by Harvey Click
It was a small two-story house with peeling gray paint and a front porch obscured by a tree with huge hand-like leaves that clawed the porch gutter as they whispered in the breeze. While Jason stared at the tree, Rue’s face suddenly materialized through the leaves like something in a trick drawing with twenty-one hidden objects. She was sitting on the porch on an iron glider, watching him intently with those cold green eyes.
Jason climbed the steps and handed her five dollars. “You said this includes some grub,” he said.
Rue got up, opened the screen door, and beckoned him into the darkness with one finger.
“It’s pleasant now but it’ll be cold soon,” she said. “These nights have been chilly.”
Jason stepped into the smell of stale incense and the sound of a clock ticking like a metallic heartbeat. Heavy purple drapes covered the windows, holding the evening light without, and when his eyes adjusted to the murk he saw painted wooden masks leering from the living room wall above a purple sofa. He set down his bag and approached one of the contorted faces.
The five life-size masks were arranged in a row on the wall. The one on the left was a likeness of a man’s face, handsome and dignified, with high cheekbones, a lofty forehead, intelligent eyes, and a faint but pleasant smile. The mask next to it was essentially the same except the forehead was a bit lower, the cheekbones a bit broader, the lips thicker and more sensuous. Looking from left to right, Jason watched the stage-by-stage deformation of the face into lecherous idiocy, the final mask resembling an ape or maybe a monstrous swine.
“I call it ‘The True Nature of Man,’ ” Rue said.
Jason turned and stared at the big grandfather clock in a corner near the fireplace. The wood was carved with goblins and gremlins and the pendulum, which swung with maddening slowness, was a pointed face with pointed ears and a long pointed tongue.
“It’s the devil himself,” he said quietly.
“It’s Azazel, the leader of the Watchers,” Rue said. “I’ll bring you some iced tea and show you around. Wait here.”
“I’m in the mood for a Coke if you got some.”
She passed through the next room and disappeared into the kitchen.
The living room looked clean enough, with potted plants on the floor and some more hanging from the ceiling, and Jason wondered how they survived in the gloom. There were a couple of old upholstered armchairs facing the old purple sofa. Against the wall, stairs with a wooden banister led to thicker darkness. He was startled by a nasty growling sound and turned to see a big black cat staring in at him through the screen door.
“That’s Aleister,” Rue said.
She had sneaked back in so quietly that Jason hadn’t heard her. She handed him a tall glass containing pale brown liquid with a sprig of something green floating in it and opened the door for the beast, which growled again and glared at him with baleful yellow eyes as it crept past him to the next room.
“You may sit here in the living room whenever you want,” she said. “Same for the front porch.”
She motioned him to follow her into the next room, where the cat was perched on a tall table, its yellow eyes glowing like the slits of a jack-o’-lantern. There were some canvasses leaning against the walls, a metal table with paints and brushes, two lamps on tripods, an easel, and a couple of chairs.
“This is my studio,” she said. “You may pass through it on your way to the kitchen, providing you don’t touch anything. Otherwise it’s strictly off limits, except of course when I paint you.”
“Tell you what, ma’am. I come to this town for one reason and when I’m done I plan on getting on outta here. I can’t say I’ll be here long ‘nough for you to draw a pitcher a me.”
“If you don’t pose you’ll owe me ten more dollars per day,” she said. “In advance. And don’t call me ma’am—my name’s Rue.”
“Okay, I guess you might could draw me for a short spell, but I gotta have something to eat first. I ain’t had nothing to eat since the crack a dawn.”
Rue gave him a scornful smile and said, “You’re far too focused on your carnal appetites. It’s a proven fact that people can live without food, you know. There are Eastern mystics who haven’t eaten anything for many years.”
“Well, I don’t know where ‘xactly in the east they live, but down where I’m from we like to eat three squares a day and some snacks in between.”
“I’ll heat up some soup in a while. I eat dead flesh only on special occasions, and you’ll have none of it while you’re living in my house. Now I’ll show you your bedroom.”
