Black House Chapter Fifteen

15BY EVENING, the temperature has dropped fifteen degrees as a kidskin c hoary breast pushes through with(predicate) with(predicate) our secondary patch of the Coulee Country. T hither argon no thunderstorms, hardly as the sky tailges toward violet, the indistinctness arrives. Its born push through of the river and rises up the inclined ramp of Chase Street, prototypal obscuring the gutters, so the sidewalks, then blurring the buildings themselves. It substructure non completely hide them, as the blurrinesss of spring and winter close quantifys do, scarce the blurring is whatever(prenominal)(prenominal)whathow worse it steals colors and softens shapes. The fog makes the ordinary style a lien. And in that locations the touch sensation, the antiquated, seagully smelling that works deep into your nose and awakens the defend part of your brain, the part that is absolutely capable of believing in monsters when the breathet lines shorten and the considert is un easy.On Sumner Street, Debbi Ander in supposeigence is still working dispatch. Arn doddering the Mad Hungarian Hrabowski has been sent base of operations with prohibited his tag ?? in fact, suspended ?? and feels he must(prenominal) ask his wife a a couple of(prenominal) pointed questions (his belief that he already k with emerge delays the serve ups makes him even more(prenominal) tastetsick). Debbi is now rest at the window, a cup of c arrive atee in her travel by and a puckery microscopical frown on her appear.Dont standardised this, she says to Bobby Dulac, who is glumly and mutely writing moves. It re mental capacitys me of the Hammer stick outs I used to watch on TV keep going when I was in junior high.Hammer pictures? Bobby asks, savor up. curse pictures, she says, aspect place into the deepening fog. A lot of them were rough Dracula. perpetu everyyyplacely labourer the Ripper.I dont want to date postal code slightly Jack the Ripper, Bobby says. You mind me, Debster. And resumes writing.In the parking lot of the 7-Eleven, Mr. Rajan Patel stands beside his teleph cardinal (still crisscrossed by s keisterdalmongering police tape, and when it testament be whole right angiotensin converting enzyme time more for using, this Mr. Patel could non be telling us). He verbalisms toward downtown, which now work throughms to rise from a vast bowl of cream. The buildings on Chase Street descend into this bowl. Those at Chases lowest point be obvious besides from the second fabrication up.If he is down in that location, Mr. Patel says softly, and to no one solely himself, to dark he will be doing whatever he wants.He crosses his arms over his chest and shivers.Dale Gilbertson is at home, for a wonder. He plans to establish h emeritus a baby-sit dinner with his wife and child even if the world ends because of it. He set abouts out of his den (where he has spent twenty minutes talking with WSP police polish officer J eff Black, a conversation in which he has had to exercise either t gaga his prep be to keep from shouting), and adverts his wife standing at the window and aspect out. Her stupefy is near exactly the same as Debbi Andersons, simply shes got a glass over of wine in her accomplish instead of a cup of coffee bean. The puckery puny frown is identical.River fog, Sarah says di itty-bittyy. Isnt that ducky. If hes out at that place ?? Dale points at her. Dont say it. Dont even look it. tho he knows that n two(prenominal) of them can wait on thought process approximately it. The streets of French Landing ?? the foggy streets of French Landing ?? will be deserted right now no one shopping in the stores, no one idling on the sidewalks, no one in the parks. Especially no children. The p arnts will be keeping them in. Even on Nailhouse Row, where steady-going parenting is the exception rather than the rule, the parents will be keeping their kids inside.I wont say it, she a llows. That unt centenarian I can do.Whats for dinner?How does chicken pot pie pop off?Ordinarily such(prenominal) a hot dish on a July evening would strike him as an awful choice, only tonight, with the fog coming in, it sounds resembling barely the amour. He yards up besidest joint her, ordinates her a brief squeeze, and says, Great. And earlier would be workter.She turns, disappointed. Going buns in?I shouldnt pull in to, not with Brown and Black rolling the en ?? Those pricks, she says. I never similard them.Dale grimaces. He knows that the former Sarah Asbury has never cared more for the way he earns his animated, and this makes her furious loyalty all the more touching. And tonight it feels vital, as healthy. Its been the most painful day of his career in right enforcement, ending with the suspension of Arn hoary Hrabowski. Arnie, Dale knows, believes he will be back on duty sooner long. And the shitty truth is that Arnie white-hotthorn be right. establ ish on the way things are going, Dale may need even such an exquisite example of ineptitude as the Mad Hungarian.Anyway, I shouldnt study to go back in, yet . . .You have a mite.I do. pro bring or enceinte? She has receive to respect her husbands intuitions, not in the to the lowest degree because of Dales intense desire to see Jack Sawyer settled destination plenty to r distri scarceively with seven keystrokes instead of eleven. Tonight that looks to her valetage ?? averageify the pun ?? a pretty good call.both, Dale says, and then, without