American Elsewhere

by Robert Jackson Bennett

  Parson looks around, stands up, and murmurs, “Oh, dear.”

  “What is it?”

  He walks outside, and as soon as he is beyond the doors his clothing balloons up and whips about from the gales. “Oh, dear, dear. They are quite upset.”

  “Who?” asks Mona. “What’s going on?”

  He looks up, appearing to consult the stars and the moon, and he cocks his head and listens. “There’s been another murder.”

  “A what?”

  She stands and joins him at the door, but he quickly says, “Do not come outside, Miss Bright. It is very dangerous out here right now.”

  “What the hell are you talking about? What was that about a murder?”

  “Someone else has been killed,” he says. He holds up a hand, asking for silence, and listens more. “It is Mr. Macey.”

  “Macey? The old man from the store? You’re saying he’s been killed?”

  “Yes,” says Parson.

  “How do you know?”

  He looks around as if he can read something in the quivering pines or hear it in the wind. “I know.” He gives a deeply disappointed sigh. “I am coming back inside.”

  Mona stands aside as he comes back in to sit at the card table. He looks quite shaken. “This will not be good,” he says. “Not at all. Another death…”

  “Who was the first?” asks Mona, but she already knows the answer. “Mr. Weringer? It was him, wasn’t it? The guy whose funeral I interrupted?”

  Parson nods.

  “But I was told it wasn’t foul play.”

  “You should know by now that what people say in Wink is often not very truthful,” Parson says.

  She laughs bitterly. “No shit. So what’s going to happen now?”

  Parson stares into his game of checkers, looking from bead to bead. Finally he raises his head and studies Mona, and she doesn’t care at all for the look in his eye. “You seem like someone used to death. Am I wrong?”

  “I don’t know what the hell you mean by that.”

  He picks up one of the beads and turns it over and over in his palm. “I mean, you have seen violent death before, and dealt with it.”

  “I was a cop for a little while, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  “I suppose it is.” He smiles. It is not a pleasant sight, for his face seems unused to the expression. “Miss Bright, I am going to help you. You want answers, and I think I know how I can give them to you. But you, in turn, must also help me.”

  “How am I supposed to do that?”

  “It is simple,” Parson says. “All you have to do is solve a murder.”

  Parson lets her sleep on the office couch that night, for it is too dangerous outside to return home. How it is dangerous, he does not tell her—he cannot.

  He sits behind his desk as she sleeps, listening to the radio. He likes the radio. It is a very soothing experience, he finds, to hear the voices of the dead past in his ear like they’re still alive and fine. Two moments in time brushing against one another.

  He looks at the woman asleep on his couch, rolled up in an old white blanket and face buried in the cushion, and he wonders what she truly is. For he knows she is more than just a rather pretty woman with a sad past, as she first seemed: he is beginning to suspect that what he is looking at is something like a bomb, waiting for the spark to set it off.

  Parson stands and examines the board of keys on his wall again. He looks for a long, long time before finding the right one, which is last in line behind a long row of them in the corner. The key is unlike most of the others: it is long, its metal is dark, and it has one thick, awkward tooth at the end.

  He walks to one section of the paneled wall in his office. He looks back at Mona and confirms she is asleep. Then he feels the wall, fingers probing its nooks and crannies, until he finds one hole whose existence would not appear coincidental to a casual glance.

  He inserts the key in the hole and turns it. There is a clunk from somewhere in the wall, and one section of the paneling pops out a little. Parson works his fingers into its edge and pulls it open.

  It is a small, narrow door, one that could not comfortably allow a taller person to pass. On the other side is a wooden staircase, and Parson peers down it, inspecting its wooden steps, for they have not been used in some time and he is not sure they’re still sound.

  He begins down the staircase, which is dark and unlit. After the first turn he begins feeling the wall for a switch, and on finding it he hits it. A string of caged lights along the ceiling flicker on, leading him down the rickety passageway, and he continues until he finally comes to the motel basement.

