Peaceable Kingdom (mobi)

by Jack Ketchum

  We went from there to the library and looked up reprints of his stuff. I couldn’t see why he objected to the body painting. Half his work consisted of nudes. He painted them in mythical, quasi-metaphysical settings, sort of similar to the pre-Raphaelites, that kind of thing, with titles like Dido and Anaeus, The Lamia, Circe, and Penelope at the Spinning Wheel. All a bit melodramatic for my tastes, a bit precious, but not half bad either. What we had here was the ghost of a pretty eminent man. He had died of heart failure in 1928, a bachelor, at age thirty-seven.

  We told Paula and Mary what we had and they couldn’t wait to get back to the Ouija board.

  The body painting stayed, of course. It was not the business of some cranky ghost to tell me how to make a living. Besides, it was easier on all of us now. Knowing who he was made him much less disturbing. Mary’s performance that night was halfway back to normal.

  After closing we got him talking again.

  We told him what we knew about him. OH REALLY he said. We asked him where in the place he’d died. We were curious. NONE OF YOUR DAMN BUSINESS he said. We asked him if he liked the girls. We got no answer to that one. We asked him why he painted mythical instead of modern scenes and he said THE TWENTIES WERE TOO GAUDY FOR ME AND I FORGOT TO ASK WHAT ARE THOSE RIDICULOUS THINGS YOU WEAR ON YOUR NIPPLES. Paula blushed and told him they were pasties. Finally Mary got what later amounted to an inspiration and asked him if he’d always come when we called him like this. YES he said.

  She asked him why.

  BECAUSE I DAMN WELL HAVE TO he said and suddenly the table began to shake like we had our own private earthquake in the place. You could feel his rage pouring up through the floorboards. Bernie went white as a sheet. It was scary.

  And just before it stopped I heard Sam squawking behind me from his perch, his voice high-pitched and shrill. I had never heard Sam scared of anything before and I almost stopped it all right then and there—and of course I know now I should have. But Mary had planted something in my mind. I’m an entrepreneur. I can’t help it. It comes with years of practice and gets in the blood and stays there.

  He said he had to come when we called him. And he shook tables.

  The following night he pulled the tablecloth out from under the candlesticks. It shot maybe three feet into the air and then came drifting down behind me. The night after that he floated the table two feet off the floor. On the third night he mashed the planchette on the Ouija board into a flat clear plastic plate.

  And the point is, we asked him to do these things.

  Mary did, actually. He always seemed to respond to Mary while with the rest of us it was iffy. But I figured I could use that too.

  “Suppose we do a seance,” I said to her, “before the end of the show?”

  “Huh?”

  “We fit him into it.”

  “You’re crazy, Stu.”

  “Why not? We try it once. If nothing happens, no big loss. If it works, we’ll advertise the hell out of him.”

  We were sitting at the bar and the dinner crowd was slowly arriving. Whatever the cook was doing in the kitchen he was doing right, and it was making me hungry. Mary’s scent was working on me in a different way. At the moment I felt lean and smart and avaricious. I smiled at her and she looked at me for a while and then smiled back. And there was that look in her eyes again, that sense of hey, what the hell.

  “I don’t know, Stu,” she said. But she was being coy now. “Suppose you just tell me what you’ve got in mind.”

  We set it up.

  We gave him the spot right after Paula’s, right before the body-painting number. That way if he flopped we’d still have our topper. We dimmed the lights and had a couple of the waitresses carry on the table with the cloth and candles, the Ouija board and the mashed planchette, and meantime I went into a little act of my own, trying to spook the crowd.

  I told them all about Frank W. Morgan, all this stuff about him being a painter and dead since 1928 and you should have heard them hoot and holler. They thought we were pulling one, naturally. But I got to them eventually. I made up this story about how he’d been murdered by a former lover, a jealous model. I made it all grim and gothic and by the end of it I had them interested. The place was quiet for once. So quiet that when somebody dropped a soup ladle in the kitchen you could feel half of them jump.

