Necro Files: Two Decades of Extreme Horror (12 page)

“I’ve never been robbed,” the keep said. He was drying glasses, grinning.

“Huh?”

“Never been robbed like other bars, never been shaken. Never problems.”

“Big deal,” Smith sputtered.

“Is Xipe. He is good luck.”

Idiot.
Smith stared at the figure again. It smiled much like the keep, emptily. Smith didn’t believe in gods, stone or otherwise. Gods were bad for business. “Another,” he said, and hopped off his stool.

In the john, he scanned incomprehensible graffiti. Most of it seemed to lack Spanish extraction altogether. Xoclan, ti coatl. Ut zetl! Huetar, Coatlicue, ay! Me socorro! Someone had drawn a hummingbird eating the heads off stick figures. Smith grimaced and zipped his fly. A shadow swung behind him. He spun, shucked his Glock, and drew down …

But it was only a trinket swinging from the light. A black plastic figure with pudgy hands and a big, empty smile.

Xipe.

This place gives me the creeps.
He couldn’t wait to get back to San Angelo and the real world. A little coke, a little pussy—enough of this wasteland. A slim figure in a smudged azure-blue suit sat stooped beside Smith’s bar stool. The head turned as if psychic, big white smile with a gold tooth, greasy hair, greasy face.

“Amigo,” Ramirez greeted. “How is my favoreet yankee?” He offered a pale hand, which Smith declined to shake.

“I’ve been waiting a fucking hour.”

“Hey, we Mexicans, we’re always late, isn’t that right?”

“Come on, we’ve got business.”

Ramirez nodded, grinning, and paid the tab. The gold-flecked grin seemed permanently fixed. He led Smith out, slinking like a junkie after a mainline.

The street stood empty. It stank of dust. A lone whore yammered at a couple of G.I.s getting out of a cab. She gazed at Smith once, then quickly looked away. The main drag wasn’t even paved; it was dirt, strewn with litter. Smith checked the alleys for tails, but only emptiness returned his glances.

“I have much good stuff for you tonight, Meester Smeeth.” Ramirez held the door for him at the motel. PARADISA, the neon sign glowed.
Jesus,
Smith thought. Dark lamps lit the lobby. Ridiculous felt prints of matadors and Spanish women adorned the stained walls. A greasily rouged fat woman tended the counter, hair in a black bun. From a shelf of curios, the tiny figure of Xipe smiled.

Smith frowned.

They mounted stairs which smelled of beer-piss and smoke. Ramirez’ room smelled worse.
La Biblia
rested on a nightstand, beside a stained bed. Used condoms stuck to the side of the wastebasket. Ramirez was zipping open a battered suitcase, but Smith’s gaze turned to the room’s only wall painting. The quetzl-feathered head on a plump, squatting body. Its arms outstretched as if to invite embrace. The smile huge yet empty.

“Xipe,” Smith muttered at it.

Ramirez looked up, grinning gold. “The Giver of the Harvest, who protects the faithful. The Great God of—”

“Good Will, I know,” Smith interrupted. Xipe’s eyes were empty as its smile, its fat hands empty. Perhaps it was the
mode
of the trinket’s emptiness that distressed Smith so. It seemed to him a kind of vitality—a
knowledge
—hidden deep beneath the black facade. An emptiness that somehow yearned to be filled.

“He brings luck, Meester Smeeth. He guards us from our enemies.”

Smith blinked. A shiver of vertigo, like standing up too quickly after a neat shot of Uzzo, seemed to transpose Xipe’s smile to a momentary hollow grimace.

Smith turned away. He didn’t feel good—bad beer or something. In dismay, he glanced down. “Jesus Christ, you bring the stuff in a suitcase?”

“My people, like yours, we pay.”

“You can’t buy every Customs officer on the line.”

“Of course not.” Ramirez grinned at Xipe. “The rest is
buena snerte.
”

“What?”

“Luck.”

Smith felt a chill. The painting distracted him. “How many masters?”

“Ten. New faces, all new stuff. And chiquitas—the best.”

Smith carried forty large. He was authorized to pay three grand per master, but only if the production was good. The way it worked, if the larger-formatted master wasn’t excellent, the second dupes would look piss-poor. Ramirez plugged the first tape into the VCR he’d set up on the dresser. Now came the grueling part, having to watch a sample of each. Smith steeled himself, crossed his arms, and addressed the screen.

His eyes bulged when the image formed.

