by Kit Hallows
He let go long enough for me to pull away.
I wheeled round and ducked back as he tried to bludgeon me with the cosh in his gloved fist. My hand shot forward, grabbed his wrist and twisted. He dropped the cosh then seized it with his other hand and swung again. It struck my head hard. I felt a flash of pain and the world dimmed around me.
I sidestepped the next blow and gave him a right hook to the throat. He spluttered and two long white fangs appeared behind his bloodless lips, and then I noticed his pupils, which were barely pinpricks in his topaz eyes. They bore into mine as he tried to hypnotize me. “Nice try,” I growled as I tore my gaze from his, pulled my gun and fired.
The bullet blew a hole in the empty staircase behind him as he burst apart into hundreds of motes of light and swarmed past me out through the open door, and into the empty street.
I stumbled in pursuit, slowing as he rematerialized before me.
My second shot went wide as he leaped toward the wall of the house, ran up the side and turned, pirouetting through the air. His cosh whistled past my head and struck my shoulder with a solid whack. I held on fast to my gun, despite the bolt of agony blazing through my arm, and leaned in to knee him in the crotch.
His choked cry was high and I savored his pain as I raised my weapon and fired again. The bullet pounded into his chest, and he staggered back, hissing like a snake before breaking apart into motes of dim light. They flew past my head and fluttered around the corner of the house.
“Who are you, coward?” I called. The Crimson Eye? Word was they were still looking to take me out, payback for the slaying of their beloved master, Mr. Tudor.
But if that was the case, why hadn’t the vampire killed me when he’d had the chance? And what was the purpose of dragging me into a deserted house?
I reached for the corner of the brick wall where he’d turned, and soaked up its old, yet potent magic. I was about to use it to search for traces of my vampiric assailant when my phone rang.
- Haskins
“What do you want?” I asked, keeping my voice low as I scanned the gloom.
“I need to see you. It’s urgent.”
“How urgent?”
“Very urgent. Meet me on Green Street.”
“I’m kind of busy right now.”
“Trust me,” Haskins said, “you’ll want to see this. Hurry.” He hung up before I could respond. I sighed as I strolled back toward the streets that led out of the magical quarter.
It never just rained in this city.
It poured.
Hard.
12
I took a cab to the south side’s old textile district. Most of the factories there had long since closed as the businesses moved overseas. Now, after decades of disuse a few of the worn brick buildings were being converted into lofts as the neighborhood slowly but surely became gentrified.
“Right here’s fine.” I said as I spotted Haskins’s car.
The cab pulled over amid the shadows of the elevated railway. The tracks ran above and parallel to the two-story high wall that extended the length of the block. I paid the driver and climbed out into the bitter cold.
As expected, the place was pretty much deserted, but I spotted a man huddled in a blanket in a nearby doorway. He nodded to me, the face below his ragged beanie a long tale of hunger and suffering. “What’s up, chief?” he asked.
I handed him a five as the cab pulled away, dowsing us both in exhaust. “Seen anything interesting lately?” It was always good to get word from the street whenever possible and my gut had more faith in this man’s observations than Haskins’s ad hoc speculations.
“I’ve seen things.” The man was blinkered, but there was a faint trace of latent magic behind his red-rimmed eyes. “You might call them interesting. Depends on your outlook. I call them downright disturbing.”
“What can you tell me?” I slipped him another five.
“Bless you, son.” He folded the bill slowly and tucked it away "I’ll tell you what I’ve seen, and you can take it for what it’s worth. But listen, I’ve been clean for going on three years now, so this ain’t no pink elephant shit if you know what I mean.” He pointed a trembling finger toward a large old reinforced door situated further along the wall, right across from where Haskins had parked. “That place is leaking some kind of weird pollution.” He raised his voice as a train rattled overhead. “Used to be a mechanics, now they call it an artist’s space. Me, I call it an uppity drug den for a bunch of spoiled rotten assholes.”
“What’s been going on there?”
