Left Hand of Doom

by Mike Allan

  He gives up with a sigh. “I try it at least once each day.” He looks down at the harmonica with a wistful expression. “Just in case they decide to grant me a pardon.”

  “How. . .how long has it been for you?”

  “It’ll be eight years in three days.”

  I shake my head in disbelief. “You tried to steal the whole scale?” I still think he’s crazy and stupid, but I have to add ballsy to the list.

  “Not just the scale,” he says. “I sought all. I lost all.”

  “You mean--” I swallow. “The ursound?”

  He nods.

  Forget ballsy. Ballsy implies you have the awareness to recognize danger and fear it. Going after the ursound, that’s like trying to stuff the Sun in a mason jar. It requires delusion.

  “They took everything,” he says, “except my voice. I can even sing as long as it’s words and not just notes. I suppose they wanted me to still have my powers of speech to warn off anyone else from attempting such a foolish overreaching.”

  “It didn’t work, did it?”

  He smiles, teeth still hidden behind his lips. “I spent the first two years inconsolably drunk. Then I started thinking.”

  I haven’t exactly gotten past the inconsolably drunk phase. But then, my injury is merely crippling. What they did to him is close to death.

  His fist closes around the harmonica and he returns it to his breast pocket. “We can get it back. I have a way, but I need your help.”

  “Not interested.”

  “Yes you are. The gears are already turning. You’re wondering what you missed in all your frantic searching for a means to reverse your curse. You’re wondering what tomes I found to give me such confidence.”

  “I burned my books after what happened.”

  One of his eyebrows arches. “Really? That’s a shame. There are too few copies of the mysteries, even with the power of Xerox.”

  “Too many if you ask me.”

  He gives me an indulgent smile, like he knows I’ll come around eventually. Maddening thing is he’s probably right. “I can’t play anymore to enact a ritual, but you can. Even with the G5 taken from you. I supply the rite, you supply the riffs.”

  “Ritual like that would take a low end.”

  “Already taken care of.”

  “If you need guitar, why the hell don’t you go find somebody who’s not missing a chord?”

  “Because you’ve been there. You’ve tasted it. It’s still on you. That’s experience you can’t teach. I wrote the parts with you in mind.”

  “Pretty presumptuous of you.”

  He snaps a business card out of his pocket and hands it to me between two fingers. “At least think about it.”

  “Dunwich Productions? I thought they made amps and pedals and stuff.”

  “Same name, different company.”

  “Can’t they, like, steal your name?”

  “You don’t really know much about trademark and copyright, do you?”

  “What the hell would give you that idea?”

  I shake his hand this time.

  Purd blasts the horn. I imagine it’s what last call sounds like in Valhalla, sending the einherjar to bed so they can hack each other to pieces and drink tomorrow. One last Cyclopean awaits. Next time.

  Somewhere Cyclopean pulls me in like a wormhole. Everything blurs and goes to black. When I pop out again the place is empty except for Purd and I. All the stools except the one currently occupied by my ass perch atop the bar.

  Purd’s counting cash at the far end, watching me with one eye.

  “What?” I say.

  Purd licks her finger and slaps the last bill onto the stack. “We’re going to bed.”

  I nod. I nod vigorously in agreement. Unfortunately that’s about the only vigor I can conjure.

  Whatever. That didn’t bother me, even though I was unlikely to ever have a chance at getting band coups d’etat pity sex ever again. So I sucked that night. I suck every night. Everything in the world sucks, except Black Sabbath. And Purd. She doesn’t suck, in every sense of the word.

  4

  She wakes up too early for me to slink out. Early meaning it's still a time considered by convention to be morning. I hear something sizzling on a stove and banging pots. Dimly I recall this as a ritual called breakfast. Something responsible adults make.

