I walked-ran toward the door.
“Mr. Istenhegyi…?” She slid between the door and me. The smell of sandalwood and lavender cologne made my head swim.
I stopped so quickly that I felt dizzy. The pulse in my neck quickened and I tried to keep my eyes flat as my mind raced. “Yes?”
“Haven’t you forgotten something?”
My mind went blank. “Ummmm?”
Oh, smooth, Istenhegyi, I could hear Bear chastise. Sam Spade has nothing on you, you mook.
“A cab?” She waved a thin hand toward her telephone.
“A cab! You think…oh, a cab! To get back to town! Oh, yes! A cab…yes. ” I said, fighting to keep my voice light as I plastered a clueless smile on my face. “May I use your phone?”
***
I gave her a story about meeting the car on the main street.
After I turned the corner, I stopped and hid behind a tree.
Bear sat in that very chair, chewing that vile gum and, while she was in the kitchen getting their drinks, wadded it up and….oh God…the tea.
I waited for any sign of poisoning but none came. I sighed deeply, feeling stupid but relieved at the same time. I sat down on the ground and wiped my forehead, trying to think. In spite of the shade of the trees, the air was hot, so hot it actually had a smell like thick, stagnant miasma. And the bugs. They swarmed around me, biting, and just plain annoyed me. God! Why would anyone choose to live out in the bayou? I couldn’t concentrate. I swiped and scratched.
“Think, Janos. Think!” I said, slapping my face. Janos is my birth name. Bear pestered me to Americanize my name to Jake but, in my heart, I was still Janos. “What do we know? What are the facts? He was there. Harleaux lied about that. But why? And where is he now? What did she do with him? And what about my-“
A rustling from the brush near the road interrupted my monologue. I stood up quickly.
The rustling intensified. My hand shakily grabbed the .38 I kept inside my jacket. I don’t like guns; that’s more Bear’s department. He’s the bullets man. I’m more the book and pen kind of guy.
I stepped behind the tree and peeked.
A white chicken stepped out from the brush.
“Jesus, Hester.” I exhaled and put the gun back in the holster. “You were almost dinner.”
She clucked at me and walked away, her talons scratching at the ridges in the hard dirt.
Ridges. From a tire track! How did I miss that?
Good going, Sherlock. Bear’s voice boomed inside my head.
“Shut up, Bear.” I murmured. Hester cocked a queer eye at me and clucked. “I talk to myself. It’s a nervous habit.”
I sighed.
“And now I’m talking to chickens.”
“Ker-cluck.”
***
The tracks led back to Harleaux’s bungalow. No surprise there. I snuck up to her house, keeping low and away from the windows. There was a deep impression in the dirt where the car had sat for a while and then another track that led into the field and toward the barn.
There wasn’t much action coming from inside the house but, outside, the chickens were starting to become a real pest. Two of the feathered bastards ran up and pecked me on the ankle, drawing blood. I kicked those two only to have a half a dozen more trying to trip me. They followed me, clucking and pecking all the way. I finally decided to hell with stealth and started running toward the barn.
It was a typical English style barn, large, square and bulky. The roof looked swayback on one side, as if it were half done or falling in. The doors weren’t locked and I pulled them open, hitting a couple of chickens in the process. I admit, that was really more in revenge than necessary.
I slammed the door behind me and leaned against it. I closed my eyes as I caught my breath.
Opening them, I knew how Gepetto felt inside the whale. The wooden planks and rafters arched upward like a grayish ribcage. The barn was huge, hollow except for hay strewn haphazardly on the floor and the chickens. God, there were dozens and dozens of the damn birds, scratching around on the floor, roosting up in the rafters, on the ribs of the roof and…
“Sons of bitches…Kincsem, what did they do to you?”
In less than 24 hours, the filthy birds had nested inside her, scratching up the upholstery and littering the floor with feathers, hay and muck. The outside was splattered with white offal. The excrement had etched tears into the paint as if it were acid.
Six chickens sat on the roof and stared down at me with an imperious silence. I swiped at them with my fedora. “Get off of her, you stinking feather bags! Git!”
