Cars full of wailing people cascaded past Speedy in a torrent and tumbled in slow motion the hundreds of feet to the water below; the splashes they made on impact were far enough away that the noise took a second to rise up and reach him. Whether in single-minded pursuit or by accident, the big crab thing followed the autos over the edge, its many legs flailing futilely as it fell and disappeared into the depths along with its prey.
Speedy hung above the void, staring about in dismay. Overhead, with a whoosh, the sun went out and night instantly reigned. The brimstone street lights of the Bay popped on for a moment in automatic response, but darkened in an expanding circle as the contagion spread from Willy’s ground zero – the darkness crept steadily over Yerba Buena Island and on to the East Bay across the water, continuing up the hills with no indication of slackening speed even as it reached the crest and kept expanding outside the Bay Area basin.
The sky was filled with crazy stars in unfamiliar constellations – appearing and disappearing like winking eyes, pulsing in an obscene sort of Morse code. There was a feeling of pressure above like the sky itself was squeezing down atop them; Speedy’s ear drums creaked as if he’d barreled down a steep incline out of the mountains into the lowlands. Then, with a squeak that tremored the world, the night sky inverted into whiteness and the stars turned black in a negative of their former selves. The stars still throbbed and leered like when they were white, but that only made it all seem even more improper somehow.
The asphalt crumbled into dust beneath Speedy’s right hand and he yanked that mitt away as if scalded. Speedy dangled by his left hand only now, swinging gently as he considered the yawning gulf beneath.
There were no waves down there where the Bay had been moments before – the surface hundreds of feet below looked ripple-less and silvery and metallic, like a gigantic lake of mercury. The black stars made the mercury glow – or was it shining with its own internal light?
“Bakersfield don’t sound like such a bad idea right about now,” Fat Bob growled unseen from above him. Bob’s voice sounded like he was forcing it through mush.
Here came those quiet footsteps once more, approaching from the far end of the shattered span – quiet as before, but again cutting through all the background noises like it was the only sound in the world.
Speedy let go his grip and twisted into a head down position as he fell. He locked his arms and legs into a ramrod rod straight diver’s arrow, just in case it was water down there and he could turn the impact into something survivable.
He fell forever.
D T
By Laird Barron
Considering his profession, it wasn’t surprising that the author would occasionally tell a colorful story dredged from his past. Since his weapon of choice was horror these stories were predictably gruesome.
He’d been stabbed, beaten, burned. He’d initiated misadventures involving felonious exploits and romantic miscalculations. Now he could laugh about it, if bitterly.
The editor sometimes imagined the author as a young Viking biker on the third floor of a tenement, then the bucket of paint thinner splashed in his face, the lighter flare, a fireball, our Viking lad crashing through glass and plummeting into a row of dumpsters and trash bags. After the bounce a few singe marks, a few scrapes, one broken bone, otherwise unscathed except for a burgeoning sense of immortality. Such was the story of his youth. Charmed and cursed at once.
These many years later, the writer had swollen to mammoth proportions, an intimidating mass of muscle beneath the soft pink and gray excess of middle age, a person who was in most ways steadily vanishing from the Earth even as he expanded. His blond hair was long and his handlebar mustache luxurious. His mouth curled in a snarl during sleep. He clenched his left fist like a giant baby, like baby Hercules choking the life from the serpent.
He’d ridden a chopper and worn a bomber jacket in his heyday, had punched the lights out of pigs and rival bikers alike, done a stretch in the pen, standing up, if you must ask. The majority of the scars were on the inside. He’d snorted coke and popped pills and kept the breweries in business. After his reinvention as a pulp lit wunderkind and subsequent ascent through the literary ranks he’d shagged enough groupies to qualify as a minor rock star.
Alas, alack, the star set as stars are wont to do.
No more bestsellers meant no more blow, no more jellybean jars full of pills, no more jellybean jars full of starry-eyed college girls; down to Schlitz and Jameson and his old Tom cat and Tom’s canned cat food. Not sands through the hourglass but smoke through the pipe were the days of his life. Ghosts and demons had come swooping from the wings to bear him away to Valhalla in a plume of fire.
