Bubba and the Cosmic Blood-Suckers

by Joe R. Lansdale

  Each member was assigned a bedroom, and each of them went to their rooms. After awhile the dead servants brought the luggage to them from the steamboat.

  Elvis stood at the window of his room as Elvira placed his case on a large chair and opened it. Before she could remove his goods, he said, “I’ll take care of that myself. Thank you, Elvira. Thank you very much. You may go.”

  Elvira turned her head, looked at Elvis and studied him. Her eyes appeared to brighten for a moment, as if the sight of Elvis triggered a memory inside her marginally reactivated brain, and then it was gone.

  Elvis wondered how someone as young as her, someone who when alive must have been quite beautiful, had chosen to kill herself. He studied the thin line of rope burns around her neck, more visible than they had been the night before. He watched her turn away and leave the room, heading back with the other dead to the steamboat.

  Elvis sighed. He was a long way from Sun Records and Memphis, and had been for some time, and now there was no going back. There were times when it all seemed a dream, a shuffling of shadows, lies and false hopes; time seemed to break and ebb and flow, the past through the future, the future through the past. When that happened, life didn’t seem real, merely an illusion.

  That night Elvis lay in bed nude, looking up at the pentagram above him. He had one small light next to the bed, and it showed the pentagram clearly. He wondered why the pentagram was powerful. It was only a symbol. He got up and opened one of the windows. The edges of the window were blessed, the glass of the window was blessed. Even with it open, it was a barrier against evil. It could hold many things at bay, or at least give them worries. He wasn’t so sure this was true about what they faced now. He had no reason to think that the spells would not be enough, no reason other than instinct. He had been wrong a few times, but right more often than not. He had a very uneasy feeling about what was to come.

  The cool wind caressed his sweat-coated body. On the roof, the weather vane, which was in fact a collection of protective symbols, rattled in the wind.

  Elvis stuck his head out the window and pulled in a deep breath, then went back to bed, continued looking at the pentagram.

  He couldn’t sleep.

  He counted sheep.

  A lot of sheep.

  He thought about whacking off, but wasn’t up for it. It was something that helped him sleep, though, so perhaps he should reconsider. It wasn’t as good as pills back home, but now, being away from them for a few days, he was beginning to feel good, strong again.

  If he had his pills, his glorious pills, he could take one, or two, or three, to sleep. But they made him sleep too deep, and he had the dreams that moved time back and forth, dreams where he thought he might not be who he thought he was, dreams where he was older and confused.

  To hell with the pills. Under these sorts of circumstances it was best to be nervous and alert, all things considered. But when this was over, oh heavens, he was going to take several pills and drift down into a deep sleep and try to stay there for days.

  Outside his door he heard a squeak of boards, then the knob rattled ever so gently and the door cracked open.

  Elvis reached out and lay his hand on the silver-coated, symbol-carved handle of the large knife he had placed on the end table. It had been blessed by the Dala Lama, rabbis and a Catholic priest, as well as blessings from religions consumed by time.

  Elvis lifted the knife slowly and sat up in bed. In the doorway he saw an attractive female shape, dressed in a long, snowy gown, teeth white against the night, black hair flowing around her.

  She lifted the gown with one hand, lifted it high so that her long legs shone almost as white as the gown. She lifted her nightgown with both hands now, showing her dark triangle. She came forward, her movement an invitation to delightful penetration, and then she put a knee on the bed. The bed sank down slightly, and Elvis awoke. He didn’t have the knife in his hand at all. The window was closed and so was the door.

  There was a crease in the bed, but there was no Jenny. Wait, was it Jenny he had dreamed of? Who exactly had he thought he’d seen?

  9

  BREAKFAST

  Dishes clattered. Forks, knives and spoons scraped. Johnny had prepared a breakfast feast. There were two kinds of toast, scrambled eggs and turkey bacon, biscuits and sweet cakes, oatmeal and grits, pigs-in-a-blanket, all manner of treats speared on forks or clutched in fists. Elvis had a cut-up banana in his grits. He wanted to eat everything on the table, but right now he had to be fast and sleek.

