by Edward Lee
“That’s six large. The Boss Man ain’t happy.”
“Barkeep,” Rudy changed the subject. “Get my good friend Vito here a beer on my tab, and one for this guy, too,” he said, slapping the ludicrous man on the back.
Vito jerked a thumb. “I’ll be over at the booth marking my books. Come on over if you got anything you want to talk to me about.”
“Actually,” Rudy seized the opportunity. “I was wondering if like you could maybe give me a little extra t—”
“I ever tell you how I lost my eye? About ten years ago, I ran up a big marker on the Boss Man’s tab, and I made the big mistake of asking him for a little extra time.”
Rudy gulped. When Vito disappeared to the back booth, Beth jumped in to complain. “That’s great, Rudy. We’re nearly broke, you’re six thousand in debt to a mob bookie, and now you’re buying beers for people. Jesus.”
“Guys like Vito like to see generosity. Part of their machismo.”
“And now look what you’ve done!’ she whispered.
The inane, toothy grin floated forward; its owner took the stool next to Rudy. “Innumerable thanks, sir. It’s not ald; however, I’m grateful to you.”
“What the hell is ald?” Rudy asked.
“A high and might liquor indeed, and a favorite of the mashmashus. We invented it, by the way, though your zymurgists of today refuse to acknowledge that. You see, the great grain mounds would accumulate condensation in the sun. The dregs, then, seeped into pools of effluvium, which were squeezed off into the casks.” He sipped his beer, cross-eyed. I am Gormok. And you are called?”
Gormok? What kind of fruitloop name is that? Rudy wondered.
“I’m Rudy. This is Beth, my fiancé.”
Beth frowned again, and Rudy supposed he could see her point. Nothing he’d promised her had come true. His gambling was like a ritual to him, an obsessive act of something very nearly reverence, and it kept a monkey on their backs the size of King Kong. The stress was starting to show: tiny lines had crept into Beth’s pretty face, and a faint veneer of fatigue. She’d lost weight, and the lustrous long caramel-colored hair had begun to take a tint of gray. She worked two jobs while Rudy sweated bullets at the track. And now mob men were calling. No wonder she’s always pissed. I’m gonna get my eye poked out next Friday and here I am buying beers for a shylock and some loose-screw named Gormok.
“And I affirm,” Gormok went on in his creaky, sinitic voice, “that your generosity will not go unrewarded. If I can ever be of service to your benefit, I implore thee, make me aware.”
“Forget it,” Rudy said. Nut. He drained his beer. “Where’d the barkeep go? I could use a refill.”
“Our humble servitor, I believe,” Gormok offered, “is at this sad moment seeking to contact his unfaithful paramour.”
Rudy spied the keep down the other end of the bar, talking on the house phone. Suddenly the guy turned pale and hung up. “I just called the fuckin’ trailer,” he muttered. “My girlfriend ain’t there. Then I ring my buddy down at The Anvil, and he tells me Stacy left after happy hour…with some guy.”
“A gentleman, too,” Gormok reminded, “unthus known and of a formidable endowment of the groin.”
“Shadap, ya whack.” The keep went back to the phone. Beth maintained her terse silence. But Rudy was thinking.
“Gormok. How about doing that salt thing for me.”
“An alomance! Yes?” came the grinning reply.
Rudy lowered his voice. “Tell me who’s gonna win that fight.”
“Alas, the gladiators of the new, dark age,” Gormok remarked, and peered up at the boxing bout on the bar television. “But have thee a censer? Clearer visions are always begot by fire.”
“What’s a censer?”
“It’s something you burn things in, during rituals,” Beth defined. “And don’t be idiotic, Rudy.”
Rudy ignored her, glancing about. “How about this?” he ventured, and slid over a big glass ashtray sporting the Swedish Bikini Team.
“It shall suffice,” Gormok approved. He sprinkled several shakes of salt into a bar napkin and placed it in the ashtray. “A taper, now, or cresset or flambeau.”
I hope he means a lighter. Rudy flicked his Bic. He lit the napkin, which strangely puffed into a quick flame and then went out. Gormok’s face took on a momentary expression of tranquility as though he were indeed taking part in some ritualistic worship. Then the odd man leaned forward…and inhaled the smoke.
Rudy stared.
