Smog - Baggage of Enternal Night (16 page)

“I don’t think you’re in a condition to do much of
anything. You look like you died and thawed out.”

I felt it too. The hot evening air burned my cold
skin. My joints ached, and my brain felt like Willie Mays used it for batting
practice. But I persisted. “He’s my friend. I just...wasn’t prepared.”

“And you’re still not. You’re not thinking.
What’re you going to do differently the next time you go up there?”

I couldn’t think of a thing.

Ray continued. “How long has Joey been up there
with those records?”

“He’s been gettin’ an earful every day for the
past week, trying to figure them out.”

“So a little while longer’s not going to change
anything. We’ve got to take matters into our own hands, Charlie. We need
weapons.”

“You’ve got a gun?”

“I was at Normandy. I’ve got a collection.”

“I didn’t know you were in the army.”

“Came back a goddamned war hero. Lot of good it
does you after the headlines change.”

I was taken aback—the things you don’t know about
your friends.

“So, what’s your plan?” I asked.

Ray started snapping fast. “Like I said, we need
weapons. I have to go to my North Side shop; I’ve got some things in storage
there. John’s working all night, taking inventory. I’ll bring him back with the
guns. We could use another man.”

I was going to ask “Which John,” but I supposed it
didn’t matter.

“We’ll regroup in the lobby,” Ray said. “I would
bring you along, but I’ve only got a two-seater, and John doesn’t have a car. I
think you need to rest up anyway.”

I was torn inside. I couldn’t let Joey rot away in
his room any longer with that...
thing
. I wanted to get him now, but I
felt faint, like I could topple over any moment and not get back up. Then
again, was I lying to myself? Did I really want to go back up there to try to
save Joey, or was I making up a reason to hear the music again, to let myself
give up? I already felt lulled into a state of semi-hypnosis. The mind plays funny
tricks sometimes, and I couldn’t trust my own reasoning.

“All right,” I conceded.

“You want me to help you back up to your room?” he
asked.

“No, I need to get away, put some distance between
myself and this building for awhile.”

“Don’t go far.”

“I’ve just got somewhere I have to check in at.”

Ray nodded. “We’ll do it, Charlie, don’t you
worry. We’ll storm them, just like at Normandy.”

“What time?” I asked.

“What time is what?”

“What time should we meet back in the lobby?”

He stared at me, and his head twitched just
barely. “Yeah, in the lobby. Um, three hours. Meet you here in the
lobby...three hours, at ten o’clock.”

I felt a brush of déjà vu, like I was experiencing
something again, something that had occurred already. The air seemed a little
colder, a little darker. Or possibly it was just the sun beginning to fall.

“Maybe I should follow you,” I said, and I knew it
was my fear working me over; I didn’t want to be alone. I didn’t have many
lifelines to grasp, and he was the nearest. If something happened to Ray, my
odds of beating this situation would slip even worse. “It could be better if we
stay together. I’ll just drive separate.”

“Do you hear that?” he asked.

“Hear what?”

Ray looked at me and blinked. “No, I gotta go.
Can’t keep watching in the rearview for you. We’ll meet back in the lobby.”

I noticed he stopped snapping.

“In Normandy,” he said. “Normandy...”

“Ray—”

“See you, Charlie.” He turned about-face and left.

I was left alone on the sidewalk. The streetlamp
across the street turned on, then fizzled and went out. I walked the other way,
around to the side of the building where tenants parked, still feeling muddled
in the mind. The longer I was in the shadow of the apartments, I realized the
honest truth was that I
did
want to go back to Joey’s room and surrender
to the song. I thought of my vision in Rasputin’s world and the difficulty of
moving each leg; that was how I felt now, as if I struggled to reach my car
through a bank of snow. But if the others in Joey’s room had given in, it was
only because they hadn’t been there from the beginning. They didn’t see what it
did to us, the way I watched Joey fade away. Maybe they believed this was a
grand venture, a chance to discover the meaning of existence, but I didn’t buy
it. It was the devil’s deal and a kick in the ass.

I made it to my car. I opened the door and slid
behind the steering wheel. Slipped the key into the ignition and…nothing. The
engine gurgled and belched but wouldn’t roll over. I turned the key again to
the same effect. I knew my transmission had been going out, but this was
something different. The starter? Carburetor? Rasputin’s effort? All I knew was
the Crestline wasn’t going anywhere tonight. How the world seems to conspire
when desperation nips at your heels…

Vkhodite.

I needed to get away. I sensed Rasputin—that
thing—reaching down to me from the fourth floor, his arms extending like wisps
of flame. I jumped out of the car and ran back around the building, hoping to
see Ray before he drove off. He was nowhere in sight, so I just kept on
running, all the way down Sanford Street, past its closed shops and darkened
windows and old vagabonds sleeping in the alleyways.

A taxi drove slowly in the other direction eyeing
me: a middle-aged man running—now holding the stitch in his side and gasping
for breath—down the street, dressed in a flapping suit and shoes in which one
sole began to crack off. I waved him over and, fortunately, he didn’t think I
was too crazed. I gave him directions, and he drove me to Gail’s.

It was after eight o’clock by the time I knocked
on her front door. Gail’s bungalow was an architectural turn-of-the-century
wonder, cramming five split-level rooms and a kitchenette into only a thousand
square feet of space. It might have been small, but Gail’s home was sharp. Each
room had its own theme and color palette; she decorated to match with the
season’s fashions. She even let me keep a room so I’d feel more welcome during
visits. Of course, it never felt like “my” room without luggage littering under
every step.

Knocking at her door reminded me of Joey; I rapped
for half a minute without any response. I had a key to her house the same as I
did for him, but didn’t want to let myself inside if she was fuming.

