In Laymon's Terms

John Pelan

ENT ROLLED OFF THE mattress and got to his feet, scuffing one foot through the red-chalk pentagram surrounding the mattress. The girl was still asleep, Jeannie, Jenny, whatever...A pentagram, for fuck’s sake...Some of the shit you had to play along with just for a piece of ass...

Lighting a cigarette he looked around the warehouse’s dirty-gray concrete floor, chipped and yellowed plaster walls decorated with posters affixed with Scotch tape, refrigerator in the corner next to the half-bathroom. Posters of musicians mostly, Siouxsie, Sisters, and of course, Johnny Algiers...What a fuckin’ dump...He’d had no idea that she’d lived in a place like this; hell, she had enough money to go clubbing, you’d think she could spend a few bucks on a real place to live...

Kent looked down at the girl, sleeping soundly after their energetic sex (or ritual, as she kept insisting), weird bitch...Kent had run into women who liked getting slapped around, but this was the first one who had asked him to cut her with a razor while he was fucking her. Just another kink, Kent had no problem with that as long as she was buying the X and had beer in the fridge...The fact that she’d left her purse in plain sight was an added bonus.

At the Cafe Sepulchre, he’d spotted her immediately, low-cut blouse showing the intricate spiderweb tattoo on her back and black jeans that looked to be painted on the shapely long legs. That got his attention...What held his attention was the roll of bills she’d extracted from her purse when she went to pay for a drink. He’d brushed into her and made a comment on her silver jewelry and spiderweb tat and had started spinning a web of his own...

She cut him off quick. “Look, I know you just wanna fuck me; that’s okay, I can be into that if you’re willing to help me with something...”

Kent looked her over. “Help” could mean just about anything: money, drugs, protection from a violent ex-boyfriend, whatever...“Help you with what, exactly? Not that I’m saying ‘no,’ but I wanna know just what you’ve got in mind.”

“It’s not money or anything like that, if that’s what you’re thinking, I’ve got money; here, let me get us a couple of drinks and I’ll explain, then if you’re up for it, we can go over to my place...” With that she vanished into the crowd in the direction of the bar...

Pretty brassy, he thought. At least he wouldn’t have to waste time talking about relationships or any of that shit. She was probably a rich girl from the Eastside out playing Goth so she’d have something to brag about with her girlfriends...Fine, she had money and she had a place; it would be almost too easy.

“Chartreuse!” she announced, plunking two glasses of green liquid onto the table. “Really strong, but great stuff. Here!”

That was impressive. They charged something like seven bucks a shot for that stuff here...Yeah, she had money, or at least was trying to convince him that she did. That was kind of puzzling; she was good-looking, not the type who had to get attention from guys by buying them booze; that made the angle about “help” all the more interesting...

“What do you know about Magick?” She pronounced the word with an emphasis on the last syllable, leaving no doubt that she was talking about Magick with a “k” as opposed to magic...

“You mean Crowley and Satanism and stuff like that? A little, I guess...Why?”

“I’ve found something, something that was in an old book. It’s an incantation for raising a demon...I want to try it, and I need help for it to work...”

“Bullshit, even if that stuff worked you think that real spells are going to be in a book that you can buy off of Amazon?”

She took a long pull of her drink. “No, it’s not like that, not like that at all...I got this book from an Estate. You ever heard of Brentwood Grey?”

“The millionaire? The guy who disappeared a couple of years ago to beat a murder rap? Sure, I’ve heard of him, there was a bit on America’s Most Wanted or something. What’s that got to do with your spell?”

“Grey was a Magus, he was an adept of the highest possible degree. Yeah, he was about to be charged with murder, but it wasn’t really murder. He was engaged in sacrifices. Grey was the real deal, and I found this incantation on a sheet of paper folded up inside a book from his collection!”

Kent took another long look at her over the rim of his glass, feeling the fiery bite of the liqueur working its way into his bloodstream. Maybe this would be more interesting than he’d thought...

“So, how did you wind up with a book from Grey’s collection? Somehow, I don’t picture you hanging out at Estate sales...”

“The book was in a used bookstore. I don’t know how it got there, maybe his maid ripped it off and sold it or something, but the book had his bookplate in it, and about halfway through there was a paper with the directions and words to this spell. He must’ve stuck it in as a bookmark and forgotten about it. It’s gotta be the real thing, I mean, we’re talking about Brentwood Grey...”

She ordered more drinks, several more drinks. She was obviously getting hot just talking about this stuff. Kent thought about dragging her into a stall in the men’s room for a quick suck and fuck, but there was more at stake here than just getting a nut off.

