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jack_babalonWhen I was a kid dad would always tell Mom & I a ghost story on Christmas Eve. I dunno, I think it was a British thing. But being as this is my holiday without him, I thought in honor of his memory I would try the same. So this is an idea I've been tinkering with, a little like a different story of mine - 'Ride' - only it's a lot quicker.Hope you dig it.
Now, 'Honey' may be what I call the car, but 'Baby' will always be my faithful and beat up mountain bike. Honey's what I drive, but Baby's what I ride. Honey gets me around town, but Baby takes me straight into the city. She's a Scott 70, 28" wheels, 24 speeds, chipped red paint and flat black of frame. She wears every pot hole, spill and wreck we've shared with the pride of a battle scarred Valkyrie. Between us we share the manly and time honored relationship known between cowboy and steed, knight and mare, and Knight Rider and K.I.T.T. Only I have to do both our voices. No easy task that, as Baby's imaginary AI communicates with the authoritative and robotically feminine voice that comes standard issue on all future space faring vessels. Unfortunately my best imitation of that comes off like a very bored dominatrix faking a very bad British accent. However, the reactions 'her' voice draws from passing joggers and cyclists always makes it well worth the effort.
Right now we're on the Freedom Parkway Trail that slices straight down the Old Fourth Ward's jugular before twisting itself deep into the belly of Poncey-Highland. Perched on the intersection of Highland & Freedom, digging the traffic view, I catch my breath off the last drag from a Camel. I've been burning energy with speed trials up and down the winding hills of the Trail finishing with a light cruise around L5P for nostalgia kicks. The sun had only just set but already a sharp, wet chill was setting in. We've had a few days of solid rain and tonight's the first clear sky I've seen in awhile. Still I'm tired and hungry. I'm about to launch back home into the Fourth Ward, when as soon as my foot hits the pavement, a blue eyed boy rolls up on my left.
The blue eyed boy's dressed up as some kind of urban ninja. Black hoodie under a black leather jacket, black studded gloves, black army fatigues tucked into black combat boots and a black bandana imprinted with a skull's white rictus worn bandit style. With his hood up, the blue eyes sparkle cold and pale from its shadows to look beyond me as if I wasn't there. As for the bicycle he pulled up in, well I can't recall have seen anything quite like it outside the works of H R Giger. A custom made number, built to intimidate anything smaller than a Harley. The frame was assembled from a series of chrome dipped animal bones and brandished polished spikes of intermittent sizes along the tubes. A horse's skull, also dipped in chrome, acted as the bike's headset with two light reflectors embedded in the sockets and two massive horns protruding out shoulder high into handle bars from its sides. The tires look thick enough to crush rubble beneath its treads yet fresh enough to have just rolled out of the shop.
I whistle appreciatively: "That's an awesome lookin' ride you got there, man."
The blue eyed boy seems to suddenly realize I'm standing there. He looks at me in that way you do when someone you don't recognize speaks your name at a party you weren't invited to. He holds his gaze a second too long before drawing it slowly away to his bike, giving it an approving nod as if he had just remembered what it looked like.
"So, uh, you had her made locally or something?" I say admiring the reflections of brake signals flowing along its frame.
The blue eyed boy pats the chrome horse skull lovingly, the reflectors spark a ruby glare and he shakes his head no. While any sane man would've made their goodbyes at this point I decided to try to sound all clever and cool instead: "So, uh you wouldn't want to race me for her would you?"
The blue eyed boy unsheathes his full attention back on me and pins me silent under a wild glare.
"You can't race me, Little Shade." The skeletal grin of his black bandana move in synch with the words, "I'm the finishing line that waits victoriously for the fast and slow alike. Fast as accident and slow as murder. But nevertheless... I accept your challenge."
"Whoah, whoah, whoah... I was just playing with you there, man."
"Ah but I'm not a 'man', Jack." The blue eyed boy erupts into a laugh that echoes for miles beneath the grinning bandana. "Look at me with your imagination and see me for who I truly am."
"How'd you know my...?"
"Look!"
And with a blink of my eyes the blue eyed boy has been replaced by the towering silhouette of an armored angel, whose obsidian bat wings spread endlessly up into the abyssal night. His ride melts out of his abdomen into a skeleton mare with liquid black bones and the embers of two dying universes swirling from the skull's sockets. The longer I look into them the larger they seem to become, threatening to suck dry the light from the world in a red shift blaze until there is nothing left but an ashen shell. I would scream in terror if I wasn't so mesmerized by their glory. But then another blink brings the blue eyed boy back before me along with the world just as I had left it.
"So now that you know exactly who you have challenged," the blue eyed boy nods with a quick courtesy, "I will now outline the terms of our race."
"Dude, hold up a second. What 'terms'?" I laugh nervously, "I mean I just told you I was kidding when..."
"In jest or not, you have challenged me and I have accepted. Those are the rules." The blue eyed boy silences me with a dismissive wave that skins the leaves from branches behind him, "Now while I am normally bound to never interfere with a shade before its harvest, there is the exception should I ever be met on the crossroads just after dusk."
"I thought that was the Devil?"
"No, she can only appear upon the crossroads at midnight and does so strictly for reasons of a more mercantile nature."
"'She'?"
"Oh yes, just like her Mother." The blue eyed boy looks upwards and then back at me with a twinkle of pity, "only without the temper. Now I on the other hand, am no merchant but rather a messenger. When I appear before a mortal after the last light of dusk has set, I am bound to answer truthfully any question with which they may present me. Or in your case, any challenge, to which I am also bound to answer as well and do so with an enthusiastic 'yes'?"
"Look, I don't know what's going on here, but I really gotta get going here." I grip Baby's handlebars hard, ready to spin her around and bolt back to Little Five. Maybe hold up in the Yacht a spell and drink this whole episode back into oblivion.
