Ice-cold shadows fell off the tall buildings, staining the streets, now. Crowds of shoppers moved along the pavement like juggernauts, exhaustedly, but with great determination. Mr. Minchell looked at them. They all had furtive appearances, it seemed to him suddenly, even the children, as if each was fleeing from some hideous crime. They hurried along, staring.
But not, Mr. Minchell noticed, at him. Through him, yes. Past him. As the elevator operator had done, and now F.J. And had anyone said good night?
He pulled up his coat collar and walked toward the drugstore, thinking. He was forty-seven years old. At the current life-expectancy rate, he might have another seventeen or eighteen years left. And then death.
If you're not dead already.
He paused and for some reason remembered a story he'd once read in a magazine. Something about a man who dies and whose ghost takes up his duties, or something; anyway, the man didn't know he was dead--that was it. And at the end of the story, he runs into his own corpse.
Which is pretty absurd: he glanced down at his body. Ghosts don't wear $36 suits, nor do they have trouble pushing doors open, nor do their corns ache like blazes, and what the devil is wrong with me today?
He shook his head.
It was the tape, of course, and the fact that it was his birthday. That was why his mind was behaving so foolishly.
He went into the drugstore. It was an immense place, packed with people. He walked to the cigar counter, trying not to feel intimidated, and reached into his pocket. A small man elbowed in front of him and called loudly: "Gimme coupla nickels, will you, Jack?" The clerk scowled and scooped the change out of his cash register. The small man scurried off. Others took his place. Mr. Minchell thrust his arm forward. "A pack of Luckies, please," he said. The clerk whipped his fingers around a pile of cellophaned packages and, looking elsewhere, droned: "Twenty-six." Mr. Minchell put his twenty-six-cents-exactly on the glass shelf. The clerk shoved the cigarettes toward the edge and picked up the money, deftly. Not once did he lift his eyes.
Mr. Minchell pocketed the Luckies and went back out of the store. He was perspiring now, slightly, despite the chill wind. The word "ridiculous" lodged in his mind and stayed there. Ridiculous, yes, for heaven's sake. Still, he thought--now just answer the question--isn't it true? Can you honestly say that that clerk saw you?
Or that anybody saw you today?
Swallowing dryly, he walked another two blocks, always in the direction of the subway, and went into a bar called the Chez When. One drink would not hurt, one small, stiff, steadying shot.
The bar was a gloomy place, and not very warm, but there was a good crowd. Mr. Minchell sat down on a stool and folded his hands. The bartender was talking animatedly with an old woman, laughing with boisterous good humor from time to time. Mr. Minchell waited. Minutes passed. The bartender looked up several times, but never made a move to indicate that he had seen a customer.
Mr. Minchell looked at his old gray overcoat, the humbly floraled tie, the cheap sharkskin suit-cloth, and became aware of the extent to which he detested this ensemble. He sat there and detested his clothes for a long time. Then he glanced around. The bartender was wiping a glass, slowly.
All right, the hell with you. I'll go somewhere else.
He slid off the stool. Just as he was about to turn he saw the mirrored wall, pinktinted and curved. He stopped, peering. Then he almost ran out of the bar.
Cold wind went into his head.
Ridiculous. The mirror was curved, you jackass. How do you expect to see yourself in curved mirrors?
He walked past high buildings, and now past the library and stone lion he had once, long ago, named King Richard; and he did not look at the lion, because he'd always wanted to ride the lion, ever since he was a child, and he'd promised himself he would do that, but he never did.
He hurried on to the subway, took the stairs by twos, and clattered across the platform in time to board the express.
It roared and thundered. Mr. Minchell held onto the strap and kept himself from staring. No one watched him. No one even glanced at him when he pushed his way to the door and went out onto the empty platform.
He waited. Then the train was gone, and he was alone.
He walked up the stairs. It was fully night now, a soft, unshadowed darkness. He thought about the day and the strange things that were gouging into his mind and thought about all this as he turned down a familiar street which led to his familiar apartment.
