Neil Gaiman & Caitlin R. Kiernan & Laird Barron (44 page)

Betty circled back, stopped and looked at him expectantly. Glum and grudging, Mr. Bright dug into an inner coat pocket and pulled out a roll of greasy twenties. He began to count them off, slowly and then more slowly, as Betty looked on. When he stopped, Betty mimed laughing again, throwing his head back, pointing in disbelief. Mr. Bright gritted his teeth and peeled away more twenties, until there was quite a pile of rancid cabbage in his lap. He threw the last bill down in disgust.

“That’s every damn cent I got with me,” he said. “You better be worth it.”

Betty swept up the money and went through a routine of counting it himself, licking his thumb between each bill and sweeping his hands out in wide elaborate gestures. Apparently satisfied, he drew a tiny, pink vinyl purse from his bicycle’s basket and tucked away the money. Leaning down, he winked broadly at Mr. Bright.

Then he pushed his little sailor cap forward on his brow and pedaled off into the fog.

∇

Three days later, Mr. Bright was presiding over a poker game at the front table with Charlie, Leon and Elmore Souza, who had lost both hands in an accident at the fish cannery but was a master at manipulating cards in his prostheses, to such an extent that he won frequently because his opponents couldn’t stop staring. Since they were only playing for starlight mints, though, nobody minded much.

Mr. Bright was in a foul mood all the same, having concluded that he’d been shaman-suckered out of a hundred and eighty dollars. He had just anted up five mints with a dip into the box from Iris Fancy Foods Restaurant Supply when he looked up to see Betty Step-in-Time sashaying into the Chowder Palace. His friends looked up to see what he was snarling at, and quickly looked away. A peculiar silence fell.

Betty was carrying a Pee Chee folder. He walked straight up to Mr. Bright, opened the folder with a flourish, and presented it to him. Mr. Bright stared down at it, dumfounded.

“We should maybe go,” said Leon, pushing away from the table. Charlie scuttled out the door ahead of him, and Elmore paused only to sweep the starlight mints into his windbreaker pocket before following them in haste.

Betty ignored them, leaning down like a helpful maitre d’ to remove a mass of photocopied paper from the folder and arrange it on the table before Mr. Bright.

The first image was evidently from a book on local history. It was a very old photograph, to judge from the three-masted ship on the horizon; waves breaking in the background, one or two bathers in old-fashioned costume, and a couple of little board and batten shacks in the foreground. White slanted letters across the lower right-hand corner read:
Nunas Beach, corner of Alder and Stanford.
Squinting at it, Mr. Bright realized that he was seeing the view from his own front window, a hundred years or more in the past.

Silently Betty drew his attention to the fact that the future site of Calamari Curls was a bare and blasted lot, though evening primrose grew thickly up to its edge.

“Well, so what?” he said. In reply, Betty whisked the picture away to reveal another, taken a generation later but from the same point of view. A building stood on the spot now—and there were the same arched windows, the same fanlight door, above which was a sign in letters solemn and slightly staggering: ALDER STREET NATATORIUM.

“A nata-what?” said Mr. Bright. Betty placed his hands together and mimed diving. Then he gripped his nose, squeezed his eyes shut and sank down, waving his other hand above his head.

“Oh. Okay, it was a swimming pool? What about it?”

Betty lifted the picture. Under it was a photocopied microfilm enlargement, from the
San Emidio Mission Bell
for May 2, 1922. Mr. Bright’s reading skills were not strong, but he was able to make out enough to tell that the article was about the Alder Street Natatorium in Nunas Beach, which had closed indefinitely due to a horrifying incident two days previous. Possible ergot poisoning—mass hallucinations—sea-creature—prank by the boys of San Emidio Polytechnic?—where is Mr. Tognazzini and his staff?

“Huh,” said Mr. Bright. “Could we, like, blackmail somebody with this stuff?”

Betty pursed his cupid’s bow and shook a reproving finger at Mr. Bright. He drew out the next paper, which was a photocopied page from the
Weekly Dune Crier
for April 25, 1950. There were three young men standing in front of the Hi-Ho Lounge, looking arch. The brief caption underneath implied that the Hi-Ho Lounge would bring a welcome touch of sophistication and gray-flannel elegance to Nunas Beach.

“So I guess they boarded the pool over,” said Mr. Bright. “Well?”

