The Devil's Graveyard (51 page)

‘The others get out?’ Sanchez wheezed.

Janis piped up. ‘We got separated from Freddie an’ Emily quite early. Maybe they got out another way.’

‘What about the blues guy?’ Sanchez asked. ‘He was still with us just now, wasn’t he?’

Elvis, who was not particularly out of breath, and didn’t seem to have even a single hair out of place, shook his head disapprovingly at him.

‘You mean Robert Johnson? The guy who practically invented the blues?’

‘Yeah, him.’

‘The guitar legend? The guy who saved us all by keepin’ the fuckin’ zombies away?’

‘Yeah. That guy.’

‘You knocked him down into a fuckin’ big goddam crack in the floor. I’d say he’s suppin’ with the Devil right about now.’

Sanchez screwed his face up. This was awkward. A witty remark was required to ease the situation. ‘Sure hope he’s got a long spoon,’ he quipped.

Elvis was decidedly unimpressed. ‘A long spoon? The fuck’s that got to do with anythin’?’

‘Dunno. I’m just sayin’,’ Sanchez muttered awkwardly.

‘Fuck you, Sanchez. Your weasellin’ ways have just sent one of the greatest musicians of all time into the pits of Hell. Ain’t you got no shame?’

‘Rather him than us, right?’

Elvis sighed exasperatedly and turned away. Behind him, Sanchez could hear the noise of the hotel crumbling. It sounded like an iceberg breaking up. The building was almost gone. The penthouse suites on the top floor slowly disappeared out of sight beneath ground level amid a giant cloud of dust and sand. A huge pillar of dust swirled up into the night sky and slowly descended to the ground, like dissipating fireworks. Just then, above the diminishing roar of the disappearing hotel, came the sound of a powerful engine and the horrible clash of inexpertly changed gears.

From round what had been the side of the hotel, a massive blue camper van appeared. It had been left in the parking lot at the rear of the building, but now it was zipping down the drive through the clouds of dust, heading towards Sanchez, Elvis and Janis.

‘Hey! Over here!’ Elvis shouted, waving at the driver.

The van hurtled towards them, racing ahead of the falling debris and the cracks appearing in the driveway behind it. When it reached the road, the driver pulled it up alongside the three survivors. ‘This whole fuckin’ day just gets stranger by the minute, don’t it?’ Sanchez remarked.

The folding door at the front of the camper van hissed as it opened. Then the sound of Tom Jones singing ‘It’s Not Unusual’ blared out from the van’s stereo system.

Sanchez rushed to the door, knocking Janis Joplin to one side in his eagerness to be the first to climb aboard the van. When he stepped on board he was astonished to see that the driver was none other than Annabel de Frugyn, the Mystic Lady herself.

‘Why, hello, Sanchez,’ she croaked, offering him her usual gap-toothed smile.

‘Uh – yeah.’ For a moment he was completely lost for words. Then ‘Hi. Great idea stealin’ the van,’ he said approvingly. He found it confusing to say anything to the old witch with approval.

‘Yeah. I had a premonition that there was some sort of quake imminent, so I scoured the parking lot and found this lovely van with the keys still in the ignition. And a Tom Jones CD, too, signed by the man himself!’

Elvis and Janis followed Sanchez aboard and made their way towards the back of the van. Elvis yelled back at the Mystic Lady.

‘Yo, woman! Press that metal to the floor, baby. Let’s get the fuck outta here.’

‘Sure thing, King,’ Annabel simpered in reply. Elvis tended to have that effect on women, even ones as downright peculiar as the Mystic Lady.

Sanchez took a seat just behind Annabel. For a moment he just sat there with his mind in neutral. Then he breathed a huge sigh of relief at having escaped the carnage and destruction. A comfortable cushioned seat had never felt so good, even though his sweaty buttocks did tend to stick to the plastic seat cover. As they sped off down the highway he looked back and watched the final moments of the hotel as it plunged into the pits of Hell. By the time they were half a mile down the road, the Hotel Pasadena was all but gone. To any fresh visitor, it would seem as if it had never existed.

Sobered, he looked up into the rear-view mirror at the top of the windshield. He could see the Mystic Lady’s face in it. They smiled at each other. Maybe she wasn’t so bad after all.

‘You okay, Sanchez?’ she asked.

‘Been better.’

‘Well, we’re all safe now. Be back in Santa Mondega ’fore you know it.’

‘So long as nothin’ else goes wrong.’

‘It won’t. I can see us getting back with no more dramas.’

‘Bein’ able to see the future really pays off sometimes, don’t it?’

‘Certainly did earlier,’ Annabel replied. ‘I made a killing on the roulette, you know.’

‘
Yeah?
’Cause that tip you gave me sure didn’t work out too well. I lost a fuckin’ fortune on the wheel when you called red.’

Annabel smiled. ‘Funny, that. You know, that was the only time I didn’t win all day.’

‘
What
?’

‘I won almost a hundred thousand dollars today on that roulette wheel. The only call I got wrong was the one when you lost all your money.’

‘Thanks a bunch,’ said Sanchez, bitterly.

A knowing grin spread across the Mystic Lady’s wrinkled face. ‘Maybe next time you offer me a drink, you’ll think twice about giving me piss,’ she suggested.

Goddammit,
thought Sanchez.
Shit karma, again.

After that, he would have preferred to spend the journey at the back of the van, as far away from Annabel as possible. Unfortunately, Elvis and Janis were in need of some privacy. Sanchez did his best not to be too nosy, but his occasional glances back were greeted by the sight of Janis bent over the pull-out bed with Elvis pounding into her from behind. And Janis wasn’t exactly a quiet fuck, either. Energetic sex wasn’t moderating her Tourette’s much.

