I’ve replayed that incident in my head multiple times a day for the last thirty years, and every day I reach the same conclusion: I should’ve done what I wanted to do in that moment.
I should’ve reached over, opened the door, and kicked her pretty ass out into the desert night. God damn me for doing nothing. God damn me for waiting until it was too late.
-TRACK 3-
LOST IN DIM CARCOSA
Most of us had never been to Los Angeles before. I know it was Johnny’s first time, and for Bobby and Hank that tour was their first time journeying farther west than the Mississippi. Personally, I’d only ever been to Los Angeles once when I was a kid, on a family trip to Disney, and it was about the same as I remembered it: smoggy, the sky painted a permanent yellow haze, with traffic backed up on the highway for as far as the eye can see.
The place was nothing at all like the movies had led us to believe. The whole goddamn city was a temple built to honor the nameless gods of greed and excess, a money machine that chewed up kids and shit them out every hour. For every star it birthed, ten more were damned to wander the streets and alleys, peddling their bodies for God knows what.
And there we were, four southern boys lost in the wilderness. Calling it a culture shock was an understatement.
The only one of us who wasn’t enchanted by the promise of this yellow-gold Shangri-La was Camilla. As we left the freeway and made our way downtown to the record label, she was quick to point out the sights—this movie was filmed on that corner, that place had great Thai, a good place to score weed is down that street, shit like that. I wondered if she ever lived there, if that’s where she came from, which makes sense in a weird sort of way. Only a city as fake as Los Angeles could produce a creature like Camilla Bierce.
We never talked about what happened the night before, and in the days to come I wrote it off as me being too tired and her being too doped up. I wish I’d said something to Johnny. Maybe he would’ve knocked my teeth out, but more probably, he would’ve ditched her there in LA. And maybe that would’ve been the best for all of us. Wait. No, I know it would’ve been best. Not that it matters now. Things never work out the way you want them to. The Stones wrote a great song about that.
Anyway, we spent two days in the city, but we never really left that dim Carcosa. That’s what Camilla called it, you see. She never said ‘Los Angeles’ or ‘LA’. It was always Carcosa to her. She guided us along its darkened shores as the morning sun painted the horizon a cloudy gold.
Thirty years on, I still wake up at night drenched in sweat, my heart thumping like someone beating on a door, terrified that I’m still back there in my hotel room. Terrified that I’m trapped in Carcosa.
Whenever I look in the mirror at the lines on my face, I think I still am.
***
“Christ, you boys let Aidan drive you into town? What, you got a death wish or something?”
Reggie met us in the lobby. The record label was headquartered in a swanky office building downtown. The office was sleek and minimal, made up to look like no one occupied the place, every surface waxed so clean you could see your face in the marble. It’s the sort of area that could double as an operating room, it was so fucking sterile.
I shrugged off Reggie’s jab and gave the old bastard a hug. He’d been good to us, making sure we had enough merchandise and money to get from gig to gig on that tour. He was one of the first to believe in us, and I trusted him. Why I didn’t listen to him about Camilla is beyond me. Maybe she’d already cast her spell on me. Surprise handjobs will do that, I suppose.
He greeted the rest of us with smiles and handshakes and hugs, but he paused when he saw Camilla. I’ll never forget the look on Johnny’s face when old Reggie turned back to us and said, “You boys pick up a stray?”
Johnny took off his sunglasses—he’d been wearing them almost nonstop on the last leg of the tour—and struggled to meet Reggie’s stare like a scolded child.
“This is Camilla,” he mumbled. “She’s a friend of the band. Cam, this is Reggie, our manager.”
Camilla’s ruby lips were already peeled back into a smile, her face almost glowing with a false sense of happiness. Whatever charms she had, she’d turned them up to eleven for old Reggie. She held out her hand.
“Such a pleasure to meet you, Reggie. I’ve heard so much about you.”