He tossed and thrashed in his slumber and sweated like a man gripped by fever. His lover, the editor, didn’t know how to help him. When it got bad, and lately it always was, bad, she smoked Benson & Hedges and perched cross-legged on a chair, nude but for a set of cat’s-eye glasses and the fancy camera as ever slung around her neck, watching intently, unable to decipher his delirious muttering. Occasionally she snapped a picture of his comatose form. He too dabbled in photography, one of the mutual loves that kept them together after other loves had sputtered and died. The pictures inevitably developed muddy and grainy as his words.
What was he dreaming?
No mask? No mask! and some bullshit about Camilla was all she got from his raving when she got anything. He’d once mentioned a nightmare of being buried to the neck in sand as the ocean tide came in while world-famous author Stephen King strode toward him decked in an ivory turban and a ragged yellow cloak that dragged the sand like a tail. What could it mean? She didn’t think it meant much of anything except that he might have a complex about rich dudes like Stephen King.
He’d also mentioned being followed lately, that he, like everyone, had a doppelganger. He mused that the fucker must be intercepting his royalty checks. This didn’t interest the editor – writers were paranoid. No, she dwelt upon other mysteries such as, who the hell was Camilla? Surely not the Camilla. No, surely not.
~*~
The editor was young and wily and after a span in the trenches had landed the fiction editing job at a fresh big city magazine, a science and technology-oriented slick positioned to counterbalance the publishing magnate’s interest in high fashion pornography.
The author was two decade’s older than the editor and had recently sent his agent novel number seven. Each of the other books had dealt with swashbuckling barbarians matching steel against devils and dinosaurs, or rarely, hard-bitten PIs and their dames versus otherworldly menaces. He mixed a dash of blue collar authenticity and a pinch of literary ambition into the conventional pulp brew. Six times it worked, albeit with diminishing returns.
The agent, who was a mutual friend, had confided to the editor that the new novel was a mess, a kind of Frankenstein teleplay rather than a traditional book, that it wouldn’t be winning the author any new fans in the critical establishment, that it would probably sink without a trace and drag the author’s dwindling readership to the bottom. What was it about? Who the hell knew? Even the author shrugged off that question and muttered something in Latin she couldn’t follow. The agent, still in confidence, had admitted to stalling halfway through the manuscript, of being unsure if he could finish it, much less muster the courage to pitch it to a reputable house.
The author made his bones with the previous six books and another hundred or so short stories, but he’d also done some time editing at weird fiction periodicals and helmed a long-running anthology series that celebrated the best short horror of the calendar year. The anthology gig was in jeopardy due to a climate shift at the publishing house.
The pair had known one another professionally for ages, of course. Genre industry being claustrophobically small, and the science fiction/horror end of the closet all the moreso, it would’ve been surprising if they hadn’t associated at the various conventions and seminars that broke the seasons into manageable chunks.
What no one guessed, not even their closest confidants, was the couple engaged romantically with varying frequency and had done so from the beginning. At the outset they’d actually taken some extended holidays together, although as her fortunes ascended and his waned, their ardor cooled. These days it was meet-ups at hotels at prearranged intervals or acts of opportunity during the aforementioned literary conventions. For her the act had become one of charity, residual tenderness in respect of happier times.
Her job at the slick paid substantially better than his anemic sales, so when they rendezvoused once a week to screw and then go dancing she paid the freight. Mostly that meant watching him crack open bottle after bottle from the hotel minibar, or get catastrophically pasted as they waltzed from club to club. Often, their friends and colleagues would accompany them upon these expeditions, never guessing that the couple was actually a couple.
