by Mike Allan
“Find attached sheet music for the second movement of the ritual. Learn this quickly. Stars are aligning, literally and figuratively. Shall be seeing you shortly. Show time soon.”
9
Goat Smoke.
Amoebic Dysentery.
Toxic Plasmosis.
My crooked thumb swipes up and down my phone, going through the List. The List dates back as far as I can remember. It started out scratched in the margins of my notebooks at school, alongside poorly doodled band logos both real and imaginary. I did fine in school, why do you ask?
A few years ago I digitized the List. Makes it easier to pop in another entry, but it lacks the same charm as a hunk of stained and wrinkled college ruled note paper.
Phantom Anus.
Spectral Sphincter.
Somebody was anally fixated that day.
I’ve got hundreds of them. Some goofy, some cool, some plain stupid. Names for stoner bands, doom bands, thrash bands, post-blackgaze avant garde bands even, but nothing leaps out.
Nilos sticks his scratchpad under my nose. I crane my head back till his writing comes into focus.
“Soundlore.”
“Not bad,” I say, and tap it in before going back to the List.
After a few more swipes I lose interest. This isn’t the kind of thing you can force. I toss my phone onto the bench seat and look up.
For four guys, the van is huge. I’ve got the back seat all to myself and it’s long enough I can stretch out comfortably. Nilos is likewise undisputed lord of the middle seat, but relations between us are good.
Up front, Phillips drives. He’s wearing his damn suit still, even though we just crossed into Mississippi and it’s the approximate temperature of Satan’s balls outside. He never seems to sweat, even though the rest of us shed out cramp inducing volumes in the frantic runs between air conditioned havens whenever we stop.
Sjaak dozes in the front passenger seat. I know Sjaak just enough to not like him. He and I have barely said ten words to each other since we got on the road two days ago. He was more than happy to tell me the Dutch lyrics on Swamp Dragger’s “Verlooeren Hoop” EP were pronounced so bad it was an insult to every clog-stomper in the Netherlands. Obviously not a fan.
Nilos twists around and holds up his notepad. “Kampfwagen.” Rendered in a suitably Germanic font.
“Already in there.” It’s a fucking cool name for sure, so cool it’s probably being used by about two thousand bands right now, all of them WWII themed thrash. Nilos frowns and turns back around, tapping his pen against his lower lip.
I catch Phillips glancing back at me in the rearview. We hold gazes a second, then he flicks back to the interstate. The kudzu blurs past, and the highway signs beat by. What the hell are we doing out here?
“We’re going to Mississippi,” he said a couple days ago, rolling up out of nowhere, Moses coming down from the Mount bearing a MapQuest, driving a panel van with a surly Dutchman in the passenger seat.
“Going to sell our souls down at the crossroads?” I said, jokingly. He didn’t laugh.
Nilos explained it to me during the first day of driving, first using signs to help me practice then falling back to the notepad when my eyes glazed over.
The titans sometimes make deals with humans. Give them something, they grease the skids, give you a command of the noise a few notches above even the most talented mere mortals. All those legends about bluesmen selling their souls to a Crossroads Devil, that’s the truth behind them. Maybe I should have tried that before breaking and entering. If I had....
“So what happens when you die if you sold your soul to a titan?” I asked.
Nilos shook his head in a way I’d learned meant, “Don’t know and I don’t wanna know.”
“Not to worry, Eddie,” Phillips had called back from the front passenger seat. Sjaak had been driving at the time. “We’re not dealing in souls.”
“Then what have we got to trade with a titan?”
He gave me a knowing look in the rearview. The inscrutable gaze of a Kung-Fu master and a fortune teller’s cryptic stare screwed and gave birth to that look.
At least I have Nilos to keep me company. Says something about our little band when the mute and the misanthrope are the two best conversationalists.
Miles drag. Phillips shoots down my motion to stop for snacks and drinks, but I get a chant going and Nilos stomps his feet in time. Sjaak shouts at us to shut up, but Phillips, hunched over the wheel, steers us onto an exit. He parks then hops out without a word. He’s got a cigarette in his hand. I haven’t seen him smoking since the first night we met outside the Hour.
