Bleak History - John Shirley
PROLOGUE
“Don't you just feel... different today?” Gulcher said to Jock.
“I dunno,” Jock rumbled. “Bottled up in here, I dunno how I feel.”
Troy Gulcher looked up at the clock in the aluminum mesh on the wall of the lockup. They even try to cage time, he liked to say.
The guards for Securimax Cell Block 5, a New Jersey high-security penal institution, were most of the time behind the glass of the bulletproof booths looking down on the cellblock from the second-floor tier. Gulcher could see their silhouettes up there, but you couldn't see their faces most of the time, what with the light being behind them. Like being watched by ghosts.
Jock, a tall, blond man with a heavy jaw and Aryan Army tattoos—real name Rudolph Simpson —and Gulcher, a stocky, dark man with a short black beard, heavy black brows. Both convicts were in coveralls, prison yellows, standing by the Ping-Pong table. Just toying with the paddles. Jock bounced the ball under the paddle, but didn't try to serve it.
It was almost lights out. Pretty soon the guards would tell them through the public address to “put paddle on table” and go back to their cells; it being Monday, three guards would come to each cell, unlock them one at a time, doing a quick check to see if anyone had managed to make some pruno or tucked away some other contraband.
Same old same old, for almost a year now. No movement on getting Gulcher transferred to State Medium Security, where it was so much easier, roomier, a man could hustle some drugs. “You shouldn't have busted up that security guard's shins,” his court-appointed lady lawyer had told him. Snooty bitch. Like to get her alone, once he was out. Have her out of that pants suit lickety-split.
Restless. Nervous. “How about serving that f*cking ball, there, Jock?”
Jock shrugged and served and they batted it listlessly back and forth till it bounced from the table and Jock went to chase it down. Gulcher waiting tensely.
Gulcher was feeling more than his usual restlessness. Something in the air about to bust open like's a lightning storm. Ought to try to explain to Jock again. But it was hard to explain the hunches he got.
Gulcher and Jock had become allies, since the Jersey guys came into the cellblock; Chellini and Doloro, trying to throw their weight around. “When you get out, this t'ing's going to get you, you don't gimme what I want in here,” Chellini said. “Cigarettes, whatever.” This t'ingl Gulcher doubted that fat bastard Chellini was really a made man. If he was, he would probably have had a better lawyer. Doing any time to speak of just for stealing a car, with the jails so crowded, meant you had a bad lawyer. It was strange Chellini had ended up in high security for stealing cars. Maybe it was his record. Maybe he'd pissed off the cops. Or maybe he was a plant, made a deal with the warden to catch the others with contraband.
“You really don't feel something, like, in the air?” Gulcher asked softly, as Jock came back with the Ping-Pong ball.
“I dunno, Troy, hey, could be I do feel funny.” Jock paused, bounced the ball on the table. “Could be they put something in the dinner, one of them experiments they do on prisoners.”
Jock was prone to paranoia. Craziness in your block boys was one of the things you put up with. Gulcher sighed and glanced up at the clock again.
“Don't wait, “ a voice whispered. “Don't waste what... “ The voice faded before it quite finished. “What'd you say?” Gulcher asked, looking sharply at Jock. “Didn't say nothing,” Jock said, returning the look, eyes narrowed. “Thought I heard a...”
“Long ago, you called my name. The wave has risen. Now you can hear my reply. Reach out... use the red vitality... don't wait... “
There it was again. A whispering. Something about calling a name? A wave “risen”? Red vitality?
Someone whispering—not Jock. But no one else was standing close enough. Just the two of them standing at the Ping-Pong table. Whose voice was that? Sounded like it was coming from right behind him.
Gulcher looked—nobody there.
Whispering...but what was the voice saying? Couldn't quite make it out. “You didn't hear “ somebody whispering?” Gulcher asked.
Jock frowned at him. “You f*cking with me? 'Cause I don't like that.” “The wave rises...let it guide you... “
Was that what it was saying? The wave rises, let it guide you? And there was a feeling with it....
The whispering went with a rise in that strange, restless feeling. Like years ago. He'd never forgotten it. Started with that Aleister Crowley book he'd got, as a teen, from that crazy-stoned old friend of his Pop. Old dude with the long white hair, used to run with Charlie Manson. That strange feeling Gulcher got when he'd read the book. Not understanding all of it.... But when he'd drawn the diagrams, called the “Names of Power” listed in Magick in Theory and Practice...
Nothing definite had happened that night, years before; just that feeling of something unusual in the air. A tingling that seemed to want to talk to you. But—nothing that you could actually see. Next morning, 5 a.m., his father had got himself paralyzed. Slid his Harley under a truck. Which was a good thing for his son, a “blessing”—as that old drunk Father Lawrence liked to say—because it meant no more beatings from the old man and because it meant that eventually Gulcher could get his pop alone, with the old son of a bitch stuck in his bed. Could take his time ending the old prick's life. Smothering him good and slow. Which Gulcher did within six months of the accident.
Now, in Securimax Cell Block 5, the feeling grew and grew in his chest, as the whispering got louder and louder. A good feeling. Strong! Like when he did Dexedrine to get through a night of jacking trucks, getting them over the Penn border. You got a rise, a sensation of power inside, like no one could sneak up on you, no one could bust you, no one could stand in your way.