Funny part about the entire affair was, neither had ever taken real measures to keep it a secret. Insomuch as their purviews and spheres of influence made them colleagues and peers rather than supplicant and mistress or master, there wasn’t much in the way of conflict of interest. Both, albeit somewhat extravagant in their public personas, were at heart rather discreet, and thus eschewed displays of public affection. Nonetheless, no one ever noted their simultaneous absences from egregiously tedious panels, or how they all too-often walked out of an elevator together, or how they were usually the last to depart the publisher party at the con suite. No one asked and they didn’t tell until finally “casually clandestine” became their watchword.
The sum of this being that the editor felt a keen sense of isolation here in the twilight’s last gleaming, as it were. She couldn’t think of a single person to turn to in her hour of need that didn’t present a risk of exposure and scandal. She couldn’t think of anyone who’d take the May/December romance seriously.
Thus she observed her lover’s gradual decline and slipped in and out of her own increasingly weird dreams that were doubtless a sympathetic response to the man’s condition.
~*~
Saturday Night. The author and editor toddled off to their city’s version of the Tenderloin and settled in a hole in the wall that catered to the leather and denim set. This was one of those rare occurrences that saw them alone for the entire evening. Joan Jett and the Blackhearts belted from the jukebox, and Lynyrd Skynyrd, and George Thorogood and the Delaware Destroyers. Heads banged and glass smashed.
–Maybe drinking isn’t such a grand idea, she said as he brought four double shots of bourbon to the table and slugged them one after another. It was round three for him during the past two hours. Her mostly untouched Long Island Ice Tea had sweated to death in the meanwhile. However, she’d gone through half a pack of cigarettes. –Your color is icky. Ease back on the spurs, have a soda. Come back to the land of the living.
–Hiked the Catskills the other day. There’s a herd of magnificent deer back in the hills. I wanted to get a picture. Anyway. Bug season. Ticks, gnats, mosquitoes up the wazoo. Chomped the living shit out of me. He bared his arm momentarily to show off the various red lumps and bumps. –And no deer. Deer shit and ticks and a black forest.
–Maybe you’ve got malaria, she said, only half in jest.
Bam, bam, bam, bam! He slapped the empty glasses down and grinned at her with the indolent fury of an ancient rogue lion. He patted her hand and grabbed her cigarette and took a greedy drag. –I’m worried about you.
–Oh? Why?
–You talk in your sleep. That ain’t good. Means you got mental issues. A guilty conscience.
–I don’t have a guilty conscience.
–You should.
–I know, but I don’t.
Stereo MC came on with “Connected.” She thought the peppy beat masked cosmic horrors. A theme for the modern Lovecrafts.
He snapped his fingers to the beat. –Al died last night. Alden was the author’s long-suffering agent and the author spoke of his abrupt demise with a highly affected casualness.
The editor had been away from her office for the weekend , had unplugged the phone as usual, so this news was a punch in the gut. –Holy shit. What happened?
–He was investigating a megalith in Arkham County. The thing fell. He got squished.
–You aren’t funny except to look at. Jesus, what happened? I saw Al last week.
–Sorry. I don’t know. Cops found him in his apartment this morning. Probably a bum ticker. The author smiled to show it didn’t hurt, but his eyes glittered and the pause in his voice was too pronounced. –It’ll get sorted. Meanwhile, I’m in a bind. I need a rep. Everybody loves you, E.
–I’m no agent, she said and snatched up the Long Island Ice Tea and drank most of it.
–Just for now. Push my manuscript to some of the big boys, bat your lashes, flash some leg, whatever…
–Nice what you think of my professionalism. I don’t need to do that to sell a project.
–Shit, E, I know it. I’m teasing. But dead serious, you gotta help me on this. My head is barely above water. Take a peek is all I ask. He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand and stared into the smoky distance as if focusing on the music. –The funeral. We need to make arrangements
–Okay, okay, she said. No point in a drawn out argument that she was going to lose after a few more rounds. She loved the guy and that was that.
The author smiled and it was sort of genuine. –Gonna shake the governor’s hand. He leaned over and kissed her cheek, then lurched upright, nearly upsetting the table. He staggered toward a distant alcove where the bathrooms were stashed. Yuppies and bar toughs alike cleared the hell out of his way as he approached.
