Billy Purgatory and the Curse of the Satanic Five (11 page)

The man wasn't so dark anymore; Billy could make out a body armor vest, black T-shirt beneath. Muscular arms with lots of tattoos and black fingerless gloves. Military boots and dark camouflage. As Pop would have said, “This guy's seen some action. He's vacationed at Hotel Shit.”

Billy watched him like a three-eyed hawk. Any second now, he'd be close enough for Billy to swing and take the guy's knees out. Once he was on the ground, it'd be sneakers to the face.

The dark man who'd fallen from the sky didn't pull any of the knives he had strapped to him. He wore a light pack and had a sword jutting up from it — or just a holster for a sword. The big guy's hand reached back and Billy let his knees go loose. “Come to Billy Purgatory and see how we do things on the ground.”

Billy saw the dark man pull his skateboard into view. It was a good looking board, and Billy was impressed for a half-second — this guy had class, knew how to fight and what to use to fight with. Both his hands took hold of the weapon and he began to swing as Billy began to let his own weapon of choice fly.

Billy Purgatory saw the scar across the man's face just as Dr. Luna boomed in the biggest voice he could muster, “STOP!”

Billy lost his balance and fell back, dodging the swipe of the dark man who now towered over him. Billy looked up into the face of the man who let his own board remain in one hand and fall to his side.

“It worked.” That's what the man said to Billy Purgatory. “You're real.”

“Dude.” Billy Purgatory couldn't stop staring at the scar. “Who the hell are you?”

The man seemed like he didn't know how to respond, but finally gave a half-hearted smile. “I'm Billy Purgatory.”

Dr. Luna had rushed beside the two of them and had his arms spread out wildly. “Back away! Do you hear me! Both of you back up and don't get too close to one another.”

Billy stared up at Billy from the floor. He saw a lot of Pop in the other Billy. He looked like Pop, and that meant that he looked like Billy, and that Billy really was Billy and there were two of them.

Billy's ten-year-old brain hurt like it had just jumped into a slushie-freeze river. The other Billy, the older one, pointed a thumb at Dr. Luna. “What is this guy talking about? Should I punch him?”

Billy started to pull himself up from the floor. “No, don't punch him — he's kinda cool. I don't know what he's talking about, but he knows a lot about science stuff.”

Dr. Luna was standing between the both of them now, still talking at the top of his lungs. “This is very dangerous! We're in danger of causing a singularity that might destroy everything we've come to regard as our universe.”

“Calm down, Luna.” Billy stood, trying to look around the doctor's wildly flying hands at his older double. “We're not gonna hug and kiss.”

The gunshots were much louder than the Time Gun had ended up being. Billy held his skateboard up instinctively to his chest and Luna fell backwards. They came in rapid succession. Billy saw the shooter up by the railing and watched as his older self was pushed this way and that by the impact of many rounds fired, striking him in the back.

Ten-year-old Billy stared as he watched his older version's eyes roll back in his head and then come falling face first to the ground at his feet. The body armor proved to have remained intact, but Billy saw the three darts which had struck old Billy in the back of the neck.

“I'm dead.”

Billy looked up to the railing and watched as the Russian, Broom, lowered the weapon. Around either side of Broom, his troops in helmets and black armor came rushing into the stable and down the flights of stairs to swarm the lab.

Billy raised his fist into the air and pointed with his other hand. “Dammit, Russian! You killed me.”

“He is not dead, Billy Purgatory.”

Billy watched as Brooms troops jackbooted their way around his fallen older self and grabbed him up.

“The darts,” said the Russian, “they are for him to sleep.”

Billy didn't like what was playing out around him at all. There were way too many of these guys for Billy to take all of them out. Dr. Luna was picking himself up off the floor. Billy stared up at Broom with fire in his eyes. He knew this guy had been up to shenanigans of a bullshit sort. Billy's heart suddenly sank — what about Mom? Billy would kill this guy if he even thought about laying one hand on his mother.

Then, in her flowing white, Billy's mother, Emelia, appeared at the landing to stand beside Broom. She looked down and watched the shock troops carry old Billy towards the back wall of the lab and into the entryway that led to the storage tunnels.

