n a world where black magic is real, Artemus Dark is a paranormal investigator without a gun confronting demons, sorcerers and ghosts in a barrage of cases that often – literally – are to die for. In Dark Running, Artemus searches for the murderer of his sorcerer-brother in a darkly-atmospheric New Orleans. Deluged with a host of surreal characters, almost every one of them a suspect, Artemus soon discovers that Philip was killed in his connection in the recovery of an ancient grimoire in Malta: the fabled Emerald Tablet of Hermes Trismegistus. Anyone possessing the artifact can control great powers; Artemus takes on the case and then discovers he’s been hexed to die – ripped to shreds by a faceless demon, summoned by the forces of the Tablet itself. Not fully believing in the Tablet’s existence, Artemus escapes harrowing encounters with his demon and assorted villains using powerful black magic. As clues (and bodies!) pile up, the investigator tries to connect the dots to the mystery, but nothing seems to make sense. With the help of a voodoo psychic, Artemus discovers the only way he can be rid of his hex is to have the caster willfully destroy the “binding object” with which it was made. Death stalks every shadowy corner as the ghost-hunter flies from the rainy streets of New Orleans to the far-flung shores of Malta, hoping to discover the secrets behind the murder and the location of the Tablet itself. At the end, confronted with death and dismemberment by his horrific nether-demon, Artemus discovers something startling about his own identity and his connection with the Tablet … a revelation that will change his life forever.
Saturday evening before Easter, the gray beast of a seaward storm dragged itself over the Bay Area, shedding its blood. Below it, a diminishing fragment of fragile humanity trudged onward by the clicking of clocks and personal, self-made prisons of life.
Here, there, everywhere.
Lost to themselves, these fragments vanished, one-by-one, in the gray dullness of being; of existing. Everyone wants the best for society, they will say, but as long as they benefit themselves first.
Marilyn let herself in the back of the Liberal Arts auditorium, the section connected to Humanities, on an errand of self-survival. The building was new, yet it still smelled musty –old – from the rain.
So, yes, she thought as she sat herself in the stiff office chair behind the lectern, the Prince of Darkness has a face.
On the desk before her were a stack of VCF newsletters. VCF – The Voice of Chinese Freedom. The on again, off again Asian student union. Jane or somebody – maybe Daniel – had brought them in from the printers. A blue order paper crowned each stack with an assurance of quality. Precision. Exactness.
Marilyn took the top newsletter and checked the active roster.
The Prince of Darkness has a face, she thought. No one would know that. Well, not nowadays, not after so many years the old man had remained silent in whatever rotating inferno he shacked up in. The Prince of Darkness has a face, she thought again, for the umpteenth time. She knew it well because like any demon, the Damned know well their tormentor’s identity.
Her father.
…
When fishing for treasures in a flood
When … fishing …
do not fish out daughters
when
fishing for
fishes
Marilyn Wan sat back, her steely, focused eyes absorbing the words on the screen. AltaVista Babelfish was just plain ignorant. She did not have a Mandarin keyboard. What she got translated online was:
当钓鱼为在洪水时的珍宝不要钓鱼女儿
It was mixed up. The translation mixed up the words. It should translate as, “When fishing for treasures in a flood, do not fish out daughters.” What it read was: When fishes for do not fish the daughter when the flood treasure.
She checked her watch and frowned. She would have to write the whole thing out longhand and there were three thousand words. Frankly, Marilyn didn’t write Mandarin well. Her fluency was in Cantonese, and speaking and writing Chinese was not the same as it was in English. That was because whoever had dreamed up Chinese writing had been an artist and not a linguist. Would her students notice? None of them had a lick of Chinese in them, and this was not a linguistics class. No, it would get around – they would take notes – and somebody somewhere would translate it and she would become a laughing stock, all just because there wasn’t a decent translating program handy.
Errant thoughts invaded her brain. Have to hit the gym – martial arts training, girl! Kick-Hit-Kick! And the VCF, Marilyn. Daniel could do it. No – he’s waiting for something like that! He would laugh at me! Too much on your plate – he’ll say – and then give me a smug I told you so. But … I could pile it on Su Fawn! No, can’t because she’s quitting anyway. Fuck.
Marilyn looked up, thinking she’d seen movement in the aisle.
No one was there.
Marilyn stood and walked up the aisle, gently pushing the double doors open to reveal the cold hallway and the downpour beyond the front glass. Somewhere in the lingering storm, The Prince of Darkness moved. He was always up to something – his hidden agendas.
There was somber comfort at a gloomy, rainy Saturday when she felt there was not a single soul anywhere.
She was halfway down the center aisle when she noticed someone sitting at the lecturer’s desk. It was Lui “Billy” Chieng, the mathematics professor. He was wearing his raincoat and his aged, balding head shown under the pale lights. How he had gotten in there without her seeing him was a mystery. Perhaps he’d been up a flight visiting Professor Fry and had come down the back stairwell while she’d been watching the rain.
“Mao’lin,” he greeted her, using her birth name. He was in his seventies, but his voice was smooth and unblemished.
Marilyn stopped in front of him, bowing slightly. “Uncle Billy.”
“You made the Head,” he said, in Mandarin, “how good for you.”
“Oh. Thanks.” She frowned. They were silent a few moments, studying each other. Billy Chieng’s eyes were ivory in the irises, making it appear he had cataracts, but his vision was impeccable. He seemed to notice her disapproval.
“You’re not happy about the promotion?”
“I can’t help but think you or my father pulled strings.”
The old man looked away.
“It’s not that I’m ungrateful. I mean, Dean Schumacher and the Board have been a thorn –”
“I told you about my young days, yes?”
“Yes, uncle.” He wasn’t her true blood uncle; it was a term of endearment borne from years of cultural tradition.
“Those were hard times, long ago. I loved mathematics. My father was a poor, ignorant farmer in Shandong. My mother died while I was very young and she left us with a big family. During the war, there was no one to help me make it to school. I learned what little I could from the missionaries, but I hungered. The more I learned, the hungrier I became.”
Marilyn sighed. She knew his story. Chieng continued, however, unabated.
“I met some men who were friends of the old chairman, Mao, yes? They put in a good word for me and I was sent to school where I learned engineering. Later, when we fought Chiang Kai-shek, I was made an officer of the People because of my education. These men who helped me, they had no reason to help me. They didn’t care for impoverished orphans. So I became a little brother to them – a tool for them – because they saw my usefulness.
“Those were dark times. Men of little worth were given high stations; men of great worth were kept under the heel because they were feared. I didn’t understand that, back then. I thought that if I were smart, I should be able to go to school and learn more. When these men understood my potential, many feared me. It was through my big brothers that I became great in my own way, and I learned how to make people fear me. Yet, they would not just give it to me, no. I had to become part of them. An asset? Yes?”
When Marilyn didn’t say anything, he continued. “You know how this school is run, Mao’lin. It has its own government, its own society, its own police department. It works within itself, truly a universe. A university. How apt – yes? Funny how things are lo chi (logical).”
Marilyn stared at the top of her desk. She knew where his lecture was going.
