Providence

by Caroline Kepnes

  T-ball. “Sure thing, Cap.”

  She spins around and I can’t face Romy. The room where all the beards were, all the hope. Can’t even follow my own train of thought right now. What am I going to say? How am I even possibly going to defend myself?

  Romy eyes me. “Was that your boss?”

  My neck seizes up in the bad way, the opposite of the way it did back at the Biltmore, back when there was hope. “In a manner of speaking.”

  Romy smiles. “I love that you report to a woman. That makes me feel so good about all this.”

  * * *

  —

  In her office, Stacey gives me a look. It turns out my “Beard” was a domestic violence victim. He was at that conference looking for his boyfriend. He’d called in the abuse several times. He wasn’t even in Providence the night Krish died, he was in a hospital in Wareham. What was he doing at the Lovecraft convention if he lives in Wareham? He found that hat in his boyfriend’s car. He was there on a hunch.

  “Eggie,” she says when she’s through. She stands up and opens the door.

  “I know.”

  “Do you? Because you gotta let it go.”

  I don’t look at my colleagues as I walk out to my car. It’s enough to feel them glancing over their computer screens, knowing.

  There’s no denying what today was all about, all the Lovecraft people, their toothy smiles, the love in their fingertips, holding doors open, so passive, these sweet, gooey people, hearts like Lo’s, this is what they’re drawn to: Violence. Gore. Innocent people like dark things. It’s not rocket science, it’s that rule of opposites and attraction.

  I get in my car and when I watch the video of the Beard getting his ass kicked, I know him. He’s not a drug dealer. He’s a goddamn puppy, a Lovecraft fan.

  The truth creeps up on me like a kid in a schoolyard. What Stacey knew. What they all knew, everybody in the station. I might be wrong. The Beard is probably a soft, sweet, passive soul, probably missed the conference today because he was home nursing his wounds. Probably never harmed a soul in his life, probably never will. I should stop looking for him. In a moment like this, you can make that kind of decision. And then you can rewind the video, you can watch it again.

  JON

  It was so easy to be brave on the drive over, but I froze up and missed the whole Lovecraft conference. I came here but I didn’t go in. I failed.

  Now Dr. Woo is outside of a black car. She’s going to get in it soon and she’s going to go and then I will have wasted my whole day sitting here, not taking control of my life, not trying to find a way out of this mess.

  I step out of my car. That skin-crawling sensation overtakes me again, that sense of someone lurking. I whip my head around but there is nothing. No one. I focus on my breathing, slow and steady. I pull my cap down low. I am Providence. I walk up to her, Dr. Lynn Woo, a smallish, strongish woman who smells of black licorice and fancy shampoo. I tap her on the shoulder.

  She turns. She smiles. “Well, you’re a tall drink of water.”

  “Can I ask you something about The Dunwich Horror?”

  She laughs. “Is this something we didn’t cover in the two-hour seminar?”

  She’s trying to be nice but I can’t take in the kindness. I can’t look at her. I have to look through her. Feel nothing. Focus. “What if they could have fixed Wilbur? Wilbur could change,” I say. “People change.”

  “People, yes…maybe,” she says. “Monsters, no.”

  “But what if they could have fixed him, turned him back?”

  She’s studying me. She’s thinking. “Hon,” she says. “Have we met? You look so familiar.”

  I feel my body heating up. I shake my head. “I don’t think so.”

  “Well,” she says. “Wilbur was growing fast because he was only part human. When he dies, there’s no blood. He’s literally super natural.”

  “What if they had done a blood transfusion,” I ask. “Like, if they had replaced the yellow bile, that stuff that made him a monster, I mean couldn’t they have made the human part of him bigger than the monster part?”

  She smiles. “You’re adorable,” she says, and she likes me, she’s amused, she isn’t taking me seriously. I have the urge to tell her everything, how I’ve never gone to Meeney because he knew Roger Blair. I’d feel too much. This was safe because she’s a stranger. But now I’m here. She’s here. I forgot how easy it is to feel something for someone and that I should warn her that I am Wilbur (sort of) and she has thirty seconds to help me or die. But how could I really do that? How could I tell her?