Now old Reggie, he’d been around the block more than once in this business. You name a band dynamic, and chances are he’d seen it. Hell, just look at your history of rock. Look at the Beatles or Nirvana, Yoko Ono or Courtney Love. You introduce a variable into an otherwise balanced equation and it tips the scales. Reggie only needed one look at Camilla and he’d already made up his mind, her charms be damned.
He was still a man of class, though. He took her hand and shook. “Pleasure’s all mine, Ms. Camilla. I’ve not heard a thing about you, but I’m sure your man here will remedy that.” The air in the room was sucked away with his words, and we all stood there staring at our shoes like we’d just let down our old man. He wasn’t mad at us, per se, but man he was disappointed. Finally, Reggie broke the ice and clapped his hands.
“The gentlemen upstairs are eager to hear about your tour. I think you’re going to be pleased about the things they have to tell you. Very pleased. Shit, I’m excited for you boys.”
Reggie ushered across the lobby, but paused mid-step and shot a glance at Camilla.
“I’m afraid you’ll need to stay down here, miss.” His flabby cheeks went red, but his words didn’t miss a beat. “This is a business meeting, I’m sure you understand.”
“Oh, don’t worry about that,” Camilla said, smiling through a gaze of knives. “I’ll wait down here. You guys take as long as you need. Oh, and Johnny?”
Our introverted frontman turned on his heel like a soldier given an order. Bobby snickered quietly to himself, and Hank jabbed an elbow into his ribs. Even I remember rolling my eyes at how ridiculous his reaction was. She’d been with us, what, a month? Six weeks at most? And already she had his balls tied around her finger.
Camilla swung her arms around him, pulled him close, and sucked his face for a good two minutes. The rest of us stood there, annoyed and impatient, while this guy we’d known for years let a total stranger dominate him. It was more than uncomfortable to watch; it was sickening. Not so much because of the display of affection, but because of how willingly he’d given himself to her. That wasn’t the Johnny we knew. It certainly wasn’t the hard-nosed quiet guy we’d grown up with.
Before she finished with her performance—and really, that’s all this was, a fucking performance—Camilla locked eyes with Reggie, and I swear I saw the hint of a smile at the corner of her ruby lips. That look said everything it needed to: This one’s mine. This one belongs to me. And he did. We just didn’t know it at the time.
When she was finished, Camilla tousled Johnny’s hair and gave him a quick peck on the cheek.
Her display of power concluded, Camilla left us to our business. “Good luck,” she cooed. Johnny turned back to us with a puzzled look on his face, like he was in the twilight hours of a magnificent bender.
I can count on one hand all the times I ever saw Reggie spooked. That moment was one of them. The rest . . . well, I’ll get to that.
***
Business meetings with the suits at the label were about as exciting as you might imagine. There were a lot of numbers, sales data, marketing plans, the whole nine. We sat there in a stupor, nodding and laughing at the right moments, letting Reggie speak for us. In a nutshell, the Jesters in Our Court EP was selling well. Incredibly well, to hear the suits talk about it, setting new sales records for the label.
Radio stations had adopted the song ‘Holes in the Fabric’ as an unofficial single, much to our dismay, since it was the second song of a two-parter, but our unhappiness over that fact didn’t last very long. People were actually calling in to radio stations to request our song. Our song. That we wrote together. Can you believe it?
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We couldn’t. Not then.
The meeting concluded with an offer: a two-album deal, a generous royalty agreement, and support for a national tour. There was no hesitation on our part. We signed it willingly, happily, and celebrated that night by throwing a massive party in our hotel rooms. Why wouldn’t we? It was one of the best days of our lives, everything we’d worked so hard for as a band.
I remember asking Johnny, as we rode back down the elevator after the meeting, if he thought he could write enough songs for two albums. He turned to me, in that sort of half-sleepy, half-creepy way of his, and smirked.
“I’ve already started writing it,” he said. He put on his shades and pushed them up the bridge of his nose. “It’s really quite special. Our first album is going to raise the bar pretty fucking high, my friend.”
He was right. It did, but for all the wrong reasons. We never recorded that second album. The first one was enough for a lifetime.
