Clown in the Moonlight

by Tom Piccirilli

  "You," she said. "What are you doing here?"

  "I just told you. I'm here to help you."

  "I don't believe you," she said.

  "Why not?" I asked. It's an honest question.

  "I know what you are. I know what you do."

  "I don't go around shooting my friends in the head." I emptied the bullets into my hand and placed the .32 back in her purse. "And after you killed her?"

  "I was going to shoot myself."

  I nodded. "Because of Ricky?"

  "Because of Ricky. And you. And...that night. And...because of what I became, what I was. I...I–"

  I turned on the lamp on the night table. The light shined down on Linda's sleeping face. In two years she hadn't lost much muscle mass at all. Despite the tubes, her arms were toned. Her face was ashen, but otherwise she looked as beautiful as the day I met her. Her mother kept her luxuriant hair well-brushed.

  I put my hand to her forehead and could feel her inside her own nightmares trying to rear away from me. I whispered the words to her that my mother used to say to me to calm my mad fevers. The machines began to warble and beat faster. My pulse rose along with them.

  Gwen said, "What are you doing? Oh God, don't kill her...don't kill her any more than you already have–"

  "Relax."

  "Please–"

  Linda hid from me in the depths of her dark dreams, lost among the shreds and scraps of muddled memories. I moved among their fragments searching for her, only to see myself in bed with her and Gwen, the three of us bleeding and covered in sweat. And at the foot of the bed stood Ricky, grinning, and Gary Lowers, blind but reaching, hungry, hard. It was an ugly fusion of truth and night terror.

  In the dream, my teeth red with her blood, I told her, "It's time to wake up now, Linda. Gwen's waiting for you with a whole new outlook on life. Your friend is here to lead you onto a new path."

  Baphomet bucked at that. I felt its rage meet my rage. The windows vibrated even though there was no wind. The Filipino nurse cried out in want and agony. Gwen said, "The shadows, they're–"

  "They don't matter," I said. "Come over here, talk to her."

  "They're swarming towards us–"

  "Come talk to her."

  "But–"

  "I won't let anything happen to you."

  "But that's all I've done for two years. I talk and talk. If she doesn't know I'm here by now."

  "Do as I say, Gwen, come speak in her ear. Let her feel your breath. Let her feel your lips. Hold her close."

  She leaned over her friend, her enemy, herself, and hugged her, and kissed her, and started muttering. A lot of what she said was trivial and referred back to when they were kids. Other things were personal, sexual, horrible, laughable. Before long Gwen was crying and giggling at the same time, and soon Linda was doing the same with her. They clenched fiercely as the machinery sounded and whooped, and the birds pecked, and the wind rose and fell, and the nurse came rushing in with her uniform misaligned. I left the hospital and got in the Mustang and drove under a moon heavy with the features of a goat.

  4.

  It's the same game as always, just different players, except for me. It's all my fault for playing along in the first place, but nothing of interest waits for me anywhere else. My old man is dead. My mother is dead. My gods slumber. The girls never last more than a month. They're all needy and awful in the same way. I find only what I look for. It's why I'm with Mercy right now.

  She tells me, "We're about to start the ritual."

  "Are you sure you want to go through with it?" I ask.

  "Oh yes, definitely."

  She tugs me by the wrist and leads me up the hall. The White Queen leads the group. The nerds take very little notice as the coven marches out the back door towards the wetland.

  I should probably rethink the situation before I let this girl make love to me under the evil moon near a toxic waterway. I'd had enough poison cause me strife. I'd been surrounded by venom of one sort or another most of my life. My old man had been juiced on it, my mother burned and degraded by it. It had shaped my formative years and filled my heart. I'd been surrounded by it in prison and on the ward. It had made me jump the wrong way and forced my hand into many bad decisions.

  I follow mercy and the others outside and the cool air washes over me. I watch the White Queen in her flowing white muumuu leading the ragtag band through the brush. Some of them hold high-power flashlights, and the bright shafts twine and cross and cut through the night. Mercy falls into my arms and licks at my jaw line, firing up my flesh. I bend to kiss her and she turns away.

