The Devil's Metal (16 page)

“Sleep tight,” I heard him say. “We’ll be on
our way soon.”

His words rang throughout my head as I was
pulled deeper and deeper into the dark chasm of sleep. I was almost
under, almost in my dreams, when the bus shook slightly.

My eyes opened carefully and I expected to
see Sage standing by the bed. But there was only the faint light
from above the couch next to the bunks, casting long shadows around
the bus. I was too tired to raise my head off my pillow and look
around, but I had the eerie, unsinkable feeling that I wasn’t alone
on the bus.

Someone else was with me.

I opened my mouth to call for Sage but a
faint noise stopped me. It came from the bunk below. I held my
breath and listened.

It was a weird wet and slopping sound that
was punctuated by the bunk shaking. In my drugged head I imagined a
pile of bleeding guts and an animal rooting through them and
wolfing them down in thick, drooling gulps.

I felt frozen in a weird panic, trying to
figure out what it could be and trying to battle the now steadily
encroaching sleep. Before I could look over the edge of the bunk
and look, as terrifying as that prospect was, the bunk shook a
final time and something solid fell out of it and slapped onto the
floor. The last thing I heard was the sound of something wet and
heavy being dragged, and the last thing I saw was a long, low
shadow passing along the walls, heading out the bus door.

Sleep claimed me before I had the chance to
scream.

CHAPTER TEN

Dear Miss Melanie,

How are you doing, honey child? I keep
calling you and missing you, but your mom mentioned you met a “nice
young man” and well, I guess that explains it. That’s all she told
me though, so don’t worry about your mom spilling pervy details
(not that I think you’d tell your mom all about your love life, but
since I’m not there, I can’t imagine who you’re spilling the beans
to!). But anyway, RIGHT ON!!

It’s hard for you to get in touch with me on
the road and I don’t know when this letter will reach you, but I
can tell you that on August 13th, I’ll be staying in Nashville for
two nights at the Hermitage Hotel (SUPER LUX!!). Most of the time
though we just sleep on the bus, so this will be so much fun and I
can’t wait to hear your voice—I hope you call! Ask for Rusty (don’t
ask!).

I’ve been fine. It’s been a weird trip,
that’s for sure. At first I was so shy and nervous around these
guys, and not all of them have been very nice. I gotta be honest.
Noelle was an outright bitch at first, but she’s warmed up a teeny
bit. Well, she’s not glaring at me as much, and she’s stopped
calling me a groupie, and she actually gave me a pretty good
interview yesterday. Mickey is kind of quiet and I get the feeling
he doesn’t really care about me one way or another, but I don’t
mind. Graham is an ass. When he’s not setting off by himself on
some “business,” he’s reading cult-like textbooks. He likes
Aleister Crowley just like Jimmy Page does, but at least Page is
sincere with his black magic and stuff. Graham just seems like a
poser, always wearing black and acting like a creep. And he knows I
am on to him, that’s why he’s always glaring at me or being weird
when I’m around. I get the feeling he wants me to be there, but I
worry him just the same. The rest of the band doesn’t even pay
attention to him and neither do I…except when I have to interview
him during 2-3AM in the morning. What a loser! I’m NOT looking
forward to that.

There’s Jacob, the band manager. He’s an
enigma. He’s like tall and large; he reminds me of a British boxer
turned gangster and should have gold teeth. He’s very rough around
the edges and just last night at Chicago’s show, he punched a rabid
fan in the head for coming after Robbie with a pen (I guess he
thought it was a penknife?). But I like him for some reason. He
looks after me like a surrogate father, in a way, and he seems to
know way more than he lets on. Sometimes I think he’s Merlin.

Robbie…oh dear. I can’t wait to get you on
the phone so I can spill the real details. He is as charming and
gorgeous as you would think. He’s easy to talk to…or he was. He’s
kind of distanced himself from me after the other night. Mel, I did
a real dumb thing. REAL DUMB. I don’t know if there was something
inside me that needed a rebound to get over Ryan or what (and it
worked, because I haven’t thought about him in days), but let’s
just say drugs and tongues were involved and leave it at that.
Seriously. You wouldn’t believe it. I hang my head in total
shame.

