Some kids are just born to it. Some switch that says 'no' inside a normal person never gets flipped. Caesar was like that. When them old men who see horror as a tool gave him permission, Caesar never looked back. He took to terror like a dog takes to meat. He got to victimising whatever people he was victimising (do the details matter? I say to you, they do not) with a will.
And now and again, he'd take his little brother Aristide along. Want to know the really fucked up thing? He'd show the little kid what you can do to a person with a car battery, with a straight razor, with a bottle of bleach, with a simple fifty cent lighter, like other big brothers show you how to, I dunno, catch a fucking football.
Aristide snuck into his brother's room while Caesar and his girl lay sleeping. He hacked them both to death and wept. Just couldn't let the animal be in the world anymore. The last time he wept until tonight.
Not all unions are opposites.
His father came home drunk and looked in. The idiom doesn't really translate but all he said was 'it's for the best, really.' Then passed out.
The rest of Caesar's crew came around the next day and found the body and figured the perpetrator to be the dad. They knifed dad to death. One hundred and seventy stab and puncture wounds. They ignored little Aristide because, well, Caesar always said he had a soft spot for his younger brother and the kid was soft. No way he'd have the stones to hurt Caesar.
Whatever never got switched on in Caesar was there in Aristide. He knew his brother would never stop. The girlfriend? Well, there had to be sacrifices.
A week later, Aristide's mother came home.
She knew she shouldn't have left but a cult had found her. She'd been, quietly quietly, a neighbourhood witch. The locals just looked the other way because, well, she was handy to have around. Abortions and keeping the flies off the cattle and finding lost things and keeping the kids from bleeding out after the circumcisions. They all went to services together on Sunday and no one said a damn thing. Hell, when the witch-finder came from the big city, looking for gays and witches and leftists and those with the wrong tribes' blood in them, the people quietly moved her on.
Cosette, her name was and she was smart and ambitious and she wanted more than the life she had in the township. Her husband was okay. Didn't hit her. She kept him under a charm to keep his dick in his pants so he never gave her AIDS. Drank too much but he was happy drunk so she didn't mind. He was good looking and was talented in bed. She liked him fine.
Liked her kids too. Caesar had been a vicious school bully, obviously but at least no one picked on him. Caesar was alright too. Handsome and big and tough.
Aristide she was a little less taken with. Smart but shy. He liked school and was kind to other kids. But he never stood his ground when the bullies came. He never fought for what he wanted. His mother had a hard time respecting him. Cossette wished there'd been a third boy, who had one's brains and the other's fire.
Eventually she got her wish, in a way.
But for now, no, she was stuck with the weaker one. See, the Laibon cult found her and recognised her skill and recruited her. The husband had protested of course but then she told him that she'd be paid a salary of five hundred Pounds Sterling a month. He could have a hundred fifty of that. He quit his job and drank most of it, giving his sons ten pounds of food and care each fortnight.
As for Cosette, she was taught English and her French was retrained. She learned a lot about the world and never had to be told twice. She had a third grader's education but she was sharp. She took to the magician's work well. Mainly her duties took her to Islamic areas of the continent, keeping an eye on Jinn and Ifrits. She grew fascinated by the heroin trade, shocked at the money you could make and appalled at Western tastes. She sicced spirits on carbonated soda representatives and cursed GM crops to flower, messing with the businesses that were pretty much openly trying to enslave Africa again. She was good at the work. She was great at it.
But Cosette came home when she heard the news. Buried her husband and buried her son. Then she sat down with Aristide (which wasn't his name then but you probably know that) and got the truth out of him.
She looked into the eyes of the small, skinny thirteen year old and realised, why she'd been away, Caesar's malignant lessons had taught him to be strong. She couldn't help but be impressed at her youngest and his capacity to hunt such ferocious prey. Her heart turned against Caesar after the shock of losing him wore off and, in time, she pieced the stories of the murders togethers. She was a woman with her own capacities for violence but her work had taught her that cruelty was no way to live. She pitied her poor foolish husband but didn't really miss him. She took Aristide with her, no longer bound to her township.
