Guitar Heroes
by Simon Kewin
Copyright © 2012 Simon Kewin
Cover image Burning Guitar © iStockphoto/-M-I-S-H-A-
Guitar Heroes originally appeared in Here & Now. Copyright © Simon Kewin, 2003.
Guitar Heroes
I lean back against the speaker stack at the side of the stage, microphone forgotten for a moment. Knock back a mouthful of flat beer. I can feel the speaker buzzing and skipping against my spine. The roar is deafening, so loud you almost stop hearing it. Centre-stage, Sarah grapples with her guitar as if she’s battling a writhing snake. The noise from it breathes, phasing from abrasive discord to glorious harmony. Her eyes are shut; she’s lost in sound. Green smiles his enthusiastic smile at me from behind a blur of arms and drumsticks. Emblazoned across the side of each of the booming black cabinets are the words Screaming Machinery, crudely stencilled in scuffed, white paint above the Geiger curves of the SM logo. And as Sarah and Green riff and I look on I think to myself just how bloody brilliant we are.
I scan the night’s crowd at the Independent Chapel. I am reminded of the carvings I saw at some temple once, where long-forgotten craftsmen had laboured to carve thousands and thousands of stone human heads around the walls: each face given individuality, life, a personality. Out there now I see ecstasy, anger, boredom, laughter, fear ...
But then I see him, standing at the back against the bar. I’m brought back down to Earth with a crash. I can't see his face against the glare of the stage-lights but I know it’s him. It isn't just the long, bulky overcoat or the outline of his wide-brimmed hat, it's something in his stance, his presence. He doesn't dance of course, doesn't even sway, he just stands there looking directly at us, at me.
Down at the front of the stage, two or three members of the crowd, young men full of bravado and alcohol, torn tee-shirts bearing our own images I'm pleased to see, have decided it’s time to start crowd-surfing. I watch as they writhe and clamber out of the melee around them, levering themselves up onto the stage, eyes wild. The Chapel's stage security team, Big Bad Bob and The Ice Giant, wander out onto the stage to make sure they aren't intent on causing us harm. I grin at the sight. At the back of the crowd stands someone to really worry about, but Big Bad Bob and The Ice Giant don't know that. They are much more concerned by a couple of drunk lads trying to show off.
Ten songs, three encores and we're off, riding the buzz and happy with how it's gone. Even the new songs have received an enthusiastic response. The Ice Giant guards the entrance to the underworld labyrinth of backstage corridors. With a satisfied nod of his beard, he stands aside to let us pass. We make our way down through narrow, painted-brick corridors behind and beneath the stage, pipes and cables strung out along the ceiling so that Green has to duck every few paces. The sound system from above makes everything boom and vibrate, the walls sweating in the stuffy heat.
The dressing-room is small, scruffy, hot. Green perches on top of the cases of beer that have been left there. Sarah looks around for her guitar case.
‘We all saw him, yeah?’ I say. ‘At the back, near the bar? The old Wicca Man himself?’
Green grins and nods, as if I have told a good joke. A familiar, favourite joke. Sarah looks up, apparently through the wall and says quietly, to herself, Panic on the streets. She crosses the room to the stack of cans, pulls one from a pack of six, opens it with a deft flick and fizz of beer, drains it in one easy pull, then looks at me and says, louder this time, ‘OK. Take me to the bridge.’
*
The traffic streams along the motorway that runs beneath the flyover, our usual meeting-place. We stand enjoying the night-time cool, the speed and rumble of the nearby vehicles, the panorama of scintillating city lights all around us. Back at the Chapel the party will continue for hours, but for now it’s good to be outside. Green hands out the last of the cans he’s brought, although the cold has sobered us all up now. Sarah is silent, taking in the view. She frowns, an expression I know means she has a headache brewing. A bad omen.