Jason sipped the tea. It tasted sweet and musky, something like the way goldenrod smells in the woods on a hot day.
“Be careful with the stairs,” she said. “I shelve my books on them, and these books are valuable.”
Every other step was lined with books, and Jason had to lift his feet high as he followed her up. He glimpsed a couple of titles as he climbed: The Key of Solomon and Magick in Theory and Practice.
“This is a fitting symbol of the fact that through books we ascend to great heights,” Rue said. “And it’s also a symbol that with each step the learned climb twice as high as the ignorant swine. The mundane steps required by the material world are doubled in height by knowledge, you see.”
She continued discoursing in this vein as they climbed. Jason tried to pay attention to what she was saying because he figured with all of these books she must be very intelligent, but her words made little sense to him. Seeing a great number of books always made him feel tired and depressed, and in fact he felt more tired with each tall step he took.
And there was another distraction as well—the purple cloth of her long skirt was quite thin and it clung tightly to her butt as she climbed. Rue’s butt wasn’t full and round like Holly’s—in fact, it was so slim she might have been one of those strange people who lived in the east and never ate—but as Jason stared at it just inches in front of his face it occurred to him that maybe Holly could stand to lose a few pounds.
“Besides, I don’t like bookcases because they’re too rectangular,” she said when they reached the short dim hallway at the top. “Rectangles are cages that logic creates to imprison our divine spirits. Here’s the bathroom. This room is mine”—she pointed to a closed door—“and you’ll enter it only if I invite you. And here’s your room.”
His room was hot, musty and dark like the rest of the house, with a dark green blind covering the only window. Rue switched on a bare ceiling bulb, and Jason saw paintings covering all four walls, but the framed canvasses had shapes cut out of them so they resembled painted nets or webs—they were holes more than canvas.
Jason gulped his tea thirstily and stared at them. “How’d they get all cut up like that?” he asked.
Rue sighed and said, “Genius always baffles the eyes of the ignorant. You may admire them but under no circumstances will you touch them. Now try the mattress and tell me if it’s comfortable.”
“Maybe I’ll open the window,” he said.
“It’s painted shut. It’s a fitting metaphor for how the art of painting seals out the noises and stenches of the mindless brutes and creates a separate world of spiritual beauty and harmony, so be happy it’s painted shut. Now lie down and try the mattress. I’ll take your glass.”
Jason handed her his empty glass and sat on the bed. He felt awkward lying down with her standing there, but he suddenly felt so tired he did anyway.
“Good,” she said. “You just lie there like a good boy and I’ll get something to take care of your hand.”
This caused him to open his eyes.
“You have a nasty cut on your left hand,” she said.
Jason wanted to say something, but she was already gone. He lay back heavily, shut his eyes, and saw that Holly was lying on top of him. They were both naked in the back seat of his father’s old Chevy. He wanted to ask Holly where she’d been, but he noticed his mother was peering in through the driver’s window. Although the car must
have been sitting still for her to be standing there like that, he saw buildings that looked like hospitals and prisons whizzing by as if on a moving backdrop. Then he noticed Hatter sitting in the driver’s seat, cursing unintelligibly while recklessly whirling the steering wheel one direction and the other.
“Don’t let Ma see us like this,” Jason whispered to Holly, but plump Holly had shriveled into a long bony scarecrow with Rue’s face. Jason’s mother finished her silent scrutiny of Hatter, and now her round face drifted like a white balloon to the rear window to gaze at her naked son trapped beneath a naked scarecrow with cold green eyes.
“What’s that you doing in there, Jasper?” his mother asked.
Jason started to say, “My name ain’t Jasper,” but the scarecrow’s fingers, thin as bones, pinched his hand so sharply that his eyes sprang open.
In the faint light coming through the open bedroom door, he saw that Rue was crouched over him naked with a knee on either side of his body and her bare crotch pressed against his. Then he realized that he was completely naked himself and his penis was inside her.
