Mr. X

by Peter Straub

  At the sound of a car pulling up in front of the rooming house, I looked up and saw the Mountaineer backing into a parking space. I jammed the book in my pocket, opened my door, and extended a foot through the frame. I could go no further. Like an X-ray, a sharp pain pierced my head from back to front.

  Instead of Helen Janette’s hallway and Otto Bremen beckoning from his easy chair, before me lay the room I had seen as a child and in the midst of my breakdown at Middlemount. A dying fern, a stuffed fox under a glass bell, and a brass clock occupied a mantelpiece. Somewhere out of sight, a man muttered an indistinct stream of words. All of this had existed long before my own time on earth. I lurched backward, and the scene dissolved.

  The old man across the hall was looking at me. “Kid, you okay?”

  “Dizzy spell.” I ran downstairs toward Laurie Hatch.

  54 Mr.X

  O Great Ones, O cruel Masters, Your long-suffering but faithful Servant bends once again to the pages of his Journal. I wish to make a confession.

  Of late, my tales have much occupied my mind, one in particular. It was my longest, my best and most regretted. While writing it, I felt godlike and fearful. My pen flew across the page, and for the first and only time in my life I wrote what I knew not that I knew until it was written—I knocked at the door of the Temple and was admitted—my life became a dark wood, a maze, a mystery—it was then first I entered the river-bankish state—

  Would that tale had never laid its hand upon my breast and whispered—take me in—

  I need a moment to collect myself.

  The inspiration descended during a weary, late-night return from Mountry Township in the summer of my last year as a Lord of Crime. A fool named Theodore Bright had attempted to eliminate me from my position in the criminal hierarchy. The necessary payback had been devoid of pleasure. I wanted out. My thoughts turned to the consolations of art, and a pleasing notion came to me, that of adumbrating the plight of Godfrey Demmiman, a half-human creature granted the freedom of a god. My alter ego was to re-enact my struggles toward the Sacred Purpose. But as I wrote, my intentions surrendered to what rose up within me.

  I PROTEST!

  Every other tale went where it was supposed to go. Why should only this seem inhabited by art? Let me say this, let me spell it out loud and clear—

  I HATE ART. ART NEVER DID ANYONE A BIT OF GOOD. IT NEVER WON A WAR, PUT FOOD ON THE TABLE, SWEPT THE FLOOR, TOOK OUT THE GARBAGE, OR SLIPPED YOU A TWENTY WHEN YOU WERE DOWN AND OUT. ART DOESN’T ACT THAT WAY.

  The beginning went as anticipated. Through the medium of Godfrey Demmiman’s childhood and youth, I revisited my own. We had mystical experiences in a deep wood and the descent of godlike gifts. My tears brimmed over at the discovery of the Sacred Book. Then hoodlum Imagination brushed aside intention and destroyed my peace. In place of conviction—doubt; in place of clarity—confusion; of design—chaos; in place of triumph—who knows, but certainly not triumph.

  Demmiman moves to Markham, the New England village beloved of his Master, and through its winding lanes and passages imagines himself led by misshapen beings to a long-abandoned house of evil repute. He breaks in and finds it to have been the residence of his ancestors. Within, a Presence stalks him—he stalks the Presence—they confront each other—horribly—of the blasphemous ending I decline to speak. For the sake of Coming Generations, I enter the following into the Record:

  I Hereby Recant the concluding passages of the story entitled “Blue Fire,” those beginning with the words, “Slowly, with dragging step, an indistinct figure emerged from the shadows,” and place these conditions upon their distribution. They are to be banned from the Reading Lists of Your Secondary Schools and Institutes of Higher Education. Where available, access must be restricted to Historians and Other Scholars, and this Statement is to be printed in its entirety upon the facing page.

  What follows is an account of recent actions on Behalf of the Stupendous Cause.

  I had nearly forgotten my vow to protect Frenchy La Chapelle from the cowardice of his partner in crime, but when it came back to me, I repaired to the intensive care unit of St. Ann’s Community Hospital.

