by Harvey Click
Of course she’d want to know why he hadn’t called her after Drew went to the hospital, and he couldn’t think of an answer for that. And he’d have to explain that he couldn’t leave the apartment to come see her because he was guarding Drew’s book. But then she’d probably want to come over, and what if Rue called while Holly was here? How could he explain that Rue had put a hypnotic spell on him if he supposedly didn’t know her? It was all so complicated.
Women are too damn complicated, he thought angrily. Why can’t they be straight-up and honest like men?
He felt better by the time he was done with his bath, and it occurred to him that Conan wouldn’t waste his time worrying about how a crippled man took a dump. Now that he was a reading man, he was beginning to see how books taught important lessons about life, and surely this was one of them.
He had left his razor at Rue’s house, and Drew’s looked so dirty he didn’t want to use it. His whiskers had always felt like soft down, but now they were a tad coarser, and his face looked even leaner, older, and hungrier than it had a couple of days ago. He admired it for a while, rubbing his stubble and making the sorts of faces in the mirror he’d seen tough guys make on TV.
Maybe some of these damn snotty women would treat him with more respect now that he looked so manly. And if they didn’t he’d leave them behind without a second thought, the same way Conan would do.
He dialed Holly’s number with trepidation, let it ring for a long time, and felt both relief and annoyance when she didn’t answer. Despite dreading her questions, he’d been hoping she’d want to come over here and help him keep watch. He could certainly do with some company, and maybe they could have sex a few times on the sofa.
He decided to kill some time by cleaning Drew’s kitchen. He knew Conan wouldn’t waste his time cleaning a cripple’s apartment, but he hated to think of Drew coming home to this horrible mess. He threw empty bottles and other trash in a huge bag and hauled it out to the garbage can in the alley, which was even more trash-strewn than Drew’s kitchen. He washed the dishes, swept the floor, and mopped it. He didn’t enjoy housecleaning but had done plenty of it after his father had taken sick, and the familiar chores made him feel less far from home.
When he was putting the clean dishes away in the cupboard it occurred to him Drew might not be able to reach them. He moved a kitchen chair to the counter and sat on it to see which shelves he could reach from a sitting position, and the same sick feeling he’d had in the bathroom came over him again. He’d never before cared very much about other people’s problems, and he didn’t want to get started now if this was what caring felt like.
Maybe it was all the reading he’d been doing. He’d heard people say reading books made you care more about things, and if that was the case he thought he’d probably better give up the habit before things got out of hand.
Music was better than reading anyway. It was prettier and didn’t cause eyestrain and didn’t make you care about other people’s toilet problems. He remembered there was an acoustic guitar leaning in the corner of the study, and he brought it to the living room. It was a bit out of tune, and even more out of tune by the time he finished tuning it, since tuning had never been one of his finer talents, but he strummed the few chords he knew, and for some reason they made the apartment sound even more silent and empty.
Maybe his wild claim to Kyra about having a band wasn’t such a bad idea. If he was going to have to support Holly and the baby, music might just be the ticket. He knew musicians made a lot of money because he’d seen them on TV wearing fancy clothes and driving around in big limousines. If he could get a job playing in a bar he’d soon be raking in the dough, and it would sure beat bussing tables and getting chocolate syrup all over his shirt.
He turned on the tape recorder and strummed and sang Merle Haggard’s “Sing Me Back Home,” one of the five or six songs he knew. He thought he was doing an exceptional job, maybe even better than Merle himself because he was putting more emotion into the refrain, really letting his voice sail out there like a fist and pack some punch, and he pictured a big bar crowd listening with rapt attention, not speaking a word, maybe with some attractive young women weeping a little during that sad refrain.
He’d never owned a tape recorder and was eager to hear what he sounded like, but his guitar playing sounded bad and his voice even worse, like a grade school kid warbling in the shower with a sore throat, at least until that emotion-packed refrain, and then it sounded like a coonhound getting run over by a dump truck.
He decided the problem most likely was Drew’s tape recorder, which looked old and worn out, but if he was going to make a living at this enterprise he’d probably need a little practice.
The phone rang. He hit the record button, picked up the receiver, and stuck the microphone against the earpiece. If he heard Rue’s voice he planned to pull the receiver away from his ear before her devilish spell could work its mischief.
“What’s the story, kid?” Hatter asked.
Jason switched off the recorder and said, “I’m getting sick and tired of sitting ‘round here in this damn flytrap, that’s the story. Rue’s been snooping ‘round trying to bust in, and it’s not like Drew left me a sword or anything to fight her off.”
Hatter chuckled and said, “A sword?”
“I just mean it ain’t an easy job guarding this thing all alone without no weapons or nothing. I could get killed any minute and nobody would know ‘cept the flies.”
“I told you I can lock it up here at my hotel. Then you can go out and enjoy yourself, maybe get laid or something.”
“Nope, we already been through all that.”
“Well then, I’ll come over and help you with your guard duty. I’m good to have around in tough situations like this. I always pack heat in case things get dicey.”
“I for sure could use some help, but you can’t be reading Drew’s book. I swore a promise and they’s nothing in the world will make me break it.”
