Cathy was behind the bar with Alex, poking the meat pies with a stick to see if they needed replacing yet. Lucy and Betty Coltrane were still clearing up the general mess. Everyone turned to look as Bettie and I appeared from the back stairs.
“Well?” said Alex. “How was it? What was it? I’ve got a first-rate exorcist on speed dial, if you need him.”
“Everyone relax,” I said. “It’s a fake.”
Pen Donavon’s head came up. “What?”
I started to explain, as kindly as I could, about psychic imprinting and guilt, but I could tell he wasn’t listening. And I stopped as I realised the bar was getting darker. The light became suffused with red, as though stained with fresh blood, sinking into a deep crimson glow. Tables and chairs suddenly exploded into flames and burned fiercely, unconsumed. The Coltranes backed quickly away, and joined the rest of us at the bar. The walls slumped slowly inwards, swollen and inflamed, their fleshy texture studded with sweating tumours. A huge eye opened in the ceiling, staring down at us in cold judgement. The floor became soft and uncertain beneath my feet, heaving like the slow swell of the sea. Deep dark shadows were forming all around us, slowly closing in.
“It’s him, isn’t it?” said Bettie, gripping my arm with both hands. “It’s Pen. He’s imprinting his vision of Hell right here, with us.”
“Looks like it,” I said. “Only this doesn’t look or feel like any illusion. I wouldn’t go so far as to say it’s real, as such, but it could be real enough to kill us.”
“How is he doing this?” said Alex. “This bar has defences and protections laid down by Merlin himself!”
“Yes,” I said. “Where is the power coming from to let him do something like this?”
I fired up my gift, and looked at Pen Donavon through my third eye, my private eye. And I found the hidden source of his unnatural power. I could See the thing, inside his body, tucked away under the sternum and over the heart. It must have come to his little shop as just another piece of interdimensional flotsam and jetsam; and he probably hadn’t realised how powerful it was until he accidentally activated it. Probably hadn’t even realised it was alive until it forced its way inside him. Now it was attached to him, a part of him, with long tendrils reaching into his heart and gut and brain. A mystical parasite, living off him while feeding him power in return.
I couldn’t tear it out of him without killing him in the process. And I didn’t want to kill Pen Donavon, even after all the trouble he’d caused. None of this was really his fault. I doubt he’d had a free and uninfluenced thought of his own since the parasite took up residence inside him.
Demons emerged from the shadows around us. Hunched and horned, with scarlet skin; medieval devils all with distorted versions of Donavon’s face. They smiled to show their jagged teeth and flexed their clawed hands hungrily. Alex had his cricket bat out again. Cathy had the shotgun. Betty and Lucy Coltrane stood back-to-back, ready to take on all comers. Bettie looked at me. I looked at Pen Donavon.
“Why Hell?” I said bluntly. “Why are you so convinced of your own damnation? What could a small and insignificant little man like you have possibly done that could be so bad that all you ever think about is Hell?”
For a long moment I thought he wasn’t going to answer me. The demons were getting very close. And then he sighed deeply, staring into his glass.
“I had a dog,” he said. “Called him Prince. He was a good dog. Had him for years. Then I got married. She never took to Prince. Just wasn’t a dog person. We all got along well enough…until the marriage hit problems. We started arguing over small things and worked our way up. She said she was going to leave me. I still loved her. Begged her to stay; said I’d do anything. She said I had to prove my love for her. Get rid of the dog. I loved my dog, but she was my wife. So I said I’d give Prince up. Find him a good home somewhere else. But no, that wasn’t good enough. She said I had to prove she was more important to me than the dog, by killing him.
“Have Prince put down. Or she’d leave me. My choice, she said.
“I killed my dog. Took him to the vet’s, said good-bye, held his paw while the vet gave him the injection. Took my dog home. Buried him.
“And she left me anyway. Prince was my dog. He was the best dog in the world. And I killed him.” He looked slowly round the bar, at the Hell he’d made. Slow tears were running down his cheeks. “I deserve this. All of it.”
