Black Wings Part 6

"You know," I finally said, "I've read both of the biographies. Jos.h.i.+'s and de Camp's."

He grimaced.

"At least Jos.h.i.+ took the time to try and understand the era," he responded. "De Camp lived through some of it and he still couldn't understand how it affected me."

"They never said much about your death. About how you felt as you lay there in that bed at Jane Brown."

He turned to look at me. For some reason, his lantern jaw looked more solid. I could almost swear that his chin was reflecting the light.

"Go to sleep, Michael." It was the first time I had heard him refer to me by name.

I went to sleep.

Professor Wilmarth/Lovecraft was talking about the black stone. Akeley had sent it through the mail and it had disappeared. I took out the stone from Machen's "Novel of the Black Seal" and showed it to him. He was interested but disappointed. "Yes, but it's not quite what we're looking for." He played the record for me and I listened to that strange otherworldly voice.

"To Nyarlathotep, Mighty Messenger, must all things be told. And He shall put on the semblance of men, the waxen mask and the robe that hides, and come down from the world of Seven Suns to mock . . . ."

It was not surprising that it was my voice speaking on the record.

Wilmarth/Lovecraft took no notice.

Suddenly, we jumped forward and I was in Akeley's cabin. Wilmarth/Lovecraft was talking to Akeley, who was sitting in the opposite chair and covered in his huge robe. Akeley was describing Yuggoth with its great cities of black stone. After awhile, Wilmarth/Lovecraft went to bed and I took his place.

"So," Akeley said in that queer, disjointed voice, "what are you you looking for?" looking for?"

"Not much," I answered. "It's just that I've always wondered- a lot lot of us have wondered-who are you really? Under that mask. of us have wondered-who are you really? Under that mask.

Who are you? Are you one of the Fungi? Are you Nyarlathotep?"

"Why don't you see for yourself?"I reached over and took off the mask. It was Lovecraft. "Of course," he said, "who else else would it be?" would it be?"

*never developed a taste for Clark Ashton Smith. I knew he was a good writer, but just something about his work never clicked with me. Lovecraft, Howard, and Smith were touted as Weird Tales' Weird Tales' "three musketeers." And yet it was often said that Seabury Quinn was more popular with the readers than any of them. Lovecraft never got a cover. Guess Margaret Brundage just couldn't bring herself to paint Cthulhu and, after all, there were no half-naked damsels in distress in Lovecraft. Maybe he would have been more successful if there had been. "three musketeers." And yet it was often said that Seabury Quinn was more popular with the readers than any of them. Lovecraft never got a cover. Guess Margaret Brundage just couldn't bring herself to paint Cthulhu and, after all, there were no half-naked damsels in distress in Lovecraft. Maybe he would have been more successful if there had been.

*he next few days pa.s.sed strangely.

I don't need to say that I didn't show up for the operation. Dr. Lyons called once, demanding to know where I was and why I didn't come in. He didn't call again. In fact, n.o.body called after a while. I got to the point where I had to pick up the phone and check it regularly to make sure it was still working.

I stopped doing that when a thick, guttural voice came on the empty line and said, "YOU FOOL, WARREN IS DEAD!"

The dreams went back and forth then. Sometimes I'd have them when I was sleeping. Sometimes I'd have them when I was awake. I'd be walking down Thayer Street and suddenly I'd be walking down a street in Arkham, heading for the Witch House.

Were they real? Was anything real at this point? I remember all those stories where everyone knows that the dreams are real except for the dreamer. In Pet Sematary, Pet Sematary, the main character (whose name escapes me but he was played by Dale Midkiff in the movie, which wasn't a bad adaptation-King had suffered far worse) goes for a midnight walk with the spirit of the dead student. The student leads him down the path to the Pet Sematary and then tells him not to go beyond the wall. He might as well have put a big neon sign saying, "This way to the Wendigo's Zombie grounds." When he wakes up, he's stunned to find his feet covered with mud and sticks. When I read that, I wasn't overcome with fear. Of course the dream was real. Aren't they always? My first thought was, "d.a.m.n, that's gonna be hard to clean up." the main character (whose name escapes me but he was played by Dale Midkiff in the movie, which wasn't a bad adaptation-King had suffered far worse) goes for a midnight walk with the spirit of the dead student. The student leads him down the path to the Pet Sematary and then tells him not to go beyond the wall. He might as well have put a big neon sign saying, "This way to the Wendigo's Zombie grounds." When he wakes up, he's stunned to find his feet covered with mud and sticks. When I read that, I wasn't overcome with fear. Of course the dream was real. Aren't they always? My first thought was, "d.a.m.n, that's gonna be hard to clean up."

