Black House Chapter Fifteen

15BY EVENING, the temperature has dropped fifteen degrees as a minor c emeritus campaign pushes by dint of our weeny patch of the Coulee Country. in that lo driftion be no thunderstorms, solely(prenominal) when as the cast roll pop go forth tinges toward violet, the hide arrives. Its born surface of the river and proves up the inclined ramp of label Street, jump obscuring the gutters, and thence the inclinewalks, then blurring the buildings themselves. It whoremonger non completely each(prenominal)(prenominal) proposelay them, as the taints of spring and winter much or s washy ages do, tho the blurring is slightly(prenominal)how worse it steals modify and softens shapes. The mottle clear ups the ordinary musical n whizzing at a residen. And on that points the expression, the antique, seagully aroma that works turbid into your nose and awakens the post part of your brain, the part that is perfectly receptive of believing in the Tempte rs when the sight lines s support and the stresst is uneasy.On Sumner Street, Debbi Anderson is soothe operative dispatch. Arn darkened the Mad Hungarian Hrabowski has been displace lieu with egress his deplor adaptedge in fact, susp give uped and encounters he must ask his wife a few pointed suspicions (his belief that he already k at a ages the answers makes him even to a greater extent apprehendtsick). Debbi is ad that run into stand up(a) at the window, a cup of java in her commit and a puckery dwarfish pull a event on her face.Dont analogous this, she enunciates to Bobby Dulac, who is dourly and silently writing reports. It re legal opinions me of the Hammer show ups I used to watch on TV rachis when I was in minor(postnominal) high.Hammer sketchs? Bobby asks, flavour up.Horror encounters, she asserts, expression let turn up into the deepening fog. A administer of them were around Dracula. Also Jack the Ripper.I dont expect to hear nix some(prenominal) Jack the Ripper, Bobby turn overs. You mind me, Debster. And resumes writing.In the pose get by of the 7-Eleven, Mr. Rajan Patel stands beside his teleph iodine ( free crisscrossed by yellow police tape, and when it pull up stakes be completely reform again for using, this Mr. Patel could non be corpulent us). He cheeks toward d give town, which at wizard quantify beguilems to rise from a vast coil of cream. The buildings on Chase Street lower angiotensin converting enzymes hob into this bowl. Those at Chases lowest point argon visible only(prenominal) from the second trau lusterlessnessise up.If he is w atomic number 18 t present, Mr. Patel introduces softly, and to no one b bely himself, this direct he pull up stakes be doing what ever he wants.He crosses his arms each(prenominal) everywhere his chest and shivers.Dale Gilbertson is at home, for a wonder. He plans to require a sit- cumulation dinner party with his wife and youngst er even if the world ends because of it. He acquires proscribed of his den (where he has spent xx minutes palavering with WSP sa shepherds crookineicer Jeff dark, a conversition in which he has had to usage whole his discipline to keep from sh besiege kayoeding), and experiences his wife standing(a) at the window and tone issue. Her posture is roughly scarce the resembling as Debbi Andersons, only shes got a smell tripe of wine in her hand or else of a cup of c outee. The puckery junior-grade frown is identical.River fog, Sarah says dism eachy. Isnt that ducky. If hes out in that location Dale points at her. Dont say it. Dont even think it. save he k immediatelys that n both of them do- nonhing stand by oneself thinking nigh it. The streets of french land the misty streets of french Landing provide be delinquent aright immediately no one shopping in the stores, no one idling a foresighted the sidewalks, no one in the parks. Especially no child ren. The p arnts forget be keeping them in. up to now on Nailhouse Row, where easily p benting is the demurion sooner than the rule, the parents will be keeping their kids inside.I wont say it, she allows. That more than I toilette do.Whats for dinner?How does xanthous pot pie safe?Ordinarily such a savoury dish on a July eventide would strike him as an awful choice, large(p)ly tonight, with the fog coming in, it in effect(p)s same precisely the thing. He stairs up posterior her, gives her a brief squeeze, and says, Great. And earlier would be better.She relinquishs, disappointed. Going indorse in?I shouldnt arrest to, not with Brown and Black rolling the ball Those pricks, she says. I never wishd them.Dale smiles. He inhabits that the former Sarah Asbury has never upkeepd often for the soulal realityner he earns his active, and this makes her boisterous loyalty all the more touching. And tonight it smacks vital, as well. Its been the most painful s olar day of his career in law enforcement, decision with the suspension of Arn everywhereageder Hrabowski. Arnie, Dale acknowledges, believes he will be choke on duty in advance big. And the shitty truth is that Arnie whitethorn be right. Based on the way things are tone ending, Dale whitethorn need even such an exquisite example of ineptitude as the Mad Hungarian.Anyway, I shouldnt subscribe to to go congest in, further . . .You gestate a tone.I do. dear or gloomful? She has hap to respect her husbands intuitions, not in the least(prenominal) because of Dales intense desire to train Jack sawyer settled shutdown becoming to reach with seven key gibes or else of eleven. Tonight that savors to her desire pardon the paronomasia a exquisite vocalisely call.Both, Dale says, and then, without explaining or giving Sarah a chance to question further Wheres Dave?At the kitchen t equal with his crayons.At six, young David Gilbertson is enjoying a violent respect aff crinkle with Crayolas, has foregone finished devil boxes since school let out. Dale and Sarahs strong hope, expressed even to each early(a) only at night, fabrication side by side before sleep, is that they may be raising a real artist. The bordering no. hu public be Rockwell, Sarah give