Not their driver, though. He was smaller—average-sized, really. It was standing in front of his passengers that made him appear diminutive. He was wearing a beige, zip-up jacket over a white dress shirt with a huge collar and brown bell-bottom slacks. His hair was black, freshly-cut and gelled, but his skin had the yellow tinge of someone with jaundice. He was younger pretending to be older. I figured he was in charge of the five guys. Actually, what I thought was, the five passengers were residents of one of the local group homes, and the driver had decided to treat them to a night out. I know how it sounds, but things like it happened often enough for it not to seem strange, anymore.
The driver didn’t waste any time. He spoke to the front door guy, who pointed him to the bartender. She leaned across the bar to hear what he had to say, then motioned to one of the girls who was killing time with a cranberry spritzer to fetch someone from the dressing room. I read her lips: Isis. Nikki. The driver nodded at the bartender, and passed her a folded bill. I’m pretty sure it was a hundred.
Nikki emerged from the dressing room wearing her assortment of scarves, but without the long gown. She looked across the club to where the driver was standing with his hands in his trouser pockets. Her head jerked, as if she recognised him. When she walked up to him, she kept her expression neutral, which only seemed to confirm that she knew the driver. He tilted forward to speak into her ear. Whatever he had to say didn’t take long, but she took a while to respond to it. She stared at the driver, as if trying to bring him into focus, then nodded and said, “Sure”.
Apparently, what the driver wanted was a lap dance for each of his five passengers, all of them provided by Nikki. He gestured for the nearest of the huge guys to come forward. Nikki took hold of one enormous hand and led the guy to the middle lap dance booth. He had to stoop to enter it; I wondered if he’d fit inside. He did. His four buddies didn’t register his departure in the slightest. The driver stationed himself midway between the rest of his passengers and the booth. He gazed into space, and waited.
I didn’t see Nikki emerge from the booth with the first giant in tow, because I’d been called to the dance floor. It took me two songs into my three-song routine to sell a customer a private dance. He was a college student. I almost thought I recognised him from one of the big lecture classes. He was free with his money, and it wasn’t difficult to keep him in the booth for two dances. We were to the right of Nikki and whichever of the enormous guy she had with her. The walls of the booths weren’t thick. All kinds of sounds leaked through from the adjoining spaces. That centre booth, though, was silent. I noticed this, but I don’t know if it seemed strange to me or not. I’m not sure. I was busy with the college student. I want to say that there was something off about that lack of sound. It was as if it was a gap in sound, a blank spot in the middle of a song, rather than the end of it.
Nikki and I finished our dances at the same time. I didn’t notice anything wrong with her, then, standing naked outside the booths. She was flushed, but she’d been working hard for almost thirty straight minutes. She was sweaty, too, which was odd. The club was air-conditioned, in order to keep the dancers’ sweat to a minimum. I wondered if the driver was going to ask for his turn, next. He didn’t. He passed Nikki the biggest roll of bills I had and have ever seen, collected his giant cargo, and exited The Cusp without another word. Nikki gathered her scarves from inside the booth and retreated to the dressing room.
She didn’t stay there long. She dropped the scarves on the floor, stuffed the roll of money into her purse, and returned to the club. The first customer she approached was a middle-aged guy wearing grey slacks and a white button-down shirt. He was sitting back from the stage, so he could watch the show and not have to pay out too much cash. Nikki straddled him in his chair and ground her pelvis against him. Whatever prudence he’d imagined he possessed flew out the window. He trailed behind her to the lap dance booths.
A minute later, he was screaming. The booth’s door flew open, and Nikki stumbled out of it. There was blood all over her legs, her ass. She stopped, found her balance, and walked towards the dressing room. As she did, her customer emerged, still screaming. The front of his slacks was dark with blood. Of course I assumed he’d done something to her. His face, though. He was wide-eyed, horrified. One of the bouncers was already next to him. I went to check on Nikki.
