by Anton Marks
You’ll never go hungry, Mr. Grounds-man, she thought.
Lying on her back with her legs drawn up and her head propped at an angle by a folded towel, above her the sun sat regally on a soft mound of pale blue sky as the few remaining clouds drifted ponderously out of sight. In the distance frisbees were being thrown, footballs kicked, lovers cuddled and the only blot on the picture perfect landscape was the filthy looking hobo muttering to himself in the immediate distance. He slithered about the park his clothes slick with dirt, a grimy bag that seemed like a coal sack with a thick rope like pull string on the top. She didn’t know why but the thought popped into her head that he was some kind of anti-Santa some perverse version of St. Nick from some other place that instead of finding out who is naughty or nice when he slid down the chimney it was with a skinning knife to eviscerate your family with a guttural Har!Har!Har!
Y shivered again at her flights of fancy and closed her eyes the image fading. She took in a lung full of the fragrant air and adjusted the earphones on her MP3 player. The music of Eyrikah Badu formed a seamless backdrop to the calm.
A sweet musical score for how life should really be.
For long moments nothing mattered. All the pain she had been through was a hazy memory that could so easily have never happened and her contentment while it lasted in the here and now was all that existed.
Not for long.
Already, the darkness they had been exposed to was grating on her perceptions of the world she had spent twenty five years understanding. To be introduced to another aspect of existence that was hinted at in religions or popular culture but never truly accepted by the majority was scary, almost impossible to comprehend.
“Wake up an’ smell the goddamn roses,” the voice of reality whispered in her ear and she sighed. Opening one eye she looked up to see Patra blocking the precious sunlight and grinning down at her. “Wha’s happenin’ bitch?” Patra was obviously in a boisterous mood and having a dig at her for good measure.
“I was great before you turned up,” Y said as she raised up on her elbows. “How did you get here?”
“I rode my baby. And I must have shaved at least ten minutes off the time it took me the last time I was here.”
“Orgasmic?” Y said sarcastically.
“Hell yeah!” Cleopatra looked around. “Where’s Suzy at?”
“She bought her roller blades with her so she’s skating through the park somewhere.”
Patra nodded and took her iPhone from inside her leather jacket. She punched the touch screen and bought it to her ear.
“Alriiight,” she began. “Where here?” She nodded pointing to the floor. “Waiting for you girlfriend. So bring your big balloon ass over.”
Y shook her head and laughed.
“You sleep with it, don’t you?”
“Nothin’ gets past you, girlfriend. This is dual function shit, right here.” Patra held out the Smartphone in the palm of her hand as if she was a shop assistant about to go into a preamble on the benefits of the product. “It keeps me connected and is a cleverly disguised dildo too,” she laughed, girlishly. “I’ll get one for you on your birthday, aiight?”
“Thanks.” Y said.
It didn’t take long before Suzy was whizzing up the path towards them. Her movements were a blue and black blur with her dark hair flowing behind. Swerving past obstacles with a fluid grace and leaping over a park bench as she approached.
A sharp bank and she was standing in front of them in a cloud of dust and Chanel.
“Everyting criss,” Suzy said brightly.
Patra high fived her.
Y nodded.
“So, let mi guess,” Suzy said breathing evenly and looking at Y’s unconvincing show of impassiveness. “Yuh couldn’t tell us over the phone, suh it must be serious.”
Patra looked over to Y questioningly and then to Suzy.
“So what’s this about?”
“A development.” Y said cryptically.
“Goddamit, Y man! This is a good gig,” Patra blurted. “No, this is a great gig. You’re not going to fuck it up with some deep analytical shit are you?”
“It’s not about Spokes, this time.”
“Well, cool,” Patra sighed, relieved, her voice lowering. “If it don’t affect my paper, I’m peachy.”
“It’s Tyrone.”
“Damn,” Patra blurted out. “Why didn’t you say it was about that cocksucker?”
“If I knew it was about him, mi woulda come sooner.” Suzy said her voice more urgent.
