by Jason Ridler
“Yes! It is you! I am a seeker and before me is the grail of oblivion, as the great god Tiamat births herself from the cosmic ocean womb and casts us into a shadowland of horror the likes of which died in the lost ages of Cimmeria!”
“He’s talking about you,” the kid whispered, smiling. “Man, I love these rants.”
That made one of us.
Weasel loomed above me. “Listen, Herald! Listen as I invoke the call to arms for the damned!”
“I’d rather not,” I said. “My name’s not ‘Harold’ and you’re disturbing these people’s ride.”
“There is but one ride, Herald! And it is the final one.”
He flung his arms out in a Christ-like posture, his eyes rolled back in his head. The language that rolled out of him predated the birth of the Nazarene by more than two thousand years.
“We are the servants of the demon goddess, of her terror brood, we are born to build on the graves of our enemies and make palaces of bones to worship the rape of creation, we taste the blood and death and crave to suckle more before the fires of our burning die out in a chorus of the damned! Let the days of blood and sword rise! Let the magic of ruin transform our world into a new Babylon, fit for the end of time! And the sins of the fathers will be bled dry by the sons! And Babylon will welcome us home!”
Weasel ranted and shook with the lost language of Babylon rolling off his lips as easily as English from the queen’s tongue. Lost in his exultations, he didn’t notice when a vial fell from his poncho. But as it rolled to my wingtip’s toe, its belly full of rattling pills, Weasel stopped raving and tracked the sound. The prescription stopped, hidden by my shoe.
“No! That’s mine!”
Doing a little trick best done with juggling pins, I flicked the bottle with my toe into my lap. Weasel’s sunburned hands reached for its afterimage, but the vial was already safe in my hand.
He retreated, but barely. “Give it back!”
“Not until you tell me where you learned that language. It certainly wasn’t The Strip.”
“I am a seer!” he said, desperate, and everyone looked at us as if we’d started performing an off-off Broadway play. “I must have visions to keep out the nightmares.”
Weasel was a desperate critter and it felt bad to push him, but he’d made a correlation between me, the Black Lotus, and the world of ancient Babylon. He was connected.
“Who taught you those words?”
Weasel’s split lips pursed. “I swore an oath!”
“Hey,” the kid said. “Give the guy his medicine!”
“Throw the old guy off the bus,” a black teen said. “I think he crapped his diaper.”
“Why don’t I throw you off,” said an old lady in pressed pink polyester slacks and a floral blouse.
“Silence!” Weasel said. “Give back what is mine, Herald, or I will call upon my gods to set horrors loose upon you!”
I tossed the bottle to him, but I could see the label as it spun through the air. Faded, it was hard to make out what the prescription was for, and Weasel’s name, though in bolder black letters, had been intentionally scraped away.
Damn it.
Weasel snatched the meds and shoved them into the folds of his gray mess. “You bring death, Herald. When the masters arrive, you will be the first they devour under a blood-red sun.”
That’s when I caught it. On his right wrist. A jangle. Medical bracelets. You’d have to claw those names and numbers off with sterner stuff than yellow nails and gummy teeth. I stood and held out my hand. Needed to be closer to see it.
Weasel recoiled.
“Look, I just want to apologize and give you my seat.”
“You are a trickster.”
“I’ve been called worse by better, but if you’re right and the big nasties of the world are looking forward to my demise, then I might as well try and make amends before the L.A. skyline goes crimson. Please?”
Everyone held their noise, except a sleeping old man with flabby cheeks who snored gently like a gas leak through a tin whistle.
Weasel shook his head but looked at my outstretched hand. “I can see . . . I can smell the aura.”
I grinned against his dread. Every once in a while, I’d meet someone touched by magic, someone who could sense it like I did, as colors, as a smell, or textures. They were rare, tortured, and often lost souls who’d lived on the sharp margins of the world, and slid off into oblivion, but Weasel was schooled. He had arcane knowledge you don’t find in the gutter. He was connected, somehow, a casualty that fate had put in my way.
My hand was steady while Weasel, who had called me “enemy” and “Herald,” did the math in his head of what he could or should do with me.
