Voice

by Joseph Garraty

  “Cool,” Johnny said. He led Danny past her toward the back exit. Danny didn’t look back. The two of them left, and the door snicked shut.

  Case counted to ten, waiting for her heart to slow down. Allen was watching her.

  “I’m going back to the hotel,” she said. She had four hundred bucks in the safe, and it wouldn’t hurt to grab her bag and a change of clothes. “Then I’m done. I quit. I am gone. You coming?”

  Allen nodded. “Oh yeah. This ride stopped being fun a long while back.”

  She couldn’t argue with that.

  ***

  Case punched the numbers into the safe and pulled out the four hundred dollars first. As she stuffed the wad of folded cash into her pocket, a twenty peeled free and fell to the floor. For a second, she thought about leaving it, leaving the bag, the clothes, and everything—leaving Allen, who was next door getting his own shit—and running. Time suddenly seemed very important.

  That’s crazy, she reminded herself. They’re out doing . . . Fan Club stuff. According to Allen, Johnny hadn’t gotten in until almost dawn the last time he’d partied with the Fan Club. Looting the entire hotel room wouldn’t take more than five minutes. She snatched the bill off the floor and pocketed it. Still, she couldn’t shake the idea that time was short. Her stuff and Danny’s had gotten mingled over the past couple of weeks, virtually all of it ending up in Danny’s bag. He insisted he’d carry everything. It had been a nice gesture, but now it was a pain in the ass.

  Ah, fuck. Danny. Her heart tore at her. Danny. Could she really just ditch him? Leave him with whatever Johnny had become? She had put her ditching days behind her, or so she’d thought. And I love him.

  That’s not him, she reminded herself. She didn’t know what it was, but Johnny’s madness was apparently catching.

  More reason to get the hell out of here right now.

  But are you sure? Really sure?

  She didn’t know. Her eyes burned, and the light from the lamp refracted into a thousand dull shards in the prism of her tears. Big, gentle Danny. He didn’t deserve what had happened to him, she thought, and a flare of righteous anger ignited in her chest.

  I can’t help him. And now is not the time to worry about this.

  She picked Danny’s bag up. Rather than go rummaging, she dumped the contents on the bed.

  A notebook fell out on top, slid down the pile, and flopped open. Johnny’s handwriting and newspaper clippings. Case ignored it—Johnny’s crazy journal was the least of her concerns.

  Then the word Killed in large newsprint caught her eye. She looked down the page.

  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.

  There was more. Every show date, every city they’d played.

  The Fan Club. Where were they partying tonight? Case had a strong suspicion she knew what kinds of party games they liked. She felt fear scamper up the back of her neck, and the urge to flee amped up again. She checked the digital clock next to the bed—she’d been here for four minutes.

  “Fuck this,” she said aloud. Clean underwear and a backpack could go hang—she had the money, and she could replace the stuff anywhere.

  What about Danny? Another pang of sadness and despair. She couldn’t think about it clearly, but she knew she couldn’t help him. She didn’t know how.

  Time to go.

  She flung open the hotel room door—

  And Johnny was standing there. Grinning.

  Case stopped, her mouth half open, her mind spinning mad wheels with no purchase.

  Johnny. Here. Not one greased hair had fallen out of its place, and his hungry smile hadn’t diminished in the slightest. Nor was he alone. Danny stood next to him, his own idiot grin fixed firmly in place, and crowded around them, spread up and down the hall and stinking like a swamp, was the entirety of the Fan Club.

  They all stared at Case.

  “We need to talk, Case,” Johnny said.

  “Talk.” Her mouth tasted like chalk.

  “I got the impression you might be flaking out on us before the last show,” he said. His face grinned, but his voice was serious as a heart attack. “You don’t want to do that. Think about what you’ll be throwing away. You’ve worked so hard to get here.”

  “Fuck you,” Case said. Her voice trembled, but she didn’t care. “I quit.”

