Burnt Black Suns: A Collection of Weird Tales (24 page)

He closed the door on me and I locked it, then turned around and faced the thing on the table. She panted heavily, her mouth opening and closing as if she were warming up her muscles. I wanted nothing to do with her, but the scent of her sex and soft flesh was making my head swim. I wanted to look away, but despite my bravado in front of Thistle I was afraid that she’d somehow break free when I wasn’t paying attention.

“You’re a good girl, right? You aren’t going to hurt me?”

She snarled and I shuddered.

I knew I had only a few minutes before Thistle’s fantasies got the better of him and he tried to sneak in to catch me literally with my pants down. I wasn’t going to give him the opportunity. He didn’t leave me with much in the storage room, strangely the one place in the house not cluttered to the ceiling. I guess he wanted some room to show his ghoul who was boss. As far as I saw it, despite his grandiose ideas Thistle was not one to share, and his hunger was always going to be bigger than he could fill. I pulled out the folding knife I kept in my pocket and started to fray the ropes around the girl’s wrist and ankles. I was careful not to cut too much—I didn’t want her escaping before I set things in motion. She almost seemed to understand what I was doing because she struggled less as I worked, but when I looked into her eyes I saw they were as empty as a shark’s. There was nothing behind them that approached a soul. Only further blackness.

On cue the door shot open revealing Thistle, his boxer shorts now gone, his pencil at full attention. “What the hell are you—” was all he managed to get out before my knife cut through the last of the ghoul’s bonds and her inhuman strength did the rest. She leapt across the room at such speed Thistle didn’t have a chance to move his hands from his hard-on before she tore off his face with razor-sharp teeth. Still, he tried to speak, his voice a gurgling brook as she crouched over him; then those same teeth removed a large piece of his throat and finally shut him up. She lapped up the blood as quickly as it spurted while his body shook and convulsed, his hand still clenched around his member so tightly it had turned deep blue. I chose this moment, I think wisely, to dash out of the room while the girl was still distracted by her meal. I thought I felt her hands claw at my ankle as I passed and I shrieked, but didn’t stop until I was outside the storage room and was able to shut the door and padlock it. At that point I checked my leg for damage and was relieved to find none.

I slumped to the floor, my heart racing, astounded I’d made it out alive. I don’t know if it was the fear or the sight of that bloodied naked girl, but I found myself somewhat aroused by the whole ordeal. That sensation withered once I felt the pounding on the door I was leaning against.

It was like sledgehammer coming down hard, again and again, from the other side, and judging by the way the wooden frame was splintering it was clear the room wouldn’t hold Thistle’s ghoul for long. I scrambled to my feet and looked around the stacks of debris from the dead man’s life. The only thing in my favor once the girl broke free was that the basement’s maze of junk and wires would prevent her from springing on me, but the obstacles were just as confining for me as they were for her, if not more so. There was no way I could outrun her, but maybe there was a way to escape her. Thistle had left his dimensional machinery on and running, and the window was still operational. I picked up a book from one of the piles and threw it at the window; it passed through with a flash of static. I looked back at the door to see a thin bloody arm break through and begin to tear the wood apart. She made a hole easily big enough to fit her tiny body, and leapt through to land on all fours about fifteen feet in front of me. She snarled and lifted her nose to the air.

“Easy, kitty.”

She had my scent, and in my terror I wondered how she could smell anything with her face covered in blood. It ran through those rows of sharp teeth and then down her neck until it dripped off her tiny breasts. She raised her head skyward and made some horrible screech, and when she was done I heard its response from the electronic window humming behind me. I dared a quick peek and saw a row of shadows in the distance moving across the rocks. She was calling reinforcements, calling her pack, and I knew that if I didn’t do something quickly they were going to find their way through the portal. If that happened, a lot of bad news was going to follow, not the least of which being that I would be deader than Thistle. Some gratitude, I thought.

