Black Wings III - New Tales of Lovecraftian Horror Read online

  Coast highway. No shape to the world here. Barely a light. A good hour lot of things would light up.

  90+

  Clea’s ass and piece of a poem stuck in my head—

  I had been hungry all the years;

  My noon had come, to dine;

  I, trembling, drew the table near,

  And touched the curious wine.

  Flat. Rubber clacking. Downhill—collision the direction I feared, down a patch of naked dirt that worked as a half-assed exit ramp—bumps or furrows…Lucky I didn’t flip over…Finally coasting, pulled over. Cursed. Abandoned end of some industrial town…Dark…

  Something like a street…

  Didn’t need my M.B.A. to know this was a place I shouldn’t be. But I was.

  Skipped my cell. Thought, do it yourself and “Get out of here.” Fast.

  Popped the trunk, started to change the tire.

  That’s when the first shadow appeared. Second barely seconds after.

  Looked at my Rhode Island plates. “Welcome to Kingsport.” Oddly, clownishly, cocked his head, jester whose colors were on the wrong canvas. “Got a problem there?”

  Stood. Did it slow. Facing deranged—high on drugs maybe, or so I thought, and mean, was sure about that aspect. Didn’t know what to say. “Flat tire.”

  It grinned. “Can see that.” Bobbed its head. “Surely can.” Talking passed your fragility, dislodging pieces you make horizons from.

  I wanted to step back, but there was no backward as I was against the fender. Saw things like this on Law & Order, but Providence isn’t New York City, one giant slum, vertigo of gang-bullet ruin unleashed, ripening the ground with terrible. Those things didn’t happen in Providence, not to people like me. All just some circumstance of whimpering and blood-crazed ugliness on TV. Never really bothered me. Never expected to sick my fault right in its face.

  Blood pressure infected with impossible’s hammer. Lost in the panic of dumb. “Right. Sorry.” Loaded with my cringe.

  Second, “Can see that too.” Grinned, adjusted his crotch. Wild eyes. Disheveled. Dripping cold. Moved, between no farewell and ruin, to my side and almost behind. Created dialogues in my perspective. Left no ripples.

  First lit a cigarette. “Not a good spot.” Words, no relief for anxiety, bleeding with melodrama. “Habitation of gangrene and hell, a bitch that’ll skin ya down to the pulse.” Grin got wider, crazier. Looked back over his shoulder like he heard something in the darkness. Made some guttural sound. “Fucking world. Burn it down. Burn it down…Lonely place.” Expression asked if I understood. “Things here…are dying.”

  Wanted to say something about current global economic conditions and the plight of both producers and consumers. Feared it would be a misstep connected to a hospital.

  Rape victims are supposed to yell fire.

  What about this?

  Tightrope, trying to keep my color. Full of instant-stupid. Kept my mouth shut.

  Nothing seemed to move.

  “But that’s not really your concern.”

  Might have nodded yes, you’re right.

  The shadow to my right snickered. Coughed. Flickered in the corner of my eye.

  KNIFE

  Didn’t know they were that big.

  STAB

  That sharp.

  Flood—mosaic—knot stifling logic, of nameless Jack the Rippers abruptly hammering futures. If it was a movie, no wide shot.

  CUT MUTILATE KILL KILL

  Blinking/wedged in a blanket/scream muffled by the sleeve that jumped into your mouth. Eleven years old watching Psycho through my fingers.

  KILL KILL

  Did this wolf have a gun too?

  BULLETS

  Unseen intruders, aliens injecting red dawn into hapless victims, leaving all is through.

  Should I plead with him?

  Would. Could instantly phrase a litany of petitions.

  If that would work.

  “But I’m in the mood tonight to be kind, so you hand me your wallet and change that tire and get the fuck out of Dodge…We both get what we want.”

  I did.

  Slow. Like the cops on TV tell you. Afraid he’d think I had a weapon on me.

  Or just change his mind.

