An odor that reminded him of Vic’s Vapor Rub hung in the room.
“Don’t leave, don’t leave!” implored the voice. “Is that you, McNeil?”
Duncan did not look around the room, but kept very still, as if by turning his head he might miss the culprit dash from behind the curtains and hide, say, behind the back of the sofa.
Games. Someone was playing games.
In the center of a round rattan coffee table rose one of the largest hookah pipes he thought he’d ever seen. And he’d seen plenty.
Eight hoses sprouted from near the base; a medusa, of sorts.
He leaned over the prodigal pipe, and inhaled.
Hashish, of course. That explained the smell.
Memories started flooding back. He shook his head, as if he’d conjured a cloud of gnats, then stepped silently toward the kitchen.
The living room and kitchen merged where dingy carpet had collided disastrously with wood flooring. Champagne-colored ringlets and curls corkscrewed their way up from the long, quarter-inch trench, ensnaring floor splinters and cigarette butts and Captain Crunch and God knew what else.
Compared to the living room, however, the kitchen was surprisingly tidy.
“Hey, over here!” cried the man. “Please tell me you’re that kid’s father.”
This time, Duncan got a bearing on the voice. He stepped cautiously to the south wall where hung an Ansel Adams poster. Modestly framed, this black-and-white photo depicted a placid lake surrounded by aspen and pine and snow-capped mountains. The caption below offered “Mirror Lake and Mount Watkins, Yosemite National Park, California”.
It was vintage Ansel Adams; the vista so serene, so inviting that it made a guy just want to crawl into the picture with his fishing pole and drown a few worms. And as hard as Duncan was trying not to believe it, it appeared to him that someone had done just that, minus tackle.
On the narrow patch of shore located in the bottom left corner of the print, also in black-and-white, was a gaunt man in striped pajamas. Barefoot, he was pacing along the bank, hugging himself. He appeared to be in his late forties, bald, and was sporting a gray goatee. His pate glinted dully beneath the overcast sky.
Duncan fought a curious urge to yell. “Are you Mitch Dillard?” he said, feeling truly stupid.
Startled, the man pivoted shakily. Not quite facing Duncan, he gazed skyward and spoke like an oracle addressing the Messiah: “Are you Duncan McNeil?”
“I asked you first.”
“Look,” the man began, disconcerted, “I can’t see you, but I can hear you.” He rubbed his hands briskly together. “All I can see are mountains and trees and picnic tables. So unless you’re Ricky Ranger, Duncan McNeil, or Smokey the fucking Bear, get the hell out of my house!”
“You didn’t answer my question,” Duncan reminded, searching the ceiling and walls for hidden projectors, laser lights, Alan Fundt’s successor—anything that would expose the prank, or at least allude to one, and quell the strange panic blooming in his gut.
The man squinted. “What question was that?”
“Are you Mitch Dillard, the photographer?”
He laughed. “I used to be, but now I’m Mitch Dillard, flashback schizophrenic.” He hugged himself tighter. “Let me tell you, it’s colder than a well digger’s ass in Wyoming out here!”
“California,” Duncan corrected. “Yosemite National Park.”
“I know where the hell I am!” Mitch crowed. “It’s my poster!”
“And it appears to be springtime,” Duncan said, making idle conversation while poking around an oval oak table teeming with wadded Twinkies packages and 35mm film canisters. Cigarette burns were so plentiful on the table and surrounding carpet that they often crisscrossed one another, looking to Duncan like a herd of black, fuzzy caterpillars had migrated to this very spot and died. “I can almost smell the blooms from here,” he said. “I’m guessing it’s 65, maybe 75 degrees in there.”
“Celsius or Fahrenheit?” Mitch cried, pulling exaggeratedly at the waist of his pajama bottoms. “So I have a low threshold to the cold! I yell bonzi! every time there’s a nip in the air! Big deal!” He was literally jumping up and down. “Haven’t you noticed the rather peculiar situation I’m in?”
“I’ve noticed,” Duncan said. “So, how…did you get in there?”