“Mom!” Billy redirected his finger at Broom. “Get away from that guy. That Russian is up to no good.”

Billy's mother looked to Broom and smiled. “I've always known that, darling. Don't worry, we're safe now.”

Billy suddenly found himself surrounded by shock-troops. He got in some good hits, but their armor wasn't the cheap stuff. Two of them easily hoisted Billy up by his arms.

“Mom, are you gonna let these guys capture me?”

Billy's mother stopped her conversation with Broom at the railing just long enough to answer her son. “Take him to his room. Make sure he doesn't get away from you this time.”

Broom and his mother turned from the railing and vanished into the night. Billy Purgatory kicked and fought all the way up the stairs.

II.

Billy Purgatory's room sucked more now than it ever had before. “Going to your room blows.” Pop had never once told Billy to go to this room, much less locked him in there. Billy had banged on the
door until he'd worn the paint off the bottom of it. “So that's how it's gonna be?” Billy focused his telescope on the stables and found that that big dumb tree was in the way of him looking into the door. He tried not to pay any attention to the stone picnic table, because that just made him think about Mira and made him sad.

He gave up and sat down on the floor next to his skateboard. “Well board, looks like that curly-Q who stole my trampoline time was right after all. This place is definitely evil.” Billy thought about how his mother had been all nice to Broom, even after the Russian had shot the other him in the back with a dart machine gun. He didn't want to say the words, but he knew he couldn't lie to his board; it was the only friend he seemed to have left.

“Looks like Mom doesn't really care about me, or you.” Billy wasn't gonna cry like Luna had when he zapped the only girl who was probably ever gonna pay any attention to him off into time and space. Billy didn't feel like crying anyhow; his own mother had tricked him into thinking that she loved him. That didn't make Billy Purgatory all melty-marshmallow hearted. That made Billy Purgatory angry.

“She might be classy and smart and have a ton of hired guns that do whatever she says, but she ain't got what we got, board.”

The skateboard said nothing, but Billy continued because he figured it was probably curious.

“We got street smarts. That's more important than any of those big numbers that Luna draws on his chalkboard.” Billy had grown up on the other side of the tracks, and even better, he'd had Pop to guide his way. “I wish you were here with me now, Pop. This time it's bad, and I could sure use ya.”

Billy had no idea where Pop was, though. He kept being fed a story that Pop was off working for his mother on some secret mission — but Billy knew Pop. “No matter how into Mom he is, there's no way that Pop is gonna do any business that stinks like evil business.”

He was gonna have to come up with his own plan, and he was gonna have to do it largely alone, since his board never talked and was only good at rollin' and smackin'. Billy checked the window and found that it was the kind of window that didn't open. He looked in the bathroom; the air vent would work, if Billy had been a raccoon. He opened the louvered doors to the closet. Aside from some pants
and shirts hanging up that Billy wouldn't be caught dead in, there wasn't anything.

“Well, smack a catfish's ass.” Billy slammed the closet doors shut. He had no idea what it meant to slap a catfish on the ass, but Pop said it when he was pissed off — and Billy was definitely pissed off.

Billy watched the doors click shut, then felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up again. The flash from inside the closet was so bright through the louvers that Billy ducked, sure they were gonna come flying off their hinges.

The light faded, but the hairs on the back of his neck didn't stand down as quick as they had before. Billy could hear the raspy crying coming from inside the closet. It was the saddest sounding thing the boy had ever heard. Low, meek, and totally devoid of any hope.

Slowly, Billy crept back to the closet door with his board raised. What kind of pitiful science-trick was this?

She was curled up in the corner of the closet when Billy found the courage to open the door. Her lab coat had been torn at her left shoulder, and there were dark splotches on it — they looked like blood, and Billy prayed that the blood wasn't hers. Her hair wasn't as cute, and was disheveled as wild as a pixie cut can go. The skin of her long legs was so pale, and there was a gash down her right one. Mira was missing a shoe.

She looked up, tears in her eyes. Her face was ghost-white and her lips so devoid of color they looked blue. “Billy..?”

