“And why not?” the law-man roared. “The town’s gone crazy! I’ve two people dead, a young boy driven insane, and people are hiding in their homes! You haven’t been out there. I…see things out in the fog. I see them. I can feel them, God help me. And just like that night in the Vineyard, I know something is coming. Can’t you?”
The doctor slowly nodded, tears running down his face.
What if the stories about Derringer are true? he thought. We thought we’d escaped his lunacy but what if he didn’t get away quite as cleanly as we thought?
George Sutton was right. Every man leaves a paper trail.
“It’s all started to fall apart, hasn’t it?” said Harrington. “Derringer passed through. We thought we were safe. His wake ripped us to pieces.” He picked up the heavy volume with both hands. The paper within crinkled with the sound of dry leaves. “I ask you, Sheriff. What’s a nine-year-old boy doing with a book like this?”
Lee considered the tome clutched between Harrington’s wrinkled fingers.
***
“I think this is pushing my own boundaries a tad too far,” said the Sheriff, slamming the cell door closed and turning the long key. “What exactly are you expecting?”
Harrington, lowered his body to the thin mattress on the cot, his cane under one arm, the book beneath the other. “Take a look into the cell next door.”
“This is my town, Doc. It should be me.”
“It’s my town too, Sheriff.” He’d been curing the ills of Greenwick for generations. The Sheriff had failed in his duty to protect, and while the doctor could still draw breath, he would try to heal the wounds and remove the infection. As he had told the banker, you had to use what you had left. “I think Derringer left this book here on his way through, and Tommy somehow got hold of it. Might have been a case of wrong place, wrong time for the little fella.”
“I still think it should be me.”
“Look at me, Sheriff. How many years do you think I have left? That’s the problem with being a doctor, my friend. There are no false hopes or sugar-coated facts. When you see the figures, view the scans, your trained mind knows when your number’s about to come up. Sutton said that every man’s life leaves a paper trail. I know yours, Sheriff. You passed your medical with flying colours last spring. I did it myself. If I can somehow fix things, the town needs you to help put the pieces back together.”
“And you?”
Harrington laughed, already feeling the hooks of the book starting to work their way inside his mind. “I’m an old doctor with a dodgy ticker, riddled with cancer. My own prognosis would be a few months, Sheriff. You see why it has to be me.”
The Sheriff stood still for a moment, eyes unfocused, digesting the information. Harrington had no time to help him deal with the news, the book would not allow him the privilege of easing the suffering of one last patient.
“Don’t open the door. No matter what I say or do.” Harrington laid his cane against the cot and with the book in his lap, opened the dry, flaking cover.
On seeing the macabre symbols scribed within, the doctor closed his eyes against the onslaught that hammered his thoughts. The characters, a cross between Chinese and Arabic, burned holes into his consciousness, leaving behind gaping holes spewing void. He pulled, concentrating, trying to squeeze the gaps closed as more and more tore through his cerebellum. The symbols and images did not need to be read; they radiated from the pages.
“Help…me…” he wheezed, unable to control himself.
In moments, his lattice of synapses had given way to a gaping chasm. Harrington fell through the hole in his own mind.
“Paper trails,” said George Sutton. The banker still wore his sharp suit. The body within melted. “Even the universe, old friend.”
The earth spun, caught in circulation, passing through the veins of a God.
In the cell, Harrington slapped his clawed hand against his forehead, nails opening the skin, desperate to scratch the visions from the inside of his skull.
There are worlds in here, he screamed, yet all that escaped his lips was a jagged cry of nonsense.
Nothing mattered. The countless patients he had cured and saved from death would perish in manic agony. The time had come. Derringer had not just left this ancient volume in Greenwick but other macabre and powerful objects all over the country. Harrington felt their presence, the madness swelling and consuming like his own cancer that now bubbled and contorted.
How could Greenwick hope to survive when the human psyche proved unable to even comprehend such horror?
