by Harvey Click
The creature down there in Mother’s bedroom turned its massive head, and its eyes flashed like lasers seeking out Phil’s spyhole. Careful, don’t pant so hard, he will hear.
Every weekend that summer, while Father was away at his meetings, Phil would be locked in the attic and the genie would have its way with Mother. Silly Phil begged Sammy to rescue him, but Sammy was just a toy and this wasn’t kid’s play.
Then one day that fall Phil’s father took him aside and said, “You’re going to have a baby brother. That is, it could be a sister. What I mean to say is, you’re going to have a sibling.” He puffed on his pipe and gazed at the gray wads of smoke with an unreadable frown.
Phil’s mother grew plump about the belly, and for a time the genie left her alone. But when the baby came, she had dark skin and kinky black hair. It was the genie’s daughter.
***
Let us pray.
Phil puts aside his fountain pen and thumbs through the Bible. He’s the sort of cowardly agnostic who’s always looking for a burning bush. I know of a power beyond all his imaginings, but I won’t tell him. He’s known nothing but darkness. Good. I’ve let him stew in his bottle of darkness until there’s nothing left of him but vinegar, and now I’ve pulled the cork.
He stares at a verse from Psalm 56: “Thou hast kept count of my tossings; put thou my tears in thy bottle.”
***
Two nights ago I joined him as he sat alone in a quiet blue-collar bar on the outskirts of Akron. I sat in the shadows of his booth, barely visible, and even the waitress didn’t notice me when she brought him another glass of whiskey.
“Trying to build up your courage, kid?” I asked.
“I’m not going through with it,” he said. “It’s too risky. Everybody knows we’re an item.”
I chuckled. “You spent one night with her, kid, and since then she’s scarcely said hello. You call that an item? You think she bragged to all her friends that she had a one-night stand with weird Phil the lunatic librarian?”
He swallowed half the whiskey in his glass and stared at his long fingers.
“Tell me something, kid, how’ve you felt since that night in her apartment?”
“Sick.”
“Ah. And in fact you’ve felt sort of sick ever since you met her, haven’t you? I’ve told you why, and you know I’m right. She’s put the hex on you all the way from your brain to your toenails. Her witchcraft comes from her paramour, the very same genie that had his way with your mother. He’s using Mary to get his revenge on you. He’s with her right now—I saw him enter her apartment an hour ago.”
Phil swallowed the rest of his whiskey.
“Don’t you believe me?” I said. “Don’t you remember Suzy, Marcia, Isabelle, Candi, all those sad little affairs that ended so badly? The genie’s sluts, all of them.”
I sat beside him in the passenger seat as he drove like a slow old woman to Mary’s apartment. He parked in the dark lot behind it and quietly got his friend Sammy out of the trunk. Not the same fork, but a very similar one with the two inner tines filed off, and I can tell you with some authority that souls are able to transmigrate. It was nearly three a.m. and all was still. Her apartment was one side of a double, and the back door was easy to jimmy with a credit card.
We tiptoed through the kitchen, dining room, and living room to the dark stairs, soundlessly ascended them, and stood scarcely breathing outside her shut bedroom door.
“If she’s alone I’m leaving,” Phil said, not speaking out loud but thinking his words.
“She’s not alone,” I thought-spoke back.
Phil turned the knob and eased her bedroom door open. Mary’s face and one naked shoulder glowed in a sliver of moonlight that penetrated the edge of her window blind. The rest was darkness.
“She’s alone,” Phil said without speaking.
“Look closer.”
“There’s no one with her,” he insisted, clutching his fork in an icy fist. “It’s just a shadow beside her.”
“Not a shadow. It’s the genie.”
The eternal past. Mary’s eyes snapped open.
Sammy to the rescue.
***
Be there again, when Sammy came to the rescue. Peep once more through the secret spyhole you bored in the attic floor, your child’s eye watching Mommy moan beneath the sweaty naked genie. In fact in all these years you’ve never pulled your eye away from that hole.
