Black Wings: New Tales of Lovecraftian Horror (8 page)

  
Not a drug deal. Not a delivery of some hijacked old shit.
Devil worship? He turns his head and looks back at the Pontiac. At the trunk. The trunk he'd never looked in.

  "Hello, Johnny."

  "Sorry I'm late, but the rain—"

  "Rain?"

  "It stopped just over there. Freaky. Like there was a barrier it couldn't pass through."

  "Rarely does the rain hunt in the Halls of Fire." With a hand, thin wisps of curling smoke rising off it, he removed his sunglasses.

  Red eyes leveled at him. Unblinking. Stabbing red eyes, bare of all except contempt.

  
Fuck, that's . . . unholy!
His mouth open—language flattened out with a bang, the burning air rushing into it.

  The dark man has not moved. As cursed shadows tethered to forgotten riddles his cats sit at the edges of the table.

  "Heavenly things dancing in the sun . . . They Dwell on Other Planes." Empty well-deep voice. Thin, stone lips hardly moving.

  
How does he do that?
His hand moves to his left for comfort— no gun. He has a gun, but it's on the seat of the car. Forgotten in haste; to get this over and get out of here, to get his money.

  The moon falls between cracks in the clouds. The air smells of light-devouring blackness. And the black man has not moved. And the scarring pattern of the swelling music boils on.

  All he can do—simple and terrified—is stare. At the loud red eyes. He wants The End. Wants the money—his
money.
Wants to leave, to be on his way to Mexico. Wants Now to be over. But all he can do is stare.

  The song the black man sings ends. The red eyes grow cold, the smile widens. "So we have arrived. Dark and light in shadows on this hill. Dark and light, one to take and one to give."

  
Shit, the package. It's still in the trunk.
"Right. Sorry. I'll get the package."

  Low laughter dancing. "I've no need for it. I know the way."

  "But I have it. It's in the trunk. Right where your man said it was. I've never touched it. Never even looked at it . . . Could I get my money? And go?"

  "Money? Oh, yes, that. Calm yourself, my boy, you'll have no need for money—not that there ever was any. Not where you are going."

  The stone smile.

  Bait. Tricked.

  
Going? I'm going to get my fuckin' gun. He'll give me my money,
then . . . and I'll put two in his head for fuckin' with me. Shoot his
fuckin' cats too.

  "Johnny, I can see by your face you think to do me violence and leave. That will not happen. I control the opening of every door. I've a few moments to fill, so allow me to amuse you with a detail or two about you and the road traveled.

  "Your dear mother was a drunkard and a whore, not that she took money for her wanton rutting, mind you, but for a few cheap drinks she would spread her legs wide. And I had a need, a need that required a vessel to carry a drop of my essence. A need for an act to occur under a star engraved in times ancient. A little song in her ear followed by a several glasses of gin and she . . . how would you put it? She fucked like a rabbit—climbed on top and took to my lust as if she were a maggot to an apple. I left her sleeping and dripping with my seed."

  Black laughter brands him.

  "I never saw her again, yet I've kept an eye on you. The night you were born the moon was fire-red—did she never tell you of The Burning? My pets were there, watching, walking in your first dream. After engraving you they came and reported to me. As the years found themselves whitened by the teeth of time, I've sent one of my servants to check on you from time to time. You'll recall the attorney who suddenly showed up to rid you of your legal entanglements when that girl died. He was a servant I employ on occasion. And Pitt—even the worm fears the scent of what he sends to the soil, did you ever wonder why a coldblooded monster like that befriended and protected you in jail? Again, my handiwork. Remember the evening your father fell down the stairs to his death, consumed by the spleen of a hard drunk?"

  Mr. Phoenix's finger strokes the neck of the cat sitting at his right hand. "Mesah was there watching that night and made certain the coarse mite flew to the Labyrinth Where the Damned Howl. I could not, after all, have you damaged. Every time some loose extreme put you at risk I cut it back to nothing."

