Concerning The Ending

   They met at the crossroads, between Deepwood Cemetery and the riverbed, far from where the lights were ropes of dangling stars and the tinny washpan blues were a whispered memory. The moon was a sunken ship crushed on the forest horizon, casting ghostly light in wan strips over the gravel. Even the insects had ceased their castanets. He slid from the soul of the shadows, the nail ever-present in his hat-band gleaming like a diamond, like the smile beneath the twist of his moustache. He had been expecting his guest all along.
  A barter, one for stakes he could never guess, but one he knew was inevitable. Here another crossroad stretched, set evanescent above the road and river; the future yet un-traveled, save perhaps by the Houngan. Potentially he could have walked away, returned to bed, shut the door on the voice of magic, and mystery and danger. On the music itself.
  Hoell stopped before the tall man. "Well," he said, "I'm here."
  Rhodius nodded solemnly. "And I suspect you're not interested in the world."
  "Too many problems with it already," Hoell said, shaking his head. He removed his fedora, raked a hand through his hair.
  Rhodius smiled briefly, teeth glittering in the moonlight. He waved an arm behind him, a showman inviting inside. "There's a door here, Mr. Hoell. It opens only one way. No charm or totem will matter within. No veve has power except what is already there. Are you willing to step through it?"
  Hoell stood still for a moment. He looked at the moon, tracked a progression of notes moving through his mind like an amorphous cloud of migrant birds. Listen to the spell of the music.

  Come to the crossroads, it bids. Come to the crossroads, and master your own destiny. All he asks is something dear you don't really need. Will you really miss your second sight? Your inner child? Your last kiss? So much more could await in this world. So much that should have been, will be, could be. All that is asked is a token. A fair price for youth, beauty, and knowledge.

  He fumbled in his pocket, held forth the bullet, and stepped forward.


FINIS
copyright 2010 tcr/BPLtd.

Concerning the Queen of Knives

  Without any visible cue, two dwarves toddled around one of the caravans, each one taking an arm and dragged the body away over the moonlit dust.
  Cigars finally lit, Rhodius breathed a long fallow smoke stream, and turned his impressionless eyes to Hoell. "Thank you, my fellow. I am sorry you had to be involved in this most unfortunate night. If I may be of service in the future. . . ."
  Hoell didn't trust himself to speak. He mumbled a thank you, to which the ringmaster tipped a hat and strode off into the grounds.
  Kelly flipped the knife around a few times, catching the handle in this hand, then the other. Her smile wasn't unfriendly, but neither was it a thing to be trusted. It was of a thing in the darkness, telling you to beware, it's only warm for the time being. Hoell just watched her.
  "I see that you've met Nicholas," she said. "What wisdom did he impart?"
  "And ending," Hoell replied eventually. "All that mattered was the ending you make."
  Kelly laughed short and mellifluous. "That would be his style, old bastard." She made the knife vanish somewhere in her peacoat with a sleight-of-hand flourish, tipped her hat and turned to follow the ringmaster. Then she turned back. "Hoell," she called out. "No one can give you the world. They can only give you their part."
  Overhead, the moon shook free from the cloud cover.

Dr. Rhodius, part Two

  Hoell pulled the blackened tin from his coat. He looked at it a moment, trying to decide what he should be feeling. Then he passed it to Rhodius. The ringmaster didn't even open it, passed it behind him to the girl.
  Whitechapel's mouth opened and shut. "But. . . . But my faithfulness! My service!"
  Rhodius raised an eyebrow. "Indeed. . . ."
  "I watched over that box! I brought the boy here! I've toiled in this cesspool years for you! Surely I am owed my due?!"
  Rhodius remained unmoved by the tirade. He flicked an eyebrow, and then bent back over the cigar that had gone out. "You're quite right. Kelly, my dear, please give Mr. Whitechapel what he is owed."
  In a unified moment the Queen of Knives stepped forward and plunged a little penknife into Whitechapel's left breast. The only sound was grunted exhalation of breath as she stuck the knife in again and again, a pantomime of feral sex. She stopped, wiped the blade on his jacket with an expression of satisfaction dissonant to his look of confusion, and let what was left of Whitechapel drop to the dust.

