“Okay,” Harrows said with little enthusiasm.
A few minutes later, Marks examined the photographs one by one, passing them across the desk to Harrows, who stared at them with decreasing happiness.
“Well,” Marks said when the last of them had been glanced over. “We’ve managed to ascertain only one more fact of the case.”
“Hmmmn?” Harrows gurgled from his depressed spot in the chair. “What’s that?”
Marks gestured at the photos, each showing the tall, thin man in the dark suit, apparently creeping up behind Harrows. “Well, he’s still getting closer.”
In each of the photos, the thin man seemed to have just entered Marks’s office, and was seen, shadowy and indistinct, striding purposefully toward Mr. Harrows. Almost directly behind Harrows, he was obscured from the camera and appeared only as shoulders, feet, arms, the shape of a head. It was impossible to detect any true details. The figure was a collection of brights and shadows, which coalesced into a human form only when viewed from a distance.
AFTER Harrows had left, Marks sat at his desk and studied the photos one after another. In each, the thin man appeared to be closer to Harrows by a half step, a few inches. In the last one, he was still only halfway between the doorway and Harrows.
“Who are you, then?” Marks murmured, sipping bourbon in the pale pool of yellow light generated by his desk lamp. “Why are you haunting our Mr. Harrows? Are you haunting Mr. Harrows? Are you getting closer to him, or is he getting closer to you?”
The photos remained mute. Marks tossed them onto the desk and sat for a moment, staring off into the shadows of his office. He reached over and picked up the instant camera, turned it so the lens was facing him, and leaned back in his chair.
“You around?” he murmured. “You want to chat?”
A twitch of his finger, and the flash exploded, filling the room with a second’s worth of blue light. Blinking in the aftermath, Marks plucked the emerging photo from the tiny printer and shook it back and forth, letting it develop. He turned it over and squinted down at it, a strange, languid grin spreading across his face. “Well, hello there,” he said quietly.
The photo was of an out-of-focus and off-center shot of Marks, his nose seemingly too large, his eyes shut against the flash, unattractive and distorted. Over his left shoulder, seeming to lean directly over Marks’s shoulder, was the thin man, clearer than before but still grainy, more a collection of dots than a solid figure. In one hand, held oddly toward the bottom of the frame, he held a white square, indistinct. Marks squinted at it, held the photo alternatively near his eyes and far away, finally setting it down on the desk, unsatisfied.
He whirled and put the phone to his ear.
“Ralph? I know it’s late. Sorry. Listen, I have another favor to ask you.”
IV
“Phil, I damn near shit myself.”
Ralph Tomlin led Phillip K. Marks through gray, unmarked corridors. Marks paid no attention to the fake cubicle walls, didn’t acknowledge anyone they passed. With his oversized raincoat and unshaven demeanor, he stood out. People stared.
“Well? What is it?”
Tomlin shook his head. “Sit down at my desk here. Take a look. You have to see it yourself.”
Marks sat down at the small desk, which was dominated by a huge computer monitor, bigger than any Marks had ever seen. On it was displayed a clear scan of the Polaroid: Marks, blurry, crushed against the camera lens, the Thin Man, dark and skeletal, grinning over his shoulder, holding something awkwardly in his hand.
“Okay.” Marks said testily.
“Now, here’s a blowup and clarification of the lower right-hand corner of the photo, where that guy’s ‘hand’ is. I use the air quotes because that really isn’t a man, Phil.”
“I knew that, considering that he wasn’t in the room when I took the photo.”
“No, I mean nothing was there, Phil. The figure we see there is an optical illusion, a collection of dots: white and black. He’s a black-and-white halftone, is what he is. But here’s the disturbing part: the blowup. He’s holding a card, Phil. For want of a better term, I’d say it was a business card.”
Ralph clicked a key and stepped back as the picture on the screen changed to a detail of the photo: a rectangular, white space, surrounded by the blurred and indistinct lines of the Thin Man’s hand. The card, at this magnification, and with the aid of clarifying software, had words printed on it:
I AM DEATH
Marks leaned back in the chair, let out an explosive burst of breath. “Oh, shit.”
