Black Wings Of Cthulhu: Volume Two Part 14

She handed Felix the small volume. A reprint from 1863 Mexico City. Biblioteca de la Luz Oscura.

The black-and-white ill.u.s.trations were crude but effective. Ghouls among Aztec ruins. Ghouls eating corpses. Orgies on the roof of the National Cathedral. There were a few notes in Lovecraft's handwriting; Felix recognized it from the other book. G.o.d names were underlined. One section had been labeled "Changelings." One of the most horrible ill.u.s.trations had the underlined note: "Drawn from LIFE." The last section was in Latin, "Ordo Novo Astrorum." It was full of dates, and lat.i.tude and longitude tables and astrological symbols. Again Lovecraft's note, "De Castro says when the stars are RIGHT check alignments monuments of Tullan." There were a few strange sketches of buildings; one did look like Wright's Maya House. Another, perhaps a giant door, was labeled Paseo de Ya-R'lyeh.

Carlotta had broken down. Rivers of mascara ran down her brown face. For the first time Felix realized how young she was. She was his age (or just a few years older). And how sad. And what nice b.r.e.a.s.t.s. She lunged at him, and he stared at demonic l.u.s.tful Carlotta in the painting. Her tears fell hot on his chest, and there were black stains on his light blue cotton shirt. He knew if he understood why she had to keep painting the thing she feared, he would understand fear. He would be the next Karloff, the next Lugosi. He held her. He patted her. He hoped she couldn't feel his hard-on.

When the storms of emotion pa.s.sed he took her to Chabelita's. Tacos. Burritos. Hamburgers. Mexican Food. He had a burger and coffee and asked if he could borrow the book.

After the litanies and the offerings the book was a makeup guide and acting manual. To become a ghoul, you had to cover yourself with a blue-black mixture. It was partially graveyard dirt (to make yourself pleasing to the Lord of Worms), ground Seer's Sage (pipiltzintzintli), "magic" mushrooms, soot, and turkey fat. There were useful suggestions on how to make the jaw line appear more doglike, how to make the hair ropy. The book really suggested replacing teeth with obsidian chips and making an incision at the base of the spine for the tail to grow. There were a few notes on the language-"meeping," Lovecraft had glossed.

The ghoul not only ate the flesh, but the memories of the deceased. Wizards and priests were highly prized. It had limited powers of invisibility. It was immortal, although de Castro was unclear about this; it faded from the world of the "tonally"-the everyday world made from parts of the sun. The ghoul lived on a dream world untouched by the healthy sun of earth.

No wonder Juan went crazy. De Castro's informants had been drug-crazed Otomi shamans plotting to throw the Spanish out. Their post-Conquest oppression had been great; if bullets couldn't be had, magic could.

Felix had a week. He began with regular makeup products. He painted his teeth black, thinking the obsidian would be overkill. He even scared himself in the mirror.

He didn't call Carlotta during his preparation time. He knew he could fall in love with her, and she would be scared s.h.i.tless that he was using the little book at all. He had sort of, kind of, suggested that he would just drop it into Mr. Ackerman's mailbox. Besides, she was probably crazy too. She had had to rationalize Juan's actions. She had to at least partially believe that he had become a ghoul. Felix wondered if she worried about her Momma's dead body; one of the clippings had been about a Mexican graveyard...

Besides, it bothered him how hot he got thinking of the naked many-breasted Carlotta in the painting. He wanted to be scratched by the long gore-stained nails, rub his tongue down the rows of canine teats.

Three days before Night Gallery would be casting the ghoul for "Pickman's Model" Felix had a breakthrough. He had an honest-to-G.o.d gimmick. He could claim to have Aztec sorcery on his side! Man, how cool is that?

The magic-using personality can always find omens of confirmation. That night's "Late Late Show" was The Time Travellers in which Forrest J Ackerman played a bit part. The G.o.ds were in favor.

