The walls of the Creole cottage whispered. Thirty minutes after David’s hurried departure, the house, no longer content to haunt Ken with the past, exploited the present to prickle his insecurities with accusations of ineptitude, apathy, and selfishness. You failed your family, the house told him. Ken hadn’t been there. Bobby and Jennifer had looked for him, tried to reach him, but they just couldn’t find him, so they went on without his guidance. And David. He’d all but fled after dropping Ken off that morning.
And why wouldn’t he? Ken wondered. It wasn’t like he’d made any effort to explain the bizarre events that occupied his mind. He was delusional, that much was clear. Maybe David would understand, even help him through his emotional wreckage, but Ken didn’t want to take that chance. Of course, more than just his mind betrayed him these days. His haunted memories fed on tangible sustenance. The Thorn, that ugly and haunting piece of jewelry his daughter had given him at Bobby’s bequest, was no figment. Bobby’s fiancée and the blond thug, Chuck, were real enough.
Ken didn’t know what to make of it all. He didn’t believe in ghosts or bogeymen. Even if he did, those things didn’t explain Vicki Bach or Chuck, the kid who had murdered his son. Both were human and dangerous. All he could know with any certainty was that elements of the past were again weaving with the present.
In Austin, he’d experienced none of the nightmares that befell him here. It was this place, this city. New Orleans was punishing him; for what crime, he didn’t know. For Ken, the reason was becoming less and less important. All he had to do was leave. The city that had once excited him with endless possibility was now reduced to a trash heap, piled high with fetid history and rotting emotion. Its reek covered him. Everywhere he turned, refuse clung to refuse, blanketing anything he might have cherished. It would be better for everyone if he just went back to Austin.
Ken crossed his kitchen to the loggia and stepped into the courtyard to let the sun’s heat soothe him. A few steps into his yard, he grew dizzy. His knees grew weak, and he nearly crashed to the flagstone path. His vision skewed and grew fuzzy. The courtyard before him and the fence beyond seemed to melt. The dying plants in the wall hangers took on a new life: Their dead, brown tendrils oozed along the brick walls and crept like serpents along the painted siding. The pots at his feet began a slow respiration, growing and shrinking like muddy lungs.
He knew this feeling. He tried fighting it, but it wrapped around him, penetrated him. Ken moved to the ivy-covered brick and leaned against it. He rested on the wall to let the wobbly feeling pass. Bright lights, like the blinding flash of a camera popped before his eyes. Ken blinked. He turned back toward the house and stopped.
Travis Brugier stood in the shadow of the balcony, blocking Ken’s path to the house. Naked, then dressed in a crisp linen suit, then in shorts with a brilliant colored shirt, then naked again.
“I’m hurt, Baby. You barely remember what I looked like,” the apparition told him. “Perhaps I can be of some help.” Brugier took a step forward. His nudity fell beneath the linen suit again. “Shall we go into the house?” he asked. “After you’ve pulled yourself together, of course.”
The dream sensation, and the sickness it brought began to slip away; they receded but left room for the onset of fear. Blinking wildly, he hoped his eyelids would sweep Brugier back into his mind, but Brugier remained.
“Dead,” Ken whispered.
“But not forgotten,” his guest replied. “Sad thing about Bobby. A handsome boy, much like his father. It was a shame to see his beauty dashed, but I had to get you here, back to the beginning.”
Ken stumbled forward, stepping across the flagstones. Still dazed, he fought to control his legs.
“You didn’t really think I’d leave you?” Brugier asked, stepping aside to allow Ken’s passage into the house. “Not after all that we meant to each other.”
“It didn’t mean anything,” Ken said. His head felt bruised, but he managed to get into the kitchen and through the dining room. He leaned on a chair for support. Brugier spoke at his back.
“Didn’t mean one little ol’ thing? Is that what you tell yourself? After all I’d done for you?”
“I never asked.” Ken pulled on the chair and sat heavily in it. He accepted Travis Brugier’s presence but dressed it up as delusion. “I didn’t want anything from you.”
Brugier stepped around Ken. The linen suit looked impossibly crisp. It only looked that way for a few minutes on a human body, then the wrinkles came. An illusion, Ken decided, a dream and nothing more.
The dream chuckled. “Much more,” it said. “I told you I’d see you again, and I never lied to you.”
“What do you want?” Ken asked.
“I want you to consider the offer I made.”
Offer? Ken’s mind raced, trying to remember. The spirit was talking about their last night together, but Brugier had rambled about so many things. Ken thought he remembered something from that night: something about time, something about forever. And when his mind finally cleared and he had the answer, it repulsed him.
“Never,” he said.
“Really,” Brugier asked. “After Paula and David follow Bobby? When everything is taken from you by me or by time, when you have nothing except your own miserable, aging body, will you still be so confident in your commitment to never? I know loneliness, Baby. I know desolation. Perhaps, just for fun, I’ll leave you Jennifer for a while. I almost like her. Such a bitter child. Perhaps the ugly sow will have children of her own. How will Grandpa feel when he visits the house and finds the babies hanging by their tongues? Will you still say never?”
“I…” Ken gasped. With the threat had come a picture, a perfect picture: two children, still infants, dangling from the eaves of Ken’s house with Jennifer, their mother, in a heap on the flagstones beneath rigid pink toes.
“Don’t force me to be cruel,” Brugier said. “I find it far too easy. Especially when it comes to love.”
“This…is not…love!” Ken said.
Brugier stepped forward to grasp Ken’s shoulder. “Baby, this is what the poets have written about for centuries: unforgiving, uncompromising, and undying. Sounds like love to me. But don’t take my word for it. Ask anyone. Better yet, just ask Sam.”
“Sam?” Ken asked. “What does Sam have to do with this?”
“No more or less than anyone else in your life.”
Brugier released his grip on Ken’s shoulder, turned toward the kitchen, and walked away.
“Travis,” Ken called. He stood from the chair and followed the apparition, the delusion, the damnable ghost—whatever Travis was—into the kitchen, but the man was gone. He continued through to the courtyard, but it too was empty. Back inside, Ken returned to the chair and leaned forward on the table.
Travis had taken credit for Bobby’s murder. Was that possible? Had it been Brugier’s influence that had driven Chuck to kill Bobby? And what had Travis meant about Sam?
Then, Ken caught himself. Travis wasn’t real; he was nothing more than a figment of Ken’s damaged imagination. He was no more genuine than the piano dirge or the frightening vision of David Lane’s dead body. Ken’s guilt over his son’s death had brought Travis back as a tormenting spirit that spoke nonsense, a memory given life by decaying sanity.
“I need some help,” Ken whispered.
The moment the word help left his lips, a flurry of knocks landed on his front door, startling him up and out of his chair.
~~~
Sam Martin stood on Ken’s stoop looking frantically from one side to the next. His narrow face was written in panic; a thin film of sweat covered his brow; his upper lip twitched nervously. When Ken opened the door, Sam rushed in.
“Lock it,” Sam commanded as he spun into the living room.
“Sam, what’s…”
“Lock the door,” Sam insisted, spinning quickly to look around the interior of Ken’s house. “You’ve got to help me. I don’t know what I’m going to do if you don’t help me. I can’t believe this. I…”
“Sam, what the hell is going on?”
Martin scanned the room one final time. “Not here; he might see us. Let’s go to the back.”
“Okay, just calm down,” Ken agreed. “We’ll go to the kitchen. Who might see us?”
“Jersey,” Sam said before retreating to the back of the house.
In the kitchen, Sam resumed his pacing. “It’s my fault,” he said. “Let’s get that out first. I’m a selfish prick, and none of this would have happened if I hadn’t been such an ass. But Jesus Christ!”
“Sam, tell me what happened.”
“Give me one of those,” he said, indicating the cigarette in Ken’s hand. He fumbled the slender tube in his fingers before he managed to get it pinched firmly between his lips. “Have you got any coffee?” Martin asked.
“It doesn’t look like you need any coffee,” Ken said.
“I haven’t slept all night. I was afraid to.”
“Sam, you need to settle down.”
“Damn it!” Sam cried. “Just make the fucking coffee!” He immediately realized his irrational tone. In a second he went from raving to complacent as if every ounce of strength had drained from his body. He put a hand on Ken’s shoulder. “Please. I’m sorry.”
Ken nodded slowly and turned for the coffeepot. “Why don’t you want Jersey seeing us together?” he asked.
“I’m not worried about him seeing us together,” Sam corrected. “I’m worried about him finding me.”
“Are you going to explain this?” Ken asked. He pulled the coffee beans from the freezer and filled his grinder.
“The night of my party,” Sam began, “there was this kid. I went outside to have a smoke while the stragglers were still carrying on. Jersey had already gone to bed,” Sam turned away. His hands ran quickly over his scalp and then rested on the back of his neck. “I told you that Jersey and I were having some trouble. Things haven’t been all that good between us lately, particularly in bed. All of his medications have made it kind of tough. His stomach is always upset, and he doesn’t have any energy. We haven’t made love in months. And I know that’s no excuse for what I did.” Ken took this silence as an opportunity to grind the coffee beans.
As he poured the powder into the filter, Sam resumed speaking. “The kid was beautiful. He was interesting to talk to, or I was so drunk I thought he was. We sat outside for about an hour, and I finally told him that I had to go to bed. He asked if he could join me. Well, I wasn’t that drunk. I told him that Jersey was inside, and he asked if he could stop by sometime when Jersey wasn’t home. I figured he was just flirting and told him that he could stop by anytime he wanted.
“Well, he took me up on it. I got home from school yesterday about three. Jersey was on his way out to show a client a few properties uptown. I sat down and started grading papers when the doorbell rings. It’s this kid. I don’t know what I was thinking when I asked him in,” Sam said. Then he chuckled bitterly, “That’s a lie; of course I knew what I was thinking. Ten minutes later we were doing exactly what I was thinking. I don’t think I’ve ever been through anything so intense in my life. Maybe it was the guilt. Maybe it was the fear of getting caught. I don’t know. I was so lost in it all that I didn’t hear Jersey come in.”
“Oh shit, Sam,” Ken whispered. The coffee was brewed, and he poured them both a cup. “So he left you?”
“He tried to kill me, Ken.” Sam drank from the hot coffee and leaned on the kitchen island. “At first, he was incredibly cold about the whole thing. He told the kid to get dressed and get out, and the little fucker was gone in about two minutes. I’d gotten dressed myself, and I apologized. I was sorry. I am sorry. And Jersey just nodded his head and walked out of the bedroom. I broke down completely. The look on his face killed me. I was crying and trying to figure out anything I could say or do to make this not have happened. When Jersey came back into the room he was holding a knife.”
“What?”
Sam nodded. “He had gotten the carving knife from the kitchen. He stood in the doorway for a minute, completely blocking it with his body. He started talking quietly, almost whispering. I couldn’t understand a word of it. My attention was focused on that blade. Then, he charged me. He dove at me with the knife, and I dodged him and ran out of the house.
“Fortunately, I’d hidden his gun, because he would have used it. I know he would have. Anyway, I got in the car and started driving. Eventually, I stopped at a motel in Metairie. I waited a couple of hours for Jersey to cool off, but when I called, I found that he hadn’t cooled any. He told me that he was going to kill me, Ken. He said he’d wait as long as he had to, but wherever I went he was going to find me.
“When I drove to school this morning, I saw him sitting in his car on the street outside of the lot, and I high-tailed it out of there.”
“Maybe he wanted to talk to you,” Ken suggested. “He’s had the whole night to think about it and calm down. He probably just wanted to work things out.”
Sam shook his head. “I’m scared to see him, Ken. I don’t know what he’s thinking.”
…unforgiving, uncompromising, and undying—sounds like love to me.
Ken searched for something rational to say but found himself at a loss. Less than an hour ago, Brugier had told him to ask Sam about the ramifications of love, but if Travis’s ghost was simply an extension of Ken’s own fragile sanity, then how had Ken come across this information? He couldn’t have created it for himself. Which left the possibility that the apparition of Travis Brugier had a source outside of Ken’s own mind, but that was impossible.
“Ken, what am I going to do?”
“I’m not sure, Sam,” he said, struggling to put away his ridiculous speculations. “Jersey overreacted last night, but it’s not like you made this easy for him. Maybe he’s calmed down enough to listen to you. We could go back over to your place and wait for him. If he’s still upset, you can come stay here for a few days until you guys get this thing worked out.”
“You’ll come with me?” Sam asked pathetically.
“Yes,” Ken told him, “but don’t expect this to be easy.”
“I know.” Sam suddenly looked incredibly small as he hunched over his coffee. “But he’s got to forgive me,” Sam whispered. “He’s got to.”
“Let’s hope he does,” Ken said. “Just finish your coffee.”
Once the mugs were in the sink, Ken led Sam to the door and locked the house behind them. The wet heat of the day settled on them instantly, and Ken wished he had worn a lighter shirt instead of the cotton sweater he had thrown on. They wandered slowly up Dumaine. Sam stared at the ground like a punished child. They took the left on Burgundy Street.
“Maybe if you talked to him first,” Sam suggested.
Ken had been thinking the exact same thing. He could get a reading on Jersey’s temperature before the two men were forced to face one another. Maybe he could talk Jersey down a little. “We’ll see,” Ken said.
“Thanks,” Sam muttered.
“So, was this guy a friend of Jersey’s?” Ken asked as they neared the next corner. “You said he was at your party.”
“No. Some woman, a client of Jersey’s, had brought him. I thought he was her date. God knows they looked like they belonged together. I figured he was straight until we started talking. Then he dropped a few familiar names, and I knew he was family.”
“You guys know the same people?”
“I guess,” Sam mumbled. “He said he knew Lance and Pug. He knew a lot about David Lane, and he even mentioned you.”
Ken stopped walking. “Sam, what did this kid look like?”
“He was blond…” Sam began.
A gun’s report interrupted Sam’s description. Ken would have thought the explosion nothing more than a car’s backfiring if it weren’t for the divot the bullet tore from the sidewalk ahead. He spun around, saw Jersey Fleagle aiming down the barrel of a small handgun and stumbled back.
At his side, Sam had already weighed his options and chosen flight. “Run, Ken,” he cried, not waiting to see if his friend took the advice or not.
Another shot fired, and Ken leapt back, pressing himself against the building, a pointless reflex that provided no cover from Jersey at all. Sam had already reached a full sprint by the time he left the sidewalk, crossing into the street.
Ken heard the rumble of the truck barreling down Burgundy, traveling too fast for the neighborhood. Sam bolted out in front of the vehicle. The truck’s brakes squealed the second before it hit Sam Martin, knocking him off of his feet. Sam spun through the air like a discarded doll back toward Ken and the lover he was trying to flee. Then he crashed to the ground, his face cracking on the edge of the curb only a dozen feet from Ken.
“Sam!” he cried.
Face down, his friend’s body convulsed, legs kicking the ground in a spastic syncopation. Blood drooled down the curb and pooled in the street, mingling with dirt and litter.
Ken stumbled forward, already in shock, but knowing he had to help his friend. He only finished that one step before a strong hand threw him back to the wall, where he crashed into the wooden siding.
That same hand encircled his throat, and Jersey Fleagle’s lunatic features rose before him. The barrel of the small pistol pressed deeply into Ken’s cheek. Jersey’s gaunt face was pulled into a mask of pure hate. Saliva foamed at the corner of his mouth. Nothing sane existed behind the wild eyes.
“Thought I’d just let you fuck him?”
“Jersey,” Ken said, trying to placate but sounding panicked, “he was going home to find you. He wanted to apologize.”
The barrel of the gun ground into Ken’s cheek. “Lies!” Jersey said. “All lies. You wanted him, and anything you want you take. You don’t care who gets hurt. The great Ken Nicholson and all of his admirers. Such a charmed world.”
The grip on Ken’s throat tightened; fingers gouged his neck. The gun muzzle at his cheek pushed in painfully.
“But you’ll see,” Jersey growled. “When everything’s taken from you, everything you love, everything that loves you. Gone. Then, you’ll see.”
