Failure

by John Everson

  Six months ago.

  “A little sex show for the old man, and we score a bag you could eat dinner out of for a week,” Raymond had promised. Cind had sat in the cab up front with him, sampling the promised weed and shaking her head.

  “I didn’t make it up,” Raymond had promised. “I’m not desperate or anything.”

  “Yeah, well what about him?” she’d answered, jerking a finger to the back seat, where Sal had stayed quiet.

  “What about him?”

  “He’s not exactly Romeo.”

  “Just tell me when you feel it,” Raymond had answered.

  A few seconds later, a wide grin spread across her face and her eyes went wide. She turned her head to the back seat.

  “You wouldn’t be so bad…”

  * * *

  By the time Sal pulled up in front of the house it was near dark. There was no mistaking it for the wrong destination, though, even in twilight. The tall, anemic structure was exfoliating, littering the foot-high grass around it in fishscales of paint that once had been white, but now looked dirty and soot-stained. Grey house dandruff. The black shutters sloughed their own skins too, and the wooden porch sagged in the middle under its own weight. The other houses on the block were proud, well-kept Victorians. But Aaron’s pit of magic was just that: the neighborhood’s pit.

  Sal parked on the south side of the street a couple doors down. Raymond’s parents’ black Toyota was already in the driveway. From the glovebox, he pulled out his pair of num-chucks. He set those on the seat and dug deeper into the compartment, riffling through oil change receipts and owner’s manuals to get to an old friend: A chinese star. Sharp as a knife on its edges, and ready for throwing. He slipped backwards out of the cab, tucked the star in his left back pocket and put his chucks in the right.

  Then with a slam, he closed the cab and stood straight up, taking a breath while staring at the house.

  The house where it had all begun.

  The house where now, it apparently was going to end.

  Steeling his bulky shoulders, Sal straightened, and crossed the street.

  It was time, she’d said.

  He didn’t knock when he reached the front door. And the knob wasn’t locked.

  He hadn’t expected it to be.

  The living room looked much as it had when Sal had last been there. A beaten up brown couch hugged a yellowed wall, and a worn trail led the way across the pea-green shag carpeting towards the kitchen, and a hallway to the back bedrooms.

  Sal remembered the first time that he’d been here.

  * * *

  “Are you sure he’s gonna give us the pot?” Cind said, pulling Raymond to a stop outside the door.

  “Are you sure he’s not gonna rape me and kill you?” she continued, giving the crusty siding a long once-over.

  “Hey,” Raymond said. “You tasted the shit. It was awesome. And Sal trusts him to deliver. Right Sal?”

  The husky boy shrugged.

  “Look,” he said. “The guy creeped me out some, but in a pervert way, ya know? I mean, he seemed harmless to me, but twisted. I think he wants to get his rocks off watching some young kids, and we can help him out. You wanna bail on this, that’s fine, but we’ll miss out on a free stash that’d keep us for the rest of the year.”

  “I’m not bailing, Sal,” she said. Then she put her hands over her chest in protection. “It’s not like I wanna fuck you…but that shit you had was prime. I can close my eyes for five minutes.”

  “I’m gonna take more than five,” he promised.

  “You’ll be lucky to keep it up for three, I bet,” she taunted.

  “Whoa, whoa,” Raymond butted in. “Save the flirting for the bedroom.”

  He stepped ahead of them and knocked on the crumbling paint of the door.

  It opened almost instantly. A haggard, greying face peered through the narrow opening, sickly light framing a pair of hairy ears, and a shadowed brow.

  “So, you came,” was all the man said.

  The door opened all the way, and the three high schoolers filed inside.

  “Nice place you got here,” Raymond said, after taking in the moth-eaten couch and piss-colored walls.

  “Save it,” the old man said, and motioned them through the frontroom, and into the kitchen. That room was a story all by itself, with ancient green formica counters and floor tiles that might once have been white. But the man didn’t give them enough time to really take in the room.

  “Down the stairs,” he said, and motioned them through a thin wood door leading to a steep narrow band of grey-painted wood steps.