The dreams. Eventually the dreams are the only things that are real. In the dreams there's no cancer, only monsters, G.o.ds, demons, ghouls, and things you can grab and hold with your hands. Something you can fight and batter into submission. Ever try to grab a cancer?

*stopped eating after a while. Didn't know why I was bothering anyway. Everything tasted the same and had that metallic, coppery taste to it. Lovecraft approved of that. We talked a long time about things and only occasionally would something creep through the woods or the walls. I kept taking the herb/vitamin potion along with Dr. Lyons's medication until it ran out. The Hounds of Tindalos ran through every once in a while but stopped coming when I ran out of food to give them. The cats of Ulthar never bothered to come at all, preferring to stay on the moon until everything was over.

"Am I dying?" I asked Lovecraft.

"Maybe. Who knows? What is death? Don't ask me."

"But you're you're dead." dead."

"Am I?"

*finally found the section in The Ghost Pirates The Ghost Pirates that Lovecraft was talking about. that Lovecraft was talking about.The good s.h.i.+p had been plagued by the appearance of ghost pirates who are making away with the sailors. There were ghost s.h.i.+ps following them through the mist. The narrator tries to explain what's happening: "Well, if we were in what I might call a healthy atmosphere, they would be quite beyond our power to see or feel, or anything. And the same with them; but the more we're like this, this, the more the more real real and actual they could grow to and actual they could grow to us. us. See? That is, the more we should become able to appreciate their form of materialness. That's all. I can't make it any clearer." See? That is, the more we should become able to appreciate their form of materialness. That's all. I can't make it any clearer."

I was spending more time away. I couldn't remember what day it was or what month. The cable was shut off eventually, which was okay because the electricity followed shortly after. I lay in bed, fumbling through my mind. Things and places wandered through me until, eventually, I found myself spending less and less time in that small room in Rhode Island. When I was there, my head was one large hurt. I had begun to think of my brain as a big black stain. If I could lift my head and look in the mirror, I felt sure that my eyes would be completely black.

Lovecraft accompanied me most of the time, but sometimes I was alone walking through the worlds. I was solid, with form and substance. Here, I was thin and ghostly. The people there welcomed me. They grabbed my hand, slapped me on the back, and brought me along. Here, only Lovecraft stayed at my side and, eventually, I woke up and even he wasn't there anymore. He had moved beyond and to see him, I'd have to let myself drift away.

I didn't float off like you hear in those near-death shows. I fell away from myself, sinking through the earth. I was going beyond and following old Joe Slater to that strange place that was a star far away that shone upon Olathoe aeons ago.

The ground below me became a solid deck of a s.h.i.+p. I felt it move through the water as we raced forward into the strange and forbidding water where an island had suddenly appeared.

Asenath looked at me through Edward Derby's eyes. I sent six bullets into his brain.

I reached for the smooth surface of polished gla.s.s.

I thrilled to the sound of Erich Zann's music as the dead, mute man called to something outside the window.

I tore through Capt. Norrys' body while the sounds of the rats ran off in the distance.

I unfurled the photo at the corner of Pickman's painting.

I cringed in Nahum Gardner's farmhouse as the colour sprang free.

I . . . had become . . . fiction.