What makes it worse is that we were caught
by Sage himself. Sage Knightly. You know I’ve always had a soft
spot for him, and being here with him on the bus has only made it
worse. At first he was pretty pissed that I was here, but he’s
coming around. He told me that, in not so many words. He’s very
distant from me and keeps to himself a lot but there is no question
he is large and in charge. And MEL, HE IS LARGE! Don’t get your
head in the gutter, I haven’t touched him and don’t plan on it
(Dawn is no longer allowed to touch rock stars!), but he is large
in form (super tall, super amazing smile, crazy strong—I’d
embellish but you’d get the wrong idea—tattoos that are hotter in
person made up of tiny snakes and Day of the Dead type
stuff…speaking of, it’s quite apparent he’s of Mexican blood
somewhere. Though his eyes are that light green/gray color, his
skin tone is very olive in real life, and I caught him reading a
book in Spanish once). Anyway, rambling, he’s also larger than
life. I hope to interview him at some point, but every time I work
up the nerve, I either say something snappy or I don’t say anything
at all. I don’t know what that guy is doing to me, but I don’t like
it.

What else? Well there are some crazy
groupies that the boys call the GTFOs (not to be confused with the
GTOs, and by the way, pretty sure Robbie has done the deed with
Miss Pamela), and they are nuts. One is a journalist and is trying
to get me in trouble with the manager by spreading lies and being a
jealous bitch, the other threw beer on my face, and the other, the
“crackpot ringleader,” is called Sonja and I swear she’s a witch.
Or maybe I’ve just been hanging around Graham for too long.

As for my writing…eh…it’s coming along. I
wrote a long concert review for the story yesterday on the bus ride
to Chicago. I’ve got some notes on Robbie (though he won’t let me
use a tape recorder) and Noelle. I’m actually writing this right
now on my knee as I head toward Creem’s office. YUP, I am in
Detroit and I’m about to see the big boss himself, Mr. Barry
Kramer. It’s sort of unofficial, they knew the band was playing in
town, and asked Jacob to send me over. So I’m in a cab and sort of
sweating to death of nervousness. Wish me luck!

It feels weird being on the road and so out
of touch with the world. I heard Nixon got impeached! The economy
is totally sinking into a recession! There could be wars going on
and I wouldn’t know about it! The only inkling of the world at
large that I have is when Bob, our bus driver, stops to fill up the
bus and complains about the gas prices. But at the same time, it’s
kind of nice. Now if only I could just buckle down and start
writing some genius stuff.

I love and miss you and hope I see your
smiling face soon!

Dawn.

Future Editor of Creem Magazine

“Could you pull over the next time you see a
post box,” I asked the cab driver as we zoomed up suburban
Detroit’s bumpy streets. “I need to mail a letter.”

“No problem, mama,” the cabbie answered
back. I folded the letter to Mel and stuck it in a stamped envelope
and sealed it shut. Then I sat back in the ripped cab seats and
watched the world go past, trying to keep myself occupied.

Detroit was huge and more sprawling than
Seattle. It wasn’t pretty by any stretch, not even close to the
Emerald City, but it had its own vibe and sense of malaise. Cars
were made here, and according to the headlines I’d caught from gas
station newspapers, as the economy crashed so did the auto plants.
You couldn’t see it in the faces of the kids as they played on the
streets in threadbare clothes, but you saw it in the adults as they
stared blankly at their neighbor’s foreclosure signs on overgrown
lawns. The black population was huge but even Mel wouldn’t have fit
in. She was too cute and full of smiles. The folks here stood on
the street corners with suspicious baggies, eyes full of hate and
defeat as my cab rolled past them. It was a hard luck city, and I
had to wonder why Creem decided to set up office in the land of
motors.

We drove past a post box, but before I had
time to point it out, the cabbie said, “Too dangerous for a white
lady like you.” When we finally did find a box, he ran out to mail
the letter and left me in the cab. I had been away from the band
and the safety of the tour bus for a half hour, and though my
cabbie seemed like a good man, I had never felt so alone in the
world. One tall redhead in a world of real life problems that would
put any spoiled rock star’s to shame.

As the cab trundled along the streets, I
tried to sit back and relax. Now that the letter was out of my
hands and on its way to Mel, my mind was free to wander and that
wasn’t always a good thing. It wanted to get nervous about going to
Creem, meeting Barry and discussing the work in progress…which so
far hadn’t been much work at all. I felt beads of sweat forming
underneath my palms and a shakiness in my lungs from my building
nerves. Oh boy.

