Witch Lights by Michael M. Hughes

black robe. You know what I’m talking about.”
    Ray didn’t need to answer. When Mantu had found him that terrible night after the ritual at Crawford’s, Ray had been wearing a blood-splattered hooded red robe.
    “And he starts screaming. Eyes popping like his head’s gonna explode. ‘Amber! What the fuck are you doing? Get upstairs or I’ll beat your fucking head in!’ He’s screaming like that, his face purple and veins sticking out of his neck like he’s gonna have an aneurysm. She just gets out of bed, picks up her clothes, and splits. She doesn’t say a word to me.
    “And now the crazy white man in his scary robe is looking at me. The robe was black, not white, but shit, a white man in a robe is still
a white man in a robe,
right? Then he smiles. I’ll never forget that smile. The smile of a jackal. Looking straight at me just like when Wile E. Coyote would see the Road Runner turn into a lamb chop or a turkey leg. And then he looks at my dick, which at that point was about the size of a raisin. ‘You part of the entertainment?’ he asks.
    “I tell him no, nope, just a guest, thank you very much. No entertaining for me, no sirree, and hey, I think it’s about time I got home anyway because my poor, sick mother needs her medicine. I’m wondering how the fuck I’m gonna get out of the room alive. Then another guy pokes his head in the room. Younger man, fat. Greek or Italian or something. Mafia type if I’ve ever seen one. The way he looks at me I’m sure he’s gonna slice me from my balls to my chin. But he turns and grabs the other guy and whispers something to him and they just leave.”
    “Damn, Mantu.”
    “Oh, that ain’t the end, Ray. I wish it was. So I get dressed as fast as I can. I’m just getting my shoes on when two more motherfuckers come in. Young white guys, mean-looking and dressed in nice suits. One of them pulls out a Dirty Harry–sized Glock and points it at my face. Right between my eyes.”
    He wiped sweat from his forehead but didn’t take his eyes off the road. “They made me get on the bed. Facedown. Asked me all kinds of questions—who I was, why I was there. I told them the truth, but they seemed surprised that I had gotten in. I was sure they were just gonna pop me and toss me in the Delaware River with a cinder block tied around my neck.
    “And then they took me out into an alley. I was praying to Jesus, to Allah, to Buddha, praying that I would live, because if I did I was never going to do another line of coke, I’d never drink again, I’d stop the reefer, and I’d buy my dear old mother a condo in Florida and take her to church every Sunday and out for a big pancake breakfast afterward. All those bullshit bargains you make with God to avoid getting a piece of lead in one side of your head and your brains out the other.”
    “And you’re here.”
    “Yeah. Here I am. They just kicked me in the balls and threw me on the concrete and said, ‘You forget all about this night, nigger, because we know who you are.’ I cried. I was so happy to be alive, I just laid there and cried.”
    “So then what?”
    Mantu looked at Ray, then back at the road. He cleared his throat. “I couldn’t get it out of my mind. Once the fear wore off I got mad as hell. And then I just stopped getting gigs. No one returned my calls, not even people I considered my friends. Somehow those bastards blackballed me and shut me down. My whole career, all those years putting in my time…up in smoke.”
    “You must have been pissed.”
    “Oh, yes. So pissed it drove me to try to figure out what the hell had happened. But curiosity was part of it, too. Who were these people? What was the deal with the robes? I figured maybe they were Freemasons or the mob or some weird Illuminati-type shit. And then I picked up the paper one day and there he was. Looking me in the face.”
    Ray stared. “Who?”
    “The businessman. The guy in the robe from the party. William R. Hobbs.”
    Ray