Smog - Baggage of Enternal Night (12 page)

The world turned off, a television show that cuts
away to a black screen. Maybe the channels turned, for I was taken to slumber,
and, in dreams, saw again the faceless people in the winter forest. There were
perhaps forty or fifty men and women settled around an enormous campfire. I
felt alone, cold and adrift, and I wanted to join them. At that thought, a
blurry figure rose from their assemblage, arms open in welcome. He possessed no
real form, no features, just a sense of flowing robes and ethereal limbs.
Through him,
inside him
, I saw the universe twinkling like the floating embers.

Come in
, he said.
Come in from the
cold.

And I wanted to join them, that group settled in
trance around the flames. But I knew, too, I would give up something if I did,
something I held dear, some part of myself. I fought the urge to move closer.

The figure’s voice became angry.

Come in, or I will take you...

Chapter
4

The
next morning was Friday. I brushed aside remnants of the strange dream and made
chicken soup and fried some eggs for breakfast. I cooked an extra portion and
brought it down to Joey’s apartment.

I heard the record playing halfway down the hall
before I reached his room. The walls were thin as a weekday newspaper, and I
wondered that his neighbors didn’t complain. How long had the chanting songs
been going on for? All night, or did he wake up and start playing them when he
rolled out of bed? I wondered, too, how far echoes of that music could drift.

“Hey, Joey,” I called out and knocked on his door.

No answer. I pounded several times until a woman
across the hall opened her door. She had blue hair from a bad dye job, wrapped
in pink curlers to make it look even worse.

“You playin’ a conga over there?” she said.

“Sorry,” I muttered.

I had a key to Joey’s place, but I knew not to use
it unless it was prearranged or an emergency. We both kept keys to each others’
apartments in cases of turning off the gas or bringing in the mail if one of us
was away for awhile. I didn’t think today would constitute an emergency, but I
knew, too, that he’d been real sick.

I let myself into Joey’s room and closed the door
behind.

His apartment looked as if an earthquake had
struck, knocking all his belongings down, and then cleaned up by a tornado,
tossing them into great heaps. There were luggage and collectibles filling the
room, mirroring my own apartment, but thrown in teetering piles against the
walls rather than stacked and organized. Normally he was like me, a sucker for
collecting, but also tidy, keeping the place in a livable condition. It seemed
now that he’d just shoved everything aside in order to have one large, empty
area in the middle of the living room.

That’s where I found him, listening to the record
player, sitting on the floor in a sort of trance, and chanting along with the
strange musical words.

Vkhodite. Vkhodite. Vkhodite.

Ne zaderzhivat’sya v kholodnyy
i temnyy, ho prisoyedinit’sya ko mne v svet navsegda.

“You alive in here? Didn’t you hear me knocking?”

No response. He kept chanting, and I noticed his
body swayed just slightly, rocking back and forth.

I stepped closer to him. “Joey!”

At the same time, he stopped chanting and turned
to me, and I saw a flash of movement in my peripheral vision. I tried to look
in two separate directions: in one, I saw Joey looking sicker than ever, his
eyes milky and skin pale-blue, and in the other direction the after-image of a
figure that vanished, a wild-bearded man in flowing robes. I tried to exclaim
at both simultaneously.

“God, Joey, are you okay?” and “Who else is in
here?”

I was so taken aback, though, my words mixed and
came out instead as an incomprehensible babble: “
God—who—Joey—else—you—in
here!
”

“Charlie, you all right?” he asked.

“Who’s asking? The guy that looks like he’s been
drowned for three days? I’ve never seen someone pale as a dead fish before.”

“I look like that?”

“Yeah, pretty much.” Then I rephrased the
other
first question I had tried to ask. “Who else is here?”

“No one but us chickens.”

“There was a man, with crazy hair and a beard,
like he hadn’t shaved in a century.”

Joey’s mouth fell open, and I could see, even from
a distance, he hadn’t brushed his teeth in a long time. “You saw him?”

“So there
is
someone?”

“I don’t know. I was dreaming of snow and sky…the
bearded man was leading me through, so I wouldn’t get lost.”

“Don’t get nutty.” I turned and called across the
apartment toward the bed and bathroom. “Hello? Come on out.”