I gaze out at the cityscape, waiting for whatever it is that’s going to happen. For a moment I think I see something passing across the face of one of the soaring, spot-lit office towers; an indistinct, huge face, growing as it approaches, the expression in the eyes very cold. The image shifts, broken up into window-sized pixels. Some vast advertising projection I guess.
The old man arrives then, first the hat and then the bulky coat coming into view, a silhouette against the electric constellations. He has a walking-stick with him, a crook of some gnarled wood that he leans on heavily as he moves. He nevertheless seems to reach us very quickly. It’s the sort of thing he does for effect. His face is invisible beneath his hat in the shadowed, monochrome gloom of the sodium street-lights.
‘Thank you for coming Mr. Singh, Ms. Tonin. Mr. Green.’
His voice is quiet, almost a whisper. He is, as ever, extremely polite.
‘The three of you are sorely needed this night. Terrible things are happening.’
It comes as no surprise. He isn't in the habit of dropping by for a chat. Sarah looks tense, as if gritting her teeth against the pain in her head.
Green, grinning, says, ‘The forces of evil threatening some poor, defenceless group of souls again is it Merlin?’
The old man ignores the name we have privately given him, perhaps not recognizing it. Thankfully, he seems also not to register the gentle mockery in Green's words. Half the time I suspect Green doesn't even believe all this stuff actually happens. He grins through it all like it's a film he’s watching.
‘So it is, Mr. Green, so it is.’
Merlin looks away from us, out over the scratched and battered railings of the flyover to the city beyond.
‘Although this time there will be no need to send you leaping off between the worlds.’ He looks back at us, with unnecessary melodrama. ‘It is Manchester itself that is threatened.’
‘But ... here we're just three slightly successful pop musicians with aspirations to becoming fairly successful,’ I say. ‘We have no power in this realm. There must be someone else.’
Typically he presses on, ignoring my objections.
‘I have to tell you that, since dusk fell this evening, seventeen people have been killed on these streets.’
‘That's terrible.’ I say. ‘So let's tell the police. What the hell can we do about it?’
‘In each case the victim has been skilfully dissected. The extracted bones have been carefully laid out on the ground in some very particular and intricate patterns. Does any of this sound familiar to you?’
The boys are back in town says Sarah to herself. I say nothing. He knows the answer.
‘Look at this,’ Merlin continues, pulling a folding street map of the city out of one of his coat pockets. ‘It's a folding street map of the city.’
He kneels down a little stiffly, leaning heavily on the walking-stick, and spreads the map out on the concrete floor of the flyover. From another pocket he takes out a pen.
‘I'll mark out the site of each killing in the order in which they have occurred, drawing a line between each as I go. You'll soon understand what is happening.’
‘Join-the-dots,’ says Green. ‘Excellent!’
Merlin, ignoring him, starts drawing. After ten pen-strokes have been drawn to-and-fro across the city centre there can be no doubt he is right. Sarah isn't watching. Maybe she knows already. Soon all eighteen deaths have been plotted, with seventeen lines connecting them.
‘You see it, do you not?’ asks Merlin. ‘The Eighteen-pointed Star. The Twisted Wheel. There is only one more point to be plotted, one more line to be scored across the city and the figure will be complete. The ritual sacrifices, the rune, it is all clear, yes? Someone
is opening up a gateway, a huge gateway, from their world to this one. We've all seen that rune used before if never on such a scale. Nothing that uses it is going to be just visiting the tourist attractions of Manchester or going to one of your performances.’
‘OK,’ I say. ‘So we know where the eighteenth point of the figure must be, yeah?’
Merlin points to the map, peering closely for a moment in the poor light.
‘It is here, near the canal, a small road named Curtis Street. Do you know it?’
Sarah answers for us. Grabbing the flyover railing she flips herself over and down into the roar of cars and lorries. Then Green, more cautiously, hurls himself over after her. I shrug.
‘No time to lose,’ I say to Merlin and, picking out a likely-looking articulated lorry thundering down the fast-lane of the carriageway beneath us, jump to follow them.
