“You’re a damned pervert, Lulu.”
“What’s Dennis Hopper say in Blue Velvet? ‘Don’t toast to my health, toast to my fuck.’”
“I wouldn’t be Dennis Hopper,” said Spyder. “I’d be Orson Welles. He can act, write, direct, he married Rita Hayworth and you know, deep in his heart, he’s a stone killer.”
“That arty fuck never has happy endings. He’s always dead or betrayed.”
“Yeah, but we all end up there if we live long enough. I love the guy’s certainty. He was willing to ruin himself for whatever he was doing. That’s the definition of balls.” Spyder checked the door again to make sure it was locked, then turned on the light in the studio.
Lulu shielded her paper eyes and softly said, “Shit.”
“So, what happens now?” asked Spyder. “Do we open up tomorrow like nothing’s different?”
“Things are only different if you act like they’re different.”
“Bullshit. Everything’s different.”
“I’ve been exactly what I am for years and it didn’t affect things. Why should that change now?”
“That was before,” Spyder said, groping for words. “I was going to say the world has changed, but it hasn’t. I’m changed. And I fucking hate it. I take back what I said about Sam Spade and knowing things. I enjoyed my ignorance. Give me three wishes and that’s what I’d ask for first.”
“Reality sucks,” said Lulu sitting up on the chairs. “But, if you wait long enough, everything becomes normal. You’ll see.”
Looking out the studio window onto Haight Street, Spyder watched the people outside going through their happy, blind lives. Couples were going to dinner, ducking into bars. On the corner, a girl with blue hair was kissing a boy in a cop shirt and vinyl shorts. Softly Spyder sang, “When I’m lyin’ in my bed at night, I don’t wanna grow up, Nothin’ ever seems to turn out right, I don’t wanna grow up.” He looked at Lulu. “Know that song?”
“Tom Waits. Jenny gave me the CD for my birthday.”
“When I see the price that you pay, I don’t wanna grown up, I don’t ever wanna be that way, I don’t wanna grow up…” For the first time, Spyder was glad that Jenny had left him. He couldn’t imagine trying to explain all this to her. Where was she right that second? Was she happy? He hoped so.
NINE
HARD THANKS
Spyder straightened up when he realized that he and Lulu were no longer alone.
Three smiling men, dressed like bankers in an old movie, were standing in the studio. One of the men carried a large snakeskin ledger. All three men were very pale and carried long, curved knives in their belts. The banker in the middle was wearing the face of the businessman Spyder had spoken to in the street that morning. The face was held in place on the banker’s head by shiny brass clasps that stretched the skin like taffy.
“You are not alone?” said the banker in the middle, the one with the book.
“Who the fuck are you?” asked Spyder.
Lulu stood up and pushed him against the wall. “Shut up, Spyder.” She looked at the bankers. “I wasn’t expecting you. It’s not time yet. I can still see fine.”
All three men were wearing skin masks. From under the stolen meat, their flesh seemed to give off a cold chemical glow, like fungus on the walls of a cavern. There was nothing at all human about the men’s presence, Spyder thought.
“This visit is not for you,” said the banker in the middle.
“It is for us,” said the one on the left.
“For accounts balance?” said the one on the right.
“I don’t owe you nothing. My account is balanced,” said Lulu.
“For now,” said the banker in the middle, who appeared to be the leader. “Our concern lies with the future?”
“I saw what you did to that guy. Get the fuck out of here!” said Spyder, grabbing one of the chairs and starting at the men.
The banker with the ledger calmly pulled his knife and pointed the blade at Spyder. “This is not for you, young man. Please do not interfere.”
“Look at her. She doesn’t have anything left to give you.”
The three pale men nodded and laughed. “She lives and breathes? Yes. There is always something. Her heart?”
Spyder looked at Lulu. “You said they didn’t take hearts.”
“We take hearts, when life is not honored or appreciated. But the oblation can not live without one, so we take them last.”
Spyder weighed the chair in his hands, knowing the moment to hit someone had passed. When he set the chair down, the middle banker put the knife back in his belt.
