New Cthulhu: The Recent Weird

by Michael Marshall Smith

  Martin had joined Clouds of Memory a few months ago, but he’d quickly fallen out with the singer and lead guitarist, Simon Cowley, an untalented egomaniac who couldn’t stay in key if his life depended on it. Martin still rankled over the way he’d been peremptorily fired after a gig in Yate and left to find his own way home (it hadn’t helped that his girlfriend had dumped him in the same week), but watching his nemesis make a buffoon of himself didn’t seem like a bad way to keep his mind off his stomach’s flip-flops.

  Simon Cowley ended “Paint It Black” by wrenching an unsteady F chord from his guitar a whole beat behind the rest of the band, and stood centre-stage with one arm raised in triumph, as if the scattering of polite applause was a standing ovation. His shoulder-length blond hair was tangled across his face. He was wearing a red jumpsuit and white cowboy boots. He turned to the drummer and brought down his arm, kicking off the doomy opening chords of his self-penned set-closing epic, “My Baby’s Gone to UFO Heaven,” and Martin saw Dr. John stepping through the people scattered at the fringe of the audience, heading straight towards him.

  He should have known at once that it meant trouble. Dr. John was a small-time hustler who, after dropping out of Bristol University’s Medical School, supplemented his dole by buying grass and hash at street-price in St. Paul’s, Bristol’s pocket ghetto, and selling it for a premium to students. They’d first met because Dr. John rented a rotten little flat above the club where Martin had been working. Dr. John had introduced Martin to the dubious delights of the Coronation Tap, and after Martin had set up his hole-in-the-wall secondhand record shop, Dr. John would stop by once or twice a week to sell LPs he’d found in junkshops or jumble sales, or had taken from students in exchange for twists of seeds and stems. He’d tell Martin to put on some reggae and turn it up, and do what he called the monkey dance. He’d flip through the stock boxes, pulling out albums and saying with mock-amazement, “Can you believe this shit? Can you believe anyone would actually pay money for it?” He’d look over the shoulders of browsing customers and tell them, “I wouldn’t buy that, man. It’ll make your ears bleed. It’ll lower your IQ.” or he’d read out the lyrics of prog rock songs in a plummy voice borrowed from Peter Sellers until Martin lost patience and told him to piss off. Then he’d shuffle towards the door, apologizing loudly for upsetting the nice middle-class students, pausing before he stepped out, asking Martin if he’d see him at the Coronation Tap later on.

  When he wasn’t hustling dope or secondhand records, Dr. John spent most of his time in the Tap, sinking liver-crippling amounts of psychedelically strong scrumpy cider, bullshitting, and generally taking the piss. Like many people who aren’t comfortable in their own skins, he was restless, took great delight in being obnoxious, and preferred other people’s voices to his own. He would recite entire Monty Python sketches at the drop of a hat, or try to hold conversations in Captain Beefheart lyrics (“The past sure is tense, Martin! A big-eyed bean from Venus told me that. Know what I mean?”). His favorite film was Get Carter, and he could play Jack Carter for a whole evening. “A pint of scrumpy,” he’d say to the landlord, “in a thin glass.” Or he’d walk up to the biggest biker in the pub and tell him, “You’re a big man, but you’re in bad shape. With me, it’s a full time job. So behave yourself.” Amazingly, he was never beaten up, although a burly student in a rugby shirt once threw a full pint of beer in his face after being told that his eyes were like piss-holes in snow.

  Dr. John’s scrumpy-fuelled exploits were legendary. The time he’d been arrested for walking down the middle of Whiteladies Road with a traffic cone on his head. The time he’d tried to demonstrate how stuntmen could fall flat on their faces, and had broken one of his front teeth on the pavement. The time he’d climbed into a tree and gone to sleep, waking up a couple of hours later and falling ten feet onto the roof of a car, leaving a dent the exact shape of his body and walking away without a bruise. The time he’d slipped on ice, fallen over, and smashed the bottle of whiskey in his pocket: a shard of glass had penetrated his thigh and damaged a nerve, leaving him with a slight but permanent limp. His life was like a cartoon. He was Tom in Tom and Jerry, Wile E. Coyote in Roadrunner. He was one of those people who bang their way from one pratfall to the next in the kind of downhill spiral that seems funny as long as you don’t get too close.

