I caved in all at once, releasing a long sigh and allowing my legs to slide from under me. My knees popped and the blood began to flow back into my feet. I leaned back against the wall and wiped my face with the bedspread. I was very thirsty and I had to urinate. I decided I would use the bathroom, have another drink of water and leave the way I came in.
I slid from the bed, onto my feet. The blood moved thick inside me, making my feet tingle. I walked into the bathroom and bent over the sink, cranking the cold water and cupping the flow into my mouth. I drank until my head ached and my belly was full. I stood and looked into the wide vanity mirror, wiping my mouth with my forearm. Next to the bed some twelve feet behind me was a boy with a white face under a black hood standing against the curtains, staring at the spot on the bed where I had been sleeping.
His presence was so matter-of-fact and perfectly still, my mind could not register it as fact and my body was gripped with total paralysis. He was staring at the bed, not me, and I could not move now in front of the mirror for fear of stirring his attention. I was aware of the hair on my forearm stiffening beneath my lips as I breathed into the crook of my elbow, but my eyes never left him. He was short, only as high as my chest, dressed in narrow black pants and the black hooded sweatshirt with a bulge at the lower front. I could not see his hands, and assumed they were in the pocket over his belly. His feet were bare, small as two decks of cards, white as Annette’s stomach had been, nearly glowing in the dark bedroom. His shoulders were hunched forward, his neck cocked forward a bit, and the profile of his jaw and nose and chin were just as white as his feet.
My God, how long? How long has he been standing there? Half an hour? Two hours? Since I fell asleep? No, I’d looked at the window an hour ago. He was not there then. How did he get inside the room? He could not have come through the doorway - I would have seen him. Unless, while I was lying with my head on the pillow, I had not been able to see the floor in the doorway and at the foot of the bed. He very well may have belly-crawled down the hall and across the bedroom floor.
Or else he just materialized.
But what if he had been there all along and I couldn’t see him until I looked in the mirror? Oh, Jesus, oh, Jesus Christ, this not happening.
He’s not, he’s not real. And that is what makes him so awful to behold.
He still hadn’t moved. He wasn’t even breathing. My shoulder ached from holding my arm horizontal across my chin. He had to go away soon. He had to, like the boy I saw in the backyard, wearing the blazer with the private school crest. It was him, I knew it, the same boy in different clothes.
At the same moment my memory made the connection, the boy in the bedroom lifted his nose as if catching a scent, then turned his head swiftly toward the mirror and the hood over his brow and ears cupped outward like the neck of a cobra as his reflection turned and came at me in a series of purposeful strides.
I turned on my heels in time to see him walking faster, everything moving too fast, and his hands came out of the pouch and reached up to pull the hood back, I knew, so that he could show me his face.
‘No!’ I shouted, backing into the vanity, trapped.
The white backs of his tiny hands came together over his forehead and swept up without a sound, pulling the hood back and everything, his entire face, was flat white and his voice, if it was a voice, came through like a repeating snatch of overheard conversation whispered deep inside me.
. . . did look what they did look what they did look what they . . .
And I shouted, covering myself as he ran into me and I felt nothing other than the blood pounding in my ears, followed by a dull ringing, and finally silence.
I lowered my arms and surveyed the bedroom, which was filling with the blue light of dawn, but the boy was nowhere to be seen, and at once the room felt purged and dull. I was certain that I was alone now, mirror or no mirror. But I did not turn around to seek his reflection. Nor did I wait for him to return.
28
An hour and a half later, after stumbling upon the entrance gates and rotting swan statue in the septic fountain, I was able to recalibrate my bearings and find my way back to Annette’s. The sun was up, the air inching toward the seventies, and yet I was cold, and tired beyond words. My brave decision to walk out of the SP had evaporated. Now I just wanted a hot shower and a familiar bed, even if it was hers. Whatever was wrong with her, she was a person, not someone who could appear and vanish through walls. She was sick, and a doctor would be able to explain how her freckles appeared to have vanished.
As for the boy, well, I was having a nervous breakdown, with the added bonus feature of recurring hallucinations. I was experiencing post-traumatic stress disorder, as Bergen had warned me I would. Better yet, some truant had decided Halloween came four months early this year, and I had let the little shit get the better of me when I should have grabbed him by the neck and frog-marched him home to his parents.
Daylight is at least one half the battle in restoring common sense.
The garage door was down. I walked up onto the porch and found the front door locked. The chalk circle was there, fading. I knocked, but she didn’t answer. I cupped my hands and peered into the foyer, but there was no sign of her. I knocked a few more times. I walked around the garage to the gate, which was also locked. I was too tired to worry now. I was angry, and it felt good to be angry.
I went back to the front door and pounded. ‘Annette! I’m locked out!’
I was about to kick in another window when I heard the soft crunch of tarmac gravel and the barely perceptible squeak of brakes. I began to turn, expecting to see her green Mustang.
‘Morning sweetheart,’ a man with a sophomoric cop-show voice said. ‘Run and I’ll put a boot so far up your ass you shit teeth.’