“Well our friend has been sighted. The response from the blog has been incredible. The sisters out there are as pissed off as we are about our money.”
“How many subscribers we get so far?” Suzy questioned.
“Two thousand, one hundred.”
“Goddamn in four days. The sisters got our back, man.” Patra said.
“Feh real,” Suzy sounded incredulous and then the canvas of her face altered to a blank emotionless stare. She was looking beyond Y and Patra but couldn’t seem to look away. Her focus was in the middle distance which became a blurry netherworld of past and future, cause and effect, filled with the uncountable threads of possibility stretching into an unknown horizon then image faded. Suzy was gripped by a compulsion that tightened the muscles of her neck, holding her sight squarely on a hobo in the distance. This was the first time the derelict had come to her attention and must have taken a circuitous route, around and around the park, in ever diminishing circles, gibbering, dragging his lace less boots - that had become almost slippers - picking up detritus that was fascinating to his eyes only.
For every nugget his crazy mind conjured out of thin air and he popped in his mouth, he let out an almost sorrowful mewling sound and continued on his way. And his way was ever closer to where the girls sat.
Patra looked around briefly at the sound but turned back to the conversation.
“He’s been spotted three days ago in Croydon,” Y said evenly.
Suzy turned back to face her, pale.
“You mean dat son-of-a-bitch nuh have the decency to leave London at least. Him bold nuh rass?”
“Nah that nigga ain’t bold, that’s his way of telling us to kiss his black ass.” Patra shook her head and planted her left hand on her hips. “In other words that jiggaboo thinks we can’t touch him, he thinks he’s in the clear.”
Suzy cracked her knuckles combatively, getting back into the conversation.
“I know how you guys feel and that’s why I felt I better break the news in person.” Y said.
Patra and Suzy sat on the grass.
“I just feel like I want to go and stake him out inna Croydon, right now,” Suzy said. “Just check out his coming an goings.”
“I’m with that.” Patra said.
“Me too,” Y said. “But we‘ve got enough on our plates to deal with so leave that dawg for now. I got something special for Tyrone, trust me.”
“Suppose he skips town?” Patra asked.
“Well if your theory is right and he thinks that he’s got one up on us then he’ll stay and gloat.”
“An’ we have him.” Suzy rose up gracefully from a legs crossed position all thought of Tyrone drained out of the discussion. Instead her eyes were on the bag man, head down coming their way. Suzy flowed into a Wushu form her stance solid and ready but it was her eyes that gave her away. Her eyes that made Patra ask.
“What’s up Ms Wong?” Then she looked back herself and scrambled to her feet.
Y was able to have a better look at the derelict and it did nothing to improve his standing in her eyes. Instead it made her sense of disquiet much worst. His hair was brown shoulder length matted and caked with grime. He sported a substantial beard that was flecked with saliva and fragments of his last meal. Persistent gnats swirled around him in a cloud of which he was the centre.
He muttered as he dragged himself closer.
“Be careful Y.” Suzy’s said the words with considered em
phasis. “Him is not what him seem.”
Those words reverberated in her head discordant and chaotic. Y reached out to Patra and both pulled themselves up to standing, turning to face the hobo who was shuffling towards them as if they did not exist.
“Let’s just leave this crazy motherfucker. He can do his strange shit on his own, it’s a big park.”
“London is not big enough for you to hide from me, girlies.” The hobo said, his voice roared like the flames in an ancient hearth stoked with a bellow of air.
The girls took a step back.
The bagman that earlier was engrossed in his own sick world was suddenly present, in the here and now, aware and curious. A cold intelligence inhabited his eyes, where a vacant one had been. His posture snapped rigid in a crouch, his movements almost feline prowling. As he circled his prey, his focus steadied on them with an almost furious heat of anger or hunger or something, that ignited in him.
A monstrous smile unfurled from his lips.
“Jesus.” Patra said. The girls were fixed to where they stood in rapt amazement.
