By Bizarre Hands

by Joe R. Lansdale

  Water was right at their feet. Another step and they would have been in it. A bead of sweat trickled from Brian's hair, ran down his nose and fell off. He realized that Clyde was testing him.

  "Basements aren't worth a shit around this part of the country," Clyde said, "except for a few things they're not intended for.''

  "Like what?"

  "You'll find out in plenty of time. Besides, how do I know I can trust you?"

  That hurt Brian, but he didn't say anything. The first rule of being a Superman was to be above that sort of thing. You had to be strong, cool. Clyde would respect that sort of thing.

  Clyde nodded at the water. "That's from last month's storm."

  "Nice place if you raise catfish."

  "Yeah."

  The match went out. And somehow, Brian could sense Clyde's hand behind him, in a position to shove, considering it. Brian swallowed quietly, said very coolly, "Now what?"

  After a long moment, Brian sensed Clyde's hand slip away, heard it crinkle into the pocket of his leather jacket. Clyde said, "Let's go back, unless you want to swim a little. Want to do that?"

  "Didn't bring my trunks. Wouldn't want you to see my wee-wee."

  Clyde laughed. "What's the matter, embarrassed at only having an inch?"

  "Naw, was afraid you'd think it was some kind of big water snake and you'd try to cut it."

  "How'd you know I had a knife?"

  "Just figures."

  "Maybe I like you."

  "Big shit." But it was a big shit to Brian, and he was glad for the compliment, though he wasn't about to let on.

  Clyde's jacket crinkled. Another match flared.

  "Easy turning," Clyde said, "these stairs are narrow, maybe rotten."

  Brian turned briskly, started up ahead of Clyde.

  "Easy, I said."

  Brian stopped. He was just at the edge of the light. He turned, smiled down. He didn't know if Clyde could see his smile in the match light or not, but he hoped he could feel it. He decided to try a little ploy of his own.

  "Easy, hell," he said. "Didn't you bring me down here just to see if I'd panic? To see if those creaky stairs and that water and you putting a hand behind me would scare me?"

  Clyde's match went out. Brian could no longer see him clearly. That made him nervous.

  "Guess that was the idea," Clyde said from the darkness.

  Another match smacked to life.

  "Thought so."

  Brian turned, started up, stepping firmly, but not hurriedly. The stairs rocked beneath his feet.

  It felt good to step into the room's speckled light. Brian sighed softly, took a deep breath. It was a musty breath, but it beat the sour, rotten smell of the basement. He leaned against the wall, waited.

  After what seemed like a long time, Clyde stepped out of the basement and closed the door. He turned to look at Brian, smiled.

  (What nice teeth you have.)

  "You'll do," Clyde said softly. "You'll do."

  Now came the grand tour. Clyde led Brian through rooms stuffed with trash; full of the smell of piss, sweat, sex and dung; through empty rooms, cold and hollow as the inside of a petrified god's heart.

  Rooms. So many rooms.

  Finally the downstairs tour was finished and it was time to climb the stairs and find out what was waiting behind those doors, to look into the room filled with light.

  They paused at the base of the stairs. Brian laid a hand on Clyde's shoulder.

  "How in hell did you come by all this?" he asked.

  Clyde smiled.

  "Is it yours?" Brian asked.

  "All mine," Clyde said. "Got it easy. Everything I do comes easy. One day I decided to move in and I did."

  "How did you—"

  "Hang on, listen; You see, this was once a fancy apartment house. Had a lot of old folks as customers, sort of an old fossil box. I needed a place to stay, was living on the streets then. I liked it here, but didn't have any money. So I found the caretaker. Place had a full-time one then. Guy with a crippled leg.

  "I say to this gimp, I'm moving into the basement—wasn't full of water then—and if he don't like it, I'll push his face in for him. Told him if he called the cops I'd get him on account of I'm a juvenile and I've been in and out of kiddie court so many times I got a lunch card. Told him I knew about his kids, how pretty that little daughter of his was, how pretty I thought she'd look on the end of my dick. Told him I'd put her there and spin her around on it like a top. I'd done my homework on the old fart, knew all about him, about his little girl and little boy.

