Bubba and the Cosmic Blood-Suckers

by Joe R. Lansdale

  Then she sensed among them a singular force more powerful than any she had encountered before; a charismatic dynamo, and therefore an excellent source of food and power.

  She smacked her sticky lips.

  Daylight burned away slowly moving beat by beat toward nightfall.

  She waited.

  11

  MEANWHILE, AT THE SAME TIME, BACK AT THE GHOST HOUSE

  When they were all holding hands, eyes closed, the house silent, Elvis felt what seemed to be a trickle of electricity. Low current. Traveling through him like his veins and nerves were highways and the electricity was a bus, and then it became more than a bus. It was like a train, and it was racing fast, and then it was a surge of raw-assed power that caused Elvis’s brain to wire up, plug in, and leap out as Blind Man’s mojo and that little blue pill (damn, them things were the shit) got a hold of him. Jump, baby, jump.

  Across the blackness, a speeding bolt of hot-blue light, a cinematic montage, a collection of impulses and impressions, some that made sense, some that did not.

  They were:

  Blackness and stars, and then there was a crack in the blackness, like an ebony egg broken open, and Elvis could see light coming from inside the crack, egg-yolk color, but muted, and now it was as if he were a miniature space ship flying shit-for-dollars into that muted light.

  A burst of redness, a wash of gooey darkness, and he found himself sailing high over a world of jags and crags and broken buildings, chunks of this, and chunks of that, drifts of black smoke, flares of white smoke, and off to the right a vast black ocean surging and rolling, the wind blowing wild, maybe even a little insane. His essence was blown with it, blown like a banshee across that vast sea, controlled like a cosmic puppet, snip-snap and willy-nilly at the pleasure of Blind Man’s powers and that little blue pill, and then he passed away from the ocean, sailed over the land, over a landscape of sagging buildings and broken glass, wolves and children running in the streets, men and women being broken up and ripped apart, reshaped by hands unseen (No, there was a glimpse of something, but what?) and heard sucking sounds like fat kids with fat straws and thick malts and an intense appetite. And then he knew. He was not only on this devastated world, this alternate or dimensional side-by-side earth, he was inside of a mind that harbored simple but powerful emotions and dreadful memories; a mind that wanted to control and devour.

  Elvis felt weak, as if gut-shot and bleeding out. His very being was touched-on, rubbed-on, molested. Onto a ramp of stone he went, sliding as if his soul was stuffed with rocks. Then he was standing on the formation, walking out on it, arriving at the narrowing tip of black stone and looking across from it, saw a high rock wall that rose up dark and uneven. Attached to that rock wall, something pulsed and red spots of gooey-fire leaked out of it. It looked like nothing less than a giant wasp’s nest. The nest was huge and strange, and looking at it Elvis felt a surge of power, like volcanic activity steaming to the surface through tight cracks in the earth.

  He knew then that thing wanted him. It wanted him like a screaming teenage girl wanted him on stage, like an old fat woman with her husband asleep beside her wanted him, remembering him from some movie, plunking her pudding. This thing wanted him too, wanted to suck at his talent, his thoughts, his essence.

  Feeling that from the nest, Elvis backed up, turned to run. And then the universe started to collapse. He could see at the back end of the stone ramp the yard of the safe house. He thought, as he neared the bottom of the ramp, I will jump to safety.

  And then his mind was on fire. He had sensations of having a mouthful of chocolate mice, vanilla turds, and strawberry puke, and then there were the far-spanning colors of the rainbow swirling about him, plus colors unknown, colors with taste; fat colors, thin colors, colors without pants, colors wearing hats, a flood of nonsense feelings for which his mind had no identification, and then a sensation like the greatest orgasm he had ever experienced, and — he fell forward with his head into a platter of biscuits.

  When Elvis finally lifted his head, he saw the others were doing the same, all returning from their own surreal revelations that Blind Man had shown them. All except Blind Man and Colonel. It was obvious they had made the jump before and were already past its effects; they were brighteyed and good to go.