The Broadsword

Laird Barron

Laird Barron is the author of the acclaimed short story collection The Imago Sequence and Other Stories The Imago Sequence and Other Stories (Night Shade,2007). His stories have appeared in Sci Fiction and Fantasy &Science Fiction and have been reprinted in The Year's BestFantasy and Horror, The Year's Best Fantasy, and Best NewFantasy 2005. He is now at work on his first novel. (Night Shade,2007). His stories have appeared in Sci Fiction and Fantasy &Science Fiction and have been reprinted in The Year's BestFantasy and Horror, The Year's Best Fantasy, and Best NewFantasy 2005. He is now at work on his first novel.

*ately, Pers.h.i.+ng dreamed of his long lost friend Terry Walker. Terry himself was seldom actually present; the dreams were soundless and gray as surveillance videos, and devoid of actors. There were trees and fog, and moving shapes like shadow puppets against a wall. On several occasions he'd surfaced from these fitful dreams to muted whispering-he momentarily formed the odd notion a figure stood in the shadows of the doorway. And in that moment his addled brain gave the form substance: his father, his brother, his dead wife, but none of them, of course, for as the fog cleared from his mind, the shadows were erased by morning light, and the whispers receded into the rush and hum of the laboring fan. He wondered if these visions were a sign of impending heat stroke, or worse.

September had proved killingly hot. The air conditioning went offline and would remain so for G.o.d knew how long. This was announced by Superintendent Frame after a small mob of irate tenants finally cornered him sneaking from his office, hat in hand. He claimed ignorance of the root cause of their misery. "I've men working on it!" he said as he made his escape; for that day, at least. By the more sour observers' best estimates, "men working on it" meant Hopkins the sole custodian. Hopkins was even better than Superintendent Frame at finding a dark hole and pulling it in after himself. n.o.body had seen him in days.

Pers.h.i.+ng Dennard did what all veteran tenants of the Broadsword Hotel had done over the years to survive these toofrequent travails: he effected emergency adaptations to his habitat. Out came the made-in-China box fan across which he draped damp wash cloths. He shuttered the windows and snugged heavy drapes to keep his apartment dim. Of course he maintained a ready supply of vodka in the freezer. The sweltering hours of daylight were for hibernation; dozing on the sofa, a chilled pitcher of lemonade and booze at his elbow. These maneuvers rendered the insufferable slightly bearable, but only by inches.

He wilted in his recliner and stared at the blades of the ceiling fan cutting through the blue-streaked shadows while television static beamed between the toes of his propped-up feet. He listened. Mice scratched behind plaster. Water knocked through the pipes with deep-sea groans and soundings. Vents whistled, transferring dim clangs and screeches from the lower floors, the bas.e.m.e.nt, and lower still, the subterranean depths beneath the building itself.

The hissing ducts occasionally lulled him into a state of semihypnosis. He imagined lost caverns and inverted forests of roosting bats, a primordial river that tumbled through midnight grottos until it plunged so deep the stygian black acquired a red nimbus, a vast throbbing heart of brimstone and magma. Beyond the falls, abyssal winds howled and shrieked and called his name. Such images inevitably gave him more of a chill than he preferred and he shook them off, concentrated on baseball scores, the creak and grind of his joints. He'd shoveled plenty of dirt and jogged over many a hill in his career as a state surveyor. Every swing of the spade, every machete chop through temperate jungle had left its mark on muscle and bone.

Mostly, and with an intensity of grief he'd not felt in thirty-six years, more than half his lifetime, he thought about Terry Walker. It probably wasn't healthy to brood. That's what the grief counselor had said. The books said that, too. Yet how could a man not not gnaw on that bone sometimes? gnaw on that bone sometimes?

Anyone who's lived beyond the walls of a cloister has had at least one bad moment, an experience that becomes the proverbial dark secret. In this Pers.h.i.+ng was the same as everyone. His own dark moment had occurred many years prior; a tragic event he'd dwelled upon for weeks and months with manic obsession, until he learned to let go, to acknowledge his survivor's guilt and move on with his life. He'd done well to box the memory, to shove it in a dusty corner of his subconscious. He distanced himself from the event until it seemed like a cautionary tale based on a stranger's experiences.

