by Jim Fusilli
“Shirley,” he muttered.
She always had a body to make a sissy hard and she was rockin’ it in a lavender dress with a slit up her shapely thigh. She sat before his laptop, swiveling toward him on the chair’s ball bearings.
“I must be trippin’,” he said. After the stroke four years ago, these days he barely had imbibed any booze or what they called controlled substances. Okay, sure, there was a blast of Macallan 25 he’d had last Christmas, alone, but it was only one drink and that was months ago.
“Maybe I’m your subconscious talking to you, baby,” she said. King crossed those magnificent legs. “Maybe the mother ship beamed you up and deposited you in the cosmic slop you could be swimming in, or could be I’m the constipation you got sneaking that bacon cheeseburger yesterday.”
He grinned. “I’m weak.”
“That was your excuse when I caught you wiggling your finger in Jeanie on the tour bus.”
“Yeah,” he agreed.
She smiled sweetly, crooking a finger at him. “Come here.”
He did, feeling more spryness in his steps than in some time. Like when he was a youngster staying ahead of the Five-O and the competition. He’d amassed enough slangin’ rock to finance dubbing his first effort, a cassette tape of his songs he sold out of the trunk of his hoopty and at swap meets.
She turned back to his laptop and after a few taps, brought up the clips from Shaderoc the Soul Shaker. This was a new version of the Stagolee inspired, “super bad” brother persona created by a comedian friend of Gibson’s named Renaldo Redd. Redd had parlayed the character into a couple of low budget actioners in the eighties—Shaderoc vs. Dr. Funkenstein and Shaderoc: Seekers of the Pimp Cane. Both had done well at the box office. Enough so that Redd had been preparing a third outing, the bigger budget Shaolin Shaderoc. But he died of a heart attack as he panted while peeling off the panties of a percussionist named Sheila Ramirez.
Even before Redd’s body was interned at Inglewood Cemetery, complete with six Amazon honeys in gold hot pants and matching top hats as honorary dancing pallbearers, Gibson had made his bid for the character. He’d recalled coming up with the Shaderoc moniker as he and Redd drove up the coast one day, passing a bottle of Jack back and forth while Redd told him about his idea. But through various legal and who-knew-what-all-else twists and turns, Ramirez eventually secured the rights to the character.
“Wasn’t there a Shaderoc graphic novel out in the early oughts?” the King apparition said. They both watched the actor playing Shaderoc as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon-like, he sailed through the air delivering a devastating kung fu kick to three bad-guy ninjas, scattering them like bowling pins.
“There was. There was also a talk of a limited series on cable but that didn’t happen. Until . . .”
“Until Thomlinson.”
She meant the cult director/writer Nic Thomlinson known for giving grindhouse the A-picture treatment. He worked out the rights with Ramirez and the flick was scheduled to drop on Netflix. Going full bore on the retro vibe, he brought Gibson out of semi-retirement to do the soundtrack.
“But it’s not flowing like it used to, huh, Church? Like the notes were singing their song in your head.”
“I felt it when I worked out the title song and recorded with Marie and Sylvia,” he answered, the two old friends of both of them.
“Meaning they knew where to fill in where you left holes.”
“True,” he admitted. For the big love scene between Shaderoc and Xtal, the Queen of the Aztecs, he’d scrapped the dopey lyrics he’d written and went with an instrumental version, which had come out pretty good he’d concluded. But since then, he was running on fumes and Thomlinson and the suits would know it.
“I’ve already pushed back the deadline,” he said, knowing such increased expectations or dampened them in some quarters.
Elbows on the desk, King leaned forward, her fingers with their gold twinkling nails pressed before her face as she looped the scene again. This time with the lackluster track Gibson had been listening to underneath. “Speaking of fingers, stud, yours still work, right?”
“About the only damn thing that does.”
“Figures. Get your guitar.”
He shrugged and, turning, reached for his Fender Telecaster. He pulled a stool close and turned on the amp as King swung the mics attached to adjustable arms into position. She smelled good, Gibson noted as he plucked the strings while he tuned it. How could a ghost have a scent? But then again, how the hell did a ghost have solid form?
