Snake Girl VS the KKK

by Peter Joseph Swanson

  Burt said, “I think this is a good time to start. Michael, you can stay if you button your fly back up.”

  He shrugged. “It just does that. The button holes are getting all worn out.”

  Burt said, “Never mind. God I wish I had a nice sequined purse chock full of pennies so I could hit you over the head.” Then he announced loudly for all to hear, “Now we’re going to start everything off with a dance to heal nature. The ozone layer has a hole in it, they say. It was probably caused by too much hair spray.”

  Michael raised his hand. “I did it. Too much Aqua Net. Sorry. But how else am I going to get it to stand straight up?”

  “Everybody in a healing circle. We’ll dance around, tighter and closer.”

  Michael said, “We’ll dance until we plug the hole!”

  They danced until Burt hushed the laughter. “That’s enough of that. Wasn’t that fun. And now for the next item in our church service. Now for Nelly Tom. I promised him I’d let him sing the opening song from Annie.”

  He did it in an almost pitch-perfect tenor, and ended very plaintively, “Maaaaaay-beeeeee.”

  Burt said, “The song about being an orphan was sung tonight because my homily is on being orphans.”

  Nelly Tom loudly sobbed out, high pitched, “I’m an orphan!”

  “Yes dear. You can sit down now. Somebody give her a hug. And Tom! Tom! Nelly Tom… we’re not unzipping other people’s pants yet! We have to have the homily first.”

  “Sorry.”

  Burt added, “Don’t sit next to Michael. Don’t encourage him.”

  “Oh but he’s sooo pretty!” Michael winked at Nelly Tom and hoped Burt would be very brief with his sermon. The man gave Michael a wink in return. The campfire smoke blew in Michael’s direction. He was glad. It would keep away the mosquitoes. It would make him smell good.

  Burt said, and loudly to stop the all-around chatter, “It’s been said that we’re all orphans. Not only because we’re gay and left our families and their heterosexual prejudices, but all people are orphans. All people have left who they were and have no memory of it. All the other animals have instinct and that is their link to a great ancient past. We have no instinct. We have no knowledge of anything other than what we’re told after we grow up enough to understand our culture’s speech. Some people in some parts of the world tell one type of story and some are told another. The stories all try to tell where we came from but they fall short. Their memory does not contain when we were not humans yet, or even much of a mammal. We were once prehistoric animals the size of mice. And those old versions of mice had no memory of when they were fish. The fish could not remember when they were plants. Can we now have the memory of plants? Can we be leaves and flowers again when we dream at night? No. We are orphans. We have no instinct. But we have something no other creature has. We have a language that makes us to use symbols. We use them and shift them. And with them we twist time. We speak of and imagine when we were not yet men but when we were prehistoric mammals the size of mice. No other animal looks at fossils and gathers its information. No other animal dares to think in terms of millions of years. No other animal dares to wonder what type of creature we might be a million years from now, if we don’t go extinct as most types of mammals have. Mammals don’t last. In the fossil layers we see mammal’s reigns are shortest. While we are here we must remember how we do fit in with nature and be humbled that we once sat on a log, licked our fur, and ate insects. Then some time went by and we went to the moon. We might go on to blow ourselves all up, or put a hole so big in our atmosphere that we all radiate. What a ride.”

  After a deliberative silence, Michael said, “Burp. That was such a cool burp. Cool!”

  Burt bowed.

  Michael continued, “But darling, that homily of your doesn’t sound too much like all that pagan stuff you usually used say. What about appeasing the gods? What about tapping into the great spider web of all life? What about people being one with nature? What about shaking sticks at stuff.”

  Burt answered, “That’s all still there. It’s just that people are able to also detect that it’s all changing. And it all hasn’t been the way it is. The cosmic spider web changes. The gods change. There is no being one with nature because there is no one. There is no one vision of man. There is no one version of nature.”

  Michael slapped his knee. “That’s great. But I’m so horny now. This is a sex club, right? He dropped his jeans down past his knees. “And now you’re all going to see something really tubular!” Michael started to belly dance.

  Burt put his finger in the air. “Not so fast. You have to pass our test.”