  Johnny sighed. “It’s not just your own career you’d be sabotaging,” he said. “Think of us. Think of who you’re screwing over. Erin, who spent countless hours setting this up. Me. Allen.” He winked at her, so quickly it was gone before she could believe it happened. What had he done with Allen? “And Danny. Danny’s given up a lot to be here. Are you ready to fuck him over, too?”

  She acted without thinking. One moment she’d been standing there in horrified shock, and the next, her hand shot out in a vicious punch directed at Johnny’s face.

  He caught her by the wrist, effortlessly, stopping her hand inches from impact. She gasped in shock rather than pain. It didn’t actually hurt much, but this was Johnny, for fuck’s sake. He probably went one-thirty if he was wearing heavy shoes, and he was as skinny as a signpost. Yet he held her wrist without showing any sign of strain.

  “You’re not much of a team player, are you? I always knew you were going to fuck us over. If that’s how it’s going to be, I’ll make a deal with you.”

  “Fuck you.”

  He continued as if he hadn’t heard. “You play this last show, and I won’t make Danny hurt himself.”

  “Fuck you,” she said again. That’s his brother! she thought, though some part of her wondered. Surely he wouldn’t—

  “Danny?” Johnny said.

  Danny reached up, almost casually, and curled his index finger in behind the bottom lid of his left eye. Then he pulled, hard. Case heard the tearing sound clearly above her own breathing.

  “Jesus Christ!” she yelled, and she pushed away. Johnny let her go, and she fell back into the room.

  Bloody tears poured down the side of Danny’s face while the Fan Club watched hungrily. His eyelid hung in a flap, and she could see his eye, white and wet, swiveling in its socket. “Don’t leave us, Case,” he said. “We’ll miss you.” There was a pause, and then his face changed, softened an instant before contorting into a mask of fear and pain.

  “Oh God, it hurts!” he shouted.

  “Danny!”

  And then his face was still again. “Don’t leave us,” he repeated tonelessly. He wiped the blood off his face and licked it off the side of his hand.

  Case jumped to her feet. “You son of a bitch!” she snarled at Johnny.

  “Danny?” Johnny said again.

  “No! Wait! I’m sorry!”

  Danny paused. This time his index finger was stiff and straight, pointed at the same eye.

  “Okay,” Johnny said. “One more show.”

  Case looked down. Danny was still in there, somewhere. For that one awful second she had seen him.

  “One more show,” she said.

  Chapter 31

  Danny was in there. Somewhere. Case reminded herself of that as the van barreled down the road, bound for Dallas and the last show of the tour. She hadn’t seen him since, though. The thing that was driving his body disregarded her most of the time, except for the occasional musing glance that made her feel like one of the lobsters in a tank at a fancy restaurant. At least he was wearing sunglasses now. She didn’t know if he—it —had done anything to patch that gruesome flap of skin back in place, but at least she didn’t have to look at it. It was hard enough for her to keep from replaying the moment where he’d reached in and torn his own eyelid open as casually and indifferently as opening a piece of junk mail.

  Behind them trailed a caravan of more than a dozen vehicles. The fucking Fan Club. There were over fifty of them now, each with the same hungry look as Danny. Four of them had stayed in th
e room with her last night, just to keep an eye on her, Johnny had said. She hadn’t been able to sleep under their watch, and she’d sat on the chair and glared at them most of the night.

  They had spent most of that time talking among themselves about how hungry they were and grinning at Case. She had wondered if their self-control would hold out and resolved to throw herself from the window if they came for her. That decision had come naturally, a solution so obvious it needed no deliberation.

  In the morning, she’d been hustled into the van with Allen, who managed a weak smile through the dazed, shell-shocked expression on his face. A cut as long as her hand zigzagged its way across his forehead.

  “Rough night?” she had asked.

  “You could say that.”

  And then they were off.

  The girl with the blue mohawk rode shotgun next to Danny, and Case, Allen, and Johnny spread out in the back seats.