She was bent over one of the make-up tables, attempting to roll a joint. The backs of her legs, the cheeks of her ass, were scarlet. Closer to her, I saw that her skin had been scraped raw. It reminded me of when I’d been a kid and wiped out on my bike, dragging my palms or shins across the blacktop. The air smelled coppery. Blood ran down Nikki’s legs and pooled on the floor. Blood flecked the bottoms of the plastic wings, the tattoo. She wasn’t having any luck with the joint. Her hands wouldn’t do what she wanted them to. I pushed in beside her, and rolled the spliff as best I could. I passed it to her with fingers that weren’t trembling too much, then held her lighter for her.
I didn’t know what to say. Everything that came to mind sounded inane, ridiculous. Are you hurt? Her legs and ass looked like hamburger. Do you need a doctor? Obviously. What happened to you? Something bad. Who were those guys? See the answer to the previous question. I couldn’t look away from the ruin of her flesh. When I’d started working at The Cusp, I’d thought that I was entering the world as it really was, a place of lust and money. Now I saw that there was a world underneath that one, a realm of blood and pain. For all I knew, there was somewhere below that, a space whose principles I didn’t want to imagine. I mumbled something about taking her to a doctor. Nikki ignored me.
By the time one of the bouncers and the bartender came to check on her, Nikki had located her long gown and tugged it on. She checked her pocketbook to be sure the roll of cash was there, took it in the hand that wasn’t holding the joint, and crossed to the fire exit at the opposite end of the dressing room. Without breaking stride, she shoved it open, triggering the fire alarm. She turned left towards the parking lot as the door clunked shut behind her.
The bouncer, the bartender, and I traded looks that asked which of us was going to pursue her. I did. I hurried along the outside of the club and across the parking lot to where Nikki parked her Accord. The car was gone. I ran back towards the building, which everyone was pouring out of. I could hear a distant siren. Most of the customers were scrambling for their cars, hoping to escape the parking lot before the fire engines arrived and boxed them in. I considered making a dash inside for my keys, and was brought up short by the realisation that I didn’t know where Nikki lived. I had an approximate idea—the apartments down by the Svartkill—but nothing more. I could drive around the parking lots, but what if she’d gone to the emergency room, or one of the walk-in care facilities? I didn’t even have her cell number, another fact which suddenly struck me as bizarre.
Why couldn’t I get in touch with her? Why didn’t I know her address? The strangest sensation swept over me there in the parking lot, as if Nikki, and everything connected to her, had been unreal. That couldn’t have been the case, though, could it? Or how would I have found out about the job at The Cusp?
I didn’t see Nikki for the rest of the time I worked at the club. I stayed through the end of the fall semester, when I graduated early and moved, first back in with my Dad, then down to Florida. The five enormous guys, their jaundiced driver, didn’t return during those months. The customer whose pants had been soaked with Nikki’s blood did.
Less than a week later, he appeared at the front door, insisting he had to talk to her. His face was red, sweaty, his eyes glazed. He looked as if he had the flu. The bouncer at the door told him that the girl he was looking for no longer danced here, and no, he didn’t know where she’d gone. The guy became agitated, said he had to see her, it was important she know about the cards, the hearts. The bouncer placed his hands gently but firmly on the guy’s chest and told him the girl wasn’t here and he needed to leave. The guy broke the bouncer’s no
se, his right cheek, and three of his ribs.
It took the other two bouncers on duty to subdue him, and they barely managed to do that. The cop who answered the bartender’s 911 call took one look at the guy and requested back-up. The cop said they would transport the guy across the Hudson, to Penrose Hospital, where there was a secure psych ward. As far as I know, that’s what happened. I don’t know what became of Nikki’s last customer, only that I didn’t see him again.
