The Collected Short Fiction, page 145
We continued in silence until we hit the interstate and turned east.
Beasley reached over and patted my scraped knee.
“Yep, it’s over. The moon feels different.”
I didn’t have the heart to tell him that the last thing I’d seen before I booked out of there in Sheriff Holcomb’s cruiser was Deputy Cooper’s grinning corpse, or how its eyelid drooped in a ghastly wink.
Besides, Beasley was right. The moon did feel different. Surely it did.
I gave him a cheery smile and clicked on the radio. Hank Williams Sr.’s lost highway carried me into dreams.
(Little Miss) Queen of Darkness
First published in Dark Discoveries #29, Fall 2014
I: Initiation
I write this: The cops don’t know what really happened in Eagle Talon. Lies, all lies. Ask Jessica, if I ever see her again. This isn’t about Eagle Talon, however. I’ve never even been. No sir, Bob, if it’s about anything, it’s about that debutante ball Zane throws in his basement at the tail end of high school, 1998. The unfinished basement with the raw earth and a tunnel that smells of mildew and dankness. The tunnel is maybe three by three and is actually a cleft in the rock of the hill upon which this house rests.
I can’t forget that hole in the ground. It drills through my mind.
Yeah, Shit Creek describes an imperfect circle right back to the bad old days. Oh, the party is rad, though: heavy metal, booze, drugs, psychedelic lights. The kids slam-dancing. Me with my hand on Stu Whitlock’s hip the whole time and nobody the wiser. Then that damned hick brat Dave Teague racing overhead, naked and covered in blood (so the legend goes), screaming his head off. Ruins everything ...
I also write: People call it this or that, but our club doesn’t have a name. It didn’t originate in Alaska. It was around before Alaska. We don’t suckle at the breast of a god, it suckles at ours. Unfortunately, devoid of context, that stuff reads like the Unabomber’s doodles.
Next, I make a list. Were I to title it, the title would be “People Who Died,” like the song. Such an everyman tune because everybody can relate, right? The partial list is scribbled in a black moleskin notebook. I’ve left bloody fingerprints on the pages. Many of the names are illegible from the smears, or redaction with a magic marker. Names changed to protect the guilty. Four remain intact in truth and form. Hell if I know whether that’s significant or not.
Zane Tooms & Julie Vellum: They could’ve been the power couple from the lowest circle of Hell. Alas, Zane already had a loyalist and Julie’s not the kind to need any. These are your villains. Nuff said.
Steely J: Just about tall enough to play pro basketball. He’s Zane’s major domo. The Renfield to Zane’s Dracula. Loyal through thick and thin—and I’m not kidding, I literally mean that. We called Zane Fat Boy Tooms until his folks croaked and he started in with the horse de-wormer and got slenderized. Steely J stuck with him down the line. Steely is what you might call inscrutable. Looks nice, dresses nice, and plays nice, if a teensy bit of a cold fish. His features lag behind whatever message his brain is sending. Somebody behind the curtain throws a switch and he smiles. Or, he smiles and picks up a claw hammer and comes for you. The Sandburg poem about fog creeping on little cat feet? That’s Steely J. Except six-six with a hammer.
Vadim: My buddy Vadim often brags that he’s an expert in Savate. He paid two hundred dollars for a six week course at a strip mall. I let him drag me in once to meet the instructor (mainly I wanted to ogle some studly hotties kicking and stretching, but whatev) and the dude had a bunch of diplomas, certificates, and autographed photos of macho celebrities I didn’t care to recognize. The French version of hi-ya for an hour. Bo-oring.
The strip mall closed shop when the economy cratered in ’09. Not before Vadim got what he needed, however. He asserts that Savate is the elite of the elite fighting arts, natch. I don’t know my foot from my elbow when it comes to violence. I’m a lover, always have been. That’s why I keep the numbers of a few bigger, tougher friends in my Rolodex.
Vadim talks lots of shit every time we go clubbing and the fraternity bros start hitting on me, which they totally do. I clutch his sleeve and say, “Whoa, there stud. They’re just being friendly. Get mama another margarita, ’kay?” Vadim shoots the bros a venomous parting glare and then toddles off to fetch my drink. His thighs bulge his cargo pants so that he really does toddle. I think of it as having my own Siberian tiger on a leash, except with pouty, pouty lips, and six-pack abs! Nice while it lasted. He’s dead too.
End of list.
