Billy Purgatory and the Curse of the Satanic Five (7 page)

That unmistakable cut of the eyes, the face trying its best not to turn into a mischievous grin — all said first words to Billy Purgatory he could not ignore.

Don't try and bullshit me.

“Mom?” There, he'd said it. The word didn't seem real, and he still stared up into the face of his long lost mother as if she were an illusion projected from another place. A hidden place which Billy still did not understand, and probably should not question.

But the boy had so many questions.

“Broom said that you somehow got lost in Africa.” Her voice was soothing, warm, like a gently rolling river under cotton candy clouds.

Billy had to think about it for a minute — yeah, that
is
what that place was called — Africa.

“Mom…”

His mother didn't reach out to embrace him — Billy only considered later that this is what he would have wanted her to do. He couldn't wrap his mind around what it even meant to have a mother, much less be wrapped in her loving embrace.

Billy's Mom raised an eyebrow. “Son?”

“I'm just…” He was stumbling over his words —something he wasn't used to experiencing. Words flowed freely out of the mouth of Billy Purgatory, more often than not. Freely and without the use of any filter. He was the master of the comeback, except where his mother was concerned. She made him the master of staring and not believing any of this was real.

“…just… I'm just happy to see you, Mom.” Billy wasn't exactly sure what was happening to him, or why he felt so weird inside. He felt all hot, he could hear his heart beating, and his eyes twitched. He tucked his skateboard neatly under his arm and looked away from her, because he thought perhaps he might be feeling tears trying to leak out. He didn't get why he felt like he was gonna cry like a sissy — he wasn't sad, he was happy.

Billy looked back up into her face. His mother was sitting against the edge of her desk in her white dress. She brushed a strand of hair out of her eye. Was she about to cry too?

She didn't cry though, and she crossed her arms as she began to speak. “You went into one of the rooms I told you not to go into, didn't you?”

Billy didn't know what she was talking about, but it did suddenly sound like he was in trouble — which immediately reaffirmed his feelings about rooms with desks in them. “I don't know anything about any rooms, Mom.”

Mom
. So weird.

“Have you been bothering the doctor down at the stables?”

Billy shook his head.

“Billy Purgatory,” she said his whole name, “how many times do we have to have this discussion?”

He wasn't digging being in trouble with his Mom, when all he could think about was getting a hug. What would that feel like — if she hugged him?

“I…” Billy was looking down at his sneakers. “I'm sorry, Mom. It was an accident. I didn't go to Amsterdam on purpose.”

“Africa, child.” He looked up at her and she pointed her finger. “You were in Africa. Someone needs a geography tutor.”

“It was an accident, really.” Billy tried to make his sweet face — which kinda didn't exist — but he still tried. “I went in that room you told me not to go in.”

“Where the mirrors are? The machine?”

Billy nodded and didn't feel right lying to his Mom, but he figured maybe if she heard what she wanted to hear, and had it all worked out in her head, this would be a quicker resolution to her
being mad. Quicker than trying to explain how the Time Zombie had snatched him from a bunch of vampires and zapped him off to Austria.

“Yes…” Billy looked up for affirmation and reassurance. “…ma'am?”

“You have almost free rein of countless acres of manicured lawn, everything from woods to gardens, a swimming pool, a trampoline…”

“Hot damn, we have a trampoline?” Billy's excitement was short lived, as Mom was pointing her finger again.

“…a tennis court, a game room, a tree house, and a mile and a half of paved driveway to skate up and down.”

Billy was digging the idea of a tree house, but he kept it zipped this time.

“All I've ever asked is that you keep away from our guests, who are doing very important work and do not want to be bothered by a ten-year-old child, and that you stay out of any room that is locked. Is that too much?” Mom's fingers stopped pointing, and she had her arms tightly folded at her chest once more.

“Mom, I promise if you'll just stop being mad at me, I'll never go in another locked room ever again.”

Billy tried to make his sincere face — which didn't exist either — yet, he actually was sincere.

