‘That’s it,’ he said. ‘Now I know I’m having a nightmare.’ He turned his head to the right, and the old man in the mirror turned his head to the left. He nodded his head up and down and the old man did that, too.
‘I’m thirty-five years old,’ he insisted. ‘You are not me. I don’t know who the hell you are, but you are not me.’
When he spoke, the old man moved his lips to mime what he was saying; and when he reached up and touched his cheek, the old man copied him.
‘You cannot be me!’ he shouted, although his voice was thin and strained, just like an old man’s voice. ‘You cannot be me!’
He lowered his head. On the shelf above the basin he saw a green plastic mug caked with toothpaste. It contained a toothbrush with splayed-out bristles and a crumpled tube of Blanx. On the other side of the shelf there were seven or eight bottles of tablets. He reached out and picked up the nearest, which was labeled Lorazepam. He knew that Lorazepam was prescribed for panic attacks, but he had never taken it in his life.
It was then that he looked at his hand. His skin was wrinkled and liver-spotted, and his nails were chalky, with deep ridges in them. He dropped the bottle of Lorazepam in the basin, and held up both of his hands in front of his face, staring at them in horror. He was old – at least fifty years older than when he went to bed. How could he be so old? Not only that, he was sick, too. He picked up one medicine bottle after another, and saw that he had tablets for arthritis, high blood pressure, heart arrhythmia, ulcers and gout.
There was no doubt that they had been prescribed for him, either. Each bottle was clearly marked James Rook, although he had never heard of the doctor, S. Fabrizzi, MD, with an address on Sunset Boulevard.
Jim left the bathroom and shuffled across the corridor and into his living room. It smelled stale and stuffy, and when he switched on the lights he saw why. The windows were all covered in thick brown drapes, and the air-conditioning unit was turned off. He didn’t recognize any of the furniture. There was a heavy armchair, upholstered in worn brown velveteen; a grubby yellow couch with heaps of old newspapers on it; and a cheap upright dining chair with a red vinyl seat.
The carpet was filthy and threadbare, and there were stacks of magazines and newspapers everywhere, as well as brown paper grocery sacks from Ralph’s, dozens and dozens of them, all neatly folded.
Jim went across to the window and pulled back the drapes. Outside, on the balcony, there were five or six terracotta pots with dead plants in them, including a ghost-like yucca, and an ivy that trailed across the floor like the tentacles of a stranded squid.
He tried to switch on the air-conditioning, but the knob dropped off on to the floor, and when he looked closer he could see that the unit’s connecting wires were frayed and hanging adrift. He left the knob where it was. His back was too stiff for him to bend over and pick it up.
He limped slowly around the room. He knew where he was. He was still in his third-floor apartment on Briarcliff Road, although it looked as if he hadn’t redecorated it in twenty years or more. The walls were streaked with grimy gray condensation, and the chandelier was thickly furred with dust. It looked as though he hadn’t thrown anything away for twenty years, either. Not just newspapers and magazines and grocery sacks, but empty boxes of painkillers and indigestion tablets, as well as carefully creased candy wrappers and envelopes and flyers from local pizza restaurants.
He knew where this was, but he didn’t know when. It appeared to be sometime in his own future, but there was no way for him to tell if he was dreaming, or hallucinating, or if he was suffering from amnesia, and had lived through the past half-century day by day and year by year but had simply forgotten it all.
He turned around. He was wheezing with effort, and he made his way over to the heavy brown armchair. He was just about to sit down, however, when he realized that there was a white plastic cushion-cover on the seat, stained with yellow. So not only had he lost most of his hair, and not only was he suffering from anxiety attacks, and arthritis, and a half-dozen other complaints, but he was incontinent, too.
He stood swaying in the middle of the living room and he thought: If this is real, if I really have arrived at the age of eighty-plus and this is what my life is like, then I’m going to go back into that bathroom and take every single tablet on that shelf.