“You can’t have her,” said Spyder. “But from what she told me, you don’t care about that. You just want a payment, right?”
“Accounts must be balanced. This is our burden,” said the one on the right.
“Any will do, if given freely?” said the one on the left.
Spyder nodded, still trying to parse their odd, singsong speech. “Then take something from me.”
“Shut up, Spyder!” shouted Lulu.
The middle banker said, “You owe us nothing. If we took from you, we would be in your debt?”
“No. You’d leave Lulu alone, so we’d be even.”
“This is possible.”
“And you said this was for the future, so you wouldn’t need anything from me right now…?” Spyder asked.
“Correct.”
“Okay then. It’s a deal. I’ll see you down the fucking road. The door is that way. Use it.”
“There is no deal yet,” said the middle banker. He stepped forward and grabbed Spyder’s arm with shocking speed and strength. With his knife the banker cut a symbol into the underside of Spyder’s left wrist. “Now we have a deal.” He smiled at Spyder. The flesh the banker wore didn’t quite synch with his muscles, so the smile came in stages. First the facial muscles worked, then the teeth appeared, and then the outside flesh stretched into something a schizophrenic might call a smile. “So that you will not forget? And no one else can claim you.”
Spyder had been tattooed, pierced and had a ritual scar on his chest, but nothing he’d ever done prepared him for the pain of the banker’s knife. It managed to be freezing and branding-iron hot at the same time. And it didn’t feel as if the blade was cutting, but raking away large sections of skin and muscle. However, when Spyder looked there was a small, neat incision that was already cauterized.
“Pardon us?” said the banker, and all three men started toward the back of the shop.
“Hey, Barry White, tell me something,” said Spyder. “You knew she wasn’t alone, didn’t you? This whole scene was just a vaudeville act. You weren’t here to collect from her, but to rope in someone new.”
The middle banker nodded to his companions, then to Spyder. “You. The girl. This does not matter. The debt matters. The restoration of balance? This is our burden.” One by one, the three men entered the little bathroom at the back of the studio. When Spyder opened the door a moment later, they were gone.
“What was that word he called you just now?” Spyder asked Lulu.
“Oblation,” she said. “It’s a kind of sacrifice. The kind you’re supposed to give with thanks.”
“It’s not enough they zombify you. You’re supposed to send them a thank you card, too?”
“Pretty much. You wouldn’t think it to look at them, but the Black Clerks are all about having a good time.” Lulu put her hand lightly on Spyder’s shoulder. “You have no idea what you just got yourself into.”
Spyder kissed the top of her head. “It’s all right. I think I know someone who can help.”
TEN
DOA
After dropping Lulu at home, Spyder took at cab to the Bardo Lounge. He’d always preferred the night, but now he was falling in love with it.
Spyder couldn’t really deny the angels in the sky or the anacondas with the faces of crying children hiding in the palm trees along Dolores Street, but in the dark the smaller cur
iosities were swallowed by shadows, mostly invisible. Besides, night had always seemed a time of madness and possibility. The visions just felt more natural at night.
The neighborhood around the Bardo Lounge had taken on a heavy, wet jungle feel, as if the cab had stumbled into the abandoned set of some expensive dinosaur movie. There were always a lot of film crews in town and, for a moment, Spyder thought that they might have genuinely rolled onto a set. But sacrifice poles dotted the corners, animal heads and flowers dripping in the thick, humid air.
The Bardo Lounge was packed. Rubi was serving drinks. She gave Spyder a kiss on the cheek and brought him a tequila. He was relieved to see that she was entirely normal, with none of Lulu’s mutilations.
The bar was alive with a happy, drunken weekend crowd. Leather-clad boys and girls with hair in cotton-candy colors and lips shining brighter than their vinyl skirts. Spyder wanted to wade out and dive into their beauty, and be baptized by their sweat and saliva. But for the first time since he was an awkward teenager, he couldn’t think of anything to say to them. He felt as removed from the crowd as the monsters he’d been seeing in the streets all day. Spyder turned away and drank his tequila.
