Avenging Fury

by John Farris

  “Never met a young lady who didn’t.”

  “Oh—I didn’t mean anything. Now I’m embarrassed, Mr. Olds.”

  “You just call me Eloy. Nothin’ to be embarrassed about. Diamonds was made for little beauties like yourself.” A caterer brought Eloy his crystal tumbler of Bull Run bourbon. “Fetch Miss Harlee a glass of the bubbly,” Eloy said, twinkling at her several degrees brighter than the flashy pink diamond. “You did say you was of drinkin’ age, darlin’?”

  Harlee hunched her shoulders slightly and looked down with an abashed smile.

  “Only at weddings, sir.”

  “Well. Can’t be no harm in havin’ a sip or two in honor of Nikki Lea’s friend, who is about to go ’round the course for the third time. That is, if it’s okay with your folks.” Eloy looked around. “Where they be at?”

  “I’m by myself. I was passing by outside with—friends, and I—I’ve always loved Western art, so—” Harlee peeked around, then looked up in a conspiratorial manner at Eloy, “I snuck in.”

  Eloy rumbled with laughter. “We won’t tell nobody.”

  Harlee had charm aplenty, Eden noted, and used it with care. She relied on that great smile to light up her immediate surroundings. And she could wear clothes: a nifty Hermès number tonight, basic black, with a coral cashmere sweater around her shoulders. Just a kid. But she made Eden, age twenty-two, feel antique and a little dreary. She drank half the champagne in the glass Harlee had given her.

  Eloy had slipped off his diamond pinkie ring in order to let Harlee have a better look at it. Her face was alight with gemstone passion. Eloy’s face glowed a little redder, more pridefully, than it had before Harlee showed up. Talk about charmed. She did seem to have an easy way with men of a dignified age. Eden’s ears were ringing as she finished her third glass of champagne in a single swallow. She smiled but said little even when Harlee roped her back into the conversation. It slowly dawned on Eden that, unfair as her judgment might be, there was just something about Harlee she didn’t care for. And no, she was not a bit jealous of the girl’s verve and flawless good looks.

  By the time the party was winding down and Cody returned to them, it seemed that Eloy had included Harlee in their dinner plans for the evening.

  Spectacular, Eden thought a little glumly.

  She drained another glass of champagne while it was still available.

  Waiting at their banquette table in Canaletto with the other girls in the crew of Fetchlings, all supernally lovely and all but Nic shimmering with hybrid vigor, Devon received a text message on her cell phone from Harlee.

  “We should go ahead and eat,” Devon said, dropping her Nokia back into her clutch purse. “Harlee can’t make it tonight.”

  “What’s going on?” Nic demanded. In one of her surly moods. Her jaw was swollen on the left side. She bit down on a breadstick and winced. “She-it! Next time I do me a full-body makeover, it’ll be without wisdom teeth.”

  “Is Harlee okay?” Reese asked.

  Devon smiled calmly despite a pinch of unease. “Yes. Something came up.” From her seat in the restaurant Devon could tell that the party at the gallery was over. The guests had begun to drift out onto the shopping concourse that bordered the indoor canal. She didn’t see Harlee. “Not to worry. She’ll tell us all about it tomorrow.”

  JUBILATION COUNTY, GEORGIA • JULY 23,

  1926 • 2015 HOURS MOBIUS TIME

  Igots a good hold on it now,” the one-eyed Letty Fresno said to Delilah. She had been fishing with needle-nose tweezers in the expanded wound on Gwen’s neck that a mosquito invisibly had begun, sucking its gullet full. Gwen’s hands took a hard purchase on the pump handle of the sink, Delilah moaning softly aye aye aye through gritted teeth.

  Then the buried thing popped out and Letty, astounded, studied it, turning up the flame of an acetylene lantern: it was a bit of metal or ceramic-coated metal smaller in diameter than the head of a thumbtack.

  “Reckon how that bitty thing come to be buried in yo’ neck with only a trace of a scar? Never have seen the like befo’.”

  Delilah silently requested and Gwen poured more ’shine for them in their tin cup. While they drank the potent stuff Delilah pondered the pill-like object. She had no comment.

  Letty handed Gwen a wad of cotton cut from clean flour sacking to press against the oozing wound. She took the ’shine jug away.

  “Watch yo’self. The hangover be worse than a nest o’ yellajackets let loose in yo’ brain. Now hold tight to the bandage while’s I make a poultice for that li’l wound. Three–four days, oughter heal jes’ fine.”