“Open the cells!” screamed Harrington in hysterical fits of laughter. “Open the cells!”
Sheriff Lee, sitting at the card table, the crude sketches scattered around him, placed his head in his hands and began to weep.
LITTLE SPARKS OF MADNESS
Simon Dewar
“You're only given a little spark of madness. If you lose that, you’re nothin’.” – Robin Williams.
SHE wore a fluffy, pink dressing gown and a vacant stare. The lady stood outside the large red brick house at the end of the cul-de-sac, set well away from the other houses; a building cast under a shadow, as though a cloud had parked itself directly above. Her thick blonde hair was tousled, as though she’d only just woken up or hadn’t slept at all.
Brodie stopped the bicycle in front of the lady and she blinked, her gaze slowly focusing on him. He noted the black half-circles under her glassy eyes. She had been pretty once.
“Your paper, Ma’am?”
“Ma’am?” she said, and blinked. “Oh. Thanks. Just Sally will do. Or Mrs. Benning.”
“Here you go, Mrs. Benning,” Brodie said and pulled a newspaper from his bike’s saddlebag. “One copy of The Charlotte Observer.”
Sally smiled and gave Brodie an appraising look, as though she’d only properly noticed him for the first time. She stepped forward and took hold of the paper, but stopped short of actually taking it from him. “What’s your name?” she asked.
“Brodie,” he said, feeling awkward. There was a certain gravity to the moment, as though something important had just happened. Brodie hoped she’d hurry up. He needed to complete his deliveries. He wanted every dime he could lay his hands on before his birthday and Comic-Con came around.
“You think I could have two of these, Brodie?” she said, finally taking the rolled newspaper and tapping it against her cheek thoughtfully.
“I guess. You’re only meant to get one, unless you paid for two, but every week some go missing, or a dog shreds ‘em on someone’s front lawn. No one will notice.”
“Oh, thank you. You are a darl,” she said. Her smile lit up her face and took years off her appearance.
“You’re welcome, Ma’am,” Brodie said, returning the smile.
As he cycled back out of the dead-end street, no matter how he tried to think of his comics, he couldn’t shake the mental image of sad Sally Benning in her fluffy, pink dressing gown.
***
Sally peered after Brodie as he rode away. What was it about him? Something electric. Not in a sexual way, of course—she wasn’t a god-damn kiddie-fiddler! He reminded her of someone she knew. Maybe he reminded her a little of herself at that age too. Sure, that must be it. She harrumphed, pushed him out of her mind and trudged back inside.
Sally had never been in such a funk in her life. It was, of course, Harold’s fault. She’d never before had writer’s block or missed a deadline. Not until that bastard left her. Fifteen years of marriage for nothing. Fifteen years of putting up with his snoring, his boorish ways, and the skid marks in his underwear on laundry day. Fifteen years of stiffening up hard as a board whenever he touched her with his smelly, calloused hands. Fifteen years of shame and miscarriages. But she’d written her way through it. Written enough to pay half their bills and even win some awards.
Now that was that. He’d disappeared from their house and her life without so much as a phone call. Without so much as an angry letter pro
mising divorce papers from his lawyer. One minute he was there, his fat ass planted firmly on the living room recliner, the next he was gone.
No one called or visited. When his boss called she’d told him that he’d walked out on her and she didn’t know whether he’d be in for work or not. Neither of them had any close living relatives. All her friends were editors in New York or fellow writers that she only caught up with online or at conventions. She lived a drab existence, pottering around in her fluffy, pink dressing gown with a coffee in one hand and a head full of recurrent thoughts.
Damn him. Damn him for the way he’d treated her. Damn him for the way he made her feel. And damn him for walking out on her after fifteen years. What did she have now? What would people think? How could she write like this? Her perfect little lie had been shattered. She was no longer the highly awarded writer with her mansion in the suburbs and devoted husband. The charade was over.
