“How am I supposed to help?”
“Point me towards the door you just came through.”
“Pick that up,” I told her, motioning to my crystal on the ground.
“She can be quite forceful at times. But she is a good cook,” Mr. M. smiled at me.
She reached for it, hesitantly, and brushed one long finger against its surface. The crystal rippled like a pool of water. A sliver of light traced its way up her finger, around her arm, and into her mouth. She looked towards her husband, and motioned for him to touch the sphere.
“I’ve seen it,” he whispered. “I’ve seen it. I don’t want to go.” I felt a ripple in my soul as she drew her hand back from the crystal, its substance briefly turning gelatinous. With a great slurp, a perfect replica of the crystal slid out of the first one, amoeba-like, and landed at my feet.
Mrs. M scanned the horizon, then turned around and slugged her husband. With that, she marched towards infinity, shouting back over her shoulder, “You are a being of true power. Everything you see here is yours. Good luck!”
“Right. So you’ve left the keys under the mat, then? I’ll just water the plants, feed the fish for you until you get back?”
But she had faded into obscurity. And she’d left behind a huge gathering of wandering souls, who were now surrounding me, pointing towards the crystals, and asking the same question, begging for the same thing: “Which way do we go?”
* * *
Why am I telling you all of this? Because after his wife left him, Mictlantecuhtli wandered the grey wastes until he found the highest mountain on the edge of un-Creation. He vowed to sit in a cave, lonesome and forlorn, until his wife came to her senses. But she’d moved Beyond. She wasn’t coming back, and we both knew it. After a few millennia, I started to get ol’ Mic to open up a little and talk. I wanted to make sure he was adjusting to life as a single man. I wanted to make sure he wasn’t plotting some kind of takeover behind my back. Mostly, I just wanted him to get off the mountain so I could build my lodge. When it became clear that he wasn’t going to leave, I built the lodge around his cave. Eventually, he got tired of people poking their heads inside. He came out of his shell. Now, if you venture into the basement casino of the Slippery Slopes Lodge, you’ll see the entrance to his cave has become Mickey’s, the hottest ski bar in the coldest part of Angel Falls.
I think deep down inside, Mickey was a people person all along. While he’s never been a threat to my monarchy, he has created a nice little side business for himself on the mountain. It’s as close to power as he’ll ever have again, and I think he’s comfortable with it. He trades in pieces of soul. Exchange of anima crystals. It’s a sick little habit started by some of the residents here, one that I frown upon. Rather than have an ofrenda altar full of dull, grey pieces of your soul that you can’t discern, why not have a display of other people’s successes, sins, and shortcomings? Endless entertainment. It’s all a bit sad and desperate to me. People say they do it to reconnect to their humanity, and I tell them they’re only too right. They smile when I say that, and so do I. If it weren’t for their base instincts, I’d be out of business down here, wouldn’t I?
Today, I needed a moment of privacy with Mickey, so I called up a dusting of snow for the peaks. That’ll get everybody outside and skiing while Mickey and I talked shop. I found him in the corner, carefully marking some of the liquor bottles to make sure nobody was stealing off of his watch. I also noticed he took a few slugs before making his mark. He stopped abruptly when he noticed me, tipped his head forward, and let all of the booze trickle out of his mouth and back into the bottle.
“Mickaaaay,” I growled.
“Someone left this for you,” he fetched a manila envelope from behind the bar. It was small, dusty. Looked like it had been through Hell. There was a wax seal, broken. I couldn’t make out whose stamp it bore.
“You open this?”
Mickey shook his head. “Why do you think I’m marking all of the bottles? I’ve had a run of no account, untrustworthy employees. Something I wouldn’t have if you’d just sift a few out for eternal retribution now and again.”
“Now, now. If I let one person slide, I have to let everyone slide. Fair ’s fair.”
“And when did you start playing fair?”
I wasn’t in a hurry to open the envelope. It was emitting a vibe. A bad vibe. Something that reminded me of a place I’d been before and didn’t want to go back, like Branson, Missouri.
