Mammoth Book of Best New Horror (60 page)

    But I simply sat and looked at him and waited.

    He started off with trivial matters. We discussed our latest works -I mentioned the last manuscript I'd finished and made enough misleading comments for him to think it was still under consideration at my publisher. This one was a grand family drama delving into such an assortment of relationships and secrets and personal mysteries that I had no idea what the hell the story was about. He mentioned his latest bestseller, the one I'd bought and left on the front stoop. He didn't talk about the Stark House book.

    He was splitting his attention between our conversation and writing in his head at the same time. He was letting his mind wander the building. The slightest noise made him snap his chin aside. The muscles in his legs jumped. He was trying to kill his interest with booze. He wouldn't be able to stand it much longer.

    I started in where I'd left off earlier. "Why didn't you call the police?" I asked.

    "We had argued that morning-"

    "I know. I heard you."

    It did something to him. It got down beneath the layers of his created persona and dragged up his real self. I got a view of my old pal again, the kid he was back in the day before we blew our friendship. He was just a scared boy, alone without his mothering wife to lead him safely through the extent of his own life. He'd been coddled for so long that he'd lost any kind of veneer. His hard shell had cracked badly over the years of his success, and it had let in all his insecurities and reservations and doubts. No wonder he screamed out his titles when he was losing a fight. He couldn't apologise and he couldn't debate. It was all he could defend himself with.

    It's sometimes a curse to have an imagination that can draw up detailed visuals, and when you got down to it, he was better at it than me. He had a worse affliction to bear.

    "Why are you writing about this building?" I asked.

    He reared in his seat but the bravado wasn't there anymore. "She told you that?"

    "Not outright. We were talking that day and I got a hint of what you were doing. So why are you doing it?"

    He poured himself more bourbon. His hands trembled badly but not out of fear. At least not merely out of fear. Gabriella had been his buffer between him and the rest of the world, and without her he was being rubbed raw. "You know why."

    "No, I don't."

    "You do!" He sank back into his seat, all knife edges and points. If he moved too quickly he'd slash open a cushion. He frowned and his eyes were already so deep in his skull that they nearly disappeared altogether. He studied me, unsure of just how far to go. Finally his voice leaked words. They fell from his lips so softly I missed them.

    "What?"

    He said, "You've seen those who share the house with us."

    "Seen who?"

    "Those who stalk these halls."

    "The toxic waste guy bothering you?"

    He lashed out and sent a vase sailing across the room where it crashed against the far wall. "You know of whom I speak!"

    When his speech patterns grew more gentrified I knew he must be really upset. I tried not to let it get too good to me, but it did. I felt a warmth bloom in my guts. Corben was actually nervous, but not about losing his wife. He'd had dinner at the White House and given signings and speeches to crowds numbering in the thousands, but right here in his own living room he sat trembling before something he couldn't even name.

    "What congress have you had with them?" he asked.

    I couldn't help it. I burst out laughing. I hadn't laughed in so long that once I got rolling I had a difficult time stopping. Maybe if I'd had more recent congress it wouldn't have been so funny. Corben stared at me in shock. It got me going even harder. Then I thought of Gabriella and the noise died in my throat.

    "I came to talk about Gabriella, not any of your nonsense."

    "It's not nonsense and you know it!" He reached for something else to throw but there was nothing handy so he hurled his glass. It bounced off the sofa and landed right side up on the floor without breaking. "We heard the stories about this place when we were children."

    "We heard stories about every building in the city. The only reason you're so scared of this one is because you live here now. If you were over in Trump Tower you'd be acting the same way."

    He shot to his feet, grabbed another glass, poured more bourbon and splashed some on the floor. He hadn't been able to hold his liquor in college and wasn't doing any better now. His voice was already losing its sharpness. "You mock me."

    "I ought to mock you just for saying 'you mock me', asshole. People really let you get away with talking like that?"

    He ignored me. He'd started to slip away. "I can't rest. They don't let me sleep. They work their way into the pages and ruin whatever I'm writing. Isn't it the same way with you? Tell the truth. How can you find clarity with all the noise? All the tension and weight of their bearing and closeness."

    Even if I had the pity to spare I wouldn't throw any his way. "You've got a beach house out in Southampton, a mansion in Beverly Hills, and a villa in Italy, right? So why don't you leave and go spend some time someplace else? Take a trip right after you tell me where your wife is."

    "I can't leave, Will. I'm not sure I can ever leave here again. Stark House won't let me go."

    "What happened to Gabriella?"

    He dropped back into his chair and sat there blankly, withdrawing further into himself, gulping his drink. The ice rattled loudly. He snorted like a pig. A part of me wanted to beat the hell out of him and force him to talk, but I knew it wouldn't do any good. I wasn't going to get any answers from him. He was willing himself to shut down.

    "Lay off the sauce," I told him. "I want you clear-headed. I've got more questions and you're going to answer them. We'll talk again soon."

    "What was her name?" he asked.

    "Who?"

    "The one you took away from me in college. Mary? Maggie? Melanie?"

    "I don't remember."

    "She visits me too," he said. "She's dead but she asks about you. She doesn't remember your name either."

    The next afternoon, on the second floor, I saw a young handsome man and a beautifully delicate woman walking up the corridor, holding hands. I'd never seen them before. He was in a tux and tails, and she wore a lace dress that looked straight out of the 1920s. They came toward me and the hair on the back of my next rose. A warm, comforting draft swept across my throat. They both smiled and nodded to me. I couldn't quite get my lips to work but I managed to nod back. I wanted to ask if they'd seen Gabriella but the words wouldn't form. They went to the stairway and began to move down it. I held myself in check for about three seconds and then started after them. I knew what I would see by the time I got there. No one would be on the staircase.

