Mark Henry_Amanda Feral 02 (19 page)

I yawned. The whole scene reeked of a roadside scam. We were probably wasting our time and a perfectly good albino heart for nothing more than a guy in a rubber squid outfit. Honey was bouncing on her palms with excitement. Poor thing, I thought. She’s heading for a let-down.

… and the spiel continued.

“The Kraken of Butte rose first in the lower depths below the site. The warm pocketed eddies leached minerals from the surrounding rock, creating a healing pool for Levi’s battle wounds to heal. After the mine was stripped and the pit flooded, the mighty Kraken broke through the crust, swam the shy mile to the surface and encountered his first human being, a cranky Italian named Farelli.

“Alfonse Farelli was a miner before the copper veins were worked to nothing. He had a family of seven children and an obese overbearing wife named Sofia. When Levi first set eyes on the man, he was falling through the air toward the murky waters. Being a caring sort, Levi caught him in one of his softer, less spiny tentacles and brought him close to his good eye.

“After the man stopped screaming, he asked, ‘What the fuck are you?’ to which the Kraken had no response, not speaking English, and all. Instead, he experienced the man’s fear and granted a wish that the Italian couldn’t articulate and that the Kraken didn’t
really understand. He gave the man the strength of the demons of the deep—”

“Bullshit,” I interrupted. “Can we just skip the script and pick up the pace? I could knit a sweater in the time it’s gonna take, or at least hire someone to do it.”

“Sh!” Honey spun around, eyes all squinty and judgmental.

“Fine. Please excuse me.” I pulled a smoke from my purse and lit up.

“There’s no smoking in the pit!” Eddie yelled. He’d pulled out a hand mirror from somewhere and was eyeing me suspiciously.

I butted the cigarette and cracked my knuckles. “Go on then.” Gil prodded me and passed up his flask. I don’t normally imbibe on platelets but this was proving to be a long ride and, well, I’d forgotten my hooch in the car.

“Levi,” Eddie continued, “gifted Alfonse with all the strength and wisdom of the aquatic demons and for the low low price of just three of his young sons. That’s where yours truly comes in. Vinnie and Frank and me were just young when it happened. The Kraken needed guards and he got ’em.”

“That’s sad.” Honey picked at a name carved into the wall as we passed.

“No way. We was totally into it. No more fuckin’ school. No more chores. No more watchin’ Mom drain the bottle every night. It was good.”

We were coming up on the tunnel’s exit; it seemed to let out onto a platform. I could just see Vinnie waddling back and forth and another figure kneeling at the wooden guardrail. Praying perhaps.

“Here she is.” Eddie pulled hard on a lever and the brakes pumped to a jerky stop. “Exit the vehicle and form a line to the left.”

Honey was up and ready in an instant, while Gil needed to be nudged awake before he scrambled from the low seat and took his place behind me.
¹⁰⁰
The tall demon gestured for us to approach the guardrail quietly. The genuflecting figure was shrouded in a flowing hooded robe and mumbled unintelligible words. Maybe these were the basis for the Cosby Kids, I wondered. This new guy, Frank, was aping a decent Mush-mouth.
¹⁰¹

Lights shone down into the pit and illuminated a massive lake that butted up to a terraced hillside opposite us. A refinery stood as dark and silent as sculpture to one side. Vinnie started hopping.

“He’s coming! He’s coming.”

Gil and I looked at each other, repressing giggles— because we’re juvenile like that—and looked down the side of the pit at a mass of bubbles rising from a churning whirlpool. A mist surrounded the disturbance, as though the splashing was a result of some giant invisible waterfall.

Then it surfaced.

A slimy gray gelatinous thing.

All ten feet of it. Tentacled, yes, but—come on—so less than impressive. I expected a creature at least the size of a Greyhound bus but instead I got a Volkswagen. It clambered up the pit wall, tentacles rolling out, connecting with the rock and dragging its bulbous floppy head behind. I wished I had a flashlight to check for wires or a track.

It seemed legit, though.

