Weird Shadows Over Innsmouth

“That’s different, man. You’re not in the business. You’re a civilian. Go get a sample, okay? And talk to her, try to find out where she’s getting her stuff from. A chick like that, she has to be fronting for someone. Maybe those guys who muscled into my business at the Student Union.”

“The ones who put the Fear in you,” Martin said.

One day at the beginning of the long, hot summer, Dr. John had walked into the Tap with two black eyes and a split lip, and insisted on showing everyone the stitches in his scalp whether they wanted to look or not. “Four fuckers beat me up round the back of the Student Union. Told me that it was their territory from now on. Some pockmarked guy with a goatee is working my spot now, turning the kids on to brown heroin by telling them that he’s out of grass right now but if they’d like to try a sample of this little powder...” Dr. John had looked solemn for a moment, then had put on his Get Carter voice. “Still, look on the bright side. They’re only fucking students. Maybe a bit of heroin will light up their immensely dull lives.”

Now he told Martin, “I’m scared of nothing, man. Still, if she is working for them, and they see me talking to her... You see what I mean? But you’re a civilian. They won’t touch you.”

“She looks like she’s from some cult,” Martin said. “Like the Hare Krishnas who were here earlier, handing out copies of George’s favourite book.”

“Don’t knock the guys in orange, man, they serve a mean lentil curry to people who, because of the government’s attitude to alternative lifestyles, often find themselves having to choose between eating and paying the rent. Just walk over there, cop a little of what’s she’s holding, and come right back. It’ll take you all of thirty seconds, and I swear I won’t mention saving your life ever again.”

“I’ll do it,” Martin said, “as long as you stop making those puppy eyes at me.”

He tried to affect a cool stroll as he moved through the crowd towards the girl. The closer he got, the less attractive she appeared. Her face was plastered in white powder, her Louise Brooks bob was a cheap nylon wig, and her skin was puffy and wrinkled, as if she’d spent a couple of days in a bath. Martin told her that he’d heard she had some good stuff, and she looked at him for a moment, a gaze so penetrating he felt she had seen through to the floor of his soul, before she shook her head and looked past him at something a million miles away.

Martin said, “You don’t have anything for me? How about for my friends? They’re playing next, and they could do with a little lift.”

She was staring straight through him. As if, after she’d dismissed him, he’d ceased to exist. Her eyes were bloodshot and slightly bulging, rimmed with thick mascara that made them seem even bigger. Her white dress was badly waterstained, and a clammy odour rose from it.

“Maybe I’ll see you around,” Martin said, remembering how he’d felt when he’d suffered one of his numerous rejections at the school disco. It didn’t help that a gang of teenage boys jeered and toasted him with bottles of cider as he walked away.

Dr. John was waiting for him backstage, a plastic pint glass in his hand.

“I see you found the free beer,” Martin said.

“You really are a superstar, man. I mention your name and it’s like magic, this beer suddenly appears. What did she slip you? What did she say?”

“She didn’t say a word, and she didn’t slip me anything either. It’s probably some kind of scam involving herbal crap made from boiled nettle leaves or grass-type grass, and she realised that I’d see right through it.”

“All the best gear is herbal,” Dr. John said, and launched into a spiel about William Burroughs and a South American Indian drug that was blown into your nostrils through a yard-long pipe and took you on a magical mystery tour, stopping only to give Simon Cowley a shit-eating grin as he came off stage, saying, “Fab set, man. Reminded me of Herman’s Hermits at their peak.”

Simon looked at Martin and said, “Still hanging out with losers I see,” and walked past, chin in the air.

Then Martin was busy setting up his keyboards while the two festival roadies took down Clouds of Memory’s drums and mikes and assembled Sea Change’s kit, and before he knew it the set had kicked off. The sun was setting and a hot wind was getting up, fluttering the stage’s canvas roof, blowing the music towards the traffic that scuttled along the far edge of Clifton Downs. Martin concentrated fiercely on playing all the right notes in the right order in the right place, but whenever he had a few moment’s rest he glanced towards the girl. Seeing her beyond the glare of the footlights, seeing her with a hairy hippy with a beer-drinker’s belly, a couple of giggling girls who couldn’t have been more than fifteen, a bearded boy in bellbottoms and a brown chalkstripe waistcoat, a woman in a summer dress and a chiffon scarf...