Laughing Man

by Wright, T. M.

  And so many people had asked him how he spelled his name. People to whom he had to give his name—store clerks and people carrying out official business—and though he spelled it carefully, they almost always misspelled it as "Earthman," or "Earthmun," and he had given up trying to correct these misspellings. Even the name on his driver's license was misspelled—"Jack Erthman," which was, at any rate, a unique misspelling.

  He said now, breaking the long silence between himself and Patricia, "What do you think of my name?"

  She glanced at him, and he at her, though he could see little of her face in the darkness. "I think it suits you," she said. "It's a strong name. A male name."

  "Erthmun?" he said.

  "Oh." She shook her head. "No. Jack. That's a strong name. I don't know about Erthmun. I've often wondered where the hell it came from."

  "It's German," he said. "My family was German." She shrugged. "Sure. It sounds German."

  The search went on for another three hours. No body was found, and no further signs of the missing boy.

  When he woke at 3:00 A.M. and did not find Villain on his chest, Vetris was disappointed. And relieved. He enjoyed the idea of leading a basically uneventful home life, which was one reason he had never married. But he also enjoyed the possibility of the strange and the unpredictable finding its way through the door and into his house. And what could have been more strange and unpredictable than the ghost of his psychotic cat waking him early in the morning? He wondered how he'd react. Would he scream and attempt to throw the creature off? Would he jump from his bed and run from the room? Would he and Villain stare at one another for a minute while the wide-eyed Villain let him know that nothing as insignificant as death was going to get in the way of their bizarre relationship, and while Vetris tried to understand where his ideas of reality had all gone astray?

  And yet, Vetris thought, he had indeed awakened only a few hours after going to bed, and he had awakened because it was about the time that Villain had always awakened him. Old habits are hard to break, especially when they're lodged in the subconscious as tenaciously as a virus.

  He heard movement in the room, and he thought at once that mice were taking over the house again, now that Villain was gone. The mice, he supposed, could sense the departure of an enemy as lethal and as omnipresent as Villain, so they thought that it was time to party.

  The movement continued. Pitter-patter sounds, similar, Vetris thought, to the sounds that a large cat on the prowl might make, or several mice on the retreat might make.

  He didn't like the idea of mice overrunning the house. It presented him with agonizing decisions about how to get rid of them. Another cat? Where would he find one with the lethality and lordly demeanor of Villain, whose very presence kept the mice at a distance? Traps? What kinds? He didn't at all like the idea of getting up to find mice nearly cut in half by the classic mouse trap, and the "Have-a-Heart" traps were too much work; he'd tried them. Plus you couldn't catch all the mice. And the ones you did catch had to be taken at least five miles from the house, otherwise they always found their way back. God knows how.

  The sounds in the room became louder, Vetris thought, as if the creature making them had suddenly gained fifty pounds. But the sounds were still pitter-patter sounds, the sounds of something moving stealthily. He wished he could see better without light. His night vision had been deteriorating ever since he had hit forty and he sometimes believed it was a precursor to blindness. His father and two of his uncles had succumbed to early blindness caused by an esoteric illness, and the idea that he might go blind scared the hell out of him.

  Perhaps he should turn on a light, he thought. Perhaps he should know what was in the room with him. Perhaps he should know if it was a fifty-pound mouse, or Villain being what he always knew that Villain could be.

  A small face, nearly lost in darkness, appeared just above him. "Oh, my God!" it whispered.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Williamson the Loon knew about the Chocolate Murders. Everyone knew about the Chocolate Murders. Everyone whose mother had great oaks growing out of her forehead and hollyhocks growing from her feet and rivers flowing through her belly. And everyone who knew intimately about the Chocolate Murders—and, of course, everyone else with the same mother knew about them intimately—thought that they were strange, perverse, and unacceptable. That they were a waste of food and resources and too similar, far too similar, to the foolishly complex actions of those whose mothers had red lips and breasts brimming with milk.

  Williamson the Loon thought that way, in those words, and he thought in other ways, too, when the occasion required. He thought in less lyrical ways, in direct ways, like an apple hitting the ground, or a honeybee, heavy with pollen, lumbering from one flower to another, or a man in pursuit of his survival pursuing women to impress and penetrate. There was nothing calculated about anything Williamson did. He did what was necessary to him, without embellishment, introspection, afterthought, or regret. He was not a man driven. He was simply not a man.

  He wanted to pity the female state trooper whose body he had left behind in the front seat of her car. He wanted to pity her because he knew that pity was an emotion worth cultivating, because many in that other culture—the one born of women with red lips—seemed to value it in others, and seemed to know when it was offered without sincerity. But he wasn't absolutely certain what pity was. Could it be a feeling of sadness or regret in the face of another's misfortune? If so, what really were sadness and regret all about, except—as far as he could see—becoming emotionally entangled in the fate of someone else? And to what end?

  But still, cultivating the emotion of pity, after he found out what pity was exactly, could be an asset. It might enhance the few days and nights that were left to him in ways he could not imagine now. It might give him greater access—at necessary times—to the bodies and vaginas and wombs of women of that other culture whom he required to bear his children, which promoted his own survival, as well as the survival of his species. Oh, it was such a heady time, this time of transition, from being to nonbeing to existence all over again.

