At length the Sphinx became what it must have been to its conscripted builders and wretched supplicants of old. A monster. A dire and unaccountable thing, rampant upon the earth.
The more he tried not to look, the more Walter became convinced that the man loitering in the hall beneath the yellowed tympanum of the Resurrection was looking at him.
True, the light was bad, at least for a reading room. The green lamps in their vine-shaped Art Nouveau sconces hummed and flickered on a pinched current, and the high cupola windows admitted only a wan, leaden daylight. It was also true that Walter was prone to misread visual cues. Just the other day he’d been parking his car in the dim catacombs under the Woolworth Building and had mistaken—if only for an instant—a standard poodle in the neighboring Cadillac for an old woman grinning fox-fangs at him. It had given him a serious jolt (not just that such a thing could be, that that it could be out driving around). Other people in the same situation might have laughed, but Walter didn’t. His history, in conjunction with certain recent developments, made laughter quite out of the question.
In any case, he was being watched. The gaunt, elderly gentleman wore a herringbone vest, and had an overcoat draped about his shoulders like a cape, and was definitely watching him. He held a tabloid newspaper in his lap, but his eyes kept creeping up from the page, and with a sly angling of the head their gaze consistently tacked to Walter. There was something intense, something unhealthy about that gaze. Walter wasn’t sure, but he thought the faint, brittle clicks he heard from all the way across the room were the man’s teeth grinding.
Walter looked the other way and saw with some relief that Maureen had returned. He got up and walked over to the help-desk. She was a comely young woman, with a glass eye, a stylish bob, and a wry manner. She looked up and smiled. “Mr. Church?”
“Maureen. How’d we do with that list?”
She placed a stack of books in paper sleeves on the counter in front of him, an index card with a list of titles taped to the top. “All but one,” she intoned gravely. “That one’s checked out, and—” her library voice dropped even lower— “and between you and me, Mr. Church, I hear the Department of Homeland Security is after it. Section 215 of the Patriot Act. Don’t worry, I kept your name off the query list.”
He adjusted his glasses and scanned the card, tapping pensively with his index finger.
“Of course they don’t tell us why they want it. There’s a rumor—” her voice cut to a whisper— “that OBL had a copy on him when they, you know …” She made a subtle shooting gesture, and rolled her good eye. The glass one stared straight ahead. “They’re worried about codes. Mad Arabs bombing the subways—”
“I say, Maureen …”
“Hmn?”
“Do you see the man sitting in the hall back there, your eleven-thirty, on the bench?”
She craned her neck. “Yes?”
“Do you suppose he’s … all right?”
She looked again. “Has he been there for long?”
“Well, he seems to be—”
“Oh, there he goes.”
Walter looked. The man was walking down the hall, tapping about him with a long cane and drawing glances from a group of uniformed grade-schoolers coming the other way.
“My God,” said Maureen. “Have you seen this?”
“Hmn?” He looked down at the newspaper she’d turned around for his inspection. The headline read “Five Arrested in Plot to Dynamite Ancient Treasure,” and surmounted an image, familiar by now, of a dark silhouette against the Manhattan skyline.
At Battery Park, three months and seventeen days ago, Walter had been standing with a crowd of several thousand, pressed against the rail with a front-row view of the harbor. He’d seen it emerge from the dense fog that lay on the water, immense and impassive, blackened by the sea, gliding along on its iron bed beneath screaming throngs of birds. A gasp went through the crowd and a few starkly isolated shouts rang out as the great beast of Giza came fully into view. Six thousand miles it had traveled, dreaming upon the illimitable deep. Walter had the unnerving impression that it was looking right at him.
The harbor masters were ready and had sent tugs to guide its passage, but their exertions did little to persuade two hundred tons of limestone-freighted inertia. Of its own volition, it headed toward the mouth of the Hudson and finally came to rest about a thousand yards off Governor’s island. From Walter’s vantage, it skulked about the fog-dimmed skirts of Lady Liberty like some bastard offspring, come to ransom its legacy. A helicopter circled above it. Water began to feel dizzy. He turned and shouldered his way through the crowd.
