Mr. X

by Peter Straub

  “He was home with Queenie the whole time.” Nettie glanced at me. “She testified to that effect, but the jury chose not to believe her, which was the same as saying that she told a pack of lies. Our sister was the picture of honesty. Honest as sunshine.”

  “At times,” May said, “our sister’s honesty was of a sort to make you check and see where you were bleeding. I’d like more ribs, please, Ned, and some of the marshmallow salad from the Ladies of Galilee.”

  “Toby didn’t say anything to save himself?” I asked.

  “Didn’t, couldn’t, wouldn’t.” Nettie took the bowl of marshmallow salad from May and spooned half of it onto her plate. Disgust won out over her reservations. “Toby hardly talked to his own lawyer. They convicted him of stealing a silver picture frame, all because a Hatchtown no-good claimed he saw Toby hanging around outside the house.”

  A familiar sensation, that of steady electrical pulsations, flowed into my arms, and the colors around me blazed. I could not be sure how much time was left me. Robert lingered somewhere close by, burning with jealousy. I said, “This is a wonderful birthday party, but I should go inside and lie down for a while.”

  “That’s all right,” Nettie said. “If you were to fall to the ground and foam at the mouth, I’d feel like a miserable old woman.”

  The buzzing pulse quieted in my veins; the yellow flare around Clark’s chest and shoulders receded back into his jacket. “At Toby’s funeral, someone made a comment that made me think Stewart Hatch owned these houses. I always thought they belonged to you.”

  May frowned. Clark sneered thoughtfully at a flake sectioned from a pork rib. Nettie patted my hand. “Son, you don’t have to worry about us.”

  “Which means, I suppose, that he does own your houses.”

  “Over the years, our family has done a lot of business with the Hatches. At a time when money was running low, Mr. Hatch became aware of our difficulties, and he stepped in to do us some good.”

  “What kind of good?”

  “Mr. Hatch plans to develop this area. In the meantime, we can stay here for the rest of our lives.”

  “What if Hatch goes to jail?”

  “No matter what happens, we’ll be fine.”

  “We are protected, and we did it all ourselves,” said May. “Toby’s money is what I call the icing on the cake.”

  Clark said, “Speaking of dessert, where’s that sweet-potato pie?”

  “You’ll wait until the boy’s had his fit,” said Nettie. “It isn’t your birthday.”

  113

  I walked through the kitchen, feeling his hovering presence with every step, and said, “Show yourself, Robert.”

  I came into the living room. “Did you know Stewart owned their houses? What’s going on? He can’t develop one block on Cherry Street.” I imagined my silent double standing before me, grinning at my perplexity.

  Trudging up the stairs, I thought: Four hundred and eighty thousand dollars is just the icing on the cake?

  I moved over the landing and shuddered to a halt. Howard Dunstan regarded me with dispassionate curiosity from the end of the hallway. I resisted the impulse to run downstairs. A faint smile played over Howard’s mouth. He was enjoying my birthday. Robert and I had eased the boredom of eternity by providing him a drama more entertaining than he had expected.

  “Go outside, give your daughters a thrill,” I said. “I’m sick of the sight of you.”

  The expression on his face said, You don’t get it, you are missing the point. He turned aside, inclined his head to the window behind him, and faded from view.

  I went to the window and looked down. Four people in festive spirits sat at the picnic table. Imbuing his duplicate of the pink extravaganza with an elegant raffishness, Robert spoke to Nettie and made her dimple with pleasure. He looked astonishingly handsome, even as I took in the roaring deprivation I had seen while he cavorted among fireflies and flaming birds.

  I moved from the window and saw the door to Nettie and Clark’s bedroom. It was half open. Scarcely believing what I was doing, I went into their room. Two freestanding wooden cabinets stood against the back wall, and two upholstered chairs faced me from beyond a double bed with white pillows and a faded yellow coverlet. I felt like a rapist. A tall chest of drawers faced the bed. The room’s only closet took up the wall to my right.

  The sweet, musty odor of a lavender sachet filtered toward me. Clark’s outfits took up half of the rail, Nettie’s long, loose dresses the other. Tidy stacks of sweaters and sweatshirts covered most of the shelf above the rail. A manila folder lay an inch back from the edge of the shelf beyond the sweatshirts.