"Oh, you certainly do have to get going." The blue eyed boy looks back at me and wags an admonishing finger that heralds the screech then crunch of an unseen car to crash in the distance. "Faster than you've ever gone on your 'Baby' before. But just not... yet. Not until the race has officially begun."
"Okay hold up a second. Didn't you just tell me how I can't beat you? How you're the, what was it again?, oh yeah, the 'victorious finishing line'?" I shrug with powerless arrogance, "So what would be the point of me 'racing' that?"
"Fair enough." The blue eyed concedes with his moon white rictus widening beneath the hood. "Instead you'll race three of my hounds."
He claps his hands three times as applauding sarcastically. They are followed by three phosphorous white lights that ignite out of the gloom from deep in the trail's distance. As one they fire forward down the wet, black pavement at a ferocious speed towards us. Within the count of five, they are close enough that I can see the shadows of three men with the lights borne upon their heads. Within ten they have covered half the distance between their origin and I can make out they're line skaters of some sort. They're decked out in full body black unitard suits and wearing coal miner helmets. Fifteen on the dot and they arrive, circling around us vulture style while training their helmet beams on me. Beneath their glare I can see there's something wrong with their faces. I keep catching faceless black masks, but sometimes I catch quick glimpses of pus colored lampreys with dagger ringed mouths grinning at me.
"C'mon, man." I turn to the blue eyed boy, "Three against one. How's that fair?"
"It isn't." The blue eyed boy wags his eyebrows playfully. "Which is why you'll have a one minute head start."
I find myself slipping into the realm of nightmare reasoning. Where decisions are made with all the wisdom of teenage lovers in horror films even as a small part of you sits in the audience of your brain screaming - 'Behind you!'
"Oh yeah and where we racing to?" I say all cardboard bravado and chattering teeth.
"From here...," the blue eyed boy looks down the darkened recesses of the bike trail and squints his eyes, "to Boulevard. Now before you protest allow me to point out that you don't have to beat my hounds to win. All you have to do is get there before one of them touches you."
"And what happens if they touch me?" I ask shielding my eyes from the glare off their helmets. "I die or something stupid like that."
"There's no need to be dramatic. Your time is marked but it's not tonight. " The blue eyed boy unfolds his arms magnanimously causing an ambulance's siren to wail out its song of rescue. "But as you recall, your challenge was for possession of my steed and she shall be yours if you make the ride untouched. In return however, I will be racing you for three of your days."
"What, like in the future or something?"
"No. From your past."
"I don't follow. I mean, haven't I lived those already?"
"Heh." The blue eyed boy snorts, "Yes, and you continue to do so brightly in the depths of your remembrance. Even when you're not aware that you do so."
"Why would you want my memories?"
"Because mine are primarily of harvesting shades and waiting at the end of eternity for it to loop back in on itself only to start all over again. Nothing but terror and tedium I can assure you. Ah, but should one of my hounds touch you during the race... then I'll collect from your mind that day as a child when your best and only friend introduced himself to you in that hostile classroom you thought you'd never escape. Should another, the night you clung to the waist of that pretty Italian girl as she rode you both up Mount Etna on her scooter - that shall be mine alone to remember as well. From the third, I'll count amongst my treasures that day your father and grandfather arrived unannounced at that horrible summer camp to rescue you from the most excruciating eight weeks of your life. The memory of these days will keep me company when I watch the last ember of existence flare out and as I wait to harvest the first cell from the next primordial cauldron to come. Admittedly, I could do better, but still you work with what you're given."
"Or take." I sneer abandoning all hope of denial for anger. "So what happens if I refuse?"
"Then I give you a minute either way before my boys pluck them from your mind while you just stand there."
I shift from anger to bargaining: "C'mon man, isn't there something else we can work out? Some other memories at least, I mean... shit, some days, those other days are all I got."
"Then you better race as fast you can for them, little shade. "The blue eyed boy winks. "Now get ready to go in ten, nine, eight,..."
The hounds stop circling me and line themselves up three abreast directly behind me. I can hear them grunting and snarling. I can smell something rancid and bitter coming off them. I'm frozen on my bike, petrified. I don't know if I can make myself move much less race. I'm not ready to do anything but curl up in a ball and cry. And that's when I hear her.
"Jack," Baby whispers. "Listen to me."
"... seven, six, five,..."
"I can do this." She promises.
"... four, three, two..."
"And so can you." She assures me through my desperate grin to match the blue eyed boy's.
"... one and go!"
I kick off with a slap of Converse to the pavement and launch myself into the trail with a primal scream, pedaling faster than I've ever pedaled before.
***
Lined intermittently along this section of the trail are a regiment of old-timey looking lamps to provide a modicum of evening's illumination. Their bulbous tops casting the curves and hills in a soft copper glow for nocturnal promenades. But tonight for some reason they have all been extinguished a few hours earlier than usual. The lamps I pass to my left are drenched black, mute soldiers at attention draped with the shadows of the blue eyed boy's wishes. So basically I'm racing blind with only the ambient night sky and passing headlights off Freedom to navigate by.
That and instinct. My body knows this part of the trail as well as my eyes do. If not better. I synch into Baby's frame, allowing her to envelope me in her velocity armor. I shift command to muscle memory. I bank sightlessly around invisible bumps, hug flawlessly sudden curves and shift cycles to match the climb of unseen hills.
But what I don't got is time. Which means I'm pounding pedals a little more recklessly than I'm used to. I've been counting and we're at 23 seconds into my head start and we've just passed where I first saw my opponents. It took them 15 seconds to get this far which means they have an eight second headstart...
"Jack." Baby tells me through the chatter of my teeth. "I really need you to focus if we're going to win this."
She's right. Besides that's 15 seconds downhill. Impressive. But not impossible impressive. I look behind me, the old Orpheus habit, and see the headlights of the blue eyed boy's hounds vanish as I dip down the hill.
