Billy Purgatory and the Curse of the Satanic Five

by Freeman, Jesse James

  “Good. I gotta skate out of here. My Pop is gonna be mad if I don't get home.” Billy was happy to have a plan again.

  “You're far from your home. I don't think that thing can get you back. Such a silly thing that it is.”

  Billy's mission was suddenly dashed — she had just insulted the board. “It's not silly. It's a skateboard, every kid should have one.”

  “I've never seen one before.”

  Billy couldn't get his aching head around that one. “What do you and the other kids do around here, then?”

  This is when she looked away for the first time from his eyes. “We survive.”

  “Am I at the zoo?”

  “No, you're in Africa.”

  “I was afraid you were gonna tell me things were weirder.”

  Billy pushed himself to where he was sitting up, and this time she let him. “I'm an American kid, we're stupid in geology. I don't even know where Africa is.”

  “Geography,” she corrected. “You're across the world from America. A great ocean is between my home and yours.”

  Billy stretched forward, and it was hard to do so. He took hold of his board like it was a security blankie. “I'm totally gonna look at some maps when I get back to school.”

  Billy looked over at the medical kit, then found where she had bandaged the cuts and bruises on his legs, along with a few on his arm. This girl was like a doctor, but she was maybe ten, like him. Chicks must be smarter in Africa.

  “Hey, so…” Billy paused. “What's your name?”

  “Imena,” she answered as she closed up the medical supplies.

  “You're just a kid like me, but you know all this medicine stuff. How come?”

  “You learn fast over here, and my parents were doctors.”

  “They just work on the grown-ups?”

  “They no longer live.” She lingered on the lid of the medical kit. “The wind took them.”

  Billy looked out to the fire, sorry he'd stuck his wheels in his mouth. “My mom's gone too.”

  They both had a minute, then looked at one another again. Imena began to spread a salve over Billy's black eye.

  “What is your name?” she finally asked. Billy realized he hadn't even thought to introduce himself on his own. He'd been too fascinated by Imena.

  “I'm Billy Purgatory,” he said, proud as ever.

  “Such a strange name.”

  “It's a strange world, dollface.”

  Billy stood on shaky legs when she was finished with his eye. He figured he was as bandaged and patched up as he was gonna get, and made his way outside to the fire. Imena followed quietly.

  Billy noticed first that Zeus, the monkey with the spears, was hanging out by a tree stump, staring off into the fire and smoking a cigar. Beyond his puffing short-stack body, the villagers had come to sit around the big fire.

  An old fellow with the craziest beard Billy had ever seen was telling a story. Everyone was listening to him go on and following the lines made between the firelight and darkness surrounding them all.

  Billy knew enough about things to figure out this was a witch doctor. Imena would tell him later the proper word was a Shaman. Billy liked witch doctor better, but no use splitting hairs on a rhino's rump.

  There wasn't any TV and everyone was getting into the story, so Billy did too.

  “When there was no world, God sat in darkness. God used the inky night like clay to make the earth. He did his work blind, because until he was finished, he wanted nobody to see what he was making.

  “God made all that you see. He made the animals, and the trees, and the rocks. Nothing within the world cloak came to be that was not of his touch, his slash, his breath. God made everything, yes, but he did not make the place they call Wind Hill.”

  The witch doctor pointed to a far off, irregularly shaped mountain across the plain.

  “You see, Man made this place. He carried the stones for many generations and piled them high. He laid the top smooth and with a high crest that dipped at an angle, like the quarter moon. To climb to the highest peak was treacherous at best. Man meant to run down the cliff as fast as he could. Much faster than the beasts of the savannah.”

  Billy watched Zeus take a long drag off his cigar, then pull a small bottle of whiskey from the pack at his feet.

  “When God was finished with his work, he sparked the firebox of the brightest coal. This became Mother Sunshine. He looked over everything he had made. Then he happens to see Wind Hill and he can't remember making this place at all. So God comes to the first men and asks, ‘What is this place that sits among my mountains that I did not make with my own hands? Do you think that you are like me and can add to my perfect earth?’ The first men point to the sky. Even though the world was new, and they had yet to tread much upon it, to stomp the land under their feet, they were already unsatisfied with their place in it.”

