Stories (2011) (87 page)

"Gardner," I yelled, and my voice seemed to travel
uncertainly through the house.

"Rocky?" came Gardner's voice; it was weak and
whispery, came from the dining room. I went on in there and found Gardner
sitting at the table where I had last seen him.

I turned on the light. The Ouija was in front of him again,
only this time it was cracked half in two. Gardner had not fixed the broken
window and cold wind whipped into the room and lashed at me like a wet
crocodile tail. The hardwood floor in front of the window was warped up a bit
from where the rain had blown in, and it looked to have blown away most of the
white chalk circle.

Even the diagrams on the walls looked to have faded. The
candles were out and the odor in the room was not due to that nasty incense. It
was something else. Breeze down from the fertilizer plant, I reckoned. Bad
stuff.

Gardner was a changed man. It was as if someone had bleached
him. His face was as white as a starlet's teeth, his eyes had more red streaks
than a chicken yard had scratches, and his hair had that
combed-with-an-egg-beater look.

I walked over to the table and sat down, reached out and touched
Gardner's hand. My own hand came away damp... bloody.

Gardner's wrist was cut up pretty bad.

"What happened, Gardner?"

"Meko."

"Meko did this? Why she's as gentle as a..." and
then I saw her.

She was lying against the wall on Gardner's right. It was as
if she had been flung there like a wet dishrag. Her head was dangling at an
impossible angle, as if it had been screwed halfway off, and her tongue drooped
from her mouth, looked a foot long.

"What happened?" I asked.

"The ghoul," Gardner said. "It made me do
it... just a little cat's soul, but it wanted to feed; it wanted the energy of
something alive.

Couldn't help it, Rocky, I swear. I didn't want to, but the
ghoul wouldn't leave me alone."

"Take it easy."

"The board... last time I summoned it, then tried to
send it back, it split the board... It was showing me I no longer had
control." He reached over and took hold of my shirtfront. "It's
inside
me,
 Rocky. Fought it all I could, kept it at bay, but it's getting
stronger... The spells, the diagrams. They won't hold it."

"Easy, pal." I finally got him out of the dining
room and into the den, into one of those big chairs in front of the fireplace.
I fixed up the fire some, went out and got the beer and wine. After a glass of
the wine he seemed to calm down a bit.

"I've pulled it out of there," Gardner said.
"I've unleashed the goddamn parasite and it's feeding on me. I feel like
I'm inside a husk looking out sometimes... like I can't control my actions.

Actually saw it... me, take hold of Meko and... God! It's
got me, Rocky." Suddenly he was keyed up again.

"Have some more wine." I poured him another glass
and he upended it.

"It soaked up Meko's energy like a sponge soaks up
water. It was terrible... exhilarating in a way... Evil, Rocky, very
evil."

"You're tired, Gardner. Meko scratched you... you're
not quite yourself."

"I didn't kill Meko," Gardner said at the top of
his lungs.

"You've got to believe me, Rocky. If you don't I'll
lose my mind.

It's like that writer, Lovecraft... things are out there,
waiting, just waiting to slip through time and space into this world. I've let
one through, and my body is the gate. When the emotions are up, the ghoul
feeds, and then when the emotions die down, the gate starts to close. It gets
sucked back, back to the abysmal darkness beyond this world.

"I was a fool to try and open the way to let myself be
a sort of human sacrifice, just because I was curious."

A horrible thing went through my mind:
Curiosity killed
the cat!

"Listen, Gardner. It feeds off emotional stress, right?
Well, if you take it easy, if you let the stress die out cold, can it
survive?"

"I don't think so... It can at least be
controlled."

"Then try and relax." I knew I was talking crazy,
but Gardner wasn't going to listen to logic. He was too flipped out. I poured
him another glass of wine, and somehow we managed to slip away from the subject
and into other matters.

An hour later we were talking rapidly about anything and everything
under the sun — except the supernatural. When Gardner seemed to have himself
pretty well together, we buried Meko and cleaned the blood off the wall and
tossed the Ouija board out.

