“Is that your boyfriend?” I said, watching Ted’s mass of curly hair bob over the crowd like a frayed basketball.
“So what if it is? Jesus, did you think we’d be going steady or some corny high school crap like that?”
“I can’t deny my feelings.”
“Richard, I like spending time with you. I like what we did...what you did to me. I would see you again just for that, if nothing else. But I’m warning you, I’m a player.”
“Player?” I didn’t want to tell her, but I was a one-man clusterfuck. She could cheat on me without ever leaving the bed. Loverboy and Little Hitler would make sure of that, and the Insider was sure to get its jollies.
“I like to get around. I told you that. I’m not ready for anything serious.”
“You said love—no, pardon me, I didn’t mean to use that word—you said good things take time.”
“I also said good things are worth waiting for. And good things are worth a little risk. And probably a dozen other stupid little things. That’s bedroom talk, you dummy. You should try it sometime, you might get lucky more often.”
The sun threw shadows from the sky plow across Beth’s face. Her eyebrows scrunched, and her fine cheeks were tight. Something stirred inside me. I hoped, grimaced, tried to fight, but the door opened and Loverboy walked out on the porch and stretched, enjoying the view.
“The oven’s warm,” he said, working my lips. “Why not let Loverboy be your bakerman and tart your pastries?”
“Richard, I honestly can’t believe you. I thought you wanted to talk. Can’t we leave sex out of it?”
“I want to put sex in it,” he said. I could only watch, horrified, from the living room of the Bone House while Mister Milktoast and Bookworm conspired over a pun involving “King Lear.”
Beth turned away. Loverboy put his/my/our hand on Beth’s knee and squeezed the flesh that spread so temptingly under her denim jeans, sweet as a sausage in its casing or ready-to-bake cookie dough in a plastic sleeve. Beth grabbed Loverboy’s hand and pushed it away.
“This is getting awkward,” she said.
“Or aardvark,” Mister Milktoast said. That little fellow needed to get out more often.
“You can’t change me.”
She didn’t know that her life had already changed. It had changed the moment the Insider had used Loverboy to lure her into the pasture. She had mistaken the lush green for an idyllic playground. But the fences were closing in, the barbed wire was encircling, the butcher was sharpening its steel.
Fatted calves, Mister Milktoast noted, seconded by Loverboy.
“I wouldn’t want you to be anything but Beth,” said Bookworm.
“Good. Then let me breathe.”
Breathe. Live. Hope. Yes, do all those things. So Richard can see how human you are. So Richard can feel for you. So Richard can care. So Richard can la-la-la . . . you know.
It was the Insider, flexing its dark majesty. No longer was the Insider content merely to direct from the wings. Now it wanted to act, to wear its meat, to walk the human stage, the Orson Welles of spiritual possession.
I cringed as the Insider reached out and brushed a hand under Beth’s chin. It grinned, black and cold, letting me wallow in its cruel dominance.
Its hunger lingered and tingled, a sweet passion that was all the sweeter for being delayed. And my helplessness hit me like hammer strokes, a thousand Lilliputians crawling my skin, but I seized control of my tongue and spat a Gulliver’s roar.
“Go away,” I shouted at the Insider.
“I am, Richard,” Beth said. “That’s what I’ve been saying.”
“I’m sorry, Beth,” said the Insider. “I want you to trust me. I would never, ever, do anything to hurt you.”
Beth wasn’t sure if she should be flattered or angry. She put her hands on her hips, but didn’t push the Insider’s hand away. I was aware of the Insider drinking the light from her eyes and stowing the vision in my memory. It buried the tender moment like a bone, something it could dig up and worry later, work into the book as a descriptive passage.
“Listen,” Beth said with what Bookworm dismissed as a Nora Roberts sigh. “There’s a Halloween party. Xandria’s band is playing.”
Hot-diggety-double-dickmeat, whispered Loverboy from the coal shuttle of my brain. Brown and serve, eat ‘em while they’re hot. Just don’t go fucking it up with all that sensitivity crap, Richard. If you say the word “love” right now, I won’t let you jerk off for a week.
