Devil City

by Gestalt Publishing

  Scarlet was eager for it all.

  But she was eager for other things in life.

  One night, she caught the midnight special.

  She wrote back. Scarlet was too smart for train station pimps and the other usual welcoming the City gave 16 year old girls run away from the country and home. Jobs, boyfriends, all that. She built a life and while the family didn't like her so far away, at least she was safe.

  And Luanne envied her. Luanne had tried the same thing, twenty years or more before, getting away, making it on her own. But loneliness had bought her back to Abscess. She couldn't help but simply admire her niece. And sure, the City changed Scarlet, over and over again and sure her boyfriend was weird and shy and no one liked it when he got quiet and just stared but he wasn't terrible.

  There was always an expectation though, that this was all a holiday, a phase. That this big city woman who, truth to tell, kind of intimidated them all would take off the high heels and come back, marry a high school sweetheart and be a part of them again.

  Except for Greatma. Greatma loved that Scarlet had gone away.

  'She'll be back but not for a long time. Keeps us fresh! It's like onions, she's good for our blood.'

  But they prayed for Scarlet anyway.

  Sure was a surprise when she was getting married. Her mother and father had been proud of course. Especially when they found out she was marrying money. The cousins thought it was romantic, a whirlwind romance. Not Greatma.

  Luanne had gone to see the old lady, 95 years of age, after she had refused to come down from her shack one Christmas. It was unlike her. The old girl loved Christmas, the drinks, the little kids, the food. Luanne took some leftovers and walked the five miles to the old shack in the swamp where the family had started.

  Greatma was in a bad way. All her bundled-stick familiars were on the prowl. That old swampcat ghost she kept around as a totem was spooked. Greatma herself was tired, worn, twitchy and irritable.

  'What's under your skin?' Luanne asked as they drank the old woman's fine distilled applejack.

  'Visions.'

  'Visions?'

  'I don't hold in prophecy. I'm not a soothsayer. Being a prophet is for those the Lord calls and I'm not likely to be chosen like that. But I see what's coming. I look out into time and see what's going on with my family, what secrets they have. And I saw Scarlet.'

  'Scarlet's fine, Greatma, you know that. She's getting married. You know she invited you but she also said she understood if you're too old to travel.'

  'She's not fine. Look.'

  Greatma threw some moss onto her fire. Bought out the toadstools she cultivated and they ate some. Greatma sang her old, old songs.

  Luanne saw it then. Something, out in the dark.

  The profound dark between worlds.

  The places where no dust or light or hope was tolerated, where the blackness rush in like exterminating waves. Pure emptiness.

  But it wasn't empty.

  Something serpentine and huge moved through it. Something profoundly malicious, something that radiated its personal desire for harm. Something curled and rotten, wrapped around the heart of every void.

  Luanne knew it was just a thought, just an idea. She couldn't even see anything but she knew a demon when she saw it. (Even though this was worse than demons but she can't be expected to know that, not with the beat of her heart hammering blood to her ears.) She knew it wasn't real but she prayed to Christ Jesus that it wouldn't see her.

  It took a long time to realise there was a voice. A woman's voice, whispering to the snaky monstrosity. Cooing, almost. A sing-song lullaby whose words were too low to make out.

  And. Slowly. With a klieg light blare of irradiating yellow light...

  The snake.

  Woke.

  Up.

  Luanne came to hours later. Greatma had prepared some elderberry tea for her, to calm her.

  'Every time I look for Scarlet, see what secrets are in her life, that's what I see. That goddamn twisty winding thing that's out there.'

  Greatma spat into the fire.

  'Something set that on her. Woke it up and goaded it. Maybe on all of us. It's coming now, like an asteroid.'

  The old woman wiped the crusts out of her blind eyes.

  'Scarlet's gonna die.'

  ii

  The number 0 on my phone broke in the fall. 0 and 4.

  Every fucking number in the City uses that as a code. I can't call anyone. Got the message right in front of me, can press fucking SEND but I can't dial out.

