But then, just when she’d gone to Bergdorf’s and bought her black veil and dress and taken out his will and consulted with her lawyer -- and everything had seemed so full of the promise of an open grave -- it had all quite mysteriously unravelled. It was that sneaky little lawyer Fong who was to blame -- all those phone calls from the kitchen she wasn’t supposed to hear. A lot of nonsense about surgery she didn’t understand -- and the next thing she knew that creep from the sanitarium had taken him away. Well, all those stitches on his head didn’t make him look much worse. At least, thank God, he was now -- except for his interminable wheezing and the blinking of those buzzard eyes -- altogether paralyzed. At least now she would be spared the horrors of the bedroom. Who would have thought that anyone so very old would insist on all those hideous positions?
“Good God!” she cried out suddenly, kicking off the blankets. The tickle was so unexpected and odious that at first she thought it was some sort of poisonous vermin -- a toad or colossal centipede -- creeping up the hollow of her knee. It was only now, jumping out of bed and turning on her lamp, that she saw the hand -- the thin, warped, sallow fingers -- writhing in convulsions on the sheet.
Hearing her shriek, Smedlow (if he could still call himself that) looked for -- but suddenly could not find -- the muscles that controlled the eyelids. Panic -- atrocious, smothering, claustrophobic panic -- overtook him. He was quite certain he’d go mad. It was as if he were locked up inside an exceedingly small, dark closet and had stupidly misplaced the key. He had allowed himself to become so moronically cocksure of his ability to locate and lift up the muscles to the eyelids that it had never once even occurred to him that he could possibly lose them again. For several moments, in a rising frenzy of paralysis, he tried to find an exit from the darkness. Then suddenly, once again, a whiff of her perfume wafted toward him and he was conscious of a monstrous shock, a seismic tremor of intoxication, as if some bygone longing had been wakened in the old meat of the alien carcass.
It was only now that something crackled in his head, something eerie and decidedly unwholesome, something which forever after he would liken to the crackling of a radio drifting from its signal and then tuning in to some faint and ominously foreign frequency. Even as he kept on trying desperately to locate the muscles to the lids, a steady stream of sounds -- nearly inaudible but menacing -- became slowly, almost imperceptibly, louder. -- “But howsomever much” said a now barely discernible whisper, “this fat milksop Chommeley endeavoured to wriggle out from under his bounden duty to deliver me the lady in the locket, I would nowise be dissuaded from my prize.”
“Don’t you ever touch me again like that,” he heard her say, the slow and measured violence of her words drowning out the whisper of the other voice: and almost at once he succeeded in finding and pulling up the eyelids.
She took his breath away, in the scantness of that negligee so painfully young and naked, her eyes squinting with a fury that she seemed immediately to regret.
“I just mean . . . you startled me, you woke me up,” she said, forcing herself to sugar her voice and stroke his writhing hand. How cold and pale and damp it was, like fondling a dead chicken. But what an astonishing ruby, she thought, feeling the ring beyond the frantic knuckles -- and she made herself look up at him and kiss him on the mouth.
He could not feel the warm, moist, softness of her lips. The most he could do was to look at her and blink. Another whiff -- this time the stink of rotting garbage -- wafted toward him. If only, he thought, he could make her understand that he was not this smelly carcass but himself, Max Nathan Smedlow, then maybe she could even begin to want him. With a Herculean effort, he tried to locate the wiring to the larynx, a heroic attempt which, as she turned her back on him and hid beneath the blankets, she winced at and mistook for the gathering of phlegm.
Up until this moment Smedlow had been so entranced by the diaphonous exposure of her naked beauty, that he hadn’t been able to give his expert and undivided attention to the hand. Even now, beyond the purple silk cuff of his pajamas, beyond the blue veins of an emaciated wrist, it clawed in fierce convulsions at the mattress. Of course there was absolutely nothing unusual about this. It was, he told himself at first, only a perfectly common (though admittedly morbid and atrocious) reflex of the muscles -- an involuntary movement like a tic or some appalling kind of shaking palsy.
