Chasing the Moon (16 page)

“Hi,” she said. “Need some help?”

“If you’re offering.” He handed her one. It was full of canned goods and heavier than it looked.

“Want me to carry that for you?” asked Vom.

She decided letting a ravenous monster carry groceries was a bad idea and just soldiered on.

As they walked toward his apartment, she tried to think of something clever to say. Something witty. Something, at the very least, memorable.

“Getting kind of cold outside, huh?”

Chuck, his back to her, kept walking. “Beg your pardon?”

“Outside,ze="3">” she said. “Cold.”

“Didn’t notice,” he replied.

They climbed the short flight of stairs to the second floor. She screwed up her courage and tried again.

“A bit late for grocery shopping, isn’t it?”

“I don’t pick my schedule,” he replied. “Have to take my opportunities when I get them.”

At the top of the stairs, she noticed his monster hound was missing from its post at his apartment door.

“Where did it go?” She regretted asking it. She didn’t want to step into a sensitive area.

Chuck’s response was deadpan.

“Away. It does that sometimes.”

The door opened by itself as they approached. He went inside.

She paused on the threshold, waited a few moments for Chuck to reappear. He didn’t. She set the groceries down.

Vom inspected the contents of the bag. “Oh, is that salami?”

She glared with disapproval.

“All right, all right.” Vom and Smorgaz walked to her apartment just a few feet down the hall.

She glanced down the length of the hall. The dog was still not there.

Diana called into Chuck’s apartment. “Hello?”

He didn’t answer.

She grabbed the groceries but hesitated. Casually entering one apartment had gotten her into trouble recently. Perhaps she would be wise to think about it this time.

She scanned the room. Everything looked normal. The décor of the place was difficult to pin down. It was like a designer had cut it into zones, and each tiny zone had its own theme. The couch was from the sixties, bright orange and covered with fringe. The television was a wood-paneled monstrosity from the fifties. The coffee table was a thin, irregular piece of metal that must’ve been from the future because it floated without any means of support. The flooring was equal parts carpet and wood, broken into a checkerboard pattern.

It didn’t look dangerous. But her life was already weird now, and peril was something she was getting used to. She stepped into the apartment. A light, sticky sensation hit her face as she did so, as if she had walked into a spiderweb. Her first instinct was to brush it away, but there was nothing there.

The door started to swing shut behind her. Quietly. If it was hoping she wouldn’t notice, it was mistaken. She stopped it with her foot. She found a wedge of cheese in the bag and shoved it under the door. Then she followed the sounds of activity to join Chuck in his kitchen. It was bigger than the living room area. Much bigger. A window cast bright light into the room, but she couldn’t see anything outside but the brightness. His back was to her, and he must not have heard her.

“Where do you want this?” she asked.

He jumped, knocking the bag over. Several cans rolled across the counter and clattered on the floor. A can of peas rolled to her feet, and she ducked to pick it up.

“Sorry,” she said.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“I just wanted to know where you wanted me to put this down.”

“No, not that. What are you doing in here?”

“Your door was open,” she said.

“It was?” He walked past her and checked for himself.

“I propped it open with your cheese,” she said. “I hope that’s okay.”

He glanced at her, then the door.

“It’s fine. I guess so, anyway.”

He smiled slightly and returned to putting away the groceries. She thought about helping but didn’t know where anything went. He was a good-looking guy. Better-looking than she’d assumed from her first impression. Tall, slim but athletic, closely cropped dark hair, and a lantern jaw that was almost cartoonish, but kept just on the right side of that line. He reminded her of Superman. Or his mild-mannered alter ego in a rather poor disguise. Although his eyes were brown. And his nose was a little big. And he had a bit of stubble on his chin. Still, a handsome guy, just her type. Although it was strange to think she had a type at all, since she’d never been romantically linked with a guy like this.

“I just moved in,” she said.

“My condolences.”

“Oh, it’s not so bad. The apartment is nice at least. Not sure how I feel about the monsters, but I’ve had worse roommates. How long have you been living here?”

Chuck, his back to her, crumpled his grocery bag.

“You should probably go.”

“Oh. Okay. Sorry.”

She exited the apartment. Chuck followed.

“Sorry to bother you,” she said.

He un-wedged the cheese from the door. “You aren’t bothering me. It’s just probably better if you aren’t here when he gets back.”

“He? Your dog, you mean.”

He nodded.

“You aren’t allowed visitors?”

He rubbed his chin. “I don’t know. Don’t get many. Although Stacey and Peter drop by and bring me a baked good every so often.em"><

“Does everyone bake in this building?”

“Stacey turned me on to it. Helps to pass the time.”

Chuck smirked. It was a lopsided grin, charming in its imperfection.

“I’m thinking of picking up knitting,” she said. “Or maybe juggling.”

“Whatever works.”

They shared a chuckle that he cut short abruptly.

“He’s coming. You should go.”

“Okay. It was nice—”

He shut the door.

“—Meeting you.”

