Billy Purgatory: I am the Devil Bird

by Jesse James Freeman

  Billy wanted desperately to be fast.

  As Billy began the walk out of his camp he heard it crunch under his feet, and looking down he saw that his feet were moving upon the longest abandoned snake skin Billy would ever see. Billy decided to keep walking the skin and let it guide him in a land of no roads.

  Chapter 27

  Medusa's Wake

  While she was not well loved among the Sisters the afternoon before her burial, there was an unspoken uneasiness regarding the ritual before us.

  This quiet reverence at Medusa's passing did not hold into the night unfortunately.

  The foul Crone who they kept locked in the prayer pit beneath the statue came out of her solitude to make sure the Goddess Mistress' bidding was executed swiftly and without remorse that would leave any unforgiving stained memories lingering. This creature had powers absolute over our Order, taking her commands directly from the laws predating the fall of the Titans.

  She only washed in the blood runoff of the animal sacrifices and a rot and pestilence clung to her like a starving orphan. Her stench was overpowering and the dirty cloak she wore thankfully hid her features from our sight. She stood tall yet bent as a tree before a wind rage. She kept about her neck the mushroom necklace and the fungus itself grew from her fingers as they would a swamp root. All we could make out clearly of her face in the torchlight was her spear nose.

  This ‘thing’ had never seen the sunlight and would certainly join dust and ash were she thrust suddenly at Apollo's high lamp.

  Her voice was deep and smoke ridden and would do well attached to a man. Surely this was not truly nor had ever been an actual woman. A safer guess was a deranged child's nightmare of what a witch should be.

  “The one called Medusa is your sister no longer. Take what remains of her at first light to the forgotten pier and toss her into a beggar's boat. Do not look upon her and do not travel with her until darkness has passed. The night things would try and claim her as she was of our Goddess Mother. She enjoyed the pleasures of the sea once. Let it have her again.”

  She made her way down her dark steps to retreat to her hole beneath the stone mother's womb.

  “Do not have me venture up these steps again because you have failed.”

  There were twelve of us tasked to take Medusa's body to rest. We were kept that night in a special chamber and many of the others cried into the morning.

  “Emelia,” said the red-locked one to me in the dark. “Medusa was most loved of us all. Most pure.”

  “She's fouled now,” I answered back. “Be still and don't speak of what we are to do with her quiet bones.”

  I knew, though, that this weeping girl was right. If the Goddess could cast away a part of her that was so passionate and true, then those of us who held fear, doubt, lust and longing - what hope could there be for us when it came our time? Or when the Goddess decided it was our time because we had bored her?

  To hang on and continue in this embrace with divinity - how much of ourselves would we have to release? How dirty must we ourselves be forced to become to prove our devotions?

  Ultimately, were we all traveling the path of that crone locked in the basement? So turned and far from human that only the bottom of the Goddess' stone feet was worthy to look down on us?

  I had always hated Medusa. I found her to be a silly and vain representation of what the sisterhood was. Flawless and seemingly reserved - separate from the others.

  The lust everyone felt for her, straining their gaze to her in the marketplace. She was, to me, a village whore who doled out smiles and tender looks in exchange for sins and penance. It wasn't Athena the people adored at all, those unwashed: it was her prized priestess, Medusa.

  Her beauty was her curse, she knew this, and rather than use it as a beautiful woman does, she fled from it. She fled from a destiny as a princess or a nobleman's consort. We all had reason to flee the world, the other sisters and I. Yet Medusa was perfect for the world below our sacred hilltop. It chased after her still, while the rest of us were long forgotten.

  Good riddance.

  They had wrapped Medusa in heavy binding as the Egyptians taught; even their symbols were drawn all about the cloth.

  We hoisted her body to our shoulders on the poles and with six of us on either side, we sent our sandals out into first light past the beggars and the morning vermin. Rats and dogs came forth to watch Athens' beautiful sister's body make its last trek. The sailors lay drunk in the streets and we turned their great ships of the new gleaming harbor of Athens to our backs and went to find an abandoned boat on the forgotten shore.

  Past the olive fields and then into the forest as we all sang sad songs in our heads to not dwell upon her death and the rarely traveled path we had to walk with her on the first part of her morning journey towards Hades.

  The rock crag where the first ships of Athens had long ago moored was unused, haunted and cursed. Had we not considered the Goddess watching over us we would have surely been more afraid. We said a prayer aloud to her, and we did not stare very long into the rock face of Dagon cut from old sea stone.

  It seemed even the insects would not follow us down the narrow cut pass to the rock beach. There we found the wrecks of ancient ships in the lost harbor.

  We came upon a disheveled tiny boat with long-ago broken sails and a single rotting oar. This is what would become her casket. She just fit into it, and we felt it would float perhaps long enough to get her off to the horizon.

  And we pushed her out to sea.

  The eleven other Sisters and I stood at the water's edge as she floated away. And I looked at the dawn birds and watched the sunlight paint itself on water green and gold.

  Medusa violently jerked against her bindings.

  The others swore it was the gull song, but I heard her muffled screams from within the funeral wrappings.