Concerning What Happened Next

  The moon was a magnolia, petals reaching ever so slightly to the broken heart of the earth. The air was still heavy and ponderous, but Hoell could see neon lights hazing a skyline in the distance, swirling inward from the darkness toward 42nd. Points of light moved and blinked like xylophone notes, sounds never reaching the field. Somewhere out there blood rushed through the veins of the night.
  Hoell rubbed his face thoughtfully, fished a rugged cigarette from a pocket and lit it from the shadows of the Stetson. Threw the match carelessly, and exhaled to the sky.
  He heard the click and threw himself to the left before he even saw the switchblade fly. He came up in time to grab an arm as the knife dipped again, thrust it back toward the trailer. Pale African face, hair like a drowned pirate, the smell of the riverfront. It pushed Hoell away, whipped the knife in a slash waist high. "Give us, jazz man," it said tonelessly. The blade winked in the moonlight as the creature lunged. Hoell sidestepped, swung clasped hands in an uppercut that sent his assailant staggering back.
  Hoell backed up to a booth and pulled the ancient revolver from his coat, leveled it in time for the other to jump forward with a slash that grazed his hand, dropping the gun. The switchblade came up, plunged down. Hoell grabbed the knife arm with one hand, swung his right underneath into the ribs, two quick punches. He grabbed the thing by its decaying jacked and tossed it head first into the side of the booth. Wood cracked, a tangle of spindly legs and arms tried to right itself. Hoell didn't see his pistol, ran deeper into the Midway.
  Dodging a labyrinth of carousels, galleries, metal fences and attractions. He could hear his pursuer still, emotionless as a predator, but he had bought a few seconds time. He stopped short before the corrugated steps of another attraction, dramatically heralded the Deadly Jungle Python, Guaranteed The Largest Snake Ever Seen. Behind him was the Strong Man Tester. Hoell grabbed the hammer and ran up the steps.
  The tent was pitch dark, stank of bedding, sour water and reptile. Lexan walls waist high formed a walkway, separating unseen things making only whispered suggestion of movement, cold and alien presence. Hoell crept along to the main attraction, a pit sunken into the floor. He could barely see shape, just a dark draconian mass encompassing a small pool. It moved slightly, guttural scratch on gravel. It could smell him. He crouched in the darkness opposite, and waited.
  Footfalls, soft and steady, slithering along the walkway. Worn boots moved in front of his hiding place. Hoell tried not to betray a breath, could smell the decay of the waterfront even with the overbearing smell of reptile. He waited, let it move a few steps more. Suddenly Hoell leapt up, swung the wooden mallet with all his strength and a bestial war cry.
  The mallet struck square in the back, lateral force sending the creature over the lexan wall into the pool with a grotesque splash. In a second the snake had struck, coiling itself around in three quick circles. The zombie began the most unworldly keening, thrashing with the constrictor in the stagnant water of the pool. Hoell threw the mallet after him and fled.

