by Mike Allan
I massage my forehead. “Hey, man. You should rest. All this stuff can wait.”
“No.” I snap. “I’m sick of getting yanked around and I’m sick of everyone knowing more than me. So I want to know what’s up. You and I are going to talk until I feel like I know a little more than nothing.”
“Fair enough. You want a beer?”
He tosses me a can from the mini-fridge under the workbench. “What do you want to know?”
“I was pretty out of it in the car but I remember Liz talking about Phillips. Something about stopping him?”
“That's the idea. You’ve seen what he can do. And that’s just his writing. Now that he’s got his sound back he’s even more dangerous.”
“Do you know what he’s planning?”
He shrugs. “Long-term, no idea. He’s got so much juice now, he could probably shoot for the ursound again if he wanted. No telling for sure though. Short-term? Kill everybody that could stop him. Starting with you.” He looks down at his beer. “And ending with you, really.”
“Me?”
“Yeah. You know the rite he used. You could backmask him.”
“Backmask?”
“Just like it sounds. . .remember all those bullshit controversies? Like with Judas Priest. They weren’t true, but there’s power in playing backwards sometimes. You play a ritual backward, it’s like rewinding the world.”
“It just goes back the way it was?”
He shakes his head. “No. I can’t explain it exactly. Way it was told to me, it reverses the final effect of the rite. Not whatever leads up to it.”
“So he’d lose the sound he stole and then...” I make a gun with my beer hand.
“Mm-hmm. Liz puts one right in his forehead, and the world of music is safe for another day.”
"So you're expecting me to play the rite backwards?"
“Not play, exactly.”
“What, then?”
Before he can answer there’s a pounding on the front door. Jack grabs a shotgun out of an umbrella stand on his way over. After peeking out the sliding viewport he unlocks.
Liz steps in. She smells like burning hair. Her jacket is scuffed and fraying where spikes have been torn out. The stitched up cut on her forehead weeps pus.
“You’re up. And out.” She glares at Jack. “You fill him in?”
Jack nods.
“Why isn’t he transcribing the rite then?”
Jack looks at me, back to her, shrugs. “Just trying to get his feet under him. What happened to your face?”
“You need to get to work while the rite’s still fresh in your mind. There’s an acoustic in the storeroom. Ask Jack if you need anything else.”
“No. Fuck that. You don’t get to just walk away after handing me orders. I want to talk.”
“There’s nothing to talk about.”
“How about the fact that there’s no point in me writing anything down? Nilos was--” my voice cracks pathetically. “He was the best. He was the key to the rite working. Without him, there’s no point. We’d never be able to play it.”
She turns. “Who said anything about we? You think we’re meant to be the heroes in this story? It’s like you said, the half-titan was the key. Who knows when another one will appear? How would you even know when one is born, and where to look? But if you can write it down and reverse it, there’s a chance that someday, somewhere, someone will be able to put him down. But you, and me, and Jack? We’ll be dead long before that happens.” She spins around. “Get to work.”
“Or what?” I say, but she doesn’t have to answer.
The memory’s still in my fingers, but every time I play the scene at the mesa flashes in front of my eyes. I don’t make much progress. Jack understands. He doesn’t mind me sitting in a stool next to him as he tinkers on a bass or air brushes symbols into a drum shell. We hardly ever speak, but it’s good to be by someone, even if I don’t know him at all. Sitting in that storeroom all alone with only a guitar, it feels like falling down a pit with the bottom always just out of sight.
“How did she find me?” I ask.
“What, the show? Somebody found a post about your new band. We knew Phillips had been operating in that area recently. So we started skimming the Scape. We, uh, heard you guys rehearsing. We heard the G5. We knew you’d lost it before, so it wasn’t hard to put two and two together. There was no way to get there fast enough unless she did the speaker trick.”
“What did you think?”
“It was really good stuff, man. I’m sad I’ll never get to hear it.”
