Bone Music (31 page)

“All right,” Vaughan said. “Let me know if you need help.”

Furry Lewis allowed as he would, but he didn’t have a solitary intention of asking for help. And he didn’t need it, either.

“I’d like to rent a car,” he told the rent-a-car clerk.

“Would you like a midsize or a compact, sir?”

Furry Lewis grinned. “I’d like a Cadillac,” he said. He’d seen those pricey Japanese and German cars around, but he didn’t think much of them. His idea of a car was the same as it’d always been — wide seats, big motor, whitewall tires.

The clerk smiled. “We’ve got one,” he said. “I’ll need your license and the credit card you’d like to put this on.”

Furry Lewis reached for his wallet. “I’d just as soon pay cash,” he said.

The clerk frowned. “That can be arranged,” he said. “But I’ll need a credit card to secure the rental.”

Now Furry Lewis was a deadman, and he didn’t have no credit cards. He could have had some if he’d put an effort to it — Stevie Ray Vaughan had — but it wouldn’t be a simple undertaking, and Furry Lewis had never gone to the effort of making the requisite arrangements.

He didn’t have a current driver’s license, either, though he had the one he’d died with back home in a drawer full of memorabilia.

So when the clerk asked him for a credit card and a driver’s license, Furry Lewis put a spell on him. Oh, it wasn’t any evil spell, but it was a deceitful one: he hummed a little tune as he reached into his wallet and brought out two smooth strips of plastic, and as he hummed he smiled very wide.

“That’ll be great,” the clerk said, running one of the strips through a device that would have took an impression from it if it’d been a credit card; copying nonexistent numbers from the surface of the other. When he was done he asked Furry Lewis how long he’d need the car.

“I’ll take it for a week,” Furry Lewis said. A week was longer than he figured he would need the car, but it was better to be sure.

“Insurance?”

“Yes, please.”

“Great. And you wanted to pay for that in cash?”

“I do.”

The clerk pushed a contract toward the deadman; at the bottom there was a dollar amount, circled in red ink. Furry Lewis took the money from his wallet and pushed it toward the clerk.

The clerk handed him the keys along with his change.

“Right out that door,” he said. “Third car on the left — you can’t miss it.”

Ten minutes later they were on I-10, heading toward New Orleans. They made good time at first. It wasn’t hard; all the traffic was moving in the opposite direction.

Furry Lewis did the driving; Vaughan rode shotgun. Red took the back seat — both sides of it. He sprawled out across the length of it, sort of resting, sort of stretching out, but not as relaxed or comfortable as either of those things. More like a man writhing in the dirt someplace, maybe suffering a little, maybe suffering a lot, but without the stamina to wail. . . .

He seemed to get a little better as they drove the Caddy east-southeast toward New Orleans.

But not much better.

“What’s wrong with him, Furry?” Vaughan asked as they passed a sign that said
La Place — 10 Miles
. As he asked that question Red groaned from the back seat, long and low all haunting-like, so unearthly that even dead Stevie Ray Vaughan shivered at the sound. “I don’t like the sound of that at all.”

Furry Lewis didn’t take his eyes off the road, but he nodded. “I don’t like it, either. I don’t know what’s got into him. He ought to be vivacious as he ever is.”

Vaughan leaned back to get a glance at the prone deadman. “Red? Hey, Red, is there anything we can do for you?”

Tampa Red shook his head — so slightly that Vaughan almost didn’t see it. “I’m fine,” he said. “I just don’t feel so good, that’s all.”

Now the sign before them said
La Place — Next Exit 2 Miles
, and Vaughan reached into the glove box to check the map to see how far they had left to go. He could have saved himself the effort — because suddenly there were red traffic-control cones lined up all along the highway, shunting them toward the exit, and the sign said
Road Closed — All Traffic Exit Right
.

Two dozen heavily armed men and women in National Guard uniforms stood on either side of the sign, enforcing the closure.

“What the hell. . . ?” Vaughan asked.

Furry Lewis swore profanely.

When they were halfway off the exit it finally came to Vaughan that they’d come across. “They’ve closed the city down,” he said. “All the way the hell out to here.”

Furry Lewis nodded.