As days went by he found himself increasingly taken with the strange, brute charisma of the thing. In this he was not alone. Almost immediately, “tourists” started coming by the boatload, boarding the iron platform with ladders, ropes, ramps, whatever they could use. Some of these immediately stripped naked and crawled fawningly over its outstretched paws, or kissed the stone, or feigned to suckle at its flanks, encouraging others to take pictures. Others tagged it with spray-paint, or chiseled souvenir fragments to keep or to sell. Still others tried to scale the limestone shelves, carious and slick with sea-grime as they were. Many fell and shattered their bones, or banged off the lip of a barge and were drowned. This toll continued until one morning at dawn, when a squadron of harbor police took the platform and beat the pilgrims back into their boats. From then on a regular guard of men in riot gear stood ready to discourage further encroachment. A semblance of normalcy returned. Walter’s approach was rather the opposite of the enthusiasts’. It was distance, not closeness, that he sought. The distance to comprehend the breadth circumstances, the space to discover the truth. That, he believed, had always been humanity’s best response to plague, to calamity, to war and genocide. It still was. The best way to shake the irrational feeling that he, Walter Church, at fifty-two, was living in somebody’s nightmare.
Joey Church dangled his legs over the stage in the Rockaway High auditorium. Long, curly hair veiled his face. He was 16 and good-looking, with a leading role in the school play—a play ostensibly written by Joey Church. He had his grades locked up for the semester, and visions of being the next Edward Norton or Robert Downey. He didn’t give a fishtailed fuck about some 5,000 year-old piece of crap rotting in the harbor. Joey Church was the real deal, the Sphinx of Rockaway High!
“Okay, people bring it in.” Ms. Ortega rapped her clipboard and settled in a swirl of skirts and perfume on the stage next to Joey, a little close for his liking. He’d considered her hot at one point—like, really hot—but recently her bohemian style and gypsy camp manners had struck him more like sloppy affectation. A lot of things were disappointing him lately, though he mostly kept these sour impressions to himself. Apart from his sister and maybe Fox Creasy, there was no one he felt like confiding in.
“We open exactly one week from tonight,” said Ms. Ortega, “and some of you still don’t have your lines down. That makes my brain bleed and hallucinate little green gnomes eating you alive, but I know it’s no use calling you out here. You know who you are, you know what to do.” A few guilty groans and murmurs answered her. “Get it done!”
“Mea culpa, Ms. O, mea culpa!” wailed Clay Widerski, swooning dramatically. Fox jiggled his wrist over Clay, and Joey screwed up his lips to keep from grinning.
“Now, a few of you have asked to have your lines cut down. Normally I’d just give you a straight answer, like no, or hell no, but since the playwright is sitting right here on his gifted little tuchus …” She jabbed a painted nail at Joey. There were some appreciative chuckles and a knowing smirk from his sister. “I guess he’s your daddy. Mr. Church, you have those chops under review?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“I need your ruling by tomorrow. Please be kind to your fellow thespians, some of those lines are pretty ornate. But keep the Book of the Dead stuff. I’ll murder you if you chuck that. ’Kay. Questions? No? Get out. Go home and practice.�
��
Joey was popular with the drama kids, but not in general. The only time he liked attention was when he was on stage. If he’d known his father’s batshit script would actually win the contest and become the school’s fall production, he might have turned in his own work instead, the one about the Garden of Eden reality show. Now here he was, playing the Sphinx in some kind of baroque, schizoid cross between Oedipus and the Wizard of Oz. Which was cool. Sort of. Better than clomping around in cowboy boots singing about corn, or watching Clay Widerski’s Puck OD on fairy dust. On the other hand, some of the dreams he’d been having made him feel like a stranger to himself. They weren’t just the usual ‘fuck, what’s my line?’ dreams, but not exactly screaming nightmares either. More like really dark, immoral fantasies. His backpack was in the first or second row of seats, he was sure—but now he didn’t see it. He walked along, scanning the rows, and jumped when Fox Creasy slapped him on the back.
“Hey! Whoa, you okay?”
“Fine, why?”
“You look a little … I don’t know … Still in character.”
“Na.” He smiled. “I’m all right. What’s up, we rollin’?”
