The Lovecraft Squad: Dreaming

by Stephen Jones

  To stick it to the honky man . . .

  Who’s tryna break cover . . .

  But no matter what they did . . .

  She’s cuttin’ up the squid . . .

  Who’s no kind of lover . . .”

  Too late, Zann recognized himself. He was the honky in this woodpile. Snakes were crawling in after him.

  Spooks and imps and hellhounds were on his tail. Real ones.

  Robert Johnson’s Mr. Devil and papa-loa Baron Samedi were the drummers. Nefertiti was all the female spirits who sang men to their doom. The sirens and the banshees, the Shangri-Las and the Supremes, la llorona and the lorelei, Yuki-Onna and Yoko Ono, les belle dames sans merci. The weight of her self-belief and—yes—her talent wrestled his song to the ground and killed it.

  It was a miss. A palpable miss.

  The jury got up and banged the gong. Variety deemed it floppo at the boxo.

  Under Nefertiti’s song, he heard the voice of Billie Holiday.

  “Gloomy Sunday”—the Hungarian suicide song. In many a house of despair, corpses were found bled out in the bath, dangling from the light fittings, or next to empty pill bottles . . . with a wax of “Gloomy Sunday” on the turntable, gramophone arm clicking against the end of the groove. The all-time favorite exit number.

  “Sunday is gloomy

  My hours are numberless

  Dearest the shadows

  I live with are numberless . . .”

  The strings of Zann’s violoncello snapped and twisted around his wrists, throat, thighs—taut as cheese wire. His song was strangled.

  Nefertiti played a solo, her fingers animated by other souls.

  In voodoo, the possessed invited the spirit to move in . . . and drew on the strength of the loa. To dance, to love, to kill. Johnson’s damned blues and Billie’s killing whisper gave Nefertiti power—but they were just her backing group. What she was doing was all on her.

  She blew him a kiss . . .

  . . . And his own strings sectioned him.

  “Supernatural Soul Sister

  Takin’ up the fight,

  Supernatural Soul Sister

  Shinin’ through the dark and dismal night.”

  VIII

  There was nothing else for it.

  Curwen had Hester set up a meeting. A parley.

  Nefertiti Bronze was reachable via her record label.

  They let her choose the site. The Undertaking Parlor on West 116th Street—the Harlem Hounfor where her husband had reigned, briefly, and died, horribly.

  Her jungle.

  He’d expected it.

  This had begun high above the city.

  It would end on the streets.

  The Five Families were in disarray . . . uncaptained, scattered, of no use. Alfreda Zann had been trying to talk with him—as Hester noted wryly, she must have found someone to dial the number for her. She was typical of the poor specimens contesting for the vacant seats. The stunted gnome Bronson, one of Wizard Whateley’s bastards, seriously believed he had a shot at wearing the star-covered pointy hat. Delapores were taking each other to court in England over the title, and fighting broadsword duels on the lawns of Exham Priory when the law failed to satisfy them. Marsh’s school of fish-folk were on the point of quitting dry land altogether, and concentrating on their doings in the Bermuda Triangle. Martenses had been hunted close to extinction in the tunnels below.

  So it wasn’t all bad news.

  For centuries, he’d had his doubts about the Families.

  Degenerates, the lot of them. Neither fish nor fowl, despite their scales and feathers. Most died gibbering nonsense in italics as the enormity of their failures crashed in on them.

  Only Curwen had the vocation. The Calling of Cthulhu.

  He would thank the Woman of Bronze for clearing out the dead wood . . . before he killed her.

  The bulletproof limousine cruised through Harlem.

  The possibles were in place. They’d infiltrated over the last few days, while Hester negotiated with representatives of the Bronze Foundation. Curwen nipped into them at random moments, taking peeps through their eyes.

  Grok. Zoot. Lucy-Linda. The Loot.

  Absurd names. Sharp minds. Strong bodies.

  Which would be Curwen’s next host?

  Each time, it was an agony to return to Walker Phillip Ward—wrapping himself in rot and pain and feebleness. Worldly position was of limited use if he was too decrepit to wield influence. Even his voice was failing, so he could no longer rely on the power of his feared telephone calls. Soon, he would make the choice. Cast off the old flesh. Once legalities were taken care of, the Esoteric Order would have a new captain and Polyphemus Investments a new chairman.

