A drink sounded superb. It had been a long drive, longer than expected. Later, upon reflection, I would realize something was odd about that thought. Something about the quality, the texture. The thought, it seemed, did not originate in me.
Nevertheless, I ordered. I felt light, happy. I drank. I ordered another. Had that, too. Felt fine. Finer than fine. Relieved. The strange events of the past day left me. Hazily, I decided it was all a trick. Charles’s dilemma. The rabbit fella. The spirits. Just dreams.
A broad sat down next to me. We ordered drinks, bumped gums, enjoyed each other’s company.
On our way up to my room (I’ll spare you the indecencies) my thoughts ramped up in intensity. One second I was focused on our conversation, then . . . fuzz, or noise. Like radio static. Then the voices came, like I was tuning in, finding a station on the dial. They became jumbled, careened wildly inside my skull. I itched uncontrollably. I needed to run away. My body rumbled. My hands vibrated.
Then—one thought, clear as day, rang out above the rest: “A drink! Quickly!”
There it was: the insatiable urge for rotgut. More of it. Gallons. If I didn’t get it in my body right then and there, I was going to fall down and die.
I must have it! Now!
I ran down the hall, away from that poor girl (I never got her name), bolted down the stairs—never mind the elevator, man, get the liquor!—skidded left into the dining room, waved madly to the bartender, and by the time I reached his side he held my whiskey in his white-gloved hand.
I took it in a single gulp and demanded a double. I drank it, then another. And another, immediately on top of that one. One by one the glasses thudded on the bar top, and patrons of the hotel began to stop and watch.
After my seventh drink the good bartender refused to serve me. The anger I felt! How could he refuse? Didn’t he know that I needed a drink right there—that seven would not suffice? Without his permission, I leapt over the counter and swiftly drank damn near an entire bottle of hooch.
I don’t remember falling. I remember nothing of the tube down my throat, the vomit, the doctors, the blood. Nothing.
Two days later I awoke in a hospital bed. Had it not been for my good business standing, I’d have been tossed into an ordinary asylum with the schizophrenics and other defectives. Imagine that—a man of my caliber!
A round doctor with a crooked nose visited me. His name was Doctor Leclair. He said he’d seen many alcoholic cases, and he gave me a brief rundown of various medical treatments—all of which I refused.
I told him whatever had come over me was surely gone now; besides, I wouldn’t have a drop until I was safely back in my own home. After all, this was only the first time anything so strange had happened to me. I was fine. Perhaps it was the time of day (a person’s temperature drops later in the day, requiring him to warm up), or maybe it was the stress of the situation with my brother, but I was no alcoholic.
I made no connection whatsoever between this unfortunate event and what Charles had told me. It must have been too horrific to consider. I was too tired, too stressed out, I told myself. This wouldn’t happen again, right?
After making sure my hospital records would be kept sealed from any business associates, I showered off the stench of embarrassment and left. It was time to see the man with biscuit hands.
Chapter Eleven
After Folsom Street there’s an invisible poverty threshold where the decently well-off end and the poor begin. When I crossed it this time, the mood grew darker, heavier. The day had been fine on the sunnier side of town, but here in the Tenderloin it felt eternally cloudy, misty, uninviting.
I approached an old building whose address matched that on the slip of paper. A single door in the wall of red brick marked the entrance. I flung it open and a rolling wave of dust unfurled upon the steep entryway like dirt from a rug. Light hadn’t permeated the stairwell in some time.
On my way to the apartment I must have disturbed someone on a lower floor, for a frail hag coughed her way out of her apartment and spat words at me between her gingivitis-inflamed gums. Ignoring her, I knocked on the door at the very top.
A person with scabs like scales opened the door. Half his face was blocked by the door frame. I looked past him and into the haze of black and smoke that saturated the residence, when someone’s thin, rickety voice sprang out of the wild blackness. “Come in!”
