Rock On

by Howard Waldrop

  And the second time Elise offered to show her what was on the other side of the wall, Annie didn’t say yes, but she didn’t say no, either; dim sense that she’d acted silly earlier, afraid of the dark and getting her hands dirty. Elise still in her shirt, but nothing else, Annie in nothing at all and she followed, neither eager nor reluctant, scraped her shoulder squeezing through, but the pain at least a hundred harmless miles away.

  “Watch your head,” Elise whispered, library whisper like someone might overhear, “the ceiling’s low through here.”

  So hands and knees at first, slow crawl forward, inch by inch and the muddy smell so strong it seemed to cling to Annie’s bare skin, scent as solid as the cobwebs tangling in her hair. A vague sense that they were no longer just moving ahead, but down as well, gentle, sloping descent and then the shaft turned sharply, and Annie paused, “Wait,” straining to see over her shoulder. Pinhead glimmer back the way they’d come, flyspeck of light like the sun getting around an eclipse and a sudden, hollow feeling in her gut that made her wish they had stayed in the warm pool of the Turkish carpet, tadpole shallows, drifting between the violins and keys, the twilight pond sounds.

  “It’s so far back,” she said, the compressing weight of distance making her voice small, and “No,” Elise said, “It’s not much farther at all.”

  Finally, the shaft opening wide and they could sit up, the impression of a vast and open space before them and the unsteady flame of the single pillar candle Elise had brought from the room revealing high, uneven walls to either side, old bricks wet and hairy with the colorless growth of some fungus or algae that had no need of sunlight or fresh air. “Be careful,” Elise said and her arm out and across Annie’s chest like a roller coaster safety bar, and she saw that they were sitting on a concrete ledge where the crawl space ended abruptly. Short drop down to rubble and the glint of water beyond that.

  “Where are we?” and Annie heard the awe in her voice, little girl at the museum staring up at a jumble of old bones and daggerteeth awe; Elise pointed up, “Right beneath the old Morton Theater,” she said, “But this goes on a long way, beneath most of downtown, and that way,” and now she pointed straight ahead of them, “that way goes straight to the Oconee River. Old basements and sub-basements, mostly. Some sewer lines. I think some of it must be pre-Civil War, at least,” and Annie wished halfheartedly she wasn’t so fucked up, so she could remember how long ago that was.

  And then Elise was helping her down off the ledge, three or four feet to an unsteady marble slab, and then showing her the safer places to put her feet among the heap of broken masonry.

  “I never had any idea this was down here,” she said and realized that she had started crying, and Elise kissed her tears, softest flick of her tongue as if salt might be too precious to waste and “No one ever has any idea what’s below their feet,” she said. “Well, hardly ever, anyway.”

  Misstep, ankletwist and Annie almost fell but Elise there to catch her. “Are you okay?” but Annie only nodding her head, guessing she must be since nothing hurt. A few more careful, teetering steps and they were already to the black water, mirrorsmooth lake like glass or a sky without stars or moon. And Annie sat down again, winded and dizzy, a little queasy and that was probably the pills, the pills and the smell. “How deep?” and Elise smiled, Elise holding the candle out above the surface and the water stretched away as far as they could see. “That depends. Only a few feet right here, but a lot deeper in other places. Places where the roofs of basements have fallen in and the structures below have been submerged.”

  “Shit,” Annie muttered, her ass cold against the stones and she hugged herself for warmth.

  “There are a lot of cool things down here, Annie,” and Elise was crouched right at the water’s edge now and one hand dipped beneath the surface, spreading ripples that raced quickly away from the candlelight.

  “Things that have gotten in from streams and rivers and been down here so long they’ve lost their eyes. Beautiful albino salamanders and crayfish,” she said, “and other things.” She was tugging her T-shirt off over her head, the candle set carefully aside and it occurred to Annie how completely dark it would be if the flame went out.

  “Want to swim with me, Annie?” Elise asked, seductive coy but Annie shivered, not the damp air or her nakedness but remembering now, swimming with a cousin when she was nine years old, a flooded quarry near her house where kids skinny-dipped and thieves dumped the stripped hulks of cars and trucks. Being in that water, beneath glaring July sun but not being able to see her feet, dog paddling and something slimy had brushed fast across her legs.