“The combatant dark of skin and light of garb,” Gormok giddily intoned, “who is called Tuttle, before two minutes have expired, will emerge victorious by a single blow to the skull of his oppressor.”
Rudy snatched up Beth’s purse.
“Rudy, no!”
“How much money you got?” he asked, rummaging. He fingered through his fiancee’s wallet. “Twenty bucks? That’s it?”
“Damn it, Rudy! Don’t you dare—”
Rudy turned toward the mob man’ s booth. “Hey, Vito? A double sawbuck says Tuttle KO’s Luce this round.”
Vito didn’t even look up. “No more credit, Rudy.”
“Cash, man. On the table.”
Now Vito raised his smirk to the TV. “Tuttle’s getting his ass kicked. Don’t make me take your green.”
“Come on, Vito!” Rudy barked. “Quit bustin’ my balls. Are you a bookie or a book collector?”
Vito made a shrug. “Awright, Rudy. You’re on.”
Rudy jerked his gaze to the TV, then drooped. Luce was dancing circles around his man, firing awesome hooks which snapped Tuttle’s head back like a ball on a spring.
“You’re such a fool,” Beth groaned.
“Hark,” Gormok whispered, and pointed to the screen.
Tuttle shot a blind jab which sent Luce over the ropes—
“Yeah!” Rudy yelled. Then: “Yeah, fuckin-A yeah!” he yelled louder when the ref counted Luce out and raised Tuttle’s arm in victory.
Vito came over. “Good call, Rudy. Just don’t forget that six large.”
Rudy’s smile radiated. “That’s five thousand, nine hundred, and eighty, Vito.”
“Yeah. See ya next Friday, paisan.”
Vito left the smoky bar, while Rudy fidgeted on his stool. Even Beth was rubbing her chin, thinking. And Rudy had a pretty good idea what she was thinking about.
“How’d you do that, man?” he asked aside to Gormok.
“I am an alomancer,” Gormok answered through his ludicrous grin. “I am a salt-diviner for the Fourth Cenote of Nergal.”
What you are, Rudy thought, is a nut. But I love ya anyway. He put a comradely arm about Gormok’s shoulder. “So, Gormok, my man. How would you like to come and live with us?”
II
“Who’s that?” Mona winced when they got home.
Snooty bitch. “This is our very good friend, Gormok,” he told the blonde coed. Her 38C’s pushed against her blouse. “Gormok, this in Mona, our housemate.”
Gormok appraised the attractive, tight-jeaned student. “Men have rown leagues for such beauty, priests have scaled ziggurats.”
“Uh…huh,” Rudy said. “Mona, how about going to your room to study, huh? Gormok and I gotta talk.” Mona made no objection, padding off with her English 311 text, Pound, Eliot, and Seymour: The Great Poets of Our Age. “Sit down, Gor,” Rudy bid. “Make yourself at home.” Gormok did so, his lap disappearing when he sat down on the frayed couch.
Rudy nudged Beth into the kitchen. “Get him a beer. He seems to like beer.”
“Rudy, this might be a bad idea. I don’t know if I—”
“Just shut up and get him a beer,” Rudy politely repeated. He went back to the squalid living room, bearing an ashtray and a shaker of salt. “So, Gor. Tell me about yourself.”
The lunatic grin roved about. “I am but a lowly salt-diviner, once blessed by the Ea, now curs’d by Nergal.”
“Uh…huh,” Rudy acknowledged.
“I w
as an Ashipu, a white and goodly acolyte, but, lo, I sold my soul to Nergal, The Wretched God of the Ebon. Pity me, in my sin: my repentance was ignored. Banished from heaven, banished from hell, I am now accursed to trod the earth’s foul crust forever, inhabiting random bodies as the vessel for my eternal spirit.”
“Uh…huh,”
“Jesus,” Beth whispered. Disapproval now fully creased her face when she gave Gormok a can of Bud. Yeah, we’ve got a live one, Rudy thought. The next fight—Jenkins versus Clipper—was on the west coast; it would be running late. “That’s pretty, uh, interesting, Gormok. You think maybe you feel like doing the salt thing again?”
Beer foam bubbled at Gormok’s grin. “The alomance!”
“Uh, yeah, Gor. The…alomance. I could really use to know who’ s gonna win the Jenkins-Clipper bout.”
