by Mike Allan
Alhazred, man, could he write a ripper. I thought Phillips had a genius for bending sound, but this makes his tunes quaint. It’s so technical the wheedly-deedliest of wheedly-deedly tech-death wizards would cry. My fingers trip over each other, the strings buzz tuneless against the frets. An idiot palsy afflicts my strumming hand. Bad enough to screw up, but when I start to hit the notes right, I feel queasy. Stale cigarette and rotgut booze tastes haunt my mouth. Shadows flicker just out of sight. Even without the magic of the pentodes or blood or astral conjunction to feed them, there’s power in these notes.
Nilos isn’t having an easier a time of it. We’re still working out our respective sides, getting the muscle memory down before we play together. Sometimes I hear him stumble off beat and he just loses it. Starts hammering away at the kit without rhyme or reason, though that's not much of a deviation from the actual song. Once he leaves his door cracked while getting a drink in the kitchen. On my way to the bathroom I catch a glimpse inside. Shredded drumskins litter the floor. There’s a china cymbal embedded in the drywall, like he hurled it with all his strength. I don’t linger long enough to see anything else. I don’t want to piss him off.
Normally, I approve of teetotalers and amateurs putting in the work to go professional. But Nilos has been taking to it with a grim determination. He’s not drinking to drown the butterflies in his gut like at the Hour. It’s like he’s trying to prove to himself he’s not afraid to die. Numb himself to the act of suicide so it’s not so hard when the moment comes. It’ll be easier if he’s already halfway there.
At least that’s how it was for me.
I don’t say anything to him about it. What can I say? I did the same thing. Maybe this was inevitable. If you've gone through life without crawling through that mud, you just died before your turn to wallow came.
One morning while I’m nose down in my Captain Crunch a scrap of paper slides into my view.
“We should start rehearsing.”
I look up and nod. Nilos smiles. “Nilos.” I want to tell him it’ll be all right. I want to tell him someday, after all this is over, we’ll start Hag up again. Maybe we’ll have to pick a different name since it’s not too great to have your brand associated with a shootout. I want to tell him we’ll get the bitch.
“Never mind.”
Midway through our second play through one morning and a car crunches onto the gravel drive. Like a couple of kids we run for the door, nearly barging into Phillips. His cheeks are sharper, sunken deeper. The collar of his shirt is looser around his neck so I can seek a peek of his ink. The empty left sleeve of his suit jacket is pinned neatly to his side.
“Hello, gentlemen,” he says.
“Jesus. What happened?”
“I ran into Liz again. Don’t worry, she didn’t track me back here. This was weeks ago.”
He leaves it at that, slips between us to go inside. Nilos and I exchange a look before following. Phillips raids the scraps of our kitchen, clucking to himself at the state we’ve left the place in. Two bachelor musicians, one a veteran boozer and the other a budding alcoholic, what’s he expect?
“It’s almost time. I’ve found a perfect venue. Are you two ready?”
“Yeah, we’re ready.” Close enough, anyways. “You still want to do this?”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
“Maybe because she took your fucking arm?”
“I feel fine.”
“What’s the point of getting your sound back if you can’t even play anything?”
“I can whistle,” he snaps. “Play the damned kazoo.” Air shimmers between us like heat waves off a highway. “I’ve come this far. I’m not going to stop now because of a minor setback.” He grabs a jar of pickles and wedges it between his hip and the counter, leaving his hand free to twist off the lid. “She didn’t take my writing hand. That’s all I need.”
“All right, man. All right.”
“I’ve got some edits to the tabs. If you all have been practicing as diligently as you say they should be easy to incorporate.” He fishes a pickle out of the jar, stares at it a moment, then tosses it into the sink. “Pack up and let’s go.”
14
Before we get on the road Phillips makes us put on bulletproof vests. He pulls out one of the plates to show us the runes carved into the ceramic. “With these it'll stop a titan’s fist,” he says.
“What exactly’s the plan?” I say. And does it involve getting in reach of any titan fists?
“Same as before. You play the ritual. The titan gives me back what I want.”
“And then?”