  I do my stern voice. “Lovecraft goes on and on about him being part human. He makes us see him as a baby, growing up fast, too fast, but still, he’s like you and me, he has a mother.”

  And she shifts gears, she gets serious, even a little impatient, she says Dunwich is part of the larger Cthulhu story and the most noteworthy thing about this story is that it has a happy ending.

  My cheeks turn red. “But he dies. Wilbur dies.”

  “Yes,” she says. “That’s precisely what I’m saying. Sure, there is a bloodbath, his actions do lead to a lot of death, but there is an end to it. And we, the readers, we get to feel relieved, like the town won this round. Wilbur is dead. The horror has come and gone.”

  She rubs her forehead. She’s getting dizzy and I am running out of time.

  My voice is low and shaky. “But what if things could have ended differently?”

  She flashes her eyes at the driver, she wants out of this conversation. “You’re still talking as if there’s something redeemable about Wilbur.”

  “Well, he isn’t all bad. He saved his brother.”

  She laughs. “You’re a piece of work,” she says. “And I swear I know you. Were you here last year? The Cthulhu breakfast…the first day?”

  I push her again. The clock ticks. The one inside of me, the one that tells me there isn’t much time until my heart starts to attack. I’m feeling things. Terrible things. Dread. Resentment. My voice comes out like a hiss, “I’m just trying to figure out how they could have saved Wilbur.”

  “They couldn’t have,” she says, snapping. “The goal is to kill Wilbur because his goal is to kill us. Here he is, in our backyard, and he’s going to kill us. What’s scarier than that?” She wipes her forehead. “I feel pink,” she says. “Do I look pink?”

  “But he was part human,” I insist. “He was born to a mother. He has a brother. He’s a person. He does start out that way.”

  She moves toward her car. “That might be the scariest thing of all,” she says. “Doesn’t matter that you’re a little good if you’re mostly made of evil.”

  Her nose begins to bleed and I can barely get the words out, Thank you. She just gave me my death sentence and now she slinks into her big town car, disappearing like one of Lovecraft’s monsters. And then I look into the lobby, at all the happy people. I blink. I rub my eyes. Yes. No. Yes. That’s who I think it is, and I see her and she sees me and I stop moving because I can’t move. It’s her. Chloe.

  CHLOE

  I bought a shirt in the lobby: SHOGGOTHS IN BLOOM. I don’t know what a Shoggoth is, but I like the word. I like the Nirvana song In Bloom and I didn’t want to look like an outsider, a girl searching for love, especially around all this requited passion, obsessed people coming together to fuel and feed this love. I take the glass elevator up to the fifteenth floor and the bottom drops out of my stomach.

  “ ’Scuse me,” a girl says, smiling fully, so un-Manhattan. “Do you want me to pull your tag off?”

  Upstairs, the conference rooms and the hallways are stuffed with Lovecraft people, more men than women, costumed, energized. These people live for this, they wait for this, this is their World Series, their wedding day. It’s so easy to picture Jon here, so easy to imagine that he’s found a home with people t
he way he never could when we were kids, or never wanted to. I feel him everywhere; he would call this my Spidey sense. I see a guy picking over bagels at the buffet, that could be Jon. I walk over there but it isn’t him. I see another guy adjusting a black robe, laughing at something. My heart is beating faster. But then he raises his head to scratch his neck and no, not Jon again. I go back in the glass elevator to the lobby and ride with the Lovecrafters, up and down. It would have been fun to be here with Noelle, to hear her little comments. I miss her, I miss Jon, I am dizzy with missing and I wander around downstairs until I convince myself that he’s upstairs, that I missed him, and I get back into the elevator where two guys are raving about a reenactment of The Dunwich Horror.

  “Excuse me,” I say. “That’s a book, right?”

  They look at me like I just bought my shirt in the lobby.

  “Long story,” I say. “But was that reenactment today? Did you see this guy there?”

  I shove my phone at them, my Jon drawing. No, they didn’t.