People had begun to gather on the far sidewalk; they stared and pointed at the dead man and the man who would soon be dead, but nobody said a word. The gun traced over Ken’s cheek; it drew from his eye down to his jaw.
“Jersey,” he said. “Don’t do this.”
The man shuddered violently. He bellowed a cry into Ken’s face, spraying his chin with saliva. Jersey released his grip and leapt back. Ken gasped in hot air.
“Your charmed world is behind you, Baby,” Jersey said, his voice high and raving.
In the next moment, Jersey’s eyes flared anger. He brought the gun up and pointed it at Ken’s chest, then he moved quickly from one foot to the next in a lunatic jig. The crowd across the street gasped and muttered. A calm sense of resignation filled Ken. He could not hope to outrun or outmaneuver a bullet, and the rage on Jersey’s face made it clear there would be no bargaining. Ken closed his eyes tightly waiting for the explosion and the pain. The street remained silent.
“The charmed world is behind all of us,” Jersey said,
The tone of the voice struck Ken as different, no longer manic. Ken opened his eyes. Jersey Fleagle’s countenance had changed. The insanity had drained from his face, leaving him looking hollow and afraid. He gazed at the body of Sam Martin, and tears slid down his cheeks.
“So, Alice,” Jersey said, dropping his gun on the sidewalk, “welcome to Wonderland.” Then Jersey ran off, leaving his lover’s body on the street.
~~~
Across the street, witnesses pointed. A slender man in white shorts had a cell phone cupped to his face, and he babbled rapidly into the device.
Ken pushed away from the building. Dazed and stumbling, he walked toward Sam’s body, already certain his friend was dead. He leaned down and grasped Sam’s wrist, probing with his fingers to find a pulse, but his fingertips were met with nothing but cooling skin.
Sam’s legs kicked in spasm. Ken leapt back, a low groan rolling from his throat. He backed up a step and then another, repulsed by the postmortem throes. At the corner he turned, and not knowing where he intended to go but knowing what he was escaping, Ken walked away.
Rational thought was gone for a time, knocked out by the impact of a small paneled truck. Distantly, he knew he should stay at the scene. The police would want to speak to him, more so because Sam was the second victim from Ken’s life in under a week. Regardless of this consideration, with his thoughts and emotions in tumult, he kept walking.
So strained was his thinking that he began to seriously consider Brugier’s involvement in the recent tragedies. It made no difference that the man had been dead for the last thirty years. Everything that had happened tied back to Brugier and that time in Ken’s life, and Vicki Bach was the connection, he knew. But why? And how?
Ken was so lost in his thoughts that he walked right into two young women.
“Hey, man,” a tall blonde with straight hair said. “Be cool.” Ken looked at the girls. Their bellbottom jeans and floral print blouses made them look like extras from a remake of Easy Rider, but there was something else. The street seemed to have changed. Ken couldn’t put his finger on exactly what had changed, but it all felt different, out of place, and wrong.
“Papa Square is trippin’,” the brunette said.
Ken walked around the women, ignoring their jeers and laughter. A 1972 Camaro raced by, and Ken gave it a cursory glance, noting the classic vehicle. Behind it, another old car, a powder-blue Plymouth Duster, rolled down the street. And behind that, a white VW Beetle from 1969. More cars came and went, and not one of them was less than thirty years old; some, like a black Cadillac, its shark fins cutting a wake through the morning air, were even older. Ken searched the far sidewalk and saw three men dressed in seersucker suits and proper white plantation hats who were smoking cigars and laughing. Behind this trio of gentleman, a kid of twelve or thirteen bopped along to a tune pouring into his ear from a transistor radio.
Travis Brugier had told Ken that he’d needed to get him back. Back to the beginning.
Around him, New Orleans, as it was thirty years ago, thrummed with life. In the distance drums and horns announced a makeshift parade, and the scent of boiled shrimp, all pepper and ocean filled his nose. On the corner, a young man stood with his back propped against the building, which should have been a restaurant but wasn’t. It wouldn’t be a restaurant for another ten years. As he approached, Ken’s stomach leapt into his throat because he recognized the young man, despite the damage that had been done to him.
Puritan Crowley, his old friend, the one he called Crow, the one who had died so similarly to Sam Martin, leaned against the wall. The right side of his face was torn away, exposing dangling muscle and bone. Blood soaked the front of his A-shirt and the thighs of his ripped jeans. His right shoulder was a froth of meaty pulp surrounding a club of white bone where his missing arm had once attached.
The newspaper said that Crow had gotten hooked up on the rear bumper of the car that ran him down and dragged a good distance before the driver finally stopped. A lot of him was left on the street.
“You been bought and sold,” Crow said, drooling teeth and spit and blood over the mush of his lower lip. “He ain’t never letting you go.”
“I have to leave, have to get out,” Ken said, the words a hushed and desperate babble in his ears.
“If you leave,” Crow said, “who’s gonna protect them? Not one of ’em knows what’s comin’. Not David. Not Paula. Not Jennnifer. But you know, don’t you, Sweetie? You know good and well what’s comin’ down the road.”
Ken looked at the remains of his old friend, still leaned up against the building, a smile cutting his destroyed face.
“I suppose you could always come back for the bone parties.”
Whether sane or not, Ken refused to engage the apparition in conversation, feeling that even a simple acceptance of the chimera would pull him deeper into the madness. Instead, he ran. He could not tell which props—people, cars, and carriages—were real and which were part of the delusion playing around him, so he ignored all of them, running headlong through intersections and down blocks traveled by pedestrians wearing retro fashions and silly hairstyles. Horns blared and passersby shouted their annoyance at his rudeness, but Ken couldn’t stop running, not until he was back in the present.
A sound like thunder exploded in his ears. Ken stumbled. Around him, walls and street lamps melted and dribbled as if they’d been coated in watercolor camouflage, now being washed away by an invisible downpour. Some of the houses changed colors; others simply faded or brightened in subtle degrees. The odors of the street grew more pungent. The sky brightened. In cascading waves, the façades fell away until Ken found himself gasping for breath, heart thundering in his chest, amid modern vehicles and familiar buildings.
Movement ahead caught his eye, and Ken, struggling to sate his lungs with air, bent forward to rest his hands on his knees, never taking his eyes off of the form. Dressed in white, the boy hurried toward him, a messenger with yet another dreadful communication. Recognition settled in slowly; it scraped and gnawed its way into Ken’s already aching mind.
On the sidewalk, Bobby Nicholson, his white hospital gown flapping behind him, ran forward, his arms wide as if to greet his father with an embrace.
~
I suppose, you could always come back for the bone parties.
Ken sat in the living room of his home, brushing off remnants of dread. In his left hand he clasped the Thorn, whose chain snaked from his palm along the rough material of his sofa.
You go ahead and leave, Baby. You go live in this fantasy of yours. You’ll never know what life could be because you’re too caught up in what it should be. But that will pass, and when it does, and when you think you’re happy, that’s when you’ll see me again. That’s when I’ll show you exactly how fragile all of this is. No one can give you what I can. No one!
He could attribute his hallucination to numerous factors—exhaustion, guilt, grief—but there was just too much that Ken could not have created for himself. Sam. The Thorn. Vicki Bach and a boy named Chuck.
Tell me a story.
History wanted to be recognized, and in the light of that memorable command, Ken Nicholson told himself this story:
~~~
Late one July evening when the sunset did nothing to alleviate the sticky heat in the air, Puritan Crowley led Ken deeper into the French Quarter along an unlit alley and through a black-mouthed doorway. They had been having an argument over good and evil. In Puritan’s mind, there were no such distinctions, and Ken took exception to his friend’s frivolous attitude. This was a regular argument they often engaged in late at night when pills kept them up long after exhaustion would have closed their eyes.
Crow led Ken into a dark hallway scented heavily with incense and marijuana. Alcohol had blurred his vision, and Ken felt certain he would never be able to make his way out of the building, let alone back to his apartment. So, he had no choice but to follow his friend deeper. The hallway might have been fifty yards or five feet—Ken was too intoxicated to tell—but it seemed a great trek from the time that the dark mouth accepted them. Eventually, they came to a doorway. Puritan rapped lightly with his knuckle. Shave and a haircut. The two bits never came. Instead, a small window opened, and a stubbled face appeared asking them what they wanted.
“Travis invited us,” Crow whispered.
The odor of spice and smoke wafted heavily through the window, and Ken felt dizzy under its oppressive cloud. He leaned against the wall, trying not to stare at the gruff face framed in the window that was observing the two boys like they might have shat on the doorstep.
“Never heard of him,” the doorman replied.
“Look, Sweetie,” Puritan said. “Travis owns this place, probably owns you, so be a pal and open the door.”
Ken felt uneasy. His stomach rolled from the immense amounts of scotch and the hideous reek of the chamber beyond the gruff face. He didn’t care if they got in or not. He’d be just as happy to slink back to the apartment and climb into bed and hope he could find sleep before the spinning world made him vomit. And now, Crow was threatening a guy who might easily kill them both. A bad scene. A very bad scene.
The door opened. Another wave of stench passed into the hall, and Ken choked down his stomach. He followed Crow into a small room blocked from the rest of the place by a long red velvet curtain. The distant tinkle of a piano mingled with voices and other noises that sounded animalistic. The doorman stood to the side, clutching the open door in a meaty fist. Standing at Ken’s height, the doorman weighed a good thirty pounds more, and his muscled body, covered with only a pair of swimming trunks, seemed tensed as if to pounce. Ken tried to smile as he passed, but the doorman’s face ate the expression.
“Alice,” Crow whispered. “Welcome to Wonderland.” With a dramatic gesture, the curtain was pulled aside.
The memory came so clearly that Ken found himself startled out of it. He scanned the living room around himself. Jersey Fleagle had said nearly those same words to him before running away from the scene of his lover’s death. Perhaps the fresh memory had mingled with ancient history, but Ken could not convince himself. Past and present were coming together. That which had passed, that which should have been dead and dust had returned.
Welcome to Wonderland.
~~~
Travis Brugier’s Parlor was little more than a three-roomed hovel dressed up like a lounge, a whore painted to imitate beauty though it had never genuinely touched her features. The walls were covered in thick red wallpaper. Dirty mirrors suspended over raw pine flooring reflected back the withered appearance of the chamber. Furniture—ornate chaise lounges, armchairs with detailed needlework, and velveteen benches—ran along the walls. A dim light glowed from the yellowed crystal of a small chandelier. The smoke-filled air swirled among the patrons and filled the room like a vision of the heavy perfume that choked the small space.
The patrons lounged, spoke, and laughed. Many held martini glasses in one hand, using the other to pincer cigarettes or cigars or joints. Some wore suits; others were in costume, pretending to be women, pretending to be rough trade, pretending to be anything but the respected businessmen that many of them were. Young men mingled in this crowd. Some looked confident and others appeared frightened, but whether predatory or pretty, the boys were constantly engaged by their older counterparts. Two doorways led out of the room on the far side. Their pitch-black invitation to enter seemed wholly correct. Again, a whore, inviting yet unclean.
Crow moved into the crowd easily. Ken lingered behind, still trying to understand what purpose this place served. He gazed at the heavily made-up men and their clean-cut counterparts. Something moved in him, something that was made equally of fear and sick anticipation. His head refused to stop spinning. He felt certain that his weak knees would give out on him in moments, sending him to the filthy, stained boards at his feet.
Up ahead, Crow turned with a wide grin. He moved back to Ken’s side and grasped his elbow. The action was not one of support but rather one of impatience. He guided Ken through the crowd, saying hello to the various admiring eyes that fell upon them.
The room was wall to wall with bodies reeking of cologne and French perfume. Sweat gathered at Ken’s neck and traced along his back. He regained some control of his feet and shook free of Crow’s insistent grasp, righting himself for a moment before he was nearly toppled by a small round man shaking his hips for his friends’ amusement. The fat man called an apology after him, but Ken was lost. He knew that Crow was up ahead somewhere in the thick wall of bodies. He hurried through, excusing himself at every step. The last thing he wanted was to be alone in this place.
He found his friend standing by one of the doorways, speaking with a slender, mature man wearing a summery yellow dress. The man wore no makeup, no wig. His thin features, drawn with sharp lines, exploded when he smiled: a sunrise on flesh, a blossom of good cheer unfurled in less than a second.
“Is this the one?” the man asked.
“This is Ken,” Crow announced proudly. “Ken, this is Gordon.”
Ken listened to the exchange. Suddenly, he realized that he had been expected. Somehow, his presence was not only welcomed but required. Familiar unease coiled in his throat. He took the offered hand and shook it lightly, unable to greet the man with words.
“Well, Travis will love him,” Gordon said. “Go on out. He’s holding court.”
Crow’s face sparkled. The man’s praise, though directed not at him, had hit the mark.
The hallway was short, and the air in it was clearer than that in the stifling room. They passed an open door, and Ken looked in. A single row of candles running along the back wall lit the room, and between their flickering cast and the open doorway, numerous shadows moved. The noises from this room, the grunts and gasps, and the thick musk of sex, defined its purpose. As he walked, Ken saw two men against the near wall. A man with white hair, dressed in a business suit, pinned a younger man to the wall. His suit trousers gathered at his knees, and his front shirt tails draped over the young man’s ass, hiding the point of their union. The mature man’s palm wrapped over the boy’s mouth, covering the lower half of the kid’s face. Ken caught a glimpse of the young man’s eyes—wide and staring and blank—before turning away.
Ken felt along the wall, supporting himself on the rough, black painted surface. Up ahead, candles flickered, and he realized that they were not going deeper into the building, but rather they were leaving it behind them.
They stepped into the courtyard, and Ken barely stifled a gasp. Everything moved here. A handful of people meandered about, pointing at the flora, commenting on its beauty. Candles in large hurricane lamps flickered, dancing over the beautifully diverse array of blossoms pushing from the ground and dangling from ornate pots hung from the wrought-iron balconies above. A fountain spat its plume through electric illumination. It seemed the entire courtyard was alive. Even the flagstones at their feet seemed to move, trembling with some unknown energy. A spray of leaves covered the ground like lacy carpet. Hibiscus blossoms speckled the courtyard floor. And their host sat in a chair at the far end of the yard.
Crow hurried them along, past the fountain with its amazing colored fluid twinkling along the dull gray concrete basin.
As Ken drew closer to their host he felt the sobering effects of anticipation creep into his head. Obviously, the handsome man with the broad toothy smile was the master of this place. Everyone in attendance was so at his tolerance, and they would be removed at his request. As the face became clearer, the eyes beamed out at him, so alive yet with no discernible expression. Power, he thought. Those were the eyes of a man who worried about nothing because nothing was beyond his control. So many impressions settled on him then—the amazing face and strong neck, the broad grin that spoke to pleasure not frivolity, the deep skin color, and the thick wavy hair—but the most mesmerizing aspect of his host were those ice-blue eyes telling the world that he would forgive no trespass. Not only did Ken read all of this in a matter of seconds, but he felt the certainty of his impression as if the man himself were verifying the information by speaking directly into Ken’s mind.
“Welcome,” the man said warmly, lifting himself from the chair. He stood several inches taller than Ken, casting his shadow over both of the boys as he rose.
“Hi,” Crow said. “This is the friend I was telling you about. Ken, this is Travis Brugier, our host.”
Ken took the hand and felt a strange shock at the touch of the man’s cool, dry palm. No longer was he standing in an amazing courtyard somewhere in New Orleans’s French Quarter with his friend at his side. Instead he was in a void where no other human being could see him, save for the man whose hand held his.
The void whorled around them, and Ken fought to keep his footing. Lost in the man before him, Ken saw himself in fields, in battles. He found himself sitting quietly on a tree limb as he shook apples free of branches, laughing as they rained down on some form below then disappeared into the night which replaced the ground. Rivers and oceans and lakes, valleys and mountains and cities, places he’d never been filled him. Seconds passed, the amount of time it took to recall the name of an acquaintance, and he was back in the courtyard.