  Assaulted by the life sprawling in his telescope of memory, his skin crawls. He wants out of the bullring, wants the weathervane to turn. Wants something sane. Wants his life to be another life, one not framed in the shipwreck of 100 sabbaths, not washed away by the teeth of 1,000 drinks. He is too stunned to cry. All capacity for speech is stitched shut.

  "Though your life has been dark and violent, have you never taken note of the fact that in 32 years no scar has been born upon your body?"

  His mind weak, beaten down. He is desperate for words. For some key to freedom.

  "I see you wish you could trade the empty box in the trunk for your liberty. Yes, Johnny, the box contains
nothing."
The word a grave.

  "You see, for this, what shall we call it? Prelude To Windfall, perhaps . . . You needed to come here freely. The package was merely a vehicle for you to do so. I can see you're searching for a reason for all this . . . I'll be plain. I am called by many names. Tonight the verse of stone and wind call me, The Opener of the Way. You and I are here to open a door. A door opened by the harvest."

  
Harvest? Like in dead?

  He would run—the keys are still in the Pontiac's ignition, but finds himself bound, held knee-deep in sand.

  Mr. Phoenix's hands glow. Tendrils of jet-black smoke curl from his spider-fingers. There is a blade in his hand.

  The black man stands. His stone smile widens.

  He finds his tongue, hisses, "A door to what?"

  "To something you'll never see, nor would you understand."

  Lost and overwhelmed. "I don't—"

  "The only thing you need understand is there will be blood spilled."

Michael Shea

Michael Shea has written the Lovecraftian novel
The Color out of Time
(DAW, 1984). He is the author of the short story collection
Polyphemus
(Arkham House, 1987). His Cthulhu Mythos story "Fat Face" has been widely reprinted, notably in Cthulhu 2000 (Arkham House, 1995). Among his many other works are a four-volume series of novels chronicling the adven tures of Nifft the Lean (1982–2000), the first of which won the World Fantasy Award. Shea has also worked in science fiction and has been nominated for a Hugo Award.

 
 
icky Deuce, twenty-eight and three years sober, was the night clerk at Mahmoud's Mom and Pop Market. He was a small, leanly muscled guy, and as he sat there, the darkness outside deepening toward midnight, his tight little Irish face looked pleased with where he was. Behind Ricky on his stool, the whole wall was bottles of every kind of Hard known to man.

  This job was easy money—a sit-down after his day forklifting at the warehouse. He already owned an awesomely restored '64 Mustang and had near ten K saved, and by rights he ought to be casting around for where he might take off to next. But the fact was, he got a kick out of clerking here till two a.m. each night.

  A kick that was not powder nor pill nor smoke nor booze, that was not needing any of them, especially not booze, which could shine and glint in its bottles and surround him all night long, and he not give a shit. He never got tired of sitting here immune, savoring the unadorned adventure of being alive.

  Not that the job lacked irritants. There were obnoxious clientele, and these preponderated toward the deep of night.

  Ricky thought he heard one even now.

  Single cars shushed past outside, long silences falling between, and a scuffy tread advanced along the sidewalk. A purposeful tread that nonetheless staggered now and then. It reminded Ricky that he was It, the only island of comfort and light for a half a mile in all directions, in a big city, in the dead of night.

  Then, there in Mahmoud's Mom and Pop Market's entryway, stood a big gaunt black guy. Youngish, but with a strange, outdated look, his hair growing weedily out toward a 'fro. His torso and half his legs were engulfed in an oversize nylon athletic jacket that looked like it might have slept in an alley or two, and which revealed the chest of a dark T-shirt that said something indecipherable RULES. The man had a drugged look, but he also had wide-arched, inquiring brows. His glossy black eyes checked you out, as if maybe the real him was somewhere back in there, smarter than he looked.

  But then, as he lurched inside the store, and into the light, he just looked drunk.

  "Evening," Ricky said smiling. He always opened by giving all his clientele the benefit of the doubt.

  The man came and planted his hands of the counter, not aggressively, it seemed, but in the manner of someone tipsily presenting a formal proposition.

  "Hi. I'm Andre. I need your money, man."

  Ricky couldn't help laughing. "What a coincidence! So do I!"