He can’t be talking to me, I thought, too confused to be frightened, and that doesn’t even make sense.
I turned. He was already halfway across the lawn, and, now that I saw him, I was afraid. He was big, maybe six two, at least two hundred and forty pounds, with speed bag shoulders and lineman thighs stamping black lace-up boots, the soles flapping paddles coming like comic strip exclamation points. His limbs were sausaged in sleeves of polyester: blue-black slacks and a matching lapel shirt that set off his wavy red hair and a mustache the size of carp. He had a hard paunch and his ogre hands were the throbbing white of cartoon gloves after the sledgehammer has landed. They were holding, almost burying, a .38 snub-nosed revolver whose black hole barrel underwent exponential growth spurts - dime, poker chip, wine bottle bottom - until it was a manhole cover hovering in front of my face.
‘Hey, easy, whoa!’ I raised my hands. ‘I’m a friend of Annette’s.’
‘Like shit you are.’ He was not wearing a badge or brass of any kind. Just before his shoulders blocked my view, I noted that his sedan was unmarked, an Interceptor deep red going to brown, spotlights over the side mirrors, with a brush guard and flat black rims. Undercover, in that not subtle way. ‘Put your hands on that wall and spread your legs, cutie.’
My body still didn’t believe this was happening. ‘What for? What do you think I did?’
He knows about the broken window. He knows you were sleeping in someone’s house. You’re going to jail.
His eyes were reddened, huge and pickled in his fat face, like they weighed three times as much as the average human’s. Looking into them was unpleasant, so I faced the stucco.
‘Little B & E? Little sniff the panties while Mommy’s away? That your thing?’
‘I was just out for a walk and forgot my keys,’ I said. ‘I live here. Take it easy.’
‘Shut it.’ He holstered his gun. His belt did not have all the toys, but most of the important ones. He kicked my feet apart and patted me down, slapping my ribs and thumbing my crotch as he went south. ‘You holding dope, faggot? Muling a little Tijuana brown up your tailpipe? Tell me now before I find it, because if I find it first I’ll take you down to the park and make you bob for apples.’<
br />
‘What? No, Jesus, I don’t have any drugs.’
He swatted my ass. ‘Where’s your wallet?’
‘Inside. She didn’t give me a key yet but she—’
‘Shut the fuck up and turn around, puppy.’
I turned. He was standing with his hands on his hips, his dimpled, two-testicle chin nudging at me from under a mean little grin. He smelled of aftershave, the neon-blue kind that comes in a bottle shaped like the ace of spades.
‘Name?’ Now that he wasn’t barking, his voice was actually a little high, not lisping but unexpectedly feminine.
‘James Hastings.’ Beat. ‘Sir.’
‘Panty wastings?’
‘Hastings,’ I said. This one has studied all the shows.
‘Don’t know any Hastings ’round here. Where you from originally?’
‘Originally? Tulsa.’
He whistled. ‘Tulsa! No kiddin’?’ He smiled brightly, like he too was from Tulsa and now we were going to be friends, this was all just a misunderstanding. ‘Tulsa, what?’
‘Uhm, Oklahoma,’ I said, then mumbled, ‘pretty sure there’s only one.’
‘What did you say?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Did you say, “Pretty sure there’s only one?”’
Okay, so he had the hearing of a bat.
‘Look, with all due respect, officer, I have friends in the LAPD who would assure me I am entitled to see your badge.’
For a moment his eyes seemed to shimmy in their sockets. He leaned forward and shouted, dotting me with spittle. ‘Wrong answer, retard! There’s Tulsa, Oregon, and Tulsa, Oklahoma! You want to see my badge? Here’s my badge!’
The heel of his palm went forward and retreated. I believe one of my ribs cracked, but I never found out. I fell to my knees, coughing. Oh, this asshole was going to pay. This was good. He was Sheltering’s rent-a-cop, of that I was now certain, and I was going to sue the home-owners association for everything they had left. When I regained my sight, I noticed a bulge above his boot. Ankle piece, like Ghost used to carry. And then a funny thought came to me: what would Ghost do in this situation? Answer: the absolute worst thing you could do, of course. He would slug the cop in the balls, steal the cop’s gun, jack the cruiser and go crash it into a Motel 8, order up two pros and a bag of blow.
‘Howssat feel, Tulsa? That feel nice? You wanna see my badge again?’
‘I live here,’ I said, spitting to the side. ‘With Annette.’
‘Speak up. Sound like you got a dickey in your mouth.’
‘Annette Copeland. She brought me here.’
‘And who are you?’
‘Her boyfriend.’ I got to my feet. ‘We just came back a week ago.’
‘She didn’t come back. Not possible, dickhead. Try again.’
‘I was her neighbor. Her husband Arthur, I’m the one who—’
His mouth fell open. ‘The fella lost his wife? The Ghost?’
I glared at him.
‘Shit, you don’t look much like a rapper, but then I guess you wouldn’t.’
‘I’m not Ghost. I worked for him.’
