Black Wings IV

by Edited by S. T. Joshi

  Feathers fluttered at the back of his belt. The ornamented flute from Gray’s office, or one suspiciously similar, had been stuck through it casually.

  Trujillo’s recruiter?

  Whatever he did for PWP, Gray’s mumbled introduction left it a mystery. Cassie hadn’t even managed to catch the guy’s name above the rumble of the conveyor belt, and Gray hadn’t stuck around for questions. Instead, he had muttered something else about a phone call and disappeared—leaving the visitor to account for himself, which he didn’t. He seemed to prefer working to talking, which was fine with Cassie.

  For the first few hours, anyway.

  The belt was running fine tonight, miracle of miracles, but she could still hear the usual work music above it—and she hadn’t had the time or privacy to put in her earplugs yet. At least half a dozen people were humming along, some even swaying as they packed the CDs Gray had such high hopes for.

  Glancing at Lyn Trujillo’s cover art as the jewel boxes slid through her hands, Cassie shuddered. Were there coyotes lurking in that unfocused background?

  “Break in five minutes, people,” shouted one of the staff. “Let’s get these boxes sealed for the truck.”

  As the zip of packing tape replaced the belt’s rumble, Cassie glanced at the workroom clock. Ten-thirty already. The minor wail of the flute was giving her a headache, setting her nerves on edge and tweaking her paranoia. Glare from the overhead lights threw shadows she couldn’t quite account for.

  The air smelled funky, too. She wondered again about the heating system, and headed outside as soon as possible.

  Even the wind had to be better than this.

  After detouring around a knot of smokers—not all of them favoring tobacco—near the back door, Cassie worked her way around the building, staying close to the wall. She’d been right about the wind. It was nastier than usual tonight, buffeting what few security lights still worked. By the time she reached the parking lot out front, she was shivering persistently.

  Frank’s pickup was still safely where she’d parked it, though, in the farthest space from the front door. Relief washed through her. Why not just leave? the voice of reason suggested. Hop in, go home. Bail from this creepy situation.

  Then she noticed another parking space, directly by the door. It was empty… except for DIRECTOR stenciled in white paint.

  Fishing in her pocket with numb fingers, Cassie grabbed her cell phone and flipped it open. As it sometimes did, the two-word curse of rural America appeared onscreen.

  No service.

  To her surprise, everyone who had gone on break was actually back when the conveyor belt started up again. Dirty looks directed at the two staff members told her why—or at least how. The why of nearly everything about this evening was turning mysterious as the clock’s hands crawled toward twelve.

  Starting with where the hell Marcus Gray was, on this Very Important Night he’d been ranting about for the past week.

  Focus on what’s going on here. Now.

  Tonight’s special visitor wasn’t working so hard, though everyone else seemed to be. PWP’s clients were packing CDs and other Kokopelli merchandise as though their messed-up lives depended upon it. Some looked twitchy, sweating profusely in the chilly room. Others were zoned out, slaving away in their own private worlds.

  The visitor was walking among them now, though he didn’t seem to be saying much. Maybe he was whispering. Certainly he was leaning in close, touching some of the women who looked particularly nervous. The teenage receptionist she’d met on her first day here was following him around like a starving puppy.

  As the woman next to her reached out for his sleeve, Cassie turned away quickly. The woman’s expression when she glanced back chilled her.

  Passive. Sheep-like. Glazed.

  Meanwhile, Cassie’s temples were starting to throb. The work music had grown louder, piercingly insistent, and she was sure now that the heating system had problems. At least the overhead lights weren’t glaring any more. They had dimmed noticeably since their return from break, though neither the staff nor anyone else seemed to have noticed.

  Eleven-thirty now.

  Eleven thirty-five. Was the belt speeding up?

  At eleven-forty, the staff hauled open the rolling door in one wall. A large van had been backed up to the other side. With more speed than she’d have thought possible, both staff members and a few of the fitter male clients started lifting boxes onto handcarts for the van. Wind from the open door howled past unnoticed.

  By eleven fifty-five, the job was almost done. As a final box went in at midnight, Cassie heard the conveyor belt stop…and the work music, more intense than ever, rising to fill the auditory void. She dug in her pocket for her earplugs.