“Plenty. Last night the screaming woke me. Worse screaming than usual. Horrible, like someone was dying. And then this spooky bitch came through that door. She was shining.”
“Shining?”
“Yeah, there was this weird silver light spilling from one of her sleeves. Like she had a frigging flashlight stuck to her wrist.”
“Anything else?”
“Yeah. How much time you got?”
“Not a whole lot right now, someone’s waiting for me. But I’ll be back…thanks, man.” I headed down the sidewalk toward Haskins’s hastily parked car and turned to face the thick wood paneled doors that led to whatever he was investigating beyond. The doorway was battered, scuffed and covered in what appeared to be decade’s worth of vomit stains. I reached for the handle, and the door creaked open onto a shadowy yard. Iron struts from the railway above blocked out most the sky, almost as effectively as a roof, and old engine parts and bald tires littered the rubbled ground.
Along the far wall was a row of five carefully placed metal shipping containers that had been converted into make-shift studios, and standing before one was Haskins and a blonde, stork-like woman wearing a shabby Afghan coat. She was the type of broad that had a collection of habits, and none of them good. She turned my way as she lit a cigarette from the butt of another and blew out a long stream of smoke. “Who the fuck are you?” Her voice was barely more than a rasp.
“He’s with me,” Haskins said. He looked angry, not that that was particularly unusual.
“Good for him. So is he going to pay me my fucking rent?”
“Rent?” I asked as I eyed the eclectic collection of studios. They all seemed to be vacant except for the one at the end. Soft yellow light spilled from a salvaged shuttered window that had been added on one side and the door that had been left ajar.
“Yeah. I just came down here to get my money and I end up standing out here in the goddamned freezing cold talking to this jackass.” The woman nodded to Haskins. “And I still ain’t got my rent. So are you going to pay me, mister, or what?”
“I don’t have any idea what you're talking about!” My patience was wearing thin and I had better things to do than spend another moment in the company of these two grotesques.
“My tenant, that’s what I’m talking about,” the woman said. “I came here this morning to collect my money. Which was late. And not for the first time neither. Then I find him in his studio all fucked up on something. Just sitting there staring at himself in a mirror, like he’s some kind of damned art installation. And he’s not talking, but he’s breathing. So I call 911 because I want him out of here, and for good this time. Plus it looked like maybe he needs to go to a hospital or something, I don’t know. So then…” She paused to take another puff of nicotine before releasing it at me in a slow, steady cloud. “So then some cop turns up looking like he’s fresh out of kindergarten. And he goes and has a look round and then he goes and calls this one,” she gave Haskins a baleful glare. “And then he tells me to wait until you show up. And all I want is my rent. I’ve got bills to pay!”
And heroin to smoke. I glanced back toward the studio as something shifted and for a moment I thought I caught a glimpse of an immense, faint black shape looming over the top of the container. When I looked again it was gone.
“Who the hell is this guy, anyway?” the woman asked Haskins before rounding on me.
I stared right back at her u
ntil she looked away, then I reached into my pocket, seized a crystal and let its power flood my system. She blinked slowly and gave a high-pitched laugh as I placed my hand upon her forehead. Then her eyes drifted down. “I…”
“You need to go home. That’s what you need to do. Now,” I said.
“Sure.” She nodded, turned and hurried back through the yard toward the door and stumbled out into the street.
“What did you just do?” Haskins demanded.
“Made her forget a few things. Don’t worry, she’s used to it. She’ll go home, smoke something nasty, have a little nap and we get some peace. Now, care to tell me what in the hell I’m doing here?”
“This way,” Haskins walked over and threw open the door to the studio at the end of the row. Inside were stacks of canvases under heavy, dusty tarps and a large easel that stood in the middle of the room. Sitting on a stool before it was a young guy with long dark hair and a gaunt pale face. One of his wrists was suspended in the air by a length of twine tied to the light fixture above him and a small mirror had been duct taped to his hand and carefully positioned in front of his face.
