Butcher Bird E-Book

Richard Kadrey

• Herausgeber: Books on Demand
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Seitenzahl: 403

Beschreibung

Spyder Lee is a happy man who lives in San Francisco and owns a tattoo shop. One night an angry demon tries to bite his head off before he's saved by a stranger. The demon infected Spyder with something awful - the truth. He can suddenly see the world as it really is: full of angels and demons and monsters and monster-hunters. A world full of black magic and mysteries. These are the Dominions, parallel worlds full of wonder, beauty and horror. The Black Clerks, infinitely old and infinitely powerful beings whose job it is to keep the Dominions in balance, seem to have new interests and a whole new agenda. Dropped into the middle of a conflict between the Black Clerks and other forces he doesn't fully understand, Spyder finds himself looking for a magic book with the blind swordswoman who saved him. Their journey will take them from deserts to lush palaces, to underground caverns, to the heart of Hell itself.

Leseprobe

Butcher Bird

Chapter 1 - Auto da FéChapter 2 - The Great DivideChapter 3 - Strange AttractorsChapter 4 - Traffic JamChapter 5 - Communication BreakdownChapter 6 - A Trick of the LightChapter 7 - ShadowsChapter 8 - Slow ChildrenChapter 9 - Hard ThanksChapter 10 - DOAChapter 11 - The Voice of the SphinxChapter 12 - Cyanide RecallChapter 13 - Journey Into FearChapter 14 - What Are Little Boys Made Of?Chapter 15 - I LUV LAChapter 16 - The Birth of MonstersChapter 17 - Cannibal OrchidsChapter 18 - A Weapon for OthersChapter 19 - What Men Never UnderstandChapter 20 - BadlandsChapter 21 - JubileeChapter 22 - BewitchedChapter 23 - Death is not the EndChapter 24 - Amazing GraceChapter 25 - Angel FireChapter 26 - My Enemy's EnemyChapter 27 - The Hall of MirrorsChapter 28 - Suspicious MindsChapter 29 - BereniceChapter 30 - A Universal JokeChapter 31 - The FutureChapter 32 - DominionsChapter 33 - The Killer Inside MeChapter 34 - The Ghost of Christmas PastChapter 35 - UnstrungChapter 36 - Highway to HellChapter 37 - A Bad Good NightChapter 38 - Dead Eyes TalkChapter 39 - AnthropologyChapter 40 - The Possibility of FloatingChapter 41 - Vanilla RosesChapter 42 - Izanami and Red DragonChapter 43 - Eaten AliveChapter 44 - Daddy LonglegsChapter 45 - Pink BoyChapter 46 - The Damned and the GentrifiedChapter 47 - Miss Fuckin' MannersChapter 48 - Treacherous and BoringChapter 49 - The Garden of Earthly DelightsChapter 50 - Holy ShitChapter 51 - Off the RadarChapter 52 - Waiting for the End of the WorldChapter 53 - Threnody 23Chapter 54 - More than HeavenChapter 55 - Table ScrapsChapter 56 - StarsChapter 57 - Jesus Christ and Bruce LeeChapter 58 - Roll Me a Smoke, John WayneChapter 59 - At the End of the Day, Luck always FailsChapter 60 - Worshipping CrocodilesChapter 61 - The Other Side of the WindCopyright

Chapter 1 - Auto da Fé

"They say that when your head gets chopped off, it can still see and hear for a few seconds, so I'll have to go with beheading," said Spyder Lee to Lulu Garou.

Spyder Lee was drinking shots of Patron Añjo tequila with Lulu, his business partner, at the Bardo Lounge just off Market Street in San Francisco.

Lulu looked into her empty glass and thought for some time, took a drag of her Marlboro Light and winked at the woman tending bar. "Being beaten to death," said Lulu. "Badly. I don't mean like with a baseball bat or rebar so you're out cold, but something small." She crushed out her Marlboro in the ashtray the bartender slid in front of her. "An eight ball in a sweat sock. That'd give your killer a good workout."

"Not if the guy hit you in the head right off," said -Spyder.

"My mama was pretty free with her hands. I'm a faster ducker," Lulu replied. She grinned. Spyder could tell she was unimpressed with his argument.

"Burning at the stake," he said.

"Drawn and quartered," Lulu countered.

Rubi, the bartender, took their empty glasses away. "Exactly what are you two rattling about?"

"Worst ways to die," said Spyder. "Being covered in honey and staked out on a red ant hill."

"Dying of thirst. Like right now," said Lulu.

Rubi slid her hand across the bar and took hold of Lulu's left pinkie. "You parched, baby?"

"I'm drier than Candy Darling's cunt."

"Candy Darling was a man," said Spyder.

"Exactly."

Rubi leaned forward and kissed Lulu's pinkie. "I'll get you both another round. On me." As she left to make their drinks, Lulu called after her, "That ain't all that's gonna be on you tonight." Rubi stuck her tongue out at Lulu.

"Being crucified. That's supposed to be horrible," said Spyder.

"You're only saying that 'cause that's how they talk about it in movies. You ever known anyone who was crucified? Or even heard of one? Hell no. Maybe being crucified is great. Maybe it's a fucking hoot. Maybe it's a blow job and ice cream on your birthday." Lulu took out another Marlboro Light and lit it with a pink fur Zippo. "Know what would really suck? Being force fed a bucket full of black widows."

Spyder made a face, half frown and half smile. "Jesus, girl," he said.

"You're upping the ante on me."

