Allan didn’t say anything. He figured he would pop the guy in the mouth, one tight, from-the-shoulder fist into those bad teeth. That’s all, just one quick one.
A big, dark man with a mustache and curly black hair stepped up next to Allan and said, “I guess this is yours. I saw you at the vending machine before me, so I guess this belongs to you.” He handed Allan the candy bar.
“See there,” the ferrety guy said, “your troubles are solved.”
Allan paid for the gas and went back to his car. Sitting behind the wheel, he swallowed the Snickers in two bites, confused. He couldn’t believe that he wasn’t meant to hit that guy in the mouth, and he waited a moment to see if anything else might be revealed. But there was nothing and the photo in his back pocket flipped into his thoughts again and his true purpose was renewed.
The man with the mustache, Al Butts, got back into the car with his employer, Karl Bahden. Karl sat behind the wheel. They pulled out into traffic following the kid.
“You figure he knows where he’s going?” Al asked.
“You got to have faith,” Karl said. “You don’t have faith you might as well kiss your butt good-bye, Butts.”
“Don’t kid with my name,” Al said.
“What’s that?” Karl turned and smiled at his employee.
“Nothing,” Al said.
At noon the kid pulled into a ratty blue motel called the Periwinkle (the drawing on the sign looked a little like a gigantic twat with teeth but Karl figured it was some kind of seashell), and Karl stopped the car down the street at a fast-food joint and said, “I gotta make some calls. Get me a double cheeseburger, a large fries, and a chocolate shake.”
From the pay phone he called Dr. Roald Peake. “We are in St. Petersburg,” he said. “I don’t know. I think it’s the end of the line. He’s driving around like he’s looking for something now. His buddies are in the city, but he don’t know where, that’s how I figure it. Okay.”
Karl hung up and then called Blaine and gave him the news too. Karl didn’t think of himself as a traitor or some fancy kind of double agent. It was just that his mother had always emphasized the virtues of enterprise. Even as a kid, he’d always held two jobs. If one paycheck was good, two were better. It wasn’t an inclination for betrayal that motivated Karl; it was just a real strong Puritan work ethic. For a while it had looked like the one goose was going to kill the other—and it probably would shake down to a single employer in the long run—but for now business was booming. God bless capitalism and the spirit of competition.
Dr. Roald Peake put the phone down. He blinked at the wall of smoke and lit another cigarette. He felt both good and bad. Good because events were rising to a climax and, as he always said, “It is better to blow up than to peter out.” Well, perhaps it was Lord Draining who had always said this, but it was a sentiment Peake shared with his Lordship.
Bad because someone, some vile interloper, some scurrilous agent of, no doubt, the Gorelord himself (Andrew Blaine, that is), had stolen the book, the precious book. Ha! If they thought they could rob Roald Peake of its knowledge by doing so, they were mistaken. The book was committed to the deepest recesses of his memory. In fact, it wasn’t simply memorized, it was busy in his mind. All manner of stories and shapes were growing.
He punched the intercom. “Ms. Goddard,” he said. “Tell Jordan I want everything ready within the hour. We are going to St. Petersburg, Florida.”
Andrew Blaine and Gloria Gill had been preparing to make love when the phone call from Karl Bahden came.
Blaine had answered on the speaker phone.
“I’m sorry,” Blaine told Gloria, untying her from the polished rack. Her pale, round body was shiny with honey. “We’ve got to fly down to Florida immediately. We’ll have to continue this later.”
Gloria pouted, sticking her lower lip out. “They could die in the meantime,” she said, staring ruefully at the mason jar full of ants.
Blaine patted her sticky shoulder. “My dear, Florida is full of fire ants.”
Gloria grinned then, turning and hastening to the shower. Blaine smiled after her.
My little bundle of screams, he thought. My sweet mortification.
The man next to Jeanne on the plane was nervous and wanted to talk. He was a fat man in a blue dress shirt about two sizes too small for him, and he was sweating powerfully. “I don’t go for flying,” he said, waving his hands over his stomach. “I don’t like the idea of it, up here thousands of feet in the air listening to Neil Diamond on earphones. Pretending to be something we aren’t. Jesus didn’t fly in airplanes.”