The fires blazed up all around us. My bare skin smarted painfully from the heat. The air was thick with the stench of blood and brimstone. The demons were almost within reach. In his need to be punished, to make atonement for his sin, Pen Donavon had brought Hell to Earth; or something close enough to do the job. He could burn up the whole bar and everyone in it…but the parasite inside him would make sure he survived. To go on suffering. Suddenly I knew what the parasite fed on.
I got angry then. I could kill Donavon, rip the parasite right out of him. But he didn’t deserve that. Not when there was a better way. I’m John Taylor, and I find things. Things, and people, and just sometimes, a way out of Hell for those who need it.
I raised my gift and forced my inner eye all the way open, making it look in a direction I normally had sense enough to avoid. I concentrated, drawing on every resource I had, and I Saw beyond this world and into the Next. I found who I was looking for and called his name; and he came. A great door opened up in the middle of the bar, spilling a bright and brilliant light into the crimson glare, forcing it back. All the demons stopped and looked round, as a great mongrel dog with a shaggy head and drooping ears bounded out of the door and into the bar. He went straight for the demons nearest Donavon, and tore right through them, gripping them with his powerful jaws and shaking them back and forth like a terrier with a rat. The demons cried out miserably, and fell apart. Donavon looked at the dog, and his whole face lit up in amazed disbelief.
“Prince?”
“Typical,” said the dog, spitting out a bit of demon, then trotting over to push his great shaggy head into Donavon’s lap. “Can’t turn my back on you for five minutes.”
“I’m so sorry, Prince. I’m so sorry.” Donavon could hardly get the words out. He bent over and hugged the dog round the neck.
“It’s all right,” said the dog. “Humans can’t think for shit when they’re in heat. It was her fault, not yours. You were just weak; she was the bad one.”
“Do you forgive me, Prince?”
“Of course; that’s what dogs do. Another good reason why all dogs go to Heaven. Now come along with me, Pen. It’s time to go.”
Donavon looked at the wonderful light falling out of the door in the middle of the bar. “But…you’re dead, Prince.”
“Yes. And so are you. You’ve been dead ever since that parasite ate its way into you. Don’t you remember? No; I suppose it won’t let you. Either way, it’s only the parasite’s energies that have been keeping you going, so it could feed on your pain and fear.” The dog paused. “You know, there’s nothing like being dead for increasing your vocabulary. I’ve been so much more articulate since I crossed over. Anyone got a biscuit? No? Come with me, Pen. Heaven awaits.”
“Will we be together, Prince?”
“Of course, Pen. Forever and ever and ever.”
There was a bright flash of light, and when it faded the bar was back to normal again. The Hell that Pen Donavon had made was gone, and so was the door full of light. His dead body slumped slowly forward and fell off the stool, hitting the floor. It heaved suddenly, jerked this way and that by loud cracking and tearing sounds, and then the parasite appeared from under the body. It scuttled across the floor like a huge beetle, until I stepped forward and stamped down hard. It crunched satisfyingly under my boot, and was still.
Gone straight to Hell, where it belonged.
NINE
Entrances and Exits
So, back to Uptown we went. It had been a long time since I’d been involved with a case that involved so much walking, and I was getting
pretty damned tired of it. If I’d wanted to spend so much time tramping back and forth in the Nightside, wearing out good shoe leather and guaranteeing severe lower back pain for later, I’d have had my head examined. And to add insult to injury, a fog had come up, ghosting the Nightside in shades of pearl and grey. Fog is always a bad sign; it means the barriers between the worlds are wearing thin. You can never tell what might appear out of the mists or disappear into them.
The Witch’s Tit aspired to dreams of class and opulence, but it was really just another titty bar with a theme. A campy mixture of Goth come-ons and Halloween kitsch, where the girls danced naked, apart from tall witch’s hats, and did obscene things with their broomsticks. The club was situated right on the very edge of Uptown, as though the other establishments were ashamed of it, and quite probably they were. The Witch’s Tit was the only legitimate business Kid Cthulhu owned and certainly the only one he took a personal interest in.