It was the end of another day at the tattoo studio and piercing parlor Spyder and Lulu ran together. Spyder did the ink while Lulu handled the metal. It was a pleasant business. It let them both pretend to be artists while making money and getting a lot of tail on the side. Rubi, for instance, had been one of Lulu's earliest and most regular customers.

"She's got about five pounds of me all over her all the time," Lulu liked to tell friends.

Rubi bought back their drinks and set them on the bar. "What time you getting off tonight?," asked Lulu.

"Early," said Rubi. "'Bout an hour."

"Sweet."

"Being eaten alive, Night of the Living Dead-style," said Spyder.

Lulu turned to him. "You mind? We're having a moment here."

"Wait, better than that," Spyder went on. "Being starved to death, but given topical anesthetic and surgical equipment, so the only way you could stay alive'd be to amputate your own limbs and eat them."

Rubi said, "You two ought to get married. Move into the Bates Motel." She went down the bar to serve other customers.

"Now you ruined our surprise," Spyder called after her.

Lulu took a long pull on her tequila. "Flayed alive and drowned in pickle brine."

Spyder looked at his hands. The back of one was -covered in an intricate black tribal snake pattern while the other hand sported a cartoon red sacred heart. MANS RUIN was tattooed across the knuckles of both hands. He'd gotten the letters while doing a year in reform school for car theft. They were bullshit tats. Kid stuff. But they marked a period of his life, so he never bothered to have them lasered off. From his neck to the tops of his feet, Spyder Lee was an explosion of images and pigments. He'd never felt normal until he'd been tattooed for the first time. The ink felt like some kind of magic armor. His tattoos, even the stupid ones, made him feel bullet-proof.

He was one of those lanky Texas boys you see working on cars in oil-stained driveways, a cooler full of Coors, his only concession to the summer heat. A perpetually messy mop of black hair and long arms covered in grease working on the transmission of a vintage Mustang of questionable ownership.

"Split open, your organs torn out with hooks and replaced with red hot coals," he said.

Lulu leaned in close. "Strapped to the front of a burning boat and driven through a mile and a half of electrified razor wire in a Tabasco sauce hurricane."

They both broke up in drunken laughter, spitting and slamming their hands on the bar.

"You're both wrong," said a woman sitting to Spyder's right. He and Lulu turned to look at the woman. She was small, with fine features and the smooth grace of a dancer. The woman was drinking red wine and was wearing sunglasses. In her right hand she held a white cane, the sort used by the blind.

Lulu called over Spyder's shoulder, "Okay Stevie Wonder, what's the worst way to die?"

The woman finished her wine and stood up. "To be betrayed by the one you love."

She turned on her heels and swinging her cane in small arcs in front of her, pushed her way through the crowd and out of the bar.

Spyder watched the door as it closed behind the woman. Lulu took a drag off her Marlboro. "Stupid bitch," she said and dropped the butt into the woman's empty wine glass.

Chapter 2 - The Great Divide

The Earth was born in a furnace. When the world grew strong enough, it crawled into the dark void to cool and heal itself. Soon, however, it grew too cold and shivered with ice.

The Earth looked around and found a small star to warm it up. Deciding it liked the neighborhood and the climate, there the Earth stayed.

Life appeared across the Earth, splashed in the water and glided on thermals through the sky. It didn't take life long to grow so abundant that it began preying on itself.

Crows, bats and eagles, the lords of the air, scooped up fish from the seas and dumped them in the desert until the dry lands were piled high with their bones. These carcasses became the Earth's first mountains.

Other animals learned to climb the trees and attack the birds as they hunted for food. The land dwellers decorated the bare trees with the birds' feathers and painted the ground with their blood. The gray earth suddenly had color.

Every creature who lived in the sea—the fish, the whales, the seals, the crabs, the squids and the rays—met in the South Seas and beat their fins, claws and tentacles, and raised an enormous tidal wave. The wall of water shot across the earth, drowning millions of the land and air beasts. This is how the many rivers and oceans of the world were born.

After an eon or two of mass murder, when the surface of the Earth was a stinking slaughter house, the lords of the different realms of life met at the ancient human city of Thulamela to see if they could end the butchery. This wasn't all that simple, since the many different creatures of the Earth were going to have to live on the same planet, but give each other plenty of room.

They divided the world into three Spheres, with each Sphere being invisible and out of the reach of the others. Humans and the most numerous animals of the land, sea and air were given one Sphere.

A second Sphere was home to the rarest creatures—the phoenix, selkies, vampires, barbegazi, corrigans, tengus, lamias, rompos, sylphs, gorgons, volkhs, wyverns, trolls and other exotic beasts.

The last realm was left to the most glorious and dangerous inhabitants of the planet: angels and demons.

So it was that each of these groups lived and grew old and died in its own Sphere, inhabiting the same time and space as all the other Spheres, but rarely touching—unless a creature was powerful or clever enough to learn the spells of crossing over. Because the town meeting that divided the world had taken place in a human city, cities became the places where the creatures who moved from Sphere to Sphere would meet up to talk, joke, eat, exchange spells and news, make love or commit the occasional genocide.

Over the next few thousand centuries, the creatures who dwelled in the second and third Spheres struck a kind of déente. Unfortunately for the beasts of in the first Sphere (which included ninety-nine percent of humanity), they forgot about the other Spheres completely and only glimpsed them in their dreams.

Or so they thought.

Chapter 3 - Strange Attractors

Later, Spyder went out the back and into the alley behind the Bardo Lounge for a quick piss.