  As she palmed them, another sound began, weaving through the flute recording and the wind outside. It was rasping and ancient, yet a part of her recognized it even before she glanced across the room.

  Gray’s feathered flute wasn’t stuck through their visitor’s belt any more. He was playing it, his body curved over the elaborately carved tube almost like an extension of the instrument. What came from it was less music than breath—a wordless ritual, an artifact out of time before civilization. Or thought.

  Or humanity.

  Most of the people around her were already swaying in place. A few moaned. The young receptionist gasped softly, then sidled around her table and began slow-stepping toward the music, head thrown back and long hair streaming.

  Moving toward the center of the workroom to join her, their visitor played louder. Other women—then a few men—began to copy the girl’s steps. It looked like the most natural thing in the world, a physical evolution of the music.

  A ceremony in the making.

  Every frostbitten nerve in Cassie knew that much, even as her own body began to sway. Forcing herself down on her knees behind one of the tables, she fumbled with the earplugs she’d manipulated so easily moments ago. One nearly slipped from her grasp—but the effect was astonishing. Cut off from the wail of the visitor’s flute, she found herself back in charge of her muscles.

  And in danger of being noticed by anyone still paying attention.

  Easing back up, Cassie tried to copy the rhythm of those closest to her. Her earplugs hadn’t gone in perfectly: enough of the music leaked through to let her follow along, maybe too well. Shuffling and slow-stepping through the dimming light, the knot of PWP clients and staff swept her up. Wind gusting through the loading door pushed them all along, following the flute-player toward the only other door in the room.

  Most of them had used it on their way back from break. Now it gaped open onto a pitch-black corridor far longer than any Cassie remembered in this building. As the dancing crowd disappeared inside, she felt the first stirrings of panic.

  What had Daniel McAllister said about “many gates”?

  Still the visitor with his flute played on, ever-changing yet somehow monotonous. Caught up in the rhythm, the others swayed after him into the darkness, some moaning under their breaths. Ahead—but how far ahead?—hints of dim light flickered against the walls.

  The scent of piñon pine grew stronger as they approached. Piñon smoke…as from a newly kindled fire. Cassie’s panic rose even as her feet carried her along. This was nowhere in the PWP complex, she was certain. This was a waking dream, a collective primal nightmare, a footnote from Trujillo’s last desperate scribblings.

  This was a wound in the modern skin of the world.

  Abruptly, the corridor ended in a cave some cringing part of her already recognized. A small central campfire threw shadows on the soot-blackened walls, summoning pale ghosts of petro-glyphs. They danced in imitation of the one who capered and piped in the firelight, throwing sparks from the conchas of his hatband and the silver-mounted toes of his boots.

  Men and women all around her joined in that dance. Someone even had a hand drum, its soft malignant heartbeat growing stronger as the flames leaped up.

  Cassie str
uggled against that rhythm. Like a swimmer fighting current, she forced herself away, toward the nearest curve of stone. Other bodies flowed into the gap she made. The dance and the music and the flames began to blend, calling malformed petroglyphs from the walls to writhe in the air above their heads.

  And as they did—as the shadows writhed with them—the piper’s flame-colored shirt turned to actual fire, enveloping him for an instant.

  Murmurs of awe and terror rose from the other dancers. Out of that brief conflagration, something taller, leaner, and far less human was unfolding. Still piping, curved over and around the appendage of its instrument, it shook its…head, surely … until tatters of black felt and silver fell away.

  Cassie pressed herself further into the shadows.

  Turned her own head away, but not quickly enough.

  “Nyar’la’a!” The syllables tore themselves from a dozen straining throats at once. “Nyar’la’a!”

  A sudden gust of wind blew through the cave…blew down from the distant ceiling which was no longer solid, if it ever had been. Live coals spattered from the fire. Cassie glanced up. Through whatever the smokehole had become, she could see stars. Too many stars, even for rural Wyoming. Too many stars in very wrong colors, torn by a wind which blew out of somewhere unimaginably desolate, inconceivably cold.