“And then we go our separate ways. Go play in your atrocious band, what do I care?” He hops into the driver’s seat and slams the door shut.
“He did just lose his arm,” I say to Nilos. “Maybe we should cut him some slack.” He lays hard onto the horn. “Just a little.”
Phillips knuckles press against his thin flesh like razors where he grips the wheel. The whole drive I never see him blink. He must, though. Sometimes when I'm not looking. When my attention wanders.
Nilos and I talk back and forth for a little bit, but we're both too deep in our own heads to even fake it. I lean my head against the window and let the stripes lull me to sleep.
Nilos shakes me awake. I excavate crust from my eyes and squint at the dash clock. About an hour till midnight. We’ve been on the road about four hours. Plastic knocks on plastic as Phillips wrestles with the gear in the back. I hop out of the van and stretch till I crack. “Where are we?”
Phillips ignores me. Nilos just points up.
The mesa shoots upwards, five hundred feet of sheer red stone. Some brave bushes and pioneering dwarf trees grasp fissures and narrow shelves worn into the rock. At the bottom there's a brown trailhead sign. Tacked under it is a list of red lettered warnings longer than my arm. The little trail zigs up at a steep angle along the rock face before zagging back, on and on until it hits the top.
“No,” I say, “Hell no.”
Phillips wheels my rig over. “Yes.”
“Can’t we just play it down here and call it good?” I say. “Maybe splash a little extra blood to make up for it?”
“You know it doesn’t work that way. Quit bitching and start climbing. The time’s almost here.”
Nilos rolls his eyes but hefts up one of his bass drums and starts up the trail. After pausing to repent of all the horrible life choices that led me to this, I follow him.
The trail’s not as bad as it looks staring up from the bottom. It’s bad enough though. Sweat streams off me by the time I reach the top. I navigate my stack through the yucca plants and creosote bushes studding the table top. Dead center there’s a clear spot where we set up. Between Nilos and I it takes four trips to haul everything up. Phillips carries what he can, but there’s not much he can do short an arm.
It’s near midnight when we finally get everything set. Phillips paces along the perimeter of our little stone stage, muttering to himself, checking his watch and the position of the Moon every few steps. The gun cases are cracked open and ready to go, just in case our number one fan makes another appearance.
I finish tuning up. Nilos gets the skin on his snare tightened just so. We both feed our instruments some blood. Then we wait for our cue. It’s chilly up here, downright cold when the wind blows. I puff warm air into my hands. Suddenly, he stops, turns, and walks straight towards the generator. Once it's puttering away I flick my rig on. Nilos taps his sticks together one two three....
On four we commence probably the first ever performance of Alhazred’s musical ravings.
All through our days in the cabin, as I played it on an acoustic, I tried to imagine what it would sound like piped through a rig. My imaginings hardly touch it. The sound pouring out my speakers churns my guts. My teeth ache like I just bit into a hunk of dry ice.
A yucca bursts into flames beside me. Blue fire races around its spear blade leaves but they don’t burn. Faces form in the flames
. They scream silently and then disappear inside their own gaping mouths. Eyes coalesce long enough to glare at me then vanish into wisps of glowing smoke. For I don’t know how long I stare at the flames. A tempo change knocks me out of the trance and then I don’t see them anymore, but I still smell ashes in my nose.
We’re nearing the end. The ritual concludes with a wall of chaotic noise. It breaks every rule, written and unwritten, and not in a good way. My fingers crab walk up and down the fretboard. The strings glow angry orange and the stench of burning skin rises off my smoking fingers.
Keep going keep going keep going. Play and play and play even though my fingers want to break off and run for cover, even though my tendons sizzle like dynamite fuses and my fingertips bleed and my finger bones knock hollow on the strings. Almost there. Almost.
Stop.
It just ends. No ring out, no blast of feedback. Just one final mutant chord, then silence.
Fat clouds of steam rise off Nilos’ shoulders. He leans over his dreams, gulping air. Without looking up he raises his hand to give a thumbs up.
The tentacle bursts out of the ground and snares him around the wrist. A second thrashes his kit aside and latches onto his other arm. They bunch and writhe as they wrench him off his stool. The back of his head cracks against the rock.
