Fields of Broken
Glass,
Part 2
iv
on my journey i fell inwards
The day broke over Eagle Town, a small dusty community just south of where Andre grew up. The farmlands were there, so were the silos and deserted houses. More and more people were fleeing to the south, into Mexico, trying to escape before the ecological disasters that were destroying the land got any worse. In this small town Andre DeCamp went to look for Billy Snyder, following leads he had picked up in the Lawrence police files. The strongest lead that he had was Billy's internment in the Eagle Town Community Asylum for the Criminally Insane.
There was something arousing suspicions about the whole affair. Billy was anything but a psychopath. He was a saint, a loving, gentle young man with a vast amount of compassion for living creatures and fellow humans. Nowhere did there exist records of the reasons for his internment.
"Snyder, William, Age 21. Removed from Lawrence City Jail and handed over to Eagle Town authorities, ACI. Further details available from Classified Files. See office of Aaron Jay Shingle, Law Enforcer, Sirius County."
Sheriff Shingle was an immense bulk behind a desk, sitting uncomfortably on fat buttocks, belching and puffing his cheeks as hot air blew across his fat. "I don't have nothing to say about ACI in Eagle Town," he blurted to a confused Andre. "Classified. Those walls are not for looking through."
Andre wandered about Eagle Town taking in the small roads, the tiny paths behind clapboard houses, fallen sheds and ill-cut lawns. There was a smell from his childhood in the air, a pleasant whiff of corn stalks, wheat sheaths, interrupted by the awful stink of oil slicks in the river, rusted metal, and the trailing gasoline from broken tractors. Off the roadside were the cars abandoned by the ones who have fled. There were busted televisions lying in the grass, twisted car fenders, shattered glass panes.
In the center of a rubbish pile, cascading heaps of left-over food wrapped in newspaper, was a dirty man, old with a long white filthy and matted beard. He scratched the top of his head and said quietly to whoever would be passing: "You go! I go! We all go on the Bardo!" His knobby fingers would point to the nuclear power plant towers on the horizon, tall sentinels glowing, streaking the sky a crimson red. Andre walked down the road taking in all these fractured scenes, the garbage and the broken humans. In the back of his mind he heard his father hawking a used tractor, he heard Billy invoke the Archangel of Air, he heard voices calling from the other side of the asylum wall.
v
these walls are not for looking through
Henry Barton's operation started at midnight on June 12, 1985, in the humid and sultry oppression of the summer heat. For the first time in ages he had pulled up the metal slats of the venetian blinds and was staring directly at the light coming in from the outside world. The letters TDK burned like a maelstrom through his head.
Andre DeCamp stood swathed in his yellow rubber raincoat, the hood pulled up and an open umbrella over his head like a dark periscope. Motorcycle goggles covered his eyes. The gear was necessary: he knew from past experience how messy these things could be.
Barton started with his banishing pentagrams rituals and then advanced to the hexagram, all the time shouting and intoning god names and ancient words from lost languages. The room took on the feel of a chilled vortex, made icy by the burning of some collapsed star that started to shine in all its blackness near the center of the ceiling. Andre watched in awe as this black sun began to form and take on shape. He had seen this before, a long time ago in Billy Snyder's private attic apartment.
"Hear me O Spirits of the Deep!" Barton was shouting in a rolling bass drone. "I command you, by the buried talismans, by the twelve stones of the Holy City of God, by the blackness at the depths of the pit where the slaves and subterranean workers dig their precious jewels, a sapphire, a ruby and a lapis lazuli.
"By the powers within these, the marvelous seeds of the stars, from the awesome empire of the gems beneath the earth, take on crystalline form and appear before me. Appear before me and become my subject to do my bidding! Hear me! Ol Sonuf Varosaji! Goho IAD Balta! I reign over you, saith the Lord of Justice! by the mighty power of the Seeds of the Stars! Release your power and do my bidding!"
The room darkened to a pitch and then cracks of lightning split the ceiling. Plaster rained upon Andre's umbrella and sprinkled Barton's hair. The water began to fall and the black sun let loose with all its terrible beauty.
"Come Thou Forth and Follow Me!" Barton shouted, his arms outstretched and reaching towards the crackling neon lights. "And make all Spirits subject unto Me! So that every spirit of the firmament and of the ether, upon the earth and under the earth, on dry land and in the water, of whirling air and of rushing fire and every spell and scourge of God may be obedient unto me! To Me! To Me!"
The rains howled and lashed at Andre's umbrella, tearing it from his grasp. Suddenly there was a crack and the large window pane cracked into a crazy spider web pattern, a criss-crossing of white lattice. In the midst and stormy waves, Andre saw Barton's head slump to the side.
The lights roared and flickered out. The room was pitch black, the window still illuminated by the neon of the sign, but the interior of the room was black as the tomb.
Andre took out his electric torch and pushed the plastic button. The flashlight beam lit up a shaft which terminated at the smashed and bleeding skull of Henry Barton. Andre raced forward and inspected the wound. It was clear that the Chief had been killed by a bullet that had come careening through the window.