Getting the Seer's Sage and the "magic" mushrooms wasn't easy; he used Crisco for turkey fat, but he did scoop some real-live cemetery dirt. He had to add some more routine pigments to make his blend. Then he called the NBC studios in "beautiful downtown Burbank" and asked if he could be allowed to do his Aztec ritual before the casting call. This was California, so the "yes" was a foregone conclusion.

He decided it would be better to say the incantation in English, so he translated the chant 93: Lowly Father of Worms, whose moon face is disfigured with rotting death, I am you and you are me. Behold, I wear the dead skins like my uncles the Priests.

Behold my teeth are the stones of Tezcatlipoca like my uncles the Priests.

You taught that to walk, which should not walk.

You have fatted me on the bodies of wizards!

You are Eihort. I feast with Thee! You are Nyarlathotep-Metzli! I mock with Thee!

You make liquid my flesh! You make dead my mind! You make long my bones!

Yr Ngg Eihort Ebloth Yetl! Yetl! Shinn-ngaa!

I am you and you are me! I am your flute. I am your teeth!

Felix practiced the chant, trying to make it sound American Indian-that is to say, like every cowboy movie he had ever seen. He fell asleep at three in the morning. He awoke with a terrible hangover. The door of his apartment was open and there was blood on his lips, but Felix Ramirez was not an imaginative man.

On the big day it seemed that everything that could go wrong did. Someone had locked the studio and the key couldn't be found. Then they couldn't get the air turned on. Then Mr. Serling had to go to another set, and they had to wait. Some of the wannabe fiends left. The audition was supposed to happen at three. At six-thirty they got to their dressing room. Felix had tried to tell everyone about his new-found religion. The black security guard listened with the "I've heard it all" look. The white receptionist seemed interested in the s.e.x magic part. Two of the ghouls-to-be had joined a new religion that month also. One was about UFOs, the other had to do with screaming.

There was another delay. The goop on his face had made it numb; now it was making him a little dizzy. Felix didn't know what "Seer's Sage" was-but it came across as pot from h.e.l.l. It definitely gave him the munchies. Weird thoughts kept creeping into his mind. You know, if I was high on this s.h.i.t I could pull my teeth out. That would feel real good, like coming. I wonder if Chinese people taste like Chinese food? I bet I could jump really high. There's probably not much human left in Juan Rotos. I bet worms p.o.o.ped in that graveyard dirt. I am probably wearing dead people. I want to say to Rod Serling, "I submit you for Eihort's approval!" I am really hungry. I shouldn't have thrown away that pizza, the mold might make it taste better, who knows? I want to bite that white girl receptionist.

Felix got up and paced. This was getting too weird. Juan had probably got a bunch of his angry young Mexicans to try this, and then do a little graveyard vandalism in some rich white cemetery. Probably Forest Lawn-what an emblem of what's wrong with white America! That would have sent them way over the edge! He took a deep breath. He would sit down and focus on the chant. The room was a little too bright, a little too hot. The eight other guys done up as ghouls were beginning to bug him. He wanted to meep at them.

Two more ghouls left. Felix saw through the open doors the moon had come up. The Otomi said the moon was once the equal of the sun. Then the sun threw a rabbit in its face. All the craters astronauts visited were an insult to the moon. The moon gave his flesh to worms, which became people. It was people's job to revenge the moon's insult. The messenger of the moon mocked other G.o.ds. It was people's job to get with the program. Felix closed his eyes. The moon called to him. Revenge me! Make red!

Mr. Serling strolled in with his big Dane bodyguard. Felix jumped up and said he was going to do his chant now.

"What's that clown doing?" asked Serling.

The words were coming out all wrong. It had started in English, but it became something else. The bodyguard pushed Serling backward. "If this is a publicity stunt it is stupid."

Felix felt his arms growing/lengthening. He should have made the cut for the tail. That was going to hurt. The security guard had dropped his comic book. One of the ghouls was yelling about the s.p.a.ce brothers.

