The Last Coin

by James P. Blaylock

  Andrew forced himself to drive slowly, bumping over ruts. “What the hell’s he doing?”

  “I think … Yeah. He’s found it. The turtle. We should have taken the damned belt! Why the hell didn’t we take the belt? He’s onto us. He tossed his shovel away. Here he comes. Step on it.”

  Andrew stepped on it, shifting back down into second and swerving toward the edge of the road where it was smoother going.

  “Don’t get stuck in the field!” warned Pickett, as they slewed into a rut.

  “You know me,” said Andrew, grinning at him and jerking the car back out, “The Terror of Leisure World.”

  The Metropolitan slammed along like a camel over the desert. The lights of the highway shone ahead, a couple of lonesome cars full of people thinking they had somewhere important to go. The moon was enormous and yellow, as if it reflected the fires that burned in the north and west. Signal Hill was almost entirely ablaze, a leaping ribbon of wind-driven flame. Dust swirled and flew as gusts buffeted the car.

  “What a night,” muttered Pickett.

  “Just about what you’d expect,” said Andrew. “Are they after us?”

  “No. Yes. There’s his headlights.”

  The Metropolitan banged down onto the highway, screeching left on Studebaker Road. “It’s too open out here,” said Andrew. “There’s no place to hide, nowhere to lose him.”

  “Just go like hell. I’ll watch for cops.”

  Andrew drove toward home. If it came to a fight, he wanted it to be on familiar ground, near allies—Rose and Aunt Naomi. And somehow the beach drew him, the pier, the crashing waves. He was jacked up with adrenaline. He felt sharp and canny. Things along the roadside seemed almost to glow. He could hear the ocean, too, as if in a giant seashell, rushing and sighing, the sound of the collapsing ages.

  They rocketed down the highway, angling back onto the Pacific Coast Highway toward the San Gabriel River. “Look!” Andrew shouted.

  “What, what?” Pickett’s head ratcheted around, staring, expecting Lord knew what.

  It was a pig that Andrew saw. A monumental pig, big as a pygmy hippopotamus, coming up out of the bed of the river and bound for Orange County. It rollicked along on its too-tiny hooves, its eyes set on an unseen destination, glancing for an instant at the Metropolitan as they sailed past. Andrew slowed down, both of them craning their necks, and for no reason he could easily define, Andrew waved over the top of the car at it and then blinked his headlights. They banked around into town, past residential streets.

  “He’s going our way!” shouted Andrew, elated but not knowing why.

  “Yeah,” said Pickett. “That’s a good sign. I can’t see Pennyman. We lost him, I guess. We got out of there in time.”

  They slid around the corner onto Main Street, then down the alley and around beside the house. There was a light on in the kitchen. Aunt Naomi, no doubt, or Rose, waiting up for them, having a bite of something.

  It was Mrs. Gummidge. Andrew was dumbstruck. On the kitchen counter lay a plastic bag full of white powder. On the stove was the tea kettle, singing away, and on the counter lay Aunt Naomi’s mug and a box of Earl Grey tea.

  “Oh!” she cried, throwing a towel over the plastic bag. But Andrew had recognized it. She hadn’t been quick enough. It was the anti-coagulant rat poison that he’d stupidly thought to fool Rose with a week ago. Mrs. Gummidge had plucked it out of the trash can. The rest of the story was clear as well water—Pennyman’s talk of “personal vendettas,” Mrs. Gummidge’s insistence that Aunt Naomi consume cup after cup of tea, the mysterious internal bleeding …

  “Assassin!” cried Andrew, throwing aside the towel and upending the bag into the sink. He turned on both faucets, flushing the powder down the drain, damning himself for ever having been fool enough to …

  “Don’t!” Pickett cried, waving the ball of dimes. “It’s evidence! Don’t pour it out!”

  “Ow!” shouted Andrew, slapping at his back pocket. Smoke curled up from it, and there was the sharp smell of burning cloth.

  “The spoon!” yelled Pickett, and Andrew flailed away at it with his hand, hauling out the smoking, handkerchief-wrapped spoon and dropping it immediately onto the floor, where it bounced free of the cloth and began to revolve, faster and faster, like a compass needle gone mad.

