She studied odd patterns on the box again, then she looked into the mirror once more, and then said, “You’re a mess.”
She returned the box to the dresser, and the photo to the nightstand. She shoved her belongings under the bed, laid down and fell asleep within seconds.
Sleep gave way to a dream where she walked slowly down the boardwalk. It snowed hard and wildcats walked behind her, dark things sniffing the ground, peering into alleys, but never getting too close; and shadowy people sat on benches.
All the shops were closed but one—Nicky’s Occult shop. He insisted that he didn’t give a crap about the occult, or Spiritualism. He’d studied it, and there’d been money in it, especially in a place like Talbot’s Bay.
In Nicky’s dream shop, vintage books had been set carefully in the display window. Among the rare treasures were magic books from The Secret Order of the Rosicrucian’s, to Astrological Signatures from the Brotherhood of Light, and divination books by Aleister Crowley. Oversized amulets sat scattered on velvet—strange and macabre pieces; silver figures with twisted faces, glowering over bodies lying on altars.
A single candle flickered within that shop. Shadows danced around it, and surreal forms moved in and out of gray and black.
She looked up at the LaNeau, hovering over Talbot’s Bay like a demonic sentry. The gargoyles on its towers leered, and ghosts moved behind windows. Fright filled Diana, her eye throbbed uncontrollably, but something compelled her to enter the shop.
She pushed opened the door. Chimes tinkled. One of Tyler’s songs played somewhere in the background, lyrics about the devil and hell, a song he’d written, but never recorded, one he’d put inside one of his handmade boxes.
The tune grew louder, and blood poured from the ceiling, where dead bodies hung on hooks—women Tyler slept with through the years.
Felicia sat humped over a table where the candle burned. Mirrors surrounded her, and she turned cards over one by one.
"The High Priestess is wicked. There’s blood on her hands. It looks as though she’s coming for you. It’s the eye…that’s what she wants.”
When Felicia finished, she raised her head. The woman’s eyelids had been stitched shut. How did she see the cards?
Felicia laughed, thumped a finger against her forehead. "It’s all inside here."
“Ma, are you back from the dead? Where’s Tyler?”
"I’m just a dream." Felicia laughed again. "Tyler’s traveling through the years, hitching rides with the devil.”
The bodies began to move, slowly manifesting into lions with golden manes and white tigers—and wolves with yellow-green eyes. They moved toward Diana, and their fangs dripped with fresh blood. They leapt, and Felicia fell forward, scattering cards, and tipping over the candle. She sighed when flames began to consume cards, table, and her clothing, then she pointed to the creatures.
"They can’t leave the shop. Go." Felicia tore at her stitches, thread came loose and blood poured from empty eye sockets. "The others—the gypsies—their magic is old; they’ll get you if you don't leave. Fly away."
Diana backed out the door. The beings landed on the threshold, paws reached out, and fire burned—devouring her mother, and the esoteric shop. People, who’d been sitting on benches stood, began to stagger forward. Something vile touched Diana's face, and then she floated upward, high above the shop, towards the LaNeau.
Then Tyler was there, smiling, beckoning her to come closer, flames licking at his feet, consuming him as the music grew louder.
“You’ve gone to Hell, and you’ve become something horrible,” she yelled.
The scene changed. She'd entered a room of mirrors—the ballroom of the LaNeau. A small child sat in the midst of broken glass, and a wildcat’s eyes glimmered in the dark. A beautiful woman sat beside the little girl, dipping a paintbrush into a pan of blood. She turned, looked Diana’s way, and then she said, "There are secrets here."
A siren sounded. Someone spoke in another room. Dream images wavered into dark corners. Time unraveled mystical images, bringing Diana back to reality, to the sound of a cat crying outdoors and Bruno singing in Italian somewhere in the house.
The room smelled of damp, of old things. The sheets were clean, crisp and the mattress firm, but something ancient and threatening mingled with things familiar and comfortable.
The floorboards creaked outside her room, and a soft thump sounded on the door.
She told herself the place was old, and aged houses were abundant with odd noises.