The moon and a million stars shone down brightly from the night sky. They lit the desert and the long ribbon of the highway with a pleasant glow, barely hinting at the evil left behind where the hotel had once stood. Sanchez had never been a great admirer of moonlight, but after all he had just been through he took comfort in the sight of it. There had been moments over the past twenty-four hours when he had thought he might never see even simple, natural sights like the glow of the moon and stars again. From his seat behind Annabel the faint glimmer of light allowed him to see a crossroads up ahead, long before it was illuminated by the van’s headlights. He didn’t recall seeing it on the journey to the hotel, and since it appeared to be without a road sign to provide directions, he hoped Annabel would know which road to take. She slowed the van to a crawl as they approached it. Then she leaned back and looked over her shoulder at Sanchez.

‘You know which way we go from here?’ she asked.

‘Not a fuckin’ clue. Straight ahead’s probably as good as any.’

‘I don’t know,’ said Annabel dubiously. She was still half turned towards Sanchez, not really watching the road ahead of her. Looking past her at the approaching crossroads, Sanchez spotted a man in a black suit, wearing a fedora, walking down the middle of the road. He would have been hard to spot even in the glare of the van’s headlights, had he not been carrying a large white signpost over his shoulder.

‘WATCH OUT!’ Sanchez yelled.

Annabel whipped back round to face the windshield, slamming on the brakes as she did so.

‘Jesus! Who the hell is that?’ she asked.

Sanchez got up and joined her at the front of the van. The signpost the man was carrying had four arms set at right angles to each other, each with a place name lettered on it, though Sanchez couldn’t read them.

‘I think,’ he said softly, ‘that’s Robert Johnson.’ He thought back to the young singer he had known as Jacko, and whom he had met for the first time only a few hours earlier. Somehow, that name no longer seemed to suit him.

Annabel raised an eyebrow. ‘The Blues Man?’

‘Yeah.’

‘The one who sold his soul to the Devil at the crossroads?’

‘Yeah. That one. How the hell’d he get here so quickly? Thought I’d killed him back at the hotel.’ Seeing her expression, he added hastily, ‘Shit, it was an accident.’

‘I’m not sure I need to hear about that,’ Annabel said primly, shaking her head. ‘He was a good sort, you know, was Robert Johnson.’

‘How d’ya mean?’

‘Well, the spirits are telling me he’s about to show us the way home.’

Sanchez watched Johnson prop the sign on the ground and look around for the exact spot to stake it. ‘Yeah, he’s puttin’ the signpost back on the crossroads.’

‘Exactly,’ said Annabel knowingly.

‘Wonder where he found it?’ Sanchez thought aloud.

‘Where he left it, most likely.’

‘You think he took it down?’

‘Like I said, he was a good man.’

‘How the fuck does stealin’ signposts make him a good man?’

Annabel sighed. ‘Think about it, Sanchez. That signpost directs people to the Hotel Pasadena. By taking it down and hiding it every Halloween, Robert Johnson has probably saved a heck of a lot of lives. And now he’s showing us the way home.’

She pointed up ahead and they both watched as the black man in the suit rammed the signpost down into the loose earth at the roadside, where two arms of the crossroads met. After securing it he twisted it around. Annabel pressed gently on the accelerator and the van slowly approached the crossroads. When they were close enough to get a good look at the signpost they saw the man they believed to be Robert Johnson point up at one of the white-painted arms. It indicated the turning to the right. Lettered in black on the sign was the word ‘HOME’.

Annabel flashed the headlights at him by way of thanks and began to turn the steering wheel to the right. As the van came round, Sanchez waved a regretful hand at the Blues Man, in apology for having nudged him into the chasm in the floor of the hotel. Johnson waved back once, then doffed his hat to show no hard feelings. With that last gesture, he disappeared into the night.

The van sped on through the darkness for another hour before the Mystic Lady eventually parked it up at the first motel they came to outside the Devil’s Graveyard. Sanchez would finally have somewhere safe to rest his weary head in peace.

And he wouldn’t have to continue listening to Janis Joplin screaming ‘Fuck me harder, you fuckin’ muthafucker!’ any more.

Breakfast in a motel was all that Sanchez could have wished for. He had lost his luggage and his jacket, all left behind in his room at the Hotel Pasadena. Since the place had now plunged into the depths of Hell, there was every chance that the Devil and his minions were walking around in Sanchez’s finest selection of Hawaiian shirts. So he made do with the red one again, even if it was a tad sticky and stale. As for his shorts, he was used to wearing them for weeks at a time in any case, so neither was it any great hardship to pull them on once again.

He sat in a booth by the motel diner’s window, tucking into a fried breakfast and occasionally sipping from a mug of steaming hot coffee. As he did so, he reflected on all that had happened in the Devil’s Graveyard the day before. Opposite him at the table sat his good buddy Elvis. At least, Sanchez liked to think of Elvis as his buddy. Chances were high, however, that once they were back in Santa Mondega they wouldn’t have much contact, unless Elvis came by the Tapioca for a drink.
But, hey,
Sanchez thought,
we kinda bonded a little during yesterday’s goings-on.

Like Sanchez, Elvis was stuck in the same clothes that he’d worn the day before. Yet unlike Sanchez, he looked as cool as ever, somehow making yesterday’s dirty clothes look so much less sleazy than did the bar owner. His hair was still unruffled, despite an evening of angry sex with Janis. He did look tired, though – just about ready to nod off to sleep at any minute, Sanchez thought. He’d kept his trademark shades on and was sitting back against the red vinyl-covered bench in the booth, with his legs stretched out over to Sanchez’s side of the table.