"Incoming." Baby red-alerts me. I snap out of the math cloud. At the last second I zig a flock of all terrain joggers rounding the bend, I zag an oncoming bicyclist who's got the LED on his handlebars set to epilepsy. Strobe bedazzled, I overcompensate the dodge and go off trail. Braking at my velocity across the wet grass sends me skidding hard. I drop down my foot, pivot Baby off its anchor as I pull her up and kick off the terrain to send us gliding back into the flow. The last spots clear from my eyes and I pop back onto the trail. Only a few moments lost, but even one's more than I can afford right now.
"True enough, Jack." The blue eyed boy answers my thoughts as casually as if I had spoken them. He's pedaling alongside Baby's port side from just left of nowhere. Shock recoils a jolt through my body and I almost spill again. "It's now one minute and my hounds have been dispatched."
"So?" I pant and pedal faster to open a narrow lead on the smug fuck. "Who's counting?"
"Why I am, Jack." The blue eyed boy picks up speed effortlessly, flanks in close and shoots a wink that sparkles through the gloom. "Since the day you were born."
The blue eyed boy bolts forward at the speed of dark, sailing out of existence as easily as he sailed in.
I look behind me and though I don't see their lights yet I can feel them approaching. They fill me with the silence before the scream. The dread of childhood monsters perched on the bed, the terror of hospital visits at three in the morning.
"Jack, I can go faster than this." Baby emergency broadcasts through the horror, "Much faster. But not without your help."
She's right. I pedal faster. Haul ass with everything I got. Within moments we're approaching the bridge that runs over the beltway, the recently opened jogging path between Cabbage Town and Piedmont Park. Up ahead I notice something to my right. A chain link gate pressed flat to the railing separating the trail from Freedom Parkway. I've passed it hundreds of times before but never really gave it much thought. But now I remember that time some asshole closed it on me and I only avoided riding into head on at the last minute.
"Don't worry Baby," I smile down on her as we rocket over the bridge and soar down the steep drop of the overpass that follows. "I got a plan."
Baby doesn't say a word. She does that when she worries.
***
I hit the overpass, switch speeds up and rocket down the brief tunnel's drop. I burst out in a splash of puddles and my tires slice a cascade of waves in my wake. I come up on the cubist style gray house to the left quick and start to slow down. Up ahead the second set of chain link gates installed along the trail. I brake and dismount just past them in one fluid motion. I jog over quick and hope they're not bolted close. If they are then I've just fucked myself well and truly for nothing.
I stumble through the dark and yank on the gate to my right. There's resistance but they budge. Panic strength kicks in and I manage to pry it through the muddied leaves wedging against it. The next one n the left is a lot easier. I manage to line them up together to block the path. Now all I need's a way to lock it. I dash over to Baby. I kneel down beside where I dropped her and unwind my bicycle chain wrapped beneath the seat.
By the time I get back to the gate I can see the first light of their approach just up ahead at the tunnel's edge. I force myself not to look, concentrating on snaking the bicycle chain through the loops of the gate. My fingers are numb from the cold and my hands shaking from fear, but I manage to slip them through.
A train starts wailing just ahead of me and drifts into a howl of mangled steel. I glance up on instinct and spy the three hounds zooming down the hill towards me. The blare of their light almost blinding me. I force my fingers to work quick as I snap the lock into place and shiver out a jerry-rigged version of the lesser banishing ritual of the pentagram. Blurring holy names of god and elemental angels in a chant that's speed metal fast.
The hounds are only a few yards away, with the largest of the three taking the lead...
... and I finish with an improvised "IAO BABALON" dialing the four number combination to 0156...
... just as the big hound slams into the gate in front of me.
A bright blue flame sparks off the impact and the gate shakes hard as if struck with a ferocious gale. The hound recoils back covered in astral fire and shifting back into its true form. It resembles a bullmastiff the size of a pony whose head has been replaced with that of a lamprey's protruding through the massive torso. From its rounded jaws a beam of white light slices around the trail wildly. The other two hounds slow and circle around their companion as it shrivels into a diminishing ball of flames before consuming itself out of existence.
Before me the locks glows with the blue of Nuit's splendor and the cerulean robes of the mountain gods.
"You're fucking with the wrong shade, assholes!" I bark victoriously giving them double fuck you salute with my hands.
"Very clever." The blue eyed boy says appearing directly to my left. "I wasn't aware you were an initiate."
"I know enough to get in trouble." I say with a grin of my own. "The rest is wha'cha call it - 'imagination'?"
"Bravo, and that is one of your three memories you have won. But clever only goes so far in a race and you're not even halfway there. " He nods towards the gate.
I look over. The hounds are standing there watching silently. Their lantern glares trained directly on me. Then I notice that they seem to be floating away backwards for some reason.
No, not backwards. Down. They're sinking into the pavement, quickly, as the torch of their helmets soon extinguish into a puddle along the trail. Leaving only the darkness and I stumble backwards. I stumble back and remount Baby. To my sides I see the lanterns reemerging from the earth a few feet ahead of the gate.
"Shit." I hiss and take off as my opponent laughs behind me. The curve winds itself uphill, then dips left to run parallel with Highland before dropping to curve sharply under the avenue before giving into the largest hill on the trail - an upward slope that terminates a few yards shy of Boulevard.
That's gonna be a hard ride, with no more gates or tricks in between.
But then again... who said I had to take the trail? 'To Boulevard' was all the blue eyed boy had said. He didn't say anything about how.
Inspired, I pound the pedals furious and take the serpentine climb in a blur. The cold air is blasting my exposed hands numb. I can't feel my fists and each bump sends a jolt of sharp pain up them. My chest in pounding. Each breath comes ragged as every cigarette I've ever smoked comes to collect. I force myself not to look over the shoulder and aim forward. I'm coming up along the rear patios of Johnny's Pizza and some frou-frou cantina. Almost there. Then, from over my left shoulder the glare of a closing hound. They're faster than I thought and gaining up on me quick.
