by AnonYMous
‘Yeah. I had a premonition that there was some sort of quake imminent, so I scoured the parking lot and found this lovely van with the keys still in the ignition. And a Tom Jones CD, too, signed by the man himself!’
Elvis and Janis followed Sanchez aboard and made their way towards the back of the van. Elvis yelled back at the Mystic Lady.
‘Yo, woman! Press that metal to the floor, baby. Let’s get the fuck outta here.’
‘Sure thing, King,’ Annabel simpered in reply. Elvis tended to have that effect on women, even ones as downright peculiar as the Mystic Lady.
Sanchez took a seat just behind Annabel. For a moment he just sat there with his mind in neutral. Then he breathed a huge sigh of relief at having escaped the carnage and destruction. A comfortable cushioned seat had never felt so good, even though his sweaty buttocks did tend to stick to the plastic seat cover. As they sped off down the highway he looked back and watched the final moments of the hotel as it plunged into the pits of Hell. By the time they were half a mile down the road, the Hotel Pasadena was all but gone. To any fresh visitor, it would seem as if it had never existed.
Sobered, he looked up into the rear-view mirror at the top of the windshield. He could see the Mystic Lady’s face in it. They smiled at each other. Maybe she wasn’t so bad after all.
‘You okay, Sanchez?’ she asked.
‘Been better.’
‘Well, we’re all safe now. Be back in Santa Mondega ’fore you know it.’
‘So long as nothin’ else goes wrong.’
‘It won’t. I can see us getting back with no more dramas.’
‘Bein’ able to see the future really pays off sometimes, don’t it?’
‘Certainly did earlier,’ Annabel replied. ‘I made a killing on the roulette, you know.’
‘Yeah? ’Cause that tip you gave me sure didn’t work out too well. I lost a fuckin’ fortune on the wheel when you called red.’
Annabel smiled. ‘Funny, that. You know, that was the only time I didn’t win all day.’
‘What?’
‘I won almost a hundred thousand dollars today on that roulette wheel. The only call I got wrong was the one when you lost all your money.’
‘Thanks a bunch,’ said Sanchez, bitterly.
A knowing grin spread across the Mystic Lady’s wrinkled face. ‘Maybe next time you offer me a drink, you’ll think twice about giving me piss,’ she suggested.
Goddammit, thought Sanchez. Shit karma, again.
After that, he would have preferred to spend the journey at the back of the van, as far away from Annabel as possible. Unfortunately, Elvis and Janis were in need of some privacy. Sanchez did his best not to be too nosy, but his occasional glances back were greeted by the sight of Janis bent over the pull-out bed with Elvis pounding into her from behind. And Janis wasn’t exactly a quiet fuck, either. Energetic sex wasn’t moderating her Tourette’s much.
The moon and a million stars shone down brightly from the night sky. They lit the desert and the long ribbon of the highway with a pleasant glow, barely hinting at the evil left behind where the hotel had once stood. Sanchez had never been a great admirer of moonlight, but after all he had just been through he took comfort in the sight of it. There had been moments over the past twenty-four hours when he had thought he might never see even simple, natural sights like the glow of the moon and stars again. From his seat behind Annabel the faint glimmer of light allowed him to see a crossroads up ahead, long before it was illuminated by the van’s headlights. He didn’t recall seeing it on the journey to the hotel, and since it appeared to be without a road sign to provide directions, he hoped Annabel would know which road to take. She slowed the van to a crawl as they approached it. Then she leaned back and looked over her shoulder at Sanchez.
‘You know which way we go from here?’ she asked.
‘Not a fuckin’ clue. Straight ahead’s probably as good as any.’
‘I don’t know,’ said Annabel dubiously. She was still half turned towards Sanchez, not really watching the road ahead of her. Looking past her at the approaching crossroads, Sanchez spotted a man in a black suit, wearing a fedora, walking down the middle of the road. He would have been hard to spot even in the glare of the van’s headlights, had he not been carrying a large white signpost over his shoulder.
‘WATCH OUT!’ Sanchez yelled.
Annabel whipped back round to face the windshield, slamming on the brakes as she did so.
‘Jesus! Who the hell is that?’ she asked.
Sanchez got up and joined her at the front of the van. The signpost the man was carrying had four arms set at right angles to each other, each with a place name lettered on it, though Sanchez couldn’t read them.
‘I think,’ he said softly, ‘that’s Robert Johnson.’ He thought back to the young singer he had known as Jacko, and whom he had met for the first time only a few hours earlier. Somehow, that name no longer seemed to suit him.
Annabel raised an eyebrow. ‘The Blues Man?’
‘Yeah.’
‘The one who sold his soul to the Devil at the crossroads?’
‘Yeah. That one. How the hell’d he get here so quickly? Thought I’d killed him back at the hotel.’ Seeing her expression, he added hastily, ‘Shit, it was an accident.’