He started back toward the bathroom, but then he stopped, holding on to the back of the couch for support. He couldn’t count on it, but there might be a bottle of Fat Tire in the fridge to wash the tablets down his throat, if they were still brewing Fat Tire after all these years. If not, he would have to make do with soda or a glass of water, or whatever he could find.
He was halfway to the kitchen when he saw a dark gray blur crossing the kitchen doorway, as if somebody had flashed past it, so quickly that they were almost invisible. He heard the front door open, and for a moment he felt the briefest of warm drafts. Then he heard it close again.
‘Who’s that?’ he shouted, in that thin, reedy voice. God, he sounded like his own grandfather, George. ‘You come back here, whoever you are! You just come back here!’
He hurried as fast as he could manage into the hallway. The security chain beside the front door was hanging loose, and still swinging. He tugged open the door, which was stiff for lack of oil. Right next to it stood an umbrella stand with four or five walking sticks in it. He lifted one of them out, a heavy ebony cane with an elephant’s head carved on the top of it, and stepped out on to the landing.
‘Who’s there?’ he called out. ‘You come right back here and show yourself!’
The light at the far end of the landing was broken, so the steps that led down to the second story were swallowed in deep shadow. Jim strained his eyes to see if there was anybody there, but it was far too dark, and he suddenly realized that his eyesight wasn’t too good, either.
‘Whoever you are, you come out where I can see you!’ he demanded.
He waited, his lungs wheezing like a worn-out concertina, but there was no movement in the darkness. Whoever it was, they must be long gone. But as he turned to go back inside, he heard a slithering, scratching sound coming from the steps.
‘I hear you!’ he said. ‘I know you’re there! You come on out!’
He felt frail, and as vulnerable as if he were made of out of nothing but folded paper. He had to grip the railing with his left hand to keep himself steady. But for some reason he felt less afraid than he had ever felt in his life. And angrier, too.
‘Don’t think you can get away, you yegg!’ he shouted. ‘You come back here you son-of-a-bitch and show yourself!’
For over a quarter of a minute, all Jim could hear was distant traffic, and the rumble of a faraway airliner. Then he heard that scratching again, and that slithering, as if some kind of animal were slowly climbing the steps. He held the railing tightly in his left hand and lifted the ebony cane in his right. He realized now why he wasn’t afraid. He wasn’t afraid because he was so old, and he didn’t really care whether he lived or died. Less than a couple of minutes ago, he had even wanted to die.
But he also realized why he was so angry. Whoever had broken into his apartment had taken advantage of an old man’s vulnerability, his vulnerability. His age may mean that he was sick, and feeble, and incontinent, but he still deserved respect.
‘What?’ he demanded. ‘Are you chicken-shit or something?’ He swung the cane around and around, so that it whistled, even though his elbow gave a painful click every time he swung it. ‘Too damned scared to show yourself?’
It was then that he realized that two slanted yellow eyes were looking at him from just above the top step. He stopped swinging the cane and took two steps backward, until he was close to his open front door. The yellow eyes rose higher, as the creature climbed further up the steps. It was still in shadow, so Jim couldn’t yet see what kind of a creature it was, but he could tell that it was very big, and from the way it was steadily coming nearer, it didn’t seem to be afraid of him at
all.
He heard claws tip-tapping along the tiled floor toward him, and he was just about to stumble back into his apartment and slam the door when the creature stepped into the light. To his shock, it wasn’t a creature at all, but what appeared to be a woman. She was dressed in a shiny robe of slate-gray silk that reached right down to her feet, and which made a slithering sound as she walked. On her head she was wearing a tall black wide-brimmed hat, rather like the Puritans used to wear, but with a dark smoky veil underneath it. All that Jim could see of her face was that her eyes looked like two black smudges, more like holes than eyes, and that her skin was very white.
She stopped in front of his door, with both her hands tucked into her sleeves.
‘Erm . . . hi,’ said Jim. He couldn’t think of anything else.
The woman said nothing. The night breeze stirred her veil, and Jim thought that he saw her face change, as if it were a white screen on which different images were being projected. For a fleeting moment, it looked animal-like, a dog or a fox.
