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The Pisces Man in Black

Seger Lansdale

    His voice was calling to me, echoing up deep from within the corridor of a dream. I slowly awakened, my eyelids fluttering in the soft darkness.
    He appeared to be sitting on the foot of my bed, though I felt none of his weight pressing on my feet beneath the blankets. Was he weightless somehow? Ghostly? His appearance should have terrified me, his sitting there like that with me trapped beneath the bedding. But instead of terror, I felt mild wonder, and peace. Yes, there was peace in my often-troubled soul.
    The moonlight from between the blinds of my bedroom window gave a silver ambience to the back of his head. He sat in profile, the right side of his face visible to me from where I lay, my head propped up on my pillows against the headboard. He was cast in blue-black shadow (the effects of a stage light, maybe?) and he carried an acoustic guitar upside down on his back. I found this odd. If he was sitting on my bed, shouldn’t the guitar’s neck be dragging the floor, the strap practically choking him?
    What was more mystifying was the arm of someone else’s guitar partially obscuring the ghostly figure’s face, slightly to his right and beneath his chin. I looked for the musician holding this other guitar and saw only a shadow, blacker than the darkness that already painted the room.
    A faint smell of cologne spiced with cigarette smoke wafted to me from the foot of the bed. The ghostly man’s hair was long and black, neatly combed from his forehead back to behind his ears. His face was strong, thin with a well-defined nose, and slightly pouting lips. He was dressed in a black suit jacket. The collar of his white shirt peeked out from beneath it at his neck. In his right hand, he held a silver microphone, the tip of his index finger slightly extended, but still curled around the mike stem.
    The first time I clearly heard him speak to me, he was holding the microphone to his lips and calling gently in a giant baritone voice, “Ronnie...Ronnie...son...I want to help you. We need to talk. Wake up, Ronnie. Wake up, son.”
    I was struck by a quote I had read long ago from Kris Kristofferson where he had said something about the Voice of God. I looked at this apparition calling my name, the voice deep but gentle, more beseeching in tone and pitch than commanding, calling “Ronnie, son...Wake up...” and wondered to myself, Is this what I’m hearing? The Voice of God?
    The better question might have been: Would God speak with a deep, Southern accent? I dared not ask and simply said, “I’m here. I’m awake.” Then, “Who are you?”
    He continued holding the silver microphone to his lips, never at all turning in my direction when he said, “Don’t ask such questions. They aren’t important. What is important is what I have to teach you, son.”
    I was twenty-two years old, but had no problem with him calling me “son.” It seemed entirely appropriate that this ghost of a man should do so. He had a voice suited for calling anyone anything he wanted, but the voice’s tonality was inharmonious, expressing tenderness despite its apparent volume and hinged power. I suspected he would have trouble cursing anyone out. He had the voice for it, but would struggle using it in such a way.
    “Teach me, I guess,” I muttered.
    “I hear it. I hear your depression and I’ve come to help you.”
    I jutted my head to the right to get a better look at him, trying to peer around the guitar arm that blocked part of the lower portion of his face. But the guitar arm somehow lengthened and his face was more obstructed than ever. So I gave up.
    I sat back against the pillows again and said, “Boy, I really did have too much to drink last night.” I ran a hand over my unshaven face. Whisked my frizzy hair rapidly through my splayed fingers.
    “Yes, Pisces are prone to abusing alcohol and drugs,” he said into the silver microphone. “I ought to know. I’m a Pisces too.”
    If he didn’t have my interest before, he surely had it now. I sat up straighter in bed. “You’re a Pisces?”
    “I am, was, and always will be.”
    He lowered the silver microphone again, his index finger still curled around the stem. He was waiting for me to ask him more questions. Despite the booming voice, he didn’t have an assertive personality.
    “Did you struggle with depression? A lot?”
    “Always. I even crawled deep in a cave one time in Tennessee and asked God to kill me. He didn’t though.”
    He laughed softly. “Depression is part of being a Pisces. It’s almost in our genetic makeup. That’s why it’s important to bring purpose and God into your life.”
    I looked towards the window, my eyes taking in the moonlight shining through the blinds. My mind wasn’t drifting; I was simply considering what he had to say.