The inhabitants apparently hadn’t heard of lamps or sunlight. All happiness had long since been sucked from the room, which now held only the quality of homesickness. There were several men inside—dirty and decaying skid rogues who lurked around the corners and walls and who were reduced to mere outlines and shadows.
The silent scab-faced creature at the door led me to a long couch in the middle of the large, oblong room, where dope fiends sat around and bought their fixes. With long, floppy fingers he motioned me to sit down on the well-worn cushions alongside the dirt, dust, and bugs.
In front of me, on a facing couch, but separated only by a few feet, was Lazarus, the one I was there to see. He sat in its groomed recesses, and had reinforced his territory with stacks of blankets, books, writings, and food crumbles and bottles.
He was the dope-peddling king, Lazarus, and here was his throne.
I couldn’t tell where the man ended and the couch began, so deep he sat. Though I could see only a little in the swamp of darkness, his eyes shone bright green and yellow. His body was gaunt, skeletal.
I heard liquid dripping. First a trickle, then a forceful stream. He closed his eyes and let out a soft sigh. King Lazarus grunted, shifted, licked his lips. I heard the sound of a moist hole spreading open followed by a hearty plop onto metal. The scabby hombre from the door waited patiently behind the king, and when the sounds had stopped, he bent over and removed the portable toilet from under the long couch. He left, presumably to dispose of the waste.
When he returned he lit a candle, keeping guard a few feet away. Enough space to give some awkward sense of privacy but not enough to matter.
The yellow flame illuminated deep pockets in the king’s face. I could discern only some of his features. I traced the line of light from the crown of his head downward. His scalp was made equally of hair, scars, and pus. Dry flakes of skin made a patchwork quilt of his face. Deep grooves ran down his neck like dry riverbeds, perhaps from some long-lost battle in a foreign country, but the longest ran lengthwise through his eyebrow, giving him a demented, Mad Hatter-esque appearance.
I looked down at his hands. Charles was right. The fingers were gone or shortened to nubs. The tops and bottoms had folded over on themselves, giving them a doughlike appearance. Nails sprouted from a few of the distorted fingers, but they were freakish, green and full of gashes down the middle.
His hands resembled mittens, the kind you wear that cover your whole hand.
“What do you need?”
I uncovered my mouth and nose and made sure the gaseous smell had moved on. I reminded him of Charles, and brought him up to speed on our current situation.
“My brother,” I said, “is trapped in our home and now refuses to leave.”
Lazarus smiled faintly. “I forget sometimes that a whole world exists out there beyond this little apartment. I find it best to stay isolated nowadays.” He suddenly frowned and murmured something to himself. “It’s safer that way. For everybody. Your brother—his world will contract like mine.”
Silence. For a moment Lazarus stared off into the darkness, then he looked at me with renewed enthusiasm, suddenly snapping out of his lethargy. He raised his biscuit hand to his lips, rubbing it against the old, white crust that had gathered around his kisser.
He seemed to be having an inner debate or dialogue. Finally, he asked: “Have you had any . . . compulsions yet?”
“Compulsions?”
“The feeling of needing a drink right away, this very moment? Perhaps it’s midnight, and you’ve been at the bar, and the owner is about to close. Do you feel a strong
urge to get more liquor from the store and drink it right away?”
“No, nothing like that,” I lied, clearing my throat. (I promise, Dear Reader, I didn’t realize I was lying at the time. I wasn’t in control—but I’ll get to that more shortly.)
“Because when a man begins to drink like your brother, like me, the spirits demand more and more. The malady is progressive. And fatal. The drinking must continue, and becomes more and more excessive. It will not stop. The important part to understand is that it is not you who is doing this. It is them. They live inside you. And they will run you until you cannot take any more liquor. Why they are inside only some of us I haven’t a clue. There is only one solution . . .”