Now, however, it was his host’s turn to flinch. Travis stepped back, releasing Ken’s hand. Some alien emotion clouded the strong eyes.
“Mr. Crowley,” Brugier said with a smile. “Go inside and entertain my guests.”
Now they were alone, Ken and the man named Travis, in a courtyard miles from any other living soul.
~~~
Travis Brugier’s presence sobered him. Twilight engulfed them, dancing like the flames in the many glass lanterns, and the blossoms offered up their perfume into the humid air so that it fell in a baptism of scent. The piano, harbored in the parlor, played a melancholy rag. He barely heard the tune as his mind sought to recapture the flashes of scenery that had accompanied his introduction to Travis Brugier. And the man gazed down on him, unmoving since his dismissal of Puritan Crowley minutes before. Arrogance never touched the features; the man was far too refined for such a petty façade. Indeed, he looked little more than content within himself and with all around him. But the power Ken had felt upon first laying eyes on the man remained, even grew the longer he looked at him. Standing there in his fine linen suit with the tightly knotted tie at his throat, the man effused confidence.
“Well,” Brugier said, breaking the silence, “your friend speaks highly of you.”
“He’s a good guy.”
“I think he was accurate in his assessment.” Brugier smiled, turning his back on Ken for a moment. “You’re a very handsome young man; he was right about that.”
Ken felt the flush cover his face, and while he’d never considered himself naïve—books had provided him with an education in matters that he had not yet had the time to cultivate in his short life—he realized exactly what was expected of him. Crow had offered him up as a gift to this great man. He felt embarrassed, felt ashamed. Something else too: a feeling he could only later describe as longing.
“Don’t be embarrassed,” the man said. “There’s no shame here.”
As Brugier took his seat, Ken wondered if the man could read so much from his face. Obviously, Brugier weighed people day after day for their strengths and weaknesses. Surely he could pick up on the blatant flush of a young man’s cheeks.
“Please,” Brugier said, “have a chair.” He indicated a wicker stool next to him, and Ken moved toward it. His belly twisted into a knot of indiscernible emotions. The weight of the air settled on him and filled his lungs like a gelatinous fluid, growing firm and suffocating in his chest. “He tells me that you’re something more than an idiot as well. That’s good. It’s rare and therefore precious.” Brugier smiled, his brilliant white teeth showing against the deep color of his skin. The expression cut deep wrinkles around the man’s eyes and created creases at his mouth. He looked thoroughly amused at Ken’s silence. “I feel the same way,” he whispered, leaning forward so that the curious could not hear him. “Awkward isn’t it?”
“What’s that?” Ken asked. His nerves were jangled, but he tried to regain some composure.
“All of this.”
“Exactly what is this?” Ken said.
Again Brugier laughed. “I believe your parents would call it courting.”
~~~
In Brugier’s Wonderland, there was a hierarchy, a pecking order that became obvious with every day that passed. Like a family, with firstborns and babies, so was Travis’s world. The firstborns, the older acolytes (older being a relative term as most were generally in their late teens and early twenties), ran the place. They kept the parlor and house clean and moved through the home with great care, cleansing the crystal and china as if these ornaments might bite should the boys be indelicate. They were spoiled but not lazy. Haughty stares fell upon the newborns, the children who came to Travis’s domain with their youth wrapped about them like ermine. Pampered and cajoled, the newborns held the older children in disdain as they were forced to perform the menial tasks of the house. The middle children, those who no longer pleased by their mere presence, were taught the maintenance of the grounds, how to keep the bugs off of the garden and the proper way to serve guests cocktails. Every youth who stayed on went through these stages, living the role of baby, middle child and firstborn. Not all stayed. Some left early on, but there were never less than a dozen young men living in the house. As time passed and the firstborns were replaced, leaving the house and the parlor behind to experiment with the real world, new faces appeared.
Travis called these children Vassals. He used the term affectionately like a parent, like a lover, but Ken sensed that the word camouflaged a less kind feeling.
Ken was never the baby, never the middle child, and he certainly could not have been a first child. He was something wholly different, and the young men in Travis’s employ treated him as such. Though it was clear that he belonged with them, the others regarded him angrily, suspiciously. He seemed to be a new creature in their community. They gave him space but made their displeasure known with glances of ice and razor-sharp words.
Only a week had passed since Ken first wandered bleary eyed into Travis’s presence, but they were inseparable in this time. Nights were filled with embraces and stories, magical stories of other times and other places.
“Tell me a story,” Brugier would request, handing Ken a thick leather-bound book. Ken read from the book, finding many of the stories tragic. Both genders and a number of races were represented in the tales. Some were humorous and some outright frightening, but nearly all were laced with tragedy and loneliness.
Throughout those first few evenings an anxiety weighed on Ken as he wondered when this relationship would be consummated, but his mentor kept their passion to embraces and kisses. Even in the bed, late into the morning, Travis kept Ken at a distance as the young boy felt the heat radiating from his mentor’s body. Ken’s thoughts, clouded by expectation, ran through the exotic possibilities, but release was found with his hand as he showered in the morning or lay alone in the warm bed after his companion rose.
Ten days into his stay, Ken left the compound and wandered through the Quarter, back to the flat he and Crow shared. His roommate was sleeping, arm across his eyes to shield them from the daylight penetrating the thin curtains. Weary and disheveled, his friend looked up in surprise.
“What are you doing?” Crow asked, his voice concerned.
“I thought I’d see how you were.”
Then the familiar smile returned to the face. “Things’re fine,” he croaked. “I thought you’d forgotten about me.”
Ken laughed, uneasy from the rapidly changing emotions displayed in his friend’s eyes.
“The restaurant called,” Crow said. “I told them you had a new job.”
The restaurant? Jesus, Ken thought. Ten days without a call. How would he pay his bills? Panic came and went quickly. It didn’t seem to matter any more. Travis would not let him starve. God knew he didn’t really even need the flat anymore. But Crow? How could he afford the place on his own?
“I guess you’re kind of mad,” Ken said. “I mean I just left like that.”
“It’s fine,” his friend said, but something about his eyes gave him away.
It wasn’t fine. Something was bothering Crow. Was it the money? If not, what else could it be?
The conversation, less intimate than some they had shared, went on for a couple of hours as Ken told Crow about the strange order of things at Travis’s and his own place among the Vassals. Crow didn’t seem curious in the least. He didn’t ask a single question about Brugier, his home, or The Parlor. Instead he let Ken divulge those things he felt comfortable divulging, and left the rest to imagination. Crow never left the bed through the entire dialogue. He remained propped against his pillow, nodding and fitting exclamations of his own into the conversation while not really saying anything.
After a while, Ken sensed a difference in the room. New furniture stood in place of the ratty wicker pieces they had scavenged from behind an apartment building, and the two mattresses they had slept on were gone, now replaced by a small but intricate brass bed. He had not noticed any of these things when he’d first come in, and now they screamed at him.
“Are you sure you’re all right?” Crow asked.
The tone of the question bit at him. Ken tried to read his friend’s thoughts, tried to understand why he should be concerned. The question had scared him, made his skin crawl.
How many times had he heard that term and not realized exactly what it meant? Before, he could not imagine the sensation of skin crawling, but now, as his flesh pimpled and the meat on his back seemed to creep up his spine, he understood the term far too well. “What’s going on?”
“Nothing.”
“Crow what is this shit? Where’d you get the money for all of this? You doin’ something illegal?” He knew he had changed the subject but feared delving further into his friend’s personal affairs.
“What difference does it make?” Crow asked. He sounded angry. “You don’t live here anymore.”
“You throwin’ me out?”
His friend burst out laughing. The anger on his face disintegrated as his features blossomed into pure humored delight. “Throwin’ you out?” Crow spat amid a flutter of giggles. “Baby, don’t you get it? You been bought and sold.” His guffaws ceased abruptly, and he wiped the tears from his eyes. “You ain’t gotta worry about nothin’ no more.”
Bought and sold? Like a statue? Like some fucking piece of furniture? Everything Ken had, which was not much, he had gotten honestly, had paid for with sweat and hard work. Yet here was his best friend accusing him of…What? Prostitution? Selling himself for a few bucks?
“Hey,” Crow said. “What are you fumin’ about?”
Ken didn’t answer. He wanted to punch the charming face, wanted to break it open, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. As always, he realized that Crow meant nothing by his comments. Just being flip, complimenting his friend by telling him how easy he had it.
“Sweetie, you’re going to have it all,” Crow continued, “but be careful.”
“Of what?” Ken asked.
“Be careful of forever,” his friend advised. Crow’s voice quieted. He looked out the window, holding a pillow to his chest. “Forever is just too damned long.”
~~~
Months passed as he allowed Wonderland and Travis Brugier to intoxicate his senses. Days were spent on long walks, shopping, or just lying in the bed until sunset, and evenings were spent at the theater, at dinner parties, in extravagant restaurants regaling with the best society could provide for companionship. But neither needed this last. They were ample companions for one another.
Ken might have considered Travis more than sufficient had it not been for the limitations of their intimacy. Most of the time, Ken felt perfectly content working out his passion with his hand, but there was so much he wanted to know, wanted to feel, and Travis refused any such displays.
One evening Ken had asked him about the distance between them. He felt awkward bringing it up, but he could not stop himself. Insecurity played on him.
“I’m saving myself for marriage,” Brugier quipped.
But Ken persisted. “If you need me to do something…anything, I’ll…”
The man hushed him with a finger on his lips. “In time,” Brugier said. “We have plenty of time.”
Ken agonized over it. As the weeks passed, a seed of uncertainty took hold in his mind. He spoke with his parents rarely; never saw his friends. He had become, as Crow suggested, a piece of furniture, bought and sold and now in the possession of this man. Perhaps he could have lived with this, had it not been for that piece of his life that he felt was missing.
Some small part of him wanted out of this fairy tale. A little part of his mind ached for normalcy. His notion of normalcy was the life one experienced when watching family television in those days. He wanted to go to college. He wanted to meet a nice woman and have a family. He could put Wonderland behind him, could make something normal of his life.
Out of Wonderland, he thought. All of its pleasures and all of its simplicity were truly addictive, but like a favored yet overindulged drink, the sweetness had grown tedious.
After his fifth month in Travis’s presence, he spoke out for the first time. They were in the courtyard in Travis’s comfortable chair. Though chill, the day offered sunshine. Neither had said anything for several minutes as they watched two of the babies fussing in the flowerbeds. Ken knew the way they looked at him: like servants who one day hope to marry the king only to have their hopes dashed by some unexpected suitor. They looked at him bitterly, envied him. Many of them out and out hated him. “I think I want to go to school,” Ken said. A simple statement. So why the fear?
“I know,” Travis replied. “I wondered how long it would take you to tell me.”
“I can’t sit around forever doing nothing.”
“Why?” Travis asked. “What do you need? An education? I can give you more knowledge than any university. A career? The only purpose of a career is to make money. You’ll never need that with me.”
“But what if something happens?”
“Something?”
“With us,” Ken said. “I just feel lost in all of this. I’m floating here, and I need an anchor.”
“I’m your anchor.”
“But you might not always be here,” Ken said. His voice had risen. This was not his true concern; his true concern was that his dreams of normalcy would be nothing more than dreams if he remained in the sanctuary. When he looked at Brugier, hoping to glimpse understanding in the eyes, he only saw humor.
“I’ll be here forever,” his mentor said. “We’ll be here forever.”
And Crow’s voice came back to him. Forever is just too damned long.
That night, Travis remained downstairs in the library. Ken lay in the bed watching the fan spin above him. His inexperienced mind did not understand Travis’s intentions, though he tried to puzzle them out. Sure, they had a good time together, fun and games, but there had to be more. It couldn’t go on like this forever. Eventually men met women, they married, they had children together. That was the world.
As he lay there, reveling in his fancies, he heard the soft squeak of the door being pushed open. He didn’t want to see Travis right now. It wasn’t Travis. One of the Vassals, his name was Reginald Wexler, stood in the doorway, wearing a pair of boxer shorts. The black hair on his head glistened as if wet. The boy’s almond skin stretched tight over his lightly muscled frame. An expression of sultry innocence played on his delicate features. Reggie was a firstborn. He helped keep the house clean. Ken knew the boy hated him. They had exchanged several frigid glances. So what the hell did he want? “Is something wrong?”
Reginald moved forward. He came within a few feet of the bed, and Ken saw the boy’s erection pushing at the material of his shorts. The Vassal dropped his boxers and stood quietly naked as if waiting to be approved of.
“Does Travis know you’re up here?” Ken asked, exasperated by the display.
“He sent me up,” Wexler replied, climbing onto the bed. “He thought you needed…” Wexler moved in to kiss Ken’s lips.
Ken rolled off the bed, rebounded off the nightstand, and spun into the center of the room. What was this? A joke? Some plot by the kid to foul his relationship with Travis? But no, Ken knew this wouldn’t be the case. None of the Vassals would jeopardize their future.
So, Travis had sent the boy up. This was Travis’s answer. He had no interest in fucking, so he’d have one of his Vassals do it for him. The insult to Ken’s integrity disgusted and enraged him. Was this what Brugier honestly thought Ken had wanted?
He dressed quickly, oblivious to Reggie, who lay on the bed, looking confused. He left the room, ran down the stairs, and threw open the door of the library. Travis sat reading. He looked up in surprise.
“You son of a bitch!” Ken yelled.
“Baby,” Travis placated, “what’s wrong? Reggie not your flavor?”
He walked across the room and knocked the book from Travis’s hands. Travis’s eyes, no longer powerful but immensely sad, stilled him.
“I thought…” Ken began, stifling the words in which he could not believe.
“You thought that I loved you.” Travis finished softly. “Am I right?”
Ken could not answer. He preferred the anger; anger was easy.
“What do you know about love?” Travis asked. His voice grew serious and harsh. “You can’t even say the fucking word. You’re a child. Do you think that piece of meat between your legs measures love? You still cling too tightly to your religion, Baby. Breeding is not love. Animals breed. They rut and fuck and give birth, and life goes on. It’s disgusting. It’s degrading. And what of us? Two men. We can’t even breed, so why waste the energy? All of this,” Travis, infuriated, beat his breast. He reached up with a hand and gouged his own cheek, raking the flesh and drawing blood from the tanned skin. “All of this is nothing. It comes and goes. Beauty dies with the passion that defined it. Is that enough? Is it?” Travis grabbed Ken’s shoulders, pulling the frightened boy closer. “Is that enough for you? A few years of passion? A handful of days to impale imperfect flesh with your cock for a few moments of pleasure or to create more like you?”
The oozing scratches on his face and his steely mien gave the man an otherworldly look. Ken wanted to run, but he remained frozen.
“That’s why I sent Reginald to you. I wanted you to see how little it means, and how much more there is.” Travis released Ken’s shoulders. “You asked if I loved you. You have no idea what that means.” Travis shook his head. “Go to bed,” he said, turning his back.
Having been dismissed, Ken moved quietly out of the library.
~
Chuck sat in Paula Nicholson’s living room, staring through the curtains. A cool place, he thought as he waited patiently for the woman’s return. Heavy wooden furniture lay beneath plush cushions and comfortable armrests. And yeah, he knew it was the old broad’s place, but he got the definite feeling that Nicholson had put it together, bought the furniture and the knickknack crap and everything.
He definitely liked the old guy’s style. He pictured himself in twenty years, maybe twenty-five years with a mustache and gray hair. He felt certain the he would look as good, if not better, than Nicholson. And the rest was money. If you had enough money, nothing else mattered. Women, men, they could both be bought if the wad was big enough. Shit, even manners could be bought for a price.
Once Vicki came through with his fee, Chuck would be buying a whole new world.
He looked around the room, taking in the details of the furniture and the walls. The paint job was cool, almost white but with a hint of purple. The color contrasted surprisingly with the stark white of the moldings. The ceiling was painted the same color as the walls. Most of the rooms he’d seen during his short life were painted white. Just white, but this place was elegant like the old guy.