I stand up and switch gears. I keep going in a straight line past the turn off even as my opponents gain velocity. I can't just bolt for Highland now or they'll simply catch me on the turn when I lose speed. Instead I go just a bit over the top and then as I can hear their grunting over the wind whistling in my ears, I swing a sharp left. I catch two streaks of shadow race by and hear them howl. I overshot the mark though and I'm climbing the side of the grassy knoll between the trail and street before vanishing beneath the tunnel. Wet grass and mud absorb a good chunk of my momentum, but I still have enough to gain some traction and reach the sidewalk along Highland. I hang a right and pop into the street.
A monstrous blare resounds followed a terrible banshee shriek as I realize that a minivan is about to plow into me. I hang a left and just avoid getting swiped by the minivan as it roars past me. I ignore it and keep going. Zigzagging through the dwindling rush hour traffic. I switch to instinct and faith.
Headlights. Horn blares. Tire screeches. Close calls each. I glance behind me. The hounds roll off the trail and into Highland in pursuit.
Diving through oncoming vehicles, ignoring the brakes outright, doing my best to throw them off balance long enough to keep the lead. Up ahead, Glen Iris and then a steady climb to Boulevard. The finishing line. Home free. But as I come up on Glen Iris the light turns red and there's a steady cross stream of traffic truncating my route.
Not just that but with traffic stalled the hounds will gain back their lost ground easily weaving through the backed up cars.
But then a thought occurs. A gamble. Something the blue eyed boy told me earlier. "Baby, you know what I got to do right?"
"Affirmative." And she opens up full speed as we plunge into the traffic.
It's not like the movies. Slow motion doesn't kick in while you flutter through fired bullets the way butterflies flit through flowers. It's more like a cubist painting made of chunks of oncoming steel, lights and synthetic roars at 20-30mph. Diving head first into a 180 degree collage of iron and raw speed...
...and gliding back out of it.
Unscathed. I gambled right. That it wasn't my time. The blue eyed boy hinted as such. I reach the other side of Glen Iris taking the last few yards before the final incline kicks in. Habit makes me look back. I see the two hounds weaving through the traffic, the smallest of the three is just about to cross clear with his black hand reaching out for me, closer and closer no matter how fast I go... when a Subaru collides right into him.
"Yes!" I pump my fist just as the last one slips through. The inline skates burn the distance between us with no delay. I look ahead and shift up the gears to compensate for the climb. My lungs feel like they're going to burst. Blood's pounding rough through the skull. I pass the first street that turns off and am approaching the second. The hound is directly behind me now, I can hear the slice of his skates across the pavement.
Time for one last idea.
I bank right just as I feel the hand snatch at the empty air where my shoulder was a moment ago. I slip between two cars and pop the curb. The climb ate enough momentum that I don't go crashing into the bushes. He's on inline skates. Let's see how they handle a sidewalk.
Bad plan though.
As instead of following me the hound races up ahead along the street to cut me off. We're racing neck and neck up the street. The pavement's broken up though. Mountain bike or not I can feel each jolt and bump rattle me from the frame to the teeth. I'm approaching the end of the block but he's already cut me off. Circling around patiently for my arrival.
So instead I hang a right at the end of the block and stay on the sidewalk. Curving down and around the brick tenement housing there. The terrain's not much better on this side but at least it's downhill. The hound seems confused for a moment and then races after me. Using the same plan as before. Using the street to gain distance on me and cut me off just ahead.
Exactly what I hoped he'd do.
I hang a sudden left as he rockets past me and another as I head back to Highland behind him. The hound just now registers and glides around quicker than I anticipated. Now I'm on the street and the traffic's flowing along. The hound rounds the corner and is giving it all he's got. Covering the space between us in demonically fueled strides.
But Boulevard's up ahead and closing.
That's when the blue eyed boy appears ahead of me. Standing there blocking the narrow lane I have between parked cars and the traffic crawl. His arms are outstretched to me and I can hear the growl of his hound closing in, the glare of his lantern flickering in my eyes as it grows steadily and I can see a black hand snatching at my shoulder.
Now or never.
I lock down on those blue eyes and drain the reserves within. I lean forward over the bars just as the black hand swipes at the empty air above my arched back. I gun it forward - dead on into the blue eyed boy.
The blue eyed boys widen with anticipation and I blink mine just at the moment we should impact only to see a much, much wider breadth of full on traffic. Boulevard - where I jab my brakes hitting the rear front first and the back second so I slide out of a final lounge off the hound who goes crashing down in front of me just as I manage to stop inches from an oncoming MARTA bus.
I drop my foot down... and touch sweet Boulevard as if it was my very own home.
The fallen hound vanishes and I glide over to the sidewalk. There the blue eyed boy is waiting for me. Only he's not on his ride now, he's standing next to it and grasping the handlebars.
"Well played, Jack." The blue eyed boy nods respectively and motions to his bicycle. "Your chariot awaits."
"Keep it." I laugh, lighting up a well needed cigarette to keep from vomiting. "I'll take my Baby over your ride any day. Oh, and keep the memory of this race while you're at it. They're not as sweet as mine but it'll remind you what mankind is capable of when you don't know how to take a joke."
The blue eyed boy laughs and mounts his ride. "That I will, Jack. That I will. But tell me... how do you know there weren't originally five riders and you only remember three because when two touched you their memory vanished along with the ones they took?"
"Wait, what?" I pull the cigarette out of my mouth, "Naw, you're just fucking with me."
"I guess you'll never know until the next time we meet."
