You show him what a Gypsy can do, boy.
“Now, if you don’t want to end up clinging like a will-not on the smallest festering hemorrhoid of hell’s back door, tell me what I want to know.”
The demon snarled and champed his teeth and howled. He changed his shape a half dozen times. A Madonna, with a howling coyote child growing from between her chattering breasts. A fat man with eyes the color of bleeding piss, his lips like two flat worms twisting over a mouth that screamed in other directions. A barbed wire crucifix, burning with the glow of bloodstained glass. Nothing but fear and metamorphosis. He was showing off for the hell of it. A pissed off tantrum artist, kicking his heels against the canvas of inevitability.
Finally, his tantrum finished, Cantanker told Carnival exactly what the Gypsy wanted to hear.
Chapter 43
Something in Sandalwood
With the final incantation accomplished, Carnival banished Cantanker. The demon was glad to go. It was nearly daylight.
Not a morning man, eh? Not his time at all, the little mewling night-pussy.
“You’re awfully brave for somebody hiding in somebody else, Poppa.”
Not hiding. Caged. Do you think I stay here because I like the view?
This wasn’t Carnival’s time either. He needed some sleep after he tidied the mess.
It’s over. Right, boy?
It was over for now. Cantanker would stay gone for a while but there wasn’t much Carnival could do to contain him forever. He’d be back soon enough. And then Carnival would have to deal with him. Poppa knew.
That’s the trouble with bargaining with demons. Worse than loan sharks. It leaves you with a heap of long standing debt. The vig will kill you. Watch out, boy. A demon’s memory lingers longer than Cain’s grudge.
Carnival shrugged. “Karma is sticky.”
Ho, listen to him. Mr. Nonchalant. Karma is what you dip your apples in, after you’ve shoved razorblades into them.
Carnival understood how it was. You make your fate, dickering with demons. It’s like barring a drunk from a tavern. Sooner or later he’d come slinking back in and if you need the money you let him drink.
That’s just how it went.
Sooner or later Carnival would have to deal with Cantanker.
He didn’t look forward to it but there wasn’t any sense worrying about what might happen down the road.
A Gypsy has neither a past nor a future. The past is dead, the present is under your feet, and the future a gray unanswerable riddle that only time could tell.
Carnival glanced at the wall clock. It was nearly seven AM..
It was too late in the morning, to have the sun shining on such grisly goings on, but what was he to do with what was left of the hooker? That really wasn’t any riddle at all. He’d put her in the basement with Elija. They could sit around in the dark and sing drinking songs together.
He gathered up the pieces in the milk crate. He wondered about Cantanker. Why hadn’t he taken him? He could have. He’d had all the right. Carnival had messed up the ritual. By all rights he should have been smoking in a hellfire rotisserie by now.
You are marked, boy. Marked by something more powerful than a demon.
Carnival touched his own chest.
He felt the anger burning inside it. The anger and something more. A mark. Someone stronger owned his soul. Maya?
Who else?
The wounds on Carnival’s throat told him that a lot of what he’d believed hadn’t been true. She’d taken him and was probably using him. Maybe forcing him to do murder.
You went right along with it, didn’t you?
Poppa was partly right but that wasn’t all there was to this.
What else could there be?
No self respecting demon would fear a vampire. They’re about equal in power levels. Carnival wouldn’t want to live on the difference in fighting ability but that whole hierarchy caste system that hell lived and died by would allow no hellion to dare step back from the undead. It just wasn’t done. There was somebody larger than Maya behind this; somebody large enough to give a full grown blood demon like Cantanker a reason to turn down a naked throat.
Carnival shook his head clear of doubt and anxiety. He’d thought long enough. There was still the matter of the hooker’s dead body. He still couldn’t believe he’d done this. He hadn’t killed like this before, not unless he had to. Why was he doing it now?
Open your eyes, boy.
“They’re open, Poppa. Someone stronger owns my soul. I can live with that for now. There’s nothing else to do.”
