* * *
The last entry in my diary describes the flight back home. However, that was by no means the end of the story. Three weeks later. The short note was on the last page of my newspaper, which I used to look at first, for the weather. Under the heading "The World in Brief" there was an entry saying that in San Francisco a blind man had shot his wife by mistake. The man's name was given as de Boer. No first names were mentioned. I was alarmed. Of course, Nick's and Marie's second name was Mintford, but de Boer sounded familiar, too. Marie's maiden name, perhaps? And the house was owned by her parents, as far as I knew. You couldn't trust a newspaper in such matters, and surely there could not be all that many blind men in San Francisco.
I rang up Nick. Or I tried. I let the telephone ring over twenty times, but nobody answered. I checked the time. Early morning in San Francisco. Nick and Marie would still be at home normally. I tried again, dialing with greater care, but to no avail. Nobody lifted the receiver.
The next day, when the original events were already two days old, the
Abendblatt
gave a more detailed report, and this time there could be no doubt. The names had been corrected. They said, Nicolas Mintford had mistaken his homecoming wife for a burglar and shot at once. Marie had not realized the danger because the flat had been in total darkness. She had been dead by the time the ambulance arrived. There was no mention of any unborn baby. A tragic accident.
Accident? I had my doubts. Had Nick not moved about in his flat in light and dark with absolute confidence and recognized every sound? Was it possible that he might have mistaken Marie for a burglar at any time of day? Was it not much more likely that Marie's intention of leaving him had triggered the same kind of panic as the cops had done with his suicide attempt? That he had knowingly shot at Marie? And, if so, wasn't then my brother in extreme danger, too? If Nick had killed his wife in anger, wouldn't he possibly or even most likely try to kill my brother as well? After all, he had caused Marie's decision.
I tried to call my brother at his job. In vain. Finally I got hold of the operator. The girl tried to put me through, but again with no result. The phone kept ringing in my brother's office. Then the girl's voice again: "Mr. Berger is not in his room; do you want me to leave him a message?"
I asked her to put a note on his desk, saying would he please ring me back at once. I did not leave the house for the next few hours. In vain. My brother did not call. Perhaps he spent the weekend with friends somewhere in the country. Perhaps he had hidden in some hole in mournful misery over the death of Marie and refused to hear or see anybody. Or he was dead already. I was helpless. I could only wait for him to call.
When he eventually called, very much later, everything was clear anyway, even without him admitting anything. We did not even touch on the issue, and police investigations had been closed some time since. Again I had not understood anything. One thing I know by now, however: Nick's revolver, of which I had been so afraid for my brother's sake, had been confiscated by the police, of course.
* * *
Hamburg, today. My big brother, nervously pacing the room. And me, just as nervous, watching him. "I just had to come," he said. "You are the only person to whom I can talk about this."
But, of course, I would not be able to help him, and he knew it. "The air mail letter then," I said, "that came from you, right?" He nodded. The envelope had contained nothing but a newspaper clipping. The article said a blind man had jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge at dawn the previous morning. Suicide no. 828. By chance the fall had been witnessed from a passing coast guard vessel; they had eventually pulled the man out of the water, but he was dead by then. A probable cause for the suicide had been the death of his wife, whom the blind man— as reported yesterday— had accidently shot dead.
"What did you think?" he asked.
I shrugged. To be honest, initially I had been relieved. Suicide. And my brother would not be in danger anymore. But then I had my doubts. Suicide? Sure, Nick knew his way around the house perfectly well. He went everywhere and did anything he wanted. But the Golden Gate Bridge was at the other end of the town. It was much beyond Parker to take his master there. Even if Nick had taken a taxi it would have been difficult to get on the bridge without help.
"There is only one possible reason why you had sent me that letter," I said.
He avoided my eyes. "Police investigations found no traces of foreign interference."
"You didn't come all the way to tell me that," I said.
My brother did not say anything for a while. Then, finally: "He did not even put up a fight." I looked up. He wept. My big, strong brother. My poor brother.
Richard Laymon
Boo
RICHARD LAYMON'S
first novel was the now-notorious
The Cellar
, as heart-stopping a mix of noir, woman-in-peril, and horror as has ever been concocted. In the ensuing quarter century, his worldwide reputation as a true master of dark suspense— albeit one with a truly sly sense of humor— made him a brand name in England. His books were just beginning to find wide favor in the States before his untimely death last year. "Boo," which first appeared in the anthology
October Dreams
, shows his sense of humor running dead even with his sense of the macabre.
Boo
Richard Laymon
T
he last time I ever went out trick-or-treating, it was with my best friend Jimmy and his sisters, Peggy and Donna. Peggy, Jimmy's kid sister, had a couple of her little friends along, Alice and Olive. There was also Olive's older brother, Nick.
Donna, Jimmy's older sister, was in charge.
We all wore costumes except Donna. Being sixteen, Donna thought of herself as too old for dressing up, so she went as herself in a plaid chamois-cloth shirt, blue jeans, and sneakers.
Peggy wore a Peter Pan outfit. When I saw her in the green elf outfit and feathered cap, I said, "Peter Pan!" She corrected me. "Not Peter Pan, Peggy Pan."
One of her little friends, I don't remember whether it was Olive or Alice, sported a tutu and a tiara and carried a wand with a star at one end. The other girl wore a store-bought E.T. costume. Or maybe she was Yoda. I'm not sure which.
Nick I remember. All of fourteen, he was a year older than Jimmy and me. He was supposed to be a Jedi warrior. He wore black coveralls, a black cape, and black galoshes. No mask, no helmet. We only knew he was a Jedi warrior because he told us so. And because he carried a "light saber," pretty much a hollow plastic tube attached to a flashlight.