It wasn't Spyder's habit to urinate in public, but at the best of times the Lounge's toilets were questionable. Sometime during the day, Rubi told him, they had committed Hara kiri. "One summer during college I was trekking in Nepal," Rubi said. "First night out we came to this little village and I asked this lady who ran the local teahouse where the toilets were. In Nepali she said, essentially, `Anywhere but here,' and pointed to an open field."

As Spyder unzipped in the alley, he consider the club's name and wondered if the real afterlife would be at all like this. A tab at your favorite bar. Pretty girls to chat up. The occasional piss in an alley next to God's own dumpster. It didn't seem like the afterlife would be too bad a place. Spyder wondered who the bouncer in the Bardo Realm would be. The Black Bhairab, he decided. Shiva's most wrathful form. The six-armed, crown-of-skulls-wearing Mad Max of the afterlife.

Spyder zipped up and turned to reenter the club. Like a bad dream, the Black Bhairab was right there beside him. Something big enough, strong enough and wild enough to be the Black Bhairab, though Spyder knew that these qualities were also present in most of your dedicated crackheads, Spyder. This particular crackhead grabbed Spyder by the front of his shirt and lifted him off him feet, tossing him into the trash cans and empty liquor boxes at the back of the alley.

Stunned, Spyder reached for his cash, hoping this would get the guy to back off. The mugger came up and slammed his boot into Spyder's midsection, then kept kicking, even after he'd snatched the money from Spyder's hand. Spyder didn't even get a decent look at the guy and that really bothered him. He wanted to see the face of the man who was about to kill him.

As if the mugger had heard Spyder's thoughts, he felt himself being pulled up by his collar until he was standing upright. Then Spyder's feet lifted from the dirty alley floor and he hung limp in the air at the end of the mugger's arm. "You know how to whistle don't you? Just put your lips together and blow," Spyder croaked as he hung there. He punched the crackhead as hard as he could. The guy's face gave as if there were no bones in there, just a lot of flesh-colored pudding.

The mugger's face began to change. His skin crawled in the jittery sodium light from a street lamp. The mugger's eyes swelled and burst from their sockets, black and glittering with facets. His lips seemed to melt, drawing down into a long, twitching tube. Cracked, curved horns burst from the sides of his head. The mugger exhaled a fetid cloud of steaming breath. Spyder's brain was on overload. The adrenaline rush and oxygen-deprivation had him flashing on a frantic stream of schizophrenic data. Snakes. Insects. Wolves. Angels. The mugger had a smell. Overwhelmingly sweet. Vanilla roses. Rotting fish. The perfume of dead school girls. Spyder thought of his room in high school. He'd had a poster on the wall, a parody of the kind of out-of-date Civil Defense instructions they used to give kids in case of nuclear attack. The last line had read, "Put your head between your legs and kiss your ass goodbye."

Spyder vomited on the mugger's arm. The puke seemed to have some kind of mysterious juju power because at that moment the mugger's head sheered off and rolled to the alley floor. His body, which still had a solid grip on Spyder's collar, follow a second or two later.

When he could open his eyes, Spyder saw a pair of shiny vinyl boots in front of his face. He closed his eyes again, ready for this new intruder to finish him off.

"Get up," came a woman's voice.

Spyder looked up and saw the blind dancer he and Lulu had spoken to in the bar earlier that night. She was holding a long and bloody sword in her hands.

"I'm tapped out. The dead guy got all my money," said Spyder.

"I'm not mugging you, fool. I'm saving you. Not that you deserve it." The blind woman reached down for Spyder's arm and helped him to his feet.

"Thanks. What the fuck just happened?"

"A Bitru demon attacked you. I killed it."

"I don't believe in demons."

The woman nodded. "All right. It was a junkie with the head of an insect and possessing superhuman strength."

"Okay," Spyder croaked.

Spyder looked at the body at his feet. He hadn't been hallucinating. The body wasn't even vaguely human.

"What the fuck… Why would a demon want me?"

"A Bitru doesn't just drop by for blood and crumpets. He doesn't come unless he's called."

"I did not call any goddam bug monster thing to kick my ass. I wouldn't even know how."

"You must have his mark on your body. Near your heart," said the woman. She ran both sides of her sword across the demon's body, cleaning the blood from the blade. Planting the tip of the sword on the ground, she gave it hard shake. The sword blurred and when she stopped shaking, it had transformed into the white cane she'd had earlier.

"Damn." Spyder opened his shirt and looked at his chest. "I have a lot of ink on me. Geometrics. Tribal work. Religious geegaws."

"Any runes or symbols?"

"A shitload."

"And do you know the meanings of all those runes?"

"'Course. Some. In a Trivial Pursuit kind of way. They're just designs."

"So says the man covered in demon blood." The woman moved closer to Spyder. "Did it ever occur to you that those symbols have meaning and power?"

"Where? How? I've done a thousand tattoos like that on people."

"Some of them are probably going to have a dream date like the one you just had." She laid her hand over his heart. "You don't believe in demons, but you believe in magnetism, right? These symbols you put on your body, like the Bitru's sigil, these are a kind of magnetism. You don't have to understand how they work. The demons do."

"What can I do?"

"Take it off. Change it. All the signs and symbols that you don't know."

"What's your name?" asked Spyder.

The woman took her hand from his chest. "Most people just call me Shrike."

"Thank you, Shrike."

She ran a hand lightly over Spyder's cheeks and jaw. "Good thing you're pretty. You're not the quickest little pony on the track, are you?"