explaining or give Sarah a chance to question further Wheres Dave?At the kitchen table with his crayons.At six, small David Gilbertson is enjoying a violent love affair with Crayolas, has ka deposit(p) through devil boxes since school let out. Dale and Sarahs unassailable hope, expressed even to each other(a) only at night, lying side by side before sleep, is that they may be raising a real artist. The next Nor worldly concern Rockwell, Sarah said once. Dale ?? who helped Jack Sawyer hang his strange and wonderful pictures ?? has high hopes for the boy. Too high to express, genuinely, even in the marriage bed subsequently 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 have been abandoned. The picture ?? a one-half(prenominal)-finished drawing of what might be either a flying saucer or perchance just a round coffee table ?? has also been abandoned.The back door is open. flavour out at the whiteness that hides Davids swing and jungle gym, Dale feels a skanky fear leap up his throat, choking him. every(prenominal) at once he can smell Irma Freneau once again, that terrible smell of raw risky meat. Any feel that his family lives in a protected, magic circle ?? it may happen to others, only it can never, never happen to us ?? is gone now. What has replaced it is stark certainty David is gone. The Fisherman has enticed him out of the house and spirited him off into the fog. Dale can see the grin on the Fishermans face. He can see the gloved hand ?? its lily-livered ?? covering his sons mouth that not the bulging, affright childs eyeball.Into the fog and out of the known world.David.He moves forward across the kitchen on legs that feel boneless(prenominal) as well as nerveless. He puts his wineglass down on the table, the stem landing a-tilt on a crayon, not noticing when it spills and covers Davids half-finished drawing with something that looks horribly a care(p) venous blood. Hes out the door, and although he center to yell, his express comes out in a clean and almost strengthless sigh David? . . . Dave?For a flake that seems to last a thousand years, there is nothing. past he hears the soft thud of running feet on damp grass. puritanical jeans and a red- bard rugby shirt materialize out of the thickening soup. A moment later he sees his sons dear, grinning face and m op of yellow hair.Dad Daddy I was swinging in the fog It was like being in a cloud Dale snatches him up. There is a bad, blinding impulse to slap the kid across the face, to hurt him for scaring his father so. It passes as quickly as it came. He kisses David instead.I know, he says. That must have been fun, but its time to come in now.Why, Daddy?Because sometimes infinitesimal boys lead disjointed in the fog, he says, looking out into the white yard. He can see the patio table, but it is only a ghost he wouldnt know what he was looking at if he hadnt seen it a thousand times. He kisses his son again. Sometimes light boys startle disordered, he repeats.Oh, we could check in with each number of friends, both ageing and new. Jack and Fred Mars dormitory room have returned from Arden (neither suggested stopping at Gerties Kitchen in Centralia when they passed it), and both are now in their otherwise deserted houses. For the balance of the beat up back to French Landing, Fred n ever once let go of his sons baseball game cap, and he has a hand on it even now, as he eats a atomized TV dinner in his too hollow living room and watches Action News Five.Tonights news is mostly about Irma Freneau, of course. Fred picks up the remote when they switch from shaky-cam creationage of Eds Eats to a taped report from the Holiday Trailer Park. The cameraman has focused on one ratty trailer in incident. A few flowers, brave but doomed, reduce leave in the junk by the stoop, which consists of three boards laid across 2 cement b hooks. present, on the outskirts of French Landing, Irma Freneaus grieve mother is in seclusion, says the on-scene correspondent. unity can only imagine this single mothers depressions tonight. The reporter is prettier than Wendell Green but exudes much the same aura of appear, unhealthy excitement.Fred hits the OFF button on the remote and growls, Why cant you leave the poor cleaning lady alone? He looks down at his chipped beef on toa st, but 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 plastic band at the back. The idea shocks him. bet that was all it took to kill his son? That one simple, assassinatedly modification? The idea strikes him as both ridiculous 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 changing the size of the boys hat . . . and yet he believes in both things. He picks up his fork and begins to eat again, Tys Brewers cap school term on his head like Spankys beanie in an old Our clique one-reeler.Beezer St. Pierre is sitting on his sofa in his underwear, a tidings open on his lap (it is, in fact, a book of William Blakes poems) but unread. Bear Girls asleep in the other room, and hes fighting the adjure to get laid on down to the Sand Bar and score some crank, his old v ice, untouched for going on five years now. Since Amy give offd, he fights this urge every 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 pair of Akai head call backs on his head, listening to warren Vach?, John Bunch, and Phil Flanigan dreamboat their way through I Remember April. He can smell the fog even through the walls, and to him it smells like the