Cosette began his training.
He wasn't great. He never seemed to do anything but master a few conjures here and there, although his veve patterns were beautiful. He talked about maybe becoming an artist. Drawing American comic books. But no, Cosette had decided he'd join her coven and he didn't see much point in fighting with his fearsome, beautiful mother. He might not be a hugely talented sorcerer but nothing made him afraid anymore and he'd learned something about charisma from his older brother, who had a talent for inspiring atrocities.
Cosette spoke French, was black, was experienced and her magic was rooted in Yoruban folk-sorcery. When the job came up in Haiti, she took her boy.
Here's the thing. Here's where it links in.
They had her on the trail of an object. A mask.
Yeah. The Hollow.
But that was sort of a long-term prospect. She dealt with the former Tonton Macoute who were making bank as freelance bastards or setting up their own little cults or just being cunts to everyone. Cosette's own crew didn't need their competition.
On Aristide's fifteenth birthday, the Hollow turned up. She tracked it down. No one fully briefed her or she's have been a damn sight more wary. Someone was wearing the fucking thing, too.
Cosette was a powerful woman but on that hot April night, she walked into a shantytown expecting a routine retrieval and never walked out.
Aristide, fifteen and turned hard by the memories of the necklacing, of the feel of his brother's skull under a cane knife, had turned even harder, running with the Haitian crews like Soleil Noir and Ti-Haiti down around Warf Jeremie.
He waited three days for Cosette to come home. When she didn't, he knew something was up. Gathered the boys and traced her steps.
The Hollow had her body for three days. The Hollow is a butcher god. Think about what three day and boredom does to a body at the hands of a creature supernaturally gifted at skinning, flensing, jointing, boning. Aristide only recognised the carpet of gore that used to be his mother because the Hollow had folded her clothes all neat and tidy on a table, out of reach of the twelve pints and the fifteen kilos of guts spread out like a fucking picnic.
No one beats the Hollow. It was only because it was murmuring to itself about the Bloody Chamber, the Pink Secret, the Wet Gate, that he even got a shot in.
The Hollow was busy. It slashed his throat and went back to its business. It never even looked at him.
Aristide survived and slunk away. His boys got him out and it was touch and go but he lived. His voice was ruined after that. A clacking, wheezy whine that hurt. A nasty scar.
Something else caused the Hollow to flee and, in time, it passed on to a man called Jon. And Aristide took a year but he consulted Obeah Men and Houngans and everyone he could. He lacerated his soul, giving it up to Baron Cemetery and big bad angels and whoever else would take a slice. A year consulting with whatever would tell him where the Hollow had gone.
The City.
It went there and he followed. Seventeen years old, fresh off the boat, he was lucky the City had plenty of immigrants, blacks, who had French colonies fucking with their distant pasts. The young boy who wept over fratricide was a long way gone, baby. And forgotten. But the new man, the third son Cosette had dreamed of, found cause with the African a
nd Haitian crews and soon found himself running a gang of high bastards.
Aristide hooked up with a local lodge, who recognised his game. Not his mother's coven. Those fools let his mother walk into horror and her own murder. He got together a small but profitable drug distro business and he showed the local vodou types the roots magic, the Yoruban style.
Then, with his crew of hard motherfuckers who had the superstition, he tracked down the Hollow. By then it was wearing Jon. Took him a while but Aristide found it.
He'd reinvented himself and his crew in hoodoo drag. Frock coats and tops hats and veve scarification and monocles and canes. Necklaces of bones. Guardsman's coats festooned in Legba symbols. Antique smoked glass spectacles. Dreadlocks dripping with bones. Machetes and cane knives. Limousines, all done up in graveyard drag. Coffin shaped subdermals. Playing up their French accents and soaked in amanita and rum and cigars and datura and no problem with taking the chainsaw to your arms, your legs. No problem sending that shit to your mother by courier. Terrifying black men, dressed up in death, wearing winklepinkers and vicious as a cancer in the balls.