  Numb, Elvis realized he was no longer holding hands on either side. They had all let go somewhere during their astral journey. Maybe that disconnection was what had broken the trip, sent them back.

  Elvis could hear Colonel, in mid-conversation, Professor Elmer Fudd at the lecture hall, already evaluating for them what they had seen. As Colonel talked, all the images Elvis had seen, all the sensations he had felt, he tried to organize and make logical, but it was a slow evaluation and the effort made his brain hurt as bad as a head blow.

  From now on he felt there would always be a hole in his head from which the logic fled.

  12

  ELMER FUDD IN LECTURE MODE

  “-and long ago this thing and its minions slipped in, those things being part of its hive. They have slipped in before, since the moment humans stood up on their hind legs and stared at the stars and blew the results of a raw meal out into the air as a fart. Vampires we call them, but they are more than men in black capes and evening wear, women in gossamer gowns, prowling the night, feasting for blood by biting necks.

  “These beasts are not afraid of crosses, theocratic icons. Not in the religious sense, anyway. Only in the sense that if someone believes in something bad enough and long enough, that gives certain things power, like the runes carved into your hammer, John Henry. Like the symbols on all your weapons. Spells here in our safe house, they should help. The house’s guardian spirit might work to protect us, if Elvis will jump start her a little. Don’t know for sure. But we think these sort of protections will slow them down, and we need all the help we can get because these things are more powerful than anything we’ve dealt with before.”

  “You know this how?” Jenny said.

  “A probe team. We sent them in first. It didn’t work out. That’s why they decided to bring in the big guns. This team. These creatures here in New Orleans are different, more deadly. Gate to their world is widening, and they’re not being pulled back like before; once they came through for a short time, and couldn’t maintain here, but now they can stay longer. The elastic band of dimensional ectoplasm that holds them to their source world has lost its snap and the dimensional gate has, in a sense, been thrown wide too often. The hinges are sprung.”

  “My question,” Johnny said, “is what caused it to finally open so wide and spring its hinges?”

  “Drugs, perhaps,” said Blind Man. “Doors to perception once opened can’t always be closed. Kind of drugs that open the mind can also open the gate. What druggies see isn’t always the great revelations of an opened mind or the deep, dark crevasse of human emptiness. Good trips, their minds and souls go to good places, or interesting places, bad trips, well, they see things like what you just saw. It’s an ethereal trip for most mind-travelers, but sometimes they come loose from thought and the dream collapses. They end up in a solid place, Over There, and sometimes they don’t come back. Works both ways. In the case of the vampire Hive Mind, controlled by a kind of queen bee, the Big Mama, they don’t want to go back. They have eaten, for lack of a better word, most of their resources there, and though they rule that world, and other worlds, it is an empty kingdom for the most part. For them this is paradise. At least until they suck it dry and try to find a path into a new dimensional world. They came through a wound between dimensions and ended up in a spot that was once a cheap-ass film studio, and is now a junkyard. It took them years to pull themselves all the way through, to become corporeal. They were fairly dormant until Elvis revived them.”

  Everyone looked at Elvis.

  “Me?” he said. “I didn’t even know they were here.”

  Colonel said, “Some people have a kind of power they don’t understand. Charisma we call it—
”

  “Told you,” Jenny said.

  “It is a force within some, but not all. At least not developed. When someone has it… Like our boy, here. People who just POP, for lack of a better word. The IT people. They give off a powerful energy. Sometimes they give it out so much it drains them, and they wither. A lot of people with IT, don’t last long. Almost anyone who is highly popular in sport, film, politics, they have it. But it’s a matter of degree, and it takes a kind of nourishing before it becomes a true power. You made them stronger when you were on that set, Elvis, but it wasn’t enough. It took years and bits of souls from others until they could become solid, use their powers, and when that happened they went out and fed, gained even more strength. But with you in the vicinity again, they want you. You could be the last piece of the puzzle, and with Jenny, all of you, including me, we are offering them all the power juice they need.”