“No, Charlie, he ain’t here. You just saw my
dream, is all.”

The record was still playing, that cacophony of
crashing instruments and solemn words repeating its strange invocation. I felt
dizzy, yet ethereal at the same time, like if I fell I would slip
up
an
inverted slope, lifted by a reversal of gravity.

“Turn that crap off!” I yelled. Even when I said
those words, though, part of me wanted to settle down on the floor right next
to Joey. I sensed a great revelation forming, a secret gift offered if only I
would listen to the record. But, more than that, I just felt flustered and
confused, the way a dream twists your perception.

Joey moved in slow-motion, still seeming to sway
back-and-forth. He tilted his head as if trying to comprehend my request, and I
saw the quarrel in his eyes, the internal dispute as part of him demanded to
let the music play. Maybe he was worn down, or maybe he obliged for my sake,
but Joey hesitantly lifted the needle off the disc.

Still carrying the food I made for him, I walked
into each room, looking for the bearded man in robes. Joey’s apartment was
small, even more so than mine, and the doubt quickly formed in my mind as to having
seen someone else at all. The amount of baggage and rubbish in here was piled
to the ceiling in heaps of such disarray that looking in any direction created
hints of monsters and madness peeking from under skewed cases. An assortment of
footlockers rose above my head, stacked in ragged formation the way a brick
wall appears after a cannonball has smashed through. Behind me, a pyramid of
suitcases and cardboard boxes shifted like a wave. A mound of clothes spilled
from an open closet, and a pungent smell leaked from its shadows.

And it was cold. Colder than the room should have
been, colder than it
could
have been. Air conditioning was not a luxury
afforded dependably at the Les Deux Oies. We sweated in our rooms most summer
days, finding respite through box fans with damp clothes hung over them,
listing strategically in each corner. But the fans did not blow today, and yet
it was chilly as January’s shore on Lake Erie.

I returned to the living room, and Joey still sat
on the floor, knees pulled up to his gaunt chin.

“I told you he ain’t here,” Joey said.

“Do me a favor and don’t listen to those records
anymore,” I said. Joey nodded, and his eyes looked in my direction, but they
seemed to look
through
me, rather than at me. “I mean it, give it a
break.”

“Sure thing,” he said. “I need a rest, anyway.”

“I made you some eggs and soup. Where should I put
it?”

“Anywhere, Charlie. I’m not that hungry.”

“You need to eat. You look like you’ve lost thirty
pounds over the week. In fact, you look like you need to go to the hospital.”

If Joey had appeared wan and disheveled when I saw
him in the hotel lobby on Tuesday, he was a soup sandwich now. His week’s worth
of whiskers were salt-and-pepper bristles that looked splotchy as charred
embers. His hair was dull and matted and hung over his ears. He still wore the
same powder-blue button-down shirt from when I saw him last, and it looked now
as if it could stand on its own. But it was his skin that was the worst. It
looked watery—translucent—like if I examined close enough I could see his bones
and guts underneath. It’s how I expected a man who was starving to death to
look after a couple months, not just a few days.

“No hospital, Charlie. I just need some rest,” he
said. “I haven’t been sleeping so well lately. The bearded man follows me in my
dreams. He wants me to listen…he’s trying to save me.”

“The more you talk, the worse you sound.”

He shook his head at an odd angle, the way someone
does after swimming and trying to get water out of their ears. “Sorry, pal, I’m
all right. Just this cold, you know? Makes me say funny things.”

“Speaking of cold, it’s freezing in here. How’d
you get the superintendent to install working air conditioning?”

“Wetzel? He wouldn’t do me any favors. He’s been
up here twice complaining the music’s too loud.”

“At least I’m not the only one who thinks those
records are bad news.”

“I don’t know what it’s all about, Charlie. I just
have this compulsion—a
craving
—to keep listening. Even when I think I’ve
turned it off, it’s still playing.”

I, too, felt the pull of the music, and how long
had I listened to it total? Including when I walked in, maybe ten minutes,
tops. How did Joey feel, who spent every day of last week locked in here
alongside the gramophone and discs? I could only imagine the influence it held
over him, an influence that seemed to become
stronger
, while he somehow
grew sicker.

