Crackpot Palace

by Jeffrey Ford

  That night, Kaufmann slept slumped over his desk, pistol in hand, and dreamt of a time before the politicians in the capital had succumbed to a disease of avarice and sapped all of Grindly’s resources for themselves. Once it had been known far and wide as “The Nexus of Manufacture,” a gleaming machine of commerce where traffic filled the streets, faces filled the windows, nobody ate cabbage who didn’t want to, and the inspector had a police force, enough bullets, and a paycheck. Again, in his sleep, he watched the city slowly rot from the inside out, and eventually stood on the platform at the station waving forlornly as even the petty criminals left town.

  While Kaufmann dozed, Daddy was busy, slipping silently through the shadows. He could smell the terror of the populace, a sweet flower scent that drove his hunger. The music played on the strands of web behind his eyes directed his purpose, negating distraction, as he shuffled up a wall, found an unlocked window, and let the breeze in.

  His first victim of that night was the pale and beautiful actress Monique LeDar, who still performed, nightly, one-woman shows of the classics, although the stage was lit by candles and squirrels scampered amid the rafters. She awoke in the midst of Daddy’s feeding, and he saw her seeing herself in the myriad reflections of his eyes. He stopped, tipped his hat, and continued. She put her wrist to her forehead and perished.

  The Gazette had the story in its late-morning edition the next day—“Daddy’s Dozen,” read the headline. At the end of the lead article that gave a list of the drained and the grisly condition in which each was found, there was printed a formal plea from Inspector Kaufmann for volunteers to help track the killer. That evening, he stood on the sidewalk in front of the Hall of Justice, a mausoleum of an old marble structure, dark and empty inside save for his office. The last set of batteries in the flashlight had died, so, instead, he held, like a torch, out in front of him, a small candelabra with three burning tapers. He’d been waiting for over an hour for the mob of volunteers to form in order to begin the hunt, but as it was, he stood alone. Taking the gun from his shoulder holster, he was about to strike out on his own when an old woman in a kerchief and a long camel hair winter coat hobbled slowly up to him.

  “Can I help you, ma’am?” asked the inspector.

  “I volunteer,” she said.

  He laughed. “This is dangerous work, my dear. We’re after a cold-blooded killer.”

  The old woman opened her pocketbook and took out a blackjack. She waggled the tube of stitched leather with lead in the tip at Kaufmann’s face.

  “That’s an illegal weapon,” he said.

  “Arrest me,” she said and spat on the sidewalk.

  The avenues and side streets of Grindly were empty. Even the drunks stayed home in fear of being drunk themselves. It was slow going and just as lonely for Kaufmann with Mrs. Frey in tow. He’d barely gotten the woman’s name out of her. She followed five steps behind, not so much his posse as a haunting spirit. He respected her courage, her sense of civic duty, but found her quiet wheezing and the rhythmic squish of her galoshes incredibly annoying, and wondered how long it would be before he used his last bullet on either her or himself.

  It was dinnertime in the city that never woke, the scent of boiled cabbage, the skittering of rats along the gutters. Occasionally, there was a lighted window and the distant, muffled sound of a radio or a child’s glee or an argument, but for the most part Kaufmann and his deputy passed down empty streets of boarded storefronts and burned-out brownstones where the echo of the wind sounded like laughter in the shadows.

  It was dinnertime for Daddy as well, and he moved along the rooftops, keenly aware of the warm spots in the cold buildings beneath, heat signatures of those who might find themselves on his menu. He was hunting for the essence of the young. His last kill of the previous night had been Tharshmon the watchmaker, a man made old by lack of work and self-respect. No one any longer cared to know the time in Grindly. It was better left unmentioned when the future arrived. As dozens of pocket watches chimed in Tharshmon’s studio at three A.M., Daddy had interceded without a struggle. The bereft watchmaker’s fluid was overripe, though, insipidly sweet and watery. It gave no energy but bruised the will and loosened the bowels.