"Yeah." I wink and flick him a two finger salute off the brow. "Well, until then... try and keep up."
The blue eyed boy returns the salute and pedals back down Highland.
I close my eyes for a second and try to see if there was anything I had forgotten.
Now, 'Honey' may be what I call the car, but 'Baby' will always be my faithful and beat up mountain bike. Honey's what I drive, but Baby's what I ride. Honey gets me around town, but Baby takes me straight into the city. She's a Scott 70, 28" wheels, 24 speeds, chipped red paint and flat black of frame. She wears every pot hole, spill and wreck we've shared with the pride of a battle scarred Valkyrie. Between us we share the manly and time honored relationship known between cowboy and steed, knight and mare, and Knight Rider and K.I.T.T. Only I have to do both our voices. No easy task that, as Baby's imaginary AI communicates with the authoritative and robotically feminine voice that comes standard issue on all future space faring vessels. Unfortunately my best imitation of that comes off like a very bored dominatrix faking a very bad British accent. However, the reactions 'her' voice draws from passing joggers and cyclists always makes it well worth the effort.
Right now we're on the Freedom Parkway Trail that slices straight down the Old Fourth Ward's jugular before twisting itself deep into the belly of Poncey-Highland. Perched on the intersection of Highland & Freedom, digging the traffic view, I catch my breath off the last drag from a Camel. I've been burning energy with speed trials up and down the winding hills of the Trail finishing with a light cruise around L5P for nostalgia kicks. The sun had only just set but already a sharp, wet chill was setting in. We've had a few days of solid rain and tonight's the first clear sky I've seen in awhile. Still I'm tired and hungry. I'm about to launch back home into the Fourth Ward, when as soon as my foot hits the pavement, a blue eyed boy rolls up on my left.
The blue eyed boy's dressed up as some kind of urban ninja. Black hoodie under a black leather jacket, black studded gloves, black army fatigues tucked into black combat boots and a black bandana imprinted with a skull's white rictus worn bandit style. With his hood up, the blue eyes sparkle cold and pale from its shadows to look beyond me as if I wasn't there. As for the bicycle he pulled up in, well I can't recall have seen anything quite like it outside the works of H R Giger. A custom made number, built to intimidate anything smaller than a Harley. The frame was assembled from a series of chrome dipped animal bones and brandished polished spikes of intermittent sizes along the tubes. A horse's skull, also dipped in chrome, acted as the bike's headset with two light reflectors embedded in the sockets and two massive horns protruding out shoulder high into handle bars from its sides. The tires look thick enough to crush rubble beneath its treads yet fresh enough to have just rolled out of the shop.
I whistle appreciatively: "That's an awesome lookin' ride you got there, man."
The blue eyed boy seems to suddenly realize I'm standing there. He looks at me in that way you do when someone you don't recognize speaks your name at a party you weren't invited to. He holds his gaze a second too long before drawing it slowly away to his bike, giving it an approving nod as if he had just remembered what it looked like.
"So, uh, you had her made locally or something?" I say admiring the reflections of brake signals flowing along its frame.
The blue eyed boy pats the chrome horse skull lovingly, the reflectors spark a ruby glare and he shakes his head no. While any sane man would've made their goodbyes at this point I decided to try to sound all clever and cool instead: "So, uh you wouldn't want to race me for her would you?"
The blue eyed boy unsheathes his full attention back on me and pins me silent under a wild glare.
"You can't race me, Little Shade." The skeletal grin of his black bandana move in synch with the words, "I'm the finishing line that waits victoriously for the fast and slow alike. Fast as accident and slow as murder. But nevertheless... I accept your challenge."
"Whoah, whoah, whoah... I was just playing with you there, man."
"Ah but I'm not a 'man', Jack." The blue eyed boy erupts into a laugh that echoes for miles beneath the grinning bandana. "Look at me with your imagination and see me for who I truly am."
"How'd you know my...?"
"Look!"
And with a blink of my eyes the blue eyed boy has been replaced by the towering silhouette of an armored angel, whose obsidian bat wings spread endlessly up into the abyssal night. His ride melts out of his abdomen into a skeleton mare with liquid black bones and the embers of two dying universes swirling from the skull's sockets. The longer I look into them the larger they seem to become, threatening to suck dry the light from the world in a red shift blaze until there is nothing left but an ashen shell. I would scream in terror if I wasn't so mesmerized by their glory. But then another blink brings the blue eyed boy back before me along with the world just as I had left it.
"So now that you know exactly who you have challenged," the blue eyed boy nods with a quick courtesy, "I will now outline the terms of our race."
"Dude, hold up a second. What 'terms'?" I laugh nervously, "I mean I just told you I was kidding when..."
"In jest or not, you have challenged me and I have accepted. Those are the rules." The blue eyed boy silences me with a dismissive wave that skins the leaves from branches behind him, "Now while I am normally bound to never interfere with a shade before its harvest, there is the exception should I ever be met on the crossroads just after dusk."
"I thought that was the Devil?"
"No, she can only appear upon the crossroads at midnight and does so strictly for reasons of a more mercantile nature."
"'She'?"
"Oh yes, just like her Mother." The blue eyed boy looks upwards and then back at me with a twinkle of pity, "only without the temper. Now I on the other hand, am no merchant but rather a messenger. When I appear before a mortal after the last light of dusk has set, I am bound to answer truthfully any question with which they may present me. Or in your case, any challenge, to which I am also bound to answer as well and do so with an enthusiastic 'yes'?"
"Look, I don't know what's going on here, but I really gotta get going here." I grip Baby's handlebars hard, ready to spin her around and bolt back to Little Five. Maybe hold up in the Yacht a spell and drink this whole episode back into oblivion.
"Oh, you certainly do have to get going." The blue eyed boy looks back at me and wags an admonishing finger that heralds the screech then crunch of an unseen car to crash in the distance. "Faster than you've ever gone on your 'Baby' before. But just not... yet. Not until the race has officially begun."
