“We went there for this,” Ebenezer said, holding up the journal again. “He had it layin way back in one a the caverns a the buildin, back where no one would find it. He said it was fittin, callin me out in the stifflin heat ta lay claim ta the hellish thing.” Ebenezer set the journal in his lap and pressed his forefinger hard into its black, dusty surface. “He’d been movin a bunch a crates around. Mentioned somethin ‘bout ventilation purposes, switchin boxes from the floor ta the top, other stuff it never paid ta remember. The gist of it being: after several years in those warehouses the heat and humidity will start ta twist and weaken the boxes. It can get dangerous if left unchecked. Ya just might find yaself underneath an antique trash pile if attention ain’t paid.
“So the load shifts while ‘e’s workin and one a the forks punches a hole in the bottom box. He said it musta missed a coupla rotations cause the bottom was rotten as hell, and with the hole punched in the side, ‘e almost didn’t get the others off the top before the box collapsed, spillin out the contents.
“This came outta that box. Oddly enough, Calandro said this was the only thing mildly interestin in there. I always liked how he said that, ‘mildly interestin’. Nothin else but old newspapers, pamphlets, shredded paper and clothes…moth-eaten men’s clothing. All the same size but way outta date. The newspapers were all mid-to-late 1940’s and the warehouse number was so old it had ‘most faded away. Weird, since many of the boxes in the warehouse dated back much later and were still in fairly good shape. Anyway, while he’s diggin around in search a its code tag, this journal comes slidin out.
“He figured ‘what the hell,’ pocketed the book and went ta the office with the number in ‘is head ta run a check on the owner. Went through all the packin, receivin, and storin lists, and come up with nothin. Concentrated in the 40’s but nothin, zero. Went all the way up the ladder, nothin. Eventually, the box was trashed since nobody could figure why a person would store paper and old clothes in a six foot by eight foot box for countless years, obviously. And worst a all, as far as management could tell, nobody had ever paid a goddamn cent for storage. Just sittin there like a ghost for decades...”
Ebenezer halted his diatribe, pausing so as to secure the moment, to let the shadows wrap themselves tighter around the furniture, settling quietly into every seductive corner. He even reached up and clicked the cord once more, reducing the light further to a mere vague presence. Then he opened the journal with what looked like trepidation mixed with a good dose of determination.
“This is what’s inside,” he said quietly. “You and I’re in a private club now, Billy. Never showed this ta nobody and the only other person on the face a the earth who knew it existed’s been dead for damn near thirteen years.” Ebenezer wiped his mouth, bent to the book. Billy noticed the old man’s hands were shaking. He watched as Ebenezer turned to a previously undisclosed marker three-quarters deep in the small journal.
Chapter 42
Ebenezer read in monotone, a striking departure from his previous stories. This is what he said, again, in a voice that was eerily not his own:
“As I stated earlier, I write this to please myself only. But on the chance someone gets this far, the spells and incantations earlier on have either missed completely or bide their time in the shadows. It really makes no difference to me. By that theoretical time I will have long since ceased. In fact, I doubt that one bone will ly within scorching distance of another. Such are my transgressions against mankind. Such also are my transgressions against gods and demons. Perhaps they will lead me to the very Gates of Hell Itself, but I fear no torture. I fear no damnation.
“Assuredly I am twisted, demented, evil. I bear these things, wear them among the living although they know not. If they did my purpose would end. One can seldom choose what will make them great, what will serve as legacy, so I scratch out my own accolades, my own acclaim. My bounds are becoming ever more limitless; ever more grotesque. A deep, dreadful smell follows me now, every hour, forcing me to layer upon layer of clothing so as to not call attention. Soon, it will not matter.
“I am unsure what dread consequences I have set in motion, but I will abide here with quill and candle, waiting. The storm has been blasting since late this afternoon and as the Devil’s Hour approaches I can fathom no sign of easement. This room wafts with the scent of the charnel house. But enough…there are other things to set down.
