Jazz and booze flowed freely in the upscale venue. One of those places where everyone still dressed in big frills and fringed beaded dresses. The dish had made her way to the back of the bar, past the band and dancing girls.
As I stood there, taking the place in, debating how to make my approach, a little thought—a voice—came into my head. Calmly it said, “A whiskey would do you just fine.”
Yes, of course. A whiskey. Perfect. Nothing like a drink in a bar. It had been a long day, a long week, a long life. I deserved a drink. It made sense. It fit. It would do the trick. Not once did it occur to me to rethink this plan. None of my brother’s experience nor my night a few days before remotely entered my mind.
I ordered. I received. I drank.
Immediately my head cleared, my chest relaxed, my breathing came easier. I felt better, empowered, invigorated. Just what I needed. There’s no other way to describe it, even now.
I glanced around the tavern to find my new dame. Yes, there she was—in the back. I tightened my tie, set my feet straight on the floor and began walking toward her. (I didn’t think about it then, but I’m realizing now that my sudden infatuation with her must have sprung from the things inside me, to get me inside the bar and in a position to nibble one. Sneaky bastards, they’ll use anything.)
After just a few steps, my body stopped, all by itself. I had meant to walk to the back of the bar, but my legs locked up on me like a car brake.
My mind raced. I told myself to keep walking—tried to will the strength with all my power—but nothing I did could wrench my legs from the floor in the direction I wanted. They would not obey.
Then, a hazy thought invaded my brain: A drink.
My feet turned; my legs followed. So did my torso, my arms, my brain. My body took me back to the bar and slapped a fin down.
How to explain the sensation of being trapped in your own body? To lose control over your legs? In a panic I thought my automatic functions, like my heartbeat, would immediately cease. My vision would go dark. My knees would buckle and give out, sending me face first into the ground, grinding my nose and eyes into the cement and leaving me paralyzed for the rest of my short, miserable life.
Five drinks later, I was sobbing uncontrollably at my barstool. I tried to leave, but still my poor body wouldn’t move.
“Please, no more!” I screamed. But it was only to myself, in my own brain, and nobody heard me. Pleading only sank me deeper in the abyss. The more I struggled, the harsher and faster the punishment—the drinks—came. Why the bartender kept serving me I do not know; all I know is that I kept going. I had to.
Four more drinks. Then another. I was lit up.
When would the madness stop? The others inside me were still not satisfied. To keep on going would have surely meant a swift poisoning. Still, they ordered. The voice became my car, my chauffeur for the evening. It was the engine, and it drove me.
I remember nothing after that, and four days later I awoke in the same hospital bed I’d left twice before.
Chapter Thirteen
The good French doctor, who had come to the U.S. to study medicine, stood over me, explaining that I’d been in a kind of alcoholic coma.
“As a doctor, I used to be embarrassed to admit defeat,” he told me. “I’ve seen many, many alcoholic men and women wheeled through my doors. Some of them I’ve been able to treat. Others, well . . . And you, you are one of the worst cases I’ve ever seen. If you continue to drink—even once more!—I am certain you will die, or go insane and need to be locked up.”
I asked him my chances. He shrugged. “I’ve seen a hundred just like you. Almost every one, to my knowledge, has drank against my advice. I suggest giving your house key to a loved one, signing yourself into this hospital, and removing yourself from society for six to nine months. You have to live without drinking, and that is certainly impossible for you right now.”
I told him that was quite impossible, my being locked up in a mental hospital.
At this point five young orderlies entered the room, moving swiftly and arranging themselves in what I can only describe as a purposefully menacing configuration.
“This is my staff,” said the doctor. “They handle mental illness cases here at the hospital. The ones who are . . . committed. The schizophrenics and pedophiles.” He leaned in. “The alcoholics, too. It is my opinion that you should stay here for close observation. And since you are incapable of changing your own mind, I will try fear.
“You are a menace to society. Your drinking is dangerous to others. You are putting others at risk with your selfish behavior. If you leave, so be it. But should you return, ever again, you will stay here. I am under authority of the state government to keep multiple offenders off the streets. Here you will remain, under my close watch, like any common retard. Forever.”
After some time I nodded and thanked the doctor. Then he and his henchmen left, and I quietly gathered my things and signed myself out of my unwanted accommodations.
Chapter Fourteen
When we were children, my parents took us to the most extravagant zoo in Asia. A thousand animals lived within a royal palace, caged and in shame.
Naturally I was curious about the animal kingdom, but I was split between siding more with the animals or with their human captors. While I loved the zoos, a certain empathy took root in me, silently wishing that the animals would that very night break free of their cages and run out into the world, free at last. Children understand animals; it’s no coincidence that children’s toys are all made to resemble them. Presently I found this memory returning, and the realization that I too was trapped in a cage, for whoever (or whatever) had manifested itself inside me to stare at and control me.
My bucket rounded a bend off Fell Street, hit a pothole, kept going. The city was busy as I left for the coast; it was Monday morning, and everyone was getting to work. Massive construction cranes and lifts were setting men high above the street in shaky scaffolding. Children with dirty faces trudged to school or work; the rich men and women rode in cabs while the poorer marched down their half-finished roads.