  Zeus got a good snicker out of this part of the story; Imena gave him a foul look to quiet him. Zeus went back to his smoking, keeping his chuckles to himself.

  The Shaman continued his tale. “‘We've built this high place,’ said the first men, ‘so that we might run into the wind and lift our arms and fly into the air like the birds. The ground is no place for man. We mean to sail high and to warm our bodies in flight hovering about the stars.’ God laughed at them, ‘Do not try this, for you have labored for nothing. Man's place is not with the birds: he is to be master of the ground. To climb so high and flap your arms is not for you.’ Then God went away to laugh himself into slumber; after all, his many labors had provided only jokes from men.

  “The first ones of men stood atop the peak of Wind Hill and stared down the high cliff they had made. A thousand feet and one was the distance to the rocks below. Man is foolish and did not listen to God. They found the first tall fast man of the tribe and the elders chanted him on:

  “‘Spread your arms and steal God's wings.’

  “The tall one ran faster than a man had ever run before or since. He leapt for the clouds and spread his arms like a bird kissing a breeze.”

  Zeus laughed audibly this time, knowing what was coming from Man's experiment.

  The witch doctor made a crash of his hands, coming together loudly over the fire like a thunderclap.

  “Splat!” Zeus couldn't resist and took another pull off his bottle of rye.

  “Many generations,” continued the witch doctor, “and the skulls continue to pile up at the base of Wind Hill.”

  Zeus offered Billy the bottle and Billy looked around quick, then reached to take it from the drunk monkey. Imena cut her dark eyes to Billy and caught him in the act. Her expression of disapproval made Billy pull back his hand. The monkey shrugged and kept drinking.

  “To this day,” said the witch doctor, “the descendants of the first men still live in the old caves at the bottom of Wind Hill. They still search in vain for the one who will one day take flight and prove God wrong. God doesn't care though; he sleeps still, a smile on his face. ‘Silly man,’ God dreams, ‘none are birds but birds.’”

  The lull in the story caused contemplation among the tribe around the fire, and a question from the mouth of Billy Purgatory, “Hey monkey, what's that crazy guy going on and on about?”

  Zeus took another swig. “Silly man.”

  Billy shook his head; it still didn't make sense. Billy wasn't as focused on the fable then as he would be later. “You know how to get out of Africa?” Billy asked Zeus.

  Zeus looked back to Billy with a twinkle in his drunk eyes and blew a smoke ring Imena's way. “How'd you get lost over here anyway, kid?”

  Imena must have decided to let them talk man to monkey, because she gave Billy one last look and walked back to her hut.

  “Vampires were chasing me. Then this monster that smelled like Bufford's piss jar snatched me and did some magic trick junk.”

  “Sounds more like science and an undead temporal anomaly to me.” The monkey puffed his cigar.

  “Yeah well,
I don't understand all that fancy zoo talk. So whatever you say.”

  “I gotta hand it to ya. You're taking talking to a monkey pretty well. It freaked most of this bunch out the first time I rolled into village square and asked them who I was gonna have to smack up to get a drink.”

  Billy looked over at him. “Are monkeys not supposed to be able to talk?”

  “It's chimpanzee and I haven't always been one. They call me Zeus.”

  “Yeah, that's what the doctor girl said.” Billy was sitting facing Zeus now, holding his board in his lap. “You think they'd have mentioned in school that monkeys can't talk.”

  “To be fair, they probably didn't feel like they had to come right out and say it, kid.”

  “It's not a big deal, really. Pop has a talking chicken in our backyard.”

  Zeus put his hands up. “Okay, that's just cuckoo.”

  “Anyhow, you know how to get me back to America?”

  Zeus was looking at Billy's skateboard. “You roll around on that thing? It sure is sparkly for a hunk of wood.”