  Upstairs, I dawdle around the buffet table with an empty plate, an obvious prop. Someone taps my shoulder. A guy with glasses, fake tentacles attached to his naked scalp like extensions. He smiles. “You look lost,” he says.

  “I’m not lost,” I say. “Just looking for my friend.”

  He raises his eyebrows. “For your boyfriend?”

  “I don’t know,” I say, and I sound like a weirdo, I am the weirdo with my empty plate, my I don’t know and stiff new shirt.

  The guy is backing away. “Good luck,” he says.

  I pick up a hard croissant. I don’t know. How can that be true? I know so much. I know what I do, I know where I live. But none of it matters if you don’t know who you love. I gnaw on the old croissant. It may as well be cardboard. I know I love Jon from afar. I never turn my ringer off at the movies in case this is the time he says something when he calls. But I think love is something you have to do up close, in a room like this, with circulated air and intermittent squealing.

  I pull the picture of Jon up in my phone and show it to the bald guy with the tentacles. He looks at the picture of Jon, handsome Jon. The guy with the tentacles slinks away from me, his shoulders drop.

  “Those types all look the same to me,” he says.

  “No,” I say. “I promise you, this guy is a good guy. He’s obsessed with The Dunwich Horror and I’m pretty sure he’s here.”

  Tentacles doesn’t mask his disappointment. I like him for it. There’s nothing rude about it. I tell Tentacles I like his costume and he smiles.

  “If you don’t find your fella, I’ll just be over there by the Elder Things.”

  I thank Tentacles and I’m alone again. The food at Tenley’s must have been a mirage because I feel empty inside, outside of myself. I get back in the elevator and go on a few rides, the way I ride the subway in New York, staring at my warbled reflection, imagining the doors opening, imagining Jon being there. Chloe, he would say. I’m so sorry.

  People in the elevator crack up over a joke I don’t get, I don’t speak this language, I don’t belong. The lobby is still a madhouse thick with people, same as it was before. I hold my breath and my purse and I search the lobby, every tiny sofa, every little crowd, every line, every everywhere. He isn’t here.

  But I can’t shake this feeling that he is. It’s no different than the phone calls.

  A woman taps me on the shoulder. She wants me to take a picture of her and her weirdo posse. “Sure,” I say, hoping I don’t sound too obsequious. These people are the opposite of New York, they’re so present, so fully engaged, not charging ahead, not hell-bent on making that train or that light. I forgot about peace. About what it’s like to have everything you want, your needs met. The woman who asked me to take the picture, her name is Marjorie. She met her husband here at NecronomiCon three years ago and she laughs. He should be the one taking the picture but who knows where he is? So much to see! Her ring sparkles, small. Marjorie and her friends from the Internet, from the weekend, they squish in together. They don’t have to be encouraged to go cheek-to-cheek. They’re adjusting their hats, their cloaks. I’ve never felt so alone in my life.

  “Honey,” she says. “We’re ready when you are.”

  I apologize for being in outer space and I hold up her phone. “Say Cthulhu.”

  They speak in unison and they weren’t expecting that. “You guys,” I say. “Let me take another for safety. I want to make sure everyone’s in here.”

  They tell me they want to make a pyramid and I tell them it’s a great idea. People are gathering around us, clapping. I’m the photographer; an observer. I look around, I get used to the reality that I’m not going to find Jon, that I came here alone and I’m invading all this togetherness. I can never tell anyone about this day. I’ll pretend I got my Shoggoths in Bloom T-shirt at a thrift store.

  Soon, the Lovecrafters are in formation. There are three vertical rows of them in total, four on the bottom, two in the middle, and Marjorie the Bride on top, arms raised in a V. I take pictures and a video and I promise myself to find a community when I get back to New York, but I know I won’t. Marjorie climbs down. Her cheeks are red. She’s hugging the others, promising to send them pictures. I want to leave. I need to leave. But I can’t interrupt her, she’s too happy.