  Michael stopped dancing and squeezed the front of his underwear. “What test.”

  “To be in the company of druids you only have to prove yourself to be a bard.”

  “A bard? Sure.”

  Burt nodded. “A great keeper of the stories that help tell us who we are.”

  Michael loudly blew air, then said, “I am way better than any bard. I’m a goddam circus! A three ring 3-D circus!”

  “You can’t be better than a bard. A bard means that you’re the best. It’s just what the word means. The best!”

  Michael rubbed his chin and smiled. “Then I’m the bardiest bard because I can tell stories that’ll mess up your dream life. Whatever you want… I’m game. As long as it’s all the way.”

  Burt laughed. “That far?”

  Michael nodded. “Oh! I like to do everything all the way… and with lots of bug spray. Give me some more of that bug spray; I don’t want to be all chewed on while I’m being licked. That’s always irritating.”

  Burt proclaimed, “To be one of us you must prove your worth. You must first tell a story and be a bard. What’s your story?”

  “Oh? Oh, I’m full of stories, sure. But this is a campfire. This is in the dark woods. This is a gathering of fairies. If I’m to do something like that then it has to be a spooky story! One I wrote myself. And when it’s made into a movie it will star David Bowie.”

  There were noises of approval from the crowd.

  Nelly Tom went, “Oooooh!”

  Michael grinned. “My ghost story should be the only thing from hell and not these little mosquito upstarts! Oh Mary! Hold on to your padded bras it’s going to be a bumpy ride and you might need them if we crash. And you boys in the balcony… we know what you’re doing up there.” He took a stick and poked up the fire a bit. Michael smiled at everybody circled around him, took a deep breath, and told his best gay ghost story, “Black Candles and Blood.”

  Chapter thirteen

  Black Candles and Blood

  After the noon storm had passed and the bright sun sparkled off the wet countryside, the van turned onto a gravel side-road that finally led to a rickety trailer home and a concrete silo that both looked forlorn, sitting in a large grassy field. Behind them were two smaller structures, an outhouse and the entrance to a root cellar.

  “This is it?” Bernard shook his head sadly. “It’s so freakin’ white trash! Where’s the scary gothic barn? Where’s anything? Maybe that garden over there is haunted with old rotten tomatoes. God, I need a stiff drink! That is a garden, isn’t it? Or is it just weeds.”

  Sam pulled on the front of his beard, looking disappointed also. “I guess this is the place. Hmmm.”

  “A stupid ugly haunted trailer home? You know how I hate mobile homes. Sooo tacky tacky tacky white trash! That’s just great. Do you love my life?” Bernard moaned like a wobbly ghost, “Oo-oo-oo-oh! Maybe a fat woman in pink stretchy shorts will walk out and offer us red Kool-Aid. Scare me!”

  “Shut up and don’t be such a donkey!” Sam anxiously tugged on the front of his beard again.

  “It’s not scary looking around here and it must be 90 degrees!” Bernard tried to fan his face. “I can’t believe I drove you and your damn camera halfway through the state for this. We could have just phoned from the office where there’s air-conditioning and expensive booze.” />
  “It’s only about 80.”

  Bernard put his nose in the air. “Well it’s humid and I see bugs.”

  After they took a whiz in the weeds they cautiously approached the trailer. “There’s a guy who’s expecting us,” Sam said. “Some grounds keeper.” Inside the door, he cautiously stepped onto the dusty carpet. He called down the tiny dark plywood hall, “Hello? Hello?” There was no answer from the end room.

  Bernard looked at the decor in disdain. He spotted a simple watercolor on the brown fridge. It was a headless scarecrow. “Take a picture of that with your camera and let’s get the flying flip out of here. We can just make up a story. Any story.”

  “Shhh!”

  “What.”

  “Listen.” Sam heard an odd sound like metal creaking. “Somebody’s on the roof!” They quickly stepped back outside and looked up but didn’t see a thing on the roof. “Now I’m scared. Didn’t that sound like somebody was up there?”

  Bernard shrugged. “Maybe it was just the grounds keeper and he jumped off on the other side—trying to scare us. What a weenie.” They re-entered and Bernard started to poke through the cabinets.

