by Tim Pratt
She tried not to think of all the scorpions and rattlesnakes and sleek poisonous spiders that could be living among the junk, unseen, but she wasn’t very successful. The Desert Room, though surely no better insulated than the rest of the café, seemed to shut out all ambient sound. She couldn’t hear the Metallica disc Hendrix was playing, or the babble of customers.
Now that she looked up, Marzi couldn’t even see the door in the rear wall. Broken shelving leaned against the back wall, covering the door and the rest of the wall almost entirely. That was a relief. She could face the door whenever she wanted, and didn’t have to be confronted immediately with the locus of her fear.
She finally turned her attention to the two mostly visible walls; the murals were impressive, despite the blossoms of mold that marred them here and there. Huge rocks seemed to project from the walls, an illusion helped by the fact that the walls really did bulge in places from water damage, lending an indisputable sense of three-dimensionality. Bald vultures perched on top of cartoon cactuses. Oversized scorpions swarmed over the rocks, stingers and claws upraised. Rattle-snakes coiled on sand dunes. Vile yellow light saturated the whole scene, and a poison-yellow sun filled one upper corner of the room, painted on two walls and the ceiling, though water spots obscured the spiky flares on its upper reaches. It was a mural like any of the others, just done in a desert motif, sort of like the Road Runner and Coyote cartoons, but more menacing—this was a desert alive with things that would kill you. But even that was somewhat reassuring, because the monster Marzi remembered didn’t want any life at all; it wanted everything scoured down to the bare rock. Marzi lifted Jonathan’s camera, pleased to see that the room looked even more harmless from behind the viewfinder. She snapped shots of the two side walls, then lowered the camera, chewing her lip.
The floor wasn’t really that rotten. There were a couple of bad places, enough to fuel Hendrix’s paranoia, but mostly the structure was solid, and there were boards laid across the most dangerous bits. Chunks of the plaster ceiling might fall on her, but that was the extent of her danger. The room felt like a room, not a wasteland confined within four walls, despite its soundproof qualities. Her thumping heart had slowed, and the adrenaline no longer sang in her veins.
She went to the center of the room and turned around to get a picture of the interior wall. She felt a bit nervous turning her back to the rear wall, the one with the door that led nowhere . . . but it was just a door, covered up with boards besides, and altogether harmless.
The mural was painted across the wall and the door that led to the kitchen, and depicted a distant dune with a coyote howling in silhouette, and sharp rock outcroppings in the distance. Marzi took a photo.
She put the camera down on top of a pile of boxes and turned her attention to the rear wall. This was the sticking point, wasn’t it? The real test. Now that her memory had been restored, Marzi remembered placing the boards there to block the door, leaning them against the wall with zombie-like efficiency, already repressing the memory of what she’d seen behind the door. She should have nailed the boards up instead, but she’d been working in shock, after all. It was amazing she’d done even this much. She started moving the boards out of the way.
When the wall was one-third uncovered, Marzi noticed the difference.
The door was still blocked, but she’d cleared away enough of the shelving on one side to see the painting. It was not as she remembered. There should have been more boulders, more scorpions and dunes, more of the same desert-scape that adorned the other walls. Instead, the painting depicted buildings, weathered wooden storefronts with hitching posts out front, the classic view-down-Main-Street scene from a thousand Westerns. This was the street where the comical sidekick would die in the second act, where the hero and the villain would shoot one another in the third.
I’m just remembering it wrong, Marzi thought. After all, the buildings did look familiar—she’d drawn them in the first issue of Rangergirl, as part of the ghost town that lay beyond the Western Door. She’d assumed she was drawing on a lifetime of experience with Western movies, but apparently the scene was an outright theft from Garamond Ray. Was impaired memory a suitable excuse for plagiarism? Unless the wall hadn’t always been like this . . .
No. The wall hadn’t changed—that was absurd. As absurd as a mud-girl, she thought. As absurd as ghost cowboys in the Red Room.
