SS 04: Devil Said Bang: A Sandman Slim Novel

by Richard Kadrey

  Nice people are fucking weird.

  Carlos is sitting up in a plastic chair in the clinic reception area. His arm and shoulder are still bandaged and smell of aromatic oils and potions.

  I sit down next to him.

  “Hey, man. I’m really sorry to get you mixed up in my shit.”

  He laughs, patting his pockets.

  “When haven’t I been mixed up in your shit? I met you on the day you got back from Hell, remember?”

  “I guess so.”

  “Yes so. I knew something like this could happen. It’s called a calculated risk. And now it’s happened and I’m walking away. It’s like I got a measles shot. I’m immunized. Nothing bad will ever happen to me again.”

  “I’m not sure it works like that.”

  “Of course it does.”

  He gives up patting his pockets.

  “You have any cigarettes? I’m dying for one. No pun intended.”

  “I thought you didn’t smoke.”

  “Only after surgery.”

  “Sorry, but I gave my last one to a guy who sold his soul to the Devil.”

  He sits up in his chair.

  “I guess there’s some things worse than getting shot.”

  “Not many. Anyway, I hear the guy is such a fuckup he’s getting his soul back. Even the Devil doesn’t want it.”

  “I must have missed that day at Catholic school. The nuns never told us that being a dumb-ass was a weapon against the Devil.”

  “Now you know.”

  He leans forward, propping his good elbow on his knees.

  “Don’t apologize for any of this. Remember when you and your pretty squeeze killed all those zombies in the bar? Business doubled after that. With you back and ninjas going Wild West, I’m going to make a fortune.”

  “As long as no one shoots the jukebox.”

  “I’ll kill any cocksucker that touches my jukebox.”

  “You’ve got someone to take you home?”

  “My brother-in-law is going to give me a ride.”

  “You never told me you were married.”

  “I’m not. He’s really my ex-brother-in-law but I like him a lot better than my ex-wife.”

  I get up and look around for Allegra.

  “You take care yourself. Heal up before you reopen the bar.”

  “I’m going to make so much money I’ll buy a Cadillac to drive me to my Lexus and drive that to my other Cadillac to drive to work.”

  “I’ll catch you later, man.”

  “Later.”

  Candy disappeared into the back of the clinic right when we got here, but Allegra is putting things away in the treatment room.

  “Welcome home. Candy says you two had an adventure today.”

  “The other guys had an adventure. We had a car wreck.”

  “And walked away with a couple of scratches. I’m jealous. Remember that time you took me with you to meet the dead man Johnny Thunders? I miss that kind of thing.”

  “Maybe you should train some people to take a few of your shifts.”

  “I am. You met Fairuza, the sweet Ludere, the other day. She’s my chief apprentice.”

  “Cool. I’ll drag you and Vidocq along when the right kind of craziness comes up.”

  She smiles and wraps two chunks of what look like pearly rocks in dark blue silk. Divine-light glass from the beginning of time. God broke a star and dropped the glass to Earth. One of his original fuckups. It wasn’t all bad. It turns out it heals a lot of wounds. Doc Kinski once used it on Allegra.

  “You don’t know anything about the other Stark, do you? You’re a doctor. Maybe he’d tell you something he wouldn’t tell other people.”

  “No. Sorry. He never told me anything.”

  “Have you been getting some stabbings in here?”

  “Are you talking about the girl? No. No stabbings. From what I hear, if she cuts you, you die. I heal people. She kills. There’s no point in me treating the dead.”

  Candy comes in and crooks her thumb over her shoulder.

  “Can I talk to you a minute?”

  “Sure.”

  We walk outside into the cool, crisp L.A. afternoon. The sky looks a little strange. Clouds are rolling in fast and it’s like the light is strobing behind them.

  “I have to take a rain check on your suite. Rinko got a taste of blood last night and now she’s kind of in withdrawal. I need to take her home.”

  “I understand.”

  “Sorry. I keep seeing you and running off.”

  I shrug.

  “Maybe I deserve it. I ran out first. Anyway, you have to do the right thing by your friend.”

  “Doing the right thing usually sucks.”

  “Almost always.”

  She kisses me and goes back inside. Through the glass I see her giving Rinko a potion and leading her into the treatment room.

  There’s another reflection in the glass. A ghost.

  I turn and the little girl is standing there. Frilly blue party dress and a knife as big as her leg. She stares at me like I’m a rat on her birthday cake.

  “Who are you?” I ask.

  She doesn’t say anything.

  “What the hell is wrong with you? Why are you killing people? You pissed off? Hungry?”

  Still nothing.

  I take a step toward her. She takes one back. I take another. There’s an earth tremor, like a small earthquake. I look down at my feet. When I look up again, the girl is gone. I walk out to where she was standing. Then to the far wall. I get on my knees to look under all the vehicles. The ground gives way and I land flat on my back. I was run over by a pickup truck about thirty minutes ago. It hurt. Falling six feet onto a sore back hurts more. I lie in the fresh dirt, trying to catch my breath.