  The basement is lit by a single old halogen work lamp dangling from the ceiling. Besides this, the basement is almost entirely empty, its cracked cement floor totally bare.

  But it is not completely empty. In the center of the basement, directly under the work lamp, is what appears to be a large, rough-hewn cube of dark, stained metal. It is nearly four feet tall and wide on all sides. Its edges are somewhat notched and its sides a little scratched, and it’s missing one corner, but besides that it is whole and unharmed. Yet despite its simplicity, one cannot help but get the feeling that there is something more to the metal cube; perhaps it is how it manages to attract the eye, no matter where you look: you could stare at your shoes as hard as you like, yet eventually you would find your gaze slowly, inexorably lifting to rest on the cube sitting in the light of the work lamp. Or maybe it’s the way the very air seems cooler the closer you get to the cube, eventually growing so cold that, if you were to approach it, you’d feel sure you were about to freeze over. Or maybe, if you were particularly observant, it would be the cracks in the cement floor that would disturb you, for a quick study would show that all the cracks radiate outward from the cube, as if it has been slowly pushing down on the slab of cement with greater and greater pressure.

  Parson does not enter the basement. He stays on the stairway, on the very bottom step. He is not willing to venture any closer.

  He looks at it for a long time, reflecting on how little it has changed since he first stored it here.

  He says, “This is your doing, isn’t it.”

  If he expects a response from the cube, it does not come.

  “You brought her here,” he says. “I don’t know how you did it from so far away, but you pulled her here.”

  Still the cube does nothing: it simply sits in the center of the room, gleaming darkly in the light of the lamp.

  “Why?” he asks. “What are you doing? What do you need her for?”

  No response. But is Parson mistaken, or is the work lamp moving a little bit, as if the cube is pulling it closer and closer?

  “Answer me,” he says. “Answer me. I deserve that. I deserve one answer, at least.”

  The work lamp keeps getting closer and closer, its cord stretched to the breaking point, until finally it can take it no longer and with a snap the lamp breaks free and flies to the cube like a bullet from a gun. The light goes out, and there is a clang and the sound of glass shattering from somewhere in the darkness. Then nothing.

  Parson gazes into the darkness. “Fine,” he says bitterly. “Have it your way.” And he stomps back upstairs to his office.

  WE ARE NOT HAVING THIS CONVERSATION

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Okay, so.

  Mona knows now, or at least generally feels, that she isn’t insane. She is not hallucinating, nor is she schizophrenic, nor is any of this a result of years of profound and bitter depression, depression she thought she was escaping when she came to Wink. No, she now feels that this madness is being done by Wink itself, as if the little town is toxic or soporific in some way and she’s slowly being drugged or poisoned just by being here. Why this town has such an effect on her, she isn’t sure; but she knows now that it’s not some genetic defect in her brain that may one day send an impulse to her hand telling it to please pick up that loaded Remington in the closet, lift it to her temple, and await t
he hot kiss of cordite-perfumed lead. Which is a pretty big relief.

  But if she’s not crazy, she thinks as she drives the Charger through town with evening rushing on above her, then why is she still here? And, more importantly, why is she suddenly so cavalier about committing very prosecutable breaking and entering on behalf of a semi-lucid old man who runs an empty motel on the outskirts of this town? Because, she reminds herself as she parks her car on the side of the road next to a steep cliff, that’s exactly what she’s about to do.

  She gets out and peers down the cliff and sees the home nestled in the pines below. It is a huge, sprawling mansion, and though she cannot see much of it from here she can tell it’s one of those houses in Wink that’s absolutely perfect, a house that should exist only in the backgrounds of fashion magazines and Rockwell paintings.

