by Edward Lee
Distaste plainly stamped on her face, Mary held a tin can betwixt the poor man’s legs, into which he now voided his bladder.
Her wince intensified. “For goodness sake, Paul! You go more than a horse! Hurry!”
Another full minute lapsed when finally the void terminated and Mary aversively emptied it in the small sink. “You just want attention anytime you know I’m getting some.”
“I do not,” he said forlornly. “I had to go and you weren’t here.”
She sat with some effort in a fold down chair, cradling the distended belly. “I’m doing all of this for you and step-dad, you know. Working two jobs and carrying another baby. I’m tired of you taking me for granted. You’re lucky to be alive, you know, and you wouldn’t be, Paul, if it weren’t for me.”
Paul railed, elevating his stumps. “Oh, yeah, I’m so lucky to be alive! Thanks very much!”
“Don’t talk like that,” she said in a lower and somehow darker tone. “We could have it a lot worse. Both of us.”
“He wanted to talk to me, not you,” Paul objected, spittle on his lips and tears in his eyes. “I knew Lovecraft better than you, and just because—”
“That’s enough,” came her tempered retort, then she rose from the chair, but before she could exit—
“Mary, wait! Please!” the invalid implored.
“What?” she nearly growled.
“I need you to…”
“You need me to what?”
Now his voice degraded to a pitiful peep “You know… With your hand…”
A hot glare raged on her face. “No! It’s dirty and sinful! It’s disgusting!”
My brows rose high.
Paul’s forlorn whine continued. “But it’s so hard to do it myself. I get lonely back here, and…”
“No!”
“At least-at least… can I see? I’ve got nothing else, Mary. Please. Let me see, just for a second…”
Mary’s comely visage was now a mask of disdain. “No! I’m your sister, for goodness sake!” then she left the room in a whir and slammed the door.
First, the blaring sight, then, second, the implications, left me agog at the window. Yet when my eyes fond their way back to the unfortunate Paul, I heard my very soul groan…
He sat now in a desperate hunch, his back to me, his shoulders moving as his forlorn whimpers drew on. I did not need to see to know that he was attempting to masturbate with his elbow stumps.
What a tragedy, I thought.
My secret gaze retreated. Though the situation offended my outer sensibilities, I did not issue judgments, but what a sorry plight life left to so many. The poor girl, pregnant while having to work two jobs to support an invalid brother and most likely an invalid stepfather. While the poor brother himself has only… this as his only accessible mode of pleasure. The grim reality only served to reflect more of myself back into whatever sense of self-awareness I possessed. I was the indulgent, filthy rich, having never had to work in my life, while these people.
I knew that before I left this town, I would do something quite generous for this destitute family…
The alley’s exit conducted me to a crossroad, when I turned westward and followed the sign. Clean block buildings lined one side of the street, stands of dense trees lined the other. I set my quiet despair behind me, to re-attended my task.
I MUST locate this Cryus Zalen…
Sunlight sifted through high branches while from the east a gentle surf touched my ears. I wondered if Lovecraft had ever walked this particular street and so hoped that he had. I knew that I was seeing what he saw as his mind worked on the pieces of The Shadow Over Innsmouth.
A crunch to my left stopped my gait. I turned, scanned the crush of trees, but saw no one where I was sure someone must be. The sound I’d heard was unmistakable: a footstep crunching down on the drought-withered detritus of the woods.
After several more paces, the crunch resounded again.
“Hello there!” I called when I saw the figure shamble through the trees. A figure, yes, adorned in a long, ruined black raincoat. “Mr. Zalen! Please! I’ve dire need to speak with you!”
The figure disappeared as quickly as if it were part of the woods. I could only wonder now just how debilitated Mr. Zalen had become via the rigors of opiate addiction and impoverishment. The latter stages of such misfortunes regularly left its victims incoherent or fully mad. Should this be the case with Zalen, my trek could well prove pointless.
A ten-minute stroll left me standing before the new fire station where several men chatted amiably while they washed and polished the grand, new pumper truck. Not half a block on, I found what could only be the poorhouse.
