Bone Music

by Alan Rodgers

  Where he sank deep beneath the hot bright waves, and damn near drowned down in the blazing brine. The whiteness of the heat down there stunned and frightened him, and burned him, too, and for a long hard moment Dan could not tell which way was the surface and which way was deeper, hotter water, and he would have drowned, he surely surely would have drowned gasping and gagging on the fiery white plasm if Polly hadn’t saved him.

  She found him in the deep, as she’d found him in the River Styx, and saved him as she’d saved him there. Grabbed his collar, dragged him to the surface; pulled him through the burning brine and up onto the rocks that were the shore.

  Pressed his diaphragm, easing the fiery water out his lungs; kissed him, drawing air.

  Dan came around slowly. At first he hardly breathed at all without assistance, but now breath by breath he came back among the living, and he saw her, and he loved her, and he couldn’t bear to ask her why she saved him because he was afraid to hear the answer.

  “I love you,” Dan said. His voice was weak — so weak he hardly heard himself. “I want to hold you here forever.”

  Polly smiled. “I love you too, Dan Alvarez,” she said. Dan didn’t understand, and he still didn’t want to. He took her love as she gave it to him, without questioning it, and maybe that was the best thing all in all.

  “We need help,” Elvis said. Dan looked up to see that the deadman’s white suit was filthy, soaked with ashy water, speckled with glowing and sputtering bits of emberous debris. “We have to go to the city.”

  He pointed at the rocks above them, and Dan looked up to see the city known as Firgard for the first time.

  It’s a dreadful place, Firgard. A city of broken splendor and horrific love; a place where foul things seem fair and fair things foul, where death and life, salvation and damnation twist around one another until no stranger can pare one from the other.

  “You’re out of your mind,” Dan said.

  Polly shook her head. “He’s not,” she said. “It isn’t just the boat. There is an errand here we need to realize.”

  As she spoke she helped Dan to his feet. When he tried to answer her with protests she pressed a finger to her lips and shook her head.

  “There isn’t any other way,” she said. “We’ve got to go.”

  The Devil’s Quarter of New Orleans

  The Present

  The Devil’s doorman led Emma and Leadbelly out the back door of the casino, into a great wide glass-ceilinged room. The room was bright with moonlight shining down upon them through the glass, and brighter with the light of a thousand crystal chandeliers. In its center was a wide spiral stairway — a rich, wide stair, wide enough for an army to descend walking side by side by side. Its marble steps were carpeted with red velvet; its banisters were bright polished gold.

  Such ostentation, Emma thought. You’d think the Devil had no shame.

  “This way,” the doorman said, leading them down the stair.

  The stairway went down on and on forever, so deep that Emma came to think they’d already descended to the center of the other, and then it still continued.

  “Don’t you get tired of these stairs?” Emma asked the doorman when she thought she couldn’t go another step. “Got to be a time when even the Devil’s too tired to go on.”

  The doorman only smiled. “The damned are all beyond despair,” he said. “It isn’t that much farther.”

  Outside the Fallen City Firgard

  Hell

  Timeless

  Before they reached the ruined city they came upon a campfire.

  Six ghosts and the shadow of a deadman sat around that fire, each of them holding a guitar. The ghosts sat apart from the deadman’s shadow — they seemed to shun him, in fact.

  And perhaps they did shun him.

  “That’s Leadbelly,” dead Elvis said, pointing at the shadow. “He isn’t really here. But his shadow always follows the ghosts of the six Kings — because he was the seventh.”

  Dan felt as if every hair on his hide stood on end, but of course they didn’t. It was just a chill, and chills like that are only natural in Hell. “The Seven Kings,” he said. He’d never heard that phrase before, but he knew it in his heart, just as he’d always known the Kings themselves, no matter how he’d never thought of them as rulers.

  “That ghost was Ma Rainey,” Elvis said, and then he nodded at each of the ghostly Kings in turn. “That was Charlie Patton — Blind Lemon Jefferson — Blind Willie Johnson — Peetie Wheatstraw — and there, near the fire, that was once the great King himself, John Henry.”