He was an aging agnostic and it occurred to him that, as he marched ever closer to his personal gloaming, the ghosts of Christmases Past had queued up to take him to task, that this heat wave had fostered a delirium appropriate to second-guessing his dismissal of ecclesiastical concerns, and penitence.

In 1973 he and Walker got lost during a remote surveying operation and wound up spending thirty-six hours wandering the wilderness. He'd been doing field work for six or seven years and should have known better than to hike away from the base camp that morning.

At first they'd only gone far enough to relieve themselves. Then, he'd seen something-someone-watching him from the shadow of a tree and thought it was one of the guys s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g around. This was an isolated stretch of high country in the wilds of the Olympic Peninsula. There were homesteads and ranches along its fringes, but not within ten miles. The person, apparently a man, judging from his build, was half-crouched, studying the ground. He waved to Pers.h.i.+ng; a casual, friendly gesture. The man's features were indistinct, but at that moment Pers.h.i.+ng convinced himself it was Morris Miller or Pete Cabellos, both of whom were rabid outdoorsmen and constantly nattering on about the ecological wonderland in which the crew currently labored. The man straightened and beckoned, sweeping his hand in a come-on gesture. He walked into the trees.

Terry zipped up, shook his head and trudged that direction. Pers.h.i.+ng thought nothing of it and tagged along. They went to where the man had stood and discovered what he'd been staring at-an expensive backpack of the variety popular with suburbanite campers. The pack was battered, its s.h.i.+ny yellow and green material shredded. Pers.h.i.+ng got the bad feeling it was brand new.

Oh, s.h.i.+t, Terry said. Terry said. Maybe a bear got somebody. We better get Maybe a bear got somebody. We better get back to camp and tell Higgins. back to camp and tell Higgins. Higgins was the crew leader; surely he'd put together a search and rescue operation to find the missing owner of the pack. That would have been the sensible course, except, exactly as they turned to go, Pete Cabellos called to them from the woods. His voice echoed and bounced from the cliffs and boulders. Immediately, the men headed in the direction of the yell. Higgins was the crew leader; surely he'd put together a search and rescue operation to find the missing owner of the pack. That would have been the sensible course, except, exactly as they turned to go, Pete Cabellos called to them from the woods. His voice echoed and bounced from the cliffs and boulders. Immediately, the men headed in the direction of the yell.

They soon got thoroughly lost. Every tree is the same tree in a forest. Clouds rolled in and it became impossible to navigate by sun or stars. Pers.h.i.+ng's compa.s.s was back at camp with the rest of his gear, and Terry's was malfunctioning-condensation clouded the gla.s.s internally, rendered the needle useless. After a few hours of stumbling around yelling for their colleagues, they decided to follow the downhill slope of the land and promptly found themselves in mysterious hollows and thickets. It was a grave situation, although, that evening as the two camped in a steady downpour, embarra.s.sment figured more prominently than fear of imminent peril.

Terry brought out some jerky and Pers.h.i.+ng always carried waterproof matches in his vest pocket, so they got a fire going from the dried moss and dead twigs beneath the boughs of a ma.s.sive old fir, munched on jerky, and lamented their predica ment. The two argued halfheartedly about whether they'd actually heard Pete or Morris calling that morning, or a mysterious third party.

Pers.h.i.+ng fell asleep with his back against the mossy bole and was plunged into nightmares of stumbling through the foggy woods. A malevolent presence lurked in the mist and shadows. Figures emerged from behind trees and stood silently. Their wickedness and malice were palpable. He knew with the inexplicable logic of dreams that these phantoms delighted in his terror, that they were eager to inflict unimaginable torments upon him.

Terry woke him and said he'd seen someone moving around just beyond the light of the dying fire. Rain pattering on the leaves made it impossible to hear if anyone was moving around in the bushes, so Terry threw more branches on the fire and they warmed their hands and theorized that the person who'd beckoned them into the woods was the owner of the pack. Terry, ever the pragmatist, suspected the man had struck his head and was now in a raving delirium, possibly even circling their camp.