The single-floored length of small apartments looked pressed down by adversity, as though soullessness were as salient a feature as the compartments’ peeling paint and rag-stuffed broken window panes. From them issued the smells of urine and rotting food. An elderly man sat slumped and glassy-eyed before one dingy-doored room, to the effect that I thought he might be deceased until he shivered once, and hacked. An obese blind woman with a white cane sat just as dejected at the next unit. She looked up sightlessly when she’d no doubt heard my passing, then rose from the milk crate she used for a chair, tapped back to the doorway, and went in. The door slammed.
The end unit struck me as darker than all the rest, though the sunlight here shone evenly across the entire length of apartments. A doorless postal box revealed no occupant’s name, and I noticed a grease-stained garbage bag sitting roadside filled with stubs of burned down candles, expended flash bulbs, and empty food cans aswarm with flies. A cracked walkway led me forward until I stopped, forced to eye a curious door-knocker mounted in the beaten door’s center stile, a queer oval of tarnished bronze depicting a morose half-formed face. Just two eyes, no mouth or nose, no additional features.
I wrapped hesitantly with the knocker, staring uneasily at the name plaque posted just above: C. ZALEN.
3.
What the door opened to show me was more of what I expected: a thin, pallid man demonstrating every sign of physical squalor. He still wore the ruinous black raincoat, which hung open to show him shirtless, sunken-chested, slat-ribbed. Frayed trousers torn off at the knees were what he wore below the waist, as well as rotten shoes. His already sunken eyes appeared nearly non-existent by the smudge-like crescents beneath them. I made every attempt to smile and seem unfazed.
“Ah, Mr. Zalen. My name is Foster Morley. I saw you cutting home through the woods but I guess you didn’t hear me.”
The man frowned. Longish black hair had been slicked back off his brow by either tonic or, more likely, the natural oils from his scalp that had accreted from not washing often. “What do you want?” he asked in a voice that sounded more hardy than I would expect from such a dilapidated unfortunate.
“You’re the photographer, correct? The newspaper man, or have I been informed in error?”
“That was a lifetime ago, but I guess if you’ve been informed about me, you’re either police or a client… and you don’t look like police so I guess you better come in.”
So he must still have some clients for his photography business, I reckoned. Which meant he had some money coming in. He invited me inside to a living room in worse repair than the exterior: a legless couch, the sparsest furniture, and one of those large wooden cable spools on end, to serve as a table. A chemical scent in the air suggested the solutions of photo development. Before he closed and bolted the door, he peeked both ways outside, as if suspicious of something. He oddly reached behind a bookcase whose shelves dipped at their centers, and withdrew a simple folder.
“Fifty cents each, Mr. Morley,” he told me, and handed me the folder. “I can tell by the way you dress you’re not on the outs like a lot of folks these days. You want to buy, not sell.”
I couldn’t imagine what he meant but I could tell by viewing the folder’s side what it contained: a hefty stack of photographs. An instantaneous thrill made my
nerves buzz at the prospect. Mary, even in her disapproval of the man, must’ve called ahead to tell him what it was I sought. I nervously took a seat, and flung open the folder…
What a horror the times have turned this world into. I could’ve gagged at the repellent images that leapt up at my eyes from the glossy surfaces of the photographs. These were neither pictures of Lovecraft nor of Olmstead in days past. It was, instead, outright pornography.
The scenes depicted in the few sheets I looked at need not be described. I can only say that the photography itself was strikingly vivid and every bit of expert.
“But the ones with the white girl making it with the colored fellas are a buck each,” he continued. He skimmed off the tattered raincoat and hung it up on a nail in the wall. “If you’re into kids, they’re two bucks each.”
I thrust the evil folder back to him. “This is… not… what I came for.”
“Oh, so you’re a seller? Well, you gotta pay me up front for the film and developer, and I get half of what I can sell ‘em for. But keep in mind, if they ain’t pretty enough, I won’t bother ‘cos I can’t sell the pictures. And the more you can talk ‘em into doing, the more I can sell ‘em for.”