  Daddy skittered down the side of a four-story apartment building. At the lighted window on the third floor, he settled upon the fire escape. With his face to the glass, he saw two young children dressed in their pajamas, playing in a bedroom. He tried the window, but it was locked. He tapped at the glass with one long nail. Their big pink faces drew close to see him, and even before they undid the latch, his system was creating the chemical needed to digest their juices. He had learned it wasn’t helpful to let them see him drool.

  At the same moment, three blocks away, Inspector Kaufmann was passing the Water Works. He turned and peered back up the sidewalk to see Mrs. Frey’s bent form inching along through the weak glow of the block’s one working streetlight. He set the candelabra on the ground, holstered his gun, and took out his last cigarette. He’d traded a pair of official police handcuffs, with key, for the pack it came from. Leaning down, he lit it on the flame of the center candle. He was cold and tired, and every scrap of newspaper that rolled in the wind or bat that darted out of a blasted window momentarily paralyzed him with fear. He took a drag and heard Mrs. Frey’s galoshes drawing closer.

  The old woman had nearly caught up and there was still a good half of a cigarette left when he heard a desperate scream come from off to his right. “Shit,” he said, flicked the unfinished butt into the gutter, drew his pistol, and ran across the street. There he entered an alley, and ran through the dark, avoiding piles of broken furniture and old garbage. The alley gave way to another street and then another alley, and when he was almost winded, there was again a shrill scream and he saw a woman at an open window three stories up. “My babies,” she wailed. Kaufmann scanned the sides of the buildings for Daddy. He heard something move amid the trash, and caught a darker spot in the darkness out of the corner of his eye. As he lifted the gun, something wet and sticky smacked him in the face. He fired blindly.

  By the time Kaufmann had wiped the web from his eyes, Daddy was gone, the distraught mother above had spotted the inspector and was yelling for his assistance, and behind him, Mrs. Frey, pocketbook on her wrist, the candelabra in her right hand, the blackjack in her left, shuffled inexorably closer. The inspector dropped the gun and ran away.

  Daddy sat atop the smokestack of the abandoned Harris Electric Loom Mill, nursing the wound to his leg where the bullet had grazed his calf. The spider in his head unhooked the strings that sent pain, and then nestled back into the center of things, half high from the effects of the rich essence of youth. His imagination took off and he plucked the silver strands, composing as he played, spinning a web of an idea. “Herd them,” Daddy said in a voice that cracked and clicked. The spare scattered pattern of the lights of Grindly required design.

  Exhausted from running, Inspector Kaufmann leaned against the coral facade at the entrance to Grindly Station. His own thoughts were as scattered as Daddy’s were inspired. Against what would have normally been his better judgment, he chose to believe that for some reason the train would, that night, stop at the platform and take him aboard. He hurried on so as not to miss it. His quick footsteps echoed across the wide rotunda and he passed through another set of doors into the dome that held the station platform. He was surprised to find himself the only passenger.

  Kaufmann cupped his hand behind his ear and cocked his head toward the track in order to check for vibrations of the coming train. He thought he felt the merest rumble deep in his chest. After listening for a long time, all he really heard was the sound of water dripping. It interfered with the anticipation of escape. Then he realized it wasn’t water dripping, but more a tapping. It stopped and then started again. He looked up at the inner dome and froze.

  In an eyeblink, Daddy leaped down on a forty-foot thread of web and stood before Kaufmann. Mandibles clicked together a
nd Daddy did a bad job of hiding the drool. From some forgotten byway of his brain, the inspector’s years of experience on the streets of Grindly engaged. He made a fist and swung with everything he had. The punch hit the mark, cracking the left lens of Daddy’s rose-colored glasses and sending him stumbling backward a few feet. The inspector didn’t know whether to flee or continue to attack, and in the empty moment of his indecision, he definitely heard the train coming.

  He made a move toward Daddy with fists in the air, but his nemesis twirled with insect precision and speed and clipped Kaufmann under the chin with a foot that struck like the tip of a bullwhip. The inspector was almost brought to his knees by the blow, but instead of going down he righted himself and backed off. Blood trickled from the side of his mouth. The train was louder now, and a faint light could be seen filling the tunnel. He looked down and saw that the backs of his heels were off the edge of the platform. He put his fists up and kept them moving.