  "It costs, you know," she says.

  The proper response to that is, Yes, I know, but I'm not feeling proper.

  "What does?"

  "Anything. Everything. Anything that you want, whatever you desire, it costs."

  I've paid out a lot over the years for the things I thought I wanted. I've paid in cash, blood, pain, freedom, love, hate, and time.

  We follow the coven out into the pines. The loamy odor makes me think of Aztakea Woods, Gary's body, and my mother's funeral. My mother, her corpse sealed inside a casket, her great soul already cast among the stars, while I stood there in the rain shoulder to shoulder with my father's shame and anger. No priest, no other mourners, even the cemetery caretaker had run for cover in the storm. Thick streams of rainwater rushed down into the hole and filled it like a sewer. I imagined rats in there already chewing on her remains. It made me hiss and steam. My old man turned away without a word and drove home without me. I plodded home through the mud, this same smell surrounding me.

  Mercy breaks from me and takes up formation with the coven around a dead tree standing in a clearing, jagged branches tilted at vicious angles. I move behind her, feeling a little too old for this crowd, looking back over my shoulder at the swaying, rustling pines. I feel eyes on me, a will at work.

  I look off in the direction of Pioneer State and wonder if up on those highest floors, perched at the cube windows, madmen and tainted women stare down at us right now. I can almost see them in their pjs and loose-fitting robes, their nails thick with clay from making ashtrays during crafts hour, wicker in their hair from weaving baskets. What might they think as they watch the flashlights maneuvering through the scrub, moonlight glazing the treetops?

  The White Queen stops and the members of the coven form themselves into a ring around the coven tree. I stick close to Mercy. It throws off the power of the triskaideka. The White Queen draws out a dagger from beneath her glowing muumuu and depicts symbols in the air with it. She speaks quietly but with great authority. I can't hear the words but I understand their meaning. The ocean is angry. The tide slams into the beach. We're about ten miles from the dunes where Ricky's boys tried to slash me to death. There's another graveyard nearby. This one might as well be the one hidden in the sand.

  The White Queen's voice grows louder. The breeze stiffens. She turns to the east and bows, then she does the same facing the west, then the north, and the south, the athame carving words, names, and ciphers in the dark.

  "With this witch's blade, my athame, I call forth Askiel, Uthrick, Pommerance, Tico-Tico, and Lafleur de Malcolm," she says. "I ask for my familiars Thorn-in-the-Crown and Percywinkle to come to me now and guide these blessed magicks. Where there is evil, there is righteousness set against it. Where there is mischief, there is nobility to balance it. Where there is corruption, there is salvation."

  Mercy whispers to me, "Which do you think I am? The mischief or the nobility?"

  "I'd have to go with mischief."

  "And you?"

  "The same."

  "I was hoping that."

  She moves her hand across my belly, rubs me the way a person might a dog, sort of scratching. Then she digs her nails in deeper until I grunt. She leans in as if to kiss me but pulls away at the last second.

  "So you're about to be purified now?" I ask.

  "As much as I ever hope to be, I suppose."

 
"I wonder how much that is?"

  The tone in my voice hooks her, wakes her up some. Mercy's grin begins to go slack. My own smile hardens.

  She steps away. Each coven member performs gestures in the air with their hands. Every so often they fall back together and carry out a series of intricate actions that make the entire thing look like a well-rehearsed ballet recital. I wonder how long they've been doing this, how many times they've stood in this field surrounding a dead tree, beneath the eyes of the moon. The night birds start to sing.

  Jenks slides up beside me from out of the darkness. His breath is rancid with whiskey. He holds the flashlight up to his face and pulls faces. His eyes are wild with cocaine, almost as insane as Ricky's were on acid.

  "Pretty ridiculous, eh?" he says.

  "Beats sitting at home watching the news."

  "Probably right about that. I still don't like it."

  "Why not?"

  He scoffs. "If you want anything in this world, you have to earn it, fight for it, or steal it. Dancing around in the darkness and calling on spirits named fuckin' Percywinkle is just moronic."

  "Then why did you join the coven?"

