The Gifts I Bring To Thee by Joseph A. Pinto

Joseph A. Pinto currently lives in New Jersey with his wife Stacey and daughter Athena. He is the author of the horror novel Flowers for Evelene and the novella Dusk and Summer. Please visit the author at www.josephpinto.com.

Billy sat at the bar, his face long, his life longer, and grimaced as an uneven edge of the wooden stool bit into the seat of his pants. This couldn't possibly be the place. Either he read the ad wrong or it was fucked up, misprinted, and if that were the case, he'd be on the phone with the paper the second he got home. Someone sure as shit would be paying for his wasted tank of gas. But the addresses did match, and now he found himself here.

He didn't really want to be here, here being this shithole of a bar, but his options were dwindling and desperation had him grasping for straws. But this was worse than straws - this was... him whiffing at thin air, trying to catch clouds from his back while in the middle of a grassy field. It wasn't working, but he tricked himself to feel like it was anyway.

Billy just wasn't getting it, any of it. Life. Riches one day, rags the next. Billy just didn't get it, no matter how hard he tried. And he tried. Tried with his friends until they grew weary of him chewing their ears off, scattering like frightened pigeons at the mere sight of him now. Family… well, he really didn't have any, none that he could speak of, now with his own family life splintered into pieces. Tried therapy. But he quickly realized his error with that - it proved too time consuming, too costly and usually, more often than not, he returned home (home now being a rented apartment where the stench of old curry festered inside the grain of the wood flooring) with head spinning, crammed chock full of shit his brain found indigestible. So he started looking around for shortcuts. They were out there, somewhere. Besides, he only needed to know one thing. It couldn't be so difficult. He just wanted to know who was fucking his wife.

Eventually, he found them. The shortcuts. They were temporary fixes, he knew. Band-Aids across a gash, but they seemed to work. Gave him some solace. Saved him from chewing another ear off.

He looked around. Three tables squatted impatiently around a mute jukebox. Another, littered with empty shot glasses, occupied the far wall; two old men sat there, haggard faces and potted skin, swaying drunkenly as they sipped at dirty, foamy mugs. Billy glanced at his watch. Barely noon. The old timers must've been here the moment the front door cracked open. Hell, they might've never left from the night before. Billy noticed a last table sitting oddly out of place, shoved away into the far corner of the bar like a naughty little child in timeout. Billy shook his head; definitely, this was all wrong.

"What'll it be, friend?"

The bartender loomed unexpectedly into Billy's face, smiling broadly, revealing crooked teeth and a bit of his morning's ham and egg sandwich. Billy nearly toppled from his stool. Just a second ago, no one was behind the bar. He cleared his throat, shifting uneasily as the stool bit into his ass again. The old men jerked their heads around at the sound. "Actually, I think I'm leaving. Seems as though I've got the wrong place. I was looking for the psychic expo. Newspaper had this address, but obviously it was wrong."

The old men chortled. Billy grimaced, thinking they'd gone and choked down chicken bones. "Psychic expo you say, huh?" The bartender's grey eyes gleamed above his chubby greasy cheeks as he wiped at the bar, his stained towel dragging about in lazy circles. He seemed in no hurry to answer Billy, just wiped, wipe, wipe wipe at spills and spots Billy couldn't see. The bartender turned his back, now rubbing at beer taps with almost affectionate strokes. Their reflections sparkled in the liquor bottles lined behind them.

"I asked you if -"

"I know what you asked me," the bartender snapped. "And you've got the right place."

Billy shook his head. "No, no. I saw an ad in today's classified about a psychic expo. Thought it'd be in a book store or something."

"You ain't from around here, are you friend?" The bartender smiled again, the ham and egg wiggling from his front teeth like a speared fish.

"No," Billy answered weakly, his stomach rolling.

"Then don't be thrown off by appearances. This ain't the prettiest bar, and this ain't the prettiest neighborhood. But people tend to judge a book by its cover, if you know what I mean, so we need to spread our word a bit. Get fresh blood outside our town."

The old men giggled again, but Billy couldn't figure over what. "So yeah, this is the psychic expo. We ran the ad you read. Nothing wrong about it. And now you're here."