“The school is run with the most universal of integers in its equation: money. The lowest and central denominator. Fear has its uses, of course, but the application of the fear integer causes a variation: anger.” He coughed, covered his mouth. “When you appeal to avarice, money is a far more stable component in the equation than fear. The trouble with this application is that you must continue to appeal to this avarice. It’s an equation with an infinite, mathematical solution.”
“Uncle Billy ….”
“Yet another way things equate – even in the best of organizations – is by favoritism, and not necessarily by one’s qualifications. You deserve good things, Mao’lin.”
“You pressured them to consider me for the Liberal Arts head.”
The old man smiled. “Pressured? No. I appealed to their avarice; I presented them a logical sum to their equation, and they found it acceptable.”
“I could have made it myself.”
“You certainly could, Mao’lin. The Tao teaches that even the most powerful among us must have allies to succeed. It’s balance: we are connected. You forget I’m a sorcerer.”
Marilyn laughed, despite her annoyance. He was egocentric to a fault; even he would admit that. Yet, he had a way with his words, Billy Chieng. A supposition. Take it or leave it, but in the end, you took it because he was wise. Wise and dangerous.
“The challenges before you are not disqualifications or lack of potential, but favoritisms. Did you think they would just hand you the position with Professor Lieberman in the backdrop?” The old man’s voice became cold, emotionless. He wasn’t looking at her anymore. “Dean Schumacher wants him in the seat because they are lovers.”
“And she doesn’t trust me.”
“No. She doesn’t. You are this pretty Chinese girl in a sea of white people. They know about you, they know about me. They know about your father. They’re looking in through a window trying to figure us out, and they can’t do it. We’re not like those safe Chinese people downtown selling trinkets on Grant Avenue.”
“They think we’re criminals.”
The old man held his hands out. “We are criminals, Mao’lin.”
She didn’t dare being impolite; for one thing, it had never been in her upbringing to be rude to her elders, and secondly, the old man was rarely curt with her. He was dangerous, yes, but she never felt him dangerous toward her. He was a dragon head in the Blue Dragon Tong, and by that, he held considerable clout in the Chinese-American community. How an aging Chinese gangster had ever gained position among the alumni at the University of San Francisco was beyond her. Professor Chieng was, arguably, a mathematical genius despite his other qualifications. By any normal academic stretch, the old man did earn his academic seat by merit.
Did anyone at the university know about him? What Billy Chieng was? When he pushed Schumacher and the Board to promote Marilyn – did they know why they felt compelled to do so? Did they know he was dangerous? Did they even have an inkling what the old mathematics professor held besides … tenure? Marilyn wondered.
He shifted in the chair, sighed. “Women age better than men, don’t you think?”
Marilyn shrugged.
“Maybe it’s because they’re so full of life. They have the power to have babies, and maybe that makes them stronger … I don’t know.”
“Maybe.”
“You should have children. It would be a good thing, I believe. It would be good to see you with children,” he said. “That young man of yours – Daniel. You should get married and have children.”
“We’re … not together anymore.” Marilyn didn’t want to talk about it. Daniel had never talked about marriage at length when they’d been together. It was just one of those things. “You were married for a long time, Uncle Billy,” she pointed out, changing the subject.
“I had two wives. Married to both at once. One lived with me here – Yi Lin. The other lived in Shanghai. You remember my wife Yi Lin? It was a very long time ago when she died. You were this little girl …. ” His voice trailed off. He finished with: “She was a good woman.”
“What about the wife in China?”
“She died much younger, of fever. I only saw her three times.”
“Why didn’t she come to America?”
He scowled. “Our marriage was prearranged, but she could not have children. I left her because her family insulted me. I wouldn’t send for her.”
“That’s really sad,” Marilyn said.
“Life is sadness, Mao’lin, what does it matter?” Billy Chieng cleared his throat. “When I look at you I see your mother. You know how I found her in China? You know? How I brought her here?”
“Yes, Uncle Billy.”
“Her eyes were as green as yours ….” He let it drop, contemplating his words as if they were elusive shadows in a strange room. “She was absolutely beautiful.” A pause – an endless moment where the old man seemed lost in his thoughts. Then he said, “I need you to do something for me, Mao’lin.”
“What?”
“I want you just to remember how dear you are to me.”
She smiled.
He reached inside his raincoat and took out a syringe, placing it on the desk. Seeing it made Marilyn’s smile fade instantly: there were bound horrors within the vial, swirling in an amber miasma.
“I can’t, Uncle Billy.”
“It is the Way. It is Tao. It is balance … harmony.”
“I … can’t.”
“Yes you can. I need your help. It won’t hurt your classes.” He watched her struggle quietly. When she looked at him, he pushed the needle closer to her. “Take it. You want it, I know.”
“I … I don’t take that anymore.”
“Not all the time, no. It’s still there. It never goes away.” His milky eyes were so intent they frightened her. “You know that it’s by my hand that you will be a dragon in the tong, not your father’s. Your world is more linked to mine than it is to his.”
She shuddered, a tear gliding down her cheek. “What do you want from me?”
“The Ghost Voices. These are troubling times for the tong and I want to find out some things.”
“I suppose I don’t have a choice.”
“We all have choices, Mao’lin. You possess a gift of vision, as did your mother.”
She picked up the needle. “Do you have something?” Marilyn wanted to tie her veins.
“Here.” Chieng gave her a rubber band. She took it from him, rolled up her sleeve and carefully administered to herself. The yellowish glow of heroin smoothly sank into her skin – amber sinking into alabaster. Chieng got out of the chair and placed her gently into it. For a while that was the last thing she remembered.
My latest short story, “Don Quixote de Las Vegas”, can be found at the Hispanic Culture Review! Follow link for a read and an introduction to this fine online cultural magazine!
Follow Miguel and his wife as they tackle the huge windmills in the deserts south of Barstow, California in the spirit of the Man of La Mancha and the bid of chucking reality!
She must have slept for an hour; she must’ve slept for a day.
The sky was all steel and white, when once it had been all black. It was now a turbulent mixture of shading too subtle to separate from sea and sky. No stars, no moon, no sun, no way to know where she was. The boat had taken on water, and that was for certain. That was all Ajaratu knew.
I saw the ghost again
last evening.
A wispy sheen upon
A pale gray sky.
A cascade of silvery-white horses
Riding a cold cold wind.
Her lips trembled with the last syllables of the half-forgotten poem. The sail itself blew ragged, a fluttering of despair. It would no longer catch the wind and she’d be sore lost to harness it and try to make for land again.
Ajaratu, she heard her father’s voice whisper in the deep halls of memory, the sea is always your teacher, but it will make severe your ordeals.
He hadn’t been there for everything though. Not everything. She could see his face sometimes in the leeward clouds, when the sun was dropping and the sea was calm. It took some imagination, but she could make out the shape of his face if she tried hard enough. It was easier when the summer was old and the storms were pushing themselves out of the south.
Her father had been gone so long.