Beyond the Hall of Mirrors

    The exit left the Mirror Hall, but not to the outside. Hoell found himself in a chamber of library quiet buoyed by faint opera, too large to be a trailer, but certainly behind-the-scenes. Weak light crowded with furniture, benches, things he couldn’t make out, blossoming dancing shadows over the tent walls, scarcely illuminating, mystifying. He moved cautiously, quietly. He thought he heard deep breathing, someone sleeping, softly on the edge of bel canto. Accoutrements of show-business loomed from the darkness, ornate canes, silk toppers, chains and feathers, trunks draped in mythology. The private quarters of magic.
   The soprano scratched, needle stuck, then freed itself with a lurch. Hoell heard a voice, speaking from the darkness. Soft and scratchy as the needle, surreal. “How will it end?”
   Hoell froze. Was it imagination? He couldn’t see anyone. But it spoke again, repeating itself. “How will it end?”
   Still no one he could see, but had to be aware of him. “Excuse me?”
   “Everything has a beginning. And everything has a end. How will it end?”
   Hoell slowly moved toward the music, not sure what to expect. Whatever he had in mind, it wasn’t what he saw. On a table, just across from a wobbly phonograph, was a glass dome containing a human head, hair and beard white with an expression of doubt and apprehension. The head swiveled, eyes looked directly at him. “I sought to enjoy the folly of man’s short pleasures of earth. What is it you seek?”
   Hoell held the gaze evenly, somehow unsurprised the macabre thing spoke. “I’ve come to return something. But I don’t know who it belongs to.” He wasn’t sure why, but he told the head the truth. “Whitechapel wants me to take it to him, but he just wants to save himself. It belongs to someone else.”
   “You seek Him.” Eyes tossed lightly to the ceiling. “He who constructed this Babylon. He who holds the keys.”
   “I don’t know what I’m after,” Hoell admitted.
   “You want more than your life is now,” the head said sorrowfully. “You want to touch the promise before the world moved in around you. You want what can be found at the Crossroads. What only He can give you.”
   Hoell let the words assemble in his mind.“Then it is true. This . . . . carnival is run by The Jew?”
   The bushy eyebrows closed sadly. “It is true he has power. It is not of his own making, but he possess it nonetheless. And I am too old to envy him any longer. I had my time, and squandered it.”
   “Who are you?”
   The head sighed. “I have known many names, worn the mantle of many civilizations since he first cursed me. Cartaphilus. Matathias. Isaac Laquedem. Newton. Van Houten. Ahasver. I have none, now. It has been my curse to pay for my pride, my inhumanity, for eternity. Do not squander yours. The winds are blowing again. Where will you let them take you?”
   Hoell took in the room again. His fingers reflexively twisted the bullet in his pocket. “I don’t know. To an ending, I suppose. I’ll find out.”
   The head closed its eyes, slipping into a blissful expression, like tasting the most perfect dream one could dream. “Only your life can speak your fate. All man‘s dreams and ambitions are meaningless. All that matters is, how will it end? How’s it going to end? Be a friend, and wind the phonograph.”

The Hall

     Endless mirrors glisten and menace in the spears of moonlight finding their way in. Hoell felt his way like a blind man in a world of cold blue light, following the trail, clinging to shards of self-awareness. Static self-image dissolves, the soul split into a multitude of facets and palindromes. Consciousness leads from one self-image to the next, never settling -- distance perceived at close proximity, nearness a mirage stretching itself to the next self-image. The danger lies in trying to pinpoint identity. You lose your grip in the face of absorption, until you believe you never had one at all, grasping association of the nearest reflection, struggling to retain your idea of yourself, your idea of the awareness of reality. Your own image becomes your worst enemy, fading, melding one with another. A million unshaven Hoells, hollow eyes tugging for a piece of warmth, each one mutely insisting they are the real Hoell, each one promising life, and future, and sanctuary just beyond the curve of light. Dirty fingers reaching, clutching desperately, surrounded by the voices of others trapped here, carried eternally by the skittering mice. Believe me, accept me, I'll show you the way . . . .
   Hoell felt himself slipping, fading, sensations dripping like sand into an abyss. All point of reference had vanished completely. And then he paused, and held his right hand out palm down. In a moment it dipped gently, fluidly, a sparrow riding the wind, a wave slowly rolling toward breaking. Fingers began to flicker like spring rain, and his head filled with a progression of notes. The music was there, had always been there, just beyond hearing but guiding. The abyss pulled back, the desperate yearning Hoells faded into the backdrop. He almost laughed, and shortly left by a star-covered door.
   Mirrors can be created, broken or ignored. And when your mind is in the thrall of the music, nothing else matters.

