Gone to the Wolves, page 31
“Over the hill,” Kip said softly.
“Exactly. That’s exactly what he is.”
“All right, Grishnackh. I’ll go.”
Grishnackh gave a reedy laugh and clapped his hands together. “Crazy Dusty! I never doubted it. Now, the first thing you must do—”
“I’ll go on one condition.”
His eyes darkened at once. “A condition. And what might that be?”
“I want an answer to my question.”
He raised his eyebrows. “But you haven’t asked me any!”
Kip watched him. For a moment he seemed not to understand.
“The girl,” he said.
Kip nodded.
A look that might almost have been regret passed over Grishnackh’s boyish face. When he spoke again his voice was greatly changed.
“Dusty,” he said.
“I’m listening.”
“You should never ask a thing unless you want to know the answer.”
Kip was on his feet already, pulling on his gloves and parka. Grishnackh shook his head and cursed under his breath.
“Hold on, Dusty. Hold on one damn minute.”
“I’m tired of this.”
“Haugan took her. I told you.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“You’ll be pleased to know that Haugan is in Bergen. You could see him tomorrow.”
“Tell me about him.”
“I’ll tell you this, Dusty.” Grishnackh cleared his throat strangely. “Magnus Haugan is the smallest of your worries.”
Kip stood poised in the doorway, suspended there mutely, waiting for him to go on. But he didn’t go on. He sat on the cot with his mouth tightly closed.
“You can take me to Haugan? You know where he lives?”
“We are going to meet him.”
“When?”
“We leave Oslo at midday tomorrow.”
“I’ll be there.”
“Of course you will!” Grishnackh was his jaunty self again, leaping up from the cot and shaking Kip’s hand with mock formality. “That pleases me greatly. But I have a condition as well.”
“What is it?”
“If we’re going to break the law together, Dusty, we really ought to know each other’s names.” He kept Kip’s hand in both of his. “Our true names.”
Kip felt his arm stiffen. “I’m not sure what you mean.”
“Surely ‘Dusty’ is an invention?”
Kip thought hard for a moment. “I already told you it was. My given name is Christopher.”
“What a happenstance! My parents named me Kristian.” Grishnackh laughed again. “For obvious reasons, I changed it.”
“To what?”
“My legal name now is Varg. This is what you will call me.”
“Varg,” Kip repeated. The sound hung strangely in the room.
“An old word, brother Christopher. Very old. A way of saying wolf.”
“Wolf,” Kip said. “Okay.”
“It suits me, don’t you think?”
“Sure.” Kip took back his hand. “I should probably head—”
“She was here, Christopher.”
“What?”
“That girlfriend of yours. She stayed here, in this room. With her good friend Magnus Haugan.”
Kip kept his voice steady. “You’re sure about that?”
Grishnackh bowed and reached for something on the floor behind the cot. “She left this bag. Or Magnus did. I haven’t looked inside.”
“A bag,” Kip said hoarsely. “Okay.”
Grishnackh pressed a dark bundle into Kip’s hands: a small canvas backpack, gray and water-stained and slightly damp. “A gift,” he said, and stepped out of the room.
* * *
Kip sat on the cot with the pack in his lap, listening to Grishnackh’s steps receding down the passage. Even once they were gone he forced himself to wait for a slow count of ten, the way Oona had taught him long ago, to pacify his nerves.
Inside the pack he found two pairs of plain black socks and a half-eaten package of goro cookies and a band shirt that he recognized immediately as Kira’s: MERCYFUL FATE U.S. CANADA 1989. Below that, a thin stack of pages torn from a palm-sized spiral notebook. He arranged them in a row across the mattress.
I listened to music to make me alive. To make the *world* alive I mean to say or at least to make it real. I had a problem with that. With believing in things. Everything felt unreal to me & nothing ever mattered. Not even myself my own self least of all.