She was nursing the cut on his hand, swabbing it with a liquid that made his whole hand sting while she slowly rocked up and down on him. He tried to watch her in the darkness, but his eyelids fell shut again like heavy black curtains.
Chapter Three
Jason awoke in stifling blackness with a sense of panic and no idea where he was. He sat up with great effort in the dizzy darkness, sensations prickling through his heavy limbs like electricity reanimating a dead frog.
Piece by piece he remembered where he was and vaguely recalled a strange dream about Rue crouching over him like a praying mantis. Or maybe it wasn’t a dream, because he noticed he was naked and in fact the part of his body prickling the most furiously was his swollen penis.
He pushed himself up and tottered with bare feet over the bare wood floor, groping the hot black air until his hand touched something soft, ragged, and seemingly hairy. One of her ugly damn paintings, he thought, remembering that she had told him never to touch them.
He continued groping until he found the light switch by the door. The bare bulb on the ceiling hurt his eyes, and he had to shut them until the throbbing eased.
His clothes were gone. He looked in the closet, but there were just dresses, skirts and blouses hanging there. He found a pink lady’s bathrobe and put it on. The shoulders were way too narrow and the hem was nearly up to his crotch, but at least he could pull it shut far enough to cover his erection.
He tied the belt, tiptoed down the hallway to Rue’s bedroom door, and stopped to listen. He thought he heard breathing, then thought he didn’t. He crept to the bathroom, eased the door shut, and when he flipped the light switch the two bright bulbs above the mirror made his eyes throb again.
Nothing seemed to be in focus: the hairbrush beside the sink seemed to clutch a huge black spider instead of a wad of hair, and the silver comb beside it looked more like a dagger. His bandaged left hand felt hot, and the heat seemed to stretch all the way up his arm into his brain. He needed to pee, but he stood at the toilet for a minute or more unable to will his erection away.
At last he gave up, tiptoed out of the bathroom, and shut off the light. He’d had his fill of this strange place, but he couldn’t very well leave the house dressed in a pink bathrobe, and besides he had nowhere else to go.
He’d already decided Rue was insane and intended to keep him prisoner by hiding his clothes. He’d seen something like that on television once and figured here in the city it probably happened pretty often, but if Rue thought she was dealing with some dumb hick she had another think coming. He’d show her—but he hadn’t quite figured out how.
He listened at her door again, heard nothing, and then sneaked his way to the stairs. He remembered the books too late; already his bare foot was putting weight on them, already he was losing his balance, and now he was sliding on his bare ass down a steep avalanche of words.
“Shit!” he said when he landed on the floor at the bottom. Groaning and swearing, he picked himself up from the heap of mutilated books and hobbled into Rue’s studio, where there was at least a hint of light.
The numbness was gone, and now he felt bruised all over, especially his elbows and hips and the back of his head. There was just enough moonlight coming through the windows for him to see that his duffle bag wasn’t there.
He looked in the kitchen then returned to the living room, but it was too dark there to make out anything. He was hunting for a light switch when he heard a sound from the front porch, a soft thump.
“Rue?” he asked quietly.
Must be the damn cat, he thought, but then he saw its yellow eyes glaring at him from the fireplace mantle. As he glared back, he heard the harsh squeaking of the screen door hinges.
“Rue?” he asked again, very quietly.
He crept to the front door and pulled back the curtain from the window. A tall black man was staring in—very tall and about as friendly looking as the cat.
“Rue, you got a gun ‘round here?” he yelled, but there was no reply from upstairs.
He ran to the kitchen, found a long chef’s knife, and was looking for a rolling pin or some other sort of club when he heard a sort of metallic cough at the back door—the sound of a key in the lock.
The door opened, and the man stepped into the kitchen. He was about six and a half feet tall, maybe forty or forty-five, and wore a peach-colored suit, a creamy white shirt, and a pale blue tie. His dark face was somehow oddly familiar, handsome and dignified, with high cheekbones, a lofty forehead, intelligent eyes, and a faint but menacing smile.
