Right boy. No need at all. Do what you think you have to.
“I ain’t ashamed,” she said, as if she could read Carnival’s mind. “Just scared sometimes, is all.”
“Scared of what?”
“Scared every night. Scared of the men with faces like credit cards, scared that one of those men was going to kill me. A girl’s got to live that sort of fear, all the time.”
Carnival shook his head softly. He could tell her about fear, he supposed.
“All those diseases out there,” he said. “I guess it can get pretty scary.”
She laughed at that.
“It’s not the diseases. They’re invisible. They don’t scare me. It’s the men. They’re not all nice, like you. Most of them ain’t nowadays. The men who pick me up these days are usually the bad kind. The kind that ain’t choosy. It gets scary, knowing that sooner or later you’re going to see one of them. Smile at them and get into his car. And then he’s going to kill me.”
She smiled up at Carnival like she knew what was in his mind. Carnival busied himself with spilling the salt around the floor. Sea salt is best but the regular stuff worked just fine and it went for half the price.
Salt the meat well, butcher, to keep it from growing buzzing flies.
“What’s all that salt for?”
“It’s a magic circle,” Carnival said, trying to keep the circle as even as he could. “It keeps things pure and clean. Salt’s a universal cleanser.” The easiest way to lie is always tell the truth.
“You ain’t smelled the harbor lately, have you?”
Carnival laughed at that. He couldn’t help himself but he had to watch out for that. He didn’t want to get attached. Sharing a laugh is as personal as sex, if it’s the right kind of laugh. And personal was something Carnival didn’t want. Not with what he was getting ready to do.
“So that salt’ll protect us, while we do it?”
He nodded, not trusting himself to speak.
“Are we going to do it in there?”
He allowed her another nod.
“You don’t think you could dig us up a sacred mattress, do you?” she asked. “It might be better for my sacred back.”
“You do most of your clients in that alley, don’t you?”
She looked down.
Ashamed again.
Damn it.
“I just want things to be perfect, is all,” she said. “That salt’s for protection?”
He nodded.
“Kind of like a magic rubber then, isn’t it?”
He laughed again. Damn it. He had to get this over with. No more fucking around. If he laughed again, it wasn’t going to happen.
“You’ve got one of those, don’t you?” the girl asked.
“One of what?”
“A rubber. A safe. You know, a condom. For protection. Like your salt.” she looked down, like these were the hardest words she’d said in a long time. “You’re a nice guy. I wouldn’t want you getting hurt.”
Hell.
“Yeah. Don’t worry about me, girl. I’ve got one right here.”
Carnival reached into his pants pocket, pulled out his knife, and rammed it as hard as he could between the hooker’s breasts.
The ritual had begun.
Chapter 41
Meat Grinder Dreams
Momma lay in her bed, passing time.
She didn’t really know what to do with her time anymore.
Sleeping wasn’t something that came easily to the long dead.
She lay in the darkness, letting her body rest, letting time pass.
There was a spider nestled in a corner. She watched it weave its web.
“Are you hungry, spider? Am I hungry?”
She couldn’t tell. All of these sensations were foreign to her.
The spider kept on weaving.
Momma kept on staring.
When she finally fell into the closest thing to sleep, she was visited by dreams.
Somebody was standing over her.
Somebody was forcing her into a meat grinder.
She kept screaming, but the hand above her kept forcing her downwards until nothing was left but a hand. The fingers and palm opened up into mouths, hungry screaming mouths, and then the hand above her forced her down.
Down, screaming, forcing her, forcing his own hand deep into the meat grinder and letting himself be pulled down after her. At the last she looked up, from the spill and the meat, she looked up at who was forcing her down.
It was her son.
“Oh my son. Oh my Val,” Momma whispered. “Whatever do you think you are doing?”
The spider kept on weaving, spinning out its sticky charm, laying down its ancient design, a trap to keep death out.
Chapter 42
Chumming the Waters
It had to be bloody.
