Mr. Phoenix's finger strokes the neck of the cat sitting at his right hand. "Mesah was there watching that night and made certain the coarse mite flew to the Labyrinth Where the Damned Howl. I could not, after all, have you damaged. Every time some loose extreme put you at risk I cut it back to nothing."
Assaulted by the life sprawling in his telescope of memory, his skin crawls. He wants out of the bullring, wants the weathervane to turn. Wants something sane. Wants his life to be another life, one not framed in the shipwreck of 100 sabbaths, not washed away by the teeth of 1,000 drinks. He is too stunned to cry. All capacity for speech is stitched shut.
"Though your life has been dark and violent, have you never taken note of the fact that in 32 years no scar has been born upon your body?"
His mind weak, beaten down. He is desperate for words. For some key to freedom.
"I see you wish you could trade the empty box in the trunk for your liberty. Yes, Johnny, the box contains nothing." The word a grave.
"You see, for this, what shall we call it? Prelude To Windfall, perhaps. You needed to come here freely. The package was merely a vehicle for you to do so. I can see you're searching for a reason for all this. I'll be plain. I am called by many names. Tonight the verse of stone and wind call me, The Opener of the Way. You and I are here to open a door. A door opened by the harvest."
Harvest? Like in dead?
He would run — the keys are still in the Pontiac's ignition, but finds himself bound, held knee-deep in sand.
Mr. Phoenix's hands glow. Tendrils of jet-black smoke curl from his spider-fingers. There is a blade in his hand.
The black man stands. His stone smile widens.
He finds his tongue, hisses, "A door to what?"
"To something you'll never see, nor would you understand."
Lost and overwhelmed. "I don't —»
"The only thing you need understand is there will be blood spilled."
Copping Squid
Michael Shea
Michael Shea has written the Lovecraftian novel The Color out of Time (DAW, 1984). He is the author of the short story collection Polyphemus (Arkham House, 1987). His Cthulhu Mythos story "Fat Face" has been widely reprinted, notably in Cthulhu 2000 (Arkham House, 1995). Among his many other works are a four-volume series of novels chronicling the adven tures of Nifft the Lean (1982–2000), the first of which won the World Fantasy Award. Shea has also worked in science fiction and has been nominated for a Hugo Award.
Ricky Deuce, twenty-eight and three years sober, was the night clerk at Mahmoud's Mom and Pop Market. He was a small, leanly muscled guy, and as he sat there, the darkness outside deepening toward midnight, his tight little Irish face looked pleased with where he was. Behind Ricky on his stool, the whole wall was bottles of every kind of Hard known to man.
This job was easy money — a sit-down after his day forklifting at the warehouse. He already owned an awesomely restored '64 Mustang and had near ten K saved, and by rights he ought to be casting around for where he might take off to next. But the fact was, he got a kick out of clerking here till two a.m. each night.
A kick that was not powder nor pill nor smoke nor booze, that was not needing any of them, especially not booze, which could shine and glint in its bottles and surround him all night long, and he not give a shit. He never got tired of sitting here immune, savoring the unadorned adventure of being alive.
Not that the job lacked irritants. There were obnoxious clientele, and these preponderated toward the deep of night.
Ricky thought he heard one even now.
Single cars shushed past outside, long silences falling between, and a scuffy tread advanced along the sidewalk. A purposeful tread that nonetheless staggered now and then. It reminded Ricky that he was It, the only island of comfort and light for a half a mile in all directions, in a big city, in the dead of night.
Then, there in Mahmoud's Mom and Pop Market's entryway, stood a big gaunt black guy. Youngish, but with a strange, outdated look, his hair growing weedily out toward a 'fro. His torso and half his legs were engulfed in an oversize nylon athletic jacket that looked like it might have slept in an alley or two, and which revealed the chest of a dark T-shirt that said something indecipherable RULES. The man had a drugged look, but he also had wide-arched, inquiring brows. His glossy black eyes checked you out, as if maybe the real him was somewhere back in there, smarter than he looked.
But then, as he lurched inside the store, and into the light, he just looked drunk.
"Evening," Ricky said smiling. He always opened by giving all his clientele the benefit of the doubt.
The man came and planted his hands of the counter, not aggressively, it seemed, but in the manner of someone tipsily presenting a formal proposition.
"Hi. I'm Andre. I need your money, man."
Ricky couldn't help laughing. "What a coincidence! So do I!"
"OK, Bro," Andre said calmly, agreeably. As if he was shaping a counter-proposal, he straightened and stepped back from the counter. "Then I'ma cut your fuckin ass to ribbons till you give me your fuckin money!"
The odd picture this plan of action presented almost made Ricky laugh again, but then the guy whipped out and flipped open — with great expertise — a very large-gravity knife, which he then swept around by way of threat, though still out of striking range. Ricky was so startled that he half fell off his stool.
Getting his legs under him, furious at having been galvanized like that, Ricky shrieked, "A knife? You're gonna to rob me with a fucking knife? I've got a fucking knife!"
And he unpocketed his lock-back Buck knife and snapped it open. All this while he found himself once again trying to decipher the big, uncouthly lettered word on the guy's T-shirt above the word RULES.
Andre didn't seem drunk at all now. He swept a slash over the counter at Ricky's head, from which Ricky had to recoil right smartly.
"You shit! You do that again and I'm gonna slice your —»
Here came the gravity knife again, as quick as a shark, and, snapping his head back out of the way, Ricky counter-slashed at the sweeping arm and felt the rubbery tug of flesh unzipped by the tip of his Buck's steel.
Andre abruptly stepped back and relaxed. He put his knife away and held up his arm. It had a nice bloody slash across the inner forearm. He stood there letting it bleed for Ricky. Ricky had seen himself and others bleed, but not a black man. On black skin, he found, blood looked more opulent, a richer red, and so did the meat underneath the skin. That cut would take at least a dozen stitches. They both watched the blood soak the elastic cuff of Andre's jacket.
"So here's what it is," said Andre, and dipped his free hand in the jacket and pulled out a teensy, elegant little silver cellphone. "Ima call the oinkers, and say I need an ambulance because this mad whacked white shrimp — that's you — slashed me when I just axed him for some spare change, and then Ima ditch the shit outta this knife before they show up, and it won't matter if they believe me or not, when they see me bleedin like this they gonna take us both down for questioning and statements. How's your rap sheet, Chief, hey? So look. Just give me a little money and I'm totally outta your face. It don't have to be much. Ten dollars would do it!"