  Then, the great work would continue.

  “This must be the place,” said Hester.

  She wore a chauffeur’s tailored tunic and peaked cap, with matching miniskirt and jackboots. It looked more like a costume than a uniform.

  They were parked outside the undertakers’ place.

  The establishment was discreetly open for business. The heirs of Mordecai Vault had buried what they could find of their proprietor and taken advantage of the land-rush business the Eldritch War was generating in the city. The shoggoth damage was repaired. There were wards in place against the beasts now. No matter. The mindless tools were of limited use for detail work. They could put a hole in a mountain, but not thread a needle. This matter was worth handling personally.

  Nefertiti Bronze had earned that.

  “. . . And that must be the boss bird,” Hester said. She whistled.

  The Woman of Bronze stood outside the undertaking parlor.

  She wore a skintight black leather suit, scarred with silver zip-fasteners.

  “I didn’t think she’d be that tall,” said Hester.

  Curwen looked through tinted windows at the woman who’d fought the Esoteric Order to a standstill.

  “I didn’t think she’d be so stupid,” he said.

  He dipped into Grok—stationed on a roof across the street with Lee Harvey Oswald’s mail-order Mannlicher-Carcano, a blooded object a sight more powerful than any damned guitar. It had taken much wheedling to prize it out of the National Archives in College Park. He looked through the rifle’s telescopic sight, zeroing in on the woman’s broad, strong face. She turned and looked straight up at Grok’s hiding place. Her direct gaze was electric, shocking Curwen back into his prime body.

  He was jolted. Hester noticed.

  Zoot was chalking symbols on the sidewalk up the block, using artists’ materials from the studio of Richard Pickman. A few passersby lingered, fascinated by the whorls and curlicues—though most got headaches if they stayed too long, and would be compelled to acts of self-harm over the next few days. Curwen found the artist’s limber, sinewy body congenial, but it would need a thorough cleansing. The cosmic voids opened up in Zoot’s brain by peyote, acid, and the White Album were dangerous, and exorcising all traces of his irritating personality would be a priority.

  Lucy-Linda was posing as a white radical groupie—sitting outside a café, nursing a bottomless cup of vile coffee (he’d dipped into her an hour ago and the taste was still in his mouth), reading Eldridge Cleaver’s Soul on Ice. She wore kaleidoscope-pattern camouflage pants, a khaki clenched black fist T-shirt, a bullet bandolier, and a red beret. Her weapons were pills—her own “voodoo dolls”—popped in precise order over the last few days. She buzzed with extra senses and abilities. New World Pharmaceuticals, an Olde Fellowes holding, was working round the clock to fulfill her specific, performance-enhancing orders. She claimed synthesized hallucinogens were the wave of the future . . . but also snorted lines of grave-dust from the tombs of sorcerers. Chemically fast-tracking through years of experiment, she maintained a cheat-sheet beat turning the moldy pages of the family Necronomicon any day of the week.

  And the Loot was out there, in waiting—barred to any probing soul by spiritual barricades thrown up in Asian jungles. Of all of
the possibles, only the Loot had taken steps to keep Curwen out. Murder and madness made him strong. An interesting challenge. He would have his “best friend”—a machete—strapped to his thigh.

  “Let’s get this over with,” he told Hester.

  She got out of the car and walked around it.

  A sidewalk loafer—in purple bell-bottoms and white fur coat, broad-brimmed hat, one glinting gold tooth—wolf-whistled and commented, “Mighty fly. Come work for Silky, Sister Sinful,” he said.

  Hester ignored the offer and popped the trunk to haul out his wheelchair.

  Curwen had not been able to walk for days.

  Hester opened the passenger door and eased him into the chair, then settled the blanket around his useless legs. He coughed, tasting his own bile. He saw in black and white for a few seconds, before color came rushing back in, more vivid than before. His vision was as sharp as Zoot Ward’s, without the psychedelic aureole around living things.

  Hester wheeled him across the street.

  Nefertiti Bronze looked down at him.

  “Joseph Curwen,” she said.

  No one had directly addressed him by his real name in decades. He hadn’t thought anyone outside the family knew it.