But then, unfortunately, only a very few heartbeats later, another, terribly disturbing possibility occurred to him -- a possibility which, like a suspicion of cancer, awakened a brood of nightmares much too horrible to bear. And the more he watched the fingers clawing without his permission at the mattress, the more he felt this possibility grow into a large and sickening certainty. Nor could he say why, as he looked up again at the periwigged little lordling in the painting, those sneering eyes still filled him with the menace of a sick foreboding -- a slow, obscene, encroaching doom. Oh yes, of course, he did keep on trying to tell himself that this blossoming terror was ridiculous, that the voice he’d heard was just a nightmare and that the writhing mutiny of the hand was just a normal symptom of some well-behaved and commonplace disease. -- Or, then again, maybe there was someone else alive inside this rotting body with him: maybe he was not alone.
Chapter XI.
Shewing how much a rejection letter upsets Mr. Frobey,
how much a strange voice troubles Dr. Smedlow
and how little a Lady’s drawers will satisfy his Lordship.
Dear Mr. Frobey:
I have received a copy of your novel, Creep, and -- at long last, after several months of luncheons with our media affiliates and our marketing staff -- I have now finally found a couple of minutes to give it a read. I hardly know what to say. But I did not find the book heartfelt. I cannot understand why Billy Angel would want to put a snake in someone’s mailbox or cut the fingers off a nun. I did not find one single character who is irrepressibly spunky and likeable, who would give the average reader a warm feeling or make her shed a tear. I do think you might have found a happy ending. I also think you might have paid attention to the market and learned the elementary rules of grammar. I am afraid, quite simply, that Creep (are you altogether certain of that title?) is just not right for our list.
Sincerely,
Octavia Blynn
Lemuel Lee stared once again in disgusted disbelief at the illegible, pretentious flourish of the signature -- a couple a real quick giant curlicues like she didn’t have no time to write her name -- and for the fifth time that morning folded up the letter and stuffed it back real snug into the ass pocket of his jeans. He closed his eyes and sighed and made himself focus on the soothing anger steadily burning in his belly. Time was, he woulda gone off all loud and sudden like a stupid firecracker. Time was, he wouldn’t a had the balls and military discipline to stand up for his injured honor. But now that he had his gold-bug hieroglyph tattoo and was a bona fide secret soldier in the Army of Anubis, he just wasn’t gonna take no shit.
“Lem! Lem ya little idiot! Quit dawdlin’! Didn’t I tell you twice already to get the bags a blood? And we’re gonna need one more a them great big transfusion needles. And don’t forget the scissors: it’s time to snip them stitches.”
But how in humpin’ hell, thought Lem, as he moped all the way down the hallway to the kitchen, grabbed the scissors and the needle from the knife drawer, and the blood bags from the fridge, was he ever gonna get famous if he was always stuck with nursin’ and feedin’ and babysittin’ the old geezer?
“Now go get the English Fella his box a panties, Lem.”
Aunt Ligeia was always bossin’ him around, like he was some kind a little dog she expected to go fetch. Why didn’t she just do it herself, he thought, but nodded with sullen obedience and trudged off to bring the goddamn undies from the library.
“Well, here’s your stinkin’ toys, ace,” said Lem some moments later, thinkin’ there wasn’t no way in hell they’d ever make him believe that this here splicer was the English fella.
You could put a four-cylinder VW engine into the chassis of an old, junked Cadillac DeVille, but that sure as hell wouldn’t make it no goddamn real-live Caddy.
Sitting in the wheelchair where they’d placed him beside a panoramic vista of the New York skyline, Smedlow now for the first time saw what looked to him like a very old, badly scuffed, black suitcase. His horror began the very moment it was plunked down before him on the table. For the hand -- his hand? -- whose hideous movements he had so wanted to attribute to convulsions, now suddenly reached out with a fierce and certain purpose, as if drawn to this old leather case by a magnetic and overpowering force. At once it seized upon the latch, releasing a sharp aroma from a heap of ancient petticoats and drawers. Smedlow had a sinking, sickening -- but obviously ridiculous -- feeling that he had seen this pile of yellowed underwear before. The wigged lords and coiffured ladies staring from the paintings on the wall now also troubled him like a repugnant but still hazy recollection -- as if he, Max Nathan Smedlow, were a dream from which someone who was not Smedlow was struggling to awaken. One portrait of a gentleman -- the large, pink, grossly fat face of a vicious cherub -- particularly arrested his attention. And it was now that it happened again: that detestable noise like static crackling in his head, as if the radio signal that was his life had been lost -- and another, unwanted frequency were tuning in to take its place. Once again, the noise became slowly clearer, louder, until it was an intimate and unwanted confidence suddenly whispered in his ear.
