Black Wings: New Tales of Lovecraftian Horror

a light fog that was drifting in off the Bay. And people were out, little knots of them near the corners. They formed isolated clots of gaudy life, like tidepools, all of them dressed in baggy clothes of brightcolored nylon, panelled and logo-ed with surreal pastels under the emerald-and-ruby signal glare. And as they stood and talked together, they moved in a way both fitful and languid, like sealife bannering in a restless sea.

The signals changed in pattern to a slow tidal rhythm. It seemed a rhythm meant to accommodate rush-hour traffic. You got a green for two blocks max, and then you got a red. A long, long red. Ricky's blue Mustang was almost the only car on the road in this phantom rush-hour, creeping down the long bright python two blocks at a time and then idling, idling interminably, while the sealife on the corners seemed astir with interest and attention.

Ricky had no qualms about running red lights on deserted streets, but here it seemed dangerous, a declaration of unease.

'Fuck this!' he said at their fourth red light, slipping the brake and rolling forward. At a stroll though, under twenty. The Mustang lounged along, taking green and red alike, as if upon a scenic country road. The bright languid people on the corners threw laughter at them now, a shout or two, and it seemed as if the whole great submarine python stirred to quicker currents. Ricky felt a ripple of hallucination, and saw here, for just a moment, a vast inked mural, the ink not dry, themselves and all around them still half-liquid entities billowing in an aqueous universe.

Out of nowhere, for the first time in three years, Ricky had the thought that he would like a drink. He was amazed at this thought. He was frightened. Then he was angry.

'I'm not drivin much farther, Andre. Spit out where we're going, and it better be nearby, or you can call 911 and I'll take my chances. I'll bet you got a longer past with the SFPD than I do.'

'Damn you! Whip in here, then.'

This cross street was mostly houses — some abandoned — with a liquor store on the next corner, and a lot of sealife lounging out in front of it. 'Pull up into some light where you can see this.'

They idled at the curb. The people on the main drag were twothirds of a block behind them, the liquor store tidepool much closer ahead of them. Andre leaned his fanatic's face close to Ricky. The intensity of the man was an almost tactile experience; Ricky seemed to feel the muffled crackling of his will through the inches of air that separated them. 'Here,' hissed Andre. 'I'm gonna give you this, just to drive me another coupla miles up into these hills. Look at it. Count it. Take it.' He shoved a thick roll of bills into Ricky's ribs.

It was in twenties and fifties and hundreds. It was over five thousand dollars.

'You're. you're batshit, Andre! You make me cut you to get ten bucks, and now you —»

'Just listen.' Some people from the liquor store tide pool were drifting their way, and Ricky saw similar movement from Third Street in his rearview mirror. 'What I needed,' said Andre, 'was money that blood was spilt for — it didn't matter how much blood, it didn't matter how much money. Your tenspot? It's worth that much to me there in your hand. Your tenspot and another couple miles in your car.'

The locals were flowing closer to the Mustang at both ends. Ricky fingered the money. The gist of it was, he decided, that if he didn't follow this waking dream to its end, he would never forgive himself. 'OK,' he said.

'Another couple miles in your car,' said Andre, 'an one more thing. You gotta come in.'

'You fuck! You shit! Where does it end with you? You just keep —»

'You come in, you watch me connect, and you go out again, scotfree, no harm, no strings attached! I gotta bring blood money, and I gotta bring a witness. I lied to you. It wasn't the ride I needed. It was a witness.'

A huge shape in lavender running-sweats, and a gaunt one wearing a lime-green jumpsuit, stood beside the Mustang, smiling and making roll-down-the-window gestures. Behind the car, shapes from the main drag were moving laterally out into the street to come up to the driver's side.

But in that poised moment what Ricky saw most vividly was Andre's face, his taut narrow face within its weedy 'fro. This man was in the visionary's trance. His eyes, his soul were locked upon something that filled him with awe. What he pursued had nothing to do with Ricky, nor with anything Ricky could imagine, and Ricky wanted to know what that thing was.

