The Eye of the Moon (8 page)

‘Yeah, sure, maybe another time, bruv. We’ve gotta get goin’.’

Even though the rain outside was showing no sign of letting up, JD was not overly happy at having Casper hang around in a church where the floors and walls were in places splattered with blood. The sooner he could get his little brother out of there the better. There was already a strong chance of sleepless nights on the horizon if Casper started having nightmares about what he had seen. As JD tried edging his brother in the direction of the main doors Elvis threw a comment his way.

‘Ain’t you gonna at least shake hands with the new preacher?’ he asked.

‘I’m sure I’ll get a chance to shake hands with him another time,’ said JD, offering a polite smile as he pulled Casper down the aisle with him towards the exit.

‘Yo, scarecrow man,’ Elvis called after him. ‘You’ll get fuckin’ soaked through in that outfit. Wear this.’

The King had picked up a dark cloth from the floor and tossed it at the young man. It was a hooded robe, recently worn by one of the now dead vampires. JD caught it and took a long look at it.

‘Thanks, Elvis,’ he called back.

‘Ain’t nothin’, man. Just take good care of your brother.’

As JD tugged at the robe so that he could put it on without getting into a tangle, Elvis headed past them and out into the night. He had other business to attend to, taking down the local manufactured pop acts.

JD struggled for a moment to get his arms into the sleeves of the long dark robe. When he eventually managed to do so, he found that it fitted snugly around his shoulders and hung nicely just above his ankles. After securing it around his waist with its narrow leather belt he followed his excited younger brother out into the rain, pulling the hood up over his head as he went.

Beth sat in one of the two comfortable, but distinctly grubby, dark green armchairs that Annabel de Frugyn had in her trailer. The older woman had sensed that the cold wind and rain had left Beth chilled, so had boiled the kettle to make them both a cup of her finest tea.

The kettle stood on a sideboard behind her at the far end of the trailer in what passed for the kitchen area. With her back to Beth, Annabel poured the steaming hot water into her two best mugs and stirred the contents for a short while, then returned and sat down opposite the young girl and handed her a mug. It contained extremely weak tea; more disturbingly, it had a picture of John Denver on it. The reason for the tea’s weakness lay in the fact that she refused ever to use more than one teabag a day. On this particular day she had already had about four cups, so the dried-out prune masquerading as a teabag really hadn’t imparted much flavour to the hot water in the mug.

Annabel made herself comfortable in the chair opposite Beth and placed her own mug (decorated with a picture of Val Doonican) on the small table in between them.

‘He’ll come back, you know,’ she said reassuringly.

‘Am I that obvious?’ Beth asked.

‘It’s practically stamped on your forehead, my dear. He’s the one for you, though. I can tell. I have a nose for these things. I’m a fortune teller by trade.’

‘Is that right?’ Beth perked up. ‘Could you read my fortune?’ Then a thought struck her. ‘I don’t have any money, though,’ she said sheepishly.

The darkly dressed woman smiled. ‘Of course. Hold out your hands. I’ll give you a palm reading.’

‘Okay.’

Beth placed the John Denver mug on the table in such a position that it was in a staring contest with Val Doonican. Then she held her hands out to Annabel’s examination.

Outside, the rain was falling harder, and making an almighty racket as it pounded on the tin roof. There seemed to be no electric light in the trailer and the only illumination was provided by candles spaced intermittently on a ledge along the walls, each flickering with an eerie green flame. The only window was just behind Beth’s head, and every so often a flash of lightning outside would light up Annabel’s pale, warty face. One such flash occurred just as she took hold of the girl’s hands with both hers and smiled her gap-toothed smile at her.

‘Oh, I sense great things for you, Beth, my dear,’ she said, after a long pause.

‘Really? Like what?’

Annabel looked her up and down and began to nod. ‘Yes, yes, you’ve come a long way to be here. You’re not originally from Santa Mondega, are you?’

‘No, that’s right. My father moved us here a few weeks after I was born.’

‘From Kansas, I’m thinking.’

‘Delaware actually.’

‘Shush. Don’t interrupt, unless it’s to agree with me. You’ll break my concentration.’

‘Sorry.’

‘Now,’ Annabel went on. ‘You miss home, don’t you? And you want to get back there, but you’re not sure how.’

Beth frowned.
Was this woman for real?
Just because she was dressed as Dorothy from
The Wizard of Oz
didn’t mean that she was from Kansas and believed that there was no place like home. She couldn’t help a feeling of relief that that this would all be over soon and JD would return. This fortune-telling old biddy was, frankly, a joke. Not only that, it
seemed she was stupid enough to think that Beth hadn’t seen
The Wizard of Oz.
Even so, the girl let her continue anyway.