The door opened.
His wife was in the kitchen, he could see. Her apron flashed across the arch, and back, and across. He called: "Madge, I'm home."
Madge did not answer. Her movements were regular. Jimmy was sitting at the table, drooling over a glass of pop, whispering to himself.
"I said--" Mr. Minchell began.
"Jimmy, get up and go to the bathroom, you hear? I've got your water drawn."
Jimmy promptly broke into tears. He jumped off the chair and ran past Mr. Minchell into the bedroom. The door slammed viciously.
"Madge."
Madge Minchell came into the room, tired and lined and heavy. Her eyes did not waver. She went into the bedroom, and there was a silence; then a sharp slapping noise, and a yelling.
Mr. Minchell walked to the bathroom, fighting down the small terror. He closed the door and locked it and wiped his forehead with a handkerchief. Ridiculous, he thought, and ridiculous and ridiculous. I am making something utterly foolish out of nothing. All I have to do is look in the miror, and--.
He held the handkerchief to his lips. It was difficult to breathe.
Then he knew that he was afraid, more so than ever before in a lifetime of being afraid, Look at it this way, Minchell: why shouldn't you vanish?
"Young man, just you wait until your father gets here!"
He pushed the handkerchief against his mouth and leaned on the door and gasped.
"What do you mean, vanish?"
Go on, take a look. You'll see what I mean.
He tried to swallow, couldn't. Tried to wet his lips, found that they stayed dry.
"Lord--"
He slitted his eyes and walked to the shaving mirror and looked in.
His mouth fell open.
The mirror reflected nothing. It held nothing. It was dull and gray and empty.
Mr. Minchell stared at the glass, put out his hand, drew it back hastily.
He squinted. Inches away. There was a form now: vague, indistinct, featureless: but a form.
"Lord," he said. He understood why the elevator girl hadn't seen him, and why F.J. hadn't answered him, and why the clerk at the drugstore and the bartender and Madge.
"I'm not dead."
Of course you're not dead--not that way.
"--tan your hide, Jimmy Minchell, when he gets home."
Mr. Minchell suddenly wheeled and clicked the lock. He rushed out of the steamfilled bathroom, across the room, down the stairs, into the street, into the cool night.
A block from home he slowed to a walk.
Invisible! He said the word over and over, in a half-voice. He said it and tried to control the panic that pulled at his legs, and at his brain, and filled him.
Why?
A fat woman and a little girl passed by. Neither of them looked up. He started to call out and checked himself. No. That wouldn't do any good. There was no question about it now. He was invisible.
He walked on. As he did, forgotten things returned; they came and they left, too fast. He couldn't hold onto them. He could only watch, and remember. Himself as a youngster, reading: the Oz books, Tarzan, and Mr. Wells. Himself going to the University, wanting to teach, and meeting Madge; then not planning any more, and Madge changing, and all the dreams put away. For later. For the right time. And then Jimmy--little strange Jimmy, who ate filth and picked his nose and watched television, who never read books, never; Jimmy, his son, whom he would never understand.
He walked by the edge of the park now. Then on past the park, throu
gh a maze of familiar and unfamiliar neighborhoods. Walking, remembering, looking at the people and feeling pain because he knew that they could not see him, not now or ever again, because he had vanished. He walked and remembered and felt pain.
All the stagnant dreams came back. Fully. The trip to Italy he'd planned. The open sports car, bad weather be damned. The firsthand knowledge that would tell him whether he did or did not approve of bullfighting. The book . . .
Then something occurred to him. It occurred to Mr. Minchell that he had not just suddenly vanished, like that, after all. No; he had been vanishing gradually for a long while. Every time he said good morning to that bastard Diemel he got a little harder to see. Every time he put on this horrible suit he faded. The process of disappearing was set into action every time he brought his pay check home and turned it over to Madge, every time he kissed her, or listened to her vicious unending complaints, or decided against buying that novel, or punched the adding maching he hated so, or . . .
