by Anton Marks
Suzy had finally been dismissed from her job and was temping with some fly-by-night security firms who weren’t that interested in references. Y was evicted by the Housing Association and was bunking by her Mom’s place. The butt naked Amazon in front of them had landed her third modeling job from AM Agency in as many weeks without breaking a sweat. She was performing at The Pink Kitty Kat when she wanted variety and the punters loved her. Yet Patra still had enough enthusiasm mixed in with her usual lack of fear to be hyped about this new and improved Bad II the Bone.
Y wanted to hug her but instead called her a cow.
Suzy laughed.
“Dis must be a good sign. I couldn’t tell the last time we were together smiling for a change. I’m looking forward to a good time out and to test Mr. P’s theory that we are onto something. Sing low and don’t break deh spell, it feel too good.”
“Yeah!” Patra said dismissively not wanting to show how much in agreement she was. “While you girlies stroke yourselves and get all wet and sticky I’ll get on with some business. I’ve got the outfits to collect and sisters they are HOT. You wanted to be the centre of attention when we pull up in our nineteen forties whip - compliments of an ex-boo of mine - and you will. Heads will turn and jaws will drop, guaran-fucking-teed.”
Only Patra held the exact mental picture of how they would look tonight and that she kept a secret, but it reigned in their imagination.
The mind movies were broken by Patra’s piping “we outta here” and disappearing out of the steam room with a smile on her face and swish of her ass, knowing she had left them in a state of white hot anticipation.
10.
Greenwich Gardens Morgue
North London
Tuesday, July 17th
23.35
Darkman padded easily into the autopsy room completely naked and slowly closed the doors behind him. He stood motionless for a while feeling the chill seep in from the soles of his feet, sniffing the lingering antiseptics used to cleanse the stink of death and listened grimly to the faint ethereal cries of lives cut short and the sweet pleas of redemption only he could hear. Enoch Lacombe licked his lips at how they were so open to the suggestion of mischief. Anything for these entities to feel a connection with a world they were lost to but he had no need of wraiths dis night yah, his focus was elsewhere.
Enoch had hurriedly left a pressing engagement of bloodletting to give his attention to a past colleague he had not been able to question. So he entered the environs of the Westminster Public mortuary as if he was a regular visitor and prepared for his enquiry.
The night assistant - old boy, pepper grey hair with a London accent tinged with the flavor of the Caribbean - was still seated at his desk, head slumped on a pile of reports, a stream of blood trickling from his nose and mouth, the only indication that the Amazonian brain beetle had entered the orifice and began eating its way through his soft tissue en route to his brain. An oval Vévé with the patterns of mental confusion was sprinkled in rice grains at the entrance to the pathology suite discouraging any staff from entering while Enoch prepared to extract information from an old acquaintance and informer.
In the examination room the body that lay grey and waxen on a metal table equipped with gutters and stirrups was the uncovered corpse of the late Omar Michigan Smiley who, from the report on the desk outside, had died from heart failure, a massive overload of his circulatory system. Enoch wished he had something more substantial to do with it but unfortunately deh bwoy had died in hiding before he was able to sit and reason with his living soul but there were other means at his disposal to elicit what he required from him.
Other more esoteric avenues.
Omar would have his undivided attention behind that sublime veil of life and death. For the minutes that Enoch would commune with him, Omar would perceive them as seconds and Enoch would be the centre of his universe beyond the grave; his dark sun that he would supplicate to with the hope that he would stay awhile, sharing his eternal darkness. But for Darkman this was unpleasant business, not because of the process but because of the man.
In his life before prison, Omar worked as his messenger boy picking up and delivering items as and when his services were required. He was keen and could be molded, doing what he was told without question especially after he realised he was working for someone who could literally make his dreams become reality. He saw how Enoch revived flagging companies, made law suits go away and old enemies disappear all by coercion or manipulating forces that frightened and enthralled him. The St Lucian remained committed and focused to stay in Enoch’s good graces and to see more of what the master Voudon’s power revealed. But fear did not keep him circumspect, instead it fuelled Omar’s ambition and his greed, thinking he was the Darkman’s equal in guile.
