“That’s good to know, but, well, it’s not actually an answer.”
Holly looked impressed and I couldn’t help but wonder exactly how stupid she thought I was.
“True,” she admitted. “So there are things you won’t do for me, or for money. Tell me, then, Preston – is there anything you wouldn’t do for April?”
My reaction was born of instinct, not thought. I am not normally in the habit of overturning tables, or of hurling mugs of hot coffee aimed at a lady’s head. Holly ducked it so casually I could have sworn she anticipated it, however and then laughed as it hit the wall, leaving a giant brown mark on the eggshell paint.
“Calm down, Preston.” Holly giggled as if I had committed a minor faux pas. “I don’t know who you are running from but I’m not them. You are safe here.”
“Then how did you know…”
“Kim told me, silly. Besides, everybody who lives in the Estates has their reasons for being here. At least now I can tell you what you will be doing first – get a towel from the closet and mop this up, then get yourself another cup of coffee so we can talk like civilized people.”
Chagrined and puzzled, I went to go look for the towel, wondering exactly what I had gotten myself into.
***
Holly changed before we went out, probably because I had splattered coffee on her dress. The patterned skirt and trim blouse she’d chosen to replace it were both dark, in contrast to golden legs that emerged beneath her hemline. She had me bring along an umbrella despite the weather, the warmth, the lack of anything other than wispy clouds in the sky.
Traffic on Leng Street was light, mostly trucks and commercial vehicles. There was a scattered assortment of people on the sidewalk, most of whom could not stop staring at Holly. The heels she wore seemed like a poor choice for a long walk, and she took my arm for support after only a few blocks.
“Holly…”
“Preston?”
“Sorry about the coffee.”
“Are you still worrying about that? It’s fine. Kim warned me that you were a little edgy.”
I shoved my hands into my pockets, driving them down so that she couldn’t see my fists clench.
“I was afraid of this,” I admitted. “I am the paranoid bastard I always worried I would become.”
Holly laughed brightly.
“I’m curious about what kind of life experiences would lead you to throwing hot coffee at a woman you’ve only just met. Never mind. You wouldn’t tell me the truth in any case, would you? Not that I mind a man lying to me, you understand. But those aren’t the particular kind of lies that I like to hear.”
That shut me up pretty good. We were quiet for another block, as the town grew gradually more run down and the buildings were incrementally shorter. The faces in the crowd were predominantly wizened and unfriendly.
“Holly,” I begin carefully. “You never told me what it is that you want me to do.”
“If I asked where you came from or where you got that pretty little girl you live with, what would you say to me? Would you make up a story?”
I thought about it for a long time before I answered her. It is not in my nature to be honest about these things, but the best lies have a kernel of truth at their core. Oh, I could tell her whatever I liked with a straight face – I know that much about myself. My body will not betray me. My nerves are rock solid and my mannerisms are rehearsed. I could lie to the face of a god, assuming he has one, and make it sound natural. Nevertheless, Holly would see right through me, no matter how plausible the story I told her.
“Probably.”
She smiled and patted my arm.
“You have to be careful, Preston. Telling the truth can become a habit. A bad one, at that. Especially for a man in your position.”
There it was again. That look that implied all sorts of things, mainly that I would never understand anything going on behind that elegant face.
“Of course, there’s no harm in telling you. We are going to do a number of small things today, Preston. None of them will be difficult or dangerous. Not today. All of them, I assure you, no matter how trivial they seem, are of the utmost necessity. Our first destination is a park not too far from here.”
“That doesn’t really clear anything up for me…”
“You got an answer.” Holly looked at me slyly. “Are you angling for more?”
I shut up. I always did that when I wasn’t certain what I would get if opened my mouth. My hand strayed by reflex to my phone, but it was still too early. I had another thirty minutes, easy, before our first check-in.
The park was desolate and ugly. There was more concrete than grass, and the grass that was there was mostly dead. With an oddly shaped triangular lot and too much slope to make development feasible, it was a typical urban afterthought – better a park than a vacant lot. The trees were spindly pines that leaked sap and left black stains on the sidewalk. The play area was made of battered molded plastic, the colors dulled by rain and sun and neglect. The swings hung, forlorn and seatless, chains swinging gently in a breeze that I could not feel. Holly tutted distastefully and released my arm, digging through the enormous bag slung beneath her arm that she probably would have called a purse.
“Here,” Holly explained, thrusting a small wrapped present in my direction, paisley paper with a corresponding crimson bow, a small, densely hand-written note poking out of the ribbon. “Put it inside there, please.”
She pointed, indicating the inside of an ancient, vaguely turtle-shaped cast-iron climbing structure that sat, rusting, at the edge of the sand play area.
“Excuse me?”