"You underestimate me," said Spyder. "This was all my clever plan to meet you. I think it went pretty well."

"Take care of yourself," Shrike said, moving back toward the mouth of the alley.

"My name is Spyder," he called to her.

"Take care of yourself, Spyder." She waved without turning around.

"Wait. Do you have a phone number or email or something? I owe you."

"You don't owe me anything."

"But I'm madly in love with you and stuff."

She turned gracefully and continued walking backwards, never breaking stride. "Not the quickest pony at all."

She was gone. Spyder started after her, but when he tried to take a step, his legs shook so much that he fell against the alley wall. A few minutes later, Lulu came outside looking for him. She helped him back into the Bardo Lounge. Spyder noted that Lulu didn't seem to notice the large dead demon lying nearby in the alley. Together, -Spyder and Lulu got very, very drunk.

Chapter 4 - Traffic Jam

It was light out when Spyder woke up, but his eyes refused to focus, so he couldn't read the time on the Badtz-Maru clock-radio near the bed.

His head felt as if someone had scooped out his brains and filled his skull with broken glass and thumb tacks. When he tried to sit up, every part of his body ached. He rose slowly to his feet and walked stiffly to the bathroom. Spyder's shoulder throbbed and when he switched on the bathroom light he saw why.

There was a long gash running across his shoulder and down his chest. He had a black eye, a swollen lip and his arms and ribs were spotted in livid purple bruises. Spyder remembered the scene in the alley. It wasn't a dream. He had been mugged.

Blood from the gash had dried on his skin, gluing part of his white wife-beater to his chest. Spyder stood under the hot shower until the blood softened and the water soothed his knotted muscles.

When he stepped out of the shower, he left the wet shirt draped across the towel rack beneath the framed Lady from Shanghai poster that Jenny hated. The gash on his shoulder burned and his headache was com- ing on strong behind his eyes. Spyder slapped on some gauze squares and taped them down with white medical tape.

Christ, he thought, I was supposed to call Jenny last night and tell I was going to be late. She must be pissed. Then it hit him, as it had hit him almost every morning for weeks: Jenny was gone. She'd packed up and moved the last of her stuff to LA. That's why he'd gotten so drunk with Lulu. It was the one month anniversary of her desertion.

"No fucking way I can put ink on anyone today," he thought. It was already after one in the afternoon. Spyder didn't want to go the studio, but he needed to call his clients and reschedule. He dressed quickly into battered black jeans, steel-toed Docs and the largest, loosest gray Dickies shirt he could find in his closet. A pile of Jenny's abandoned textbooks were stacked at the back, The Gnostic Gospels, Heaven and Hell in the Western Tradition, An Encyclopedia of Fallen Angels. Spyder slammed the closet door.

The warehouse Spyder rented was across town from the tattoo studio. He usually rode the Dead Man's Ducati—the bike he'd bought cheap from a meth dealer he knew down in Tijuana; the previous owner had gone missing and did Spyder want first dibs?—but he felt too shaky for two wheels today. He called a cab and waited by the curb in the warm afternoon sun.

"Do you have the time?"

Spyder was so out of it, he hadn't seen the tall man in the gray business suit approach him. The man was bald, but tanned and healthy-looking, with deep wind and -sunburn creases on his cheeks. It took Spyder a second to answer.

"Uh, no. Sorry."

"No worries," the man said with a slight Shrimp-on-the-Barbie accent. "Lovely day."

"Yeah. Great," said Spyder

"You all right, mate?"

"Just a little hungover's all."

The business man laughed. "That's how you know you had a good time," he said and clapped Spyder on his sore shoulder. "Cheers."

As the man walked away, Spyder saw something attached to his back. It was sort of ape-like, but its head was soft, like a slug's. It had its teeth sunk into the man's neck and was clinging onto his back by its twisted child-like limbs. Spyder wanted to call out to the man, but his throat was locked tight in fear and disgust. The parasite's head throbbed as it slurped something from the business man's spine.

Spyder took a step back and his shoulder touched a rough wooden pole planted in the ground through a section of shattered pavement. Pigeons and gray doves were nailed up and down the pole. Animal heads were staked around the top. An alligator. A rottweiler. A horse. Other more freakish animals Spyder couldn't identify. Each head was decorated with flower garlands and its eye sockets and mouth stuffed with incense and gold coins, like offerings.

Across the street, a griffin, its leathery wings twitching, was lazily chewing on the carcass of a fat, gray sewer rat. Emerald spiders the size of a child's hand ran around the griffin's legs, grabbing stray scraps of meat that fell from the beast's jaws. The spiders scrambled up and down the griffin's hindquarters. Gray stingray-like things flapped overhead, like a flock of knurled vultures. A coral snake lazily wrapping itself around the sacrifice pole stopped its climb long enough to call Spyder by name.

Spyder's head spun. He stepped into the street, flashing on the demon in the alley the night before. The mugging had been real. Had the monster part been real, too? He leaned his head back. Spinning in the sky overhead were angels with the wings of eagles. Higher still crawled vast airships. Their soft balloon bodies glowed in the bright sun, presenting Spyder with profiles of fierce mythological birds of prey and gigantic lotuses.

A cab turned the corner onto Harrison Street and -Spyder frantically flagged it down. "Haight and Masonic," he said to the driver, trying not to sound as deranged as he felt. Spyder slid into the backseat and as the driver pulled away, he peered out the cab's rear window. The business man was on the corner, talking to three pale men in matching black suits. Their clothes and general formality reminded Spyder of bankers in an old movie.