“From the moment of birth I had purpose. My earliest memories revolve around images of animal vivisection and exercises in formaldehyde. How many animals? How many species? Purely beyond my comprehension.
“But nothing compares to the Speechless.
“They are surely the upper echelon in my field of depravity, the pinnacle to which I aspired. The pinnacle to which I reached. First, as the lowly apprentice to the sick Mr.---, an institution in the profession, though none would have believed the sickness that diseased his mind. I was very proud to do him The Honors myself when his time came around. As all do. As mine will. Dead, he was very different, unrealized difference, laid out quietly in the silk shirt, the severely starched trousers; his hands impassive and cold upon his chest. But I did for him, and he, in turn, did for me. The torch was passed. The torch of secrecy now known only to myself, and the Speechless, if they can now hear too.
“In public I keep to myself, careful not to betray my sinister insight, these bizarre compulsions. Only a true genius can raise himself above the level of subjectivity to the true realm of invisibility, but that is what I did, what I have done. That is why I like these rooms; the darkness comes on so easily. Even the occasional vermin which happens to find its way inside, shrieks at my shadow, my very shadow! I know I’m very close, even closer than the old man had supposed. It was inevitable; I was too soon in synch with the embedded chill of the stainless steel tables and laboratory sinks. I embraced endless emptiness so very soon.
“Of course, I am seldom disturbed on the street, even less so in practice. Despite my invisibility I am still viewed with equal parts superstition and revulsion, but that is understandable. People don’t understand the practice; they don’t want to; they don’t choose to. And most assuredly they wouldn’t abide my need, it being too…discordant to weakened palates. Because, naturally, mine is a morbid profession, and I’ve found typical fools shrink from my handshake on nothing more than pure animal instinct. It is most assuredly not my hands that are cold; my disguise is too complete for such silliness.
“But it does give me a thrill, though, their trepidation, that mad skittering fear behind their eyes. Even the City Fathers, these leaders of men and business become very small in my presence. Especially when they come to do business. Then they are quiet, insecure little mice, here, where insecurity flourishes. Doling out whatever I ask for services they don’t choose to contemplate, for procedures they pretend do not exist, just for the comfort of escape back to their world. But for that one moment they do recognize their end, for just one second they track the clock’s hand and tremble. I am the magnet of their fallibility.
“So? I laugh because this unpardonable fear holds nothing for me. I understand it and welcome its permanence.
“Of course, I’m not well. To state anything to the contrary would be in defeat of my purpose. I shun the daylight and commit unspeakable acts on the dead in the sanctity of these inner rooms. I realize my deviance; I foster it. Because the dead tell no tales. This is my progression, my onward march. I see no meaningful distinction between the living and the dead, and here, where I am the worst, no one speaks out to defame me. I’ve found this tolerable for a while. But my boredom has grown.
“I peer through the gloom, pouring this poison to the page. I listen to the rain pattering on the windowsills. Just beyond the lesser shadows I can see water gathering in a growing puddle by the door. My heart races with every ripping peal of thunder, with every stroke of lightning. It is surely the beginning of the cacophony of demons I have summoned! The countless minions who’ve waited impatiently o
n the Other Side, licking their slavering lips to get at me. It is a long-awaited Feast they hunger for. And in the face of this knowledge, I laugh.
“I do not seek safe passage.
“I welcome the Time of Flowing Blood, rending what I can even as I am rended. My rebellion will be legend!
“Because the last things have been done. There are three Speechless lying silently on the steel tables in the back rooms, not far down the drafty hallway from the room where their clotting entrails trail down the stainless drains and their blood congeals on the concrete. The inscriptions warned against cleanliness, against any hint of such. Even so, I’ve reached much further than the Books warrant; I’ve picked my brain for every conceivable avenue.
“For I am the only true monster in the world. I have festered and bred this madness with the care of a wet-nurse, gloating over it like a rat stuffed to fill. Fear holds no sway, provides no barriers. I have become Fear.