Go back, not the whole way, not to high school. Three and a half years is far enough. We have gathered, dearly beloved. Gathered to sign on the dotted line and change the course of our stars forever. What a load of crap. I’m motivated by fascination, boredom, skepticism. Some of the others are buggy-eyed true believers. Have at it, morons.
The sun is bleeding out all over the Chugach Mountains. An inlet, ice-toothed and serpentine, lies below us somewhere, wrapped by mist that’s freezing into black pearl. I’m not captivated by the austere beauty of the far north as seen through frosty picture windows. My feet are cold and I’m bored. I’m an L.A. girl trapped inside an L.A. boy. This arctic weather is for the birds.
Julie Five says to me, “Oh, Ed, quit sulking. You detest it so much, why’d you come? Nut up or shut up.” She finishes me off with a sweet as pie smile. I beam one right back. Anybody more than arms-length away might get the impression we’re peaches and cream. Big sister, little brother at worst. Then again, it’s an intimate gathering of former classmates. Most of the others know how it is with us because it’s been this way with us since junior high. Her nickname is JV, but I call her Julie Five. Our mutual acquaintance, the lamentably absent Jessica M, coined that bit of mockery. Sure, we’re supposed to pity Julie Five for cowering in a closet while her lover got noisily disemboweled by the Eagle Talon Ripper in the winter of 2012, but her sob story doesn’t move me—“victim-of-unspeakable-tragedy” is scraping the bottom of the barrel on a white trash reality show. Her sneaky path to fifteen minutes of fame and she didn’t even try to stop the murdering bastard. Oh, dear heavens, no—she left that chore to her archrival, Jessica M, the girl who got the cover of Black Belt Magazine and interviews with every cable news show in existence. Good for Jess. Screw Julie Five. She’s cowardly, treacherous, and mean. She like totally vacillates between vocal fry and ending every sentence on a rising note. Basically the darkest valley girl in the history of valley girls. I’d feed her a cup of lye if I had some.
Our host, Zane Tooms, stares at the sunset the way a man with an appointment compulsively checks his watch. He’s dressed in a white shirt and black pants. No shoes. He never wears shoes at home. His shirt is unbuttoned two notches. A metallic chain gleams from the opening. I’ve seen the pendant when Zane had his shirt off—a smallish lump of vaguely horrid metal, or bone. Its color shifts, the film of a lizard’s eye rolling aside. He folds his napkin, rises from his seat (throne) at the head of the table, and walks further into the decrepit mansion.
The house juts from a knoll with an impressive view of tidal flats and occasionally the water. The knoll was a bear den until hunters exterminated the bears and poured concrete back in when-the-hell-ever. Exactly the kind of place natives would say, “Don’t build here! Bad medicine!” White Man doesn’t give a shit about any of that and here we are. Even so, the Tooms residence lacks the sinister gravitas of a classic, gothic haunted castle. Made over once too often, the latest reconstructive surgery has rendered it a weird amalgam of art deco and 60s kitsch. His home might have been cozy in its heyday. He let it go to seed after the senior Toomses shuffled into the next life. He travels and can’t be bothered with upkeep. I’ve told him he needs a decorator because the ambiance sucks. Frontier chic it is not. Swear to god he doesn’t even live here, it’s so borderline derelict. If Zane confessed he only showed up to unlock the joint and turn on the lights half an hour before his guests arrived, I wouldn’t be shocked.
The basement is carved into the den itself and mostly unfinished. Lots of exposed beams, pipes, and dirt. I shudder to think. Tunnels bore past the glow of any lamp. Can’t say I’m impressed with the remote location or the bear catacombs. Way too rustic for this girl. What does impress me is Zane himself. These days, after slimming his chubby cheeks and beer gut, he’s drop dead gorgeous. A walking, talking Ken Doll; brunet model. He oozes primal charisma. Night and day from the acne-riddled, blimpo Zane that we knew and abhorred as kids. I’d kill to learn his secret and that’s part of why I RSVP’d yes on the invitation last month; why I ditched everything I had cooking in Cali and came like a dog to her master’s whistle.
Steely J gives us a significant nod. We guests push away from half-empty plates and migrate into the parlor, wine coolers and rum and cokes in hand. I loathe the parlor. It’s cold and dank, the books are moldy, and the stuffed moose head that presides here has gone blind with rot. The notion of accidently brushing against something icky gives me the shivers.