  “Just make yourself at home.” Sam waved his arm around.

  “I wanna see what people around here put their Cheese Whiz on.” Bernard opened a drawer. He saw several books of matches.

  Sam nervously smoothed down the front of his beard. “I’m going to go out and take a peek at the silo.” He went outside.

  Alone, Bernard sat and flipped through a few old magazines. He opened one and a naked man was having sex with himself. He curiously looked at a few more pages before he decided to slam it shut. “I bet they’re all cousins.” He spotted a black candle that was stuck in a plaster holder. He laughed mockingly.

  Outside, Sam was almost entirely across the gravel and weed farmyard to the concrete silo when he heard somebody yell, “Run! Run! Run!”

  Startled, he turned but didn’t see anybody. He hurried back inside the trailer, his heart pounding. He grabbed Bernard by his shirt and dragged him outside. “Hear it? Did you hear that?”

  Bernard cocked his ear, listened hard, and finally shook his head. “Don’t hear a thing.” He made an irritated snotty face. “Sorry.” He smoothed the front of his shirt and turned to the trailer. “God, I need a stiff drink!”

  “Don’t go in,” Sam implored him. “Come with me.”

  “I don’t like being out in all this farm.” Bernard scanned the surrounding field with a face of contempt. “Take some pictures of the place and I’ll just make up a damn story for the paper. Or I’ll just lift something from one of the gay porno magazines in there. Scary.” He pulled a disgusted face, turned, and loudly slammed the thin metal door as he went inside again.

  Sam took a deep breath and resolutely headed back to the silo. Inside its door he looked up to see a figure at the very top as if it was somehow looking down at him. But it was headless. Sam decided that it was surely a life-size puppet of some sort. It quickly pulled away and dozens of white moths flew into the door, resting on the walls.

  Sam turned to leave but couldn’t find the door. It was suddenly as if it had never been there. It was as if he was now at the bottom of a deep well. “Help!” he cried out, turning circles, baffled.

  Finally breathless, he sat on the ground. When he looked up again, fearing razor sharp pitchforks, hay bales and God knows what else to rain down, he saw a white envelope fall, fluttering end over end. It landed on the ground before him. Writing was scrawled on it. “In a silo’s empty bins, something wicked this way spins, right of center the bull’s eye, black bird droppings drop and die, the scarecrow boy runs stuffed with hay, shot at by the KKK.”

  Sam heard the sound of something scraping the concrete and felt a hot breeze. He turned and the silo door was right behind him as it should have been all along. He ran out to see that from up the road a swarm of glowing specks swirled at him. When they enclosed him he saw they looked like hot-white bullets. With a deafening explosion they knocked him over. When he got up they were gone. A huge swarm of white moths lifted from the distant weeds and fluttered away into the shadows of the woods. Sam hurried back to the trailer and cautiously peered inside the door to catch Bernard still slamming through the cabinets. When Bernard noticed his colleague’s strange expression, he asked, “What’s wrong? What’s wrong?” Sam noticed that the black candle was lit.

  Sam jumped, startling anew, finally noticing a man in a billowing floral dress and wide straw hat. He was sitting on the couch sipping a canned beer with white gloved hands.

  “Ah!” Sam almost tripped backwards. “I didn’t see you there!”

  “Chill.” Bernard mockingly rolled his eyes. “The grounds keeper.”

  “Oh.” Sam tried not to stare too rudely as he took in the alarming sight of a man in a dress out in the middle of cowpoke nowhere. “Hi.”

  “I’m Lunar Oblique, the grounds keeper. Have we all met before?”

  Bernard shook his head and said, “No, we just got here. We’re the journalists who are investigating the haunting out here. They said there’s all sorts of odd happenings. Some even swear there’s a merry-go-round in the field… sometimes. How can something like that just come and go?”

  Lunar Oblique smiled with sparkling red lips. “You both look so shocked. What did you expect the grounds keeper to look like? A Republican? Would anybody else care for a beer?”

  Bernard’s nose wrinkled and he smiled tightly. “Not that brand. I like to taste the hops.”

