Billy Purgatory and the Curse of the Satanic Five (37 page)

He didn't see any of them, directly — so far they were avoiding, or hadn't yet moved into, the back yard. Perhaps their tactic was to draw whoever they thought might be in the house to run out the back door and into the woods, so they could wait for them there.

He watched the embers of his fire and tossed a few more logs upon it. He gave the fire a shot of tequila and the flames danced up towards his wrist. Then he gave himself a shot of tequila in case he decided to dance.

As his eyes looked over the overgrowth of the backyard, he decided he would have another. “That was for you, backyard.” He raised his bottle from his shed and tipped his feed store hat towards it. “You have taught me much.”

The weeds of the backyard did not answer him, they just glistened in the first rays of the morning sun through the clouds. The droplets, heavy on the weeds and vines, made many prisms in those first shafts, like the fireworks he'd seen spiral into the sky when he had been a boy.

He could hear the front door of the house battered in. Windows broke. There were flashes of movement, the riot gear armor through some of the windows. Their guns aimed at the ready.

There was no one to chase from the house into the yard. They would find no lost souls hiding in that place. Ulysses and the boy had both gone years ago — if they'd ever been back, and Billy surely had been at one point, the Old Solider had never noticed their coming or going.

The sound of many boots interrupted the morning solitude that the Old Soldier enjoyed so in the yard. He knew that he would most likely never hear that sound of nothing he cherished so much, ever again. If there was a downside to what was taking place, it was that it would be loud from then on. Those who came to him that morning, and the boy they sought, only believed in gods that made a big noise in the world.

The woman and her companions were not as heavily armored as the troops they had brought who had sailed from the helicopters. They wore windbreakers and bulletproof vests. They had badges and name placards on silver chains around their necks that swung when they walked. The Old Soldier did not move from his place drinking tequila by his fire pit.

There was no need for him to move, they knew that he was there. They walked in a straight line across the yard, through the vines and weeds, until they reached the little place he kept cleared at the missing wall of his shed.

She wore her hair long, and had it tied in a ponytail which fell down her back. It was blonde and the sun looked well spilling over it. He did not offer, but she did not ask, and the Old Soldier did nothing to stop her as she took a seat in the sand to his right. She too crossed her legs and sat as he did, and he felt it only fair to shift his body to face her.

There were many men in the backyard. Most of them stayed back, as if the conversation he would soon have with the blonde woman was for his benefit alone.

She had a very pleasant voice; it was deeper than he'd imagined it would be, but pleasant enough coming from her pretty face. She did not hold the lines that the Goddess tried so hard to hide in her own face.

This woman's face was fresh. It seemed brand new.

“What does F.B.I. mean?” The Old Soldier had his eyes affixed to the gold letters she had stenciled into her windbreaker above her left breast.

She looked down at the letters herself, and then cast her gaze back to his. “It means Federal Bureau of Investigation.”

The Old Soldier nodded. “You are an investigator, then?”

She shook her head. “Not quite. Those letters shouldn't concern you very much, old man.”

She placed her fingertip into the sand and began to draw in it. She didn't get very intricate with her motions or the symbol it made. She didn't have to.

From the Old Soldier's perspective, it was an inverted numeral five. “You know what this symbol means?”

He nodded. “I have seen it before.”

She smiled. “Good.”

“I too have seen creatures like what you are.” He looked into those calm eyes on that new face of hers. To the Old Soldier's gaze, they had no color.

“They're blue.” She smiled, using two fingers to indicate her lifeless eyes. “Most of them see them as blue.”

The Old Soldier swept his eyes over the crowd assembled in the backyard. None of them had color in their irises. “Most of who see them as blue?”

“The humans.” She brushed the sand off her knees. “So, you know what we are? I can only assume that you know who we're looking for.”

“I do know who you are looking for. I can tell you that if I knew where that someone was, I made a promise to his father a long time ago that I would not allow harm to come to him. I would not tell you a thing.”