  "So, I scared him good. He didn't want any trouble and he let me and the cunt I was banging then move in."

  A spark moved in Clyde's eyes. "About the cunt, just so you know I play hardball, she isn't around anymore. She and the brat she was going to have are taking an extended swimming lesson."

  "You threw her in the bay?"

  Clyde tossed his head at the basement.

  "Ah," Brian said, and he felt an erection, a real blue-veiner. Something warm moved from the tips of his toes to the base of his skull, foamed inside his brain. It was as if his bladder had backed up and filled his body with urine. Old Clyde had actually killed somebody and had no remorse, was in fact proud. Brian liked that. It meant Clyde was as much of a Superman as he expected. And since Clyde admitted the murder to him, he knew he trusted him, considered him a comrade, a fellow Superman.

  "What happened next?" Brian asked. It was all he could do not to lick his lips.

  "Me and the cunt moved in. Couple guys I knew wanted to come too, bring their cunts along. I let them. Before long there's about a half dozen of us living in the goddamned basement. We got the caretaker to see we got fed, and he did it too on account of he was a weenie, and we kept reminding him how much we like little-girl pussy. I got to where I could describe what we wanted to do to her real good."

  "Anyway, that went on for a while, then one day he doesn't show up with the grab. Found out later that he'd packed up the dumpling wife, the two ankle-biters and split. So I say to the guys—by the way, don't ask no cunt nothing, they got opinions on everything and not a bit of it's worth stringy dogshit, unless you want to know the best way to put a tampon in or what color goes well with blue . . . so, I say to the guys, this ain't no way to live, and we start a little storm trooper campaign. Scared piss out of some of the old folks, roughed up an old lady, nailed her dog to the door by its ears."

  "Didn't the cops come around?"

  "Yeah. They came and got us on complaints, told us to stay out. But what could they do? No one had seen us do a damn thing except those complaining, and it was just our word against theirs. They made us move out though.

  "So we went and had a little talk with the manager, made a few threats, got a room out of the deal and started paying rent. By this time we had the cunts hustling for us, bouncing tail on the streets and bringing in a few bucks. Once we start paying rent, what can they say? But we keep up the storm trooper campaign, just enough to keep it scary around here. Before long the manager quit and all the old folks hiked."

  "What about the owner?"

  "He came around. We paid the rent and he let us stay. He's a slumlord anyway. It was the old folks kept the place up. After they left, it got pretty trashy, and this guy wasn't going to put out a cent on the place. He was glad to take our money and run. We were paying him more than all the old codgers together. The pussy business was really raking in the coins. And besides, he don't want to make us mad, know what I mean?"

  "Some setup."

  "It's sweet all right. Like being a juvenile. The courts are all fucked up on that one. They don't know what to do with us, so they usually just say the hell with us. It's easier to let us go than to hassle with us. After you're eighteen life isn't worth living. That's when the rules start to apply to us too. Right now we're just misguided kids who'll straighten out in time."

  "I hear that."

  "Good. Let's go upstairs. Got some people I want you to meet
."

  "Yeah?"

  "A girl I want you to fuck."

  "Yeah?"

  "Yeah. Got this one cunt that's something else. Thirteen years old, a runaway or something. Picked her up off the street about a month ago. Totally wiped out in the brain department, not that a cunt's got that much brain to begin with, but this one is a clean slate. But, man, does she have tits. They're big as footballs. She's as good a fuck as a grown woman."

  "This going to cost me?"

  "You kidding? You get what you want, no charge—money anyway."

  "What's that mean?"

  "I want your soul, not your money."

  Brian grinned. "So what are you, the devil? Thought you were Dracula."

  "I'm both of them."

  "Do I have to sign something in blood?"

  Clyde laughed hysterically. "Sure, that's a good one. Blood. Write something in fucking blood. I like you, Brian, I really do."

  So Brian saw the dark rooms upstairs, and finally the one with the light and the people.

  The room stank. There was a mattress on the floor and there was a nude girl on the mattress and there was a nude boy on the girl and the girl was not moving but the boy was moving a lot.