"Okay hold up a second. Didn't you just tell me how I can't beat you? How you're the, what was it again?, oh yeah, the 'victorious finishing line'?" I shrug with powerless arrogance, "So what would be the point of me 'racing' that?"
"Fair enough." The blue eyed concedes with his moon white rictus widening beneath the hood. "Instead you'll race three of my hounds."
He claps his hands three times as applauding sarcastically. They are followed by three phosphorous white lights that ignite out of the gloom from deep in the trail's distance. As one they fire forward down the wet, black pavement at a ferocious speed towards us. Within the count of five, they are close enough that I can see the shadows of three men with the lights borne upon their heads. Within ten they have covered half the distance between their origin and I can make out they're line skaters of some sort. They're decked out in full body black unitard suits and wearing coal miner helmets. Fifteen on the dot and they arrive, circling around us vulture style while training their helmet beams on me. Beneath their glare I can see there's something wrong with their faces. I keep catching faceless black masks, but sometimes I catch quick glimpses of pus colored lampreys with dagger ringed mouths grinning at me.
"C'mon, man." I turn to the blue eyed boy, "Three against one. How's that fair?"
"It isn't." The blue eyed boy wags his eyebrows playfully. "Which is why you'll have a one minute head start."
I find myself slipping into the realm of nightmare reasoning. Where decisions are made with all the wisdom of teenage lovers in horror films even as a small part of you sits in the audience of your brain screaming - 'Behind you!'
"Oh yeah and where we racing to?" I say all cardboard bravado and chattering teeth.
"From here...," the blue eyed boy looks down the darkened recesses of the bike trail and squints his eyes, "to Boulevard. Now before you protest allow me to point out that you don't have to beat my hounds to win. All you have to do is get there before one of them touches you."
"And what happens if they touch me?" I ask shielding my eyes from the glare off their helmets. "I die or something stupid like that."
"There's no need to be dramatic. Your time is marked but it's not tonight. " The blue eyed boy unfolds his arms magnanimously causing an ambulance's siren to wail out its song of rescue. "But as you recall, your challenge was for possession of my steed and she shall be yours if you make the ride untouched. In return however, I will be racing you for three of your days."
"What, like in the future or something?"
"No. From your past."
"I don't follow. I mean, haven't I lived those already?"
"Heh." The blue eyed boy snorts, "Yes, and you continue to do so brightly in the depths of your remembrance. Even when you're not aware that you do so."
"Why would you want my memories?"
"Because mine are primarily of harvesting shades and waiting at the end of eternity for it to loop back in on itself only to start all over again. Nothing but terror and tedium I can assure you. Ah, but should one of my hounds touch you during the race... then I'll collect from your mind that day as a child when your best and only friend introduced himself to you in that hostile classroom you thought you'd never escape. Should another, the night you clung to the waist of that pretty Italian girl as she rode you both up Mount Etna on her scooter - that shall be mine alone to remember as well. From the third, I'll count amongst my treasures that day your father and grandfather arrived unannounced at that horrible summer camp to rescue you from the most excruciating eight weeks of your life. The memory of these days will keep me company when I watch the last ember of existence flare out and as I wait to harvest the first cell from the next primordial cauldron to come. Admittedly, I could do better, but still you work with what you're given."
"Or take." I sneer abandoning all hope of denial for anger. "So what happens if I refuse?"
"Then I give you a minute either way before my boys pluck them from your mind while you just stand there."
I shift from anger to bargaining: "C'mon man, isn't there something else we can work out? Some other memories at least, I mean... shit, some days, those other days are all I got."
"Then you better race as fast you can for them, little shade. "The blue eyed boy winks. "Now get ready to go in ten, nine, eight,..."
The hounds stop circling me and line themselves up three abreast directly behind me. I can hear them grunting and snarling. I can smell something rancid and bitter coming off them. I'm frozen on my bike, petrified. I don't know if I can make myself move much less race. I'm not ready to do anything but curl up in a ball and cry. And that's when I hear her.
"Jack," Baby whispers. "Listen to me."
"... seven, six, five,..."
"I can do this." She promises.
"... four, three, two..."
"And so can you." She assures me through my desperate grin to match the blue eyed boy's.
"... one and go!"
I kick off with a slap of Converse to the pavement and launch myself into the trail with a primal scream, pedaling faster than I've ever pedaled before.
Lined intermittently along this section of the trail are a regiment of old-timey looking lamps to provide a modicum of evening's illumination. Their bulbous tops casting the curves and hills in a soft copper glow for nocturnal promenades. But tonight for some reason they have all been extinguished a few hours earlier than usual. The lamps I pass to my left are drenched black, mute soldiers at attention draped with the shadows of the blue eyed boy's wishes. So basically I'm racing blind with only the ambient night sky and passing headlights off Freedom to navigate by.
That and instinct. My body knows this part of the trail as well as my eyes do. If not better. I synch into Baby's frame, allowing her to envelope me in her velocity armor. I shift command to muscle memory. I bank sightlessly around invisible bumps, hug flawlessly sudden curves and shift cycles to match the climb of unseen hills.
But what I don't got is time. Which means I'm pounding pedals a little more recklessly than I'm used to. I've been counting and we're at 23 seconds into my head start and we've just passed where I first saw my opponents. It took them 15 seconds to get this far which means they have an eight second headstart...
"Jack." Baby tells me through the chatter of my teeth. "I really need you to focus if we're going to win this."
She's right. Besides that's 15 seconds downhill. Impressive. But not impossible impressive. I look behind me, the old Orpheus habit, and see the headlights of the blue eyed boy's hounds vanish as I dip down the hill.