  Walking, looking for a place that sells phone is a nightmare and it's past close of business. Bruise shock shoots into my hip. Have to stop a minute, find an alley, spew up with pain. Some suits make a great show of not looking at me, just seeing a drunk who hit the weekend drinking early. It's Saturday.

  Fuck off back to moronland, suits.

  It takes fifteen minutes to get to a phone booth, which I kind of forgot even existed. Ever since cell phones came in, they've been harder and harder to find. Think about doing some rite to fix my broken piece but I'm in no shape and I don't understand the technology. Couldn't think my way into the right set of symbols to make the fucking thing work.

  Want a limit on magic, there's one for you. Still got to work within your own provenance.

  Anyways, find the phone. Some gross bastard has pissed in the booth which is bad enough but, look, someone's gummed up the slot. No idea where another one is. Hit the high street, try to wave down a cab. Two pull up and two pull away. Jacket ruined, blood on my trousers. That's not happening.

  Walk one hundred fifty meters and by the end, just trying hard not to pass out, trust Gnosis to guide me. Fucksake Devil. We'll be talking about this. Put the change in. Punch in the numbers. On the screen, the Devil's signature appears where the numbers should.

  Right.

  Desperate times. Need to get across town. Now.

  The Black City. Strange monochrome hidden world - the chiaroscuro dreams of the City. No. It's too strange there since Wick moved in. She's exploring it. Changing it. Too easy to get lost. But the City has other shadows and other secrets. I've got ways to hit them up.

  The Night.

  North here, I'm amongst the old gabled townhouses and the deco and nouveau office buildings gone dead inside that house crack dens on their upper floors. The streets lined with sketchy, undead trees that never seem to flower and never seem to die. Alley way and cobblestones, up north. Gaslamps, long since switched over to electricity but with a kind of old man's dignity still. It's getting dark here. Shadows are lengthening. The red and white and black brick is washing out. Everything turns dark.

  The Night.

  In the nighttimes, the City wakes up. It seethes. All its evil dealings are done at night. The needles hit the arms and the flesh hunters gun cars down alleyways lined with those who've the need to sell such wares. The city councillors and the planners and the police take their meals and brandies, happy to exchange favour and the future of their fellow citizens for coins to horde. Parents arrive drunk to terrorise children, work's aggression ready to be taken out on more innocent audiences. Thieves come out from shadows. The dark-eyed predators with no ambition but a weakling's urge to prey on weakness.

  Less common threats too. Leeching vampires stirring from their filthy sewers and mould-damp basement, ghosts eager to deal horrifying retributions out on a world that couldn't even kill them, spirits who remember the old days when humanity was paralysed by the darkness. Magicians, cultists, sorcerers, fuelled by it all, channelling a black current into blacker mojo, feeling the City nightly wake, twitch like a predator and prepare to feast on its own body.

  That's the Night. A memory the City has of all that badness. A permanent scar on its own skin, sleep paralysis of the whole town. A time where all that is locked and imperishable. Metetherial world, hallucination given skin.

  I hate the Night. I've walked in that stillness, that paralysed bad idea, three times before an
d I do not like it. Endless fear.

  But the Black City is closed and I can't find a phone and someone has sent my friend into a whirl of blades wielded by a profound hunter. Was talking about the times you find out who you really are?

  Right then, at that exact second, who should pass by, recognise me, flick her eyes away like she never saw me - it's Buscema. I know this woman.

  This is north in the docklands where the bad cults play and that's where we dealt with her last time too. She was in some crazy cult worshipped guns. Made them Gods. Bullets for saints.

  Hired out as shooters as an act of faith. Me and Jon cursed them bad. Acting like they were all death-masters and shit... we didn't like them much and their cowboy attitude, pulling triggers, not caring if the automatic they shot pulled away, shooting through plaster, taking out civilians, murdering without discipline.

