The Wrong Goodbye

22.

Upstairs, a quiet cacophony, like a nightmare cocktail party heard through a shared wall. Myriad drips, drops, and plinks as the torrent outside found its way into the decrepit structure —pooling in depressions, leaking through cracks, pouring off of jagged ledges where the first-floor ceiling had caved in. Dozens of voices, some raised, some quiet, talking all at once in tongues both foreign and familiar. The thud of heavy footsteps above —shuffling, skipping about, and unless I was mistaken, dancing. The crackle of a warped and timeworn record from somewhere far away, playing Patsy Cline at half the speed and twice the warble. And the snap and hiss of candles in the damp.

The hallway I was in extended the length of the building, stretching into murky nothingness to either side of me. The floor and walls were blackened and peeling, as if from fire. The ceiling —plaster, by the look of it —sagged in places, and was entirely absent in others, mildew and yellowed water marks blossoming here and there the length of it.

I picked a direction at random, my one stocking foot stained with ash and soot as I scuffed along the empty hall —wary, alert. I’d never seen the inside of a skim-joint before. I don’t know what I’d been expecting from a place demons go to get whacked out on moments stolen from the humans they profess to despise —something speakeasy-er, I guess —but this sure as hell wasn’t it. This place made your average crack house look like the Ritz. But hey, I’m sure the rent was reasonable.

Beside me was an open door. I ducked inside. A small, square room, with bare wood floors and a ceiling of rotting plaster. In one corner was a candelabrum, anchored to the floor by tiny termite hills of wax, a halo of soot dancing on the wall behind it in the shifting candlelight. In the other corner lay a man. Many men, in fact —though in reality, this thing was not a man at all. His visage shifted as he slouched, eyes fluttering, against the join of the two walls, alternating between a half a dozen human faces at random. His lips moved as he lay there, muttering in a voice that shifted tone to match each face, as though the lot of them were in conversation, each talking over the other in an unintelligible stream of syllables.

Though he lay there helpless and twitching, this creature was no doubt a powerful demon, and one accustomed to dealing with humankind. Demons of the lesser orders are unable to alter their appearance in the eyes of man; their gruesome physiognomy is merely a reflection of their own corrupted natures. Should they desire to walk among the living unnoticed, they’re forced to take a living host —and even then, if they possess that host too long, their nature will begin to warp the host as well. And powerful demons who do not deign to interact with humankind —like, I suspect, the beast I left downstairs —simply do not bother to alter their aspect to accommodate human perception, leaving puny human minds like mine to piece together something that makes sense out of the nonsense that they’re given. But this guy, even ensconced in whatever skim-trip he was on, maintained some semblance of human appearance. Granted, without a conscious, focused will, the shapes didn’t hold for long, but never did he slip from displaying a human form —never did he offer a glimpse of his true nature. That meant power. That meant danger. That meant I was glad he was asleep.

The man-demon shifted in his slumber, and his arm, which had previously rested across his stomach, flopped to the floor. His shirt-sleeve was rolled up to the elbow, and the tender flesh of his forearm was pocked with track marks —though no needle could mark a demon’s flesh for long; the injury would heal itself before any scarring could occur. And indeed, these marks weren’t from a needle at all, but from countless shards of skim. One such shard was in there now, like a jagged bit of colored glass inserted just beneath the skin —I could see it flickering below the surface like lightning contained within a cloud.

He rolled and kicked a leg, like a junkyard dog dreaming of glorious pursuit. His eyes flashed open, locked on mine. His hand lashed out and wrapped itself around my leg. Dark fire —the fire of the Depths —flickered across his arm, and the room seemed suddenly engulfed in their all-consuming flame. It spread outward from his being like the halo of soot from the candles across the room, fluttering like weightless silk as it expanded. Then his lids slammed shut, and the dark fire dissipated. The demon was once more asleep.

I pried my leg from his grasp and retreated to the hall. There was nothing for me in that demon’s room. I wondered if there was anything here for me at all. If I was a fool to have even come. But it was too late for such concerns —I was here. Committed. There was nothing else for me to do but see it through.

As I continued down the hall, I peeked into the rooms I passed, finding some empty, and others flush with three, four, even five demons —most of them foot-soldiers, leathery black and hideous. Some lay still in dream, while others swayed in time with the music, or gestured wildly as they conversed with whoever had a guest-spot in their skim-trip memory. Not a one of them showed any interest in me; occasionally, one would glance my way, but their gazes slid right off of me like I was furniture.