Years went by. I left Florida for Wyoming, big sky and a job managing a bank. I bought a house, a nice car. The district manager was pleased with my performance, and recommended me for a corporate event in Idaho. I took 80 west to Utah, where I picked up 84 and headed north and west into Idaho. Somewhere on the other side of Rock Springs, a white van roared up behind me and barely avoided crashing into the back of my rental. I swore, steered right. The van swung wide to the left, so sharply it rose up on its right wheels. I thought it was going to tip over, roll onto the median. It didn’t. It swerved towards me. I should have braked. Instead, I stomped the gas. The rental surged past the van. As it did, I glanced at the vehicle’s passengers.
Its rear and middle seats were filled by a group of enormous men whose crew-cut heads did not turn from the road ahead. In the front seat, a driver with black hair and yellowed skin laughed uproariously along with a woman with long brown hair. Nikki. Together, she and the driver laughed and laughed, as if caught by an emotion too powerful to resist. He wiped tears from his eyes. She pounded on the dashboard.
I pulled onto the shoulder and threw the car into Park. My pulse was hammering in my throat. I watched the van speed west down the highway until it was out of sight. I waited another half-hour before I shifted into Drive and resumed my journey. The remainder of the drive to Idaho, and all of the way home, I didn’t see the van. But I was watching for it.
I still am.
For Fiona, and in memory of Joel Lane.
LOREN RHOADS
THE DROWNING CITY
LOREN RHOADS is the author of a space opera trilogy entitled “In the Wake of the Templars” and co-author of a series called “As Above, So Below”, about a succubus and her angel. Her “Alondra” stories have appeared in the anthologies Fright Mare: Women Write Horror, Sins of the Sirens, The Haunted Mansion Project: Year One and nEvermore!: Tales of Murder, Mystery, & the Macabre, as well as in the upcoming volume Strange California.
“Alondra DeCourval came out of my love for the old psychic detectives like Dion Fortune’s Dr. Taverner, Manly Wade Wellman’s Silver John, Algernon Blackwood’s John Silence and William Hope Hodgson’s Carnacki,” reveals the author. “Because I love to travel, I’ve been setting Alondra stories in cities I have visited and loved. So far she’s had adventures in Tokyo, Prague, New Orleans, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, with more to come.
“‘The Drowning City’ was inspired by a trip to Venice, where I discovered the Jesuit church of Santa Maria Assunta. It really does have a balcony draped in fabric made of marble. I’m prone to ear infections and I’ve had my eardrums punctured more than once (but only once in both ears at the same time, thank goodness), so I wanted to spin something positive out of that experience.
“I was a Kickstarter supporter of Nancy Kilpatrick’s nEvermore! project, at a level that allowed me to submit a story for consideration. I pulled Edgar Allan Poe’s Tales of Mystery and Imagination off the shelf, looking for inspiration, and reread his story ‘The Assignation’. There were correspondences between that story and ‘The Drowning City’, because I’ve loved Poe’s stories since I was a child. I was surprised and thrilled when Nancy accepted my story for her anthology.”
THE WET WINTER air swirled around Alondra DeCourval, slipping icicle fingers under her collar. As she walked back from the boat landing at the Fondamenta Nuove, her nose felt raw, her throat ached, and her head throbbed. It had been a long time since she’d gotten sick while travelling. At least the trip to Murano had been worth it. Her new glass beads were warm under her shearling coat.
Venice was a maze during the best of times, one she enjoyed unravelling on a sunny day. Tonight, with the fog hastening an already early twilight, she wanted only to curl up beneath the comforter at Guilietta’s palazzo on the Grand Canal, sip cioccolata calda, and be swarmed by cats. Instead, she took a wrong turn and found herself in a little dead-end square dominated by a stone cistern and surrounded by 16th-century apartment buildings. Lost.
Alondra pulled off a wine-coloured glove to wipe her nose. She felt nearly miserable enough to knock on a stranger’s door to ask for directions. Instead, she replaced the glove, wrapped the scarf tighter around her throat, and retraced her steps.
A brief meander brought her to a paved square ringed by a few sad olive trees in marble planters. The trees had been carted to the sinking city and left to fall to ruin. Alondra brushed droplets of fog from one’s sagging leaves.
