“What? So why did you go out of your way to glorify him when we met?”
“Because I, too, was lured by blind faith and a general belief in the goodness of mankind. Not for a second did I think that he was a crook.…”
“Samuel? A crook?” Ben pushed aside thoughts of the lie detector’s strange tactics and his use of trickery and deceit.
“One of the biggest,” Robert said, sighing and leaning back in his chair, “one of the biggest.”
“You brought him here?”
Robert nodded. “I couldn’t just leave him in the state he was in. Even crooks deserve a proper burial.”
“How do you know he punched in a seven over three?”
“Samuel called me and asked me to come over to his house as soon as possible. I thought maybe he had some new information regarding Catherine. When I got there, the door was open. I found him lying on the floor. I bent down and tried to pick him up but he was unresponsive. Much like you, Ben, I couldn’t believe that the Mad Hop had opted out in this way, but the note he’d left on the table was conclusive.”
“Note?” Ben asked, looking at the investigator’s still body.
“He apologized to all those whose trust he’d betrayed. He admitted that he wanted more than anything else to be a superior private eye in this world but that desire turned into an obsession, which clouded his judgment. Hence the dizzying string of failures. Hence the feeling of worthlessness. Hence the decision to put an end to the tragic farce.”
The doleful effect of Robert’s words did not stop Ben from barking “Forget it!” when the golden-haired undertaker took a step forward and put out his palm for the key.
“Why won’t you give back the key?” Robert asked.
“Because then he’ll swallow it and I won’t have any way of getting Samuel out.”
“What do you mean ‘getting Samuel out’?” the bald undertaker asked.
“I’ll explain in a second,” Ben said, “but first tell me: what happens if someone who never pushed the magic numbers is buried in a sarcophagus of eternal sleep?”
“There’s no such thing. It’s unthinkable that we would force someone…”
“No, I don’t mean you guys. I’m just wondering if there’s a way to prove that someone actually chose the option of ultimate sleep.”
“Of course,” the baldheaded one guffawed, “you see if he wakes up.”
“But if he wakes up after you’ve swallowed the key?”
The golden-haired one giggled. “Take it easy. Once they’ve been put in their eternal beds, they don’t wake up.”
Ben nodded, walked over to the sarcophagus, shoved the key in place, and flipped the lock three times.
“What are you doing?” the undertakers yelled in unison.
Ben smiled and extended his hand to Robert. “Come. Out of the chair. Let me put Samuel in there. It’ll save us all a lot of time.”
“Are you out of your mind or have you just forgotten that I’m a cripple and can’t go anywhere without my wheelchair?”
“Oh, but I’ve seen your form in the hundred meters,” Ben said.
Before Robert had the chance to respond, Ben apologized and cracked him on the back of the head, breaking his neck and pulling him out of the chair. On the ground, Ben flipped the Belgian onto his back and used Robert’s thumb to press 3 once on his godget, ending the dead man’s moaning. Within moments, his eyelids were fluttering and he had dropped into a deep sleep.
The undertakers looked on in shock. “Don’t you get it?” Ben asked. “I did that just to demonstrate that it’s entirely possible that you’ve been locking innocently sleeping people in these sarcophagi.”
“Like Robert,” he added, still not seeing comprehension in their eyes. “What would happen if I put him as is in a sarcophagus and locked it up? Pushing three once assures eight hours of dreamless sleep, right? What happens when those are up?”
“He’d keep on sleeping,” the golden-haired one mumbled, exchanging bashful looks with his friend.
“In other words, if I wanted to do away with Robert, not only would it be easily done, but I’d also have your help. In the previous world, you’d be seen as accomplices to a murder. And I think that’s a little worse than pummeling a phony cripple—a fact you’ll be able to verify quite easily in a few hours when he wakes up.”
Ben lifted the coffin’s heavy lid, took hold of the Mad Hop’s warm body, and folded him into the empty wheelchair.
“But…,” the bald one began.
