The voices were joined by a jingling sound.
I set my suitcase and typewriter case down and walked to the dining room.
At one of the round tables sat Oliver, Lonny, Dale, Martin, Woody and the Joker. They were playing cards: Blackjack. The Joker was dealing.
I didn’t even want to move, didn’t even try, but my legs approached the table.
“Hit me,” Oliver said, and the Joker dealt him a card face up. “Again.” Another card was flipped. “I’m good.”
“What’s going on?” I asked.
Lonny rapped his knuckles on the table and the Joker flipped up a card. He rapped again and another cared was flipped.
“I’m busted,” he said, disgusted.
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
The Joker turned to look at me. “Everyone’s here together. Isn’t that how you want it to be?” He was smiling.
I walked over to Oliver.
“I’m sorry,” I said. It was all I could say.
“Don’t think about it,” Oliver said, his teeth stained with blood. “I believed it was you. I wanted to get you, before you got me.”
I looked around the table.
I’m the only one left. The last of the Jokers Club.
Martin placed his cards down on the table. “I’ll stand,” he said. His chest was full of puncture wounds. Dale was beside him, holding his cards, his whole front split open.
“I don’t like this,” I said.
“It’s not that bad, Geoff,” Lonny said, the slit in his throat moving in tandem with his lips. “It really didn’t hurt that much. It felt kind of like a paper cut, only much deeper.”
I looked to Woody. The fingers holding his cards were fleshless. Only patches of skin remained over the grayish bone of his skull. He looked at me and his lipless mouth opened.
“It had to come to this,” he said. “It was our destiny.”
I looked to the Joker who still grinned at me.
He gestured with the deck of cards in his hand. “Do you want to play?”
“No,” I said. “I’m tired of games.”
I looked the Joker square in his puppet-like eyes.
“Did Jason send you?” I asked.
“Of course not,” he said, shaking his head, his bells jingling. “I came here to help you.”
“Then help me,” I screamed realization dawning on me. “Did I kill anybody?”
“Are you capable of killing somebody?”
I looked at Oliver, who sat at the table with a disgruntled look on his face. But that wasn’t murder, I thought. That was an accident. Just like Jason’s death was an accident. We never meant to kill anybody. Did we?
“I’m confused,” I said, turning away from the table. The pounding in my head amplified. It throbbed, and I wished it would stop.
“Why are you confused?” the Joker’s voice came from behind.
“I’m not sure of any of the answers.”
The pounding grew louder.
“Where can you find the answers?”
“I’m not sure,” I said, raising my voice to hear myself over the pounding in my head. “The answers may be in the past.”
“Then why don’t you go find them.”
“I don’t know where to start.”
The pounding was deafening, and I realized it was not only in my head. It came from outside me. It came from the kitchen. It came from the refrigerator.
(Time to open the door.)
“Start from the beginning,” the Joker said.
The Tin Man’s house.
When I pulled up to the Tin Man’s house, my heart was pounding along with my head. I got out of the car and looked around. The street was empty. I turned and looked at the house, scanning the shade-covered windows for Emeric Rust. The entire place bore no signs of life.
Hearing a whisper of sound, I looked to one of the windows on the right side of the second floor where a shade fluttered. Out of the corner of my eye, I thought I saw a glimpse of a hand pulling away from the edge. I couldn’t be sure. But the shade did sway back and forth slightly, though no breeze could be blowing in because the window was shut.
I walked around to the back of the yard.
There stood the junk pile.
I expected this towering mass of twisted metal and aluminum, but it was much smaller than I remembered, barely more than a small stack.
Grass had grown up around the edges of the pile, almost overtaking it. There was even a small tree that had somehow managed to sprout up in the middle and now rose above. I imagined the young sapling as it grew up, weaving its way through the gaps between discarded scraps of metal and tin, striving to reach the sunlight that filtered down through the cracks.
Life had grown from a pile that had held death.
I stood before the junk, as if it were some kind of altar. I heard the jingling behind me and turned to see the Joker.
“I’m here,” I said.
“And why are you here?” he asked.
“Because death has been here, and I can smell its scent.”
“And what form has it taken?”
“That’s what I want to know.”
“Well, look there,” the Joker said, extending his arm, pointing his index finger, “and see if you can recognize it.”
My eyes followed the path of his finger. It pointed to a large, broken piece of glass that stood perched halfway up the mound like a mirror hanging on a bathroom wall. I stepped up to it and looked in.
My reflection stared back at me.
I looked at my bruised, haggard, disoriented face. I almost didn’t recognize myself.
