Clown in the Moonlight

3

Of 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.

Gwen said, "What are you doing? Oh God, don't kill her…don't kill her any more than you already have-"

"Relax."

"Please-"

Linda hid from me in the depths of her dark dreams, lost among the shreds and scraps of muddled memories. I moved among their fragments searching for her, only to see myself in bed with her and Gwen, the three of us bleeding and covered in sweat. And at the foot of the bed stood Ricky, grinning, and Gary Lowers, blind but reaching, hungry, hard. It was an ugly fusion of truth and night terror.

In the dream, my teeth red with her blood, I told her, "It's time to wake up now, Linda. Gwen's waiting for you with a whole new outlook on life. Your friend is here to lead you onto a new path."

Baphomet bucked at that. I felt its rage meet my rage. The windows vibrated even though there was no wind. The Filipino nurse cried out in want and agony. Gwen said, "The shadows, they're-"

"They don't matter," I said. "Come over here, talk to her."

"They're swarming towards us-"

"Come talk to her."

"But-"

"I won't let anything happen to you."

"But that's all I've done for two years. I talk and talk. If she doesn't know I'm here by now."

"Do as I say, Gwen, come speak in her ear. Let her feel your breath. Let her feel your lips. Hold her close."

She leaned over her friend, her enemy, herself, and hugged her, and kissed her, and started muttering. A lot of what she said was trivial and referred back to when they were kids. Other things were personal, sexual, horrible, laughable. Before long Gwen was crying and giggling at the same time, and soon Linda was doing the same with her. They clenched fiercely as the machinery sounded and whooped, and the birds pecked, and the wind rose and fell, and the nurse came rushing in with her uniform misaligned. I left the hospital and got in the Mustang and drove under a moon heavy with the features of a goat.