Aloha From Hell (33 page)

Kelly creeps over closer to see what="1 to see I’m doing.

“You might not want to watch this,” I say.

“If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather stay. This looks like it might be quite interesting.”

“Okay,” I say. “Here’s the situation. We have to walk to Eleusis and then get all the way to the asylum and back out again. I’m wearing a glamour so I don’t broadcast that I’m alive, but I’m bleeding, so I need more. And if Mammon signaled a posse, he might have told them I was the one who took him. I can’t look like me. Are you getting my point?”

Jack gives me a big wolfish smile.

“If you’re about to do what I think you are, I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

“Okay, but if souls puke, don’t do it on me.”

“I’ll remember that, sir.”

“And don’t call me ‘sir.’ ”

“Yes. Sorry.”

I close my eyes and try to remember any binding spells I picked up along the way, something to keep Mammon here with us a little longer before he croaks. My head is still a little foggy from the crash, but I come up with a minor bit of hoodoo that should hold if I work fast.

The next part I’ve never actually tried myself, but I saw it done a couple of times by old juju priests I met through some Dharma bums in a New Orleans Sub Rosa clan.

I try to get the words and rhythms of the old houngans in my mind before I start working. The real spell is a complex combination of Yoruba and Louisiana Creole and I’ve forgotten a lot of the words, so I have to do a lot of bebop improv, but bullshitting hoodoo on the fly is my specialty. As I chant, I rub my temples, and when the words are flowing fast enough and the time feels right, I grab my face just below the scalp line and pull. The skin comes off like I’m peeling a banana. It sticks in a couple of places and I have to snip them with the knife, but it’s not a big deal.

I put my face, bloody side up, on the cloth I cut from Mammon’s suit.

I hear Kelly gasp. It’s not in horror, but in a kind of fascination and awe. He’s probably never seen high-quality Merlin stuff. This must be a hell of an introduction to magic.

I do the whole ritual again. When I peel off Mammon’s face, I drape it over the raw and bloody place where my face used to be. The new flesh burns as it attaches itself. I close my eyes and breathe, working through the pain. I’m dizzy and slide over onto an elbow. I feel Kelly grab me so I don’t fall. The inside of my head swirls around once more and then it’s over. I touch my n19;I touchew face. There’s no pain at all. Mammon’s skin feels like it’s been there forever. I open my mouth. Move my lips in mock smiles and frowns.

I look at Kelly.

“What do you think? I don’t look too much like Mammon, do I? It’s his skin, but my bones and muscles, so we shouldn’t be twins.”

Kelly shakes his head.

“You don’t look at all like him,” he says. He stares at me with a kind of beatific smile plastered on his face, like Saint Peter just gave him an invitation to the Christmas after-party in Heaven.

He says, “If it isn’t being too forward, I’d like to say that you might have just become my personal hero, Mr. Stark.”

“Okay.”

He looks up at the rolling black clouds that cover the sky.

“I once thought that I was a master of flesh. But I see now that you have surpassed me in every way.”

As my new face settles in, I wrap my real face in Mammon’s cloth, put it carefully in the leather satchel, and sling it over my shoulder.

“That’s real nice of you, Kelly, but what the fuck are you talking about?”

He stands. Looks at me and then at Mammon. The Hellion finally dies and his body disappears.

“I prefer Jack, if you don’t mind,” says Kelly. “That’s what people called me in older, merrier days when I was still alive. Jack the Ripper.”

Some crazy people must stay crazy even after they’re dead. I met dozens of Judas Iscariots, Hitlers, and Jack the Rippers in the eleven years I spent Downtown, but always one at a time. I always wondered if they steered clear of each other out of professional courtesy.

There’s one thing that makes me think Kelly could be for real. Mason chose him. Picking a simple back-alley cutthroat with delusions of grandeur isn’t a mistake Mason would make.

Jack is leading us down the embankment and into the thick woods that line the freeway. The trees stand at crazy, impossible angles. It’s like we’re walking through still photos of the forest in the process of falling.