*
Sarah crouches on the leading edge of a bus that’s breaking the law by speeding along in the outside lane. She looks calm, focused, as if sitting on a river-bank and getting ready to dive in. Her hair streams backwards in the eighty, ninety mile-per-hour wind. Green is casually step-stoning to get to her, walking and jumping without even breaking his stride across the tops of vans, lorries, tankers, judging the relative speeds of the traffic in the different lanes with an assured ease. I take it more carefully, but catch up with them soon enough, with the help of a fast-moving fire-engine.
‘Damn fascist demon-hoards, that's all we need,’ I say to Green, a little out of breath. ‘Imagine what they'd do to this place.’ I wave vaguely to indicate Manchester. A distorted image of the night's crowd flashes through my mind. The crowd as it would be if the bad guys did manage to break through the barriers between the worlds. Dismembered limbs, unidentifiable lumps of flesh are strewn all over the floor, the walls, the lighting rigs, the stage, the speaker-stacks, us. Then the image is gone. I mean, we've had bad shows but never anything like that.
‘Not good, not good at all,’ Green replies, although his expression is far from grave.
‘I tell you,’ I continue, ‘There's something strange going on with this one too. The old guy wouldn't tell us why we were even involved. We're not getting the full story. I don't like it.’
Before Green can answer - assuming he was even going to answer - Sarah is up and moving, leaping between vehicles, making her way towards an upcoming junction. We follow, catching her up on a small van that is slowing down to exit the motorway. Curtis Street is not far off. A set of lights or something and we can jump safely off and be at our destination.
It beats public transport every time.
*
Shadows and rain fill the air, the scene a collage of steel-greys, dun-browns, midnight-blues, black. The arches of the railway viaduct stride over the canal, all colour leeched out of its red-brick walls by the darkness. A tram rattles and clanks its way across the top. From the wires above it, brilliant flashes of blue light crackle out as electrical contacts arc, like miniature lightning bolts, or giant flash-gun bursts.
The scene before us becomes a sequence of frozen stills in the crackling, staccato light. And what we see is death: death on the streets of Manchester.
Crack! A large, indistinct figure standing over three bodies on the ground around it.
Crack! The figure suddenly standing up, looking towards us.
Crack! The figure almost upon us before any of us has time to react.
Finally we move. Green charges first, lunging forwards to meet the figure, roaring with pleasure like someone relishing a brawl in a pub. I move more carefully, edging around the side, waiting for a good moment to pile in. It occurs to me the creature is at least vaguely humanoid. Always some reassurance.
Green hits the shapeless, looming figure in the chest with his lowered shoulder, intending to knock it flat on its back. There is a strangely gentle noise, a muffled shush, and Green cartwheels onwards, off-balance and falling, having apparently passed through the being unhindered. Meanwhile the figure continues to move forwards, quickly but apparently without effort, in a way that reminds me a little of Merlin. It occurs to me then it is coming for me.
Green hits the ground awkwardly, landing on top of bits of broken rubble strewn about the ground. Half of his body, one arm, the lower part of his face have disappeared, as if great bites have been taken out of him. He’s covered with something dark, like jam or blood, as if he has taken some of the stranger's body with him as he passed through.
Crack! Another shock of blue light and the figure is there before me. A faint smell of acid in the air. Its face is right in front of mine. But there is no face. I see just featureless black, filigreed with a thousand tiny glints of silver. Its features are in constant, seething motion. What could almost be a nose, a mouth, constantly appear, mutate, then vanish.
Ants. I suddenly realise what I'm seeing: a figure made of a million, million ants, a single massive swarm in the rough form of a tall, bulky biped. Ants working together, animated by some single purpose, controlled by some mind to form this miraculous, writhing golem. Not good. Then Green starts to scream. He clutched at his face, batting at the writhing shadows covering his body. He lurches to his feet, flailing around as the insects covering him bite. He heads for the edge of the canal and half jumps, half falls in.