Jim cleared his throat. ‘Was that you in my apartment just now?’ he asked her. He was holding his cane tightly in both hands, in case she wasn’t as harmless as she looked. ‘If it was, I have to admit that you scared me.’
The woman was silent for a long time. Then she said, ‘Nomu palgayo. Mot chayo. Chamyonso, gumulkkwoyo.’ Her voice was high, but it was blurry and indistinct, like somebody talking in their sleep.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Jim. ‘I don’t understand you. What language is that?’
Again, the woman didn’t reply. Underneath her veil, her face appeared to alter, again and again, but it could have been nothing but the smoky chiffon, stirring in the wind.
‘Were you here, inside my kitchen?’ he repeated. ‘What were you looking for? What did you want?’ He paused. ‘Were you looking for me?’
Without a word, the woman pushed past him and into the open door of his apartment. Her silk robe slid against his hands and it was slippery and cold. ‘Hey!’ he protested. He took a step back and almost lost his balance. He lifted his cane, but what was he going to do, hit her with it? She slithered along the corridor until she reached his bedroom.
‘Excuse me, ma’am, but where exactly do you think you’re going?’ Jim asked her. ‘You really need to get out of here, now. Like, exit, stage right.’
She stood staring at him, as if she expected him to follow her. Then, without any further hesitation, she disappeared into his bedroom door.
Jim went after her. When he reached his bedroom, he saw that she was standing on the opposite side of his bed, waiting for him.
‘I don’t know what the hell you think you’re doing here,’ he told her. ‘I don’t have anything worth stealing, so far as I can make out.’
The woman drew her left arm out of her right sleeve and pointed stiffly to the bed. She was wearing gray leather gloves, but instead of having five separate fingers they were divided only in two, and each half was very long, more than two inches longer than a normal finger.
‘You want sex?’ Jim asked her. ‘I’m a little too decrepit for that, I’m afraid. Besides, I hardly know you.’
The woman continued to point at the bed with her gray cleft glove. Then she raised her right glove, and pointed at Jim.
‘You want me to lie down on the bed? Is that it?’
Still the woman didn’t speak, but she kept on rigidly pointing with both arms, as if she were sending a semaphore signal.
‘I think I’m going to call the police,’ Jim told her. ‘It seems to me like you’ve managed to escape from someplace that you seriously need to go back to.’
He went across to the nightstand and picked up the phone. Right next to it, there was a glass tumbler with a dental bridge soaking in it. Until now, Jim hadn’t realized that he had three molars missing at the back of his lower jaw.
He held up the receiver and said, ‘This is your last chance, OK? If you leave here nice and quiet, I’ll forget that you ever pushed your way in here. Otherwise, I’m sorry, it’s the cops.’
He waited, but the woman stayed where she was, still pointing.
‘I’m real sorry that I have to do this,’ he said. ‘It’s not like I want to get you into any trouble. But you don’t leave me any choice, do you?’
He prodded 911, but the instant he did it, the woman let out a screech that sounded like a hundred animals having their legs torn off – agonized, but hoarse with rage. It was so unexpected and so deafening that Jim staggered backward against the nightstand, and the bedside lamp toppled on to the floor.
The woman’s screeching went on and on, relentlessly, and she didn’t pause once to take a breath. As she screeched, she started to grow, both in height and in bulk. Underneath her veil, her face changed in shape, becoming narrower and longer and more pointed, like a fox, and behind the chiffon her eyes gleamed a septic yellow. Her black hat toppled backward, her veil fell away, and her gray silk robe burst open. Her gloves exploded to reveal four long claws on each of her hands. Now Jim could see that she wasn’t a woman at all, but a huge black-haired creature – a creature that became taller with every second, until its head was almost touching the bedroom ceiling.
It had a snout like a fox, and staring eyes like a fox, and it had pointed ears like a fox, too. But it also had curved incisors and two twisted black horns between its ears. It stank of wood smoke and incense and dried blood – the unmistakable stench of hell, no matter what religion had created it.