It was a stroke of cruel irony that she’d finally moved into an apartment across from a good-looking guy who liked to cook, and he was being held prisoner by an inter-dimensional beast hound. It wasn’t a problem. Not exactly. But it was irritating as hell.

She walked the few steps to her door. A glance over her shoulder confirmed that the dog was back at its post in front of Apartment Two.

“See you ’round, Chuck,” she muttered to herself before going inside to her own monsters.

For the first time Diana didn’t push her dresser in front of her door when she went to sleep. She had never expected it to be a deterrent to the monsters that shared her apartment, but it had been a psychological bulwark against the tide of madness that threatened to engulf her. It could no longer serve that purpose. She was fairly certain she was crazy already, or at least well on her way.

She awoke staring into a giant tentacled eyeball.

“Hey, you’re awake,” said Zap.

“I’m awake.”

She climbed out of bed. Zap handed her a robe.

“Thank you,” she said.

“My pleasure.”

Diana wondered how long he had been staring at her but decided not to ask because there wasn’t really a good answer to
that question. She’d have to set some boundaries for the new monster, but that could wait until she had some breakfast.

She took a quick shower. When she pulled back the shower curtain Zap was hovering over the toilet. He handed her a towel.

“Get out,” she said quietly.

“Yes, maam. Right away, ma’am.” He darted out of the bathroom.

She got dressed, brushed her teeth, combed her hair. The monsters were all waiting in the living room. Vom and Smorgaz sat on the couch. Zap floated in a corner.

Staring at her.

That was going to get old real fast, but before she could confront him the doorbell rang. She didn’t remember having a doorbell before, but maybe it was new.

It was West. “Do you have a minute, Number Five?”

“Yes.”

“Do you have six minutes?”

“Sure.”

He counted on his fingers. “Might take up to seven minutes, now that I think about it.”

“I have the time,” she replied.

“Good. Follow me.”

She followed. Any excuse to get out of the apartment. She couldn’t shake the sensation that Zap was still watching her.

West read her mind.

“He can’t. The building occupies a null point in space-time. A being like your friend cannot see through its walls.”

“That’s good to know.”

West took her downstairs, turning right at a split in the hallway that she was certain hadn’t been there before. A layer of gray filth coated the walls. As they went farther and farther down the seemingly endless corridor, the grime grew blacker and thicker until the sludge under her shoes made a sticky squish with every step. She looked over her shoulder, but an inky darkness crawled along behind them. This was not a metaphor. She could see tentacles and gnarled limbs reaching out, dragging the shadows at a slow, steady rate. She wondered what would happen if they caught up.

West must have read her mind again. “They’re nothing to worry about. All talk.”

She heard them then. Distant, disquieting whispers speaking in insensible languages.

“I wouldn’t listen too closely if I were you,” said West. “You have a strong constitution for this sort of thing, but they can still screw with you.”

Being told
not
to listen only made it harder not to. Most of the whispers didn’t register, but several voices tried to spoil the endings of movies for her. They failed, probably because the darkness seemed a little behind on the latest cinema.

Darth Vader is Luke’s father. Norman Bates is the killer. Rosebud is a sled.

They reached the end of the corridor before the voices could get to anything more shocking. The door was covered in the same grime. West wiped it from the lock, drew an old-fashioned key from his pocket, and unlocked the door. It opened slowly, and a chill swept from the darkened room on the other side. Hissing fearfully, the shadows retreated from the hall.

He passed over the threshold. Diana paused. She was placing an inordinate amount of trust in a guy who had tricked her into a cursed apartment. She was fairly certain he wasn’t human. He might have been at some point, but now he was something else. Something inscrutable, indefinable. Vom and Smorgaz were monsters, but at least they were up-front about it. For all their dark impulses and inhuman qualities, they were more accessible than West.

He spoke from the interior. “This way, Number Five.”

The hall behind her stretched off into infinity. She got the distinct impression that if she tried to walk down it without West as her guide, it would swallow her, trapping her in an endless walk. She didn’t know where that information came from, but she didn’t doubt it. Her only choices were to tarry here outside the door or go inside. She’d come this far. It was a little late to chicken out.

She pushed open the door, expecting a chamber of horrors beyond mortal ken, but it was only another apartment. It was dusty and cluttered with boxes and junk pushed against the walls. The furniture was old and battered. Stains spotted the carpet. The whole place smelled musty and stank of stale pizza rolls.

Music came from somewhere. It filtered through the walls. The distant, atonal tune could’ve easily been mistaken for random noise but buried underneath its discordant melody lay a hidden harmony that beings from beyond time and space would find comforting. A purely human mind would’ve found its sanity knocked a smidge ajar in ways that wouldn’t have been immediately obvious until it discovered its crippling fear
of red shoes and obsession with banana pudding. But Diana only found the music strange and disquieting. And just a touch beautiful.

This should’ve shocked her, but she had already suspected that she was a little bit crazy at this point. She’d seen too much not to be. Sanity and insanity were just words anyway, and only lunatics obsessed over silly little things like words, she’d decided.