Billy Purgatory: I am the Devil Bird

by Jesse James Freeman

  Billy wondered, as a shaft of fire rock lit up the sky, if that's why Lissandra had spent so much time in the woods. If she had been looking for the Witch House too. Billy figured that gypsies and witches had to be related in some way or another.

  Maybe Indians, too.

  He knew someday soon that he would find Lissandra, but it wouldn't be tonight. The season of Halloween had already begun, and she wouldn't be able to hide from the stars for too much longer.

  At first, Billy hadn't been sure that Lissandra was anywhere close to here now, that is, until he had heard that Old Man Brickstaff's mansion up on the hill had burned to the foundation. It was at the base of that palace in the servant's cottage that Lissandra had lived with her aunt so long ago.

  Billy was pretty sure that he knew who had started that fire, and if Lissandra hadn't started it, she sure as Hell had finished it. Billy wondered aloud into the night air why all the girls he was into were pyromaniacs. Anastasia had never owned up to burning out the hive which housed the last of her own race, the vampires. Billy knew that it had burned, though. He had put two and two together and it had equaled Anastasia.

  Maybe Lissandra heard that story too. Starting her own fires to one-up the other girl. It was no secret that Billy was always pretty impressed by a good fire.

  Two dueling metaphysical arsonists vying for his attention? There's no way that Billy's life could ever be that awesome.

  Besides, Lissandra wasn't into him. She had tolerated him, but there wasn't anything there beyond that. Never really had been, never really would be. Billy did respect that Lissandra completely owned up to the fact that Billy got on her last nerve.

  Anastasia, on the other hand, had that smug air of false sweetness about her at all times. A cloud of wishing-well lies stale and stagnant, never changing. Always drawing Billy in with those sad but mischievous dark eyes when he was at his weakest. Before he knew it, she was wrapping arms around him, whispering in his ear, fangs slipping into place…

  Then he'd crack Anastasia in the nose with an elbow and have to peel her off him like the snake she really was.

  Three meteors were burning the sky when Billy stood to say, “Alright, Witch, here's my wish. Since you didn't like my fires when I was a boy, I figure you owe me.” While Billy saw no Witch to formally address, he knew the night rabble was in the woods and watching him. “My wish is this: don't let Anastasia find me before Lissandra.”

  The wind got a chuckle at his words. It threatened to snow again, like it had long ago, the night the vampires almost took his life in those same woods, and Lissandra had saved him. There wasn't a cloud in the sky though, just burning random rocks.

  “'Cause you know,” he continued, more to himself than to anything in the woods. “I could go either way right now.”

  Billy wished that he was celebrating his birthday in the sunshine, but Billy never saw the sunlight anymore. He'd have to start doing all his work at night – when they were awake.

  Things that drained blood and tore flesh and celebrated murder, things that slithered and prayed to the cold, those were his party guests. Lurking was their march; they'd forgotten what the sunshine's slow burn was like, and they had no interest in remembering. Billy hadn't walked in anything brighter than an overcast day since Lucinda Drew had been taken from him at the Chelsea Hotel.

  “Why did you take her from me?” He couldn't even call forth tears. He questioned the empty air for understanding - for some clue towards any answer.

  Billy stood on the stone wall of the parlor; he turned his heart towards the line of dark trees and fully accepted what was meant by the night.

  “We were going to leave. We were on our way and you'd never have heard from either of us again. I was ready. I'd made up my mind to let it all go. I thought that was what you wanted? Stay stupid, don't be a hero! Forget about the past, don't go looking for her. Don't try to find her.”

  Nothing.

  “I was going to get lost. Find a regular job in another place far away from here. Lucinda was going to be enough for me.”

  Deeper nothing.

  “Lucinda didn't have anything to do with any of this. She was innocent. What could she have ever done? What could she do to you, to any of you? What could she have done to that Time Zombie that took her? I know you're all in it together. What did she or I ever do to any of you bastards?”

  Fire rock cuts the sky.

  “You stole my mother from me, you send a psychotic murderer disguised as a pretty girl to ruin my life, and now you've driven my Pop insane. Then when I've had enough and race to get away from it all…”

  Of course, no answer from dark trees.

  Billy let himself slip from the wall and slide down it. He wrapped his arms across his chest and couldn't forget that look of surprised horror Lucinda wore as the Time Zombie stepped out of nowhere and snatched her out of the hotel room. Billy was sure then he would never forget that look, that desperate plea for understanding before her mind was torn from reality and her body torn from her and cast into…

  Nothing.

  “I'm sorry, Lucinda. I wasn't a hero.”

  The trees seemed to nod in agreement, finally waking, spurred on by the wind picking up.

  Billy focused on them and then could see past their dark needles and swaying limbs. He could see all of the horrid things that lived in the night. They crept up behind the trees, and he could hear their fangs scrape in their mouths. Their knuckles cracked and hooves scratched the bark. Tails pounded the ground. They, the night things, could smell the blood in the air that clung to Billy's words.

  Billy was standing beyond the parlor wall. He began to walk defiantly towards their death grove, that place just beyond that lie we hold so dear, locked in our hearts. The lie of what is real and that which cannot be.

