He emerged from the foliage and dove down the winding highway. There was the fogbanked Bay below, the jeweled snake of the Hood glinting within its gray wet shroud, and Ricky took the curves just like his old self, riding one of the hills' great tentacles down, down toward the sea they rooted in.
There was something Ricky had to do. Because in spite of his body, his nerves being his, he didn't know who he was now, had just had a big chunk torn out of him. And there was something terrible he had to do, to locate, by desperate means, the man he had lost, to find at least a piece of him he was sure of.
His hands and arms knew the way, it seemed. Diving down into the thicker fog, he smoothly threw the turns required. and slid up to the curb before the liquor store they'd parked near. when? A universe ago. Parked and jumped out.
Ricky was terrified of what he was going to do, and so he moved swiftly to have it done with, just nodding to his recent companions as he hastened into the store — nodding to the Maoris in shades, to the guys with the switchblade cap-bills, to the guys with the crimson hoods and the golden pockets. But rushed though he was, it struck him that they were all looking at him with a kind of fascination.
At the counter he said, "Fifth of Jack." He didn't even look to see what he peeled off his wad to pay for it, but there were a lot of twenties in his change. The Arab bagged him his bottle, his eyes fixed almost raptly on Ricky's, so Ricky was moved to ask in simple curiosity, "Do I look strange?"
"No," the man said, and then said something else, but Ricky had already turned, in haste to get outside where he could take a hit. Had the man said no, not yet?
Ricky got outside, cracked the cap, and hammered back a stiff, two-gurgle jolt.
He scarcely could wait to let it roll down and impact him. He felt the hot collision in his body's center, the roil of potential energy glowing there, then poked down a long, three-gurgle chaser. Stood reeling inwardly, and outwardly showing some impact as well.
And there it was: a heat, a turmoil, a slight numbing. No more. No magic. No rising trumpets. No wheels of light. The halfpint of Jack he'd just downed had no marvel to show like the one he'd just seen.
And so Ricky knew that he was someone else now, someone he had not yet fully met.
"'Sup?" It was the immense guy in the lavender sweats. He had a solemn Toltec-statue face, but an incongruously merry little smile.
"'S happnin," said Ricky. "Hey. You want this?"
"That Jack?"
"Take the rest. Keep it. Here's the cap."
"No thanks." This to the cap. The man drank. As he chugged, he slanted Ricky an eye with something knowing, something I thought so in it. Ricky just stood watching him. He had no idea at all of what would come next in his life, and for the moment, this bibulous giant was as interesting a thing as any to stand watching.
The man smacked his lips. "It ain't the same, is it?" he grinned at Ricky, gesturing the bottle. "It just don't matter any more. I mean, so I understand. I like the glow jus fine myself. But you. see, you widdat Andre. You've been a witness."
"Yeah. I have. So. tell me what that means."
"You the one could tell me. Alls I know is I'd never do it, and a whole lotta folks around here they'd never do it — but you didn't know that, did you?"
"So tell me what it means."
"It means what you make of it! And speakin of which, man, of what you might make of it, I wanna show you something right now. May I?"
"Sure. Show me."
"Let's step round here to the side of the building. just round here. " Now they stood in the shadowy weed-tufted parking lot, where others lounged, but moved away when they appeared.
"I'm gonna show you somethin," said the man, drawing out his wallet and opening it.
But opening it for himself at first, for he brought it close to his face as he looked in, and a pleased, proprietary glow seemed to beam from his Olmec features. For a moment, he gloated over the contents of his billfold.
Then he extended and spread the wallet open before Ricky. There was a fat sheaf of bills in it, hand-worn bills with a skinlike crinkle. It seemed the money, here and there, was stained.
Reverently, Olmec said, "I bought this from the guy that capped the guy it came from. This is as pure as it gets. Blood money with the blood right on it! An you can have a bill of it for five hundred dollars! I know that Andre put way more than that in your hand. I know you know what a great deal this is!"
Ricky. had to smile. He saw an opportunity at least to gauge how dangerously he'd erred. "Look here," he told Olmec. "Suppose I did buy blood money. I'd still need a witness. So what about that, man? Will you be my witness for. almost five grand?"
Olmec did let the sum hang in the air for a moment or two, but then said, quite decisively, "Not for twice that."
"So Andre got me cheap?"
"Just by my book. You could buy witnesses round here for half that!"
"I guess I need to think it over."
"You know where I hang. Thanks for the drink."
And Ricky stood there for the longest time, thinking it over.
Passing Spirits
Sam Gafford
Sam Gafford grew up on a steady diet of comic books, television, old horror movies, and the fiction of H. P. Lovecraft. Small wonder that he would want to become a writer. His stories and essays have appeared in a variety of small-press publications and magazines. Gafford has also helped to advance the critical study of the fiction of William Hope Hodgson. He is working on a novel about Jack the Ripper.
"…Cthulhu never existed. Azathoth never existed. Nyarlathotep, Shub-Niggurath, Nug, Yeb, none of them. I made them all up."
I was sitting in H. P. Lovecraft's small study, listening to him rant. It was 1937. In barely under a year he would be dead of stomach cancer. I felt a need to try to tell him this. To let him know that the pain in his abdomen was not just «grippe» but a serious medical problem that he should seek treatment for immediately. When I tried to explain that I knew all about those types of things, he refused to listen and went on ranting.
"But you know what is the worst thing about all of this?" he continued in his nasal voice. "This is what I'll be remembered for. if I'm remembered by anyone. For making up a pantheon of monster-gods. Basically, for stealing from Dunsany."
I tried to explain that that wasn't the truth. That he had added much more to it than just the idea of a cosmic mythology, but he wouldn't listen. It was very strange and not at all the type of conversation I had envisioned having. I wouldn't say that the man was bitter, but he certainly wasn't happy about a lot of things.
Looking at him, I felt that there were so many things that I should be saying but I didn't. My time was too short for that and the memory was already fading.
When I awoke, I was in my apartment and there was a ribbon of spit on the pillow next to me. I checked it for blood, but it was clear. My head throbbed as usual and I felt the familiar dull ache behind my eyes. I crawled out of bed and turned the TV on as I dressed. CNN was going on about some flareup in the Middle East (I had long ago stopped caring about such things, there was always a flareup somewhere or other) and I flipped it over to «Scooby-Doo» on the Cartoon Network. It was one of my favorites from the first year (the best year before they got into all that guest star nonsense and then brought in Scrappy-Doo — who the hell ever thought that was a good idea?) with the space ghost that had the glowing, laughing head. I remember how that scared the piss out of me as a kid. A lot of things scared me back then, before I learned that the only real scary thing in life was stuff like cancer and brain tumors. There weren't any gods or monsters. Not in the real world. Here we had sickness and disease instead of vampires and ghosts.