One hand reached out, tried to hand me a quill. It had been yanked from his mouth and both ends had blue ink dripping from them.
I did not accept the offering. For one thing, I was afraid that at the moment I reached out to take it, another hand would grab me and strangle me and tear me apart. For another, it just seemed too gross, too gruesome. That thick blue liquid was both ink and blood, and the blood part made me queasy.
I’d beaten the Ultimate at his own game, but it had been too easy to do. It occurred to me that maybe this had been the plan all along. Maybe I’d been groomed for exactly this purpose, to take over as the head Letter Writer. Maybe everything that had happened to me had been designed to shape me, mold me, make me into a leader. Maybe the Ultimate had been dying anyway, near the end of his run, and he’d picked me out as his successor.
I glanced over at the collapsed wall and the letter library. Aside from writing them, there was nothing I enjoyed more than reading letters. If I was to be honest with myself, I had to admit that I could spend days in there perusing correspondence at random, not just looking at the letters written to and by myself and my friends and family, but dropping in on people I didn’t know, reading up on their lives and loves, their hopes, dreams and disappointments.
That library was a repository of every letter that had ever been written by anyone anywhere.
And it was all at my disposal.
It could be mine.
He wanted me to take over. Was it what I wanted? I didn’t think so, but when I considered the fact that I could become the new Ultimate Letter Writer, a kinder, gentler version, that I could reshape our role in the world, make sure that we used our power for good, I was tempted.
More than tempted.
Maybe this was meant to be.
Who was I kidding? Use our power for good? That was where it would start, but that was not where it would stop. The road to hell, as they said, was paved with good intentions, and I knew better than anyone the seductive power of letter writing, the slippery slope to which that led.
I looked over at the library. It would be better to light a match and burn the whole thing, torch the fucking place so it could never be accessed by anyone.
Only I couldn’t do that, either. Too much history was here. There was a lot of worthless shit, yes, and a lot of dangerous ideas, but these were historical documents, letters going back to the dawn of civilization, and I couldn’t just destroy that.
I could seal it, though.
By writing a letter.
What kind? A cease-and-desist letter? A letter of reprimand? A letter of marque?
I turned my gaze toward the Ultimate. He was gone. In the last few seconds, while I’d been looking at the library, the life had left his body and now he was dead. At least I thought he was. I moved next to him, took from his hand the quill he had offered me.
He moved. His big eye blinked, rolled insanely; then one of his hands reached out and took hold of mine, squeezing tight. Even half dead, he had a grip like iron, and as I struggled to get away, his head flopped forward and that gigantic grinning mouth closed around my arm, shoulder and upper back. What felt like a thousand needles stabbed me as he bit down, quill teeth sinking into my flesh. I wanted to scream, but I couldn’t… and then I didn’t need to anymore. A current of power passed from him to me, transferred by those quills.
His hand let go of mine, his head flopped back, both eyes closed, and his body slumped, sliding off the throne. This time he really was dead. I looked over at my arm and shoulder but could see no sign of the bite, nothing but smooth ordinary flesh.
I could feel the power in my right side, though, an electric tingling.
I stood tall, holding the quill that he had given me in my hand.
The bureaucrats had finally moved. Row after row of them sank to their knees, bowing before me in a display of choreographed fealty that reminded me of nothing so much as the Nuremberg rally. The power coursed through me, no longer just on my right side but on my left, as well, settling comfortably throughout my body and giving me a confidence and feeling of well-being that was unlike anything I had ever experienced.
I was still holding the quill, the bureaucrats bowed low before me.
This was the test. I had the power to do whatever I wanted. It was all up to me.
I hesitated.
I could do a lot of good.
No!
Power corrupts, I told myself, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
I paused, looking around, then found a piece of paper that had not been soaked with ink, and used the quill to write a letter. To Whom It May Concern, I wrote.
I have sealed the letter library. It cannot be entered or accessed and none of its contents may be viewed by anyone. All Letter Writers are now free to do as they wish and are no longer employed by the company, which has been dissolved. They may return to their previous lives. I wish them well.
I signed it with my name.
I had no idea what would happen. Many of the Letter Writers I’d met had been from other places, other times. Would they resume their lives precisely where and when they’d left off, or would people from the past suddenly find themselves in contemporary New York or Chicago or Los Angeles? I didn’t know, but it was not up to me and was no longer any of my concern. This was it. I was done; I was finished. I would never write another letter as long as I lived. My letter-writing days were over for good. I threw down the quill and…
The world wavered.
The bureaucrats were gone as suddenly as they’d appeared, the scores of men bowing before me no longer visible. From somewhere far off, I thought I heard screams, and I told myself they were screams of joy, though I was not quite sure that that was the case. They were the screams of Letter Writers who had been released from bondage, I tried to convince myself, who were now free to return to their normal lives in the real world and use their skills to attract lovers and complain about entertainment and do whatever they damn well pleased.
Maybe they were the screams of those bureaucrats being consigned to whatever hell they had originally come from.
That was acceptable, too.
The hole in the wall and the library beyond disappeared. The throne with the crumpled monster body at its foot faded away. The ink-soaked newsprint hardened into floor and metamorphosed into carpet.
I was back in Edson’s rental house.
