Scott Nicholson Library Vol 1

by Scott Nicholson

  I had no memory of coming home in the night. Those hours were a fog, lost in a stupor of alcohol and multiple personalities and endless revisions. My head throbbed from drink.

  But the Insider made sure I didn’t forget Monique. Her wide staring dead eyes were seared into my brain, branded there by a red-hot iron, stapled to the Bone House walls like a Led Zeppelin poster. The Insider was lost in the mist of my pain, engorged and ecstatic. Fat on light. Fed on my dead hope. Bloated by bloodthirsty, barbaric bliss, and typing up a storm.

  It had won. But the outcome was never in doubt. How could any human defeat such a monster? How could you outsmart your own omniscient narrator?

  “I told you the answer,” said Bookworm.

  “Shut up.”

  “I suppose writer’s block isn’t an option?”

  “Bookworm, I don’t know who to believe anymore. How do I know you’re not the Insider, playing a game just for the sheer hell of it? After all, we all sound alike. In fact, we sound like me.”

  “You’re only in the Bone House once in a while, when one of us takes over. But I’m in here all the time.”

  “And I pity you for that.”

  “Don’t take this the wrong way, Richard, but you’re just a little too human to really comprehend.”

  “Damned with feinted praise,” Mister Milktoast said, from some dusty corner of the closet.

  “And you, Mister Milktoast? Whose side are you on?”

  “Hey, Bookworm, I’m the one who drove Richard home. I’m the one who made sure we didn’t leave any incriminating evidence at the scene. I’m the one who cares the most about us. After all, I’ve been here the longest. If we’re all psychic vampires, then I have the most at stake.”

  “Why are you afraid he’ll be caught? Maybe that’s the best thing that can happen to Richard. The book will sell at auction, Fox News will push the story, Barnes & Noble moves product, and the murders will stop.”

  “I promised to protect him. The boots still walk. They just have a different pair of feet in them.”

  “Fuck both of you,” Loverboy said. “And I don’t mean that the way you think I do. You diddledicks couldn’t screw your way out of a wet dream.”

  Little Hitler snickered.

  Open house in the Bone House, come one, come all. Except that thing in the back room, typing, typing, typing. When writers are really in the zone, they wouldn’t know it if a jetliner crashed into the house.

  “It’s only in your mind,” Bookworm said. “And that’s the worst place of all.”

  “The Insider’s getting stronger,” I said. “We all agree on that.”

  “If it’s so fucking all-powerful, why doesn’t it just drive us all out of here and take Richie over completely?” Loverboy said. “Do some major housecleaning?”

  “You’re too busy reaching for Richard’s penis to figure it out,” Bookworm said. “It needs us, in some crazy way. It’s not just the possession that motivates it. The Insider has to have someone to lord it over.”

  “And the more the merrier, apparently,” said Mister Milktoast. “Four heads are better than one.”

  “Then it struck paydirt here,” I said. “But maybe this is the way the Insider works. How many killers claim to hear voices in their heads?”

  The sun was weakening, growing softer as clouds knit a layer across the sky. Somewhere, a church bell rang, a safe, lonely, human sound. I wondered how many hours it would be before the police found us. A ticking clock always increased dramatic tension. Even that old asshole Aristotle knew that, and he lived back when people used sun dials.

  “Well, I’m starting to suspect that it can also extend those powers beyond the host,” Bookworm said. “Maybe with not as much control, but enough to influence events and behaviors.”

  “That sounds like something you pulled out of Mister Milktoast’s ass just to complicate things,” I said. “Sounds too convenient. Like you’re trying to change the genre so we can publish this as science fiction.”

  “No, listen. It makes things happen. It causes people to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  “Bullshit, Dickworm,” Little Hitler said. “You’re just trying to let Richard off the hook again. He’s the one who’s screwed up everyone he touches. Let him take some of the blame for a change. I don’t know why you guys are always trying to forgive him. We should be rubbing his face in every steaming ounce of the shit he’s heaped on the world.”

  “Love the skin but hate the skinner,” Mister Milktoast blurted out.

