Down These Strange Streets

by George R. R. Martin; Gardner Dozois

  “Here’s the thing,” I said. “I’ll do it, but you got to give me a photograph of Tootie, if you got one, and the record so you don’t play it no more.”

  She studied me a moment. “I hate that thing,” she said, nodding at the record in my hands, “but somehow I feel attached to it. Like getting rid of it is getting rid of a piece of me.”

  “That’s the deal.”

  “All right,” she said, “take it, but take it now.”

  MOTORING ALONG BY MYSELF IN THE CHEVY, THE MOON HIGH AND BRIGHT, all I could think of was that music, or whatever that sound was. It was stuck in my head like an ax. I had the record on the seat beside me, had Tootie’s note and envelope, the photograph Alma May had given me.

  Part of me wanted to drive back to Alma May and tell her no, and never mind. Here’s the record back. But another part of me, the dumb part, wanted to know where and how and why that record had been made. Curiosity, it just about gets us all.

  Where I live is a rickety third-floor walk-up. It’s got the stairs on the outside, and they stop at each landing. I lived at the very top.

  I tried not to rest my hand too heavy on the rail as I climbed, because it was about to come off. I unlocked my door and turned on the light and watched the roaches run for cover.

  I put the record down, got a cold one out of the icebox. Well, actually it was a plug-in. A refrigerator. But I’d grown up with iceboxes, so calling it that was hard to break. I picked up the record again and took a seat.

  Sitting in my old armchair with the stuffing leaking out like a busted cotton sack, holding the record again, looking at the dirty brown sleeve, I noticed the grooves were dark and scabby looking, like something had gotten poured in there and had dried tight. I tried to determine if that had something to do with that crazy sound. Could something in the grooves make that kind of noise? Didn’t seem likely.

  I thought about putting the record on, listening to it again, but I couldn’t stomach the thought. The fact that I held it in my hand made me uncomfortable. It was like holding a bomb about to go off.

  I had thought of it like a snake once. Alma May had thought of it like a hit-and-run car driven by the devil. And now I had thought of it like a bomb. That was some kind of feeling coming from a grooved-up circle of wax.

  EARLY NEXT MORNING, WITH THE .45 IN THE GLOVE BOX, A RAZOR IN MY coat pocket, and the record up front on the seat beside me, I tooled out toward Dallas, and the Hotel Champion.

  I got into Big D around noon, stopped at a café on the outskirts where there was colored, and went in where a big fat mama with a pretty face and a body that smelled real good made me a hamburger and sat and flirted with me all the while I ate it. That’s all right. I like women, and I like them to flirt. They quit doing that, I might as well lay down and die.

  While we was flirting, I asked her about the Hotel Champion, if she knew where it was. I had the street number, of course, but I needed tighter directions.

  “Oh, yeah, honey, I know where it is, and you don’t want to stay there. It’s deep in the colored section, and not the good part, that’s what I’m trying to tell you, and it don’t matter you brown as a walnut yourself. There’s folks down there will cut you and put your blood in a paper cup and mix it with whiskey and drink it. You too good-looking to get all cut up and such. There’s better places to stay on the far other side.”

  I let her give me a few hotel names, like I might actually stay at one or the other, but I got the address for the Champion, paid up, giving her a good tip, and left out of there.

  The part of town where the Hotel Champion was, was just as nasty as the lady had said. There were people hanging around on the streets, and leaning into corners, and there was trash everywhere. It wasn’t exactly a place that fostered a lot of pride.

  I found the Hotel Champion and parked out front. There was a couple fellas on the street eyeing my car. One was skinny. One was big. They were dressed up with nice hats and shoes, just like they had jobs. But if they did, they wouldn’t have been standing around in the middle of the day eyeing my Chevy.

  I pulled the .45 out of the glove box and stuck it in my pants, at the small of my back. My coat would cover it just right.

  I got out and gave the hotel the gander. It was nice looking if you were blind in one eye and couldn’t see out the other.

