Butcher Bird

  Madame Cinders grabbed onto the gurney and quickly pulled herself from the floor. “Why did you do that?” she screamed, her face a deep and furious crimson.

  “I didn’t do anything,” said Spyder. “It just happened.”

  “It was very rude. I’ll teach you never to be rude to me again.” She turned toward Lulu and raised her hand. Spyder jumped in front of her and pulled Lulu behind him. But instead of hurling a spell at them, Madame Cinders doubled over in pain and hit the floor screaming.

  “What is this? What have you done?” she yelled.

  “It’s not my fault,” said Spyder. “I didn’t expect you to eat it, you silly bitch.”

  “What?”

  “John the Baptist’s heart. I hid it in the spine of the book. I thought it would maybe make the magic not work. I sure as hell didn’t see this coming…”

  Madame Cinders fell on her stomach, her body convulsing, her shoulders twitching. Her head snapped up and lolled to the side. Her eyes were pearl white and flames seemed to dance inside. She drew in a long, harsh breath that began as a hissing in her lungs, rising in intensity until it was the growl of a rabid wolf. Boils, red and livid, grew and burst along her right arm and spread across her body. Her white hijab, now stained with her blood, began to smoke as her skin gave off a black incandescent glow. Her bones were visible beneath the skin, and soon the skin itself was peeling and dropping off in long, dry strips. She seemed to shrink, as if something were draining her from the inside. Runes rose like welts on her blackened skin.

  Whatever force she used to control her mechanical flower suddenly broke and Shrike fell to the floor. Spyder ran over and took Shrike’s face in his hands. “You all right? Talk to me.” He held her until she opened her eyes. “You can’t get away from me that easy,” he said.

  “Look,” said Lulu, pointing to Madame Cinders.

  The witch was on her feet, her arms out, using every bit of her strength to keep her balance. She seemed paralyzed in place, unable to move. Suddenly, her head snapped toward Spyder. She took one step and the thin blackened skin that still covered her bones, sloughed off and fell to the floor like boiling tar. Her bones sank into the thick mess and disappeared.

  Spyder and Lulu tried to pull Shrike to her feet, but she screamed in pain. Spyder lifted her shirt and found the deep bruising and cracked ribs. Her skin was lacerated with the serrated tooth marks of the orchid’s blades. Without thinking about it, he lay his hands on her and closed her eyes. Soon, he could hear Shrike’s breathing become slow and steady. A few minutes later, she could stand on her own.

  They searched every room in the tower until they found Shrike’s father—alive, though frail and confused. Wrapping him in a blanket they found in the guards’ barracks room, they bundled the old man down from the tower.

  Madame Cinders’ servants waited anxiously in the courtyard as the four came out.

  “We need a coach and horse,” Shrike told them. The servants didn’t need to be told twice.

  They rode back through the Medina and just managed to squeeze the cart into the tunnels that ran to Alcatraz. Shrike held her sleeping father in her arms the whole way, speaking to him quietly as they went. Spyder put his arm around her. She reached up and squeezed his hand. He could see her fighting back tears.

  When they reached the old cavalry stables, Lulu asked, “What’s it going to be like back home, you think?”

  “I don’t know,” said Spyder. “You’re covered, I guess, but I might have to leave town. We’ll see.”

  “Going to be weird to be back. You know with a full set of eyes and insides and skin.”

  “Weird’s not so bad when you get used to it.”

  “No shit.”

  They stepped down from the coach, but when Spyder turned to help Shrike and her father, they were gone.

  SIXTY

  WORSHIPPING CROCODILES

  “Oh, you poor things,” said Mrs. Porter.

  When they got back to San Francisco, Spyder and Lulu, broke and shaky, managed to hitch a ride with the Porters, a family on vacation from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, who’d had their bags stolen off the luggage carousel at SFO.

  The Porters were very sympathetic to the nice Texas couple they found stranded at Fisherman’s Wharf, after Spyder fed them a story about their brand new Toyota hatchback being stolen. After they’d all piled into the Porters’ SUV, with both parents and three kids, Lyle Porter, the husband, launched into a nonstop monologue all the way to Spyder’s warehouse.

