Authors: Edward Lee
I know where she went yesterday
, came Hudson’s dreadful thought.
My apartment, to tell me I’ve won a contest called the Senary, and then strip nude and rub herself down with my olive oil
. . .
He wondered if he should call the police and tell them that he’d seen the missing woman, but . . .
No. What on earth could I say?
He squinted at the next, shorter article, which reported that a grave had been vandalized late last night at Carver Forest Memorial Cemetery, and the very instant Hudson read the information, he glanced out the window to discover that the bus was cruising by a long, overgrown cemetery. The sign at a fenced entrance read
CARVER FOREST
.
Uncanny
, he thought. The spotty article went on to reveal that the grave vandalized had been that of a four-month-old infant who’d been murdered last spring.
Lord. What a world
. . .
Hudson closed the paper when he saw his stop nearing. Had he turned the page he would’ve seen a grimmer article about the discovery of a dead newborn baby found in a recycle bin last night. Hudson pulled the cord. “Thank you, driver,” he said, and the driver, in turn, frowned. The
Tourette’s man railed from the back of the bus just as Hudson stepped off: “Fuck suck schmuck gruck huck puck duck buck zuck wuck six.” Then the doors flapped closed.
Hudson turned as the bus pulled away.
Did he say six?
He squinted after the disappearing vehicle and saw the Tourette’s man give him the finger through the back window.
He walked down Central, shirking at loud cars and motorcycles. He’d already memorized the street address (24651) because he didn’t want to be consulting his wallet in this neck of the woods. The area was mostly ghetto, small saltbox houses in various states of disrepair.
Maybe this isn’t such a good idea
, he considered when he noticed stragglers obviously selling drugs only blocks deeper off the road. Burned-up yards fronted most of the little houses; piles of junk sat like tepees amid trashed cars.
So much for urban renewal
. . .
He sensed more than saw a figure behind him.
“Yo!” came a girl’s voice.
Hudson turned, not quite at ease. A black girl in tight knee jeans and a zebra-striped tube top boldly approached him. Her dark skin gleamed over robust curves.
“How’s, uh, how’s it going?” Hudson bumbled.
“Why’n’cha lemme put some sizzle in your swizzle, man, like I’ll lay some bigtown xtralicious super gobble game on you for, like, twenty-five bucks,” she said.
“No, really, I—”
“Bullshit, man.” She stood haughtily, hand on a cocked hip. “I knows a john when I see one, and
you
a john. Come on, pussy or mouth, I got both. You wanna fuck, I kin tell.”
“No, really—”
“Yeah, you white guys’re all cheap motherfuckers. Awright, twenty bucks for a blow.”
Only now did Hudson fully realize how out of place he was. “I’m . . . not interested. I’m just trying to find an address.”
The gleam of her white teeth matched that of her skin. “Shee-it. You lookin’ for the Larken House, I know. Lotta folks always lookin’ for it. 24651, right?”
Hudson was astonished. “Well, yes.”
“Folks been walkin’ by it since it happened.”
“Since . . .
what
happened?”
“Don’t’choo watch the news?” She adjusted her tube top. “Couple, three months ago, a brother named Larken, work construction, he cut off his ole lady’s head when he found out the baby she had a couple months ’fore that were from a other dude. Cut her head off in the house, then walk right down this street and stick it on the antenna of the dude’s car ’cos, see, he hadda old car that had one’a them old-fashioned antennas on it. Then Larken come back the house and cut the
baby’s
head off, and he microwave it. Some say he fuck the headless wife on the kitchen table, too, but I dunno. Then he hang hisself. Said he had his cock out when he step off the chair.” She looked at him. “Fucked-up house, man.”
Hudson felt perplexed. “So that’s why people walk by it? Because it’s . . . infamous?”
“Yeah, man. ’Cos, sometime, they say, you kin see Larken in there, hangin’ by his neck. Sometimes you hear the baby cryin’.”
A HAUNTED house. Terrific
, Hudson thought. “Most of these houses don’t seem to have addresses, even the ones that are obviously lived in.”
“Shee-it, sure. They take the numbers off so the pigs get confused,” she said. “You gimme twenty dollars’n I show you where the house is.”
“I’d be much obliged.” Hudson slipped a twenty from his pocket and gave it to her.
She grinned, stuffing the bill into her top, and pointed to the small, boarded-up house right in front of him.