He decided to look around as he waited for the woman to get back. She’d left about thirty minutes ago. As he’d hidden behind a shrub across the street, she’d come out of the house and driven away. No one else had been in the car with her. That was good. He knew where the ugly little bitch was. Their mutual friend wouldn’t be dropping her off for a couple of hours yet. So, Chuck had sidled across the street like he owned the entire neighborhood, slipped around back, and popped out a window pane to gain access to the door lock. Easy as pie. The alarm wasn’t even set.
At first, he’d thought about sitting on the couch and just waiting, as if nothing were wrong. He would be sitting in the house when the old broad got back, and he’d talk at her all coollike until he was close enough to show his affection. He could tell her that he was waiting for the ugly little bitch. What was her name anyway? Janice or Jessica or something like that? What difference did it make? He wouldn’t need a story.
But now, he wanted to see the place and really get a feel for the old guy. Nicholson had done pretty good for himself. He had that house in the Quarter and this place, neither of which was shabby, and the guy didn’t even live in New Orleans. He probably had a house in Hawaii or Florida or something. Given time, Chuck might have met him on one of those Florida beaches. Who knew?
One thing was for sure, the old guy was loaded, and the woman told him that he’d had exactly what Chuck had when he was the boy’s age: nothing. So, anything was possible.
He wandered through the dining room, stopping long enough to wonder at the plates on display in a huge glass-faced cabinet. They didn’t look all that special to Chuck. Why the hell display them? Plates: just stack the fuckers up and deal them out when dinnertime came around. He stepped closer to get a better look at the blue borders. His eyes fought the shadows. His nose nearly to the glass, he followed the pattern around the plate. His eyes circled the border, making out the images depicted there. Guys on horses with dogs riding through a countryside painted the color of Smurfs.
Rich people were weird. Who wanted to watch something like that when they ate? He had expected more from the old guy. Gold trim, he could see. Chuck imagined drinking from silver goblets and eating off of golden platters. That’s how the rich should live. That’s how he’d do it when Vicki paid up.
He continued on through to the kitchen, and finding nothing special there, he invited himself upstairs. The first room he came across must have been the punk’s. Trophies lined a low bookcase built into the wall. A jock, huh? Sure didn’t act like one, Chuck thought. One good pop, and the guy was on the ground. The other blows had just been for fun.
He left the room and crossed the hall. This was where the old broad slept. On the nights he’d come to call, she always went to bed alone. But not tonight, he thought.
The walls in the bedroom were a deeper color than that of the room downstairs. It might have been some kind of blue, but it looked weird. Chuck shrugged. He moved to the woman’s dresser and looked at the pictures on it. There were five of them. In the first, it was just the punk in a football uniform, looking like a jerk. The next picture was of a big grassy yard with trees around it. Two kids hugged each other. He assumed it was the punk and his sister. She wasn’t really ugly in that picture though; too young to be really ugly. The third picture caught him. It was of the entire family, standing in front of this house. The old woman wore a lacy white dress that looked incredible on her. Of course the picture had been taken years before, and she was still young and not nearly so fat. In her arms a pudgy little brat chewed on its fingers. The punk as a little boy stood next to the woman, and next to him stood Nicholson.
Chuck lost his breath for a moment. It was almost like looking in a mirror. Sure the nose was different and the mouth wasn’t quite so full, but the overall resemblance was startling. Chuck smiled. He knew he’d look like the guy when he got older. And the proof was sitting right in front of him. He lifted the silver-plate frame and stared through the glass.
The guy was very cool. In the picture, he wore a pale blue suit. His hair, barely gray then, was short and neat. He looked like an actor, or a president or something. Chuck slid the picture into his jacket. He wanted to show Vicki when he got back. She said he didn’t look like the guy at all, but now he had proof.
He ignored the other pictures, choosing to turn and check out the room. The bed was impressive. A thick blanket, the same color as the walls, covered the bed. They called those comforters, he remembered. White lace skirted the frame, which was made of a thick, dark wood. Two pillars rose up from behind the numerous pillows arranged at the far end, and at their head. Atop the tapering posts, headpieces were carved. They looked like nuts. He could not remember the kind of nuts that they reminded him of, but they did look like nuts.
As he moved from this room to see what else the place offered, he heard the door downstairs open. Chuck pulled the steel bar out of his jacket and turned for the stairs. He knew there’d be time to check the place out later. For now, it was party time.
~~~
Paula arrived home, parked in the drive at the side of the house, and hurried up the walk. In her arms she carried a thick wad of dry cleaning, the thin plastic coverings rustling like leaves against her body. Paula opened the front door and started for the stairs.
Every day the house seemed just a little quieter, and the silence needled her. She’d heard that when people lost a limb through accident or amputation, they had twinges of memory, feeling things in the extremities they had lost. Her family was like that now. Initially, it had only been Ken, the sound of him showering, the smell of him in the halls and on their bed. She missed these things, and her mind fed her tiny helpings of sense memory, which only served to aggravate her loneliness. Then, Bobby had gone off to college, and Paula imagined his rock and roll still playing too loudly in his room, sensed him running through the house when he was no longer there. And never would be again.
Paula refused to cry again. She stomped up the stairs, determined to maintain her composure. The last thing she wanted was another two-hour crying jag in the middle of the afternoon. That wasn’t going to help anyone.
Soon, Jennifer would be grown and another limb would be lost, and Paula just wasn’t sure what would be left. There would be memories of Jennifer playing her guitar behind the locked door of her room, strumming quietly as if trying to keep her music a secret, muffled phone calls between her daughter and friends, the memories of arguments and tantrums. Paula would continue to feel twinges, but they would be phantom pangs, resonating painfully on nerves scraped raw by silence.
At the top of the stairs, Paula took the corner quickly. In her room, she hung the plastic shrouded clothes in her closet. Just unwrap them later, she thought. But the responsible voice in her head wouldn’t accept procrastination. She dropped her purse on the bed and then returned to the waiting chore. Paula scrunched the plastic into the smallest ball she could manage and shoved it under her left arm. Passing the bed, she lifted her purse as an afterthought.
In her haste with the laundry, Paula had not noticed that Robert’s bedroom door stood open. Now, as she passed the opening, she caught a figure from the corner of her eye. She jumped. She saw a shadow standing in her son’s room, and for a moment, she thought it might have been her son or the memory of him, but no, the figure was too small to be her son. And her son was dead.
She turned slowly to face the dark form. They stood there for what seemed to Paula like minutes, as the shadow in her son’s room remained motionless. A tiny voice in her head told her to run for the stairs, told her to get out of the house and into the street. She heard the voice but could not move. She wanted to know who had the nerve to invade this particular room. As the form stepped forward, the details of the boy’s face came clearer.
She knew him. He’d been at Jersey and Sam’s party, and at the school before that. Of the thoughts that fought for her attention, the loudest was that this was the bastard that had killed her son. So violent was this realization that she acted before rational thought could stop her. Paula charged forward, dropping the plastic bags on the floor in the hallway. She didn’t even notice the steel bar in Chuck’s hand as she rushed forward and slammed her weight into the boy, sending him backward and down onto the carpet of Robert’s room. Dazed from the concussion, Paula struck out blindly, hitting the floor and the boy’s face in equal measure.
She kept the pepper spray in her purse. She also kept a small knife there. As she thought of these items, the boy swung his weapon, but Paula’s flailing arm knocked the blow askew. Pain flared but she barely recognized it. She shifted her weight and found the boy’s crotch with her knee. His eyes exploded from surprise to genuine fear. Grappling with his blond hair, Paula rolled off of the boy. Her nails raked his face, and then she knelt behind him. With a fistful of his hair in one hand, she clawed viciously at his cheek with the other.
“Bitch!” he screamed, tearing himself out of her grasp. He moved quickly, bending forward at the waist to free himself, and then jerking himself around like a striking serpent.
Paula was already digging through her purse for the spray. Finding it, she snapped the safety flap free and pointed the canister at the boy. The pipe bit into her shoulder, but this only caused her to depress the nozzle, spraying the boy’s savaged cheeks and his eyes with the debilitating liquid.
His scream pierced her ears. Doubled over, the boy cried out again and again. He swung the pipe blindly from his kneeling position. His threats died beneath agonized wails.
Then, she was out of the room and running down the stairs. Only then did she hear her own screaming; only then did she realize she had screamed at all. She ran through the living room and lifted the phone. Quickly she pressed nine-one-one. When the operator came on she gave the woman her name and address. The operator repeated the information.
“S-s-someone j-just tried to attack m-me in my house,” Paula sputtered. “He killed my son. He killed my son.”
“All right,” the operator said. “I want you to stay on the line while I send help.”
Stay on the line? “If you want to come entertain this guy,” Paula said, “that’s fine. I’m getting the fuck out of here.”
With that, she dropped the phone and ran to the front door. As she pulled it open, she heard the boy on the landing above her. He still cried, still swung the pipe. She turned in time to see him lose his footing and crash down the staircase toward her. Paula went through the door into the light of day and closed the door behind her.
~~~
Eyes burning, face scalding, his entire body aching, the boy rolled off of the last step. That bitch. He’d envisioned a hundred reactions but not this. As he waited in the punk’s room, standing like a statue just inside the doorway, he envisioned the woman freezing in place; Chuck had imagined her screaming and running for the stairs; he had envisioned her softening, coming to him because of his resemblance to the man her husband had been. But no, she’d come for him in a different way.
You gotta feel your mistakes.
He stumbled forward, still blinded by that shit she’d put in his eyes. It ate at the open skin of his cheek; he could feel it working there like acid, as if the woman’s assault weren’t enough. His hip slammed a small table as he tried to navigate his way through the house. He wanted to hurt that bitch, wanted her crushed skull cradled in his lap as he stroked her beautiful hair.
He tried to open his eyes and nearly screamed again. Streaks of light cut through solid objects, their dismal colors blending into a hazy pool like oil floating on a puddle catching sunlight. Tears filled his eyes to wash away the chemical burn, but his vision wouldn’t clear. He’d have to come back for the woman. By now, she was miles away, and that’s where he needed to get.
A mind map of the house unfolded through his panic and suffering. The kitchen was off of the dining room. In order to get there, he would need to cross this room, and then it was a straight line to the backyard. Once there, he would take refuge in one of the neighbor’s lawns or houses. It didn’t matter; he had to get away, already he heard the sirens coming.
Hurrying through the house, knocking his shins and his hip into walls and furniture, he found the back door, threw it open, felt the sunlight hit his face. His barely opened eyes stung as he tried to assess the ground before him, but everything was one yellow-white smear. He rubbed at his eyes, but the pain only increased. And the sirens were getting so close.
That bitch. She fucked him up, fucked him up bad. Returning the favor would be his pleasure, he’d make that pretty face look like ground meat, make her fat body a…But he had to get away. If he didn’t hurry, he’d never get his chance. They’d know he’d done the punk, they’d know.
Tires raced along the side of the house. The sirens were deafening. He spun and twisted, trying to make good an escape whose time had long passed. Already he heard the doors opening and the heavy clicking of weapons being released. “Freeze,” someone called, and he almost laughed through his agony. Did they really say that? Still, he figured he’d better do what they said for now. Vicki would get him out.
Chuck stopped moving, stopped swiping the air with his pipe. When they told him to drop his weapon, he did it. When they told him to lay face down on the ground, he did it. When a heavy boot came to rest on the back of his neck, he let it. When they jerked his pained arms behind his back, grinding his chin into the concrete of the drive, he said nothing.
Whatever, he thought. He’d be back.
~
As Paula Nicholson was helped into an ambulance and a young man named Chuck Baxter was shoved into the back of a police car, Ken ventured through his memories.
Tell me a story, Baby.
The magnificence of Wonderland wore on him. At night he read Travis stories from the large volume on the nightstand, but he wouldn’t put feeling into the words as he once had. Now he merely recited the words before him, drawing no pleasure from them. Travis questioned him about this sudden disinterest, and he just complained of being tired.
He wanted out. Whether or not he ever found the life he dreamed became irrelevant; he wanted out of Brugier’s life. The place was scaring him, as if the rest of the world no longer existed. Less and less they ventured out to shop or eat. Though not a prisoner—he was able to walk at his leisure through the Quarter—Ken felt captured.
One cool January day, he decided to visit Crow again. It had been nearly a month since he’d last seen his friend and that had been at The Parlor. The boy had been so drunk that he probably didn’t even remember the evening. Ken wanted to make sure that Crow was sober. He had something to ask.
So, Ken crossed the quarter to the flat they had shared. Crow, predictably, lay on the bed, still sleeping though it was well past noon.
“Hey?” Ken said, laughing at his friend’s laziness.
“Wha…?” Crowley tried. He coughed vigorously into his fist and sat up. “Hey!”
He crossed the room to give his friend a hug. “How’s it going?”
“Cool,” Crowley replied still trying to focus his eyes. “What brings you out here? Slumming?”
“Something like that,” Ken said. “Haven’t seen you in a while; thought I’d check up on you.”
“Yeah well,” his friend laughed, “as you can see I’m as productive as ever. I went out last night with this woman from Baton Rouge. You should have seen her. Damn child, she was a fine-looking thing. She had some of that acid shit. I don’t even know where she went. I came out of it as the sun was coming up and shagged ass back here. Never even got to her. We just drank and laughed. God did we laugh. I wish I could remember what we laughed about, but hey, she was paying the bills.”
“Sounds great,” Ken said. A twinge of envy ran through him. He missed those late nights with Crow. He missed the action and the intoxication and the complete disregard for common decency. Most of all, he missed the freedom. “We should get together some night.”
Crow didn’t seem happy to hear this. “Sure,” he said. He looked suspicious. “Thing’s okay?”
“No,” Ken said. He stood up and walked across the room. “I don’t know. I mean, what have I got to bitch about? Everything I want, he gets me.”
“Sounds good on this end.”
“But it’s not enough. I mean, the guy’s acting like we’re married or something. We spend all of the time together and…It’s just not what I want.”
“So tell him.”
“I did, and he just brushed it off.”
Crow slid out of the bed. His legs dangled over the edge as he looked at his friend. “I didn’t tell you this,” Crow said, moving his gaze around the apartment as if he expected to find spies. “Christ,” he said, running a palm through his hair. “You didn’t meet Brugier by accident, okay? He’s had his eye on you for a long time now, long before I took you to see him.”
The news settled about him like a cold mist.
“He came to me,” Crow continued. “He’d seen us together on Bourbon and at the restaurant. The night that Gordon Lawless took me to The Parlor for the first time, Brugier introduced himself. We got to talking. He suggested I bring you by. Then he insisted.”
“Shit,” Ken whispered. If he had known how to identify his feeling at that moment, it would have been one of complete outrage. “What is this?”
“You don’t get it,” his friend said. His voice actually seemed pained, and Ken had never heard this tone from him before. “Darlin’, you are married, like it or not. Lawless told me that Brugier never did shit like this. Never. Those other kids are different; they hang around hoping to meet someone rich. He doesn’t give a shit about them, and they don’t give a shit about him except for what he can get them. But Brugier wants you.”
“No,” Ken said. “I’m out of there.”
“Ken, you’re still not getting the picture. Brugier’s a powerful man. He knows shit about everyone. Even the mob is afraid of this guy. Don’t screw around. I mean it. You don’t know what he’s capable of. I don’t think anyone does.”
“So what am I supposed to do?” Ken asked. “Spend the rest of my life with him? Wait it out until he gets bored or I go insane? No. I’m leaving.”
“Ken.”
“Can I move back in?”
Crow looked up at him through his lashes. His bangs hung in front of his beak nose, and something terrible played across his face. “No,” Puritan Crowley said.
“Crow?”