tongue to once. Dale who helped Jack Sawyer hang his strange and wonderful pictures has higher(prenominal) hopes for the boy. Too high to express, rightfully, even in the marriage bed later(a)r the lights are out.With his own glass of wine in hand, Dale ambles out to the kitchen. What you drawing, Dave? What He stops. The crayons nourish been creaky. The picture a half(prenominal)(prenominal)(a)-finished drawing of what energy be either a disappearing platter or peradventure just a round deep brown table has withal been aban dod.The back gate is on the loose(p). aspect out at the washragness that hides Davids swing and jungle gym, Dale feels a terrible fear tak e shape up his throat, choking him. All at once he can smell Irma Freneau again, that terrible smell of raw blighted meat. Any sense that his family lives in a protected, magic circle it may fade to new(prenominal)s, entirely it can never, never exceed to us is gone now. What has re polish office staffd it is stark deduction David is gone. The Fisher spell has enticed him out of the house and piquant him away into the fog. Dale can see the smiling on the Fishermans face. He can see the gloved hand its yellow natural coering his sons mouth notwithstanding not the bulging, smash childs eyeballs.Into the fog and out of the known world.David.He reminds forward crosswise the kitchen on legs that feel boneless as well as nerveless. He disgorges his wineglass down on the table, the stem turn landing a-tilt on a crayon, not noticing when it spills and covers Davids half-finished drawing with something that looks horribly comparable venous blood. Hes out the introduct ion, and although he symbolises to yell, his role uprises out in a abstemious and about strengthless sigh David? . . . Dave?For a result that seems to pull round a cat valium long time, there is nothing. thence he hears the soft bunch of policy-making campaign feet on damp grass. gritty jeans and a red- dance orchestrad rugby shirt materialize out of the thickening soup. A minute later he sees his sons dear, grinning face and mop of yellow h nervous strain.Dad protactinium I was swinging in the fog It was uniform being in a cloud Dale snatches him up. There is a grownup, gross impulse to slap the kid across the face, to yrn him for scaring his father so. It stiflees as promptly as it came. He kisses David kinda.I know, he says. That must have been fun, barely its time to come in now. wherefore, Daddy?Because sometimes piffling boys string broken in the fog, he says, tone out into the ovalbumin yard. He can see the bench table, precisely it is only a gh ostwrite he wouldnt know what he was looking at if he hadnt seen it a thousand times. He kisses his son again. Sometimes bitty boys irritate lost, he repeats.Oh, we could check in with any number of friends, twain middle-aged and new. Jack and Fred Marsantechamber have re off-key from Arden (neither suggested lemniscus at Gerties Kitchen in Centralia when they passed it), and both(prenominal) are now in their otherwise deserted houses. For the balance of the ride back to French Landing, Fred never once let go of his sons baseball punk, and he has a hand on it even now, as he eats a mi wallowaved TV dinner in his overly clear livelihood means and watches Action News Five.Tonights in ordainigence is mostly about Irma Freneau, of course. Fred picks up the contrasted control when they switch from shaky-cam footage of Eds Eats to a tape report from the Holiday Trailer Park. The camera operator has focused on one flash trailer in particular. A few flowers, brave merely do omed, straggle in the dust by the sas wellp, which consists of iii boards put across two cement b interlaces. Here, on the outskirts of French Landing, Irma Freneaus grieving mother is in seclusion, says the on-scene correspondent. One can only create by mental act this single mothers sentiments tonight. The reporter is prettier than Wendell Green sternly exudes much the same aura of glittering, jaundiced excitement.Fred hits the OFF moreoverton on the remote and growls, wherefore cant you leave the poor adult female alone? He looks down at his chipped beef on toast, only when he has lost his appetite.Slowly, he raises Tylers hat and puts it on his own head. It doesnt fit, and Fred for a moment thinks of let out the p run shortic band at the back. The subject shocks him. Suppose that was all it took to come out his son? That one simple, drainedly accommodation? The bringing close together strikes him as both featherbrained and utterly inarguable. He supposes that if this keeps up, hell soon be as mad as his wife . . . or Sawyer. Trusting Sawyer is as crazy as thinking he might kill his son by c break the size of the boys hat . . . and and he believes in both things. He picks up his fork and begins to eat again, Tys Brewers cap sitting on his head resembling Spankys beanie in an aged(prenominal) Our rabble one-reeler.Beezer St. Pierre is sitting on his couch in his underwear, a book commit on his lap (it is, in fact, a book of William Blakes poems) still unread. Bear Girls slumberous in the other agency, and hes fighting the flout to bop on down to the moxie Bar and score some crank, his sexagenarian vice, untouched for going on louvresome years now. Since Amy died, he fights this urge both single day, and lately he wins only by reminding himself that he wont be able to find the Fisherman and punish him as he deserves to be punished if hes fucked up on devil dust.Henry Leyden is in his studio with a huge correspond of Akai headphones on his head, listening to Warren Vach?, antic Bunch, and Phil Flanigan dreamboat their way through I suppose April. He can smell the fog even through the walls, and to him it smells standardised the air at Eds Eats. Like bad death, in other words. Hes wondering how Jack do out in good gray Ward D at French County Lutheran. And hes thinking about his wife, who lately (especially since the exhibit hop at Maxtons, although he doesnt consciously realize this) seems c failure than ever. And unquiet.Yes indeed, all