For a moment he must have thought he was right.
Look at him now.
Enoch still had a hard time believing it had been this same yout who had been integral in organizing the theft of his arcane collection, this same yout had arranged the ghetto thugs to steal it and tipped off the authorities about some of the valuable items he had bought, stolen or murdered for. Enoch paid for his underestimation of the small island cockroach and paid again with the loss of his precious collectables, four years in prison and the almost irreversible destruction of his family heritage. Revenge was not enough. He wanted to shred them and scatter their remains across the city and paint an inspired mural with their guts and blood. But first of all the lynch pin, Mas Smiley.
He thought about all this as he stood naked, eyes closed, arms hanging at his sides, his thin but solid frame gleaming from perspiration even in the chill surroundings. As if prompted he opened his eyes slowly, blinked and revolved his locked shoulders. Breathing deeply but rhythmically, Enoch almost glided over to the head of the trolley table, his feet taking on a life of their own and touched both his palms on the temple of the cadaver, mumbling words that made his lips tremble as he spoke and sending a gossamer sheet of folding condensation that met the warmer air and twirled into oblivion.
The heat knowing it had no place here skittered away from this masquerade of an autopsy like vermin fearing extermination. It wasn’t just in his head either but a physical crackle of charged atmosphere began as dark forces convened and gripped the Voudon in an almost hypnotic trance leeching life-giving heat from around him. The fingers of his right hand began to flicker with anticipation and his eyes fell on the equipment table and the gleaming tools of a traditional post-mortem examination. His ten fingers lead him almost to the insanely sharp blades, spiked ended calipers, saws with fine set teeth, forceps, punches and chisels but as his digits strolled over the implements like they were choice chocolates he decided on a stainless steel hollow tube which he balanced expertly over his knuckles, rolling it into the palm of his hand, feeling its weight and balance.
Without further thought controlled by the psychic eddies guiding his hand, Enoch levelled the point of the needle over the collapsed larynx, finding its spot like a dowsing rod and then suddenly slamming it through the neck and into the windpipe. The gases in the distended stomach immediately sought release issuing a putrid stream of decomposing stomach content and the vile by-product of the softening of tissues. He made no attempt to step away instead Enoch’s nostrils flared as he deeply inhaled the noxious fumes that carried something of its host, brief snippets of his past life intertwined in corrupted DNA but not enough. He needed to unravel his memories, his secrets that were locked into the code of every cell in his body, even this dead carcass.
Retrieving the hollow spike from his neck, the Darkman’s fingers were dancing eagerly over the tools settling on a glinting dissecting knife. Deftly he cut the stitches of the Y incision previously made by the coroner - V at the neck and a straight incision from below his throat to the pubis. He dug his fingers into the sutures and spreads the flaps of his stomach open wide, foul smelling mucous dripping from his hands and he peered into the body’s cavity.
&
nbsp; The words of invocation bubbled from his mouth as he threw his head back to the ceiling, his arms outstretched, rhythmic sounds that alter the tapestry of reality while you looked on, each word stripping away at what kept the sleeping masses grounded and sane, bringing him to places few people have seen and lived to speak about. Enoch swayed from its effect, anticipating an arrival telegraphed by the invisible waves lightly buffeting him, then nothing. A palpable silence descended. Then a screaming invisible someone that echoed from a dark dank pit, someone being flung forward, catapulted or discarded from where he rested and unceremoniously dumped into the stinking dead thing that was Omar Smiley.
Enoch breathed easily covered in blood, bone fragments, mucous and gore. He opened his eyes and grinned down at the carcass.
“How yuh like yuh new resting place, Omar?”
The blood curdling scream in Enoch’s head was for his senses alone.