Maybe I could get some info from Mickey if I plied him a little. I pulled a stool to his table and picked up an empty bottle. I gave Mickey a thoughtful look, then wrapped my lips around the opening and thought of the most disgusting thing I could imagine. Something to turn my stomach enough to make me puke.[12] And vomit I did, sixty-four ounces worth, filling the bottle to the brim. I set it down gently and capped it.
Mickey gave me an incredulous look. His mouth worked open and closed a few times. “That was disgusting.”
“Thank you.”
“No, thank you. To what do I owe the pleasure?”
“I need information. You give me what I need, maybe I’ll give you a few more bottles of your favorite hooch. I had a big lunch, you know.” I patted my stomach for emphasis.
Mickey reached out for the bottle, his fingers cracking the thin film of frost that had formed on the outside. He let the light filter through the bottle onto his face, a warm smile playing on his lips. I knew what he was seeing in the bottle. Mrs. M back in happier times, their days ruling over the land of the dead as the “it” couple of the Underworld. And that’s just from looking. He knew how much better it’d be when he got his first taste from the bottle. He started to unscrew the cap. I latched on to his wrist.
“You most certainly may not. Not yet. I need information about a girl.” I took her photo from my pocket and slapped it onto the table. “Aspen Biltmore. She’s gone walkabout in a most unforgivable way. Know anything?”
“You can’t get a fix on her?” he sneered at me.
Here’s where I should let you in on dirty secret number one. The anima crystals are supposed to be a burden, something each soul must carry for all eternity, bearing the weight of their deeds and misdeeds as they cleanse themselves on their journey through the Underworld. When a soul is holding onto one of their crystals, I can see them, no matter where they are or what they’re doing. Once I started my laissez-faire policy of allowing ofrenda altars in the home, I gave up my right to see every detail of my tortured souls. Frankly, it’s fine with me, gives my brain more room to think. And they seem to get along just fine without me. But take Aspen. She’s on her way across the wastes with thirteen anima crystals from thirteen different people. I’ll never be able to get a fix on her. But I will find her. All of this, Mickey knew. His question was just a torment for me, a little, “I could do your job so much better and you know it.” Fuck him.
“Fuck you, Mickey. Are we helping each other or not?”
“I don’t know nothing,” he said, his eyes firmly locked on an empty shotglass on the table.
I gave him my most exasperated sigh, hocked the best loogie I could pull from the depths of my lungs, and spat across the table, filling the glass with my slime. Didn’t spill a drop, either.
Mickey tried to drink, but I capped the glass with my hand. “Come on, Mickey. I need you while you’re lucid. I came here because this is your stock in trade. She moved thirteen crystals. That kind of volume, plus the fact that she’s a rich, lazy, spoiled little shit, means she went to a dealer. I’m thinking she was your best customer.”
“That’s where you’d be wrong,” Mickey said. “And she moved a lot more than thirteen crystals.”
“Who did she work with?”
Mickey shrugged his shoulders. “Couple of guys, probably. Who have you pissed off lately?”
“I want the names of the original owners. If I know whose crystals I’m looking for, I can find her. Who’d she work with?”
“You’
ve got bigger fish to fry. Open your envelope,” he said.
I eyed him warily. “No sneaking a shot while my hands are occupied.”
He leaned back from the table. “I don’t think they’re related to her case at all. They just showed up like they always do. I just finished getting their smell out of everything this morning.”
“Smell?” I slid my hand into the envelope. There were only two things inside. A folded piece of photo paper and a tiny vellum scroll sealed in wax.
“All rotten vegetables and animal pelts. Bah. Your descendants puzzle me.”
“Rotten veg—” I started. “Are you talking about the Brothers?”
Mickey was silent, but he added a layer of “you look like you’ve seen a ghost” to his ever-annoying smile.
“You. Are. Shitting. Me. When’d they get back in town?” I asked.