Marzi went to the other side of the still-blocked door and cleared those shelves away. More buildings, marching off to the vanishing point, painted in perspective. She moved on to the middle, took a breath, and moved the boards away.
She stood back and looked at the whole wall. The door was still there, tarnished brass knob and all—she’d been careful not to touch that knob when clearing the shelves away, careful without acknowledging the reason for her care. The middle of the mural depicted the street itself, a dusty stretch lined by buildings. She’d expected to see a shadowy figure painted at the end of the street, a man in a hat and a long duster, but the street was empty. Otherwise, it was perfectly familiar, the land just beyond the Western Door, which she’d drawn so many times. Marzi was profoundly shaken—she didn’t remember the mural looking like this at all. She’d take her last picture, and get out of here, and then seriously consider getting professional help. Again.
Marzi stepped back and lifted the camera, peering through the viewfinder. Her finger depressed the button, and the shutter clicked, obscuring Marzi’s view for a fraction of a second.
When the shutter opened, the painting had changed.
Now a shadowy man stood at the far end of the street, visible through the viewfinder. A blob of mold obscured his face.
Marzi gasped and dropped the camera to the floorboards.
When she looked at the wall with her own eyes, the man was gone. She picked up the camera, which seemed undamaged by the fall, and almost put it to her face again. But no. She didn’t want to see if the figure came back. Nor would she look at the developed photographs, if she could avoid doing so. She didn’t want to know if the figure appeared in them.
Without putting the boards back, unwilling to stay in the room a moment longer, she reached behind her and opened the door to the kitchen. She backed out of the room, never taking her eyes off the rear wall. Once outside, she flipped the light off quickly, and then slammed the door.
Marzi leaned her forehead against the cool wood and breathed deeply. She would have to go back in eventually, she knew—it was imperative that she nail boards over the door—but she couldn’t face it again, not so soon.
She headed outside to get some fresh air before her shift started.
Lindsay was deep in her canvas, slashing color across the upper third of the painting, when Alice came in. This painting was a cadmium-and-cobalt scream of primal defiance, a repudiation of the dark that seemed sometimes to be pressing in from all sides, an act of violence committed against her own growing melancholy.
Then the source of her melancholy appeared. Alice walked in, her chunky motorcycle boots clomping against the floor. She looked shy and out of her element among the covered canvases, the neat workbenches, the jars of turpentine and soaking brushes. But beautiful, too, her strong features, cropped hair, slim body in a leather jacket, plain white shirt, black leather pants, a little silver charm of a gorgon’s head hanging on a green thread around her neck. She’d ridden with a lesbian biker gang called The Gorgons for a while. Lindsay loved those stories, loved hearing Alice recount her vivid history. Lindsay put her brush and palette down and smiled. She wanted it to be a dazzling melt-her smile, but couldn’t manage it; the look on Alice’s face was so odd, confused and determined all at once.
“Hi, tall, dark, and handsome,” Lindsay said, wishing she’d held on to her brush so she’d have something to do with her hands. Her voice was too loud in the quiet studio.
Alice stopped, a little too far away even for a conversation between strangers, much too far to stand from a lover, and the distance made Lindsay
ache.
“Lindsay,” Alice said, her voice wavering. “I’m really sorry about last night.” Alice Belle, uncertain—it was as wrong as a fish flopping on the salt flats, incongruous as a cursing monk.
“It’s okay. Stuff comes up.” A beat, a twisting moment. “What came up?”
Alice looked around, found a stool, pulled it over, and sat. She slumped, seemingly exhausted, and Lindsay noticed the bags under her eyes, like faint smears of ash, like war paint for a dispirited brave. “I wanted to talk to you about that. I’m . . . did Marzi tell you she saw me, that we talked?”
“She mentioned it, but she didn’t say much, just that you had a lot on your mind.” Like I’m too young, Lindsay thought. Too femme, too perky, I try too hard, I’m bad in bed. . . . Which of those? Something else? Would Alice lie, try to spare her feelings; would Lindsay know it for a lie?
