Billy Purgatory and the Curse of the Satanic Five (38 page)

He leaned back in his chair and reached for the half-smoked cigar he had stubbed out hours ago. He provided it with new flame for the rolled leaves to contend with and took in the desperate, bitter smoke.

“Castro.” He smiled and took another puff, rising. The tiny counter in the kitchen was covered with jars in one state of philosophical wonderment or another. The ones to the right were upside down and drying on dishtowels. The ones to the left were all full — save for one. He screwed off the golden lid and took a sip of his homebrew. He'd learned to add a little mint, and just a touch of ginger.

It made him think of the jungle and it helped him remember.

“Hair like the blondest snakes.”

Not even Cortez had ever coveted strands of gold so fine and pure.

He hit the back door with the cigar and the half-empty glass of ‘shine. It was already dark atop the mountain, and it wasn't anywhere near nighttime. The clouds were black, and much too fat to contain the rupturing lighting strikes. It was all moving his way and would be on him soon. Ulysses watched the bolts strike the peak of the neighboring mountain like a nest of copperheads.

He could see a fir burst into flames at the top of the tree line on that distant mountain. Yes, it was all coming this way.

Ulysses left his coat on the back porch rocking chair and began the walk to higher ground on his own peak. There wasn't much between him and where he was going, aside from rocks. Nothing that God had left up here, anyway.

He had salvaged the steel from what had been left of his truck. It, like Ulysses, hadn't run right in years. It had taken him longer than he had wanted to cut it down and build the rods, but he had a wooden leg to contend with. He had cut the denim away from the prosthetic, it was easier to take on and off that way, and it didn't feel the cold mountain winds that Ulysses normally kept the rest of his body shielded from.

It only throbbed, even though it no longer existed — there was still the phantom pain after so many years. Whatever that had been that had eaten his leg away, finally taking its prize after Mudder Kelroy had used an ax to send it to full chum, hadn't been greedy at least. Hadn't taken more important parts.

“I hope it tasted like old burnt third-leg goat, you octopus bastard.”

Ulysses sent back his head and let the moonshine flow down his trap. The burn did him good against the windstorm that the clouds had kicked up. “Here it comes, sure enough, Ulysses. Sure a'damn-bang-smooth, it comes.”

He worked the last of the cigar, standing just outside the pentagram. The five metal spikes he'd driven into the ground pointed up to a sky that was about to be full overcast by dark clouds. He'd found enough wire to make the crisscrosses from the points. He'd wrapped the mirrors in copper and had them all tied to the posts, pointed in at the clocks which were piled up in the center of it all.

Ulysses took a last puff of the cigar before he dropped the smoking nub onto the ground. The lighter fluid and dish soap burned good and hot. Reflected in Ulysses' tired irises was the flaming pentacle.

He closed his eyes and thought about her and then said all FIVE of their names aloud.

Ulysses took a step into the fire pentagram and called out the monster's true name.

“I command you!”

He didn't open his eyes and he stayed stone still as the lighting did what it was supposed to do and struck the five points. When he did let his lids lift, he watched the lighting mix with the fire, running in balls and coils across the copper and up the wires. The thunder mixed with the noise of a hundred ringing alarm clocks.

Ulysses tightened his gaze. The reflection in glass on the clock faces revealed the hands of the instruments as they began to spin wild and fast.

It let out the most horrible scream as the flash blinded Ulysses. The torn clothing it wore fluttered, but not from the wind of Ulysses' world. It seemed to float above the spinning clocks, and the lighting tendrils circled around it in a way which would have made Tesla proud to make Ulysses' acquaintance.

All it did was scream.

Ulysses had his guns pulled and was firing into it, but it wasn't fully there. Ulysses could see through it. The electricity all around gave enough flash that he could clearly see the projectiles he fired sail right through the ghost of a Time Zombie trapped between worlds.

Ulysses kept firing anyway.

“Where did you take him? Where did you take my boy, you som' bitch?”

He kept squeezing the triggers, even after the clips of the pistols were empty. The soldier advanced, pushing forward on his trusted wooden leg. He let the pistols drop and pulled two knives that would have been considered swords in times long past.

