Dead Lines

by John Skipp; Craig Spector

  Except when the stench in the elevator shaft began competing with the stench on Broadway, and winning.

  And the buzzing from the top floor was getting louder every day.

  It wasn’t until Wednesday morning that Rocco the super listened to Lee, and agreed to check it out. He was a lazy so-and-so, and none too clean hisself. But even ol’ Rocco made a prune face when he got a whiff of what was going down. And when they took a ride up to investigate, they never made it past the seventh floor.

  At 10:15, the police were there. They took one whiff, and that was it. Next thing he knew, he was escorting them up.

  And when they opened the door…

  * * *

  The gods could ride you in your dreams. Lee could well enough believe it; here in the city of dreams, he saw a lot of people who looked ridden.

  And sometimes their gods rode them right into the ground…

  Sunshine and Lee slid down the shaft. The rumble of the machinery was nothing compared to the roar of the silence between them. It made him think about the flies, the incredible sound they’d made: almost deafening, once the door was open. So loud you could scarcely hear yourself choke. He closed his eyes, and the blackness was alive with their memory: hundreds, maybe thousands, their fat blue-green iridescent bodies so thick in the air you could barely see through to the wall beyond.

  Little girl, you don’t really wanna know, he thought to himself, biting back on the image. They were coming down by the fourth floor now. The Caribbean. Nice. He wished to hell he was there instead.

  He could feel her trembling.

  The last few floors seemed to take forever. Too much time to think. Too much time to remember.

  The thing on the rope…

  The ground floor arrived. He whistled softly, threw open the door, and stood aside.

  The girl didn’t move.

  “We’re here,” he said softly.

  She nodded. Her eyes flickered panic.

  “Okay.” Heavy sigh. “I been afraid this might happen.”

  She looked at him then. It about broke his heart.

  “You wanna tell me about it?”

  Her mouth had gone dry, the lips stuck together. It took her a minute to whip up the spit. To speak now would be to cross a line that he was sure she didn’t want to cross. Just as sure as the knowledge that she had no choice in the matter. No choice at all.

  “I… need to know,” she began, “whose apartment it was. Before.”

  “His name’s Glen Fitzpatrick. Photographer fella.” Pause. How much? She knew that he knew that she knew that he knew; it was a conspiracy of denial in the face of certainty.

  Lee felt awful as he took the next step, saying, “But that ain’t what you’re askin’, is it…”

  “Oh, God.”

  He was surprised by the interruption, even more surprised by the confusion and pain in her eyes.

  “Oh, God. What happened to him?”

  “No, no! He’s fine!” Lee blurted, confused. “It was the other boy that hung hisself: a friend of his, some writer fella—”

  But she didn’t hear; or if she did, it didn’t matter. She was running, then, away from him, away from whatever she’d gleaned from his words, the pain of it something she carried with her as she disappeared into the streets.

  Leaving him with a very bad feeling indeed: a feeling that things would get a whole lot worse before they could possibly get better…

  SHELLS

  Low tide, and the gentle susurration of baywater waves. Reaching up on the shore, toward the lighter sand some eight feet inland. Falling back in ceaseless cycle, collapsing in the face of the next wave in.

  Also reaching, he thought.

  Also doomed.

  “You’re a cheerful guy,” Marty dryly informed himself. “It must be your God-given calling in life: to spread happiness and joy wherever you may roam …”

  His voice died in mid-rumination. It had plenty of room to die in. The beach was long and chill and all but deserted. It reminded him of the last dozen or so clubs he’d played. His voice had died there, too!

  Along with his career, and any hope of its resurrection.

  Marty Swansick was philosophical. At this point, it was the only thing left to be. He was forty-five years old. Nearly half of those years had been spent in a grueling, frequently desperate struggle to prove that he really was a hysterically funny guy. His act had been honed to surgical incisiveness by two solid decades of amateur nights, sweaty half-hour stints at places like the Comedy Cellar, the periodic street-corner stand-up routines, and Columbus Circle or Washington Square Park. It was a hard life in search of an impossible dream, but the struggle only served to sharpen his edge. Marty Swansick fought like hell and hustled shamelessly while all around him friends sold out or rolled over for a weekly paycheck and a taste of respectability.

