I wanted to hear it, so I put on the record. And it wasn’t the same no more. It was Johnson, but the words was strange, not English. Sounded like some kind of chant, and I knew then that Johnson was in that record, as sure as I was in this room, and that that chanting and that playing was opening up a hole for that thing in the wall. It was the way that fella had said. It was like a rat working its nose through red-hot meat, and now it felt like I was the meat. Next time I played the record, the voice on it wasn’t Johnson’s. It was mine.
“I had had enough, so I got the record and took it back to that shop. The place was the same as before, and like before, I was the only one in there. He looked at me, and comes over, and says, ‘You already want to undo the deal. I can tell. They all do. But that ain’t gonna happen.’
“I gave him a look like I was gonna jump on him and beat his ass, but he gave me a look back, and I went weak as a kitten.
“He smiled at me, and pulls out another record from that same box, and he takes the one I gave him and puts it back, and says, ‘You done made a deal, but for a lick of your soul, I’ll let you have this. See, you done opened the path. Now that rat’s got to work on that meat. It don’t take no more record or you playing for that to happen. Rat’s gotta eat now, no matter what you do.’
“When he said that, he picks up my hand and looks at my cut-up fingers from playing, and he laughs so loud everything in the store shakes, and he squeezes my fingers until they start to bleed.
“ ‘A lick of my soul?’ I asked.
“And then he pushed the record in my hand, and if I’m lying, I’m dying, he sticks out his tongue, and it’s long as an old rat snake and black as a hole in the ground, and he licks me right around the neck. When he’s had a taste, he smiles and shivers, like he’s just had something cool to drink.”
Tootie paused to unfasten his shirt and peel it down a little. There was a spot halfway around his neck like someone had worked him over with sandpaper.
“ ‘A taste,’ he says, and then he shoves this record in my hand, which is bleeding from where he squeezed my fingers. Next thing I know, I’m looking at the record, and it’s thick, and I touch it, and it’s two records, back to back. He says, ‘I give you that extra one cause you tasted mighty good, and maybe it’ll let you get a little more rest that way, if you got a turntable drop. Call me generous and kind in my old age.’
“Wasn’t nothing for it but to take the records and come back here. I didn’t have no intention of playing it. I almost threw it away. But by then, that thing in the wall, wherever it is, was starting to stick through. Each time the hole was bigger and I could see more of it, and that red shadow was falling out on the floor. I thought about running, but I didn’t want to just let it loose, and I knew, deep down, no matter where I went, it would come too.
“I started playing that record in self-defense. Pretty soon, I’m playing it on the guitar. When I got scared enough, got certain enough that thing was coming through, I played hard, and that hole would close, and that thing would go back where it come from. For a while.
“I figured, though, I ought to have some insurance. You see, I played both them records, and they was the same thing, and it was my voice, and I hadn’t never recorded or even heard them songs before. I knew then, what was on those notes I had written, what had come to me was the countersong to the one I had been playing first. I don’t know if that was just some kind of joke that record store fella had played on me, but I knew it was magic of a sort. He had give me a song to let it in and he had give me another song to hold it back. It was amusing to him, I’m sure.
“I thought I had the thing at bay, so I took that other copy, went to the post office, mailed it to Alma, case something happened to me. I guess I thought it was self-defense for her, but there was another part was proud of what I had done. What I was able to do. I could play anything now, and I didn’t even need to think about it. Regular blues, it was a snap. Anything on that guitar was easy, even things you ought not to be able to play on one. Now, I realize it ain’t me. It’s something else out there.
“But when I come back from mailing, I brought me some paint and brushes, thought I’d write the notes and such on the wall. I did that, and I was ready to pack and go roaming some more, showing off my new skills, and all of a sudden, the thing, it’s pushing through. It had gotten stronger’cause I hadn’t been playing the sounds, man. I put on the record, and I pretty much been at it ever since.
“It was all that record fella’s game, you see. I got to figuring he was the devil, or something like him. He had me playing a game to keep that thing out, and to keep my soul. But it was a three-minute game, six if I’d have kept that second record and put it on the drop. If I was playing on the guitar, I could just work from the end of that record back to the front of it, playing it over and over. But it wore me down. Finally, I started playing the record nonstop. And I have for days.
“The fat man downstairs, he’d come up for the rent, but as soon as he’d use his key and crack that door, hear that music, he’d get gone. So here I am, still playing, with nothing left but to keep on playing, or get my soul sucked up by that thing and delivered to the record store man.”
TOOTIE MINDED THE RECORD, AND I WENT OVER TO WHERE HE TOLD ME the record store was with the idea to put a boot up the guy’s ass, or a .45 slug in his noggin. I found South Street, but not Way South. The other street that should have been Way South was called Back Water. There wasn’t a store either, just an empty, unlocked building. I opened the door and went inside. There was dust everywhere, and I could see where some tables had been,’cause their leg marks was in the dust. But anyone or anything that had been there was long gone.
I went back to the hotel, and when I got there, Tootie was just about asleep. The record was turning on the turntable without any sound. I looked at the wall, and I could see the beak of that thing, chewing at it. I put the record on, and this time, when it come to the end, the thing was still chewing. I played it another time, and another, and the thing finally went away. It was getting stronger.
I woke Tootie up, said, “You know, we’re gonna find out if this thing can outrun my souped-up Chevy.”
“Ain’t no use,” Tootie said.
“Then we ain’t got nothing to lose,” I said.
We grabbed up the record and his guitar, and we was downstairs and out on the street faster than you can snap your fingers. As we passed where the toad was, he saw me and got up quick and went into the kitchen and closed the door. If I’d had time, I’d have beat his ass on general principles.
When we walked to where I had parked my car, it was sitting on four flats and the side windows was knocked out and the aerial was snapped off. The record Alma May had given me was still there, lying on the seat. I got it and put it against the other one in my hand. It was all I could do.
As for the car, I was gonna drive that Chevy back to East Texas like I was gonna fly back on a sheet of wet newspaper.
Now, I got to smellin’ that smell. One that was in the room. I looked at the sky. The sun was kind of hazy. Green even. The air around us trembled, like it was scared of something. It was heavy, like a blanket. I grabbed Tootie by the arm, pulled him down the street. I spied a car at a curb that I thought could run, a V-8 Ford. I kicked the back side window out, reached through, and got the latch.
I slid across the seat and got behind the wheel. Tootie climbed in on the passenger side. I bent down and worked some wires under the dash loose with my fingers and my razor, hot-wired the car. The motor throbbed and we was out of there.
IT DIDN’T MAKE ANY KIND OF SENSE, BUT AS WE WAS CRUISING ALONG, behind us it was getting dark. It was like chocolate pudding in a big wad rolling after us. Stars was popping up in it. They seemed more like eyes than stars. There was a bit of a moon, slightly covered over in what looked like a red fungus.
I drove that Ford fast as I could. I was hitting the needle at a hundred and ten. Didn’t see a car on the highway. Not a highway cop, not an old lady on the way to the store. Where the hell was everybody? The highway looped up and down like the bottom was trying to fall out from under us.
To make it all short, I drove hard and fast, and stopped once for gas, having the man fill it quick. I gave him a bill that was more than the gas was worth, and he grinned at me as we burned rubber getting away. I don’t think he could see what we could see—that dark sky with that thing in it. It was like you had to hear the music to see the thing existed, or for it to have any effect in your life. For him, it was daylight and fine and life was good.
By the time I hit East Texas, there was smoke coming from under that stolen Ford’s hood. We came down a hill, and it was daylight in front of us, and behind us the dark was rolling in; it was splittin’, making a kind of
