PYRATE CTHULHU - Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos (vol.2) Page 19

  This last word reverberated in a brazen basso far larger than the lean man’s lungs could shape. And the knell of that voice awoke winds in the night, and the winds buffeted Ricky as though he hung in the night sky within the eye, and Ricky knew. He knew this being into whose view he’d come! Knew this monster was the King of a vast migration of titans across the eons of the countless Space-Times! Over the gale-swept universe they moved, these Great Old Ones. Across the cracked continents they trawled, they plundered! Worlds were the pastures that they grazed, and the broken bodies of whole races were the pavement that they trod!

  It astonished him, the threshold to which this Andre, night-walking zealot, had brought him. He looked at Andre now, saw the man utterly alone at the brink of his apotheosis. How high he seemed to hang in the night winds! Look at the frailty of that skinny frame! The mad greed of his adventure!

  Andre seemed to shudder, to gather himself. He looked back at Ricky. He looked like he was seeing in Ricky some foreigner in a far, quaint land, some backward Innocent, unknowing of the very world he stood in.

  “On squid, man,” he said, “ . . . on squid, Ricky, you get big! All hell breaks loose in the back of your brain, and you can hold it, you can contain it! And then you get to watch Him feed. And now you’ll see. Just a little! Not too much! But you going to know.”

  Andre turned, and faced the eye. He gathered himself, gathered his voice for a great shout:

  “Here’s my witness! Here I come!”

  And he vaulted from the balcony, out into the pupil—impacted it for an instant, seemed to freeze in mid-leap as if he had struck glass—but in the instant after, was within the vast inverted cone of light-starred night, and hung high, tiny but distinct, above the slowly twisting panorama of the great black Bay all shoaled and shored and spanned with light. That galactic metropolis, round its core of abyss, was—less slowly now—still contorting, twisting toward the center of the pupil . . .

  And Ricky found that he too hung within it, he stood on the wide cold air in the night sky, he felt against his face the winds’ slow torque towards the the center of the Old One’s sight.

  And now all Hell, with relentless slow acceleration, broke loose. The City’s blazing architected crown began to discohere, brick fleeing brick in perfect pattern, in widening pattern, till they all became pointillist buildings snatched away in the whirlwind, and from the buildings, all the people too like flung seed swirled up into the night, their evaporating arms raised as in horror, or salute, crying out their being from clouding faces that the black winds sucked to tatters . . .

  He saw the great bridges braided with—and crumpling within—barnacle-crusted tentacles as thick as freeway tunnels, saw the freeways themselves—pillared rivers of light—unravelling, their traffic like red and white stars fleeing into the air, into the cyclone of the Great Old One’s attention.

  And an inward vision was given to Ricky, simultaneous with this meteoric overview. For he also knew the Why of it. He knew the hunger of the nomad titans, their unappeasable will to consume each bright busy outpost they could find in the universal Black and Cold. Knew that many another world had fled, as this one fled, draining into the maw of the grim cold giants, each world’s collapsing roofs and walls bleeding a smoke of souls, all sucked like spume into the mossy curvature of His colossal jaws . . .

  It was perfectly dark. It was almost silent, except for a rattle of leaves. The cold against his face had the wet bite of fog . . .

  Ricky shook his head, and the dark grew imperfect. He put out his hand and touched rough wooden siding. He was alone on the porch, no lantern now, no armchair, no one else. Just dead leaves in crackly little drifts on the floorboards as—slowly and unsteadily—he started across them.

  He had seen some shit. Stone cold sober, he had seen. And now the question was, who was he?

  He crossed the leaf-starred grass, on legs that felt increasingly familiar. Yes . . . here was this Ricky-body that he knew, light and quick. And here was his Mustang, blown oak leaves chittering across its polished hood. And still the question was, who was he?

  He was this car, for one thing, had worked long to buy it and then to perfect it. He got behind the wheel and fired it up, felt his perfect fit in this machine. Flawlessly it answered to his touch, and the blue beast purred up through the leaf-tunnel as the house—a doorless, glassless derelict—fell away behind him. But this Ricky Deuce . . . who was he now?

