John Miller - Death Draws Five

“—Uh,” Jerry caught himself. “Are you a member of the Church?”

The living museum-piece shook his head. “No, man. But these righteous dudes are like customers of mine.”

“Customers?” Jerry asked with a raised eyebrow.

“That’s right. I’m like, their grocer, man. All organic. All natural. All the best.”

Jerry glanced at Angel, whose frown had deepened. Actually, Jerry thought, it would do her a world of good to get stoned. It’d loosen her up a little. And if she stays around this guy long enough, she’d get high just from the contact. He coughed discreetly. The fumes were already starting to get to him.

Angel stood beside Jerry and stared suspiciously at the newcomer. “Really?” she asked. “Exactly what do you sell?”

The hippie smiled, unfazed by her glowering frown. “Hey, I know you, man. I mean, I seen you before down at Kaleita’s store driving that bitchin’ Cadillac SUV, though, really, man, I don’t much approve of SUV’s because they’re really bad for Gaea and all her children—”

“Answer the question,” Angel said severely.

Beaming, he jumped out of the van. Jerry took one breath and had to turn his head away. He could feel his eyes starting to water.

“I’ll show you, man. Come around and take a look at our mother’s generous bounty.”

Jerry shrugged at Angel, and they followed him to the van’s side where he’d already slung open the door, and stood proudly, gesturing at the baskets within.

Jerry had to admit that everything looked good enough to eat, even the zucchini, but he suspected that he’d been standing a little too close for a little too long to the sixties poster child and was at least a little high from the fumes the guy emitted like some kind of tangible pheromone.

Angel just looked blankly at the baskets of red, vine-ripened tomatoes, the bundles of scallions and red onions, crates of lettuce, the cucumbers and zucchini, and open burlap bags of potatoes that still had clumps of thick, rich soil clinging to them.

“What’s your name?” Jerry asked him.

“They call me Mushroom Daddy,” the horticulturist said, “because I grow the most bitchin’ ‘shrooms in Orange County. Got a special greenhouse for them with all the glass painted black and dirt that’s—“

Jerry nodded, forestalling the horticultural lecture he was sure was about to come. “I’m Creighton,” he said. “This is Angel.”

“Woah,” Mushroom Daddy said. “Angel. Cool. Creighton. Groovy, man. What do you folks want with the snake handlers?”

“Ah, well,” Jerry said, “we’re looking for a kid. A kid who’s been lost in the woods overnight. We hoped they may have seen or heard something.”

“Heavy,” Daddy said. “Why don’t you hop in the ol’ van and I’ll give you a lift. Their commune is about a mile up the hill. They don’t take too good to strangers, but seeing as you’re with the Daddy, they might to help you. They know just about everything that goes on around Snake Hill.”

“Groovy,” Jerry said.

Mushroom Daddy slammed the side door shut and slung back into the driver’s seat.

Jerry smiled at Angel. “Get in,” he said. “I’ll close the gate.”

She went around to the passenger’s side and gingerly got into the van. Mushroom Daddy started it up again. With much tender encouragement and delicate manipulation of the gas pedal, the engine finally caught. Jerry closed the gate and climbed into the front seat after the van inched forward, exchanging smiles with Daddy over a stiff-featured Angel as they chugged up Snake Hill, a Canned Heat tape playing softly on the eight-track.

Jokertown: The Jokertown Clinic

Fortunato woke to darkness and pain. It was odd because he hurt so badly yet he couldn’t feel his body. He tried to lift his right arm and hold his hand in front of his eyes, but couldn’t manage it. He didn’t know if he was lying on a bed or perhaps the floor of the abandoned building, sitting in a chair or floating in a pool of water. Though he didn’t feel wet. All he felt was pain.

Then he thought of opening his eyes. He blinked at what he saw. It was himself. He was lying in a bed, and it didn’t look good. The white sheet hid most of his body, but it was clear that he’d been hurt very badly. His left arm, visible over the sheet, was bandaged from palm to biceps. A drip line ran up from his elbow to a bag of clear fluid hanging from a hook over his head. His nose was bandaged as if it’d been broken. His eyes were swollen nearly shut and horridly blackened. His entire face, in fact, was as bruised and battered as if he’d been in a fight, and lost.

Suddenly he remembered that he had. He remembered the confrontation with the Jokka Bruddas. They’d overwhelmed him almost immediately. He remembered getting a few good licks in, but it seemed pretty clear from his current state that he’d lost the fight. He looked awful.

Suddenly he wondered how he could see his entire body, head to toe, including his face, and the bed he was laying on. He wondered dully if he were dead. Killed, and maybe eaten by a bunch of under-age street punks. That would mark a glorious end to his career. The man Tachyon had once called the most powerful ace on Earth beaten to death by juvenile delinquents.

But he wasn’t dead. He certainly hadn’t been devoured. He was either asleep or unconscious, but he could see his chest rise and fall. The squiggles on the heart monitor over his bed seemed to be spiking in a nicely regular rhythm. He suddenly realized what was going on. He was projecting his astral form, hovering over what clearly was a hospital bed. Somehow his powers—or at least one of them—had come back to him, without the need for the Tantric magick that he’d once practiced to charge his batteries. Tachyon had told him that the rituals were simply a crutch for his conscious mind, but he’d never believed him.

Maybe the space wimp had been right all along.

He couldn’t tell for certain what had done it. Maybe the anger. The sheer impotence of being Fortunato and yet being unable to defend himself from some pissant street thugs, when once he’d defeated the Astronomer over the skies of New York. Maybe it had been the fear he’d felt when he’d realized that he could indeed be beaten to death by those children. Maybe it had been the realization that if that happened he couldn’t help his son.

He looked down at his body. He realized that although it might be dangerous, he had to stay out of it. His body wouldn’t last for long without his spirit to guide and animate it, but he had to take the chance that it would hang on at least for awhile. It was likely that the liberation of his astral form had been the work of his unconscious mind. If he returned to his body, there was no guarantee that he’d be able to leave it again. And his body wasn’t going anywhere for awhile. It looked too broken up.

His astral form was free to travel. To prove it to himself he floated out of his private hospital room and found himself in a familiar corridor. He realized that he was back in the Jokertown Clinic. He sped along the corridor, unseen and untouched by the nurses and patients he passed, though one joker perhaps blessed with a touch of second sight seemed to watch him as he floated by. But the joker said nothing and Fortunato slipped into another of the clinic’s private rooms, and found himself in Peregrine’s presence again.

She was sleeping. Josh McCoy was dozing in the chair by her bedside. Both looked tired and worn, Peregrine more so. Fortunato’s astral body hovered above her. He felt an overwhelming desire to hold her again, but he realized that he’d forfeited that right a long time ago. He reached out and touched her cheek, his incorporeal fingers slipping through skin and the flesh beneath.