Tomlin nodded, staring raptly at the fuzzy image. “Oh shit is right.” He grinned. “Phil, ever since you started down this weirdo path of yours, you’ve shown me some really odd things from time to time. This one gave me chills. So, what do you think?”
Marks shook his head dazedly, his eyes locked on the fuzzy words on the screen. “About what?”
Tomlin snorted and glanced down at Marks. “Is he coming for your subject,” he asked, “or you?”
Marks finally tore his eyes from the screen. “Is that supposed to be helpful in some way?”
Tomlin shrugged happily. “I’d just get your subject into an emergency room, if I was you, buddy. If Death’s following him around like that, there’s got to be a reason.”
Marks’s smile was barren. “Unless he’s after me now, right?”
V
Marks walked the dark streets after hours, smoking ill-advised cigarettes and pondering his new concern. As the sun disappeared and the shadowed streets stopped looking cheerily familiar, he wondered unhappily if he was being stalked by a specter, if a photo taken by a helpful stranger might reveal a companion. They were not cheering thoughts. He stopped in a favorite bar, the Full Moon, and ordered a double bourbon on ice, sat in the back by himself, and sipped it slowly, staring at the wall.
“What’s the story, Phil?”
Marks glanced up, surprised, and found Jerry, the jowly owner. “Sorry, Jer, I was woolgathering.”
“Can see that, Philly. Everything okay?”
“Sure.” Marks paused, studying his drink, then looked up again. “Jer, what if you had to tell someone something bad. Something ... sad. Something that maybe they didn’t need to know, but you felt duty-bound to tell them.”
Jerry laughed, his belly bouncing within its tight shirt. “I do, every night, Phil, round closing time.”
Marks smiled faintly. “What if you had to tell someone they were going to die?”
Jerry looked away. “Jeez, Phil—”
Marks shook his head, leaned back in his chair. “Shit, I’m sorry, Jer. Just got a lot of stuff on my mind. Don’t pay any attention to me.”
“Easy enough.” Jerry turned away and then hesitated, looking back over his shoulder. “You weren’t going to tell me that, were you, Phil?”
Marks shook his head. “No, no, Jerry. Not you. Just someone I’ve been working with.” He paused, and just as Jerry was about to turn back, Marks continued. “Hey, Jer, you got a camera around here?”
Jerry started walking back to the bar. “Yeah, actually. Keep an old Polaroid on hand for when we get troublemakers and have ta ban ’em. I got quite a wall of shame in my office.” He glanced back as he walked away. “Why, Philly?”
Marks gulped the last of his drink. “Take my picture, okay?”
Jerry retrieved the camera from behind the bar and hefted his bulk back toward Marks’s table. “Sure, sure. Why not?”
Marks nodded absently, pushing his hands through each of his pockets until he’d recovered a small pad of paper and a black-ink pen. He wrote quickly and tore a sheet off, holding it up under his chin as Jerry approached.
“Ready?”
Marks nodded. The flash went off, and Jerry lowered the camera as the picture was spit out. “Who’s this for? With the note and all?”
Marks crumpled the piece of paper up and tossed it on the table. “I’ll know in a moment, Jer. Let me see the print.”
&n
bsp; Jerry tore it from the camera and handed it gingerly to him. Marks took it between two fingers and shook it carefully, drying it in the air, then held it up and studied it, silently, for a few seconds.
“You see something strange?” Jerry asked. “I’m prepared for anything, after the last few times you brought your work in here.”
Marks laughed, a grim bark that made Jerry frown. “Jer, sometimes I guess I ought to just leave everything alone, you know?” He stood up and tossed a bill on the table. “I gotta go track down my subject.”
Jerry let Marks push past him and watched him walk out of the bar purposefully, head down. Then he turned back to the table and plucked the photo from it. Looking down at it, squinting in the bad light, he gasped. Sitting at the same table as Marks was a tall, thin man in a dark suit... or at least that’s what it looked like to Jerry. The man was shadowed and indistinct.
