Mr Hands

by Gary A Braunbeck

  He saw something lying at his feet, and carefully reached down for the hand-carved astronaut that the odd little man at the carnival had given him so many, many years ago.

  Something had been carved into the back of the astronaut’s space suit: Sarah says hi.

  Randy looked back up at the magically fossilized remains of Lucy Thompson. “I’m fine now, really, and…and I just…I just wanted to thank you,” he whispered.

  And was freed.

  Later, he began the climb back down.

  It seemed a lot easier, somehow.

  He suspected a lot of things would from now on.

  Epilogue: The Hangman

  3:20 a.m.

  Grant McCullers finished drying off the last of the glasses, slid them into the overhead racks, dried his hands on the towel he’d thrown over his shoulder, and offered his hand to the guy at the bar. “Pleased to make your acquaintance, Randy.”

  “Likewise,” said Randy Patterson, shaking Grant’s hand.

  “Welcome home,” said the Reverend, also shaking Randy’s hand.

  “Thank you.”

  “Hope you’re planning on staying with us for a while,” said Jackson as he shook Randy’s hand.

  Randy shrugged. “I…I don’t know. I don’t really have any family or friends here anymore. I’m not even sure why I came back here, to tell you the truth.”

  “I know why you came back,” said Grant, reaching out and taking the carved figure of Mr. Hands off the bar and placing it on the long shelf of knickknacks. “Where else would he belong, if not here?”

  Randy stared at the figure for a long while, then nodded his head and grinned. “He looks almost at home up there, you know?”

  “You bet he does,” said the Reverend.

  Randy looked at the three faces around him. “Don’t you guys have, like, a thousand questions you want to ask me about this?”

  “Not a one,” said Grant. “We know bullshit when we hear it.”

  Randy nodded. “So…what do I do now?”

  “Well,” said Jackson, “considering that you’ve had a bit of a trip, all things considered, I think maybe you ought to go back to the shelter with the Reverend here and—hey, wait a second. Where’d you get all that money you’re carrying?”

  Randy reached into his pocket and pulled out the wad of fifties that Grant had seen earlier. “This? This is a little over six hundred dollars, and it’s every penny that I’ve managed to save from working odd jobs over the past several years. Reverend, you’re welcome to some of it if you’ll let me sleep over at your place tonight. I’m suddenly so…so tired…”

  Before the Reverend could respond, Grant said, “I won’t hear of it, Randy. Look, I’ve got a spare room upstairs—it’s not much, but it’s pretty homey. We can maybe fix it up for you over the next few weeks. I can offer you room and board plus a hundred bucks a week to help me out here in the bar and kitchen. What do you say?”

  Randy looked at all three of them again. “But you…you hardly know me.”

  “We know you just fine,” said Jackson.

  “And now we’ve got enough for a decent game of Monopoly,” said the Reverend.

  “Plus,” said Grant, picking up the broken guitar neck from the shelf, “if you want to hear one of the stories behind one of these things, well…you’ve got to be a regular. Only regulars get to hear.”

  “And you now have friends,” said the Reverend.

  “Count on it,” said Jackson.

  Grant leaned on the bar and waved the broken guitar neck in front of Randy. “So what do you say, my friend? You got a new home, if you want it—and besides, I’m sure that Linus would get a kick out of seeing you again. I’ll bet he’d like to hear your story.”

  “C’mon,” said Jackson. “We don’t beg well…whatta you say?”

  Randy looked around the bar, then at the three men—his three new friends—and then, finally, at the broken guitar neck. “I guess if I want to hear the story behind that damn thing, I’m staying.”

  And then he looked up at the carved figure of Mr. Hands and, just for a moment, thought he heard Lucy and Ronnie and Sarah and Kylie and all of the others laughing as they said, Well, now we can all be together.

  Welcome home, Randy.

  Be happy.

  “Whoever fights monsters, should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster.”

  —Nietzsche

  And Now, a bonus story:

  Gary A. Braunbeck’s International Horror Guild Award-Winning Novella

  Kiss of the Mudman

  “Music’s exclusive function is to structure the flow of time and keep order in it.”

  —Igor Stravinsky

  “Without music, life would be a mistake.”

  —Friedrich Nietzsche

  1

  Of all the things I have lost in this life, it is music that I miss the most.

  I read once that humankind was never supposed to have had music, that it was stolen by the Fallen Angels from something called The Book of Forbidden Knowledge and given to us before God could do anything about it. This article (I think it was in an old issue of Fate I found lying around the Open Shelter) said this book contained all information about Science, Writing, Music, Poetry and Storytelling, Art, everything like that, and that humanity wasn’t supposed to possess this knowledge because we wouldn’t know what to do with it, that we’d take these things that were supposed to be holy and ruin them.

  I remember thinking, How could God believe we’d ruin music? I mean, c’mon: say you’re having a rotten day, right? It seems like everything in your life is coming apart at the seams and you feel as if you’re going under for the third time...then you hear a favorite song coming from the radio of a passing car, and maybe it’s been twenty years since you even thought about this song, but hearing just those few seconds of it brings the whole thing back, verse, chorus, instrumental passages...and for a frozen instant you’re Back There when you heard it for the first time, and Back There you’re thinking: I am going to remember this song and this moment for the rest of my life because the day will come that I’m going to need this memory, and so you-Back There taps you-Right Here on the shoulder and says, “I can name that tune in four notes, how about you?”