  But for now he was hungry for a cheeseburger, fries, and a Coke, and the idea of cross-species, cross-cultural philosophy simply stopped appealing to him.

  He had grown to love cheeseburgers, but found that their appeal was enhanced tenfold by the addition of French fries and ketchup, and enhanced ten-fold again by the addition of a tall, cold Coke, half-filled with ice, and served in a genuine Coca-Cola glass that had been chilled. The whole meal was as heavenly as any that a vegetarian such as he could dream of, though he had often considered substituting Coke with Starbucks Mocha Frappucino, though Mocha Frappucino, he decided, was best drunk all by itself, unencumbered by other flavors and textures.

  He had, however, drunk a bottle of Mocha Frappucino while devouring a housewife named Betty, who had very willingly let him into her house because he had told her that he was a representative of the TV show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, and that she had been suggested as someone with an unquenchable appetite for knowledge and, thus, the possible winner of a million dollars. Perhaps more, depending on how well her appetite for knowledge had been satisfied.

  When Williamson's appetite for her had been satisfied, and his bottle of Mocha Frappucino drunk, he had made his way back to the place where he stayed so that he could wash his hands, mouth, and face, and to change his clothes, which were unsightly with much of Betty herself, and then back to his job as a shoe salesman. He had always loved his job as a shoe salesman. It kept him close to the earth. God but he missed that job.

  The face was the face of a boy who spoke in Vetris's voice, "Oh my God!" it said, then vanished into the darkness of the room, leaving Vetris breathless and shaking from the surge of adrenaline that had pushed through him.

  He did not leap up, though he knew that he should, because he had seen something strange and threatening in the boy, who might, he knew, still be in the room, as he—Vetris—lay in the
bed, quivering, trying hard to peer into the darkness above him, trying to make out, at least, the overhanging lamp on the ceiling, or the color of the ceiling itself—bright white—as he tried to push the darkness away by sheer force of will.

  But his hearing had shut down, too. Or his brain's ability to process what he heard in the room had shut down. A big windup alarm clock ticked loudly on the nightstand next to his bed, but he couldn't hear it. And he thought that if the boy were still in the room, he wouldn't be able to hear him either, because he could hear only his pulse in his ears, and it was deafening, maddening, too fast.

  Damnit! He was a fucking cop! And the image of a spectral child in his room, mouthing only three words at him, had made him almost comatose. Where were his balls, for Christ's sake!

  His stomach muscles tightened—his body was readying itself for action, he knew. Fight or flight.

  "Shit!" he whispered.

  "Shit!" he heard from somewhere else in the room. In his voice.

  An echo! he thought, and knew that the idea was foolish. There could be no echo in a small, furnished room.

  Oh God, he was being what he had once been, long ago. A small boy frightened into inaction by what most small boys are frightened of—an unseen and unknowable, fantastic and deadly something that had invaded and corrupted the sanctity of his bedroom.

  He threw himself from the bed, stood by it for a moment, glanced about frantically. "Where are you?" he whispered. "Where are you?"

  And he heard, from somewhere in the room, from everywhere in the room, in his voice, as if it were an echo that could not exist here, "Where are you? Where are you?"

  God, he was out of the bed at least. He was standing naked in a room without light and addressing a boy he could not see who spoke in his voice. But he was out of the fucking bed! He was no longer comatose. He had taken action. He had stopped being the small, frightened boy he had been so long ago.

  "Turn the light on," he whispered to himself.

  "Turn the light on," he heard.

  He cast about for the source of the voice. He saw large, softly dark lumps that were his dresser, his bed, his bedside table.

  "Turn the light on," he heard.

  "Goddamnit! Shut up!" he screamed.

  "Goddamnit! Shut up!" he heard.

  He felt something touch the small of his naked back and he whirled about, groaned "Uh!" grabbed for whatever had touched him, grabbed only air.

  Something touched his naked stomach, his naked legs and buttocks, and he whirled about and whirled about, groaning, "Uh!" again and again, told himself frantically that whatever was touching him could not be a threat, that it was only a boy who had gotten into his house and was playing tricks, playing with the naked man, making him grunt and groan and grab the night air.

  "Uh! Uh!" he heard.

  Only a boy had gotten into his house, and that boy was having fun, that boy certainly was having fun, laughing, certainly laughing...

  But he wasn't. The boy wasn't laughing. He wasn't laughing.

  "Show yourself, goddamnit!" Vertris shouted, and got the words back, in his voice, from the corners and walls and the ceiling and the floor of the dark room.

  Something touched his face quickly, lightly. And his chest, too, at the same time. And his genitals. His legs. His buttocks. His back again, his neck, his arms. All at once. This was not just one boy, he realized. It was several boys. Several pairs of hands.

  "Jesus Christ!" he screamed.

  "Jesus Christ!"

  "Jesus Christ!"

  "Jesus Christ!"

  "Jesus Christ!"

  "Jesus Christ!"