The Insider smiled. I could feel its pleasure, with the warm sun on its face, with the human race at its fingertips, with me to taunt and probe and consume. A rich banquet of emotions to pick through and a host of hosts from which to choose. You’d think an ancient, soul-stealing entity would have developed a little humility along the way. But this bastard was an aspiring writer, after all, so all bets were off.
“Three days,” I said.
Beth half smiled. “Sure. Come by and pick me up.”
“I dream about your brown hat.”
She laughed. “You dream about head.”
“Head is where the house is,” Mister Milktoast said, basking in the approval of the Insider, who had set aside his loathing of language and developed a fondness for wordplay. I wondered what games he and Mister Milktoast had been playing in the back room. Scrabble, Boggle, hangman, Russian roulette with a dictionary.
“You’re funny,” she said. “I guess I forgive you.”
“Sorry I put the squeeze on you,” the Insider said.
“No promises.”
“Cross my heart and hope to die.”
Beth glanced around at the passing crowd and gave the Insider a quick peck on the cheek. The Insider walked back into the Bone House and climbed the stairs to the attic, leaving me with her saliva evaporating on my skin.
“You okay, Richard?” Beth asked.
“Never better,” I said, swallowing. “This book I’ve been working on—”
“Got to run.” She adjusted her brown hat “See you Friday?”
“I already have an idea for a costume.” Life was a come-as-you-are party, and I already had the masks.
“Great. And Richard...”
“Yes?”
“Things always work out for the best. In the end.”
I watched her walk away. It seemed like I was always watching her walk away. And I hoped I would always be able to watch her walk away.
My hand unclenched Little Hitler’s grip on the knife in my pocket.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
A man came into the Paper Paradise the next day. He wore a rumpled charcoal suit and his quick dark eyes seemed to read every title in the store at one glance. He was as thin as the cigarette he put in his mouth. He grimaced around the cigarette and came to the counter, looking like he was tempted to disobey the “No Smoking” signs.
“Is the manager in?” he asked out of the side of his mouth. He was about forty, and the circles under his narrowed eyes made him look as if he had slept on a bed of nails and fucked a raccoon.
“Miss Billingsly’s off today,” I said. “Can I help you?”
He pulled out his wallet and flashed something brass-colored. “Detective Randolph Frye, Pickett County Sheriff’s office.”
Bookworm blinked for a moment, then Mister Milktoast took over. “What can I do for you?”
Frye dug in one jacket pocket for a moment, then the other. He pulled out a crumpled card. “You Richard Coldiron?”
“Among other things.” Mister Milktoast was a natural-born liar. I had to practice.
Frye flipped the card on the counter. “Did you fill out this card?”
It was a Paper Paradise discount card. “That’s my signature,” Mister Milktoast said.
“You remember the customer? Shelley Birdsong?”
“Hmmm. Birdsong. Isn’t that the girl who’s missing?”
“You read the papers.” He glanced at the rack that held the locals, as well as the New York Times and Was
hington Post. Then he looked out the window at the highway. His eyes kept moving, as if they might get dusty if they rested for a second.
“We give these out to students,” Bookworm said. “Kind of a ‘good customer’ card.”
“This is dated the day before she disappeared. One of those things we have to check out.”
He fished in his pocket again and brought out a photograph of Shelley, probably taken in the summer. There were the green eyes, the freckles, the faint vacant look, the shiny copper hair. She was pretty and full of life, the opposite of the last time I had seen her.
I sensed Frye’s oiled ball bearings of eyes on me. I hoped my expression was neutral. But, after all, it wasn’t my expression. Loverboy’s pupils might have flared involuntarily and Mister Milktoast might have winced in recollection. “Yes, I remember her now. I showed her a few books, but she ended up buying a magazine, I believe.”
Frye grunted. “Was she with anybody at the time?”
“Not in the store. There could have been somebody waiting in the parking lot, I suppose.”
“Do you recall what time she was here? We’re trying to put together a sequence of events from the last days she was seen.”