There is another sound then, a quiet, hushing sound that comes from the ant-figure itself. What could almost be its mouth and throat move. Faintly, even as the creature reaches me, I hear a voice. The words are rough, as if heard through a storm of white noise over a long distance. But I recognize the pattern, the rhythm of the sounds.
I pull out the knife I carry in my left boot. An instinctive but futile move. Here it is just an old knife. I take a step back to have room to swing, but find I'm unexpectedly backed up against the wall of the viaduct arch.
I slash at the creature's face, the blade passing through with just a gentle shush. A few of the ants stay on the blade and I drop the thing quickly, not wanting to let them get to me. I crouch down, looking for a direction to spring to get away from the creature. In the darkness, I can see nothing.
Then a flame sparks into life nearby. The ant-being stands unmoved for a moment, then starts to writhe and twist. It buckles out of shape. There is a crackling noise in the air, like a million, tiny sweet-wrappers being screwed-up angrily, and an unpleasant, smoky smell. The large, powerful form melts into a smouldering lump, into separate clots of panicked, scurrying ants, into nothing.
Behind it Sarah says, quietly, Burn, baby, burn. She has her purple plastic cigarette lighter burning on maximum flame. She waves it around with a final flourish, as if to completely dispel the presence of the creature, then looks at me. In the dim, wavering light, deep shadows on her face, I can see she looks worried.
I look around for Green but the canal waters are dark and quiet. Instead, Merlin appears from the shadows. He looks around at the scene, at the bodies. He walks over to them and stands there for a moment, deep in thought, as if paying his respects to someone he knew. Then he comes over to us.
‘We must hurry. I think the arrangement and form of the body will be close enough to complete the geometry of the rune. The gateway will be opening soon. I had hoped this would not be necessary but ... come with me, we must find a doorway.’
He starts to move off. From inside another of his pockets he pulls out a battered, red-leather book, thick like an old train timetable. He hasn’t asked us if we are injured. He hasn’t even noticed the absence of Green.
‘Merlin!’ I shout after him. ‘Merlin, it ... spoke. The creature, it was singing. I could almost understand it.’
The old man stops, looks back impatiently.
‘Merlin, it was singing one of our songs. It was singing lines from Bleeding Heart at me. One of our songs! What the hell is going on here?’
He turns away, resumes his walking, expecting us to catch up with him as he talks. I scoop up my knife from the ground and return it to its sheath in my boot. The
n I run to catch up with him.
‘It is possible it has used you as the primary focus for its leap between the worlds,’ Merlin says. ‘Used the words of this song of yours as an element in its incantation.’
‘Let me get this straight: it’s here because of us? By using us?’ I ask.
‘It is possible, yes.’
‘You knew this, you knew this was going on didn’t you? And now all these people are dead.’
‘And many more will be if we do not hurry. I suspected, yes, of course. I suspect many things, Mr. Singh, but not all of them come to be. Now follow me!’
He strides away, flicking purposefully through the old book as he goes.
‘But ... Green!’ I say.
‘No time, follow me, follow me.’
And of course, as ever, we follow.
*
Manchester is a city of portals, of gateways. Merlin explained it all to me once. Doors to other cities, other Manchesters, are everywhere. You can use them if you know where to look. And if you know which ones are safe. Dusty, disused doors in old warehouses with Authorised Personnel Only painted on them in flaking letters. Overlooked ginnels squeezed between large city-centre buildings. And when it rains – which it does – puddles that form in certain places, over certain spots, that, if you leap into them, lead out of our Manchester and onto the streets of some parallel city.
When it pours it opens up the doors.
There are many alternative Manchesters: Rainy City, Mamcunium, Victoriana, Cottonopolis, Greatwich, Coketon, Gothwick, Edgeton, Madchester. Over the years we must have visited all of them. And despite the differences, the variety, what always strikes me is how similar they really all are.
Merlin leads us briskly along a succession of main roads and back streets, consulting his book all the while, occasionally muttering words like apogee and translocation to himself.