Cruel Zinc Melodies

by Glen Cook

  “Excellent. Again. There’s something down there. It’s big. It’s alien. And it’s ugly. It’s still a long way from being wide awake. It considers the world its nightmare. Your bug makers disturbed it. The bugs are still disturbing it. Bugs that it may have helped dream. Yes. There are a lot of bugs down there. Thousands. Still. Probably feeding on the thing. Something beyond my knowledge. Or maybe anyone else? s.”

  Oh no! Hang on! This time was supposed to be simple. Deal with some bugs. Stop some sabotage. A couple days of easy work for a bucketful of gold.

  “How would that tie into ghosts?”

  “Susceptible minds might think they saw ghosts if their obsessions reflected off the dreams of the thing down below.”

  I grasped what he meant because I live with a dead Loghyr. I didn’t like it. Nor did he convince me, really. “Any idea what it is?”

  “No. But there’s precedent for ancient horrors wakening.”

  “Of course. Suggestions?”

  “Keep people away. Find experts. Do research. Look through ancient records.”

  I sighed as vistas of work expanded before me.

  I beckoned Gilbey. “Come on over here. You need to hear this.” I told Bill, “He does. He’s the money.” I told Gilbey, “You'll love this.”

  Gilbey listened. He didn’t interrupt. Bill expanded on what he’d told me. Gilbey said, “First step, identify the threat. Determine the extent and magnitude.”

  “Right.”

  Gilbey looked at me. “I blame you for this.”

  “What?”

  “If we’d sent anybody but you, it would’ve been over after those Bustee kids got rounded up.”

  He was joking. I didn’t feel it. It did seem like this stuff happened to me all the time. “Yeah. Well, I did take care of them. I can follow up with the Guard and the Outfit, if you want.”

  “The Outfit?”

  “The Chodo family enterprise. The Combine. The Syndicate.”

  “I know who you mean. Why bring them up?”

  “They’re very territorial. The World is at the edge of their territory. It ought to spin off a demand for secondary entertainment. Which would be why you haven’t heard from them. Chodo and Belinda understand business better than most people.”

  “We’re going to help them get better, too?”

  “A fair dinkum, I’d bet. Anyway, they don’t allow competition. And no freelancing on their patch. You’re safer down here than you’d be anywhere but the Dream Quarter.”

  Gilbey grunted. “So there are several things going on.”

  “Yeah.” Seems to be my fate. “Like this. Looks like. You decided to build a theater. To anchor a chain. But you picked a spot where something ancient and unpleasant is buried way down deep. The enterprise attracted wannabe gangsters from the Bustee.”

  “And the bugs?”

  “Teenagers. Psychotically brilliant kids, mostly off the Hill. They found a secret place to indulge some strange hobbies. The bugs they made got loose. Besides getting up here to the surface, they went down and irritated whatever it is that’s buried down there.”

  I was cooking. Who needed the Dead Man to work this stuff out?

  Gilbey asked a trick question. It wasn’t the trick question but it was a good one. At that point I had only a glimmer of the key question myself. “What are you going to do about it?”

  “That’s the big one. It'll take some thought. Right now, recruit a gang of thugs and take complete control here. Then find out why the workmen won’t show up when jobs are so scarce. Maybe go down under to look around. If the sulfur I left burning hasn’t made the air unbreathable down there.”

  “That'll take time.”

  “Everything takes time. Even taking time. The impossible especially takes a little longer. Here’s what you can do. Tell your construction foremen I want their men here tomorrow. Or they can kiss their jobs good-bye.”

  “We don’t operate that way, Garrett.”

  “Why not?”

  “We’d rather look out for our people.”

  “They know that. Right? So, you talk this way, they know you’re serious. Bill. Suggestions?”

  Belle? Bill? was looking a little younger. “Before anything else, you need to tell me what you want to accomplish.”

  “We’re building a theater. Shooting for an early spring opening date. We’ve had problems. Vandalism. Theft. Giant bugs. And the haunting I brought you over to check out. The theft and vandalism have been dealt with. I used to think we had the bug problem licked, too.”

