Snake Handlin' Man

by D. J. Butler

  “What is it, your job to ask all the dumb, irritating questions?” Eddie chomped at him, but then he felt guilty. “I don’t know,” he grumbled. “Something bad happened here, I’m guessing. Some kind of terrible sin, maybe.”

  Twitch laughed lightly. From someone else, it might have sounded like mockery, but it lifted Eddie’s spirits a little. “Sin,” the fairy giggled, “is for humans.”

  “Yeah, it is,” Eddie agreed.

  Metal shutters had been dropped over the storefront windows of the Sears. It seemed a little extravagant for a box store in the middle of nowhere, but maybe that’s why the Apep worshippers had chosen it. As Eddie and the band stalked around the edges of the gravel parking lot, he saw a couple who looked like small ranchers, wearing boots, yoked shirts and blue jeans, walk in through the swinging glass doors. Eddie didn’t see any guards.

  That made him uncomfortable.

  “How trained are your mongooses?” he asked the preacher.

  Phineas Irving shrugged. “Like a dog, I guess,” he said. “Not as much as that, really. They fight snakes by instinct. Fortunately, they have really good instincts.”

  Eddie had hoped he might be able to send the animals in as scouts somehow. “I’d give a lot for a decent wizard right now,” he said, thinking of Adrian and wishing he could turn invisible.

  “Sorry,” Irving muttered.

  “Never mind.” Eddie spotted something at the side of the building. “Twitch,” he told the fairy, “I’m glad you can fly.” He pointed and then set out at a jog.

  It wouldn’t pay to forget that Overalls, Lady Legs and the other mutant snake-men were somewhere out behind them, and coming their way.

  The building’s shadow should have given Eddie relief from the heat as he rolled to a stop underneath a fire escape; instead, it added to his sensation that he was freezing to death. He gritted his teeth, forced himself not to shiver, and looked up. The iron ladder bolted to the side of the building as an emergency exit only ran halfway down its side, but then it had a second half on tracks, that could be unlatched and pushed down from above.

  Twitch hit the top of the fire escape in falcon shape and immediately became the spiked, leather-bar-garbed drummer. He skittered down the ladder like a monkey and kicked open the latch.

  “Easy!” Eddie hissed, but too late. The ladder bumped, rattled and squealed like a hinge that needed oiling, but it dropped. Jim stepped forward and caught it easily before it hit the bottom of its descent, cutting off what might otherwise have been a very loud noise.

  “Thanks,” Eddie said to the singer.

  Jim shrugged, slid the ladder easily down to its full extension, and started climbing up.

  “I’ll go last,” Eddie told them, and sent Irving and Mike up the ladder ahead of him. Mike climbed reasonably well, for a big guy, but Irving moved slow, humping the Nehushtan on one shoulder and the Enfield on the other as he went. Then Eddie climbed up the rungs. Halfway up, he grabbed a bit of rope that was knotted around the top rung of the sliding half and pulled it up after him, latching the ladder back into place and then joining the others on the gravel-strewn rooftop.

  There were air conditioning units, a small water tower and a gas generator on the rooftop. The way inside was a door at the top of a staircase. Eddie pulled at the handle and found it locked. “Mike?” he said.

  “Sure,” Mike said, no problem. The bass player had grown up running in gangs and had some useful skills. “I just need a credit card.”

  “Credit card?” Eddie snapped. “Do you think we’re here to go shopping?”

  “Chingón,” Mike laughed. “I can open this door, but I need a credit card to do it.” He looked around at the band. “Nobody? Nobody’s got a credit card?”

  The band stared back dully. Eddie shrugged. “Bad risks,” he deadpanned. “I guess when Satan got my soul, he dinged my credit score, too.”

  Phineas Irving shoved the Nehushtan into the crook of his neck and shoulder and rummaged in his pockets. “How about this?” he asked, and held out a driver’s license.

  Mike took it. “It’s expired,” he noted. “Pennsylvania.”

  Irving nodded. “I’m kind of on the lam,” he said, and pointed at the big red snake on his shoulder.

  “Isn’t everyone?” Twitch cracked wise.

  “Stop reading the damn thing and open the door,” Eddie said gruffly. He took the Remington in both hands and stood watch.