His wide eyes were filled with horror and morbid fascination as they stared into themselves. I reached over to check his pulse and breath, it was light but steady, and then I glanced at the painting resting before him. It was filled with black scratches and scrawls of ink spattered over renderings of pyramids, eyes, snakes, and lots and lots of tall black doors. A tiny clear plastic bag of what looked like coal dust rested on the edge of the easel. “Any idea what this is?” I asked.
“Nope. But I’ve seen it before. We found a ton of it at this rave we got turned onto recently when some tweaker called the fire department to put out a nonexistent inferno. When they got there the whole crowd was freaking out, like they were convinced the place was burning down. A couple of the cops I was with claimed they saw the flames too, but there was nothing there, not even a whiff of smoke. I think it was some kind of, what do you call it, mass hallucination or something. We hauled in plenty of twitching idiots holding little baggies of that shit. I sent it in for analysis but haven’t heard anything back yet.”
I held a pinch below my nose. It smelled of black crystals, cocaine, and all kinds of horrible shit.
“Looks like you know what it is,” Haskins said. “Is it from your people?”
“One element is, yes. But it’s some kind of mix. Seems the main component is garden variety cocaine, from your people. Not sure what else is in it though. Let me know if you hear anything from the lab. In the meantime, I’ll take a sample of this to a guy I know and see what he can tell me.”
“So what are you going to do with laughing boy?” Haskins asked, nodding to the artist perched before the canvas. “I can’t bring him in. Not if he’s on some drug that contains…magical shit.”
“Yeah, probably best to keep this quiet for now, if we can. Whatever it is, it's got a serious hold on him, but he’s breathing and his heartbeat’s steady. I think he'll be okay. Leave it with me and forget you saw it.”
“I will. Just as soon as I’m…you know…” He glanced down at his open hand.
“You’ll get your money, Haskins. Don’t you always? Now what about that cop the landlady reported this to?”
“What about him?”
“I don’t want any more of your boys poking their noses in. Especially not while I’m trying to figure out what’s been going on here.” I'd had more important things on my mind when Haskins had called, but that homeless guy’s mention of a spooky bitch and silver lights had peaked my interest. This was beginning to reek of the Spiral’s work.
“Don’t worry, he won't say nothing. I’ve got more dirt on that little punk than you’d care to know about. Just make sure you get this mess cleaned up.” Haskins waved as he sauntered out of the studio, then yelled back from the yard “And pay that dumb broad so we don't get any more calls.”
I closed the studio door, pulled up a crate and sat next to the artist. Then I gazed into his eyes. He was gone, locked away in some other world I couldn’t see. I grabbed a crystal and absorbed its power and placed my other hand upon his forehead. Usually I could tap into a blinkered’s mind with almost no resistance, but this time there was an odd delay. He had sight. Not much, but more than most blinkereds I’d met, and the visions he was having were leading him on an insidious descent that would almost certainly lead to a harrowing, irreversible breakdown.
Images of his life began to tumble and swirl through my mind’s eye.
His name was Miles, and he’d come from a very affluent family. After a catastrophic spate of arguments with his parents he’d been effectively disowned and now he rented a room in a squalid apartment a couple of blocks away. The limited contents of the place consisted of a single mattress and a chipped cup, making it little more than a depot where he packaged the little bags of speed he sold, mainly to support his own habit.
Miles was single, basically friendless, and on the verge of utter despair. The paltry money he earned from selling his art was considerably less than he made from the drugs; a harsh reality slowly chewing at the last strands of his ailing self worth. His life was sad and empty. Just another lost ghost swallowed up by the dark city.
“Hang in there.” I moved my hand from his head and rested it on his bony shoulder. I had to get him out of the mental fug he was in so I could get him some help. There were halfway houses for blinkereds with sight, which employed doctors and counselors to integrate them into the magical community or prescribed treatments that could shut down their visions and release them from their torment.
