Hoell waited until nightfall, then ventured to the old town in search of Savannah. The streets narrowed into brick capillaries with the history of mud, and tall orange brick buildings sloughing off multiple lots. He had entertained the thought of returning to the apartment in hopes of finding the Houngan, but the rusted bullet weighed heavy in his pocket. Besides, the big man would be the best hope of finding the shadow walker.
The moon was out, cutting through the hazed city ozone, drawing long and jagged shadows from the bricks to loom like fairytale creatures in a manmade forest. Night sounds stretched thin.
He found Savannah down a street of sinking French Revivalist, a half-hearted if well-meant attempt at replicating Montmartre, slowly falling to the onslaught of entropy and neglect, seasons of fashion replacing another idol. Savannah was in the furry overcoat, inspecting a scavenged half cigar. Hoell approached with a proffered match.
Savannah muttered a thanks around puffing nauseating plumes of acrid smoke. "To what do we owe this visit?" he asked.
"I need it back."
Savannah raised an eyebrow. "It's time?"
Hoell fished the bullet from his pocket. The moonlight glinted off the brass. Savannah nodded slowly, and scratched the hairy underside of his chin. "Then the rumors are true."
Hoell hid the bullet again, and scanned the alley nervously as though speaking brought out nightmares.
"They say a carnival set up in the fog last night," Savannah continued. "Out of season and from far away."
"Whitechapel is scared. One of his creatures was waiting for me. They've been following me."
"If He has returned, he should be. A good steward our Fred was not." Savannah made a face, and handed over the cigar remnant. "Are you sure this is what you want?"
Hoell didn't answer immediately. He looked for the source of the moonlight, then at the cobbles, then into the darkness. "It's the only way," he finally said, thinking of the absence of the Houngan.
Savannah seemed to sigh deep within himself, but reached into the coat and pulled a grizzled skeleton key on a piece of shoestring over his head. He looked at it balefully for a moment, then passed it to Hoell. Hoell took it from him soberly, held it to the light for a moment before stowing in his jacket.
"Thank you, old friend," he said. Savannah grabbed his arm as he started to leave.
"Be careful. He has traveled so long, and Whitechapel is above nothing."
"I know. But I have no choice." The big man let him go, and Hoell retreated into the deep.
Monday, July 26, 2010
Sunday, July 18, 2010
Concerning the Diner and What Happened THERE
The sunlight fought through the grimy diner windows, desperate to wash years of stains from the flecked counter. Insomniac truckers mingled with leftover nighthawks, a brief moment of armistice between two worlds only seen in the space of twenty minutes cities the world over. Hoell straddled the line, walked in the No Man's Land between two camps, part of neither, propelled and drawn by the pursuit of the song, like desert fathers seeking truth.
A bit of the morning fog lingered ankle deep, a child protesting bedtime even while falling asleep. The diner in daylight offered more than invective coffee and anemic eggs; it was a space of sanctuary, a breath safe from the nightmares of the darkness. Even if they didn't sleep, Whitechapel and his ghouls vanished into some shelter from the daylight.
The carnies slipped into the diner, stained fedora and dirty eyes staring into weak nickel coffee like reading the future in the swirling oils. With them was a woman who could only have been part of their troupe, lacking the road-worn dust and time but clearly a stranger from another land. She was Asian, probably Japanese, but hair dyed castaneous. She wore a long wool coat and a black porkpie devoid of adornment. She took a stool and drew out a cup of joe with her eyes.
Hoell felt a chill wind settle in with them, the sort of feeling you get when you're asked to play an unlucky song and only the band knows you shouldn't play it. He tried to ignore them from his end of the bar, traced designs in the spilled sugar. The susurration of conversation had dissipated, leaving the jangle of forks on plates and the kitchen's din. The carnies were as quiet and focused a shell-shocked soldiers having seen more on this earth than they bargained for. The woman in the hat ate a slice silently but with considerably more cheer. The materteral waitress refilled Hoell's coffee.
