Aftershock & Others Page 4

  I try to get away, to roll off the cot, but I can’t move. My body won’t respond.

  And then I see it. Or rather I see a faint outline, greater darkness against lesser darkness: slim, between four and five feet high. It leans over the bed and reaches out to me. Tiny fingers—cold, damp, ragged fingers—flutter over my face like blind spiders, searching. And then they pause, hovering over my mouth and nose. My God, I can’t stand the odor. I want to retch but the drug in my system won’t let me.

  And then the fingers move. Quickly. Two of them slip wetly into my nostrils, clogging them, sealing them like corks in the necks of wine bottles. The other little hand darts past my gasping lips, forces its way between my teeth, and crawls down my throat.

  The unspeakable obscenity of the taste is swept away by the hunger for air. Air! I can’t breathe! I need air! My body begins to buck as my muscles spasm and cry for oxygen.

  It speaks then. In Marion’s little voice.

  Marion’s…yet changed, dried and stiff like a fallen leaf blown by autumn gusts from bright October into lifeless November.

  “Daddy…”

  “WHEN HE WAS FAB”

  Early on in 1990 my goombah Tom Monteleone asked me to contribute to the first of a series of anthologies he was starting. The Borderlands guidelines were and have always been: no topic, no restrictions, and above all, no clichés.

  “Surprise me,” Tom said.

  Well, with one project or another—Reprisal, Freak Show, Nightworld, and all the short stories—tugging me this way and that, I kept putting it off. So it wasn’t until late in the year that I started “When He Was Fab” for Tom.

  This is one of those stories where I give a blank look when asked where the idea came from. I have a vague memory that it might involve watching the original The Blob for the umpteenth time. My favorite scene has always been the one where the old guy removes the goo from the meteorite; as he holds it up on the end of a stick it seems to leap onto his arm. I may have done my turn-it-over thing and thought, What if the goo has something else in mind besides lunch? I can look back and say it’s a Cinderfella story, but during the writing it was simply happening. The working title was “Dying Outside” (pace Bob Silverberg).

  As I was finishing it, Weird Tales came along and said they wanted to do a special “F. Paul Wilson Issue.” The magazine that had introduced H. P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, Robert Bloch, and other behemoths in the genre wanted to devote an issue to moi? How could I refuse? They needed stories—soon. One of the pieces I sent them was “When He Was Fab.” It’s not true horror, just strange…weird. Perfect for Weird Tales.

  Tom was ticked. So I promised him another for Borderlands 2. It’s hard to say no to Tom; you get the feeling you might end up sleeping with the fishes.

  (NB: As you read, keep in mind when this was written.)

  When He Was Fab

  Floor drains.

  Sheesh. Doug hated them.

  Being super of this old rattrap building wasn’t a bad job. The hours could play hell with you sometimes, but he got a free room, he got his utilities, and he got a salary—if you wanted to call that piddly amount in his weekly check a salary. But you couldn’t knock the deal too hard. Long as he stayed on the job, he had shelter, warmth, and enough money for food, enough time to work out with his weights. Wasn’t glamorous, but a guy with his education—like, none to speak of besides seventh grade and postgrad courses in the school of hard knocks—couldn’t ask for a whole helluva lot more.

  ’Cept maybe for drains that worked.

  The basement floor drain was a royal pain. He hovered over it now in his rubber boots, squatting ankle deep in the big stinky puddle that covered it. Around him the tenants’ junk was stacked up on the high ground against the walls like a silent crowd around a drowning victim. Third time this month the damn thing had clogged up. Course there’d been a lot of rain lately, and that was part of the problem, but still the drain shoulda been working better than this.

  Now or never, he thought, unfolding his rubber gloves. He wished he had more light than that naked sixty-watter hanging from the beam overhead.

  Would’ve loved one of those big babies they used at night games up at Yankee Stadium.

  Jeez but he hated this part of the job. Last week the drain had clogged and he’d reached down like he was about to do now and had come up with a dead rat.