And it wasn’t as if she wanted to believe the rumors that he went to sea and there ended, somehow, upon the endless rolling water. They all kept that going, the people of the island; that perpetual nod and a look in their eye that was not meant to console the grieving parties because no one on the island cared about Ajaratu. They were in league with her mother. Not Ajaratu. Not the girl who sought the gray pale light and dark of the sea because maybe maybe maybe her father had just left them and not died at sea; that he had left for Floh-ee-dah. Good riddance because he never amounted much to anything but a dreamy alcoholism.
He was a fool; her mother would say, and the people of the island said, you, my dear, are a fool for chasing him!
Yet, fool or no, he was never cruel. Not once in those hours of red-eyed pensiveness was he ever cruel. He would hold his daughter to him as they sat on the rickety old rocker overlooking the wide gray sea and he would say
Ajaratu.
Ajaratu.
There’s no life given to you when you live here.
He would return, one day, for his daughter. Ajaratu had been so certain of that. Now, now – it was too long. Too long.
She’d gone to sea, the cold gray sea, on a raft with nothing more than the wind and a flag-pole rag made for a sail. She won’t end on the sea like they said her father had.
…
Her mother washed laundry by the shore of the sea. She beat the fabric tight and flat against the smooth stones, wadding them, flattening them, and smacking them hard on the unforgiving rock. Over and over again.
There were a few pennies to be made, but none enough to use by themselves. It was difficult to earn or rob money from those who have none. Honest folk never get rich, as her father said those months ago. He’d brought them a string of fresh fish from the wild and dark sea like he’d always done.
One of these days I’ll go to Floh-ee-dah, he’d told Ajaratu in a whisper.
She never wondered what he would do if he ever got there. The mainland seemed so far away, as if in a dream. She never wondered if he ever would come back for her, because she felt that he would.
Yet he hadn’t come for Ajaratu in these long years.
This was because of her. The mother. It was the mother that kept him from returning and not because he’d ended in the depths of the wine-dark sea. It was the mother and her scowling face and her demanding ways. Ajaratu was certain of this.
And she couldn’t rightly know of it, but Ajaratu suspected it, that at nights when the dark drew in off the somber horizon and the breeze came icy from the sea to kiss her nose, that half asleep she was visited by her father – her absent and vanished father – as if he stood there over her.
Ajaratu
She could remember a dream, somehow, his face glimmering like a ghost in glass.
Ajaratu, beware the sea
beware beware
Beware the unforgiving sea.
Dead in her dreams as if dead in life.
Oh, he couldn’t be dead though, drifting in the hard sky as she drifted in her helpless dory and the sea slapping her bow and the mast rag fluttering. Above it, she could see the dark steel move on obliviously. On and on.
Hadn’t she heard her father’s voice that time, not so long ago, whispering in her dreams as his shadow stood there before that open ocean-window, with the soft sounding brass bell in the distance chiming the early hour? And the seaward storm moving on and through and despite the lateness, she could see the clouds moving.
Soft and strange grayish-blue light afar.
Her father whispered in her dreams something about it being the Flying Dutchman out looking for the damned.
What made that light in the dark dark sea?
The Flying Dutchman, child.
She wished he could know she had come out to sea searching for him, because that’s where he’d gone. To find conch and whatever was edible. The last thing Ajaratu had seen of her mother was the woman slapping laundry on the flat rocks because some of the village crones paid her a few coins for the trouble. Her mother had been scowling, she recalled. Scowling in voiceless hatred because she’d never understood why Ajaratu was so loyal to her absent father. Her brown-black form was a sliver on the flat white-gray rocks of the tide-flats as she slapped that linen and scowled.
…
Her mother walked the length of the island every day in the course of her work. Miles around and back again, with a basket on her head. That basket was hardly ever empty, and one could see it a long way off because the island was flat for the most part.
Some people have said that there was once a great sailing ship that wrecked near the rocks her mother would bleach those dirty linens, and somewhere within arms’ reach laid silver bars for the taking. Her mother never gave into those stories though, because to search for them would be not to find them, and not to find them would be confirmation there was nothing more to her and her family other than toil. Ajaratu found that strange, because her mother would rather toil without disappointment dashing her dreams that one day she would never toil. Her mother, Ajaratu believes, was crazy.
At times Ajaratu had swum to the depths when she was not hauling fresh water in buckets from the spring wells, searching for those silver bars. She could see them in her mind’s eye, flashing and brilliant on the sea floor, half-obscured by sand and crushed coral. There wasn’t anything like them down there in the shallows where the barracuda floated or the moray eel hid. There were the blurry shafts of sunlight scurrying back and forth in zigzags over the clutter of rocks and fish and weed.
And yes, the girl’s wish now fully on: leave the woman. Leave the scowling woman who hated you. The one who would not understand. There was no other place to go but the open sea and off the island, and nowhere but the wind and the water and the clouds. Somewhere out there, child, child, somewhere out there your father vanished. And maybe it wasn’t like how everyone said that he’d died out there, lost at sea. No, it didn’t have to be that way. He might’ve left them all behind and took the Gulf Stream up and made it to Florida because in some way, Ajaratu was going that way too. She would go to Flo-EE-dah and find her father because she was certain it wasn’t the unforgiving sea that had killed him, it was the old scowling woman who was her mother who had driven him away just as she had driven Ajaratu away.
Please take my fear of the lonely unforgiving sea away so I can leave the island behind, and such a wish granted because Ajaratu couldn’t see the island, nor the sky, nor the sea. The long thread of red cloth was gone, and the sail hanging limply because it could not catch the rising wind.
Through the gaps above she could see once in awhile a lone angel, winking indifferently down from the Grand Abyss. Is that a sign? It was like her grandmother used to say, look for the signs. Because the heavens know. They know everything. And you will understand them even if you choose to ignore them.
There are streams of ghostly luminescence in the water at the bow of the dory, swirling and fading away into the darkness of the night ocean, stirring up that ghostly phosphorous. There’d been a large shark there earlier, keeping pace, but Ajaratu hadn’t felt afraid. Not all things in the sea were evil. Detached, aloof, and following her on a whim, the great fish had moved lazily from starboard to port and back again until boredom overtook it and it had vanished into the emerald depths.
And there had been a devilfish out there too, much earlier in the day, just under her boat, spreading its great black wings in an endless and majestic dance. A black angel, dark as the night ocean, and she wondered then where it had gone. Does it sleep on the bottom of the sea when night overtakes it? Or did the devilfish just swim forever?
Ajaratu, it seemed to have said in its wandering guidance, whither where you go?
I would fly through the sea
With you
Fly on
We two lonely spirits
We two fools
All that poetry, anyhow, is not of her spirit, at least not born of her own inner yearning. It comes from somewhere beyond her, because her father, in those lost days before she had turned to the sea, used to read worn pages second-hand from left-over leavings of those who once had homes taken from them. One could find anything if they search the dirty hills of garbage. No one keeps wealth on Cat Island. They either stay poor or leave poor, but at least those who leave have a wealth of dreams.
That was where her father had gone.
All those poems – hose pages stolen before her mother could tear them up and abandon them, as she had torn and abandoned the man of their lives.
