Billy Purgatory and the Curse of the Satanic Five
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Authors: Jesse James Freeman
Copyright 2012 Jesse James Freeman
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Cover Design by Thomas Boatwright
Edited by Jennifer Gracen
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to similarly named places or to persons living or deceased is unintentional.
PRINT ISBN 978-1-935961-74-1
EPUB ISBN 978-1-62015-078-8
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Library of Congress Control Number: 2012915975
T
HIS BOOK IS
DEDICATED TO THE
BADASSARY OF
K
AREN
D
E
L
ABAR
Contents
T
HE ADVENTURE CONTINUES IN BOOK 3â¦
MORE GREAT READS FROM BOOKTROPE
A
CKNOWLEDGMENTS:
Steven Luna, Marni Mann, Micheal Olivares,
Robert Stringer, Shauna Davis, Tess Hardwick,
Tracey Hansen, Joe Schmidt, Robert Pruneda,
Quill Shiv, Glenn Skinner, Stephanie Fuller, and
in loving memory of Stormy The Chicken
Thanks to Jennifer Gracen, Thomas Boatwright,
and everyone at Booktrope
~1~
I S
MACKED
T
HE
R
AINS
D
OWN
I
N
A
FRICA
“IS THIS UGLY SNAP-TRAPPED, ROTTEN-TOOTH, greasy sack' a guts ever gonna get sick of twirling me around like I'm his date to the ho-down?” Billy Purgatory didn't exactly say those words out loud, or at least he didn't think he had, but he was sure thinking a lot of colorful language just like that as he held onto the vest with the glowing orb strapped onto it.
He was getting sicker than a carny's merry-go-round mule and his eyes were rolling around in his head as fast as everything else was around him. All he could hear was the monster moaning and carrying on, like it was offended that Billy was hitching a ride on it.
Billy Purgatory and the Time Zombie were caught up in a twisted river of black ink and swirling mayhem. Billy gripped his skateboard tight. “This is the greatest trick I've ever done.” Not that Billy was really doing anything. He was still taking all the credit for just how fast the whole world was spinning.
“If I do puke, it's just gonna make this even more badass.” Maybe that'd shut up all its screaming and crying. “You started us up this ramp, zombie. No use in screaming like a city girl on a country roller-coaster.”
“Grrrrrrrrrraaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrr'grllll'Rhhrrrrrrrr!”
Billy laughed. “We're riding this wave all the way to the bottom. Come Hell or Hiawatha!” Billy continued to fall with the monster,
and even though his stomach felt like it was up between his ears, he was having the time of his life.
Even better than jumping the dumpster out behind the Chinese restaurant.
“Dumpsters will never tickle these heartstrings again.”
Billy Purgatory was in a strange world in which he had never before been. His collapsed widow's peak of black hair sailed in and out of his eyes. Dark shorts of a camouflage styling and T-shirt fluttered like a proud flag. Sneakers held on to his feet for dear sneaking life.
Billy saw its mouth open as he pushed away from it. He saw its jaw snap like an alligator. Infected teeth called out a chorus only the dead can sing.
The face of his foe was rotted and failing, but Billy could see that it had once been a man. This monster had a mother that had birthed and loved it. It had grown with hopes and dreams, which had been surely dashed and forgotten when whatever curse which made it as it was had befallen it. Billy was curious about him, but not so curious that he was sticking with it for any longer than he had to.
It had sad eyes though, which didn't seem to go along with the rest of its homicidal demeanor. You had to look far back into the black ichor vessels that made clouds of the pupils, but there was sadness in there, Billy was certain of it. The teeth and the claws and the metallic probes and electrodes which had sunk into its skull long ago seemed unconnected to the eyes and the sadness.
What had this thing done to itself? What raw deal had it made with the universe which garnered this reward?
Maybe being a zombie was all about having to remain sad and alone forever? Being only able to express your emotions with slashes and trying to speak in puncture wounds to those who got close enough to listen? Maybe being evil was little more than no longer being able to speak the language of the rest of mankind?
It was hard to make friends in this world; harder still when your mauling undead gape tries to swallow them one awkward hello at a time.
