Gone to the wolves, p.23
Gone to the Wolves, page 23
“This place—I can’t explain it. It’s real.” She bobbed her head. “You’ve got to feel that.”
“We’re going to get our asses kicked. That’s most of what I’m feeling.”
“You’re right,” she said happily, pulling him closer. “Anything could happen here.”
Not even the color-by-numbers metal of the first act on the bill was enough to take the edge off Kira’s high. Trauer turned out to be four foppish glammers in what looked to be Elizabethan powdered wigs, whose entire performance consisted of a twelve-part mini-opera about being invited to a really awesome party. With the exception of a handful of whatever the German equivalent of Hell’s Angels was—who were obviously friends or roadies—they were barely tolerated by the crowd. Kira led Kip straight to the geometric center of the room, its acoustical sweet spot, and stood pressed up against him for the entire set. By the time it became clear that the party the bewigged Germans were screaming about was actually nuclear war, it had begun to seem conceivable to Kip that everything was going to be all right. Someone passed him a joint. Kira brought her mouth to his ear and whispered that the singer reminded her of Ray, her hillbilly cousin, who was now assistant floor manager at a Home Depot in Gainesville. Kip dragged on the joint contentedly and told her he agreed. He felt sleepy and nostalgic. He hadn’t thought of Harley Boy in ages.
Afterward they wandered lazily through the crowd—which was thickening around them by the minute—and ended up at a row of merch tables underneath the stairs. Kira didn’t want to talk. She was less giddy now, more abstracted. The merchandise was professionally arrayed along the wall: neat stacks of Trauer shirts, black and long-sleeved and heavy, with mountains of Cannibal Corpse CDs and EUROPEAN BLOODBATH ’91 shirts and posters beside them, as gory and cartoonish as ever. Copies of the new LP looked to be selling briskly. He picked one up to show Kira, curious to hear what she thought of the cover. But Kira had already moved on.
She was down at the last table, shoulders hunched in concentration, leafing through some sort of xeroxed pamphlet. Only now did he notice that there was no merchandise for the Norwegian act—no CDs, no vinyl, not even a demo. Just a tidy little pile of stapled pages. It made him uneasy for reasons he couldn’t explain. A small sheaf of paper. No one else around. He came up behind Kira and saw that the page she was reading was covered in Celtic or Norse script of some kind, accompanied by a drawing, clumsy and hard to decipher, of a girl in peasant clothing being eaten by a wolf.
“Jesus,” Kip said. A feeling like remorse washed over him. The girl lay spread-eagled in a snowdrift in what looked to be a forest, her skirt torn up the middle. The crudeness of the drawing made it all the more obscene. The wolf stood hunched over the girl the way Kira herself stood over the table, dripping black blood from its jaws onto her belly.
“I agree,” said Kira. But she meant something different. On the back of the pamphlet a few sentences in English had been written out by hand:
THERE IS NO GROUP NAMED DRAUGR. THERE IS COLD AND WIND AND THERE IS NO MORE LIGHT. THE WOLF PRESIDES ABOVE THE CHILD. THE CHILD SUFFERS AND THE WOLF SUFFERS. THE SUFFERING THEY SHARE BECOMES A CEREMONY. THE SUFFERING THEY SHARE BECOMES A WEDDING. THE SUFFERING THEY SHARE BECOMES A PASSAGE. INTO WINTER. INTO DARKNESS. INTO TRUTH.
FEAR IS NAMELESS. NIGHT IS NAMELESS. DEATH IS NAMELESS. WORSHIP HIM.
“I’m beginning to understand why they don’t sell any T-shirts,” Kip murmured.
“This is so bizarre,” said Kira. “Like a religion or something. A secret society.”
“Sounds like your standard Lord of the Rings crap to me.”
“You used to love those books. You told me so.”
“I read them as novels, Kira, not nonfiction. You don’t see me running around in chainmail and a fucking battle-axe.”
She took in a deep breath and held it. “Maybe that’s the problem,” she said.
“The problem with me?”
“With everybody.”