The smells! The room was full of the revolting smells of living things, all hot and shiny-smelling like the sun. Like Tonatiuh! The insulting sun, enemy of the thousand-faced moon. Felix grabbed the arm of the s.p.a.ce-brother worshipper. He yanked hard. It didn't come off the first time, but tore free the second. Make red. He squeezed the forearm the way he squeezed a toothpaste tube. He loved the taste as it squirted in his mouth. But his teeth were wrong. They were white like the sun. Something hot burned into his chest. The guard was shooting him. Serling was screaming as the big blonde pushed him into an elevator. Felix yelled, "I submit you for Eihort's approval! You are entering a place between substance and shadow, things and ideas! I am filing you under 'S' for snack!"

Then Felix could see it. A big crack in the world. He could see it, the place between substance and shadow, things and ideas. He could see the nagual, the dreamlands. He could see a long stairway of onyx or obsidian hanging off the crack, which both was and was not in s.p.a.ce. The guard threw his gun at Felix. What did the f.u.c.ker think was going on-that this was Dragnet?

Felix knew he had to re-establish order. These people weren't focused. He yelled out, "Ninoyoalitoatzin inic nehuatl inic chicnauhtopa! Nimoquequeloatzin Niehort! Yo es Nyarlathotep-Metzli! I am the Father of Worms!"

No one bowed. They were supposed to bow. The Mocker Moquequeloatzin had made worms walk to make fun of the G.o.ds. Religion was the black joke. He charged at the screaming receptionist. He grabbed her fat little cheeks like tamales. He stuffed them in his mouth. Her screams were laughter.

He could see into the earth now as though the floor, the ground were purest crystal. He could see Eihort. It was a bloated white football resting on tiny legs. The ghouls were feeding on bodies. When it moved it made the countless little earthquakes LA suffered. The whole Pacific rim shook when it shook. Eyes formed in its Jello, and they looked at Felix with love he hadn't felt since Momma died.

Police were running in the door. The moon looked about twenty times as big. Moonlight sounded so sweet. He loped toward the door. The cops were shooting, and then they were running. Out in the parking lot was a big white van. It was open.

Inside was Carlotta, her sixteen tiny b.r.e.a.s.t.s displayed. There was a ghoul driver. Juan, no doubt. She meeped and barked, but she clearly meant, "Vamonos!" Felix ran to his mate. The van careened out of "beautiful downtown Burbank."

THE NIGHT THE PRESS CALLED "ATTACK OF THE GHOULS" WAS one of the closest calls I had with the boss. He had been having fits filming "Cool Air" and was on set for many extra hours. There was an audition for the ghouls for "Pickman's Model"-and like always with NBC the message to call off the audition was lost in the main switchboard. The boss decided to go over. He felt sorry that the poor actors had been waiting for so long. As soon as we walked in, one of them-clearly some kind of hophead-began mumbling some weird stuff. I tried to push the boss away, but he was all irate as usual. Then another one of the ghouls runs up to the first one. The hophead pulls the other ghoul's arm off. We all thought it was a publicity gag. Then the security started shooting. I got the boss out of there. NBC put a big hush on the story. They decided that people would think it was a really stupid ad campaign. Of course, some of the story did leak out in the town of "It bleeds, It leads." Some reporter tried to connect the incident with some graveyard vandalism, but I tell you it was just another snapshot of how people act in Hollyweird.

-Tycho Johansen, I Was Rod Serling's Bodyguard

(North Hollywood Books, 1983) *

The Clockwork King, the Queen of Gla.s.s, and the Man with the Hundred Knives DARRELL SCHWEITZER.

Darrell Schweitzer has been writing fantasy and horror since the early 1970s. His credits include Whispers, Twilight Zone, Cemetery Dance, Interzone, Postscripts, and numerous anthologies. He is the author of three novels, The Shattered G.o.ddess (Donning, 1982), The White Isle (Owlswick Press, 1989), and The Mask of the Sorcerer (New English Library, 1995), and the novella Living with the Dead (PS Publishing, 2008). He is a poet, critic, and interviewer, and has published books about Lord Dunsany and H. P. Lovecraft. He was coeditor of Weird Tales for nineteen years. He is a four-time World Fantasy Award nominee and one-time winner.

