Leprechaun in the Hood: The Musical: A Novel Page 10

  As crazy as it sounded, Mark couldn’t think of a better plan. The others seemed to agree because there wasn’t a word of protest, just blank stares as everyone let it all sink in.

  Trinie looked at Byron and Simon, then over to Mark. Lucas didn’t rate for a glance.

  “Well,” she said. “I mean. You’re infringing on the leprechaun’s intellectual property. We’re just members of the chorus. I think we’ll be fine.”

  Lucas slammed his empty glass down on the table. “She’s right,” he said. “Now if you’ll excuse me I have to go piss and then get on with my life. Just another lesson to respect copyright holders.”

  He stumbled off to the back of the bar and Mark, for one, was happy to watch him go. He hoped that he could get Lucas one on one, explain to him how serious this situation was, that they weren’t messing around.

  When Mark looked back, Simon was crying. “We barely have any cast members left. Please. I know this is my mess. I know I’ve been an asshole. But you both know the choreography and can pull double and triple duty. We already sold the tickets. The leprechaun will show.”

  “What do you think?” Trinie asked Mark.

  Mark was just happy she was speaking to him again, even though her expression was all business.

  “I think,” he started. He didn’t really know what was going to come next until it was out, like having two choices that sound good at a restaurant and surprising yourself with your own order when the waitress asks you what you want. “I think we should help if we can. It’s dangerous, but like you said: the leprechaun’s probably going to focus on Simon.”

  Simon swallowed hard, his eyes red and puffy. Before the director could say anything, Byron spoke up on his behalf.

  “That’s good, because we’re going to need your help hunting for four-leaf clovers and setting up the rest of the gags before tomorrow night. In the meantime we need to lay low and hope that the cops don’t keep the theater closed. I imagine they’ll have that dead guy wiped up by then.”

  Simon went from red to pale, then reached both hands out and touched Trinie and Mark’s forearms. “Thank you for this.”

  “We do have one problem I can’t figure out, though,” Byron said. “Who’s going to play our leprechaun with Marvin locked up and lepped out?”

  Before any of them had a chance to answer this, there was a commotion down at the bar. It sounded like drunken frat boys pounding on the bar for service, unaware that they’d walked into the wrong place to pull that shit.

  From the end of the bar closest to them, Mark watched as the bleach-blonde bartender—she was cute, Mark had seen her before—flipped off the far end, then moved to serve whoever was making the racket.

  Then she started screaming.

  “Kay!” Simon yelled, pushing away from the table and toward the bar.

  Kay was up on the bar. Her hazel eyes were wide and scared and somehow not her own. The patrons at the bar all took an instinctive step back, even though nothing had happened yet beyond a scream.

  Seeing her up on the bar, Simon was struck with the strangest thought. I’ve never actually seen her feet. She’s always behind the bar. She could have been a Muppet for all I knew.

  Her heavy combat boots thudded up and back down again as she tried to pull her feet off the bar. There was a look of frustration on her face, as if her legs were being held in place by a force that she wasn’t able to resist.

  Then she was joined on the bar by him and the patrons of the Lovecraft began murmuring to themselves.

  The leprechaun didn’t just look different in person: he was different. There were subtle discrepancies between this flesh-and-blood version and the one in the films. His outfit was similar, but his face was different. He still had the high cheekbones and deep, filthy dimples, but the skull under his flesh was different. Because this wasn’t Warwick Davis in latex and makeup, this was the leprechaun.

  “Whew,” said a guy next to Simon. “I thought something was actually wrong for a second. I didn’t know there was performance art scheduled for tonight.”

  “There’s not,” Simon said, but the guy only gave him a ‘who-was-talking-to-you’ look.

  “Hey, you there laddie,” the leprechaun said, pointing a clawed finger at Simon. The crowd parted like the Red Sea. “I heard you have a treat tomorrow for ol’ Paddy. Well what’s a big show without dancers? Take a look at this sweet little prancer and be sure to break a leg when you fight that rotten baddie.”

