Zod Wallop

by William Browning Spencer

  Translating between the case history social-speak lines, it was clear to Helen that Clyde Gold and his wife, Nadine, were trailer park trash.

  What was curious about Rene’s situation was that she should be in a ritzy place like Harwood. Someone had been paying her way for several years, the funds administered by a Newark law firm, and her actual benefactor was a mystery. Rene herself did not know—or at least said she didn’t—where the money for her treatment came from.

  Emily Engel had always been as she was now. She had come into the world without much interest in it and had received a variety of diagnoses from sage physicians of the body and mind and none of it had meant a damn to Emily Engel. Her parents had died in an automobile accident when she was twelve, and she had been adopted by her uncle, a man named Robert Furman—Helen found the name vaguely familiar—who had cared for her privately before discovering that the task was no small one and so had sent her on to Harwood.

  Helen pushed the legal pad away and got up and went into the bathroom. She brushed her teeth slowly, methodically, a habit developed in childhood when a dental hygiene film frightened her into elaborate ablutions.

  She thought about them. It was a strange and tragic crew that Harry had disappeared with. That, in itself, might not be wildly coincidental; after all, their meeting ground was a psychiatric hospital. But what they had in common was deeper than that. It was, Helen thought, a condition of isolation, of retreat. Emily had fled at birth, had never greeted the world. Rene had retreated into the dark closet of addiction. Paul Allan had hidden in a fog of red rage. Raymond Story was convinced that he had never properly returned from a watery death, that he was exiled to an alternate world. And Harry…Harry’s retreat had been so abrupt, so cruel.

  It had occurred the day of the funeral. Morganson’s Funeral Home had been packed, for Harry and Jeanne were a gregarious couple and had many friends. Helen had been talking to Jeanne’s mother, a woman ill-equipped for tragedy, who dealt with the horror by talking tirelessly about a host of inconsequential subjects.

  When Helen had first arrived at the funeral home, she had found Harry alone, outside, smoking a cigarette. She had embraced him, offered condolences, and asked where Jeanne was. He said she was inside, with her parents. He added—and it was later that this seemed ominous—that he thought funerals were barbaric. He did not believe in religious ceremonies, he said, and while some people felt that rituals were a way of dealing with grief, he felt they simply showed the true futility of any attempt to “pretty-up” death.

  It was a strangely intellectual speech, and Helen had studied Harry’s pale, twisted countenance and thought that he would need to find professional help if he were to survive.

  “A child’s coffin is an awful thing,” he had said. “Cremation is really the only civilized alternative, but Jeanne—”

  He had stopped talking, crushed the cigarette in the grass, and walked into the funeral home.

  And Helen had been talking to Jeanne’s mother when Jeanne interrupted them. It was Helen that Jeanne wanted to talk to.

  “Harry’s left,” she said.

  “Left.”

  “Randall says he saw him walking down the street, heading toward town.”

  Helen suggested that he would be back, had simply needed a walk to calm himself, but, in her heart, Helen felt that Jeanne’s fear was justified. Helen suspected that Harry would not return for any portion of the funeral, and when Helen held Jeanne in her arms as she wept by the graveside, Helen hated Harry for the selfishness of his despair and knew that the marriage was shattered.

  Helen no longer hated Harry, knowing he had been beyond rationality or decency that day and now despised himself for the memory of his own desertion.

  Helen Kurtis saw herself in the mirror and thought that there were probably few sights more dismal than an old woman brushing her teeth and weeping.

  Chapter 18

  DR. ROALD PEAKE sat at his desk, smoking two cigarettes at once, lost in Zod Wallop. He no longer read the words. He knew them by heart. He stared at the drawings, watercolors that at first seemed crude roughs (this was, after all, a draft) but that, with careful study, yielded incredible detail. You could see the hairs on the Swamp Grendel’s tongue, and, if you narrowed your eyes and lowered your head so that the page filled your entire field of vision, you could catch peripheral images that were not, in fact, on the page. You could see all of the Duke of Flatbend when the page itself showed only his polished boots, his heavily medallioned chest, and one thin hand reaching out to shake the hand of the newly arrived Lydia.