  "Like you said, it beats staying at home. Besides–"

  "Besides," Mercy joins in. "We're all about to get naked."

  Jenks's laugh is guttural and obnoxious. So is Mercy's. So is mine.

  Kip's voice soon becomes the loudest and clearest among the coven. "To me now, Utheziel. To me now the north wind. To me now golden fire, the chalice, the dagger, the aspect of the heart. To me now the Nephilim, the despised, the wondrous, the gargantuan."

  The members return to their stations, except for Mercy, who leaves my side and moves alone to stand at the base of the tree, brushing herself against those fierce, angular branches. The others turn their flashlights to illuminate her. I fade back. I allow the triskaideka to reign. I wait in the weeds. I stand on lost graves.

  Mercy holds her hands out to me.

  She wags her eyebrows and turns on that killer smile again.

  Her wreath of razors flashes with burning silver.

  She throws off her leather coat and skins out of her boots, weaving and angling all around, gyrating and slithering.

  And then she dances.

  And in her moonlit eyes she seems to be dancing only for me.

  She performs like a professional stripper working the circuit. The wetland is her stage. The coven is her audience. The birds fly against the black sky, pivoting, wheeling, rising, arching. Maybe she is offering herself to me. Maybe she waits to garrote me and offer my ashes to the dead and martyred. It doesn't matter to me. There is something about her that entices and irritates me. It is the same story for every woman I've had. I can see her teeth blaze every so often. Her black lipstick and eye shadow frame her alabaster face so that she appears to be a harlequin. She opens the top two buttons of her blouse and the curve of her breasts are heavy and exquisite. The tattoo at her neck looks like a raven.

  For a moment I see other figures out there, draped in black, silhouetted in the slashes of flashlight. The girl has brought my past alive within me. I recognize faces, body language, intent. I watch dead men looming. It is easy to get distracted.

  The men of the coven watch Mercy. They all want her. So do some of the women. She is desirable in the way that make lovers stupid, especially now, bathed from above. I can smell a hint of methane in the wind. It takes nothing at all to stand in the wetlands with strangers, breathing in the stink of decomposing bodies around you. Mercy's bare feet tamp out a staccato rhythm that beats louder than the pulse in my temple.

  She sweeps in close to me, shakes her hair wildly in my face, and a barb catches me across the chin. She withdraws. I thumb blood away.

  Jenks puts his arm around me, dips his head and draws me into a huddle of clandestine mystery as he speaks quietly in my ear.

  "You ready to fuck Mercy yet?"

  Of course I don't like the way he says it, half with a sneer and half with a laugh. No one else glances my way, not the White Queen, not even Mercy. My back muscles tighten and my stomach dips. Ricky urges me to tear his Jenks's eyes out. Gary Lowers loves his mother. He knows I love my mother too.

  I turn to Jenks. "When I am it'll be between her and me."

  He puts a hand to my chest and pushes hard, forcing me back a step. "No, it's between me and you. You pay me."

  "I pay you what?"

  "Depends on what you want. Half and half is one-twenty. Around the world three hundred, you want the whole night it's five, and that's a bargain. Believe me, I know."

  "You know."

  "I know." He actually holds out his hand. "Payable now, up front."

  He snaps his fingers.

  I look over at Mercy, the silver studs on her short-shorts burning. She dances among flashlight rays that seem to cut her to ribbons. She meets my eyes. I realize what a dupe I've been. She'd spotted me and off the cuff had known I was the loneliest, horniest, most futile asshole in a long line of them. A gray-haired punk old before his time, full of need and empty of action. A couple of air kisses in my direction, a hand to my neck, and I'd be hers. She'd even hinted at her true intention. Whatever you desire, it costs. And I'd been too eager to see what she was actually talking about, distracted by ritual and subjugation.

  Jenks still has his hand out. He snaps his fingers again, says, "Come on, c'mon. You going to kick in or are you going to let a fine ass like that get away from you?"

  I keep my gaze on Mercy as she snakes her way across the field, dancing and gyrating, sweaty and laughing.

  "What about me makes you think I have five hundred bucks on me?" I asked.