“Here, girl. Come here, girl.” I tried to whistle, but my mouth was too dry. She looked at me with those dead eyes and cocked her head. “Be a good girl and jump through the window.” I could hear the howling behind me and wondered how much time I had left before the pack arrived. A minute? Maybe two? I couldn’t turn around to see their approach while the girl in front of me stared and growled. I was running out of options. “Come on, girl,” I said, motioning her forward. I’d have shown her my throat as bait, but I didn’t want anything to happen to it. “Come here.” When she took a step forward, I almost wet myself.

I worked to keep the window between us while she took sideways steps, looking for an opening. The cables from the ceiling kept her grounded, but they also kept me from moving very far with any sort of protection. She was making a wet bray as she stalked toward me, and I knew I was running short of time—the howls of her pack were getting louder and louder—but I kept speaking quietly to her, kept tempting her forward. Each step she took left a bloodied footprint behind, and as she knocked computer equipment aside I prayed she didn’t do anything to damage it. When she was within six feet of me she stopped and went up onto her haunches. I could see that all the muscles in her body were so tightly tensed she was like a wound spring. She was getting ready to pounce, but all I could think about was how engorged her labia had become. I swallowed hard.

I moved more by terrified reflex than anything else when she leapt. As soon as those muscles started to unfurl, time for me slowed to a crawl. I immediately stumbled backward, flailing my hands out in front of me. I managed through sheer luck to push the two-post rack over onto her, and as it fell she managed to leap into the portal and disappear from this world and into the next. The window continued to fall toward the floor and I braced for its impact, but it never came. Instead, the electric window hung a foot from the ground, its intact wires and cables breaking its fall. Then I heard wild howling and knew the pack had arrived.

I reached up and started pulling any wire I could get my hands on, hoping to disconnect the window before those creatures could leap through. I could feel the cables giving handfuls at a time, but that sickening hum didn’t stop. I saw an arm appear from under the hanging window, an arm far larger and thicker than the one I’d seen on Thistle’s ghoul, and I knew I didn’t have a choice. I leapt over the fallen debris onto the back of the fallen two-post rack, adding my weight to it. The cables holding it up snapped immediately, and it and I crashed into the ground. The window shattered and I was thrown forward, hitting my head on the edge of one of the tables, knocking computer equipment to the ground. Everything went black for me then.

When I awoke I knew two things: first, that I was still alive; second, that I wished I wasn’t. My head throbbed, and when I put my hand on it it came away covered in blood. I tried to stand, but the world was spinning way too fast and I had to sit again. At least, until the room slowed down. I looked around me at the destruction. A thick beastly arm lay cleanly severed at my feet amid broken glass and plastic. There was blood everywhere, some of it mine, and footprints across the concrete leading back to a broken door and some massacre beyond it. I’d made a clusterfuck of things again, and I had no idea how I was going to explain it away. Normally, I’d just leave, but there was no way my fingerprints weren’t all over the place, no doubt full of blood. My only solace was the knowledge that no one would be missing Dr. Thistle, which bought me a little time.

I managed to crawl upstairs after a while and found a towel to hold against my bleeding head. The wound wasn’t as deep as I’d thought, and the crazy glue I found in one of the millions of boxes was enough to keep the wound shut without me having to go to the hospital for stitches. I crawled into the bathtub and turned on the cold water, then sat there for as long as I could, trying not to pass out. I didn’t think I had a concussion, but I wasn’t going to take the chance. I wasn’t crazy, despite what I kept telling myself.

I’d had to do a lot of things in my life, but getting rid of a body was never one of them. I had a vague idea of what to do, and thankfully Dr. Thistle had all the tools I needed somewhere in his piles of clutter, but sawing through bone is a lot harder than it sounds. When I managed to get him down into enough manageable pieces, I put them and the severed arm into a black garbage bag and carried it over to a place I knew behind Greenwood Racetrack. It was the place you took things you wanted to forget about. Everybody knew that. Once I got back I cleaned the house as best I could and made some space for myself. I’d finally found a home. At least, for a little while. Until they shut the power off, at any rate.

I have read all the books about that time, but they are all wrong. There is no one who knew Henri Etienne as I did, certainly no one in all Paris. We were both students at the Conservatoire, the finest musical school in all the world, where we had met in our first year and had become inseparable. The man people whisper of in the shadows of concert halls bears little resemblance to the boy I had once held dear. This is the way of things, I suppose. Few truly know those they idolize most. Perhaps, this is best.

