The next morning I packed my bag and left, aware that my stay in the hotel had proved fruitless. I returned to my sister’s house to find her in agitated conversation with the druggist from upstairs; she was in a terrible state and said she’d been trying to reach me all morning. She had awakened to find the flower box by her bedroom window overturned and the shrubbery beneath it trampled. Down the side of the house ran two immense slash marks several yards apart, starting at the roof and continuing straight to the ground.
My gawd, how the years fly. Stolidly middle-aged—when only yesterday I was young and eager and awed by the mystery of an unfolding world.
—Lovecraft, 8/20/1926
There is little more to report. Here the tale degenerates into an unsifted collection of items which may or may not be related: pieces of a puzzle for those who fancy themselves puzzle fans, a random swarm of dots, and in the center, a wide unwinking eye.
Of course, my sister left the house on Indian Creek that very day and took rooms for herself in a downtown Miami hotel. Subsequently she moved inland to live with a friend in a green stucco bungalow several miles from the Everglades, third in a row of nine just off the main highway. I am seated in its den as I write this. After the friend died my sister lived on here alone, making the forty-mile bus trip to Miami only on special occasions: theater with a group of friends, one or two shopping trips a year. She had everything else she needed right here in town.
I returned to New York, caught a chill, and finished out the winter in a hospital bed, visited rather less often than I might have wished by my niece and her boy. Of course, the drive in from Brooklyn is nothing to scoff at.
One recovers far more slowly when one has reached my age; it’s a painful truth we all learn if we live long enough. Howard’s life was short, but in the end I think he understood. At thirty-five he could deride as madness a friend’s “hankering after youth,” yet ten years later he’d learned to mourn the loss of his own. “The years tell on one!” he’d written. “You young fellows don’t know how lucky you are!”
Age is indeed the great mystery. How else could Terry have emblazoned his grandmother’s sundial with that saccharine nonsense?
Grow old along with me;
The best is yet to be.
True, the motto is traditional to sundials—but that young fool hadn’t even kept to the rhyme. With diabolical imprecision he had written, “The best is yet to come”—a line to make me gnash my teeth, if I had any left to gnash.
I spent most of the spring indoors, cooking myself wretched little meals and working ineffectually on a literary project that had occupied my thoughts. It was discouraging to find that I wrote so slowly now, and changed so much. My sister only reinforced the mood when, sending me a rather salacious story she’d found in the Enquirer—about the “thing like a vacuum cleaner” that snaked through a Swedish sailor’s porthole and “made his face all purple”—she wrote at the top, “See? Right out of Lovecraft.”
It was not long after this that I received, to my surprise, a letter from Mrs. Zimmerman, bearing profuse apologies for having misplaced my inquiry until it turned up again during “spring cleaning.” (It is hard to imagine any sort of cleaning at the Barkleigh Hotella, spring or otherwise, but even this late reply was welcome.) “I am sorry that the minister who disappeared was a friend of yours,” she wrote. “I’m sure he must have been a fine gentleman.
“You asked me for ‘the particulars,’ but from your note you seem to know the whole story. There is really nothing I can tell you that I did not tell the police, though I do not think they ever released all of it to the papers. Our records show that our guest Mr. Djaktu arrived here nearly a year ago, at the end of June, and left the last week of August owing me a week’s rent plus various damages which I no longer have much hope of recovering, though I have written the Malaysian Embassy about it.
“In other respects he was a proper boarder, paid regularly, and in fact hardly ever left his room except to walk in the back yard from time to time, or stop at the grocer’s. (We have found it impossible to discourage eating in rooms.) My only complaint is that in the middle of the summer he may have had a small colored child living with him without our knowledge, until one of the maids heard him singing to it as she passed his room. She did not recognize the language, but said she thought it might be Hebrew. (The poor woman, now sadly taken from us, was barely able to read.) When she next made up the room, she told me that Mr. Djaktu claimed the child was ‘his,’ and that she left because she caught a glimpse of it watching her from the bathroom. She said it was naked. I did not speak of this at the time, as I do not feel it is my place to pass judgment on the morals of my guests. Anyway, we never saw the child again, and we made sure the room was completely sanitary for our next guests. Believe me, we have received nothing but good comments on our facilities. We think they are excellent and hope you agree, and I also hope you will be our guest again the next time you come to Florida.”
