Mortality Bridge (31 page)

The demon’s tendril wraps above the doorway and the demon swings over Niko’s head and into the dark car. He wraps his wings around himself and watches mutely from deep within, shadows shrouding his indifferent face as Niko struggles for his life beneath him. Niko glares pure hate into the demon’s face. The son of a bitch just stands there. The train rocks and Niko’s legs fly out and his hand slips off the freightcar door. The demon’s tendril whistles through the air and wraps his wrist. Niko’s hiking shoes scud ground and then the demon leans back and lands him like a largemouth bass. Niko convulses gasping there beside his scarred guitar case on the filthy freightcar floor. The wind knocked from him by his fall. His wrist seared where the living whip has branded it.

The demon sets serpentine limbs against the clattering door and slides it shut. Now the car is dark and the air is close. The clanking chaos of the train drowns Niko’s wheezing struggle to regain his breath. When he can speak again he addresses the darkness. “Why. Did you help me? Who. Are you?”

And the darkness replies in a familiar voice. “What’s the matter, buddy pal? Don’t you recognize me?”

Niko stares and feels an awful deepdown recognition grow.

Familiar laughter in the closed and rocking space. “After all the years we spent together.” Niko’s heard thousands of recordings of himself. Enough to recognize his own voice replying from the shadows.

“Here.” Snap of leather, and a supple tendril bearing a jaundiced yellow light the color of a failing flashlight moves between the two figures in the boxcar, one supine and the other kneeling, to render in Rembrandt chiaroscuro a funhouse visage floating disembodied in the dark. “Better now?”

Niko takes in deepset eyes reflecting steady cold light, a broad brow, thickbristled eyebrows, mottled brown hide, wide face and prominent jaw, large nose, broad cheekbones and gaunt cheeks. Twisted and contorted, sinister and mutilated, the demon’s face still recognizable as his own.

“You’re me?”

In the sepia light the full lips curve in a lopsided grin. “Close but no cigar,” says Niko’s voice from this thing’s mouth. “I’m your demon.”

HOT WIND FLUTTERS Niko’s tattered coat as the boxcar clatters deeper into Hell to carry its divided load along its destined route. The walls and floor are slimed with human filth, the stench is overwhelming. For once he’s thankful for the dimness.

Near one wall the demon sits crosslegged like a huge statue of Niko carved into a gargoyle, swaying languidly with the boxcar’s rocking, not resting against the wall because of his wings but hunched forward with mottled tendrils hugging pointy knees and waiting silently for Niko to absorb this latest development and looking all the more horrifying in his sure familiarity.

The strange thing is that Niko doesn’t need much explanation. The creature before him looks exactly like the demon he has always pictured, the supple critic and whispering adviser who for so long lived within his mind. Urging him Have another drink. Admonishing him Don’t let her tell you what to do. The self aggrandizing voice that exhorted him to put his own needs first, then told him what a selfish prick he was. The voice that on a rooftop whispered Jump. Here is the demon he has wrestled all his life. The enemy he has come to protect because he believes that to exorcise it is to tamper with the engine that drives his art. The imagined creature manifest and sitting across from him in a filthy boxcar on a rocking Hellbound train. And the face it wears is Niko’s own.

The desecrated face smiles as Niko begins to understand. The ruined head nods. Acknowledging his acceptance. Their tacit communion.

Niko snorts and ducks his head. His demon grins.

Niko looks up at him again and nods back. His demon laughs and nods back. Niko laughs too, finally, with the finality of understanding. What else is there to say? They’re twins after all, however out of true the likeness. The moment hangs unspoken in the boxcar air.

Soon they quiet down and listen to the locomotive’s soulhulling horn whistling in the dark while it ferries its load of misery and pain farther into the territory of despair. A cargo seeking mercy from creatures without conscience. Finally Niko nods again as if the iron language of the train has spoken to him in a primitive and private tongue and he regards the demon, his demon, sitting patiently before him.

“You’re taller than I imagined.”

His demon laughs and Niko follows. The train screams boastful oblivion. Many miles away, mulchosaurs glance up from their gutstrewn prey and scream replies to the iron challenge shrieked across the tortured air beneath the world.

From the folds of its wings Niko’s demon produces a bottle. Sealed cap, white letters on black label. “I believe you dropped this.” He leans forward and holds the bottle out.

Niko takes the whiskey from him. “I believe you’re right,” he says, and breaks the longshut seal.