“Tight fit nuh true? But it was yours five days ago boss an’ mi nevah hear yuh a complain.” He chuckled amiably. “I guess you were fine where you were, in between places, wondering; eternal darkness or eternal light.”
Enoch shook his head with mock sorrow and said slowly. “When yuh get dead fucking wid deh side of darkness because of stupidity there is no rest feh yuh. Do you understand?”
Enoch listened amused that Omar felt he could escape him even in death.
“I don’t want to hear deh weeping and moaning star, I will leave your eternal soul trapped amongst the remaining rotting cells a dis body for ever, yuh si mi?”
Enoch nodded.
“Didn’t I warn yuh? Did I not tell yuh, to see an’ blind, hear an’ deaf? Work hard and keep our business, our business. But yuh red eye an’ bad mind against deh man who feed and cloth yuh. How you can do that? Fuck with an Obeah man of my talent and expect I wouldn’t find yuh bomboclaat in this life or deh next. Only a few man have earned the ability to walk both sides of deh divide. To your detriment, I am one such man. Suh just picture yuh spirit bound to yuh bones an’ when you bones crumble to dust, yuh spirit bound to where the dust remains. My voice will be the last human contact you will ever have. You will be a dead, decaying inconsequence, walked on and pissed on. Eternal silence, eternal lockup, unless...”
Enoch lowered his gaze for a moment and said nothing. He breathed with controlled ease, condensation pluming from his mouth, eyes closed, the hairs on his body standing on end.
“Deal?” He asked, opening his eyes. “Yuh want to deal wid mi now yout? Don’t fancy the tight fit or sharing the stinking confines of yuh own body, wid deh blow flies and maggots? Well before we talk about sending you back from whence you came, I have some questions I need answering. And depending on how yuh cooperate will depend on how and when I fling yuh rass back to damnation.
“We have deal.”
The pause, although only seconds in duration, was pregnant with threat and desperation.
“Ah, mi bwoy. Yuh are coming around to my type of tinking. Mek wi reason nuh.”
Whitmore Private Cemetery
Tuesday, July 17th
12.35
Spokes had to see it for himself but even then, even when he knew how sick and perverted Darkman was, even when he convinced himself that this mad man - who had no right being free on the street - would go to any length to regain what was his even then this level of depravity would leave him speechless.
Cebert had called him, sounding scared and breathless. The Barbadian pensioner was spending his last two years working amongst the picturesque gardens of Whitmore Private Cemetery, tending the plants and lawns, his loving care keeping the place in perfect order, enjoying his passion for gardening before he moved back to his house and land in St. Joseph. He had known the old man for nearly four years and he had kindly promised to look after Jimmy’s tomb with extra special care. He had lived up to his part of the bargain, making sure the memorial to his friend was the focal point of this pleasant place to spend an eternity. For his help Spokes made sure he regularly contributed to his retirement fund and it was at times like these that he was thankful he was such a generous soul. Spokes stood with his hands in his pockets, his comfortable Tod’s loafers set comfortably on the manicured lawn looking over to the mausoleum, set into a background of an explosion of horticultural color. And still with such beauty in his midst gooseflesh erupted along his arms and crawled languidly up his back. Cebert stood with him shoulder to shoulder reluctant to move even a step closer.
“You can go.” Cebert encouraged.
From what Spokes could see from his vantage point the mausoleum had been violently breached. The gate had been flung open with great force and the metal of the wrought iron lattice had melted to such a degree that the molten droplets stretched by gravity, had hardened into the shape of bared fangs.
“Yuh touch nuthin’, since... since yuh find it this way?”
The cemetery attendant shook his head.
“Just how I found it this morning. But I’m going to have to let my supervisor know what happened.”
“Dat cool, what I have to do won‘t take a moment.” Spokes surprised himself with that burst of bravado but it was slurped away by the sponge that was the reality of the moment.
