by Doug Johnson
Grrrkkk.
Lazarus looked up to the roofline and saw the sleek, tapered silhouette of a bird of prey near the ridge of the main wing. He walked toward the driveway for a better angle. With the bird’s distinct, pale grey head and the russet coloring of its body, there was no mistaking. It was a Red Kite.
Lazarus scowled and disappeared into the shed. It wasn’t that he disliked kites. They were, after all, quite handsome. But they were also scavengers, often of dead sheep, and Lazarus knew that if this one had parked itself on his roof, there was a good chance it was preparing for a carrion feast.
A raptor of the same family as harriers and buzzards, a kite has long wings and weak legs, so therefore spends a great deal of its time soaring. This bastard however, had decided to perch itself right on top of Lazarus Walker’s goddamned satellite dish.
In the study, he slid open the antique roll-top desk and sat down. It was a great, hulking piece pulled from a bank on the Isle of Man, joined of wide English oak slabs and heavy brass hardware. It may well have been more seaworthy than the ship that had ferried it across the Irish Sea to Blackpool. There were no fewer than thirty drawers, all of them empty. It housed only two things now: a laptop and an ashtray.
The study itself was a mahogany-paneled womb. Rolling ladders climbed to empty bookcases, the volumes once filling them hauled off decades ago. Dreadlocks of dust hung from a leaded glass chandelier over frayed Turkish rugs and brass-tacked leather sofas dulled and cracked from neglect. The veneer of a tremendous, stand-mounted globe peeled like onion skin beneath the watchful eye of the master himself, Lord Bentwicke, whose insipid portrait hung over the fireplace.
Lazarus couldn’t bear to call the place Bentwicke Manor. It made it sound as if he had a crooked todger, he thought. He powered up the laptop and browsed his email, but barely a minute passed before a yellow triangle emblazoned with a black exclamation point popped up.
You are not connected to the Internet. Check your connection and try again.
“On the dish. Yes, a kite… No, the bird, you idiot.”
Lazarus paced around the parlor, barking into a cordless phone. He passed a bay window that overlooked the garden and did a double-take.
A shadow.
He could have sworn he’d seen it shift near the stone wall. Probably the bird, swooping down to snatch up a vole, some warm little morsel to gobble down with afternoon tea. The grandfather clock struck four o’clock behind him, prodding him back to the conversation. Its startlingly loud, hundred-year-old tubular chime bellowed through the house and Lazarus strained to hear the voice on the other end of the receiver.
“Three weeks? Let me speak to your supervisor.”
He chewed a fingernail, staring at the clock’s dinner-plate pendulum and listening to the meaty tick-tock of its movement.
“Well, when will he be back?”
Lazarus winced and shot a glance down at his hand. His teeth had raked away enough skin to draw blood from the cuticle on his ring finger.
“Fine. No, I’ll do it myself.” He sucked on the bleeding finger. “And it better not void the bloody warranty!”
He punched the “end” key and banged the phone back into its charging base. Not quite as satisfying as slamming an old-fashioned, Bakelite handset into its cradle, but it was better than nothing.
Lazarus stormed out to the garden and squinted up at the roof. The damned kite was still up there on the dish, scratching the hell out of it with its talons.
“Shoo… Shoo!”
The bird cocked its head with mechanical precision.
Grrrkkk.
Lazarus searched the ground at his feet and picked up a rock.
“Fuck off, you!” He reared back and hurled it, but the kite launched itself with a single flap of its great wings.
Dear God, Lazarus thought with fleeting awe at the six-foot span. The rock whacked the satellite dish with the resounding clang of a soup pot and knocked it cockeyed.
“Bugger!”
The shorter step and tripod ladders were stored in the shed. As he had today, Lazarus used them often for the frequent pruning tasks the garden required, but they wouldn’t do for this. He remembered spotting something in the stable though, and marched off to investigate.
