Snake Handlin' Man (5 page)

“She doesn’t
know
the cure. She
is
the cure.”

“There’s no Nehushtan?” Eddie pressed. “You just put up a signboard to announce that you’re a snake hater?”

“There’s a Nehushtan,” Phineas said, and he jerked his head at the back door of the double-wide. “It’s in the tent, and it might even be
the
Nehushtan. But I’ve never cured anybody with it. I’ve got enough juice to keep snakes out of the tent, and that’s about it.”

“Juice?” Twitch asked.

“The Nehushtan is powered by faith,” Irving said. “Faith’s not my strong suit.” He put the ring back into the envelope and jammed it into his pocket again. “Snakes do stay out of the tent when I’m preaching, though, so that’s good.”

“Huevos.”

“So what’s the cure?” Eddie asked, slightly puzzled. “Is this some kind of voodoo thing, like the snakes are her offspring and so you can cure the children’s bites with some of the mother’s blood? Hair of the dog?”

“They’re not her children,” Irving grouched. “They’re Aaron’s.”

Eddie felt sick. “You mean it’s still an orgiastic cult,” he said. “And girls like Sami …”

Irving nodded. “Young girls, girls alone who need jobs and help,” he finished. “They get taken in and … they get taken. Boys, too. By Aaron, or by someone else in the cult. They’re all monsters, or they want to become monsters. And some of the kids escape, I try to help if I can. But if they don’t, then their bodies are consumed by their children. And by the other worshippers of the snake.”

Mike looked shaken.

“What do you mean, you try to help?” Eddie demanded. “How did you
help
that poor girl? She was still stuck in this town, right next to the temple of the snake. Why didn’t you get her out?”

Irving buried his face in his hands. “She was going to leave tomorrow,” he muttered, and ran his fingers through his bristly hair. “Collect her last paycheck and leave. And I thought I had hexed her womb, killed the snakes inside. I thought she’d get to her aunt’s house in Dallas and be in for a terrible shock when she delivered dead snakes … she’d make the
National Enquirer
, but she’d be alive.”

“She didn’t know,” Eddie realized. He remembered how delighted Sami had seemed when she thought her baby was kicking. “She thought her baby was just a normal human kid. She wanted a boy.”

“Should I have told her?” Irving had despair in his face. “Would you want your daughter to know that she had snakes in her womb? I did what I could, and I thought I had done enough. I thought the danger was controlled.”

“Your hex failed,” Twitch said sharply. It was an awfully direct statement from the fairy, Eddie thought, and unusually judgmental.

The mongooses hissed. They chased their own tails and looked skittishly into the corners of the room.

“Jeez, are there any wizards who actually know what they’re doing?” Mike asked.

“Not me,” Irving said. “I’m no wizard, I’m just an Egyptologist. Not even that, I’m ABD, never got my degree. Whatever I know, I learned by reading the old monuments, execration texts, second millennium B.C. medical treatises. Or from folklore. Some of it works. I think the hex I put on this house works—anyway, the snakes don’t come in.”

“Anyway, it ain’t a house,” Mike grumbled. “It’s an advertisement for meth lab tenants.”

“And the Nehushtan?” Eddie asked. “You get the instructions for that out of a book?”

“I stole it. The University had it in its museum collection, and I had access because of the work I was doing on the Wadi Hammamat grave finds. I took it with me when I left. I don’t know if it’s authentic or not—neither did they, it was a recent acquisition and they were still examining it. But it works. At least, sort of.”

“You and Adrian have a lot in common, really,” Mike mused. “You a napper?”

“What?”

“What are you doing to stop the summoning?” Eddie asked. He knew this was a distraction, and that he should be focused on his real challenge—Adrian, the ticking clock, and getting the wizard cured—but the thought that some sort of snake-worshipping sex cult was trying to
summon
its demon-deity caught his attention. “Was that the idea behind stealing the Nehushtan?”

