The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 20

by Stephen Jones (ed. )

  “So I say how’s about I drown myself. He thinks this is a good idea.

  “We go up to Central Park – out to the lake? – and I wade on out into the water, which I have no sensation of, incidentally, and I keep walking until it covers my head. And I keep on walking. Then I just stand there, looking up through the water at the stars twinkling up there in the sky. I can hear this other guy shouting to me – a kind of half-shout, half-whisper . . . because it’s late at night, you know, and the muggers are out – he’s shouting asking me if I’m okay. And I’m trying to answer him. There I am, in ten feet of water, trying to talk. I stayed there for about fifteen minutes and then came out.”

  Front-Page shakes his head and takes a slug of beer.

  Edgar suddenly notices that beer is dripping onto the floor from Front-Page’s chair but he doesn’t say anything.

  Shrugging, Front-Page says, “And I tried other things. Hanging myself. No good. I think it broke my neck, which is maybe why I have trouble swallowing, but it didn’t do anything else. I only thank God that I did it with this other guy near at hand. I mean, I just kicked away a wastebasket – we were in the Park again, under cover of darkness – and swung there from the branch of this tree. I felt fine . . . well, I felt no different. If he hadn’t have been there, I’d have been found in the morning, still swinging there, still trying to talk and ask someone to please get me down.

  “Then I tried poison. You see, I was trying things that, if they didn’t work, wouldn’t make me look any different than the way I always look. I mean, if I’d tried fire, then I may have burned all my body into a blackened mass which I would still maybe have to walk around with.”

  Front-Page shakes his head again and knocks wood.

  “Then this guy, he says maybe he’s not the one to give me any advice. He means by this, maybe nobody alive can give me advice on this one. So I ask him what he means by this. And he says I should think about trying to speak to somebody who’s already dead.”

  At this point, Front-Page McGuffin turns to Bills Williams and says, “I want you to help me talk to Dawdle O’Rourke.”

  Without saying a word, Jack Fedogan gets to his feet and walks over to the counter. A couple of minutes later he comes back to the lilting piano of Herbie Hancock playing “My Funny Valentine”, carrying another pitcher of beer. Nobody has said anything while he’s been away, like it was some kind of performance which couldn’t continue while one of the actors was taking a leak.

  Jack pulls over a chair and sits down at the table, setting the pitcher next to the empty one. “This should be bourbon,” he says. To which Edgar gives a short snigger and then does the honours of freshening everyone’s glass.

  “Can you do it, Bills?” McCoy asks.

  Bills nods and looks down at the playing cards in his hands. “I can try,” he says. “But are you sure Dawdle is the one? You don’t want me to call on Betty instead?”

  “Uh uh,” says Front-Page. “She’d worry. I mean, I should be up there – or ‘out’ there . . . or wherever the hell ‘there’ is – and the fact that I’m not with her will mean I must still be alive. If she knew all this was happening, she’d worry. It has to be Dawdle. Dawdle and me go way back. If he can’t help me, then nobody can. I know I can trust him not to say anything to anyone else . . . mainly to Betty. He’s the only one. I love the others but they’d think they were doing me a favour by speaking to Betty. I can’t take that chance.”

  Only Herbie Hancock has anything to say after that, and he’s doing his talking with his piano.

  After a while, Front-Page says to Bills, “Will you do it?”

  Bills nods. “I’ll do it.”

  As they’re preparing one of the tables over near the wall, Jack Fedogan is going around telling the other folks that he’s closing up for the night, closing up early. It’s a credit to him and the Working Day itself that the other patrons accept this as just the way things are. They leave with smiles and nods, pulling on scarves and overcoats as they prepare to venture up the wooden stairs and out into the January streets of Manhattan.

  Pretty soon there’s just the six of them.

  Eleven if you count Coleman Hawkins, Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis, Tommy Flanagan, Ron Carter and Gus Johnson, whose mellow “There Is No Greater Love” is wafting around the bar, filling the corners and all the nooks and crannies of The Land at the End of the Working Day, preserving the mystery of those hidden places while removing their threat.