There was a demon sitting on the stool next to Spyder. It was a huge bare-chested olive-skinned man, his features lost beneath cascading rolls of glistening fat. White geometric designs covered his arms and chest, some kind of tribal markings. Considering everything, he didn’t look too bad, Spyder thought. Pretty human, in fact. Not at all like the monsters in Jenny’s mythology textbooks. The demon stole the beer of the girl sitting next to him and poured the whole thing into a wide, toothless mouth that split open in the middle of his chest.
Spyder sighed and the demon caught him looking. The demon leaned in close and said, “How do you get twelve humans to wear one hat?”
“How?” asked Spyder.
“You bite the heads off eleven.”
Spyder turned back to his drink. “Sorry for not laughing, but I’m going to be over here ignoring you.”
“I’m Bilal,” said the demon, “ You’re the little prince, aren’t you? The one Shrike killed for. What’s your story?”
“There is no story. I’m just an inker who had to take a leak.”
“That’s beautiful. Maybe they’ll carve that on your tombstone? You’ll be an inspiration to future generations.” A stoned couple stumbled by and Bilal delicately plucked the cigarette from the mouth of a cadaverous, lavender-lipped boy. The demon sniffed the cigarette once and dropped it into his chest-mouth. “Though I was really hoping you could justify your existence. Like maybe you were some minor deity on pilgrimage. Or a diplomat off to a secret rendezvous to stop a war.”
Bilal blew out a long puff of smoke out through his regular mouth.
“What’s it like being a demon here in a place like this?” asked Spyder.
“I don’t know. What’s it like being a human?”
Spyder looked in the mirror behind the bar, taking in the crowd. There were other demons, mostly talking to each other. A couple of guys playing pool were cut up in a way that looked like the work of the Black Clerks. “Weird and getting weirder,” Spyder said. “Like Salvador Dali weird, all melting clocks and checkerboard deserts.”
“Welcome to the world, boy. As for my personal complaints, you can add having to deal with idiot talking meat like you.” Bilal pocketed a two-dollar tip someone had left for Rubi. “See, that demon who died last night was Nebiros. He was a friend of mine. In fact, my best friend in this sorry Sphere.” Bilal put his hand on Spyder’s arm. Each of the demon’s fingers was tipped with a scaly lizard mouth lined with tiny needle teeth. The lizards bit into Spyder as Bilal squeezed his arm. “You owe Nebiros a life, and me, well, I miss my friend and that makes me mad. You know what I mean?”
The enormous mouth opened wetly in the demon’s chest and he pulled Spyder closer. A leathery, black tongue darted out, licking Spyder’s face. “Shit!” yelled Bilal, slurping the enormous tongue back into his chest. He turned Spyder’s arm over, revealing the Black Clerk’s mark.
“You must shit candy and piss champagne, son. Everyone wants a piece of you,” said Bilal.
“You mean you can’t hurt me because of this mark?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“It sure as hell looked like it.”
“Smile while you still have lips. The Clerks have you penciled in. What they’ll do to you is a hundred times worse than anything I’d do.”
“I’m looking for Shrike,” said Spyder.
“Just because I’m not eating you doesn’t mean I’m your pal.”
“Yeah, but if I find her and get her to help me, maybe she’ll get in trouble with the Clerks, too. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
“Shrike’s not that stupid,” Bilal said. He took the last of Spyder’s tequila and swallowed it, glass and all. “Still, she likes them pretty and dumb. You might drag her down to your level.” Bilal spat broken glass onto the ground at Spyder’s feet. “She’s got a room at the Coma Gardens. It’s a flophouse down by Pier 31.”
“I’ve never heard of it.”
“It’s not for your kind.”
“Right. Thanks.”
“Go to Hell.”
Rubi asked Spyder if he wanted another drink. He shook his head. “You okay?” she asked. “You’ve been here muttering to yourself all night.”
“Just replaying that last fight with Jenny. I keep trying it different ways hoping it comes out right.”