On the counter in the kitchen, the cell phone was ringing, and I picked it up, no longer afraid of what might be on the other end, no longer hiding from anyone or anything. It was Edson, and he expressed relief at being able to find me, told me how worried he’d been. Reading between the lines, I realized he seemed to have been worried not for my safety or his but for my sanity. I asked if there’d been anything in the newspapers or on TV about my mom’s murder, and he said no. He gently hinted that I might have been mistaken about that, that there might be some alternate explanation. I didn’t tell him about the blood-soaked floor and walls, but let him think that he might be right, that I might have just misinterpreted something. I’d contact the police later, find out what had really happened.
I talked to Edson for quite a while, and it calmed me down, helped me readjust, made me realize on a real, tangible level that it was all over. I was reminded of our teenage selves, who used to chat on the phone trashing teachers we hated and talking about girls we were interested in. It felt good to be in contact with other people again, and for the first time in memory, I felt free, free from unseen pursuers, free even from the nagging belief that I needed to be writing, that I was not doing what I was supposed to be doing if I was not penning letters.
After hanging up, I opened the front door and checked the mailbox.
Habit.
There was no letter inside, but there was a small box on the ground directly beneath it, addressed to me from Patrick Scholder, the private investigator I’d hired to find Vicki and Eric. I took the box into the house and opened it up. Within was a report and a videocassette. In a cover le
tter, Scholder stated that he was mailing me his findings since after numerous tries, he’d been unable to reach me on the phone.
I wanted to watch the videotape, but I restrained myself and read the report first. According to Scholder, Vicki was living in Brea again, working at her old job. She was not seeing anyone, was not dating and spent the time when she was not at work taking care of Eric, who now went to a Montessori school because they offered afternoon day care.
Taking a deep breath, I picked up the videocassette. My hands were shaking as I took it over to the VCR and slid it in. I turned on the television, pressed play.
It was a videotape of the two of them. They were at a park, and Vicki was sitting on a bench, watching Eric as he played with another little boy. She was wearing clothes I didn’t recognize—shorts and a simple sleeveless top—and she looked absolutely beautiful to me. Her hair was longer than I remembered, and she’d done something to make it wavier. The result was stunning.
Eric had grown nearly a foot, and his face was thinner. He was still a little boy, but I could see in his features the teenager he would become, and I hated myself for missing over a year and a half of his life. It wasn’t my fault, at least not directly, but I was angry at myself for being who I was, for being what I was, for not being strong enough to fight my addiction.
At least that was all over now.
Eric ran up to Vicki, gave her a hug, said something in her ear that made her laugh.
I started crying. The tears felt good in a way, but they were horrible, too, and rather than try and stifle them, I let them come, let my feelings have their way with me. I was not used to experiencing emotion so straight and unfettered. Hope had been in such short supply for me that I’d grown accustomed to tamping down any feeling that would make me think about what I’d had and lost, what I’d probably never find again. But now I sobbed like a baby, and my heart ached with the love I felt for both of them. Time had passed, a lot had happened, and my mind minimized the messiness surrounding our breakup. I wondered if hers would do the same or if the negative emotions she felt for me had been strengthened and amplified over the past year and a half. From her point of view, I was a deadbeat dad, and she’d no doubt received anonymous letters confirming that fact.
My eyes hurt, my jaw ached, but finally I cried myself out, and exhausted, I lay down on the couch and slept.
Hours later, I awoke. I sat up groggily, went into the kitchen to get myself a drink of water, went into the bathroom to take a piss, then with blurred eyes reread the report until I found Vicki’s new phone number.
I picked up the cell phone. Dialed.
“Hello?” Vicki answered.
I recognized her voice immediately, though I hadn’t heard it for a long, long time. That cadence and timbre had been seared into my memory, and I would be able to recognize her speech even if I were stricken with Alzheimer’s. A flood of memories accompanied that one word, all of them good, and once again the tears threatened to return.
“Hello?” she said again.
I switched off the phone.
I couldn’t do it. After all this time, I was afraid to speak to her, didn’t know what to say to her.
I stared at the small phone in my hand. Maybe I should work out ahead of time what I wanted to say, practice it. Even better, maybe she had an answering machine. I could keep calling until she wasn’t there, until the machine answered, and then I could leave a message. She could call me back after that, which would make it a hell of a lot easier.
No. This was too important to be left to the vagaries of phone tag. It was too easy to avoid people that way, too easy to opt out of that sort of indirect attempt at personal connection. Besides, speaking was not my strong suit. And after all this time, after all the lies they’d probably been told, I needed Vicki and Eric to hear my words straight, uncensored, unfiltered, from the heart. If I was ever going to win them back, I needed to make my case in the strongest way possible. I needed to be at my absolute best.
I thought for a moment, then went into the kitchen and sat down.
There was only a moment’s hesitation. Then my lefthand was holding down the side of the paper and my right hand was holding the pen.
I took a deep breath.
Dear Vicki, I began…
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Born in Arizona shortly after his mother attended the world premiere of Psycho, Bentley Little is the Bram Stoker Award–winning author of fifteen previous novels and The Collection, a book of short stories. He has worked as a technical writer, reporter/photographer, library assistant, sales clerk, phonebook deliveryman, video arcade attendant, newspaper deliveryman, furniture mover, and rodeo gatekeeper. The son of a Russian artist and an American educator, he and his Chinese wife were married by the justice of the peace in Tombstone, Arizona.
DISPATCH Page 35