Billy Purgatory: I am the Devil Bird

by Jesse James Freeman

  “I can help you, Cap'n. Honest, I know I can.” Maplethorpe was gonna break down. Uly could sense it.

  “You're dead, Maplethorpe. Get that through what's left of your skull. You can't help me anymore.” Uly knew the direction of the last of the screams, and he knew then the best way to double-back and sneak up on LBJ's monster.

  “We're still a team, Cap'n. Do or Die!”

  “I'm going alone. You stay back.” Ulysses found the trail and was about to break for it, seeing Maplethorpe's ghost wasn't doing much for his own moral.

  “She'll get you too, Chief! Then we won't be able to fix none of us.” Maplethorpe's point only made sense to the spirits.

  Ulysses broke from the kid and ran.

  “Chief! Wait, I ain't dead. You hear me, Chief. I can't be dead. I still gotta piss!”

  Ulysses ran towards where she had to be waiting.

  IV

  Ulysses Purgatory passed several heads on pikes, the leftovers of the monster's sister, the one that the natives feared even more than the monster herself. The wild woman of the jungle they called the Sword Witch. While seeing the ghost of one of his former teammates was unnerving, so were the rotting heads with their pained expressions left high on bamboo for all who entered these lands to see.

  Ulysses hoped that the intelligence they had on the sister was right, that this was the day the monster went wandering every year to do her own murders.

  “The very last thing I need right now is to meet some jungle honey who chops off guys heads.”

  Ulysses Purgatory was very sure of that: that he didn't want to meet the Sword Witch.

  Ulysses followed the sound of the first cowbell, swinging in the wind from the branch of the first tree.

  V

  Hunkered down behind a rock, Uly tossed away his useless China knock-off gun. Its barrel was still white hot; when it cooled it would never fire straight again.

  Ulysses Purgatory was out of machine gun ammo.

  He had found the bodies of his fallen soldier comrades. They resembled mummified corpses, still dressed in their camouflage and still firing their machine guns at Uly's position. Their souls, separated from their bodies, wandered the jungle looking for their commander, while the carcasses themselves seemed to be under the monster's control.

  Even over the gunfire, Ulysses had no trouble hearing her voice coming to him from the trees surrounding the clearing.

  “Soon you will be as they. My death-gaze will send your soul fleeing and I will have hold of the rotted meat you leave behind.”

  “Death-gaze, huh.” Ulysses nodded to the wind. “Should have known.” Uly tossed a grenade, blowing the body of one of his fallen to bits.

  This, of course, did not stop the mindless advance of the other corpses.

  “You should never have entered the borderland between worlds, boy. Gods play here. Did you not see the warnings of my sister?”

  “Where is your sister? The Sword Witch?”

  “This is the anniversary of my defilement. I alone am vengeance on this day.”

  Uly made the cross on his chest and thanked Mother Mary that the pencil pushers in the CIA got that part right, all the while tossing another grenade and taking out two more undead soldiers.

  “Lyndon Johnson is the only god you need to worry about today, lady. Like it or not, you're coming with me.”

  The four zombie soldiers left, two on each flank, swung around the rock where Uly hid, their weapons ready to send lead flying. They were too late to catch him. Ulysses had gone springing up and over the small boulder and turning in the air, his sidearm drawn and already throwing bullets their way.

  Uly was always a better pitcher than hitter.

  Zombie soldiers turned to the motion and noise and were not at all mindful of the four grenades with missing pins that lay in the grass at their dead feet.

  Ulysses was too fast for them.

  The explosion at his back propelled him further out into the field, and Ulysses landed almost to the trees. She would be close now.

  “No matter, come into the trees then and meet my gaze.”

  Ulysses pulled a big piece of shrapnel out of his shoulder. He was going to have to sew that up; blood poured. He fished into his leg pocket for his medical kit, found his cigarettes first. Shrugging, he lit one up and took a big drag off it.

