by Ian Rogers
Ryerson nodded. The business analogy was getting a little tired, but he understood the message perfectly. He had already decided to take the job. Shadowing a cheating spouse was as routine to a private investigator as filling a cavity was to a dentist, but there was nothing routine about the money. That aside, Ryerson found he liked Mrs. Marchand and genuinely wanted to help her. There was something about her gutsy, no-apologies approach to life and business that he respected. It wasn’t his way, but he didn’t meet a lot of people with convictions, much less the fortitude to stand by them.
Ryerson finally managed to tear his gaze away from the goat woman. He closed his eyes and counted to ten. When he opened them, Jonathan Marchand was sitting across the table from him. He looked like his picture: a dark-haired, dark-eyed man in his early thirties with a scar on his chin and a smarmy smile that looked just as permanent. He looked like the kind of guy who was used to getting his way, and with minimal effort. A man who looked at the world with lazy confidence, with emphasis on the lazy. He was wearing a suit and tie under his overcoat. He was also wearing leather gloves, which Ryerson thought strange considering the cloying heat of the club.
“You’ve been following me,” Jonathan said, grinning. “I don’t know you. Do I?”
“Where did you come from?” Ryerson felt ill and off-balance, like a man suffering seasickness.
“Philadelphia,” Jonathan replied, and tittered. “But I don’t think that’s what you really want to know. You’re a detective, aren’t you? Hired by my wife? The Witch of Wall Street.” He scoffed. “I’m surprised she sent you in here. That was very irresponsible of her.”
“She didn’t send me,” Ryerson said. “I followed you here.”
“How resourceful of you. But this isn’t a very safe place to be, detective. Although,” he added thoughtfully, “it’s the only place to go if you want to get out of an uncomfortable predicament.”
“If you want out, then hire a lawyer.”
Jonathan smiled contritely. “A lawyer is of no use to me. My marriage is no ordinary union, just as Al Azif is no ordinary club. As you may or may not be coming to realize.”
Ryerson thought of the goat woman, and had to force himself from looking back at her table. Jonathan turned to face the stage.
“The performers here are presented at their relaxed best.”
“So they say.”
“Yes, but do you know why they’re presented? Do you know what happens to those who are put on stage?”
L’il Joe had finished playing. He stood motionless, trombone held close to his chest, almost protectively, and tilted his head up to the sickly glow of the spotlight. He looked like he was waiting for something. The silence spun out. His mouth suddenly fell open in a silent scream. Yellow smoke began to rise up from the stage. It quickly enveloped L’il Joe. He didn’t run, he just stood there while the smoke closed around him. When it dissipated a few seconds later, he was gone.
“Tricks,” Ryerson said, but his voice wavered slightly.
“There are no tricks here,” Jonathan declared. He took off his gloves and held up his left hand. There was an angry red scar across the palm, as though it had been slashed open with a razor, and not too long ago. “It’s all business, detective. Transactions. I made a mistake when I signed on with that witch—I concede that—but I’ll be damned if I’ll let her take me without a fight. This,” he raised both hands to indicate the club, “is a pocket. A kind of purgatory. Time doesn’t pass in this place. I like to come here and think, have a martini or two, enjoy some live music. Al Azif has played host to many performers. Sometimes you’ll meet people you haven’t seen for years. Sometimes you can even find those who have died.” He tittered again and put his gloves back on. “Rarer still, you can find people who are just passing through. Special people. Like someone who can break the bond between a witch and her familiar.” He shrugged. “Expensive, but doable.”
Ryerson found himself repeating something the Blue Fairy had told him: “Promises were made, contracts were signed.”
“Yes.” Jonathan sounded disgusted as well as annoyed. “But how could I have known? How could I have known?”
“So you want me to follow him?”
“Yes. He’s a regular man-about-town. He’ll keep you on your toes.”
“Do you have a picture of him?”
Mrs. Marchand raised the hand that had been holding the lighter. It was gone, and there was a photograph in its place, held between her thumb and index finger.
Neat trick, Ryerson thought, and reached out to take it.
She pulled back at the last second. “Don’t let him see you.”
“I’ll be just another one of the shadows.”
“I’m leaving,” Ryerson said. “Your wife can find someone else to play these games.”
Jonathan threw his head back and laughed long and hard. “You think this is a game?”
Ryerson stood up, knocking his chair over, and made his way across the room, past the bar, and through the curtain. He glanced over at the coat-check booth as he went by, then came to an abrupt halt.
The door leading into the anteroom was gone. In its place stood a wall with an advertisement for something called Fireball Whiskey. It showed two women bent suggestively over a flaming bottle. The slogan proclaimed IT BURNS! Neither woman was entirely human. One of them had the head of a hawk, while the other’s face was an explosion of squirming tentacles.
Ryerson went back through the curtain. The black man with the blinding grin was still leaning against the counter, snapping his fingers. “Evening, suh!” he rasped.