Gradually one of the patrons mustered the courage to speak. "You from the circus? Just set up last night?"
The carny in the fedora nodded solemnly.
"Y'all have that living head," the cook chimed in.
Someone guffawed. "What's that like, pal?"
"Sounds like a hustle."
The woman smiled. "And led by the Jew cursed by Christ," she said, and Hoell caught the twinkle in her eye as she spooned more pie into her petite lips. He traced imaginary keys on the bar to accompany the radio. "That's what they say, anyway."
"People say a log about your folk," the skeptic said. "Not much of it is nice."
The woman turned inquisitive eyes as the fedora gloomed even deeper into his cup. "Takes all kinds," the woman said without interest, and reaching for the tall cruet of sugar revealed the hint of a tattoo coiling about her wrist and into her sleeve.
The skeptic missed the temperature change. "Heard about a town in Oklahoma where the carnies were cheating folks. Then they tried to take a little girl. Town strung 'em one night in the rain. Sheriff said they were thieves, murderers and outlaws, and should twist in the wind as a warning to others."
"Jesus, buddy," someone said.
The woman in the porkpie nodded, spoon clanking against the inside of the cup as she stirred it. "Heard that one before. Hear a lot of things on the road. Hear a lot about Jericho, too."
The diner fell silent again, this time slightly more strained. The woman drained her coffee, threw some bills on the counter and with the rattle of the cowbell was gone. The room remained quiet for a few gravid moments, and then someone voiced, "Jericho? Where the hell is that?"
"It isn't," one of the carnies spoke. "It's a rumor, a legend."
"Ten years ago, circus went through a town in north Texas," the man in the fedora said. "Rough crowd. They said someone raped one of the coochie girls. Townsfolk refused to do anything about it. Rumor holds that when the circus left, the town was empty but horses."
No one said anything. One at a time, the two carnies stood up, paid the bill and left. Hoell waited a few minutes and followed.
He stepped outside into the sunlight blossoming on the concrete, and the sounds of a city moving into momentum and starling frantically chirping. A brightly painted flyer on the scratched storefront glass caught his eye, announcing the circus was indeed in town, hinting at magics from the far east, human oddities and shows never before imagined by man. Mystical huckster rhetoric at its finest. He heard the scrape of a match, looked up to see the woman in the porkpie bent over a cigarette. She flicked the match into the street, drew in a deep breath, and smiled with dark glasses unmistakably at him.
A bit of the morning fog lingered ankle deep, a child protesting bedtime even while falling asleep. The diner in daylight offered more than invective coffee and anemic eggs; it was a space of sanctuary, a breath safe from the nightmares of the darkness. Even if they didn't sleep, Whitechapel and his ghouls vanished into some shelter from the daylight.
The carnies slipped into the diner, stained fedora and dirty eyes staring into weak nickel coffee like reading the future in the swirling oils. With them was a woman who could only have been part of their troupe, lacking the road-worn dust and time but clearly a stranger from another land. She was Asian, probably Japanese, but hair dyed castaneous. She wore a long wool coat and a black porkpie devoid of adornment. She took a stool and drew out a cup of joe with her eyes.
Hoell felt a chill wind settle in with them, the sort of feeling you get when you're asked to play an unlucky song and only the band knows you shouldn't play it. He tried to ignore them from his end of the bar, traced designs in the spilled sugar. The susurration of conversation had dissipated, leaving the jangle of forks on plates and the kitchen's din. The carnies were as quiet and focused a shell-shocked soldiers having seen more on this earth than they bargained for. The woman in the hat ate a slice silently but with considerably more cheer. The materteral waitress refilled Hoell's coffee.
Gradually one of the patrons mustered the courage to speak. "You from the circus? Just set up last night?"
The carny in the fedora nodded solemnly.
"Y'all have that living head," the cook chimed in.
Someone guffawed. "What's that like, pal?"
"Sounds like a hustle."
The woman smiled. "And led by the Jew cursed by Christ," she said, and Hoell caught the twinkle in her eye as she spooned more pie into her petite lips. He traced imaginary keys on the bar to accompany the radio. "That's what they say, anyway."
