Why are you doing this?
The big sailor went down on the ground, choking and spasming and drowning in his own blood. Carnival had torn out his larynx. And then he wasn’t moving at all.
Maya smiled, a hot and hungry grin like a well fed snake. Stevie Nicks was hanging in her arms like a big pale rag doll. Carnival saw that smile and just like that he forget all his doubts. You can forgive so damn much for just a single fleeting smile.
Open your eyes, boy.
“Well doesn’t that damn it all to sailor-sucking hell,” Maya said with a grin. “You’re a natural,”
He turned on, and then off, just like that.
Maya was right.
Carnival was turning.
Chapter 66
Hide and Go Seek
Carnival hid the bodies. It was easier, now that no one was living in the basement. The bodies even seemed a little lighter. He wondered if he was buffing up, what with all of this lugging of dead meat.
Yes, my son. You are a regular Mr. T. Maybe when the palm reading dries up you should open a personal trainer business. Build a better body by dragging bigger bodies.
Carnival thumbed his chest and kicked a toe full of imaginary sand into Poppa’s face. It was funny, though. Everything was funny. Death was all around him, and he just wanted to guffaw. He was verging on giddy.
He could still taste the sailor’s blood.
A protein shake, shaken not stirred.
“It tastes bad, Poppa.”
Hold that thought, my son. Your girlfriend lives on that terrible taste.
Carnival remembered being held down by one boy, and made to swallow another boy’s spit. The kind of harmless fun bullies loved to indulge in. The spit was bad, but the sailor’s blood was far worse.
Could he keep on doing this for the rest of his life?
Open your eyes, boy. Stop playing Saul of Tarsus.
“What does that mean, Poppa?”
It means you ought to be feeling up elephants, wondering if they are made of rope, tree trunks, or palm leaves.
Carnival opened the trapdoor and rolled the sailor’s body in. It made a large sound as it hit the floor. He could have left it where it was. It wasn’t like anyone ever came to call on her, after all. She usually went on and got the sailors.
Hell, all he had to do was take care of the tattooist and the building would be his.
A personal trainer and a slum lord. It’s good to have ambition.
But right now all Carnival wanted was to be out of this mess. Things were happening so quickly. Everything he tried seemed to lead him deeper into the cesspool.
He clambered down the ladder.
There was mold forming on one of the bodies. The humidity was pretty bad. He wondered briefly about the practicality of installing a dehumidifier. The mold didn’t look natural. It stank like a swamp, only not as pretty. The mold was growing in a pattern, like it had been drawn on. It looked like a little like a fish net. Then Elija sat up.
“Fuck!” She’d said they wouldn’t come back.
She said a lot of things.
“Right Poppa.”
“You killed me,” Elija said.
“No. The street killed you. The blood war killed you. Hell, you probably died in birth.”
The poor bastard never stood a chance, did he?
“Right, Poppa.”
Especially after he met you.
“You killed me,” Elija repeated.
Carnival reminded himself to bring a bottle next time. Maybe that would keep the old wino quiet.
“Don’t ignore me!” Elija called, but Carnival looked away.
Own it, boy. It’s yours. Your inheritance. You’ve built it.
In the far corner the bald guy with the goatee was pumping himself into the hooker’s open wound. She looked like she was enjoying herself.
“Stop it,” Carnival yelled. “Stop it. You’re all dead.”
But nothing stopped. Nothing could stop.
Why should it?
“I did this,” Carnival said. “I own this. All of it. I created it. I made it. It wasn’t Poppa’s fault. It wasn’t Maya’s fault. I started this ball rolling.”
At last his eyes are open.
There was a glint of light from out of the shadows. Like the reflection off of a heavy pair of glasses.
“Who the hell are you?” he asked.
No answer. It was all over. The bodies stopped moving. Carnival backed out carefully, feeling for the ladder. The sailor lady stood up and took a step back from the dead Stevie Nicks.
“Val?” Stevie Nicks called.
Holy belladonna. Look who came to the party? I don’t remember anyone inviting you.
It was Momma.
Chapter 67
The Forces of the Law
Outside of the room where Olaf was psychic raping Momma, the neighbors were growing concerned. Their concern wasn’t usual. This was the sort of neighborhood where loud sounds went unheard but this was different. This sounded like a nuclear war was going off inside the room. Someone finally picked up a phone and dialed the police. People stood by listening to the sounds inside the house’s front door.
A policeman arrived within minutes. Minutes later he called for backup. A truckload of ESU troops arrived. Men who lived for action, who found the life of ordinary police duty to be far too boring for them.
“It sounds a little like a pair of homicidal serial rapists have decided to restage Custer’s Last Stand in there,” One of the ESU troops said.
They readied their battering ram. A tube of steel ending in a flat foot, with handles for swinging and a large lead weight hidden inside that slid forward with every swing, adding to the impact.
Shotguns were dutifully pumped. Automatic weapons, cocked and locked. Game faces set upon hard eager faces.
“Go!” the captain shouted.
The largest ESU trooper swung the ram while another stood ready with a shield in case there was gunplay.
