The Search for Joseph Tully

by William H Hallahan

  He felt alone. Abandoned. Menaced. All was being taken from him. Carson had said it: “Lost wife, lost friend, lost neighborhood, lost childhood, lost identity.” Disease: modem life.

  He walked out of the office and down the hall to the elevator. A life half-done, only just begun. Ozzie missed the pungent part. The game gets in earnest. The loves grow stronger: the hates more consuming; the fears greater; the number of daily battles and skirmishes lost increases. The paws slow; the teeth w ear; the prey grows faster, more elusive. The hell with it.

  Maybe Ozzie escaped. Beat the rap. Skimmed over the wall. He’s drunk the top off the wine barrel and fled. No dregs for Ozzie. Got away on a glassy sea before the dirty weather hit. Maybe he’d had the best and knew it. Maybe dying was smart. The elevator door opened and Richardson got on.

  He wished fervently that he were dead.

  19

  The lights were right.

  Ozzie Goulart was a creature of lighting. And his apartment was a victory of strategic lighting. One switch put them on-low lights behind plants, on tables, over the drawing table. No glare. No overhead lights to flash out all line and tone and character shadows.

  Richardson shambled across the room to Ozzie’s drawing table and sat down at it. He stared at the large square of blank white paper. He touched it. He took up a brush and held it, then slowly drew a dry invisible line on the paper. Nevermore.

  He heard someone behind him and turned to see Clabber pushing the apartment door open with a finger. Clabber stood looking silently at him.

  “I see you’ve heard the news,” he said finally.

  Richardson turned his back to Clabber, nodding. “Yeah.”

  There was a long pause. “Did you hear about the walls of the house?”

  Richardson reluctantly turned away from the white pad like a man interrupted from an intense labor. He looked at Clabber. “Walls? What do you mean?”

  Clabber studied his face for another long moment. “I think you’d better come with me over to that house. There’s something there you ought to see.”

  20

  Their feet crunched in the dry snow, smooth and untracked under the full moon that soared amidst traveling clouds.

  Clabber carried a pressure-type gasoline lantern, unlit. He kept his head down from the cold as he walked.

  Richardson looked ahead fearfully. He saw the grocery sign in the moonlight. Beside it, the crane’s boom rose at a steep angle into the night sky, menacing the helpless buildings around it. A fox in the chicken coop.

  They crossed the expanse of white in moonlight at a rapid pace set by Clabber. Richardson glanced at Clabber’s face and realized that Clabber was excited.

  The cold got in at Richardson’s ankles and wrists, burned his face and tortured his earlobes. He was shivering, apprehensive, and filled with a terrible sense of loneliness. He felt as remote from Clabber as a patient alone with a masked surgeon.

  When they reached the intersection, they walked into the midst of many tracks. In front of 1028 the snow was trampled.

  Richardson followed Clabber up the steps and stopped as Clabber knelt in the vestibule. He expertly pumped pressure into the fuel chamber in the darkness.

  A moment later a small ball of match light illuminated his cupped hands and the profile of his face. He reached the small flame to the mantles. The lamp emitted a sighing sound as bright light filled the vestibule—a harsh light that flattened every plane and washed away all shadows.

  Clabber stood up and lifted the lamp by the wire bail. Carrying it at his side, he mounted the stairs. Richardson reluctantly followed. Clabber was to have his dramatic moment.

  Their booted feet rang loud on the wooden steps. Clabber reached the turning and stepped along the hallway. The spindles of the hall banister loomed monstrously, then fell away as the glaring lamp passed them. Richardson followed the turning, passing semidark rooms, empty, abandoned. He dared to think of the whooshing noise in his apartment. The thought of spending a night alone in this empty building in darkness filled him with panic.

  At the foot of the second flight of stairs, Clabber paused long enough to look back at Richardson. Then he began to mount, slowly, one slow step, then two, then three. He looked again at Richardson.

  At first Richardson thought it was the weird effect of the lantern. Then he saw it.