The smile became wider and more menacing, and then he let out a soft easy laugh, like the laugh of a man who knows he always gets to have the last laugh.
“Man, that lady sure can pick ‘em,” he said. “You look like an angel at the pink pearly gates.”
Jason suddenly remembered the short pink robe he was wearing, and he glanced down to see that his erection was poking out of it like an infant’s arm with a balled-up fist. He adjusted the robe with one hand and waved his chef’s knife around with the other.
“Why don’t you put that knife down,” the man said, pulling his peach-colored jacket aside just enough so Jason could see the butt of a gun sticking out of his waistband. “Knives make me nervous.”
Jason dropped the knife onto the counter.
“That’s better. Is Rue here?”
“I dunno.”
“Then let’s you and me have a look around and see. You go first.”
Jason led him through the studio to the living room and stopped at the heap of books at the bottom of the stairs.
“Oh my,” the man said. “I guess Rue must not be here ‘cause I don’t hear her screaming bloody murder just now. But let’s go upstairs and have a little look around anyhow, shall we?”
Jason picked his way carefully through the books up the stairs. The man followed him, switched on the hallway light, and tapped on Rue’s door.
“You in there, babe?”
He tried the knob, then took a ring of keys from his pocket and unlocked the door. He turned on the light just long enough for Jason to glimpse a big brass bed, then switched it off and shut the door.
“Let’s try the other room,” he said, and when they got there he followed Jason inside.
“So this is where she’s got you sleeping, is it, or maybe she’s already invited you into her royal queen’s chambers? Man, Rue sure got a taste for that good jailbait.”
“I’m twenty-one,” Jason said.
“That’s what you say, but does your driver’s license say the same thing?”
“Yep.”
“Well, I’m pleased to hear that. We don’t want Rue getting in trouble over jailbait, do we? My name’s Mingo. You got a name?”
“Jason.”
Mingo extended his long arm. Jason eyed the big hand warily and nodded.
“Is she your girlfriend or somethi
ng?” he asked.
“Is she yours?”
“Nope.”
“That’s good, that’s real good,” Mingo said. “I just stopped by for a friendly little talk, that’s all. Caught wind that Rue had taken in another boy-toy, and that never spells anything but trouble. Trust me, I’ve seen this movie more than once before. Sit down, Jason, and make yourself comfortable.”
Jason sat on the bed.
“Don’t you have any better clothes to wear?” Mingo said. “Rue doesn’t usually go for fruits.”
“She stole my clothes.”
Mingo let out a soft easy laugh and sat down beside Jason. “I swear that woman gets crazier every day.”
He pulled a gold cigarette case from his jacket pocket, removed an expertly rolled joint, lit it, took a pull, and handed it to Jason. They smoked for a while without talking. The marijuana was stronger than the homegrown Jason was used to, and his head began to rock up and down like a cradle.
No black people lived in Glum Fork, so Jason wasn’t quite sure how to talk to one of them. Since Mingo was so big and furthermore carried a gun, it seemed he ought to make a point of saying he’d always liked black folks and had never thought of them as any less good than white folks, but he didn’t know how to bring this up in a natural way. Maybe he should say he used to get in fights every day trying to protect a little black boy who lived in Glum Fork, maybe named Arnold or maybe Boom Boom, but the marijuana was confusing him and the story kept getting tangled in his head before he could begin telling it.
“Sure is stuffy in here,” Mingo said after a while. “This place always gives me the creeps. If I was you I’d be finding a better place to stay real soon. Like right now or maybe even sooner than that.”
“Can’t leave without my clothes.”
“Well, you better be finding some soon. Staying here another night won’t be good for your health, if you catch my drift.”
Mingo got up and said, “Tell you what, Jason, we had a nice talk but I got business to attend to. Why don’t you just keep the rest of that reefer, I expect you might be needing it. Man I tell you, don’t these paintings give you the royal willies? Take a good look at this one before you leave, I mean a real good look.”