Mitch began rubbing his hands along his thighs. “Couple three hours ago, this guy pays me a visit, says his name’s Gamble, and that he wanted me to give someone a message. Basically, I told him where he could stick his message, that I’d had enough loopy shit for one day, and was most certainly not in any mood to play mailman opposite some fruitcake.”
“And he said...?”
“He said, ‘My friend, you don’t know the first thing about crazy,’ then recited a lame limerick—and presto! I’m in this glossy freezing my nads off!”
“What did he look like?”
Mitch blew into his cupped hands. “You won’t believe me.”
“Like I’m believing any of this.”
“David Copperfield,” he confessed.
“The book, or the magician?” Duncan felt it was a legitimate question, given the scenario.
“The hocus-pocus guy, smart ass,” he said. “Black suit, boyish good looks, the whole nine yards. But he didn’t fool me. I’ve seen better Cher impersonators, and I told him so.”
“Magic, huh?” Duncan said. “Well, that might explain a lot. How much hash did you smoke before this Gamble guy arrived?”
Mitch laughed. “How much did you?”
He thought for a moment. “Good point.”
“I’ll damn sure guarantee you that this ain’t the kind of Rocky Mountain High John Denver had in mind.”
Well, that was debatable, Duncan thought. Besides, Mitch was in the Sierra Nevada range, not the Rocky Mountains. But this wasn’t the time to nitpick.
He lifted the picture off its hook and examined it from front to back. While doing so, it vaguely occurred to him that he might be pitching the poster’s animate resident about like a bug in a jar.
Of course, that was a ridiculous notion.
There was nothing on the wall except a ghostly rectangle of brighter paint, indicating only that the print had been there for some time.
Duncan returned it to the wall and regarded Mitch—still upright and appearing no worse off than before—with remorse; not sad for the man, but woeful that he himself might be spending the next six months or so as a guest of the state, where he would interpret inkblots, debate with his fellow convalescents the ethical ramifications of electroshock therapy, and match wits with an unscrupulous nursing staff. And, in the meantime, hopefully befriend any humongous oafs who could bench-press any of the facility’s marble commodes and bust his ass out, preferably before his prescribed lobotomy.
“Fuck,” Duncan groaned. “This is not happening.”
Mitch held up a finger. “Hey, it could be worse. Instead of Ansel Adams, I could be up to my ass in H.R. Giger.”
Duncan poked the glass with an index finger, and was relieved when he felt solid resistance. But could he reach into the scene if the glass wasn’t there? he wondered. He wanted very badly to remove his glove, convinced that it was not allowing for the tactility necessary to experience this remarkable brand of bizarreness. He kept both gloves on, though, reminded that—even without his fingerprints—the District Attorney could probably make a convincing case that he had the motive and opportunity should the photographer’s corpse later be found floating in the reflective waters of Mirror Lake.
“He’s the guy who designed the creatures in the old Alien movies,” Mitch said.
Duncan was massaging his temples with vigor. “What?”
“H.R. Giger. He’s the one—”
“Yeah, yeah, I know who he is.”
“Hey,” Mitch hollered, “this is just as hard on me, you know.”
Duncan closed his eyes, inhaled deeply.
“What happened at the school today?�
�� he finally said. “With my daughter?”
“Ah hah, I knew it!” Mitch yelled, clapping. “You are McNeil!”
“The one and only,” he said. “Now, what about my daughter?”
“She…she didn’t tell you?”
“Yes, she did,” Duncan lied. “But I want to hear your version of events.”
Mitch began pacing again, gesturing dramatically as he spilled the story.
“Let me get this straight,” Duncan said. “Amy’s hand sucked the colors from your canvas?”
“Like cat hair up a Kirby.” Mitch shrugged his shoulders. “Given the fact you’re talking to a guy in a chintzy poster, is that so unbelievable?”
Duncan supposed not. “And the note that was left—this ‘Special Bulletin’—said, ‘He knows where you’ve flown’?” Upon that, he vaguely recalled something Rachel had told him earlier. Didn’t she say that the ambulance driver experienced something very similar? At the hospital?
