Hemlock: Shadow Pages

by Sean Michael Argo

  He moves like a man in a dream, and every fiber of my being wants to snuff him and leave him in a ditch somewhere, but I stay my hand, and instead help him to his feet. Whether I like it or not he's the only link I have left, the only clue as to what they might have planned, what He has already put into action. I throw my coat around the hollow man, and we walk out from the tunnel and into the streets. Not a soul pays attention to us as we push onwards, so focused as they are upon whatever schemes they have of their own, whatever desires sought to slake that may occupy the minds of those who would live in such a place as this. We take a shortcut through the alley off 5th Street, then turn in a circle three times while humming off key, and finally I'm allowed to see the red door at the edge of the alley. The door is unlocked, as I knew it would be, and we rush inside. Mag is waiting at a small table, the tarot cards laid out, face up, the Royal Spread. She looks up like she's been expecting me, and smiles to reveal a mouth full of dozens of tiny sharp teeth. I tell Mag to cut the sideshow act and help me, which she does, and we set the hollow man down on the couch. Suddenly I smell gasoline, and he takes a sharp breath, then opens his mouth in a scream that brings with it a fire that spreads across the room in an instant.

  When he finally starts talking I nearly lose my calm and end him right then and there. Something in his voice way too familiar, something that makes my vision go red, something that makes me positive that I've killed this man before, perhaps several times. Mag cuts through my Thoughts with a snap of her fingers, reminding me whose house I'm in. I sit back and watch, breathing and getting my composure back. I'd shown him a little piece of my Power, and I had the sinking feeling that I'd tipped my hand to a better poker player than myself. He is filling himself back up, getting sharper by the second, Mag sees it too. She takes his hands and leads him to her reading table. She has her back to me, but I see from the expression on his face that she's just licked her teeth and those second eyelids of hers have closed. Now he is sitting there, the same way I did three years ago, staring at those black pits in her head, and I know he is peering into the Abyss.

  I'm standing in the alley, and it begins to rain. I pull my hat further down over my head, watching the water pool at my feet as it drips down from the brim with increasing volume. It figures that bitch would kick me out right as the rain comes in. Right as rain. The thought sticks in my mind. Right as rain. I whisper the phrase aloud. As I do there are suddenly voices in the rain. Something moving in the downpour, visible only because the rain drops are striking it. Right as rain. My lips curl back in a rictus smile as its presence fills the alley, my face seemingly not under my control. The voices in the darkness still whisper. Right as rain. I fight it, but its power is upon me, and I fall in a heap onto the hard wet concrete, smiling and chanting. Right as rain. Whatever it is passes through the red door at my back. Something is in there with them. I want to get up, I want to warn them, but I cannot rise. Right as rain. Right as rain. Right as rain.

  I have been doing this for a long time. Days, weeks, months, years, all seem to bleed over into each other. Time loses its power, the only indication of its passage is the slow sure decay of the physical body. Of course I run soul-sipping scams just as much as the next guy, buts that's a temp fix. I find myself relying more on the Craft these days, and I break heads only when I have no other choice. Word on the street is that Mr. Shift is losing his edge. Listen closely children, never pick a fight with an old man, he's too busted and tired to knuckle up to a brawl, he'll just kill you.

  A street-preacher yells out at passers by, screaming that the end times are upon us. It strikes me as odd that not a single person seems to pay attention, nobody even politely ignoring him. He stands, a look of defiance upon his face, belting out his sermon as if competing with a gale force wind for volume. The way he goes unnoticed becomes eerie, and I see that only one other person in the crowd is watching, a disturbingly tall rail of a man about half a block down. I recognize him as one of the equine ani-magi, and that's when it hits me. The street-preacher is a True Prophet, for it is only they who suffer the burden of bearing the Word to the Deaf. The fact that myself and the magus can hear him doesn't bode well for us, means we're part of the show and not the audience. Damn.