Through a dazedness of incomprehension, I merely replied, “What?”
He shot me a glare sharp as a dagger. “It’s the business, man! You got a couple cute daughters and you want me to snap ‘em nude or fuckin’ guys, right?”
I stared. “No,” I croaked. “I have no children.”
“Then what do you want, Morley?” he suddenly yelled. “I need money, and you’re wasting my time! Get out of here!”
Bleary-eyed, I gave him a ten-dollar bill.
“What’s the sawbuck for?” his rant continued after snapping the bill from my fingers. “I don’t turn tricks, man! I’m no swish! You want to fuck a girl, fine, I got one here, but don’t bullshit around! You’re starting to scare the shit out of me—” and then he yelled at what was presumably the door to the bedroom. “Candace! Come out here!”
Before I could object, the door opened, and out stepped a timid and very naked woman in her twenties. One hand covered her bare pubis; her other arm attempted to cover two very swollen breasts. What she couldn’t cover at all, however, was the belly stretched out tight and huge from a state of pregnancy that had to be close to the end of its term. Obliquely, I made out a radio tune from the other room, “Heaven Can Wait,” I believe, by Glen Gray.
The girl smiled crookedly at me through a gap in the hair falling over her face. “Hi. We-we could have a nice time together, sir…”
More of the real world I didn’t care for at all. By now I’d managed the shock of this horrendous miscalculation, and produced a frown of my own which I directed immediately to Zalen. “I gave you the money so you needn’t feel your valuable time is wasted. I’m not interested in prostitution nor pornography.”
Zalen chuckled. “Come on, Mr. Morley. You ever had your tallywhacker in a pregnant girl? Bet’cha haven’t.”
“You’re a profane vagabond!” I yelled at him.
“—and it’s not like you can knock her up.”
I wished that looks could kill at that moment, for my look of utter loathing would surely have shorn him in half. “I’m interested in a particular photograph I’m told you’re in possession of, and if this is the case, I’ll pay you one hundred more dollars for it.”
Zalen looked agape at my words, then flicked a hand at the girl, to shoo her back into the bedroom. “A hundred dollars, you say?”
“One hundred dollars.” Now I noticed what first appeared to be splotches of pepper inside the man’s elbows but my naivety wore off in a moment and told me they were needle scars. “My patience is growing thin, Mr. Zalen. Do you or do you not have a photograph of a writer by the name of Howard Phillips Lovecraft?”
For the first time Zalen actually smiled. The couch creaked when he sat down and crossed his thin, white legs. “I remember him, all right. Had a voice like a kazoo, and all the guy ever ate were ginger snaps.” He jumped up quickly, and slipped something from the bookcase. He showed it to me behind his gap-toothed smile.
It was a copy of the Visionary Publications edition of The Shadow Over Innsmouth.
I removed mine from my jacket pocket and showed him likewise.
“I didn’t think anybody even read that guy, but I’ll tell you, after this came out, a lot of folks did, and they weren’t too happy with what he had to say about our town. Most of Olmstead back then was moved down to Innswich Point, so the guy changes the name to Innsmouth. Christ. Changed all the names but only a little, you know? Like he wanted us to know what he was really writing about.”
“For God’s sake, Mr. Zalen,” I countered. “He merely used his topical impressions of this town as a setting for a fantasy story. You’re practically accusing him of libel. All writers do things like that.” I cleared my throat. “Now. Do you have the photograph?”
“Yeah, I got it, but only the negative. I can have it developed for you tomorrow.” His smile turned slatternly. “But I’ll take the hundred up front.”
I am not a man given to confrontation or brusqueness, but this I would not stand for. “You’ll take five dollars for processing fees, and the remaining ninety-five when I have what I want,” I told him and thrust him another five.
He took it all too eagerly. “Deal. Tomorrow, say four.” His eyes turned to cunning slits. “Who told you I had the picture?”