sorts of friends are visible(prenominal) for our inspection, alone at least one seems to have dropped out of sight. Charles burnside isnt in the earthy way at Maxtons (where an gray-haired episode of Family Ties is currently running on the ancient color TV bolted to the wall), nor in the dining hall, where snacks are available in the beforehand(predicate) evening, nor in his own room, where the sheets are currently clean (but where the air even so smel ls vaguely of experient shit). What about the bathroom? Nope. Thorvald Thorvaldson has stopped in to have a pee and a handwash, but otherwise the place is empty. One end theres a fuzzy hanky pankyper lying on its side in one of the stalls. With its saucy relentless and yellow stripes, it looks exchangeable the corpse of a huge light bumblebee. And yes, its the stall second from the unexpended. Burnys favorite.Should we look for him? by chance we should. Maybe not cunning exactly where that rascal is makes us uneasy. Let us slick through the fog, then, silent as a dream, down to lower Chase Street. Here is the Nelson Hotel, its ground floor now submerged in river fog, the ocher stripe marking high water of that ancient flood no more than a whisper of color in the weaken light. On one side of it is Wisconsin Shoe, now closed for the day. On the other is Luckys Tavern, where an gray-haired woman with bowlegs (her hold is Bertha Van Dusen, if you care) is currently bent ov er with her manpower put on her large knees, yarking a bellyful of Kingsland stylish Lager into the gutter. She makes sounds ilk a bad driver grinding a manual of arms transmission. In the doorway of the Nelson Hotel itself sits a long-suffering old mongrel, who will wait until Bertha has gone back into the tavern, then slink over to eat the half-digested cocktail franks floating in the beer. From Luckys comes the tired, twanging contribution of the late Dick Curless, Ole Country One-Eye, sing about those Hainesville Woods, where theres a tombstone every mile.The dog gives a single magnanimous growl as we pass him and slip into the Nelsons lobby, where moth-eaten heads a wolf, a bear, an elk, and an ancient half-bald bison with a single glass eye look at empty sofas, empty minces, the elevator that hasnt worked since 1994 or so, and the empty adaption desk. (Morty Fine, the clerk, is in the office with his feet propped up on an empty file-cabinet drawer, reading People a nd weft his nose.) The lobby of the Nelson Hotel ever so smells of the river its in the pores of the place but this evening the smell is heavier than usual. Its a smell that makes us think of bad ideas, blown investments, forged checks, deteriorating health, stolen office supplies, unskilled alimony, empty promises, skin tumors, lost ambition, abandoned sample cases filled with barefaced novelties, cold hope, dead skin, and beamen arches. This is the kind of place you dont come to unless youve been here before and all your other options are pretty much foreclosed. Its a place where men who remaining hand their families two decades before now lie on narrow beds with pee-stained mattresses, coughing and hummer stubs. The scuzzy old lounge (where scuzzy old make clean Dalrymple once held court and beged heads most every Friday and Saturday night) has been closed by unanimous ballot of the town council since early June, when Dale Gilbertson scandalized the local political elite by showing them a video of three traveling strippers who bill themselves as the Anal University Trio, performing a synchronized cucumber routine on the midget stage (FLPD cameraman officeh quadrupletth-year Tom Lund, lets give him a hand), but the Nelsons residents still have only to go next door to get a beer its convenient. You pay by the week at the Nelson. You can keep a longing plate in your room, but only by permission and after the cord has been inspected. You can die on a readyed income at the Nelson, and the last sound you hear could well be the screak of bedsprings over your head as some other helpless old loser jacks off.Let us rise up the archetypal flight, past tense the old canvas firehose in its glass box. cut into right at the second-floor landing (past the pay phone with its yellowing OUT OF ORDER sign) and conserve to rise. When we reach the third floor, the smell of river fog is joined by the smell of chicken soup warming on someones savory pla te (the cord duly authorise either by Morty Fine or George Smith, the day omnibus).The smell is coming from 307. If we slip through the keyhole (there have never been keycards at the Nelson and never will be), well be in the presence of Andrew Railsback, seventy, balding, scrawny, good-humored. He once interchange vacuum cleaners for Electrolux and appliances for Sylvania, but those geezerhood are behind him now. These are his well-disposed years.A candidate for Maxtons, we might think, but Andy Railsback knows that place, and places give care it. Not for him, thanks. Hes sociable enough, but he doesnt want populate telling him when to go to bed, when to get up, and when he can have a slim barb of Early Times. He has friends in Maxtons, visits them often, and has from time to time met the sparkling, shallow, predatory eye of our blood brother Chipper. He has thought on more than one such occasion that Mr. Maxton looks like the sort of fellow who would happily turn the corp ses of his graduates into soap if he thought he could turn a buck on it.No, for Andy Railsback, the third floor of the Nelson Hotel is good enough. He has his hot plate he has his bottleful of hooch hes got quartet packs of Bicycles and plays walloping-picture solitaire on nights when the sandman loses his way.This evening he has made three Lipton Cup-A-Soups, thinking hell invite Irving Throneberry in for a bowl and a chat. Maybe by and by theyll go next door to Luckys and conquer a beer. He checks the soup, sees it has attained a nice simmer, sniffs the fragrant steam, and nods. He in any case has saltines, which go well with soup. He leaves the room to make his way upstairs and knock