“For it befell,” said the strange, archaic voice, “that for some matter of weeks this bloated coxcomb Chommeley came not again to play at cards -- a most ill-mannered and dishonourable usage whereat I was not a little puzzled and aggrieved. Not, to be sure, that I did in the leastwise sorrow at the loss of his society. But I would by no manner of means suffer this churl to cheat me of the winnings of our wager. His Lady’s cousin, whose virgin and lily-white bosom he had so largely and withal so temptingly extolled was, in a word, chattle of which his honour as a gamester required him at once to yield possession. In fine, long I tarried not to pen a letter to this effect, enquiring of him why he so ungentlemanly put me off and when precisely I might savour the enjoyment of my prize. And yet, for all that I was most suitably angered on this account, my choler was not near so great as my perplexity. For I could scarce misdoubt but that he cared not a fart if I debauched her. “The reason for this incomparable stinkard’s hesitance I did find out some days thereafter when, by way of sociable chit-chat, one of my associates at cards made mention that the young Earl of Wolverton was newly dead of a burst bowel occasion’d by a kick in the small guts whilst beating of his horse. This melancholly intelligence might perchance have ’scaped my notice, had my companion not now enlarged on his remark, saying that forasmuch as young Wolverton had died without issue, it had come about that a distant cousin, a young maiden, had succeeded to a most prodigious fortune the which -- by reason that the Viscount Chommeley was her guardian -- he had seized on with the gluttony of a leech.”
The voice broke off, as if the signal had been lost, and for a moment Smedlow (as he would never give up calling himself) could hear Lem’s snipping scissors and see the old man’s fingers caressing, crawling through the pile of musty silks. He had just enough time to assure himself that he could still manage to make the eyelids blink, still retrieve some precious memory of his former life as Smedlow: Dumpling, his wife’s incontinent little Yorkshire terrier, came to mind -- a perfectly trivial domestic detail and yet it felt like a gulp of air before the antiquated whispering resumed.
“Near a fortnight thereafter, at the last comes a letter from this Chommeley, much lamenting the interruption of our fellowship and the tardiness of his reply (which he did ascribe to being much occupied of late, and out of town, and indisposed with the worm and the like idle and infamous excuses), but at length coming more roundly to the point -- in fine, that he agreed to the defilement of the maiden, so long as it were done by stealth and might nowise be imputed unto him, for he was most mightily afeard it should be known that he had contrived the ruination of a countess. This fat shit-breech full grievously regretted, said he, that he would not again be in London until yet several months hence -- at the which time the lady would be entirely in his disposal and he would be, most humbly, at my service. Such, at all events, was the sum of Chommeley’s letter the which I forbore to answer by return of post -- save to require that, in earnest of our bargain, he would dispatch me a pair of her most odoriferant drawers.”
The voice broke off again and in the silence Smedlow watched the fingers rummage through the heap until they had located what looked to him like a yellowed, crumpled, mildewed and extinct species of long underwear. As this garment was lifted closer he could hear the old meat sigh, feel the old heart beating faster and he could smell -- through the mustiness -- the very faintest lingering of perfume.
“And yet,” resumed the voice, “my exceeding great vexation notwithstanding, I cannot say but that I was, in some measure, disposed to favour this adjournment of my pleasure. For the inconveniences of my condition, the most dolorous and ill-beseeming alterations of my person, did not in the least conduce to the tranquillest enjoyment of the sex. Indeed, I would nowise venture out a-doors unless my agony were lightened by a dram of opium and unless my face were hid behind the cover of a vizard-mask. For I could scarce endure my torments. And as yet neither my powders nor my patches nor my periwigs -- nay, nor the cunning transmutations of chirurgery -- could reconcile my looking-glass to the ravages of my singular distemper.”
Chapter XII.
Wherein Mr. Frobey makes a scientific experiment and plans a military expedition whilst Dr. Smedlow regains hope and his Lordship eats a beggar.