"Incoming." Baby red-alerts me. I snap out of the math cloud. At the last second I zig a flock of all terrain joggers rounding the bend, I zag an oncoming bicyclist who's got the LED on his handlebars set to epilepsy. Strobe bedazzled, I overcompensate the dodge and go off trail. Braking at my velocity across the wet grass sends me skidding hard. I drop down my foot, pivot Baby off its anchor as I pull her up and kick off the terrain to send us gliding back into the flow. The last spots clear from my eyes and I pop back onto the trail. Only a few moments lost, but even one's more than I can afford right now.
"True enough, Jack." The blue eyed boy answers my thoughts as casually as if I had spoken them. He's pedaling alongside Baby's port side from just left of nowhere. Shock recoils a jolt through my body and I almost spill again. "It's now one minute and my hounds have been dispatched."
"So?" I pant and pedal faster to open a narrow lead on the smug fuck. "Who's counting?"
"Why I am, Jack." The blue eyed boy picks up speed effortlessly, flanks in close and shoots a wink that sparkles through the gloom. "Since the day you were born."
The blue eyed boy bolts forward at the speed of dark, sailing out of existence as easily as he sailed in.
I look behind me and though I don't see their lights yet I can feel them approaching. They fill me with the silence before the scream. The dread of childhood monsters perched on the bed, the terror of hospital visits at three in the morning.
"Jack, I can go faster than this." Baby emergency broadcasts through the horror, "Much faster. But not without your help."
She's right. I pedal faster. Haul ass with everything I got. Within moments we're approaching the bridge that runs over the beltway, the recently opened jogging path between Cabbage Town and Piedmont Park. Up ahead I notice something to my right. A chain link gate pressed flat to the railing separating the trail from Freedom Parkway. I've passed it hundreds of times before but never really gave it much thought. But now I remember that time some asshole closed it on me and I only avoided riding into head on at the last minute.
"Don't worry Baby," I smile down on her as we rocket over the bridge and soar down the steep drop of the overpass that follows. "I got a plan."
Baby doesn't say a word. She does that when she worries.
I hit the overpass, switch speeds up and rocket down the brief tunnel's drop. I burst out in a splash of puddles and my tires slice a cascade of waves in my wake. I come up on the cubist style gray house to the left quick and start to slow down. Up ahead the second set of chain link gates installed along the trail. I brake and dismount just past them in one fluid motion. I jog over quick and hope they're not bolted close. If they are then I've just fucked myself well and truly for nothing.
I stumble through the dark and yank on the gate to my right. There's resistance but they budge. Panic strength kicks in and I manage to pry it through the muddied leaves wedging against it. The next one n the left is a lot easier. I manage to line them up together to block the path. Now all I need's a way to lock it. I dash over to Baby. I kneel down beside where I dropped her and unwind my bicycle chain wrapped beneath the seat.
By the time I get back to the gate I can see the first light of their approach just up ahead at the tunnel's edge. I force myself not to look, concentrating on snaking the bicycle chain through the loops of the gate. My fingers are numb from the cold and my hands shaking from fear, but I manage to slip them through.
A train starts wailing just ahead of me and drifts into a howl of mangled steel. I glance up on instinct and spy the three hounds zooming down the hill towards me. The blare of their light almost blinding me. I force my fingers to work quick as I snap the lock into place and shiver out a jerry-rigged version of the lesser banishing ritual of the pentagram. Blurring holy names of god and elemental angels in a chant that's speed metal fast.
The hounds are only a few yards away, with the largest of the three taking the lead...
... and I finish with an improvised "IAO BABALON" dialing the four number combination to 0156...
... just as the big hound slams into the gate in front of me.
A bright blue flame sparks off the impact and the gate shakes hard as if struck with a ferocious gale. The hound recoils back covered in astral fire and shifting back into its true form. It resembles a bullmastiff the size of a pony whose head has been replaced with that of a lamprey's protruding through the massive torso. From its rounded jaws a beam of white light slices around the trail wildly. The other two hounds slow and circle around their companion as it shrivels into a diminishing ball of flames before consuming itself out of existence.
Before me the locks glows with the blue of Nuit's splendor and the cerulean robes of the mountain gods.
"You're fucking with the wrong shade, assholes!" I bark victoriously giving them double fuck you salute with my hands.
"Very clever." The blue eyed boy says appearing directly to my left. "I wasn't aware you were an initiate."
"I know enough to get in trouble." I say with a grin of my own. "The rest is wha'cha call it - 'imagination'?"
"Bravo, and that is one of your three memories you have won. But clever only goes so far in a race and you're not even halfway there. " He nods towards the gate.
I look over. The hounds are standing there watching silently. Their lantern glares trained directly on me. Then I notice that they seem to be floating away backwards for some reason.
No, not backwards. Down. They're sinking into the pavement, quickly, as the torch of their helmets soon extinguish into a puddle along the trail. Leaving only the darkness and I stumble backwards. I stumble back and remount Baby. To my sides I see the lanterns reemerging from the earth a few feet ahead of the gate.
"Shit." I hiss and take off as my opponent laughs behind me. The curve winds itself uphill, then dips left to run parallel with Highland before dropping to curve sharply under the avenue before giving into the largest hill on the trail - an upward slope that terminates a few yards shy of Boulevard.
That's gonna be a hard ride, with no more gates or tricks in between.
But then again... who said I had to take the trail? 'To Boulevard' was all the blue eyed boy had said. He didn't say anything about how.
Inspired, I pound the pedals furious and take the serpentine climb in a blur. The cold air is blasting my exposed hands numb. I can't feel my fists and each bump sends a jolt of sharp pain up them. My chest in pounding. Each breath comes ragged as every cigarette I've ever smoked comes to collect. I force myself not to look over the shoulder and aim forward. I'm coming up along the rear patios of Johnny's Pizza and some frou-frou cantina. Almost there. Then, from over my left shoulder the glare of a closing hound. They're faster than I thought and gaining up on me quick.