One of the bankers stepped forward, reached into the businessman's chest and pulled out his heart. Turning stiffly, he dropped the organ into an attachécase held up by another of the trio. That done, the third banker used a knife to carefully peel the businessman's face off. The cab turned the corner and Spyder lost sight of them.

Chapter 5 - Communication Breakdown

"How you voting on Prop 18?"

Spyder looked up. The cabbie looked -exhausted, Spyder thought. One of those guys in his forties with eyes that make him look ten years older. His skin hung loosely on a gray, unshaven face.

"The companies make it sound like it'll put more cabs on the street, but really it's just going to screw up the medallion system even worse and give all the power to the big cab companies. We aren't employees, you know. All us cabbies are freelance. I owe money the moment I take my cab out. The moment I touch it. A cab driver has the job security of a crack whore. Worse than slaves, even. We're up at the big house begging the master for more cotton to pick."

"I'm sorry, said Spyder. "I don't know anything about Prop 18. I don't vote… ever."

The driver shook his head. His black hair stuck out at odd angles, as if he'd been sleeping on it just a few minutes earlier. "Voting's not a right, you know. It's not a privilege. It's your duty. My daddy died in the war so you could vote."

"Hey driver, uh," Spyder looked at the name on the man's taxi license, "Barry. Do you want to play a game?"

"I don't think so."

"There's a $20 tip in it for you. "

"Are you a cop?"

"No."

"Fag?"

"No."

"You from the cab company?"

"No, Barry."

"What kind of game?"

"Don't rush getting me to the Haight," Spyder said. He leaned his head against the window. It was cool on his forehead. "Take your time. Let the meter run. As we hit each corner, you're going to tell me what you see.

"What's on the corners you mean? Like buildings and people?"

"Exactly. Big or small. Whatever strikes your fancy."

"Give me a for instance," said Barry. "Like this corner."

"Okay," said Spyder leaning forward to peer out the windshield. "That semi up ahead. The blonde eating a taco in front of bodega. The mailbox painted like a Mexican flag. That blimp shaped like Garuda."

"What's a Garuda?"

"A bird-beaked messenger deity from Thailand."

"I don't see nothing like that."

"Tell me what you see."

Barry breathed deeply and craned his head on the end of his long, doughy neck. "Some bums with shopping carts. Some hookers. Mexican or Asian, maybe. Can't tell from here. They got on high heels and the littlest goddam skirts. You can see all the way to Bangkok when they bend over."

"Keep going," said Spyder.

"Just stuff?"

"Just stuff."

"A Goodwill. A closed down porn theater. Cholos drinking forty-ouncers by a low-rider. A cop car stopping near 'em… ," Barry fell into a sing-song pattern, reciting as they drove. "A mom with her kid in a stroller. A couple a dogs fucking. Get some, boy! Some dope dealers. Bunch of teenyboppers cutting school. Little shits. Don't learn to read and we end up paying their welfare so they can have babies." Barry glanced into the rearview mirror at Spyder. "This is kind of a stupid game, buddy. When is it your turn?"

"My turn?" Spyder lit a cigarette, his first of the morning. "Everything you saw, I saw. But there were other things, too.

"Dazzle me."

"A winged horse. A lion turning into a golden bird, then into smoke. An angel sharing a cigarette with a horned girl whose skin's blue and hard, like topaz."

"Jesus fuck, man," said Barry. Spyder saw the driver's eyes widen in the mirror. "Are you on drugs or do you need drugs?"

"There's a naked, burned man walking down the street. No, not burned. Cooked. Glazed and cooked like a ham. There's a swarm of little sort of bat things flying around him taking bites. He doesn't seem to mind."

"I'm letting you out at the corner, guy."

"Keep going or you don't get your tip."

Barry shook his head. "Keep it. Getting stabbed by some psycho fuck isn't worth twenty dollars."

"Do I seem like a psycho to you, Barry?" asked Spyder.

"I dunno. Sure talk like one."

"I understand. This is weird for me, too."

"Then maybe you just want to be quiet and not talk about it anymore," Barry said. "Anyway, we're almost to your drop."

"Do you see that building on the corner? I can't tell what it's made of. It's like pink quartz, but the walls are shifting like the whole thing is liquid," said Spyder.

"It's a vacant lot, man."

"Maybe I'm just dreaming."

"If it's a dream, you can give me a fifty dollar tip instead of twenty."

Spyder smiled. "Or I could stab you in the head, suck out your eyes and skull fuck you. I mean, if this is just a dream."

The cab screeched to a stop. "Get out."

"Let me get my money," said Spyder.

Barry turned around to face him. He had a lime green windbreaker draped over his arm to hide the old Browning .45 automatic he was holding. "Get the fuck out."

"Jesus, Barry. Tell me that's not your daddy's gun," said Spyder. "Pretty Freudian, don't you think?" The cabbie's eyes narrowed. "I'm kidding, man. I'm just having a weird day. Let me give you some money."

"Keep your hands where I can see them and get out. I'll shoot you and tell the cops you tried to rob me. When they find all the dope in your blood, they'll believe me."

"Sorry I scared you."

"You didn't scare me, you pissed me off," said Barry. "Can't you tell the difference?"

Spyder got out of the cab and leaned in the front passenger window. Barry kept the gun pointed at him. "Funny, my ex said something like that when she split."

Barry gave Spyder the finger, gunned his engine and shot straight down Haight Street before being caught at the next corner by a half-dozen jaywalking punks.