  That curse was simple. We called the cops on them. Three pulled serious time and the rest? The curse meant any gun showing up in the City, serial numbers and ballistic would lead back to their stupid cult, if they picked up a heater. They could never take the risk again unless they fancied being pinned with any number of unsolved shootings.

  The north where the bad cults play. Surrounded by enemies. Back here again and alone.

  Buscema is already on the phone. Lark, here, alone, wounded. Figure she'll probably risk the curse for me. Her husband and brother went down in the police raids on their shooting range temple. Decades each. Even as white people. She'll figure it's worth it.

  The Night then. No choice. She's already staring at me with eyes like scopes, not even bothering to hide now backup's on the way. Decision's made for me.

  Close my eyes. Think of whispers and laughters in the dark. Throw myself - no, no that's not the right way to think about it - let the Night come in to this phone booth like a tide. Let it take me out, deep into its mouth.

  iii

  The Night isn't a place. Not like a bar is a place, or a graveyard. It's a condition. You let yourself go into it, like walking through air turned honey. You're still in the world but time and space are afraid of the Night. They don't grip on so tight. Nothing sees you inside it. You throw your mind up into it and disconnect from the body. Your thoughts are in the Night, your body in the City but all of those things are out of synch.

  Too tired, too scared, too bloody to go otherwise, I choose to walk it.

  The Night laps me up.

  Walking, pain still there but removed. The City glides past. Faster than normal. Taking blocks with each stride.

  Sky is low and green with reflected light. Neon signs in the far distance blink and waver. A woman is begging someone to just stop please stop it. A kid is crying. Distant gunshot. Ambulances whining as they race towards some old, new squalid ugliness. A car alarm. A train. Hear them all, far away. Streets are wide and cold and pools of light from streetlamps never quite seem to splash over my feet. Steam from the subway, moving slow, making shapes I don't like to look at.

  From the corner of my eye, there's a form. A child. Laughter. A spike of anger and fear that I'm doubting will ever go away now. I know the boy.

  Murtai. The kid from the orphanage.

  My bully.

  You got one like that? One kid who lives in your memory like a tapeworm? Guy gets centre-stage in your memory who you never can seem to shake? Your bully?

  Murtai's mine. There were dozens of course but Murtai was a horror. He used to make the younger kids jerk him off and broke their fingers in drawers if they said no. Had three broken fingers by the end of his first month. Social workers told me not to be so clumsy.

  Was walking down the stairs, smash into the back of my head. He'd put a sackful of marbles into a sock. Broken nose from landing. Mild concussion. Bruising on my spine from where he'd stomped my back as I was on the stairs. That was how we met. Guy like that, he never needed a reason. Way you walk, way you dress, impress others. Maybe he just has some need in him he has to fill. You hope for that.

  Took it all and kept all stoic and shit. You cried, that was it. Murtai wasn't the worst of the predators in there but they hadn't noticed me. See me crying, I'm dessert for freaks. Just took the beatings and hid under the blanket in nurses' office. He came to me at night sometimes and held a knife he'd made out of a comb. Did you tell anyone? I hadn't. Punk on him, that's worse than crying.

  First person I ever cursed.

  But even after he fell through that window and the shard of glass tore off his lip and pierced his tongue I was in terror of that motherfucker.

  There he is. Walking beside me. Get the prickle of fear, shooting up into my jaw. He's not real but all that feeling lights me up.

  Someone new to this says it's just an illusion, ignore it and it goes away. Veteran of the trade knows it runs a bit deeper. Here he is. I'm looking at him out of the corner of my eye. Six feet tall time he was eleven. Look again and I can see the glass in his face. Funny that. I don't regret that glass at all. You take the fingers in the drawer then tell me how to forgive. What matters isn't whether or not this is the same prick ran rabid through a few years of my life. It's that he's here now, trying to stir up fears that you never throw over.