  Now he gimped up to Martin, a short, squat guy with a cloud of curly black hair and a wispy beard, wearing a filthy denim jacket, a Black Sabbath T-shirt, and patchwork flares, saying loudly, “Didn’t you used to be in this band?”

  “For about five minutes in April.”

  Dr. John sneered at the stage. “You’re well out of it, man. Is that a gong I see, right there behind the drummer? It is, isn’t it? Fucking poseurs.”

  “If they dumped Simon and found someone who could actually sing and play lead guitar, they might have the kernel of a good sound. Put the bass and drums front and centre, like a reggae set-up.”

  “Not that you’re bitter or anything,” Dr. John said. He pulled a clear glass bottle half-filled with a cloudy brown liquid from one pocket of his denim jacket, unscrewed the cap and took a long swallow of brackish liquid, belched, and offered it to Martin.

  Martin took a cautious sip and immediately spat it out. “Jesus. What is it?”

  “Woke up on the floor of this strange flat this morning, man. I must have been invited to a party. I mixed myself a cocktail with what was left.” Dr. John snatched back the bottle, took another pull, and smacked his lips. “You have to admit it has a certain vigor.”

  “It tastes like cough medicine. There’s beer backstage, if you want some.”

  “Backstage? Were you playing, man? I’m sorry to have missed it.”

  “I’m on next. Playing with the headliners.”

  “Free beer, man, now I know you’re a star.”

  “I’m only a stand-in, but I get all the perks.”

  On stage, Simon Cowley, his face screwed up inside a fall of blond hair, was hunched over his guitar and picking his way through an extended solo. When Martin had joined Clouds of Memory, he’d tried to get them interested in the raw new stuff coming out of New York and London—Television and the Ramones, Dr. Feelgood and the 101ers—but Simon had sneered and said it was nothing but three-chord pub rock with no trace of musical artistry whatsoever. “Artistry” was one of Simon’s favorite words. He was the kind of guy who spent Saturday afternoons in guitar shops, pissing off the assistants by playing note-by-note copies of Jimmy Page and Eric Clapton solos. He liked to drop quotes from Nietzsche and Hesse into casual conversation. He was a big fan of Eric Von Daniken. He subscribed to the muso’s music paper, Melody Maker, and despised the achingly hip streetwise attitudes of the New Musical Express, which Martin read from cover to cover every week. The tension between them had simmered for a couple of weeks, until, while they were packing up after that gig in Yate, Simon had picked an argument with Martin and sacked him on the spot.

  Dr. John took another swig of his cocktail and said, “Sabbath, man, they’re the only ones who can do this kind of thing properly. Did I tell you about the gig at Colston Hall this spring?”

  “Only about a hundred times.”

  “It wasn’t loud enough, but that was the only thing wrong with it. A thousand kids belting out ‘Paranoid’ at the top of their lungs, it was a religious experience. But this, this is like . . . ” He looked up at the sky for inspiration, failed to find it, and took another drink.

  “It’s prog rock crap,” Martin said, “but Dancing Jesus likes it.”

  The barechested guy stood in the middle of the thin crowd, arms flung wide, face tilted to the blue sky, quivering all over.

  Dr. John’s lifted his upper lip in a sneering smile that showed off his broken tooth. “Where his head’s at, man, he’d groove on anything. I sold him my last three tabs of acid and he dropped them all. Anyone’s in UFO heaven, it’s him.”

  “Made much money here?”

  “I’m here fo
r the vibe, man.”

  “Right.”

  “Truly. I’m down to seeds and stems until Tuesday or Wednesday, when this a guy I know is going to deliver some primo hash. Moroccan gold, man, the real no-camel-shit-whatsoever deal. This guy, his brother’s a sailor, gets the stuff straight from the souk. I’ll put you down for an eighth, seeing as you’re a good pal and a professional musician and everything.” Dr. John looked around and sidled closer and said, “Plus, you can help me out a little right now.”

  Martin was instantly wary. He said, “I’m on after this lot finishes.”

  “I’ve seen these fuckers play before, man. They’re getting into the drum solo, and then there’s the bass solo, that plonker’s endless guitar wankery . . . You’ve got plenty of time. And it’s a really simple favor.”