MUCH OF THIS STORY WILL HAVE TO REMAIN suppositional, because a good deal of it is speculative and significant parts of it are untrue. I did not witness. I was not there.

I will admit that I met Reginald Graham in college, a few weeks into my freshman year. He was two years older than me and, yes, I looked up to him awfully, and yes, I suppose I really did, as campus wits snickered at the time, follow him around like a puppy dog, but no, we were not lovers, not queer; it wasn't like that at all. I hate it the way people think only in such cliches rather than stretch their pea-sized brains just a little. When a boy gets into a relationship like that with someone older it may be more that he's Wagner looking for Faustus, applying for the position of genuine, certified sorcerer's apprentice, mad scientist's a.s.sistant, sidekick junior grade. You don't even have to be a hunchback to get the part. What he hungers for is wisdom, guidance, a path through life, and he will cling desperately to someone he thinks has got it. Maybe this does indicate a certain weakness of character, or simple immaturity. Did you ever wonder what happened to poor Wagner after it all? No one cares. Go look it up.

You know the main bit: Cut is the branch that might have grown full straight, And burned is Apollo's laurel bough.

Et cetera, et cetera.

So maybe I was indeed somebody with no backbone, looking for a combination of a guru and father figure, but I wasn't his b.u.m-boy, so you can just forget about that.

How, then, am I mad? Hearken! and observe how healthily-how calmly I tell you the whole story.

I followed Reggie Graham around because I thought he was a genius. At that point he was working on being a poetic genius, the next T. S. Eliot or Ezra Pound, and if his words often didn't seem to make sense that was because they were deep. They had to be, from the pa.s.sionate conviction with which he declaimed them. Oh, yes, some of the impression he made was biological chance-he was a big, broad-shouldered guy with brilliant red hair, a thick beard, and a booming voice-and some of it was stagecraft, complete with a fake British accent that he could put on when he wanted to; but his voice somehow sounded right. It commanded authority, like a prophet's. And he was a genius.

It was during this period that he gave me my first real clue to what a far more frivolous writer later called life, the universe, and everything. We were driving late at night, way out in the country, coming back from I don't remember what, and on a lonely road, far enough away from anywhere that there was no city glow even on the horizon, he pointed to the darkened fields on either side of the road, and said, "Have you ever really thought about it, Henry? The darkness. As soon as you get away from the road and the occasional farmhouse, just a few hundred yards out into one of those fields, you might as well be on another planet. Anything could be happening out there, out of sight, out of earshot. If somebody were being raped or murdered or"-here he laughed and dropped into a sinister, particularly good Boris Karloff impression-"eaten by cannibals, those lights, the world, civilization, the possibility of rescue would seem as hopelessly far away as the stars, and no one would ever know."

"They'd find the bodies in the morning. There'd be buzzards."

"But the world of the morning light is not the world of the darkness, Henry, no, not at all. By day, that's a familiar field. You're trespa.s.sing on some farmer's property, all mud and cornstalks. But at night, in the darkness, it's as remote as the bottom of the sea."

"And what do you find there?" I asked.

"Something terrible," he said, "Or something beautiful. Or both at the same time."

Now I may suppose that Reggie had already started his nocturnal perambulations in farmers' fields by then, but I did not know-I do not know-because what he did right after that was drop out of school. His genius led him to actually getting one of his verse plays put on by an avant-garde company in Philadelphia. I attended the first performance, which was staged in a long corridor with a huge plastic bag stretched the length of it, and the audience sitting on the floor on one side, with the actors on the other. Most of it consisted of shrieked, half-comprehensible lines, cacophony on musical instruments, and silhouetted violence. The costumes suggested chess pieces. It was all, in the parlance of the period, "heavy," and that and twenty-five cents, as some campus critic quipped, would get you a cup of coffee. What it got Reggie Graham was the termination of his college career, because his parents insisted he major in business or accounting so he could get an actual job afterwards, and while such a romantic rebellion is eminently suitable for one of such genius, certain practicalities set in when funds are cut off.

