Deathbird Stories

by Harlan Ellison

  He suddenly felt a fear that he would never leave this thing called Ohio here.

  “I asked you: did Nita ask you for anything?”

  He shivered.

  “What?”

  “Nita. Did she ask you for anything?”

  “Only a light.”

  “Did you give it to her?”

  “Yes.”

  Madelaine’s face swam in the thin fluid of his sight. Her jaw muscles trembled. She turned and walked across the room. Everyone turned to look at her. She went to Nita, who suddenly took a step backward and threw up her hands. “No, I didn’t–”

  The flocked velvet witch darted a hand toward the older woman and the hand seemed to pass into her neck. The silver-tipped fingers reappeared, clenched around a fine sparkling filament. Then Madelaine snapped it off with a grunt.

  There was a terrible minor sound from Nita, then she turned, watery, and stood silently beside the window, looking empty and hopeless.

  Madelaine wiped her hand on the back of the sofa and came to Charlie. “We’ll go now. The party is over.”

  He drove in silence back to town.

  “Are you coming up?” he asked, when they parked the Eldorado in front of the hotel.

  “I’m coming up.”

  He registered them as Prof. Pierre and Marja Sklodowska Curie and for the first time in his life he was unable to reach a climax. He fell asleep sobbing over never having seen the sea, and came awake hours later with the night still pressing against the walls. She was not there.

  He heard sounds from the street, and went to the window.

  There was a large crowd in the street, gathered around his car.

  As he watched, a man went to his knees before the golden Eldorado and touched it. Charlie knew this was his dream. He could not move; he just watched, as they ate his car.

  The man put his mouth to the hood and it came away bloody. A great chunk had been ripped from the gleaming hide of the Cadillac. Golden blood ran down the man’s jaws.

  Another man draped himself over the top of the car, and even through the window the King of Tibet could hear the terrible sucking, slobbering sounds. Furrows were ripped in the top.

  A woman pulled her dress up around her hips and backed, on all fours, to the rear of the car. Her face trembled with soft expectancy, and then it was inside her and she moved on it.

  When she came, they all moved in on the car and he watched as his dream went inside them, piece by piece, chewed and eaten as he stood by helpless.

  “That’s all, Charlie,” he heard her say, behind him. He could not turn to look at her, but her reflection was superimposed over his own in the window. Out there in darkness now, they moved away, having eaten.

  He looked, and saw the golden thing hanging up-side-down in the slaughterhouse, its throat cut, its blood drained away in onyx gutters.

  Afoot, in Dayton, Ohio, he was dead of dreams.

  “What time is it?” he asked.

  Suggesting that Christ had a homosexual relationship with Prometheus.

  The Place With No Name

  This is how legends are born.

  Perhaps it was because Norman had never suffered from an excess of oily, curly hair that he had been unable to make it as a gigolo. Or as Norman had phrased it: “I can’t stand patent-leather on my hair or my feet.” So he had taken the easy way out: Norman Mogart had become a pimp.

  Er, let’s make the semantics more palatable. (In an era of garbage collectors who are Sanitation Disposal Engineers, truck drivers who are Transportation Facilitation Executives, and janitors who are Housing Maintenance Overseers, a spade is seldom a spade, Black Panthers please note.) Norman Mogart was an Entertainment Liaison Agent.

  Pfui. Norman was a pimp.

  Currently marketing a saucy item titled Marlene–a seventeen-year-old Puerto Rican voluptuary with a childlike delight in the carnal act and an insatiable craving for Juicy Fruit gum–Norman was doing nicely. Succinctly put, Norman was doing just whiz-bang. His alpaca coat had a velvet collar; his Porsche had recently been re-bored; his Diners Club account was up to date; and his $32-a-day habit was nicely in hand.

  Norman Mogart was also an Artificial Stimulant Indoctrinaire.

  Pfui. Norman was a junkie.

  It is not true that cocaine addicts are more sensual than common garden-variety hopheads, vipers, stash-hounds, potheads, speed freaks, crystal-spaceouts, pill-droppers, acidheads or blastbabies. It’s just that coke hits like paresis after a while, and when a member of the opposite sex begins to put on (as they used to say around the Brill Building) “the bee,” the cocaine sniffer just doesn’t have the wherewithal to say no.