The Hollow took them apart like a man play fighting with his infant.
Aristide survived because he ran. Ran like a motherfucker. Almost lost it when the Hollow's voice followed him up those tunnels. 'Hello, boy. I smell your mother on you.' No chance of fighting after that, after it shook him down to foundations. Left his crew to die in their screams and blood, that hard crew of his.
He's weeping not for his boys, who got taken apart like a meal, but because he has no idea now what can help him get revenge for his mother, for Cosette, who was fierce and beautiful and in her own way, kind. He weeps for exactly four minutes and thirteen seconds and that's the last time in his life he'll cry.
Don't worry, Aristide. Someone's coming.
ii
'Lazlo, the papers I left. The journal. I left it on the kitchen table.'
He coughs into his phone receiver.
'Yeah. Yeah I seem ‘em. What's a jaguar-cult? So, hey, a jaguar walks into a bar and orders-'
'No time. Listen, I need you to keep ‘em safe. Some people might be coming for them. They'll be serious hitters. In fact, can you hoodoo them up? Keep them somewhere safe?'
'What's safer than here?'
'Lazlo, you once left your door open for three days. The cleaners stole your best pants, half an ounce of speed and a bottle of advocaat.'
'I don't drink advocaat.'
'Not anymore anyways.'
'And did I care about any of that? Did they steal my notebook with the prepped material? Did they take my photo of Gish? Did they steal my -'
'No.'
'No. Because hordes want trinkets, Lark! Hide in plain sight, boy!'
'I'd rather hide it somewhere safe.'
'What have I always told you boy?'
"'Never hire an expensive hooker because you'll probably be too drunk to appreciate it and if you're drunk enough, having a cheap one won't matter." And by God I wish you hadn't.'
'Heh. That's good advice though. You're playing into their hands, boy!' He's very loud.
'They're making a play I don't understand. It doesn't make any sense. It looks like it'll get them killed.'
Which is true. Elliot? He might have read all about case file zero zero what the fuck ever but he won't appreciate what it means. Foulstone, who knows? Either way, they try to take out Jon, chances are good they'll die quick and die bad.
'Then you're going to lose, Lark. You're the audience and you know what I say about that.'
I do. Audiences, Lark, audiences are stupid fickle things and they reward you only when you flatter them and tell them what they know.
Why did Elliot bring me in and tell me his plan?
Stupid. Fickle. That's me, making assumption about how stupid people are. It makes a bit more sense Lazlo's way. They want Jon for something.
They know I have a lead on helping him. They put the scare on me, I rush the operation. Leave a trail a blind man could follow. Alright.
'Yeah, okay. Okay Lazlo, good call. But keep those papers safe anyway and keep eyes open. They'll probably be looking.'
'I'll be as quiet as Pepper's Ghost, boy.'
Hang up.
Bettina comes back in. She covers herself in water to disguise that she doesn't sweat, dampness still clinging to her clothes. She wins a lot and then fakes an injury, strained ankle, pulled finger because she can't risk something like never sweating, never breathing heavy, not for more than a few hours. She unloads seven hundred or more onto my kitchen table.
'You bank half a’ this?'
I keep her money with Lin. Lin takes ten percent, then again no banks ask to see a dead woman's ID or is open to a woman who takes the risks my muscle does. Bankers don't like clients with roaring knife wounds. Lin's bond is her life. Take just under half, lock it up.
'Later.'
She sniffs at me.
'What?'
Slowly, she grins.
'What?'
She takes out two beers, still smiling.
'What?' I take one. Only drink beer with her now, I realise. Whisky or tequila elsewise. She cuts some limes she bought, Squeeze juice into mine then slide it onto the rim.
'So you and that little punk girl, eh?'
'I dunno what -'
'She broke a piece off you? Lark, you hussy, giving it up to a player!'
It's weird to talk about this with her. The cut on my cheek hurts.
'Bettina, I have no idea what you're talking about.'
