Billy Purgatory and the Curse of the Satanic Five (6 page)

Billy stared up high into the eyes of the man standing before him.

“That's my skateboard, mister.”

The man chuckled and cast his eyes down, admiring it for a half second as he spun it into the air. He reached down with it and Billy closed his fingers around the trucks at the other end.

The tall, blonde man let go and Billy pulled the board back into his arms, feeling lucky that he still had his one and only friend after the adventure he'd just been through.

The man pointed to a row of benches to Billy's left as the other black-armored men began filing past them. “Have a seat.” His accent was thick — maybe Russian? “Put on your seatbelt, young Billy Purgatory.”

Billy looked around to see other men doing the same as the plane rocked; he felt weightless for an instant as it lifted with a mighty roar off the beach.

“Who the hell are you, blondie?” True, this guy had just saved Billy's ass, but the boy was learning to ask questions first and then smack-skulls later.

The man began walking towards the cockpit as he spoke. “I am the Broom. I have come to retrieve you and return you to your parents.”

Billy's legs were shaky, and as the plane tilted he had no choice but to fall into one of the bench seats and go for the seatbelt. As he clicked the buckle, he felt the words of the Russian hit him with full force.

“My… parents?”

Billy looked for the Russian, but all he got in reply was the image of the cockpit door closing.

~4~

P
URGATORY
M
ANOR

IN THE TEN YEARS HE'D BEEN KICKING, Billy Purgatory had never ridden in a limo before — and if anyone would ever ask him about riding in one, he would shrug his shoulders and pontificate that he already owned the fanciest set of wheels on planet Earth. Even if there were limousines on Mars (the planet, not the god) his skateboard would still have ‘em beat. Billy didn't drink any of the fancy seltzer water they kept in that thing, and he figured the booze was watered down. Pop had told Billy one time, “Drinking and fighting is about the same; if you're gonna do either one, then don't half-ass it. Stare ‘em down, reach for the good stuff, take your chips and push ‘em all in.”

Billy could have sure gone for a bag of BBQ chips.

The Russian, Broom, sat across from Billy. The boy had given up asking him questions back at the airplane — the guy said nothing. All Broom had said was, “Time for a car ride.” He'd changed clothes, and now wore a black suit with a vest and tie and all that noise —the guy even carried a fancy gold pocket watch. He kept the black leather gloves on his hands, which made him look like some mastermind character out of one of Billy's comic books. The guy was all about dressing up, and Billy rolled his eyes as he'd followed him across the airfield from the plane. The only thing that Billy had figured out about this guy is that he was a potential (but, unconfirmed) badass, and that he sure loved himself.

Billy had his head against the door of the limo and drifted in and out of sleep. He would wake up and notice the terrain and familiar places. The first thing he'd zeroed in on that told him he was home was that old rusty water tower. Billy didn't wanna climb it and skate down one of the legs as much as he had before he'd gotten lost in Asia. When he would look over at Broom, the guy would be sitting quietly and writing or drawing into a leather book. Beyond whatever it was he was doing, Broom seemed very uninterested in his surroundings, and in Billy Purgatory.

“You making a comic book, Russian?”

Broom's pen stopped the sweeping motion across the page it had been attacking, and he looked up at Billy. “A what?”

Billy rose up from leaning and sleeping and stretched. “You know, a comic book? They're the only kind of books that don't suck because there's just enough words not to give you a headache from reading words. And there are cool pictures of badasses who kick evil right in the marble-box.”

Broom leaned forward slightly, “Oh, that is your mythology? Your hero stories?”

Billy put his hands on his board, which was lying across his lap. “Yeah, whatever. Look, if you're making a comic, you should draw a dude in there that looks like me — who has a skateboard like this one and black-jacks monsters in their trash-talkin' jaw-dumpsters until they shut the hell up.”