Nilos and I have it planned out like D-Day. I flank left, raid the fridge, he executes a pincer attack down the chips aisle. In and out quick. Sjaak, despite his earlier bitching, comes in with us to buy the place out of protein bars and bottled water.
Nilos picks up a drumming magazine with some girl I’ve never heard of from a band I don’t know on the cover behind a kit decorated with Baphomet and family. Her witch’s robe is slashed down the middle all the way to her belly button. I’ll need to grab it after he’s done so I can read the articles.
There’s a graveyard of cigarettes at Phillips’ feet when we step back out. Fat sweat droplets quiver on his forehead. Sweat. He’s human after all. On the one hand I’m glad to see the unflappable finally flapping. On the other hand if Phillips is getting nervous, just what the hell are we driving towards?
“You all right, man?”
“Fine,” he snaps around the cigarette. He’s not puffing it, he’s sucking the life out of it. If he clenches any harder he’ll bite right through the filter.
I hand the drinks off to Nilos and motion for him to go back to the van. “What’s wrong with you?”
“Nothing.”
“Bullshit. I’ve never seen you like this.”
“Grand total of four days of your life you’ve seen me and now you know me so well, do you?”
“I’m not a head doctor but even I can diagnose flop sweat and a sudden chain smoking attack.”
He squeezes a jet of smoke out between his teeth.
“Look, man. I didn’t sign up to be your soldier, okay? I’m a part of this. So I want to know what’s got you so spooked. Is it the titan?”
“Of course it’s the fucking titan,” he snaps.
The horn blares. Sjaak rolls down his window, letting out precious A/C just to scream something in Dutch at me. I flip him the bird.
“I made fun of you when we went back. Remember, for not keeping your eyes open through the Scape? But in those places there’s nothing to see. The Scape is a big, empty place. I haven’t seen one of them since they. . ..”
I don’t say anything. Maybe the right words exist to bring him some comfort, but I know I’ll never find them. I could have all the time in the world to rifle through my vocabulary and I’d never find the words. I know because I’ve tried to find them for myself and come up empty every time.
“The rite could call any of them. But what if it’s her,” he says. “The one who carried out the sentence on me.” He gestures weakly at his chest. I know what he’s remembering. You don’t keep sounds in your brain. When they want to take one from you, they just jam their hands right in and yank till it rips. When they wrenched the G5 out of me it was the worst pain I’ve ever felt. I can’t imagine the agony of having every possible note and chord torn out of you at once. No wonder Phillips is jumpy.
I squeeze his shoulder. He looks at me, shocked. I give him a smile. Then before it gets too weird I jog back and clamber into the van. Phillips follows me a moment later. I can see him trying to catch my eye in the rearview as I stare out the window.
Nilos sticks his pad under my nose.
“Hag.”
“Now that’s a fucking name.”
As the Sun dips I glide the van off the interstate and onto a two-lane deathtrap county road. Wreaths and crosses like dandruff on both shoulders. I try not to look at them a
s I drive. I decide to not even try passing anybody, but no worries, there’s nobody stupid enough to be out here but us.
“There,” Phillips says, pointing. I ease the van onto the shoulder, a few yards from where a red dirt road slashes across the paved county highway. Before I can come to a full stop and throw the parking brake he opens his door and runs around to the back. The van dings at me when he throws the rear door open and starts pulling our gear. “Quickly now,” he hisses. “We’ve got to move.”
I hop out and go around to help. Nilos, bleary eyed and frizzle haired, rolls out of the van. I laugh at him and he sticks his tongue out and flashes what I can only assume is a really mean sign wherever it is he comes from. Sjaak stands on the shoulder, looking out over the tall grass, just watching.
“A little help?” I say as I pass with my cab. Sjaak ignores me.
“Here, here.” Phillips scores a line in the dirt. I set the cab down and Nilos stacks the second atop it.
“Hurry,” he says, kneeling to start plugging my cab into the generator. Nilos and I hustle back to start piling Nilos’ kit. As we’re unloading I notice a couple of hard guitar cases that aren’t mine. “Are you playing?” I shout at Sjaak. He ignores me to keep up his staring contest with the horizon.