  And his folly paid off: a couple of miraculous walk-ons for sitcoms had gotten him a bit part in the ill-fated Long As It Takes for CBS. The show bombed, but Lasko (the lovable “flea-bitten super of a Lower East Side slum”) had been roundly acclaimed. Lasko led to Letterman led to

  Carson led to cable led to a pilot of his own and a slew of bookings in packed houses of increasing distinction.

  Suddenly, Marty Swansick had an agent, an upcoming series, and more money than he rightly knew what to do with. Suddenly, the impossible had become the probable had become the likely had become the all-too-easy. And suddenly, over a night that had lasted twenty-seven years, Marty Swansick was a star.

  “Was a star,” he muttered, affirming the past tense. “For one brief, shining moment that lasted all of two years, you were a star, my friend. You had it all.” He let out a dry chuckle of joyless amusement.

  “And then,” he continued, “in the immortal words of Robin Williams: ‘I clawed my way to the middle, and then fucked my way down …’”

  His soliloquy was interrupted by a thunderous boom from across the water. With the sky clouding over as it was, the sound could have passed for real thunder; but Marty knew it was just the boys down at the Aberdeen Proving Grounds, where the combined might of the United States Military got together to test their toys.

  Like little kids, he mused, glancing some two hundred yards down the beach at a handful of prepubescents. They were the only other people in sight, and they were busy, busy, busy: oblivious to the chilling clouds and ersatz thunder, hard at work on something big.

  It was a sand castle, he guessed. And they labored on it with the same kind of single-minded fervor that he imagined going down at ol’ Aberdeen, where the hits just kept a-comin’ every couple of minutes.

  Someday, he thought, they’ll get to test those toys for real. Then ol’ Marty Swansick can take his place among the other great comedians of his age: Dangerfield, Cosby, Hope, Reagan, Gorbechev, Falwell… too many to list, all topping the charts on the Hit Parade to oblivion.

  Such balming bitterness was scant comfort as Marty watched the kids play. He wondered what, if anything, they thought about the constant exposure to the overtures of the Death Machine. Probably think it’s neat; all flash and no pain. They have no idea how genuinely scary it is. They have no idea…

  There was a sudden stirring behind him. He turned to see a big old basset hound padding straight for him like a hairy Polish sausage on legs. It came right up, grinning a lopsided doggie grin, snuffling his feet. He stopped and ran his hand along its well-padded back.

  “Well, hey, ol’ fella!” he burbled, scratching its floppy ears. The dog just panted and lolled its tongue at him. “So how’s tricks, huh? How’s life as a witless quadruped?” The insult went clear over his fuzzy friend’s head. Like most of my hecklers, he observed, continuing to skritch and scratch away.

  Another loud ka-boom went off in the interests of world peace and national security. The basset hound pointed its thick head skyward, eyes flickering with confusion. Marty swatted it playfully on the ass and said, “Big storm brewing, buddy. Better get on home, before it
’s too late.”

  The dog went galumphing off through the sand, on a collision course with the kids. He guessed they’d be shooing him away in two minutes flat. It was a dog’s life.

  Ain’t it the truth, he thought, feeling the dark clouds gather inside as the surf brushed his feet. A proverbial infinitude of sandy granules lay there, topped by an infinitude of pebbles that sat upon the sand like sprinkles on a sundae. None of which held his interest.

  His eyes were focused, instead, on a pretty white shell half-buried at his feet. It was roughly the size of the nail on his pinkie, roughly the color of sun-bleached bone. There was another one beside it. And another. And another. One of them was almost as big as the palm of his hand. But the rest were small. Very small.

  There were millions of them, up and down Crystal Beach. They had all been alive once, God only knew how long ago; their deaths had gone unnoticed by all save themselves. And the waves, which pounded them relentlessly into the shore.

  So many tiny souls, he thought. All gone. All gone.

  Just like that.