Certainly.
He had vanished for Diemel and the others in the office years ago. And for strangers right afterwards. Now even Madge and Jimmy couldn't see him. And he could barely see himself, even in a mirror.
It made terrible sense to him. Why shouldn't you disappear? Well, why, indeed? There wasn't any very good reason, actually. None. And this, in a nightmarish sort of a way, made it as brutally logical as a perfect tape.
Then he thought about going back to work tomorrow and the next day and the day after that. He'd have to, of course. He couldn't let Madge and Jimmy starve; and, besides, what else would he do? It wasn't as if anything important had changed. He'd go on punching the clock and saying good morning to people who didn't see him, and he'd run the tapes and come home beat, nothing altered, and some day he'd die and that would be that.
All at once he felt tired.
He sat down on a cement step and sighed. Distantly he realized that he had come to the library. He sat there, watching the people, feeling the tiredness seep through him, thickly.
Then he looked up.
Above him, black and regal against the sky, stood the huge stone lion. Its mouth was open, and the great head was raised proudly.
Mr. Minchell smiled. King Richard. Memories scattered in his mind: old King Richard, well, my God, here we are.
He got to his feet. Fifty thousand times, at least, he had passed this spot, and every time he had experienced that instant of wild craving. Less so of late, but still, had it ever completely gone? He was amazed to find that now the childish desire was welling up again, stronger than ever before. Urgently.
He rubbed his cheek and stood there for several minutes. It's the most riduculous thing in the world, he thought, and I must be going out of my mind, and that must explain everything. But, he inquired of himself, even so, why not?
After all, I'm invisible. No one can see me. Of course, it didn't have to be this way, not really. I don't know, he went on, I mean, I believed that I was doing the right thing. Would it have been right to go back to the University and the hell with Madge? I couldn't change that, could I? Could I have done anything about that, even if I'd known?
He nodded sadly.
All right, but don't make it any worse. Don't for God's sake dwell on it!
To his surprise, Mr. Minchell found that he was climbing up the concrete base of the statue. It ripped the breath from his lungs--and he saw that he could much more easily have gone up a few extra steps and simply stepped on--but there didn't seem anything else to do but just this, what he was doing. Once upright, he passed his hand over the statue's flank. The surface was incredibly sleek and cold, hard as a lion's muscles ought to be, and tawny.
He took a step backwards. Lord! Had there ever been such power? Such marvelous downright power and--majesty, as was here? From stone--no, indeed. It fooled a good many people, but it did not fool Mr. Minchell. He knew. This lion was no mere library decoration. It was an animal, of deadly cunning and fantastic strength and unbelievable ferocity. And it didn't move for the simple reason that it did not care to move. It was waiting. Some day it would see what it was waiting for, its enemy, coming down the street. Then look out, people!
He remembered the whole yarn now. Of everyone on Earth, only he, Henry Minchell knew the secret of the lion. And only he was allowed to sit astride this mighty back.
He stepped onto the tail, experimentally. He hesitated, gulped, and swung forward, swiftly, on up to the curved rump.
Trembling, he slid forward, until finally he was over the shoulders of the lion, just behind the raised head.
His breath came very fast.
He closed his eyes.
It was not long before he was breathing regularly again. Only now it was the hot, fetid air of the jungle that went into his nostrils. He felt the great muscles ripple beneath him and he listened to the fast crackle of crushed foliage, and he whispered:
"Easy, fellow."
The flying spears did not frighten him; he sat straight, smiling, with his fingers buried in the rich tawny mane of King Richard, while the wind tore at his hair -
Then, abruptly, he opened his eyes.
The city stretched before him, and the people, and the lights. He tried quite hard not to cry, because he knew that forty-seven-year-old men never cried, not even when they had vanished, but he couldn't help it. So he sat on the stone lion and lowered his head and cried.
He didn't hear the laughter at first.