Without its former inhabitants there to claim seniority, it had become quite a catchall, but the smell of horses lingered, and probably would until the building fell. It was an earthy fusion of leather and musk, neatsfoot oil and sweet hay with the sour echoes of crushed apples. There were saddles and other tack, of course. Threadbare hunt caps and musty, scarlet coats draped over harvest buckets and bushel boxes, cinder barrels and cider presses.
What Lazarus was after however, was the apple-picking ladder. Tapered from its wide base to nearly a point at the top for stability, with weathered ash side rails and square oak rungs, it was perhaps, as old as the house itself. The ladder was so tall as to be almost silly-looking, six yards, maybe seven, he guessed. It was, in fact, twenty-two feet tall, and Lazarus quickly discovered that it was one heavy son-of-a-bitch.
Just tipping the thing up and leaning it against the house proved a task in itself, but he would not be beaten by a fucking bird.
He climbed the creaking rungs with acute caution, each narrowing as he approached the roof until both hands barely fit side by side between the rails. The ladder was not quite tall enough, and Lazarus had to stretch to reach up and over the eaves. He felt the cold tingle of fear in his groin, but hoisted himself up onto the roof slates anyway, ignoring the stiff breeze and drizzle that had arrived. The late afternoon light was fading rapidly beneath the clouds, and he knew that if there was something worse than being up on a wet roof, it was being up on a wet roof in the dark. No time to hang about dawdling in indecision.
Thankfully, the roof pitch was not particularly steep on this part of the house, but it was certainly high enough to keep his heart thrumming in his chest like a double bass drum. He half crawled to the satellite dish and looked it over for damage. The kite’s talons hadn’t scratched it nearly as badly as he’d thought. In fact, he wondered what it had done that bollixed up the signal. He gingerly twisted the dish back toward its proper position to the south.
“Come on, you little bitch. Don’t break. Don’t break.”
On the ground below, a dark shape shot out from the tree line. Lazarus caught the motion out of the corner of his eye and whipped his head around, soles of his shoes slipping and squeaking on the wet slate. He grabbed the dish to steady himself.
What the hell was that?
He scooted over to the edge as quickly as he dared and scanned the grounds. Leaves rustled in the wind. Sheep bleated in the distance. Shadows shifted in the green, near-dusk light, and a chill crept up his spine, but he saw nothing.
CHAPTER 3
Lazarus picked up the cordless phone and clicked it on. He didn’t call the constable often, God knew he was the last person Lazarus wanted around, but once the novelty of having a rock star in their midst had paled, most of the locals had respected his privacy, and that included the police.
There was dead silence on the handset.
He punched a few random buttons and listened again. He shook the phone and returned it to his ear. Still nothing.
Christ, not this now, too.
He checked the charger base and jiggled the cord. A crunchy dial tone stuttered over the receiver then smoothed out. Lazarus breathed a sigh of relief and dialed.
“Constable McHenry? Lazarus Walker here. Any sightings of wildcats around the wood?” He stared out the window as the last embers of the day’s sunlight smoldered on the horizon.
“No, that won’t be necessary. Must be seeing things. Thanks.”
He hung up, feeling quite foolish, but somehow better for having made the call. Each year, there were hundreds of “phantom cat” reports all over the British countryside. Most were nonsense conjured up by over-active imaginations, but every five or ten years, one of these reports panned out with v
erifiable proof. There hadn’t been a true, indigenous wildcat sighting in Northern England in a century or more, he supposed. But that didn’t mean it wasn’t possible.
He’d trek out to the back acreage in the morning and take a head count of the Leicester sheep. For the time being, he was tired. His brief affliction of the “heebie-jeebies” had passed, and a growling stomach reminded him that he hadn’t eaten since the egg and cress sandwich that afternoon.
Aunt Bessie. God bless the old cow. She’d been feeding Lazarus for most of his adult life with her boxed, frozen fare. With a gingered hair helmet raked back in a bun and a smile-that-valium-built plastered across her round, cabbage-hued face, dear Aunt Bessie had dedicated her fictional life behind the apron to packing the deep-freezes and cupboards of her devotees with anything made of starch, eggs and milk that they were too lazy, or simply too stupid to mix themselves.