  “You’re well-informed,” he said, alarmed by the croak in his voice.

  Each word was a fishhook torn from his gullet.

  She shrugged. “It pays to know.”

  From Grok’s perch, he saw where her soldiers were stationed. The bespectacled earnest fellow in a conservative suit engaging Lucy-Linda in dialectical debate . . . the pitch-man selling wind-up chatter-teeth toys and bouncy eyeball glasses . . . the long-legged girl in hot pants and a frayed denim vest, who hung out with Silky’s houris but wasn’t one of them . . . the meaty-armed pork butcher with his too-new, too-sharp hatchet . . . the colored girl in a cop uniform . . . the old Chinese in monk’s robes . . . all easy kills. The sniper could trust Lucy-Linda to throttle the Nation of Islam shill with his own bow tie. The cop and the monk wouldn’t get past the chasms opened by Zoot’s sigils. The others were coconuts in a shy. Pop pop pop . . . dead dead dead.

  “You went away for a moment, old man,” said the Woman of Bronze.

  He tried to shrug, but only his right shoulder lifted.

  “Let’s take a walk,” she suggested. “It’s a pleasant day. We could go around the block. See how we do things in Harlem. I’ll bet you’ve never been this far uptown before . . .”

  She set off slow, so Hester could keep up.

  Curwen wasn’t heavy just now. His PA was as at ease as if she were wheeling an empty chair.

  “Confidentially, he wasn’t much of a husband,” said Nefertiti Bronze. “Sebastian Cutter. Not much of a man, come to that. And a lousy-ass bocor. If he’d asked, I’d have told him not to be so ambitious. He was no Mordecai Vault. If Brother Vault had been the obeah man when your . . . messengers . . . came a-calling, things would have panned out a whole different way. That man was prepared . . . but—like you, Curwen—he was old and tired and ready to step aside. Sebastian was there, in waiting. Stupid-eager and head full of the getting that could be got. He was willing. He was hungry. And you hit him his first week in post.”

  Curwen didn’t deny anything.

  “I was young when we married, not too much older when we split. Don’t know why we kept the paper. I suppose he appreciated the marital status . . . meant he had an excuse for not wedding any of the others he took up with. I only heard from him when he wanted something—usually money, but sometimes inside information, an introduction to someone useful, or tips on the voodoo business. He liked being hitched to my daddy’s reputation more than he ever liked being married to me. John Bronze casts a shadow in this city, even now. Sebastian was becoming a nuisance. He was addicted to dropping the Bronze name . . . writing fat checks I wound up cashing. Sooner or later, we’d have had a falling-out. A big one. Maybe fatal—for him! So . . . you could say you did me a favor by putting him down.”

  “An enlightened view,” Curwen said.

  The woman stopped and turned to look at him. Hester pulled him back.

  “. . . But he was family. I know you dig that, Curwen. Family’s all you’ve got, after all.”

  There was a switchblade in her hand. The blade black so as not to flash.

  He was shocked out of himself . . . into Zoot Ward, hands abuzz with Eldritch energies as he drew cosmic darkness out of the sidewalk. Then spears of frozen night passed through the artist’s body. His strings were cut.

  And Curwen was back in Walker Phillip Ward, shaking.

  “. . . Pasty faces in Harlem,” the Woman of Bronze was saying. “Not exactly inconspicuous. Let me help you with that.”

  She outspread her arms, making a target of herself, and looked up at Grok.

  No shots rang out.

  Curwen fled to Grok, and found his mind inside a severed head. In the last seconds of consciousness, he saw combat boots and the dripping machete . . .

  Then he was wriggling in his chair, gripping the rest with his good arm.