Billy massaged his forehead. "Yeah, well, you're right about the neighborhood. No offense, but it's pretty shitty. You're smack in the middle of industrial warehouses. Most are crumbling apart. I don't remember seeing a house for blocks. How do you manage to stay in business? People can't possibly drive down here at night. So what is it then? A good lunch crowd? Happy hour?" Billy forced a grin across his face. It quickly evaporated as the bartender loomed over the bar. "Oh, we manage," the bartender growled through thick phlegm in his throat. "We get by just fine."

Billy shuddered as if unseen fingertips grazed the back of his neck. He whirled upon his stool; no one stood behind him. The old men hung over their beers, laughter (were they mocking him?) frozen across their lips. "I think I need a drink," Billy said.

The bartender flipped his towel over his shoulder, receded into the shadows. Some clanging glasses and rattling bottles later, Billy had his drink. "What's this?" Billy questioned of the sickly green concoction squatting atop the bar like a toad, his highball full of a murky and ghastly liquid clinging to the sides of the glass like toxic sludge.

"House special." The bartender announced proudly. "Compliments of the psychic expo."

"Thanks. Appreciate it," Billy replied, hoping he hid the trepidation from his voice. Against his better judgment, Billy took the glass into hand, lifted it to nose. Surprisingly, it smelled sweet, fruity. His gaze drifted across the top of the highball - the bartender hovered there, an expectant vulture, mouth agape, ham and cheese dancing with every breath he took. "I told you. Don't be thrown off by appearances."

Billy closed his eyes, opened his throat, threw it back. Thick, cloying; Billy feared he might choke. But the house special slid down his throat, warming his gut in mere seconds. The strangest thing - as fearsome as the drink appeared, it somehow tasted like a strawberry milkshake. "Delicious," Billy gasped. "I wouldn't have imagined. Is there even any alcohol in this?"

The bartender chuckled, went back to cleaning his bar. wipe wipe wipe. He nodded his head, never glancing up. "It'll sneak up on you, this drink will. Knock you out. That's why it's the house special."

Billy couldn't resist temptation. He tilted his head back, further, further, the thick liquid lurching sluggishly down his throat like a fat centipede down a drain, until he felt his stomach absorb it like parched soil sucking greedily at the rain. The room tilted, and Billy shifted his weight across the stool to keep from toppling over. Not until his equilibrium had been reestablished did Billy notice the reader.

She sat at the forgotten table in the corner of the bar. How she had gotten there, when she arrived, Billy couldn't be certain. But she sat there now - an oddly deformed head atop slumped and withered shoulders. "Madam Gwendolyn's ready for you now," the bartender whispered.

Billy said nothing, unnerved by the psychic's ghastly appearance. He drained the remainder of his drink with trembling hand and then pushed away from the bar. He approached the psychic cautiously, the way one might creep upon a junkyard dog.

The psychic said nothing, did little to warrant she was aware of Billy's presence. And then Billy realized why. Her eyes were glazed milk-white, protruding from her misshaped melon skull like a fish snatched unceremoniously from the sea. It was difficult to keep from focusing on the grotesque fact that her eyelids seemed to be missing, but then a thin, withered membrane slipped down across her eye, and Billy nearly breathed a sigh of relief that they, indeed, existed. Stop it, he chided himself. She's obviously a sick, old woman.

The unnatural head dipped toward the chair opposite her and despite the numbing chill stealing along his spine, Billy took it without hesitation. This was the psychic fair, after all. It was what he came for. He fumbled for something to say.

The psychic waved a hand, gnarled as a tree root sprung from the ground, through the air. "You have a story that is mine to read," she hissed between the gaps of her decayed teeth. Billy broke into goose bumps and briskly rubbed at his arms. "You come for answers. You will depart with truth. Are you prepared?"

"Of course. Why wouldn't I be?"

"There are some truths meant to consume a man!" Madam Gwendolyn exclaimed, melon head wobbling. Wispy, straw like hair rustled over her brow, and she brusquely swept it aside. Billy wished she hadn't. Her forehead stretched in an endless expanse of crinkled skin, dotted by liver spots dark as mold. "Mmm," she cooed, "you have seen your share of so-called prophets. Digested the rubbish shoveled into your ears. Charlatans, all of them. Telling you only what you needed to hear. None gifted. None with power." Those cold, milky fisheyes bulged and widened. "None like me."

