by Marcus James
She hated lying to her cousin, but she knew she had to. She had made a promise. One she had kept her whole life thus far, and she couldn’t betray that now.
“Just a house ghost?”
Kathryn nodded. “I swear. Nothing special.”
“It just always seems like secrets with you Kathryn...”
“I know, and I’m sorry. I should have told you about the Slasher, but you were just finishing junior high and I was trying to look out for you. I didn’t want to freak you out. That’s all it was, and as time passed, with college and course loads, I just forgot about it.”
“All right...” Magdalene acquiesced. “So, it’s my first night in town, what are we going to do?”
Kathryn smiled wide and with relief that the subject had been dropped. “What aren’t we going to do?”
IV
They had spent a couple of hours at the Bar Marmont, surrounded by dark woods, and a hodgepodge of antique furniture that was mismatched, but somehow worked, as with everything else in the hotel. The bar was dimly lit with tiny lamps on tables and a bath of red from the hanging lamps above the bar top which were sheathed in gaudy shades with decorative fringe.
Kathryn was dressed in the usual tight black knee-length dress, an off-the shoulder number this time, with needle thin patent leather heels, and her hair swept to the left and was once again pumped with Aqua Net. The stack of diamond bracelets shimmered every time she picked up her martini glass to take a drink of the bar’s signature Jerry Thomas Manhattan.
In contrast, Magdalene wore a flowy spaghetti strap silk and lace dress which reached her knees and seemed to echo the shape of flower petals, a pair of Russian blue suede knee high stiletto boots, and around her neck were a series of necklaces, one of which was a sharp fang made of garnet.
Kathryn had made a reservation at Spago for dinner at nine, and though a table would have otherwise been impossible, the second Kathryn mentioned she was a Blackmoore of the Blackmoores, a table of her choosing opened up for her immediately.
When they arrived to the two story white Spanish style home-turned-restaurant with name lit up in pale electric pink and terra-cotta roof, they were led immediately to a table towards the back, with windows that looked out directly onto Sunset, and more importantly, Tower Records and the dumpsters beneath them.
“I had a feeling you had something else up your sleeve.” Magdalene said to her after they had requested a bottle of Bordeaux from their server, a spindly effeminate man of about thirty seven with thin light brown hair that was parted to the right, a long beak of a nose, and an infectious smile with sparkling pale blue eyes.
All of the servers were dressed in pressed white pants and shirts, with a pink bowtie, which blended in with the pale pink and white of the walls. There was an exhibition kitchen-one of the firsts for its time when it opened at the beginning of the eighties.
There was an airiness to the restaurant, and all of the crisp white linen topped tables and white chairs were close together in a place lit with brass art-deco style scones that were directed towards the ceiling, and by the candles lit at every table.
There was nothing to take away from the contemporary art on the walls, or the blond woods of the exposed beams on the ceiling, and everywhere they turned, there were celebrities, rock stars, and other Hollywood types wining and dining.
“Of course... but it’s not just that. I’ve always wanted to try this place, and I thought it would be nice to come here with you.”
The server returned with their wine and Kathryn and Magdalene both ordered a salad to start-more so that they could dismiss their server and get back to talking about the situation at hand.
“Hey, I’m not complaining. We get to go to the hottest restaurant in LA and scope out the crime scene... it’s kind of a win-win.”
Magdalene smiled and Kathryn returned it, shaking her head and rolling her eyes. They both looked out onto the parking lot of Tower Records, and just as Richie had predicted, the record store with its iconic bright yellow façade with bold red block lettering was bright and crowded, with an endless stream of young people moving in and out of the music store, paying no mind to the police tape and the two officers that were parked outside and keeping their eyes on the dumpsters.
“Are you picking up anything?” Kathryn asked her cousin.
“Just an overwhelming sense of terror. What about you?”
Kathryn sighed. “I think we need to get closer to it. Actually go down there after dinner. I am definitely sensing a lot of fear... and pain, but nothing concrete.”
They finished their salads and put in an order for a smoked salmon and caviar pizza, and returned to scoping out the parking lot of Tower Records.
Kathryn focused, watching the bodies move in and out, and the endless parade of cars and motorcycles with their white headlights and red taillights moving through the growing dark like fairies in the forest.
She tried to push through the glass with her mind, to extend the reach of her power, to move through the air and connect with those black metal dumpsters and link with whatever residual energy-whatever psychic imprint that was still lingering, but there was too much distance and too much activity for her to make that sort of bond.
“Do you miss Sheffield?”
The question felt like a hard blow to the side of her face. It was a forceful punch that if physical, would have knocked out several teeth. Kathryn looked at her cousin and was searching for some sort of reason why she would have brought him up.
“Sure, let’s just get right into it.” Kathryn shook her head and threw back the rest of her wine, not bothering to wait on their server to refill her glass.
“I’m sorry. Not exactly the smoothest transition. I’ve just worried about you Kathryn, that’s all.”