She bowed her head and took a breath and asked herself what she’d gotten into all those years ago, what she was going to do.
A stranger stepped from the haze. He said, –Baby, he used to pop them pills and score them hoochie mamas because he could. Now he boozes and does dope because it’s the only thing that keeps him level enough to churn out the horseshit he churns out. Except, there’s not enough booze or dope to compensate. As for the hoochies, you’re the last. Dig?
For a moment she thought her companion had returned from the bathroom, although that was physically impossible. Yet, the voice was correct, so too the general height and features of the man who’d materialized from the smoke and gloom. Her author was dressed in jeans and a leather jacket that no longer zipped properly. This look-alike stranger was leaner by forty pounds and wore a sports coat, slacks, and cowboy boots, all of it crisp. His eyes were hidden behind Hollywood style sunglasses, his long hair was caught in a pony tail. A brother? A cousin? The author as he might’ve appeared at the end of the road not traveled?
She cleared her throat and forced a smile. –Damn, sorry if my jaw is on the floor. But, the resemblance… Are you related?
–No. The stranger slid into a chair across from her. –I am the doppelganger, at your service. He placed his hands on the table. Large and pale, the left bruised and bloodied across the knuckles from some recent violence, swelling even as she watched.
The editor considered a number of reactions, a couple of them precipitous, and settled on calmness as she might’ve if confronted by a menacing dog. –They say everybody has a double in the world. She lighted another cigarette and studied the visitor, stalling in the hope that the author would swagger back and put an end to the scene.
Alas, alack.
Finally, the stranger said, –Your boyfriend and I met in Europe. During the war. Remember that train tour of all the old castles and museums…the one you missed? That’s the year you landed your job at the slick. Yep, you were too busy schmoozing the brass to hit the road for a vacation with your ever lovin’ chum. Well, he was a lost soul and some bad boys sold him worse dope and he went right off the fucking rails. I fastened upon him one night as he lay sweating and raving in his hostel bunk.
–Happened upon him? He’s never mentioned you, she said.
–Sure he has
. You don’t listen so good.
–So well. But I do. And, shit, you’re right. He did. Why are you following him? Are you friends? Enemies? An inane question, but the best she could do under the circumstances. She was nervous. Her vision swam from the effects of pounding that damned drink a minute ago…
–It’s more of a parasite/host relationship.
–A what?
–Or, perhaps, you could call me his muse. Our pal is awfully productive for a man on the edge of a complete breakdown. As he spoke, the stranger flexed his bruised hand and that reminded her of how the author clenched his fist while asleep.
The editor glanced around. Though the bar was packed, it seemed the two of them occupied a tiny island illuminated by the spotlight of a dull shaded lamp hanging from a chain. She’d dressed in her shortest velvet skirt that usually garnered leers and a few wolf whistles, yet none of the crowd seemed to notice her existence. Even the music had receded to the faint roar of distant surf.
She reached into her purse and came up with the dainty canister of mace she’d kept rattling around since the last time somebody got mugged in her apartment building. –Let’s start over. Who are you?
He smiled. Evil twitched the muscles of his jaw and spread fast. –I’m not the only one who’s drained the life from him. His fans, his publishers, the critics…
–Who are you?
–Planning to zap me if you don’t like the answer?
–Yeah, like a cockroach. She leaned forward so that the nozzle was near his face, saw her shaking hand magnified and reflected in his sunglasses. Her finger caressed the trigger.
–As you say. I am the dreadful one whom Camilla saw.
–Camilla.
–Camilla. No mask. No mask! He hissed to imitate a crowd cheering and made jazz hands.
–Oh, that bitch again. She pressed the trigger, hard.
The stranger inhaled the mist and divided like an amoeba on a slide, his face slithering, sloshing side to side, bisecting, a red crack traveling vertically crown to navel, and the lights in the bar flared black, fist to the eye socket, and back again and he’d vanished.
A Season In Carcosa Page 28