He nods in his stoner way. The girl nods with him. The boy huffs smoke over the corpse. 'They lit him on fire.'
'Yes.'
'They took his eyes. How could he stand that?'
'I think he was tough as the great iron door at the entrance to Hell.'
'Hells yeah.'
He carries a copy of the Satanic Bible the same way that Ricky does. It's halfway out his back pocket. Baphomet finds me again. He grins and winks at me. I wink back.
I wait for the kids to pull the book like pulling a gun, like drawing an athame, a witch's blade. When they finally do, they read a false and hollow incantation. They draw a pentagram around Lowers's body with a stick. There are outlines of other pentagrams in the dirt too, partially erased by the rain and nearly obliterated by leaves crushed by couples making awful love.
'What about the guy who did it?' the boy asks.
'What about him?'
'You think…you know…that he was possessed? That demons told him to do it? That crows talked to him and the trees bowed down?'
'No.'
The girl whispers in the boy's ear. Gary Lowers's knows what they're saying. So do I. So do the crows. So do the bugs in Gary's dead, toothless mouth.
This gets boring. This gets tiring. I've enjoyed my talk with Gary, but now it's over. I stand just as the boy rushes me, tugging his mother's stolen butcher knife from the small of his back. He swings the point toward my heart. I snap my forearm across the inside of his wrist and he drops the knife as his hand goes numb. I give him a short chop in the throat and he collapses to his knees, gagging.
I pick up the knife and remember my mother cooking dinner, cutting fat from my father's steak, showing me at length how to slice meat. I picture the boy's flayed flesh wrapped neatly and laid out on a reliquary. The girl runs up the trail, screaming. 'Don't rape me! Please don't rape me!'
Compared to Linda and Gwen she's not even pretty enough to fuck, much less rape. It's insulting that she thinks I would.
I grab her by her dirty blonde hair and yank her head back, exposing her throat. I place the dull edge of the blade to her carotid and hug her to me like every person in my life that I hate but want to love. Like everyone I love who's dead. Because of me or for any other reason. There's not that many but they cling and grow heavier and heavier the farther on you go.
I kiss her under the ear and her boyfriend has enough breath to cry out, 'No!'
'Do you love her?' I ask.
'Yes!'
'Would you die for her?'
There's no hesitation. 'Yes!'
It's easy to say when you're stoned. I check his eyes. Beneath the setting sun they're pinpoints lit by molten gold.
'You love him?' I ask her. 'And think about it carefully before you answer. Because one of you has to die.'
She bursts into tears. 'We were only messing around. We didn't mean anything!'
'He tried to stab me in the heart.'
'No no, it was just a…a game. We were playing. It…it…'
'You wanted to screw while my hot blood pumped across your tits, didn't you?'
'No!'
'Don't lie to me. I'm the king of lies, I'm the master of lies. I'm Black Shuck.'
'I don't know what you're talking about!'
'And you, you're the one who gets to choose. So, shall it be him or you?'
'Him!' she shouts. 'Kill him! Cut his dick off, cut his throat, I don't care. Him! Do it to him.'
'Sure, but then you have to fuck me while his blood jets over us.'
'I want to!'
It's all so dramatic. That's really all that they want. To be on a human stage full of pith and tragedy, so long as it's not their own. Ricky understands the truth. So did Gary, even before they took his eyes from him.
I kick her in the ass and she goes flying into the brush. The boy attacks and I slash him across the forehead so blood runs down his face in a death mask. 'You bastard!' he moans. He holds his arms out in front of him, blindly staggering, searching for the girl. She yelps and he trips over her, and they both sprawl into the weeds. They find each other on their knees and kiss and groan and weep. It'll keep them happy for a while.
I stare at myself in the side of the shining blade. The birds chitter and squawk, laughing. So do the angels of death hovering high in the trees. It's all right. I have to admit that it's a ridiculous story bound to become myth. Somehow I've become a part of it, though no one will ever know in the retelling.
I spin and hurl the knife upward and pierce the heart of a crow. Or perhaps it's a black angel simply posing as a crow. The blade sails down with the impaled bird and lands a few inches from Gary Lowers's head. The point of the knife thunks within the defined lines of the latest pentagram. Let the next group of curious children think on it.
12
I wake up behind the steering wheel, in the lot of Cow Harbor Park. Ricky is laying out on the hood of the Coupe, covered in blood, staring in at me through the windshield.
I know it's Linda's blood. I understand that he's murdered her in her coma. Maybe it was an act of love or one of faith.
His lunatic eyes whirl with the knowledge of himself, the PCP and LSD ravaging his system. It opens doors for him that should stay closed. He weighs no more than a hundred pounds. The bones of his face are trying to squeeze past his skin. His skeletal rictus grin explains nothing and everything at the same time.
He scratches at the windshield as if he wants in. I stare at him. My expression, I'm guessing, is inviting.
There's no sun but shadows of bars across his face. He laughs and thrashes, writhing on the hood of the Mustang, then breaks into a low mewling. Eventually he's weeping. His tears fleck the glass like a summer rain. The other Knights of the Black Circle sit in his car, unmoving, weak, ineffectual, already fading away.
'I called in an anonymous tip,' Ricky sobs. 'I told them where Gary's body was. I told them who murdered him.'
Ricky raises his chin and the insanity drains from him, drop by drop, until he's the most lucid I've ever seen him. The shadows run over him like black paint. They reshape themselves. The bars become something else. I watch them and hunch over the wheel more closely. Soon I see there's a noose around his neck.
He says, 'I'm going to hang, aren't I? You know it, don't you, Black Shuck? You see it.'
I don't bother to respond. He stares out at the trees as the wind moves through them. They wave, billow, beckon, and bow. The tips of Ricky's fingers are discolored from dirt, weed, pills, and infection. He draws arcane symbols on my windshield before me and they burn for an instant before they disappear like he will soon disappear. He spells his name for me. He spells mine as well. He kisses the windshield as if he's making love to me with his lips. He bites down on his tongue until he chews off the end of it. Then he spits blood across the glass. I nod to him through the red streams.
He chuckles, runs to his car, and drives off, alone. His knights have abandoned him, as he must've known they would. They've returned from where they came. The sky is full of black wings.
That evening Ricky Kelso is arrested for the murder of Gary Lowers.
Two days later he hangs himself in jail.
