As I Die Lying (30 page)

“
The Insider’s getting
stronger,” I said. “We all agree on that.”

“
If it’s so fucking
all-powerful, why doesn’t it just drive us all out of here and take
Richie over completely?” Loverboy said. “Do some major
housecleaning?”

“
You’re too busy reaching
for Richard’s penis to figure it out,” Bookworm said. “It needs us,
in some crazy way. It’s not just the possession that motivates it.
The Insider has to have someone to lord it over.”

“
And the more the merrier,
apparently,” said Mister Milktoast. “Four heads are better than
one.”

“
Then it struck paydirt
here,” I said. “But maybe this is the way the Insider works. How
many killers claim to hear voices in their heads?”

The sun was weakening, growing softer as
clouds knit a layer across the sky. Somewhere, a church bell rang,
a safe, lonely, human sound. I wondered how many hours it would be
before the police found us. A ticking clock always increased
dramatic tension. Even that old asshole Aristotle knew that, and he
lived back when people used sun dials.

“
Well, I’m starting to
suspect that it can also extend those powers beyond the host,”
Bookworm said. “Maybe with not as much control, but enough to
influence events and behaviors.”

“
That sounds like something
you pulled out of Mister Milktoast’s ass just to complicate
things,” I said. “Sounds too convenient. Like you’re trying to
change the genre so we can publish this as science
fiction.”

“
No, listen. It makes things
happen. It causes people to be in the wrong place at the wrong
time.”

“
Bullshit, Dickworm,” Little
Hitler said. “You’re just trying to let Richard off the hook again.
He’s the one who’s screwed up everyone he touches. Let him take
some of the blame for a change. I don’t know why you guys are
always trying to forgive him. We should be rubbing his face in
every steaming ounce of the shit he’s heaped on the
world.”

“
Love the skin but hate the
skinner,” Mister Milktoast blurted out.

“
And who’s going to take
your side, Little Hitler?” asked Bookworm. “You’re glad the Insider
has found us. It gives validity to everything you stand
for.”

“
What’s this about the
Insider affecting other people?” I said, before they started
arguing.

“
Remember Virginia? How the
voices started after her father began molesting her?” Bookworm
said.

“
Of course he remembers
Virginia,” Loverboy said. “He fucked up my fuck. All because he was
trying to sympathize. What a fucking joke. Just pop ‘em and drop
‘em, Richie-wuss, and the sooner you learn that, the happier we’ll
all be. Especially me.”

“
The Insider was in Ottaqua
all along, laying the groundwork,” Bookworm said.

“
Who appointed you ‘Mr.
Backstory Database’?” Mister Milktoast said through a
pout.

I ignored my oldest friend. “And made Father
and Mother the way they were? And maybe it made Shelley come to my
house even though she barely knew me?”

“
Do you think Loverboy would
get lucky otherwise?” Bookworm asked.

“
Hey, Bookwuss, I resent
that,” said Loverboy. “This boy could charm the habit off a nun.
It’s you guys that make ‘em duck and cover. Mister Milktoast, the
total candy-ass. Richie, the king of navel gazing. And you,
Dickworm, the frigging faith healer, the cosmic child, the deep
thinker. And Little Squiggler. . .need I say more?”

“
Point taken, Loverboy,” I
said. “But I think Bookworm’s on to something.”

“
Run with me, guys,”
Bookworm said, excited for the first time since he’d booked a room
in my flesh hotel. “Leap of faith. Maybe it put Beth in that
gallery on campus on the same day that Richard was
there.”

“
And you’re saying that it
made me fall in love with Beth?”

“
Careful with the L word,”
Mister Milktoast said. “Liability, labia, laborious.”

“
Stay on point,” Bookworm
said. “And let’s go further from there. The Insider openly despises
love, yet it makes sure that you find some version of it. We’re
poison, remember, because we dream and love and hope and reach for
something better than ourselves. And the Insider blames that for
the extermination of its species.”

“
Yet it wants me to love, so
it can enjoy making me kill?” I asked.