Hatter chuckled and coughed. “I got four words for you, kid: Big Mac and fries.”
“It’s a fact I’m awful hungry. There ain’t nothing ‘round here fit to eat.”
“Okay then, I bring you some food and while I’m sitting there helping you with your guard duty I get to read. Fair enough?”
“Well, maybe just a few pages, but you can’t take no notes and also you gotta run some clothes over to the hospital for Drew. I want three Big Macs, large fries, and a chocolate shake. Make that a large shake and bring plenty of ketchup.”
“You drive a hard bargain, kid, but I’ll be right over.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
There weren’t any chairs in the study, so Jason brought in two from the kitchen and ate at the big cluttered table while Hatter read. The Big Macs tasted extra good today, even if they weren’t very hot, and the fries were perfect with the extra bit of grease that Jason liked so much.
When he was done eating he got his book and read Robert E. Howard while Hatter read Drew Dieborn. It was a great relief to have some company, and Hatter had proved he wasn’t lying about packing heat by pulling his tweed jacket aside to show Jason the snub-nose revolver hidden in a shoulder holster beneath his left armpit. It seemed to Jason a manly thing to carry a gun and he decided he’d buy one as soon as he made some money off his music.
Unfortunately he still wasn’t able to go out for a walk because he needed to stay in the room and make sure Hatter didn’t stuff any pages in his pockets. The clock on the wall made its slow journey from 10:30 to 1:00 and then 2:00, and Hatter kept reading. He didn’t even get up to go to the bathroom or get a drink of water; in fact he didn’t move at all except to reach for a new page or occasionally light another Chesterfield.
Jason finished the last page of his book at 2:20 and got up to search the shelves for some more Conan stories, but there weren’t any and he didn’t want to ruin Robert E. Howard’s spell by trying a different writer.
Watching Hatter read was even mo
re boring than sitting around by himself, and he realized his plight wasn’t going to improve until Drew got out of the hospital. Drew should be plenty grateful for being brought back to life, so maybe he’d let Jason stay here rent-free for a while, maybe Holly too if necessary, though of course they’d have to take over Drew’s room and let him sleep on the sofa. That would give Jason a little time to practice his music before he had to go out and make a living.
When three o’clock rolled around he said, “You better run them clothes over to the hospital for Drew. Maybe he’s ready to get outta there.”
It was the first word either of them had spoken since Hatter had started reading, and he looked startled by the interruption, as if he’d forgotten where he was.
“This is the most fascinating book I’ve ever read in my life,” he said. “Drew is a genius. More than a genius—he’s a seer, an illuminatus. In the first fifty pages or so he proves the existence of God, or at least does a better job than I’ve ever seen before. There must be a flaw in his argument somewhere, but I haven’t figured it out yet.
“But after that things take a turn for the dark side. I mean stygian dark, hellish dark, darker than a deep hole on the dark side of the moon. It’s like the Necronomicon.”
“The necro-what?”
“Never mind. Demons, infernal powers, primordial monstrosities hiding in seven different hells, which he says are cosmic flaws caused by seven ruptures in the fabric of space-time in the first moment when the universe burst from a puncture in what he calls nethertime. Now he’s beginning to describe how to conjure up these demons and exploit their power. He has my hair standing on end.”
Jason couldn’t tell if that was true because Hatter was still wearing his hat.
“He almost has me believing this stuff, kid! I tell you, every crackpot in the world would buy this book, and there are enough of them to make it the biggest bestseller of the century. You could start a religion with this thing. I’m going to call my agent today—this needs to be published immediately. In many volumes, of course, so the suckers will have to keep shelling out their money to learn more dark secrets.”
“Before you start calling people, maybe you can run them clothes over there and see if he’s ready to come home. I don’t wanna spend another night here by myself.”
Hatter stared at the unread pages like a child being told to leave Disneyland. “Okay,” he said at last.
Jason made him leave the study before he gathered clothes from the bedroom. As he hunted for socks and underwear in the smelly room with its filthy handkerchiefs and dirty magazines, he found it hard to think of Drew as a genius. But if his book made him rich maybe he’d share some of the wealth with Jason. Bringing him back to life ought to be worth twenty percent at least or maybe one-fourth, whichever was bigger.
After Hatter left, the apartment felt sinister and menacing again. He dialed Holly’s number, and this time Hempy answered.
“Is Holly there?”
“No.”
“Will she be back soon?”
“No.”
“Where is she?”
“Jason, you’re always a day late and a dollar short, aren’t you?” Hempy said. “She moved back in with Cosmo. They’re planning to get married in two weeks.”
Jason hung up. He thought he should feel angry, but he didn’t. Let Holly seek her happiness wherever she wanted because he knew she wouldn’t find it with him, and he knew he wouldn’t find his happiness with her. He hoped he could see his baby someday, but someday seemed a long time away.
In the meantime he needed to practice his music so he could make some money. He switched on the tape recorder and sang another Merle Haggard song, then a couple Willie Nelson songs, and was halfway through the only other song he knew, a Waylon Jennings tune, when someone knocked on the door.
It was Hatter. “Get his wheelchair,” he said. “We made a daring escape with nurses screaming like berserk banshees and irate doctors trying to murder us with their scalpels.”