  “Really?” Billy looked down at it. To him, it looked like a dull, banged up piece of wood with wheels and tape on it. “I don't see sparkly. To me, it looks rather calm and understated. Sort of an earthen palate, but with rich overcast burnishing.”

  Billy looked back up at Zeus, who just stared at him funny.

  “I don't know a lot of smart talk, unless it has to do with skateboard finishes.”

  “Yeah okay, so I'm gonna go knock off the rest of this bottle and pass out over by the compost pile.” Zeus pulled himself up on unsure primate legs.

  “I thought monkeys slept in trees?”

  Zeus was wandering off into the night, a trail of cigar smoke following him. “Oh yeah, good idea. We'll talk about getting you back home tomorrow, kid.”

  Billy watched him and the spears slung over his shoulder fade into black. He wasn't entirely convinced that monkeys were any smarter than chickens, but Zeus definitely had something the chicken lacked.

  Style.

  III.

  A fire burned also in the caves beneath Wind Hill. Mostly embers, it sent a stingy trail of blue smoke up through the crack in the rocky dome of the roof. The High Elder of the first one's descendants sat in quiet meditation, watching the life of it all burn away as the charred pit joined the night, and together would grow cold.

  The pictographs which lined the walls sparred with the dark and the last flicker of it, all causing them to become cartoon cells in shallow but fluid movements. Stories from the past cut out long ago, left to languish in a world where little magic remained.

  The Elder grew as tired as the day had, and he too would give in to the dreams brought to him. The cave was a home unfulfilled, littered with empty promises made long ago by his ancestors to a god who mocked them by his ignoring countenance.

  More than anything, he was bored with it all. Bored with this world, and not up to the task of any more empty promises.

  Or so he thought, as his eyes fluttered and barely fought off sleep.

  Shadow brought a gift though; some things in the cave were more than the dancing drawings of the old ones. A bruised and creeping jackal, wild dog of the African plain. It stayed low and made simple, but precise motions towards the last of the fire-dance.

  The High Elder was intrigued in spite of himself. This one should be out hunting; if she was here now, then something strange was surely afoot.

  Something new.

  “What have you brought your master, She-beast?”

  The She-jackal limped stealthily to the far wall. It was decorated with a painting of the changing seasons and the glimmering stars — an odd representation of the zodiac, with symbols ancient and near forgotten.

  The High Elder watched as she pressed her cold nose to the stone. Just above her snout, she indicated a certain figure upon the larger cosmic wheel of life.

  The Elder leaned close, then crawled halfway the distance between him and the picture wheel carved into the stone. He was too excited to waste time in the motion of standing — more than anything, he slid the rest of the way across the smooth rock floor.

  The figure indicated was that of a boy, sitting atop a plank with a starfield to his back.

  The High Elder watched the jackal as she raised a paw to the smoke-escape in the roof. Stars painted the night and had full hold of the sky.

  The old man's eyes narrowed and he looked back to the boy on the wheel picture. “You will take me to him,” the Elder commanded of her. “This will please me.”

  The She-jackal took her eyes from the stars and met his gaze as the last of the fire clung to life.

  “Pleased enough to change me back?” the jackal asked.

  The High Elder was already standing and going for the horn to call up the clan. He paused at the question and gave a smile to the dark, which he had erased from his mouth, before he turned seriously back to the She-jackal's eyes.

  “Not nearly that pleased yet, my wife,” the High Elder said, as the fire gave the room last rites.

  IV.

  Billy Purgatory sat away from the fire under the only tree in the village. The wind blew the handle of the pump, which dumped into a round cistern nearby. The clanging wasn't loud, but it was the high pitch of metal against metal, and Billy knew that he wouldn't be able to sleep if he stayed out here all night.

  Even though he was so tired.

  Billy looked up at the moon and wondered if Pop had noticed he was missing yet. Billy figured that he wouldn't catch on to his absence until the morning, when he didn't hear Billy unclacking all the locks on the front door so he could skate off to school.

