Ghouljaw and Other Stories (21 page)

“Hello?” Ray calls out, his voice reverberating in the narrow space.

Someone clears their throat. A tall, thin man emerges from the corridor on the other side of the shop. “Pardon me,” he says, his raspy voice and wild gray hair suggesting he’s been drowsing. He takes his horn-rimmed glasses from his face and begins wiping the lenses on his white smock. “May I help you?”

“Yes, sir. I don’t know if you remember me or not, Mr. Vaught, but my name is Ray Swanson.”

“Ah yes . . . Roger’s youngest boy,” he says, his tone grave. “I didn’t have the opportunity to impart my condolences at the funeral, son. But you have them now. Your father was a good man.”

Ray nods, not knowing what to say. He lifts the brown bag. “I think this belongs to you.” Ray offers the bottle. “I think it’s a gift.”

Vaught’s eyebrows twitch as he looks back and forth from Ray to the paper-wrapped bottle. Almost warily, the old man takes hold of the package, unties the twine, and gently slips the bottle from the bag. “Oh . . .
my,
” he says. For the first time Ray sees that the dark bottle has no label, but instead displays what looks like an embossed number seven. The top of the bottle has been sealed with burgundy wax. Up close, Ray gets a better look at the barber’s austere appearance—a mortician in Buddy Holly glasses, Ray thinks. “Do you mind telling me”—Vaught licks his lips—“how you came across this
gift
?”

“My mom found a check addressed to Crenshaw’s Market. Wendell Harper told me my dad had reserved this bottle for you, that it was some sort of present.”

Smiling, Vaught shakes his head in what might be disbelief. Silence for several long seconds. “And what a generous gift it is, my boy. And since you are the one delivering it, I will thank you as my benefactor. Now,” he says abruptly, placing the wine bottle on his narrow work shelf in front of the mirror, “it would be impolite if I did not offer my services to you.” Vaught slowly spins the barber’s chair, his long hand inviting the young man to sit. Ray doesn’t mention that he’d planned on getting his haircut anyway, but instead smiles and sinks into the bulky barber’s chair, all chrome and cracked-vinyl cushion. In the mirror, Ray watches Vaught swipe a black cape from a hook on the wall and, with an old-fashioned flourish, snaps the cloth in midair and drapes it over Ray, fastening it around his neck.

The old man moves to his work shelf, lined with colored bottles and jars containing creams and tonics. In addition to several neatly arranged instruments, there’s also the tall, ever-present glass jar of Barbicide filled with the requisite blue disinfectant.

Vaught lifts a pair of electric clippers and begins whistling along with the low-playing radio.

Ray shifts in his seat, getting comfortable. “I was afraid you wouldn’t remember me.”

“Nonsense,” Vaught says with a dismissive gesture. “In fact, I remember your first visit to this very chair.” He clicks on the clippers and moves behind Ray.

“Really?” he says, sounding a little more incredulous than he’d intended.

Vaught addresses Ray’s reflection in the mirror. “Why certainly. My goodness, you threw a fit.”

Ray huffs a laugh. “Oh.”

Shaking his head Vaught says, “Lord, you just bawled.” And Ray recalls it clearly, that old photo—the picture commemorating his first haircut at Vaught’s barber shop: his round, tear-smeared face pinched in mid-cry, freshly trimmed bangs hanging across his forehead. And again his mind’s eye moves to the margin of the snapshot—once more he sees his father’s big arms reaching in. But now, Ray thinks, there’s nothing harsh or severe in that frozen motion—those arms are not restraining him—those hands are cradling him, trying to soothe him. Ray is clutched by a cold contemplation: If he’d always been wrong about the interpretation of that photo, what else had he been wrong about?

Ray is shaken from this vivid image when Vaught whistles through his teeth. “Yep, your daddy took good care of you that day, and every other time he brought you. I tell you that man sure loved his boys, you in particular. Always said you were his special boy.” Vaught thumbs off the clippers and returns to his cluttered work shelf.

While the man has his back turned, Ray winces, his chin sinking to his chest.

Vaught must have glanced in the mirror because the old man has been silent, peering at Ray’s reflection. “You all right, son?”

