The Kimota Anthology Part 1

KIMOTA ANTHOLOGY.

Horror, Science Fiction and Fantasy fiction.

Stephen Laws;Stephen Gallagher.

edited by Graeme Hurry.

DEEP BLUE.

by Stephen Laws.

If I think back about it, the whole thing really began with Charlie Otis and his drunken talk about what music can do to you, depending on what kind of mood you're in.

He felt like talking that night, so I let him. That's the thing about The Portland. It's a kind of haven for people who feel the need to get seriously drunk or talk, or get seriously drunk and listen. It's a pub that's managed to survive the plague of bra.s.s and chrome that's infected so many of the city-centre drinking places since the late seventies. Just your old-fas.h.i.+oned, no-nonsense, peeling wallpaper kind of place; with a scarred bar top and fast service for the professional drinker. It's the kind of bar where a draughtsman, a Chief Executive, a s.h.i.+pyard welder and a solicitor can get drunk and talk about their problems with whoever's there, without resorting to talk of work, influence or profession. Anybody who breaks the unspoken rule gets the cold shoulder. Anyway, I digress, and you may as well know from the beginning... I'm no b.l.o.o.d.y good at telling stories, but bear with me.

So anyway, Charlie Otis worked at the Breweries, something in the Orders Section I think (not that it matters, like I say). I'd already got a couple under my belt when he walked in, but he was onto his fourth before I'd ordered my third, and he was p.i.s.sed off. He didn't want to talk about his problem, whatever it was... just around it. There's a time for talking and a time for listening. In The Portland, you've got to be intuitive. So I in-tooted, and listened.

"That's the thing with some music," he said, "If you're in a good mood, you can listen to a real bluesey piece, about some fella who's lost everything, you know? And you can enjoy it, get into the feeling of it, without feeling too bad. Know what I mean? But if you're already blue... well, it can make you suicidal. You must know what I mean - you play that sort of stuff for a living."

Time for another digression. He's right, I'm a professional musician. I played Working men's Clubs for years with a group - if you can call our Rag Tag bunch that - by the name of 'The h.e.l.lbenders'. Yeah, I know it's a corny t.i.tle, but we'd seen a Spaghetti western back in the sixties with that t.i.tle, and it sort of stuck with us. We were what you might call 'soft-rock', I suppose. My ambitions for super-stardom vanished a long time ago, and I don't play the clubs anymore. I'm a session man, but strictly small-time stuff. You ever listen to the music that backs those kids' commercials? You know the sort of thing - the heavy rock stuff behind Super Auto Man or Lightening Raiders. I'm proud of some of it, actually. Even cut a single of the Raiders theme, but it didn't go anywhere. Anyway, whereas the work pays the bills and the maintenance money for my Ex and two kids, it doesn't have any sort of street cred, so I don't talk about it too much.

So I said: "It's just a job to me, Otis."

"Come on, don't give me that," he says. "You're a musician. You've got to feel what you're playing."

"If I felt everything I played I'd be burned out"

"But that's the point, see?" He was on his fifth, and I was starting to tune out. "I mean, if you really felt some kinds of songs, I mean really felt them it would depress the h.e.l.l out of you, wouldn't it? I mean... take "Run for Home", that Alan Hull song. I can't bear to listen to it, 'cause that's the day Alice walked out on me..."

And so on and so forth.

Okay, so we're skipping ahead now. This is about a month later. I was in the same bar, and the same seat, getting on the outside of some happy hour Canadian Gold whisky, when Gerry walked in.

Now I'd known Gerry for a long time. He had his faults, but he was basically okay. Actually, I owed him, because it was thanks to Gerry that I started in the commercials work. He was involved with Implosion Studios in town, and that's where I recorded most of my stuff with the other session men that Gerry used to pull together for these kids' adverts. We were good and we were cheap, and the stuff we thrashed out for those London firms was b.l.o.o.d.y good, if I say so myself. But the thing with Gerry was... well, he was an entrepreneur. He thought he was Big Time, but he wasn't. And you had to ignore the way he went on sometimes about wanting to make the Big Big Time. For a while, I was dragged along in the enthusiasm of Gerry's dreams, but experience taught me that most of those dreams would stay that way. Gerry wasn't involved with commercials anymore at that time, he had moved off in search of his Big Dreams. Despite that, despite the fact that I've probably turned into some aged rock and roll cynic, we still had a beer occasionally in The Portland and I let him prattle on about the big deals he was always going to pull off.

Now, this was the second conversation, so I'll try and get it right.

Just how the h.e.l.l we got around to talking about Buddy Holly, I don't know. But we did.

"Ask anybody," said Gerry. "Anybody..." (and he belched loud enough to draw the attention of the barman) "anybody who knows. And they'll tell you that Buddy Holly was the greatest, the most influential... the greatest..."