  “We did things the old-fashioned way with Lieutenant Ward,” said Nefertiti Bronze. “You appreciate tradition, I know that. Puffer fish powder, drums, and chickens, three-day burial in shallow earth at a crossroads . . . none of that West Re-Agent jazz. You never know about the side effects of mad science. Pollutants get out into the rivers, clog ’em up with unkillable mutant bass. So, we employed old-school voodoo and made us an old-school zombie. Think Haiti and Murder Legendre, not Pittsburgh and Night of the Living Dead. I’d caution against your piggybacking trick. Even if you could get into the Loot’s skull, there’s no mind there. Burned out by TTX. He’ll make a mighty fine janitor at the parlor, fetching and carrying, sweeping up after black folks. Something piquant about a whitey shuffling with the broom and nodding “yassuh” at the brothers. Some of the congregation want him as a whipping hound, to take out their frustrations. An understandable thing, though not to be encouraged. My daddy told me we should be better than that. But we’ll make good use of the soldier doll. All that blooding won’t go to waste.”

  There was only one place to go . . .

  The Woman of Bronze shook her head.

  “Uh-huh . . . the coffee at the Has-Bean Café’s only bitter to cover the other taste.”

  He looked around, vertebrae cracking. Lucy-Linda Carnby was alone at her table, facedown in her book, aqueous humor leaking from burst eyes. Her hands shook. Drops of blood seeped from around her fingernails.

  Trembling, racked with pain, Curwen squirmed in his chair.

  Another white face loomed over the black woman’s shoulder.

  Special Agent Whitney Gauge.

  “You done here, Miz Bronze?”

  “Almost, Agent G-Girl. How’s Fire Island?”

  “Typical vacation. Too many midges. Gave up halfway through the new Norman Mailer.”

  Curwen’s consciousness darted about in the ruined cathedral of Walker Phillip Ward’s near-corpse. More of him was dead than alive. Portions of the brain were mush. He couldn’t talk—his tongue was chewed leather.

  The possibles were off the plate.

  But Nefertiti Bronze’s people couldn’t have got them all. There were twenty-seven living Wards, Curwens, and Phillipses, ranging from dotards to idiot children. He could be any of them, pitch temporary camp in a reasonable substitute until another perfect possible could be bred. Six were in the city . . . others across the country, from Massachusetts to New Mexico . . . a few overseas, in England or Germany . . .

  “It won’t wash, Curwen,” said the Woman of Bronze. “Nowhere to go.”

  He twisted his face into a smile.

  He opened himself up and probed for the soul-threads, the escape-ways he always had prepared.

  He would be back to settle up for this humiliation. Years down the line, an eye-blink according to the calendar of the Great Old Ones, a few moments only in the relay race of his extended lifetime. When these women were old, unpr
epared, and feeble, hands as yet unborn would fit around their throats and the mind of Joseph Curwen would choke them out.

  He was calm, but . . .

  “No way out there either,” said Nefertiti Bronze. “In the last half hour, your family has suffered a remarkable, unprecedented streak of bad luck. Accidents, murders, suicides, sudden illnesses, acts of war. You’re the last of the line.”

  How?

  Only he kept track. Not all the family were on the books. Only he knew about the unacknowledged bastards, the foundlings raised by strangers, and the distant cousins untraceable even after years’ research.

  He looked up at Whitney Gauge and the Woman of Bronze—pale and dark sisters, both smiling. And he looked across at the third face, the slightly pop-eyed Hester Tilling. She had the smile too.

  “Your girl keeps good records,” said the Woman of Bronze. “And knows when to change horses. Sometimes, contrary to what your wise old uncle might have said, that’s best done in midstream.”

  She stuck the switchblade into a part of him that still felt pain.

  Special Agent Gauge pulled it out and stabbed him again, then handed the knife to Hester, who drew back, teeth bared, ready to cut across . . .

  Curwen saw his PA had a lot of pent-up fury to dispel.

  “Not the throat,” cautioned Nefertiti Bronze. “This time, since it’s his last taste of death, let’s make it a special meal, and not be too hasty in the cooking and serving. He should savor the experience. Let nature take its course . . . with care, he might last for weeks . . .”

  They had gone around the block. And were back at the undertaking parlor.

  His eyes were dimming. The last thing he saw was her ebony face, burnished by sunset and his failing senses—implacable, beautiful, terrible.

  “Good night, sugar,” she said. “Give my love to the darkness.”

  NINE

  Cool Air

  “THIS SQUEAKY FROMME IS one crazy bitch.”

  Special Agent Diane Masterton stifled a sigh. She knew that Olivetti had pitched his voice louder than usual just to make sure she heard him. Fine. If he wanted a fight . . .