What the #@&% Is That?

by John Joseph Adams

  He wiped his sweaty face with his sleeve. He pried the cork loose, poured half a glass, and drank it while sorting his phone messages. Three—two from Mom, and the last from that drunken author Creely. Mom said, I love you; why don’t you ever return my calls; Creely said, Get in touch soonest; you got my number, and hung up. From all the hooting and yelling in the background, the author sounded like he’d used a payphone at the local tavern.

  Bryan’s stomach felt the slightest bit queasy. He burped and the metallic taste returned. He did himself up with another quarter glass of cabernet sauvignon, glanced over his shoulder, and saw that Angie remained poised and smiling as if she’d slipped on a reasonably lifelike mask of herself in one of her better moods. Ah, yes, he should pour her a stout one, keep her in that happy place.

  Angie accepted the too-full glass without comment. She balanced it on her thigh.

  “Your engagement ring,” he said. “You’re not wearing it.”

  “I’m not?” Again with the flinty smile.

  His stomach burbled. He made his apologies and beelined for the bathroom. His reflection in the mirror was an ashen nightmare. He dropped his trousers and sat on the commode, head in his hands.

  Angie knocked on the door. “FYI, I don’t fancy you anymore, Bryan. Ten years in Chinese Hell should be considered time served. It’s your turn on the spit.”

  Bryan would’ve retorted, but at that moment, his guts began to convulsively evacuate their contents. He groaned.

  She continued in a pleasant voice, quite unlike her customary tone. “Do you recall that dream I mentioned? The one where I was a knight traveling the land on a fearless steed and lopping heads with a talking broadsword? Probably not. That’s the problem, Professor. Had it again last night. I am now convinced time has come to cut bait and pursue other life opportunities. You always say I can do better. Kudos. Kudos, you heartless motherfucker!”

  His vision contracted. His breath whistled. He clutched his tightening chest and toppled face-first onto the tiles. The descent took forever.

  “Don’t be melodramatic. Whining isn’t manly. I mean, hell, Bry. I’m the one who should be pissed. Ten goddamned years.” She sighed, and if Bryan hadn’t simultaneously been suffocating and shitting himself, he might’ve imagined her pressed against the panel, wistfully tracing the grain with her nail, enacting the breakup scene that comes at the end of act two of every chick flick. “FYI, I’ve already met someone, so please do fuck right off and don’t pester me with calls. We’re flying to the Caribbean in a few hours.”

  Bryan clawed at the door in a doomed gesture. He vomited. Angie’s engagement ring rode the sluice from his guts and floated in a puddle of bile and salmon under his nose. He blacked out and had a vision of lying helpless among reeds while giant herons pecked his liver to itty bits. Angie, clad in a shiny chainmail bikini, leaned upon her equally shiny broadsword and smiled contemptuously. She stroked the pommel with her thumb and said, “Who’s sticking it to whom now, you silly bitch?”

  * * * *

  “Collapsed lung,” the beefy nurse said with supreme indifference. “You aspirated a shitload of vomit. Not good, bro.”

  Bryan woke, after a fashion, in a hospital bed with the monotone report in progress. Tubes clogged his nose and throat. Cottony wooziness softened the interior of his skull. No, aspirating a shitload of vomit did not sound good at all, he had to agree. He closed his eyes and had a foggy recollection of his eleven-year-old self standing in the drive, pellet rifle in hand while the squirrel twitched its last. The tops of the sycamore (sequoia?) trees rustled and monkeys screeched fearfully. A shadow blotted the sun. A ten-foot-tall Martian descended from the belly of the mother saucer on a cold white beam. The Martian took his eleven-year-old self’s pulse while brandishing a shiny chromatic blaster in the other hand. Nice shooting, Tex, the Martian said via telepathy. We hate those damned things where I come from. Heathcliff snatched the squirrel and darted away. The Martian telepathically laughed with savage gusto and Bryan’s nose bled.

  “Go back to sleep,” the beefy nurse said, and snapped his fingers.

  Bryan went back to sleep.

  * * * *

  A few days and several sketchy diagnoses later, the beefy nurse said, “That’s a wrap. You’re officially mended. There’s your clothes.” He turned the light off as he left the room.

