First, Robert Furman discovered that he hated poetry. In the midst of writing a poem, he suddenly realized that there was not a single pursuit he could think of that was so trivial, so superfluous to living. He was in an academic setting, of course, and that could have been part of the problem. Here poetry was published in slim, arch magazines and read by perhaps twenty-five people who published in the same journals. But it was not just this elitism that troubled Furman. He realized, in the midst of composition, that he could attach any adjective to any noun (the “arbitrary teapot” or the “truculent rose,” for instance) and then cobble up some sort of meaning to suit the phrase. There seemed something despicable in this wordplay, a kind of intellectual self-abuse.
Perhaps, he thought, it was only his own poetry that he despised. But no, he discovered that he hated the poetry of all his peers, and, incredibly, all poetry ever written. Behind every poem there seemed to crouch an unsavory ego, the sort of man or woman who would let the infant cry in its cradle while seeking just the right nuance of tone and cadence. The people who wrote poetry were to be avoided as were the poems that emanated from them like methane gas seeping from a swamp.
So he quit the university and filled in the additional time with more drinking. And then his sister and her husband were killed in an automobile accident and Robert Furman did what he had to and acquired custody of a catatonic, wheelchair-bound girl named Emily Engel. Emily was twelve at the time and she stayed with Furman for two years.
“I thought she was, in an odd way, the answer to my prayers,” Furman said. “Of course, what happened to Jessica and Tom was horrible, but at least, well…I thought of her as my salvation.”
Here was a task he could turn his heart to with a will. He could care for the crippled, absent girl.
But he couldn’t. “I discovered I was no Mother Teresa,” he said. “I wanted her to respond and she didn’t. I wanted her to look at me, say, ‘Robert, how are you today?’ and, alas, it was all one long today for Em. I was not equipped for the kind of altruism that asks nothing in return. I wanted gratitude and love.
“I drank more. One night I left her room and when I came back smoke was pouring out the door. I had left a cigarette burning in the ashtray, and it had fallen over onto the bedspread. I almost asphyxiated my niece. And I decided she would be better off with professional caretakers. It was, after all, of no concern to her who tended to her.”
Helen interrupted. “You committed your niece to Harwood Psychiatric Institute and then you let this Marlin Tate give her an experimental drug?”
“Doesn’t sound good, does it? Actually, I took the drug too. What convinced me to proceed was Harold Gainesborough’s name on the list of Harwood patients.”
Helen blinked. “Harry?”
“It wasn’t an entirely rational decision. But I often read Harry’s books to Emily, and I sometimes fancied there was a response, some brightness in the eyes denoting laughter, some poised and breathless moment when, for instance, the moon weasels are about to eat Bocky. So here was Marlin Tate with this list of possible candidates for an experiment that would link these people telepathically. Harry’s name seemed a sign. I felt that Emily had some emotional bond with this writer of children’s books. Marlin Tate had already decided on one candidate, Raymond Story. Story had a history of psychic experiences and had even been, for a while, a resident of the notorious Simpec Research Institute.
“At first, Marlin was disinclined to let me participate. Knowledge of the experiment might alter it, you see. I might see shadows that were merely shadows and interpret them as telepathic phenomenon. But I prevailed. I wanted to speak to my niece, and I couldn’t reach her in this mute world.”
Robert Furman was silent, staring out the car window at the passing streetlamps.
Helen leaned toward him. “And were you? Were you able to communicate with her?”
“I have had terrible dreams for years now. They grow increasingly grim,” he said, sighing. “I often dream that this shabby old hotel is a dark, monstrous castle, and I hear the screams of people being tortured in the dungeons, and sometimes I see Lord Draining walking the halls, his hands covered with blood.”
“Lord Draining?”
Furman turned and studied Harry. “Yes. I’ve read Zod Wallop. I recognize the Vile Contender. But my dreams are much darker than that happy little book.”
“Yes,” Harry said. “They would be.”