Zane unlocks a cabinet and sets a jewelry box upon the big circular granite table we’re seated around. The table is slightly concave. Several parallel grooves radiate from the edge to a depression in the center. As for the jewelry case, it is an unpleasant box with the lacquer stripped. The wood is scored and blanched by patterns of fungal decay. An eighteenth-century caravel’s lost antique dredged from the muck at the bottom of Cook Inlet in 1979, or so my peeps testify. Inside the box, a ring nests in crushed velvet. An indelicate description for those playing at home—its color is similar to a blood clot glistening against tissue paper. He plucks the ring and casually passes it to Morton, just like that. No formalities whatsoever.
“Damn, it’s heavy,” Morton says. Morton always sounds bemused or surprised.
“Don’t drop it,” Julie Five says. She’s cool and eager. She gave Morton a hummer last August while we were all on a tour bus at Denali State Park. They speak to each other with barely restrained antipathy. “Drop it, and it’s ten demerits.” Gawd, I hate her smug, bitchy tone. I hate that Morton accepted her blowjob and turned me down flat. Heel.
“By the way, the table isn’t granite,” Zane says as if he’s peeked into my brain. His gaze is cruel. “Another rock entirely. There are chains of sea caves in the Aleutians. This table is carved from the bedrock of those caves. Men died acquiring this on my behalf.” He looks at Morton. “Okay, Mort. Time to get bitten.” He is indulgent, yet commanding. Two decades in Europe, and farther abroad, will do that to a guy, I suppose. Julie Five says Zane spent months lost in a desert and went barking mad. Eating-his-own-shoelaces fucked in the head. Wouldn’t guess it to feast your eyes upon him, or maybe you would. The corners of his eyes twitch if you catch it at the right moment.
Morton makes a show of examining the ring, as if a middle manager role at an office supply store qualifies him to appraise jewelry. He’s enjoying the spotlight. “Is this the Ouroboros?”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” Zane’s sneer almost spoils the plastic charm of his perma-smile. I’ve long assumed his genial urbanity is a façade for darker impulses. Doesn’t bother me. Everybody has got another side. It’s exciting.
“If there were a real Dracula Ring, this would be the one,” Julie Five says. “Lugosi’s was pretty. Fake. Fake. Fake.” She rocks, barely suppressed. Her face is so very animated. I’ve seen that expression. It’s the wide-eyed, lips slightly parted expression women at boxing matches wear. I’m sure the rich hoes in Rome did it the same when they attended the gladiatorial games.
The ring is formed of thick, intertwined strands of corroded iron. There’s a jagged gap opposite the shank. Whether from damage or by design, I haven’t a clue. The shank is set with the aforementioned gory gemstone that also, if you squint, resembles a death’s head in the way a thundercloud might resemble the skull of an angry god. The stone fitfully glints with the light from the table lamp. Almost a twin to the pendant hanging from Zane’s neck.
“I thought it’d be a thumb prick.” Morton slips the ring onto his finger.
“Ha ha, you said prick.” I laugh, but not really. No, not really.
“Dude,” Vadim says with ample foreboding. “This shit is how you get sepsis or peritonitis or something.”
“Quiet, punk, you’re next.” Julie Five grins at him. I think of a northern pike opening its needle-fanged jaws to slurp down a hook.
Zane raises his eyebrow. “A dribble of claret for the cause seems reasonable. The price for betrayal is a blood eagle. JV’s idea. Be warned.”
“What’s a blood eagle?” I say.
“You don’t want one,” Vadim says.
Steely J excuses himself. He steps through a panel near a bookcase and that’s the last I see of him. I think it’s the very last time anybody sees him for a few years. Candice, his latest girlfriend remains at the table with an expression of abandonment. She’s had too many wine coolers.
Neither Clint nor Leo speak. They’re nervous, I can tell. Leo is a bit green around the gills. Real hard cases. Both of them agitated and wheedled to be included, and now their knees are knocking. And why are they spooked? The ceremony is bullshit. High school melodrama. This is supposed to be mock serious, like fucking about with Ouija boards and séances or homoerotic fraternity paddling rituals.
“Seven is a good number,” Zane says. He’s not counting himself, obviously. He’s playing Satan. “Seven were the apprentices in the Devil’s Grotto.”
“Power number, baby,” Julie Five says, Ed McMahon to his Johnny Carson.
