by Tim Curran
So I did. I slid that oily, black-tasting barrel into my mouth and as much as the idea was abhorrent to who and what I was, I saw escape. I saw a way out. I saw release from the clutches of the thing that held me and that release was pure, it was sweet to taste. I frantically tried to pull the trigger but my fingers were no good, they would not obey.
“Soon enough, Little Injun, soon enough.”
The riot gun fell from my hands and clattered into the street. I was defeated and fatigued. I was drained. I was broken. I noticed then what so many had noticed before: that the Skeleton Man cast no shadow. Not that that bit of information was any real surprise: things like him never cast shadows.
Something released me at that moment and I ran.
I ran out of pure animal fear. I ran through fields and thickets, I splashed through streams, I struggled in the mud of bogs…and all the while, the Skeleton Man followed. He did not walk or run, he drifted six inches off the ground, telling me how he had killed my family and speaking in their voices and telling me how, when the time came, I would die, too.
Then he was gone and I was alone, sore and scratched from twigs scraping my face, my uniform filthy with dirt and pond mud and pickers. I think I made up some crazy story about chasing some guy, something the other cops could understand, and it was that night I found something in my pocket, something he had given me.
Chapter Twenty
“And what was that?” Slaughter asked him.
Feathers poked the fire with his stick. He took another cigarette from Slaughter and snapped off the filter, lit it, blew smoke from his nose. He reached into the pocket of his shirt and pulled out a card. A tarot card. It was The Devil. On his throne, Satan sat with bat’s wings outstretched, one hairy arm lifted as if in greeting. The card was well-worn, greasy, yellowing.
Slaughter reached out to take it from him, but Feathers pulled it away, shaking his head. “No, I don’t think you should touch it, son. I think it carries a black juju of sorts on it.”
“A curse?”
Feathers shrugged. “Something like that. Something intended for me and only for me. I don’t think you need any of this bad rubbing off on you. Maybe there’s no power in this thing but I believe that there is. It’s from the Skeleton Man’s pack and when he comes to collect it, he’ll collect me, too.”
A fetish object. Slaughter had heard of such things. A juju could be both good luck or bad luck, and in this case it was definitely the latter. Like some kind of engraved invitation that would carry Feathers through the gates of Hell.
“But you still haven’t told me how you knew those things,” Slaughter said. “How you knew his name was Chaney or what happened in that house. How did you know those things?”
“I told you I knew ‘em same way you’ll know ‘em.”
“And how’s that?”
“By going on a vision quest.”
Slaughter just looked at him. The story Feathers had just told was weird, gruesome, and more than a little unnerving, but he wasn’t sure if he believed it or not. Feathers seemed to be honest and his words had a ring of truth to them…but a vision quest? That was mysticism and Slaughter had very little patience with things mystical and unseen, things divinatory and spiritual. He was by nature an existential kind of guy that believed in what he could see and touch and know to be true through his five senses. Other than that…he was skeptical. Yet, Black Hat had showed himself in that video at the compound and he had crept into Slaughter’s dreams. Maybe that didn’t mean much, maybe there was nothing truly flesh-and-blood about any of that, but Slaughter had a nasty feeling about it all.
“And how do I go on a vision quest?”
Feathers smiled. He put the tarot card back in his pocket. From the other pocket he took out a little packet of tinfoil and unwrapped it. Inside, there were three little dried slices of cactus about the size of coins. Peyote buttons. Slaughter had seen them before. He had tripped his brains out on the stuff once and was discovered naked in a field the next day.
“Buttons? The bad seed?”
“Sure, it’s the only way.”
“Go on a trip?”
“See your destiny.”
Slaughter smiled, thinking about it. Black Hat aside, he was out here to get that bio out of the fortress and maybe kick some Cannibal Corpse ass in the process. This was business. He was on a mission and he needed to hook back up with the Disciples. Did he really want to go scrambling his brains at this point? The answer to that was no, obviously, but as he looked into Frank Feathers’ eyes he saw something in them—an integrity, a complete honesty, a certainty that was nearly mystical in and of itself. Slaughter could plainly see that the man wasn’t playing with him. He really believed a trip on the button express could unlock secrets and unveil mysteries, open doors of perception long closed and provide an acuity, a bird’s eye view of things, that would be forever denied him unless he let the peyote wake up his sleeping brain and notch his mind up to complete consciousness.
