That gets her attention. She gives me a slow once-over with her eyes or whatever it is behind those glasses.
I say, “I was alive. The only living thing that’s ever been down there and sure as Hell the only living thing that’s ever crawled out.”
“Oh. That’s you. The monster who kills monsters.”
Her body relaxes like we’re chatting each other up in a bar.
“What a relief. For a minute there, I was afraid you were a ghost. I don’t like doing business with the dead. They leave pitiful offerings.”
“I guess being all disembodied would make you a little skittish.”
“That’s not the half of it. Ghosts are whiners. When they don’t like the answer I give them, some even try haunting me. Me. Can you imagine how annoying it is to have a ghost moaning away in your car? I banish them to road structures. Overpasses or cloverleafs. Let them watch the living go by for a hundred years or so and see if that improves their manners.”
“I wonder if the bums that live in underpasses know they’re pissing on the dead?”
Mustang Sally looks at me hard.
“Why do you want to go back? Escaping once was quite a feat. Are you trying to become famous by doing it twice?”
“I’m going to find a friend who shouldn’t be there. And then I’m going to kill someone. If I have time, maybe I’ll stop a war or two.”
That makes her laugh. A full-throated husky howl.
“You’re not frivolous. But you might be crazy.”
“My friends wouldn’t argue that point, so I won’t either.”
“This friend you’re going to rescue, is she your lover?”
“Yeah.”
Sally looks out at the road. Heat reflects off it, making the cars in the distance soft and dreamlike.
“Do you know what most people ask me when I stop for them?”
She waits. I’m supposed to ask the question.
“What?”
“You’d think it would be about where to find the boy who got away or the girl they left behind. But no. They want to know where they should go to be happy. How can I possibly answer that? The road isn’t here to make you happy. It’s here so you can find your own way. Because they bring me cigarettes, they expect me to cure their misery.”
“What do you say?”
“I tell them to go to a gas station and buy the biggest map they can find. It doesn’t matter if it’s the city, the state, or the world. I tell them to open it, close your eyes, and drop your finger somewhere on the map. That’s where you’ll find what you’re looking for.”
“Running off into the unknown can sure clear your head. It sounds like pretty good advice.”
“Thank you.”
I smoke the cigarette as a highway-patrol car slows down and gives us the once-over. Sally throws the driver a tiny backhanded wave. The patrol cop’s eyes go blank. He turns his attention back to the road and drives on.
“Any thoughts on my problem?” I ask.
“Yes. What you want isn’t all that hard to do, but it isn’t easy if you get my meaning. What you need is a Black Dahlia.”
“And that means what?”
“You’re going to have to die. And not a going-gentle-into-that-good-night death. It’s going to be messy.”
Story of my life.
“I was hoping for something a little more in the hocus-pocus area. Getting Downtown dead and being stuck there kind of defeats the purpose of my coming to you.”
She flicks the Lucky butt out onto the road. It flies in a perfect arc like a falling star. Marking her territory so more cops won’t bother us.
“Silly boy. I said you had to die. I didn’t say you’d be dead. Dying is just the offering you make to gain passage. Once you’re on the other side, the debt is paid and you’ll be you again.”
“How violent are we talking about? I mean is the word ‘entrails’ involved?”
“Your death doesn’t have to be quite as baroque as poor Elizabeth Short’s Black Dahlia. A car accident should do it. At a crossroads, of course.”
“Is there anything I need to do?”
“You’ll need to carry an item worn by or touched by someone who suffered a violent death. Anything will do. A photo. A class ring. If the friend you want to find died violently, that’s perfect. Get something of hers. Keep it close so it’s touching your skin as you pass through. Love and death. There’s no more powerful combination.”
That’s good news, but which of Alice’s things should I bring with me? Maybe something she’d miss. Or is it too mean to remind her of her life here? On the other hand, it feels a little lame to bring the TV remote or her toothbrush.
“How do I find the right crossroads?”
