CHAPTER 13
Dream logic.
They are all children—but they are all adults, too.
It is his grade-school Halloween dance. It is also the Obsidian Sanctuary at the same time. And it is also Carfax Abbey. Everyone is there. Everyone is costumed. Simon is safe, a misfit in the misfit kingdom, smiling under the sweaty seal of a rubber mask. The punch bowl is full of absinthe and nostalgia, and next to the bowl, lined up, are the severed heads, each weighing as much as a rotisserie chicken, each resting on its own tin plate on the plastic lavender tablecloth. Jolly Roger, with his gold-platinum grin, plays in a skeleton-pirate band, on a keyboard that is also a pipe organ. Byron, the African crow, perches on a microphone as the lead singer. The music is “Moonlight Sonata”—but it is also “Mary Jane’s Last Dance.”
Byron sings. Then Byron is gone, replaced by the Corbies. There is no transition.
Everyone is there. And they—the dreams—writhe in and about.
Simon mingles with his classmates and they are still children. They are also grownup and some apologize for not understanding Simon. He smiles and tells them it’s all right, for even they are precious in the memory.
Off in the corner, Officer Polhaus, as a boy, gets someone’s lunch money.
Simon’s mother is there, and she pins corsages on the girls and boutonnieres on the boys—and they are not flowers but writhing moths.
Simon’s dog is there—the one that died in his arms, in the alley—healthy and happy.
And Simon’s patients twirl about the dance floor. Some of them thank Simon. Some of them shake his hand. Some of them hug Simon with the intimacy that only forms between two people through a Y-incision. Still others dance up to Simon and open their chests, guiding his hand inside to feel the tactile-slick of their glistening souls. Everyone opens up.
Toby Reynolds and the other children drag their cement blocks about the dance floor.
Little Robin sits by the door, ready to pick out the monsters from the rubber masks.
And they—the dreams—writhe in and about.
Simon dances with the Band-Aid Girl, his girlfriend for one night and forever in dreams. Only now she is Jane, and Jane has come to the Halloween dance dressed as the Hanging Girl, and she dangles about, from the ceiling, on a rope, and Simon has to float upward to be at her level. Simon tips his hat and loosens her noose so he can fit his head and neck in as well. Jane holds Simon tight. They dance on the wind.
Perched on a microphone stand that branches off like limbs on a metal tree, the Corbies sing in a Tom Waits warble: “And now she’s dead/Forever dead/And she’s so dead and lovely now.”
Simon and Jane kiss, wrapped in their noose embrace. She whispers in his ear—says she’s sorry for disappearing, says he shouldn’t have followed her into the dark.
“I have to,” Simon says.
The Corbies sing in a grinding voice like skeleton love.
Then Simon is under the table, under the punch bowl, the severed heads, and the plastic lavender tablecloth—hiding out with the Band-Aid Girl. Only she’s Nyx and Nyx is a child and Nyx is an adult and either way she’s a jumble of sardonic purple lips. Simon shows her shadow puppets, and she kisses him on the cheek.
And then the screaming starts.
* * * * *
Simon starts in the dark, the screams of so many loved ones ceasing to exist. Every time we wake we kill our loved ones. He reaches for a glass of water. He feels the white lock of her hair that he saved. He hugs the moldering hotel pillow that still has her scent.
“This is not an ideal relationship,” he says to the dark.
* * * * *
Can’t sleep.
So he paces.
Dead plants. Dead gold fish. Very dead gold fish. His routines had been disrupted; he had not had a flushing ceremony with this failed attempt. Decay is setting in.
Take care of it tomorrow.
Pace.
Dead plants. Writing on the walls: Jane Doe and other phrases and symbols and equations and unintelligible scratches. The shakes. Jane withdrawal. All thoughts are broken glass.
The Dead Water junkie.
The shivering scarecrow.
No Dead Water. No fix. So he grabs an extra pumpkin and a DVD and a bottle of absinthe and a scalpel and a brain knife. He watches the dead on the screen in the original silent-film presentation of The Lost World, circa 1925. He drinks absinthe. The lines blur away and he grows fascinated watching the crude stop-motion dinosaurs and other ancient creatures. He finds himself thinking of the geriatric couple making out at the old theater.
“Oh, look at you. Look at you,” croons a jazzy Corbie in his head. “Brood, brood, brood in your Boo Radley moods.” The other wraith crows pluck a bitter bass beat from the tendons of the dead in the upside-down tree.