He pulled out a small green vial from under his blanket and stared at it longingly. “Potion might be the right word. It was given to me many, many years ago. It isn’t important who. Just another afflicted chump, like me, like your brother. Likely this has been handed down for some time. But this is the last of it. I drank some, and the rest I passed on to others. When the sufferer drinks it, it pushes the spirits out into the physical world. They become real flesh and blood creatures, who I believe can be destroyed.”
“The spirits,” I asked, “what are they?”
Lazarus shrugged. “Does it really matter?” He stretched back, looked at the pockmarked, cobwebbed ceiling. “We are better off not knowing. Not thinking about them at all. Our mental images could very well call them into consciousness. It is best not to understand.”
“You said they could be destroyed?”
The king’s eyes lit up again. He motioned me to move forward, and we leaned a little closer together. His breath stank. “At some point after I drank the potion I began seeing them. A few months later, I think. Horrible, evil things. Childhood nightmares came to life. I was told, as I told your brother, never to look at them, never to stare at them. Because when you look . . . they move closer. Hence, what I told your brother: Never stare at who goes there . . .
“For a long time—a couple years after first seeing them—I avoided staring at them directly. It went fine for a while. However, I developed a deep phobia of normal living. Life grew tremendously complicated. Others may not have had the troubles I did. Why it was so difficult for me to simply ignore them I cannot say; I know only that I began avoiding whole sections of certain streets, or of my home, where I’d seen them out of the corner of my eye.
“My nerves began to melt. I got the heebie-jeebies, most days. Unable to hold a conversation. Mind you, none of the things had come very close to me yet—they were still in my periphery. But for me that was worse. And one day their proximity was too much to bear.
“Perhaps I should have been more grateful by their expulsion. Granted, I had forgotten the terror of constant drinking. But after years of them needling me, and slowly gaining power, I had had enough.
“I chose a place, a time. I stood, back to a wall, and waited for one to appear. It was a big fat slob with no shirt, his skin covered in red blisters, like he’d been roasting in the sun for weeks. I ran up to him, grabbed his neck, spun him around, and threw him against the wall. I squeezed the life out of him, but then—” Lazarus held up his big, red, folded biscuit-looking hands, raw from years of scratching and irritation. “When he fell to the ground, my hands had burnt off. They turned red as the fading sun, then black. In time the blisters came off . . . So, can they be destroyed? Most surely they can. But—” He showed me his stumps, emphasizing his point. “You must not touch them.
“I can no longer look after myself. I’ve sat here, in this seat, for ten years now, while my legs wither and die. I’ve waited for someone strong enough, who is not yet entirely afflicted, to erase my demons from this world forever.”
I blinked. “How many more are there? How many follow you?”
“Many.”
“Are they here now?”
Lazarus said nothing, only leaned farther back in his chair and let his eyes wander around the room.
As I scanned the apartment I realized there were even more dope fiends scattered around the place than I saw previously. Perhaps they’d just appeared, or perhaps I hadn’t noticed them hiding in the darkness. Some were hidden in strange crevices or crouched inside bookshelves behind the piles of wood and stacks of trash.
They all seemed to be concentrating on Lazarus and me.
Then, as if struck in the head, I understood. Lazarus grinned. He knew that I knew.
The people scattered about seemed to know, too, and they edged in closer.
For they were his demons, Dear Reader.
“Take this,” said Lazarus, holding between his doughy hands the small vial of liquid. “It’s the last of it. It was given to me. I won’t need it. But you, you might. When you leave here, if the compulsion to drink comes, drink it before your mind talks you out of it. For the alcohol will surely kill you faster than the spirits. At least this way you’ll have a fighting chance.”
The ghouls were beginning to encircle us.
“If they do become completely physical beings, be ruthless. Murder them quickly. You must kill them in the flesh. That is the secret. But don’t touch them! I was unable to do it, but there is hope with you. I can feel it!
“Reach under my blanket,” he whispered feverishly. “Do it!”
I felt cold, hard metal. He grabbed my shoulders with both stumps, pulled me in so close I could smell the pus-filled cavities where his teeth used to be. “Use this gun to free us. Murder them. Murder them all.”