“I’m sorry,” Ben said, “this isn’t up for discussion. I’m taking him with me. If I’ve made a mistake, I assure you I’ll return. In the meantime, I recommend you start thinking about ways of verifying eternal sleep…”
“On one condition…,” the golden-haired one said.
* * *
The reunion with Yossef and Miriam was moving, even though the two kept sneaking surreptitious glances at the dead man in the wheelchair, who was flanked by four suspicious undertakers. Ben could hardly hold back the tears as he listened to the story of their departure from the previous world and the gift they’d left for Kobi and Tali. When he told them about his exhaustive efforts to track down their daughter and the assistance he had received from the inanimate man in the chair, they promised to do all they could to help him. Ben realized that the old scientists had a hard time coming to terms with the new world. When Yossef asked if he had an explanation for their current reality, Ben said their new existence would make sense soon enough, even under their scientific scrutiny, but that in the meanwhile they should just be thankful that they arrived together.
The couple exchanged thumbprints with Ben, asked him to keep them up to date with even the smallest development, and warned him not to drift away as he had during their long mourning period in the previous world.
After they had left, Ben leaned against the door. Yossef and Miriam had aged a decade since the tragedy. And if that wasn’t enough, he’d left them with the insincere notion that they were sure to run into Marian at some point soon.
Losing himself once again in one of the desolate cars on the train of thought, he wasn’t able to decipher the words spoken by the cranky voice in his ear and turned toward the speaker, asking, “What did you say?”
The youngest undertaker nodded in the direction of the Mad Hop, who stretched his short limbs to full capacity, yawned, looked around, and said, “Bloody hell, this is one ugly apartment.”
The four flabbergasted undertakers crowded around him. “What do you want?” he asked, jumping back.
Seeing Ben approach him, he stomped his right foot. “This is my seven over three? Four undertakers, a client, and a liar’s wheelchair? No ladies? Nothing to drink? No city? Something small … chimneys … God, it isn’t supposed to be like this … this is one fucked-up kind of internal wor…”
“Samuel, you alright?” Ben asked, getting on his knees and taking him in his arms.
The little man, lost in Ben’s arms, said, “That’s all I needed, the blooming of a latent homosexuality … bloody hell…”
One of the undertakers burst out laughing. “Sorry, sir, but you’re mistaken. You’re still in the Other World and we’ve made a grave error.”
Turning to Ben, his head bowed, he said, “I believe we owe you a profound apology. We shouldn’t have doubted you.”
Ben waved off the apology. “Don’t worry about it. The important thing is that Samuel’s awake … I’m sure you have a ton of work and I wouldn’t want to keep you.”
Once they’d gone, Ben turned back to the investigator. “What happened to you, Samuel? I know you didn’t opt for a seven over three.”
“I didn’t even opt for a one over three.”
“So what then?”
“Robert.”
Ben laughed unwillingly. “Huh?”
“Lose the clownish expression. The man’s a pathological liar.”
“You mean the business with the wheelchair?”
“That, too.
Since you brought me here in his wheelchair, I assume you realize he’s not in need of it. He just uses it as a ploy for sympathy.”
“It did strike me as odd, considering he’s the only physically disabled person I’ve seen in the Other World.”
“The only person posing as physically disabled. There are no handicapped people in the Other World.”
“You say the wheelchair is a ploy for sympathy?”
“Absolutely. He wants to convince as many people as possible that he was wronged in the previous world. Don’t think he chose you because of your uniquely keen listening skills. I assure you there are hundreds like you, random people who have heard the tragic life story of the pathetic creature who’s incapable of forgiving himself and therefore seeks out the sympathy of all and sundry.…”
“Well, now I see why you kept avoiding the matter, but how can you be so sure he’s that big of a liar?”
“He brutally raped that poor girl.”
“What about the whole thing with the sleepwalking?”
“Bollocks. He made a copy of her key and snuck into her room at night.”
“And you know this, because…?”
