Billy Purgatory and the Curse of the Satanic Five (2 page)

“Dammit, this thing's not even a T-Rex.” It had a face and teeth like a horse — all it did was chew leaves. “For a dinosaur, you are a real letdown. You look like a giraffe.”

It sniffed in Billy's direction again, then raised its neck up and turned to trot its high ass through the trees. Billy took this as an invitation to follow. He had a lot better things to do than follow a dinosaur-giraffe, but maybe this thing was headed towards the street.

The dinosaur went into a full trot and began putting distance between it and Billy. “Hold up, dinosaur. This ain't a caveman club, it's a skateboard.” Billy broke through the trees and watched it running down the slope into a valley, towards a big swimming pool that turned out to be more like a lake. There were tons of dinosaurs down there by the water in the moonlight. Some had long necks like it did, some looked like reindeers, and there were fat dinosaurs in the water…

“That's a damn hippopotamus.”

Billy crossed his arms as he looked down over the tall grass swaying in the nighttime breeze. Sure enough, there were hippos in that lake.

Billy watched the interplay of the fantastic creatures milling about in the darkness. Although he didn't know how that zombie-monster had gotten him there, he knew exactly, without a doubt in his mind, where he was.

“Dammit, I hate the zoo.”

If Billy hadn't been so banged up and could feel anything, he'd have picked up on the hairs lifting on the back of his neck sooner. Regardless, he was coming around to the idea that he was being watched.

Billy raised his board, checking the wheels as he did so. The old girl had survived, thankfully, and was no worse for wear other than a dirt bath. Billy thought about his only weapon as he closed both hands on it, in case it would be needed to swing at something.

“I don't do nothing with you lately but beat up stuff.”

His skateboard didn't answer. It must have known better than to run its mouth when there was danger lurking.

“Please, no more vampires. Please, please. No. More. Vampires.”

Billy cut his eyes up to the night sky in a motion of, “Can't a guy catch a break?”

Then, Billy Purgatory spun around.

Mean, dirty dogs. Three of them faced off with him now. They were bigger than the strays that roamed the neighborhoods. And they had nasty grins on their faces, like a fat kid who finds the door to the ice cream truck left open.

They'd come from behind a small group of rocks, and their present course was circling Billy while he tried to follow their snarls and sweating teeth in the dark with his board.

Everything Billy met lately seemed hungry and had the fangs to seal the deal.

Billy knew they were gonna hit him from three sides. He had heard his Pop go on and on about how even a three-peckered goat can't fight a two-front war. That meant three fronts were just ridiculous. Billy was almost too tired to care. His guts still hurt from being so close to that undead maniac. The flash that had brought him here had made time and space ooze over his insides like a melted clock.

He figured this must be the end, but he couldn't wrap his head around having dodged an army of vampires, and then a zombie monster, only to get chomped down on by the mange.

This was when he heard the war cry.

Billy was falling down and blacking out from the strain, but he swore that attached to that high pitched rebel yell was the body of a monkey wearing a necklace made of the teeth of every animal Noah didn't catch. A monkey with two long war spears and a face full of teeth and cool war paint. Monkey screams from a face of white dots and slashes.

The thing was ferocious for a monkey and had fangs of its own. The dogs turned on it and that was their mistake; one of them got the spear, no questions asked, and was reduced to a blood-spraying whimpering call for mercy.

No mercy was shown.

Billy blacked out right after the last dog limped away to hide in the night, tail between its legs.

II.

He awoke, but fought it the whole way. Billy had been having that dream about the Devil Bird again, and he was hoping that this time he would make it to the end to find out exactly what that stupid chicken was talking about.

No answers again.

Billy found himself lying on a mat within a hut. He stared outside and saw tribesmen, tribesladies, and tribeskids milling about a fire. It had become night again.

Billy turned his head to stare up at what he considered would probably be the ceiling of the hut he was in, but instead found the brown eyes and skin of a girl about his age. Maybe a little older, but not much.