  He emerged from the foliage, and dove down the winding highway. There was the fog-banked Bay below, the jewelled snake of the Hood glinting within its gray wet shroud, and Ricky took the curves just like his old self, riding one of the hills’ great tentacles down, down towards the sea they rooted in . . .

  There was something Ricky had to do. Because in spite of his body, his nerves being his, he didn’t know who he was now, had just had a big chunk torn out of him. And there was something terrible he had to do, to locate, by desperate means, the man he had lost, to find at least a piece of him he was sure of.

  His hands and arms knew the way, it seemed. Diving down into the thicker fog, he smoothly threw the turns required . . . and slid up to the curb before the liquor store they’d parked near . . . when? A universe ago. Parked and jumped out.

  Ricky was terrified of what he was going to do, and so he moved swiftly to have it done with, just nodding to his recent companions as he hastened into the store—nodding to the Maoris in shades, to the guys with the switchblade cap-bills, to the guys with the crimson hoods and the golden pockets. But rushed though he was, it struck him that they were all looking at him with a kind of fascination . . .

  At the counter he said, “Fifth of Jack.” He didn’t even look to see what he peeled off his wad to pay for it, but there were a lot of twenties in his change. The Arab bagged him his bottle, his eyes fixed almost raptly on Ricky’s, so Ricky was moved to ask in simple curiosity, “Do I look strange?”

  “No,” the man said, and then said something else, but Ricky had already turned, in haste to get outside where he could take a hit. Had the man said no, not yet?

  Ricky got outside, cracked the cap, and hammered back a stiff, two-gurgle jolt.

  He scarcely could wait to let it roll down and impact him. He felt the hot collision in his body’s center, the roil of potential energy glowing there, then poked down a long, three-gurgle chaser. Stood reeling inwardly, and outwardly showing some impact as well . . .

  And there it was: a heat, a turmoil, a slight numbing. No more. No magic. No rising trumpets. No wheels of light . . . The half-pint of Jack he’d just downed had no marvel to show like the one he’d just seen.

  And so Ricky knew that he was someone else now, someone he had not yet fully met.

  “ ’Sup?” It was the immense guy in the lavender sweats. He had a solemn Toltec-statue face, but an incongruously merry little smile.

  “ ’S happnin,” said Ricky. “Hey. You want this?”

  “That Jack?”

  “Take the rest. Keep it. Here’s the cap.”

  “No thanks.” This to the cap. The man drank. As he chugged, he slanted Ricky an eye with something knowing, something I thought so in it. Ricky just stood watching him. He had no idea at all of what would come next in his life, and for the moment, this bibulous giant was as interesting a thing as any to stand watching . . .

  The man smacked his lips. “It ain’t the same, is it?” he grinned at Ricky, gesturing the bottle. “It just don’t matter any more. I mean, so I understand. I like the glow jus fine myself. But you . . . see, you widdat Andre. You’ve been a witness.”

  “Yeah. I have. So . . . tell me what that means.”

  “You the one could tell me. AIs I know is I’d never do it, and a whole lotta folks around here they’d never do it—but you didn’t know that, did you?”

  “So tell me what it means.”

  “It means what you make of it! And speakin of which, man, of what you might make of it, I wanna show you something right now. May I?”r />
  “Sure. Show me.”

  “Let’s step round here to the side of the building . . . just round here . . . ” Now they stood in the shadowy weed-tufted parking lot, where others lounged, but moved away when they appeared.

  “I’m gonna show you somethin,” said the man, drawing out his wallet, and opening it.

  But opening it for himself at first, for he brought it close to his face as he looked in, and a pleased, proprietary glow seemed to beam from his Olmec features. For a moment, he gloated over the contents of his billfold.

  Then he extended and spread the wallet open before Ricky. There was a fat sheaf of bills in it, hand-worn bills with a skinlike crinkle. It seemed the money, here and there, was stained.

  Reverently, Olmec said, “I bought this from the guy that capped the guy it came from. This is as pure as it gets. Blood money with the blood right on it! An you can have a bill of it for five hundred dollars! I know that Andre put way more than that in your hand. I know you know what a great deal this is!”

  Ricky . . . had to smile. He saw an opportunity at least to gauge how dangerously he’d erred. “Look here,” he told Olmec. “Suppose I did buy blood money. I’d still need a witness. So what about that man? Will you be my witness for . . . almost five grand?”