Look: at the foot of the bed a baby squalls in her crib, not your sister at all but the genie’s black child, and you hear the bedroom door opening, though from your spyhole you can’t see that corner of the room, and your mother’s eyes open wide and her mouth falls open too but no sound emerges, and then the genie turns its massive head to peer over its massive shoulder, but too late because already Sammy is hurtling through the air to the rescue.
His two prongs spear the genie’s back, two fountains of blood pumping high, and then at last that missing scream comes ringing out of your mother’s mouth like a siren, and you want to call out to her, stupid boy, you want to protect her from Sammy, but it’s your secret that’s causing all the trouble, it’s your secret that you don’t even dare utter aloud, so your voice is stuck frozen in your throat and your limbs too have frozen so all you can do, no, I, I, I, go on and pour it out, say all I can do is lie silent and paralyzed with my eye glued to the spyhole and watch some shadowy figure pull Sammy’s dripping prongs from the genie’s body, and for a moment the figure looks like Daddy, but Daddy’s away at a meeting and besides he’s a gentle man, this is all Sammy’s doing, my fault, my fault.
Go on.
The shadowy figure carries Sammy to the foot of the bed, it is Daddy after all, no way around it, that devil Sammy is leading Daddy into darkness. Sammy hesitates at the side of the bed and stares at Mother, having one last long good look. She seems to be trying to pull the genie’s heavy body over her own as a sort of shield, but the dying genie lurches half off the bed spurting blood, its head and shoulders hanging off the edge of the mattress while your mother screams, my, say my, while my mother screams, her breasts staring like comic book eyeballs at Sammy, who just hangs there midair as if deciding what to do next.
Then suddenly Sammy has made up his mind, he’s diving headlong into the crib, Mother screaming, never heard such a scream, and Sammy comes swooping back up one tine poking through a fat sausage arm, the other tine poking through the widdle tender eye clear through the back of the soft round baby skull and sticking out the back dripping blood and brains.
Go on.
“Here you go, Mother,” says the figure in a soft gentle voice, Father’s voice, it’s my father after all, shadowy Daddy.
Go on, Phil. I’m pouring you out. Don’t you want to be emptied? Don’t you want to be done?
Mother screams, never heard such a scream, and my limbs frozen my voice frozen in my throat like an icicle my eye frozen to the spyhole staring at the baby, not my sister at all but the genie’s child impaled like a marshmallow on a fork, on Sammy the devil’s fork, and then Sammy’s diving again, the baby still stuck on the prongs, Daddy plunging the devil’s fork smack into Mommy’s belly, saying, “Here you go, Mother,” putting the baby back in her belly where it came from, my eye still wide staring unable to blink, can’t see anymore, there’s nothing left to see now, nothing left to hear…
***
Nothing left of him now. I have uncorked him and poured him out. Good. What a foul breath of stinking words. All that ripeness.
A toast: Drink of this swill, it is his soul. Drink your Phil.
It stinks up here in this attic. Phil has been afraid to go downstairs and clean up his mess. He’s been sitting up here for two days and two nights, pretending that nothing happened. Should I tell him Mary was alone in her bed, that I made him see a genie where only a shadow lay? No, there’s nothing left of him now, nobody left to hear the punchline.
Years ago he watched through his spyhole while his father cleaned up his own
mess. The mild man daintily wrapped the bodies in canvas tarpaulins, one body huge like Papa Bear, one tiny like Baby Bear, and one just right. He dragged them out to the garden, and Phil watched through the rear attic window while he buried them near his ripe tomatoes. Then back to the bedroom with a bucket of water and a big sponge. The water kept turning red and had to be changed frequently. He pulled off the sheets and neatly made the bed and the crib. Then he stood for a while admiring the tidy room, the clean bed with its spotless guilt, I mean quilt.
Phil heard him shut the bedroom door quietly, as if afraid of waking a sleeping wife and baby, heard him creep down the creaking stairs, heard nothing more. A day went by, two days. Not a sound. No food, his water jug empty, his slop bucket ready to overflow, but he was afraid to call out for help—afraid the genie might return, afraid of Bloody Sammy, afraid even of his gentle father.
