by Tim Meyer
“Really?” I asked.
“I know. Completely the opposite of how he acted in those last few months. Lester used to be very outgoing. Always had a joke to tell.” Sheldon looked down, reminiscing about his old employee. Maybe an old joke Lester told him crawled into his mind, because a fraction of a grin worked its way onto Sheldon's face. “We had a loud argument the day I fired him. I didn't want to terminate him. I asked him to get some help. That he was sick and he needed to see someone, someone who would listen to him. Someone other than himself. He freaked out of course, telling me he was perfectly fine, that nothing was wrong. That it would all be over soon.”
“What was he referring to?”
“I dunno. Something about his camera. I tried to block most of his babble out. Some of the stuff he was saying was off the wall—like really out of this world stuff. Stuff better left in some science fiction magazine. I tried to tell him to stop talking like that, that someone would have him committed if they heard him talking like that.” He paused, as if he was done talking.
“And?”
“And, I guess, finally someone did.” Sheldon returned to his work, clearly done talking about Lester Resnick. “He is currently at the Benton Health Facility. Anything else you want to know, you can go ask him.”
3
She was stunning. The food before us looked delectable, but I couldn't take my eyes off of Aurelia's dress long enough to enjoy it. It was red, cut just low enough to expose the tops of her breasts, with lipstick to match. Her hair was wavy, resting on her shoulders. Her appearance trumped my plaid shirt and khakis.
She was a special woman, and her smile filled me with a wholesome feeling I had not felt in what seemed like forever.
The food came and went. The waiter of the fancy restaurant in downtown Carver's Grove asked us if we had room for dessert. We decided to have a fudge brownie, topped with vanilla ice cream. Before the brownie came out, I grabbed Aurelia's hand from across the table. “I have something I want to tell you.”
“Oh Jesus,” she said, straight-faced. “You're not going to propose to me or anything, are you?”
I laughed out loud, a thunderous release which turned many neighboring heads in my direction. I didn't mind. It was funny.
“No,” I said, bringing my hideous outburst to a silent halt. “Nothing like that.”
“Oh, good,” she said, relieved but smiling back.
“I wanted to tell you about something that's happened to me recently,” I said. “It's important. And I think you should know about it,” I continued. “No matter how crazy it sounds.”
“Okay,” she said, a little confused. “What is it?” Curiosity was apparent in her voice, but it came with a hint of apprehension.
“It started when I got the job at the paper—”
I was cut off by my blathering cell phone. I fished it out of my pocket, with every intention of ignoring the call. I wish I would have. I wouldn't have even looked to see who it was, had Aurelia told me it was okay if I needed to take it, if it were “important.” I looked at the name that had “Calling” written beneath it. The person calling was far from important, but I was curious to see how things were going with him, considering the package I knew he recently received.
“Uncle Bernie, can I call... you... back...”
A fifty-seven year old man was crying on the other end of the line. He was not trying to hide it. He was not sniffling, or stifling his moans. He wasn't trying to control it, to contain the loud outbursts of a painfully broken heart. He bawled his voice hoarse through the small speaker next to my ear. I had to pull the phone away as he continued with no intentions of stopping. I wondered if he was going to go on like this until I hung up.
When he finally spoke, his voice was barely audible.
“That bastard... I can't believe... he did this... that whore... that fucking whore!” he yelled, sounding like a frog croaking. His words were slurred and I could tell this phone call had been motivated by alcohol.
“Uncle Bernie, you're drunk. Calm down. Go to sleep. And call me in the morning.”
Aurelia looked at me, raising her eyebrows. I shrugged my shoulders.
“Drunk got n-nothing to do with it.” I heard something fall on the ground on my uncle's end. At first I thought it was the phone, but he kept talking as he bent over to pick whatever had fallen up. “It's got to do with that whore and that p-prick... that motherf-fucker,” he sputtered. “I-I can't do it any-anymore,” he said, sounding out of breath.
“Relax. Just... you'll be fine. It hurts at first, but as time goes on... you'll get over it,” I told him.
Aurelia looked at me, rolling her eyes, in a playful manner, not a bitchy one. I put a finger up, asking for one more minute, pretending to beg. She nodded, smiling.
“Ritchie... I can't believe she'd do this to me...”
“I know...” I said.
I mailed my Uncle Bernie the pictures shortly after Little Chris had developed them. That was a few days ago. They came in the mail two days later. I pictured my uncle sitting on the couch, cocooned in a blanket with a half-used box of tissues, the wet ones strewn on the floor before him. It would probably take many more days like this to get passed this stage. Many more. But in truth, he asked for this. He wanted a picture of his wife cheating on him, and I delivered it.
The photographs did, however, come with a slight blemish; a little black spot over the heads of his wife and lover. I chose the one that hindered the picture the least. There were copies that showed their entire bodies in little black marks. Little Chris still did not know what to make of them. It didn't matter. The picture I selected to ship off to my uncle clearly revealed that his wife had been unfaithful.
Job well done.
“She's... gonna... pay...” he said. He had become belligerent. His voice was raised. His sorrow turned to anger instantly. “They'll... both... pay...”