“Yeah, well … Me and Allie was gonna catch a cab over to Forest Park, check out those sculptures she’s been on about.”
“Naw yo, I can’t. Promised moms I’d pick up the dry cleaning. They close in two hours.”
“Oh right. Then …”
There was a pregnant pause, and Joey realized he’d declined a non-invitation.
“Ay, Joey, son, you know me an’ Allie been spendin’ time an’ shit. I hope that’s okay wit’ you, cuz, you know I’d never disrespect her or nothin’ right?”
“Naw, naw it’s cool yo, just be good, y’know, don’t get lost out there.”
“Naw, f’sure, we’ll be careful. I’ll have her home by ten.”
“Ten?”
Fox frowned. “What … like eight?”
Joey held the glare for a good three seconds before Fox saw a crack and they both broke into laughs. “Shit, son.”
“Fuck outa here, man.”
They slapped hands and Fox retreated quickly down the aisle. Allison was waiting at the door, and blew Joey a kiss. Then they were gone, and Joey stood in the empty auditorium. He looked to his left. As if by magic his backpack was there, second seat in, practically under his nose. He shook his head as he shouldered it. Fox and Allie, huh. He figured he ought to be happy—who did he trust more than Fox? Just felt kind of weird.
He was almost to the door when something made him look back. The auditorium was empty—looked empty, felt empty. But something had just rippled the curtains. He felt like he had dreamed this moment, like he was dreaming it.
He shrugged off the shiver that ran down his neck, re-slung his bag and banged through the door. Fuck it!
Walter’s fellowship had dried up almost six weeks ago. The university had lost interest when his work took a turn into what they politely referred to as “more speculative territory.” Now from his tiny garret in Upper Manhattan, he worked on borrowed time and borrowed money, with all the English tenacity his father had bequeathed him. He wanted to see the thing through and make his mark. At fifty-two it felt like a losing prospect. Still, if you can fill the unforgiving minute …
It was Friday, his day of rest, his day to stop off at The Cloisters to tarry amongst the herb gardens and translated monasteries of his beloved Europe, his intellectual Eden. Usually he meditated on the Unicorn Tapestries, those marvelous minglings of pagan and Christian heritage. Today he found himself in a different gallery contemplating an illumination, The Procession of the Flagellants from the Duke of Berry’s Belles Heures. The men in this delicate rendering wore wide-brimmed, black hats and white gowns that clung precariously to their hips. They walked in stately ranks, two abreast. Two in the foreground were on hands and knees, receiving lashes from two others in masks of white cloth.
Walter marveled, first at the hand that could do this, second at the rather blatant homo-eroticism—one of the men was whipping himself with one hand and caressing himself the other—and finally that an act of self-debasement should be rendered with such superlative grace. He felt a kinship with these men, who in their time, in their peculiar folly, had also believed their efforts were holding up the heavens, holding back the darkness.
Of course the real scene must have been somewhat less picturesque: naked fanatics beating themselves bloody in the street. More like Goya had painted it. His eyes drifted up to the anguilliform dragon, either swimming in the barred abstract of sky or else impaled on one of the cross standards. The latter would imply a horrible blasphemy, would it not? The fiend crucified in place of Christ?
Walter felt ill. The room turned about him, and the venerable air of the place grew musty and close, like a tomb. The next thing he knew he was out in the corridor, vomiting against the wall. People murmured, and a guard’s radio crackled. Shamefaced and retching, Walter went for the first exit he saw, and staggered out onto a stone landing overlooking a river. The river, once called the Hudson, was now called something else—some terrible name he couldn’t remember, couldn’t pronounce. “Oh God!” he groaned, mopping his sweaty face. He wished that he could vomit it all, get it out of him, this muck of accumulated knowledge, this tired, unclean store.
He looked again. There was no sanctuary. The sky was a leprous purple and red. Every saturated cloud was an evil, floating brain. The river was a lamentable afterbirth. It drained away in the shadow of the Jersey Palisades, which Walter understood to now be serving as execution grounds.
“Yo, your pops is a fuckin’ genius, yo.”
