Knows what? the voice in his head said scornfully. Johnny winced. The voice didn’t whisper anymore—it spoke so strongly that sometimes he caught himself looking around to see if anybody else had heard it. She wasn’t cut out for life on the road? Few are. Relax, John. Go back to sleep.
That sounded like a good idea. Sleep. “Johnny” probably had the right idea—it usually did. Look what it’s done for me so far, Johnny thought with genuine gratitude.
That’s right. We’re going places together, you and me. Now go back to sleep. “Johnny” sounded irritated with him.
Well, we’re all tired in here, Johnny thought, and he laughed. It sounded desperate and hysterical, even to him. In the other bed, Allen stirred.
Despite his leaden limbs and sluggish mind, Johnny forced himself to sit up. It was five-forty, which meant the newspapers would be out. He got out of bed and grabbed his backpack.
This is foolish, John, the voice said, like a stern parent. There’s nothing to prove, and you’re only making yourself upset.
Nonetheless, Johnny walked to the door. He reached for the handle, and for one dreamlike moment, his body stopped moving. His hand stopped in midmotion and wouldn’t go forward, and his legs were stuck in place. Then the moment was gone, and he moved forward just as smoothly as if he’d never stopped.
Did that really happen? Am I losing my mind?
No, the voice said, though it didn’t seem especially sincere. You’re tired. You need rest.
He ignored it as best he was able and left the room.
Downstairs, the motel staff was starting to set breakfast out. Johnny had no interest in that. He found a copy of the Tribune and settled in to one of the chairs in the lobby.
He found what he was looking for in the local section. A young man had been brutally killed late last night—beaten to death, apparently, though the article hinted that an animal had been at him after he was killed. The article also gave an address where the body was found, and though Johnny didn’t know anything about Chicago geography, he didn’t guess he needed to. It would have happened near last night’s venue.
It always did.
You’re being stupid, the voice told him. This obsessive fantasy of yours isn’t doing anyone any good.
He took his journal and a pair of scissors from his backpack. His vision blurred, but he shook his head and it cleared. A woman in a business suit walked by, giving him a wary look.
He flipped to the middle of the journal. Once, the journal had been a log of daily thoughts, events, fragments of lyrics, but lately it had become a grisly sort of scrapbook. At the top of each of the last thirteen pages was a city and a date. Below most of the dates, Johnny had taped an article from the local newspaper.
Atlanta. June 17, 2010. Two Concertgoers Killed in Apparent Parking Lot Brawl.
Raleigh. June 18, 2010. Woman’s Body Found Mutilated in Alley. No suspect in custody.
Richmond. June 20, 2010. Man Mauled to Death Downtown. Police suspect feral dogs.
It went on for thirteen pages, one page for each stop they’d made on the tour so far. Charlotte. Baltimore. There was no article on the page for New York—Johnny had combed the papers and found nothing. Perhaps nothing had happened that night, or perhaps New York suffered an embarrassment of riches in the violence department, rendering the nightly crop of bodies found in Dumpsters and alleys less than newsworthy. Boston. Columbus. Indianapolis. Detroit. No article for Cleveland, for whatever reason. Philadelphia. Milwaukee.
He cut the article for Chicago out with trembling hands.
Put it away, John, “Johnny” told him, disgusted.
What are we doing, Johnny? he asked it. What are we doing?
We’re not doing anything. These are big cities, Johnny, and the human race is teeming with barely suppressed violence. That the cup should run over sometimes is hardly a surprise. It runs over nightly, everywhere. You’re looking for patterns in chaos, John. Save your energy for something worthwhile.
Numbness filled Johnny, but while he felt no pain, no guilt, there was a slight pressure reminding him that he should feel something.
Erin knows, he thought. Maybe not anything specific, but she knows something has gone wrong here.
Nothing has gone wrong here, “Johnny” told him. Put this foolishness away and go to sleep.
Through the fog in his thoughts, Johnny made a decision. The thing in his head wouldn’t like it—but fuck him. This was going to end tonight.