Simon drinks more absinthe, and he cuts into the pumpkin with the scalpel and brain knife. Simon slides his hand inside the pulp, feeling the chill innards, remembering Jane and his patients and those intimate moments in Autopsy Room 6. Then Simon cuts some more. He is not a professional pumpkin carver, but his hands are surgical and he knows his tools and he cuts and cuts into the flesh until he can see Jane’s face.
* * * * *
Simon hides under the punch table with Nyx. He performs shadow puppets, and she claps and she kisses him on the cheek. They sip emerald punch. Outside, the Corbies sing Poe verses to a blues beat.
“You know,” Nyx says, “if I find out exactly why you want Jane back, I’ll probably freak out a little.”
Simon nods.
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right,” Simon says.
They look at each other, as children.
“We should have known each other growing up,” says little Nyx.
“Yeah,” says little Simon.
A quiet moment passes, under the table.
Simon comes to attention with a start.
“I have to go find Jane.”
“Oh, Simon, don’t go out there,” says Nyx, suddenly afraid.
“But I have to.”
Little Nyx bites her purple lip. “Simon,” she says, “some doors you can’t come back out of unchanged. Some doors, only boogeymen can come out.”
Then the screaming starts.
Outside the under-table, all the dreams scream. Something had snuck into the dance.
“Like a thief in the night!” shriek the Corbies before they are silenced.
Nyx and Simon huddle together, and outside the under-table are the sounds of screaming and tearing and chewing and slurping. Simon makes a choice. He tears open a lavender flap.
Outside there are only black doll’s eyes and teeth and teeth and teeth.
And Hunger. Manifest Destiny Hunger. Their mouths are as wide as perdition; they can never have enough. One by one fall all the dancers and dreams, dead and devoured. Hunger holds illimitable dominion over all.
* * * * *
Awake.
Jane’s pumpkin head tumbles out of his lap, the screams of a billion frightened animals and a river of blood and offal in the back of his brain. He feels the paralysis, the unexplainably deep dread, like the night terrors in his youth.
Bob. The hammer.
I let it in, Jane. I let it in.
Arthur Drake, Chicago’s guru, smiles at Simon through his television. Another night. Another Apex Consumers infomercial chattering between 3:00 and 4:00 A.M.
“Be a more powerful consumer!”
“Be at the top of your food chain in business and life!”
“Start small, dream big!”
Strangers give testimony in the eye of the TV. Simon is urged to call now and join the program by purchasing self-help audiotapes and CDs by Drake himself; books and guides for selling Drake’s products from the home; meditation aids; vitamin supplements. Dates flash on the screen for local pep talks at various hotel conference rooms and a large arena event at the end of the year. “Listen to Arthur Drake speak live!”
It was always there, Jane, always there—before it all started. Pyramid schemes and smiles. Zoophagy on a mass-market scale.
The hammer.
Simon willfully breaks his paralysis and stumbles through his house. The dead plants. The scratches on the wall. Arthur Drake calling from the living room, saying he can teach you how to get everything you ever hungered for.
The hammer.
Bob.
It’s in the kitchen, wrapped in oily rags, caked in ancient blood.
“Don’t be a minnow, be a shark!” shouts Drake.
Simon flicks the light switch.
I let it in, Jane.
In the cloudy fishbowl, the dead goldfish, the very, very dead goldfish, swims about. Hungrily.
* * * * *
“So, tell me, dear: Have you won the girl back yet?”
“No, Mother.”
“Well, you keep trying, hon.”
“I will.”
“Oh . . . uh . . . your father wanted to know: Have you gotten yourself into a support group yet?”
“Yes, I have.”
“You have?
“Yes. They’re good, Mother. They’re very good.”
* * * * *
They practice guided meditation. Then Simon is fighting Nyx on a mat.
But before that, Simon stashed Bob—the hammer, not the dildo—in a train station locker.
And long before that, Simon threw a towel over the fishbowl and refused to look under it again.
When Simon walked into the Obsidian Sanctuary, Little Robin gave him the once over. Simon surprised himself by performing a coin trick for the silent girl. Simon never did that, not outside of the Dead Water and dreams. Robin smiled and hugged him.
