I recognized her right off, Rikki Spectre of Rikki and the fucking Spectres.
Expletive mine, not the actual band name. The arty-fartsy half English, half Somali punker who wore too-goddamn- much eyeliner, with hair like a dying black bird, she had practically made an art form out of not smiling. Why was Rikki fucking Spectre terrifying to someone like me? Because Rikki fucking Spectre’s entire existence was just further proof that me and my band were relics. Our time was up. Sure, we’re still selling tickets, people were still buying LPs even with that goddamn American dwarf handling the singing chores, but we were no longer relevant. Punk killed that. Punk had killed metal. At least that’s how it appeared then. And Rikki was terrifying to me because her band actually could play. They wrote some good tunes, she had a voice, something to say with it. And worst of all, I could tell all this, that she was important and that she spoke for and to the youth, but I also realized that I could not relate to her and her music at all. I was out of the circle. I was an old, out of touch millionaire recreating and pantomiming his glory days on stage to arenas full of less successful, still aging burnouts doing the same.
I was aware then of how hilarious it was that someone who willingly calls himself Codger was complaining about feeling old all of a sudden. I was also aware that I was only thirty-five then in that hotel as I was feeling like a has-been, but we lived fast in Frivolous. Rock and roll in general, everything is accelerated but also elongated. Like how your childhood years felt like decades were crammed into them. That’s how it felt being in a band, making albums, touring. You live so much, learn so much, change so much, do so much in such little time. I think the common denominator in both childhood and rockstardom is relentless change, growth. The monotony of most people’s lives makes every day, every year, feel like one big endless drone. Time stretches on and on, with no distinction and therefore no form, no order. But with living on the road, like childhood, the years feel longer but they also go by quicker too. Before you know it, there’s some kid like Rikki fucking Spectre running around and turning corners, reminding you how much of a fucking ghost you’ve become.
So obviously I pretended I didn’t know who she was when I saw her. “What’s the rush? Are you being followed, miss?”
“Is that… whoa, shit it is… Rikki Spectre!”
This fucking kid.
“I don’t know if I’m being followed but who you calling ‘Miss’?” Chislehurst, southeast London, rich parents. Nearly as bad as a Yank.
“Look here, nothing was meant by it, now will you tell us why you’re running around this hotel?” I asked her, and halfway through I tried my best not to sound like her father reprimanding after a late night with no call.
“I’m running because I saw something weird and I thought the best course of action, seeing as I’m snowed in to this hotel, was to run the hell away from it.”
“What did you see, was it a ghost?” the kid asked.
“What, so the hotel is haunted then?” I asked.
He shrugged one shoulder. “I don’t know. It’s just, like, the first thing I thought of.”
“No, I didn’t see a ghost. I just saw something… it must have been… well, I don’t know what it was but it’s not a fucking ghost.”
I took another bite of chicken before I realized it and then remembered the other pair of footsteps, the heavier ones. They were still coming, only now much slower. They heard us, whoever it was could hear us, and they were slowing their approach. The low sound of them was coming from the other corner. We all seemed to hear it and went quiet. I looked to Rikki and she shook her head and held her hands up. I had a large bite of chicken in my mouth and what scared me the most was accidently choking on it when mister big boots came around the corner to say howdy. Things like that happen to me all the time; inopportune bodily processes. Like when you’re holding in a fart because someone else is telling you something important, like that they want a divorce. I managed to chew my chicken slowly, braced myself for whatever was around the bend. A man walked out, an ordinary man holding a flashlight. He was terrifically tall, barrel-chested with a wonderful round bulb of Afro on his head and a ridiculously thick winter coat on. His name was Marcus Wilkes and I kind of knew him. He was a Vietnam vet turned bodyguard, specializing in rock stars with drinking problems, sort of a responsible enabler. He used to babysit Jim Morrison until the Lizard King absconded to Paris and sent word that he wouldn’t require Marcus’ services anymore. He was dead five months later. Too bad John Lennon hadn’t had him on the payroll three days ago, eh? We wanted to hire him to take care of Sully a few years ago but Marcus was committed to his current gig, the glam vamp Frankie Gideon. And that was sure to be a full time engagement. Frankie was the only one I’d ever seen keep pace with Sully when it came to nostril coca-cola. “Marcus, what are you doing here?”