  He shuddered with just the memory of it. A monster Brooklyn brown rat. Big, tough mother that could’ve easily held its own with the ones down on the docks. Didn’t know how it had got in this drain, but the grate had been pushed aside, and when he’d reached down, there it was, wedged into the pipe. So soft, at first he’d thought it was a plastic bag or something. Then he’d felt the tail. And the feet. He’d worked it loose and pulled it free.

  Just about blew lunch when he’d looked at it, all soft, puffy, pulpy, and drippy, the eyes milk white, the sharp yellow buck teeth bared, the matted hair falling off in clumps. And God, it stunk. He’d dumped it in his plastic bucket, scooped up enough of the rapidly draining water to cover it, then run like hell for the Dumpster.

  “Whatta y’got for me this week, you sonuvabitch?” he said aloud.

  He didn’t usually talk to floor drains, but his skin was crawling with the thought of what might’ve got stuck down there this time. And if he ever grabbed something that was still moving…forget about it.

  He pulled the heavy rubber gloves up to his elbows, took a deep breath, and plunged his right hand into the water.

  “What the hell?”

  The grate was still in place. So what was blocking it?

  Underwater, he poked his fingers through the slots and pulled the grate free, then worked his hand down the funnel and into the pipe.

  “What now, you mother? What now?”

  Nothing. The water felt kind of thick down there, almost like Jell-O, but the pipe was empty as far as his fingers could reach. Probably something caught in the trap. Which meant he’d have to use the snake. And dammit to hell, he’d left it upstairs.

  Maybe if he squeezed his fingers down just a little farther he’d find something. Just a little—

  Doug reached down too far. Water sloshed over the top of his glove and ran down the inside to his fingers. It had a strange, warm, thick feel to it.

  “Damn it all!”

  But when he went to pull back, his hand wouldn’t come. It was stuck in the hole and all his twisting and pulling only served to let more of the cloudy water run into his glove.

  And then Doug noticed that the water was no longer running down his arm—it was running up.

  He stared, sick dread twisting in his gut, as the thick, warm fluid moved up past his elbow—crawled was more like it. After a frozen moment he attacked it with his free hand, batting at it, wiping it off. But it wouldn’t wipe. It seemed to be traveling in his skin, becoming part of it, seeping up his arm like water spreading through blotter paper.

  And it was hot where it moved. The heat spread up under the half sleeve of his work shirt. He tore at the buttons but before he could get them undone the heat had spread across his chest and up his shoulder to his neck.

  Doug lost it then. He began whimpering and crying, clawing at himself as he splashed and scrambled and flopped about like an animal caught in a trap, trying to yank his right hand free. He felt the heat on his face now, moving toward his mouth. He clamped his lips shut but it ran into his nostrils and through his nose to his throat. He opened his mouth to scream, but no sound would come. A film covered his eyes, and against his will his muscles began to relax, lowering him into the water, letting it soak into him, all through him. He felt as if he were melting, dissolving into the puddle…

  Marc hopped out of the cab in front of the Graf Spee’s entrance, paid the driver with his patented flourish, and strolled past the velvet cords that roped off the waiting dorks.

  Bruno was on the door tonight. A burly lump of muscle with feet; at thirty-five he was maybe ten years old
er than Marc; his hair was a similar brown but there the resemblance stopped. As Marc approached the canopied entrance he wondered what Bruno had looked like as an infant, or if the doorman’s mother had been prescient. Because Bruno had grown up to be the epitome of Brunoness.

  “Ay, Mista Chevignon,” Bruno said with a wide grin and a little bow. “How ya doon tanight?”

  “Fine, Bruno. Just fine.”

  Keeping his hands jammed deep into the pockets of his Geoffrey Beene tweed slacks, and trapping his open, ankle-length Moschino black leather coat behind his elbows while exposing his collarless white Armani shirt, buttoned to the throat, Marc swiveled and surveyed the line of hopefuls awaiting the privilege of admission to the Spee.

  “Real buncha loooosuhs tanight, Mista C.”