  “These people they got workin’ at the airport, they’re not stealing to be evil. Where they’re from, stealing’s a way of life. Everybody does it, from the president to the police chief, from the school teachers to the local witch doctor. Every one of ’em’s a goddam thief. Hell, if I was in their shoes, I’d probably steal, too. But this is America. We don’t need to do that kind of shit, pardon my French, here. You work hard and you get your reward. But, I suppose, when you’re raised worshipping crocodiles or some such nonsense, anything goes. Am I right?”

  “Right as rain, Lyle,” said Spyder, hoping they got home soon or got hit by a semi.

  Lulu crashed with Spyder that first disembodied night back. Realizing he had no idea where his keys were, Spyder had to wheel over a dumpster from the car repair place next door, then climb onto the roof and drop down into the upper loft through a skylight. In the morning, Spyder found his battered old hardback of Naked Lunch on the bookshelf and pulled out the hundred dollars in emergency money he kept hidden in the spine. He and Lulu got on his old bike, an oil-leaking Kawasaki Police 1000, and Spyder took her back to her place in the Mission.

  For the duration of the ride, Spyder obsessively checked his mirrors and scanned the street, waiting for a siren or a vigilante to point him out as a killer or a child molester. But it didn’t happen. As he pulled up in front of Lulu’s building, Rubi was coming out. She smiled brightly and kissed both Lulu and Spyder, giving no indication that she recalled Spyder punching her. Lulu gave a shrug and followed Rubi back inside, after blowing Spyder a kiss from the steps.

  Spinning a quick one-eighty across the median, Spyder cruised over to the Haight. The tattoo studio was still gone, and the vacant lot still looked like whatever had occupied it had burned. Spyder couldn’t decide if that bit of historical consistency was comforting or not.

  He left the Kawasaki parked between an art car covered in plush toys having sex with naked Barbies and a Jews for Jesus panel truck. He went into the Long Life Cupboard health food store. Immediately, his stomach was burning and his shoulders were one big knot of tension. Spyder’s fight-or-flight instincts were locked on high alert for any funny look, wayward gesture or wandering beat cops. No one even acknowledged him except the cute blonde hippie chick at the register who smiled and asked, “How’s it hanging?” as Spyder paid for his orange juice. “Sucks about your shop,” she said.

  “Thanks.”

  “You opening another one?”

  “We haven’t decided yet.”

  “Let me know if you do. I was thinking about getting a mudra tattooed on my shoulder,” she said. “Tell Lulu hi, and don’t be a stranger.”

  “You got it,” said Spyder. He smiled awkwardly and fled the place. It was all too much. The city. Too many people. Too much noise. Copper jitters. The angels, demons and strange beasts that had wandered in from other Spheres were there, too, but their presence seemed kind of normal. It was the athletic shoe ads on the buses, the wandering tourists and ultra-hipsters, the panhandling poser kids that were making it hard for him to breathe. Spyder downed his OJ, gunned the bike into traffic and drove home. He’d been social enough for one day. No need to push my luck and find that one guy who still thinks I’m Charlie Manson, he thought.

  Back at the warehouse, Spyder sorted through a pile of mail on the floor by the front door. There was an official-looking letter from an insurance company. Inside was a settlement check for the burned studio. The check displayed a prominent one followed by
many more zeroes than Spyder had ever seen on a document relating to him.

  Later that night, he met Lulu for a drink at the Bardo Lounge and showed her the check.

  “Rubi, give my future ex-husband a drink on me.”

  “Just make it a Coke, thanks.”

  “You feelin’ sick?”

  “Like I’m wearing borrowed skin.”

  “Me, too,” Lulu said. “Still haven’t heard anything from Shrike?”

  Spyder shook his head. He pulled out a fresh pack of cigarettes, cracked the pack and removed one. Lulu stole one and lit Spyder’s smoke with the pink Zippo she’d almost lost by the Bone Sea.

  “Not a word,” said Spyder.

  “We been sitting around too long. We need to work.”

  “I’m not ready to even think about opening another shop. Maybe we could get a couple of chairs in a shop on the street. Big Bill’s or Colored People.”

