“Remember to lock the door, and be quick. Don’t touch anything else.”
“Yes, master,” said Luke.
Allie snorted and hurried outside.
“What a pain in the ass. I’d take three Derek Stobeckers over one of her.”
“Let’s get that stuff.”
Luke went to the corner to the bass drum. He removed a microphone stand to get to it. She watched him lift it easily. “Got it?”
“Cake,” Luke replied, though his voice quavered.
Dara went through the desk’s top drawers. No whistle. In the meantime, Luke balanced the drum on the student’s table closest to the door. “You thought of opening Maribel’s letter early?”
“Don’t you dare,” she replied.
“Just wondering.” He chuckled. “What do you think it says?”
Dara took a deep breath. “Something good, I hope.”
She found a small key next to some pencils. She took it, knelt, and opened the sliding cabinet doors behind her. She pushed a woman’s hoodie out of the way. It must have been Allie’s because Dara didn’t recognize it as belonging to Maribel. A few piles of children’s books had been stacked inside the cupboard. In the back, a couple of flyers from the Puppet Town amusement park and a plastic Jolly Green Giant leaned against a little diorama. Over the cellophane window on top rested a crayon drawing of a rocking horse, the word “marble” underneath. Dara moved it and her heart thudded in her chest.
“Oh my…holy shit,” she whispered.
Inside the diorama sat three things, each with a label. A toy purple bug with DARA printed on masking tape below it. A red rubber duck, with LUKE underneath. An extremely wrinkled two-dollar bill. JOHNNY.
“What is it?” asked Luke.
“Come here.” Dara put the diorama on top of the cupboard and removed the lid.
Luke peered over her shoulder. “Hey, a duck, what do you know?”
He picked it up. “That’s a fine duck right there. Not really rubber though. Hard plastic.”
“But is it the same kind from the pool?”
“If memory serves.”
Dara watched his face. “Do you feel…different now?”
“Should I?”
It must not work outside of the Lifemare…. She looked at the names. “Maribel doesn’t print like this.”
Two names at the top of the chalk board, one written by Maribel, and the other by Allie: Mrs. Rhodes and Mrs. Banks. The second had the same boxy quality to the letters.
“Our friend Allie had to have written that—what is this stuff? Some kind of Voodoo death box?” Luke tittered, but Dara didn’t reply.
“Why would she include Johnny and not Maribel?”
“She’s got the hots for Maribel. That’s obvious.”
“You’re joking.”
Luke shrugged. “Not really—”
“Allie’s married.”
“Oh well, then it’s impossible.” He smirked. Something lit in his eyes. “Allie did meet Johnny once. Don’t you remember when we bumped into her at Shasta’s? After she told him she was married, Johnny harassed her the whole night. He got pretty pissed when she said she wouldn’t trade in a successful pianist for a turd farmer.”
“That was pretty funny.”
“Not to Johnny.”
“Yeah, where’s your loyal hubbie right now? At home fingering a piano.”
“He has a way with women,” Luke replied dryly. “Now you got me worrying about him again. Come on, put that box away. I don’t really want to know what it is, tell you the truth.”
Dara covered up the diorama, returned it to where she found it, and located Maribel’s whistle on top of a basket of well-used crayon nubs.
More questions. Few answers. Dara wanted to feel like she’d uncovered something just now, but she wasn’t certain if it could explain anything. This puzzle had so many pieces to sort through, she’d not found the corners yet.
It left way too much to be desired.
Chorus:
Much of what he used to disbelieve, he’d discovered to be only partially true.
Gentle colors and friendly shapes gave the play-set its vibrancy. Normally, out there in the field all by itself, silly red-yellow-blue-and-green paints, it would be the first thing people noticed, but under this influence, it was cause for avoiding eye contact. They. Would. Know better than to look upon something to stir up the rot growing in their stomachs. He was behind this. All of Them, behind this.