Staring up and around the monster, into what had been a void of darkness, there suddenly appeared before Billy's eyes an attic's full of heavenly pinpricks. The light of the stars came back into view,
and Billy felt the impact of the thing he was riding on touch down hard. Everything on the monster shook violently, including Billy's handholds, and he fell off and hit the ground with a thud that could be described as not very delicate â which is why Billy called it a thud.
The boy was sliding down a big, stupid rock, kicking up dust and sand all around him as he slid. Rocks were rolling along with him, and he pulled his board to his chest as his body began to slide and then roll. Every turn he took opened a new gash and caused a new bruise.
He was gonna have to make up a very fancy lie when he told Pop about this story. A doozy of a lie, even better than the time he told the lunch lady at the school cafeteria that if he didn't get tacos every day for lunch, his doctor had said all his hair would fall off â like candy spilling out of a piñata.
“Do you see this beautiful head of hair, lunch lady? It cannot be allowed to pass from this world without a fight.” The lunch lady had pointed to her own head and indicated the net she wore over her hair to keep it under control. Billy pointed, unmoved, “Eat more tacos!”
It was his answer to everything, really: Eat More Tacos.
When Billy finally stopped sliding in the dirt, he saw the monster far away and standing on top of that big, stupid rock they'd landed on. It clenched its fists and raised its arms and face to the sky.
“Here we go again.”
“Ghhhr'lllarlllgh'Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrr'Orrrrl'ghhhhhhhh!”
Billy shook his head and rocks fell out of his beautiful hair-do. “Doesn't that guy know any other songs?”
Then the monster banged on its chest with its fists, there was another one of those bright flashes that made the spots blink around in Billy's eyes, and the monster and all its screaming vanished from the rock and was gone.
Billy pulled himself, and his skateboard, up from the ground. “If I had a cool disappearing light'mah'bob on my chest, and I could do all those tricks like that thing can do, I'd be a lot happier than it and my guidance counselor lady seem to be.” He was pretty sure she drank, and the divorce probably wasn't helping any of that â the guidance counselor lady, that is, not the monster that did the cool tricks.
He was banged up and bloody, but he'd been that way before, so Billy decided to take a walk â but he was cautious, because he didn't
know just how far that thing had flipped them into the air, and the baseball field and all those vampires had to be around here somewhere close.
“I'm sneaking past the crypt-cousins this round.”
The more he looked around, the less this was looking like the neighborhood around the old cement factory. He was having trouble finding any landmarks that he recognized and he hadn't seen a street yet. No streets meant no rolling, and his legs were already hurting from walking.
There were no buildings â no wonder he didn't recognize anything. “How the heck am I supposed to find my way home if there ain't any street signs?” Billy walked down from the rocks and boulders into an area of scattered trees and grasslands. The moon was pretty bright, and the noise from all the bugs was pretty loud.
“How far in hillbilly country did that dumb monster toss me?”
Billy stopped when he saw that what he thought was a tree standing next to a tree was really a
monster
standing next to a tree. A big one.
“A dinosaur? Son of a bitch, I knew that teacher was lying.”
It stood on four long legs like a horse and had an even longer neck. It didn't seem concerned with Billy Purgatory in the least. It was eating the leaves off a tree. “I'm gonna drag everyone out here and show them that dinosaurs are living in the woods right on the edge of town.” Billy decided to make Pop come along too, because if this dinosaur decided to act up, he was pretty sure that his grizzled war hero father could wrestle it to the ground and show it who was boss.
Then Billy would jump it on his board â kinda to show off for the other kids' benefit. Seeing a dinosaur was one thing; seeing Billy jump his skateboard over it was really putting on a show. If he did that though, he was gonna have to figure out how to lure this dinosaur out to the street.
The new monster froze, then craned its neck back to look at Billy. Billy took a couple steps back and raised his board up.
It lowered its neck, sniffing the air in Billy's direction. Billy looked the thing over. Seeing it face to face, it didn't seem as scary as the dinosaurs he'd seen in the movies. The moonlight shone over the dinosaur's skin and he recognized the yellowish and brown splotched
pattern. The lady that stood on the corner and always wanted Billy to buy her cigarettes âcause she was banned from the liquor store had a purse that was just the same pattern.