I kept my eyes focused on the city rolling
past, trying to ignore it. When we stopped at a light, I looked
over at the brown Cadillac next to us. There was a woman in the
backseat holding up a bundled baby and cooing to it. I couldn’t
help but smile. Even though I couldn’t see the child’s face because
of how it was swathed, the cute way the mother was bouncing it up
and down and the sheer joy on her face made me feel warm
inside.

I watched as the mother brought the baby in
closer for a kiss.

A long, inhuman tongue protruded from the
infant like a waving tentacle. It licked the mother’s nose,
slopping around her face.

I felt the skin at the back of my neck
tighten. My arm hairs stood on end. My breath was gone.

The mother smiled at the child as the tongue
slinked back into its head. Then she slowly, deliberately turned
her head toward me. She smiled again. Her teeth were red with blood
and it dripped down her chin. As she kept that frozen grin on her
face, the infant’s tongue came back out and wiped it all away.
Blood spilled down its pulsing, wet length and into the baby’s
blanket.

I hadn’t noticed I was screaming until the
cabbie slammed on the brakes and I was jerked against the
seatbelt.

“What the hell, woman?” he yelled, giving me
crazy eyes in the mirror.

I looked back out the window at the
Cadillac. It was already ahead of us and turning down a street. I
couldn’t get my thoughts together, couldn’t feel my limbs. What the
hell was happening? Did I really just see that?

I gulped for breath and shook my head.
“Sorry. Thought I saw something.”

The cab driver didn’t look too
convinced.

Finally we reached the Creem office and I
tipped my cabbie handsomely for getting me there in one piece. He
gave me a funny look, a little glad to have me out of his cab, and
took off down the street. I couldn’t blame him. I was
simultaneously a nervous wreck over meeting Barry and a paranoid
nusto who was seeing baby demons on the street. I had to get myself
under control and fast.

Here I am
, I thought, standing in
front of the rather plain building on Cass Avenue. The rest of the
buildings on the street were rather quaint and Victorian looking,
but Creem Magazine’s headquarters looked totally rock and roll in
that “I’m not trying hard” way.

I took in a deep breath and tried to keep
the waves of nausea at bay, and made my way up the stairs to the
front door. I almost reached it when the door flung upon and Lester
Bangs stepped out.

I nearly had a heart attack. Here was my
hero, Lester, in all his mustached, aviator sunglasses glory,
wearing a dirty t-shirt with a rainbow on it that did nothing to
hide his potbelly.

“You’re the kid? The chick? The kid chick?”
he asked, talking a mile a minute. I noticed he still had one foot
in the door.

“I think so?”

He waved me over. “Come on, come on. It’s
not safe out here for a girl like you.”

I couldn’t tell if he was making fun of me
for being a country bumpkin or what, but he quickly ushered me
inside. He closed the door behind me and set about turning as many
locks as possible.

“Rough neighborhood?” I asked.

He let out a shy, “Heh heh heh,” and when he
was done, he turned and ran up the narrow stairs, calling over his
shoulder, “we had a break-in a few days ago. We’re getting the fuck
out of here.”

I ran up the stairs after him, noting the
smell of smoke and incense in the air. When I got to the landing
and turned the corner, I was faced with a neat and tidy teak desk
and the round, smiling face of a woman in her early thirties. She
exuded both welcoming and no-nonsense qualities about her, and her
multiple bracelets shook as she reached out to shake my hand.

“I’m Maureen,” she said. The phone beside
her rang, rattling in its receiver.

“Mother Goose,” cut in Lester, winking at
me.

“Maureen, I’m Dawn,” I told her. “We spoke
on the phone.”

“I speak to everyone on the phone, dear. Go
right in, Barry is waiting for you.” She reached across her desk
and smacked Lester on the arm. “Be nice to this one.”

“I’m nice to all the ladies,” Lester told
her but she was already occupied on a phone call.

Lester gently touched my shoulder like his
contact would set me off, and steered me around the corner of the
desk and cloudy, plastic partition until I was in an open-planned
office. It was like a small city, with cluttered desks lining the
outskirts and narrow corridors between them. Papers were flying
everywhere, caught in a dirty breeze that rolled in from an open
window, a breeze that did nothing to clear the thick haze of
tobacco and pot smoke that hung in the air like a mass of
thunderheads. The office was pretty much empty except for a man and
woman who wrote side by side in the back of the room, she on the
phone taking notes, he clacking up a storm on his Underwood
typewriter. The walls were dotted with Robert Crumb cartoons,
signed records, concert photographs, and magazine covers. It was
chaos and heaven all at once.