A swing set extends from a pool of dark yellow poison where a red ducky floats. Studying the scene better, on his stomach in the swing, a naked green man with broccoli hair pendulums over the poison, lapping it up, holding it in, regurgitating back into the pool. In Their heart of hearts a klaxon would ring, he’s doing this to get better, whatever made him ill before, he’s doing this to get better. Pulling Their gaze away was certain. Certainly.
Save for the benched man…. The tiny hairs in his ears flutter as he strains to hear. His ass stings from sitting on the wooden bench so long. From not blinking all this time, knife-points of cold tears sting the corners of his eyes. Below the peak of the play-set where nested rods of steel complicate the upper floor, and below the second level of plastic bubble windows, the psychotic face of a harlequin opens its bubble-gum maw wide enough to let children inside, and its beady candy-corn pupils evaluate the man. The oral passageway inside the harlequin’s throat—has it always been thus?
A moment passes, and now this Abaddon stretches before him? How could that be? This song, this horrible, awful, forbidden song still can’t drown out the plinking melody of the xylophone, nor can it rob him of the feral puppies eviscerating each other with all the jubilation infancy brings. A reply, just one, solitary, pitifully small reply, to all his cancerous questions brings his Ouroboros mind to the gagging point. Through the veils of tear, his vision blanches the scene of wildlings tumbling in the passageway, blood games melting the dark at its seams. Screeches; retches; gags; wails; his plaintive sounds betray his trance. Yes, yes. With Them, it is, it is.
“Do you…,” he begins, shaking his head, coming through the fog a bit. “Hear me? Back there? If you could just make it quit happening, I could go and find help. What will it take? It can’t end like this. I’ve had plans. We all had plans. Can’t you just say something? Why won’t you answer me goddamnit! Grunt or something. For Christ’s sake! You better not let it get at me again. I don’t…shit! I don’t want to see it ever again. My body’s breaking down and you don’t even care. Help me.”
Verse 4: Invader
Chapter 13
Johnny hadn’t moved for hours.
He’d managed to negotiate the scattered crates and massive dirt hills and circle the gladiator ring, but stumbled on an open area of crumbling, primeval sandstone blocks. If he set foot out there, the Count would spot him, as well as the gathering of Bone Men flanking the dog-thing like steadfast minions. Johnny hunkered down and stayed down, ultimately rethinking a mad rush to the U-Haul, which was only twenty feet away on a grade of up-turned gravel and dirt.
The Count had spared him initially, but with the gladiators dying in droves, Johnny wasn’t so sure it would stay that way. For now, the dog was more interested on the spectacle in the ring—starving human beings ripping each other apart, fueled by the rage of feral survival and the gruesomeness of cruelty and abandonment. It was obvious in the snarling, drool-blood masked faces: the fight was necessary, not to continue to live, but to make others pay for the wretched lives they’d led. Leaning on his bone scepter, the Count, long dark jowls hanging, sunken flesh around his zombie eyes, watched with mouth parted in a smile of disbelief and unchecked marvel. He relished every eye plucked from the socket, every rope of intestine pulled from the abdomen, every death call and snarl of hungry homicide.
Johnny couldn’t look at the dog anymore. The need to vomit in terror had come and gone, but seeing how that Thing was loving all this...he would turn his eyes across the brown field of Southern California dirt,
rock, and weed, and in the distance, the rippling black curtain suspended from the sky. It wasn’t unreachable. Yes, I could make it. The desert had never looked so inviting. At first he questioned driving the U-Haul through such an unforgiving landscape, but someone had replaced the tires with large tractor treads, well shined and onyx in the sunlight.
Hadn’t noticed those before! No problem then.
He could cut across the ravine, and the sewer plant where he’d been suspended, wasn’t that far at all.
I’m baaaack motherfuckers!
You’re not anything, if you don’t get up and move. You’ve been here so long, your ass has fallen asleep. Get to that U-Haul, dickhead.
Johnny squared his shoulders. Sweat dappled his back. With the number of gladiators thinning to only a few, this had to be done now. Before they found him.
“Oh, we know you’re there,” said voices in sync with the song.
