Kill City Blues (Sandman Slim 5)

I land flat on my back, knocking the wind out of me. It takes me a minute to get my senses back. My stitches hurt from the impact. Faintly, like he’s talking through water, I can hear Traven calling my name. But I’m in no shape to answer.

I came down on a pile of mall trash and building materials. Broken drywall panels, a layer of old cups and napkins, moldy clothes, and broken beanbag chairs. A million gnat-size Styrofoam pellets float to the floor, like I’m lying in a blizzard in a garbage dump. Thin, airy laughs come from the edges of the room. They sound like the wind from the other side of a hill.

“Who’s there?”

The laughter tapers off but no one answers. Looking up, I can see the hole where I fell through. It’s not that far. Shadows move across it. Someone is looking for me.

I shout, “Traven. Down here. Hey!”

“He can’t hear you.”

Another voice says, “None of them can.”

“Who is that?”

More laughs. A bunch of people down here think I’m fucking hilarious.

It’s warm and damp, with the same tropical feel as the mall’s atrium. My eyes slowly adjust to the room. Furred fungus on the walls glows faintly. Eidolon Whiskers. We had something like it Downtown. I look back at the opening in the wall where I fell through. It’s not real. It’s a phantom. A ghost wall like the one hiding the room in Hell where I first found the 8 Ball.

In a few minutes I can almost see my hand in front of my face. Then shapes in the room. I’m in the middle of a maze of improvised graves and tombs built from debris that landed here during the collapse. Someone has cobbled together a cemetery for whoever was trapped here. If this is a boneyard, I have a bad feeling about who’s been laughing at me this whole time.

“Hey, dead guys. Come out, come out, wherever you are.”

Gray wisps circle me. Faces resolve themselves for a second or two, then break apart into smoke.

“There you are. Why did you grab me? What did I ever do to you?”

“It was fun.”

“We were bored.”

“You were clumsy.”

“You’re alive. That’s offense enough.”

I shake my head.

“Is this one of those ‘we’re-dead-and-that-makes-the-living-our-enemy’ situations, ’cause seriously . . . ? That’s the best you could come up with?”>He sets down the knife and Power Bar.

“I’d like this century and the Sub Rosa that rose up in it to disappear like dust on the wind.”

“We brought you here, didn’t we?”

“Aye. You did. And forgot us when things didn’t go just the way you wanted.”

“What happened? How did you end up in Kill City?”

He looks away, into the lens of the flashlight, like he’s staring into a campfire.

“We come from ancient magic. Powerful stuff back home, but it’s weak in this new godforsaken land. We could still fight and scare the other families, but we were only half the warriors our patrons counted on and they never let us forget it.”

“So they ditched you.”

“Ditched. Buried. Forgotten.”

“I’m not going to be able to help you turn back time or nuke L.A. Anything else you want?”

“Revenge on the house that brought us here and left us, disgraced and abandoned.”