by Nick Mamatas
But then again, who does?
Now though, I wonder if Dede’s death wasn’t as instantaneous as we were told. Was it like mine is, a seemingly interminable period of near senseless consciousness—everything closed but my ears? Imagine having to turn off every light in a high-rise office building manually, one at a time, and the elevators are broken. That’s fucking dying. That’s being already dead.
If this is the afterlife, all religion is wrong, and most atheism isn’t looking very clever anymore either. There are seven billion of you out there, and what, ten billion of us who have been through it? Ticking away somewhere in our own brains until the last tissues rot, isolated from both the world of the living and even the rest of the dead. On television, people often address the dead, but only when we’re safely buried six feet under their feet. In real life, when in the same room with a corpse, people talk to themselves.
The coroner, or assistant, or intern—whoever it was—was a chatty sort. He gave me a name: Billy No-Face. His name was Thomas. I know because he goaded himself constantly. “Come on, Thomas, clean up already.” “Thomas needs a smoke break.” Thomas is also an artist getting a certificate in natural science illustration at RISD, and he was keen to put the ruins of me in his portfolio, but the light was all wrong, and his shift almost over, and oh, he didn’t bring the right sort of pencil. “How could you be so stupid, Thomas?” An excellent question.
When I was alive, I often felt a peculiar tingling sensation when hearing certain sounds in an otherwise quiet room—that ASMR thing I mentioned previously—but I didn’t always need YouTube videos. Whispering, shortwave radio sound effects, the rats in the walls of my apartment scuttling or scratching, and pencil sketching and erasures. There are plenty of videos of these sounds online, some looping for ten or twelve hours. They put me on the edge of orgasm and then to a blissful sleep, most nights. It didn’t matter how lonely I was, or how hungry, or even if my Internet or electricity was paid up, I had a guaranteed half-hour of ecstasy every night so long as it wasn’t so cold outside that the neighborhood vermin froze and died.
When Thomas sketched me, I heard it clearly. He was so close. But I didn’t feel a thing. No tingles, no bubbling spinal fluid, no sense of a human brain floating gently in a vat of NyQuil and sex. That’s when I really knew I was dead, when I finally looked down at my hand and saw my cracked tooth in my bloody palm. I nearly expired just then. I had this sense that I didn’t have to hang on till the last chemical reactions died out; I could flip the final light switch at any time, stop cogitating and then______. When the sound of pencil, the wrong pencil for Thomas but the right one for me, inspired no strange semi-erotic reaction, I nearly turned myself off.
He leaned over me. I could feel the tickle of his breath in my ear. “I know all about you, Billy No-Face. Panos Panossian,” he said. I couldn’t be sure, as so many of my nerves had already died, but I think he licked me.
Then the door opened and Thomas quickly dropped the sketchbook and kicked it somewhere. A rough but feminine voice said, “Hello there, Thomas. I’m bringing in a pair of bad girls for a little tough love show and tell. Hey, he’s already out.” Then I heard the sound of vomiting.
Thomas got up from his stool, muttering that this sort of thing happens all the time. I presumed he meant the puking, not the interruption of a late-night art session.
“I don’t know what you’re trying to prove,” I heard Colleen say.
“Pretty nasty handiwork,” the voice of the older woman said. Something rolled; there was a clank and a squishing sound. Thomas must have broken out a mop and bucket.
Then I heard Tracy’s voice, tentative and contrite. “Sorry. I don’t normally upchuck like this. It’s just…the smell.”
“Breathe through your mouth,” Colleen said.
They were together. Colleen and Tracy. Were they suspects? Did they have information? Were they going to confess right now, like on Law and Order or something, or turn against one another? Where my heart would have once started beating faster there was just an empty hole. I could feel my brain sizzling with anticipation, burning the “me” that I am away at the edges, like the corner of a piece of parchment held up to a candle’s little flame.
“Still think she did it?” said the older woman.
“This is really irregular, DiRonalde,” Thomas said.
“No, that is really irregular,” DiRonalde said. I’m sure she was pointing at me.