“And what about at the mesa? How’d she find us then? I figured with all the wards Phillips started using there’d have been no chance.”
“You kidding? Everybody with even a little talent or knowledge felt the echo when he killed the half-titan.”
I look down and swirl my can. Jack swivels towards me. "Hey, Eddie, I didn't mean--"
“Forget it." I slug back the last of the can. "What’s her story, anyways? Were she and Phillips really a thing?”
“Yeah. I mean, that’s what I heard. Used to work together, working out rites to go into the Scape.”
“How’d they turn into archenemies or whatever?”
"She never told me. Or anyone. But it's not hard to guess." He takes a deep breath. “Look, I’ve never been in the Scape. Probably never will, if I’m lucky. But you hear things. One thing I’ve learned, nobody ever goes through that place unscratched. Some of them just curl up, never go back, try to disappear. Some do everything they can to get back what they lost. And some of them want to put up walls around the whole thing. Save everybody else from making the same mistakes.”
“By shooting them?”
He laughs. “Well, when you put it that way, she's doing what she loves.”
I transcribe in snips. Play a few notes, write a few. Play a few, write a few. In the middle of a tricky passage, sweat drops bulge on my brow. It’s hard only playing a few notes at a time after practicing for speed so long. Momentum always carries me too far. I flex my fretting hand and reset my fingers. Screw it, I’ll just rip through, get it out of my system. My hand flies up and down the strings, leaping, diving. As I hit a c sharp bubble wrap crackles at the base of my skull
“Eddie.”
I freeze. The room’s dark, but not so dark something could lurk unseen in the corners. I think about Phillips whistling tricks out of the tentacles. What else lives in the Scape that’ll follow him?
Son of a bitch. Nerves are shot. I could use a drink but I don’t want abuse my fridge privileges with Jack. Sighing, I reset my fingers.
“Eddie.” The voice comes with the first note, warbling in sympathy with my botched pluck. The guitar slips off my lap and hits the ground. Instead of a wooden thump, it says my name again.
Trembling, I reset myself and pluck the low e string very, very softly.
“Eddie.”
I pluck again. “Play,” it says.
The strange voice comes out in the broken, tuneless rhythm of my playing. “Nice to talk again.”
The last word fades out. “Nilos?” I say.
“No.”
My hand clenches over the neck, strings whining against the frets. “Phillips.”
“That’s right.”
“What do you want?”
“Took a while to find you. So many sounds to sift through in the Scape. How goes the backmasking?”
“Great. Gonna bury you like Lennon buried McCartney.”
For a few measures he cackles. “That was garbled singing, not backmasking.”
“Whatever, asshole.”
“Wasting your time. You know I’m unbeatable. Look what I'm capable of. I can dam off the Scape, turn your notes into my voice.”
I mute the strings. After a moment, I start playing again.
“Let’s deal,” Phillips says.
“Deal? There’s no deal to make.”
“The deal of all deals. Life for a life. You for Purd.”
“Nothing yet.”
“So I just give myself up?"
“It’s a good deal. She lives. You get to die a meaningful death.”
Not big on dying any kind of death, but I don’t have much choice. Or maybe I do. “They’ll never let me leave. Not until I’ve finished transcribing the backmask. Maybe not even then.”
“Find a way. You’ve got a day to figure it out.”
A spark catches somewhere in my head. “I don’t need that long. But I do need to play.”
Phillips doesn’t speak for a long time. There’s no sound at all as I strum. It’s like when the G5 was gone, but here every note is missing.
“All right. But when your day is up, you’re cut off again. And the same goes for Purd.”
After the last word I hit a sour d-flat. I play a few more, just to make certain he’s unkinked the hose. I set the guitar aside and walk out into the workshop. Back to me, Jack’s bent over one of the benches, restringing a bass with shiny black cobalt strings. A little curl of smoke swirls off the cherry tip of an incense stick by his elbow. He’s got his headphones in, so he doesn’t hear as I slip along the bins. I grab a legal pad from one of the workbenches, tearing off the sketch of a circuit and uncapping the magic marker.