  The wall going up the stairs and the wall facing him at the top were covered with figures. White plaster walls, virginal in their whiteness. Someone had peeled off the old paper and drawn on the walls.

  Clabber halted, watching Richardson’s reaction. Richardson stepped up several more steps and peered at the drawings.

  “Madness,” he said involuntarily.

  21

  The figures in the foreground were gigantic—over seven feet high—and gowned about in monks’ cassocks. Menacing, thick figures they were, with their faces hidden by their cowls, pha-lanxed in a row up the wall like chess pieces. Solid overpowering masses of monks’ brown.

  Between them, below them, above them in stunning contrast were phantasms in violent furious colors. Flagella, toadstools, bottle-shaped figures with twisting follicles, all limp as though melting and ready to ooze down the wall and onto the steps. They were done in heavy black outline and filled in with chrome yellows, deep reds, blues, sickening bilious greens.

  There was a third layer of figures. These smaller and seeming distant, well into the background, very dark in blues, grays, greens. They had large staring eyes—mad, frightening eyes, panic-stricken, beyond soothing, beyond reply. Amorphous, terrified and terrifying.

  Every line was distorted. Everything was frightening.

  Richardson looked with wonder at it. Then he shook his head at it all in disbelief. Clabber began to mount the stairs, and as he moved, the lantern illuminated the figure on the wall at the top of the stairs.

  This was another monk, larger than the others. The peak of his cowl reached up the wall to the ceiling. The monk in the roadway at the bottom of the iron fence? His face was shadowed dark but partly visible, and the eyes were burning, remorseless, insane. One hand rested limply on the handle of a great battle sword that was planted in the foreground in front of the monk. He expressed the towering rage of divinity.

  The other hand—the left hand—pointed directly down the stairwell at Richardson.

  Richardson hesitated, staring at it, intimidated by it.

  “Come on. There’s more,” said Clabber. He climbed to the top of the stairs and turned, waiting. Richardson had had enough. He wanted to leave.

  Clabber beckoned with a finger. “The best is up in this room.”

  Richardson mounted the stairs slowly. The risers of the stairs seemed imposingly high and he felt small and powerless, passing each menacing, malevolent, enormously high figure. Eyes everywhere, multitudinous eyes peered out from behind the monks, stared at him with awe and dread—the most infinite transgressor in the universe.

  When he reached the top of the stairs he felt almost impelled to kneel before the pointing, accusing, silent monk.

  Clabber waited patiently in the doorway of the room, watching Richardson’s eyes study the figure. At last Richardson looked at him. Richardson didn’t want to go into that room.

  Slowly, Clabber’s arm raised the lantern. As it passed his face, his frosty breath was illuminated. He turned with the raised lantern and entered the room. Richardson stepped to the doorway and looked in.

  Human figures, smaller than life, half size, formed a writhing, upward-struggling pyramid of bodies, nude in pasty grays, unhealthy figures with sagging thews and soft, bloated bodies panic-stricken; seeking to escape upward, they attempted to climb the wall, to climb each other, standing on other fallen figures, figures struggling to rise with the weight of others on them. Many were supine and motionless, trampled to lifelessness. All the climbing writhing figures were partly turned so that all of them stared in frozen motion in silent sound from that wall directly at Richardson.

  W
hat they sought to escape from was him. Richardson. Panic beyond control.

  Adjacent to them was an oversize human head. A large pair of tinsnips had cut open a portion of the skull. A horde of hideous demons poured out of the incision. Above them stood an ethereal cherubic angel in a white robe. He held a flaming sword.

  These figures filled the entire windowless wall except for the middle. There was a huge head from floor to ceiling in a black derby. An extraordinary portrait: a man with dark hair, dark eyebrows, clean-shaven, about thirty, with a tan complexion and a thin-lipped determined mouth. The eyes were enigmatic, ambivalent. Purposefulness on the face, however, was dominant, almost overpowering, utterly implacable.

  Richardson stared at the colossal face. A face he’d never seen before, a face he’d never mistake, not ever, if ever he were to see it.

