The Janus Tree: And Other Stories
Page 25
My mouth fell open, and I sank to my knees. I would have grabbed the door if there’d been anywhere to grab. I stared straight into the flicker in his eyes. “You know,” I said.
“Well of course I know.”
“How did you know? Weren’t you vaccinated?”
“I was indeed. Alarming, no? And that’s not even the most fascinating part.”
His words, in that goat-voice, buzzed in my ears, seemed to set my brain vibrating so that I couldn’t answer, couldn’t even remember how to speak.
“The fascinating part—the real poetry, if you’ll forgive me—is where I think it came from.” And from his lap, he lifted the Kipling book. Held it out to me.
“Your father’s,” I mumbled.
He nodded. “They thought they were going to have to put him in an iron lung, but they didn’t, quite. He just lost the use of his arms. And one leg. He really should have burned this, don’t you think? And yet, how wonderful that he didn’t.”
“It’s…” My brain cleared. I sucked fog deep into my lungs. “That’s absurd. Impossible. A virus can’t live on a page. Not for fifty seconds, let alone fifty years.”
“Impossible. Sure. But what other explanation could there be? And just think, Veiled Lady. Personal Physician to the Library. What if it’s true? What was our virus doing, all these long years, with no one to hold it, no one to play with? All curled up in a book? What sort of bedtime stories do you think a virus tells itself?”
He was rambling again, off on one of his milkcrate rants. I just sagged against the metal doors, momentarily stunned to helplessness.
“I’ve been imagining one,” he said. “Want to hear it? It’s not so different than any of the stories any living thing tells: ‘Once upon a time, I got out. I got free. I sailed the summer wind. I met others, and fell in love. I leapt from island to island. I confronted my enemies, and laid them waste. I made more of me. I made more of me. I made more of me.’”
“Gone,” I said. “Meaning, you sent them out?”
He stopped talking, smiled that smile. “Sharing the good word. Like all proper Librarians before me.”
My hands flashed out, grabbed his, yanked him sideways toward me. His squeal of pain was awful, pig-like, and satisfying.
“Did you tell them? You murdering, fucked-up son-of-a-bitch, did you tell them what they have?”
“The ones who wanted to hear. Mostly, I just said it was time to go see old friends. Go to the parks and teach the children.”
“Jesus. Oh my God.”
“Much better than bombing, don’t you think? The ironies abound.”
Tears blurred my eyes, ran in rivulets down my face. I kept his wrists clutched in mind. “Aaron. He’s got it, too. What did you tell Aaron?”
“Well, Aaron’s pretty special. As you know.”
Absurdly, I felt myself nodding. My breath catching.
“A loving young man. And brave. And very angry. Mostly about what’s happened to you.”
I jerked his wrists. “Does he know?”
“He knows.”
“And he went to ‘spread the word’? To kill children? I don’t believe it.”
“Not at all,” said Erick Kinney. And he smiled once more. “He said to tell you you were right. That it’s long past time he went home to tell his idiot father exactly where he’s been.”
About the Author
Three-time International Horror Guild Award Winner Glen Hirshberg’s novels include The Snowman’s Children, The Book of Bunk, Motherless Child, and Good Girls. The third book in the Motherless Children Series is currently in production. Hirshberg is also the author of three widely praised story collections: The Two Sams (a Publishers’ Weekly Best Book of 2003), American Morons, and The Janus Tree. Hirshberg is a five-time World Fantasy Award finalist, and In 2008, he won the Shirley Jackson Award for the novelette, “The Janus Tree.” With Peter Atkins and Dennis Etchison, he co-founded the Rolling Darkness Revue, an annual reading/live music/performance event that tours the west coast of the United States every fall and has also made international appearances.
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Visit him online at www.glenhirshberg.com.
This Digital Edition Copyright © 2016 by
Glen Hirshberg
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All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.
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The characters and events in this book are fictitious.
Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
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Cover image © 2011 by Jonas Yip
Cover design © 2016 by Kathryn Freeman
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