“I told Marzi I’m afraid of becoming a pyromaniac,” Alice said, and that was unexpected. Lindsay was flummoxed, then abashed at her own self-absorption, and, finally, confused and alarmed.
“What?” Lindsay said.
Alice shrugged. “I think I’m going crazy, is all. I’ve always liked fire, but lately it’s been more than that. These past couple of days I’ve thought about starting fires. That’s why I didn’t go out with you last night. I went riding, tried to clear my head, and . . . it doesn’t make sense . . . but once I got a few miles away from town, I felt better. I felt like myself again, not some crazy firebug. So I came back, and it started to happen again, that urge, like there’s a huge speaker downtown blaring the word ‘Burn’ over and over, a thousand decibels, and as I get closer it gets louder and louder until I can’t hear anything else, it fills up my head . . .” Alice, amazingly, was crying, tears spilling from the corners of her eyes, and Lindsay went to her without thinking and held her, wrapped her arms around Alice’s body. She was so much smaller than she seemed.
Alice was so stiff, it was like hugging a light pole, but then she relaxed suddenly, stood up from the stool, and embraced Lindsay fiercely. “I’m so scared,” Alice said. “I’m so scared of me,” and Lindsay couldn’t think of anything to say to that, could only think of Marzi’s brief breakdown, when the sight of a closed door was enough to make her weep uncontrollably. Both Marzi and Alice were strong—Lindsay would have bet her eyes they were stronger than she—and yet they’d both broken in such peculiar ways.
“Alice, it’ll be okay, we’ll work it out,” but Alice pulled away, shook her head.
“No,” Alice said. “What, I’ll go to therapy, they’ll say my mom and dad hurt me, which they did, and that’s why I want to start fires? But it’s not, not now. This is coming from outside, and I know that’s crazy, that thinking it makes me even crazier, but I believe it’s true.”
It did sound crazy—paranoid, specifically. But how could she say that, especially when Alice acknowledged it herself? How could Lindsay help?
Alice said, “Something wants me to burn down Genius Loci, the coffeehouse. I dream about it, I daydream about it, I almost plan—oily rags, gas cans, smoke and flames belching out the windows, the roof lifting off like a rocket, Lindsay.” Alice’s eyes were bright, glassy; Lindsay realized that talking about this excited Alice, even as it disturbed her. “And I see something beautiful, rising from the flames—a phoenix, a dark angel made of fire, with a beautiful face and snakes made of smoke for hair, a goddess of fire, cleansing, taking everything down to ash and the end, a goddess with supernova eyes—” and then Alice grimaced and shook her head. “Shit,” she said. “You see? I’m almost talking myself into it. You see?”
“I see,” Lindsay said, willing herself not to step away. She touched Alice’s hand. “Don’t hurt yourself, baby.”
“What I don’t get is how specific it is,” Alice said, scowling. “It began as a vague thing, you know? I wanted to fire-dance more, then I wanted to play with open flames, but then for the past couple of days it’s been so strong, and it’s this one particular place I want to burn. What’s so special about a coffee shop?”
Lindsay shrugged helplessly, strange connections knitting together in her mind. Jane had tried to break into Genius Loci, howling about an imprisoned goddess, and Beej had calmly pledged fealty to an earthquake god while he tried to break in, and now Alice had visions of a phoenix-gorgon-goddess—Why? Why were all these people drawn to this ordinary place? Lindsay had an open-door policy when it came to strange ideas, and she’d dabbled in tarot, Eastern healing practices, numerology, astrology, and various forms of divination, but nothing really stuck, and she had no strong attachment to any particular mystical system—but surely this mass obsession with Genius Loci meant something.
“So I’m going away,” Alice said, almost but not quite too softly to hear, and Lindsay blinked at her, then shook her head and said, “Oh, no,” unable to summon any laughter or offhandedness, none of her many protections coming easily to hand. She had no illusions about forever or eternal love with Alice, but they’d just begun; there was so far yet to go before the end, and now it was over?
“I feel better when I’m farther away,” Alice said. “Please understand, it’s even hard to be here, this close. I don’t trust myself, and that’s terrible. I hate this feeling, but I had to say good-bye to you. I had to see you before I left.”