  It’s getting quite dark out by now, and she checks her equipment one last time. She’s wearing her black boots, a pair of dark jeans, and a dark coat she borrowed from Parson. Around one shoulder is a black, compact backpack that contains a set of improvised lockpicks (and Mona, having worked quite a few burglaries in her time as a cop, knows these are frequently all that’s necessary), a small flashlight, a utility knife, and a pair of gloves. Tucked in the back, as usual, is her Glock, but she hopes to Christ she’s not going to need it. Mona has never shot anyone, and she doesn’t want her first time to occur when she’s doing something ridiculously, ridiculously illegal.

  “I do not expect for there to be anyone there, or anyone watching,” Parson told her back at the motel. “The death happened weeks ago, and I expect all eyes will be on Macey’s residence, since his passing is so much more recent. So getting in and out of Weringer’s house should be no issue.”

  “The way you say that makes me think there’s problems somewhere else,” Mona said.

  “You are correct,” Parson said. “It’s what’s inside the house that may be an obstacle for you.”

  “I thought you said Weringer was just an old man who lived by himself?”

  Parson squirmed uncomfortably, and Mona knew they were skirting one of the many subjects he couldn’t discuss directly. “There are very few ‘justs’ in Wink,” he said. “Let me simply say that what you encounter in the house, even if Weringer no longer lives there, will probably be unlike many things you have ever seen before.”

  “I really do not like being sent into anything blind,” she said to him. “If I wind up hurting someone doing this, I will be fucking mad.”

  But it’s what he said just after this that really got to her, Mona thinks as she begins sliding down the slope, grasping rocks and roots to slow her descent. For Parson just smiled, and said, “If it is any consolation, if you find anything within the house I doubt you would be able to hurt it at all.”

  She comes to the base of the cliff and squats there, listening. She can hear no one nearby, nor can she see anyone. The fence of Weringer’s backyard starts just ahead. It’s made (of course) of perfect white pickets, but the advantage to this is that they have significant gaps between them, so she can see quite a bit of the house and the yard on the other side. The house is utterly dark and still, the yard totally disorganized but with plenty of cover.

  Mona sighs a little, and, mentally kicking herself every step of the way, runs up and hops the fence.

  She feels as if she’s just broken some solemn rule when she crests the top of the fence and lands on the ground on the other side. She looks around at the dark, quiet yard. It is overgrown with leafy brush, and an unpruned cottonwood leans drunkenly toward the house as if about to impart an impolite secret. She remembers what Parson said:

  “What you are looking for is something that will not belong there at all. It will be a key, but not just any key: it will be a large, technical-looking key, like a key for some rare and extremely dangerous piece of equipment. Which it is, in a way. It will be unusually long and have many, many teeth, and its head will be striped yellow and black. And I expect that, if it is still there, Weringer will have attempted to hide it very, very well.”

  “And what is this key to?” Mona asked.

  “A place,” said Parson. “A place that has answers for you, and me.”

  Answers for you and me, Mona thinks as she makes her way to the back door. She kneels and produces her lockpicks, and grasps the knob as she examines the lock. It’s as she reaches for the right pick that she twists the knob a little bit, and is surprised to find it gives.

  She twists the knob all the way and gives the door a little push. It falls open.

  Well, she thinks, that makes things a lot easier.

  She slips inside and shuts the door behind her. She turns on her flashlight and sees she’s in the kitchen, and it’s done in that nauseating sort of faux French country that requires lots of rustic chicken decorations. A genuine Kit-Cat Klock hangs on one wall, tail at an angle, eyes suspiciously at one side. Mona’s about to start forward when she hears something: there’s a song being played somewhere in the house.

  She calms herself, and prowls forward through the rooms, all of which are a little shabby but quaint. The song is coming from an ancient-looking record player, which, defying all logic, is playing twenty seconds of “How Much Is That Doggie in the Window?” over and over again. Mona flashes the room with her light, sees no one, and approaches.