That guy was going to shoot me, thought Spyder. He considered that as he walked the last half block to the studio. Maybe it wasn't such a bad option. The hallucinations weren't letting up. Maybe being shot was what he needed to kick his brain out of the peculiar abyss into which it had fallen. Spyder had the feeling that the day wasn't going to get any better.

Chapter 6 - A Trick of the Light

Spyder walked with his head down, not allow-ing himself to look around no -matter how odd or enticing the visions: black hooves, crows chatting with rats, the suddenly sinister insect-silhouettes of panhandlers he'd seen a thousand times before.

He smelled musk and ambergris, cook fires and sewage. It reminded him of the Moroccan souks, but he was very far away from Morocco. In fact, very far away from anything familiar right now.

A sense of relief came over Spyder when he entered the tattoo studio and closed the door behind him. A couple of college girls were inspecting the flash designs on the walls and giggling nervously to each other. They didn't have wings or horns or extra eyes. They were a beautiful sight. Spyder could hear Lulu in the back with one of her piercing customers. "You'll feel a little pressure and then a slight sting, but that's all," she said. "Relax."

Hungry for a normal moment he spoke to the college girls. "If you have any questions about the tattoo work, that's what I do around here, so you can ask me."

The girls looked at him and the taller one, a café2dau-lait brunette with bright green eyes, said, "How much for the black panther? That's a real traditional one, right?"

"Yeah. All the pieces on that wall go way back. And we charge by the hour, so the price depends on how big and where you want it. We have a hundred dollar minimum."

The girls whispered to each other, then turned to Spyder. "We're going to think about it. Do you have a card?"

Spyder went behind the counter and found one of the studio's cards. He felt self-conscious handing it to the brunette. The card had a symbol on it. Spyder knew it was something Celtic, but he had no idea what it meant.

"Thanks," said the dark haired girl, letting her fingertips brush against Spyder's as she accepted the card. Under normal circumstances, Spyder would have taken that as a signal to go into his charming act, complete with self-effacing patter and a certain calculated awkwardness that gave him the look of someone who might need just a little looking after. Today, however, all he could muster was a tired smile. "Any time," he said and turned away from the girls, looking for his appointment book so he could cancel everyone set for that day. Maybe for the rest of the week, he thought.

His head and body ached and his hands shook a little as he leafed through the appointments. "Every rabbit hole has a bottom," he said quietly, remembering something that Sara Durango had told him after giving him his first hit of acid when he was fourteen.

Lulu and her female client were coming out of the back room when Spyder settled on the numbers he needed to call. He didn't look up, not ready to deal with the world, much less make eye contact with Lulu or the girl.

"Remember," said Lulu, "you're going to want to soak in a sea salt bath and use that antibiotic cream every day."

"Every day," said the other woman. Spyder heard the little bell over the door ring as she left.

Spyder had to concentrate to make his fingers punch the right numbers into the phone. It rang a few times then gave a subtle click as it switched over the voice mail. "Hi. This is Spyder Lee over at Route 666 Tattoos. Sorry, but I have to cancel our appointment for this afternoon." He settled back in his seat, giving Lulu a pained smile. "I'm not feeling that well and… holy shit… ."

Spyder set down the receiver and stood up, coming around the counter. Something was terribly wrong. He took Lulu gently by the arm. "Goddam," said Spyder -leading her to a chair. "What happened to you?"

Lulu looked at him, puzzled. "Nothing happened to me. You're the one who got stomped, 'member sugar?" She laid her hand on his cheek. The hand was cold and the skin was stiff, like dried-out leather.

"What happened to you?" Spyder repeated more insistently.

Lulu kept smiling. She had to. She had no lips. All the flesh from the lower part of her face had been cut neatly away, leaving her with a permanent leer. She wore a low-cut shirt and her dry white skin was criss-crossed with old scars and stained stitching. Spyder thought of the cheap boots and vests he'd bought on teenage roadtrips to Tijuana. Bad leather sewn together crudely and carelessly. Most disturbing of all were Lulu's eyes. They were gone. Over her empty sockets torn scraps of paper were taped, each with a smeared, childlike drawing of an eye.

"What the fuck happened to you?"

The exposed muscles around Lulu's mouth twitched a little. She reflexively pulled away from Spyder and covered her face with her hands, then quickly lowered them. "Oh my god, " she said. "You really had your brains rearranged last night."

"Tell me I'm fucked up," Spyder said. "I've been seeing the most horrible shit all day. Monsters. Buildings that aren't there. Dead people."

"Not dead, most likely," Lulu said. "There's a whole lot more range between dead and alive than they taught us when we were kids, Spyder."

"What are you talking about?"

"There's a lot no one taught us. Deep, dark secrets. Other worlds. Other kinds of people. Hidden, but right in front of us."

"This is a mistake."

"I wish. There's monsters in the world. Some of 'em were born and some were made. I was made."

"This isn't happening. I'm still in the alley. I'm knocked out and I'm dreaming."

"I'm so sorry, darlin'. You're not ready for this. You were never supposed to see or know about it."

"Know about what?" Spyder shouted. "What are you?"

"I'm Lulu, baby. Just Lulu." She sat down next to him again, a horrible, broken toy. "You're just seeing another part of me. And I'm so sorry for that." Tears fell from her empty eye sockets, staining the paper drawings taped there.

Spyder walked across the room and sat on the floor with his back against the counter. "I refuse to accept any of this," he said.