  “There you go.”

  Rubi came back with their drinks. “Cheers,” she said, giving them a big smile. Spyder was almost used to Rubi not hating him.

  Lulu raised her glass in a toast.

  “The Kaiser’s moustache.”

  “To Lucifer’s tail.” Then, “To Primo.”

  “To Primo.”

  A demon sat on the stool to Spyder’s right, nursing a glass of Jägermeister. Bilal, the demon, fat and shirtless, poured the Jäger into a mouth that opened in his chest. He looked straight ahead, trying not to catch Spyder’s eye.

  Spyder leaned over to him. “What’s the difference between a demon and a glass of beer?” Spyder asked.

  Bilal shifted his eyes toward Spyder, but refused to turn his head. “What?”

  “Beer’s still good without a head.” Spyder put his hand on the demon’s shoulder. “Remember me?”

  The demon turned away.

  “Talking meat all looks pretty much the same to me.”

  “You’re Bilal?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Then you should remember me. Or do you curse so many people that we all blur together?”

  “You need to go away now,” Bilal said. His chest-mouth opened slowly, emitting a growl and hot breath that reeked of wet decay.

  “Stop that,” said Spyder. He touched the middle finger of his right hand to Bilal’s chest. The skin shifted like sand, sealing the extra mouth shut. “What were you saying?”

  The demon heaved its enormous bulk from the barstool, feeling for its lost mouth.

  “I’ll destroy you,” it said.

  “Yeah, your first one worked out so well. What do you do for an encore? Not swallow my soul?” Spyder took a sip of his Coke and a long drag off his cigarette. It was good to have real smokes again. “I was in the book. I am the book. And your demon noise sounds like cricket farts to me now. I have Apollyon’s blade. I’m the devil’s brother. I killed the Black Clerks. What are you but some back alley rat-eater who likes to take out his bad moods on people who can’t fight back?”

  Bilal was breathing hard. He was angry, but Spyder could tell that he was even more scared.

  “Leave me alone,” said Bilal.

  “All I wanted was to be left alone, but you tried to eat me. When that didn’t work, you cursed me. Made people think I was Hannibal Lecter.”

  “That was before.”

  “Before what?”

  “Before I knew who you were.”

  “And who’s that?”

  “The Painted Man.”

  “Don’t you forget it. Now, what’s the magic word?”

  “What word?”

  “What do we say when we’ve fucked up and we want forgiveness?” asked Spyder.

  Bilal hesitated, shook his head. He stared at the floor. John Cale’s version of “Heartbreak Hotel” came on the jukebox.

  “I’m sorry,” said Bilal.

  Spyder nodded, patted the demon’s barstool.

  “Climb back up in the saddle, big man. Let me buy you another Jäger.”

  “You’re not going to kill me?”

  “Hell no,” said Spyder. “I understand about bad moods and being stuck someplace maybe you don’t want to be. So, you get to keep your head and I get to not spill demon guts all over this nice, clean shirt.”

  Bilal gestured to his chest.

  “Could you?”

  “Sorry.” Spyder touched the demon. The skin of Bilal’s chest shifted, unsealing his second mouth.

  Rubi brought him a shot of Jäger and Spyder passed it to the demon. He clinked his Coke against Bilal’s glass in a toast.

  “Tell me the truth,” said Spyder, leaning in close. “Do we taste more like pork or chicken?”

  SIXTY-ONE

  THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND

  A month later, the initial rush of being back home had worn off. Spyder waited for his mind to settle down, his moods to slide into their regular patterns; he waited for the world to become solid under his feet, but it didn’t happen.

  He ate. He slept. He ordered a new tattoo gun and an autoclave from an online wholesaler. When they arrived, he got as far as opening the box before losing interest. Every day he went out to buy food, but just came home with more cigarettes. When the insurance check covering the fire in the tattoo shop arrived, he finally admitted that he wasn’t going to go back to work anytime soon. After a few calls, he got Lulu a table at Luscious Abrasion, just down the street from where their shop had been. He’d visit her there every couple of days.

  It had been more than a month, but he was startled every time he saw her. She looked so good, so happy to be back. Soon, it was hard to remember all that the Clerks had done to her.