The battering ram hit the thin wooden door and crumpled like a rolled up tube of cigarette foil.
Inside the room Momma hung onto Olaf, still trying her hardest to ride out the fuck. She felt the battering ram’s impact like the kick of a baby seven states away. She was taking Olaf further in than he ever wanted to be. There’s more than one way to resist. Sometimes it’s a matter of fighting it off. Sometimes it’s a matter of riding with it. Showing your attacker how little effect they have upon you. Momma was riding Jim out. She was taunting him, trying her will to survive against his will to assert. She was breaking him.
“Give it to me, little man. You couldn’t fill your wife and you can’t fill me.”
He howled his shame and anger, throwing it into her with all his might.
She rode him as easily as a parakeet riding a thundercloud.
“Mister you have had your share of me and it damned near killed you,” Momma said. “You ought to stick to prom girls and beauty queens from here on out. A real woman is just too damn much for you.”
She’d had enough. You can’t cage something that doesn’t want to stay there. She broke free from the psychic rape, removing herself from Jim’s used up body, just as easily as discarding a pair of torn leotards. She left them both behind, Olaf fucking what was left of Jim. Olaf didn’t care. He was in frenzy, fucking faster and faster, until the bitter shell that was all that was left of Jim, ignited. The house went up in flames. Like his last house. Like his wife and her lover.
The fire department was called.
They stood around outside of the flames admiring the ESU’s crumpled battering ram.
When the fire finally died to ashes, two skeletons were found.
Their bones were charred midnight black.
The two skeletons were tangled together in as tight of a knot that could be tied by an entire troop of Boy Scouts, accompanied by a shipload of rope-obsessed sailors.
Chapter 68
Family Reunion
Momma moved through spac
e and time, reaching for the voice of her son.
“Val,” she called. “My little Valentino.”
That was what she’d named him, after her mother’s favorite movie star, Rudolph Valentino.
“Momma?”
She remembered the last time she’d seen him alive. He’d been busy, fighting his father with knife and scarf. And then he was down and Poppa had taken her away and done something far worse than anything Olaf could have imagined.
“Valentino?” she called again.
He hated the name. He hated the jokes the other kid’s cracked at his expense. When he got old enough to say so, he quietly changed it to Carnival. He changed it in his heart. There was nothing on paper.
Gypsies don’t use paper for that sort of thing.
“It’s good to see you for real, Momma,” he said.
She smiled and stepped inside the darkness, moving towards the light of her only born child. Carnival couldn’t believe that his Momma had found him. Not down here. He could understand her finding him in the graveyard. He’d called for her there, hadn’t he? He wasn’t sure how much of what he did these days was of his own will or someone else’s. He could barely make her out in the darkness, like she was fading away before his eyes.
“It’s been bad, Val. Very bad.”
“What happened?”
She decided not to tell him about Olaf and Jim and the superintendent and the girl at Iambic Pentacles and the old bartender.
He’d worried enough already.
“I’m fading, and I’m not certain I can make it back.”
“What can I do?” Carnival asked. There had to be some kind of answer.
“I can’t stay,” she said. “Unless I take one of these bodies.”
Carnival looked around at the charnel scattered about me. He felt ashamed, like she’d caught him abusing himself with a sex toy.
“Momma, take a look at them. They’ve suffered enough.”
Momma shook her head.
“Idiot. What has your father been teaching you? The dead don’t suffer. They don’t care. The dead are far beyond pain. The dead are lucky.”
“Momma, I knew these people.”
“It didn’t stop you from killing them, did it?”
“I didn’t do it for myself.”
“No. You did it for her. But now you won’t help your old Momma. What kind of son have I raised?”
Carnival heard a buzzing upstairs.
Was it the tattooist’s needle?
Then he heard a distant thumping, like a fist against glass.
Maybe it’s a mob, come to drag the mad Gypsy scientist away. Come to burn the old he-witch at the stake.
“Hush, old man,” Momma said. “Close your flytrap, you are scaring the boy.”
He’s a Gypsy. Born to fearlessness.
Right Poppa. Carnival envisioned himself tied to a telephone pole, heaps of old newspapers and wicker furniture piled about his feet, just waiting for the kerosene and the struck match.
The banging got louder.
And then he heard a steady buzzing.
It was the door bell.
It sounded as if someone had pressed their thumb against the button and leaned.
“That’s the police,” Momma said. “I can hear their badges jingle.”
She’s right, boy. It is policemen. I can smell the donuts on their breath. You had better make up your mind, run one way or the other.
For a brief instant Carnival hesitated. How could he be certain the two of them weren’t trying to get him away from the bodies.
Is that a bad thing?
“Have I ever lied to you before?” Momma asked.
“Never.”
So far as you know.
“Shut up, Poppa,” the two of them said in unison.
That convinced him.
Carnival ran for the door, trying not to panic. While he was trying to get up the ladder and through the trapdoor before they beat down the window glass, he caught one last look at Momma, moving through the bodies like a shopper in a grab sale, looking for the best of buys.
