“It may be all hoodoo to you,” Colonel said. “But she’s often accurate. She’s tapped into the spirit world.”
“We got Blind Man for that,” John Henry said. “We don’t need that shit-fingered bitch.”
Colonel turned to Elvira, standing still and loose, her mouth hanging open like a fly trap. “Elvira. My cabin. Box on the dresser.”
Elvira moaned a little, and shuffled away.
“That just ain’t right,” John Henry said, watching Elvira head toward the cabins.
“What I’m working on now,” Colonel said, “is a way to get our voodoo expert to provide us with some kind of warranty if the corpses don’t work out.”
“That’s even less right,” Jack said.
It was a bit of time before Elvira was back, her slow-working brain having to process the order properly, but she managed, and returned with a large flat box.
“Thank you, Elvira,” Colonel said as if he meant it. He took the box from her, asked her to take a position beside the rail, then he laid the box on the table and opened it. He reached inside and fished out several large photographs, which he gave to me to examine and pass to the others.
“You’ll note what’s curious about them immediately,” he said.
That turned out to be quite an understatement. They were photos of the police fishing something from the river, and there were a series of photos of what they fished out.
I focused on one photo in particular. At first glance what was in the pictures looked like large pale, somewhat abused, medicine balls. But then I noticed one of the balls had teeth. Closer examination proved it didn’t look like a medicine ball at all. It was a nude, crunched-up body. It was a man, or perhaps a short-haired woman. The back had been broken and the heels of the feet had been pushed up to the shoulders. The body had been crunched so tight it was relatively small considering it was a corpse. It was such a bizarre sight the mind tried to make it into all manner of things other than what it was.
I fanned through the photos. There were several of those balled-up humans, men and women. I could see a shriveled nutsack hanging down on one. Even with all I had experienced, the sight of them disgusted me. I passed the photos to the next in line at the table.
“Here’s something even more interesting than the uniqueness of those photographs,” the Colonel said. “They had been dead only a short time, and not from drowning. When they cut them open, heart, intestines, all gone, like they had been vacuumed out. There were leech-like marks on their necks, but their throats, the insides, were raw, as if worked over with sandpaper and lye. And there’s another curiosity. The bodies had been in that balled-up position for some time, and they had been alive.”
“Couldn’t be,” Jack said. “They’d be dead as soon as their backs were snapped, or maybe they’d live for a little while, but not long.”
“Not what our experts say. They took the job from the local cracker cops, who were eager to give it up. They came to the conclusion they had been alive for weeks, slowly drained of their innards and blood. They had those marks on their necks, chests, other places, but mostly it was figured whatever pulled out their sweetbreads and guts, did it through their throats, sucked them right out like a malt through a straw.”
“What kind of device does that?” Jenny asked.
“Good question,” said the Colonel.
“Are these the first bodies like this that have been found?” Elvis asked.
“The right question,” said the Colonel. “There were some found like this a few months back, and a few months before that. But no one thought to cut them open back then. No one missing fit the descriptions. Some peckerwood at the police department suggested they had been in a car compactor.”
“Were any of them identifiable?” Jack asked.
“They straightened them out best they could, took photos,” the Colonel said. “They didn’t match anyone missing, so far anyway. Fingerprints are gone; as if they were sucked flat and creaseless from the inside.”
“If you got all of us together, this isn’t just an exploratory mission, and you’re not expecting a cake walk,” Elvis said. “You’re being coy, or the organization is.”
“On a need to know basis,” the Colonel said, and picked up his fork. “Elvira. Bring the pie.”
5
NOT FAR OFF BOURBON STREET
He wanted blood. So, there he was, walking along, a lanky guy with oily brown hair and a corpse-white face, carrying inside him a hunger of sorts.
Down the street where the streetlights throbbed, there was an open doorway in an abandoned building, and a girl wearing a blue-jean mini skirt was coming out of it, clicking along on high heels. Long-legged and slim of body, pert breasts, dark hair tied back in a loose pony tail, swishing like its namesake, a purse hung over her shoulder by a long strap.