A HUNGRY TRAIN howls down the gloom and feeds its pace by eating souls on rails set in the poisoned land like stitches in a rotting wound while Niko takes the offered drink and smoky liquid floods a tunnel decades dry. His demon nods approval as the man drinks from the bottle and the trainhorn blows an aching note as his charge on a Hellfound train falls off the wagon like an ousted angel.

Down the hatch the demon says in Niko’s voice.

Lookin at ya Niko toasts. He holds the whiskey in his mouth expecting that his throat will clamp and when it doesn’t lets the liquor trickle down his throat and waits. No pounding skull no clenching gut no breaking sweat. A faint but not unpleasant burn of smoky liquid in his mouth.

He swallows. His eyes tear up, his face turns red, he feels he’s going to sneeze. But it has always felt like this or worse.

“Like falling off a bike,” his demon says.

“Or a wagon.” He lifts the bottle one more time but hesitates.

“Go ahead. The second stroke won’t make you more unfaithful than the first.”

But Niko bangs the bottle on the rocking floor and watches amber liquid sloshing with the freightcar’s motion. “So,” he tells the bottle. “You’re back.”

“Sort of.”

“Sort of. What’s that mean?”

“I’m back but not the way you think.”

“No shit, Sherlock. Now if I want to wrestle you I can do it with my hands.”

His demon’s smile grows fond. “Not what I meant, bud.”

“Don’t call me that.” Niko grabs the bottle up and takes that second swig and does not see his demon’s look of undiluted pleasure.

“Let me deal you some cards here, buddy pal. One, a cute little succubus clamped onto your leg like a horny little poodle dog. Two, a toasty fire inside a comfy little igloo. Three, two lovenotes in your own crappy handwriting, Exhibit A sealed in a bottle of Tennessee’s finest, Exhibit B delivered via Greek Express.”

“You wrote the notes.”

“No shit, Sherlock. And built the igloo. And made the fire. And knocked that little sucker off your leg.”

“But why.”

A helpless shrug. The ravaged face wears something sad and tender now. The demon wraps his wings about him as if cold and now it’s his turn to stare bleakly at the whiskey bottle. “Because, you poor fuckedup loser,” he tells the bottle, “I love you.”

PITCHFORKED DEMONS STOKE the famished engine with a coke of anguished souls. Niko in the stifling boxcar feels the old familiar fuse burn in his belly and he looks away from his own demon swaying with the boxcar’s languid motion. He senses the demon’s embarrassment and feels embarrassed for him.

“It’s an occupational hazard,” his demon says. “Sometimes we get a little too fond of the thing we’re decimating.”

Niko slides his guitar case between himself and his demon.

“See, I’m part of you. Which means I’m also partly you. Mostly you never needed me. Did you know that? Mortals often don’t. You undo yourselves just fine without us. But sometimes you flog yourselves right up to the brink and then just stand there wavering. That’s where we come in.” He mimes a little push with S-shaped tendrils.

Niko undoes the catches and raises the lid and stares into the case like a man at the funeral of an old lover. He takes another swig of booze. Three old friends getting reacquainted on a train. Can I have a hallelujah.

“But it’s hard to watch you do it to yourselves and not feel sympathy for you poor bastards. We get to know you so damn well. It’s our job. And to understand is to forgive, right? So even while we push you just that final bit it hurts.”

Niko exhumes the Dobro from its case and slides the metal tube over his ring finger.

“You think you need us to keep you angry. Keep you producing. You defend us even when you know we’re out to get you. You think we’re part of you. Somewhere inside. Well, that works both ways buddy pal. Mostly when we feel the urge to help you out we just ignore it and go on and do our job. But sometimes we sink your boat and then throw you a line. We can’t help it. I mean there you are floundering around in hot water you usually boiled yourselves, and we ought to be laughing our ass off at how easy you make it for us, and then this little voice inside us says Hey, why don’t you give the poor schmuck a break, and next thing you know we’ve thrown you a line and we’re hauling you in.” The demon shrugs and looks a little sad. “That little voice is you. Sometimes you’re our demons.”

Still not saying anything Niko holds his empty hand out and his demon wraps the bottle with a tendril and offers it. As Niko drinks his demon watches like a voyeur at an orgy.

Niko holds the bottle out and meets his demon’s eye. His demon takes it back and takes a long hard gurgling pull and then recaps the bottle and sets it sloshing on the clacking floor beside the guitar case. He grins at Niko brighteyed and belches satisfaction. Smells of liquor, lighting matches.

