Kill City Blues (Sandman Slim 5)

Even hurt, Balthazar was strong. He threw a couple of fireballs at my head. They missed, but only by inches. I was stuck. Terrified of helping him. Terrified of leaving. He tried a spell to raise the pillar. He managed to get it up a couple of feet before it fell back down on his chest with a soft frightening sound.

“Help me,” he said. “Or I’ll kill your whole family.”

I knew he meant it. I couldn’t move. I was so scared of him that I wanted to help him. But I was too afraid to move. Then he started to cry. Big, wet-eyed wails. That was when I understood. I walked away and left him up there on the hill.

There was a Laundromat not too far away that still had a working pay phone. I dialed 911, didn’t give them a name, but I told them that a boy was hurt inside Golden Hills. I didn’t tell them exactly where. I didn’t want them to find him right away. Then I went home.

The next day it was all over the local TV news. The boy who’d died in a tragic accident in a poorly maintained graveyard. When the medics had found Balthazar, they’d taken him to an emergency room at a good hospital. But it was full of civilian doctors. If they’d known to take him to a Sub Rosa clinic like Allegra’s, they might have been able to save him. But I didn’t want that.

I knew the moment Balthazar started crying that I was dead. No matter what he said after that, no matter what he promised or how much he pleaded, he’d never forgive me for seeing him so weak. He’d kill me the first chance he got. So I did the only thing I could do. I left him lying in the wet grass.

Balthazar was the first person I ever killed. I don’t like to think about it, so I work hard at not doing it. Sometimes I see his face on an opponent when I dream about the arena. I looked him up in Hell when I was Lucifer. Found him in Butcher Valley with the other killers. Turns out I wasn’t the first kid he’d come after. Still, remembering him on the ground bothers me, though not so much that I would have changed what I did.

I wonder sometimes if leaving Balthazar in a graveyard is why I’m tied so closely to the Hollywood Forever Cemetery. A cemetery was Balthazar’s exit and my entrance into this world. Two fucked-up kids connected forever by a land of bones.

That’s why I hate cemeteries.

The Kill City Cemetery is in even worse shape than Golden Hills. Tombs are slapped together from collapsed concrete and drywall. A few graves were hacked into the floor, but most are just covered with debris. Mini burial mounds. Someone made crosses from old water pipes. Angels are tacked on some of the graves, torn from Valentine candy displays. A Star of David is crudely hacked out of an acoustic ceiling tile.

I pick up a Big Blue World snow globe from the floor and toss it at the nearest cross. It bounces off with a satisfying ping. I get up and tear the cross out of the grave, find another, and tear it out too.

“Stop that,” says a ghost.

“Fuck you, Jacob Marley.”

I bang the metal crosses together, shouting, “Hello. Hello. Hello.”

When I don’t hear anything I toss one of the crosses up and out of the ghost wall into the corridor above.

“Stop that,” screams one of the ghosts.

They swarm around me, pushing and shoving, trying to knock the second cross from my hand.

“Aw. You don’t like that? How about this?”

I push through them and pick up a piece of concrete with some rebar sticking from it. Using it like a sledgehammer, I bash one of the makeshift tombs to pieces.

“Stop him, someone.”

“Please.”

“He’s insane.”

A mummified body lies among the ruins of the tomb. I pick it up by the neck.

“Any of you ever see The Muppets? I loved that show. Let me see if I can do Kermit’s voice and work the mouth at the same time.”

“Stop. Please.”

“Why should I stop? You can only kill me so dead.”

I kick a plywood support from the side of another tomb. It leans to one side and slowly slides to the ground.

“Please. No more.”

“I’m going to pull every single body out of these graves. I figure I can make half of you into lawn gnomes and the other half into ventriloquist dummies. The tourists will love ’em, don’t you think?”

A spook screams in my face, “Do not desecrate our resting place.”