Clown in the Moonlight Read Online Free PDF

tore Christ's back apart.   Ricky puts his feet in my lap the same way that Linda did in the car.   Maybe it's a sign of affection.   Maybe he's trying to push buttons.   He fails on either count.   I wait him out.   We're like that for a while.   He breaks before me.   He hops off the couch.
    Maybe this is it.   I watch for the blade.   It doesn't appear.   Ricky likes an audience, but only if he gets to lead them to the stage one by one.   He laughs his mad monkeyboy laugh, his hair coiling into his eyes like serpents.  
    His face goes bleak.   "What's your name?" he asks.
    I don't tell him.   Names have power.
    His crew tightens around him.   Now I see who the other members of the Knights of the Black Circle are.   They've been here the whole time, but somehow hidden among the gatherers.   Not in the corners, I always check the corners.   Hiding in plain sight, but somehow not there either.   They're shadows without light, they're mutts like all the rest but nothing like the rest at all.   Ricky leads them through the throng.   They cluster at the far side of the living room and make their way down the corridor to a distant den.   They follow him without a word.   They seem incapable of speech, like they've been walking the deserts of the earth for ten millennia in silence, with swords drawn.   Their lips are set, mouths nothing more than bloodless lines, eyes as empty as Lowers's sockets.   They slam the door.
    I stand and put my back to the wall and shut my eyes.   I press my concentration beyond the noise, the babble, the pizza guy still retching, the rain slashing at glass.   I hear Gwen and Linda in the bathroom, washing and bandaging each other.   They whimper because the peroxide burns.   They whimper because some of the marks are bound to scar.   Gwen might need stitches.   Linda's knees are still weak.   They worry about pregnancy.   They worry about what they may mother with me as the father.
    I focus hard enough that I can hear Ricky talking to his knights on the other side of the house despite the din.  
      Ricky's done a little homework.   He knows the names of the infernal orders, the black popes, the archdukes that sit in great central dome of Pandemonium.   He discusses offerings. Ricky mentions Gwen's name.   She's on his kill list.   The others concur with the choice.   Their voices are guttural and grating.   The language they speak hardly sounds like English.   More names are tossed into the mix.   They're either agreed upon or dismissed.  
    My focus is so sharp that Ricky notices.  
    He says, "Someone's listening."
    The door opens.   They check the hallway.   Ricky's got to know it's me, but what fun is it not to play a little hide and seek.   I fade into the crowd.   The Knights of the Black Circle exit and drift among the partygoers.   I pretend to dance with a burnout chick with big tits who's barely shuffling in place.   I draw her to me and put my lips to her throat.   I nibble.   I suck.   I bite.   She grunts and jerks in my arms.  
    She says, "I like you.   I think you should take me home."  
    "Sure."
    "But no fucking.   I'm on the rag."
    "Okay."
    "But I'll jack you off if you want.   I like you.   I'll do that for you."
    "You're sweet."
    I walk her out to the Mustang and the moment she crawls into the passenger seat she passes out.   It's just as well.   I'm not up for anything else, not even a hand job.   I'm raw and clawed.   I check her wallet and read her driver's license.   I realize her name is on Ricky's kill list.   I lift her eyelids and stare at her blank eyes, thinking about them in Ricky's fist, being squeezed, being thrown away.  
    I drive her home through the storm and leave her sleeping on some Adirondack furniture under a roofed patio.   I sit with her smoking a cigarette.   I take a drink from the hose.   I stuff the stolen bags of PCP into her pockets, thinking, what the hell.   Maybe she and her friends