  He pulled Emelia's sword scabbard from off his back and pointed it at the thick night as he moved. It spun in his fingers first and then sliced at the air.

  “I'm not afraid of you anymore. You've made me tough as nails just like you are, but I'm not one of you. The nighttime is my time, but I won't run with you. Now you run from me.” Billy felt the world shift beneath his feet as he stepped into the borderland between his world and where they hid.

  “I hunt you now, and I'm going to kill every last one of you. The scoreboard in Hell is about to tip the other direction.”

  Billy cut into the brambles with the scabbard and felt wretched things flee further into the dark at his advance. “I might not be a hero, but I'm at the very least dangerous and pissed off.”

  Billy ran into their grove, leaping to the top of the old tree stump and moving like his mother would have taught him to move had they not taken her away from him.

  He found the grove was empty, but he could still smell the cowards; he could almost see them jumping into their chasms far from the Witch House. Billy stood with arms outstretched, the useless half of a sword in his right hand and his skateboard shield in his left, his chest open to their slings and arrows daring them to bring it.

  All that remained in that grove, that long ago had been a witch's orchard, were words marked into the dirt by the night's claw and tail, an evil promise warning:

  BILY PURGATORY, YOU FIGHT ALONE!

  Billy spit at the ground, not worried that the witch's curse for asking his wish was revealed to him in big, bold scrawl on the forest floor.

  Because really, how much more could he possibly be cursed?

  Chapter 22

  The Black Orchid Lounge

  Billy had found the hike up the hillside to the gutted and burned Brickstaff mansion good for his head. He had slept the night before in his car; something about the house he had grown up in had changed and Billy felt completely disconnected from it - as if his childhood had been a dream.

  He'd parked the Oldsmobile in the rusty shipyard and stared at the ruined factories and manors that were so dilapidated that even the bums wouldn't sleep in them now.

  Everyone said there were haun
tings a plenty in that place. Billy knew the truth though: it had been the place the vampires had called their kingdom by the sea.

  Anastasia had told him this. He'd been in their tunnels and knew the one that led to the woods.

  Billy walked the highway to make it atop Brickstaff Hill, though. The tunnels weren't the way to travel anymore, and he knew there weren't any vampires left down there.

  There wasn't ever any Devil Bird either.

  The events of the previous two days filled Billy's thoughts. After he had retrieved his skateboard from the hall closet he locked the house back up and made his way through the overgrowth which at one time had been his backyard.

  An old half-pipe had become completely consumed by weeds and vines. The lawn mower that sat rusting in the thick brush was nearly unrecognizable. A beer can still sat atop its engine.

  Pop had just walked off and left the world to spin on its own. Billy felt his father had only pretended to ever care about any of it for his son's benefit. Pop had done the best he could do to give Billy a normal childhood.

  It had made sense back then. Now it had more holes than a Swiss screen door.

  Billy found the old shed at the edge of the woods where he had vague but fond memories of a big rooster living inside. Billy remembered the Devil Bird being taller than Pop with a wingspan like a bomber and a beak the size of a minister's wife's hat.

  The Devil Bird had cold eyes that always held judgment. It didn't like the light and slept the day in the corner covered in a blanket of shadow. Billy remembered the Bird drinking a lot and always wanting to fight.

  Billy stared into the shed. One side was completely open, and there was no evidence there had ever been any chicken wire or that any animal, especially a giant bird, had ever lived there.

  There was nothing beyond three walls, a dirt floor, a roof and a hobo firepit. Nothing but wrong memories of things that never were.

  Billy vowed he would leave behind his childhood and never look back.

  II

  Billy had entered Lissandra's woods that next morning, leaving the Olds sitting in the park close to the baseball field.

  Before he even took the first step he knew he wasn't going to find her there anymore. He knew he was going to find something though.

  The brush was thicker than he remembered. When Lissandra had claimed this place as her sanctuary so long ago, it gave it a strange sort of order. Billy was the one who always tried to be noticed, disturbing the calm of nature with his supreme command of chaos.

  He used to run through these woods like a hell-bat. Now there was barely a snake rut to follow into the deepest part, but he pressed on. If Lissandra was in here he'd have to get as far away from people as possible, as far away from man made things and what he labeled as civilization and the known world.

  He figured at this point that all those modern familiarities he loved so were poison to Lissandra's soul.

  Billy found a new and strange her standing on the bridge over the drainage run-off, but it wasn't Lissandra, of course.

  The pattern of the dress was as if the woman had purposely rolled about the forest floor. She was stained in greens and golds, imprints from the grass and straw. She was a statue of dead leaves and briar runs, and dirty like a fresh grave had hold of her ankles and would never let go from trying to pull her in.

  This new woman's hair was a mess, long and brown and never washed. She had eyes of coal and from her temples sprang the antlers of a deer.

  “Who are you searching for, Billy Purgatory?” Her voice came from the wind.

  Billy didn't answer.

  “She's not here,” the woman continued.

  Billy looked around. A woman in a dirty dress with antlers wasn't anywhere close to the weirdest thing he had seen this week.

  “You don't even know who I'm looking for. You just asked me.”

