Billy Purgatory: I am the Devil Bird

by Jesse James Freeman

  The bus pulled up and Artie waited for all the cool kids to get on first. Billy was already standing back on his board and thinking. Could Pop have really gone away? Maybe he went to go find Billy's Mom.

  Artie waved from the cracked bus window and called down to Billy, “I'll see you in school. It'll be nice to have someone to talk to again.”

  “No dice, Wusenkrantz.” Billy kicked down the sidewalk, “I gotta find my Pop.”

  Chapter 5

  Boxcars

  After a whole day of searching (and skating), Billy hadn't seen one sign of Pop or Anastasia. The sun had checked out for the time being and Billy was tired, but he didn't want to go home and hang out in his house all alone. Billy knew he had to come up with the best plan he'd ever come up with.

  Billy had made the executive decision that Pop wasn't anywhere in his town so he was going to jump a freight train. Billy had seen the hobos hanging out by the train yards and figured if they could barely walk a straight line and do it then so could he.

  He wasn't sure exactly where the train was going, but he knew that his Pop had come from a little place called Piney Point, which was up north a ways. That's how Pop had described where it was: “Up a ways”. Pop also liked to use the word “Yonder.”

  Billy Purgatory was a man with a plan.

  Billy missed the first train, but he almost got it and didn't bang up his knee too bad. His second attempt was successful, and he grabbed onto the handle of an open boxcar door and swung himself up. The entire experience was probably the coolest thing he'd ever done.

  Aside from that time he jumped over that van in the alley behind the Chinese Restaurant. That was cooler because it involved landing in a dumpster.

  Billy was busy plotting out the angles in his head and how the next train he jumped was going to involve a tree and a ramp and he'd be on his skateboard. He was so busy that it wasn't until she sat down next to him in the doorway of the train car and hung her legs over the side just like him that he realized he wasn't alone.

  Anastasia just looked out at the dark country and didn't say anything for a long, long time.

  She wore jeans and thrift store sneakers and a blue T-shirt with a faded decal advertising a place called TK's Records and Tapes that Billy had never heard of before. The equally faded decal on the back was in the shape of that plastic piece you stick into the center of old 45 records.

  Billy remembered not to stare and watched grain elevators fly by his view of the night before he finally said, “So, you want my help after all?”

  “No,” Anastasia said simply. “You just happen to be running away on the same train I am.”

  “I'm not running away from nothing.”

  She looked over his way and the wind caught her black hair. “Then what are you doing on a train in the middle of the night?”

  “I'm gonna ride the rails, sister, and go from town to town looking for my Pop.”

  Anastasia sat at the door of the train boxcar as the landscape flew by her and Billy Purgatory. The wind kept blowing her hair into her eyes and she kept alternating between not caring and brushing it off to the side furthest from him. It gave Billy odd opportunities to glance at her: she was obscured by the night mostly, but occasionally he got a good look at her when her black hair cooperated. It was almost like she didn't want him to be able to see her clearly.

  “You don't remember what happened to you the other night, do you?” She asked this staring out at the rushing trees. She really was good at avoiding his eyes.

  Billy pretended to avoid hers. “I remember saving you from the forces of darkness, sweet'ums.” Billy considered that probably wasn't the best response he could have given, but he had to run with it.

  She was looking at him again. “You didn't save me that time. I told you to run. Remember?”

  “What about the first time? I guess I didn't save ya then either?”

  “You came in handy the first time.”

  Billy looked at her like she was crazier than the fortuneteller Old Lady. “How come you get kidnapped by vampires so much?”

  Anastasia ignored his question and changed the subject. “So you don't remember the monster taking you?”

  “What took me?” Billy asked. “You mean that ugly sack-a-guts that poofed out of nowhere and ran all the vampires off? I don't remember it taking me anywhere.”

  Billy didn't remember what happened after it grabbed him and he blacked out. He was too cool to tell her that, though.

