Scott Nicholson Library Vol 1

by Scott Nicholson

  Ah, Richard, you try to fight me, to push me away like you do your wearisome little friends. Please, relax and enjoy yourself. Because your futility only makes you weaker.

  I appreciate this skin you have. Though I loathe you humans, I must say you experience a wide range of tactile pleasures. Your Loverboy knows what I’m talking about.

  Oh, yes, I’ve been here, longer than you think. Older than you think. And you have Virginia to thank. And yourself, of course. Or maybe you’d rather blame her instead of thank her.

  Remember your dream, that night of her death? The dream of transformation, of vapors?

  That was no dream. Reality is the pages you turn as you go forward.

  She almost trapped me, the little human bitch. Almost pulled me into the gray oblivion with her last selfless breath. I was so drunk on her pain, Richard, I can’t describe how rapturous it was, watching through her eyes as the razor whipped and her blood spiraled down into the shower drain and her heart beat itself senseless.

  I almost spiraled as well, twisted into entwined nothingness with her soul. As all my brethren have gone with others.

  Richard?

  Oh, I was afraid you were asleep. I hope I’m not boring you. Flashbacks are so seldom necessary, and they pull you from the plot of your life. Because you think you already know the ending and you see the pink light of dawn. Or perhaps the front door of hell swinging open to welcome you.

  Mister Milktoast is listening. Mister Milktoast is so concerned for you. It’s almost touching. But he cares only for his own survival, Richard.

  Wrong, you say?

  I know your Little People. I’ve been close to them for years. I’ve been a part of them. I am your Little People, and they are me.

  Little Hitler is watching now, his beady eyes burning from the depths of his dungeon. He is aroused by the promise of pain, whether it’s yours or his own.

  As for Loverboy, I understand his base desires. I have been many humans, whether you believe it or not. I rutted with him between the legs of that woman Beth, thrilled more by your distress than by Loverboy’s callous eroticism.

  Beth.

  Another name that brings you pain. Oh, you are a feast, Richard Allen Coldiron. I’ve worked you into a lather, and I haven’t even begun to shave into your past. I haven’t even begun to write my part, to bring myself fully onto the stage and into the spotlight.

  Hmm, what have we here?

  Richard.

  Tut, tut, tut.

  Tell me you didn’t. Not your own mother.

  Sure.

  I believe you.

  That wasn’t you. It never has been. Of course not. Always an excuse. Let’s blame Bookworm, shall we? He’s the mystery man, the heavy philosopher, the chronic headache. I despise your language, the one he celebrates so much. But it’s the only tool I have to link me with you, Richard. Without words, how would you be able to talk to yourself?

  But since we’re sharing secrets, here’s a little secret of mine: it’s always been you that I’ve wanted most. All of your little friends are just doormats to bring me closer to you. They are the supporting characters in your divine comedy. And the more they divide you, the greater my power. The more they dissect you, the deeper I dig into your soft bits.

  After all, as Mister Milktoast would say, “You are what you eat.”

  Well, Richard. I am what you have fed me. I am your monster. I am you.

  But I am others as well. I’ve looked out from under the thick brows of a Neanderthal as he beat his brother with a fallen branch. He didn’t know it was the first human use of tools. He only knew that murder was liberating. And I ate of his dim psychic fruit as he danced and growled over the glistening gray brains and shattered skull of his prey. Eventually, that host failed, but there was always the next, always another whose troubled spirit opened the door for me. Many times over, the cycle repeated itself in seasons of slaughter. As your race evolved into the mass madness you call civilization, my opportunities to invade multiplied.

  But even then, as my race infiltrated yours, we were losing, becoming weak as you searched for spiritual enlightenment and love.

  Love, yes, the greatest poison.

  But not universal among humans, as you well know. Wait. I am talking to you of “love.” Better to talk with a cow about the manufacture of non-dairy creamer.

  I developed a taste for the emotional banquet of war. I was at turns a Philistine, a Macedonian, an Aryan. I drew blood in the ranks of soldiers. Then I sought the minds of kings and experienced the delights of decimation.