“That’s what it said,” Mitch affirmed.
“Where who’s flown? And who the hell is ‘He’?”
“Mr. McNeil, your daughter didn’t answer any of my questions, which should come as no surprise seeing how I was too busy wetting my pants to ask her any.”
Duncan concentrated. There was something else the medic had told Rachel. Something about moving images on glass? Christ, he couldn’t remember.
He cursed himself, wishing now he’d been more attentive.
Headlights spun across the living room curtains. Across the street, car doors opened, releasing a drunken chorus of profanities and giddy laughter. The voices entered a neighboring house, then all was quiet.
“McNeil?” Mitch yelled. “You still with me?”
Duncan continued to stare at the curtains. “Yeah. I’m just trying to figure a way to get you out of there.”
Mitch whooped. “I’m glad you brought that up. See, this guy Gamble said he expected you to show up sooner or later, and that he’d let me out once you did. But that I’d have to read you a message first. So, if you don’t mind...”
Very curious now, Duncan turned to Mitch. “Okay, let’s hear it.”
Mitch delightedly removed a folded piece of plain notebook paper from his pajama pants’ pocket, cleared his throat, then began reading: “‘There once was a detective named McNeil, A suitcase full of money he did steal, Amid the moral strife, He saved a child’s life, And gained a dead one in the deal.’ He signed it, ‘Sincerely, Mr. Gamble’.”
Jack London’s short story “To Build a Fire” came to Duncan’s mind as his body temperature suddenly plummeted to forty below zero, with the tundra around his heart made even more frigid by the wind chill. For a long moment he could barely breathe, and seriously considered burning the poster and the photographer within it before he lost consciousness. But he was already so numb that a match would have been useless in his fingers.
“Don’t you rabbit on me yet, McNeil!” shouted the photographer. “There’s more, a P.S. at the bottom. You ready?”
“Go ahead,” Duncan said, wondering if his chest would ever thaw.
“‘P.S. Given her recent cravings, tell your wife there’s a wonderful little restaurant over by Hollenbeck Park. Middle Eastern. I strongly recommend she start out with the Fatoosh. It’s excellent. Then, to whet her appetite for lamb, she should go for the Koozy. Best in town. For dessert, there’s nothing better than their Basbousa. I know, I know, she’s watching that cute little figure. But guess what? So am I! Mmmm-mm! Tell her to put it on my tab.’”
After what might have been either several seconds or several hours, the picture and photographer wavered back into view. Duncan, just barely recalling that last part, said, “What was that about my wife and Koozy in Hollenbeck Park?”
“Want me to read it again?”
Duncan shook his head. “No, no, forget it. I think I get the intention.”
“Their couscous is good too,” Mitch offered. “If you’re into that shit.”
Duncan glanced around, not knowing whether to expect a genie to pop out of Mitch’s hookah, the walls to ooze blood, or his wife to deliver him a swift elbow, order him to roll over, then curse his obnoxious snoring before falling herself back to sleep.
Finally, Duncan turned to the photographer. “Well, I’m still here, and you’re still in there.”
Mitch was already slugging himself in the sides. “Damn it! Maybe I didn’t read it right!”
“No,” Duncan assured, “you did just fine.”
Just then, Duncan saw a distortion on the surface of the lake, just off the opposite shore. The photographer must have heard what Duncan saw, for he turned and stared.
There it was again. Something huge rolled just beneath the lake’s glassy surface.
“What the fuck is that?” Duncan said. “A sturgeon?”
“Way my day’s been going,” Mitch groused, “it’s probably the Incredible Mr. Limpett.”
Don Knotts dressed up like a carp? Duncan leaned in, fascinated. Why not?
Then his eyes grew wide as he stepped back from the poster. “Mitch, get away from the lake,” he ordered. “Now! Run!”
“Run? And go where?” Mitch implored. “I’m in bare feet. I can barely walk!”
“Just…Christ, just start heading toward Mount Watkins!” Duncan said, beginning to panic.
