Jack of Ravens

13

San Francisco, October 1966

San Francisco was a city on the brink. A diaspora had swarmed across America to the city by the Bay, building their capital in just six blocks centred on Haight Street and Ashbury Street. In 1965, 15,000 people lived there. Within two years it had exploded to 100,000, with more arriving every day off the buses from the sticks, in their Swinging London miniskirts or Beatles haircuts, their denim and tie-die, and Victorian and Edwardian fashions raided from thrift stores. The freaks and the hippies had their own stores, their own newspapers, their own medical centres and legal advice, their own bands and their own currency, usually LSD and marijuana, but sometimes sex and food.

It was a place that hung between worlds. To the east was the poor, black Fillmore neighbourhood and to the west the wealthy Pacific Heights. To the north was the Panhandle, an idyllic green retreat that led to Golden Gate Park, and beyond that was the political activism of the University of San Francisco.

The minute Church stepped off the bus into the swarming crowd, most of them barely old enough to be out of high school, he could feel the influence of the Blue Fire. This wasn’t like Krakow when they had visited John Dee. There the atmosphere had been pure, invigorating and electric. Here it was conflicted, ebbing and flowing, and at times there was almost a sourness in the air that was suffocating the energy.

‘Can you feel it?’ he said to Niamh. ‘This place is gearing up to be a battlefield.’

‘It is … exciting.’ Niamh looked around at the strange faces and extravagant costumes with a faint sense of wonder. It reminds me of the Far Lands.’

San Francisco was filled with big, old Victorian houses where rooms could be cheaply rented. They found a place on Page, just up the street from a condemned mansion where Big Brother and the Holding Company and some of the other San Franciscan bands hung out. As Church stashed his clothes, he realised this was a lull before the ground started shifting under his feet. Big things were coming, events that had been 2,300 years in the making. He hoped he was up to it.

Police were everywhere, watching the colourfully dressed men and women with contempt and barely repressed aggression. As he moved through the streets, Church realised he was being watched, too. One cop followed him for half a block before making a phone call.

As they made their way to the newspaper offices to check the small ads, they came across a disturbance. A freckle-faced woman in a gold-starred headband was raving about monsters that had killed her boyfriend in Golden Gate Park. Church wondered if she was having a bad trip, but she didn’t have the telltale disoriented look about her.

‘It’s started,’ Church said.

In the park, a group called the Diggers were handing out free food to the hungry kids, and leaflets urging the local businesses to distribute their profits to the community. One of them directed Church to a thick copse where a huddle of people had gathered.

The victim was young, probably still shy of his eighteenth birthday. His face was covered with weeping sores that looked like the latter stages of some plague. Fearful of infections, Church pulled Niamh away, but not before he had noticed something else: where the skin was peeling it looked as if there were scales just beneath the surface, and on his forehead two protrusions had broken through like horns.

Church caught one of the Diggers, a pale-faced man in a leather hat named Jerry. ‘I don’t know what’s going on around here any more, man,’ he said, concerned. He doled out a bowl of rice to a painfully thin girl. ‘People seeing far-out things-’

‘What kind of things?’

He shifted uncomfortably. ‘Monsters, they say.’ He shrugged. ‘It’s just crazy talk, but … It’s not just one or two. Not the real freaks. A lot of regular guys. That chick said she saw something weird kill off her boyfriend. It’s like the Outer Limits, you know?’ He returned to the food, but Church could see he wasn’t alone in his uneasiness. The sour mood was visible in the faces of many who passed, jumping from one to another like a plague as the strange stories were passed on.