Jerry’s eyes flicked to the table and then back to the photo. In his bar, the table was gouged by a million nervous hands and a few serious vandals. In the photo, words had been carved onto the table:
I LIKE YOU BETTER
VI
It was an innocuous-enough apartment door, but Marks gave in to instinct and looked the whole hallway over before stepping forward and knocking firmly. After a moment, there was a shuffling from inside and then:
“Who’s there?”
“Mr. Harrows, it’s Phillip K. Marks.”
The metallic sounds of locks being undone, and then the door cracked open slightly. Marks waved sardonically at the eye that appeared to look him over. The door shut again and reopened quickly.
“Mr. Marks. I’m sorry, I’ve been a little on edge since we had our discussion. I apologize.”
“No need.” Marks said smoothly. “I think I’m beginning to understand.”
Harrows nodded pleasantly, then looked around the hallway. “Mr. Marks—why are you here?”
Marks looked around. “I don’t mean to be rude, Mr. Harrows, but I have to ask you for two favors.”
“Favors?”
“First, and most importantly, do you have anything to drink?”
Harrows studied Marks for a moment, and then nodded. “Yes, Mr. Marks, I think I have a bottle of Old Smuggler in the kitchen. It’ll give you one hell of a headache in the morning.”
Marks nodded. “Thank you. I’ll take a double.”
Harrows shrugged his eyebrows and turned to enter the kitchen. “You said you had two favors to ask of me, Mr. Marks?”
“I’d like to take your picture one more time.”
Harrows paused and then continued into the kitchen. “May I ask why?” he called back.
Marks glanced around the room. “Let’s just say I need to confirm an unfortunate suspicion. The good news is, I’ll probably be able to set your mind at ease about the whole situation in a few minutes.”
Harrows returned with Marks’s drink. “Jelly glass, sorry.”
Marks shrugged and took the drink eagerly. “Christ, that’s terrible.” He drained it with a grunt and a grimace, and handed it back, pulling a small camera from his pocket. “Smile!”
Harrows blinked in surprise at the flash.
Marks tore the photo from the camera and began shaking it in the air. He smiled a thin, sickly smile at Harrows. “Well, we’ll know in a moment.”
They stood facing each other as Marks fanned the print. When he stopped and turned it over, they both glanced down. Harrows blinked again.
“He’s gone.”
Marks nodded glumly. “So he is.”
“Why, that’s good.” Harrows said in a muted tone. “I think that’s good. Do I have you to thank for this?”
Marks nodded again. “I am afraid so. Thank you, Mr. Harrows. I don’t think I’ll have to trouble you again.”
He squinted at Marks, who just stood there carelessly, numb. “Mr. Marks, what’s wrong?”
Marks shook himself. “Nothing, Mr. Harrows. I’ll bid you good night. I would tell you to keep my number and call me if you need anything else, but I somehow doubt I’ll be around much longer. Keep the camera.”
“Mr. Marks?”
Marks turned and let himself out. Harrows called after him one last time but did not follow.
MARKS headed toward the nearest bar he knew, feeling rusty inside. Half a block away, he noted a convenience store and turned for it impulsively. Inside he bought a pint bottle of bourbon and another thing of film, which he unwrapped while standing there before the bemused, dark-skinned man behind the register. He loaded the film and held the camera up to his eye, stretching a grin across his face.
“Smile!” he hissed. Startled, the dark-skinned man flashed a brief grin. Marks captured it with a bright flash. A motor whirred. A gummy print erupted from the front of the camera. Marks flapped it in the air and then studied it eagerly. His skeletal grin faded.
“Thanks,” he muttered, handing the print to the puzzled man. “I’ll need more film. As many packs as you have.”
Marks made his way up and down the streets, a stiff, permanent smile fixed to his face. He stopped everyone he saw and repeated the same pitch to them:
“Excuse me, let me take your picture? It’s a public service, and it’s free. A few seconds, and you can keep it if you like it.”
Most of the people he approached allowed him to photograph them and posed awkwardly, cheerfully. Marks would snap the photo with a minimum of fuss, would shake the photo out recklessly, would glance at it, and would hand it to his subject wordlessly, his smile more brittle each time, and would move on wordlessly.