  Bernie and Paula and Mary came on dressed in white robes and took their places at the table and I did likewise, lighting the candles while the dimmers faded to black.

  And I could feel him there. Even before we called him. Something cold and tough right beside me. And I had the horrible feeling he was smirking.

  We got our response from the crowd right off, all the ooohs and ahhhs, just as soon as the table started to rise, and then again when the candles switched places and when the tablecloth started flapping, and again when the Ouija board just folded up and flew across the room, slamming against the bar. That shut them up entirely. I think they were truly scared by then, scared mostly for Mary, who was doing all the talking, but maybe for themselves too because the feeling in the room had grown so thick and strange and Sam’s cawing was so unearthly, starting off like a low groan and going louder and shriller until finally—according to plan, mind you—Mary stood up and told the ghost of Frank W. Morgan to take her robe off and to do it now and he did, and of course she was naked underneath. And by then it was a screeching sound Sam was making, a high shrill bird-sound of stark terror.

  “Paint me,” she said.

  I had no idea it was coming. I honestly didn’t.

  We all knew how he felt about the body painting, and I’d have told her not to if she’d given me any warning. Some people don’t believe me but it’s the truth. But it was just like her to pull out the stops like that, to make it all theatrical and exciting. It was that boldness again, that daring. The paint cans and brushes were right behind her, in the wings, stage right, waiting, and she knew it.

  “Paint me!”

  She stood in candlelight, head high, smiling, the scent of Possession pouring off her in waves of heat and there wasn’t a soul among us who so much as shifted where he sat or stood, just Sam and that ungodly screeching noise, and then it was as if some huge hand just lifted her, six feet up, and I suddenly remembered what she’d said to me, that she’d never met a man as tough as she was and remembered what I’d felt from him just minutes before when we first sat down, because she hung in the air a moment, mouth open in surprise, and all she said was ooops. I swear it. Ooops. Like she hadn’t counted on this at all and then he tossed her. Stage right, into the wings.

  We heard a crash and Sam went suddenly silent.

  Then all we heard was paint dripping.

  It was merciful, I’ll give him that much. The angle of the head against the wall told you that. She hadn’t suffered.

  And he’d painted her, all right.

  If we’d thought that was going to be the culmination of it, going to be end of something, it wasn’t. The Parrot did not stop being haunted. Far from it.

  The cook still has to search around for his colander or his spatulas from time to time and has to watch his stuffings for unlikely substances and Bernie finds scotch bottles hidden in the damnedest places, and we still have to arrange the tables nearly every morning when we open up. We’ve thrown out the Ouija board, of course. We lay off the hard loud rock ’n roll now and play country music instead, which he seems to like a whole lot better. And nobody paints naked girls anymore in deference to Mary.

  I keep smelling Possession in every corner of the club.

  It’s the damnedest thing.

  I will allow the man has taste.

  Sam has taken to winking into nothingness now, and leering into shadows.

  Megan’s Law

  Well, what the hell would you do?

  A cop walks up to your door, knocks. You look out the window and see his squad car parked in front of your house. You open the door and this kid half your age with a gun and cuffs and bullet
pouches on his belt and a pad, pencil and some flyers in his hand says ’scuse me, sir, good morning, Mr. Albert Walker? and you say yes, what can I do for you, Officer? and he introduces himself and proceeds to inform you on this fine sunny summer nine-thirty Saturday morning smelling of fresh cut grass and dew that there’s a goddamn rapist moved in two doors up, a fucking child molester by the name of Philip Knott, a tier-three high-risk sex criminal and he’s informing you by order of the county prosecutor’s office.

  He tells you that he understands you have a twelve-year-old, Michelle, is that correct? and you say that’s correct. He asks you to take precautions. He’s consulting his notepad to make sure he gets this right. He says we’re asking parents in the neighborhood to reinforce general instructions about staying away from strangers and to treat Mr. Knott in particular as a stranger, to tell their children and their children’s caretakers to make certain you know where they are at all times. We’re asking them to tell their children where Mr. Knott lives and what he looks like. And here he hands you a flyer.