Spokes bunched his two fists at his side steeling himself for what came next.
He smoothed down his goatee and walked over to the entrance expecting the familiar multi-sensory perception warning from his serpent head ring that would stop him in his tracks and compel him to seek safety but that did not happen. He took clumsy, hesitant steps, his lizard brain beseeching him to let someone else investigate this. He could be in the safety of his yard allowing his imagination to fill in the blanks where he could not corroborate the truth, but instead he was here. Just the site of the ornate iron gates, melted and ripped from there hinges made him feel scared and inconsequential.
He had to see what Darkman had done.
Spokes stood at the entrance his heart pounding in his chest and he peered into the murky interior. He turned to look for Cebert but he was way behind him, arms folded, with a look on his face that said, ‘I’m happy just where I’m at thank you very much’.
“Yuh have a lighter?” Spokes called over.
Cebert dug into his overalls and rummaged through his multiple pockets. Triumphantly he lifted a copper flip top lighter and threw it to him, not proceeding an inch more than he had to. Spokes plucked it from the air, his reflexes not dimmed from days as a slips man in his local cricket team, he rubbed it between his fingers like a good luck charm and smelt the whiff of butane on its case. Cautiously he stepped into the gloom, his breath pluming even though outside the midday sun was at its highest and most intense. He snapped the lighter open and watched the flame flicker from a steady cold zephyr where none should be. Taking a deep breath, a musky damp aroma kept in step with him like an insubstantial doppelganger as he walked into the darkness. The immediate shadows flitted away like rats, the darkness held at bay only just as he stopped about four paces from the entrance, his mouth open as he moved the lighter from left to right.
Jeeesus Christ.
The crown of his head prickled immediately and his mouth became as dry as an arid desert.
The scene was one of chaos.
Spokes moved closer, one tentative step at a time, gently moving debris under foot and held the lighter high. The crypt was smashed open from the top, as if a giant fist had pummeled it into submission, scattering Italian marble everywhere. Then something - he just couldn’t imagine one scrawny black man could have done this on his own - had pulled the aluminum coffin that had spent four years in the cold embrace of the crypt, up to a standing position, denting and nearly ripping the casket flaps off its hinges, revealing the plush blue satin that lined the interior.
But there was no sign of the mortal remains.
Then a creeping certainty burrowed its way into his thoughts like ravenous maggots and with it a swooning wave of nausea and repulsion. Spokes directed his flickering light to the
ground and the full horror of what he saw took some seconds to register. The debris that had threatened to twist his ankle was masonry, marble and desiccated human remains. The remains had been torn asunder and literally scattered to the four corners from fury or shear madness.
If he was not seeing this for himself, he could have so easily discounted this nightmare, somehow turned his back to it but even Spokes’ legendary skill of burying his head in the sand could not deny this.
The sweet almond smell triggered in the olfactory region of his brain was his ring’s way of telling him there was more to see, yes sir.
Much more.
The lighter extinguished and the twilight - his eyes getting used to the darkness - closed in on him. A moment of panic flared up in the pit of his stomach but with two tries he flashed the lighter to flame again and raised it over his head. The red smears on the wall became self evident.
Blood.
And he could not reign in his galloping mind from wondering whose blood had been sacrificed for this message.
“Yuh got to be playing wid me,” he murmured.
Not smears on the wall but human scrawl.
His hands trembled violently threatening to drop the lighter to the floor but he managed to grip it with both hands, steadying it to read what was written on the wall of the mausoleum.
This was not Jimmy, very smart but you will be surprised by what the dead, hear. The bones told me everything they knew.
A pump of gastric juices lurched into his stomach like a punch to the gut and his undigested food mixed with the adrenaline of panic. The combination began rising up in his throat. He stumbled backward his hand over his mouth but even as he frantically escaped this horror house he could not help but see the other message written on the adjacent wall.
You have something for me Mas Spokes and I want it back. I will have it back.