Clown in the Moonlight

4

It's the same game as always, just different players, except for me. It's all my fault for playing along in the first place, but nothing of interest waits for me anywhere else. My old man is dead. My mother is dead. My gods slumber. The girls never last more than a month. They're all needy and awful in the same way. I find only what I look for. It's why I'm with Mercy right now.

She tells me, "We're about to start the ritual."

"Are you sure you want to go through with it?" I ask.

"Oh yes, definitely."

She tugs me by the wrist and leads me up the hall. The White Queen leads the group. The nerds take very little notice as the coven marches out the back door towards the wetland.

I should probably rethink the situation before I let this girl make love to me under the evil moon near a toxic waterway. I'd had enough poison cause me strife. I'd been surrounded by venom of one sort or another most of my life. My old man had been juiced on it, my mother burned and degraded by it. It had shaped my formative years and filled my heart. I'd been surrounded by it in prison and on the ward. It had made me jump the wrong way and forced my hand into many bad decisions.

I follow mercy and the others outside and the cool air washes over me. I watch the White Queen in her flowing white muumuu leading the ragtag band through the brush. Some of them hold high-power flashlights, and the bright shafts twine and cross and cut through the night. Mercy falls into my arms and licks at my jaw line, firing up my flesh. I bend to kiss her and she turns away.

"It costs, you know," she says.

The proper response to that is, Yes, I know, but I'm not feeling proper.

"What does?"

"Anything. Everything. Anything that you want, whatever you desire, it costs."

I've paid out a lot over the years for the things I thought I wanted. I've paid in cash, blood, pain, freedom, love, hate, and time.

We follow the coven out into the pines. The loamy odor makes me think of Aztakea Woods, Gary's body, and my mother's funeral. My mother, her corpse sealed inside a casket, her great soul already cast among the stars, while I stood there in the rain shoulder to shoulder with my father's shame and anger. No priest, no other mourners, even the cemetery caretaker had run for cover in the storm. Thick streams of rainwater rushed down into the hole and filled it like a sewer. I imagined rats in there already chewing on her remains. It made me hiss and steam. My old man turned away without a word and drove home without me. I plodded home through the mud, this same smell surrounding me.

Mercy breaks from me and takes up formation with the coven around a dead tree standing in a clearing, jagged branches tilted at vicious angles. I move behind her, feeling a little too old for this crowd, looking back over my shoulder at the swaying, rustling pines. I feel eyes on me, a will at work.

I look off in the direction of Pioneer State and wonder if up on those highest floors, perched at the cube windows, madmen and tainted women stare down at us right now. I can almost see them in their pjs and loose-fitting robes, their nails thick with clay from making ashtrays during crafts hour, wicker in their hair from weaving baskets. What might they think as they watch the flashlights maneuvering through the scrub, moonlight glazing the treetops?

The White Queen stops and the members of the coven form themselves into a ring around the coven tree. I stick close to Mercy. It throws off the power of the triskaideka. The White Queen draws out a dagger from beneath her glowing muumuu and depicts symbols in the air with it. She speaks quietly but with great authority. I can't hear the words but I understand their meaning. The ocean is angry. The tide slams into the beach. We're about ten miles from the dunes where Ricky's boys tried to slash me to death. There's another graveyard nearby. This one might as well be the one hidden in the sand.

The White Queen's voice grows louder. The breeze stiffens. She turns to the east and bows, then she does the same facing the west, then the north, and the south, the athame carving words, names, and ciphers in the dark.

"With this witch's blade, my athame, I call forth Askiel, Uthrick, Pommerance, Tico-Tico, and Lafleur de Malcolm," she says. "I ask for my familiars Thorn-in-the-Crown and Percywinkle to come to me now and guide these blessed magicks. Where there is evil, there is righteousness set against it. Where there is mischief, there is nobility to balance it. Where there is corruption, there is salvation."

Mercy whispers to me, "Which do you think I am? The mischief or the nobility?"

"I'd have to go with mischief."

"And you?"

"The same."

"I was hoping that."

She moves her hand across my belly, rubs me the way a person might a dog, sort of scratching. Then she digs her nails in deeper until I grunt. She leans in as if to kiss me but pulls away at the last second.

"So you're about to be purified now?" I ask.

"As much as I ever hope to be, I suppose."

"I wonder how much that is?"

The tone in my voice hooks her, wakes her up some. Mercy's grin begins to go slack. My own smile hardens.

She steps away. Each coven member performs gestures in the air with their hands. Every so often they fall back together and carry out a series of intricate actions that make the entire thing look like a well-rehearsed ballet recital. I wonder how long they've been doing this, how many times they've stood in this field surrounding a dead tree, beneath the eyes of the moon. The night birds start to sing.

Jenks slides up beside me from out of the darkness. His breath is rancid with whiskey. He holds the flashlight up to his face and pulls faces. His eyes are wild with cocaine, almost as insane as Ricky's were on acid.

"Pretty ridiculous, eh?" he says.

"Beats sitting at home watching the news."

"Probably right about that. I still don't like it."

"Why not?"

He scoffs. "If you want anything in this world, you have to earn it, fight for it, or steal it. Dancing around in the darkness and calling on spirits named fuckin' Percywinkle is just moronic."

"Then why did you join the coven?"

"Like you said, it beats staying at home. Besides-"

"Besides," Mercy joins in. "We're all about to get naked."

Jenks's laugh is guttural and obnoxious. So is Mercy's. So is mine.

Kip's voice soon becomes the loudest and clearest among the coven. "To me now, Utheziel. To me now the north wind. To me now golden fire, the chalice, the dagger, the aspect of the heart. To me now the Nephilim, the despised, the wondrous, the gargantuan."

