Magic (The Remarkable Adventures of Deets Parker Book 2)

by J. Davis Henry

  She shook her head. The gesture was more a refusal to acknowledge me rather than a misunderstanding of my pantomime.

  I reached into my knapsack for the dictionary. As I leafed through the pages, Andrea started to edge away from me. At that moment, my eyes went right to the word I needed.

  “Espera.” I held up one finger to beg for her time. “Wait. Please… por favor.”

  She took the book from me and glanced through it. She spoke rapidly, angrily. “¿Qué quieres conmigo?”

  I pointed at a word. “Español.” Then next to it, “English. Ingles.”

  “Lo sé.”

  She handed the dictionary back. I pieced together my question, flipping pages as she crossed her arms and ripped me apart with vicious glares. “¿Quien… mono… y… coche? Automóvil?”

  She shook her head, signaling or feigning miscomprehension.

  What did she know about the masked monkey-devil? Had she ever seen Filomena’s eyes glow red? Who was in the Cadillac? Did Monkey Man know Filomena? I wasn’t going to be able to phrase all my questions to Andrea, nor was I sure I’d get answers.

  Continuing to follow the monkey was my best option.

  “Gracias, Andrea. Thanks. Paz.”

  Looking around the corner, I could see two red-robed figures far down the street, a puff of smoke rising above the head of the short devil.

  Andrea screamed my name. Shaking her head back and forth, she yelled, “No, no, no.” Her disdain had vanished, replaced with wide-eyed panic and a quivering voice.

  “Ese mono no es hombre.”

  Whatever she had just said caused her body to shiver in fear. I hesitated at the corner, not wanting to lose sight of the two devil dancers. She grabbed at me, trying to hold me back, obviously pleading for me not to go.

  Why?

  She tore the dictionary from my hand, frantically searched the text to clarify what she wanted me to understand.

  There. She jabbed at a word. I followed her slim, dark finger to her painted fingernail. She cried the word directly into my face, “Monstruo.”

  I didn’t have to read the translation.

  I couldn’t lose track of him. I wanted to know why the monkey-masked stranger had saved my life and what clues he offered to help unravel the enigma that had pulled me into its vortex.

  The street dead-ended, fading to gravel and dirt in a field two blocks away. Monkey Man and Fishhead were crossing the clearing where a black dog playfully harassed a flustered chicken. The chicken flapped away when the dog turned its attention to the two passing figures. The pooch bounded after them, woofing and wagging, harmlessly challenging and teasing the masked dancers with vociferous barking. The mysterious duo ignored its noisy persistence.

  The dog snorted its disapproval, then turned and ran towards where I stood, focusing its attention directly at me.

  Andrea stepped away, incredulous when she saw I still intended to follow after the monster.

  I hurried to the outskirts of town. The dog loped alongside me, reminding me of the spirit beast that had charged across the star-lit meadow in the Poconos. My quarry had crossed the open area and was approaching the edge of a tangled, dark green overgrowth.

  We followed.

  The grasses to each side of the field’s footpath became wilder and taller, pressing in on me, slashing at my face and hands. I slowed as I passed under and into a myriad of leaves, hanging vines, and branches. An air of moldy rot, filled with the sound of buzzing insects and chirping birds, assaulted me. The dog slipped into a dense thicket and disappeared, its snuffling sounds circling around me, now near, now far, as I moved carefully down the narrow jungle path.

  I stopped by a waist-high tree root that partially barricaded my way and cautiously peered around the trunk. As if called to do so, the forest noise stilled itself. The two robed figures had stopped ahead of me, not twenty feet away. Slowly, Monkey Man lifted off his mask and turned towards me. His now uncovered features were as hideous and monkey-like as his papier-mâché mask. Small horns jutted up from above his temples. His hair-covered face had a flattened black nose and sloping forehead. Large, disturbingly intense eyes glittered as his lips twisted outwards to reveal four solid, bone-crunching, saber-like fangs. He was taunting me, challenging my perception of reality, and he knew it. A puff of brown smoke rose above his head. The fish man put an arm on his shoulder and turned him gently around in a gesture that said, “Come on, leave him alone. Let’s move on.”