Ryerson ignored him and went past the bar. He came to the foot of the stairs leading up to the VIP lounge. The sign on the newel post said VIPERS. He heard a sizzling sound like water striking a hotplate. He looked up the stairs and saw the velvet rope had become a length of barbed wire. Beyond it he saw a couple sitting at a table. They both had the heads of snakes. The woman was wearing a strapless green dress with a sapphire broach around her scaly throat. The man raised a fluted glass to his lipless mouth and drank the amber liquid with quick darts of his forked tongue.
Ryerson tried to scream, but it got stuck in his throat. He uttered a weak choking sound and stumbled down a short corridor. He pushed through the door of the men’s room and stood for a moment bent over at the waist, hands propped on his thighs, catching his breath. The cloying smell of pine filled his nostrils. He straightened up, went over to one of the sinks, and splashed water on his face. He took a deep breath, held it, and released it in a pathetic whimper. There had to be an explanation for what was happening here. He just had to calm down and figure it out.
Jonathan must have found out he was being followed. He had set a trap, maybe put something in his drink, a hallucinogen of some kind, and now he was playing with him.
The first thing he had to do was find a way out of here.
He went past the row of stalls to the window. It wasn’t barred, and Ryerson silently thanked God for small favours. The lock was a simple thumb latch, but it had been painted over and wouldn’t budge, no matter how much pressure he put on it.
Desperation started to set it. In a panic, Ryerson drove his elbow through the glass. A jagged piece slashed his arm, but he was so keyed up he didn’t feel it. His attention was focused on the view outside the window. He was staring at a night sky scattered with thousands of coldly twinkling stars. He should’ve been looking at the wall of the adjacent building. He took an unconscious step closer. He stuck his head out the window and looked down. He couldn’t see the ground, or anything else for that matter, just blackness. He looked back at the stars. They began to twinkle faster and brighter. Ryerson watched them, utterly transfixed, until he realized they weren’t twinkling.
They were blinking.
“God . . .” he muttered.
Eyes. He was looking at eyes. Thousands of them.
And they were looking back at him.
Ryerson screamed and threw himself away from the window. He bounced off the side of a stall and collapsed on the floor, sobbing. He was vaguely aware of a buzzing sound coming from the window. It was growing steadily louder.
He wiped his eyes and saw blood on his hands. He went over to one of the mirrors and squinted at his reflection. Tiny rivulets of blood were trickling from the corners of his eyes.
He turned on the hot and cold faucets full blast and flushed his eyes. Bloody water splashed the sink, the mirror. He looked at his eyes again. The bleeding had stopped, but it looked like he had gone a week without sleep.
The buzzing was very loud now. It sounded like a hive of extremely large and extremely pissed off bees. The cut on his arm bled freely, but he didn’t have time to take care of it now. He’d patch himself up after he got out of this fucked up jazz club. If he got out. He still had to find an exit.
Exit.
The emergency exit.
He burst out of the men’s room and ran briskly across the room. He didn’t look up at the VIP lounge, skirting the stairs and the table where he had sat with Jonathan Marchand. Jonathan was gone, but that didn’t matter anymore. He had done his job like the well-paid puppy dog he was. Getting out of this place was all that mattered now. Being able to look in the mirror and not see blood pouring out of his eyes was high on his list, too.
He weaved through the crowd to the emergency exit. The sign over the door had changed again. Now it said BURN. It could have said DISCO INFERNO for all Ryerson cared. He was getting out. He put his hands on the push-bar, relishing its cool, firm reality. Then he slammed the door open and stepped out into a wall of mist. It was like the atmosphere in Al Azif, only much denser. And yellow. Ryerson could barely see his hands in front of his face.
The door snapped shut behind him, and he jumped. He took a breath, then let it out. His hands cut smoothly through the mist, up and down, side to side. There was nothing within his reach. He took a few tentative steps forward, arms outstretched.
He turned right and tried moving in that direction. A minute passed. Then five. It was hard to tell how far he had come. He had lost all sense of distance and direction. He considered backtracking to the fire-door, but wasn’t sure he could find it again. He thought he heard something up ahead. Something that might have been a voice.
He allowed himself to walk a little faster. He looked down to see how his feet were doing, but couldn’t see anything past his belt buckle. The sound of his shoes slapping the ground was distant, almost dreamlike.
Gradually, the mist began to clear. He stopped moving when he saw it was actually flowing past him, as if propelled by a strong breeze. Ryerson didn’t feel anything, but the voice was getting louder and clearer.
He started moving forward again, expecting to see the mouth of the alleyway opening onto some side-street. Instead he saw faces. Lots of faces. They seemed to be staring up at him, as though the ground up ahead slanted downward at an abrupt angle.
His shoes made an abrupt clomping sound on ground that was unmistakably wooden. The mist was gone, and Ryerson realized he was back in Al Azif. On stage. Under the spotlight.
He looked out at the crowd. Jonathan Marchand was in the VIP lounge, sitting next to the goat-woman. She held a cigarette in an ebony holder and was staring at Ryerson through the rising smoke.