***
Drew looked very pale and weak, and getting him from the Hudson into his wheelchair was difficult. “I want to see my manuscript,” he kept saying.
Jason wheeled him into the study, and Drew glanced through all four piles and then said, “Someone’s been messing with it.”
“I read a couple pages,” Hatter said.
Drew glared at him and then at Jason. “What pages?” he demanded. “How many?”
“I don’t know, maybe twenty or thirty.”
“Are you certain you didn’t read any more than that? At precisely what page did you stop reading?”
Hatter looked through the pile he’d been reading and said, “Um, page three hundred and fifty-one I guess.”
“Very well,” Drew said. “It doesn’t become really dangerous until around page five hundred. Nevertheless, I’m disappointed in you, Jason. This is not a lending library. Did you let anyone else in here to read it?”
“Nope.”
“Mr. Dieborn, I’m a writer myself, and I have a pretty good agent,” Hatter said. “I can help you get it published.”
“Oh, you can, can you?”
“Yes, I believe I can. And it needs to be published—it’s an extraordinary piece of work. I’d like to read the rest of it and would be very happy to edit it for you.”
“Oh, you would, would you? Well, I have news for you—you’re not going to read it, nor is anyone else. And thank God Rue Anne didn’t get her hands on it.”
“How’d you know she wanted to steal it?” Jason asked.
“Marmalade told me.”
Jason sat on one of the chairs and Hatter sat on the other.
“Well, that’s not precisely correct,” Drew said. “Marmalade didn’t actually tell me Rue Anne wanted to steal it, but I put two and two together. That’s why she poisoned me, of course, so she could get her hands on my manuscript.
“What Marmalade did tell me is that I’ve inadvertently revealed some esoteric secrets in my manuscript that, in the wrong hands, could initiate the apocalypse. I’m reasonably sure what a couple of them are, too. Certain sections of some ancient grimoires are written in a sort of code so the uninitiated can’t understand them, and I’ve managed to decode several of these abstruse passages. One of them is a spell to unlock Abaddon from the bottomless pit, which will bring about Armageddon and the end times. Another spell is potentially even more dangerous, and I won’t even hint at its content. This book could literally bring about the end of the world.”
Jason was thinking that dying must have addled Drew’s brain. “Ain’t Marmalade dead?” he said.
“Yes, of course she’s dead, but so was I—remember? Jason, I have seen the afterlife—I was there! It was such a marvelous experience that I can’t possibly put it in words, but I know I’ll spend the rest of my life trying. Don’t expect choirs of angels strumming harps in some grim Methodist church—it’s nothing like that. There were trees and meadows and hills and streams, there were birds and animals and gorgeous flowers like you’ve never seen or smelled before. The colors! They were astonishing, colors that the human eye cannot perceive. Plato said this world is but a shadow of reality, and he was correct.
“And there was Marmalade, dressed in a sort of gossamer white gown, diaphanous and ethereal. We danced and played like children, and we talked for hours!”
“You were dead for about six and a half minutes,” Hatter said. “I timed the tape.”
“Six minutes, six years, time means nothing in the afterlife! I tell you, we spoke at great length of many things. She showed me how misguided my work has been on this endless, dreary manuscript. The truth, the only truth we need, is so much simpler than all this onerous babble. ‘Of making many books there is no end; and much study is a weariness of the flesh,’ as the Preacher said.
“And best of all, Marmalade doesn’t blame me for the accident that killed her. In fact, she chides me only for blaming myself all these years. Look at this, Jason.”
&n
bsp; Drew moved his wheelchair away from the table and lifted his left foot five or six inches, and then the right.
“Do you see that? I haven’t been able to lift them that high for eighteen years. My spinal cord was bruised but not severed in the motorcycle wreck. For several months I was totally paralyzed from the waist down, but then some movement began to return. My doctors thought it was possible I’d be able to walk again, and I underwent two dreadful surgeries and many months of rigorous physical therapy, but my legs were so weak that I gave up hope. But now the curse has been lifted, and I tell you in a very short while I shall walk again! There’s no cure like death, and there’s no nurse more skillful than Marmalade.
“And now, Jason, I’d like you to gather up my manuscript for me, all the piles, every page, and bring them to the back yard.”
“What are you planning to do?” Hatter asked.
“Burn them.”
“You can’t do that! You must be insane.”
“No. I was insane, but now I’m cured.” Drew placed a stack of pages in his lap and said, “Jason, wheel me to the back yard. Mr. Hatter, maybe you’d be kind enough to bring out a stack.”
“I won’t be a party to this crime,” Hatter said. “I’ll tell you what, I’ll put this manuscript in a safe and guard it like a hawk and not let anyone near it till you come to your senses. Tomorrow I’m sure you’ll feel very different.”
“Back yard, Jason,” Drew said.
Behind the apartment sat an old brick barbeque grill surrounded by weeds and empty bottles. Drew wadded up a few pages and placed them on the lower grate.
“Go in and get the rest,” he told Jason.
“You right sure you wanna do this? I got mad one time and busted up my shotgun against a tree and I felt awful sorry after I did it.”