  They progressed further down the trail, vanishing in the jungle’s play of dappled light and shadow. One particular ray of sunlight pulled my attention to an out-of-place, reflective twinkle of silver. I made out wet footprints muddying the dirt of the path where, in one of the impressions, a large concentration of water hadn’t soaked into the ground yet. The fish man had been standing in that exact spot. Dripping.

  Man, what is going on? The Monster Alley house had inexplicable puddles of liquid in front of one door.

  A dark hand, smelling of earth and flesh and disease seemed to reach out and turn me like the fish man had done moments before with the monkey demon. I could sense serpent’s stirring within an ancient darkness and felt the undiluted presence of the Shadow Creature. It had been a long time since its last visit.

  “Do not follow this path yet.”

  Then the ebony mystery blended into the darkness of the surrounding jungle, and with that, in a moment of revelation, I understood the Shadow Creature had always been here—guarding this route, waiting with the plants and the cacophony of living noise, and the rotten air, and the creatures that swarmed and slithered—constantly aware, always hidden.

  Suddenly, the black dog burst through a small group of banana trees and hurried back down the path to San Francisco de Yare, the town where devils danced and a priest swung smoking incense on a chain while sprinkling water to disperse evil beings.

  Johnny waited for me at the edge of the field, pistol in hand.

  “You crazy fool. When I heard about a woman threatening a gringo with a gun, I knew trouble had found you again. What the hell did you wander off for? You knew that Filomena bitch was around.”

  “Yeah, I got distracted.”

  “Andrea is still in town. She says you followed after two devil dancers. She’s loony, says they were evil spirits. Too much rum and marijuana in that girl’s head.”

  We mixed with the party in the plaza, and despite my nerves being jangled by adrenaline, I managed a few sketches. As I drew, I decided that pastels would be the best medium to capture the richness of color and variety of textures I was encountering in Venezuela. Since I only had colored pencils, I made some quick renderings, put my materials away, and wandered around, buying two masks and some delicious, but unidentifiable, grilled meat from a street vendor. I also bought a twelve-foot long, blow-up vinyl anaconda.

  As Johnny and I were hiking back to the Land Rover, the small bus we had rescued earlier passed us. Andrea sat by one of the windows. I acknowledged her with a slight nod. She averted her eyes, looking straight ahead, not wanting anything to do with a guy who had rubbed her tits, stole her marijuana, couldn’t speak her language, and chased after monsters down dark jungle paths.

  I got drunk that night back in Caracas. In the fuzzy-headed morning, looking down from my room’s balcony, I saw my twelve-foot, inflatable snake floating in the crystal-clear water of the hotel’s pool.

  Chapter 10

  A day and a half later, a living, breathing boa constrictor stretched across the dirt track we were negotiating on the way to Cecilia’s farm.

  Johnny grinned, shaking his head slowly in astonishment. “That snake must be twenty-foot. Can’t even see his head.”

  “Man, which end is his head? I think his tail is in that muck on the left.”

  “What a monster. Can’t get around him in this swampy jungle. We’ll have to run over h
im.”

  “No, man, that’ll kill him.”

  “What do you suggest then, Mister Deets? How anxious are you to see this girlfriend of yours?”

  “He’s not moving. Maybe he’s dead.”

  “No, he’s relaxing in the sun. Could be he just ate something.”

  “I read these dudes just hang out doing nothing for about a month after they stuff themselves.” I reached over and honked the horn. “C’mon, move it. You’re holding up traffic.”

  “We could bump it with our tires. Maybe it’ll motivate him.”

  “Man, that’s one incredible, scary-looking beast. He must be a foot thick.”

  After watching the snake lay immobile for twenty minutes, I stepped out of the vehicle and stomped on the ground to get its attention. “Snake. Wake up, man, we’re trying to get by.”

  “We could light a fire, shove it up next to him.” Johnny pulled out a cigarette, turned off the engine, and joined me.