  Front-Page himself is not taking part in the preparations. He’s sitting at the old table, the one near the bar, sitting by himself and occasionally looking up, looking around, and then looking back at his drink, sometimes taking a slug, the pool of beer around his chair widening all the while.

  “All his insides are shot,” Edgar explains to Jim Leafman as they throw a green cloth over the designated table. “Liver, kidneys, heart, lungs, bowel, colon . . . all rotted to mush.”

  “Yeah?” says Jim, sneaking a glance across.

  “It’s what happens,” Edgar says matter-of-factly. “Happens to us all.” He pulls a face. “You catch the smell?”

  Jim frowns and shakes his head.

  “You should’ve been sitting next to him. Poor guy. Smells like an open sewer.”

  Bills Williams comes out of the bathroom with McCoy Brewer. “What he’s done,” he’s saying to McCoy, “is mess up his natural forces with protective talismans and totems. Maybe it’s the sheer number and frequency, maybe it’s just the interaction of one or two . . . I don’t know.”

  They stop at the table and look across at Front-Page.

  “And in doing so, he’s made it so that he . . . his soul, his id, his karma . . . whatever you want to call it – he’s made it so that his very essence has been imprisoned. Maybe he was protecting himself – for a while anyways – from external influences, but he died from what sounds like a heart attack. It was an internal force that killed him. I don’t think you can protect yourself from what’s happening in your own body. Don’t think you should even try.” Bills gave a small smile, without humour. “We are born, we live and we die. That’s the way it is . . . and that’s the way it has to be. When Front-Page’s time came and his body could no longer continue, his essence should have been free to go. We’re going to do this thing – contact Dawdle O’Rourke – but I don’t know as how it’ll do any good.”

  “Okay, everybody ready?” says Jack Fedogan.

  “As we’ll ever be,” says Bills. “Front-Page?”

  The time of inaction seems to have taken its toll and Front-Page is once again moving with extreme difficulty. So much so that Jack and McCoy have to go over and help him to the new table.

  When they are all seated evenly around the table, Bills starts to speak.

  “Okay, here’s the way it’s going to work. We all link hands palm-down on the table. Nobody breaks the link, whatever happens. If this thing is going to work, it’ll work right away. If it doesn’t, then it isn’t going to work. Okay?”

  Everyone nods and grunts assent.

  “No talking or sounds of any kind, okay?”

  Without waiting for a response, Bills Williams takes a hold of McCoy’s and Jack’s hands and allows his head to fall forward onto his chest.

  “Dawdle O’Rourke?” Bills says, his voice sounding deep and strange, sitting on the sound of Tommy Flanagan’s piano like a cork on an ocean. “Dawdle O’Rourke, I need to speak with you. A friend of yours needs your help. His name is Front-Page McGuffin. Please respond.”

  They wait in silence.

  After a couple of minutes, Bills repeats the message word for word.

  Still no response.

  “Dawdle O’Rourke, you are urgently needed. This is Bills Williams in The Land at the End of the Working Day. Please respond.”

  Front-Page tries to smile and pulls his hands away from Edgar and Jack. “It’s no good,” he says as he tries to pull his eyelid up. “It’s just not going to work.”

  They all break t
heir hand-holds.

  Jack Fedogan leans forward on the table. “Hey,” says Jack, “you ever hear about those cases where folks lift automobiles off of kids who are trapped beneath . . . just regular scrawny people who suddenly have this amazing strength?”

  “Yes?”

  “Yep.”

  “Uh huh?”

  “Well,” says Jack, “why is that?”

  “You think this is the time for—”

  “No, Edgar, this could be important,” says Jack. “It’s the power of the mind, isn’t it? That’s what does it.”

  “Yeah, that’s what they say on Cable TV, Jack,” says Edgar, “so what’s your point?”

  “My point is . . .” He turns to look at Front-Page and sees his old friend’s wrecked face, sees the black rings around the eyes, pieces of lip that seem to be coming away – he never noticed those before – and tufts of hair that stand proud of the scalp which itself is going kind of blue and mottled, like hands that have been in water too long. And, taking hold of Front-Page’s hand again, he asks, “Do you trust me?”