  “Should we do that?” Jenny asked. “Offer it to them? Isn’t that a little like putting your head in the lion’s mouth after coating your skull with chopped liver?”

  “It’s how we lay our trap,” Colonel said. “It may take longer for them to lock in completely without us, but they will eventually find the powers they need through attrition. Now is the time to tease them out with our charismatic buffet, and nip it in the bud.”

  “Shit,” Elvis said. “I got a super power and didn’t even know it.”

  “I never said it was super,” Colonel said. “But you do have power. You use it all the time to get laid.”

  “I guess,” Elvis said, then glanced at Jenny. “But it doesn’t always work.”

  “You are at the peak of it, boy,” said the Colonel, “but that also means you are about to begin the downhill slide.”

  “Thanks,” Elvis said. “Thank you, very much.”

  “Facts is facts,” the Colonel said. “Everyone in this room has this charismatic glow to some degree. Blind Man has it even more than you, Elvis, but his powers are turned inward due to his blindness. He is more deeply connected than the rest of us, and actually sees more. He linked us with those other worlds. What the Hidden Agenda knows, it knows because of Rococo Blue and Blind Man.”

  “All we got was a jumble of impressions,” Jack said. “I don’t know I got anything I understand from it. Hard to plan an attack if you can’t comprehend the nature of what you’re attacking.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Colonel said. “Tourists, transients, street people, whores and druggies, this place is for them a plate lunch special. They can take on the forms of those they consume, that much we know, and they can create forms. They are shape-shifters. They can walk amongst us. They are quick and strong. They are shifting shadows full of doom.”

  “Oh wow, I like that,” John Henry said. “A shitting shadow full of doo.”

  “Shifting shadows full of doom,” the Colonel said.

  “Oh,” John Henry said. “That’s not as good.”

  “Yeah,” Jack said. “I heard what John Henry heard.”

  “It did sound like that,” Blind Man said.

  “Quit being asses,” Colonel said.

  “Can you sense them now?” Elvis asked Blind Man.

  “I can. They stir. They know who we are and what we’re about. I try to put up mind barriers, and I can do that pretty well, for a time. But thoughts of mine, and thoughts of yours, flow through me like a conduit, and sometimes my mental dam springs open. There’s a hole, and I can’t put a mental finger in it fast enough to stop the water, the thoughts from this side slip through and collect in their reservoir, so to speak.”

  “Everyone is really on a metaphor kick,” Johnny said. “What you’re saying, without bullshit attached, is they have a pretty good idea what we’re doing, what we plan to do, and they want to eat us, along with everyone else?”

  “Yep,” Blind Man said.

  “Let’s take the fight to them,” John Henry said.

  “They are going to bring it to us,” Blind Man said. “They know where we are, and if they destroy us, they’ll be unstoppable. It’s best we maintain fortification whenever possible, and wait.”

  “Can they move about in the daylight?” Jenny asked. “Or are they like legendary vampires?”

  “If you have read Dracula,” Blind Man said, “then you know he could in fact move about in the daylight, but his powers were diminished at that time. Still dangerous, but not as dangerous. These things are not unlike that, though they do avoid direct sunlight when possible. They can still do everything they normally do, but not as easily, and not as well. And unless they want you to see them, during the day you need 3-D glasses. In the day they can fade like a dream if they choose. At night, they can be more easily seen. But they don’t always look like the monsters they are.”

  “Shouldn’t we all be wearing the glasses now?” Jenny said.

  “The house is reasonably protected,” Colonel said. “We would know if they were near. Blind Man would know.”

  “I’m with John Henry, which I hate to admit,” Jack said. “Let’s go slap the dog shit out of them, put a stake through their hearts.”

  “The stake part doesn’t work,” Colonel said.

  “Whatever,” Jack said. “A pigeon up their ass, holy water in their nose. Whatever works. If they’re weakest now, we should head out with 3-D glasses on.”

