The Everborn (11 page)

He had risen a little more than an hour ago to an incessant ringing of the doorbell, finding himself seated at his desk and slumped over his typewriter, his head pillowed by the cradle of folded arms. He had been working undisturbed for hours and hours on end, hours which seemed like days, attempting to finish the newest novel ghostwritten for Ralston before he arrived to retrieve it. Today had been the day Ralston’s agent anticipated its delivery, and Andrew had laboriously slaved in preparation.

Slaved so hard, in fact, that in his extended weariness he had completed the final pages just before the electric buzz of the typewriter managed to lull him to sleep, without so much as allowing him the memory of having typed anything at all.

***

Ralston Cooper was seated on the black leather recliner in the living room of Andrew’s apartment. His attentions riveted now from the room’s eccentric environment to the vivid rock images of MTV on the projector television.

That’s the place for me
, Ralston maintained, the crystaline line of meth he had snorted before his arrival maintaining the rhythmic flutter-tap-tapping of his black leather-booted right foot against the shag carpet.
Rock videos, man. Not books all my life, no siree Bob. ‘Specially books written this way
. He gazed down upon the thick black and white of the manuscript in his lap, its pages corralled by a topless cardboard stationary box.
I wanna be known for something
I
knew I did
myself
for a change. Although, fame and
fortune for this
writing
shit is
still
heaven and a bag of chips...

With the exception of the flickering T.V. light, the only illumination in the room was from the single lamp protruding from a clamp situated on a shelving fixture above Ralston’s recliner. This annoyed Ralston; it was the brightest Andrew allowed the room to be regardless of time of day. The man lived his life like a reclusive elderly
mole
for godsakes. Ralston was also for that matter accustomed to space, and with the princely sum he typically paid Andrew for his literary services, he’d expect the fool to at least lounge in spacious luxury.

And then there were the books... shelves streamed across the expanse of wall space, filled with diverse volumes of both fiction and reference and whatever else could conceivably be of interest or fancy to Andrew enough for such a library. All Ralston could see of this was uselessness and wasted space, but then again Ralston had never been much of a reader.

At least the furniture bore a dose or two of extravagancy, though the dismal redundancy of matching black common to every piece suggested images of a lived-in funeral parlor. The drapery of the patio doors echoed the apartment’s somber shades, and Ralston could never recall them being parted, regardless of day or night.

The air conditioner to the right of the drapes hummed softly, its mild currents of air providing salvation enough for the mock—novelist/rock star wannabe to maintain his sanity.

But it wasn’t Ralston’s place to condemn or criticize, and he often managed to ho-hum the apartment’s claustrophobic eccentricities away. He simply carried out his scheduled visits, lingered long enough to get what he came for, awarded Andrew in advance for a job well done with a brisk pat on the back and an envelope with a pre-agreed cash sum. He’d then return to his Brea home for a celebration screw with his girlfriend, to an anticipated publishing deal, movie deal, drug deal, cancelled band rehearsal, whatever his life brought him into doing as long as there was convenience in doing it.

The hell with Andrew, really; whatever Andrew Erlandson chose to do with his allowed earnings was
Andrew Erlandson’s
choice, in
Andrew’s
own little erratically reclusive mole-like way.

Besides, it was Andrew’s agreement.

Andrew’s work for him was a constant reminder of this agreement. The reasons behind it all were to Ralston both a shady mystery and a profoundly divine miracle. But he dared not question; questions and answers were not only excluded from the deal....

....they might conjure up horrifying atrocities that were embedded in both their pasts, the sort of things Ralston would far prefer lost within
his
past, the things which might remain still within Andrew’s secretive present.

There, diagonal from Ralston, mounted and framed in an open space upon the wall between book shelves, hung a single paperback book cover, preserved flat behind thin glass. Upon it, embossed in bold print and flanked by the glimmer of oil-painted silvery daggers were the words

INTO THE GRAVE II

a novel by

Andrew Erlandson

and below this the short scribbles of an autographed signature.

Further towards the sliding glass patio doors and after another series of book shelves, hung also a late 1960’s motion picture poster, glaring out from behind the transparent plastic of a poster frame. Sandwiched between the faded colors of crayfish-like costumed men and credits ending in the words
FILMED IN TECHNICOLOR
splashed across a spread of white-blank backdrop, there read

HIDEOUS MUTATED SEA DEMONS

and below this also, in the book cover’s similarly autographed longhand, looming in careful avoidance of the beginning credits,

To my son,

I in you, and you in me.

Loving timelessly,

-
your Dad, A.J.

Ralston brought a hand to his lap and lifted the bulky stack of papers. As Aerosmith’s latest video faded from the T.V. screen, he thumbed through the manuscript, scrutinizing, perusing. The black of his fingerless gloves glimmered slick under the mild lamplight above. Webbed fumes rose from the mount of extinguished cigarettes within the silvery mouth of an ashtray stand at his side, one butt for nearly every three minutes of waiting for Andrew to emerge from showering.

From the view of his ghostwriter’s latest services, Ralston was pleased. He was very pleased.

This was exactly what he told Andrew when the bathroom door opened and the narrow umbra of the clandestine writer halted and rested against the living room’s entrance frame.

“Another guaranteed bestseller,” Andrew said without a hint of enthusiasm. “A sliver of my soul carved to fit medium weight bond paper.”

“Yeah,” Ralston added, nabbing what enthusiasm could have existed in Andrew and making it his own, “I’d say you’d done and shined like a million dollar penny....yeah, another six million figured penny. In a string of such, thanks to your craziness schemes and bloodletting pacts. I don’t fully understand why I’ve been ordained with such a noble existence, and frankly, why I’m the household name that I am scares the piss out of me if I think about it too much. But I’m famous, filthy famous. I have wealth, I have notoriety. And I have you to thank for it. I really must say,
I didn’t know you had it in me
.”

