Smog - Baggage of Enternal Night (19 page)

Oh, but what a
ride it will be
,
I thought. I asked, “How long until you could get here?”

“I’m ready to leave now, so
give me twenty minutes’ drive time.”

“Pull up to the curb outside
the front entrance and keep the engine running.”

She paused. “Is there anything
else I should know, Charlie?”

I evaded the question. “I’m
counting on you being here in twenty minutes. I’ll be waiting. If I’m not
outside already, wait five minutes for me and then leave. Just get far away,
all the way to New York, and don’t look back.”

“You’re scaring me. Why don’t I
wait as long as it takes for you to get ready?”

“If I’m not out there in time,
something will have happened. Something, that if you came looking for me, would
affect you, too...the ghost of Rasputin...”

“When have you ever been on
time for anything? I’m not leaving you up there.”

“Please, Gail. Just do as I
ask. I’ve got enough to worry about without fretting over your safety.”

She sighed, a long and deep sound
as if a wind blew through the receiver. “Okay, Charlie. I’ll be there in twenty
minutes and I won’t wait around.”

“Thank you. And, Gail...bring
ear plugs for yourself.”

“I will.”

On impulse, I added, “And New
York sounds like a wonderful idea.”

“Are you saying you’ll go with
me?”

“I’m just saying what I’m
saying. It’s a wonderful idea. If circumstances were different I’d be there in
a flash. As it is…I don’t know what’s going to happen tonight.”

“You’ll pull through. You
always land on your feet. Think positive, of a new life for us.”

I didn’t want to think of
anything but surviving the next hour. “I gotta go. If all goes to plan, I’ll
meet you downstairs.”

“I’ll see you, Charlie. I know
I will. I love you.”

“Love you too, Gail.”

I hung up, questioning if I did
the right thing. My life—my soul—were already at stake…even if she was my only
hope, should I have asked her for assistance and put her at risk as well? I
pushed it out of my mind.
Stay positive
, I thought, just like Gail told
me. Unfortunately, I wasn’t very adept at positivity.

I looked around the room one
last time, hoping to draw on an inner strength found through happy memories of
days lounging on the phone with collectors and nights opening baggage with
Joey. Regardless of what was to happen, I knew that part of my life was closed;
nothing would ever return to the way it was.

I left my apartment and walked
slowly down the hall to the elevator bank. Each step felt planned by someone
other than me, like a force pulling my legs closer to it, one-at-a-time. I
entered the conveyor, and that same force brought my arm up to punch the fourth
floor button. I still wore the ear plugs Gail gave me, but I imagined the music
playing anyway in my mind. Already my thoughts began to jumble…was it truly my
imagination or did I actually hear it? Rasputin must have realized I was less
susceptible to his chants when I went in after Ray. Would he double his efforts
to convert me, or did he possess other facilities with which to subdue me?

I read in Rasputin’s biography
that he could foretell the future…I trembled, wondering if that were true and
if he waited down there prepared, knowing exactly what I intended to do. I
thought that, at least, he couldn’t be at the height of his power, as he was
still collecting souls, still passing through the transition process.

The elevator reached the fourth
floor, and I exited, pausing outside its door. The hallway before me seemed to
stretch away like a narrow cobblestone lane. Snowflakes and dead leaves swirled
alongside the molding, and the apartment doors appeared as hollows cut into
dense groves of trees. But it appeared, too, as a simple beige hallway, covered
in cheap carpet that led to Joey’s room. Again I felt that sense of two worlds
overlapping each other, as if one existed within the other and bulged out,
overflowing its confines.

A chrome ashtray stand squatted
in the corner of the hall. I took it and placed it in the elevator entrance, so
that the door could not close and the conveyor descend. I walked. The same
force that seemed to pull me along since I left my room now felt more urgent,
more
in control
. As I approached Joey’s room, the force warmed me, and I
felt a flush of confidence. I realized what propelled me forward was nothing
nefarious, but instead a certain stimulus. It inspired me that what I was to
attempt was for “good,” if good and bad could be so easily delineated. When I
heard reports of heroics performed by everyday people they often remarked that
whatever occurred had gone against their normal nature; they acted on impulse.
I could only hope such a noble consciousness was leading me at this time.

In moments I was there,
standing outside Joey’s door. I grasped the knob and my skin stuck to the
frozen metal. I turned it, and tiny icicles shattered within the tumbler. The
door was difficult to open as the hinges were likewise frozen, and as I pushed
against it with all my might, I saw that I pushed the door into an
ever-deepening drift of snow.

Vkhodite.

The bad voice came back, and my
sense of noble consciousness went the way of the dinosaurs. I made enough space
between the door and the snow that I could slip through.

What had once been Joey’s
apartment could no longer be called as such. Whereas the last time I entered,
the far wall had given way to dense forests, now, too, did all the other
confines of the room. I shivered in a clearing carved from woods, and in all
directions the trees pressed together like interlocking fingers. The doorway I
passed from stood as a singular object unattached to anything but the ground,
the way a gravestone thrusts from the earth.

Rasputin and the converts were
gone.

I knew I entered the realm the
book spoke of: the land of Black Forest, frozen in time outside Saint
Petersburg. Though I felt relief at his absence, part of me panicked. I had to
find the record player fast. The fire still burned in the ground ahead, though
the flames were low, its strength waning from the falling snow and lack of
fuel. The suitcases that had served as altar for the record player were toppled
over, and a group of footprints led away through the trees. He’d led them to
the original clearing, where the Misbegottens once gathered for his worship.

Though all the walls and
ceiling were gone, Joey’s belongings remained, half-buried under snow. To my left
his dining table tilted up as if an ice wave pushed from beneath. Greasy plates
had slid off and piled in a heap to one side, and I saw the remains of
breakfast I had brought him earlier that morning. A full day hadn’t passed
since our last conversation, though it seemed a lifetime ago. Rasputin’s
transformation was accelerating.