It was a cold, blustery afternoon and Canarsie Pier was almost deserted, just the way they liked it. The three of them had taken over a bench, looking out over the water and passing a bottle of citrus Mad Dog. The sauce was just a tune-up for the real road show, due to start any minute now. In an hour they wouldn’t even remember they’d drunk it.
“Fuckin’ genius,” Fox repeated, leafing through the pages of the script. “Kinda fucked up, though. Like that part where the Sphinx marries Ed to his mother, and his father comes back from the dead. That’s pretty fuckin’ seven-thirty, yo, but I like it. Like Shakespeare on shrooms, yo!”
“Yeah, whatever,” muttered Joey. “You didn’t have to live with him.”
“What’s he like?” asked Allie. “You never talk about him.”
Allison was Joey’s stepsister. Her own father was a jolly Puerto Rican stevedore who lived in the Bayview Projects, just ten minutes walk away. Dark skin and crystal-blue eyes made her a fetching study in contrasts, no less so than her Catholic faith and penchant for boys and drugs. Joey was not especially tough, but he’d decided at a young age that he was willing to go to prison for her sake. Most guys understood this and acted accordingly.
“Jo-ey,” she said. “Jo-jo. You at home, bro? Those caps kickin’ in?”
He looked at her. “Huh?”
“I asked you what your old man is like.”
“Oh … Professicus? Maximum Over-choad? I don’t know, imagine growing up in the London Natural History Museum.” He tipped bottle, took a swig. “With weekends at the circus.”
“Fuckin’ shrooms taste like garbage,” muttered Fox, picking at his teeth. “Give me some skeezies, yo.”
Joey took the bag of Skittles, placed one in his open hand. “One.” He placed another. “Two.” He reached into the bag and placed a third— “Three” —then hit Fox’s hand from below and sent the candy flying. “Fuck outa here.”
“Oh you fuckin’ gloryhole cunt-mugger …” Fox’s punches hooked into Joey’s back and shoulder as he laughed.
“Here, bitch, take ’em.” He shoved the candy into Fox’s hands and winged a hook of his own.
“Okay-okay,” said Allie, “the English history part I get, I mean I know that part. Tell us about the circus.”
Joey sighed, looking up the shoreline. The wind rifled the cordgrass and made the
salt flats shimmer with fanning textures of light. The marshes were dying here, little more every year. No one knew why. For some reason he thought of that thing floating in the adjacent harbor, like a big rotting tooth. That thing he didn’t give a fuck about. That one. Was that what his father’s loopy play was about? Some kind of whack-job fuckin’ allegory? He hoped it was something like that, and not …
“The circus,” he said after a long silence, “was him going through my mint-condition Alien vs. Predator comics with a red fuckin’ sharpie, saying he’s finally figured it out, the reason for the Holocaust.” He looked over and met their blank stares. “That’s right. The Holocaust. The one in Europe. You probably thought it was Hitler’s fault, huh?” He shook his head. “Batman and fuckin’ Predator.”
Fox burst out laughing. Allie looked sad.
“He’s nuts,” continued Joey. “He spent a whole year in a loony bin. That’s why Moms got custody. Oh, and he cheated on her with his research assistant. Brian.”
“Fuck!” shouted Fox, belting it over the water like a war cry, and Allie gave in to a sad mirth as she stroked her stepbrother’s back.
“Goddamn, I’m feelin’ it,” said Fox. “Yous feelin’ it?”
“Mmn.”
“Lil’ bit.”
“Come on, let’s run through it.” He leapt up, brandishing the script. “You’re the Sphinx. Daddy’s takin’ a dirt nap. Momma, wassup wit’ dat ass?” He pulled Allie off the bench and she laughed, slapping his hands away. “Sphinx, your line.”
“Naw, you two go ahead,” said Joey. “I’m gonna sit for a minute.”
Fox shrugged and followed Allie over to the rail. The sun was going down in a red bath to the west, and the bay made a rippling, blood-purple backdrop to their rehearsal. The mushrooms were indeed kicking in. His body felt like a thing apart, a suit of crawling, alien armor, a busy android housing his brain. The edges of his vision unraveled and re-knit with seamless fluidity, and Fox had Allie in his arms and Joey knew it was just the scene playing out, but …
Year's Best Hardcore Horror Volume 2 Page 33