“Promises are delicate things. My kind has been promised much throughout the ages. I can tell you that not a single one of those promises ever revealed itself as a hidden truth.”

The Old Soldier regarded a pop from the fire. “Then you should understand, even more than I, how unjust it is to break promises.”

“So you don't tell me where the son is. I can live with that. Where is the father? Ulysses.”

“That I don't know either.”

“And…” She twisted her neck, it too made a pop. “…you wouldn't tell if you did.”

“You understand much, for a thing which has wasted much time and energy on a fool's errand.” His hand swept across the assembled crowd. “This makes me think that you want something more of me.”

“I do want more of you. You will happily give me that, eventually. First order of business, you're coming with me.”

The Old Soldier raised a finger as she started to stand, and she stopped her motion and returned to his tired eyes. “Do you mind if I have a drink?”

“Not in the least.” She motioned toward the tequila bottle in the sand. “Please, be my guest.”

The Old Soldier nodded a thank you and took a long shot that finished the bottle. “I have one more request.” He wiped his mouth with the sleeve of his new jacket.

“I am listening.”

“Do you mind terribly, if I draw a new picture for you?”

She shrugged and then reached out the palm of her hand to wipe away the symbol of The Five. “Clean slate. Go for it.”

The Old Soldier extended two fingers, and cut parallel lines into the sand. “In the way of promises, I have made two. I don't call them promises though, I call them vows. The first was to protect this house and all of its occupants. The man you asked of, Ulysses, he took me in when no one else would. He didn't have to.”

“Well, that's not a great revelation, you've already plainly stated…”

The Old Soldier raised a finger and continued. “The second was that for the rest of the days I would be on this Earth, that I would live a quiet life. I would never again walk the path of violence.”

The woman stood. “Those sound like very conflicting vows from my perspective.”

“They never have been, until this morning.”

The woman motioned for the rest of her demons to close in on him. He saw the cuffs and the blackjacks and the guns.

“You're not going to have to worry about breaking any vows, old man.”

“I am not worried. Out of courtesy, which I do not owe you, I ask you once to leave this place as you found it and never return.”

“That's not happening.” She motioned for the soldier to stand with her. He did not argue and rose slowly from his fire.

“Then know it was you, and not I, who caused those lines to intersect.”

The woman stepped forward and the troops moved into the shed. “Once we've raped what we want from you, we'll drop your bones into somewhere quiet where you can renew your vows. I know just the perfect place.”

Neither the woman, nor any of her demons posing in riot gear, was ready for the soldier to kick his boot into the fire and send the burning log sailing up and out over their heads. He watched it flame and fly, as did many turning heads.

The woman grabbed at him, and he felt his arm flex for the first time in many years. He next felt the impact of his fist on her sternum. The Old Soldier was watching the flying flaming log sail into the overgrowth of the backyard, and he did not see the woman's body that he had struck impact with the wall of his shed. He only heard the noise she made as she went through the snapping lumber and twisting tin.

The Old Soldier felt it in his heart when the log he had sent as a projectile of fire collided with the overgrowth. He felt the warmth in his chest as the weeds and vines he had watched silently grow for years smoked. The same garden that he had last night blanketed in kerosene erupted in a bright flash, which was more blinding than the morning sun.

Half of them were overtaken by flame instantly. Their clothing burned and their weapons heated. They pulled at their armor and couldn't get their belts off fast enough before flash grenades they wore began to erupt.

The Old Soldier had his arms raised and pushed the flames to rise and burn hotter and faster. He stared at them and their ammunition
began to detonate all on its own. Their bodies riddled with their own bullets and the bullets of their companions. Their guns exploded in their hands and shot off in their holsters.

He raised his hands ever higher, spurring the fire, and the flames from his fire pit leapt towards the ones who hadn't been caught up in the inferno that had claimed the backyard.