The Brothers. History’s first and most infamous killer, and his sidekick with the victim complex. They were the first sign that my meddling in the Grand Experiment may have had unintended ill consequences. All that jealousy and finger pointing. They got over it pretty quick. And when they had a chance to sit back and think about everything, they realized that I was the one who set the ball in motion. They’ve held a bit of a grudge ever since.
“They’ve been carving up the lower North End for about a cycle and a half now.”
“Did they ask after me?”
Mickey said nothing, but nodded towards the folded photo in my hand. I knew there was something bad about it, but now that I knew what kind of bad I was dealing with, I didn’t want to look.
I unfolded the paper, and was indeed hit by a faint whiff of spoiled carrots and deer ’s blood. The photo was an artistic shot, a still life composed to make one word, easy to read, but difficult to make out because of the medium used to write the message. The picture had to have been taken from a hilltop somewhere in The Greens, one of our idyllic little countryside villages. Well, it used to be. The photo showed a vast stretch of land covered in carefully arranged piles of entrails, spelling out words like a classic postcard: Greetings from Above! The photo was signed in what had to be blood near the bottom: “See you real soon. Love, Cain and Abel.”
“Sounds like they’re happy to be back.” In my entire time as ruler, they’ve come through twice, each time after attempting to kill each other on their eternal journey walking the Earth. I managed to dispatch them back both times, and only just by the skin of my teeth. I don’t know who or what they disemboweled, but I could tell it was a lot of whos or whats. A fine mess.
There was a sound like a snail being sucked through a greasy straw. I looked up from the photo to see Mickey, slumped back in his chair, the shotglass still sucked between his lips, his eyes lost in the grey and faraway past. He’d be no help to me for a few minutes. No matter. I felt the need to leave. Had to get back home, close the blinds up, focus, plan.
That was when Mickey snapped awake and began floating above the table. His eyes glowed an unhealthy shade of aquamarine. He turned upside down and blood began to drip from his mouth and nostrils. Didn’t stop him from talking, though.
“Smoke! Smoke!”
I didn’t smell anything. “Mickey, you’re making a mess. I just had this jacket dry cleaned, and—”
“STOP! Lightbringer, the universe belongs to Shadow. The Dark One. He, and He alone! Yaotl, adversary! Yaotl, dark one!” With that, Mickey went limp and crashed to the floor.
I stood up, grabbed a napkin, and gently dabbed Mickey’s bloody spittle from my lapel. I stepped past him to leave, and he seized my ankle. He looked up at me from the floor, his face a bloody mess, his eyes still aglow, and worst of all his grip hurt . Well, not hurt exactly, but I felt it, and I never feel anything. Something was possessing him, something that I didn’t want to hang around.
“It’s not the end of the world,” Mickey gargled after me as I scurried away, “but before this is done, you’ll wish it was.”
Chapter Two
It had been weeks since I’d been back to my place. I have a couple of imps that I keep around for housework and maintenance, the ones who didn’t show too much ambition at torture and mischief. Imps never have names, they’re more of a hive-mind mentality. But me, I like to name my pets, so imagine how disappointed I was when I found Harold and Maude hanging on my wall, staked through their chests with cruel-looking spears. They were well and truly gone, and my apartment was unkempt. Not trashed, per se, but it looked like someone had very carefully ridden a rhino through the place.
I waved my hand to bring the lights up, and they flickered briefly. I tried again, a bit more forcefully, and got the place up to full brightness. Making lights come on is a parlor trick for me, shouldn’t require any effort. I hobbled to my couch, worried that Mickey may have sprained my ankle with his death-grip. Two harbingers in one day, one from Upstairs, and one from who- knows-where.
I examined the photo again, then unrolled the piece of vellum that had been in the envelope. It was a note in Mickey’s handwriting, but not his voice:
BARTENDER IS OURS. MORE WILL FOLLOW. BLACK IS THE NIGHT, COLD THE SMOKE.