Broom lifted the book and turned it so that Billy could see what his pen and ink had been creating. There were lots of words that he didn't need to put in to make a good comic. One whole page was nothing but words — and even worse, numbers that looked like math. The only thing worse than too many words was too much math. Half of the second page was filled with a drawing of what looked like an island, and had a big black dome in the center of it. That part was kinda cool, but it looked like there were words on that too.

“That the bad guy's secret lair?”

Broom actually smiled. “Hardly, young Purgatory.”

“Yeah well, I guess it's got potential. But dude…”

Broom still held Billy's eyes to his as he closed the book and placed it back into his lap.

“…don't quit your day-job.”

II.

The limo had passed the street that Billy and Pop lived on miles ago, and had long since crossed the tracks. Now, it was winding up through the road that cut the woods in half. They were heading up into a place that Billy didn't know much about at all — where the mansions that looked down at the ocean were.

Billy had done some walking around up here once, after he'd spent a day in the woods building a skateboard ramp to jump over a forgotten log truck. He'd decided he needed refreshment befitting a badass, but there hadn't been a gas station or an orange soda anywhere up there. He'd seen the gates that blocked off the mansion though, and the iron scrollwork above them that displayed to anyone unlucky enough to live on the other side of the tracks the name of the family who didn't want you anywhere near their house.

“Hey Russian, why are we going up where the rich people live?”

Broom was sipping some of that watered down whiskey; focused on his ice cubes, he didn't bother to answer Billy.

“We're not going to that snotty girl's house are we?” Billy was speaking of Mandy Brickstaff, of the prominent Brickstaff family — Billy didn't know then what “prominent” meant exactly, other than they sucked.

“I have told you already, Billy Purgatory, I'm taking you to your parents.”

Billy looked out the window — did his mom live up here somewhere? Had she always been this close, but Pop had never told him?

“Mister, my mom…”

Billy stared at the gate he'd seen that day last summer, in search of orange soda. Everything about it was the same, it was still just as high and just as menacing — but the name in expensive black-iron scroll atop it had changed.

“Purgatory Manor…?” Billy said the words as the car turned into the drive and approached. “Russian…”

Broom sighed, “Yes, Billy Purgatory?”

“What's a manor?”

The gate opened as the car slid up the drive. Billy looked at the trees lining the drive, all perfect and trimmed — they looked like upside down ice cream cones. The grass was short and didn't even look real, like that time he'd ended up on the golf course and stolen all those balls people left lying everywhere. Billy didn't see any balls in the yard, and even though it was hard for him to process, this place looked cleaner than the golf course. They passed tiny perfect houses in a Spanish style, stables, fountains, and statues of naked ladies.

“This is one person's house? Who needs all this stuff?”

The big car climbed the hill as the driveway began its incline. Billy saw a massive house sitting atop it. It looked like one of those places that the geography teacher-lady showed them slides of when she'd been in Greece. It had white columns and scroll-worked stone and tons and tons more statues.

“This is your house, Billy Purgatory.”

“No way, dude. We passed my house like ten miles ago. This place is way too nose-in-the-air-it's-up-God's-rear for me and Pop.”

The car made the turn into a massive circular driveway and Billy couldn't believe how high this place was — he could see everything from here. The whole town, the coastline, the tops of the rusted ships that were in the old harbor, even the cement factory — there was no part of his world that Billy didn't find himself looking down upon.

The car stopped. Broom wasted no time opening the door and sliding his lanky frame out. “You've taken more than one blow to the head, Billy Purgatory — after the adventures you've had across the world, it's no wonder your memory is not servicing you well.”

Billy jumped out onto the stone driveway. All this room to skate, that was the only good thing about any of this in his broken memory. There was no way he had forgotten about anything like this though — was there? It was all way too weird, and Billy stared down the drive. He could skate down that easy, and be over that wall and back to him and Pop's house in no time. He thought that maybe that was the plan: get out of here before any of this got anymore off the crank-case.

“Come, Billy Purgatory, your mother wishes to see that you are well.”