Why? Well, here’s a hint: word has it he’s not a leg man.
The club itself looked cheap and tacky from the outside, all sleazy neon and seedy photos of girls who probably didn’t even work there, but that wasn’t what concerned me. There was no barker outside, singing the praises of the girls and cajoling passers-by to come on in and take a look. And when I cautiously pushed the door open and looked inside, there weren’t any bouncers either, or any traces of security. Kid Cthulhu wasn’t known for leaving his assets undefended, especially during an important meet like this. Had to be a trap of some kind. So I walked in, smiling cheerfully, with Bettie bouncing happily along at my side in a black leather outfit with chains and studs, and a perky little dog collar round her throat.
The club had been fitted out with all the usual Halloween motifs—black walls, witch’s cauldrons, and grinning pumpkin-heads. The lighting was comfortably dim and inviting, save for half a dozen spotlights that stabbed down onto the raised stage at the back of the club, picking out the dancer’s steel poles. But still; no girls, no customers, no bar staff. Kid Cthulhu had cleared the place out, just for me. The phrase no witnesses was whispering in the back of my head. I led Bettie through the empty tables and out into the open space before the stage, our footsteps loud and carrying in the quiet. Half a dozen human skeletons had been hung from stretchy elastic, bobbing gently at the edge of the open space, perhaps disturbed by our approach. At first I thought they were another example of the Halloween décor, but something made me stop and take a closer look. They were all real skeletons, the bones held together by copper wire. Some of the longer bones showed teeth-marks.
A new spotlight stabbed down from overhead, revealing Kid Cthulhu sitting on a huge reinforced chair, right in the centre of the open space. He looked like a man, but he wasn’t. Not any more. You could tell. You could see it, feel it. There was a taint in the man, all the way through. He had been touched, and changed, by something from Outside. Kid Cthulhu was a large man, he had to be, to contain everything that was in him now. He was naked, his skin stretched taut and swollen, as though pushed out by pressures from within. He was supposed to be about my age, but his face was so puffed out no trace of human character remained in it. He sat slumped in his oversized chair, like King Glutton on his throne. His bare skin gleamed dully in the mercilessly revealing spotlight, colourless as a fish’s belly, while his eyes were all black, like a shark’s.
They say he broke men’s bones with his bare hands. They say he ate the flesh of men, breaking open the bones to get at the marrow. They said there was something growing within him, or perhaps through him, from Outside. And right then, I believed every word they said.
“Hey, KC,” I said cheerfully. “Where’s the Sunshine Band?”
He studied me coldly with his flat black eyes. “John Taylor…Your name is bile and ashes in my mouth. Your presence here is an affront to me. Your continued existence an unbearable insult. You killed my combat sorcerers. My boys. My lovely boys.”
“You have changed,” I said. “You never should have gone on that deep-sea voyage. Or at the very least, you should have thrown back what you caught.”
“You defy me,” said Kid Cthulhu. “No-one does that any more. I shall enjoy killing you.”
His voice was harsh and laboured, forced out word by word, with a distinct gurgle in it, as though he were speaking underwater. He sounding like a drowning man, venting his spite on the man who’d pushed him in.
“I thought we were here to do business,” I said. “I have the Afterlife Recording right here with me.”
“I don’t care about that any more,” said Kid Cthulhu. “Money doesn’t matter to me. I have money. All that matters now is the satisfying of my various appetites and the destruction of my enemies. I will see you broken, suffering, and dead, John Taylor. And your pretty little companion. Perhaps I’ll make you watch as I tear her guts out, and eat them as she dies, screaming.”
“Oh, ick,” said Bettie. “Nasty man…”
Kid Cthulhu rose suddenly up from his throne, a man twice the size a man should be, forcing his great bulk up onto its feet through sheer strength of will. His joints were buried deep under swollen flesh, and unnaturally distended genitals showed under the great swell of his belly.
“Double ick,” said Bettie. “With a side order of not even for a million pounds.”