  Consequently, when Marlene–live wire that she was–felt compelled to snuggle up to her entrepreneur, Norman was too weak with happy to resist. It was this inability–nay, rather this elasticity of moral fiber–on Norman’s part, that brought about his terrible trouble, and the sudden pinching need for the bread to get turned on with. Marlene chose to snuggle up under a bush in Brooklyn’s fabled Prospect Park, unfortunately, and it was one of New York’s Finest (not to mention chicken-est) who felt honor-bound to bust her, chiefly because he had been called on the carpet only that morning by his Captain for having been caught catnapping (with pillow and alarm clock) in the rear of a police ambulance. The bust left Norman with not only his pants down, but his source of income cut off.

  Three weeks and six hundred and seventy-two dollars later, Norman was out of money and out of dust. His connects smelled the nature of his impecunity and magically dried up. Norman was in a sorry way.

  There comes a point in the downward slide of the human condition when a man ceases to be a man. He may still walk erect, but it is principally a matter of skeletal arrangement, not ethics. Norman had reached that point…and passed it: screaming. Like the Doppler effect of a train whistle as it fades past a fixed point. Norman was going insane. The hunger was no longer even localized; withdrawal was an entity in itself. It clung to him like dark mud, it filled his mouth with rust. In a movie theater where he had fled to catch a few moments of peace and Chaplin’s City Lights, he smelled the sick-sweet pungency of someone in the darkness tuning in on grass, and he wanted very much to puke. Instead, he lit his eighty-five dollar GBD, the pipe Elyse had given him for his birthday, the year before she had gone off and married one of her tricks, a canning company executive from Steubenville, Ohio. The aromatic curlicues of tobacco blotted it out a trifle, and Norman was able to continue on his thorny path to furious darkness, unimpeded by the scents of lesser joys.

  Inevitably, it came down to finding another hooker–for the ravishing Marlene had been sent to the Women’s House of Detention at Sixth and Greenwich Avenues for a big one-twenty, it being her second bust. It came down to finding a new hooker, or boosting a drugstore for its till and drug supplies. But: Norman was a Constitutionally Incapacitated Swashbuckler.

  Pfui. Norman was a goddam coward.

  As for the former solution, it was luck-out there, as well: there were no other girls on the turf worth handling. For in his own way, and in his own pattern, Norman was a dealer in quality goods. Cheap or tawdry merchandise was a stink in his nostrils, inevitably bringing on a loss of reputation. In Norman’s line of work, either solution was written in the hieroglyphics of bankruptcy.

  Thus, view Norman Mogart, hung between the torture posts of his limitations and his desires. Swinging gently in a breeze of desperation.

  The only climate that could have forced Norman to do what he did.

  He accosted the woman as she turned to lock her car. It had been the only empty space on Hudson Street, and Norman had known if he lurked for only a few moments in the dark doorway of the Chinese hand laundry, someone coming home late to one of the apartment buildings on Christopher or Bleecker would pull into it. He had been in the doorway no more than five minutes when the w
oman pulled in, backed and filled, and cut the ignition.

  As she emerged, and turned to lock the door, Norman struck. He had a short length of pipe in his topcoat pocket, and he came up on her silently, and jammed it into the small of her back. “A gun, lady.”

  The woman didn’t react as Norman had expected. With one sweeping movement she spun on the toe of her right foot, brought her arm around and directed the muzzle of the “gun” to the side. In two seconds Norman Mogart was grappling with a woman who had taken a course in street self-defense at the West Side YMHA. Norman found himself lifted on a stout hip, slung into the car, and sliding down its side. Then the woman kicked him. It was a very professional kick. It caught Norman directly under the heart and sent slivers of black glass up through his body into his brain. The next part he remembered only dimly: he grabbed her leg, pulled it out from under her and she fell with her skirt up around her hips, and her coat up around her skirt. Then he beat her solidly seven or eight times in the face with the length of pipe.

