The stuff tries to slither beneath the couch—Jack sees this even as he wipes his hands on his shirt, frantic with revulsion. Doc slams his bag down on one piece. Beezer squashes the other with the heel of a motorcycle boot. It makes a squittering sound.
“What the fuck is that shit?” Doc asks. His voice, ordinarily husky, has gone up into a near-falsetto range. “What the fuck—”
“Nothing from here,” Jack says, “and never mind. Look at him! Look at Mouse!”
The red glare in Mouse’s eyes has retreated; for the moment he looks almost normal. Certainly he’s seeing them, and the pain seems gone. “Thanks,” he breathes. “I only wish you could get it all that way, but man, it’s already coming back. Pay attention.”
“I’m listening,” Jack says.
“You better,” Mouse replies. “You think you know. You think you can find the place again even if these two can’t, and maybe you can, but maybe you don’t know quite so much as you . . . ah, fuck.” From somewhere beneath the blanket there is a ghastly bursting sound as something gives way. Sweat runs down Mouse’s face, mixing with the black poison venting from his pores and turning his beard a damp and dirty gray. His eyes roll up to Jack’s, and Jack can see that red glare starting to haze over them again.
“This sucks,” Mouse pants. “Never thought I’d go out this way. Lookit, Hollywood . . .” The dying man draws a small rectangle on his makeshift scribble of map. “This—”
“Ed’s Eats, where we found Irma,” Jack says. “I know.”
“All right,” Mouse whispers. “Good. Now look . . . over on the other side . . . the Schubert and Gale side . . . and to the west . . .”
Mouse draws a line going north from Highway 35. He puts little circles on either side of it. Jack takes these to be representations of trees. And, across the front of the line like a gate: NO TRESPASSING.
“Yeah,” Doc breathes. “That’s where it was, all right. Black House.”
Mouse takes no notice. His dimming gaze is fixed solely on Jack. “Listen to me, cop. Are you listening?”
“Yes.”
“Christ, you better be,” Mouse tells him.
As it always has, the work captures Henry, absorbs him, takes him away. Boredom and sorrow have never been able to stand against this old captivation with sound from the sighted world. Apparently fear can’t stand against it, either. The hardest moment isn’t listening to the tapes but mustering the courage to stick the first one in the big TEAC audio deck. In that moment of hesitation he’s sure he can smell his wife’s perfume even in the soundproofed and air-filtered environment of the studio. In that moment of hesitation he is positive he isn’t alone, that someone (or something) is standing just outside the studio door, looking in at him through the glass upper half. And that is, in fact, the absolute truth. Blessed with sight as we are, we can see what Henry cannot. We want to tell him what’s out there, to lock the studio door, for the love of God lock it now, but we can only watch.
Henry reaches for the PLAY button on the tape deck. Then his finger changes course and hits the intercom toggle instead.
“Hello? Is anyone out there?”
The figure standing in Henry’s living room, looking in at him the way someone might look into an aquarium at a single exotic fish, makes no sound. The last of the sun’s on the other side of the house and the living room is becoming quite dark, Henry being understandably forgetful when it comes to turning on the lights. Elmer Jesperson’s amusing bee slippers (not that they amuse us much under these circumstances) are just about the brightest things out there.
“Hello? Anyone?”
The figure looking in through the glass half of the studio door is grinning. In one hand it is holding the hedge clippers from Henry’s garage.
“Last chance,” Henry says, and when there’s still no response, he becomes the Wisconsin Rat, shrieking into the intercom, trying to startle whatever’s out there into revealing itself: “Come on now, honey, come on now, you muthafukkah, talk to Ratty!”
The figure peering in at Henry recoils—as a snake might recoil when its prey makes a feint—but it utters no sound. From between the grinning teeth comes a leathery old tongue, wagging and poking in derision. This creature has been into the perfume that Mrs. Morton has never had the heart to remove from the vanity in the little powder room adjacent to the master bedroom, and now Henry’s visitor reeks of My Sin.
Henry decides it’s all just his imagination playing him up again—oy, such a mistake, Morris Rosen would have told him, had Morris been there—and hits PLAY with the tip of his finger.
