Chapter 45
Asleep at Third Cock’s Crow
Carnival slept for a couple of hours. He awoke to the ringing of the doorbell. It was a cheerful noise, something along the lines of a power drill chewing into his eardrums. He stumbled blearily to the door. There was someone standing there. Carnival couldn’t pry his eyelids open wide enough to determine who it was, or if he knew them, or if he owed them any money.
“Can you read the future?” a young voice nervously asked. Carnival barely looked. He was too tired to bother noticing if it was a girl or a boy.
Oh look, a fan. Maybe she wants your autograph.
“Go away,” Carnival said. “Or I may have to kill you.”
Of course Poppa loved that.
I love a morning man. Up at crow’s piss with a grin above his chin. Tell the girl her future.
“There is no future,” Carnival snarled, slamming the door.
Maybe you’re right, with business like that what future can you have? You can’t pay the rent on good intentions and a bad attitude.
“Shut up, Poppa.”
Carnival stumbled back to his cot and fell in.
He was asleep before he even remembered falling.
Poppa sang unmelodious lullabies, but Carnival slept on.
There came another banging at the door.
“No future,” Carnival mumbled into his pillow. “There is no future.”
And then he fell back asleep. The day fled like a reluctant lover. Carnival slept on like a dead man, only a little more peaceful.
He didn’t hear the third knock upon the door.
The one he should have answered.
Open your eyes, boy. St. Peter would be so ashamed.
Car horns honked.
A garbage man dropped a garbage can, adding another dent to a heavily dented bucket.
Nothing changed.
Carnival slept on.
Chapter 46
Access Denied
Maya stood outside of Carnival’s front door, uselessly banging on the window glass. The doorbell must have been broken. He hadn’t come to its ringing. She couldn’t imagine him not answering if he knew it was her. She was that certain of her hold over the gypsy.
The door was locked. She could have broken it down. It would have been a simple task. That wasn’t the point.
She banged on the window glass.
She felt the thirst for blood growing inside her. Like a cancerous sponge, looking for something to suck up.
When will it end, she wondered. When I have drank the last throat dry? She reached her mind inside of the shop. It felt a little like reaching into an unlit closet.
Carnival, she shouted with her mind. Come to the door. It’s Maya.
She didn’t like standing outside like this. It was too familiar.
I’ve stood like this before, she thought. She had stood outside another door, trying to reach another gypsy.
Who?
Just for an instant she thought she saw Carnival, standing there behind the glass.
Only taller.
Darker.
She screamed.
It takes a lot to make a vampire scream.
A light turned on in the upstairs window.
It terrified her.
She turned back into the night, diving into the darkness like a fish heading for bottom.
Chapter 47
Somnubalism or Something Like It
Carnival hadn’t heard Maya at all. He lay there upon his cot, dreaming of the basement. It wasn’t all that hard of a concept, given that he was sleeping directly above the out-of-the-blue trapdoor.
He dreamed he was lying in the darkness.
You have been lying to yourself for a while, boy. To yourself most of all.
Carnival saw the wound in Olaf’s throat, opening like a flower in the rain.
He saw the way that the hooker’s chest gave way beneath his knife.
He saw the tautness of Maya’s breasts, like distant cool hills that he dreamed of climbing.
He saw it all in one dark thundercloud moment frozen in the shackle of time and he wanted to taste her, and wanted to weep.
Open your eyes, boy.
He awoke in the cellar staring at a corpse’s face. He lay so close that he could have kissed it, sticking his tongue into its mouth if he wanted to.
He kept his cool.
He only screamed a little.
The maggots were as thick as sticky rice. There were bunches of them, clustering white and wet about the festering wounds. He didn’t mind the maggots. They’ve always had a bit of a bad reputation, as far as bugs go. But army physicians in both the Civil War and World War I noted that wounds covered in maggots tended to heal more quickly than uninfested wounds. Sounds sick, doesn’t it? The fact was the maggots ate the infected flesh without any of the burning or tearing that a scalpel or an antiseptic might offer.
Someday you should make a documentary on the subject. Our friend, the maggot. Put it on Fox. That is a network that appreciates corruption.
He could hear Poppa, so he probably wasn’t dreaming. This was one of the soft zones, the gray areas that stretched between waking and not awake. Truths are poured out upon such gray slates. ‘
Truth and ambiguous revelation.
Carnival watched the maggots moving and pulsing. Forming words. Pictures. Like hieroglyphics. He saw a snake, a panther, a dragon. Then slowly, they formed themselves into words.
T-A-L-K-T-O-T-H-E-C-I-T-Y
S-T-O-R-M-T-H-E-W-A-L-L-S
Then he saw the dead rat chewing its way out of Elija’s face.
Damn it. That thing had been dead. They’d both been dead.
“No,” Elija said, tongueless and slurred. “Not dead.”
The rat kept chewing, long past hunger. It squinted at Carnival, the light reflecting in its eyes. For just an instant it looked like the damned thing was wearing eyeglasses.
The rat spoke, its mouth still full of Elija’s tongue.
“You have been marked.”
“No better than that rat.”
“Talk to the city.”
Open your eyes, boy.