“Robert came to me and asked me to find out as much as possible about Catherine and to alert him when she came to the Other World. Before agreeing, I asked him to relate the story of his life. When he got to the part about the rape, which he of course described as her romantic initiative, I couldn’t hold the laughter back. I told him I suffered a rare nervous system disorder that triggered sudden paroxysms of laughter. Inside, I despised the bastard. I asked him to bring me the video documentation of that night, but he claimed all of his tapes had mysteriously disappeared from his apartment. My jaw hurt for days, but I agreed to help him.”
“Why? You…”
“Ben, sometimes you’re as naïve as an alias.”
“Samuel, sometimes you’re as foggy as a patch of London sky.”
“I agreed to take on his case knowing that I’d do everything in my power to ensure that he never met up with her again.”
“You lied to him.”
“I couldn’t bear the thought that that poor woman would be persecuted in death as in life. I found several articles about the story. It was clear the man was a beast who had taken advantage of a young woman preparing to devote herself to God. Her life was ruined in one fell stroke. Even though I knew it was a lie, I felt compelled to make this case mine.”
“What did you do?”
“You mean what didn’t I do? I sure as hell didn’t tell him when she came here a little over a year ago.”
“How did he miss her? I mean, he sits there in that chair all the time.”
“I guess she was lucky. Maybe he was off to Narcotica, buying one of those hideous cigars.”
“Unbelievable.”
“Well, that’s not the half of it. Right after I made his acquaintance, I contacted the White Room Directory and asked for a daily report of the newly dead. When her name eventually came up, I tracked her down, warned her about him, and found her a new place to live. Once I sat down with her and heard the true version of events, I was mad enough to kill him. Ben, the man’s mental. He’s obsessed with the woman. After so many conquests, he couldn’t handle her rejection, so he decided to take matters into his own hands.”
“So you think he doesn’t really love her?”
“I couldn’t care less. What’s important is that she doesn’t love him and that, as far as she’s concerned, he is the devil incarnate.”
“Aren’t you getting a little carried away? According to the old truism, to err is human but to forgive…”
“Never have I been more proud of my humanity and lack of divinity.”
“I meant Catherine.”
“She can’t forgive him. And besides, for her, this business isn’t even part of the past. Her nightmare continues.”
“Because when she shot him she thought she was putting an end to it.”
“And then she comes here and discovers that not only is this loathsome creature still hunting her, but his determination had increased tenfold.”
“But as long as he never finds her…”
“He already has. In a café. She lashed out at him and ran away.”
“I know! Oh my God, I know! I was there with my mother. I saw the whole thing. That’s how I found out he isn’t crippled.”
“Right. So she managed to get away, leaving the bastard feeling degraded and betrayed. He came straight to my place and started howling about my inadequacies, saying he’d trusted me all these years and, had I not made all these false statements, he would have met her ages ago. I smiled and said that since he’s in an accusatory state of mind, perhaps he’d like to discuss some fraudulent statements of his own.…”
“You told him the truth?”
“Ben, any good liar knows that the lowest lie is meant to serve an even lower truth. The spectacle was a true pleasure. His face went white, a catatonic tremor went through his limbs, and his countenance took on the hysteria of a man who realizes he’s lied to a far more gifted liar. And then…”
“He came for you?”
“Surprising how much strength the man has. He lunged at me, and before I had the chance to fight back, he got his hands around my neck and started to bellow like crazy. Then he took my thumb and forced it down on the button, sentencing me to a sleep I wasn’t supposed to rise from.”
“I don’t get it. If he planned on sending you to the kingdom of eternal sleep, why’d he only force you to push the button once?”
“He forced me to push the button seven times.”
Ben smiled limply. “Okay Samuel, would you do me a favor and tell me what the hell you’re talking about? Because what you’ve just said makes no sense whatsoever.”
“Well, it does if you’ve had the button ‘fixed’ years ago,” the Mad Hop said, taking the godget off his neck and pointing at the sleep button. “I’ll demonstrate with my pinkie, since the godget only responds to the thumb. If you use your pinkie to push the sleep button seven times, what will happen?”