I stand up and switch gears. I keep going in a straight line past the turn off even as my opponents gain velocity. I can't just bolt for Highland now or they'll simply catch me on the turn when I lose speed. Instead I go just a bit over the top and then as I can hear their grunting over the wind whistling in my ears, I swing a sharp left. I catch two streaks of shadow race by and hear them howl. I overshot the mark though and I'm climbing the side of the grassy knoll between the trail and street before vanishing beneath the tunnel. Wet grass and mud absorb a good chunk of my momentum, but I still have enough to gain some traction and reach the sidewalk along Highland. I hang a right and pop into the street.
A monstrous blare resounds followed a terrible banshee shriek as I realize that a minivan is about to plow into me. I hang a left and just avoid getting swiped by the minivan as it roars past me. I ignore it and keep going. Zigzagging through the dwindling rush hour traffic. I switch to instinct and faith.
Headlights. Horn blares. Tire screeches. Close calls each. I glance behind me. The hounds roll off the trail and into Highland in pursuit.
Diving through oncoming vehicles, ignoring the brakes outright, doing my best to throw them off balance long enough to keep the lead. Up ahead, Glen Iris and then a steady climb to Boulevard. The finishing line. Home free. But as I come up on Glen Iris the light turns red and there's a steady cross stream of traffic truncating my route.
Not just that but with traffic stalled the hounds will gain back their lost ground easily weaving through the backed up cars.
But then a thought occurs. A gamble. Something the blue eyed boy told me earlier. "Baby, you know what I got to do right?"
"Affirmative." And she opens up full speed as we plunge into the traffic.
It's not like the movies. Slow motion doesn't kick in while you flutter through fired bullets the way butterflies flit through flowers. It's more like a cubist painting made of chunks of oncoming steel, lights and synthetic roars at 20-30mph. Diving head first into a 180 degree collage of iron and raw speed...
...and gliding back out of it.
Unscathed. I gambled right. That it wasn't my time. The blue eyed boy hinted as such. I reach the other side of Glen Iris taking the last few yards before the final incline kicks in. Habit makes me look back. I see the two hounds weaving through the traffic, the smallest of the three is just about to cross clear with his black hand reaching out for me, closer and closer no matter how fast I go... when a Subaru collides right into him.
"Yes!" I pump my fist just as the last one slips through. The inline skates burn the distance between us with no delay. I look ahead and shift up the gears to compensate for the climb. My lungs feel like they're going to burst. Blood's pounding rough through the skull. I pass the first street that turns off and am approaching the second. The hound is directly behind me now, I can hear the slice of his skates across the pavement.
Time for one last idea.
I bank right just as I feel the hand snatch at the empty air where my shoulder was a moment ago. I slip between two cars and pop the curb. The climb ate enough momentum that I don't go crashing into the bushes. He's on inline skates. Let's see how they handle a sidewalk.
Bad plan though.
As instead of following me the hound races up ahead along the street to cut me off. We're racing neck and neck up the street. The pavement's broken up though. Mountain bike or not I can feel each jolt and bump rattle me from the frame to the teeth. I'm approaching the end of the block but he's already cut me off. Circling around patiently for my arrival.
So instead I hang a right at the end of the block and stay on the sidewalk. Curving down and around the brick tenement housing there. The terrain's not much better on this side but at least it's downhill. The hound seems confused for a moment and then races after me. Using the same plan as before. Using the street to gain distance on me and cut me off just ahead.
Exactly what I hoped he'd do.
I hang a sudden left as he rockets past me and another as I head back to Highland behind him. The hound just now registers and glides around quicker than I anticipated. Now I'm on the street and the traffic's flowing along. The hound rounds the corner and is giving it all he's got. Covering the space between us in demonically fueled strides.
But Boulevard's up ahead and closing.
That's when the blue eyed boy appears ahead of me. Standing there blocking the narrow lane I have between parked cars and the traffic crawl. His arms are outstretched to me and I can hear the growl of his hound closing in, the glare of his lantern flickering in my eyes as it grows steadily and I can see a black hand snatching at my shoulder.
Now or never.
I lock down on those blue eyes and drain the reserves within. I lean forward over the bars just as the black hand swipes at the empty air above my arched back. I gun it forward - dead on into the blue eyed boy.
The blue eyed boys widen with anticipation and I blink mine just at the moment we should impact only to see a much, much wider breadth of full on traffic. Boulevard - where I jab my brakes hitting the rear front first and the back second so I slide out of a final lounge off the hound who goes crashing down in front of me just as I manage to stop inches from an oncoming MARTA bus.
I drop my foot down... and touch sweet Boulevard as if it was my very own home.
The fallen hound vanishes and I glide over to the sidewalk. There the blue eyed boy is waiting for me. Only he's not on his ride now, he's standing next to it and grasping the handlebars.
"Well played, Jack." The blue eyed boy nods respectively and motions to his bicycle. "Your chariot awaits."
"Keep it." I laugh, lighting up a well needed cigarette to keep from vomiting. "I'll take my Baby over your ride any day. Oh, and keep the memory of this race while you're at it. They're not as sweet as mine but it'll remind you what mankind is capable of when you don't know how to take a joke."
The blue eyed boy laughs and mounts his ride. "That I will, Jack. That I will. But tell me... how do you know there weren't originally five riders and you only remember three because when two touched you their memory vanished along with the ones they took?"
"Wait, what?" I pull the cigarette out of my mouth, "Naw, you're just fucking with me."
"I guess you'll never know until the next time we meet."
"Yeah." I wink and flick him a two finger salute off the brow. "Well, until then... try and keep up."
The blue eyed boy returns the salute and pedals back down Highland.
I close my eyes for a second and try to see if there was anything I had forgotten.