“I didn’t say that I think Chloe did it, officer,” Colleen said. “I said that I thought she knew something.”
“So you attacked her in the ladies’ room?”
“Lawyer.”
“I want to go back to the hotel,” Tracy said. “I just want to go home, really.” She’ll never be a Chloe to me. “I don’t want to press charges. I understand why Colleen is so upset.” She must have gestured toward me or something. “I mean look at him.” She started sobbing quietly. “He was so sweet.”
I’ve read that sometimes dead people moan, or burp, or make some other sort of noise thanks to air in the lungs. The cadaveric spasm, it’s called, and it sounds like the magic word a stage magician might use when pulling a zombie out of a black silk top hat. Make a wish! Cadaveric spasm! At that moment, I made a stupid wish—that my corpse would coincidentally burp or sputter.
“I’m really envious of you, Colleen,” Tracy said. “You’re published, people like you, you got to hang out with Panossian before any of this happened. I’m as upset as you are.”
“Chloe, look, it’s fine. I just, listen, you want to help? Tell Officer DiRonalde about Arkham.”
“Isn’t that a videogame?” DiRonalde asked.
“It’s an asylum for the criminally insane in the Batman universe,” Thomas offered, smugly.
“Well, it’s that now,” Tracy said. “Arkham is a town in the stories of H. P. Lovecraft. It’s sort of a cross between Salem, Massachusetts, and Providence. There’s a college in it, called Misktanoic, which is a stand-in for Brown University.”
“So?” DiRonalde said.
“That’s not what I mean, Chloe,” Colleen said. “It’s a book. A book bound with human skin. Panossian was sent a copy by its author, who handmade it, and was looking to sell it. That’s when I last saw him. I tried to tell the police about it, but they thought I was crazy.”
“Did you see the book?” DiRonalde asked.
“No, I was too grossed out to look at it.”
“I’ve heard about Arkham,” Tracy said, “but I thought it was just some sort of hoax or urban legend.” Nothing happened for a moment, then she added, “Because it just sounds ridiculous. It’s something some dirtbag kid who listened to too much Iron Maiden would think is cool.”
“If neither of you have seen the book, maybe it doesn’t exist and our friend here was trying to pull a scam on someone,” Thomas said. “And they got mad and killed him.”
“And cut off his face?” DiRonalde said. “Leave the police work to the police, son.”
“So what’s your theory?”
“I’m a humble uniformed officer, not a detective,” DiRonalde said, “but how about this—a love triangle? Two women scorned. They combine their efforts and kill their former lover. Then they have a falling out, and get into a fight in the ladies’ room of the same hotel where they killed their lover, because to put it plainly most murderers aren’t too smart, and people who lack self-control are the ones most likely to commit crimes of passion.”
I didn’t quite feel a hand on me, but there was something, a sense of downward pressure and movement somehow, as though I were wrapped in a dozen thick blankets. “This is not the kind of corpse left behind by a secondhand book deal gone bad, or even fraud.”
“What if someone wanted to turn his face into a book?” Tracy said. “The cover, I mean. They could just stretch the face over a copy of his novel, and make a unique edition of one, right? There are supposedly a few copies of Arkham out there, but that’s just skin, from anyone. Even a
nother book made from someone’s face wouldn’t be exactly the same as Panossian’s, so it really would be a unique item.”
“It really would be also crazy,” Thomas said.
“Of course it would be crazy,” Colleen said. “But that’s what we’re dealing with, right? A crazy person who didn’t even try to dispose of the body. How else to prove that the face was Panossian’s? It had to be news, had to be something done in public, or almost in public.”
“You two girls seem to be on the same page,” DiRonalde said.
“Well, it makes sense,” Tracy said.
“It also makes sense if you two killed him for his face and were looking to put it on a book. He wouldn’t suspect either of you of wanting to kill him—men almost never think women are dangerous.”
There was another long silence. Then Tracy asked, “Are we under arrest?”
“Shut up, Chloe.”
“Do you have anything you want to say?” DiRonalde said.
“I just want to go back to the hotel,” Tracy said.
