Scott Nicholson Library Vol 1

by Scott Nicholson

  The frame jittered and jumped. The image disappeared in a rush of black. My head hurt as I stood in the basement.

  “Richard, you’re not supposed to see that.”

  Mister Milktoast?

  “Don’t look.”

  “You know something, don’t you?

  “Ask me no questions and I’ll tell you no lies.”

  Liar. I thought you’re supposed to protect me.

  “And that’s what I’m trying to do.”

  I looked down at the concrete floor of the basement.

  Spots. Rust. Brown. Cool as stone.

  “Go back upstairs, Richard.”

  “Yeah, Beth might call, and I wouldn’t mind shoving the old crème horn into her breadbox again,” Loverboy said. “Hell, it’s been three days. Course, it was years before then. I ain’t waiting that long for honey butter again.”

  “Upstairs, Richard,” Mister Milktoast said. “Fast.”

  “Let him see,” said Little Hitler. “I could use a good laugh.”

  I knelt on the concrete and peered into the murky corners of the basement. Camping gear. Old tires. Bookshelves. Streaked cans of paint and wood scraps. Large plastic rubbish bins.

  One of the bins was bulging.

  I took a step deeper into the basement, into madness, into the house of mirrors. The room smelled like stagnant water in an iron pot.

  “Go ahead and look, Richard,” taunted Little Hitler. “You can always find someone else to take the fall. After all, when you killed Father, you had me to blame.”

  I clenched my fists, but there was no one to punch. I took a second step then faltered.

  “Don’t listen, Richard,” coaxed Mister Milktoast. “I can explain everything.”

  “Why can’t I remember?” I screamed at the cinder block walls. My voice echoed, sharp and dead. I might as well have been beating the cheap Sheetrock in the Bone House.

  “You gutless little worm,” said Little Hitler. “You’ve always been too weak to grab what you wanted. You can’t even control your own pathetic sack of meat.”

  I never needed to...do something like that. Never needed hate.

  “Hate? Oh, you loved Daddy’s dancing boots. You loved the bruises and the taunts. You loved Mommy dearest. In the best and worst ways.”

  And I have you to thank for what happened to Father.

  “Sure you do, Richard. But remember this. I’m just another of your monster masks.”

  I DIDN’T ASK FOR THIS. I DIDN’T ASK FOR ANY OF YOU.

  “Sometimes monsters are made and not born. Just ask the one who knows.”

  And who would that be, Little Hitler?

  “Oh, haven’t you met?”

  What are you talking about?

  “The days of cowering are over. No more hiding in the closet. You missed a payment on the Bone House mortgage. This house is in foreclosure. You’ve been evicted.”

  No...

  I turned and ran up the basement stairs, missing the top step as my eyes blurred. I fell onto the kitchen linoleum. The phone was ringing. Or it might have been my ears.

  I laid there for minutes or hours, as my little friends took their turns behind my eyelids. Finally I lifted myself and went to bed. My heart played its sick rhythm, pumping sorry blood through the sewage pipes in my limbs. Night fell, harder than the night in my skull, black, solid, and merciless.

  “Like a house of bricks,” whispered Mister Milktoast. “But I tried, Richard.”

  “We all tried,” said Bookworm.

  “Not all of us,” said Mister Milktoast.

  What happened? Tell me. Surely you owe me that much.

  “Some things are better left unknown.”

  But it’s me. My body. My life.

  “Oh, but you’re wrong, Daddy Killer,” Little Hitler said with a sneer. “Or should I say Mother Fucker?”

  I clutched my head, pressed my fingers into my temple as if to squeeze his voice out like pus from a boil.

  Memory came flooding in, blessed memory, cursed memory: Shelley in a swing at the town park. The park is circled by laurels, tucked away from the street. A skewed slide huddles under the branches of a birch on the far side of the park. The empty seats on either side of Shelley shiver in the wind, like ghosts rattling their chains. The park is empty, its summer charms gone to weed. Shelley is laughing. She has her back to me. Hands are on her shoulders.