“Fuck!” Before I can fumble my fatigued fingers back into position for a sorcerous lick, two more tentacles grab my hands. A third seizes my guitar and rips it away. It tightens around the body until the wood cracks and splinters, then tosses the pieces away. Squirming only makes them grip tighter. One yanks so hard my right shoulder pops out. I go down to my knees screaming and cursing and crying.
“Phillips! Help!”
Like a man in a trance, he walks over to Nilos. The tentacles holding Nilos curl tighter, cracking bone. He pulls a rune-scarred shard of cymbal from his pocket, kneels down, and stabs Nilos through the throat.
I yowl half in rage and half in pain. Busted shoulder forgotten, I hurl myself against the tentacles, but they hold me tight.
Phillips withdraws the knife. It drips blood and white noise. Nilos’ feet jerk and twitch faintly. He gurgles. Phillips raises the knife in both hands and plunges it below his sternum. He drags the edge down to Nilos’ waist. I hope Nilos dies right then, so he doesn’t have to experience what happens next. Phillips shrugs off his jacket, unbuttons his shirt cuff with his teeth and drags it up past his elbow, then thrusts his bare hand into the gaping wound in Nilos’ belly.
You don’t keep your sound in your head.
There’s a sound like overturned guitar strings snapping and Phillips staggers back with a fistful of glowing sound. They’re just like the ones the titan took out of me. There are thousands in the bundle, writhing like worms. Phillips swallows them in three gulps. His head snaps back, almost touching his skull to his back. A bone crackling seizure grabs him and he topples onto the stone. It passes within a moment, and when Phillips stands again there’s blood leaking from his eyes and nose and his ears, but he’s smiling. He’s still smiling as he walks towards me, dagger in hand. Somehow he keeps his smile, even as he purses his lips and whistles a happy little tune.
Zip-a-dee-doo-dah indeed.
“I’m not going to say I’m sorry.” Phillips runs his thumb along the edge of the still bloody ritual knife. “I’m not going to say this hurts me. It doesn’t. I’d do this a thousand times more to get this back.” He whistles a few more bars, then switches to a quavering, low pitched warble. What vultures sing when they fly over Styx. Sound swirls out of the ground and coils around his stump, warping and weaving into a flat paddle. He changes the tempo of his song and the spatula end splits into fingers. Sharp trills whittle the rough edges smooth until it’s a white, pulsing mirror to his flesh and blood hand. He tosses the knife back and forth between his hand and the sound prosthetic.
“Thank you, Eddie.” He whistles again, like he’s calling a dog, and the tentacles drag me to my back. He raises the knife. I will myself not to shut my eyes, because watching him as he kills me is all the feeble defiance I’m capable of.
Feedback pulses from my stack. Phillips pauses. I tilt my head back, scraping it against the stone, until I can just barely glimpse my stack, upside down. The grill bulges. Liz bursts out in a blur of leather and spikes and muzzle flash. Phillips barks something and the air in front of him thickens. Blood streams from his mouth. The bullets slow like they're spiraling through water. They fall at his feet.
Liz reloads then rips the whole magazine at Phillips. He tries his shield trick again, but one slips through and smacks into his shoulder. Liz ejects the clip and slaps in another. Phillips spins and sprints for the mesa’s edge. A shot to his back staggers him, but he doesn’t go down. He leaps out into air and plummets out of sight.
Liz skids to a stop at the edge. After a moment of staring down the drop she walks back to me. She pulls the plate out of my vest and pumps shots into it until the pistol locks empty. Even close as she is, the plate doesn’t break, but the tentacles release me and retreat screeching into the ground.
My shoulder is still out of joint so I hold my limp arm with the other as I run over to Nilos. Blood oozes from the horrendous wounds in his chest and throat. It runs through the tiny cracks in rock, finding itself new veins to slip through before it clots in the air. I suck back a sob and wipe my face.
Liz crunches up beside me, places her hand gently on my arm. Not even a count off or dinner and a drink before she jerks it. The pain as my shoulder slides back into the socket screams up and down my arm.
“We need to go. Now.”