“Elizabeth Short was murdered near Leimert Park. There was a nice crossroads there, but it’s all suburbs now. Why don’t you try the I-10 underpass at Crenshaw? That’s a decent little crossroads. All you need to do is hit the accelerator and run the car into one of the concrete freeway supports. I’ll be close by to give you a little push to the other side.”
“Thanks. I appreciate it.”
She nods and strolls to her car. I follow her over. She digs through the bag of snacks and comes up with a packet of jelly beans. She rips it open, offers me one, and when I shake my head, she spears one with a fingernail, takes it off with her teeth, and chews. She reaches into the packet, pushing the jelly beans around, looking for a specific one.
She says, “I’m only doing this because while you might be crazy, you’re not stupid. You don’t think you’re Orpheus and can bring your friend back to the world of the living. That means you’re willing to die and cross over to the worst place in Creation for someone you love but can never truly have. That’s the kind of thing that can give even an old thing like me goose bumps.”
“To tell you the truth, I’d rather be back running Max Overdrive.”
“No, you wouldn’t. You’re like me. One of the night people. I’m the road. I give life and I take it. People like us don’t get to close our eyes to the world and live cozy mortal lives.”
Two men’s faces slide into my memory. My real father, Kinski, a has-been archangel, and the father who raised me. One of the faces fades away. It’s the other, not-quite-human one that stays.
“You make it sound so doomed and romantic. We should all be drinking absinthe as we die of consumption.”
She shrugs her pretty shoulders.
“It’s what you allow it to be. You can find beauty and joy in the dark places just as easily as civilians find comfort in the glow of their TVs. But you have to allow yourself to do it. Otherwise . . .”
“Otherwise what?”
“Otherwise, ten years from now, you’ll be stopping me and asking a foolish question and I’ll end up sending you to a gas station to buy a map.”
“Ow. When you put it that way, Hell sounds just about right.”
Sally touches my cheek. Her hand is warm, like the furnace burning behind her shades.
“Be a rock, James. Otherwise, you’ll lose everything.”
“How did you know my name was James?”
She swallows another jelly bean.
“It’s just a trick I can do.”
I shake my head.
“You sound like the Veritas sometimes.”
“One of those little Hellion luck coins that insults you when you ask a question? I hope I’m not that mean.”
“No. But what the hell does ‘Be a rock’ mean? It sounds like the kind of hoodoo warning that never actually means what it says.”
Mustang Sally puts the jelly beans back in the bag.
“I always say what I mean.”
She takes the white driving gloves out of her purse and puts them on. “Just like I always signal when I change lanes. I can’t help if you don’t see me coming and end up in a ditch.”
Like a Howard Hawks freeway femme fatale, Mustang Sally slings the little purse over one shoulder and gets back in her car, revs the engine, an
d peels out. She blows me a kiss as she speeds by.
Aloha from Hell
I DRIVE ACROSS town and beach the Bonneville in a no-parking zone in front of the Bradbury Building, that old art deco ziggurat and one of the few truly beautiful constructions in L.A. A group of schoolkids is on a field trip and I let them pass by before stepping into a shadow. I’m pretty sure a couple of the kids saw me. Good. Kids need their minds blown every now and then. It’ll keep them from thinking that managing a McDonald’s is the most they can hope for.
I don’t come straight out into Mr. Muninn’s cavern. I lean against the wall in the Room of Thirteen Doors. This is the still, quiet center of the universe. Even God can’t text me here. In here I’m alone and bulletproof.
I’ve had one ace up my sleeve since this whole circus with Mason, Aelita, and Marshal Wells began. The kill switch. The Mithras. The first fire in the universe and the last. The flame that will burn this universe down to make way for the next. I told Aelita about it but she never believed me. She couldn’t. I’m an Abomination and I could never get anything over on a pure-blood angel like her. So what good does that make the Mithras? A threat only works if people believe in it, which leaves me alone in this eternal echo chamber, not sure what to do. I can get behind Mustang Sally’s beauty-in-darkness idea. That’s half the reason Candy and I have been circling each other all these months. We’re each other’s chance to find some black peace in the deep dark.