“Step lightly,” whispers Jack. “And don’t touch anything. Tremors have loosed the land under the trees. They’re barely rooted. They’ll come down on us with the slightest provocation.”

Suddenly I’m sorry I’m wearing big steel-toe boots. I should be in Hello Kitty slippers.

I’ve never seen a real forest in Hell. Not one with trees and plants. I’ve seen places called “forests,” but they’re usually tightly packed mazes of saw blades and spinning pylons studded with needlelike Hydra teeth.

We walk maybe twenty yards until the forest gets tight and dark and wild. Old-growth backwoods. It’s hard not to bump into limbs and the solid trunks of the drunken trees. Each time I hit something, I feel it give, and wonder if it’s going to fall and which way to run and if running will make things better or worse by bringing down even more trees. Tree trunks crack and branches fall around us, but we make it through the forest and come out onto low sand dunes.

Jack points off into the empty distance and says, “There’s Eleusis.”

But I’m looking down. At the bottom of the dune Venice Beach stretches into the distance. Which doesn’t make sense. Venice is west of Hollywood and we’ve been going south. I don’t know what’s going crazy faster, this city or me.

I look up to where Jack is pointing. There’s something in the distance, but I’m damned if I know what it is.

Venice is shuttered and looks like it’s been that way for fifty years. The only light in the area comes from the fires reflected off the belly of the endless black clouds overhead. Vents in the ground belch geysers of superheated steam. Fire twisters skitter in the distance, tearing up the empty beach houses. We head down to the long tourist walk.

“You’re wondering if I’m lying about who I am, Mr. Stark. Or if I’m a nutter.”

“Something like that.”

“And you’re wondering how someone might go about proving or disproving my claim.”

“Right on the money.”

Even by Hell standards we’ve pretty much pegged the bleak meter. There’s nothing more depressing than a dead beach town. It’s like all the loons and extroverts and dimwit fun in the world has been boxed up and tossed on a bonfire. Of course, this isn’t really Venice. It’s just the Convergence projection of it. Still, something big died here and the sight of it has sucked the wind out of me. Or maybe I’m light-headed from cutting off my face. We move past empty weight-lifting areas and out-of-business tattoo parlors.

Jack says, “It’s impossible for me to prove who I am. Perhaps I’m mad. Perhaps I’m a liar. If you perhaps had a book about old Jack’s comings and goings, you might ask me details of my past. But you don’t have a book and even if you did, Jack is a famous man. His crimes are well known and well documented. I might have read the same books as you.”

“Where does that leave us, Jack?”

“In the wilderness, I’m afraid. I can no more prove to you that I’m happy Jack than you can prove to me you’re Sandman Slim.”

“Excuse me? I just stepped out of a shadow and killed five Hellion military officers. I took a Hellion general prisoner. I manifested a Gladius.”

Jack rubs his jaw and rolls his shoulders, still trying to work out the kinks. I wonder how long he was in Mammon’s cage.

He says, “Maybe you did and maybe you didn’t. I’m not a magical sort like you and some of these other folk, so I don’t know how it all works, do I?”

“Use your imagination.”

“You appeared to kill a number of soldiers and to dash through shadows, but it could have been a trick of the eye. I’ve seen stage magicians make furniture dance and spirits float in the air. And I’ve seen this lot make people see all sorts of things. Lovers, friends, parents. Spiders. Snakes. But they were mere phantasms. Trickery meant to fool the eye and terrorize the soul. For all I know, you twiddled your thumbs and tricked Master Mammon’s staff into killing each other.”

“That would still be a pretty good trick.”

“Indeed it would be. I’ve seen demons and devils that could break a man’s bones on the rack or his heart with a single word. But that doesn’t make any of them Sandman Slim.”

“When you get down to it, I don’t really care who you are. If you can get me to Eleusis, I’ll call you Jack the Ripper or Mott the Hoople if you want. Just get me there.”

“Of course. And what will be my payment for this service?”

I stop and look at him. Jack walks on for a few steps before looking back at me. He puts his hands in his pockets and stands up straight. The whole deferential attitude is gone. He’s a killer standing his ground.

