by Brian Keene
At first, she wasn’t sure this could be the right place. The bartender looked to be at least 60, with a longshoreman’s sense of pure rough trade style; and the three cackling cadavers holding court at the bar before him were equally antique. It looked more like her dad’s VFW post in Milwaukee than anything she’d seen since she got to the Bay area.
But then the room opened up, and she saw the black light posters adorning the dark wood walls: Mr. Natural, Keep On Truckin’, the obligatory dayglo peace symbol. It was pretty clear the owners of this dump had figured out no one wanted to hear Benny Goodman any more, made a few cheap concessions for the hippie demographic they needed if they wanted to keep the doors open.
But it didn’t cover up the fact that, as hole-in-the-wall joints went, this one was pretty creepy. She could almost taste the history, and it didn’t taste good. A quick peek at her watch said it was quarter to eleven. She figured she’d catch ten minutes of their set, then get the hell out of Dodge and back to the land of the slightly-more-living.
And that was when the band came on, with four drum stick clicks in the dark followed by a sonic boom: one-half power-chord, one-half pre-recorded atomic blast, the Hiroshima mushroom cloud suddenly projected on the wall behind the stage.
Suddenly, she could see the members of Black Sunshine in stroboscopic silhouette. The gaunt, towering lead singer, swaying around the mic stand he clutched in one hand. Not exactly handsome, but snakily compelling nonetheless.
The guitarist and organist to either side weren’t great lookers either. But the notes they hit were haunting on top of the hypnotic tom-tom trance state being laid down by the drummer, whose face remained hidden under a curtain of greasy bangs.
And, no fooling, there was Dewey on bass. He was staring at the floor, thudding out a sinuous pattern to the primal beat that didn’t sound San Franciscan at all. More L.A. More like the fucking Doors, all dark and doomy. But pretty good. It suited the mood she was in, peace and love not having quite lived up to her expectations.
“Right on, Dewey,” she muttered softly. “You sound good, baby. Good for you.”
There were maybe forty people on the open dance floor, floating around like undersea creatures, getting their lethargic freak on under the strobing lights. People didn’t dance together. They danced around each other. Sometimes eye-to-eye, but more often than not off in their own world.
Marcie wasn’t judgmental. She liked to get super-high, too. Get into her own space. Let the spirit guide her. But there was something about the hollow-eyed emptiness in the faces of the people spinning around her that only reinforced The Shantyman’s sketchy-ass vibe.
These were the people who had fallen off the fringes of the fringe. The castoffs of the countercultural revolution, far more narcotic than psychedelic. Bottom-feeders, with no bottom left to feed on. The lostest of the lost.
For the second time, she felt the urge to leave. But the music was powerful, growing more so by the second. And like a train wreck in the making, she wanted to see what happened next. It was definitely not the weirdest scene she’d stumbled into, or ever would, if she was lucky.
She wondered who had some pot, at least. Started scoping out likely suspects as she steered her way to the front.
The farther in she went, the toastier the room got with unwashed body heat, so she opened her jacket, revealed her coochie-high skintight pink velvet micro-mini dress. It was one of Dewey’s favorites, and she wasn’t sure whether it was to torture him or reward him. But it glowed in the black light, and strobed in between. One fact was for certain: It was made to be seen.
The lead singer spotted her first, raised a hungry eyebrow before suddenly remembering it was time to croon. He cast a gaze back at Dewey, with a knowing grin. And then, at last, began to sing:
It’s dark tonight
In the winter of no love
All the stars you came to shine with
Are not glittering above
And, oh, your disappointment
It just fits you like a glove
What’s so easy
Makes you queasy
In the winter of no love
In the time it took for that verse to flow through, she felt the gentle push of the crowd from behind. They were moving slowly toward the stage, mesmerized by the throbbing groove and his rich, deep baritone voice. She, too, was starting to move with the rhythm, the intoxicatingly persuasive syncopation.
