Mammoth Book of Best New Horror (59 page)

    It's sometimes a curse to have an imagination that can draw up detailed visuals. I thought of them entwined after having just made love, now feeding each other wine and caviar. I hated caviar the one time I tried it, but when I thought of romance that's what came to mind. The window open and a cold breeze pressing back the curtains. Moonlight casting silver across the dark. The sheets clean but rumpled. Her crossing the room with a hint of sweat carried in the niche at the small of her back, slowly dripping over the curve of her
derriere.
When I thought of romance I thought there ought to be some French thrown in there too. The bright flare of the refrigerator opening, her body silhouetted the way it had been the last time I'd seen her. The refrigerator door shutting, night vision lost. Total darkness for a moment and then the pressure of her body easing back into bed.

    You didn't need a lover to drive you to the rim, you could do it all on your own.

    I wore myself down hoping to escape my dreams. I slept heavily but not well. I wrote a lot but not well. I dropped off with my head against the spacebar.

    One morning, I found a note slid under my door.

    It went six pad-size pages. It stated, in plainly printed block letters much clearer than my own handwriting:

    A MAN MADE OF ALUMINIUM FOIL STEPPED FROM MY CLOSET AND CONFESSED HIS SINS. THEY WERE PLENTIFUL. HIS HANDS ARE RED FROM A WOMAN'S BLOOD. HE IS TERRIFIED BECAUSE HE HAS NOT YET MET GOD, AND FEARS HE NEVER WILL, AND THAT GOD - IF HE EVER EXISTED - EXISTS NO MORE. DR LAUBER, HE SAID, COMMANDS HIS SOUL. THE RHINE FLOODS ACROSS THE PLANETS. THIS IS NOT THE AFTERLIFE HE WAS HOPING FOR. AT THE END OF OUR DAYS WE ALL FULLY EXPECT TO MEET THE CREATOR, AND, FOR GOOD OR ILL, FOR HIM TO SPEAK WITH US, EVEN IF ONLY TO JUDGE HARSHLY, PERHAPS WITH DIVINE HATE. AN AFTERLIFE WITHOUT GOD IS ONE WITHOUT PARAMETERS, WITHOUT CELESTIAL DESIGN. DR LAUBER, THE ALUMINIUM FOIL MAN SAID, OWNS US ALL, THOUGH SOME OF US CONTINUE TO ACT AS IF THERE IS SUCH AN ABSTRACTION AS FREE WILL. I HAVE COME TO THIS BELIEF MYSELF - THAT NONE OF US ARE FREE - SOME TIME AGO AS WELL. IT FRIGHTENS ME, IT ALL CHILLS ME SO. WHAT SAY YOU?

    The note was signed: MOJO.

    You couldn't be better off dead. You were already a phantom in this city. The world spun by filled with the vacuous and the caustic and the fearful. They hunched down inside their coats and disappeared before you really knew they were there. They muttered to themselves and turned away from bright lights and loud noises. I'd raised my voice only once on the street in the past month, and that was hailing a cab. Sometimes I wondered if I'd even know it when my heart quit beating.

    The 1976 one-hit-wonder lady who sang "Sister to the Swamp" knocked on my apartment door and asked if I'd repair the broken showerhead in her bathroom. She still had an enormous afro and wore the kind of silky, streaming dress that she'd worn on Soul Train during the disco years. I got my toolbox and followed her upstairs. She had the gold record mounted on the wall near the window so that the sunlight would send a molten yellow across the room. Everywhere I looked were photos of her with politicians, sports legends, and other musicians popular at the time.

    When she spoke I heard very little beside the lyrics to "Sister to the Swamp". The heavy bass rhythm of the song pumped through my head. I got into the tub and worked the showerhead until I got it fixed. When I finished, the 1976 one-hit-wonder lady was at the window staring at the rush of foot traffic on the sidewalks below. She held one hand up to the glass like she was trying to find her way through without breaking it. She wanted to go outside. She wanted to sing for the people. I'd seen that haunted need in her eyes and the eyes of the other shut-ins for a couple of years now. I wanted to ask her why she didn't just step outside and do her thing. But even I knew it was impossible. Time had moved on without her and she wouldn't be able to get back up to speed. Her photos and her gold record and the lyrics to her one song were all she had left now. She'd chosen that path and it would have to be enough for her. She said nothing more to me and I grabbed my toolbox and got out of there, back into the world. It felt very much the same on one side of the door as the other.

