The moans of passing cars tell Hap they are still on the highway, leaving Providence. Abruptly, the blade is swept from Hap’s throat. There’s a strange moment when he keeps his head pressed against the center console, near the man’s stinking legs. After several minutes, Hap cautiously sits up just as the tall man takes an exit that leads to the small suburbia of Johnston. The man’s sunken eyes are unblinking against the road.
“They took my mother.” The killer reemerges from his sunken thoughts to snarl as his Cadillac blows through a street loaded with gas stations and fast food joints. They are heading toward the woods.
Chapter 11: The Damned One
Paul stretches his arms along the back of the bench as he looks up at the statue of Roger Williams. From where he’s sitting, a waning moon is perfectly aligned with the top of Williams’s head, where he stands on his perch overlooking his city. The moment he wonders if such an alignment is a coincidence, the sleek blade of a knife presses to his throat. The Eye Doctor has found him.
A numbness forms in Paul’s chest as the tip of the blade prods his Adam’s apple. He wonders if he’ll get any last words in before his throat is opened up over the nice collared shirt Johan asked him to wear. It was the first time Johan had ever asked him to dress nice, and go figure, Paul was curious as hell as to why that was.
The knife is whisked away, and someone, the slender skull of a woman, tucks her chin against his shoulder, her mouth hovering near his neck. “My teeth are just as deadly as the knife,” Lacy whispers. Paul pops into nervous laughter that she immediately mimics, swinging around the bench to sit beside him.
“Johan sent you to spy on me?” Paul asks as Lacy snuggles in a little bit closer.
“No, I’m not the one following you tonight,” she says in such a way that Paul turns to glance for anybody lurking along the shadowy street behind the park, but if Candle Lighters exist there, they are well hidden.
“Don’t see why he asked me to meet him here,” Paul says, and Lacy shrugs, putting her head on his shoulder.
“Beats me. All I know is I wasn’t invited. I heard things have been tough lately at the hotel. With the killings. S’what inspired me,” Lacy says, her jeans are tight around her long legs. She doesn’t look like she has a knife hidden on her. Paul pities the mugger that sets upon her on a night like this.
“What if I had a gun?” Paul asks, and Lacy laughs, staring longingly at the moon above Roger’s head.
“You wouldn’t. They chose you because you’re not the type. Which is funny. Never thought I was the type,” Lacy says.
He’s seen her half a dozen times since that night at the Palace of the Komodo in Westerly, and always, she seems more like some silly young girl than a member of the cult. Johan said it was her job to make him comfortable. If he was right about that, then maybe he was right about Paul being somebody important. There had to be truth to that, right?
“You ever worry that you’re being used?” Paul asks.
“It’s not something worth worrying about. You went to law school. Was that your dad’s idea before it was yours? I guess, like his suggestion?”
“Yeah, he made it clear. It was all his idea,” Paul says, though he never minded it. He liked his dad telling him how successful he was going to be. Come to think of it, Johan was the first person since his dad to make him feel like he could accomplish anything. And to be honest, Paul doesn’t feel any of that same warm fuzziness for Johan that he felt for his dad, so that really is saying something.
“We’re all used a little bit. Some people want us to be something because of how it makes them feel. A politician, a doctor, a wife. Everybody you ever meet winds up wanting to make a plan for you.”
“And what’s your plan for me?” Paul asks, on the verge of flirting but feeling no pressure to cross that line. It seems unthinkable, but Lacy is more of a friend than any woman he’s ever known, even if he still can’t keep his eyes off her humble curves.
“To make you comfortable,” Lacy says, Johan’s words coming out of her mouth. “I heard about….” She blanks out, trying to remember something. “That bellhop,” she finally adds. That was exactly what Paul didn’t want to think about. He still has no idea what Hap really did. Was he really a threat all along, right under Paul’s nose? Is Johan pissed at Paul now? Maybe he had him wearing a nice shirt because he’s going to some kind of candle lighter trial.
“From what Johan told me, this kid seems to have had issues letting go, the poor thing. He was working for…you know.” Lacy runs her finger across her throat.