  700 dollars in bills, I wanted to make an impression with Clea that wasn’t just plastic. He took it. Nodded the transaction was complete and he was impressed and happy. Left the credit cards—I was shocked; thought thugs always took it all. Tossed my billfold back to me.

  I barely caught it.

  “Thanks.” Almost sounded like he meant it. Turned and walked away.

  Didn’t scream.

  Didn’t say thanks.

  Sidekick slapped him on the back. Said, “Fucking tourists. Let’s get a bottle.”

  They laughed. Left me the punch line of a joke I didn’t get…

  After my loss of luck, after any hope of sweet or yesterday-soft or tomorrow with a chorus of open arms was stricken from all calendars, after the war—when there was no sky, no feet dressed and able to run from the man in black, the man with the knife that had killed men—his blade that danced its lightning-bolt orgasm in their nervous hearts, that’s when my hands began to shake.

  Watched them vanish in blackness.

  Blackness.

  Impression, belly to breath, more than unpleasant. Alive? Felt like it. Felt like it. Stung the eyes to look at it.

  But I did. Stared at it. Pushed and pressed focus into the visitation. What did it want? Was it capable of moving? Even to my lips if they screamed?

  Capable. Here? Nothing was. Nothing had the tools, not a key not a verb not a light to illuminate the freeway that could take you to save, to make it come carry you home or far away.

  Trying to recover. Vanish. Take a road that yielded to the measure of feet, somewhere where words clear devils from the path…Anywhere beyond the spurs THE END put to future.

  Some ghost-story thing that engulfs some terror-prone plot of fearful victim being scraped by unseen, black rattled. No sound no motion but it was a vampire, a village of

  Garbage

  A fenced off lot Empty BLACK

  Row of uninhabited bugalows

  Too quiet

  NULL and VOID as new terms you don’t bargain your way out of.

  Just stood there trembling. Pushing my eyes—

  Weak neon. ReD. A bit of GREen. Down the street, three or four blocks—a black gulf of shadows and blacker stains poured between us—the light of a gas station. Hung my hopes on a phone.

  Headed for what I hoped was a harbor. A face with a voice in it, stuck at the register arranging cigarette packages or reading a weekly magazine of stars uncovered, secrets exposed, until the clock placed its hands on midnight.

  Scared you forget things, like the phone in your pocket. Maybe I just needed to see a face. One that had heard of the meek shall inherit and do unto others.

  In old noir films the streets are wet to give heightened effects to the lights. Not here. Bone dry. And lights? I half wondered if they were outlawed here. Then I wondered when here was.

  Panicked-blind didn’t see any sign when I left the highway and there wasn’t a single word on anything here. No KEEP OUT. No street signs. Most of the bungalows on the other side of the street should have had CONDEMNED notices posted on the doors. They didn’t. More than a few didn’t have much glass left in the windows either. Of those that did, most were broken and the pieces of glass looked like jagged teeth.

  This was a bad place. Worse it was nameless. Dead place full of fierce.

  Walked faster.

  Froze.

  Shit.

  I’d reached for the pen in my pocket, thought if need be it was the closest thing I had to a weapon, and brushed my phone.

  Idiot.

  Held it. Didn’t get to think saved.

  No Service.

  Needed the lights at the gas station now. And a face to go with them.

  In the blackness a great clock, too distant
and weak to be brethren to the light I was aimed at, chimed. Didn’t know what hour it welcomed but its tone certainly didn’t speak of anything comforting.

  Stopped dragging my feet and moved…

  A dead traffic light…Dilapidated everywhere. Old doorways, whatever they had once cast with welcome, gone. Cracks had drawn and quartered dear, poverty repeated and repeated had threaded and curled any pleasing right out of them. Windows out of shines covered over internal faces and hell-seasons I knew would only carry manes of madness if I could see them. Porches, splitting boards losing their hard in endless obituary-hours, never near the word mercy…

  100 years ago this neighborhood must have been poor now it was exploded, its wood and brick skins abbreviated, ready to fall and accept the soil that longed to bury it…Each window, each door, each stain of ink-dark hollow, screamed gone, screamed black, screamed will not, screamed you cannot do…Feral displaced language, grew in the ashes…No good on this street with the moon in the gutter. Misery stretched its river down this street, didn’t play fair, left ugly.