  I was King David, reveling in ecstasy as his soldiers claimed enemy foreskins. I was Herod, working his mouth as he ordered the deaths of all first-born Jews. I was Caligula, taking his red pleasure with impunity.

  Those were glorious days, but still my race diminished.

  And at last I was alone.

  Alone in an alien world, forced to live on human terms.

  I’m an outsider as surely as you are, Richard. Perhaps we were meant for each other. Perhaps my journey was predestined to end here. But the journey has been sweet.

  I haunted the bones of Thorquegard, finding obscene satisfaction in torture as holy work. I was Vlad Dracula, thrilling to the sight of a thousand blank-eyed human heads mounted on spears. I was Gilles de Rais, beloved baron by day, child-torturer by night. I was Elizabeth Bathoray, bathing in the blood of virgins. I was a hundred, no, a thousand, others.

  Jack the Ripper, as the press so fondly called me when I wore the skin of Stephen Barrow. The original Hitler, not that pale shadow you harbor in your head, drunk on the hatred and genocide I inspired. Ed Gein, the heart-eater. Theodore Benton, whose fondest fantasy I helped fulfill by enticing him to have intercourse with his mother’s headless corpse.

  All of those, I bring to you. All of that exquisite madness, I now give to you. These treasures of my memories are now invested in you.

  What’s that, Mister Milktoast? “May they bear interest.” Cute. Especially since this is a book and we need to keep the reader engaged.

  Now, where was I?

  Such amusing myths emerged over the years, whispered around campfires or issued as threats to children. Demons, werewolves, vampires, nightwalkers. Names not dared to be spoken in darkness, such as Lucifer, Lilith, Hecate, Black Annis, Shiva. All because the human imagination cannot accept such horrors being committed by their own kind. All because humans are unwilling to see the dark shadow in the face of a friend or neighbor or even their own mirror.

  But you have looked, haven’t you? You are the mirror.

  So many years, so many rivers of blood, so many black oceans of despair. So many to kill, and so little time.

  And then I found Virginia. She was fertile, with her budding mental disorder and her flair for rebellion. She was tainted, vulnerable, self-pitying, full of hate. Thanks to her father’s repeated rapes, which I coaxed into him by planting a thousand dream-whispers in his sleeping head.

  She was a fountain of pain. She quenched me. But I could never make her kill. She proved too strong in the end.

  I believe she knew I was there, and why. She knew what I had planned for her. And she almost took me with her.

  But her final thought—her final act of hatred in a long life’s night of pain—her final thought was of you, Richard. And that thought set me free, just as it now further imprisons you.

  And you were begging for me. You drew me as surely as a corpse draws a fly. You, with all your little voices and puppet shows and mind games and self-delusions. You’ve been waiting for me all along.

  Don’t twist the sheets so. Don’t try to smother yourself with the pillow. Because this is your dream, Richard. This is your dream come true.

  You have made me what we are.

  Sometimes monsters are made, not born.

  Oh, Richard, do you really take me seriously? Are you so far gone that this makes sense to you? Do you accept the impossible? You’re actually leaving this in the story? An ancient s
oul-hopping entity that’s an excuse for whatever vile deeds you’ll commit in the chapters ahead?

  Wonderful. This truly is a match made in heaven and a wedding bell rung in hell. I knew I’d chosen well.

  I’ve got boots on. Let’s dance, shall we?

  (P.S. Me again. I told you he was a sucky writer, didn’t I?)

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  I mailed off the manuscript the next morning, hoping to be done with all, unable to face another page.

  At the Paper Paradise, I was pale and feverish, wearing my guilt like a shroud. Even the rows of books gave me no comfort. Miss Billingsly asked me if I was sick.

  “No, ma’am,” I said, my tongue thick in my mouth. I was ready to bite it if something tried to take it over and make it say bad things. “I just had a long night, that’s all.”

  “Insomnia, huh? You should have tried a dose of Samuel Pepys. It always works for me. Three pages of his diary and I’m sailing away to dreamland.”

  She said “dreamland” as if it were a theme park. My theme park would be a house of horrors, with no exit signs, full of fanged clowns and a lifetime gig as Donald Trump’s hairdresser.