Andre said, 'Ima show you — what's your name again?'

'Ricky.'

'Ima show you, Richie, the power and the glory. They are right here among you, man, an you don't even see it! Hell, even these fools out here can see it!'

The Mustang was surrounded now. From behind it sprouted shapes in crimson hoods, with fists bulging inside gold velvet jacket pockets. Up to Ricky's door (its window already open, his elbow thrust out, and five K in cash on his lap) stepped two men with thundercloud hair, wearing shades, their cheeks and brows all whorled with Maori tatooing like ink-black flames. A trio of gaudy nylon scarecrows leaned on his hood, conferring, the sidethrust bills of their caps switching like blades. But Ricky also noted that all this audience, every one of them, had eyes strictly for Andre sitting there at his side. Ricky was free to scan all those exotic, piratical faces as though he were invisible.

All their eyes were grave. They showed awe, and they showed loathing too, as if they abhorred something Andre had done, but just as piercingly, longed for his nerve to do it. Ricky realized he had embarked on a longer journey than he'd thought.

Andre scanned all these buccaneer faces, his fellow mariners of the Hood. A remote little grin was hanging slantwise across his jaw. 'Check this out Rocky,' he growled, 'an learn from these fools. Learn their awe, man, cause what I'ma show you, up in those hills, is awe.'

He shouldered his door open and thrust himself up onto the sidewalk. He towered just as tall as the giant in lavender sweats, but he was narrow as a reed. Yet his voice fairly boomed:

'Yo! Alla you! Listen up! Looka here! Looka me! You all wanna see something? Wanna see something about something besides shit!? See something real, just for a change? See the ice-cold, spinecrawlin, hair- stirrin truth? Looka here! Looka here, at the power! Looka here! Looka here, at the glory!'

Ricky scanned all the dark faces that ringed them round, and every eye was locked upon that wild gaunt man in his rapture, who now, with a powerful shrug, shouldered off his nylon jacket. It flopped down on the sidewalk with a slither and a sigh, and lay there on the concrete like a sloughed cocoon. He stretched the fabric of his T-shirt, displaying it to every locked-on eye.

Rickey's angle was still too acute to let him decipher exactly who it was who 'ruled.' But all these encircling faces, they seemed to know. They shared a vision of awe and terror and. something like hope. A frosty hope, endlessly remote. but hope. Ricky realized that there prevailed on these mean streets a consensus of vision. He clearly saw that all these eyes had seen, and understood, a catastrophic spectacle beyond his own imagining.

Andre barked, hoarse and brutish as a sealion, 'Jus look at me here! I have gone up to see Him, and I have looked through His eyes, and I have been where He is, time without end! An I'm here to tell you, all you dearly beloved mongrel dogs of mine, I'm here to tell you that it's consumed me! My flesh, and my time, have been blown off my bones, by the searing winds of His breath! I'm not far off now from eternity! Not far off from infinity now!'

The raving seer then hiked up his T-shirt to his chest. What Ricky, from behind, saw there was like a blow to his own chest, an impact of terror and dizziness, for Andre's thorax on its left side was normal, gauntly fleshed and sinewed, but along its right side, his spine was denuded bone, and midriff was there none, and just below his hoisted shirt-hem, a lathed bracket looped down: a fleshless rib, as clean and bare as sculpture.

His rapt audience recoiled like a single person, some lifting their arms convulsively, as in a reflex of self- protection, or acclaim.

Ricky dropped the Mustang into gear and launched it from the curb, but in that selfsame instant Andre dropped into his seat again and slammed his door, and so he was snatched deftly away, as if he were a prize that Ricky treasured, and not a horror that Ricky had been trying to flee.

Moon-silvered, lightless blocks floated past, yet Ricky never took his eyes from the gaunt shape whose T-shirt he could now, uncomprehending, read: CTHULHU RULES.