It tossed loose boulders aside with ease. They cracked
against the pit and fell to the water, smacking like belly flops. Occasionally it would rear back revealing a jagged beak protruding from a thick meaty welt at its center. Sure there was no way this thing was going to take down a pirate ship, but it was definitely capable of giving a human body a good munch.
¹⁰²

“Behold! Leviathan!” Eddie swept his arms wide with the pride of a religious fanatic.

“I thought he’d be bigger,” Honey said.

“What?” Eddie, Vinnie and Frank snapped in unison.

“I just—” Honey shrugged.

“Silence!” the kneeling brother ordered. He reached up, hands resembling flexible lobster claws, pulled back the hood—and since I’m making foreskin references, let me add—and uncovered his head, an engorged mass pitted with suckers and short stubbly tentacles where hair should be. The look was total venereal disease.

We must have looked like the row of clown mouths waiting for water streams at those stupid carnival booths, from the shock the scene engendered. Gil glanced over at me and gagged. Honey covered her mouth. An odor wafted from the thing somewhere between cheddar cheese and seaweed and I ought to know; it was so bad I sniffed it twice, just to make sure.

“What the fuck? I thought this was your brother?” I asked.

“Oh. That’s Frank. He spends a lot more time with Levi than us. You get like that.”

We didn’t even need to discuss it; the three of us stepped back from the guardrail like pageant contestants,
completely in sync and mortified. I don’t take chances on blemishes let alone tentacles. Vinnie didn’t seem to want much to do with the approaching creature either. He leaned against the tunnel entrance, an unlit cigarette dangling from a sucker on his face and fiddled with a Zippo, occasionally sparking it up. Eddie spun at him each time, sneering.

“You get like that?” I pointed. “Just from being around it?”

Eddie waved me off with those exceptionally long fingers. “Don’t youze worry, you gots to be around it for more than a couple of minutes to notice any change.”

The more I stared, the more they looked like ten tentacles hanging from his grayed hands. I imagined that slimy calamari slipping across the soft supple skin of my cheek and a shudder rolled through me that must have looked like a seizure.

Gil touched my back. “Are you okay?”

“I will be … when we get the fuck out of here.” I forced myself to look over the edge again just in time for the Kraken to rise up and peer at us with an inky eye the size of a bowling ball. Its tentacles swirled about us and coiled around the posts.

Frank stood up and began conversing with the Kraken in a rapid-fire gibberish. The giant octopus responded in a garbled wet tone that rattled the platform and jettisoned thick ropes of spittle that splattered across the robed brother. He slipped in the puddles of saliva until finally he fell into a kneel.

“Ask your question.” Frank wiped the goo from his mouth and flicked it against the wooden planks.

Honey stepped forward and spoke with uncharacteristic hesitancy. “Yes, Leviathan, er, Levi?”

“Mighty Leviathan,” Eddie corrected. “To you.”

“Mighty Leviathan,” she parroted. “We understand you might know a way for me to see my dead brother’s ghost.”

The brothers looked at each other. Eddie raised an eyebrow.

Honey continued unperturbed. “It lives in this lady’s car. Is that possible? For me to see him again, I mean. Even for just one time?”

Frank turned to the creature and let loose a flurry of burps and gagging noises.

The Kraken slumped back from the platform and hung from its arms, placing its full weight on the supports of the deck. It creaked and shuddered, but held firm. A long sigh gargled from Levi’s throat.

Silence.

I looked at my watch, at my skin. More than a few minutes had passed, and since I already had the gray skin down under my body makeup, I wasn’t looking forward to any appendages sprouting like discarded asparagus or some shit like that.

“Can we—”

“Shut up!” Eddie demanded. “He’s telling Frank the answer to your query.”

I leaned forward to see if I could make out a sound, but all I heard was a low hissing and the occasional spit bubble pop. The creature was watching us, but particularly Honey. Seemingly reading her. I remembered the story of the brother’s father and how the Kraken had read his mind. Still, I wasn’t certain the whole thing wasn’t a scam. These guys came across as con-men more than confident guards of a mystical beast. Yet moments later, Frank clutched the rail and rose on slippery feet.

He turned to Honey. “Levi has spoken. There
is
a way the girl can see her brother again.”

Honey clapped her hands and beamed.

“Kill her,” he said.

