Black Wings: New Tales of Lovecraftian Horror (33 page)

  The lift arrived with a metallic ping and Joe got out and walked the short distance to his room. Once inside, he dumped the rucksack and stripped down to his underpants. He slipped his iPod inside the waistband and inserted the earphones into his ears. "Rotterdam" by Githead, on repeat. If it meant he would never again be able to listen to Githead, so be it. Just as he had never been able to listen to
Astral Weeks
since the traumatic break-up with Marie from Donegal, or to Cranes. He'd been to a Cranes gig in Clapham the night before his father had died and every time he tried to listen to any of their albums, it put him right back where he was the morning he got the phone call from his mother.

  He moved a towel and bath mat out of the way, then dragged the body into the bathroom and lifted it into the bath, not worrying too much about the smears of blood this left on the floor and the side of the bath. He stood over the bath with the hacksaw in his hand and suddenly perceived himself as Vos might film him, looking up from the corpse's-eye view. He hesitated, then reached for the towel, which he placed over the head and upper torso.

  His first job was to cut away the remaining scraps of clothes, which he dumped in the sink, and then he began working at the left wrist, just below the tattoo. The hacksaw blade skittered when it first met substantial resistance. Blood welled from the cut in the flesh and trickled down toward the hand, causing Joe's hand to slip.

  In his earphones, the girl vocalist sang, "It's a nice day," over and over.

  It took at least five minutes to get through the radius and another minute or so of sawing to work through the ulna. There was a certain grim satisfaction in having removed one of the hands, but the exertion had brought Joe out in a sweat and his head was throbbing. In his dehydrated state, he could little afford to lose further moisture.

  He knew that he had a long job ahead of him and that it would never seem any closer to being completed while he was still thinking forward to—and dreading—the hardest part. He sat down on the bathroom floor for a moment, letting his heart rate slow down. He knew what he was about to attempt. He had decided. It was necessary if he was to survive.

  
It's a nice day.

  Taking a breath, Joe shuffled along the floor. He turned around and leaned over the edge, pulling the hem of the towel up to reveal the neck. He placed the serrated edge of the hacksaw blade against the soft skin just below the Adam's apple. A little bit of pressure and the teeth bit into the skin, causing a string of tiny red beads to appear. He leaned into the saw and extended his arm. Back and forth, back and forth. His hand pressing down on the chest and slithering and sliding.

  It took a few minutes. He wasn't timing himself. It felt longer. He bagged the head by touch alone, using a plastic carrier from one of the shops on Nieuwe Binnenweg. He recycled one of Mains's shoelaces to tie it shut, then placed it in the sink.

  It would be easier now. It could be anyone.

  
It's a nice day.

  At several points over the next two hours, Joe thought he would have to give up. What he was doing was inhuman. If he carried on, he would lose his humanity. Even if he evaded capture, he would never be at peace. But each time he merely restated to himself his determination to survive. Yes, what he was doing was a crime, but it was the only crime he knew for certain he had committed.

  The clean-up operation took longer.

  It was some time in the afternoon when Joe presented himself at the front desk to settle his bill. The rucksack was on his back, his own bag, bulkier than on arrival, slung over one shoulder. Outside in the street he stopped and looked back. He counted the floors up and along until he spotted his open window. On an impulse, he walked back toward the hotel. There was a poorly maintained raised flower bed between the pavement and the hotel wall. Joe rested his foot on the lip of the bed as if to tie his shoelace and peered into the gaps between the shrubs. At the back, among the rubbish close to the hotel wall, was a broken brown bottle. Joe reached in and his fingers closed around the neck. He placed the bottle in his shoulder bag and walked away.

  On a patch of waste ground at the end of one of the docks behind Keileweg, unobserved, he started a small fire with bits of rubbish, locally sourced. When the fire was going well enough to burn a couple of pieces of wood salvaged from the dockside, Joe took Mains's torn and bloodstained clothing from his bag. He dropped the items into the flames, then added Mains's wallet, from which he had already extracted anything of use. The broken bottle, which could have originally been a beer bottle from WATT but equally might not have been, went over the side of the dock.

  Satisfied that the fire had done its most important work, Joe left it burning and started walking back toward the city center, the rucksack still heavy on his back.