Burning the universe was a lot more fun to think about when Alice was somewhere safe. Some puny hopeful part of me imagined that Heaven would still stand even if the rest of the universe turned to ash. But Alice is Downtown now and I know she was right and I have to let go of her, but I can’t let her die down in Mason’s crazy-house hellhole, and that’s what will happen if I throw the kill switch.
I grab a heavy glass decanter from the floor and step out into Muninn’s underground storeroom.
I yell, “Mr. Muninn. It’s Stark.”
He sticks his head out from around a row of shelves overflowing with Tibetan skull bowls and ritual trumpets made of human femurs decorated with silver. He wipes his brow on a black silk handkerchief as he walks over.
“Just doing a bit of inventory. Sometimes I think I should hire a boy like you to put this all on a computer, but then I think that by the time he’s finished, computers will be obsolete and we’ll have to do it all over again with brains in jars or genius goldfish or whatever other wonders scientists come up with next.”
He sighs.
“I suppose in a place like this, the old ways work best. Besides, I know that while it looks like a jumble to other people, I know where each and every item is. I only do inventory as an excuse to revisit doodads and baubles I haven’t handled in a century or two.”
He sees the glass container in my hand.
“Oh my. You’ve brought it back. Let’s sit down and have a drink.”
Muninn’s desk is a worktable covered in the kind of junk that would give the staff at the Smithsonian nuclear hard-ons. An early draft of the Magna Carta that included the emancipation of ghosts. Little floating and whizzing matchbox-size gewgaws from Roswell. Cleopatra’s lucky panties. For all I know, he has Adam and Eve’s fig leaves pressed in their high school yearbook.
I set the decanter on the table between us. If you look hard enough into the glass, you can see a flickering match head of fire. It doesn’t look like much, but neither do the few micrograms of plutonium it takes to kill you as dead as eight-track tapes and with a lot more open sores.
“You’ve changed your mind, have you? You’re not going to set us all ablaze like the Roman candles on the Fourth of July?”
“When you put it like that, it sounds fun. Giving this back might be a mistake, but I don’t think it’s mine anymore.”
I pick it up and look inside. I’ve had the Mithras all this time, but I’ve hardly ever looked at it. It’s beautiful.
“I don’t want this sitting in the Room in case Mason manages to make a key and can get in there.”
“No. If there was anyone even more unsuitable than you to hold the Mithras, it would be him. No offense, of course. I would never have traded it to you if I thought that you were capable of using it.”
“But I am. I was. I almost pulled that plug a hundred times.”
“But you didn’t. And that’s why I let you have it.”
I push the Mithras across the table in his direction. Muninn picks it up carefully, like a preacher who just found a Gutenberg Bible at a garage sale, and puts it on a nearby shelf where he can keep an eye on it.
He says, “If you see any of my brothers when you get to Hell, please give them my regards.”
“Your brothers are in Hell?”
“One or two, I expect. I’m the only sedentary one. The others are restless sorts. They’re bound to pop up anywhere. Some of them pass through Hell on occasion and send me trinkets for my collection.”
He points to a shelf with Hellion weapons, a cup I recognize from Azazel’s palace, and a chunk of the same kind of black bone that my knife was carved from.
“How will I know if I meet one of your brothers?”
He laughs.
“You’ll know. We’re twins except that there are five of us, so I suppose we’re two and a half twins.”
“I’m going to be moving pretty fast, so hello is about all I’ll have time to say.”
“You won’t even have to say that if you’re busy. Here,” Muninn says.