  Using a slick redhead’s slide, Tinnie eased in close, inside my left arm, while I was talking to Bill and Gilbey. “You were way too optimistic about that, Malsquando.” She pointed.

  Up where the roof sheathing should start going on soon, a brace of foot-long blue beetles decorated the World, glistening in the afternoon sun. Something the size of a small terrier perched up top, between naked rafters, wearing big antennae. It sparkled in the sunlight, too. I couldn’t make out the color. Black or dark brown, and very shiny. “All right. I got way ahead of myself.”

  The neighborhood had been quiet. Today. Enough for me to make out the chatter of a sizable group headed my way.

  That turned out to consist of Morley Dotes, Singe, Saucerhead, and several of Morley’s troops. I’d asked Morley to find Tharpe. I told Manvil and Bill, “Let me talk to these guys.” Noting the wench pack starting to size Morley up already.

  How does he do that? Get them breathing faster just by showing up.

  “Saucerhead. Great. I need you to run security here. Round yourself up five guys you trust, then keep everybody who don’t belong here out of the place.”

  Tharpe’s mouth opened and closed several times before he asked, “How will I know who belongs?”

  “We'll work that out after you pull a crew together.” He knew where to find the right kind of people.

  “Pay?”

  “I’ve got the brewery behind me. As long as people drink beer we'll get paid.”

  Saucerhead glanced around. He recognized Gilbey. That made my case. “That'll do.” He headed out without another word.

  I faced Singe. “And what are you up to?”

  “Freelancing. For Mr. Dotes.”

  “I see.” I glanced at the sky. “Are you dressed warm enough?” I had a notion what was up. That might take a good, long time. If Singe could find a track at all after the weather we’d been having.

  She gave me the kind of look an adolescent does after that kind of question. And added a big rat sneer at my coat.

  “All right. You’re a big girl.” I told Morley, “Don’t get her into any tight places.” And strained hard not to start moralizing about bounty-hunting somebody who’d never done anything to him personally.

  “More bugs,” Gilbey said. He pointed. A huge walking stick had appeared up top. It was big enough for me to make out its head rolling right and left, checking the blue beetles. It decided they looked tasty. It charged. Something I’d never, in my limited experience, seen a normal walking stick do. They usually move slow, or just wait for dinner to come to them.

  The beetles scooted. One lost its grip on the wall. Down it went. The walking stick fell right behind it. The beetle pounded the air desperately with inadequate wings. It survived its collision with cobblestone. The walking stick did not.

  Morley and Gilbey alike hustled over for a closer look. I said, “They just keep on hatching out. I should head over to the Tenderloin, find out if?”

  Miss Tinnie Tate has mastered the secret of bilocation. She was beside me, gouging me in the ribs, before I could finish my thought. Belle gawked, amazed. Though he seemed more taken with Lindy Zhang. Whenever he looked at her he sloughed a half dozen years.

  The years came back the moment he looked somewhere else. Somewhere behind me. I turned but didn’t see what had turned him gray at the gills. He pretended nothing had happened. But he looked around some more, marking lines of retreat.

  Morley return
ed. “You have an interesting one here, Garrett. Not as lethal as usual, but interesting. Good luck. Singe. Time to go.”

  Gilbey approached. He wore a weak smile. “Ditto, what your friend said. I understand why it’s taking so long. Alyx! Let’s go.”

  “Hang on. I need to talk to her. Alyx! Come here. Gods damn it, Tinnie, turn it off for two minutes.” There are rare moments when enough Tate is just about enough.

  “What?” Alyx was pouting now.

  “Cut the crap. Give me some straight answers. Why do you keep insisting on ghosts here when nobody else sees them?”

  “I see them!”

  “Seen any today?”

  “No.”

  “Where do you see them when you do?”

  She waved a hand behind her, indicating the World. “Inside.”

  “So. You’ve been coming down here despite your dad’s instructions.”

  She stared at the pavements, for once unready to squabble.