“Mira? I thought that you got lost in time.”

She stared at him, as if she didn't understand the words he was speaking. “I wasn't lost. I found something.”

“Mira, you're back now. I mean, we're kinda locked in my room because it turns out my Mom is evil…”

“You were there.” Tears ran down her face and those big eyes just stared. They weren't as pretty as they'd been across from the picnic table. They were bloodshot, sunken, losing color in the iris.

“I haven't gone anywhere since I went to Africa.”

“No, it was you. The same scar.” She traced the gash in her leg, which didn't make a lot of sense to Billy because his scar was on his face. “I know it was you. You didn't do a thing to stop them.”

Mira raised her finger from the gash and pressed it to her lips. Then she licked the blood from it with a tongue that was white.

Billy took a step back. “Mira, you're safe now…”

“Safe!” She grabbed at the wall and her nails scratched at the wood. “The future is the most horrible place imaginable.”

Billy kept backing up.

Mira pulled herself up and out of the closet. “There are so many of them there. The whole
world
is them. They all call out your name.”

Billy had his skateboard held out between him and the girl. “Mira, it was an accident. Dr. Luna is all into you, he'd never do anything to hurt you on purpose. He cried when you disappeared.”

“Oh, he cried, did he?” Her head did a nervous twitch as she got to her feet and kicked off the remaining shoe. “He cried? None of you have ever cried. No matter what has happened to you in your whole life, nothing compares. They tear at one another and they scream your name.”

“Mira, you need to stay in that closet.”

“Purgatory.” She whispered it. “Purgatory.” Billy was more freaked out by the whispering. “Come out, Billy Purgatory. Come out.” She steadied herself, holding onto the closet door. “But you won't come out to them. You don't do anything. You didn't do a thing when I screamed your name along with them.” She pushed herself away from the doorway and into the room. “I saw you looking at me and I begged you to help me. You didn't do anything.”

“Mira, that wasn't me. That was the old me. Mom has him locked up in the lab.”

“It's going to be you — and from where I've been, and what I've seen that I can't forget — you're guilty.”

Her hand grabbed her lab coat and pulled the collar off her neck. Billy saw the bite marks and the scratches. The wound that leaked blood that had turned black.

“Mira, please — let me take you to Dr. Luna. He loves you and he'll fix you.”

Mira stared down at the boy as the rest of the color left her eyes. “How could he love this? How could I ever be expected to love after what I've seen?”

Billy swung at the bedroom door with his skateboard. “Hey, soldier jack-offs, we need a medic in here!”

“The future is horrible.”

Billy banged the door again.

Mira opened her mouth and Billy tried not to look at that white tongue as her mouth struggled to form words — some of her last.

“I'm gonna break open your skull. I'm going to eat your brain. I'm going to stop you…”

Billy banged at the door again before she lunged. He was just able to dodge, but his board went flying and rolling across the rug, then under the bed. Mira sliced around with her hands and took out one of the wooden bed posters.

Billy ran up the steps that led up to the high mattress and leapt across the bed. His skateboard hadn't rolled to the other side, so Billy rolled in after it. His eyes looked up wildly, lying on his back under the bed. He watched the mattress springs strain and could feel her weight upon the bed. He heard the ripping of fabric and then he heard it again and he strained to reach his skateboard as springs gave and Mira's wild hand punched through the mattress.

When she laughed she made a gurgling sound, like her lungs were full of blood. She grabbed wildly with her hand punched through the mattress, then it vanished up the hole. Billy rolled into his board as Mira's hand punched a new hole into the mattress and through the springs. The twisted metal cut into her flesh and black blood and pus oozed onto the floor. It smelled like death as it pooled below her crazy grasping hand. Billy watched her fingernail slice into the rug, and he rolled the rest of the way out from under the bed.

When Billy crashed into the telescope, knocking it over, he looked for Mira, but she wasn't on the bed any longer. Feathers were still dancing in the air and Billy didn't know where she'd gone as he looked around the room wildly.

The door to Billy's room unlocked and then burst open. The two uniformed shock-troopers stepped into the room, guns drawn. “What the hell are you doing in here, kid?”