Devoured Stars Over Dublin Read online

  Month 2020 Volume 10 No

  10

  Devoured Stars Over Dublin

  by

  Méabh de Brún

  Over the black sprawl of Dublin, the demons flapped their sore-puckered wings and screamed. Too high to lob a brick at, with nasty talons that’d take a chunk off your face if you tried. Best leave them shriek and gibber across the boiling clouds, swooping and weaving between the pulsating slices in the sky. For my part, I was hungover as hell. I eldritched up Fishamble Street, the non-Euclidean road worsening the stomach situation. Dublin heaved and breathed underfoot, coiling alleys on top of each other, doubling over on lanes so you met yourself coming the other way. It’s hard to have a good time in a landscape like that, so generally there ‘ent much to do other than imbibe intoxicating substances and trip the light traumatic.

  Everyone’s iffy on dates these days but firm on engaging in brain damage, so we all agreed we were roughly entitled to celebrate the centennial of the 1916 Rising, ascension of the True Gods from the unholy sea-depths. Tearing down the Roman Idol, our glorious betters slouched onto this plane of existence to show us the real meaning of awe, and to live under the black light of their rule. Engaging in commemorations, I’d spent the previous night gattin’ with some antediluvian arseholes, ossified on the cheap cider sold by the blind Augers of Clonmel. They started brewing ‘cos no one wants to know the future anymore, but people will pay to get fucken’ iridescent. Moloch’s balls, ‘twas hardly a smart move the night before a job.

  Next morning, I was still half-cut and heading North, into normie-town and away from the fine houses of the antiquated South, passing the ever-smoking ruins of the sepulchre on Inns Quay and turning the corner onto Church Street. I’d been hoping a bit of perambulation would take the bile from my stomach and the pounding from my head, but no such luck. In the corner of the midday sky, a newly opened slice hung like an open sore. The pulse of its purple-green light got my guts lurching and set my teeth on edge. I kept the eyes averted as best I could and made my way to the Menagerie.

  It had been a while since my last call, but ‘twas only a brain soaked in cider that’d forget the Menagerie was best visited on an empty stomach. As soon as I got the heavy doors open, I walked into a wall of smells. Rank fur and sour sweat. Bitter slime and acrid burning. There was an earthen floor underfoot, and wasn’t I thinking myself fucken’ blessed for fear I’d gawk my guts up.

  “Brown bottle flu, is it?” Mags grunted, watching me bend double and breathe deep. She stepped out from behind the counter to heave a bucket of slops at some writhing underthings in a pen. “Hope you ‘ent drank your coin.”

  I rubbed the back of my hand over my mouth, throat stinging from the tide of bile. “You’ve the look of a sale about you. Finally getting rid of them useless bodies down below?”

  The Menagerie is built on the ruins of Saint Michan’s Church. Mags kept the crypt mummies when she took over the plot. It’s been a century, all pageantry of the Roman Idol abandoned, but people still cling to superstitions. We exist in a broken frame of meaningless street names and people curing sores with gravedirt.

  Mags rolled up the sleeves on her meaty arms. She was a big woman, due to her willingness to eat the most tainted of wriggling things. “I know why you’re here, Mz. Reg Barry. And it ‘ent to buy some mummified knights.”

  I grinned. “Someone put me wise to what you’ve got out back.”

  Mags crossed her arms and looked hard. “Who?”

  “They said you caught it falling out of a slice, ‘ent that some luck? And I thought to myself well, I’ve been so good to Mags over the years. Brought business her way. She’s surely waiting for me to take it off her hands.”

  In a world where we’ve et most things with four legs, there’s money to be made in finding meat. Mags scavenged the twisted things that fell from slices, the tears in the fabric of reality. Like puckered sores in the sky, those festering wounds opened and closed without apparent cause, leaking in nasties from other dimensions. Some of which were good eating.

  Point being, Mags was low level. Purely gizzards and green-meat. She hadn’t a clue what to do with a find like this, and I knew it. She wanted to sell it to the Upper-Classes for sure, but she hadn’t the contacts. Or the business acumen. Not like I did.

  “Who told you?” she asked again.