At last thirst and hunger drove him down. He pried open the attic door with his screwdriver and tiptoed along the upstairs hallway past his mother’s bedroom, not an easy journey but no genie’s fist splintered the shut door. Then down the stairs, at first tiptoeing then suddenly racing down in blind terror to the silent dining room, where already he could smell the truth stinking in the kitchen, where his father sat slumped beside the breakfast table, staring at the floor with a puzzled frown, his eyes alive with maggots and flies.
Sammy had got him too. The tines had reached like fingers into the man’s unknowable heart.
***
Phil was too young at the time to understand that his father had killed himself after murdering his wife, her lover, and their baby. And even as a man he has never fully understood, because some realities are difficult to grasp, and after all it was Sammy who did the dirty work, the same Sammy whose favorite game was punishing all the sinners in hell. It was always Sammy and it still is.
Enough with scribbling words on paper. I need to go downstairs and clean up his mess. It’s not a big mess like the one Daddy made, it’s just a little mess, it’s just Mary’s head resting on Mother’s pillow in her bedroom. But it’s getting a bit ripe and needs to be put in a big jar of formaldehyde, just like all those other heads decorating Mommy’s dresser, a succession of brief romances, each one ending badly—very brief and very badly, and always with a mess to clean up afterward.
I don’t mind cleaning it up. A little work has never bothered me, and it will feel good to stretch these long legs and do something physical with my nice new hands. You can’t imagine how long I’ve wanted to walk around in a real bottle, I mean body, on a planet with some weather. Try living in the outer darkness and you’ll see what I mean. It’s like a miserable attic in the dead of winter, cold enough to make your soul chatter.
Even before Phil slid out of the womb, I coveted his warm veins, that beating heart, that tender brain. He grew into such an eager student, took to me like a son, called me Mr. Nick Nock, spoke with me long into the lonely hours of night. I taught him how to whisper secrets into bottles, and he let me whisper mine into his keen ears. He became my genie.
Phil was a fine student, but there’s nothing left of him now. I’ve poured him out, and his empty body will be my home from now on, so long as this heart beats.
My scream frozen like an icicle in my throat my eye frozen still wide open staring—
Be quiet, Phil. This brain is mine now. Drift away, my boy, drift through the window, drift to the moon, so fat and pale in its fog. Easy, easy, I’ve taught you the way. Your mother is there waiting for you. Mr. Nick Nock loves you. Drift to the moon, to the icy white moon, and be gone.
***
I am Philip Hushing.
I Walk Time
I knocked on the door marked 2B, and someone inside the apartment began to cough. This went on for a long time, and then the door opened a few inches and a wet gray eye stared out.
“What do you want?” an old voice asked.
“Are you the one they call the Monk?” I asked.
“Maybe, maybe not.”
“You ever hear of somebody named Joe Laredo?” I asked.
“Maybe, maybe not. What do you want?”
“My name’s Sam Hunter,” I said. “Joe Laredo told me you taught him some things, and I want you to teach them to me.” I pulled three one-hundred-dollar bills from my pocket and spread them out like a fan in the dusty darkness of the hallway. “I’ve got money.”
The wet gray eye blinked. “Bah, Joe is a stupid boy,” the voice said. “I never teach him nothing. You tell him to keep his mouth shut or maybe I teach him something he won’t like so much.”
The eye shut and the door tried to, but the tip of my shoe stopped it.
“Joe Laredo told me you taught him pretty well,” I said. I shook the three-hundred-dollar fan and said, “This is just a taste. This is for just one hour of your time.”
“Time, money,” the Monk said. “I’m an old man, I don’t got time to waste. How much time you think I got left to spend your money?”
“You’ve got enough time left to spend three hundred bucks and spare one hour,” I said. “You want more money? Here.”
I pulled two fifties from my pocket and added them to the fan. The door opened, and a sour stench swept the hallway while a skeletal claw grabbed the money and stuck it in the pocket of a filthy ragged bathrobe. Wet eyes glittered in an old bearded face streaked with ruined veins, and a gray tongue licked a few long brown teeth.
“Come in,” the Monk said. “You got one hour, then you can get out.”