Lulu got up and locked the door to the studio, then sat back in the chair in front of Spyder. "Darlin', we've known each other since we were six years old. You're the first person I came out to," she said. "I guess I'm coming out again."

"As what?"

Lulu leaned forward and laid her hand on his knee. "Please don't touch me," Spyder said. She withdrew the hand.

"I'm not really a monster," said Lulu. "I'm a damned fool, but I'm not a monster. I just got into something a little over my head."

"That part's obvious."

"I just had my eyes opened, so to speak," she said, -pulling her exposed muscles into a smile. "Just like you." She slid down next to him on the floor, careful not to let her body touch his. Spyder shifted away from her a few inches.

"Remember four, five years back when I was all strung out on oxy? I couldn't work. Couldn't do much of anything but steal and score."

"You still owe me a CD player," Spyder said.

Lulu let out an airy laugh, like wind through a keyhole. "Rehab didn't work. Then, I met some people through this dealer. They said they could get me clean. Make my hands steady, so I could work again. Did I want to try it? Of course, I said Yes."

"When was this? I remember you getting better in rehab," said Spyder.

"Jesus, Spyder. I didn't last a week there," Lulu said. "I wouldn't let you visit, remember? I always called you? I checked out and was on the street scoring until I met these people."

"Who were they?"

"Real monsters. Born monsters," she said. "But I didn't know that back then. They offered me the deal of a lifetime. I'd get clean, get healthy and get my talent back. They promised they could make me better than ever. Can you imagine what that meant to me back then?"

"How'd you end up like this?"

"You know how dealers are. The first one's always free. Then the price just keeps going up. You got a cigarette?"

Spyder pulled a pack of American Spirits from his jacket pocket, took one, gave one to Lulu and lit them both. They smoked in silence for a few moments.

Lulu blew a series of small smoke rings through the center of bigger rings, something Spyder had been watching her do since junior high. "The price for giving me back my life was my eyes," she said, "They said that sight's mostly in the brain and that in this Sphere of existence, they could make it so I'd see better without them." Lulu took a long drag off the American Spirit. Spyder wanted her to stop talking. "They were right, only they didn't tell me it wouldn't last. Every year or so, my sight would start to go and they'd show up, ready to deal. They'd already taken my eyes, so they took something else each time. Stomach. Liver. Skin. I don't know what all anymore. But not my heart. You'd be surprised what you can live without, but not your heart." Another long drag. A cloud of blue smoke. "Each time, they'd do their little voodoo so my body'd keep going, till the next visit. No one ever noticed the difference. When they took my eyes I saw a whole new world. The world, I guess, you're seeing now. Shit, Spyder, no one knows anything. All the teachers and cops and priests and shrinks they sent us to, they don't know what's really going on. When I saw the real world, knowing how long I'd been blind scared me a lot more than the monsters."

"You think this is some kind of goddam gift?" asked Spyder.

"For you it is. You got it for free. It cost me a little more."

"Fuck this world and fuck this gift."

"I'd rather fuck your sister."

"I'll trade you for your mom."

"Deal," said Lulu. She stuck out her hand, the traditional end to a stupid joke that they'd done since they were kids. Eventually, Spyder shook Lulu's hand.

"Goddam," said Spyder. "It is you, isn't it?"

"Yeah, it is."

Spyder slid his arm around Lulu's shoulders and pulled her to him. She hugged him and laid her head on his chest. They sat on the floor until the sun went down and the studio was dark. People knocked on the door, but they ignored them.

Chapter 7 - Shadows

Many years ago, Ishtama was the mother of birds, Setuum was the mother of fishes, and in a golden city in the south Coatlique, the Lady of the Skirt of Snakes—her body decorated with human skulls, serpents and lacerated hands—gave birth to the first man, Mixcoatl.

Mixcoatl's sisters were the stars in the sky and he brought one to Earth to be his wife. Their children were the human race.

As much as Mixcoatl's wife loved him, she missed her sisters and longed to visit them in the sky. Mixcoatl went to Apsu, the lord of the birds, to ask him to fly his wife back to heaven. When Mixcoatl arrived, however, Apsu wasn't there. His wife, Tiamut, told Mixcoatl that Apsu had been murdered by his Shadow Brother, Marduk. Apsu was a friend and Mixcoatl grew very angry at this news. He climbed to the top of the tallest mountain in the world and cut out Marduk's heart with an obsidian knife, throwing the Shadow Brother's body into a deep gorge that led to the center of the world.

When Mixcoatl went home, he told his wife what he had done. She was afraid. "Our mother, Coatlique, the Lady of the Skirt of Snakes, is dead. Your Shadow Brother, Huitzilopochtli, burst from her breast in battle armor and a bone sword."

Mixcoatl told his wife, "I have no brother, shadow or otherwise."

His wife said, "Before she died, our mother warned that at some moment in our life, all men and women -create their shadow form, born from their desire and rage. These shadow forms do not manifest themselves in flesh unless called into being by an act of violence or madness, a blow at creation itself. When you rashly killed Marduk, you bought forth your Shadow Brother and released pure chaos into the world. Huitzilopochtli is you reborn as a soulless void. If you do not destroy him, he will kill you and take your place."

Mixcoatl put on his armor, called his sons to his side and took them to war. For years they roamed the earth looking for Huitzilopochtli, but they didn't find him. At night Mixcoatl had terrible dreams and awoke in the morning pale and weak. Finally, Mixcoatl grew sick and his army rested by the banks of the frozen sea at the bottom of the world.