A Baroque church loomed over the square. Age stained its white marble façade to the colour of spoiled milk. Black lichen gnawed permanent shadows beneath the pediment. Above the gutters stood a row of saints on soapboxes, clutching the instruments of their martyrdoms.
Alondra had never grown entirely comfortable with churches. She no longer felt personally threatened by the survival of the institution that had tortured and killed her ancestors as witches, but she didn’t assume modern Christians were better behaved. It was a prejudice she’d inherited at her grandmother’s knee and she had not looked for a reason to challenge it. Let the Christians beseech their god to work his magic on their behalf and Alondra would work her own. The less contact between them, the better.
Be that as it may, the unnamed church was open and bright inside. Alondra had no better concept of the time than she did of the direction of the Grand Canal. She was sure, however, that it was Thursday night. Whatever was going on inside the church, she guessed it wouldn’t be preaching. Rather than drift around in the cold any longer, she climbed the steps and entered the sanctuary.
To her continual surprise, she did not burst into flames as she crossed the threshold. The earth, even liquefied as it was in Venice, did not tremble. The Christian god never betrayed any displeasure when the witch set foot in his house.
Alondra’s gaze went immediately to the chancel at the opposite end of the nave, but everything behind the choir rail was blacker than the night outside.
And what a splendid building it was: the ceiling rose in a series of domes, every surface adorned in contrasting relief with urns or acanthus leaves or dentition. The columns that stood sentry around the chancel were inset with green stone that morphed and grew in kaleidoscopic horticultural patterns. Swaying dizzily, Alondra sank onto a vacant pew at the back of the room.
Perhaps a hundred people sat in clusters, chatting. Alondra studied the congregation, trying to define their commonality. She saw rough-looking fishermen in patched wool coats. Unabashed society women in mink. A knot of too-handsome men with black eyes, laughing together. Teenaged girls watched them enviously, craving their attention.
Alondra heard nothing spoken but Italian. Apparently this was not a show church, drawing tourists to an evening concert. These parishioners felt as comfortable in their neighbourhood basilica as they would at the local ristorante. Alondra wondered that they hadn’t interrogated the outsider in their midst. Just as well. She had enough trouble gathering her thoughts. Conversing in Italian might be beyond her. She promised herself that she’d sit for another minute, then seek a teenaged girl—surely they’d learned English in school—and ask directions. She loathed being reduced to a tourist bumbling along in a single language.
A balcony attached to the marble wall on her left caught her eye. Alondra realised the damask drapery that flowed from its canopy and hung in graceful folds from the balcony’s lip had been carved from white marble inset with green. The jagged edge of the canopy’s valance: stone. The large tassels hanging from the valance: stone. The fringe on the curtains: stone.
The exu
berant detail slaved over by the stone carvers made her want to laugh. She wondered if their god took the same amusement in it.
She touched chilly fingertips to her forehead, suspecting she was feverish. Everything sounded out of focus, as if cotton wool wrapped her head. She had better get back to Guilietta’s. She reached out toward the girl across the aisle.
To the rattle of polite applause, someone cleared his throat. Alondra prepared to flee, rather than sit through a sermon. As she rewound her scarf, however, she realised that she’d blundered into a recital rather than a religious service.
It was difficult to make out the speaker’s words as they bounced around the stone space. The congestion in her head didn’t help. Still, Alondra understood “voice like an angel”. That persuaded her to settle back in the pew.
A woman gestured grandly to the audience nestled inside their winter coats in the unheated church. She wore a spotless white gown that fell in a single shining piece. An ornate gold brooch accented the shoulder. Her bare arms were an olive tone that spoke of sun and summer and the warmth of islands farther south.
The singer turned to her accompanist, who lifted a flute to her lips and quietly began to play. Her smoky voice was deep enough to be masculine, dark and strong as espresso. Alondra struggled to follow the words, garbled by echoes from the uneven stone walls.
The emotions behind the song were clear. The singer held a deep reverence for something Alondra couldn’t decipher, as well as pride in her talent.
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