Mr. X

by Peter Straub

  “Don’t worry, Mrs. Anscombe,” said Cordwainer Hatch. “You will be taken care of soon enough.”

  She took another dazed step toward the kitchen. “Shit, I really am in hell,” she shouted, “only the son of a bitch isn’t RED, it’s BLUE!”

  The Black Death of the Hatchtown lanes drifted toward us. A sickening wave of almost limitless rage poisoned by an insanity deeper than Alice Anscombe’s streamed from him as his mind reached out to engulf mine and Robert’s. For the first time, I knew I could resist his strength. Robert yelled, Do something! and I told him, Wait. Cordwainer’s mind battered on mine like a wind flattening against an oaken door.

  That means nothing. Move!

  The air gathered into a solid substance, pushed us back through yielding walls, and deposited us in a small room stacked with cardboard boxes. Cordwainer was only inches away. He stank of riverbottom. Blue light filtered in from the living room, where the Mr. X of 1967 berated Mrs. Anscombe. Our Mr. X blasted a roar of outrage into our minds: You destructive, destructive, destructive little vandal! You monster! He drew a knife from his coat.

  A furious bellow and a series of muffled noises reported the demise of Mrs. Anscombe. Mr. X’s younger self uttered a screech of frustration, thundered into the kitchen, and transported himself outside in pursuit of a small boy he knew had escaped him yet again.

  “I guess you’re angry about the books,” I said.

  Cordwainer grabbed our shoulder, spun us around, and clamped us to his chest. He dug his knife into our neck.

  Is this what you had in mind? Robert asked me. Sorry, but I’m not hanging around to get killed. I told him to calm down.

  “You could say that, yes. I am angry about the books.” He nudged the blade another eighth of an inch into our neck. “Satisfy my curiosity. Where did you learn the name Edward Rinehart? Was it your mother? That old fool Toby Kraft?”

  “Lots of people told me about Edward Rinehart,” I said. “Where are we?”

  He sniggered. “Don’t you remember the Anscombes? Does Boulder, Colorado, ring a bell? We have journeyed back through time, the Substance Molten, a matter undoubtedly beyond your comprehension, that I might inquire how you managed to get away from me that time. Speak, please. I am deeply interested, I assure you.”

  Why aren’t you DOING anything? Robert yelled. Are we just going to TALK to a guy who’s sticking a knife in our neck?

  Shut up and let me handle this, I said to Robert. We have to talk to him.

  To Cordwainer, I said, “I can tell you who you really are. You’ll find that tremendously interesting, I promise. It surprised me, too.”

  “Enough of this charade. Let’s see if any other book burner wants to join the fun.”

  A great wind whipped into the room, flattening the pink jacket against our chest. Furniture slid across the living room floor. It sounded as though every dish and glass in the kitchen blew off the shelves and smashed against the walls. The window behind me exploded. I told Robert part of what I had in mind and heard him chuckle.

  Did you think you actually had me fooled?

  Everything in the house flew before the heightening wind. The living room window bulged and detonated. A kind of ecstasy flowed from Robert.

  “Are you looking for someone?” I asked.

  You destroyed my books! That is an OUTRAGE! Where is he?

  “I want to show you something, Mr. Sawyer,” I said. “People are going to be able to see us. If you have any sense, you’ll take the knife out of my neck.”

  His arm tightened over our chest. “I’ll humor you,” he said. The knife came out of our neck and jabbed into our lower back.

  Robert asked, What the hell are you doing now? I told him to hope for the best, and all three of us dropped through the floor into suddenly malleable time.

  117

  I was aiming for something I wasn’t sure I could find. Even if I could find it, I had no certainty of what we would see.

  The world ceased to swim. We were standing on a beaten footpath beside a two-lane macadam road. Horse-drawn wagons and old-fashioned automobiles rolled past in both directions. Robert was shouting that he did not understand what was happening, and Cordwainer was jabbing a knife into our back. Immediately, proof that we had arrived at the right place appeared before us.

  To our left, Howard Dunstan’s mad, bearded face scowled through the windscreen of a high-topped car chugging toward us down Wagon Road. His wife languished beside him. As they pulled nearer, two pretty young women who must have been Queenie and Nettie became visible behind them. Just entering their teens, May and Joy peeped out from the rumble seat.