  “And who’s going to take your side, Little Hitler?” asked Bookworm. “You’re glad the Insider has found us. It gives validity to everything you stand for.”

  “What’s this about the Insider affecting other people?” I said, before they started arguing.

  “Remember Virginia? How the voices started after her father began molesting her?” Bookworm said.

  “Of course he remembers Virginia,” Loverboy said. “He fucked up my fuck. All because he was trying to sympathize. What a fucking joke. Just pop ‘em and drop ‘em, Richie-wuss, and the sooner you learn that, the happier we’ll all be. Especially me.”

  “The Insider was in Ottaqua all along, laying the groundwork,” Bookworm said.

  “Who appointed you ‘Mr. Backstory Database’?” Mister Milktoast said through a pout.

  I ignored my oldest friend. “And made Father and Mother the way they were? And maybe it made Shelley come to my house even though she barely knew me?”

  “Do you think Loverboy would get lucky otherwise?” Bookworm asked.

  “Hey, Bookwuss, I resent that,” said Loverboy. “This boy could charm the habit off a nun. It’s you guys that make ‘em duck and cover. Mister Milktoast, the total candy-ass. Richie, the king of navel gazing. And you, Dickworm, the frigging faith healer, the cosmic child, the deep thinker. And Little Squiggler. . .need I say more?”

  “Point taken, Loverboy,” I said. “But I think Bookworm’s on to something.”

  “Run with me, guys,” Bookworm said, excited for the first time since he’d booked a room in my flesh hotel. “Leap of faith. Maybe it put Beth in that gallery on campus on the same day that Richard was there.”

  “And you’re saying that it made me fall in love with Beth?”

  “Careful with the L word,” Mister Milktoast said. “Liability, labia, laborious.”

  “Stay on point,” Bookworm said. “And let’s go further from there. The Insider openly despises love, yet it makes sure that you find some version of it. We’re poison, remember, because we dream and love and hope and reach for something better than ourselves. And the Insider blames that for the extermination of its species.”

  “Yet it wants me to love, so it can enjoy making me kill?” I asked.

  “Which is another problem, gentlemen,” Mister Milktoast said. “Any minute now Beth will be waking up, maybe next to a drummer, maybe not. She’ll get up and make some breakfast. Eventually she’ll start to wonder why her roommate isn’t up and about. Maybe she’ll knock on the door to Monique’s room. Maybe she’ll open the door.”

  I knew what Beth would see. The Insider had taken photographs using my brain as the film stock. The project was currently in development hell.

  “How many witnesses saw Richard with Monique last night?” said Mister Milktoast. “And there’s bound to be other evidence at the scene, stray hairs or semen—”

  “Hey, don’t look at me,” said Loverboy. “That was more Little Diddler’s cup of tea. I ain’t into zipless drips.”

  “Let’s not think about that right now,” I said. There were hundreds of ways to hurt people, and I had a feeling I’d be learning every one of them.

  One of my neighbors was cooking bacon. The frost was melting across the hills, changing them from silver to brown. Children were waking up and sneaking into the Halloween candy they had collected the night before. People were putting away their masks.

  “And Dickie darling had the bright idea to go to the par
ty dressed as Jack-the-fucking-Ripper,” Little Hitler said.

  “That’s what I’m trying to tell you guys,” said Bookworm. “It’s all too scripted, too perfect. Richard has no real reason to love Beth, because she’s hardly been a warm and fuzzy romantic interest.”

  “I don’t know if I can accept that,” I said. “This was already straining my willing suspension of disbelief. I mean, being possessed by an ancient soul virus is one thing. But if you carry this idea back even further—”

  “Exactly. Was Mother meant to be an alcoholic? Was her love for you destined to...turn out the way it did? You have to agree that the Insider would get a great deal of satisfaction out of something so depraved.”

  “You’re scaring me, Bookworm.”

  “Maybe that’s the way Evil has done business throughout history, stacking the deck so that it always wins.”

  “And maybe it was the Insider who made me kill Father? And Little Hitler is innocent?”