As I was leaving for home Gardner said, "Thanks,
Rocky."

"All right," I said. "You've just been
working too hard. Stress.

Get some rest."

He gave me a wan smile as I left him at the door. I drove
away from there with a chill at my back like the North winds blow.

You've seen those ads about problem drinkers. The ones that ask
the question: "If you let him drive home drunk, are you a real
friend?"

What the ad's getting at, of course, is being a friend isn't
always easy. It isn't a great lot of fun to tell your old pal that he's a
goddamned sot and he ought not to drive home; ought not to walk home, for that
matter, in a drunken condition. The good friend is supposed to do the driving
for him, or make him sleep over, offer help in some sort of way.

That's what I should have done, and I feel guilty now. I
blame myself for what happened to Gardner. Maybe I could have gotten him a head
shrinker, someone who could have helped him with his problems. I like to think
I didn't do that because I don't have much faith in those folks to begin with.

Whatever the excuse, there's no doubt I knew my friend Gardner
was losing his grip. I was just foolish enough to think it might go away, like
a cold or something. It's hard to admit that a friend's losing it, that his
dough isn't done in the middle.

I laid low, didn't call Gardner, didn't go by. Deep down I probably
didn't want to see him; didn't want to look at that wild look in his eyes, or
hear him ramble on about elemental ghouls from beyond. Truth to tell, if it
hadn't been for something I read in the papers, I might not have gone by there
the night it happened.

I'm not much of a paper reader, and I guess by the time I
got to the article it was a couple days old. Don't really remember.

Out back of this lumber yard they'd found the body of a college
girl and her head was twisted on her neck like some sort of rubber doll's head.
That made me think of poor Meko, the way she looked lying up against Gardner's
dining room wall. The thing got to working in the back of my mind like a dog
scratching at a screen door, wanting to be let in.

But still, I didn't go over there.

A few days passed, and like before, a couple days late, I
read the newspaper. Found out that there had been two more murders, each as
ghastly as the first. One of the victims had been a college boy, the other a
little girl. Same method of operation. No obvious motive.

I didn't like what I was thinking, but I couldn't put it out
of my mind. Five minutes after I laid the paper down I was in my car, on my way
to Gardner's.

The house was dark again. I got out of my Ford, walked on up
to the door and started to knock. But didn't. I just didn't want to hear that
hollow rap of my knuckles bouncing around inside that big old house — and maybe
that wasn't entirely the reason.

Something deep inside me seemed to say: "Boy, you
better be quiet."

I went around to the back of the house and found a window that
wasn't latched, pushed it up and crawled inside, just managing not to castrate
myself on a nail sticking up in the window sill.

The inside of that room was like being inside someone's wool
pocket. Couldn't even see my hand in front of my face.

Although I don't smoke, I carry matches. You use them in odd
ways in the janitor business — checking corners for dust, that sort of thing. I
peeled one out of the matchbook I carried and lit it.

I was in Gardner's art studio. I'd only been in there one
other time when he'd shown me a painting he was doing for a Western paperback.
Canvas made an alley wall on either side of me, and in the flickerings of the
match, I could see the door that led into the hall and out into the rest of the
house.

I started down between those canvases and something caught my
eye. About that time my match went out.

I lit another and held it close to the painting — for that's
what had gotten my attention — and got a good look. It damn near turned my
stomach, and I tell you true, I'm not a squeamish sort of guy. It was a
painting of a woman, a man, a little girl and a cat.

Each of them had their heads twisted at a crazy angle,
tongues hanging out of their mouths and their eyes popping like huge pockets of
puss.

When that match went out I lit another, moved it around to look
at the other paintings. They all seemed to be of the same creature, but in
different poses. The paintings seemed to represent some sort of huge whirlwind
that was equipped with a horrible, toothy mouth. I had an idea what they were
supposed to portray.

Poor Gardner had totally lost it. Those people, those
horrible murders... I lit another match and moved toward the door that led to
the hall.