Unfortunately, the next time I came to Florida was for my sister’s funeral late that winter. I know now, as I did not know then, that she had been in ill health for most of the previous year, but I cannot help thinking that the so-called “incidents”—the senseless acts of vandalism directed against lone women in the South Florida area, culminating in several reported attacks by an unidentified prowler—may have hastened her death.
When I arrived here with Ellen to take care of my sister’s affairs and arrange for the funeral, I intended to remain a week or two at most, seeing to the transfer of the property. Yet somehow I lingered, long after Ellen had gone. Perhaps it was the thought of that New York winter, grown harsher with each passing year; I just couldn’t find the strength to go back. Nor, in the end, could I bring myself to sell this house; if I am trapped here, it’s a trap I’m resigned to. Besides, moving has never much agreed with me; when I grow tired of this little room—and I do—I can think of nowhere else to go. I’ve seen all the world I want to see. This simple place is now my home—and I feel certain it will be my last. The calendar on the wall tells me it’s been almost three months since I moved in. I know that somewhere in its remaining pages you will find the date of my death.
The past week has seen a new outbreak of the “incidents.” Last night’s was the most dramatic by far. I can recite it almost word for word from the morning news. Shortly before midnight Mrs. Florence Cavanaugh, a housewife living at 24 Alyssum Terrace, South Princeton, was about to close the curtains in her front room when she saw, peering through the window at her, what she described as “a large Negro man wearing a gas mask or scuba outfit.” Mrs. Cavanaugh, who was dressed only in her nightgown, fell back from the window and screamed for her husband, asleep in the next room, but by the time he arrived the Negro had made good his escape.
Local police favor the “scuba” theory, since near the window they’ve discovered footprints that may have been made by a heavy man in swim fins. But they haven’t been able to explain why anyone would wear underwater gear so many miles from water.
The report usually concludes with the news that “Mr. and Mrs. Cavanaugh could not be reached for comment.”
The reason I have taken such an interest in the case—sufficient anyway, to memorize the above details—is that I know the Cavanaughs rather well. They are my next-door neighbors.
Call it an aging writer’s ego, if you like, but somehow I can’t help thinking that last evening’s visit was meant for me. These little green bungalows all look alike in the dark.
Well, there’s still a little night left outside—time enough to rectify the error. I’m not going anywhere.
I think, in fact, it will be a rather appropriate end for a man of my pursuits—to be absorbed into the denouement of another man’s tale.
Grow old along with me;
The best is yet to come.
Tell me, Howard: how long before it’s my turn to see the black face pressed to my window?
THE KING by William Relling, Jr.
/> William Relling, Jr. is one of the newer writers to break into the fantasy genre, with recent sales to Cavalier, Dude, Whispers, and various small press publications—as well as an article for a now-defunct science magazine called Probe, “which despite the title was on a different shelf from Cavalier.” Born March 14, 1954 in St. Louis, Missouri, Relling now makes his home in the Los Angeles area. Over the past ten years he has worked as a librarian, truck driver, hospital orderly, professional musician, salesman—and just now is teaching junior high school English part time while a part-time graduate student at the University of Southern California studying cinema, TV, and dramatic writing. In his spare time Relling is working on a screenplay for “a science fiction swashbuckler.” His story “The King” is a reminder that fantasy fans aren’t the only ones prone to idolize (and capitalize upon) their dead heroes.
Man, that was a while ago and I still shake. But, Jesus, who wouldn’t? I’m probably not ever gonna stop, not as long as I can remember what I saw. And I’m not real likely to forget.