  Roald Peake was presently studying an illustration of the Hall of Atrocities (Lydia was being led down it by the devious Lady Ermine), and Peake was certain that he could discern, beyond the window of the page, two apocalypse lizards fighting over a severed hand.

  The intercom buzzed for perhaps the third time, and, reluctantly, Peake surfaced and reached his hand toward the button. “Yes?”

  “Mr. Bahden’s here, Dr. Peake.”

  “All right. Send him in.”

  Peake closed the book and dropped it into the top drawer of his desk. His office was small and white (white desk, white carpet, white walls), and for a moment he thought the walls were translucent, and that the frozen bodies of ill-behaved children were tumbled every which way in the ice. Angel wings were attached, most realistically, to the naked children. This was a decorative motif, and Lord Draining’s peers were lavish in their praise of this brilliant concept that served as a warning to hyperactive children while gratifying the aesthetic sense with a vision of soaring cherubs.

  Peake blinked and this vision was gone. He was used to such moments now, and, if they had briefly troubled him, they no longer were a source of any discomfort. Indeed, he was fascinated by these afterimages and wished they might stay longer so that he could study them and gain some insight into their meaning. The only thing that was the least bit troubling about this phenomenon was his nose. His nose actually seemed to have elongated, as in the caricature of Lord Draining, and this didn’t appear to be a simple, lingering hallucination. His hands confirmed this lengthening. He thought of asking his secretary if she noticed anything unusual about his physiognomy, but the question itself might influence her answer and so, for the time being, he decided to say nothing. The effect wasn’t, in any event, unflattering. He rather fancied it made him look more intelligent and debonair.

  Karl Bahden entered the room smiling. He was polishing something with a handkerchief. Was that blood? Another afterimage?

  “We’ve found where Blaine has stashed the group,” he said.

  “Ah,” Peake said, standing up. “Wonderful.”

  “We would have found them sooner if our own security hadn’t been compromised. You won’t like this part.”

  Peake didn’t. He listened with growing anger while Karl told how Blaine’s people had found a leak at Peake Pharmaceuticals and so kept Blaine posted of the search.

  “It looks like they even have photographs of this first book, the one you came across at Tate’s mansion.”

  Peake felt his hands clutch the top drawer. “My God!”

  Karl was still talking. “Turns out Blaine has Gainesborough and the rest on a floor at the main building in Newark. We looked there, sure, but they knew when we were looking, knew how to misdirect us. I figure—”

  “Who?” Peake said.

  “The leak?” Karl said, smiling.

  Peake nodded. Karl stood up, walked briskly across the white carpet, and dropped the knife onto the white stone desktop. It spun brightly. He stuffed the handkerchief back into the pocket of his suit jacket and rubbed the back of his neck. “You’ll be needing someone new to take dictation,” he said.

  The morning of the next day, the security guard in the lobby of GroMel’s Newark office looked up to see a tall man in a suit smiling at her.

  “May I help you?” the security guard asked. She had seen this man before—not smiling—in a photo, she thought. Inst
antly wary, her hand moved toward the console that would summon Akerman and the others.

  “Don’t,” he said.

  She nodded. “All right.” She couldn’t remember the man’s name, but she knew him now. He was freelance, expensive.

  “I do not approve of women security officers,” he said, leaning forward, touching her silver teardrop earring. He caught her wrist before her hand reached the console.

  With her free hand, she unsnapped the holster, touched the butt of the revolver.

  “You have already been overrun,” he said. “A very toxic gas has killed your entire team, with the exception of a certain Kellerman who is, I believe, on sick leave today. And Kellerman isn’t to be trusted in any event, at least, that’s my opinion.”

  She did not move.

  “Oh, I’m telling the truth,” he said. He leaned across the desk and flipped three switches. The monitors flickered, revealing new rooms. In one, a uniformed body was sprawled across a desk. The second monitor showed an empty room. The third showed two more inanimate bodies: a middle-aged woman slumped in a chair, a bald man draped across the chair’s back and leaning toward his companion as though prepared to whisper something wanton in her ear.

  “I would like you to dial this number,” he said. He handed her the small slip of paper. “Think only of dialing this number,” he said, “and you might yet escape my disapproval.”