John, what are you thinking? I can’t hear you, John. The voice sounded faintly alarmed, Johnny noted with satisfaction.
He taped the article in under Chicago.
***
Erin said her goodbyes at breakfast, and there were no tears this time. She gave Johnny a searching look before giving him a hug. He didn’t miss her hesitation, or the way she wiped her hands on her jeans afterward, but he tried to smile even as the voice in his head cursed and called her foul names.
They dropped her off at the bus station, and then it was on to St. Louis.
What are you thinking? the voice asked him. He stared out the window at the cornfields and tried to tune it out. Don’t hide from me, John. We’re in this together, you and me. All the way to the end.
Johnny didn’t like the sound of that, but he didn’t answer. That thing wasn’t going to get anything from him. Not again.
It called to him as they passed the St. Louis arch. Talk to me, John. Again as they got off the interstate. John, it’s awful quiet in here. Let’s talk. Again as they got to the venue. Please, John? Don’t shut me out. We have so much left to do. It was whining now, and Johnny took a grim joy in that. Maybe it couldn’t read his thoughts exactly, but it picked up on his emotions. Why would you want to hurt me, John? We’re good together. We’ve done so much. Together.
“You okay?” Danny asked him as they got out of the van.
“I’m good,” Johnny said, though he could feel the strain in his face, his neck, and his back. The constant wheedling and the endless stream of entreaties were wearing him down, and “Johnny” kept getting louder and louder.
Sound check was awful. Singing was a tremendous amount of work with all that racket in his head. The band started running through “Burn” and the voice started up again, more insistent than ever.
Please, John? Don’t leave me alone in here.
“Goddammit, will you shut up?” Johnny snapped into the mic, right in the middle of the song. Everybody stopped playing, and he could feel the others looking at him.
“Pardon?” the sound guy said through the monitors.
“Sorry. Sorry. Can we take it from the beginning?”
He made it through with nothing more than raw, bloody-minded effort, but wasn’t pretty.
“You okay?” Danny asked him again after they wrapped up sound check. “You don’t sound too good.”
“I know how I sound, okay?” Johnny said. “I’ll get it together.”
“I didn’t mean that,” Danny said, though it was obvious that that was exactly what he’d meant. “I mean, you seem like you might be getting sick or something.”
He’s right, the thing said. You don’t sound too good. It will be all right, though. I can help. Let me help you.
Johnny gritted his teeth and ignored it.
He had to clench his fists to keep from shaking by the time they took the stage.
“You okay?” Danny asked him for the third time. Johnny was ready to hit him. “We can call this off if you’re too sick to go on.”
“Fuck that,” Johnny said, a trace of fire in his voice. “We came here to make some noise, so let’s rock this motherfucker.” That sounded good—he wished he felt it.
The thing in his head had left him alone for an hour, but he could feel its excitement as he stepped in front of the mic. Case played the opening riff to “Burn” and suddenly all eyes were on him. There were a dozen or so people in front that he’d come to recognize staring excitedly up at him. He thought of them as Johnny�
��s Fan Club, and he drew confidence from their cheers. This might be okay, he thought.
Then it was time to sing, and he felt the thing in his head push forward to work its magic.
NO, he thought.
It stopped as abruptly as if it had hit a wall. He felt it slam forward again, and again he thought NO. Frustration and panic welled up inside the thing, and it let out an unearthly howl that rang the inside of his head like a bell.
Johnny missed the first line of the song, but he caught up at the second, and he—he, alone, John Tsiboukas—sang it with everything he had.
His pitch wavered, and the sound was anemic. It was as though eight months of practice and performing had peeled away in a moment, leaving him with the same lousy voice he’d always had.
A look of shock spread across the faces of Johnny’s Fan Club, eerily synchronized. Moments later, shock was replaced by a nasty look he didn’t like at all. They leered and sneered and booed him. The rest of the crowd didn’t follow their lead, thank Christ, but the rest of the crowd didn’t seem particularly impressed, either. Some people watched with interest, but others milled about in little clots, spread out across the floor, talking to each other over the music. Many of them, Johnny noticed, gravitated toward Case’s side of the stage.