Look at him, man. He’s got his finger on the pulse of something bigger than the both of you. Maybe it’s because he’s an Indian but more likely because he’s had commerce and interaction with old Black Hat and maybe some of that supernatural mojo rubbed off on him like gold dust.
Slaughter took the button and chewed it up, filling his mouth with cool spring water from the mug Feathers gave him. The button tasted like shit like they always tasted like shit. He worked it into a mush in his mouth, swallowing the sacred juice in droplets.
“You’re on your way, friend,” Feathers said, patting his arm. “Wish I could go with you. Wish we could travel together. I think we’d do well together, you and I. But it’s not to be. Tonight, tomorrow night, I’m going to have a visitor and he’s going to want the card I hold in my pocket.”
“Sure.”
“You’d best be on your way.”
Slaughter understood. Where he was going now was not for the old man to follow. His trail was his own and the lights he saw and the shadows that moved there were of an intimate variety. Frank Feathers had his own upcoming trip to contend with and he needed time alone to come to grips with his god (or the lack of one).
Slaughter hopped on the hardtail and waved to him and Frank Feathers waved back, both knowing they’d never see each other again. At least not on this side of the pale. Slaughter followed the dirt road out to the pavement and opened up the hog until he could really feel the wind biting into him. He rode like that for maybe twenty minutes until he felt a weird anxiety taking hold of him. He wasn’t making the turns in the road so good anymore. He was sweating. He was shaking. A town appeared before him and a green sign said: EXODUS, pop. 1200. He pulled in and followed deserted streets, getting tangled up in a weird snaking labyrinth that was partly physical but mostly in his head. He parked his scoot at a little grassy park and stepped off, falling face first into the grass which was so vividly green it seemed to reach up to him, every blade a separate finger of hallucinogenic color. The smell of it was intoxicating. He pulled himself to his knees, grounded by waves of intense nausea. He vomited but had no temporal memory of it, thinking it had happened many hours before except that the bile on his chin was wet, so very wet. It smelled like a freshly-cut lawn.
He stood uneasily, sweating rivers.
Before it went too far, he grabbed his road bag off the scoot which contained the Combat Mag and extra speed loaders and his Kukri. It was important to have these things with him, he decided. In his mind they were totemic. He stepped through the vibrant green grass, making for a peeling bench bordering a monument. The earth felt squishy beneath his boots. He was aware of the blades of grass crushing beneath his step, the sound they made. It was almost like they were crying out in pain.
The bench.
He fell into it.
And went for a ride…
* * *
He was shivering in the sun and sweating hot rivers, his limbs feeling numb and his mouth oddly dry. The sky above was so brilliantly blue t
hat it was like neon. The monument was a great slab of stone that seemed to rise higher before him like a monolith. It sparkled like silica. He was getting off good and he seemed to know it without actually knowing anything but the whisper of the wind and the clarity of all things like his eyes were truly open for the first time in his life.
“What was that Indian’s name?” he heard his voice ask. “Did he have a name?”
He put his hands to his ears because his voice was loud and booming and he could see the sound waves moving through the air like ripples in a pond, picking up speed, flying off towards the hazy mountains in the distance and then rolling back at him, each individual wave hitting him like breakers and making him cry out. The words were turned around and pulled inside out and they echoed around him, hitting him from all sides.
“THAT…”
What?
“DID HE?”
Stop it!
“NAME WAS THAT…”
He was shaking now, begging for it to stop.
“INDIAN DID HE WHAT WAS…”
“Auuughhhh,” he moaned and shook with dry heaves.
“NAME HAVE WHAT WAS…”
“Shut up,” he managed.