  This means nothing, Cordwainer said. Nothing. An illusion, a sideshow. Where is the other, you wicked boy?

  On the far side of Wagon Road and in the wake of a horse-drawn cart heaped with burlap sacks, a vehicle sleeker and more expensive than Howard Dunstan’s floated into view. Carpenter Hatch, already frozen into eternally disapproving vigilance, muttered a remark that made the already wilting Ellie sink away. Through the rear passenger window of their automobile peered a sulky replica of myself and Robert at the age of five. Putting along behind the Hatches and moving inexorably toward the Dunstans was a third vehicle, grander than Howard’s but less impressive than the Hatch swan boat. The little girls in its rear seat pointed at the Dunstans, now nearly parallel to the swan boat. May Dunstan fixed her eyes upon the sullen childish face in the passing car. Howard stared straight ahead. Ellie Hatch, visible for a final second, shifted in her seat and regarded an empty field. A moment after the two cars separated, Wagon Road turned into chaos.

  Every windscreen and headlight within fifty yards exploded into flying glass. Tires flew from their axles and spun over the macadam. Panicked horses reared, bolted forward, and rammed their carts against whatever was in their way. Burlap sacks spilled potatoes across the road. I saw a horse go down and vanish beneath wreckage, its toothpick legs sawing the air. The pressure of Cordwainer’s arm lessened, and the knife fell away.

  Over the sounds of collisions came the screaming of horses and the shouts of men. As the swan boat swerved off the road to veer around the damage, Ellie Hatch’s weeping sounded in my ear from two feet away: it was not the voice of the woman now speeding into the distance, but her voice as remembered by the child in the seat behind her. Robert and I had colonized Cordwainer’s mind and memory.

  A bluebird tumbled to the floor of the ruin on New Providence Road; a naked girl of eleven or twelve pressed her hand to the wound in her bleeding chest and reeled over the filthy cement; the young Max Edison nodded from behind the wheel of a limousine; The Dunwich Horror leaped from the extended hand of a uniformed boy; a uniformed man said disease; in a doorway on Chester Street, a knife entered a whore’s belly; cartoon monsters descended from a cartoon sky; a fountain pen glided across a lined page; something lost, something irrevocably damaged, flew through the Hatchtown lanes, and that something was Cordwainer Hatch.

  Robert shouted, Kill him, kill him! What’s wrong with you?

  I tasted Cordwainer’s egotism and the illusion of a sacred cause and thought: I know how this ends.

  The screams of terrified horses, the noises of collisions billowed from Wagon Road. I took the knife from Cordwainer’s hand.

  Release me!

  “Okay, I’ll release you,” I said, and set him free. Robert shrieked in protest.

  Cordwainer stumbled back, laughing. “You’re too weak, you couldn’t hold me.” He looked at his empty hand. “Do you think I need a knife? Without your brother, you’re nothing.”

  “What did you see?” I asked. “Did you see yourself?”

  He surged over the grass. When Cordwainer slammed into me, I twisted sideways to absorb the shock and wrapped my arms around him. The three of us fell through a sudden trapdoor at the side of the beaten path.

  118

  Still in the momentum of his assault, Cordwainer Hatch rolled from my grip and struck the table in my room at the Brazen
Head. He groaned and pressed his hands over his eyes.

  “Take your time,” I said.

  Cordwainer lowered his hands, examined his surroundings, and swept the hat from his head. The ghost of Edward Rinehart shone in his ruined face. “Even the weakling has a little fight in him.” He glanced over his shoulder and backed against the wall, weighing his options.

  Kill him! Robert urged. He’s confused, he doesn’t understand what happened.

  It’s going to get a lot worse for him, I told Robert. Just wait. To Cordwainer, I said, “Do you remember that day? Do you know what happened on Wagon Road?”

  I could see him decide to sound me out. He lowered his hat to the table in a parody of a diplomatic gesture—he was hooked, and his next words proved it. “Let’s declare a temporary truce. This is about the last thing I anticipated, but now we have this interesting opportunity to hear what the other has to say. I want you to describe your fantasies. When you have finished, I will explain reality. Reality is going to astound you. Considering what you did to me, my offer is extraordinarily generous. But you will pay for your obscene crime, I assure you.”