Andre dove for the floor and threw himself behind the safety of the sofa couch. He groped his way along feeling for the furniture as the hideous invoked star burned overhead and sucked into its heart all light and shadow. As adept Andre was in ceremonial magic, he knew no way of banishing such an entity. He felt it up there, sucking at his very essence like an astral vampire.
He lay for a half hour, panting and breathing heavily as the pellets of rain fell on his rubber coat. Every now and then scintillating points of light would spiral from Barton's head and make for a point in the ceiling where they would vanish into an invisible hole.
"This is a fine state of affairs," Andre bemused. He felt more plaster falling from the ceiling. "We should have signed that petition in the lobby."
Then the front door started to open and light appeared in the crack. A shadowy figure wedged its way into the room and Andre saw the silhouette of a rifle neck sticking up towards an oval-shaped head.
Swinging his torch towards the intruder and pressing the plastic button, Andre cast the shaft of electric light directly onto the killer's face. To his surprise, he saw a crusty, strong-boned countenance, angry looking and screwed up with determination. The eyes were watery, like pools of stagnant water and conveyed nothing of the emotions beneath. The hair was slicked back, the nose looked like it had been through surgery, and the cheeks were sullen, but there was no doubt about it: Billy Snyder was standing before him holding a high-powered rifle and reacting to the sudden burst of light by firing from a hand gun concealed in his other hand.
The bullet caught Andre in the fleshy part of his thigh and thrust him towards the floor. His flashlight fell from between his fingers and the shaft of light came to rest on the approaching black leather boots as they walked menacingly towards him.
vi
his mind was part of the pillage
Billy Snyder had been one of Sheriff Shingle's nice boys, always willing to please, to live up the standards and expectations of his master. Shingle, a bloated three-hundred-pound mass of quivering flab slabs, had within him an iron will that imposed itself in a black way upon the small community of brothers that centered on the Eagle Town courthouse and county hall. One could always spot a Sheriff's boy by the glossy eyes, the pools of stagnant water focused on nothing, reflecting only the dull luminosity of the overcast sky.
Andre DeCamp had no way of knowing that brainwashing experiments were being conducted in the underground chambers of the courthouse, far less that Billy had anything to do with it, but he knew that Shingle was a black magician, intent on subjugating the human race to his own will to power.
Little was known about Shingle's private life outside of a couple of mistresses and illegitimate sons sprinkled about the county like harvest seed. But it was clear and obvious that he was involved in something more powerful than the fraternal orders of moose and elks and deer and raccoons. Underground tunnels went from the courthouse to the sewer culverts, where strange altars sported chains and whips. Iron rings in the walls...crude graffiti depicting anatomical exaggeration...mocking words in chalk:
UNDER HIS WILL...THERE SHALL WE DWELL!!
In a flash, Andre knew the score about Billy, where he had gone, what had occurred to him there, what his mission was now. There was a secret order of assassins working out of the Sirius County Townships and the Magi of the world were being stalked and eliminated to make way for a reign of redneck terror that would engulf the continent and swallow mankind into its jaws. Now Henry Barton had been eliminated and his psychic powers had failed to warn him in advance. Perhaps it had been the sign, or the interference of the Black Sun which still burned above the apartment chamber.
Billy moved forward and picked up the torch which lay slantwise on the carpeting. He shined it in Andre's face and then lifted it towards his own, illuminating his features from below and making a grotesque pattern of cobweb-like shadows about his chin, nose and eyes.
"Hello, Andre." he said in a familiar soft voice.
"Hell, Billy." Andre replied. "I've been looking for you for a long time."
"Why did you have to join him?" Billy asked sternly. "He's evil. He was going to form an alliance and move against Sirius."
Andre grabbed at his wounded leg and felt a throbbing ache up and down his spine. Something was starting to creep along the vertebrae and eat its way towards his brain. "I don't have much time, Billy," he gasped. "The serpents are on the move."
Billy smiled and lifted the gun to Andre's face level. Andre was looking straight down the barrel and thought it resembled a quivering sphincter. He laughed to think of that analogy...what would the firing of the bullet be equivalent to? What a horrible way to die.
"He gave the workers stomach cramps," Billy snorted. "What an adolescent trick. We knew we had to close down this cheeseball operation before the Tibetan Enclave. We're so tired of this mindless failure to recognize A.J.'s brilliance."
"Yes, Billy. I sided with the losing team."
"More than that, you left Sirius. You should have stayed. We had our cornfield. The pipes are still in the dirt."
"But you've changed, Billy. I can see it in your eyes. You're no longer you. You're Him."
Billy's smile contradicted his blank eyes. "I always have been Him. Perhaps my grandfather was just nuts, I should have taken up the industrial arts, become an arc welder. This knowledge is a dangerous thing."
"It unbalanced your mind, Billy."
"Nonsense. I'm on the side of White now. Remember how we used to think that White Magic was for goody-goodies. I do believe now it's for the White Race. Let the other gooks have their hocus pocus. We have fire power." He jiggled the rifle butt. "We're on the move. Seig Heil."