If a gun was pressed to Gibson’s head, later he couldn’t recount how it all went down. How Shirley King dusted off the Yamaha keyboard in the closet and played the thing like when he first heard her in that night spot on Florence in the ’hood. He worked his fingers and thumbs on the strings like he too was in his twenties again, standing before thousands in the Sports Arena, his licks moving through them like current. He was sweating and rasping the songs that used to make the honeys swoon and the men bop their heads. The music like a cocoon around him as he and his band, Rhythm Pulse, did their thing and there was no one who could touch them.
Head back, the Telecaster a blood-pumping part of his body, was a thing alive that didn’t make music, but rather the music channeled through it from the Source. He was plugged in and the crowd was with him. Looking across the sea of faces he saw his ex-manager Sandy Igar. Smiling. Into it. What the hell . . . ? Head back in the gloom, Gibson’s eyes came open.
“About time, ya goddamn lazy bastard.”
Igar was standing over him in Haggar flared slacks, that porno-actor mustache and those two-tone aviator shades—a look he sported well past its prime.
“Dreaming about pussy your sorry self ain’t never gonna get you can do any time. Right now we got to lay down some sound, son.”
With effort, given his left leg was the one with the strength, he sat up on the couch in his studio. “I’m in purgatory, is that it? I have to earn my way out by completing this soundtrack?” The real Igar was still alive but had been ensconced, some said entombed, in his Bel Air mansion for years. He was said to be suffering from a short list of long-suffering ailments.
The fit Igar before him had his hands on his hips like an NFL coach judging his new prospect, a sour look on his face. “Look, crip, you gonna sit there and wallow in self-pity or you going to earn?”
“Carrot and stick I see,” Gibson muttered, slipping on his crutch. He must have sued Igar at least three times during his music career. “Or better,” he huffed, getting to his feet. “That stick up your ass.”
“My job is not to stroke your fragile ego,” Igar began. “That’s what groupies and your hangers-on are for.”
“‘My job is to get the best out of you, and that takes sweat and blood,’” Gibson finished. He knew all the Igarisms. The two settled in, trading insults and verbal jabs back and forth, as Gibson reworked two other tracks. As had happened to him in the past, he was annoyed and envious that Igar knew his shit only too well. He couldn’t sight read like Gibson and at best could keep time banging a cowbell, but the sumabitch knew how to pace, where to emphasize this riff over that one, what to bring up and what to bring down. More in the role of engineer than musician, Gibson worked the mixing board cutting and remixing tracks at Igar’s direction.
“I’m going to grow tulips out of the shit you spread,” Igar said.
“I’m’a put my two lips on ya mama tonight,” Gibson replied, but followed the other man’s cue.
Finally, as dawn approached, they took stock. “Okay, that’s not too bad,” the Igar simulacrum allowed, sitting on the stool, his ear turned toward the playback monitor speakers.
A spent Gibson was back sitting on the couch. “It’s great. The best I’ve done in I don’t know how long.” He said in a whispery tone as if his vocal chords were made of some gossamer material.
Igar turned his head toward him. It was a stuttering, mechanical motion, as if there were gears in his neck and
they slipped slightly with the effort. He removed his glasses revealing all-white eyes with red glowing outlines. This did not rattle Gibson.
“About my end,” the Igar thing said.
“I got your end, bitch.” Gibson grabbed his crotch, managing a chuckle.
Igar returned the insult but Gibson’s attention was on a framed original artwork print on a near wall. It was the cover for his Dominoes with Selassie album. The more he stared the more he was drawn into the scene—that of a man and woman warrior back to back with futuristic-looking weapons in their hands battling half-monster-reptile and half-machine creatures. He blinked, and it was if he were floating away.
“About time you go here, brother man.”
Gibson blinked again. Before him was Shaderoc the Deifier, the Demolisher, the Defender, the Soul Shaker. He was a big cat as Gibson had always imagined him. Six four or five and built like Mike Strahan back when or J. J. Watt now.
“Sheeet,” he muttered.
Shaderoc wasn’t real. That is, Gibson looked down at his hands and they looked like . . . his hands. But this construct before him was hyper-idealized, like a live pencil drawing by comic book artist Jack Kirby, inked with fluidity by Gil Kane and colored in a combination of a bold primary palette.