“He didn’t seem like the type to be…well, anything. Johan told me this kid’s girlfriend was missing.” That’s what he called Hap: “the kid,” as if he wasn’t anything else. And maybe he wasn’t.
“She probably didn’t know how to break up with him if he was that clingy. There’s a very fine reason why you won’t ever catch me dating anyone,” Lacy places her hand on Paul’s arm, and before he can say something cutesy back to her, a car rolls to a stop right behind them. Johan.
A door clicks open, and nobody has to call to him. Paul knows. Lacy pecks him on the cheek, and he leaves her sitting alone in Prospect Terrace, watching the moon and the stars. She’ll be fine, he reasons to himself. She’s likely one of the most dangerous people in this city.
***
“Augustine Francesco,” Johan says a few minutes later as their drive brings them through Westminster street downtown. He lifts a fried octopus roll of sushi to his lips with a pair of chopsticks, and the meat crunches between his teeth as a tentacle dangles over his lips before he sucks it back in. Paul doesn’t question him eating sushi off a china plate. He wouldn’t be surprised if the limo previously stopped at the Japanese place on the hill, and a chef ran out to personally hand the meal to Johan on their finest dining plate. That kind of thing seems to happen to Johan a lot around Providence.
When Paul first started working at the Miskatonic, he met a woman seemingly obsessed with the color purple right down to her bra and panties. She called the front desk asking for him personally to come to her room, and while the front desk girls were too new at the time to joke with him about what was going to happen, they would’ve been right to. Augustine Franceso bent the world to her whim, and she chewed Paul up like he was a five-dollar piece of ass looking for a fix. It’s no wonder then that during the limo ride from Paul’s apartment Johan casually mentions that the reason they’re going to an exclusive art gallery at one in the morning is to meet a single woman in particular.
“She was your final test,” Johan said, and as with the sushi, Paul wasn’t surprised to find that she was in on everything. He’d suspected it after she tempted the boy, Hap. He shuts his eyes and tries to ignore the sudden guilt that threatens to crawl up through his chest. Poor kid should’ve gotten laid when he had the chance.
The limo swishes them down a wordless curve of familiar streets. Paul can’t keep track of all the hidden rooms and buildings Johan has shown him. There is a city between the city, just as there is a voice in everyone’s head.
The gallery is in the attic in one of the historical preservation buildings on Broadway. A moldering back staircase, seemingly unfit for Paul’s new status, brings them up to a moth-eaten studio of cruel artificial light that gives energy to a collection of strange masks on the walls.
There are masks of skulls, demons, and otherwise deformed things in between; the shrouding face templates are carved in everything from wood to obsidian. Masks are as big as doors and as small and eerie as doll faces. Before every mask is a lit candle atop a stool; throughout the gallery, the sound of an eerie violin continues to play. It seems to cling to every face on the wall, vaguely reminiscent of the haunting moans from the downtown water fire festivals.
Johan’s immediately embracing a man in a tuxedo Paul doesn’t quite recognize. It takes him a moment to realize that the little over a dozen people
who are perusing the gallery are all Candle Lighters.
Paul recognizes an old man with buzzed hair as Taylor McKinley from the feast at the Komodo. Taylor’s rubbing a hand over an expressionless mass of golden sparkles that carries a Middle-Eastern vibe. Paul turns to admire an old mask, more artifact than presentation; maybe that’s its charm, something new that looks old. It’s a grinning faceplate of yellowed cloth with miscellaneous cracks teetering from its eyeholes.
“My son, William, was the theatrical sort. He never could control himself, you see. Family ought to stick together; I regret leaving; consider your father.” Paul turns to face the man he thought was blind, Elliot Sampson, who is still wearing his black shutter glasses, though Paul swears he took them off in the moonlight before joining the ceremony at the beach. When Paul embraced the soaking man after he rose from the sea, Elliot looked him in his eyes and smiled. Perhaps he only has an aversion to the light. Now, Elliot’s being guided. He’s holding onto the arm of another familiar candle lighter, the blood-drenched-boy from the basement whose name Paul can’t remember.