  Mrs. Gummidge burst from her chair. She slammed past Andrew, who tried to push in front of her to cut her off, and she grabbed at the spinning spoon, understanding what it was now and hungry to possess it. Andrew kicked it away, toward the back door and the toad aquarium, then turned to chase it. “Get her out of here!” he yelled at Pickett.

  Mrs. Gummidge backed away toward the living room, as if she were giving up, but then whirled around and jerked open the knife drawer, coming up with a carving knife. Without a word she slashed at Pickett, who yowled and tumbled backward out of the way. Astonished, Andrew abandoned his pursuit of the spoon and grabbed a ceramic pitcher off the counter, cocking his arm to throw it at her. She ducked out through the open door, cursing, with Andrew at her heels, carrying the pitcher, thinking to stop her and her murderous rage before she could do any damage with the knife.

  The living room door flew open and there stood Pennyman, alone, with a pistol in his hand. His face was deadly white, and his hand shook dangerously. The corners of his mouth trembled, spasming downward in random jerks, and his head was twisted around stiffly, his chin thrust forward, as if he were being pressed on the back of the head by some unseen force. “I’ll take that,” he said to Pickett.

  FIFTEEN

  “Patience, children, just a minute—

  See the spreading circles die;

  The stream and all in it

  Will clear by-and-by.”

  Robert Louis Stevenson

  “Looking Glass River”

  BEFORE PICKETT COULD move, could drop the ball of dimes or throw it, or cosh Pennyman in the head with it, the old man stepped forward, pressed the gun to his forehead, and clicked back the hammer.

  There was the sound of a slamming door, and feet on the hallway upstairs. It was Rose, without a doubt, getting up to see what was going on.

  Stay upstairs, Andrew thought, half-closing his eyes. Stay the hell upstairs. Don’t come down.

  Cats peeked out from behind chairs, slinking around corners and blinking out of doorways. There was a scrabbling beneath them, under the house. What was it?—’possums? The wind buffeted the casements and moaned through the mail slot.

  “Now the other one,” Pennyman said. He turned the pistol on Andrew, who shrank away in horror. “Quick, or I’ll shoot you in the stomach.” The old man stank like a demon, his breath rasping out through darkened, mossy teeth. His eyes glowed with loathing and desire and corruption. There were footfalls on the stairs.

  “It’s on the kitchen floor,” Mrs. Gummidge hissed. “He dropped it.”

  Pennyman waved them toward the kitchen with his pistol, then abruptly shoved it into his pocket, leaving his hand on it. Rose confronted them from across the room, tugging her bathrobe around herself.

  “Well,” she said, smiling sleepily. “Back from the hunt?”

  “That’s right,” said Andrew. “Wonderful time. Plenty of treasures. I’ll just be up in a moment.”

  Rose nodded. “I won’t join you, if you don’t mind,” she said. “I’m not dressed for socializing.”

  “Of course,” said Pennyman, controlling himself with a visible effort. Rose didn’t seem to sense any trouble. She nodded and climbed back up the stairs. Andrew deflated. He didn’t care what happened, not really, not if Rose could be kept out of it.

  Waving the pistol again, Pennyman herded them into the kitchen. “Where?” he said.

  Mrs. Gummidge hesitated, betrayal in her eyes. Quick as a lizard, Pennyman slapped her on the cheek with the back of his gun hand, knocking her into the kitchen cabinet. She mewled with pain, cowering there.

  Andrew started forward, but Pennyman spun toward him, covering him with the pi
stol. “Stinking coward,” said Andrew, cursing himself for his helplessness. “It’s on the damn floor. Under the aquarium. Take it.”

  All of them pushed toward the back door. The spoon wasn’t there. Andrew glanced at the lid of the aquarium, thinking that maybe the toad … But no, the toad floated as ever, hovering, watching them, the brick securing the lid.

  “Where?” Pennyman grunted, threatening Mrs. Gummidge again.

  “It was there!” wailed Mrs. Gummidge, her eyes full of hatred. “I swear it was. Five minutes ago. I tried to get it for you. I tried …”

  “Shut up!” shouted Pennyman. “Witch! You murdered your lover to get your hands on that coin. You’d betray me in a moment. I’ll have it out of you though, before the dawn. See if I don’t. Out the door.”