He looks in the mirror at Vaught, who turns slowly. Ray swallows hard, knowing that his expression, his eyes, betray his true feelings. After a long pause, Vaught simply nods solemnly. “We all go through that, son.” With his long fingers laced through the eyelets of his scissors, Vaught walks back behind the chair, speaking to Ray’s reflection. “Sometimes we don’t realize how much we love someone until it’s too late.” Silence. “All that matters is that your love is sincere in your heart.”

Ray takes a rough swipe at his eyes and sets his forearms on the armrest. “It is.”

Vaught is reverently silent for several seconds, and then slams his foot down on something.

All this happens very fast.

There’s a metallic
clack,
and Ray’s forearms are restrained from the sides of the armrest. The same thing happens to his shins. Ray’s heart lurches and he begins to thrash.

Vaught pulls off the black barber’s cape; now Ray can see his wrists clamped with stainless steel cuffs. The armrests have opened to reveal slender troughs, each containing a shallow drain positioned under his forearms.

Ray’s eyes dart to the mirror to see Vaught standing behind the chair, smiling.
“HELLLLPP!”
Vaught reaches down, reemerging just as Ray sucks in another breath.
“HEL—”

Vaught slaps a piece of duct tape over Ray’s mouth. “You might as well knock off that racket, son.” He strolls over to his work shelf. From a drawer he removes a worn leather strop. “I’d appreciate a little cooperation, and I know your daddy would too.” He places the strop over Ray’s forehead, latching the ends to the neckrest.

The big band music fills the barber shop.

On the shelf, Vaught opens a wooden box and removes a silver straight razor with an ornate ivory handle. Ray flexes and bucks against his restraints. “I assure you it’s no use,” the barber says.

Vaught retrieves the wine bottle and uses the razor to peel back the wax. With another instrument he removes the cork. The man sniffs at the lip of the bottle and smiles. “In vino veritas,” he says. Ray watches Vaught remove the blue Barbicide jar from the shelf, revealing a small, funnel-shaped receptacle. The barber upends the bottle, inserting it into the small drain. Ray hears liquid flowing, gurgling as it travels through what sounds like tubes or pipes, just like a sink draining.

“A long time ago,” Vaught says, scrutinizing the bottle as it depletes itself, “members of my guild were called barber-surgeons. And we performed more than just haircuts, we were more like novice physicians—we had our hands in pulling teeth, bloodletting, tonsillectomies, Caesarian sections, amputations. Did you know that?” Ray’s chest rises and falls rapidly. “No. I didn’t think so.” Apparently pleased with the progress of the draining wine, Vaught lifts his razor and approaches Ray. “Back then, the key was to convince people of the doctrine of the four humors: black bile, yellow bile, phlegm, and of course blood. It was necessary that these four elements remain balanced in order for a person to be healthy. Or at least
think
they were healthy.” The old man adjusts his glasses. “The number four carries great symbolic significance, son—the four stages of life, the four seasons.” He chuckles softly. “I could go on and on.”

Ray screams under the duct tape as Vaught lowers the straight razor. With a practiced movement, the barber carves a design—what looks like a curled number seven—across the inner portions Ray’s forearms. Blood courses down and into the armrest-troughs. “These symbols,” Vaught says, using the razor to gesture at the intricate lacerations, “are fleams—my guild’s cherished instruments for bloodletting.”

Ray thrashes and shakes his head, blinking back petals of darkness blossoming on the fringes of his vision. “And now”—Vaught sweeps his hands wide like a conductor—“to complement one pagan consecration with another:
‘By faith Abel offered to God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain . . . and through it he being dead still speaks. By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac, and he who had received the promises offered up his only begotten son . . .’”

The sound of Vaught’s recitation grows distant, and Ray’s head begins lolling. The last thing he hears is the tiny bell above the door as someone enters the barber shop.

Monosyllabic chants. Whispered scripture.

Ray urges his eyes open. The duct tape has been removed and he can breathe through his mouth. He’s cold. It’s dark here—scents of soil, rust, and rot. Lying on his side, Ray squirms, feeling dirt on his cheek and under his fingers. Through his slitted eyelids he sees guttering lights, flickering thinly as if from lanterns. The walls are thickly mortared stone, slick with moisture. This is a cellar, he thinks. Or a dungeon. Ray tries to move and winces against pain pulsing through his forearms. They feel bound or bandaged now.