And when a pasty-faced scarecrow in a Nehru jacket passed a doobie her way, she gratefully accepted, took a long toke, passed it back. He nodded, unsmiling, returned his gaze to the band.
By the time she exhaled, it was already too late.
***
Suddenly, the room seemed to skew sideways in all directions at once, as her vision went fisheye.
Her brain and the floor turned to mud, the strobing lights like pulsars flaring numbly within.
Ooooooh noooo went a voice she barely recognized as her own, as the angel dust took effect. Shedidn’t know what PCP was, but she knew what it was doing, elephant-tranquilizing her as surely as a dart to the neck.
She stumbled back as if to fall, but the press of bodies kept her upright, rubberband limbs all but useless as her gaze bleared toward the stage.
And Dewey was looking at her now, face mutating as the world went wrong, his eyes black holes that glittered redmeat red at on/off intervals. His sharkmouth crawled up either cheek in a grin too huge for comprehension, his fishbelly creme bass bending and writhing in crotchulous undulation.
And as his fuzzed-out bass notes hammered through her bones, she felt the call of the walls, the floor and ceiling, as sure as the words now being chanted by the band.
All you who are lost
Belong to us
All you who are lost
Belong to us
Something tore inside her bowels, like a menstrual cramp only higher, and seemingly farther away. She vaguely felt wetness run down her legs, wasn’t sure if she was peeing or bleeding. There was a hand holding her up by the right shoulder. Its fingers runnelled down the front of her coat like fatty wax.
And her vagina filled with something thick as cock, with none of the pleasure.
From within.
All you who are lost
Belong with us
In the winter of no love
Marcie screamed as her lower intestines crawled out of her holiest of holes and out into the room, waggling blindly wormlike, curling toward the sound. She felt herself emptying, screamed again, reeling back against the wall of bodies.
But they were already melting, too. Bodies sagging, as faces dripped. A bouillabaisse of rotten squalor, giving themselves up at last to the only place that would have them.
Being claimed by this hellhole, and Black Sunshine.
Now she knew why they were the house band.
Marcie toppled on top of a sloe-eyed blonde whose eyes oozed out to either side. Her slick hand grazed Marcie’s cheek before its arm dissolved into the floor.
Then came the onslaught of lead guitar, every raw treble note a rivet driving itself into her flesh. It tried to pin her, but she crawled with all her might, finding strength through fury. GoingI will not dielike this.
The next body she met was already liquefied but for the skull, which crumbled like a candy shell. She clawed past it, felt her fingernails snap as she grabbed the wooden floorboards, felt the floorboards grab back. Ancient mouths with thick splinter teeth, opening up to sample, bite, and suck her in.
She screamed again: a wail somehow strangely in tune with the music that assailed her. The most in-tune her voice had ever been. And that scared her most of all.
There is no other
Place for you
Will be no other
Trace of you
Come wallow in
The waste of you
Come on
Come on
COME ON!
COME ON!
She could not look back over her
shoulder. She could not look back over her shoulder. She did not want to see her guts slide across the floor behind her, moving inexorably toward the stage. She did not want to see the triumph in Dewey’s eyeless eyes as his own dark umbilicus crawled out his ass and down his stupid bell-bottomed pants leg in an attempt to fuse with hers.
And she was emptying. Yes, she was. Belly concaving to the ribcage, the spine, as more and more of her squeezed then squirted out her pussy and into the room. There was no question that she was dying now. The only question was where.
The door was a trillion more than 2,173 miles away, but she knew it when she saw it, crawling past the bar, where the Shantyman regulars cawed like vultures, having seen this all before. Placing bets on how far she’d get. Eyes black as Satan’s coal.
But she was not going back. She was going forward, one desperate lunge at a time. The music still huge, but receding as an angry honking cabbie drove by, honk like the voice of God saying you knowwho you are, you know who you are.
There was no troll at the door. No cover charge on life. She saw headlights, heard voices through the floating rectangular slab as the miles turned to inches turned to nothing turned to there . . .