“Put this,” she said, pointing to the box in my hand, “inside there,” she continued, pointing at the innards of the climbing structure. “There should be some graffiti near the back. Look for the word ‘GOAST’ scratched in the metal, put it underneath that.”
“’Ghost’?”
“It will be misspelled.”
My mouth opened and then closed again, all without making any sound. I gathered my wits to make a second attempt.
“Okay, but how did you… never mind. You’re just going to leave it there, for anyone to find?”
“Not at all,” Holly assured me. “The person it’s intended for will find it, trust me. I only give people the things they need.”
I shrugged and climbed inside. I am sort of a big guy, so it took a little negotiating, but I managed to get enough of myself in there eventually. I squinted in the half-dark until I could see the back of the tight and decaying enclosure. Sure enough, ‘GOAST’ was scratched into the layer of rust coating the metal, probably with a set of keys. I felt weird leaving the present sitting there, but a job is a job. It was too dark to read the note, but it was definitely addressed to someone and quite long, written in compact and neat cursive. My back was sore by the time I had carefully wormed my way back out.
“Thanks. That would have taken me all afternoon,” Holly said inexplicably. “Well, come on. We’ve tons more to do.”
Indeed we did. We left a variety of brilliantly wrapped packages at various locations throughout the neighborhood, walking miles along winding streets. We left one inside the brass mail drop of an abandoned building, another behind a pile of discarded traffic signs underneath a freeway overpass. One was carefully hidden behind staged books in a department store’s home furnishings section, while a brilliant yellow package was left casually, in plain view on a park bench outside of an elementary school. There were a dozen more before I lost count.
We stopped in front of a small coffee shop somewhere a bit after noon, near a quiet corner a few blocks from downtown. I expected to be handed a present, until I realized that Holly was waiting for me to open the door for her. I did so, and we went inside, into the smells of fresh bread and roasting coffee. Holly picked out a table near the window and I obediently tagged along.
“So, we are…?”
“Eating. It is lunchtime, Preston. Go ahead and get whatever you
want,” Holly said, nodding at the counter. “It’s on me. Don’t worry. They won’t ask for money and they already know my order.”
I was nervous with the arrangement, but the counter girl welcomed me cheerfully enough, then asked what I would have. I ordered a turkey sandwich and an iced tea, because that was the first thing on the menu I saw.
“You’re working for Holly?”
The girl glanced over at me, freckled, teenage and curious, as she filled a glass with ice cubes. She tossed her brunette hair as if she wanted me to notice it.
“Yeah, at least for today. Does she come in here a lot?”
The girl laughed at me and handed me my iced tea, her interest evaporating. Belatedly, I realized she had assumed that I was someone important, someone in the know, simply because I was working for Holly. Until I opened my big, curious mouth.
“Sorry, big guy. You have questions, you ask Holly. It should mean something to you that I know her order without needing to ask.”
I just nodded. How exactly do you react to having your stupidity pointed out? Well, if you are like me, you get quiet. I did not say anything until I had ferried my sandwich along with Holly’s Greek salad and some kind of floral-scented tea, to the table.
“You’re doing fine, Preston,” Holly said reassuringly, like a particularly compassionate school teacher, spooning dressing on her salad. “You don’t have to worry. April is fine. Kim is a good person.”
The screen of my cell phone said the same thing in April’s shorthand.
‘Fine. Lunch now. Downstairs. Bring present.’
A normal text from April. She sent them every two hours, without fail. She usually asked for presents, too. Just, she said, to be on the safe side. Almost anything would do as long as she hadn’t seen it before. I made a habit out of trying to find something, every day. With the exception of television, April hadn't seen much of anything, so novelty was easy to come by.
“Yeah, I guess so. Wish she was a little less hard on me, though.”
Holly gave me a serious look as she munched on her lettuce.
“Kim thinks you are bad news. Dangerous. That you lied to her, and you are lying to April. Would you call any of that incorrect?”
Ack. I put my sandwich down on the plate in front of me carefully so she could not see my hands shake. It seemed extremely important, for some reason, that Holly didn't realize how badly she had me rattled.
“Not exactly wrong, no, but…”
“You don’t have to tell me,” Holly said, smiling as if she had won something. “You’re a good guy, Preston, no matter what Kim thinks, no matter what you think of yourself. You will do the right thing eventually – once you run out of other options.”
And there it was. In praise, condemnation. Bittersweet as the expression on her face.
“How do you know these things?”
Holly shook her lovely head.
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you. Call it magic if you like. Eat up. We still have things to do today.”
Holly paused to have a cheerful chat with the freckled counter girl on our way out. No one asked her to pay for anything. That, if you ask me, is a very good trick.
The second half of the day was as much a blur of activity as the first. I could not understand how Holly could walk so far in those shoes. We visited a Chinese grocery store where Holly had an animated conversation in what I thought was Mandarin. Eventually, Holly accepted a paper-wrapped bundle without examining it, taking the proffered bag and handing it to me to carry. It wasn’t heavy.