  At the center of a network of wires and tubes, a Hatchtown weasel I knew of old sipped the steady doses of oxygen provided by a mechanical ventilator. Like all Hatchtown weasels, including Frenchy La Chapelle, Clyde Prentiss had dared speak of me only in whispers during his urchin-hood. (None of them have ever known my name—any of my names—and for decades have referred to me by a delightfully sinister sobriquet.) On a balmy evening twenty-five years in the past, happening to overhear the prepubescent Clyde Prentiss amusing his peers by a show of irreverence, I exploded into their clubhouse, grasped the little fellow by his ankles, carried the gibbering boy down the lanes to a little-noted structure, and suspended him head-down over the Knacker.

  At a time when popular opinion dismisses every sort of nastiness as unacceptable, this eternal source of Hatchtown nightmares has not only been forgotten, its very existence has been denied. Accidentally or no, the Knacker’s location has slipped from public record, conveniently assisting its ascent into mythical status.

  I held the wriggling boy above the pit until a fragrant evacuation stained his dungarees. Having made my point, I lowered him to the floor. From that day forth, neither the boy nor his fellows offered ought but obedience. The comatose husk of that child’s adult self lay before me.

  I drew my knife to slice through the accordion folds of the ventilator tube. His spindly chest elevated and deflated. I threw back the sheet, punched the blade into his navel, and dragged it to his throat, which I laid open with a single lateral stroke. The guardian machines trilled, and Prentiss flopped up and down in lively consternation. I wiped the blade on the bottom of the coverlet and swept unseen around the nurse who had appeared at the front of the compartment.

  I once again put the fear of God into Frenchy La Chapelle by seeming to materialize out of the refuse of a Word Street corner. “Good morning, Frenchy,” I said. He levitated an inch or two off the pavement. “Time for your marching orders.”

  Frenchy emitted a moan, about what I had expected. “I tried to find Dunstan, but if he ain’t here, it ain’t my fault.”

  “I want to know where he’s staying.”

  “How’m I supposed to do that?” Frenchy whined.

  “Look for him. When you see him, follow him home. After that, return to this corner and wait for me.”

  “Wait for you?”

  “Pretend it’s a train station, and I’m the train.”

  His mouth curved downward in a Frenchy-smile. “Lots of guys tryin’ to find Dunstan.”

  He risked a peek beneath the brim of my hat. “The cops brought him in after that friend of Joe Staggers got his head bashed open, only they let him go. Staggers and his pals aren’t too happy.”

  “You’d better find him before they do,” I said.

  He rocked back and forth, gathering his courage. “Didn’t you say something about a favor?”

  “You could always call the hospital.”

  Frenchy stopped jittering, and a pulse beat in his temples.

  “Step into Horsehair. I’ll explain what you are going to do Monday night.”

  He held his breath as I moved in and blocked the opening. Frenchy had been one of the boys who had seen little Clyde’s brush with the Knacker.

  55

  Laurie, who had listened with only half an ear as I described Rinehart’s book and my conversation with Suki Teeter, came to life as we neared the expressway. “You solved everything in one day! Yesterday you didn’t know anything, and now you know more than you want to! You’re done! We have to celebrate.”

  I asked if Cobbie had come home all right.

  “Yes.” Her tone was dry and ironic. “Stewart brought him home and then favored us with his company for several hours. That’s why I was late.” She swerved onto the westbound ramp. “He helped himself to gallons of Scotch and repeated the same things
over and over.” Laurie glanced over her left shoulder and flattened the accelerator. We hit sixty before we shot out onto the expressway, and when we settled into the fast lane, the speedometer was climbing past seventy. “Most of them were about you.”

  I blurted, “Me?”

  Grenville Milton had called Le Madrigal to complain about a man of my description who had insulted him outside the restaurant, then gone in—on Milton’s recommendation! Vincent, the headwaiter, had identified me and informed Milton that I had joined Mrs. Hatch and Mrs. Ashton. Milton had reported to Stewart, who already knew, because his private detective had told him.