“You poor thing,” said Rubi.
“I’ve seen you in here a hundred times before. I’ve stolen your drinks and I’ve spit in them. But you’ve never seen me,” Bilal said to Spyder. “How does it feel to suddenly have to live in the real world?”
“It’s the worst thing that ever happened to me.”
“Good.” All of the demon’s mouths smiled. “I’ve been around and I can tell the ones who are going to make it once they get the Sight and you’re not one of them. You’ll be dead by Christmas. A bullet. Maybe you’ll cut your wrists. I don’t see you as the hanging type.”
“I’m going to kill myself just because I see uglies like you? Not likely, princess.”
“No, you’re going to kill yourself because you can’t stand the real world. Reality is a two-ton weight strapped to your balls. And they just keep getting heavier.”
“I’m going back to ignoring you now.”
“I’ve seen it a hundred times. You’re changed and there’s no going back. And everyone knows it. Look around. All those pretty girls who used to flirt with you, your friend behind the bar, they’re all watching you having a nice chat with an empty barstool. They’re already starting to wonder about you. Tomorrow they’ll tell their friends. Maybe I can’t hurt you, but I have friends who can influence mortal minds. Reinforce the doubt that’s already there. By Monday, you’re going to be Charles Manson to these people,” said Bilal. “Yeah, you’re going to kill yourself.”
“Tell me something, when you jerk off, do those little lizards on your hands bite? I bet you like that.”
“And then there are the Clerks. They’ve claimed you and you know what that means. They’re going to pick you apart like a maggot-covered carcass. Could you feel them slicing you up with their eyes, deciding what piece they’ll take first?”
Nick Cave’s “Red Right Hand” came on the jukebox. A girl whooped drunkenly and Rubi turned the song up loud.
“I take it back. You won’t make it till Christmas,” said Bilal. “You won’t even make it to Halloween.”
“Get a costume and come on over. I’ll put razor blades in some apples for you. Enough for all your mouths.”
Bilal leaned over the bar and used the lizard mouths on his fingertips to spear some cherries from Rubi’s drink set-ups. The demon popped the cherries into his face-mouth one at a time. “Give Shrike a big kiss from me. She’ll be so happy to see you, little prince.”
Spyder got up from his stool and started for
the door. He couldn’t help noticing that people were pointedly getting out of his way. At the door Spyder heard Bilal yell, “An OD! You’re going to OD! How could I have missed that?”
ELEVEN
THE VOICE OF THE SPHINX
Spyder wondered what time it was. He was in another cab and doing his best to ignore the chatty driver. It pained Spyder that he hadn’t ridden his bike that morning. Without the bike, he always felt tied up and weighed down.
Ever since he could ride, Spyder had always had a motorcycle of some kind. “You never know when you’re going to need to get the hell out of Dodge,” he told friends. “And you can only run so far in a cab.” He told the driver to pull over.
“This ain’t even near the piers,” said the cabbie.
“I feel like walking.” Spyder paid the man and got out. He checked out the landscape as the cab made a U turn and headed back the way they’d come. Spyder had lived in San Francisco for ten years and during a brief breaking-and-entering period in his early twenties, had prided himself on knowing every backstreet, alley and bypass in the city. Right now, however, he didn’t know where the hell he was.
Ahead of him, where he was certain the waterfront warehouses should lead to the Fisherman’s Wharf tourist traps, were well-trodden sand dunes sloped down to San Francisco Bay. A lot of the city had been built on reclaimed beach. This, he was certain, was what the waterfront probably looked like a couple of hundred years ago. Spyder’s reflexes told him that ahead, past the dunes, was where the piers lay. But his eyes told him that there was nothing but shifting beach and black water. Then he saw a flicker—an orange light from the far side of the shifting sands. In that moment of illumination, Spyder could see a line of silhouettes moving along the edge of the dunes, heading over them. Some of the silhouettes carried burdens on their backs. Others were merely misshapen. It was enough. Spyder’s started walking.
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