  “I’ll wait here,” she said and reached for the candle, held it close and the flame shielded with one hand, protective barrier between the tiny flame and any draft or breeze, between herself and the native blindness of this place.

  “Suit yourself,” and a loud splash before Elise vanished beneath the black surface of the pool. More ripples and then the surface healing itself, ebony skin as smooth as before and Annie left alone on the shore. Every now and then a spatter or splash that seemed to come from very far away, Annie feeling sleepy and the pills playing with her sense of distance, she knew. Trying not to think of how filthy the water must be, everything washed down sinks and toilets and storm drains to settle here. But Elise would be back soon and they could leave, and Annie closed her eyes.

  Sometime later, a minute or an hour, and she opened them again, headachy and neckstiff, the nausea worse; Elise was there, dripping, and her hands cupped together, something held inside them for Annie to see. Something fetal the pinkwhite of an old scar, floating indifferent in the pool of Elise’s hands, and she said, “Isn’t she wonderful? She looks a little like Gyrinophilus palleucus, but more likely she’s a whole new species. I’ll have to send one back to my father.”

  And then the salamander released, poured from her hands back into the lake, and she bent to kiss Annie. Slick arms around Annie’s waist and lips so cold, so wet they might be a drowned girl’s, drowned Ophelia risen, And will ’a not come again, and will ’a not come again; faint and fishy taste passed from Elise’s mouth, and she pulled away, was reaching for her T-shirt, lying where she’d left it on the rocks.

  “I really hope you didn’t get bored,” she said, and Annie shook her head, “You should have come.”

  Elise lifting her arms, and Annie saw the crimson slits where her armpits should be, the feathered edges bright with oxygen-rich blood, gasping slits like twin and puckered mouths, and then the Bauhaus shirt down, and Annie almost made it to the edge of the water before she vomited.

  The last week of June and TranSister moved their gear into a new space across town, a big loft above a pizza place, the rent too high but they were sharing the cost with two other groups. And the wet weather passed into the blistering swelter of early summer, and Annie stayed away from Bean Soup. There were other coffeehouses, and when she saw Elise on the street she smiled, polite recognition, but never spoke. A few prying questions from Mary and Ginger, but she only had to tell them once to shut the fuck up.

  And sometimes, late at night and especially when the summer storms came riding high and swift across the land and the sky rumbled like it was angry at the world, she would lie awake in her apartment on Pulaski, trying not to remember the throbbing, amphibian voices threaded into the fabric of Seven Deadlies’ music, Elise’s music, trying not to think about the vast and empty spaces that might sprawl somewhere beneath her. And unable to think about anything else.

  There are strange things living in the pools and lakes in the hearts of mountains . . .

  J. R. R. Tolkien (1937)

  Briefly the frontwoman for the goth-rock band Death’s Little Sister, Caitlín R. Kiernan choose a career as a writer over the band’s desire for bigger and better things. Music is used not only a metaphor in her first novel, Silk (1998), but is integral to the novel and three of the main characters comprise the punk band Stiff Kitten. Kiernan has gone on to auth
or several more novels, including Low Red Moon, Daughter of Hounds, and The Red Tree, the later of which was nominated for both the Shirley Jackson and World Fantasy awards. Her most recent novel, The Drowning Girl: A Memoir, was released earlier this year. Since 2000, her shorter tales have been collected in several volumes, including Tales of Pain and Wonder; From Weird and Distant Shores; To Charles Fort, With Love; Alabaster; A is for Alien; and The Ammonite Violin & Others. In 2012, Subterranean Press released a retrospective of her early writing, Two Worlds and In Between: The Best of Caitlín R. Kiernan (Volume One), to be followed in 2014 by a second volume. Caitlín is also currently writing a graphic novel series for Dark Horse Comics, Alabaster, based on her character Dancy Flammarion. She lives in Providence, RI, with her partner Kathryn.

  Odeed

  David J. Schow

  Christ on a moped, thought Nicky. He’s gonna jump.

  Twenty yards away, nailed by a powder-blue pin-spot, Jambone cut loose a banshee howl and leapt skyward, holding his crotch in one hand and a phallic radio mike in the other. Achtung, all dicks.