Carnival sat up.
“Is that you, Poppa?”
Nothing. Not a sound. The big bald guy’s wristwatch said it was 4am. As far as Carnival could see the wristwatch was the only thing working on the big guy but Carnival just wasn’t so sure. He reached out to touch the watch. His hand passed through the glass. He felt the whir of the phantom cogs and gears buzzing ethereally within his flesh.
Even the watch is a ghost. They don’t make them like that anymore. Everything is computerized. God dreams in binary code.
A forerunner.
What could it mean?
Someone was going to die. Someone close, maybe. Carnival wasn’t sure. He didn’t recognize this ghost. That didn’t always mean anything. You didn’t have to pass that much of a qualifying exam to get the job.
“What have you to tell me, old ghost?” Carnival asked.
Maybe Timmy has fallen in the wall.
“Shut up, Poppa.”
The forerunner’s mouth opened and a soft sound like a dry wind over broken glass whispered out. Carnival had to strain to listen.
“She’s hunting,” the voice whispered. “Your mother is looking for you.”
The forerunner began to whirl softly, the fabric of its being torn by the accomplishment of its purpose. Its face whirled and blurred and funneled down about its mouth like water running down a drain.
Carnival stood up.
He pulled himself clear of the bodies and clambered up the ladder one more time.
Upstairs he unearthed his toolbox. He used a hammer and a handful of large nails to nail the trapdoor shut, swinging the hammer, pounding each nail down, thinking of stakes and coffin lids. He made enough noise to wake the death. He was surprised the tattooist or the lady downstairs didn’t call up and complain. Maybe the hammering only echoed in whatever dimension that basement was in.
&
nbsp; It didn’t matter. He wouldn’t waste any more time on futile gestures.
He had things to do before sunrise awoke. He had to go talk to the city.
There was a storm ahead.
His mother was looking for him.
And he needed a cab.
Chapter 48
What the Wound Said
Maya leaned out over the evening crowds, her arms spread wide like a crucified angel, her toes just barely touching the eaves of a dilapidated accounting house, resting her weight upon the sanctity of pure empty nothing. No one saw her. No one looked up this far. The billboards, shining neon tabernacles, served as a natural line of vision and horizon. Why look towards heaven when you can shop at The Gap?
Maya was hunting and hungry. So hungry that she was thinking about choosing herself a homeless bum. She thought it funny to remember how she’d chided Carnival over her last meal. She’d been just kidding him. The filth of the offering hadn’t truly offended her. How could it? After so many years pride dies easily in the face of thirst.
How many years had it been?
Carnival’s question still bothered her.
It had been a long time yet a little fastidiousness remains. One has to be fussy to find a little meaning in one’s life. If you start to live in the moment too long, taking what fate provides, then you become indifferent to all that life has to offer.
It was the reason Maya hated Buddhism. Like all those other non-carnivorous cults, they encouraged the practice of vegetarianism. The deficiency in protein encouraged your brain to shut down. You got docile, tractable, easily controlled. She didn’t even care for the taste of Buddhist blood yet one has to learn pragmatism. She’d drunk from rats and worse.
She considered her options. No, not a bum, not tonight. It was easier to stand on the corner and wait for the first car to pull up. She softly leaped down towards the pavement. A homeward bound insurance broker nearly sprained his neck in a start of surprise, then blamed it on an overactive imagination. Maya ignored him. She was hunting.
She waited on the corner. It didn’t take long. Her victim pulled up, wrapped in a large car. He looked like a family man, heavy set and balding, with a neatly trimmed goatee. He looked well fed and smelled it too. Whoever it was he was probably a college dean or an accountant. It didn’t matter. They were all the same, all looking for what she gave them – a thrill, a ride on the roller coaster, a little goose of adrenaline followed by merciful death.
He was the same bald man that Carnival had seen in the cellar. Maya didn’t know that. If she had, she probably wouldn’t care. Forerunners were usually harmless. She’d picked up a serial killer once. She had found out after, when she’d looked in his trunk. He still kept some souvenirs, neatly wrapped in plastic. There’d been one fresh enough to drink from. Not this guy, though. This guy was harmless, once he’d got that urge for strange meat out of his system.
What are you doing out here, she wondered? Why do you risk so much for a little guilty pleasure? Isn’t your wife enough? Hasn’t your doctor warned you about the dangers of the numerous taints that can lurk in random body fluid? Don’t you watch television?
It didn’t matter. Maya was hungry, and the man in the car promised relief. She sat in his car and smiled at him. When he smiled back, she opened his throat. He tasted of strong cologne. Testosterone watered down with hamburger grease and icy diet soda. He was soft. Well fed. His blood was thick and rich with cholesterol.
She drank.
How many nights has it been, she wondered. How many throats have opened before her? She wished she could remember. It was all such a blur, as if she’d stepped whole out of the night; new born at the fall of every dawning dusk. What a perfect conscience. How else could you live with the memory of so many deaths stretched behind you like a long crimson scarf?
She opened his throat and pushed her face down into the wound. She pulled back. She should remember this. This was always so good and so fulfilling. It was sweet every time. Why didn’t she remember? She felt something pushing down her throat. She tried to bite it off, but it resisted. Like a small wet Teflon snake too tough to bite through.
