The Children of Old Leech: A Tribute to the Carnivorous Cosmos of Laird Barron (39 page)

Opening it, he closes his eyes at the first glimpse of its contents.

Salazar has transcended himself. No longer merely a gladiator, now a poet.

***

The elite box of Hong Kong’s Kuan Yin Arena more closely resembles a parliament conference room, with sensibly upholstered chairs arranged within horseshoe tables on a steeply tiered gallery with scarlet porphyry floors and columns.

The reincarnated Lord Sun sulks with his retinue, alone. Less than a year after the operation, he is still a hostile occupier at war with his son’s unconquered body. His lipless rictus and incessant stammer freely betray the deranged ancient hiding inside the teenaged body, but the fault lies with all the immunosuppressors and hormones and the many arcane drugs required to maintain even infantile control over the body’s basic motor functions. Frustrated with the headset he uses to communicate with the servants waiting outside his inflated plastic hyperbaric bubble, Lord Sun raps angrily on the interior wall, demanding to see the hypnotist. His servants hardly hide their sneering expressions. They think him weak. They see his imminent demise and their greedy enrichment. He’s surprised them before.

Dr. Balance finally arrives, looking uncharacteristically excited. “Your new Samurai is prepared for battle. I think today my Lord will enjoy a most interesting match.”

At last, Lord Sun recalls some spark of vitality. “The odds. What odds does she command?” A string of drool wiped away by rash-ravaged hands.

“Twelve to one, my Lord.”

A young man’s lungs vapor-lock on old man’s laughter. “She will… destroy… them all…”

Dr. Balance locks eyes with Lord Sun, guides him to a relaxed state. By his own insistence, Lord Sun is immune to hypnosis, but Balance’s relaxing influence has made him the only one he can trust with the care and feeding of his most prized possession.

“They underestimate you at their peril, my Lord. But not entirely without cause. For far too long, you have pursued your vengeance to the detriment of your business pursuits and your stable. You’ve become known for vulgar exhibition matches. But your reinvention as a patron shall be as dramatic as your physical reincarnation.”

Nodding until he swoons with dizziness, Lord Sun breathlessly agrees. “If he knew… it would destroy him utterly. He should have been revived in time to witness this moment.”

Around them, the crowd thickens, patrons and prostitutes take their seats as the lights over the arena brighten. The first event is hardly a title match, but it marks the first appearance of a female gladiator in the history of the Pageant.

“I know you have misgivings, my Lord, but it is best that you not allow yourself to become… compromised again. She is her mother’s daughter, full of defiance, but also her father’s, and so a formidable contender in the games. Her natural anger channeled in that direction will yield you great benefits, instead of bringing further trouble to your house.”

Lord Sun’s mouth says something Balance misses because his hand moves to cover it and slap it repeatedly.

Best get this over with. “As luck would have it, I have uncovered a token which was no doubt meant for you. Whether an act of surrender or a last gesture of defiance I leave to you, but I think that once you hold it in your hands, you may find the contentment to leave the issue to the past.”

Knowing he treads on rice paper, Balance quickly proffers the tiny pillow book.

He has trimmed its chewed borders and replaced the haphazard binding of hair and detached ligaments and perfected the botched curing which Salazar attempted with his own urine. In spite of some shrinkage, the painstakingly inked words are still clearly legible when he holds it up to the convex belly of Lord Sun’s bubble.

赤い風泣くこと

Trembling, Lord Sun reads, unblinking.

私の体は本です

Eyes screwed shut, Balance turns the pages as Lord Sun consumes each inhumanly compressed line.

私の名前は剣です

Eyes riveted upon the unwritten
kereji
—the “cutting word” upon which the last line turns, he says the Samurai’s true name aloud, curse turned into prayer.

His eyes go on roving behind closed lids, as if in deep REM sleep. His lips go on reciting the haiku.