  There wasn’t any doorman, and the door was hanging on a hinge. Inside I saw a dusty stairway to my left, a scarred door to my right.

  There was a desk in front of me. It had a glass hooked to it that went to the ceiling. There was a little hole in it low down on the counter that had a wooden stop behind it. There were flyspecks on the glass, and there was a man behind the glass, perched on a stool, like a frog on a lily pad. He was fat and colored and his hair had blue blanket wool in it. I didn’t take it for decoration. He was just a nasty son of a bitch.

  I could smell him when he moved the wooden stop. A stink like armpits and nasty underwear and rotting teeth. I could smell old cooking smells floating in from somewhere in back: boiled pigs’ feet and pigs’ tails that might have been good about the time the pig lost them, but now all that was left was a rancid stink. There was also a reek like cat piss.

  I said, “Hey, man, I’m looking for somebody.”

  “You want a woman, you got to bring your own,” the man said. “But I can give you a number or two. Course, I ain’t guaranteeing anything about them being clean.”

  “Naw. I’m looking for somebody was staying here. His name is Tootie Johnson.”

  “I don’t know no Tootie Johnson.”

  That was the same story Alma May had got.

  “Well, all right, you know this fella?” I pulled out the photograph and pressed it against the glass.

  “Well, he might look like someone got a room here. We don’t sign in and we don’t exchange names much.”

  “No? A class place like this.”

  “I said he might look like someone I seen,” he said. “I didn’t say he definitely did.”

  “You fishing for money?”

  “Fishing ain’t very certain,” he said.

  I sighed and put the photograph back inside my coat and got out my wallet and took out a five-dollar bill.

  Frog Man saw himself as some kind of greasy high roller. “That’s it? Five dollars for prime information?”

  I made a slow and careful show of putting my five back in my wallet. “Then you don’t get nothing,” I said.

  He leaned back on his stool and put his stubby fingers together and let them lay on his round belly. “And you don’t get nothing neither, jackass.”

  I went to the door on my right and turned the knob. Locked. I stepped back and kicked it so hard I felt the jar all the way to the top of my head. The door flew back on its hinges, slammed into the wall. It sounded like someone firing a shot.

  I went on through and behind the desk, grabbed Frog Man by the shirt, and slapped him hard enough he fell off the stool. I kicked him in the leg and he yelled. I picked up the stool and hit him with it across the chest, then threw the stool through a doorway that led into a kitchen. I heard something break in there and a cat made a screeching sound.

  “I get mad easy,” I said.

  “Hell, I see that,” he said, and held up a hand for protection. “Take it easy, man. You done hurt me.”

  “That was the plan.”

  The look in his eyes made me feel sorry for him. I also felt like an asshole. But that wouldn’t keep me from hitting him again if he didn’t answer my question. When I get perturbed, I’m not reasonable.

  “Where is he?”

  “Do I still get the five dollars?”

  “No,” I said, “now you get my best wishes. You want to lose that?”

  “No. No, I don’t.”

  “Then don’t play me. Where is he, you toad?”

  “He’s up in room fifty-two, on the fifth floor.”

  “Spare key?”

  He nodded at a rack of them. The keys were on na
ils and they all had little wooden pegs on the rings with the keys. Numbers were painted on the pegs. I found one that said 52, took it off the rack.

  I said, “You better not be messing with me.”

  “I ain’t. He’s up there. He don’t never come down. He’s been up there a week. He makes noise up there. I don’t like it. I run a respectable place.”

  “Yeah, it’s really nice here. And you better not be jerking me.”

  “I ain’t. I promise.”

  “Good. And, let me give you a tip. Take a bath. And get that shit out of your hair. And those teeth you got ain’t looking too good. Pull them. And shoot that fucking cat, or at least get him some place better than the kitchen to piss. It stinks like a toilet in there.”

  I walked out from behind the desk, out in the hall, and up the flight of stairs in a hurry.

  I RUSHED ALONG THE HALLWAY ON THE FIFTH FLOOR. IT WAS COVERED IN white linoleum with a gold pattern in it; it creaked and cracked as I walked along. The end of the hall had a window, and there was a stairwell on that end too. Room 52 was right across from it.