“Do I miss him?” Kathryn sighed. “Yeah, I do. Every day. I think about him every time I have a thought to myself. I think about him when I don’t want to think about him. Every time I find another man attractive I think about him, and I feel like I am betraying him.”
Kathryn didn’t want to go there. She had wanted to have a fun night. She had wanted to enjoy their dinner, try to get an impression from the dump site, and then get on with their night. She wanted to have a good time, party, listen to bands on the Strip, get drunk, and shop in the morning after a late breakfast.
What she didn’t want to do was talk about Sheffield Burges. “He made his choice though, and I have to learn to let him go... after eight years, it’s still not going well.”
Magdalene nodded. “Do you want him back?”
Kathryn’s gaze was stoic. “I don’t even think that is a possibility and I don’t think we should talk about him right now. It’s your first night in town. Let’s just finish dinner and get on with our night.”
Magdalene seemed to want to say more, but gave a defeated ‘okay’ instead.
They finished their dinner and polished off the bottle. Quickly paying their check and made their way back out into the warm California night.
The Strip was lit up in neon and was filled with the sounds of honking horns and swarms of young people laughing and men catcalling from rolled down car windows as the two women made their way down to the parking lot of Tower Records.
It was close to midnight and the record store seemed to only double in traffic. It looked like a party inside, and the sound of rambunctious rock music filled the night sky every time the glass and steel doors would swing open.
Kathryn pointed to the cop car and Magdalene nodded, walking up to the window and giving it a knock. The officer rolled it down and looked at Magdalene.
“Can I help you?”
“You guys look like you could use a meal... get out of here.” They stared at her for just a moment before nodding. They rolled up their windows, turned on the engine and pulled out of the lot, making their way down the Strip.
“Good job.” Kathryn said with a smile.
“Piece of cake!” Magdalene responded with a rub of her
hands as if she were wiping off dust.
“Let’s get to work.” They walked over to the dumpsters, lifting the yellow tape and slipping under. Together, hands linked, Kathryn and Magdalene walked over and placed their other hands on the metal, closing their eyes and allowing that power to come forward.
“Manny Esteban come forth...” they repeated, feeling their witchcraft surge inside of them. It flowed like waves of warm tingling swirls, passing through their bodies and out of their hands and flowing into the black metal of the large dumpster.
They were first met with the sound of trash moving around, followed with a choking-as if gurgling on water-and they opened their eyes just in time to see the white marble and lacerated hands spring fourth from the debris, gripping the edge of the metal and smelling putrid from internal rot.
The apparition of Manny Esteban emerged with bits of trash clinging to him as he pulled himself up and out of the dumpster.
There was a large hole in the middle of his black hair from where he had been scalped, and his onyx eyes stared wide and blank, blood spilled black out of his mouth, and as they stepped back, allowing him to climb out of the trash, they saw the exposed cavity of his chest where his heart had been removed.
‘Urgh...’ he managed when looking at Kathryn, raising one white, boney finger at her with recognition.
“I tried to help you... I tried to save you...” she said to him. The sight of him broke her heart, and it was all she could do to keep herself from crying.
‘Death...’ the ghost responded.
“What happened? What was it that took you?” Magdalene asked.
The ghost that in life had been Manny Esteban directed his decaying head and his outstretched hand to the clear night sky.
‘Food... for...them...’
Before they could ask more, the spirit shot his arms out and took hold of their wrists, and they were assaulted with visions of creatures with lean male bodies, golden olive skin, with hands that were like the talons of birds, and head’s not unlike eagles with giant feathered wings as black as the night itself, protruding from their backs and their voices screeching in the night.
Another flash of Manny pressed in the dusty ground flat on his stomach while they raped him. His cries were agony as they violated him. Kathryn and Magdalene could feel the fire of them inside of him, tearing him open.
Manny tried to breathe while his mouth filled with blood, and finally, they watched through the visions as the creatures took Manny’s head and slammed it repeatedly into the ground.
They felt and witnessed everything, even after his death.
They observed in helpless horror as these three creatures split his skull and scooped out his brain, which they removed in chunks and devoured like baby birds swallowing food regurgitated by their parents.
Lastly, they witnessed through the eyes of his confused and detached spirit as one of these creatures took one of those talon fingers and shoved it deep into his chest and ripped it open, grasping his still-beating heart and tearing it from his corpse and passing it between them; their razor sharp beaks ripping into the bloody muscle and tearing sinewy tissue.
The visions ended and the tears were streaming down their faces. The spirit of Manny Esteban was gone, and once again all that was before them was the dumpster, and behind them the numerous indiscernible voices of the night greeting them once again into the land of the living.
“That poor guy...” Magdalene said.
“What were those things-those monsters?”
“They were like something out of a mythology book, like things you would find carved into the walls of ancient temples.”
“Cruel and indifferent... dark things...” Kathryn hesitated before finishing, discerning one other feeling, something that surprised her and made her recall that dream from the night before. “Yet, I felt connected to them... something the witch in me responded to... that it found familiar.”
Magdalene had felt it too. As terrifying as they were, there was something about them that drew her in, something that felt ancestral; something that was totemic and innate.