  Everyone was talking. Except Elvis. So far he had grumbled a few words and stirred his grits about, unconsciously blending in butter and too much sugar. So much for being sleek.

  Colonel said, “You look as if you might have seen a ghost.”

  Elvis glanced up. The entire table noticed the exchange and went silent.

  “I believe I did,” Elvis said.

  “That’s Sarah June,” the Colonel said. “That’s why I gave you that room. I knew she would come.”

  “You put me there so a ghost could visit?”

  “She isn’t just any ghost,” Colonel said. “The house is a woman, and that is her favorite room.”

  “Cut the shit,” Elvis said.

  “What the hell are you two chattering about?” Johnny said. Jenny said, “Yeah. Tell us.”

  “I had a visitor last night,” Elvis said. “A ghostly woman in white. She couldn’t stand the sight of the pentagram and took off, fast as a laser beam. Colonel here, he seems to know what she’s all about. He said the house is a woman, whatever that means.”

  Blind Man nodded his pale head. “I sensed her last night. But it’s you she wanted, Elvis. I don’t think the pentagram stopped her. I think she’s shy.”

  “Perhaps,” said John Henry, “she wanted to borrow a cup of ectoplasm.”

  “This house is a spirit,” Colonel said. “Once it was just a house, but now it is more than that. It’s a spirit. A guardian spirit. Sarah June lived here, back in the sixties. She took an experimental drug called Rococo Blue. The university near here had a government experiment they were trying. A drug that would allow you to slip between realms. They thought it might be a perfect weapon for their soldiers. Moving on the astral plane, being able to become solid on another plane. But it didn’t work out that way. At least not completely. It killed the volunteers, and the tests were stopped.”

  “That would be a good reason to stop,” Jenny said.

  “What they didn’t know, is that to some degree, it worked,” Colonel said. “There is indeed an astral plane. Actually, it’s another dimension.”

  “And that’s what this trip is all about?” Johnny asked. “Dealing with dimensional baddies?”

  Colonel nodded. “It’s time for me to explain as much of it to you as I can in a short time. I’m going to light a candle and lead you out of the dark.”

  “To the Promised Land?” Johnny said.

  “There isn’t one,” the Colonel said. “Not like you’re thinking. There are only dimensional worlds, some better than others, all accessible by certain people, and sometimes by certain methods. Spells that have nothing to do with religion, but things that have been passed down through religion. Even mathematical formulas can open the doors to these worlds, and sometimes, certain drugs will slip you through the cracks, working like magic formulas. You come loose here and go there, wherever there might be, it’s like you’re liquid running into the smallest cracks, able to flow to places you can’t normally see and have no awareness of.

  “Sometimes you don’t come back. Elvis here. He still wants to believe there’s a place we go with the Mississippi River, his mom frying him up peanut butter and banana sandwiches. It’s not like that. You can believe what you want, but I tell you, it’s not like that. Souls get hung, all right, but they’re not on their way to a Christian heaven, or an Elysian Fields. They are hung between worlds by accident, or by spells. Like say a soul in a gris-gris bag.”

  Colonel looked
at Elvis when he said that.

  “You don’t know what I believe,” Elvis said.

  “Yeah, I do,” Colonel said. “Because of so much governmental sanctioned drug-induced travel between worlds, the boundaries have been compromised, the lines between this world and others wobble and weave. It’s easier to slip through the cracks than before.”

  Elvis always thought it odd to hear Colonel talk so professorially. It didn’t jive with his Elmer Fudd persona. If you concentrated on his voice too much, no matter what he said, it sounded humorous.