  Olmec did let the sum hang in the air for a moment or two, but then said, quite decisive, “Not for twice that.”

  “So Andre got me cheap?”

  “Just by my book. You could buy witnesses round here for half that!”

  “I guess I need to think it over.”

  “You know where I hang. Thanks for the drink.”

  And Ricky stood there for the longest time, thinking it over . . .

  Crawlin’ Chaos Blues

  by Edward M. Erdelac (2010)

  ***

  ‘It’s like a spirit from some dark valley, something that sprung up from the ocean–like Lucifer is on the Earth…’ – Howlin’ Wolf, 1968.

  Don’t nobody remember King Yeller. The Delta folks don’t like to talk ‘bout him like they do Muddy or BB or Robert Johnson, though I ‘spect he was as good as them if not better. I don’t know no white folks ever heard of him. They ain’t a page on him in all the blues books ever written.

  I ‘spect I’m the only one alive knows why.

  I met him in sixty-four in Chicago. In them days, the draft was in full swing, and I didn’t see no way out of it, so I figured I’d do some drivin’ around before Uncle Sam come callin’.

  I’d always wanted to hear that ‘lectric blues played, so I filled up the tank of my daddy’s ’52 Catalina, bought me a sack of tamales and a jar of moon off my cousin, and drove up there from Quito, Mississippi. I got to Maxwell Street on a Saturday when the Jew Town market was open. The sidewalk buskers and the gutbucket players paid the shop owners out they tips to run extension chords from the shops to they amps, and you could hear that ragged, powered sound goin’ all up and down the market like a rattletrap Ford with a cryin’ drunk at the wheel, crashin’ into the songs of the Gospel singers, street hustlers, and the yellin’ of the rummage sellers. A lady drummer let me blow my harp with her and her husband for pocket money. She told me ‘bout a place called Silvio’s on Lake and Kedzie where Howlin’ Wolf played on the weekends. I went over there to see him.

  I seent King Yeller when I pulled up. He was a little younger than me, skinny, high yeller, and red headed; a sharp dresser. A more troublesome lookin’ nigger you never did see. Had shifty, light-colored eyes and a way of talkin’ out the side of his mouth. When I first seent him, he was leanin’ on a beer sign watchin’ that Lake Street L clackin’ overhead, one bent Kool stuck in his lips, beatin’ out I Ain’t Superstitious as best he could on a rusty ol’ National with a pocket knife for a slide.

  “What we got here?” he said, when I come up on the curb.

  I figured he meant to hustle me and I wasn’t ‘bout to have it.

  “You got Harpoon Elkins here,” I said.

  “Harpoon,” he grinned, trying my name out. It wasn’t my Christian name sure, but I didn’t wanna go throwin’ that ‘round Chicago anyhow. “See you got Mississippi tags,” he said, noddin’ to my car.

  “Tha’s right,” I said.

  “You up from the Delta?”

  “Quito,” I said.

  “Man, I ain’t never heard of no Quinto.”

  “Quito. What that got to do with me?”

  “Ease up now, blood,” he said. I seent he had that pocket knife still between his bowin’ fingers.

  “Sound better you used a bottleneck,” I said.

  “My uncle taught me with a knife. You play the slide?” he asked, slappin’ his guitar.

  “Naw. I blow a little harp.”

  “Who don’t?” he held out his hand. “Name’s King. No relation to Martin Luther. Yeller’s what they call me. King Yeller.”

  I shook. I figured he was awright, long as he didn’t ask for nothin’. I ast him was he playin’ here tonight.

  “Mm hm,” he said. “Want in? It ain’t but a buck, but you look like you could use all the bread you got.”

  It wasn’t no lie.

  He got me past the doorman like he said he would. Pretty soon we was settin’ in one of them smoky corners at a booth with a little candle in red glass and a couple cold Blue Ribbons in front of us, watchin’ some sweet browns wrapped up tight as candy, slow draggin’ with they mens across the floor. Crammed into the corner with a jumpin’ band was the man hisself, Howlin’ Wolf, all three hundred pounds of him, black as pig iron and sweatin’ like a steam engine, crawlin’ on all fours, rollin’ his eyes, and flickin’ his tongue like a snake. He was singin’ Evil, and he sure looked like a man possessed by a devil. He was too big for the place, so goddamned big when he put his harp between his hands and blew he looked ‘bout to swallow it whole.