Furman, so calm, so remote, suddenly spoke in anguish, “If I have sentenced Emily to eternal nightmares, then I have done an evil, unforgivable thing. I saw her get out of her wheelchair and run down a hall. At one time I would have been delighted. But I fear now that, with volition, she may seek to escape these nightmares. She may try to kill herself. I know the power of these delusions.”
“They are not delusions,” Harry said.
Furman did not contest this remark but said simply, “Worse then.”
Emily woke and brushed pine needles and small, dead oak leaves from her shirt. What was this garb? she wondered. Some peasant disguise?
She crawled out from under the bush, and Arbus followed her, squeaking sullenly. His Lordship loved to sleep and always woke with grumbling.
“I am awake, my Lord,” she said. “The powers move. I am vital and I hum with revenge. Let all Zod Wallop experience this entrapped death, this sleep that does not refresh.”
She lifted the monkey in her arms and looked around. They were in a park and it was twilight.
“I can feel the Cold One in my veins,” she said. “He has not mounted his terrible steed. The Abyss Dweller still sleeps. We must find them and urge them on their way. Even the Dark Ones sometimes hesitate.”
She walked slowly toward the lake. A ragged man in brown pants, shirtless, approached her with a limping gait.
“That’s a cute monkey you got there,” he said. His hair stuck out in filthy knots and appeared to be burned at the ends, perhaps some cure for lice.
“This is Lord Arbus,” Emily said. “He does not fancy himself ‘cute’ and he is not a monkey, but a man transformed by enchantment. The spell was intended to harry him, but he found he liked this low-to-the-ground existence and so has remained in this form although Mettle could change him back in an instant.”
“Ah,” the man said, spitting on the ground, “fucking crazy.” He moved on past her.
She shouted after him. “Which way the ocean?”
He turned, pointed. “Just keep walking that way and eventually your knickers will be soakin’.” He moved away.
He is very impudent, Emily thought. I should have turned him to stone. She thought she might be up to that. Not the world, not yet. But a single, arrogant man. Yes.
She moved on though, seeking the ocean. It called to her now, a salty, green, kelpish harkening.
Allan woke, got off the bed, and left the motel. Sleep—a few fitful hours—had not cooled the anger. He got in his car and drove the streets. He followed the oceanfront signs to the beach.
“Why we gotta keep following this guy?” Al Butts asked. “He don’t know any more than we do now.”
Karl Bahden grinned. “We are following this guy because that’s what we have been told to do. You ever hold a regular job, Butts? You do what the boss says.”
Butts hunkered down in the passenger seat. “I ain’t never retiring to Florida,” he said.
“The Chamber of Commerce hear that they’ll have a heart attack.”
Andrew Blaine peered out the limo’s window at the old folks moving slowly down the sidewalk. Cafeteria sheep, he thought. He liked that and turned to Gloria and smiled. “Cafeteria sheep,” he said, waving his hand toward the geriatrics.
Gloria didn’t smile back. Her round face was filled with ill-tempered anxiety. “I need a lab,” she said. “We could already be too late. If we hadn’t let that asshole Mitford chat these people up for weeks, we’d probably have the drug by now. I mean, what was the sense of that? It’s the Engel girl that we need; she
’s our best hope. We need to grab her, analyze her, no lag time.”
“Yes, yes,” Blaine said. “Analyze. A sweet word, but what do you mean exactly, my little wolverine?”
Gloria studied the roof of the limo. Her mouth softened and grew circular, as though she were savoring a bonbon. “Well at first I thought, ‘Just grind her and start sorting’ but then I realized that some trace elements might be too diluted. So I thought, ‘Get the blood first, all of it, and shake that down. Then go after specific organs that might filter the drug.’”
“You are a marvel,” Blaine said.
“We need a lab. We need a place we can take her.”
Blaine nodded. He turned in his seat and spoke to one of the three men who sat behind him.
“We got any subsidiaries in this happy zombie hole?”
“I don’t know.”
“Maybe you could find that out. Also, see if you can link up with Bahden. Maybe the kid has found them.”