  Robert said, Let’s put his eyes out. Let’s make him squeal.

  He’s going to squeal, all right, I said back. The worst moments of his entire life are about to happen.

  “Looks like I guessed wrong,” I said to Cordwainer. “You were supposed to get so angry you wouldn’t be able to function.”

  “Oh, you angered me. And I’ll grant you this, you’re stronger than I imagined. But there’s no sense continuing this discussion without your brother. You’ve lost whatever surprise factor you were counting on, so bring him in.”

  “I eliminated my brother this morning. He was a useless impediment. Since you’re willing to listen to my fantasy, as you call it, I want to show you a few things.”

  Cordwainer gave me a wary scrutiny. Whatever he saw must have persuaded him that I was telling the truth. “Congratulations. Why don’t you begin by telling me what you find significant about a few ancient collisions on Wagon Road?”

  At that moment, I felt very much like Robert. “Instead, why don’t you begin by telling me about the house on the edge of Johnson’s Woods?”

  Cordwainer’s face twisted into a smug, ghastly smile. “You wouldn’t understand. You couldn’t.”

  “Then I’ll give you some information you probably don’t know. Carpenter Hatch bought that property from Howard Dunstan’s daughters. It was where Howard spent his whole life, and when it burned down, he died in the fire.”

  He moved alongside the table, settled his hand on the back of a chair, and gazed at the ceiling. Cordwainer had decided to humor me. “Really, this is completely absurd. The man I thought of as my father bought that land to build houses for what he called the rising scum. The Dunstans never had any connection to the property. They swarmed into Cherry Street like roaches, and they never left.”

  The same crazy triumph with which he had told me about secret messages in H. P. Lovecraft irradiated him. “That house was the residence of a god.”

  “Howard Dunstan was a sort of Elder God,” I said. “That’s what is so interesting about what he did to you.”

  Cordwainer’s mouth opened in soundless hilarity.

  “You’re amused,” I said.

  “I’m in awe. Your mother filled you with the most amazing nonsense.”

  I took the photograph of Howard in his wing collar and high-buttoned waistcoat from the folder and slid it toward him. He smiled at it in negligent disdain. “You’re looking at Howard Dunstan,” I said. “Your real father.”

  “Did you make this up all by yourself, or was Star crazy, too?”

  I moved a photograph of Carpenter Hatch alongside the first. “Which one of these men would you say was your biological father?”

  Cordwainer barely glanced at the photographs. “I don’t expect you to understand this, but my true fathers were not of this earth.”

  “Let me tell you about your half-sister Queenie,” I said. “The first of Howard’s four daughters. Queenie could read people’s minds and go from one place to another in an eye-blink. She didn’t walk, she didn’t bother to open doors or climb stairs, she just went. It’s a Dunstan talent, like walking through walls, and she got it from Howard. When May Dunstan, her sister, was a young woman, a boyfriend tried to rape her. She turned him into a green puddle.”

  Cordwainer’s face twitched. His eyes rose to meet ours.

  “May caused that scene on Wagon Road. The instant she saw you, she knew you were Howard’s son. You looked too much like him to be anything else. Look at his picture, Cordwainer. Whatever abilities you and I have, we inherited from Howard Dunstan.”

  “She reduced a man to a green puddle?” Cordwainer was staring from the far edge of the table. “You know that for a fact?”

  “I hardly know what a fact is anymore,” I said. “Neither one of us ever had much contact with facts. Only instead of H. P. Lovecraft, I had you.”

  His mouth tucked in at the corners, and his eyes shifted. Once again, I saw a remnant of Edward Rinehart momentarily surface in his face. “What was my mistake? Calling myself Earl Sawyer? I didn’t think anyone would catch that.”

  “I almost missed it,” I said.

  Cordwainer moved the photographs closer to him. “You want me to talk about Wagon Road? I remember that girl staring at me from the rumble seat. I had no idea who she was. Then our windshield blew up, and everything went crazy. My father—my legal father—drove home as if nothing had happened.”

