by Harvey Click
“Just barely.”
“Look at my lips,” Grimes said. “Do you see them moving?”
They weren’t. The room swayed like a ship in the roaring waves. An impression of smoldering resentment emerged from the roar, anger hissing hot in the shells like meat scorching in a skillet.
“Burned the Goddamn meat, so what?” someone said.
Dexter turned and saw a young man with long black hair standing in the corner of the room. He pulled on the gold pirate hoop in his left earlobe and smirked.
“So it gives the old fuck the runs and makes his hemorrhoids burn, so what?” the man said.
Dexter yanked the shells off his head. The room tilted and swayed, and the young man disappeared, but the word burn stuck in Dexter’s brain like a morsel of charred meat. He was dizzy and wanted to sit down, but the only chair in the room looked fragile and expensive.
“You’re suffering from over-excitement of the temporal lobes,” Grimes said. “You’ll feel better in a moment.”
“I feel fine,” Dexter said. “What’s all this supposed to prove, that you know how to talk without moving your lips?”
Grimes put the listening shells back in the case. “I’m sorry my toys disappoint you,” he said, “but I shouldn’t be surprised. It’s difficult to impress a man who’s listened to the Talking Horn—no?”
“How would I know, I only wrote about it,” Dexter said.
“You’re not a talented liar, Dr. Radcliff. A man in your risky position should be better versed in the arts of deceit. Your aunt owned the Talking Horn, and I daresay you’ve listened to it more than once.”
Dexter stared at him. Though he’d been trying to find proof of Grimes’ guilt, now he felt oddly disappointed. Maybe in the back of his mind he’d been hoping the old man would prove his ally.
“I guess that pretty much tells the story,” he said. “Only question left is how much money you want. That’s why Mary left her cute little message, isn’t it, like a ransom note that’s too weird to be used as evidence. So what do you plan to do, split it fifty-fifty? That hardly seems fair since she had to do the dirty work. Or maybe she enjoyed it.”
Grimes made a disapproving noise. “A man who exposes his feelings so openly makes soft work for a sharp dagger,” he said. “I seriously doubt you’ll survive this situation you’ve put yourself in.”
“Yeah? Well, I’m getting sick of your talk about thugs sliding down my chimney. You ransacked my house yourself to see if I had any other goodies for your collection. Don’t bother telling me how much money you want, because I don’t intend to give you a dime. You’re the one who’s going to pay.”
Dexter’s anger grew as he spoke. He grabbed Grimes’ lapels and yanked his face up close. “Here’s my final offer,” he said. “Give me the Horn or I’ll break your neck.”
Grimes clucked his tongue like a disappointed father and said, “Don’t be such a fool.” He dropped his walking stick and gently laid his hands on Dexter’s shoulders. They felt like two stun guns churning his muscles to gelatin, and he sank weakly to the floor.
The old man smiled and backed away, holding two crackling bolts of lightning in his hands like swords. They crisscrossed the room in a sizzling web of fire, reflecting off the glass display cases and the polished wall ornaments. A silver shield glared blue-white and rang like a bell. Something scorched Dexter’s earlobe, and he smelled the rug singeing as he rolled out of the way.
In a moment the light show was over. Dexter got up and touched his burned earlobe. Little yellow flames danced like fairies on the cushion of the Edwardian chair in the corner.
Grimes kneaded his hands together and stared at the smoldering chair. “That was a nice chair,” he said. “Now the upholstery’s ruined.”
“Target practice in the house again,” someone said. A dark-eyed young man stood in one of the doorways, black hair pulled back in a ponytail. A gold pirate hoop gleamed in his left ear. “May as well turn this dump into a public shooting range,” he said.
“Dr. Radcliff, this is my assistant, Johnny Burne,” Grimes said.
“Assistant my ass,” Burne muttered. “More like a fucking slave.”
Assistant was the right word, Dexter thought. There must be a trapdoor in the corner of the room. Assistant pops in and out while sucker wears listening shells. Assistant stages light show and burns sucker’s ear somehow. Probably the lavender smell was some sort of hypnotic gas to confuse sucker, a trick used by charlatans since the days of the Pharaohs.
