billy waiting for her at the foot of the bridge by the cypress trees. She was happy to see him, but wouldn't let herself show otherwise at first.

  She folded her arms. “What do you want, Billy?”

  “Nothing.” He had his skateboard under his left arm.

  She stared at him, unconvinced.

  “Well…”

  Billy looked back down the trail, “I came to tell you something.”

  Lissandra looked over Billy's shoulder, wondering what it was he was focused on. “So tell me.”

  “I can't now.”

  “Must not have been too important then.” She watched his hair fly into his eyes as he turned back to her. Billy brushed it away and then it fell right back into the same spot covering his left eye.

  Lissandra noticed that Billy's left knee was a mess of drying blood and leaves. “You fall down back there?”

  Billy nodded, “Yeah, that's the part where I can't tell ya.”

  “It's pretty obvious you fell down, Purgatory. You always fall down though. So what's the big secret?”

  “That's not the secret part.” Billy kicked the ground with his equally twelve-year old sneakered foot.

  “I really don't have time for all this. It's getting dark soon…”

  “Where you been, Lissandra?”

  “Around. Out here in the woods mostly.”

  Billy looked up at her, took in the little smudge of dirt on the girl's nose. He was pretty sure she wasn't eating much. She was living in the woods. “Are they mean to you?”

  Lissandra pulled her arms in tighter around her chest. “Is who mean to me?”

  “Those Brickstaff people.”

  Lissandra mostly lied. “Nobody is mean to me. Why do you even care?”

  “I was just trying to figure out why you never go home.”

  Lissandra didn't care much for talking about her life, especially, she told herself, to Billy Purgatory.

  “I just like it out here better.”

  “They look for you at summer school.”

  Lissandra took a little step back. “Who looks for me?”

  “Your Aunt. The Principal. They're gonna send a deputy…”

  “They're not coming into the woods looking for me. Besides, I might never go back.”

  “We've got room. My house is big…”

  Lissandra stopped squeezing herself and made sure she was standing as straight as she could make herself. She was actually a few inches taller than the boy. “What makes you think that I want your help or that I need somewhere to live?”

  Billy looked away. “I don't know. I'm sorry, okay.”

  “Nobody needs your help. You couldn't help me even if I did need you to, anyway.” Lissandra was getting angry and didn't understand why. “You're just a kid like me.”

  “Okay.”

  “It's getting darker.” Lissandra had already planned her escape route in her head. “Quit coming out here. You just cause trouble.”

  The last of the sunlight beamed over Billy's shoulders and illuminated him raising the saddest broken green-striped single birthday candle Lissandra had ever seen. He held it between them, his arm outstretched.

  “What…” She wasn't sure what she was looking at. Rays of sunlight broken by tree branches gave him a haloed effect. Would he burst into song next? Into flames?

  “I got you some cupcakes. I wrecked back there and I fell on the bag.” Billy looked down at the skinned knee, but Lissandra had already seen it and couldn't take her eyes off the candle.

  “This candle is all I got left.”

  Lissandra saw the chocolate frosting on Billy's fingernails as she spoke. “You're…”

  “An idiot?”

  Lissandra swiped the candle from Billy's fingertips and spoke in a quiet voice. “…no. You're sweet.”

  Billy Purgatory got his second kiss from Lissandra under the cypress trees that night. He didn't have to steal this one.

  II

  After her birthday, Lissandra let Billy come visit her in the woods whenever
he wanted. It wasn't every day, but Lissandra had found the Sheriff's deputy Billy had warned her about waiting for her when she went home the morning after her birthday. Her Aunt and the deputy had stern words for her and threatened her with foster-care and halfway houses and dungeons if she didn't start back to school.

  Lissandra had already been in trouble with the human's school system for missing so many days during the regular year that she had been sentenced to summer school. She was learning far more from being among nature, but I decided not to pull any goddess tricks and save her.

  Lissandra begrudgingly returned. She hoped she might see Billy, as he had spent every year in summer school since the beginning of time. Billy never came, though – and the adults there seemed not to care.