  People line the alleyway as we walk through the narrow path, our procession passing in the angles between the angles. Silent figures lean against walls, terrible unseen things perch atop the buildings, and all eyes are upon us as we walk, the weight of His legend pushing down on our already straining muscles. Friends, enemies, and creditors of all stripes have come to stand in the rain and watch us bury him. There is a cemetery, lost inside a maze of hidden streets, and it is there we walk, following the Old Road, gathering power so that he may walk with might. The rain and the dying heat of the day create a strong stench in the trash-ridden passages, not unlike death. There is no music, there are no words spoken, tears hidden in the rain.

  I’ve never been entirely comfortable in sewer tunnels. Might be the symbolic underworld aspect of them, more likely it’s the fact that they tend to be filled with, well, sewage. Think about it for a second. You’ve heard stories about the things that stalk the night here, probably you’ve even seen a few things you’d rather not see. Anything that eats has to shit, and everything in the twilight city craves to feed on one thing or another. Trust me chummer, there is nothing quite so disconcerting as wading through the refuse of the dreams and nightmares that call this place home. But if you want to know what you’re going up against, sometimes it pays to find out what its diet consists of. This one? Meat and Dreams. Damn.

  I walk through the grimy streets, head down against the fetid wind of a neighborhood long forgotten by anything clean or sweet. In the street a woman stands under a burned out light post, half her form hidden in shadow, the other bathed in the sick orange light of the endless sky. Her steely eyes lock with mine, and I can feel her Gaze upon me, looking for weakness, looking for cash, then, at the last moment, looking for comfort. I keep my pace steady, and I angle towards her, nice and easy. It is customary for streetwalkers to greet a man once he reaches a certain distance from her, yet she is silent, even as I cross the threshold she says nothing. Her eyes never blink, and her stance is strong, but I can see the fatigue in her form, I can smell the doom upon her. That hunted look that whispers from the edge of her soft smile. Someone's out to hurt you baby, and we both know it. She draws close and her lips part, she stands on the tips of her toes as her mouth nears mine, stopping just short of touching. Her breath is a mix of clove cigarettes and the hint of dry gin, and I breathe it in, even as she pulls my breath into hers. She knows that this isn't my fight, and she's not asking me to fight it, just needs someone there to say goodbye. I'd die for you, right now, but you have to ask. And she doesn't, just like I know she won't. We pull apart and I walk past her into the night. I'm not even at the edge of the block when it happens, but I feel it, everyone does for at least a hundred yards. Hard mojo and a bad place to face it, a rough way to go, but you took it standing up.

  The trees creak and moan in the wind, and a light mist falls upon me as I tread carefully through the dark forest. I gasp at the crisp clean air as it enters my lungs, and the soft earth has me wrong-footed, so accustomed am I to the unforgiving concrete wilderness of the city. Every couple of years I come to this place, a small clearing of moss covered boulders, deep in the forest and miles from the cacophony of my life. The one place where silence isn’t a sign of danger, where I can close my eyes and let the wards power down. I rest on my haunches, hands on my knees, and simply breathe. I could stay, and many times have been tempted never to return to the city, to turn my back on the tempest of violence and terror. And yet, I cannot remain. In time the silence would become deafening, the calm acceptance of the trees would transform into accusation, and the sun-warmed boulders would burn with escapism. My place is back there, in the gutter, surrounded by the filth, a gun in my hand and a spell upon my lips. Pity. I like it here.

  I l
ean against a wall in that terrible and lonely place, my breath misting in the cold night air, even as the blood leaking from my chest steams and pools around my feet. So many close calls, so many narrow escapes, more than my fair share of reckless bravado, and always I have emerged. Time and time again I have stood face to face with my enemy, and though I rarely play a fair hand, until tonight I have come away with victory. Such a mundane thing to die for really, not even worth the mentioning, and on top of it the pay was crap. Twenty years ago I’d have never taken this sort of job, but needs must when the devil drives. I wince and pull my hip flask, taking a sip of the tonic, savoring the taste as it slides down my throat. The spells within the liquid work hard to bind my flesh, but I’m too far gone even for that. Some asshole will inevitably say that such an ignoble end is the price of the life I’ve led. Maybe so, but I’ve seen and done many things, I’ve loved, I’ve won, I’ve lost, and I’ve lived. Fuck it. Time to pay the butcher’s bill.