  More sonic booms from Aberdeen. Another chill gust of sea breeze. Marty tucked up the collar of his windbreaker and looked down the beach: two of the kids were playing with the basset by the base of the expanding castle. He chuckled, momentarily charmed by nostalgic pangs, then felt his attention drawn inextricably back. Toward the shells. The sand.

  While the changing tide reached its liquid fingers out toward the shore, then slipped back in whispering failure. And the last eight months rolled in like those vanquished waves, drowning him in the details of his fall…

  He’d been warned. Oh, yes. By old friends. By family. By none other than his agent, Murray the Shark, who drew him aside in an uncharacteristically paternal tone and said, “Marty, you’re a very funny guy. Right now you’re on top of the world. Watch. Your. Step.”

  It was a miracle on the order of the loaves and fishes, this concern. It had almost managed to cut through the high-voltage burble that had become the stuff of daily life. Almost.

  “I can protect you from the jackals,” he’d said, “and I can protect you from the vultures, ‘cause that’s my job. But I can’t. Protect you. From. Yourself.”

  The words stung with the dead-on accuracy of twenty-twenty hindsight as wave upon lurid wave crashed down …

  Then there was the drink. The track. The girls girls girls: dozens of them, outclassing him by a country mile, all aching for a piece of the first real money in his miserable life, encouraging him to believe that it would last forever and ever and …

  Two thousand a month for his Central Park West co-op with the spectacular view. One-hundred-fifty-dollar dinners for two, every night. Broadway shows at one hundred dollars a clip. Nose candy. The occasional nine-hundred-dollar weekend bacchanal at the Plaza Hotel. More nose candy. A trip or two to Europe.

  A lot of trips to Plato’s Retreat.

  And then, when he was too far in to ever escape unscathed, the forty-two grand he’d plunked down on his “summer retreat”: a quaint little cottage on Crystal Beach, not far from his ancestral stomping grounds of Cecilton, Maryland. It was a place to escape: far from the hurly-burly, with only the crashing waves and the guns of Aberdeen to remind him of worldly reality…

  “Ah, but let us not forget,” he said aloud, “the way I blew the pilot. And let us not forget,” while the regret and self-pity welled up in his eyes, “the way I came off as an arrogant, sniping blowhard on my third and last Tonight Show appearance. And let us not forget,” fingering the long-emptied vial in his pocket, “all the many, many dollars I pissed up my nose or down the drain. And let us not forget…”

  But he wanted to forget. Oh, yes.

  Which was why he’d fled the city. To escape, to recoup, to find the edge he’d lost when life got soft. To watch innocent children who had their lives and dreams still before them, playing in the sand.

  To say goodbye.

  Marty walked, and watched. While the dark clouds gathered.

  And the sunlight waned.

  ■

  The basset hound was gone, which didn’t surprise him a bit. The castle was spectacular, which surprised him quite a bit. His eyesight, unlike his timing or his credit, was still pretty close to perfect. He could see a fairly awesome display of moats and turrets and sturdy walls from a hundred and fifty yards away.

  One of the kids was calling to him. The rest of them joined in, shouting and gesticulating. He hollered, “I CAN’T HEAR YOU!” and continued toward them, thinking hope springs eternal, creation lives, sure I’ve blown it but I hope to God you kids live long enough to make your dreams come true…

  The first thing he noticed was the jutting pile of sand. At first he’d mistaken it for a washed-out castle; then he realized that the big white thing poking out of the top was the enormous skull of a fish. Its mere size was disorienting enough: as large as the head of a garden trowel, good eating for any hearty fisherman. He drew nearer, checking it out.

  It was a fish, alrightee. No doubt about it. But why had it been buried? And why so close to the water?

  As Marty moved abreast of the mound, it occurred to him that the sand beneath the skull was gently stirring. He moved closer still, and the cause became apparent.

  There were tiny pools of tiny maggots churning over the base of the skull.

  “Yuk,” he said, addressing the maggots. “That’s disgusting.” The feeding continued, unshamed. The little-kid shouting continued, unabated, and it wasn’t long before the patter of tiny feet drew near.