  “They may be stronger at night,” Blind Man said, “but they have to come here, to this house to get us, and in their powerful arrogance, they think they can take us. Here we are safer than if we go directly to them. We also have our powerful house protector, a kind of succubus. She needs sex to recharge her. Lots of supernatural spirits do, and Elvis, she likes you. And we need her protection. She’s like the icing on a cake.”

  “Fuck a ghost?” Elvis said. “Not likely. Wait a minute. Will it be like the real thing?”

  “It’ll be like more than the real thing,” the Colonel said.

  Elvis considered briefly. “Maybe I could take a hit for the team.”

  “Sure,” Jenny said. “A hit for the team.”

  “The house spirit isn’t as strong as they are outside of her realm, but when it comes to defending the house, she has quite a bit of power. This is her domain and where she is the strongest, and maybe the spells in the house will protect us, be barricades against their attack. And with our weapons and expertise, we are like the Alamo, prepared for a siege.”

  “Well,” Jenny said, “I’m from Texas, and obviously you are not up on your Texas history. Those fellows at the Alamo. They lost.”

  13

  FENCES, SPELLS, AND JOHN HENRY GETS NERVOUS

  They put a chain-link fence up quickly, electrified it, said spells over it, poured holy water on it, and tested it. It crackled like a huge piece of cellophane being wadded and was hot enough to knock a bull elephant’s dick in the dirt and make it crawl.

  That was the first barrier.

  They made spells around the house, spread ashes from the remains of incinerated corpses blended with nun pee over the grounds.

  That was the second barrier.

  On the porch that went completely around the house they placed garlic and dried wolfsbane in pots of blessed soil shipped in from the graves of martyrs of all religions and martyrs who had died for being against religion.

  That was the third barrier.

  Inside the house, all along the walls, they dripped holy water and dropped salt until every inch along the wall had been touched and crusted with it. They placed the pubic hairs of saints encased in amber in window sills, the windows close to the ground.

  That was the fourth barrier.

  They drew pentagrams on all the floors and walls, even though there were already spells etched in and chalked on them. On each stair step they added the fat of a blessed and sacrificed sheep, mixed it with the ashes from a long-dead pope.

  That was the fifth barrier.

  Upstairs on the landing they drew more pentagrams and set up a giant crossbow on a stand at the top of the stai
rs. It was loaded with a long and heavy druid-blessed bolt. Beside the chair where the crossbow commander would sit, was a bucket containing four more blessed arrows. All the doors had power symbols on them. All the windows were soaped with symbols of the same. Spells were added to all the rooms.

  That was sixth barrier.

  For the seventh, during the day they decided they would all wear special 3-D glasses strapped tight to their heads, just in case the buggers decided on a sneak attack. You couldn’t fight what you couldn’t see.

  They waited and ate and exercised and talked and walked about the perimeter and watched the sun ride across the sky and dip into shadow. They removed their glasses then, but remained cocked and ready.

  John Henry, walking with Elvis and Jenny near the fencing, said, “Still think we ought to take it to them.”

  “You may be right,” Jenny said. “Who can know what’s truly right with this stuff?”

  “It creeps me out, them coming to us,” John Henry said. “Us knowing they’re coming.”

  “We don’t know for sure,” Elvis said. “That’s the Colonel and Blind Man talking.”

  “Yeah, but Blind Man, he’s tapped into their shit,” John Henry said. “Hell, he’s tapped into our shit, and a lot of other people’s shit. He might be tapped into the dogs at the pound for all we know. He’s one creepy dude, you get right down to it, and he probably knows what I’m saying now, which gives me the goddamn shake-a-weenie-willies. Blind Man’s got some mojo.”

  “We all do,” Elvis said.

  “There’s that. But this waiting crap, it makes my skin crawl like roaches under a carpet. Hey, shouldn’t you go and charge the ole girl’s battery?

  We’re going to need all the protection we can get if these things are as bad as the Colonel and Blind Man make out.”

  “Reckon that’s true,” Elvis said.

  “I could go for that,” John Henry said. “I’ll fuck damn near anything if it’s willing.”