A pothole shook the bus. The snorer woke. And Weasel’s hand slid into mine.
Every crack, crevice, and tendon was gnarled, but the shake he gave me was formal, the kind you’re trained to do somewhere better than the gutter. As I pumped back, I twisted my hand to toss the chain around his wrist so that its heaviest part, the ID tag, landed on his wrist.
“Z. C.”
Initials alone, but Weasel took the look at his wrist as sacrilege. “Demon seducer!” I let him kick my stomach with his sandaled foot, the big toe’s overgrown nail gouging me in the abs. My ass hit the seat as he ran to the front. “Stop! Stop this chariot! You carry an abomination! We must all flee!”
After arguing with the bus driver, Weasel fled, alone, no one heeding his call as he ran into the street wild and free—and utterly broken and depressing.
“You’re like a celebrity,” the kid said while I poked my gut, hoping that toenail hadn’t infected me with whatever Weasel had. “You got jumped by a member of the Merry Pranksters!”
“Weasel runs with Ken Kesey?”
“He did,” the kid said, big smile on his face because he was schooling a grownup. “They kicked him out. Too wild even for those freaks. Now he preaches on the street and speaks in some crazy language, selling poems and offering wisdom.”
“A modern-day prophet,” I said.
“We get the prophets we deserve,” the kid said.
I chuckled, seeing I had not added much more than a bruise to my growing collection of wounds. “You’ve got a hell of a good eye for detail,” I said. “Anything else you can tell me about the Master of the Toenail Stab?”
The kid lit up. “Oh, yeah! Everyone has a story about Weasel. Some said he was at Pearl Harbor and lived, and that drove him mad because all his buddies died. But I don’t think so.”
“And what do you think . . . sorry, my name is James.”
“Manuel,” the kid said, and shook the hand vigorously. “I think he was a professor. One of those guys who reads so much he goes crazy. I know soldier crazy. I know crazy, period. And Weasel, man, he talks like Dr. Strange, and Dr. Strange is smart.”
I nodded. “Thanks, Manuel.”
“What do you think, James?” he said, which surprised me. No one talks to anyone they don’t board the bus with, but Manuel not only wanted to talk, he wanted to listen, a trait seemingly removed from the genes of his generation.
“I think you’re onto something.”
He stood and pulled the cord for the next stop. “Don’t be rough on Weasel,” Manuel said. “He’s nice sometimes. When he’s quieter. Tells crazy stories.”
“About what?” I said as the kid with answers ran to the doors.
“Monsters! Dungeons! It’s like Johnny Quest meets King Kong!”
Then Manuel was on the street, running through pedestrians as if he owned the block.
“You were too nice to him,” the pastel-pink grandma said. “Kid like that needs discipline.” “Kid like that?” I said.
She grunted and looked out the window as we headed south, and all the weirdness fell into the normal sluggish speed of the L.A. afternoon haze, with me heading into the unknown, searching for anything that might make this puzzle more complete so I could get a good look at the picture and grab the guy who hurt
Cactus.
“Find him, Brimstone. Find him and kill him.”
“Next stop, Crenshaw. Transfer here for the Metro 806 for the Boardwalk.”
I made my way to the open doors and stepped out.
Cutting through yellowed sandwich wrappers and the greenish pall that made L.A. such a lovely garbage heap on the good earth. I looked around at the young and old, black and white, brown and pink, and tried to think of how the hell I could keep my word without taking a life.
My stomach sank as I realized Cactus might already be dead. And promises to the dead are ugly business.
7
I RAN TO A PHONE BOOTH, FISHED OUT A DIME, AND made a call to Veterans Hospital.
“I’m calling regarding my colleague, Cactus—I mean, Sergeant Cochise Sandoval Hayes. He was brought in today with severe shrapnel wounds and blood loss.”
“Are you a family member?” Her voice was so smooth I expected there to be a sexy robotoid on the other end.
“The brotherhood of arms.”
“But not a blood relative.”
