Jeremy Bushnell - The Weirdness

Billy remembers the first long year after he’d failed out of school, remembers that at some point in that year his dad invited him on a trip to Italy, wanting them to go off together, spending six months tracking down some scattered cache of sixteenth-century books. At the time, Billy was trying to hold down a job scanning documents for an insurance conglomerate, and trying to stay sober, and trying to get up early in the mornings to work on an impossibly tangled outline for an ambitious novel that he never actually began writing, and the idea of spending half a year with his frosty, difficult dad seemed not particularly tempting, but in retrospect it seems like a blown opportunity. Instead of being a washed-up nobody he could have been … part of a father-son team of traveling book hunters? Right now it seems like it would have been a pretty good way to make a life. Better than this. Better than sifting through half-revised chapters of a weakly conceived novel.

He built this newest manuscript around a braided pair of narratives: one about a married couple who can’t stay faithful to one another, and one about their drug dealer, who is involved in a Big Deal Gone Wrong. He had some idea that the book as a whole was thematically about betrayal, that the two plotlines would reflect one another somehow. One printed chapter has “MICROCOSM / MACROCOSM” written across the top in his familiar scrawl. That must have meant something at one time.

The more he reads, the more the very existence of the document perplexes him. He’s never been married. His interactions with drug dealers have always been brief and to the point. He’s not even sure he even has anything to say about betrayal. Why did he write this? What larger point was he hoping to make? Had he just been streaming a lot of TV about narcotics? Right now, he’d be embarrassed to see this thing in print, even if he were willing to take Lucifer up on his deal.

Even if he were willing. Which he isn’t.

He puts the accordion file down and picks up the folder of PowerPoint slides that the Devil left. He looks at the picture of Timothy Ollard and fantasizes, for a moment, about punching him in the face.

“He doesn’t look so tough,” Billy says.

But then he flips ahead to the picture of the tower. It still looks pants-shittingly scary even in printout form. But what did Lucifer say? The whole thing was a front, designed to terrify people into not seeing it? He flips to the map, scrutinizes the address. He doesn’t get up to Chelsea very often but he’s pretty sure he’s been by this place at least once in the last decade. It’s under a cloak? Last night, while high, Billy was pretty ready to roll with it, but in the glare of day it just sounds like bullshit. Infinite fire? The end of the world? Come on.

But he wants something to do other than look at this folder full of failure. And it couldn’t hurt, Billy thinks, to shoot over there and see what’s at this address. There’s plenty of time before the reading; he can bring the accordion file and look through stuff on the train. He could just go. Just to take a look. Just to know if cloaks are real.

And so then he’s in Chelsea, standing at an intersection, peering down at Lucifer’s printout. Cold November wind whips around him, threatens to snap the paper out of his hand. According to the map he’s at the right corner, but he doesn’t see any cloaked building.

Well of course you don’t see it , he thinks. That’s the whole point of a cloak. Isn’t it? Is it? Maybe he’s been punk’d after all.

Directly across the street from him is a junk-metal yard, blocked from view by tall walls of corrugated iron, lashed and bolted together. It has a foreboding, ramshackle nature that reminds him of the tower, and warlockish clangs and rumbles emit from its depths. He’s looked at it from twenty different angles now, trying to catch some sort of change in its nature, but so far, nothing.

Behind him is a gallery space: through the window he can see eight lacy forms made out of what appear to be lathe-cut blocks of industrial Styrofoam. Billy’s pretty sure that if you were trying to hide something in Manhattan you wouldn’t disguise it as interesting art, although he can hear the Ghoul’s voice in his head, making some crack about how people tune out nothing faster, these days, than an artist asking for attention.

Across the way there’s an unassuming-looking brick building that takes up most of the block. He hasn’t really checked it out that deeply, distracted as he has been by the metal yard and the Styrofoam, but now he gives it a second look. Painted directly on the brick of the building’s western face are the faded words SEAFOOD WAREHOUSING.

He reads them for a second time, really tries to think about the business model implied there.

He looks at the map, looks at exactly which corner Lucifer has pinpointed.

He crosses the street.

Tentatively, he puts out his hand and touches the building. It feels like a building. He’s not sure what he expected.

He looks both ways along the building’s front for a window that he can peek into, but there are no windows at street level, just some ornamental concrete buttresses.

There is also no door.

Interesting , Billy thinks. So, let’s say I’m a customer . He turns right, heading for the corner. Let’s say I have some seafood I need warehoused. I go over here, to the southern side—

He rounds the corner. The southern side is a long expanse of brick. More buttresses. No loading dock. No door.

Okay, then , Billy thinks, making the long trek along the southern side. The building nearly abuts another one at its southeast corner, so the eastern face is inaccessible. Billy peers into the thin, trash-choked gap between the two buildings: there’s not even enough space to fit his fist in there. So the north side is the only side left. He hurries back the way he came, and it turns out that there’s no north side either; it’s directly up against another giant brick building on that side, without even an alley to look down.

So. Two sides. No windows. No loading dock. No door.

I got you, you bastard , Billy thinks.

He crosses back over to the gallery so that he can get more of the warehouse in his view. It sits there, impassive.

Billy stands on the sidewalk for a full minute, legs apart, hands balled in fists at his sides, goggling at the building. He is rapt with concentration. He is fully focused; fully focused except the part of him that is remarking on how much he has begun to resemble homeless dudes who he’s seen staring intensely at everyday shit with a stance and demeanor oddly identical to his own. He imagines, briefly, what wonders they have seen.

In the end, it works with something like an autostereogram effect: he loosens the convergence of his eyes a little and the warehouse slowly separates into two warehouses. And there, between those wavering visions, he can see it. The horrible tower. The dread castle. Spiny bits and tar-black bones. The ornamental buttresses are still there, only they appear to writhe subtly. They heave like lungs. And right in the center of the mess is a single bloodred door, crawling with calligraphic glyphs.

He blinks and the whole thing snaps back into a warehouse again. He makes himself go walleyed and Warlock House wavers back into view.

He wishes his phone had a camera in it, although he kind of doubts that the effect could be captured photographically.

He tries to imagine what it would be like to go up to the door, go into the place, make good on Lucifer’s deal. And he suffers a complete failure of imagination. He can’t see himself going into a building that looks like that. He can’t see himself even taking one step toward the objective. He literally won’t cross the street now, even though the building looks like a warehouse again.