And suddenly, in an avalanche of insane joy, he grinned and leapt to his feet. With one swing of his dough-hand a candle went flying into a drape, and ropes of flame gleefully ascended to the ceiling.
He turned, yelled into the darkness: “Once more unto the breach, dear friends!”
And with that he ran screaming, arms flailing, into the small horde of spirit-men who’d amassed near the kitchen. He tackled two of them, knocking them backward with full force, cracking one’s head against the countertop on the way down.
Meanwhile, the hellish fire swirled and consumed everything, spreading quickly around the large room. Smoke filled my lungs.
I turned to run out the front door but was flanked by two demon goons on my right. Without thought, I raised the gat and fired twice. I hit them in the soft parts of the belly; they landed backwards with the sound of a deflated balloon escaping thin lips.
A third demon sprung seemingly from the wall, and had the body of a full-grown man and the face of a small child. Was it Lazarus as a young boy? I lowered the gun but heard the king’s voice ring out from behind the kitchen wall: “Shoot! Shoot now!”
The boy opened his impossibly large mouth, vomiting blood and bile. I fired again, this bullet exploding through his neck. I’ve never killed anyone, but remember, these weren’t people. These were something else. These were invaders.
I ran to the door, fumbled for the knob. The smoke was too thick to see much, but somehow I broke free the door from its lock, made it outside, and turned to slam it shut, when—
A charred biscuit hand thrust between the door and its jamb. Lazarus. The fire had thrown black soot over his face, burnt off the rest of his skin on his shiny forehead. His raccoon eyes flashed beneath layers of decades-old dirt that had accumulated on his face.
“Thank you!” was all he got out.
Then the home belched, a great rush of fire scorching my eyebrows. It engulfed Lazarus completely. He shoved me outside, then quickly slammed the door and buttressed his body against it, shielding me from the demons within.
I held tight to the doorknob, pulled with all my might. I’m not sure when the rattling and screaming inside stopped, because the smoke that billowed under the door eventually knocked me out—and there was nothing but darkness.
Chapter Twelve
Days later I awoke in a hospital bed. I had suffered monoxide poisoning and a great gash to the head, though I still can’t remember what blow had caused it. After convalescing for two
days, I left a free man. The simple alibi of trying to break down the door to help save those inside sufficed for an explanation to the police and hospital administration.
There was also my stature as a prominent businessman. I’m not ashamed to admit it, though I acknowledge my privilege.
As I recovered in a bath at the hotel, my mind went to my brother and his ghouls. Who were the spirits? Could they have been real people at some point? Was the rabbit man some cosmic monster that just wandered into my brother’s body, or was he born inside? How did the spirits pick their host?
And were they after me now?
I picked up the little green vial of potion and sloshed it about. The liquid, whatever it was, was thicker and heavier than water. The little brown flakes and strands mixed with it resembled embryos in a muddy tube.
It was 11 p.m. when I dried off. I had thought about driving back to Charles that night, though I opted for one more night to recover.
I decided to go for a short walk. Little did I know what was in store for me, and how the infection was spreading throughout my body and mind, driving me to make decisions, like the one to stay that night.
Had I left right then, ignored my thoughts, would things have turned out differently?
The past ten years have seen some of the most exceptional industrial growth in all of the country, San Francisco being no exception. Guys were working day and night, razing buildings, erecting new ones, laying foundation. On every block rebar sprouted like weeds from concrete slabs.
Two miles from the hotel I passed by a graveyard being removed to make way for some new building. Night men carried out coffin after coffin. A crypt, a monument had been felled by their sledgehammers, stones and debris scattered across the ground.
I was glum, gloomy, depressed. A group of high-class men and women half-stumbling through the street passed. A gorgeous dame in her twenties, with a tight red dress on, turned back for a glance at me. As her group turned to the right to enter a tavern, she paused, flicked the ash from her cigarette, and winked at me, inviting me to join.
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