Люциус Шепард - The Best of Lucius Shepard

McGuigan’s was handy, but that would have disincluded Pin, who obviously was underage. I loaded him, Stanky, and Liz into the back of the van and drove to Szechuan Palace, a restaurant on the edge of the business district, which sported a five-foot-tall gilt fiberglass Buddha in the foyer that over the years had come to resemble an ogre with a skin condition, the fiberglass weave showing through in patches, and whose dining room (empty but for a bored wait-staff) was lit like a Macao brothel in lurid shades of red, green, and purple. On the way to the restaurant, I replayed the incident in my head, attempting to understand what I had witnessed not in rational terms, but in terms that would make sense to an ordinary American fool raised on science fiction and horror movies. Nothing seemed to fit. At the restaurant, Andrea and Pin ordered tea, Liz and Stanky gobbled moo shu pork and lemon chicken, and I picked at an egg roll. Pin started talking to Andrea in an adenoidal voice, lecturing her on some matter regarding Black William, and, annoyed because he was treating her like an idiot, I said, “What does Black William have to do with this?”

“Not a thing,” Pin said, turning on me a look of disdain that aspired to be the kind of look Truman Capote once fixed upon a reporter from the Lincoln Journal-Star who had asked if he was a homosexual. “Not unless you count the fact that he saw something similar two hundred years ago and it probably killed him.”

“Pin’s an expert on Black William,” Stanky said, wiping a shred of pork from his chin.

“What little there is to know,” said Pin grandly, “I know.”

It figured that a Goth townie would have developed a crush on the local bogeyman. I asked him to enlighten me.

“Well,” Pin said, “when Joey told me he’d seen a star floating in front of the library, I knew it had to be one of BW’s stars. Where the library stands today used to be the edge of Stockton Wood, which had an evil reputation. As did many woods in those days, of course. Stockton Wood is where he saw the stars.”

“What did he say about them?”

“He didn’t say a thing. Nothing that he committed to paper, anyway. It’s his younger cousin, Samuel Garnant, we can thank for the story. He wrote a memoir about BW’s escapades under the nom de plume Jonathan Venture. According to Samuel, BW was in the habit of riding in the woods at twilight. ‘Tempting the Devil,’ he called it. His first sight of the stars was a few mysterious lights—like with you and Joey. He rode out into the wood the next night and many nights thereafter. Samuel’s a bit vague on how long it was before BW saw the stars again. I’m guessing a couple of weeks, going by clues in the narrative. But eventually he did see them, and what he saw was a lot like what we just saw.” Pin put his hands together, fingertips touching, like a priest preparing to address the Ladies Auxiliary. “In those days, people feared God and the Devil. When they saw something amazing, they didn’t stand around like a bunch of doofuses saying, ‘All right!’ and taking pictures. BW was terrified. He said he’d seen the Star Wormwood and heard the Holy Ghost moan. He set about changing his life.”

Stanky shot me one of his wincing, cutesy, embarrassed smiles—he had told me the song was completely original.

“For almost a year,” Pin went on, “BW tried to be a good Christian. He performed charitable works, attended church regularly, but his heart wasn’t in it. He lapsed back into his old ways and before long he took to riding in Stockton Woods again, with his manservant Nero walking at his side. He thought that he had missed an opportunity and told Samuel if he was fortunate enough to see the stars again, he would ride straight for them. He’d embrace their evil purpose.”

“What you said about standing around like doofuses, taking pictures,” Andrea said. “I don’t suppose anyone got a picture?”

Pin produced a cell phone and punched up a photograph of the library and the stars. Andrea and I leaned in to see.

“Can you e-mail that to me?” I asked.

Pin said he could and I wrote my address on a napkin.

“So,” Pin said. “The next time BW saw the stars was in eighteen-oh-eight. He saw them twice, exactly like the first time. A single star, then an interval of week or two and a more complex sighting. A month after that, he disappeared while riding with Nero in Stockon Wood and they were never seen again.”

Stanky hailed our waitress and asked for more pancakes for his moo shu.

“So you think the stars appeared three times?” said Andrea. “And Black William missed the third appearance on the first go-round, but not on the second?”

“That’s what Samuel thought,” said Pin.

Stanky fed Liz a bite of lemon chicken.

“You’re assuming Black William was killed by the stars, but that doesn’t make sense,” said Andrea. “For instance, why would there be a longer interval between the second and third sightings? If there was a third sighting. It’s more likely someone who knew the story killed him and blamed it on the stars.”

“Maybe Nero capped him,” said Stanky. “So he could gain his freedom.”

Pin shrugged. “I only know what I read.”

“It might be a wavefront,” I said.

On another napkin, I drew a straight line with a small bump in it, then an interval in which the line flattened out, then a bigger bump, then a longer interval and an even bigger bump.

“Like that, maybe,” I said. “Some kind of wavefront passing through Black William from God knows where. It’s always passing through town, but we get this series of bumps that make it accessible every two hundred years. Or less. Maybe the stars appeared at other times.”

“There’s no record of it,” said Pin. “And I’ve searched.”

The waitress brought Stanky’s pancakes and asked if we needed more napkins.

Andrea studied the napkin I’d drawn on. “But what about the first series of sightings? When were they?”

“Seventeen-eighty-nine,” said Pin.

“It could be an erratic cycle,” I said. “Or could be the cycle consists of two sequences close together, then a lapse of two hundred years. Don’t expect a deeper explanation. I cut class a bunch in high school physics.”

“The Holy Ghost doesn’t obey physical principles,” said Stanky pompously.

“I doubt Black William really heard the Holy Ghost,” Andrea said. “If he heard what we heard tonight. It sounded more like a door closing to me.”

“Whatever,” he said. “It’ll be cool to see what happens a month from now. Maybe Black William will return from the grave.”

“Yeah.” I crumpled the napkin and tossed it to the center of the table. “Maybe he’ll bring Doctor Doom and the Lone Ranger with him.”

Pin affected a shudder and said, “I think I’m busy that day.”

Pin sent me the picture and I emailed it to a gearhead friend, Crazy Ed, who lived in Wilkes-Barre, to see what he could make of it. Though I didn’t forget about the stars, I got slammed with business and my consideration of them and the late William Garnant had to be put on the backburner, along with Stanky’s career. Against all expectations, Liz had not fled screaming from his bed, crying Pervert, but stayed with him most nights. Except for his time in the studio, I rarely saw him, and then only when his high school fans drove by to pick up him and Liz. An apocryphal story reached my ear, insinuating that she had taken on a carload of teenage boys while Stanky watched. That, if true, explained the relationship in Stanky-esque terms, terms I could understand. I didn’t care what they did as long as he fulfilled his band duties and kept out of my hair. I landed him a gig at the Pick and Shovel in Waterford, filling in for a band that had been forced to cancel, and it went well enough that I scored him another gig at Garnant College. After a mere two performances, his reputation was building and I adjusted my timetable accordingly—I would make the college job an EP release party, push out an album soon thereafter and try to sell him to a major label. It was not the way I typically grew my acts, not commercially wise, but Stanky was not a typical act and, despite his prodigious talent, I wanted to have done with this sour-smelling chapter in my life.