  I wouldn’t get further without sacrifice. “That oul’ wan on Whitefriar Street. She holds mass, tells stories about stars. Calls herself Saint Bridget. She said she had a vision.”

  “S’pose she must’ve, so.” Her sweat-soaked ringlets hung limp against her cheeks. “C’mon then.” We walked behind a leather curtain, into a room that was hotter, closer. I swallowed down sick, focusing on what Mags was at. She walked over to a bulky shape covered in a blanket and whipped it away to reveal a wooden cage.

  Inside was a normie, just like you or me… but its flesh was warm and pink. Its eyes were bright and scared, instead of sunken pits of despair. It had plump healthy bits like it lived under a yellow sun, and insides all red and healthsome, no doubt. It let out a noise of fear, and even that had more life than this city has seen in a century.

  “Came right through a slice,” Mags told me, jerking her head in the direction of whatever pulsing rip in reality she meant. “Fell out, screaming and shrieking.”

  If they knew it was here, all innocent and untainted by writhing horrors, the Old Ones would descend quicker’n you could snap a phalange. Only the combined psychic mammering of all the wyrd beasts in the building kept it hidden. I eldritched closer and twisted my comprehension to have a proper look at the noisome monkey-thing.

  “Minds intact n’all.” Mags was proud. “The one you flogged before,’ ‘twas a bit brain-broken, wasn’t it?”

  She was referring to ten years ago, and the only other inter-dimensional normie I’d crossed paths with.

  Fhtagn hell, the coin I made off that.

  “Nah, just had a stammer.” I straightened, picking my teeth with a nail, figures tumbling through my brain. “Thirty percent of the sale,” I proffered. “A steal at my own personal risk.”

  “Hundred’n fifty coin, and the tip of your tongue. Up front.”

  “Up front?” I clutched my heart, play-acting affronted.

  Mags nodded. I came to the unfortunate realisation that she was not entirely dearth of acumen. “I know you’ve sold to them before, but that ‘ent much by way of insurance. The Royals are as likely to rip yer throat out as buy it. I’ll be taking my cut up front.”

  A hundred’n fifty was a good deal. Only one hefty problem with it, being that I didn’t have a hundred’n fifty, did I? I suspected this’d be the set up, but a hundred and fifty? Moloch’s balls. Niamh was meeting me with the funds, but I was definitely short coin.

  Niamh was my ostensible eerie, my derelict darling and uncharted star of my heart. But that wasn’t a solid state of affairs. It’s difficult to keep tabs on another person in Dublin, and most of our Stygian trysts happened when we were two bottles deep, after popping a couple of Eltdown shards. Like I said, there ‘ent much to do round here, and what you are doing barely cuts through the black. You might as well try and be iridescent while you’re at it.

  But back to business. I kept picking my teeth, a bit of loathsome meat stuck between my molars. I was already cursing myself for splashing out to get them sharpened. What can I say? I’m vain sometimes. “When d’you want paying?”

  “If you’re not back by midnight, I’ll strip it for parts," Mags replied, the dimples on her elbows deepening as she crossed her arms. "They’ll fetch well, and I won’t have to worry about getting my head et.”

  She wanted to
be rid of it. Understandable. It was a royal delicacy, and no one wants the Old Ones darkening their door. If it stayed too long, they’d sense it and converge. Bear down to eat away its sanity like peach flesh sucked from the pit.

  I nodded, a jerk of my chin, and she held out her hand. Before either of us could seal the deal, the otherworld monkey-thing spoke.

  “Please,” it said, its fingers wrapping round the bars of its cage as it leaned in on its haunches. Saltwater leaked from eyes undulled by the blood red moon. “Where am I? Please, help me.”

  I dropped to my own haunch, tilting my head to comprehend it proper. It jerked away, scrabbling to the back of the cage like it thought I might bite.

  They’re good teeth.

  “Dublin,” I told the pretty thing. So like a normie, but plump and fresh and lacking the bones pressed against skin. Well-fed and bred under a blue sky and a yellow sun. “You’re in Dublin, baby blasphemy, how’s she cuttin’?”

  “This isn’t Dublin,” it gasped and gawped, lunging and gripping the bars. “I live in Dublin, this isn’t Dublin.”

  “It is here.” I turned back to Mags. “Clothes not included, no?”