Her face was the first forgiving thing he had seen in forever. The side of that face closest to the door was bathed in the warm firelight from outside. He got all caught up in watching the patterns of it change the hue of her soft skin, like a kaleidoscope to his eyes. Her hair was short and he liked how it framed her forehead. She wasn't trying out earrings or lipstick like all the girls from his school, and he liked that, because she didn't need it to be pretty. She simply
was
pretty.

She had caring and concerned eyes which never left his own. Her mouth tried to smile to reassure him that he was alive and okay, but she wasn't able to trick him into thinking that happiness was something she found easy to come by.

Her hand rubbed a wet cloth over Billy's forehead. He could see, out of the corner of his eye, an open medical kit that lay beside him on the floor mat.

“Is this a dream?” Billy wasn't sure what was really happening anymore. “Where's that stupid chicken?”

“Just rest.” Her voice was soothing and she had an accent Billy had never heard before; very proper, with none of the colorful slang or cutting words short, like his own mouth was so fond of. “Zeus brought you to me. You're safe now.”

Billy tried to rise up, but she was strong and pushed him back down. Then again, maybe he liked the attention more than he let on, and gave in. The cloth-on-the-forehead trick was working its magic.

“Girly, I'm not safe.” Billy tried not to excite his voice, but he could only do so much when wound so tight he might pop a sprocket. “There's zombies and vampires and big dogs after me.”

She gave him a look and then checked his forehead with her hand like she was checking for a fever. The only other person that had ever done that was the nurse lady at school, and she had big man hands with hairy palms.

“Where's my board?” Billy felt like he might go into a panic.

She slowly pointed and Billy's eyes followed her delicate fingers, maybe lingering on them too long, before he noticed the skateboard lying on the mat at his feet.

“Good. I gotta skate out of here. My Pop is gonna be mad if I don't get home.” Billy was happy to have a plan again.

“You're far from your home. I don't think that thing can get you back. Such a silly thing that it is.”

Billy's mission was suddenly dashed — she had just insulted the board. “It's not silly. It's a skateboard, every kid should have one.”

“I've never seen one before.”

Billy couldn't get his aching head around that one. “What do you and the other kids do around here, then?”

This is when she looked away for the first time from his eyes. “We survive.”

“Am I at the zoo?”

“No, you're in Africa.”

“I was afraid you were gonna tell me things were weirder.”

Billy pushed himself to where he was sitting up, and this time she let him. “I'm an American kid, we're stupid in geology. I don't even know where Africa is.”

“Geography,” she corrected. “You're across the world from America. A great ocean is between my home and yours.”

Billy stretched forward, and it was hard to do so. He took hold of his board like it was a security blankie. “I'm totally gonna look at some maps when I get back to school.”

Billy looked over at the medical kit, then found where she had bandaged the cuts and bruises on his legs, along with a few on his
arm. This girl was like a doctor, but she was maybe ten, like him. Chicks must be smarter in Africa.

“Hey, so…” Billy paused. “What's your name?”

“Imena,” she answered as she closed up the medical supplies.

“You're just a kid like me, but you know all this medicine stuff. How come?”

“You learn fast over here, and my parents were doctors.”

“They just work on the grown-ups?”

“They no longer live.” She lingered on the lid of the medical kit. “The wind took them.”

Billy looked out to the fire, sorry he'd stuck his wheels in his mouth. “My mom's gone too.”

They both had a minute, then looked at one another again. Imena began to spread a salve over Billy's black eye.

“What is your name?” she finally asked. Billy realized he hadn't even thought to introduce himself on his own. He'd been too fascinated by Imena.

“I'm Billy Purgatory,” he said, proud as ever.

“Such a strange name.”

“It's a strange world, dollface.”

Billy stood on shaky legs when she was finished with his eye. He figured he was as bandaged and patched up as he was gonna get, and made his way outside to the fire. Imena followed quietly.

Billy noticed first that Zeus, the monkey with the spears, was hanging out by a tree stump, staring off into the fire and smoking a cigar. Beyond his puffing short-stack body, the villagers had come to sit around the big fire.