The girl’s smile disappeared, replaced by a sneer then a look of horror then a sneer, again.

Frank shuffled toward the tunnel as though our tour had come to a pleasant, mutually agreeable end.

“Hold up, Bud,” I said. “We trudge all the way up to this shithole, bring you a human heart. No. Scratch that. A fresh
virgin
heart. And all we get is a curt, ‘kill her’? What the fuck? I could have figured that shit out myself.”

Levi let out a shriek that shook the platform and rattled the bolts that secured it to the pit wall. Someone was a little crabby.

“No. No. Levi. We got it right here! Promise! Vin-nie!” Eddie reached behind him but his brother simply shrugged and backed away into the tunnel. Where he stood lay the empty Ziploc baggy, slimy with Granita’s coagulated blood. Beads of the crimson goo littered the surrounding boards. Vinnie must have gotten the munchies.

The platform splintered and gaps formed between the wooden planks, already transforming from solid footholds to wobbly funhouse ride. We may as well have been standing on skateboards.

It felt like a good time to run.

I clutched Honey’s arm and pulled her toward the exit, Gil hot on our heels.

“Vinnie! Get back here! We’re gonna need that hear—” Eddie’s voice was clipped into silence.

In the next moment, a splash echoed down the pipe followed by a warble that could only be Frank
screaming and the crashing dismemberment of timbers as the platform collapsed into the massive lake of acid.

Shame.

It could quite possibly have been the most exciting roadside attraction I’d ever seen.

“He’s not the
only
mystic, you know?” Vinnie squatted next to the Volvo’s front tire, ran his slimy mitt across the black tread. Mr. Kim glowered above him through a cloud of cigarette smoke, blending in at times. For a second, I thought the little creep had shivved a knife in it, but when he stood the object in his hand looked nothing like a knife. He noticed my stare. “Oh this? Cars are kinda my thing. Just checking the pressure.” He held out the gauge to show me.

“I told him get away from goddamn car,” my ghosty friend said. “He no goddamn listen.”

“Thanks, Mr. Badass.” I gave him my sassiest wink. Mr. Kim was still getting the hang of profanity, but he was catching on. I stomped over and made like I’d kick him away from the car if he didn’t move.
¹⁰³

“Don’t!”

I kicked the air in front of him, causing the little welt to flinch. It’s the small things in life that make you feel good, like a hug.

“I guess I have difficulty listening to someone who’d throw their family under the bus like you just did.”

He skittered away a few feet and stammered, “The-the-they’ll be fine. Just a little fuckin’ wet. Side effects, you know.” He lifted his trouser leg to reveal a tentacled appendage. “Besides. I been lookin’ for an opportunity to get the fuck outta here. This seems to be it.”

Honey stepped in between and interrupted the love fest. “You were talking about another mystic.”

I reached for her shoulder. “C’mon. Let’s just get out of here.”

She swatted my hand away. “Just wait. God.” She spat the G-word out like a punishment.

“Oh yeah. Levi’s not the only seein’ thing around here.” Vinnie shifted from one set of tentacles to the other. Comfortable with his newfound upper hand.
¹⁰⁴
Pig. “Crow Res gots a fuckin’ shaman. And he ain’t no mooch like ‘the Mighty Levi.’ Got a job and everything.”

“So where do we find this … shaman?” I was hesitant to give any credence to the guy’s story. For all I knew this was going to be just another in a string of fabulous cock-ups that seemed to be scripted for us by some unknown writer somewhere, some overweight forty-year-old loafing in cargo shorts and flip-flops.

“He sweeps up nights at the deep Crow grocers. Youze go and find the emcee. He might have your answers.”

“The emcee?” Honey asked.

“You heard me. I gotta go pack. I’m fixin’ to get outta this here shithole. Got a girl waiting for me in Vegas.” He waddled up the steps of the trailer and slammed the door behind him.

Gil and I gagged, but Mr. Kim just sighed and sank to a kneel on the hood. “Honey don’t look happy.”

It was true. She’d been watching us interact with her brother, a solemn frown marring her pretty face like a hot zit.

“Oh, Honey. It’s not like we’re going to go ahead with the Kraken’s idea. We wouldn’t do that.”