“Have any of you seen Frankie?” He looked worried; I’d never seen him even look annoyed before. Even with the lunatics he wrangled for a living. “I’m looking for him. I was on the phone with the road manager when the power went out and he was saying that Frankie didn’t leave with the rest of the band or crew when they got out.”
“Why didn’t you leave with everybody else in the first place?” My paranoia was getting the best of me, I was suspecting even rock star bodyguards.
“I stayed back to make sure he wasn’t here, after I couldn’t find him I gave the road manager a call,” Marcus said. He made it fairly obvious that he didn’t like being questioned.
“I haven’t seen you and I’ve been looking around the hotel for a while,” the kid said without malice or accusation. More like he was just stating a surprising fact.
“Maybe you didn’t see me, maybe I did see you… has anybody seen my client?”
“Um,” Rikki said. She had somehow found the time to light a cigarette. Not Cherry Valleys, by the by. “That’s kind of what I was running from.”
I swallowed my chicken. “What?”
Heathen’s Greetings
“I saw Frankie in a lift, he was going down,” Rikki said.
“That’s surprising then, isn’t it?” I said to no one in particular.
“Smartass,” Rikki said.
“I’m not trying to insult the man but how the hell could he take the lift when the power’s out then?”
“The power’s out?” she asked.
“Why the fuck do you think we’re in the dark?” I told her.
“I just woke up not more than fifteen, twenty minutes ago, I didn’t know, excuse me.”
“You guys sure do sleep through things,” the kid said.
“When did you see Frankie, just now?” Marcus asked.
“It was about ten minutes ago or so.”
“And that’s why you were running? That’s what got you screaming? Frankie in the lift?” I dropped my chicken bones on the floor. If it bothered the kid he didn’t let me know.
“I wasn’t the one screaming.” She said that and only that. Who the hell says something like that without following it up with the identity of the actual screamer? The pain in my head had shifted. Not left, just shifted. The dull pierce had given way to a sort of steady pressure. Right in the center of my skull. When I closed my eyes flashes of deep swamp blue and dark reptilian green washed over. And again, the image of black branches retreating back into the dark. I felt like my brain was submerged in tar, that it was filling, swishing this way and that just behind my eyes. I needed to sit down or else I was going to be sick again.
But instead I said, “Who was screaming then?”
“Frankie?” Marcus asked.
“…I don’t know.” The ember from her cigarette flashed orange. “He wasn’t alone.”
“What do you mean?” The kid entered the conversation.
“It’s going to sound stupid when you hear it.”
“That hasn’t stopped you yet.” I said it and immediately regretted it.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“This w
hole punker attitude you’re affecting with the ‘don’t call me “Miss”’ business and what all.”
“‘Affecting,’ he says? Listen here, you old dried up, bullshit macho, heavy metal fossil, that is if you can understand basic human language through the fog of your dope and booze cocoon—”
“‘Dried up’? What have you achieved? You’ve made one damn record so far.”
“Oh, so you’ve heard it then?”
“Yeah, I have. Not bad but you know what? It’s been almost two years since you put it out.”
“So?”
“So, back when I was your age Friv was putting out two a year. What’s the matter, dear, you and yours already run out of ideas?”
“Fuck you.”
“I was just talking a bit of shit just then, but now I think I might have actually hit the nerve. Maybe you’re the one who’s dried up?”
“Fucking wank—”
“Cut the shit,” Marcus said. “You were telling a story, you mind getting back to telling it?”