  I went to the bathroom every half hour. I kept looking in the mirror, unable to shake the feeling that Shelley had met a stranger. Or an alien. My face was a sickly shade of green under the fluorescent light. My hair was even more of a brown shock than usual. I saw Father’s small and sharp nose and his rounded chin, the only inheritance he had passed down besides the Coldiron curse.

  My bloodless face made my brown eyes seem darker. They swam like storm puddles polluted with algae scum. I looked in my eyes for signs of the Little People. I searched for the Insider, seeing if its shadow really haunted my pupils. I saw only my murderer’s eyes.

  “All protagonists eventually give a descriptive look at their reflection,” Bookworm said. “That’s a trite romance-novel gimmick, Richard.”

  I slammed my fist against the sink, the sparks of pain sending Little Hitler out with his hungry tongue. “Shut the fuck up, Bookworm,” I said, knowing I had hurt his feelings but taking a sick leap of pleasure in it. I left the bathroom with my knuckles bleeding.

  Even bland Brittany noticed my anxiety. “Say, Richard,” she said, flipping back her hair in that way that Loverboy so admired. “You don’t seem to be your usual self.”

  My usual self. A borrowed thing.

  “A wild night with what’s-her-name? Your girlfriend, Beth?” she teased. Her eyes sparkled, eyes that reminded me of Beth’s. Something stirred to life inside me at the rush of pain.

  “I think I’m just coming down with the flu,” I mumbled. Even Bookworm couldn’t keep my mind on my work. He was off sulking in his room, somewhere up the stairs. To hell with him. The story was done, and I no longer needed him.

  “Maybe so,” Brittany said. “You don’t look so hot.”

  But you do, senorita, Loverboy said. Hotter than a two-dollar tamale and tighter than a Mexican mouse’s ear. Let me go south of your border and do a little cha-cha-cha.

  “I think I’d better go home,” I said, forcing myself to turn from her, trying not to dwell on the soft secrets under her clothes.

  Miss Billingsly let me leave early since it was Tuesday, one of the low-traffic days. Pulling my Subaru into my driveway, I wondered what my neighbors had been doing two nights ago. I wondered what I was doing two nights ago.

  No one saw us, Mister Milktoast said. Nor ax us. Not at awl.

  “Sharp,” I replied. “What were we doing that no one saw?”

  The thing that didn’t happen.

  Shelley.

  I opened the door. A faint rich smell in the air, ripe with the promise of dirt. It reminded me of the dead cat I had poked with a stick when I was a kid. I opened the door to the basement and stood for a minute, looking down the dark stairs. I knew terrible truths waited there. I needed to find out for myself. There could be no trusting the Little People on this one.

  Why was “truth” so sacrosanct? Why was it held above all, with nations built on its principle and lives lost in its pursuit?

  “Because you need to understand,” came that deep, chilling voice I hoped I’d never hear again. The voice that I wasn’t sure I had heard the first time.

  It commanded me down the stairs. I would have gone anyway. Bookworm’s curiosity throbbed bright and velvety behind my forehead, Little Hitler perched on my shoulder like a drug monkey.

  The Insider taunted me with each step.

  “You need to know, Richard…the plot thickens…see what I can make you do…if you don’t tell my story…so I can live forever.”

  On the bottom step, I was struck with a vision of such intensity that I was nearly driven to my knees.

  Shelley is looking through an aquarium, and I watch her face from the other side. Her features are swollen by refraction, her gray eyes wide and watery, her cheeks bulging in a distorted smile. A few faint freckles lay in sprinkles on her cheeks, but they are somehow obscene. Her eyes follow a yellow angelfish that is floating on its side at the top of the tank. Its fins are ragged and mossy. She laughs, coughing blue smoke into the room.

  Behind her head, a Magritte print hangs on the wall. A faceless man in a suit holds an umbrella.

  “I can give you all the flashbacks you need,” said the Insider, and I was back in the basement, sweat drying beneath my eyes.