And I haven’t even tried to pick up the sticks since then. Kind of forced retirement, you know. I don’t think I could hold onto ’em. But I haven’t had much of an urge to try. And I’m not gonna for a long time. Not for a real long time.
It’s not like it didn’t get to anybody else who was there, like the guys in the band, or the people in that theatre, or anybody who read about it later, who really don’t know what happened. But I saw him, and he was there, and Jay’s dead and Tommy’s dead, and I know it was him. I know.
’Cause I worked for him. You remember back in ’69, when he made that comeback, and they did that big Vegas gig and the tour and the film of that Hawaii gig? The one that’s been on TV a couple times. Well, I worked part of that tour. When they were playin’ in the midwest and they did this job in Kansas City and Ronnie Tutt came down with the flu, I got hired—on account of one of the horn players knew me and we’d worked together before—until Ron got better. So I did the gigs in St. Louis and Chicago and then Ron came back. But I hung around and got paid as a percussionist, ’cause The Man liked me, you know, and wanted to keep me around. Just as a favor.
That was a great job, ’cause he paid the band real well, and everything was first class all the way. And those cats, those guys in the band, could play. Glen Hardin did the piano work and a lot of the arranging and he was fine, man, really fine. And James Burton, the guitar player. I never heard anybody who could play like him. Just jamming with those guys was all right. Yeah, it was all right.
But The Man himself was great. He was The King, you know, just like they said. I mean, a lot of people only knew him from the early days and “Hound Dog” and Ed Sullivan or maybe from those not-so-good flicks he made. Or they only know the last year or so before he died, when he got so bad, you know, puttin’ on all that weight, and his voice goin’ and all and the stories about the booze and the pills and all that other shit.
But when I knew him he was at his peak. He was at the top. He was in good shape—he worked out, you know, exercise and karate and all, two, three hours a day—and his voice was real smooth and strong. God, he could sing. Did you ever see that thing on TV from Hawaii? He was great. Just great.
And he would kill those crowds. Absolutely. Not just the chicks, either, but the guys, too. And not only the young ones, but like old ladies and housewives and little girls and all. They’d scream and faint and just wet their pants. He had ’em, man, and he knew it all the time. It was unbelievable. Like he lit a fire under every one of them. And he did, too. He did.
We could feel it, too, just playin’ behind him. And he still had some of that at the end, you know. That fire, that electricity. Even when he was goin’ down, when he was dying, they were still hangin’ on him. Even though he was fat and sick and all and couldn’t sing like before. But he was still The Man. He still had it, even though he was in bad shape.
Look what happened when he died.
Those people thought he was some kind of god or something, and they came from all over the world to that funeral. Like he was something more than an ordinary human being and not like the rest of us, you know. And really he was, in a way. He was special. And anybody who’d known him, or thought they did, or who loved him was there. There were thousands of ’em. Jesus, I was there and it was—well, like nobody out of all those people could believe it, you know, and they all felt so bad. Like he couldn’t really be mortal and couldn’t really die. You could feel it like a weight on your back in that crowd, that “how-can-he-do-this-to-us” sort of thing. He couldn’t really be dead.
They’re still comin’ today.
When I think back on it now, maybe that was a part of what happened later. You know, all those people not accepting that he was dead, wanting him to be back, praying to him like he was a god—
Maybe that was part of it. That and something else.
The hustlers. The hucksters. The cheap bastards who came down like buzzards to make a buck out of all that grief, that love, that worship. It made me sick to see those guys on the streets, man, right out in front of that goddamn tomb, sellin’ ashtrays and T-shirts and photos and records. And the people, those thousands and thousands of people were buyin’ it up, just because they loved him and didn’t want to let him go. Like they had to have a part of him to hold on to. I got pissed off, and punched one of those guys out, one who was sellin’ necklaces of little silver coffins with his name engraved on ’em. They had to pull me off that son-of-a-bitch.