  On the other side of the mattress a naked blond girl squatted next to a naked boy. The girl had enormous breasts and dark brown eyes. The boy was stocky and square-jawed. They lifted their heads as Clyde and Brian came in, and Brian could see they were stoned to the max. The two smiled at them in unison, as if they had but one set of facial muscles between them.

  The boy riding the girl grunted, once, real loud. After a moment he rolled off her smiling, his penis half-hard, dripping.

  The girl on the mattress still did not move. She lay with her eyes closed and her arms by her sides.

  "This is Loony Tunes," Clyde said, pointing to the boy who had just rolled off the girl. "This is Stone," he said, pointing to the stocky boy. "If he talks, I've never heard it." He did not introduce either girl. "This is all we got around here right now, cream of the crop."

  The girl on the mattress still had not moved.

  The one called Loony Tunes laughed once in a while, for no apparent reason.

  Clyde said, "Go ahead and tend to your rat killing, me and Brian got plans." Then he snapped his fingers and pointed to the nude girl with the big breasts and the silly smile.

  She stood up, wavering a bit. With ten pounds and something to truly smile about, she might have been pretty. She looked like she needed a bath.

  Clyde held out his hand. She came around the mattress and took it. He put an arm around her waist.

  The one called Stone crawled on top of the girl on the mattress.

  She still did not move.

  Brian could see now that her eyes were actually only half-closed and her eyeballs were partly visible. They looked as cool and expressionless as marbles.

  Stone took hold of his sudden erection and put it in her.

  She still did not move.

  Stone began to grunt.

  Loony Times laughed.

  She still did not move.

  "Come on," Clyde said to Brian, "the next room."

  So they went out of there, the big-eyed girl sandwiched between them.

  There was a small mattress in the closet in the next room, and Clyde, feeling his way around in the dark with experienced ease, pulled it out. He said, "Keeping in practice for when I quit paying the light bill, learning to be a bat."

  "I see," Brian said. The girl leaned against him. She muttered something once, but it made no sense. She was so high on nose candy and cheap wine she didn't know where she was or who she was. She smelled like mildewed laundry.

  After Clyde had tossed the mattress on the floor, he took his clothes off, called them over. The girl leaned on Brian all the way across the room.

  When they were standing in front of Clyde, he said, "This is the big-titted, thirteen-year-old I told you about. Looks older, don't she?" But he didn't wait for Brian to answer. He said loudly to the girl, "Come here."

  She crawled on the mattress. Brian took his clothes off. They all lay down together. The mattress smelled of dirt, wine and sweat.

  And that night Brian and Clyde had the thirteen-year-old, and later, when Brian tried to think back on the moment, he would not be able to remember her face, only that she was blond, had massive breasts and dark eyes like pools of fresh-perked coffee, pools that went down and down into her head like wet tunnels to eternity.

  She was so high they could have poked her with knives and she would not have felt it. She was just responding in automaton fashion. Clyde had it in her ass and Brian had it in her mouth, and they were pumping in unison, the smell of their exertion mingling with hers, filling the room.

  The girl was slobbering and choking on Brian's penis and he was ramming it harder and harder into her mouth, and he could feel her teeth scraping his flesh, making his cock bleed, and it seemed to him that he was extending all the way down her throat, all the way through her, and that the head of his penis was touching Clyde's and Clyde's penis was like the finger of God giving life to the clay form of Adam, and that he was Adam, and he was receiving that spark from the Holy On High, and for the power and the glory he was grateful; made him think of the Frankenstein monster and how it must have felt when its creator threw the switch and drove the power of the storm through its body and above the roll of the thunder and the crackling flash of lightning Dr. Frankenstein yelled at the top of his lungs, "It's alive!"

  Then he and Clyde came in white-hot-atomic-blast unison and in Brian's mind it was the explosive ending of the old world and the Big Bang creation of the new . . .

  Only the sound of panting now, the pleasant sensation of his organ draining into the blond's mouth.