The kind of spirit Carnival needed would only come to the smell of fresh blood. You can’t catch anything without good fresh bait. So he cut the pieces of the dead hooker and scattered them around the salt circle, being careful not to spill any blood across the salt, for fear of breaking his sanctuary.
The dead girl, you mean.
“You know what I mean, Poppa.”
What you mean? You’ve killed a girl. A human being. You’ve taken her life. You’re not a very good Galahad, are you? Stop lying to yourself. Don’t try to hide behind labels. Leave that to the lawyers in their oily cheap suits.
“And you’ve never done anything as bad as this, Poppa?”
Not like this. This is strong magic. Where’d you learn magic like this?
“What, you thought I had nothing but card tricks and crystal balls? I’m wiser than you think. Wise enough to notice you changing the subject.”
It had to be bloody and it had to be random.
There had to be pieces strewn, like torn tickets at a funhouse fair, dreams of broken stained windows, a mosaic of meat. There’s an art to butchery, an art and a science. Done properly it becomes a kind of divination. The entrails readers of Pompeii knew this. The Red Dreamers of Cythoris. The dogmen who talked in blood and tongue meat in the nameless streets of Bel-hal-hai.
It’s a good family tree to piss against, isn’t it boy?
Carnival ignored his Poppa’s jibes, too busy on his incantation.
“Come, dark spirit,” he called, chanting words that clanked in his mouth like cleavers against anvils. “Come red wanderer. I call to the outer dreams of the universe, to the darkness that cannot be touched, I call to the red one’s twisted malevolent servant.”
Demons don’t talk that way.
“I know, Poppa. They don’t talk that way but they like to pretend that they do.”
The shadows in the corners of the room began to swim. Standing and stretching out like a streak of red cinnamon oil that had learned how to walk. And then there it stood, leaning there, just outside Carnival’s circle. So close that he could smell its fetid breath. It stank of curdled blood and greed. One of the countless unsung grotesqueries, raised barely a half a century ago into demon-hood.
Its name was Cantanker but it didn’t know that Carnival knew that.
“Give me the heart,” it begged, reaching one overly long gangle of an arm out towards Carnival, stopping just short of the salt circle.
“I’ll give you nothing unless you talk with me.”
Cantanker’s jaw structure dislocated into the shape of a very large and hungry grin. Cantanker was a low-league grotesquerie, very minor arcane majoring in obsequious carnage, a demon of urges and betrayal.
He would be as good a place as any to start tracking the Red Shambler down.
“Oh we’ll talk of many things,” Cantanker promised.
Carnival couldn’t resist.
“Of cabbages and kings,” he countered.
Then he gave Cantanker a finger.
Her smallest.
“Here! You have my permission.”
The bargaining had begun.
The blood spir
it picked up the finger and sucked it like a Pixie Stick. The finger pruned and wrinkled beneath the blood spirit’s lips like a slug under salt.
And then Carnival played his next card.
“I know you by name, Cantanker Pewling,” he said. “You are the itch in the blood that causes a man’s hands to reach for his wife’s throat on a hot summer evening. You are the piss-off, the slow burn, the burr beneath the saddle. You are the bitch-bastard that will not die.”
Cantanker smiled. It wasn’t a nice smile. It was kind of smile that made a man dream of watching the blood run down a white picket fence, after a half dozen babies have been dropped upon the sharpest pickets.
“You have one of those already, gypsy boy,” Cantanker said. “You have a bitch who will not die.”
Carnival grinned.
Cantanker knew things too.
Demons keep up with all the gossip.
“She gives a hell of a hickey.” Carnival admitted. “Better than you’ll ever know.”
“I fucked her in the ass.” Cantanker boasted. “She screamed for more.”
“You fucked your mother while you were both blind drunk.”
This was how demons really talked. Talking with demons, especially the one’s farthest down on Hell’s totem pole, was a little like talking to a pack of fourteen year old boys. The ranker you talked, the more they loved to listen.