    “Go on, please.”
    “Life is like a train,” he said. “You’ve got to have both tracks. Purpose and God: those are the twin tracks your life, your train, must run on.”
    He wasn’t coming across as preachy at all. His deep voice carried a sense of humility, an emotion perhaps born in a man who had lived through many trials and tribulations. I sensed, no heard, that he really wanted to help me.
    “My life,” I admitted, “feels largely purposeless.”
    “That’s because you don’t apply yourself.” He lowered the silver mike, gave his next words more thought before speaking again. “I can’t and won’t speak, for others. But us Pisces are known to drift. You must apply yourself to your writing, your purpose.”
    “How does God come into the picture?”
    “Apply yourself to Him as well. Study the Bible and other spiritual teachings. Ponder the wisdom of the ages from books and music.”
    “I don’t know about religion.” I rubbed my whiskered chin. “Always had problems with it.”
    “People get too dogmatic about religion. I sought truth and absorbed it wherever I could find it.” He brushed at the tip of his nose with the back of his extended index finger, hand still holding the mike.
    “The astrological sign of Pisces described me well. I was prone to depression, dreaming and drifting through life, and seemingly born susceptible to addictions to a variety of chemicals and behaviors. I saw myself in astrology, just as I did in other religious traditions and philosophical teachings. To me, that was all truth.”
    He lowered the silver microphone from his lips and it was then that I noticed he was fading away. He was dematerializing before my very eyes!
    “Hey...hey...where are you going? Wait! Wait!”
    “I’ve said all I’ve got to say, son. Just apply yourself to God and your writing and you’ll start feeling better – I promise. I did the same with Him and my music.”
    Already the scent of cologne spiced with cigarettes was diminishing. The guitar that had obscured his chin vanished, and the moonlight from the window brightened when the blue-black shadow around him suddenly blinked out. The microphone that had gleamed silver in his hand faded to a dull gray, then disappeared.
    “Wait...wait...” I stammered. “I still have more questions! I still don’t know who you are...were...” I scrambled my brain for more to say and only could manage, “Are you an angel?”
    He laughed. He was gone now and all I heard was his deep voice echoing back to me from between here and there, or maybe nowhere and yet somewhere.
    “An angel?” he asked. “Come on, son. Inside me lives a black dog.”
    I thought, Now why was does that sound familiar?
    His soft soothing laughter, deep and understanding; and drifting in the night air, rocked me gently into a calming and peaceful sleep.

    The next morning I lay awake, rummaging around beneath the covers with my feet to the foot of the bed where he had sat, and thinking again and again, Did this happen? Did this really happen to me?
    But I didn’t waste too much time thinking about it, having become acutely aware of my tendencies for dreaming and drifting since the conversation the night before. So I jumped out of bed and got right down to business. After cleaning up and getting dressed, I spent some time in the Bible. Over the weeks that followed, I searched the local library for books on philosophy and spirituality and read voraciously. I listened for truth in music, and applied myself to wisdom. I wrote stories too.
    And indeed, I started feeling better, just as he had promised I would.
    I could say my story ends there, but that wouldn’t be the truth. Far from it! Let me tell you what happened to me at Half Price Books.
    My apartment had become a book depository instead of a place fit for living. The bookshelves were overburdened, the coffee table in my living room cluttered (books aren’t good coasters), and my bedside table was a Mount Saint Helens of magazines. It was time for a trip over to Half Price.
    I packed up two cardboard boxes full of books and magazines and drove over. It was raining softly that day, the sun struggling to peak out from behind the clouds as I trudged through the glass double doors, my back straining under the load of the big box wrapped in my arms.
    The counter where they purchased your used books and mags was near the music section. I didn’t notice the curio my first trip through. Neither did I see it when I returned with the second heavy box and wrestled it up on the counter.
    The young attendant behind the counter smiled. “If you want to look around for a few minutes,” she said, “I will have a price for you shortly.” She grabbed my first box and removed the cover. I thanked her and started looking around the store.
    I’ve always loved the atmosphere in any Half Price bookstore. The smell of all the books in the aisles, the promises of stored and realized knowledge and burning imaginations: all available to a brush of my fingertips, or a small cash investment. Often I can go inside and purchase nothing and simply browse the shelves; the names of Dean Koontz, James Patterson, or Sandra Brown in my mind while seeking out their random or specific titles. Or the works of other authors; just looking is half the fun, even when not buying.
