Smog - Baggage of Enternal Night (17 page)

“I’m sorry,” I said, more to myself than to her.

“I want you to come with me,” she said.

“Huh?”

“Charlie, I know how happy you are in Detroit.
You’ve got your friends, your collections. But what’s your future? You’re
struggling with something every time I see you. My relocation will be paid for
and I’ll be making good money, more than I need. It’s a chance to start over
for both of us…together.”

My mind reeled, and I couldn’t determine if it was
Rasputin’s curse knocking me or what Gail just said. “That’s so…sudden.”

“I know, Charlie. But sometimes when your train
comes to station, you’ve got to be ready on the platform, suitcase in hand.”

“Is that why you brought me to dinner with Van
Duyn?”

“I wanted you to meet him. The promotion was a
possibility, something rumored about that I was in the running for. He made me
the offer today. I was planning on telling you over dinner tonight…under better
circumstances.”

“Congratulations.” I wasn’t sure of what else to
say.

“I should have told you what it entailed earlier,”
she said. “But it was just a rumor, and I didn’t want to get our hopes up, or
make it seem like I was some girl suckered by daydreams.”

“Gail, your timing—”

“Like I said, I wish I would have discussed this a
couple weeks ago, when I first heard about it. Maybe you would have been
packing your clothes instead of running around at those auctions. Maybe this
thing
never would have happened.”

Though I appreciated her stance, I doubted I would
have skipped on an auction even if I
was
in the middle of packing.

“We can talk about it later,” I said, though I
didn’t know how much “later” I had. Cold sweat dripped down my temples like
melting frost, and I shivered.

“I know,” she said. “I’m sorry I even told you
about the job when you’ve got your own problems. I believe you about this
haunting, but it’s hard to put into perspective, just something I never
imagined anyone would actually get tangled up with. I hoped that moving would
wipe the slate clean, all our problems taken care of. But there’s always a
hitch, isn’t there?”

I was in fear for my life, and right now all I
felt was guilt for burdening her with my woes. My eyes rolled back, and I
sensed as if I was about to pass out again…

“Charlie?” Gail shook me and patted my face.

I
did
pass out.

“How long was I gone?” I asked. I sensed
Rasputin’s presence, but he wasn’t alone. I heard Joey call to me as well:
vkhodite
.

“Just a few minutes. You’re sick, Charlie. I want
to help you with all this, but you can barely stay awake. You need to go to the
hospital. If what you say is true—you’re infected with some sort of ghost’s
touch—there’s no telling what hideous illness you’ve contracted.”

“Hospitals won’t help. I’ve got to get back and
take care of this now. I’m meeting Ray at the apartments. He’s got a plan.”

“What’s his big plan?”

I certainly didn’t want to tell her we were going
in there for a
stick-em-up
. “We’re going to turn the record player off.”

“That’s it? You defeat the ghost by turning off
the record player? If it’s that easy, why don’t I go over there and do it for
you? You’re too sick to do anything but sleep.”

“No, Gail. You can’t go in there. Hearing the
music is what makes you sick.”

“Wear ear plugs.”

The simplicity of her declaration made me feel
like a little kid being told that two pounds of turds don’t fit in a one-pound
box. It was too simple, too obvious, to do anything
but
make sense. Then
again, nothing about those records made sense. Maybe ear plugs wouldn’t
work—the ghost would slip right on through the rubber. Besides that, I already
heard the music in my head even when it wasn’t around. But I knew, too, the
closer I was in its presence, and the more I listened to Rasputin’s chants, the
greater effect it had on me. The ear plugs, at least, would have to slow down
that effect.

“I knew there was a reason I loved you,” I said.

“What’s that reason? My common sense? What about
my support of your crazy ways, and my compassion and cooking and wit?”

“And extraordinary beauty,” I added.

“What don’t I do for you, Charlie Stewart?” She
pinched the inside of my thigh.

“Stop it, I’m near an invalid!” I cried out with a
giggle. The stress and fear and sickness passed for a second, just a brief
moment in which the sun popped over the horizon and melted that crushing
pressure on my back. Then the sun winked out, and the pressure and fear and
everything else crashed back into place.

“I’ve got to go,” I said.

She looked at me and nodded. “I’m glad I got to
see you.”

“I tried calling earlier.”