“For a slave, you do remarkably little work,” Grimes said. “Perhaps you could bestir yourself and fetch the fire extinguisher.”
“Fuck you,” Burne said. “You can burn the whole Goddamn place down for all I care, just lemme out first.”
He was a couple inches taller than Grimes and had a husky frame but drooping shoulders and a heavy stomach. He’d probably been a handsome child, but a sullen expression was rooted in his features like a plantar wart.
“I suggest you attend to dinner,” Grimes said. “If anything sets the house on fire, it’ll be your cooking.”
“It’s done, your royal highness,” Burne said. “Maybe you want me to bring it in here and feed it to you.”
“Would you care for some dinner, Dr. Radcliff?” Grimes asked.
“No.”
“Very wise,” Grimes said. “Fasting will sharpen your wits, but Burne’s cooking will sharpen your ulcers.”
“Tomorrow you can fix your own fucking slop,” Burne said. He slouched out of the room and slammed the door.
The flames had lost their interest in the chair cushion, but the air was thick with smoke. Grimes opened a barred window.
“Give me your expert professorial opinion, Dr. Radcliff,” he said. “Did the power of suggestion do this?”
“No, your accomplice did it with some kind of stage device. He’s probably the one who ransacked my house. You like to have other people do your dirty work, don’t you?”
“Whenever possible,” Grimes said. “But I assure you that neither one of us burglarized your house. This smoke is hard on my throat. Shall we go to another room?”
“I’m going home,” Dexter said.
“Very well.” Grimes carried the smoking chair to the foyer. He opened the door and set it on the porch. “It’s been an amusing evening,” he said.
Dexter stepped out, and the cool night air smelled good after the smoke and the lavender incense or whatever it was. The moon that had been swallowed two nights ago looked fat and healthy through the trees.
“If you think these vaudeville stunts intimidate me, you’re wrong,” he said. “I know a few tricks of my own.”
“I daresay the only trick you know is how to talk tough,” Grimes said. “It’s a pity, because you’ll soon learn I haven’t exaggerated about these, how did you put it, thugs sliding down the chimney. Talk won’t impress them.”
Dexter gritted his teeth and cursed silently. He should have known better than to come here with no plan. He was climbing down the steps when Grimes said, “There’s another option, Dr. Radcliff.”
“What’s that?”
“You’re a sporting man,” Grimes said. “What do you say to a sort of wrestling bout between your skepticism and my modest skills. If you win, I’ll tell you everything I know about the theft of the Talking Horn. I’ll even tell you where Mary Ash is.”
“Yeah? Why should I trust you?”
“You shouldn’t. But you can trust this.” Grimes pulled a snub-nose revolver from his jacket pocket and handed it to him. “It’s only .38 caliber, but it should give you a nice bargaining edge if I don’t keep my part of the deal.”
Dexter opened the cylinder and pulled out a cartridge. It looked good, but it could be loaded with sand.
“They’re quite real I assure you,” Grimes said. “You may fire one at the ground if you don’t believe me.”
Dexter stuffed the gun in his pocket. “What do I have to do to win?”
Grimes
aimed his walking stick at the burnt chair cushion until a puff of black smoke seemed to cling to the tip. Old conjurer’s trick, any parlor magician could do it with a rigged wand. He swung the stick as if he were hurling the ball of smoke into the front yard.
“You see the smoke beneath that maple?” he said. “All you have to do is step into it for a moment or two—and maintain your skepticism.”
Dexter looked at the tree about fifty feet from the house and couldn’t see anything other than a shadow, but it seemed to throb and thicken as he watched.
“You probably have a bear trap hidden there,” he said.
“I assure you as a gentleman there are no mechanical contrivances of any kind,” Grimes said. “There’s something far more dangerous, the power I call magic and you call suggestion. But if you’re worried about traps, we can move the smoke.”
He jiggled the tip of his stick, and the thick shadow squirmed out of its nest beneath the tree and stood in the open moonlight of the weedy yard. Dexter blinked several times, but it wouldn’t go away.