Jim knew that it was a demon, although he didn’t know its name or where it had come from or what it was looking for. He could guess, though. Almost all demons were hungry for human souls, because the more human souls they could devour, the more powerful they became, and the more pleasure they derived from their victims’ endless suffering. He stood in his shabby bedroom looking up at this black bristling creature and for the first time in his life he felt as if his insides had turned to water. He wasn’t afraid of dying. He didn’t relish it, but everybody had to die sometime and he had woken up tonight so old and sick. What terrified him was the prospect of his soul being trapped by this demon for ever, never knowing peace, never knowing an end to darkness and cruelty and pain. What terrified him was the prospect of being dragged around for eternity, with hooks in his intestines, jolting and bumping over the rough hot cinders of hell, screaming for mercy.
The creature gave another deafening screech, although this time it sounded less like a hundred tortured animals and more like a hundred tortured men. Jim ducked down and tried to dodge toward the door, but the creature swung its arm and hit him on the shoulder, tearing through his T-shirt and ripping his skin – a blow so hard that Jim was knocked sideways back on to the bed.
He tried to scramble across the bed to the opposite side, but the creature struck his other shoulder, and then his hip, and then his chest, so that he was winded. His T-shirt was in tatters and the bedsheet was sprayed with droplets of blood.
‘Get off me!’ he coughed. ‘Get the hell off me!’
But now the creature reared up at the end of the bed, snarling and spitting, with strings of mucus swaying from its lower jaw. It was still swelling larger and larger, and it felt to Jim as if it were filling up the whole bedroom. The stench of wood smoke and dried blood was overwhelming, and it filled his lungs with every gasping breath, almost choking him.
The creature leaned over him at an impossible angle, and he could feel its bristles prickling against his legs. Wincing with fear, he looked up into its face, and it was almost laughably grotesque, as if an oriental artist had set out to create the most hideous and frightening monster that he could. It looked as if a fox had mated with a bear, and the bear had mated with a bull, and all three of them had been possessed by some mad vengeful spirit that was screaming for human blood.
He closed his eyes tight, praying that the creature wouldn’t hurt him too much. The creature screeched again, and he could feel its chilly breath and its flying spit against his face.
&nb
sp; ‘Oh God,’ he said, between gritted teeth. ‘God, take care of me, won’t you?’
It was then that darkness fell on him, as if the night sky had collapsed like a huge black circus tent.
SEVEN
A voice very close to his ear said, ‘Jimmy?’
He opened one eye. It must have been at least five in the morning because the white calico blind was already beginning to brighten, and he could hear birds chirping outside his window. He opened the other eye, and turned his head, and there, lying so close to him that he could hardly focus on her, was Summer.
‘Summer?’ he croaked. His mouth felt parched.
‘Hey . . . you’re awake,’ she smiled, touching the tip of his nose with her finger.
He sat up. Summer was wearing a sleeveless yellow T-shirt and a pair of white satin shorts and that was all. She wasn’t wearing make-up, either. He had never seen her looking so fresh-faced and young. She looked more like a high-school cheerleader than a Hollywood pole-dancer.
‘What happened?’ he asked her. He held out both of his hands and turned them this way and that. No wrinkles, no liver-spots, no deeply furrowed fingernails. ‘God almighty, what did I do?’
Summer smiled and sat up, too. ‘You were screaming.’
‘Screaming?’ He looked down at his Mr Natural T-shirt. It was faded, but it wasn’t ripped, or spattered with blood.
Summer said, ‘Even Mrs LaFarge could hear you. She wanted me to call the paramedics, but I said you were probably having a nightmare, that’s all. I came up here and your door was wide open and I came in and found you on the bed. You looked like you were having a fight with somebody. You know – waving your arms around, kicking your legs.’
‘And screaming?’
Summer nodded. ‘I didn’t know you had it in you. Like, eat your heart out, what was his name? That singer. I think he’s dead now.’
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