Jimmy was "the Mummy." Earlier that night, Donna and I had spent ages wrapping him up in a white bedsheet that we'd cut into narrow strips. We kept pinning the strips to Jimmy's white longjohns. It took forever. It would've driven me nuts except for Donna. Every so often, she gave Jimmy a poke with a pin just to keep things interesting. We finally got it done, though, and Jimmy made a good-looking mummy.
My costume was easy. I was Huck Finn. I wore a straw hat, an old flannel shirt, and blue jeans. I had a length of clothesline over one shoulder, tied at the ends to a couple of my belt loops to look like an old rope suspender. As a final touch I had a corncob pipe that my dad let me borrow for the night.
So that was our group: who we were and how we were dressed that night.
Jimmy and me, Donna and Peggy, Alice and Olive and Nick.
Seven of us.
Except for Donna, we carried paper bags for our treats. Donna carried a flashlight. For the most part, she took up the rear. She usually didn't even go to the doors with us but waited on the sidewalk while we rang doorbells, yelled "Trick or treat!" and held out our bags to receive the goodies.
For the first couple of hours that night, everything went along fine. If you don't count Nick going on occasional rampages, bopping us on the heads or prodding us in the butts with his light saber, proclaiming, "The Dark Side rules!" After a while, Jimmy's bandages started to come off and droop. At one point, ET (or Yoda) fell down and skinned her knee and spent a while bawling. But nothing major went wrong and we kept on collecting loot and roaming farther and farther into unknown territory.
It was getting very late when we came to a certain house that was not at all like the others on its block. Whereas they were brightly lighted and most had jack-o'-lanterns on their porches, this house was utterly dark. Whereas their shrubbery and lawns were neatly trimmed, this house seemed nearly lost in a jungle of deep grass, wild foliage, and brooding trees. It also seemed much older than the other houses on the block. Three stories high (not two like its neighbors) and made of wood (not brick), it looked as if it belonged to a different century.
The houses on both sides of the old one seemed unusually far away from it, as if whoever'd built them had been afraid to get too close.
Though Nick usually ran from house to house without returning to the sidewalk, cutting across lawns and brandishing his light saber with Peggy and Olive and Alice chasing after him, this time he thought better of it. All four of them came back to the sidewalk, where Jimmy and I were walking along with Donna.
"What's with that house?" Nick asked.
"It's creepy-eepy-eepy," said either Olive or Alice, whichever one was the fairy godmother princess ballerina.
"It doesn't look like anyone lives there," Donna said.
"Maybe like the Munsters," I said.
"I think maybe we should skip this one," Donna said.
"Hey, no," Jimmy protested. "We can't skip this one. It's the best one yet!"
I felt exactly the same way, but I never could've forced myself to disagree with Donna.
She shook her head, her bangs swaying across her brow. "I really don't like the looks of it. Besides, it'd be a waste of time. Nobody's there. You won't get any treats. We might as well just—"
"You never know," Jimmy interrupted. "Maybe they just forgot to turn their lights on."
"I think Donna's right," I said. "I don't think anyone's there."
Jimmy shook his head. By this time, all the "bandages" had slipped off his head. They dangled around his neck like rag necklaces. "If somebody does live in a place like that," he said, "wouldn't you wanta meet him? Or her. Maybe it's a creepy old woman. Just imagine. Like some crazy old witch or hermit or something, you know?"
For a while, we all just stood there and stared at the dark old house— what we could see of it through the bushes and trees, anyway, which wasn't much.
Looking at it, I felt a little shivery inside.
"I think we should just go on," Donna said.
"You're in charge," Jimmy muttered. He'd been ordered by his parents to obey Donna, but he sounded disappointed.
She took a deep breath and sighed. It felt good to watch her do that.
"It's probably deserted," she said. Then she said, "Okay, let's give it a try."
"All
right!
" Jimmy blurted.
"This time, I'll lead the way. Who else wants to come?"
The three girls jumped up and down, yelling, "Me! I do! Me! Me-me-me!"
Nick raised his light saber, and said, "I'll come and protect you, Princess Donna."
"Any trouble," I told him, "cut 'em to ribbons with your flashlight."
"Take that!" He jabbed me in the crotch.
He didn't even do it very hard, but the tube got me in the nuts. I grunted and gritted my teeth and barely managed not to double over.
"Gotcha!" Nick announced.
Donna bounced her flashlight off his head. Not very hard, but the bulb went dark and Nick yelped, "
Ow!
" and dropped his light saber and candy bag and grabbed the top of his head with both hands and hunched over and walked in circles.
"Oh, take it easy," she told him. "I barely tapped you."
"I'm gonna tell!" he blurted.
"Tell your little ass off, see if I care."
The ballerina fairy-godmother princess gasped.
ET or Yoda blurted, "Language!"
Little sister Peggy Pan almost split a gut, but seemed to know she shouldn't laugh at Nick's misfortune so she clamped a hand across her mouth.
Jimmy, more concerned about my fate than Nick's, patted me on the back and asked, "You okay, man?"
"Fine," I squeezed out.
Donna came closer. Looking me in the eyes, she said, "Did he get you bad?"
I grimaced and shrugged.
"Right in the nads," offered Jimmy.
I gave him a look.
Instead of killing him, as intended, my look seemed to inspire him. "Donna's a certified lifeguard, you know. All that first-aid training. Want her to take a look?"
"Shut up!" I snapped at him.