He expected the usual phantom scenes: stark-lighted rooms, hollow-eyed children and sneering spic studs, women gagged and tied and jerking as fingers sunk needles into banded breasts. Instead he saw a grainy black and white of a man getting out of a car in front of a San Angelo warehouse.

The man was Smith.

Next: himself walking down the concourse at the Dallas/Ft. Worth air terminal. And next: himself giving Vinchetti’s Justice plant some pad and a list of phony bust points in a vacant Del Rio parking lot.

Ramirez’ gold grin glowed. “Good stuff, eh, Meester Smeeth?”

“You greaseball pepper-belly motherfucker!” But before Smith could even think about yanking his heat, a hammer cocked behind his head. Smith’s face felt huge as he turned. He was now looking down the barrel of a 3-inch S&W Model 13.

“Good evening. Mr. Smith. My name is Peterson. I work for the Department of Justice. I’m arresting you for multiple violations of Section 18 of the United States Code.” It was just a young punk, the “G.I.” in the bar. He gave Smith an empty smile. “Mr. Ramirez has given us enough documentation to send you up for thirty years. I want you to know that you have the right to remain …

The words melted. Behind him, Ramirez was giggling. All Smith could think was
I’m not going down,
over and over. Federal time on a kiddie porn rap was as good as a death sentence. He’d be “boy-cherry.” They’d turn him into a cellblock bitch in five minutes.

From the wall, Xipe smiled, seemed to lean over Peterson’s shoulder. Smith made his move. The half-second disarm he’d learned in the Army worked well enough; his hands snapped up, grabbed the revolver and Peterson’s wrist, and pushed. A round went off and burned a line across Smith’s scalp. Peterson’s wrist broke, and suddenly Smith had the piece. He squeezed off two Q-loads into Peterson’s chest. The kid crumpled beneath Xipe like a tossed offering.

Ramirez jumped on his back. Smith tried an elbow jab but missed. The Mexican was clawing at him, biting into his ear. The revolver hit the floor. Smith staggered back, screaming as his right ear was separated from his head between Ramirez’ teeth. The front wall diminished, yet the framed, grinning Xipe seemed not to; the empty smile followed him. Smith meant to slam Ramirez into the back wall.

Instead, he collided with the window, and the window gave.

It was nothing so trite as slow motion. Smith and his piggyback rider fell very quickly, but the hot night seemed to rise more than they seemed to fall. The street greeted them like a brick slammed down onto copulating frogs.

Something crunched, then collapsed. Smith rolled off Ramirez, who’d broken his fall. Was something looking down at them? Stupefied, Smith managed to stand, shuddering as he removed a long glass shard from his armpit and another from his belly. He was cut bad, but perhaps Xipe had brought him luck after all—Smith had risen from the two-story drop intact, while Ramirez lay crushed, organs punctured by cracked bones.

Smith caught an overhead movement, or he thought he did. He stared up. Was someone leaning out of the window, looking down at him? Maybe Peterson had had a backup man. Smith shucked his Glock, but when he lined up the three-dot sights, the window was empty.

Giggling bubbled at his feet. Ramirez spat out Smith’s chewed ear. Despite ruptured organs and a broken spine, the Mexican grinned, somehow, in glory.

“Looks like today is not your lucky day, Meester Smeeth.”

“Luckier than yours, bean-eater.” Smith pumped eight rounds of 9mm hardball into Ramirez’ head. The skull divided, as if trying to expel its contents. The gold-toothed smile froze emptily up at the night.

Smith limped away. Heads popped out of La Fiesta de la Sol. Curtains fluttered in lit windows; faces queried down. Several seemed to wear smiles like empty gouges, like cut-out masks.

Numbness throbbed where his ear had been. His breath rattled, and blood ran freely down his leg. He’d probably cut arteries, punctured a lung. Like a dimmer, his vision began to fade.

I’m losing it,
he thought.
I’m
…

But, more good luck. The cab idled in the alley, as if expecting him. He fell into the back seat, slammed the door, consciousness draining in pulses.

“I’m bleeding like a fucking tap. Get me to a hospital.”

The cabbie turned, a blurred, vacant grin. “No hablo Ingles, señor.”

Smith peeled off a grand in ball notes from his roll. “Hospitala!” he attempted, throwing cash. “Pronto!”

“Anytheen you say, Meester.”

The cab pulled off into dust. Before Smith passed out, he sensed plump outstretched hands, a smile vast as a mountain rift. A plastic toy, like a kewpie doll, swung fitfully from the rearview.

Xipe.