She had to be getting ripped, slamming shots of chartreuse as though they were water, and the shit she was talking about...Tantric sex, demonology, all kinds of weird stuff. Apparently this spell required that she say “words of power” at the moment of orgasm.

The night shifted and faded into a green-tinted haze of chartreuse and X; he was struggling to maintain, to keep focused on what he needed...

She’d wasted no time in stripping out of her clothes. Damn, she was hot...Perfectly formed, pert breasts, marred only by a poorly-done spider tattoo on the left. She had some other tattoos: a serpent wound its way up her back, tail disappearing into the cleft of her ass. He sat patiently watching her breasts bob as she traced a pentagram around the mattress on the floor. This was goofy as hell, but it might turn out to be worth it.

She started babbling about “heightened awareness” or somesuch as she drew out two long thin lines of coke on a small pocket mirror; from somewhere a couple of small glasses had appeared with a cloudy green liquid inside. Kent didn’t even have to ask if it was absinthe, at this point it just seemed to fit. He just wished she’d shut up for a minute and let him enjoy the buzz.

It was worth being patient; the sex had been great, she liked it rough, really rough, and he didn’t mind hurting her...Once he was able to tune out all the weird shit she kept saying as he thrust into her. She’d come the first time just as he cut her with the razor, screaming out some sort of gibberish and then biting his shoulder hard enough to draw blood. The cut he’d made wasn’t deep, just enough to draw blood like she’d asked...Moments later she’d howled out the same gibberish and bit him again.

They lay there for some minutes, listening carefully. Sirens wailed outside; in this part of town that could mean anything from an OD to a knife-fight or a drive-by. The warehouse made the furtive creaking noises that were common to all old buildings; somewhere outside a car door was slammed. Nothing, at least nothing that needed a chalk pentagram to keep it at bay...

The combination of booze and drugs coupled with their energetic sex was starting to work on her. She mumbled something and began to doze off. Kent pretended to do the same as he let his eyes adjust to the darkness, taking in important details like the door and the broken-down dresser where she’d left her purse...

Kent lay there with her for a few minutes, then carefully extricated himself from her embrace, being very careful not to wake her. He’d remembered where the small refrigerator was and he helped himself to one of the three remaining beers. Kent dressed quickly, quietly so as not to wake her. He’d need to avoid the club for a few weeks—never a good idea to shit where you eat...Fortunately, Seattle had lots of clubs and they were all filled with women stupid enough to let Kent into their homes. He’d run into a few of his previous conquests on the street before and most of the time had been able to convince them they must have just lost their money the night before. Making sure they got good and drunk was the key. One girl even fell for his line about getting sick in the middle of the night and walking to the hospital rather than waking her. She was so impressed with this self-sacrificing bit of gallantry that she brought him home again, and this time he got her jewelry too...

He finished the beer and looked around for the bottle of absinthe, no sense in letting it go to waste...Nowhere to be found, maybe she’d put it under the pillow; now that was just too risky...After a couple of minutes he gave up the search and went on to more important matters, like her purse.

Moving quickly to the wooden dresser, he picked up the purse, a trendy designer brand. He wondered briefly where she got her money. Jeanne, Jenny, or whatever her name was might have actually been interesting to get to know under other circumstances, maybe there would be a next time...After all, she’d had an awful lot to drink as well as the coke and X. Just might be worth trying again...He quickly rifled through the purse. Hey! A vial of white powder, an unexpected bonus! That along with nearly a hundred dollars. Kent left a ten-dollar bill and pocketed the rest...Leave her enough to buy a bottle of something to take the edge off when she woke up.

Looking at her again, as she stretched in her sleep, he almost felt bad about ripping her off...almost...But hell, anyone stupid enough to think that they can summon a demon by making weird noises while being fucked deserves to be ripped off.

Kent helped himself to another of the beers in the fridge and headed for the door. There was enough money to make a score before he went home, and he’d gotten laid; not a bad Saturday night, all things considered. He wished she hadn’t been a biter and that he’d been able to find the rest of the absinthe, but what the hell, you can’t have everything...He headed past the stairwell to the door.

The sound was so soft that at first he thought she was mumbling in her sleep, then it came again, a low rumble like something very heavy being dragged. Kent looked at the corner by the stairs as the sound came again, a sound that had in it an eternity of cruelty, a sound of rocks grinding ponderously together. He stared in the dim light and saw something very large with far too many limbs slowly raise up to its full height, its massive antlers scraping the ceiling as it did so.

Kent’s last thought before the iron pincers encircled him and began to squeeze was that maybe there was something to that sex-magic stuff...