Walking out of that old building he had to figure she had scored some drugs, something to lick, snort or shoot. He moved along quickly, covering ground silently, his tennis shoes making little noise. He closed in behind her and when he was almost on her, she wheeled, said, “Get back. I don’t want to spray you.”
She was holding a small container of breath freshener, holding it with her finger on the plunger, hoping he’d think it was mace or pepper spray. He grinned, said, “You just gonna sweeten my mouth, baby.”
She bolted then, ran fast, especially considering the heels she was wearing. That’s all right. He liked a chase. It’s like a hound is walking along and spies a rabbit. The rabbit spies the dog and runs. It awakens something inside the hound, some deep-seated instinct to chase and kill. He liked that, and he wasn’t the sort that lost a chase. A professional chaser was what he was.
Around the corner of a building she went, into an alley, and as he made the corner after her, he saw that she was at the far end of the alley, coming up against a dead-end, a brick wall. He laughed a little, quit running, started strolling forward, a cat ready to torment a mouse.
He was almost on her when she turned, dropped the breath freshener, let her purse fall off her shoulder and hit the ground. Then he saw something ooze out of her. A shadow, and the shadow folded around her like cockroach wings. Then there were more shadows, sliding out from the alley walls, from behind the dumpster. Shadows crawled down the bricks like spiders, made scuttling sounds, dropped to the alley, and within a blinking of an eye appeared as black-boned skeletons, which then transformed into large insect shapes.
The Chaser managed to draw his knife from under his shirt, the blade he had intended to use on the woman. The shadows hustled down the wall and along the alley, scrambling and clattering, insect-like legs clicked on the brick alleyway, tentacles waved in the air like drunks trying to hail a taxi. The clicking shadows closed around him.
He slashed at them. He actually cut them, he was sure, because they were solid, but they just kept coming, sticking wet shadows against his skin, thick as wet wool blankets. In the shadows were faces, almost human, but the features flowed and ebbed like melting wax. There were flashing teeth, and sounds like someone talking, but the words weren’t anything he understood. The shadows held him and turned him effortlessly, as if examining him. The insect legs poked him, the tentacles caressed.
And then there was the girl, splitting out of the shadows, no longer shrouded in darkness, drifting toward him. The pores of her skin sprouted little insect legs and the legs grew long and thick and grabbed him, held him, pulled him closer to her mouth, which was wide open and huge. A crawling thing came out of her mouth and went down inside of him so fast it was done before he could realize exactly what had happened. Spike tipped tentacles stabbed at him, entered his flesh. Teeth slashed, his blood flew. He felt it warm his face, neck and back, and then his legs and scrotum; he was bleeding all over from thousands of sticks and bites.
He wanted to run. He wanted to scream. But his feet weren’t touching the ground. He was lifted above it. When he tried to scream the only sound he could make was a moaning noise because his mout
h was full of what felt like a fat crawling caterpillar the size of a banana. It descended down his throat, and into his belly. His belly wiggled and swelled.
He dropped the knife. He didn’t remember when it fell from his hand. He had been set up like a duck in a shooting gallery.
For a grateful moment he felt nothing. He was paralyzed. But he had the sensation of being emptied out, like he had just experienced an extreme bowel movement.
Then he was slammed to the ground, belly first. Now he felt pain. It had arrived by express train, a horrible pain, as his back snapped like a breadstick. This was followed by numbness. He could see the tops of his feet on either side of his face, the soles turned skyward, as they were pressed down over his shoulders. There were a lot of cracking sounds. He ought to be dead, he thought, dead. But he wasn’t. He wasn’t that fortunate.
Then suddenly the pain was gone. He was numb as if his body had been filled with Novocain; no, as if he were himself Novocain.