He did this hundreds of times, wandering the streets randomly, moving rapidly from person to person. After several hours of this, his voice was rough and cracked, his gait was shuffling, but he persisted, often bullying people into allowing him to photograph them.
At four in the morning there weren’t many people left on the quieted streets, and Marks finally allowed himself to lean against a parked car, slumping in exhaustion.
“Who knows? Could be anything,” he muttered to himself. “No rhyme or reason. None that we would understand.”
He shook his head, trying to clear it. He worked his stiff hands, clawed from clutching the camera.
“Who knows why? Bad luck. Been doing this stuff for too long.”
“Move it on, buddy.”
Marks glanced up sharply and found a uniformed policeman standing across from him, pointing his club at Marks’s chest.
“What?”
The cop waved the club up the sidewalk. “Move it on home, pal. Had a good time, and now you can go sleep it off.”
Marks stared at the cop as if he didn’t understand.
“Now, pal.”
From somewhere, Marks produced a smile, palsied and faint. He held the camera up to his eye and squinted. The cop’s stern face resolved in the lens.
“Just a photo before I go, please.”
The cop frowned sourly when Marks pressed the button and the flash went off tiredly. Marks held up a placating hand as he plucked the print from the camera and began waving it in the air.
“I’ll go. I swear, Officer. And I’ll give you the photo. It’s just a hobby.”
Eagerly, he peered down at the picture. Stood still for a moment, and then slumped back against the car, his eyes closed.
The policeman took a hesitant half step forward. “You okay, buddy?”
Marks opened his eyes and smiled an easy, happy, glintingly predatory grin. The cop blinked in the face of its hard, bright cheeriness.
“I’m fine now, Officer. You have a good night.” Marks pushed away from the car and paused to study the cop for a moment. “Enjoy it.”
Whistling, he turned and walked away.
The Bedroom Door
By ELAINE VIETS
“I saw your partner Angela in my bedroom door,” Grandma said.
“Angela, my interior design partner?” I asked. “That Angela?”
“The skinny one with the red hair,” Gr
andma said.
“Damn. She’s a good partner,” I said. “I’ll hate to lose her. She’s going to be dead in three days.”
A shrill scream split the air, and I jumped. Then I realized it was the teakettle boiling on Grandma’s Magic Chef stove. She dropped two tea bags in a blue pot, poured in boiling water, and cut me a slab of homemade apple pie.
That gave me time to recover. I’d blurted something horribly selfish. Angela was going to die, and my first thought was how it would inconvenience me.
“I wanted to warn you in case something happened,” Grandma said.
Something bad.
My grandmother had the “second sight,” but it wasn’t a gift anyone would want. She couldn’t say, “Sell your stock this afternoon. The market’s going to tank.” Grandma saw only misery with her second sight.
The doorway to Grandma’s bedroom was a portal to the other side. For ten years, people had appeared in Grandma’s bedroom doorway three days before they died. Some were friends, some were family, but all had a connection to Grandma.
The soon to be dead showed themselves at night bathed in warm light, while Grandma shook and shivered under her chenille spread. They never appeared when she took an afternoon nap or had a sick headache. They never said anything. They were just there, and then they weren’t.
I asked the crucial question. “What was Angela wearing?”
The dead in the doorway always wore whatever they had on when they passed to the other side.
“Not a stitch,” Grandma said, disapproval in her voice. “And let me tell you, she’s not a natural redhead.”
“She’s not a natural anything, Grandma. Angela puts on heels and a suit to take out the trash. This is good pie.”
“Thanks,” Grandma said. “I put up the apples last fall.”
“If you saw Angela naked, maybe she had a heart attack in the shower,” I said.
“I don’t think so,” Grandma said. “I saw your aunt Tillie when she had her stroke in the bathtub. Her hair was wet, and she clutched a bar of Palmolive soap. Tillie was my own sister, but that woman had serious cellulite. Angela was perfectly dry and looked like she’d just gotten out of bed. Her hair was mussed and her lipstick was smeared.”
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