  “What kind of monster is that thing anyhow?”

  Anastasia did that thing with her hands then. It was kind of her thing in Billy's mind because for the hour they'd been sitting there she always cupped her hands and looked down into them when she talked all serious like.

  “Science and magic,” she began. “You were caught between them. The Vampire Master and the Demon that took you.”

  “Demon?” Billy didn't believe in demons.

  Anastasia looked up from her hands but not towards Billy; she stared into a blinking red light on a pole beside the tracks as they passed. “Well, it's not a demon. It's a creature that should be dead, but vampires call it a demon because to them it's evil.”

  Billy ran his fingers over the wheels of his skateboard and listened to them spin in the dark. “And vampires ain't evil, sugar?”

  Anastasia didn't seem to have an answer for that, or didn't care to answer.

  “That would make it a zombie then.” Billy kept the chatter moving on.

  “Undead temporal displacement anomaly,” Anastasia corrected.

  Billy didn't even listen to any of that, “A zombie that travels through time and space.”

  Anastasia shrugged. “If you insist.”

  “It's a Time Zombie.” Billy was proud.

  “That's a stupid name.” She rolled her eyes at Billy.

  “Why? It's what it is.”

  “You shouldn't refer to it so flippantly.” Anastasia crossed her arms.

  “You're just mad you didn't come up with it first.”

  “No, I'm not.”

  “Yeah,” smiled Billy. “You kinda are.”

  “Call it whatever dumb name makes you happy.”

  “It's a cool name.” Billy let it roll off the tongue,

  “Time Zombieeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.”

  It echoed in the boxcar and that made Billy smile wider than a church door.

  Anastasia uncrossed her arms finally. “Where did it take you? It's very important that you remember.”

  “Where did WHAT take me?” Billy wasn't letting this go.

  “I'm not calling it that.” The girl crossed her arms. “We're being serious now. You vanished from the baseball field with it. You've been gone more than a week.”

  “I'm not telling you nothing. What you're saying is crazy anyhow. I haven't been gone any time at all. We just met that one time, right?” Billy tried to remember how many nights ago that had been and couldn't remember anything about disappearing with this Time Zombie dude.

  Anastasia started again with her questions. “What did you do last night?”

  “I came to the baseball field to save you from vampires. You told me to run but wouldn't get outta the way so I had to smack you in the face.” Billy still felt bad about the smacking part. It was wrong to hit people, most especially girls.

  Anastasia shook her head no.

  Billy was pretty sure vampires and other monsters were what had happened last night. Then again, he remembered that dream with the Devil Bird and the mountain. “Barbecued?”

  “No, Billy,” Anastasia said sternly. “That was a week ago.”

  “How do you know where or when I don't barbecue?”

  “Because I followed you and I've been watching you.”

  Billy straightened from his slouch. “You've been watching me, really?”

  “I didn't know who to trust. The vampires want something from the Time…you know. Anyway, I didn't know if you were involved, until the second time I saw you on the baseba
ll field.”

  Billy asked her point blank, “You've been stalking me?”

  “No, disgusting. Stay focused.”

  “Are you some crazy chick?”

  “I'm not crazy and you probably don't remember because time and space got disrupted.”

  Billy decided he'd have to go along with the crazy. “I might be able to remember, if you say the name right…”

  “Fine.” Anastasia seemed truly disgusted. “Where did the Time Zombie take you?”

  “Make it echo.”

  She looked out at the tree blurs. Billy thought she might wind back for a punch, but she relented. “The Time Zombieee?”

  Billy had his board in his lap. “Oh him? I don't remember.”

  Billy looked up to find her really staring at him for the first time that night. It made him feel strange and his hand found the side of the train car door to fight the dizzies.

  “Stop looking at me.” Billy held tight the iron handle of the door.

  She didn't stop. “You hate people looking at you, don't you?”