“Yeah,” Irving looked depressed. “But I can barely get it to flicker. It’s the real deal, all right—but I’m not. Funny thing is, if our positions were switched, Aaron could probably use it like a flamethrower. He was always a believer.”

“Still is,” Eddie pointed out. “Just in the wrong stuff.”

Irving nodded. “And the spells. The summoning—I
think
—is a sort of group performance and incantation. I only saw it the one time, of course … on my honeymoon … but some of the kids I’ve known have told me that the same kind of thing is what they experienced. I think I have some ideas about how to throw a monkey wrench into it, but I’d need to have access to their props and scripts beforehand. Well,” he chuckled uneasily, “or else I’d need to be present at the ritual.”

“Would that be another orgy?” Mike asked.

“Boobs,” Twitch said cheerfully. Mike turned his palms up in an innocent shrug and Jim shook his head in mock frustration. “We all know what you like, is all I’m saying,” the drummer added.

“Yes,” Irving answered. “And at the end of the orgy, Apep is supposed to appear. Surviving worshippers will be touched by him—like Aaron and Miriam were touched.”

“You mean they’ll turn into freaky snake-mutants,” Mike interpreted. “Dare to dream.”

“Surviving?” Eddie asked.

“Most of the worshippers will be eaten.”

“And what do you get out of all this?” Eddie asked. “Don’t go quoting the Book of Joshua and telling me you’re on the Lord’s side. What is it you want here? You think this gets you to Heaven?”

Irving shrugged and looked down at his feet. “Maybe,” he admitted. “If there is a Heaven. Or maybe I get my revenge. Or maybe I get my wife back.”

Mike whistled. “Really? Don’t you just hate her too much now?”

Eddie shook his head; he understood Phineas Irving all too well. “Says the man who ain’t never been married. Love and hate ain’t opposites,” he told the bass player. “They’re pretty near the same thing. The opposite of
both
of them is just not giving a crap.”

“I give a crap,” Irving agreed, but he couldn’t look up.

The mongooses darted across the room and through a doggie flap in the trailer door. Jim stood and stared at the animals, his hand on his sword, but the preacher waved him down.

“They’re going after snakes,” Phineas Irving said. “There are always snakes.”

“I’m glad you care,” Eddie said, and he meant it. He hoped Irving succeeded, but he was concentrating again on his own immediate problem. He wanted to get Adrian back on his feet, play the evening’s gig, and get clean out of Oklahoma. “But I’m on a clock and you still haven’t answered the question I care about. How does the lamia … Mrs. Irving … cure snakebite?”

“Milk,” Irving said. “Lamia’s milk is a sovereign remedy against the bite of any snake.”

Twitch laughed. “Boobs,” he said again.

CRACK!

The trailer shook.

***

Chapter Five

Eddie spilled his coffee on his lap.

“Dammit!” he yelled, and jumped to his feet. Now he was burned front and back.

Jim was already standing, and the big man whipped out his sword and raced for the door. Twitch would have been on his heels, but the drummer got tangled up in Mike, whose knees knocked the fairy down and slowed them both. The snake preacher fell off his stool with the shuddering of the trailer, and then turned and scrambled for the kitchenette, going for his Enfield rifle.

Eddie grabbed the Remington and pumped it.

The trailer shook again.

Jim opened the door and jumped back—

a snake head jammed itself at the singer, a snake head the size of a whole ham, with a tongue as long as a human arm.

Eddie saw his shot and took it.
Boom!
The Remington’s slug bit into the hinge of the serpent’s jaw with a small splash of blood, and the snake pulled back.

“Is that Apep?” Mike yelled. The bass player pushed the sofa over onto its back and crouched behind it, drawing his pistol and covering the windows. From the yard, Eddie heard a surprisingly loud hissing sound.

Twitch flashed into a silver avian blur and swooped out the open door. Jim fended off a second lunge of the enormous snake’s head by sliding his backside up onto the kitchenette counter, kicking with the heels of both boots. Eddie scooted to the front window of the trailer, trying to get a better look outside.