“You’re high.”
“We’re always trying to make life feel real—to make it louder and brighter, more crazy, more like how we think reality is supposed to be—”
“You’re talking about yourself now. Only yourself.”
“—but maybe the answer is to pick some random fairy tale, some stupid fantasy, and take it as seriously as you possibly can. Go down so deep that everything just flips. Reality turns flat and gray. The fantasy gets bright.”
He nodded for what felt like a minute or more. “I don’t like this.”
“Oh, Kip,” she told him gently. “You don’t have to.” The resignation in her voice scared him worse than any drawing ever could.
“What is it?” he hissed. “What is it now, Kira? Am I disappointing you again?”
The lights dropped before she could answer. She took his arm, but only to step past him. Then the room exploded into sound.
The chord that rang out was familiar enough—an overdriven minor triad—but what stood his hair on end was how it felt. Distorted guitar had always had a certain temperature to him: it had always, no matter how vicious the music, been a sound he understood in terms of heat. Embedded in that warmth—hidden inside it—lived a cryptic form of life-affirming power. Deicide and Death and Morbid Angel played their riffs to raise the dead, not to inter them. That was the nature of the exchange, the secret truth of the transaction, however bleak the songs might sound to virgin ears. Rage and violence and pain instead of nothingness.
This chord was cold. It was thin as a wire, serrated and glasslike, with no low end at all that he could hear. It hit him like a sandstorm in some freezing northern desert. Claustrophobia overtook him in the darkness. A hundred mouths were shrieking in the impossible coldness of that single ringing chord. But when it ended he heard nothing but the seething of the amps.
He could never say, in the years afterward, how long that spell of glacial silence lasted. When it was broken, it was broken by voices—but not by singing, or by speaking, or by any sound of human provenance at all. The voices sprang up at a distance, at the limits of hearing, and found their way slowly together. A call heard through the forest, across wind-blasted steppes, over pack ice in winter. Kip had never heard it before, not that he could remember, but he recognized that plaintive chorus instantly. It was the howling of a pack of wolves converging on a kill.
As the lights came up he made out human outlines. He felt what he’d felt at his very first show—that what he was seeing and hearing should have been preposterous. Why wasn’t it preposterous? He saw their faces now and what they’d done to them. He’d expected something theatrical, kabuki-like; these men looked as though they’d smeared their skin with animal fat and ashes. It was impossible to pinpoint their eyes through the paint, much less where they were looking, but he felt their eyes on him. On him and on Kira.
The freezing chord rang out again and the bank of lights kept rising. In place of leather and chains and bullet belts the men on stage were dressed in simple black. Against his will their faces held him spellbound. He saw what Kira was seeing now, he realized, and he felt what she was feeling. The same defenselessness, the same disgust. The same attraction. He understood her better in that instant than he ever had before. He closed his eyes and became her. It felt good to escape from his body. It felt somehow sexual. By the time the drumming started he’d forgotten where he was.
* * *
“What was that?” someone stammered, which was how he realized the set was over. The voice of a man—an American, he thought, though he no longer had much faith in his own judgment. He’d been listening with his eyes shut, clutching Kira’s hand in his, following the blond child in the peasant dress as she stumbled through the woods. The snow up to her ankles, to her kneecaps, to her hips. The black wolf slavering behind her. He took in a breath to tell Kira what he’d seen but she was already in motion, working her way with quiet purpose through the crowd. There was no need to chase after her. He knew where she was going.
He found her under the stairs, at the little merch table, and this time she was talking to a man. There was always a man. This one was gaunt and stoop-shouldered with long straight black hair. His face was unremarkable, forgettable, but Kip already knew he’d remember it the rest of his life. The man had been saying something to Kira: something solemn and momentous. Something private. He shut his mouth as soon as Kip came into earshot.
“Who’s this?” Kip said, louder than he’d intended. He was practically shouting. He slung an arm around Kira’s shoulder and flashed the man his most all-American grin. “Who are you, friend? Are you a wolf? Are you a vampire? Do you suck the blood of helpless little girls?”