“Hey, Jack.” I tap him on the shoulder and slip one of the headphones off. “I could use a beer.” I set the legal pad down beside him and tap the marker onto it.
“Sure,” he says, glancing down at the paper. “I need a break anyways.”
Jack grabs a couple of cold ones and cracks them. I hand him the marker. It squeaks over the paper.
“Sure he’s listening?”
“Just had chat. Thru guitar.”
He shakes his head, licks foam off his wispy mustache. “Bad news. Wards should keep him from skimming. Place isn’t safe anymore.”
“So what’re you working on?” I say aloud as I write: “Got an idea. But we need to bring in Liz.”
“Just putting some fresh steel on this baby. Cobalt wrapped, gets you some more power out of them. Makes a hell of an artillery piece with the right enchantments on the stack.” Writing: “She won’t like it.”
Hmming and ahhing in interest, I take the pad from him. “Haven’t even heard the plan yet.”
“Yeah.” He scratches out: “It’s you. She won’t like it.”
“She’ll get to shoot at me.”
“Okay, she might like it.”
16
Liz glances between Jack's neat handwriting and the disassembled pistol spread out on a rag in front of her. A copper bristle brush sings through some kind of metal bit. The smell of oil hangs around her in a slick cloud. She clenches the brush between her teeth and reaches for the marker.
“Absolutely not.”
Her folding table creaks as Jack leans over it. “Give it a chance.”
“Did. It’s a stupid idea.”
I reach for the marker but Jack fends me off. “Better than anything we’ve got,” he writes.
“Transcribe. Backmask. Only plan with a chance.”
I snatch the marker. “FUCK THAT. Just give up and hope somebody gets him in fifty years?”
Liz attacks a spring with the corner of the rag.
“If it doesn’t work, I’ll finish transcribing.”
“It doesn’t work, we're dead.”
“No worries, then.”
Gently, Jack relieves me of the marker. Slowly and deliberately he writes, filling almost an entire page with careful print. For a long moment Liz stares at the pad. Placing both hands on the table, she pushes up to her feet. She rips Jack’s magnum opus off the pad, wads it up and stuffs it into her jacket pocket. She writes, “Fine” diagonal across the fresh sheet, spins, and stalks out past us.
“What did you write?” I scrawl under her emphatic answer.
“Flattered her. Said that we’re the only ones who’ll ever have a chance against him. Reminded her he’s only going to get stronger in the future.”
I nod.
“Also said I wanted to hear Hag live sometime.”
I could kiss the big bastard. Could, but won't.
I pause in the doorway of the storeroom. Jack sits with his back to me, again at work on the cobalt stringed bass. I count to three.
Sprint to the shotgun in the umbrella can. I rip it out and pump it. Or try to pump it. It’s harder than I expected, but I get it done with some unmanly straining. Jack slips his headphones down onto his neck.
“Eddie?”
I point the muzzle in his direction but a few degrees off. “Sorry, Jack, but I’m gonna need that rumbler.”
He winces a little at my delivery. I give him a helpless shrug. Never said I was good at this. His stool's feet buzz across the concrete when he pushes away from the workbench. “Eddie, take it easy. Don’t do something--”
I raise the shotgun and blast a shell into the roof. It’s a little easier pumping the next one in this time. “Now step away from the bass.”
Eddie backs off a few steps. I circle till my back is to the workbench, grab the bass by the neck with one hand. The shotgun dips and bobs all over.
“Wheel that stack over.”
“Whatever you’re planning, Jack, it’s not going to work. Liz is going to be back any minute.”
“I’ll be long gone by then. Right there, plug it in. Good, face it towards the wall.” I lean the bass against the stack's side. “Now toss me the cable.” I catch the gold-plated end and plug in. Jack hits the power. Dust tumbles in ragged sheets off the walls when the stack clears its throat.
“Now back away slow. Get in the storeroom and shut the door.”
