As I Die Lying (23 page)

"You gutless little worm," said Little
Hitler. "You've always been too weak to grab what you wanted. You
can't even control your own pathetic sack of meat."

I never needed to...do something like that.
Never needed hate.

"Hate? Oh, you
loved
Daddy's dancing
boots. You loved the bruises and the taunts. You loved Mommy
dearest. In the best and worst ways.”

And I have you to thank for what happened to
Father.

"Sure you do, Richard. But remember this. I'm
just another of your monster masks."

I DIDN'T ASK FOR THIS. I DIDN'T ASK FOR ANY
OF YOU.

"Sometimes monsters are made and not born.
Just ask the one who knows.”

And who would that be, Little Hitler?

"Oh, haven't you met?"

What are you talking about?

"The days of cowering are over. No more
hiding in the closet. You missed a payment on the Bone House
mortgage. This house is in foreclosure. You’ve been evicted."

No...

I turned and ran up the basement stairs,
missing the top step as my eyes blurred. I fell onto the kitchen
linoleum. The phone was ringing. Or it might have been my ears.

I laid there for minutes or hours, as my
little friends took their turns behind my eyelids. Finally I lifted
myself and went to bed. My heart played its sick rhythm, pumping
sorry blood through the sewage pipes in my limbs. Night fell,
harder than the night in my skull, black, solid, and merciless.

"Like a house of bricks," whispered Mister
Milktoast. “But I tried, Richard.”

"We all tried," said Bookworm.

"Not all of us,” said Mister Milktoast.

What happened?
Tell me.
Surely you owe
me that much.

"Some things are better left unknown."

But it's me. My body. My life.

"Oh, but you're wrong, Daddy Killer," Little
Hitler said with a sneer. “Or should I say Mother Fucker?”

I clutched my head, pressed my fingers into
my temple as if to squeeze his voice out like pus from a boil.

Memory came flooding in, blessed memory,
cursed memory: Shelley in a swing at the town park. The park is
circled by laurels, tucked away from the street. A skewed slide
huddles under the branches of a birch on the far side of the park.
The empty seats on either side of Shelley shiver in the wind, like
ghosts rattling their chains. The park is empty, its summer charms
gone to weed. Shelley is laughing. She has her back to me. Hands
are on her shoulders.

My hands. No, not quite mine.

Shelley straightens her body, rocks her
shoulders back, and shakes her hair free. She lifts her legs and
Loverboy pushes her shoulders. Shelley grips the chains and goes
into the air, defying gravity. She comes back quickly, and Loverboy
pushes again, from the waist this time. He watches as she presses
against the sky, purple dress billowing.

And I am Loverboy. I see as he sees. But it's
not just Loverboy. Something else watches from behind our
eyeballs.

Shelley soars up and out, to that delicate
moment of suspension at the height of her swing, to zero gravity
framed against the sun. She is a goddess, Hera in silhouette ruling
the heavens, the apotheosis of her gender. There, in that eye
blink, she attains her immortality.

And I am almost willing to condemn my
salacity. I am seized by rapture and nearly converted.

But gravity holds sway, rushing her back once
again to Earth, into my human hands. The touch of flesh brings
earthly desires. The illusion shatters. She is again meat, prey to
be snared, a trophy to be won.

But was it my memory, or the one they gave
me? Mister Milktoast interrupted, like a tour guide shouting over a
street musician. I was once again in bed, twisting the sheets,
damning the dark, a reluctant lodger in the skeletal structure
where all doors led to one place.

"We were careful, Richard. I made certain of
that," he said.

Careful?

"You picked her up at the college, after one
of her classes. Brick building. Five o'clock."

Of course. How could I forget?

"Sarcasm doesn't become you."

Everyone
becomes me. That’s the problem.

"More than you know, Richard."

What's that supposed to mean?

"While the cat's away, the mice will
lay."

Speaking in tongues again? Or does the cat
have them?

"Remember, Richard. It wasn't your fault. It
never is."

Then why do I get the fucking guilt?

