Mr. X (81 page)

A well-known pressure moved us through the front door. In a shapeless garment that fell to the tops of her feet,
Goodnight Moon
in one hand, her hair a matted tangle, Mrs. Anscombe stared down at her husband’s corpse. Our Mr. X loomed behind her, displaying an enraged, grotesque smile beneath the brim of his hat. Mrs. Anscombe padded into her husband’s blood. Frank Sinatra sang of the encounter on a lovely night between a force not to be resisted and an object not to be moved.

Mrs. Anscombe said, “Shit on a shingle.” She turned her face to us. “Who the hell are you, Bob Hope?”

Unable to see the thirty-five-year-old man who had materialized near the front door, nine-year-old Robert was watching her from the kitchen. As if following the direction of my thoughts, Mrs. Anscombe looked toward him and walked deeper into the red pool. A dim recognition moved across her face, and the book slapped into the blood. Her eyes swung back. “Why are you doing this?” she shouted. “Don’t you understand I’m already in hell?”

“Don’t worry, Mrs. Anscombe,” said Cordwainer Hatch. “You will be taken care of soon enough.”

She took another dazed step toward the kitchen. “Shit, I really am in hell,” she shouted, “only the son of a bitch isn’t RED, it’s BLUE!”

The Black Death of the Hatchtown lanes drifted toward us. A sickening wave of almost limitless rage poisoned by an insanity deeper than Alice Anscombe’s streamed from him as his mind reached out to engulf mine and Robert’s. For the first time, I knew I could resist his strength. Robert yelled,
Do something!
and I told him,
Wait
. Cordwainer’s mind battered on mine like a wind flattening against an oaken door.

That means nothing. Move!

The air gathered into a solid substance, pushed us back through yielding walls, and deposited us in a small room stacked with cardboard boxes. Cordwainer was only inches away. He stank of riverbottom. Blue light filtered in from the living room, where the Mr. X of 1967 berated Mrs. Anscombe. Our Mr. X blasted a roar of outrage into our minds:
You destructive, destructive, destructive little vandal! You monster!
He drew a knife from his coat.

A furious bellow and a series of muffled noises reported the demise of Mrs. Anscombe. Mr. X’s younger self uttered a screech of frustration, thundered into the kitchen, and transported himself outside in pursuit of a small boy he knew had escaped him yet again.

“I guess you’re angry about the books,” I said.

Cordwainer grabbed our shoulder, spun us around, and clamped us to his chest. He dug his knife into our neck.

Is this what you had in mind?
Robert asked me.
Sorry, but I’m not hanging around to get killed
. I told him to calm down.

“You could say that, yes. I am angry about the books.” He nudged the blade another eighth of an inch into our neck. “Satisfy my curiosity. Where did you learn the name Edward Rinehart? Was it your mother? That old fool Toby Kraft?”

“Lots of people told me about Edward Rinehart,” I said. “Where are we?”

He sniggered. “Don’t you remember the Anscombes? Does Boulder, Colorado, ring a bell? We have journeyed back through time, the Substance Molten, a matter undoubtedly beyond your comprehension, that I might inquire how you managed to get away from me that time. Speak, please. I am deeply interested, I assure you.”

Why aren’t you DOING anything?
Robert yelled.
Are we just going to TALK to a guy who’s sticking a knife in our neck?

Shut up and let me handle this
, I said to Robert.
We have to talk to him
.

To Cordwainer, I said, “I can tell you who you really are. You’ll find that tremendously interesting, I promise. It surprised me, too.”

“Enough of this charade. Let’s see if any other book burner wants to join the fun.”

A great wind whipped into the room, flattening the pink jacket against our chest. Furniture slid across the living room floor. It sounded as though every dish and glass in the kitchen blew off the shelves and smashed against the walls. The window behind me exploded. I told Robert part of what I had in mind and heard him chuckle.

Did you think you actually had me fooled?

Everything in the house flew before the heightening wind. The living room window bulged and detonated. A kind of ecstasy flowed from Robert.

“Are you looking for someone?” I asked.

You destroyed my books! That is an OUTRAGE! Where is he?

“I want to show you something, Mr. Sawyer,” I said. “People are going to be able to see us. If you have any sense, you’ll take the knife out of my neck.”

His arm tightened over our chest. “I’ll humor you,” he said. The knife came out of our neck and jabbed into our lower back.

Robert asked,
What the hell are you doing now?
I told him to hope for the best, and all three of us dropped through the floor into suddenly malleable time.

117

I was aiming for something I wasn’t sure I could find. Even if I could find it, I had no certainty of what we would see.