  Up here on the rooftop, at least, he didn’t see the frozen heads. Just the metal hulks of building machinery and the dusty blue sky, slowly deepening.

  Click. Good as his word, Mike opened the door. “Easy,” he said. Eddie wished he felt as confident as Mike sounded, and resisted looking at his watch.

  “Do we have a plan?” Irving asked, as Eddie headed first into the gloom-shrouded stairwell.

  “Sure,” Eddie quipped. “We find the lamia. Then Mike milks it.” The stairs under his boots were concrete, and he shuffled slowly, trying not to trip himself. Under a glowing green exit sign, he hit a landing and turned.

  “I do?” Mike asked.

  The door at the top of the stairs slammed shut, and the stairwell plunged from shadow into darkness.

  “What’s the matter, Mikey?” Twitch asked. “Boobs are all fine and good until you actually have to touch them?”

  “Don’t call me Mikey,” Mike complained. He sounded like he was at the end of the line. “And don’t leave me. I think I’m alone back here.”

  “No matter what you may say,” Jim sang from somewhere behind Eddie. He sang in a whisper, but in the stairwell his voice boomed, anyway.

  “I always will be true.

  No matter how far away,

  I’ll always be with you.”

  Eddie chuckled. “You in love, Jim?”

  “You said he was a mute,” Irving squeaked.

  “Nah, I said he was cursed,” Eddie reminded the preacher. “Strictly speaking, that wasn’t quite true, either. He’s just trying to avoid unwanted attention.”

  “By singing?” Irving asked. “Like that?”

  “Why don’t you do it more often?” Mike asked. “We could have, like, conversations, instead of you just pointing and looking serious and then Eddie talking all the time.”

  “Do you have any idea how hard it is to have a conversation entirely by singing?” Twitch demanded.

  Eddie bumped his toes into a door at the bottom of the stairs. “Hold on,” he urged the others. “Slow up.”

  “He could make up his own words and put it to music,” Mike suggested. “Kind of scat-singing. Like,” and the bass player burst into sing-song, “hey, Mike, how about you pick this lock for us?”

  “That’s cheating,” Eddie said. “It’s just talking with pitch, and it don’t count.”

  “Why?” Mike pushed. “I mean, if they can’t hear music?”

  “Who’s they?” Irving asked.

  “Uh … Satan,” Mike said. “And those guys.”

  Eddie felt something brush against his feet. He jumped almost out of his skin, and then realized it was probably a mongoose. “Just having a pitch to it doesn’t make a sound music,” Eddie said. He found the door handle, and pulled. This one was locked, too.

  “It doesn’t?” Twitch asked.

  “Rhythm section,” Eddie muttered. “Mike, get up here and open this door.”

  “This from the world’s greatest tambourine player,” Mike grumbled, but down he came. There was grunting and huffing as he stepped on toes and finally tumbled down to the bottom of the steps. “I still have the card,” he said.

  Eddie guided him to the door’s handle.

  “If just pitch or rhythm was enough to block a sound from the Fallen’s hearing,” he pointed out, “they wouldn’t hear machines working, or animal calls, or just about anything else. They’d be practically deaf. It’s gotta be music.”

  “He could have code songs,” Mike persisted. “Like ‘Beat It’ could mean ‘run away’. Or he could sing
‘Eye of the Tiger’ to mean ‘attack.’”

  Eddie shook his head. “I’m gonna let you think about that one on your own, Mike, and tell me why it’s a terrible idea.”

  “I don’t understand,” Irving groaned.

  “You don’t have to,” Eddie said. “Hang on tight to the Nehushtan, and remember how it drove away those crazy-ass half-snake bastards back at your trailer.”

  “Got it,” Mike said, and pulled open the door.

  Eddie dragged Mike with him and slunk out onto the top floor of the Sears. They found themselves behind a mock-up of someone’s front room, with a three-part sofa and chair set and an oval glass coffee table. The floor was dimly lit, only a few sections of its fluorescent tube lighting turned on, and no windows.

  “Home sweet home,” Mike sneered at the furniture and drew his pistol.

  “Don’t knock it,” Eddie shot back. “I miss this stuff.” He saw bodies stacked three deep on the couches and on the floor between them, oozing red from thousands of tiny perforation wounds. They lay in puddles of their own blood, white and drained like slaughtered chickens, but they weren’t dead. They were wiggling.