“DID NAME HAVE HE INDIIIIIAAAAAN…”
Breathing in and out now, he remembered that a long time ago he heard echoes in a dream and maybe it wasn’t a dream at all and where the hell was he and where had the other Disciples gone? He could feel them near, his brain replaying bits of conversation from years past that sounded new and recent.
He felt heights of exhilaration and lows of terror, everything in-between. He tried to speak but his mouth would not work. His hands felt numb and he flexed his fingers but was afraid to look at them because he feared they would be gone. Everything was disjointed and unreal and in its unreality had a weight and a physical presence beyond anything he had known before. The tangible was intangible and the unknown all-too apparent. With altered perception, he could not be sure how long he had been in the park or how close or far away objects were.
He looked at the trees in the park and wondered how their limbs moved with no breeze and wondered why all the houses in those tight little neighborhoods flanking the park had suddenly become tombstones that were gray and chipped and flecked with lichen. Or had they always been like that? A squirrel raced by his boot and Slaughter was certain it had been laughing at him. He saw a bee. A big fat bumblebee. It hovered in the air before him and Slaughter was thinking how bright were the yellow bands encircling its body. He could see its eyes and the careful smirk on its little bee mouth and the wings, moving so fast they buzzed…but if he concentrated, they moved very, very slow and then he was aware of how many hairs the bee had. Black hairs. Yellow hairs. Bulging sacs of pollen on its legs that looked to be the size of fanny packs. When the bee moved, it left a trail of pollen behind it that shimmered like golden fairy dust.
“Pay attention now,” said the bee and flew off.
Hey, asshole.
Slaughter looked around, not sure of anything now but knowing from experience that nothing was real and everything was real and you couldn’t fight it: you just went with it.
Hey, asshole.
He looked and Dirty Mary was squatting in the grass before him. She looked good. He felt a burning need in his groin. He wanted to get up and climb on top of her but he could not move.
Oh, aren’t you just something? Fucking asshole motherfucking biker piece of shit. Who do you think you are? Spent your life robbing and fighting and murdering and dealing drugs. Nothing but a criminal. A lowlife criminal and now…ha, ha…now you think you’re righteous, you’re walking the straight and narrow, on a holy mission. Don’t make me laugh. Did you think Black Hat won’t punch your ticket in the end?
You know Black Hat?
I serve at his side.
But you’re dead.
She laughed and unbuttoned her blouse and showed him her breasts. They were full and round, the nipples pink and jutting. He saw the tattoos on them—the roses on the left one and the dragon on the right climbing up to her sternum.
You can’t have them. He won’t let you.
Who?
You know. Call his name. To call the names of the dead is to summon them and to give voice to the darkness is to make it real. You get it, asshole? Do you GET IT?
She squeezed and worked her breasts in her long fingers, teasing the nipples until they stood as hard as push pins. When she took her hands away there was another tattoo and it covered both breasts:
Slaughter began to shake and shiver as the hot sweat of fevers broke open on his face. That word. That symbol. That word-symbol. It meant something and he knew it. It meant the most awful things and Dirty Mary was trying to tell him but he couldn’t hear and she kept shaking her head as she rubbed her breasts.
I died. Then I went down the rabbit hole and into the darkness and I saw him there. He asked about you, John. Oh, the evil that men do. You’re one of his favorites because you have absolutely no respect for human life. You like to kill.
No, I don’t.
But you do.
Only when I have to.
She began speaking in what seemed dozens of voices at the same time, all of them berating him and shouting at him and telling him things he needed to know, but were incomprehensible.
Really, John. You have to concentrate. I went down the rabbit hole and I met the Mad Hatter and he said tweedle-dee, tweedle-dee, why is a raven like a writing desk and right now he’s with that Little Injun and he’s telling him riddles.
Shut up.
I won’t. Not until you remember.
Then Slaughter did. In his memory that was so real it shut out everything else he saw a couple of the boys from the 158 Crew: Sean Cady and Butch Vituro. They were both long dead now but that didn’t seem to matter and why should it?