“I knew it was you. Sorry I didn’t answer. I
thought if I picked up you would cancel on dinner.”

“I was going to.”

She smiled, but it was a pitiful, sad look, the
expression of foreboding and acceptance that whatever was to happen would
probably be for the worst. “I’ll get those ear plugs for you. The neighbor’s
dogs have been keeping me up at night. I guess I won’t be sleeping tonight
anyway.”

Gail went into the other room, and I tried
imagining life without her. I couldn’t. I knew she was right, that I’d grown
dependent on her to keep me sane. She was the one constant in my life, like
going to the track and knowing she was the winning bet every single race. Just
being in Gail’s presence relieved my worries, and the sound of her voice warmed
me with joy. If I was to be taken away by Rasputin, like Joey, I had to make
sure she didn’t follow. I wanted Gail as uninvolved and distant as possible. I
hoped she’d have the life she deserved in New York, and I knew it was a long
stretch to even consider me being a part of it, given the condition I was in. I
know how hokey it sounds but, regardless of what would happen, I just wanted
her to be happy.

She returned into the room, and I thought of the
dramatic final scenes I’d seen in movies like
Gone With the Wind
and
Casablanca
,
those “good-byes” that stain your memories forever with tears. I wanted my
good-bye to have meaning.

Instead, I planted my face in my hands. “Can you
give me a ride back home?”

Chapter
7

Gail asked a lot of questions as we
drove back to the apartments.
How was I feeling? What else did I know about
ghosts? What precautions was I going to take? What if something worse happened
to me? What if I couldn’t turn the record player off?
Her string of
inquiries didn’t instill a lick of confidence in me, and the closer we got to Les
Deux Oies, the less I wanted to chat about it.

Above, the moon posed full. I’d
never been particularly superstitious, but I thought that boded poorly. Wasn’t
the night of the full moon when forces of evil were at their strongest? That
was when the beasties and demons came out, those creatures written about in
monster books or shown oversized on the big screen. There were thin gray
clouds, too, that drifted across the sky, and it made the night even more
ominous.

We arrived and pulled around to
the side of the building where my Crestline sat, looking sadder than a caged
dog. Gail placed her hand on my wrist.

“Be careful,” she said. “Are
you sure you don’t want me to go in there with you or wait for you somewhere
close?”

“Absolutely not. I don’t want
you anywhere near this building.”

“I’ll be too far away if
something happens, if you need me. It’s a twenty minute drive from my house to
here. A lot can happen in twenty minutes.”

“I know, but you’ll be safe at
your home. Wait by the phone, and I’ll call you when it’s over. I’ll be all
right for now; I’ll be with Ray.”

“Good luck,” she said and
kissed me quickly on the lips.

“Love you, dear.”

“Love you, too.”

And then she was gone. I stood
alone in the parking lot, unsure if I would ever see her again. Hell, I was
unsure if I would see the next hour.

I returned inside Les Deux Oies
and walked through the lobby looking for Ray or John. The whole floor was
empty, and it was silent, too. Usually there sounded the hiss of turning pipes
or the echoes of tenant arguments, but now it was so quiet I could’ve heard a
mouse yawn.

I checked my watch, and what I
saw caused me to want to punch myself. It was past eleven p.m. People’s lives
were in peril, and I still couldn’t catch up to the world. Ray said to meet him
in the lobby at ten o’clock, and I wound up over an hour late. Would Ray have
gone up to Joey’s room without me or was he still en route? Could this whole
situation already be resolved? No, no…
it
was still up there; I felt it.

I needed to make a call. I
could go up to my room, but I didn’t want to miss Ray if he came through the
lobby. I thought about leaving a note if we passed each other, but I didn’t
have a pen or paper. Fortunately, a payphone stood outside on the sidewalk.

A minute later I stood under
the shifting moonlight, digging in my pockets for a dime. I triumphed in that
small endeavor and hoped it to be an omen for the rest of the night. I dialed
the rotary for Ray’s North Side consignment shop. For every ring, I felt my
heart beat twice as fast. Nobody answered, and I hung up before it burst.

Where was Ray? This was not
good…I wondered if I should just go back up to Joey’s room now, alone. I willed
myself to wait a bit longer. I returned to the lobby and sat on one of the worn
couches lined in pairs against the foyer. The backrests were punctured with
knife slits, and springs broke through the seat cushions. More than once in the
past, I’d come across a drunk passed out here.