Yep, he was healin’ up real good, thought Lem as he snipped the last stitch in the scalp, pulled out the black thread with his tweezer and laid it down with all the others on the Kleenex. Why, it wasn’t no more than a week and already you couldn’t hardly see the cut, which beside the fact that all them fuzzy little white hairs would soon be big enough to hide it, wasn’t no more now than a pink, itty-bitty line. Why, already the patient was sittin’ up and fiddlin’ with them skivvies, which was goddamn freakin’ good seein as how Uncle Earl had pretty near rebuilt his entire engine, exceptin’ for that whatchumacallit gland he’d been so careful to leave in.
“Lem! Get a move on! Go hang up one a them bloodbags. And don’t you make no mess.”
Well, it was only after the bloodbag was hung up just right and he was tryin’ real hard to connect it up with one a them real narrow plastic tubes, that it finally all of a sudden struck him that maybe, after all, this here splicer was the English fella. Now it wasn’t that he hadn’t seen before that the patient was sniffin’ skivvies. It was just that he hadn’t paid no mind to what Uncle Earl was always callin’ the “scientific and philosophic implications.” Of course he’d heard tell that a splicer -- like a pig’s head spliced onto a billygoat, for example -- was always kinda like Siamese twins. But the point was to figure out which a these suckers, in a manner a speakin’, was sittin’ in the driver’s seat. Now it was true that the patient was sniffin’ them undies like Uncle Earl had said the English Fella would. But that didn’t prove nothin’, since everyone knows that a chicken walkin’ around without its head ain’t doin’ much more thinkin’ than some kinda goddamn electric eggbeater. But if that pain-in-the-ass prisoner was the one in there callin’ all the shots, there was one sure way to find it out real scientific.
Paralyzed in his wheelchair, counting breaths to calm himself down, Smedlow saw Lem plunge into his jeans’ pocket and pull out his own -- now unspeakably precious -- monogrammed silver lighter.
“Kinda like a long lost friend, ain’t it?” said Lem, plunking it down on the table: “Well, if you want it, all you gotta do is reach out and take it.”
“Lem!” barked Aunt Ligeia: “The blood’s leakin’ on the rug! Now you grab a wad a paper towels and clean it up real good.”
That’s right, he thought, grabbing the towels and nodding, why not just go ahead and dump another load a shit on old Lem? Everybody just always figured he was gonna keep on grinnin’ and takin’ it. Like that bigshot editor, for example. Not that he minded so much her takin’ highfalutin potshots at his grammar and all, but if you was gonna say somethin’ bad about his hero, Billy Angel, well, then that was somethin’ else again. Oh yeah, they all just thought he was gonna keep on waggin’ his tail. But nope, he thought, dabbing the carpet and watching the towel redden, now that he was a soldier and had studied up real good on the tactics of guerilla war, there just wasn’t no way in hell he was gonna let some bigdeal fancy bookworm take a crap all over his honor.
“Lem! Now go give ’im one a them big needles in the right hand and I’ll go get the left.”
No, no, don’t listen to them, thought Smedlow. Just . . . get a hold of yourself. The wondrously, momentously initialed -- MNS -- silver lighter seemed to float away on the sheen of the table like a life preserver just beyond his grasp. If only he could take it. If only he could locate the control panel, make that mummy’s hand stop fingering those old rags.
“Aw Hell, I missed the vein,” said Lem, focusin’ real good for his second try and this time hittin’ it just right. Which reminded him, as he watched the blood flow through the tube, how Floyd Fusco had told him and the other guys (after they was all swore-in as soldiers of Anubis) that the whole trick to fightin’ a guerilla war was stayin’ real focused and livin’ off the land -- eatin grubs an’ ants an’ stuff -- and always stayin’ hid so as you could spring yer ambush. And Floyd, after he had told ’em all how they was gonna take over and settle up the scores, had said that the whole trick to ambushin’ was thinkin’ like yer enemy -- and that thinkin’ like yer enemy, when you come right down to it, wasn’t no different than fishin’, which all boils down to findin’ some little smelly dead fish or some nice big worm or bug yer goddamn mudpuppy’s gonna go for. And so, reasoned Lem as he watched his aunt stab the other hand, if he was gonna go fishin’ for some bigdeal, fancypants editor, then his one damn, fuckin’ problem was to figure out what kinda bait was gonna make that kinda mudpuppy swim down to take the hook.
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