Quickly, Betty presented the next photocopy. It was an undated article from the
San Emidio Telegraph
noting briefly that the Hi-Ho Lounge was still closed pending the police investigation, that no marihuana cigarettes had been found despite first reports, and that anyone who had attended the poetry reading was asked to come forward with any information that might throw some light on what had happened, since Mr. LaRue was not expected to recover consciousness and Mr. Binghamton and Mr. Cayuga had not been located.

Mr. Bright shook his head. “I don’t get it.”

Betty rolled his eyes and batted his lashes in exasperation. He shuffled the last paper to the fore, and this was not a photocopy but some kind of astronomical chart showing moon phases. It had been marked all over with pink ink, scrawled notations and alchemical signs, as well as other symbols resembling things Mr. Bright had only seen after a three-day weekend with a case of Ten High.

“What the hell’s all this supposed to be?” demanded Mr. Bright. “Oh!… I guess this is… some kind of shamanic thing?”

Betty leaped into the air and crossed his ankles as he came down, then mimed grabbing someone by the hand and shaking it in wildly enthusiastic congratulation. Mr. Bright pulled his hands in close.

“Okay,” he said in a husky whisper. He looked nervously around at his empty restaurant. “Maybe you shouldn’t ought to show me anything else.”

But Betty leaned forward and tapped one image on the paper. It was a smiling full moon symbol. He winked again, and backed toward the door. He gave Mr. Bright a thumbs-up, then made an OK symbol with thumb and forefinger, and then saluted.

“Okay, thanks,” said Mr. Bright. “I get the picture.”

He watched Betty walking primly away, trundling the pink bicycle. Looking down at the table, he gathered together the papers and stuffed them back in the Pee Chee folder. He wheeled himself off to his cubicle and hid the folder under his pillow, with the tire iron.

Then he rolled around to his desk, and consulted the calendar from Nunas Billy’s Hardware Circus. There was a full moon in three days’ time.

∇

It was Saturday, and the full moon was just heaving itself up from the eastern horizon, like a pink pearl. Blue dusk lay on Nunas Beach. The tide was far out; salt mist flowed inland, white vapor at ankle level. Mr. Bright sat inside the darkened Chowder Palace, and watched, and hated, as people lined up on the sidewalk outside Calamari Curls.

Calamari Curls was having Talent Nite. The Early Bird specials were served, and senior diners went shuffling back to their singlewides, eager to leave before the Goddamned rock and roll started. Young families with toddlers dined and hurried back to their motels, unwilling to expose little ears to amplified sound.

Five pimply boys set up their sound equipment on the dais in the corner. They were the sons of tractor salesmen and propane magnates; let their names be forgotten. The front man tossed his hair back from his eyes, looked around at the tables crowded with chattering diners, and said in all adolescent sullenness:

“Hi. We’re the Maggots, and we’re here to shake you up a little.”

His bassman leaped out and played the opening of “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction”
with painful slowness, the drummer boy joined in clunk-clunk-clunk, and the front man leaned forward to the mike and in a hoarse scream told the audience about his woes. The audience continued biting the tails off shrimp, sucking down frozen strawberry margaritas and picking at Kona Coffee California Cheesecake.

When the music ended, they applauded politely. The front man looked as though he’d like to kill them all. He wiped sweat from his brow, had a gulp of water.

Betty Step-in-Time wheeled his bicycle up to the door.

“We’re going to do another classic,” said the front man. “Okay?”

Ka-
chunk!
went the drums. The keyboardist and the lead guitarist started very nearly in sync: Da da da.
Dada. DA DA DA. Dada.

“
Oh Lou-ah Lou-ah-eh, ohhhh baby nagatcha go waygadda go
!” shouted the front man.

Betty Step-in-Time dismounted. Just outside the restaurant’s threshold, he began to dance. It began in time with the music, a modest little kickstep. A few diners looked, pointed and laughed.

“Nah nah nah nah asaya Lou-ah Lou-ah eh, whooa babeh saya whaygachago!”

Betty’s kickstep increased its arc, to something approaching can-can immodesty. He threw his arms up as he kicked, rolling his head, closing his eyes in abandon. A diner sitting near the door fished around in pockets for a dollar bill, but saw no hat in which to put it.