Vaughan looked at his map, trying to figure out how they were going to get into the city. It wasn’t much use; the New Orleans detail map gave out long before La Place, and the state map only showed two roads along the route — I-10 and US-61. They knew I-10 was closed, and it was an easy bet that US-61 was, too. Too easy; there wasn’t a chance they’d miss it if they closed I-10.

No way to go around to the north — Lake Pontchartrain was in the way.

But it was different to the south. Because south of New Orleans is Cajun country, and there are more tiny roads through the swamps than anyone can count — lots more than the National Guard can close in a few hours.

“We ought to be able to get through if we travel along the south bank,” Vaughan said. “We need to turn back — the nearest bridge goes across the river about ten miles back.”

Furry Lewis nodded. Turned left under the Interstate, then left again to get back on it going in the opposite direction. Twenty minutes later they crossed the river by Vacherie and turned right onto SR-18, which is what the maps call that part of the river road that follows the south bank of the Mississippi from Baton Rouge to New Orleans.

SR-18 took them all the way into the outlying suburbs of New Orleans before they found another National Guard roadblock at the junction with Interstate 310.

Just before they got to the roadblock Red sat up in the back seat and groaned. He was breathing, Vaughan could hear — breathing laboriously and unsteady. Vaughan looked back and saw that Red was covered with sickly sweat like he’d never seen on a deadman.

“Turn right,” Red told them. “Right here, into the dirt.”

Furry Lewis didn’t argue with him; he did exactly as Red asked. Vaughan, now, he would have argued — he did argue, in fact. Not that it mattered.

“There isn’t any road here,” Vaughan said. “What’re you going to do, plow through that hedge?”

Furry Lewis laughed, because that was exactly what he meant to do.

Through the hedge; crosswise over some farmer’s driveway; through a barbed-wire fence on the far side of it.

“It’s going to cost you a piece,” Vaughan said, “when you pay for what you just did to this Cadillac’s grille.”

Furry Lewis shrugged as the Cadillac surged into the pasture. “I’m good for it,” he said.

Vaughan laughed. “I know you are,” he said.

As half a dozen head of cattle scattered across the field, trying to get out of their way.

“Bear left,” Red whispered. “You’ll find a dirt road not far from the southeast end of the field.”

Cow-pats spattered off the tires, and here and there the Caddy’s tires spun wild in the mud. When they were halfway across, the farmer came out of his farmhouse and started waving a shotgun at them.

Furry Lewis didn’t pay him any mind, except to laugh a little at the sight of the man in such hysteria.

Kept laughing, too, even when the farmer raised his gun and started shooting.

Maybe because the farmer missed, or maybe because Furry Lewis was a deadman not susceptible to murder, or maybe because the whole experience struck a chord with him — who can say?

Who can say indeed.

As they reached the field’s southeast corner, and the Cadillac plowed over the corner fencepost.

“When you get to the road, turn straight,” Red said, which made no damn sense at all until they got to the road and came onto it where it bent, and to their right it was more-or-less west and straight ahead mostly south.

A long, smooth dirt road that looked like it went on forever into bayou country. It wasn’t on the map — not either one, not the state map nor the detail map of New Orleans.

“I bet the Guard doesn’t even know about this road,” Vaughan said. “I think we’re going to make it.”

Furry Lewis didn’t look convinced. “I wouldn’t worry about the Guard,” he said. “But I’m not looking forward to what’s ahead of us.”

That brought back the things Vaughan saw on the news that afternoon, and reminded him of the dread he felt in his heart when he’d seen it.

Sobered him considerably.

“Look for yourself, Stevie Ray,” he said. “There, in the swamp-woods off to your left. Let your heart look through your eyes, and you’ll see them.”

It was dusk, almost the end of dusk — but when Vaughan looked into the woods he saw them clearly as he’d see in the brightest part of day.

Clearer, maybe. For the things he saw were minor loa — swamp devils like you’d conjure in the tropics to curse the children of the wetlands. And hellish things like those are clearer in the night than they can be in the day.

“It’s Hell, Stevie Ray. All around us, here — Hell has fallen up to earth.”

Stevie Ray Vaughan wanted to argue, because he didn’t want to believe that such a thing could happen. But even as he did he knew that he was wrong.

He knew where he was.

Of course he did. All deadmen know the winds of Hell. They taste those winds for hours when they’re gone, before they sing the Hell-door open and walk back among the pathways of the living.