“Joey, I’ve never said this before. Nobody loves
collecting cases like me, but this record player, this
thing
, maybe you
need to get rid of it.”

“Not yet. I’ll take a rest, but I need to figure
it out. It’s like shootin’ craps; you can’t be sure, but just know your
number’s coming up soon. I feel like that, there’s something big about to
happen, and I don’t want to miss it. I’m so close, Charlie…ready to make a
great leap…I know it.”

“Well, wait on it awhile. My friend, the Hungarian
who runs a book store, told me to return this morning. He was going to research
into what these records are saying.”

Joey brightened at that. “I’d love to hear all
about it.”

“Why don’t you come with me? Fresh air would do
you good.”

“No, like I said, I need to rest. That’ll sort me
out.”

“Okay, sleep it off. I’ll come back later and
check on you. I mean it about maybe needing the hospital, though. You look
bad.”

“Thanks for the concern. I appreciate it, although
you’re starting to sound a bit like my mother.” He grinned, and it looked
almost as if his face split, the lines of his smile dissecting colorless cheeks
like tearing across wet paper.

“And don’t listen to those records,” I added.

“Okay, Ma. Are you going to dress me and send me
to Sunday School, too?”

I shook my head slow. “That’s some sauce coming
from a guy who says records are speaking to him.”

Joey laughed at that, a great bellow that warmed
the cold apartment. His head tilted back, and a hint of color returned to his
milky eyes, and everything seemed as it should. The old Joey Third was back and
in control. That’s how I choose to remember him, laughing away the sickness,
the dreams, the haunted records, laughing like he won the richest bag at the
auction.

Though I saw Joey once more, I never heard him
laugh again.

Chapter
5

I returned to Vic’s Books, driving
parallel to the Detroit River most of the way. The blue-green water sparkled
and lapped against the piers of Ambassador Bridge. It was a nice drive, which I
should have found peaceful, but instead I traveled wrapped in melancholy
thoughts. I arrived at the shop and entered as before, the small bell over the
door announcing my presence. It was only a week since last I visited, but
already the store seemed staler than before, mustier, as if the books were
rotting dead things on the shelves of a crumbling mausoleum.

Strange
, I thought,
how
your surroundings are interpreted to reflect your mood.
When I entered last
week, the store felt comfortable, reminding me of happy childhood memories,
escaping from the world through imaginary portals created by the likes of
Robert Louis Stevenson or H. Rider Haggard. Now the shop felt only dreary and
old, a reminder of things that age and are shelved in obscurity.

I moved between the aisles of
tomes and found Vic as before, sitting behind the counter and reading, a
smoldering cigar stub planted between hardened lips.

“Charlie,” he said, placing a
marker between the pages of his book. “Right on schedule.”

“If nothing else, I am a timely
man.” I spoke in full confidence but knew that if Gail were there, she’d laugh
in my face.

“Timely
and
intriguing,”
Vic replied. He brought up the pillowcase of records and set them on the
counter.

I was going to ask what he
meant, but Vic just waggled an accusatory finger at my chest. He exhaled a ring
of blue-gray fumes then stubbed out the cigar in a ceramic dish. “I got a
friend to listen to your records. The language is Russian... mostly. My friend
wants to know what kind of a gag this is, though.”

I shook my head. “No gag,
unless it was pulled off by whoever made the records.”

“No backwards words or dubbed
voices?”

I shook my head again.

“Subliminal messages like that
Elvis-kid plays in his music to make all the girls turn goo-goo for him?”

His questions began to irk me,
as if this were a setup and the real gag was being played on me. “Not that I
know of, Vic. If I knew what the records were saying, I wouldn’t have bothered
you in the first place.”

“My friend’s name is Yefim László.
He works with the Eastern Orthodox antiquities market. He says these are
records of the dead.”

“Records of the dead?” I repeated.
“What does that mean?”

“There are sacred hymns that
are chanted and, if performed correctly, lead one’s soul to remain intact in
another realm after the body fails. It’s a sort of spiritual transcendence, or
a method of immortality.” Vic paused and steepled his fingers under his chin.
“The interesting thing about this legend is that it dates back to the Indus
Valley People of ancient Pakistan. You ever heard of them?”