He was gradually rolled into a circle of flesh. Tears ran down his cheeks and dripped on the alley floor. He was lifted up and dumped into a big, black bag, and then the bag closed; a bag made of wet shadows. He was carried away amidst sighing sounds and happy gurgles, toted away as if he were no more than a bag of feathers to be tossed on the fire.
6
THE NOCTURNE SAILS THE DEAD OF NIGHT
The paddle wheels tumbled across the water, moving the Nocturne briskly through the soft darkness and the cool night. The red and yellow Chinese lanterns were lit. They were the colors of blood and honey. The dinner was finished, the table was taken away, and Elvis and the others went to their rooms.
In his room, sitting on his bed, Elvis thought: This is fucked up. I should be working on new music. Maybe I should learn to write a song myself. Never could do that well. But I can sing. Damn I can sing. I can sing better now than when I started. I really got bottom in my voice now, deep and resonating. I’m getting better. And I’m wasting it.
Shitty, fucking, dog-crap movies, and all because I can’t keep my mind reasonably clear and still be able to kill monsters if I have something serious to concentrate on, something that requires all my brain cells, not just one or two. Colonel Parker, damn him. He said if I made crap, sang simple movie songs, I’d make plenty of money and have all that I would ever want.
Didn’t have to worry about getting into character for those movies. I was just playing me. No taking the work home with me. No acting coach. Easy lines. Shitty songs. Fuck the co-star. Nothing to it. The fuck the co-star part was all right.
But there was a fly in the pie, Elvis thought. I didn’t keep my head clear. I swallowed everything I got my hands on, though it was prescription. I mean, I must need it or they wouldn’t give it to me, right?
Oh hell, will you listen to me? Who am I talking to inside my head? Me, I guess, and me always answers the way I want. But maybe if me were honest, he would tell the other me: Elvis, you who are full of ego and pounds of self-deluding shit, are fooling yourself.
Drugs are messing you up, man. They are going to kick your ass and leave you lying in a ditch next to broken beer bottles and a dog that got hit on the highway. It’s in the stars, Old Son. Buck up!
Elvis stopped his musings and looked at his suitcase on a slatted platform near his bed. The case had been opened for him, and his clothes had been laid out beside it by zombie hands.
He thought: Dead motherfuckers handling my drawers and unfolding my socks. That ain’t right.
He wanted a pill, but fortunately he hadn’t brought any and didn’t know where to get any, and when he was working this branch of his job, he was good about leaving them alone, because it gave him purpose, as music once did, as it still should now.
Elvis stopped thinking on things he couldn’t change, the wrong roads he had traveled. It was too depressing. Started trying to see himself in a more positive light. He was in fact a real hero. But no one knew. He kept the people of the world from having monster breath on their necks. Mostly.
Elvis shivered, as if trying to shake off the blues.
The Colonel had provided a small box of the Cuban cigars he liked, had placed them by the bed. Elvis fished a cigar from the box, picked up a lighter that had been left for him inside the box, walked out on the deck, stood there and lit his cigar. He sucked the smoke, but not deep, sucked it and blew it out into the night air.
And then he saw her.
She was on deck, and the moonlight liked Raven, who preferred being called Jenny. Boy did it like her. She wore it like a second skin, looked like an angel come down for a boat ride. The Chinese lanterns reflected light along with the moon on the water, and they were the only lights, except for the blinking lights along the shore. All the colors of romance. Jenny stood on the deck, placed her hands on the railing.
Elvis made a step forward, realized he didn’t really want the cigar. It tasted foul in his mouth. He walked to the railing, tossed it into the Mississippi, and strolled toward Jenny. He walked the way he had in so many movies. Dipped his head a little, shy-like, hooded his eyes and sneered a little. It was a style that worked pretty well on women. He was somehow a little boy lost, and a dangerous thug all at the same time. He worked on that look in the mirror, got it wrong it just looked like he was constipated, got it right the gates to ecstasy could open for him.
As he came up, she said, “You walk soft. Sound of whatever you threw overboard was louder than your footsteps.”