“
Which is another problem,
gentlemen,” Mister Milktoast said. “Any minute now Beth will be
waking up, maybe next to a drummer, maybe not. She’ll get up and
make some breakfast. Eventually she’ll start to wonder why her
roommate isn’t up and about. Maybe she’ll knock on the door to
Monique’s room. Maybe she’ll open the door.”

I knew what Beth would see. The Insider had
taken photographs using my brain as the film stock. The project was
currently in development hell.

“
How many witnesses saw
Richard with Monique last night?” said Mister Milktoast. “And
there’s bound to be other evidence at the scene, stray hairs or
semen—”

“
Hey, don’t look at me,”
said Loverboy. “That was more Little Diddler’s cup of tea. I ain’t
into zipless drips.”

“
Let’s not think about that
right now,” I said. There were hundreds of ways to hurt people, and
I had a feeling I’d be learning every one of them.

One of my neighbors was cooking bacon. The
frost was melting across the hills, changing them from silver to
brown. Children were waking up and sneaking into the Halloween
candy they had collected the night before. People were putting away
their masks.

“
And Dickie darling had the
bright idea to go to the party dressed as Jack-the-fucking-Ripper,”
Little Hitler said.

“
That’s what I’m trying to
tell you guys,” said Bookworm. “It’s all too scripted, too perfect.
Richard has no real reason to love Beth, because she’s hardly been
a warm and fuzzy romantic interest.”

“
I don’t know if I can
accept that,” I said. “This was already straining my willing
suspension of disbelief. I mean, being possessed by an ancient soul
virus is one thing. But if you carry this idea back even
further—”

“
Exactly. Was Mother meant
to be an alcoholic? Was her love for you destined to...turn out the
way it did? You have to agree that the Insider would get a great
deal of satisfaction out of something so depraved.”

“
You’re scaring me,
Bookworm.”

“
Maybe that’s the way Evil
has done business throughout history, stacking the deck so that it
always wins.”

“
And maybe it was the
Insider who made me kill Father? And Little Hitler is
innocent?”

“
Just take a little blame
for a change, Richard,’ Little Hitler said. “I know, I know, it’s
against your beliefs to actually accept responsibility for your
actions, not when you can spin some bizarre fantasy to get yourself
off the hook. But go ahead, Bookworm. Your little theory is
amusing, and there’s not a whole hell of a lot to laugh about these
days. Except our gracious host and his eternally leaking heart, of
course.”

“
All the bad things might be
traced back to Richard’s childhood,” Mister Milktoast said,
collaborating with Bookworm. “Maybe the Insider was at work even
earlier than that.”

“
Sally Bakken?” I said. “The
Garage Man? I can’t believe that the Insider has that much power.
It’s just too...”

“
Impossible?” finished
Bookworm. “Just like it’s impossible for you to be carrying on a
conversation with four Little People who live in a place called the
Bone House. It’s impossible for a soul-stealing psychic entity to
sneak into people’s minds and make them kill, just so it can live
forever. It’s impossible for you to carry the case histories of the
human race’s worst butchers inside the filing cabinets of your home
office.”

“
But I don’t have those
memories—”

“
No. You’re outside. But
they’re here, inside, all the memories of every murder.”

I had a headache, and it was more than just
the residue of beer. If I was just a temporary host, the Insider
might already be sizing up its next victim.

“
It could already be
outlining a sequel,” Bookworm said. “Because it’ll eventually get
tired of you, Richard. It’ll break you down and use you up. If you
don’t get caught first.”

“
I’ve got a feeling it wants
a final victory before it lets me disintegrate.”

“
Yes. One last
victim.”

“
One true love. The perfect
blasphemy.”

“
Come on, Bookworm,” Mister
Milktoast said. “This is starting to sound like self-referential
metafiction. And you know such a thing can only end
badly.”

I pressed my temples. This had to be a
nightmare, and I’d awaken with damp sheets and a hangover and a
wife, kids, mortgage, lunch date at the golf club. A regular,
boring, fucking pleasant life, one not worth writing about.