“Five miles down along this way,” Red said. He sounded stronger, now — almost hale and whole. “And then you’ll find a crossroads. There will be a fire, there, and the ruins of a boneyard. The bones will tell you which turn to take.”

Vaughan understood that better than he was comfortable with. Furry Lewis said, “Of course,” and gave a little nod like that was the obvious thing.

Suburban New Orleans

The Present

Emma didn’t pay much attention which way she went as she tore out of the Kmart parking lot. That was a terrible mistake, because her turns took her exactly where she didn’t want to go — back into the old heart of the city, where the hardest part of Hell had fallen up to earth.

A terrible, terrible mistake.

The first clue she had that she’d stumbled into something bad was when the streetlights went dark all around her, as power failed throughout the city suddenly lit only by the brilliance of the blood-red moon — and just as suddenly dead-end barricades appeared before her on the road.

“Oh my God,” Emma whispered, slamming down on the brake pedal. The Buick’s tires screamed and skidded long and hard before the car came to a stop.

Backed the car up; put it back in gear. Rolled back onto the road.

When she came to the next intersection Emma saw light off in the distance to the right, and she thought that light had to be a way out of this awful place.

But she was wrong.

When she followed the light it led her to the worst thing she’d come upon in a day full of terrible discoveries: it led her into the midst of a battle where a legion of the damned did battle with the Louisiana National Guard.

She screamed again when she saw that.

“We’ve got to get out of here,” Emma said. She did a U-turn, drove a few blocks back away from the battlefield. Turned into what looked to be a quiet alley; pulled the car over, switched on the dome light, found her map, and tried to figure out how the hell they were going to get out of there.

As she read the map she felt a hand on her leg, sliding upward — it damn near scared her to death. When she saw it was Leadbelly making a pass at her she grabbed the hand by the wrist and pushed it away from her.

She wasn’t gentle. At all.

“What’s the matter, baby?” Leadbelly asked. “You don’t like me?”

“You tried to sell me to the Devil,” Emma said. “You thought I’d pay a gambling debt! Keep your foul hands to yourself.”

“Oh,” he said. “Oh, Emma Henderson, it wasn’t really like that. You know it wasn’t! You got to understand what I was trying to accomplish!”

“I bet you were,” she told him. “I hate to think what it would have come to if the Devil would have took me.”

“I wouldn’t let him do that,” Leadbelly said. “I would have took you back, woman. I promise that I would!”

That was half a lie, at least. But Emma wasn’t certain which half was which.

But it wasn’t like she had a chance to consider the question. Because suddenly there was heavy breathing too damn close, and Emma tried to push dead Leadbelly away from her — only Leadbelly wasn’t there.

When Emma tried to fend him off all she pushed against was air.

Because Leadbelly wasn’t anywhere near her.

He was on the far side of the car, leaning against his window, staring into space, and the breathing wasn’t coming from his direction anyway.

It was coming from outside the car.

Emma didn’t have to think to realize they were in some awful kind of trouble; she reached for the keys to start the ignition, turned, turned and the car’s engine rolled over but it didn’t catch. Stole a glance over her shoulder as she pumped the gas pedal, one, two, three, and dear God sweet Jesus there were eyes out there staring at her, wide enormous eyes the size of plates and bloodshot yellow. Emma screamed she tried to start the car but it wouldn’t start, wouldn’t effing start, the engine was flooding oh God no no no —

As the glass beside her shattered, and some awful thing dragged her from her seat.

Through the shattered window as shards of glass shredded her blouse, gouged her arms, her breasts, but she hardly felt it, she screamed, flailed wild with her fists as she saw teeth like carving knives glitter in the moonlight —

And she knew she was going to die, and she knew that there was no hope in the world, and she could have gone limp defeated as the awful thing devoured her but that wasn’t Emma, she tried to fight so long as she could —

— kicked —

— and hit.

Something.

Hit something soft and wet.

The toe of her right shoe, oh Christ her foot was in it up to the ankle what was that stuff no, no, no, no —

— as the devil roared, doubled over, dropped her —

Emma tried to run.

She really tried.

But it wasn’t that easy. Her foot was stuck in, in, she didn’t know what. She didn’t want to know, and then it was free, but it was, it felt, oh God she was on fire, wasn’t she?