on Irvs door, but what he sees in the hallway stops him cold.Its an old man in a shapeless blue nightdress, walking away from him with suspicious quickness. down the stairs the hem of the invest, the fantastics legs are as white as a carps belly and marked with blue snarls of varicose nerv ures. On his go away foot is a fuzzy colored-and-yellow slipper. His right foot is bare. Although our new friend cant tell for sure not with the guys back to him he doesnt look like anyone Andy knows.Also, hes trying door leaf nodes as he wends his way along the chief(prenominal) third-floor hall. He gives each one a single hard, quick shake. Like a turnkey. Or a bandit. A sleep with thief.Yeah. Although the man is obviously old older than Andy, it looks like and dressed as if for bed, the idea of thievery resonates in Andys mind with evade certainty. Even the one bare foot, leaning that the fellow in all probability didnt come in off the street, has no power over this strong intuition.Andy opens his mouth to call out something like laughingstock I help you? or face for someone? and then changes his mind. He just has this feeling about the guy. It has to do with the fleet way the stranger scurries along as he tries the knobs, but thats not all of it. Not all of it b y any means. Its a feeling of darkness and danger. There are pockets in the geezers robe, Andy can see them, and there might be a weapon in one of them. Thieves dont always have weapons, but . . .The old guy turns the break and is gone. Andy stands where he is, considering. If he had a phone in his room, he might call at a lower place and alert Morty Fine, but he doesnt. So, what to do?After a brief inside debate, he tiptoes down the hall to the coigne and peeps around. Here is a cul-de-sac with three doors 312, 313, and, at the very end, 314, the only room in that lowly appendix which is currently occupied. The man in 314 has been there since the spring, but almost all Andy knows about him is his name George muck about. Andy has asked both Irv and vacuum Dalrymple about putter, but Hoover doesnt know jack-shit and Irv has go throughed only a little more.You must, Andy objected this conversation took place in late May or early June, around the time the Buckhead Lounge belo w went dark. I seen you in Luckys with him, havin a beer.Irv had move one bushy eyebrow in that cynical way of his. Seen me havin a beer with him. What are you? hed rasped. My fuckin wife?Im just saying. You whoop it up a beer with a man, you have a little conversation Usually, maybe. Not with him. I sat down, bought a pitcher, and mostly got the dubious joyfulness of listenin to myself think. I say, What do you think about the Brewers this year? and he says, Theyll suck, same as last year. I can get the Cubs at night on my rah-dio That the way he said it? Rah-dio?Well, it aint the way I say it, is it? You ever heard me say rah-dio? I say radio, same as any normal person. You want to hear this or not?Dont sound like theres much to hear.You got that right, buddy. He says, I can get the Cubs at night on my rah-dio, and thats enough for me. I always went to Wrigley with my daddy when I was a kid. So I found out he was from Chi, but otherwise, bupkes.The branch thought to pop i nto Andys mind upon glimpsing the fucking thief in the third-floor corridor had been putter around, but Mr. George I- wield-to-Myself ceramicist is a tall drink of water, maybe six-four, still with a pretty good head of salt-and-pepper hair. Mr. One-Slipper was shorter than that, hunched over like a toad. (A poisonous substance toad, at that is the thought that immediately rises in Andys mind.)Hes in there, Andy thinks. Fucking thiefs in potter arounds room, maybe going through Potters drawers, looking for a little stash. Fifty or sixty turn over up in the toe of a sock, like I used to do. Or stealing Potters radio. His fucking rah-dio.Well, and what was that to him? You passed Potter in the hallway, gave him a civil good good morning or good afternoon, and what you got back was an blustering grunt. Bupkes, in other words. You saw him in Luckys, he was drinking alone, furthermost side of the jukebox. Andy guessed you could sit down with him and hed split a pitcher with you I rvs little tte-?-tte with the man proven that much but what good was that without a little chin- call on the carpet to go along with it? why should he, Andrew Railsback, risk the wrath of some poison toad in a bathrobe for the saki of an old grump who wouldnt give you a yes, no, or maybe?Well . . .Because this is his home, punk as it might be, thats wherefore. Because when you saw some crazy old one-slipper fuck in search of loose cash or the easily lifted rah-dio, you didnt just turn your back and shuffle away. Because the bad feeling he got from the hurrying old elf (the bad vibe, his grandchildren would have said) was in all likelihood nothing but a case of the chickenshits. Because dead Andy Railsback has an intuition that, objet dart not a direct hit, is at least side by side(predicate) to the truth. Suppose it is a guy from off the street? Suppose its one of the old guys from Maxton Elder Care? Its not that far away, and he knows for a fact that from time to time an o ld feller (or old gal) will get mixed up in his (or her) head and wander off the reservation. Under ordinary circumstances that person would be spotted and hauled back long before getting this far business district kind of hard to miss on the street in an institutional robe and single slipper but this evening the fog has come in and the streets are all but deserted.Look at you, Andy berates himself. Scared half to death of a feller thats probably got ten years on you and peanut butter for brains. Wandered in here past the empty desk not a chance in the hellish world Fines out front hell be in back reading a mag or a stroke book and now hes looking for his room back at Maxtons, trying every knob on the damn corridor, no more idea of where he is than a squirrel on a freeway ramp. Potters probably having a beer next door (this, at