  Immediately she spots the signs of a struggle. She can see where the couch has been moved, its clawed feet out of place with the years-old indentations in the green shag carpet. She’s guessing someone bumped it, and bumped the record player in the process, which is why it’s stuck on repeat. It must have been playing this section of song for weeks, over and over again. Mona debates turning it off, but if there is someone else here (and there won’t be, she tells herself, but if there is) then whoever it is, they’ll definitely know they’re not alone if the music stops. So as much as it sets her teeth on edge, she lets it keep playing.

  She begins searching for this key of Weringer’s. She’s not sure why Parson talked up the interior of this house so much, because to Mona it’s just another old-man house, and she’s been in plenty of those, mostly when the neighbors called the police because they hadn’t seen Mr. So-and-So in a while and could they please send someone out to check on him. And often she did find him, sometimes in the bedroom but often in the bathroom, which Mona began to think of as a genuine death trap for the elderly after she found her third limp, starving octogenarian curled around the toilet with a broken leg or hip or skull. Having toured the homes of the elderly in the worst, most bizarre way possible, she doesn’t find anything all that extraordinary about this one, beyond its size: the old photos, trophies, stuffed fish and animal heads, and Tiffany crystal lamps are all de rigueur, in Mona’s experience.

  But that doesn’t mean finding this key is easy. She checks all the places she’d expect it to be—desks, mattresses, sofas, drawers, wall safes (of which there are none, but she pushes aside each hanging picture to make sure)—but she doesn’t find a damn thing. As far as she can tell, there are no deceptive security measures in this old man’s house. Unless he’s got a hollowed-out book somewhere, but being as he owned tons of musty old tomes Mona wants to eliminate all other possibilities first before she starts flipping through his collection.

  She checks, then rechecks, then re-rechecks all the rooms, starting with the first floor and moving to the second, and it’s on what has to be the fourth round that she notices something she missed. She’s walking from the library to the bedroom, and she glances to the side and sees that the hallway she previously thought led to the bathroom does not: now it appears to keep going, and never arrives at a bathroom at all, and whereas before it was only about ten feet long now it is nearly a hundred, and dark and lined with many doors.

  She isn’t disturbed by this, initially. Mona’s very observant, but she knows she’s capable of making mistakes, even big ones like missing a whole hallway. Yet as she starts to explore this hallway she realizes two things:


  1) She can remember exactly where the bathroom door was, yet now there’s no sign of any bathroom at all, and 2) She can’t shake the feeling that this hallway is actually quite a bit longer than the whole house.

  She goes to one door and opens it and shines her flashlight in. Inside is yet another library, except it is much, much bigger than the last one, and one whole wall is an enormous crystal window. The room is lit with pink-white moonlight traced with intricate designs from the glass, and there is a brass telescope set before the window, pointing off at one dark corner of the sky. An observatory, she thinks, though she notices there’s some artwork in here, too: sculptures made of black stone sit on top of the bookcases. Initially she thinks they’re just abstract art, a collection designed around a single theme (amoebic or microcellular life, she thinks), but she cannot help but feel that the sculptor was not sculpting from sheer inspiration: there is a familiarity and intelligence to the sculptures, as if the artist worked with subjects, which is bizarre, as Mona cannot imagine any organism with so many unnecessary tails or fins. Either way, she doesn’t think anyone would hide a key in here.

  She continues on down the hallway and opens the next door. The room within is dark, and she shines her flashlight in and sees it is a large storage room with many rolls of fancy fabric stacked along the walls. She unrolls one partially and sees that it’s a tapestry, like the medieval kind, but she doesn’t think there was ever a medieval tapestry like this: it is done in what appears to be different shades of black, if such a thing could even be possible. It’s sort of like a Magic Eye poster, because when she stares at it long enough she begins to see the hints of an image. After a moment she realizes it’s a large city laid out under a black sky. The structures are strange, however: there is almost something aquatic to their design, resembling a mass of growth from a coral reef more than any city Mona’s seen before. She checks out a few more tapestries (the one of the tree with the unsightly white fruit is especially disturbing to her) before continuing to the next room.