  The folder contained a lot of black-and-white photographs. They could have been of Nettie and her sisters arranged tallest to smallest in front of the house on New Providence Road; of Clark Rutledge striking a pose in high-draped pants; of Star Dunstan beside a nightclub piano, singing “They Can’t Take That Away from Me.” Looking at them was the only way to clear the aunts of my suspicions. I took out three of the photographs and knew that whoever these people might have been, they were not Dunstans.

  A young man in a straw boater propped one foot on the running board of what I thought was a Marmon. In a studio portrait, a girl of perhaps eighteen with straight, dark bangs and wearing pearls, a white, midcalf dress, and gleaming silk stockings smiled at a rolled diploma. Older versions of the same people, he in a three-piece suit, she in a cloche hat, posed behind two boys in sailor suits, one of them not long out of infancy. I slipped the photos back into the folder and took out another. My symptoms surged back into life, promising me a merry ride.

  Dressed for the occasion in a doll-like jacket and bow tie, a small boy with bangs like his mother’s perched on a photographer’s stool in front of a backdrop depicting an Italian hill town. His face was nearly identical to that of the three-year-old Ned Dunstan in the photograph my mother had given me.

  I pulled out one of the Edgerton Academy class photos pink-haired Spike had assumed I wished to find. Twenty boys in their early teens stood in three rows on the steps in front of a school. Glowering at the camera from the end of the last row, apart and unhappy, as dark as Caliban, was the image of myself at thirteen.

  I walked out of the bedroom to find Robert leaning against the wall, smiling at me. He said, “Nettie and May are a perfect pair of rogues. And I can’t say enough about Clark. The man belongs in the Senate. You don’t mind my taking advantage of your absence to get acquainted with the family, do you?”

  “Would it make a difference?”

  Robert looked at the folder and narrowed his eyes. “Is that what I think it is?”

  I pushed it toward him. “Take this to the car. I have to get back to the Brazen Head before my attack.”

  “Can you hold it off that long?”

  “I have more control than I used to,” I said.

  “We’re developing all sorts of new skills.” Robert took the folder and disappeared.

  When I came back out into the backyard, Clark and the aunts looked at me with gratified surprise. “Bounce back faster than a rubber ball, that’s what you do,” Nettie said.

  “It’s still on the way,” I said. “I should get back to my hotel. But thank you for my birthday party. And I love my new jacket, Aunt May.” An unanswered question came to me. “We were talking about Toby. Did they say he broke into a house in Hatchtown?”

  “Do they have silver picture frames in Hatchtown?” Clark sneered.

  “Nettie said a Hatchtown character saw him outside the place.”

  “A lowlife named Spelvin claimed to see Toby out in Ellendale. People like him didn’t go wandering through Ellendale in those days, not without getting rousted.”

  “Where in Ellendale?” Electrical current sparkled through my veins.

  “Manor Street,” Clark said. “Where the mansions went up in the twenties.”

  “Whose mansion in particular?” I already knew.

  “Carpenter Hatch’s place,�
�� Clark said. “I don’t know how a jury decided Toby Kraft could get so down and out stupid.”

  I faded from the backyard with none of Robert’s impressive immediacy.

  114

  Sprawled across the backseat, Robert said, “What do you make of these pictures?”

  “You first.”

  He put on a mock-professorial voice. “These photographs represent approximately fifteen years in the life of an increasingly well-off Midwestern family. We begin with a clever roughneck and the little beauty who had the misfortune of marrying him. In time, the roughneck transforms himself into a stiff-necked dictator, and the bride dwindles into a cringing phantom. They have two sons, seven or eight years apart, who are sent to a horrible school established to reinforce the fantasy that they are landed aristocracy.”

  “Anything else?”

  “The first son looks like us.”

  “He also looks a lot like Howard Dunstan.”

  Robert waited.

  “The roughneck was Carpenter Hatch. The girl who turned into a phantom was called Ellie, short for Ellen, as in Ellendale. Their first son wound up in jail, disappeared, and supposedly died. The second son, Cobden, went to work for his father, got married, and had a son. All his life, Cobden Hatch was afraid his son, Stewart, might turn out like his brother.”