    I got downstairs into my place and sat in front of the computer screen willing the words to come. They wouldn't. Every time I thought of King Carver in Danish a flutter of nausea worked through my guts.

    I shut my eyes. I let my fingers move across the keypad on their own. I started typing. Corben and I used to clown around with automatic writing back in college. I did it every now and again when I wanted to clear my mind. I forced my focus to some far corner of my brain and left it there. The typing grew louder.

    My hands pounded away. I wondered who the hell was writing Mojo letters to me and why. There had been a craftiness to the note, a kind of witty petulance. It seemed a direct insult to the aluminium foil guy. Someone had done his online research on Dr Lauber. But to what end? And why send it my way? And why pose as the monkey? A thin shard of fear scraped inside me, and my hands seized for a moment. What if the note had come from the ice-pick killer? Who even used an ice-pick any more
except
for killers? This was the fucking age of refrigerator door ice-cube makers, baby. Sweat broke across my upper lip. What if the note had really come from Mojo? The paper was the size of the sheets on the chimp's little pad. Why hadn't I seen Gabriella in over a week? My focus snapped back into the keyboard and I felt my fingers type her name. GABRIELLA. What kind of a damn fool dedicates a book as a codicil to his wife, and does so by simply calling her My
wife
My thoughts twisted to Corben's book on Stark House. What had he learned about this place that I should know? How far along was he? Who would he dedicate this one to? What if the chimp were dancing up behind me right now with an awl in his little monkey fist?

    I opened my eyes and turned around. I was alone. My face dripped sweat. I checked the clock. I'd written for twenty minutes. I scanned the computer screen. Much of it was gibberish with a few random whole sentences found in the muck. I spotted DEATH TO KING CARVER in there among a kind of repetitive bitter ranting about lack of royalties and stolen foreign translations. I'd fallen back into some of the same old traps. It was bound to happen. A few maudlin phrases cropped up. I wrote COME GET ME, FUCKER and had a partially completed scene of a disembowelling. A filleting blade eased through flesh. There were slithering intestines and someone trying to hold together his fish-white belly with his fingers. I was getting the feeling that my mental state might currently be a bit skewed. WHERE HAS HE HIDDEN MY LOVE? Deep among the mire stood out SHE SPEAKS.

    It took some of the edge off but not nearly enough. I deleted the file and stared at the blank monitor willing some kind of answers that refused to appear. It didn't matter much. I didn't even know what questions I was asking. I wasn't even sure I wanted to try writing another novel. There didn't seem to be much point anymore. I wasn't as wrecked about not giving a damn as I thought I would be.

    I picked up the Mojo note and read it again. I wondered if a man made of aluminium foil might be preparing to step from my closet as well. Why should Dr Lauber command anybody's soul?

    I hadn't talked to Corben on any kind of a significant level in fifteen years. If we passed each other in the halls we would nod and do no more. I had the phone numbers of everyone in the building. I grabbed the phone and called the apartment. I hoped Gabriella would answer. My back teeth hurt because I was clenching my jaws so tightly. Like a love-struck teenager, I thought I might hang up the moment she answered. The phone rang ten times, twelve, thirteen times. Maybe they really were in Monaco.

    I hung up and then gave it another dozen rings.

    Finally Corben picked up, and with an exasperated growl said, "Who is this?"

    "I'm coming up," I told him.

    I tossed the phone down and moved out the door on a near-run.

    I got to his apartment and we both took an extra moment for what was coming. I stood on one side listening at the door, and I knew he was standing on the other side, his eye to the peephole. We both waited. I had no idea what we were waiting for. I started forward and before I could knock he flung the door open so hard I heard the doorstop snap.

