Butcher Bird Read online

  “Then maybe you just want to be quiet and not talk about it anymore,” Barry said. “Anyway, we’re almost to your drop.”

  “Do you see that building on the corner? I can’t tell what it’s made of. It’s like pink quartz, but the walls are shifting like the whole thing is liquid,” said Spyder.

  “It’s a vacant lot, man.”

  “Maybe I’m just dreaming.”

  “If it’s a dream, you can give me a fifty-dollar tip instead of twenty.”

  Spyder smiled. “Or I could stab you in the head, suck out your eyes and skull fuck you. I mean, if this is just a dream.”

  The cab screeched to a stop. “Get out.”

  “Let me get my money,” said Spyder.

  Barry turned around to face him. He had a lime green windbreaker draped over his arm to hide the old Browning .45 automatic he was holding. “Get the fuck out.”

  “Jesus, Barry. Tell me that’s not your daddy’s gun,” said Spyder. “Pretty Freudian, don’t you think?” The cabbie’s eyes narrowed. “I’m kidding, man. I’m just having a weird day. Let me give you some money.”

  “Keep your hands where I can see them and get out. I’ll shoot you and tell the cops you tried to rob me. When they find all the dope in your blood, they’ll believe me.”

  “Sorry I scared you.”

  “You didn’t scare me, you pissed me off,” said Barry. “Can’t you tell the difference?”

  Spyder got out of the cab and leaned in the front passenger window. Barry kept the gun pointed at him. “Funny, my ex said something like that when she split.”

  Barry gave Spyder the finger, gunned his engine and shot straight down Haight Street before being caught at the next corner by a half-dozen jaywalking punks.

  That guy was going to shoot me, thought Spyder. He considered that as he walked the last half block to the studio. Maybe it wasn’t such a bad option. The hallucinations weren’t letting up. Maybe being shot was what he needed to kick his brain out of the peculiar abyss into which it had fallen. Spyder had the feeling that the day wasn’t going to get any better.

  SIX

  A TRICK OF THE LIGHT

  Spyder walked with his head down, not allowing himself to look around no matter how odd or enticing the visions: black hooves, crows chatting with rats, the suddenly sinister insect-silhouettes of panhandlers he’d seen a thousand times before.

  He smelled musk and ambergris, cook fires and sewage. It reminded him of the Moroccan souks, but he was very far away from Morocco. In fact, very far away from anything familiar right now.

  A sense of relief came over Spyder when he entered the tattoo studio and closed the door behind him. A couple of college girls were inspecting the flash designs on the walls and giggling nervously to each other. They didn’t have wings or horns or extra eyes. They were a beautiful sight. Spyder could hear Lulu in the back with one of her piercing customers. “You’ll feel some pressure, then a slight sting,” she said. “Just like popping your cherry.”

  Hungry for a normal moment he spoke to the college girls. “If you have any questions about the tattoo work, that’s what I do around here, so you can ask me.”

  The girls looked at him and the taller one, a café-au-lait brunette with bright green eyes, said, “How much for the black panther? That’s a real traditional one, right?”

  “Yeah. All the pieces on that wall go way back. And we charge by the hour, so the price depends on how big and where you want it. We have a hundred-dollar minimum.”

  The girls whispered to each other, then turned to Spyder. “We’re going to think about it. Do you have a card?”

  Spyder went behind the counter and found one of the studio’s cards. He felt self-conscious handing it to the brunette. The card had a symbol on it. Spyder knew it was something Celtic, but he had no idea what it meant.

  “Thanks,” said the dark-haired girl, letting her fingertips brush against Spyder’s as she accepted the card. Under normal circumstances, Spyder would have taken that as a signal to go into his charming act, complete with self-effacing patter and a certain calculated awkwardness that gave him the look of someone who might need just a little looking after. Today, however, all he could muster was a tired smile. “Any time,” he said, and turned away from the girls, looking for his appointment book so he could cancel everyone set for that day. Maybe for the rest of the week, he thought.

  His head and body ached and his hands shook a little as he leafed through the appointments. “Every rabbit hole has a bottom,” he said quietly, remembering something that Sara Durango had told him after giving him his first hit of acid when he was fourteen.