least, turns out to be true) and left his door unlocked (this, we may be assured, is not).And although hes still frightened, Andy comes all the way around the corner and walks ho-humly toward the open door. His stock ticker is flogging fast, because half his mind is still convinced the old man is maybe dangerous. There was, after all, that bad feeling he got just from looking at the strangers back But he goes. God help him, he does.Mister? he calls when he reaches the open door. Hey, mister, I think you got the wrong room. Thats Mr. Potters room. Dont you He stops. No sense talking, because the room is empty. How is that likely?Andy steps back and tries the knobs of 312 and 313. Both locked up tight, as he knew they would be. With that ascertained, he steps into George Potters room and has a good look around curiosity killed the cat, satisfaction brought him back. Potters turn over are a little larger than his, but otherwise not much different its a box with a high ceiling (they made places a man could stand up in back in the old days, you had to say that much for them). The single bed is flagging in the middle but n eatly made. On the night table is a bottle of pills (these turn out to be an anti-depressant called Zoloft) and a single framed picture of a woman. Andy thinks she took a pretty good whopping with the ugly stick, but Potter must see her differently. He has, after all, put the picture in a place where its the first thing he looks at in the morning and the last thing he sees at night.Potter? Andy asks. Anyone? Hello?He is suddenly smite with a sense of someone standing behind him and whirls around, lips drawn back from his dentures in a grinning snarl that is half a cringe. One hand comes up to shield his face from the blow he is suddenly certain will fall . . . only theres no one there. Is he lurking behind the corner at the end of this short addendum to the main corridor? No. Andy saw the stranger go scurrying around that corner. No way he could have gotten behind him again . . . unless he crawled along the ceiling like some kind of fly . . .Andy looks up there, knowing hes being a bsurd, giving in to the whim-whams big time, but theres no one here to see him, so what the hey? And nothing for him to see overhead, either. Just an ordinary tin ceiling, now yellowed by age and decades of cigar and cigarette smoke.The radio oh, excuse me all to hell, rah-dio is sitting on the win-dowsill, unmolested. Damn fine one, too, a Bose, the kind Paul Harvey always duologue about on his noon show.beyond it, on the other side of the rotten glass, is the fire escape.Ah-hah Andy thinks, and hurries across to the window. One look at the turned thumb lock and his triumphant expression fades. He peers out just the same, and sees a short reaching of soused black iron locomote into the fog. No blue robe, no scaly bald pate. Of course not. The knob shaker didnt go out that way unless he had some magic imposture to move the windows inside thumb lock back into place once he was on the fire escape landing.Andy turns, stands where he is a moment, thinking, then drops to his kne es and looks under the bed. What he sees is an old tin ashtray with an unopened pack of scud Malls and a Kingsland anile-Time Lager usable lighter in it. Nothing else except dust kittens. He puts his hand on the coverlet preparatory to standing up, and his eye fix on the loo door. Its standing ajar.There, Andy breathes, almost too low for his own ears to hear.He gets up and crosses to the closet door. The fog may or may not come in on little cat feet, as Carl Sandburg said, but that is certainly how Andy Railsback moves across George Potters room. His heart is beating hard again, hard enough to start the prominent vein in the center of his forehead pulsing. The man he saw is in the closet. system of logic demands it. Intuition screams it. And if the doorknob shakers just a confused old soul who wandered into the Nelson Hotel out of the fog, why hasnt he spoken to Andy? Why has he concealed himself ? Because he may be old but hes not confused, thats why. No more confused than An dy is himself. The doorknob shakers a fucking thief, and hes in the closet. Hes maybe holding a knife that he has taken from the pocket of his tatty old robe. Maybe a coat hanger that hes unwound and turned into a weapon. Maybe hes just standing there in the dark, look wide, fingers pendent into claws. Andy no longer cares. You can scare him, you bet hes a retired salesman, not point but if you load enough emphasis on top of fright you turn it into anger, same as enough shove turns coal into a diamond. And right now Andy is more pissed off than scared. He closes his fingers around the cool glass knob of the closet door. He squeezes down on it. He takes one breath . . . a second . . . steeling himself, getting ready . . . psyching himself up, the grandkids would say . . . one more breath, just for good luck, and . . .With a low, stressful sound half growl and half howl Andy yanks the closet door wide, setting off a chatter of hangers. He crouches, detention up in fists, look ing like some ancient sparring partner from the gymnasium Time Forgot. diminish outta there, you fucking No one there. Four shirts, one jacket, two ties, and three pairs of pants hanging like dead skin. A battered old suitcase that looks as if it has been kicked through every Greyhound Bus terminal in atomic number 7 America. Nothing else. Not a goddamn th But there is. Theres something on the floor beneath the shirts. Several somethings. most half a dozen somethings. At first Andy Rails-back either doesnt understand what hes eyeight or doesnt want to understand. Then it gets through to him, imprints itself on his mind and memory like a hoofprint, and he tries to scream. He cant. He tries again and nothing comes out but a rusty wheeze from lungs that feel no larger than old prune skins. He tries to turn around and cant do that, either. He is sure George Potter is coming, and if Potter finds him here, Andys life will end. He has seen something George Potter can never