  SAMARA TATE’S BOOK OF SHADOWS

  The Twilight City lies between the angles of our perceptions, its urban landscape a divine obscenity reflecting our scrutiny. A place where reality and fantasy are as indistinguishable as the dream from the dreamer. Samara Tate was the speakeasy Nightingale that serenaded the dark spirits of the City. Her voice was more alluring than her looks, and that was saying something, as she was desired by every two-bit gangster and straight-laced chummer in town. She had power, and a light that shone from her spirit like a lantern in the gloom of our lives. Everybody knew that she was untouchable, because, like all things of beauty and power, she ended up belonging to the Nightmare Man. That is, until Mr. Shift came along. There are still parts of the city that haven’t been rebuilt since those bloody days. I bribed my way into her dressing room one night, not long after Mr. Shift’s place burned down, and using the old lipstick stained cigarette butt he’d given me I was able to find a small metal tin hidden in the wall. Her arcane play-lists were there, each song a hidden spell, written on napkins and the back of matchbooks. A brief and chaotic diary scrawled in the margins. This is a literary snapshot of Samara Tate, caught in motion for the briefest of moments, a twilight creature in its element.

  I remember when I first came to the twilight city. Running from the endless assembly line of bad boyfriends and broken dreams. A one way ticket to the end of the line. I left the bus terminal and just started walking, the switchblade and backless dress my only possessions. The city welcomed me like an old friend coming home. The long shadows were a comfort to me in those days. Eventually I fell in with an underbelly crew of jazz slingers, making music and mojo to put a roof over my head and liquor in my glass. Then he revealed himself. An easy smile, quick wits, and the raw allure that is the stock and trade of dangerous men. What he called himself doesn’t matter anymore, proper names slide off him like water from oilcloth. Most folks call him the Gambler, or the Nightmare Man. I quit wearing the backless dress, as my flesh now bears the signs of his passage. I don’t call him anything, just in case he’s listening. I still have the switchblade.

  Something burns beneath the thin veneer of my civility. My grace and poise hide the thing that swims in my soul. I have no memory of its first awakening, the raw birth of it lost in a haze of drugs, sex, and music that’ll cost more than money if you listen too closely. In a moment, it was there, upon me, within me, perhaps even springing forth from me, its teeth and hard dark skin both foreign and anciently familiar. Even He cannot fathom its power or pierce its camouflage, my one secret, the last inch I hold tightly for myself, my dark passenger.

  I found my Hands in the still small place between silence and song, and I remembered the tale of a fisherman and the strangest fish in a stranger land. It changed everything, from the way I pluck the strings of my bass when the rhythm rides deep to the way I arch my back when a lover does it right. They come to me now in droves, the party people, the hollow children of the night, like moths to the flame of a lantern they barely perceive. I’ve become a fixture in the speakeasy heavens, true north for anyone who can navigate such realms. And you watch. You wait, and for what I cannot tell, but the terrible patience in you cries out a warning to what’s left of the woman I once was. One day Nightmare Man, one day you too will join the screaming choir that echoes in my skull on the nights when I’ve poured enough gin down my throat to float on by, one hand touching the water and one hand touching the sky.

  You can see everything from the stage, the vantage point behind the blinding lights. Truth spills forth from faces hidden in shadow. The tilt of a shot glass, the curl of smoke from cigarette tip, the half-step gait of a pistol strapped to the inner thigh. I break them open with song and show, then He steals what he wishes. People always whisper that music costs more than money in the twilight city. If only they knew. He is plotting something, moving towards some abstract goal, I can feel it. Fortunes slip through his fingers as he discards the juicy secrets mined from the crowd, yet he keeps what seem to my perception to be meaningless mental chatter, the most insignificant of details. The Lord of Pain and his entourage spend an evening in the club and he takes nothing, yet a tattered stranger will command His every attention. I weep for the city the day he finds the last piece of the puzzle he so feverishly pursues.