Billy had been seconds away from dropping the wheels of his board to the stone and pushing off, yet he suddenly lost the desire to fly off this hill. His mother? She was alive and she wanted to see him. This guy was lying, there was no way that his mother had been living up here all this time — Pop had lots of secrets, especially about Billy's mother, but there's no way that he'd have kept
that
a secret.

Besides, Broom had said he had come for Billy to return him to his parents — that meant Mom
and
Pop. Mom must have moved back while Billy was over in Antarctica, and bought this Brickstaff place and changed the sign over the gate. If that's what had happened, and both his parents were here, that could only mean that Mom and Pop had gotten back together and all they needed now was for Billy to come home so they could all be a family.

Billy looked down at the orange wheels of his skateboard. He thought about how happy Pop must be that Mom had come back, and this made Billy happy too. “It's just like I always wanted. It's perfect.”

“What are you mumbling there, boy? There will be plenty of time for you to roll about on that contraption.”

When Billy turned back to Broom, he had already opened the vast front door to the biggest house that Billy had ever seen —
his
house. Broom was checking the time on his pocket watch.

“I didn't say anything, Russian. Which way to my Mom?”

Billy made the executive decision to never question, and for once, just let life be perfect.

III.

The house went on forever, and there were windows that seemed to stretch up higher than the water tower. Light streamed in wide shafts and cast down on expensive rugs and furniture — the kind of stuff that Billy was too afraid to touch because he knew he'd break it. Mom sure had a lot of stuff, and Billy didn't want to break
any of her pretty lamps or vases on his first day back. Billy wondered how Mom had moved all these things into this place; she must have had a pretty big moving van. Whoever had decorated this place for her liked old antique things — and statues of naked ladies. Billy had always figured that his Mom was a classy broad; he'd just had no idea how much stuff a classy broad needed to be classy.

Billy would see the occasional maid or butler lookin' guy, and Billy would wave to them and say, “Hello.” Billy wasn't really trying to be polite, although he'd been taught not to be an asshat for asshat's sake. The thrill in greeting the passerby came more from the echo that the massive rooms produced with his voice. They would all nod to Billy in their fancy uniforms and return with a respectful and quiet, “Master Purgatory.”

Billy kept wondering who this
Master Purgatory
guy was — maybe he had a hobo uncle he didn't know about. Billy just let them all call him that, because as long as the echoes kept rolling, it really didn't matter what was said.

Broom opened two really big doors, not that there was a small door in the place, and the light from the high circular window shown down into Billy's eyes and blinded him. It was hard to make out what this place was, especially with him holding the deck of his board up to shield his peepers. It looked maybe like the principal's office, only with a lot more space and a lot more fancy decorations. It was unlike the principal's office too, in that it didn't smell like stale cigarette smoke and cheap after shave. There was a big desk made out of cherry wood that had a deep red tint to it. Desks were always bad omens in Billy's mind, and he hoped that he wasn't in trouble already. He'd have to explain to his Mom and Dad that it wasn't his fault that he'd ended up in Australia, and it all had to do with that monster kidnapping, that zombie that traveled through time and…

Time Zombie. That's what he was gonna call that thing.

Billy started to make out the silhouette of a woman standing behind the desk. She was tall and possessed an athletic, beautiful feminine form. The light streamed by her blonde hair and cast a halo-like glow about it. As the wisps of blonde played in the light, they took on the appearance of being aflame. When she began to move, as Billy's eyes adjusted to the start contrast of light and
shadow in the room, she did so with grace and purpose. She reminded the boy of the mother-lions he had seen roaming the plains he had just left on the other side of the world. They were the queens of everything they encountered.

This woman possessed the same royal birthright.

Billy lowered his skateboard from his eyes as her body eclipsed the bright circle high up on the wall which had kept him from seeing. Her face held warmth, that was undeniable, but there was so much more to her than that. Her eyes cut into the little man before her — she looked him over as he stared, dumbfounded. Billy could see her take in the cuts and bruises he'd accumulated over the last few days, and she gave him a look that spoke heavier than the weight of all those words that Russian was filling his book with.