  Sam pulled the envelope from his pocket. “Look! This fell out of the sky when I was in the silo.”

  “There’s those little things all over this place.” Lunar Oblique waved it off with a theatrical gesture of his white gloved hand. “My sorry stars, the last journalist who was sent out here used to write all his ideas down on those little pieces of paper. We find them all over the place when the wind blows.” He turned to Bernard. “Now as I was saying… you went and lit the black candle!”

  “So?”

  Lunar Oblique sadly shook his head, scowled and batted his painted eyelashes. “Not good in any way! It always leads to something bad! Very bad!” He took a big noisy gulp of beer.

  Sam asked Bernard, “Why the hell did you light the damn candle?”

  Bernard shrugged. “I don’t know. There were matches. I felt like it.”

  Lunar Oblique frowned. “Felt compelled.”

  Bernard disregarding the man’s ominous tone and went to the candle. He blew it out. After its wick sizzled a moment it astonishingly relit itself, to which Lunar Oblique sadly shook his head again. Bernard asked, “What’s going on?”

  “Let me get a picture of you doing that.” Sam pointed at the candle.

  “Hell no!” Bernard hollered. “I’m not in this article! The story isn’t about me!”

  Lunar Oblique sadly shook his head. “It’s about you now.”

  “It’s a neat candle and it does tricks.” Sam spotted a white plastic spoon on the kitchen counter move all by itself. He hurried to it and grabbed for it. It surprisingly slipped from his fingers and stuck to the ceiling. It spun up there for a moment before falling down to the floor. Dismayed, he dropped a heavy black frying pan on the spoon, soundly crunching it, then he ran to the bathroom and locked himself in.

  “You can’t use that bathroom for anything but hiding!” Lunar Oblique hollered, “there’s no water hooked up! If you gotta tinkle you gotta go out and use the outhouse!”

  “What’s going on?” Bernard asked the grounds keeper again, and then yelled down the hall to Sam, “What’s going on?”

  “Are you guys Republicans?” the grounds keeper questioned Bernard, reaching up to anxiously fuss with the wide brim of his straw hat.

  “I’m a journalist,” Bernard answered. “So, I’m supposed to be Independent. Why?”

  “There’s a monster—a headless scarecrow boy thing set loose from God’s clowns! It’s bullet ridden and it doesn’t seem t
o like Republican types... the gun types. So it seems.”

  Bernard quickly jotted this in his binder, then asked, “Okay. First question. How many beers have you had so far today?”

  Lunar Oblique’s expression stayed dark and ardent. “They used to stay here and say the black mass. And there was that sick black candle.”

  “What?” Bernard asked. “Who?”

  Lunar Oblique nodded. “And they were members of the gun cult.”

  “Who? The NRA?” Bernard asked.

  Lunar Oblique shrugged and pulled nervously on the cuffs of his gloves. “I guess. That’s all they did but revel for guns… like it’s the most thrilling thing in the world, or something… like they had nothing better to do. If they’d put that same kind of energy into a children’s charity they could have practically saved the world.”

  “I’m sorry,” Bernard remarked, clearly not sorry, “but as irritating as some of them may be, it’s all legal.”

  “Legal? Hardly. They got tired of shooting up the scarecrow for target practice.” Lunar Oblique leaned closer. “So they made its arms and legs move a bit with black magic. But that still wasn’t enough for them. They couldn’t get it to run by itself. So one day they chased the nelly neighbor boy, who they’d gotten very angry with anyway, and they shot him up … blew his head right off. Poor Paris.” Lunar Oblique closed his baby blue eyelids and took a slow pained breath. He gulped down the rest of his beer. He pulled a pink lipstick out of his skirt pocket.

  “What?” Bernard shook his head. “His name was Paris?”

  “Paris. That’s what he called himself.” As Lunar Oblique added another layer to his lips, he said, “You think I’m a little creative, well, you should have seen him. I have clothes. He had glamour! He would wear little bits of feed sack and string beaded with bottle caps and walk around like he was on the Sonny and Cher show. He wore that over his jeans of course. He looked more like a scarecrow, himself, that way, like one run over by a plow, but he didn’t see himself that way. He had an imagination.”