  Sal hesitated, looking back toward the front room, but the man grabbed him by the shoulder. Sal stood a head taller than the man, but he quailed at the bony grip on his muscle.

  “A little late for second thoughts,” the old man said through gritted teeth. “And when are you likely to get something that good again?” He nodded at the retreating ass of Cind, thrusting side to side in tight denim as she stepped down the stairs into the orange glow of a dim lower light.

  “You ought to be paying me for providing the opportunity,” the man said, and pushed him toward the stairs. Sal went, but not without one more look back.

  “The only way out is down,” the man laughed gently, and kneed him in the back.

  At the bottom of the steps, the three teens stopped and gasped as one. The room was simple—unadorned concrete walls, a beam-spliced rafter ceiling supporting the upper floors, and a concrete floor, painted the same slick shiny grey as the stairs. But in the middle of the open floor was painted a giant pentagram, its red thick lines showing almost black in the heavy light. And hanging from the beams were a wealth of silver chains. Each uneven length was studded with a variety of sharp, long, silver hooks.

  Aaron chuckled as he saw what drew their gaze.

  “You’ve seen my pain chimes, eh?”

  He patted the boys on their backs.

  “Not to worry. Those are for another ritual. Unless you three are very, very bad, you’ll never need to feel the kiss of their steel.”

  He motioned them forward.

  “Go on, go on now.”

  He stepped to the side, and lifted a green bag from a hook on the stairwell. “I have the stuff, don’t you worry. We’ll even do a test smoke, if you like.”

  He pointed to the top point of the pentagram.

  “Young lady—you will sit there.”

  The positions of the two spikes on her right and left, he declared for the boys.

  “Her suitors,” he smiled, pointed, and bowed.

  “Sit, sit.”

  He tossed the bag and a packet of rolling papers into the center of the diagram. “Take a toke on me,” he said. “If you don’t like it, and you want to leave now…that’s fine. But once we begin, I’d really rather we continue on through the ritual.”

  Cind looked up from the bag at her feet.

  “Ritual?” she said. “I thought you just wanted to see us fuck.”

  “That’s all I want from you tonight,” he nodded, patting the air in front of him, as if it were her head. “The ritual is mine. It will help me with a magic of my own.”

  He pointed again at the bag.

  “Smoke some. I’ll be right back.”

  Aaron walked back up the stairs, and left the teens alone. Sal reached out and opened the bag, quickly rolling a joint in the papers provided. Cind stared Raymond down, the two of them exchanging an entire conversation with eyes alone.

  “Fucked up,” was all she finally said.

  “I told you that,” Sal replied, wetting the papers with his tongue. “But this shit’s worth it.”

  “You brought condoms, right?” she asked Raymond, ignoring Sal.

  Raymond produced a pack of Trojans and nodded. Then the three jerked as one, as the downstairs echoed with a scream.

  Cind grabbed Raymond’s thigh, and Sal launched himself up from the floor in a crouch. But just as suddenly, they relaxed, as the slowl
y building echo of drums filled the room. Another cry, and the percussion increased in tempo, a mass of beats and pain filling the room like sonic perfume.

  The stairs creaked and Aaron returned clutching a cell phone.

  “I thought you might like a little mood music,” he grinned. “Diamanda Galas. A dark mass. For your dark ritual.”

  He strode to the center of the diagram, looking with amusement on Sal, still on his knees, and Cind, still clutching Raymond’s leg.

  “Lighten up, my children. You should enjoy this night.”

  He dug a hand into the pocket of his pants and came out with a book of matches. “Light up and be happy,” he proclaimed, and tossed it on the floor.

  None of the teens moved for the bait.

  “Well?” he asked, and Cind pushed herself backward.

  He bent down to bring one wizened eye to stare an inch from Cind’s own.

  “Sal told me you were a goodtime girl. Was he lying? Are you really just a frightened prude?”

  Cind’s heart contracted and a chill ran up her spine. Why was she being such a baby about this? She’d fucked guys for one joint; doing two for a split of a bag this size was like hitting the motherload. She ought to be naked and spread already!