  "OK, Bro," Andre said calmly, agreeably. As if he was shaping a counter-proposal, he straightened and stepped back from the counter. "Then I'ma cut your fuckin ass to
ribbons
till you
give
me your fuckin money!"

  The odd picture this plan of action presented almost made Ricky laugh again, but then the guy whipped out and flipped open—with great expertise—a very large-gravity knife, which he then swept around by way of threat, though still out of striking range. Ricky was so startled that he half fell off his stool.

  Getting his legs under him, furious at having been galvanized like that, Ricky shrieked, "A knife? You're gonna to rob me with a fucking
knife? I've
got a fucking knife!"

  And he unpocketed his lock-back Buck knife and snapped it open. All this while he found himself once again trying to decipher the big, uncouthly lettered word on the guy's T-shirt above the word RULES.

  Andre didn't seem drunk at all now. He swept a slash over the counter at Ricky's head, from which Ricky had to recoil right smartly.

  "You shit! You do that again and I'm gonna slice your—"

  Here came the gravity knife again, as quick as a shark, and, snapping his head back out of the way, Ricky counter-slashed at the sweeping arm and felt the rubbery tug of flesh unzipped by the tip of his Buck's steel.

  Andre abruptly stepped back and relaxed. He put his knife away and held up his arm. It had a nice bloody slash across the inner forearm. He stood there letting it bleed for Ricky. Ricky had seen himself and others bleed, but not a black man. On black skin, he found, blood looked more opulent, a richer red, and so did the meat underneath the skin. That cut would take at least a dozen stitches. They both watched the blood soak the elastic cuff of Andre's jacket.

  "So here's what it is," said Andre, and dipped his free hand in the jacket and pulled out a teensy, elegant little silver cellphone. "Ima call the oinkers, and say I need an ambulance because this mad whacked white shrimp—that's you—slashed me when I just axed him for some spare change, and then Ima ditch the shit outta this knife before they show up, and it won't matter if they believe me or not, when they see me bleedin like this they gonna take us both down for questioning and statements. How's your rap sheet, Chief, hey? So look. Just give me a little money and I'm totally outta your face. It don't have to be much. Ten dollars would do it!"

  This took Ricky aback. "Ten dollars? You make me cut you for ten dollars?"

  "You wanna give me a hundred, give me a hundred! Ten's all you gotta give me—and a ride. A short ride, over to the Hood."

  "You want money and a ride! You think I'm outta my mind? You wanna ride to your connection to score, and when we get there, you're gonna try an get more money out of me. And that's the
best
case scenario." Ricky was dismayed to hear a hint of negotiation in his own words. It was true, he'd had a number of contacts with the San Francisco Police Department, as the result of alcohol-enhanced conflicts here and there. But also, he felt intrigued by the guy. Something fascinating burned in this Andre whack. Intensity came off him in waves, along with his faint scent of street-funk. The man was consumed by a passion. In the deformed letters on his t-shirt, Ricky thought he could make out a T_H_U.

  "What could I be coppin for ten bucks?" crowed Andre. "I'm not out to harm you! This just has to do with
me.
See, it's
required.
I have to get these two things from someone else, the money and the ride."

  "Explain that. Explain why you
have
to get these two things from someone else."

  Andre didn't answer for a moment. He stared and stared, not exactly at Ricky, but at something he seemed to see in Ricky. He seemed to be weighing this thing he detected. He had eyes like black opals, and strange slow thoughts seemed to move within their shiny hemispheres . . . .

  "The reason is," he said at last, "that's the
procedure.
There are these particular rules for seeing the one I want to see."

  "And who is that?"

  "I can't tell you. I'm not allowed."

  It was almost time to close up anyway. Ricky became aware of a powerful tug of curiosity, and aware of the fact that Andre saw it in his eyes. This put Ricky's back up.

"No. You gotta give me something. You gotta tell me at least—"

  "Thassit! Fuck you!" And Andre flipped open the cellphone. His big spatulate fingertips made quick dainty movements on the minute keys. Ricky heard the bleep, minuscule but crystal clear, of the digits, and then a micro-voice saying, "Nine One One Emergency."