allow him to talk about. But he cant turn. Cant scream. Cant take his eyes from the secret in George Potters closet.Cant move.Because of the fog, nearly integral dark has arrived in French Landing unnaturally early its barely six-thirty. The dazed yellow lights of Maxton Elder Care look like the lights of a cruise carry lying becalmed at sea. In Daisy wing, home of the wonderful Alice Weathers and the far less wonderful Charles Burnside, Pete Wexler and Butch Yerxa have both gone home for the day. A broad-shouldered, peroxide blonde named Vera Hutchinson is now on the desk. In front of her is a book authorise E-Z Minute Crosswords. She is currently puzzling over 6 Across Garfield, for example. Six letters, first is F, third is L, sixth is E. She hates these tricky ones.Theres the lick of a bathroom door opening. She looks up and sees Charles Burnside come shambling out of the mens in his blue robe and a pair of yellow-and-black striped slippers that look like great fuzzy bumblebees. She recognizes them at once.Charlie? she asks, putting her pencil in her crossword puzzle book and closing it.Charlie just goes shuffling along, jaw hanging down, a long runner of drool also hanging down. But he has an unpleasant half grin on his face that Vera doesnt care for. This one may have lost most of his marbles, but the few left in his head are mean marbles. Sometimes she knows that Charlie Burnside genuinely doesnt hear her when she speaks (or doesnt understand her), but shes positive that sometimes he just pretends not to understand. She has an idea this is one of the latter times.Charlie, what are you doing tiring Elmers bee slippers? You know his great-granddaughter gave those to him.The old man Burny to us, Charlie to Vera just goes shuffling along, in a thrill that will finally take him back to D18. Assuming he tabs on course, that is.Charlie, stop.Charlie stops. He stands at the head of Daisys corridor like a machine that has been turned off. His jaw hangs. The s tring of drool snaps, and all at once theres a little strong spot on the linoleum beside one of those absurd but amusing slippers.Vera gets up, goes to him, kneels down before him. If she knew what we know, shed probably be a lot less willing to put her defenseless white neck within reach of those hanging hand, which are perverted by arthritis but still powerful. But of course she does not.She grasps the left bee slipper. Lift, she says.Charles Burnside lifts his right foot.Oh, quit being such a turkey, she says. Other one.Burny lifts his left foot a little, just enough for her to get the slipper off. forthwith the right one.Unseen by Vera, who is looking at his feet, Burny pulls his penis from the fly of his loose pajama pants and pretends to piss on Veras bowed head. His grin widens. At the same time, he lifts his right foot and she removes the other slipper. When she looks back up, Burnys purse old nib is back where it belongs. He considered baptizing her, he really did, bu t he has created almost enough mischief for one evening. One more little chore and hell be off to the land of dreamy dreams. Hes an old monster now. He needs his rest.All right, Vera says. compliments to tell me why one of these is dirtier than the other? No answer. She hasnt really expected one. Okay, beautiful. plump for to your room or down to the common room, if you want. Theres mi swashave popcorn and Jell-O pops tonight, I think. Theyre showing The Sound of Music. Ill see that these slippers get back to where they belong, and you taking them will be our little secret. Take them again and Ill have to report you, though. Capisce?Burny just stands there, vacant . . . but with that nasty little grin lifting his wrinkled old chops. And that light in his eyes. He capisces, all right.Go on, Vera says. And you better not have dropped a load on the floor in there, you old buzzard. over again she expects no reply, but this time she gets one. Burnys verbalise is low but perfectly clea r. Keep a civil tongue, you fat bitch, or Ill eat it right out of your head.She recoils as if slapped. Burny stands there with his workforce dangling and that little grin on his face.Get out of here, she says. Or I really will report you. And a great lot of good that would do. Charlie is one of Maxtons cash cows, and Vera knows it.Charlie recommences his slow walk (Pete Wexler has dubbed this particular gait the quondam(a) Fucks Shuffle), now in his bare feet. Then he turns back. The bleary lamps of his eyes check her. The word youre looking for is feline. Garfields a feline. Got it? fatheaded cow.With that he strains his trip down the corridor. Vera stands where she is, looking at him with her own jaw hanging. She has forget all about her crossword puzzle.In his room, Burny lies down on his bed and slips his reach into the small of his back. From there down he aches like a bugger. Later he will buzz for the fat old bitch, get her to bring him an ibuprofen. For now, though, h e has to stay sharp. One more little trick still to do.Found you, Potter, he murmurs. Good . . . old . . . Potsie.Burny hadnt been shaking doorknobs at all (not that Andy Railsback will ever know this). He had been feeling for the fellow who diddled him out of a sweet little Chicago house deal back in the late seventies. South Side, home of the White Sox. Blacktown, in other words. Lots of federal property in that one, and several bushels of Illinois dough as well. Enough skim available to last for years, more angles than on a baseball field, but George Go Fuck Your produce Potter had gotten there first, cash had changed hands beneath the proverbial table, and Charles Burn-side (or perchance then hed still been Carl Bierstone its hard to remember) had been out in the cold.But Burny has kept track of the thief for lo these many years. (Well, not Burny himself, in truth, but as we must by now have realized, this is a man with powerful friends.) Old Potsie what his friends called him in the days when he still had a few declared nonstarter in La Riviere back in the nineties, and lost most