Free Witch Lights by Michael M. Hughes Page B

were starting to take notice. After one show in Philly, the owner of the club asked me if I wanted to come to a party at his place. He had some really good Peruvian shit, and he said I reminded him of Richard Pryor before he caught himself on fire. Which I took as a compliment. So he drives me to this place in Chestnut Hill, and, man, I tell you what, it’s a
serious
fucking party. Weed and Cuban cigars stinking up the place, bottles of Dom, and lots of guys in expensive Italian suits. Mostly white guys, but some Asian Yakuza-looking dudes with their crazy tattoos, too. I was the only guy with skin darker than a paper bag, but nobody seemed to even notice me. Everybody was high, the music was pumping, and the girls were walking around in short skirts and high heels. Beautiful girls, too—high class, natural beauties, natural tits, not a stretch mark on any of them. Young and sweet. And this hot little blonde starts chatting me up—sits down next to me and starts running her fingers across my chest. I was pinching myself the whole time. It seemed too good to be true.”
    The van dipped into a rut and Ray’s head nearly hit the roof. Mantu was unperturbed. Driving at night in Guatemala was a daredevil sport but it hardly fazed him.
    “But she had the weirdest eyes. Like she wasn’t all there—like her face was a mask and there was nobody behind it. I figured she was just really high, or really shallow, or really high
and
really shallow, but at that point I didn’t care if she had the IQ of a dust mite because she started whispering nasty stuff in my ear. Telling me about all the freaky shit she was going to do with the big black python in my pants—and let me tell you, he was getting bigger and blacker by the second. I’m talking shit straight out of the
Penthouse Forum
. I was a little creeped out by her weird eyes, but I was horny, and she was playing me like a fiddle. You know what I’m saying?”
    Ray thought back to Lily. “Yeah.”
    Mantu wiped his forehead. “So she takes me down to the basement, to a spare bedroom or something, and she pushes me down on the bed, pulls off my shoes, my belt, and pulls down my pants.”
    “I don’t need to know
all
the details,” Ray said.
    Mantu didn’t smile. “But it was wrong. Looking at her was like looking at a doll, or a puppet. Or a robot. I guess some guys find that sexy, but not me. Something about her was just unnatural. Artificial. Like she was programmed.”
    Ray nodded. Like Crystal. Poor, dead, lost Crystal, who’d been programmed to do whatever Crawford and Lily had wanted. Just one of the women everyone believed he had murdered.
    “But she fucked me. Oh my God, did that crazy bitch ever fuck me. I’m screaming at the top of my lungs, like I’m dying, having a grand mal seizure. But her eyes got even scarier—there was definitely someone behind them then. Something had been hiding and it just came alive when she was riding on top of me. And I didn’t like it. The only thing I could think of was Linda Blair in
The Exorcist
.”
    “Jesus,” Ray said.
    “But then—boom—it passes, and her eyes are back to normal. I figure maybe I’m just tripping out from all the blow and reefer—getting stupid paranoid for nothing. But I couldn’t look at those eyes again. No way. I couldn’t let myself look into them. Then she asks if I want to shoot some heroin. I tell her no. I had that feeling you get when you know you’ve gotten yourself in deep shit and you know it’s just gonna get worse and there’s not a damned thing you can do about it. I knew I had to get out of there. It was a gut feeling at first, but then I started to panic.”
    Mantu stared in silence at the road ahead, his eyes lost. “Then the door opens. I’m lying there, with the girl next to me, both of us buck naked. And there’s a guy at the door, clean-cut, businessman type, fifties, maybe sixties, short gray hair, real conservative looking, but he’s wearing a fucking
robe
. A