  Uly pulled the thread out of the med kit and the big needle that went along with it.

  “I'm coming in lady, don't worry. I ain't afraid of the dark.”

  Ulysses Purgatory felt her slink further into the jungle as he began to sew.

  VI

  Ulysses walked into the jungle, following the sound of the bamboo chimes in the trees. He had a green bandana tied over his eyes and was carrying a really evil looking knife. He was going to have to go mano a monster with Medusa, the knife all he had left to his name.

  Ulysses considered then that he might have more strongly considered a career in baseball.

  He could hear the goat and the bell tied around its neck up ahead, and had no trouble feeling his way down the path. Ulysses found the break in the trail with his feet, and began to move up the hillside above the goat tied to the old dead tree below.

  Medusa was running up the hill to his left. She was quiet but wasn't completely silent, even in her bare feet and with nothing but sparse linens covering her form. Ulysses could smell her. She didn't have an altogether revolting tinge to her; she had a wild smell, like she was part of the jungle, but not so much a part of it that her scent completely blended with her surroundings.

  She actually smelled like wildflowers. Some monster she was turning out to be.

  He knew that she was opening her arms to greet him at the top of the hill, and when Ulysses broke the trees and entered the hilltop she could obviously see that his eyes were covered and she let out a little laugh.

  “That tactic is not unknown to me. So many soldiers and so little has chang--”

  She didn't get to finish her words. Uly stayed low, and he ran her and rammed her good, a move that she surely wasn't expecting, since it worked. The soldier used her own weight against her and sent them both rolling together down the hillside. Medusa didn't like this at all and bit him at his wounded shoulder, tearing it anew. Her nails dug into his back, and Ulysses was reminded of a girl he once knew who liked to play rough.

  This was no girl though; this was a monster.

  At the bottom of the hill, he made sure they kept spinning, rolling over the rocks he'd used to ring the dead tree that had the goat and the bell tied to it. She was on her feet much faster than Ulysses when they broke apart, mainly because he wasn't trying to get to his feet. He pulled the signal flare from his belt and lit the candle and pressed the sparks into the rocks.

  The propellant he'd used to douse the fire ring the day before was still as noxious and living as ever as the hot burning flame ring lit all around them both, making it bright for anyone who didn't have their eyes covered to see.

  The goat barely seemed to notice and continued eating the bark off the dead tree.

  Medusa fell atop Ulysses then and raked her nails down his chest, drawing lots more blood. She kept them sharp this time of year.

  “What's all this? Trying to burn me?”

  Medusa used her nails to slash the cloth from Ulysses eyes, and it tore to shreds and the force of it all broke Uly's nose. Medusa pressed her hands to his shoulders and held Ulysses to the ground.

  “Actually, it's the signal so the saucer can see us.” Ulysses laughed through a lot of pain. Medusa didn't know what any of that meant – how would anyone, monster or otherwise?

  “You are beaten. Open your eyes.”

  Ulysses laughed harder. “I can't; they're sewn shut.”

  When the purple light from the craft above shot down on the two struggling beneath it (and the goat), Medusa saw that this was true. He'd sewn his own eyes shut.

  Medusa sunk her claw into Ulysses leg as she tried to grab onto anything, puncturing
an artery in the process. Blood flew up and seemed to float in the air as the beam of purple light grabbed hold of everything in the fire ring and began to pull it up into the sky.

  Ulysses felt the blood rush out of his body and tried to push her off him, and as she left his body, she slashed open the thread holding his left eyelid closed, and Ulysses caught sight of her as she rose into the sky.

  She was a beautiful, scared girl with wild hair. Not a monster at all. The purple beam of light was lifting her into the air and towards LBJ's flying saucer high above.

  Medusa's last desperate kick sent Ulysses falling out of the clutches of the light and plummeting free towards the hill below. Blood sprayed from his leg, and things got much worse for him as the purple light extinguished. Gone were the girl named Medusa and the goat.