He hears a throat-clearing sound, and then Arnold Hrabowski identifies himself. The Fisherman interrupts him before he can even finish: Hello, asswipe.
Henry rewinds, listens again: Hello, asswipe. Rewinds and listens yet again: Hello, asswipe. Yes, he has heard this voice before. He’s sure of it. But where? The answer will come, answers of this sort always do—eventually—and getting there is half the fun. Henry listens, enrapt. His fingers dance back and forth over the tape deck’s buttons like the fingers of a concert pianist over the keys of a Steinway. The feeling of being watched slips from him, although the figure outside the studio door—the thing wearing the bee slippers and holding the hedge clippers—never moves. Its smile has faded somewhat. A sulky expression is growing on its aged face. There is confusion in that look, and perhaps the first faint trace of fear. The old monster doesn’t like it that the blind fish in the aquarium should have captured its voice. Of course it doesn’t matter; maybe it’s even part of the fun, but if it is, it’s Mr. Munshun’s fun, not its fun. And their fun should be the same . . . shouldn’t it?
You have an emergency. Not me. You.
“Not me, you,” Henry says. The mimicry is so good it’s weird. “A little bit of sauerkraut in your salad, mein friend, ja?”
Your worst nightmare . . . worst nightmare.
Abbalah.
I’m the Fisherman.
Henry listening, intent. He lets the tape run awhile, then listens to the same phrase four times over: Kiss my scrote, you monkey . . . kiss my scrote, you monkey . . . you monkey . . . monkey . . .
No, not monkey. The voice is actually saying munggey. MUNG-ghee.
“I don’t know where you are now, but you grew up in Chicago,” Henry murmurs. “South Side. And . . .”
Warmth on his face. Suddenly he remembers warmth on his face. Why is that, friends and neighbors? Why is that, O great wise ones?
You’re no better’n a monkey on a stick.
Monkey on a stick.
Monkey—
“Monkey,” Henry says. He’s rubbing his temples with the tips of his fingers now. “Monkey on a stick. MUNG-ghee on a stigg. Who said that?”
He plays the 911: Kiss my scrote, you monkey.
He plays his memory: You’re no better’n a monkey on a stick.
Warmth on his face.
Heat? Light?
Both?
Henry pops out the 911 tape and sticks in the one Jack brought today.
Hello, Judy. Are you Judy today, or are you Sophie? The abbalah sends his best, and Gorg says “Caw-caw-caw!” [Husky, phlegmy laughter.] Ty says hello, too. Your little boy is very lonely . . .
When Tyler Marshall’s weeping, terrified voice booms through the speakers, Henry winces and fast-forwards.
Derr vill be morrr mur-derts.
The accent much thicker now, a burlesque, a joke, Katzenjammer Kids Meet the Wolfman, but somehow even more revealing because of that.
Der liddul chull-drun . . . havv-uz-ted like wheed. Like wheed. Havv-uz-ted like . . .
“Harvested like a monkey on a stick,” Henry says. “MUNG-ghee. HAVV-us-ted. Who are you, you son of a bitch?”
Back to the 911 tape.
There are whips in hell and chains in Sheol. But it’s almost vips in hell, almost chenz in Shayol.
Vips. Chenz. MUNG-ghee on a stick. A stigg.
“You’re no better’n—” Henry begins, and then, all at once, another line comes to him.
“Lady Magowan’s Nightmare.” That one’s good.
A bad nightmare of what? Vips in hell? Chenz in Shayol? Mung-ghees on sticks?
“My God,” Henry says softly. “Oh . . . my . . . God. The dance. He was at the dance.”
Now it all begins to fall into place. How stupid they have been! How criminally stupid! The boy’s bike . . . it had been right there. Right there, for Christ’s sake! They were all blind men, make them all umps.
“But he was so old,” Henry whispers. “And senile! How were we supposed to guess such a man could be the Fisherman?”
Other questions follow this one. If the Fisherman is a resident at Maxton Elder Care, for instance, where in God’s name could he have stashed Ty Marshall? And how is the bastard getting around French Landing? Does he have a car somewhere?