The preacher came over by the kitchenette sink with the .30-06 and looked through greasy Venetian blinds at the yard. “No,” he said. “Apep should be much, much bigger. Also, I think Apep should be a straightforward serpent.”

Eddie brushed aside dingy cotton flaps that served as curtains with the nose of his shotgun and threw a glance into the yard. “Hell,” he said.

A shambling crew of monsters rammed themselves against the porch. The mongooses stood on hind legs and hissed a protest, but the furry little snake-eaters were out of their depth here, because their foes weren’t simple snakes. They were
snake-men
. The big head that shoved at the trailer door trying to get in sprouted from the shoulders of heavy-bellied human body in denim overalls. A second monster looked like a mass of snakes, an entire hedge of them, sprouting out of a brown gabardine skirt and a pair of shapely legs. A third beast was a snake the size of a Christmas tree, with three sets of muscular human arms sprouting out of its scaly flanks and a human head. There were more, but Eddie stopped cataloguing and started shooting.

Boom! Boom!

He shattered the window and put as many slugs as he could into Overalls the snake-headed man. In the yard, Twitch harassed the other serpent-thugs, but he wasn’t very effective in falcon form against creatures so large. He did manage to pluck several heads off Lady Legs the bush of serpents, but either Lady Legs grew them back immediately, or she had so many to start with that the loss of a few made no difference.

Mike crawled over to join Eddie, while Phineas Irving smashed out the window over the kitchenette sink and poked the muzzle of the Enfield out through the hole. Jim slashed and stabbed at the creatures, making Overalls bleed from several chest wounds and reducing Many Arms to One Arm Less, but the monsters didn’t seem to care. They grunted and hissed, and snapped at Jim and the mongooses when they had a chance, but their focus was elsewhere.

They rammed themselves against the porch, and grabbed at it with both hands, lifting.

“They’re trying to break apart the trailer!” Eddie barked, seeing the danger. “They’re not getting past your hexes, so they’re just going to tip us over or smash us to bits!” He leveled the Remington at a man who looked totally normal, and wore a blue-green-colored jumpsuit like he was a plumber or some sort of appliance repairman. He was squatting to get his hands under the lip of the porch, trying to rip planks out directly. Eddie got a good enough look at the man to see that the name on his chest read
Bob
and that his belly writhed, and then he squeezed the trigger. Blood spattered the porch, the khaki fabric ripped open and a mass of hissing serpents sprang from Bob’s belly. Bob stumbled back, arms windmilling. Eddie glanced around the yard and guessed there might be fifteen or twenty of the snake-man-monsters besieging them. “We need another way out!”

Phineas fired three quick shots, brass shells spinning out of his bolt-action rifle like rolling dice between each
bang
. “Only other door’s the back!” the preacher shouted. His face was slick with sweat and his voice quavered a little. “Through the tent, past the Nehushtan and on down the hill!”

“Chingones might be on that side, too!” Mike pointed out. The bass player emptied his clip into a bearded man whose lower body was a hissing knot of snakes—the inversion of Lady Legs—and knocked him back into the sand. Gray-brown mongooses jumped onto Snake Legged Man and bit at his snapping serpentine lower body.

“Have faith!” Eddie bellowed back, and shoved more shells into the magazine. “Jim! Out the back!” he yelled at the singer, and then he jumped into the kitchenette, grabbed Phineas Irving by the shoulder, and spun the preacher around to head him in the other direction. “Lead the way!”

Overalls rammed his snake head in through the kitchenette window; Eddie pointed the Remington at the flickering tongue, as long as Eddie’s forearm, and squeezed the trigger.

Boom!

Then Eddie stumbled back through the trailer, on the heels of Irving and Mike, with Jim close behind them.

A tiny hall ended in a scratched dark brown door with a flaking plastic knob. Irving pulled at the handle and the door didn’t budge. “It sticks!” he exclaimed.

The trailer shook and its wood groaned.