  When the glass had dissolved in his brain and body, he was sitting on the dirty bricks of Hudson Street, half on top of a mound of dead meat.

  He was still sitting there, a few minutes later, not quite believing what he had done, when the prowl car’s searchlight speared him.

  Norman Mogart scrambled to his knees and scuttled around the car. He dropped the pipe–which was now sticky–and crouching low, ran for his life. He ran into a man coming out of a narrow doorway leading up to cold-water flats, and caromed off him. He threw the man away from him and ran up Hudson Street. He kept running, with the squad car behind him, siren shrieking, gumball machine flickering angry red, searchbeam jabbing for him. He ran into Jane Street and kept going till he found a doorway. He ducked into the doorway and ran up a flight of stairs. And another flight. And another. And then he climbed a ladder and came out through a trapdoor on the roof of a Greenwich Village tenement. It was a roof that locked with other roofs, and he fled across the roofs, catching himself in wash hung on poles-and-rope, and screamed because he didn’t know what it was.

  Then he found a fire escape, and clattered down the iron steps till he came to the drop-ladder, and it squeaked rustily, ant he climbed down, dropping into another alley. Then he ran up another street, and onto Seventh Avenue, and across Seventh Avenue, dodging between cars. Then he was on another street, and he walked with head bowed, hands in topcoat pockets, praying he had lost them.

  Light pooled on the sidewalk, and he looked up.

  The light came from a trip lamp in the window of the store, and the sign it illuminated said:

  ESCAPE INSIDE

  Norman Mogart hesitated only a moment. He pulled open the door, and stepped into the shop. It was empty. There was a brown, leathery, wizened little man with pointed ears standing in the exact center of the empty shop.

  Yes, the shop was one of those.

  “You’re early,” said the little man.

  Norman Mogart was suddenly frightened. There was the unmistakable rattle of lunacy in the little man’s voice. He stared for a long moment, feeling his gorge rise. Then he turned and reached out for the doorknob, knowing it was just there, under his questing fingers. There was no door.

  “You’re almost ninety seconds early,” the little man murmured. “We’ll have to wait, or throw everything out of phase.”

  Norman Mogart backed up, kept backing up, backed through the space where the door should have been, the wall should have been, the sidewalk outside the shop should have been, the street should have been. They weren’t there. He was still inside the shop, whose dimensions seemed to expand as he moved. “You better let me out of here, crazy old man,” Norman quavered.

  “Ah. It’s time.” The little old man hurried toward Norman. Norman turned and ran. Across a faceless, empty plain of existence. He kept running. There were no rises, no dips, no features to the surrounding terrain. It was as though he were in some enormous television studio set of limbo, running and running across an empty plain.

  Finally, he slipped, exhausted, to the floor of the shop, and the little old man scampered up to him. “Ah. Fine. Now it’s time.”

  He sat down cross-legged before Norman Mogart. Norman noticed with some alarm that though the little old man was sitting in a lotus position, quite comfortably, there was almost a foot of empty air between his bottom and the floor. The little man was sitting on the air.

  Norman shut his eyes tightly. The little old man began talking to Norman as though he had just entered the shop, not as though he had been ninety seconds early.

  “Welcome, Mr. Mogart. So you want to escape. Well, that’s what I sell here. Escape. Inside.”

  Norman opened his eyes.

  “Who are you?”

  “A humble shopkeeper.”

  “No, c’mon now, who are you?”

  “Well, if you press me…”

  The little man shimmered, and changed form. Norman shrieked. The form shimmered again, became the little old man. “Will you settle for what I’m showing you?”

  Norman bobbled his head eagerly.

  “Ah. Well, then, do you or do you not wish to escape, Mr. Mogart? I can guarantee that if you refuse my offer, the police will apprehend you in a matter of minutes.”

  Norman hesitated only a second, then nodded.

  “Ah. Good. Then we have an arrangement. And, with all my heart, I thank you.” Norman had only a moment to consider the peculiar tone in the little old man’s voice.

  Then he began to dissolve.