Gardner stood in the doorway, a poker in his hand.

"Gardner, it's me."

He gritted his teeth and swung. I caught his wrist and
pushed him into the hall, up against the wall. His eyes burned into mine like
blowtorches. But most amazing was his strength.

Gardner is a slight man, small boned and delicate, but he tossed
me off like a dog shaking rain from its coat. I went flying down the length of
the hall, smashed into the door that led to the dining room.

Gardner stalked toward me like some sort of great praying mantis,
the poker swinging at his side.

I kicked out at him and hit him in the abdomen, knocked him back
about a foot. Just enough to give me time to open the door into the dining
room. At a dead run I palmed the table and went over it, and behind me came
Gardner. He did the same, but with less effort. I didn't wait to see him land.

I went into the den and to the front door, but I couldn't
get it open. Either the lock was jammed or I was fumbling.

I turned just in time to avoid the poker. The blow would
have smashed my head like a water balloon. It went into the wood of the door
and stuck, made an ear-shattering scrape that rocked me from head to heel.

Gardner struggled with the poker, but it was hung. I hit him
with a left hook to the gut. Once I'd hit Archie Malone like that in a hard
bout in Houston. He'd dropped to his knees like a five-dollar whore, but
Gardner, he kept standing. It just seemed to annoy him.

It did get him away from the poker though, and I gave him an
overhand right to go with it. Must have broken his nose, but it didn't stop
him. He forgot that poker, and as I wheeled away from the door, he came after
me barehanded.

Gardner's face was not his own. It seemed as if it had been remolded
by crude and uncaring hands. The eyes were like sparks flickering with the firelight
— for that ever-constant fire was blazing and smoking in the hearth. The teeth
were drawn back in a horrible, ear to ear grin.

For the first time in my life, I was really scared.

"Gardner, I don't want to hurt you."

He came on quick and silent. I gave him another hook to the middle,
landed a right cross above his left ear. It rocked him, but he didn't go down.

"Gardner!" I screamed, and for a moment it was as
if he understood me, knew who I was. It was like something from within him was
trying to grab the reins and whoa back.

"Rocky," he said weakly, "help me." And
then the features that momentarily softened were washed away by a tide of fury
and insanity.

I backed away, got around in front of one of those big
chairs in front of the fireplace. Gardner reached out, grabbed the heavy chair
and flung it halfway across the room, palmed my chest and knocked me up against
the fireplace mantle. The flames licked at my back, scorched my hide through
jacket and shirt. I swiveled to the left, away from the fire.

My hand touched something metal, and when I looked down, saw
it was resting on the fire shovel in the poker rack. I jerked the shovel out of
there and laid it hard upside Gardner's head.

Blood trickled down the side of his head, and those eyes blazed
like bonfires in the hollows of a skull. They seemed to freeze me.

"Gardner, for the love of God!"

He was on me, his fingers buried in the lapels of my jacket.
I tried to hit him with the shovel again, but couldn't get in a good whack.
Blood streamed down his face, and that horrible mask of hate was inches from my
face, the teeth bared like some rabid dog... and then the face seemed to fold
down like a jerked blind, and there was Gardner's face again, his eyes. Maybe
it was just the shadows there flickering in the firelight, but the demonic face
and that of Gardner seemed to shift from second to second, and then Gardner
pushed me from him and turned toward the great hearth.

His legs coiled, and by the time I realized what he was
about to do, it was too late. He leaped straight into the fire, and the flames,
like fingers, seemed to reach out and grasp him.

I tried to pull him out, but he fought me. The last thing I remember
was his face — Gardner's — and in spite of the damage the flames had done to
it, it seemed at peace. But then maybe I'm just thinking after the fact, being
melodramatic.

The fire wrapped him up and took him away, and what I managed
to pull from there was hardly recognizable as a man.

That's been a while now, but sometimes I wake up and see that
face Gardner wore, or worse yet, I see him looking at me out of those flames,
and then his blackened body lies before my eyes and I wake up.