“No time!” Eddie shouldered Mike aside, pointed the shotgun at the doorknob and
boom!
blew it to pieces. He muscled past Mike and Irving both, pushing himself first through the door.

He hopped down a cinderblock step and into the tent, leading with his weapon. There were a few benches, rough-cut and dirty. The tent was propped up on four poles and some cross-beams that connected them; one side of the white canvas sagged to the ground, but there were no snakes. An iron tube sunk into a poured puddle of concrete served like a flag stand, and stuck into it was a wooden pole. The wood looked so ancient it was almost petrified, and nailed to the top of the pole, coiled around a stubby crosspiece, was the desiccated body of a snake, six feet long and a brilliant red that managed to gleam through layers of sand and dust. Eddie could smell the antiquity.

He blinked and tried not to focus on the infernal feast he saw at the back of the tent, haggard women ladling soup from a huge cauldron into bowls that they handed to a line of equally haggard men. The soup, Eddie saw, was thick with tiny fingers and toes.

“Clear!” he shouted, and stepped forward.

The trailer shifted again, and the other three men stumbled in behind Eddie. Twitch must be outside still, Eddie thought. He hoped the fairy was okay. He’d hate to have to find a new drummer; your choices were limited when you only let damned men join.

“Get the Nehushtan!” he barked to Irving.

“I … I can’t,” the preacher fumbled. “I … you’re a man of faith. You carry it!”

“It won’t work if I hold it,” Eddie growled, “trust me.”

Irving turned to Mike.

“It won’t work for any of us!” Eddie snapped. “You said you could make it flicker, that’s better than nothing! Pick it up and let’s go!”

The trailer shook again, and Eddie heard a loud
CRASH!
inside it. He imagined the porch torn to toothpicks, and Overalls and Lady Legs trampling the shag carpet.

Phineas Irving flinched, gulped, and slung the Enfield over his shoulder. He bent to pick up the Nehushtan. “I’ve never tried this against … against things like those,” he said. “Just the little rattlers. Just keeping them out of the tent so I could preach a little.”

Eddie shrugged and stepped to the tent flap. The sagebrush and sand beyond wiggled and danced with a sea of snakes, but they stopped a few feet from the canvas. Eddie locked eyes with a particularly angry-looking diamondback and hissed right back at him. “Apep can crap ’em out big,” he guessed, “and he can crap ’em out small. It’s still all the same shit.” He hoped he was right.

“Carry the tent,” Irving pleaded, and he stood up with the Nehushtan on his shoulder.

“What?”

Twitch touched ground and shifted from his falcon to his humanoid forms, looking very feminine. “They’re coming around this way!” the fairy gasped, and slipped his fighting batons into his hands. His long silver hair and matching horse’s tail bounced with his own edgy footwork.

“I don’t know if I can do it without the tent,” Irving explained. “I think I can make it work with the tent.”

“Jeez,” Mike said, but he jumped over to one angle of the tent and picked up the pole supporting that corner.

Eddie was tempted to shoot the preacher. “What do you mean, like it’s a force field made out of tent canvas?”

Irving shrugged, trembling. “I know I can keep snakes out of the tent,” he muttered. “I don’t know what happens if I leave the tent.”

Jim nodded to Eddie, arched his eyebrows, and positioned himself at a second tentpole.

Faith, Eddie grumbled in his head. If creation had been up to him, he’d have chosen an instrument that was less finicky. “Fine!” he snapped, and grabbed one of the sagging poles. He hoisted it up onto his left shoulder, ripping a couple of tent pegs out of the ground as he did so. Twitch grabbed the fourth, and they began to shuffle forward. “I know you can do it, Reverend Irving,” he said, trying his hardest to sound encouraging. Warm and supportive was not Eddie’s strong suit.

The corner of the tent flapped around Eddie, sometimes obscuring his vision and sometimes not. He was at the front of the tent, with Mike, and they walked forward towards a trembling jumble of serpents.