Five of the birds took flight, leaving one behind.
“You son of a bitch!” I opened the door to get a foothold and batted at the bird with my hat. “I said GIT!”
The bird ducked….it ducked and then… slowly… regally… crooked its head to the side, flopping its enormous scarlet comb to one side, and looked down on me with one golden red eye.
I backed down. There was something other than chicken in that stare. It made the hairs on the back of my neck bristle. I took a step backwards… and my foot landed on something sqwacky. I twisted my back by doing a wild two-step as I barely kept my balance.
Turning, I saw dozens, hundreds of chickens now, flocking between the door and me.
“Oooookay. Good chickens. Nice chickens.” I said, holding up my hands. “Sorry I stepped on your friend back there, couldn’t be helped.”
A low rumble came from behind me. It was like a big cat’s purr, loud enough I could feel it in my bones. The chickens stared up at something right over my shoulder and started to bop their heads in rhythm.
I followed their gaze back to the chicken. No, not a chicken. The thing on the roof of my car was no chicken. The monster was dancing, its wings outstretched and flapping. The scythe like talons on the end of its scaly legs ripped through the cloth roof. Its neck was ostrich- like, bald with feathers clinging to it in small clumps, as if someone had gripped its head and stretched it out. It undulated like a snake and the head lolled in rhythm with the swirling neck. Its beak was open with the tongue hanging to the side. Golden spittle dribbled off and puddled on the roof where it sizzled and bubbled.
“What the hell!?!?”
It stopped.
Its eyes blazed in fury as it caught me watching its grotesque burlesque. It began to hiss and croak out a hellish crowing that the other chickens echoed back. The sheer volume made my ears feel like popping. I clapped my hands over my ears and started kicking my way toward the door but with every two chickens that flapped out of my way, three would take their place.
Fine. New plan. I rushed back to my car, kicking chickens to the right and left, feathers exploding as I made my path. The grotesque chicken thing cawed like a siren and snapped down at my hand as I reached for the door handle. “Damn, bird!” I screamed as I pulled my hand back before it could tear out chunks of my skin with its beak. Every time I reached forward, it would rear its head back and then strike out again. Back and forth, back and forth.
The chickens behind me were growing bolder and started pecking at my ankles. “Oh, to hell with this!” I said and I punched the chicken monster in the beak, cutting my knuckles to the bone. I climbed inside Kincsem and felt for the key. “Yes! That’s my girl!” The key was still in the steering column. Finally, something going my way! I pulled the toggle and she started up with vengeance in her heart. My baby knew when she was being abused. I slammed my foot down on the gas-
BWAKAWKWABWAKWKWABWKAKABWKAKWKWWKW!
Talons, claws, feathers and beaks….that is all I could see as chickens jumped up from the backseat. I beat at them with my free hand and tried to keep the car from swerving but it was too much. In the chaos, I rammed the car into a wall.
Dammit. So close.
I pushed my way out of the car and slammed the door on the crazed chickens inside. Coming at me, hundreds of chickens were charging with the monster chicken lea
ding the way. I pulled my .38 and took three shots at the horde. Nothing. A useless waste of bullets. I looked around the empty barn for a weapon, anything!
Beyond my crunched up car, I spied something…a door. Thank you, Jesus….a door!
As luck would have it, I had crashed not five feet from a door that led to…who knew? Who cared? As long as it got me away from this bloodthirsty flock of hellchickens, that was all I needed.
I holstered my .38, climbed over my hood, rushed inside and slammed the door, severing a few beaks and clawed feet in the process. I slid to the floor and tried to catch my breath. There wasn’t a lock on the door but I didn’t think the damned beasties were clever enough to turn a handle. I took a look around. It was a windowless room but well lit. There was a partition that ran halfway through the middle. The breeze felt good on my-
Wait. Breeze? Where would-
I looked up.
This just wasn’t my day.
There was no ceiling. The room opened up to the sky. A dozen sleeping chickens roosted on the railing that boxed in the room.