She pulled back. The wound was changing, reforming itself. That was strange enough, but then the wound tried to swallow her. A mouth formed in the wound, and a tongue taunting from out of the mouth. She saw lips like pasty leeches, teeth that were small and wet and black. The teeth looked like soggy raisins, dipped in tar. The tongue danced racily, trying to touch her lips. She pulled back, revolted. It takes a lot to revolt someone who’s used to sleeping with corpses and drains blood for a living.
“Does he love you yet?”
It was her dark master. She saw the glint of his spectacles, deep within the wound’s makeshift mouth.
“He has to love you, you know?” the mouth said. “You have to make him need you.”
She swallowed twice, before she could speak.
“He cares for me.”
“Yes, but does he love you?”
“He says he does.”
“What do you feel?”
She thought about it and shrugged.
“Not yet.”
“Why didn’t you help him hide the corpse? He’s got to feel he needs you. You’ve got to help him, any chance you get.”
“You don’t know what love is,” she said. “Love has nothing to do with need.”
“And what would you know about that?”
There was another pause.
The blood on her lips suddenly tasted bitter.
“You’re starting to sound like him,” she said.
“Hide this body. Hide it close to him. Hide it in the cellar, under his bed. Give the little gypsy boy something to think about.”
She nodded.
She would do what her master told her to do.
“Do it now,” the wound ordered.
“Who are you?” she asked.
“You’ll find out soon enough.”
And in the red tattered cave of the wound that spoke like a mouth, Maya swore she saw a wink.
And then there was nothing but blood and emptiness and thirst.
She drank deeply, and forgot.
The watch on the bald man’s wrist read 4am.
Chapter 49
The Tattooed Puppet
The needle never stilled.
It moved through the soft soup of what was left of the boy.
All through the long night the tattooist kept his needle working.
It was almost an afterthought, really. He had spent an entire night of working on the young boy. At this point there just wasn’t that much left of the boy. The skull had vanished. Whether he’d worn it down to bone meal and dust with the working of his needle or whether it had been magicked away didn’t matter.
He didn’t know that the skull was hidden in Carnival’s basement.
He didn’t need to know.
Something else had decided where the pieces of the puzzle needed to fall.
So he sat in the dark with an unpleasant smirk on his face, wearing the heavy pair of magnifying spectacles that his aging eyes demanded for such fine work as this, talking through the scrap of mouth that he’d cut from the young boy’s face as he talked to Maya, a woman he’s never met before.
Talking to her and pulling her strings.
The Red Shambler squatted in the red soaked shadows, breathing wetly like an ancient voyeur at an all night orgy, dancing a further set of soft wet strings above the old tattooist’s soulless shell.
“You’ll find out soon enough,” the red beast spoke, not noticing the strings that dangled invisibly above its own gory frame.
The Red Shambler smacked his dank lips, as if he could taste the sweat of someone’s freshly opened throat.
Chapter 50
Any Hack in a Storm
“Call me a cab, Poppa.”
Okay, so you’re a cab.
Carnival cursed himself for not seeing that one coming.
Don’t waste your breath cu
rsing yourself. There are plenty of folks who would be glad to do that for you.
“Don’t mess with me Poppa. You know what I want. I need to get down to the waterfront, and it’s too far to walk at this time of night.”
There’s no cab driver who would be caught dead on this side of town, unless maybe he was dead.
“Call in a favor Poppa. I know you still have a few friends.”
Do you know what this might cost you?
“It couldn’t be any worse than what I’ve already spent. Do what you have to do.”
For my son, I can do this. Should I call downtown, or up?
“Better call up, if you can. I’ve already pissed off one demon tonight.”
Carnival felt a warm glow inside as Poppa began to chant.
I call upon St. Kitt, patron of cab drivers and wanderers who carried the baby with the weight of the world on his shoulders. I call upon St. Eloi, blacksmith patron of the Iron Rom and patron of mechanics. I call upon St. Franziske of the dark night, who carried so travelers lost by night might find their way. I call upon St. Fevre, patron of cab drivers and migrant farmers, who cleared a right of way with a single spade. I call upon the holy spirits who have kept watch over the wheels of the Rom for a thousand years. By my grandfather’s grandfather’s grandfather, a Rom king is calling for momentum. My son needs a cab, preferably nonsmoking. Secondhand smoke will kill you as fast as any knife.
“Funny, Poppa. Do you think anyone was listening?”
When your Poppa calls for thunder, the clouds shout – “How loud”? Of course, they were listening. Are you?
Fearing another stupid joke, Carnival listened. He heard a soft lowing welling out of the night.
“Cows?”
Look outside.
Carnival looked. There, at his doorway was Mario the Borsch King’s flower cart. Bedecked and dangling with a chain of white roses and two potted funeral lilies. Mario perched above the push-arms, dressed in a pair of teddy bear pajamas. Hitched to the push arms were a team of a half dozen ghostly butchered bulls.
Your vardo awaits, poshrat, mad cows and all.
Chapter 51
Gypsy Blood Page 19