Niko tunes the steel guitar. The watching demon shivers at approaching harmony. Some dread resolution.

Niko shuts his eyes and hears the train. Feels the rocking. Finds a rhythm. Lets it move his fingers on the metal strings. The Dobro cries.

Out there in the peopled abyss demons pause their endless nailgun crucifixions as a dark refrain comes from the passing boxcar rocking gently as it rolls beyond their stations of the cross. Pinioned souls allowed a brief and unplanned respite moan and twist in parody of sexual release as this sad dopplered lullaby weeps out across the neverending night.

As his fingers play the trainsong Niko realizes that the locomotive horn is blowing rhythmic harmony to take the top part of the melody he improvises in a plaintive slow and unarticulated speech from disenfranchised nations crying out its cureless loss.

He opens his eyes.

The trainhorn stops when tendrils lower from a leathern mouth.

Niko mutes the metal strings and lets the train conduct itself to iron down the flattened plain. The demon grins a feral grin and bangs its bony hip to knock hot spit from the harmonica that gleams between its snakelike tendrils. Not a trainhorn then.

Fascinated Niko hugs the Dobro while his demon blows a high downbending chord that finds the trainbeat in its motion and before he knows it Niko’s strumming long and sheeting heartbreak chords above that wailing harp. Chords that hover dip and glide like gulls above a churning ocean. Whiskey humming in his veins. Music’s in your blood they say.

The soultrain groans along its iron fate, tie and spike and rail and wheel. Niko in a drunk duet upon a midnight special of his lost soul’s forging. Who he is has led to where he goes as surely as the route on which he runs, tie spike rail wheel, tracks as damning as the ones that once had mapped his arm and leading to the same conclusion.

He keeps his eyes closed and plays on and while he plays his demon talks. “Here’s the trick, buddy pal, here’s the rub. I remove some obstacles and you think that I’m helping you.” The slide sobs high up on the Dobro’s neck. “That’s why I’m just like you. That’s why I’m torn.” Grounds the crying on the bottom string. “I want you to succeed. See? I want to watch you get away with this.” Arpeggios his doubt. “Because when I help it shoves you right into the mouth of it. You make it easy for me. I want to thank you and I want to kick your ass.” Lets a held chord bleed while reaching blindly for the bottle. Feels it pressed into his hand. Drinks deep and holds the bottle out and feels it taken. Winces not uncomfortably at the little detonation in his gut. Hello old friend. “But here’s the grand prize question. What will you do when you get there?”

Niko mutes the strings and lets the trainsong play unaccompanied. Measure for measure, tie spike rail wheel. “What do you mean?”

“I mean when you get to where you’re going and it’s time for you to walk the walk how are you going to fuck it up?”

A clatter from ahead goes through them and behind them as the train runs over piles of bones.

“Who says I’m going to fuck it up?”

“You’ve never done anything but. It’s the nature of the soul who lives in you. He ruins his life, he comes down here, he screws the pooch. Over and over, life after life. You know why? Cause he’s a fuckup, that’s why. It’s that simple.”

“Fuck you.”

“You fucked up club gigs when you were just starting out because you were using. You fucked up every time you tried to sober up or kick.”

“That was a long time ago.”

“It’s fair to say what happened to your baby brother was a fuckup don’t you think?”

“Shut up.”

“Why? You’ve heard all this for years. I’m just saying it out loud this time. You fucked up every band you were in so much you had to hire session players on your albums and tours. And how about Jemma, old buddy old pal? El Fuckuppo Grande. What, you think being rich and famous keeps you from being a loser? You’ve got assloads of cash, you’re famous as shit, and you fucked up your whole life. You always have. So why in the world should I doubt you’re gonna fuck up again?”

Niko hugs the Dobro with his eyes clenched shut. He thought his demon had defected, jumped ship to help him on his sorry way. Why is he doing this to him now?

But let’s be honest, buddy pal. Something inside you wants to hear all this. Something believes every word this son of a bitch says. Always believed it. Isn’t that why you shot up, why you drank? To shut him up or build a wall to shut him out. But all it ever really did was shut you in there with him. Like you’re in here with him now. Tie spike rail wheel. Soulmates, cellmates, oneman show. He can’t help himself, he’s what he is. We are who we are. It’s that simple.