‘And your friend, he searches for something too. His road will come to an end when he finds his soul.’

Beth raised an eyebrow. ‘Don’t you mean brain?’

‘What?’

‘In
The Wizard of Oz,
the scarecrow wanted a brain.’

‘What’s
The Wizard of Oz?
’

‘Are you kidding?’ Beth was astonished, her surprise overtaking her normal good manners.

Annabel sat back, looking slightly offended. ‘Do you want me to tell you your fortune, or not?’

‘I’m sorry. Please do go on.’

‘Thank you.’ There was a hint of suspicion in the fortune teller’s voice. She was not used to being challenged in such a direct fashion. ‘The path you choose will matter not, for you, my dear, will always arrive at the same destination. All roads lead back to what feels like home for you. Under the light of a sleepless moon, that boy will be with you always.’

Beth raised an eyebrow.
She’s lost it,
she thought.
This old fruitbat is absolutely cuckoo.
‘What does that mean, exactly?’ she asked, anxious now to get the whole stupid business over with.

Instead of replying, the darkly dressed woman suddenly jumped slightly, as if someone had jabbed a pin in her ass.

‘There’s somebody at the door,’ she hissed.

‘What?’

Before the other could reply, there came a loud knock at the door of the trailer.

‘That’s for you, Beth,’ Annabel said quietly.

‘Excuse me?’

‘By all accounts, I think the wicked witch has found you. You should answer the door.’

Beth felt a cloak of fear fall over her. ‘My stepmother is here?’

Annabel nodded. ‘She has come to take you home.’

‘Oh no. I promised JD I’d wait for him. Can’t we pretend I’m not here?’

Three more booming knocks were heard over the roar of the rain as a fist pounded on the door. Then Beth heard the voice that had always chilled every nerve in her body.

‘Beth!
By God, I know you’re in there!
I saw you through the window. You’re coming home with me
right now.
You just wait ‘til I get my fuckin’ hands on you, you little bitch …’

Beth stood up and walked over to the door, readying herself for the mental and physical assault she was about to receive from her irate stepmother.

As she reached out for the doorknob, an action that would undoubtedly initiate the torrent of abuse that was to follow, Annabel quietly made one last comment.

‘Beth, you have blood on your hands.’

It was strange thing to say, even by the fortune teller’s standards, but it brought the desired reaction. Beth looked down at her palms.
There was no blood.
So she turned her hands over.
Still no sign of a single drop.
She turned back to look quizzically at the strange, ugly woman.

‘I can’t see any,’ she said.

‘But you will, my dear.
You will.
’

JD and Casper fought their way through the torrential rain for twenty minutes before they finally made it home. The rented accommodation in which they lived with their mother, Maria, a small house in a rackety row of two-storeys, was in Santa Mondega’s red-light district. There were two reasons for this. Firstly, it was all they could afford. And secondly, their mother was a whore. By reputation and by trade. JD knew it, although Casper had really no idea. One day it might sink in and leave him with some bad mental scars, but that day seemed quite a way off for now.

JD had never expressed any disapproval at his mother’s trade. From the moment he had realized what she did for a living he had also understood the reasons why. This wasn’t a career she had chosen for herself. She was a single mother trying to provide for two growing sons. JD’s own father had run off when he was a small child, without offering up even a half-decent explanation. Things had picked up briefly when his mother had lived with another man, named Russo, who had fathered Casper, but all too soon he too had run off. Russo had returned to his ex-wife by whom he had another child, a son named Bull, who was of a similar age to JD. They still lived near by.

Their front door was hidden away down a dark alleyway, and to get to it they would normally have had to walk past a number of hookers, pimps and drug dealers. It wasn’t scary for them because everyone knew who they were. They were Maria’s kids, and pretty much everyone who hung in the alleyway either worked with, behind, underneath or on top
of their mother at some time or another. Nice folks, though, really. Tonight, with the wind and rain as hard as they were, no one was around, so they made it to their front door without the usual meet-and-greet session.

JD turned his key in the lock and pushed the door open to let Casper run on in. He pulled down the hood of his new robe and allowed it to rest around his shoulders, and then followed his younger brother inside. They stepped into the small entrance hall, its dirty red carpet already muddied, no doubt by a few clients who had dropped by earlier. The mud was barely noticed by either boy though, for what greeted them inside was carnage. Casper became instantly distressed and confused. One look round was all it needed for JD to make a snap decision for his younger brother’s benefit.