“She said you were small,” Carnival added. “Like a cocktail weenie.”
“I fucked your mother,” Cantanker said. “Fucked her with my blood swollen cock. Fucked her until she spat out the cuntworm that grew into you.”
Blood swollen cock? This hell spawnlet’s read too many Forum letter columns.
“Ha!” Carnival retorted. “My mother would kick tombstones up your poor buggered ass until your eyes crossed in shame.”
The black banana peel of pride goes slick and fast before a tumble.
“To hell with that, demon. You can talk about my girlfriend all night long, but nobody talks down Momma.”
Ha, listen to the Momma’s boy.
It was awkward, trying to converse with a demon while Poppa kibbutzed. Cantanker hissed, trying to spray Carnival with his toxic blood. The blood spew hit the wall of the salt circle and sprayed out in midair, like reddish green mud splashed on a thin invisible circular windshield.
“Tell me what I want to know,” Carnival demanded. “Or I’ll keep you here all night.”
“You can’t keep me. I have work to do.”
“Yes I know. There’s a drunkard six blocks aching to beat his wife’s skull in with her favorite bowling trophy. There’s two friends arguing over a pack of cigarettes and one of them has got a knife. There’s a mad dog itching to tear the throat out of a beggar’s child. You’ve got work waiting for you but right now you’ve got to deal with me and I’ve got you hard and fast - and neither of us are going anywhere until I hear what I want to know.”
“Throw me her heart.”
Greedy, greedy. You’re a poor host, boy.
“I’ll throw you a bone,” Carnival taunted, grabbing his crotch with his hand. “You don’t have my permission to eat her yet.”
He cut off her big toe.
“How about a toe?” Carnival offered. “There’s lots of eating on that.”
Carnival threw the toe. It bounced like a small rubber ball.
“Suck on the toe jam, I left a chunk in the wound for you. You have my permission.”
Cantanker ran after the toe, like a transient hunting a cigarette butt. Minor demons are anything but proud. He picked it up and tore a chunk out of the ball of the toe. It made a popping, cracking noise beneath his teeth like he was chewing on a crab apple.
“Give her to me. Give me your permission.”
“Don’t talk with your mouth full.”
Carnival was enjoying this. After all of the pissiness and despair of the last few days it felt good to have the upper hand, even if that hand could tear his spine out if there were so much as a speck of empty space in the salt circle’s perimeter.
“The bitch is mine. Give her to me.”
You’ve played too long, boy. Don’t fuck with this one or he’ll have you by the throat.
“The bitch is mine,” Carnival retorted, pounding on the hooker’s torso for dramatic effect.
You ham. Your overacting will get the best of you.
Poppa’s prophecy proved true. As Carnival pounded on the dead woman’s chest, a small gout of uncontrolled blood and seeping rot spurted out of the hooker’s open wounds.
Look boy. You learn something new every day. Cadavers don’t bleed, but they’re messy as all hell.
Before Carnival could catch the blood with his inner weave, the spill oozed a single half an inch across the salt circle. And that’s all it took. The circle was broken just that quickly. Cantanker was in Carnival’s face, his fangs pressed like ripper kisses against the Gypsy’s panicked throat.
“It’s quite all right,” Cantanker whispered. “I give myself permission now.”
Carnival felt Cantanker’s picket fence smile open wide.
Wider.
“This will be good,” Cantanker snarled, like a bear trap that had learned how to speak.
Say goodnight, boy.
The Gypsy fought back as hard as he could, but he might as well have been a dead baby mouse in the mouth of a feral cat. Cantanker could tear Carnival’s throat open and yawn at the same time, without breaking sweat. Carnival didn’t stand a chance but he’d be dry-fucked with a splintery Louisville Slugger before he let the demon know that.
He forced a taunting smile.
“If you get fresh with me I’m going to scream.”
That’s it boy, show him who is the boss.