  Bad place. Coming apart. Wasteland too empty for urban. Not one cigarette butt, no beer cans. No weeds in the cracked pavement. Even Providence has litter here and there.

  Lifeless.

  Except for the stacked bags of garbage.

  No flies.

  No cat or rat drawn to the foul-bouquet of some soft inside…None? In a place like this?

  Outside of one’s familiar habitat there are times when WRONG can easily be determined, when the hiss of this is not for you or of you transforms the acid in your stomach into the warning blast of a siren. I got it. Heard it loud and clear.

  RAN

  Tried not to smell the decay being painted by slimy water and unseen festivals saturated in nightmares.

  Began to understand I had more to fear than the blades and drug-fueled whims of predators.

  Half a block from the light, tried not to stare into the silent blackness. My brother Paul had studied the arts at BU and

  once said if you look at it things in there you can’t see see

  you…

  RAN

  To the light—

  Not a single moth in its current.

  Tripped over my haste. Flight, down HARD. Slammed my head on the pavement. Response to thud-to-a-halt banged-up knee throbbing after the live-wire jolt. Blood, knee, forehead. Jammed two fingers trying to break my descent. Hadn’t been bitten by the ground since I was eight, it all came back to me. Lucky didn’t break anything but soft skin.

  Rubbed.

  Throbbing attached to expanding—too much—too much.

  Slurred and grumbled at the pain.

  Rise. Tortured and deliberately. Test.

  Wince.

  Eject a New York street watchword.

  Someplace I didn’t want to be. Slow. Unstable.

  Hobbled…grunted—cursed.

  Got there. One rusty pump. Unlit. Heavy-crisscross wire over the window. More heavy-wire and a banded metal frame over the door’s window.

  DOOR

  Locked.

  CLOSED

  Old yellowed sign, an open mouth with no words of light.

  I slapped at it.

  “Someone think I picked this place? Fuck.

  “Thought every bowery in America had a 24-hour place. Shit…Shit. Where am I?”

  “You’ve come into my night.” No-greeting alto, whiskey-raw, milled in a cascade of hours rooted in harrowing briars.

  Froze.

  Woman’s voice. But—

  In a place like this a voice like that could be ferocious, dangerous too.

  I turned into the rasp. Eyes, things stained by turpentine or acid. “I am Alice. Magg.” Lips that that never kissed anything Betty Crocker made or a man, tongue within nearly the same gray as the rag that passed for a dress. Sunken cheeks, junkie face. Hair once blonde, doubtful ever nice. Chin with skin problems requiring a surgeon. No pretty to her. No soft.

  Face ill-fit. Wrong mask hung loosely on a frame it wasn’t made for. Shivered internally and blamed it on the dim light.

  Woman, yes, but shabby and soiled, greasy when it’s dried, the way bums are.

  Tried to smile. Hoped I was. Show her friendly. Might be helpful?

  Looked at me like I was something unknowable.

  Me, alien?

  “You’re lost…I can smell your fear.”

  “Just upset. Flat tire, got mugged. Took all my money.”

  Face refitted with understanding. “The predators. They wander here. Jackals, take whatever they come upon.”

  I nodded.

  “Is there a phone around here somewhere?” Hoped I didn’t sound like I was praying.

  “I have one.”

  “I’d be grateful if you’d let me use it.”

  Couldn’t follow her thoughts as they wandered. Her mouth widened. “To be parted from these skies…Escape the Cabal.”

  Stepped away. Glared at me. “Strange man.”

  Me?

  She was crazy. The thieves too.

  “Cut.” Pointed at my forehead, looked at my split knee. “The blood.” Reached in a ripped pocket and handed me a small black twig. “Chew. Ease your pains.”

  Some kind of root. Her clothing was grubby and there were scabs on the back of her hand but I took it. Sour tasting, but if it would help…These backwater New Englanders have old remedies, in the South they have that gris-gris stuff. I took this to be the same kind of thing. They don’t mince words in coastal New England towns and they don’t save useless.

