“Both missing, yeah, I know.” I told him about the connection with FiFi Cherie’s night club and the little job I’d been given. Henry’s grin widened, but I wasn’t feeling so good about all this.
“So we’re in this together,” he said as if some of the clouds around him had thinned.
“I’m not sure I care for this escapade. You say nothing can be taken into this other realm? What about my guns, my knives? I’m naked without them.” It was true. I could handle myself in a fist fight, but from my experience of other realms, you needed a whole lot more than brawn to take on the kind of critters you’d find in there. And if Carmella Cadenza was behind this, she’d have a bodyguard to match the Pope.
“We’ve got the guitar,” said Henry. “And the element of surprise. They won’t be expecting us.”
“Well, that warms the cockles of my heart,” I said.
* * * *
In my apartment, I prepared myself as meticulously as I could for this little jaunt into Whereverland. No guns? Hell, I must be getting senile. I stripped to the waist and applied a certain type of paint in a certain type of way across certain parts of my torso. Once it was dry I put on a shirt I only wore for certain occasions, one that was supposed to be charmed against the agents of darkness (although I had some doubts as to its veracity) and finally I slipped on a necklace and snapped wristbands on each arm. Looking at myself in the mirror, I grimaced. If my pal Rizzie Carter, the local Police Chief, saw me in this get up he’d think I was heading on stage for a pantomime, but it was worth it if it could deflect the kind of nastiness I was about to bump into.
I met up with Henry again in an insalubrious part of town. He wore the tightest pair of black leather pants I’d ever clapped eyes on like he’d been poured into them and a black shirt to match—it even had black buttons.
“Less chance of being seen,” he explained. Across his shoulder he’d slung a black leather case, long and narrow, the prized guitar secreted within. Overall he looked like a runaway from an Iron Maiden concert. I thought maybe I looked a bit like Robert Mitchum’s kid brother, but I doubt if Henry had ever heard of the guy.
Darkness had already dropped over the city as Henry led us through the streets to a remote place where, mercifully, not many of the lights overhead worked. There were a few people about, night owls, but they paid us no heed. Henry was heading for the place where Suki Yosimoto had last been seen, as far as he knew. I had some pretty good contacts in these rat-runs, but Henry had his own eyes and ears.
“You’d be surprised what they’ll do for a peek at The Deep Green,” he grinned. “She’s a legend.”
We entered an old building that looked like one good sneeze would bring the whole place down on our heads. It must have housed every pest known to man—woodworm, dry rot, wood beetle, concrete cancer, you name it, this was their heaven. We threaded our way through the piled dust and debris, our way barely lit by one flickering street light outside.
Henry unzipped his case and slid out the guitar. It had a weird blue glow to it, faint as moonlight in fog, so we were able to see our way into the heart of the collapsing masonry. This would not be a good place to get buried. My bangles and baubles were proof against sorcery, not a ton of falling bricks.
Unfazed, Henry slipped the guitar strap over his shoulders, paused to take in a deep breath, and then gently stroked the strings. The sounds he made were like whispers, susurrating around us, echoing back like ripples on a pond as they touched the walls. We waited in sudden silence after the sounds faded.
Ahead of us was a solid wall. It groaned and we both ducked instinctively. Dust belched from abrupt cracks in the surface and before we knew it, the whole goddam shebang was toppling forward, with us under it, like mice about to be pinned in a trap. However, as the bricks reached us, they parted like a miniature Red Sea, and thundered down on both sides of us. What we were left with was a thick cloud of dust and a tall, black gash, empty as space.
Coughing fit to bust our lungs, Henry and I went into that darkness. It was a vacuum, soundless, but at last, we could breathe. Behind us, the dust and rumble of settling masonry died away and it was like someone had slammed shut a mighty door.
Henry, his face smeared in muck, grinned. “We’re through,” he said.
I didn’t know whether to be relieved or unnerved. I settled for glad to be alive and we moved on, the light slowly changing from inky black to dark grey. Henry put the guitar away and it fused with his back, making him look like some kind of malformed troll. One disguise was as good as another.
Henry had earlier told me as much about this realm as he knew. It was, he said, like a bubble between worlds, limited in dimensions, held together by ancient spells and sorcery created eons in the past by creatures—demigods, he said—who generally shunned the light and occasionally needed someplace to hole up while the powers of light went on the rampage, looking to exterminate them.
By the septic glow of the light somewhere ahead I could see we were in some kind of tall, rocky maze, the sheer walls rising up into total darkness. This was either one big, monolithic building, or a subterranean catacomb of dubious dimensions. I just hoped that Henry had some inkling of where we were headed. I’d have been lost within a dozen paces. All we had was the dim light and there was no clue to its source. What I did figure out was that we were not alone.
Something or more likely somethings were plodding about, probably down more than one of those narrow runs in the stone. High up in the darkness, something else flapped and scraped along, a big bunch of bats maybe, or creatures with similar wings. And claws. They always had claws.
As we wove our way deeper into the maze, I got the distinct impression that the shifting, scraping things beyond us were moving in a certain pattern. My guess was, we were being herded.
“I think you’re going to need your guitar,” I whispered to Henry.
He grinned back at me. Jeeze, he was enjoying this. It must be his youth. Barely gone twenty and he was up for anything. I ached for my twin Berettas, although I had a feeling that in this place they would be less effective than water pistols.
Something emerged from the murk ahead of us. It looked like a pile of rags on small stilts, with one arm as twisted as the branch of a warped tree, flapping at us. The other arm gripped a crutch, another distorted branch which just about supported the thing. Light gleamed briefly under a long confusion of hair and beard in what I took to be a couple of eyes. They were the only features in an unrecognisable face.
Henry did unstrap the guitar, slipping it out of the case slowly. I was relieved to see the faint blue glow, which suggested to me that the thing was primed. “We’re in luck,” he said. “It’s the Raggedy Man.”
Luck? This mobile heap of garbage was a sign of luck?
“The legends say if you find him, he can help you.”
“This way,” hissed the Raggedy Man. “You gotta ignore those who clutch.”
Now there was an expression to fill you up with confidence. Those who clutch? What in hell had we gotten into here?
Henry didn’t seem to have the same reservations that wriggled coldly through me and we followed the Raggedy Man as he swiveled and hobbled through a corridor leading off the main one. I went after them cautiously, my hands spread like fans, ready to simulate Bruce Lee at his lightning best. If anything