He gave it everything he had anyway, screaming the words into the mic, moving across the stage with something like his usual swagger. He saw a few heads nod with the music, but mostly just indifference. His confidence faltered, and the thin sound of his voice coming through the monitor speakers was another devastating blow to his ego. This is a fucking disaster, he thought, and the swagger went out of him.
Somehow, he made it through the song. There was applause, but it sounded perfunctory after the deafening ovations he was used to. The howling in his head stopped.
The voice in his head took on an ugly smugness. Go on, then, it told him. Let’s see what you got. This one’s all yours.
It stayed quiet for the rest of the set—not that that helped much. Johnny knew his voice just couldn’t cut it. It came back to him shrill and tiny, barely on pitch. The band went through one song after another to an audience that seemed to Johnny to be almost completely uninterested. Johnny’s Fan Club jeered and got so rowdy he wondered when they would start throwing things.
The band was tight and the beat was driving, and he knew that was all that carried the set. When it was finally over, Johnny slunk away as fast as he could, walking rapidly with his head down. Case caught his eye for one second, and he saw only pity on her face before he looked away.
Filled with shame, Johnny ran to the van.
***
“What’s with him?” Case asked Danny.
“Don’t know. He’s not feeling well, I guess.”
“Yeah. He sure doesn’t look so good. I thought he was going to puke onstage. Too bad. He started strong.”
“Yeah he did,” Danny said. “It’s hard to remember how terrified he used to be onstage.”
“Wish he’d have finished stronger, but you can’t have a perfect show every night.”
***
From the St. Louis Riverfront Times, July 8, 2010:
. . . Opening for Crashyard was up-and-coming Ragman, a hard rock quartet out of Dallas that’s been getting rave reviews as the warm-up act for this tour. We found the good press to be more than justified, as Ragman blasted the room with a set of scorching rock and roll. Heavy riffs and the lead singer’s raw sound imbued their set with a nice grittiness, setting the stage perfectly for Crashyard’s set. . . .
***
Johnny never saw a copy of that day’s Riverfront Times, but he made sure to pick up the St. Louis Post-Dispatch before leaving town. There were no murders mentioned.
Chapter 29
There is darkness everywhere, and a noisome dampness thickens the air. To breathe is to pull wisps of wet air through sheets of molding gauze. Johnny can’t see, but he can feel mud squishing between his toes, and the leaves and stalks of strange, fleshy plants crunch and burst beneath his bare feet. He’s walking. Where? Forward. Every few steps, his foot plunges into a puddle, soaking him with stinking water up to the knee. He feels rather than hears a door open in front of him, and he walks through.
On the other side, an ocean gleams oily under moonlight. Out in the deeps, vast pale shapes move below the surface, and Johnny averts his gaze, knowing with a deep certainty that to look is to invite something to look back. The abyss, maybe, he thinks without a trace of sarcasm.
At the shore, the water is still, smooth as glass, like no ocean he’s ever seen or heard of. The moon, too, is strange—too small, too distant, its patterns unfamiliar and foreboding. Its light is green and foul. Johnny is swept with the sense that he does not belong here, no more than a house dog belongs in the jungle.
This is the back of the world, he thinks, and while that makes no sense from any geometric or cosmological perspective he knows of, he also knows it is true.
“The back of the world,” a voice says behind him, echoing his thoughts. He doesn’t need to turn to know there is a man, or something like one, back there, cowboy hat and ironic grin masking something horrible. “Where cold and hungry things scratch to get in like scratching at the back of a picture in a frame. Watch.”
Johnny watches the shore, careful not to look out too far. The water stirs and breaks open, and a figure, a man-shape, emerges, hunched and shuffling. Again, Johnny turns his gaze. This is not the awful presence he senses churning and roiling in the depths, but it would be similarly unwise to invite its attention.