  Dan frowned. “I thought ‘John Henry’ was just a song,” he said. “A song about a man and a machine.”

  Elvis scowled. “John Henry was a lot of things,” he said. “’He could make that hammer ring like a bell.’”

  “I heard that said,” Dan told him. “Lots of times. But I haven’t ever heard any hammer ring like a bell.”

  “I bet you ain’t heard it,” dead Elvis said. “If you’d ever heard you wouldn’t doubt, not for a moment.”

  Dan shook his head. “Of course I never heard,” he said. “I wasn’t born till twenty years after you stole that guitar off the bluff.”

  The air around them went very still for a moment, and Dan could feel the deadman seethe with anger —

  And then he wheeled around and grabbed Dan by the collar, lifted him clear off his feet.

  Started shouting.

  “What the hell you mean by that, huh, boy? What the hell you mean, ‘stole that guitar off the bluff’? Who the hell you think you’re talking to? What the hell you think you’re saying? Stole? Stole?”

  “You stole it,” Dan said. “I know you did. I saw you in my dream.”

  “I found it,” Elvis said. “In the ashes. I didn’t steal nothing, you hear me?”

  “It wasn’t rightfully yours,” Dan said. “You know it wasn’t.”

  “Shit,” dead Elvis said. “You think it’s rightly yours now?”

  “Oh no,” Dan said. “Not me. I brought it back to you. I’d bring it back to him,” he said, nodding at vaporous John Henry, “if he was anything but a ghost.”

  “You’re wrong,” dead Elvis said, lowering Dan to the ground. “The Lady put it on you, just the same as she put it on me. It’s yours no matter if you want it or you don’t.”

  Dan backed away. “It’s not,” he said. “You aren’t any ghost. That guitar’s yours — you ought to take it. You got a problem with responsibility?”

  The deadman swore and grabbed for Dan’s collar again, but this time Dan had the sense to get out of his way. “I died to get away from that goddamn thing,” he said. “I ain’t about to let you put it on me, hear?”

  Now Polly Ann had missed this altercation, because she’d waded back out among the rocks to get a few things (like the dead King’s guitar) off their broken boat. She’d also missed the sight of Leadbelly’s shadow — and of the ghostly Kings.

  It was a hard thing when she did see them. Polly came up over the rise from the shore, and saw the fire and the shadow and the ghosts, and then she saw John Henry, and she screamed.

  It was horrible, that scream. Horrible as anything Dan had seen or heard since they’d gone to Hell. Half of it was terror, but the other half was grief, and the fear and the sadness coiled ‘round one another till they made Dan ache to hear them, and she dropped everything onto the rocks as though she didn’t even realize what she had, and she ran to the ghostly King’s side —

  — ran to him —

  — ran to him and wrapped her arms around him, and Dan felt jealousy cut through him like a knife, so hard, so sharp, so cruel, and now she wailed again entirely in anguish as she tumbled through the great King’s ghostly arms.

  Sobbed and sobbed and sobbed so sad, Dan almost felt for her throu
gh the curtain of his jealousy, and now one of the ghosts took up his guitar and sang, sang so beautiful so clear and true Dan could almost hear them Lord the song so beautiful so faint as the others joined him and the shadow of Leadbelly looked on resentfully. . . .

  “What are they singing?” Dan asked. “I can’t make out the words.”

  Elvis turned to look at him coldly. “I can’t hear anything at all,” he said. “That’s what I been trying to tell you.”

  But Dan remembered “Jailhouse Rock” the way the deadman sang it in the motel room in Detroit, and he knew that was a lie. “Like hell,” he said. “I bet you’re hearing every word.”

  The deadman didn’t answer. And then there wasn’t time to answer, as a sudden storm blew up through the Bosphorus — hard and wild, a hailstorm cut with cold cold rain that stung them everywhere it touched.