“That’s it? For real?”
“Fo’ real, man.”
At first Hudson thought he was being taken but when he peered over the door, he noticed a black metal number six but also the ghosts of numbers that had fallen, or been taken off, a two and a four to the left, and a five and a one to the right.
“Thank you,” he said but the girl was already walking away.
Hudson peered at the squat house. It looked in better repair than many of the others on the street, even with its windows boarded over. Clapboard siding, fairly faded, portico over gravel where a garage should be, one level save for an awned attic. Screen door with a ripped screen.
What should I do, now that I’m here?
he quizzed himself. Was he really going to break into a house where murders had occurred? And what if there were homeless people inside, or addicts?
Am I REALLY going to do this?
But then he thought:
The Senary
. . .
The instructions, however, mentioned after sundown. Hudson still had about an hour, he thought.
I’ll get something to eat and think this over
.
He jaywalked to a Zappy’s Chicken Shack. Six patrons stood in line, and five of them appeared to be African American prostitutes. When his turn came, a Hispanic woman with half of one ear missing asked if she could help him.
Hudson ordered the Number Six special: three wings, a biscuit, and a drink.
There’s that number six again
, he reckoned. Just as he would sit down with his food, one of the prostitutes, a scarily thin woman with huge eyes and pigtails, slipped beside him and whispered, “Gimme a wing.” Hudson did; then she whispered lower, “Why’n’cha lemme put some sizzle in your swizzle, man, like I’ll lay some bigtown xtralicious super gobble game on you for, like, twenty-five bucks.”
What, is that the patented line around here?
Hudson politely informed her that he had no interest in her proposal, and edged quickly out of the restaurant.
God, these are good!
he thought, scarfing his remaining wings and biscuit as he walked down the street.
He still had time to kill, but he didn’t want to get killed himself as sundown approached. He walked down Central a ways, trying to look inconspicuous and knowing he wasn’t doing a very good job. Sirens rose and fell in the distance, and then he jumped a bit at either a faraway gunshot or backfire.
Hurry up, sundown
, he thought, and patted his wallet to make sure it was still there, then the other pocket where he’d slipped a slim flashlight. At the corner a dark hulk loomed, and then a shadow covered Hudson: the shadow of a cross cast by the sinking sun.
A church
, he noticed next of the drab, pilelike edifice. For no apparent reason he stopped to study it. The sign read:
GRACE UNITARIAN CHURCH OF ST. PETERSBURG
, but a smaller sign in magic marker added,
CLOSED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE.
This is the deaconess’s church!
An old building of streaked gray stone. High, double-lancet windows framed mosaics of stained glass that looked black, and drought had killed most of the ivy that crawled up the walls. Hudson was surprised to find the large front door unlocked, and even more surprised by his lack of hesitancy in entering. Fading sun tinted the nave with reddish light; as he approached, his nostrils flared at a smell like urine and something more revolting. He passed empty pews, crossed the chancel. Several apsidal rooms arched behind the altar, two empty but on the floor of one he found, oddly, a coping saw. Hudson ran his fingers along the thin blade and found it tacky. Could it be blood?
No, no, that’s ridiculous
, he felt sure. It was probably tar or something, resin, maybe. Nevertheless, the saw irked him and he stepped quickly out.
Tires crunching over gravel alerted him; he hustled to a rear window in the dressing room where, in fading light, he saw a black car pulling out.
What would I have done if it was pulling IN?
And who might be driving it?
Probably just smoochers
, he resolved. Or, in this area? A drug deal.
A draped baptistery stood to his right. Did he hear something? Hudson put an eye to the gap in the scarlet drapes, and seized up.
“Yeah, yeah,” a man with his pants down huffed. He was in his fifties, graying hair on the sides of a bald pate, and he wore a dress shirt and tie. His cheeks billowed at the obvious activity at his groin. He stood before another man who was on his knees—a fetid, homeless man. Hudson could swear he saw flies buzzing around the bum’s horrifically sweat-stained ball cap. Six inches of dirty beard jutted from his chin as his head bobbed frenetically back and forth.
Hudson pulled the curtain back. “This is a church, for God’s sake!”
The corpulent client’s face turned sheet white. “Shit! Shit shit shit!” he shrieked. He yanked his overlarge slacks up and barreled out of the baptistery, stumbled down the nave, and banged through the front door.