  I heard movement on the far end of the stairs. I had an idea what that was all about. About that time, two of the boys I’d seen on the street showed themselves at the top of the stairs, all decked out in their nice hats and such, grinning.

  One of them was about the size of a Cadillac, with a gold tooth that shone bright when he smiled. The guy behind him was skinny with his hand in his pocket.

  I said, “Well, if it isn’t the pimp squad.”

  “You funny, nigger,” said the big man.

  “Yeah, well, catch the act now. I’m going to be moving to a new locale.”

  “You bet you are,” said the big man.

  “Fat-ass behind the glass down there, he ain’t paying you enough to mess with me,” I said.

  “Sometimes, cause we’re bored, we just like messin’.”

  “Say you do?”

  “Uh-huh,” said the skinny one.

  It was then I seen the skinny guy pull a razor out of his pocket. I had one too, but razor work, it’s nasty. He kept it closed.

  Big guy with the gold tooth flexed his fingers and made a fist. That made me figure he didn’t have a gun or a razor; or maybe he just liked hitting people. I know I did.

  They come along toward me then, and the skinny one with the razor flicked it open. I pulled the .45 out from under my coat, said, “You ought to put that back in your pocket,” I said, “save it for shaving.”

  “Oh, I’m fixing to do some shaving right now,” he said.

  I pointed the .45 at him.

  The big man said, “That’s one gun for two men.”

  “It is,” I said, “but I’m real quick with it. And frankly, I know one of you is gonna end up dead. I just ain’t sure which one right yet.”

  “All right then,” said the big man, smiling. “That’ll be enough.” He looked back at the skinny man with the razor. The skinny man put the razor back in his coat pocket and they turned and started down the stairs.

  I went over and stood by the stairway and listened. I could hear them walking down, but then all of a sudden, they stopped on the stairs. That was the way I had it figured.

  Then I could hear the morons rushing back up. They weren’t near as sneaky as they thought they was. The big one was first out of the chute, so to speak; come rushing out of the stairwell and onto the landing. I brought the butt of the .45 down on the back of his head, right where the skull slopes down. He did a kind of frog hop and bounced across the hall and hit his head on the wall, and went down and laid there like his intent all along had been a quick leap and a nap.

  Then the other one was there, and he had the razor. He flicked it, and then he saw the .45 in my hand.

  “Where did you think this gun was gonna go?” I said. “On vacation?”

  I kicked him in the groin hard enough he dropped the razor and went to his knees. I put the .45 back where I got it. I said, “You want some, man?”

  He got up and come at me. I hit him with a right and knocked him clean through the window behind him. Glass sprinkled all over the hallway.

  I went over and looked out. He was lying on the fire escape, his head against the railing. He looked right at me.

  “You crazy, cocksucker. What if there hadn’t been no fire escape?”

  “You’d have your ass punched into the bricks. Still might.”

  He got up quick and clamored down the fire escape like a squirrel. I watched him till he got to the ground and went limping away down the alley between some overturned trash cans and a slinking dog.

  I picked up his razor and put it in my pocket with the one I already had, then walked over and kicked the big man in the head just because I could.

  I KNOCKED ON THE DOOR. NO ONE ANSWERED. I COULD HEAR SOUNDS FROM inside. It was similar to what I had heard on that record, but not quite, and it was faint, as if coming from a distance.

  No one answered my knock, so I stuck the key in the door and opened it and went straight away inside.

  I almost lost my breath when I did.

  The air in the room was thick and it stunk of mildew and rot and things long dead. It made those boiled pigs’ feet and that pissing cat and that rottentooth bastard downstairs smell like perfume.

  Tootie was lying on the bed, on his back. His eyes were closed. He was a guy usually dressed to the top, baby, but his shirt was wrinkled and dirty and sweaty at the neck and armpits. His pants were nasty too. He had on his shoes, but no socks. He looked like someone had set him on fire and then beat out the flames with a two-by-four. His face was like a skull, he had lost so much flesh, and he was as bony under his clothes as a skeleton.