  He looked away.

  The others filed out behind them onto the floor.

  “Why is the top floor Furniture?” Mike asked. “That just means they have to bring all the floor models up two flights of stairs.”

  “No one impulse buys a bed,” Eddie pointed out. “Or at least, anyone who throws around that kind of money doesn’t shop at Sears.”

  Mike shrugged. “Maybe they got an elevator, anyway.”

  “I hear something,” Twitch said. “It’s rhythmic, so it must not be music.”

  “Does it have pitch, too?” Mike snarked.

  “Ah, now you’re asking really sophisticated questions, and I’m just the drummer.” Twitch sprang into the air and took flight as a falcon. He flapped his silvery wings and shot across the Furniture section of the Sears, dropping into a wide double-stairwell in the center of the floor.

  Jim followed, and the others trailed after the singer. At the stairwell, Jim stopped and looked down. Eddie looked with him, and saw a stack of inflated, life-sized, bowling pin-shaped clowns standing guard over a table of woodscrews. He guessed it might be the junction of Toys and Hardware.

  “Of course I thought he had to be a fairy when I saw him,” Irving muttered. “But thinking a thing and actually seeing it are very different.” The preacher shifted the Nehushtan on his shoulder, looking very out of place in the department store. Eddie chuckled. They all looked out of place.

  “The fairy’s not your problem,” he told the other man. He patted the pole, freeing a falling sift of sand from the ancient wood. “Your problem is that you are our biggest gun. When the fight breaks out, we need to get you into position and unleash the power of your weapon.”

  “We’re not in a tent,” Irving said hesitantly.

  “You kidding?” Eddie gestured at the floor displays all around them. “What is Sears, what is any big box store, if not just a big tent in a bazaar? And you know that the Nehushtan can rain Hell down all over these things. You don’t think it, you know it, because of what you’ve seen.”

  “Faith seems complicated,” Mike said. “I’m glad it’s not me.” He shifted from foot to foot, carefully checking all the corners of the floor as they waited for Twitch to come back.

  “Nothing simpler,” Eddie lied. “And the good news is that we’ve got us a powerhouse here, a man whose faith is true and weapons grade.”

  Mike snorted. “Weapons grade?” He laughed. “Mierda.”

  “It’s true,” Eddie said. “For your faith to be effective against evil, it’s not enough to believe in God. You have to believe in evil, too, and you have to believe that your faith will protect you.”

  “So … vampires …” Mike said slowly.

  “A cross ain’t enough,” Eddie explained. “On the other hand, a cross in the hands of someone who believes in the cross, and believes in vampires, and believes the cross can stop the bloodsuckers … well, sayonara, Nosferatu.” He patted the Nehushtan again. “The Reverend Irving here believes in snake-mutant sons of bitches, and he knows from personal experience that the Nehushtan is an ass-kicking weapon of heavenly vengeance against them, so his faith is exactly the kind we need.”

  “Huh.” Mike scratched himself.

  “Of course, we don’t want you to kill the lamia before we milk her.”

  “I’m not really a reverend,” Irving said.

  “Well, you’re not a Ph.D., either, so I can’t call you doctor.” Eddie snorted. “Besides, I kind of like reverend.” Irving looked shaky, and sounded none too confident. Eddie wanted to shore up the man’s faith before they got back into the thick of it, but he didn’t quite know how.

  “You do it,” Irving said.

  “Can’t.”

  “Why not?” The preacher tried to push the Nehushtan pole into Eddie’s hands and Eddie resisted. “You saw it work just like I did. You know it works. You carry it and I’ll shoot the rifle.”

  Eddie grabbed the pole and shoved it onto Irving’s shoulder, hard. “I’m damned, don’t you get it?” he hissed. “It doesn’t matter how much I believe or what I’ve seen, I sold my soul, and I can never have the gift of faith.”

  Irving looked at Mike.

  “Yeah,” Mike said. “Me too, I think.”

  Phineas Irving sighed heavily.

  “It ain’t that bad,” Eddie urged him on. “Everything I said is true. We know you’ve got faith, and we know what you can do with the Nehushtan.”

  “I choked when the tent fell off,” Irving reminded him. “And suddenly it stopped working, and we were almost eaten.”