  Marc let his eyes roam the queue, taking in all the well-off and the trying-to-look-it, some natives, some tunnel rats and bridge trolls, all dressed in their absolute best or their most fashionably tacky ensembles, trying to look so cool, so with-it, so very-very, but unable to hide the avid look in their eyes, that hunger to be where it was most in to be, to dance on the rotating floor of the Spee and search for the famous faces that would be on the “Star Tracks” page of next week’s People.

  “Have they been good little aspirants, Bruno?”

  “Yeah. No wise guys so far.”

  “Then let’s make someone’s day, shall we?”

  “Whatever you say, Mista C.”

  He sauntered along outside the cords, watching them stare his way and whisper without taking their eyes off him. Who’s he?…You ever seen him before?…Looks like Johnny Depp…Nah, his shoulders is too big…Gawd, he’s gawgeous!…Well, if he ain’t somebody, how come he’s getting in ahead of us?…I dunno, but I seen him around here before.

  Indeed you have, sweetheart, he thought.

  The last speaker was a bony, brittle, bottle blonde with a white hemline up to here and a black neckline down to there. Knobby knees knocking in the breeze, spiky hair, a mouth full of gum, three different shades of eye shadow going halfway up her forehead, and wearing so many studs and dangles her ears had to be Swiss cheese when her jewelry was off.

  Perfect.

  “What’s your name, honey?”

  She batted her lashes. “Darlene.”

  “Who you with?”

  “My sister Marlene.” She reached back and pulled forward an identically dressed clone. “Who wants t’know?”

  He smiled. “Twins. More than perfect.” He lifted the velvet cord. “Come on, girls. You don’t have to wait any longer.”

  After exchanging wide-eyed glances, they ducked the velvet and followed him to the canopy. Some of the dorks grumbled but a few of them clapped. Soon they were all clapping.

  He ushered them to the door where Bruno stepped aside and passed the giggling twins through into the hallowed inner spaces of the Graf Spee.

  “You’re a prince, Mista C,” Bruno said, grinning.

  “How true.”

  He slowed, almost tripped. What a lame remark. Surely he could have come up with something better than that.

  Bruno stepped into the dark passageway and touched his arm.

  “You feelin’ okay, Mista C?”

  “Of course. Why?”

  “You look a little pale, is all. Need anyting?”

  “No, Bruno. Thanks, but I’m fine.”

  “Okay. But you need anyting, you lemme know an’ it’s done. Know what I’m sayin’?”

  Marc clapped Bruno on the shoulder and nodded. As he walked down the narrow black corridor that led past the coat checkroom he wondered what Bruno had meant. Did he look pale? He didn’t feel pale. He felt fine.

  The twins were hovering near the coat check window, looking lost. They’d finally achieved their dream: They’d made it to the swirling innards of the Spee, and they weren’t sure what to do about it. So they stood and numbly watched the peristalsis. One of them turned to Marc as he approached.

  “Thanks a million, mister. It was, like, really great of you to get us in and like if, you know, you, like, want to get together later, you know, we’d, like, really be glad to show our appreciation, know what I mean?”

  The second twin batted her eyes over the other’s shoulder.

  “Yeah. We really would. But do you mind if I, like, ask, uh…are you someone?”

  Just as he was thinking how pathetic they were, he reminded himself that once he’d had to wait on line like them. That had been years ago, back in the days when King Kong had been the place. But after he’d been let in once, he’d never stood on line again. He’d taken his chance and capitalized on it. And as time had passed and his status had risen, he’d developed the nightly ritual of picking one or two of the hoi polloi for admission to the inner sanctum of whatever club he was gracing with his presence that night.

  “Everyone is someone. I happen to be Marc.”

  “Which is your table?” said Twin One.

  “They’re all my tables.”

  Twin Two’s eyes bulged. “You own this place?”

  He laughed. “No. Of course not. That would be too much trouble.” And besides, he thought, these places stay hot for something like the life span of a housefly. “I just go where the action is. And tonight the action is here. So you two wiggle in there and enjoy yourselves.”

  “All right!” said Twin One.

  She turned to her sister and they raised their fists and gave each other a gutteral Arsenio Hall salute.