  She lifted the receiver and dialed.

  The man came out of the executive bedroom and smiled apologetically. “Too much coffee,” he said. “That’s some bathroom. You could put a mariachi band in there and it wouldn’t be crowded.”

  Blaine wasn’t in the mood for this. “You were going to tell me good news, about the Underwood litigation.”

  “Yes, of course.” He was a young, boyish fellow, this lawyer. Why, Blaine wondered, hadn’t Watson, Wilkons, and Ware sent old Ware, as usual? Ware knew how to be deferential. Years of toadying up to big-money accounts had made Ware the ultimate sycophant. Maybe Ware had died.

  Blaine didn’t care for this young, brash pup. He seemed too pleased with himself, too at ease. He was talking. A phone rang.

  Blaine was momentarily confused. Where…

  The young man opened his briefcase and took out the phone. He flipped it open, brought it to his ear, and said, “Yes.”

  He only spoke once more, saying “yes” again. He put the phone in the briefcase, snapped the case shut, and walked toward the desk.

  The impertinence of the boy, Blaine thought. Taking a phone call here. Ware would hear of this. Watson, Wilkons, and Ware weren’t the only lawyers in town.

  Blaine looked up. The arrogant young lawyer was smiling, heading toward the door. Impertinence upon impertinence. “Something’s come up,” he said. “I’m very sorry, but there’s an emergency. I’ll get back to you.”

  “Young man!” Blaine roared. “What in hell—”

  The door closed. Blaine came up out of his chair and raced across the carpet, quickly covering the distance. The door appeared to be stuck; he tugged on the handle with both hands, rocked back on his heels, rattled the door, howled.

  Goddamn.

  He turned back to the desk, the phone. He stopped then, saw the briefcase lying there on the carpet.

  The briefcase exploded, transformed into a dirty white cloud that rose up, expanding.

  Oh, shit. Blaine held his breath, turned. Get to the bedroom, the phone in there… A second explosion—and a roiling wall of mist obscured the open doorway.

  Blaine closed his eyes and felt the hot, biting cloud caress his face. He knew something about this sort of thing, knowledge gleaned from a military project here, some covert CIA thing there. His lungs ached. And he knew what would happen if he tried to breathe.

  Harry sat in group listening to the girl, Rene, shout denials. The counselor, that sadist Mitford, was grilling her about her father. “You wanted to have sex with him, didn’t you?” Mitford was saying.

  “No!” Rene was shouting back, lying, of course, because any therapist will tell you that everyone wants to have sex with everyone else and that the symptoms many adults exhibit (compulsive/obsessive behavior, depression, an inability to remember the names of presidents) are sure signs of forgotten sexual encounters—often with relatives or extraterrestrials.

  Rene looked quite beautiful, her eyes glistening, her cheeks shiny with tears of anger, her lips bruised seductively by shame.

  “What about the Cold One?” Mitford asked, leaning forward. “What exactly is this Cold One? You were saying you had bad dreams about him?”

  “Yeah,” Rene said. “Anyone has a dream about the Cold One, I don’t guess it is going to be a good dream.”

  Allan laughed at this, and Mitford turned to him. “Allan, do you have dreams about the Cold One?”

  “No.” Allan looked away quickly.

  “Harry, what exactly is the Cold One? He’s a character in your children’s book, Zod Wallop, isn’t he?”

  “Yes,” Harry said, “He’s the deadly ghost created when the Two Vile Contenders clash.”

  Mitford nodded. “Yes, I remember now. Pretty bleak, as I recall.”

  “Yes.”

  “How do you explain that all your friends here are so enamored of this Zod Wallop?”

  Harry shrugged. “I don’t know—”

  “Excuse me,” Mitford said, “We have a group in session here.”

  Harry was thrown off, until he realized that the counselor wasn’t addressing him.

  Two men in business suits had entered the room. The taller of the two men had his hands in his pockets.

  “It’s okay,” he said. “Please continue. Sounds interesting.”

  Mitford stiffened. “I’m afraid I’ll have to call Security,” he said.

  Security, Harry thought, should have kept these men from sauntering in here in the first place. Something was amiss.