She closed her eyes.
“Diana.” Tyler’s voice eerie—distant.
“Am I going to dream of you again? Please tell me you’re not in hell.” She fluffed her pillow, then pulled covers to her chin.
She thought about a girl that Tyler had carried on with, a woman named Lerma Dalty. A pretty girl he brought to the bay one winter, and a permanent fixture when Tyler toured the East Coast; always with front row seats, lingering backstage when each show ended. There were always groupies and one-night stands, of course, it was part of the lifestyle, but this one was different, a poet who’d been nominated for something or other. She wasn’t an empty-headed, doped out fan peeing her pants because a rock star looked twice at her. Lerma was someone that Tyler might fall for—a threat, and in her presence, he became lighthearted, wrote some of the most powerful lyrics he'd penned in years.
Diana spent hours brooding over the reasons why she couldn’t inspire Tyler in that way. She felt as though she’d lost her looks and sex appeal. It wasn’t enough that photographers loved to capture her image as much as they did Tyler’s. Later, published photos bore captions with flattering statements such as The Gorgeous Diana Bane, or The Hottest Rock Wife Today. In the end, Tyler went elsewhere for love at times. Diana began to believe that magazines, cameras, and fans couldn’t see beneath layers of imperfection as Tyler did.
"Things are more complicated than you know.” Nicky once told her, when she questioned him about Lerma, during a cab ride down Fifth Avenue, and he didn’t look at her as the taxi cut in and out of side streets, fled through yellow lights and exited onto the FDR.
“Complicated? Why do you condone his shit? It’s like you’re throwing me under the bus.”
“You made the chose to marry him, and you’ve got to live with that shit.” Nicky’s words were sharp and hurtful. “If you want to leave him, then leave him. We’ve all got free will, but I think the attention, the limelight has you addicted, and that’s a tradeoff…life is filled with them.”
And she went on; knowing Tyler made love to Lerma. Diana hoped that Tyler would get tired of the poet, like he always did, and the affair ended, but not in the usual way.
Lerma got murdered one night in her hotel room on Fifth and Twenty-Fifth. Someone cut her throat. Tyler had been questioned extensively, with detectives going to their Tribeca apartment, and asking over and over, “What was your relationship with Lerma Dalty?”
“She was a groupie, and I had some weak moments with her,” Tyler had answered, throwing his hands up, indicating that there was nothing more to tell them. And in the end, infidelity was Tyler’s only sin—one that hurt Diana more than a killer’s blade—causing her to cry uncontrollably, spending countless hours locked in a darkened bedroom.
Now she drifted away, through memory, through years and months gone by. She remembered Lerma smiling from her front row seat at Madison Square Garden, and Tyler seeming to sing only to her, and there’d been a concert in Boston where Lerma waited in a white limousine by the stage door. A day later he wrote the song now filling her head, as she moved through a dreamscape, where she walked along the beach, and sea creatures stood on the shore, their tentacles reaching out for her.
"Let me take you to your deathbed. Let me rock you through time with my blood-stained blade…"
She opened her eyes, but something was off. The bedroom walls slanted and thick mist moved over the floorboards. Someone was there with her, a shadow hovering over her, and then
floating to the edge of the bed.
“Diana, you always knew me better than anybody.”
Diana gasped, and then realized it had to be another dream, because Tyler sat at the foot of that bed. He hummed tenderly. A soft mist surrounded him, and dark, undefinable shapes danced behind him.
Diana sat up, shivered when he reached for her, and then stroked her shoulder gently with his fingertips.
“Did you call me before? Earlier when the floorboards creaked?” Diana rubbed her right eye. Speckles of blue and orange twirled around Tyler.
“Yeah, it was me. I wrote some lyrics, wanted you to hear them.” He looked to the window, thought for a moment, and then ran his fingers through his hair.
“New lyrics? The dead write songs?” She imagined him wandering the bay, words and music forming in his head; and maybe he'd waited until the song had been perfect before he went to her.
“I’m not dead now. Not this minute.” He tipped his head to the side. His face was pale, his lips parched, tinged with blue.