Meanwhile, Pers.h.i.+ng was preoccupied with more unpleasant possibilities. Suppose the person they'd seen had actually killed a hiker and successfully lured them into the wild? Another thought insinuated itself; his grandmother had belonged to a long line of superst.i.tious Appalachian folk. She'd told him and his brother ghost stories and of legends such as the Manitou, and lesserknown tales about creatures who haunted the woods and spied on men and disappeared when a person spun to catch them. He'd thrilled to her stories while snug before the family hearth with a mug of cocoa and the company of loved ones. The stories took on a different note here in the tall trees.

It rained hard all the next day and the clouds descended into the forest. Emergency protocol dictated staying put and awaiting the inevitable rescue, rather than blindly groping in circles through the fog. About midday, Terry went to get a drink from a spring roughly fifty feet from their campsite. Pers.h.i.+ng never saw him again. Well, not quite true: he saw him twice more.

*ers.h.i.+ng moved into the Broadsword Hotel in 1979, a few months after his first wife, Ethel, unexpectedly pa.s.sed away. He met second wife, Constance, at a hotel mixer. They were married in 1983, had Lisa Anne and Jimmy within two years, and were divorced by 1989. She said the relations.h.i.+p was been doomed from the start because he'd never really finished mourning Ethel. Connie grew impatient of his mooning over old dusty photo alb.u.ms and playing old moldy tunes on the antique record player he stashed in the closet along with several illconcealed bottles of scotch. Despite his fondness for liquor, Pers.h.i.+ng didn't consider himself a heavy drinker, but rather a steady one.

During their courts.h.i.+p, Pers.h.i.+ng talked often of leaving the Broadsword. Oh, she was queenly in her time, a seven-floor art deco complex on the West Side of Olympia on a wooded hill with a view of the water, the marina, and downtown. No one living knew how she'd acquired her bellicose name. She was built in 1918 as a posh hotel, complete with a four-star restaurant, sw.a.n.ky nightclub-c.u.m-gambling hall, and a grand ballroom; the kind of place that attracted not only the local gentry, but visiting Hollywood celebrities, sports figures, and politicians. After pa.s.sing through the hands of several owners, the Broadsword was purchased by a Midwest corporation and converted to a middleincome apartment complex in 1958. The old girl suffered a number of renovations to wedge in more rooms, but she maintained a fair bit of charm and historical gravitas even five decades and several facelifts later.

Nonetheless, Pers.h.i.+ng and Connie had always agreed the cramped quarters were no subst.i.tute for a real house with a yard and a fence. Definitely a tough place to raise children-unfortunately, the recession had killed the geophysical company he'd worked for in those days and money was tight.

Connie was the one who eventually got out-she moved to Cleveland and married a banker. The last Pers.h.i.+ng heard, she lived in a three-story mansion and had metamorphosed into a white-gloved, garden partythrowing socialite who routinely got her name in the lifestyle section of the papers. He was happy for her and the kids, and a little relieved for himself. That tiny single bedroom flat had been crowded!

He moved up as well. Up to the sixth floor into 119; what the old superintendent (in those days it was Anderson Heck) sardonically referred to as an executive suite. According to the super, only two other people had ever occupied the apartment-the so-called executive suites were s.p.a.cious enough that tenants held onto them until they died. The previous resident was a bibliophile who'd retired from a post at the Smithsonian. The fellow left many books and photographs when he died and his heirs hadn't seen fit to come around and pack up his estate. As it happened, the freight elevator was usually on the fritz in those days and the regular elevator wasn't particularly reliable either. So the superintendent offered Pers.h.i.+ng three months' free rent if he personally dealt with the daunting task of organizing and then lugging crates of books and a.s.sorted memorabilia down six steep flights to the curb.

Pers.h.i.+ng put his muscles to good use. It took him three days' hard labor to clear out the apartment and roughly three hours to move his embarra.s.singly meager belongings in. The rest, as they say, was history.