Allentown. Yes, Allentown, PA. The 158ers were going after a witness in a drug trial involving Ringo Searles, then-president of the Pittsburgh chapter of the Disciples. The rat’s name was Boyle, a drug dealer who had fingered Ringo’s complicity in a tri-state heroin trafficking operation.
In under a minute Sean popped the lock on the back door with a little L-wrench and a shot of graphite. They found themselves in a kitchen that stank of fried foods and garbage. It was dark, but Slaughter could see light in the next room, hear the TV blaring out the canned laughter of a sitcom. He moved noiselessly in there, saw Boyle in an easy chair, his back to him. Cady moved forward, cool as a body in a freezer, his eye on the top of Boyle’s pink head. He got right up behind him and brought the butt of his Glock right down on the crown of Boyle’s skull. It made a meaty thud and Boyle fell forward, sliding from the chair.
Cady turned him over with his boot. Boyle was out cold.
Satisfied, Cady went to the window. There was a shade drawn. He pulled it up and down twice. Then he went back to Boyle. A lolling human slug, Boyle spilled out of the bathrobe in too many places. Fat bulged out of the robe like an inner tube from a tire.
Butch came in with the tools.
“Okay?” he said.
Cady nodded. “Just fine.” He turned to Slaughter. “Now you see how we joint ‘em.”
Butch set down the leather sack of tools. Next to it, Slaughter set out a stack of black, heavy-duty plastic garbage bags.
“Never take off your gloves,” Cady said, his eyes narrow in his square-jawed face…except it wasn’t Sean Cady now. It was Black Hat who was the Mad Hatter who was Chaney the Skeleton Man. The clownwhite face, horribly pitted and scarred as if by acid, the eyes like pink mince. He wore a high top hat and on it was a placard with the following:
“Dat’s rule one,” he said, imitating the voice of a tough hood. “When ya do a guy, ya always cover yer tracks. Ya take yer gloves off fa one minute, rub yer eye, scratch yer balls, whatever, dere’s dat much more chance yer gonna touch something. Ya leave a print behind, fuggetaboudit. Dey’ll get ya. Dey always do.” He looked at Slaughter, winked. “Dost thou com
prehend this, biker boy?”
Butch nodded. “That’s right, Johnny. This here’s messy work, but if you do it right, nobody ever has to know.”
He gave each of them a blue plastic disposable apron, the sort meat cutters wore. The Mad Hatter took out his Glock again, threaded a silencer on the end. He left the room, turned on some more lights. “In here. Come along with me,” he called out. “Tweedledum and Tweedledee.”
“Sure,” Butch said.
Slaughter took the bags, the tool bundle.
Butch took Boyle by the legs and dragged him effortlessly down the hall into the bathroom, hefted him into the tub. The Mad Hatter stripped the shower curtain free, tested the strength of the rod, nodded with satisfaction that it was steel and it was screwed firmly into the wall.
“We’ll make a fine and secret work here,” said he.
Slaughter and Butch slid a plastic bag over Boyle’s head. He moaned and stirred slightly. The Mad Hatter went over to him, stuck the muzzle of the Glock up to the bulge of his head and pulled the trigger—pop, pop, pop—as he whistled Gounod’s “Funeral March on the Death of a Marionette” which was impossible to hear, Slaughter knew, without conjuring up images of Alfred Hitchcock. Boyle trembled and went still. The bag was essential, Butch pointed out, in that it helped to contain the bone chips and brain matter that otherwise would’ve sprayed around the room.
Butch took Boyle by the legs, hoisted him up, lifted him up so the top of his bagged head just brushed the bottom of the tub. The Mad Hatter, whistling merrily, tied his ankles together with rope, then roped him to the shower curtain rod. The rod bent down, but held. Already blood was running from the bag around Boyle’s head. The Mad Hatter pulled it free, set it aside.
When Slaughter stared at him he said in a singsong voice:
“There was a lady all skin and bone,
Sure such a lady was never known:
It happened upon a certain day,
This lady went to church to pray…”