Even now Ajaratu recalled that terrible time when she’d decided to explore the great warren of seaward tunnels built to channel water away from the harbor. The tide came in early, merely because she’d forgotten about it, and Ajaratu had been a’washed into the warrens without hope of escape.
Dank and dark and full of the woo-laroo-roos, the bad spirits, the malo loa as the voodoo women said, those channels attracted the children of the island to explore. There is no great fear that will stay the curiosity of children, they say. Yet, Ajaratu had slipped into the great well there and couldn’t get herself out. It was long after dusk when her father somehow found her – perhaps homing in where she was with a sixth sense – and had, with the use of a rope and tackle, extricated her from her imprisonment. When they’d returned home, her mother merely remarked indifferently that her only daughter was back. It seemed no great news one way or another.
…
Now to be out on her own, without mother or father, even with a sinking dory far from land, and when the water came in because of the high nighttime sea, it sank the dory and she was cast away.
She rode the unseen waves, up and down and up and down, headed as far as she knew west toward the blue light of the Flying Dutchman, or maybe it was FLOH-EE-DAH, or at least what she thought was Florida, and when she struggled, she sent phosphorous up like a cloak of ghosts. Malo loa, maybe, because now she was without a boat and without the one she came to find.
One at sea with the gods because you could be like her mother and sit all Sunday morning in a pew touting Jesus or Jehovah or whoever you wanted, but in the end the only gods were those in the sea. The wish to know the gods is disquiet for the unwise, or so her father had once said. He had said that because he was learned; learned enough to read poetry and to know about the Flying Dutchman.
In the rolling valleys, she could still hear his voice above the pumping of her heart, t’was better to sit in Hell and learn Sin for thirty days than to abide ignorance in Heaven for one.
And now waiting for her last wish, the glorious gate to being: to leave behind all that was her childhood and the innocence of everything that she once was.
In the shadow of the sea Ajaratu rode and rode and rode away, and in those dips and heights she came ever on. She said,
Published by Eureka Literary Magazine 2009; published by Calliope 2015
“Girl Sunday”
Girl Sunday comes out of Herbie’s On the Beach running like watercolor in a deluge. A needle in the foot because no one will notice. Amber in glass vials, alabaster flesh, a teeny-tiny pinch; rise out of the green green grass asleep. Kiss me. Dylan Thomas. Always changing, Girl Sunday, yet remaining the same. Somehow. She is as wild as ever, running wild with everything and everyone tame around her.
They will miss her if she is gone. Short red hair, large eyes, lithe, petite, pixyish in the Sunday morning light. Girl Sunday. They will look for her on the avenue, even those who never knew, somewhere along the way. In another world at another time, painters would paint her, sculptors would sculpt her; is she beautiful? Maybe, but maybe not. Superficially, perhaps. Beauty is superficial.
Stopping by the jewelers, because this is the day, or would be the day, Girl Sunday’s little one would have been two-years-old. Every year she will come here, buy a sapphire – a birthstone – and keep it in the small oak box in an empty storage room meant to be a nursery.
…
Going to the used record store, where the vinyl LPs are sold, defying the Electronic Age. Girl Sunday looking though the stacks wearing a short, yellow summer dress. Fats Domino. Patsy Cline. The Ventures. It’s an undying fad because all her friends go there too. Dead and dying music immortal. Listen to it spin, Girl Sunday. Spin in the morning light. Stick the needle in your foot because no one will notice. Rise out of the green green grass. Kiss me.
Simon and Garfunkel on a bridge in bad weather. We should let water pass under it. Girl Sunday likes the ghosts of the 45s. Somebody dead and nearly forgotten sings about being under a boardwalk. Regina behind the counter plays them all for her because Girl Sunday doesn’t own a turntable. It’s for fun is all.
The bookstore next, poetry ‘natch. Dylan Thomas. Kiss me out of the bearded barley. Swive me out of the green green grass. Kiss me.
Her best friend, Sara, doesn’t go to the bookstore because she doesn’t like to read. Hot nights and loud music are cooooolio! and Sunday mornings don’t exist. Girl Sunday feels sorry for her. Sara feels sorry for Girl Sunday. It’s a vicious circle. Friends are enemies when they are best at what they do, and she wonders who’d said it best that pity is the most dangerous, unintentional weapon.
After she abandons poetry, Girl Sunday heads out toward the country to make the day her own. It already belongs to her: Sunday for Girl Sunday. The week looms of course; it promises what it promises, and is either best or worst for those who await it. Yet for now, it’s the cool sunlight on the cape toward the water. She drives alone because for two years there’s been no one to accompany her. Even in that fragile year and a half where there had been a man, he was absent. Absent in a marriage and on the road. Rain on the road, apart from Girl Sunday and apart from their wedding vows and she with a cat and a full belly in a room of shadows. Ding dong bell. Swing the spitting cat. Dylan Thomas.
On the drive of her parents’ home she stops and cuts the ignition. The morning is old and soon the sun will pass the zenith, but even now the drive ahead is cloaked in the shadows of the trees. He had never loved her. He hadn’t understood. Other women and on the road. Girl Sunday in a room of shadows with a full belly and a cat. A needle in the foot. There’d been her illness, driving a wedge into her soul as she lay in the bed and the loneliness peeling off the walls. Worry. We are instruments of our own desires, bound by illusions of what we all think should be: a baby and a home and a family in the happy Sunday morning sunlight all of two years ago.
The side gate into the garden bars memories of a younger and shriller Girl Sunday running to catch fireflies or toads or butterflies. She doesn’t realize this at the moment, reflecting that there’s a pond behind the gate and that the house possesses a small quay. Even though there had been years of flashing jubilance skipping and diving into the chill waters of mid-summers long ago, all that remains for her now is a dull uneasiness: that the pond is another one of those dark, empty places that she no longer likes thinking about. The pond is like the empty marriage bed with its memories. Yet the pond holds no act of husbandly betrayal, and no miscarriage of a daughter unborn. It holds nasty surprises in the fastness of time, a haunted place in her youth where something cold and deadly had pulled her underwater. She yet possesses a scar on the back of her right calf to this day where the boards of the quay bit her when she’d fallen in. She had broken through the rotten boards and hit her head and – splash – was in the water. Had something clutched at her trailing foot as she struggled for the surface? Had something held her tight and forever … the foot … drawing her down into the dark green murk and the writhing grasses? And had she seen something in her wild flailing panic as she gulped water and sank? Had she seen a glimmering pale face empty and sad – her face – far away beyond the reach of the sunlight and the shimmering minnows?
On the sloping drive Girl Sunday sits in her car and stares at the house. In its abysmal shade in the amber sunlight she imagines it to be a candy cottage like the ones her aunt makes at Christmas: graham-cracker walls, candy stanchions, ringed with vanilla icing around the roof of chocolate chip tiles and shutters painted of maple syrup. She can imagine suddenly that one of those shutters are being pulled back on one side by a delicate, feminine hand – and she can see her own face – reminiscent of her mother and yet not so. The hair isn’t red but midnight-black, bestowing flashing emerald eyes and perfect teeth, inviting Girl Sunday inside this wondrous house of pureness and goodness. But it isn’t her face or her mother’s really; it isn’t even the façade of what could have been if things were different. The house is no longer home.