  I lay on my back and watch the slow sweep of the ceiling fan, then heave myself up to a sitting position. First thing I do whenever I wake up shamed in Purd’s bedroom is look at the shelves and see what new knick-knacks she’s picked up. The shelves run wall to wall and climb floor to ceiling crowded with detritus from dozens of subcultures. Wicca charms, hematite crystals, Asatru mjolnirs and drinking horns, a tangle of traffic cone orange cyberlox. A museum of the fringe. Purd’s essentially a Viking, raiding the sub-cultural coasts and borderlands for their fashions and slang. Doesn’t look like there’s anything new since my last entry into her sanctum except a shark spirit hood. Drug pockets dangle from its felt teeth. Plunder from the land of EDM. If you ask me she should’ve just laid waste to the whole place and sailed on for climes with less bpm. There’s nothing impressive about a computer laying down a rapid bass line. When George Kollias cracks 200 a minute, it actually means something.

  What the fuck is wrong with me? I shouldn’t bag on the kids for their music. They like what they like, just like I did. Hell, they probably like it because people like me hate it. Still, though, regardless of the music’s merits, that shark hat pocket is an atrocity. There are some universal truths.

  One of which is grease and orange juice are the closest we’ve come to a hangover cure. I stagger out into the kitchen.

  “Hey.” She doesn’t look up from the pan.

  She’s wearing a Five Finger Death Punch shirt, just to piss me off, which works. However it barely covers her bare ass, so I’m torn. No, I’m not. I want to light that shirt on fire. After I rip it off her, of course.

  “Hey. What time is it?”

  “Breakfast.”

  She plates it up. Grease, starch, and eggs. All the main food groups. The American condition on a plate.

  “Thanks.”

  She shrugs and sits down across from me. I stare down at the rippling surface of her kitchen table. When I look up she’s staring at me.

  “What is it?” she says.

  “This guy came by last night. He wanted me to. . .he asked me about the G5. He knew about it. Everything.” I quickly tell her all about Phillips.

  Purd knows about the Soundscape. One of her many forays into esoterica. But she only ever learned the lowest mysteries. She dipped her toe in and wisely chose to stay the hell away. There’re much safer things to do than dick around with the primordial sublimes of sound. The only relic from her brief flirtation is her battered, half complete copy of the Sonomicon.

  “So he says there’s a way for me to get the sound back. For both of us.”

  She sets her fork down. She hasn’t eaten a bite since I started yammering. “What are you going to do?”

  “I don’t know. I think I want to try it.”

  “What do you mean you think you do?”

  “It’s. . .I. . ..”

  I don’t realize my hand’s shaking until Purd reaches across the table to grab it. Her palm is slightly greasy. I lower my head and peek at her from beneath my brow. She smiles at me.

  “I never told you about Till and Evan, did I?”

  “Yeah you did. You were wasted so I guess you don’t remember.”

  “You never mentioned it.”

  She rolls her eyes. “Come on. Drunk-bartender confidentiality is always in effect.”

  “Yeah. Thanks.” I hate the thought spewing my guts at her, but it beats having to tell her cold sober now.

  No, I can’t run from that. I’ve been running for years now. I’m tired. And I need to talk this out. I can’t make this decision just rattling around in my own skull. Purd’s my only friend. Or at least she’s the closest
thing I’ve allowed myself.

  “So you. . .know about the tentacles then? And the sonic titans?”

  She nods.

  “I know I shouldn’t want to go back there. I shouldn’t even be thinking about it.” I look at the kitchen window. It’s pretty small, but if I dislocate both shoulders I might be able to squirm through and escape before I say something resembling emotion. “But it’s like. . .Till and Evan are dead. They’re dead because I fucked up. I ask myself every day why the titans didn’t kill me along with them. Shit, if anyone of us deserved to be punished, it was me. The idea was my idea. The fuck ups were my fuck ups.” My chest hurts. It’s like I’ve been stabbed and it’s all just spilling out of the wound. “Nothing I do is going to bring them back, but if I can go in again, if I can get what I came for in the first place. . .no, fuck that, if I can just get so I can play like a regular person again, then maybe their deaths won’t’ve been completely worthless.”

  I’ve had this conversation with myself a million million times, and Purd’s just as silent as my walls when I ask them.

  “Well?”