“Fine. I had woken up, realized the phone wasn’t working, didn’t jump to the conclusion that the power was out too, god forbid. Did however jump to the conclusion that the hotel had been evacuated because I heard rumblings about it being a possibility last night, and finally I figured out that my fucking band and our people had forgotten and left me behind despite being the band’s fucking namesake.” She flashed her cat eyes at me. “So, I was walking around the Alucinari, trying to make the most of it, maybe find something to eat…” I offered her a chicken wing. She looked down at it, then to me, and then went on with her story. “And then I see this, like, trickle of red light coming down from the ceiling, all around the outside of the lift’s doors. That’s weird, right?”
“What floor?” Marcus asked.
“The twelfth, my floor… and I saw this from across the hall and so I start walking towards it, to see what it is, see if maybe someone else was stuck in this dreadful place.”
“You didn’t notice that the halls were dark?” I asked.
“…I guess I did, that’s why I could see the light so well, but I didn’t really think about it at the time. I had just woken up, it was colder than a penguin’s prick, and I was a little hungover from the night before, excuse me…”
“Of all the half-soaked things…” I trailed off, took out my own smokes. Her story was getting thinner and thinner. Maybe the kid’s weed was just getting me paranoid. But I looked at Marcus and he didn’t seem too impressed with her tale either.
“Then the door opens…” She pressed on with it anyhow. “And it’s… Frankie. And my first thought was, ‘oh fuck me, that’s Frankie Gideon, he’s fabulous.’ I start walking closer and I even shout something in case he doesn’t see me but then I notice two things: The first is that Frankie doesn’t look well. At first I thought maybe this is just what he looks like without makeup but then I could see it was something else. His skin looked almost green and he had this expression… The second thing was that he wasn’t alone. Standing behind him was this… person. With his hand on Frankie’s left shoulder.”
“You didn’t recognize him?” Marcus asked.
“I couldn’t see his face.”
“Was it all blurry and indistinct?” the kid offered. “A lot of ghost sightings are like that.”
“No, and it wasn’t a fucking ghost. The man, this figure… I couldn’t see his face because he was too tall. He was so tall that from the outside of the elevator I could only see up to the bottom of the breast of his suit jacket. And that was at least a yard above the top of Frankie’s head.”
“That can’t be right,” I said. “How could this giant bloke even fit in the lift then? If he was that tall he would have to hunch in order to not stick his head out the roof of it.”
“He stood perfectly upright from what I saw, and he wasn’t just tall, he was wide too. Dark suit, his fingers looked pale, gigantic on Frankie’s wee shoulder. He made Frankie look like a doll or a child in comparison.”
“Did he look scared? Did Frankie say anything to you?” Marcus leaned in close to her, probably trying to figure out if she was telling the truth.
“I don’t know how to say this without sounding terribly overdramatic, but I got closer to the lift and when I looked at Frankie’s eyes he looked like somebody that was past fear. He looked like someone who knew he was going to die and there was nothing to be done about it.”
“How do you know what that looks like?” the kid asked.
“Never you mind how I know but I know. I’ve seen it before.” She didn’t even sound angry at the lad for asking, more like she was tired of having to explain it and things like it. I knew the look she was talking about. I saw it in my mother’s face when the cancer took her slowly when I was a boy. Saw the look reflected in my father’s eyes as he watched her leaving. I believed Rikki, at least that part of her story. You don’t have to be old to know death. “When I saw that look I stopped walking toward them. And then I saw that Frankie could see me, and then I swear I saw that big hand, that impossibly big hand, press down slightly on his shoulder, it was quick but I know I saw that, and then Frankie opened his mouth and this sound comes out. It wasn’t a person’s voice at all. It was loud, so fucking loud I had to put my hands over my ears. So I got away, started walking backwards down the hall. I was afraid to turn around and run just then. I didn’t want to take my eyes off them. Then the noise stopped and Frankie shut his mouth and he grinned. And then the doors slammed shut and the red light came back around the lift.”
“You said before that Frankie was going down,” I said.