  Kay began to dance an Irish jig, impressive in that nobody in the bar seemed to know she could dance. Even more impressive because she was doing it in boots.

  The leprechaun clapped and grinned, glanced up at Kay’s face. Then his grin faded and he squinted, licked his lips almost nervously. He put both hands into his coat pockets, dumping the contents onto the bar before hopping off and disappearing into the crowd.

  There was no music, only the frantic tapping of Kay’s boots against the polished oak of the bar. Toe-heel, heel-toe, accelerating as the crowd gasped at Kay’s fellow dancers.

  There were two globs of flesh on either side of Kay, and Simon had to squint to make them out: two severed hands dancing on outstretched fingers. The disembodied hands were small enough, the fingers stubby enough, that they could have been a toddler’s hands, but Simon knew better.

  They were Marvin’s hands.

  The two hands kicked out a middle finger in unison with Kay, the three forming a Lord of the Dance chorus line that, once the initial shock had worn off, sent the crowd running for the exits.

  With what looked like great effort to control her mouth, Kay fought to get words out. “Someone,” she yelled, strings of drool dropping out of her half-open mouth, “help me please.” About every third step she would miss a kick, the toe of her boot catching the skin of her calf and leaving a red abrasion.

  Simon saw her future then, her steel-toed boots kicking at her legs until they were broken in half at the knee, her feet still dancing along with Marvin’s hands under their own magic power.

  He looked over to the rest of the group—they were all in as much shock as he was. Though the recent events made it damn hard to deny the existence of the leprechaun, seeing the thing in the flesh made it a certainty. They were now all united in fear, bound together by the task of killing the monster, and though Simon was bubbling with terror, it felt good to have some camaraderie in his life.

  “Byron, help me,” Simon said, vaulting onto a barstool and hoisting himself up the edge of the bar.

  Byron ran over, standing under Kay. His eyes never left the dancing hands. He must have realized what Simon had already guessed, that those fingers once belonged to their friend.

  Simon tried to sneak up behind Kay and lift her off the bar, but before he could get there she did an especially acrobatic twirl, moving to the edge of the bar and kicking back, bloodying Byron’s nose and knocking into him. As Byron stumbled backward, cupping his bleeding face, Simon backed off.

  “I’m s-s-sorry,” Kay stuttered.

  Trinie and Mark were on the move now, ducking under the bar and coming at Kay from the opposite direction.

  There was blood dripping down Kay’s legs now—there seemed to be an equal amount of it from Byron’s busted face and Kay’s own wounds.

  Simon tried to approach again, unsure of what he was attempting to do, or if it would work. He needed to sweep Kay off her feet, get her so that they could tie her legs together so she would stop hurting herself.

  As if they’d read his mind, the hands stopped dancing, lining up in a defensive position between Simon and Kay. It seemed ludicrous to be afraid of something so small, but that didn’t stop the fear from freezing up Simon’s progress.

  The two hands turned, palms toward each other, and seemed to confer. After a moment one bolted forward, the tips of its pointed fingernails tapping against the finished wood of the bar as it sprinted at Simon.

  Simon tried to hop over it, ready to kick the second one away when he reach
ed it, but the hand leapt up to meet him and grabbed hold of his ankle.

  The sharp nails worked up Simon’s pant leg, but he was too close to Kay now to care—he needed to help her.

  He took another jump and was behind her, the second hand sliding across the bar and stumbling to turn itself around.

  Trinie jumped up from behind the bar and smashed a bottle of Jameson against the second hand, as if playing a violent game of Whack-A-Mole. The hand crumpled under the bottle, pressed flat, the tiny fingers breaking. Trinie brought the bottle down a second time and the glass gave way, sprinkling the bar in glass and Irish whiskey. Shards pierced the thin skin of the hand and it twitched, made pathetic by her attack.

  Below them, Byron stirred, the kick not enough to knock him unconscious but clearly fucking him up in some way. He grabbed the nearest barstool and lifted himself to his knees.

