Clown in the Moonlight (13 page)

She sweeps in close to me, shakes her hair wildly in my face, and a barb catches me across the chin.
 
She withdraws.
 
I thumb blood away.

Jenks puts his arm around me, dips his head and draws me into a huddle of clandestine mystery as he speaks quietly in my ear.

"You ready to fuck Mercy yet?"

Of course I don't like the way he says it, half with a sneer and half with a laugh.
 
No one else glances my way, not the White Queen, not even Mercy.
 
My back muscles tighten and my stomach dips.
 
Ricky urges me to tear his Jenks's eyes out.
 
Gary Lowers loves his mother.
 
He knows I love my mother too.

I turn to Jenks.
 
"When I am it'll be between her and me."

He puts a hand to my chest and pushes hard, forcing me back a step.
 
"No, it's between me and you.
 
You pay me."

"I pay you what?"

"Depends on what you want.
 
Half and half is one-twenty.
 
Around the world three hundred, you want the whole night it's five, and that's a bargain.
 
Believe me, I know."

"You know."

"I know."
 
He actually holds out his hand.
 
"Payable now, up front."

He snaps his fingers.
 

I look over at Mercy, the silver studs on her short-shorts burning.
 
She dances among flashlight rays that seem to cut her to ribbons.
 
She meets my eyes.
 
I realize what a dupe I've been.
 
She'd spotted me and off the cuff had known I was the loneliest, horniest, most futile asshole in a long line of them.
 
A gray-haired punk old before his time, full of need and empty of action.
 
A couple of air kisses in my direction, a hand to my neck, and I'd be hers.
 
She'd even hinted at her true intention.
 
Whatever you desire, it costs. And I'd been too eager to see what she was actually talking about, distracted by ritual and subjugation.

Jenks still has his hand out.
 
He snaps his fingers again, says, "Come on, c'mon.
 
You going to kick in or are you going to let a fine ass like that get away from you?"

I keep my gaze on Mercy as she snakes her way across the field, dancing and gyrating, sweaty and laughing.

"What about me makes you think I have five hundred bucks on me?" I asked.

"We can always hit an ATM."

"And how do you know I have that much in my bank account?"

"What else are you going to spend your cash on, man?
 
Trips to the French Riviera?
 
You've got no woman.
 
You drink milk, for Christ's sake.
 
You don't do drugs.
 
You live in a dive someplace, you've got no friends and no wife and no kids."

"And how do you know all that about me?" I ask, genuinely interested.

He frowns like I've asked the dumbest question he's ever heard.
 
Maybe it is.
 
"It's written in your face, man.
 
Don't you know that?
 
Don't you see that every morning when you're shaving?"

My expression must be fairly absurd because he starts to chuckle, and then guffaws.

Mercy's dance ends and some of the men can't contain themselves.
 
They whistle and hoot.
 
Not very becoming behavior for a coven.

The White Queen tries to stop the noise with a hiss, but the guys keep going and Mercy even takes a bow.
 
It pisses off Kip, who appears to be serious about the rite.
 
He growls, "That's enough.
 
This is a solemn ceremony."
 

Mercy steps back to the tree and kneels at it in caricature of pagan worship.
 
Her harlequin's face appears to be poised on the edge of laughter.

Dropping her chin to her chest, the White Queen begins to chant, holding the
athame
tightly in both hands.
 
The blade dips and jerks, turning her as it moves.
 
It seems to be alive, like she can barely hold onto it.
 

She cries out and spins, and her arms are wrenched and yanked this way and that by the trembling knife.
 
Wheeling, she faces me, her arms jutting forward, the dagger pointing at my heart.
 

She says, "It's you.
 
The spirits want you."

"Yes," I admit.
 
"They want me.
 
And they want all the rest of you too."

She takes two fumbling steps in my direction and then stops.
 
The
athame
begins to pull her away in a different direction.
 
She wanders with it, mewling.
 
She struggles to let go of the handle, but can't.
 
The other members begin to gasp, mumble, titter nervously, make sounds of surprise and disbelief.

I turn to Jenks.
 
I feel the first real smile of the evening crawl across my face.
 

I reach out and grip his wrist hard enough to make him drop the flashlight.
 

"Hey!" he cries.

It rolls at my feet and I kick it aside, the beam illuminating nothing now.

"Hey...my wrist...stop–"

I grip tighter.
 
I pull him closer, the night sky playing in his moist eyes.
 
"You really know how to steal the last remnant of a man's self-respect, don't you, Jenks?"

"What?
 
It's dark, I can't–"

"You think I don't need that last bit of honor?
 
That last piece of my own sense of self-worth?
 
You think I'll turn that over to you without a fight?"

"Hey, man, don't–"

"I didn't give it to Baphomet.
 
I didn't give it to my father.
 
I didn't give it to Ricky.
 
You really believe I'll hand it over to a piece of wet shit like you?"

"Hey, man, hey!
 
Hey!"

The bones in his wrist grind together and he tries to shriek, but the agony steals his air.

"You think I don't have repressions and pressures building up inside of me.
 
You think I don't have violent fantasies just looking for a way out of my head?
 
What am I, just a clown out here in the moonlight
?
 