“What happens if I don’t win this bet?” he asked.
“Most likely you’ll die,” Grimes said. “But if you survive I’ll invite you to stay here for a while and learn a few simple skills.”
“You intend to lock me in a dungeon or something?”
“No. You’ll be free to leave, but I believe you’ll choose to stay.”
Dexter looked at the black shape throbbing in the weeds. Grimes’ tricks were elaborate and probably dangerous, but he was willing to take the risk if there was a chance of finding Mary. Then he reminded himself he was supposed to be looking for the Horn, not for Mary.
“The darkness you see is called the void,” Grimes said. “It’s the unformed world, the chaos outside creation. Some call it the Twisted Zoo.”
“Where I grew up they just called it fog,” Dexter said. He started across the yard toward it.
“Don’t be so hasty,” Grimes said. “Never step into chaos until you know the way out. I give you five words that will save your life if you use them wisely. They describe how the void will appear to you, but they also contain the key to release you.”
“You ever feel like laughing when you spout this nonsense?” Dexter asked.
“No. Do you feel like laughing?”
Dexter didn’t. The fog had thinned to a slender plume of vapor lingering in the weeds, but it swayed like an exotic dancer, the kind that lured you into a dark room and cut your throat.
“What are these five words?” he asked.
“Open grave with shaded forms,” Grimes said. “Remember them perfectly even as chaos strips all other words from your mind.”
The dark dancer drifted back into the trees as Dexter approached it. The shadows were so deep inside the grove that it could hide anywhere, but he kept looking until he tore his pants leg on some thorns. So damned ridiculous, he thought. Suckered again by an old vaudeville clown.
As he turned to leave he saw it rolling swiftly toward him through the trees, a dense ball of glowering darkness taller than a man. It stopped a few feet away from him and pulsed like a heart.
Dexter wanted to run but stood his ground. The only way to beat Grimes was to face one of his illusions and prove he was stronger than an old man with a few cheap tricks up his sleeve. A cool breeze blew through the trees and unraveled the seething black lump into thin threads of mist.
“Okay, Grimes, I’m going to keep my part of the deal,” he yelled. “If you don’t keep yours, I promise you I’ll use this gun.”
He stepped into the wispy threads. They didn’t feel like vapor, more like dry spider webs against his face, silky and delicate, but somehow they drained the light and sound and odor out of the air. The moon dimmed to a vague smudge and the crickets stopped singing. He tried to fight his way out of the stifling silence, but it gathered around him like black cotton and muffled his voice when he yelled. He kicked and clawed, panting on dead air, and managed to rip a sort of window in the stringy darkness.
He peered out of it at a world he didn’t recognize. Cold moonlight hung like icicles from gnarled branches where huge humpbacked birds perched, ruffling silent wings and staring down at him with corpse-hungry eyes. A fat snake slid out of the leaves like a long black tongue.
He turned and looked for Grimes’ house, but it was nowhere to be seen. He seemed to be in a thick forest or jungle, and the silence was increasingly being filled by strange hoots and shrieks and cries, some of them not so distant. Things changed their forms whenever he looked away from them and then looked back: the huge humpbacked birds morphed into gigantic black cats with gleaming yellow eyes, and the cats morphed into shaggy bear-like creatures hugging the branches and glaring down at him, their fierce slavering mouths filled with savagely sharp teeth. All of the beasts looked misshapen and deformed, as if they were biological rubbish that couldn’t survive for long in any place but this grotesque never-land. Even the malformed trees seemed to throb and pulse and gradually shift their shapes.
He headed in the direction he thought the house should be, but walking was difficult because the ground was spongy and choked with thick vines that squirmed and writhed like serpents, slithering around his ankles and trying to trip him. The smoky darkness still hung over him like a veil, sometimes transparent and sometimes so dense he could barely see. His legs felt tired, not just his legs but his whole body and mind, and more than anything he wanted to lie down and rest. People who were dreaming should be lying down, and he knew he was dreaming because the menagerie he saw could exist only in nightmares, a fish walking on six legs, a jackal with two growling heads, a swine-like thing with an anus where its mouth should be, a mammoth green toad that walked upright like a man.