***
Our wonderful manager treated us to dinner at the hotel later that night. Alcohol flowed freely during the meal, so much that Bobby had a hard time with his lobster claws. I’m not sure if he’d ever had lobster before that night, so he was probably lost to begin with. Watching him try to drunkenly extract the meat of the claw was the cause of much laughter, so much that the hotel manager asked us twice to keep it down. Not that we gave a shit.
So about that party I mentioned. I don’t remember whose idea it was to get shitfaced, but none of us—including Reggie—had a problem with it. Old Reg covered the tab that night, ordering round after round at the hotel bar. We started out with beers, graduated to shots, and about there is where the night gets hazy for me.
Here’s what I remember: Hank spilling his Irish Car Bomb all over Johnny’s vintage Rage Against the Machine T-shirt (“I bought that on their last fucking tour, you dick!”); Reggie sermonizing about the good old days to Bobby, who was so blitzed out of his mind that every other word out of our manager’s mouth was a comedic revelation; Johnny sulking over a whiskey on the rocks, and I’m unclear if he was just being his usual brooding self or if he was upset over the spilled drink; and Camilla sitting beside him, braiding a strand of her hair with his.
I remember staring at her while she did, partially because I wasn’t sure what I was witnessing. At the time I thought it was one of the dumbest fucking things I’d ever seen. It was some high school-level shit, you know? Was she going to wear his class ring next?
But thinking on it now, I think I was mystified by what she was doing. Sure, I was drunk, I fully admit that part, but I do remember that part of the night with clarity. Johnny seemed oblivious to what she was doing, almost as though she wasn’t even there at all. Hell, he didn’t even wince when she pulled the slack out of his hair. He sat there, drinking his whiskey while she twisted and tied a red strand of hair to his. The whole thing had the feeling of a ritual. I don’t know how else to explain it, but it’s like she was, I don’t know, binding herself to him. Or him to her. Either way, watching her do this to him, I felt like a helpless intruder, unable to do anything to stop her and also completely uninvited to witness the event.
When she finished, she turned to me and smiled. “Isn’t he cute? I think it suits him.” She chewed her bottom lip and traced one finger along my arm. “Want me to do you next?”
I didn’t respond to her. Instead, I got up from my seat and staggered out of the bar and back up to my hotel room. From here, things become a series of snapshots, like still images cut from a broken film.
My room was cold. The A/C was cranking away, and I stumbled over to the window to adjust the thermostat.
I fell face-first into bed. I didn’t bother undressing or even turning down the sheets. There’s a lot of darkness after this, and I don’t remember how long I was out. All I know is that I passed out when I hit the pillow for an indeterminate amount of time, and I was somehow yanked out of my drunken slumber by a heavy knocking on my door.
Camilla was there with Johnny, Hank, Bobby, and Reggie in tow. She didn’t say anything as she invited herself into my room. The other guys followed her single-file. They might as well have been strung along on a leash. I mumbled something as they sauntered in, probably asking what the hell they’re doing, but none of them said anything to me.
After I closed the door, Camilla turned and snapped her fingers. “Sit there,” she told them, pointing to the floor. They obeyed, sitting in unison, their chins turned downward as if in prayer.
“Guys,” I slurred, “what the fuck is this?”
Camilla turned to me. Her eyes were one color again, two golden marbles set alight and blazing with an impossible fire. She licked her lips, and when she spoke she did so with the voice of many. There was more than just Camilla inside her. I know that now. Legion, some call it, but I know it by another name. It was the voice of a king. The king. A true king of many, unspeakable by any sane mortal tongue. We all bore his mark when we took the stage for the final time, but that night in the hotel room was the first I’d ever heard it.
“Coronation in the city of gold,” Camilla said. “Together we will sing the song of the Hyades in the court of Carcosa, and you will bear the sign of Hastur the Unspeakable, his glorious majesty and the true Yellow King.”