  “We’d better find shelter,” dead Elvis shouted — and even though he shouted from almost close enough to touch, the storm beat so hard and loud that Dan could hardly hear him. “You get the girl. I’ll get her stuff.”

  Dan didn’t even think about what that meant — the moment was too hard and cold and frightening. He ran to Polly, who still lay sobbing among the rocks, lifted her to carry her away — and saw they were alone now, that the rain had killed the bonfire and driven the ghosts and their shadow away. He wanted to ask where they were gone and why they’d appeared before them, but they were gone, and there was no one to ask, and Polly sobbed and sobbed as Dan lifted her onto his shoulder and hurried toward the city of the damned.

  Blue Hell

  Timeless

  Lisa and Robert Johnson wandered through Hell for hours and hours. All that time Lisa kept thinking that she should have been scared, and she should have been howling for her mother, but what she felt was — fascinated. And hungry, too, the way you feel hungry for something when you want to see more and more and more.

  She should have been scared, she knew. The only reason she wouldn’t feel scared was if she was a frightful thing herself, and she wasn’t any horror, she was Lisa! Little baby Lisa, that’s all!

  Only that wasn’t all she was, and she knew it.

  Where they started out — in the tunnel that led down from the basement — everything was all fire and brimstone, just like in the picture books when somebody draws Hell.

  But it didn’t stay that way.

  Step by step the walls around them grew darker and more fetid, till now Lisa could smell something dank and earthy as rotting humus and jungle earth —

  — and now they came upon a wide mahogany door, and Robert Johnson freed the bolt and let it open wide.

  He stepped through and stood on the far side, waiting for her. Lisa followed him gingerly. She was certain in her heart that she was following Robert Johnson into a trap. A trap, a trap, a real trap, she could feel the waiting lurking malevolence in that place, and Robert Johnson ought to feel it, too, if he had any sense he wouldn’t go in there what kind of an idiot was he, anyway?

  “This is Blue Hell,” Robert Johnson said. “It used to be an island on the world.”

  As he spoke the mahogany door slammed shut of its own accord behind them, and Lisa heard the bolt on the far side of the door bang home.

  And they were trapped.

  Trapped in a fetid jungle blooming thick with dark blue foliage.

  So blue, that place. Everything about it was blue — the leaves, the grass, the trees, the light, so blue, so blue, was it a trick of the blue light that surrounded them or was everything really so blue. . . ?

  She looked at Robert Johnson, to see if the light would make him blue, but his complexion was too dark to take on color; she looked at her hands and saw that the light and the reflections cast her just-so-slightly blue, but nowhere near as blue as her surroundings.

  “I don’t understand,” Lisa said. “What do you mean, it used to be an island? Why do they call it Blue Hell?”

  Robert Johnson only answered her second question. “Just the color,” he said. “Nothing else.”

  Lisa waited for him to answer the other part for the longest time, but he never did.

  She followed Robert Johnson into the thriving Hellish dark. As the air around them grew thick and humid, till now it began to smell like a disease, the lurking presence that she’d felt intensified. She could feel demonic eyes watching them from somewhere deep inside the crowding leaves and branches — skulking in the jungle shadows, staring through the thick blue dark.

  “You feel them, don’t you?” Robert Johnson asked, pausing in a clearing, looking back at her over his shoulder.

  “Who?” Lisa asked — too quickly, too frightenedly, and the falseness of the question was obvious.

  “The loa,” Robert Johnson said. “That’s who those demons are.”

  Lisa bit her lip. She said, “Oh,” and she looked down at her feet.

  “It’s better not to look them in the eye,” Robert Johnson said. “If you stare at them they take it as a challenge.”

  He led her half an hour through the jungle, deeper and deeper into the fetid blue flora, till now Lisa thought she could hear a trickle of running water. And on as the sound of water grew stronger and closer, and now the lurking devils seemed farther and farther away —

  And suddenly the jungle parted, and they stood in the most beautiful place Lisa had ever seen.