Amber light pulses at the far end of the room. Ray tries to focus on the reverent whispers. He squints across the cellar, seeing them now, their figures defined by the weak light from bull’s-eye lanterns.

Ray hears his mother, the sound of her voice blending with the words of Harlan Vaught. Ray realizes that he’s in the basement below the barber shop.

With the last of his strength, Ray struggles up on his elbow. Now he notices the tangle of thin, liquid-filled tubes hanging from the ceiling, dangling like IVs. Wine. Blood. Something else. He follows them down to a long wooden bench, to the crumpled row of corpses—huddled shapes in varying degrees of decay.

His mother and Vaught are standing at the far end of the bench, leaning over the body of Roger Swanson, the corpse still dressed in its funeral suit, its sleeves rolled up to expose forearms riddled with plastic tubes.

And with that incantation, Roger Swanson twitches and slowly raises his head, viscous fluids seeping from his nostrils and mouth. Alice Swanson gasps. “Amen,” she says, reaching out to her husband. “Amen.” Vaught delicately disconnects the needled tubes hooked into the cadaver’s arms, and dark liquids weep from track-marks along its forearms.

With vertiginous understanding, Ray summons an image of Hazel Steinhauer. Intuitively, he knows that Travis Steinhauer is one of those hunkered shapes slumped along the wall.

Tenderly, Vaught helps the thing that was Roger Swanson to its unsteady feet. After a moment, Alice steps in and the two begin shuffling toward the basement stairs. Vaught strides forward, and Ray is hoisted up and dragged across the dirt floor. And there, between two mold-mottled corpses, Ray replaces his father as he is settled into his special spot on the bench.

Well, we could start with Cassidy, she was wealthy—that is to say her family, the Davenports, were wealthy—and that has some bearing on all this, because Corbin would have been rich too, by way of nothing else but relational proximity, if he would have just been a little more ambitious, if he would have just cooperated, if he would have just capitulated.
If only you could see the big picture . . .

On second thought, maybe we should begin with the Gore, or at least the old gypsy-witch woman at the end of his fifth-floor apartment hallway. Corbin Hollis had noticed her on the first day after moving into that dreary, uptown dwelling. Of course she was no gypsy or witch at all, but as she resembled somebody’s mummified but animated hippie grandma, sometimes staring vacantly down the fifth-floor passage, it was difficult for Corbin not to conjure a few entertaining associations.

Northern sections of the city were funny like that: there was always some weird block or two where the eccentricity of elderly affluence commingled with the voguishly antisocial segment of artsy punks.

Corbin was neither elderly nor artsy nor affluent. Corbin couldn’t tell you what he was, and frankly didn’t give a fuck about it—about anything, really.

His hometown of Colfax, Indiana, was a dismal, social-noose of a community that hung around residents’ necks just waiting for the trapdoor of independent thought or—God save us—self-reliant deviation to open up beneath their feet. Corbin hadn’t waited for that to happen as it did to his mom and dad, and he’d departed on an existential exodus as soon as he could. That had been about three years ago.

But he had only lived in this uptown apartment for the last nine months or so. Last fall, during that first week here—the first week following his clumsy retreat from Cassidy’s impeccably decorated apartment—Corbin had been walking home from an underwhelming day with the moving company—packing, stacking, lifting, and wheeling (repeating this routine several times a day)—when, from the sidewalk, he happened to glance up to the fifth-floor corner window of the weathered brick façade of his building, up to his apartment window. Corbin stopped walking and narrowed his eyes. An old, ill-pallid woman was standing there, looking out the window. Because of the overcast sky reflected in the already hazy-wavy glass, she seemed immaterial at first, as if floating in a frame of smoke-swirled murk. The curtains were parted on either side of her.
A ghost can’t move curtains, can it?
But there was no mistaking it—fifth floor: northwest corner—Corbin’s apartment. Even from the sidewalk Corbin was startled by how ghastly-gray the woman was—a scrambled bulb of white hair haloing her gaunt face—standing with her arms dangling at her sides staring down at the street below.