  He’s schizzing, thought Nicky. He’s gonna do the splits.

  It was debased, sensual. It hurt Nicky to watch Jambone land in a perfect split—it hurt to watch the singer’s package thump off the stage boards. Nicky winced.

  It hurt to think they’d just flushed all their insurance. Jambone had promised, oh, how he had promised . . .

  The hyper-clean teenies in the scalper rows were sucking it wetly up. They just said no to drugs, to sex, to everything, and the music was all they had left to fill their empty widdle brainpans.

  The music was like a military cargo plane crash-landing into a football stadium. Only louder. Even counting the Stinger missiles and twice-fried fans. Nicky’s strategic perch was just behind Hi Fi’s amp banks. In the opposite wings he could just make out the arena manager, standing knee-deep in CO2 mist, looking not at all amused. The solemn little dude had a clipboard, for God’s sake. He gnawed on a pencil and sweated. Nicky knew he was wearing wax earplugs, and swore he could see the guy’s hairline recede as the music pounded onward.

  The clipboard was for roughing out damage estimates to the arena.

  That’s it, Nicky thought. Scribble away, el fucko. We’re gonna have us a riot here.

  The terms of their hastily negotiated backstage detente suggested that if arena management permitted the metal group Gasm to exceed its scheduled ninety-minute show and perform the encores upon which Jambone had insisted, then at dawn there would still be a building on this spot. Okay, thought Nicky. All was square. Gasm had trotted back out to applause and screaming so palpable it could blow back your hair. They cinched through “Calling All Cops” (the bit with the siren never failed to bring a crowd to its feet) and “Hard Machine” and their speed-thrash cover of “Hi-Heel Sneakers.” The band had run offstage, vaulted back on, sweat drops afly, for “Chain Saw” and “Too Big to Hide.”

  That was it, Nicky had thought. Jambone was down to his glitter skivvies. No more jazz to throw the crowd. All that was left would be for him to slash his throat and dive into his public. That, or one more encore song.

  But the paying customers could smell the wrap-up and weren’t about to just let it happen. They knew how to play Jambone as well as Jambone knew how to play them. When he teased, they responded with lust. When he swore and stomped, they dumped on kerosene.

  The arena manager was getting ready to cut the power. Nicky could read the man’s twitch like a clause in a contract.

  Everybody was up, bopping wildly, surging toward the stage in breakers, pushing forward against the barricades and bouncers, at first gently lapping, but steadily working up to some serious surf. It would be as mindless as a landslide, as single-minded as a swath of army ants.

  Violence. Nicky did not think this, he knew it. More than a decade of hard touring had cellularly tuned him to know. He, too, functioned as an instrument—nonmusical, yet essential to Gasm.

  Nicky watched Hi Fi spread ’em and master the bass guitar. It was a long, smooth Fender fretless as big as she was. She was trapped inside a blue leather jumpsuit that stopped short of cutting off her wind. Nicky could stare at her forever, and not only that, but she was a damned good—

  Nicky snapped his head as though trying to wake up. Screw it on! This might just be our last show.

  The deal was the band did music and Nicky did the headaches. Now he was getting a trifle steamed because he had done his part . . . and the band was about to betray his fine negotiating skills. Oh, those wacky rock ’n’ rollers.

  He flashed on the barrage of lawsuits that had dogged them throughout the ’89 tour. Holy aroma! Tonight just could be the end. His skin was tingling, not from the music, but from a new and vaguely nauseating taste of forewarning. The PA system was ramped so the band caught the least of the onslaught. Maybe it was bounceback, thudding off the hind-curve of his skull. Bad thoughts in there, being bullied around by the music. The task of all the expensive equipment surrounding him was to grab gigantic clouds of raw air and shape it, shove it around inside the arena. Nicky usually wore headphones. If he, too, did not like it loud, he could always sell mobile home parcels.

  The arena manager scratched out a figure and penciled in a new one. Oh, God.

  Gasm had twisted “Killshot” into a wild jam. Nicky saw Nazi Kurt crank his Marshall stack to max. Slurpee saw it, too, from the drum riser. Sweat spattered up in a spray from his flat toms; so did splinters of drumsticks. Slurpee had a quiver of replacements near his right knee and could snatch fresh sticks without skipping a thump. Slurpee saw Nazi Kurt, then Double-Ought saw Slurpee and kicked up his machines, amping his lead from migraine to search-and-destroy. Lyz Ah was forced to turn up, or be lost. Archie, the player who made Gasm guitar-heavy, copied. Jambone felt the slam from the monitors.

