Tad Williams - A Stark And Wormy Knight

Eventually I rammed the thing through the wall and got its head stuck deep enough that I could finally pull myself loose. No sooner had I got rid of the bear than a tiger rug wrapped itself around my ankles and started trying to gnaw off my feet. The whole place was nuts — the paintings on the wall with their eyeballs bulging, trying to talk, the stuffed animals jerking around like they’d been electrified. I’d had enough of this crap. I kicked the rug up into the rafters where it hung, gnashing its teeth and swiping at me with its claws, then I made a run for the front door. I couldn’t help but notice as I ran past that the grandfather clock was lit up from within like a jukebox, glowing and, well, sort of pulsing. And the air around it was murky with strange, colored shadows which were streaming into the clock like salmon swimming upstream to spawn. Every one that went past me burned icy cold and made my skin tingle. It didn’t take much to know that this was the center of the haunting or whatever it was. It was pulling on me, too, a strong, steady suction like a whirlpool in dark, cold water. I had to struggle against it to reach the door.

I was happy enough to get outside at first.

The sickly glow from the top of the lighthouse was barely strong enough to light the long grass waving on the hilltop, but it was enough to illuminate the thin shape standing at the bottom of the path, swaying a little, head hanging down as though in some kind of hypnotic trance. Whoever it was, they didn’t have a prayer against that stuff behind me.

“Hey!” I shouted. “Get out of here!” I hurried down the path. If I had to, I’d just throw whoever it was over my shoulder and carry him…

The first thing weird I noticed was that the Y-shaped pattern on the guy’s chest wasn’t a design on a shirt. I realized that because of the second weird thing — he was naked. The third thing was that the shape on his chest was made of stitches. Big ones. In fact, it wasn’t a guy in any normal sense at all — it was Rufino Gentle’s body, fresh off the autopsy table, standing just about where it must have been found in the first place.

I’ve seen a lot of creepy stuff in my time, but that doesn’t mean you get used to it, you know.

I grabbed at his hair as I got close and lifted his head so I could look into his eyes. No resistance at all. Nothing in his eyes, either. Dead — I’m telling you, dead. Not like you say it about someone who doesn’t care any more, I mean dead as in “not alive.” There was nothing like a soul or a sensibility in that corpse, but it was still standing there, swaying a little in the wind, long dark hair flipping around, a livid new autopsy scar stretching up past his navel and forking to both collarbones. When the wind caught his hair again I couldn’t help noticing that the top of his skull was gone, too, his brain sitting right there like a soft-boiled egg in a cup. He was holding the rest of his skull in his dead hand, clutching it like it was an ashtray he’d made at summer camp.

I’d had a rough night. I don’t think anyone will blame me for not bringing Rufino Gentle’s body back with me. He looked pretty comfortable standing there, anyway, so I left him there and hurried down to the fence and Albie Bayless waiting in his car.

“Did you see the lights?” Albie asked me, wide-eyed.

“We’ll talk about it,” I told him. “Bur first I need to drink about nine beers. Do you have nine beers at your place? Because if not, I really, really hope there’s somewhere open in this godforsaken little town where we can get some.”

“The Gentle kid’s body, just…standing there?” Albie asked again as we got into the car the next morning. This was about the twentieth time. “You really saw it?”

I don’t think Albie had slept very well. I wondered if maybe I’d told him too much.

“Trust me — I’ve seen worse things in my day. I have to admit, though, you’ve developed a few new wrinkles here.”

Grayson Thursday was waiting for us in his office, a little storefront place that looked like it might have been the site of one of those telemarketing boiler rooms. There was a computer — the 1980s kind, so it looked like the mating of a Hammond organ and an typewriter — a television, a telephone, and that was about it. He had a desk with a single notepad on it. Not a file cabinet in sight. Thursday himself was a kindly looking gentleman of about sixty, although his face was a little odd in a way I couldn’t entirely put my finger on at first. Like he’d been in an accident and had gone through some cosmetic surgery afterward that didn’t quite iron out all the bumps. His voice was a little odd, too, as though he’d been born deaf but had learned to talk anyway. But what really worried me was that he didn’t seem to think there was anything unusual about me at all — didn’t even look twice when we were introduced. That I’m not used to, and it gave me a bad feeling.

“I’m sorry to have kept you waiting for this meeting, Mr. Bayless, Mr. Boy,” he said. “I don’t get into town very often.”

“Oh, yeah? Where do you live?” I asked him.

“Quite a long way away.” He smiled as if he was thinking of something else entirely and adjusted the sleeves of his expensive sweater. “Now, what can I do for you gentlemen?’

“My associate and I want to ask you a few things about the Monk’s Point property,” Albie told him.

“Is this about the Gentle boy?” He shook his head. “Terrible thing — tragic.”

Oddly enough, he really sounded like he felt bad about it. It didn’t make me any more comfortable with him, though.

Thursday proceeded to answer a bunch of questions about the house — how long his family had owned it (seventy years or so), what they used it for (it had been a local museum, but never earned enough money, so for now it was just sitting there), and why they didn’t sell it to a hotel company (family sentiment and the historical value of the property.) All very expected, but I was watching Thursday more than listening to the answers. Something about him just didn’t quite seem right. He seemed…distant. Not like he was on drugs, or senile, just weirdly slow and detached.

“I hope that’s been some help to you,” he said and stood up, indicating that our time was over. “What happened to the boy was very sad, but as I told the police already, it’s nothing to do with me. Now I’m afraid I have some important errands to run. Please leave a message with my answering service if there’s anything else I can do for you. I won’t be back in town until next week.”

As we went out into the parking lot, I asked Albie, “Did he say he wasn’t going to be back until next week?”

“Yeah, why?”

“And didn’t you tell me he made you wait a week for this meeting?”

“I guess.”

“And it just happens today’s Thursday. And his last name’s Thursday.”

“I’m not following you.”

“Never mind. Can you look some stuff up for me this afternoon? I’ll give you a list. And before you start, drop me off at Bobby Gentle’s house.”

“The dead kid’s father? Why?”

“His name was on a notepad on Thursday’s desk.”

Albie shrugged. “You’re the boss. Try not to scare anyone to death.”

“There’s been enough of that already,” I said.

After the Baylessmobile rolled away, I walked up the long, overgrown driveway but stopped and stepped into the trees before I reached the house. I waited for no more than a quarter hour before Grayson Thursday rolled up the driveway past me in his spanking new Mercedes. I waited a couple of minutes then followed, but the yard around the ramshackle house was covered with dry grass that hadn’t been mowed in months, not to mention all kinds of other trash, and it was hard to get close without making a noise. Thursday didn’t stay very long, anyway. I had to duck back into the trees again as he came out, got into his beautiful car and bumped off down the driveway.