The homeless man raged. “You fucker, man!” Spittle flew from his chapped lips. “That was my trick, man! He was gonna pay me twenty bucks! I ought to kill you, man!”
Hudson stepped back, not nearly as afraid as he’d expect himself to be. “Relax.” He kept his cool. “I was just looking around. Here.” He handed the bum a twenty-dollar bill.
The bum turned instantly joyous. “Cool, thanks. Gimme another twenty and I’ll do you, too.”
“No. No, thanks,” Hudson said, realizing now that the
man’s beard was one of the scariest things he’d ever seen. “Who
are
you?”
“Forbes,” said the bum.
“
Forbes?
So . . . Forbes, this is where you . . . do . . . business? A church?”
When the bum scratched his beard, dandruff fell like salt from a shaker. “Aw, Deaconess Wilson, she’s cool. Let’s me sleep here at night as long as I’m out by five in the morning.” Now he lifted the liner out of the baptismal font and drank the water in it. “I feel bad ’cos, see, she sleeps upstairs and sometimes I sneak up there and watch her take showers and shit. She’s got the best boobs—”
I know
, Hudson thought.
“—and this big, gorgeous fur-burger on her, man.
Blonde
. And I just can’t help it. I see
that
all wet and shiny in the shower, I just
gotta
beat off. Shit.” He grinned, showing rotten gums. “Guess I’ll probably go to Hell, huh?”
“They say only God can judge,” Hudson said lamely.
The bum scratched his ass. “She gives me canned food a lot, too, makes me feel even guiltier. I guess I’m just a shit. It sucks when ya have to eat your own nut just for the calories, ya know? You ever do that?”
Hudson paled. “Uh, no.”
“Yeah, man, when you’re homeless ya gotta do it ’cos there’s, like, a couple hundred calories in it. Been times it’s the only thing that kept me from starvin’.”
Hudson felt staggered. “There’s a soup kitchen on Fifteenth Street. Forbes,
please
. Go there instead.”
“Really?” The bum beamed. “Didn’t know. But what’re
you
doin’ here, man? You a friend of Deaconess Wilson?”
Finally a topic of conversation he could take part in. “Not really, but I did meet her once. Do you know where she is?”
The bum reached down into the front of his rotten
jeans and scratched. It sounded like sandpaper. “Disappeared, they say, but . . . I don’t know about that.” He pulled his hand out and sniffed it. “See, when I’m sleepin’ in here at night, sometimes I think I hear her coming in. I can hear her car.”
“A black car?”
“Yeah. Old black car.”
Interesting
. “I just saw a black car pulling out of the lot behind the church.”
“Shit! Really?” The bum scampered past Hudson, leaving dizzying B.O. in his wake. “Ain’t there now,” he said, peering out the window.
“Maybe she’ll be back,” Hudson contemplated. “Or maybe it wasn’t her.” He eyed the bum. “Say, did she ever mention a strange word to you? The word
Senary?
”
Forbes was only half listening. “Naw, never heard no word like that.” He picked his nose and nonchalantly ate what his finger brought out.
What am I DOING here?
Hudson asked himself.
The window was turning dark, and at once the bum seemed edgy. “Shit, it’s sundown—”
Sundown
, Hudson repeated.
“—and I gotta get out.”
“But I thought you said you slept here.”
“Yeah but I ain’t gonna do that no more,” Forbes said, and shuffled back toward the chancel. “Every night since the deaconess been gone, I have me these really scary dreams.”
Hudson didn’t know what compelled him to ask, “What . . . dreams?”
The bum’s eyes looked cloudy. “Aw, weird, sick shit, man, like in some city where the sky’s red and there’s smoke comin’ out of the sewer grates on every street, and black things flyin’ in the air and other things crawling up and down these buildings that are, like, a mile high, and people
gettin’ their guts hauled out their asses and these big gray
things
eatin’ girls’ faces off their heads and drownin’ kids in barrels’a blood and playin’ catch with babies on pitchforks’n shit, and then, then this giant statue with the scariest face—oh, yeah, and a house, man. A house made of heads . . .”
Hudson stared.
“—and, fuck, last week, right before Deaconess Wilson disappeared, I was sleepin’ in the pews and dreamed that these
monsters
were fuckin’ with her, and reading all this evil shit like Latin or something.”