There was never any music in my house when I grew up. Not even shit music. Mostly it was just quiet. My mother would sometimes stay shut up for weeks & weeks. It was a dead place but not the way Your house is dead Corpse Father. Not the kind of dead that erases you Per and Magnus talk about. My fathers house was just a flat gray place where bad things sometimes happened. They happened in silence mostly. I don’t know if You’ll understand me when I
Ive started this & torn it up a dozen times at least. When can I just *see* You
Magnus tells me Im stupid. That of course You understand. Of course You know. He tells me that You know us like a rider knows his horses. Like a hunter knows his deer. But the longer I go without seeing You the more mixed up I get. The more desperate or doubtful. How could You understand my childhood when You never were a child?
I know what Youll tell me. The past is dead skin. You might even be angry at this letter. But its for me Corpse Father not for anyone else. I need to get this straight before I burn away to ashes.
When music finally hit me it was too much. It was painful. Like the color got switched on in a TV set I’d always thought was black & white. I felt too alive & things were too real & it was too beautiful it made me go crazy. I thought that I could be like everybody. Not as good as them maybe but just as alive. I bought my first records & went to my first shows & felt actual love & was loved. I really did Corpse Father. I did and I was. Whenever I got that sickness that doubtful feeling the music could kill it. If it was powerful extreme enough it could. I thought I recognized myself forgave myself and I was not insane and that if I saw my reflection in the expression on the face of the eyes of the boy that I loved, just a regular kid, that must mean I was real. It was beautiful & bright & painful & that pain could only be a proof of something. It was proof that I existed.
I kept myself believing that for almost two whole years.
Then I stopped. Music was still everything, the weight & the colors, the ladder rock branch I held on to. I couldn’t imagine a day or an hour without it. But it changed me Corpse Father. I did terrible things. I degraded myself. I fooled my friends & lied to them & fucked people I felt nothing for at all. Men with no goddamn clue how to touch me. Girls I didnt even want to know. Thats when I understood musics actual power Corpse Father. When it made me do the things I didnt want. When it made me do violence against myself. My friends were still true friends to me & they cared about & helped me. & the whole time they were helping me I wanted just to die.
But now You exist & I know You exist. I can hardly believe it. It was music that gave me brought me to You and I never will regret it. I know about Your house Corpse Father. Where you gather the names. Where you cook them & eat them. I offer you mine.
10
“I’m questioning what I’m hearing here, Norvald. Am I really hearing this? Absolutely not. No fucking way.”
“This is a good thing, Z. A major thing. I know he trusts me now.”
“You know diddly shit. We’ll see how smug you’re feeling when they turn you into jerky.”
“If they wanted me dead they’d have killed me already. They wouldn’t put me on a train for seven hours.”
Leslie stared at him. “Why the hell would Grishnackh even want you along? Have you asked yourself that?”
Kip hesitated. “He thinks I’ve done time.”
“What?”
“For aggravated assault. And for arson.”
Leslie raised his eyes to heaven. “And why the holy fuck would he think that?”
“I know what I’m doing. I promise. Try to have a little faith.”
“I like the sound of that, actually. Try to have a little faith. I can say it while I’m sprinkling your ashes in the fjord.”
“This was always the plan, Z. From the very beginning.”
“To set churches on fire?”
“Whatever it takes.”
“You know what I think? I think you enjoy this. I think it gets your dick hard. It’s not even about Kira anymore.”
Kip took a deep breath. “One more time. Kira was with a man named Haugan. Magnus Haugan. Varg says he’s in Bergen. I’m going to meet him.”
“Let’s just say—for giggles, as a kind of thought experiment—that your new boyfriend comes through. What happens then?” Leslie took the kerchief from the nightstand and opened it. “You’re going to ask this Magnus Haugan, as one man of the world to another, what happened to the girl who fits this tooth?”
“That’s exactly what I’m going to do.”
“Excellent. Thanks for the input. I was just double-checking.” Leslie’s oversized head was bobbing around like one of those plastic dogs people put on their dashboards. “And what if he tells you that he chopped her up and made her into julepølse?”