  Simon wrapped both arms around Kay from behind. This was not how he imagined their first hug going. She stomped down with both feet, still dancing, crushing Simon’s toes beneath her with what felt like supernatural strength.

  The fingernails of the first hand were at the back of his neck now, the fingers too stubby to get any kind of hold around his throat, but instead continuing to scale his height, ending up on the top of his head and starting back down over his eyes.

  Simon kept his grip on Kay, lifting her off her feet, but her feet still whirled and threw them both off balance.

  There was a tiny finger in his left nostril now, the nail like a blade, stretching the flesh of his nose to its breaking point. Simon was allowed one second to think of Jack Nicholson in Chinatown before the midget hand Roman Polanski-ed his nostril. The pain was intense, the blood flooding his sinuses as he breathed in to scream.

  Byron had finally recovered, and though his face was still contorted and bloody, he ran toward the bar. At the same moment, Kay’s feet hit the ground hard and sprung back up, tossing Simon backward, though he still held his grip around her waist. Her boots kicked out, hit the crushed leprechaun hand and flung it forward. It collided with Byron’s face, throwing him off his feet, the back of his head thudding against the floor.

  Simon uncurled one of his arms from around Kay’s waist, just long enough to grab hold of the hand that had gripped a clump of his hair.

  He pulled at the hand but there was no give. It felt like his scalp was peeling off his skull, and he screamed through clenched teeth, finally having no choice but to release Kay and tug on the hand with both of his. As he fought with it, strands of hair ripped loose, the pain so bad that he wouldn’t be surprised if he’d just given himself his first bald spot.

  Just when he thought there was no hope, that they would never have a chance to act out their plan of action because their entire group would be defeated by a pair of possessed midget hands, everything stopped. The commotion in the bar ceased.

  Kay lay on the floor, moaning and whimpering, rubbing her bruised shins as tears spilled down her cheeks.

  The hand in Simon’s clutches wiggled out of his grip, hit the floor, and scurried away, rushing out the entrance like a frightened rat. The broken hand flopped around as if trying to escape, but couldn’t manage it with all of its broken bones.

  Byron was sitting up now, stanching the blood from his face with his shirtsleeve, the blood hitting the hardwood with an audible drip. His eyes were half-lidded and he looked like he could fall asleep at any moment. He kicked the hand away from him.

  Behind the bar, Trinie’s expression was pure warrior woman, clutching the neck of the broken bottle, her chest heaving as she stared at the still-swinging double doors. Behind her, Mark was hoisting a baseball bat up from behind the bar, Kay’s sharpie-embellished peacekeeper, the side of it reading “you better tip ur ’tender!”

  Walking over from the direction of the bathroom, unfazed by the chaos that had erupted in the bar, came Lucas. Hands in his pockets, whistling like all was well in the world.

  “What’s going on?” Lucas said. He zipped up his fly and then spotted the hand just in front of him. The hand thrashed like an injured bird, flinging green blood all over the floor. “Holy shit…I guess you guys weren’t kidding.” He stomped down on Marvin’s hand until it was a pile of blood-bone jelly.

  Simon helped Kay to her feet, and couldn’t help but notice how she clung to him, pressing her face into his neck and crying.

  “I’m sorry, Kay. I swear…I won’t let anything happen to you.”

  She pulled away from him, wiped the tears from her face. “Simon...”

  “Yeah?”

  “I think I’ll skip going to your show after all.”

  They watched as the thieves piled into a car and zoomed away into the distance. He could have killed them all, could have sent in his minions to shred them into a pulpy soup.

  But he was having far too much fun to end it so quickly.

  And he had found his bride.

  He had entered the bar with the sole purpose of playing with the thieves, letting them know he was there for them and that no matter what they did, no matter how hard they tried, he would bathe in their innards. When his victims were afraid, the kill was always so much more satisfying. Orgasmic, really.

  Once he had seen the bartender’s eyes, he knew she was the one. He could feel it in his bones, in his blood. When he saw the one who called himself Simon, fighting the crowd to save her, it only made it that much sweeter.