Hands-down, her specialty was Yorkies drowned in gravy, but there were also stuffing balls and croquettes, roasted potatoes basted in duck fat, mashed carrots and swede, spotted dick, dozens of puddings and crumbles, a token green selection of button sprouts, and of course, toads-in-the-hole, which would spotlight tonight’s menu.
There really is no acceptable way to cook a toad-in-the-hole other than properly baking it, but Lazarus was ravenous. He nuked a package of Tidgy Toads in the microwave, then slid them onto a plate and reached for the chef’s knife in the block to slit the plastic film. The slot in the block was empty, and he puzzled for a moment, searching his memory as to where he might have left it after his sandwich earlier. Stomach rumbling, he simply grabbed an unnecessarily long bread knife to administer the task, snatched a Beck’s from the fridge and headed off to feast.
Lazarus sat in the formal dining room at the head of a table so long that it required two sizable chandeliers to light it. Three walls were papered with an ostentatious green and pewter floral Damask pattern, the fourth paneled in dark oak salvaged from a galleon of the Spanish Armada. Lazarus had been bombarded with hundreds of similar details about the mansion during the walk-throughs, but quite honestly, didn’t care. His reasons for buying Bentwicke Manor had nothing to do with pomp and everything to do with anonymity. It was quite a paradox.
Wind groaned and prodded at the eaves as Lazarus inhaled his pudding and sausages in solitude and washed it down with the beer. He leaned back in his chair and looked at the grand fireplace. The mantle was enormous, and most certainly hand-carved. The number of painstaking hours that delicate work had taken would no doubt have boggled the mind. Lazarus chuckled. Tucked inside it now was a hundred-watt Marshall amp head on a four-by-twelve slant cabinet, and propped on a stand beside it, an 80’s vintage Gibson Flying V guitar.
When was the last time he’d picked it up?
He wasn’t sure. There had come a time when music no longer delivered the high it had in his youth. He couldn’t remember exactly when. It had been a gradual process, he supposed. Even as the band continued to churn out records and tour and even win awards, he’d moved on to other things in search of that high. More destructive things. That’s when he’d decided he needed to “get away from it all,” as he’d told that odd kid Dylan from the nursery. He didn’t want to go down in flames, so he’d gotten himself away from the fire.
Lazarus slid onto the piano bench in the music room and lifted the lid off the Bosendorfer grand. He brushed his fingers over the keys, expecting to find them cold, but felt radiating warmth instead.
Was he imagining it?
It didn’t matter. He played. It began with Chopin’s Ballade No. 1 in G minor, but fluidly drifted into some improvisational jazz that morphed into Count Basie’s big band style and finally rock, finishing up with a final, pounding return to Chopin.
He let the final chord ring out, letting a bit of his heavy metal flair for the theatrical bleed through. Scratching his nose on his shoulder, Lazarus realized he was still wearing the dirty, twill work shirt he’d been toiling and sweating in all day.
“Jesus.”
Quite frankly, he stunk.
Lazarus did not see the door silently sweep closed on the right side of the second floor hallway just before he reached the top landing of the curved, main staircase.
He walked straight past the door to the end of the hall and pushed another open on the left. It was his bedroom, the only room in the entire house that he’d furnished completely when he moved in. It was every bit what one might expect from a world-class rocker, a lavish amalgam of eclectic textures and styles, at once raw but ornate, kitschy but luxurious, nothing if not flamboyant, yet somehow almost tasteful. It was the black and crimson lair of a former hedonist with plenty of money and a healthy sense of humor about how he’d earned it.
Stepping into the room, the door immediately began to swing shut behind him. He was used to this. The thing would not stand open, never had. It was just one of those little daily annoyances that wasn’t quite important enough to make a priority to fix, but became extremely irritating if one was in a less than effervescent mood. He’d thought more than once about just tearing the goddamned thing off the hinges and stowing it in the stable. He lived alone, after all. What the hell did he need doors for? Glancing around the room, he spotted a temporary solution of such archaic utility that he felt momentarily foolish.