*ers.h.i.+ng would turn sixty-seven in October. Wanda Blankens.h.i.+p, his current girlfriend of nine months and counting, was forty-something-she played it coy, careful not to say, and he hadn't managed a peek at her driver license. He guessed she was pus.h.i.+ng fifty, although she took care of herself, hit the Pilates circuit with her chums, and thus pa.s.sed for a few years on the uphill side. "Grave robber!" he said when she goosed him, or made a half-hearted swipe at his t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es, which was often, and usually in public. She was a librarian too; a fantasy cliche ironically fulfilled during this, his second or third boyhood when he needed regular doses of the little blue pill to do either of them any justice.

Nine months meant their relations.h.i.+p had edged from the danger zone and perilously near the edge of no return. He'd gotten comfortable with her sleeping over a couple of nights a week, like a lobster getting cozy in a kettle of warm water. He'd casually mentioned her to Lisa Anne and Jimmy during one of their monthly phone conferences, which was information he usually kept close to his vest. More danger signals: she installed a toothbrush in the medicine cabinet and shampoo in the bath. He couldn't find his extra key one night after coming home late from the Red Room and realized he'd given it to her weeks before in a moment of weakness. As the robot used to say, Danger, Will Danger, Will Robinson! Danger! Danger! Robinson! Danger! Danger! He was cooked, all right, which was apropos, considering the weather. He was cooked, all right, which was apropos, considering the weather.

"Oh, ye G.o.ds! Like h.e.l.l I'm coming up there!" she said during their latest phone conversation. "My air conditioner is tip top. You You come over here." She paused to snicker. "Where I can get my hands on you!" come over here." She paused to snicker. "Where I can get my hands on you!"

He wanted to argue, to resist, but was too busy melting into the couch, and knew if he refused she'd come flying on her broom to chivvy him away most unceremoniously. Defeated, he put on one of his cla.s.sier ties, all of which Constance had chosen, and made the pilgrimage-on foot in the savage glare of late afternoon because he walked everywhere, hadn't owned a car since he sold his El Camino in 1982. Walking generally suited him; he'd acquired a taste for it during his years of toil in the wilderness. He took a meager bit of pride in noting that his comfortable "trav eling" pace left most men a quarter his age gasping and winded after a short distance.

He disliked visiting her place, a small cottage-style house in a quiet neighborhood near downtown. Not that there was anything wrong with the house itself, aside from the fact it was too tidy, too orderly, and she insisted on china dishes for breakfast, lunch, supper, and tea. He lived in constant fear of dropping something, spilling something, breaking something with his large, clumsy hands. She cheerily dismissed such concerns, remarking that her cups and dishes were relics pa.s.sed down through the generations-"They gotta go sometime. Don't be so uptight." Obviously, this served to heighten his paranoia.

Wanda made dinner; fried chicken and honeydew, and wine for dessert. Wine disagreed with his insides and gave him a headache. When she broke out the after-dinner merlot, he smiled and drank up like a good soldier. It was the gentlemanly course-also, he was loath to give her any inkling regarding his penchant for the hard stuff. Her husband had drunk himself to death. Pers.h.i.+ng figured he could save his own incipient alcoholism as an escape route. If things got too heavy, he could simply crack a bottle of Absolut and guzzle it like soda pop, which would doubtless give him a heart attack. Freedom either way! Meanwhile, the deceit must perforce continue.

They were snuggling on the loveseat, buzzed by wine and luxuriating in the blessed coolness of her living room, when she casually said, "So, who's the girl?"

Pers.h.i.+ng's heart fluttered, his skin went clammy. Such questions never boded well. He affected nonchalance. "Ah, sweetie, I'm a das.h.i.+ng fellow. Which girl are you talking about?" That heart attack he sometimes dreamt of seemed a real possibility.

Wanda smiled. "The girl I saw leaving your apartment the other morning, silly."

The fact he didn't know any girls besides a few c.o.c.ktail waitresses didn't make him feel any better. He certainly was guilty of looking looking at lots of girls and couldn't help but wonder if that was enough to bury him. Then, instead of rea.s.suring her that no such person existed, or that there must be some innocent mistake, he idiotically said, "Oh. What were you doing coming over in the morning?" In short order, he found himself on the porch. The sky was purple and orange with sunset. It was a long, sticky walk back to the hotel. at lots of girls and couldn't help but wonder if that was enough to bury him. Then, instead of rea.s.suring her that no such person existed, or that there must be some innocent mistake, he idiotically said, "Oh. What were you doing coming over in the morning?" In short order, he found himself on the porch. The sky was purple and orange with sunset. It was a long, sticky walk back to the hotel.