So I wasn't really going to argue with him. You know, it had been a really hard day and all I was really looking forward to was to wind down, not wind up. So I took another mouthful of Canadian Gold and started picking idly at one of the rough scratches on the battered bar counter, remembering the time Stanley Usher had his teeth knocked out on it by some p.i.s.sed-off long distance lorry driver.

"Who's arguing?" I said. "I think he was great, too."

And Gerry swigged down some more of his Newcastle Brown and said: "But... I mean... he was the greatest."

And round about then I started to think that he'd already been drinking tonight before he came into the pub. And maybe one too many snorts of the happy-baccy. I wasn't in the mood that night for meaningless, meaningful discussions, know what I mean?

"Know how he died?" asks Gerry.

"Plane crash," I replied. "Him and the Big Bopper."

"September 7th 1936 to February 3rd 1959," said Gerry. "And here's a quote:'One day soon the reservoir of Holly's songs will be drained. I give the cult five years.'Adrian Mitch.e.l.l, London Mail 13th July 1962." Gerry ordered another Brown Ale and a whisky for me. So who was arguing?

"The Day The Music Died," I said in return."Don McLean's 'American Pie'. And he was singing about the day that Buddy Holly died."

"But it's not dead," Gerry said. And there was something about the way he spoke that made me wonder if he was as stoned as I thought he was. "Not anymore." There was an eagerness about the way that he spoke; the keenness cutting momentarily through his drunken blur.

And then he fumbled in his inside pocket and took out a brown manila envelope, swatting it with dramatic emphasis on the bar. He sipped his drink again and sat back, leaving the envelope there, staring at me with that intense expression on his face - like I was supposed to say or do something. Instead I shrugged, invited him to carry on.

"Know what's in there?" he asked.

"A contract for me to play with Bruce Springsteen on a world tour."

"You wish. But in fact, it's better than that. More than better. This is a b.l.o.o.d.y gold-mine."

There was a pause then, and Gerry seemed to be savouring the moment. Then he nodded at the envelope, inviting me to open it. With a sour smile at his dramatics, I swept it from the bar and did just that. Inside were two sheets of yellowed paper. When I opened out the heavily creased and folded pages, I could see that it was old music paper with the two staves on it. It was a song. Hand-written, with the blue ink faded to grey. The scrawl at the top of the first sheet was hard to decipher, not helped by the Canadian Gold blur in my head.

"Deep... deep..."

"Deep Blue," finished Gerry, swigging back his drink and ordering another for both of us. "It's a blues number. Read the signature."

I squinted at the scrawl again, holding the page up to the light for a better view.

"Buddy..."

"Holly," finished Gerry.

I looked back at him for a long time.

"You're telling me that this is an original ma.n.u.script for a song by Buddy Holly?"

"Not only that. But it's the last song he ever wrote."

I finished my drink, still looking hard at Gerry. When our two refreshers came, I sipped at it for a little while, and then said: "Bulls.h.i.+t."

"I'm telling you. It's Buddy Holly's last song. Never been played, never been recorded. It's a goldmine."

"It's a forgery."

Gerry seemed impatient now. I'd obviously not reacted according to plan.

"No it's not. It's the real thing. I guarantee it."

"There's one big reason why it can't be a Buddy Holly song."

"Why?"

"Because Buddy couldn't read music, much less write it. He was self taught."

"You think I don't know that."

"And you still say it's genuine?"

"I've had the handwriting for the lyrics tested by experts. Not only that, but every crotchet and quaver matches the handwriting style. They were written by the same hand, by the same man. Buddy Holly."

"I still say, Bulls.h.i.+t."

"I've got the evidence. Look, you're not telling me anything I don't already know. But - maybe he'd started to learn. The simple fact is - it's his song. And it's his last."

"Where did you get it?"

"Indirectly - from the site where his plane crashed."

"You mean someone just picked it up off the ground, and it's never been heard of for more than thirty years."

"That's right."

"That bull is still straining in the ditch, Gerry."

"Some hillbilly farmer picked it out of a tree. Didn't know what he'd got, but his daughter did. Just like a lot of kids back then, she thought Buddy was Number One. Devastated by what had happened. She just kept those two pages locked in her trunk. A last personal reminder. Never let on about it. Just took it out of that trunk every once in a while and looked at it."

"And never thought about trying to sell it? Maybe make a fortune out of it a few years later?"

"She died. Suicide or something. Someone else found it in that trunk."

"So how come you're the first to get your hands on it?"

Gerry tapped his nose. "I'm not the first. I'm number ten, to be accurate."

"Nine people have had this song - and it's never been recorded?"

"All nine owners died."

"They all died," I said, kind of flat, to get a reaction out of Gerry.

"They died. Tell you what, that song was destined for me."

"Sounds like you're spinning me a tale. What is this - a song with a curse?"

"A song that's never been recorded. This is the one that's going to make the big money."

"You sure this song wasn't composed by Tutankhamum?"

"What?"

"You know. A curse or something."