“I’m the closest thing to family he’s got left, thanks to General Cooke and the Trail of Tears and . . . Look, I just want to know if he survived the ambulance ride.”
“I’m afraid we don’t give out that information over the phone, sir.”
“And I appreciate that, because most people are human garbage, but this case is rather extreme and I really need to know if he’s alive or dead.”
“You should contact a family member—”
“But not a next of kin? So he’s alive?”
A pause. “I didn’t say that, sir. It is protocol for those with a concern about friends to contact family members first. Otherwise, I’m afraid I cannot help you.”
“Wait! Look, you seem like a professional woman. What’s your name?”
“I will not—”
“James Brimstone. I know you’ve been trained to keep abusers and worse away from their victims. By your standards and training I might very well be the person who caused the grief. You are absolutely right in not assisting me in finding out this information. You’ve saved lives doing this, right?”
Silence, but she heard me.
“So, what I’d like to suggest is something that will protect the sacred trust you have with your patient, but also allows me piece of mind. Doesn’t that sound good, ma’am?”
“Miss Geary.”
“Miss Geary, thank you. Here’s what I propose. There was an ambulance attendant who took Cactus inside. Rail-thin redhead with a short haircut. Strong, but wiry. I helped him get my friend, Sergeant Hayes, on the gurney by calling him a name he knew. Can you ask that redheaded ambulance driver to pick up the phone?”
“We do not provide access to ambulance attendants.”
“Naturally, otherwise you’d be setting the hospital up for all sorts of legal problems. You’re vigilant, Miss Geary. That’s great. I don’t want anything to be compromised, especially for Sergeant Hayes. Here’s what I suggest: ask the man if he wants to talk to the guy who called him ‘Arrows.’ I called him that while he helped get Sarge in the ambulance. He was the only one who heard that name and I’m the only one who knows he knows it. If he doesn’t remember, or has no time for me, fine. But if he wants to talk to the man who helped him save a life, tell Arrows that I am on the phone.”
Silence held me like Cactus’s hands around my throat.
“Miss Geary?”
Silence.
“Hold, please.”
My ears filled with Tijuana Brass from some station left of the dial as I watched the shadows of the afternoon grow, cars moaning and coughing as my throat constricted with smog, strain, and fear . . . A promise to a dead man made everything harder. Death changes everything. That promise could lasso me to a fate that might never be fixed as I struggled to make Cactus’s ghost rest. Kill “them” might mean “kill all of them” or “kill myself” if he saw me as responsible.
Metro brakes squealed and I knew I didn’t have long before missing the connection and having to walk to the Boardwalk, since waiting for the next bus would take even longer.
The bus clanged. My ears popped. A click came from the receiver.
“Yes?” I said. “Arrows?”
Silence.
“Come on, man. My name is James Brimstone. You figured out what was going down with my combative friend at the Legion Hall when I yelled ‘Arrows.’ We got him on that gurney together. Please, just tell me, is he—Sergeant Cochise Sandoval Hayes—alive, or is he dead? If you don’t want to get in trouble, just say ‘cabbage’ for life or ‘prunes’ for death.”
Silence.
“Come on, man!”
A cough. “Cabbage, but it’s going bad, quick. Might not last the day. Shit, Geary’s coming.”
“THANK YOU!”
I slammed the receiver into its cradle, yanked open the door, and ran like hell after the bus as it pulled out and off, ignoring my frantic waves, because the Mayor Who Never Visits said he would make the buses run on time.
“Damn it,” I said, then looked down the road. No one but a few kids in denim and a couple of winos in evening dusters on the sidewalk. Cars zoomed by.
I decided to stick out my thumb and await the fate of the road and the kindness of strangers until a half-hour passed. I’d been hitching and riding with danger since I’d run from Oakland, grabbed a train in Richmond’s Iron Triangle, and headed out to parts unknown. For conservative types I’d look like an out-of-work lounge singer. For lefties, I’d be seen as a threatless—if somewhat tattered—member of the power elite.
But no cars stopped. In a city in perpetual motion, I was as motionless as a concrete curb. My mouth was half road grit, half chewing on thoughts about the day.