  Then she jerked again.

  “She's alive!”

  The Sisters kept singing, unsure if what they were seeing was real. I had been the only one to break the song and I did it again.

  “She's alive,” I pled to them. “Can't you see her move? She screams!”

  I, who lived my life in a world of lies, blind devotion and solitude. I had turned from a living breathing world to focus on a block of marble cut into a visage of an ideal woman who did not exist - I saw the helplessness now of a real woman, a beautiful one who did exist.

  I saw her struggle.

  I heard again her scream.

  “Fools, shut your mouths to this lying hymn and help me. Help her!”

  They stopped singing and began to turn away from her body with her boat fading into the far away waves.

  From that moment on, they would have ignored this truth had they not been forced to pull me from the water. I fought them there, and I had never fought anything in my entire life.

  Then I was a Titan, a demon, a goddess. I was rage.

  “We've murdered her! We are divine murderesses singing songs to a bitch-goddess.”

  Finally, they took me forcefully to the rocks of the beach. The boat was too far now and there were too many frightened fists pressing me down.

  “Murderers all!”

  Medusa was less than a speck when the Sisters had finally restrained me fully. I clawed at them and my madness bore blood result with no quarter. I thrashed like a swordfish tossed to land and my spit and nails were venom and dagger upon the lot of them until they bound my arms with the rope that had held Medusa's body aloft between the death staffs.

  I remember little about being forced back up the path and soon found the shade fog of ancient tree all about me as we again entered the forest.

  The Red-haired One who had cried in my arms all the night before had become their leader.

  “You'll bring death to us all, Emelia.” I stared into the blood colored ringlets which lay at the back of her head. “You'll have the deep Crone tearing up the stairs from her crypt nest.”

  “Curse your ginger-forked tongue,
you coward. Curse her as well and curse you all.”

  She turned then to look back at me. My arms wanted to reach forth and strangle her to death with the knots they had used to bind me. Her pitiful look would not quell my curses.

  “Bring forth that Crone's darkness from that well of pig blood. Call up her urine stained chastity.” My pain was merciless as were my words. “I say bring her. I will use my last breath and slashing fingertip to brand into her flesh the word - Murderer!”

  I promised then more curses. “I will scream for her myself and animate the only thing in that unholy place that has shown itself to be real beyond our whimpered offerings.”

  I struggled to free my hands. “I will summon her with my own scream!”

  This is when the red-curled harlot put her hand on me and sent my eyes afire.

  “You'll do no such thing, Sister Emelia.” And she showed her full devil's nature. “Because I'm going to cut out your tongue.”

  I stared into her. “With what? Your tears?”

  She clenched harder and drew back her other hand but it only went back and would never strike at me. She, as well as all of us, was frozen like stone at that moment and all that moved were the fear bumps I watched rise pink against her white skin.

  We all felt the truth that we were not alone in this wood. Not alone at all.

  She released her grip upon me when the wolf leapt from shadow and latched into her midsection with its mouth. It was a massive creature and the jaws that grasped her were as a great legion of soldier death fang-work.

  The blur of ashen white fur, larger than a chariot, breezed past me, taking her with such primal precision that it moved me not an inch even though I was brushed by the fur with its passing.

  I stood there, still as I had imagined Medusa would be in her little death ship, arms still bound as the great wolf landed with the screaming red-haired wench who fought for her life like a snared bird. Two more of the pack revealed themselves to be waiting along the road where the great beast came to rest with her. They were the size of ponies and the hunch of their backs stood several stones taller than any of the frightened Sisters.

  The Red-haired Sister called for the Goddess to save her as one wolf took a leg and the other swallowed her head whole, and all together they tore her in three then tossed the bloody pulp of her parts into a ditch grave.

  Their eyes glowed silver, and they joined together in a low growl, bellowing at the mass of Sisters clawing in fear trying to push one another further out towards hungry mouths.

  When the wolves didn't advance, the Sisters ran with no regard for the fact that I remained with hands tied in front of me in the center of the road.

  All seven dire wolves circled me slowly, and their leader, who had fared much better than ours, sniffed at my hem and I was desperately afraid.

  It let loose a howl and took the rope hanging from my bound hands and I was pulled to the path and then through the leaves, into the darkness that clung now to the trees, too deep into the forest for the rays of sunlight to follow.

  I screamed, terror stricken, surely being pulled toward my death.

  Creatures such as these are not born by nature alone, and they must have been collared by dark fingers, sent to drag whatever would remain of me through the Gates of Hell.

  I had cursed fully my goddess for the very last time, and I had nothing left to pray to. I chose not to run the inventory of idols through my head now. Cursed be to all the statued falsehoods of my youth. I would go alone into death and not be saved by stone carved judgments.

  When we finally stopped, I was cut and bruised and naked. Even my bindings had passed from rope to twine, and I pulled free my hands. I looked surely as something would made of clay before fired. Covered in leaves and mud and not feeling the least bit exposed as I rose from the grounds wet afterbirth.