    Finished with browsing the books, I made my way to the music section and that was when I saw it! Displayed prominently in a large curio was a picture of the Pisces Man in Black! (I had taken to calling him by that name.)
    I stumbled slightly, blinking in surprise and confusion. An attendant must have seen my reaction because he rushed over and grabbed me by my upper arm.
    “Are you all right?” he asked. “It looked like you were going to pass out.”
    I stared at him, my mouth working, and only could mumble, “It’s him. It’s...it’s really him!”
    “Who? What are you talking about?”
    I pointed a shaking finger at the curio. “The Pisces Man in Black! That’s him...him in that picture.”
    The attendant looked in the direction I was pointing. “Oh, you mean that album? Yes, that’s a mint copy of Johnny Cash at San Quentin.” He led (no, practically dragged) me over to the display. I followed him on unsteady legs.
    “You know, Johnny Cash was a Pisces, wasn’t he?” the attendant asked. “Yes, I do remember reading that somewhere.” He shrugged. “We have had that record for a few weeks now. Are you a Johnny Cash fan?”
    “I guess...I am...I don’t know,” I murmured.
    My mind was jumbled, staggering under the weight of further revelations. I remembered now that Kris Kristofferson had been talking about Cash’s voice maybe sounding like the Voice of God. And that “black dog” comment? I think that was how the Man in Black used to refer to the darker side of his personality.
    Come to think of it, it probably wasn’t a coincidence either that I had given him the nickname “The Pisces” Man in Black!
    I rubbed my forehead, trying to take it all in.
    “Can you believe it?” the attendant asked. “A mint copy of <>IJohnny Cash at San Quentin, originally released in 1969, is worth only around eighteen dollars. Eighteen dollars!” The attendant shook his balding head. He appeared genuinely outraged. “Shame! That thing is a classic and I believe priceless. Priceless, I tell you!”
    I nodded almost dumbly. “Yes, priceless.”
    He studied me. “Are you going to be all right?”
    “Yes...Yes...I think so.”
    “Ok. My name is Samuel. I’ll be around, if you need me.” He looked doubtful, but then reluctantly left me standing before the display.
    I looked at the Pisces Man in Black, Johnny Cash. He was posed on the album cover, as he had been that night in my bedroom. The moonlight through my window blinds that had shown on the back of his head was really a stage light. Dressed in a black suit jacket with a white shirt underneath, he was surrounded in blue-black shadow, the acoustic guitar hanging upside down on his back. The right side of his face was in the picture, the black hair combed back, the longish nose and pouting mouth: all the same. In his hand he held the silver mike, his index finger extended slightly and curled at the tip.
    The unseen musician stood off to the right too and out of the picture, his guitar arm still hiding part of Johnny’s face.
    An involuntary chill crawled down the length of my spine. This feeling wasn’t born of fear, but of awe. I had seen Johnny Cash’s ghost! He had come back from the beyond to help a fellow Pisces – to help me.
    I seemed to recall his being a good man in life. Why not in death too? It made perfect sense. It would be just like him to help me, a complete stranger.
    I felt more than just a little honored.
    My name was called over the PA system, the quoted price for my used books and magazines ready. I still stood there, staring at the Johnny Cash album and was only shaken from my revelry by the return of Samuel.
    “You still standing here?” he asked. “You must be a huge fan of Johnny Cash, or country music.”
    “Neither,” I said. “I’ve read and heard different things about him, but I never really knew who he was, until today.”
    “Wow, that’s amazing! I thought everyone knew who Johnny Cash was.”
    I came to a sudden decision. I looked at Samuel. “Eighteen dollars?”
    “Huh?” he asked.
    “You said it was eighteen dollars to buy this album, Johnny Cash at San Quentin.”
    “Yes. But its value is immeasurable. He was a great man. A legend in this age, and at any other time.”
    “I couldn’t agree with you more,” I said. “Get that record out of there, out of that curio. I’ll buy it. I’ll take it! Take it home with me, where it belongs!”

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