The shadowy shapes of four Bone Men slid down the embankment, spears pointed at him.
Johnny threw his body forward and ran. He rounded the driver’s side of the moving truck and ripped open the door. In his seat sat the man from the U-Haul store. A woman with tight brown curls sat next to him, looking worried.
“This is my truck,” the man stated, looking forward. “You can’t have it.”
Johnny stepped up on the running board. “Move the hell over!”
“No,” the man repeated. “My wife and I need this truck.”
The Bone Men clucked their tongues as they flowed into a unified group moving toward Johnny.
Johnny pushed the man, but he wouldn’t budge. “You son of a bitch! Move!”
The man shook his head fiercely. Thick saliva dangled from his mouth. Johnny yanked him out of the cabin by his collar and let him fall to the ground outside. The wife reached forward and grabbed the keys out of the ignition.
He lunged for her. “Give those back!”
A squeal, unnaturally sharp and agonized, made Johnny stop, poised just over her. The woman edged down in the seat and pushed the door lock down. Johnny hit the lock on his side and lowered his body. A sandaled foot connected with his face. The woman reared back, trying to kick him again. He caught her by the ankle. Her body twisted sideways.
“Fuckin’ chill!” he whispered.
Through the windshield, a spear hoisted a body into the air. The wife squirmed. Johnny clamped his hand over her mouth. He could feel her tongue and teeth gnashing against his palm. The body of her husband jerked above them on the spear, flexing to right itself but having nowhere to go. Five more spears drove up into his body, stabbing repeatedly. Johnny saw the blood showering down. He closed his eyes, but he could hear it, torrential rain on the hood of the truck.
After a few seconds, the pitter and patter stopped. Johnny opened his eyes. The red-soaked body hung there in a sad upside-down U. Breathing heavy through her nose and trembling, the wife stared at her dead husband. Johnny took a chance and removed his hand. If she couldn’t take that image as a hint to be quiet, then nothing would work.
“Give me the keys,” he whispered. “Please.”
She blinked and looked around the floor. A pounding outside made her start. Johnny tried to flatten his body even more. The woman found the keys. They rattled as she dragged them off the floor mat.
A metallic puncture sound, an ear-splitting pop! Warm mist sprayed Johnny’s face. The spearhead exited the woman’s neck and twisted around for good measure, then retreated, barbed ends tearing skin and gristle away, nearly severing the woman’s head as it pulled back through the door.
Another spear plunged through on the passenger side, the edge of the spearhead slitting Johnny’s jaw. Another spear came through, just over his head.
“Fuck this!” He scooted back, grabbed the handle, and pushed outside. The door struck a Bone Man in the face. He fell to one knee, using his spear to keep balance. Johnny dashed over a stony ridge, feet nearly slipping out from under him. He could hear things piercing the dirt all around him. His heart felt like a red-hot tea kettle about to explode. He kept on. Lungs catching flames. Bones creaking from his weight. He was going to collapse. It was over.
Johnny spared a glance over his shoulder. But there was nothing.
Just field.
Dirt.
Weeds.
Rocks.
No visible life.
It was a familiar landscape, not only because he’d grown up playing around here, but because Johnny understood the land. He commiserated with a place like this, with its unappealing, coarse exterior. Something had once been alive here.
He walked swiftly, keeping an eye out. At a distance he could see homes. Some of the houses had belonged to friends, and the windows glinted in the sun. The houses he’d never been inside had black curtains drawn over their panes and doors. Any of the curtains could get him away from whatever he was trying to escape. However, convincing strangers to let him inside their house, especially with him sweating and bleeding profusely, was probably out.
The large curtain would be the only way.
Spicy, unseen flowers perfumed the air. He knew the smell from lifetimes before. Calm. Nostalgic. Loving. It called to mind a time when Johnny Cruz still had the capability to behold life with a little hopeful wonder. Ever dubious, while winding down an old dirt-bike path, he enjoyed the scent, taking in a large breath through his nose. He didn’t remember the stretch between the old neighborhood and the sewer plant having paths as wide and well-packed as these; he must have somehow missed that before.