  “This time you won’t choke,” Eddie reassured him, and then he pumped the Remington. “Besides, we’re here with you, and we’re armed to the teeth.”

  “I’d still rather it was you holding the pole.”

  “Believe me,” Eddie laughed harshly, “I’d trade places with you in a heartbeat.”

  “What are we going to milk the lamia into?” Mike asked. “I mean, Adrian’s not here, so he can’t … you know …”

  “Breastfeed?” Eddie asked, grateful for the change of subject. Too much thinking wasn’t going to help Phineas Irving at all. He stepped over to a display of kitchen furniture and took a green pebbled plastic pitcher off the top of a finger-smudged black table. “That’ll do,” he judged. “We get that much milk, we can donate the extra to Johns Hopkins or the VA.”

  He heard a clicking sound and looked up. Standing at the top of the stairs, dim light washing his face from the story below, Jim snapped his fingers and hissed in Eddie’s direction.

  “Uh-oh.” Eddie rushed to join the singer of the band.

  Jim pointed.

  The floor of the story below was awash in snakes. They were the normal-sized ones, rattlesnakes and whatever else, but there were hundreds of them. They hissed and slithered over each other and tied themselves in knots like living pretzels, batting the inflated clowns every which way and knocking showers of woodscrews to the floor.

  Eddie felt tired.

  “Dammit,” he sighed. “All I want to do is keep us alive until we can get to Chicago, get a little help from the hoodoo woman, and save our souls. Why’s it have to be so hard?”

  The snakes began to climb the stairs. No sign of the big freaky mutant ones, though. Jim braced himself and Mike came around to join them, pistol ready.

  “Irving,” Eddie hissed, “get over here!”

  Phineas Irving stumbled around to the top of the stairs. He looked like he was in shock, and the Nehushtan on his shoulder shook. “Maybe we should shoot the snakes,” he suggested.

  “Maybe they ain’t heard us yet,” Eddie countered, “so we should try something a little more quiet.”

  “Even Peter sank into the water,” Irving pointed out.

  “Just once, though,” Eddie said optimistically. “The second time out, he was gangbusters
. Should we sing a hymn? It’s gonna have to be soft if we do. Plus,” he pointed at Jim, who stood resolutely pointing his sword at the advancing snakes, “it’ll mean Jim gets to join us, and it’ll make him feel included.”

  “I …”

  “Onward, Christian soldiers,” Eddie started in a whisper, “marching as to war.…”

  Irving closed his eyes and moved his lips along with the music.

  Come on, Eddie thought, you can do this.

  The Nehushtan began to loop and slither on its pole. Eddie crossed his fingers.

  “I’m taking the safety off,” Mike said. “They’re close.”

  “You’ve still got the safety on?” Eddie snapped, incredulous.

  The Nehushtan shook off a veil of sand and coiled like a spring. It stared at Eddie, and its black, beady eyes glittered.

  “You’re doing great, Reverend Irving,” he told the preacher. “Christ, the royal master, leads against the foe.…”

  “Forward into battle see his banners go!” Jim joined in. The boom of his voice filled the Furniture section, even whispering as he was.

  Eddie heard the whoosh of wings, the angry hiss of a snake and a tiny crunch as a serpentine skull was cracked open. Twitch the horse-tailed falcon tossed a bloodied scrap of former snake to the floor and then landed in his human shape, batons in hand.

  “They’re getting ready for a party down there,” the fairy said. He turned and joined Jim, both of them swiping with their weapons at the slow flood of snakes. “An orgiastic one.”

  “Where’s down there?” Mike asked. Jim and Eddie continued to sing softly, as the song reached its chorus. Eddie kept his eyes locked on the preacher’s face, communicating all the faith and confidence and trust he could. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the twinkling red of the Nehushtan’s scales as it shifted about, and he tried not to let himself get distracted.

  Onward, Christian soldiers, marching as to war,

  With the cross of Jesus, going on before.

  “The basement,” Twitch answered. He and Jim were hard pressed by the snakes, slapping them aside and skewering them and stomping them flat. “Kitchenware. Apparently, Apep’s a domestic goddess.”

  Ding!

  “What’s that sound?” Eddie asked, and stopped singing to listen. He looked into the depths of the floor where he thought the sound had come from and saw a light appear, sliding into visibility as the door concealing it opened.