Anthology of Ichor III: Gears of Damnation (41 page)

As below, so above. And now, history repeats itself. The madman in Berlin wishes to rebuild the temple, to dedicate it to Hades as the tyrant Lygdamis once did. To bring eternal night to the world in exchange for power.

The wooden doors set within the frame of the Portara were closed, bolted and barred shut. There was no way in.

Steve began to laugh. A high-pitched, nervous giggling that escalated to shrill peals of manic laughter.

“
What now, Jules?
What now?”

Julie shook her head slowly. It took a huge effort of will to move it, and an even bigger effort to remain calm, to refuse to give in to the screaming black demon of panic and madness within her.

Apollo had called Steve. But something else had called her. Something else had granted her wish and enabled her to go to him.

Something that knew Steve’s rescue would set in motion the chain of events that led to this. The smell of death that had filled her nostrils when she stepped through the portal should’ve been warning enough.

She stared at the wooden barriers. There were sounds of movement from within the temple. Harsh tramping of jackboot heels, the cocking of rifles, the sharpening of knives. The new priesthood of Hades were making ready to welcome the travellers.

“
We wait,” she said finally. “We wait for sunrise.”

She sat down, cross-legged, and put her head in her hands. She tried to ignore Steve’s screams.

Eventually, the doors opened. But sunrise never came to the Portara.

In Hades’ realm, night is eternal.

MUSIC MAN

by

Bruce Memblatt

Dikon played a mean sax. The streets were good to him. Some days were better than others. The winters were hard. Summer nights were the best. Folks hanging out in t-shirts and jeans sipping cool beer, catching the breeze in their hair were free-er with their spare change on a warm summer night.

Same corner every night, right by the subway station down by Union Square, Dikon would blast out high notes, low notes and every note in-between. He’d take requests, he’d improvise, he’d reprise. Some nights he could pull in a hundred bucks and get a room somewhere, but most nights Dikon stayed out on the streets. If you asked Dikon why he chose the streets he’d tell you he didn’t know, there were some things he could do, some things he couldn’t. He loved the music, but it wasn’t why he stayed out there. Dikon wasn’t searching for fame or fortune. Dikon was just trying to survive. Some said he was just a lazy so and so, but that wasn’t it. Dikon was afraid. He played a mean sax. He played a tough street guy but deep down in that place where there’s nowhere to hide Dikon knew he was afraid of the sun and the moon and everything that slithered in-between, because he couldn’t cope with the small every day things people did to get by. As hard as he tried his head was forever lost in the music and the clouds beneath the harsh sun.

Dikon spotted Virgil one night hanging on the corner where he always played, the corner of Sixteenth and Broadway, the corner he’d came to call
his corner
. There wasn’t anything that unusual about Virgil it was just that he kept coming back. Now Dikon knew he played a good sax, and some people loved the sax, but there were other corners and other street players, why was this dude stopping by almost every night?

Virgil was tall, always wore a hat and he must have been in his late forties Dikon surmised. The thing was there was something dark about Virgil that he couldn’t define, like a sadness, but more. It was like Virgil knew something; something about the way things were going to go down, not just for him but for the world. And Dikon guessed they weren’t going to go down good from the way Virgil carried himself and by the intensity in his eyes. The eggs would fall, the eggs would fall everywhere and break like cheap glass.

Dikon would describe Virgil as a mortician. It was something in the way he looked, his hat, his shiny shoes, his black suit, and the vague smirk that came and went with the frenetic breeze.

When Dikon learned Virgil’s name it must have been the tenth time Virgil had sauntered down to his corner. The red setting sun bleached through the buildings surrounding the intersection like cracked ice under a bed of bourbon. The first thing Dikon saw was the shadow of Virgil’s hat falling over the saxophone case that stretched over the sidewalk by his shoes. The second thing he saw was a twenty-dollar bill haphazardly fall and land on top of the change that lined the case.

The third thing; he heard his voice. “I like the way you play all sad like.”

Dikon couldn’t help but spit out. “ It’s all the loose ends, you know, I can’t figure them out, they turn my head, and I cry through the notes.”

“
You need a job,” Virgil said, that’s all he said, nothing poetic, or complex like Dikon expected, the fucker just said
you need a job
.

Was he all wrong about him? Maybe Virgil wasn’t a mysterious dark soul; maybe he was just another asshole. Dikon knew Virgil was right in the grand scheme of things, but at that time, in that spot, he thought the fool was just shooting off his mouth with an easy answer, and the guy didn’t look like anybody’s fool.

Dikon just shot back, “Yeah, I suppose you’ve got a job for me?”

Without missing a beat, without curling a hair Virgil said, “as a matter of fact I do, my name is Virgil, I own a little club just down on Avenue A called as you might guess Virgil’s. I want you to play there. I’ll pay you; maybe even give you a room.”

Dikon stared in his eyes. Virgil’s eyes were squinting like the sun was hitting them too hard, but the sun was behind him. Dikon thought it added something to his already strange demeanor. It was like the dude was caught between something, maybe between a rock and a hard place, maybe between good and evil, maybe somewhere between sane and crazy like him.

Dikon simply said, “So that’s what you’ve been doing coming down here every night? You were scoping me out, trying to see if I was good enough to play in your club.”

Virgil cracked a half smile. “I’ve been looking for someone special, someone who didn’t pose, someone who played real. I need someone who plays real. You play real.”

“
You know there’s something about you that’s dark. Man, you scare me and you intrigue me.”