"People say a log about your folk," the skeptic said. "Not much of it is nice."
The woman turned inquisitive eyes as the fedora gloomed even deeper into his cup. "Takes all kinds," the woman said without interest, and reaching for the tall cruet of sugar revealed the hint of a tattoo coiling about her wrist and into her sleeve.
The skeptic missed the temperature change. "Heard about a town in Oklahoma where the carnies were cheating folks. Then they tried to take a little girl. Town strung 'em one night in the rain. Sheriff said they were thieves, murderers and outlaws, and should twist in the wind as a warning to others."
"Jesus, buddy," someone said.
The woman in the porkpie nodded, spoon clanking against the inside of the cup as she stirred it. "Heard that one before. Hear a lot of things on the road. Hear a lot about Jericho, too."
The diner fell silent again, this time slightly more strained. The woman drained her coffee, threw some bills on the counter and with the rattle of the cowbell was gone. The room remained quiet for a few gravid moments, and then someone voiced, "Jericho? Where the hell is that?"
"It isn't," one of the carnies spoke. "It's a rumor, a legend."
"Ten years ago, circus went through a town in north Texas," the man in the fedora said. "Rough crowd. They said someone raped one of the coochie girls. Townsfolk refused to do anything about it. Rumor holds that when the circus left, the town was empty but horses."
No one said anything. One at a time, the two carnies stood up, paid the bill and left. Hoell waited a few minutes and followed.
He stepped outside into the sunlight blossoming on the concrete, and the sounds of a city moving into momentum and starling frantically chirping. A brightly painted flyer on the scratched storefront glass caught his eye, announcing the circus was indeed in town, hinting at magics from the far east, human oddities and shows never before imagined by man. Mystical huckster rhetoric at its finest. He heard the scrape of a match, looked up to see the woman in the porkpie bent over a cigarette. She flicked the match into the street, drew in a deep breath, and smiled with dark glasses unmistakably at him.
Sunday, July 11, 2010
Concerning the Hotel, And What Transpires There
Hoell slept in a bare-wall flat outside he hotel fire-escape, flashing promise of Vacancy and sounds of the street below unhindered by thin plaster walls. It was at the end of an easement guarded by a shower of sparks from an elevated train bouncing in the oily water. Homeless fires sparkled faintly along the embankment, sure to be evicted by passing police or railroad bulls, but for now a moment of sanctuary.
A passing train slowly shrieked and groaned its way overhead, hissing fumes into the musty trail of the night. Hoell dodged a resonating pool at the foot of the trestle, giving the shadows a wide berth. Some of the unfortunates calling this place home could be desperate. Be careless, and you might find the Houngan calling you up from a premature burial.
The hotel steps might once have been nacre marble, now worn down ambergris and furrowed, supported by a rusted iron railing like an octogenarian couple aiding each other down the street. Wan florescent lights drew the decay of the floor tile to the eye like dross. Rip Van Winkle at the desk wouldn't have offered any messages had Hoell been expecting them. He passed the lobby by and started to the second floor. He didn't see the ghost boy until he stood from one of the fraying lobby chairs.
Jean Lafitte from the blue club, hair stringy and limp. Hoell thought he was called Keyes, a sort of courier for Whitechapel and other unsavory task masters in the city. Wandered down here years ago, castaway from another life hoping to taste a little sample of darkness and was soon swallowed.
His face showed no betrayal of thought or emotion. He just reached an arm out, palm open to the ceiling. Hoell felt pulse pounding in his ears. He shook his head, and then for good measure raised a middle finger. The ghost boy was unmoved. Hoell continued up the stairs.
He locked the door, deadbolt and slide chain, and jerked the stained curtain over the window. Discotheque colors bled through and blended on the wall. Hoell turned on a cathedral RCA that looked dredged from the waste bin and sat in a spliced wooden chair as the tubes warmed. Eventually tinny notes began to fill the room.