Gormok’s grin never fluctuated. He knelt on tacky carpet tiles and went into his arcane ritual of burning salt in a napkin, then inhaling the smoke that wafted up from the ashtray. He seemed to wobble on his knees. “The warrior b’named Clipper, dear friend, in the sixth spell of conflict.” Then he collapsed to the floor.
“Holy shit!” Rudy and Beth rushed to help the alomancer up. “Gor! Are you all right?” Rudy asked.
“Too much for one day.” Gormok’s voice sounded drugged. “Put me abed, dear ones. I’ll be better on the morrow.”
“The couch,” Rudy suggested. “Let’s get him on the—”
“Deep and down,” Gormok inanely remarked. “I must be deep, as all damned Nashipus are so cursed. Get me near the cenotes.”
“A cenote is a hole in the ground,” Beth recalled from her college myth classes. “They’d hold rituals in them, sacrifice virgins and things like that.”
A hole in the— “The basement?” Rudy suggested.
Beth opened the ringed trap-door, then they both lugged the muttering and rubber-kneed Gormok down the wooden steps.
“Better, yes! Sweet, sweet…dark.”
They lay the bizarre man on an old box-spring next to the washer and drier. Dust eddied up from the dirt floor. “He’s heavier than a bag of bricks!” Beth complained.
Rudy draped an old army blanket over him. “There.”
“Ea, I heartily do repent,” Gormok blabbered incoherently. “Absolve my sins, I beg of Thee!” He began to drool. “And curse thee, Nergal, unclean despoiler! Haunter! Deceiver of souls!”
“Uh…huh,” Rudy remarked, staring down. Yeah, we’ve got a live one, all right. A real winner.
III
In bed, they bickered rather than slept. “I can’t believe you invited that weirdo into our house,” Beth bellyached.
“I didn’t hear you complaining,” Rudy refuted.
“Well, you do now. He’s…scary.”
“You don’t believe all that mumbo-jumbo, do you? It’s just a bunch of schizo crap be made up.”
“It’s not made up, Rudy. I majored in ancient history, that is, before I had to quit school and go to work to keep you out of cement loafers. Cenotes, ziggurats, alomancy—it’s all straight out of Babylonian myth. This guy says he’s possessed by the spirit of a Nashipu salt-diviner. That’s the same as saying he’s a demon.”
Rudy chuckled outright. “Somebody hit you in the head with a dumb-stick? He’s a flake, Beth. He probably escaped from St. Elizabeth’s in the back of a garbage truck and read about all that stuff in some occult paperback. He thinks he’s possessed by a demon. And so what? Let him think what he wants. What’s important to us is the guy’s genuinely psychic. You heard him, he predicted that fat barkeep’s squeeze was cheating on him.”
“That could be just coincidence, Rudy.”
“Coincidence? What about the Tuttle fight? He didn’t just pick the winner, Beth, he picked the round. He picked a KO by a guy who every bookie in town said was gonna lose.”
“I don’t care,” Beth replied, turning her back to him amid the covers. “He’s scary. I don’t want him in the house.”
“Beth, the guy’s a gold mine on two legs. We keep him under our wings, we’ll never have to worry about money again. We’ll be—”
The scream came down like a guillotine blade. Rudy and Beth went rigid in the bed.
Then another scream tore through the air.
“Thuh-that came from M-Mona’s room, didn’t it?” Rudy stammered.
“Yuh-yeah,” Beth agreed.
“She’s your friend. You go see what happened.”
“Fuck you!” Beth shouted. “Inconsiderate coward son of a—”
“We’ll both go, then. Here. I’ll protect you.” Rudy boldly brandished one of Beth’s nail files. Then, disheveled in their underwear, they crept out of the bedroom.
“Aw, Christ,” Rudy muttered when he saw the trap-door to the basement standing open.
Then they padded down the ball, and peered into Mona’s room…
“Aw, Christ,” Rudy muttered again.
But Beth didn’t mutter. She screamed.
Gormok, his face smeared scarlet, grinned up at them in the lamplight. And atop the stained bed lay Mona, naked and quite dead.
She was also quite eviscerated.
The student’s trim abdomen had been riven open, and from the rive an array of organs had been extracted and arranged about her as if for some macabre inspection. An outline of slowly seeping blood spread about the corpse like a Kirlian aura.
