Available Dark: A Crime Novel (Cass Neary) by Elizabeth Hand Page B

singer sounded like he’d taken vocal lessons from Hasil Adkins. Most of the lyrics were in Norwegian, but I suspected I’d have no trouble understanding them if I’d been a fifteen-year-old boy with anger-management issues. Whatever he was saying, he seemed to mean it. The guitar work sounded like an electric razor jacked on ice. I gave the band props for that before removing the album from the turntable.
    “There’s some good Mayhem there, too.” The albino indicated another carton. “And we do special orders.”
    Mayhem was another band Suri had mentioned. I got a good suss on their worldview from the song titles—“Chainsaw Gotsfuck,” “Carnage,” “Necrolust.”
    “Here’s the original 1987 Deathcrush. ” The albino handed me an LP wrapped in Mylar. “By the way, I’m Baldur.”
    “Like the Norse god?”
    He grinned. “Yeah. A joke—in Norse, Baldur is called ‘The White One.’ There were only a thousand copies of that demo, all hand-numbered. See?” He pointed to the sleeve—number 666. “That was Necrobutcher’s own copy. That’s what I was told, anyway.”
    I wondered if Necrobutcher’s mother had christened him that, but a guy named Baldur probably wasn’t the one to ask. “Can I listen to it?”
    He shook his head. “Not that one. There’s a 1993 reissue on CD; we don’t have it, but it’s easy to find. I don’t even know why Quinn keeps that here. He’ll never let it go. Ozzy Osbourne’s manager offered us three thousand dollars, and Quinn said no.”
    “Quinn.” I handed back the LP, trying to sound nonchalant. “So is he around?”
    “Maybe today. Maybe tomorrow. He’s been gone for a while. Excuse me,” he said, and turned to a girl holding a copy of Astral Weeks.
    I flipped through the rest of Mayhem’s oeuvre. Their fashion sense was early Nazgul—black leather, white corpse makeup, stringy hair. KISS for depressives. Quinn had always been more of a classic Chuck Berry, Rolling Stones, New York Dolls kind of guy, but maybe prison had changed his musical taste, or maybe he aimed strictly for the collectors’ market. After a minute I withdrew another LP: Dawn of the Black Hearts.
    The cover was a color photograph of a young man in a bloodstained T-shirt and plaid flannel shirt, lying on the floor. A shotgun pointed at a hand slick with blood, and lying across the gun’s stock was a blood-spattered carving knife. Blond hair swept back from a forehead that dissolved into a porridge of shattered bone and brain tissue. I squinted to read the logo on the bloody T-shirt.
    I ♥ TRANSYLVANIA
    Ilkka’s photographs hadn’t triggered my sense of damage, but this picture reeked of it. It was like walking into a room where there’s a gas leak.
    “It’s a nasty picture, that one,” said Baldur, returning from his customer. “Especially if you’re not expecting it.”
    “Seems like it would have limited commercial appeal.”
    “Yes. It’s revolting. That’s another rare one Quinn doesn’t want to sell. If we put it on eBay, we’d get some good money for it. Which right now, we could use.”
    “You don’t worry about someone ripping them off?”
    “Oh, sure. But Brynja…”
    He pointed across the room, and I saw the woman in the New Age grotto watching us. “That’s our guardian. My sister. ”
    “She’s your sister?”
    Baldur laughed. “Yeah, I know. We’re not a family of albinos. Just me.” He waved at the dark-haired woman, who fixed me with a thousand-yard stare before turning away.
    “She doesn’t look too happy to see me.”
    “She hates Quinn.” Baldur picked up Dawn of the Black Hearts. “Probably she thinks you’re one of his friends.”
    “Why does she hate Quinn?”
    “You know.” He shrugged. “So you’ve never heard Black Hearts ?”
    “Nope. But that’s a real photo, right?”
    “Oh sure. It’s real.” He tapped the cover. “That’s Dead.”
    “I mean, it’s not, like, Photoshopped or—”
    “No—his name is Dead. Or