He didn’t wait for an answer.
“You remember that fat kid down in Miama, now that’s a good example, you see, his wing was tipped up, like this,”
Old Dad held his hand at a forty-five degree angle.
“ …into the stream causing the power to swirl around and around and create this big, fat ball of greed at the lowest possible level of eating and shitting.”
“This IS leading somewhere, right?”
Old Dad chuckled to himself then slowly turned and stared that dead stare of his right into my eyes, as if he were looking for the back of my head.
“I’m about to enter a very powerful part of that jet stream of evil, man, I’ve been invited by people I cannot refuse.”
His lips trembled as he spoke now.
“I want you to go with me. Your wing is set straight, like this.”
He held his hand level.
“Evil flows over and past you, for some reason, like it doesn’t know you’re there. I need you with me, to hold me level.” He turned back to his pipe, “The stream is powerful enough, where we’re going, to flip me over and suck me right down.”
“And where are WE going?”
Old Dad smiled to himself, took another pull and passed me the empty bowl.
“There’s a coven up here in the hills—big time, heavy names, people who run this town—and I’ve been invited to a landmark meeting: THE FEAST OF THE BEAST. Only happens every twenty-eight years. I can’t imagine what it’s gonna be like but I do know that at their regular weekly meetings they have a human sacrifice.”
I knew I didn’t want to be stoned when I heard what he had to say.
“Wait a minute, you’re telling me wealthy, intelligent, highly-placed people, in the show business community, are involved in some crazy Mansonesque rituals up here in the hills?”
“Manson was small potatoes. I told you, this ain’t candles and chanting. This is not a test. I been INVITED.” Old Dad looked at me, slowly smiling that demented Santa Claus smile of his. “Well, can I count on you?”
“What’d they invite you to do—bring the victim?”
Old Dad laughed like a bowl full of jelly, “Nooooo…No…man… They get drifters for that—pretty little teenage runaways, milk carton kids, unwanted babies, nameless, faceless.” He scooted over on the bed and put his arm around my shoulders. “You hurt me by saying that; why you’re family, you damn near raised Stony.” His touch was not comforting. “No—I need an anchor here, that’s all. Here, let me fill that bowl up for ya’ with some of this good-good Highwayman, four-hundred smackers an ounce smoke.” He is planning to kill me, I thought.
“You want a little tootski?”
I wanted a little outski. I began planning a graceful exit as Old Dad produced a mirror, from under the bed, with rows of white powder on it. He did a couple of quick snorts and offered me the mirror.
“Listen man, research Satanic rituals for me and give me some background on this stuff; I can’t afford to look stupid here. Watta’ ya’ say?”
“Not for love or money.”
Old Dad solemnly withdrew the mirror; my answer had offended him. I stood up just as Katey returned—rubbing the radar in her nose that had told her the lines were out again.
“Am I interrupting something?” She purred as she settled down at Old Dad’s feet.
“No, I was just leaving.”
“Do that research for me, man, I’ll pay ya’ good money.”
“Right.”
I kept moving toward the door.
“That party’s coming up real soon.” I turned back to Old Dad, Katey had her nose buried in the white stuff; Old Dad was patting her head gently. He looked up at me and smiled, “Call me.”
The ride back down the hill seemed darker than the ride up. Maybe it should have. I kept hearing moans and wails coming from the black hills, sounds that told me it was time to get out of Dodge. I felt like a magi leaving Herod’s palace with the screams of the slaughtered innocents ringing in his psychic ears, hoping to find another way home.
CHAPTER THREE
IN SEARCH OF ASYLUM
THE SUNRISE WAS GRAY, chilly—almost, almost Fall. I didn’t go home after I left Old Dad’s; something told me not to. Some ancient, genetic program bubbling in my blood had me sitting like Mr. Primitive Man staring through the mists before my cave, waiting for the pale pink light of dawn to give form to the creatures that haunted my night.
I needed a place of refuge, a place of asylum. I was sitting at a small metal table in the Farmer’s Market having a Hot-el of coffee. Life was becoming a nightmare. I was starting to see demons everywhere I looked and hear the moans of their victims drifting up like smoke from my cigarette. I had seen the beast—dear God, he was huge. He was as big as business, he was as bad as government and he was after me.
I watched the sparrows pick at the scraps of pizza on the ground as I tried to put these new feelings into the context of what I’d known before last night. Things began making a strange kind of sense. If I was right, Paps had not been murdered because he knew something about the coven but because they thought he didn’t know anything. It was important that the victim be ignorant, innocent, a “virgin” sacrifice.
If Old Dad’s offer was genuine, they did not want to kill me; they wanted me to join them. They didn’t want my life; it was my soul they were after. They were not afraid of being exposed; they were not afraid of being caught. They had the power to make my life miserable and my misery would increase their power.
I decided on a cinnamon roll to go with my breakfast of coffee and depression. I loved cinnamon rolls. When I was in high school I would go to the cafeteria early in the morning and get a cinnamon roll and a carton of milk. I could only afford to do this on Fridays by saving up my milk money all week. Just asking for one made me smile. I came back to my table with the knowledge that maybe they couldn’t make my life as miserable as I had thought.
I reached into my pocket and pulled out a faded scrap of paper. On it was written the only poem I’d been able to save from the Common Poets book I had been working on when I’d met Paps all those many years ago in Texas.
I had dropped out of college because of the appalling hypocrisy of the institution. It was the sixties. I had taken a job in a metal workshop in the Oak Cliff section of Dallas. The honesty and good nature of the men that worked there inspired me to do a book about them and their way of life. It was to be a collection of the stories and jokes they told, a reflection of a passing generation’s way of looking at things. I called it Common Poets, with the phrase, “Poetry is a common occurrence,” underneath the title. For months I taped and photographed these men with the eye of an anthropologist saving for posterity the last glimpses of a soon-to-be-extinct tribe. It was there I met Paps and his friend Goat, also college dropouts.
Goat Boone had a brother named Chris. The Boone brothers were notorious Dallas artists. Chris had actually gone to New York City and established himself as a writer, of sorts, for magazines. Chris said he would take my book to the Big Apple and try to get it published for me. He was right about one thing—he took my book. He got an advance from a publisher and took that, too. I had saved this one poem as a reminder of those men and a warning never to trust Chris Boone again.
I unfolded the page and read the poem:
Trout
By Claude Evans
One Saturday I was fishin
the Trinity River