“It was a cigar,” he said. “That couldn’t have been loud.”
“I have some sort of hearing thing,” she said. “Not like the Blind Man, but it gives me an edge. I live with thuds and creaks and echoes from things others don’t notice at all. A cricket can be as loud as a violin to me, the rolling of a tongue in someone’s mouth from across the room is like someone squeezing out a wet bath towel right next to me. Squeaking shoes sound like ferrets screeching. Gives me perfect pitch as a singer, but I have to put in ear plugs when I perform, or the sound of the music, the feed on the monitor, hearing myself singing, would be torture. Ear plugs in, I can hear everything about right, more comfortable. But you walk soft, even for my ears.”
“I always heard I was part Indian.”
“Walking soft has nothing to do with your genetics. It’s a learned behavior.”
“Think so?”
“Know so. I do want to say it’s amazing to meet you. My dad has all your records. Even the oldest ones. And to think you’re doing what you’re doing with the Colonel, the non-music part. Amazing, a man your age.”
“Think I just felt my pride wiggle a little and lie down in pain.”
She turned from the railing. It was the first time she had actually looked at him directly. She smiled. Yep, an angel.
“How’d you get roped into this?” Elvis said. “You got this marvelous career going, and now you’re doing this too. Believe me, it doesn’t do the career good, and in the long run it doesn’t do you any good. I liked it at first, but it’s soul-wearing.”
“Like you, got pulled in by the Colonel. He recognizes certain abilities. Singing, as well as oddities that make us special at what we do.”
“Your hearing, being your oddity?”
“One of my oddities. I am also amazingly flexible.”
“That’s interesting.”
“That’s what all the men say. Forget it. Not going to happen.”
“No?”
“No.”
“What the Colonel said is I have the kind of mind and body that’s good for the work, and he meant exactly that. His mind didn’t go there, where yours went. At least I don’t think his did.”
“He’s all business, and if his mind didn’t go there, then he may be light in his loafers or minus his balls.”
She grinned at him, leaned on the rail with her palms and watched the water chug by. “I know plenty of men who are, as you say, light in their loafers. Some of them are my best friends.”
“All right,” Elvis said, not w
ishing to engage, not sure about the changing world, not sure of right and wrong. He gave her one of his patented looks; the one he had been told was sexy. “This job, sometimes, you get lonely. Oh, so lonely.”
“As I said, not going to happen, big boy.”
“What?”
“Not going to help you get unlonely.”
Elvis smiled. “Sure?”
“Yep. I’m not that lonely.”
Struck out, Elvis thought. Shit. He remembered it had happened once before, maybe like, what, ten years ago? Girl turned out to be a lesbian. That had to be the answer here. Jenny had to be a lesbian.
Jenny spread her fine, wet lips into a grin.
“By the way, I can tell you’re startled you didn’t succeed in enticing me to bed, and now you’re thinking I’m a lesbian. I’m not.”
“I wasn’t thinking that at all.”
“Funny. Most men trip in the weeds and decide the only way they could have lost their footing is if the girl’s a lesbian. And you, Elvis Presley, the famous, big shot singer, I figured being turned down would lead you to that thought immediately.”
“It didn’t though.”
She smiled again.
Goddamn, he thought. She sees right through me. Is she just smart, or a mind reader? He decided she was just smart. Mind readers, and he had known a few, like the Blind Man, could do it under the right circumstances, but they usually furrowed their brows. Her forehead was smooth. Damn, everything about her was smooth.
Elvis thought, all right. I’ll give this another pitch, low and to the inside. She’s just teasing or testing me.
He decided to do the thing where he seemed not that interested, didn’t see her as that special. He hadn’t had to pull that ball out and throw it in a long time, but he was going for it.
“Hell, honey. I was just playing. You got to have a sense of humor to do this job.”
“Sure you were kidding,” she said, and they both listened to the paddle wheel beat on for a bit. Then she said, “You want to be doing this?”