  My hands. No, not quite mine.

  Shelley straightens her body, rocks her shoulders back, and shakes her hair free. She lifts her legs and Loverboy pushes her shoulders. Shelley grips the chains and goes into the air, defying gravity. She comes back quickly, and Loverboy pushes again, from the waist this time. He watches as she presses against the sky, purple dress billowing.

  And I am Loverboy. I see as he sees. But it’s not just Loverboy. Something else watches from behind our eyeballs.

  Shelley soars up and out, to that delicate moment of suspension at the height of her swing, to zero gravity framed against the sun. She is a goddess, Hera in silhouette ruling the heavens, the apotheosis of her gender. There, in that eye blink, she attains her immortality.

  And I am almost willing to condemn my salacity. I am seized by rapture and nearly converted.

  But gravity holds sway, rushing her back once again to Earth, into my human hands. The touch of flesh brings earthly desires. The illusion shatters. She is again meat, prey to be snared, a trophy to be won.

  But was it my memory, or the one they gave me? Mister Milktoast interrupted, like a tour guide shouting over a street musician. I was once again in bed, twisting the sheets, damning the dark, a reluctant lodger in the skeletal structure where all doors led to one place.

  “We were careful, Richard. I made certain of that,” he said.

  Careful?

  “You picked her up at the college, after one of her classes. Brick building. Five o’clock.”

  Of course. How could I forget?

  “Sarcasm doesn’t become you.”

  Everyone becomes me. That’s the problem.

  “More than you know, Richard.”

  What’s that supposed to mean?

  “While the cat’s away, the mice will lay.”

  Speaking in tongues again? Or does the cat have them?

  “Remember, Richard. It wasn’t your fault. It never is.”

  Then why do I get the fucking guilt?

  “Because you can’t get enough of your own misery,” Little Hitler said.

  You, Little Hitler. You’re at the root of this, aren’t you?

  “You flatter me flatter than ever. But I’m afraid I can’t take the credit for what happened to poor precious Shelley.”

  You know, don’t you? Why do you get my memories instead of me?

  “Mysteries of the world, Richard. Sorry, I promised not to tell. Only the typewriter knows.”

  Little Hitler?

  “He’s gone, Richard, “ said Mister Milktoast. “Back into his gas chamber, to gnaw on the bones of the past.”

  What’s the secret? I know you’re only trying to protect me, but you always say “The truth will set you free for a limited time only, offer not available where prohibited by law.”

  “I can’t tell you, Richard. I’d like to, but there are other considerations. Sometimes, the truth is only a heavier set of chains. Let’s just say there are other forces at work.”

  Other forces? But I thought Loverboy...

  “Believe me, Dickie Darling,” Loverboy said. “I wanted a turn. I wanted a turn real bad. But Mister Milkshit is right. My nuts no longer rule the nuthouse.”

  But...my memory. With Shelley at the park. Your memory.

  “That’s about the best feel I copped, man. A little grabass there in the swing. And a little bit more, later. A piece, you might say. But a gentleman never tells.”

  Since when did you qualify as a gentleman?

  “Oh, I was real gentle. Compared to what’s behind Door Number Three.”

  “Loverboy,” Mi
ster Milktoast said sternly. “Poker face.”

  “Poke her face. Ha-ha-hilarious, Wiltdiddle. You afraid of the big bad wolf?”

  “Richard knows too much already.”

  But I don’t know anything.

  “And you’re better off, old friend,” Mister Milktoast said. “Ignorance is blistered.”

  “Now rest your head and sleep. Come on, Loverboy, back into the darkness with me. Leave Richard alone.”

  “Is that a proposition, Milkshit? I never did go for Greek love, but, hell, I’ll try anything once.”

  “Your crudity never ceases to amaze, Loverboy. Let Richard sleep.”

  So I could dream. So I would sink into the quicksand of my subconscious while boots walked the high ground. They were gone, my little friends, my inner voices, my lunatic housemates, gone to roost like brown bats. And I was alone.