Others follow, and soon a crowd flaps and shambles up the shore. Johnny doesn’t want to look, but there are too many, and he catches glimpses. He sees pale flesh, glistening eyes, and ribs and knobbed spines punching out from their thin, almost skeletal bodies. They pass by him in their hundreds, and their stench is an atom bomb of dead fish and decaying things.
The last one passes, then stops. It turns, and Johnny is thankful that its face is buried in shadow. It gestures to him, unmistakably beckoning him to follow.
He looks down and sees his own pale flesh, his own ribs pushing out through stretched skin, and hunger fills him, hunger itself consumes him. He has known privation before, especially at the end of the month with the bills unpaid and the cash gone. He has skipped meals for two and three days at a time, but he has never known hunger so deep or so pervasive, and he knows that he has been hungry forever. He would eat the plants from the ground if they weren’t poison. He would eat the dirt if it would sustain him, grind the rocks between his teeth if it would only stop that vast, hollow ache.
The creature beckons again, and Johnny follows. Up the beach, he can see a squat structure, no more than a dark suggestion from here, but he knows what it is. Dread coils in him, but it is a small thing next to the hunger.
He walks.
The creatures have gathered in front of the structure—a high platform, much wider than it is tall, built of wood the color of bone.
A stage.
Case stands on it, stage right as always. She’s tuning up, twiddling the pegs on her guitar and tapping one foot impatiently. Danny’s in back, in front of the drums. He’s stamping his foot, pounding the bass drum over and over, just like a particularly slow sound check. Quentin stands at stage left, and again Johnny is grateful for the dim light that hides all detail, for Quentin is dead as can be. His eyes are sunken and dark, and tangled shapes spill from his belly, slopping over his legs.
Case stops tuning. Danny stops kicking. Quentin stands there. They are all waiting.
“They are waiting for you, Johnny,” the man behind him says. “It is time for you to take the stage and call your hungry brothers forth.”
Johnny turns around. The thin man in the black silk shirt is there, just as Johnny had known he would be. A wind kicks up, blowing the scent of burning metal off the ocean.
“This wasn’t the deal,” Johnny says.
The man says nothing, but Johnny can
see the faint crescent shape of his grin widen beneath the hat.
“This wasn’t the deal,” Johnny repeats.
“Too bad.” The man crosses his arms.
“You’re not the devil,” Johnny says.
“I never said I was. But you asked for fame, fortune, and a voice to move millions, and I gave it to you. Do you doubt it?”
Now it’s Johnny’s turn to stay silent.
“Ah. So you want to welch on the deal? Be my guest. I won’t stop you. Go back to pouring coffee and scrubbing dishes. Maybe one day you’ll make assistant manager. One day, when your short span of years winds itself down, you’ll look back at the opportunity wasted and weep—but that’s your choice. You can always be proud of that. Making your choice.
“Those lofty goals of art and immortality? They’re yours to throw away.”
On the stage, the band plays a long, ugly chord.
***
“Wake up! Showtime!”
Johnny woke with a start. The surroundings were foreign yet familiar, and he remembered. Another green room. Sacramento this time, he thought. Or maybe San Diego. Somewhere a million miles away from that otherworldly beach under its baleful moon. Or a billion. He blinked, trying to clear his head.
“Jesus, Johnny, wake up! You can’t go onstage like that.” Danny shook him again.
“Knock it off, I’m coming.”
He found his feet somehow, but they felt strange, and he shuffled and shambled behind Case with Danny guiding him when he started to weave. He waved Danny off when they reached the stairs. “I got it,” he said, but he stopped. Dread held his feet to the floor. He could hear the crowd muttering and chuckling, and he wasn’t sure he could take another show like the last one. He wasn’t sure he could go up those stairs and face that indifference again, that effortless verdict from the mob that declared him worthless.
What do you say, Johnny? the voice in his head asked. It had never called him Johnny before. Shall we give them what they came for? Something to remember?
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