The shadows pass suddenly and she is a little more like the young Girl Sunday again. She gives the house of her innocence a long wavering look. No one is there. No one has ever been there. She starts the ignition and drives away.
…
“Tina, you need a change,” Sara will say, with her eyes wide and her innocent grin unblemished of tragedy. He was a jerk. He didn’t deserve you. Your little girl wasn’t meant to be. That’s why it ended. That’s why it all ended. The world can’t move if it’s wrong. Chrissakes, Girl Sunday, you’re only twenty-six!
Dance. Dance in a world of music and swirling lights. Fun. Dance, my ten little girls. In the foot again. The needle. It’ll make it good, trust me. Dylan Thomas. Swive me out of the green green grass. Kiss me.
There are men in the whirling jubilance, men and alcohol and music and chaos. Yet it is one of those places you’d like to go, and you go on alone and stand alone and you leave alone and you remember the sadness of what might have been and when you go home, you go away. Two years and friends and family and still so empty; it’s funny how it works. Girl Sunday can’t change, Sara. Life isn’t like the movies. A cat still lives at home. Spitting cat. How does the old story go, Dylan? Ding dong bell, swing the spitting cat?
In the little oak box are two sapphire pins, twinkling in the low light. Taking them out in the glow of remembrance is something perilous. Tina, you need to change. Within those green eyes she knows this. Life has its own agenda, but where does it go?
Head in hands, on the edge of the bed, now. Now. Cry. Laugh. Wonder. It’s everything and everything spins. She’s all right. Girl Sunday is out there alone, but she’s all right.
Here the two-lane highway comes to an inevitable cross with an unpaved gravel through-and-through that appears to come from nothing and heads toward nothing. There are great snow-capped peaks to the northeast after the flat desert, and opposite, the land falls away into nothing. Phoenix is off that way, somewhere beyond the great flat line and oblivion.
The pickup comes to a halt right at the crossroads. There’s a brief pause before the passenger door opens and someone gets out. An exchange of gratitude and welcomes float away in the cooling air – cooling because it’s nearing December. A moment later and the truck is off toward points that’ll suffice for civilization, leaving the tall Indian man with long, unkempt hair standing there for some while, his duffle bag at his feet, surveying the dusty road toward the mountains.
Big Sky Country and the Last Stand before the World Changes.
He shoulders his bag and heads on.
*
John River’s ranch is the first home he comes to, that is, it used to be called John River’s Ranch, but now it’s changed hands and the current owners have put up a stalwart gate on the drive and a black-on-white placard reads DOWNE HOME. Since it’s just yards off the Willow River Apache Indian Reservation, it’s owned by white people now – the Downes. It makes sense.
The Roadrunner has never met them, the Downes, but he’d known John River and the River clan all his life. They’re gone now, somewhere. The Rivers are/were full Apache and they aren’t living anywhere near the Rez these days. The Roadrunner decides he’ll ask about them and where they’ve ended up. Someone in town will know.
By the time he makes the town limits of Ekta, the sky has become a somber, moody blanket. No one is there to pick him up because no one knows about his arrival. The Roadrunner hasn’t wanted a lot of fuss because the non-whites off the Rez would show up and make a big deal out of it, like they always do. The Town Elder Council hasn’t made any complaints, but he’s seen the inconvenience his fame has made for them.
They don’t care about his fame. The people. They really don’t. Nothing changes for them because White fame isn’t the same as Red fame and, well, they don’t like Red fame either. All of it’s unwelcome.
Which is why when he passes Leonard’s Mercantile, the clerk out front just gives him a wave and goes about his business sweeping the day’s leavings off the porch. The cattlemen have been in, it appears, by the droppings.
The Roadrunner heads up the dusty way and comes to his uncle’s house. There’s a number there, issued by the Federal Bureau of Indian Affairs, out by the mailbox. It reads: 5629. The house is still just as bland and poor as it’s always been. It whispers:
Welcome Home, Michael Roadrunner.
Welcome back.
You’ve been gone now a long while, this last time.
But you’re back now.
You’re back.
And you’re alone, which is a good thing.
But you know we don’t have anything here for you.
Never.
We didn’t have anything when you first started out.
We didn’t have anything when you came back all rich and famous either.
He unlatches the gate and heads up.
*
The uncle is dead; he’s been gone now for almost ten years. The Roadrunner’s older sister owns the place from a half-assed inheritance that doesn’t mean a lot. Margret Walker’s now unmarried from a dozen of excuses and besides, he never really could see her married for long. She’s just not that way. Not that she’s unattractive for a woman nearing sixty; she’s just headstrong and bent. Bent. Bent psychologically – not physically. She has no children from a mostly-celibate life, despite her marriages.
“Do they still call you Roadrunner?” Margret asks from the stove. He can’t tell if there’s any change in her oft-deadpan gaze because her back’s to him.
“Yes.”
She grunts.
“What?”
“Because white people never get it. I guess ‘Walker’ isn’t good enough for them. Or you.”
Margret brings him apache tacos. They’re soft tortillas filled with beef and acorns and some pleasing sauce the Roadrunner doesn’t recognize. All the apache tacos he’s had have tasted like the skins off cacti.
They eat in silence for the most part because Margret doesn’t care about what’s going on outside the Rez and Roadrunner doesn’t want to tell her anything about it either because it’s a weird world and he knows she won’t understand it.
She does ask him, though, “Are you still part of that rock and roll band?”
He shakes his head; they’ve been apart for some while.
“And that wife of yours? Where is she?”
“China.”
There are a few minutes before Margret’s got her nerve up to ask, “Do you have any money?”
*
Nothing has changed in the millions of years since he’d been a teenager. Not here. Not in this place – his old home – the home of his uncle who has gone away to the Great Mystery. The Great Mystery. That’s a laugh. The Roadrunner’s been away for so long – so disconnected – that he can’t remember the religious names of his Apache upbringing.
Well, gone spiritually if not physically.
Ussen.
Now that’s the name of the Grand Creator of the Apache world. And he thinks it’s funny. Funny – because he hadn’t thought of that name in such a long time and now it just rolls in his brain as he stares at the dusty ceiling of his old bedroom. It’s all Jesus Jesus Jesus these days. He wonders if the People have really accepted Jesus over the Old Ways. He doesn’t know. No one talks about the Old Ways anymore.
The Roadrunner’s not with them anymore either, you know. No. It’s gone. The boy had left so many years ago and that’s what’s really sad about the whole thing because it’s not like one could just walk away for a few years and then come back and things would be somehow the same.
Some while later he finds himself in bed, listening to the sounds of the desert. He rolls to his side and tries not to think. He can hear stray dogs barking. Maybe they’re not dogs; maybe they’re coyotes. There’re many coyotes to be found in the wide thirsty land between the Rez and Phoenix.
They sound a little like those hyenas on the nature documentaries, he thinks. Coyote – Coyote ….