  She began stealing off into the night to find Billy down the trails. Lissandra would meet up with the deer and walk with them into the woods and to the creek. She felt safe with them, and as the deer drank Lissandra and Billy would lie on the bridge and look through the breaks in the trees into the face of whatever phase the moon happened to be in.

  The two thought they were doing the most grown-up things in the world, but their innocence remained intact. I was sure I would have to intercede at first – but Billy Purgatory turned out to be a boy with an odd sense of honor. It was enough for them both to talk and dream with one another – rewarding one another with a kiss when they would first find the other and when they'd eventually part ways.

  There were nights that summer when Billy would be on his own strange labors and wouldn't show. Other nights, Lissandra would find her aunt home after a day doing whatever it was she did high in that mansion which lorded over the cottage. If her aunt seemed too concerned about school or homework then Lissandra wouldn't venture out.

  It took the girl longer to notice than it did for me: something was very wrong with her aunt. Lissandra had always known her to be a busybody. She was a foul human being who cared for little beyond money and stature. Family was never her strong suit, and she had told Lissandra on more than one occasion that she didn't consider the girl to be her family.

  Lissandra hadn't cared one way or another what her aunt said about her, but to make a statement like that about family applied to not only the girl, but her dead grandmother as well. Lissandra could not forgive someone who held contempt and shame in regards to their own mother. It enraged Lissandra.

  So Lissandra found it strange that she began to feel sorry for her aunt as the woman began to show increasing signs of the sickness that was overtaking her. The girl's aunt's once golden skin began to pale, and her hair began to thin. The only color that could be found in the woman's face were the dark bags she held under her eyes – at first hidden by make-up, but as weeks progressed her aunt didn't seem to have the strength to care any longer.

  Her aunt took to sitting on the couch and staring into a television. She never changed the channel, even after midnight when the color-bars would take over the screen. Lissandra stopped sneaking out, it became unnecessary to sneak anywhere. Her aunt oftentimes would not answer Lissandra's questions and lived her nights in a daze.

  Lissandra found herself actually pleading with her aunt one evening as a beauty pageant played on the television. The woman's eyes were completely glazed. Lissandra waved her hand in front of her aunt's face.

  Nothing.

  She sat there, breathing, sometimes even humming along with the television, but beyond that, nothing. Lissandra didn't know who to call or what to do. Who would have believed her? Every morning her aunt rose from the couch, and dressed to walk up to the main house. Smiling the whole time.

  “Why do I care?” The girl repeated that out-loud more times than even I can count. Lissandra couldn't begin to imagine the answer.

  This is when the cats appeared. Lissandra began to notice them. First there was just one, a black cat with a damaged left ear. Lissandra had found it sitting on the garden table in front of the cottage one afternoon as she made her way in from summer school. She saw the slice taken out of the ear and took pity on the creature, walking towards it to offer some comfort and pet it as she did the fawns in the forest.

  It arched its back and hissed at Lissandra. It swiped a paw and came within inches of drawing the girl's blood. Lissandra pulled her hand back as the cat hissed again and jumped from the table and into the bushes. The girl had never met a creature that treated her like that.

  She had a way with animals, which is part of what made her special to me and welcomed by the wood. Things naturally came to her, if only to investigate her and then move on. Not even a serpent had ever so much as taken a defensive posture against her - much less an offensive one.

  The only creatures that had ever acted in such a way towards her were the unnatural ones. Like vampires – things that weren't supposed to exist, but Lissandra's grandmother had told her long ago that they, and things even worse than them, were real.

  That same night, as Lissandra had finished her homework and was moving towards the door to leave, her aunt spoke.

  “I know you're seeing a boy.”

  Lissandra froze. Her aunt's back was to her and she was staring into a near-muted television like she always was. Her aunt didn't turn.

  “What?” Lissandra hadn't actually had a conversation with her in weeks.

  “A boy.” Her aunt's voice was like a ghost's and sent chills through her chest.