The members return to their stations, except for Mercy, who leaves my side and moves alone to stand at the base of the tree, brushing herself against those fierce, angular branches. The others turn their flashlights to illuminate her. I fade back. I allow the triskaideka to reign. I wait in the weeds. I stand on lost graves.

Mercy holds her hands out to me.

She wags her eyebrows and turns on that killer smile again.

Her wreath of razors flashes with burning silver.

She throws off her leather coat and skins out of her boots, weaving and angling all around, gyrating and slithering.

And then she dances.

And in her moonlit eyes she seems to be dancing only for me.

She performs like a professional stripper working the circuit. The wetland is her stage. The coven is her audience. The birds fly against the black sky, pivoting, wheeling, rising, arching. Maybe she is offering herself to me. Maybe she waits to garrote me and offer my ashes to the dead and martyred. It doesn't matter to me. There is something about her that entices and irritates me. It is the same story for every woman I've had. I can see her teeth blaze every so often. Her black lipstick and eye shadow frame her alabaster face so that she appears to be a harlequin. She opens the top two buttons of her blouse and the curve of her breasts are heavy and exquisite. The tattoo at her neck looks like a raven.

For a moment I see other figures out there, draped in black, silhouetted in the slashes of flashlight. The girl has brought my past alive within me. I recognize faces, body language, intent. I watch dead men looming. It is easy to get distracted.

The men of the coven watch Mercy. They all want her. So do some of the women. She is desirable in the way that make lovers stupid, especially now, bathed from above. I can smell a hint of methane in the wind. It takes nothing at all to stand in the wetlands with strangers, breathing in the stink of decomposing bodies around you. Mercy's bare feet tamp out a staccato rhythm that beats louder than the pulse in my temple.

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."

Mercy tries to get to her feet but was having a hard time of it, still tapped out from the delirious dancing, a confused expression on her face.

With a sickly war cry, the White Queen rears and lunges at me. She has a lot of horsepower behind her and nearly bowls me over. The athame slashes again leaving a silver moonlit trail behind in my eyes as I feel a sting in my chest. She's nicked me.

She lashes out again and I punch her in the stomach. My fist sinks in six inches. She lets out a sickly, "Ooof!" and drops onto her face. I snatch up the dagger and kick her in her fat ass. The rage is more powerful than the tide, washing over me, drowning me, commanding me.

"Go on back home, lady. You can start looking for new members tomorrow."

She turns over and glares at me. "The spirits dwell inside you."

"If your husband shows up with any of his guns, I'm going to have to kill him. You understand that?"

"Satanus infernus, you're an empty shell animated with disease and malfeasance. Black Shuck. Black Shuck. Do you even realize it? You're inhabited. You're possessed. You're dead. You're long dead."

I've been dead so many times I can't count them anymore. I was killed by my father over and over when I was a boy. On the ward they murdered us by inches with electricity and water. My first night in prison I pulled a seven man train and was left deader than hell. Of course I am as dead as Gary, as dead as Ricky, as dead as Linda. Isn't everybody?

"You're getting on my nerves, lady."

I draw my arm back and smack her in the forehead with the pommel of the blade. It makes a sickening thud but I don't feel her skull fracture beneath the blow. She would probably live.

Then I am finally alone with Mercy.

The grin is still there on her pouty lips, murdering me. It is as much a part of her as anything else. The raven glowers. I want to catch its neck in my teeth.

"How are you feeling?" I ask her.

"Starting to come down a little."

"That's too bad."

"What's happened?" She stares at the White Queen. "What's happening?"

"Just a little mischief."

Her eyes unfocus again, that harlequin smile beginning to flatten out some. I shake her hard and she looks at me, and a subtle snake of fear begins to slither into her expression.

"Only five hundred, huh?" I ask. "You sure you're not selling yourself short?" I open my wallet and toss bills at her. Tens, twenties, singles. I snap my credit cards against her face. "Visa okay?"

"Don't, please-"

Don't, please. I beg the rage to release me. I call for my mother to find the strength to help form beyond the veil. I feel Baphomet at my left hand, Ricky at my right. I call on Gary Lowers to aid me in this time of need, and he refuses. He asks why I never buried him. He asks why I didn't call the police. He asks for his mother as I ask for mine.

I put a hand to the pulse in her neck and say, "Your heart's racing."

"I'm scared. You…you…"

"Don't be afraid, Mercy."

I reach into her wild curls and get my hands around the razor wire. My fingers begin to bleed immediately. I unwind the wreath of barbs and pull it free. She squeals in pain and a pulse of blood arcs against my cheek.

"What are you?" she asks. "Are you…are you Nephilim? Askiel, Uthrick…?

"…Pommerance, Tico-Tico…Bathal, Bathei, Winter's Leg…"

"Are you abomination?"

"You really want to find out?" I ask.

She nods, but tears well and she sniffles and whimpers, "Oh God-"

"I'm mischief. I'm corruption. Maybe I'm salvation. Whatever you desire, Mercy…remember, it costs."

"No, you're-" She falls into my arms one more time and I force my mouth against hers and let my teeth slide down across the raven. I bite hard and she screams. "Please-give me…no…!"

"I'm just a man, baby," I say, alive in rage, alive in death, alive with my black life, pressing her back against the coven tree and then drawing her down beside me in the field. Something breaks inside my chest that might be a laugh or might be my heart. Venom fills my mouth. I kiss her and she struggles. I twist the razor wire around her throat, tug gently, and she lets out an erotic moan. She tries to pull away and her throat spurts. I'd watched her closely. All I had to do was tighten my draw a little more, saw back and forth, and her head would come off.

Her eyes are black and full of terror, awe, and desire, the same as mine. "I'm everything you need," I tell her, and I am.