“Fuck, Ken,” Crowley spat. “This isn’t like asking a cab to pull over because you’re bored with the ride. Brugier has power. He is power. Do you have any idea who goes to that parlor? People who run this city, this fucking state. And everyone who goes there is breaking the law, Ken, but they still go. They go for him. They go to get a glimpse of him. Maybe they stay for those kids running around the place, but they’re there for him. What do you imagine a guy does to get people like that to worship him? Hmm? He isn’t famous, and he certainly isn’t the richest guy around, though he probably could be. Nobody knows what he is, Ken. He’s a mystery, but he’s a mystery with power. And you are his.”
Puritan Crowley’s words sank in. Ken had met the man on a hot July night, sitting in a courtyard as he sipped a drink and observed the revelers who enjoyed his hospitality. What had Ken thought then? A good time? Fun and games? All part of the vacation he was enjoying before he started taking life seriously? Had he felt love for the man? Could he? And the plain answer was: no.
Even without his fancies of a normal life, even without the fantasy of a wife and a family, he did not feel love for Brugier. Awe. Compassion. But not love. That was the plainest fact. Perhaps with that emotion he might accept this unwelcome fate, but without it?
“I have to get out of there.” Ken said. “I have to leave.”
He turned from his friend and walked to the door. Crow called after him, but Ken stepped into the hall, with all of its odors and dismal paint, and walked out of the building. The heat of the day had increased. Sweat popped out on his collar, and by the time he reached Wonderland, his entire body was soaked.
Reginald passed him in the foyer, his eyes landing on Ken like an insult. “Go to hell,” Ken said. He moved to the stairs and took them two at a time as he hurried toward the bedroom. He threw open the door, but Travis was not there. Downstairs he checked all of the chambers, but they were empty or occupied by the Vassals who cleaned or relaxed, depending on their status.
“Where is he?” Ken demanded of a young man who was reading a comic book while reclined on Brugier’s favorite chaise lounge.
The boy shrugged and went back to the brightly colored rag in his hand.
He went to the balcony outside of the room he had shared with Travis. Standing there he looked out at the courtyard and the beautiful flowers. The garden always seemed to be in bloom here. Always. He neither saw nor heard Brugier come onto the terrace. When the man spoke, Ken felt chilled.
“You want to leave,” Brugier said.
Ken turned. The man had not showered yet. His hair was a tousled bush, and his eyes looked bleary. The clothes he wore were wrinkled and uncharacteristically shabby. He looked like a drunk in the street, a bum; he looked sadder than Ken had ever seen another human being look.
Still, “yes” was his answer.
“Do you know how long I’ve been alone?” Brugier asked, staring over the courtyard and its lovely collection of flowers. His voice was ragged.
“Travis, it’s not…”
“Of course you don’t,” Brugier interrupted. “The first time I saw you it was raining. You were at the restaurant on a break. I remember you were reading a book by Baldwin. You loved the book. The tragedy of Giovanni entranced you.”
“I can’t live like this.”
“And what would you intend to do?”
“Move back in with Crow,” he lied. “Then find a new job.”
Brugier chuckled. “Then school and a wife and some little ones?”
“Maybe.”
“Is that all?” Brugier questioned. “The mundane dream of the middle class? Is that the life you want? And what happens when the misery of truth creeps up on you? When the family is not enough and you realize that your dream has been nothing but an inexpensive entertainment diverting you from who you really are?”
“I don’t know who I am. I need to find out.”
“I can show you.” Brugier turned and put a hand on Ken’s shoulder. “You can have as many lives as you want with me. You can be anything you want, everything you want.” His face looked miserable. The stubble of his beard showed thick gray trunks of hair. Brugier reached in the pocket of his wrinkled suit. He pulled out a chain with a small charm at the end. “Take this,” he said. “I call it the Thorn. Keep this, and no matter what happens, we’ll be together.”
Ken accepted the charm and wrapped his arms around the man. He embraced Brugier and tears came to his eyes. For a while, Ken forgot about leaving.
~~~
He stayed that night, wrapped in Brugier’s arms. As the revelers celebrated another night of life in the Parlor, Ken barely slept. His eyes would close for a few moments and then pop open again, impelled by some new thought.
The fragile warmth, such an uncommon thing, had kept him in Wonderland with his mentor. Confusion guided him back into the bed, back into the terrible comfort of the fold, but its grasp was tenuous. Ken had not changed his mind. Perhaps he would give it a little time so that he could ease the man out of his life. The last thing he wanted was to hurt anyone. Especially this man who had been so generous to him. He touched the necklace and held it up so that it caught the light from the courtyard: an ugly little charm, granted, but obviously a precious piece.
Crow’s words came back to him: The man is power. A mystery with power. But he was a man, and he hurt like any other. If only Ken could make Travis understand without hurting him.
But when the morning came, Travis again put on his wrinkled suit, buttoning his shirt wrong and cinching his belt loose so that his slacks hung low on his hips. He made no pretense of vanity; he ran no shower or brush through his hair. He didn’t even spray himself with the sweet perfume he liked. Once he awoke, he put on the suit and went outside. He returned an hour later, after Ken had cleaned up and dressed himself.
Ken sat at the kitchen table and drank coffee while he read. The rain had just begun to tattoo the courtyard. A couple of the Vassals were taking their breakfast in the dining room while another puttered in the pantry, scrubbing the floor and organizing the shelves. As Ken skimmed the book in his hand, his thoughts returned to leaving the bizarre compound of Brugier’s Wonderland.
If he could not stay with Crow, then he’d have to find a new roommate. Still, he thought
Crow would let him come back. They were friends, after all. Ken knew that once he made an amicable split with Travis his friend would acquiesce.
Then someone slapped a newspaper on the table before him. Startled, he looked into the melancholy face of its conveyer. Travis appeared completely lost, his watery eyes unable to focus. “I’m sorry,” Brugier said. “I know he was your friend.”
Ken looked back at the newspaper and scanned the page. A small headline on the bottom of the right column announced:
Young Man Killed In Traffic Accident
Ken read the article. Puritan Crowley was dead. According to the paper, Crow had run into the street and was hit by a delivery truck. Witnesses described the young man’s behavior as erratic, screaming and batting at the air as if warding off attack. The police would check for evidence of controlled substances during the autopsy. He was nineteen years old.
After reading the article, Ken stared into the courtyard. Rain and bright sunlight showered the stones simultaneously. Travis put a hand on his shoulder.
A mystery, Ken thought. No one knows what he is. He’s a mystery. A mystery with power. And you are his.
~~~
He did not attend Crow’s funeral. Travis insisted that he should, but Ken couldn’t bring himself to do it. As those days passed, he marked the complete degeneration of Travis Brugier. Never shaving, never cleaning himself. Day after day, his hair remained in a nest on his head. The man’s complete disregard for hygiene had become disgusting. He smelled, and his suit no longer looked fitted. Rather it looked like a crumpled rag taken off another man’s back. He had lost weight, and his sallow cheeks were made more hideous by the bristling hairs of an unkempt beard.
Brugier’s manner reflected his appearance. At times, he just sat quietly, in a melancholy haze or wandered through the house as if he were lost, his eyes seeing nothing of the treasures surrounding him. Other times he was volatile. Three of the Vassals had fled in those days, cowering under Brugier’s harsh words and dashing out of Wonderland with nothing but the clothes on their backs.
Ken decided to leave four days after Crowley’s death. If Brugier wanted to hurt him, then fine, but he was leaving. The man was a specter, a horrible ghost biding its time. Lying in the bed at night, Ken could barely sleep for the reek of him. Brugier’s countenance became impossible to regard, and his temper was uncertain. Ken could feel the emotion building in the man, boiling, preparing to explode. He wanted to be long gone when that moment came.
The day of his departure, he went to the bedroom and found Travis in the chair occupying the slender track of wall between the French doors leading to the balcony. The light pouring in on either side made it all the more difficult to see the man. Dust floated in the columns of sunlight, and in the shadow between these pillars, sat Travis Brugier.
He appeared to be covered in dust himself. The gray cast of his beard had bled into the man’s skin and his clothing and his eyes. No longer did he look real. Rather he had taken on the quality of a charcoal drawing: light and shade, defining form but lacking the colors of reality.
“And now,” Brugier said, “you leave me.”
“Yes,” Ken replied. He had not even seen the man’s lips move. Trapped in the darkness, Travis might have been dead his form was so still. “I have to.”
“I knew this would happen. Even though you stayed, I knew you’d never really stayed. The whole time you were making your plans to leave me.”
“I didn’t want to hurt you.”
“How sweet,” Brugier scoffed. The man leaned forward in the chair, knotting his fingers in his lap.
“Fine,” Ken said. He shook his head and turned.
“Wait,” Brugier called. “I’m sorry, Baby. I’m sorry. Please wait.”
Ken stopped. He turned. “I hate this,” he said.
“Yes.” Travis stood. He walked forward and swung an arm toward the bed. “Sit down, please. I’m going to tell you something.” Hesitantly, Ken sat on the edge of the bed. He watched the shadow of Brugier move against the glowing curtains. More than ever he wanted to be away from this place. Like a panther Travis paced, his form dark and brooding.
“A long time ago, long before you were born, I decided to be alone. Someone I trusted, someone I loved, betrayed me. I offered her so much, but in the end she clung to the ignorance of her world, the foolish beliefs of her religion, and she cast me aside. I swore that would never happen again, but it did. With you.”
“I just…”
“Shut up!” Brugier bellowed. The man stopped his pacing and inhaled deeply. “I’m sorry. You thought I loved you once.” He fell silent and turned his head to look at the confused young man on his bed. “I do love you, Baby. There’s a fire in you, and you feed it with experiences. You want to know more and do more than the rest of the world’s sheep. Those flames attracted me, warmed me, and, yes, they made me love you. Perhaps, if you had been given some time to grow you’d have loved me too, but I acted from desperation. The thought of losing you confused me. It still does, honestly. But I realize your need. So, I want you to have the time you need to grow, to experience life, and when that’s over, I want you to come back to me.”
“I can’t promise that,” Ken said. Never was what he thought.
A bitter grin spread over Brugier’s face before he whispered, “Never is a hopeless commitment. You jump to it far too quickly.”
“You don’t understand,” Ken said.
“Oh, I assure you, I do. When time is a commodity of which you have little, you become quick to eliminate possibilities. You have to make choices. Do you see that? You only have so much time to spend, so you tell yourself. I can do this or I must do this, but I haven’t got the time for everything, so I’ll say never to this other. Passion and responsibility clash, because those things you desire steal time from the things you believe you need. So, the painter sets down his brushes and becomes a file clerk, and the man who wants to see the world puts away his duffle bag, so he can stay home to feed his children and wipe the shit from their asses. Every choice brings misery, because something must be killed to give space and sustenance for some other thing’s life. And it’s all because you know that one day the clock’s ticking will stop.” As he spoke, Travis’s voice rose. He was pacing and ranting, waving his hands in the air. Sweat covered his face, glistened in his unkempt hair.
“And you!” he continued. “You stupid, stupid prick. I’m telling you it doesn’t have to be that way. If you’d just open your fucking ears and listen.”
Ken had to get out of this place. The man was going mad before his eyes. And no matter how he felt, he could not watch this descent, could not witness the shattering of another human mind. He moved to leave the bed.
Brugier jumped forward and pushed him back. “You are not leaving.”
Ken rolled off the bed. “The fuck I’m not. You think I’m one of those kids downstairs who needs you? I was here because I wanted to be here. And I’m leaving because I want to leave.”
“You were here because I paid Crowley to bring you here. Your life has been mine for months now, and it will be mine for a long time to come.”
“Bullshit.”
“Is it?” Brugier said. “Let’s find out. You go ahead and leave, Baby. You go live in this fantasy of yours. And do you know what you’ll find? I do. I’ve done it all. It will drain you, suck you dry. You’ll never know what life could be because you’ll be too caught up in what it should be. But that will pass, and when it does and when you think you’re happy, that’s when you’ll see me again. That’s when I’ll show you exactly how fragile all of this is. No one can give you what I can. No one!”
Ken walked to the door. He looked at Brugier for what he hoped was the last time, and then he turned and fled the house and the courtyard. He escaped back into the real world, leaving Wonderland behind, never imagining that he would return.
But Travis wasn’t done with him. Not just yet.
~
David was torn. He’d spent his afternoon sifting through memos and newspaper articles, seeking documentation to support the strategic recommendations he would be presenting to his client. But his mind was not on the work, not fully. Ken was in there, messing things up, creating disarray with his face, his body, and his irrational and infuriating behavior. David couldn’t even pretend to understand why he had allowed Ken to put him through such emotional turbulence. With no other logical explanation David had to believe that he was still in love, but the bitch of it was, he loved a man whom he hadn’t seen in well over a year. Then, Ken had been charismatic, funny, and romantic, but David had seen nothing of these traits in the past few days; their time together had been colored by morbid drama and Ken’s melancholy. So, why David expended so much thought on the man was incomprehensible. Maybe it was the idea that Ken actually needed him, or there was magnetism to Ken’s vulnerability. David didn’t know. Rationality insisted that he put an end to it, just walk away and return to the comfortable life he’d created for himself.
But rationality had a weak voice, rarely heard over the roar of emotion. So, when Ken called, asking if they could get together because he needed to talk, David had gathered all of his work into the appropriate files, logged off of his computer, and headed for his car.
Now, they walked along the river, saying little as the Mississippi gurgled and rolled to their left. The sky was clear except for wisps of cloud against the horizon. Ken wore a distracted expression, nothing new there, and he seemed to be struggling for something to say. David wanted to break the uncomfortable silence, wanted to lighten things up a bit. He threw a hip at Ken and nudged him along the path.
Ken didn’t respond. He was lost in thought. When he finally spoke it had nothing to do with David’s gesture.
“Sam died today,” Ken said.
“Sam?” David asked. “Your friend Sam?”
“Yes. His lover, Jersey, started shooting at us. Sam panicked, tried to get away. A truck ran him down.”
“There was shooting?” David asked with quiet incredulity.
“Jersey caught Sam in bed with someone. He snapped, went into a jealous rage. The thing is, I’m pretty sure the guy he caught Sam with was the same guy who killed Bobby.”
“What? Are you sure?”
“No. But, yes.”
“Less cryptic would be helpful.”
“Then, I have to start at the beginning,” Ken said without taking his eyes from the walk. “I told you why I left and how it had something to do with Travis Brugier?”
“Yes.”
“I want to tell you the rest of it. It’s important for you to understand what happened.” Ken crossed the path and sat on an empty bench.
David joined him. Ken gazed over the water, lost in thought, and David waited for his friend to speak, anxious to get new perspective on an old story.
“I’ve been thinking about this all day, trying to get the pieces straight in my head,” Ken said. “I remember most of it pretty clearly.”
“Take your time.”
Ken worked through his thoughts for several moments, and then said, “I met Travis Brugier on a summer’s night back in seventy-four. I had this friend, Puritan Crowley, whom I called Crow. We used to…”
~~~
For thirty minutes David sat and listened to his friend’s memory. He pictured Brugier’s home and the Vassals maintaining the grounds and serving their master. This information was in keeping with what David had heard whispered in his youth. Then came the young Ken Nicholson, reading to the man in bed as the nights passed or the afternoons faded. When Ken began describing the deterioration of Brugier, David’s nerves crackled and stung. He already knew how the story ended, but to imagine someone with such power losing his sanity was truly unnerving.
Ken stopped talking after describing his escape from Brugier’s
Wonderland. “Did I mention the necklace?” Ken asked.
“No,” David said. “Is it important?”
Ken smiled bitterly. “Yeah. It’s important. He called it the Thorn. You know how some people name their jewelry, particularly a piece that’s valuable? Well, he’d done that with this necklace. It didn’t look valuable. In fact, it was rather ugly. But he told me to keep it. He told me that it would bring him back to me one day.”
“What did it look like?” David asked.
Ken fished in his open shirt collar for a moment and pulled a chain free. “Like this,” he said.
A small charm in a golden setting that wrapped around the cap of the pendant like talons. The pendant itself was little more than the size of David’s thumbnail. Shaped vaguely like a cross, with a thick vertical wedge that ended in a point and a horizontal beam that was ragged, the piece was hideous. Slightly gray like a rotting tooth, it might have been an old piece of polished ivory.