  “Just take a little blame for a change, Richard,’ Little Hitler said. “I know, I know, it’s against your beliefs to actually accept responsibility for your actions, not when you can spin some bizarre fantasy to get yourself off the hook. But go ahead, Bookworm. Your little theory is amusing, and there’s not a whole hell of a lot to laugh about these days. Except our gracious host and his eternally leaking heart, of course.”

  “All the bad things might be traced back to Richard’s childhood,” Mister Milktoast said, collaborating with Bookworm. “Maybe the Insider was at work even earlier than that.”

  “Sally Bakken?” I said. “The Garage Man? I can’t believe that the Insider has that much power. It’s just too...”

  “Impossible?” finished Bookworm. “Just like it’s impossible for you to be carrying on a conversation with four Little People who live in a place called the Bone House. It’s impossible for a soul-stealing psychic entity to sneak into people’s minds and make them kill, just so it can live forever. It’s impossible for you to carry the case histories of the human race’s worst butchers inside the filing cabinets of your home office.”

  “But I don’t have those memories—”

  “No. You’re outside. But they’re here, inside, all the memories of every murder.”

  I had a headache, and it was more than just the residue of beer. If I was just a temporary host, the Insider might already be sizing up its next victim.

  “It could already be outlining a sequel,” Bookworm said. “Because it’ll eventually get tired of you, Richard. It’ll break you down and use you up. If you don’t get caught first.”

  “I’ve got a feeling it wants a final victory before it lets me disintegrate.”

  “Yes. One last victim.”

  “One true love. The perfect blasphemy.”

  “Come on, Bookworm,” Mister Milktoast said. “This is starting to sound like self-referential metafiction. And you know such a thing can only end badly.”

  I pressed my temples. This had to be a nightmare, and I’d awaken with damp sheets and a hangover and a wife, kids, mortgage, lunch date at the golf club. A regular, boring, fucking pleasant life, one not worth writing about.

  “Better take the Ripper suit to the cleaners, Richard,” Mister Milktoast added. “Might have a few spots on it that I couldn’t sponge out. It has to be back at the costume rental tomorrow.”

  “Thanks for keeping me on task, Mister Milktoast.”

  “Beth is going to need comforting after the shock wears off. We’d better practice being indignantly outraged, or whatever it is society expects on such an occasion.”

  “That’ll be a switch,” I said. “Beth crying on my shoulder for a change.”

  “I took a trophy,” Little Hitler said, walking to the dresser, where a lump lay covered by a towel.

  “You’re a sick puppy, Diddler,” Loverboy said. “I like that in a headmate.”

  I flinched as he yanked the towel away. There lay Beth’s brown hat, headless. Mister Milktoast purred in excitement.

  “Now leave me alone,” I said. “I’d better get some writing done before things get crazy around here.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  I have come to believe all the rest is the fault of those big-time publishers, the ones who wouldn’t recognize genius if it rolled up on a courier bike with a serving of foie gras packed inside a warm duck. If only they had purchased the novel, the story would have ended there and I would have gone on to the life of a struggling, frustrated writer with suicidal tendencies. A poor man’s Palahniuk, a motherless Lethem, a born-again Brautigan, a disarmed Hemingway.

  Alas, it was not to be. Beth called me Monday after work, while I was opening the last of that day’s 19 rejection slips.

  “R-Richard?”

  “Yes?” Mister Milktoast said.

  “Did you hear?”

  I cleared my throat and delivered the line as I’d rehearsed it, Richard Burton by way of James Dean, with a little Peter Lorre thrown in for spice. “Yes. My God, it’s so terrible. How are you?”

  “When I opened her door and found her—”

  The dam broke. She sobbed over the phone.

  I despised women’s tears. They made me angry because I didn’t know how to shut them off. I was so grateful to have Mister Milktoast. “I’m sorry, Beth. God, I’m so sorry.”

  She sniffled and gasped, “I...I just can’t believe it.”

  “I wanted to come over when I heard, but I was afraid you’d think I was being too...presumptuous. How are you doing?”

  “I’ll live, damn it. But Monique won’t. What kind of monster would do such a thing?”

  What kind of monster, indeed. “I don’t know, Beth. I honestly don’t know.”