“
Akai kaze ga naku…”

Repeating the mantra until its resonance overlaps with the endless repetition out of the Dark behind every closed eyelid…

“
Watashi no karada wa hondesu…”

The cutting word picks the neural locks of the door at the back of every brain, the door that drums, drugs and blood alone can open.

“
Ken wa kotobadesu.”

The crowd rises to its feet at the first sounds of the ludus… not the expected horns or strident martial music, but a piercing black static scream of inhuman desolation that rebounds through the cavernous arena.

Lai’s opponent enters the arena to distracted applause, but some of the more astute patrons turn to the back door when they notice that the screaming is getting louder, and it’s not coming from down on the dirt floor, but from somewhere much closer. From down in the catacombs where Dr. Balance only minutes ago placed Lai Salazar in a deep trance before showing her the Samurai’s pillow book.

Only the hypnotist can recognize the name the newly resuscitated ghost is trying to speak with both Lord Sun and Lai’s lips.

Before any can react, the screaming becomes a chorus. Lord Sun claws at the walls of his bubble. His screams tear the microsutures in his scalp, man becoming madman becoming God.

Even Dr. Balance cannot tell, looking into those streaming, alien eyes, whether he is observing his favorite patient in the ecstasy of his hideous miracle—the impossible, the unspeakable, coming true twice—or the Darkness, incarnate at last and utterly devastated to find out how incredibly overrated being alive is…

Yes
, he thinks as the doors fly open to admit a chill steel wind,
it promises to be a most interesting match.

Tenebrionidae

Scott Nicolay & Jesse James Douthit-Nicolay

…and the red light was my mind.

—Robert Johnson

D
umont wriggled his shoulders, shoved from his feet and twisted at the hips to inch himself further up the back of the fox hole. Not so cold yet and it was hell for comfortable but he wanted to keep as much off the gritty metal floor as he could. You weren’t careful in a cold train car, metal would suck the heat out of you like
nuthin
. Without a sleeping bag best he only touched bare metal at his shoulders boots and butt.

Missy lifted her head from his chest to wedge a wet nose against his chin and neck, lick up at his cheek. Dumont wrapped his left arm around her and winced. He hadn’t peeked yet to see how deep the cut ran. He was gonna have to look soon. Last he could see, the dirty bandanna he tied round it was soaked a darker red all cross the top. Not enough light to check it now anyway.

Least he managed to score a good ridable from NOLA on a grainer porch. Damn lucky but that didn’t change how fucked his situation was overall. He thought about his pack. Fucking Shadow Riders had it, together with his sleeping bag and most of the rest of his shit. Who knew what they were doing to it? Trashing it all, dividing it up… most likely some black magic bullshit. And his last pint of whiskey was in there too. With time to grab one thing only he went for his guitar, the scratched up acoustic Susie True-Bright gave him at Eufaula Lake two Novembers back. He was probably going to regret that choice. With neither whiskey nor water left, he knew he was going to regret it
soon
. He craned forward to check he at least hadn’t lost the guitar, right now riding by the bottom of the grainer’s ladder since it wouldn’t fit with him in the hole. The bottom edge of the case cut a thin arc from what light the moon still dribbled down. The case seemed steady, moving only in time with the slow swaying rhythms of the train.

He let the back of his head rest against the chill rusty wall and tuned in to the trainsong, hoping it would lull him to sleep.

Only five things could steady him, still the deep waters of his chaos. Whiskey. Missy. Playin’. Fuckin’. And the sound train wheels made over steel rails.
Rat ta tat tat rat ta tat tat
. Best lullaby ever. Better than any his foster parents ever sang him, that was fersure…

Fersure
.

He couldn’t catch the rhythm tonight though, ride it into sleep. Not yet. Too much rage and anger ran still through his veins, the gin in a cocktail spiked with confusion and fear.