There was a shrill noise behind him, and he turned to see something like a tarantula the size of a horse. It was maybe thirty feet away, staring at him with eight white eyes, and while he stared back it began to creep toward him, limping in an odd way as if it had more legs on one side than the other. He knew it wasn’t real—and already it was beginning to morph into some other sort of monstrosity—but it frightened him nonetheless, and he backed away from it until the ground disappeared beneath his feet and he tumbled into a shallow pit.
It was a rectangular hole about four feet deep, a freshly dug grave, and he knew it had been dug for him. He was so tired that he lay down flat on his back like a corpse. A monstrous face peered down at him, and then another, and they both grinned and chattered, but he didn’t care. None of this could be real. It was a wrestling bout between his will power and Grimes’ power of suggestion. He knew Grimes was winning, but he didn’t care. Grimes had given him a bit of mumbo-jumbo that was supposed to contain a key to release him, five words of mumbo-jumbo, but he couldn’t remember what they were. In fact, it was difficult to remember any words at all. Strength was draining from his brain as it had drained from his legs, and he found it impossible to form a coherent thought.
More horrid creatures arrived to stare down at him, but they didn’t bother him. They were just shadowy forms now, not really creatures at all, and even the dirt he was lying on seemed to be turning into vapor. A chilly wind reached down into his grave, blowing away all substance and sense and meaning.
I must be dying, he thought, but I don’t really care. Sink into soft darkness, he thought, become a nothing-thing beyond words or want. Time is a shapeless void where words blow empty and cold like wind in a hollow place meaning nothing.
But try to remember five of them, five words, just five, what were they?
Open grave with shaded forms.
Five words meaning nothing, and he watched their dead letters flutter like leaves in the nothing-wind and make new words meaning nothing, sword, death, shadow, mirth, and then he thought about Mr. Grinchin, the moon-wizard he used to dream about, and a cold gust of nothing-wind blew all the fluttering letters together into a new sentence, the word gives shape and form.
Something happened. His mind suddenly c
leared and the shapeless void took on shape and form. It hardened into real dirt, and he found himself lying flat on his back in a real hole. He climbed out of it and stood in a real yard with no writhing vines or impossible creatures. He saw the house and his car through the trees and was surprised by how close they were. For a while they’d been in another world.
Severe psychotic episode triggered by hypnotic suggestion, he thought, but he saw a real hole in the ground, a shallow open grave with a mound of loose dirt beside it.
The darkness was still there, spinning like a skinny dust devil just a few feet in front of him, but it shrank into the distance as he brushed the dirt from his pants. He stepped out of the grove and saw Grimes standing on the porch fifty feet away.
“Looks like I won your little game, Grimes,” Dexter yelled as he walked toward the house. “Now it’s time for you to pay up. I’m not coming back in—you come out here and start talking sense. I want to know where Mary is, and the Horn.”
“Watch out, Dr. Radcliff, there’s something behind you,” Grimes said. “Make no sudden moves, just keep walking slowly and then run as fast as you can.”
“I don’t think so,” Dexter said. “I’ve had enough fun for one night.”
But he turned and looked. He didn’t see anything at first because it was sitting quietly in the shadows beneath a tree and was just as dark as the shadows except for its eyes and teeth. It looked something like a gorilla but was cruder and more primitive and at the same time more human, an ape-man sketched by a psychotic artist. It batted away a night bug with a big ugly paw and scratched its face and watched him, badly drawn lunatic eyes squinting yellow in the moonlight.
“Very cute,” Dexter said. “Now cut out the tricks and come out here and start talking or we’ll see how well this .38 works.” He reached in his pocket for the gun, but it was gone.
“Softly, Dr. Radcliff, your voice may agitate it. I assure you it’s quite dangerous. Back up slowly toward the house and then run like hell.”
“I’ve got a better idea,” Dexter said. He found a heavy branch and pulled it out of the weeds. He threw it like a javelin and hit the thing in its hairy chest. It howled and thumped the ground with its fists.