And all she managed to do was stumble a few hysterical steps as the thing came up looking for her with a vengeance.

It got her, too.

And it killed her, long and slow and painfully. . . .

Caught her by the back collar of her dress as Emma tried to run, raised her high above its grinding jaws teeth gleaming like a thousand sabers, vapor rising up like the stink of death dear Lord that was its breath as it lowered Emma into the crushing maw —

As the talons that held Emma released her, and she dropped into the pit —

No.

No no no no.

It didn’t happen like that, no matter how Emma thought it did.

Oh, the talons released her, and Emma fell screaming to her death, but something went wrong on the way down, and suddenly she was on the ground, hitting the pavement hard shoulders first, and suddenly a mountain of fetid meat fell beside her, and she looked up disoriented to see Leadbelly. He had his switchblade out again, and it was gleaming in the moonlight, awful ichorous stuff drizzling along the edge, from the point —

“Leadbelly,” she said. She was crying, wasn’t she? Yes, she was sobbing, trembling. . . .

“I told you I’d do right by you. You believe me now, Emma Henderson?”

Emma didn’t have an answer. She didn’t have words, didn’t have — didn’t have the presence of mind to comprehend the question.

“Come on,” he said, taking her arm, helping her to her feet. “We got to get out of here before another boogey man can find us.”

Bayou Country, Jefferson Parish

The Present

There were boneyard vapors at the crossroads, directing them to the left, and they almost went that way. But before they did Furry Lewis pulled over to the edge of the road and parked the car and cut the engine. Got out of his seat and left the car to approach the crossroads on foot.

There he faced the ghosts, and held them to an interlocution; and when he did he learned they meant him ill.

He came back to the car shaking his head.

“They’re trying to direct us into a trap,” Furry Lewis said. “I don’t know what it is, but I don’t like it. I’m going the other way.”

Vaughan frowned. He gestured at the map. “That’s going to take us a long way from New Orleans,” he said. “Maybe hours away.”

Furry Lewis hesitated. “Maybe,” he said. “Maybe we ought to run the trap.”

Red opened his eyes again when he heard that. And spoke very softly, but with a sureness that chilled Vaughan to the bone. “No,” he said. “That’s wrong. Bear left, here. Follow the road with your heart.”

And who could argue with that? Furry Lewis said, “If you’re sure, Red, that’s what we’ll do.” Vaughan shook his head, but he didn’t say a word.

The swamp road led them southeast among the bayous, in the general direction of the river’s outlet to the sea. A couple times Vaughan wanted to say, Wait, this is wrong, we’re going way the hell out of our way, but he knew that was wrong, because it was only sense, and the real path was a thing like Red told them — it was a thing you had to follow through your heart.

Swamps and bayous on both sides of the road, and now and then murky-looking pinewoods. And then suddenly there was a big abandoned pepper plantation off to their left, and Vaughan saw a man in a uniform, and the moment that he saw that man his heart knew of him.

“Pull over,” he said, “You’ve got to pull into that farm on the left.”

“I see him,” Furry Lewis said. “You think I could miss a man like that?”

But that was a question that wasn’t what it seemed, because the truth was that till that moment Furry Lewis had failed to notice him entirely; and that was strange, and partly frightful, too.

“I dreamed about him in the air,” Red said. “That’s Robert Brown — known generally as Washboard Sam — flesh and bone.”

“I know it is,” Furry Lewis said. “You think I don’t know Sam?” As he asked that question he pulled into the plantation’s driveway, and followed the driveway’s left branch back toward the place where Washboard Sam stood guard.

Nobody answered the question. They all knew the answer.

When they got to there they found Washboard Sam leaning on a fencepost. His uniform was a security guard uniform, and he was the law in that place as much as there was one.

There was Magic all around him, buzzing in the air with a strange electric intensity. When he looked Stevie Ray Vaughan in the eye the deadman’s lifeless heart began to beat.

“I never heard you, Sam,” Furry Lewis said. He looked — amazed. Stunned. And it only makes sense that he’d be amazed, after all; for all the years since the great King died, he was the one who kept the tradition; first when he was alive and then after he passed on. After Elvis died refusing the burden and the legacy, Furry Lewis came upon the Dominion his own self. If the world were upright Furry Lewis would have heard the music anytime a deadman sang it in the river kingdom.