  You can not only name it in three, but can replay it in your mind from beginning to end, not missing a single chord change, and—voila!—your rotten day is instantly sweetened because of that tune. How could any self-respecting Divine Being say that we might ruin music when a simple song has that kind of power? I’ll bet many a sad soul has been cheered by listening to Gordon Lightfoot’s “Old Dan’s Records,” or broken hearts soothed by some goofy songs like Reunion’s “Life Is A Rock (But the Radio Rolled Me)”; how many people in the grips of loneliness or depression have been pulled back from the edge of suicide by a song like “Drift Away,” “I’m Your Captain,” “(Get Your Kicks On) Route 66,” or even something as lame as “Billy Don’t Be A Hero”? You can’t really say for certain, but you can’t discount the thought, either, because you know that music has that kind of power. It’s worked on me, on you, on everyone.

  (It never occurred to me before, Byron Knight—yes, the Byron Knight—said to me the evening it happened, how frighteningly easy it is to re-shape a single note or scale into its own ghost. For example, E-major, C, G, to D will all fit in one scale—the Aeolian minor, or natural minor of a G-major scale. Now, if you add an A-major chord, all you have to do is change the C natural of your scale to a C-sharp for the time you're on the A-major. Music is phrases and feeling, so learning the scales doesn't get you “Limehouse Blues” any more than buying tubes of oil paints gets you a “Starry Night,” but you have to respect the craft enough to realize, no matter how good you are, you’ll never master it. Music will always have the final word.)

  Of all the things I have lost in this life, it is music that I miss the most.

  I can’t listen to it now, and it’s not just because I’m deaf in my le
ft ear; I can’t listen to music anymore because I have been made aware of the sequence of notes that, if heard, recognized, and acknowledged, will bring something terrible into the world.

  (The progression seemed so logical; leave the G string alone—tuned to G, of course—so the high and low E strings go down a half step to E flat. The B string goes down a half step to B flat, the A and D go up a half step, to B flat and E flat. The result was an open E flat major chord, which made easy work of the central riff. For the intro, I started on the 12th fret, pressing the 1st and 3rd strings down, dropped down to the 7th and 8th fret on those same strings for the next chord, and continued down the neck...as the progression moved to the 4th string, more and more notes were left out and it became a disguised version of a typical blues riff. The idea was to have a rush of notes to sort of clear the palette, not open the back door to Hell...but that’s a road paved with good intentions, isn’t it?)

  Some days I’m tempted to grab an ice-pick or a coat hanger or even a fine-point pen and puncture my good eardrum; total deafness would be a blessing because then I wouldn’t have to worry about hearing that melody...but the tune would still be out there, and I’m not sure anyone else would recognize it, so who’d warn people if

  (...B string goes down a half step to B flat, the A and D go up a half step, to B flat and E flat...)

  the Mudman hears his special song and shambles in to sing along?

  2

  The Reverend and I were out on our second Popsicle Patrol of the night when Jim Morrison climbed into our van.

  That Friday evening was one of the crappiest nights in recent memory. It was November, and it was cold, and it was raining—the kind of rain that creates a gray night chiseled from gray stone, shadowed by gray mist, filled with gray people and their gray dreams; a dismal night following a string of dateless, nameless, empty dismal days. The forecast had called for snow, but instead we got rain. At least snow would have been a fresh coat of paint, something to cover the candy wrappers, empty cigarette packs, broken liquor bottles, losing lottery tickets, beer cans, and used condoms that decorated the sidewalks of the neighborhood; a whitewash to hide the ugliness and despair of the tainted world underneath.

  Can you tell I was not in the best of moods? But then, I don’t think anyone was feeling particularly chipper that night, despite the soft and cheerful classical music coming through the speakers, one in each of the four corners of the main floor. (I think it was something by Aaron Copland because listening to it made me feel like I was standing in the middle of a wheat field on a sunny day, and that only made me feel depressed.) The shelter was about a third full—there were twenty-five, maybe thirty people, not counting the staff—and the evening had already seen its first “episode”: a young guy named Joe (I didn’t know his last name, people who come here rarely have them) had kind of flipped out earlier and took off into the dreary night, upsetting everyone who’d been eating at the table with him. The Reverend (the man who runs this shelter) spent a little while getting everyone settled down, then sent one of the regulars, Martha, out to find Mr. Joe Something-or-Other. Neither one of them had come back yet, and I suspected the Reverend was getting worried.

  The Cedar Hill Open Shelter is located just the other side of the East Main Street Bridge, in an area known locally as “Coffin County.” It’s called that because there used to be a casket factory in the area that burned down in the late sixties and took a good portion of the surrounding businesses with it, and ever since then the whole area has gone down the tubes. Most of the serious crime you read about in The Ally happens in Coffin County. It’s not pretty, it’s not popular, and it’s definitely not safe, especially if you’re homeless.