“You haven’t even read it yet,” Andrew said. “Maybe this’ll be that one downer you’re afraid of that’ll stop your roll....”

Ralston went for his coat, a black London Fog which hung on the rack near the kitchen entrance. He grabbed the bulky manuscript, cradling it within his palm against his side, his thigh toppling over a half-empty beer can which tumbled from the end table edge and emptied onto the carpet.

“Look at it this way,” Ralston told him. “Just as many millions will buy it anyway, and if they don‘t like it, well, I know I can count on you to come back with another one the critics
will
love. I’ve become quite a phenomenon and I’ve just
now
hit
the ‘Big Three-Oh’, and I’m free and I have a
say-so
.”

It had always been important for Ralston Cooper to have a
say-so
. Before all of this, before he had a
life
, before Andrew and Andrew’s pact of taciturn lunacy, Ralston never did quite have a
say-so
of anything, with the exception of the renegade delinquents of his youth. Back then, he had truly been a delinquent authority, a Lost Boys Leader, a pot-smoking, shit-talking teen thing that was much to be feared among rebel-tough-guy slacker chick-magnets too good for varsity football.

Even then, however,
say-so’s
were few and far between. Far between fights and after-school detention, far between flights of fancy and wannabe rock-star dreams.

Say-so’s
had to be
won
.

Until Andrew Erlandson came along.

Andrew Erlandson made
say-so’s
easy as pie.

(
nightmare memories, memories of nightmare
)

He’d convinced himself that it was merely Andrew who confronted him one day with the reasonless offer to pen his own works and to submit them under Ralston’s name, for Ralston to receive credit and money as long as Andrew received a certain reasonable sum in return.

As though Andrew
couldn’t
receive credit himself.

As though Andrew was somehow

(
forced into it
)

hiding something, running from something, yet he had to write, had to publish.

But it was the (
nightmare memories, memories of nightmare
) desperation, the offer Ralston couldn’t refuse, which passed the torch of
having say—so
ultimately to Ralston, and ultimately to Ralston’s fate.

And by now, Ralston was pretty much used to it.

And Andrew seemed pretty much the sap.

“You’ve worked your ass off, Andy-man,” Ralston told Andrew. “Go, get yourself a beer at
The Crow Job
, check out my new band. I got a seat toward the front just for you. Had to, knowing it’s gonna be hella packed, everyone there to see the big book writer rockin’ and all. But this is really
me
doin’ this, Andy.
I
can
do
this. Watch me. And watch the fans see me kick ass. By the way, nice title. I can’t wait to read
The Everborn
myself.”

With that, Ralston slipped a hand into his overcoat and withdrew a white envelope, presented it sealed and slipped it into Andrew’s front shirt pocket.

With a brief snicker and hurried anticipation, Ralston turned and departed across the darkened living room, past the flickering music television, out the front door and down the apartment complex’s inner hallway, leaving Andrew standing snug and silent and alone.

And if it wasn’t for the distraction of the deep and disorienting sleep he’d awakened from, Andrew would have wondered what Ralston meant by
The Everborn
, which wasn’t the title of the novel he believed he’d written.

***

Andrew remained still for a moment’s time until he softly padded across the living room carpet and closed the front door. Turning, he stepped to the recliner, reached for the TV remote, and paused as he viewed an MTV news report about the trampling of several teenagers at a metal concert mosh pit. Kurt Loder signed off with the image of an electrode-studded globe and station logo. Andrew signed off with depression, both from his thumb and his sigh.

There were times like these when Ralston and Ralston’s crock of flamboyant cockiness would indeed get to him, get his goat and leave him fucked like one on a witches’ sabbat, but times few and far between in recent years. He’d learned to accept what needed to be, what (he was convinced) was
meant to be
, and in truth this ghostwriting racket remained an ongoing sacrifice Andrew would just as soon sign off as drink goat piss.

This conviction made Andrew clench his teeth and bite his tongue whenever his father came to mind, the great B-movie director father he never knew, the father he wished were alive somewhere but doubted was anywhere but six feet under.

A.J. Erlandson was declared missing sometime before Andrew was born, and had been missing since, yet remained an inspiration and an icon to Andrew, yeah even a legend to not only he but many, and what many who knew of him remained to this day as thinking of the heralded director as one would fancy the likes of Elvis....not so much as a
king
of things but nevertheless working in some obscure Burger King in Utah. Anything but being
dead
. For some concealed, undercover reason. Though even more so for A.J., since his body was never found, no body at all.

Nobody except for maybe the Weekly World News.

And when someone was missing from someone’s life for so long, as long as Andrew had been alive, which had been twenty-eight years so far, in similar circumstances, one might as well declare them dead. Andrew had done so, quite a while back, and so had Andrew’s mother, who’d refused to so much as date anyone let alone marry until a little under a decade after the disappearance. Deep down, it was all due to wishful thinking. After thinking of the impossible-become-probable for so long, thinking can really become quite dominated by wishes.

“Wish you may, wish you might, what is it you wish tonight, dearest Andrew?” whispered the hallway darkness which led to the bathroom and single bedroom. “Tell me of your wishes.”

It was the distant echo of a voice, calling, speaking, a woman’s spoken caress, smooth and hushed and provocative, beckoning into close intimacy. Within the apartment, within the single bedroom, in the hallway. Somewhere, yet everywhere.