Nilos gets his kit all assembled before I can even finish tuning up. Quick little bastard. Maybe the magazine coverwitch had a few pointers on loading in.
“Ready?” Phillips says. Nilos and I nod in unison. Nilos stirs his cymbal.
Phillips yanks the starter. On the fourth rip it catches and hacks out oily smoke. He flicks the switches on the amp. I nod my head along with the beat, one measure, two measures. . .play.
Nilos and I have run through the rite so many times now it’s automatic. We glide through without even a stumble
The generator chokes, sputters, and goes silent. For a moment there’s no sound, not even the hiss of the breeze or the bugs buzzing. Then, the ground in front of me splits. A jagged lightning bolt cleaves through the cracked pavement. The thunderclap blows my hair back. A white curtain of light-noise bursts up from it, surging a hundred feet up. The sound. I don’t just hear it. It hammers at my guts. It leaves a taste like pennies on my tongue. Fireworks flash in the corners of my eyes.
After what seems forever but is really just a few beats the roaring subsides and the light subsides to a weak, pulsing glow. A little tendril of it coils up out of the fissure, breaks free. More follow it, threading together, spiraling around themselves like DNA. Nilos and I stand up. More strands join as the whole mass takes on a vaguely human shape. I want to run. My deep buried primate brain is howling for me to run for the primeval safety of trees. I want to dig a hole and stick my head in it and never come out. But Phillips, who suffered worse than I did, just stares the thing down. Shame makes a great courage substitute.
The titan’s black, smoky eyes lock onto me. Then its whirling skin bursts outward with a jet engine whine. I shut my eyes, the light is so bright. When I open them, there’s a woman standing there. She looks familiar. Nilos pulls the folded up magazine out of his back pocket and gapes at the cover.
Her spits me. The eyes look like glass, not quite right. “Thief.” Then she skewers Nilos, gives him a smirk. That’s all she has for us, because then she turns to Phillips. “You called?”
“I want my sound back.” He jerks his head at me. “His too.”
“In exchange for what?”
“Your life.”
The titan spits out ugly black laughter. The sound makes me nauseous, like catching a whiff of formaldehyde. “Don’t be fatuous, Howard.”
“I’m giving you this once chance to deal as an equal. I suggest you take it.”
“You presume too much.” She digs under her immaculate fingernail. “If we were equals, I would kill you for wasting my time. Honestly, you didn’t really think your threats would work, did you?”
“I thought it was worth the attempt. But really, my band just needed the breather” He yanks on the generator’s ripcord again. “Gentlemen! The B side.”
I stomp on the pedal and the sound of a ribcage caving in cracks out of the stack. Nilos slashes a dagger made from a scrimshawed wedge of cymbal across his palm and dribbles his blood over the road. His foot turns into a blur on the bass pedal. The whole earth shakes in time, like the ground is a drum skin stretched taut beneath my feet. I lock into the beat, set my frets, and let it fly. A fist of noise shoots out of the stack and slams into the titan.
Her false skin withers like melting film stock, revealing the glowing white beneath. Her eyes blaze red. I try not to look at her as I strum out another chord. She coils and leaps over it. I aim another at where she’ll land but she changes direction midair. She’s fast. I keep strumming, throwing shot after shot at her, guiding them with my eyes. Nothing even comes close, she’s so quick, but I keep slinging them. This is all part of the plan.
As she dodges and twists, I see it, when the light hits it just right. The little stream of noise, thin as floss, tethering her to the rift in the earth. Her lifeline back to the Scape.
Phillips sprints into view. Roaring, he hefts the cymbal-ax above his head. It’s a big brother to Nilos’ ritual dagger, a half-moon covered with runes and sharper than brass has any physical right to be. Setting the meat of my hand against the strings, I chunk out power chords. They’re not as strong, muted like this, but I can spew them out like a machine gun spits bullets. Phillips closes in. Two ax lengths. One. He plants hard on his front foot, draws the ax back.