“Jasper’s dead,” Simon said, and he told them about the body and the gun and the Spam. He played Jasper’s tape. Murmurs shuddered through the group, and a few tears fell. But Nyx took control and calmed them. Polhaus glared, but he did not approach Simon, did not say anything. Through a series of looks between Polhaus and Nyx, Simon guessed that they had shared words on the subject. Though she was half his age and less than half his size, Nyx was not a person you wanted to piss off.
She was also persuasive. Though Simon hung to the edges of the room, she eventually got him out on the mats. Tonight was self-defense night. Polhaus and Nyx taught the group various maneuvers and tactics for urban survival.
“I’m not dressed for physical education,” said Simon.
“Good,” said Nyx. “When the time comes to use what we’re teaching you, you won’t be dressed for it either, so you’re ahead of the curve.”
Simon took off his bowler hat and jacket and tie and shoes.
In the end, they are both sweating and both smiling.
“Where’d you learn all that?” asks Simon.
“I was in the military, very briefly,” says Nyx. “I’ve picked up what I can when I can. Now you tell me: Where the hell did you learn to move like that?”
“Charlie Chaplin.”
* * * * *
Neil’s dorm room is the repository for a collection of rock biographies, books on the occult, and LPs. Jim Morrison and Aleister Crowley posters cover the walls, and Ghostbusters action figures crowd the TV stand. Through a poster and a quote, Albert Einstein reminds Simon that: Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a persistent one.
Nyx told Simon where he could find Neil Barnes and added, “I’m coming with you,” back at the Sanctuary. “Knock had some others in his crew,” she explained. “But most of them fell off the world. Neil’s a smart kid. Skipped a few grades and got into college early. Neil and Jasper have been by the Sanctuary off and on. That’s where they met your Jane Doe.”
She’d looked worried, but wipes that off her face when they get to the dorm. There she’s all smiles and playful pouts. Neil’s roommate trips over himself to be helpful.
“Hasn’t been around for a few days,” he says, not looking particularly concerned, eyeing Nyx up and down.
Simon searches through Neil’s desk, silently lamenting the lack of organs to catalogue, weigh, and read, while Nyx goes through Neil’s closet and searches under his bed. The roommate takes the opportunity to look at Nyx through the new angles this position affords.
“You won’t find Neil’s gear,” the roommate says. “Took it all with him last time he left.”
“Gear?” asks Simon.
“Neil is very . . . advanced,” Nyx says, as if that explains everything.
They dig around some more, but this is not a corpse and this is not even a crime scene. Simon doesn’t have any absinthe in his guts, no wormwood tree in his brain, so he has no feel for any of it. He sifts listlessly. On the back of a notebook designated Western Civilization, Simon finds a set of rules written in pencil:
1. An exorcist should always have his music.
2. An exorcist should always have his specs.
3. An exorcist should never, EVER turn off his music.
4. An exorcist should never, EVER take off his specs.
5. Always wait for THEM to come to YOU.
Nyx picks up a leather-bound planner and leafs through it.
“All right, Simon. Time to go.”
“Wait,” says the roommate. He steps up to Nyx, close, breaching all levels of personal space and blocking her off from the door. “Maybe your—” he eyes Simon with a doubtful look “—friend wants to go home. You can stay and hang, tonight. Maybe you can interrogate me a bit more.”
Nyx grins.
“Tell you what, stud. I’ll be your date tonight if you can answer one pop quiz question.”
“What?”
“What is the earliest age at which a human being can masturbate?”
“Ah, fuck,” the roommate chuckles, a little confused but encouraged, leaning in even closer to Nyx, “I don’t know . . . ten?”
“Actually,” Simon says, “studies done the mid-nineties indicate that a fetus can engage in such activities, in the womb, at as young as thirty-two weeks of gestation.” Simon had not paid much attention to the exchange, but the medical factoids just fell out of his mouth while he was playing with his cards, turning jacks into queens.
Nyx and the roommate stare a moment.
“Well, looks like I was wrong too,” Nyx says to the roommate while maneuvering around him and taking Simon’s arm. “And I guess I have my date for the evening. Sorry if that leaves you all alone tonight. On the upside, you’ve had much more practice at that than you ever realized.”
She shuts the door.
* * * * *
“You have a mischievous streak,” says Simon, back in Nyx’s car. It’s a purple Volkswagen Beetle, lovingly referred to as “the Nyx Mobile” by all the Obsidian Sanctuary members. They have a special affection for the car; it had pulled into many of their driveways at inhuman hours of the night, bringing help when they could not call anyone else.