'She smelled like another girl. I figured she was, you know, all lesbian and that.'
Drink at that beer, defeated. She helps herself to my pack. We light up. Sit.
Sigh. 'So did I, truth to tell. But you can't tell anything these days. It all collides in to one another.'
Shrugs as she replies. 'It ain't so bad. Keeps things interesting. Most time you look at a dude, you got him figured out straight away. His shoes, his watch, his hair. You find out some part of him don't run true to what you thought you'd get, that's good! Spicy.'
'Or it just means they're a little crooked in how they're boring.'
'Lark, look at you. Just got laid an' a hour later, you on your own trip about how bad the world is, how people are all messed up or trash. You got a smoke in your mouth, you got a beer in your fist on top of that. How good you think the world can get?'
Nothing to say to that. Good point fairly made. We clink the beers together.
'That Devil guy, I heard him talk about her. Think I don't know stalker obsession when I hear it? You don't want no part of that.'
I'd been listening, not brooding on my own problems, that line would have saved me some trouble. But I wasn't, so it didn't.
'You got that look in your eye. Tell me the exciting adventures Batman and Robin are getting into tonight.'
'I don't think - '
'You Robin.'
'I'm a man you'll find in full possession of a black cape.'
'Uh huh. You still Robin.' She's trying not to just laugh at me. Funny thing is, find I don't mind.
I tell her about why Elliot called us in. I tell her they were just giving me a poke, see which way I was gonna jump.
'But you know about it. Which means, because you're you, we're gonna come at it sideways.'
'Yeah. It's not the smart play for them to come at Jon. He's dangerous. He's dangerous. So I need to know what's up.'
'We could lift that Elliot guy. Wouldn't even need to play it rough with him. Guy like that, just threaten to bust him up, he'd spill.'
'Love to. Truly. But, leaving Scarlet aside, that'll bring Library heat. That one, he's under the knife.'
'Sure.'
'So yeah. We're coming at it sideways by coming at it forwards.'
Stub out.
'Sometimes you got play the obvious tip. We're gonna find Jon. Right now.'
iii
Bettina walks ahead of me. Shorts to her knees, new kicks, big hoo
die on, sports team on it. Earbuds in. She won't stand out.
Me? I'm just in an old jacket, unshaved. Sometimes a lifestyle like mine means I don't have to pretend to look like I belong in bad parts of town.
I sip on a 40. Not a great drink but it keeps me in character. Least there's a lot of it.
North, we're uptown and north. My skin stands out here but it's... I'm not exotic. Just rare. Bettina, she's fine. Some local boys come down from a stoop try to sweetly court her. She can handle them, if not, she's got a lead pipe under her shirt heavy enough to introduce brain to streetlight. Got something similar in my bag but hers is more practical. She's talking back to them in English, Spanish and a slangy mix of both. They're hollering at her. Charmers.
Take my eyes off her. Feel around.
Not here. Walk down the road, past a tobacconist, an all night bodega, porno shop, chemist, cross a street, butcher's all shut up for the night, walk past a 'religious supply store' with some genuine buzz to it. Owner, she looks through the window, my wards sparking off hers but I just walk by like I'm not even noticing, past a post office with a shattered window been taped together, a newsie, a video rental, get blasted by an laundry's heat, an anarchist den with a CLOSED FOR BUSINESS sign over the black roses painted on it and a RAPISTS AND CAPITALISTS NOT WELCOME in marker on the door. Then an old second-hand bookshop, open late.
Even on the job I can't help myself. Grab two paperbacks, old Mircea Elidae I probably already have and a copy of Jaws. Store ‘em in the old duffel bag I've got strapped across my body I'm using in place of the doctor's kit tonight. It sticks out.
Cross at the alley and, yeah.
Here. It's in this alley. Catch the buzz, mood-spoor that says Hollow.
Walk to the end.
Past the dumpster. Foul water soaking my shoes.
Manhole cover. Been opened.
Here's Jon.
Devil City Page 8