Idiot, he thought, this is not going to work. He tightened his grip on the Remington, made sure the shoulder strap was in place so that when he’d emptied the magazine he could drop it and pull out the Glock instead. He only had one hand to work with, now.

But the snakes hissed and pulled back. Only scant feet in front of Eddie and Mike, and drawing back in parallel to the tent’s advance. They weren’t afraid, Eddie realized. They weren’t fleeing. They were being
forced
back.

It was
working
.

He heard the crunch of Phineas Irving’s feet on the sand behind him, and then the preacher began to sing.

“Onward, Christian soldiers, marching as to war,

With the cross of Jesus, going on before.”

“I’d take the cross of Jesus going on before,” Mike said. The bass player grunted and sweated and looked nervous. He held the pole against his shoulder with both hands, and his M1911 in one fist. “I don’t really like being in front, and I’m not crazy about having a snake at my back, either.”

“Don’t shoot yourself,” Eddie warned the other man, and then he looked back at Phineas Irving.

Irving looked like he was praying, like he was concentrating so hard he might be in a trance. And above him, nailed to the high cross, Eddie would have sworn that the serpent was
moving
.

Eddie blinked, trying to be sure he wasn’t seeing a vision of some damned soul.

The snake moved. Its red scales flashed like rubies; dust and sand shook off its flanks as it coiled around and around in a spiral on the tall pole. Eddie met Jim’s gaze, bringing up the rear with a tent pole on his shoulder, and saw that the big singer had noticed it, too. They both raised their eyebrows.

“Huevos,” Mike said, and Eddie whipped his head back around.

Ahead of him, blinking in and out of his vision as the edges of the tent waved up and down in the desert breeze, he saw a slope down to the van, parked on the track where they’d left it. To his left were Mike and, beyond the bass player, the edge of the trailer as they slowly coasted around it. Between the van and the trailer in Eddie’s intermittent field of vision came a horde of snake-men, shambling around the trailer’s shoulder and hissing in rage. Eddie raised his shotgun.

Irving sang louder:

“Christ, the royal master, leads against the foe,

Forward into battle see his banners go.”

“They’re back here, too!” Twitch shouted.

Eddie heard the clash of Jim’s sword on something hard, and then the dull thump of Twitch’s batons coming into play. He wanted to risk a look back, but he couldn’t. Overalls was charging straight at him, enormous head goggling in the air like a living antenna with jaws the size of a tire clamp.

The Nehushtan wasn’t keeping the monster back. Or at least, it wasn’t keeping it back enough. It would be no comfort if the artifact stopped the creature from entering the tent, if it could rip Eddie to pieces while standing outside.

Boom!
Eddie shot the snake-man. Overalls staggered sideways, and Lady Legs rushed up behind to fill the gap.

Bang! Bang!
To his left, he heard Mike taking pot-shots, too. The tent swerved and sagged as Mike adjusted his grip, but the big guy managed to still hold his end up.

They were past the trailer now and headed down the slope. Cutting across the desert in the straightest line, Eddie’s combat boots tromped down on crackling sagebrush and crunching pebbles. Mercifully, he didn’t step on any snakes; the little ones, rattlers and whatever else they were, continued to wiggle back from the advancing tent.

But the big mutant buggers rushed at the men holding up the four corners.

Onward, Christian soldiers, marching as to war,

With the cross of Jesus, going on before.

Boom!
Eddie fired again. A handful of the pinwheel-spinning snakeheads erupting from the gabardine skirt exploded into pulp and gore, but the others kept coming. He fired again, and again, and then Lady Legs was on top of him—

whoosh!
—

something sprang past Eddie.

He slipped back and rocked on his heels, his vision flashing sideways like he was on some Six Flags Chicago rollercoaster. He saw Mike swinging his pistol like a club, hammering Many Arms in the face over and over while the hands grabbed at Mike and tried to rip away the pole. Mike was taller and kept the pole out of the monster’s reach, but he was being inexorably dragged down.