“No…”

“They were a civilization of
about twenty million people that vanished a few thousand years ago.”

“How could twenty million
people vanish?”

“That’s the mystery ain’t it?”

I clenched my teeth. Vic could
be a little infuriating sometimes.

He continued. “Of course, that
was way before there were devices to record sound. You know the expression that
photography is a means of immortality?”

“Sure, it’s a way to be
remembered forever.”

“Consider the philosophy of
that statement. At its core, the idea holds true for any medium that records an
image or a thought: paintings on cave walls, sculptures from stone, ink on
papyrus. Those were visual recordings. Then Thomas Edison came along and
invented the record player. The legend moved forward along with the advancement
of technology. The hymns could be recorded, so their incantation—their essence—lasts
forever.”

Goosebumps prickled the flesh
on my arms as I thought back, listening to the words spoken by people that were
long-dead yet still hanging around. “Why did your friend think this was a gag?”

“He’s from Moscow and has a
passing familiarity with most of the Baltic languages. The dialect of Russian
spoken on these records is old, but there are other languages, voices, he’s
never heard. Yefim described them as speech patterns like ancient Latin but
spoken backwards and guttural, as if recited through a mouth filled with mud.”

Vic looked at me, reading for
an expression. I didn’t know what to say so forced out something, feeling
obligated to reciprocate his remarks. “You don’t say.”

“Charlie,” Vic said and leaned
in close. “My friend says these records are cursed. They’re like reading a
demon’s diary, they make you sick if you listen. They don’t play like normal
records. You noticed that already. And Yefim…he says they don’t
end
.”

I felt my guts sink to my
knees. I thought back to when I listened to the albums, how they went on
indefinitely, how I tired of listening and turned them off, though I never
tried to listen all the way until it stopped. The air in Vic’s store felt
muggier,
thicker
, and I rubbed at the back of my neck, as if some
presence breathed on me from behind. I was about to thank Vic for helping me
out, make a quick exiting remark, and then get outside for some fresh air. But
he continued.

“One more thing,” he said.

“There’s more?”

“You want me to quit now, or
you want to hear the rest of what’s on these records?”

“I’m still here, ain’t I?”

“Not long ago there lived a
Russian mystic who was said to have learned how to pass between the realms of
the living and the dead. Maybe he did it through the hymns of the Indus Valley
People or maybe not, but he believed that true salvation came from within, that
the spirit of God lived in the heart, not in heaven above. The soul must be
conditioned
for the afterlife, or it would wither into nothingness like a flower, whose
roots can’t find perch in the soil.

“That man was Grigori Rasputin,
the
Mad Monk
. These were his records.”

I felt that presence on the
back of my neck suddenly burn, like a bull’s snort, and I needed to sit. My
first thought was that I wanted Vic to keep the records, I didn’t want to ever
touch them again. But my next thought—the avarice within—wondered as to their
value.

Vic seemed to read my mind. “I
don’t know of any self-respecting establishment that would want these in their
possession.” He ran his hand over the bundle. “Of course, this
is
Detroit, so not many places here respect themselves
that
much. I could
probably put you in contact with a couple collectors of dark artifacts. Maybe
get fifty bucks for each disc.”

“Sure, thanks, Vic. Like I said
before, these don’t belong to me. I’m just doing a buddy a favor, asking on his
behalf. But I know there ain’t much he won’t put a price tag on, so I’m sure
he’ll be interested.”

“Yefim said he doesn’t ever
want to see or hear these records again, and he was pretty insistent I stress
that you follow his sentiment. In other words, I’ll cross his name off the list
of possible buyers.” Vic winked at his own joke.

“Thanks again.”

“Nothing of it. Your thanks are
reflected by your patronage.” He extended his arms out to the shelves. “I’m
sure you’ll find something of interest.”

I wasn’t much in the reading
mood, but I thought I could pick up a gift for Gail, maybe a fiction novel by
Valerie Taylor or Faith Baldwin. Gail loved to bury herself in the risqué pulps
late at night while we lay in bed. I started to turn away, to skim the shelves
for her, when something clicked in my thoughts.

I needed to
know more…

“Say, Vic, you got any books on
Rasputin?”