  Clyde reached out and touched Brian's hand, squeezed his fingers, and Clyde's touch was as cold and clammy as the hand of death.

  Clyde drove Brian home. Brian stole silently into the house and climbed the stairs. Once in his room he went to the window to look out. He could hear Clyde's '66 Chevy in the distance, and though it was a bright night and he could see real far, he could not see as far as Clyde had gone.

  And later:

  back at The House the girl Clyde and Brian had shared would start to wail and fight invisible harpies in her head, and Clyde would take her to the basement for a little swim. The body of the girl on the mattress would follow suit. Neither managed much swimming;

  and there would be a series of unprecedented robberies that night all over the city;

  and in a little quiet house near Galveston Bay, an Eagle Scout and honor student would kill his father and rape his mother;

  and an on-duty policeman with a fine family and plenty of promotion to look forward to would pull over to the curb on a dark street and put his service revolver in his mouth and pull the trigger, coating the back windshield with brains, blood and clinging skull shrapnel;

  and a nice meek housewife in a comfortable house by Sea Arama would take a carving knife to her husband's neck while he slept; would tell police later that it was because he said he didn't like the way she'd made the roast that night, which was ridiculous since he'd liked it fixed exactly that same way the week before.

  All in all, it was a strange night in Galveston, Texas. A lot of dogs howled.

  THE FAT MAN AND THE ELEPHANT

  For Pat LoBrutto

  The signs were set in relay and went on for miles. The closer you got to the place the bigger they became. They were so enthusiastic in size and brightness of paint it might be thought you were driving to heaven and God had posted a sure route so you wouldn't miss it. They read:

  WORLD'S LARGEST GOPHER!

  ODDITIES!

  SEE THE SNAKES! SEE THE ELEPHANT!

  SOUVENIRS!

  BUTCH'S HIGHWAY MUSEUM AND EMPORIUM!

  But Sonny knew he wasn't driving to heaven. Butch's was far from heaven and he didn't want to see anything but the elephant. He had been to the Museum and Empor
ium many times, and the first time was enough for the sights—because there weren't any.

  The World's Largest Gopher was six feet tall and inside a fenced-in enclosure. It cost you two dollars on top of the dollar admission fee to get in there and have a peek at it and feel like a jackass. The gopher was a statue, and it wasn't even a good statue. It looked more like a dog standing on its haunches than a gopher. It had a strained, constipated look on its homely face, and one of its two front teeth had been chipped off by a disappointed visitor with a rock.

  The snake show wasn't any better. Couple of dead, stuffed rattlers with the rib bones sticking through their taxidermied hides, and one live, but about to go, cotton mouth who didn't have any fangs and looked a lot like a deflated bicycle tire when it was coiled and asleep. Which was most of the time. You couldn't wake the sonofabitch if you beat on the glass with a rubber hose and yelled FIRE!

  There were two main souvenirs. One was the armadillo purses, and the other was a miniature statue of the gopher with a little plaque on it that read: I SAW THE WORLD'S LARGEST GOPHER AT BUTCH'S HIGHWAY MUSEUM AND EMPORIUM OFF HIGHWAY 59. And the letters were so crowded on there you had to draw mental slashes between the words. They sold for a dollar fifty apiece and they moved right smart. In fact, Butch made more money on those (75C profit per statue) than he did on anything else, except the cold drinks which he marked up a quarter. When you were hot from a long drive and irritated about actually seeing the World's Largest Gopher, you tended to spend money foolishly on soda waters and gopher statues.

  Or armadillo purses. The armadillos came from Hank's Armadillo Farm and Hank was the one that killed them and scooped their guts out and made purses from them. He lacquered the bodies and painted them gold and tossed glitter in the paint before it dried. The 'dillos were quite bright and had little zippers fixed into their bellies and a rope handle attached to their necks and tails so you could carry them upside down with their sad, little feet pointing skyward.

  Butch's wife had owned several of the purses. One Fourth of July she and the week's receipts had turned up missing along with one of her 'dillo bags. She and the purse and the receipts were never seen again. Elrod down at the Gulf station disappeared too. Astute observers said there was a connection.