  At a bus stop across the street from where one of Antony Gormley's ubiquitous cast-iron molds stood guard on the roof of another building, Joe caught a bus to Europort and boarded a ferry bound for Hull, using Mains's ticket. The writer would have approved, he thought. When the ticket control had turned out also to involve a simultaneous passport check, a detail he had somehow not anticipated, Joe's heart rate had shot up and a line of sweat had crept from his hair line, but the check had been cursory at best and Joe had been waved on to the boat. He sat out on the rear deck, glad to relieve his shoulders of the weight of the rucksack. With an hour to go before the ferry was due to sail, he watched the sky darken and the various colors of the port lights take on depth, intensity, richness. Huge wind turbines turning slowly in the light breeze, like fans cooling the desert-warmed air of some alien city of the future. Giant cranes squatting over docksides, mutant insects towering over tiny human figures passing from one suspended cone of orange light to the next. Tall, slender flare-stacks, votive offerings to some unknown god. The lights of the edge of the city in the distance, apartment blocks, life going on.

  Soon the ferry would slip her mooring and glide past fantastical wharves and gantries, enormous silos and floating jetties. She would navigate slowly away from this dream of the lowlands and enter the cold dark reality of the North Sea, where no one would hear the odd splash over the side in the lonely hours of the night.

Jonathan Thomas

Jonathan Thomas is the author of numerous short stories that have appeared in Fantasy and Terror, Studies in the Fantastic, and other magazines. His first short story collection, 
Stories from the Big Black House
(Radio Funk, 1992), is a rare collector's item; a second collection,
Midnight Call and Other Stories,
appeared in 2008 from Hippocampus Press.

 
 
ustin, till a month ago, had never expected to be here again, but three decades and several dead-end career later, he was back as an "honored alumnus," no less. The room, true to memory, was on the scale of a hospital ward, and the walls were a dull aseptic white, typical of countless other gallery spaces. His photos were of "The Beautiful and the Condemned: Parting Shots," and were on a two-week sojourn in Providence between exhibits in Boston and Philly.

  From humble beginnings as snapshots of lopsided red barns, his work had evolved into highly polarized, finely etched silver nitrates of charming landscapes, buildings, or neighborhoods about to be bulldozed for development. Their pathos had touched a mainstream nerve somehow, earning him grants, and articles in the
New
York
Times,
and NPR interviews, and calendar contracts. Meanwhile, the irony of displaying these images someplace that stood atop a former charming site was evidently lost on the faculty, homecoming alum, and students at the opening, bless their uncritical hearts. If his alma mater wanted to show him off as a successful graduate, he guessed he could live with that much boosterism. No, nothing much had changed about the List Art Building since grad school, except he strongly doubted he'd run into the ghost of H. P. Lovecraft tonight.

  Justin, in fact, had never set foot in the building after that incident. He'd been offsetting his tuition as a night watchman for Campus Security, and had refused any further assignments there, and what's more, he'd admitted why. And why not? He saw what he saw, and youthful principles dictated he "tell it like it is," in the parlance of the day. True, he'd been reading up on Lovecraft for his Comparative Literature thesis about local-color fantasists, so he knew that Lovecraft's Early American home had been uprooted and towed over the hill to make way for the List Building. Untrue, however, were rumors he'd been on acid, as fabricated by those intent on a "common sense" rationale for any brush with the supernatural. Luckily, suspicions of drug use rendered nobody a pariah at the time, or the entire university population would have been on the outs with itself. Vexing enough that LSD and "some space cadet" figured in every recap overheard at parties, or worse, thrown back in his face by unknowing raconteurs.

  In any case, the unvarnished facts had remained in Justin's drug-free head, and one of the more remarkable was that the ghost had behaved exactly as he'd have anticipated. Justin, in baggy blue uniform, had been on midnight rounds in the building and had entered the room where his work would someday surround him. Track lighting with dimmers set extremely low barely alleviated the darkness; there were no windows.

  From out of the murk burst someone pacing rapidly, who nearly collided head-on with Justin before performing a lastsecond about-face and pacing away. Justin had time only to gasp and stumble to a halt, heart thumping, while the trespasser paced toward him and away once more. At second glance, Justin took note of short hair parted on the left above a high forehead, a thin lipped mouth that seemed small because of a substantial chin, and a gaunt physique in a 1930s suit replete with white shirt and black tie. The similarity to Lovecraft in off-register photos on yellowing newsprint was unmistakable.