  They cut across the backyard in a herd, through the gate and around into the alley, heading up toward Main Street. Andrew strode along, keen and alert but having no idea in the world what to do with all his keenness. Run? What would that avail him? Should he jump on Pennyman and then be shot and left in the alley? Or worse, bring about Pickett’s death? He wished he could communicate with his friend, make some sort of sign, but Pickett looked pale and tired and watched the ground as they stumbled along.

  Pennyman walked on his heels, painfully. Halfway there, back behind Señor Corky’s, he hobbled to a stop. With his free hand the old man rummaged in his pants pocket, hauling out a clasp knife. Watching them all the while and covering them with the pistol, he thumbed one of the blades out of the knife, shoved it through the leather on the side of his shoe, and slit the shoe open, his face sagging with relief. He sawed across the top of the shoe, excising the toe, tearing his sock out entirely when the knife blade caught in it.

  Andrew nearly gagged. He hadn’t expected what he saw inside Pennyman’s cut-away shoes, in the dirt and trash of the alley. There were no toes visible, no real flesh. Instead there was the cleft, scaly black callous ridge of a cloven hoof, obscene in the moonlight. Pennyman worked the knife into his other shoe, cutting chunks away.

  His face twitched and shuddered, and his hair stood out in patches from his head, his scalp flaky and mottled. He licked his lips with a tongue that was almost snake-like. Mrs. Gummidge watched him, fascinated, unbelieving, frightened. She had the look of someone both repulsed and attracted by evil, the eyes of a half-repentant torturer, whose special sickness was a groveling, hand-washing contrition.

  Andrew backed away from her and the pistol swung toward him. He stopped dead. Pennyman stood up, smiling now. He threw the pocketknife into the weeds, reached into his coat, and hauled out his silver, jingling, lead-lined box. Steam seemed to seep from under the lid, smelling sulphurous and hellish. The bulge of the two dime-encased coins danced in his pants pocket, and he licked his lips again, wondering, maybe, if he could afford to pull the fused coins out, break off the covering of dimes, and add the two to his collection. He put his face into the reek and breathed deeply. His features stiffened and his gun hand jerked and spasmed as if he wanted to throw the gun away, to tear open the box right there and scoop out the tainted silver and let it run through his fingers.

  The temptation tore at his features, but he put the box away again, unable, perhaps, to accomplish the juggling act without putting down the gun. He wanted two more coins. That’s all. Two more coins before the sun rose again over the tired earth.

  They were off once more, out onto the deserted asphalt of Main Street. He waved them toward the pier. The surf cracked and boomed, shaking the pilings. The pier lamps still burned, dim and watery in the light that shone from the now enormous moon hanging over the city like a gas lamp, threatening to blow out on the instant. Wind sheered across the face of the waves, blowing sand, scouring the beach where the tide had fallen. A wash of shooting stars fell into the sea.

  Andrew watched for his chance as they ducked under the rope that the lifeguards had used to cordon off the pier. He didn’t have any idea when it would come or what form it would take. He knew without doubt that he’d leap into the ocean gladly if, say, Rose were there and had fallen in and needed saving. He would step in front of a bullet to save Pickett. But would he do the same to save the faceless world? To stop Pennyman? Would the desperate time come when he would say damn the gun, and just wade in? Or would he leave it to Mrs. Gummidge? She certainly seemed posed for it. She half-hovered when she walked, watching Pennyman out of the corner of her eye, knowing that he carried with him a malignant treasure that it had taken a lifetime to amass, and that in one calculated move she could …

  But no, Pennyman was no longer entirely human. He was a thing born of the coins, a thing of evil, and he understood the Mrs. Gummidges of the world far too well. He knew how far to trust them. He prompted the three of them along, down the pier, past the concrete restrooms, the fish cleaning sinks, the lifeguard tower, the snack stands, toward Len’s Bait House, which stood dark and wind-lashed on the pier’s end.

