Peter Straub - Lost Boy Lost Girl

In the past sixteen months, Mark had e-mailed his uncle four times, not so briefly as to conceal a tone Tim found refreshing for being sidelong, sweet, and free of rhetorical overkill. Mark’s first and longest e-mail used the excuse of a request for advice, Tim thought, as a way to open communications between them.

From: munderhill697@aol.com

To: tunderhill@nyc.rr.com

Sent: Sunday, February 3, 2002 4:06 PM

Subject: speak, o wise one

hi de ho

this is your nephew mark in case u couldn’t decipher the from line. so I was having this lil disagreement with my father, and I wanted 2 ask your advice. after all u managed 2 get out of this burg & travel around & u write books & u live in nyc & all that means u shd have a pretty open mind. I hope it does.

bcuz u & u alone will decide what i do next. my dad sez he will go along with u no matter what. I dunno maybe he doesn’t want 2 have 2 decide. (mom sez, quote, don’t ask me, I don’t want to hear abt it, unquote. that’s what mom sez.)

i turn 14 next month and 2 celebrate my bday I’d like 2 get a tongue piercing. 1 of my friends has a pierced tongue and he sez it isn’t 2 painful at all and its over in a jiff. I’d really like 2 do this. don’t u think 14 is the rite age 2 go out and do something dumb, provided u do think it is dumb to pierce your tongue, which I obviously do not? in a year or 2 I’ll take it out & go back 2 being boring & normal. or what d’you say, move up 2 a cool tat?

waiting 2 hear from the famous unk

m

From: tunderhill@nyc.rr.com

To: munderhill697@aol.com

Sent: Sunday, February 3, 2002 6:32 PM

Subject: Re: speak, o wise one

Dear Mark,

First of all, it is wonderful to hear from you! Let’s do this more often. I like the idea of our being in touch.

I’ve been thinking about your question. To begin with, I’m flattered that you thought to ask my opinion on such a personal matter. I’m also flattered that your father placed the decision in my hands, but I suppose he really did not want to think about his son having his tongue pierced! If I had a son, I wouldn’t want to think about it, either.

bcuz, as u wld say, the idea of tongue piercings makes me feel a bit queasy. I like your earrings and I think they look good on you, but whenever I see some young person with a metal ball riding on top of his/her tongue, I begin to fret about the discomfort of such an arrangement. Doesn’t it complicate the whole eating business? I almost hate to admit this to you, but to me tongue piercings really do seem like weird self-mutilation. So you are far ahead of me in this regard.

This is not the answer you were expecting, I’m sure. I’m sorry to stand in the way of you getting what you want, but you asked and I had to answer you truthfully. I’d rather think of you without a metal ball in your mouth than with one. Sorry, kiddo, but I love you anyhow.

Is there anything special you’d like me to get for your birthday? Maybe I can make up for being so boring and middle-class.

Uncle Tim

The next day two messages from his family turned up in his Inbox.

From: munderhill697@aol.com

To: tunderhill@nyc.rr.com

Sent: Monday, February 4, 2002 7:32 AM

Subject: Re: speak, o wise one

TYim, this is nme Philip using Mark’s computyer. Hje showed me what you wrote him. I hadf the feeling you’d do the right thing for once. So, well, thanks. IO hate that crap too.

From: munderhill697@aol.com

To: tunderhill@nyc.rr.com

Sent: Monday, February 4, 2002 5:31 PM

Subject: Re: speak, o wise one

>Is there anything special you’d like me to get for your birthday? now that you mention it, yep. ordnance. :)

m

For once, as his brother would put it, Tim was grateful for the Internet’s assumption that its users were incapable of perceiving a joke unaccompanied by a nudge in the ribs. Philip’s error-riddled message contained a different kind of reassurance – that of its having been sent at all.

During Pop’s life, the brothers had come together – meaning that Tim flew to Millhaven from New York – once or twice a year; in the five years since his death, they had scarcely spoken. Pop had come to New York once, as a widower of two years in his late seventies, saying that he wanted to see what all the fuss was about, and he had stayed in Tim’s loft at 55 Grand Street, which he had found awkward and discomfiting. His knees made the trek up and down three flights of stairs difficult, and Tim had overheard him complain to dear Michael Poole, who lived one floor up with the amazing and equally dear Maggie Lah, that he had imagined his son was at least rich enough to put in an elevator. (‘I used to run an elevator, you know,’ he told Michael. ‘At the famous St Alwyn Hotel, right there in Pigtown. All the big musicians stayed there, niggers included.’) The next day, at an informal little get-together Tim put together with Maggie Lah, Michael Poole, and Vinh Tran, who with Maggie owned and operated Saigon, the Vietnamese restaurant on the ground floor of 55 Grand Street, Pop turned to Michael and said, ‘You know something, Doctor? As far as I’m concerned, the whole world can blow up right soon’s I die, and I wouldn’t give a damn. Why should I?’

‘Doesn’t Tim’s brother have a son?’ Michael asked. ‘Don’t you care what happens to your grandchild?’

‘Not a hell of a lot.’

‘You a tough ol’ coot, aren’t you?’ Maggie said.

Pop grinned at her. Vodka had loosened him up to the point where he supposed this stunning Chinese woman could see through the cobwebby disguise of old age to the seductive rascal he was at heart. ‘I’m glad someone down here in New York City is smart enough to understand me,’ he said.

Tim realized he had read through three pages of the new George Pelecanos novel without registering anything more than individual words. He looked up the aisle to discover that the flight attendants handing out the wrapped lunches were only two rows in front of him. On Midwest Air, a one-class airline noted for its wide seats and attentive service, the approach of the in-flight meal could still arouse some interest.

A blond woman with a Smithsonian-quality Millhaven accent handed him a wrapped chicken Caesar salad, more than acceptable by airline standards, and a minute later her twin sister filled his Midwest Air wine glass a quarter of an inch above the line with a decent cabernet, and when he had taken a sip and let it slide down his throat, it came to Tim Underhill that for the past twenty minutes, when he was supposed to be enjoying George Pelecanos as a kind of palate cleanser before making notes for his new and highly uncharacteristic project, he had been engaged in the fruitless task of obsessing about his brother.

If he actually did intend to accomplish any work during this trip, which in spite of everything he hoped he might, he was going to have to stop brooding about his brother and dedicate at least some of his attention to a surprisingly little known figure in American life, Dr Herman Mudgett, a.k.a. H. H. Holmes. Probably the country’s first serial killer and undoubtedly one of its most prolific, Mudgett had adopted the surname of a famous fictional detective and constructed in Chicago a monstrous murder palace in the form of a hotel just in time to siphon off young women in town to attend the 1893 Columbian Exposition. In his vast hotel, he killed almost every woman who became involved with him to a degree greater than serving him breakfast in a local restaurant or selling him collars and cravats at the haberdashery. LD Bechtel, a young musician of Tim’s acquaintance, had suggested that they collaborate on a chamber opera about Holmes, and for the past two months this project had occupied a portion of his thoughts.