  “I know it's a woman. It could be one of…”

  She stared into Billy. Her gaze was cold and probing, her expression changing when she finally saw within him what he couldn't hide.

  “So, there are only four women now?” She smiled at this.

  “There's nobody lady. I couldn't be any more alone than I am right now.” Billy said it matter-of-fact, but the tinge of defiance didn't go unnoticed by either of them.

  “Which one did they take from you, Billy?”

  “How do you know my name?”

  “Escape.” She smiled. “They stole your escape.”

  “I'm not trying to escape.”

  “You had it all planned so well, didn't you?”

  He was starting to dislike her questions. “I don't know what you're babbling about.”

  “Of course you do. I bet she was blonde.”

  Billy saw red, and his tears boiled behind his eyes because he refused to set them free.

  “Sunshine for hair, just like your mother.”

  Billy ran for her, right up a boulder and leaping over the creek drain as he flew for the woman on the bridge. He was going to tear her antlers from her head and have her chew on them, burying her words.

  He saw her raise her arm like it was in slow motion, and Billy's forehead slammed into the palm of her hand. The impact against the woman's delicate-looking palm felt like Billy had slammed his face into an elephant's backside.

  Billy collapsed into the brambles of the run off bed below. His board crashed to the rocks on his right. Pop's army jacket unrolled to his left and Mother's empty sword scabbard fell from it to the ground.

  The woman lowered her arm and ignored Billy's new position, focusing on the black scabbard.

  “So, she DID steal it.”

  Billy looked down at the wooden scabbard, still seeing double.

  “That was… my mother's.”

  “By possession alone, perhaps.”

  Billy rolled off the pile of brush and picked it up, double sets of blurry stars in his eyes.

  “Do you know the symbols on it?”

  Billy raised his eyes to her again. The pain in his hot head kept him from running at her again.

  But the pain was now mixed with hope… Answers.

  “No, I don't know what any of it means.” Billy was down but not defeated. Talking wasn't his normal course of action but neither was getting smacked around by a deer-broad.

  Billy stared at the interworked coin emblems, five of them. Then he raised the swordless appendage at her glaring eyes atop the bridge.

  “Flower, moon, owl and broom.” The woman sang these words to him, her voice a nest of humming birds.

  “And a key,” continued Billy.

  “Yes, never forget the key. Five symbols in all.” She seemed proud that she knew that for some reason.

  “Like the obvious matters,” thought Billy. “Why did my mom steal it?”

  “Emelia,” she said.

  “Yeah, Emelia.”

  “You know her name then? She was very crafty and oh so beautiful.”

  “She IS beautiful,” Billy corrected. “She lives, honeybunch. That's how damn crafty she is.”

  “That is impossible, and it speaks that you know nothing of her if you believe that.” She seemed sure of herself.

  “Why should I believe you? What are you, a demon?”

  “Hardly, but a demon might be more reliable a source of information for you now.”

  “Is she in Hell?” Billy refused to let his heart sink at the thought.

  “What if she is? Are you marching the Dragontooth Gate to get her back?”

  “Hell yes!” And Billy was equally sure of himself then. “You don't know what I've seen, lady. Hell would just be another detour now.”

  “She's not in Hell. I'm not even sure there is one.”

  “Then she's out there.” Billy swept the scabbard at the world.

  “Your mother turned to stone long ago.”

  “People don't turn to stone, Blitzen.”

  “Medusa's lovers would disagree with you. You should find another blonde to run away with Billy Purga
tory.”

  “Tell me where she is then.” His eyes narrowed.

  “You like the darkness too much for this heroic cause. In fact…”

  Billy brought his foot down hard on the edge of his skateboard deck, sending it spinning up into the air and catching it as the woman continued, almost laughing. “You love the darkness.”

  Billy turned from her. “Your broadcast day just ended.”

  “You miss her at your neck.”

  Billy spun around, “I don't love HER!” Just the mention of Anastasia sent Billy into a scorching rage.

  The woman with the antlers fully laughed then.

  “You won't find Anastasia out here. The woods hold too much life. Your lover is a parasite.”

  “You don't know jack-stacked shit, sister.”

  “She's a cancer.”

  “You don't have any answers. You're not even real.”

  “If you search for Lissandra, she reads the cards now. Never stays anywhere long. She's close though.”

  Billy was shocked to finally get a straight answer from this mental patient with the horntips. “That's who I was looking for anyhow.”

  “So she's the one you feel has your precious answers, gypsy princess Lissandra? You will search for her first in the ruins of the mansion on the hill. You'll truly find her hiding in its smoke.”

  Billy vowed he wasn't going to stop walking away this time.

  “You'll get her killed, you know. Your attentions lead to a body count.”

  “I'll die before I let that happen again!”

  “You can't die, Billy Purgatory.”

  Billy did stop then, face-to-face with a knotty oak. He was sure he didn't have the power to move trees out of his way with his mind, because it would have happened then and there.

  “We're what? What's this we..?” Billy knew she was in league with them, whoever they were. The Time Zombie, Anastasia and the Devil Bird all trying to throw him off the trail.

  “We are tied to one another, you and I. We are kin.”