“I think it was morning, but I couldn’t be sure. We get lots of students in here on the weekdays.”
“A pretty girl like that and you don’t remember? Anything else you might have noticed? Anything out of the ordinary?”
No, you gray-skinned gumshoe Columbo wannabe. Just little old me, with daggers in my eyes and a flesh torpedo in my pocket. Just a killer clown with a bat-filled belfry and a winning smile. Just an age-old psychic spirit with an appetite. Just a figment of my own dark imagination, a Stephen King wet dream, a ludicrous leap of logic. All perfectly normal, nothing to see here, just move along, folks. But buy the book first.
“No, nothing that really stood out.” Besides her nipples that poked out like number two Eberhardt pencil erasers, Loverboy noted. “She was just another college girl...”
...who happened to have a little bit of light that needed to be eaten. Another girl who happened to be cursed with the affection of Richard Coldiron. Another piece of taffy that just happened to come between the five or six of us. A dollar’s worth of candy.
“...nothing special.”
Frye picked up the card and tapped it on the counter. He studied me as I pretended to check on an elderly couple in the Psychology section. I turned back suddenly, trying to catch him off guard. His eyes flicked away, as elusive as gnats.
The Insider enjoyed the game. What did it care if I were caught? It could always find another collaborator. Bookworm wasn’t nearly as talented as he thought, and some of his literary references were too obscure.
“I just remembered something,” Bookworm said, insulted. “She mentioned a boyfriend named Steve.”
Our eyes finally locked in an invisible tug-of-war. Little Hitler came out, determined and cold, on lizard feet, his tongue like a dagger.
“Steve?” Frye said, acting as if he were only half-listening. “Yes, we checked him out.”
“Is he a suspect?”
“Not at liberty to say, Mister Coldiron. No evidence of foul play as yet. Just a mystery at this point. I hate mysteries.”
“Too bad. I was just going to recommend the newest Margaret Maron.”
Frye must have seen something stirring in my eyes, clouding my irises. Spirits, maybe. Ghosts. Multiple personalities. Psychic vampires. He pulled the unlit cigarette from his mouth and then put it back. The butt was crimped and soaked with his saliva.
“A babe like that, it’s a real shame,” Loverboy said. “I hope she turns up.”
“And beets and rutabagas,” Mister Milktoast said.
“What’s that?” Frye said, biting harder on the cigarette.
“Turns up, turnips. Root-crop reference.”
“Hanging out here all day, I guess you get funny ideas.” Frye asked. “Anything else?”
“Huh?” I came back, from miles and rooms away. “No. Nothing that I can think of.”
Frye faked a smile with one side of his mouth. Wrinkles made arrows around his lips. “Call me if you come up with anything.”
“Always happy to help.”
“Thanks for your time, Mister Coldiron.”
Hey, got nothing better to do, Shit For Brains. Come on back any old time and mess with Richie’s mind. Greatest show on Earth, right here. Step right up, come one, come all.
I watched the door close behind him.
“Nice job, Richard,” said Mister Milktoast. “You were as cool as a cucumber before the salad daze.”
“No thanks to you guys. You nearly blew it.”
“Passing the buck again, Dicksquiggler?” taunted Loverboy.
“You’re the one who called Shelley. You’re the one who got her to the house, however you did it. Candlelight dinner compliments of Mister Milktoast? Or did you borrow some poetry from Bookworm?”
“Hey, Diddledick, I don’t need no help with the ladies. You’re the pasta-prick who pretends to care. I doubt you could even get it up, unless it’s with Mommy dearest.”
“If I could get my hands on you—”
“Don’t tease me like that, sweetie. You wouldn’t know how to handle this biscuit.”
Bookworm stepped in. “Gentlemen, let’s be reasonable. We’re all in this together.”
“Glad I have you around to edit my feelings,” I told him.
Bookworm rang up a purchase. The elderly couple bought a Benjamin Franklin biography and a book on dealing with death. After taking care of business, Bookworm rubbed his hands together. “I’ve been thinking, Richard.”
“News-fucking-flash,” said Loverboy. “Dickworm cuts a brain fart.”