They had no subsidiaries in St. Petersburg, as it turned out, but they supplied 67 percent of Regal Labs’ income.
“I think that’s good enough; I think they’ll be willing to hustle for us.”
“Bahden’s on the line,” another of the men said.
Blaine took the phone. “Where are you?”
“We are at the goddamn beach,” Karl said. “There’s this big hotel off to my left. He got out of the car.”
“What’s the name of this hotel?”
“I don’t know.”
“Find out.”
“Yes, sir.”
He called back in five minutes. Blaine’s man reserved two adjoining suites at the St. Petersburg Arms. “You’ll want to talk to the people at Regal,” Blaine said, turning to Gloria. “You’ll want to tell them what you want and where you want it delivered.”
Jeanne Halifax, driving her rented car through the city, did not find the hotel until the world was shadows. When she saw the building, she gasped. Grimfast, she thought, but then it shimmered into quiet, mundane reality. She recognized it from the postcard, although that photo had been taken, obviously, in grander times. At the desk, she asked if a Harry Gainesborough was registered. He was. Jeanne wasn’t surprised. She knew he would be here. She still felt a powerful humming current within her, a rightness that was protective. Harry was not in his room, however, and she walked back down to the desk and registered. As she was signing in, she saw movers bringing in crates and boxes. The desk clerk looked up. He motioned one of the movers over. “What’s this?” he asked.
“Delivery for Dr. Andrew Blaine,” he said.
“Oh, okay. Somebody called about that. Jeez, he said he had a lot of luggage. This is a lot.”
The mover shrugged, that half-lidded doing-my-job look. “Yeah, well.”
“Okay. Fine. Fine. Dr. Blaine is in rooms 316 and 317. Here are the keys. Don’t forget to return them.”
The mover nodded, turned away, and walked back toward the other men, standing by their boxes and crates.
“Not that elevator!” the desk clerk shouted. “There’s a service elevator around the hall. Thank you.”
Dr. Roald Peake chewed on a cigarette while smoking another. “Is the helicopter ready?”
“Yes, sir,” the man said.
“Then let’s not stand here gawking at the sunset. Let’s go.”
“Yes, sir.”
Roald Peake and four of his men walked across the scruffy airplane field. In the distance, palm trees fluttered their fronds.
“A balmy night,” the pilot said.
“I hate balmy,” Peake said.
Peake found himself thinking of the Gorelord, that piece of grendel phlegm that has stolen the Book. He had failed to kill the man once, but he wouldn’t fail twice. You want to do a job right, you do it yourself. The Gorelord was ancient. Peake flexed his hands, lean, strong hands—he could have been a concert pianist or a massage therapist—and thought of that reedy, fragile throat. The Gorelord’s neck would snap like dry kindling.
He felt a rush of adrenaline. It was not, alas, accompanied by the proper nicotine zing. His blood cried out for more tobacco. “Excuse me, gentlemen,” he said. “Is there a rest room on the premises?”
The pilot nodded. “Over there.”
It was a small, dirty cubicle with a toilet that Peake would not have sat on for any amount of money. He studied himself in the mirror. His nose had ceased growing, but his cheeks were hollower and his lips fuller and, most noticeably, his hair had darkened and lay closer to his skull. He had a sleek and cunning aspect. “You are getting better in every way every day,” he told himself, an affirmation that he remembered from his brief bout with self-improvement.
He grinned at himself and then pulled his pants down, bent over, and shoved a cigarette up his butt. He stood up and drew his pants back up, buckled his belt.
Gonna stop smoking any day now, he thought. I’ve just about reached my limit.
Gabriel woke with the sound of the tide, unmistakable, in her ears. It was night, and the air was filled with the mysterious, dead-fish smell the ocean exhales. That was the thing about the ocean, it drew no fine lines between life and death. You came to the Ocean of Responsibility looking for answers, and the tide hissed life, death, life, death, life, death, and you chose, and the truth was there was always some of the one clinging to the other.
