Clown in the Moonlight (11 page)

"What kind?" I ask.

"A purification rite."
 

"That sounds...righteous."

"Oh it is," she assures me, her breath cool against my five o'clock shadow.
 
"It certainly is."
 
Then she puts her lips to my ear and whispers, "But I think there might be some sex magic to it."
 
She wags her eyebrows and hits me with a sloe-eyed gleam while I wonder how different sex magic might be from the regular thing.
 
"And some blood sacrifice."

"Sacrifice," I repeat.
 
It's a word that holds more power than she'll ever understand.
 
I can feel the depths of the ocean stir at the sound of it.
 
The trees around the hospital sway with its understanding.

Mercy takes no notice.
 
"Out there in the pines under the moon."

Out there in the pines under the moon, where the shadows crawl, and Ricky still keeps watch. I think of the ancient cemeteries hidden beneath the floor of the forest, the hidden stones bearing names of colonists who'd died of cholera or yellow fever centuries ago.
 
Or the mass graves in potters' fields where they buried the corpses of the patients, dead from too much electroshock, drowned in the hydrotherapy tubs, raped, impregnated by doctors, victim piled on top of victim in cardboard coffins.

"You people certainly know how to throw a party."

"It's not a joke, you know.
 
Not to them.
 
Especially Kip.
 
He's been seriously into this for months."

"And you?
 
Is it a joke to you?"

She just hits me with the grin again, eases up closer, and throws a leg around mine.
 
Some of the nerds perk up and check out her ass.
 
I stand my ground as she slithers around me like the serpent across the branch of the tree of knowledge.
 
The symbols of our lives are everywhere you look.
 
They find us no matter what we do or where we hide.
 
She nips at my throat.
 
She catches a vein between her teeth and licks and sucks.
 

I glance over at Kip, who's reading through papers covered with symbols, discussing them with the White Queen. They seem to be on the verge of an argument. His shoulders are hunched, his eyes ablaze.
 
He's a little heated as the White Queen points at the instructions and tries to explain them to her own satisfaction.
 
She smiles through it all even while Kip grimaces.
 
Her understanding only angers him more.
 

Jenks has moved off from the group and sips from a bottle of Jameson's, snickering to himself.
 
I can tell by his expression that he wants to cut something.
 
A stray dog, a person walking by in a crowd.
 
He wants to see blood run. In a pinch he'll bleed himself, just to see the coursing red.
 
His gaze flicks here and there.
 
It finally meets mine.
 
His sneer solidifies.
 
He likes seeing Mercy working me in the corner, up against the wall.

"This blood sacrifice," I say.
 
"You talking about chasing down bunnies or something a little bigger?"

Mercy gives me a final love bite.
 
It hurts.
 
It arouses me.
 
I think of Linda and Gwen and all our scars.
 
Mercy raises her lovely face to me, her features highlighted by all that black makeup set against her wondrously white skin.
 
The razor wreath wound in her hair flashes with reflections of the lights and television.
 

She condescends and tells me, "Probably something bigger."

"You're not going to let Kip try to reach into his secret pocket for his butterfly blade and slash open my carotid, are you?"

She titters at that.
 
It's the kind of titter that originally sounds adorable the first couple times you hear it, but eventually makes you want to puke.
 

"That's not for me to decide," Mercy said, "it's for you.
 
How badly do you want to live?"

"Good question."

"Is it?"

"It is.
 
Do you have an answer?"

"I was asking you."

Still grinning, so close that her lips land on mine from time to time as she speaks, she moves her hand to my groin.
 
She rubs and finds me already hard.
 
She smiles and it's her first real smile since I've met her.
 
She's proud of making me want.
 
Our mouths brush together.
 
The feel of her moist breath on my face is starting to make me a little high.
 
It's a good feeling, one I haven't had in a long while.
 

"I want to live more at certain times of the day than others," I admit.

"How about now?"

"I'm holding out a little hope that the night might turn out to be a memorable one."

"So, you feel like being bathed in moonlight and getting laid?"

I picture her bathed in moonlight, naked, dancing, out in the woods, with the night birds in the tree tops, the coven writhing around us, and I feel like getting laid.

"Sure."

She asks, "Are you everything I need?"

O
f course I'm not.
 
I'm not everything that anybody needs.
 
I'm nothing that anybody needs.
 
The last time I visited Linda on the coma ward I said it to her.
 
I told her to let me go.
 
The machines rasped and blinked and keened in response.
 
I hid in shadow while the night nurses went on about their business.
 
One of them, a cute little Filipino, got some action off one of the oncologists.
 
They did it out in the open, in a free bed on the ward, in front of the eyes of more than a dozen patients frozen in time, trapped between their first and last breaths.
 
At two in the morning Gwen turned up.
 
I don't know how she sneaked in, or why, but she sat beside Linda in the dim room and held her hand.
 
She said nothing at first, and did nothing, except let out quiet, tormented sobs.
 