“I’m going to enjoy tearing you apart. Who will be first, first ,first?” His voice boomed with otherworldly sibilance and he licked his lips with an impossibly long lizard tongue. The tip was forked, the body a mottled, meaty protuberance, black, pink and grotesquely prehensile.
“Oh, Christ!” Y rocked back, reached behind her and snapped the latch of her Versace monogrammed sword bag on her back. She gripped the handle of the katana and pulled it free.
“You can try.” Suzy said her face losing color in degrees, her voice carrying horror instead of intent.
The hobo thing laughed its shoulders rising and falling, exposing a dirty flannel shirt and an unzipped body warmer every time laughter gurgled repulsively from its mouth. The flesh under it rippled and contorted. A barely audible hum and buzz of insect intelligence, moved under his shirt with the hive mind of a swarm.
The hobo thing shivered deliciously. Cockroaches and Black Beetles fell from under his shirt and scurried away. He caught one, an armored beetle and looked at it inquisitively. He then popped it in his mouth, where it proceeded to burrow into his cheek, travelling under his skin to his neck and disappeared. The hobo thing rolled his neck in satisfaction.
“You I want first,” he pointed to Patra his finger nails dirty thick talons.“Ah!” He sniffed the air like a hound.“Juicy, tender and bloody. Somebody’s nasty.” He said in a sing song voice.
Like a cell from an old film reel stuck in a dilapidated projector, an instant in time that hitched in her memory cold and clear, Patra could feel her adolescent embarrassment flush over her again, tears pooling in her eyes
“Somebody’s nasty.” Her class mates had teased as her first ever period left it’s bloody mark on her grey metal chair. Patra caught herself drifting under the hobo things spell and shook her head, swearing under her breath.
It had burrowed into her mind, knowing it was her time of month and purposely picked the trauma from her past, using it against her. Fucking with her head, fucking with all their heads. Patra composed herself and instinctively took back control and slammed the trapdoor of her mind shut to its intrusions.
“Didn’t know we could do shit like that, ain’t that right motherfucker.” Patra gave a weak smile and snapped into a Thai form, fists up, poise loose. “He trying to fuck with our minds girls don’t let him.”
Suzy stepped forward composing herself with effort rubbing shoulders for reassurance and said.
“Jus fuck off and leave us alone. Wi nuh frighten that easy.”
“No fun in that,” the hobo thing said.
“Let me hear you scream. Now or later. Your choice. Always your choice.”
His grin was broad, impossibly so, almost splitting his face in two and that inhuman tongue flickered behind the prison bars of black and rotting teeth that held as much menace as the slavering canines of a vampire.
“Tangling with us will not be fun peckerwood, I don’t care which satanic hood you’re from. You maybe gangsta down their but up here, so are we.” Patra spat the words a dark resolve eclipsing her features.
“This will be fun, fun, fun. The legion know of you, you are celebrity meat in the pit. So I want to be first to gut you, to taste you. I want to be the first, first, first.” He raved like child in a tantrum.
“Not today,” Y said calmly. “Today you go back to where you came from.”
Y stood with the glowing katana pointing towards it. She slid smoothly into a kata, locking each move, each breath, the anger maybe or the horror intensifying the umbra of power emanating from the sword. Patra and Suzy stepped back.
“Walk away or get carried away.”
The hobo thing flinched noticeable at the sword, its focus reverted inwards for a moment, the infernal brimstone glow in its eyes dimming, as if it was consulting with someone or something not of this world. Then as if its fears were confirmed it snapped back to lucidity with a feral grunt. Its smile was impish, eyes calculating as he absorbed them as if the image would become a mental keepsake for him. This time he stepped back tentatively.
“Next time you won’t see me coming. Next time will be fun.”
He took a longing look at them and scurried away, his manic laughter trailing behind him.
“Neeeext time will be fun,” he screeched. “Next tiiimeee!”
14.