  In keeping with his fitful stride, the revenant's expression was of confusion and distress, readily understandable in anyone who found himself in a bleak hall where his snug parlor should be, and in someone so skeptical of the spirit world who was suddenly one of its denizens. Trembling Justin drew flashlight from belt holster and asked meekly, and sympathetically he hoped, "Can I help you?"

  The ectoplasm must have been too delicate to withstand spoken vibrations. The agitated Lovecraft failed to re-emerge from the shadows. Darting flashlight beam detected no one anywhere in the gallery. Justin hightailed it out of there, pausing only to lock up behind him with unsteady hands. Thus began and ended his sole occult adventure.

  None of his instructors or classmates were at the opening. Good! Chances were minimal of having to endure urban legends about himself. By the grace of free wine, though, numerous alum, whether staid and middle-aged or impossibly young, saw fit to buttonhole him on ever more familiar terms. He extended cordial thanks for generic compliments, even when some cranelike dowager pumped his hand and actually exclaimed, "Nice captures!" And what harm in disclosing that he lived in the Catskills, and that he wasn't going to the "big game" tomorrow against Princeton because he hated football? Or that he was staying on Benefit Street at a Victorian bed-and-breakfast, yes, every bit as quaint and genteel as it sounded, maybe a little rich for his blood in fact. Did he travel with his family? He'd been twice married in haste and divorced at leisure, thanks for asking. "Irreconcilable differences of standards and values," he explained, "but everyone's amicable. The exes are too humane to try squeezing alimony from a stone. Anyway, no children, thank God!" Was Justin coming off as brusque? No matter, if it kept tipsy parents from bragging about their overachiever kids. He'd been hitting the wine himself, after all, and was at the point of wishing Lovecraft's ghost would reappear, if only to light a fire under this whitebread crowd.

  Aha, someone with whom Justin needed a word was crossing his line of vision. Dr. Palazzo, head of the Pictorial Arts division and a darling of
ARTnews
and its slick-paper ilk, was homing in on a few equally overdressed attendees. Sturdy Dr. Palazzo exuded brash corporate airs in powder-blue three-piece suit, yellow tie, and wavy silver hair too majestic to be real. Had he ever in his life so much as handled a crayon? He came across as governor of a military occupation, but Justin steeled himself and essayed an engaging smile. Reimbursement for lodgings had been a condition before Justin agreed to wedge this fortnight into his itinerary at the last minute. The exhibit would otherwise have gone into storage at his Boston or Philadelphia venues, and he'd have been home resting up days ago. Typo-laden e-mails from the gallery director promised that only the formality of Palazzo's signature stood between Justin and repayment, but he had yet to hear a straight answer about that after a full day in town.

  Justin flagged Palazzo down and introduced himself. Palazzo congratulated him on the show without acting especially impressed. He was clearly en route to more important conversations. Justin presented his case with all due tact, while ruminating that the sum in question wouldn't have bought one of Palazzo's shoes. Palazzo's curt advice was to discuss petty cash with the gallery director.

  "She referred me to you," claimed Justin, a shade archly.

  "I can't do anything right now." Oh? That much "petty cash," and then some, was probably wadded up in Palazzo's back pocket.

  "Why don't I drop by your office Monday morning? What time is convenient for you?" Justin swallowed a belch an instant before it was too late.

  "You'll have to call my secretary." Palazzo rushed off before Justin could say anything else.

  The gallery director had been across the room all along, but Justin didn't want to make her evening any worse. She looked like hell. Curly brunette strands were stuck to her clammy brow, her eyes were bulging, and she was dividing frazzled attention between a cell phone and the micromanagement of slowpoke undergrads in catering uniforms. Dr. Palazzo, meanwhile, was hobnobbing with the impeccable few, as if nobody else were around. Justin downed one more plastic goblet of Chablis and slunk out and down the hill to Benefit Street.

  He awoke in a sweat under fleece comforter. Between the cushy down-filled mattress and the hiss of a radiator going full blast before Columbus Day, he felt decadent as much as overheated. He also felt he might have been a bit uncharitable toward last night's attendees, and even Dr. Palazzo. He couldn't, in fairness, object if the lives of others led them to perspectives different from his own.