"What makes you so special?" Billy asked crassly.

The psychic chuckled and Billy cringed. It sounded like snot had lodged in her throat. "Your hand, please… into mine." Knobby fingers unfurled across the table, tarnished, hooked fingernails gnashing together. She seized Billy's hand, her palm rough, gravelly, and he bit into the side of his cheek as her grotesque fingers closed like the jaws of a Venus' flytrap. "To grant what you seek, I ask only for your energies in return. That is essential to complete my reading. There is no other fee."

No other fee? It was too good to be true, but Billy was willing to go along. After all the money he'd spent at these soothsayers, it was time he'd gotten something back. "My energies? Yeah, whatever, I guess I can give you that."

Madam Gwendolyn closed her bulbous, nightmarish eyes. She cocked her head to one side, briefly sniffed at the air as a dog would, sensing something Billy couldn't see. "Good, good." Releasing Billy's hand, she unbuttoned her blouse at the wrist, efficiently smoothing and folding as she cuffed to her elbow. Translucent skin now exposed across her slender arm; veins crisscrossed and intersected like a crazy network of backwoods roads. Billy swore he could see the blood pump sluggishly through them, but that was plain crazy - the whole situation was plain crazy. But he'd stick it through. Something about this old hag gave Billy reason to believe. Billy turned, suddenly very thirsty, hoping to get the bartender's attention, hoping to build on the buzz the drink had dealt him. But then the psychic's nails bit into his palm and she jerked him back around, fisheyes twinkling furiously. "These are the gifts I bring to thee."

Pockets of beads broke from Madam Gwendolyn's skin, and as Billy watched, he realized they were tiny droplets of reddish ink. Like water blisters, they rose and burst from her flesh, rolling along her forearm in a glistening network of lines, bubbling, gelling. Stunned, Billy examined her arm this way and that, studying every conceivable angle as the beads of ink transformed into faint outlines, soft shadings. From this side - mad, abstract strokes. From that - a hazy, swirling… "My God," Billy croaked. "It can't be."

Madam Gwendolyn relinquished her hold upon Billy, gazed warmly across her own arm, a sculptor admiring the first signs of life from clay. The tattoo of a woman's face looked back. "Your wife, yes? A beautiful woman. Too beautiful for her own good. The root of your problem. She deceives you, but you're already aware of that. That is not why you're here. Am I correct?"

Billy's head spun. His vision blurred - two Madam Gwendolyn's sat before him, now three, and each as revolting as the last. He turned to the bar again; it shimmered like a mirage, melted away into a dirty greasy smear across the walls. The floor undulated like a pond surface choked thick with sewage. Billy realized it was only layers upon layers of ham and egg coagulating into a crusty topping. Out from the shadows the bartender stepped, his dirty towel flicking from the darkness like a serpent's tongue, and Billy could hear the incessant ridiculing from the old men. He didn't know which way to look, squeezed his eyes shut hoping the madness would go away, and when again he opened them, his wife leered from the psychic's arm. It couldn't be. It just couldn't. This crazy, senile gypsy set him up with some otherworldly sleight of hand magic trick, like Criss Angel, that illusionist Billy often watched on television. His wife probably fucked him, too.

"How much?" Billy demanded. "How much did she pay you? No wonder there's no fee. Your palm's been slicked already. Tell me how much my wife paid you to put you up to this, you grisly old bitch!"

Slowly, the image of Billy's wife faded - first her brow and chin, followed by her lips, nose and finally the inky wisps of her hair. Billy shivered, witnessing the remnants of her face recede eerily beneath Madam Gwendolyn's flesh as if she'd drowned. "And now for what you seek," Madam Gwendolyn said. "The truth to your wife's lies."

Billy heard the laughter of the old men again, heard the whistle of ham and egg from between the bartender's teeth. Heard the pound, pound of his heart against his ribcage as Madam Gwendolyn's arm bubbled like a cauldron, rupturing into dozens of raw craters, oozing with the strange ink like secretion. But the discharge wasn't as thick or as crimson as before. Already it congealed into an odd scab across her pinprick wounds, the bizarre stigmata clearly waning.