Knowing I didn’t yet owe a promise to a dead man eased my nerves some, even with the shrapnel wounds in my ass itching like I was covered in ticks.
I plucked the Black Lotus from my pocket, careful to avoid letting the edges of the petals cut through my skin again. But I needed to see this clue, this amazing slice of antiquarian relic from the deep Cimmerian past that had ended up in L.A. for no goddamn good reason.
The nine petals were ebony and sharp and, despite being snipped from whatever stem that it once called home, the monstrous flower was exceptionally vibrant and healthy, which begged the question: how long had it been free from its mother root? How many blooms like this are around L.A.? The world?
I placed the unbelievable flower back into my pocket, then stuck out my thumb again and let my mind wander. Weasel’s rants . . . they’d been littered with Cimmerian and Babylonian references, if jumbled through the coffee press of his own delusions. If I couldn’t grip his psyche to shake out what he knew, who could I ask?
His talk of a fallen world in which we reverted to some natural state of barbarism made my shit swirl. It was the kind of world Edgar lamented, where everyone was under the thrall of horrific creatures of tremendous power, beasts that Edgar thought he was better than. Ethics and morality were invented by the weak to make the powerful feel guilt and to galvanize the cockroaches of this world against their natural superiors. There were times when such words were meaningless, where power, dominion, and mastery was all that saved us from unending chaos and madness. Now we have a world of debauchery for the meek and heroes made of musicians who shoot drugs in their veins. All empires fall, and it will be for the strong to take what they can when decadence erases these pathetic peons from the soil. Take what you can from this world, my dear apprentice. Feel no guilt, no remorse, no regret. Such feelings are holes in your armor for letting the cockroaches invade.
I squirmed against the memory of Edgar’s hedonistic philosophy as a burnt-orange station wagon pulled up.
Behind the wheel was a woman with a beehive she’d been maintaining since the last decade was young. “Hey slugger,” she said from dark purple lips, a perfect shade to go with the catseye glasses and pounds of caked-on makeup. “You going my way?”
/>
I grinned. “If your way is near the Venice Beach Boardwalk.”
She chewed a green chunk of gum that had likely lost its minty flavor—overcome by coffee and cigarettes—ten miles before. “Close enough.”
I walked around the front of the car. She reached over and popped the door open so I could slink into her world. “Much obliged,” I said, closing the door. “I’m James Brimstone.”
“Harriet Pinkerton.”
“Oh, like the Detective Agency?”
“Ha!” she said, peeling off. “That takes me back. Most of the boys I pick up wouldn’t know a Pinkerton from a G-Man.” She winked. Here she was, dressed as if the galas of the Rat Pack in 1960 were still the rage, yet Harriet Pinkerton was what I would call one-hundred-and-ten percent her own self: confident, sure, and not giving a damn.
I liked Harriet Pinkerton immediately.
Thanks to her lead foot and inability to distinguish yellow from red, Harriet was catching up on the bus I missed, all while sharing her amazing life story, which was a novel unto itself: part romance, part horror story.
“But that’s what you get for marrying a makeup man. Don’t get me wrong, Don was also a great lover, but you become his Guinea pig for every monster face he thought the folks at Universal might think could be the next Wolf Man and it wears you down. God, he went through a fish-critter phase where I was a squid-faced demoness, head like a giant clit with tentacles.”
“Think I missed that one at the Parkway Drive-In.”
She patted my arm while pulling out and dodging anyone who used their brakes. “Well, it’s sweet of you to think he had a chance at a drive-in monster movie, but his specials—that’s what he called when he turned this pretty face into a walking nightmare—his specials weren’t worth a damn. Nobody liked monsters anymore. He had to settle with what he was almost good at: backstage showgirl makeup.”
“Ah, you were queen of the floor show.”
She slapped my knee playfully. “Get too fresh, James Brimstone, and you’ll get a bruise! No, I couldn’t dance more than a few box steps before both feet were making left turns. I was a singer, which is a fancy way of saying I wasn’t pretty enough to show up and do anything else. ‘Pretty enough to sing’ is what the bookers used to say.”