I ventured out into the yard, called Dauple and asked him to come as soon as he could. He agreed, but there was little enthusiasm in his voice. In fact, he sounded downright pissed off.
The afternoon was drawing in and a commuter train rattled overhead, sending pigeons flapping from the rafters. I ducked under a corrugated shed as spots of blue and white marbled shit spattered the frosty ground. Then, as I glanced back to the studio, I froze. The air around it shimmered, and I caught sight of a great dark rectangle towering over it.
A door?
It was huge, so tall the top of it almost touched the iron struts of the railway above. Its form was faint but more defined where the motes of dust swirled through it and it pulsed and thrummed while a distant knocking sound issued from its core.
“What the hell?” I whispered.
Then the manifestation flickered, and was gone.
13
I pulled back one of the dusty drop cloths and flipped through a stack of paintings while I waited for Dauple. Most were just as strange and nightmarish as the one displayed on the easel, but here and there within the mix were lush, color-drenched landscapes. Beautiful, skillfully rendered even, but always marred by some pointed, discordant detail; a beetle upon a leaf with the face of a skull; a graceful lady and her partner, her face scratched away by a knife, or a mountainous landscape with rock formations that brought to mind a hunched, tortured looking man.
I also found a few extraordinarily lifelike portraits of a young girl. These were the only images that the artist seemed to have left undamaged and free of nightmarish additions. I wondered who the people were that bought his works and what could possess them to hang them upon their walls. Was it to be edgy? Was it to fulfill some perverse yearning to regularly witness the darkness and despair lurking within the heart of the human condition? Or maybe to reaffirm what most blinkereds already knew on some subconscious level; that darker other worlds existed, and that they were a lot closer to hand than they’d ever cared to acknowledge.
I glanced through the window as the door at the far end of the yard scraped open and Dauple stepped through. He was wearing his frayed black suit but no top hat and he seemed preoccupied. Angry even. He nodded to me as I waved him toward the studio.
“Morgan,” he said, his usual childlike excitement for dealing with Organization business absent. He glanced at the artist, and his brow fu
rrowed then his eyes leapt to the little bag of dark powder and I remembered him mentioning his bout with black crystal addiction.
“He doesn’t look well.” Dauple commiserated as he peered into the artist's eyes. “Not well at all. Do you think he’s eaten faerie fruit?” He sniffed deeply. “I don’t smell saffron.”
“No. I don’t think he’d be here if he had.”
“That’s not entirely true. While many blinkereds are whisked away to Faerie when they eat their fruit, others only do their traveling up here.” He tapped the side of his head. “It may not be Faerie, but this young man is definitely somewhere else right now. And not a nice somewhere else at that.” Dauple checked his pulse. “There’s still plenty of life in him.” He cocked his head toward me. “Which means it’s not quite bag-time. So why’d you call me?”
“I need someone to watch over him while I try to figure out what’s going on and find him some help.”
“Why me?” Dauple eyes gleamed amid the dark bruise-like circles that surrounded them. He rubbed his long hooked nose. “I’m always glad to help, Morgan. You know that. But…”
But in the old days, I was reluctant to have anything to do with you. Now you’re about the only person in the Organization I can trust. “This needs to be kept quiet. For now, at least.”
“Understood,” Dauple said. “Secrecy. Privacy. Both very important. Vitally important.”
“Are you okay?”
“Yes.” His manic grin gave me a flash of his dark rotten teeth. “Yeah. Of course.” He ran his fingers through his thin coppery hair, leaving it standing up all over the place. “Actually, no. Not at all.”
“What’s up?” I didn’t have a whole lot of time to play counselor, but I didn't like the idea that something was eating him up. He’d done quite a lot for me of late, and strange as it was, I’d kind of grown to like him.
“Gretchen ended it.”
Who the hell was Gretchen? It took me a moment to recall the woman he’d met on his speedy date, the one that looked like a chipmunk drenched by a monsoon. “I’m sorry to hear that. What happened?”