“Yeah, well, it’s a way to cope,” she says, aggressively working the stick shift. “It’s a way to squeeze.” She mimes squeezing an invisible Bob—the dildo, not the hammer. “When I worry, I make gross jokes.”
“You make lots of gross jokes.”
“Yeah, I do, don’t I?”
Simon looks through the planner. Inside is a pamphlet for Apex Consumers, as well as a flier for Club Wendigo, just like the one from Jane’s hotel room. Occasionally, on a given date in the calendar, there is an address. Each address is designated a “level”—mostly 1s and 2s, and the occasional 4.
Simon takes a few sips from his Thermos.
The Corbies groom their death-mote feathers.
“What do you know about Apex Consumers?” Simon asks.
“I know I’ve seen too many of their infomercials.” Nyx turns to Simon. “Insomniacs unite! What’s his name—Arthur Drake? Yeah. Self-help guru, master of materialism. ‘Be a more powerful consumer.’ What bullshit. Tapes and books so you can program yourself to want more and more shit you don’t need. Gotta hand it to that gi-normous penis, though; he’s combined the self-help shit with a killer pyramid scheme, so he gets his recruits selling his company’s tripe in hopes of becoming rich like him.”
Nyx shifts gears, hard. Squeeze indeed.
“Of course, there are the weirder rumors, too,” she says.
“Weirder rumors?”
“We’re looking into it.”
“You’re looking into it?”
“Yeah. We don’t just drink coffee and tell abduction stories. The troops are on it.”
Simon sits back in the seat and, in his mind, sifts through the events and the little he knows about Ichabod Knock and Neil and Jasper. The Corbies tear the clues to bone meal and play with the crumbs.
“Jane,” Simon says. “She held them together. She gave their minds peace. She could do that. Her golden eyes. You say their group was looking into some . . . nasty things. Jane vanishes. Then they all fall down. Ichabod disappears. Jasper commits suicide. And Neil—he’s without his team. Maybe he goes on one last outing, out of spite, or anger, or to prove nothing has changed. He goes out and—”
“What are you doing?” Nyx asks.
Simon opens his eyes and watches his hands miming with a mind of their own.
“I—I’m pulling organs out of a Y-incision. Helps me think.”
“That’s a little creepy.”
“Is it?”
“How do you do that?”
“What?”
“Creepy ’n’ cute at the same time?”
Simon shrugs and blushes, and Nyx smiles. Then they think of Neil. The smiles vanish, and they drive in silence. They drive south toward the last address in Neil’s date book, marked several days ago. They drive toward a Level 6.
Eventually, it gets dark.
* * * * *
The neighborhoods peel back layer after layer of seediness. Simon and Nyx double-check the address but know they are in the right place when they look up and notice that the roofs of the neighborhood buildings are all covered in crosses built from hastily bent TV antennas. Rows and rows of wiry crosses shiver in the late October wind.
Broken dolls. This is a trail of broken dolls, and I had hoped to find one whole. Eh, Jane?
At the nexus of shivering wire and TV crucifixion: a plain brick building, once affluent, now chopped into cramped apartments. They go inside. Simon is still wandering in his head with the questions, his hands still slick with metaphoric viscera. Outside his thoughts there is much of mildew and many doors and many shadows and many voices. Simon does not understand the voices—most of them speak in a rushed Spanish—but Nyx seems to keep up and knocks on door after door until there is an unwelcoming crowd in the hall. She asks them questions that end in “Neil Barnes” while, in the walls, the pipes whine and keen.
Finally, an old woman speaks out. The shadows in her face are the deepest, and the Corbies point out all the bad memories trapped in the wrinkles.
“Like the dark stories caught between the rings of a hanging tree,” they say.
A man argues with the crone but she argues back. She takes Simon and Nyx to a door leading to the cellar.
And then Simon is down in the dark with a flashlight. The old woman will not go past the first step, and Nyx asks her questions. Simon sweeps the little light over the dirt floor in the dark. Everything smells of a spider’s womb.
“Hello?”
Simon finds it by a far wall, an odd set of electronic goggles.
An exorcist should always have his specs.
The old woman is still above, her words getting faster—terrified vowels bouncing inside a malevolent pinball machine. Though Simon does not know what she is saying, he recognizes that she’s repeating the same sentence over and over again. He also begins to realize that it is very cold down in the basement and the building is making the strangest sounds.
An exorcist should never, EVER take off his specs.
Nyx says, “Simon, let’s go!”