‘I’m not sure I need to hear about that,’ Annabel said primly, shaking her head. ‘He was a good sort, you know, was Robert Johnson.’
‘How d’ya mean?’
‘Well, the spirits are telling me he’s about to show us the way home.’
Sanchez watched Johnson prop the sign on the ground and look around for the exact spot to stake it. ‘Yeah, he’s puttin’ the signpost back on the crossroads.’
‘Exactly,’ said Annabel knowingly.
‘Wonder where he found it?’ Sanchez thought aloud.
‘Where he left it, most likely.’
‘You think he took it down?’
‘Like I said, he was a good man.’
‘How the fuck does stealin’ signposts make him a good man?’
Annabel sighed. ‘Think about it, Sanchez. That signpost directs people to the Hotel Pasadena. By taking it down and hiding it every Halloween, Robert Johnson has probably saved a heck of a lot of lives. And now he’s showing us the way home.’
She pointed up ahead and they both watched as the black man in the suit rammed the signpost down into the loose earth at the roadside, where two arms of the crossroads met. After securing it he twisted it around. Annabel pressed gently on the accelerator and the van slowly approached the crossroads. When they were close enough to get a good look at the signpost they saw the man they believed to be Robert Johnson point up at one of the white-painted arms. It indicated the turning to the right. Lettered in black on the sign was the word ‘HOME’.
Annabel flashed the headlights at him by way of thanks and began to turn the steering wheel to the right. As the van came round, Sanchez waved a regretful hand at the Blues Man, in apology for having nudged him into the chasm in the floor of the hotel. Johnson waved back once, then doffed his hat to show no hard feelings. With that last gesture, he disappeared into the night.
The van sped on through the darkness for another hour before the Mystic Lady eventually parked it up at the first motel they came to outside the Devil’s Graveyard. Sanchez would finally have somewhere safe to rest his weary head in peace.
And he wouldn’t have to continue listening to Janis Joplin screaming ‘Fuck me harder, you fuckin’ muthafucker!’ any more.
Sixty-Four
Breakfast in a motel was all that Sanchez could have wished for. He had lost his luggage and his jacket, all left behind in his room at the Hotel Pasadena. Since the place had now plunged into the depths of Hell, there was every chance that the Devil and his minions were walking around in Sanchez’s finest selection of Hawaiian shirts. So he made do with the red one again, even if it was a tad sticky and stale. As for his shorts, he was used to wearing them for weeks at a time in an
y case, so neither was it any great hardship to pull them on once again.
He sat in a booth by the motel diner’s window, tucking into a fried breakfast and occasionally sipping from a mug of steaming hot coffee. As he did so, he reflected on all that had happened in the Devil’s Graveyard the day before. Opposite him at the table sat his good buddy Elvis. At least, Sanchez liked to think of Elvis as his buddy. Chances were high, however, that once they were back in Santa Mondega they wouldn’t have much contact, unless Elvis came by the Tapioca for a drink. But, hey, Sanchez thought, we kinda bonded a little during yesterday’s goings-on.
Like Sanchez, Elvis was stuck in the same clothes that he’d worn the day before. Yet unlike Sanchez, he looked as cool as ever, somehow making yesterday’s dirty clothes look so much less sleazy than did the bar owner. His hair was still unruffled, despite an evening of angry sex with Janis. He did look tired, though – just about ready to nod off to sleep at any minute, Sanchez thought. He’d kept his trademark shades on and was sitting back against the red vinyl-covered bench in the booth, with his legs stretched out over to Sanchez’s side of the table.
All the King had in front of him was a plate with a cheeseburger on it, which he hadn’t yet touched, and a glass of orange juice.
‘That was some fuckin’ day yesterday, huh, Sanchez?’ he commented.
‘Yeah. Not exactly my idea of fun. Reckon next year I’m goin’ to stay in Santa Mondega. Gotta be a whole lot safer.’
‘Yeah, man. Smart idea.’
Sanchez finished up the last piece of sausage on his plate and wiped his mouth with a napkin, before reaching for his coffee cup.
‘Reckon you’ll see that Janis Joplin chick again?’ he asked Elvis, who was staring out of the window at something in the parking lot.
‘Yeah, maybe. She’s kinda cool. Say what, though, Sanchez, ya oughta take out that Annabel thing. She’s got it bad for you, buddy.’
‘She’s got somethin’ bad, sure enough,’ Sanchez grumbled. ‘I can smell it every time she’s near.’
Elvis laughed politely and continued to stare out of the window. From behind his sunglasses Sanchez saw him raise an eyebrow.
‘What’s happenin’, man?’ he asked.
‘Yo, Sanchez,’ Elvis half-whispered, so that no one within earshot would hear him. ‘Check out that black car outside.’
With a squeak from the tortured vinyl, Sanchez twisted his substantial butt round on the bench and peered out of the window to get a look at the car. Sure enough, in the lot outside was a black Pontiac Firebird parked in front of one of the motel rooms. It was rocking wildly from side to side.