Hastur? The true Yellow King? Coronation? My head swam, my brain soaked in a pool of liquor so deep I’d spend a week treading the surface of a hangover, and all this mystical mumbo-jumbo-bullshit did was make me wish I’d had one more shot of bourbon to take the edge off. I looked at the guys, who were all lined up and pouting like scolded children. Johnny wasn’t wearing his sunglasses. He was rocking back and forth, mumbling words I couldn’t understand.
“Johnny?”
He paused, and when he looked up at me, my blood went cold. His eyes burned with the same golden fire. Hank, Bobby, and Reggie followed his gaze like dominos, one after the other, their eyes burning gold. One by one, they smiled, and only then did Johnny speak.
“We’ve been chosen, Aidan. Join us.”
The world spun out of control as I backed away. I’m not sure what I was trying to accomplish. Run away, maybe, not that I would’ve gotten very far. My motor skills were heavily compromised, the liquor having already worked its magic. Or maybe it was her magic. I’ll never know for sure, but I’ve long suspected Camilla’s dark tricks had something to do with it. Even drunk, I could’ve made my way out of that room, but I didn’t. The will, my will, was gone from me.
When I looked back at her, I felt my last ounce of resistance slip away from me, withering and dying in the gilded light of her fiery gaze.
“Shhh,” she cooed. “Do not fret, child.”
My knees buckled, and I sank to the floor. Tears streamed down my face. Behind us, the guys hummed and murmured together, rocking excitedly in frantic meditation.
The tips of her toes traced along the plush carpeting as she hovered toward me. Moments later, I felt her fingers work their way through my hair. She tilted my head back and our eyes met.
“The Yellow King has plans for you,” she whispered. “All of you. And they begin here in this room. With me. With all of us.” She tightened her grip on the back of my head. I cried out as her nails sank into my skull, guiding me forward toward her. “Now,” she growled, “lick me.”
I know what you’re probably thinking. We all got drunk and took turns defiling our groupie. That isn’t what happened. She defiled us. Our bodies, our minds. Our souls. I have scars in places you wouldn’t believe.
She took turns with us, forcing the others to watch at the bedside, chanting words that didn’t make sense to me. I’m not even sure they were actual words. Awful guttural sounds that hurt to utter.
We didn’t talk about that night for the longest time. By the time we did, it was too late to matter. The damage had been done, Camilla’s influence over us complete and absolute.
I have a recurring nightmare from time to time. My phone rings at my bedside, and when I answer it, John
ny’s on the other end. He’s raspy and choked because his throat is missing, and he tells me, “Aidan, where are you, brother? We need you to shred for us. The band can’t practice without you.”
I tell him that I’m here in the nursing home, that I haven’t touched a guitar for years, and besides that, he’s dead, how could he possibly sing? And then I ask him where he’s calling from, and he tells me.
“We’re in Carcosa now. We’re getting the band back together. All we need is you.”
I always wake up in a cold sweat. Nights like that are the worst. I haven’t had a good night’s rest since the night in the hotel. Imagine the worst hangover you can, and then imagine it never goes away. A hangover that lasts the rest of your life.
That’s my life, Mr. Hargrove, and it all started that night. That night was more than just sex to her. It was a ritual in honor of her king. Whatever she did to us marked us for the rest of our lives. We lost ourselves in Carcosa that night. I don’t think any of us ever really made our way back.
-TRACK 4-
THE USURPER’S ASCENT
Reggie was gone by the time we woke the next morning. We didn’t see him again for a month, and by that point we were so wrapped up in recording the album that none of us dared bring up what happened. When we woke up in the same room together, we just figured we’d had one hell of a bender the night before, and blacked out. It wasn’t the first time that had happened. For a while I had myself convinced that the blurry memories of that night were nothing more than nightmares, phantoms conjured from my subconscious by the booze.
Magical thinking, you know. I think we all knew what had happened, but were too afraid to speak of it. Losing control of yourself is a hard thing to admit. You look back and think: Hey, there’s no way I could’ve done that. That wasn’t me. That was some other guy.
But we knew the truth. That morning, Hank, Bobby, and me all booked flights back home for a short vacation. Johnny chose to stay in Los Angeles to start working on the album.
Ugly Little Things Page 23