  Laurie said, “This morning, some guy tailed me into town and watched us go to City Hall. After that, he followed us to the V.A. Hospital. When I got home, he hightailed it around the corner for a little chat with Stewart. Who of course shoved Cobbie into his car and burned rubber all the way to my house.”

  I looked through the Mountaineer’s big rear window. “If Stewart thinks I’m working for Ashleigh, he must be going batty trying to figure out what we were doing at the V.A. Hospital.”

  “Everything’s driving Stewart batty. Stewart is especially batty when it comes to you.” Her eyes flashed at me. “Going places with a Dunstan is like associating with Charles Manson. After destroying the Hanging Gardens of Babylon and introducing the Black Death to Europe, your family got really awful. They settled in Edgerton, where they practiced voodoo and cheated at cards. They made the Kennedys look like the Reagans!”

  Gleaming with mockery, Laurie’s eyes slid to meet mine. “He actually said that. They made the Kennedys look like the Reagans. It was very impressive.”

  “We always were a little peculiar,” I said.

  The tiles on the roof of the big house on Blueberry Lane were made of rubberized plastic, and its design mismatched a Tudor manor with a Georgian townhouse. Stewart Hatch had probably fallen in love with the place the moment he had seen it.

  “Who built this house?” I asked Laurie.

  She grimaced. “It’s one of Grennie Milton’s masterpieces. To feel at home in it, you have to wear a pink blazer and green pants.”

  We went into a vast space in which islands of furniture seemed to float a few inches off a pale carpet. Footsteps clattered on a staircase. Cobbie hurtled around a corner, charged toward us, and wrapped his arms around his mother’s legs. A dark-haired young woman in blue jeans and a loose cotton sweater appeared in his wake.

  “Ned, Posy Fairbrother, my savior.”

  Posy gave me a crisp handshake and a smile that would have warmed a corpse. “The famous Ned Dunstan.” From the mass of hair gathered behind her ears, wisps and tendrils escaped to fall about her face. She was about twenty-four or twenty-five and the sort of woman who wore lipstick only under duress. “Cobbie’s been talking about you all afternoon.” Posy turned to Laurie. “Feed him in about half an hour?”

  Cobbie let go of his mother and tried to drag me away.

  “After we get him in bed, how about helping me in the kitchen?”

  Posy looked down at Cobbie doing tug-of-war on my hand and smiled at me. “The price of adoration.” She knelt in front of him. “Give Ned some time to talk to your mother before asking him to listen to your music.”

  “Ned and I can both listen to the music.” Laurie bent toward her son. “Cobbie, Ned likes that same Monteverdi piece.”

  Cobbie stepped into the space Posy Fairbrother had vacated. “You do?” His eyes held no trace of humor.

  “ ‘Confitebor tibi,’ ” I said. “Emma Kirkby. I love it.”

  His mouth fell open. I might as well have said that Santa Claus lived on one side of me and the Easter Bunny on the other. He wheeled around and raced toward one of the floating islands.

  Laurie and I sat on an oatmeal-colored sofa as Cobbie loaded a CD into a rank of sound equipment beneath a big, soulful self-portrait by Frida Kahlo. I couldn’t take my eyes from it. I looked for the other painting she had inherited from her father, and above the fireplace to our left saw a slightly smaller Tamara de Lempicka of a blond woman at the wheel of a sports car.

  “What astounding paintings,” I said to Laurie.

  Cobbie was exploding with impatience. “Sorry,” she said. “We’re ready now.” He pushed the PLAY button.

  Emma Kirkby’s shining voice sailed out of invisible speakers, translating the flowing, regular meter into silvery grace. Cobbie sat cross-legged on the carpet, his head lifted, drinking in the music while keeping one eye on me. His whole body went still. The meter slowed down, then surged forward at “Sanctum et terrible nomen eius,” and he braced himself. We reached the “Gloria patri,” where Emma Kirkby soars into a series of impassioned, out-of-time inventions that always reminds me of an inspired jazz solo. Cobbie fastened his eyes on mine. When the piece came to an end, he said, “You do like it.”

  “You do, too,” I said.

  Cobbie picked himself up from the carpet. “Now hear the piano one.”