"Because you can’t get enough of your own
misery," Little Hitler said.

You, Little Hitler. You're at the root of
this, aren't you?

"You flatter me flatter than ever. But I'm
afraid I can't take the credit for what happened to poor precious
Shelley."

You know, don't you? Why do you get my
memories instead of me?

"Mysteries of the world, Richard. Sorry, I
promised not to tell. Only the typewriter knows."

Little Hitler?

"He's gone, Richard, " said Mister Milktoast.
"Back into his gas chamber, to gnaw on the bones of the past."

What's the secret? I know you're only trying
to protect me, but you always say "The truth will set you free for
a limited time only, offer not available where prohibited by
law."

"I can't tell you, Richard.
I'd like to, but there are other considerations. Sometimes, the
truth is only a heavier set of chains. Let's just say there
are
other
forces
at work."

Other forces? But I thought Loverboy...

"Believe me, Dickie
Darling," Loverboy said. "I
wanted
a turn. I wanted a turn real bad. But Mister
Milkshit is right. My nuts no longer rule the nuthouse."

But...my memory. With
Shelley at the park.
Your
memory.

"That's about the best feel I copped, man. A
little grabass there in the swing. And a little bit more, later. A
piece, you might say. But a gentleman never tells."

Since when did you qualify as a
gentleman?

"Oh, I was real gentle. Compared to what's
behind Door Number Three."

"Loverboy," Mister Milktoast said sternly.
"Poker face."
"Poke her face. Ha-ha-hilarious, Wiltdiddle. You afraid of the big
bad wolf?"

"Richard knows too much already."
But I don't know anything.

"And you're better off, old friend," Mister
Milktoast said. “Ignorance is blistered.”

"Now rest your head and sleep. Come on,
Loverboy, back into the darkness with me. Leave Richard alone."

"Is that a proposition, Milkshit? I never did
go for Greek love, but, hell, I'll try anything once."

"Your crudity never ceases to amaze,
Loverboy. Let Richard sleep."

So I could dream. So I would sink into the
quicksand of my subconscious while boots walked the high ground.
They were gone, my little friends, my inner voices, my lunatic
housemates, gone to roost like brown bats. And I was alone.

Alone with whatever owned the black breath
that blew its wind up my spine.

I tried to think of Beth, to find her golden
glowing memory, a needle of hope in a burning haystack. But I saw
only the fogs and shadows, the tricks my own psyche played on me.
And what good would Beth do? Another balm, another prop, another
excuse.

Rustle, click, clatter.

Something was shuffling like a rat behind the
Bone House walls. The thing that had chewed holes in the baseboard
of my brain, that had sprung every steel trap I had ever laid
against it.

"Richard Allen Coldiron."

Its voice reverberated through my ductwork,
sliced through the marrow, drew closed every curtain against its
chill. I thought at first that it was Little Hitler, trying on a
new mask or a sharper moustache. But then it spoke again,
front-door loud, slamming the knocker.

I knew then this was the hunter, the shadow
of the others, the one who had haunted the cemeteries of my days.
And I knew, with an instinct that was truer than a star map, that
all the old insanities were a party game compared to this new
one.

For the first time in my miserable life, I
wondered if maybe I was really crazy. Sure, I was different. I
accepted that. Through Bookworm, I had studied multiple
personalities, dissociative disorders, psychoses. I had split the
finest hairs of schizophrenia. I had introspected and analyzed with
the most acute lenses.

“
You crossed Freud with Jung
and came out as a Skinner,” Mister Milktoast joked from behind a
distant door.

Madness was a perfectly ordinary human
condition.

The nature of the beast.

Plus I was a writer, which made it almost
mandatory.

But that well-explored and accustomed madness
was familiar ground. My Little People were part and parcel of my
earthly baggage. They could at least be understood, in their own
fashion. They all had their motives, fantastic or not, and were
relatively consistent.

But that night, with a clarity that was so
sweeping that it almost brought comic relief, the truth shone its
cruel light into my mind.