Occasionally he would sidestep a dirt ramp. He thought of Beltran, how he’d always wanted to get him a bike when he got older. The week before he packed for Arizona, Johnny remembered taking him to these exact same dirt paths. Later that day he wanted to take Beltran on his Harley, give him a little fun, make a memory before they said adios. Shit, he’d just been trying to cheer the kid up, but instead of cutting loose and enjoying the ride, the boy had gotten all scared and whiney. The trip back home had been long, and Johnny remembered yelling at Beltran a few times to stop his sniveling. So much for that. But at least he’d known he’d made the right choice sending him back to Charles.
That’s how Lisa would have wanted it.
“Lisa?”
Johnny froze. His mouth opened again, but no words shaped on his lips. He couldn’t. With that scent of flowers in the air, with the vision before him, what words would he have used to express how he felt?
His ex-wife, who had gotten ill and died, stood on a nearby hill, alive as he remembered her in his best memories. She wore a white dress, but the sunlight cut through it and he could see her full, warm, wonderful figure within. He’d always loved her body. He gotten her some lingerie that she’d only worn once to make him happy, in spite of him trying to get her back into it a thousand times. It wasn’t that she was self-conscious; she just thought that kind of stuff silly.
She couldn’t really be here? Could she?
Yes. She was here now, no longer in the white dress, but in the sinful red and black mesh baby-doll lingerie, with thong. Johnny’s body reacted at once. Lisa peered down and bit her lower lip sinfully. Someone else walked up behind her, in the exact same lingerie, but the fit was less tight, the hips more accentuated.
His first wife, Mandy. In one of her garter belts he could see a money note flapping there. He squinted into the sun…looked like a two-dollar bill.
“Oh my God…,” he moaned, his pulse quickening. It would be amazing if they….
And they did.
Johnny watched as his two wives kissed, licked, and fondled each other. He went into a trance, silent splendor, awestruck, femalestruck, his body roaring with need. He never wanted this to end. The only thing better would be to have more—
“Come here,” purred Mandy.
“Take off your pants,” breathed Lisa.
Johnny did as commanded. His wives had sparkling murder in their eyes, and devil claws extending from bleeding cuticles, but he pushed t
hose images away. No. That would not ruin this. He would enjoy his lovers for as long as he could. He would stay here with them until the end of time, if he had that long. Not just for their flesh, for their touch, for their love, for their wonderful, haunting, beautiful smell that made him feel alive again. He’d known it all along but hadn’t taken the time to appreciate the truth.
Their musk smelled of those flowers.
Chapter 14
Near dusk, but the sewer plant swam in black.
Shasta’s Bar and Grill was still closed after some food-poisoning incident, and the other dive bars were too far outside of town for Johnny to bother with. Luke had checked and he wasn’t home either. The plant was the only place left in his sad life that Johnny’d even think of visiting. Still, Luke couldn’t imagine his friend would show up here—this was, at best, a shot in the dark, and yet more than once on the drive home Dara had prodded him, “You sure you don’t see anything weird over on that side of town? You think maybe that’s where Johnny went?”
Hell if he knew. Luke did see the curtain spilling from the sky, but he didn’t fine it as remarkable as Dara did. When black curtains fell from the stratosphere, this was how they looked, right? Why was she so worked up about it?
Suspiciously, Maribel had been silent and moody during the trip home. She pled exhaustion and seemed to care even less about the curtain than Luke did. That made him feel better. Dara was just being Dara, which was to say, overreacting.
Her insistence got him to reconsidering the hard-line stance he’d taken earlier. Wives versus Friends. Johnny might need help, and Luke was the only person he could ever turn to.
When Maribel and Dara took a late afternoon nap together, he managed to slip off, hoping to resolve this before they woke. After twenty minutes of driving around, he realized he’d left his cell phone at the house. That was certain to piss them off.
Nightmare Ballad Page 14