The Urban Fantasy Anthology (15 page)

I ran around the front of the car and climbed in the driver’s seat as fast as I could. Mrs. Lumley, now some kind of rapidly changing blue creature, growled from the front lawn. I turned on the ignition and hit the gas.

“What the fuck was that supposed to be?” said Christ, catching his breath as he passed us each a cigarette.

“Your old man is out of his mind,” said the Devil. “It’s all getting just a little too strange.”

“Tell me about it,” said Christ. “Remember, I warned you back when they first walked on the moon.”

“This is some really evil shit, though,” said the Devil.

“The whole ball of wax is falling apart,” said Christ.

“I actually had a break-out in the ninth bole of Hell last week,” said the Devil. “A big bastard—he smashed right through the ice. Killed one demon with his bare hands and broke another one’s back.”

“Did you get him?” I asked.

“One of my people said she saw him in Chicago.”

“Purgatory is spreading like the plague,” said Christ.

The Devil leaned up close behind me and put his claw hand on my shoulder. I could feel his hot breath on the back of my neck. “His old man is reading Nietzsche,” he whispered, his tongue grazing my earlobe.

“What’s he saying?” Christ asked me.

“Which way am I supposed to turn to get out of this development?” I asked.

Just then there was an abrupt bump on the top of the car. It startled me and I swerved, almost hitting a garbage can.

“You gotta check this out,” said the Devil. “Saint Lumley of the Bad Trips is flying over us.”

“Punch the gas,” yelled Christ, and I floored it. I drove like a maniac, screeching around corners as the pastel ranches flew by.

“We’re starting to lose her,” the Devil called out.

“What are you carrying?” Christ asked.

“I’ve got a full minute of fire,” said the Devil. “What have you got?”

“I’ve got the Machine of Eden,” said Christ.

“Uhh, not
The
fucking Machine of Eden,” said the Devil, and slammed the back of my seat.

“What do you mean?” said Christ.

“When was the last time that thing worked?”

“It works,” said Christ.

“Pull off and go through the gate up on your right,” said the Devil. “We’ve got to take her out or she’ll dog us for eternity.”

“I don’t like this at all,” said Christ.

After passing the gate, I drove on a winding gravel road that led to the local landfill. There were endless moonlit hills of junk and garbage. I parked the car and we got out.

“We’ve got to get to the top of that hill before she gets here,” said Christ, pointing to a huge mound of garbage.

I scrabbled up the hill, clutching at old car seats and stepping on dead appliances. Startled rats scurried through the debris. When I reached the top I was sweating and panting. Christ beat me, but I had to reach back down and help the Devil up the last few steps.

“It’s the hooves,” he said, “they’re worse than high heels.”

“There’s some cool old stuff here,” said Christ.

“I saw a whole carton of
National Geographic
s I want to snag on the way out,” said the Devil.

Off in the distance, I saw the shadow of something passing in front of the stars. It was too big to be a bird. “Here she comes,” I yelled and pointed. They both spun around to look. “What do I do?” I asked.

“Stay behind us,” said Christ. “If she gets you, it’s going to hurt.”

The next thing I knew, Mrs. Lumley had landed and we three were backed against the edge of the hill with a steep drop behind us. Her blue skin shone in the moonlight like armor, but there were tufts of hair growing from it. She had this amazing aqua body and an eight-foot wingspan, but with the exception of the gills and fangs, she still had the face of a sixty-five-year-old woman. She moved slowly toward us, burping out words that made no sense.

When she came within a few feet of us, Christ said, “Smoke ’em if you got ’em,” and the Devil stepped forward. Tentacles began to grow from her body toward him. One managed to wrap itself around his left horn when he opened his mouth to assault her with a minute of fire. The flames discharged like a blowtorch and stopped her cold. When she was completely engulfed in the blaze, the tentacles retracted, but she would not melt.

As soon as the evil one finished, coughing out great clouds of gray smoke, Mrs. Lumley opened her eyes and the tentacles began again to grow from her sides. I looked over and saw that Christ was holding something in his right hand. It appeared to be a remote control, and he was furiously pushing its buttons.

The Devil had jumped back beside me, his hand clutching my arm. He had real fear in his serpent eyes, yet he could not help but laugh at Christ messing around with the Machine of Eden.

“What’s with the cosmic garage door opener?” he shouted.