  You’re looking at a mug-shot. Front-view and profile.

  Taken six years ago, says the cop.

  From the front he isn’t bad-looking. Late twenties, dark hair. High cheekbones, strong jaw, a cleft in the chin and a wide, sensuous mouth. The eyes look haunted though. Scary eyes. Dark circles beneath them as though the guy hasn’t been sleeping well or maybe drinks too much. And then in the side-shot there’s the long weird Bob Hope nose and that spoils everything. The guy’s not good-looking at all. From the side the smudges under the eyes look even darker.

  He goes on to say that should my daughter be approached by Mr. Knott for any reason whatsoever I should report this to the police as I would any other case of suspected criminal activity. Then he tells me what I can’t do. First, I can’t convey any of this information to anybody else in the community. That’s the job of the prosecutor’s office and local law enforcement. I’m not even supposed to discuss it. And any actions taken against Mr. Knott, he says, including vandalism of property, verbal or written threats of harm and/or physical violence against Mr. Knott personally or against his family or employer will result in arrest and prosecution. I understand that, don’t I? He’s warning me against vigilantism. I hear him loud and clear but I have some questions of my own now.

  “Hold on. We’re talking about the new guy in the Hadley place, right?”

  “That’s right.”

  “He moved in a week ago. And you’re only now getting around to telling me?”

  “I understand your concern over the delay, sir. I can only say that these things move slowly sometimes. Paperwork, bureaucracy, all that kind of thing. But I’d guess he’d be pretty busy with the move anyway, wouldn’t you?”

  “And there’s nothing we can do about this?”

  “You can take precautions, sir.”

  “I mean about getting him out of here.”

  He shrugs. “Man’s got to live somewhere, doesn’t he. He’s done his time. He’s got to see his probation officer every week and verify his address with the prosecutor’s office every ninety days. Other than that he’s free to go wherever he wants, just like anybody else.”

  “Just like anybody else.”

  “Sorry. That’s the way it is.”

  The kid does look sorry. I give him that.

  I look at the mug shots again. Beneath the photos are the guy’s name, description, address, the make of his car—white Ford Escort—his plate number, his place of employment—Gene’s Garage, I know it well—and a description of his offense. Aggravated sexual assault.

  “You mind telling me what he did?”

  “Afraid I can’t do that, sir. I’d be violating his civil rights.”

  “But you know, don’t you.”

  “Yes.”

  “And it was pretty bad, wasn’t it.”

  The kid just looks at me. The answer’s in the look.

  “This really stinks.”

  “I can’t argue with that, sir. Have a talk with your daughter. Most of these guys, they don’t want to mess around in their own neighborhood anyway. They go elsewhere. Just tell her to be careful and I’m sure things will be fine.”

  He tells me to have a good day and walks down the steps to the sidewalk and over to Fred Grummon’s place next door. I wonder how Fred and Susan are going to take this. Their daughter Linda’s eighteen but Fred Junior’s only ten. Knott lives in the house right beside them, third one up on our little dead-end street. He knocks at the door. I don’t want to watch this. I go inside.

  It isn’t fair. I’m worried damn near all the time now.

  In some ways it’s worse than fucking Rahway. In Rahway I had Jumma to protect me and even if the price for that was so fucking high I’m lucky I can walk straight, here I got nobody. Nobody I can trust to watch my back. The guys at the garage, I trust the owner but not the rest of those dumb white-trash assholes. They know I’m a damn good mechanic but they’d just as soon kick my ass as look at me.

  It’s all too new. Maybe that’s it. Only one goddamn week in this town. I can’t even look at my neighbors.

  This Megan’s Law thing. It fucks you up! Out in California they firebombed this guy’s car, torched the poor bastard, burnt him to death. In Connecticut they got this other guy, about twenty-five of them, beat the shit out of him, somebody they thought did stuff but it was a case of mistaken identity, they fucked up, they got the wrong guy. It’d be funny if it wasn’t so fucking scary. What people are capable of.

  It’s not fair.