"What's going on? I can't see who it is." Billy cried in dismay.

Madam Gwendolyn shook her head. "My strength… is leaving me. My power… no more. Cannot go on."

"No, no, you must!" Billy pleaded. "You said there are none like you. You must finish this. You must tell me who my wife is having an affair with!"

"Harder to see than… I thought it would be. Need… more…"

"More what?" Billy was frantic now, nearly kicking the chair out from beneath him. "You said there's no fee. Dammit, you old bitch! You finish this. You give me what I came for. You give it to me!" He was screaming now, on the cusp of hysteria, but didn't care. So sick he'd grown of getting the runaround from these so-called seers, so sick of having his wallet bled. He'd grown sick of himself too, for becoming so weak and desperate. But Billy just wasn't getting it. He never did. "You tell me who my wife left me for! You make me understand!"

Madam Gwendolyn's head lolled across her shoulders. The wounds upon her arm slowly closed; the tattoo gradually dried. "Your energies," the psychic croaked, "you… promised me."

"Yeah, yeah, crazy bitch. Take my energies. Whatever. Just give ..." But the words snagged inside Billy's throat.

Her sharpened fingernails raked across the surface of the table, milky eyes wide, lips curled, exposing grey diseased gums. Billy's arms were seized without warning, pinned atop the table. The old men held him at either side, their strength unreal; Billy could neither pull nor shake his arms free, and soon their icy fingers squeezed down into bone. Billy tried to scream, tried, because the bartender had snuck behind him and now shoved his greasy towel deep into Billy's mouth.

"I gave you the courtesy of a free drink," the bartender hissed between ham and egg, "and I expect you to be a bit more respectful. Now, you're going to give the Madam what she wants. And then you'll get yours in return."

Wild guffaws from the old men. Billy thrashed wildly. No avail. Their grip only tightened like a vise. Collapsed his arms. Terror ripped red-hot from his lungs, muffled by the pungent towel. Billy glimpsed a steely flash from the corner of his eye, felt a strange pressure release from his body and realized the bartender had just slit his wrists.

Madam Gwendolyn pounced like a cat. Her jaws immediately clamped onto Billy's wrists, hungrily slurping at the blood escaping his body, and a horrible realization struck him as his life agonizingly ebbed away. The ink beading upon the psychic's skin, its odd, coppery smell…

Side to side, she swung her head, suckling at each wrist, every pass gaining uncanny speed, mouth stained and dripping with his escaping essence. The old men laughed, and the bartender laughed, and Billy laughed too, for surely this couldn't be happening, surely he'd fallen, yet again, for the sleight of hand from a soothsayer. And as he laughed and choked behind the vile rag stuck far down his throat, the old psychic perked up, straightened out and released his wrists with a smack of her lips. She cleaned her mouth with a wipe from the back of her hand. "Aah," she sighed, content, rejuvenated.

Billy felt the rag pulled from his throat, the release of the old men's grip. It hardly mattered. His throat was raw. His arms flopped on the table, ruined. A river pumped from his wrists. His body slumped against the table. He was feeling sleepy - maybe he should lay his head down, close his eyes awhile. Take a nap. He could use one. He was tired of trying to get it. Riches one day. Rags the next. But before his eyes slipped shut, he needed to know. Needed to resolve unfinished business.

Madam Gwendolyn presented her arm, bubbling anew with Billy's fresh blood. To grant what you seek, I ask only for your energies in return. "Who… is it… cheats… my wife…" As his voice faded, Billy prayed he could hold on just a bit longer.

Madam Gwendolyn's undulating skin ruptured into hundreds of bloody pinpricks, fusing hurriedly into one another like severed partners seeking their mates. Wide, innocent eyes… high cheekbones… an aquiline nose not unlike his own… From Billy's lips a final gasp. "Maaa… maah… my…"

"Yes," Madam Gwendolyn announced, dabbling her crooked fingers through pools of Billy's blood. "Your sister. Did I not tell you there are some truths meant to consume a man?"

Wild cackles from the old men and the bartender, and before Billy slipped away into darkness, the urge for a ham and egg sandwich overwhelmed him.

© 2009 by Joseph A. Pinto