  I zoom in on the last picture I took. One girl is growling. One guy is squinting, smiling so much that you can’t see his eyes. Another guy is channeling rage but it comes off as funny. Another girl’s face is full of dread, maybe she’s afraid of falling, being crushed, or maybe it’s just the blues that come when the dance is almost over, when the last song is playing. But her face makes me feel better. My love isn’t real, but this love isn’t real either, this isn’t every day for these people. Their real lives don’t compare to this weekend. They never will. Just beside the sad girl, in the background, there is a man. You can only see him because the automatic doors in the lobby are open. He’s outside. His hands are in his pockets. I know someone who used to do that. I am looking for someone who used to do that.

  My feet dig into the floor, into the carpet and I expect the floor to crack open because that’s him. I’d know him a mile away and I know him fifty feet away. He’s older. He has a beard. But I drew those eyes until my own eyes were watering. I know the way it feels when those eyes are on me, and that is this feeling, this feeling I haven’t had in so long. To be loved, looked at, treasured. I wasn’t crazy to come here after all. There is a happy ending, there is a thing called fate, a balance to all this missing, the zing of that jingle that brought us together, Alex Interiors, you’re never alone. It’s him. It’s him. I scream his name. Jon!

  He turns. And I see the moment he sees me. The way his eyes widen. The way he freezes in place. He recognizes me, he does, and I start to run, I scream for Marjorie and I throw her phone at her.

  She calls after me, “Go get him, Shoggoth.”

  I run like a Shoggoth if a Shoggoth runs fast, tripping through the lobby, toward those automatic doors that looked closer in the picture. Time is passing; it had already passed by the time I noticed him. The doors open again, they close again. The town car that was out front is gone and the doors sense me coming and they open and then I’m outside screaming his name.

  But he’s gone.

  I stand here not crying, not saying anything, fully absorbing the horror, more horrible than any of these costumes, these elaborate creatures with their weird names. No, this is worse. Being seen, being left. The awareness of it. I remember when my grandmother found out she had Alzheimer’s. The worst thing isn’t the disease, Chloe. It’s knowing that you have it, that it will slowly eat you, that’s the worst thing about any bad thing in the world, the knowing, and if you can get a handle on that, you can get through anything. Consciousness is the monster and it wins.

  The valet approaches, a frisky older man with an
obvious red toupee. So many people here could be characters in a dream. “Little Miss Lovecraft,” he says, grinning. “Did you need a taxi or is one of these monsters gonna get you where you need to go?”

  In the taxi, the driver asks if I’m going to the train station and I nod, yes. It’s a mostly empty train and I have a whole row. When we clear the tunnel, we have reception again. I hold my phone the whole way home. It doesn’t ring once. I paint monsters in my mind, but none of them grab onto me the way he does, from the inside out, in perpetuity.

  EGGS

  I don’t ride a bicycle. It’s been a sticking point at various times in my life. As a kid, I preferred my feet on the ground. But you can get away faster said my buddy Stevie, and it’s one of those moments I can remember in my gut, in my eyes, crystal clear, because I remember being nine years old and knowing that I would be a cop, that I wasn’t interested in getting away with anything.

  Lo shrugged it off the first time I told her that little story. “Well,” she said. “Your dad was a police officer. So he influenced you, pushed you. That’s not so much a gut feeling as it is a growing awareness of what was put in your gut.”

  And then she wrapped spaghetti around her fork and called it pasta. Women.

  I let her think she was right but she was wrong. I have a strong gut. While I might have inherited it from my dad, my gut is mine alone. You can’t expect someone else to be a part of it, to validate it. That’s what makes it a gut. It’s the reason I know that I don’t belong on a bicycle. In my gut, I know nothing good will ever happen to me with my legs straddling that little seat.

  And you honor a gut the way you do a ghost, a tradition. Today I’m gonna do that by heading back to that damn Lovecraft gathering, gonna pop a Zantac for the damn twist in my belly that snakes around my backside a little more all the time and just do it. And I’m taking it easy. I’m going in calm. It’s almost a good thing that I feel a little weak, I’m not firing on all cylinders. I have zero expectations of anything happening today, I’m just going for the hell of it.