THE DARKNESS. WE SPECULATE THEN THAT IN THIS POST-collegiate period Reginald Graham found his way into the darkness. Maybe he drove out to that very same country road one night, pulled over to the side, and just started walking, off into nowhere. Maybe he found where he was going. Maybe the shadows and hints of shapes became solid for him. Maybe he stepped through some kind of gateway.

HOW, THEN, AM I MAD?.

Let me tell you what happens to Wagner without Faustus. He drifts. The boy grows up, kind of. He lives with his mom for a while. He gets a series of meaningless, low-level jobs.

Then, five years later, when I was twenty-six, Reggie called me up suddenly, in the middle of the night. The connection was poor. I could have in retrospect imagined that he was out in the dark, standing in a muddy field, surrounded by ineffable mystery, but that was impossible at the time because cell phones had not been invented yet.

We will speculate that he called to tell me of his findings, to draw me back in to whatever adventure his life had set him out on, because maybe he needed a sorcerer's apprentice again, sidekick, junior a.s.sociate mad scientist's a.s.sistant (no deformities required), but not, I emphasize, not an ephebe.

He told me about another place, which existed only in the darkness, which was invisible to the light; and for a moment the connection was very clear and he said, "You were expecting maybe malevolent, tentacled monstrosities from beyond the rim of the cosmos, but no, it is not like that at all," and then there was a lot of static, and I could only make out bits, about a mountain range of black gla.s.s, and a kingdom, dragons, a castle, a king who was mostly clockwork and his queen who was made of living gla.s.s, and roads that twisted into angles that didn't make sense, and there was a long bit about monsters, and a singing forest with razor-sharp leaves.

"Reggie, is this some new play you're working on?"

"No," he said abruptly. The connection broke.

HOW, THEN-?"

WAGNER, DRIFTING, EVENTUALLY GETS NUDGED OUT OF the nest by Mom, goes back to school, and finishes an advanced degree, and after a bit more dithering ends up as a teacher of English literature at a private middle school trying to hook fourteen-year-olds on the thrills and beauties of The Tragickal History of Doctor Faustus, alternating every other semester with Romeo and Juliet. Every once in a while he slips them some Poe. ("How, then, am I mad? Hearken-!") He even becomes a Minor Poet himself, joining the elite of American poets with an actual, non-subsidized book in print, ent.i.tled, modestly, Poems, which has sales very, very closely approaching three figures.

If he doesn't have a house in the suburbs, an ideal wife out of a 1950s sitcom, and the statistically average 2.5 children, well, at least he has made a start at the American dream. We live in a possibly imaginary, imperfect world.

THE NEXT TIME REGGIE GRAHAM BURST INTO MY LIFE we were both approaching forty. It was as if college-and the strange phone call-were only yesterday and there was no break in the continuity whatever. He grabbed hold of my arm as I walked along a Philly street and hauled me into a bar, and before I could even protest I realized that this craggy, almost white-haired stranger actually was my old master-yes, that was what he was; Wagner has a master in Faustus, not a chum, not a buddy, not an equal of any sort-and I was as affixed by his intense gaze as a desert mouse is allegedly hypnotized by the gaze of a rattlesnake; but it wasn't like that between us, no, not ever.

I wasn't much for drinking. I had rarely ever been inside a bar in my life. I wasn't really sociable, to tell the truth. So I sat there, fluttering and stammering while he ordered drinks for us and insisted I take a good stiff jolt of whatever it was, and then, in the darkness of that place, all the noises and lights of the outside faded away, and I saw only his face drifting before me like a risen moon, and I felt but did not see that he pressed something into my hand. It was a ring, cold to the touch.

"I need you to keep this safe," he said. "Be careful with it. It can break. It is made of gla.s.s. But it must not break and it must be kept from the enemies of the Queen of Gla.s.s, who would use it to destroy her, destroy everything, Henry, not only her world, but yours, ours, the whole kablooie."