  When Daddy took one long-legged step to the left, Kaufmann saw salvation. The roar of the approaching train filled the tunnel and set the entire platform vibrating so that it was impossible to hear the squish of Mrs. Frey’s galoshes. She inched up upon Daddy from behind, the candelabra glimmering, the blackjack waggling in her grip. Kaufmann threw a flurry of jabs to distract the arachnid, and the old woman lifted the leather club as high as she could. The locomotive entered the station but didn’t slow.

  In the reflection of rushing windows, Daddy detected treachery. He spun in a blur, his mandibles severing Mrs. Frey’s neck with a swift clip, like cutting a rose. From the hole in his trousers, he shot a blast of web at Kaufmann. It happened so quickly that the inspector could only stand motionless as the strand of sticky thread wrapped twice around his neck. The web’s long tail was pulled in by the rush of the passing train and affixed itself to the handle on the back door of the caboose. Kaufmann was jerked off the platform by the neck, and flew behind the train. The last thing he saw in Grindly was the mosaic face of God. Mrs. Frey’s head hit the platform then and spat.

  The next evening, in an abandoned warehouse by the docks, Daddy stood in total darkness, emitting high-pitched squeals that called all the natural spiders of Grindly to him. When he felt their delicate heaving presence surrounding him, he clicked and blzz’d out his plan. He gave instruction on rethreading the human brain. He spoke of the ear and the path to take, warning of cul-de-sacs. “A quarter pound of fly meat for every human restrung,” he promised. Spirits were high, but, later, when they returned to him for payment, he gleefully crushed them beneath his slippers.

  By the time he got done with Grindly, the city shone and ran like one of Tharshmon’s pocket watches. Everything moved as if to music. It became for Daddy a web of human thread. “Purpose without a point,” he often reminded his human electorate, and they tacitly nodded. He continued to feed at night, roaming the rooftops and alleyways, leaving old luggage indiscriminately in his wake. People showed him smiles during the day, but, still, no one wanted to meet him in the dark. The reconfiguration of their brain patterns didn’t eliminate terror, only their ability to react to it. “Fear and Industry” was Daddy’s motto and it took him far.

  After the train was again making scheduled stops at the station, Daddy boarded with a ticket to the capital one evening. He never returned to Grindly, but instead bit into the larger politics of the Realm and kept eating in a spiral pattern until he reached the center of everything. There, he made himself a nest.

  A Note About “Daddy Longlegs of the Evening”

  I stole the title for this story from the title of the Salvador Dalí painting, Daddy Longlegs of the Evening—Hope! I’d gone to a Dalí retrospective some years ago at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. It was a great show. They really had the goods, and it was all topped off in a dark last room by Dalí’s hologram of Alice Cooper. Dalí’s Daddy painting is one of those melt jobs, with weird figures draped on tree branches and ants crawling all over. A cool painting. But in the same show there was a drawing he had done, which I’m afraid I’ve never been able to find again in order to corroborate the title, of a guy with long, long legs, running. He’s wearing a tall hat and maybe a scarf. Unless I’m just making this up in my mind, I think the figure was also wearing circular glasses. Seeing this image and thinking about the title of the painting gave rise to the idea of my Daddy—a boy transformed into a spidery monster. Once the image of my character came to mind, it morphed in my imagination into a figure from the old Fleischer brothers cartoons (Betty Boop, Coco the Clown, etc.) where the entire world could, at the drop of a dime, come to anthropomorphic life. One of the best compliments I’ve gotten as a fiction writer came from reading this story for the MFA students at the Stone Coast Writing program in Maine. Jim Kelly told me that one of his students, after hearing the reading, asked him—“Is he allowed to do that?”

  Permissions

  “Introduction” by Jeffrey Ford. Copyright © 2012 by Jeffrey Ford.

  “Polka Dots and Moonbeams” first published in Stories: All-new Tales. Copyright © 2010 by Jeffrey Ford.

  “Down Atsion Road” first published in Haunted Legends. Copyright © 2010 by Jeffrey Ford.