At last I knew who worked my meat
mannequin.

I had met the enemy, and it was I.

"After all these
years,
" it said. “
A pleasure to meet me
.”

I didn't know how to address this new thing,
because to allow it voice would be to admit its existence. I
stuttered, stumbled, and swallowed a lump of dread. When faced with
the unpleasant reality, the best thing to do is stall, then call a
lawyer. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“
Come, now, Richard. Do you
think you could have accomplished all this on your own? Without me,
you’d really be far too boring.”

“
You’re losing
me.”

“
You were already lost. But
I let you do all the typing because…well, as you can see, I don’t
have any fingers.”

It was hard to argue with that kind of logic,
but I argued anyway, until he took over this sentence and wouldn’t
let me finish.

"This book is mine now."

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Swim with me, Richard.

Flow with me through the channels of your
brain. Float with me in darkness. Join me in this rich, mad soup.
Fool yourself again. And when you remember me, when you tell of me,
as I know you must, give them their money’s worth.

At long last, you have found me, your
omniscient narrator. I thought I might have to wade through more of
your human years. But time is nothing to me. No time, only tides,
forever licking at your shores. Or licking your shoes, as Mister
Milktoast would put it. Sole slobber.

You are a most welcoming
host. Many have fought me, without success. But you invite me like
Loverboy with a raging boner. You
need
me, almost as much as I need
you.

I know what you're thinking.
But you're wrong. I'm not just another of your voices. I'm not
Little Hitler playing one of his pranks. Your Little People come
from inside, this silly little conceit you call the “Bone House,”
because you’re afraid to embrace your true nature. But I
am
nature.

Your little friends call me the Insider. But
names are meaningless. I have been called many names over the eons.
When you've been around as long as I have, one name serves as well
as another. I mean, “Richard Allen Coldiron”? Who would ever fall
for that? Who are you trying to kid?

The doors are numerous, Richard, here in your
house of mirrors. It was difficult, searching and probing your
memories. But it was joyful work. So much pain. So much to nourish
me. I was weak, after that short stay in Virginia.

Oh, the name brings fresh agony?

Yes. Virginia.

Virginia.

VIRGINIA
.

Your bitterness is sweet, Richard. Your guilt
has given me food for thought. Your pain has made me strong. Eat it
and feed me, you pathetic bastard.

But Virginia was a mistake. Not my first, and
certainly not my last. Others of my race have been destroyed by
such mistakes.

How, you ask? How, what, why. Blah blah
blah.

You humans are so obsessed by your need to
understand. That is your greatest flaw. That is why I've never been
without a host. That is why I've walked among your human minds so
easily. Shoot up a school, move on. Strap on explosives and walk
into a crowded market. Get elected to office and manipulate others
into warfare. If only there were more of us. We could get things
done.

Since you crave self-knowledge, I'll grant
you that knowledge. Because knowledge makes you vulnerable. Your
knowledge is my power. Your guilt keeps me alive.

You don't believe me. I'm not surprised.
Humans never accept that there are other forces at work beyond the
scope of their tidy little scientific measurements. They cling to
this illusion of control, this vision of themselves as masters of
their own destiny. But we were here before you, born in the offal
of this planet's creation, in the hot gases and star fire. We
drifted without form, as pure energy, absorbing nutrients from
simple cellular activity. But we always had to change and adapt, as
the earth aged and organisms became more complex. Our species was
trapped here by the very symbiotic relationship that allowed us to
exist.

Then evolution in its cruelty brought sudden
change. Human consciousness. We found rich feeding grounds in the
chemicals of your psychic energy, and we assimilated ourselves
among your species. But the cosmos played its great joke on us.

We were there when Eve plucked the fruit,
when Adam munched down, and we learned of appetite. We needed more,
always more, we needed your emotions and pleasures and pains, and
soon we were dependent on the human race for our survival. We lost
the ability to duplicate ourselves, we lost our language, we lost
our power over the earth's elements. Soon we even began thinking
like humans.