  It was a hard act in those early days. Dim-lit stages in speakeasies that were more dark cornered basements than legit nightclubs. We would sling the tunes amidst a haze of smoke and varied depravities, my voice a wall to hold it all at bay. A contralto shield to protect us from the groove. It’s the price you pay here, for the art and the glory, it lifts you up or tears you down. That’s how it works in the twilight city, the energy of the crowd gets in you, becomes you. We’d play our set, suck down all the booze we could grift, and try to make it back to whatever flophouse we were calling home that week. The boys were grateful for that gift, more than they let on, gratefulness hidden beneath a surface of weathered silence. It was a life I soon learned to miss once I belonged to Him. But I was young then, his liquor was better and I got far fewer shrunken heads in my tip jar when I played for his audience.

  The first time it happened, I passed out from the pain. The second time I was in shock for two hours. The third time I killed a man. With money and favors I could never earn on my own the Ink Masters etched the beasts into my skin, twisted their energies into my soul. Some men just want a girl with lots of sweet tattoos, but for Him it was about making sure I was protected, making sure I knew I was His. I had but to will it, and the beasts would stir to my defense. My guardians, my slayers, servants red in tooth and claw and subject to me alone. The most potent of weapons and the most cunning symbol of my bondage.

  I had the boys patch him up and haul him back to my place, then I paid them in trade to keep things quiet. I wash up, then throw on something red and revealing, and go out into the living room where he was sprawled out on the couch. He starts coming to, his instincts drawing him into a fighting stance, then he visibly relaxes when his eyes find me. Men are all the same, and even the most hardboiled of the bunch flushes as his eyes travel down my body, and his muscles ease up as he sits back down. I hand him a glass of bourbon, neat, and slide across the cushion, pretending like I'm checking the bandage on his throat as he breathes in my perfume. This is a man who believes in honor, a man who for the right price will not hesitate, a man foolish enough to think he can kill a god. Just the sort of man I needed on my side if I was going to stay alive.

  The blood from his neck drips onto my face as I stare into his eyes and see death swimming in those baby blues. He tells me to start talking, and eases up a bit on my throat, but keeps enough pressure to remind me who's in charge. I tell that I know about the man who hired him, and that I know there's a debt to be paid. He feels me up with his other hand, the callous tips of his fingers dancing over my tattoos, slowly awakening the spirits within. He doesn't see it, and I take a note of that, thinking I may gain the better of him. Then he pulls a small wooden dowel from his pocket and pushes it into my
side, caging the power under my skin. No more tricks he says, tell me something I don't already know, and the blood splashes me again. I give in, and I tell him about the man in the bar, sitting in the corner, smoking a cigar and flipping a coin over and over. I tell him that I wasn't the only one who knew that he had been hired to do a shooting in the bar tonight. I tell him that I need his help, and as I do another drop of blood lands near my eye, dripping down my face like a crimson tear. His eyes follow the blood down my cheek, to my neckline, and his grip slackens as he sees the unmistakable cigar burn on my throat.

  He's not buying what I'm selling, and that's never happened before. I'm bruised up and worked up and the things under my skin are screaming at me to let them out to do their work. I need a drink. Without speaking I walk to the cabinet and pour myself two fingers of gin. As I bolt down the contents of the glass he packs the bandage with tissue, puts away his blasting rod, then holds out his empty glass expectantly. A gesture of acceptance, even if wary. I refill my glass with gin and pour him another bourbon, then turn smartly, and pause, looking him right in the eye and holding his gaze. We stand like that for a moment, fighting and fucking with our eyes, and when we've had enough both look away. I hand him the glass and join him on the couch. Without pretense I lift up my skirt and pull out my cigarette case, then pull out two smokes. I put both in my mouth and look up to see that he has the lighter ready. I inhale deeply and both cherries fire up. I keep one then hand him the other, tinged red with my lipstick. He pauses for a moment, then smirks and takes a drag. Now we're friends he says, or as much as anybody can be in the twilight city.