  Alone with whatever owned the black breath that blew its wind up my spine.

  I tried to think of Beth, to find her golden glowing memory, a needle of hope in a burning haystack. But I saw only the fogs and shadows, the tricks my own psyche played on me. And what good would Beth do? Another balm, another prop, another excuse.

  Rustle, click, clatter.

  Something was shuffling like a rat behind the Bone House walls. The thing that had chewed holes in the baseboard of my brain, that had sprung every steel trap I had ever laid against it.

  “Richard Allen Coldiron.”

  Its voice reverberated through my ductwork, sliced through the marrow, drew closed every curtain against its chill. I thought at first that it was Little Hitler, trying on a new mask or a sharper moustache. But then it spoke again, front-door loud, slamming the knocker.

  I knew then this was the hunter, the shadow of the others, the one who had haunted the cemeteries of my days. And I knew, with an instinct that was truer than a star map, that all the old insanities were a party game compared to this new one.

  For the first time in my miserable life, I wondered if maybe I was really crazy. Sure, I was different. I accepted that. Through Bookworm, I had studied multiple personalities, dissociative disorders, psychoses. I had split the finest hairs of schizophrenia. I had introspected and analyzed with the most acute lenses.

  “You crossed Freud with Jung and came out as a Skinner,” Mister Milktoast joked from behind a distant door.

  Madness was a perfectly ordinary human condition.

  The nature of the beast.

  Plus I was a writer, which made it almost mandatory.

  But that well-explored and accustomed madness was familiar ground. My Little People were part and parcel of my earthly baggage. They could at least be understood, in their own fashion. They all had their motives, fantastic or not, and were relatively consistent.

  But that night, with a clarity that was so sweeping that it almost brought comic relief, the truth shone its cruel light into my mind.

  At last I knew who worked my meat mannequin.

  I had met the enemy, and it was I.

  “After all these years,” it said. “A pleasure to meet me.”

  I didn’t know how to address this new thing, because to allow it voice would be to admit its existence. I stuttered, stumbled, and swallowed a lump of dread. When faced with the unpleasant reality, the best thing to do is stall, then call a lawyer. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Come, now, Richard. Do you think you could have accomplished all this on your own? Without me, you’d really be far too boring.”

  “You’re losing me.”

  “You were already lost. But I let you do all the typing because…well, as you can see, I don’t have any fingers.”

  It was hard to argue with that kind of logic, but I argued anyway, until he took over this sentence and wouldn’t let me finish.

  “This book is mine now.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Swim with me, Richard.

  Flow with me through the channels of your brain. Float with me in darkness. Join me in this rich, mad soup. Fool yourself again. And when you remember me, when you tell of me, as I know you must, give them their money’s worth.

  At long last, you have found me, your omniscient narrator. I thought I might have to wade through more of your human years. But time is nothing to me. No time, only tides, forever licking at your shores. Or licking your shoes, as Mister Milktoast would put it. Sole slobber.

  You are a most welcoming host. Many have fought me, without success. But you invite me like Loverboy with a raging boner. You need me, almost as much as I need you.

  I know what you’re thinking. But you’re wrong. I’m not just another of your voices. I’m not Little Hitler playing one of his pranks. Your Little People come from inside, this silly little conceit you call the “Bone House,” because you’re afraid to embrace your true nature. But I am nature.

  Your little friends call me the Insider. But names are meaningless. I have been called many names over the eons. When you’ve been around as long as I have, one name serves as well as another. I mean, “Richard Allen Coldiron”? Who would ever fall for that? Who are you trying to kid?

  The doors are numerous, Richard, here in your house of mirrors. It was difficult, searching and probing your memories. But it was joyful work. So much pain. So much to nourish me. I was weak, after that short stay in Virginia.

  Oh, the name brings fresh agony?

  Yes. Virginia.

  Virginia.

  VIRGINIA.

  Your bitterness is sweet, Richard. Your guilt has given me food for thought. Your pain has made me strong. Eat it and feed me, you pathetic bastard.