Gwen had changed a great deal since the night on the beach, in the graveyard hidden by sand and sawgrass, and Ricky's boys threw her at the bottom of the pit.
 
With Ricky dead his influence has lessened.
 
She was more demure, more caring, full of deeper regrets and fears.
 
She attended college and went to church every week.
 

I watched from the shadows and wondered if she was better off now, wearing sweaters buttoned to the top button, her hair pulled back, her face a little plainer without makeup.
 
She wasn't dead and a lot of other people were.
 
She lived through an experience that would have killed many others.
 

I wanted to talk to her, but there wasn't much point.
 
I would've only frightened her.
 
I would've only scared her off, and she was already scared enough.
 
I couldn't offer any kindnesses, especially after the two nights we shared.
 
One in bed, one in the pit.
 
One proved rage, one proved life.
 
I wondered what she confessed to the priests, how much she'd said aloud.
 
If she'd told the truth the Vatican would have sent word to have her exorcized, ostracized, ex-communicated.
 
They would've huffed incense and hurled holy water in her face.

She murmured to Linda as the machines beeped and hummed in tune with our hearts.
 

"It's time to wake up.
 
It's time that you heard me say how sorry I am for everything that happened.
 
You're my best friend.
 
You're my only friend.
 
I can't go on any farther without you.
 
I need you here."
 

She washed Linda's face down with a kerchief dipped in ice water.
 

I sent my will into the machines so I could live inside Linda's lungs.
 
I was the blood beating in and out of her circulatory system.
 
I was her brain wave activity, her mired memories, her stardancer fantasies. I was sluggish.
 
I slept.
 

I withdrew.
 
Linda wasn't quite ready to awaken yet, but it would happen soon enough, so long as Gwen didn't quit on her.
 
They both needed someone who had been to the same places, who'd been lured by the same black dream.
 
They had shared love and blood.
 
They had shared Ricky.
 
They had shared me.
 
They'd sipped on my rage and it had changed them as it had changed me.

Baphomet had a long reach.
 
So did Ricky.
  
I could feel their presence drawing near once again.
 
Gwen felt it too.
 
She froze up and let out small sounds of anxiety.
 
Ricky and the Devil waited for Linda the way they waited for everyone.
 
They called to her across the dark oceans the same way that Gwen called to her from her bedside, begging her to return to life.
 
Gwen wanted her friend back.
 
Baphomet wanted his minion, his offering.
 
I didn't know exactly what Ricky wanted, but he wanted the same thing from me.

Gwen held Linda's hand up to her eyes, bathing her skin in tears.
 
She whispered, "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, please wake up, please come back, I swear it'll be different this time.
 
Come back to us.
 
Come back to me, please."

I could almost hear Ricky's insane laughter.
 
So could Gwen.
 

On a strap around her shoulder hung her handbag.
 
She opened it and pulled out a nickel-plated snub-nose .32. She snapped open the cylinder and checked to see if it was loaded.
 
All six chambers were full.
 
She snapped it closed again and sat staring at the piece for a minute.
 

The Filipino nurse was getting hammered again.
 
This time in ICU down the hall.
 
I could hear her whining moans and the groans of her lover, the Ecuadorian night janitor.
 
They weren't going to make their rounds and stop Gwen.

"I'm not going to let him do anything else to us," she said.

She pointed the barrel at Linda's forehead.

I moved from the shadows and presented myself.
 
I snatched the gun from her hand.
 
Gwen gasped and took in a deep breath, preparing to scream.
 
I dipped down and muffled her shriek with a kiss.
 
She shouted down my throat and inflated my lungs with her terror.
 

I broke off and said, "It's all right, I'm here to help."

Gwen backed away until she hit the windows.
 
She stood silhouetted in the dim room ignited only by moonlight.
 
The burning silver traced her form.

"You," she said.
 
"What are you doing here?"

"I just told you.
 
I'm here to help you."

"I don't believe you," she said.

"Why not?" I asked.
 
It's an honest question.

"I know what you are.
 
I know what you do."

"I don't go around shooting my friends in the head."
 
I emptied the bullets into my hand and placed the .32 back in her purse.
 
"And after you killed her?"

"I was going to shoot myself."

I nodded. "Because of Ricky?"

"Because of Ricky.
 
And you.
 
And...that night.
 
And...because of what I became, what I was.
 
I...I–"

I turned on the lamp on the night table.
 
The light shined down on Linda's sleeping face.
 
In two years she hadn't lost much muscle mass at all.
 
Despite the tubes, her arms were toned.
 
Her face was ashen, but otherwise she looked as beautiful as the day I met her.
 
Her mother kept her luxuriant hair well-brushed.

I put my hand to her forehead and could feel her inside her own nightmares trying to rear away from me.
 
I whispered the words to her that my mother used to say to me to calm my mad fevers.
 
The machines began to warble and beat faster.
 
My pulse rose along with them.