They screamed more in defeat than pain. To the Old Soldier, there was no greater song than the anguished cry of a demon who suddenly found fire not to be his ally.

The ones who did not run, he pushed out of his way as he walked towards the hottest, truest point of the eruption. It felt good to punch them, and he did it often as he took his time walking across the yard.

At the wall of flame, he sent his hand towards the house and the fire followed his cue, flying into the home that Ulysses had welcomed him into so long ago. Had he not been so consumed with anger, he would have found the burn that mercilessly stormed the house very sad.

Then the Old Soldier walked into the heart of the flames he had created by destroying the calm he had stared into for many years. He turned as the fires danced around him and licked at his clothing, setting it alight and incinerating it from his body.

He watched through the flame wall as the woman crawled across the yard, dripping blood from her mouth. She had broken ribs, he'd heard them snap. She raised her still new face to meet his eyes as he raised his arms once more and sent a cone of fire sailing up towards the sky.

She watched as the fire got so hot that his body began to be consumed. She pushed herself up and her pretty face turned to sheer agony and wrath. “You dare use fire against us? Against demons? This will not go as forgotten.”

She heard the booming voice from the flames.

“
Is that a vow?”

She pulled a gun and it went white hot in her hand, searing her flesh and then exploding, sending most of her fingers flying.

“
You will listen to me now.
” The flames singed the clouds above, and she could no longer see the figure which had been the old man within the tower of fire.

“
You will tell your masters that they have angered the Oracle of the Pyre, and that the son of Ulysses Purgatory will now have a reborn ally.
”

She pulled herself to her feet. “Oracle of the Pyre? No such thing exists. What are you?”

A tendril of fire flew from the wall of flames and set her hair on fire as it made its way to light up the shed. The demon woman with the burning blonde hair ran from the yard as the voice of a coming cataclysm called its own name.

“I am the Devil Bird.”

~30~

“A
LL THINGS TRULY WICKED START FROM INNOCENCE
.”

—E
RNEST
H
EMINGWAY

The keys were white hot on nights when the thunder rolled with the oncoming clouds. He was so high up, in his cabin, that when the biggest claps hit it stirred the window panes to motion within their frames. They had been threatening to crack, then shatter, for years now — but things hadn't gotten quite loud enough in the world yet, and the typewriter made a much more menacing roar to his ears. With each new stroke, he felt as if he were murdering another of them in their sleep.

Who was he writing any of this for anyway? There were boxes upon boxes of white pages, filled with words that nobody would ever rifle through. For the longest time, he was sure that he would die up there, alone. He hadn't thought, for the longest time, that it would be of any consequence one way or another. If he did die there in exile, none of them would ever know; yet if he were to come off the mountain with the burden of the weight of his words, he felt he wouldn't be able to bother any of them to read — to listen.

He was writing the greatest book that had ever been written. He had stopped numbering the pages at #8703 —that had been a year or more ago. He thought about all the typewriter ribbons… miles of them… no, it had been three years ago.

One day blended into a year, and the only thing that ever changed was the weather.

Do you know of the coming of the rain? Are your soul cups ready to run over when it spills down? Man is a filthy ashtray, undeserving of the storm which will wash away his filth. You will be hosed down with the same casual scrutiny you have given to the world around you. Dirty man, covered in their ashes, you never paid any attention to them or their desires. Why should you be shocked when they pay no attention to you when they turn on the hose and let the rain fly?

Open your mouths. Drink Deep. Gargle fully and try to wash the taste from your mouths.

Filthy, dirty, stupid human race. You have never tended well the fires they lit for you in your spirit furnace.

Ulysses Purgatory had felt that a great first chapter title.

He started each new page with the same header:

The Last Manifesto of Ulysses S. Purgatory

Ulysses had felt it important to make sure the reader remembered what it was they were reading. That if anyone never bothered to read any of it was a foregone formality. It was also not Ulysses' problem.