  “We really are—” Mitford said, and a dark hole appeared in the middle of his forehead, accompanied by a polite cough as though a librarian were trying to get one’s attention.

  Mitford leaned sideways and fell, chair clattering.

  The man was already turning with the gun. “I don’t want to shoot anyone else,” he said. “I had a bad experience with a therapist once; I suppose I was acting out, just now. I apologize. I don’t want to harm any of the rest of you. I just want you to come with me.”

  They walked down the hall. Harry was in the lead. Behind Harry, Raymond was pushing Emily. Allan and Rene walked side by side, with the gunmen following in the rear.

  They were getting in the elevator when Allan screamed, turned and grabbed both of the men. “Go!”

  “No!” Rene screamed back, but Raymond jerked her into the elevator and pressed the button to close the door.

  Emily’s wheelchair spun in a quick circle, and she would have toppled out had Harry not caught her. He looked up, holding the girl in his arms, and saw that Allan had fallen to the floor with both men, the three of them rolling and shouting.

  “Jesus!” Rene shouted, “We’ve got to go back. We can’t leave Allan.”

  “Lord Allan has chosen to aid us,” Raymond said, shifting into his loftiest manner. “It would be poor manners to refuse the gift.” Raymond punched the button that would take them to the top floor.

  When the elevator stopped, Raymond said, “We need a key”—he tapped the keyhole—”in order to reach the roof. Does anyone have such a key?”

  Rene looked disgusted. “What do you think, asshole?”

  “You are forgetting that I am a wizard,” Raymond said. “In Zod Wallop, I am the Wizard Mettle.”

  “Oh, that’s great news,” Rene said.

  Mettle? Harry thought. The Wizard Mettle was a buffoon, inept and windy, a parody of New Age pomposity and fuzzy thinking. Harry hadn’t had Raymond in mind, and he wondered what it was that made Raymond see himself in the role.

  “I have a key,” Raymond said. He took it from his pocket and inse
rted it in the lock. It turned. The elevator hummed, shook, and rose. Raymond bowed.

  “That old guy!” Rene said. “That weird thousand-year-old janitor with the dirty hair and the crazy snow boots. That’s why you were always talking to him. You swiped his fucking key! Hey, Raymond. You are sharper than you look.”

  “My Lady, your conclusion is cruel. I did not steal his key. A miracle has occurred,” Raymond said.

  “Yeah, a miracle,” Rene said.

  “I call it a miracle when a despised and much abused old man whose lot has inured him to the suffering of others suddenly shakes off his chains and strikes a blow for freedom and decency and with no incentive other than compassion gives us his key to freedom.”

  Raymond smiled grandly.

  “Okay,” Rene said. “Let’s haul ass, Saint Story.”

  They came out on the roof, into sunlight, and Raymond lifted Emily from the wheelchair. “There is a fire escape—I’ve seen it from the rec room—that will take us within debarking distance of the roof of a building which, I believe, will furnish us egress to the street.”

  They followed Raymond to the side of the building and, at his urging, eased over the ledge and dropped to the stairs. Raymond lowered Emily to Harry. He must have seen some anxiety in Harry’s eyes, for he paused and said, “Fear not, Lord Gainesborough. Blodkin watches over us. We shall navigate these stairs with ease, and yonder building’s office workers will offer no hindrance to our progress.”

  Raymond was absolutely correct.

  On the street, they hailed a cab.

  Andrew Blaine sat on the carpet, his back propped against his desk, his eyes closed. He held the mouthpiece firmly over his nose and mouth, breathing the oxygen methodically, as though the action of his lungs had ceased to be an involuntary function. A devout man, he thanked God for his emphysema.

  He could not judge how much time had passed, perhaps half an hour, perhaps longer. He had fumbled under the desk, found the red button, and pressed it. Help should have arrived immediately, and its absence suggested that things were very wrong at GroMel. Help would come, though, eventually. The button would summon off-site aid. He had only to wait. He was glad that Gloria Gill hadn’t been with him during this attack. He was fond of her and would have been saddened by her death. He thought of her sweet roundness, the toothpaste whiteness of her flesh as he peeled the black garments from her, the pocked scars of other love bites, and he was amused at how desire could stir in the midst of danger.