“No. I’m serious. I know how to beat the Insider.”
Here was hope, thrown in my face, a razor of light cutting into the safe darkness. But was it real, or just another of the possessor’s tricks? If the Insider really knew what all of us were thinking, how could we even dream of outsmarting it?
“Trust me, Richard.”
Trust. The ultimate trick. But what choice did I have?
“Okay,” I said. “I’m waiting.”
“Curiosity killed the cat nine times,” warned Mister Milktoast. “And he had a rat in his belly.”
“Good things are worth a little risk,” I said, a corny line I’d picked up somewhere and tucked away for just the right moment, just to let everyone know I’d been paying attention all along despite the whims of multiple narrators. “Tell me, Bookworm.”
“It’s like the answer to its own riddle. An inside joke. Get it? The Insider.”
“Tell me more.”
“Yes,” said the Insider, coming out, all black brass and barbed wire and pissed at being dragged away from his typewriter. “I’m dying to hear how you’re planning to get rid of me.”
It laughed for half an hour. Every door in the Bone House shook on its hinges.
Those next few days, I was a sleepwalker with dreams of blown glass. I hovered just behind the surface of my own eyes, stoned on the emotional pain that nourished the Insider. Sometimes Miss Billingsly would look at me over the top of her glasses and frown. The local poets haunted their corners, outspooking each other with stage-garb nihilism. Speed readers made their mindless trips to the bestseller racks, genre freaks scoured the meager offerings and muttered. I avoided Brittany as much as I could because Loverboy’s attraction was becoming a deeper hunger. He thought she smelled like cinnamon rolls.
Seven rejection slips showed up in the mailbox. Someone had been making multiple submissions.
Worst of all, the rejections said things like “Your fantasy novel does not meet our needs at this time,” when the book had been submitted as non-fiction.
The Insider grew stronger, spinning its bleak lullabies, its voice a molten volcano that oozed cold black lava. It was feeding on my guilt over what I had done to Shelley. But now it wanted more. More pain, more dea
th, more hate, more pages. I fought to keep it down, like a sideshow geek who knows he will be beaten if he vomits the live snake he has swallowed.
My vociferous friends haunted my every step, twittering like puzzle birds, filling in the blanks as I became an outline. They were the parts that didn’t quite make a whole.
Loverboy was the lupine eyes, mistaking appetite for attraction, visually groping the tired curves of grandmothers as eagerly as he did the nubs of prepubescent girls.
Mister Milktoast was the polite mouth, always ready to make a witty comment to the stranger in the checkout line.
The nose was Bookworm, sniffing for danger and spoilt meat.
Little Hitler ruled the ears, hearing conspiratorial whispers in the slipstream of passing cars and autumn winds.
The Insider was the hands that itched to reach, to touch, to caress, to crush, to type.
The many were becoming the one. They were me, and my point of view shifted to third person plural.
The end of October brought its cold rains.
Halloween arrived, brown and dead and damp. I recycled a dozen rejection slips. I checked the outline of my life story to ensure I wasn’t leaving a hole in the plot.
I put on my costume. Then I drove to Beth’s apartment.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
The party pounded the flat stones of the house. Three Draculas on the porch held beer and cigarettes, blowing smoke between their fangs. Princess Leia danced by herself, white and virginal and with eyes clouded by some secret, illegal pleasure. A Viking couple shook their rag fur boots and waved plastic axes. The band was dressed like zombies, with pale makeup and black lipstick and Medusa hair. The lead singer kept falling into the crowd and knocking beer out of people’s hands. Xandria strutted like a Zulu queen, thumping the strings of her bass guitar.
The night swelled and pulsed. Restless energy hung over the house like a thunderstorm. A hundred people throbbed under one roof, all looking out from their masks, all tapping into their primitive ancestral memories. Halloween. Samhain. All Saints Day. But the night belonged to the sinners.
I had rented a top hat, cane, and coat and tails. My white gloves were stained with red dye. Mister Milktoast had enjoyed putting the costume together. He loved dress-up and make-believe.
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