  That was everybody, thought Nicky.

  Lyz Ah and Archie and Double-Ought ganged up for their infamous three-way ax-massacre pose. The crowd was not only ready for it, they expected it.

  They used it as an excuse to get crazier.

  The audience could easily outlast the band, Nicky knew. No lie, but no strain either. He scooted half a step to observe Rocky, a headphoned tech sitting at the console. Red and green LEDs shot full-board in time. Their power consumption was awesome. There were three crew people for each member of the band, guys ’n’ gals who earned their scratch by burning and bleeding through every show. Nicky had picked them all—roadbones who might consume Camels by the carton and bimbos by the six-pack, but whose true OD was adrenaline, endorphins, the electricity of the metabolism.

  Nicky blew out a breath. It was nearly force-fed back down his throat by the sheer hurricane of sound. He moved to his cue position.

  Jambone and Nicky had sign language worked out for all occasions. Periodically the singer would glance stage left to see if Nicky had a request.

  The arena manager glared at Nicky through blue fog and the atmospheric swim of music. When he thought he had Nicky’s attention, he tapped his wristwatch.

  Nicky’s glands upshifted to hate. Pure, ungilt. Not for Gasm, but for the audience of vampires, for that little turd-weasel in the Sears three-piece, squinting at Nicky like a high school principal, his lips pressed whitely together. Two worms fucking, thought Nicky.

  Nicky nodded exaggeratedly at the minion of authority.

  In that moment, Jambone turned.

  Without averting his gaze from the manager, Nicky clenched his right fist, holding it up for Jambone to see. Then he braced his wrist with his left hand.

  Jambone got what he wanted.

  Jambone spun high on one toe, shooting his own fist up, then down, and the entire band pivoted in midbridge to another of their big ’uns, “Never Give In.” It was a precision switch guaranteed to leave change from a dime, and the audience was so stunned by the relay that there was almost no reaction through the first bars.

  Then they cheered. They knew the words.

&nbs
p; You want nihilism, anarchy? Nicky thought. You got it. He grinned.

  Crescendo time for the cannibals. The bouncers felt the crush from behind the plywood barricades, sliding to defensive crouches as Double-Ought fireballed through a lunatic improv. Lyz Ah and Hi Fi went on the attack; the crowd wanted them the way a leather Harley saddle wants a warm crotch. Archie rode the lip of the stage, beckoning physical contact from the pit.

  The arena manager was trying to consult a munchkin underling. He could not be heard. He was going at least as berserk as the band.

  Nicky caught Rocky’s eye and jerked both thumbs up. The tech acknowledged, invoked his personal grapevine, and everyone who mattered had the massage in seconds.

  Play it loud. Pop fuses. Break laws. Fry brains.

  Flaming money, undergarments, spikes, programs, change, cherry bombs, everything not bolted to the concrete floor rained stageward. Jambone unsocketed his skull-and-crossbones codpiece, lent it a hefty sniff, and spun it into the teeming throng. A Morrison-style bust was about the only option left.

  Nicky saw a whirlpool form where the codpiece landed. A piranha feeding frenzy. The morsel was won amid eye gouging and tribal slaughter.

  The concert reached for critical mass, gauged in contusions and fractures and perhaps even the ultimate inconvenience. Nicky no longer cared. The unbridled power of his decision was narcotic; the rush flooded his system. Let cochleas explode. Let the blood flow.

  Let history be made, but now.

  JFDI: Just Fucking Do It.

  Jambone was the first to be hit by the echoes of Lyz Ah’s just-concocted solo, bouncing back from the far end of the arena bowl. The sound returned hollow and unnatural. He gawked. The mike slithered from his grasp to clunk on the stage. There was no superamplified clunk to follow.

  Nazi Kurt slipped and fell on his ass in astonishment.

  The sudden, total silence whooshed in like a shroud to compress the eardrums. The drop-off was vertiginous; Nicky felt as if he were fighting to respirate in a vacuum.