Ride Upon Midnight: Chapter 5
Miles of Fire
Ride Upon Midnight is an occult mystery of murder, music, and ghosts.
Missed out on previous chapters? Read them below!
Chapter 4: Welcome to the Machine
5 MILES OF FIRE
It rained all the way to London. We stayed in a small hostel with stairs that were almost vertical, managed by a man who looked as though he practised voodoo at the weekends.
We all had rooms on the second floor and there was a single bathroom at the end of the hall. The lights flickered for no reason and periodically the bulbs hummed. The pipes in the walls groaned and they sounded like ghosts but Ingrid wasn’t afraid because she said real ghosts don’t sound like that.
Our room faced the alleyway of a club with neon signs, and blue and red light came through our window even with the curtains drawn. For the festival we were given cards we wore on lanyards around our necks. We spent the day in the practice room drinking red bull, a cigarette wedged between Dirty Bobby’s fingers while he jammed on the bass. It was still raining the first day during the sound tests and the crew had to put plastic sheets over the sound equipment. There was a leak in one of the stages and they had to climb up a ladder to fix it.
Ingrid was excited to see a stage so big. The crew showed her around and she couldn’t believe the size of the speakers. Bobby and I gave a short interview for a TV station we’d never heard of. It stopped raining in the evening. The crowd was loud and excited and we could hear them while we built our drum kit and equipment on a couple of risers—platforms with wheels to quickly get our stuff on stage during the changeover.
At 10:40 P.M. we made our way onto the stage in the haze of blue lights. Our roadies were quick and fast and we had all our equipment out there in under fifteen minutes. We were allocated ten minutes, so we were a song and a half down, but we weren’t in bad water yet. I picked up a guitar and put the leather strap over my neck. I used a pick from my dad’s band. I approached the mic, sweat dotting my forehead, my tongue sticky with sugary drinks, my heart doused in what felt like battery acid. I leaned forward.
‘We’re Hollow Point.’
Our backdrop burst into light. I heard drum sticks snapping against each other, then we began to play. There were strobe lights and I could hear my own voice in my earpiece. It wasn’t like playing in a bar in Wightford. I could see all the audience, standing in mud and puddles of mud, wearing raincoats and plastic ponchos, some just in soaking clothes, and there was a woman riding an inflatable sofa across a sea of hands. Flags of England and Scotland and one of Wales undulated, the stage lights bursting on them. There was a German flag and an Italian one. I played hard and fast. We were playing a song I’d outlined five years ago, with some modifications from Bobby. A red light flashed across the stage. I swore it was made up of letters. The chorus came, the chorus ended. Verse two. Eyes closed. Eyes open. The audience was gone.
A huge neon sign flashing HOTEL was before me. I suddenly dropped my guitar and turned toward the wings. Ingrid wasn’t there. I tripped over my guitar cable, my guitar sliding across the ground. I stopped the set and went backstage, my legs as wobbly as rubber.
A roadie was flipping through a skin mag.
‘Where’s Ingrid?’
‘Who?’
‘The small girl. Where is she?’
‘I dunno man.’
People were looking at me: stage managers, roadies, crew members, other bands. But I didn’t care. The concert manager was running over to me.
‘Not now,’ I said. ‘I’m looking for Ingrid.’
‘What the hell are you doing. Get back out there.’ He carried a clipboard and wore a microphone headset.
‘Not without Ingrid.’
When I walked away he snapped his fingers at someone. He followed me into a room plastered with band posters and exposed wiring. Ingrid was there with a man wearing a crew member card round his neck.
‘What are you doing?’ I said.
‘I wanted to show her how we mix the system,’ he said.
‘You can’t do that. She’s my niece.’
‘I didn’t think it’d be a problem.’
I grabbed his shirt and pushed him hard against the wall. ‘You didn’t think it’d be a problem?’ His underarm odour was rising off his shirt. ‘You ever use your brain? You see a little girl and you think you can just take her? You should be arrested for abduction.’
‘Dude, it’s not a big deal.’
‘It’s a big fucking deal.’
He pushed me away but I grabbed his arm as he tried to leave. ‘You have no idea what you’re doing. I want you fired.’
‘Get out of my way.’
‘No, get out of here. You’re not qualified for this job. What’s your name?’
I didn’t realise Dirty Bobby and the concert manager and half the crew were watching me.
‘Let it go, bud,’ said Bobby.
I leaned into the roadie’s face and looked into his eyes and whispered, ‘If I ever see you again I’m going to punch your lights out. Got it?’
Bobby pulled me away and took a red bull from a small fridge and shoved it into my hand.
‘Get it together. Drink that. We’ve lost another song because of this.’
‘He had no right.’
‘Totally, but we’re on the clock right now.’ He pulled the tab on the red bull. ‘Drink. You have twenty seconds, man. I’ll warm them up.’
He walked behind a curtain. A moment later I heard a heavy bassline come over the speakers. I drank the entire can in one go and crushed it and threw it into the bin. Taking up my guitar, I went out and put my foot on a speaker facing the crowd.
‘Slight technical issue.’ My voice echoed and squealed with feedback.