The world ceased to swim. We were standing on a beaten footpath beside a two-lane macadam road. Horse-drawn wagons and old-fashioned automobiles rolled past in both directions. Robert was shouting that he did not understand what was happening, and Cordwainer was jabbing a knife into our back. Immediately, proof that we had arrived at the right place appeared before us.

To our left, Howard Dunstan’s mad, bearded face scowled through the windscreen of a high-topped car chugging toward us down Wagon Road. His wife languished beside him. As they pulled nearer, two pretty young women who must have been Queenie and Nettie became visible behind them. Just entering their teens, May and Joy peeped out from the rumble seat.

This means nothing
, Cordwainer said.
Nothing. An illusion, a sideshow. Where is the other, you wicked boy?

On the far side of Wagon Road and in the wake of a horse-drawn cart heaped with burlap sacks, a vehicle sleeker and more expensive than Howard Dunstan’s floated into view. Carpenter Hatch, already frozen into eternally disapproving vigilance, muttered a remark that made the already wilting Ellie sink away. Through the rear passenger window of their automobile peered a sulky replica of myself and Robert at the age of five. Putting
along behind the Hatches and moving inexorably toward the Dunstans was a third vehicle, grander than Howard’s but less impressive than the Hatch swan boat. The little girls in its rear seat pointed at the Dunstans, now nearly parallel to the swan boat. May Dunstan fixed her eyes upon the sullen childish face in the passing car. Howard stared straight ahead. Ellie Hatch, visible for a final second, shifted in her seat and regarded an empty field. A moment after the two cars separated, Wagon Road turned into chaos.

Every windscreen and headlight within fifty yards exploded into flying glass. Tires flew from their axles and spun over the macadam. Panicked horses reared, bolted forward, and rammed their carts against whatever was in their way. Burlap sacks spilled potatoes across the road. I saw a horse go down and vanish beneath wreckage, its toothpick legs sawing the air. The pressure of Cordwainer’s arm lessened, and the knife fell away.

Over the sounds of collisions came the screaming of horses and the shouts of men. As the swan boat swerved off the road to veer around the damage, Ellie Hatch’s weeping sounded in my ear from two feet away: it was not the voice of the woman now speeding into the distance, but her voice as remembered by the child in the seat behind her. Robert and I had colonized Cordwainer’s mind and memory.

A bluebird tumbled to the floor of the ruin on New Providence Road; a naked girl of eleven or twelve pressed her hand to the wound in her bleeding chest and reeled over the filthy cement; the young Max Edison nodded from behind the wheel of a limousine;
The Dunwich Horror
leaped from the extended hand of a uniformed boy; a uniformed man said
disease
; in a doorway on Chester Street, a knife entered a whore’s belly; cartoon monsters descended from a cartoon sky; a fountain pen glided across a lined page; something lost, something irrevocably damaged, flew through the Hatchtown lanes, and that something was Cordwainer Hatch.

Robert shouted,
Kill him, kill him! What’s wrong with you?

I tasted Cordwainer’s egotism and the illusion of a sacred cause and thought:
I know how this ends
.

The screams of terrified horses, the noises of collisions billowed from Wagon Road. I took the knife from Cordwainer’s hand.

Release me!

“Okay, I’ll release you,” I said, and set him free. Robert shrieked in protest.

Cordwainer stumbled back, laughing. “You’re too weak, you couldn’t hold me.” He looked at his empty hand. “Do you think I need a knife? Without your brother, you’re nothing.”

“What did you see?” I asked. “Did you see yourself?”

He surged over the grass. When Cordwainer slammed into me, I twisted sideways to absorb the shock and wrapped my arms around him. The three of us fell through a sudden trapdoor at the side of the beaten path.

118

Still in the momentum of his assault, Cordwainer Hatch rolled from my grip and struck the table in my room at the Brazen Head. He groaned and pressed his hands over his eyes.

“Take your time,” I said.

Cordwainer lowered his hands, examined his surroundings, and swept the hat from his head. The ghost of Edward Rinehart shone in his ruined face. “Even the weakling has a little fight in him.” He glanced over his shoulder and backed against the wall, weighing his options.

Kill him!
Robert urged.
He’s confused, he doesn’t understand what happened
.

It’s going to get a lot worse for him
, I told Robert.
Just wait
. To Cordwainer, I said, “Do you remember that day? Do you know what happened on Wagon Road?”

I could see him decide to sound me out. He lowered his hat to the table in a parody of a diplomatic gesture—he was hooked, and his next words proved it. “Let’s declare a temporary truce. This is about the last thing I anticipated, but now we have this interesting opportunity to hear what the other has to say. I want you to describe your fantasies. When you have finished, I will explain reality. Reality is going to
astound
you. Considering what you did to me, my offer is extraordinarily generous. But you will pay for your obscene crime, I assure you.”