Move Under Ground

Move Under Ground
by Nick Mamatas

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MOVE UNDER GROUND

Book One
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Book Two
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Epilogue

Book One
Chapter One
I was in Big Sur hiding from my public when I finally heard from Neal
again. He had had problems of his own after the book came out and it
started being carried around like a rosary by every scruffy party boy
looking for a little cross-country hitchhiking adventure. They'd
followed him around like they'd followed me, but Neal drank too
deeply of the well at first, making girls left and right as usual, taking a
few too many shots to the face, and eating out on the story of our
travels maybe one too many times. Those boozy late-night dinners with
crazy soulless characters whose jaws clacked like mandibles when they
laughed are what got to him in the end, I'm sure. They were hungry for
something. Not just the college boys and beautiful young things, but
those haggard-looking veterans of Babylon who started shadowing
Neal and me on every street corner and at every dawn-draped last call
in roadside bars; they all wanted more than a taste of Neal's divine
spark, they wanted to extinguish it in their gullets. Neal was the perfect
guy for them as he always walked on the edge, ever since the first shiv
was held to his throat at reform school when he was a seven-year-old
babe with a fat face and shiny teary cheeks. He wanted to eat up the
whole world himself like they did, I knew from my adventures on the
road with him, but I didn't learn what was eating him 'til I got that letter
that drove me to move under ground.
The letters had become more infrequent while I was out on Big Sur
living in Larry's little cabin, due to me at first, I thought. I was working
on my spontaneous writing, which sounds a bit contradictory but
discoveries need to be plumbed, not just noted, and I was turning out

roll after roll of pages about the stark black cliffs and how it felt that
the world wasn't just shifting under my feet but how I was sure one day
I'd end up standing still while the big blue marble just rolled out from
under me to leave me hanging over the inky maw of the universe. I
didn't take breaks except to pick my way into town every week or ten
days to get some supplies: potatoes and beans, some cooking oil,
whiskey, chaw, more rolls of paper which came in special just for me
thanks to Larry, and stamps and my mail. Letters, only three were from
Neal, most from mother and my aunt and one or two from my agent
with checks so big I couldn't even cash them but instead had to sell
them for a dime on the dollar to the one-eyed shopkeeper at the general
store that held my mail for me. By that time I could hardly stand to hear
anyone's voice so I never spent more than a few hours in town, just
enough to do my errands, get my socks washed by the old unsmiling
Chinaman and wolf down some cherry pie with ice cream. Even the
great belly laughs of the old-timers who had shuffled up from Los
Angeles when the strawberry crops had turned black on the vine grated
on me when I heard them now, but those curlicue swirls on Memere's
letters were soothing and stainless like the sky. I'd read them as I'd hike
back up to the cabin, smoking a great Cuban just to have some light to
read by if I didn't get home before dark.
Neal's letters were something else altogether, and he was still
something else, too, as the kids say. The first letter was typical Neal,
full of big plans to play connect-the-dots between girls and writers. "Oh
dearest Jack," he wrote to me, "once you're all settled and have ironed
up after your latest crack-up I'll come down from San Fran in Carolyn's
father's great old battleship of a car, then drive right back up the coast
in reverse through Oregon where the trees hold up the vault of the sky.
Then we can tour Vancouver; it's a wet warm pocket of life up in those
frozen wastes