I tried to think up a plan of
attack, but I felt dozy. My mind wandered. I imagined the building back in its
glitzy hotel days; there would have been a doorman dressed to the nines
welcoming you inside with a big smile, and a concierge and bellhop stumbling
over themselves that they couldn’t shake your hand fast enough. Once upon a
time, the lights in here were like a Hollywood marquee sign, and the red carpet
rolled to every room.

Of course, that was an era ago.
Les Deux Oies was like anything else in life; given enough time, it had faded
to become a shadow of its original self, the days of newness and vitality long
gone and nearly forgotten. The apartment building was no more than a piece of secondhand
junk found inside someone’s piece of lost baggage. Original gold leaf along the
wall trim could still be seen, though now it cracked and peeled away like the
hide of a dead animal. Light bulbs and bad wiring needed replacing, the
wallpaper sagged, pipes leaked, and carpet stank.

Ah, who was I kidding? I
condemned the building for being decrepit, when I was in the same condition. If
ever a kettle called the pot black, it was me. Les Deux Oies was a good home,
like an old used shoe that, once broken in, trades its shiny gloss for comfort
and familiarity. I felt like I belonged here; it was something I’d grown with
over the past decade. Together we’d weathered its ups and downs and begun the
final descent into crumbling obscurity.

Yet I
wanted
more…I
wanted
to belong with Gail. It had been a long time since I hoped for something better
for myself. Going to New York could be for me what renovations were to Les Deux
Oies: a new start. Deep down inside, though, I felt I didn’t deserve it. The
self-doubt gnawed at me…life was so fleeting, so
cold
. It was a mockery
to imagine happiness. A voice whispered of meaning beyond what life offered…

I shuddered and got up and went
outside to call Ray’s shop again. I let the phone ring twenty times and was
about to hang up, when someone finally answered.

“Yeah?” The voice made no
effort to hide its aggravation.

“Hi, is this John?” I asked.

“What of it?”

“This is Charlie Stewart. We
met at the auction.”

“Oh, hey. Little late to need
something, isn’t it?”

“I’m looking for Ray. Is he
over there?”

“Ain’t seen him since
yesterday. Want me to take a message?”

“Do you know where he could be?
It’s urgent I find him.”

“Last I heard he went to your place.
Didn’t he show up?”

My heart sank. I had feared
this. “Yeah, he was here, but he went back to the shop.”

“Nobody’s been here all night.”

“You sure?”

“He hasn’t been here. If you
need something else, spit it out. I’ve got inventory to complete.”

Vkhodite.

The word sounded so clear that
I thought John spoke it through the phone. I slammed the handset against the
cradle and returned inside.

If Ray never arrived at his
shop, I knew where he wound up instead. Time was running out, and I prepared
myself to return; I would have to end this horror alone.

This time going up the
elevator, I heard the music begin to form earlier. Its amorphous essence hummed
louder as I passed the third floor, filling in the silence between each click
of the conveyor’s ratcheting gears. The records’ range was spreading. I dug
into my pocket and pulled out the ear plugs Gail had given me. With them jammed
into my ears, the world fell silent.

I reached the fourth floor and
got out, immediately feeling the temperature drop in the hallway. A puff of
wind blew along the corridor, and I thought of how many dozens of jackets I had
in my room and that I should go up there and get one.

No,
I thought.
If
I left now, I might not have the strength to return.
I made my way to
Joey’s room.

His apartment was about ten
rooms down from the elevator bank. I had walked the distance a thousand times
before, but never before with this sense of dread. Every footfall moved in slow
motion, and the distance seemed to triple. I passed two doors that were left
wide open, Joey’s neighbors who walked out and never returned. As I drew
closer, the air grew colder still. I reached his home and didn’t bother to
knock. A scrim of snow and ice bordered the doorframe, and icicles hung off the
knob.

I went inside.

After all I had seen over the
past week, all I experienced—the craziness, the horror, the fear—I was still
taken aback at the absurd changes before me.