Now you would think that the reaction that any sensible person would have at this point would be to break away, say, "Reggie, are you nuts?" and just leave, or, if one happened to be braver, more concerned, heroic even, one might even try to work one's way through the obviously deranged, utterly schizophrenic fantasy to find the inner, true core of my friend's soul-if he really was my friend and not my master and I his willing slave-or at least steer him to the nearest funny farm, a.k.a. psychiatric clinic, and leave these matters to the professionals. But no, I was Wagner, remember, who was there to help when Faustus sold his soul to the devil for a handful of party tricks and a night in bed (we hope) with Helen of Troy. I was the puppy dog, the apprentice, the mad scientist's sidekick (hunchback optional, no a.s.sembly required), so that is not what happened at all.

Reggie took me by the hand-no, it wasn't like that between us at all, not ever-and he led me away, not out onto the familiar city street, no, but elsewhere. I admit that because this is largely a work of supposition and fiction and speculation, and, being at best a Minor Poet ("My ninety-nine readers can beat up your ninety-nine readers!"), I am not very good at this, not the person who even should be telling this story-but I alone survived to tell thee, to coin a phrase-I admit, I say, that from here on to the end the continuity becomes hard to follow, there are lacunae in the narrative, and at times even I (most of all I) have no idea what is going on or why, even as I was more than a little disconcerted when we stepped, not out of the bar and onto the street, but into a dark place, and it was cold there-I mean, wasn't this a sunny Sat.u.r.day afternoon in July? I wasn't dressed for work, but was wearing flip-flop sandals, blue jeans, and a Grateful Dead T-shirt. Yes, it was suddenly nighttime, and winter. I could see my breath. My feet and arms burned with the cold. Reggie wrapped a blanket and sat me down by a pot-bellied, wood stove beneath the glare of a single light bulb, and it seemed as if we had been there for a long time, as if we'd been together for months, and he had become-and I somehow already knew this, as if I had been attending his exhibitions and shows-not a famous poet or a playwright but, to spite his now dead parents, neither a chartered accountant nor a Kmart manager, but instead a notably eccentric painter, whose brilliance was known to a select few, who honored me by inviting me out to his remote studio, a barely converted, unheated barn way, way out in the country, in the darkness, well beyond the glow of city lights. Here I had been for a long time sitting for a portrait that was to be his masterpiece, that was to reveal every bit of his pa.s.sion and dark wisdom to the unsuspecting and largely undeserving world.

My eyes adjusted. I could make out the weathered, wooden walls, the high rafters, and the precarious-looking floor with dark gaps in it. Reggie sat on a high stool with an easel and canvas turned sideways to me, so he could catch some of the light. As he painted, he spoke, as if continuing a long-running conversation that I remembered from a dream out of which I had only half awakened. He said that the crisis in the Kingdom of Black Gla.s.s was coming to a climax. An evil force had gathered in the Forest of Razored Leaves, a terrible foe to the lord he, Reggie Graham, faithfully served, the Clockwork King and the king's consort, the Gla.s.s Queen. This enemy, called The Man with the Hundred Knives, would soon lead his armies out of the forest, overwhelm the Palace of Black Gla.s.s, smash everything, and send its shards scattering in some fearful and immensely destructive way to pierce the infinite number of worlds that existed everywhere in the darkness.

It was the worlds of light, I was to understand, the worlds that contained things like college campuses and private middle-schools and bars and Kmarts that were illusion, that didn't matter, that were merely dreams, from which now, as I sat for this portrait, I had only partially awakened.