Threatened with awful poetry. I sat on the sofa and closed my eyes to let my mind wander in search of the Brothers or anyone who may have seen them. Yes, I know, a girl was about to destroy the fabric of time and space, but the Brothers were here to whoop my ass. The two events could be related…
I reached out for the neighbors, and saw nothing. Blackness. Maybe they’d gone out. I squinted my eyes up, tried harder. I snaked a mental probe out for anyone who’d seen or heard anything unusual that day. But I got nothing. Less than nothing, I couldn’t even sense my neighbors. Something was wrong.
I stood quickly and limped to the master bedroom. I had designed it to have only two pieces of furniture. One is the most kick-ass waterbed you would ever have the pleasure of riding, and the other was my ofrenda altar (more of a shrine, really).
Empty. Someone had taken my balls. And, as the old saying goes in Angel Falls, a man without his balls is powerless. I’m fairly sure that holds true elsewhere as well.
My anima crystals can only be touched by a divine being. Lesser mortals who’ve tried have been destroyed, absorbed, melted, fizzed (the only way to describe it, really), and my personal favorite, torched. A god or lesser daemon can handle it. The effects it has on them are different depending on who’s holding, but the effect on me is always the same. Someone else touches my crystal, I lose a step. Someone holds them, and I get swoony. So now that someone had stolen them, why was I still on my feet? I had a feeling the answers were located more in Mickey’s sinister turn than Phaleg’s message.
I felt a cold sheen of sweat building on my forehead. I tried to tell myself it was only psychosomatic. There was a reasonable explanation for this. I wasn’t going to die – yet. No, I only had to walk across the wastelands, in completely uncharted territory, chasing someone who’s bent on destroying the universe while in turn being chased by murderers intent on destroying me, and I had to do it all with the powers of a mere mortal. That about sums it up.
I sat back and turned on the television, scanned the news channels to see if word had leaked out. So far, so good. Nothing seemed to be out of the ordinary until the screen started bleeding. Oh, it’s done it before, when I play back my favorite gory movies with the special effects cranked way up. This was the news, however. It should have been stuffy, dry, boring, but there was clearly blood gushing from Edward R. Murrow’s eye sockets. Every time he’d blink or look to his left or right, another little spatter would spray my carpet. My precious white shag was beginning to look like I’d been babysitting a young Jackson Pollock, if Pollock had been a feral cannibalistic baby. I made a note to tell JP that next time I saw him, see if he’d get a good chuckle out of it. By the end of the sports reports, I started to notice it: a distinct pattern. When I stood up, it was more difficult to see, but if I crouched low and cocked my head to the side, it was definitely a message.
/> “They are listening.”
Could be the Brothers trying to get my attention. I don’t think so. Cain’s a bad speller, and Abel’s more of a blunt trauma man, blood makes him queasy. Even if it’s not them, it’s still a little scary. Is it a threat, or a friendly warning?
“Who?” I asked.
Edward R. Murrow chose that moment to stop splattering blood. He sprang over the top of his desk and, from the sound of it off camera, seized some hapless studio grip and tore his guts out. He returned on screen a moment later, covered in gore, and began feeding intestine through the screen onto my carpet.
“Eddie, Eddie, I just had this place cleaned!”
He shook his head in a most gruesome manner and pointed at my carpet. “They are listening.” And next to that, the intestines had piled nicely into a stylized, cursive script: “Monarch of Indigo ~~~~Danger ~~~~ Manna.” Here’s the problem with anima crystals. I’m sure the message was more detailed, but it was centered on my crystals, so most of it wasn’t getting through to me.
I wasn’t sure about the first part, but the last part could only mean one thing. I ran to the closet and pulled out my most inconspicuous trenchcoat, hiking the collar up as high as it would go. I jammed a fedora onto my head, low over my eyes. I looked at myself in the mirror, then decided that I looked like a pervert. I ditched the hat, dug around for another coat, crimson leather. Crimson shades to top it off. Might as well try to look confident while I’m out there. I just know there are so many people who’d like to hurt me, given the chance. Walking outside, I was giving them the chance.
Angel Falls Page 3