He wasn't ready for her to push herself from the desk and to make quick strides with her long legs towards him. Billy just stared at her — how could she be real?

Billy stopped asking questions when she wrapped her arms around him and pulled his body to hers. She was warm and comforting, and she didn't give hugs like Pop did — Pop kinda stumbled up to you and grabbed you and pulled you up into his arms and then put you in a Grizzly-vice until it got hard to breathe. Then he'd drop you on the couch and tell you not to set stuff in the garage on fire anymore.

Mom's hugs weren't better, but they were certainly the most welcome part of the strange adventures Billy had found himself on since the baseball field.

She pulled back from him slightly, and her fingers brushed the hair out of Billy's face. She drew a circle around one of the knots he'd gotten on his forehead that had surely begun to bruise and turn black.

“My handsome little brave man.” Her words were almost like a song. “You have to be more careful, or there's going to be nothing left of you by the time you grow up.”

Billy was so in love with being close to her that he didn't even flinch when she placed her fingertip at the end of his scar and traced it in its diagonal line all the way down his face. “You've already got one beauty mark. You don't need anymore.”

Beauty mark? Billy thought that his mother must really love him, because nobody had ever said anything nice about the scar across his face.

“I'll be more careful and stuff, Mom. I promise.”

Then his mother kissed Billy on the forehead. Billy had to hold his eyes closed really tight so the tears couldn't get out.

When he opened them, his mother had pulled away and was walking around her desk once more. “No more traveling. No more adventures. No more Africa.”

“I promise.”

Billy's mother settled gracefully into her oversized desk chair and lifted a pen as she opened a book like the one the Russian carried.

“Go and get cleaned up. I'll expect you at dinner.”

Billy couldn't stop looking at her, and when his mother realized she was being stared at, she cut her eyes up to meet his.

“Uh, Mom…where's Pop?”

She held his gaze for a moment longer, then went back to her book. “Your father is off on an important errand. He'll be back soon.”

Billy smiled at his mother, even though she wasn't paying any attention to him anymore. He turned to go about the task of pulling open the big office door and trying to find his room in this place. Hopefully there was a map like in the mall.

“Billy.”

“Yes, Mom?”

“If there is a locked door, it's locked because the secret contained within isn't something you should concern yourself with. Do you understand this time?”

Billy pulled open the door and looked back out at the massive room he'd traveled through to finally meet the most wonderful mother in the galaxy.

“Mom, I promise.”

IV.

Billy went almost an hour without breaking any promises to his mother. After leaving her office he went wandering on his own, running into a maid or butler and getting updated directions which way he should be headed to find his room. By the time he'd made it across the house, Billy had seen the last suit of armor he would ever want to see — which was a disappointment, because the first couple he'd seen were pretty damn cool. They just kind of stood around though, and didn't do anything. Everything in this place just seemed to be standing around, doing nothing and serving little to no purpose. By the time Billy reached his bedroom, he felt exhausted.

His new room was yet another letdown. It had a big fancy bed that was so high off the ground, there was a little set of steps to climb to get onto it. Billy laid his head down on the feather pillows and let his eyes scan the joint. He didn't see any of his stuff from his old room there, and the place felt like a doctor's office. There was all this science stuff, like a globe and a telescope pointed out a window, and what looked like a functioning toilet through a door across the room.

“No wonder I get in so much trouble with my mom around,” Billy commented to his board, which was resting on the pillow to his left. “Perfect worlds are kinda boring.”

Billy knew he wasn't gonna get any sleep, and neither was his skateboard for that matter, so they got up. He started tossing drawers and peering into closets. “Are all these shoes mine?”

He didn't find a slingshot or a plastic army tank or anything to create explosives with in the whole place. Disgusted, Billy found himself looking through the telescope out the big picture window of his room. “Okay, stars… stars… boring stars… Moon, or Jupiter, or whatever the hell that is.”