  “You have. Bad Alyx.”

  “I just wanted to see how things were going. I talked Daddy into building all this.”

  “The ghosts. You keep insisting.”

  “Damn it, Garrett! I saw them! Every time I ever went down into the part that’s going to be under the stage. That’s where everybody else saw them, too. And sometimes even up on the ground floor.”

  “Who else saw them? I can’t find anybody.”

  “They all quit. Or lie because they don’t want to talk about it.”

  I didn’t get that. Ghosts aren’t common but so much weird stuff happens around this burg that I couldn’t see anybody getting rattled over a spook or two. Unless... “What did you see?”

  “I don’t know. It was just there. All kind of formless. And there was, like, music. Or something. Really faint.”

  Had I not had Bill’s report I would’ve discounted everything Alyx said. As it was, I couldn’t get anything more useful than her stubborn insistence that shehad seen ghosts.

  “All right. Go on home with Gilbey. Take the ladies with you.” Bill, I noted, had managed to spark a conversation with Lindy. Which he was using to cover his moving continuously to survey the neighborhood.

  I had a distinct feeling that Bill had seen a ghost of his own. One that made him extremely nervous. Which just added on to the pile.

  I invited myself to interrupt. “Bill, talk to me some more about what’s going on down there. I really don’t understand.”

  40

  “What now, Malsquando?” She was going to beat that dog hairless.

  We were alone now. We had the World to ourselves. Discounting the presence of several Relway Runners driven by a need to keep an eye on what was happening. Tinnie had refused to leave with the other women. She insisted that she was smitten by my borrowed coat.

  “You don’t want to wear that Malsquando thing out the day you invented it.” It irked me for no reason I could pin down.

  “Why aren’t you wearing your regular coat?”

  Though she’d stared some, this was the first she’d commented. “The guys at Morley’s place tore it up fighting over it.”

  “What?”

  “They thought somebody left it behind. It looked halfway decent and didn’t smell too bad.”

  “A found treasure. I meant well, Mal... All right. It’s gotten really quiet, hasn’t it?”

  Yes. There was no one else in sight. Except Relway’s guys, at rare moments.

  “Why aren’t we up to our ears in gawkers and opportunists?”

  “You want to go inside and poke around?”

  “When reinforcements arrive.”

  “You’d get a better look at everything in there.”

  And there wasn’t much anyone could take from the outside. Not without prying pieces off.

  Some word had to be out. Something to the effect that whoever messed with the World could expect to come up missing useful bits.

  It was the edge of the Tenderloin, where freelancing is seriously discouraged.

  Seconds after we got inside I received proof that my redheaded friend was way too subtle for me. She had a good reason for getting in out of the weather.

  I should have run for it. But I couldn’t.

  Tinnie said, “I’m getting a lot of pressure from the old folks, Garrett.” She paced and twitched, her voice taut and pitched higher than usual.

  This wasn’t the Tinnie I was used to. That Tinnie is the personification of self-confidence. I’m the one who panics when personal talk gets personal.

  I had a premonition. Here came a time to panic. “Oh? Yeah?” I squeaked, too.

  “I’m out of excuses. For everybody. Including me.” Her voice kept going higher.

  “So... Uh... What do you think?” I shoved my hands into the back of my pants. She didn’t need to see them shaking.

  “Uh... I think...” Her voice was up there in mouse talk range. “We’re grown-ups.”

  “So we ought to be able to act like grown-ups.”

  That didn’t come out smoothly.

  “Yeah.”

  “Grown-ups manage this stuff all the time.”

  “Every day.”

  Both of us could hear dozens of absent voices muttering that our behavior was worse than juvenile.

  Tinnie went on. “And we are grown-ups. Aren’t we?”

  “Have been for years and years. Though some would argue.”

  “People years younger than us manage perfectly well.”

  “They do, don’t they? And we’re professionals. We’ve dealt with tough people and tougher situations.”

  Talking all around the central issue. Not getting to the heart but relaxing the defenses a little, here and there.

