Shadows of the Emerald City (47 page)

A stupid happy grin played over his face. With the sixty he had left, and the hundred overdraft on their checking account, he could catch a balloon out to Wichita, then hop a Greyhound back to Knoxville, where he grew up. Get a fresh start. Still have some cash left for meals and booze.

He toyed with the idea of leaving right away, as soon as the bottle arrived. Screw Dorothy. Screw four a.m. She’d probably call the Winkies anyway. It was time to trade up, time to write off his ten dismal years with that bitch.

1:50 a.m.

He picked up the little brown book again, ran his thumbs over its fine, high-quality paper, ruffled its gilt edges. On the first page, underneath where the C-note had been, English words in Gothic script stared at him. The print swam under his bleary eyes.

“
DEAR FRIEND
,” the words began,

Please accept this small token of respect as an incentive to continue your journey through the pages of this treatise, which offers the most important of all paths, that which leads to the true desires of your heart.

“
Heard that one before,” he muttered.

He’d done it all before, in fact. Started young, just after dad left and mom finished drinking herself to death. Amway, multi-level marketing, telephone soliciting—even some three-card monte before he figured out where his real talents lay.

“
I took your cash, okay?” he lectured the book, “But I’m the one in charge here, pal. Not you.”

He punctuated his words by stabbing the book with his index finger. The stabbing felt good.

He turned the page.

The title read: “
A Spell for Control of an Inconstant Woman
.”

He busted out laughing.

“
Oh, you little SOB,” he told the book, shaking it fondly under the lamp, “Oh, you SOB. Control a woman! Yeah, yeah, that’s the ticket.”

Then he stopped laughing. What did “Inconstant” mean, anyway? He didn’t know that word. What if it meant something weird, like the gal was on her period?

He closed the book, feeling wary of it. Then he opened it again and ran an index finger over the words of the spell. They were Latin words. He could tell that much. He mouthed a few syllables, massacring the ancient language.

He tried to flip to the next page. The book wouldn’t let him. Its remaining pages stuck together now like they were glued. He felt a chill rise up his spine.

Maybe he should throw the book in the trash right now, get rid of it. He’d read all those stories as a kid, stories of monkey’s paws and magic lamps and deals with the devil that never quite turned out like you’d planned…

But the book had just given him the hundred. A hundred in cold, hard cash, and not just some empty promise. That was more than the devil usually fronted you, in those stories.

So he would read the spell. Out loud, but backwards. No, not backwards. Every other line, the odd ones, then back to the even ones. No, no, all the words, but chopped up. Like a sobriety test. That way, it might still work. But if there were any funny hoodoo associated with it, he’d have broken it up.

It had to work.

You still got it, pal
.

That’s what he told himself.

He read the spell, out loud, chopped up like he‘d planned.

Nothing happened.

Nothing, except a wave of fatigue crashed over him. He tried to stay awake, to keep his eyes open, but his limbs suddenly felt like lead. He couldn’t sit up any more. He felt himself collapse into the bed.

The last thing he saw was the words inscribed on a dusty brass plaque at the head of the bed.

SWEET DREAMS, JUST LIKE HOME.

Then he was falling, falling…

2:35 a.m.

The phone was ringing. It had been jingling for some time now, its tone distorted by his dreaming mind into a buzzing insect noise. Bert often dreamed of insects when he slept in the Land of Oz. In his dreams, flies buzzed around his helpless head, entered his gaping mouth and vibrated down his throat, making his feet dance wildly.

He groaned. He felt so boozy, damp and heavy like wet laundry. Like he was melting into the bed.

He tried to sit up.

He was stuck.

The phone was still ringing. He tried again, straining to rise from the bed. It must be Dot calling. He had to get to that phone, damn it! He grunted and struggled. But he couldn’t move.

His felt his heart pounding. He tried to turn his head. It wouldn’t budge. If he’d gone paralyzed—

He listened to the raspy breaths coming out of his mouth. He saw something moving, out of the corner of his eye.

Dusty wallpaper ran around the room above the paneling. He could barely make out the pattern in the semi-darkness. It was supposed to be flowers, an endless repetition of some thin twiggish fancy long-stemmed thing. But it didn’t look like that now. The patterned things on the paper looked like insects. Long, thin, evil insects, staring down at him with their large, multipart eyes.

The name for them came to him unbidden:
The Fleeby-Jeebies
.

He cried out, breathing hard, and tried to move again. His arms and legs were sinking into the bed. The bed was holding them tight, swallowing them up. He couldn’t budge.

The phone had stopped ringing. He barely noticed. He swallowed hard and dry. He was sinking, sinking slowly into the bed that felt like it was full of quicksand. It was warm now, filled with body heat. It smelled musky, like a woman.

It was eating him alive.

He cried out, at the top of his lungs. The bed gripped his face and head, squeezing, making his temples pound. He grunted and strained and arched his back up an inch or two off the bed, struggling, twisting, gurgling—

A sharp pain snapped like lightning up his lower back. He gasped and collapsed back onto the bed. He panted, trying to control the pain and the panic.

He cried out again. The bed was constricting his lungs, poking him painfully in his sides. What began as a screech ended in a pathetic sob.

He felt the bed molding itself to him, oozing up around his scrotum, invading his anus with its warmth. It gripped his wrists, his ankles—

He had a sudden urge to just let go, to let it happen, to let the bed swallow him and be done with it. To give up.

Then the bed began invading his ears. A sudden, agonizing stab of pain radiated from his jaw into his neck and head. There was a crackling, popping sound.