While upstairs, the police continued to bang on the door.
Chapter 69
Fleetwood Mama
There were two policemen, as big as life and twice as blue. Carnival figured he was safe. In all the television shows he’d ever watched the cops always called for back-up before making a big arrest.
My son, the street savvy Gypsy. I told you that television was educational.
The first of the two introduced himself as Officer Vincenzo. He was a small neat man, with hard eyes. If he knew how to smile he wasn’t showing any of it off.
Playing Hardy to his Laurel was Officer Michael Mallory. He made it a point to give Carnival both of his names, like he was getting set to apply for a job. He was a big fellow with thick shoulders and virtually no neck. His hair was cropped so closely Carnival thought he might be bald.
“Are you the owner of this establishment?” Vincenzo asked.
“That’s me. The owner, staff, and prime stockholder.”
Mallory grinned. Vincenzo made a movement with his mouth that might have been a twitch.
“Did you order a pizza two nights ago?”
“Is there a law against that? Some sort of trade embargo I wasn’t aware of?”
Vincenzo made that small motion with his mouth again. Carnival thought he might be pissed off.
He’s not angry. He has hemorrhoids and a small penis and he thinks his woman is cheating on him. What kind of Gypsy are you that you can’t read a face better than that?
“Just answer the question, please.” Vincenzo reiterated.
“Yes, I ordered a pizza. It never came. So I settled for Chinese. It was a better plan. Less heartburn.”
Mallory nodded. He was a man with a stomach. Vincenzo just stared. If he ate anything, it was probably made of obituary newsprint.
Mallory sniffed, as if somebody had quietly farted.
“It smells like a rat in your walls,” he said. “You ought to have that checked out.”
Carnival shrugged.
“It’s an old building. There are rats and cats and a couple of alligators prowling around the drainpipes.”
Mallory spread his hands. They looked like catcher’s mitts. You wouldn’t want to try resisting any kind of arrest with him on the other end of the cuffs. Carnival tried to stay polite. It didn’t pay to mouth off to the police. They could hurt you in any number of ways, and most of them legal.
“So you’re a fortune teller,” Mallory said. “I guess you knew we were coming, already, didn’t you?”
He grinned, pleased with his joke.
Such a wit. I’ve never heard that joke before. Have you, son?
Carnival ignored his Poppa and made out like everything was hunky dory. He grinned and smiled and tugged his forelock.
Vincenzo just stared.
“Do you got any of that Chinese leftover?” He asked.
Carnival nearly panicked.
“I threw it out. You keep it too long it draws the rats.”
He nodded at Mallory. Two buddies sharing a private joke.
“So what’s the problem? Did you lose a pizza driver, or something?” Carnival asked.
That was a stupid mistake. Watch your mouth before you bite your tongue off.
It was too late to take the words back. Vincenzo’s eyes narrowed. They were blue and pale and hard as a pair of frozen dimes. “Why do you want to know?”
Stupid. Why not just arrest yourself?
Carnival showed them the palms of his hands. No hard feelings.
“Hey, just being curious is all.”
They asked a few more questions. Carnival answered as briefly as he could. He thought about trying to blank their minds. Then he thought better of it. It might work on Mallory, but Vincenzo was another ball of worms. Besides, when they saw they weren’t going to get much of anything more useful than an educated grunt and a wisecrack, they folded their tents.
Carnival watched their backs heading up the sidewalk. He thought about what was hidden in the basement. How long before they’d caught Dahmer?
When they smelled the stink. Buy some incense and take up cigarettes.
“Are they gone?” Momma asked from the shadows.
Carnival looked up and nearly fainted.
Just look what you have done to your Momma.
There, standing over him was the ghost of Stevie Nicks, or her twin sister.
Actually it was neither.
It was Momma, wearing the body and the bathrobe of the lady who took in sailors. She looked oddly attractive in the darkness of the room - until Carnival saw his Momma’s eyes moving behind the mask.
Was he still turned on?
He tried not to think about that.
“Are you okay?” Momma asked.
Carnival sat up. He touched his nostrils.
They were bleeding.
He licked the blood. The taste of the blood told him what to do.
“Yeah,” he said. “I’m fine.”
But he wasn’t. Not by a long shot. Vincenzo and Mallory were going to keep on poking around until they found the truth. Nothing stays hidden forever.
He picked up his telephone.
Punched the number.
Someone picked up on the third ring.
“Hello, Chollo?” Carnival said.
He knew what he had to do. Blood washes blood. He told Chollo what he wanted and then Chollo told Carnival what he wanted in return.
“Yeah, I can do that,” Carnival said. “Just get me what I need. Compared to what I’m messing with, a curse would be easy. I need something for the curse, though.”
“Should I make a list?” Chollo asked.
“You ought to be able to remember this one.”
Carnival told him what he wanted.
“You’ve got to be kidding,” Chollo said.
“Do I look like a kidder?” Which is a hard question over the telephone. “You’ll need to stop at a pet store to get it.”
“After the blood bank or before?”
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