  “Don’t look so glum,” Johnny said. “One more show, and then it’s on to bigger and better things.”

  “One more show, and that’s it,” Case reminded him.

  He shrugged. “One more show and then obscurity, if you’re into that. I don’t understand you, Case. Fame, fortune, and a wild rock-and-roll lifestyle are all going to be yours. Isn’t that what you always wanted?”

  She didn’t bother answering him. If it weren’t for Danny, she would have jumped for the door, never mind that they were going seventy miles an hour.

  If it wasn’t for Danny, I wouldn’t be in this fucking van.

  What was she going to do about Danny? She had no idea. As the van devoured the miles and the time before the show ticked away, her spirits sank further. She clenched her hands into impotent fists. She’d like nothing better than to knock Johnny’s face in, but she didn’t think her chances were good. He was faster than her, somehow, and stronger too. And it would take only a word from him and the thing inside Danny would put out Danny’s eye or tear off his face or Christ knew what. How could she fight that?

  She watched and waited, and the clock wound down. Her thoughts shifted from Danny to the show. Something bad was going to happen tonight. Something colossally bad. She didn’t know what, exactly, but the Fan Club gave her some ideas. Johnny would make more of them—or, no. He’d call them forth. That felt right. He had called them forth last night. Danny had been normal before the show and something horrible had come to live inside him by the end. More of that would happen tonight, she was sure.

  Maybe a lot more. Hadn’t there been only twenty or thirty Fan Club members at the start of the show last night? She thought so. Now there were enough to fill a dozen or so cars. Fifty? Sixty? And the show last night had been like nothing else she’d seen before, filled with a terrible, unearthly power.

  She had a feeling tonight’s would be more powerful still. They were headlining, which meant a long set, and the venue packed a couple thousand people. Erin would fill it, somehow. That’s what she did.

  And then what?

  Dread gnawed at her insides for the whole ride.

  ***

  The green room. Just like all the other green rooms. Case had no sense of being back home, no sense of triumph at the sheer size of the show they were about to put on. She heard the pounding bass of the thrash bands that went on before them, big local names that Erin had booked for support. The place would be packed.

  Erin herself came back to visit, but her stay was brief. She was clearly unsettled by the creepy grin Johnny wore, and she wrinkled her nose at the terrible smell that filled the room. The Fan Club was back here, too, and she didn’t like that at all. She moved through the clot of people, trying to avoid touching any of them. Case saw the man with the spiral notebook in his ear wink at her.

  She hugged Case. “Good luck,” she said in a shaky voice.

  “Get out of here,” Case whispered. “Just get away.”

  Erin looked at her with wide eyes and left in a hurry.

  Case checked the wall clock. Two minutes to midnight. Just like the Iron Maiden song.

  Two minutes to showtime.

  ***

  His people were hungry. Johnny—he liked that name, thought he’d keep it for a while—was hungry, too. So hungry.

  Soon. Soon we will feed. All of us.

  Tonight he would bring his people through. All of them. There were so few of them left in that dead world on the flipside of reality, and he was now in full command of his power. He would pull them through into this new world, pull them through into a place teeming with meat, alive and squirming on the bone, and his people would feast.

  In the back of his mind, something that had once ruled this body screamed and wept.

  ***

  “Let’s go,” Johnny said. Danny grinned. Case and Allen shared a terrified look.

  The four of them headed for the stage.

  Chapter 32

  Somewhere deep, John sees it all, and it is as it was in those long-ago dreams. His body moves up the stairs at the back of the stage, behind the curtain, and he hears the sound of the crowd, rumbling and restless. A single voice, high and clear—a woman’s voice—starts to chant: “Johnny! Johnny! Johnny!” It’s only seconds before the chant is picked up by dozens more, then hundreds, then the whole room. The stamping of their feet vibrates up through the stage, up through the soles of his feet, into his belly, his heart.

  His body walks out onto the darkened stage, and a roar goes up from the crowd. He stands in front of the mic, and he can feel his face twist in a sneer—the Elvis sneer from his dreams—though he never told it to move. He is powerless now, a spectator at his own moment of glory.

