Last Days (24 page)
Authors: Brian Evenson;Peter Straub
Tags: #Private Investigators, #Murder, #Horror, #Cults, #Fiction, #Investigation, #Thrillers, #Dismemberment, #Horror Tales
"Just have to report," said Kline.
"Of course," said the Paul. "Might I ask what you have in your hand?"
"This?" said Kline. "Borchert's head."
"Ah, I see," said the Paul.
"I'm going to put him down," said Kline. "I left something outside."
The Paul nodded, started toward the desk and the telephone. Kline hurried outside, took the bucket by the handle, carried it sloshing back in.
By the time he returned, the Paul was already unlocking the heavy door. Kline came closer and put down the bucket and waited.
"You know where to find him," the Paul said. "He'll be waiting for you," he said, and reached out to open the door. Whereupon Kline killed him with the cleaver.
There was a Paul on the other side of the door and Kline greeted him and killed him as well. This Paul was a little harder to kill, having caught a glimpse of the first guard prone on the floor just before Kline swung the cleaver, but in the end he was dead too.
He dragged in the bucket of gasoline, sliding Borchert's head along with his foot.
From there it was just a matter of dousing the parquet and the walls. He spread some in the entryway and then up the stairs and down the hall at the top of the stairs as well. Then he went back down, lighting it as he went.
By the time he reached the bottom, Borchert's head was a ball of fire and there were blue flames licking the floor and walls and Kline's hand was blistering. His shoes and legs and shirt were aflame. He tried to beat himself out and when it kept up he pushed his way out the door and rolled in the doorman's blood. And then, still smoking, his hands starting to shake, he took the doorman's keys and stood at the door, watching. Once he heard shouts, he closed the door, and locked it.
He stood beside the door, listening to what might be screams, what might be merely the crackle and roar of the flames. When it grew too hot and the door itself began to smoke he moved back and slowly away until finally he was standing alone in the street, watching the entire building catch fire. He listened to the sound of the sirens, distant but coming closer.
Where now?
he wondered, at first walking, then loping, then breaking into a run.
What next?
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thanks are due to Paul Miller for first publishing "The Brotherhood of Mutilation" and Paul DiFilippo for writing an introduction to that volume. I'd also like to thank Paul Maliszewski and Paul Tobin Anderson for advice concerning one-handed piano performances and for putting me on the trail of Paul Wittgenstein, the one-armed pianist (and brother of Ludwig Wittgenstein), and Paul LaFarge and Forrest Paul Gander for general encouragement. And to my girlfriend, Paul, and to my two daughters, Paul and Paul.
And the greatest thanks to three honorary Pauls--my publisher Victoria Blake, my agent Matt McGowan, my French editor Claro--and to the ever-generous and ever-brilliant Peter Straub.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Brian Evenson is the author of nine books of fiction, including
The Open Curtain
(2006), which was a finalist for the International Horror Guild Award and the Edgar Award and was named one of the ten best books of the year by
Time Out New York
. Evenson's most recent collection of stories,
The Wavering Knife
(2004), won the International Horror Guild Award. Among his other books are
Altmann's Tongue
(1994), which was the cause of a great deal of controversy, leading to his leaving a teaching job at Mormon-owned Brigham Young University and to his eventual break with the Mormon Church. In 2008 he published
Aliens: No Exit
, an
Alien
movie tie-in novel, from DH Press. A new story collection,
Fugue State
, will be published by Coffee House Press in 2009. He has also published a critical study of novelist Robert Coover and several book-length translations from French, and he is an occasional collaborator with graphic novelist Zak Sally. Evenson's work has been translated into French, Spanish, Italian, and Japanese. He directs Brown University's Creative Writing Program and lives in Providence, Rhode Island with writer Joanna Howard and their dog Ruby. You can find out more about his work at
www.brianevenson.com
.
ABOUT THE BOOK
Last Days
began its life in 2002, when Paul Miller of Earthling Publications approached Brian Evenson about writing a limited-edition novella. At the time, Evenson had just read
Red Harvest
and was fascinated by Dashiell Hammett's relentlessness. He had rediscovered Philip K. Dick's
A Scanner Darkly
, and loved how Dick grafted noir to science fiction. Then he stumbled onto Jonathan Lethem's
Gun, with Occasional Music
, re-read Peter Straub's beautifully crafted
The Throat
, and started looking at Joel-Peter Witkin's photographs. With all that whirling in his head, he sat down, had a few false starts, but eventually arrived at the idea for "The Brotherhood of Mutilation." Earthling published the book, and very quickly it sold out.
Everybody thought that was the end of the project. But somehow a few prints of the original 315-copy print run of the novella got into the right hands. One went to Claro, the French editor of a series called Lot 49, who decided to publish it in translation. Another made its way to Denmark, to the filmmaker Karim Ghahwagi, who wrote a screenplay. Another went to Victoria Blake, then an editor at DH Press, the prose division of Dark Horse Comics.
Almost immediately after the initial publication, Evenson wanted to continue the story, but he knew it needed to hold its own against "The Brotherhood." He was still reading noirs--work by Fredrick Brown, Dan Marlowe, David Goodis, and Richard Stark was most important. Then he saw Odd Nerdrum's painting
One Story Singer
. When two friends separately mentioned that Ludwig Wittgenstein's brother Paul was a one-handed piano player, the elements of "Last Days" suddenly fell into place. By that time, Victoria Blake had started Underland Press, and wanted to publish both of the novellas as a single novel. The first edition was published as an original trade paperback in February 2009.
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