  The wall adjacent at right angles to it was incomplete.

  It was a hand-lettered statement. In ponderous, unadorned letters of enormous strength but irregular as though almost clapped onto the wall in desperate haste, a final warning. It said:

  “Richardson! Run for your life!’

  22

  Richardson blundered along beside Clabber, with bowed head and shivering dog’s body, feeling his shoes crunching through the snow.

  He was guilty. Guilty of a vast unspeakable crime. The loneliness, the separateness from all other human life, seeped up through his wet shoes into his soul. He glanced once at Clabber and felt he was being led by a keeper. The cold, the endless bitter cold was no longer a part of the environment; it was a presence, a spirit, a tormentor bent on destroying all the fight in him.

  He was struck with how fragile human life is.

  “It’s the time-honored thing to do for shock,” said Clabber. “Actually, alcohol is a depressant, but maybe it will help.” Pie poured three fingers of brandy into a small glass.

  Richardson looked at it, then looked around at Clabber’s kitchen. He was seated in the same chair again, in his overcoat again and sensing again that he should get up and walk out.

  Instead he picked up the brandy and took a mouthful of it. He swallowed it and felt the warmth like a ball sink slowly to his stomach.

  Clabber sat down cross-armed and watched him. “Well, at least there are three people who believe that someone is trying to kill you.”

  Richardson scowled at him. “Three?”

  “Well, there were three.”

  Richardson frowned at him.

  “You, and me and Goulart.”

  “You knew about that, Clabber?” Richardson waggled a thumb in the direction of the empty house.

  “Ah, no, not that. I knew that Goulart was convinced he had psychic powers—”

  “And I can guess who convinced him.”

  Clabber shrugged indifferently. “I let him read my books. And I talked to him. Beyond that he went by himself.”

  “What do you mean ‘beyond that’?”

  “Drugs is what I mean. Goulart started with certain meditation exercises that are described in one of my books. And he had flashes and insights, so he drew them. Fragmentary pictures they were—one of a Roman centurion, I remember. Goulart had an artist’s mind, so everything was visual. He might have been sketching things he’d seen years ago. That’s not a psychic experience or insight. I warned him not to be too impressed. But he was convinced he was on to something. About a month ago, he told me he was experiencing strong psychic shocks. He sensed that you were in trouble. Something was going to happen to you. I think he was already using hallucinogens. And as far as I’m concerned, that destroys the validity of the experience. And I told him so. He said he was convinced that he could see who was going to hurt you, see his face, if only he could have a strong enough psychic manifestation. Well, you see the result.”

  Richardson looked doubtfully at him. “That stuff made sense to you?”

  “Oh, some. Look, Richardson, you can see artwork like that in any insane asylum. Most of it is typical of the dangerously paranoid mind.”

  “Paranoid! Goulart was insane?”

  Clabber waggled a hand doubtfully. “That's an iffy thing. He may have had an authentic experience—”

  “Explain that artwork to me.”

  Clabber poured more brandy into Richardson's glass. “No. I'm not equipped for that. But I think he painted the whole thing for you. That artwork isn't complete unless you personally are standing within it. All those figures are focusing on you, looking at you. Some express menace—directed at you. And the others are clearly terrified of you.”

  “Me? What the hell are you talking about?”

  “I don't know. But all those paintings in the back room focus at a point in the middle of the room. If you stand there in the exact center of that room, then all eyes focus on you. Everything, including that enormous face with the derby. There's only one way to find out what Goulart was trying to say.” He looked at Richardson and waited.

  “What am I—the straight man? Okay. I’ll bite. What way?” “A séance.”

  Richardson slapped a hand on the table in disgust and turned his face away. “Clabber, you’re just too many. You’re —you’re as persistent as a guy selling hot watches from a dark doorway. I have no intention of going to a séance. Goulart killed his mind with drugs and I’ve lost my best friend. Beyond that it’s all pure bullshit.”