When he did hear it, he thought that he was dreaming. But it was true: somebody was laughing.
He grasped one of the statue's ear for balance and leaned forward. He blinked. Below, some fifteen feet, there were people. Young people. Some of them with books. They were looking up and smiling and laughing.
Mr. Minchell wiped his eyes.
A slight horror came over him, and fell away. He leaned farther out.
One of the boys waved and shouted: "Ride him, Pop!"
Mr. Minchell almost toppled. Then, without understanding, without even trying to understand--merely knowing--he grinned widely, showing his teeth, which were his own and very white.
"You--see me?" he called.
The young people roared.
"You do!" Mr. Minchell's face seemed to melt upwards. He let out a yell and gave King Richard's shaggy stone mane an enormous hug.
Below, other people stopped in their walking and a small crowd began to form. Dozens of eyes peered sharply, quizzically.
A woman in gray furs giggled.
A thin man in a blue suit grunted something about these damned exhibitionists.
"You pipe down," another man said. "Guy wants to ride the goddamn lion it's his own business."
There were murmurings. The man who had said pipe down was small and he wore black-rimmed glasses. "I used to do it all the time." He turned to Mr. Minchell and cried: "How is it?"
Mr. Minchell grinned. Somehow, he realized, in some mysterious way, he had been given a second chance. And this time he knew what he would do with it. "Fine!" he shouted, and stood upon King Richard's back and sent his derby spinning out over the heads of the people. "Come on up!"
"Can't do it," the man said. "Got a date." There was a look of profound admiration in his eyes as he strode off. Away from the crowd he stopped and cupped his hands and cried: "I'll be seeing you!"
"That's right," Mr. Minchell said, feeling the cold new wind on his face. "You'll be seeing me."
Later, when he was good and ready, he got down off the lion.
* * *
A PLACE OF MEETING
* * *
It swept down from the mountains, a loose, crystal-smelling wind, an autumn chill of moving wetness. Down from the mountains and into the town, where it set the dead trees hissing and the signboards creaking. And it even went into the church, because the bell was ringing and there was no one to ring the bell.
The people in the yard stopped their talk and listened to the rusty music. Big Jim Kroner listened too. Then he cleared his
throat and clapped his hands-- thick hands, calloused and work-dirtied. "All right," he said loudly. "All right, let's settle down now." He walked out from the group and turned. "Who's got the list?"
"Got it right here, Jim," a woman said, coming forward with a loose-leaf folder.
"All present?"
"Everybody except that there German, Mr. Grunin--Grunger--"
Kroner smiled; he made a megaphone of his hands. "Gruninger--Bartold Gruninger?"
A small man with a mustache called out excitedly, "Ja, ja! ... s'war schwer den Friedhof zu finden,"
"All right. That's all we wanted to know, whether you was here or not," Kroner studied the pages carefully. Then he reached into the pocket of his overalls and withdrew a stub of pencil and put the tip in his mouth.
"Now, before we start off," he said to the group, "I want you to know is there anybody here that's got a question or anything to ask?" He looked over the crowd of silent faces. "Anybody don't know who I am? No?"
Then came another wind, mountain-scattered and fast: it billowed dresses, set damp hair moving; it pushed over pewter vases, and smashed dead roses and hydrangeas to swirling dust against the gritty tombstones. Its clean rain smell was gone now, though, for it had passed over the fields with the odors of rotting life.
Kroner made a check mark in the notebook, "Anderson," he shouted. "Edward L."
A man in overalls like Kroner's stepped forward.
"Andy, you covered Skagit valley, Snohomish and King counties, as well as Seattle and the rest?"
"Yes, sir."
"What you got to report?"
"They're all dead," Anderson said.
"You looked everywhere? You was real careful?"
"Yes, sir. Ain't nobody alive in the whole state."
Kroner nodded and made another check mark. "That's all, Andy. Next: Avakian, Katina."
The Howling Man Page 5