  “You can’t run, you can’t hide. You stole me gold, so I’ll steal your bride.”

  The leprechaun chuckled as he waved his hands, the tips of his fingers sparkling with green energy.

  From inside of the bar came the sound of a sneeze. Then another.

  When the third sneeze rang out, the leprechaun roared with laughter and danced his way back into the bar where his bride awaited.

  Byron inspected his bruises in the bathroom mirror. They were bad and he’d be shooting red snakes of dried blood out his nose for the rest of the weekend, but he’d made off lightly compared to Simon. Good, all of this was his fault anyway.

  Byron still couldn’t believe that through all the shit they had seen, all the shit they had been through, that Simon could even think about using the flute in the way he had intended. So the musical could become successful? Fuck that musical!

  There was a knock on the bathroom door. “We got to get going,” Simon said from the next room, his voice nasally.

  Byron wouldn’t normally be driving after a knock like that—he and Simon both should have been in the emergency room—but instead they’d invited the whole crew back to his apartment to rest and plan. Kay had declined their invitation, but had promised not to say anything about them to the police that would be showing up at the Lovecraft. Lucas had also declined, said he had to stop by his store first and that he would meet up with Mark and Trinie the next day.

  Mark and Trinie had already left the apartment to go hunting for four-leaf clovers. It was Byron and Simon’s responsibility to find the wrought iron.

  Portland was probably the only city in the continental United States besides Colonial Williamsburg where you could look up a blacksmith and not have anyone ask you what century you were in.

  The first place on their list had only been two blocks from Byron’s place. If they found what they needed there, he wouldn’t have to endanger them both by driving around.

  Simon did the talking, not something that historically worked out, but Byron was too sore to argue.

  “I need spears made of wrought iron.”

  “Yeah, I can do that,” said the young proprietor with the gauged ears. His arms were scrawny, but hairless and flecked with tiny scars, clearly the result of successful smithing.

  “Cool. Can you have three of them made by tonight?”

  “Rush jobs are expensive, but yeah.”

  “Awesome,” Simon said, then turned to Byron. “You brought your checkbook, right?”

  Byron sighed, wishing that Kay had just kicked his head straight off his
shoulders.

  “You guys ever do this as a kid? Me and my friends would spend whole recesses on this, even though we never found any,” Trinie said, though the nostalgia was hollow.

  Mark could tell she was just saying something to fill the space as they both worked over the patches of clover on their hands and knees.

  “Got one,” Mark said, then threw it over his shoulder and sighed. “Never mind.”

  “This is useless, you guys. Those things are rare,” said Lucas, whose efforts to help were half-assed. He claimed that he’d had knee problems since high school, from the football team, and was trying to spot them from a standing position.

  “Just shut up and look, all right?” Trinie said through clenched teeth.

  “Are we going to talk about this?” Mark said, ignoring Lucas and continuing to comb the area under him.

  “What?” Trinie asked.

  “The fact that this plan is stupid and probably going to get us killed. At the very least arrested for tampering with a crime scene.”

  “You saw that thing,” Trinie said, her fingers trembling as she ran them across the carpet of clover. “It’s got to be stopped or it’s going to kill us.” They were gathered under a tree in the park across from Byron’s place. A few minutes ago they watched as Byron and Simon stumbled out of the apartment, both of them bloodied and bruised, shielding their eyes from the sun.

  “Well, unless it gets what it wants,” Lucas said, interjecting himself into a conversation that Mark would have preferred stay between Trinie and himself. “That’s what those people never seem to do in the movies. They never just give the leprechaun his shit back. It is his. Even his likeness, his IP. If he weren’t killing people, his case would hold up in court.”

  “I guess you’re right, Trinie,” Mark said, openly ignoring Lucas. Though his friend had a point. Now was not the time for smartassery. “We’re implicated now. And helping Simon and Byron is the right thing to do.” He didn’t really believe that, but if he could get her to think that he did, he might still have a chance with her when this was all over.