There’s a song in that, somewhere. It doesn’t matter anymore, though, because the Roadrunner has come home and his wife is far, far away. On the road. The forever and ever road. Stretching away and away and away …,
… and I’ve seen the future little Apache boy and everything turns out ALL RIGHT.
He’s asleep before he knows it.
*
These dunes, these hills of ancient dust – he remembers them well. The ranchers back in the day had been a surly lot, more than eager to shoot buckshot or rock salt into the backside of an errant Apache kid on a Yamaha 80 motorcycle. He supposes now that it hadn’t mattered if he’d been truly trespassing on their lands; the ranchers didn’t care for anyone riding around on their watch, their skin or not.
It’s too easy to fall into that trap, of bigotry. Not all the ranchers back then had been hateful, but then again, perhaps a good many were – are.
Oh, and now he can see Jinny McCabe’s old ranch. The Roadrunner doesn’t know if her family still owns it or not. Yes, he’s known many women since her and now, isn’t that funny? Beyond thousands of musical performances and venues, his dick in anything that moved in the backstage rooms and innumerable hotels strung between here and East Europe and Australia – why can’t he forget teenage Jinny McCabe? And, no, she’d never put her white hand in his, nor had she touched his lips with hers. Those years ago, the Roadrunner had only been a dim shadow occupying the out-of-the-way recesses of her sideways glance. He is and will always be an Apache and she the white daughter of an Arizona rancher. Anyhow, why does it seem that with all his fame and money that he can have any woman anywhere at any time – and yet, now, standing here overlooking her childhood ranch – why does he pine for the mere ghost of a girl he’d known only in his adolescence?
He’s stood there for a long while now, the western sun on his back, just like it’d been in the old days. Who lives down there in the ranch now?
The Roadrunner can’t recall ever seeing young Jinny McCabe in the yard of her ranch or the pens near the house when he’d been a teen sitting near this very same spot. She’d had brothers there too; he doesn’t remember much about them because they’d been older.
At his back, the sun moves toward lands far away, to where his wife is at the moment. Her culture – her people – isn’t Apache, but it isn’t the same as Jinny McCabe’s either.
Now, he can’t remember for certain, and the years of rock and roll fantasies and substance abuse have screwed reality around, but, didn’t Jinny McCabe once tell him that she’d wait forever?
Somehow the Roadrunner has made his way down the dunes to the drive of the old McCabe Ranch and he sees that the old name placard is gone but there’s nothing on the lone mailbox either.
The Roadrunner sticks his hands in his jeans pockets and walks away.
*
I’m the one
I’m the one
They warned you about
Ghost in the machine
Have no doubt
I’m the one they warned you about
The Roadrunner is mumbling their first hit song. Has it been so long ago? He grimaces, thinking how inane it sounds, rolling in his brain. It’s a tired old pop song now. It’s been in every goddamn music hall and venue and concert and radio station since … the old days … the days when it all was exciting and mattered. The days before reality caved in and one realizes they’ve become nothing but a high-priced whore with an electric guitar.
The Roadrunner, in his innocence, hadn’t known, not really, what Jinny meant to him back then. I’m the one they warned you about, Jinny. Pain and sadness but altogether PAIN. Pain dancing close to the fire, Roadrunner. But you can’t stay away from it.
It seems like someone is standing not far from the outer fence of the old McCabe Ranch.
The breeze, a soft and subtle touch of the Devil’s tongue, sweeps the white fluttering fabric around and it twists back on itself. It’s not her, after all: a tarp or a blanket or a plastic cover. No – it isn’t Jinny McCabe and her light blond hair. Rancher’s girl. Horse girl.
Oh, walls. Walls erected along paths of love kept forever the hopes of one so far away from his target. She’d never spoken to him at school even though they came close together once upon rare times when the universe was being cruel. He only a shadow to her, perhaps; a reservation kid who’d successfully lied about who he was and where he lived just so he could haunt the halls of public schools beyond his range.
That one time, though, he’s certain he’d seen her at her ranch.
Now, that had to have been her! All those years ago! The swift-moving blond thing on her way to the family pick-up. He remembers he’d hopped on his bike and coaxed a chortle from its engine. Kicking it into gear, he’d headed out on the opposite side of the rise, hoping to make the road from the ranch just in time to “accidentally” meet Jinny McCabe before she was gone.
It didn’t have to be perfect, just enough for him to ride across the road in time for her to see him. The lone ranger on his trusty metal steed. The heroic one, you know? He would pop a wheelie or something. Give her a show. Look at me!
In terrible hope, Roadrunner’s distracted flight had forced him to forget the dip of the far end of the ravine and the soft sand of the rise beyond it. Just as he hit the sand, his front wheel twisted around and he dumped his bike – and himself – into a heap.
Unhurt, he’d pulled the bike up and jumped on the seat, kicking the engine back to life and then hurtling himself up the rise again to find her …,
… and yet missing the object of his affection as she sped onward and outward.
That’d been that. In a nutshell. He’d never seen Jinny McCabe again.
*
There’s a Pentecostal church up the road. It’s all flat land, and the wind doesn’t seem to stop – ever. The Roadrunner hasn’t been here in a long while.
The pavement ends, and the road is called Newbury, but like most roads thereabouts, its name origins are unknown. Nobody goes in for any of that Native American horseshit about having roads named after pertinent cultural icons or even religious ones.
The Roadrunner sits on the low whitewashed wall and looks over the clutter of gravestones. There’s none here that stand out from another because no one has the cash or the audacity to be remembered. Among them, it takes an eagle eye to find that particular one, but even now the Roadrunner has a difficult time recalling faces and voices. Now isn’t that funny? Dead in death as well as dead in memory. There are only a few phrases here and there scattered names like bones:
BILLY WALKER
And
DELIGHT “MILLIE” WALKER
There are crosses on the stones. Etchings. WHAT A FRIEND WE HAVE IN JESUS. That sort of thing. He’s paying for someone to come out and weed the graves, and it appears that somebody’s doing that.
*
“You’ll see. Once you leave, the family won’t accept you anymore. Your friends won’t accept you. You won’t be Apache again. You won’t be part of the people. Ask anyone who’s ever left.” It’d been Margret’s eyes that had told him this, long ago, her lips never having moved, and no sound from her thin lips.
The Roadrunner debates. They all act like they don’t want him at home, on the Rez, and they also told him before that he’d be sorry if he ever left. It’s been some time, yes, since he was here last and maybe somehow like eons in their memory, but for him it seems just like yesterday.
The family has always been that way. Go on, if you want. Get out of here, Michael Walker. You’re not like them, the white people, but you’re not like us either. You’re a half-breed, born outside the marriage because your Apache dad had hooked up with a wayward white woman who hadn’t known any better. Go on. Go away. But …
… don’t leave us either.
There aren’t many words of goodbye but it appears that the closer the time comes for him to go play his guitar again, the colder his family’s hearts become. They sit there, watching him in silence on the porch as they eat. There are three of them: Rachel and Little Millie and Margret.
Millie, the youngest sister, gazes at him over her bowl of beef stew. You’ll see. You thought you were lonely before, but wait until you leave us. You’ll never come home again.