As he spoke I got up and came over to look at the portrait. There I was, in the lower right, huddled in a small area of light by the wood stove. Reggie had painted himself into the picture, a portrait of himself seated at his easel painting the picture. I couldn't help but notice, as I looked from the painting to his face, to the painting again, that he did look shockingly aged, but not withered, not feeble; no, more like one of those timeless heroes in popular fantasy, who have battled wizards or demons for centuries, and have become hardened, gnarled, immensely potent, like a cross between Gandalf and Strider with just a touch of Gaiman's Sandman. The image of me, by contrast, made me look younger and skinnier than I actually was, and very vulnerable, with the emphasis on the unruly mop of brown hair and the exaggerated, round gla.s.ses, the thin, pointed chin, pale forehead, and wide eyes. I could not have, I realize in retrospect, asked him, "Is that me or Harry Potter?" because this was a while ago and the Harry Potter books hadn't been published yet.

I didn't ask him anything, but just stood there and watched as he worked in the wide s.p.a.ce in the upper left, painting dark upon dark, shaping images I could just barely make out, of a king whose face was a faintly luminous clock, the hands set at just a minute before midnight, and beside him the Queen of Gla.s.s, all black and gleaming, tiny points of light on the tips of her crown like stars; while behind them and a little below, in the upper middle part of the painting, the sinister Man with the Hundred Knives (who wore them strapped across his body on two long belts, like a pair of bandoliers) gathered his forces in the Forest of Razored Leaves.

There was so much more in this picture that I cannot explain or describe. There was a whole world there, much more real to me then than the half-remembered dream of city streets, schools, bars, department stores, and the like.

I understood fully and completely, to the very depths of my heart, that Reggie Graham had always been the sort of genius who would awaken us into the true world and the true kingdom, and that, because he had done so, nothing else mattered or would ever matter again.

SO I WOULD LIKE TO BELIEVE. BUT REMEMBER: THIS IS A tissue of speculation and lies.

How, then, am I mad? Maybe I'm mad because I didn't say, "Whoa, wait a minute Reggie, you are the one who has abandoned all pretense of sanity. You've drawn me into this-Drawn? Painted, like in the painting, painting me into the painting-that's a joke, get it?-into your private psychotic fantasy world." While there might be other worlds and other dimensions, how could he expect me to believe that they're inhabited by gla.s.s people and filled with magic kingdoms and razor-blade forests and creatures that look like animate chess pieces, sort of a cross between Alice in Wonderland and The Lord of the Rings on acid, with, as I was soon to discover, a substantial sadom.a.s.o.c.h.i.s.tic element added?

No, I just stood there, while Reggie explained everything and explained and explained, so thrillingly, so compellingly, that I felt as if I too had lived in the Black Gla.s.s world for a thousand years, as he had, only occasionally a.s.suming mundane guise and venturing into the world of light to recruit a new, not necessarily hunchbacked a.s.sistant (batteries not included).

BUT WHO IS TO SAY THAT AN UTTER AND ABSOLUTE genius cannot also be utterly and absolutely mad?

I don't believe that. I don't believe any of this.

It is therefore mere supposition that as Reggie was telling me all this, as he stopped painting for a minute and showed me a black gla.s.s dagger-like one of those obsidian knives Aztec priests used to rip hearts out with-and explained that the Man with the Hundred Knives is not complete or all-powerful as long as he's missing this one and only has ninety-nine, I suddenly heard a loud crash and a thump behind me, in the dark recesses of the barn and something grabbed me from behind and whirled me around, and I found myself face to face with what looked half like an enormous insect, half like a naked man whose red skin gleamed like animate, baked brick. Its many limbs flashed and flickered like whips, too fast to follow, and I was hurt, I was falling, I was cut to pieces, while I heard Reggie Graham shouting, "It wants the ring! Don't give it the ring!" But I had no chance to think about any ring, and could only curl into a ball, my back to it, to make it work a little while longer as it slashed through my clothing and my flesh and my bones to get to my vitals.

Then there was another crash, and the pain did not stop, but now I sat with my back against an upright beam in a spreading pool of my own blood, with broken bits of reddish gla.s.s or clay all around me, and Reggie standing over me, hefting a sledgehammer in his hands and looking rather pleased with himself.

"I knew this would come in handy one day," he said.

"What the f.u.c.k was that thing?" I managed to gasp, gurgling on blood.