“Alice,” Lindsay said, and nothing else; there seemed to be no words. Protests were futile, and what could she say? So “Alice” again, and Lindsay kissed her lover’s eyelids, her fore-head, her lips. They shared a hungry kiss and an embrace, and there was heat; so much heat.
Alice broke away, and smiled shyly, that unlikely smile she had. “Maybe—” she began, then stopped and shrugged.
Lindsay nodded, understanding, her lips still warm from Alice’s. “I know. Maybe.”
Short-trigger Man
* * *
When Marzi gave him the camera, Jonathan said, “Thanks again.” He looked down at the camera and said, “Oh, there’s only one picture left. Smile.” Before Marzi could protest, he snapped a picture of her.
“I bet my eyes are half closed and I look like a pug dog,” she said.
“I’m sure you’re very photogenic.”
She snorted.
“I’m going to get these developed,” Jonathan said. “I’ll see you later.” He went down the steps quickly, almost skipping. It was nice to see him excited. She suspected it wasn’t a side of him that most people saw, and she felt privileged to glimpse it.
Hendrix was gone for the night, and the only other person working was Pouty Peter, who had long bleached-blond bangs and almost never talked—he was nice enough, she supposed, but uncommunicative to the point of pathology. The café was dead empty, only two or three customers who were in for the long haul with their laptops, books, and magazines; most of the student clientele had fled for the summer, and everyone else apparently had better things to do with the evening than hang around here. Pouty Peter sat on a chair near the refrigerated drink case, reading a book written in German, sipping intermittently on a Red Bull. Marzi tried to think of some manager-type stuff to tell him to do, but really there was nothing. It had been a slow day, too, apparently, and everything was as neat as it ever got, except for the stuff they would clean up after closing.
The first hour was uneventful. Marzi served exactly one beer, and spent the rest of the time reading, until she finished The Wood Wife—there were desert spirits in that book, but they were different from the one she had to contend with. Then she doodled in a notebook, sitting on a stool behind the counter, keeping an eye on things, though there wasn’t much to keep an eye on—Beej behind bars, Jane scared away or no longer interested or maybe busy being crazy someplace else, Denis no doubt humiliated down to the soles of his boots. A boring night like a thousand others, but not since last summer had it been this quiet, and Marzi had forgotten what it was like. It took some effort to get her mind down to the proper cruising speed.
Around seven, Pouty Peter said, “Shit
, do you hear that?”
Marzi cocked her head, but didn’t hear anything except someone faintly tapping on a laptop in the Teatime Room. There wasn’t even music playing; the last CD had stopped, and she hadn’t even noticed. “No, what?”
“It’s like . . . I dunno . . . a black buzz. Bees or flies or a fan that’s almost broken . . .” This was more than Marzi had ever heard Peter say at one time, and it wasn’t proving him a lucid or interesting conversationalist. “Almost like it’s words, but I can’t quite make it out . . .” He looked bothered; more than that, spooked. “Maybe it’s just somebody listening to headphones, or something playing down the street.”
“Maybe,” Marzi said. “You’ve got better ears than me, I guess.” She listened—after all the strange things she’d been through lately, she couldn’t dismiss anything out of hand—but still didn’t hear anything.
Peter stood up. “Look, I don’t feel so well, do you think I can take off? I know you’d be here all alone, but—”
Marzi waved her hand. “I’m going to close early anyway. Go on.” She’d been thinking about sending him home for a while anyway. It was that kind of night. She couldn’t imagine there being a rush here that she couldn’t handle by herself.
Peter gathered his things. “If you get super busy, call me on my cell, I’ll just be at home.” He lived in a shared house not far from the café.
“Sure, don’t worry about it.”
Then Marzi was alone, bored, listening to the nothing-at-all noises, certainly no black buzzing. She wished Jonathan would come back, even though he would want to show her the pictures; she wished Lindsay would come in, smelling of bubble gum and vanilla, bringing some radiance with her.