Using his pinkie cautiously, Ben pushed the button seven times. “Okay, nothing.”
“Good,” the Mad Hop said, pushing the button once.
Ben stared at his godget. “Your button stays depressed. It doesn’t bounce back.”
“No, it doesn’t. And it doesn’t matter if you push it seven times or seven hundred times. It will only respond to the first one.”
“Eight hours of dreamless sleep.”
“That’s right,” the Mad Hop said, putting the godget back around his neck. “I asked the manufacturers to disable all of the other sleep options.”
“But the undertakers told me that…”
“True. Which is why I’m so grateful to you. Had you not extracted me from that ridiculous aquarium I would’ve been down for a whole lot longer than eight hours. That Belgian may be out of his mind, but he is a thorough bastard. He realized what I’d done, so he dragged me all the way to the cemetery to bury me before I woke up.”
“So, in this world’s vernacular, you could say I saved your death.”
The Mad Hop groaned and got out of the wheelchair. “Well, at least you got yourself a piece of vintage furniture in the deal.”
“Which reminds me, what are we going to do with Robert?”
“We won’t be hearing from him anytime soon. As far as Catherine is concerned, no need to worry. She lives far away. The only reason he bumped into her is because she came to see a friend.” After a brief silence, he continued, “In the interim, I understand you’ve hit a dead end.”
“Couldn’t have put it better myself,” Ben said. “No one’s seen her, no one’s heard from her, no one’s…”
“Okay, I get it,” the Mad Hop said. “The easy part of looking for this missing person has come to a close. Nonetheless, I must say this case is getting more intriguing by the minute—on the one hand, your wife went missing in the Other World, an easily accomplishe
d task, the dream of any escaped criminal, a place that grows in size every day like a geometric progression gone haywire, but, on the other hand, your entire family is here and over the past fifteen months not one of them has heard a word from her.”
Ben nodded, eyeing the portrait on the wall as though it might reveal another clue.
The Mad Hop watched him. “Rather like the Mona Lisa, eh? Says nothing, looks at you with the wisp of a smile, knows something you don’t, and yet manages to look so innocent, as though the mysteriousness she exudes is a mere figment of the spectator’s imagination.”
“Wish she could talk.”
“If she could, she’d probably beg for a frame.”
“Sorry?”
The Mad Hop took the canvas painting off the wall and tucked it under his arm. “Ben, the artist did a great job, but it’s not enough. This needs to be framed.”
“I meant to do that but…”
“It’s alright. Just a little something in return for all you’ve had to endure.”
“Wait up, I’ll join you.”
“No need. Take my generosity and go to sleep. By the time you wake up the enigmatic lady will be framed and perhaps that will get us on the right track.”
“What do you mean?”
“Truly, I haven’t the faintest idea. I’m just trying to cheer you up with my supercilious banter. As a matter of fact, I’d be pleased if we could start plotting a new strategy upon my return.”
29
The Exorcist
“Yonatan, you’re starting to worry me. I was gone for a week and you still show no signs of recuperation. Maybe you got used to having my voice around and thought I’d abandoned you. No way, my dear, not a chance. I’m really sorry I was gone for so long. It wasn’t planned. Not remotely. I was supposed to catch a flight, have an operation, and come back three days later. You remember which operation, right? I should have taken care of it years ago, but each time I got anywhere near the hospital I thought of my mom’s terrible story. In the end, I decided to conquer my fears. After all, the place is known as the world leader in treatment for remov— Merde, it’s impossible to have a private conversation in this place.… It seems like the nursing staff seizes every spare moment they have to eavesdrop. Anyway, I hope you won’t mind if I whisper till they’re gone. I guess you’ll be pretty surprised to hear that I didn’t go through with the surgery after all. You’re not going to believe what happened. I went to the hospital, and when everything was ready to go, just as the surgeon walked into the room for prep, I started to think about what had happened in that very same place years ago and realized there was no way I’d ever be able to do it. It’s just too much.
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