Four blocks later we stopped at a Persian teahouse where there was not another woman in sight and two soccer games played mutely on different televisions. The muttered conversations in English and Farsi were as thick as the smoke in the room. Holly had a brief discussion with a jumpy fat man, who I guessed was the owner. After a whispered conference and some nervous looks at his clientele, he motioned for her to come into a back room. At her nod, I followed.
Behind the teahouse was a dirty white hallway, stairs climbing up to a second story, and a small room at the end of the hall. A man sat, hidden by his newspaper, at the single table there. Holly greeted him cheerfully as she walked by, ascending the stairs with the rotund owner, motioning for me to wait.
“Nice to see you again, Professor Dawes. This is our new neighbor, Preston Tauschen from 2A. Do look after him for me while I’m gone, wont you?”
Holly did not wait for an answer. Judging from the expression on the nervous man’s face, I am not sure she would have gotten more than stammering. Eventually, he gestured for me to take the chair opposite him. He was tall and lanky, dressed in a nice if aged suit with a bowtie and silver cufflinks.
“Nice to meet you, err, Preston, was it? Quite a surprise, seeing Holly here. Not that I mind, but I was under the distinct impression that women weren’t allowed…”
“Does that surprise you?” I asked, sitting down and helping myself to a glass from the teapot on his table. “Holly seems to do pretty much as she pleases.”
“Yes, I suppose so. Well, if I may ask, what are you doing with her, Preston?”
I shifted uncomfortably. His total failure to make eye contact was troubling. I am not sure what was making him so nervous, but it made me want to turn around in my chair to get a look at whatever was sneaking up on me.
“I’m working. Holly pays me to… well, carry her stuff, mostly. I’m not really sure what is it that I’m doing, to be honest.”
“Aha. A common problem, I think.”
“What about you, Professor Dawes? Do you teach?”
“Yes, but I do more research these days. Old books, mostly. Purely scholarly work, largely historical. A team of divers investigating the sunken city in harbor salvaged much of the collection that I’ve been working with quite recently. They disappeared shortly after, which was a pity, because their findings are amazing…”
“Wait. They found books underwater?”
“A marvelous form of papyrus, I believe,” Dawes said excitedly, looking more human when he was comfortable with the topic. “Though the chemical analysis showed surprising indications of synthetic origin, which simply isn’t possible. These books are naturally centuries old, though I’m afraid carbon dating has produced rather... inconclusive results.”
“Oh. So, what city is this?”
“You are a new arrival here, I keep forgetting that. You must go to the harbor, Preston. Our city possesses a most remarkable twin, a ruin that has been submerged for the last thousand years…”
“A thousand years! No way. How old is this city?”
“Old. Old beyond any reckoning, Preston. Old enough to remember when the stars were very different and the moon much less strange,” Dawes said, abruptly deciding to make eye contact. His fervor was so obvious that it did nothing to make me more comfortable. He looked like the sort to start producing religious pamphlets. “Tell me, sir. What brought you to our fine and terrible city?”
“Well, mainly business, actually…”
“You don’t say? And what kind of business do you do, Preston?”
“The kind that it’s better not to ask questions about,” I suggested gently. “If it is all the same to you.”
To my shock, Dawes laughed shrilly and slapped the table.
“Very good. I had a feeling that was the case. Tell me, Preston. Did you first see the city in a dream?”
Of course. One I could not forget.
“Naturally,” Dawes continued on, as if I had answered him. “And this dream, Preston. Do you have any specific memory of waking from it?”
It is a good thing my face stays blank. Because my mind reeled.
“Have you ever heard of ‘King in Yellow’, Preston?” Dawes leaned forward eagerly. “Is that what brought you here, to the Nameless City? You would not be the first, sir. Quite the opposite, actually. You must tell me…”
“Professor, I hope you aren’t giving our neighbor a hard time,” Holly scolded. “He’s only jus
t arrived. It’s far too early to be raking him over the coals, don’t you think?”
“Yes, of course, you are right,” Dawes mumbled, bowing his head. “I meant no harm in my eagerness.”
“Don’t feel bad.” Holly laughed and patting him on the shoulder. “I will stop by and speak to you this evening, Professor. Come on, Preston, we still have much to do.”
“Of course,” he repeated, standing and making a little bow to see us out. I could feel his eyes on me until we rounded the corner and were out of his sight.
Holly had collected more packages for me to carry, and then it was back out on to the street, and more miles to walk. I started to wonder if she was familiar with the concept of a taxi. Or a bus. Hell, even a bicycle was starting to sound like a good idea.
Paranoid Magical Thinking (Unknown Kadath Estates) Page 4