  He looked down and saw his legs beginning to fade away. Slowly. Without pain. “Wait a second, wait hold it!” Norman implored. “Are you a demon? A devil, some kind of thing like that? Am I going to Hell? Hey, wait a minute, if I’m going to Hell, I shoulda made a bargain…what do I get?…Hey, hold on, I’m fading away…Are you a gnome or an elf, or what?…Hey, what are you…!?!”

  All that was left in the shop were Norman’s eyes, his ears, his lower lip and a patch of hair. And even as these faded, the little old man said, “You can call me Simon.”

  And then, like the Cheshire cat, Norman Mogart faded away completely, hallucinating for an instant that the little old man had added, “Or Peter. It doesn’t matter…”

  At first, in that painful introductory moment upon returning to consciousness, Norman Mogart knew only that he was looking straight up. He was lying on his back, in a springy bed of some growth, the .30-06 Husqvarna still held at high-port across his chest and one shoulder–but he was flat-out on his back. As that first moment stretched like warm taffy, drawing itself out until it had become one minute or five or ten, strange thoughts faded away: thoughts of another life, of a pain that burned in him, a pain that was now gone, to be replaced by a pain of quite another sort, of a woman, of running, of a little man…of an image that faded faded faded away to be replaced by…what? His senses crept timorously back to him, each carrying an allotted burden of new memories, replacing those old ones, now fading and gone; depositing the new memories in suddenly cleared spaces, and they fit snugly, as though they belonged, settling to rest in his mind.

  He was staring straight up, through the interlaced boughs of half a dozen jacarandas, and while he lay there, senses settling carefully back in their niches, he dwelled on flesh that faded and how lovely the blossoms seemed.

  Had it been night, in a cold place? Here it was day, and warm. So warm. Had it rained here? Yes.

  It had been raining. Heavily, he supposed, for the ground on which he lay gave off a moist and repellent squishing when he moved; his clothes were soaked through to the skin; his hair lay matted along his forehead; the stock and barrel of the hunting rifle were beaded with rain that had clashed with cosmoline and encysted itself.

  He realized, finally, that the knapsack was still in place on his back, that he must have fallen straight back when he collapsed, and that now it was a painfu
l hump which forced him to lie in a tortured arched condition. He slipped sidewise, and received immediate ease from the pain.

  Still he looked up, seeing the huge leafy fronds that had collected their water greedily, and seeing the strange birds that came to slake their thirst at those informal watering-places. One bird he saw…

  He had never known it, true so true: he had hardly lent credence to the native stories: he had heard it was so, that there were jungle birds of brilliant plumage whose colors ran in the rain, but he had snickered at the thought. Very often, too often (and if once too often, then he was a fool on a fool’s errand!), the natives were like children, much rather believing their fancy-made-up tales than the truth. Yet here it was, above him, nonchalant, and here–in this wonderland that was certainly no Wonderland–it was true. So who were the children, after all?

  He stared up at the wild-eyed huge-billed creature and saw its colors, like a Madras print, running, flowing, melding one into another, red and yellow and green. And he marveled.

  Beside him, in the rain-swollen pool, the jacaranda blossoms clotted like sour flesh, sucking at the flow of clear water. Cocaine? What did that mean? Not him, perhaps some other.

  Now he felt rested, and with the thought, as punctuation, the mad-eyed bird leaped howling into the slate sky. He rose awkwardly, steadying himself on this root, that bole, stiffly, shifting the rick-rack between his shoulderblades. He seemed to rise up and up, a scarecrow, an exceptionally thin man, until he stood unsteadily, staring at the world. Then he looked down, and his reflection, jigsawed by bright blossoms, looked back. He did not recognize himself for a long moment. The body seemed all wrong. He remembered another body, in a cold place, and fear, and the hurt that lived in that other body…then he recognized himself.

  He did not know how long he had lain there, the fever rising higher in him, then abating, then rising once more, a volcanic heat that rose and fell to no discernible rhythm…but the burns and sores were better this day. He felt he could go on alone without balming himself with herbs. (He had begun to suspect, in any case, that one of the herbs, he did not know which, was poisoning him further.) (There, that was a thought that belonged to this body, not the other.) (Yet the rifle had gotten no lighter: rueful thought.) (Cocaine?)