“Shut up, Kip,” said Kira.
“You may find these interesting,” the man said to her, as though Kip had never been born. “I’m thinking you will.” He sounded as if he’d learned his English from old Boris Karloff movies. He passed her a book of some kind and she took it, frowning very slightly. Kip looked back over his shoulder at the bright and empty stage. He felt desperately homesick. The man said something else to Kira, a few murmured syllables, then gave a kind of curtsy and moved off into the crowd.
“Life of the party,” Kip said cheerfully. “A real buttercup.”
“They’ll be on soon,” Kira said, leading him away from the table. “The Corpse, I mean. Let’s try to get up front.”
“What was that little book he gave you? A guide to home embalming?”
She didn’t answer.
“Kira.”
She made an exaggerated show of stopping and turning to face him. Her attempt to conceal her excitement made her seem about fifteen. Her arms were crossed and her lips were pressed together so tightly that they all but disappeared. She stared at him impassively. A low-end roar was building. It was happening at last.
“I’ve had enough, Kira. I’m done. I’m going home.”
That wrung a laugh from her. “You’re joking.”
“I’m going.”
“What about the Corpse?”
“Fuck the Corpse.”
She looked genuinely confused. “But they’re about to—”
“What was he whispering to you about?”
“Kip—”
“Did he want to eat your brains, Kira? Is that what he asked you? And did you say ‘yes please’?”
“I can’t deal with this anymore.” She shook her head. “Everywhere we go. It’s just sad.”
“Can’t deal with what? Can’t deal with what?”
“How much of that joint did you smoke, for Christ’s sake? You sound like a skipping CD.”
“That doesn’t matter,” he heard himself answer. “My thoughts are clear as crystal. My eyes are fucking open. I can see into the future.”
She shook her head a second time and he lunged at her and caught her by the shirt. She looked straight through him now, squinting a little, as though he were a mist that was about to burn away.
“Tell me you’re leaving me, Kira. Just say the words. That’s all you have to do.”
He was forcing something, choking the life out of something, murdering something that might otherwise have taken weeks or months to die. It was finally over. He’d done it out of desperation, out of insecurity, out of weakness. But for the first time in a year his hands were free.
The roar seemed to falter. The houselights were dimming. What she said next was overridden by the buzzing in his brain.
“What was that?”
“All right, Kip,” she said. “All right. I’m going to leave you.”
He took a step backward then and stood before her with his arms half raised, awkward and unsteady, like a cowboy who’s been beaten to the draw. She looked calm again, not disgusted anymore—but also as if she expected him to kill her. He gave her what he hoped was a reassuring smile and she nodded and took him gently by the wrist. Her mouth was forming words again.
“I can’t hear you,” he shouted.
“Come on, Norvald. They’ve already cut the lights.”
She headed for the stage and pulled him after. They were having an adventure. He could admire her again objectively, as if from a distance, as if decades had gone by. Kira Beth Carson. He remembered her at the Death show on the last day of his childhood: chipped green nails, long-sleeved Iron Maiden tour shirt, hair the dull metallic red that cheap black dye turns in the Florida sun. Acid-wash jeans with a hole in one knee. A white leather choker. Kira in the mosh pit, standing absolutely still. Zit-faced bangers all around her being raptured up to heaven.
A light somewhere had started strobing. Kira said something that sounded like “Venice.” He closed his eyes and let her guide him. He knew what was coming. He didn’t regret it. The crowd was already shrieking, triggered purely by instinct, and he raised his arms and threw the devil horns with all the rest. Kira was to the left of him, craning her small body upward, angling for a better line of sight. The crush was the law now. The tide swept them forward, foreseeable as always, relentless as always. He lost sight of Kira and found her again. The tide rose between them. He watched her receding. He was clawing his way toward her when the realization hit him. She was nowhere he could follow. She was out of range already. She was gone.
1
One year later Kip was applying the first of three coats of wax to his Honda Accord, which he’d only just bought, when a pair of vaguely midwestern-looking men in suits struck up a conversation with him about his vehicle.