And she’s down the stairs, grabbing Simon’s arm.
“Time to go!”
And they’re up the stairs and through the door and past the sobbing old woman and all the eyes and the shadows and doors and mildew. Then it’s out another set of doors and they’re in the car and driving away. Behind them, the shivering wire crosses beg the sky.
Simon finally asks, “What did she say? What did she say about Neil?”
Nyx accelerates.
“The walls ate him. The walls ate him.”
* * * * *
All these broken dolls, Jane, with their broken doll parts.
“The walls ate him,” Nyx says again.
“Do you think that’s true?” Simon asks, breaking a long silence.
“Doesn’t matter. Get the bad feeling and you get out.”
Simon looks out the window. The cement, at that speed, flows like dark water. He waves to the swimming skeletons and thinks about the people trapped in walls and thinks about the doors, the doors!—and windows—so many—whipping by. All those doors and windows, and each portal would be another story if one were to open them.
“You watch a horror flick,” Nyx says, “and you run your voice raw yelling at some blond, mega-boobed bimbo. ‘Don’t go up the stairs! Don’t open the door!’”
Simon nods and the Corbies watch the passing cement.
I thought, Jane, that I might take a jackhammer someday and free all the cement skeletons of Chicago. Then they would tell me all their secrets, tell me how all the strange stories fit together, joint by joint, into one plot. That was before I understood Knock’s riddle.
“Shit! Ah, Neil.” Nyx slams her steering wheel with a fist. “You can’t hesitate. Not in the dark. Your spine twitches, you run. You don’t go up the stairs. You don’t investigate the suspicious warehouse, alone, after dark. You don’t fucking read the passages of the archaic book that drove its last five owners insane with its unspeakable truths. You don’t hesitate because the dark is bigger than us. We are, all of us, out of our fucking depth. Knock thinks he can keep poking around, gather enough secrets to protect him—shit. You see what happens. The Sanctuary is a survival group. We’ll help you, Simon, as best we can, but we’re not going down Ichabod’s path.” She slams the steering wheel again, even harder. “Fuck! I am not that blond bimbo! I’m the spunky, dark-haired girl who’s sardonic and fantabulous—but with some emotional issues and a troubled past. The one you root for to pull her shit together and make it to the sequel. I intend to make it to the sequel. I’m running out of the spooky house!”
Simon lets the words flow from her purple lips. He does not interrupt. No Neil. Not even a cadaver. Disappointing. But he also feels bad for Nyx, feels pain because she feels pain and feels awkward because he does not know what to do about it. So, he holds his breath and reaches out an unsure hand, squeezing Nyx’s shoulder and rubbing the back of her neck as he had seen and felt her do to him in the closet at the Sanctuary meeting—mimicking as best he can.
Nyx smiles, reaches a hand up and squeezes Simon’s.
I learned, Jane, that it is not so very difficult to interact with the living, not if I pretend they are dead.
Simon lets his hand linger, savoring the warmth.
“Oh, Simon. You probably think I’m a crazy chica, no?”
Simon’s head cocks to the side.
“Compared to what?”
Nyx half laughs, half hiccups.
“Maybe that’s why I like hanging out with you, Mr. Meeks. Relativity. Whoa—you okay? You’re shaking.”
Simon does his best to steady his hands. “I haven’t had my . . . I haven’t visited the Dead Water in a while.”
“Dead Water junkie!” says a Corbie.
“Shivering scarecrow!” says another.
“I’m hungry!” says a third.
“That’s some addiction,” says Nyx. “Do our meditation sessions help?”
“A little. I found my power animal.”
“And?”
“I dissected him. It helped. A little.”
“Wow.”
After a moment, Simon sighs and notes, “Jane held them together—Knock and the others—kept them sane. She could do that. But when she vanished, the dark got them. Who was she?”
“I don’t know,” says Nyx. “Someone special.”
“Yes.”
Simon’s mind meanders: watches a billboard flashing by—realizes he is hungry—thinks of the candy bar—the name brand—the Milky Way galaxy. The blurring lights became stars—UFOs—urban myths—cosmic secrets—the underworld—religion—gods—salvation—death—and Milky Way Bars.
Simon takes Jasper’s recorder from his pocket.
Play.
“They’re . . . they’re all around me right now,” says the dead man’s voice.
Stop.
Rewind.
Play.
“They’re . . . they’re all around me right now.”