  “Hi, Stark.”

  The voice is breathy. Barely a whisper and hard to hear over the traffic.

  I’m lying in a hole as deep as a grave. There’s another hole like a tunnel leading off into the dark. The voice is coming from there.

  “What is this?”

  A desiccated corpse, gray parchment skin stretched like tissue paper over brittle bones, sticks its head out of the hole like a turtle and draws it back in when the light hits it.

  “Don’t you recognize me?” says the corpse.

  “You’re a fucking skeleton. How am I supposed to recognize you?”

  “Once upon a time you wanted to kill me. Then you wanted to save me. You didn’t do either. You let Parker murder me.”

  “Cherry? Is that you?”

  Cherry Moon was a member of my old Magic Circle. One of the ones who stood by and let Mason send me to Hell. For staying out of the way, Mason gave her the gift of youth. Creepy youth. Candy is into Japanese cartoons but Cherry Moon wanted to be a cartoon. A forever-prepubescent Sailor Moon love doll in a school uniform. Do you know what it’s like to get hit on by a thirty-five-year-old woman who looks like she’s twelve? No. You don’t. It’s strange and unpleasant on so many levels I can’t begin to count them.

  “Was that you who dropped me into a hole in Bamboo House?”

  “Do you get followed around by a lot of tunneling dead girls?”

  “You saved me from getting shot.”

  “Yes. You owe me. You didn’t save me when I was alive. I want you to save me now.”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “Kill the littl
e girl.”

  When I first saw her, I thought Cherry was a ghost cursed to stay on Earth and the hole was just a ghost projection from her mind. Seeing her skeleton crammed into the narrow tunnel, I see I was wrong. Cherry did this to herself.

  “Is the girl hurting you?”

  “She’s killing us. All the other ghosts and spirits in L.A. When she isn’t killing you, she hides with us in the Tenebrae. Kills us like she kills the living and we don’t know why.”

  When Cherry died, she was so afraid of moving on that she made herself into a jabber. Jabbers are a kind of ghost so traumatized by death that they can’t even haunt people or places like normal ghosts. They stick close to their bodies. Literally haunt their own corpses and tunnel in them from place to place. They won’t come out of the ground because their bodies are fragile and they’re afraid of being mistaken for zombies. Jabbers are about the most pathetic thing in the world.

  “I don’t know what you want me to do. I can’t get near the kid.”

  “You travel between worlds. I saw you come here from Hell. Come into the Tenebrae and stop her.”

  “I don’t know how.”

  “Find out.”

  I get nearer the hole. Cherry doesn’t back away this time. I put out my hand. Slowly she creeps her hand forward until our fingertips are just touching. I was right. She’s real. A ghost hiding in her own bones.

  “Jesus, Cherry, all you have to do is let go. Get out of this body. Get out of the ghost realm. Go on to wherever it is you’re supposed to go.”

  “No!” she says. “Do you think Heaven is waiting for me with open arms? We both know where I’m going, and as long as these bones hold together, I’m staying right here.”

  “I can help you when you get to Hell. Like you said, I couldn’t save you when you were alive. Maybe I can help now that you’re dead. But you have to let go.”

  She crawls closer to the tunnel opening. I can see her lipless smile and eye sockets full of dirt and dry plant roots. I want to look away but I don’t.

  “Where do you stay when you’re not stalking me?”

  “I moved into an old cemetery in a field of old cemeteries. It’s the strangest place. Full of aetheric ghosts and physical ghosts like me.”

  She makes a sound that’s almost like a laugh.

  “There’s practically a traffic jam with us tunnelers. We have to be careful digging or we can fall into each other’s chambers.”

  “What do you mean by a field of cemeteries? What the hell is that?”

  “It’s like a cemetery for cemeteries. Or a garden where some kind soul has planted the dead and where we live. Go ask Teddy Osterberg. He’s the one who collects the cemeteries. I’m just one of the flowers in his garden.”

  “So the little girl is killing Sub Rosas, civilians, and now ghosts. She tried to kill the other Stark, so she’s tried to kill an angel. Do you know anything about him?”

  “Other Stark? He’s prettier than you. Like you in the olden days. Now you’re a mess. A girl likes a few scars. They give a man character. But you don’t have a shot with me anymore, darling.”

  “Does anyone call the Tenebrae Blue Heaven?”

  “I’m afraid we’re plain old Tenebrae. Tell me you’ll help us.”

  I reach into my pockets for a Malediction and remember I gave my last one away. Anyway, Cherry wouldn’t want me smoking. Dried-out corpses are perfect kindling.

  “If Teddy Osterberg collects the dead, he could be connected to the girl and I know the girl is connected to Saint James. I’ll check him out. Maybe I can help both of us.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Don’t get too choked up. I’m mostly doing this for me. If I can get to King Cairo first, I’m going after him. I’m going to hurt him dead. I’m tired of people trying to kill me. Downtown. Up here. It’s getting aggravating.”