“Mr. Jones?”
The boy, with a faint Southern accent, immediately moves away from Elliot. There’s a hierarchy that comes with whom Paul will allow himself to forget first, and if he’s drunk, everybody’s an exception save the pope, but it feels like there’s a hole growing in his brain. Paul can’t put a label on the kid, and this isn’t the first time he’s forgotten somebody recently; the few skills he has are fading.
“Derrick Woodbury, sir,” the boy says with the humble conviction that he hasn’t introduced himself before. So Paul goes along with it, shaking his hand and telling Derrick that he remembers him.
Elliot, that rich Rhode Islander Paul still can’t believe he’s never heard of, smiles in Paul’s direction, and perhaps the reason why the blind wear glasses is so that others feel their stare like it’s a hungry thing sniffing out recognition.
“Which one is your favorite?” Derrick asks Paul about the masks. He sounds giddy as if each mask is a miniature carnival of hidden delights and wonders.
Paul shrugs. “I could hardly pick.” He smiles, and he doesn’t have to try and be likable, does he? He doesn’t have to bullshit. He doesn’t have to play any games. He has what these people respect, if only he knew exactly what that was.
Paul had recently given a motivational speech at the University of Rhode Island. He didn’t write it or know he was attending until the day before when Johan and Lacy invited themselves into his apartment and laid out an agenda. There was no mention of the Moon Shack or the killer carving out eyeballs, and the next thing Paul knew, a Miskatonic limo delivered him to where he gave a speech to a few thousand kids. He gave a rousing monologue about unity, becoming a part of your community, and not standing alone, not trying to do it all on your own. The whole event was a callback to his rally days, and later that night, Johan asked Paul to give that very same speech to a different crowd gathered in the Miskatonic’s ballroom. Who starts the applause?
“Well, which one would you want to wear? Me, I like the one sorta like a mirror: that one,” Derrick says. Paul follows Derrick’s pointed finger to a circular, plate-like mask of diamond. “If that caught in the midday sun, it’d be blinding, like my head was a star. Imagine seeing that run at you!” Derrick shudders with a grin that’s too wide. When somebody tugs on Paul’s shoulder, he’s all too happy to turn away from the overeager cat killer.
The face of a cow, some kind of horned buffalo with brown fur, presses against Paul, its maw meeting his lips as he tries to jump back. Wicked laughter shrieks from the beast’s throat as a slender pair of arms surrounds his neck. Augustine slinks off the mask, the red of her dress catching the light of the many candles consuming the room. “I couldn’t resist,” she says to the applause of Derrick’s laughter. Elliot taps Derrick’s shoulder, and the boy quiets and nods at Paul before helping the old man continue on with the exhibit. Paul focuses on Augustine’s lips and the way such simple things can take on a different identity in different shades of light.
She hails from Los Angeles, but she runs fashion events all over the country. They met once before after she hosted an event at the Miskatonic. Paul imagines Augustine has men like him in every major city. She reels in whatever New England celebrities happen to be around, and while they don’t stay at the Miskatonic, they still set the staff aflutter with excitement.
Augustine’s hand reaches up to trace across Paul’s face. “Silly little boy, you are the only one I know who doesn’t need a mask,” she says with such awkward passion as if Paul doesn’t really know that the only reason an honest woman is interested in him is because of his words and promises. Augustine is scattered and strange. The last (and first) time they spoke, they avoided talk of fashion, models, and her business, unlike every other entrepreneur Paul has met. She is amorphous to the point of being unidentifiable. Yet just one purr from her throat, and he feels as though he’s connected to the threads between everything she tells him. He tries to ignore the idea of her seducing Hap. The poor bastard. Now he’s likely a corpse somewhere who didn’t so much as get to dip his wick one last time.