Concerning the Circus

   The air grew thick with the threat of rain. Still in the distance, but present nonetheless. Out in the field by Drywood Creek the carnival was a dark and silent creature, abandoned and slumbering beneath a moon moving in and out from clouds. Hoell stayed in the shadows, warily treading the perimeter of packed dust and sporadic gravel. Grey rain would later turn the field into a mess of pale clay mud, and then the carnival would be gone, but for now Hoell silently walked in the long shadows of mechanical giants, evil silhouette of midway booths, silent terrors advertised by weathered cutouts.
   The carnival spun out like a wheel, a spiral, turning slowly from the center, the Midway. Hoell kept moving in clockwise, watching a shifting moon alter the landscape. Rounding the front of an old flatbed pick-up he thought he saw one shadow melt away from the rest, but rather than recede with the moon's tide glide toward a tent rippling gently in the quiet breeze. The air picked up the must of the river, sharp fuel and animal spore, and the hint of decay lurking just on the end. They were still following him.
   He ducked around the creaking pendulum of a Ferris Wheel car, skeleton shifting faintly the metal gates, getting an empty animal pen between them. He thought he had dodged sight, but slipped around a hulking truck still reeking of diesel to get some distance.
   The moon vanished, obscuring the attraction in front of him, housed in a trailer with sides like a Murphy Bed. In the darkness a shadow moved beyond the Ferris Wheel. Hoell took his chances and slipped inside.

Concerning the Street Car

A flurry of cars rocked over the trestle, showering a curtain of coquelicot sparks and sibilant murmurs. Hoell stayed toward the center of the street, watchful eye on the flickering barrel fires. A bearded man coughed into gloved hands but ignored him. The one-eared dog at his feet looked at Hoell briefly, then lost interest. In a moment Hoell was mounting the saturnine stone steps up the embankment toward the parallel of Second Street, elevated train lumbering noisily past. In a brief flash of its light Hoell thought he saw something else beneath the trestle, an impression more than an image, a figure cut from the darkness of the night. The dog uttered a low growl. The man coughed again, almost apologetically. Hoell kept walking.

Concerning the Houngan

   The Houngan was tall, razor thin, skin the color of creamy coffee. Dirty braids drifted rhythmically across his face. His face was devoid of eyebrows, but marked with the ambiguous blue of ancient, faded tattoos. He was draped in the chair like dry cleaning, like an aquarium skeleton collapsed against his treasure chest. Timelessness, the musty air of centuries, hung about him, mingling with strange herbal and sweat notes.
   Hoell suddenly remembered the cigar, fished it from his jacket and held it out. Languidly the Houngan took it, lit it with an unseen flame and pulled a smoke. He exhaled with eyes to the heavens, a connoisseur waiting for the last moment to dispense an opinion. At last he spoke. "The winds are changing, Jazz Man. They are blowing from the south. From the past."
   Hoell nodded solemnly.
   "But they will not stay. They are here only to move out again. He seeks what is his, what holds him to this earth he created for himself."
   The cigar, which with Savannah smelled like a wet newspaper, filled the air with a sweet musty smell, a faint hint of anisette there and gone.
   "Whitechapel wants it too," Hoell put in. "He wants to give it himself."
   "Whitechapel thinks he can change the winds of his own fate. He thinks he can walk the same path as He." The Houngan flipped a tuft of ash to the floor. "He is wrong," he said matter-of-fact. "The time for bargaining has passed. Only the just shall survive."
   Hoell's hands found an unheard Jelly Roll Morton in the air, tapped it out like Morse Code. "What would you have me do?"
   The Houngan looked at him with scrutinizing black eyes. He reached into his jacket and pulled forth a card, flipped it around with a flourish and revealed the face to Hoell. A crude icon of a chess rook, the card obviously upside down. "You must go to Him. Bring what He desires. Out of the chaos of the storm the moon will shine."
   Hoell looked down at the object in his hand, trying to make up his mind. He sighed, and moved his shoulders back resolutely. "I don't know that I've a choice," he said, and slid the tin box into his coat. He tipped his hat to the Houngan and left the room.