  “Pass it on,” she said, and snatched the joint from Sal to inhale deeply. “A prude I am not!”

  After passing the jay on to Raymond, she reached both hands in the air and, as if on an unspoken dare, peeled the thin yellow top over her head, exposing the stretched lace of a white silk bra beneath.

  “Now we’re talking,” Sal smiled, already feeling the hit expanding the reach of his eyes.

  Raymond smiled too, passing the joint back to Sal, and touched the bare neck of Cind, who was rocking slowly to the beat of the background drums.

  “This is going to be a night to remember,” he whispered.

  * * *

  That it had been, Sal thought, pushing open the door in the kitchen that led down. Down into the bowels of the house, where blood once ran in steaming rivers across a pentacle of fire.

  It had been quite a night. And he knew that there was only one place in the house where Aaron and Raymond and Cind would have ended up now, to deliver the vile fruit of that night’s ceremony.

  The stairs were aglow with the fiery orange light of the pit, and Sal put one foot down on the first grey stair. His heart trembled, though he heard no noise from below. He was the last to arrive. And he knew, somehow, that at least one of them would not be leaving.

  Just as Emily hadn’t left.

  * * *

  “I forgot just one thing,” Aaron had said that night, after the acrid smoke of pot had stifled the room and lit the world behind their eyes into a sliding kaleido-scope of time and shifting space.

  “We need a witness.” His eye squinted off into the rafters, and he hoisted himself up on a chain, careful to avoid the glinting barbed hooks that pricked from its length.

  “Someone we can trust. Preferably, someone who already knows what’s going on tonight.”

  The man stepped backwards, out of the pentagram, and pulled another bag from a chain in the shadows.

  “She’ll get hers, as well,” he promised, and tossed the bag into the center of the diagram with the first.

  “Is there someone who already knows what we’re about tonight? Someone you won’t be ashamed to have see you like this?”

  He looked from one face to the next. Cind’s lips were already puffy, blood-filled. Raymond shifted his crotch beneath her hand, wondering when the right time was to strip. It would be weird to do it in front of Sal, but…

  “Who knows?” Aaron said, and stared hard at Cind. “You’ve got someone we can call, just for an hour, yes? Think of your friends.”

  There was a cloud in her mind and Cind thought a moment, trying to picture her friends. There was Suzie, blonde hair, and wide hips with daddy’s Porsche and mommy’s clothes…no, Suzie had stopped talking to her when the weed ran out. There was Lisa, with her red lips and mall-talk, but…no, Lisa had stopped calling this semester too. Cind felt a tear well and shook it back.

  “Not me,” she said, and looked over at the pointed nose of Sal, realizing for the first time that they were really not so different, she and the geek.

  “You then,” Aaron had said, pointing to Sal. “You told someone other than these two about your score tonight, right?”

  Sal shook his head.

  “I told Raymond. Who else could I tell?”

  Raymond grinned and shook his head. “These two don’t get out much,” he apologized, and laughed as Cind pulled back from lightly fingering his crotch.

  “I could probably get Emily to come down.”

  “You told Emily Sathers?” Cind gulped. “How could you?”

  “Look, Cind, she’s alright, trust me. We smoke together sometimes. I figured if you didn’t want to do this, she would. Don’t worry, she’s not going to tell anyone.”

  “Will she witness for us?” Aaron asked, and Raymond shrugged. “Don’t see why not. She’s always up for kinky shit, and she’d love a good hit like this.” He shook to clear his head. “Want me to call her?”

  Aaron tossed him the phone.

  “Yes.”

  * * *

  Sal stepped softly on the stairs, easing his way to the basement. Emily Sathers had agreed to witness for them, six months ago. The last time he’d been in this basement. The last time Emily had been alive. Their threesome was the last event Emily had witnessed in her life.

  He wondered as he neared the bottom, if this was the last event he would take part in, himself.

  Was it worth it? A voice asked in his head, for the thousandth time. Was the shit really that good?