“A source.” She added.
Kathryn nodded. “Yes, and I have no idea what to think about it. I haven’t the slightest idea how to understand it.”
“And yet, there it is.”
“Exactly.”
The deeper they got, the more that they were confronted with riddles. What had this to do with Kathryn? Why were these things coming for her? And where were they? Why hadn’t these things-these winged demons come for her directly? What were they waiting for?
Kathryn wished that she could seek them out, that she could go to wherever these things dwelt, if they were even a part of this realm, and face them head on. To challenge these beasts of the night and send them back to hell.
“If only it were that easy.”
Kathryn looked at her cousin, who stared straight ahead, completely unaware that she had read her thoughts.
“We’re meeting up with Angelina at one,” Kathryn stated, completely ending the conversation. “Let’s stop staring at a dumpster.”
Magdalene looked at her cousin gobsmacked. There was so much more to talk about-so much to try to figure out, and yet she was just pushing it away as if she no longer wanted to deal with it.
She knew better than to argue with Kathryn, but no longer talking about it wasn’t going to make it stop from coming.
“Kathryn.”
She raised her hand in protest. “C’mon, it stinks.”
Magdalene stood there for just a moment, watching as Kathryn turned and began to make her way to the front door of Tower Records, her mind swimming and her strides seemed almost heavy with the weight of all of these questions.
V
They had spent the next forty minutes at Tower Records, which was like a club in its own right. Employees passed around red Solo cups filled with liquor-presumably from the shop across the street-to any interested customers, and blasted up-and-coming Sunset Strip bands from the speakers while a Nina Hartley porno played on the television sets.
It was a rebellious free-for-all without a manager in sight, and though they were gracious with the Solo cups, when it came to actual paying customers, they were ignored.
They were both unprepared for the bottom shelf vodka that tasted like lighter fluid as it burned down their throats and they had politely declined neon flyer after neon flyer from boys and girls in bands, playing at this bar or that, and when they finally left to meet up with Angelina at the Rainbow, both women tossed the flyers in the trash can right outside of the door.
The police had returned to the spot where they had been staked out before, eating burgers with McDonalds’ wrappers and sipping soda through straws, and they gave no acknowledgement as Kathryn and Magdalene had walked past, returning back to Spago to retrieve their car from the valet.
It was a quarter to one by the time they had walked into the Rainbow Bar and Grill, the place already packed with people smoking, drinking, and speaking loudly in the dining room, awash in red light and shadows.
They found Angelina towards the back, just sitting down plates of food to a table of guys in tight denim and long hair, a couple of them with bandanas knotted loosely around their necks. Angelina looked hot in her black mini skirt, tight black halter top, and lace gloves with the fingers cut off.
That mane of thick black hair was teased and sprayed into place as usual, and despite being on her feet and running around from table to table, she seemed to move in her heels with ease.
She smiled when she spotted them, and walked over to them quickly, tucking her tray under her left arm.
“Hey,” she said to Kathryn with a smile.
“Hey back,” they kissed each other affectionately on the cheeks, and Kathryn turned her attention to her cousin. “This is Magdalene.”
“The cousin!” Angelina said. Magdalene nodded. “Hola, so great to meet you!” She said to her. Magdalene wasn’t used to this instant warmth. Usually
everyone she met was so guarded. Perhaps it was a Washington thing, or maybe just a Bellingham thing, but it seemed everyone was always so cautious when meeting another person for the first time.
Perhaps it was the constant sunshine, or the Hollywood coolness, but there was something to the mystique and glamor of Los Angeles that seemed to hold true and it made everyone so much more outgoing-so much more open to meeting complete strangers.
“You too,” Magdalene offered her an equally warm smile.
“Let me just count out my till, and we’ll be good to go! There are a couple of regulars whose band’s playing at the Whiskey tonight!”
The girls nodded, and Angelina told them to go wait by the bar and get themselves a couple of shots on her.
It had taken close to ten minutes, and while they waited, Kathryn and Magdalene met each other shot for shot of Jack Daniels, and when Angelina reappeared, purse in hand, the three girls did one more shot, before going out into the Hollywood night.
They made their way down the two blocks to Sunset Boulevard and North Clark Street, where on the corner sat the Whiskey-a-Go-Go, a three story building painted in hard-to-miss red, and accented with black trim on the crown of the venue and black awnings above the narrow windows on the top floors.
There were posters of future shows posted all over the outside walls, and the street was crowded with people trying to get in. Kathryn tried to see who it was who was playing, but the side of the street that the marquee faced was completely overtaken by drunk metal fans, many eager to get inside, and others just enjoying the party that seemed to be taking place on the sidewalk.
“So, who’s playing?” Magdalene asked Angelina, as the three of them pushed their way to the front of the line.
“I know these guys-a couple of regulars as I said-they are in a band called Night Hunter.”
“Night Hunter?” Kathryn asked. She was trying to be polite, but it was hard to suppress the smile at the sound of their name.