*he next day he asked around the Broadsword. n.o.body had seen a girl and n.o.body cared. n.o.body had seen Hopkins either. Him Him they cared about. Even Bobby Silver- Sly to his friends-didn't seem interested in the girl, and Sly was the worst lecher Pers.h.i.+ng had ever met. Sly managed a dry cackle and a nudge to the ribs when Pers.h.i.+ng described the mystery girl who'd allegedly come from his apartment. Young (relatively speaking), dark-haired, voluptuous, short black dress, lipstick. they cared about. Even Bobby Silver- Sly to his friends-didn't seem interested in the girl, and Sly was the worst lecher Pers.h.i.+ng had ever met. Sly managed a dry cackle and a nudge to the ribs when Pers.h.i.+ng described the mystery girl who'd allegedly come from his apartment. Young (relatively speaking), dark-haired, voluptuous, short black dress, lipstick.

"Heard anything about when they're gonna fix the cooling system? It's hotter than the hobs of h.e.l.l in here!" Sly sprawled on a bench just off the columned hotel entrance. He fanned himself with a crinkled Panama hat.

Mark Ordbecker, a high school math teacher who lived in the apartment directly below Pers.h.i.+ng's with his wife Harriet and two children, suggested a call to the police. "Maybe one of them should come over and look around." They made this exchange at Ordbecker's door. The teacher leaned against the doorframe, trying in vain to feed the shrieking baby a bottle of milk. His face was red and sweaty. He remarked that the start of the school year would actually be a relief from acting as a househusband. His wife had gone east for a funeral. "The wife flies out and all h.e.l.l breaks loose. She's going to come home to my my funeral if the weather doesn't change." funeral if the weather doesn't change."

Ordbecker's other child, a five-year-old boy named Eric, stood behind his father. His hair was matted with sweat and his face gleamed, but it was too pale.

"Hi, Eric," Pers.h.i.+ng said. "I didn't see you there. How you doing, kiddo?"

Little Eric was normally rambunctious or, as Wanda put it, obstreperous, as in an an obstreperous obstreperous h.e.l.lion. h.e.l.lion. Today he shrank farther back and wrapped an arm around his father's leg. Today he shrank farther back and wrapped an arm around his father's leg.

"Don't mind him. Misses his mom." Mark leaned closer and murmured, "Separation anxiety. He won't sleep by himself while she's gone. You know how kids are." He reached down awkwardly and ruffled the boy's hair. "About your weirdo visitor-call the cops. At least file a report so if this woman's crazy and she comes at you with a pair of shears in the middle of the night and you clock her with a golf club, there's a prior record."

Pers.h.i.+ng thanked him. He remained unconvinced this was anything other than a coincidence or possibly Wanda's imagination, what with her sudden attack of jealousy. He almost knocked on Phil Wesley's door across the hall. The fellow moved in a few years back; a former stage magician, or so went the tales, and a decade Pers.h.i.+ng's senior. Well-dressed and amiable, Wesley nonetheless possessed a certain aloofness; also, he conducted a psychic medium service out of his apartment. Tarot readings, hypnosis, seances, all kinds of crackpot business. They said h.e.l.lo in pa.s.sing, had waited outside Superintendent Frame's office, and that was the extent of their relations.h.i.+p. Pers.h.i.+ng preferred the status quo in this case.

"Cripes, this is all nonsense anyway." He always locked his apartment with a deadbolt; he'd become security-conscious in his advancing years, not at all sure he could handle a robber, what with his bad knees and weak back. Thankfully, there'd been no sign of forced entry, no one other than his girlfriend had seen anything, thus he suspected his time schlepping about the hotel in this beastly heat playing amateur investigator was a colossal waste of energy.