‘Well, why the hell didn’t you say so? I’m Rick, Rick Butterfield!’ He slapped my back. ‘Know ’Nettie from way, way back in the day. I’m sorry, guy, but you gotta announce yourself here. We got creepies and mopers and all kinds of termites.’
Now I remembered. She had mentioned him the night we had dinner and exchanged oral exams on Mr Ennis’s patio. Rick Butterfield. Ex-cop. Her friend? She must have been exaggerating when she used the term friend. At least, I hoped she had been exaggerating.
‘You know her,’ I said. ‘Okay. Right, I’m staying with her.’
He watched me with a combination of curiosity and hunger. ‘Why won’t she let you in?
‘We had a fight. She locked me out.’
‘Is that so?’
‘Why would I lie to you?’
Rick nodded, something still troubling him, but satisfied for now. ‘How’s your gut?’
‘Fine.’
‘Sorry if I came on a little eager, but I learned my lesson the hard way. Had a greaser down on his belly last spring. Gave him the benefit of the doubt, didn’t search him. I go to cuff him, but before I can get an angle he lunges, just quicker’n Dominican steals third base. Sliced up my thigh and opened my sack ’fore I knew what the fuck happened. Lucky my nuts didn’t go rolling down the got-damned sewer hatch. Crossed a few wires, though. Street vasectomy. Couldn’t dog my gal for a month. You better believe I showed that little prick his own private Gitmo.’
The man had to be on coke or speedballs. Something known to cause verbal diarrhea and general unchecked aggression.
‘But since you’re practically family now, truceyducey? ’ Rick Butterfield extended his hand.
I didn’t know whether to laugh or run. ‘Jesus. You’re not playing, are you?’
‘It’s all a play, muffin.’ Rick pumped my hand. ‘Just good clean livin’.’
We sidled off the porch. I intended to climb the gate.
‘So you’re not doing anything?’ he said.
‘Now? No, but Annette’s probably wondering—’
‘Fuck that,’ Rick said. ‘I’m buying you a drink. Just comin’ off the third shift, I ain’t got anyone to drink with no more and I could use some stink on me.’
I began to protest but he was already steering me toward the car, one of his big mitts hanging over my neck. I realized this might be useful. Rick might be able to tell me a few things about my new girlfriend’s history of mental illness, what Arthur was like. I was starving for perspective, any information.
No, the truth is I didn’t want to go back inside. I didn’t want to know what condition she was in, and after the last twenty-four hours I needed a drink. I deserved a drink. We stopped at the car, doors open, and Rick Butterfield looked at me across the roof like we were partners about to go on a patrol. He was grinning, his soup strainer wiggling.
‘That figures,’ he said.
‘What?’
‘She’s already got you whipped six ways to Sunday.’
‘Hey,’ I said, my face coloring.
‘Don’t sweat it, Ghost.’ He patted the roof. ‘Isn’t a man alive can resist that.’
I took the bait. ‘Yeah, what?’
‘Best pussy north of the border, amigo.’
Rick winked and ducked into his cruiser.
I looked up the vacant street, wondering what I had gotten myself into.
29
Rick Butterfield’s basement was every high school kid’s wet dream come true, minus the girls.
When he wheeled into the driveway of his unassuming but rather sprawling patio home on the edge of the SP’s first wing tip, I said, ‘I thought we were going to a bar?’
Rick finished mounting The Club to his steering wheel before answering. ‘We are. Best one in town.’
I followed him inside. He led me through a cavernous living room that smelled like cat groins, through a small kitchen with a car engine and a cereal bowl full of gasoline on the breakfast table, to a stairway with a runner of baby-blue deep pile. As we descended into his walnutpaneled underworld, my host had to duck a neon sign bolted to the stairwell frame. Next to the pink palm tree, in loopy Vegas font, it said:
The Rick Room
There was indeed a bar, with all the main liquors (low-to-mid-tier brands) faced out in front of a large Budweiser mirror. The bar itself was a ten-foot block of walnut with eight coats of varnish, silver quarters and buffalo head pennies trapped inside like bugs in amber. All three taps pumped regular Budweiser. Rick yanked us each a draught and handed me a frozen glass mug, the ice sheaths sliding like Superman’s fortress at the North Pole.
‘Make yourself at home, Ghost.’
‘Just James,’ I said. ‘Ghost is the real one.’ But he ignored this, busy as he was tinkering with two remote controls.
Shortly the ceiling speakers began to emit a steady stream of hits from
Rick’s favorite satellite station. Survivor, Journey, Van Halen, Asia, Toto. By this time I knew this was not a retro gimmick fad for him. I remembered a movie that had terrified me when I saw it in theaters as a child back in the early eighties. It starred Timothy Hutton and was about a caveman found frozen in a block of ice. He thaws out and comes to life, loses his mind and is pursued to a tragic death. Iceman, it was called. Yes, Rick Butterfield was like the Iceman, except he hadn’t been frozen back in the Cro-Magnon age. He had been frozen in 1983 and he was never going to thaw out.
The Haunting of James Hastings Page 21