  Where his hands lay on the sheet, there were bloodstains. His guitar was next to the bed, and there were stacks and stacks of composition notebooks lying on the floor. A couple of them were open and filled with writing. Hell, I didn’t even know Tootie could write.

  The wall on the far side was marked up in black and red paint; there were all manner of musical notes drawn on it, along with symbols I had never seen before; swiggles and circles and stick figure drawings. Blood was on the wall too, most likely from Tootie’s bleeding fingers. Two open paint cans, the red and the black, were on the floor with brushes stuck up in them. Paint was splattered on the floor and had dried in humped-up blisters. The guitar had bloodstains all over it.

  A record player, plugged in, sitting on a nightstand by the bed, was playing that strange music. I went to it right away and picked up the needle and set it aside. And let me tell you, just making my way across the room to get hold of the player was like wading through mud with my ankles tied together. It seemed to me as I got closer to the record, the louder it got, and the more ill I felt. My head throbbed. My heart pounded.

  When I had the needle up and the music off, I went over and touched Tootie. He didn’t move, but I could see his chest rising and falling. Except for his hands, he didn’t seem hurt. He was in a deep sleep. I picked up his right hand and turned it over and looked at it. The fingers were cut deep, like someone had taken a razor to the tips. Right off, I figured that was from playing his guitar. Struck me, that to get the sounds he got out of it, he really had to dig in with those fingers. And from the looks of this room, he had been at it nonstop, until recent.

  I shook him. His eyes fluttered and finally opened. They were bloodshot and had dark circles around them.

  When he saw me, he startled, and his eyes rolled around in his head like those little games kids get where you try to shake the marbles into holes. After a moment, they got straight, and he said, “Ricky?”

  That was another reason I hated him. I didn’t like being called Ricky.

  I said, “Hello, shithead. Your sister’s worried sick.”

  “The music,” he said. “Put the music back on.”

  “You call that music?” I said.

  He took a deep breath, then rolled out of the bed, nearly knocking me aside. Then I saw him
jerk, like he’d seen a truck coming right at him. I turned. I wished it had been a truck.

  LET ME TRY AND TELL YOU WHAT I SAW. I NOT ONLY SAW IT, I FELT IT. IT WAS in the very air we were breathing, getting inside my chest like mice wearing barbed-wire coats. The wall Tootie had painted and drawn all that crap on shook.

  And then the wall wasn’t a wall at all. It was a long hallway, dark as original sin. There was something moving in there, something that slithered and slid and made smacking sounds like an anxious old drunk about to take his next drink. Stars popped up, greasy stars that didn’t remind me of anything I had ever seen in the night sky; a moon the color of a bleeding fish eye was in the background, and it cast a light on something moving toward us.

  “Jesus Christ,” I said.

  “No,” Tootie said. “It’s not him.”

  Tootie jumped to the record player, picked up the needle, and put it on. There came that rotten sound I had heard with Alma May, and I knew that what I had heard when I first came into the room was the tail end of that same record playing, the part I hadn’t heard before.

  The music screeched and howled. I bent over and threw up. I fell back against the bed, tried to get up, but my legs were like old pipe cleaners. That record had taken the juice out of me. And then I saw it.

  There’s no description that really fits. It was . . . a thing. All blanketwrapped in shadow with sucker mouths and thrashing tentacles and centipede legs mounted on clicking hooves. A bulblike head plastered all over with red and yellow eyes that seemed to creep. All around it, shadows swirled like water. It had a beak. Well, beaks.

  The thing was coming right out of the wall. Tentacles thrashed toward me. One touched me across the cheek. It was like being scalded with hot grease. A shadow come loose of the thing, fell onto the floorboards of the room, turned red, and raced across the floor like a gush of blood. Insects and maggots squirmed in the bleeding shadow, and the record hit a high spot so loud and so goddamn strange, I ground my teeth, felt as if my insides were being twisted up like wet wash. And then I passed out.