Everywhere it stank like death. My clothes were damp and crusty and full of bad feelings, and I pressed the gas harder to get out of the city before it consumed me.
While weaving between other cars, passersby, and construction teams, a thought so stupid suddenly burst into my mind that I nearly leapt out of the driver’s seat.
How about a drink?
It had to be a joke, some nasty sarcasm of the mind. I tried to laugh the thought away, refusing to give it too much attention else it became stronger. How could I possibly, after hearing the doctor’s appraisal, after shivering at the thought of restrained incarceration, after knowing all that I’d known about such an illness—how could I consider even a glass of beer?
Yet no sooner did I reject the idea than it boomeranged back.
The doctor’s a quack. Don’t believe him. You’ve never had trouble with drinking—that’s impossible! It’s your brother, he’s the one with the real problem.
The thoughts swirled around in my seething cauldron of a head. It was like standing in one spot, watching the merry-go-round procession speed past me, each fake carousel animal another thought. And though it spun faster and faster, one animal—one thought—became clearer than the rest.
A drink. Just one.
I pulled over to think and hopefully get my head straight. I knew this idea was deadly. But the thought of driving back to the house, to a depressed Charles, with only vague notions about what to do about any of this, was almost worse. What was this business about pulling spirits into the real world? Destroying them? Murdering them?
Wasn’t I entitled to a drink, especially after my brother had put me through so much? I was doing this for him, after all. I gritted my teeth, hate on my lips.
What I’m about to tell you will sound strange, but it’s all I know. One moment I was in my automobile, pulled over to the side of the road. The next, I was in
a small bar, back in the city, with a bourbon in hand.
How I got there I do not remember.
I swallowed that one drink—just the one. Ha! I had done it. I got up, flattened out my crumpled shirt collar, and walked out to drive back to Charles.
Ten minutes later, however, I was smoked. Roaring drunk. Apparently, I had walked right back in again. No recollection of doing it.
The thoughts and voices swirled around in my brain, collided, transformed, aligned, screamed, disappeared, and returned for more alcohol. I was jingle-brained.
I couldn’t drown them out; if I walked farther from the bar they roared louder. I couldn’t reason, threaten, or cajole them. I gripped the sides of my head, praying for annihilation, but found myself ordering one drink, then another.
Soon after, the bartender, with the help of the few morning patrons, deposited me into the back alley, lest other prospective customers be turned off by insane clientele.
There was one thought, however, buried deep inside me that cut through the chatter, through the drunkenness. End this. End it now.
My hands shook as I removed the small vial from my crumpled breast pocket.
What was in this potion? Would it kill me? Maybe Lazarus had created this as a sick joke. Maybe it was poison. I wanted to pitch the small bottle into the side of the building. I tried to convince myself my brother’s letter, the haunting at the sea castle, this elixir, the opium spirits, were all figments of a severely damaged and twisted mind. This was merely a small scene in the world’s longest nightmare.
Then, something horrible crowded in behind my eyeballs. Pressure built in my head, and a massive bloated face swelled in my mind. A half-twisted grin and balloon eyes that lit up like coals. The face rose bigger and bigger and clouded out all other thoughts. Its lips were rotting away, its teeth black. Its mouth opened wide and began to swallow my head.
I screamed.
I drank the potion.
Chapter Fifteen
The storm in my head quickly faded, like a tide returning to sea. I could breathe; I stopped grinding my teeth. The pressure behind my eyeballs released. Even the crick in my back corrected itself; my brain fog dissipated.
I slowly looked around the alley. Everything seemed brighter, newer. The bloated face became a distant memory. Who was it? A figure from my distant past, or from an undreamt-of future?
As I walked down the alley I let my fingers brush the brick walls. They seemed so red, so beautiful. Above me the seagulls barked and yipped against the grey sky. Below me my feet rose and fell on the concrete, heels to toes.
It was all so real.
So I did this for a while—just picking my feet up and down, marveling at all my surroundings. I glimpsed a butterfly, then a honeybee, and I remembered suddenly that the honeybee was integral to man’s survival. For if they didn’t pollinate our flowers (or were they their flowers), we’d have no food, and no flowers to enjoy.
After I wandered dumbstruck through the streets I skipped. I was free. To describe the feeling of being light would be almost impossible. Two men came out of a tavern sloshing pints around after a hard day’s work, and would I care for one? No, thank you very much; I went about my day.
I walked past a boutique and gazed at the dandelions and the azaleas. I waved through the window at the hunchbacked hausfrau within who appeared shell-shocked at the sight of a stranger blowing her kisses. People in San Francisco are notoriously unfriendly, after all.
Striding past the shop, I passed a brick alleyway between the buildings. A homeless broad with eyes like antennae—which were set back in the pits of her head yet also bugged outwards from their thin frames, so they had the strange look of being detached around the edges of their sockets—stared back at me.
She was covered in dirt, garbage, bugs. In one claw she clutched some bit of disgusting food, and ate from it. She shoved crumbs into her mouth, slowly chewing up some old bread or muffin she’d found in the waste bin. I thought nothing of her, and kept moving on down the street.