  Laurie said, “I’ll mess around in the kitchen for a while,” and disappeared around the corner. Cobbie inserted another CD and pushed buttons until he reached Zoltán Kocsis playing “Jardins sous la pluie,” the last section of Debussy’s Estampes.

  He closed his eyes and cocked his head in unconscious imitation of almost every musician I have ever met—even I do that when I’m listening hard. I could see the harmonies shiver along his nervous system. “Jardins sous la pluie” ends with a dramatic little flourish and a high, percussive E. When it had sounded, Cobbie opened his eyes and said “That’s on our piano.” He pointed across the room to a white baby grand angling out from a far wall, raced across the carpet, raised the fallboard, and struck the high E. I don’t know what I felt most like doing, giggling in delight or applauding, but I think I did both.

  “See?” He struck it again, percussively, and lifted his finger to cut off the note.

  “Do you remember the big note before that?”

  He spun back to the keyboard and hit the high B. “It’s five down and five up, it’s funny.”

  The B was a five-step down from the E, so after all the previous harmonic movement, the E came as an almost comic resolution. It was no wonder Cobbie could imitate voices perfectly. He had perfect pitch, or what we call perfect pitch, anyhow—the ability to hear precise relationships between sounds.

  “How did you know where they were?”

  He walked up to me, laid his forearms across my knees, and stared into my eyes, asking himself if I were really that dumb or just pretending. “Because,” he said, “one is very, very, very red. And the big one is very, very, very blue.”

  “Naturally,” I said.

  “Very, very blue. Now can we have the funny Frank Sinatra song?”

  “Just what we need,” I said.

  He charged back to the player, inserted the CD of Come Dance with Me, and called up a crisp drum roll and Billy May’s brass figures. Cobbie sank to the floor and crossed his legs, listening to Sinatra’s perfectly timed entrance on “Something’s Gotta Give” with the same concentration he had brought to Monteverdi and Debussy. He twinkled at me at the beginning of the bridge and smiled at Sinatra’s stretching out of the rhythm after the instrumental break. Because I was listening partially through Cobbie’s ears, what I heard gleamed with a loose, confident power. But for some reason, a part of me shrank away—Sinatra’s “Something’s Gotta Give” was the last thing I wanted to hear. The track ended with a swaggering downward phrase and an exultant Come on, let’s tear it up that made Cobbie laugh out loud.

  He fastened his eyes on mine. “Again?”

  “Ring-a-ding-ding,” I said.

  The jazzy call to arms from the drummer; urgent shouts from the trumpets and trombones; the saxophone section unfurling a carpet-smooth lead-in; at the exact center of the exact center of the first beat of the first bar of the first chorus, a lean baritone voice took off in a racing start. Fear slid up my spine, and goose pimples bristled on my arms.

&nb
sp; When the song ended, Posy Fairbrother appeared at the entrance of the room. “Let’s tear up some wild, knocked-out, koo-koo spaghetti, what do you say?”

  Cobbie plunged toward her. At the corner leading to the kitchen, he looked back at me. “Ned! We’re having knocked-out, koo-koo spaghetti!”

  “You and I are having spaghetti, Frank,” Posy told him. “You can say good night to Ned afterward, and then he’s going to have dinner with your mommy.”

  Laurie moved around them, holding a wineglass in each hand. “You and Posy go in the kitchen. I’ll be there in a minute.”

  Cobbie put his hand into Posy’s and vanished around the corner. For what seemed an absurdly long time, Laurie and I walked toward each other. When we stood face to face, she leaned forward to kiss me. The kiss lasted longer than I had expected.

  “What did you think? What do you think?”

  “He’s incredible, that’s what I think. I think he should skip grade school and go straight to Juilliard.”

  Laurie put her forehead on my shoulder. “Now what do I do?”

  “You should probably start him on piano lessons with a good teacher. Five years later, get him a great teacher and hire a lawyer whose nickname is Jaws.”

  She straightened up and stared at me, almost exactly as Cobbie had done while explaining that E and B were colored red and blue.