Read Online Dead Things by Stephen Blackmoore - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Stephen Blackmoore
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clever. Here’s me being a fucking idiot.
This is amateur hour stuff. This is not the kind of mistake I make. I know how to deal with her kind. Lucy’s death has me spun so much I don’t know which way is up.
I need to get a better read on Santa Muerte. I don’t trust her agenda, can’t trust her agenda. But I don’t know enough about her to see what sort of play she might be making. What I need is some dirt.
Baron Samedi or Maman Brigitte might know, but they won’t talk. They’re in the same club, or near enough for the difference to not matter, and they don’t tend to narc on each other. They’re not gods, they’re not spirits. They’re somewhere in between. They keep to themselves and though they might gossip with one another, they’re not prone to talk to outsiders.
I pull onto the 5 Freeway, merge with traffic. Feels like a game of Frogger. One more thing about this town I didn’t miss.
Who to talk to? Who do I still know in L.A.? Who’d even talk to me after all this time? The dead would be useless, though they might help me track down Griffin. The living even less so. My contacts at the higher levels aren’t going to talk. I’d just waste my time and burn their goodwill.
Hang on. Maybe I don’t need to ask someone who knows her now. Maybe I can ask someone who knew her way back when.
—
The doors move.
Last time I found one was behind a dumpster on the alley wall of the Roxy on Sunset. Before that was next to the telescope at Griffith Observatory. These doors led to nowhere good.
There are large doors and there are small doors. Sometimes they’re traps. Sometimes they’re opportunities. They’re hard to find but they’re always where the people are. No point in having a door if there’s no one to go through it.
The particular door I’m looking for now I haven’t seen in a very long time. But I know it’s around.
The thing it leads to hasn’t moved since Cabrillo came over from Spain almost five hundred years ago. If it had, I’d have heard.
People have been looking for it since before he got it off an Arabian trader in Barcelona and lost it somewhere in Southern California in 1542
I park the Caddy in the lot at Union Station on Alameda. It’s gotten busier since I saw it last. Thousands of people pass through this place every day. Now I guess they have local trains and a subway? Jesus. When did L.A. get a subway?
The main terminal is a hall of Spanish tile, twenty-foot ceilings, enormous chandeliers. Light slants in through the massive windows. The footsteps of commuters echo through the hall. They wait for buses and trains, talk and text on their cell phones. Oblivious wanderers.
I’ve spent the last two hours looking for this door. There was one in the Doheny Library on the USC campus once, and I found one at the back of a porta potty in a park in Compton.
Neither of those is there, anymore. I found one here in the eighties and one on the ceiling of a house on Catalina Island. I’m hoping this one is still here. The boat ride to Avalon always made me sick.
I buy a ticket for the Gold Line to get to the trains, duck into the men’s room. I wait a few minutes for the handicapped stall, latch the door behind me, pull out a piece of chalk.
I press on the tiled wall of the stall, close my eyes and feel for any magic that might indicate the door is still here. With so many people passing through, Union Station has become thick with it and it’s hard to feel past all the background noise.
I taste the smoke and ash in the local pool of magic. Hints of lumber and steel. Oil, blood, stolen water. Subtle notes of so many cultures it’s dizzying. This is L.A.’s magic condensed. Thick and cloying.
I think I have it a couple of times but it slips away. It takes me a few minutes but then I catch the taste of a history far deeper than anything Los Angeles has produced. Touches of the Middle East, sex, lots and lots of alcohol.
I hang onto it, make sure I have a good grip,
This is amateur hour stuff. This is not the kind of mistake I make. I know how to deal with her kind. Lucy’s death has me spun so much I don’t know which way is up.
I need to get a better read on Santa Muerte. I don’t trust her agenda, can’t trust her agenda. But I don’t know enough about her to see what sort of play she might be making. What I need is some dirt.
Baron Samedi or Maman Brigitte might know, but they won’t talk. They’re in the same club, or near enough for the difference to not matter, and they don’t tend to narc on each other. They’re not gods, they’re not spirits. They’re somewhere in between. They keep to themselves and though they might gossip with one another, they’re not prone to talk to outsiders.
I pull onto the 5 Freeway, merge with traffic. Feels like a game of Frogger. One more thing about this town I didn’t miss.
Who to talk to? Who do I still know in L.A.? Who’d even talk to me after all this time? The dead would be useless, though they might help me track down Griffin. The living even less so. My contacts at the higher levels aren’t going to talk. I’d just waste my time and burn their goodwill.
Hang on. Maybe I don’t need to ask someone who knows her now. Maybe I can ask someone who knew her way back when.
—
The doors move.
Last time I found one was behind a dumpster on the alley wall of the Roxy on Sunset. Before that was next to the telescope at Griffith Observatory. These doors led to nowhere good.
There are large doors and there are small doors. Sometimes they’re traps. Sometimes they’re opportunities. They’re hard to find but they’re always where the people are. No point in having a door if there’s no one to go through it.
The particular door I’m looking for now I haven’t seen in a very long time. But I know it’s around.
The thing it leads to hasn’t moved since Cabrillo came over from Spain almost five hundred years ago. If it had, I’d have heard.
People have been looking for it since before he got it off an Arabian trader in Barcelona and lost it somewhere in Southern California in 1542
I park the Caddy in the lot at Union Station on Alameda. It’s gotten busier since I saw it last. Thousands of people pass through this place every day. Now I guess they have local trains and a subway? Jesus. When did L.A. get a subway?
The main terminal is a hall of Spanish tile, twenty-foot ceilings, enormous chandeliers. Light slants in through the massive windows. The footsteps of commuters echo through the hall. They wait for buses and trains, talk and text on their cell phones. Oblivious wanderers.
I’ve spent the last two hours looking for this door. There was one in the Doheny Library on the USC campus once, and I found one at the back of a porta potty in a park in Compton.
Neither of those is there, anymore. I found one here in the eighties and one on the ceiling of a house on Catalina Island. I’m hoping this one is still here. The boat ride to Avalon always made me sick.
I buy a ticket for the Gold Line to get to the trains, duck into the men’s room. I wait a few minutes for the handicapped stall, latch the door behind me, pull out a piece of chalk.
I press on the tiled wall of the stall, close my eyes and feel for any magic that might indicate the door is still here. With so many people passing through, Union Station has become thick with it and it’s hard to feel past all the background noise.
I taste the smoke and ash in the local pool of magic. Hints of lumber and steel. Oil, blood, stolen water. Subtle notes of so many cultures it’s dizzying. This is L.A.’s magic condensed. Thick and cloying.
I think I have it a couple of times but it slips away. It takes me a few minutes but then I catch the taste of a history far deeper than anything Los Angeles has produced. Touches of the Middle East, sex, lots and lots of alcohol.
I hang onto it, make sure I have a good grip,
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