  Lulu and her female client were coming out of the back room when Spyder settled on the numbers he needed to call. He didn’t look up, not ready to deal with the world, much less make eye contact with Lulu or the girl.

  “Remember,” said Lulu, “you’re going to want to soak in a sea salt bath and use that antibiotic cream every day.”

  “Every day,” said the other woman. Spyder heard the little bell over the door ring as she left.

  Spyder had to concentrate to make his fingers punch the right numbers into the phone. It rang a few times then gave a subtle click as it switched over to voice mail. “Hi. This is Spyder Lee over at Route 666 Tattoos. Sorry, but I have to cancel our appointment for this afternoon.” He settled back in his seat, giving Lulu a pained smile. “I’m not feeling that well and… holy shit….”

  Spyder set down the receiver and stood up, coming around the counter. Something was terribly wrong. He took Lulu gently by the arm. “Goddam,” said Spyder leading her to a chair. “What happened to you?”

  Lulu looked at him, puzzled. “Nothing happened to me. You’re the one who got stomped, ’member sugar?” She laid her hand on his cheek. The hand was cold and the skin was stiff, like dried-out leather.

  “What happened to you?” Spyder repeated more insistently.

  Lulu kept smiling. She had to. She had no lips. All the flesh from the lower part of her face had been cut neatly away, leaving her with a permanent leer. She wore a T-shirt cut low from the neck, and her dry white skin was crisscrossed with old scars and stained stitching. Spyder thought of the cheap boots and vests he’d bought on teenage road trips to Juarez, across the border from El Paso. Bad leather sewn together crudely and carelessly. Worst of all were Lulu’s eyes. They were gone. Over her empty sockets torn scraps of paper were taped in place, each with a smeared, childlike drawing of an eye.

  “What the fuck happened to you?”

  The exposed muscles around Lulu’s mouth twitched a little. She reflexively pulled away from Spyder and covered her face with her hands, then quickly lowered them. “Oh my god, “she said. “You really had your brains rearranged last night.”

  “Tell me I’m fucked up,” Spyder said. “I’ve been seeing the most horrible shit all day. Monsters. Buildings that aren’t there. Dead people.”

  “Not dead, most likely,” Lulu said. “There’s a whole lot more range between dead and alive than they taught us when we were kids, Spyder.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “There’s a lot no one taught us. Deep, dark secrets. Other worlds. Other kinds of people. Hidden, but right in front of us.”

  “This is a mistake.”

  “I wish. There’s monsters in the world. Some of ’em were born and some were made. I was made.”

  “This isn’t happening. I’m still in the alley. I’m knocked out and I’m dreaming.”

  “I’m so sorry, darlin’. You’re not ready for this. You were never supposed to see or know about it.”

  “Know about what?” Spyder shouted. “What are you?”

  “I’m Lulu, baby. Just Lulu.” She sat down next to him again, a horrible, broken toy. “You’re just seeing another part of me. And I’m so sorry for that.” Tears fell from her empty eye sockets, staining the paper drawings taped there.

  Spyder walked across the room and sat on the floor with his ba
ck against the counter. “I refuse to accept any of this,” he said.

  Lulu got up and locked the door to the studio, then sat back in the chair in front of Spyder. “Darlin’, we’ve known each other since we were six years old. You’re the first person I came out to,” she said. “I guess I’m coming out again.”

  “As what?”

  Lulu leaned forward and laid her hand on his knee. “Please don’t touch me,” Spyder said. She withdrew the hand.

  “I’m not really a monster,” said Lulu. “I’m a damned fool, but I’m not a monster. I just got into something a little over my head.”

  “That part’s obvious.”

  “I just had my eyes opened, so to speak,” she said, pulling her exposed muscles into a smile. “Just like you.” She slid down next to him on the floor, careful not to let her body touch his. Spyder shifted away from her a few inches.

  “Remember four, five years back when I was all messed up on Oxy? I couldn’t work. Couldn’t do much of anything but steal and score.”

  “You still owe me a CD player,” Spyder said.

  Lulu let out an airy laugh, like wind through a keyhole. “Cheapass county rehab didn’t work. Then, I met some people through this dealer. They said they could get me clean. Make my hands steady, so I could work again. Of course, I said Yes.”