“You're gonna tell me where you took Billy. I'm gonna cut the zombie-taint right off you if that's what it takes. I'm gonna smile while I filet your—”

The lighting struck hard, dancing from one knife to the other, burning the hair right off Ulysses' arms and blackening his skin. It threw his body clear of the pentagram and he watched, flying backwards away from the monster, as the Time Zombie appeared, fully formed and screaming at him with all its regal countenance.

Ulysses slammed into the rocks below the summoning place as the Time Zombie's full weight caused its feet to sink into the pile of clocks. The monster stepped from the mess of them and, with eyes focused on Ulysses, began to move forward.

It was fast, faster than one might consider an undead creature powered by atomic fire might be. It wasn't faster than the lightning though, and the next strike set the metal rods, the wire, and the spinning clocks all in motion again.

It let out a roar as it was again caught up in the madness of what Ulysses had created.

Ulysses' eyes had once again closed, but he still saw the flash and knew that the monster was gone.

II.

Ulysses Purgatory's parched lips burned, but it was a new burning. It was liquid which irritated his cracked and bleeding mouth. He could not say how something could feel so good and hurt so bad all at once as the water flowed down his throat. It hadn't been much — it had only been just enough.

When he opened his eyes and they slowly adjusted to the new burn, the sunlight, he saw the burly form and out of control beard of Mudder Kelroy begin to take shape.

Ulysses tried to speak, but words didn't flow — perhaps he had finally spent all he would ever have on an endless highway of typewriter ribbons.

Mudder poured another sip from a cantina. “Quit trying to talk, dumbass.” Mudder's deep voice was laced with an extra slice of disdain. “You're lucky you ain't dead. Or, was that the idea?”

The vast biker rose on elephantine legs. Picking Ulysses up with him didn't at all seem a strain. “I don't know why I'm doing this, Ulysses. I ought to just leave you up here and let a couple more days of Mother Nature's big paintbrush wipe you clean out'a this mountain view.”

Ulysses tried to say the name of his son as Mudder Kelroy started carrying what was left of him down the mountain. Mudder looked down at his struggle with jaw and lung, and watched his mouth move like a fish on a poker table.

“Yeah, you got it. I ain't doing none of this for you. It's all for the boy.”

Ulysses' eyes closed again…

…when they next opened, he was wrapped in a blanket and belted into the passenger seat of a relic of a green army jeep. He watched the trail that led up to his cabin unfold before his eyes in reverse.

“Did you get my book?”

Mudder looked over at him from behind the wheel through his aviator sunglasses. He had the jacket on, Lucifer's Circus Motorcycle Club, and an olive green T-shirt tucked into a pair of faded blue jeans. All of it was separated by that leather belt and oversized buckle. Mudder wasn't hiding the fact that he was armed, he rarely ever had; there was a holster at his hip with a chrome plated Desert Eagle at rest.

“If'n you mean the Encyclopedia Dementia you had scattered in boxes all around that place the answer is not no, but hell no.”

Ulysses didn't see the shoe of his wooden leg resting on the floorboard next to his good foot. He realized that he was legless on one side. “Where's my wooden leg?”

“I seen it up in a tree. I ain't never been one to climb trees.”

“You left my damn leg up in a tree?”

“Piss on your peg. There could'a been a line of can-can dancers with my name tattooed on their asses spinning on every branch of that tree and I wouldn't a' climbed it.”

Ulysses was glad he was strapped in as the jeep took a hard tilt his direction, clearing a brush patch from a fallen tree. “I could still climb a tree, and I don't have a damn leg.”

“I can't imagine why you'd need such a worthless skill as that, but I ain't gonna argue with you about it. Climbing a tree would be ignorant if a man had two legs and three tails.”

Ulysses bounced around more, but his ass never left the seat. He realized that not only had he been belted into the seat, Mudder had used ratchet straps to finish the job up right.

“You must have been afraid I was gonna spring out of here like a jack-in-the-box.”