  "I been stabbed by a punk in a liquor store! I been stabbed!"

  Ricky violently shook his head, and held up his hands in surrender. With a bleep, Andre clicked off. "Believe me! You're not makin a mistake. It's something I can't talk about, but you can
see
it. You can see it yourself. But the thing is, it's got to be now. We can't hem an haw. And Ima tell you now, now that you're in, that there's something
in
it for you, something good as gold. Trust me, you'll see. Help me with this knot," he said, pulling a surprisingly clean-looking handkerchief from his jacket pocket. He folded it—rather expertly, Ricky thought—into a bandage. Ricky wrapped it round the wound and tied the ends in a neat, tight square-knot, feeling as his fingers pressed against flesh that he was forming a bond with this whack by stanching his blood. He was accepting a dangerous complicity with his whack aims, whatever they might be . . . .

  Bandaged, Andre held out his hand. Ricky put a ten in it.

  "Thanks," said Andre. "So. Where's your ride?"

 
 
The blue Mustang boomed down Sixteenth through the Mission. All the signals were on blink. Here and there under the streetlights, there was a wino or two, or someone walking fast, shoulders hunched against the emptiness, but mostly the Mustang rolled through pure naked City, a vacant concrete stage.

  Ricky liked driving around at this hour, and often did it on his own for fun. When he was a kid, he'd always felt sorcery in the midnight streets, in the mosaic of their lights, and he'd never lost the sense of unearthly shapes stirring beneath their web, stirring till they almost cohered, as the stars did for the ancients into constellations. Tonight, with mad, bleeding Andre riding shotgun, the lights glittered wilder possibilities, and a sinister grandeur seemed to lurk in them.

  They passed under the freeway and down to the Bayside, hanging south on Third. After long blocks of big blank buildings, Third took a snaky turn, and they were rolling through the Hood.

  Pawn shops and thrift stores and liquor stores. A whiff of Mad Dog hung over it, Mad Dog with every other drug laced through it. The Hood was lit, was like a long jewel. The signals were working here.

  The signals stretched out of sight ahead, like a python with scales of red and green, their radiance haloed in a light fog that was drifting in off the Bay. And people were out, little knots of them near the corners. They formed isolated clots of gaudy life, like tidepools, all of them dressed in baggy clothes of brightcolored nylon, panelled and logo-ed with surreal pastels under the emerald-and-ruby signal glare. And as they stood and talked together, they moved in a way both fitful and languid, like sealife bannering in a restless sea.

  The signals changed in pattern to a slow tidal rhythm. It seemed a rhythm meant to accommodate rush-hour traffic. You got a green for two blocks max, and then you got a red. A long, long red. Ricky's blue Mustang was almost the only car on the road in this phantom rush-hour, creeping down the long bright python two blocks at a time and then idling, idling interminably, while the sealife on the corners seemed astir with interest and attention.

  Ricky had no qualms about running red lights on deserted streets, but here it seemed dangerous, a declaration of unease.

  "Fuck this!" he said at their fourth red light, slipping the brake and rolling forward. At a stroll though, under twenty. The Mustang lounged along, taking green and red alike, as if upon a scenic country road. The bright languid people on the corners threw laughter at them now, a shout or two, and it seemed as if the whole great submarine python stirred to quicker currents. Ricky felt a ripple of hallucination, and saw here, for just a moment, a vast inked mural, the ink not dry, themselves and all around them still half-liquid entities billowing in an aqueous universe . . . .

  Out of nowhere, for the first time in three years, Ricky had the thought that he would like a drink. He was amazed at this thought. He was frightened. Then he was angry.

  "I'm not drivin much farther, Andre. Spit out where we're going, and it better be nearby, or you can call 911 and I'll take my chances. I'll bet you got a longer past with the SFPD than I do."

  "Damn you! Whip in here, then."

  This cross street was mostly houses—some abandoned—with a liquor store on the next corner, and a lot of sealife lounging out in front of it. "Pull up into some light where you can see this."