  “Hey, mister!” his tiny assailant shouted. It was an adorable little boy, maybe six years old: all scruff blonde hair and scrawny tan limbs, huge potbelly poking out of Hang Ten shorts. “You gotta see our castle, mister. It’s really neat!”

  Marty felt himself momentarily torn between the kinetic bundle of enthusiasm before him and the squirming, sightless death-dance behind. It passed quickly; he knew that this would be his last glimpse of Crystal Beach. The sale of the cottage had been confirmed yesterday. Tomorrow, a Mr. and Mrs. Putnam from Baltimore would take possession, displacing him forever. He would score a modest jump in value which, by the time he settled all his outstanding accounts with the financiers and the snowmen, would leave him just about enough to see through another half a month in the New York City he had come to despise.

  None of which mattered doodly-squat to the kid, whose name was Shaun, who really was six and sizzling with energy. “We gotta hurry!” he cried with all the patience of youth. “The tide’s gonna change!”

  Marty couldn’t argue with that. He gazed down into the ebullient blue eyes and felt the crust on his heart soften just a little. “Okay, junior,” he said. “Lead on.”

  Shaun took him by the hand. Aberdeen boomed.

  And the mound began to crumble under the tide’s first kiss.

  ■

  It was all Marty could do to keep up with the boy’s frantic, exuberant pace. They walked on the perimeter of the encroaching surf, heading for the castle. All the while, the kid bubbled and babbled of its glories: how they’d all pitched in, how he’d helped to dig the moat, collect the shells that brightly adorned the walls. All the while, Aberdeen’s guns thumped and thudded. As they walked,

  Marty felt the bleak existential funk that had been pushed so precariously back, thinking, they really don’t know, they have no idea…

  And they were there; the four other kids all standing by, alert and beaming. Two more boys, a pair of girls, not a one of them older than twelve. They all stood unmindful of the chill breeze that blew off the water. They all had the same bright eyes and lupine faces, the same giddy exhilaration at being a part of something really special.

  On the other hand, he noted, they’ve got every right to be proud. The castle got better the closer he came. He could see how they’d used trickling water to “age” the walls and turrets, made pillars from driftwood. He flashed on how high the walls were, and how solid; even from fifty yards’ dista
nce, it was without a doubt the best he’d ever seen.

  All the while, Shaun kept talking: how great his brothers and sisters were, how they did this all the time but this was the best ever! Marty noted that the walls behind the bold front extended easily four feet toward the water. They’d even pulled up weeds and replanted them to look like a manicured arbor of vines. His heart tugged at the sight of such detail. They’d built an ornate walkway, leading from the driftwood drawbridge over the moat, every bit as impressive as the road to Oz.

  A roadway, paved completely with a carpet of diminutive shells.

  It was exquisite. It reminded him, somehow, of King Tut’s tomb: an archeological treasure for some future generation to boggle over.

  But for the encroaching tide; Marty suddenly wished himself the camera-toting type, that he might somehow become a part of this fleeting moment. Give them, and himself, something to remember it by…

  Then the five children clambered around him, enthused. He waded through them, closing in on the wonder they’d wrought. The jokes, the customary glib patter, weren’t forthcoming—he was too much in awe—and when the eldest boy withdrew from the pack, he scarcely even noticed.

  The tallest of the girls—very pretty, reed-slender—said, “Take a look inside. That’s the best part of all.” He nodded, obliging, and peered over the wall.

  The dog was there, belly-up. The back of its skull had been staved in; a layer of sand had encrusted the exposed brain and bone. Its thick head pointed skyward, dead eyes flecked with sand and confusion. Marty expended perhaps another second in terror and disbelief, staring down at the body.

  And then the eldest child returned.

  The first blow of the Boy Scout hatchet caught him squarely in the stomach. He could feel his guts blow open. He could hear them. See them. Smell them. He had been wheeling as it happened, so the blow caught him off-balance. He teetered at the edge of the hole, while the hatchet slid wetly away.

  The next blow caught him bluntly at the bridge of the nose. It was not quite enough to kill him outright, but the force of impact was sufficient to topple him backward into the hole.