I couldn’t help but wonder what it was like: these fallen angels, these creatures of the Depths, subjecting themselves to human experiences, sensations, emotions, all in the name of feeling closer for a moment to the God that had forsaken them. And I wondered what it must feel like to come down from that, and realize you were once more removed from the light of God’s grace. It must be horrible —a shock akin to their initial fall. It wasn’t hard to see why they —or for that matter, Danny —might get hooked. Why they might keep on coming back.

At the end of the hallway was an empty doorframe crumpled outward at each side, as though something too large to pass through it had decided to force the issue. Beyond the doorway, a staircase led upward. Its banister was of dubious integrity, but the stairs themselves, bowed and scarred though they were, looked broadly feasible. They groaned and popped under my weight, but they held, and so I headed up.

As I climbed the stairs, the strains of music I’d heard below grew louder. Through the scratch and hiss of the weary old vinyl, I heard Patsy’s lament. … I’m crazy for trying, and crazy for crying… and I’m crazy for loving you…

Sounded like her week was going about as well as mine.

The entrance to the second floor was barred by a cave-in just inside the stairwell door; through the starburst pattern in the inlaid safety glass, I saw a pile of rubble four feet high. With luck, I thought, the third floor won’t be similarly afflicted.

It wasn’t. The third floor, like the second, still had a door —a heavy wooden affair inlaid with safety glass —but its top hinge had separated from the doorframe, which left it hanging at a nauseating angle that prevented it from latching. Slowly, carefully, I pushed it open, listening for any indication the movement had been noticed. Apart from a redoubling of the record’s volume, I heard nothing, so I slipped through the doorway, and eased it shut behind me.

The stairwell door opened into a broad room, from which a hallway like the one on the first floor extended. A pile of splintered timber along one wall looked like it had once been some kind of desk, suggesting this had maybe been a nurses’ station. There were candles everywhere —on the floor, atop the rubble of the desk, in the nooks created by the crumbling of the failing walls. An old Victrola cabinet sat in the center of the room, the Cline record spinning beneath its propped lid. Deep gouges furrowed its mahogany frame in sets of four parallel lines each, as though some demon had taken a swipe or two at it in a fit of pique. Apparently skim-trips weren’t all wine-androses after all.

I heard a low, huffing breath to my left, like a city bus laboring up a hill. Close —too close for my tastes.

I spun around. Behind me, hidden from view around the corner as I’d entered the room, was a demon. A massive demon, sitting beneath a jagged hole in the ceiling, through which poured a torrent of desert rain. Given the size of this monster, I couldn’t help but think that hole must be how it had gotten in.

The demon was maybe ten feet across, and standing no doubt would’ve been twice that high. Its skin was the sickly, glistening white of a creature raised belowground; its body was segmented and striated, like that of a grub. Thick horns of yellow-white protruded from its head on either side, stretching for several feet before curving slightly downward and terminating in two nasty-looking points that scratched the rainsoaked walls. Two rows of six eyes each, milky white in the absence of that trademark demon fire, were wet from rain and tears both. The creature sat with its legs hugged to its chest, rocking back and forth like a child. Its ropy neck flickered like the man-demon’s arm had flickered, indicating skim. In one hand it held a wildflower, brilliant purple in the candlelight.

As it turned its gaze toward me, its awful face broke into a smile.

It extended an arm toward me —an arm that nearly spanned the length of the room —and offered me the flower.

And with a voice as terrible as damnation itself, it said, “Daddy?”

Something in my meat-suit snapped then, and I tore out of the room at a sprint, leaving a puzzled child-demon in my wake. Animal panic coursed through my veins, obliterating reason. I ran like I had the devil at my heels, and as far as this hunk of meat was concerned, I guess I did. I ran past countless rooms like the ones I’d peeked inside downstairs. I ran past demons large and small, their utterances an awful chorus, egging me on. I ran until I reached the far end of the hall, and then my sock-clad foot came down on something sharp, and I stumbled, sprawling into a room brighter and warmer than those I’d seen so far. It was the mirror image of the one that I’d just fled, but this room was not in ruins. Its ceiling was intact, its walls unmarred, and, improbably, a fire crackled in an earthen fireplace along one wall.

I looked around in puzzlement at my surroundings, my heart still thudding in my chest. Beside me, atop an expensive-looking woven rug, sat a highbacked leather chair and a small side-table in the Mission style. A stained-glass lamp on the side-table cast colored shapes around the room, despite its cord dangling frayed and incomplete a foot from its base. Beneath the lamp was a snifter half-full of amber liquid, around which was wrapped a fat, bejeweled hand. The hand, in turn, led to a cuffed wrist, which led to a suit-jacket of bland gray. The jacket was wrapped tightly around a rotund, sweaty man, whose eyes danced with black fire, and whose mouth was curved into a predatory grin.

“Hiya, Sammy,” said Dumas. “It’s about time you showed up.”