Finally, she answered. I tried not to look too
hard at the streaks of mascara dried under her eyes.

“I’m sorry I’m so late,” I said. “I’m in some kind
of mess.”

Her eyes went big and pink lips parted like a
blooming rose. “Charlie, what’s wrong with you?”

“It’s a long story, dear. It’s Joey; I don’t know
what to do.”

“No, it’s you,” she said. “You look sick. You’re
paler than a ghost.”

“I am?”

“Lord, I can almost see through your skin.”

The tension of the last several hours caught up to
me, and I felt faint, like I would collapse right on her doorstep.

“Come in,” she said. “You need to lie down.”

She led me to the living room couch, and I sank
down so quick, I thought I would fall through the floor.

“I’ll get you some water,” she said and vanished
into the kitchenette.

When I woke, another hour had passed. Gail wrapped
a couple blankets over me while I slept.

“You’re freezing,” she said.

“I’ll be all right.”

“I just called Dr. Adams, but he’s out on another
call. A nurse said to bring you into the hospital.”

“It’s only the snow,” I said. “The snow’s making
me cold.”

“What snow?”

I blanched…why had I said that? The snow was a
dream...

Vkhodite.

It was a record, playing over and over again.
That’s why it kept repeating, like an album that got scratched; it played the
same phrases in a loop, repeating through the disc’s groove without moving
forward. That’s where I was, trapped inside the record’s cycle.

I had to turn it off.

Gail stroked my forehead. The warmth of her touch
thawed my chill. “Charlie, you’re scaring me. What’s going on?”

Had I drifted away again?

I bolstered myself to focus. “I—I’m hearing
things…seeing things…that are real.”

That didn’t make any sense at all. She cocked her
head and made a face, waiting for more. I finally spat it out, blunt as a
brick. “Do you believe in ghosts?”

“Ghosts?” she repeated, and her eyes narrowed as
if she were contemplating some underlying meaning to the question. “You mean
like spirits that haunt our homes?”

Gail and I had spoken late into the night on many
subjects, but the topics of death and religion were not ones we broached
in-depth. I knew she affirmed Protestant leanings, as myself, but hadn’t
visited a church in decades. Perhaps religion, like death, was for the morbid.

“Yes, a presence after death,” I replied.

“I think we have a soul, some sort of residue that
transcends elsewhere, but I don’t really believe in invisible people that
remain, wandering amongst us.”

“Gail,” I said, and paused before continuing.
“There’s a ghost in Les Deux Oies. It’s hurting people, and I think it’s taking
them away to another place. It’s touched me…it’s
inside
me somehow, and
it’s trying to take me, too.”

I thought she would step back and roll her eyes
and say how the hoarding in my apartment is truly driving me bonkers. Instead,
she kept stroking my forehead and kissed my brow as her fingers passed over.

“What can I do to help?” she asked.

“You believe me?”

“If there’s something affecting you, I’ll do
whatever it takes to make it right.”

I don’t know why, but I always seemed to judge
myself more harshly than Gail judged me. My own conscience constantly thought
the worst of myself, and it manifested itself onto her. She was the
understanding one between us, the rational and considerate partner in our
relationship. Even when I was late to see her or pulled a boneheaded move, I
knew she would be inwardly disappointed, but she never made as big a deal of it
as I did in my own mind. I got into the habit of thinking ill of people—even
her—and then, every time when I braced myself for negativity, she amazed me
with sympathy and understanding.

“I—I don’t know what to do,” I said.

“Tell me what happened.”

And so I did. I recited everything from that
previous Thursday night at the baggage auction where Joey won the record
player. I described the chanting we heard and my conversations with Vic, trying
to figure out what the music meant. I told her how I watched Joey grow wan,
until I saw him last as nothing more than a shadow within Rasputin. I explained
the music’s effect on anyone who heard it, even Joey’s neighbors who were
hapless enough to be within earshot of his room. I spoke of the dreams I had
and the impossible changes in his room, as if it transformed into another land.

I told Gail everything and, again, braced myself
for her rebuke.

“Why on God’s green earth are you still living
there, if you think a curse is taking over the building?” she asked. “Just
leave.”

That wasn’t the response I expected, though it
seemed an obvious question to be asked.

“I believe it’s like an infection,” I said after
careful thought. “It’s a seed planted in my brain, and it won’t be dislodged
regardless of how far away I travel. I’ve been fighting it, but he’s in my
dreams, he’s in my head,
whispering
. I’ve got to turn it off, forever.”

Gail made a face like she was going to cry, then
it seemed to change to a laugh, before returning to the potential waterworks.
“Oh, God, the messes you get into, Charlie.”

“This is hardly something you can plan on—”

She interrupted, as if I hadn’t spoken. “If only
I’d talked to you a couple weeks ago.”

I didn’t like the sound of that remark...a phrase
like that could lead to a whole slew of problematic scenarios.

I asked anyway. “About what?”

“You seem so distracted when we’re together, like
your mind is somewhere else.”

I knew better than to disagree with that.

She continued. “I didn’t want to bring it up if it
wasn’t going to happen, but now it has, and I wish I’d have discussed it with
you since the very beginning.”

“What, Gail? I’m feeling crazy enough without you
dragging up something else.”

“Geoff Van Duyn made me a job offer to oversee
onsite expansion of a new Rockwell’s. I’m moving to New York City.”

I was devastated. No, I was
crushed
. All
the building fear and distress was a weight so great, it felt as if I crawled
on concrete while a giant foot squashed me from above. And now here I sat,
literally
dying
, and my girlfriend says she’s leaving me. Though I’d
always expected it, I wasn’t prepared for that stab of pain that suddenly made
all the other pain seem as inconsequential as a scratch on the thumbnail.