“Stop it, Uncle Bernie. You said this was going to be a clean break. You knew this was going on for a while. Don't act like this.”
“It's different suspecting than it is knowing!” he snapped. My uncle did not sound like himself. “I'm going to do it, Ritchie,” he muttered, surprisingly coherent. “I'm going to make them pay.”
“What are you talking about?” I asked. I suddenly became frightened. Something on my face must have given it away, because Aurelia mouthed the words, “what's the matter?” and appeared concerned.
“I'm going inside now. It's been fun, Ritchie. Have a nice l-life.”
“Where are you going? Bernard, where are you going?”
“I followed her... I followed the b-bitch, and now it's time to make her pay the price.”
“Where?” I snapped. “Where are you?”
But there was no answer.
The bastard hung up on me.
4
I told Aurelia that I had to go, that a family emergency had come up. I left her with my credit card to pay for the bill whenever it arrived. I gave her a brief explanation, and she said she understood. She knew about my uncle's unfortunate situation when I told her about how I ended up at the first cult meeting. I strolled out of the restaurant, but not before kissing Aurelia on the forehead, and telling her that we could meet up later if she liked.
She liked.
She liked very much.
Unfortunately for me, I would not be in the mood for company.
5
I knew if something was going down, it would be at Olberstad's apartment. There was a chance my uncle followed her to the nail salon, or the place where she gets her hair done, or even the movies, but I knew better than that. I knew where Uncle Bernie would go.
I pulled into Olberstad's apartment complex about twenty minutes after my uncle's phone call. I drove as fast as I could, hitting the gas rather than breaking through every questionable yellow light. Only one light went red on me before I sped past.
I couldn't shake the awful feeling that something bad had happened. I realized that Uncle B
ernie was not the violent type, that he was not capable of hurting another human being, but I forgot to take into account that everybody has a breaking point, and if any single situation was more likely to make a man reach that point, it was catching his wife with another man.
I parked in the same space as I had on the night I followed Olberstad to Boone's house, a night that changed the course of my life forever. Actually, accepting my uncle's offer had changed everything. Scratch that; moving back to New-Fucking-Jersey altered my life in ways I never would've believed. No, that's not right either. It all stemmed from the day I left my wallet on the dresser, and walked in on Lynne getting butt-fucked by a three-hundred pound gorilla. If only I had taken my wallet to work that day, things would have turned out very different. I'd probably still be living there, working for the paper I loved to write for, clueless that my long-time girlfriend was fucking professional football players behind my back, in my bed, where we slept. It made me sick to think that one silly event, one stupid wallet, had caused so much grief and so many calamities. If that day had gone down like any other, I never would have come back to Jersey. Never would have taken a job at some rundown paper as a photographer. Never would have borrowed the hell-spawned camera bent on ruining my life. Never would have been sent on a detective mission for my uncle. And I never would have had to break my poor uncle's heart, exposing his wife and her dirty little secret. Who knew a forgotten wallet could cause such a chain of events?
I got out of my car and scurried across the parking lot. It was well lit, and so was Olberstad's front door. I saw a recognizable car parked—askew, but parked nonetheless—out front. It was Uncle Bernie's shitbox all right, I remembered it from the night we had our little meeting, the first night I was introduced to the man who was banging my aunt.
There were two kids, no older than seventeen, smoking cigarettes in the walkway leading to Olberstad's front door. They must have belonged to the apartment next to his. They were dressed like skateboarders; the snapback hats, unzipped hoodies, and jeans so tight they cut off the circulation from the waist down. I jogged by them and headed to Marty's front door, painted the same ugly shade of maroon as all the others.
“I wouldn't go in there, man,” one of the teenagers said. He took a drag from his cigarette when I turned to him.
“And why is that?” I asked.
“The couple inside was having a hell of a fight,” he replied. “Sounded pretty bad.”
“How long ago?”
“We came out here about five minutes ago,” the other one said. “We heard someone scream... or at least I thought I did.”
“For the record, I heard nothing,” the other one said, still smoking his cigarette down to the filter.
The three of us grew silent; we listened for any voices coming from within the apartment. There was nothing, except for a hooting owl, who called to us from a distance, along with other moonlight creatures.
I crept toward the door, moving slowly, still trying to keep an ear open, hoping I'd catch something being said from within the apartment. However, only the night critters could be heard.
“You have a cell phone?” I asked the teenagers, not looking at any one in particular.
“Dude, it's 2013. Who doesn't?”
“Get ready to call the police.” A bad feeling lingered in my stomach, making my internal organs knot.
“Mr. Olberstad is a nice guy. He's lived next door to my mom for years—”
I waved him off. “Just be ready.”
I reached for the knob and turned it.
It was unlocked and I pushed the door open, hesitant to step inside. But I couldn't help it. I'd come this far. There was no turning back. Just like with the Denlax, I knew no boundaries. I did not know when to stop.
I stepped inside Olberstad's apartment, and shut the door behind me.