“Payment? And here I thought saving you from a tin-can coffin might cover it.”

“Perhaps. Let’s put our minds to it as we go and see what we come up with, shall we?”

He starts walking and I follow, staring at the thick foamy sea that looks more like tar than water. I should have tried to get the car started. But on the road the posse would have caught up with us. So no, leaving it was the smart move.

“Okay, Jack, I’ve got to ask. Assuming you are old Leather Apron, what’s your story? Did the clap eat half your brain? Were you a religious freak? Did a talking dog named Sam tell you to kill all those women?”

“There is no God and I know noandnd I knthing about a talking dog, though I’d surely like to see one.”

“You’re an atheist? You were a fallen angel’s slave. In Hell. And you’re an atheist? Walk me through that, Jack.”

“Why is it necessary for God to exist for Hell to exist? The problem is that when good people imagine Hell, they imagine it as the opposite of the real world and as remote as the stars. That’s their delusionment. Hell and earth are the same thing. Separated by nothing more than a thin shroud of understanding that this is so. I lived in Hell every moment I dwelt on the other earth and I made it my business to bring Hell to all God-fearing souls to remind them that horror is the fabric from which the world was made.”

“You didn’t date a lot when you were alive, did you, Jack?”

“I don’t consort with whores, thank you very much. I rip ’em.”

“Fucking hell.”

I get out the flask and have a drink. The Aqua Regia burns in just the right way going down. I start to offer Jack a drink because you always offer the other guy a drink, but I screw the top on and put the flask back in my pocket.

We’re off the beach and heading inland, picking our way through the dead neighborhoods. At the corner of one of the main streets, where rows of burning palms converge on it like a weird offering to a glue-sniffing beach god, is an office building with a three-story clown sculpture in front. It’s in white face with dark whiskers and is wearing a top hat, white gloves, and ballet slippers. I know it’s supposed to look whimsical, but whimsy in a place like this is like jerking off at a funeral. Someone might enjoy it, but you wouldn’t want to know them.

“Assuming that you
are
Sandman Slim, tell me about yourself and your work. I’ve heard your name many times. Hellions talk about you like the bogeyman.”

“I might be a monster but I never mailed a kidney to a newspaper.”

“Half a kidney. I ate the other half.”

“Mom always said it’s a sin to waste food.”

“How many Hellions have you dispatched, Sandman Slim? How many humans and human souls?”

“No idea.”

“How many women?”

“I yelled at a meter maid once.”

Soon we’re in a residential area. People in Venice are sun worshippers and most of the houses have huge windows. Some of the upscale places even have one or two glass walls. The glass is all gone. Shattered by earth tbogd by earemors and fucked over by looters. Houses are tagged with spray-painted Hellion gang signs. Teenyboppers are assholes here, too. I hope Heaven’s teens are idiots. Going joyriding in Dad’s wings and TPing other angels’ clouds.

A dust devil swirls down the street, pelting us with trash and broken glass. I pull Jack behind a burned-out car and wait until the twister passes. It turns at the corner and heads down another street like it’s alive and has a sense of direction. A few doors later, it goes. The neighborhood isn’t completely deserted. I don’t want to know who or what still lives here. I pull Jack to his feet and we get moving.

I hear a different kind of rumble back the way we came. There’s a light in the distance. A spotlight coming down the dunes to the beach. The posse must have circled back and found Mammon’s limo.

“Is there a faster way, Jack?”

“Yes, but it’s more dangerous.”

“Let’s go.”

We make a few turns back the way we came and run right into a dust storm. I’m practically blind, but Jack pulls me through it like I’m a poodle on a leash. When we emerge from the storm we’re in a different neighborhood. Winding hill roads. The steep grades and long driveways are chewed-up, ever-widening fissures. Ghost mansions come and go in the settling dust. We head downhill, just like this neighborhood is. If the cracks in the road hook up with other, deeper cracks, one good shake and the whole side of this hill is going to turn into Surf City. Hang ten and ride the mansions, Rolls-Royces, and manicured lawns all the way down to the flats and into the Pacific.