  "We can always hit an ATM."

  "And how do you know I have that much in my bank account?"

  "What else are you going to spend your cash on, man? Trips to the French Riviera? You've got no woman. You drink milk, for Christ's sake. You don't do drugs. You live in a dive someplace, you've got no friends and no wife and no kids."

  "And how do you know all that about me?" I ask, genuinely interested.

  He frowns like I've asked the dumbest question he's ever heard. Maybe it is. "It's written in your face, man. Don't you know that? Don't you see that every morning when you're shaving?"

  My expression must be fairly absurd because he starts to chuckle, and then guffaws.

  Mercy's dance ends and some of the men can't contain themselves. They whistle and hoot. Not very becoming behavior for a coven.

  The White Queen tries to stop the noise with a hiss, but the guys keep going and Mercy even takes a bow. It pisses off Kip, who appears to be serious about the rite. He growls, "That's enough. This is a solemn ceremony."

  Mercy steps back to the tree and kneels at it in caricature of pagan worship. Her harlequin's face appears to be poised on the edge of laughter.

  Dropping her chin to her chest, the White Queen begins to chant, holding the athame tightly in both hands. The blade dips and jerks, turning her as it moves. It seems to be alive, like she can barely hold onto it.

  She cries out and spins, and her arms are wrenched and yanked this way and that by the trembling knife. Wheeling, she faces me, her arms jutting forward, the dagger pointing at my heart.

  She says, "It's you. The spirits want you."

  "Yes," I admit. "They want me. And they want all the rest of you too."

  She takes two fumbling steps in my direction and then stops. The athame begins to pull her away in a different direction. She wanders with it, mewling. She struggles to let go of the handle, but can't. The other members begin to gasp, mumble, titter nervously, make sounds of surprise and disbelief.

  I turn to Jenks. I feel the first real smile of the evening crawl across my face.

  I reach out and grip his wrist hard enough to make him drop the flashlight.

  "Hey!" he cries.

  It rolls at my feet and I kick it aside, the beam illuminating nothing now.

  "Hey...my wrist...stop–"

 
I grip tighter. I pull him closer, the night sky playing in his moist eyes. "You really know how to steal the last remnant of a man's self-respect, don't you, Jenks?"

  "What? It's dark, I can't–"

  "You think I don't need that last bit of honor? That last piece of my own sense of self-worth? You think I'll turn that over to you without a fight?"

  "Hey, man, don't–"

  "I didn't give it to Baphomet. I didn't give it to my father. I didn't give it to Ricky. You really believe I'll hand it over to a piece of wet shit like you?"

  "Hey, man, hey! Hey!"

  The bones in his wrist grind together and he tries to shriek, but the agony steals his air.

  "You think I don't have repressions and pressures building up inside of me. You think I don't have violent fantasies just looking for a way out of my head? What am I, just a clown out here in the moonlight? No. No. I am rage."

  Kip begins to shout. "I call forth Bathal, Bathei, Bathezel, Bathezuwen," he says. "I ask for my familiars Three-Together-in-the-Blind-Eye, Hildegrance, and Winter's Leg to come to me now and guide these blessed magicks. Where there is abomination, there is integrity set against it. Where there is devilment, there is dignity to balance it. Where I am lacking, there is redemption. Where there is sin, there is confession. My misdeeds are countered with my repentance."

  I let Jenks go and he draws away, unable to rub his wrist. "You broke it," he whines. "I'm going to hurt you now. I'm going to hurt you bad." He smiles, trying to hang on to his dwindling cool. "You bastard–"

  "Keep grinning, Jenks. That's right, just like that."

  I grip his chin tightly in my left hand, pressing hard into the nerve ganglia under his ear with my right so that his jaw pops open. I reached into his mouth. He struggles for a moment and I kick his feet out from under him. I keep hold of his jaw on the way down. I find the razor he keeps stashed between his gum and his cheek, the one he said he could slip out any time and slice somebody. It's a nice move if you practiced it. I'd seen guys go down with cut throats on the yard. Their jugular veins leaking, an eye taken out, or their faces marred forever by jagged gutters.