The titan slithers through my wall of noise, untouched, and batters him aside. Something snaps and Phillips screams. She turns towards me. Her eyes blaze, little view slits into hell.
I thrash at the string, throwing everything I can muster, but she bats it all aside. I guess she was just indulging me, dancing around like that before. Enjoying herself with the upstarts.
A thin line appears on the lower half of her face, spreading out from the middle. It yawns upward, and inside there’s nothing. Not black, not white. Just nothing at all.
The titan’s shout hits like a freight train loaded with molten lead. It punches holes in my soul. It etches waveforms onto my bones. My nerves jangle with sympathetic vibrations. I want to puke and laugh and shriek and sleep all at once. Some unscrambled part of my mind registers heat against my fingers. The strings glow cherry. The high e snaps and a cat-o-nine-tails end whips a searing cut across my cheek, barely missing my eye. The others strings pop and snap. The stack blows. A rushing wall of air slaps me sideways, right into Nilos. My head bounces off the sidewall of a bass drum and for a moment I’m out.
Nilos wakes me. It must be only an instant later because there’s still chunks of ground and dust raining down. He’s got a fistful of collar in one hand while his other forehand-backhands me. He smiles when he sees I’m awake. He drags me up. He doesn’t look too worse for wear, considering we just got bitch slapped by the hammer of the gods. I feel like a semi ran me down and then backed up over my carcass a few times just to be sure.
“You really are a fool.”
The titan looms over Phillips. He’s on his ass but sitting up, cradling his left arm against his chest. The titan holds his cymbal-ax. “You really thought you could hurt me with this?” Her grip tightens so slightly I can barely see it. The handle rots to dust and brass blade crumbles to dust. She wipes the last bit off her hands. “You didn’t even do the enchantments correctly.” That smoky voice is all gone, replaced by something alien, a timbre no human could ever match.
“Oh, but I did,” Phillips says. “Just not on that one.”
The titan cocks her head, then, shrieking, turns and sprints for her hole.
Sjaak brings the cymbal down with time to spare. The hexed brass slices through her umbilical. Momentum carries her a few more steps before her feet unravel. Little threads in her wake quiver and disintegrate. She stumbles to a stop at Sjaak’s feet. He pops the ax against his shoulder and spits on the ground beside her.
“Put me back!” Her threadbare hand reaches out to grab Sjaak’s ankle. He steps away. Her voice has gone thin and reedy. “Please!”
With a grunt, Phillips gets to his feet. Now that he’s standing I can see how bad she mangled his arm. His palm is facing the exact wrong away. His fingers look like a river delta. The pain hardly seems to bother him as he walks over to her and squats onto his haunches.
“As I said: trade. Sound for your life.”
“Anything you want, just put me back!”
“The chord for him.” He flicks his head at me.
“All right. All right”
“Do it now.”
When she shakes her head bits of her go flying and puff into smoke. “I can’t, not without going back. When you put me back, I’ll return it. I swear it.”
He nods.
“Now please!”
“You give me mine back too.”
“No, I can’t. I can’t give you back all that, even if I wanted to.”
“Then the tabs. Where are they?”
She says something that sounds like a random string of syllables to me, or an old modem playing through a kazoo, but Phillips nods like he understands. Sjaak puts aside his ax and scoops up the titan. She ripples like a sheet on a clothesline as he carries her back to the breach. Ethereal hands reach out as he lowers her in. A coiling thread whirls out of the breach and streaks into my gut. The earth closes up.
Nilos looks at me, questioning. I grasp down for my guitar, then remember the strings snapped. I run for the van and flip open one of Sjaak’s hard cases.
“What the hell?”
There’s two guns in the foam. AKs. I think. Whatever they are exactly, they’re the sort of gun Mao was talking about spewing political power. Sjaak crunches up beside me and snaps the cover closed.
“What the hell is that?”
He pulls out another hard case and undoes the latches. Inside there’s a Stratocaster knockoff. My hands shake as I tune it up. Just the top three strings, that’s all I need. Fuck all those other strings. I shape the chord. I strum. The root, the fifth, the octave. I hear it all. It’s beautiful.