One night, Mixcoatl awoke from fevered dreams to find Huitzilopochtli sitting on his chest. Mixcoatl was too weak to resist and Huitzilopochtli cut out his heart saying, "I've eaten you piece by piece in your dreams, brother, but don't hate me. I'm not your enemy. I have no choice in killing you and if I smile as I do it, remember it's only the joy a humble servant feels when he restores order to a disordered house, because, of course, there can't be two of us walking the Earth."

Huitzilopochtli took his brother's place on the throne of the world. His flightiness and endless cruelties inspired many beings to unwittingly turn their shadows into flesh through acts of treachery or revenge. The different Shadow Brothers—kings and farmers, birds, fish and horses—ruled the Earth. This was the era of blood and massacres that caused the world to be divided into Spheres, because no matter how the Shadow Brothers tried to reason together, they couldn't. They were soulless voids, and even the most cordial exchanges usually ended in murder.

Thousands of years passed before the living things of the Earth rose up and killed all the Shadow Brothers in power. To make sure that shadow forms never ruled again, each realm of life appointed auditors to keep the world in balance. These celestial officers had the power of life and death and could roam all the Spheres at will. They had different names among the different animal tribes—such as Soul Weavers, Holy Clerks, Black Scribes, and others. These beings didn't destroy the Shadow Brothers, but they kept their influence in check, even when they sometimes had to collaborate with individual Shadow Brothers to set the world right. The loyalties of these auditors weren't to animal, plant or man, but to the universe. And like the gods themselves, their plans were their own, subtle and unknowable.

They were thought to be beyond the influence of any god or beast in the universe, and this was true. What no one considered were things outside the universe.

Chapter 8 - Slow Children

"Did you ever feel like you were a million miles from where you'd thought you'd be when you grew up? Like you thought you were heading for a weekend in Vegas, but ended up in Mongolia instead?"

Lulu was lying across the three wooden garage sale chairs they kept up front for customers. Her arm hung down and a lit American Spirit between her fingers pointed at the floor illuminating the scars on her arm with a faint red light.

"Sometimes," said Spyder. "But then I remember the scariest truth about being a grown up: that no one really knows anything. Maybe where most people want to be is as wrong as where they end up."

"We've been taking our happy pills, I see," said Lulu. "Know what we never, ever talked about: What did you really want to be when we was kids?"

Spyder stood up and stretched, saying, "That's easy. A private detective. You know, a Sam Spade thing. The whole world'd be in black and white and the streets would be slick with rain and lit like a film noir set."

"Sam Spade was always lonely and miserable, least in the movies."

"But at least he knew something. That makes him the exception."

"When I was a girl, I wanted to be Mary Magdalene," said Lulu. "The most hated woman in the world, but Jesus saw her true heart and loved her for it. I wanted that so much. To be hated by the riff-raff, but loved by that one perfect, bright-eyed soul who knew me from the inside out. I used to jerk off to the picture of Jesus over my bed. He looked just like Jim Morrison before the alcohol bloat." Lulu took a drag off her cigarette. Spyder still wasn't sure how she was able to smoke with no lips. "When I realized I liked girls more, I jerked off imagining Jesus fucking Mary Magdalene. I was Jesus, of course. I wonder, does that make me narcissistic?"

"No, you're more like Mother Teresa."

"I'd have fucked Mother Teresa."

"You'd have fucked Nancy Reagan if she'd of held still."

"If she was in that pink Jackie O outfit she wore to Ronnie's second inauguration, hell yes. I'd've bent her over the big desk in the Oval Office and slipped her the high hard one next to the Bible Ronnie had Oliver North give the Iranians. Hell, I'd have bent Ollie over, too. Gotta love a man in a uniform."

"You're a damned pervert, Lulu."

"What's Dennis Hopper say in Blue Velvet? `Don't toast to my health, toast to my fuck.'"

"I wouldn't be Dennis Hopper," said Spyder. "I'd be Orson Welles. He can act, write, direct, he married Rita Hayworth and you know, deep in his heart, he's a stone killer."

"That arty fuck never has happy endings. He's always dead or betrayed."

"Yeah, but we all end up there if we live long enough. I love the guy's certainty. He was willing to ruin himself for whatever he was doing. That's the definition of balls." Spyder checked the door again to make sure it was locked, then turned on the light in the studio. Lulu shielded her paper eyes and softly said, "Shit."

"So, what happens now?" asked Spyder. "Do we open up tomorrow like nothing's different?"

"Things are only different if you act like they're dif-ferent."

"Bullshit. Everything's different."

"I've been exactly what I am for years and it didn't affect things. Why should that change now?"

"That was before," Spyder said, groping for words. "I was going to say the world has changed, but it hasn't. I'm changed. And I fucking hate it. I take back what I said about Sam Spade and knowing things. I enjoyed my ignorance. Give me three wishes and that's what I'd ask for first."

"Reality sucks," said Lulu sitting up on the chairs. "But, if you wait long enough, everything becomes normal. You'll see."

Looking out the studio window onto Haight Street, Spyder watched the people outside going through their happy, blind lives. Couples were going to dinner, ducking into bars. On the corner, a girl with blue hair was kissing a boy in a cop shirt and vinyl shorts. Softly Spyder sang, "When I'm lyin' in my bed at night, I don't wanna grow up, Nothin' ever seems to turn out right, I don't wanna grow up." He looked at Lulu. "Know that song?"

"Tom Waits. Jenny gave me the CD for my birthday."