  “Nyar’la’a! Nyar’la’a!”

  More voices, this time—and not all of them human. There were dozens of coyotes somewhere outside this cave, lending their responses to the wind and the chant. The rising, writhing chaos of it all. Biting her lip to focus herself, Cassie picked up the rhythm of the dance again, swaying back toward the corridor which she desperately hoped still existed.

  “Nyar’la’a!”

  She had almost reached the darkness when something landed on her shoulder. A large, beefy hand—staff, probably—hauled her backwards, toward the firelight and discovery. Cassie grabbed onto a protruding rock ledge, then kicked back with all her strength. Her captor howled. She kicked again, to the kneecap, and his grasp loosened. Twisting away, she bolted down the corridor.

  And nearly gagged on the chemical stench spewing into the air behind her.

  Glancing back over her shoulder, Cassie cursed and redoubled her speed. There were people coming after her, all right, but pursuit was the least of her problems. Or theirs. Whatever ancient nightmare had manifested itself tonight, it hadn’t been real enough to turn gas line into solid rock.

  Freezing wind hit her in the face as she jumped through the loading door. Cassie landed hard and scrambled to her feet, intent on getting as far from the facility as possible. PWP hadn’t maintained its heating system to start with. A broken line wouldn’t help, and if any of that fire in the dream-cave had actually been—

  What the hell?

  Still several yards from the parking lot—let alone Frank’s pickup and some chance of leaving—Cassie stopped dead, staring into the night around her. Pair after pair of narrow yellow eyes stared back.

  Associations: ritual music, wild beasts, madness.

  Already two for three.

  From where she stood, she could see coyotes ringing the area. Lean shadows just beyond the security lights, they sat back on their haunches and watched her, apparently waiting for her next move.

  Did coyote packs ever attack human beings?

  Moot question. The natural laws of the rest of the world no longer applied out here, and her gut knew it. She had seen things tonight that nothing in McAllister’s notes or her own brushes with the Outside had prepared her for…nothing wind and sky and earth were meant to contain.

  Without warning, the closest coyote threw back its head in song. It was a weird, tormented wail unlike anything she’d ever heard around Twenty Mile, and it penetrated her earplugs effortlessly.

  As the rest of the pack joined in, Cassie bolted for the parking lot.

  She expected pursuit, strong jaws dragging her down, but it never came. What did was the blast of a propane explosion—then a second, smaller blast as the delivery van’s gas tank caught. Running for her life now, she headed for the farthest space out. The comforting bulk of a Ford half-ton…if she could only unlock it in time—

  Headlights flashed on to meet her.

  Jeep headlights.

  Frank Yellowtail scrambled from the driver’s seat, then reached back inside for a shotgun from the rack. His mouth started moving as Cassie reached him. Shaking her head, she pulled out both earplugs and gasped her thanks.

  “How’d you know to come?” she asked, as he passed her the weapon and headed for the Jeep’s back cargo door. “I tried to call you, but—”

  “The dogs told me.”

  Cassie frowned. Rather than asking her for his keys—or just climbing back into her vehicle and getting the hell out of Dodge— Frank was opening the door for Jupe and Juno. Both wore their heavy leather leashes, which he grabbed as they emerged.

  And started barking challenge at the coyote ring.

  “What’s that mean?” she yelled over the Rotts.

  “Every coyote around our place started up about an hour ago. The dogs went nuts, started giving it right back—and then they stopped. No more barking, no more howling. No more coyotes. It didn’t sound natural, somehow. When Jupe started in on the front door, I thought we’d better get out here.”

  He glanced down at the furious dogs. “All of us.”

  Despite the weirdness of the situation, Cassie sighed. That door had taken a lot of abuse in the past couple of years—but the idea of Frank waiting at the house for her call was reassuring. She needed reassuring right now.

  Speaking of right now, why weren’t they leaving?

  Frank pointed past her to the coyotes. “We met more coming in. A lot more than I’ve ever seen around here—bigger, too. Like wolves.”

  In the fitful light from the propane fire, Cassie saw his expression change.

  “I don’t think they’re going to let us leave,” he said. “Not until this is over.”