In hindsight, she should’ve known it would come to this. He was a boiler maker who smoked filter-less Camel cigarettes, and watched five hours of TV a night. She had her MFA and two Hugo awards. He lived in an oxyacetylene blue collar world, full of pretzels, beer and TV marathons. She’d had a hundred thousand worlds inside her, aching to be released one sentence at a time. But the spark was gone now.
Would it ever return? How could she find it again? She remembered the days before she picked up her pen, and that horrible restless feeling that confused her and kept her awake at night. Then her life changed forever. Robert Sheckley gave it to her in 2003, right before he went off to Ukraine and got sick. They’d been chatting conspiratorially in the bar at a conference and he slipped a hand inside his jacket and then pressed it into her palm. Him, the elderly writing great and her great inspiration, her the doting fan. He told her he didn’t need it anymore; said she’d make better use of it. She took it and made good use of it all right, cherishing every waking moment that its creative torrent coursed through her veins. By 2005, Robert was dead and she’d graced the dais at Worldcon to pick up her first major award.
Several years later she’d met another person and he had his very own spark. They saw each other across a crowded dealer’s room, instantly attracted to one another in a way neither could explain. In the same way she’d been attracted to Robert.
He told her he’d found it tucked between the pages of a musty old book in the Brown University library. He hadn’t known where it came from or why; neither did she. She never saw him again in the flesh, although he went on to become a celebrated horror author in his own right.
Sally stopped as she passed the leather recliner in the living room. If there was a silver lining to this cloud, it was the recliner. How she loved that chair. They’d bought it almost a decade ago, and she’d always coveted it. It had become Harold’s though.
She knew she should clean that growing mound of junk and filth by the chair, but couldn’t bring herself to lift a finger. It’d been there for months and it could wait. Besides, it helped her. Helped to have a place where she could pile all the rubbish in her life. All things she didn’t give a shit about, like the Charlotte frigging Observer. She unfolded the newspapers and spread them out over the junk pile.
The room was stuffy now, always so stuffy since Harold had gone. That wouldn’t do; that wasn’t conducive to creativity. She opened the curtains and windows, letting in the crisp breeze, letting out the bad juju. A patch of sunlight fell upon the recliner and the papers piled on the floor, inviting her to sit. That was a fine idea, but she’d fix herself a tea first.
Sally walked into the kitchen, took a teacup from the cupboard above the bench and switched on the kettle. She hummed an old tune, one of her favorites from the years before married life. Before Harold. She turned back to the bench and stopped. The cup fell from her hand and shattered on the floor in a shower of cheap porcelain. A golden spark hovered above the bench, glowing like a tiny bolt of lightning, radiating warmth and light across her face.
She cursed, wanting to slap herself in the face. All this time it had been right there, laying about like some trinket misplaced in plain sight. Was she blind or forgetful? Had she misplaced it, or was it really just a fickle thing that came and went as it pleased?
She picked it up and clutched it to her breast, taking it into her being, consuming it. She gasped and cried with joy, like a lover unexpectedly reunited with her paramour.
The phone rang. Sally picked up the receiver and spoke breathlessly into the mouthpiece.
“Hello, Sally Benning speaking.”
“Sally?”
“Maud?”
“You’re damn right, it’s Maud.”
Sally picked at some balls of lint on the sleeve of her dressing gown. “Maud… I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be a stranger, I’ve just been a little busy.”
“Busy moping around after Harold? You haven’t been returning anyone’s calls or mail.”
“I know, but—”
“And I’m not the only one who’s worried about you. Your friends—”
“I’m trying to write.”
“Trying, eh? Let’s just say it’s a good thing I leaked your split with Harold on the net,” Maud said. “You’ve got a lot of sympathy out there but you’ll squander it if this goes on too long. No one likes a recluse. Unless you really have got your face buried in a fresh manuscript, I want you out there working it, doing readings…”
“I don’t think I can. Ever since Harold…”
“South Carolina Comic-Con is coming up in a few months. It’s your home state conference. I want you to give a reading. And if you can’t do that, I want you on panels, showing that winning smile of yours and being opinionated.”