"Don't be b.l.o.o.d.y stupid."

"I still think it's all b.o.l.l.o.c.ks."

"Yeah? Well, b.o.l.l.o.c.ks to you, an'all. I was going to cut you in on a piece of the action. I've got something really Big lined up. Special feature on a prime-time television special. And you could have been playing lead guitar on this one."

"Here, let me see."

"Hands off! You think it's all b.o.l.l.o.c.ks, remember? You may be able to sight read, and I might not know a crotchet from a jockstrap - but this is mine. And you just blew your chance to be part of Rock and Roll history."

Maybe it was the whisky making him more touchy than normal, or maybe he was just so hyped up about the whole thing that he wouldn't take anything except wonder and amazement and envy from anyone hearing his crazy Buddy Holly story. But that was when Gerry stamped out of the bar, jamming that envelope back in his pocket. No one looked up as he made his angry way to the door - melodramatic exits were rather a feature of The Portland - and this only served to make him more angry. I could hear him cursing all the way out onto the street. I remember laughing quietly then as I turned back to my drink, wondering just how much Big Money Gerry had coughed up for the rights to this forgery.

I haven't laughed since.

All the way home that night, in my blurred state of senses, I had this peculiar feeling. You know the sort of thing I mean? As if you've forgotten to do something, something important. And it nags away at the back of your mind. Even when I let myself through the front door of my rented apartment, I paused on the threshold and tried to remember just what it could be. Nothing would come. Inside, I decided against coffee and took the whisky bottle out of the cupboard. Had it got something to do with Angela, my ex-wife? Had I forgotten to send this month's maintenance money for the kids? Maybe it was the kids themselves, Jamie and Paula. No, their birthdays were four and eight months away. Pouring myself a house-measure of the old anaesthetic, I pulled my acoustic guitar out of the cupboard, flopped on the sofa and began to strum a few chords.

After a few minutes, I realised what had been chewing at the back of my mind.

It was the so-called Buddy Holly song.

Just as Gerry had said, I'm a pretty good sight reader from sheet music, but I also have a pretty good memory. I've only got to play a new number through once, and I can generally log it up in the old beanbox and remember it for the future. And although I'd only had a brief glance at the forgery, I could still see the image of it imprinted on my retina. It was a standard 4/4 signature, but there was something about the chord combination that seemed curious. I closed my eyes, and tried to strum out a brief s.n.a.t.c.h of what I'd seen. There was a chord change here from E major to A minor which was easy enough. Sorry, maybe you don't know what the h.e.l.l I'm talking about. Now what can I liken that chord change to? Well, it's used a lot by that film composer, John Barry. It's the opening two chord-stabs from Goldfinger, and he uses it a lot in his other stuff. Unusual to start a Blues number with a dramatic "Stab' like that . But, anyway, I kept on, swigging on the whisky bottle and trying to remember how it went on from there.

Yeah, A minor to A, then G - then...

Then I don't remember a lot after that.

What I do remember isn't very pleasant at all.

I remember the sounds of screaming, a feeling as if the whole world was tilting. When I try to think back about it, I only see "flashes': like I'm seeing some kind of psychedelic film that makes no sense. I remember something made of gla.s.s breaking. Later, they found that my front window was broken and there was blood on the panes, so I suppose it must have been that. They found the guitar out there too, on the street. I seem to remember running through rain (although it wasn't raining that night), and with the sounds of that hideous screaming all around me. I seem to see faces swimming out of mist, leering at me. But in retrospect those faces must have been pa.s.sers-by on the street shrinking back in fear as I hurtled past them in the night.

Then I remember the car, swerving around the corner with its headlights stabbing the night. I remember a shrieking of brakes that matched the terrified shrieking all around me. Then the impact. A horrible black gulf of pain that killed the screaming dead. A feeling of flying, and the knowledge that the screaming was not coming from all around me, but was actually coming from me.

Then it was like I was kid again, at the dentists. Back then, when I had gas for an extraction, I would suffer the most terrible hallucinations. I reckon it must have been some reaction to the gas, because the experiences were always hideously painful. Jumbling black-white-and red shapes. Magnified sounds, like the cras.h.i.+ng echoes of someone dropping a tray of cutlery. And the twisting and turning of those shapes, and the sounds of that cras.h.i.+ng cutlery were all, in themselves, causing the most hideous, gouging pain. Distorted voices moaning obscenities. Waves of nausea creeping and swelling through the pain...

And then I was awake again, fully expecting to be leaning forward to the unconvincing voice of a dentist telling me that everything was all right and would I please spit into the bowl. I tried to struggle up, but that hideous pain had transferred to my leg. I slumped back. I wasn't ten years old, I was forty.

I was in a hospital bed.

Sweat soaked my face, and I could feel it in the small of my back. And oh G.o.d, had I p.i.s.sed myself as I lay there?

I lay there a while, breathing deep and trying to orientate myself.