  “The dimensional worlds are far more complicated and multiple than we ever thought before. Even if you add up every shaman that’s ever figured how to crack a window in time and space, every accidental passing due to natural ability, inherent powers, changes in the weather, a subtle shifting of the earth, and add to that every goober that ever smacked his lips over a tab of peyote and found themselves traveling down strawberry lane or racing through razor-blade city, it is nothing compared to all that has gone on in the past twenty-five years, much of it due to scientific discovery and investigations by governments, ours especially. Some discoveries are due to accident, a desire to get high. Some are by design. Drugs derived from chemistry have opened a lot of doors, cracked a lot of windows, drilled a lot of holes, and let people through. They have let other things through them as well. Things from places where science is like what we think of as the supernatural here, where histories are different, and beings are frequently different. Sometimes the only difference in these places is that time has moved slower, or more quickly. A number of these dimensional worlds have space craft. Some are still using the horse and wagon.”

  “Any of them have flying cars?” Johnny said. “I’ve always wanted one.”

  “Perhaps,” Colonel said. “I haven’t seen all the worlds, for they are infinite. In fact, I have only seen a few. And fleetingly, through moments of drug-induced astral projection. Not something that’s easy to do, and it’s harder to maintain.”

  “So, what exactly does this have to do with the naked ghost in the house?” Elvis asked.

  “She is a protective ghost. She has no strength, no powers outside of this house and the immediate grounds around it; the original property lines. Her powers here are not infinite, but she serves as a kind of watch dog.”

  “Been doing this shit for a while now,” John Henry said, “and this is the first I’m hearing of some of this shit. Thought we were just fighting ghosts, vampires and werewolves and such.”

  “Let me get this straight,” Elvis said. “We are in this house because it has a protective ghost that has some ability to protect this place, and the ghost is horny.”

  “She is a sort of watch dog,” Colonel said. “She can only become solid and able to protect when the situation is… Shall we say, intense? To keep the house protected, as much as she can protect it, well, there’s a kind of payment due, and you, Elvis, have to pay it.”

  “Payment?” Elvis said.

  “She’s lonely,” Colonel said.

  “Oh, hell no,” Elvis said. “I’m not screwing a ghost.”

  “It could be a unique experience,” Colonel said.

  “Nope,” Elvis said.

  “Shit,” John Henry said, “line them ghosts up along the wall, and I’ll take care of them each and every one, even the ugly ones, male or female, if they’re willing.”

  “There’s just one,” the Colonel said.

  “Well, that’s disappointing,” John Henry said, “but give her my room number.”

  “It’s Elvis she wants,” said the Colonel. “This house needs the protection. We need to feel safe here, or reasonably so. Keep in mind, we don’t actually know what these dimensional things can do. Not yet.”

  “Damn,” Elvis said. “I got to?”

  “You do,” said the Colonel.

  “It ain’t like it’s a fate worse than death,” John Henry said. “Well, I guess she is dead and a ghost. Still, what the hell? Even fucked one of them blow-up dolls once. It wasn’t as bad as you might think, though she kind of blew out and went to pieces.”

  “Yuck,” Jenny said.

  “Are those things like soft inside?” Jack asked.

  “This one was like plastic inside,” John Henry said. “It was a little like fucking a clothes bag.”

  “Again, yuck,” Jenny said.

  “Since we’ve gone this far,” Elvis said, snagging a biscuit and beginning to butter it, “and since you say I have to find a way to fuck a ghost, I think right now it’s time to for you to tell all of what you’ve been saying again, but this time with more explanation.”

  “It’s not necessary for the soldiers to know everything that is going on with the high command,” the Colonel said. “I have my bosses, too. Even I am often left in the dark.”

  “Yeah,” John Henry said, “but I figure you got more lights on at your house than we do. And the Blind Man, even with dead eyes, he’s got more lights than we do. I know he knows this shit, what’s going on. Elvis may be team leader, but you two, you’re tapped into the high command. In Blind Man’s case because you can’t keep it from him. But the rest of us need to see what’s in the kitchen, not just what you’re putting on the table. That there is a metaphor.”

  “Yeah,” Jack said. “We got that.”

  “I agree,” Jenny said. “I know I’m new, but my ass is on the line like everyone else’s. I think we should all know why the hell this is so important, and exactly what we’re up against.”