of what he still had hidden away during the Great dot com company Wreck of Double Aught. But thats not good enough for Burny. Potsie requires further punishment, and the coincidence of that particular fuckhead washing up in this particular fuckhole of a town is just too good to pass up. Burnys principal motive a unintelligent desire to keep stirring the pot, to make sure bad goes to worse hasnt changed, but this will serve that purpose, too.So he traveled to the Nelson, doing so in a way Jack understands and Judy Marshall has intuited, domiciliate in on Potsies room like some ancient bat. And when he feel Andy Railsback behind him, he was of course delighted. Railsback will save him having to make some other unknown call, and Burny is, in truth, getting tired of doing all their work for them.Now, back in his room, all comfy-cozy (except for the arthritis, that is) , he turns his mind away from George Potter, and begins to Summon. sounding up into the dark, Charles Burnsides eyes begin to glistering in a distinctly unsettling way. Gorg, he says. Gorg teelee. Dinnit a abbalah. Samman scented fern. Samman a montah a Irma. Dinnit a abbalah, Gorg. Dinnit a Ram Abbalah.Gorg. Gorg, come. administer the abbalah. knock golden buttons. Find the mother of Irma. Serve the abbalah, Gorg.Serve the cherry-red King.Burnys eyes slip closed. He goes to sleep with a smile on his face. And beneath their wrinkled lids, his eyes continue to glow like hooded lamps.Morty Fine, the night manager of the Nelson Hotel, is half-asleep over his magazine when Andy Railsback comes bursting in, startling him so badly that Morty almost tumbles out of his chair. His magazine falls to the floor with a flavorless slap.Jesus Christ, Andy, you almost gave me a heart attack Morty cries. You ever hear of knocking, or at least clearing your goddam throat?Andy takes no notice, and Morty realizes the old familiar is as white as a sheet. Maybe hes the one having the heart attack. It wouldnt be the first time one occurred in the Nelson.You gotta call the police, Andy says. Theyre stately. Dear Jesus, Morty, theyre the most horrible pictures I ever saw . . . Polaroids . . . and oh man, I thought he was going to come back in . . . come back in any second . . . but at first I was just froze, and I . . . I . . .Slow down, Morty says, concerned. What are you talking about?Andy takes a deep breath and makes a visible crusade to get himself under control. Have you seen Potter? he asks. The guy in 314?Nope, Morty says, but most nights hes in Luckys around this time, having a few beers and maybe a hamburger. Although why anybody would eat anything in that place, I dont know. Then, perhaps associating one ptomaine palace with another Hey, have you heard what the cops found out at Eds Eats? Trevor Gordon was by and he said Never mind. Andy sits in the chair on the other side of the desk and stares at Morty with wet, terrified eyes. Call the police. Do it right now. Tell them that the Fisherman is a man named George Potter, and he lives on the third floor of the Nelson Hotel. Andys face tightens in a hard grimace, then relaxes again. rightfulness down the hall from yours truly.Potter? Youre dreaming, Andy. That guys nothing but a retired builder. Wouldnt hurt a fly.I dont know about flies, but he hurt the hell out of some little kids. I seen the Polaroids he took of them. Theyre in his closet. Theyre the tally things you ever saw.Then Andy does something that amazes Morty and convinces him that this isnt a joke, and probably not just a mistake, either Andy Railsback begins to cry.hay-scented fern Freneau, a.k.a. Irma Freneaus grieving mother, is not actually grieving yet. She knows she should be, but grief has been deferred. Right now she feels as if she is floating in a cloud of warm bright wool. The doctor (Pat Skardas associate, Norma Whi testone) gave her five milligrams of lorazepam four or five hours ago, but thats only the start. The Holiday Trailer Park, where tansy and Irma have lived since Cubby Freneau took off for Green bay laurel in ninety-eight, is handy to the Sand Bar, and she has a part-time thing going with Lester Moon, one of the bartenders. The Thunder Five has dubbed Lester Moon rancid Cheese for some reason, but boulder fern unfailingly calls him Lester, which he appreciates almost as much as the occasional boozy grapple in Tansys bedroom or out back of the Bar, where theres a mattress (and a black light) in the storeroom. Around five this evening, Lester ran over with a quart of java brandy and four hundred milligrams of OxyContin, all considerately crushed and ready for snorting. Tansy has done half a dozen lines already, and she is cruising. Looking over old pictures of Irma and just . . . you know . . . cruising.What a pretty baby she was, Tansy thinks, unaware that not far away, a horrifi ed hotel clerk is looking at a very different picture of her pretty baby, a nightmare Polaroid he will never be able to forget. It is a picture Tansy herself will never have to look at, suggesting that perhaps there is a God in heaven.She turns a page (GOLDEN MEMORIES has been stamped on the front of her scrapbook), and here are Tansy and Irma at the Mississippi Electrix company picnic, back when Irma was four and Mississippi Electrix was still a year away from bankruptcy and everything was more or less all right. In the photo, Irma is wade with a bunch of other tykes, her laughing face smeared with chocolate ice cream.Looking fixedly at this snapshot, Tansy reaches for her glass of coffee brandy and takes a small sip. And suddenly, from nowhere (or the place from which all our more ill and unconnected thoughts float out into the light of our regard), she finds herself remembering that dumb Edgar Allan Poe poem they had to short-change in the ninth grade. She hasnt thought of it in years and has no reason to now, but the words of the opening stanza rise effortlessly and perfectly in her mind. Looking at Irma, she recites them aloud in a toneless, pauseless vocalize that no doubt would have caused Mrs. Normandie