And we started where we left off. We finished our set with a heavier version of Hotel California. Afterwards our concert manager and the festival manager were waiting for me. They pulled me aside and told me the festival company was going to send a notice to our record label and tour organiser for our behaviour. I didn’t care. I walked out to the carpark and the crescent moon was broken with strips of cloud. The air smelled of rain and mud and spilt beer and urine, and I could hear cheering and bass music from the far tent. I saw Bobby walking across the gravel toward me.
‘How you doing?’ he asked.
‘Been better.’
‘Forget it. Water under the bridge. You want to come out for a couple of beers?’
‘Not in the drinking mood. Thanks, though.’
‘Just a heads up, mate, but this is the lifestyle you’ve got into it.’
‘What?’
‘Drinking, having some fun. Tell me someone who doesn’t have a drink after a concert?’
‘I’m not in this for the drink, Bobby. Or the women.’
‘Man, don’t go round saying that, okay?’ he said. ‘People don’t want to hear it. Me? No problem - you do what you got to do, right? Hey, what’s the deal with you and the kid anyway?’
‘There’s no deal. She’s my niece and my brother and his wife walked out on her. I’m all she’s got.’
‘That’s not what I mean. Guys at the studio have been talking about it, too. I mean, we’ve never seen you play anything without her around. What’s that, man?’
‘She’s my muse. What’s the problem?’
‘Relax. Everything’s cool. Just asking. And Ivan, look, he’s worried about the situation too. Shouldn’t she be in school?’
‘So it’s a situation now, is it?’
‘Your head sometimes, all over the place. This ain’t me talking. I’m just saying what Ivan’s saying.’
Bobby, the band, and the roadies went out for several beers that turned into several more that then turned into hard liquor. Two roadies got into a fight and when they asked for bail the label ditched them and picked up some new guys who didn’t speak a word of English. I took Ingrid back to the hostel. She’d fallen asleep on the way. I carried her into the room and put her in bed and took off her shoes. I lay in the bunk below her and was just closing my eyes when I heard her voice.
‘Nils,’ she said.
‘What’s up?’
‘Why’d you get mad tonight?’
‘Because a guy did something he shouldn’t have done.’
‘You’re not mad at me?’
‘Hey, listen here, I could never be mad at you.’
‘Never?’
‘Never.’
‘What if I wasn’t at your concerts.’
‘I wouldn’t be mad.’
‘And if I didn’t come to the studio?’
‘I wouldn’t be mad. You don’t want to come with me anymore?’
‘I do.’
‘You do because you think I’ll be angry if you don’t?’
‘No, I want to because I want to.’
‘If tomorrow you told me you didn’t want to come anymore, I’d stop.’
‘I know. I don’t want you to stop.’
‘All right.’
‘Nils.’
‘What’s up?’
‘In your dreams are people dead?’
‘Not always.’
‘Sometimes?’
‘I dream of people who’ve gone away.’
She didn’t say anything and I thought she went to sleep.
‘Nils,’ she said.
‘What’s up?’
‘Thanks.’
‘What for?’
‘Looking after me.’
‘That’s something you never have to thank me for.’
I didn’t remember falling asleep, but I remember the scream that I thought came from the club across the street. I almost fell out of bed as I snapped on the light.
Ingrid was sitting up, her mouth and eyes gaping. I grabbed her and lay with her, trying to calm her, tears snaking down her red cheeks, but nothing I did worked.
She rocked in my arms. I told her it was all just a dream. Just a dream. Who was I trying to convince? She stopped screaming but remained crying, holding me close, clawing at my shirt, her tears wet against my neck. I felt an indescribable feeling of dread in my heart, for I knew what she saw was not simply confined to her dreamscape. I didn’t want to acknowledge it, but what she saw when she closed her eyes was not unlike what came to me when I played without her. She understood it no more than I understood it. Or maybe she did and she was trying to run from it, I could not be sure.
She would tell me that she had lived in the moving place, and I once believed that she said this to hide the life she had experienced; but the more I witnessed her night terrors, and the more I saw of my own visions, the more I believed she was telling the truth. I didn’t know how or why.
We returned to Wightford the next afternoon. The rain returned and followed us all the way, but I didn’t mind. The grass of the farmlands was a violent green. I went into the studio the day after and Bobby was there. He had a magazine rolled up in his back pocket.
‘They wrote an article about us,’ he said. He opened the magazine and flicked to a page and put the magazine on the table, pointing at a five line article, headlined “Hollow Point - Anything but Hollow”.
I read it quickly then I read it again slowly. It opened with our technical difficulty, but that’s where the criticism stopped. The guitars were described as “meaty and crunchy”, the song structures “logical”, the bass “resonating like thunder” and the vocals were described as “[…] moments of sheer power and brutality, like the warmth radiating off an old iron boiler […] at times hoarse and violent, other times hauntingly melodic”.
‘Congratulations, Bobby,’ I said.
‘You should be congratulating yourself. There are more praises for you than anyone else.’
‘You helped write the songs, and your bass lines are killer.’
‘Look at me. I ain’t mad. I’m just happy to be playing music. These days people talk about eastern religions and ancient philosophies, but for me all I need is music. It’s transcendental. It’s my meditation. Take it away and all I got are my thoughts and a world that doesn’t give two shits about anything. Let’s go for a drink.’
I looked at my watch. ‘It’s eleven.’
‘When was the last time you got a review like that?’
‘I’m going to pass.’
‘Then at least let me buy you a burger. You eat burgers, don’t you?’
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