  “You look lost at sea, sailor.” Lulu and Spyder were having burgers at an outdoor café near Golden Gate Park. Lulu stole another of Spyder’s American Spirits and lit it with the pink lighter he’d taken back from Lucifer while they were still in Hell.

  “I’m feeling a little adrift, yeah. No big deal. It’ll pass.”

  “You need to work, dude. Get back to what you know and what you’re good at. I bet you could really make the colors dance now that you’ve got all those Dr. Strange super powers.”

  He shook his head and took a bite of his burger. The meat was chewy and tasteless in his mouth.

  “You’d think so, wouldn’t you?” he asked. “But I can’t control it. I’m a little scared of my hands. What if my mind wanders— and it’s wandering a lot these days—and I turn some baby goth girl into a Black Clerk?”

  “If you make any Angelina Jolies, save one for me.” She smiled at him and when he didn’t smile back, Lulu shook her head. “I don’t understand why you can’t just do stuff now. You healed me back at Cinders’ place. And you fixed Shrike.”

  “That was all one big rush. Like I was running, and as long as I kept running, I could do anything. But now I stopped and I can’t find my feet. The more I think about the magic, the worse I get at it.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Don’t know. The insurance money came through, so I don’t really have to work right now. Besides, I dream about money and there’s gold in my sock drawer when I wake up.”

  “Must be nice,” said Lulu, irritation edging into her voice. “What’d be even nicer was if you got over this whiny little bitch thing you’re in and you went out and found Shrike.”

  “You don’t think I’ve tried? I’ve been back to the night market. Down to the Coma Gardens. I even busted into the tunnel under Alcatraz. Nothing. No one’s seen her. She’s gone.”

  “Sorry, bro.”

  “I should go.”

  He didn’t tell Lulu the whole truth about his home life. The magic or power or whatever it was he’d acquired inside the book was getting more out of control every day. The deeper he sank into his dark mood, the more dangerous the magic became. Each night, he woke up from restless dreams to find his apartment choked with hellfire or locked in glacial ice. His bedroom was invaded by souls wandering in from the edge of the Bone Sea. Galaxies swirled where th
e ceiling should be, and he could see the Dominions floating between the stars, eating worlds and swimming in swirling clouds of cosmic dust.

  Spyder couldn’t stand being in the warehouse anymore, so he rented an ancient, rundown metal workshop in the industrial zone on a winding road out by the old Navy yards. The place was just four metal walls and an aluminum roof with a razorwire fence outside. There was nothing inside the shop for him to break or freeze or burn up when he dreamed. All Spyder took with him was his motorcycle, an air mattress, cartons of cigarettes and beer. Everything else he dealt with as he needed. During the day, he kept Apollyon’s blade under the mattress. It mostly came in handy on those sleepless nights when he thought he was going crazy. He would take out the knife and feel its weight in his hand, smell a faint echo of Hell when he held the grip close to his face. When sleep refused to come, he thought about hiring an airship and flying deep into the desert to find the hole he’d blown in Hell’s roof. Lucifer would be happy to see him and might let him stick around to help rebuild Heaven. Or would he? The fallen angel had told him to go home and live his life, but what did that even mean anymore?

  What an amazing place to have gotten yourself to, he thought, when even Hell isn’t an option.

  In May, on Orson Welles’ birthday, an old art house theater in the Mission District had a marathon screening of his films. Spyder had seen the early stuff dozens of times, so he only came for the late-night flicks, It’s All True, Welles’ doomed Brazilian epic, and The Other Side of the Wind, a dark, micro-budget film about a bitter director, played by John Huston. He knew there weren’t enough guns or tits in either movie to get Lulu to sit through them, so he went alone.

  It was almost two in the morning when the movies let out. Spyder went to the corner where he’d parked the Kawasaki and lit a cigarette. It was cold and wet. Heavy fog was blowing through the streets like sparkling ghosts.

  “Hey, pony boy.”

  She was leaning against the front door of a check-cashing shop. Through the open door was a miserable line of restless illegals pretending not to see the down-on-their luck Caucasians who were busy pretending to be somewhere else entirely.