There was no far wall to the
apartment. Instead, the room acted as a clearing and, past it, were gnarled,
intertwined limbs of giant pine trees that hinted at a great span of distance
beyond. The living room and the stacks of baggage and collectibles were all
still there but buried under a foot or more of white snow. The gramophone sat
atop a stack of luggage, like an idol upon its alter, surrounded by a ring of
fire. Bands of smoke circled upwards, and I saw that Joey’s apartment no longer
had a ceiling; it was roofed only by a shower of stars twinkling across the
dead-black sky.

Ray was there, kneeling at the
record player. I saw, too, Yefim and Horace Wetzel prostate before the machine.
There were more—ten? fifteen?—new men, women, and children in the group, though
I knew immediately Joey was not amongst them. If my heart were of glass, it
would have shattered at the realization he was gone; there was no coming back
from wherever he’d been taken. Joey Third had made his last gamble, and I knew
it was a losing hand.

Even as I mourned Joey, I
registered what other changes had recently occurred. Most of the people I saw
earlier in the day were also gone, or replaced, including the Scandinavian,
Martin, and his wife. The woman with blue hair was still there, but she was as
I saw Joey last: a fleeting shadow glimpsed within Rasputin, like the image of
a movie projector upon the screen. There were more records stacked by the
gramophone, too, more than originally came in the suitcase.

The second
voice is different on each album...
I remembered Joey telling me in the
lobby. Were there more records because more souls had been
recorded
on
each? As Vic explained, their voices were unlocking the realms of immortality
through the chants. I shuddered, wondering where that immortality would be
spent.

A teenage boy with unruly hair
and zits on his chin stood from the group and walked into the forest, singing
like he was performing an encore at the
Grand Ole Opry
. The tree limbs
parted as he passed and then snapped back into place as if he’d never been
there.

Rasputin opened his arms to me,
expecting my surrender. I stood my ground, frozen by fear as much as by the
cold. The door opened from behind, and an Oriental woman wearing a housedress
lurched inside.

She passed me, walking through
the snow to the fire, and I read the single word she mouthed on her lips.
Vkhodite.

Rasputin smiled and said
something in return. I could only guess as to his reply:
Ne zaderzhivat’sya
v kholodnyy i temnyy…

People were passing through
this room as if it were a way station. He was calling them, through the music,
attracting more followers that he…what? Consumed? Assimilated? What happened to
Joey and the others, where did they go?

Another gust of wind blew
across the room, and the trees rustled. In that movement, their branches parted,
and I saw another clearing, another campfire, far off in the distance. People
were there, and I saw the singing teenage boy sit down. Behind that were the
fairy-tale castles of my dreams. It was a world
within
a world, much as
I saw Joey and the blue-haired woman as people
within
people, perhaps a
mirror image of the reality I used to believe or, perhaps, the echoes of
another time. Rasputin was calling his followers, the Misbegottens, to action.

What had happened to the real
Rasputin? What had he attempted before his death? The book about him was back
up in my room, and I thought of the answers it might hold.

Rasputin still looked at me,
speaking, from behind the record player and campfire. How long would it take
until he comprehended I couldn’t hear him, that his words held no effect while
I wore the ear plugs?

I rushed forward, each footfall
sinking deeper into the drifts of snow. I grabbed Ray from behind and wrestled
him up, trying to haul his limp weight backwards and out the room. The Oriental
woman had sat behind Ray, and she blocked the return path. The campfire sparked
upwards, and the woman reached over and tore at my face with her nails. Her
eyes were blank, and her movement was as if a reflex, such as stepping on a
dead cat’s paw will cause its claws to extend out.

I recoiled away from the
scratching woman, and Ray slipped from my hold. I tried to lift him again but
he was bigger than me, and it was difficult to navigate in the snow. He began
to struggle, batting away my arms, then turned and struck me with his fist. I
fell to my knees in the snow though, with its depth, it was almost like falling
to my waist. I struggled to stand, and the others around the campfire rose and
moved toward me. The Oriental woman lunged again, but this time I was ready.
She was skinnier than a thermometer, so I just shoved her, and she fell
backwards on her keister.

The others came at me but, they
too, had difficulty advancing through the snowdrift. Also they moved slow and
stiff, as if they had boards tied to their limbs and tried to walk across a
tightrope. I could evade them one-by-one, but I didn’t want to find out what
would happen if they got hold of me as a group.