Jeanne agreed and suggested they talk of other things. He got off into sports, baseball, which seemed to calm him, and Jeanne was able to smile and let her thoughts run elsewhere.
She felt remarkably good. She felt up for whatever was going to happen, for whatever terror and wonder St. Petersburg had to offer. She felt a curious physical hum, as though she were floating in some clear, heated current, thicker than water, massaging, electrifying. Her mind seemed better informed of her body, as when, coming home, one sees things for the first time.
And she had been gone, that was it, of course, she had been absent from herself.
She would find the pink hotel and enter it. She would do this because the vision had seemed to demand it, but she would also do it because, in doing it, she was alive again.
“Mickey Mantle,” the fat man said. “I always say, ‘Mickey Mantle.’”
“Good for you,” Jeanne said.
Gabriel leaned into the page, her nose an inch from the illustration that showed the Duke, asleep on a purple cushion, being bound by the Ice Spiders. She recognized the Duke now. He had been one of Marlin’s friends, one of the loud, artsy ones and he had, in fact, once made a pass at her—or perhaps slept with her that winter when she was sleeping with everyone because she was pissed at Marlin—and Zod Wallop was one fucking strange country although—and this was probably the strangest part—it wasn’t strange so that you had to stretch to believe it. Oh, you knew it was true and that was what was strange…
“What an odd children’s book.”
Gabriel looked up. Her own mind might have uttered this. Her mind was doing some talking since the Ecknazine. She was also wobbling in and out of various realities (there was the room whose walls were dripping blood and another room in which the door seemed to made of living, moving snakes). But no. There was a woman. This woman was middle-aged and in desperate need of fashion guidance. With a round face, you didn’t wear those round glasses and the bangs might have worked with, say, a clown’s outfit (red rubber nose, blue lips, that sort of thing) but here the effect was pathetic.
“I have three children of my own,” the woman was saying. “They are grown now, but when I did read to them, I liked to stick to the classics: E. B. White, A. A. Milne, C. S. Lewis. Goodness, I hadn’t thought of it, but children’s authors seem to go in for initials, don’t they?” The woman giggled. Another bad idea, Gabriel thought. This woman should go with solemnity, stay away from cute, youthful, that sort of thing. She was wearing a frilly blouse that would have been coveted at a gay rights masquerade ball.
The woman leaned over and gave the illustration a closer look. “Goodness. Those spiders are revolting, aren’t they? Not the sort of book for the under-twelve crowd. I mean, it’s true children like awfulness, they seem to thrive on—”
Gabriel turned away and gasped.
“We are in a plane!” Gabriel said, clutching her companion’s wrist.
“Ah, yes—”
“Where are we going?”
“Why, straight through. We’re going to St. Petersburg.”
“Russia?”
The woman laughed, nervously. “No. Ha, ha. Florida, of course.”
“Of course,” Gabriel said, leaning back.
The woman leaned away from Gabriel then and became engrossed in her magazine.
That was fine with Gabriel. So Allan was in Florida. The Ecknazin
e had seen this and then, imperious drug, had not bothered to inform her mind. Fine.
The plane was packed. Across the aisle and five seats up, Gabriel saw something extraordinary. A fat man who had to use his hands to talk, was rattling on, hands flying. There was nothing exceptional about the man or his demeanor, but his audience was another matter entirely. She was a delicate-featured woman, her profile nearly perfect, her chin proud, her nose set for mischief, her hair a bouquet of black, Irish curls, her smile angelic. And, most wondrous and the result, no doubt, of Ecknazine’s ability to pierce the mundane, the lovely woman was surrounded in a glowing, golden nimbus, a halo of shimmering angel breath.
Perhaps, Gabriel thought, this is an angel. An angel might weary of getting about on her own steam. An angel might find herself in need of an airplane ticket to some seaside resort. Surely Heaven could grow stale.