‘What d’ya reckon’s goin’ on?’ Sanchez asked.
Elvis grinned. ‘I reckon,’ he said in his lazy drawl, ‘yep, I reckon someone’s gettin’ fucked.’
Sixty-Five
Invincible Angus had spent a thoroughly unsatisfying night in the Safari Motel. After the chaos of the previous day’s events, he had ended up without any of the cash he had hoped to pick up. He had successfully gunned down the Judy Garland impersonator, but it hadn’t made him any money. He hadn’t retrieved his twenty thousand dollars from Sanchez, either.
When he checked into the motel the previous night he’d been somewhat overhasty. Apart from one pistol, he’d left his few remaining possessions, including a box of shells and his spare magazines, in his newly acquired black Pontiac Firebird, which he’d parked in the bay right outside his room. Not a clever thing to do at the best of times, but particularly dumb when the car had no window on the driver’s side, on account of him having put a bullet through it. But Halloween had been so hectic, and so frustrating, from start to finish that all he had wanted to do was get a good night’s sleep. Now that he’d had that sleep, he was fully alert again.
The motel room he had stayed in was pretty basic, but it sure beat spending the night in Hell, or inside a zombie’s stomach, which was probably more or less the same thing. He stepped outside and breathed in a lungful of the fresh, early-morning air. It was good to be alive after all that had happened. That at least was something to be grateful for.
It was then Angus caught sight of what might just prove to be a lucky break. On the other side of the parking lot was the motel diner. Sitting at a booth by the window, stuffing his face full of sausage, was Sanchez fuckin’ Garcia. And he had his buddy, the Elvis jerk, with him. These two muthafuckers might still have Angus’s twenty grand. And if they didn’t? Well, they were still worth killing anyway.
He closed the motel door quietly behind him so as not to draw attention to himself. All he had to do was grab a couple of the loaded magazines he had stupidly left in the car the night before. Then he was going to finish the job of burying those two bastards in the desert. Not even very deep, since they’d be doing the digging.
The morning was surprisingly cold considering how hot it had been the day before. There was a light frost on the car’s windshield brought on by the chill of the desert night. As he walked over to the driver’s door Angus glanced up at the sun, which was just beginning to show over the horizon. At that low angle its rays were blinding, and he was grateful for the Firebird’s dark-tinted windows.
He opened the car door, feeling the chill of the frost on the door handle under his fingers. He lifted his right hand and blew warm air from his mouth on to his fingertips. Those fingers needed warming up in readiness for squeezing the trigger of his gun. He glanced over at the diner again. Sanchez and Elvis didn’t seem to have caught sight of him yet. As he climbed into the car he kept his gaze fixed on Sanchez’s fat face as he chewed greedily on his breakfast. That thievin’ sonofabitch was gonna be sorry he ever messed with Invincible Angus.
The black leather seat in the car was ice-cold and he shivered as he sat down on it and pulled the door shut. Still staring at his two intended victims, he reached over blindly to the glove compartment, where he’d stashed the shells and spare magazines the night before. As he did, his hand brushed against something in the passenger seat. He quickly turned his head to see what it was, and reeled back in shock. Slumped next to him in the passenger seat was a corpse.
Judy Garland.
The woman he had shot in the hotel the previous night. She smelt pretty bad, too. The front of her blue and white dress was stained almost black from a dark patch of dried blood where his bullet had smashed into her chest. Her face was hideous, the eyes open but turned up into the head, so that only the whites showed. Her hair was disordered and stiff with blood, the neat pigtails long since gone. The effects of death had drawn her lips back from her teeth in a terrifying rictus that looked like a snarl.
Jesus! he thought. How in hell had this woman’s body come to be in his car? As soon as he asked himself the question, Angus felt his blood turn to ice. One look in the driver’s mirror answered the question for him.
Staring back at him from the rear seat was a dark figure with a hood pulled up over its head.
THE END (perhaps…)
Table of Contents
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-One
Twenty-Two
Twenty-Three
Twenty-Four
Twenty-Five
Twenty-Six
Twenty-Seven
Twenty-Eight
Twenty-Nine
Thirty
Thirty-One
Thirty-Two
Thirty-Three
Thirty-Four
Thirty-Five
Thirty-Six
Thirty-Seven
Thirty-Eight
Thirty-Nine
Forty
Forty-One
Forty-Two
Forty-Three
Forty-Four
Forty-Five
Forty-Six
Forty-Seven
Forty-Eight
Forty-Nine
Fifty
Fifty-One
Fifty-Two
Fifty-Three
Fifty-Four
Fifty-Five
Fifty-Six
Fifty-Seven
Fifty-Eight
Fifty-Nine
Sixty
Sixty-One
Sixty-Two
Sixty-Three
Sixty-Four
Sixty-Five