You’ve got a body to get rid of.
“Yes Poppa. I have a body to get rid of.
At least she was in pieces. That made it easier to deal with. Easier on the back. Carnival hated dropping her into the trapdoor. It seemed so damned unladylike. Who was he kidding? She’d passed all limits of dignity a long time ago.
She was still a person. Don’t pretend otherwise.
“You’ve grown scruples since I last knew you, Poppa?”
Carnival slid the drop sheet over to the bedroom. He pulled the cot aside. The trapdoor was there. It hadn’t disappeared again. Or maybe he just saw it clearer. As clearly as he saw the wound on his throat. He dumped the hooker’s remains down the trapdoor. They made a clunky wet sound, like a rain of pot roasts. Meat upon meat. It was a suitable fate for an old hooker.
“You get the shaft one last time, woman.”
She had a name, you know? A name. Not just a hooker. She had her very own name. A sense of history. A life. Shall I tell it to you?
“Shut up, Poppa.”
Carnival’s climbed down the ladder to clear up the mess.
Tidiness is next to godliness.
He made it down the ladder with no slips.
You’re getting used to murder. Perhaps you should start your own circus act? The Amazing Massacrino, daredevil serial killer and high wire artist.
Carnival had to smile at that one at the thought of a gypsy running off to join the circus.
With a face like yours you should make a living as a monkey.
Elija was down here, right where Carnival had left him. He was getting a little ripe, too. He stank of decay and mold; a high pitched reek, like an unclean refrigerator. Tomorrow Carnival ought to invest in a tin of air freshener. Or maybe a few sticks of incense.
Some sandalwood would be nice. None of that frankincense. It smells too much like a church.
Maybe some quicklime too.
Damn it, where could he get that?
A gardening store? Maybe Mario would know.
Never mind the flower peddler. Ask Tony Soprano. There is a man who knows how to lose a body. Besides, Gypsies aren’t supposed to be gardeners. We ride on the earth, not root in it.
Carnival stared at his palm.
No future there, boy. You might as well try and read the moon.
“I was thinking about soap, Poppa.”
Ha! Not all the perfumes of Arabia, boy.
“Don’t quote the play, Poppa. It’s bad luck.”
What other kind of luck have you been having lately?
Poppa was right. Carnival watched a dead rat that looked to have been gnawing on Elija’s remains.
What had killed the rat?
Maya?
Why?
Compassion? Or just hunger.
Maybe it died of mad rat disease.
“That’s cows, Poppa. Cows get mad cow disease. There’s no such thing as mad rat.”
How do you know? Have you ever talked to a rat? They live in walls and people hunt them with steel traps. I’d be mad, if I were a rat.
“Why do I bother talking to you?”
You appreciate my sparkling wit and wisdom.
“Maybe it wasn’t Maya that killed the rat. Maybe it was something in Elija’s blood.
Maybe rat indigestion.
“No. That’s not it. There’s something bad down here. Something growing. And everybody I put down her
e is going to feed it.” Out of the corner of his eye, Carnival saw something, half shadowed, a little like a soccer ball.
You ought to hang a light down here.
“I ought to hang myself.”
Fegh. Suicide is for cowards, not gypsies. All you need is a little formeldahyde. Who knows? It could be a lucrative side business. Gypsy Val’s Fortune Telling and Undertaking Emporium – You Can Scrye Or You Can Die. You could try it if the circus work doesn’t pan out.
Carnival had to laugh.
Why not laugh? It’s better than weeping.
“You missed your calling, Poppa. You would have made one hell of a Madison Avenue advertising genius.”
Madison Avenue? Even a Gypsy can’t lie that well.
Carnival stepped closer to the corner. It wasn’t a soccer ball. It was a skull. A tattooed skull. The designs burnt in what looked like dried blood, etched in fancy dancing curlicues like whoever had once owned this skull had been possessed by a Morris dancing Spirograph.