“A friend of mine,” I snapped. “A woman named Mary Simpson—”
An abruptitude pushed him back in his seat; he nearly howled. “Oh, now I get it! She’s a friend of yours, huh? I guess you’re not the goodie-two-shoes I pegged you as.”
I winced at the remark. “What on earth do you mean?”
“Mary Simpson used to be the town slut. Now, this town was full of sluts but Mary took the cake. She was a whore, Mr. Morley, a whore of the first water, as my grandfather used to say.”
“You’re lying,” I replied with immediacy. “You’re merely trying to incense me because you’re resentful of people with means. I see your frowsy smile, Mr. Zalen, but I’ve a mind to wipe it right off your face by canceling any further business with you and seeing my way out of this den of drugs and iniquity you call your home.”
“But you won’t do that, Mr. Morley, because guys like you always get what they want. You’ll be back tomorrow, and you’ll have the rest of the money. You just don’t want to know the truth.”
“And what truth is that?”
“Not too many years ago? Mary Simpson was the top dog dockside whore in all of Innswich. Christ, she’s had, like, eight or ten trick babies, man. She made a lot of money for me.”
Now it was my turn to smile at the bombast. “I’m supposed to believe you’re her panderer? Er, what do they call them now? Pimps?”
“Not is, was. About five years ago the bitch got all high-falutin’ on me.”
“I still don’t believe you. She enlightened me of her plight, regarding her husband who abandoned her. Certainly, the man was of less repute even than you.”
“Husband, Jesus.” He shook his head with the same grin. “If you believe that, you probably believed that War of the Worlds broadcast last October.”
Of course, I hadn’t believed a word of it; I’d read the book! But for what Zalen was inferring now? It’s just more of his loser’s game, I knew. “And now I suppose you’re going to tell me she was a drug addict, like you.”
“Naw, she never rode the horse, she was just crazy for cock.” He raised a brow. “Well, cock and money.”
“And this I’m supposed to take on the authority of a drug addict who would stoop so low as to sell pictures of innocent young pregnant women to degenerates.”
“There are a lot of ‘degenerates’ in the world, Morley. Supply and demand—there’s what your capitalism’s caused.” He looked directly at me. “You’d be surprised how many sick fellas there are out there who like to look at pregnant g
irls.”
“And you’re the purveyor—to support your narcotics habit, no doubt,” I snapped. “Without the supply, there becomes no demand, and then morality returns. But this will never happen as long as predators such as yourself remain in business. You sell desperation, Mr. Zalen, via the exploitation of the subjugated and the poverty-stricken.”
This seemed to ruffle a feather or two. “Hey, you’re just a rich pud, and you got no right to make judgments about people you don’t know. Not everybody’s got it easy like you do. The government’s building battleships for this new Naval Expansion Act while half the country’s starving, Mr. Morley, and while ten million people got no jobs. Redistribution of wealth is the only moral answer. What an apathetic military industrial complex forces me, or the girl in the back room, or Mary, or anyone else to do to survive is nothing you have the right comment on.”
An unwavering sorrow touched me with the self-admission that, on this particular point, he was correct. Perhaps that’s why his truth urged me to despise him all the more. Though obviously a proponent of Marx and Ingles, Zalen had quite accurately labeled me. A rich pud. I didn’t bother to point out my many acts of philanthropy; I’m sure an alienist in this day and age would diagnose my acts of charity as merely attempts to alleviate guilt. Eventually I replied, “I apologize for any such judgments, but for nothing else. Even if what you accuse Mary of is true, I could hardly blame her, for reasons you’ve already stated. I believe that she and millions of other downtrodden… and even you, Mr. Zalen, are essentially victims of an invidious environment.”
“Oh, you’re a real treat!” he laughed.
I knew I must not let him circumvent me, for that would only refresh my despair, in which case he would win. “I’m here for business regarding my pastime. Let us stick to that. I’ll also pay—say, five dollars apiece—for any quality photographs of this Innswich Point that you may have taken before the government renewal effort.”