“Sonofabitch!” I swore. The chickens above ruffled their feathers and settled back into their naps. To hell with them. I stood up and kicked the partition, hard. “SON OF A-”
“Mmmmmrgh.” I heard a muffled grunt from behind the cheap plywood wall.
“Who’s there?”
“MMMMRGH!”
I pulled out my .38 and held my breath and I stole a look.
Oh, sweet merciful God….
My fist clenched.
I nearly wasted another bullet.
I found him.
I found Bear.
***
On the floor, there was a red and black mosaic of a snake. Starting at the tip of the tail, my eyes followed it, round and round, as it encircled a pit. Covering the pit was a large wheel supported by a pillar I only imagined was rooted at the bottom of the pit.
On the wheel, strapped naked like a sick recreation of Da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man was Bear.
“Istenem…” Oh my God rolled out in my mother tongue.
His stomach was flayed open, the skin flaps carefully stitched to the sides so his guts were open like a buffet. His intestines were pock marked and torn where the chickens had gorged themselves on the tenderest bits of the banquet laid out before them. The air reeked of blood and shit. I pressed the back of my hand against my mouth to keep from tossing up my stomach.
“MMMMFMFMFM!”
He stared at me with a wild, rolling eye. He only had one. The other socket was a red mess where the chickens had pecked. His nose and his ears were in shreds. His cheeks had been torn away into flaps. He shook his head and made that horrible muffled groan. It was then I saw his mouth. The lips were sewn shut.
“Oh, Christ…hold on, Bear…just…hold on.” My father always said a man always needed three things in his pockets: a handkerchief, a wallet and a sharp knife. I holstered my gun and pulled out my pocketknife. “ I’m here, Bear. Everything is going to be okay.”
He shook his head violently. The wheel turned slightly. “MMMMFMFMFMFMMMMF!”
He snorted heavily, like a tortured bull. Clots of bloody snot blew out. He was terrified. I wasn’t even sure he realized it was me.
“Bear, it’s me. Jake Istenhegyi. Bear!” I held his face gingerly, what there was left of it, and forced him to focus on my face. “Listen to me. I’m going to get you out.”
He shook his head and tears ran out of his one good eye. “MMMMFFFFMFMFM!”
I stroked his forehead and tried to calm him. “But you have to be still. Do you understand me? I need you to be still so I can cut the threads. Okay?”
I took his still silence as acceptance. “ Okay.”
I started snapping the threads with my knife. I kept my blade sharp so it was easy work. I just wasn’t prepared for what began spilling out of his mouth as it opened.
Salt. Bloody, pink and black clotted salt spilled out of his mouth.
“Kurafi!” Son of a bitch! I cursed in Hungarian.
Bear gagged up the rest of the foul stew and sputtered out something unintelligible.
I bent down closer to hear him. “What?”
His breath was hot and smelled like a burnt penny. “Kill me, Jake.” he whispered. “Kill me and then run like hell.”
“What?! No…no! I can get you out, Bear.” I started cutting the ropes that held him down. I freed one of his hands and started working on one around a leg.
He whimpered and tears flowed from his one eye. “Nononononono,” he keened, a horrible sound to come from the man I knew. “Look at me, Jake! Christ! I’m done for!” he cried, “It’s no good….no good…..”
“Shut up! I am not leaving you here!”
Cutting on the rope, I noticed something loosely tied to a spoke next to his leg. It was a bone. A tibia, if I wasn’t mistaken. I poked at it with my knife. The bone fell away and into the pit below.
A horrible buzzing began to swell from below.
“Ohnoohnoohno…not again…NOT AGAIN!” Bear swung his free arm and beat himself in the head with his fist. I grabbed his arm to stop him.
The buzzing amplified, echoed up from the pit along with the smell of decay and sickness.
“ohnonononononononononononono!”
“What the hell???”
I leaned over to see what was making that horrible noise.
A thick flying black column of blue bottle flies rushed up and enveloped me. I fell back, kicking and swiping at the biting, flying bugs. Bear screamed as they ripped into his open wounds, burrowing in like fat black ticks.