  She sniffed. “I’ll be keeping them for meself.”

  “Effulgent.” I reached a hand to its shining, thick hair. It jerked back with a cry.

  “Stop acting the maggot.” Mags’ voice was lit with annoyance. “We in accord?”

  “We are, yeah,” I told her, standing. She held out her hand again, and I ran my tongue round my sharp teeth before gripping the tip and biting down. My mouth filled with the tin taste of my own blood, and I spat a piece of me into Mag’s open palm. The lump sat in the centre of her hand, surrounded by spatters of bubbled blood-spit.

  Mags grunted her approval and put my deposit into her apron pocket.

  “You got until midnight,” she reminded me.

  I tilted my head and waggled my brows. “Sure, ‘tis that you’re dying to meet again, ‘ent it Mags? You can’t be having with the thought of weeks between seeing me.”

  That earned nothing but rolled eyes and Mags’ exit from the room, as she went back to tend the squirming things in the rest of the oddly bent cages.

  I stood, mouth sore and skull pounding. I needed a drink to set my entrails right after last night’s foolishness. But aside from business there ‘ent much else to do in Dublin but be foolish. It’s all survive or die, so we grab at whatever bit of living we can.

  “Please.” A whisper, but musical for its lack of croaking, gibbering or generally damned undertones. “My name is Elaine. Please help me.”

  I glanced back at the blasphemy, the creature of another dimension. Its eyes were watery, fingers gripping and flexing all panicked at its cage. I held up my own hand, comparing the grey of my skin to the health of its own.

  “Errah sure, I’ll be seeing you again.” It looked at me with big, watery eyes. “You’ve time to kill. If t’were me, I’d spend it ruminating on the word godforsaken.”

  Having expended the extent of my convivial advice for the day, I eldritched out of the dank stink of the Menagerie, onto the streets of Dublin.

  #

  Noxious fumes wafted up from the River Liffey, and the breeze carried a hint of distant screams. Head pounding, the taste of blood in my mouth, I stalked over the slick roads. Frightened eyes peeked at me through sackcloth-covered windows. Other normies hunched past with their shoulders high and their heads low. The North might be our part of the city, but the city is theirs and we know it. The whole fucken’ plane of existence is, come to that.

  ‘Twas only a couple of years ago that Saint Bridget came from the underground. We all gawped and stared as her and her ilk handed out food to the starved, talking incendiary words about freedom and stars. Making trouble. Fucken’ eejits. They were back below quick enough, in the face of thrown stones and the Displeasure of the Upper Classes. She still lurks about Whitefrier, offering blessings and being a nuisance.

  I cut through May Lane, to the corner of the old distillery. There was life rousing from the slums within, as a crowd gathered on the road to watch a Cyclopean Ghast and a Daemoniac Thing With Waving Tentacles snarl and lash at each other on the side of the building, contravening the laws of gravity. They were a constant around here, a stone’s throw from the Christchurch Crypts.

  I found a streetlamp still standing and leaned against it, watching the show. The tide of bile was back, a Black Sea pushing up from my middle. I was hot and sweating, so I pulled off my coat and dropped it to the ground.

  “Reg!” Niamh swanned up, all red hair and eyes like storm-tossed seas. “What’s the craic?”

  Niamh is a performer. She accompanies the cultists when they need a bit of flash and ultraviolet for their Southside house-calls. In the age of the easily expendable and endless choice, panache is a prerequisite for unholy services. If the priests want the proper antiquarian gold-leaf gigs, they need a bit of gilt. Niamh sings in black and evil tongues for the Upper Crusted Scabs, while they feed on the chanting ululations of the properly qualified. And of course, flogging to nerve-wracked, pre-performance cultists is always a lazy way to make coin quick. If Niamh turns up with Reg Barry right beforehand, her coat full of unholy artefacts and snortable substances… well. ‘Ent that good luck for everyone?

  “Is it true?” she asked, eyes darting. “Was it there?”

  “Aye, ‘twas.” I fished my hand into the pocket of my trousers and pulled out a copper. “I’ve a mouth on me, go fetch us a pie willya?”