  Darkness shifted to light. Bryan hobbled into his apartment on a set of cheap hospital crutches with no memory of how he’d arrived. His muscles and nervous system remained mysteriously at odds, causing spastic tics and farcical nightmares starring aggrieved monkeys and an endless green hell of jungle. His reinflated lung felt seared and scarred. He wheezed at the slightest exertion.

  The weekend dripped through his veins and cocooned him in a gray malaise that precluded research, much less actual writing. He possessed trace memories of whatever had flickered ceaselessly across the television screen. His condition remained so moribund, he only left five or six increasingly strident messages on Angie’s answering machine. Between stretches of torpor, he obsessed about her and his new rival, picturing them on a Caribbean beach sipping rum and laughing at his misfortune.

  On Monday, Frank Mandibole, a former college chum and infrequent confidant, rang. Mandibole said the situation sounded intolerable and that he’d be over right away with proper medicine. The man arrived within moments. He pranced through the door and laid his hand on Bryan’s forehead. “Gracious! Not a moment too soon. Let’s take a ride, get some fresh air in your lungs. Hang around sucking in Providence, you’ll eventually go the way of Uncle Howard.”

  “I feel half-dead, Frank.”

  “It’s Tom. To-om! I don’t go by Frank anymore. Try to focus on the positive. We’ll throw a few things in a bag and wheee all the way to Mom and Dad’s house for some R and R.”

  Bryan didn’t argue the point. While generally the same height and composition as his old self, Mandibole no longer precisely resembled the “Frank” of school days. He’d trimmed his hair and shaved off the mustache. His skin gleamed the way a doll’s skin does. In fact, his features (and helmet hair) were decidedly action-figure plastic. There’d been rumors of an accident. Obviously, he’d had work done. He wore a black-and-white cardigan that also seemed annoyingly familiar, yet not.

  Bryan lacked the strength to protest the car ride. Anyway, how much worse could it be than lying around his apartment sloughing into eternity?

  * * * *

  They hopped onto the interstate and cruised south, then west, into the wild lands of the Empire State. Mandibole’s car had a rusty pink paint job. Compactly European, a tin can on bicycle wheels. Bryan didn’t recognize the make or model, nor could he decipher the faded pennant on the radio antenna. Polka music burped and barked over the radio, interspersed with commentary that sounded Russian.

  Mandibole said, “I’ve a theory regarding your illness. You’re not superstitious—you gave up bowing to altars and thumping holy tomes, yes? Hang with me for a second. What if you’re punishing yourself subconsciously?”

  “Punishing myself for what?”

  “For bailing on the Mormons. Unresolved guilt.”

  “All my guilt is resolved. I’m a confirmed atheist. Happily.” Bryan massaged the swollen glands in his neck. Bundled in a parka, scarf, mittens, snow pants, and snow boots he still shivered. The landscape stretched brown and bare on either side of the highway.

  “Uh-huh. When I first met you, I knew something was amiss. Absolutely knew it. You were kind of head-shy. Ponder this: Leaving the fold, running off to college . . . screwing, smoking, educating. Kicking indoctrination takes a stout heart and a dedicated support system. Nobody helped you, did they? You packed your bags and split the family homestead in the dead of night with nary a kiss-my-ass to anyone. Cold turkey off the LDS teat. Traumatic, right?”

  “Of course, Fra—I mean Tom. I had a few dark days.”

  “Surely that left a scar.”

  “Not likely.”


  “Be realistic, friend. Unplugging from a cult is tricky. People who detach from rigid, hierarchal religious organizations are prone to depression, alcoholism, suicide, you name it. Botch the deprogramming and, well . . . Exhibit A in my passenger seat.”

  “Really, that’s not related to my situation.”

  “If you say so.”

  “Getting away from the church meant getting away from my dad. That’s a net gain, I assure you.” A sense of déjà vu overcame Bryan. He recalled vivid fragments of this very conversation from years before—he and Mandibole tossing darts at a college pub, blitzed on draft beer and sharing life stories. He tried to recall Mandibole’s tale and drew a blank. The main thing that stuck in his mind was that his friend had been blond, taller, and cheerfully evasive.

  “Daddy issues. Revealing, although not the nut of your predicament. My father worked for the FBI.” Mandibole adjusted his glasses. Thick and square, straight from a 1960s NASA control room. “He vetted the suicide letter Hoover’s boy sent to Martin Luther King.”

  “Suicide letter?”