  Case is to his right, as always, like in the dreams—and, also like in the dreams, her goldtop Les Paul has been replaced by a guitar the color of blood, the one that Kerry Buchanan gave her. The mystery bass player to his left is no mystery anymore. It’s Allen, of course. Quentin is dead.

  Two spotlights come on, blasting Danny and Allen with white light. As the crowd goes into a frenzy, Danny clicks his sticks together four times, and he and Allen start the song.

  “Ashes and Bone.”

  Stop this, John thinks. Please, God, stop this. His only answer is laughter that echoes around his head, lashing him like a whip of barbed wire.

  His head turns to the right, and his arm points. Another spotlight flicks on, pointed at Case. She is giving him an appraising, studying look, her eyes narrowed and her mouth set in a grim line. She comes in at the right time, though, following the frenetic bass part for a few bars before changing to the ugly harmony she devised for this song. The whole time, she never looks away from him, never changes her expression. The crowd claps and stomps along with the beat.

  The song drops into the slow part with a sickening plunge, and John’s body shivers. The guitar and bass travel in crushing unison, and then the guitar drops out, leaving the bass and drums to carry the song into the verse.

  John’s head swivels back to the mic. He knows something bad, something terrible is coming, and he pushes forward, hammering against the mind of his captor, the thing that has taken his body.

  He catches the thing by surprise, takes control for just one second. Then he feels its heavy claws on him, pushing him back, and a crushing sense of doom collapses on him.

  “Oh, God, please no,” he says.

  ***

  Case played through the beginning of the song, watching Johnny carefully. There was music going on somewhere, loud music, but her fingers were moving automatically and her mind was focused on Johnny. She thought about the beer bottle that had come whirling out of the crowd at one of the shows, right past Johnny’s head, and how he’d never even flinched. She had one idea, a bad one, and probably just one chance to act on it.

  Don’t fuck this up.

  It probably wouldn’t matter—she was most likely fooling herself—but she had to do something. Even if it was wrong.

  Her hand tripped easily down the fretboard, guiding the song into the slow part.
She had never felt less moved by music in her life. Johnny looked at her, his face inscrutable. Her heart knocked in her chest.

  Johnny turned to the mic.

  Case dropped out of the song, just like she was supposed to. One hand went to the strap button at the bottom of the guitar.

  A small voice came through the monitors—John’s voice, quiet and terrified. “Oh, God, please no.”

  John, she thought. He’s in there, too. Like Danny.

  She pushed her thumb into the locking button, and it clicked. The strap came loose.

  Then Johnny started singing, and the world exploded. The sound was crushing, a vast, thunderously deep voice tearing a rent in the cosmos, tearing a rent in the very concept of sanity itself, spewing a stream of syllables so vile that blood started to trickle from Case’s ears. The crowd screamed, and this time there was terror in the screams.

  The lights in the whole room dimmed to nearly nothing, except for the blazing white spotlight on Johnny. Darkness swirled and twisted, pouring up through the floor and the back walls like columns of smoke.

  In the front row, the Fan Club howled with murderous glee and plunged into the crowd, tearing and rending. Blood spurted as far as the stage in a grisly shower.

  Case came to herself as Johnny’s voice swelled further. The strap was off her guitar, and she held the heavy Les Paul in her left hand.

  What was I doing with this?

  She looked over at Johnny as the awful sounds smashed the air around her. His eyes were closed, his mouth open wide, and both hands clutched the mic stand.

  Case remembered.

  She wrapped both hands around the neck of the guitar, holding it like a battle-axe or a ten-pound maul. Sorry, Kerry, she thought, and she charged across the stage.

  The beat stopped as Danny saw her and quit drumming, but there was no way for him to get to her in time. The Fan Club was busy now that the leash had been slipped, gorging itself on the warm flesh of the spectators, and they didn’t see her either.