  More vine and dust and twig than flesh now, I stared at the rise of the high caves which the wolves now danced about. Deep burrows into the earth where the mother bear sleeps away the winter.

  I was reborn then.

  “Who calls me here?” This I demanded of the rocks.

  I learned then as she broke the cave entrance and stared down at the ridiculous new thing I had become.

  Ridiculous, yet relevant.

  She was tall and lean. Her dark hair clung to the sides of her angular face and intermixed with a dirty gown that was not so much unkempt as it was of the wood. Her clothing was meant to be wild, not to be pristine. Her ears were sharp and jutted from her hair, as did the antlers of the wood deer which rose proudly from her temples.

  Her mouth was delicate and small but her voice was crafted of the thunder language.

  “You wish then not to be Medusa's murderess?”

  I looked down. She was a thing I could suddenly believe in, had little choice not to believe in.

  “I did not harm her.” Somehow, I stayed standing, but I wished to shrink back into the brambles I had been pulled through and vanish forever from her sight.

  “You were jealous of Medusa. Jealous of her beauty and jealous of her piety.” This woodland woman's words cut into my heart. I believed my words about not murdering my sister, but I also believed the words cast at me from this new goddess. I did feel shame.

  “You hated her because she truly believed in something, a thing beyond her goddess and beyond your sisters and even beyond myself. Beyond heaven and hell and earth.”

  I said nothing as she scolded, “Medusa believed in something pure and you hated her.”

  “Yes,” came my tearful reply, and I felt frigid and alone; there was no warm well where my heart barely beat in my chest. Her words were the only fire in this wood.

  The new goddess did not let me speak further.

  “Hated by all was she. Well, you have all received your greatest wish, for she no longer believes and she is no longer beautiful.”

  My tears continued to flow as she spoke.

  “Her Goddess has used the excuse of her rape to banish her and since you are the only one of her funeral procession who has protested, Athena casts you away as well. Therefore, I take you and I give you to Medusa.”

  She continued, daring me to speak of my defense – for which I had little.

  “You will know the pain of your own beautiful reflection now and how you are so very undeserving of it. Your beauty is a lie to yourself and the world because your jealous nature is far uglier than any mane of serpents.”

  I struggled to gaze at the goddess through dirty tears.

  “You will care for her and your task is to rectify her now with the world.”

  Then Artemis turned her back on me and her wolves howling were as a gavel.

  I was no longer in darkness or of mud. I was washed clean, cast into the cold sea. I found myself swimming towards a tiny island.

  The remnants of the boat we had sent Medusa off in was on the shore, as if it had been further rotting there in the sun for many years. It seemed that much time, ages, had passed. I felt no older and to me it was the very same day of which we had sent her struggling and adrift. But I knew my perceptions on the subject of time passed were a lie.

  I would find Medusa finally that night, deep in the island caves. Twitching, still, and weeping.

  Chapter 28

  Americana

  It is of course true, that when Billy Purgatory found the temple in Vietnam, he was very angry. He was, to his best estimates, finally well on his way in the undertaking of his mission and supposed he had finally discovered his life plan. The voyage to Southeast Asia and the subsequent wandering about the jungle had given the young man plenty of time to think, and in this time Billy put the mental slide-rule firmly to task at hand. He defined what exactly it was that he was supposed to be looking for.

  Emelia Purgatory might not reside among the living. Billy couldn't shake the feeling that he might be able to, at the very least, discover the ghost that his mother had become.

  Billy had seen many strange things by this poin
t in his life, real and imagined, yet that didn't make it necessarily possible that he wouldn't some dark jungle eve come face-to-face with the spiritual apparition that was supposedly all that remained of his mother's mortal coil.

  He told himself over and over, alone by firelight, that if this was how the reunion was destined that he would be ready for it. He viewed his Pop's warning to him now more as a thing which was meant to protect Billy's feelings.

  “Don't try to find her.”

  Ultimately, his mission was not of discovering some spook with blonde hair wandering a jungle; it was about the discovery of Emelia's history. Who had she been? Why had she spent such time in apparent exile beneath thick trees? What had convinced her to leave the jungle in the first place and journey across so much ocean to be with Pop and to give birth to their son, only to abandon them?

  None of it made any sense to Billy. It was like she had ventured out of the night to give birth and then fallen back into hiding. Had it all become too real for her to take?

  Was his mother ultimately of the night?

  What Billy was sure of was that either living or dead, his mother was a perfect ghost.

  It was dark in the main hall of the temple on the borderland. Billy had entered for two reasons: first and foremost, to get out of the jungle rain that made the night that much darker, and because it was the first building he had seen for eleven days that was not a hut or a lean-to.

  Billy learned that the monks no longer gave the teacher candles when night fell, as the teacher had tried on more than one occasion of late to set the temple on fire.

  Billy rolled the dice and asked for whiskey, and the round, short Buddha reached into darkness and pulled from it a bottle. It proved to not be whiskey, but it was sweet and it burned so hot that Billy almost rolled over.

  Steadying himself, Billy Purgatory took another pull before passing the bottle back to the monk.