  It went on. The consensus was, we couldn’t just keep on keeping on. There were people in our lives. Something had to give. But the risks were huge.

  “Am I interrupting?”

  “Bill! I thought you went back to the tavern.”

  “I did. Then I had a thought. On the house. Because about a dozen of those giant bugs are running around out there, even in this weather. Which means the problem could get really awful when the weather turns warm. If everything isn’t straightened out by then.”

  Tinnie seemed more relieved than aggravated by the interruption. Though the subject still had to be addressed. Soon.

  I said, “You could give me more information about what’s going on down there, then.”

  “I could. If I had anything. I can’t without going down there to look.”

  I could arrange that. I didn’t tell him out loud.

  He might have read my mind. “Find yourself a real, legal expert. Not a necromancer, either.”

  I didn’t press. I knew where to find Bill. He was thinking that, too. And regretting it, maybe.

  He said, “That’s what I wanted to tell you. That whatever is down there, it’s so ugly that you need to get a really big stick onto it. Fast. Before it really wakes up.”

  He regretted having come back. But something wouldn’t let him just cut me loose.

  He wasn’t shaking now. He had been when he’d first come back outside, earlier.

  It might be a good idea to take the evidence to the self-proclaimed experts after all.

  I glanced at Tinnie.

  I could use some expert help over there, too.

  Back to Bill. I got the impression there was more on his mind. A lot more. Some of it personal. His twitchiness seemed to be the sort that comes when you think somebody is stalking you. Then, too, there must be something he thought I ought to know but couldn’t bring himself to say.

  I said, “The brewery will send a nice fee along to the Busted Dick. With a retainer. So we can call on your expertise again.”

  “Retainer?”

  “A fee you get for keeping yourself available. The brewery has several specialists on retainer. Me among them.” My heels clicked hollowly on the floor planking. I heard scratching sounds. “There’s what’s been spooking our troops.” I glanced behind
me, past Tinnie, expecting to see a big-ass bug looking for a way to escape the underworld.

  I saw a ghost instead, and very, very faintly heard some kind of music.

  No other way to put it. I didn’t want it to be, but that was a ghost. Someone I knew was dead. Someone who had been dead for a long time. Swaying to the music.

  That was a ghost I’d seen before. As a ghost.

  “Garrett? What is it?”

  “Eleanor.”

  “What?”

  “See? There? The woman in white?” Becoming more real by the second. Smiling. “The one in the magic painting in my office.” The music grew louder by the second, too. And less melodic.

  Tinnie wasn’t happy. She didn’t know the whole story about Eleanor, though. Lucky for me. She hadn’t had as much claim on me then.

  I was amazed and dismayed that so much emotion still lurked within me. That so much hurt still surrounded that beautiful dead lady.

  She smiled as she came toward me, glad to see me, reaching with one delicate, pale hand. Backed by vague music that was turning into half-heard clanking.

  “I don’t see anything, Garrett.” Just a little put out. Then, “Oh! Oh, gods! It’s Denny!”

  Bill said, “You’re both seeing people who had a powerful emotional impact in the past.”

  Tinnie said, “Uncle Lester.”

  Two more females began to form behind Eleanor. For a moment I thought one was my mother. But she was too young. Kayanne Kronk. My first love, so long ago. The other was Maya, a street gang girl who had grown up to become a serious entanglement - till I ran her off by being the same way with her that I’ve always been with Tinnie. But Kayanne and Maya were both still alive, insofar as I knew. And they didn’t go around accompanied by bad music so soft you had to strain to be irked by it.

  Both women faded as soon as I thought that.

  Tinnie was distraught. Bill grabbed hold and hustled her out of the theater. I stumbled along behind, ten percent of me clinging desperately to present reality. My brother Mikey had begun to materialize behind Eleanor. Who looked real enough to bite now.

  I saw Tinnie’s ghosts, too, but they had no form to my eye.

  The light outside helped. “Bill, that was all inside our heads, wasn’t it?” I suspected that because of my long exposure to the Dead Man.