Aloha from Hell

I try to get the words and rhythms of the old houngans in my mind before I start working. The real spell is a complex combination of Yoruba and Louisiana Creole and I’ve forgotten a lot of the words, so I have to do a lot of bebop improv, but bullshitting hoodoo on the fly is my specialty. As I chant, I rub my temples, and when the words are flowing fast enough and the time feels right, I grab my face just below the scalp line and pull. The skin comes off like I’m peeling a banana. It sticks in a couple of places and I have to snip them with the knife, but it’s not a big deal.

I put my face, bloody side up, on the cloth I cut from Mammon’s suit.

I hear Kelly gasp. It’s not in horror, but in a kind of fascination and awe. He’s probably never seen high-quality Merlin stuff. This must be a hell of an introduction to magic.

I do the whole ritual again. When I peel off Mammon’s face, I drape it over the raw and bloody place where my face used to be. The new flesh burns as it attaches itself. I close my eyes and breathe, working through the pain. I’m dizzy and slide over onto an elbow. I feel Kelly grab me so I don’t fall. The inside of my head swirls around once more and then it’s over. I touch my n19;I touchew face. There’s no pain at all. Mammon’s skin feels like it’s been there forever. I open my mouth. Move my lips in mock smiles and frowns.

I look at Kelly.

“What do you think? I don’t look too much like Mammon, do I? It’s his skin, but my bones and muscles, so we shouldn’t be twins.”

Kelly shakes his head.

“You don’t look at all like him,” he says. He stares at me with a kind of beatific smile plastered on his face, like Saint Peter just gave him an invitation to the Christmas after-party in Heaven.

He says, “If it isn’t being too forward, I’d like to say that you might have just become my personal hero, Mr. Stark.”

“Okay.”

He looks up at the rolling black clouds that cover the sky.

“I once thought that I was a master of flesh. But I see now that you have surpassed me in every way.”

As my new face settles in, I wrap my real face in Mammon’s cloth, put it carefully in the leather satchel, and sling it over my shoulder.

“That’s real nice of you, Kelly, but what the fuck are you talking about?”

He stands. Looks at me and then at Mammon. The Hellion finally dies and his body disappears.

“I prefer Jack, if you don’t mind,” says Kelly. “That’s what people called me in older, merrier days when I was still alive. Jack the Ripper.”

Some crazy people must stay crazy even after they’re dead. I met dozens of Judas Iscariots, Hitlers, and Jack the Rippers in the eleven years I spent Downtown, but always one at a time. I always wondered if they steered clear of each other out of professional courtesy.

There’s one thing that makes me think Kelly could be for real. Mason chose him. Picking a simple back-alley cutthroat with delusions of grandeur isn’t a mistake Mason would make.

Jack is leading us down the embankment and into the thick woods that line the freeway. The trees stand at crazy, impossible angles. It’s like we’re walking through still photos of the forest in the process of falling.

“Step lightly,” whispers Jack. “And don’t touch anything. Tremors have loosed the land under the trees. They’re barely rooted. They’ll come down on us with the slightest provocation.”

Suddenly I’m sorry I’m wearing big steel-toe boots. I should be in Hello Kitty slippers.

I’ve never seen a real forest in Hell. Not one with trees and plants. I’ve seen places called “forests,” but they’re usually tightly packed mazes of saw blades and spinning pylons studded with needlelike Hydra teeth.

We walk maybe twenty yards until the forest gets tight and dark and wild. Old-growth backwoods. It’s hard not to bump into limbs and the solid trunks of the drunken trees. Each time I hit something, I feel it give, and wonder if it’s going to fall and which way to run and if running will make things better or worse by bringing down even more trees. Tree trunks crack and branches fall around us, but we make it through the forest and come out onto low sand dunes.

Jack points off into the empty distance and says, “There’s Eleusis.”

But I’m looking down. At the bottom of the dune Venice Beach stretches into the distance. Which doesn’t make sense. Venice is west of Hollywood and we’ve been going south. I don’t know what’s going crazy faster, this city or me.

I look up to where Jack is pointing. There’s something in the distance, but I’m damned if I know what it is.

Venice is shuttered and looks like it’s been that way for fifty years. The only light in the area comes from the fires reflected off the belly of the endless black clouds overhead. Vents in the ground belch geysers of superheated steam. Fire twisters skitter in the distance, tearing up the empty beach houses. We head down to the long tourist walk.

“You’re wondering if I’m lying about who I am, Mr. Stark. Or if I’m a nutter.”

“Something like that.”