  In the nearly empty honky-tonk the Jubilation Joymakers, propelled by Jonas Fresno’s hard-driving trumpet, rollicked through “My Baby Don’t Wear No Shoes.” Letty’s expression was pure bliss, as if she hadn’t heard them play that number on an infinite number of nights before this one.

  “My man,” she said. “Ain’t never been a finer trumpet in all the realm of God Almighty! It do light the sun, uh-wah-hum. It paint the moon and the flowers of paradise. The Mona Lisa too.”

  “Verily, it doth impose motion on this hive of slumbers,” Delilah observed. After polishing off yet another large cup of ’shine, Gwen’s eyes, which had grown hazy, began to roll a little. Fortunately she was sitting down.

  “Uh-wah-huh-uh-huh!” Letty sang, nodding and switching her hips while her fingers prepared a concoction of smears from several odd-size jars she took from a cabinet. Delilah studied the implant removed from Gwen’s neck. Gwen’s eyelashes fluttered. The button gave her the jumps, as if she were connected to the distant source of an eerie power. With a fingertip she stroked Dr. Marcus Woolwine’s MFIU (Magnetic Flux Inhibitor Unit) as Delilah tried to divine its internal intricacies.

  “What it be tellin’ you?” Letty asked softly, applying the poultice to Gwen’s neck. And, with a touch of sorceress wiles: “Tell me what you be seein’, chile. Ol’ Letty knows you be seein’ somethin’ mighty interestin’.”

  Gwen was pale, but she had stopped trembling.

  “Ravens,” said Delilah. “Thick as old enemies, that rise like blood of spring blooming in a gusher. Faith, I am poxed, bearing scars of vile enchantment, too long with a malady that hath no name! My might, my hope, but a drifting planet in aeons of Andromeda. We must be join’d, and soon, within the embattled citadel. If not, our cause is lost.”

  “Got yo’self a young man where you comes from?” Letty asked sympathetically. She taped another square of cotton sack over the now-sterile wound. Gwen’s body trembled anew, with concern and passion. She closed her left hand on the tiny MFIU.

  “Aye, the citadel be manly, of good bone and comely flesh for beguilement’s sake. But ’tis mere accoutrement, a player on the mortal stage. The sunder’d soul is what I spake of, scepter and crown. Which, once united, rules the empty paradise of man’s eclipse.”

  “Hm. Don’t rightly know if I grasp yo’ meanin’.”

  Delilah smiled sadly and shrugged Gwen’s shoulders.

  “Conjure mother—for I know thee to be one with the antick arts—I speak of my life in twilight drear. My blood is black, my tears but snow whilst twin souls dwell apart, made separate by abyss of flaw like mirror crack’d.”

  Following the roust-the-house syncopation of “My Baby Don’t Wear No Shoes,” the Jubilation Joymakers segued to a bluesy but still swinging mode, introduced by Jimmie “Ducks” Clyborn doubling on barrelhouse piano. Delaware Joe Parker’s trombone backed him up with gliding swoops before Jonas Fresno stepped in, low-down but with a touch of wounded swagger to his legendary horn: “Rat Alley Moan.” Roscoe Raines’s vocals were a raw shout, accompanied by his thunderous percussion—like something heard pounding away in six feet of grave on a stormy cemetery midnight.

  “Well Well my momma leavin’

  me now

  Don’t give me no money

  Say I don’t need that cocaine no-how!”

  Letty studied the puzzled, downcast face of Gwen t
he doppelganger. Gwen’s hand was pressed against her solar plexus.