They all look tumbled down and broken, in their way, but he’ll never tell them that. They have only themselves, he thinks, and it’s hard comfort to know that they never ask to come away with him. It’s not their world, Rachel will argue in that nasal voice of hers.
The Roadrunner ties a red bandana around his dark hair to keep the stinging sweat from his eyes. He ignores his sisters’ silent entreaties. He gets to his feet and dumps what’s left of his lunch in the outer bin and heads inside. The desert is stifling, melting. Everything. Everywhere. Burn burn burn.
When he sits on the broken couch in his room, he draws up his knees and puts his head in his hands. Maybe he shouldn’t go away anymore. They would hate him – the remnants of his family. And what’s really scary is that maybe they all hate him anyway, no matter what he does. Maybe he just hasn’t noticed after all this time.
His ride’s here.
They gather around. Rachel holds his guitar and walks him to the rumbling car. Pain and sadness, yes? Pain dancing in the fire, Roadrunner. But he can’t stay away from it.
A wise-cracking, egotistical paranormal detective chases down witches and sorcerers and legion of ghosts and the undead in a modern world where black magic and the supernatural are commonplace.
Darkness Becomes You introduces world-famous Artemus Dark as a paranormal investigator paired with a sarcastic enchantress named Griselda Soleil who thrusts herself into Artemus’ life after he experiences a series of bizarre paranormal attacks and the deadly machinations of a necromantic assassin hell-bent to kill him.Darkness Becomes You is approximately 100K words and is complete and ready for representation. Its predecessor, Dark Running, almost sold at Ace/Penguin and Simon & Schuster with my former literary agent, Monique Raphel High. Monique is no longer with, rest her soul, but Dark Running can be revised and restructured for the new Urban Fantasy series that follows the male-female team of Artemus and Griselda.
First chapter:
Here wandering shades the spell-bound valleys tread,
And midnight magic wakes the restless dead.
Matthew Lewis
Electric
On the air:
LIVE FROM THE MANHATTAN BALLROOM IN THE LUXURIOUS NEW YORK NEW YORK HOTEL/CASINO IN LAS VEGAS, NEVADA: THIS IS ONE STEP BEYOND WITH EDDIE DE WINTER!
The cameras panned from left to right, sweeping an audience that was storming applause. Multi-colored lights flashed in the overhead, more devastating than the climax from Close Encounters of the *Third Kind. The theme music blared as a man in a dark suit glided into the stage.
His presence alone demanded the crowd to silence before the prompters did. He stood there, unmoving; a face handsome if a slight adjective sufficed, and although comely to a degree, there was a serene puppy-dog expression to it; better to woo the most hard-hearted mothers and aging women. This is a good boy. No need to lock up your daughters. Eddie de Winter is your favorite son or grandson. Marketing demographics, turned over and over by savvy sales agents and studio executives, stated this as fact. Eddie was the refined Jeopardy! multi-champion; the vague but well-seeming boy-next-door who wore sweaters over long-sleeved shirts with buttoned-down collars; a lost son of the Osmond family, perhaps. The man who everyone knew and no one felt threatened by. All in all, the psychic attracted good demographics.
Eddie’s hair was short and light fluffy-brown. His eyes, enhanced by the tempestuous lighting, were icy blue and both focused and distant at the same time. Ageless he appeared, because he was one of those who seemed perpetually youthful. Eddie wore a smile, but it was elusive, implied. It was enough for anyone to know that this good boy was innocent and trustworthy.
The lights overhead mellowed for business. The host allowed his smile to fade, clasping his hands in front of him.
“We are separated by flesh, bounded by time. This is One Step Beyond,” Eddie recited confidently in a soft and unassuming voice. A good boy! It didn’t faze him that the audience joined him reciting the introduction – knowing well the words from countless viewings of other episodes – and then exploded into another round of applause.
When the audience was prompted again to become still, Eddie’s head came up, sweeping them all and then resting on a figure to his right.
Luh-Luh-ee-zah
The people were shocked, even though they all expected the onstage speakers to catch the first ghostly whispers. The microphones had been adapted onset to be fine-tuned to the spirit world, but they were not as astute as Eddie. The hollow voice cut an echo in the ballroom, emanating from everywhere and nowhere.
Eddie closed his eyes, cocked his head, his light angel-brown hair shining like down on ducklings. “There is someone here named Lisa? Elizabeth?”
Jayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy
The sharp whisper crackled the speakers. Eddie held out his hands – he was an antenna. A radio antenna tuned to the netherworld. The whisper was repeated, sharp, crackling across the air and jumping the now-silent crowd.
“Elizabeth, your father – Jay? Jason? There is a ‘J’ in his name … no, his name is James. A man who has passed away recently.” He gazed around but couldn’t see anything but the shadows and the captive audience. Eddie cast a glance at his director to signal the overhead lights, but they wouldn’t come on. A young woman, her blonde hair dazzled by the suggestive back-lighting, became centered on a massive projection screen – the Teletron – behind the host. With her eyes widening in surprise, Eddie keyed on her.
“James,” the host continued rapidly, “I get a ‘G’ for a last name. A long name with many syllables. Gallagher? Gallipolis? No? Gallipoleski?”
The woman nodded, her mouth wide enough to engulf the first row of the audience.
Gallipoleski
The masculine voice over the speakers this time was crisp and clear. The lights swarmed in a kaleidoscope of colors, converging upon the woman.
“James Gallipoleski to his daughter Liza: the chimney. A red chimney? Yes – red brick. The deed to the old property … is it a deed? No. A legal paper. A document. James is quite persistent.” Eddie closed his eyes, pinching his forehead with thumb and forefinger. “Birth certificates. Yes. Your father has hidden your brother’s – Andrew – Yes? Andrew’s birth certificate in the old red chimney. I sense an old place. An old home. Go to the old home. The home that burned down long ago. Go to the chimney. The property is overgrown but the chimney still stands. Look there to find the identity of Andrew’s … mother.” Eddie’s eyes flashed open, shooting his left arm in the stunned woman’s direction, a look of triumph on his face. “Your father wishes you to forgive him for keeping it a secret all these years. There were political scandals; another woman.”
There was a smattering of sparks to Eddie’s left, which materialized by the stage effects manager, who harnessed the sudden spiritual manifestation by shooting electricity through a wire grid open for such a purpose. Eddie flinched, although he knew that the device would activate at one point during the show. The blue light shot out a thick smoke, blinding him, but soon melting into a human face – an older man – that dissipated under a storm of lighting and ozone.
The young woman collapsed. The audience around her roared and applauded while ushers bolstered her back into her seat with complimentary copies of One Step Beyond DVDs and Eddie’ latest book, Storming Death: Speaking with Those One Step Beyond.
The host didn’t miss a beat. Recovered from the spectacle of the manifestation, he swept the audience with a hand and rested it upon another woman. His eyes closed and the audience retreated into silence.
Truh-eh-sssssuh
The speakers didn’t capture the voice right away; the disembodied whisper reverberated from one end of the ballroom to another. When the electronics caught up, Eddie had to help the microphones along.
