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I pop the lock on the trunk with the black blade and start tossing things. It’s full of the usual car junk. A tire iron, spare tire, jumper cables. But there’s also military gear. I go back to where I left Mammon with a sturdy leather satchel and drop it beside him. With the knife I cut a large square of fabric from his suit jacket and lay it out flat on the grass.
Kelly creeps over closer to see what="1 to see I’m doing.
“You might not want to watch this,” I say.
“If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather stay. This looks like it might be quite interesting.”
“Okay,” I say. “Here’s the situation. We have to walk to Eleusis and then get all the way to the asylum and back out again. I’m wearing a glamour so I don’t broadcast that I’m alive, but I’m bleeding, so I need more. And if Mammon signaled a posse, he might have told them I was the one who took him. I can’t look like me. Are you getting my point?”
Jack gives me a big wolfish smile.
“If you’re about to do what I think you are, I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
“Okay, but if souls puke, don’t do it on me.”
“I’ll remember that, sir.”
“And don’t call me ‘sir.’ ”
“Yes. Sorry.”
I close my eyes and try to remember any binding spells I picked up along the way, something to keep Mammon here with us a little longer before he croaks. My head is still a little foggy from the crash, but I come up with a minor bit of hoodoo that should hold if I work fast.
The next part I’ve never actually tried myself, but I saw it done a couple of times by old juju priests I met through some Dharma bums in a New Orleans Sub Rosa clan.
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.