  Patricia and Erthmun were staying that night in Room 13 of the Wee-Welcome Motel, a couple of miles from South Oleander. They had gotten to the motel at 1:00 A.M., and though both of them were beyond exhaustion, they couldn't sleep, because the incredible events of the day just passed wouldn't allow it, so they had sat up—Erthmun on the bed, with his back resting against two pillows propped up against the headboard, and Patricia in a blue club chair across the room—and they had talked. Their talk was not about the incredible events of the day; that could wait. Their talk was about inconsequentials, about the motel, which Erthmun called the "Wee-Welcome Roaches Motel," and about Patricia's family—three brothers and two sisters; father dead, mother ailing—and Erthmun's predilections for Western literature (Louis L'Amour was his favorite) and ghost stories, particularly those of M.R. James and Peter Straub, which, he said, "have entertained me into fright on many a night"; the comment made Patricia smile: "I didn't know you were a poet," she said. And he said, "I'm not. My mother was."

  Which, Patricia thought, seemed to invite her into a topic that she was not up to at that moment.

  After a long silence, after it was clear to Patricia that she was at last ready for sleep, but that Erthmun didn't seem ready yet, and, she supposed, that he'd require her company until he was ready, Erthmun said, "Something is happening around here."

  After a moment, Patricia said, "That's very cryptic."

  "I mean," Erthmun said, "around these woods and fields, in these hills that the people here foolishly call mountains, in some of these houses. I feel that something is happening."

  "Do you know what it is?"

  "Yes," he said. "Somehow I do. In some way I do. But I know so little. It's clear to me, now, that I have never known anything very much at all. If you were to let me loose in the deep forest, I would die." He adjusted the pillows, then looked at Patricia again. "I think they got these pillows from a highway project."

  She smiled.

  He said, "But the thing that's happening here is a very small thing. It's not a meteorite blasting into the atmosphere, or a global conflagration, or a virus that makes us all into morons."

  Patricia smiled again.

  He smiled. "I've discovered my sense of humor only in the past few years. Before that I was as taciturn and unfunny as a roofing tile. Now I know what humor means. Even in the worst of times."

  "Like these?"

  He cocked his head. "Are you asking, Patricia, if these times we're in are the worst of times? No, I don't think they are. Do you?"

  She shrugged. "I don't know."

  He shrugged, as if in imitation of her. "Every generation's times are the worst of times. Don't you believe that? Every generation looks around and crows about its problems and troubles and grievances."

  "Yes, I understand. I agree."

  "Someone's going to knock at the door," Erthmun said.

  "Huh?"

  "Not now. Not right now. But in a while. Someone's going to knock at the door and they'll be agitated."

  "Jesus, did you suddenly become a psychic?"

  He smiled. "Yes. Just now. A few minutes ago."

  "I like your smile," she said, surprising herself.

  "I've practiced it," he said. "It used to be a smile that was no more entertaining than ketchup. Now it's the smile of a man who likes to smile."

  "I'm sorry, Jack." She looked away a moment, looked back, caught his eye. "I seem to be flirting with you."

  He shrugged once more. "And I with you. It's the setting, the hour. The people." He smiled once more.

  She smiled, thought it was inviting, thought that was okay. "Yes. People flirt. It's one of the things they do, isn't it? If someone is even mildly interesting or attractive . . ."

  "Meaning?" Erthmun interrupted.

  She looked embarrassed. "Oh, no, I didn't mean that the way it sounded. No. You're more than mildly attractive, Jack. I'm sure you realize that."

  There was a hard double knock at the door.

  Erthmun said, "Continue."

  She looked questioningly at him. "Jack, someone's knocking at the door."

  "They'll wait. They'll have to."

  She got up, started for the door, said, as if as an aside, "Later, Jack. Much later." The hard double knock came again. She opened the door.

  A tall, stout man dressed as if for hunting, in a red and black checkere
d jacket and orange pants, who had a rifle slung over his shoulder, and whose eyes were wide and dark, as if he had just heard something that was beyond startling, said breathlessly, "You got to get outta here right away!"

  "Sorry?" Patricia said.

  "I mean now!" the man said, turned quickly to his right, and, in a moment, was knocking loudly at the door to Room 14.

  Patricia leaned out her door and called to the man, "What are you talking about? Why do we have to leave?"

  Erthmun came up beside her. "Get back inside, Patricia. I think he's right. I think we have to leave."

  "Jesus H. Christ, Jack! What in the hell is going on?"

  "I'm sure that even that man doesn't know," Erthmun said.

  Vetris Gambol watched through his living room window as the children scattered as quickly and as soundlessly as cats into the early morning light. It did not seem unnatural to him. What seemed unnatural was looking through glass at them, caught in his house the way he was, in his comforts, in his skin. He did not question this way of thinking. He realized it, accepted it, watched the children scattering into the morning light. And when they had scattered and were gone, he knew well that they weren't gone, no more than the pines on the hill behind his house were gone, or the blue sky that had arched over his civilized landscape a day earlier was gone, or Villain, his beautiful and psychotic black cat with golden eyes, was gone.

  Nothing, he realized, was ever gone in this place, on the earth, a dreaming ground for life and magic. He smiled. Had he actually thought those words? He'd never thought that way before. Why now?