Simon listens to the surge of static, just after that sentence, and the faint cadence there.
The Corbies chant, “Spam, death, and Milky Way bars.” And then, the wraith crows sing, “Three may keep a secret, if all three of them are dead.”
“Not from me,” Simon says.
“Not from you, what?” Nyx asks.
* * * * *
Simon refuses to go into the kitchen, refuses to look in the fish bowl. He flips through Neil’s planner, finding September 3rd marked, not with the usual street address, like the other notes, but with Madonna of Bachelor’s Grove Cemetery. And GPS coordinates after that: 41° 37' 51.16" N — 87° 46' 14.27" W.
Off to the side, in the margins, a more hastily penned note says: There is a Lady in White in cemetery. Angry cephalopods under skirt.
Simon gets hungry.
He still refuses to go into the kitchen. The Corbies are hungry, and he shivers in withdrawal. Then Simon sees it—another note, in a different handwriting, on the back of the Club Wendigo flier from Neil’s planner. It includes an address and, under that, the insistent words:
SAFE HOUSE
—Ichabod
Simon quivers, looks about his room as if a specter might leap out and steal his clue. He dials Nyx’s number.
No answer.
Simon walks to a bookshelf and removes a hefty tome: Illinois Oddities. He opens to the back of the dust jacket to author biography: Ichabod Knock lurks somewhere in Chicago, with his cats.
Simon dials Nyx’s number again.
No answer.
“Act, Simon! Get the girl,” shriek the Corbies.
Simon says, “But Nyx—”
“You’re not going alone, Simon,” say the Corbies. “Never alone. No. The murder-in-one—specter tempest in a teapot. Go!”
Simon grabs his hat and coat and tightens his tattered tie as the Corbies croon their necro-blues, their entropic-beatnik lyrics, their apocalyptic limericks.
Simon grabs the planner and heads out the door. Turning, bent down, to lock the door, he smells it.
Chemical. Odd . . . but familiar.
Simon turns.
Three of them—three shapes made silhouettes by the flickering streetlight behind, standing over Simon on his porch. To one side, a broad-shouldered silhouette, tall, lengthy limbed, a looming, dark V-shape. In the center, an even taller silhouette, narrow shouldered, a shadowy totem-pole figure rising up and up. To the other side, a silhouette of average height, skinny, frail, shrunken in on itself with its head hunched forward and its arms held up to the chest. All three strangers wear weathered hats with wide, warped brims. Simon can make out no faces. All three stand still, perfectly still, at odd-bent postures.
And they stand.
And they stare.
And a long, silent beat passes.
A long beat.
There are those who speculate what would fill their neighbor with horror, what would drive the average person insane—and if the bystanders of the world were to turn on you and stare, silently, for long enough, you would go mad.
The silhouettes stare.
Simon stares.
The Corbies stare.
The silence grinds Simon’s nerve endings until he thinks he might scream just to silence the silence. That’s when the broad-shouldered silhouette turns to his fellows and makes a horrid, wet noise, a muffled gurgling.
The sound seems to activate the other two. Like windup meat puppets, they move in awkward jerks.
“We to play?” says the tall, tall totem-pole silhouette in a deep, resonant voice.
“We are not waxworks, mmm? You would have to pay, mmm?” says the frail silhouette in a rasp.
All their stilted sentences come out unsure, half a question mark at their tail end.
The broad silhouette gurgles again, impatiently.
The tall-tall figure reacts, steps forward, and says, “The season is autumn . . . time passes . . . first without words . . . then . . . my associate grabs you . . . then we enter . . . then we have dialogue.”
Simon, frozen, feels something manifest unseen, and the space between him and the figures turns to mealworms. The shambling shape of the broad figure moves forward in a surge, grabbing Simon by the neck and lifting him off the ground. They move into his darkened home, trailed by the other two shapes. This close, Simon can see they all wear plastic raincoats and yellow rubber gloves, the type for household cleaning. The wet crinkle of all that plastic and rubber punctuates their every movement.
And there’s the smell—chemical, familiar.
Simon sees, under the mildew and coats, dozens of green shapes pinned to each of the three figures, dozens of green pine trees, the car deodorizer kind. Dozens of happy green pines dot each of the shambling shapes like absurd war medals, like candles on a moldy birthday cake—and the scent of chemical pine sharpens. But under that is a scent Simon is very, very familiar with.
Simon struggles in the grip, and the broad stranger slams him into a wall.