I passed another alley some hundred feet away. I glanced down—and saw her standing about fifty feet away, crouched between two dumpsters.
Impossible, I thought. She would have had to race down the alley in the opposite direction, turn the corner, race halfway up the passage, then stand there—before I walked fifty feet down the sidewalk.
I moved on, shoving my hands in my pockets, uneasy. I came to another alley, but this time I hesitated before cautiously peeking around the corner.
The crumb eater stood halfway down this alley too, perfectly calm, not at all out of breath. She couldn’t possibly have run that distance in such short a time.
I continued on. But each time I passed an alley, I saw her down there, eating her crumbs and staring . . . at me. I should have realized what was happening sooner, but I didn’t. I thought it would be impossible: the spirits, so soon?
Now approaching panic, I began to run; I’m not sure for how long. I stopped looking down each alley, I just ran, despite my burning throat and aching knees. Soon I’d reached one of the least desirable parts of the city.
It all happened so fast, the mugging. One pistol-whip to the head was all it took. I went down hard in some back alley. I felt a grubby hand reach into my pocket and grab my wallet. Then I saw a set of feet flying down the asphalt landscape, blurrily blend with it, and disappear for good. I never saw who hit me.
My vision blurred. The salty tears made a kind of second lens over my right eye, bringing into view the pitted face of the horrible crumb eater. I wasn’t consciously aware that I was staring at her, but by the time I got up and turned away, the damage had been done.
The crumb eater was less than three feet from me.
Chapter Sixteen
The candle flame flickers from a silent, invisible breeze. Perhaps there’s a leak in the window by my table. Or, more likely, it’s my rapid breathing.
As I sit here writing, I realize I’ve forgotten the time again, so single-minded I’ve been in trying to get this all down on paper. I haven’t allowed for too many interjections, but at some point it is necessary for you to understand my situation.
Who was the crumb eater? I’m not entirely sure. The spooks, for me or my brother, seem to be half-real, half-imagined forms of people we know, or knew, or they’re simply made-up from fears, shame, and a thousand other horrible emotions, many of which I’ve never felt before.
It is best to describe the entities as feelings. I think that’s the closest one can get to explaining who or what they are. In the case of the crumb eater, the overwhelming emotion was helplessness.
She was a poor beggar living off the trash of others. My biggest fear, no doubt, one of my own possible realities. Though we looked nothing alike, here was me in another life: no money, no family, no ties. Everything stripped from me.
I turn away from the candle, but the flame still moves. I don’t know why.
I got myself back on the road; I yelled, I cursed, I cried, begged, bribed, yelled again, cried, begged, bribed and cursed all over again. But you can’t reason or threaten a spirit, especially one you can’t afford to look at. So as I continued out of the city and headed northwest to the coast at top speed, the crumb eater rode in the passenger seat and took my abuse all the way, never saying a word.
If only I hadn’t been so giddy and stupid to have run into the wrong part of town. I was doubly stupid not to have recognized the spirit right away. And now it was attached to me, so close it could reach out and touch me. Yet it didn’t. Why not? Was she simply staying here to torture me? Why not just grab my throat and kill me?
But what really burned me was this: where it had taken Lazarus years to become plagued by the spirits, it had taken me no more than twenty minutes. Now I was stuck with the horrible stinking ghost who sat calmly in the passenger seat, staring at me the whole drive up the coast. It’s enough to drive a man insane.
Once or twice I tried kicking her out of the car, out the passenger side d
oor, to bust open her maggot-infested head on the road. But I could not bring my foot off the gas pedal to keep the car in motion, plus the swinging foot caused my arm to jerk the wheel, so several times we almost flew down the cliff and onto the beaches below.
The crumb eater would have to stay.
After a while I settled down, and, although I would not let myself look directly at her, occasionally I made out a few features in my peripheral vision. As far as I could tell, the hag had only half a nose and was still covered almost completely in dirt and bugs. Stick bugs, no less—long, thick insects that looked like flat panels of wood. The smell of her and the bugs combined was worse than fish rotting in desert heat.
I guess, though, that people can get used to just about anything. Though the first two or three hours were insane, paranoid, and delusional, my nervousness began to subside soon after.
We are going to stare at you, I thought. At all of you. Hard and long enough to bring us close together, then we are going to kill you. Charles and I are going to tiptoe like mice stealing cookies, down to the basement, where Father kept all his weapons. Yes, that’s right, revolvers and rifles and knives and shotguns. Then we’ll bring you out, totally and completely, and then we’ll pump you full of lead.
I smiled, pressed on the gas, and raced over the hills and grassy valleys and around the rocks and near the cliffs. By the time I reached the house, still lost in thought, the crumb eater had vanished.
Chapter Seventeen
“Charles!” My voice rang out across my dark, silent home. I stood there in the doorway, waiting tensely for some sign before cautiously tiptoeing farther inside. In the kitchen I found a match and lit a candle. The light cast an eerie glow as I walked to the other end of the house.
What Goes On In The Walls At Night: Thirteen tales of disgust and delight Page 16