  “I bet.”

  “A lot easier than saving someone from a beating.”

  A few weeks ago, at a dub concert in a community hall in St. Paul’s, a gang of Jamaican youths had decided to get territorial on Martin’s bloodclat white ass. Dr. John and his dealer had chased them off, an heroic deed Dr. John had mentioned no more than fifty or sixty times since. Martin said, “I believe it was your friend Hector who actually saved me.”

  “But I alerted him to the situation, I asked him to help you out because you’re a good friend of mine. And friends have to look after each other, right?”

  Martin sighed. “If I do this thing for you, will you promise to never mention St. Paul’s again?”

  “Cross my heart and hope to die, man. See that girl?” Dr. John put his arm around Martin, enveloping him in a powerful odor compounded of stale booze, sweat, and pot smoke, and turned him around.

  “What am I looking at?”

  “The girl, man. Black hair, white dress.”

  She stood beside the St. John’s ambulance, in the narrow wedge of shadow it cast. Tall and willowy in a long white dress that clung to her curves, her arms bare and pale, her elfin face framed by a Louise Brooks bob of midnight-black hair.

  “I’ve been watching her,” Dr. John said.

  “I don’t think she’s your type.”

  Regulars at the Tap sometimes speculated about Dr. John’s sex life. Everyone agreed that he must have one, but no one could imagine what it could be like.

  “She’s dealing, man. Actually, she’s not really dealing because there’s no money changing hands, she’s been handing out freebies all afternoon. What you can do for me is sashay over there and cop a sample of whatever it is she’s holding. See, it really is an easy-peasey little favor.”

  “If it’s so easy, why don’t you do it?”

  “Man, that would hardly be cool. I’d blow my reputation if I was seen taking a hand-out from some hippy chick.”

  “But I wouldn’t.”

  “That’s different, man. You’re not in the business. You’re a civilian. Go get a sample, okay? And talk to her, try to find out where she’s getting her stuff from. A chick like that, she has to be fronting for someone. Maybe those guys who muscled into my business at the Student Union.”

  “The ones who put the Fear in you,” Martin said.

  One day at the beginning of the long, hot summer, Dr. John had walked into the Tap with two black eyes and a split lip, and insisted on showing everyone the stitches in his scalp whether they wanted to look or not. “Four fuckers beat me up round the back of the Student Union. Told me that it was their territory from now on. Some pockmarked guy with a goatee is working my spot now, turning the kids on to brown heroin by telling them that he’s out of grass, but if they’d like to try a sample of this nice powder. . . ” Dr. John had looked solemn for a moment, then had put on his Get Carter voice. “Still, look on the bright side. They’re only fucking students. Maybe a little bit of heroin will light up their immensely dull lives.”

  Now he told Martin, “I’m scared of nothing, man. Still, if she is working for them, and they see me talking to her . . . You see what I mean? But you’re a civilian. They won’t touch you.”

  “She looks like she’s from some cult,” Martin said. “Like the Hare Krishnas who were here earlier, handing out copies of George’s favorite book.”

  “Don’t knock the guys in orange, man, they serve a mean lentil curry to people who, because of the government’s attitude to alternative lifestyles, often find themselves having to choose between eating and paying the rent. Just walk over there, cop a little of what’s she’s holding, and come right back. It’ll take you all of thirty seconds, and I swear I won’t mention saving your life ever again.”

  “I’ll do it,” Martin said, “as long as you stop making those puppy eyes at me.”

  He tried to affect a cool stroll as he moved through the crowd towards the girl. The closer he got, the less attractive she appeared. Her face was plastered in white powder, her Louise Brooks bob was a cheap nylon wig, and her skin was puffy and wrinkled, as if she’d spent a couple of days in the bath. Martin told her that he’d heard she had some good stuff, and she stared at him for a moment, a gaze so penetrating he felt she had seen through to the floor of his soul, before she shook her head and looked past him at something a million miles away.

  Martin said, “You don’t have anything for me? How about for my friends? They’re playing next, and they could do with a little lift.”

  She was staring straight through him. As if, after she’d dismissed him, he’d ceased to exist. Her eyes were bloodshot and slightly bulging, rimmed with thick mascara that made them seem even bigger. Her white dress was badly water stained, and a clammy odor rose from it.