“The bite of sulfur hangs in the air yet. My knives and splitters are racked in place, although fouled and crusted with blood and yellow fats. Candles melt everywhere. How the Speechless lived is of no concern, for it is only now that they can achieve full potential. What I propose is only hinted at in most texts, but I have turned back the envelope on those amateurs.
“As I raise my pen there is a sound. Very faint, cloying, but a sound nonetheless. I know it: the dry spin of rollers scratching at their poorly-oiled drawers. I am keenly aware of the hallucination now; in what I formerly cast off as a drift of light ascant I see the boy I once was (although ghostly and tendrilled in these dank confines) crouching in the shadows, frightfully staring at the megalith I’ve become. Perhaps, then…it will be tonight. The storm, if anything, has only increased in pitch and I don’t think I’m wrong to suggest the conditions are impeccable.
“For what, my imprisoned soul wails? For the hope of stepping into the mire of Hell, naked against the demons that infest it.
“I’ve attempted to form the abomination. Only time binds me now.
“Yes. The whispering has started in the air; it is both choking and reptilian, as prophesized. The knives are within easy reach. Soon I will have enough of this; words are meaningless. I prepare myself to close and tuck away this volume, and I will go to Them. Accordingly, Their restless, snarling sleep must loosen and I will go forward. I will disrobe and join the Throng--
“---if They are powerful enough to best me. I don’t know what to wish for so I wish for nothing. I only anticipate how deep the knives will cut this night.”
*
A long silence followed the end of the reading. Ebenezer closed the tome and looked at Billy. “That is the end,” he said, placing it upon the closed chest. He rubbed his hands together as if cleansing them. “What d’ya think?”
Darkness gave the room an eerie pall, like the essence of a visitor left to wander a museum long after closing. The posters dug black holes and other irregularities into the walls. Billy realized his feet were asleep as he brought them to the floor, and bent to squeeze his toes. Light from the street filtered inside through the thin curtains at the windows and French doors. He found he’d been holding his breath for some time and exhaled loudly. Then he sat up and shook his head. “Is that some kind of joke?” he asked weakly. Ebenezer didn’t reply; he just shook his head. “No one has seen that except you?” Billy questioned; it was hard to get a focus on his thoughts.
Ebenezer glanced over at the slender volume and shook his head again. “Just you, me, and Calandro. A club a two, reduced years back ta one, and now regained ta two once more.”
In the darkness Billy asked, “You believe it?”
Ebenezer paused before giving a reply. “I b’lieve things in this world get damn strange, Billy. Life and death’s got many tricks we don’t know ‘bout yet. Too young. Everthin we can consider or contemplate has already been considered or contemplated hundrets a times before. Things happen. Little traces a horror or ecstacy, cast away off hand, sprout and grow back ta the surface. And I b’lieve in the end there’s no horror but what we make for ourselves. Heroic or damning, dependant upon our character. Look what this maniac made of his...” and he touched the book again lying on the partially-hidden chest. Then he took a moment to disengage himself from the chair and stood. He pressed his shirt flat against his belly. “I don’t know the truth, Billy. All I know right this minute is my arm’s gone ta throbbin and I’m shit-tired. It’s probably that goddamn story workin me up, but I just couldn’t resist firin it through ya.” And with that Ebenezer began making his way toward the back rooms. “Looks like it’s my time ta run, kid. Twist the lock when ya leave, and” (looking over his shoulder) “please put that thing away.”
Billy sat still on the sofa until he heard the click of the door to Ebenezer’s bedroom. The dull drone of the toilet hissed quietly through the apartment soon afterward, and Billy noticed he’d been biting his fingernails. Within the circle of light by the recliner he saw the thin volume, so seemingly innocent now that it was tucked between closed covers.
He stood up and walked over, lifting it carefully as if it might rip at his hand like a rabid dog. He found his lips very dry when he rubbed his hand across them. “Is this for real?” he mouthed, hardly noticing the fact only two words carried enough strength for sound.