“I took the stairs down to the next floor but when I got there I hear the little ding and see that the bloody lift is there. It opens up and there’s Frankie grinning with that massive hand on his shoulder and he’s looking at me. So I take the stairs and make it down to the next floor, and I hear ding and there he is again.”
“How many times did this go on for?” I asked.
“Enough that I stopped trying different floors and just went down the stairs straight to the lobby.”
“And then you started running and that’s when you found us?” the kid asked.
She nodded.
I had no idea what to make of this. Luckily Marcus did. His head tilted to the side, slightly at first. He looked at me, then the kid, and then Rikki. Finally he flashed his teeth and let out a belly laugh. “That’s funny.” He pointed at her face. “That is something else all right.”
She didn’t much care for it. “Well, I’m glad you think so because it wasn’t fucking funny while it was happening, I can tell you that.”
“It never happened.” Marcus stopped laughing immediately. “I don’t really care what any of you do here, whether you believe her foolishness or not, but I need to find my client and make sure I still have a job, so if you don’t mind I’ll be moving on now.” He started walking past her and going towards the hall me and the kid came from that led out of the kitchen.
“I’m not lying,” she said.
“Oh, I believe that you don’t think that you’re lying,” Marcus turned back to say.
“And what’s that mean?”
“He means you’re probably high, love,” I told her.
“You’d be the expert on that now wouldn’t you, Mister Frivolous Black-out.”
“Surely, you can do better than that,” I told her.
“You’re a lyricist for Christ’s sake.”
“It’s no big thing, hell, I’m a little high right now too,” Marcus said. “Finished a roach before I set to start searching for Frankie’s ass. I’m not sure what you’re on but we’ve all been there, seen some shit. Sometimes your substances can get the better of you. It’s the peril of your profession. Back when I was working for The Doors I had to talk Jimbo down off a ledge more than once. And that’s not a metaphor either. Fucking lizard boy decided he was Mister Mojo highrisin’ every now and again; and no, he wasn’t trying to kill himself, he just was s
ick of his old lady giving him grief for getting his rocks off with whatever women he had tucked away in his various Hollywood bungalows.”
The kid nodded. “You can’t let your anus give your grief.”
“What?”
“Sorry, ah-nus.”
Marcus tilted his head and gave the kid a hard stare. “…Yeah, you better be honest.”
I made no attempt to clear up any of this confusion, it was far too lovely to trifle with.
“How did Morrison get his hair to do the lion’s mane thing?” The kid was a fountain that could not stop giving.
“I was not and am not fucking high right now,” Rikki told him. “I may have had a bump, like, last night but I’m totally lucid right now, thank you very much. And yes, I know what I saw makes very little sense and there may be some rational explanation for it, but that explanation is not that I was hallucinating.”
“What do you think, Codger?” the kid asked.
I wanted to tell him that I never in particular cared for The Doors. That it was organ music, cabaret singing. I liked the blues shit, you know? But my head shifted again and now I didn’t feel sick anymore, just out of it. Tired and impossibly worn down like I could sleep for a day. Everyone’s voice seemed distant all of a sudden. It felt like when I was a boy and I’d have my head in the grass and I could hear the other children’s voices and their steps muffled through the ground. It felt like their voices were coming up from the dirt. The tiny voices of children calling out to me from deep beneath the earth.
“Son,” Marcus started. “Just comb your hair before you shower, wrap it up tight in a towel when you’re done, and then let it fall as it will, you’ll be breaking on through in no time. Everyone else, this has been fun but now I gotta find my meal ticket and figure out how long we’re gonna have to sit and wait ’til they clear the roads out there.” He gave me a strange look that could be a cousin to pity and I figured I must have looked half as out of it as I felt. But then we heard the ding of the lift and he stopped moving. Impossible, the power was out. But the sound was coming from around the corner where Marcus had come from. Rikki shot me a look. “Well, guess that’s Frankie and his giant monster then, right?” Marcus said.
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