“
Do you want the job or not?”

Did he want the job or not? He wasn’t sure, but Dikon was going to take it because the intensity that surrounded Virgil made him curious, not in the sense that he had to find a concrete answer to a concrete question, but in a more ambiguous sense. It was as if Virgil was holding the key to a door they were all going to fall through and if he followed him maybe the blow wouldn’t be so bad. Virgil was going to in some way protect him from the splatter, and chaos that was coming, that they brought on. He could see it in the edges of the buildings and in the way the sunlight peered around corners like it was crying.

“
I’ll take it,” Dikon said, staring at the red sun setting behind Virgil like it was calling him, “I’ll take it. When do I start?”

“
Tonight. Follow me.”

“
So you just want me to leave my corner right now and go with who? You? Some stranger who claims he has a gig for me? You might be some kind of lunatic.”

“
Yeah, why not now, Dikon? Have you got something better to do?”

“
Nope,” was all Dikon said while he slowly bent over and placed his sax in the case, carefully removing the change from the cheap velvet lining, and stuffing the coins into his pockets.

He sneezed twice and then he turned to Virgil and said, “Say, you’re not the devil are you?”
“I’m worse,” he half smiled.

Dikon liked the way Virgil tossed off his answer, like they knew each other as if somehow this had all happened before. Maybe it did he told himself. Maybe everything had died before, maybe it dies over and over, and people don’t notice it. Maybe something has to happen to make you notice it, like you have to meet a Virgil.

Suddenly, Virgil stared at Dikon like he’d just seen the end of the world. “You’ve got a lot of theories don’t you? Well get them all out of your head. I’m just a club owner, that’s all I am. Let’s go.” He said and he began to take his steps.

Dikon followed him, sax case under his arms, an eerie feeling in his belly that told him things were changing. Glass would crash. Under his breath he felt the stone cold feeling of fear mixed with the sizzle of the anticipation of something new happening. He held his saxophone case tightly as they walked down Broadway in silence.

Silence seemed to sit everywhere.

The sun was edging off into darkness, maybe this was the last time Dikon would see its light, the thought struck him like a match, as the window panes in the buildings turned black and the street lights began to emerge, not like they did in the past, but still enough to put on a show.

He thought about light. He thought about his next move. What would he play for his debut at Virgil’s, something dark and bluesy, that must be what Virgil wanted, he thought as they turned onto fifth street and began walking east towards Avenue A, towards Alphabet City, to Virgil’s.

The small brownstones that lined Fifth Street looked like they could fall over and crumble away with one good blow. Dikon imagined himself taking out his sax hitting a high E and watching the buildings tumble away like clay. That’s when Virgil stared at him like he knew what he was thinking.

But all he said was, “three more blocks to go.”

And there they were on the corner of Avenue A and forth street. More brownstones and old buildings lined the way; bordered storefronts, broken ATMs, ripped billboards etched with graffiti with phrases like
Angel was here, God doesn’t care
spread across plywood that covered broken windows and battered doors. It was the darkest street in the world. And in the middle of the street, between Fourth and Fifth on Avenue A, a blue neon sign hung that simply said Virgil’s, over a plain wooden door with a panel of thin glass centered in its center.

The first word that came to Dikon’s mind was
seedy
, and then he quickly remembered he was a lowdown homeless saxophone player. Occasionally he’d forget, he’d even come to believe he had a place somewhere, but it was just a wish in Dikon’s head, a memory of easier times to get him through the rough times. But, in fact, against the backdrop of boarded windows and the broken bottles and cans that lined the street Virgil’s didn’t look half bad. There was a soft glow around the door, which emanated from the dim light from within the club, that made it look mysterious in the way that even in the dingiest of places there are rims and specks of light that can induce beauty, Dikon thought, a sad kind of beauty.

He glanced at the side of Virgil’s head as they walked down the street nearing the door. Vigil’s hat titled over just a bit. He could see the edge of a grin. Dikon wondered when he was going to say something, but at the same time he was eased by his silence, because he wanted to take in the atmosphere. He wanted to hear the place he was going to play in. Dikon thought all places had their own special sounds that reveal their history if you listen close enough. And if the glass started to fall he wanted to be the first to hear it, through everything, through the past, through the present and whatever was left to come.

A motorcycle raced down Avenue A, breaking the silence and Dikon’s concentration. Then Virgil pulled open the door and he said, “here we are.”

The dim light hit Dikon’s face. He saw the back of Virgil’s hat against the light making it appear like a shadow, making Virgil appear like a shadow as he led Dikon into the club. As he guessed there was a bar running down the right side of the room, and against the opposite wall tables scattered about, small round pale wooden tables. A few random shadowed faces appeared in wooden chairs around the tables. Dank and musky was the feeling that came to him, like they had just stepped into an old woman’s attic. There was another sense he got from the room, a sense of sadness, which he thought was unusual, bars usually had a sexy sense to him, even the cheap ones, but this one was sexless and dark with a kind of longing he couldn’t put his fingers on. He looked at the ceiling, old ceiling fans spun slowly, and on the walls, nothing, no pictures or bric- a-brac, nothing, just plain wood panel and some cheap lamps. But the light in the room, there was something about that dim light that brushed against his skin like waves of change, like something was about to happen.  He wasn’t sure it if going to be something good or something bad, or something in- between but he knew this light would play a part in his future. This may be the last light he saw, he thought, when Virgil turned around and pointed to a small slab of wood on the other end of the bar facing the tables.