Another labored silence.
The other strangers seem lost.
The broad stranger gurgles, impatiently, activating his fellows.
“We to play?” says the tall-tall stranger. “Good . . . my associate holds you . . . with menace . . . good . . . my associate . . . asks you questions . . . if you do not confess . . . my associate gives you the works . . . has my associate asked the questions?”
It is dark, and the brims of the misshapen hats are wide, and Simon sees no faces.
“You will tell us, mmm?” rasps the shriveled stranger. “Where is she, mmm?”
“Who?” asks Simon, feet dangling. He kicks at his captor’s legs and groin but the broad stranger seems not to notice.
“Do not play tricks,” says the shriveled stranger. “My associate will give you the works, mmm? There is . . . no time. It does not exist. I have errands to . . . run . . . I must get a quart of milk . . . we were out of milk . . . Mother was quite terse about it . . . I must not hold . . . her temper . . . against her . . . what with her being stuck in bed all the time . . . there is no time. Mmmother—”
The broad stranger interrupts his fellow with an impatient gurgle.
The shriveled stranger refocuses. “Where is she?” he rasps.
“Have you asked the questions?” asks the tall-tall stranger, oblivious. “My associate asks the questions. If he does not confess, my associate . . . gives him . . . the works. Then we exit . . . silently. Fade to black.”
“Mmmother,” rasps the shriveled stranger. “She died . . . years . . . and years . . . ago. There is . . . no . . . time.”
“Fade to black,” repeats the tall stranger. “They all exited, then. They all . . . left. Julie said that I was a liar in all things. Said she caught me fucking one of my students, so I must have lied about everything else. But that is . . . not true.”
“Mother died,” rasps the shriveled stranger, “and they said I did, mmm? But I did not. I . . . changed the bedpans. I . . . could not go out with friends. I . . . could not see a woman. I regretted. I resented, mmm. But I did not—”
“Julie,” says the tall stranger. “She said I only gave Desdemona the role because she fucked me. Not true. She was . . . so talented. The best I’d seen. She gave me a book of Samuel Beckett plays because they were my favorite. It seemed innocent enough. We did not fuck until after I cast her . . . then they all left . . . exit Julie . . . exit Desdemona . . . exit university . . . we exit silently. Fade . . . to black.”
Simon tries to follow from synapse to rotten synapse.
Strange cards in my game of fifty-two pickup. Eh, Jane? What were they—who were they—before their nasty ever-afters?
Simon produces a scalpel and sinks it deep into the forearm of the broad stranger, but he does not notice. The other two strangers mumble on.
“. . . did not unplug the machine. No . . . time. I must . . . get a quart of milk . . .”
“. . . and she started sobbing . . . when I could not maintain an erection . . . as if it reflected badly on her . . . exit, all—”
The broad stranger breaks the tangle of words with a shriek and a gurgle, louder, and then a second time, louder and more violent, as he stamps his foot. The other two strangers snap to attention.
“Dialogue,” says the tall stranger. “Time passes. My associate asks the questions.”
The shriveled stranger looks to Simon with sudden clarity of purpose and rasps, “Where is the girl with the golden eyes?”
“I don’t know,” says Simon through the strangling yellow grip. “She’s not here.”
A pause and a silence.
“Did he ask the questions?” asks the tall stranger. “Good. I exit.” The tall stranger stalks off into the house, out of Simon’s perspective.
Another pause and a silence, and a car passes by on the street, and the headlights flash over the features of the strangers for a moment.
Was the broad stranger’s mouth sewn shut?
Were the shriveled stranger’s eyes sewn shut, too?
“She is not here,” says the tall stranger, returning. “The season is autumn and time . . . passes, first without words. Then we exit, silently. Blackout.”
Simon tumbles into space, tossed away by the large yellow hand. He crashes into a wall and onto the floor.
When he looks up, they are gone.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
JOSHUA ALAN DOETSCH once built a flesh golem out of grave-robbed parts and leftover Halloween candy. By strange chance, this golem is fueled by rejection slips. Every day it begs and it pleads, “Please, kind sir, keep me alive!” And so Joshua writes. You can thank White Wolf for making the poor golem go hungry for another day.
Joshua is from October Country, Illinois, but currently writes video game dialogue in Montreal. He has a fondness for fedoras, does a mean Christopher Walken impersonation, and, once upon a road trip dreary, wrote a blues song about necrophilia.