Black Wings: New Tales of Lovecraftian Horror

booze, which could shine and glint in its bottles and surround him all night long, and he not give a shit. He never got tired of sitting here immune, savoring the unadorned adventure of being alive.

Not that the job lacked irritants. There were obnoxious clientele, and these preponderated toward the deep of night.

Ricky thought he heard one even now.

Single cars shushed past outside, long silences falling between, and a scuffy tread advanced along the sidewalk. A purposeful tread that nonetheless staggered now and then. It reminded Ricky that he was It, the only island of comfort and light for a half a mile in all directions, in a big city, in the dead of night.

Then, there in Mahmoud's Mom and Pop Market's entryway, stood a big gaunt black guy. Youngish, but with a strange, outdated look, his hair growing weedily out toward a 'fro. His torso and half his legs were engulfed in an oversize nylon athletic jacket that looked like it might have slept in an alley or two, and which revealed the chest of a dark T-shirt that said something indecipherable RULES. The man had a drugged look, but he also had wide- arched, inquiring brows. His glossy black eyes checked you out, as if maybe the real him was somewhere back in there, smarter than he looked.

But then, as he lurched inside the store, and into the light, he just looked drunk.

'Evening,' Ricky said smiling. He always opened by giving all his clientele the benefit of the doubt.

The man came and planted his hands of the counter, not aggressively, it seemed, but in the manner of someone tipsily presenting a formal proposition.

'Hi. I'm Andre. I need your money, man.'

Ricky couldn't help laughing. 'What a coincidence! So do I!'

'OK, Bro,' Andre said calmly, agreeably. As if he was shaping a counter-proposal, he straightened and stepped back from the counter. 'Then I'ma cut your fuckin ass to ribbons till you give me your fuckin money!'

The odd picture this plan of action presented almost made Ricky laugh again, but then the guy whipped out and flipped open — with great expertise — a very large-gravity knife, which he then swept around by way of threat, though still out of striking range. Ricky was so startled that he half fell off his stool.

Getting his legs under him, furious at having been galvanized like that, Ricky shrieked, 'A knife? You're gonna to rob me with a fucking knife? I've got a fucking knife!'

And he unpocketed his lock-back Buck knife and snapped it open. All this while he found himself once again trying to decipher the big, uncouthly lettered word on the guy's T-shirt above the word RULES.

Andre didn't seem drunk at all now. He swept a slash over the counter at Ricky's head, from which Ricky had to recoil right smartly.

'You shit! You do that again and I'm gonna slice your —»

Here came the gravity knife again, as quick as a shark, and, snapping his head back out of the way, Ricky counter-slashed at the sweeping arm and felt the rubbery tug of flesh unzipped by the tip of his Buck's steel.

Andre abruptly stepped back and relaxed. He put his knife away and held up his arm. It had a nice bloody slash across the inner forearm. He stood there letting it bleed for Ricky. Ricky had seen himself and others bleed, but not a black man. On black skin, he found, blood looked more opulent, a richer red, and so did the meat underneath the skin. That cut would take at least a dozen stitches. They both watched the blood soak the elastic cuff of Andre's jacket.

'So here's what it is,' said Andre, and dipped his free hand in the jacket and pulled out a teensy, elegant little silver cellphone. 'Ima call the oinkers, and say I need an ambulance because this mad whacked white shrimp — that's you — slashed me when I just axed him for some spare change, and then Ima ditch the shit outta this knife before they show up, and it won't matter if they believe me or not, when they see me bleedin like this they gonna take us both down for questioning and statements. How's your rap sheet, Chief, hey? So look. Just give me a little money and I'm totally outta your face. It don't have to be much. Ten dollars would do it!'

This took Ricky aback. 'Ten dollars? You make me cut you for ten dollars?'

'You wanna give me a hundred, give me a hundred! Ten's all you gotta give me — and a ride. A short ride, over to the Hood.'

'You want money and a ride! You think I'm outta my mind? You wanna ride to your connection to score, and when we get there, you're gonna try an get more money out of me. And that's the best case scenario.' Ricky was dismayed to hear a hint of negotiation in his own words. It was true, he'd had a number of contacts with the San Francisco Police Department, as the result of alcohol-enhanced conflicts here and there. But also, he felt intrigued by the guy. Something fascinating burned in this Andre whack. Intensity came off him in waves, along with his faint scent of street-funk. The man was consumed by a passion. In the deformed letters on his t-shirt, Ricky thought he could make out a T_H_U.

'What could I be coppin for ten bucks?' crowed Andre. 'I'm not out to harm you! This just has to do with me. See, it's required. I have to get these two things from someone else, the money and the ride.'

'Explain that. Explain why you have to get these two things from someone else.'

Andre didn't answer for a moment. He stared and stared, not exactly at Ricky, but at something he seemed to see in Ricky. He seemed to be weighing this thing he detected. He had eyes like black opals, and strange slow thoughts seemed to move within their shiny hemispheres.

'The reason is,' he said at last, 'that's the procedure. There are these particular rules for seeing the one I want to see.'

'And who is that?'

'I can't tell you. I'm not allowed.'

It was almost time to close up anyway. Ricky became aware of a powerful tug of curiosity, and aware of the fact that Andre saw it in his eyes. This put Ricky's back up.

'No. You gotta give me something. You gotta tell me at least —»

'Thassit! Fuck you!' And Andre flipped open the cellphone. His big spatulate fingertips made quick dainty movements on the minute keys. Ricky heard the bleep, minuscule but crystal clear, of the digits, and then a micro- voice saying, 'Nine One One Emergency.'

'I been stabbed by a punk in a liquor store! I been stabbed!'

Ricky violently shook his head, and held up his hands in surrender. With a bleep, Andre clicked off. 'Believe me! You're not makin a mistake. It's something I can't talk about, but you can see it. You can see it yourself. But the thing is, it's got to be now. We can't hem an haw. And Ima tell you now, now that you're in, that there's something in it for you, something good as gold. Trust me, you'll see. Help me with this knot,' he said, pulling a surprisingly clean-looking handkerchief from his jacket pocket. He folded it — rather expertly, Ricky thought — into a bandage. Ricky wrapped it round the wound and tied the ends in a neat, tight square-knot, feeling as his fingers pressed against flesh that he was forming a bond with this whack by stanching his blood. He was accepting a dangerous complicity with his whack aims, whatever they might be.

Bandaged, Andre held out his hand. Ricky put a ten in it.

'Thanks,' said Andre. 'So. Where's your ride?'

The blue Mustang boomed down Sixteenth through the Mission. All the signals were on blink. Here and there under the streetlights, there was a wino or two, or someone walking fast, shoulders hunched against the emptiness, but mostly the Mustang rolled through pure naked City, a vacant concrete stage.

Ricky liked driving around at this hour, and often did it on his own for fun. When he was a kid, he'd always felt sorcery in the midnight streets, in the mosaic of their lights, and he'd never lost the sense of unearthly shapes stirring beneath their web, stirring till they almost cohered, as the stars did for the ancients into constellations. Tonight, with mad, bleeding Andre riding shotgun, the lights glittered wilder possibilities, and a sinister grandeur seemed to lurk in them.

They passed under the freeway and down to the Bayside, hanging south on Third. After long blocks of big blank buildings, Third took a snaky turn, and they were rolling through the Hood.

Pawn shops and thrift stores and liquor stores. A whiff of Mad Dog hung over it, Mad Dog with every other drug laced through it. The Hood was lit, was like a long jewel. The signals were working here.

The signals stretched out of sight ahead, like a python with scales of red and green, their radiance haloed in