"Goodbye, Billy." Andre closed his eyes, his descending lids squeezing two tears onto his cheeks.
"Goodbye, Andre."
...the corn stalk, air jets, they loved books together...
Billy pulled the trigger and took Andre's face off. The flash illuminated the room and in a split second the monster dwelling at the ceiling was visible, ugly and seething, dripping pus and ooze along the edges of the wall molding down towards the carpet , which was now stained with mildew and fungus.
Billy held up the torch and looked at the Black Sun straight in the face. It was the face of Father Shingle, ugly and covered with warts, a bloated neck bobbing and rippling like sheets in the wind. The eyes were filled with fire and brimstone, the mouth opened and revealing a split serpent's tongue. One of the tongues lashed forth and stretched out a full ten feet across the room to come to flickering halt before Billy's face. The forked end quivered and spoke in a raspy voice, like Shingle's own but through a muted filter.
"Mission accomplished," it said. Then it drove straight into Billy's cranium.
The room fell into a calm and the Shingle beast vanished into the ceiling, leaving behind slime trails and dripping pus. Three desiccated bodies lay in the center of the floor, lit only by the flashing TDK sign which still burnt outside the shattered window.
Then, as a grotesque finale to the debacle, the glass splintered and spread its shards around the room, sprinkling them like pollen over spring fields. Each piece was lighted with scintillating white, then faded to black upon hitting the floor.
vii
his pants are baggy, his nose is red
The door to the old man's penthouse dribbled black smoke into the hallway, carrying with it the acrid stench of burning flesh. The retired vaudevillian moved silently along the rose-colored wallpaper. Accustomed to big grotesque theatrical movements, bobbing on bulbous shoes, announcing his arrival with bicycle horns and whistle rings, the clown found it difficult to keep an invisible pace.
His name was Silly Sammy Shazammy and in the past few years he had reduced his business to children's parties, billing himself as the Silliest Clown in Town. Beneath the thick crusted make-up no child could guess he was in his sixties, a tired old man. But he knew his career was coming to an end. The kids didn't laugh at his balloon folding act anymore. They put the red crowns on their heads and walked away with blank stares. When the balloons popped they cried because their ears hurt, not that they were deprived of a treasured toy. Further, his son had died in an automobile wreck several months before, and his ex-wife had vanished, no doubt with a new husband. He lived alone in a York Avenue apartment surrounded by fading theatrical posters and scrapbooks filled with junk and trivial nothings. On the night of Henry Barton's magical working, Silly Sammy had been contemplating suicide.
When he heard the shattering glass and the rifle blasts, he had pulled on a faded crimson nightgown and dragged himself up the staircase to the penthouse floor. If there was danger he wanted to be near. Perhaps he could even be killed.
A gruesome blur shape moved along the ceiling, leaving behind a trail of stains, scorches and traces of purple slime. The shape slid over Silly Sammy's head, then protruded from the surface of the ceiling like a grease globule dripping from the underside of a barbecue rack. On the end of it was an amorphic human face.
Silly Sammy doubted his sanity. He lifted up his palms as if to supplicate the monstrous demon within the globule.
"Clown," the face spoke. "Shame of the white race."
"Please," was all Silly Sammy could muster. "Please."
The globule receded into the ceiling and the shape continued to move over the surface like a spreading ink stain. Silly Sammy fell to his knees and become convulsed in wretched sobs. He was so insignificant that even the devil himself has no use for him.
When the fire department and the police squad cars arrived at the York Avenue apartment of Henry Barton, they discovered two mutilated bodies, another with a fatal head wound from a gunshot, a trashed apartment, buckets of unidentifiable slime trails, burned wallpaper, melted glass, shattered metal and a gibbering old man with faint trace of white about his pasty lips who talked of ugly demons and black pits of despair.
Within days detectives had pieced together a story of black magic, homosexuality, mental illness and secret societies. The clown had been dismissed as a deranged innocent, Henry Barton as an eccentric Satan worshipper and the two Kansas boys as drug-addicted gay victims of Barton's mad religious practices. The story received minor coverage in the press, sparked two debates on syndicated TV talk shows, fired sermons from fundamentalists, and was quickly filed away with the cases of Long Island teens who killed their mothers and sacrificed canines in midnight cemeteries. No one heard the babble of Silly Sammy in his hospital room as he talked of how the real murderer had escaped across the ceiling and his eyes were filled with the whirling fire of little swastikas. No one traced Billy Snyder's history in Eagle Town or discovered his connection to an anonymous and minor law enforcer and his cult of flagellants. No one knew of the empty fields where Billy and Andre once sang together to the kings of the Aether and planted little Pan pipes in the dark, nurturing soil.
The pipes that little Andre once wished would
sprout and grow into a lustful secret grove where he and his loved
one could play their anarchist antics and have done with the kingdoms
of the Earth and all their horrors.
Story copyright © 1998 Richard Behrens <behrens@pipeline.com>
Artwork "The Judge" copyright © 1998 by GAK <gakart@gateway.net>