It took him a few minutes to figure out the lever and gears. He finally did something which made the telescope tilt down, and then the boy found himself focusing in on the town below Purgatory Hill. “Cool, the rib shack.” The telescope had a big lens on the end of it and the Moon was bright, so he found that focusing on things was
pretty easy once you got the hang of it. “Hey, that's that lady that Pop calls Mrs. Hooker.”

Billy started swinging the telescope over the grounds of his new home. He was gonna find that trampoline if it took all night. He would have looked all night too, had he not suddenly found himself focusing on
her
.

She had short red hair that she wore in a fairy-of-the-forest pixie cut. Covered in a doctor's coat of white, just like the dude's that came to Billy's school once a year to test them for lice wore. But unlike those doctor guys, she wore a short skirt that'd just have looked stupid on them. It didn't look stupid on her. Billy didn't know who this gal was, but he did know she had really long legs that ended in high heels. She was carrying a stack of papers in her arms and walking down a lit path towards the stables.

Billy stepped back from the telescope and looked down at his skateboard sitting on the floor at his feet. “Well hello, doctor lady.”

When Billy placed his eyeball back to the telescope to get another look, the girl was gone. “Damn.”

Billy had his board under his arm and headed out the door, into the hallway. He didn't know why he was so interested in this lady all of a sudden — she looked like she was really old, like twenty-five maybe. But it wouldn't hurt to skate down there and say hello and be friendly. Maybe she needed help carrying all those papers?

Billy looked for a door leading outside for fifteen minutes and never found one, so he improvised by opening a window and rolling out onto the lawn. The grounds were quiet, and she had been the only thing he'd seen moving. Billy got his bearings and found a path that led down in the general direction of where she'd been walking. It seemed smooth enough.

Standing atop his board and silently rolling down the hill, he was remembering the girl from the cement factory. That pretty girl that the gypsy woman had told him was named Anastasia — the one who'd gotten him into all that vampire trouble on the baseball field and started all this mess. Billy realized he still kinda had a thing for her, but he'd been all around the world and fought monsters since then — and true badasses had to keep moving and could never look back.

“Hope you're okay, baby-cakes, but Billy Purgatory always picks girl in the headlights over girl in the rearview.”

On top of these big hills that looked over the whole town, Billy never expected to see vampires, or that girl, ever again.

He kicked his board into the air and caught it as his feet left the end of the concrete and slammed down into the grass. Billy could just make out the path that the girl with the papers and the legs had been heading down, and the vast stable complex just beyond a fountain and some trees. He remembered that he told his Mom he'd be showing up for dinner, and that he'd take a bath, but none of that was happening. He didn't even know what time it was anyway. If he could ever find the kitchen in that shopping mall he lived in, he'd throw together a turkey sammich.

Adventures first — always.

As he got closer, the place didn't look much like any barn he'd ever seen. It didn't smell like horse poop either, but Billy wasn't sure if that was welcome or kind of a buzzkill. He smelled something sweet, like flowers or other nonsense that girls liked. Perfume — and he suddenly was sure that he was on the right track.

The big sliding doors leading into the place were wide open, and there were lights and noise coming from inside it. Music? Billy wasn't sure exactly what he was listening to, but he was sure that he was digging it. All barns should have no horses in them and play loud music and have girls there. The more he thought about it, this sounded like how Pop described the bar he used to hang out at down the highway. “This must be where Pop is.”

Billy pushed within with renewed diligence — seeing Pop and having a few root beers was just what he needed to take the edge off all the traveling he'd been up to that week. “That's why Mom bought this place, the bar is here. This estate might be kickass after all.”

Still no damn trampoline, though.

Walking into the joint, Billy learned that it didn't go on for too long before he came to a metal railing. While the roof was high and had several stories above him, composed of open terraces, catwalks, and stairs, the music was actually coming from below. Looking down into a sunken room, Billy saw all manner of science class stuff. There were metal tables of burners and bubbling concoctions in
flasks and beakers. There were big metal coils that let electricity dance from one spiked tower to another, and there flashing lighted computer banks. This place wasn't a stable at all; it was a mad scientist's lab, right out of a comic book.