By Gaslight Chapter 6 Tent of Shadows

Monday, November 2, 2020, 3:48 am
57^th and Powell

 

T

he night was clear, the moon was down below the distant trees and Tones was fearfully proud that he somehow had a pal three times his age, a loyal buddy that had saved his life, was the first to wake, the last to go to sleep, didn’t jerk-off in the middle of the night like Erik, was as wary of tweakers, hobo camps and cops as he was.

They sat sipping coffee behind the brewery, drinking out of cups that the old guy had made using aluminum foil.  The coffee itself they had gotten from the Cherokee at the 7-Eleven on Foster in return for cleaning the windows on the exterior.  It was the left over shit at 3 am.

He mused as the old fellow, his head forever on a swivel, looked into the clear night sky of predawn.

I mean, the only possible downside to this situation is the fact that my little buddy is insane, believes that he is possessed by the soul of an ancient sorcerer, and is actively hunting another ancient sorcerer—that must have been a good acid trip.

Yeah, but at least the creepy-ass crow has not come back since my cuffs came off—that was just too much.  Yeah, and no more LSD—imagine how much LSD this fucker has eaten!

With that thought, he heard a crackle above and saw the wings of the crow outlined under the ambient night sky land on the edge of the brewery, the eyeball still dangling from its beak—are you fucking kidding me?  Erik, why did you sell me that Nepalese paper!

Dox stood, drank the rest of his coffee, carefully folded the cup for reuse, slid it into his jacket pocket, shucked on his rucksack, saluted the crow, and as the thing flew off, Tones’ belly of blackness burned like ice and he rose eerily to his feet, “He’s back in your head, Dox?”

The little fellow looked up at him with steely grey eyes over his pinched face, now almost bearded and nodded to the right, across Foster, “Alongside Powell, five wolves and seven sheep, a big blue tent.”

“Fifty-seventh and Powell,” he answered.  Then he asked, as he finished his coffee and dropped the aluminum foil cup, which caused the little fellow to wince, like someone had stepped on a beautiful flower, “What do we need to collect, Dox?”

The fellow seemed to register verbal addresses much better when his name was spoken.  Otherwise he often would not answer absent eye contact.

“A head, the Shaman’s head.”

“What?”

“Yaas” sounded the stentorian voice dripping with assurance within his subconscious.

“Well, I’m not killing anybody.  But you saved my ass.  So I’ll play lookout on your caper.”

The little man walked off—no, marched like going to war—and Tones ambled on after him, keeping up easily, checking to make sure that ball peen hammer was still in his back pocket.

Within a few short minutes, they found themselves at the homeless camp where five tweakers stood around the bicycle tent where they chopped up stolen bikes and collected an inventory of scrap-built bicycles.  Eventually a panel truck would show up and load the bikes.  He supposed it was the racket that kept these guys in their meth.  Shit, the Chinese meth was so cheap.

He then realized that Dox was seriously fucked up.  This dude just stood there, looking up at these guys, around the fire, sniffing and listening, saying nothing.  Tones walked up behind him and said, “What do we want?”

“The wise one in the big blue tent.”

“Okay, Dox.”

With that Tones stepped up to the tall long-haired hippy leaning on his dragon cane under his cowboy hat, “Look, Pal, we’re lookin’ for a fortune-teller, in a big blue tent.”

“Oh, sure friend,” the man answered glassy-eyed and languid, “C-Three the Guru is up a block, on the next side lot, on the other side of the apple tree.  Tell him that Hip-Man sent you.”

They followed the directions and came to a large blue tarp tent and could hear chanting within, in a throaty nasal rasp, that hollow drug-addict glitch of a voice.  Dox looked up at him and said, “Ask him for his head, the Master says.”

Tones ducked into the tent while Dox stood guard and, in the dull candle light saw this light-skinned, maybe 20% African fellow with dreads and a denim braided bandana and all these affected esoteric bullshit trinkets, sitting cross legged in the center of his tent while some fat red-headed bitch sucked his dick.

He was in some weird Buddhist posture and she was methed out of her mind sucking away, while this guy seemed to be focusing on this baby-doll head wearing a cancer-kid hair wig and eye shadow.

This is some sick shit.

Tones snatched the baby doll head from its string and the weird lame guru looked up at him and yawned, “That ain’ right, man,” and Tones used his sneaker to heel-stomped his nose into mush and walked out with the wigged-up baby doll head on a string.

He showed the thing to Dox, who seemed kind of lethargic all of a sudden, and the crow with the eye ball in its beak lighted on Dox’s backpack, finally swallowed the eye ball and retinas after carrying it for two days.  The crow plucked the string from Tones’ hand and flew off into the dying night.

This is far, far beyond disturbing.

“Dox, are you alright, little buddy?”

“I’m real tired, Tones.”

“Let’s go down to the park.  We can sleep behind the pool house, okay.”

“Okay, Tones.” And the little man waited for Tones to walk off and then followed him like a puppy dog down towards the homeless guys and Hip-Man, who kind of seemed as much as a pervert as C-Three was.  He just knew there was some child abuse somewhere along the line and all those bikes being kids bikes pissed him off.  It wasn’t so long ago that he had been a kid on a bike getting knocked off in the street by adults he was trying to escape.

Dox stopped behind him and Tones said to Hip-Man, “My friend is tired and you guys suck, and you are a bitch, so I’ll take your best bike for my buddy here.”

Hip-Man said, “Wait a minute, friend.”

“I’m not your fuckin’ friend, bitch!”

What are you gonna do?” he asked one big tweaker, who backed off into the shadows for answer.

“And you, what are you gonna do?” he demanded of another shadowy figure, who also backed off.

“Nothin’, that’s what you bitches are gonna do.”

Dox then patted him on the shoulder and hissed, “The Master doesn’t want me killing this one with the creased forehead,” nodding to a big leather-faced tweaker with his hand in his pocket as Dox placed his hand on his own sheathe knife.

“You sure, pal?”

“I’m sure.  I can walk.  But my hand is thirsty so we have to go.  If he keeps looking at me like that my hand will have to drink.  The Master will be mad with the wasted effort.  His wants only quality heads.  The creased forehead would ruin the curation of the totem.”

A chill issued from the black hole in his heart and in his mind echoed, “Yaas!” like the whisper of the Devil himself.

The man with the creased head stepped further back and showed his hands, apparently creeped out by Dox’s languid and matter-of-fact appraisal of his head.  He had to come away with something, so he grabbed Hip-Man’s cane and said, “I’m Big Tones, you’re my bitch and this is my cane!  Got a problem with that?”

“No, Big Tones.  Thank you for letting me hold your cane’” submitted the big old hippy.

And so they stalked off, Dox pirouetting like a merry-go-round to keep eyes on the camp until it was out of sight.

“Simple beast,” hissed the distant voice in his head.

Maybe I am, asshole boring into my soul.  But I’m not letting you take over my mind, and you better let my pal off the hook or I’ll find a way to wreck your game.