“Something tells me I don’t want to know what that is.”
“You promised me, Norvald. We had an agreement. Informed choices. Strategic thinking. No Rambo maneuvers. You gullible son of a bitch. That was the deal.”
Kip brought both his hands up to cover his face. Leslie’s fear was creeping into him and that was unacceptable. There could be no fear from now on. No doubt. No hesitation. For the first time he regretted not having made the trip alone.
“Don’t do this to me, Leslie. Not today.”
“I can’t deal with this. I can’t deal with this.”
“Is there something you’re not telling me?”
Leslie turned to face the wall. “You’re going the same way Kira went. Always toward the bigger kick. The more batshit-crazy thrill.”
“You’re right. That’s how we find her.”
“That’s how we get murdered, Norvald. End of story. Fade to black.”
Kip smiled at him. “I always liked that song.”
“‘Fade to Black’?” Leslie made a gagging sound into his shirtsleeve. “It’s a ballad.”
“A ballad that happens to appear on Ride the Lightning. Which happens to be the fourth-best record of all time.”
Leslie didn’t answer right away. “The sixth-best record,” he said finally.
“I’ll see your six and raise you two.”
“Don’t try to distract me.”
“I’m doing this, Leslie. I’m going to Bergen.”
“Listen to me, Norvald. You can’t—”
“I can’t what?”
He shook his head. “Just don’t do anything illegal.”
“Or what? I’ll get arrested?”
Leslie kept his mouth shut. He seemed to have fallen asleep. Kip pulled back the covers and lowered his feet to the floor.
“What did you do, Leslie?”
“Nothing.”
“You’re lying.”
“I talked to the cops.”
The room went cold and still and airless. In half a decade of friendship, much of it spent attempting to make sense of the things that Leslie said and did, Kip had never been more stupefied.
“Help me understand this,” he said slowly.
“How many new and entertaining ways do I have to find to say it? They’re going to kill you, Norvald. You’re a sacrificial lamb. That’s the one and only reason that they’ve let you this far in. Grishnackh’s pissing in the Kool-Aid and you’re drinking it like pop.”
To his own amazement Kip felt very calm. It was Leslie who was shouting.
“Okay,” he said. “Just tell me what you told them.”
“Everything I know. You’re fucking welcome.”
Kip braced himself against the wall and tried to organize his thoughts. He felt Leslie’s eyes on him. He bent forward, keeping his movements deliberate, and pulled his boots out from under the bed.
“They’re watching Helvete?”
“What the hell do you think?”
“I’m going through with it, Leslie.”
Leslie just lay there. “I don’t know you anymore. I swear to god.”
Kip worked his feet into the boots and tied them carefully and went to the nightstand. He set down a folded stack of bills and picked up the kerchief.
“You kept some things to yourself,” he said. “You kept the teeth.”
Leslie didn’t answer.
“Did you tell them anything, Leslie? Did you even go to them at all?”
“You just wait. You wait and see.”
“Here’s the money for the room. Thanks for your help.”
11
Helvete the next day was packed with hangers-on—some by blind chance, some because they’d heard rumors of Grishnackh’s departure, some because they’d caught the scent of trouble in the air. There were people in the shop that Kip had never seen before. He could only assume he was under surveillance. It made no difference now.
He’d spent the night in the throne room, sleeping fitfully on the creaking sweat-stained cot, waking time and again in that perfect inky blackness in an ecstasy of fear. In spite of his foreboding, or perhaps because of it, he felt nearer to Kira than he’d been in years. He sensed her beside him in that formless nowhere-place. At one point he sat up with a cry of sadness from a dream of ruined gray sepulchres to find her leaning against him, close and warm and undeniable, running her nail-bitten fingers gently through his hair.
