“But when I come back from mailing, I brought me some paint and brushes, thought I’d write the notes and such on the wall. I did that, and I was ready to pack and go roaming some more, showing off my new skills, and all of a sudden, the thing, it’s pushing through. It had gotten stronger’cause I hadn’t been playing the sounds, man. I put on the record, and I pretty much been at it ever since.
“It was all that record fella’s game, you see. I got to figuring he was the devil, or something like him. He had me playing a game to keep that thing out, and to keep my soul. But it was a three-minute game, six if I’d have kept that second record and put it on the drop. If I was playing on the guitar, I could just work from the end of that record back to the front of it, playing it over and over. But it wore me down. Finally, I started playing the record nonstop. And I have for days.
“The fat man downstairs, he’d come up for the rent, but as soon as he’d use his key and crack that door, hear that music, he’d get gone. So here I am, still playing, with nothing left but to keep on playing, or get my soul sucked up by that thing and delivered to the record store man.”
TOOTIE MINDED THE RECORD, AND I WENT OVER TO WHERE HE TOLD ME the record store was with the idea to put a boot up the guy’s ass, or a .45 slug in his noggin. I found South Street, but not Way South. The other street that should have been Way South was called Back Water. There wasn’t a store either, just an empty, unlocked building. I opened the door and went inside. There was dust everywhere, and I could see where some tables had been,’cause their leg marks was in the dust. But anyone or anything that had been there was long gone.
I went back to the hotel, and when I got there, Tootie was just about asleep. The record was turning on the turntable without any sound. I looked at the wall, and I could see the beak of that thing, chewing at it. I put the record on, and this time, when it come to the end, the thing was still chewing. I played it another time, and another, and the thing finally went away. It was getting stronger.
I woke Tootie up, said, “You know, we’re gonna find out if this thing can outrun my souped-up Chevy.”
“Ain’t no use,” Tootie said.
“Then we ain’t got nothing to lose,” I said.
We grabbed up the record and his guitar, and we was downstairs and out on the street faster than you can snap your fingers. As we passed where the toad was, he saw me and got up quick and went into the kitchen and closed the door. If I’d had time, I’d have beat his ass on general principles.
When we walked to where I had parked my car, it was sitting on four flats and the side windows was knocked out and the aerial was snapped off. The record Alma May had given me was still there, lying on the seat. I got it and put it against the other one in my hand. It was all I could do.
As for the car, I was gonna drive that Chevy back to East Texas like I was gonna fly back on a sheet of wet newspaper.
Now, I got to smellin’ that smell. One that was in the room. I looked at the sky. The sun was kind of hazy. Green even. The air around us trembled, like it was scared of something. It was heavy, like a blanket. I grabbed Tootie by the arm, pulled him down the street. I spied a car at a curb that I thought could run, a V-8 Ford. I kicked the back side window out, reached through, and got the latch.
I slid across the seat and got behind the wheel. Tootie climbed in on the passenger side. I bent down and worked some wires under the dash loose with my fingers and my razor, hot-wired the car. The motor throbbed and we was out of there.
IT DIDN’T MAKE ANY KIND OF SENSE, BUT AS WE WAS CRUISING ALONG, behind us it was getting dark. It was like chocolate pudding in a big wad rolling after us. Stars was popping up in it. They seemed more like eyes than stars. There was a bit of a moon, slightly covered over in what looked like a red fungus.
I drove that Ford fast as I could. I was hitting the needle at a hundred and ten. Didn’t see a car on the highway. Not a highway cop, not an old lady on the way to the store. Where the hell was everybody? The highway looped up and down like the bottom was trying to fall out from under us.
To make it all short, I drove hard and fast, and stopped once for gas, having the man fill it quick. I gave him a bill that was more than the gas was worth, and he grinned at me as we burned rubber getting away. I don’t think he could see what we could see—that dark sky with that thing in it. It was like you had to hear the music to see the thing existed, or for it to have any effect in your life. For him, it was daylight and fine and life was good.