We all stare at one another. Similar to gazing into a mirror—after a while, everybody is as plastic as Zane. I poke Morton in the ribs. Somebody has to be the first to leap and he’s it. He makes a fist. Blood begins to flow. The blind moose watches as we each take our turn.
God, do You remember my third year in college when I saved that little old lady who fell on the ice in front of a moose that had wandered into town? I threw snowballs and shrieked until it ambled away into the trees. Surely, if You’re the real deal You were there. God, please be real. Please help me now. Because I can’t see anything. I’m flopped on my belly atop a heap of corpses. That can’t be right. The dark is sticky. Warm, inanimate flesh yields beneath me. My pinky slips into someone’s dead staring eye. Eyelashes bat against my knuckle.
Zane kisses my cheek. I’d recognize his Rico Suave cologne anywhere, even here. He says, “Welcome and congratulations. You’re part of it. You’ll always be part of it. I’ll see you at the party. Guest of honor, Ed.”
The rest of the night is a blank. Or a hole. So, thanks for that, God. If you exist, which I figure you don’t. The cut in my finger doesn’t close for weeks. The hole in my soul remains the equivalent of a sucking chest wound.
II: Culling
Zane Tooms makes the CNN ticker three and a half years later.
Kind of a funny story. A terrific day until that point. I spend it shopping for vintage LPs at this fat cat record producer’s annual garage sale. Vinyl is my true addiction. Stronger and purer than my fondness for baby dykes, or even my love of a self-effacing bear with real taste in the arts. I spend weekends with my boyfriend Tony at his Malibu beach house. This summer my theme resounds courtesy of The Kinks: “Little Miss Queen of Darkness.” I don’t really identify. Drag isn’t my thing and any sadness in my eyes is liable to be incidental tearing from my extra lush lashes. Nope, I love the song because its lyrics are true poetry. Poetry is distinctly lacking in this modern world. Barbarians have sacked the music industry, despoiled Hollywood. Publishing is a joke with celebrity tell-alls and Dan Brown as the punchline.
I’m lamenting these facts while sprawled on the sofa in Tony’s giant game room. The news hits as I’m raising a mojito to my lips. Hard to believe my eyes. I didn’t believe them either, though, when the accusations of seventy counts of Rohypnol-facilitated rape first came down to the clack of a magistrate’s gavel. Apparently that dark side of Zane’s was worse than I thought. Theory goes that seventy is a conservative estimate—who knows how many victims he’s left scattered across Europe.
Now Zane is dead. The DEA and Mexican police shot him a bajillion times in some fleabag hotel in Mexico City. I don’t know how to feel. There’s a tiny white scar on the underside of my middle finger. I look at it and wonder if he ever raped me. Doubtful. Despite all indications, evidence is he didn’t swing for dudes. Like I said, I don’t know how to feel.
“Ha! Hell yes! I told you they’d get that rat bastard!” Tony wanders in from the shower and does a sack dance in celebration. He played ball for the Forty-Niners. His gut is enormous. The old me, lily-fresh college grad, would’ve cared. The worn and worried me is more concerned with Tony’s heart. He’s a kindly soul, his celebration of Zane’s demise notwithstanding. Tony heard the stories and paid for my therapy. He’s earned the right to cry, “Ding-dong!” etcetera.
Oops.
The doorbell rings and it’s Julie Five on the step. I almost swoon at the shock.
“So, we meet again.” She’s wearing sunglasses and a white sundress. Her skin is softer and pinker than I recall. Time has rejuvenated her or she’s gotten on the E. Bathory program. A midnight-blue Mustang is parked in the drive with the top down. The hood symbol looks more like a particular malformed death’s head than any mustang. Three and a half years might as well be three and a half days. She makes a moue of her lips. I don’t offer my cheek for the courtesy peck, no way. I’d rather let a tarantula sit on my face.
She crowds me backward. Her shadow crosses mine and my legs go weak and I collapse upon the rug where sunlight pools on nice days. This is California, so yes, the sunlight is doing that right now. She steps over my supine form and I get a peek at her goods, like it or not. Red panties to match her scary-long fingernails. The sun filtering through the fabric of the dress turns everything to crimson. She reaches into a demure handbag and produces the iron ring. Slides it onto the third finger of her left hand. She looms above me, smiling in a way I don’t recognize from her repertoire. If evil and cruelty can mature the way wine does, then here you go. This goddamned cask of Amontillado’s got cobwebs all over it.