An old fellow with the craziest beard Billy had ever seen was telling a story. Everyone was listening to him go on and following the lines made between the firelight and darkness surrounding them all.

Billy knew enough about things to figure out this was a witch doctor. Imena would tell him later the proper word was a
Shaman
. Billy liked witch doctor better, but no use splitting hairs on a rhino's rump.

There wasn't any TV and everyone was getting into the story, so Billy did too.

“When there was no world, God sat in darkness. God used the inky night like clay to make the earth. He did his work blind, because until he was finished, he wanted nobody to see what he was making.

“God made all that you see. He made the animals, and the trees, and the rocks. Nothing within the world cloak came to be that was not of his touch, his slash, his breath. God made everything, yes, but he did not make the place they call Wind Hill.”

The witch doctor pointed to a far off, irregularly shaped mountain across the plain.

“You see, Man made this place. He carried the stones for many generations and piled them high. He laid the top smooth and with a high crest that dipped at an angle, like the quarter moon. To climb to the highest peak was treacherous at best. Man meant to run down the cliff as fast as he could. Much faster than the beasts of the savannah.”

Billy watched Zeus take a long drag off his cigar, then pull a small bottle of whiskey from the pack at his feet.

“When God was finished with his work, he sparked the firebox of the brightest coal. This became Mother Sunshine. He looked over everything he had made. Then he happens to see Wind Hill and he can't remember making this place at all. So God comes to the first men and asks, ‘What is this place that sits among my mountains that I did not make with my own hands? Do you think that you are like me and can add to my perfect earth?' The first men point to the sky. Even though the world was new, and they had yet to tread much upon it, to stomp the land under their feet, they were already unsatisfied with their place in it.”

Zeus got a good snicker out of this part of the story; Imena gave him a foul look to quiet him. Zeus went back to his smoking, keeping his chuckles to himself.

The Shaman continued his tale. “‘We've built this high place,' said the first men, ‘so that we might run into the wind and lift our arms and fly into the air like the birds. The ground is no place for man. We mean to sail high and to warm our bodies in flight hovering about the stars.' God laughed at them, ‘Do not try this, for you have labored for nothing. Man's place is not with the birds: he is to be master of the ground. To climb so high and flap your arms is not for you.' Then God went away to laugh himself into slumber; after all, his many labors had provided only jokes from men.

“The first ones of men stood atop the peak of Wind Hill and stared down the high cliff they had made. A thousand feet and one was the distance to the rocks below. Man is foolish and did not listen
to God. They found the first tall fast man of the tribe and the elders chanted him on:

“‘Spread your arms and steal God's wings.'

“The tall one ran faster than a man had ever run before or since. He leapt for the clouds and spread his arms like a bird kissing a breeze.”

Zeus laughed audibly this time, knowing what was coming from Man's experiment.

The witch doctor made a crash of his hands, coming together loudly over the fire like a thunderclap.

“Splat!” Zeus couldn't resist and took another pull off his bottle of rye.

“Many generations,” continued the witch doctor, “and the skulls continue to pile up at the base of Wind Hill.”

Zeus offered Billy the bottle and Billy looked around quick, then reached to take it from the drunk monkey. Imena cut her dark eyes to Billy and caught him in the act. Her expression of disapproval made Billy pull back his hand. The monkey shrugged and kept drinking.

“To this day,” said the witch doctor, “the descendants of the first men still live in the old caves at the bottom of Wind Hill. They still search in vain for the one who will one day take flight and prove God wrong. God doesn't care though; he sleeps still, a smile on his face. ‘Silly man,' God dreams, ‘none are birds but birds.'”

The lull in the story caused contemplation among the tribe around the fire, and a question from the mouth of Billy Purgatory, “Hey monkey, what's that crazy guy going on and on about?”

Zeus took another swig. “Silly man.”

Billy shook his head; it still didn't make sense. Billy wasn't as focused on the fable then as he would be later. “You know how to get out of Africa?” Billy asked Zeus.