To my right were heaps of
Joey’s baggage, tumbled in disarray, but I quickly located the leather suitcase
under a scrim of pale snow. Apparently nobody thought twice of it; the case
numbered just one of hundreds of luggage items stored throughout the apartment.
Perhaps I was wrong and it held no significance, but I wagered my life that the
suitcase was the only way to contain the record player. I made my way to it and
immediately began to sink to my knees in the deepening snow.

I sat down to put on the
snowshoes. Never having worn them before, I lashed the shoes to my feet as best
I could and was amazed that they worked better than hoped. Though my steps were
awkward, I no longer sank when I walked. I made my way to the leather suitcase
and broke it free from the others. With the knowledge of what I now looked for,
I reexamined the handle and strange stones lining the seams of the case. I
rubbed my fingers over the texture, and they felt hard and rough, not smooth
like ivory which I first assumed it to be. The slight greenish hue veining the
stones confirmed my belief:
limestone
. As the book described, it was
antithetical to Rasputin.

Still holding the baseball bat
in one hand, I took the case in the other, and walked across the clearing,
following the footprints. They entered the forest, and I pursued, pushing with
effort through snarling limbs. The trees were high altitude perennials,
Siberian pines and junipers, and they grew close together like clumps of grass.
I thought that those who walked before me must have broken through the branches
already so that I would follow a cleared path, but the limbs seemed flexible,
rubbery, and they snapped back into place rather than cracking off.

After a dozen yards I looked
back and could no longer see the clearing I had entered from. The forest was a
world of itself, a trap where one might wander lost for eternity; there were no
identifying features, and even the night sky overhead didn’t make sense. Where
I knew the Big Dipper and Orion constellations should be present, instead shone
distant pulsating orbs, smaller than the moon but expanding and contracting
like the beating of a heart. Had I not the footprints to follow, I would have
no hope of finding my way through. As it was, snow still fell from the sky, and
the prints were gradually fading as I watched.

I hurried onward. I wanted to
run, but the snowshoes made that impossible. Instead, I made long, wide steps
and trusted that I moved faster than those I pursued. I was proved correct as
the footprints became deeper, fresher. Soon, I saw the first figure ahead, his
back to me as he stumbled and labored to march through the snow, following at a
far distance from someone else.

I still wore the ear plugs, but
could imagine the converts’ voices, chanting in mantra as they walked. I pushed
through the tree limbs with urgency and, as I grew closer to the figure, saw he
leaned precariously on a cane, struggling to keep up with the others.

Mr. Landis,
the oldest tenant in Les Deux Oies.

I silently asked for
forgiveness and hoped that I caused him no other harm, if there was anything
left of his original self which
could
be harmed. I set the suitcase down
and swung the Louisville Slugger into the back of his head. I only used half my
strength, but Landis crumpled like a wet bag.

I picked up the suitcase and
hurried past him. Fifty yards further, I came upon the next person, the
Oriental woman wearing a housedress who had blocked me from dragging Ray out of
the room. Like Landis, she had her back to me and paid no notice as I crept
from behind. My first thought was to wonder how she walked through the snow in
just a dress without turning into a Popsicle. I supposed that in whatever state
their mind existed was part of Rasputin’s spiritual transcendence, and the
effects of the physical world didn’t affect them. I swung the baseball bat into
her skull and she fell. Whatever transcendence they experienced, they were
still affected by blunt-force trauma.

In front of her was another
man, blindly following in the footprints of those in front of him, like a dumb
trail of ants. I felled him with the bat. The orbs in the sky pulsed brighter,
and the trees thinned slightly, and the land sloped downward, so that all
combined allowed me a faraway glimpse of the
other
campfire. I knew this
was the axis of Rasputin’s realm, that which I had glimpsed from Joey’s room.
The fire there roared in a geyser of flame, surrounded by scores of shadowy
figures kneeling in rows. Rasputin was bringing the record player home, leading
the newest converts from Les Deux Oies.

I had no other plan but to move
forward, approaching sleepwalking people from behind and braining them as if I
were a back-alley hood. They were so single-minded in their trek not one
noticed my approach. I wasn’t normally much of a slugger, but in these
circumstances, I was doing all right. I probably could have stood face-to-face and,
unless Rasputin commanded otherwise, they still wouldn’t have lifted a finger
to protect themselves. As it was, I preferred clonking them from behind...I
didn’t want to see the walking-coma faces of people I once chatted with.

I came upon two women struggling
through the snow, each step sinking them to their knees, and I felled them.
Rasputin either didn’t know, or care, that I was toppling his victims. As long
as the music played, they moved forward. Perhaps I headed into a trap and
Rasputin knew I would be one of his soon enough…or, perhaps, he simply didn’t
expect anyone to follow him into his own world.

Ahead, I saw the record player,
and my heart skipped more than a beat. Two men carried it reverently between
them, stepping in tandem. Even from a distance, I saw the black disc spinning
beneath the needle and could imagine its music, that horrible cacophony of
instruments screeching together.

I raced as quickly to them as
the snowshoes would allow. I imagined chopping down a tree, and I hit each man in
the back of the head with consecutive swings.
Thwack. Thwack.
The
gramophone fell into the snow, still playing.

A knife of words slashed across
my thoughts.
Stoy! Predatel!

The alarm had sounded. I saw
the figures farther up the trail turn and scuttle toward me. The ant line was
broken. They were coming for me any way they could, and I knew that included
the Misbegottens from the distant campfire. They moved through the drifts as if
in slow motion, lifting legs comically high while trying to traverse the snow.
Rasputin would be among them, and I had only fleeting moments before they
arrived.