A doorstop.
Walking over to a bank of bookcases, he slid a gilded trophy from one of the upper shelves. He hefted it in his hand. It was a good five pounds. His eyes skimmed over the plaque fixed to the blocky, tapered base…
National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences
BLACK RYDERS
Best Metal Performance – 2005
“Massacration”
Lazarus propped the obstinate door open with the Grammy and went to take a shower.
CHAPTER 4
The band had put out some records Lazarus was proud of. The album that had won the Grammy was not one of them. He doubted any hardcore Black Ryder fan would have cited it as their best, or even second or third best, for that matter.
He’d only showed up to accept the award at all because he felt some small degree of pride for having ended a four-year streak owned by the Yanks.
Steam billowed up around him in the bathroom as he showered. The water was near scalding. When it came to cleanliness, Lazarus was vigilant to a fault. He cut the shower and shivered. The house was almost always cold. He grabbed a towel and wrapped it around his waist.
He wiped clear a swath of fogged mirror and stared at his reflection. Scars and tattoos covered his torso. Each one told a story. Many of them he’d forgotten.
Back in the bedroom, he toweled himself off and pulled some clothes from a chest of drawers. He slipped into a pair of jeans and a worn t-shirt and began to towel his hair dry. Then he saw something that froze him stock-still.
The bedroom door was closed.
He stood there for a few moments staring at it. There were times when his memory could justifiably be called into question. God knew he’d annihilated enough brain cells over the years, but there was no question he had propped that door open just a few minutes ago.
Lazarus cracked the door open and what he saw prickled his skin. The Grammy sat in the middle of the empty hallway. It had been placed on the center medallion of the Afghan rug that ran from the staircase to where he now stood, one eye peering from the open sliver between jamb and stile.
Thankfully, the hinges swung silently as he eased open the door and stepped out into the hall. Every sense was heightened. He could hear the thud of his own heartbeat in his ears. He could feel his bare feet crush the soft wool of the carpet. He took two steps forward and the door clapped shut behind him. In the noiseless vacuum it sounded to Lazarus as loud as the slam of a car bonnet.
He cringed, gritting his teeth expectantly, but nothing happened. The sun had set completely while he’d showered and dressed, and the corridor sconces cast a muted glint to light his path, though he did not remember turning them on. He crept
to the gilded gramophone and scooped it up, finding it vaguely warm like the piano keys.
For a moment he considered retreating to the bedroom, but then pressed on, slipping quietly down the stairs, becoming one with the shadows. He reached the last tread, and his eyes set upon a slice of light that spilled out from beneath the parlor door. A shadow cut across on the other side. If he had still entertained any ideas that this was in his mind, they were thoroughly extinguished now.
Lazarus took a deep breath. He stepped down and an instantaneous shock of heavy metal blasted from the parlor as if his foot had tripped an alarm. It was a raw shriek of distorted guitars and growling bass driven by a relentless, thundering pulse of drums that thumped in his chest and rattled the windows. It was familiar enough. He’d written the song.
His breath rasped. Mouth dry. Adrenaline coursed through his veins and squeezed his heart like the screw of a cider press. Wrenching the trophy in his hands, he raised it above his head. He steeled himself, drew in one final breath and stormed the parlor door.
It crashed open with such force it nearly splintered. Lazarus burst in with wide, frenzied eyes, gripping the Grammy over his head like a war hammer. He was met with peals of purring laughter. The fan-girl from the garden lounged on the sofa, Doc Martens resting comfortably on his coffee table.
“You should see yourself,” she giggled.
Lazarus caught his own reflection in a window, and with more than slight embarrassment, lowered the Grammy.
“I see you’ve graduated from trespassing to breaking and entering.”
The girl stretched on the sofa, briefly exposing a toned patch of bare midriff.
“You won’t call the cops on me.”
Lazarus set his “weapon” down on a side table and faced her without moving any closer. The music was beginning to get on his nerves.