  “When was this? I remember you getting better in rehab,” said Spyder.

  “Jesus, Spyder. I didn’t last ten days in there,” Lulu said. “I wouldn’t let you visit, remember? I always called you? I checked out and was on the street scoring until I met these people.”

  “Who were they?”

  “Monsters. Real ones,” she said. “’Course I didn’t know that back then. They offered me the deal of a lifetime. I’d get clean, get my brain and get my hands back. Can you imagine what that meant to me back then?”

  “How’d you end up like this?”

  “You know how is it with dealers. First one’s always free. Then the price just keeps going up. You got a cigarette?”

  Spyder pulled a pack of cigarettes from his jacket pocket, took one, gave one to Lulu and lit them both. They smoked in silence for a few moments.

  Lulu blew a series of small smoke rings through the center of bigger rings, something Spyder had been watching her do since junior high. “The price for giving me back my life was my eyes,” she said. “They said that sight’s mostly in the brain and they could make it so I’d see better without them.” Lulu took a long drag off the American Spirit. Spyder wanted her to stop talking. “They were right, only they didn’t tell me it wouldn’t last. Every year or so, my sight would start to go and they’d show up, ready to deal. They’d already taken my eyes, so they took something else each time. Stomach. Liver. Skin. I don’t know what all anymore. But not my heart. You’d be surprised what you can live without, but not your heart.” Another long drag. A cloud of blue smoke. “Each time, they’d do their little voodoo so my body’d keep going, till the next visit. No one ever noticed the difference. When they took my eyes I saw a whole new world. The world, I guess, you’re seeing now. Shit, Spyder, no one knows anything. All the teachers and cops and priests and shrinks they sent us to, they don’t know what’s really going on. When I saw the real world, knowing how long I’d been blind scared me a lot more than the monsters.”

  “You think this is some kind of goddam gift?” asked Spyder.

  “For you it is. You got it for free. It cost me a little more.”

  “Fuck this world and fuck this gift.”

  “I’d rather fuck your sister.”

  “I’ll trade you for your mom.”

  “Deal,” said Lulu.

  “Goddam,” said Spyder. “It is you, isn’t it?”

  “’Fraid so.”

  Spyder slid his arm around Lulu’s shoulders and pulled her to him. She relaxed and lay her head on his shoulder. They sat on the floor until the sun went down and the studio was dark. People knocked on the door, but they didn’t answer.

  SEVEN

  SHADOWS

  Many years ago, Ishtama was the mother of birds, Setuum was the mother of fishes, and in a golden city in the south, Coatlique, the Lady of the Skirt of Snakes—her body decorated with skulls, serpents and lacerated hands—gave birth to the first man, Mixcoatl.

  Mixcoatl’s sisters were the stars in the sky and he brought one to Earth to be his wife. Their children were the human race.

  As much as Mixcoatl’s wife loved him, she missed her sisters and longed to visit them in the sky. Mixcoatl went to Apsu, the lord of the birds, to ask him to fly his wife back to Heaven. When Mixcoatl arrived, however, Apsu wasn’t there. Apsu’s wife, Tiamut, told Mixcoatl that his Shadow Brother, Marduk, had murdered Apsu. Apsu was a friend and Mixcoatl grew very angry at this news. He climbed to the top of the tallest mountain in the world and cut out Marduk’s heart with an obsidian knife, throwing the Shadow Brother’s body into a deep gorge that led to the center of the world.

  When Mixcoatl went home, he told his wife what he had done. She was afraid. “Our mother, Coatlique, the Lady of the Skirt of Snakes, is dead. Your Shadow Brother, Huitzilopochtli, burst from her breast in battle armor and a bone sword.”

  Mixcoatl told his wife, “I have no brother, shadow or otherwise.”

  His wife said, “Before she died, our mother warned that at some moment in our life, all men and women create their shadow form, born from their desire and rage. These shadow forms do not manifest themselves in flesh unless called into being by an act of violence or madness, a blow at creation itself. When you rashly killed Marduk, you brought forth your Shadow Brother and released pure chaos into the world. Huitzilopochtli is you reborn as a soulless void. If you do not destroy him, he will kill you and take your place.”