Ebenezer had been reading from somewhere near the back of the book. Billy opened it to the first leaf. The cryptic, precise scrawl marched like tiny, faded ants, the letters engulfing and choking off the space around each letter. It took a moment to get used to it but when Billy did, he didn’t like what he saw. The book promised a dire and bloody curse, drawing an even darker pall upon Billy in the dim room. He shuddered and turned his face away, keenly aware of the fine, crystalline chill in his body, as if his soul had been exposed to a deep recess that hungered for souls.
He no longer wished to touch the book. It was like coddling a blasted animal scooped from the side of the roadway. He fumbled the chest open, holding the book away from his body as if it stunk savagely. In the dim glow within all he could see were what appeared to be old newspapers and a few articles of folded clothing. Ebenezer’s revelation of how the book was found was not lost to him and Billy quickly pitched the book onto the pile, shutting the lid quickly without slamming it outright.
The feeble kitchen light was not enough to steel his nerve. He made his way across the room and down the short hall to the door. The famous faces from the past and present watched in muted tones from the shadows as he, fumbling, turned the lock.
He was to the street before he caught his breath again.
Chapter 43
Just before Billy entered his empty apartment less than an hour after he’d hurried away, Ebenezer snorted loudly in his sleep and twisted over to his side. The sheets were balled up by his feet where he’d kicked them. Sleep had practically ripped him down the shoot, surprising enough after his reading, since that particular one usually rode him for days afterward. Touching the soiled surface of that journal was akin to touching a dead body, a body that refused to lay quiet. Its ability to drain him was appalling.
It was a thing to set off repercussions.
Tonight would hold the nightmares, he’d known. Crowding around his bed in the darkness, all the vague slitherings from childhood, and the more concrete but darker yet shades from his adult life. Perhaps that had been the very thing to send him to such speedy oblivion: there was such a lot of it, and every piece demanded a stage. A stage that sleep provided.
He tossed in the solitary room and wrestled with beings that plagued him. His sleeping, unseen face was locked in grim determination. The closets in his mind opened, expelling their heavy burdens into the many rooms and corridors, some spilling into view, while others bent, concealed in corners. Maybe, one: an old insult forced upon him once in a schoolyard, cowering and timid; another, the thought of his wife’s fierce grip on his hand on her deathbed, though it’d not been for comfort; and last and longest, the background litany of sc
reaming planes. Endless screams.
He could hear the whistling of the engines in a place far deeper than his ears, and always the pale blue sky floated with soft swirls to provide fitting paradox. Transfixed in the dream, he knelt once again on his knees, dripping water in the boat, his eyes wretchedly pinned on the shimmering bank. Scarcely breathing himself as he continuously pumped, staring into the tree line. The many odd shapes dancing within the depths of the woods, warning ripples racing out until they lapped at the hull with the soft, persistent slap of water riding a lip.
Then, more pressure and bright lights in his face, a humming of well-oiled machinery beneath his feet, feeding the inch-long bullets into the magazine. The crunch of pebbles and rubble beneath the knobby tires in one of many burned-out areas. Smoking houses with snaking tendrils lifting out to catch the wind. A particular blasted house, its door disintegrated, revealing splattered blood and the poor wreckage of twisted bodies.
And in this montage of dreams and memories, this place where the many closets opened and coughed out their irritable wares, a lone symbol rolled slowly across the dusty floor, and squinting harder into the gloom of this nether world, Ebenezer saw it was, finally, an apple. Bruised but whole, and then the image was no more than a pile of rubble. More smoke and bodies, but somehow, that one intact apple sitting alone among all other destruction.
This private theater played on until the first fretful stab of morning chased it away.
Chapter 44
Nora Stockton entered St. Paul’s Cathedral like a worrisome mouse, her mouth twitching at the corners as if to heighten the image. She only maintained her dignity being minus the whiskers and tail. She was early as was her habit. Mass didn’t start for another half hour, but she wanted time alone first. Just her and the Lord. She realized now resistance was useless; her tyrannical torch had dwindled in a deluge she’d not foreseen. And now she was plagued by the revelations Elizabeth’s illness had triggered. The trick was too cruel, the thorn too ragged and damaging.
Not Far From Golgotha Page 14