The bed was destroying his jaw joint.

Now he understood. It was going to break all his bones, starting with the more fragile ones. Crush him into liquid jelly before it absorbed him.

The bed had teeth.

He screamed, once more, with everything he had left.

He heard a knock, the turning of a key, and the door opened to his room.

“
Mr. Lister?” a distant voice said.

He gave out a whimper for help.

The muffled voice drew nearer.

“
Do you need help, Mr. Lister?” the voice asked.

He tried to nod his head. He couldn’t.

A strong hand gripped his. It pulled him suddenly up, out of the bed with an awful sucking sound, to an upright position. The bed let go.

Bert felt a numbness in his limbs. The room went gray and danced with stars. Then it all went black.

When he came back he was still on his feet, just barely, wobbling like jelly. He was face-to-face with Francisco, the desk clerk. A sudden sob of relief burst out of him. He fell forward into the startled hotel clerk’s arms.

“
Are you all right, sir?”

Francisco smelled of Old Spice and tired sweat. His slicked hair looked years older than his smooth face. He wore standard hotel attire, a green polyester leisure suit over a lime green silk shirt.

After a moment, Bert pushed away from the olive-faced clerk, turned, and looked back behind him, his heart still pounding. It was solid again. A normal bed. No more quicksand.

He shook out his trembling limbs. Had he dreamed it? Some boozy nightmare? Every muscle in his body felt macerated. He turned back to Francisco.

“
You—” he began, “I—” Unable to finish the sentence, he put his face in his hands and wept like a baby.

When he looked up again, Francisco was still standing in front of him, looking embarrassed.

“
I tried calling you on the phone, but no answer,” Francisco said, tilting his head slightly to the right, as though uncertain of how to proceed, “And-and-I then I heard yelling from the room. I wondered if something was wrong. So I used my key. I brought you the bottle of absinthe you asked for—but I wonder—if you really need—to be drinking any more right now?”

Francisco’s words trailed away. Bert stared up at him, bleary-eyed. He extended his hand slowly and took the bottle of glowing green liquid. A minute later, he remembered the hundred in his pocket. He jammed a hand into the pocket, pulled out the bill, and slapped it into the clerk’s hand.

“
Keep the change,” he croaked.

Francisco gave him a funny look.

“
You just saved my life, buddy,” Bert said, “Keep the change!”

Francisco shook his head.

“
That’s okay, Mr. Lister,” he said, “I didn’t save—save your life. I just brought you the change you wanted. The sixty dollars, just like you said.”

He was backing away from Bert now, from the bed. He laid the three twenties on top of the TV set, covering a rash of cigarette burns.

“
Thanks,” Bert said.

He wagged the bottle at him. “And thanks for this.”

“
No problem,” Francisco responded, still backing toward the door.

Francisco paused two paces from the door. He looked uncertain. Bert had a sudden, awful thought: What if Francisco could see the blood on him now, on his stained pants? What if he called the Winkies?

“
Mr. Lister,” Francisco said, his face grim, “There’s something else I need to tell you. Before I came down here to bring you the booze, there was a man at the front desk. The man was asking about you.”

“
About me?”

“
Yes, sir. A bald man. With hard eyes. Tall. Barrel chest.”

Oh, shit
.

“
Tinny,” Bert muttered, shaking his head.

He felt a laugh building up inside of him, a laugh on the verge of hysteria. The laugh forced its way out of him a second later.

“
Are you all right, sir?”

“
Yeah. I’m fine. Just dandy.”

Tinny
.

He laughed again, a chuckle that ended in a wheeze.

“
The bald man made me a bit frightened, sir. I didn’t tell him anything.”

“
Thanks.”

“
He’s still around here somewhere, I think. Would you like me to call—the Winkies—?”

“
No.”

“
Well, all right. But maybe you should wait in the room for a while. Until he goes, you know. I can call you if he stops by to let me know he is leaving.”

“
Thanks. Thanks a million, Francisco.”

The clerk nodded, took the two final wary steps to the door, and moved out of the room, closing it.

3:14 a.m.

Bert turned and gave the bed a malevolent stare. He felt like pissing into it. He’d like to hose down the arrogant sea-green sheets, the innocent-looking bedspread, the fluffy pillows…Had it all been a nightmare?

He wondered if he’d ever be able to lie in a motel bed again, without thinking about—.

But he was more sober now, more in control of himself. His mind was working again. He had to get out of this room.

He looked up toward the ceiling. The dusty wallpaper was flowers again. No more fleeby-jeebies.

He just had to get out of this room.

He realized something. Four o’clock didn’t matter anymore. He couldn’t skip town now, not even at four.

She’d called Tinny. That stupid bitch had called Tinny instead of him!

He was dead meat.

He stared at the book on the bedside table. It looked menacing now, its leather cover sneering at him. He knew the book had something to do with the bed swallowing him up. He was sure of it. And something to do too with the call from Dot he’d missed, before she called Tinny.

He should burn that book.

No, wait. The call had been from Francisco, not from Dorothy. Dot hadn’t called him at all yet.

And why the hell not?

There was too much going on. More than he could understand. Lady Luck had gone schizo on him. His head hurt like hell. He felt dizzy. He needed to fix the angles, to know where he stood.

He set down the bottle and picked up the book. Maybe he could reset things, try again. He held it by the edges, like a hot potato. It let him turn past the “woman” spell now. He drew in a deep breath.

The next page had that Gothic script again.

Follow my instructions
, it said,
and I will give you the deepest desires of your heart.