. . . and her lungs pulled her still-beating heart down and down, toward the blackness beyond . . .
***
And then there was light. Amazing light.
The color of which she had only dreamed.
Her face was at rest upon green green grass. Every filament bright, in the warm starlight. An infinite plane of glowing.
With a pair of hooves, stopping just an inch from her face.
“Hey,” said a voice. “It’s okay now. It’s okay.”
She blinked, looked up, fisheyed no longer as the black numbness shuddered out of her in a wave.
“What?” she said to the satyr who loomed above her: shirtless, hairy, not remotely scary, with a goatlike psychedelic glimmer in his eye that liked and loved and knew her in a flash, beneath his wild hair and great flowing horns.
“You don’t ever wanna go in there,” he said. “That’s not why you came.”
Marcie shook her head to clear it, not to disagree. Somewhere in the enormous distance, the last whimper of Black Sunshine echoed off to nothingness. Like they were never there. Like they never mattered at all.
“Where am I?” she said.
“Where you always wanted to be,” he said. “And all you have to do is let go.”
“Right.” As she helplessly started to cry.
“Release your attachments.”
“Oh, God . . . ”
“Forgive yourself.”
Choking. “I am so sorry I hurt him . . . ”
“Aw, sugar. It happens. Just don’t do it again, if you can help it” he said. “You’ll get better with practice, okay? That’s what we get whole lives for. Lives upon lives upon lives.”
“OH, GOD!” As her cord to the world, the dimension she once knew gut-snapped at last. But her heart still with her. Her spirit intact.
“The world you want may take decades or centuries to happen, back there,” he said. “But it’s already happening here, forever. This is where you’re going. This is where the best of you, the soul of you, has always been. We all know how cool you are, and how well you mean, and how beautiful you will always be, even if you come back ugly in disguise. Because that’s how the game is played.”
It was the most perfect thing he could possibly have said, all infinity flowing before and beyond them.
“So where’s the party?” she asked, grinning, as he helped her to her feet.
“Up here,” he said. “And I think you’re gonna like it. Rumor has it you’re a fucking firecracker.”
“You better believe it, lover,” she purred into his ear. Stuck her tongue in. Made him weak in the knees.
As winter turned to summer once again.
WOLF WITH DIAMOND EYES
Patrick Lacey
Vincenzo Lucille is living a nightmare.
According to photos, his eyes are bloodshot. The surrounding dark circles have aged him. And that’s saying something. At seventy-two, he is the oldest and last remaining survivor of the most infamous Italian progressive rock band. Much has been said of Harpie’s last show at San Francisco’s Shantyman club, but most of it is speculation. We can confirm a body count of nearly thirty, four of which belong to the group itself, but what caused the massacre is still up for debate.
As I knock on the door of Vincenzo’s Soho apartment, I’m prepared for bookshelves housing ancient occult volumes, things you won’t find in your local Barnes and Noble. The lights will be dim, the curtains drawn. I imagine a cauldron in the kitchen, boiling some concoction I’d rather not know about. These are stereotypes of course but it’s hard to deny Harpie’s long history of black magic rumors. Depending on whom you ask, Vincenzo and his fellow band mates, Giuseppe (vocalist), Antonio (keyboardist), Simone (lead guitarist), and Lorenzo (bassist and other instrumentation) were up to some shady business in the seventies. The rumors range from ritualistic sacrifice to conjuring spirits. It’s probably all conjecture, I tell myself, as the door opens.
I’m greeted with freshly brewed coffee instead of incense. Large, picturesque windows instead of a dark tomb. The man standing before me is nowhere near as haunted as his photos would have you believe. He simply looks as though he hasn’t slept for ages.
Vincenzo nods. “Come in, come in.”
I step inside. There are several large bookshelves but nothing screams witchcraft or demonology. Instead there are rows and rows of pulp mysteries and an alarming number of Clive Cussler novels.