  Mixcoatl put on his armor, called his sons to his side and took them to war. For years they roamed the earth looking for Huitzilopochtli, but they didn’t find him. At night Mixcoatl had terrible dreams and awoke in the morning pale and weak. Finally, Mixcoatl grew sick and his army rested by the banks of the frozen sea at the bottom of the world.

  One night, Mixcoatl awoke from fevered dreams to find Huitzilopochtli sitting on his chest. Mixcoatl was too weak to resist and Huitzilopochtli cut out his heart saying, “I’ve eaten you piece by piece in your dreams, Brother, but don’t hate me. I’m not your enemy. I have no choice in killing you and if I smile as I do it, remember it’s only the joy a humble servant feels when he restores order to a disordered house, because, of course, there can’t be two of us walking the earth.”

  Huitzilopochtli took his brother’s place on the throne of the world. His flightiness and endless cruelties inspired many beings to unwittingly turn their shadows into flesh through acts of treachery or revenge. The different Shadow Brothers—kings and farmers, birds, fish and horses—ruled the Earth. This was the era of blood and massacres that caused the world to be divided into Spheres, because no matter how the Shadow Brothers tried to reason together, they couldn’t. They were soulless voids, and even the most cordial exchanges usually ended in murder.

  Thousands of years passed before the living things of the earth rose up and killed all the Shadow Brothers in power. To make sure that shadow forms never ruled again, each realm of life appointed auditors to keep the world in balance. These celestial officers had the power of life and death and could roam all the Spheres at will. They had different names among the different animal tribes—such as Soul Weavers, Holy Clerks, Black Scribes, and others. These beings didn’t destroy the Shadow Brothers, but they kept their influence in check, even when they sometimes had to collaborate with individual Shadow Brothers to set the world right. The loyalties of these auditors weren’t to animal, plant or man, but to the universe. And like the gods themselves, their plans were their own, subtle and unknowable.

  They were thought to be beyond the influence of any god or beast in the universe, and this was true. What no one considered were things outside the universe.

  EIGHT />
  SLOW CHILDREN

  “Did you ever feel like you were a million miles from where you’d thought you’d be when you grew up? Like you thought you were heading for a weekend in Vegas, but ended up in Mongolia instead?”

  Lulu was lying across the three wooden garage-sale chairs they kept up front for customers. Her arm hung down and a lit American Spirit between her fingers pointed at the floor, illuminating the scars on her arm with a faint red light.

  “Sometimes,” said Spyder. “But then I remember the scariest truth about being a grown up: that no one really knows anything. Maybe where most people want to be is as wrong as where they end up.”

  “We’ve been taking our happy pills, I see,” said Lulu. “Know what we never, ever talked about: What did you really want to be when we were kids?”

  Spyder stood up and stretched, saying, “That’s easy. A private detective. You know, a Sam Spade thing. The whole world’d be in black and white and the streets would be slick with rain and lit like a film noir set.”

  “Sam Spade was always lonely and miserable, least in the movies.”

  “But at least he knew something. That makes him the exception.”

  “When I was a girl, I wanted to be Mary Magdalene,” said Lulu. “The most hated woman in the world, but Jesus saw her true heart and loved her for it. I wanted that so much. To be hated by the riffraff, but loved by that one perfect, bright-eyed soul who knew me from the inside out. I used to jerk off to the picture of Jesus over my bed. He looked just like Jim Morrison before the alcohol bloat.” Lulu took a drag off her cigarette. Spyder still wasn’t sure how she was able to smoke with no lips. “When I realized I liked girls more, I jerked off imagining Jesus fucking Mary Magdalene. I was Jesus, of course. I wonder, does that make me narcissistic?”

  “No, you’re more like Mother Teresa.”

  “I’d have fucked Mother Teresa.”

  “You’d have fucked Nancy Reagan if she’d of held still.”

  “If she was in that pink Jackie O outfit she wore to Ronnie’s second inauguration, hell yes. I’d’ve bent her over the big desk in the Oval Office and slipped her the high hard one next to the Bible Ronnie had Oliver North give the Iranians. Hell, I’d have bent Ollie over, too. Gotta love a man in a uniform.”