By the time I hit East Texas, there was smoke coming from under that stolen Ford’s hood. We came down a hill, and it was daylight in front of us, and behind us the dark was rolling in; it was splittin’, making a kind of corridor, and there was that beaked thing, that . . . whatever it was. It was bigger than before and it was squirming its way out of the night sky like a weasel working its way under a fence. I tried to convince myself it was all in my head, but I wasn’t convinced enough to stop and find out.
I made the bottom of the hill, in sight of the road that turned off to Alma May’s. I don’t know why I felt going there mattered, but it was something I had in my mind. Make it to Alma May’s, and deliver on my agreement, bring her brother into the house. Course, I hadn’t really thought that thing would or could follow us.
It was right then the car engine blew in an explosion that made the hood bunch up from the impact of thrown pistons.
The car died and coasted onto the road that led to Alma May’s house. We could see the house, standing in daylight. But even that light was fading as the night behind us eased on in.
I jerked open the car door, snatched the records off the backseat, and yelled to Tootie to start running. He nabbed his guitar, and a moment later we were both making tracks for Alma May’s.
Looking back, I saw there was a moon back there, and stars too, but mostly there was that thing, full of eyes and covered in sores and tentacles and legs and things I can’t even describe. It was like someone had thrown critters and fish and bugs and beaks and all manner of disease into a bowl and whipped it together with a whipping spoon.
When we got to Alma May’s, I beat on the door. She opened it, showing a face that told me she thought I was knocking too hard, but then she looked over my shoulder and went pale, almost as if her skin was white. She had heard the music, so she could see it too.
Slamming the door behind us, I went straight to the record player. Alma May was asking all kinds of questions, screaming them out. First to me, then to Tootie. I told her to shut up. I jerked one of the records out of its sheath, put it on the turntable, lifted the needle, and—the electricity crackled and it went dark. There was no playing anything on that player. Outside, the world was lit by that bloodred moon.
The door blew open. Tentacles flicked in, knocked over an end table. Some knickknacks fell and busted on the floor. Big as the monster was, it was squeezing through, causing the door frame to crack; the wood breaking sounded like someone cracking whips with both hands.
Me and Alma May, without even thinking about it, backed up. The red shadow, bright as a campfire, fled away from the monster and started flowing across the floor, bugs and worms squirming in it.
But not toward us.
It was running smooth as an oil spill toward the opposite side of the room. I got it then. It didn’t just want through to this side. It wanted to finish off that deal Tootie had made with the record store owner. Tootie had said it all along, but it really hit me then. It didn’t want me and Alma at all.
It had come for Tootie’s soul.
There was a sound so sharp I threw my hands over my ears, and Alma May went to the floor. It was Tootie’s guitar. He had hit it so hard, it sounded electrified. The pulse of that one hard chord made me weak in the knees. It was a hundred times louder than the record. It was beyond belief, and beyond human ability. But it was Tootie.
The red shadow stopped, rolled back like a tongue.
The guitar was going through its paces now. The thing at the doorwa
y recoiled slightly, and then Tootie yelled, “Come get me. Come have me. Leave them alone.”
I looked, and there in the faint glow of the red moonlight through the window, I saw Tootie’s shadow lift that guitar high above his head by the neck, and down it came, smashing hard into the floor with an explosion of wood and a springing of strings.
The bleeding shadow came quickly then. Across the floor and onto Tootie. He screamed. He screamed like someone having the flesh slowly burned off. Then the beast came through the door as if shot out of a cannon.
Tentacles slashed, a million feet scuttled, and those beaks came down, ripping at Tootie like a savage dog tearing apart a rag doll. Blood flew all over the room. It was like a huge strawberry exploded.
Then another thing happened. A blue mist floated up from the floor, from what was left of Tootie, and for just the briefest of moments, I saw Tootie’s face in that blue mist; the face smiled a toothless kind of smile, showing nothing but a dark hole where his mouth was. Then, like someone sniffing steam off soup, the blue mist was sucked into the beaks of that thing, and Tootie and his soul were done with.