That was
some
fucked up shit there at the squat, Shadow Riders comin’ in like they did… Yeah sure, Bald Jonny Ben warned him
’
bout them way back when, first time he came through NOLA, but that time Dumont only nodded, passing the stories off as fairy tales in his mind. Occultist train riders? Seriously? Only they
were
real and they were
very
serious. So was their black magic.
’
Course Tigger tried to tell him the same but he tuned her out too. Now he could tell his own story about them if he wanted. If he ever got the chance…

What he’d seen at the squat twisted in his brain like a wind whipped plastic bag snagged on a barbed wire fence. He’d been chilling there waiting for Tigger. They were s’posed to meet up, hitch out of NOLA, take their love on the road. Maybe not love exactly, but close enough. She was good for him and she said
he
made her feel safe.

First though she was gonna try to get this money some other ex owed her while he was supposed to go busk it in the Quarter. Only he drank a little whiskey to get his nerve up, then a little more and a little more after that and ended not leaving the squat.

Tigger said meet her
’
round 7:00 but she never showed. Best he could estimate she was already an hour late. Still, everything was copacetic till right before the Shadow Riders appeared.

He had a seat up against one wall, a flipped over five-gallon plastic bucket, bright orange once, writing under all the scuffs and scratches said it came from Home Depot long time ago. Missy lay on his right, tongue out and panting softly, his battered pack, packed and ready, propped against the wall on his left. He was thinking about breaking out the guitar, maybe tuning it or working on a song. Then things twisted up, got all strange.

The smell hit him first, a bitter edge coming on beneath the general mist of wet plaster, rust and mildew and his own unwashed body. Missy must’ve caught it before him
’
cause she sat up and growled, her growl becoming a whine before it choked off in silent tension. Right as his nose registered it too a thin ripple rode over every horizontal line, kinked level architecture downward a moment before pulsing on and out the corners. Shit might make sense if he were shrooming but he only had whiskey in him, and he knew that drink’s distortions full well as a sea captain knows the waves and the sky or whatever. He sat up and was still watching for a repeat when the graffiti went wrong.

That came instant, a spasm. The lines of spraypainted scrawl across all four walls, the artful head high plaques of balloon letters, the smallest penciled scribbles… it all became ugly, rough, illegible. All at once every letter was an affront in both texture and intent though he could no longer read a one. There’d been names before, bands as well as individual punks, some with tiny train tracks and an X for the crossing to show they were riders. Scraps of lyrics and fragmented rants, the ubiquitous anarchy symbol… All gone. Incomprehensible hieroglyphs swirled out at him now.

The whole room pulsed next and… altered, made no architectural sense. Missy barked and twitched her tail against the bucket and Dumont placed a hand on her back. He felt dizzy and fought the urge to puke. The doorway spun around him several times—round and round and round she goes, and where she stops—Ratch and Worm and Marlo stood. The two sidekicks drifted into place behind Marlo right away, assuming generic bully positions so fast Dumont was tempted to laugh. But Marlo had his K-Bar out beside his thigh and the other two each wore their general bulk as a weapon so no way was it time for wisecracks or laughter. The room no longer spun, only rocked a bit side to side in a seasick way as if whatever whirlwind torqued it had settled in overhead for now.

—
Lookit the schwag bitch
, Marlo sneered at him, spoke the words as a slow smoldering threat. His voice oscillated in tempo as if the distance between them were stretching and receding. Dumont felt another twinge of nausea and struggled to suppress it. Ratch and Worm sneered in their special fleshy ways but said nothing. Missy pressed closer against his thigh, hindquarters stiff with tension as she barked in bursts. He stroked her head to calm her.

—Are you
sad
because your girl ain’t here? Well you can go ahead an’ cry now
’
cause she ain’t comin’. Little Miss
Tigger
. Turns out she don’t bounce too well.

Dumont didn’t much care to hear what he was hearing but he knew Marlo was s’posed to be big on head games. Didn’t mean any of it counted for a damn thing. If it did then he failed her just like he failed Hector, the kid younger than him at the foster home, what they’d done to him.