“It works,” said Christ, as he continued to nervously press buttons. Then I felt one of the tentacles wrap itself around my ankle. Mrs. Lumley opened her mouth and crowed like a rooster. Another of the blue snake appendages entwined itself around the Devil’s midsection. We both screamed as she pulled us toward her.

“Three,” Christ yelled, and a beam of light shot out of the end of the Machine. I then heard the sound of celestial voices singing in unison. Mrs. Lumley took the blast full in the chest and began instantly to shrivel. Before my eyes, like the special effects in a crappy science fiction movie, she turned into a tree. Leaves sprouted, pink blossoms grew, and as the singing faded, pure white fruit appeared on the lower branches.

“Not fun,” said the Devil.

“I thought she was going to suck your face off,” said Christ.

“What exactly was she,” I asked, “an alien?”

Christ shook his head. “Nah,” he said, “just a fucked-up old woman.”

“Is she still a saint?” I asked.

“No, she’s a tree,” he said.

“You and your saints,” said the Devil and plucked a piece of fruit. “Take one of these,” he said to me. “It’s called the
Still Point of the Turning World.
Only eat it when you need it.”

I picked one of the white pears off the tree and put it in my pocket before we started down the junk hill. The Devil found the box of magazines and Christ came up with a lamp made out of seashells. We piled into the car and I started it up.

I heard Christ say, “Holy shit, it’s 8:00!”

The next thing I knew I was on my usual road back in Jersey. The car was empty but for me, and I was just leaving New Egypt.

Julie’s Unicorn

Peter S Beagle

The note came with the entree, tucked neatly under the zucchini slices but carefully out of range of the seafood crepes. It said, in the unmistakable handwriting that any graphologist would have ascribed to a serial killer, “Tanikawa, ditch the dork and get in here.” Julie took her time over the crepes and the spinach salad, finished her wine, sampled a second glass, and then excused herself to her dinner partner, who smiled and propped his chin on his fingertips, prepared to wait graciously, as assistant professors know how to do. She turned right at the telephones, instead of left, looked back once, and walked through a pair of swinging half-doors into the restaurant kitchen.

The heat thumped like a fist between her shoulder blades, and her glasses fogged up immediately. She took them off, put them in her purse and focused on a slender, graying man standing with his back to her as he instructed an earnest young woman about shiitake mushroom stew. Julie said loudly, “Make it quick, Farrell. The dork thinks I’m in the can.”

The slender man said to the young woman, “Gracie, tell Luis the basil’s losing its marbles, he can put in more oregano if he wants. Tell him to use his own judgment about the lemongrass—I like it myself.” Then he turned, held out his arms and said, “Jewel. Think you strung it out long enough?”

“My dessert’s melting,” Julie said into his apron. The arms around her felt as comfortably usual as an old sofa, and she lifted her head quickly to demand, “God damn it, where have you been? I have had very strange phone conversations with some very strange people in the last five years, trying to track you down. What the hell happened to you, Farrell?”

“What happened to me? Two addresses and a fax number I gave you, and nothing. Not a letter, not so much as a postcard from East Tarpit-on-the-Orinoco, hi, marrying tribal chieftain tomorrow, wish you were here. But just as glad you’re not. The story of this relationship.”

Julie stepped back, her round, long-eyed face gone as pale as it ever got. Almost in a whisper, she asked, “How did you know? Farrell, how did you know?” The young cook was staring at them both in fascination bordering on religious rapture.

“What?” Farrell said, and now he was gaping like the cook, his own voice snagging in his throat. “You did? You got married?”

“It didn’t last. Eight months. He’s in Boston.”

“That explains it.” Farrell’s sudden bark of laughter made Gracie the cook jump slightly. “By God, that explains it.”

“Boston? Boston explains what?”

“You didn’t want me to know,” Farrell said. “You really didn’t want me to know. Tanikawa, I’m ashamed of you. I am.”

Julie started to answer him, then nodded toward the entranced young cook. Farrell said, “Gracie, about the curried peas. Tell Suzanne absolutely not to add the mango pickle until just before the peas are done, she always puts it in too early. If she’s busy, you do it—go, go.” Gracie, enchanted even more by the notion of getting her hands into actual food, fled, and Farrell turned back to face Julie. “Eight months. I’ve known you to take longer over a lithograph.”