Satisfied with this logic, Gabriel returned to the Duke, last hope and only friend of the impossibly innocent Lydia. Gabriel assumed the girl was supposed to be the heroine and to engage the reader’s sympathy, but Gabriel had no patience with the girl, who fretted too much and wanted to save the world which wasn’t, as anyone knew, what the world itself wanted at all. The world wanted to be bad, evil with a flourish. Like Lord Draining said, “You know you are alive when you are doing someone dirty.”
Chapter 24
THEY GOT TO the hospital early in the morning, but Robert Furman was already dressed.
Helen, the first to enter the room, watched a pretty young Asian nurse, hands on her hips, stamp her foot and glare at Furman. “Doctor will be much upset if you leave without his permission,” the nurse said.
“Yes,” Furman said, smiling wearily, “but he’ll live to forget it. It may not seem like it now, but, in time, he’ll learn to go on with his life.” Furman looked, Helen thought, remarkably chipper for a man who had, the prior evening, been intent on putting a bullet through his head. His jacket was extremely wrinkled, but it was dry and matched the weathered state of his flesh. His smile showed plenty of teeth. Perhaps the drowning had canceled out the despair that had prompted the suicide attempt; Helen had heard of such things, of the will to live being renewed by a brush with death.
“You are being humorful,” the nurse said. “But if you leave against doctor’s orders you must sign a statement. We will not be liable for what happens to you.”
“I appreciate that, young lady. I know the drill. Bring on your papers and let me sign them. I have a cab waiting downstairs.”
“Perhaps your family can repel you from this course of action,” the woman said, turning and smiling at Helen.
“I’ve never seen these people before,” Furman said, rising from the bed. “They got the wrong room. If you’ll all excuse me—”
“I’m Helen Kurtis,” Helen said, coming forward. “We met once, a long time ago, at a party given by Lori Ives—”
“A dreadful woman,” Furman interjected.
“And this is Harold Gainesborough. He writes popular children books. Perhaps you’ve heard of him. He wrote Zod Wallop, which is why we are here, actually—”
“Zod Wallop,” Furman said. He had gone pale. “I have a cab waiting.” He pushed past Helen, moving toward the door.
Raymond entered, pushing the wheelchair with Emily in front of him. Arbus was perched on Raymond’s shoulder.
“No monkeys allowed!” the nurse shouted, her voice shrill, already defeated.
“My Duke!” Raymond bellowed. Arbus jumped to the wheelchair as his master fell to one knee, bowed his head and clasped his hand in supplication. “By all that’s honorable, we implore you: Help us.”
Helen hastened to speak, “This is Raymond Story and this, of course, is his wife, your—”
“Emily,” Furman said. He took a step backward and then, catching his balance, he moved forward and touched her shoulder. The monkey uttered a short trill of disapproval and showed his teeth. Furman ignored this, as though the presence of small, hostile monkeys was commonplace. “Yes, this is Emily,” he said. “My niece. How are you Emily?”
Emily’s eyes studied the ceiling. Her blue cotton shirt was buttoned wrong, bunched out in front, and—or so it seemed to Helen—she looked generally more rumpled and remote than usual.
“I can see you are the same as ever, Emily.” He patted her shoulder absently. “Vacationing in Florida. Well, I don’t want to spoil it for you, but I should warn you that it can be a very dull place. That’s my experience of Florida. You’ve seen one seagull you’ve seen them all. You’ve seen one wave you’ve seen the lot. And, unless you fancy lengthy discussions of ailments and digestive systems, the residents won’t challenge your conversational skills.”
“Your niece has married Raymond Story,” Helen said, indicating Raymond who was standing again. “And Raymond has insisted that we seek you out.”
“Why?”
“Raymond is convinced that you can help us.”
“Well, Raymond’s a nutcase,” Furman said, smiling. “Mind you, I don’t mean that in any derogatory sense. I myself am a nutcase. There should be no stigma attached to being crazy. Indeed, some would say that it is the only realistic response to the times. Now that I’ve drawn the proper context, I can say, with some assurance, that we have a few nutcases here. I am, it would seem, acquainted with you all, and I apologize for failing to recognize you immediately. I know all about Marlin’s sad experiment, and I was even, to my shame, involved in the selection process. Now I suspect you’ve all been having bad dreams, and Raymond, your bird-dog crazy, has managed—”
“Hey, Emily’s choking!”