“‘I just want to go back to the hotel,’” DiRonalde mimicked her, speaking through her nose. “Not home, the hotel. Is there anything of interest at the hotel I should know about? In your hotel room maybe?”
“Oh, I get it,” Colleen said. “You’re searching our rooms.”
“We’re doing lots of things. Anyway, girls, you’re free to go for now. Don’t check out of the hotel, don’t leave Providence.”
“Aren’t you going to drive us back?” Tracy asked.
“Go fuck yourself,” DiRonalde said.
“What are we supposed to do!”
“Just call a cab,” Colleen said.
“Can’t we share one?”
“I need them out,” Thomas said. “Do I need to call Amato?”
There was muttering I couldn’t make out—were the girls chastened by the remark, hushed by a gesture, or was it my nervous system disintegrating?—and footsteps that echoed throughout the basement. Just me and Thomas again, and he took up his pad and started sketching.
My face. There’s something about us humans; we see faces where there aren’t any. In the façades of buildings among the windows and doors, on a plate of eggs with a strip of bacon. We want to anthropomorphize everything around us—this is why the dead shock us. We’re not quite human anymore.
A book, a book made of my face, well that would be something, wouldn’t it? If only there was such a thing as a spirit, as a soul, then perhaps I could live on, as a book, my face stretched and distended over the case, still cogitating on some level. When I finally blink out here, will my posthumous narrative take up there, wherever that flesh is now? I could see the face of my murderer when he looks upon mine, at least once.
Though I should say that lots of limited-edition collectors don’t read their fancy books. That’s what cheap reading copies and their Kindles are for. Like a serial killer with his refrigerator full of femurs and tits, book collectors only need to know that the very special books they own are their own, and nobody else’s.
Or maybe my face is already reciting its own story, in some mystic way that I’ll never be able to access. What is he up to?
Is he being dried out, doused with chemicals, stretched around a cylinder? Is he as angry as I am, or is he thrilled to finally be rid of the rest of the body, the rest of me? Is he happy to be the center of attention, which is all I wanted to be? There is no other reason to devote so much time and energy to Lovecraftiana—the subculture is a small one, and reasonably vibrant in that there are occasionally some breakthroughs into the mainstream publishing world, or some TV show or film that makes a whole other level of sense to those initiated into occult knowledge of yellowing paperbacks and in-jokes about who Cthulhu might eat first or last. We do it to find a place where we can be important.
I wonder what is happening at the Summer Tentacular. I suppose it’s no different than that daydream the living so often indulge in—what would people say at my funeral? Do I rate a memorial panel? Frankly, I’m surprised the police even care. But I did die in a hotel, and I am a bloody mess. Where the hell is my face? Where the hell is Panossian’s face?
Panossian’s face, warped and twisted so far out of recognition that he is only barely human anymore, and that is an improvement. Panossian’s face, molded and shaped into a gill-cheeked bug-eyed Innsmouthian. Pannosian’s face, that one big eyebrow finally and fatally plucked off. Panossian’s face, finally surrounded by other books and nothing else but. It’s a dream come true, an afterlife like that.
I wish I were he.
10. What the Moon Brings
Colleen and Chloe shared a cab back to the hotel. The sun was sinking and the moon was up. Chloe stared out the window, hugging the door on her side of the taxi, but she didn’t seem afraid.
“Why did you attack me?” she asked finally, keeping her gaze out the window.
“I think you know something about Panossian’s murder,” Colleen said.
“I already talked to the detective,” Chloe said.
“What detective?”
“What do you mean what detective?” Chloe asked. “The detective who has been interviewing everyone. Cob knows him or something, so he’s been pretty cool with it. Didn’t you get interviewed back at the hotel?”
“No…not yet anyway. Maybe they skipped me because they made me go to the morgue. Listen Chloe, I’m just trying to find out what happened. That’s why, you know…we had our altercation.”
“Is that why, or did you just think you could pick on me and get away with it? Fuck you, Danzig. I’m used to it. I’m used to people shitting on me constantly. There’s nothing you can do to me that hasn’t been done by a better class of fucks than you, you fuck.”