  No, he answered, and placed his foot on the concrete of the basement floor.

  No.

  * * *

  By the time Emily had arrived, Cind had her bra off, and had even let Sal lean in for a taste. The two boys had both rested their head on her ample chest, as repeated hits of the choice drug had left them all stoned.

  The older man sat quietly at his corner of the pentagram, smiling. He’d definitely found the right combination for what he intended in these three. The girl had no scruples in how and for whom she spread her legs, and the guys didn’t care who saw them get down her pants. The better looking of the two had already removed his jeans, and it was painfully obvious that Sal was itching to join the increasingly unclothed party.

  Aaron reviewed the incantation for the 100th time, and then set his book aside when a doorbell rang upstairs.

  “Raymond?” he asked, voice quiet but commanding. “Would you like to see if that’s your friend?”

  Raymond grinned stupidly, and stood up, shakily. His white underwear bulged with an erection, but the teen didn’t seem to care as he half-ran, half-stumbled up the stairs to let Emily in.

  Sal didn’t waste the time, moving in on Cind who threw her arms around the boy without pause and was soon fumbling at the zipper of his pants. What the boy lacked in looks, he made up for in plumbing, Aaron noted, as the girl released him with comical excitement from his underwear. Sal was moaning in surprise, and pleasure, when Raymond led Emily down the stairs to join the party.

  “Shit, you guys,” the girl said, feigning moral outrage with a hand across her mouth when she saw what Cind had taken into her mouth. But Aaron saw that the girl had her own hand planted on Raymond’s barely covered ass, and knew he’d have no problems with this one. His only difficulty might be in keeping her out of the action long enough for her to play her part. And she did have a part to play.

  VI. Second Coming

  “I wondered when you’d arrive,” the familiar voice said.

  Sal stepped around the corner of the stairs, and saw them. Cind lay spread-eagled and naked on the floor, again in the center of the pentagram. But this time, Raymond wasn’t fucking her. He was holding her hand, kneeling beside her. Her blood was on the floor. Sal could see the red smears on her inner t
highs, and the gloss of it congealing on her cunt. Without her clothes, he could see how distended her belly had become from the flat surface he’d kissed not that long ago.

  Whose was it? he wondered, not for the first time. Part of him perversely hoped it was his.

  “She shouldn’t be here,” he said, moving to join his friends, but stopped at the edge of the giant symbol. Its outline was traced in lengths of angry barbed wire, and the floor within was littered with a flurry of small silver squares. Danger at every step. Razorblades. They seemed almost to glow in the dim light of the bare low-watt bulb overhead.

  Sal stopped at the edge of the sigil and said, “She belongs in a hospital.”

  He glared at Raymond, inside of the steel labyrinth, who shrugged. “She wanted to come here,” he said.

  Aaron moved to intercept him, black robes swishing at his feet. The man was in full wizard regalia, black hat perched on his thinning silver hair, satin robe tied in a sash of silver and red. His fingers were bound in rings of glinting silver, each depicting a mythical being, most with extravagantly long teeth and cruel eyes.

  “It’s time,” Aaron pronounced, placing his hand on Sal’s shoulder. “We began this here, and here it must end.”

  “End is right,” Sal said, and shoved away from the man. “We’re getting out of here and getting Cind some help.”

  Something hit the back of his skull with an icy thud.

  “I don’t think so,” was the last thing he heard.

  Aaron raised the steel rod up from the back of Sal’s head and nodded as the boy crumpled to the floor.

  “It’s time to begin,” the wizard said, and moved towards Cind and Raymond, who didn’t flinch. They were no longer afraid. There was no turning back now.

  “Remove your clothes,” he said to the boy, and Raymond complied.

  “Lie down next to her,” he said, and Raymond did, skin shivering with goosebumps. This time, he did not have an erection.

  “Take a razorblade from the floor in each of your hands.”

  Raymond picked up a blade in between thumb and forefingers in each hand.

  “You’ve cut yourself before,” Aaron said softly. “I know you want release. But your time is not now. This release is not yours.”