“He’s a very nice man,” she answered him. “No, damn it, that sounds terrible, insulting. But he is.”

Farrell nodded. “I believe it. You always did have this deadly weakness for nice men. I was an aberration.”

“No, you’re my friend,” Julie said. “You’re my friend, and I’m sorry, I should have told you I was getting married.” A waiter’s loaded tray caught her between the shoulderblades just as a busboy stepped on her foot, and she was properly furious this time. “I didn’t tell you because I knew you’d do exactly what you’re doing now, which is look at me like that and imply that you know me better than anyone else ever possibly could, which is not true, Farrell. There are all kinds of people you don’t even know who know things about me you’ll never know, so just knock it off.” She ran out of breath and anger more or less simultaneously. She said, “But somehow you’ve gotten to be my oldest friend, just by goddamn attrition. I missed you, Joe.”

Farrell put his arms around her again. “I missed you. I worried about you. A whole lot. The rest can wait.” There came a crash and a mad bellow from the steamy depths of the kitchen, and Farrell said, “Your dork’s probably missing you too. That was the Table Fourteen dessert, sure as hell. Where can I call you? Are you actually back in Avicenna?”

“For now. It’s always for now in this town.” She wrote the address and telephone number on the back of the Tonight’s Specials menu, kissed him hurriedly and left the kitchen. Behind her she heard another bellow, and then Farrell’s grimly placid voice saying, “Stay cool, stay cool, big Luis, it’s not the end of the world. Change your apron, we’ll just add some more brandy. All is well.”

It took more time than they were used to, even after more than twenty years of picking up, letting go and picking up again. The period of edginess and uncertainty about what questions to ask, what to leave alone, what might or might not be safe to assume, lasted until the autumn afternoon they went to the museum. It was Farrell’s day off, and he drove Madame Schumann-Heink, his prehistoric Volkswagen van, over the hill from the bald suburb where he was condo-sitting for a friend and parked under a sycamore across from Julie’s studio apartment. The building was a converted Victorian, miraculously spared from becoming a nest of suites for accountants and attorneys and allowed to decay in a decently tropical fashion, held together by jasmine and wisteria. He said to Julie, “You find trees, every time, shady places with big old trees. I’ve never figured how you manage it.”

“Old houses,” she said. “I always need work space and a lot of light, and only the old houses have it. It’s a trade-off—plumbing for elbow room. Wait till I feed NMC.” NMC was an undistinguished black and white cat who slept with six new kittens in a box underneath the tiny sink set into a curtained alcove. (“She likes to keep an eye on the refrigerator,” Julie explained. “Just in case it tries to make a break for freedom.”) She had shown up pregnant, climbing the stairs to scratch only at Julie’s door, and sauntering in with an air of being specifically expected. The initials of her name stood for Not My Cat. Julie opened a can, set it down beside the box, checked to make sure that each kitten was securely attached to a nipple, briefly fondled a softly thrumming throat and told her, “The litter tray is two feet to your left. As if you care.”

At the curb, gazing for a long time at Madame Schumann-Heink, she said, “This thing has become absolutely transparent, Joe, you know that. I can see the Bay right through it.”

“Wait till you see her by moonlight,” Farrell said. “Gossamer and cobwebs.

The Taj Mahal of rust. Tell me again where the Bigby Museum is.”

“North. East. In the hills. It’s hard to explain. Take the freeway, I’ll tell you where to turn off.”

The Bigby City Museum had been, until fairly recently, Avicenna’s nearest approach to a Roman villa. Together with its long, narrow reflecting pool and its ornamental gardens, it occupied an entire truncated hilltop from which, morning and evening, its masters—copper-mining kinglets—had seen the Golden Gate Bridge rising through the Bay mist like a Chinese dragon’s writhing back. With the death of the last primordial Bigby, the lone heir had quietly sold the mansion to the city, set up its contents (primarily lesser works of the lesser Impressionists, a scattering of the Spanish masters, and the entire oeuvre of a Bigby who painted train stations) as a joint trust, and sailed away to a tax haven in the Lesser Antilles. Julie said there were a few early Brueghel oils and drawings worth the visit. “He was doing Bosch then—maybe forgeries, maybe not—and mostly you can’t tell them apart. But with these you start seeing the real Brueghel, sort of in spite of himself. There’s a good little Raphael too, but you’ll hate it. An Annunciation, with
putti
.”