  “I ain’t getting near that guy. How fast do you think he can move?”

  “In that boggy mush, they’re quicker than you. They catch deer. On this road, not so speedy.”

  “I think this guy’s lazy or stubborn.”

  A shudder ran up the creatures body, and its tail end wriggled, stirring the muddy grass.

  “I think he senses us now that we’re out of the truck.” Johnny opened the Rover’s rear door and rummaged through our supplies. He handed me two tent poles and some rope, then pointed at a pile of short aluminum rods. “Put this together and poke him. I”ll cover you.” He hefted the rifle and a machete and walked closer to the snake.

  “This is nuts. Why don’t we just eat some chow and take a break?”

  “How long do you want to wait?”

  “Until he moves. We could even sleep in the truck and see if he’s here in the morning.”

  “It’s only midday. He may be hungrier in the morning.” Johnny was standing about thirty feet from the snake.

  I approached with the two poles tied together. “How many bullets you think will kill him?”

  He shrugged. “This guy can keep strangling even if I chop his head off. Stick him in the middle. Stay away from either end.”

  The makeshift back scratcher was about nine feet long. Looking for the slightest indication of threatening moves by the giant, I stepped warily towards it, stretching my arms to scrape and bang at the ground with the pole. I inched closer until the tip was about fifteen feet from its black and gray mottled skin, then became petrified with fear and backed away.

  “C’mon Deets, poke him in the balls. We’ll be able to get back to the truck once he starts moving.”

  “I don’t want to piss him off.”

  Before advancing again, I looked for any signs of the snake tensing or getting ready to attack. A slight ripple in the shallow water to the right of the road had me clambering back into the protection of the Rover, Johnny right behind.

  Johnny’s ever-present grin looked more like he was gritting his teeth. “That’s his head. I think he just took a breath of air.”

  “Yeah, I see it. Man, he’s a really scary predicament.”

  Using the telephoto lens of the Nikon, I zoomed in on what appeared to be the boa’s nostrils poking up from where its head lay beneath watery, green slime.

  “Well, now that he’s awake, maybe we can encourage him to move on.”

  Fascinated and nervous, we pulled out our cigarettes, stirred up a canteen of Tang, and sat in the hot vehicle cracking jokes and devising plans to chase away the dangerous snake.

  I flicked my third cigarette into the swampy roadside mud. “Before you start riddling him with bullets, I’m going to get out and try poking at him again. Where’s that plastic blow-up brother of his?”

  “Next to the cans of Spam.”

  I blew up the toy and tied it to the end of the tent poles. Johnny took his position with the weapons, and I forced myself to move within fifteen feet of the constrictor. I jabbed at it, the vinyl snake bouncing against its deadly ribs.

  “Go on. Shoo.”

  The plastic creased whenever I applied pressure and was too unwieldy to strike with, so I slid it on the ground, moving it back and forth along the giant’s body.

  “Deets, you clown, I’ve got to get a shot of this.”

  “Yeah. Headlines—gringo tickles snake before becoming its lunch. Use the Polaroid.”

  After about ten minutes of fruitless prodding, I worked up my courage to get close enough to poke the anaconda with the aluminum. I nudged it tentatively, then pushed. A shudder went through its body, and a rolling motion convulsed from under the water, starting at its head and traversing the entire length of the creature.

  “Thar she blows.” I leaped back, ready to scamper away again.

  When the boa’s shiver completed its route to its tail, the monstrosity had shifted its position farther away from me, but it was still slung completely across the road.

  “Watch out, Deets.”

  I heard a thud. A can of Spam caromed off the snake. Johnny stood with another one in his hand, ready to throw. The reptile shifted again. Johnny threw the blue and yellow can while I carefully stepped further away and shifted my attack to bouncing the blow-up toy on the ground in as threatening a manner as I could.

  A blue-black head rose from the water and slowly maneuvered itself until its hypnotic eyes froze both Johnny and me. Its tongue flicked a number of times, and I understood with horror that it was sizing us up as possible prey. It’s a terrible revelation to look into the eyes of a beast considering to take your life and see it possesses complete confidence in its physical abilities to do so.