  “The suicide letter. The feds wrote a note detailing the reverend’s alleged infidelities and gave him thirty-four days to ‘do the right thing.’ By which they meant blow his brains out. My dad proofread the letter, made revisions, and got it up to snuff.”

  The music changed and broadcasters argued in Spanish. Fields and barrens ceded to hills and forest. Sunlight ebbed. Mandibole made several turns that propelled them along dilapidated roads through increasingly rustic habitations. After the last town had disappeared from the rearview for the better portion of an hour, he pulled into a yard before a quaintly ramshackle two-story house. Some of the windows were boarded. The gutters were stuffed with twigs. A squirrel sat amid the twigs and glared. Bare-limbed trees encroached upon the yard, their roots exposed in the muddy soil. Patches of snow glowed like bone.

  “This is the summer house. Mom and Dad lived here until 2010. I bolt here every few months and hibernate.” Mandibole climbed out. He snatched up a stone and drilled the squirrel in the head. The creature fell, boneless, into the bushes. He chuckled and came around to Bryan’s side. “Easy does it, pal. Bit of a climb, I’m afraid. Now, now, struggling only makes this more embarrassing. You’re a bag of bones! Don’t they feed you at the hospital?”

  Bryan gave in and allowed himself to be carried like a bride along a flagstone path, up nine rickety wooden steps, across a covered porch, and into a foyer. The house smelled of dampness, algae, and unidentifiable spices. Tall ceilings and narrow passages, with nooks and crannies galore. Antique black-and-white portraits full of crabby subjects. The whole scene—Mandibole, the house and environs—could’ve been drawn by Gorey. Mandibole propped Bryan against the wall. He swooped around like a bat, flicking on lamps here and there. This pallid light pushed back the gloom and held it in tenuous abeyance. He hauled Bryan’s suitcase and overnight bag in and stacked them near a dusty player piano.

  “Kitchen’s that way. Parlor’s over there. The couch folds out into a bed. I advise against the stairs in your delicate condition. The cellar is absolutely off-limits. Phone is in the hall. Sometimes it works. No Internet, sorry.”

  Bryan summoned the strength to speak. “Why does the mailbox say SMITH?”

  “Eh? I didn’t mean this place belonged to my parents. Here are your crutches. Okay? Okay! Got to run. Make yourself at home.”

  “Wait, you’re leaving? I thought—”

  “Hell yes, I’m leaving. I wouldn’t stay in this creepy shithole for a million bucks. Weather is supposed to be warm tomorrow. You’ll find the garden to be the tonic to cure your ills.” Mandibole adjusted his fedora and ducked through the door. He called, “Remember, don’t go down into the cellar. The amontillado isn’t worth a broken neck.”

  As the motor’s whine receded, Bryan tried to piece things together. Why had he agreed to lay up here in the boonies? He hadn’t, not in so many words. Life caught him in a bore tide and swept him to this peculiar shore. He thumped his way into the kitchen and wearily rummaged through the tall pine cabinets and a deep, dark pantry. Dark because the light bulb was dead. Plenty of canned goods and pilot bread. Who ate pilot bread these days? He heated tomato soup and rustled a bit of not-too-moldy cheddar and a loaf of bread from the buzzing refrigerator. The fridge was an old, decrepit model: lime green exterior, pale and fluorescent-lighted interior. Spartan other than the cheese, a bottle of murky milk, and dubious items sealed in plastic containers. There were half a dozen eggs nestled on a side rack—four cream-colored hen’s eggs, a pale blue pigeon egg, and a crusty black petrified egg. He took the lump of cheese and closed the unit, killed the pale, deathly light and the strident buzzing.

  Yes, yes, soup and grilled cheese. He slumped at the kitchen table and ate every damned bite in defiance of his queasy guts. Ten minutes later, he puked onto the sixty-year-old linoleum. Ting! went Angie’s damned engagement ring as it rolled across the floor and into the shadows of the sink cupboards. Novocain numbness filled his mouth. He located his cell phone and tried to dial Angie. Tried, because the moment it powered on, the screen went into video mode and there she was on a beach blanket, taking it doggy style from an oiled dude in sunglasses and a ponytail. Bryan cursed. He stabbed impotently at the face plate until it went black.