  “Maybe I’ll see you around,” Martin said, remembering how he’d felt when he’d suffered one of his numerous rejections at the school disco. It didn’t help that a gang of teenage boys jeered and toasted him with bottles of cider as he walked away.

  Dr. John was waiting for him backstage, a plastic pint glass in his hand.

  “I see you found the free beer,” Martin said.

  “You really are a superstar, man. I mention your name and it’s like magic, this beer suddenly appears. What did she slip you? What did she say?”

  “She didn’t say a word, and she didn’t slip me anything either. It’s probably some kind of scam involving herbal crap made from boiled nettle leaves or grass-type grass, and she realized that I’d spot it right away.”

  “All the best gear is herbal,” Dr. John said, and launched into a spiel about William Burroughs and a South American Indian drug that was blown into your nostrils through a yard-long pipe and took you on a magical mystery tour, stopping only to give Simon Cowley a shit-eating grin as he came off stage, saying, “Fab set, man. Reminded me of Herman’s Hermits at their peak.”

  Simon looked at Martin and said, “Still hanging out with losers I see,” and walked past, chin in the air.

  Then Martin was busy setting up his keyboards while the two festival roadies took down Clouds of Memory’s drums and mikes and assembled Sea Change’s kit, and before he knew it the set had kicked off. The sun was setting and a hot wind was getting up, fluttering the stage’s canvas roof, blowing the music towards the traffic that scuttled along the far edge of Clifton Downs. Martin concentrated fiercely on playing all the right notes in the right order in the right place, but whenever he had a few moment’s rest he glanced towards the girl. Seeing her beyond the glare of the footlights, seeing her with a hairy hippy with a beer-drinker’s belly, a couple of giggling girls who couldn’t have been more than fifteen, a bearded boy in bellbottoms and a brown chalkstripe waistcoat, a woman in a summer dress and a chiffon scarf . . .

  When he came off, sweating hard after two encores, the rhythm guitarist of Clouds of Memory got in his face, saying something about his loser friend spiking beer. Martin brushed him off and went to look for Dr. John. There was no sign of him, backstage or front. The crowd was beginning to drift away. Two men in black uniforms had opened the back doors of the ambulance and were packing away their first aid kit. The girl was gone.

&nbs
p; Martin didn’t think any more about it until early the next morning, when he was woken by the doorbell. It was Monday morning, ten to eight, already stiflingly hot, and Martin had a hangover from the post-gig pub session with the guys from Sea Change and their wives and girlfriends and hangers-on. When the bell rang he put a pillow over his head, but the bell just wouldn’t quit, a steady drilling that resonated at the core of his headache. Clearly, some moron had SuperGlued his finger to the bell push, and at last Martin got up and padded into the living room and looked out of the window to see who it was.

  Martin’s flat was on the top floor of a house in the middle of Worcester Terrace, a row of Georgian houses which various members of the professional middle class were beginning to reclaim from decades of low rent squalor. Four storeys below, Dr. John stood like a smudge of soot on the clean white doorstep, looking up and waving cheerfully when Martin asked him if he’d lost his mind.

  “I’ve had a bit of an adventure,” he shouted.

  Martin put his keys in a sock and threw them down. By the time his visitor had labored up the stairs he was dressed and in the kitchen, making tea. Dr. John stood in the doorway, making a noise like a deflating set of bagpipes. He had turned a color more normally associated with aubergines or baboons’ bottoms than the human face. When he had his breath back, he said, “You should find somewhere nearer the ground. I think I have altitude sickness.”

  “I should punch you in the snout.”

  “Whatever it is you think I did, I didn’t do it.” Dr. John flopped heavily onto one of the kitchen chairs. He had the bright eyes and clenched jaw of a speed buzz. There was fresh mud on the knees of his jeans. Grass stains on his denim jacket; a leafy twig in his bird’s nest hair.

  “Then you didn’t spike Simon Cowley’s beer.”

  “Oh, that.” Dr. John opened a Virginia tobacco tin and took out a roll-up. “Yeah, I did that. You have bacon and eggs to go with this tea?”

  “If I had any bacon I’d give you bacon and eggs if I had any eggs.”