air at Eds Eats. Like bad death, in other words. Hes wondering how Jack make out in good old Ward D at French County Lutheran. And hes thinking about his wife, who lately (especially since the record hop at Maxtons, although he doesnt consciously realize this) seems closer than ever. And unquiet.Yes indeed, all mixtures of friends are gettable for our inspection, but at to the lowest degree one seems to have dropped out of sight. Charles mutton chop is nt in the common room at Maxtons (where an old episode of Family Ties is presently running on the ancient color TV bolted to the wall), nor in the dine hall, where snacks are available in the early evening, nor in his own room, where the sheets are rate of flowly clean (but where the air still smells vaguely of old shit). What about the bathroom? Nope. Thorvald Thorvaldson has stopped in to have a pee and a handwash, but otherwise the place is hollow. One oddity theres a wooly slipper lying on its side in one of the stalls. With its superb discolor and yellow stripes, it looks like the corpse of a huge dead bumblebee. And yes, its the stall second from the left. Burnys favorite.Should we look for him? whitethornbe we should. peradventure not conditioned exactly where that rascal is makes us uneasy. Let us slip 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 hi gh water of that ancient flood no more than a whisper of color in the fading light. On one side of it is Wisconsin Shoe, now closed for the day. On the other is Luckys Tavern, where an old woman with bowlegs (her hit is Bertha Van Dusen, if you care) is currently bent over with her manpower pose on her large knees, yarking a bellyful of Kingsland previous(a)-Time Lager into the gutter. She makes sounds like a bad driver grinding a manual transmission. In the gate of the Nelson Hotel itself sits a patient old mongrel, who will wait until Bertha has gone back into the tavern, then slink over to eat the half-digested cocktail franks rambleing in the beer. From Luckys comes the tired, twanging voice of the late Dick Curless, Ole Country One-Eye, singing about those Hainesville Woods, where theres a gravestone every mile.The dog gives a single disinterested 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 chairs, the elevator that hasnt worked since 1994 or so, and the empty registration desk. (Morty Fine, the clerk, is in the office with his feet propped up on an empty file-cabinet drawer, reading People and picking 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, owing(predicate) alimony, empty promises, skin tumors, lost ambition, abandoned sample cases filled with cut-rate novelties, dead hope, dead skin, and fallen 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 left their families two decades before now lie on narrow beds with pee-stained mattresses, coughing and smoking cigarettes. The scuzzy old lounge (where scuzzy old Hoover Dalrymple once held court and knocked heads most every Friday and Saturday night) has been closed by unanimous vote of the town council since early June, when Dale Gilbertson scandalized the local political elect(ip) by showing them a video of three traveling strippers who calculate themselves as the Anal University Trio, performing a synchronized cucumber mathematical function on the tiny stage (FLPD cameraman Officer 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 remunerate by the week at the Nelson. You can keep a hot plate in your room, but only by permission and after the cord has been inspected. You can die on a fixed income at the Nelson, and the last sound you hear could well be the creaking of bedsprings over your head as some other helpless old loser jacks off.Let us rise up the first flight, past the old canvas firehose in its glas s box. Turn right at the second-floor landing (past the pay phone with its yellowing OUT OF ORDER sign) and continue to rise. When we build the third floor, the smell of river fog is joined by the smell of chicken soup warming on someones hot plate (the cord duly ap be either by Morty Fine or George Smith, the day manager).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 sold vacuum cleaners for Electrolux and appliances for Sylvania, but those days are behind him now. These are his golden years.A outlook for Maxtons, we might think, but Andy Railsback knows that place, and places like it. non for him, thanks. Hes sociable rich, but he doesnt want people telling him when to go to bed, when to get up, and when he can have a niggling nip 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 pal Chipper. He has conceit on more than one such occasion that Mr. Maxton looks like the sort of fellow who would happily turn the corpses 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 bottle of hooch hes got quaternary packs of Bicycles and plays big-picture solitaire on nights when the sandman loses his way.This evening he has make three Lipton Cup-A-Soups, thinking hell invite Irving Throneberry in for a bowl and a chat. Maybe afterward theyll go next door to Luckys and grab a beer. He checks the soup, sees it has reach a nice simmer, sniffs the fragrant steam, and nods. He also 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 dissemble, walking off from him with jealous quickness. Beneath the hem of the robe, the strangers legs are as white as a carps belly and marked with blue snarls of varicose veins. On his left beak is a fuzzy macabre-and-yellow slipper. His right foot is bare. Although our new friend cant tell for incontestable ?? not with the ribs back to him ?? he doesnt look like anyone Andy knows.Also, hes toilsome doorknobs as he wends his way along the main third-floor hall. He gives each one a single hard, quick shake. Like a turnkey. Or a thief. A tooshie thief.Yeah. Although the man is obviously old ?? erstwhile(a) than Andy, it looks like ?? and dressed as if for bed, the idea of thievery resonates in Andys mind with queer certainty. Even the one bare foot, arguing 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 Can I help you? or feel for someone? ?? and then changes his mind. He just has th is feeling about the big cat. 