The cab driver glanced in the mirror. Colleen met his eyes and mouthed the word Sorry.
“I still think you know something about Panossian’s murder. I think he was killed for his copy of Arkham, and I think that Ms. Phantasia, who is local, might be hiding the book at his house.”
Chloe laughed a little Chihuahua bark of a laugh. “Fanny doesn’t have a house, moron. He lives with his father in a studio apartment.” She turned her head and wrinkled her nose at Colleen. “Good luck finding a book there. You ever see that old black and white TV show, The Honeymooners? You know how they have a table and two chairs and a stove and an icebox? That’s what Fanny’s apartment looks like. It’s why I like him.”
“How about Cob?”
Chloe shrugged. “I haven’t been to Cob’s house. If I had to guess, he rents a closet somewhere and hangs upside-down on the clothing rack during daylight hours.”
“Why is it that nobody seems hurt, or upset, or afraid, or even confused about this murder?” Colleen asked. The cabbie’s eyes widened. “Turn on the news station after you drop us off,” Colleen told him.
“I am upset. I almost cried back in that horrible morgue. I was going to cry in the restroom when you waylaid me too,” Chloe said. “Why are you going apeshit Nancy Drew on this—just let the police handle it. They know what they’re doing. They have fingerprints and evidence and stuff, I’m sure. You should worry about yourself, Colleen.”
Colleen gave Chloe a side-eye. “Oh yeah.”
“After what you did to me, you’re going to have to suck a whole lot of cock to get your career on track. A whole lot of cock.”
“Whatever,” Colleen said. The cabbie looked in the mirror again, his mouth open to say something, but he shut it again.
“Lovecraftians stick together. You’re new. I’ve been around the block a few times. You attacked me.”
“I should have left you back at the station house. Let Phantasia and his dad take the bus to pick you up.”
“What’s Lovecraft?” the cabbie said. “A new strip joint? Haw haw. You girls sound like you’re into partying.”
“We’re into taking your hack ID down and calling the taxi company,” Chloe said.
“She’s into slicing dudes’ faces off,”
Colleen said, pointing at Chloe with her chin.
“And here is the Hotel Bierce, ladies,” the cabbie said as he turned the wheel and slid into the hotel parking lot. “No need to tip, just get the fuck out of my car, you lunatics. And tell whatever the hell convention is going on this weekend that there ain’t gonna be no more cabs picking up or dropping off.”
“Fuck you, pal. I’ll just take an Uber,” Chloe said, and she stepped out of the cab and slammed the door hard.
Colleen paid with a handful of wrinkled bills. “There’s a tip in there somewhere, really. Sorry—I’m not with these people.”
The lobby was crowded with uniforms and convention goers. Colleen glanced around for a friendly face, but, seeing none, headed to the elevator bank. Then she heard a voice boom out, “Ms. Danzig!”
Colleen turned and saw an older man, balding, well-groomed, tall and swaggering like a former bodybuilder who hasn’t quite gone to seed yet, striding purposefully toward her. His black Tentacular t-shirt fit on him like it was sprayed on. Behind him was that large baby-faced man in the suit, who looked up from his phone to see that the conversation he was conducting was over.
“Yes?”
“Do you know who I am?”
“Let’s say I don’t,” Colleen said.
“David Armbruster, I’m the co-chair of the Summer Tentacular this year. I’ll need your badge.” He held out a hand.
“Sure, why?” She had taken off her badge at the police station, so had to pat her jacket pockets to find it.
“So I can tear it up,” Armbruster said. “You’re barred from the Summer Tentacular, starting immediately, for life. Also, you are barred from purchasing a membership at Necronomiville, and also Yuggoth Days up in Vermont.”
“Yuggoth Day—wait, why am I banned?”
“You assaulted a fellow member of the convention, on the grounds of the hotel, during the convention. Detective Amato received a full report and just told me everything. You should have taken your grievances outside. Ma’am, you could have taken your grievances to me. I would have had the both of you in sixteen-ounce sparring gloves before a Ustream feed in twenty minutes.”