“We’ve got our back up against it, Church,” said Shaderoc in his, of course, bass voice. He was hefting a retro kind of space rifle like what Dr. Funkenstein’s minions used in that movie. The weapon looked like it was made of tin and plastic. In a scabbard attached to his belt was a sword.
Gibson realized they were in a good-sized cave and a group of people were crowded in here too. There was the fine muscled sister from the album cover in a kind of modified tiger-skin bikini with breechcloth, heavy gravity boots slinging a large, curved knife weapon like the Klingon’s bat’leth. There was Miles Davis in his Kind of Blue phase, sharp in a sharkskin suit, shades, and wielding a onyx samurai sword, the blade phasing in and out of solidity. Near him was a hunched over Chet Baker who worked the valves of his horn and out of the music end swirled color tendrils that snapped as they lashed and licked the thick air. Big Mama Thornton was in a svelte aquamarine space suit while she expertly loaded a magazine into a World War II-era Thompson submachine gun. Like a character in a Sam Fuller movie, she rolled the dead cigar stump around in her mouth.
“Are you ready?” Shaderoc asked Gibson.
Given he was unarmed and unprepared, he said, “What can I do?”
Shaderoc looked bemused. “Bring it home, baby, bring it home.”
“I want you bad,” the wet-dream woman said as she threw her body roughly against Shaderoc’s. She kissed him with lustful ferocity as he kneaded a handful of her incredible backside.
Looking away, Gibson was handed his Telecaster by Stevie Ray Vaughan. Charlie Christian sparked a cheroot behind him. Gibson heard a screech and turning around, flying into the cave were musical notes the size of greyhounds. They undulated as they spread about, the strains of Muzak and smooth jazz. Miles was visibly shaken but rallied as an F note rushed at him, a jaw full of razor-like teeth opening in the note head. Those teeth closed in on Miles’s face but he executed a spinning move, his sword cleanly severing the note head from the stem.
“Take that, motherfuckah,” he rasped.
All about him, Shaderoc, the Tiger Woman and the musicians did battle against the invading notes. Invaders and defenders experienced losses. A ravenous note dove for him and a panicked Gibson strumming his axe on reflex. To his surprise, the sonic waves the guitar released burst the demon note into tiny pieces. A hand clamped on his shoulder. It was Shaderoc.
“With me,” the big man said, already in motion.
Down a dark tributary to the cave they went. Gibson still was on his crutch, but he somehow kept up with Shaderoc’s long strides. From up ahead in the half-light came a blast of sound that sent Gibson onto his back and Shaderoc to his knees. Growling, venal notes swarmed about them, their teeth lunging for them and a jumble of off-key singing assailing their ears.
Gibson had managed to sit up but he felt nauseous.
“Come on, follow me, Church.” Shaderoc was back on his feet, aiming and firing his rifle, disrupting some of the notes that died screaming. More of them filled the tunnel. The soul shaker went prone and started belly crawling forward. Gibson imitated him, using his arms to propel himself forward. He was glad he’d been diligent in his workouts.
“We got to get to the source,” Shaderoc said over the cacophony.
Apparently they were heading toward the origination point of the attacking notes. They began to travel down an incline and soon found themselves sliding through dirt and loose rocks into another chamber.
“Shit,” Gibson swore as they came to a halt.
Before them was a giant pulsing entity, sort of like a gigantic cocoon or hive from which knobby, exoskeleton-like shell material protruded. There were also thousands of undulating feelers wiggling from the mass. The hive construct was lit from within and the demon notes squirted into life from the ends of the feelers. A rhythmic drone beat pounded at their bodies as well. Shaderoc crawled over to Gibson.
“We got one chance,” he said. “I’m going to rip open a seam in that mutha and in that moment she’ll be vulnerable.
“Shaderoc, I—”
“No, this is how it must be. I told you, only you can bring it home.”
Before he could object again, the big man was up and seeking handholds invisible to normal men, scaling the rock wall. Hundreds, thousands of notes swirled about him. He unlimbered his rifle strapped across his back and blasted the notes to hell. Others he wrung their stems in his bare hands. But they were overwhelming him, their racket and jagged teeth opening countless wounds and gashes on his mighty body. His clothing was ripped to shreds and his rifle had been torn away from his hands. But Shaderoc kept on.