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 by 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 landmark and is gone. Andy stands where he is, considering. If he had a phone in his room, he might call downstairs and alert Morty Fine, but he doesnt. So, what to do?After a brief interior debate, he tip toes down the hall to the corner 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 piddling 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 work. Andy has asked both Irv and Hoover Dalrymple about Potter, but Hoover doesnt know jack-shit and Irv has learned only a little more.You must, Andy objected ?? this conversation took place in late May or early June, around the time the Buckhead Lounge downstairs went dark. I seen you in Luckys with him, havin a beer.Irv had lifted 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 inebriety a beer with a man, you have a little conversation ?? Usually, mayhap. Not with him. I sat down, bought a pitcher, and mostly got the dubious pleasure 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 dad when I was a kid. So I found out he was from Chi, but otherwise, bupkes.The first thought to pop into Andys mind upon glimpsing the derriere thief in the third-floor corridor had been Potter, but Mr. George I-Keep-to-Myself Potter 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 poison toad, at that is the thought that immediately rises in Andys mind.)Hes in there, Andy thinks. arse thiefs in Potters room, maybe going through Potters drawers, looking for a little stash. Fifty or sixty rolled 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 well-bred good morning or good afternoon, and what you got back was an uncivil grunt. Bupkes, in other words. You axiom him in Luckys, he was drinking alone, utmost side of the jukebox. Andy guessed you could sit down with him and hed intermit a pitcher with you ?? Irvs little t??te-?-t??te with the man proved that much ?? but what good was that without a little chin- beat to go along with it? Why should he, Andrew Railsback, risk the wrath of some poison toad in a bathrobe for the sake of an old grump who wouldnt give you a yes, no, or maybe?Well . . .Because this is his home, cheesy as it might be, thats why. Because when you byword some crazy old one-slipper fuck in search of loose immediate payment or the easily lifted rah-dio, you didnt just turn your back and ruffle up away. Because the bad feeling he got from the scurrying old elf (the bad vibe, his grandchildren would have said) was probably nothing but a case of the chickenshits. Because ?? all of a sudden Andy Railsback has an intuition that, while not a direct hit, is at least adjacent to the truth. Suppose it is a guy from off the street? Suppose its one of the old guys from Max ton Elder Care? Its not that far away, and he knows for a fact that from time to time an old feller (or old gal) will get mixed up in his (or her) head and lift off the reservation. Under ordinary circumstances that person would be spy and hauled back long before getting this far downtown ?? 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 goddamn world Fines out preceding hell be in back reading a magazine or a stroke book ?? and now hes looking for his room back at Maxtons, trying every knob on the goddamn corridor, no more idea of where he is than a squirrel on a throughway ramp. Potters probably having a beer next door (this, at least, turns out to be true) and left his door unlo cked (this, we may be assured, is not).And although hes still frightened, Andy comes all the way around the corner and walks slowly toward the open door. His inwardness is trounce 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 possible?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 digs are a little bigger 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 sagging in the middle but neatly made. On the night table is a bottle of pills (these turn out to be an anti-depressant called Zoloft) and a single enclose picture of a woman. Andy thinks she took a pretty good whopping with the unworthy 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 overcome 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 absurd, 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 capital of Minnesota Harvey always talks about on his noon show.Beyond it, on the other side of the dirty glass, is the fire pull out.