It was Rene who had shouted, coming up behind Emily just as the girl doubled over and began shaking violently. She tumbled from the wheelchair, retching, writhing in torment on the floor, face down.
“Somebody do something!” Rene screamed.
They all converged on Emily; the nurse clutched Emily’s shoulder and turned her over.
Emily turned and Helen gasped. The girl’s face was bright red, not the flush of blood but like metal heated in some forge, and she was dressed in liquid armor, a shimmer of gold, and her face was contorted hideously, an animal fierceness that had no analog in the human world.
The nurse spun backward, colliding with Helen. Robert Furman shouted, “Emily!” and Raymond leaned forward to grasp his wife’s bare arm.
Emily stood up.
“Don’t touch me,” she said. “It ravishes me. This room burns with It. No soothing here. No, do not—”
Raymond touched her elbow. And a yellow serpent of flame raced up his arm, up the dirty coat sleeve, and Raymond shouted and turned and flopped on the floor, screaming, and Harry yanked the blanket from the bed and fell with it onto Raymond, embracing him.
An alarm went off, orderlies came running, and Helen blinked at the empty wheelchair and stumbled out into the hall in time to see Emily, a glowing, ghostly figure pursued by a small, simian shape, bang through the exit door.
Helen turned and Robert Furman stood behind her. His mouth was open and he was shaking, about as frail and desperate as a born cynic could be this side of death.
Raymond proved to be unharmed. The flames that had flared so savagely had burned his coat sleeve to smoldering ribbons but had not, miraculously, harmed his flesh. His suffering was psychic, not physical, and under protests from the nurse, they all left in search of Emily. When an on-foot search of the surrounding area failed to discover her, they took to the car and continued to look, guided by Furman’s knowledge of the city.
As they drove, Furman talked. “I didn’t want to burden anyone with the unpleasantness of discovering my body. I had determined that there was a strong undercurrent that would take my corpse out to sea. I was rather pleased with myself, which, of course, is just asking for some cosmic pie-in-the-face.”
“Why did you want to kill yourself?” Helen asked.
“I have cancer. Actually, it is an operable, localized form, and the prognosis is good if
I were willing to submit to surgery. I’m not. The truth is, I am uninterested in struggle and pain. When I sickened of poetry, that’s when I should have had the grace to leave. And that was long ago. Would you like to hear the story of my life?” They had stopped at a red light.
“No!” This was Rene. Tears were running down her face. “I don’t want to hear your stupid life story. Don’t anybody talk. I’m sick of talk! Just look for Emily, look with all…first we run out on Allan, now we let Emily go. Fuck this old fart’s story!”
Helen tried to soothe the girl. “We are just trying to establish—”
Rene threw open the car door. “Fuck it!” she shouted. She dashed out into traffic. A car swerved, honking. Raymond jumped out and ran after her, but he returned shortly, sighed, and flopped in the passenger seat. “My lady Rene is fleet of foot and determined, I fear. I am afraid she eluded me.”
Robert Furman told his story. Helen would have edited out some of the philosophical commentary and omitted the dramatic pauses, but the story matter was undeniably intriguing.
“Marlin Tate was, for a scientist, remarkably literate,” Furman said. “I met him at a party, where he demonstrated his acumen by recognizing my name and praising Liar’s Kisses. Except in extreme cases (vicious serial killers or students pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing) any fan is a friend.”
And so they did become friends, and Marlin Tate talked about a drug he was developing that created a sort of psychic gestalt. He called the drug Ecknazine. “You’d have to be careful in your choice of subjects,” Marlin said. “You’d want people with rich imaginative lives, people devoid of some of the normal imaging constraints.”
Robert Furman’s part in all this might have remained that of listener and philosophical cheerleader, but several things occurred that changed all that.
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