* * *

Smith blinked from the gurney. They’d rushed him to an ICU. Around him stood a coven of hospital staff. Starched white uniforms and intent faces. A beautiful dark-eyed nurse patted his brow with a damp cloth, while another timed his pulse.

Am I dying?
Smith thought.

“You are safe now,” said the doctor. “We have stopped the bleeding.”

But like a mirage, a man had risen from the corner. He wore a black suit, a white collar.

Smith gulped. A priest.

Indeed he was. He took Smith’s hand and asked, “Are you sorry for your sins?”

Smith felt plunged into darkness. “No, no,” he muttered. “Don’t let me die. Please …”

The holy man’s crucifix glittered in the light. He looked solemn and kind. He was holding a book.

“Are you sorry for your sins?” the heavy accent repeated.

But Smith didn’t hear the words. His eyes were busy, having at last noticed the incongruity of the priest’s silver crucifix. No Jesus could be found at the end of the chain—it was another figure, who wore a crown of quetzl feathers instead of thorns. Pudgy, dark hands bore no nails. The bottomless smile beseeched him.

“Xipe,” Smith whispered.

In Nahuati, the native language of the Toltecs, the priest began to speak. The knife he raised was not of steel but of flint. And from the book he commenced the recital, not the Catholic Sacrament For The Dying, but the Aztec Psalter of the Sacrifice, and the Great Rites of the Giver of the Harvest.

Smith’s heart beat like thunder in his chest.

“Bait” was originally published in
Cemetery Dance
magazine Volume 5 Number 3/4, Fall 1993 and reprinted in his 2006 short story collection
Pieces of Hate
.

‡

Ray Garton is the author of more than 60 books, including the horror novels
Scissors
and
Ravenous
and the thrillers
Sex and Violence in Hollywood
and
Meds
. His short stories have appeared in magazines, anthologies and in eight collections. His 1987 vampire novel
Live Girls
was nominated for the Bram Stoker Award and in 2006, he received the Grand Master of Horror Award. He lives in northern California with his wife Dawn and their seven cats, where he is currently at work on something or other.

“Go over to the dairy stuff and get a gallon of milk,” Mom told them as she stood in the produce section of the Seaside Supermarket, squeezing one avocado after another, looking for ripe ones. “Low-fat, remember.”

They knew, both of them: nine-year-old Cole and his seven-yearold sister, Janelle. Their mother always ate and drank low-fat or non-fat
everything
. And besides, they knew the brand of milk on sight. The two children headed down the aisle between two long produce display cases.

“And hurry up!” Mom called behind them. “I wanna get out of here so I can have a smoke. Meet me up in the front.”

“She’s always in a hurry,” Janelle said matter-of-factly.

“Yeah. Usually to have a smoke.” They found the dairy section and went to the refrigerated cases, scanning the shelves of milk cartons—different sizes, different brands. When he spotted the right one, Cole pulled the glass door open, stood on tip-toes, reached up and tilted the carton off the fourth shelf up, nearly dropping it. He let the door swing closed behind him as they started to head for the front of the store to find their mother. But Cole stopped.

“Here’s another one,” he said quietly.

Janelle turned back. “Another what?”

He turned the carton so she could see the splotchy black-and-white depiction of a little boy’s smiling face. It was such a bad picture—as if someone had run the boy’s face through a dysfunctioning copy ma-chine—that he looked more nightmarish than pitiful. But pity was exactly what the black writing on the carton seemed to be aiming for. Cole read it aloud to Janelle:

HAVE YOU SEEN THIS BOY? 9-YEAR-OLD PETER MULRAKES LAST SEEN IN EUREKA, CA PARKING LOT OF SAFEWAY SUPERMARKET. MISSING—1 YEAR, 7 MONTHS.

There were a few more details that Cole skipped over, along with a phone number to call if anyone should see the boy or have information regarding his whereabouts. At the very bottom, he read silently to himself:

A NON-PROFIT COMMUNITY SERVICE OF VALENCIA DAIRIES, INC.

“Where’s Eureka?” Janelle asked.

“Couple hours down the coast from here, I think,” Cole replied, staring at the haunting face with its smeared features and splotchy eyes. “I wonder where they go,” he muttered to himself. “I wonder what happens to them when they disappear … who takes them … and why.”

He turned and went back to the dairy case, opened the door and began turning other milk cartons around.

“Mom said to hurry,” Janelle said. “She wants to smoke.”

“In a second.”

Each carton had a face on it, some different than others: little boys, little girls, some black, some white and some asian … but all with the same splotchy features and blurred lines that would make the children almost impossible to identify, even if they were standing right there in front of Cole.