  Billy figured he had until tomorrow afternoon to make it back to town before Pop got worried about him. He hoped that Pop wasn't going to be mad at him. Billy hadn't done this on purpose, and he hadn't had much choice. He was caught between a vampire master with a mechanical arm and a zombie with a space control panel on his chest. Billy had to press that button, or he was gonna get ripped apart by both of them all at once.

  Lots of stuff wanted to rip him apart lately. Jamming that control box turned out to be an easy way out of ground creepo.

  Wait? Was that teleporter jazz what's-it a time-machi..?

  Billy caught the sound of Zeus’ snoring in his other ear. Whatever that computer thing was, worrying about it wasn't gonna help him get any sleep.

  Billy started to stand up and wondered if where he was might not be the big problem. Maybe it had a lot to do with when he was?

  Billy looked up at the stars again; you sure could see them good here. He put his hands behind his head and stared into a million tiny twinkles. His gaze wasn't unobstructed for long.

  Imena came into the frame then, with the hunched shadow behind her and holding her tight. One of the shadow's hands was over her mouth, and the other held a rusty bladed dagger across her throat.

  Billy jumped up, board in hand.

  “Let her go!”

  He took a step back and raised his board to swing at the tribesmen's pebble-pot, but once again found himself to be outmatched.

  They had come upon the village quietly, and they had brought a lot of shadows with them. Imena kicked and screamed, and her eyes were serious and scared when she looked over to Billy. The village proved to be overtaken — men trapped in their homes with spears pointing into the doors at their children's sleeping throats.

  Billy looked to the tallest among them, the one with the fanciest robe with the gold trim. He was the only one with shoes, tennis shoes, like he was some track star from Billy's side of the world. He was in way too good a mood for Billy to like the guy, and he looked to the boy now with the skateboard raised with a spark in his eye and a song in his voice.

  “They call you Purgatory, right? I am the High Elder of Wind Hill. You don't know me, but I know you. Your picture is on my wall.”

  “Yeah, it'll last longer.” Billy felt that joke fall flat before he got half of it out. Imena's eyes imp
lored him to do something. Anything.

  That Elder guy just laughed. “Tonight, you fly. We spit into God's eye, yes?”

  Billy grimaced. “I'm about to use your neck like a ladder and climb up your head, so I can board-jack that goofy smile off your face.”

  The High Elder laughed loudly this time, big honking laughs. “I like your spirit. You like this girl who bandaged you?”

  Imena struggled and kicked at nothing, but oddly seemed genuinely interested in the answer.

  Billy said nothing though.

  The Elder kept trash talking, “I'm going to seal her in her little hut with the rest of the people and burn this village. That's no way to treat a pretty girl now, is it?”

  Imena kicked him then; she got his knee good and temporarily did the job of making him frown in pain.

  The Elder seemed like he might be getting pissed off then. “I will enjoy doing it even. The burning. She is as much a nuisance to me as her parents were. So you make the decision easy for me. You won't fly, then I torch this place and make roast'mallows.”

  Billy started to make his move, spurred on by Zeus springing up out of a drunken haze, finally. Zeus barely got to his monkey toes when the She-jackal pounced from darkness and pushed him back to his dirty bed.

  “My jackal, she remembers you. She doesn't like monkeys. Well, she likes to eat them. But who doesn't think monkey is tasty?”

  Zeus stared up in a haze, helpless for that moment.

  Billy put his board under his arm then. “Just stop it!” Billy yelled to them all. “I'll fly.”

  The High Elder beamed and snapped his fingers. The shadowed cultist with him dropped Imena from his grip.

  “Come along now, Purgatory. Your friends will be safe. We have much flying to do. God will be angry with you.”

  Billy started to follow, but he felt Imena grab his arm.

  “Billy, didn't you listen to the story? What the Shaman said? All they send down that cliff crash on the rocks. You will split your skull open and die.”

  Her fear for his life was genuine, and Billy appreciated that, but he still shook her off him as he kept moving.