    His face, once bordering handsome, had grown into a collision of sharp edges. His high cheekbones were barely covered with flesh. He looked like he'd been ill for days. His jaw line angled back severe as a hatchet. I hadn't seen him for several weeks and I could tell he hadn't been eating. His eyes were feverish, planted too deeply in his head, and he didn't seem able to completely close his mouth. His upper canines prodded his lower lip. I could smell the sourness of his breath beneath the mint mouthwash. His rapid breathing rustled loudly from him.

    A lot of the old pain and jealousy sped through my blood. My pulse stormed along. I could feel the veins in my wrists clattering. I wondered if I was as ugly to him as he was to me.

    "Where's Gabriella?" I asked.

    The question hit him like a rabbit punch. I don't know what he'd been expecting but it sure wasn't that. His face folded into nine variations of anger, indignity, and confusion before it settled into outright surprise. It suited him just swell.

    He couldn't come up with anything better than, "What?" and he hated himself for it. He got grounded again and the peevish tone thrummed into his voice once more. "Who are you to ask that?"

    "Who the hell would I have to be? Where is she?"

    "She's not here."

    "That doesn't answer my damn question. Where is she?"

    His resentful front began to fall apart even faster. He couldn't maintain his outrage. I watched it crack to pieces and the sight startled me. We were getting down deep where the nerve clusters were always on fire for one reason or another. The venom began to seep from me but I held onto that desperate need to see her. He detected it in me and almost took a kind of pity as he said, "She's gone."

    "What?"

    "It's true."

    I took a lunging step toward him and caught hold of myself in time. I looked over his shoulder and hoped he was lying, but I couldn't feel her presence in the slightest. I couldn't smell her perfume, I got no sense of her at all.

    "Gone where?"

    "I don't know, Will."

    The way he said my name tightened my chest. It was almost a whimper, an appeal to friendship. The sound of his own voice angered him and I watched his thin face harden further, his shoulders straightening. I took another step until we were toe to toe. "What the hell are you saying?"

    "She hasn't been home since the day the old man was killed in the lobby."

    "That was over two weeks ago!"

    He steeled himself. "Yes."

    "Have you called the police? Filed a missing persons report?"

    "No."

    "Why not?"

    He didn't answer. His eyes softened and he dropped his gaze. He fell back a few steps like he was aiming his ass for the rich leather wraparound sofa I saw in his living room, but he began to stumble. I actually had to reach out and grab his arm to keep him from going over. I shook him hard once but he still looked dazed. The cops should've been called in long before this, but I didn't push the point because I'd lost just about all my confidence in the police anyway.

    Corben said, "I can't speak to you now."

    "You damn well better."

    "I can't. Later. Why don't you come up tonight for a drink? It's been a while since we've talked." He slowly closed the door in my face. I had no idea how I'd gotten out into the hall.

    I had three cards from the three teams of cops. I picked up the one from the whiners and started to phone them, but before I tapped out all seven numbers I hung up. I was already a second-rate suspect in a cooling murder case. How smooth would it go down with the police if I called them about Gabriella? They'd question Corben and he was a New York celebrity, a personal friend of the mayor and the governor. He'd slick it over if he wanted, and they'd just have even more reason to presume me guilty of something. I couldn't waste the time. I had to find her. I had to make him crack. I felt it was something I had to do. Something only I could do. Audacity is sometimes its own reward.

    Leave it to Corben to call a decade and a half "a while". I decided to play along.

    A few hours later we sat in his living room drinking bourbon. From the stink of his breath I could tell he'd been at it for a while before I got there. We skipped fifteen years and anything of substance. I wanted to let my gaze roam his apartment. I'd been in the place many times before. Whenever a toilet clogged. Whenever the garbage disposal backed up. I'd cleaned up Corben's shit for two years, but I'd never been a guest and I'd never spent a minute taking in the personality of his apartment. I wanted to look at the photos with him and movie stars, on the sets of his films. I wanted to get up and hold all his rare nineteenth-century first editions. There were many paintings, mostly small originals done by artists who resided in the world's greatest museums. His tastes were similar to mine and I knew I would find many wondrous, beautiful, awe-inspiring aspects to his home.