Ah ha! You’ve discovered an ancient urban Maori burial site. Be careful, it may be cursed. Do you feel a sudden need for a paddle and a lot of pineapple?
Carnival took a panicked step back, and damn near tripped over the third body.
“Shit!”
It was a big guy, heavy set, with a big bald head and a neatly trimmed goatee. He sort of looked like a high school principal. His throat was torn out, his skin drained bloodless. Maya’s work. How’d she find her way down here? How had she got past Carnival’s wards?
You better think about what she can do. You know nothing of the ways of the undead. You don’t have control of her. You don’t have control of anything.
Poppa was right. This whole goings on was beyond him.
“But first I need to sleep.”
Be careful that you don’t sleep past doomsday, boy. It’s coming faster than you think.
The way things were going, Poppa might be all too frighteningly right.
Chapter 44
Like a Pendulum, Do
Momma woke early. The superintendent remains had vanished. Evaporated or crawled away, she didn’t care. She had things to do. She needed to find a Ouija board. She found the board three blocks down from her apartment building in a little backwater magic shop that could have been decorated by a gypsy. It had that handmade look to it, that I don’t give a fuck what you think I look like appeal. In fact the more Momma looked at the storefront, the more she thought she was looking at Carnival’s place.
It was a place of ritual, tacky and careworn and heavy with magic. It was perfect. The hand painted plywood sign, nailed above the door, read IAMBIC PENTAGRAMS. Underneath was a photocopied paper, wrapped in plastic that read – MAGIC STORE AND EMPORIUM. It was a little shop, the kind that fit in this kind of an end-of-the-road-running-downhill-fast kind of neighborhood. People sat in their front doors as if their sills were porches. Cigarettes and lost hope tainted the air. This was a neighborhood of rooming houses and basements for rent. A neighborhood of hand me down clothing shops, junk stores and used record shops.
And there was Iambic Pentagrams. Momma knew shops like these. She’d owned one once. It might even be this place. They all looked so much the same - the bartered and battered shelving systems and the hand scrawled price tags; the broom, not for flying but for sweeping, tucked discretely behind the half open door; the multi colored Tiffany lamp that flickered if you wiggled its cord the wrong way. The dust and the price tag permanently stuck to the yellowed linoleum floor tile.
Just some local color. A little play amongst these dour rows of boarding houses and condemned nightmares. It would be here ten years from now, maybe with a different name. Certainly a different owner. But the Tiffany lamp would stay. And the way the light caught it when a customer opened the door, the aura of hope beyond hope that lit the face of the owner whenever someone swung open the door with the Coke sign handle and those tired Christmas bells jingled once more. Nothing ever changed.
There was a girl behind the counter. She was large and heavy set with a childish look of hopefulness and at least fifteen pieces of metal imbedded in her face. She was busy, fiddling nervously with a carnelian pendulum. Although Momma hadn’t said anything, the girl called out “I’m just trying to decide where to go for my lunch hour.”
The pieces of metal in the girl’s face didn’t bother Momma. They reminded her of the gypsy girls who would sew coins to their shirts, shawls and scarves, wearing their dowry for the jingle and the fun. Besides, a little advertising never hurt.
“I’ll be right with you,” the girl called, as if Momma was impatient.
No, not the metal, but rather where the girl wore it. Two pieces in her lip, giving her that thick speech that is the plight of those afflicted with hearing disorders. Why would she want to alter herself like that? Did she hate her mouth? Was she so afraid of what might come out of it?
“Does that trinket help you make decisions?” Momma asked.
“Oh yes indeed. It’s a pendulum,” she said. “You hold it over your hand and let it swing back and forth. If it moves one way, the answer is yes. If it moves the other, it’s no.”
“What if it doesn’t move at all?”
“Then it’s undecided.”
“Ah yes,” Momma said. “My husband used to throw rocks.”
“That seems kind of violent.”