  Uly watched the dead tree come crashing back into the fire circle as he fell backwards and landed in one of his own traps. The sharp bamboo sticks he fell upon punctured his body in every conceivable fashion, and the poison was already at work as the flying saucer that kidnapped Medusa vanished.

  Chapter 31

  Post-Extraction

  When they'd taken Medusa, it got so incredibly dark. There had been a sudden flash of purple and amber with a sound like whispered thunder as the beam liberally cut through the molecules that make the air we breathe.

  That had stopped Medusa's scream - overwhelmed it.

  That scream when you realize you've been tricked, and the sinking slow death when you know also that a life already filled with heartbreak was again about to change for the worst. Lament at the rearview for that insignificant but constant picture you'll never ever see again.

  Ulysses Purgatory was most certainly dying then, and that was a big change in itself and made the physical landscape that much darker.

  He was bleeding out in the leg - bleeding out everywhere else too, but the leg was the worst dam break. What little blood left in him was no comfort either because it now burned, overtaken by the poison.

  Ulysses could see her standing at the edge of the pit. The moon was just alive enough to highlight her blonde hair and the very sharp edge of the axe she held.

  “You're not Vietnamese.” He laughed - not really at anything he'd said, but more that he was even able to speak or laugh at all. It was funny to him to even think about sentences or putting words together to form them, but he'd done it, by golly.

  “That's what my Granny used to say,” Uly somehow remembered. “By Golly, By Golly.”

  Ulysses realized then just how delirious the poison replacing his blood was making him.

  How much he'd loved Granny.

  “Nice axe.”

  This is when Blondie spit on him. It landed on his forehead. It was actually cold and felt good. Like a raindrop.

  “You kidnapped my sister. She's all I had in the world,” Blondie cast her words and her gaze down on him.

  Ulysses thought about it. “You have prettier snakes.”

  Wait? What do you call that stuff?

  “I mean, blonde snakes.”

  The girl above had a long braid on her left side that hung down, covering her eye.

  “Hair,” he said. “Not snakes.”

  “I've never been alone,” was her reply. It was a sad one that overpowered the anger that also lived in her voice.

  Uly's heart burned worse now than the rest of him. He spit up blood and tried to remind himself not to spit up anymore. Better save some for later.

  “Don't let me die. What about my boy?” He was remembering all of the sudden that he was dying and how irresponsible it would be to go through with that.

  Blondie was about to land on him. When she did, his leg pressed further into the punji spikes. It felt like it was going to snap off. Maybe it had already and he was just now remembering.

  True though, she was a beautiful weight to be pressing down on him. Death leaning in for a kiss.

  The Blonde lifted his chin and brought Uly's face into the light.

  Her face was close now. She had silver eyes. All that was left to do now would be to dance her blade over his throat.

  “What boy?” Blondie asked.

  Ulysses thought about this hard and he felt he might be crying. He couldn't be sure - not with all the blood.

  “Don't kill me, lady, and leave my Billy all alone.”

  She had left the axe above and had a sword in her hand. It was already pressing into his Adam's apple.

  It was so dark in his head, and his eyes closed. He couldn't feel the blade at his throat anymore but he could feel the tickle of the end of her braid on his chin.

  He would wake in fever dreams from very deep sleep, always feeling the blonde hair tickle his face.

  When he woke, he was in a temple by the river. More tree trunk and vine than stone. The columns that remained were held up by carved Buddhas with the heads of flies.

  He was dressed in white fisher pants and he couldn't find a wound left on him.

  She wore black, no shoes. Simple clothing, yet she wore it much better than he.

  Ulysses forgot for a moment to check and then was scared to look, but when he did, the leg was thankfully still attached. His leg that is - there was nothing in the world wrong with hers.

  There was nothing wrong with any part of her.

  She turned to find him staring; her blonde hair was up and held aloft by a ring of midnight laurels. She wore two swords sheathed and slung on her back.

  “I saved you because of your son,” she explained.