Gasping, I grasp my shoulder, trying to knead the pain out.
“He’s wounded but he has the Scape in him now. He doesn't know how to use all that power but he learns fast. He’ll patch his wounds and be back. Probably within the hour. Maybe even faster. Stay here and you’re dead.”
“I can’t just leave him like this.”
“Done it lots of times. Watch. It’s easy.” She spins on her heel and walks away. After a moment, I follow her.
15
The next day or so smears into dull mush. I only remember disjointed snapshots. Riding in Liz’s car. Once I come into myself with my face in my hands and tears flowing hot and no idea how I got there. Jagged snips of Liz's words lodge into my memory:
"The half-titan was the sacrifice. You were just caught up in it.”
“Backmask.”
“Before he finds us.”
I remember her face, chin thrust out, teeth flashing orange in the street lights. High beams from oncoming traffic bounds between the spikes at her shoulders. She keeps her pistol on her lap.
I wake up on a creaky cot beneath a water blistered ceiling. It smells like old paper and mildew, but I don’t see either. The blanket itches so I throw it off. Moving feels like hot whips lashing my back, but I force myself to sit up despite the pain. Purple and green bruises ring both my wrists.
My apartment could fit into this room, if you chopped it up and played Tetris with the pieces. My cot sits against the wall farthest from the door. On the concrete floor in between, there’s heaps of sound gear. Eviscerated PAs bleed wire between bits of color coded insulation and empty guitar string packets. As my eyes adjust to the dim light I pick out the sonomancy wards painted into the corners.
The door opens and a tall, fat dude comes in. He has to duck his head and turn sideways just to fit. His beard goes down to his chest and his blond hair reaches his belt. He’s whistling as he starts sifting through the electronic carrion.
“Stop that,” I say. He jerks up to look at me.
“Ah, shit, sorry. Came in to find one of these.” He holds up a bridge in his pudgy hand. “Get some more sleep.”
“No, wait.” I swing my legs around to the floor and almost pass out when pain leaps up my back.
“Hey, take it easy. You’re pretty beat up. Nine hours solid in the car didn’t help either.”
That long?
&n
bsp; “What’s your name?” I say.
“Jack.”
“Eddie.”
“I know. Liz told me about you. She told me what happened.” His face softens at the edges, goes smooth around his eyes. “I’m sorry, man. Really.”
“Where’s Liz?”
“Gone. Dropped you off early this morning and then took off.”
“She do that often?”
“Drop in and then take off again? All the time. Delivering half dead dudes, not so often.”
I immediately regret chuckling.
“Seriously, take it easy.”
“Where am I?”
“It’s safe here. Don’t worry.”
That’s not what I asked, but I don’t press. Probably he’s got orders not to tell me.
“I mean, what goes on here? What are you doing here?”
“Research and development,” he says, smiling proudly. “You want to see some cool shit? I’m not supposed to let you out but. . ..”
Yeah, it’s not like I’m going anywhere when I have to suppress a groan just to stand up. He lets me go through the door first into a long, rectangular room. Steel shelving filled with plastic tubs runs along the right side. Workbenches, end to end, line the left. Everywhere there’re speakers and instruments in various states of repair. Honestly, it doesn’t look much different from the oversized junk drawer where I was sleeping, but Jack seems proud of it so I don’t say so.
“Welcome to the armory,” he says. “Axes and amps for warriors all over the world.”
“Seriously? You guys are real? I thought Phillips was just trying to keep me scared.”
“We’re real, but we’re nothing like what he told you. We protect people from themselves. Or something.” He shrugs. “Liz can tell you better what it’s all about. Me, I'm in it for the gear. Most people, they just get a tube amp, carve some sigils into it and feed it some blood. That’s kid shit, though. There’s a lot more you can do with gear than just that.”
“Like what?”
“Well, one thing you’ve already seen. That popping out of a speaker trick Liz does? She does it with this little talisman I cooked up. Basically it’s like the transporter in Star Trek, except it breaks you down into sound and then you get spit out somewhere on the other end. It’s not like your physical being entering the Scape but--” He notices I'm glazing over. “Well, you get the idea.”