Then as I stepped aside, another face appeared in the reflection, just behind mine. It was a face framed in glass. Its eyes were vacuous. I recognized it. It was a face that had peered out of glass at me before. Once behind the window of a locked cell at Acorn Estates. And once from a second floor window at the Tower House Inn.
I spun around.
Mary stood behind me.
My head had become an engine, with a driving, locomotive beat. I shook it to clear it, with no avail.
“I don’t get it,” I said, confused.
“None of them did,” she said. “Until I told them. Torr is my married name. I kept it, even after my divorce.” She smiled. “My maiden name is Mary Nightingale.”
I saw a little girl’s face as she held her mother’s hand at Jason’s funeral, looking at me with eyes sad and cold.
“I made sure they all knew,” she said. “Before I killed them.”
I looked down at her hand and saw the hunting knife it held. The blade was much longer than Oliver’s.
“I saw you,” I said, still in shock. “At Acorn Estates.”
She smiled. “That’s where I met Woody. It was quite a coincidence, us both ending up there. He had no idea who I was, but I remembered. I befriended him. And after we both got out, we dated. He never had a clue.” Her grin was widening. “He confessed to me. Told me about what you all did to my brother. I pretended to sympathize with him. I even got him to arrange this whole reunion. He had no idea what I was planning till it was too late.”
“Where is he now?” I asked, afraid of the answer.
“Buried, deep in a forest.”
I shuddered.
“He seemed willing to accept it,” she continued. “As if it was inevitable.”
I felt dizzy.
“The others were more reluctant,” she said. “Their eyes begged forgiveness when I finished them off.”
I swayed a bit, my balance weakening. I wanted to tell her it wasn’t our fault, but I knew I couldn’t be convincing. Not even to myself.
She took a step forward. “It had all been going so well,” she said, “until you spoiled it. I wanted Oliver the most. Then you went and killed him on me.”
I remembered her wild anger at his death.
“I wished you hadn’t done that,” she said. “That made me very unhappy.”
My body wanted to
turn and run, but my limbs wouldn’t cooperate. My legs were anchored in place. My head was spinning and black dots were bursting before my eyes. I was having another spell and it couldn’t have been a more inappropriate moment. I tried to speak, tried to buy myself some time, but that had recently become my enemy.
“Jason wouldn’t tell you to do this,” I said.
“Jason can’t breathe,” she answered, still coming forward. “Jason called me a few days after he disappeared. He told me he couldn’t breathe. He asked me to help him.”
Her voice became rapid, high-pitched.
“I wanted to help him,” she continued. “But he forgot to tell me where he was. I could have saved him if he only told me where he was!”
My legs gave way, and I fell to my knees. She came closer and stood before me. Maybe it was better this way, I thought. I might not be around much longer anyway. Maybe it was justice that things end this way.
My body had no will to struggle. My mind was willing to accept it.
She moved forward.
“Now,” she said. “This is the only way I can help him.”
I saw the blade move before me.
It glistened.
I closed my eyes.
Just like a paper cut, I thought.
There was a loud thunk, and my eyes popped open.
Mary stood before me, and her eyes rolled up in her head. She pitched forward and fell to the ground in front of me.
Behind her was the ancient figure of Emeric Rust.
He stood there, rail thin, clutching the long-handled spade shovel that he had just clubbed her with. His hair like snow, his face a mass of wrinkles, his eyes bugging out. He took a step closer and peered down at me.
“KEEP OUT OF MY YARD!” he yelled.
CODA
Chief Hooper had meant what he said about keeping an eye out for me. His men must have seen me heading toward the old neighborhood, and he went out after me. But he had arrived just a bit too late. If Emeric Rust hadn’t stopped Mary, I would have been dead. It had been scary coming so close to the end.
But death might be coming soon enough. I was still standing a little too near it.
Mary was unconscious when they strapped her onto a stretcher and hauled her away. I had no doubt she would soon be heading back to Acorn Estates. I explained everything to the chief but still did not say anything about what had really happened to Jason Nightingale. I kept our oath. I was the last one left and the secret would die with me.
The chief talked with Emeric Rust and then had me come down to the station to file a statement for his report. Afterwards, I was once again told to leave town and it was suggested I not return. I didn’t think I would. There was nothing left for me here.
I was the last of the Jokers Club.
I sat in my car outside the station, toying with my keys, hesitating before inserting them into the ignition. I glanced out of the car window at the steeple on the town hall and saw that the clocks were finally working. It was almost eleven o’clock in the morning.