Concerning the Ghost Boy

    He didn't get very far before the Ghost Boy found him. The old town was deserted by all but the occasional roaming cat, still, cold and stretched taut as though waiting for something to break. The dismal strains of someone turning Bye Bye Blackbird into a lament slunk along the stairwells with the sickly, rhythmic streetlamps, born out of the night. And then, suddenly he was there, materializing from the shadows. Hoell almost screamed. Keyes reached the palm out again. Hoell flinched, then swung.
  The right cross flew just shy of Keyes' face, the ghost bot languidly rolling his face from it. An arm shot out, grey fingers curling around Hoell's throat. Hoell struck to the stomach, felt his fist connect with all the response of punching a pillow. He tried to pull the arm off, Keyes' hand trying to rifle in his coat, Hoell trying to reach the revolver in his pocket even as purple swam in his vision. Then the pressure released and Hoell tumbled to the street. He heard the guttural roar of a bear, scrambled to his feet to see Savannah, face sclerotic with rage, gripping Keyes in a massive bear-hug. The ghost boy squealed like a wounded rabbit, thrashed impotently.
  "Go!" Savannah shouted. Hoell turned and fled, leaving falsetto shrieks bouncing off the empty canyon walls in pursuit.



. . . . to be continued. . . . .

Finding Savannah

     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.

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.

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.

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.

Concerning the Meeting and the Arrival

     In the last days, Nicholas spent his time in wait, as though he knew the sands were almost gone. He would read leather books softly in the candlelight, and occasionally stroll through the shafts of moonlight from the conservatory and breezeway. He rarely went outside. He remained fastidious about his appearance, maybe more so, and spent most of his time in the study wrapped in a crimson smoking coat. When the knock tolled at his door, he greeted it with complete un-surprise. "It's you," he said, and his guest nodded slowly and solemnly. And then pulled out the blade.



   The circus rolled out of the fog like river driftwood, a rattletrap of Ford trucks and Nash sedans having seen better days before the Dust Bowl blew in, engines and suspensions gasping labor pains and vesper prayers to St. Christopher. They set up on the edge of Drywood Creek as night melted over the dry grass, the dust covered side of the caravan proudly announcing the arrival of Dr. E.G. Rhodius And His Sixteen Penny Circus. Fergus the Strong Man, and Tiny Kelly, Queen of Knives, trailing a slender stream of cigarette smoke and Cab Calloway from the door, a road worn and eldritch assortment of tumblers, fire eaters, freaks, carnies and hucksters. The scents and sounds of exotic animals drifted into the town, a pull toward the field as palpable as the arrival of the motor gypsies themselves.
   Beneath the sick glow of a hurricane lamp strung on a pole stood the man himself, in a tuxedo from the last century and a top hat that looked to be dusted with magic and mysteries from the darkest Congo to the haunted hovels of New Orleans. He pulled on a black cigar lit on the oil lamp, and set a pocket watch. Then he glanced up, twirled a moustache around a cruel smile, and strode into the black tent.

Concerning Whitechapel

    He called himself Whitechapel Fred, and dressed like a sadistic, demented carnival barker pedophile, a used car salesman hawking scurrilous and suspect attractions. His top hat might have been silk, or felt, but was crushed and stained to the point of molting velvety ochre fabric. He wore a grey checked three piece without a tie and a sardonic smirk. Hoell didn't have time to run before Whitechapel had grasped the lapels of his raincoat.
  "We meet at last! I've been looking for you, you see."
  Hoell's fingers arpeggioed an unconscious Memphis Minnie. "I was, uh, thinking I might find you here."
  "Of course you were, of course you were. Tell me, why do you think I might want to find you?" If he'd had a moustache, he would have twisted it in eagerness.
  Hoell pulled a crumpled cigarette and struggled to light it with an even more crumpled matchbook. "Haven't a clue," he answered.
  Whitechapel jerked him closer, shaking the cigarette from his lips. "I want it, jazz man. I NEED it. He's back, and he will want it."
  "I don't have it!"
  "Then GET it. Or did you miss it when I said HE was back?"
  Hoell fingered the bullet still in his coat pocket. He felt the presence of someone softly moving up behind him, another one of Whitechapel's soulless acolytes. Fred released him, brushed out a wholly imaginary crease from Hoell's coat. "Come back when you have it, old boy," he said, adjusting the feral top hat at an angle. "I think you know where to find me."
  He nodded to the creature behind, and disappeared into the lights and sounds.