  I stepped into the cool stale air. I felt the Little People morphing and dissipating. I felt...Shelley’s hair, soft and reddish brown, maddeningly fine. We are on my sofa. A Talking Heads CD is playing, and David Byrne’s panicky voice fills the room, singing something about babies. Shelley is giggling, a quiet, intimate sound. My hands are on her knees. Her dress has been pulled down a little at one shoulder, and the sight of alabaster skin brings Loverboy out, with Little Hitler right behind, and we reach up and caress the smooth gleaming moon of flesh...

  The darkness surrounded and swirled, a threat and comfort.

  ...the flesh is everything you’ve wanted, Richard. Everything I’ve MADE you want.

  I turned on the basement light, but still the darkness swarmed, the shadows crept, the eternal night held its breath in waiting. Across the cold concrete my feet moved, feet that marched to an odd and evil drum, the sound echoing off the cinder block walls. A cobweb that Mister Milktoast had overlooked hung in a corner of the ceiling. The trash can beckoned.

  I had to know, I needed to see if I’d finally lost, if what I’d suspected all along was really true: that there was nothing left of Richard Coldiron, that others had finally won, that Little Hitler and Mister Milktoast and Bookworm and Loverboy and the Insider were all real, and I was just some dream they had suffered on a feverish winter’s night, just some bit of metafiction crammed in the crumpled, handwritten pages of a yellow legal pad...

  Because if I did breathe and walk and hope and ache, then I would never...

  “...never make you do anything you don’t want to do,” I say to Shelley. Even though I’m drugged on passion, I know something is wrong. Beth’s face keeps flashing in my mind, Beth’s words keep repeating themselves, Beth’s laughter plays its music.

  “I’m not looking for a prince,” Shelley says, her breath hot and close and moist on my neck.

  Her arms are around me, pulling me hungrily toward her, but I am being pulled by my own hungers. Loverboy? He throbs impatiently. Little Hitler? Peering from the dark with squinted eyes. Bookworm? Curiously aware, analyzing sense and senses. Mister Milktoast? Watching the darkness behind, guarding against—

  Against the Insider.

  “I’m not usually like this,” I say, but my words are thick and distant, muffled in my own ears.

  “Shut up and kiss me,” Shelley says, and I am lost, I am Loverboy, then we’re both gone, swept away by a black current, and we watch as the new thing we’ve become...

  “Present tense for present tension,” said the Insider, as I reached my fingers toward the trash can lid. The stench was
stronger now, overripe and corrosively sweet.

  I muttered through tight teeth, “No. That wasn’t me, that—”

  “—that couldn’t have been you. Yes, yes, I’ve heard it all before, a thousand times. I’ve been in here, Richard. I know. Do you honestly believe this is your only heap of garbage? I’ve rummaged through your life, kicked through the closets of your memories, dusted off your broken toys, flipped through the ragged pages of your scrapbook. It’s never been you, has it? You’ve always been lucky enough to have someone to blame. And here I am. Your savior.”

  I wondered whose hand would lift the lid. The Insider answered my unspoken question.

  “Knowledge is power, my loyal host. You need to know. Bookworm wants to know. And Little Hitler wants you to see.”

  “And you? What about you, you black-hearted bastard?” I screamed. Mister Milktoast tried to hush me, but I didn’t care if the neighbors heard. “You’re the one who talks the big game, who says humans are the ones who brought evil into the world. You’re the one who sits back there all smug and superior, like some great dice jockey in the sky, telling me I deserve exactly what I roll in this life. You’re the one who needs to judge guilt or innocence, as if you’re beyond judgment. Ancient psychic predator, my ass.”

  The Insider laughed, a booming, rolling thunder of mirth that rumbled through the labyrinth of my back rooms.

  “Oh, Richard,” it said, its laughter finally dying away, leaving a dull ache in my temples. “Richard. Richard. Richard. You still don’t get it, do you?”

  “I only get what I deserve, right, Shit For Brains?”

  I touched the lid handle, my fingers tingling. I tried to lower my arm, but the muscles were locked and beyond my control. The Insider continued filling my brain with its slithery voice. “Let’s reason this out, Richard. You trust your Mister Milktoast, don’t you?”

  “How do I know it’s him, and not another one of your tricks? I mean, how do I know I’m not just fooling myself? You might have gone back to the beginning, mixed things around, made him up from scratch for your own plot purposes.”