Both of the men used that word—vehicle—which on any other day might have given Kip pause; but this was a sunny Christmas Eve, unseasonably warm even for Los Angeles, and he was crushing on his car too hard to pay them much attention. He decided they were Mormons. They watched him working for a while.
The older of the two, who reminded Kip of the movie star Matthew Modine, commented that you didn’t see too many vehicles of that particular shade of eggplant on the road these days. It seemed to be intended as a compliment.
“Eggplant?” said Kip, shaking his head. “This isn’t eggplant.”
“No? What is it?”
“Aubergine.”
“I stand corrected.” The man smiled at him. “Means the same thing, though, unless I’m much mistaken.”
“I’m pretty sure that eggplant’s not a color.”
The younger man agreed with Kip. “Anyhow, I guess I’d have to say—if anybody asked me—that what I’m looking at here is more of a maroon.”
“Beautiful shade, whatever the name,” the older man said. He glanced up the street. “You seem to know a thing or two about cars.”
“I don’t even know how to put on this wax.”
“My mistake.”
“You guys live in the neighborhood?”
“Don’t I wish. I’m from Bakersfield. Just in town for the day.”
“I’m from back east,” the younger man said. “Baltimore.”
They seemed to expect Kip to say something further. He got to his feet.
“Can I do something for you gentlemen?”
“Are you Christopher Norvald, the journalist?”
It was the older man who’d spoken. He didn’t look as much like Matthew Modine as Kip had first thought. At close quarters he looked more like William H. Macy. Kip set his rag down on the Honda’s hood.
“I don’t know if I’d say ‘journalist.’ I write record reviews.”
“Extremely pleased to meet you, sir.”
“What’s this about?”
“You’re not in any sort of trouble, Mr. Norvald. None at all. Might we ask for a few minutes of your time?”
“Telling me I’m not in trouble makes me think that I’m in trouble.”
“Not at all.”
“Would you mind stating your business?”
“We’d be happy to,” said the older man before his associate could answer. “I’m Agent Robert Calkins, of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. I’m here today as a liaison.”
“A liaison,” Kip repeated.
“Yes, sir. This is Special Agent Mothersbaugh.”
“Special agent of what?” Kip asked, hearing his voice start to rise.
“Special Agent Patrick Mothersbaugh,” the younger man said, taking what looked like some kind of leather passport holder out of the inside pocket of his blazer. “First off, I’d like to apologize for the imposition.”
“You haven’t imposed on me yet.” By now Kip was contending with an overpowering urge to take off running down the middle of the street. “Is that some sort of badge?”
“My identification,” said Agent Mothersbaugh, extending it respectfully. “Would you like to see Detective Calkins’s, as well?”
Kip didn’t answer, not right away, because he was staring down at the document in his hands in disbelief. Below an unflattering photograph of Mothersbaugh were printed his name, the words DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA *FULL*, and a column of numbers and letters that barely registered. Below that, accompanied by a crimp-edged gold seal, the words INTERNATL POLICE/INTERPOL were printed in blue sans-serif lettering. Kip closed the little wallet, which looked brand-new, and handed it back.
“I knew it. You guys always tell someone they’re not in trouble when they’re in major fucking trouble. I don’t even—”
“Could we get out of this sun, Mr. Norvald?” Calkins said. “Unless you’d prefer not to speak in front of your dependents?”
“Dependents?” Kip mumbled. “No dependents. It’s just me.”
He started walking up the steps to his apartment and the cops, or whatever the hell they were, fell in noiselessly behind him. He felt as if he’d already been arrested.
* * *
“Nice place,” said Detective Calkins, once they’d gotten themselves situated in Kip’s decrepit living room. His tone made it clear that he’d said those same words virtually every day of his professional life. Mothersbaugh sat ramrod straight on the boxy little sofa, fingers drumming lightly on his well-pressed khaki slacks. He’d seemed diffident before, even mildly depressed, but his spirits were improving. They were getting to the part that he enjoyed.