He stood, and then began to pace, something he did when thoughts weighed heavily on his mind. He seemed to float, and his hair lifted off his shoulders as though he walked down the boardwalk on a windy day. “Things are getting down and dirty, babe. I didn’t know what I was getting us into.”
She began to speak, knowing he wouldn't allow her to finish her thought. “What’s going on? Bruno—I think they—”
“Oh, Bruno. Did you ever listen to the things he says? Do you see him for what he really is?"
"What is he?"
"We made a deal; and it’s just begun.” He shook his head. “There’s a hole in time, a way to come back. There are wonderful things—and hellish things. I can’t stick around, not like the others. God has forsaken me for what I’ve done, never gave me the chance to make things right.”
Loss filled Diana. The hurt was more unbearable than ever. Tyler had been robbed of his life. She’d loved him. She forgave him for the shit he’d done long ago. She wanted him alive again. “I miss you.” She sobbed.
Something dark and sinewy scurried in the foreground. Walls expanded, and strange faces wavered within cracks.
“It’s a dream I made for you.” He smiled. His eyes used to light up when he smiled, but now they remained sad.
“You were always gone, traveling to some mysterious place, loving other people. I—”
He held a finger to his lips, and then shook his head slowly back and forth. “I only loved you. I traveled through time to save you—to save us—to try and change things.”
“Did you kill people? Did you meet the devil like you wrote in your song lyrics?”
"We've all meet the damn devil." Tyler began to pace again. His gaze flickered to the window. “Dawn is coming. Time is running out for me here.”
“Sit here…just for a while?” She patted the bed sheet, watched him move closer, like a dark angel.
He sat next to her. He smelled of sweat, of freshly dug dirt and he spoke with a spectral voice when he said, “We rowed a flimsy boat down a river, deep in the Bayou. On and on we went through dense overgrown wood. Things, part-animal, part-human watched us from the shore.”
“What were they? I've seen things like that in dreams—in other places. I've seen them here.” She flinched when something scraped at the window.
Tyler waved his hand, the scratching stopped. “Oh, they're all around us. Things we created with that book.”
“When did this happen?"
“I'm not sure. Everything is mixed up, out of sync.” He shrugged, then said, “That woman taught me how to make the boxes. The soul catchers—”
“You slept with her…with all of them." Once more images formed in Diana's head, and then quickly vanished.
“I was addicted to sex, to a lot of shit, and everything has a price.” Tyler waved his hands in front of her. His nails were long, curled like claws. For a moment his face wavered and something half-wolf and half-man stared back at her. The image faded. Tyler looked to the clock on the nightstand. "Tick, tock. How quickly it passes.” He smiled slowly.
Diana let out a yelp when a snake spiraled from the floor, and then wrapped itself around Tyler’s arm.
“Are you in the future or the past now?” She shivered.
Tyler nodded. “Past, present, future—it’s all the same once you learn its tricks, and we all tell the same stories over and over, because everything is happening at once, and it’s already happened…”
His shirt was torn, bloody, with burn marks where bullets had penetrated. He ripped the edge of it, threw fabric and thread into the air. It floated like a wounded bird to Diana’s pillow. “I’m sorry—so fucking sorry,” he whispered.
Mist grew thicker, concealing everything in the room but Tyler.
“This is some messed up dream.” Diana rubbed her right eye.
Tyler reached inside his pocket, slipped out a small hand mirror. He held it to her face.
Diana stared into the looking glass, and then screamed when she saw a girl’s body lying on a bed. Someone had carved symbols into her chest and limbs—infinity, the moon and glyphs of the Zodiac. The girl’s throat had been cut, her heart carved out.
“Did you do this?” Diana grabbed the mirror, and then tossed it. Mist and shadows swallowed it up.
“So many have done the same, killed because the dark side taunted, tempted…because they wanted fame; peeling away layers of the soul, getting to the core of it all.” Tyler kissed her forehead. “Stop crying, it can’t be helped.” He smiled, and then reached over. He kissed her on the lips now, and held her arm tight; his nails digging into her skin.