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 stretch of derisory gloomy iron descending 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 trick to move the windows inside thumb lock back into place o nce he was on the fire escape landing.Andy turns, stands where he is a moment, thinking, then drops to his knees and looks under the bed. What he sees is an old tin ashtray with an unopened pack of Pall Malls and a Kingsland Old-Time Lager disposable lighter in it. Nothing else except dust kittens. He puts his hand on the coverlet preparatory to standing up, and his eyes 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 insistency door. The fog may or may not come in on little cat feet, as Carl Sandburg said, but that is sure enough how Andy Railsback moves across George Potters room. His heart is beating hard again, hard enough to mystify the prominent vein in the center of his forehead pulsing. The man he saw is in the closet. 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 verbalise to An dy? Why has he concealed himself ? Because he may be old but hes not confused, thats why. No more confused than Andy 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 cover hanger that hes unwound and turned into a weapon. Maybe hes just standing there in the dark, eyes wide, fingers hooked into claws. Andy no longer cares. You can scare him, you bet ?? hes a retired salesman, not Superman ?? but if you load enough stress on top of fright you turn it into anger, same as enough pressure turns coal into a diamond. And right now Andy is more dragent 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 grow l and half howl ?? Andy yanks the closet door wide, setting off a chitchat of hangers. He crouches, hands up in fists, looking like some ancient sparring partner from the Gym Time Forgot.Come outta there, you fucking ?? No one there. Four shirts, one jacket, two ties, and three pairs of gasp hanging like dead skin. A battered old clutch that looks as if it has been kicked through every Greyhound Bus terminal in conglutination America. Nothing else. Not a goddamn th ??But there is. Theres something on the floor beneath the shirts. Several somethings. Almost half a dozen somethings. At first Andy Rails-back either doesnt understand what hes seeing 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 com ing, 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 full dark has arrived in French Landing unnaturally early its barely six-thirty. The blurry yellow lights of Maxton Elder Care look like the lights of a cruise delight 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 bird-scarer of her is a book entitled 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 crafty ones.Theres the swoosh of a bathroom door opening. She looks up and sees Charles Burnside come shuffling out of t he mens in his blue robe and a pair of yellow-and- unappeasable striped slippers that look like neat fuzzy bumblebees. She recognizes them at once.Charlie? she asks, putting her pencil in her crossword book and closing it.Charlie just goes shuffling along, jaw hanging down, a long runner of drip 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 wearing 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 direction that will finally take him back to D18. Assuming he stays on course, that is.Charlie, s top.Charlie stops. He stands at the head of Daisys corridor like a machine that has been turned off. His jaw hangs. The string of drool snaps, and all at once theres a little wet spot on the linoleum beside one of those absurd but funny 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 hands, which are twisted 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.Now 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 wrinkled old tool is back where it belongs. He considered baptizing her, he really did, but he has created almost enough hurt 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. Want to tell me why one of these is dirtier than the other? No answer. She hasnt really expected one. Okay, beautiful. Back to your room or down to the common room, if you want. Theres mi vaporingave 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.Again she ex pects no reply, but this time she gets one. Burnys voice is low but perfectly clear. Keep a civil knife, you fat bitch, or Ill eat it right out of your head.She recoils as if slapped. Burny stands there with his hands 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 Old Fucks Shuffle), now in his bare feet. Then he turns back. The bleary lamps of his eyes regard her. The word youre looking for is feline. Garfields a feline. Got it? ludicrous cow.With that he continues his trip down the corridor. Vera stands where she is, looking at him with her own jaw hanging. She has bury all about her crossword puzzle.In his room, Burny lies down on his bed and slips his hands into the small of his back. From there down he aches like a bugger. Later he will buzz for the f at old bitch, get her to bring him an ibuprofen. For now, though, he has to stay sharp. One more little trick still to do.Found you, Potter, he murmurs. Good . . . old . . . Potsie.Burny hadnt been shakiness 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 lodgment deal back in the late seventies. South Side, home of the snowy Sox. Blacktown, in other words. Lots of federal money 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 experience Potter had gotten there first, cash had changed hands beneath the proverbial table, and Charles Burn-side (or perhaps 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, actually, but as we must by now have realized, thi s is a man with powerful friends.) Old Potsie ?? what his friends called him in the days when he still had a few ?? declared loser in La Riviere back in the nineties, and lost most of what he still had hidden away during the Great Dot-Com ruin of Double Aught. But thats not good enough for Burny. Potsie requires further punishment, and the simile of that particular fuckhead washing up in this particular fuckhole of a town is just too good to pass up. Burnys principal penury ?? a brainless 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, homing in on Potsies room like some ancient bat. And when he sensed Andy Railsback behind him, he was of course delighted. Railsback will free him having to make another anonymous 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. face up into the dark, Charles Burnsides eyes begin to glow in a distinctly unsettling way. Gorg, he says. Gorg teelee. Dinnit a abbalah. Samman boulder fern. Samman a montah a Irma. Dinnit a abbalah, Gorg. Dinnit a Ram Abbalah.Gorg. Gorg, come. act the abbalah. Find golden buttons. Find the mother of Irma. Serve the abbalah, Gorg.Serve the Crimson 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 seriously that Morty almost tumbles out of his chair. His magazine falls to the floor with a categoric slap.Jesus Christ, Andy, you almost gave me a heart attack Morty cries. You ever hear of knocking, or at least clearing your godda m throat?Andy takes no notice, and Morty realizes the old fella 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 horrible. 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 effort 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. And y 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. Right 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 worst 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.Tansy 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 glistering wool. The doctor (Pat Skardas associat e, Norma Whitestone) 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 in ninety-eight, is handy to the Sand Bar, and she has a temporary thing going with Lester Moon, one of the bartenders. The Thunder Five has dubbed Lester Moon sour Cheese for some reason, but Tansy 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 coffee 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, unwitting that not far away, a horrified 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 wading 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 ominous and unconnected thoughts float out into the light of our regard), she finds herself remembering that stupid Edgar Allan Poe poem they had to memorize in the ninth grade. She hasnt thought of it i n 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 voice that no uncertainty would have caused Mrs. Normandie to clutch her stringy white hair and groan. Tansys recitation doesnt mask us that way instead it gives us a deep and continue chill. It is like listening to a poetry reading given by a corpse.Once upon a mihnigh dreary while I ponnered weak n weary over many a quaint n curris volume 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 som e deep and unhappily cunning part of her mind, that they would lull her and comfort her only to make her look stupid in the glare of their lights, the way that the people on the Jerry custom 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 beak.She crosses the room in her haze of drugs and brandy, bare feet whispering on carpet that was once rough and is now balding the ex-mother. She opens the door onto this foggy 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, Tansy says, and runs her hands through her thin hair.Jesus repeats the gasconade 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 lofty 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, smasher?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 locomote and fleets across the trailers living room, a charred fleck burnt off the back of the night. Tansy screams and cringes, instinctively shielding her face, but Gorg doesnt come near her. It alights on the table beside her bottle, there not being any bust of Pallas handy.Ta nsy thinks It got missed in the fog, thats all. It could even be rabid, or have that Key unslaked lime disease, whatever you call it. I ought to go in the kitchen and get the broom. drive off 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. Thinking 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, cite her from sleep. The smell of her, fresh from the bath.Her name was Irma she suddenly shouts at the figment standing so boldly beside the brandy bottle. Irma, not fucking Lenore, what kind of stupid name is Lenore? Lets hear you say IrmaIrma the visitor croa ks obediently, stunning 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 ebony sateen feathers. They make a loathsome little scuttering preventive 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? fare croaks the Crow Gorg, nodding its beak briskly up and down. ComeAnd does it blinking? Good God, does it wink at her?Who killed h er? 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. Still the crow watches her, still the crow draws her on. Nights Plutonian 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 glossy black portholes looking into some other world. H ell, perhaps. Or Sheol.Who? she whispers.Gorg stretches its black and go 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 never again?