  “And what’ll I get out of that?” She’s an absolute ride, my Niamh, but she can be a fucken’ weapon when she’s in the mood. She snapped the peeking strap of my bra, and I slapped away her hand.

  “Fuck off,” I told her. “Did you bring the bag?”

  She nodded, all cheek quashed under the weight of the small sack she pulled from her dress. There was a hundred’n twenty coin in there, more money than she’d seen in her life. Not that lifespans round here were anything boastable. “How much is Mags wanting?”

  “Hundred'n fifty by midnight. I aim to nab it well before that, so I need some hungering cultists, quick.” Mind tripping, working. What could I hawk that was worth thirty coin?

  Niamh was wearing something that used to be white but was now a stained yellow, like a sheer funeral shroud. I could see the freckles on her shoulders, like echoes of old stories about constellations. Some miracle of modern tailoring made it so there was barely a bulge in the fabric when she pocketed the leather bag. “I got a gig tonight.”

  “Where’s it at?”

  She didn’t answer, and instead reached into some secret fold of her diaphanous dress, producing a bona fide coffin nail and putting it between her lips. I pulled a pack of matches from my pocket and shook one out, lighting it with a scrape of my thumbnail. She likes being fussed, does Niamh. As I lit her cigarette, the green flame flickered in an evening breeze carrying a smell of blood and raw meat from somewhere else in the city.

  “Stop acting the maggot,” I told her, shaking out the match. “Fester up.”

  She took a long drag, the burning tip of the cigarette casting a glow against the line of her cheekbones. “Don’t see why I should,” she said on the exhale. “Nothing in it for me, like.”

  “Ah Niamh.” I threw out my arms in an expression of entreatment. “My effulgent eerie. A chuisle mo chroí. Y-syha’h lw’nafh. Be sound for once in your life, I’m in the horrors.”

  She gave me a grin like a cat eating fresh carrion, smoke trickling from between her teeth. “Lurk it, right? I got a gig with the Church of Starry Wisdom on Waterloo Road.”

  “Well, aren’t you the cute hoor?” No point playing furtive, that was an antiquarian gig. Old money to be had at that. Old, cold and pulled from Stygian depths. “You absolute wagon. How will that set you up?”

  My brain mush was already working this to my advantage. What did I have for the cultists? Run of the mill religious art
efacts. Glass tubes of essential salts to reanimate dead shades. The thumb of a bedlamite preserved in formaldehyde. A couple of joints of Arkham. The last might not appeal to priests but sure fuck it, you never know.

  Sick of swallowing, I leaned sideways and spat mostly blood.

  “What’re you after doing to yourself?” Sharp eyes on my Niamh, like glass shards under grey silk. She brought a hand to my face, the skin of her palm smooth and cool.

  “Here,” I said, gesturing at the smouldering quarter of her cigarette. “Give us a stabber.” She acquiesced. I put it to my mouth and briefly tasted her, before it was all blue smoke.

  Her thumb brushed my cheekbone. “Something gone areseways by you Reg?”

  I huffed laughter at her concern. Things were bleak, but not the end of the world. After all, that already happened. “Swing by my digs tonight, about two hours after midnight. We’ll have a joint of Arkham and get demented, yeah?”

  The hand withdrew. “After midnight?” Her brows pulled together. “But sure, I’ll be with you. I’ll take you to the cultists, and we can go on from there. C’mon Regina, what’s the plan? Where will we flog it?”

  I stopped my mouth from twisting at the full name. Regina. Queen, in the old tongue. You could get into trouble with a handle like that. Mam had funny notions, it has to be said.

  “We?” I asked. You could’ve cured meat in my words, I was that dry. “When did you become active in this operation?”

  Niamh’s tiny, but full of razorblades. The shock on her face was gone quick. “Right, I get it. I see how it is,” she bit, voice low and hard. “You’ll fuck me on your mattress, then fuck me over when you’re done.”

  “Niamh-”

  “Last three of your operations were my doing, and I ‘ent seen a cut of the business yet.” Flashing eyes and acidic anger. This little thing from some wracked street where they ate rat for dinner. All bile and fire, skin smelling like a lily-wreath. “You’ve sold to the Royals before, everyone knows you can. Why are you getting all prideful? What are you looking to prove?”