“I want to show you how it started. Close your eyes.”
She obeyed, felt shadows overtake her, and heard buzzing in her head. Images of Tyler and Nicky manifested slowly. They were at the LaNeau, in a bedroom overlooking the town. Blood streamed from a bed, onto the floor. A woman lay on a bed. Throat slit, and her heart on a window ledge.
“Things that have passed,” Tyler whispered. “These are things that never should have been. Look and listen to what went down. It’s part of the puzzle of time.” She felt Tyler’s hand touch her cheek, and then lay still as the scene dissipated. Then only terror remained—and only the clock's ticking sounded.
15.
Diana downed Naratriptan, and then made her way to the first floor. Her head throbbed, and she hoped that the drugs would do the trick. Shadows flickered across the walls and an unpleasant acrid smell filled her nostrils. She walked slowly, holding onto tables and bookcases to keep her balance.
The fire crackled, a bottle of whisky lay on the floor, and Bruno slept on the couch, an empty bottle of Jack on the floor, his firearm strapped to his chest.
She wondered how much Tyler had confided in Bruno. How much did he know about the calls, and meetings Tyler had been engaged in before his death?
Bruno, young, street wise, yet his relentless superstitious babblings proved how unsophisticated he could be. Albeit ruggedly handsome, well-built and the quiet somber type, but there were things beneath the surface—there always were. Diana guessed underneath Bruno's unrefined persona lurked someone wise beyond his apparent years; a man who'd experienced hardship and regret. Bruno remained guarded most times, as though he harbored something ominous, and he was all she had.
“Bruno?” she called out as white orbs fell from the ceiling and a pair of yellow eyes glared at her from a dark corner. Her right eye twitched uncontrollably, and then darkness momentarily cloaked her.
“Diana?” Bruno stood before her, shirttail hanging, body swaying as Jack Daniels apparently pulsed through his veins. “Everything all right?”
Her face flushed. “I thought I heard something,” she said quickly. “My head…I took some pills.”
“I wanted to make sure you were all right. Do you need me to help you back upstairs?”
“No, thanks, it’ll be all right now.”
He lowered his head. “Call me if you
need anything.” He ran a hand over his gun, turned away, and then said, “Goodnight.”
“Night.”
With night shadows lapping at his feet, Bruno seemed to glide. Specks of light from the hall reflected on stained glass windows, forming a halo around his head; and when he moved into shadow, pitch-black horns seemed to appear for an instant, but dissipated when he passed beneath a stairwell lantern. Now his hair shined, and his broad shoulders, sinewy arms and thin waist became evident in the illumination.
He is a beautiful young man, Diana thought.
She thought back to when she was younger—before Tyler got out of prison. She’d been attracted to a young local painter. He was handsome, brilliant and very confident, seeming somewhat unobtainable. Much to Nicky’s chagrin, she pursued the artist, showing up at his studio, two or three times a week, making sure she went to all his openings. It went on for almost a year, until one evening, at a small art show off the boardwalk, he asked her to have coffee with him.
He proved to be a passionate lover. They were together for six months. Slowly she learned that an overly sensitive guy existed behind his macho façade, someone needy and terrified of being alone. So, she ended the relationship and moved on.
Diana crossed her arms and leaned against the wall, thinking about Tyler. She’d never grown tired of him, even after he’d fallen in love with her, but he’d always been unobtainable in a sense, never totally belonging to her. The women, the fans and his music tore him away from her. Things, secret and dark, had power over him as well, but her own background had been shrouded with secrets and rumors of violence and thievery—she was Nicky Bernardo's daughter.
She sighed, wondering what it would have been like if Tyler had been devoid of fame. Would they have lasted as long as they did?
She made her way back up the stairs, and then paused for a moment outside her room. Then something, perhaps a mouse, scurried across the floor, distracting her.
“Damn Tyler.”
Now a soft whistle sounded from her bedroom. She pressed her hand against the door, listened for moment, and then moved away.
City at the Edge of the Earth Page 7