  Marc shuddered as he watched them hurry toward the main floor. They might be just vulgar enough to amuse someone. He opened the door marked PRIVATE and took the narrow stairway up to the gallery. Gunnar, Bruno’s Aryan soul mate, was on duty at the top of the steps. He waved Marc into the sanctum sanctorum of alcoved tables overlooking the dance floor.

  The Manhattan In-Crowd was out in force tonight, with various Left Coast luminaries salted among them. Madonna looked up from her table and waved as she whispered something in a pert brunette’s ear. Marc stuck his tongue out and kept moving. Bobby De Niro and Marty Scorsese nodded, Bianca blew him a kiss, and on and on…

  This was what it was all about. This was what he lived for now, the nightlife that made the drudgery of his daylife bearable. Knowing people, important people, being known, acknowledged, sought out for a brush with that legendary Marc Chevignon wit. It was that wit, that incisive, urbane flippancy that had got him here and changed his nightlife. Soon it would be changing his daylife. Everything was falling into place, beautifully, flawlessly, almost as if he’d planned it this way.

  And he hadn’t.

  All he’d wanted was a little excitement, to watch the watchables, to be where the action was. He’d never even considered the possibility of being in the play, he’d simply hoped for a chance to sit on the sidelines and perhaps catch a hint of breeze from the hem of the action as it swirled by.

  But when lightning struck and he got through the door of the Kong a couple of years ago, things began to happen. He’d sat at the bar and fallen into conversation with a few of the lower-level regulars and the quips had begun to flow. He hadn’t the faintest where they’d come from, they simply popped out. The cracks stretched to diatribes using Buckley-level vocabulary elevated by P. J. O’Rourke–caliber wit, but bitchy. Very bitchy. The bar-hangers lapped it up. The laughter drew attention, and some mid-level regulars joined the crowd. He was invited back to an after-hours party at the Palladium, and the following night when he showed up at King Kong with a few of the regulars, he was passed right through the door.

  A few nights and he was a regular. Soon he was nobbing with the celebs. They all wanted him at their tables. Marc C made things happen. He woke people up, got them talking and laughing. Wherever he sat there was noise and joviality. He could turn just-another-night-at-the-new-now-club into an event. If you wanted to draw the people who mattered to your table, you needed Marc Chevignon.

  And his wit didn’t pass unnoticed by the select few who recognized obscure re
ferences and who knew high-level quick-draw quippery when they heard it. Franny Lebowitz said he could be the next Tom Wolfe. And LuAnn agreed.

  He stopped at LuAnn’s table.

  “Hiya, Marky,” she said, reaching for his hand.

  Her touch sent a wave of heat through him. He and LuAnn were an item these days. They had a thing going. He spent three or four nights a week at her place. Always at her place. Never at his. No one saw his place. Ever.

  That, he knew, was part of his attraction for these people. They’d taken the measure of his quality and found it acceptable, even desirable. But he was an unknown quantity. Where he came from, who he came from, where he lived, what he did in the day were all carefully guarded secrets. Marc Chevignon, the cagey, canny mystery man, the acid-tongued enigma.

  He suspected that LuAnn genuinely cared for him, but it was hard to tell. She tended to let down her pan ties a lot quicker than her guard. She’d been around the scene so much longer than he, seemed to have had so many lovers—Christ, when he walked her into some of the private after-hours parties he could be pretty sure she’d screwed half the guys there, maybe some of the women too—but she seemed truly interested in him. At least now. At least for the moment.

  She was the one who’d been pressing him to write down his more incisive observations so she could show them to a few editors she knew—and she knew all the important ones. She was sure she could land him a regular spot in the Voice, and maybe Esquire, if not both.

  Thus the tape recorder in his pocket. During the day he never could remember a thing he’d said the night before. So he’d decided to record himself in action and transcribe the best stuff the next morning.

  Nothing so far tonight worth writing down. Hadn’t really come up with anything last night either. No inspiration, he guessed.

  But it would come. Because it was happening. He was happening. Everything coming his way. Esquire, the Voice, maybe an occasional freelance piece for GQ later on. He wasn’t going to be a mere hanger-on anymore, someone who merely knew Somebodies. He was going to be one of those Somebodies.