Then in position, he looked over his shoulder at Gibson and winked. The notes battering him, he unsheathed his sword, but it wasn’t a saber. It was the fabled pimp cane and was resplendent, made of dark burnished wood with a jeweled head in the image of a pitbull’s skull. He jumped from the small ledge he’d gained.
The pimp cane was arched high over his head, held in both hands as he yelled “Die, nasty mothersucker, die.” Shaderoc came down at the Hive Mother, his body engulfed in her musical killer note children.
But the beasts couldn’t halt Shaderoc’s momentum. Out blazed a laser blade from the end of the cane, crackling with cosmic gravitas. The white-hot beam opened a deep gash in the rutted hide. “Now, man, now,” he yelled as the notes engulfed him, stilling his words forever as he fell away.
“Shaderoc,” Gibson yelled. Getting upright, the fizz and pop like toxic carbonated water flooded his chest again. But he rallied and his fingers worked the strings feverishly, his thumb thumping a ferocious funk attack. His fingertips bled, sweat blinded his eyes. He sent his sound spears at the opening even as it healed itself shut. The wound closed, most of his sonic javelins bouncing away impotently. But hadn’t one or two gotten through? Hadn’t he been able to pull it off? Agonizing moments crawled by and Gibson could see no change as the notes zoomed around his body like a cyclone, those hungry teeth nipping at and sampling his flesh.
But as he sunk down, as his consciousness left his torn body, even as he watched his arm ripped off and eaten, the hive burned brighter from within. Its pulsations increased and as if too much water was being streamed into a balloon, its sides stretched beyond tolerance and burst. In one collective earsplitting wail, the notes died. Some of their bodies slammed into each other, the cavern walls, or simply fell to the earth, writhing in their death agonies.
One-armed, Gibson, his stub miraculously cauterized, crawled to Shaderoc. His form was getting soft, his hard distinct Kirby lines dissolving. In his outstretched hand with the squared-off fingers was a squarish block with miniature tubes and knobs all over the surface of it—a gadget straight out of the Fantastic Four.
“Take
it, you earned it.”
“What?” he stammered.
“Make me proud,” Shaderoc said and died.
Gibson rolled onto his back. He held tightly onto the gizmo, which was warm and hummed in his hand. Overhead was black, yet in that void he could see the distant twinkling stars. The dark vault got lighter and lighter, Gibson’s face placid in satisfaction.
“Oh, jeez, hey, Mom, Dad, better come here.”
“What is it, Cory?” called the middle-schooler’s father anxiously.
“Is he dead?” said Cory, not sure what he should feel.
“Tell your mom to call 911, okay, buddy?” Nic Thomlinson bent down to the body splayed across his doorstep. “Tell them we need an ambulance.” He felt for a pulse in Church Gibson’s neck but could detect none. Looking about for a clue as to how long the musician might have been out here, Thomlinson saw something sticking out of the dead man’s fist. He knew from those Forensic Squad episodes he helmed a decade ago he shouldn’t remove evidence but he did. It was a thumb drive.
“Huh,” he said, pocketing the item.
SEVEN MONTHS LATER, THE SOUNDTRACK album of Shaderoc the Soul Shaker would be the number one download for three weeks running. Church Gibson would be nominated for a posthumous Oscar, and there was interest in a biopic about him. While different people had their favorite track from the film, the complete score on the thumb drive recovered from his stiff fist, was a track of what was presumed Gibson yelling “Shaderoc” over and over, with a haunting, evocative guitar instrumental underneath. Thomlinson used it on the ending credits.
THE LONG BLACK VEIL
BY VAL McDERMID
JESS TURNED FOURTEEN TODAY. WITH every passing year, she looks more like her mother. And it pierces me to the heart. When I stopped by her room this evening, I asked if her birthday awakened memories of her mother. She shook her head, leaning forward so her long blond hair curtained her face, cutting us off from each other. “Ruth, you’re the one I think of when people say ‘mother’ to me,” she mumbled.