  Cassie wasn’t sure what ‘‘this” was, but she kept both hands on the shotgun. Things looked pretty much over to her—aside from the damn coyotes, anyway. The main PWP facility blazed like a torch, and the wind was spreading flames to a couple of the trailers. Surely nobody in there was still alive. There wasn’t even any screaming, the way you’d expect—

  Abruptly, the coyotes fell silent. So did Jupe and Juno, though they stood their ground, the fur on their necks and shoulders bristling.

  A line of shadows was emerging from the holocaust of the main facility. Some new and terrible wailing twisted itself into the wind, rising above it tunelessly. Ragged bursts of mad laughter responded.

  Cassie’s breath caught. At the head of the line, lean and hunched and utterly inhuman, capered the image of her nightmares.

  She did not understand how any of those following it…him, oh yes, him … could still be alive, or even if they were. Stumbling, dragging ruined limbs behind them, they staggered through the wind and the night like unstrung marionettes. Thick black strands trailed from their leader’s headdress. Coiling and whipping in defiance of the wind’s direction, they lashed back at random into the line.

  Shrieks followed.

  Cassie bit her lip, hoping none of them were hers.

  The coyotes were on the move now. Whimpering, they broke their ring and belly-crawled toward the piper, flattening themselves at his feet. He danced over them heedlessly. Rolling clear (most of them, anyhow), they trotted along beside the others, causing some of them to flinch away.

  Cassie pressed herself closer to Jupe and Juno.

  Blink. Blink Shift.

  Shadowy petroglyphs, two-leggers and four-leggers and Kokopelli himself, dancing forever on a kiva tunnel wall no one was ever meant to see. The faithful record of a primal nightmare…or a primal memory. Daniel McAllister’s sketch from the last night of his life.

  The world we think we live in now is just a skin—a modern skin—and every so often something else bre
aks through.

  She blinked again. The line was turning away from the facility, away from the flaming outbuildings and the road. Its leader was drawing farther ahead, and the coyotes with him—yet the others kept staggering along behind, into the snow-flecked void and the shifting wind. It blew from true north now, a Canadian blast carrying the first flakes of a storm.

  Jupe and Juno snuffled at her knees. When she didn’t move, Frank Yellowtail laid a hand on her shoulder.

  “I think it’s over,” he said. “Let’s go while we still can.”

  The distant shriek of a fire engine punctuated his words. As she loaded the dogs back into her Jeep and coaxed its engine to life, Cassie tried not to think what those would-be rescuers would find in the morning.

  What they would not find, she knew, would be tonight’s visitor. He, like Marcus Gray, was already on some other road, spreading chaos ancient as the stars she dared not look up at yet. And with every PWP workshop, every coffee mug or greeting card or flute CD, another little piece of this world would fall apart.

  Nyar’la’a. Messenger of the exiled gods.

  Whatever the message had been tonight, she hoped she never understood it.

  WE ARE MADE OF STARS

  Jonathan Thomas

  Providence native Jonathan Thomas has persisted in writing weird fiction amidst (or despite) such diverse livelihoods as postal clerk, artist’s model, and percussionist. His collections include Stories from the Big Black House (Radio Void, 1992), Midnight Call (2008), Tempting Providence (2010), and Thirteen Conjurations (2013; all from Hippocampus Press). A novel, The Color Over Occam (2012), is available through DarkFuse. Magazine appearances include Vampirella (Warren, 1978), PostScripts (PS Publishing, 2010), and Nameless (Cycatrix Press, 2012).

  He keeps the world as his disguise…The leader of the starry skies…

  —Tim Smith of Cardiacs

  IRA WASTED NO SYMPATHY ON THE HACK FROM THE Preservation Commission. Photo op or no, who wore three-piece Armani to man a power washer? And with foolhardy bare hands? In sensible navy-blue jumpsuits, Ira and his DPW duo stayed upwind (as did the Journal reporter and cameraman) of clumsy assault on defiantly indelible graffiti “We are made of stars” above an illegible signature. From misapplied nozzle billowed a cloud of agitated droplets, and jets ricocheted everywhere.