He pulls a metal strongbox from under the table and takes a set of keys from his pocket. I’ve never seen so many keys in one place at one time. He flips through them, makes a face, and tosses them on the table. He gets out an identical set from his other pocket. A lot of the keys on this ring are bigger and older. He finds one that’s so thick with rust, it’s more like a twig that’s been laying in the water and is covered with barnacles. He jams the thing into the strongbox lock and turns. It scrapes, groans, and whines, but after a minute of really laying into the thing, the box pops open. He reaches inside and pulls out a twelve-sided crystal and hands it to me. I hold it up to the light and look inside. Two pinheads, one white and one black, circle around each other in the center.
“What is it?”
“A Singularity. An infinitely hot, infinitely dense dot. Well, the two halves of it. Apart they’ll circle eternally, but when they come together . . .” He raises his hands and makes the sound of an explosion with his cheeks. “In common parlance, it’s the Big Bang. You gave me the end of the universe, so I’m giving you the beginning. I spirited it away with me when I left the family.”
I heft the thing in my hand. It’s light. Maybe half a pound. It seems kind of light for a universe.
“This was your hedge, wasn’t it? In case you were wrong about me and I did set off the Mithras. If I killed off this universe, you could start it up again.”
He closes the strongbox and puts it back under the table.
“I have a great deal of faith in you, but I’ve learned that it’s always smart to have a backup plan.”
“If you set off the Singularity, would it restart this universe or start another?”
“There’s no way of telling until it happens. And in the end, does it really matter?”
“Not to me. Though I might miss cigarettes.”
He points at the crystal in my hand.
“If you run into one of my brothers down there, give it to him. Do me this favor and I’ll owe you a favor down the line.”
He gets out a bottle of wine. Muninn always likes to seal a deal with a drink. It’s one of the reasons he’s good to do business with.
“In the meantime, keep the crystal safe. There’s only one. Now, is there anything I can give you to help you on your journey?”
He pours us wine in two highball glasses with dancing girls etched into the sides. I feel like I’m in the Rat Pack.
“What have you got? I don’t know what I’m going to be walking into down there.�
��
Muninn rummages through a box of random junk on the corner of the table and pulls out something the size of an acorn. He sets it on the table and drinks his wine. The thing is small and speckled.
I say, “It looks like an egg.”
Muninn nods.
“It is. The creature it comes from doesn’t live in this dimensional plane, but don’t worry. It’s no more exotic than an archaeopteryx, so the egg is completely edible.”
“Does that mean if I keep it warm, I’ll get a flying lizard?”
Muninn’s eyes brighten.
“Wouldn’t that be lovely? No, the egg has medicinal properties. If you’re hurt, it will help you heal and dull the pain. It has a very tough shell, so don’t feel you have to be delicate with it. Just toss it in a pocket. If you need it, put it between your teeth and bite down hard. I’ve heard they taste rather sweet. Like white chocolate.”
“You’ve never tried one?”
“I’ve never been hurt.”
If I had more time, I’d definitely want to hear more about that, but I don’t.
“By the way. There’s a tasty ’55 or ’56 Bonneville parked outside on Broadway. I don’t need it anymore and the people I took it from don’t deserve it. It would look good in your collection.”
“You’re too good to me,” he says, and comes around the table. “I’ll be sure to collect it before it’s towed away.”
I drop the egg in my coat pocket and get up.
“I have some packing to do, so I should get going.”
Muninn takes my hand and shakes it warmly.
“You keep my crystal safe and I’ll keep the Mithras for you. I hope to see you back here very soon.”
He waves at me as I step into a shadow by the stairs . . .
. . . AND COME OUT in the shadowed and semidiscreet entrance of the Museum of Death across from the hotel. It’s technically getting toward evening, but only technically. The sun won’t go down for another three hours and I’m very tired.
When I step out into the sun, the desert heat slaps me hard. It’s funny. I’ve lived here most of my life, so I hardly ever notice the heat. Maybe I’m feeling it now because I’m coming out of Muninn’s cool cavern. Maybe I’m noticing it the way someone with terminal cancer notices every leaf, every snatch of a song, every breeze from a passing car, and the color of smog over the hills as they wheel him to the hospice.
Aloha from Hell (Sandman Slim) Page 17