Years ago, before the Fall, when the whiskey and music were still flowing through his fingers, Hoell had ended up by the riverfront, and while revelry swirled about him found himself drawn to a dark storefront. On a whim he entered, and had the cards line up to pluck his fate from the uncertain. He asked what he was not doing. She told him power and dreams would fall to him. They would angle through his hands.
He looked at them now, dirty and scarred as a corollary of forgotten dreams and magic, twitching palsy-like to phantom notes and arpeggios that would never exist. Streams and tributaries of that great river lost without a moment of notice.
To be notice by Music is to swim against current, struggle to be met with the flow of grace channeled through your fingers, fight against the bitter world. When you tire, you're swept away with scarcely a memory remaining. A bucket drawn from the well.
The radio scratched out Louie scatting Stardust. Eventually, Hoell fell asleep in the chair.
A passing train slowly shrieked and groaned its way overhead, hissing fumes into the musty trail of the night. Hoell dodged a resonating pool at the foot of the trestle, giving the shadows a wide berth. Some of the unfortunates calling this place home could be desperate. Be careless, and you might find the Houngan calling you up from a premature burial.
The hotel steps might once have been nacre marble, now worn down ambergris and furrowed, supported by a rusted iron railing like an octogenarian couple aiding each other down the street. Wan florescent lights drew the decay of the floor tile to the eye like dross. Rip Van Winkle at the desk wouldn't have offered any messages had Hoell been expecting them. He passed the lobby by and started to the second floor. He didn't see the ghost boy until he stood from one of the fraying lobby chairs.
Jean Lafitte from the blue club, hair stringy and limp. Hoell thought he was called Keyes, a sort of courier for Whitechapel and other unsavory task masters in the city. Wandered down here years ago, castaway from another life hoping to taste a little sample of darkness and was soon swallowed.
His face showed no betrayal of thought or emotion. He just reached an arm out, palm open to the ceiling. Hoell felt pulse pounding in his ears. He shook his head, and then for good measure raised a middle finger. The ghost boy was unmoved. Hoell continued up the stairs.
He locked the door, deadbolt and slide chain, and jerked the stained curtain over the window. Discotheque colors bled through and blended on the wall. Hoell turned on a cathedral RCA that looked dredged from the waste bin and sat in a spliced wooden chair as the tubes warmed. Eventually tinny notes began to fill the room.
Years ago, before the Fall, when the whiskey and music were still flowing through his fingers, Hoell had ended up by the riverfront, and while revelry swirled about him found himself drawn to a dark storefront. On a whim he entered, and had the cards line up to pluck his fate from the uncertain. He asked what he was not doing. She told him power and dreams would fall to him. They would angle through his hands.
He looked at them now, dirty and scarred as a corollary of forgotten dreams and magic, twitching palsy-like to phantom notes and arpeggios that would never exist. Streams and tributaries of that great river lost without a moment of notice.
To be notice by Music is to swim against current, struggle to be met with the flow of grace channeled through your fingers, fight against the bitter world. When you tire, you're swept away with scarcely a memory remaining. A bucket drawn from the well.
The radio scratched out Louie scatting Stardust. Eventually, Hoell fell asleep in the chair.
Sunday, July 4, 2010
Concerning the Hard Time of Motherless Children
Someone was growling "Motherless Children Have a Hard Time" from the shadows of the park. They had no idea how right they were, Hoell mused. The Fog was crawling, roiling in a deliberate direction, and he was trying to make a different course even while knowing it hopeless. The fog would be here until it was time for it to move on, leaving the world changed. He tried to tuck his ears into the collar of his coat.
A small group lingered about the gnarled guitarist, including a drunk sleeping it off by a tree and a tourist couple bored but reluctant to miss a moment. Hoell paused to see if it was anyone he knew, moved on.
Across the green, by the old pavilion, the skies had opened to a moon bulging and lachrymose, lighting the ground cover fog into a chalky miasma. Hoell followed the winding path, waste bins and water fountains resembling an old cemetery with the tentacles of mist curling around them.