The thing in the lake was surfacing. But the lake was no longer water. It had turned into glass. With a quick upward thrust, the monster broke through in an explosion of twinkling shards and nuggets.
Duncan felt the room vibrate.
Mitch stood transfixed, gaping at the mutant as it oozed up from the hole and onto the fractured surface.
The creature looked like a giant slug, and was mostly transparent; its internal organs less so, but see-through all the same. As it moved toward Mitch, it did so raucously and with the blunt determination of an earthmover, scouring the surface and pulverizing the chunks of glass strewn in its path.
Its optical tentacles telescoped out and fixed upon the photographer. It was nearly upon him now.
“Get out of its way!” Duncan squealed, his voice pinched with fear.
Mitch began stomping the ground again. “We had a deal, Gamble!” he screamed at the sky. Then he turned in Duncan’s direction: “I think he’s coming for your daughter, McNeil! I think it’s Gamble who knows where Amy’s flown—”
The gastropod seized Mitch by the head, and quickly imbibed him. Duncan watched the man’s progression through the slug’s diaphanous body, from esophagus to stomach. During the violent ingestion, Mitch’s pajama top had been pulled from him and was now floating in the creature’s jellied throat.
To foil a tactless urge to laugh, Duncan slapped a hand to his mouth.
There once was a Detective named McNeil…
Everything in the picture, even the slug, remained black and white – except for the blood now rising like steam off the photographer’s entire body, effusing a wispy crimson aura.
But Mitch was not dead. Duncan could see the facial contortions, the torpid movements of his limbs, as if he were pushing out against a million rubber bands. Craggy holes were already blossoming outward in his pajama bottoms, exposing muscle and bone. Then the tissue on his chest began to flare. Within moments, his sternum began peeking through, then the connecting ribs...
The photographer’s screams were strangled, but ever-present.
A gust of wind stirred a distant copse of pine, the sound traveling across the lake like a fizzling pop bottle rocket.
In a cumulus of blood, Mitch’s right leg slid away from the hip, buoying grotesquely in the loose gel.
He was being digested.
…A suitcase full of money he did steal…
Duncan bolted for the front door, his right hand still covering his mouth. He was no longer stifling a laugh, but was now fighting back the urge to vomit.
…Amid the moral strife, He saved a child’s life…
…And gained a dead one in
the deal.
Duncan stumbled off the porch and onto the photographer’s dirt lawn. Nausea had already paled and slackened his face, and was now working on his stature.
The rain had stopped, and a breeze cooled his sweaty cheeks and forehead.
Doubled-over, Duncan dropped to his knees.
“A salt shaker,” he mumbled, laughing amid tears. “If only I could’ve gotten a salt shaker.”
Then he leaned forward and reintroduced to Los Angeles some of its finest mandarin cuisine.
“May the universe in some strange way be ‘brought into being’ by the participation of those who participate?”
–John Wheeler, physicist
Part Two
Windows
1.
A fetid stink crowded the basement; had blossomed overnight, it seemed.
Beneath each of the six stained glass windows rested a large plastic dog dish. And from these the stench of rotting meat had once again risen to levels that would, according to his crass mother, “knock a vulture off a shit wagon!”
Eli would have to get her down here to clean up. She would once again rant and rave about his compulsion to feed the “monkey-bats,” reminding him that they obviously didn’t like Mighty Dog or chicken livers or Nine Lives, and why couldn’t he just get that through his depraved skull, blah, blah, blah.
He teasingly tapped the glass murals as he walked by them, inciting their blurry occupants into wild Pavlovian responses.
Except for those of the developing room, and a lengthwise section in the middle for his Wall of Faces, all the basement walls remained unfinished. Two bare, hundred-watt bulbs hung from either end of the ceiling, casting dark, distorted twins of every stud left exposed by the absence of sheet rock, lending each undeveloped chamber the look and feel of a cold, drab penal cell.
Moodier still were the shadows ogling from those confines; the ghosts of inmates past, recidivists even after death, and still the rubbernecking bunch they were before the warden pulled their numbers.
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