She sat up and brushed sand from her cheek. She clutched her handbag. The Book was still there. All right, things weren’t that bad—although she had no idea how she had gotten here, under this pier. She remembered some altercation with a cabdriver, but it was a clouded memory, whipped by sharp, hallucinatory images.
She stood up and brushed sand from her stockinged knees. Perhaps she should have worn something less formal for this excursion. She took her high heels off and tossed them away.
“Allan!” she cried out. “Allan!”
Her head ached. She pressed her palms to her eyes, exhaled slowly. She began to walk down the beach with no sense of purpose. She walked for perhaps an hour, with no sense of her son, no prompting from the Ecknazine. She watched her silver feet tread the sand. One foot in front of the other.
She heard the sound of an engine overhead and looked up and squinted at the lights that were descending.
The helicopter came down on the beach, tilting to this side then that as though manipulated by an inept puppeteer.
Gabriel brushed her hair back and waited.
A tall man jumped out of the cockpit and ran to her.
“Gabriel,” he shouted. “I thought that was you. Fancy finding you here.”
It was Peake.
“Where is my son?” she asked him.
He grinned wolfishly. “Not one for small talk, are you? Well, come along. He’s nearby. Can’t you feel it? I can smell it, you know.”
Gabriel raised an eyebrow. “Smell what?”
“Why, Grimfast, of course. We’re almost there.”
He helped her climb in the helicopter. One of the men had to stay on the ground to make a place for her.
Chapter 25
”HEY! THAT’S HER,“ Karl Bahden said, pointing toward the beach.
“What? I thought we were looking for someone in a wheelchair?”
“Yeah, we were. But I’m telling you, that’s her. I recognize the face, and that ratty hair.”
“So what have we got here, a miracle?”
“I don’t know. We got strange stuff, if you haven’t noticed.”
Butts peered out the windshield. “Our boy Allan is driving on. He ain’t stopping.”
“He’s got other fish to fry.” Karl had seen the faked photo. It was convincing; any lovesick fool would have swallowed it.
Karl pulled the car over to the side of the road, the tires grinding in the sand, and turned the ignition off. He got out, reached in the back and pulled the rifle out.
“You gonna kill her?”
“Nah. This ain’t that kind of a gun. I’m just not gonna chase her down
the beach. This line of work, you eat too many fries and burgers on the run. I got a high cholesterol. I can’t overexert myself or I’ll be studying the ceiling in some cardiac ward.”
Emily walked along the tide. Strange little birds raced in and out of the retreating water, ducking down to suck some morsel from the sand, racing away from incoming waves, their little legs a frenzy of motion. Her gaudy shoes—another peasant fashion?—left odd, rippled footprints behind her in the wet sand. Lord Arbus nuzzled in her arms, hugging her tightly. He did not care for the roar of the surf.
Emily was confused. Had not Blodkin promised her this boon for all the years of frozen darkness, the yearning that turned to cold rage? Where then were his servants?
She saw two men coming toward her on the beach, and she sensed, instantly, that they meant her harm. They were thralls of the Gorelord or Lord Draining. No matter. If they meant to hinder her, she would teach them manners.
Against his protests, she lowered Arbus to the sand.
She turned and faced the men, now fifty feet from her. “Come no farther,” she said. “If you go on your way, no harm will come to you.”
The taller of the two men, pale-haired and grinning, raised something to his shoulder and shouted, “Glad to hear that!”
Emily felt a hard, cold slap against her thigh. She looked down and saw a small, feathered bolt sticking through the rough fabric of her leggings. A heaviness entered her limbs, as though the Cold One himself had embraced her.
What enchantment is this? she wondered. She fell to her knees. No. Her time was now. She could not be Returned. This was an outrage. Blodkin would not tolerate it.
She rocked forward, toppling. She did not feel the slap of the sand against her face or the warm tide soaking her clothing, did not hear Arbus’s screams as he fled.
Karl fired a shot at the monkey—just for the hell of it. He missed, and the monkey ran screaming over the dunes toward the road.
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