Carnival brought his left leg up hard, kneeing Cantanker’s nuts. It was worse than kneeing a brass monkey. Carnival nearly broke his kneecap.
Now he’s scared. Broken bones and poorly planned injuries always terrify minor demons.
“Poppa, you could give a little help.”
He doesn’t look like he needs any.
Carnival tried to push the demon away. It was as useless as fighting a cramp. Cantanker clung to Carnival, skin graft close. Carnival was finished. All that needed doing was for the demon to close his teeth and it would be all over. He heard the demon fangs champ and chanter, moving independently from his gumwork like a mouthful of articulated castanets.
It’d be just that easy. Cantanker could take Carnival’s face off, crap it out, and paste it on an all day sucker to treat himself with an eternity later.
“You wouldn’t like my taste,” Carnival warned. “Gypsies tend to constipate.”
Cantanker snarled, a hot blast of teeth and burning spit against the Gypsy’s throat.
It felt like shaving with a really rusty lawn mower.
“It’s our lack of moral fiber,” Carnival added.
For somebody who is meeting death by unholy means, you are doing a pretty good job of hiding your terror. You haven’t messed your pants as far as I can tell.
Cantanker growled. He wasn’t angry. Carnival knew that. He didn’t even hate the Gypsy. It wasn’t revenge or murder. It was just business. Demons are the wise guys of the abyss, the thugs and the strong arms. They deal in brutality and respect. The fact was Hell was just one super large multi-tiered street gang. When Carnival pissed on Cantanker, he’d pissed on his honor. He had to annihilate the Gypsy, given a chance.
“Go on,” Carnival snarled. “Finish it.”
At least Carnival wouldn’t have to kill anyone any more.
Carnival was comforted by that thought. He felt Cantanker’s dank septic breath panting at his throat. The tickle of his teeth. Demon spit burning like lukewarm acid. Then Cantanker leaned back and howled like a banshee banned from the graveyard. He wasn’t angry. He was pissed. He gnashed his teeth, crashing down a half a mole hair from Carnival’s neck.
“God,” Cantanker snarled, spitting the hated name out like a gob
of bloody phlegm. He had to be in pain. God was the worst curse a demon could make. “I can’t touch you.”
He doesn’t like your taste, boy. All this time, I cursed your lack of personal hygiene. How foolish of me not to realize your grand master plan.
Carnival stood. Cantanker didn’t try to stop him. Carnival tidied the circle, recovering his weave, his illusion of control. “Why didn’t you kill me?”
Stop asking so many questions. You shouldn’t look a gift demon in the teeth.
“I have to know.” Carnival shouted.
It took Cantanker several tries to muster the words. He was in that much pain.
“Something stronger owns your soul.”
Carnival hid his bewilderment.
You weren’t expecting that, were you poshrat?
Cantanker opened his hand. There was a pool of blood in his hand, red and reflective as a ruby eyed mirror.
“Look,” the demon commanded.
Carnival looked and couldn’t believe what he saw. The reflection of his face and throat. It was bad. His throat looked like it had been worked over with a barbed wire garrote. It wasn’t Cantanker’s work. It was Maya.
“Something’s marked you,” Cantanker said. “Something more powerful than I.”
Carnival was shocked but he wouldn’t show it.
Not to a bush-league bastard like Cantanker.
“You didn’t know who you were fucking with, did you?” he said to the demon.
Cantanker hissed in frustration. He couldn’t hide that pissy ammoniac scent of rank cowardice.
“Don’t think about it. I’ve got friends in lower places than you’ve ever stooped,” Carnival warned him. “I told you that it just doesn’t pay to fuck with a gypsy.”
You have no idea what just happened, do you?
He did and he didn’t but none of that mattered. Right now he was playing the advantage for all it was worth. The lie gave him confidence. It strengthened the weave of his spell, his sense of personal control. He caught hold of Cantanker’s essence like a cold iron noose.
Gypsy Blood Page 17