“It isn’t the prettiest accessory I’ve ever seen.”
Ken didn’t reply. Instead he returned the charm beneath his shirt. Then he said, “After about a week, I thought I was safe from Brugier. I’d gotten a new job, and I was going to start the following day. Then, while I was wandering around the Quarter that afternoon, I saw them. Maybe they’d been following me all week, I don’t know. But his Vassals were everywhere. I knew most of the faces from Wonderland, and I knew that if Travis had sent them out to do any damage, they would have been more than happy to do it.
“I went back to the apartment I’d shared with Crow. I threw my clothes in a paper sack and tried to get out of town. I didn’t get anywhere. They found me, hiding in a bar. They took me back to Wonderland. I didn’t know what to expect. Travis was so far gone by then. I thought he was capable of anything at that point. Still, I couldn’t have imagined…”
Ken’s voice trailed away. David looked out at the water. He placed a hand on Ken’s thigh and rubbed lightly. The familiar touch seemed to bring the man back to himself.
“The courtyard was the same as it always had been, but I felt some sense of promise there, the promise that something horrible was going to happen. It smelled like a funeral. The flowers weren’t pretty anymore. Their scent was nauseating. Travis stood on the balcony of the house, and he asked me to come up. I didn’t really have any choice, so I went. We stood on the balcony, and he said something really odd to me, he said that even I would appreciate what was about to happen.
“By then, four of the Vassals were in the courtyard standing at attention like soldiers do with their arms at their sides and their backs straight, but they were paired off, two facing two. They were naked, but I didn’t really look at them at first. I was too scared of Travis.
“When he clapped his hands, twice, like a sheik calling his wives, I looked at him and saw that his mind was gone. I saw that immediately. His eyes were too large, his smile too insane. Travis noticed me staring and jerked his head once, indicating that I should be looking in the courtyard. A terrible scream came up. It sounded like that of a woman, so shrill and panicked. I looked down into the courtyard, and one of the Vassals was backing away from the other three. His name was Reggie, the kid Travis had sent up to the bedroom that night. I didn’t know what was wrong. I’m still not sure, but he kept screaming.
“One of the other boys, his name was Vern, I think. I only remember because he hadn’t hated me like the others had. When he and I spoke, I always got the impression that he pitied me. Anyway, Vern stepped forward. He had his hands up in front of him, and he was stepping forward to comfort Reggie. I remember thinking that he shouldn’t get too close because Reggie was out of his mind; he wasn’t seeing Vern at all. Even from where I stood on the balcony, I could tell that whatever was scaring the kid was inside his head. I’m not sure how I knew—something about the eyes—but there they were, Vern and Reggie, kind of dancing with each other. One would step forward, and the other would step back.
“Finally, Vern got too close. I called to him, tried screaming for him to get back, but it was already too late. Reggie snapped and charged at him. He cut Vern’s throat, and when he dropped, Reggie fell on him. The other two boys watched, wrapped in each other’s arms, terrified.
“By the time he stood up, Reggie was covered in Vern’s blood. His body was shaking madly, and his eyes still had that look in them. The other boys saw it too. Slowly, they separated. Reggie backed away, his head moving rapidly back and forth, following the movements of the other two, who were making wide circles to either side. I kept thinking that I had to do something, but I couldn’t. When I looked at Travis, he had moved himself onto the railing, sitting there like a kid at a baseball game.
“I couldn’t even say for sure what happened in those few seconds when I was looking at Travis. When I looked back at the courtyard, the three boys were tangled up with one another. I couldn’t tell them apart; there was too much blood, too much movement.
“Then Reggie stood up again. The others were dead, like Vern. Reggie had torn them apart, and for a moment, he looked triumphant. He stood there in the courtyard, looking up at us like a surviving gladiator. I don’t know what the boy expected, but Brugier was chuckling to himself. ‘Watch this,’ he whispered.
“Reggie screamed again. He was seeing something horrible, and it still came for him. ‘Too late,’ he cried. ‘Too late.’ Then he turned the knife on himself. He started cutting at his arms and body. Finally, at his own neck. I couldn’t speak. I just stood there watching the blood pouring out of their bodies. Maybe I thought it was all an act. I don’t remember.
“When it was over, Travis asked me if I liked his show. All I wanted to do was run. I wanted to get far away from Wonderland, but I couldn’t; Travis wouldn’t let me. Not yet. Travis and I spoke. I kept asking him what had happened and how he could just sit there, letting it happen.
“I was about to run when his face cleared. Suddenly he looked sane, like the man I had met all of those months before, and he told me that he loved me.”
David reached out to touch Ken’s shoulder. He squeezed it gently. “What happened?”
“He wrapped a wire around his neck. He told me that if I turned my back on him, I was choosing to kill him. He looked so calm then, even though he knew full well I’d already made my decision. He wanted to make me choose, maybe thinking I’d feel responsible for what was about to happen.
“But I turned and walked away, and didn’t feel a moment’s guilt over it.”
~~~
David breathed deeply, the horrible story affecting him like a long run: He was short of breath; his heart thundered; sweat chilled on his neck. He actually shivered, the hard bench digging into his back as he did so.
So, that had been the night that Wonderland fell. Everyone assumed that Brugier had killed the boys and then taken his own life. It was the only thing that had made sense to the authorities. The papers had been vague as to the state of the remains, and no names were printed save for Brugier’s.
David felt the story sinking in, filling in the gaps of the fable he had heard numerous times in so many different ways. Some of the less wholesome accounts of that night insisted that Brugier had sodomized the mutilated corpses and tasted of their blood and flesh. He remembered so many tellings of the story that it had become a grand fiction to him, like ghost stories told by boys around campfires: tales of the hook, tales of the swamp witch, tales of the babysitter who roasted babies in ovens, and tales of Travis Brugier. So intangible were the details of that final night, the fertile minds of his peers had expounded on the happenings as they saw fit. As a result, a brutal mythology had formed around Brugier.
“And you have no idea why that kid snapped?”
“I’m beginning to suspect,” Ken said. “All I know for certain is that Travis made it happen.”
“What did you do?” David asked.
“What do you mean?”
“After that night, what happened to you?”
“I ran,” Ken said, still staring over the darkening river. “I hitchhiked out of the city. I went to Dallas, where I spent six months fighting nightmares. I pawned the necklace Travis had given me, and I think I got ten bucks or something for it. I worked sporadically, and then one day I called my parents. They told me that a man from New Orleans was looking for me. His name was Gordon Lawless.”
“The lawyer?” David asked.
“Yeah. I always thought the name was ironic. Travis introduced me to him a few times at the house. He used to wear those summery dresses and camp it up in the Parlor until six in the morning, but a nice guy, I thought.” Ken’s voice drifted away for a moment. “Travis used to call him Goldie, even though his hair was carrot red. When I asked about the nickname, Travis just laughed. Turns out that Travis had a quarter-horse ranch in Kentucky. Goldie was the name of his prime sire.”
David Lane remembered Gordon Lawless well enough. He’d seen the man cruising along Rampart for years during David’s early experimental phase. The guy was very popular. He was funny and rich, and word had it that he was exceptionally well endowed.
“What did he want?” David asked.
“I didn’t call,” Ken said. “I was afraid to call. He showed up in Dallas about a week later. My parents had given him the address of the house I was rooming in. When he came in, I knew something was wrong, or at least I thought something was wrong. I guess I thought he had come to take me back to New Orleans. Maybe the police had discovered my involvement with that last night in Wonderland.
“It turned out to be something very different. Lawless came with a check for fifty thousand dollars, a bequest from Travis. I was also to take possession of the house.”
“Wonderland?” David asked.
“Yes. I told Lawless to sell the place, burn it down. Whatever the case, I didn’t want it. There were stipulations in the will against me doing anything except residing in the place for thirty years. If after that I chose to sell, well…” His voice drifted away again, and Ken looked at David.
The gray of Ken’s eyes, now deeper in the dim light of evening, traced over his face. What was he looking for? Belief? Disbelief? Though he didn’t know what his expression might say, David believed him. There was only one thing that puzzled him.
“When did you get the necklace out of hock?”
“I didn’t,” Ken said. His eyes still burned into David’s.
“I don’t follow,” David said. “When did you get it back?”
“A few days ago.” Ken’s voice grew rough with the words. “Vicki Bach gave it to Bobby, and then she killed him.”
~
Ken’s sense of unease increased as he rode with David toward Paula’s house in the Garden District. He had to check on his ex-wife and daughter to make sure they were safe. Full dark had settled over the city and in Ken’s thoughts. After a day of reflection, lost amid the diseased memories of Brugier and his boys, Ken had emerged with the certainty that his escape from Wonderland had been an illusion.
When you think you’re happy, that’s when you’ll see me again. That’s when I’ll show you exactly how fragile all of this is.
And hadn’t he been happy? Last year before he’d started seeing visions of David’s death? He considered that the happiest time of his life. That’s when all of this had started. His flight to Austin had only interrupted the cruelty, merely postponing his torment.
Brugier was still alive, or he had entertained such bitter foresight as to account for Ken’s punishment before death. Neither of these choices seemed possible, but somehow Travis had made good on his promise to return for him, and Vicki Bach and her blond accomplice, Chuck, were his agents. Brugier could have used any number of incentives to recruit these violent children and more like them; his resources had always run as deep and dark as a mine shaft.
Ken needed to find out their connection to the master of Wonderland, find Vicki and Chuck and make this stop, because now Ken saw that the people he loved were being manipulated like dolls in a perverse puppet drama. None of them were safe, not Paula or Jen. Not David.
“Ken?” David asked.
“Yeah.”
“You gotta say something,” David said. “All of this quiet is messing with my head.”
“I don’t think you’d want to hear what I’m thinking.”
“Then sing me a fucking show tune, because this brooding crap is wearing me down.”
“I think the same kid that killed my son killed Sam, and I don’t think it’s going to stop with them.”
“I thought you said Sam’s death was an accident.”
“Only because Jersey didn’t get the chance to shoot him.”
“You’re not making any sense.”
“Look, David, the kid said some things to Sam. The description fits, and Paula saw this Chuck asshole at Sam’s party, which is where Sam said he met the guy.”
“So, you think there’s a connection?” David asked, making it clear he saw no such thing. “Something between Bobby and Sam and this Chuck guy?”
“Yes, I do. I’m the connection,” Ken said. He turned to see what David made of the statement, but David kept his eyes on the road. Ken detected a slight compression of the man’s brow, but little else in the way of reaction. “It all goes back to Travis.”
“Okay,” David said evenly. “That’s enough.”
“It’s not enough, because it’s not over yet. He’s not finished.”
He watched David struggling with his comments. The man’s hands tightened around the steering wheel, and he drew his upper lip between his teeth in an attempt to control the content of his response.
Finally, David breathed deeply and said in a very calm voice, “I thought you said you saw Brugier die.”
“He could have faked it. I was in no state of mind that night to know exactly what I saw, not after what I’d already seen.”
“Maybe,” David said, “but the police identified the body. It was in every newspaper in the state. Besides, even if he were alive, he’d be eighty years old by now, wouldn’t he? It makes no sense that he’d just wait around that long.”
“I know,” Ken admitted. “But…”
“No,” David interrupted. He’d reached the end of his patience. “There is no but. You went through hell with Brugier. I get that. You’re going through hell now. I understand that too, and I understand your fear. I even understand why you felt you had to leave last year. I think you really did have a breakdown. Furthermore, you’re still having it. Bobby? Sam? Come on, you can’t expect me to see a conspiracy behind your son’s murder and a jealous spat that ended badly, especially a conspiracy that started thirty years ago. This shit is in your head, Ken. You can put it down to anything you like, grief or fear, but the fact is you’re on your way to a complete emotional collapse. And honestly,” David said, casting a serious look at Ken, “I can’t watch that happen.”
He understood the implication of David’s words. He’d handled the conversation badly, had handled everything with David badly. He couldn’t even pretend to be surprised that David was already fed up.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “You’re right. I’m just out of my mind right now.”
“And with good reason,” David said. “You’ve lost two people who were incredibly important to you. It’s natural that you’d want to make sense of it, but Bobby’s death wasn’t your fault and neither was Sam’s.”
“I know,” Ken said, though of course he knew no such thing. What he knew was that Brugier’s threat was real, and anyone close to him was susceptible to that threat. He was just afraid of losing someone else, afraid of losing David, so he’d say what he had to.
David made a left off of St. Charles and shifted in his seat, apparently trying to get comfortable. The air in the car weighed heavy with his anxiety. With each breath, Ken felt it coiling in his belly and throat.
“So, am I just dropping you off?” David asked.
“No,” Ken answered. “I mean, I hope not. I need to check in on Paula and Jen, but then I think you and I need to sit down and talk, work some of this out.”
“It might be better if we hold off on that. I don’t think you’re in the best frame of mind right now. I know I’m not.”
“Okay,” Ken said, the tension in his chest tightening to an ache. “I know you’ve gone through more than enough because of me, and I’m really sorry, David. If I could wrap the last year up and toss it on the fire and burn it away completely, I would. When I saw you again, I thought I had the chance to do that.”
Ken paused. He had much more to say, but he’d been watching David as he spoke, reading the vague changes in his expression for some sign that his words were getting through. David navigated a turn, the turn onto Paula’s block, and his eyes grew wide. Only when David’s hushed voice filled the car did Ken turn his attention to the windshield and the scene beyond.
“Oh my God,” David whispered.
~~~
Police cars, their emergency lights cold and dark, lined the middle of the block in front of the Victorian Ken had bought for his wife as a wedding present. Men in blue uniforms wandered between the line of cars and the house. Seeing the activity sent a cold spike through Ken’s chest.
He was too late.
“I think I owe you an apology,” David said, speeding the Mercedes down the block.
Ken couldn’t reply. His thoughts slid, made slick by desperation and a grief he prayed was premature. Paula? Jennifer? And in thinking about his daughter, she appeared in the glare of David’s headlights.
Jennifer stood at the side of the road. She bent at the middle, hugging herself, making half circles back and forth. Tears streamed down her cheeks. Her lips twisted and trembled.
“Go on home,” Ken told David.
“The hell I will.”
“David, go. I don’t have time to argue with you. I’ll call you later.”
“This is bullshit,” David growled, slowing the car.
And he was right, Ken realized. “Okay. I’m sorry. Wait here.” Before the car came to a complete stop, Ken threw open the door and leapt onto the pavement, already running toward his daughter. Curious neighbors stood on porches or gazed out on the scene from slightly parted curtains. A police officer stood in Paula’s drive and watched, jabbing his flashlight in Ken’s direction.
When Ken reached Jennifer, she was bent at the middle as if punched. He grabbed his daughter and pulled her to his chest. Her body quaked violently as she sniffed back tears.
“Honey, what happened?” he asked. “Are you okay? Is your mother okay?”
Jennifer cried a low, mournful note and pulled away from him. “Hey,” someone called from his side, and Ken turned to see the police officer leaving his position in the drive to walk toward him. Behind the man, lights burned through every window of the house. Yellow strips of tape wrapped around the porch, announcing to the public that this was a crime scene.
The policeman’s face was blubbery, thick, and moist. His eyes held concern yet behind this was a hard expression.
“Can I help you?” the officer asked, exhaling onions and garlic into Ken’s face.
Ken swallowed hard against the offensive breath and said, “My wife…ex-wife…” and his voice died.
The officer nodded. “Mr. Nicholson calm down. She’s fine. They’ve taken her to Mercy.”
Why was she at the hospital if she was fine?
“What happened?” he asked.
“Earlier this evening she was attacked,” the officer said. Jennifer moaned deeply and hugged herself. “But she’s fine. She did a lot more damage to the creep than he did to her. We have him in custody, and your wife is being treated for minor injuries.”
“You caught him?”