  Lissandra stood strong and already had her hand on the doorknob and was ready to flee. She was not frightened of her aunt, never had been – it was that voice.

  “They will be angry if you don't stay pure.”

  Lissandra felt cold. It was the middle of summer and there was no reason for her to feel so cold.

  “You need to see a doctor. You're sick…”

  Her aunt began to slowly turn her head to look back at the girl who was not standing up so tall and confident any longer. The girl who was freezing and beginning to shiver.

  Lissandra got just the slightest glint of the side of her aunt's face, illuminated by the light of the television. Her skin looked to be made of porcelain and Lissandra could just make out the dark purple spider-web patterns of the veins just beneath the skin.

  “You're of no use to them if you're a whore.”

  Lissandra pulled at the door and could feel every blood vessel in her own face as they throbbed. She hoped that her face didn't look anything like what her aunt's must look like. The girl was thankful that her aunt hadn't finished turning her head before Lissandra had the good sense to run.

  There were ten or more black cats hissing at her from the porch and blocking her path. The girl jumped as they bit at the hem of her jeans and she prayed that they wouldn't chase her.

  I heard her prayers.

  III

  Billy hadn't seen Lissandra for two days the night he found himself pacing at the bank of the creek. He would have checked his watch again, if he had one, but instead kept looking up to the moon. Something wasn't right about the moon that night. It had started out orange and stayed low in the trees. It might have been completely blocked by the pine trees were it not so big.

  The further into the night Billy traveled the deeper the red color dripping over the face of the moon became.

  It was true, as I watched him, that Billy's awkward mannerisms indicated an uneasiness I had yet to witness in the boy. He kept his eyes on the path and it was difficult to tell if this was to look upon Lissandra's approach or to make his way back home and away from a strange night which only promised to get stranger.

  Anastasia was wearing her signature black when Billy turned to find her standing behind him. The vampire girl made no move towards or away from him, she simply was. As a casual observer, I wasn't prepared for how easy the excitable young man took the vampire's sudden presence.

  “You can't be out here.” Billy's fingers gripped the wheels of his skateboard ever tighter. “This is Lissandra's place. I'm here to meet her, not you.”

  Anastasia ignored the moon a
nd instead took in the clearing as if she had curiously stumbled into a home she hadn't been invited into. “Nice place. Lots of space.”

  “Go away. I don't want to talk to you.”

  “I just came to make sure you were alright.”

  Billy raised an eyebrow and his eyes hardened, staring down his nose at her. “You tricked me again tonight. I told you not to follow me.”

  Then he ran his fingers over the tiny marks on his neck. His hesitation showed that he did not want to, but he couldn't help himself.

  “I did not trick you.”

  “Yes you did, Anastasia. You pretended you were her.” Billy looked away from Anastasia's eyes and up towards the moon. That wasn't proving to be a much better options. The moon was completely blood red now and to Billy it looked like it was shrinking.

  “When someone comes up behind you and puts their hands over your eyes and gives you a kiss on the neck that's not a trick. I wasn't pretending to be anyone that I wasn't.” Anastasia's features softened and tried for a look of innocence.

  “I thought you were Lissandra.”

  “You were wrong. What does that have to do with me?”

  Billy took his hand from the bite-marks. They had healed quickly and could have been explained away as anything at this point. Insects. Collateral damage from one of his many falls. Poison darts.

  “You did this on purpose so I couldn't see her. You watch me and you know I've been happy and it makes you crazy because you are one crazy broad.”

  “More like you enjoyed my special vampire kiss and now you're all guilty and didn't want your girlfriend to see what got left behind.”

  “She's not my girlfriend.”

  Anastasia smiled. “Then let's do it again.”

  The moon was becoming a red speck with an increasing circle of black around it. Anastasia's eyes were green specks with swirling black outlines. Billy was sick to his stomach suddenly and couldn't decide which circles were worse to look at.

  Billy tried to raise his board in the air between them, but it was too late: Anastasia had moved in the dark while Billy was infatuated with the moon.