The pavilion had once been white, salmon latticework adorned with summer lights and the sounds of brass bands. Time had befallen it now, aided by moisture and neglect. The paint had peeled away in strips, boards and railings bowed and sagging. The moonlight flicked back and forth over the landscape, calculating off seconds of the night. Hoell was past it before he felt a subtle shift in the fog. He glanced over his shoulder, saw the mere suggestion of a figure in the ghostly shadows by the railing. Feminine form, with a bowled hat. He hadn't thought that Whitechapel, while paranoid, was suspicious enough to send a tail so soon. Then he looked again and the shadow was gone. He hurried his way across the green, over a small footbridge skirting the edge of a pond. No further shadows detached themselves from the landscape by the time he reached the carcass of a wooden maintenance shed steadily being swallowed by foliage, a building forgotten in a forgotten scape of park. Hoell had the only key that fit the weathered padlock. He glanced about and shut the door behind him, rebuking the darkness with a sputtering lighter.
The walls were shelves strewn with a miscellany of obtuse rusty things in boxes, pitted tool chest and things best left to imagination. Clearly no park maintenance man ventured into this temple. It was as though an archeological packrat with a view toward future value made a nest or tomb here.
Hoell rustled about in the lighter's amber flickers, muttering arcane directions to himself. Eventually he found what he was seeking, uttering a muted crow, and stuffed it quickly into a pocket. He snapped the lighter closed, pushed open the door and paused for a moment. After a second's hesitation he turned about, reignited the light and opened a browbeaten steamer trunk that might have been pulled from the wreck of the Titanic. From the piles of dark woolen cloth he withdrew a moth-scarred canvas satchel, the resting place for an ungainly revolver as ancient as the trunk. Hoell stuck this in his pocket as well, and locked the shed behind him.
A small group lingered about the gnarled guitarist, including a drunk sleeping it off by a tree and a tourist couple bored but reluctant to miss a moment. Hoell paused to see if it was anyone he knew, moved on.
Across the green, by the old pavilion, the skies had opened to a moon bulging and lachrymose, lighting the ground cover fog into a chalky miasma. Hoell followed the winding path, waste bins and water fountains resembling an old cemetery with the tentacles of mist curling around them.
The pavilion had once been white, salmon latticework adorned with summer lights and the sounds of brass bands. Time had befallen it now, aided by moisture and neglect. The paint had peeled away in strips, boards and railings bowed and sagging. The moonlight flicked back and forth over the landscape, calculating off seconds of the night. Hoell was past it before he felt a subtle shift in the fog. He glanced over his shoulder, saw the mere suggestion of a figure in the ghostly shadows by the railing. Feminine form, with a bowled hat. He hadn't thought that Whitechapel, while paranoid, was suspicious enough to send a tail so soon. Then he looked again and the shadow was gone. He hurried his way across the green, over a small footbridge skirting the edge of a pond. No further shadows detached themselves from the landscape by the time he reached the carcass of a wooden maintenance shed steadily being swallowed by foliage, a building forgotten in a forgotten scape of park. Hoell had the only key that fit the weathered padlock. He glanced about and shut the door behind him, rebuking the darkness with a sputtering lighter.
The walls were shelves strewn with a miscellany of obtuse rusty things in boxes, pitted tool chest and things best left to imagination. Clearly no park maintenance man ventured into this temple. It was as though an archeological packrat with a view toward future value made a nest or tomb here.
Hoell rustled about in the lighter's amber flickers, muttering arcane directions to himself. Eventually he found what he was seeking, uttering a muted crow, and stuffed it quickly into a pocket. He snapped the lighter closed, pushed open the door and paused for a moment. After a second's hesitation he turned about, reignited the light and opened a browbeaten steamer trunk that might have been pulled from the wreck of the Titanic. From the piles of dark woolen cloth he withdrew a moth-scarred canvas satchel, the resting place for an ungainly revolver as ancient as the trunk. Hoell stuck this in his pocket as well, and locked the shed behind him.
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