Henri and I were rivals over everything; two composers always at odds, albeit friendly odds. Or so it seemed to me. But I imagine it would, as I was his better in virtually every way. I do not mean for that to sound as vain as it must, but if this chapter—my final confessional—is to serve its purpose and cleanse my soul, then I must be completely honest. Compared to me, Henri was pale, destined for nothing more than performing in one of the small bars along the Left Bank where he might earn little more than enough to scrape by. It was not that he was unpracticed or undisciplined—he was the sort who put many long hours into honing and refining his craft—it was that his proficiency was never more than average, and his playing rote and unemotional. He was no better than the automaton I’d once seen at the Musée Grévin, one step above a music box with its carved wax fingers and clockwork piano. What I am trying to convey is that the boy was not in the same league as I, and that only made his company more charming to me.

His sister, Elyse, was a different beast altogether. Never in all my years before or since have I laid eyes on a woman so near perfection that even the Almighty himself might be expected to cast a second glance. Elyse was a dream, an angel. And I wanted nothing as much as I did her. Wanted to feel her heat against me. Wanted to show her the sort of passion only a man on the verge of success might be able to provide. And yet, despite all my wooing, she remained resolute against me. I was not an ugly man—my mirror assured me of that—and I was not without means, so her dismissals were very much a surprise. They were illogical, based I was sure on no more than the whims of a woman, and they only made me want her more. I knew she must love me, and that it could only be for her brother’s sake that she refused to admit it.

What charmed me most about Henri was his drive, his perseverance to best me at something, anything. He would take quite a ribbing from me in class and with friends, always second to my performances. Perhaps we were rough on him, kept his nerves raw, but it was only from love. I enjoyed having him with me. He could always be counted on for a humorous glower when I dared play the keys of his wounded pride. It seemed to motivate him, though, something for which he should have thanked me. Though perhaps not in retrospect.

Because of our friendly rivalry, he would pore over every task, practice it incessantly, fixate on achieving the truer performance. Where I might play adagio, he would play presto. A quartet I had written would be countered with a minuet from him. Each work of mine was responded to, each with a fury of playing hitherto unknown to any of us who knew him. Henri’s hands would tremble before every performance, and even my laughter was not enough to calm him. “You mustn’t goad Henri, Valise,” his sister would plead, to which I would only laugh further. “It’s all in good fun,” I’d say, and her sweet porcelain face would twist, and then she would invariably spit at me. Is it any wonder I was so smitten? We would watch Henri play, and while the rest of the room focused on his dancing fingers I could not bear it. It pained me to see them drawing such lifeless notes from the ivory. Instead, I studied his face and the flop of hair that would slide over his brow moments into his performance; or at his flushed skin, sweated with concentration before reaching a boil as he wordlessly realized that what he was playing was a failure. In these instances, he would inevitably look to me and Elyse, and each time he did so I saw defeat had already claimed him. He would not stop playing, but it is a given that once doubt infects a performer’s mind, it spreads like a cancer. Inevitably, he would stumble, in an increasingly tumultuous cascade of errors, ending in muted, polite applause. Often I would find him after these performances weeping discreetly. Forever soft as a lamb was my good old Henri.

At the end of the day, though, my friendship with him was more important to me than anything else save my own career and, perhaps, his sister’s hand, and I did all I could to guide him by my example, providing him a bar by which he might measure himself. Once, while we celebrated too much the sale of one of my compositions, he drunkenly confessed that were he ever to best me, and were he to do so in front of Elyse, he might die a happy man. I treated it as the jest it surely was—with a laugh hearty enough to fill both our mouths. His glower did not falter, which only charmed me further. His sister, however, treated it with far more weight. “We can no longer do this. Please, leave us to our misery,” she said one day as I stood across from her in the October courtyard, but she knew I could do no such thing. Henri was my dearest friend, and she my future betrothed. They would have me in their life until the end of it came.