The crowd waited. Ryerson thought of the eyes outside the men’s room window, the one that looked out on some unimaginable border. Someone started tapping their foot, which was joined by the snapping of the black man’s fingers. The crowd broke into applause that became a loud buzzing. Ryerson looked up into the spotlight, feeling its putrid glow on his face, and waited for the show to begin.
HUNGER
It begins with fire and it ends with fire.
I step out of the smoke. A man rushes toward me. He takes my hand and leads me away from a burning building. He is the first.
He passes me off to another man who helps me into an ambulance. He is the second.
A woman in the back of the ambulance puts a plastic mask over my face. She is the third.
I am taken to a hospital.
After that I lose count.
I spend the night in the hospital. I visit a lot of rooms.
In the morning the doctor comes to see me. She asks if I remember anything yet. I shake my head. She says it will all come back to me in time. I smile.
A nurse comes in with breakfast. He says he hopes I like scrambled eggs. I smile. The doctor is writing on my chart. Then she stops and looks at the nurse. She drops the chart and leaps onto his back, sinking her teeth into his neck.
I smile.
I leave the hospital shortly thereafter. No one notices I am gone. They have bigger problems to deal with.
I wander around the city. I have never been in one before. I meet a man in ragged clothes. He lives in a cardboard box. He says the city has done this to him. He holds out his hand and asks me for help.
I help him.
I go back to the building. All that remains is a crown of smoke-stained bricks. I go inside and find the charred remains of a table. Before it was a table it was a piece of wood. Before that a log. Before that a tree in a deep northern forest.
My home.
The next day I find a man on the steps of my building. He is eating a human arm.
He says he can’t help himself. He is hungry. So very hungry.
I wonder how he found me. Then I recognize him.
He is the first.
I meet a lot of people over the next few weeks. Some of them come to me. They see me in dreams.
Some people don’t like me. They say they know me. They say they know what I really am. They try to stay away from me, but the city is being closed off.
One man tries to kill me. He sneaks into my building one night and puts his hands around my throat. I do the same to him.
He goes away hungry.
The people outside the city call me different things.
They call me a virus. They call me a myth. They call me a terrorist. They call me mass hysteria.
They tell the people still in the city to stay indoors. They tell them not to leave.
People attempting to leave the city are being shot.
I spend my days walking around the city. The streets are filled with bones. I touch many people. They collect the bones and use them to rebuild my home.
I smile.
My people eat each other. My building grows.
It’s almost time to move on.
The people outside the city have set fires.
They say the spirit of the city is dead.
They say I killed it.
I will show them.
The spirit of the city is alive.
Alive and well.
Alive and well fed.
INHERITOR
Daniel Ramis thought the only thing he inherited from his father was insomnia, but as it turned out, he got a house, too.
He received this news at three o’clock in the morning, about a week after his father collapsed in his London flat of an apparent heart attack. He had grabbed onto a china hutch for support and ended up taking it down with him; the sound of it crashing on the floor was what prompted the neighbours to call the police. Daniel was notified the following day, but had made no arrangements to attend the funeral. To say that Daniel and his father weren’t close would be like saying the Chernobyl nuclear power plant suffered only a minor mechanical problem.
It should have ended there, but it seemed his father had come back to deliver one final lick—this one via a probate lawyer, a Brit named Kingsley who seemed oblivious of the time difference between London and Seattle.
“Strange as it may seem,” Kingsley said, “your father actually left instructions for you to be contacted at this exact time.” He chuckled good-naturedly. “It seems that he wanted to wake you up.”
Daniel had not been awakened by the call. He had been s
itting in his favourite chair and watching a thunderstorm perform its final act over the bay. Having lived with insomnia for almost twenty years, he knew that a window helped pass the time much better than a television.
“What can I do for you, Mr. Kingsley?”
“First of all, let me tell you how very sorry I am for your loss.”
“Thank you.”
“I had the opportunity to meet your father, and he was an exceptional man.”
Daniel thanked him again; he hoped the man would get to the point before the sun came up.
“I had planned to speak with you after the funeral, but I understand you were unable to attend.”
Daniel said nothing.
Kingsley went on as if he had spoken. “That’s most unfortunate. I had hoped to discuss your father’s will. He’s left you considerable assets, as well as instructions that he wished you to carry out after his passing.”
“What instructions?”
“It’s more of a request, actually.” Kingsley cleared his throat. “Your father would like you to return to Sycamore, which I understand is the name of a town.”
“Yes,” Daniel said evenly.
“According to his records, you have a house there.”
“Had a house,” he corrected. “My father sold it years ago. Before he ran away to London, as a matter of fact.” He closed his mouth before anything else came out.
Papers rustled on the other end of the line. “Actually, Mr. Ramis, according to the last codicil, which was drawn up in March of this year, the deed to the Sycamore property is still in your father’s possession. I verified ownership myself. Perhaps he merely closed it down for—”
“He told me he sold it,” Daniel said brusquely.
“Be that as it may, he has requested that you return there.”