Concerning The Pier

  The pier was a yellow brick road flanked by the gaudy, the garish, the gauche. Huts, trailers, flashing colors, shameless hucksters and empty promises racing amid tin ear ragtime, diesel exhaust muddying the smells of fry oil. Hoell shuffled through the pieces and people of the night, brain assembling the notes from each standard bleating anemically over the jeers and cajoles. Like sectors on a map, navigating by Hoagy Carmicheal here, Scott Joplin there, Stephan Foster by the Coney Dog stand.

 Occasionally the Houngan haunted this decrepit piece of the city as well, turning hand at shadowy tarot reading to hustle up a handful of dollar bills. Sometimes he did it just because. Hoell knew at times a man has to grift just to keep a hand in.

 The closer to the waterfront, to the tip of the pier, the hubris faded back, as though nervous of the darkness murmuring moonless below. Soft noises and shadows swallowed the gurgle of generators and safety. Even Hoell was reluctant to be there after dark. The pier was run by someone Hoell had no desire to bump into tonight. But he needed answers; things were changing, shifting with the wind and fog.

  He dodged the blind advance of a pink giraffe carted by teenage lovers, past the gunfire of a dart throwing booth, and then spied a figure lurking just off the coruscating lights and a vagabond trumpet. Pale, dusty white skin showing hard against dark ambiguous clothing from an earlier century. Eyes were black and empty, glittering in the light. It could have been the ghost boy from the club, or another fallen creature equally afflicted and employed. It hadn’t appeared to have seen him, but you couldn’t tell. Hoell ducked around a photo op cut out and a manic clown juggling drunkenly. It wasn’t paranoia. They knew he would be here tonight.

  He tried to slip behind the trailers, camouflaging himself behind towers of balloon animals, keeping an eye on the specter lurking in the shadow. Confident he remained unseen, he rounded the warm strobe of a love tester and walked into the corrugated face of Mephistopheles.

Concerning a Rusty Bullet

  Dirty fog blew over like a black blizzard. Hoell stumbled into it from the thicket of streets and alleys profuse with river smells. He navigated by habit, by the little light offered by struggling lamps and grizzled neons skulking in the darkness. He kept to the walls and shadows, coming to a nonagenarian building jutting like the bow of a ship from the swirls of mist. He climbed the steps at the side beneath the ghostly gaze of a black cat placidly lounging on a brick windowsill.
 Inside was dark, quiet, wooden steps creaking and the gentle sigh of pipes. The cat had hopped from the window in a flash and already started up the stairwell. Hoell followed. The loft apartment he sought wasn’t his. Hoell wasn’t sure whose it was, even if the plate said “Cavanaugh.” Any number of a motley assortment moved in and out of the apartment at any given time. Tonight he was hoping to find the Houngan, who frequented the flat to drink stale bourbon mixed with a tincture known only to himself. The Houngan was elusive, impenetrable, unless he was in a bourbon fit.
 The door was unlatched when Hoell reached it, dark within save pale light refracting off the peeling paint chips. He approached slowly, quietly, nudging the door open with his boot. He could tell no one was inside; the atmosphere was cold and empty. Still he fingered the cracked handle of the knife in his pocket, taking cautious steps.

 Pulsing radiator hum. Creak of the building settling. The black cat scampering across the hardwood. Someone hammering nails below. The apartment was only occupied by curtains rippling in the ghosts of wind hissing through the gaps in the window, and a small bauble glinting in the little light on the island countertop. Hoell picked it up gingerly.

&nsbp;A thick bullet of ungainly and striated lead, the casing splotched with rust and black. Hoell turned it under the light, then moved to flick a hole in the curtains. No one was there in the fog, but he knew this card. He dropped the bullet into a pocket, and retreated.

 The wind whipped up when he stepped outside like it had been laying in wait, blustery personal ambush. It moved with purpose, funneled down the street towing portent in its wake. Hoell listened to it for a moment, trying to hear the voice. Then he scuttled off toward the pier.