  “From the girl who hasn't let me look at her all night.” Billy thought that was a tricky comeback for a tricky girl.

  “I'm looking at you now.”

  “You're one weird chick.” She was, and her eyes were the darkest green then.

  Anastasia pressed her fingertip to his scar without asking permission and moved so quick that Billy had no time to push it away. It just appeared there.

  “Vampires didn't do this to you.” Anastasia was more curious than she was sweet then. “Where did this mark come from?”

  She ran the finger down his forehead and towards his nose.

  “I said stop it.”

  “You hate this scar more than you hate me looking at you?”

  “I got it from jumping Black Bear Gulch. I built this ramp…”

  “You're only lying to you because I know better than to believe you did this to yourself because you'd be proud of it if you had. Even as likely as it would be that you would do something stupid enough to cut your own face by trying to impress others.”

  “Seriously, stop it, you creepy broad.”

  “This is why you try so hard to impress them, so they'll notice something cool that you did and maybe forget about the one thing you can never get rid of that you hate more than anything in the whole world. Billy's scar across his face.”

  “I don't know where it came from.” He was concentrating hard on her delicate finger and trying to will it away like you would a bee that landed on your nose.

  “You don't know much about Billy Purgatory do you?”

  “I know that I'm…”

  “Scared?” Her eyes grew darker.

  “Never!” Billy tried to hold it together. “I was gonna tell you I'm a natural born badass.”

  “Alone?”

  “I'm a hard-core mammer-jammer.”

  She stopped her finger just past Billy's nose and pulled it back but leaned forward and replaced the uncomfortable closeness now with her gaze.

  Her eyes were unforgiving.

  “You're not like other girls are you?” Billy couldn't help but ask.

  “Oh, I am.”

  “You're not like any of the girls I know.”

  “You're right about that part.”

  She stared harder into him. Billy had to grip his skateboard hard now so as not to drop it out the doorway and lose it to the tracks forever.

  “Remember now. The Time Zombie…”

  Billy kept staring and hoping that the wind would grab her hair again and cover Anastasia's eyes. But that didn't happen and Billy could only get out that one word.

  Billy tried hard to remember, “Zombieeeee…”

  II

  Billy pushed Anastasia's face from his neck even before his eyes stopped their fluttering. His neck stung and his head ached and it was so very cold in that train car then. His mind was shutting out the klakk of the rails beneath him - or trying to.

  He put his hand to the wound near his jugular -- the vein had thankfully not been pierced -- and breathed faster than the wheels beneath him spun. His chest burned from it all and he wasn't sure if he hadn't drowned actually and his lungs weren't filled with water. He opened his mouth and tried to pull in a breath but everything he tried to do hurt.

  The cold air on his face woke him up, and he was thankful for that because it held enough intensity to force breaths.

  Anastasia railed back across the car, more from her own dodging than from any push he had given her. She clutched one end of his board and Billy found his right hand desperately coiled around the other end of his prized possession.

  She had the look of a scolded pet and he could see for the first time the tiny fangs of her upper jaw. She wore a bewildered but satisfied glare on her face like she had just done something thrilling and dangerous.

  The look on her face could best be described as crazy in simpleton's terms. She grimaced and giggled all together.

  Billy took the opportunity of her confusion to yank hard and pull the skateboard from her hand. She fell back fully from the force of his desperate yank.

  Billy watched her fall while swatting at the sting of his neck with his free hand as if he were going for a mosquito. He slowly felt the fresh wound with his palm and then pulled his hand from the pain. His palm was stained with two small drops of his own blood.

  Anastasia rolled and huddled into the dark corner of their boxcar. To Billy, she was only lunatic eyes and sharp fangs; long gone was that pretty girl who had enchanted him fully.

  She'd made him out to be a sucker. Trickering trick.

  Billy Purgatory no longer felt safe.

  “You just bit me.” Billy couldn't believe he was saying those words to this girl who'd become phantom. “You're not a girl, you're one of them! A vampire!”