I drove to the inn to retrieve my stuff and then headed down to the used office supply store to return the typewriter. The jingling sound as I opened the door startled me, and I whipped my head around, expecting the Joker to be there. I realized it was only the bell on the door, and I breathed a sigh of relief. The old man came out from a back room, adjusting his glasses. I set the typewriter case on the counter.
“All set?” the old man said, opening the case and examining its contents.
“I think I’ve done all I can with this,” I replied.
He nodded several times, still looking over the machine. He glanced up at me. “Work out okay for you?”
“It worked very well indeed.” Yes, it worked just fine. I guess you could say I was quite pleased with it. “Thank you very much.”
I paid him the remainder of my bill and turned to go. I heard the bell jingle and looked to see who might be coming in the door. But the door was closed.
I looked to the right side of the store and saw the Joker sitting behind an oak desk with a pile of papers in front of him. My insides felt hollow. No, I thought. I had had enough of this and didn’t want to deal with it anymore. I approached and sat down in a chair across from him.
“It’s all over,” I said. “I thought you’d be gone.”
“I’ll always be here,” he said, lips spread in that stupid grin of his. “Just like I always have been.”
“Always?” I questioned, confused.
He nodded. “From the beginning.”
“From when I first conjured you up?” I asked, thinking about the little attic room in my mind where I imagined all the horrors that became the seeds for my stories and ideas. That dark room of evil thoughts and death whose only tenant besides the creepy things that lurked there was the Joker. The Joker who whispered those sick tales to my mind.
“Oh, from even well before that,” he said. “From the very beginning.”
I was confused. “How could that be? I created you back then. You couldn’t have existed before then.”
“You only created this image you see before you. Where do you think the wellspring of horror in your mind came from?”
“I created it,” I cried. “I imagined all those things, those stories. Because I chose to.”
The Joker shook his head, bells jingling. “You didn’t have any choice. You never did.”
The muscles in my face went slack as my jaw opened. I looked at his beady little eyes.
“I know what you are,” I said. I thought of all the sick things and horrors that seeped out of my head onto the pages of paper. I never stopped to think why. Never cared where they came from. “Don’t you realize what you’re doing to me?”
“It’s not my fault,” the Joker said. “I just want us to be together, just like always.”
“But why did you show yourself now, after all this time?”
“I got tired of festering alone.”
“What will happen to my imagination when you’re gone?” The idea scared me.
He looked up from his reading. He looked serious. “You really don’t want to find out.”
He glanced back down at the papers in front of him on the desk.
“What are you reading?”
“The ending to the story.”
“Where did you get that manuscript?”
“Why, you gave it to me, of course.” His lips moved as he read the last page in his hands, and then looked up at me. “So the woman at the inn turns out to be Jason Nightingale’s sister. A little contrived isn’t it?”
“I told you before, my stories aren’t contrived.” I felt the need to defend myself.
He looked puzzled. “When did you finish this?”
“At the inn, when I first went back to get my stuff.”
“Are you sure? That was before you went to the Tin Man’s house.”
I was now puzzled. “I’m not sure. I think so.”
“How did you know how it was going to end?”
“I’m a writer. I’m supposed to know the ending.”
“Even before it happens.”
I looked into his quizzical eyes. “Maybe I’m a better writer than I thought I was.”
I reached to take the manuscript away from him, not wanting to think any more about the story right now. Afraid of what I might learn from it.
A hand came down and stopped me. I looked at it and noticed the Joker’s hand was no longer gloved and the sleeve was white instead of the black and white striped pattern.
“Why did you change the story, Geoffrey?”
“What do you mean?” I was afraid to look up at his face. “I didn’t change anything. This is the way it all happened.”
“I see a couple of very big changes,” he said.
I pushed away from the desk and stood up, turning away from him, but before I looked away, I could see that he did not have make-up on and wasn’t wearing the jester costume. Instead he wore a white doctor’s coat. His face
was different. It wasn’t the Joker sitting behind the oak desk.
There was a full-length mirror on the wall in front of me and I could see my reflection.
“You changed the story for a reason, Geoffrey.”
“No. That’s the story.” The image staring back at me in the mirror was long and thin, skin drawn tight on the cheek and jawbones like dried leather. There were dark bags beneath bloodshot eyes swallowed up in their sockets.
“You changed the story,” the doctor continued, “because you wanted to deny the fact that you killed your friends …”
“No.”
“… and that you were the one who opened the refrigerator door that night.”
“I can tell the story anyway I want,” I said, staring into my emaciated reflection. “I’m a writer.”
THE END
Jokers Club Page 24