Momma smiled indulgently. Out of the mouths of babes comes nothing but purposeless wind. “This shop is very old,”
“No it isn’t,” the girl contradicted, still swinging her pendulum. “I’ve just owned it a year or two.”
Momma shook her head impatiently. “It doesn’t matter. It’s very old. Did you know it stands on the very ground where they hung and burned a witch?”
“That’s not good luck.”
“It’s not bad.”
“How do you know about that?” the girl asked. “Are you some kind of historian?”
She kept diddling her pendulum. Momma wished she would stop.
“I remember it,” she said. “I remember it all.”
That wasn’t quite true. The burning that Momma remembered was her great grandmother’s fate. Burned at the stake because she wouldn’t give a man what he’d wanted. She should have talked to her own great grandmother before she cast her spells. The girl still wasn’t paying any attention. “Did you use that gadget to choose a name for the store?” Momma asked.
The girl laughed. It was a good laugh, the kind of laugh momma used to laugh back before she died.
“Oh no,” the girl replied. “That was my boyfriend’s idea. He was a poet.”
“Was?” Momma delicately asked.
“Was. But he wasn’t happy. He gave it up to be an exotic dancer. He had his sex changed.”
“And did changing his life solve anything?”
The girl looked at Momma, as if for the first time. “I don’t think it did. I went to see him once, up there on the stage. I could see his eyes, still trapped there, inside his unhappy mind.”
“You could learn a lesson from him. Change the way you look or dress and you change nothing but the tailor’s life.” Momma looked hard in the girl’s eyes. “Now serve me. I’m looking for a Ouija board.”
“Are you sure?”
“Do I look undecided?”
The girl began to twiddle her pendulum again.
“It’s just that with Ouija you can’t control it. You can’t control what takes hold of you. It’s like opening a door into the night. There’s no telling what will walk in.”
“The door has already been opened,” Momma said. “I am certain I want a Ouija board. I did when I came in here.”
“I’ve got one of them out back. In the closet.”
Momma waited.
“Would you go and get it?” she asked.
The girl nodded but kept staring at the pendulum. Couldn’t she decide for herself? Momma took the pendulum from the girl.
“How do you need this to turn?” she asked.
The pendulum swung, right to left. Then front to back.
“Is this right?” Momma asked.
The girl’s eyes widened.
“Or this?”
The pendulum began to bounce up and down.
Momma’s hand still hadn’t moved.
“Or maybe this?”
The pendulum whizzed back and forth, whipping to the end of its tether, as far as it could go. Only Momma wasn’t holding it at all. It was floating about three inches in front of the girl’s face, whirring and whipping like a miniature bolo.
Momma stared at the girl with all her power and patience.
“Please go and get me the Ouija board.”
The girl went to the back of the store. Momma listened to her fumbling and tried not to grow any more impatient than she was. As she waited, she heard a voice singing in the darkness. A glint of light beamed from the heart of the raw carnelian pendulum.
“Is that you, son?”
She took the pendulum in her hand and squeezed until the raw carnelian dripped blood. “Oh son. What have you done?”
The girl came back out, holding a tattered box that had been taped and retaped so many times that it seemed to be wrapped in duct and packing tape.
“You’ve hurt your hand.”
Momma was surprised that she’d noticed. “It’s only a little blood,” Momma said. “It changes nothing.”
She paid the girl with what was left of the money she’d found in Jim’s pocket, and turned to leave.
“Can I have my pendulum back?” the girl asked.
“No,” Momma said. “I might need it to help me decide. Those earrings? You shouldn’t wear them in your mouth. They belong in your ears.”
Then Momma slammed the door. The jingle jangle bells fell heavily to the floor and were still. The girl yanked her piercings out, one by one, stuffing them carefully into both of her ears, perforating the left drum and mangling the right completely. She’d worked three earrings through her ear canal and into her skull when the authorities arrived. The policeman who wrestled the earrings away from her with the help of two sturdy paramedics, three broken knuckles later swore he heard the tinkling of Christmas bells.
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