  The voice that comes back is deep and resonant, the voice on an old vinyl record that’s playing when the power cuts out on the player. “I trust you, Jack,” Front-Page says, and he blinks his eyes closed.

  “Front-Page?” Edgar says.

  “He’s gone,” says Bills.

  “Where’s he gone?” says Jim. “He’s right there. Where could he—”

  “Give me a hand with him,” Jack Fedogan says. He stands up and pulls Front-Page up to his feet by his arm. “Jeez, his arm!”

  “What’s wrong with his arm?” asks McCoy.

  Bills rushes around the table and takes hold of Front-Page McGuffin’s other arm, hoisting it around his own shoulder. “The muscles have atrophied,” he says. “Gone to mulch.”

  Jim Leafman scowls. “Yeuch.”

  Edgar kicks nudges him and says, “Shh!”

  With Front-Page on his feet, but his eyes still closed, and his arms around Jack’s and Bills’s shoulders, Bills says, “What now?”

  “Help me get him to the stairs.”

  “Where you going?” asks Bills.

  “Out.”

  “Where out? It’s below zero out there,” says McCoy getting to his feet.

  “I’m going to teach him the power of the mind,” says Jack.

  “Wear your coat at least,” Jim shouts as Jack starts up the stairs, his arm around Front-Page’s waist.

  “You want me to come with you?” says Bills.

  “Uh uh.” Jack grunts. “He’s still carrying a weight.”

  Bills Williams thinks Front-Page is carrying lots of things around with him, but he doesn’t say anything.

  “I’ll be back,” Jack shouts, in his best Arnie impression. “Serve yourselves.”

  Out on the street it’s cold.

  It’s dark and there’s a wind blowing and snow’s in the air, though right now it’s trying to rain . . . but most of all it’s cold.

  But somehow . . . it’s okay.

  Sometimes the City carries its magic on the surface for all to see.

  Right now, at a little before 9:00 pm, on a Tuesday evening after the longest Happy Hour in the brief history of Jack Fedogan’s Land at the End of the Working Day, the streets are empty of people. Jack looks along 23rd and then down Fifth and there’s not a single person to be seen. Not even any traffic.

  Then, its tyres swishing along the rain-washed streets, a single Yellow cab turns the corner into Fifth just a block down and heads their way, its light glowing like a beacon in the darkness.

  Jack hefts Front-Page up against him and waves his free arm. “Hey!” he yells into the gloom.

  The cab pulls up alongside them, the cabby calls, “Get in.”

  “Thanks.” Jack pulls open the door and manoeuvres Front-Page into the back seat. It smells of cheap perfume and cigarette smoke, for which Jack is grateful. His companion would not win any prizes in a sweet-smells competition.

  “Where to?” the driver asks as Jack pulls the door closed.

  “Central Park.”

  “Where in Central Park, friend? It’s a big park.”

  “Anywhere, but quickly.” He pushes a rolled-up twenty through the grill.

  “You got it,” comes the reply.

  As they drive, Jack starts patting Front-Page’s face. “Front-Page,” he says, “can you hear me?”

  “Hear you,” says Front-Page.

  “Hang on in there, buddy,” says Jack. “Hang on in there.”

  Front-Page lets rip with a fart. It sounds like material tearing.

  “He okay?” the driver calls over his shoulder. “He gonna throw up, you tell me, okay?”

  “It’s just wind,” Jack shouts. Then, to Front-Page, “Hang on, buddy.”

  The driver lets them out on the corner of Central Park South and Fifth, seemingly relieved to have made the trip without his passengers redecorating the back seat.

  Jack holds onto Front-Page, his shoulders hunched over at the biting cold wind, and watches the cab drive on up Fifth Avenue.

  “Okay,” says Jack, “I want you to walk with me.”

  “Where . . . going?” says Front-Page.

  “We’re gonna sit ourselves down on a bench along here a ways and we’re gonna look up at the city.”

  As they start to walk, Front-Page McGuffin says, “Nice.”