But it wasn’t right. And that wasn’t news; it hadn’t been right in a long, long time.

“It’s in the nature of the times,” Washboard Sam said. “The music doesn’t carry like it should.”

Furry Lewis allowed as that was so.

That was when Red opened the back door and pushed himself out of the Cadillac. Stood beside it on uncertain legs, leaning against the side of the car to steady himself.

“The Lady sang to me, Sam,” he said. “All the way down in Hell, she was, and she sang to me as I lay deathly in the air.”

Washboard Sam didn’t say a word. He didn’t look pleased to listen, either.

“She told me where to find you, Sam. And she told me to bring you with us.”

Vaughan wanted to ask what else she’d told him, but he knew it was the wrong moment.

“Is that so?” Sam asked.

“It’s a fact,” Red said. He held up a trembling hand, as though he were taking an oath. “I swear it is.”

“Where she sending you?”

“New Orleans,” Furry Lewis said.

Vaughan shook his head. “Hell,” he said, and he didn’t mean it as an expletive.

Washboard Sam laughed. “That’s wrong,” he said. “You can’t go anyplace you already are.”

And that was exactly true, Vaughan realized when he looked around him — the pepper, the woods, the swamps, everything around there took a demonic cast, and when he looked closely at the plantation around him he began to wonder if it was a place dragged up from Hell, or a worldly place possessed.

And then he thought, It’s not a worldly farm at all, it’s something from damnation — but he wasn’t sure as he should be.

“You’ll help us?” Vaughan asked. “We need you if you can.”

Sam frowned. “I will,” he said.

The Devil’s Quarter of New Orleans

The Present

The way back into the city led through the Devil’s Quarter, and that was a frightful thing. Under the light of the blood-red moon what should have been the ruins of the worst part of the city were ruins of another place entirely — Dan Alvarez recognized them as the Lady led them out of the bayous.

They were the ruins of the Fallen City, and Dan had walked among them before — just hours ago, when he and Polly and dead Elvis had crawled out of the fiery waters of the Bosphorus of Hell.

“I’m afraid,” Dan whispered into Polly’s ear. “There are devils everywhere.”

Polly took his hand and squeezed it. She said, “Sing,” but she didn’t sound reassuring.

At least partly because she couldn’t be. Oh, the devils kept their distance as Robert Johnson sang and played his guitar; as the baby Lisa played her toy kazoo; and when Dan sang with them they stayed even farther back. But Dan knew it couldn’t be that easy to disarm the Legions of the Damned, and he was right.

For as they crossed the Devil’s Quarter, the damned grew thicker and thicker around them, till now as they reached the Devil’s Mansion a vast and seething mob surrounded them, and if their song had paused a moment the horde would have consumed them in a moment.

Robert Johnson sang “Let Your Light Shine on Me,” just as Blind Willie sang it, and the mob gave way again and again — until they reached the great lawn before the Mansion.

When they reached that place the mob stood its ground, and for a long moment Dan Alvarez thought they’d reached their end. There were so many of them! Thousands and thousands of them, devils and damned men and women with hearts as black as the starless sky, and every moment a thousand more welled up through the doors and windows of the Mansion, and soon the thick of them would press in upon them. . . .

“Make way,” the Lady demanded. “Make way or I will make it through you.”

But the damned horde did not yield.

Not even when the Lady drew her great fiery sword, and leveled it; not even as great flowers of fire bloomed out of it, piercing the night.

Instead of yielding the mob surged toward them —

For Lisa it was like this:

One moment she was standing terrified behind the Lady, half certain that the Santa could protect her no matter what might come, half convinced that it was hopeless, and the demonic bloody hungry mob would overrun them in a moment, tearing them limb from limb from limb, and now the great red-eyed doglike thing thundered out of the crowd, bearing down on her, and she screamed. and screamed again as its shoulder slammed into Dan Alvarez, throwing the poor man half a dozen yards, and now the demon’s great black-taloned left arm shot toward her like a club made out of hard sulfurous flesh, grabbing her by the hair to lift her off her feet, and she thought her scalp would tear away from her skull, and it hurt, hurt, and tiny baby Lisa who wasn’t any baby down inside tiny baby Lisa screamed as the demon swung her ‘round and ‘round its canine head —