  “You want my advice?” With most people this’s a preamble to their unsolicited counsel, but with Purd it’s an actual question. She doesn’t go on until I nod. “I think you should do whatever you think is right.”

  “What the hell kind of advice is that?”

  “What?”

  “That’s fucking terrible.”

  “Well fuck you, too, Eddie.”

  “We’re having this conversation because I have no fucking idea what the right thing to do is. I didn’t then, and I don’t now.”

  “So what, you just want me to tell you what to do?”

  “Yes!”

  “No way. First, I’m not your spirit guide. I’m not here to absolve you of responsibility. Second, even if I did that, you’ll just ignore what I say and end up doing whatever you want.”

  My jaw snaps shut. I can’t really deny that. She’s cut through all my bullshit as usual. I’ve already decided what I’m going to do. I’m just fishing for her to bite on my threadbare justification, nail some two by fours to my delusions to keep them steady in the wind.

  I fold my arms. “Fine.”

  “So what are you going to do?”

  “Not sure yet.”

  “Liar.”

  “Yeah, but I’m not going to tell you.”

  “Fair enough. But Eddie? Whatever you do, be careful.”

  “I will.”

  She shakes her head and smiles. “Such a goddamn liar.”

  5

  Back in my apartment I roll Phillips’ card in my fingers, feeling the tasteful, Batemanic thickness of it. All that’s missing is the damn watermark.

  Phillips picks up on the second ring. “Speak.” There’s a thin, mechanical buzz in the background, like a clockwork hornet.

  “I want in. But first I’m going to need some proof.”

  “Of what, precisely?”

  “That you know what the hell you’re doing. I know you can’t play anymore, but you said you can craft the rituals. I want to see something you made.”

  “Fair enough. I can give you a demonstration that should convince you. How soon can you meet?”

  “Whenever.”

  “Meet me at Needlenose. I’m just about done sitting. It’s at--”

  “I know where it is. You’re getting a tattoo?”

  “Is that so strange?”

  “You don’t seem like the type, is all.”

  “It’s a Chinese character that definitely means ‘courage’.”

  I chuckle. “See you in a few.”

  “Good. Bring your guitar and an amp as well, please. Something affordable.”

  “Does that mean cheap?”

  “Something you won’t miss if it burns.”

  I load up my Les Paul and a little ten watt practice amp then drive out to Gallero Street, a few blocks off the main drag. Needlenose perches above a liquor store. A parking in rear kind of place. The fire escape clatters as I climb up to clamber through the window. This is an acceptable way of going in, so the girl at the desk and the ink fiends waiting in the sparkly 50s diner chairs don’t bat a single eye at me. I scan the studio floor and see a pair of wingtips poking out from behind the silhouette of a fat tattooist. As I walk up the tattooist turns to swap out ammunition on his gun, sliding out of my view.

  “Damn.”

  Phillips is covered. Every inch of him, from his wrists just above where a cuff would fall to his neck just below a collar’s choke to his belt line. He’s more ink than skin. Spirals warp and whirl up his arms, surge into fingerprint eddies around his shoulders. They branch across his ribs like a textbook diagram of the nervous system. Warding symbols pack the hollows between the swirling patterns. Some of them are Chinese, but they share real estate with Arabic, Elder Futhark, Greek, backwards Cyrillic R’s. Some aren’t letters at all: a treble clef overlaid atop a pentagram, a measure where all the notes are faces caught in Munchian screams.

  Rising from the chair, he smirks at my surprise. “Tattooing’s become so mainstream, yet there’s still simpletons who gawk at a man who wears suits that likes ink.”

  “I’m not gawking,” I say. “Like I said I’m just surprised. What’re you adding to the collection?”

  He points to a spot over his left top rib. There’s a wedjat with a pentagonal pupil, sandwiched between a miniature sephirot and a Mexican sugar skull.

  “Trying to ward off Apep?” I say.

  “I’m impressed, Eddie. Are you a student of Egyptology?”

  “More like a student of Nile liner notes.”

  He smiles, wincing slightly as he slips into his shirt. “Well, there are many paths to knowledge. Come on. You’re driving.”