  According to bedside digital clock, it was earlier than he thought. He could still catch the tail-end of breakfast. He rolled out of bed and into the bedraggled, off-balance aftermath of more plastic goblets than he cared to tally. In the dining room downstairs, the other guests had come and gone, and the staff had yet to clear the self-serve table. Justin grabbed three cups of coffee to be sure they'd be there when he wanted them, along with croissants and orange juice. The second cup was lukewarm, but did the trick. His frilly surroundings became sunnier, and he gamely conceded that even if they were overly precious, they attracted the clientele without whom this address might devolve into one of his silver nitrates. Justin had been pleased to find the East Side pretty much as he'd left it, thus far at least, including Geoff's Sandwiches, still in business across the street. Or did it use to be Joe's?

  Justin had wisely packed an okay digital camera, to make the best of imposed leisure. The B&B counted homecoming as a "special weekend" and obliged him to book three nights, which was just as well, in view of Monday morning business. At a whim, he headed south on gloriously unchanging Benefit Street, and at the first major intersection spotted a white cardboard rectangle taped below a "No Left Turn" sign. Big black letters proclaimed "Alumni Tent," with an arrow pointing up the curve of Waterman Street. The phrase put Justin in mind of a circus, and despite the low odds of reality bearing him out, he opted to go see what was what.

  The street skirted the drab, postwar School of Design campus and the List Building again and the venerable Main Green of the university, and at the corner of shopping-strip Thayer Street another white placard directed him one block farther, where an arrow sent him north. He winced at vinyl siding on historic walls in a neighborhood that should have known better, and then smiled. A circus tent indeed dominated the little urban meadow of Pembroke Field. Clusters of red, white, and brown balloons bobbed at the tent entrance and along the chain-link fence around the field.

  The illusion of a Big Top dissolved as soon as Justin trudged amidst a gaggle of merry old graduates through the gate. Demographically, he was back at the gallery opening, only with a much stronger turnout here, and the addition of many babies in strollers. A guy in a cartoonish bear costume was posing for photos with happy couples. Justin was mildly amused at his inability to look upon the jaunty mascot without thinking "narc." Name tags adhered to the majority of sweaters and jackets, and sociable babel emanated from a dining area where a pregame box brunch was underway. The "Alumni Pub" was doing a lively business, and Justin vetoed the passing thought of a beer to wash down breakfast.

  These people were having fun, and more power to them, but black loneliness latched onto him and gnawed deeper, the longer he steeped himself in the festivities. He had a master's degree from this school, and every right to be here, and had come at departmental behest, hadn't he? But he wasn't feeling particularly "honored," and suspected that the Gallery Director's invitation to him had somehow fueled bad politics between her and Palazzo. He also suspected that somebody sooner or later would notice him languishing in solitary discomfort and ask him to leave. He needed no outside confirmation that he didn't belong. Out on the sidewalk, he breathed easier.

  He retreated to Thayer Street, and his eyes widened in immediate dismay. Damn his vivid recollections! A dorm complex with red and green brick façade, like a dull-witted kid's Lego project, had replaced a row of classic Victorian mansions, mansard roofs and gingerbread eaves and all. He continued down Thayer and wished he could stop himself. He remembered a second-hand bookshop notorious for buying stolen collections, and a locksmith whose illegal dupes of dorm keys abetted countless student flings, and a hole-in-the-wall deli where a grouchy octogenarian sold expired yogurt and treated the customer like a sissy for not eating it, gray fuzz and all. These and other upwellings of robust personality had no latter-day counterparts. Clothing and restaurant chains were in ascendancy, some chichi, some tacky, but all with deep pockets to absorb the likely sky-high rents. Something he didn't recall was the excessive number of trust fund babies out making fashion statements. He had meager faith in the survival of a record store, a pizza joint, and a few other mom-and-pop operations beyond their next lease renewals. To discover a new generation of panhandlers in front of Store 24 was heartening, though he wasn't about to waste any cash on them. A little scruffiness, a little waywardness remained of the Runyonesque street of his less uptight era. That was the kindest spin he could manage.