Gormok was eating something dark and wet out of his hands. Her liver, Rudy realized. He’s eating Mona’s liver.
“Friends! Hello!” Gormok greeted, chewing. “How art?”
Rudy bellowed, “What in God’s name did you do!”
“Not in God’s name,” Gormok lamented. “In Nergal’s. Lo, and to my eternal shame, behold the freight of my curse. I try to fight it, on my heart. But the blasted Nergal has condemned me to such heinous acts wheneverest I breathe on the salt’s divine fumes.”
“Uh…huh.” Rudy shuddered, feebly wielding the nail file. Should I kill him? he debated. But he thought about that. He’d never much liked Mona anyway. Bitchy, arrogant, and always taking cheap shots. Sure, he’d fucked her a couple times when Beth was at work (—no great shakes in bed, either. Like fucking a starfish—) and since then she’d regularly implied that it wouldn’t be a good idea for Rudy to ever raise her rent.
“Gormok, wait here a minute. Beth and I have to talk.”
“Of course! Enjoy your discourse, dear friends,” Gormok invited. “Whilst I enjoy my meal.”
Rudy had to about carry Beth back to their bedroom. She was going pasty-faced, pale. “Rudy,” she fretted, “we have to get out of here while we still can! We have to call the police!”
“Don’t overreact, honey. He’s harmless.”
“Harmless!” Beth’s eyes came close to jettisoning from her head. “He’s eating Mona’s liver! You call that harmless?”
Rudy had a plan, but he had to play it out right. “Listen, Beth,” he said in a consoling, quiet voice. “Mona’s got no relatives or friends—hell, she doesn’t even have a boyfriend. She’ll never be missed. And she wasn’t doing well in school, anyway—”
“Rudy! You call the police right now!”
“All right, all right.” Rudy held up his hands, his hair sticking up. “I’m calling the police. See?” He picked up the phone and began to dial.
But not the police. Instead, he dialed 1-900 Sportsline. He listened a moment, tapping his foo. Then he hung up and smiled.
“Clipper won the bout in the sixth round.”
Beth went into a staccato burst of crying and screaming. “Rudy, you’re out of your mind! What is wrong with you?”
“Baby, it’s only because I love you,” Rudy, well, lied. “I’m not doing this for me, I’m doing it for us. I want us to be married someday, have kids, and all that.”
Beth sniffled, looking up. “Really?”
“Of course, honey,” he assured her and gave her a hug. “But I need you to have faith in me, okay? I want you to go to bed now
. Just trust me.” He lovingly touched her cheek. “I’ll take care of everything.”
««—»»
Rudy did exactly that. First, he put Gormok back to bed in the basement. The alomancer, smiling calmly, said, “I’m sated now, dear Rudy. My curse is relieved, and now I can sleep. And I am heartily sorry for any inconvenience i have caused you.”
“Hey, Gor, don’t worry about it.” Rudy winced a bit, thinking of Mona’s liver. “These things happen all the time.”
“Until the morrow, then! And for now—sleep. For to sleep is perchance—to dream.”
“Uh…huh,” Rudy said.
When he went back up, this time, he locked the trap-door.
««—»»
Digging graves was hard work, harder than one might expect. Yet dig Rudy did, maniacally in his boxer shorts. He dug deep.
Inserting Mona’s internal organs back into her opened abdominal vault proved a trying task too, but at least it was unique…
And later, in the little moonlit backyard, with the crickets trilling and the grass cool under his bare feet, with the scent of the bay in the air, Rudy buried the fickle bitch.
««—»»
But one more task remained. Gormok said he was cursed to commit murder on any day that he performed a salt-divination. That’s a big problem, Rudy realized. He couldn’t very well have Gormok cutting folks up and eating their livers every time he gave Rudy the read on the next fight or ballgame, now could he?
So…
He crept quietly back down into the basement.
Gormok slept on, murmuring sweet Babylonian nothings.
Here goes, Rudy thought—
—and raised the fire ax.
“Sleep no more!” Gormok quoted Bill Shakespeare as the great blade cut down. “MacRudy doth murder sleep!”
Blood flew like spaghetti sauce. Things thunked to the floor. But there was no other way! Hell, I’m doing him a favor, Rudy felt convinced as he chopped and chopped.
And chopped some more. Once he’d succeeded in severing Gormok’s limbs, he tied off each stump with twine.