  She makes the whispering sound that might be a laugh.

  “You know what they say. All the birds come home to roost. The past catches up with us. And you have quite a past, Sandman Slim.”

  “Philosophy from a corpse. Are you sure you aren’t Greek?”

  She turtles her head back into the hole.

  “I’ll see you soon. Don’t forget me.”

  “That’s not likely.”

  Cherry disappears into the dark. There’s a rustling and crackling of old bones as she turns around and crawls back the way she came. A homeless corpse living in a coffin squat. How desperate do you have to be to live like that?

  I catch a cab at Hollywood and Sunset and have it take me to the Chateau Marmont, the traditional crash pad for showbiz and well-heeled assholes from around the world. John Belushi OD’d there. Jim Morrison crabbed around the outside windows on acid. Hunter Thompson drank by the pool, and a few months back, I played bodyguard to the other Lucifer while he stayed in his secret suite upstairs. Now that I’m the black beast of the forest, the room is mine. I think.

  The cabbie whines when I hand him a hundred but is all smiles when I let him keep an extra fifty. I don’t answer when he asks if I want a receipt.

  Inside, the desk clerk’s face is streaked with plenty of sin but he’s nothing special. He looks at me like I’m there to empty out the trash cans in the lobby. I still have the Glock in my pocket if things go wrong.

  “Hi. I have a standing reservation. The name is Mr. Macheath. I’d like my special room.”

  He frowns and types something into the computer.

  “We don’t have a note saying you’d be stopping by, and according to the annotation you don’t even look like Mr. Macheath.”

  I crook my finger at him. His name tag says CHARLES.

  “Did you ever hear of the concept of low profile?”

  He looks me over.

  “That’s extremely low profile.”

  I lean in closer. I’m so sick of dealing with pissants.

  “You listen to me, you little fuck. The last time I was here, some people upset me. Like you’re doing right now. I locked them in my suite with a horde of zombies. I don’t know what the place looked like after I left—and it better be clean when I get up there—but I bet not good. Does that sound at all familiar, Chuck? Because if it doesn’t we can role-play right here. I’ll be the zombie pulling out your intestines while you watch. Then, and only then, when you’ve gotten a good look at your guts decorating the lobby like Christmas ornaments, only then will I kill you.”

  To seal the deal I take off my glove and put my Kissi hand over his. He yanks his hand away. I swear, this gimp arm is turning out to be the best party trick in history. Better than chasing girls around when you’re five, trying to make them touch your scabs.

  Charles edges over to the computer and types in something.

  “Very good, Mr. Macheath. And how long will you be staying with us?”

  “Until I leave.”

  “Of course. You remember the way to the room?”

  “Second star to the right, then straight on till morning.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Top floor. Grandfather clock.”

  I take the elevator up. I’m a little surprised to see that the hall is exactly the way it was the first time I saw it. Since the night I locked Koralin Geistwald and her clan in here, I’ve always pictured the place as a Playboy Mansion slaughterhouse. I hold my breath, open the front of the grandfather clock, and step through.

  The suite is perfect. Like
nothing ever happened. Clean and bright and full of brand-new Architectural Digest furniture. The kind that under any other circumstances would reject me like a dime-store kidney in a billionaire’s back. I guess they gave up trying to clean brains and eyeballs out of the old furniture and brought in new stuff. And I have the place all to myself until Amanda and her demonic brownnosers get here. Saying the place is a step up from the Beat Hotel is like saying Jean Seberg was pretty. I should take some phone shots and send them to Kasabian. THANKS FOR KICKING ME OUT. DON’T WORRY. I’VE LANDED ON MY FEET. But even I’m not that much of a bastard.

  Samael was alone a lot when he was up here the last time. I don’t know how he did it. The place is so huge it echoes when I walk around. I need to treat it like that library Downtown. Build myself a little vacation home in one part of the room and stay there. Over by the giant flat-screen. I’ll bet my hooves and horns this place has every channel and every movie ever made on tap. With a little fixing up I could get used to the place. Maybe there are some earthly perks to being Lucifer after all.

  I wonder if they miss me in Hell yet? And if enough people know about it to matter. Semyazah can hold things together, and if he has troops rounding up red leggers, it’ll keep them too busy to think about offing themselves. Or me. I’d still like to know who made those crank calls. But I’m not worried. There’ll be more. Maybe the hotel can tap my phone so I can trace them. I’ll have to remember to ask.

  Watching my back has left me exhausted. I want to find Saint James and I want to kill King Cairo and Aelita. Not necessarily in that order. After shooting Carlos and spilling good whiskey and the stunt on the freeway this afternoon, I want to put the hurt of all time on someone. Saint James included. Throw Blackburn in too in case he switched the hit from Saint James to me.

  I take a couple of pictures with my phone and e-mail them to Candy. Let her see what she’s missing. So much for not being a bastard.

  I dial Traven.

  “Hey, Father, with all the diabolical stuff you studied, have you ever met real-life, honest-to-God devil worshippers?”