Another voice from nowhere—but this was the guards, talking through the PA. “Okay, guests of the State, back to your cells for inspection, chop-chop. “
Gulcher tossed the Ping-Pong paddle onto the table and they walked back to their cells, each just a little bigger than a motel bathroom. Usually you had to share, but here in Securimax, Jock and Gulcher each had a cell, side by side. The cell doors were open but they'd be automatically closed in a few minutes, once the cons were inside.
The whispering again. “The wave rises, no longer is it held back. Open and be guided... “ And something else lost in the echoes of Chellini and the other ginney shouting at one another from their cells. “Shut up so I can hear,” Gulcher muttered.
What exactly was the whispering telling him to do? And why was the light going purple in here? Was he having a stroke, or what? Maybe he should ask to go to the infirmary. Fat chance. Not something they granted without his being practically dead already.
He stepped into his cell, found the plastic comb. The guards worked hard on not giving you anything you could use as a weapon on someone else, or yourself. Toothbrushes were short and soft,
there were no springs on the bed, no toilet seats, and on and on. But he'd been working on the end spine of this comb, scraping it against a rough spot on the metal frame of the door, and he had it pretty sharp. Wasn't much of a weapon. He hadn't been sure what he was going to do with it. Till now.
“Don't waste any time, “ the whispering said. Gulcher could hear it more clearly now. “The wave is rising. It won't continue forever. Do it. “
He sat on the bunk and took the spiky plastic end spine of the comb and bent it a little outward from the other spines, gritted his teeth—and jammed it into his wrist. It took a moment to punch through. Had to press hard. Then—he sucked air through his teeth as pain jolted through his wrist and blood squirted out, a red so dark it was almost inky. He hadn't hit anything major, just a bunch of smaller vessels, but it was more than enough blood for his purpose. He yanked out the plastic spine, then climbed in close to the wall over his cot, dipped the index finger of his other hand into the blood on his wrist and started drawing. Just letting the feeling guide him, like the whispering said. It felt good to do that. And he always did what felt good.
First he drew a rough circle, in blood, on the wall over his cot—a circle about two feet in diameter—then words within the circle, following it around its curve, inside. “The writing on the wall,” he muttered. “Read the writin' on the wall!” An expression he'd heard from that Juvenile Hall judge, old Judge Kramer. Gulcher chuckled, as he wrote, remembering that.
He didn't know what he was writing till it was there on the wall. He just let it be guided. But Gulcher remembered some of the names—Names of Power, they were called—from the books he'd read as a young man. He figured they'd been stored away in his head, somewhere. MOLOCH was one of them. He found he was writing them inside the circle.
Gulcher heard the door of his cell clang shut behind him, the lockdown triggered by the guards, but he ignored that. He knew it wouldn't matter.
“Hey, Gulcher!” Jock shouted from the next cell. “You're right, I feel weird! I'm, like, hearing shit too! Voices!”
“Listen to them, Jock!” he shouted back, as he dripped blood on his right hand, from the wound, covering the whole palm, the fingers.
“Now, apply the mark of your hand to the interior of the circle, to complete the connection,” said the whisperer.
He pressed his bloody handprint into the circle. The words, the lines, the print, all dripped, but you could make it out anyway. It was an intact image.
“Gaze on this symbol,” said the whisperer, “reach out with the power you feel now, connect, take power from us.... Use it as you see fit. “
Gulcher stared...
And felt the power descend on him. He felt overcharged with it, like he might explode if he didn't release it. He backed away from the bed, turned to the door, put his hand on it. Seemed to see the mechanisms that held it shut, inside the wall. Saw snakelike figures in there, ethereal snakes with faces, writhing, waiting for his command. Told them to push here, and here... 2°
The door slid open. Followed by all the doors of all the cells in Securimax 5. An alarm started hooting, earsplittingly loud.
Gulcher stepped out and looked around—wondered why the air was so cloudy. It was like they were in a steam bath. But it wasn't steam, it was something else. Like it was the vapor of life itself. Like it's the stuff ghosts are made of, he thought. Like that, but spread out, choking the air. And he saw faces form in it; faces forming and falling apart...and forming again.
The siren howling...and the men howling as they writhed on the floor.
And one vaporous face seemed to dominate the others—a bigger face that kept stock-still in the air as the others rotated around it with a slippery, nauseating motion. Like one of those faces you see carved on the squatting statues stuck on the roofs of old churches. What did they call that? A gargoyle. But big, this face. Big as a basketball backboard. Big. Looking at him, its horny lips moving. “The air serpents are yours. Formless familiars. Take territory. I will guide you to the place where I can take strength; where I can grow... and in time I will send more of myself, to your side. “ “Who are you?” Gulcher demanded.
“Your god, who blesses you, “ said the face, then it broke up, melted away. But Gulcher felt it still watching him; still just as much there, even if it was invisible. “Call me Moloch as some did once, whose children burned in my grasp. “
“Gulcher!” Jock was yelling. “What the f*ck's happening!”
The guards were running in, their faces tight with fear.
The man-faced serpents were writhing in the living steam—were made of it, and something else —and Gulcher shouted, “Kill them!” and the man-faced serpents darted at the guards and entered into them. And the guards clawed at themselves and began firing their weapons at one another.
And they fell convulsing, yowling with pain and psychosis, as Gulcher led Jock up the stairs to the now open metal door.