No.
 
No.
 
I am rage
."

Kip begins to shout.
 
"I call forth Bathal, Bathei, Bathezel, Bathezuwen," he says.
 
"I ask for my familiars Three-Together-in-the-Blind-Eye, Hildegrance, and Winter's Leg to come to me now and guide these blessed magicks.
 
Where there is abomination, there is integrity set against it.
 
Where there is devilment, there is dignity to balance it.
 
Where I am lacking, there is redemption.
 
Where there is sin, there is confession.
 
My misdeeds are countered with my repentance."

I let Jenks go and he draws away, unable to rub his wrist.
 
"You broke it," he whines.
 
"I'm going to hurt you now.
 
I'm going to hurt you bad."
 
He smiles, trying to hang on to his dwindling cool.
 
"You bastard–"

"Keep grinning, Jenks.
 
That's right, just like that."

I grip his chin tightly in my left hand, pressing hard into the nerve ganglia under his ear with my right so that his jaw pops open.
 
I reached into his mouth.
 
He struggles for a moment and I kick his feet out from under him.
 
I keep hold of his jaw on the way down.
 
I find the razor he keeps stashed between his gum and his cheek, the one he said he could slip out any time and slice somebody.
 
It's a nice move if you practiced it.
 
I'd seen guys go down with cut throats on the yard.
 
Their jugular veins leaking, an eye taken out, or their faces marred forever by jagged gutters.

Mercy had been right.
 
Blood sacrifices might be in order.

I gash him high on forehead with the razor and blood pours into his eyes.
 
He doesn't feel any pain yet and just says, "What...?
 
What are you doing to me?"
 
Then I slice again in the same place, right at the base of his hairline.
 
The flesh parts like muslin cloth.
 
I grab hold of his hair and wrench it.
 
His scalp starts to come off.
 

Jenks takes one long, deep breath, inflating his lungs and readying himself to scream.
 
I drive a nasty left hook under his heart and cut his wind off.
 
Then I pull on his hair even harder and feel half of his head of hair tear free from his skull. It flaps sideways exposing the burnished skull beneath.
 
In the moonlight, it seems to beam.

"I think I'll want her the whole night for five hundred," I say.
 
"I'll tally up with Mercy, right?"

I hammer him across the jaw and let him fall away into weeds, slipping back into darkness.

The ritual is almost over.
 
Most of the coven members were just bored twenty-somethings looking for a way to kill part of the evening before hitting Grimm's top shelf.
 
The White Queen speaks a final blessing, with Mercy still praying at the tree in the center of the clearing.
 
The others begin to split up, walking back to the house.
 
I heft the flashlight and Kip comes towards me.

"Quite a performance," I say.

He takes affront.
 
"This was the real thing.
 
We were calling down power.
 
We were fueling our own destinies.
 
Taking matters into our own hands."

"Is that right?"

His teeth are tiny, sharp, and yellow.
 
"Jenks tell you how much we wanted?"

"He did," I say.
 
"So, if you're really into witchcraft shit then how do you split your focus between calling down Three-Together-in-the-Blind-Eye and Hildegrance while playing the pimp?"

"Hey, you don't have to go for it.
 
It's your choice.
 
But it'll be a waste, I can tell you that.
 
You've never had anyone like Mercy before."
 

"Yeah?"

"I know."

"You know?"

"I know."

I turn and look at her speaking words I can't catch.
 
I hear Ricky's name, but I always hear Ricky's name.
 
The White Queen stands near, the dagger in her hand.
 
The lunatics in Pioneer State are smoking good weed and putting out the roaches in one of their handmade ashtrays.
 
Laughing at us, so ludicrous down here.
 
Tomorrow when they roam the grounds of the hospital there will be even more toxic blood coursing through the veins of the earth.

"Where's Jenks?" Kip asks.

"Right at your feet."

He swings his flashlight down and spots his friend there, his fellow pimp, mumbling in an agonized semi-consciousness, his face completely red, his bright skull in view, having taken matters into his own hands, fueling his destiny, and receiving his reward.

In one fluid move I slide my hand into Kip's jacket, dig deep until I find the slit to his secret pocket, and get my fingers around his butterfly blade.
 
I whirl it open but don't withdraw it.
 
I get my left arm around his throat and turn into him with the knife, slashing upwards.
 
He screams beneath my palm and I tighten my hold even more.
 
I angle the blade between his ribs and prod it about an inch into his lung.
 
I can practically hear it deflate.
 

Kip begins sucking air through his teeth, hardly able to breathe, wheezing in mockery to the blowing wind.
 
I leave the knife in him and dump him beside his buddy in the brush.

I walk to the coven tree.

The White Queen sees me coming and the
athame
spins her rotund body about, the point
aimed at my face this time, as she recites spells of protection.
 
She draws a six-pointed star in the air, the moon flashing off the edge of the knife and leaving an after-image behind it.
 
"Come no farther, Black Shuck.
 
I stand at the right hand of Michael, he who is Machen, and Gabriel, he who is Shamain, and Cameol, he who is Machon."

"You point that at me one more time, fatso," I say, "and I'm going to have to stick it in your eye."