And that wasn't all that wasn't right with Mr. Phoenix. Always decked out in that stupid scarlet robe. Did he think he was some pope or old pharaoh? All that Egyptian stuff layin' around his office — the place looked like some creepy-assed museum. And that time down by the trains on Hennepin St. when the dogs ran from him bawlin' like he beat them with an ugly stick and he had his back to 'em and was at least twenty feet away. And those clove cigarettes, red tip burnin' like hellfire — smelled like they was rolled in Hell too. And his voice, sounded as if it came from deep in a well and it boomed, those old Bible prophets must have sounded like that to fill people with doom and damnation. Sounded pitch black and wise. Wise in things That Were.
But he had to get there first. Had to beat this clock ticking, pulling its load into some unknowable future. Had to get outta this rain.
Highbeams trying to read the snake-curve of the road. The rain confusing the context of space and time. Rain. Here now. Here then. Like a plague.
A sign — The Sign. The sign said just ahead. On the left. Almost here. All those hours almost free. Almost free to go to Mexico. With all that money. He'd have eggs and toast and smokes and sweet Mexican pussy with that money. He'd have every day on the beach — with no rain. Never a fuckin' drop! And he'd never have to deal with Mr. Phoenix again. Never look at that stone grin that froze yer bones. Never have to hear the fuckin' cats yeowlin'. He was gonna buy two dogs — wasn't gonna let any cats near his beach house in Mexico. The sign said just ahead.
$50,000. Just ahead. Long afternoons alone with a cold beer — drunk and ready for a nap if he wanted, unless he wanted her around. Everything he wanted, just ahead.
Hours and hours in the dark. No sky, no horizon. Now — wet and repeated endlessly. No shore. Minute by minute. No clouds. Minute after minute. No moon. Hour after hour. Rain. Leviathan.
Out of it. Hot summer complaining. Cactus. Sand. Moon — low and somehow energetic, smiling in satisfaction. Rev. James Theodore Ellison's sermon instantly ended, cut off. Joshua trees, bent old crones, twisted and passing for dead. The yellow spine down the middle of the road, dry, untouched by the merciless storm. Everything here in this exhibition of midnight and the small hours of morning bone-dry.
The hill off to his left. What passes for a road leading to it. Brakes. Left at the big boulder, just where he was told it would be. The tires quieter in the sand. Slow, not wanting to kick up dust. Three minutes late, not wanting to face Mr. Phoenix.
The Pontiac stops in front of three large rocks, sentinels, white as bones. They have no eyes, arms, hands. Still he sees them as dangerous. Something about them pulses. They don't belong here. His finger touches his mother's crucifix under his shirt before passing between them.
He steps from the deep black shadows of the sentinels on to white sand. Ground from bone, he thinks. An ocean of bones.
Two more steps — ghost steps. He feels he's walking up a long hill toward a great dark house, carrying something obscene and unwanted. He feels slight. Stops. He doesn't know if he should get The Package out of the trunk. Doesn't remember his instructions. Was there a script that disappeared? He'd like to turn back. But he doesn't know the way.
The flash of a match, a scar burning this cell of night. Mr. Phoenix without his dark-brimmed hat, face under it, glowing black edge to black edge. Mr. Phoenix carved out of sharp moonlight. Smiling. Smiling that blasted, open-faced, silent smile that soured his stomach, that could hit you like a shot to the ribs. Mr. Phoenix seated at a table under a canvas pavilion. Saxophones — a pair? — coming from a tape recorder by his feet, playing blind, surging, interstellar meditations, the lost music of some vertical invader awakened from slumber, hungry, hunting. Saxophones screeching and yeowlin' like those fuckin' blacksouled cats had their tails on fire. And his cats, pushing each other aside to lick his hands. Mr. Phoenix singing, "In the Outer Nothingness, Heavenly Things dancing in the sun. They Dwell on Other Planes." Empty well-deep voice — thin, stone lips hardly moving — reflecting yesterdays gone with the wind.
Not a drug deal. Not a delivery of some hijacked old shit. Devil worship? He turns his head and looks back at the Pontiac. At the trunk. The trunk he'd never looked in.
"Hello, Johnny."
"Sorry I'm late, but the rain —»
"Rain?"
"It stopped just over there. Freaky. Like there was a barrier it couldn't pass through."
"Rarely does the rain hunt in the Halls of Fire." With a hand, thin wisps of curling smoke rising off it, he removed his sunglasses.
Red eyes leveled at him. Unblinking. Stabbing red eyes, bare of all except contempt.
Fuck, that's. unholy! His mouth open — language flattened out with a bang, the burning air rushing into it.
The dark man has not moved. As cursed shadows tethered to forgotten riddles his cats sit at the edges of the table.
"Heavenly things dancing in the sun. They Dwell on Other Planes." Empty well-deep voice. Thin, stone lips hardly moving.
How does he do that? His hand moves to his left for comfort — no gun. He has a gun, but it's on the seat of the car. Forgotten in haste; to get this over and get out of here, to get his money.
The moon falls between cracks in the clouds. The air smells of light-devouring blackness. And the black man has not moved. And the scarring pattern of the swelling music boils on.
All he can do — simple and terrified — is stare. At the loud red eyes. He wants The End. Wants the money — his money. Wants to leave, to be on his way to Mexico. Wants Now to be over. But all he can do is stare.
The song the black man sings ends. The red eyes grow cold, the smile widens. "So we have arrived. Dark and light in shadows on this hill. Dark and light, one to take and one to give."
Shit, the package. It's still in the trunk. "Right. Sorry. I'll get the package."
Low laughter dancing. "I've no need for it. I know the way."
"But I have it. It's in the trunk. Right where your man said it was. I've never touched it. Never even looked at it. Could I get my money? And go?"
"Money? Oh, yes, that. Calm yourself, my boy, you'll have no need for money — not that there ever was any. Not where you are going."
The stone smile.
Bait. Tricked.
Going? I'm going to get my fuckin' gun. He'll give me my money, then. and I'll put two in his head for fuckin' with me. Shoot his fuckin' cats too.
"Johnny, I can see by your face you think to do me violence and leave. That will not happen. I control the opening of every door. I've a few moments to fill, so allow me to amuse you with a detail or two about you and the road traveled.
"Your dear mother was a drunkard and a whore, not that she took money for her wanton rutting, mind you, but for a few cheap drinks she would spread her legs wide. And I had a need, a need that required a vessel to carry a drop of my essence. A need for an act to occur under a star engraved in times ancient. A little song in her ear followed by a several glasses of gin and she. how would you put it? She fucked like a rabbit — climbed on top and took to my lust as if she were a maggot to an apple. I left her sleeping and dripping with my seed."
Black laughter brands him.
"I never saw her again, yet I've kept an eye on you. The night you were born the moon was fire-red — did she never tell you of The Burning? My pets were there, watching, walking in your first dream. After engraving you they came and reported to me. As the years found themselves whitened by the teeth of time, I've sent one of my servants to check on you from time to time. You'll recall the attorney who suddenly showed up to rid you of your legal entanglements when that girl died. He was a servant I employ on occasion. And Pitt — even the worm fears the scent of what he sends to the soil, did you ever wonder why a coldblooded monster like that befriended and protected you in jail? Again, my handiwork. Remember the evening your father fell down the stairs to his death, consumed by the spleen of a hard drunk?"