He leads me to a small alcove that passes for a dining room, tells me to sit. Moments later, he returns with two cups of espresso. The glasses and saucers clink together as he sets them down, hands shaking badly. Nervous, perhaps. And with good reason. This is his first interview since the late seventies. He has all but sworn off the public. A journalist’s wet dream. But he grew tired of answering the same questions. Questions I myself am about to ask. I squirm in my seat. Vincenzo isn’t the only nervous one around here.
The espresso is dark and strong and I politely tell him it’s . . . different than the Dunkin Donut’s coconut mocha iced coffee I’m used to.
“Terrible,” he says, sipping his own. “Coffee is not meant to be sweet. It should be strong, bitter, black.” His accent is a strange mix of his homeland and New York City.
“How long have you lived here?” I look out the window of his third floor apartment. Across the street is, ironically, a Dunkin Donuts. Next door is an antiques shop that’s seen better days. The display window is cracked and yellowed, obscuring whatever might lay inside.
Vincenzo sets his cup down and clicks his tongue. I’ll learn this is his way of recalling information. He needs a long time to think. Harpie was known for their drug use, specifically that of the psychotropic variety. “Twenty years, about.” There’s that accent coming out, switching the order of words.
I nod and ask if he understands why I’m here.
He nods back and his eyes turn to slits. He clicks his tongue, though I haven’t asked another question yet.
It’s coming up on the fortieth anniversary of Harpie’s last show, which ended his tenure as a musician. He enjoyed a mildly successful solo career in the early eighties before fizzling out of the public spotlight for good. The man sitting across from me does not want to discuss memories he’s avoided for half his life. But, I remind myself, he agreed to the interview. He must have something to reveal.
“You want to know what happened,” he says after an uncomfortable silence.
“Yes. I realize you’ve discussed Harpie’s final show countless times but you’ve never come out and said exactly what transpired. I’m looking for the truth.”
He laughs at that. “I will give the truth but I can’t promise a good story.”
I beg to differ. The fact he’s talking at all will make for a good story. A good paycheck too.
Vincenzo rubs his eyes. He looks more like his photo now. A man with a terrible secret. When his story is through, I’ll learn it’s hard to blame him for keeping quiet all these years. Some tragedies are better left unsolved.
For a moment, I think I’ve lost him. I say something to steer him along. “Who were the killers, Vincenzo?”
He shakes his head. “Not killers.”’
“Someone had to have murdered those people.”
“Yes. One killer. Not killers.”
“Only one?” Combing through old interviews and conspiracy theories in preparation, it had always been plural. Killers. Murderers. And the occasional creatures.
“Only one.”
“Was the man one of your fans?”
“Not a man. Not entirely.”
I nearly knock over the handheld recorder I set up upon arriving. My hands fidget at his last words.
“Are you aware of our last album?”
“Of course. It was the soundtrack to Wolf with Diamond Eyes.” I watched the film for research. It’s a well-executed if somewhat by-the-numbers Giallo, a sub-genre of Italian cinema that saw its height of popularity around the time of Harpie’s last show. The word Giallo translates to “yellow,” a reference to pulp novels (similar to those on Vincenzo’s bookshelf) that were available on drug store book-racks. The covers and spines were often yellow, hence the name. Later, these trashy novels would translate to the big screen. Giallos enjoyed a stint of success due to such directors as Dario Argento and Lucio Fulci. Wolf with Diamond Eyes, though, was written and directed by a lesser-known filmmaker, one Lawrence Sanfillipo. Some speculate this is a stage name, for there isn’t a whole lot of information available on him. He made several low budget Giallos before disappearing from the film business for good. Not unlike Vincenzo.
“Yes,” he says. “Our best seller. We were able to watch it before it was released to write the score. That movie—it may seem, how you say, hokey, but back then, it was terrifying.”
I’m not sure “terrifying” is the word I’d choose. The plot is thin at best, a black-masked killer in a trench coat stalks college co-eds who, for some reason, don’t seem to wear bras or underwear. “What, exactly, did you find terrifying?”