  “Come. I live where the wolves won’t come to the windows. Come.”

  Paul used to say no option is an option. Asked him to explain it. “Easy, you do it or you don’t. Don’t cancels your ticket. Up to you.” Told him it didn’t make any sense, he shrugged. Guess I saw his point now. Knew if I stayed here I get dead.

  “OK. Lead on…Please.”

  Followed the loose sway of her rags. Turned a corner went down an alley, gap of poorly hung boards and bricks no windows, not a single door inviting come inside. Smelled of smoke. Something had burned here. Didn’t know what but thought is this what death smells like.

  “This way. This way.”

  “Yes. I’m right behind you.”

  “No time for lagging. The widow’s candle-webs…The Vacant walk. Hurry.”

  Widow?

  “Hurry.”

  We did. Turns, rushing along black streets, each as dismal as the last. No sound no motion but our own.

  What city in this part of New England could warehouse a dead zone this large? Not a single commercial building, excepting the one gas station, not a factory, nor a cathedral or church to offer heights to unfortunate and not one parked car or truck waiting to whip to faraway’s face of capacity.

  None of the houses stood over one and a half stories. Not one had an open window, and every clapboard structure appeared to have been besieged by a slow savagery. Boards were age-washed gray and peeling, roof and siding shingles were chipped, curled, and missing corners yet there wasn’t a flake of paint or piece of a shingle to be seen on the ground. Overhanging eaves sagged. This wasn’t simply a case of deterioration, they looked pecked at too…All movement, every revolution of urgency or prepared seemed to be haunted away by the delirious utterances of a cadaver-voiced broom.

  Another corner

  approached no strewn no puddle overwhelmed and despondent

  no tongue of smoke

  …around another.

  Dull. Absent map or landmark.

  Edge-eaten light, scarce and weak in the atrocity of negation’s great black fist…

  Wretched, fantasy and any glace toward sequencing’s desires flaked away, peeled, some form of bereavement the infecting reality. Situations of poor fact, loud as the notices of any persistent organization. Dingy houses, sentenced to the indifference of slow rot, soften by suffering, always on the one side of the street. The emptiness and vacant lots on the opposite side and where the sp
oradic, weak light touched the barren lots showed no signs of ever being animated by any sort of construction. There were piles of garbage bags in front of almost every house. I wondered how a place so dead-looking could produce so much rubbish.

  Wasn’t a single house with a light on. No flicker of a TV to wet deserted with its translucent spill, not one red or blue LED light winking through a curtain. Lampposts, many leaning, every third house or so, but not even half of them were on. Many cities have found the need to be restrictive in tight economic times but this, carved by caustic, was something different.

  Like all this blackness has outlawed light.

  My confused readied the array of questions on perception’s chessboard; they were ascending, ready to open—

  Wild-mouth voices. Chunk of poison.

  Grabbed my hand. Pulled me aside before we were stained by light. Leaned in. Murmured, “Nightcrows. Bad.”

  “What?”

  “Ssssh. Nightcrows. The black hand of the gallows grasps.”

  Handmade infernos. Crows casting gauntlet voices. Porch…a shout defending her neighbor from a homeless drunk full of an ex’s feud….”You don’t want to step on this stoop.”…Ex-very, sour: “Go anyoldwhere I want. No ratpit crack-whore tell mes ca’ints.”…kicked up to damage, no-speed-limit teeth ready for meat…not close enough to push but pushing anyway…then blind-guns drawn….one screamed lovin’ you—one barked never even asked me once—a sing-sing harmonize of four bullets seeking—goodbye heart—goodbye heartache—fuck you—fuck you back…energy transfer-red…scene changed its tongue, two cigarettes lying on the ground burning but no fingers to play their game…one flat against the wall blasted in immeasurable, fear can’t load her scream. She’s bleeding from her belly—still hungry, still struggling with hate—Gulp, no now to gather. The dark doorway is cold, silent. It does not want her back.