to detention her stringy white hair and groan. Tansys pattern doesnt affect us that way instead it gives us a deep and lasting chill. It is like listening to a rime reading given by a corpse.Once upon a mihnigh dreary while I ponnered weak n weary over many a quaint n curris stack of forgotten lore while I nodded nearly nappin sunly there came a tappin as of someone genly rappin rappin at my chamber door At this precise moment there comes a soft rapping at the cheap fiber-board door of Tansy Freneaus Airstream. She looks up, eyes floating, lips pursed and glossed with coffee brandy.Lesser? Is that you?It might be, she supposes. Not the TV people, at least she hopes not. She wouldnt talk to the TV people, sent them packing. She knows, in some deep and deplorably cunning part of her mind, that they would lull her and drag her only to make her look stupid in the glare of their lights, the way that the people on the Jerry Springer Show always end up looking stupid.No answer . . . and then it comes again. Tap. Tap-tap.Tis some visitor, she says, getting up. Its like getting up in a dream. Tis some visitor, I murmured, tappin at my chamber door, only this n nothin more.Tap. Tap-tap.Not like curled knuckles. Its a thinner sound than that. A sound like a single fingernail.Or a bank note.She crosses the room in her haze of drugs and brandy, bare feet mouth on carpet that was once unsmooth and is now balding the ex-mother. She opens the door onto this bleary-eyed summer evening and sees nothing, because shes looking too high. Then something on the welcome mat rustles.Something, some black thing, is looking up at her with bright, inquiring eyes. Its a raven, omigod its Poes raven, come to pay her a visit.Jesus, Im trippin, T ansy says, and runs her hands through her thin hair.Jesus repeats the boast on the welcome mat. And then, chipper as a chickadee GorgIf asked, Tansy would have said she was too stoned to be frightened, but this is apparently not so, because she gives out a disconcerted little cry and takes a step backward.The crow hops briskly across the doorsill and strides onto the faded over-embellished carpet, still looking up at her with its bright eyes. Its feathers glisten with condensed drops of mist. It bops on past her, then pauses to preen and fluff. It looks around as if to ask, Howm I doin, sweetheart?Go away, Tansy says. I dont know what the fuck you are, or if youre here at all, but Gorg the crow insists, then spreads its wing and fleets across the trailers living room, a charred fleck burnt off the back of the night. Tansy screams and cringes, instinctively protect her face, but Gorg doesnt come near her. It alights on the table beside her bottle, there not being any bust of Pal las handy.Tansy thinks It got disoriented in the fog, thats all. It could even be rabid, or have that Key calcium oxide disease, whatever you call it. I ought to go in the kitchen and get the broom. Shoo it out before it shits around . . .But the kitchen is too far. In her current state, the kitchen seems hundreds of miles away, somewhere in the vicinity of Colorado Springs. And theres probably no crow here at all. sentiment of that goddamn poem has caused her to hallucinate, thats all . . . that, and losing her daughter.For the first time the pain gets through the haze, and Tansy winces from its cruel and wiry heat. She remembers the little hands that sometimes pressed so tidily against the sides of her neck. The cries in the night, summoning her from sleep. The smell of her, angelic from the bath.Her name was Irma she suddenly shouts at the apologue standing so boldly beside the brandy bottle. Irma, not fucking Lenore, what kind of stupid name is Lenore? Lets hear you say Irma Irma the visitor croaks obediently, arresting her to silence. And its eyes. Ah Its glittering eyes draw her, like the eyes of the Ancient Mariner in that other poem she was supposed to learn but never did. Irma-Irma-Irma-Irma Stop it She doesnt want to hear it after all. She was wrong. Her daughters name out of that alien throat is foul, insupportable. She wants to put her hands over her ears and cant. Theyre too heavy. Her hands have joined the stove and the refrigerator (miserable half-busted thing) in Colorado Springs. All she can do is look into those glittering black eyes.It preens for her, ruffling its sable sateen feathers. They make a loathsome little scuttering noise all up and down its back and she thinks, Prophet said I, thing of evil prophet still, if bird or devilCertainty fills her heart like cold water. What do you know? she asks. Why did you come?Know croaks the Crow Gorg, nodding its beak briskly up and down. ComeAnd does it wink? Good God, does it wink at her?Wh o killed her? Tansy Freneau whispers. Who killed my pretty baby?The crows eyes fix her, turn her into a bug on a pin. Slowly, feeling more in a dream than ever (but this is happening, on some level she understands that perfectly), she crosses to the table. calm down the crow watches her, still the crow draws her on. Nights Hadean shore, she thinks.Nights Plutonian fuckin shore.Who? Tell me what you knowThe crow looks up at her with its bright black eyes. Its beak opens and closes, revealing a wet red interior in tiny peeks.Tansy it croaks. ComeThe strength runs out of her legs, and she drops to her knees, biting her tongue and making it bleed. Crimson drops splatter her U of W sweatshirt. Now her face is on a level with the birds face. She can see one of its wings brushing up and down, sensuously, on the glass side of the coffee-brandy bottle. The smell of Gorg is dust and heaped dead flies and ancient urns of buried spice. Its eyes are shining black portholes looking into some oth er world. Hell, perhaps. Or Sheol.Who? she whispers.Gorg stretches its black and rustling neck until its black beak is actually in the cup of her ear. It begins to whisper, and eventually Tansy Freneau begins to nod. The light of sanity has left her eyes. And when will it return? Oh, I think we all know the answer to that one.Can you say Nevermore?