  There was a general agreement around the table.

  The Colonel turned to the Blind Man.

  “Clarence, will you please tell them what you’ve seen, and sensed?”

  “Clarence?” John Henry said. “Your name is Clarence? God, that’s an awful name. Can I just call you Blinky?”

  Blind Man sighed, took a swig of coffee, carefully placed the cup on the table. His eyes were blind, but his moves were as good as anyone with 20/20 vision. Better, actually.

  “No one except the Colonel can call me Clarence,” he said. “And absolutely no one can call me Blinky. If we link hands it’ll be far more effective for me to send images and thoughts to you, things I’ve seen and experienced by remote dimensional viewing. Explaining takes too long, and well, some of it you can’t explain. You can only feel or see it.”

  “And there is one more modification,” Colonel said. He removed a small bottle from his coat and twisted off the lid. The bottle was full of blue pills. “Rococo Blue.”

  “Whoa,” Jenny said. “Didn’t we just hear bad things about those little buddies?”

  “This is modified, and a low dose,” the Colonel said. “With Blind Man here all we need is enough of a kick to put us in the right frame of mind.”

  “Can’t we just relax a moment, maybe close our eyes?” Jenny said.

  “We can, but this is better, quicker, and more certain,” the Colonel said. “Blind Man can most likely get us there, but with these, I can guarantee it. We don’t want one of us there and two of us not.”

  The pills were passed around and everyone took one, washed it down with their available beverage.

  “Link hands,” Blind Man said.

  Elvis reached out and took Jenny’s hand. She took John Henry’s, and so on until everyone was holding someone’s hands to their left and their right, though in the Colonel’s case he sat in a chair behind Elvis and placed his hands on Elvis’s shoulders.

  “Close your eyes and keep them closed tight,” said Blind Man. “I’m going to guide you along the right path, not just any dimensional path. Go wrong, you could end up in a messy and unforgiving place. So, stay linked, grab your panties, and let’s jump.”

  10

  IN THE JUNKYARD

  The day was bright and hot and the wind was still. The cars glimmered in the sunlight, paint and rust seemed bright and clean for a moment. Around the junkyard the trees were empty of birds. Out on the river the horns of tugs at work could be heard; automobiles in th
e distance, growling along, their occupants unaware that the fibers of the universe were being strained.

  Inside the cars in the junkyard the balls of meat mewed. They knew pain and confusion, but for most, their memories were drained along with ambition and hope.

  Inside the aluminum shed, Big Mama, a heap of gooey flesh and shadow, slept, but not deeply. Her minions did sleep deep, however. They slept against her, their solid shadows folded about them like wings. If she thought, they thought. If she chose for them not to think, they didn’t think. If she wanted something done, they did it.

  Big Mama dreamed and her dreams left her and crossed the void. She would do that often, move from one dimension to the other, as she could, with effort, slip in one direction, and then the other; the path between her world and this one was greased with her intent.

  In her dreams, in the world she now occupied, she sensed something changing. At first it was unidentifiable, but then she realized it was a threat, a stirring in the meaning of what she knew. There was a gathering of humans with power and ability, and that they wanted to destroy her, destroy her mission.

  In that moment she was stuck inside her mound of flesh and shadow, able to move, but not in the ways she preferred. Daylight held her back. It was full of white-hot death.

  Full night would come and the rays of the moon would release her, dip inside her and fill her up, give her power and fluidity. If the humans came for her during her weak moments, she could still put up a fight, but it would be better at night.

  Then she reached out and touched them—

  —them being Elvis, the Colonel, the whole damn crew. They were working on the astral plane, her astral plane, and they were colliding with her thoughts, her very essence, with an intense burst of disorganized sensations. Their minds crawled about inside her territory, inside her old world, and it angered her.

  Humans. They thought differently from one another, felt differently about things, were not a hive, and were therefore weak. They wanted to kill her and hers, and thought to probe within her realm to discover how to do it.