    I was wrong. They were still slowly proceeding down it. They murmured back and forth. He said something and she tittered mellifluously. It was a warm and enduring sound. They walked across the lobby floor and out the front door onto the street. Something touched my ankle and I nearly yelped.

    Mojo stood at my foot and said, "Ook." The chain that had connected him to Ferdi was gone. He held a piece of paper up to me. I took it.

    It was blank.

    He chittered and grinned and shoved his cup out against my shin. I tossed him a quarter and he danced back to Apartment 2C.

    I went downstairs and stood out on the stoop listening to the world chase itself. Four rapes and two murders had happened in a five-block radius of the building in the last month. There were plenty of suspects but no leads.

    I should be looking for Gabriella. I should be beating the piss out of Corben. But I went back to the screen and forced out more sentences. What I wasn't making up I was dredging up. I called up my most shameful moments and laid them on my characters. They all loved Gabriella, they all wanted to smash her husband. I made apologies too late. It was a third-rate redemption at best. I waited for a man made of aluminium foil to climb out of the closet. When it happened I didn't want to jump out of my skin.

    I started awakening in the middle of the night to see my old man sitting at the foot of the bed. He always faced away from me, but I recognized his shape, the heft of his hand. When I dared to call to him he hitched his shoulders and began to turn to face me. It was a turn never completed.

    Of course he couldn't face me, he was dead. He's been dead most of my life. He wouldn't even recognize me now. I was nine the last time he saw me. Now I look just like the way he did. The heft of my hand is the same. Imagine him now, finding himself at the foot of a stranger's bed, a man he's never met before, who might call out to him, "Dad?" No wonder he vanishes. If it was me, looking back at me, seeing me, a live me facing me, plaintively urging some unknown request of me, I'd run too.

    Who the hell wouldn't.

    The phone rang and no one was there. It happened more and more.

    I kept bleaching the bloodstain and finally it faded enough so folks could walk over it again. I got another royalty check, this one for $12.13, In a moment of spite I grabbed the end of it and flicked my lighter. The corner started to brown but I dropped it before there was any real damage. There was no point in ruining what little of mine they were actually sending through. I should be happy the Danes or the Portuguese or whoever the fuck were reading my books. We all make our deals with the Devil.

    A private investigator hired by the parents of one of the rape victims came around asking questions. He eyed me up good. A handyman with no set hours, no clock to punch. He'd asked around and found out about the murder. He tried to brace me and I held onto my dwindling cool. He lacked subtlety and hoped to push my buttons, whatever they were. He ran out scenarios where I couldn't get laid so I waited in dark hallways and leaped down onto teenage girls. I let him talk the talk because it was for a good cause. I wanted him to hunt down the bastard in the area.

    I awoke to laughter outside the basement window. Mojo pressed his face to the glass and waved to me. I saw the feet of boys and girls go by. A breeze blew the stalks of weeds and wildflowers against the pane. I got dressed, took the back door, and went out to the garden.

    Ferdi and the kids were following Mojo around, all of them in a line and sort of dancing the Conga. They went around and around while I watched. Mojo's little bag around his neck, stuffed with the pad and pen on a string, bounced as he jumped onto the vines and the lower limbs of a couple of gnarled trees bursting up from brick.

    I turned and saw a man with eyes like a dull metal finish. He whispered something I didn't understand. It wasn't English. I thought maybe it was German. My stomach tightened but I could feel myself smiling. The mysteries of life and death, baby, and everything in between.

    A sweet moist aroma wafted from him, and suddenly I knew what the Rhine Falls must smell like.

    "Nobody uses ice-picks anymore," I said. "So he lied. So what? He just wanted to meet girls."

    Dr Lauber held his hands up to show me they were empty. He seemed eager to explain to me that his intent was friendly and forgiving. He said something else I couldn't understand. I approached and the sunlight shimmered off him.

    I said, "It wasn't you?"

    Dr Lauber firmed his lips. He shook his head. He reached out to touch me but the touch never came. He had a lot more he wanted to say. The words poured out of him. He had admissions and apologies and declarations to make. We all did. I knew I would die before making all of mine too. It seemed nobody could do any differently. I listened, thinking about Gabriella. By the time the chain of children came around again he was gone.

    Mojo skipped by and then the kids, one after the other. As Ferdinand the Magnifico was about to pass, I reached out and grabbed hold of his coat sleeve.

    He stopped and faced me. "My good friend, the wonderful writer Will Darrow! Is it not a glorious day!"

    "Why'd you do it, Ferdi?" I asked. "Why'd you kill the aluminium foil guy?"

    Our eyes locked and I watched the real person slip out from beneath the costume of his caricature. I saw a sorrow and a resolve there that I hoped I would never have to experience. A strength that had been thoroughly hidden and an anguish that would never depart but had been recently muted. He was trying to regain his soul.

    He spoke in a quiet voice for the first time since we'd met. "He murdered my wife in Denmark fourteen years ago. You don't need to know the details."

    He was right. I didn't.

    I knew he'd told me the truth. We can go our whole lives believing we'll recognize the cold hard truth when we hear it, but when it finally arrives it's like nothing that's ever come before. It strikes a chord that's never been hit, and my head somehow rang with it. Ferdi waited for me to make a move. He appeared ready for any judgment.

    The aluminium foil liar had told me he'd done terrible things. He had struck his mother. He had broken the hearts of his children. He had made a woman bleed. He didn't think he deserved to be forgiven.