But I knew Jay, and Jay was straight about his act, and he’d even been doin’ the material for a couple of years before. The Man himself had seen Jay once and then met him later a couple of times, and he really kinda dug it. He said Jay was the only guy he’d ever seen who could do him right, you know. And Jay was a big fan of his. But Jay did other stuff in his act, you know, his own material and all. And like I said, Jay had been kicking around for awhile.
So it wasn’t Jay’s idea, really, but Tommy Adams’s, who heard Jay at a club in Knoxville. He was the one who came around with the idea for the change in the act and the offer to manage Jay if he’d go along with it. Big bucks, Tommy said.
At the time I’d been gigging with Jay for about six months. He hired me after his old drummer quit somewhere around Springfield, Illinois, and I’d been back in the midwest after knockin’ around LA for a couple of years, and was just gettin’ by. I wasn’t workin’ real steady when I met Jay and he gave me the job. Anyway, when Tommy Adams came to him with the offer that September, Jay came to me. He knew that I’d known The Man personally—like he did, too—and he wanted to know how I felt about it. So we talked.
I told him what I thought of Tommy Adams, but that I really didn’t see anything wrong with the change, ’cause I knew where he—Jay, that is—was coming from, you know. A tribute, right? Kind of a memorial. The money didn’t have a thing to do with it.
Oh, no.
So Jay went for it, and became Jay Redman, Crown Prince to the throne of The King. Right down to the white suit and the scarves and the sequins and the rhinestones and the Mother of Pearl inlaid acoustic guitar and the hair and the sideburns and the sneer and the jewelry and the tight pants and the swivel hips and the karate kicks. Right down to “Heartbreak Hotel” and “In the Ghetto” and “Burnin’ Love” and “Jailhouse Rock” and all.
And I went right down with him.
Maybe I shouldn’t say that, I don’t know. At the time I didn’t think it was bad at all. Jay got hot almost from the start, and Tommy was gettin’ us gigs all over the south and the midwest, from Fort Lauderdale to Chicago to Atlanta to Nashville to New Orleans to St. Louis, in clubs and dinner theatres and bars and everything. It got to where by February I was pullin’ down about five bills a week, just by myself. Tommy wasn’t kidding when he said there’d be big bucks. For all of us.
But it wasn’t the money.
It was real strange. We’d do the gigs, you know, at those supper clubs and all and those people, m
an, they were just amazing. I mean, Jay was good and he had it down and all, but he was still just Jay. He was only pretending. It was an act, right?
But the people. It was like bein’ back on that old tour, with the chicks screaming and passing out and reaching up to touch Jay when he’d wiggle or smile or wink at them.
Funny. There must have been a hundred other guys around the country with the same gig, and from what I heard, it was like that for all of them. The people were just crazy for something to hold on to.
But Jay took it in stride, you know, and stayed just Jay. There was no magical transformation or anything like that, where Jay started to talk like The Man when he was off stage or was possessed or any of that other crap you might have heard about. He knew it was an act, so on stage and off he was always still Jay. Sure, he dug ail the attention and the bread, but he was always himself.
But Tommy, whew. Tommy didn’t really go crazy, at least psycho or anything like that. It was the bread, you know. The dough started rollin’ in and Tommy’s all the time walkin’ around with these big dollar signs in his eyes. That was all it was, was the bucks. Tommy was another buzzard, just like those other guys.
What started it was when Tommy lined up this TV gig for Jay that was a kind of “head-to-head” for the seven or so best impersonators doing the act. So we do the gig in Vegas at Caesar’s Palace. Very big deal, right? Much bread. We made out fine.
Except that Jay loses and finishes behind a couple of other guys who maybe looked a little more like The Man or moved more like him or sounded more like him or—like I said—were just better than Jay. So what? You know. We still got paid and we didn’t do bad at all. Jay was good, as he always was, and we weren’t gonna be workin’ any less or losin’. There was enough in it for all these other cats and it wasn’t like we weren’t pullin’ down our share.
The Year's Best Horror Stories 9 Page 21