I dropped the knife and swung at the black cloud with my fedora and the cloud of flies buzzed at my head. They were vicious. They spiral dived straight for my eyes, my mouth, my nose. Blinding me, suffocating me. I twirled like a howling dervish. All the while my friend screamed and bucked on the wheel, threatening to pitch it off the stake and send it down into the pit.
In the middle of this hell, a woman’s laughter came from behind me.
I turned and opened one eye to a cat’s eye slit. Henrietta Harleaux was standing next to the partition, calmly surveying the horror.
“Come back for more of my hospitality, Monsieur Istenhegyi?”She sauntered in, her beauty and grace out of place in such a sewer. She had slipped into a stunning white gown and turban. “Or did you see something else you liked?”
I went for my .38 with one hand and swiped at the biting flies that dived at my eyes with the other. Blinded, I pointed the gun in her general direction. “Keep… ack!” I coughed and gagged as a fly rushed into my mouth.
She laughed that high crystalline laugh that seemed so beautiful only a few hours ago. Now, it drilled into my ears like an ice pick. “Poor boy.” She raised one slender mocha hand and the flies lifted up. She puckered her lips as if to whistle and blew a silent note. The black cloud swirled into a corkscrew, twisting and swirling above me and Bear. With a casual flick of her wrist, the cloud descended back into the pit.
“Nice trick,” I said. I steadied my grip to stop my hand from shaking. “Now, it’s my turn.”
“Oh?” She cocked her head to the side, much like the feathered bastards that were now crowding around her. “How many tricks do you have, Mr. Istenhegyi?”
“Only one. I call it the ‘saving my friend and getting the hell away from the crazy backwater bitch trick’. It’s pretty new.” I kept my gun on her as I bent down to pick up my knife. “I doubt you’ve heard of it.”
She shook her head and took a step closer to me. “I don’t think so.” The chickens flowed in behind her like the train of a bridal gown. “I need him. This month has been…difficult.”
“Stay back!”
“No.”
“Stop. So help me…I will shoot!”
She threw her arms wide open and stepped up the pace.
“Ha! You can’t hurt me!”
She was five feet away.
Dammit.
“Stop!”
Three feet.
“Dammit!” I shouted and pulled the trigger. I felt the hammer slam into the firing pin.
Silence.
“Stupid boy. I told you before that I am blessed. And here, at this altar, in this place of power, I am invincible.”
I took a quick look back at Bear. He was barely conscious but still breathing. I kept my stance between Harleaux and Bear and prayed for a new trick. With breath, there was life and with life, maybe some fleeting hope that I could figure a way out of this mess.
I waved my gun in the air ignoring gun safety rules. What good are rules when faced with a hellish Chicken Voodoo Queen? “So, that’s what this is then? An altar? And I thought the bone catacombs in France were twisted.”
The chickens bristled and shook their feathers. “Careful, Istenhegyi. The Loas do not take kindly to blasphemers.”
I wiped the sweat off my forehead with the back of my hand. I kept flapping my lips, hoping some passing Muse would be kind to me. “So, this is what you do? Slice and dice men up for chickens? What kind of religion is that?”
“An effective one.”
“Look at me.” She did a little turn in her white gown. “Do you like what you see?” She moved toward me and leaned in so close I could smell the jasmine. “I am seventy two years old. My children…I have twelve of them….prosper all across the country. They are businessmen, lawyers, teachers, doctors. They have succeeded in the world in spite of the color of their skin. All of this I owe to the power of the Loas.”
“At a price.” I nodded over at Bear. His breathing was getting ragged. “A hell of a steep one.”
“You give tithes. You eat little crackers and sip on tiny cups of wine. This is just the same.”
“I beg to differ!”
“Hush!” she snapped. “He comes.”
There was a rustling amongst the chickens as the flood of white split asunder to let my friend, the monster snake chicken, come through. It walked slowly, picking up each thick taloned foot and putting it down with exact pageantry. It held its head high like a monarch and swayed side to side. The chickens closest to it, bowed their heads...bowed, I couldn’t believe it….as it walked past.
It walked up to Harleaux and rubbed its head across her belly and up between her breasts. I could hear a deep cooing sound come from one of them. I couldn’t promise it was from the bird.