  Clabber rubbed his fingers on his chin and regarded Richardson. “Then explain how he heard it, too?”

  “Heard what?”

  “That whooshing sound.”

  Chapter The Seventh

  1

  Carson knocked on Richardson's door. When it was opened, Carson looked sourly at Richardson. “What's a working stiff like you doing home during office hours?"

  “Oh, I had to give testimony at the inquest this afternoon."

  “Okay. Now, ask me what I’m doing home.”

  “Okay. What are you doing home?”

  “I’m watching them load a moving van, that’s what I'm doing home. No matter where I stand, they tell me I’m in the way. We’re going to be out of here with all our goods and chattels in a few minutes, so I wanted to give you your last-minute sailing orders. Okay? Invite me into your leafy bower.”

  He stepped into Richardson’s apartment and sat slowly down on the arm of a chair.

  “You look kind of frazzled, Christopher. What’s the matter?”

  “That’s my line to you,” said Carson. “You look kind of frazzled. But if I look frazzled, too, well then that proves that life is sometimes a kick in the head for everybody. Is it not so?” Richardson nodded.

  “Okay, then heed the words of old Perfessor Possum here. You get your can in gear and move the hell out of here. Away from that creeping Jesus down there in his monk’s cave, away from mysterious noises, away from psychedelic wall paintings. If you hang around here much longer they’re going to certify you to Creedmoor and you’ll end up making raffia picture frames for the rest of your life.”

  Richardson stared at him solemnly.

  “Okay,” said Carson. “Some days you can’t get a laugh for trying. But you know what I’m talking about. It’s all over. The whole damn thing. End of Act I. It’s a perfect time to make a clean break and start fresh somewhere else. Forget the noises in the dark and Goulart’s tragedy. The whole thing adds up to zero. Nada. Goose egg. And worst of all is creeping Jesus down there. Pete, he’s a number one crackpot and you should stay the hell away from him. He’s the one that got Ozzie started. He’s a bad influence. Listen, can you get a few weeks off, say ten days?”

  “Yeah. I suppose. Why?”

  “Haul your butt over to Kennedy and flap down to Florida for a couple of weeks. First move your crap out of here into a new place, far away from here, then get down to some sunshine, girls, night spots.”

  2

  “Okay. I’ll do it. I’m okay. I’m making it.”

  “I know, I know. Don’t worry about you. Is that it?”

  “Well, sure.”
r />   “Bullshit. That woman I’m married to has been making my ear bleed. Abby has been calling me ten times every night. Griselda feels so bad she’s threatening to burn her whole damned deck. And you tell me not to worry. No. I’m here with a simple message. Stay away from that flaming fanatic, find an apartment and go have fun in Florida.” He stood up. “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. Okay.”

  Carson stepped to the door. “Now when Carol comes up, tell her we talked and everything’s going to be okay; okay?” “Yep, yep. I’ll do it.”

  Carson left.

  Richardson stared at the shut door for a time. Then he nodded his head. “Okay.” He opened the newspaper to the Apartments For Rent columns.

  3

  Carol Carson looked tired. She stood in his doorway holding out a hand, and he took it and held it, feeling it soft and small in his palm.

  “Well, we’ll keep in touch, Pete.”

  “Yes, we win.”

  “And you’re going to move out of here? On the double? And that’s a promise?”

  “Yep. On the double.”

  “Houses can go bad just like people, Pete, and this house is ‘going bad.’ ”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means that this house is a bad place now and you should move out.”

  “Woman’s intuition?”

  “No. More. I’ve felt it the last few days. So. Out. Yes?”

  “Okay, Carol.”

  “And take a vacation.”

  She studied his face, then put her arms around his waist and hugged him. He put his arms around her and patted her shoulder. “It’s going to be okay. Don’t worry.” He smelled the scent of her hair and remembered another scent, another head.

  “Good,” she said. “Good.” She stepped back. “Please get out of here and get back to living. And keep in touch with me. I may need a shoulder to cry on.” She turned and hurried down the staircase.