Docklands Cargo Bay Ltd
South East London
Friday, July 19th
11.40
The tinted smoke from the Monte Cristo cigar rose lazily from the searing tip. Enoch Lacombe savored the taste by turning it around in his mouth and then pulled almost lovingly on the Cuban, sighed, tilted his head back and let out a stream of the aromatic smoke to the zinc alloy ceiling.
“Do dare dedi datum vita.” The words spoken gently had the power to alter the laws of matter and bending it to the wielder’s will. He blew out another small twirling maelstrom from his mouth that suddenly decided to disobey the laws of thermodynamics and form into a flying vulture looking as if it was preparing for landing. His mind drifted over the blood that had been shed these past weeks and with a mental shrug he was as focused as a laser beam again. His eyes settled on the space on top of the antique bureau and he recalled the importance of what was missing from it. Invariably a deluge of pain and urgency overwhelmed him. Darkman stretched in the Celtic throne chair thought to have been charmed by Merlin himself and now housed in his makeshift home, a sixty foot trailer modified for habitation and containing some of the curiosities, charms, amulets and talismans that he had collected in his travels. Every item in his menagerie of arcane culture spoke of where he had been on the globe and the people and organizations that had willingly or not, shared hidden knowledge with him.
Home away from home, until such time.
But amongst everything around Darkman that was of obvious value and significance, two designer paper bags stood dust free, pristine and totally out of place beside the Celtic throne chair. With the cigar in his right hand, he leaned over with his left and rummaged inside. He plucked up a trouser and shirt set suited for a three to four year old, dangling it on his fingers as he observed it.
A scowl darkened his face.
His father died cursing his name for the stone that was bound to the Lacombe family had not returned in time to save his land. But of equal importance was his son, his sole bloodline and heir to the family traditions who was suffering with his baby mother under the heel of his enemies. He promised himself he would take him home, restore self worth to his woman and keep spilling the blood required for retribution by the dark god’s until the balance was restored.
He dug his nose into the fabric of the baby clothes and inhaled a lungful of newness and innocence. Enoch had never seen his child in the flesh but he had projected himself to his bedside many nights and he sensed much more than a flicker of the Lacombe talent in him. He would be strong and significant in a world that did not realize
his kind existed. And although his offspring and his mother where under the yoke, a situation he took full responsibility for, he felt no guilt, no shame, just a ice cold conviction that they were pawns in a celestial domino game, characters created from a genetic lottery, given free will when it suited the players or they lost interest. His duty was to maintain the integrity of his character and be who he was meant to be - a vicious, vindictive, vain, vengeful son-of-a-bitch who believed in family first. If the act of manifesting the duppies and demons that were his storm-troopers in this war sucked him dry as a bone, he did not care because he had been the cause of all this. He did not care that for every higher order demon, every creature from the pit he dragged fourth it drained him significantly. He needed to take respites like this to recuperate drawing on the almost endless supply of negative energy that the city of London emanated, continuing to unravel his scheme in his head but he was still only human. What he had lost he would never regain but what he was short changed in longevity he would gain in pride.
A sharp astringent smell broke his reverie and he leaned forward to exit the chair, carefully placing the baby clothes in their place. He walked past a stuffed dodo bird into the area he used as a kitchen and watched the simmering demon weed in the distillation glass bubbling heartily. Enoch added a solvent to the mix and returned to his throne.
He never thought it possible but his time in prison had taught him patience, soaking up his brashness and his compulsive need for adventure and tempering it with calculation and cunning.
Deh bwoy Spokes, who he knew held the remainder of his treasures and more importantly, the John Crow stone, had himself prepared by accident or device a powerful artifact even he could not penetrate. Then, as if this country man was taunting him, he had acquired the services of a group of the Watunza Mwanga – the carers of the light, reincarnated warriors his forefathers had run into on numerous travels in Africa. They were wild cards thrown in amongst all the conflicting forces that made up human existence to maintain the balance and fairness of the domino game. His side had been chosen by his family many centuries ago and so by their very nature he was physically unable to be within a hundred Talmudic paces of them.