  “How you like it, country?” Yeller hollered at me.

  I just nodded my head, grinnin’. Seein’ the Wolf in action was a sight to take a man’s words.

  When the set was up and the folks stopped grindin’ up on each other long enough to clap the band down, Wolf come to stand over our table, moppin’ at his forehead with a cocktail napkin and starin’ at us through some black-rimmed glasses he took out his shirt pocket.

  “You up, Yeller,” he said. He had a different way ‘bout him once he was off the stage. You hardly thought he was the same man. Up there, he’d been like a wild dog. Now, it was like lookin’ up at your daddy.

  “This my boy Harpoon, just come up from Quinto, Mississippi,” Yeller said, getting up with his guitar.

  “Quito,” me and Wolf both said at the same time.

  I looked at him.

  “You heard of it?”

  “Yeah, I heard of it,” Wolf said, takin’ a beer bottle off a girl’s tray and settin’ down in Yeller’s spot. “It’s offa the Seven, ain’t it? South of Mosquito Lake.”

  “That’s it,” I said.

  “Been fishin’ down there,” he said.

  Wolf sipped his beer and looked at me.

  Over his shoulder, Yeller set up, smilin’ out at the crowd before twiddling into a song I’d never heard, what I guess was his own:

  I’m in love with a damn fool woman,

  She got a heart as cold as ice,

  Said I’m in love with a damn fool woman,

  She got a heart so cold like ice,

  Why can’t I find a woman, who will love and treat me nice?

  It was awright. He sorta fumbled with that National, but nobody was sober enough to notice, ‘cept maybe Wolf, who squeezed his eyes thinner every time Yeller hit a bad chord. Them big-legged women kept on dancin’ with they men, clawin’ hungry-like at they behinds like they was ripe fruit in them bright, tight dresses. Yeller did have a good voice though, raw, and mean, like Elmore James.

  “I like you, Harpoon,” Wolf told me, after he’d sucked his beer down and raised his hand for another. “You listen here. Stay away from that high yeller boy,” h
e told me, thumbin’ at Yeller over his shoulder. “His uncle, Destruction, used to play piano for me. He wasn’t nothin’ but a fat mouth rounder, and Yeller ain’t no different. His mouth get you killed you ain’t careful.”

  Yeller had picked out one of them biscuits in the crowd and was singin’ straight at her. She was that devil-eyed type woman lay her business on you, make you forget your own name, how much money you got in your pocket. She seent what Yeller was ‘bout right off and she smiled at him over her man’s shoulder. That gap in her two front teeth let you know she liked to get her jelly rolled. He played Come On In My Kitchen at her, and then One Way Out, and by the time he finished up, her man had took notice.

  Wolf seent it, too. He looked at me and shook his head, then got up with his beer, said, ‘’member what I told you,’ and went off to the bathroom.

  It was hot and close in that place when Yeller come back to his seat and ran his beer bottle ‘cross his shiny forehead.

  “How you like that, country boy?”

  “S’awright,” I said, watching that woman he’d been singin’ to start into arguin’ with her man. He kept on lookin’ in Yeller’s direction.

  “Awright, sheeit,” said Yeller. “You see that fox out in front? Got my Johnny Conqueroo goin’.”

  “Still say you’d sound better you got yourself a bottleneck,” I said.

  Right then that nigger pushed his woman down and come stompin’ over.

  “Say, boy,” he said, proddin’ Yeller in the shoulder and leanin’ on our table. His coat fell open and I seent he had a pistol butt stickin’ out his drawers.

  I picked up my beer and didn’t say nothin’.

  Yeller turned in his seat and pushed the man’s hand offa his shoulder.

  “Whyn’t you try that again, shine?” he said to the man.

  “You been eyeballin’ my rider, boy,” the man said.

  “Nigger, what you want?” Yeller said. “An apology? When she wasn’t shakin’ her ass at me she was drankin’ me up over your shoulder.”

  “You got a mouth, nigger,” the man said. “Look t’me like some peckerwood been at yo momma, too.”