  Phillips directs me to an abandoned industrial park at the edge of town. The place was built on spec as a honeypot to attract high tech manufacturers, but turns out it’s hard to compete with overseas slave labor. The warehouse looks like a rotten molar jutting out of a necrotic jaw.

  “This’ll do,” he says, fiddling with a cufflink as he steps out.

  “Why’re we out here? Tis doesn’t look like a good venue for a ritual.”

  He bends at the waist to talk to me through the open car door. “We don’t need a strong locus for this. You wanted a demonstration. This is the safest place for us to do it.”

  “Safe for who?” I start to say, but he’s already shut the door and started up towards the warehouse entrance. I get the guitar and amp from the trunk and follow him in.

  Inside he’s staring at the graffiti on one wall. Maybe wondering if a tagger named Blayze is as lame as his name.

  “Right there’s fine.” He points to a patch of concrete no different from the other infinite choices spread across the floor.

  “There’s nowhere to plug in,” I say, but he waves his hand dismissively.

  “Not a problem. Just make sure it’s pointed towards us.” I set it down as he says. There’s a sharp snap as he pulls a switchblade and sets to gouging marks into my amp. Explains why he told me to bring some cheap gear. I almost say something but really, it’s a shitty practice amp and I don’t want to sound petty.

  “Tune up,” Phillips says, forehead wrinkled in concentration as he drags the knife across the speaker grill.

  When we’re both finished with our respective rituals he holds out his hand. “Come closer.” I take a step. “Closer.”

  Another step. Exasperated, he snaps his fingers and points at the patch of concrete next to him. I don’t like being summoned as if I’m the help but I obey.

  Sharp ping of a loaded spring set free. “Ow!” Phillips sticks a lancet launcher like diabetics use into his pocket. A little bead of blood blooms on my right pinkie tip.

  “What the hell?”

  “I didn’t use your fretting hand, stop complaining.” He grabs my hand and holds it over one of the freshly carved sigils on the amp. A drop of my blood hits, then sizzles away like w
ater on a hot pan.

  He unfolds a sheet of notebook paper. There’s a crudely drawn tab sketched across it. Just a short lick, a quick barrage of fifteen notes high up on the fretboard.

  “Play that.”

  “What’s the time signature?”

  “Doesn’t matter for this. Just play.”

  With a shrug, I tap my foot to get into a rhythm. I feel like showing off, so I make them all sixteenth notes and rip through them so fast the strings get hot. No really, they get hot. Not enough to burn my fingertips, but enough to notice. A notch below blistering. My brain realizes something’s wrong, but before it can tell my hands, they’ve scuttled through the rest of the notes. The heat flares up and I pull my hands away, shaking them. Opening my eyes, I turn towards Phillips, “What the fu--”

  Phillips and I stand in a pool of glowing white. We’re sinking. I yelp and try to run, but the white is like mud, grabbing at me, sucking on my boots.

  “Don’t struggle.” Phillips says, grabbing me by the arm.

  My heart hammers at my ribs, trying to escape the sinking ship. When my knees slip down below the void, I can’t run even if I wanted, even if Phillips’ grip wasn’t a vice around my bicep. My legs feel like they’re encased in concrete. Curiosity gets the better of me. I stick one hand down. When I try to make a fist, my fingers won’t move. It sticks when I try to pull it free. Panicked, I start jerking, grab it with my other hand and yank.

  “Easy!” Phillips’ hand tightens. “You’ll dislocate your shoulder. Just relax.”

  I keep it together until we’ve sunk down to our necks. Then I start shouting. Phillips doesn’t bother telling me to relax. My whole body below the white void is frozen stiff, immobile. I don’t feel anything below there. Not heat, not cold, not even the sensation of being unable to move. I wonder if I’m even there anymore, or if what’s slipped below is just gone. My screams stop as my mouth slides below the surface. Then I can only hear the blood hammering in my ears and the air rushing through my nostrils. Then those go quiet, and the only sensation is the sweat coursing down my forehead. That goes too, leaving nothing.