  “So you needs to kick this starbox and find yo’ way home.” Letty shook her head. “Wisht I had some good news to tell.” She nodded to the blues shout filling their ears. “I does know somethin’ ’bout this-yere time-travel business. It be hard, sho’ ’nuf, or any fool could likely do it.” Gwen bit her lip and nodded. “You see, ‘time’ be sticky stuff. Like that big ol’ cobweb hangin’ in the corner there I keeps meanin’ to broom down? Lose yo’ way in time, jes’ might get tangled up fo’ever. Now, you takes a time machine, no matter how queer-lookin’ some be to our eyes, they all works the same way: like a radio. Uh-huh. Thas’s truth. You tunes in to where it is you wants to go, then ride that wave, honey. Got somethin’ to do with how far them waves travel, you una’stand. And how many of ’em they be. Reckon nobody can say fo’ sure. The Jubilation Joymakers, they don’t go travelin’ through time, but they music does. Travels on ’n’ on through the heavenly cosmos, ’cause it don’t never fade nor die. They gots a wave be strictly all they own. Powerful when they’s hittin’ they best licks. Now that wave, it cross over many another wave out there somewheres, know what I’m sayin’? Gets tangled up . . . and that’s how I believe them time-travel folks go astray.” Unable to refrain from getting with the music, Letty cakewalked around her kitchen. “Should the likes of a traveler-wave run afoul of ‘Bear Cat Papa’ or ‘Stay Away from My Chickenhouse’ way way out there in the dark lonesome, look out! Lawdy me, how they do come! A-tumblin’ and a-skitterin’ down like flies into the Jubilation wave-web, bless they uncanny bodies an’ strange li’l hearts. Jes’ you listen to them mens play! Oh, they pumpin’ it up fiercely now! I hears ’em ever night, mind; still that music fit to raise the short hairs of a dead mans on his coolin’ board. It gets me to sashayin’ thisaway. And thataway. Mercy!”

  At last out of breath and strut, she left off for a glass of well water at the sink. Letty sipped her water and splashed some on her overheated brow and gazed contentedly out the kitchen window. There was a full moon above the spear-tip pines like a great yellow pearl in a buccaneer’s treasure cave. Stars beaming their own attractive magic, beckoning to the proud, the unwary.

  “Funny thing,” Letty resumed in a confidential tone, “and I ain’t told this to all that many folks—Jonas and me, we got us selves a time machine. Uhhh-huh.” Letty looked back over one shoulder. There was a light like a twitching electrified filament behind her sewn-down lid. “What you think ’bout that? Well, it be jes’ a-settin’ ’round the Vortex goin’ on near fo’ever. But they ain’t no place Jonas and me rather be. Jubilation County suit us fine. Anyhow, we don’t know what make it go. Only know it mus’ be a time machine. ’Cause of all the clocks inside, and gadgets galore.” Letty whistled low. “And they’s somethin’ else.” She leaned toward them. “A scary, grinnin’ thing! Be made of crystal, reckon. But glowin’ like the devil’s own two eyes.”

  Gwen’s head, which had been nodding, was still. She looked more or less alertly at the old conjure woman.

  “I be mos’ ’fraid to look at it my ownself. ’Fraid o’ what I might see deep down in them empty sockets.” Gwen’s lips parted and her breathing quickened as Letty turned her face away from them, grinning her own, skull-like sly grin. “You could maybe have a peek at it, if it is you ain’t believin’ me.”

  Gwen fell off her chair, wobbled to her feet, braced herself against the table.

  “I believe you!” It was Gwen speaking for a change, her voice slurred. But her eyes focused on Letty and she trembled with excitement. “Show me—your machine! If it’s wha’ I think it is, I can make that sumbitch work!”

  LAS VEGAS • OCTOBER 31 • 9:40 P.M.

  Halloween night in Vegas didn’t compare to New Year’s Eve for revels, but still there were a fair number of costumed visitors to the Venetian Hotel’s upscale restaurant row and casino. Inside Emeril’s, at a table near the one occupied by Cody Olds and his guests, a dozen people were dressed for a masque.

  Eden’s absence from the table had stretched to nearly fifteen minutes, and with the arrival of their main courses Cody frowned and looked concerned. Harlee caught his eye.

  “Want me to check on her?”

  “Maybe that would be a good idea.”

  Harlee found the women’s lounge empty except for Eden, who was in the rearmost stall. The door was closed. Harlee rapped discreetly.

  “Eve? It’s me. Dinner’s here. You doing all right? Cody was getting worried about you.”

  “A little stomach upset. Touch of the flu, or something. I’ll be right there.”

  “I don’t have anything with me but some Motrin,” Harlee said. “Could it be that?”

  “No. I just finished my last period.” Eden rose from the toilet seat and flushed. She came out slowly, licking her underlip. She had a wad of toilet tissue in one fist. She had tried to wipe all the blood off her neck, but without a mirror she’d left a couple of streaks, one down to her collarbone.

  “Omigod, what HAPpened?” Harlee said, taking hold of her by an elbow.

  “I dunno. Just started bleeding for no reason.”

  “You’re a little wobbly. Sit down over here, Eve.”

  She led Eden to a plush-cushioned bench in an alcove, helped herself to a linen towel from a stack beside dual gold sinks, wet the towel, and returned to Eden. She gently removed what blood remained, looked for a wound. There wasn’t one. It was as if she had bled from her pores. Harlee was perplexed, Eden rock-tense and downcast, hands clenched in her lap. She felt cold to Harlee.