The little apartment looked like a wino’s corner of an alley. There were no bottles, but the filth was the same. I sat on something that used to be a sofa, and the Monk sat across from me in something that used to be a chair. His skinny white knees poked out of his ragged bathrobe like bones.
“Joe Laredo told me you know how to visit the past,” I said. “If you can’t do that, I’m wasting my money.”
The old man’s laugh turned into a deep liquid cough. He spat a ball of red phlegm into an ashtray full of butts and lit a cigarette.
“Anybody can visit the past,” he said. “Just shut your eyes and remember. It’s nice back there if you don’t look too hard.”
“Joe told me you can do something more than just remembering. He said you can go back and change the past.”
“Bah. Joe’s too stupid to learn nothing, and nothing’s what I taught him,” the Monk said. “He’s too stupid to change a light bulb, how’s he gonna change the past? Worthless boy, waste my time like he waste his own. You look stupid too, you can leave now.”
“Not yet,” I said. “I paid for an hour of your time.”
“Time, money. You kids got lots of time and money to waste, old men don’t have so much. So you want to relive old wounds and sores I see, you want to revive old heartbreak? Some lover left you or maybe she died, and you want to be there again.”
“Something like that,” I said.
“Yes, that’s it okay,” the Monk said. His wet eyes glittered and he licked his blue lips. “She died, I think. Auto wreck, winter, icy road, most terrible tragedy. Two, three years ago. Too much drinks and all your fault.”
I was speechless. My friend Joe Laredo knew all of this, but why would he tell the old man?
The Monk grinned at me, licked his teeth, and said, “Telepathy is the ticket to time travel, and I have a quick look in your brain. Big ugly mess in there, but I can see her pretty face just as plain as today.”
“What does that mean—telepathy is the ticket to time travel?”
“Simple,” the Monk said. “You wanna read minds, you put your soul in someone else’s head and see what’s going on in there. Your soul’s not bound by time or space, so you put it in the head of that damn fool you used to be, and then you be there again. That’s how you travel time.”
I said nothing for a while. Though Joe Laredo had warned me that the old man was rude and unkempt, I hadn’t expected a skid-row bum. It was hard to believe this filthy creature could somehow bring Jane
back, but the thought of another sleepless night without hope seemed even harder.
“So if I learn how to go back to that person I used to be, can I change what he does?” I asked. “In other words, is it possible to change the past?”
“I look in your head and I see you teach college history,” the Monk said. “I see you write a lot of boring pages with, how you call them, feet-notes that nobody reads. So even a damn stupid fool like you can wallow around in the past like a pig in shit, but changing them pages once the ink is set and dry isn’t so easy. Only a damn good student can learn how to do that. I’m an old man, and I don’t have time for stupid students. I want just one good student before I die, someone to carry on my knowledge after I’m gone. I look in your head and I don’t see that good student.”
“I’ll be the best student you’ve ever seen,” I said. “And I’ll pay you well. You can name your price.”
“Time, money,” the old man said. “I look in your head and see you have a nice big house in the country. Looks like comfortable place for me to die. I go there and teach you if you give me that nice big bedroom downstairs and all the good food and cigarettes I want.”
“I don’t allow smoking in my house,” I said. “Not since I quit.”
“You do now,” the Monk said. He licked his teeth and grinned. “From now on, you allow anything I want.”
***
The nice big bedroom downstairs soon reeked of cigarette smoke and old-man stench, and the carpet was soon stained with spilled food and bloody phlegm. The Monk rarely left his room except to give lessons or visit the bathroom, and I could tell by the smell of the bedroom that he sometimes voided his bladder in the mattress or maybe in the corner where his dirty clothes were piled.
The lessons were conducted in the front living room, and before long that part of the house began to stink too. I would lie on the sofa, and the Monk would sit beside me in a chair and talk me to sleep. For the first couple days, I was too leery of the old man’s glittering wet eyes to relax, but soon I found myself drifting into a comfortable sort of trance while the phlegmy gray voice droned on. When I awoke, I remembered the droning voice but nothing of what it had said.