  Uly sat up to her words and looked at her for a long time as the river flowed by them. “What?”

  “Your boy, Billy.” Her words were firm and didn't strike him as compassionate.

  “I don't have a son.” Ulysses's words were the truth.

  She suddenly looked away from him and to the river.

  Then she moved towards the columned gate leading to the jungle proper, “I saved your boots for you too. This place isn't for me anymore. We've got a long walk back to the world.”

  “I'm up for a hike, I think.”

  “Not a hike,” she corrected him as if he were some idiot tourist. “Something much better - an adventure.”

  Uly's boots were at his feet, uniquely out of place.

  “Who the hell are you, lady?”

  She didn't wait for him to tie the boots. She was already following the river's run.

  “A ghost-terror.” She didn't even stop as she pulled her axe from a tree stump.

  “I'm your Sword Witch.”

  Chapter 32

  Zvetok, Luna, Sova i Metla

  The Captain and Billy hated one another until the last hour of his life. Up until that time, he had spoken few words to Billy, but his eyes and the scowl he kept forever on his face did the talking for him. “Why do you sail with us, Billy Purgatory?”

  He was a foul human being, even for the company Billy learned to keep, and he seemed to find particular amusement in the torments he and the rest of the crew attempted on Billy every day.

  Not that you could call the dank, fog-bathed and never ending hours Billy endured on the deck of his rotting husk of a ship a day. It had been so long since Billy had seen the sun burn hot in the sky that he couldn't pull up a clear memory of it.

  The fistfights and pummeling involved in making Billy's way closer to the firebox were a tease that became not about warming his bones. Flames gave little, but Billy danced towards them like a spinning moth, flinging blood and punches and teeth like a desperate cyclone. To not fight against the dark, the cold, the desperation of a sea so devoid of anything save that rusting hollowed out tortoise husk of a boat became all about something to do to pass the time.

  The vodka pumped and cycled through Billy's innards by an ever rising heart rate did enough to keep him physically hot on a sheet of grey ice glass that even ghosts were too lethargic to haunt.

  Billy Purgatory was hated by all of them, if only that his situation - just as desperate - wasn't enough to bury him und
er its crippling load. His companions had given up hope before Billy was even born.

  The Captain allowed all of this, egged it on like he'd just dropped starved pups into a pit to see who'd have the others throat for dinner. He always stopped it before it got to that place, but the men knew it's what he desired, and they were all too happy to show their true nature to Billy and to this Captain of theirs.

  The Captain, a figurehead with no more substance than the rotting, carved ladies that clung to the bows of this lifestyle's ancestry. The only explanation Billy could find for any of it was that very fact that he was an outsider, let aboard because he was younger than they and more spry. Able to leap from one widow's netting to another and insane enough to do so even when the wind tried its damndest to pull Billy along with it. He never let it take him though, even at Billy's lowest moments. Billy was smart enough to know that being cast away from them would be all too fleeting a heaven. He was smart enough to know that he couldn't fly even if he'd had wings.

  The night he died, the Captain urged Billy to take his chest from beneath his bunk. “You think me cruel, don't you, Billy boy?”

  “Sure. Why not?”

  He grinned through pain.

  “You're a poor sailor.” Billy had since picked up much of the Russian they spoke in the twenty-two months he'd been with them. “I knew I wasn't going to teach you much about that. Your heart isn't in it. Your heart isn't in much of anything.”

  “So, why am I here, Captain?”

  “You know. You're the one who begged me to let you get lost from the land.” He kept pointing beneath the bunk; Billy kept avoiding whatever horrid thing he so desperately wanted Billy to take from under there. Afraid in doing so, he'd be more and more like they were.

  “I got nothing, Captain. I went searching the world for someone and found no trace of her. I got nothing there, and less than nothing in the land I was born in. No reason to stay anywhere is how I figured it.”

  “You do got nothing back there, this is true. But you got something out here. Even though it's empty, you still got that heart, boy.”