“We apprehended a man named Charles Baxter here at the scene. He’s in our custody.”
A wave of relief crashed over Ken, making his legs shake. He took a step toward Jennifer, and she backed away, still hugging herself. Her petulant display cut into him, but he had no choice but to accept it. He wasn’t going to have a scene with her in the middle of the street.
“Thank you,” Ken told the officer. He turned to Jennifer and reached his hand out for her. “We should go see your mother,” he said.
His daughter looked at him as if he’d just called her something hateful. She cast a glance over his shoulder at David’s car and then dropped her eyes to the road. With her arms still wrapped over her chest, Jennifer stepped forward, making a great show of avoiding Ken as she walked to David’s car and climbed in the backseat.
~~~
The drive to the hospital was tense and quiet. When Ken introduced David to Jennifer, she mumbled a “hello” and looked out the window, curling her legs beneath her. Ken had always thought that introducing his family to one of his romantic interests would be uncomfortable, which is why he’d never done it. His theory seemed to have been proved. They all sat silently. None of them seemed to know what to say, and for the time being, Ken figured that was a good thing. The night had offered more than enough drama already.
At the hospital, he asked David to wait while he checked in on Paula. She was awake and in good spirits, and Jennifer’s petulance went out the window as soon as she saw her mother’s bruised face and slung arm. She hugged her mother and kissed her cheek.
“I was so scared,” Jennifer said, laying her head across her mother’s chest, just above the sling.
“How are you feeling?” Ken asked from the doorway, himself feeling awkward for interrupting the moment between mother and daughter, again sensing his outsider status among them.
“I’m good,” Paula told him.
She looked happy to see him. Maybe he was imagining that, but he hoped not. “I’m glad,” he said. “The police said you kicked the shit out of the guy.”
“I hope I did,” she said, wrapping her good arm around Jennifer’s shoulders, wincing in pain as she did so. “It’s all kind of a blur right now. Are you going to come in, or do you have to go?”
“No. I don’t have to go,” Ken said. “I’ve got one thing to take care of, and then I’ll be right back.”
He left the room and wandered down the hall to the visitor’s lounge where he found David thumbing through an old issue of People magazine.
“She’s okay?” David asked.
“Yes,” Ken said. “She’s going to be fine.”
“Thank God. Do you need anything?”
“No,” he said. “Thank you, though. We’re good for now. You should go on home. We’ll be here for a while, and then I’ll have to take Jen back to my place for the night.”
David nodded his head. “I’m sorry. About what I said in the car, I mean.”
“It’s okay. I’ve put you through a lot, and most of it was crazy.”
“Give me a call in the morning,” David said. He stepped forward, wrapped his arm around Ken’s neck, and pulled him tight.
“All of that’s over. They caught the bastard. You can relax, now.”
“Yes,” Ken said. But he couldn’t. Chuck wasn’t responsible for the hallucinations Ken suffered, nor was he the sole villain in all that had happened.
Vicki was still out there. The police had caught Chuck, so maybe her plans—Travis’s plans—needed to be revised, but Ken didn’t believe that anything was over. Even if they caught Vicki he doubted things would change. In one way or another, Brugier was behind all off this. Until Ken understood exactly what influence he still had, how he was able to get into Ken’s head or command and control people like Vicki and Chuck, and put an end to it, he didn’t believe any of them would be safe. All he could do was try to protect the people he cared about until he figured it out.
~
Chuck sat in an interrogation room just like the ones he’d seen on television: It had dirty gray walls, a frosted window with bars over it, and one of those mirrors you weren’t supposed to know people could see through, but everyone did. He thought it was pretty cool, imagining himself on one of those programs where the cops got all tough and stupid. What wasn’t cool was wondering where in the fuck Vicki was. He could see again. They had rinsed his eyes to get that pepper shit out of them, and they had bandaged his cheek where the old bitch had scratched him, though he felt certain they should have stitched up a couple of the gashes; otherwise, they’d scar. Of course the assholes holding him didn’t care what he looked like. They didn’t know that in Florida, your face was your meal ticket. Even with all of the cash Vicki owed him, he’d have to make a living at some point. If his face didn’t heal right, they’d have hell to pay.
And where was Vicki? She’d promised that if he were picked up, she’d get him out. She’d promised to take care of him. The way she threw money around, he knew she could make his bail, whatever it was. Besides, she wouldn’t want him talking about her too much. Not only could he find her for them, he could explain the woman’s intent down to the finest detail. She knew it. No way she’d just let him rot in this shit hole because it wouldn’t be long before she joined him. She owed him, and damn if she wasn’t going to pay.
Other than Vicki being a cunt, it wasn’t so bad, though. It was just like TV. The detectives were hilarious, wanting to know why he did this and why he did that. They told him that a confession would make his life a lot easier. That was a total laugh. They had no idea how easy his life was going to be.
He’d faked them out, acting totally innocent and outraged, demanding a lawyer. He made it sound like the Nicholson woman had attacked him, which she had. He’d have scars for the rest of his fucking life because of her. When he got out, he’d pay the old bitch another visit before hitting the beach. He wanted to have a few words with her.
If only Vicki would show up and get him out. Christ, what was she waiting for?
Then a thought occurred to him, and he didn’t like it one bit: What if she’d already skipped? What if she’d just bailed out on him, moved east herself, or back to Texas with her pretty face and fine automobile? Vicki Bach. That was the name she’d told him, but she could have lied. She could already be across the border with a new name and a new car, and they’d never even know she’d been there, leaving him to take the whole fucking rap. Then, all she had to do was wait it out until he was a number in the boys’ club before coming back and finishing up with Nicholson.
No way, he thought. No way he was going to sit on his ass and let her ditch him. They’d be back soon. In a few minutes the detectives would come back through the door like they had done for the last three hours, and they’d ask him the same questions, hoping to find some hole in his story. Well, when they came back this time, he’d show them holes. He’d tear them open and fill in the name and the place and the fucking time.
Vicki should have known better than to fuck with him.
His head grew light with his decision. He hadn’t eaten all day, and his stomach growled and rumbled, making him nauseous. They could have given him a sandwich or something. As it was, the dizziness grew worse, and his head began aching miserably. He felt like he might puke right on the table. His head spun, and his eyes clouded. Maybe they’d drugged him. They might have slipped a truth serum or something into the watered-down coffee. They never showed you that on television, but he knew it happened. Sweat broke out on his brow. What the hell was this? What had that old bitch done to him? What had the cops done to him?
Chuck rocked forward hoping it might ease his mutinous belly, and for a moment it did. He closed his eyes and tried to imagine something nicer than the dirty gray walls of the interrogation room. What he pictured was a long stretch of white sand and the crystal-blue ocean stretching all the way around the world. He was on the deck of a big glass house, staring out over the Florida coastline. That was cool. He liked that. He leaned forward and put his head on the desk, hoping the image would quit spinning and give him some sanctuary from the sickness rolling over him.
He pictured Nicholson at the house with him. Such a classy guy. He imagined the man walking through a pastel living room, wearing a thick terry robe and in his hands holding two silver goblets. The warm smile on Nicholson’s face grew when he saw Chuck because he loved him. Like in a play, the images came to life, and he didn’t even have to concentrate to see them. In fact, he felt certain that if he were to open his eyes, he would still be on that lovely beach with Ken Nicholson, sipping drinks from silver goblets as the sun warmed their skin.
Chuck relaxed into the image, and the sickness began to subside. He was just starting to feel better when Nicholson’s face blew apart. The fantasy changed so quickly that he jerked his head off of the table. Opening his eyes, he was still in the brightly lit room with the empty Styrofoam cup on the table before him. His hands were cuffed behind his back.
The old guy’s face had blown apart, and beneath it was the face of Chuck’s father, his head swollen and knotted from the work Chuck had done on him with a wrench.
You gotta feel your mistakes; it’s the only way you’ll learn.
Chuck knew the voice in his head wasn’t real, besides it was bullshit. You didn’t have to feel anything; in fact, everything worked much better if you just kept things cool and numb. But now that he’d thought of his father’s sick claim, he couldn’t get it out of his head. Chuck breathed deeply and looked up into the stark white lights.
Vicki. She was doing this to him. If that bitch wanted to play games, he’d give her games. When the detectives came back, Chuck was going to spill. He knew everything, and maybe he’d done some shit, but Vicki was the mastermind. She was the conspirator, and he’d seen enough television programs to know that they fell a lot harder than the jerks they got to do the work. She’d worked Bobby Nicholson to get up close to him and then told Chuck to whack him flat. She’d purposely found that Fleagle asshole. She could have used any real estate dork in the city, but she’d wanted Fleagle because he fucked Nicholson’s buddy. Of course, so had Chuck.
Thinking about that Sam dude made him smile, not because of what they’d done together—that was just fucking—but because the guy had been a total chump. What a numb nuts. The guy’s lying in bed, apologizing, and begging his boyfriend to “wait,” while Chuck still had his dick buried in the guy’s ass. Hilarious.
But none of that mattered. No. What mattered was making sure that Vicki didn’t let him rot in the tank. He wasn’t taking the fall for her shit.
You have to feel your mistakes.
She’d feel. Fuck yeah, she’d feel. He’d tell the cops her name, her address; he’d testify at the fucking trial; and when he got around to telling them about the epic mind fuck Vicki was planning for Nicholson, they’d be thanking him and treating him like a star, because what she was planning to do to that guy and his family made the Manson thing look like a church social.
All he had to do was get his story straight. They wouldn’t believe him if he didn’t make it very clear. They’d think he was lying, trying to take the heat off of himself. He had to get it right, but his father’s fucking voice kept rolling around in his head, distracting him.
When the door finally opened and detectives Ogilvie and Reilly entered, Chuck thought the lights in the room dimmed. Neither of the men had touched the knob on the wall, but the place seemed suffused with a gloom it had not previously had. Probably another side effect of whatever they’d put in his coffee. He blinked his eyes and found it harder to focus on the men. Their faces were clear enough, but a vague light, like a halo, surrounded both of them. The thinner of the two cops, that was Ogilvie, he still looked pissed off, but the other one, the stubby one, he looked bored.
Chuck would change that soon enough.
“Your lawyer is on the way,” Ogilvie said, walking across the room to stand beside Chuck. His buddy walked to the corner and stood with his hands crossed over his dick. “Now would be a good time to think about a few things.”
“Sure thing,” Chuck said, blinking again. The room spun for a second, just a quick drop to the right. He breathed deeply against the sickness the motion brought and closed his eyes to give his head a chance to adjust.
“You see, Chuck,” Ogilvie said, “you gotta feel your mistakes. If you don’t feel ’em, there’s no way to learn from ’em.”
His eyes flashed open, expecting to find his father, beaten and leaking as he’d been in Chuck’s dream, in place of Ogilvie. But the thin detective remained, arms crossed over his chest, angry expression frozen on his face. Okay, Chuck thought, that’s cool. Being locked up was just messing with his head, nothing to panic about. He checked on Reilly in the corner. The man had not moved. He still had his hands clasped over his crotch, his shoulders touching the walls. The right side of his face was purple and caved in from where Chuck had struck him with the metal bar. A clot of scalp dangled behind his ear like a chunk of roadkill.
“Shit,” he yelped, sliding his chair back with an involuntary thrust of his hips. The chair legs screeched over the floor. His heart tripped in his chest. “What the fuck is going on?” Chuck asked, nodding toward the corpse of the Nicholson kid, propped in the corner like a damaged mannequin.
“What’s wrong with you?” his father asked, leaning forward to grab Chuck’s shoulders. His old man’s shattered jaw hung open, barely moving with the words. The lumps covering his face and scalp were open and leaking blood over the lacerated brow and onto the tabletop.
This wasn’t real, Chuck told himself. It was like in his dream when Ken Nicholson’s face had come apart to reveal his father’s brutally beaten head. Except, he knew the difference between a dream and reality. His dream had been flat and stark. What he saw now occupied space, cast shadows, gripped his shoulders painfully. His father’s face was less than a foot from his own. Chuck saw every welt and dent in the skull. The foul, whiskey breath filled his nose.
In the corner, the corpse of Bobby Nicholson looked on, the body motionless, the face blue-gray with death. Only his eyes moved, racing back and forth in the sockets like living creatures caged in a dead shell.
The detectives were doing this to him, something in his coffee. Vicki was doing it. Someone had to be doing this to him, and he wanted him to stop now.
“Please,” he whimpered. Please make it stop.
“You gotta feel your mistakes,” his father said, the voice infuriatingly calm. “It’s the only way you’ll ever learn.”
Trapped in the interrogation room with the two dead men, Chuck screamed. He fought against the cuffs at his wrists. His body convulsed and trembled in revulsion and fear, trying to break the aching grip of his father.
I’ve learned, Chuck thought. I’ve learned. Please stop.
That was the last coherent thought Chuck had. He didn’t even hear his own screams as he sank down and away into a dark void where emotion and thought and physical need would never touch him again.
~
~
Morning.
Word of Chuck Baxter’s meltdown while in custody reached Ken via a call from Detective Ogilvie.
He’d just gotten home from dropping Jennifer off at school when the call came, and what little hope he’d maintained evaporated. The kid’s capture had solved nothing. Ogilvie suggested they were likely to find Bach based on what they knew about the boy, but Ken doubted it. Vicki was ahead of this game. Her skills were intellectual, and she wasn’t likely to sit back and let herself get caught. She was still out there, still plotting. How long would it take her to find a new vassal, some other disturbed punk to finish what Chuck had started? Not long, he knew.
Brugier had wanted to get Ken back to the beginning, but Ken had only gone back so far. If he intended to finish this, there was only one place left to go. There, he might find Vicki Bach or a clue that would lead him to her. If nothing else, he felt certain he would find all that remained of Travis Brugier.
He needed the keys to Wonderland.
~~~
Ken stood in the offices of Barclay and Lawless, facing the ghost of Travis Brugier’s lawyer. He had entered the large, dark room to find himself surrounded by intricately molded mahogany paneling and rich, burgundy leather furniture. Hundreds of law volumes lined a wall of bookcases to his left, and before him a wall of tall paned windows provided a view to the river beyond. A long mahogany desk separated him from the windows. A high-backed leather chair sat regally behind the desk. The lawyer who led him into the room seemed far too whimsical for such dark surroundings. Despite a very well-tailored charcoal-gray suit, the man positively radiated joy and energy.
Andrew Lawless had his father’s blue eyes and his carrot-red hair. Already in his sixties, this younger Lawless was not quite as gaunt as his father, but the resemblance was startling. When Andy smiled, it lit up the room just as his father’s happiness had. Ken wondered if the son also wore summery dresses and cruised little boys through the Quarter. He decided that it wouldn’t be hard to believe.
Lawless seemed to know the reason for Ken’s visit before he was asked. They’d had the file sitting around for thirty years, shuffling it from one cabinet to another as they’d waited for the house’s owner to reappear. Lawless also knew Ken.
“My father spoke very highly of you,” Andrew informed.
The pleasant—though, in view of Ken’s haste, tedious—conversation was similarly complimentary except for the lawyer’s disdain that the house had been left unoccupied and untended for so many years. “Shame to let such a historic piece of property crumble like that.”
But Ken could think of nothing he’d like more than to see that house fall to the ground, decimated by termites and rot.
“I go by there a lot,” the lawyer said. “I keep wondering what’s inside. The place has probably been stripped clean by thieves and destroyed by vandals, but I hope not. A grand old mansion like that shouldn’t go untended.”
They spoke for much longer than Ken had intended. The conversation turned to Andrew’s father and his “curious fascination” with Travis Brugier. And then Andrew gossiped for nearly thirty minutes about Brugier himself, carefully avoiding any comment that might offend the man’s heir. Finally, as the morning was nearly half gone, Ken excused himself. He retrieved the keys from the mammoth mahogany desk, then shook Andrew Lawless’s hand. “Thank you, Andrew,” Ken said.
“Any time,” Lawless replied. “I’ll send father your regards.” The comment stopped Ken as he reached for the doorknob.