  Mister Milktoast looked at my fingernails. They were ragged from Bookworm’s biting. How could those be murderer’s hands? Those were innocent, with blunt broad fingers, hands made for loving, holding, typing, waving good-bye.

  I let Beth dry her eyes and blow her nose before I spoke again. “Listen, do you need anything? Where are you staying?”

  “I’m over at Xandria’s place. She’s got a spare room. She’s letting me stay here until...”

  “Why didn’t you call me?” Little Hitler said. He’d forgotten the script, the little prick.

  Silence.

  “Can I come over there?” I asked. “I need to see you.”

  “I’m afraid...I don’t think I’ll be very good company.”

  “I want to be there for you, Beth. That’s what...um, friends are for.”

  “Okay. It would be nice. I could use a hug…”

  I beat Loverboy back into his room, where he could flip through the Insider’s nude photo collection instead of wrecking my cover story.

  Beth continued. “But I’m warning you, I’m a total mess.”

  “It’s okay, Beth.”

  “No. It’ll never be okay again.”

  “I’m here for whatever you need. That’s my promise.” Little Hitler chuckled at that word “promise,” but I rolled it into a cough to disguise the glee. “Cross my heart and hope to die.”

  She gave me directions to Xandria’s apartment, stopping twice to blow her nose. I passed Beth’s place on the way uptown. The sidewalk was roped off with yellow crime tape, and a group of spectators gawked from the sidewalk. A television van was pulled up by the curb, and a man behind the wheel was eating a sandwich. Two police cruisers were parked out front, a big blocky Chevy Caprice and a new aqua Crown Victoria. I saw movement inside the apartment, but I couldn’t distinguish any faces.

  I was positive Frye was in there, dusting for prints and taking measurements and chain-smoking cigarettes. I had a feeling he was going to be a clever adversary. Minor conflict was essential to any story, to keep the audience interested while the main game played itself out. The Insider was up for a potboiler.

  Xandria’s apartment was in an old two-story house about a block from campus and a couple of streets away from the stone house, up on a wooded hill. Paint cur
led from massive Colonial columns and a tall oak tree showered orange leaves on the tin roof. The windows had black shutters and the watery sun reflected off the glass like light from dying eyes. The November sky was heavy and sober above the brown hills.

  Beth sat in a metal rocking chair on the porch. She wore a red sweatshirt and blue jeans and canvas-top sneakers. Sunglasses couldn’t hide the puffiness around her eyes. She tried to smile at me, but her face looked like it might break. Her lips quivered a little and pressed together.

  “Beth,” Bookworm said, running up the concrete steps like Bogart making for Bacall. I stooped and hugged her. Little Hitler could smell the salt of her tears. Mister Milktoast knelt and gripped her hands. My reflection danced in her sunglasses. Loverboy primped and checked his hair.

  “Richard,” she said. “It’s all so…I don’t know…unreal, maybe. It hasn’t really sunk in yet.”

  “Beth, Beth,” I whispered, rocking her softly. I pressed my cheek against her soft hair that was like corn silks. Bookworm thought the “corn silk” simile was utterly corny. He hadn’t lived in Iowa, though.

  “So awful, so awful,” she repeated in my ear.

  “Do they know how it happened?”

  “I shouldn’t have left her alone. You know, Halloween and everything…”

  “You can’t blame yourself, Beth.”

  “But it’s all my fault.”

  The dam was about to burst again. She looked like she had cried through the night. Her face was blotched from the blood rush of her emotions.

  “It’s not your fault, Beth. You’re another victim. It’s nobody’s fault, except…except for whoever did it.”

  “But who? Who? She didn’t have an enemy in the world, and this isn’t your typical Halloween prank. Oh, God, Richard, what am I going to do?”

  “When did you first...?” asked Mister Milktoast. Loverboy wanted to add some smart-assed remark about snaring a drummer or banging a gong or gobbling a drumstick but I slammed shut the door to his room.

  Beth wiped at the pink end of her nose with a damp wad of Kleenex. “I looked for you at the party,” she said, avoiding my eyes by looking out at the rocky slopes of Widow’s Peak in the distance. She forgot she was wearing sunglasses, that I couldn’t have read her eyes anyway.