  “How did your father treat you?” I sorted through the pictures until I found a seven- or eight-year-old Howard posed in front of a seated, blazing-eyed Sylvan.

  Cordwainer put it alongside the others. “When he wasn’t lecturing me, he tuned me out. I depressed him. Of course, he had Cobden, the apple of his eye. Cobden could do no wrong, the little prig.”

  “And Cobden looked like him.”

  “This is so interesting.” Cordwainer was still staring down at the photographs. “I’m not saying you’re right, but it would explain a great deal about my childhood. Neither of my parents ever showed me much warmth, but they doted on my brother.”

  “Carpenter probably never really admitted the truth to himself. It would have been too disgraceful.”

  “I could almost believe it.” He smiled down at the photographs. “You know, I think I do believe it. My mother must have been more adventurous than I ever imagined.” He looked up. “And it would explain where my looks came from. I was always a handsome devil, like you. But the identity of my earthly parents … really, that’s all the same to me.”

  “Howard Dunstan manipulated you. He led you into the woods and brought you to what was left of his house. He showed you things. He made sure you came across a certain book and primed you with fantasies about H. P. Lovecraft. All along, he was just amusing himself. It was a game.”

  Cordwainer glanced at the photographs again, then turned his poached eyes and lifeless face back to us. “All nature spoke. The Old Ones spoke.”

  “Haven’t you ever had doubts? Weren’t there times when you realized that everything you believed came from short stories written by a man who never pretended they were anything but fiction?”

  “I have had my doubts.” Cordwainer spoke with undeniable dignity, and, unlike Robert, I felt a spasm of pity. “I have known the Dark Night of the Soul.”

  “Now and then, even false Messiahs probably have their bad days.”

  “I am not false!” Cordwainer thundered.

  “No, you’re not,” I said. “You’re a real Dunstan. Everything your father made you believe was half true. Howard settled in to watch you try to eliminate me. He doesn’t care how the game turns out.”

  “Evidently, my fathers have toyed with you,” Cordwainer said. “They are merciless, I can testify to that.”

  “What happened to a Fortress Academy pledge named W. Wilson Fletcher?”

  Cordwainer eyed us. “
Busy little bee, aren’t you?”

  “You were startled that May Dunstan turned a man into a puddle of bile,” I said.

  I had guessed right: his face turned to lard.

  “Maybe Fletcher showed you a certain book. Or maybe you saw him reading it one day. But something happened to you. You needed that book, didn’t you?”

  I pulled The Dunwich Horror from my pocket. Cordwainer’s eyes fastened on the cover. (Got him, Robert said. Landed. Flopping on the deck.)

  A bolt of feeling ran through his stolid face. “You stole that book from me, and I demand its return. You have no idea of its meaning.”

  “I’ll give it back after we visit Howard Dunstan. He’s been waiting for us.” I set the book down. When Cordwainer lunged across the table, I wrapped my fingers around his wrist.

  119

  Resistlessly, we fell into the dense, darkly teeming world, half Hansel and Gretel and half unknowable mystery, of a forest at night. I hoped it was late evening, June 25, 1935.

  Cordwainer seized our arm and yanked us to his side. “I don’t recognize this. Where are we?”

  “Johnson’s Woods, about sixty years ago,” I said. “On this night, you’re a little boy asleep in a house on Manor Street.”

  “I rarely slept in those days,” Cordwainer said. “Human life was a torment, and I preferred to bellow. I also wet the bed, deliberately. Compared to mine, your childhood was straight out of Mother Goose.” In the darkness, his cannonball head loomed over his black coat, as if hanging in midair. “All right, make a fool of yourself. Where’s the house?”

  “Not far away,” I said, without any idea of where in Johnson’s Woods we were.

  Cordwainer jerked us off balance, clamped an arm around our neck, and held us against his body. He was much stronger than I had expected. His arm tightened on our windpipe, and the twin stenches of mania and river-bottom invaded our nostrils. His mind probed at the perimeters of mine, like Aunt Nettie’s before she had lifted me off her kitchen chair. I slammed my mental gates, and Cordwainer chuckled. His arm closed in and cut off our air. “Funny, I don’t see a house. I don’t see any lights.”