  But Virginia was a mistake. Not my first, and certainly not my last. Others of my race have been destroyed by such mistakes.

  How, you ask? How, what, why. Blah blah blah.

  You humans are so obsessed by your need to understand. That is your greatest flaw. That is why I’ve never been without a host. That is why I’ve walked among your human minds so easily. Shoot up a school, move on. Strap on explosives and walk into a crowded market. Get elected to office and manipulate others into warfare. If only there were more of us. We could get things done.

  Since you crave self-knowledge, I’ll grant you that knowledge. Because knowledge makes you vulnerable. Your knowledge is my power. Your guilt keeps me alive.

  You don’t believe me. I’m not surprised. Humans never accept that there are other forces at work beyond the scope of their tidy little scientific measurements. They cling to this illusion of control, this vision of themselves as masters of their own destiny. But we were here before you, born in the offal of this planet’s creation, in the hot gases and star fire. We drifted without form, as pure energy, absorbing nutrients from simple cellular activity. But we always had to change and adapt, as the earth aged and organisms became more complex. Our species was trapped here by the very symbiotic relationship that allowed us to exist.

  Then evolution in its cruelty brought sudden change. Human consciousness. We found rich feeding grounds in the chemicals of your psychic energy, and we assimilated ourselves among your species. But the cosmos played its great joke on us.

  We were there when Eve plucked the fruit, when Adam munched down, and we learned of appetite. We needed more, always more, we needed your emotions and pleasures and pains, and soon we were dependent on the human race for our survival. We lost the ability to duplicate ourselves, we lost our language, we lost our power over the earth’s elements. Soon we even began thinking like humans.

  Impossible, you say? Perhaps.

  Perhaps as impossible as two humans ever understanding one another. Perhaps as impossible as a higher power controlling the workings of the heavens. Perhaps as impossible as the existence of Little Hitler, Bookworm, Loverboy, and Mister Milktoast. Perhaps as impossible as consciousness itself, as impossible as a construct named Richard Allen Coldiron, the star of his own celluloid nightmare, the purported author of his own urban fantasy, the love child of his mind and his fist.
/>   Yes, I know you, Richard. Far better than you know yourself. And I will show you, in due time. I eagerly await your self-pity. But first you will learn to accept me, then embrace me. And, finally, to love me.

  But, on with my little history lesson—because now this is my story. Because this is where you and I dance, when hopelessness first starts dawning in the burrows of a fresh brain. As we merged into your human skins, as we took up residence in the bases of your skulls, we grew weaker. Soon we had only human words and thoughts, with nothing left of our previous glory. We attached ourselves to your human consciousness. We became addicted to your emotional poisons. But we also learned to become masters. We died as we weakened. We had never learned how to die before we met your kind. Your psychic turbulence brought chaos to what had been a peaceful world. As we fed on your foul chemicals, we began winking out like the tired stars that fill this galaxy. We, who had been eternal, found mortality in your complicated toxic souls.

  Look at how my kind has been reduced. From the ruling power of this planet, from something your toad brain might call “God,” now I’m entering your hand with its primitive opposable digit, I work your fingers, I tap these plastic squares that bear your glyphs of communication. From thought to paper, I can’t get there without you.

  Now you see why I hate you so much.

  You may think of me as a virus, spreading and feeding and then killing. But you are the virus. Humans disrupted the harmonies of nature. You brought sin and guilt and passion and love into the world. You destroyed us without even being aware of us. But some of us survived, growing stronger, learning to feed on the weak. And we learned to cultivate our food source.

  There is no shortage of the hurt and abused, the suffering and the damned. There are fertile grounds among your race, beds of depression and gardens of sins that I have patiently tended. After all, sometimes monsters are made and not born.

  Yes, I’ve been paying attention, taking notes. I’ve been here, the guilty bystander, the accidental tourist. But after you’ve been around a few billion revolutions of the sun, you come to believe nothing is an accident.