  Harlee bathed her cheeks and forehead with the warm wet towel. Eden smiled wanly at her.

  “There’s no cut,” Harlee said, peering close. “I thought maybe your earring had a sharp edge. . . .”

  “No.”

  “And you keep your nails short, like me. Was there a lot of blood?”

  “Seemed like it.”

  “Nothing now. Did you . . . have you ever bled like this before?”

  “I’m not one of those, Harlee.”

  “Oh! I didn’t mean anything. I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “Do you want to go home? I don’t think Cody can get away right now, but I could take you.”

  “I don’t want to abandon him. I’ll be fine. Maybe nothing’s going to happen after all.”

  Harlee looked sharply at her.

  “What d’you mean?”

  “Oh, nothing. I’m just feeling a little spooked. Spooky. But why not? It’s Halloween, isn’t it?” Eden smiled wryly.

  Two women came into the lounge, chatting. Both wore harlequin-style masks. Harlee sat down beside Eden and put a hand on her wrist. The two women went into the stall reserved for the handicapped. They rustled around in there, giggling softly.

  “You had a premonition, didn’t you?” Harlee said quietly.

  “Why do you say that?”

  “I . . . this is hard to explain, but I pick up things about people. I’m only sixteen—I’ll be seventeen in January—but even when I was just a little kid I had premonitions.” Harlee, feeling emboldened and taking a chance that Eden wasn’t a mind-fucker (among her other, documented talents) or had no peeping ability, made up a story on the spot. “When I was six and just starting school—I’d been in first grade a couple of weeks—one morning I refused to get on the school bus. I cried and threw a tantrum, like my mom was trying to feed me to a shredder. And you know? That day the school bus lost a tire and wobbled off a bridge down the hill from our house. A couple of my classmates drowned in the creek.” Harlee fetched a convincing shudder. “I didn’t see in my mind’s eye what was going to happen to the bus. I just had a shuddery cold feeling, knowing something bad—I still cry whenever I—” And now for a few tears.

  Eden looked sympathetically at her as Harlee carefully blotted her eyes.

  “We do have something in common, I guess.”

  “You too? Somehow I was so sure. As soon as I saw
you, Eve.”

  Harlee again blotted her tears with the towel that had Eden’s blood on it. “I must be a mess,” she moaned.

  “No, you’re not.”

  Harlee rested her head on Eden’s shoulder, sniffing and wiping her nose, childlike, on the back of a wrist.

  “Our dinner’s probably getting stone cold. Did you order the fish too?”

  “Uh-huh. But I’m not all that hungry.”

  One of the women in the handicapped stall was groaning. Harlee pressed a little closer to Eden. Trying to keep certain thoughts in the hideout cellar of her mind.

  “I told you mine,” she said. “Want to tell me yours?”

  “I didn’t say I had a premonition,” Eden said guardedly.

  “But you did, didn’t you? And the bleeding—that was part of it?”

  “I’m not a religious ecstatic, Harlee. But there are things about me I’d find difficult to explain to you.”

  After a few moments Harlee said, “That’s okay. I just get so confused about myself, and lonely. Like I have the biggest secret in the world I can’t possibly tell, either. I thought—you would be the one to understand.”

  “I’m a good listener, Harlee. Maybe this isn’t the time or place.”

  “Does that mean someday you’ll, like, trust me? Like best friends? And neither of us will feel so lonely anymore?”

  “Let’s see what happens, Harlee. Thanks for coming to my rescue. We ought to get back to the others, or I’ll really have some explaining—”

  The massive displacement they experienced as they were walking out of the women’s lounge wasn’t an explosion, although it rattled their bones. Nor was it like an earthquake, because the floor didn’t rock and roll and the ornate ceiling didn’t collapse on their heads. It was an extended optical effect, a dizzying space warp, as if they’d been shot in the wink of an eye to a funhouse chamber mounted on a gyroscope and filled with slidey mirrors, the sound effects therein like the roar of a turbulent sea.

  The immediate result was vertigo. One of the masked women from the handicapped stall staggered past them bare to the waist, nipples like pink neon. She vomited on herself. Harlee clung fiercely to Eden, clawing for purchase as they too staggered giddily, fell down, got to their knees, toppled again. They heard screams and the pops of breaking glassware and, distantly, the hectic music of a Dixieland band going full-throttle.