Paula Guran - The Mammoth Book of Cthulhu

Then I looked past the fence and I seen Mr. Tillinghast up on his roof. I could see him pretty good between the trees, because that time of year, it’s not so dark yet after dinner. He was putting some kind of metal mesh thing on the roof.

And then it came over me, like, Boom! I know what I’ll do.

I told Bebe I was going to go over there and tell Mr. Tillinghast the police were going to bother him. Warn him. Get his back.

“You are crazy to go there.” She shook her head. That always made her black braids fly around. “Don’t be a dumbfuck.”

“I’m going. The police are going to bother him just for nothing. He’s gonna get bagged! He helped us, he hired my dad!”

I was thinking about my dad. We never liked cops much and now I felt, about cops, just, Fuck you.

I started climbing over the fence.

“No, Vester!”

But I climbed over the fence and left her there and walked off. Maybe I was showing off some even though she said it was a bad idea.

I crossed the lot and walked under the trees and yelled up at him. “Hey, Mr. Tillinghast!”

He went all twitchy up there and I saw him grab at a chimney. He almost slipped off the roof.

“Sorry, Mr. Tillinghast!” I called. “I just wanted to tell you—”

“Get out of here, boy! You! Go!”

I felt slapped, when he did that.

I turned around and started to walk off, then decided that because Bebe was watching, from over the fence, I had to say something else. I turned and yelled, “They’re coming out to bust you is what!”

I was almost over the fence when he called again, from the house. “Boy! Come back here and tell me what the devil you’re talking about!”

He’s the only one I ever heard say, What the devil.

It smelled like mold and dust and burning wires and something else I never smelled before. That’s what the attic smelled like. Tasted like it, too, on my tongue when I breathed in.

Mr. Tillinghast was looking at me like he was thinking of taking a bite out of me. “They’re coming tonight? You are certain it was to happen tonight?”

“Yeah,” I said. “That’s what she said.”

He looked at the ceiling, like he could see right through it. “I just put those insulation baffles on the roof. They will address the problem. The signals will not penetrate aircraft now.” I didn’t know what meant by address it. I’ve learned a humongous lot from the way he talks since then, though. (But I have to use spellcheck on this.) He gave me a big frown and pointed his finger at me. “But if the authorities come rooting through here, they will find devices that break a variety of their paltry regulations! Indeed, frequencies that might interest Homeland Security. Not that they should fear me but . . . one can explain nothing to those people. They see nothing but what is in front of their noses. And even that they do not see.”

(I told you, I remember everything people say.)

“Can you hide that stuff?” I asked.

“There is no time . . . That is — no time, working alone.”

“I could help.”

“That is a possibility — that is why I brought you up here. Your father was discreet. Are you?”

Discreet was another word I didn’t know then. But I could tell he wanted me to say “yes.” And I remembered he paid cash money.

“Yes,” I said.

“I shall reward you! You’re small, but— forty dollars?”

Forty! “Where you want to start?”

It was hard. The machines parts were larger than my mom’s old HP computer, and made of heavier stuff. Some were missing panels and inside them I saw vacuum tubes . I knew they were real old.

It was hot in there, and I was coughing from dust and my fingers was getting slick from sweat but I carried what I had to. We took certain machines down from the attic, all the way to the basement, and he set them up there. We had to make five trips.

By the time I was back down with the rest of the equipment he had four pieces of gear set up, wired together. I seen the wires looked really old, they were doubled and winding around one another and they had cloth on the outside. He stripped the ends of the wires with a knife and twisted them to each other’s with needle-nose pliers, so the units was all connected up. I was, like, what?

“Good, good, put that one on top of this unit, here. We’ll set up our camouflage antenna, ha ha, and it will be transmitting before they arrive.”

I know what camouflage was and I started to get what he was doing then.

Pretty quick the vacuum tubes were lit up and there was a smell of hot copper wire in the air. There was a big cluster of lightbulbs, all wired close together. Some of them were broken. There was a “transmitter” made of an old TV antenna and a hum came out of one of the machines. Mr. Tillinghast chuckled as he turned the humming part up as loud as it would go. That humming came and went but it wasn’t the hum from the attic.

We had set it all up between a bunch of dirty wooden boxes under a light fixture so low he knocked his head on it and the fixture broke and we were in the darkness. He switched on a flashlight so he could replace the bulb. While he did that he cursed with some words I never heard before.

Then he arranged the “units” a little more. “The key unit isn’t here,” he said. “But they won’t know that.”

Just when he got the arranging done, there was a banging on the front door above.

“Coming, coming!” Mr. Tillinghast shouted. He whispered to me, “Wait in the attic if you want to be paid right away. Otherwise — slip out the back and come back when they’re gone.”

I went toward the back door because, after all, cops was coming into the house. But I couldn’t help going around to the basement window, laying down in the dirt there and listening. I could only see a man’s shiny shoes and suit pants down there next to the equipment.

I heard Mr. Tillinghast say, “Very well, here’s my equipment! But why should the FAA come here?”

The woman said something about interference with the radios of jet planes passing overhead. And the other person, who had a deep voice, said he was a Federal Marshal and he had a warrant.

“You see the only transmission devices I have,” Mr. Tillinghast said. “When I patent this device I shall be wealthy! It will send radio signals through the center of the Earth! No satellite will be needed!”

Damn he was good at sounding like a cranky old nut.

The Marshal said, “I see!” He sounded like he was trying not to laugh. “I am sorry but we’re going to have to confiscate this equipment, Mr. Tillinghast. I have all the permissions right here.”

“What! My life’s work!”

“After it’s inspected, and pending approval, you can work on it in a safer location, sir.”

“The Devil, sir! And it is he who has arranged this! My equipment may indeed show the actual physical location of hell below the crust of the Earth! Do not look so incredulous! The Devil exists, sir!”

“I am sure he does, Mr. Tillinghast!” The man said that all chuckling.

“And when you pass into his realm, even should it be a hundred years from now, he will be waiting to chew on the bones of your soul , you pompous ass! Do you suppose the soul does not have bones? In that realm it is does, I assure you!”

I always loved the way Mr. Tillinghast talks.

“I’m going to ask you to unplug this equipment, please. Mary, could you ask the removal team to come in? They’d better wear gloves, this stuff is pretty old, could have lead or mercury in it . . .”

But in half an hour they was gone. I seen them just driving away in their van, with pieces of his granddad’s equipment and some stuff he took out of an old stereo.