“I don’t... I dunno,” Sally said.
“You do still have opinions, don’t you?” Maud’s New York accent somehow managed to make her sound even more disappointed.
“I guess,” Sally mumbled. As soon as the words left her mouth a rushing, tingling sensation spread out from the spark in her breast. The spark filled her mind and soul with light and words. Five million words, plots and subplots, story collections and novels, coursed through her synapses, causing her fingers to twitch. “Maud?”
“Yeah.” Maud’s response had the air of someone who’d given up on the conversation and was just waiting for the other party to finish it.
“I have an idea. Several of them,” Sally said, so alive for the first time since Harold left. “I think I’m back in business.”
***
Brodie stopped in front of his home. Shadows spilled across the porch and doorway. His dad really needed to cut the trees back and let in some damn sunlight. He sighed and clambered up the steps to knock on the door. School was out for the day and already he had plans to go crawfishing at the nearby creek.
“Ma,” he called. “Ma!”
Nothing.
He cursed, knocked again, and reached into his bag and fumbled for his keys.
“Coming, Hun,” his mother called. There was a tap-tap-tap of heels on the boarded floor and the door opened. His mom stood there in her leopard print pumps and her gauzy pastel blue jumpsuit, her auburn hair and fire-engine red lipstick.
“Hey, Ma,” Brodie said, leaning away from her as he stepped past her into the house.
“No hug and kiss for me today?” she said with feigned reproach. “Did you have a bad day or something?”
“Nope, but you’ve had a facial.”
She blinked. “How did you know that?”
“Wednesday is facial day. You wouldn’t want to brush against my sweaty teen boy skin, would you?” Brodie said.
She suppressed a shudder. “I s’pose not,” she said. “You get onto your homework now, okay?”
“I’ll do it later, I promise! I’ma go crawfishing. Gonna try out a new spot.”
“Well, I think there’s some chicken in the fridge, but you be home for dinner, okay? And try and leave some of those things in the river for someone else.”
“Sure thing, M
a.”
Brodie’s mom tap-tap-tapped her way into the living room and he made his way down the hall and into his room where he dumped his bag on the floor.
His room was a mess. Dirty gym clothes and the jacket he wore on his paper route were piled on the floor. A baseball bat leaned in one corner and his study desk was covered in trading cards and sporting magazines. He changed out of his sneakers and into his boots. He took his net, stuffed a ball of line into his pocket, and grabbed his crawfish bag from behind the door.
In the kitchen, there was chicken in the fridge, leftover from dinner the night before. Brodie helped himself to a small portion, shut the fridge and opened the back door that led into the yard.
***
Battersby’s Creek was Brodie’s special place. If he wasn’t trading cards or comics with the neighborhood boys, or hitting the ball down at the park, he was at the creek. And when he was there, watching sunlight and dappled shadows play across the surface of the water, he relaxed. For a while he would forget about the emptiness. That constant feeling that he was forgetting something he should be doing, or as though he’d lost or misplaced something.
On days like these, he’d hook a piece of chicken to his line and throw it in the water, then put his feet up and wait. Now that the weather had begun to warm up and the crawfish were no longer so sluggish, he never had to wait long. It was just like regular fishing, really. The crawfish would latch onto the chicken and he’d pull it in, carefully netting it to bring it to shore.
He threw his line into the water and leant back against a small boulder by the bank. It wasn’t long before there was a tug on the line. He pulled it in and scooped the unfortunate creature into the net. It struggled, the light glinting off its translucent blue shell. He pulled it free and threw it into his bag, being careful not to get caught by its long, sharp claws. It was a big one, all right. Brodie grinned. Ma would whine about all the extra work in the kitchen, but she’d boil him up all the same.
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