“
Better take the Ripper suit
to the cleaners, Richard,” Mister Milktoast added. “Might have a
few spots on it that I couldn’t sponge out. It has to be back at
the costume rental tomorrow.”

“
Thanks for keeping me on
task, Mister Milktoast.”

“
Beth is going to need
comforting after the shock wears off. We’d better practice being
indignantly outraged, or whatever it is society expects on such an
occasion.”

“
That’ll be a switch,” I
said. “Beth crying on my shoulder for a change.”

“
I took a trophy,” Little
Hitler said, walking to the dresser, where a lump lay covered by a
towel.

“
You’re a sick puppy,
Diddler,” Loverboy said. “I like that in a headmate.”

I flinched as he yanked the towel away. There
lay Beth’s brown hat, headless. Mister Milktoast purred in
excitement.

“
Now leave me alone,” I
said. “I’d better get some writing done before things get crazy
around here.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

I have come to believe all
the rest is the fault of those big-time publishers, the ones who
wouldn’t recognize genius if it rolled up on a courier bike with a
serving of
foie gras
packed inside a warm duck
.
If only they had purchased the novel, the story
would have ended there and I would have gone on to the life of a
struggling, frustrated writer with suicidal tendencies. A poor
man’s Palahniuk, a motherless Lethem, a born-again Brautigan, a
disarmed Hemingway.

Alas, it was not to be. Beth called me Monday
after work, while I was opening the last of that day’s 19 rejection
slips.

“
R-Richard?”

“
Yes?” Mister Milktoast
said.

“
Did you hear?”

I cleared my throat and delivered the line as
I’d rehearsed it, Richard Burton by way of James Dean, with a
little Peter Lorre thrown in for spice. “Yes. My God, it’s so
terrible. How are you?”

“
When I opened her door and
found her—”

The dam broke. She sobbed over the phone.

I despised women’s tears. They made me angry
because I didn’t know how to shut them off. I was so grateful to
have Mister Milktoast. “I’m sorry, Beth. God, I’m so sorry.”

She sniffled and gasped, “I...I just can’t
believe it.”

“
I wanted to come over when
I heard, but I was afraid you’d think I was being
too...presumptuous. How are you doing?”

“
I’ll live, damn it. But
Monique won’t. What kind of monster would do such a
thing?”

What kind of monster, indeed. “I don’t know,
Beth. I honestly don’t know.”

Mister Milktoast looked at my fingernails.
They were ragged from Bookworm’s biting. How could those be
murderer’s hands? Those were innocent, with blunt broad fingers,
hands made for loving, holding, typing, waving good-bye.

I let Beth dry her eyes and blow her nose
before I spoke again. “Listen, do you need anything? Where are you
staying?”

“
I’m over at Xandria’s
place. She’s got a spare room. She’s letting me stay here
until...“

“
Why didn’t you call me?”
Little Hitler said. He’d forgotten the script, the little
prick.

Silence.

“
Can I come over there?” I
asked. “I need to see you.”

“
I’m afraid...I don’t think
I’ll be very good company.”

“
I want to be there for you,
Beth. That’s what...um, friends are for.”

“
Okay. It would be nice. I
could use a hug…”

I beat Loverboy back into his room, where he
could flip through the Insider’s nude photo collection instead of
wrecking my cover story.

Beth continued. “But I’m warning you, I’m a
total mess.”

“
It’s okay,
Beth.”

“
No. It’ll never be okay
again.”

“
I’m here for whatever you
need. That’s my promise.” Little Hitler chuckled at that word
“promise,” but I rolled it into a cough to disguise the glee.
“Cross my heart and hope to die.”

She gave me directions to Xandria’s
apartment, stopping twice to blow her nose. I passed Beth’s place
on the way uptown. The sidewalk was roped off with yellow crime
tape, and a group of spectators gawked from the sidewalk. A
television van was pulled up by the curb, and a man behind the
wheel was eating a sandwich. Two police cruisers were parked out
front, a big blocky Chevy Caprice and a new aqua Crown Victoria. I
saw movement inside the apartment, but I couldn’t distinguish any
faces.