  The ocean was a vast, oily plain lined with the humps of waves driving in toward shore. An ivory ribbon of moonlight ran out across it like a dwindling highway, illuminating the depths with a weird, silver-green glow. In the west the oil fire burned on Signal Hill, low and intense now, casting an aura over north Long Beach. All of them stood in the wind finally, in front of the bait house, waiting for Pennyman to make his demands, to reveal his plan. Do what he might, Andrew couldn’t help him with the spoon. He had no idea at all what had happened to it. The cats, perhaps, had made away with it, just as the pigs had done in Johnson’s entertaining tale. The spoon was out of Andrew’s hands now, and good riddance. Still, he would do his part …

  Menacing them with the revolver, Pennyman took out the silver box of coins and laid it on the shuddering pier. Andrew hung on to the iron railing, watching the flying spindrift, anticipating the wave that would wash them all to their death in the sea. A vast black shadow passed across the ribbon of moonlight on the ocean just then, as if a single cloud had blown in on the night wind. But the sky was clear, and lit with a thousand stars. There was something in the water—under it—not in the sky at all.

  Andrew watched the sea. There it was again. He could see the dark hump of it behind incoming swells, edging along over the sandy bottom—a whale, surely, summoned by the coins, and on hand, perhaps, to do the bidding of the man the coins possessed. The radiant sea was full of fishes despite the Leviathan, the waiting monster. Andrew could see them: schooling bonita and mackerel and jack smelt; plate-sized perch swarming around the pilings; hidey-hole fish, sculpin and rock cod, blennies and eels, nosing up toward the surface. The sandy bottom was alive with shellfish and creeping things, with sea slugs and hermit crabs and lobsters and moon snails. It was as if he were watching them in a dream. But it wasn’t a dream. Pickett saw them, too. And Pennyman, surely he was aware of the thing in the sea. Of course he was; it was what he was there for. The creature contained within it the last of the thirty coins.

  The pier shuddered just then, as if a wave had slammed through it. It rocked on its pilings, creaking and groaning, threatening to tear apart, to twist itself in half and pitch into the ocean. Andrew held on, flung sideways as it moved again. There was the sound of splitting wood and concrete, and one of the pilings shivered into bits, slamming down into the water.

  Pennyman cracked the fused dimes like an egg on the old worn slats of the pier, cupping his hands over the two coins, trapping them as they fell out together, the dimes rolling away in a dozen directions. He tipped back the hinged lid of the box, and the two coins popped in among their brothers like tiddly winks and drew the silver lid down after them with a bang as the pier heaved again in counterpoint to the slamming of the box lid. Pennyman stumbled and caught himself. He smiled and looked out over the sea.

  He was scarcely human. His white suit was ragged and soiled with dirt from the treasure hunt and from kneeling in the alley. His ripped-apart shoes only half-hid what his feet had become, and his face, as if in keeping with the rest of him, had wa
rped into a goat-like parody of a human face. His tongue lolled above his pointed beard as if there wasn’t room for it in his mouth. In the west the moon was setting over the sea, and its reflected light made Pennyman’s eyes seem opaque yellow, like disks.

  “I’ll begin with you,” he said suddenly to Pickett. “You seem to be the detective, the clever man. Let’s see how smart you are when smart is at a premium. Tell me where the coin is, or I’ll blow you to kingdom come.” He aimed the pistol. Andrew tensed, ready to jump.

  “It’s here,” said a voice behind Andrew, and he turned in disbelief to see Rose standing in the cast-open door of Len’s Bait House.

  Pennyman turned the gun on her, a flicker of surprise and the hint of a smile appearing and disappearing on his face, replaced in turn with a look of grimacing idiocy.

  “Look!” Andrew shouted, pointing away down the pier, where a tiny car bumped up off Main Street humming along toward them. It stopped, and someone got out to take down the rope. It was Uncle Arthur.

  The pistol cracked. Too late, Andrew threw himself wildly at Pennyman, caring nothing about saving the world, but wanting only to turn the pistol on him, to … His hand and arm smashed into something that felt like a wall of cold, wet clay, and then he slammed into it bodily, rolling down onto the deck of the pier and against the bottom railing. He was up in an instant, puzzled, but throwing himself without thinking at Pennyman again, who stood holding the smoking pistol. Pickett reeled away, grasping his shoulder, and when Andrew leaped the second time, Pennyman was leveling the pistol at Rose, who flung herself back against Aunt Naomi, the two of them disappearing into the bait house.

  Again Andrew smashed into the clammy, rubbery, invisible wall and found himself on his back. He looked wildly behind him, only to see Uncle Arthur buzzing toward them at full throttle, agonizingly slowly. Pennyman turned and fired at the oncoming car, and the wind screen spiderwebbed with cracks as the car swerved, caromed off the railing, and came on again.