Now it was noon of that last day and Grishnackh was sitting next to him on the ancient beer-stained sofa in the front room of the shop, visibly struggling to hide his excitement, whispering with a goateed man in a leather coat who barely seemed alive. They were leaving on the Bergensbanen at four, according to Grishnackh, and people passed the couch like supplicants in a slow and constant stream. He paid them no attention whatsoever. The light of mania was in his small pale eyes. Only the man in the leather coat was real to him.
Euronymous for his part maintained a princely distance, feigning bored indifference, holding court behind the counter as on any other day. He recommended albums and rang up purchases and held forth on the matchlessness of Venom and the worthlessness of thrash. It was Grishnackh’s day and hour and he couldn’t help but know it. The rules of engagement were changing forever. Kip settled back into the cushions, silently counting down the minutes, doing his best to savor Aarseth’s secret misery. It made for a decent way to pass the time.
The man in the trench coat went by the name of Samoth and played in a band called Emperor that was said to be depressing beyond words. He fixed Kip in a baleful stare as Grishnackh introduced them. One of the few details he was willing to reveal about himself was that he came from Telemark, a rural part of the country known primarily for its fish. His English was terrible. It was clear from the start that he was performing for the Count, and that he viewed Kip as a rival, quite possibly a threat. He carried something just inside his coat that he caressed absentmindedly whenever he spoke. At one point he turned in his chair and made a gesture to Euronymous that looked like the sign of the cross but might simply have been an elaborate wave. Then he asked Kip what he planned to say to the devil when he met him in the woods.
“I’ll tell him, ‘Samoth misses you. He says you never call.’”
The look on Samoth’s face when Grishnackh laughed made the whole trip to Norway worthwhile. He lurched to his feet in a fury, his right hand jammed inside his coat like Napoleon posing for a portrait; the Count reached out quickly and pulled him back down. A flurry of Norwegian ensued that Kip didn’t bother trying to decipher. For a minute or two all was right with the world.
He was resting comfortably with his eyes lightly closed when the shop door clattered open and he felt the whole room change. All conversation stopped. Someone to his right, possibly Samoth, muttered a curse. He opened his eyes and took in all their dumbstruck faces. It could only mean the shop was being raided.
“God ettermiddag, alle sammen.”
He was up before the voice had finished speaking. Samoth was on his feet and so was Grishnackh. Leslie Vogler was the only point of movement, neatly attired in his forest-green parka and pinstriped oxford shirt and chinos, threading his way through the stunned crowd as if through a petrified forest.
“You all speak English? Of course you do. This is Norway. Excellent school system here. Democratic socialism at its finest.” His voice shook only slightly. He was directly in front of Aarseth now, resting his elbows lightly on the counter. So far no one else had moved at all.
“Are you Euronymous, Prince of Death? I bet you are. You’ve got that Renaissance-fair-weed-dealer kind of vibe.”
“You want what,” Aarseth answered, his own voice as inflectionless as ever. He was in charge again, the gatekeeper, the center of the Circle.
“Who, me? I’m just looking for some good-time metal music.” Leslie produced a crinkled scrap of paper and passed it to Aarseth. “You sell music here, don’t you?”
Aarseth squinted at the paper while the whole room held its breath. “Mayhem,” he said finally, loudly enough for everyone to hear. “Deathcrush.”
“For a friend,” said Leslie affably. “I actually think it’s dogshit.”
By this point even Aarseth’s mouth was hanging open. The fact of Leslie in that place was so incongruous that it verged on the obscene. Everything around him hung suspended, immobile, like objects in a resin paperweight. He stood up straight and turned to face the room.
“I’m a stranger to this fine country of yours—as some of you deep thinkers have probably guessed—and I have questions about your basic way of life. This quote-unquote black metal, for starters. As far as I can figure out—and I consider myself a connoisseur—you’re just a bunch of bony fish-faced crackers who can’t tell a power chord from a bucket of lutefisk, and whose only decent riffs were ripped off from the first Bathory LP. I’m hoping someone here might be able to tell me—”