“Johan’s too polite to ask you something.” Augustine’s holding the side of Paul’s face with slender, pale fingers. Her skin is smooth, unlike the other women of the Moon Shack, with their coarse and calloused hands. “I’m moving to Providence. He wants there to be a new power couple, as in you and me.” The void returns, so Paul steps outside of himself, outside of the moment and the nonsense he’s being told. “Nothing has to change, aside from us doing the rounds and letting people see us together. You can still keep your apartment and any bed warmers I’m sure you have.” Her fingers trail along the side of his face. He’ll say “yes” no matter how crazy the proposition, and it wouldn’t be for her but for the others, for the people who are looking at him in a way he’s never been looked at before. He and Augustine, what, married? Well, maybe that’s the right kind of politics.
“So you want me to buy you a ring?” Not for the first time, Paul, mostly sober, feels as though he’s completely drunk.
Augustine chuckles. “I’ll buy myself one. You don’t know what power the right stone can bring.” It still feels like a sudden joke, a wedding ruse with a woman he doesn’t know.
“Augustine.” Johan’s breaking the dizzying aura of obedience clouding Paul’s judgment. “I brought Paul here to admire D’angelo’s cosmetic work. You were supposed to save your little announcement for later.” The man in the tuxedo has what looks like a snake or serpent tattooed on his cheek, seeming to drip from an eye. He’s helping the old Taylor McKinley try on a mouthless mask of bamboo with eerie eyeholes no more than slits.
“Look at him; he’s happy to go along with it.” Augustine’s hand on Paul’s chest gives him the sudden realization that, if this actually happens, then she’ll technically be wife number three.
A startling yet simple ringing noise blares from Johan, and it is the twenty-first century; of course, he has a cellphone, but still, Paul has a hard time picturing Johan owning one. The priest of the Moon Shack lifts the thing to his ear, and his eyes seem to bulge. Johan, while speaking into his little plastic box, seems to lose the carefully practiced composure he must constantly force himself to display to Paul and the others. His face seems to grow wider; his shoulders bristle; for a moment, he seems younger, as energetic as Derrick.
Johan mutters, turning his head away as Augustine’s hand rubs along Paul’s arm. “Whoever thought people like you and me could be so important?” She’s smiling up at him.
Johan claps the phone shut and then folds his hands behind his back, looking first to Britt and then casting a single eye over Paul as his face settles back into that of the warm old priest. He stares ahead at a woodcarving. “I knew you would fall in love with each other.”
Something starts skipping erratically in Paul’s chest, but Augustine doesn’
t flinch as she leans against him. Paul feels dizzy, but both Augustine and Johan place their hands to him, keeping him on his feet. The silent gallery curator brings him a glass of wine. Before he can realize what’s happening, everybody tears away from the mask they’re admiring and joins together in a toast to Paul. There are too many smiles, but Paul joins them anyway. The room spins and spins; the masks are really faces and the faces, masks.
Chapter 12: The Alphabet Chart
When Hap asks if the handcuffs can come off, the man who can only be the serial killer the Providence Journal dubbed the “Eye Doctor” shakes his head. “Not without trust and the right angle of force,” the doctor snorts to himself. A bump in the dirt road nearly sends Hap’s head into the dashboard. “No key, anyhow,” the man says, followed by what could be either a chuckle or a moan.
Streetlights become scarce as they drive further into the woods. With the knife removed from his throat, Hap becomes bold enough to ask the man who he is.
“I have a doctorate, you believe the news. Hah.” The Eye Doctor speaks slowly as if English is his second language. The faint glow from the headlights causes his crooked teeth to form shadows that drip into fangs. “Mad Arab,” The Eye Doctor, who may very well be a racist, muses to himself. A streetlight finally beams in the distance, but its glow is severed as the car turns, bumping down another dirt road where only blackness awaits.
Moments ago, they drove through a small, dead town called Scituate that Hap wants to say is familiar, though he can’t quite recall if he ever passed through it with Tiff. Perhaps for a Memorial Day festival? The little post office, church, gas station, and fire station were consumed by small-town charm. Hap almost felt safe till he acknowledged the handcuffs shackling his wrists. The New England stone walls, lining property lines from the 1800s, are the biggest difference between here and the sticks of Pennsylvania. This whole woodsy countryside was once flat farmland.
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