“You don’t want to do this, Eddie. Whatever Phillips said, he'll go back on it. You can't trust him."
"Maybe,” I say. “But I have to try. My old band, Nilos. . .I can’t let Purd get added to the list of people who’ve died because of me.”
He gives me a thumbs up for my performance here. Only it’s not acting.
I lock him into the storeroom and grab the bass. Right on cue, Liz pounds on the door. “Jack! I’m back, let me in!”
I make a short cut on my forearm with an x-acto. Blood sheets onto the fretboard.
“Jack!” More pounding on the door. “What’s going on in there?”
I take some of the blood and daub it over the face of the stack. I hit the power button. All the hair on me stands straight up.
Shots blow the locks’ guts across the floor and Liz nearly boots the door off its hinges.
Firing one handed probably looks a lot more badass than it feels. I'm lucky the shotgun doesn't bash my skull in on its swing back. Liz answers with a shot over my head, close enough I have some brief doubts whether she got the message about the shooting being an act.
I kick the stack around to face Liz and then roll the fat string off my fingertip. A slab of sound whumps out of the stack, rocking it back on its rubber feet. Spread-eagled, Liz flies into the wall behind her. Not quite hard enough to leave a cartoon outline, but hard enough I hear her shoulder blades crunch over the fading note. A second, weaker pulse thumps out when the bass hits the ground. I kill the power to the stack and grab her fallen pistol.
“Don’t move.” Actually pointing it at her probably isn’t necessary, but hell, feels good to be on the other end for once.
“You’re making a mistake, Eddie.”
“Probably.” She looks like she’s really hurting. I might have overdone it on the bass. But if Phillips is listening, the sound needed to be heavy enough to convince him I actually escaped. I lift a couple of her spare clips out of her jacket and shove them into my back pocket. I take her money clip too. Coincidentally, there’s just enough cash in it for me to get a ticket home. Funny, that.
“You can’t beat him.” She shoves the words out between clenched teeth. Blood slithers from her nose and patters into smashed bug shapes on the floor.
“I’m not going to beat him.” There's a
black duffle next to the door. I grab it on my way out. Fifty feet out the door I blow my guts all over cracked asphalt.
17
Sickly yellow streetlight spills into the alley’s ends. Phillips stands in the shadowy no man's land. The cherry glow of a cigarette end etches lines into his face. As I walk towards him I glance down the eroding stairs to the Hour’s entrance. Shreds of police tape dangle from the frame. There’s a handwritten sign tacked to the front, “CLOSED TILL FURTHER NOTICE”.
Phillips puffs on his smoke, the tip flaring up enough to show his eyes. He twists it out against the palm of his sound-hand. “Eddie. Back where it all began. Glad you could make it.”
“Wasn’t easy.”
“I heard. You didn’t hurt Liz too much, did you?”
I shrug. “She was alive when I left.”
“Pity. But she’ll stay that way so long as she doesn’t interfere with me. She’ll be beneath my concern.”
“So how do we do this?”
“Quick and painless, if that’s all right with you.”
"Like it was for Nilos?" I snap. Good to know that even under pressure of imminent death I can keep my head for saying the wrong thing.
To my surprise though, Phillips glances away. "I tried to make it quick. I owed him that much. I owe you the same."
I swallow the rock that’s suddenly appeared in my throat. “Sounds good to me.”
“Let’s wait a minute for the others to arrive.”
“Huh?”
His face warps into a samurai war mask snarl. Eyebrows dip, nostrils flare, lips peel back. “You think I can’t hear pens scratching across paper?” We’re standing about six feet apart. His hand, the sound hand, flashes out and grabs my throat. He lifts me up and drags me close. The toes of my boots skip across broken glass.
“I hear everything,” he says. “I hear your heart beating. I hear the adrenaline spewing into your blood and your pupils creaking wider.” He cocks his head. “I can hear a baby crying half a world away and I can hear Liz sucking in a breath to steady her aim.”