The thing turned its head and looked at us. It made a noise like a thousand rocks and broken automobiles tumbling down a cliff made of gravel and glass, and it began to suck back toward the door. It went out with a sound like a wet towel being popped. The bleeding shadow ran across the floor after it, eager to catch up; a lapdog hoping for a treat.
The door slammed as the thing and its shadow went out, and then the air got clean and the room got bright.
I looked where Tootie had been.
Nothing.
Not a bone.
Not a drop of blood.
I raised the window and looked out.
It was morning.
No clouds in the sky.
The sun looked like the sun.
Birds were singing.
The air smelled clean as a newborn’s breath.
I turned back to Alma May. She was slowly getting up from where she had dropped to the floor.
“It just wanted him,” I said, having a whole different kind of feeling about Tootie than I had before. “He gave himself to it. To save you, I think.”
She ran into my arms and I hugged her tight. After a moment, I let go of her. I got the records and put them together. I was going to snap them across my knee. But I never got the chance. They went wet in my hands, came apart, and hit the floor and ran through the floorboards like black water, and that was all she wrote.
HUNGRY HEART
by Simon R. Green
New York Times bestseller Simon R. Green is the author of the eleven-volume Nightside paranormal series, which takes an intrepid PI to “the dark heart of London, where it’s always three A.M.” and monsters and creatures from myth and legend meet and mingle—and sometimes hire you to take on a dangerous job. The Nightside books include Something from the Nightside, Agents of Light and Darkness, Hex and the City, Hell to Pay, and seven others. Green has also written fantasy series such as the seven-volume Hawk and Fisher sequence (No Haven for the Guilty, Devil Take the Hindmost, The God Killer, and four others) and the three-volume Forest Kingdom sequence (Blue Moon Rising, Blood and Honor, Down Among the Dead Men), science fiction series such as the five-volume Deathstalker sequence (Deathstalker: Being the First Part of the Life and Times of Owen Deathstalker, Deathstalker War, and three others) and the related three-volume Deathstalker Legacy sequence (Deathstalker Legacy, Deathstalker Return, and Deathstalker Coda), and fantasy/spy story series such as the five-volume Secret Histories sequence (The Man with the Golden Torc, Daemons Are Forever, The Spy Who Haunted Me, From Hell With Love, and For Heaven’s Eyes Only). He also has written stand-alone novels such as Shadows Fall and Drinking Midnight Wine, and he has started a new paranormal series, Ghost Finders, with Ghost of a Chance and his most recent book, Ghost of a Smile.
Here private detective John Taylor, long accustomed to dealing with ghosts and wizards and ghouls in the Nightside, takes on his strangest case, that of a witch who lost her heart—and wants it back.
THE CITY OF LONDON HAS A HIDDEN HEART; A DARK AND SECRET PLACE where gods and monsters go fist-fighting through alleyways, where wonders and marvels are two a penny, where everything and everyone is up for sale, and all your dreams can come true. Especially the ones where you wake up screaming. In London’s Nightside it’s always dark, always three o’clock in the morning, the hour that tries men’s souls . . . and finds them wanting.
I WAS DRINKING WORMWOOD BRANDY IN THE OLDEST BAR IN THE WORLD when the femme fatale walked in. The bar was quiet, or at least as quiet as it ever gets. A bunch of female ghouls out on a hen night were getting tipsy on Mother’s Ruin and complaining about the quality of the finger buffet. Ghouls just want to have fun. A pair of Neanderthals who’d put away so many smart drinks they were practically evolving before my eyes. And four Emissaries from the Outer Dark were playing cutthroat bridge and cheating each other blind. Just another night at Strangefellows—until she walked in.
She came striding between the tables with her head held high, as though she owned the place, or at the very least was planning a hostile takeover. She slammed to a halt before my table, gave me a big smile, and let me look her over. A tall, slender platinum blonde, late teens, Little Black Dress . . . big eyes, big smile, industrial-strength makeup. Attractive enough, in an intimidating sort of way. An English rose with more than her fair share of thorns. She introduced herself in a light breathy voice and sat down opposite me without waiting to be asked. She tried her smile on me again. On anyone else, it would probably have worked.