Concerning The Tin Ear Town

Up the street, along the river, into the neon shadows and fuzzy cacophony of blues clubs stacked upon one another. Hoell made his way up the gutter, past the curious not gone to bed, the intoxicated not gone to ground, and the true inhabitants on this coruscating midnight fantasy land.
True musicians never really sleep. It’s as if the pull of the night, the melody in the blood, and the potential of the next progression gels together to take and sustain them, even when they finally lay to close their eyes.
A sweat-worn combo was still playing through a fog of smoke, seeking the heartbeat of the night, keeping it moving as though the clock of the city would stop if they did. The baton of time passed from one ancient hero to the next, a duty older than life.
The ghost of Chick Webb had possessed the drummer as Hoell sipped in on the alcohol-slick wooden floor, trying to avoid the eyes of the bouncer. His fingers were moving to the tune the pianist, half drunk and bloodshot, was finding in ivory starlight.
At a table in the corner sat a ghost boy, Jean Lafitte bred from Anne Rice stories, languid in an absinthe haze and the slow moving smoke of a black cigar. He was pale, and dirty, eyes unfocused like the undead, never quite managing to look at you. Hoell seated himself with a grin. The blank eyes slid over him without any sign of life, then drifted into the lingering wreaths. “I got it,” Hoell said. He set a small, worn leather book on the table. The ghost boy registered no response. Then white fingers pulled it close, and set a grimy envelope in its place.
“Someone was looking for you.” The words slid sibilantly, a breath of wind in the graveyard. “Someone who wishes to speak with you.”
Hoell’s hand froze upon the packet. “Is he near?”
The eyes flicked over, settling in time for a peal of trumpet to split the air. Hoell staggered from the table and left by the rear entrance.

To Begin With...

But Nicholas was chivalrous, above all else. It was well known, like a birthmark you can’t hide with clothing, or a withered arm. His eyes would betray it, in the dark hours, and he would sit in the darkness and watch the first snow falling outside the latticed study windows. A virtue streaked like a character flaw in his destiny, spoken over dim fires and homemade caves in the secret places, marred like Galahad. In the end, it would be his undoing.


  It was as if the whole world was the back of a clock face on some nights. The moon would set in over the residual night fog, Big Ben in wane, foghorns from the harbor like bass notes and baritone sax from the jazz holes lining the basements of 42nd and South Avenue. Shark-tooth smile nights like these, who could your trust? Hoell made it a simple practice — no one.

 Once, he played the ivory with the best at most of these clubs. Now all he had was the Stetson hat and nicotine stains. Removing your fingers from the keys was like snapping from a deep hypnosis, unsure of what you had revealed, and you take the diluted scotch to cover the disorientation; to keep at bay the bottom of the world falling away.

 His fingers still remembered those spells. They danced on air even now, channeling them to the melody of the waterfront.

 Savannah shuffled from the fog like a lost, sodden teddy-bear; if you could imagine the little girl heartbroken over him. “There’s news about,” Savannah growled preemptively, looking over his shoulder. “They say He has come back. . . .”

 “He isn’t due,” Hoell replied.

 Savannah just shrugged, and Hoell found himself wondering how there could be a topcoat oversized for that frame. His own was cobbled together like a Frankenstein monster, bits and pieces of other coats showing through. His fingers moved in the air. “What else do they say?”

 “The usual. Mentioned your name.”

 Hoell peered. “With Him?”

 “Nah. Whitechapel.”

 Hoell nodded, pushing the fedora back and forth across his scalp. “I see,” he said. Then, as if he had suddenly remembered, he drew a small lozenge tin from his pocket. Savannah snatched it up greedily, but cracked open the lip like an angry cat might be inside and ready to announce the state of its existence.

 He glanced up sharply. “You guarantee it’s real?”

 Hoell nodded. “Miles Davis’s own tooth. I promise.”

 Savannah made the tin disappear into his coat, and passed over something bundled in old newsprint. Hoell took it reverently, and then sidled off into the fog.