  Those movies where the emaciated, shipwrecked hero staggers along a beach, step by agonizing step? Such was Bryan’s voyage into the parlor. He collapsed onto the sofa and surrendered to a tidal surf of terrors thudding against the break-wall of his conscious mind.

  The administrative secretary at Pawhunk CC called him, or maybe he imagined it. Either way: “You’re fired.”

  “I’m on sick leave!”

  “We don’t honor sick leave. Fired, squirrel-killer. Don’t bother cleaning out your desk. We burned your shit.”

  Tom Mandibole emerged from the shadows and tiptoed across the parlor. His plastic features had altered to mimic those of Bryan’s father circa Bryan’s childhood.

  Mandibole knelt in an uncannily mechanical series of motions. “If you devour the raw heart of an enemy, you gain his courage. But! If you consume his living brain, you acquire his memories. My gods, the Smiths were fusty!” He smiled and ran his wormy tongue up Bryan’s left nostril, kept wriggling deeper.

  Bryan gazed in terror at an enormous black form detaching from the sun. If words were possible, he would’ve cried, What the hell is that? Instead, he screamed and screamed.

  * * * *

  The house seemed much cheerier by daylight. Its crooked edges were blunted, its remnant shadows less sinister. In some respects, the place reminded him of his childhood home—Mom in her flour-dusted apron, Pastor Tallen on the step wagging his finger, and the serial puppy murders, ritual suicides, and forced sodomy. Reminded him of how Dad sometimes hid under the bed while wearing Mom’s nylon stocking over his face, and the homemade blood transfusion kit he unpacked when they played Something Scary.

  Bryan managed to gain his feet after a bitter contest with the crutches, which were carved from the antlers of a stag. Their tips dug grooves in the floor as he maneuvered down the hall. His muscles ached, his head ached, and pain knifed him in the bowels. His breath gurgled and his throat constricted. His hands twitched with palsy.

  Greatest blow to his vanity came from a direct, hard look into the mirror. Formerly shot with gray when left uncolored, his hair and beard were bleached white as dirty snow. Could this explain Angie’s unceremonious decampment? Had it been his hair all along? Bryan made a mental list of his symptoms and feebly attempted to correlate them with various diseases. Epidemiology wasn’t his area of expertise, and thus he could only speculate as to whether he’d contracted AIDS, syphilis, hepatitis C, or something worse. It could always be something worse. He didn’t speculate for long, however. Walking from parlor to bathroom and back again taxed him to the core. The notion of peeling off his musty, sweat-sticky clothes and taking a hot shower made him want to vomit again. That rem
inded him: another sandwich?

  Crazed, scotch-guzzling has-been author Buford Creely awaited him in the kitchen when, after hours or days had dragged past, Bryan made it there.

  “You gonna die if you don’t eat, kid.” Creely slurred so it sounded like eat a kid. He wore a brown tweed jacket. His eyes were possum-red and glazed with cataracts from staring at crime scene photographs for too many years. The evil of the abyss and so forth. “Fuck it. You ate last week. We gotta do somethin’ about your nerves. Gotta do somethin’. C’m’ere, squirrel-killer. You’re fresh outta agency.”

  Bryan contemplated fleeing. He immediately lost his balance and fell. His right-hand crutch spun across the floor. He feebly brandished the other at Creely. “How did—why?” Each word was a tooth pulled with tweezers.

  “Eh, your dad sent me. Your old man, remember him? Was him did all them slasher killin’s back when. The Headless Horseman of Halifax. Didn’t have the heart to break it to you earlier. Frank said you deserved the truth. Frank abhors a lie.”

  “Not Frank. Tom . . .”

  “Who in blazes is Tom?” Creely knelt and cradled Bryan in his bony-flabby arms, lifted him to the kitchen table, and set him there. “Relax. I know what you need. Hospital didn’t help, did it?”

  Bryan shook his head.

  “Right, you need real medicine. Old medicine. See, kid, you can barely move. Gotta drop some weight.” Creely smiled a boozy, reassuring smile as he unbuttoned Bryan’s shirt and removed it with the tenderness of a father undressing his son. “On three, roll to your left.” He counted and then turned Bryan over. “That hurt?”

  “Yes!” Bryan said it as more of a protest rather than an assertion of fact. The fear of further pain or, worse, humiliation provoked his anxiety. “Mr. Creely, Buford . . . You have to be careful. The spine is delicate.”