  He's still here. Watching. Every time I walked down those the youth treat centre stairs till I was fifteen and me and Jon got out, I felt that hit coming again. Sometimes, got so bad, I walked down it sideways, keeping an eye on the past. Feel like that now.

  Could work some magic on it. Hex it up. Banish it. But fear is the Night's due. Don't cop it, I don't come through on my side of the bargain, which is to be afraid. Out I'll go, into the world, who knows where. Too far away to help Katanya maybe.

  Overhead lights paint the City orange. Means I'm moving quick, the change in colour. Watch Murtai's shadow. Pleased with his work, the Night dismisses him.

  Smell of sour milk. Smell of old piss. Stop for a second but pick up the stride straight away. Catch a glimpse of her, walking just behind my shoulder. Scent that's forever with me, the most perfect expression of madness I'll ever know. Can hear her whispering all the sick, black thoughts she used to have. All the threats she's made against my dad, me. The castration fantasies. The simpler tortures. How much she hated us and the bad days, where she'd hurt us and laugh and laugh about it. The litanies about the coming parousia and how she was the only person alive who'd be saved and we'd all be violated to death by hounds and demons. She loved to talk about that one. Bed time story.

  My mother.

  In her hospital robe stained with her own fluids. Hair wild. Shoulders so hunched she seems deformed. Last time I ever saw her, the anti-psychs had left her fat and drooling.

  I loved that.

  She was defeated and tamed. Dressed like she is now, like she was for the last conversation we ever had. Pulled out her catheter, invited me to dance in the puddle that pooled on the hospital floor.

  Laughing, laughing at that. Trying to splash me like you would if you were playing with the hose. Looked into her eyes and realised that whatever was left of her, it had nothing but fury and contempt for me. She'd have done worse if they hadn't cuffed her to the bed.

  Walked out of her ward, calm. Told dad to take us home, hugging myself to keep from shivering in the car, afraid she'd somehow escape.

  Oh dad. You never deserved what she did to you.

  These are my fears? Disappointing. Like any good magician, I'm always looking for insight.

  Ignore Bettina as I pass her on the street corner, asking me when is my eye coming back, Lark? I can't fight so good without it. Sad to see the Night reckons my greatest fear for her is that she'll be sub-par it comes time to throw down.

  Walking through Chinatown. Lanterns burn low. It's then I hear him, humming.

  The Devil. Just one step behind.

  Not just the image of him.

  The Devil. Shattered his way into the Night.

  Keep walking just keep walking.

  He's whistling some song in his own language. Angelic. Cutti
ng himself short, on purpose, from notes that would light up my bones, if I heard ‘em with my ears. He's related to the Archons and that music would take me apart, atom by atom.

  Just teasing. He's just toying.

  My shadow is racing before me as I walk through Gwynne, the bordertown between the middle class of Midtown and the seedier parts of Southton. His shadow shows a cowboy hat, smoke hanging out his mouth. Turns his gaze aside to light it and he's got a muzzle.

  Changing. Shadow changing. All tentacles and writhing, towering over me. Sound like someone walking through mud.

  iv

  'Lark.'

  'Aristide.'

  'When you did not appear with this woman, I think you lost your spine.'

  'She works for someone else. She called me to back her play. I got delayed.'

  Houngan looks over me then flips his blood-slick dreadlocks over his brow. Frowns.

  'You don't look good, hommes.'

  'Got a cigarette?'

  'Cost you five dollars.'

  My hand doesn't go to his offered soft pack.

  'I'm playing, man. Take it.'

  Heavy, clove beede. Better than nothing. Smoke fills up the atrium and stabs my lungs. Completely different location to the one Katanya messaged me. Technology makes me a sucker, magic every time.

  Look down at Katanya.

  'She dead?'

  Aristide kneels next to her. In his long black coat, looks like a raven.

  'Don't know. Don't think so. Don't see no wounds on her.'

  We're in the lobby of an hour room hotel. Clerk is in the kitchen, one look at Aristide and she knows it's best to keep out of his way.