6
Something bad had happened here. A lamp had been knocked over, the bulb inside shattered across the beige carpet. A few boxes and other items of unimportance were dispersed across the apartment. I moved toward the kitchen, carefully stepping over the debris that littered the floor. The place was much smaller than it looked from the outside.
As I entered the kitchen, I called out my uncle's name. No answer. Could he have left? Slipped out the window? Had Olberstad and Aunt Danica not been home when he arrived? No, he said he followed her here. They were here all right. All three of them.
But why were they not responding?
The panic-induced pang drummed within me once again, attacking my chest. Luckily I had remembered to take my medicine that morning.
Speckles of red on the kitchen counter. Blood. It had to be blood.
“Bernie?” I called out. “Marty? Danica? Anyone?”
There was really only one place they could have been.
The bedroom.
I shifted down the hallway, overstepping a few items which had been tossed to the floor during an angry fit. I reached the end of the hallway and saw two doors. One was wide open, but there was nothing but darkness inside. It was the bathroom. The bedroom door was slightly cracked, the light shining into the hallway where I was standing. “Hello?” I asked, as I pushed open the door.
According to the two skateboarding teenagers outside, I screamed when I saw the scene that a local newspaper would describe as one of the “most grisly murders this town has ever seen” although I don't remember screaming at all.
7
Aunt Danica was propped on the bed, her back resting against the headboard, sitting as if she were a doll on a little girl's bed. Her eyes had been popped out of her skull, and they were dangling past her chin from two strands that looked like red licorice. Blood continued to seep from the dark cavities that used to contain her eyeballs. Her throat had been slashed, a thick gash that had finished bleeding out. Her clothes were soaked in blood, and so was Olberstad's comforter. Blood speckled the walls.
Marty suffered a similar fate. His naked body was stretched out on the floor. His head was also on the floor, only it was on the other side of the room. Marty's vertebrae protruded from his severed neck. An ocean of blood soaked into the carpet.
I stumbled backwards.
Uncle Bernard was staring out of the window, a long, bloody butcher's knife in his right hand. He stared at the stars motionlessly.
“What did you do?” I muttered. “What the fuck did you do?”
“I showed them...” he spoke softly. “I showed them...”
He turned. I stepped to him, blind to what was coming next. The only thing I had on my mind was beating my uncle to a pulp for what he did. No one deserved this. No one. Not even them. There was so much blood in the room I could smell it. Before I reached my uncle and attempted to take the murder weapon from his clutches, I felt whatever had been in my stomach enter my throat. I bent over and fired out a whole pile of puke, which only added to the disgusting display the police would see later. Uncle Bernie did not comment. He stared at me, blankly, as if he no longer had human emotions. Who knew? Maybe he didn't. I had a tough time classifying anyone capable of butchering their fellow man human anyway.
“All can see, Ritchie,” he said. “All can see in the House of Mirrors...”
On my knees in front of the small pile of vomit, I watched as he took the knife and stuck it into his own throat, cutting from under his chin and down into his Adam's Apple. Rivulets of blood gushed from the wound.
He did not make a sound the entire time he carved himself.
8
The cops would later find a photograph in Bernard's pocket. It was of Marty Olberstad and Danica. They were kissing, and although two black spots covered most of their faces, their identities were unmistakable.
Two black spots...
Two black spots...
Two. Black. Spots.
All can see in the House of Mirrors, he had said.
PART THREE
THE DENLAX EFFECT
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
He walked to a nearby con
venience store from the Moon Motel, less than a mile away. He intended to buy coffee and smokes, but decided on a flavored slushy over coffee on the way there. His preferred choice was blueberry, but the store was out of it, so he settled for cherry instead. This agitated him. When he arrived at the cash register he asked the Indian fellow behind the counter for his brand of smokes. The Indian fellow complied with his wishes and put the cigarettes on the counter, accompanied by matches. “The next time I come in here,” the man said, “you better fucking have blueberry, or I'm going to cut off your balls with a butter knife.”
The Indian man behind the counter glared at him, like nothing had been said at all. “Good day, sir,” the clerk said.
“Eat shit,” the man muttered, and drifted toward the door. Before he left, his eyes caught the attention of a newspaper headline. BRUTAL SLAYING IN RED RIVER APARTMENT. Murder? the man thought. Murders happened frequently in Red River, not an every day occurrence, but they did happen. What made this one so special? Something about the headline grabbed him, made him stop to pick up the paper, and skim over the article.
Something made him do it all.
That was always Geoffrey Boone's excuse.
Something made me do it.
It had been hard to read since the voices took over his mind. At first, the voices came and went, spotty occurrences, even when they were at their loudest. Sometimes it sounded like a bunch of birds chirping through the bedroom window one spring morning. Sometimes it sounded like a crowded restaurant. Sometimes it was difficult to make out what they were saying, sometimes it was easy. Sometimes only one voice spoke. The Master. Sometimes he would tell Geoffrey to do things. Things that were inappropriate for this world. But from the world where the Master came from, it was anything goes. Anything could be done. Magic existed. Dark magic. Light magic too, but that was not practiced by the Elduronds. The Elduronds practiced Dark magic, and Geoffrey knew this the same way he knew most things about other worlds; because his Master told him.