  Maybe it’s something in the air, maybe it’s the promise of rain coming down as a fine spray, but Front-Page starts to improve as they move along and it doesn’t take as long as Jack thought it would to reach his destination.

  Then they’re there.

  A bench on one of the pathways that cross and re-cross Central Park. Over across from them as Jack lowers Front-Page onto the seat, they can see the buildings up Central Park West, their lights twinkling like fairy lights in the gloom.

  “This is where Phyllis and me used to come,” says Jack Fedogan. He leans forward on his knees and looks up through the branches at the glittering lights. “We used to come here and make plans,” he says, either telling Front-Page McGuffin or simply reminding himself. If you were to ask him which one it was, he wouldn’t be able to tell you. Not for sure.

  “You. Miss. Her?” Front-Page’s voice is stilted and echoing, hollow, more like the memory of voice than the voice itself.

  “I miss her very much, my friend,” says Jack. “And I look forward to seeing her again. But only when the time is right.”

  By his side, Front-Page nods. “Time. Is. Right,” he says.

  For a few seconds they sit in silence and then Jack says, “What I was saying back in the Working Day? About the power of the mind?”

  Front-Page’s head lolls on his neck.

  Jack shakes his friend’s arm and says it again.

  “Yes?”

  “You have that power.”

  Jack takes the single grunt to be an ironic laugh. “I have no power.”

  “Yes you do,” Jack says. “Okay, you can’t lift an auto right now . . . and maybe you couldn’t even if Betty were here and lying right underneath. But you’d have a college try, am I right?”

  Front-Page nods.

  “So try.”

  “Wha— What? No. Auto. Here.”

  “Try to get to her, for Chrissakes. Just . . . just leave it all. Let it go!”

  “How?”

  “Your body is finished. It’s you who’ve trapped yourself here . . . nobody else. You and all those dumb superstitions . . . all that spitting and rapping and twirling. You’ve got— Listen.” Jack turns around and takes hold of Front-Page’s jacket lapels. “If I could change places with you right now, I’d do it. You hear what I’m saying to you, Front-Page? If I could be as close to seeing Phyllis again as you are to seeing Betty, I’d change places right now. All you have to do is try.”

  “Try,” says Front-Page. “Yes” Then, “How?”

  “Just . . . just close your eyes and let it go. Don’t fight it. Use that powe
r of the mind that folks use to lift automobiles.”

  Front-Page McGuffin blinks at Jack Fedogan and then looks down at his friend’s hands. “You. Can . . .”

  Jack takes his hands away. “Sorry. Getting carried away there.”

  “S’okay,” says Front-Page and he moves his head to face the twinkling lights on the buildings through the trees. “Quite. A. City,” he says, his voice now sounding like a door rubbing on a piece of coal trapped beneath it. “New. York,” he says.

  Even the words themselves have a magical sound, Jack thinks. He rubs his shoulders and shivers. “You trying?”

  “Trying,” says Front-Page.

  They sit like that for a few minutes, silent.

  “Jack?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Something . . . You. Good. Man. Jack.”

  “So they tell me.”

  “Something. Happening.”

  Jack Fedogan turns around and looks at his friend’s face. Is it his imagination or is it the light filtering through the trees . . . or does Front-Page look more peaceful now?

  “Hold. Hand,” says Front-Page McGuffin. “Going.”

  Jack takes hold of Front-Page’s hand and grips it tight, trying hard to let him feel the warmth. “Front-Page?” he whispers.

  “Yessss . . .?” Sleepy-sounding now.

  “Tell Phyllis I said, ‘Hi’.”

  Front-Page’s head lolls forward. And now there is just one person sitting on the bench in Central Park, breathing in the fine mist and watching the lights twinkling through the trees. Jack sits there for a while like that, his arm around Front-Page McGuffin’s shoulder and Front-Page’s head leaning against his own like a sleeping lover, just watching the city and listening to its sounds.

  It takes Jack Fedogan almost two hours to walk back to The Land at the End of the Working Day. Two hours in which he has re-lived weeks and months and years of memories. When he arrives at the familiar entrance at the corner of 23rd and Fifth, it’s raining hard and Jack is already sniffling.