  “Sit the Dead” first published in Teeth: Vampire Tales. Copyright © 2011 by Jeffrey Ford.

  “The Seventh Expression of the Robot General” first published in Eclipse Two. Copyright © 2008 by Jeffrey Ford.

  “86 Deathdick Road” first published in The Book of Dreams. Copyright © 2010 by Jeffrey Ford.

  “After Moreau” first published in Clarkesworld Magazine. Copyright © 2008 by Jeffrey Ford.

  “The Hag’s Peak Affair” first published in Portents. Copyright © 2011 by Jeffrey Ford.

  “The Coral Heart” first published in Eclipse Three. Copyright © 2009 by Jeffrey Ford.

  “The Double of My Double Is Not My Double” first published in Eclipse Four. Copyright © 2011 by Jeffrey Ford.

  “Daltharee” first published in The Del Rey Book of Fantasy and Science Fiction. Copyright © 2008 by Jeffrey Ford.

  “Ganesha” first published in The Beastly Bride. Copyright © 2010 by Jeffrey Ford.

  “The Dream of Reason” first published in Extraordinary Engines. Copyright © 2008 by Jeffrey Ford.

  “Every Richie There Is” first published in Puerto Del Sol. Copyright © 1993 by Jeffrey Ford.

  “The War Between Heaven and Hell Wallpaper” first published in Interfictions 2. Copyright © 2009 by Jeffrey Ford.

  “Relic” first published in The Thackery T. Lambshead Cabinet of Curiosities. Copyright © 2011 by Jeffrey Ford.

  “Glass Eels” first published in New Jersey Noir. Copyright © 2011 by Jeffrey Ford.

  “The Wish Head” copyright © 2012 by Jeffrey Ford.

  “Weiroot” first published in Weird Tales. Copyright © 2009 by Jeffrey Ford.

  “Dr. Lash Remembers” first published in Steampunk II: Steampunk Reloaded. Copyright © 2010 by Jeffrey Ford.

  “Daddy Long Legs of the Evening” first published in Naked City: Tales of Urban Fantasy. Copyright © 2011 by Jeffrey Ford.

  About the Author

  JEFFREY FORD is the author of three previous story collections and eight previous novels, including the Edgar® Award–winning The Girl in the Glass and the Shirley Jackson Award–winning The Shadow Year. A former professor of writing and early American literature, Ford now writes full-time in Ohio, where he lives with his wife. You can follow him on LiveJournal at jeffford2010.livejournal.com or on Facebook at www.facebook.com/JeffreyFord888.

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  Praise for Jeffrey Ford

  “[Ford’s] writing is both powerful and disturbing in the best possible way.”

  —io9

  “Jeffrey Ford is one of the few writers who uses wonder instead of ink in his pen. Some writers, if they are very good, have a reader going ‘Oh!’ every few pages for one reason or another. It is a rare a
nd wonderful talent, and Ford has it in spades.”

  —Jonathan Carroll, author of The Wooden Sea

  “His fiction shares the visual clarity and precision of Roald Dahl’s work, but without the ugliness of Dahl’s inventions. . . . Ford’s sentimental, exalted prose demands more than one reading.”

  —Washington Post Book World

  “A talent to be reckoned with.”

  —Pittsburgh Tribune

  “Jeffrey Ford is a fascinatingly unconventional writer.”

  —Locus

  Praise for THE SHADOW YEAR

  “The Shadow Year takes the shape of a mystery (who is Mr. White, and what is he up to?), but it also has supernatural elements (especially Mary/Mickey’s ability to influence actual events by moving around those clay figures in the basement), while at the same time it scrutinizes its pivotal family with almost sociological rigor. . . . Doomed though it may be, Botch Town is one of the most enthralling places I’ve visited in a long time.”

  —Washington Post Book World

  “Ford keeps the reader turning pages at a rapid pace, trying to separate event from illusion as three kids with an absent father and a mother whose heart is permanently out to lunch come to grips with the enemy. Better yet, he finishes off The Shadow Year with a surprise you won’t likely see coming. And to make a good book even better, the real drama is seeing how kids whose parents are too preoccupied to notice can survive—and triumph.”