  “Yes, you're right. I am a vampire and I did just bite you. I didn't get to finish though.” She had slunk across the floor and now caressed shadows.

  “You're finished alright.” Billy held up his board as a shield and flexed up a left knuckle-sandwich in defense. “You're crazy.”

  “It's going to hurt now.”

  Billy's neck felt as if it was going to explode. His face was red and hot and the sweat on his body made it all much worse. The night air felt wrong on it and didn't do much to cool him down; just made him feel sicker.

  “It already hurts!” Billy yelled at her, into the dark corner where he watched her move.

  “If you don't let me finish then the change will be horrible for you.”

  He hated how calm she was. The calmer she was, the madder he got.

  “Shut up, you liar. You've been tricking me the whole time. I trusted you.”

  “You shouldn't have.”

  “Is this funny to you?”

  “No.” Anastasia was calmest now. “It's sad and pathetic.”

  Billy wasn't calm. “What do the vampires want with me?”

  She stayed quiet then. Maybe she was thinking about it and didn't have the right answers. Maybe she had never actually considered that question and was lost to wonder.

  Maybe she was just being evil.

  She leapt for the boxcar door and into the night and he heard her words - the words of something masquerading as a girl.

  “You'll know soon enough, Billy Purgatory, because you'll be a vampire too. I bit you; there's no stopping it now.”

  She was gone, becoming part of the blur that raced with the train across the land. Billy let himself fall back into the car and stared up at the ceiling.

  Everything joined Anastasia and her darkness.

  III

  Billy woke with a headache that promised not to get any better while the man with the overalls kept banging a ball peen hammer at the doorframe of the boxcar.

  The train had found morning and a station and hobo Purgatory had been caught by the brakeman.

  “You don't look like no can'o beans.” The Brakeman said that as loudly as possible, and he coul
d be clearly heard over three counties.

  Billy's ill-suited eyes now found the crates on the far side of the car, which he hadn't been able to read the night previous. He also hadn't tried really hard to read anything the night previous. There'd been a girl around, or he had thought there had been before she turned into not-a-girl.

  The coming light of a triangle shaft of eastern morning sun crept across the boxcars slat floor and Billy was able to see the stenciling plain enough: Crates O' Beans.

  Billy rubbed at the wound Anastasia had left on his neck - his new mark. Then the shaft of sunshine sent him a wake up message as it made the path towards his body. The sun was breaking the trees.

  Billy pushed back from it and towards the rear wall. Almost like instinct.

  The Brakeman banged his hammer again. “Come on, kid. You can run away all you want but you ain't using my train to do it.”

  Billy pressed his form against the wall in mortal fear. “I can't come out, mister. Close the door!”

  The Brakeman shook the hammer at the sun and the glare off it hurt Billy's eyes.

  “I got a schedule to keep. Don't make me get a hook pole and pull you out by the britch' loops.”

  Billy's pulse ran in overdrive, and it made his neck ache worse. He felt like he had used a cactus for a pillow.

  “I'm gonna toss Ol' Earl up there and get him to go mean on ya,” the Brakeman continued his rant. “Ol' Earl don't go with them's got the hobo eyes.”

  The light made its way closer in diagonal shafting like the hands of a reaper clock.

  “Close the door, mister. You're gonna make me burn up.”

  “Sun gonna be the least of your problems in a minute. Now I told you to get out of there.”

  Billy gripped his board and raised it like a shield.

  “She bit me, mister. I'm a vampire.”

  The Brakeman shook his head, long and slow-like.

  “You're a dumb kid, ain't'cha'? You on the dope?”

  “She bamboozled me, dude. You can't trust vampire chicks.”

  “You're too young to be having them kinda woman troubles.”

  “I got them though. She hit me with a double-cross and the sunlight is gonna get me. I saw this movie Crypt of Bat-Blood Nurses…”