  At its center was a shrine, and on both sides of the shrine there was water — water from a cool, misty brook ran through that clearing. Where the water came back together on the far side of the shrine, there was a deep pool of the clearest coolest water Lisa had ever seen.

  So beautiful, that pool. When Lisa saw it she wanted to wade in and let the water wash away every awful thing she’d ever done — every awful thing that’d ever happened to her.

  But there was no time.

  No time at all.

  Because the loa came for them the moment that they entered the clearing — came out of the edges of the clearing and stood there, glaring at them hatefully, blocking their passage.

  “They’re going to kill us,” Lisa said.

  Robert Johnson shook his head.

  “They can’t,” he said. “Not here. They can’t even come any closer while there’s water in the shrine.”

  Now the water in the pool began to roil, and Lisa wanted to say, You’re wrong, see, see? They’re coming at us from the water —

  But then she saw who it was in the water, and she knew she was wrong.

  Because it was the Santa in that water, Santa Barbara, and Lisa thought, We’re saved, we’re saved, a saint has come to save us from the horrors of damnation!

  But she could feel how false those words were as soon as she thought them. There was no salvation in that place, unless it came from down inside; no one could save them unless they could save themselves.

  Still, the loa kept their distance. None of them would dare to speak to the Santa, much less challenge her. As she rose out of the water they melted into the jungle.

  And Santa Barbara beckoned to Lisa and Robert Johnson, urging them toward the brook.

  “She’ll tell you,” Robert Johnson said. “She can tell you things I can’t pretend to know.”

  The Mansion Called Defiance

  Hell

  Timeless

  The doorman led them down the stair, into the Mansion called Defiance; through the great receiving room where ten thousand demons waited, watching hungrily as Emma, Leadbelly, and the Devil’s butler passed.

  Through the receiving room to the Devil’s Sanctum where the Prince of Lies awaited.

  Huddie Ledbetter smiled all slick and greasy as a politician when he saw the Devil.

  “Master,” he said, and when Emma heard that word she felt so ill, not just because she knew he meant to betray he
r but because no living man nor woman should ever call the Devil Master. “I’ve brought a bride for you, Master — someone precious enough to settle our account.”

  The Prince of Lies laughed wickedly. “Ledbetter, you’re a gambler,” the Devil said. “But you know you always lose.”

  Emma heard Leadbelly swear under his breath, but she didn’t pay much attention. She was too busy looking every which way, trying to figure out how the hell she was going to get herself out of that place. And not finding anything at all.

  “You’re wrong,” Leadbelly said. “This is the girl’s mother,” he said. “She’s Robert Johnson’s daughter, too.”

  The Devil hissed. “You think I don’t know who she is?”

  Leadbelly flinched.

  Emma saw curtains along the walls on either side of the Devil’s throne. There had to be doors behind those curtains, didn’t there? That was the only hope she had — she had to find a moment to make her break, and run for the door, and pray nobody caught her.

  It was almost no hope at all.

  “I’m sorry, Master,” Leadbelly said. He spoke humbly, but Emma could see how the words humiliated him — he looked so angry! Like a rock that hisses at the edge of a fire just before it shatters. “I only wanted to settle my debt, Master. I owe you more than I want to owe anybody.”

  The Devil laughed and laughed and laughed, so wicked and so cruel. “Gambling debts!” he said derisively. “You think I only own your debts? — you’re wrong, little man. I own you. Don’t you realize? Everything you do, I own; everything you think you think for me. Every breath you breathe is mine. Because you are mine.”

  Now they stood at the foot of the Devil’s throne, almost close enough to touch the Devil.

  “Yes, Master,” Leadbelly said — and Emma saw that he was trembling, literally shaking with rage.

  “Kneel before me,” the Devil said. “Supplicate yourselves.”

  Emma said, “I won’t,” but she didn’t really have a choice. It wasn’t a request; it was a command, and as the Devil spoke it Emma felt herself stoop and kneel involuntarily —

  As Leadbelly swore —