  “Who happened to resemble Howard Dunstan. And when he was supposed to be dead, this cuckoo in the nest came back to Edgerton, calling himself Edward Rinehart.”

  “He came back a second time as Earl Sawyer. A lot of people have done their best to keep me from finding out that he was my father. Our father.”

  “That would mean …”

  “Tell me,” I said. “I’d like to know.”

  “It means Edward Rinehart was a Dunstan, and you and I are Hatches. Good old Dad ties the two families together, and what’s the physical proof? Ned Dunstan. No wonder Stewart grabbed our photographs and wanted you run out of town. You could ruin his family’s reputation.” He laughed. “It’s delicious. Rinehart worked for his nephew for fifteen years, and he was so blown out Stewart never recognized him. The only way Stewart knew him was in these pictures.”

  What about Nettie and May? I wondered. Nettie would instantly have recognized “Edward Rinehart” as her father’s illegitimate son. But “Edward Rinehart” had avoided the Dunstans as he must have avoided the Hatches; he had never even allowed himself to be photographed. If the aunts had not known the identity of Star’s lover, they could not have blackmailed Stewart Hatch, and there was no way they could have known it.

  I swerved into a parking place on Word Street, where the facade of the Hotel Paris shimmered like lava. A hot electrical tingle moved across my scalp, down my spine, and into my arms. The more I learned, the more confusing it became. Every new bit of information led into another blind alley.

  “Go to my room,” I said. “I’ll be right there.”

  “I’m not making any promises.” Robert disappeared from the backseat.

  I sped through the bursting sounds and blooming colors in the lanes and charged across Veal Yard. The grain of the wood on the Brazen Head’s reception desk swam up through layers of lacquer. “Yes, we have a fax for you, Mr. Dunstan,” the day clerk said. With a thunderous explosion of summery blue from his shirt, the clerk produced a bundle of ivory-gray fax paper.

  I went to the stairs reading the brilliant black lines of the fax. Major Audrey Arndt was pleased to supply, so on and so forth, with the understanding that I had agreed, so on and so forth. Her signature boomed from the page like a cannonball. I read down names listed under the years from 1938 to 1942. The fifth name down in the class of 1941 was Cordwainer C. Hatch.

  Robert was standing near the window when I came in. From the edge of the table, the jewel-like arc of P.D. 10/17/58 floated out into the room. “You got a fax?”

  “Cordwainer Hatch,” I said. “Cobden’s brother. I think he killed a student at a military school to get his hands on the book I stole from Buxton Place.” Blue light flashed at the periphery of my vision, and the immense pressure in the atmosphere concentrated into a steady urgency. “You know what we have to do, Robert.”

  He held up his hands. “You don’t understand. It would be harder on you than on me. I don’t know if you could take it.”

  I moved toward him. An ivory-colored haze I would not have seen at any other time floated through his skin and hung like tobacco smoke. In the second before I reached for him, I took the copy of The Dunwich Horror from the table and rammed it into a pocket of the pink jacket. Everything crashed and boomed. I fastened my hand on Robert’s, knowing exactly what we were about to see.

  115 Mr.X

  O You Swarming Majesties Cruelties, Who Giveth with one hand and Taketh Away with the other—I begin to see—

  First I must address a more crucial point. I only now

  It is bitter, bitter, with a bitterness I only now begin to comprehend.

  * * *

  As the decades passed—I grew accustomed to the consolation of a Fancy—that a Godlike & Ironic Amusement—abstract—beyond the ken of the Providence Master—had Blessed Lumbered me with the Task—Mighty—of Killing the Antagonist—or—as I have discover’d—Antagonists.—I can only here inscribe that the Horrors—perpetrated by these Same—have led me to believe taught me that I misunderstood Your True Nature. Gifts and Revelations encouraged this Servant’s Illusion of a Favored Election—foolish, IMBECILE me.

  Last night—in Darkness—my Madness Soared—before the evidence of a Great Destruction. The Sacred Flame boiled tortured the Heavens—I stood in Ashes—below—

  And—in Horror & Despair—Receiv’d the Gift.