“Ah-nye, ah-dah, ah ron withchoo, ah dinkabobsa gonstalee
!” cried the front man. Betty began to undulate, and it seemed a tremor ran through the floor of the building. A tableful of German tourists jumped to their feet, alarmed, but their native companion didn’t even stop eating.

“Just an aftershock,” he said calmly. “No big deal.”

“Ah rag saga leely, badoom badoom, wha wah badoo, jaga babee!”

Betty began to dance what looked like the Swim, but so fast his arms and legs blurred the air. The lights dimmed, took on a greenish cast.

“Who’s playing with the damn rheostat?” the manager wanted to know.

“Ayah ha Lou-ah Lou-ah eh, whoa ba-bah shongo waygatchago!”

Sweat began to pour from Betty’s face and limbs, as his body began to churn in a manner that evoked ancient bacchanals, feverish and suggestive. The green quality of the light intensified. Several diners looked down at their plates of clam strips or chimichangas and stopped eating, suddenly nauseous.

“Ya ya ya ya ah-sha-da Lou-ah Lou-ah he, Nyarlathotep bay-bah weygago!”
sang the front man, and he was sweating too, and—so it seemed—dwindling under the green light, and the carefully torn edges of his black raiment began to fray into rags, patterned with shining mold.

Betty’s hips gyrated, his little sailor hat flew off, and every curl on his head was dripping with St. Elmo’s fire. Several diners vomited where they sat. Others rose in a half-crouch, desperate to find the lavatory doors marked
Beach Bums
and
Beach Bunnies.
Half of them collapsed before they made it. They slipped, stumbled and fell in the pools of seawater that were condensing out of the air, running down the walls.

“Ah Lou-ah Lou-ah eh, ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn!”
wailed the white-eyed thing the front man had become, and his band raised reed flutes to their gills and piped a melody to make human ears bleed, and the mortal diners rose and fought to get out the windows, for Betty was flinging handfuls of seaweed in toward them, and black incense.

The pink and turquoise linoleum tiles by the bandstand popped upward, scattered like hellish confetti, as a green-glowing gas of all corruption hissed forth, lighting in blue flames when it met the air, followed by a gush of black water from the forgotten pool below. The first of the black tentacles probed up through the widening crack in the floor.

Betty sprang backward, grabbed up his sailor hat, leaped on his pink bicycle and pedaled away as fast as he could go, vanishing down the misty darkness of Alder Street.

The neon olive had become an eye, swiveling uncertainly but with malevolence, in a narrow scarlet face.

Watching from across the street, Mr. Bright laughed until the tears poured from his eyes, and slapped the arms of his wheelchair. He raised his bourbon bottle in salute as Calamari Curls began its warping, strobing, moist descent through the dimensions.

∇

He was opening a new bottle by the time gray dawn came, as the last of the fire engines and ambulances pulled away. Tom Avila stood in the middle of the street, in gloomy conference with the pastor of St. Mark’s, the priest from Mission San Emidio, and even the rabbi from Temple Beth-El, who had driven in his pajamas all the way over from Hooper City.

Holy water, prayer and police tape had done all they could do; the glowing green miasma was dissipating at last, and the walls and windows of Calamari Curls had begun to appear again in ghostly outline. Even now, however, it was obvious that their proper geometry could never be restored.

Tom shook hands with the gentlemen of God and they departed to their respective cars. He stood alone in the street a while, regarding the mess; then he noticed Mr. Bright, who waved cheerfully from behind his window. Tom’s eyes narrowed. He came stalking over. Mr. Bright let him in.

“You didn’t have anything to do with this, did you, Peg?” the mayor demanded.

“Me? How the hell could I of? I just been sitting here watching the show,” said Mr. Bright. “I ain’t going to say I didn’t enjoy it, neither. Guess nobody’s going to raise no rents around
here
for a while!”

“God damn it, Peg! Now we’ve got us
another
vortex into a lost dimension, smack in the middle of town this time!” said the mayor in exasperation. “What are we going to do?”

“Beats me,” said Mr. Bright, grinning as he offered him the bourbon bottle.

∇

But the present became the past, as it will, and people never forget so easily as when they want to forget. The wreck of Calamari Curls became invisible, as passers-by tuned it out of their consciousness. The green olive blinked no more.

Mr. Bright found that the black things that mewled and gibbered around the garbage cans at night could be easily dispatched with a cast-iron skillet well aimed. His customers came back, hesitant and shamefaced. He was content.