  As hard as it may be to believe, there’s not all that many homeless people in Cedar Hill. If pressed to come up with a number, the Reverend would probably tell you that our good town has about fifty homeless folks (give or take; not bad for a community of fifty-odd thousand), most of whom you’ll find here on any given night, which explains how he knows all of them by name.

  The shelter is in the remains of what used to be a hotel that was hastily and badly reconstructed after the fire; the lobby and basement were left practically unscathed, but the upper floors were a complete loss, so down they came, and up went a makeshift roof (mostly plywood, corrugated tin, and sealant) that on nights like this amplified the sound of the rain until you thought every pebble in the known universe was dropping down on it; luckily, the lobby’s high ceiling and insulation had remained intact after the fire, so that—combined with the soft classical music the Reverend always has playing—turned what might have been a deafening noise into only an annoying one. When it became evident that “Olde Town East” (as Coffin County used to be called) was not going to recover from the disaster, the city decided its efforts at a face-lift were better employed elsewhere. As a result of the Reverend’s good timing in getting the city to donate this building, the Cedar Hill Open Shelter was the only one in the state (maybe even the whole country) to have Italian marble tile on its floors and a ballroom ceiling with a chandelier hanging from it. Makes for some interesting expressions on people’s faces when they come through that door for the first time.

  The shelter has one hundred beds on the main floor, with thirty more in the basement adjacent to the men’s and women’s showers and locker rooms. (Aside from storage, the basement was used by the hotel’s employees, many of whom worked two jobs and came to work at the hotel after finishing their shifts at one of the steel mills or canneries—those too now long gone.) A third of the main floor is covered with folding tables and chairs—the dining area—and the Reverend’s office, which is a pretty decent size and doubles as his bedroom, is past the swinging doors on the right; go straight through the kitchen, turn left, you’re there.

  During the holidays you’ll see more unfamiliar faces and crowded conditions because of transients on their way to Zanesville or Dayton or Columbus, bigger places where there might be actual jobs or more sympathetic welfare workers. The shelter turns no one away, but you’d damned well better behave yourself while you’re here—the Reverend might look harmless enough at first, but when you get close to him it’s easy to see that this is a guy who, if he didn’t actually invent the whup-ass can opener, can handily produce one at a moment’s notice. (Opinions are divided as to who the Reverend more resembles: Jesus Christ, Rasputin, or Charles Manson. Trust me when I tell you that he can be very scary when he wants to.)

  Almost no one does anything to piss off the Reverend. The business earlier that night with Joe was a rarity—even those folks who come in here so upset you think they’ll crumble to pieces right in front of you and take anyone in the vicinity with them know that you don’t ruin things for the rest of the guests. That’s what the Reverend calls everyone, “guests,” and treats them with all the courtesy and respect you’d expect from someone who uses that word. Still, the business with Joe was enough to set everyone’s nerves on edge a bit. It wasn’t even ten-thirty yet, so the regular guests who weren’t already here would be wandering in by midnight. Of the two dozen or so guests who were here, I only recognized a few.

  We had four new faces tonight, a young mother (who couldn’t have been older than twenty-three), her two children (a boy, five or six; a girl, three years old tops), and their dog (a sad-ass Beagle with an even sadder face who was so still and quiet I almost forget he was there a few times until I nearly tripped over him). It breaks my heart to see a mother and her kids in a place like this. The Thanksgiving/Christmas period’s always the worst, and the most depressing. At least for me.

  “That’s about all the excitement I can stand for one night,” said Ethel, the old black woman who mans the front door. She’s a volunteer from one of the churches—St. Francis—and sits here every weeknight from seven p.m. until eleven, greeting folks as they come in, handing out all manner of pamphlets, answering questions, and you-bet’cha happy to take any donations; she’s got a shiny tin can at the edge of he
r folding card table marked in black letters for just such a purpose.

  I smiled at her as I cleared away some more of the empty plastic plates left on the various tables. “But you gotta admit, there aren’t many places like this that offer a free floor show with dinner.”

  “Mind your humor there; it’s not very Christian to make light of others’ woes.”

  “Then how come you grinned when I said that?”

  “That was not a grin. I…had me some gas.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.” She winked at me, then looked out at the guests. “I don’t mind doin’ the Lord’s work, not at all, and Heaven knows these poor people need all the help they can get, but I swear, sometimes...” She squinted her eyes at nothing, trying to find the right way to express what she was thinking without sounding uncharitable.

  “Sometimes,” I said. Then winked back at her. “We can leave it at that and it’ll be our little secret.”

  She laughed as she dumped the contents of the DONATIONS can onto the table and began counting up the coins. “Oh, bless me, will wonders never cease? It looks like we might’ve took in a small fortune tonight. Why there must be all of—” She counted out a row of dimes, then a few nickels and pennies. “—three dollars and sixteen cents here! Might put us in a higher tax bracket.”

  “I’m sorry it isn’t more,” I said, digging into my pocket and coming up with thirty-three cents, which I promptly handed over. If you’ve got spare change, it goes into Ethel’s til or. She. Will. Get. You.