  I stood, as if You didn’t know knew not, a’midst the Ashes—as Smoke from the Cannon’s Mouth—sent Rage streaming forth—& then—Devour’d—the Substance Molten—Which is Time—& Travel’d Back—Godly & Engorg’d—to Where I shall once again slay Ferdy Dunstan, called Michael Anscombe, and Moira Hightower Dunstan, called Sally Anscombe—and Then—in Triumph—Destroy the Twin Antagonists—

  Humor—has no Place in Your Realm—Irony—as foreign as Pity. I lash myself, that I so fell short—that I could not see my Gethsemane—my Golgotha—

  The River-bank—has its Purpose & its Purpose—Terrifying. Pain equal to Pain—Rage equal to Rage—no Triumph without a Testing. Here are my wrists and ankles Pierced—here the Centurion’s Sword is Thrust—

  Crucifixion is no picnic, let me say that. Let me add that a half-human Wretch and Outcast can only take so much! I scream—my Scream shall reach the Heavens—they have Destroyed my Work!

  Yet—in the midst of Annihilation—I get the point—You Creeping Obscenities—& Bless my Wounds & Sword Slits—My Great Loss—& Torment—is foreshadowing of the Great Fire to come—For my Identity cannot be Gainsaid—the Great Fire Follows the Smoke from the Mouth of the Cannon—

  Half-mad with rage—with insult—Since discovery of the Crime, sleep has not been mine—I tremble & sweat, soak my clothing through & cannot eat—These Blessings are given in earnest of the End—when I shall Perish—to gain Eternity—

  My foes Torment me—I call to them—as of old—the Advantage Mine—my Army Mightier—in Intelligence—a New Ability given me by Need—& the Foe ignorant of my Earthly Name—Even more—I known them Two—a Grand Superiority—They do not Suspect—And will Show One—whilst I conquer Time—

  In the midst of Rage—I Laugh—to regard such Play—

  I set down the Pen—& close the Book—the Triumph hastens—My Heartless Fathers—

  116

  A half second before we were to be delivered to Boulder, Colorado, I was united with my shadow again.

  As in childhood, I recoiled from trespass and invasion; this time, I felt Robert’s revulsion as well as my own. We were thirty-five, not nine, and the shock was far greater. But I had become more like Robert than I knew: the powers I had discovered and those he had known all his life shared a common root. There came again
a breathtaking expansion into unguessed-at wholeness and resolution that in no way erased our separate individuality. We knew what the other knew, felt what the other felt, but within this symbiosis remained a Robert and a Ned. Surprisingly to both, it seemed that Ned was in charge of the decisions.

  In the year 1967, we stood, adorned in a pink sports jacket flecked with golf bags and putting greens, on the Anscombes’ front lawn. The moon hung like a monstrous button over a ridge of mountains, and the air smelled of fir trees. Blue fire shone from a window in a new addition at the far left of the house. The Mr. X of 1967 was prowling in search of his son. A shaft of blue light, sent as a flag of ironic welcome by our Mr. X, Cordwainer Hatch, flared through a crack in the living room curtains. On the steps to the attic, our nine-year-old selves were meeting for the first time. Neither we nor the demon in the living room were to be seen, because we had not been seen then.

  A well-known pressure moved us through the front door. In a shapeless garment that fell to the tops of her feet, Goodnight Moon in one hand, her hair a matted tangle, Mrs. Anscombe stared down at her husband’s corpse. Our Mr. X loomed behind her, displaying an enraged, grotesque smile beneath the brim of his hat. Mrs. Anscombe padded into her husband’s blood. Frank Sinatra sang of the encounter on a lovely night between a force not to be resisted and an object not to be moved.

  Mrs. Anscombe said, “Shit on a shingle.” She turned her face to us. “Who the hell are you, Bob Hope?”

  Unable to see the thirty-five-year-old man who had materialized near the front door, nine-year-old Robert was watching her from the kitchen. As if following the direction of my thoughts, Mrs. Anscombe looked toward him and walked deeper into the red pool. A dim recognition moved across her face, and the book slapped into the blood. Her eyes swung back. “Why are you doing this?” she shouted. “Don’t you understand I’m already in hell?”