“There is someone here. Someone. Terri. No. Theresa, isn’t it? Your mother and sister are together. They know nothing of the pain or of the accident that killed them. They love and watch you constantly.” A middle-aged woman, now centered on the Teletron, audibly gasped. Eddie didn’t open his eyes, but his hand was pointed directly at her. “Yes, Theresa. There is an ‘S’ in your name. Sweet … Swill … Switzer? Yes?”
The woman, her thin frame bent forward as if pushed, clasped her hands to her lips. The host opened his eyes and bestowed a brief, emphatic smile. Eddie’s demeanor changed abruptly, his face became more intense, and he didn’t call out for another person. Instead, the host focused his eyes on the camera, prompted by the voice of his director in the earphone.
“We will return to speak with the dead after these messages from our sponsors.” The psychic – engulfed in thunderous applause – waited a moment to see the red light wink off before exiting stage left.
In the wings, Eddie wife and producer, Sherilyn, waited for her husband. With her was Stan Levin, the director: a rotund hobgoblin of a man decked out in khaki shorts, wild black hair, and a goatee.
“He’s amazing,” Sher breathed.
The director grunted his agreement.
“He can channel on cue – what a rare gift,” she added. “And with all these lights.”
“A gift for us and for FOX,” Levin said. He didn’t have much to do except make sure the lights and the cameras worked and his star got a break.
“A pure mental medium,” she put in, her Asian face alternating in the strobe.
“Outstanding.”
“I’m not doing a live show again,” Eddie snapped, walking up to them. “Get those cameramen to zoom in on me when I tell them to, Stan. And what the fuck’s the matter with the lights? I cued those things twice and they didn’t come on.”
“I’ll get someone to check them,” the director said, and then gave orders via his radio. Stan then gave his star a wink and ran across the stage to help the grips.
“Honey ….” Sher said but Eddie waved her off.
“I … I can’t concentrate out there.”
“Keep away from the manifestation grid. It about screwed you up.”
Eddie said nothing. He was staring aback at the audience.
She touched him. “Are you all right?”
“Not a live show again,” he said. “Where did you get those kooks out there?”
“They weren’t prescreened.”
“I’m having a helluva time concentrating.”
“Eddie ….”
“Not another live show. I’ll walk, Sher. I … I can’t do it.”
She blinked, gave him a stern frown. “Okay, but we’ll still need to get through this one. I’m not even going to slap FOX with an ultimatum until we have a rap.”
Levin called out from the floor. “Get some cake on Eddie. Move it people – we got two minutes.”
Eddie said, “I don’t give a fuck what FOX wants.”
“The contract is bible.”
“Fifteen million won’t get me cab fare in this town.”
Sher motioned for a makeup woman to apply touchups to her husband’s face. “Are you okay? Do you need another hit?”
“No. I’m not in pain. I’m … I just can’t concentrate.” He was looking over his shoulder at Levin who was holding his hands up. The APPLAUSE light was on, prompting the audience to warm up before the cameras flicked on again.
“Stay away from the manifestation grid,” she warned him again.
“Eddie, center-stage.” Levin indicated the audience. “People – dish it out. Get this place rocking.”
“Eddie,” Sher began, but her husband was watching the lights come up.
“There’s something out there,” he whispered. “Get some lights on the doors.” The psychic left her in the wings, his stride regal from years of practice. Eddie positioned himself on the stage with his hands clasped in front of him again, his posture erect, and his game face on.
Levin counted down on his fingers. The audience was an unwavering thunder. The lights came up and the theme music blared for a brief sortie. Suddenly, the primary camera was blinking on. Dave Clubs, their announcer, intoned:
WE ARE BACK AT THE MANHATTAN BALLROOM IN THE FABULOUS NEW YORK NEW YORK HOTEL/CASINO IN LAS VEGAS, NEVADA. YOU ARE ONE STEP BEYOND WITH EDDIE DE WINTER!
The cameras swept in time with the streaking lights to fasten upon the host. Eddie said with liquidy-smoothness, “Death is sleep, life is a dream. We are speaking with those One Step Beyond.”
He looked over the crowd in the silence with every ear and eye upon him.
“You there,” he said softly, pointing out a gray-haired man in a white dress shirt, jacket, and jeans. It was strange this time because the speakers were silent. “I’m getting a name. It has a rough sounding ‘R’ in it. Rothsham? No …,” the host closed his eyes again, ignoring the confusion upon the man’s face, “… Rottsdale? Rheims. Rheims.” Eddie shook his head. “No, I’m wrong. Rochester? Rochester, New York? You are from there?” When Eddie’s eyes opened, they were confused.
“No,” the man said evenly.
“A woman there, in gray and black. An old place. A labyrinth.”
The older man said nothing; the audience, sensing something amiss, became so silent, one could hear the buzz off the overhead lighting.
“There is something there. Dead things in the ravine. But she is not there anymore.” Eddie’s voice had become hollow. He backed up, massaging his forehead. “Dead things in the ravine.”
Nothing from the old man, and the audience’s silence betrayed their collective confusion.
The host shook his head to clear it, getting nowhere with the attempt. “Someone there. Ahmee. Ah-Ah. Ah-bsid … the cold … the tunnels.”
There, in the center aisle, in the flashing lights, he saw her. Someone – a black-clad woman with a pale face and midnight hair – stood oblivious to the swirling lights. Eddie blanched. The cameramen didn’t find her on their viewers; they didn’t see her at all. The Teletron, an enormous entity itself, showed only the host’s terrified face. There he faltered, caught in the woman’s haunting gaze.
“Weird feedback,” Huff Donahue, right wing cameraman, muttered audibly.
“I ….” Eddie managed. His face transformed in the stage lights. What was once so assured and practiced became distant and lost. His voice spewed out in monotone: “ … and when you look into the mirror of years and you see her face and the lips move and the voice that comes says you are a charlatan remember the face in the mirror it knows you and the lips move and they’re your lips but not your voice in the nickel seams and the dead trees in November and the eyes – her eyes – you remember Eddie do you remember the Citadelle or icy mornings long ago when you ate the soul and do you remember Eddie the nickel seams and the dead trees in November and the dead wandering the and the icy darkness of the labyrinth when you were younger and the kiss of a young mother upon your lips and the cold below in the labyrinth and she says she says oh she says Eddie come back to me. Come. Back. To. Me.”
Eddie fell back and the lights overhead exploded in a shower of sparks and a blinding silver-blue flash. Cameramen, monitoring the chaos, were struck by golden electric energy from everywhere and nowhere and thrown from their stands. The audience screamed. The manifestation device, meant to enhance spiritual appearances, became a net of electrical death as arcs of energy juiced the metal rungs and chairs of the crowd. Sparks showered down from the arrays in streams of electrified energy. Shouting – screaming – everywhere.
In the pulsing blackness, people became caught in their chairs and died quickly in blue crackling energy while others were blasted from the metal railings.
Then the surging, dying madness inside the fabulous Manhattan Ballroom in the luxurious New York New York Hotel/Casino was plunged into absolute static.
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