“You’re John Taylor, private investigator,” she said briskly. “I’m Holly Wylde, and I’m a witch. My ex stole my heart. I want you to find it, and get it back for me.”
Not the strangest thing I’ve ever been asked to find, but I felt obliged to raise an eyebrow.
“I’m being quite literal,” she said. “All witches learn how to remove their hearts, and keep them safe and secure in some private place, so that no one can ever fully kill us. As long as the heart stays safe, we always come back. Hardly sporting, I know, but if I believed in things like fair play I’d never have become a witch in the first place. My ex, bad cess to his diseased soul, used to be my mentor. Taught me all I know about magic, and rogered me breathless every evening at no extra cost. Gideon Brooks; perhaps you know the name?”
“No,” I said. “Which is unusual. I know all the Major Players in the Nightside, all the real movers and shakers on the magical scene; but I don’t know him.”
She shrugged prettily. “When it comes to forbidden knowledge, Gideon is the reason why a lot of it is forbidden. A very powerful, very dangerous man, on the quiet. Anyway, I thought we were getting on splendidly. But when I decided I’d learned enough to leave Gideon and strike out on my own, he suddenly got all possessive on me. I thought we were just mentor and student, with benefits, but now he’s all over me, declaring his undying love and how he can’t live without me! Well. I was shocked, Mister Taylor. I don’t do emotional entanglements. Not at this stage in my career. I tried to be graceful about it, but there’s only so many ways a girl can say ‘No!’ in a loud and carrying voice. So. After a while he calmed down, apologized, and said he was just worried about me. Which was fair enough. But then he persuaded me to hand over my heart, so he could place some heavy-duty protections on it, to keep me safe once I was out on my own. And like a fool, I believed him. He has my heart, Mister Taylor, and he won’t give it back! And whoever owns a witch’s heart will always have power over her. I’ll never be free of him.”
She finally stopped for breath and gave me the big smile again, accompanied by the big, big eyes and a deep breath to show off her bosoms. I gave her a smile of my own, no more sincere than hers. For all her artless honesty and finishing-school accent, Holly was as phony as a banker’s principles. All the time she’d been talking to me, her gaze had been darting all around the bar, hardly ever looking at me, an
d never making eye contact for more than a few seconds. Which is a pretty reliable sign that someone is lying to you. But that was okay; I’m used to clients lying to me, or at the very least being economical with the truth. My job is to find what the client asks for. The truth makes the job easier, but I can work around it if I have to.
“What kind of a witch are you, Holly?” I said. “Black, white, Wiccan, or gingerbread house?”
She bestowed a happy wink on me. “I never allow myself to be limited by other people’s perceptions. I’m just a free spirit, Mister Taylor; or at least I was, until I met Gideon Brooks. Nasty man. Say you’ll help me. Pretty please.”
“I’ll help you,” I said. “For one thousand pounds a day, plus expenses. And don’t plead poverty. That dress you’re wearing costs more than I make in a year. And don’t get me started on the shoes.”
She didn’t even blink. Just slapped an envelope down on the table before me. When I opened it, a thousand pounds in cash stared back. I gave Holly my best professional smile and made the envelope disappear about my person. Never put temptation in other people’s way, especially in a bar like Strangefellows, where they’ll steal your gold fillings if you fall asleep with your mouth open. Holly leaned forward across the table to fix me with what she thought was a serious look.
“They say you have a special gift for finding things, Mister Taylor; a magical inner eye that can See where everything is. But that won’t help you find my heart. Gideon placed it inside a special protective rosewood box, called Heart’s Ease. No one can pierce the magics surrounding that box—and only Gideon can open it. And you won’t be able to find him or his house, either. Gideon lives inside his own private pocket dimension that only connects with our world when he feels like it. I only saw him when he let his house appear, at various places throughout the Nightside. And I haven’t seen him since he stole my heart.” She looked me right in the eye while she told me this, so I accepted most of it as provisionally true.
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