Kid Cthulhu strode toward us, slowly and deliberately, each step shaking the floor, his deep-set eyes fixed on me. His purple pouting mouth parted to reveal jagged sharp teeth. His huge puffy hands opened to reveal claws. Someone that size shouldn’t have been able to move unaided, let alone have such an air of strength and deadly purpose. I was still thinking what to do when Bettie stepped smartly forward, opened her purse, took out her Mace spray, and let Kid Cthulhu have it, right in the face.
“Nasty fat man,” she said calmly. “And you smell.”
Kid Cthulhu stopped before her, surprised, but showing no hurt at all from a faceful of Mace laced with holy water. His all-black eyes barely blinked as the Mace ran down his distended cheeks like so many viscous tears. He lashed out suddenly, one huge arm swinging round impossibly quickly, and the impact knocked Bettie off her feet and sent her flying. She crashed through a table, hit the floor hard, rolled over a few times, and lay still; and it was all over before I could even move a muscle. I called out to her, but she didn’t answer. And then Kid Cthulhu turned his head and looked at me.
He was between me and Bettie, so I couldn’t get to her. I backed away slowly, thinking fast. I hadn’t planned for this. I’d heard he was going through changes, but I still thought of him as just another gang boss. Someone I could make a deal with. The Nightside runs on deals. But all this Kid Cthulhu wanted was me, preferably in large meaty chunks. I don’t normally care to get involved with hand-to-hand combat, partly because it’s coarse and vulgar and beneath my dignity, but mostly because I’ve never been that good at it. I’ve always preferred to talk or threaten or bluff my way out of trouble. But I didn’t think that was going to work here.
I stopped, stood my ground, and stared him right in the eye. Sometimes the oldest tricks are the best. But for the second time that day, I found myself faced with someone I couldn’t stare down. His flat black eyes stared right back at me, untouched and unmoved. I couldn’t reach him. I wasn’t even sure there was anything human left in him to reach. So I grabbed the nearest chair and threw it at him. It bounced off, without leaving a single mark on his veiny, distended skin.
Then he was coming right at me, a huge mass of colourless flesh like something you’d find at the bottom of the sea, driven on by some unnatural energy. I’d beaten so many threats in my time, faced down and defeated so many Major Players, gods, and monsters…It had never occurred to me that I might be killed by some oversized, implacable gang boss.
As he crashed forward, the floor shaking with every tread, I somehow found the time to notice that his flesh seemed to move more slowly than the rest of him, sliding across his deep-sunk bones like an afterthought, as though it wa
sn’t properly connected any more. What little humanity he had left in him was sliding away. I glanced behind me. I could have run. I was pretty sure I could beat him to the exit. But that would have meant leaving Bettie behind, abandoned to Kid Cthulhu’s inhuman appetites. He’d said he’d do terrible things to her, and I believed him. So I stepped forward, braced myself, and punched him right in his protruding belly. His impetus drove him forward onto my fist, and it sank deep into his gut. He didn’t even make a sound. The cold, cold flesh closed around my hand, sucking it in. I had to use all my strength to pull it free again. Just the touch of his flesh was enough to set my teeth on edge.
A huge arm came swinging round out of nowhere and hit me like a club. I managed to get a shoulder round in time to take the worst of the impact, but the flesh seemed to just keep coming and slammed into the side of my face. The strength went out of my legs, and I hit the floor hard, driving the breath from my lungs. My left shoulder blazed with pain, and I could barely move my left arm. The whole left side of my face ached fiercely. There was blood in my mouth, and I spat it out. I sensed as much as saw Kid Cthulhu looming over me, and I rolled to one side as his great fist came slamming down like a pile-driver, cracking and splintering the floor where I’d been lying. I got my legs under me and forced myself back up onto my feet again. I didn’t feel too steady, and I was breathing hard. Kid Cthulhu wasn’t.
I backed away. My left eye was puffing shut, and it felt like my nose might be broken. I checked my teeth with my tongue. I didn’t seem to have lost any, this time. I hate it when that happens. There was more blood in my mouth. Probably a cut on the inside of my cheek. I spat the blood in Kid Cthulhu’s direction, but his flat dark eyes never wavered.