“I'da sure missed your company, Ulysses. What with all your talk of writing books about the end of the world and how you can climb the highest tree on the mountain. I just can't understand why people didn't talk you out of leaving society and going to live ‘top a possum trail.”

“You made it clear you didn't want me around anymore.”

“I reckoned that God could make use of your company up on high much more than I could. Who was he gonna sit and drink ‘shine with and talk about the coming apocalypse if I didn't let you go your own way?”

The jeep slid silently into a mud hole and the four wheel drive caught after a slide. Mudder gunned it to pull out the other side and back on the trail.

“I had to collect my thoughts.”

“Only thing you've been collectin' is mason jars and flies.

“If you had taken the opportunity to look at my work more closely, you'd have seen that I got a lot done up there.”

“You typed a lot of nonsense that don't mean nothing and ain't no account — all the while drunker than a three-titted jug.”

“I don't expect you to understand, Mudder. You never did.”

“I understand you were drunk on borrowed time. You ought to be ashamed of yourself. You ever think how bad it's been down the mountain for the rest of us? How bad it's been on that boy?”

Ulysses stared out at the new mud splats running down the windshield. “Everything I did was for him.”

“Well, I hope it pays off for him. You have finally accomplished putting yourself in a position where you are completely no use to him whatsoever. You ain't gonna feel it, because I did a patch job and a morphine stick, but right now about the only thing keeping you alive is you're way too annoying to die.”

“Just get me home. Let me find the boy.”

“You ain't got no home. You're going to a hospital.”

“I won't.”

Mudder slammed the brakes on the jeep. It slid down the road and did a 180 before it came to a stop. “Pick a spot, Ulysses.” Mudder pointed across Ulysses' face. “You want me to dig the hole over there by that runoff?” Mudder craned his big arm out his side of the jeep. “How about this — you climb that sycamore over there? When you get as high as you can go I'll light it on fire for ya and you can go full Viking.”

Ulysses didn't say a thing.

Mudder pulled the shifter back in gear and spun the jeep around and pushed it down the mountain again. “You know, I wondered why all this was happening, and why you and that kid had gotten me pulled into the shitter-swirl with y'all. It hit me though, this ain't really neither of y'all's fault— it's mine.”

Ulysses stared up at the trees thinning over his head, they'd hit the actual road soon. Either way they pointed, they would hit one of the little mountain towns eventually. “What do you mean it's your fault? What did Mudder Kelroy ever do?”

Mudder kept his gaze forward as he dodged a patch of stumps. “I promised that woman that I'd keep that chunk of wood safe. For as good a job as I done, she might as well have asked me to climb my big mean ass up a tree.”

~31~

“O
UR HOUSE…WAS OUR CASTLE AND OUR KEEP
”

—M
ADNESS

“SOMEONE IS GONNA DIE.” Billy stared out through the little window of the vampire tunnel that had been made to look like a storm drain opening under the sidewalk. He was almost directly across the street from where the house he had grown up in had stood. All that remained was charred foundation, a wrecked fence, and lots of police tape.

Everything on the lot had been burned to cinders, but where the yard stopped is where the damage ended. The houses on either side of the destroyed home were completely untouched. Billy could make out the skeleton of the riding lawnmower Pop had abandoned in the center of the backyard long ago.

Even the shed he had imagined the Devil Bird had lived in was gone.

“They are after us in earnest.” Anastasia stood behind him. She felt bad for Billy in many small ways, but she didn't share Billy's nostalgic traits. “Do you see now why I said we should take the tunnels?”

Billy just nodded. “I had a lot of good times at that place.” Billy had convinced himself that when nothing remained of the house
he'd grown up in, his upbringing had been much more magical than it actually had been. “It's like a dragon took a deuce all over my childhood. Me and Pop's house might'a been a hobble and all, but it was our hobble.”

“Hovel.” Anastasia tried to correct more delicately than she normally would.

“That thing too. What are you, the goth word police?”

“It was a bad idea to come to this place. I'm sure they're still watching for you to return.” Anastasia placed her hand on his shoulder. “There's nothing else for you here.”

“The Goddess told me I'd find Lissandra hiding in the smoke of the Brickstaff Mansion.”