Gary A. Braunbeck - Cages and Those Who Hold the Keys

He pulled the crowbar from his sleeve, tried to reach the bulb hanging nearest him with his hand, couldn’t, so stepped back, jumped up, swung the crowbar, and shattered the damn thing. Hitting the floor, he hunched down in the new shadows and waited for someone to come investigate the noise. No one did. Of course not; no one would, not here.

He rose up and pressed his shoulder against the door, forced the hooked end of the crowbar into the jamb, tightened both hands around it, and yanked back.

The doorjamb splintered apart in a shower of semi-soft flakes and the sound of a rotten tooth being torn from infected gums. Not looking to see if anyone was watching, Martin stepped into the room and closed the door behind him; it wouldn’t latch (he’d taken care of that for good), so he looked around, saw a crate stuffed with books and newspapers and painting supplies, and dragged it over to hold the door in place.

He then heard something from elsewhere in the room; the pulling in of a deep, slow, ragged breath, thick with mucus, that made a sickening rattle-wheeze-pop! at the end, an equally terrible sound when exhaled.

He walked toward the nearly used-up old man lying in the shabby, half-broken bed, his body covered by tattered blankets.

No, not just some old man— Bob .

This was him.

It was really him. Martin recognized him from that day outside DeVito’s; his face was all but collapsed now, barely more than a skeleton covered in a tissue-thin layer of flesh, but it was him.

A hundred different questions came to him simultaneously: how long had Bob lain here in this condition? How had he managed to keep himself alive? How long had he lived here, anyway? Didn’t he have any friends who might have come by to check on him?

Martin realized he was wasting time—Bob couldn’t last much longer, no way—but he had no idea what he was supposed to do, what he was supposed to look for or find here, so he fumbled in the dark until he found the small desk lamp attached to the head of the bed and snapped it on.

It was only a forty-watt bulb, but that was all it took.

Dear God , he thought. No one should have to die like this.

It wasn’t just that Bob’s skin had the grey pallor of spoiled meat, or that his hands had locked into shapes that more resembled talons; it wasn’t even the smell of him—dried blood, ruined bowels, the mold from the sheets and the blankets, something both pungent and moist that could only have been a freshly-burst infected bedsore—no; these were bad enough, sure, because goddammit no one should have to endure a death this cruel: it was, simply, that Martin Tyler was looking at the crystalline image of his very worst fear: that he was going to end up old, sick, alone, and forgotten, living out the remainder of his empty days in some dim little shabby room with no one to talk to or care whether or not he woke every day to the promise of more loneliness, feeling like his life had amounted to nothing.

No one deserves to die like this .

Bob pulled in another terrible, thick, rattle-wheeze-pop! breath (the Death Rattle, Martin remembered a nurse using the term during his dad’s final hours; the Death Rattle), then sank farther down into soaked-through mattress.

“Hi, buddy,” said Martin. Whispered. Wept.

He found a rickety wood-backed chair that he pulled over next to the bed and—after testing it to make sure it would support his weight—sat down.

“Long time no see,” he said.

. . . rattle-wheeze-pop!

“I wish I remembered more about you, I really do. I’m sorry. I—Christ, I’m not even sure you can hear me. When each of my folks died, near the very end, one of the nurses told me that they could still hear me if I wanted to say something to them, tell them I loved them or say good-bye, and as much . . . as much as I wanted to believe that, I couldn’t bring myself to say a goddamn thing. I just sat there and watched them die. And even then it felt like . . . because I didn’t talk to them . . . it felt like I was failing them one last time.”

. . . rattle-wheeze-pop!

“I don’t think I can do this again, Bob, I really don’t. But I can’t think of what else to do. I don’t know where to go from here , can you understand that? Jerry didn’t have the chance to tell me. I’ve gotten this far but from here on . . . I’m winging it.”

. . . rattle . . .

“So I’m going to sit here for a minute while I try to think of my next move and keep you company, all right? I think maybe you’d like that. I hope so, anyway. I think maybe you didn’t have a lot of company, and you would’ve liked some.”

. . . wheeze . . .

“I’m sorry that you were so lonely that spending twenty minutes with me was a high point in your life. I wish I’d known that. I’ve never been anyone’s high point before.”

. . . pop!

“If it helps, that watercolor I bought from you is my prize possession. I really love that picture, you know? You were good; you were really good.”

. . . rattle . . .

“I’ll remember you, I promise. Even if no one else does, I will. Does that count for anything?”

. . . wheeze . . .

“I’m going to tell you something that I’ve never told anyone, if that’s all right, since we’re here like this, just you and me. All my life, I’ve

(been half in love with easeful death )

felt lonely. Even in a crowd of people, or with people I know, even the few times I’ve had girlfriends, I’ve felt that way. I’ve spent so much time looking back at the bad things, or imagining the good things ahead that never get around to happening, that I’ve . . . I’ve missed out on most of my life. You ever feel like that? Like you’ve

( Call’d him soft names in many a mused rhyme )

been living just outside the frame of the movie, except it’s in the frame where all the real living is happening?”

. . . pop!

“Ah, well, shit. My head really hurts, and I’m tired, and I’m scared right down to the marrow of my bones. And I sound like a whiny little kid. I’m sorry.”

He reached out touched one of Bob’s hands, gently stroking its surface; it felt rock-hard, clammy, a brittle used-up echo of something grand that once was.

“Why couldn’t I talk to my folks like this, at the end?” And son-of-a-bitch if that didn’t open the goddamn waterworks again. Martin didn’t fight it; he just leaned down his head and placed Bob’s hand against his lips, kissing it once, not too quickly, then pressed it against his forehead as he cried, and once he almost lost his grip but managed to grab hold before Bob’s hand dropped back down and—

—and Bob was holding something.

Martin slowly turned Bob’s hand around—wincing at the sound of the frail bones cracking—and moved it a little more toward the light.

Bob was clutching a piece of paper that had been wadded into the size of a lime.

Carefully working it free of Bob’s frozen grip, Martin smoothed open the sheet of stationary.

Hello, Dipshit , read the salutation.

Martin almost grinned. “Hello yourself, Jerry.”

The letter continued:

Since you’re reading this, then Gash woke up before I could finish telling you what you need to do.

Yes, I figured that you’d end up holding Bob’s hand; cop to it or not, you’re a hand-holder; held your dad’s hand, held your mom’s, it only stood to reason . . . .

Second floor above what used to be DeVito’s; first room on your left at the top of the landing. Bob’s old apartment many years ago. The painting is there, so is the key to the museum. You’ll know the key when you find it—or when it finds you. There’s a flashlight under the bed, you’ll need it.