  Instinctively, Johnny and I molded into one mind, as if we had been hunting and fighting together since our ancestors had climbed from the same quagmire that the snake still inhabited. We could have retreated to our mobile fortress, but the anaconda’s primitive appraisal of us and our new-found tribal will forged into a battle charge. We yelled and stomped, letting the beast know we were dangerous, not to be ignored. I jumped forward, striking it with the flimsy air-filled toy while Johnny threw more Spam.

  “You’re lucky we didn’t run you over. Beat it, you’re hogging up the whole highway, you ungrateful slug.”

  “Vete de aquí, culebra del diablo.”

  The deadly behemoth slid forward. We attuned ourselves to the slightest variations in its path, making sure it was retreating and not distracting us with one end of its body, only to lash out with the other. Once it had slithered into the water, its motion became whiplike, propelling all of its menace away from us until it disappeared, surrounded by ooze and marsh grass.

  We laughed, loud and gleeful, celebrating our victory with joyful whoops as I danced in a triumphant war circle, shaking my plastic and aluminum lance. Johnny grabbed the camera, and we howled in delight at a Polaroid of me holding an eighteen foot sagging spear in one hand, a can of Spam in the other.

  About ten miles further along the rural lane, I noticed two monkeys in a tree. They sat still in the safety of an island of dense jungle, chewing on some fruit, watching us pass.

  Teresa, wherever you are, there’s a ton of strangeness going on—girls, monkey and fish people, guns. I battled a snake, met a new demon—red eyes and all. It’s been a wild time. Miss you, no matter what direction this trip’s headed in. What’re you up to, I wonder?

  Chapter 11

  As the sun lowered behind the large mountain range to our west, the watery grasslands surrounding us sparkled purple and orange. Johnny pointed at a trail of horse manure.

  I laughed. “Civilization.”

  We came to a slow-moving river where half a dozen men stood, smoking cigarettes and fastening saddles to horses. They greeted us, and once we learned they worked for Señor Gutierrez, Johnny broke out the beer and his grin, talking and joking with t
hem as if he had known them for years. He translated pertinent information to me every once in a while.

  “We can’t cross here. The river is running high. They’re fixing the only bridge and won’t be done for two more days. They’ve got a camp nearby but said we could cross safely about three kilometers upstream. So we’d have to leave this main road, then follow a cattle trail. Carlito here,” he toasted with a beer can in the direction of a pock-marked man about my age, “could show the way and ride with us to the main house.”

  The man acknowledged me with a polite smile beneath a droopy mustache. He took a quick pull at his beer and pointed at my dungarees, cracking a joke that everyone laughed at, except me. I nervously searched their faces to gauge how much of a fool they were making me out to be. When one of the other cowboys poked at Carlito’s hat and sputtered out between guffaws some witticisms that had everyone in an uproar, I relaxed, sensing the kidding wasn’t maliciously aimed at me.

  Johnny then interpreted the clowning around to me, pointing at Carlito’s roped-up, stained pants, and tattered straw hat. “He said he’d show us the way to the ranch if you gave him your blue jeans. To be fair he said he’d give you his pants. Then the other guy said it was a bad deal and would only be worthwhile if Carlito also gave you his old hat and that scraggly-ass belt of his.”

  Carlito guided us across the river, then along a wide dirt track through pastures and cropland until we reached a collection of buildings set in a grove of trees. As Johnny and I approached the front door of the Gutierrez’s residence, I wondered at the absurdity of being invited to their ranch. Cecilia wanted to lose her virginity, while her father thought I could impress rich men with my connections.

  Cecilia hugged me in front of her parents, running her hand along my jaw and cheeks. “Mira, Mamá. Sin barba.” Madame Gutierrez nodded formally, acknowledging that I had honored her request of arriving without the beard but sniffed at the sight of my hair that curled and tangled on my shoulders. Papa’s crushing handshake proclaimed power—over his land, his daughter, and American artists with thoughts other than portrayals of his farm on their mind.