  Shit, I did my time. Six years. I paid my debt to society. My slate’s clean.

  Will it stay clean?

  I guess we’ll have to wait and see.

  So what the hell would you do?

  I talked to her, all right. I talked to Michelle that very morning. Showed her the flyer and told her about the guy and I could tell she was scared and I hate that, I hate when Michelle’s scared like she was of her crazy rumdumb miserable excuse for a mother but in this case I had to scare her, scaring her was my job and I could tell it took. You see this guy, I told her, he says word one to you, you tell me and I call the cops. You don’t talk to him, you don’t go near him. He comes around school and you see him you tell your teacher. Then you call me at the office. Okay?

  Okay, Dad.

  I love this little girl. She had a terrible, awful time with her mother. I guess Judy was a little nuts when I met her at school thirteen years ago but she wasn’t drinking then, she was studying economics and she was bright and pretty with the same fine delicate blond hair and bright blue eyes she gave our daughter and she was a total banshee in bed, she was wild. I married that wildness and our daughter tamed it. Or maybe it’s more precise to say that what tamed it was having to take care of her. Having to love her. I don’t know.

  By the time Michelle was seven I was coming home from the brokerage firm every night to find Judy smashed on vodka. Passed out in the living room if we were lucky or screaming at Michelle if we weren’t. By the time my girl was ten she was dead, lying on the floor, her damn fool neck broken against the rim of the kitchen sink. Michelle was the one who found her. I remember her schoolbooks, notebooks and papers scattered across the floor in the hallway. Horror’s fallout. The debris of disaster.

  For all this time I’ve been her only protector.

  First against my wife, then against the rest of the world.

  I wasn’t about to stop now.

  I got Michelle a sitter that night and went over to Turner’s Pub on Myrtle Avenue. If anybody in town had the straight dope on Philip Knott it would be Tommy. Everybody talked to Tommy. City councilmen, cops, lawyers, dentists, gynecologists. You almost couldn’t not talk to him. A more affable Irishman never lived in my opinion. And Tommy took care of you, poured stiff and solid when you were sober and cut you off dry and arranged for a ride home if the time came that you were not.

  “Yeah, I heard,” Tommy said. “It’s a bitch, ain’t it.”

>   “You know exactly what he did, Tom?”

  He gave me a look. Ice-blue eyes under ginger eybrows.

  “You don’t want to hear about it, Al. Honestly.”

  “Oh yes I do. Jesus, Tommy, wouldn’t you?”

  He sighed and leaned on the bar.

  “All right. Lerner was in a couple days ago after his shift. Said it happened in Livingston back in Autumn of ’92. Little girl ten years old’s riding her girlfriend’s spare bike home from school, her own bike’s busted. She’s pedalling hard, going slow up a hill. Knott stops her on the sidewalk easy as pie, puts his hands on the handlebars, tells her he needs to use her bike a minute, he’ll bring it right back. She says it’s not mine, it’s my friend’s. Knott punches her in the face, knocks her off the bike and then drags her and the bike into a culvert. Leaves the bike and takes the girl off into the woods. There’s nobody around. You sure you want to hear the rest of this, Al? It gets rough.”

  “I’m sure.”

  He leaned in closer.

  “The bastard strips her and rapes her, stuffs dead leaves into her mouth so she won’t scream, does her with a goddamn broken stick for godsake. When he’s done he leaves her unconcious and walks back to the culvert, gets the bike and rides off with it nice as you please.”

  “Christ. How’d they get him?”

  “Had a prior for wagging his dick in a playground. And his prints were all over the bike. The stupid sonovabitch, he just left it there on the sidewalk about half a dozen blocks away. Plus the bite marks.”

  “Bite marks?”

  He nodded. “All over the poor thing. Matched ’em to Knott’s teeth. Lerner figures the girl’s lucky she survived. That kind of luck, personally, I’m not so sure of.”

  “You talk to anybody else about this, Tommy?”

  He poured me another scotch.

  “Your neighbor across the street. Norm Green. You might want to have a word with him. I would.”