He turned slowly. “Excuse me?” he asked, certain he had heard incorrectly.
“I’ll say hello to father for you,” Andrew replied.
“Andrew,” Ken said, “I thought your father passed away.”
The old lawyer laughed dryly. “He shoulda’ a couple of times, but he’s still hanging in there.”
Gordon Lawless had been Travis Brugier’s best friend, and to Ken’s knowledge, his only confidant. If anyone knew the connection between Wonderland’s master and Vicki Bach, it would be Lawless. Maybe Ken wouldn’t have to return to that house after all.
“Andrew,” Ken said, “would your father see me?”
“I’m sure he’d be tickled,” Andrew said happily. “Let me just call Peg and have her get the old boy cleaned up.”
~~~
Thirty minutes later, Ken stood in a larger room that seemed to be the parent of the law office he had recently left. Another broad wall of glass allowed wedges of sunlight to cut into the room, but they stopped inches from the foot of the four-poster bed containing the flesh and bones of Gordon Lawless. The room was alive with dust hovering over the tiny, drawn form of the lawyer who reclined on half a dozen fluffy down pillows. Most of Lawless’s hair had deserted him, leaving a pale orange froth above each ear and a dozen wisps above the arch of his forehead. His once gaunt face now appeared skeletal, but his eyes were clear and brilliant, and his smile upon seeing Ken was nearly as charming as it had been three decades before.
“Mr. Nicholson,” Lawless said. Age and illness had drained the resonance from the man’s voice, leaving him with a hoarse whisper. “I was hoping we might meet again one day. I can see that time has been far kinder to you than it has been to me. But then, you’ve just begun to taste time. Perhaps once you’ve gorged on it, you will have faired little better than myself, but let’s hope not. You have always been a gorgeous morsel.”
This last sentence, uttered breathlessly, brought with it an odd sense of déjà vu for Ken. Memories of a dozen such comments layered in his head, making this unlikely reunion feel familiar. Ken recalled that the lawyer often associated people and events with food. Everything had a flavor, a texture, and a scent. Ken could find no indication of Lawless’s mood from his voice, though. The rasping hiss of the words carried no inflection. “How are you, Gordon?”
“Two steps from death,” Lawless replied. “Fortunately, they don’t allow me to walk anymore, so I’m able to hoard those and carry on a bit longer. I imagine if I weren’t on three different painkillers, I’d be far more upset, but as it is, I’m rather content, or at least I allow myself to believe I am. And I suppose as long as I believe I am, then I must be, don’t you think?”
“Yes,” Ken agreed.
Lawless tried to laugh but managed only a slight cough that made the hovering dust dance frantically. “Look what they’ve done to my study,” the withered man hissed. “This was my sanctuary…Well, this and Travis’s Parlor. I used to love this room. Now they’ve buried me alive in it. I’m almost looking forward to dying, if only for the change of scenery.”
“Don’t talk like that,” Ken said as he sat on the thick paisley-print comforter covering the bed.
“You were always such a sweet boy. Delicious. That’s what you are,” Lawless said. “But I’m not afraid of death. I beat death my entire life. I lived the way I wanted to live every moment of it. Death didn’t stand a chance with me.”
Ken tried to smile, but he did not have a clue to what the old lawyer was talking about. He said as much.
“Death only wins when you invite it to join your life,” Gordon said. “It’s one thing to cross the finish line and get a stitch in your side. It’s something wholly different to carry that stitch with you through the whole race. Now, when death gets me, he gets me for a few seconds. Life had me for eighty-seven grand years. I’m happy enough with that. I just wish they hadn’t put me here in my old study. I loved the view from my bedroom, but the stairs were too hard on old Peg: all the climbing and carrying. I told Andy to hire a younger nurse, but she’s been with us for a long time, and I guess I was just being a selfish old goat. It just doesn’t seem right that I should dry up in this room where I had some of my most stimulating conversations and liveliest thoughts. Do you know that Travis and I created The Parlor right here. Right in this room?”
Ken shook his head. “No. I didn’t know that.”
“Yessireeeee,” Lawless cackled dryly. The effort brought on another spasm of coughs. Once the fit passed, the old lawyer pushed himself deep into the pillows and fixed Ken with an intelligent and serious gaze. “You did come to talk about Travis didn’t you? After all, while I always enjoyed your company and the sight of you made my mouth water like a coon-ass at a crawfish boil, we weren’t exactly close. I don’t think I have even laid eyes on you in two decades, but Travis said you’d be coming by one of these days, and I was to answer any question you asked as honestly as I was able.”
“Travis said I’d be coming by?” Ken asked nervously. The old lawyer nodded his head slowly with ominous deliberation. “Then he’s still alive?”
Gordon Lawless fixed him with a curious look that fell somewhere between exasperation and exhaustion. “Anything is possible. Personally, I have neither seen nor heard from him since his death, but he knew you would have questions. I expected you many years ago, but this is as good a time as any what with us both still breathing and all.”
“Do you know a woman by the name of Vicki Bach?” Ken asked.
The old lawyer wriggled against his pillows and stared down at the paisley comforter. He tried to clear his throat, but the sound was little more than a sigh. “I do know Ms. Bach,” the lawyer said dryly, “but as she is a client of my firm, I cannot discuss her with you. I’m afraid it would be inappropriate.”
“Can you tell me her connection to Travis Brugier?” Ken asked.
“Well, Delicious, tell me why you think there is a connection, and I’ll see what help I can be.”
“She had my son murdered, and someone else was killed. She sent her Vassal to kill my wife.”
The lawyer’s lips curled into a hungry smile and his eyes observed some far-off splendor. “Vassal,” Lawless whispered dreamily, remaining absorbed for several moments by the memories that expression evoked. When he finally spoke, his voice still dream-like, he said, “Despite Travis’s many peccadilloes, he always had a fine taste in boys. Do you remember a savory selection by the name of Maurice?”
“Gordon,” Ken said sternly, trying to get the conversation back to Vicki Bach.
“Of course, you wouldn’t,” Lawless said. “Maurice was one of the first children on Travis’s buffet. Such a treat, he was. I can still smell that child, all salt and leather like he’d just been pulled out of the ocean. Oh, I do miss him.”
“Vicki Bach,” Ken said.
The lawyer nodded his frail head, which seemed like it might roll of his slender neck at any moment. “She wants to destroy your life,” Lawless said, “What makes you think this has anything to do with Travis?”
“They are connected,” Ken said evenly. “You tell me how.”
“I’ll tell you this,” Lawless offered. “Travis had a very difficult will. In fact, if he had had any living relatives, I’m quite sure they would have contested his wishes and would have walked away with a fortune. As an orphan, Travis had nobody, and as with all things pertaining to Travis, there was a story.” The lawyer paused for a moment and reached out a pencil-thin arm for the tumbler of water beside the bed. After taking a sip he returned the glass. “Tell me a story,” Lawless said. “Do you remember Travis saying that?”
“Yes,” Ken replied. The phrase had the ability to freeze the blood in his veins.
“Well Travis’s will was another story,” Lawless continued. “You see, he didn’t name an heir in his will. Oh, he left a pittance here and there, like the bequest I brought you in Dallas, but the bulk of his assets were to remain invested. They were to remain invested until someone came to me and told me a story. He didn’t say whether it would be a boy or girl, man or woman. He simply said that one day someone would approach me and tell me the story of a young Indian couple. I remembered the story vividly because of the way that Travis told it. White Dog and Passing Cloud were their names. A tragic story. His entire estate, except for the bequests and the house, of course, was to pass into the hands of the person who came to me with that story.”
“And Vicki told you the story?” Ken asked.
“I can’t answer that,” the old lawyer rasped. “Which should answer your question sufficiently. Though apprehensive, I had no choice. The client reminded me a lot of Travis. Her mannerisms and sense of humor were exactly like his, except the client in question was so much colder than Travis. She didn’t possess an ounce of his depth. When she called me Goldie, it wasn’t the way Travis said it. He always seemed to use the name as a term of endearment, but not this client of mine. She used the word as a cold defamation.” The old lawyer stopped speaking for a moment. “I wonder how she knew that Travis called me that?” he pondered aloud. “He certainly couldn’t have told her.”
“Did Travis have any siblings, any children?” Ken asked, sensing he had suddenly found his connection. His face fell when the old lawyer rolled his head on the pillows.
“You should know better than anyone how Travis felt about fucking. He had splendid taste in flesh but absolutely no taste for it. Delicious child, do you have any idea what The Parlor was?” The lawyer again fixed Ken with weary exasperation. Ken shook his head. “The Parlor was Travis’s experiment. Or maybe the proper word would be joke. The only people who got into The Parlor were the people who had the most to lose by being in The Parlor: politicians, clergy members, prominent citizens such as myself and anyone else who kept a thick veneer of morality. Travis stocked his experiment with tasties to draw out the hungry, and then he sat back and watched them sink into the fantasy of his parlor. He’d often say, ‘Do you see the power of flesh?’ And how could you not see it? Sodomy laws, drug laws, statutory rape laws—all were being broken night after night by the most self-righteous members of our society, and Travis just sat back and laughed because while he acknowledged the power of flesh, he held power over all of them because the flesh meant nothing to him. The entire place was a giant practical joke. Even the name was a joke.”
“Said the spider to the fly,” Ken said, his voice hushed.
“Precisely. It wasn’t until a year or two before you met Travis that people started calling the place Wonderland. At first, he hated the nickname, as it took away from the amusing title he had given his experiment, but after a while he found the title fitting, and he allowed his guests to use the slang.”
“And what did Travis get out of his experiment?”
“Amusement,” Lawless said. A fit of coughs followed the word and the lawyer again reached for his tumbler of water. He stifled the fit with a long draw from the glass. A thin stream of moisture fell down either side of his mouth to his stubbled chin. “Amusement,” he repeated, “information, and control.”
“He blackmailed these men?”
The lawyer’s head rolled on the pillows. “No,” Lawless said. “Travis didn’t need to blackmail anyone. He had given these men what they wanted, and in return they gave Travis anything he wanted. A simple arrangement. Quite amicable. Then you came along, and things began to change.” The lawyer closed his eyes and fell silent for many seconds. Ken thought Lawless had drifted off to sleep, but soon the lawyer was speaking again, and his eyes sought out Ken’s. “You think you killed him, don’t you?” Lawless asked. “Don’t bother denying it. I know you were a part of it. I also know that if Travis Brugier died that night, it was because he had other plans.”
Now the old man was rambling. “He was insane,” Ken said.
“Delicious child,” Lawless said, “if you believe that, then you never understood a thing about that man, and you are doomed.” The lawyer rolled his head slowly across the pillow again. “How could you have been so close to Travis and have remained so naïve? Perhaps it was your youth, or Travis might have shielded you from some of his talents.”
“Gordon, what are you talking about? What talents?”
“Travis’s talents were the glue that held The Parlor together. Oh, he never made those boys do much they wouldn’t have done on their own, but he certainly nudged them in the right direction on occasion.”
“Are you talking about hypnosis?” Ken asked. He had often thought that Travis possessed the ability to force his will on others through the act of suggestion.
The old lawyer leaned forward and let out a long rasping hack, which was meant to be a laugh. “Hypnosis,” he mused. “My God, you are naïve. Travis didn’t ask permission to get into people’s heads; he just got in there. Your friend Crowley knew it, or rather he found out.”
“Crow never said anything to me,” Ken whispered.
“He knew better. As mercenaries went, Puritan Crowley was among the best.” The lawyer sighed raggedly. “Don’t get me wrong; I adored that boy. We had many splendid evenings and afternoons together. He was as tasty as a pecan pie, but Crowley knew the value of silence and the value of compliance. When Travis wanted you, Crowley brought you to him and was duly compensated. I’m not sure where Crowley fouled himself with Travis.
“I paid my respects at his services. I noticed you didn’t attend. Perhaps that was best. It was a dreadful little service: a plain pine box in an unmarked crypt. Only three or four people actually showed up. I felt bad for the boy.”
“Gordon, you still haven’t answered my question about Vicki Bach. Did she know Travis? Are they related? What is their connection?”
“She wasn’t even born when Travis died, and to the best of my knowledge, you and I are the only living people who had any real connection to Travis at all.”
“Then, was there some contract in his will, some agreement that bound her to him? Certain steps she had to take to inherit his money?”
“She had to tell me the story. There was nothing else.”
“Then, he’s still alive.” There was no other possibility.
The old lawyer fixed him one last time with the angry exasperated look. “I highly doubt that.” His head seemed to weigh too much for his neck, and his chin drooped to his boney chest. “Besides, it hardly matters whether he is or isn’t.”
“How can you say that?” Ken asked.
“Because, Delicious,” Gordon Lawless said, “Travis Brugier’s death would end nothing.”
~
How long he stood in front of the gate to Wonderland Ken couldn’t say, but he found himself terrified by the place. Like a wasp’s nest, this structure and its grounds had served as a shelter for vicious and poisonous things. History and the disease of memory emanated from the decimated structure. Windows, filthy and dark, played the films of history; they showed a magnificent courtyard and a bubbling fountain, and they harbored a unique master with incomprehensible power. Ken remembered numerous wonders, numerous pleasures and a single atrocity in which four children had battled for their lives. A soft bed spoke words of confused sensuality. Hallways led visitors through priceless ornamentation. Wandering these halls were the ghosts of children who were lost in their pursuit of happiness as they served their benefactor. All was brilliant light. All was unfathomable darkness. All was fractured reality. All was a story.
But he’d escaped this place once before.
Maybe you never escaped at all.
Ken unlocked the gate and pushed it open. He walked down the shadowed alley, between a stone wall and the exterior of what had been Brugier’s Parlor. When he entered the courtyard, Ken came to a stop. Death surrounded him. The four boys still lay on the flagstones in a muddied heap. Ken blinked, and they were gone. Weeds, long dried and ragged, reached for him like dead fingers. The fountain no longer spat its plume into the air; foul green sludge filled its basin. The façade was equally soiled, the paint having flaked away to expose wood nearly black with rot.
Inside, he found Andrew Lawless’s miscalculation. Ken walked through the filthy rooms, enormous and stiflingly hot, observing the treasures contained within. No thieves had ransacked Travis’s home. The precious furnishings had suffered only from dust and infestation. As a young man he’d had no concept of their value beyond the way the antiques seemed perfectly suited for the large Quarter house. The paintings on the wall were pretty, and that was as far as he had been able to go in their appraisal. Now, he recognized many of the artists whose work hung beneath layers of dust and filth. The furniture he once had treated indifferently now took on meaning as he realized its rare and precious qualities.
Ken rubbed his palm along a filthy frame holding a painting by George Bernard O’Neil. Ken had seen a similar piece auctioned in New York for nearly sixty thousand dollars, and he recognized the painting as the least precious in the home by far.
And where was the collector now? What had Travis become? In light of his conversation with Gordon Lawless, Ken felt certain that Travis, like himself, had survived that last night in Wonderland. Death could be faked. Authorities could be bribed, particularly in this city. Ken had not waited long on that balcony. Travis could have woken and struggled his way back to life, patched the tear in his throat. For all Ken knew, he’d hallucinated the entire thing, the way he had repeatedly hallucinated David’s death. Perhaps that pattern had been set then. Whatever the case, Travis was certainly capable of such a dramatic feat. The rest would be lies and money, lots of money. For Travis, this would be the easy part.
And Vicki Bach? What was her reward?
Ken ran his fingers over a Lord Leighton bust, wiping the grime on his pants as he passed. So beautiful these objects were, and some incredibly valuable. How did a monster find appreciation for such things?
Upstairs, Ken entered the bedroom he had shared with Travis Brugier. So much filth covered the place that Ken could barely make out the Persian rug at his feet. It was indistinguishable from the floor as both lay beneath a thick frosting of dust. He pulled the thin quilt off of the bed and coughed through the dust cloud that rose high into the room. He tossed the pillows on the floor. Though thinking it a useless gesture, Ken crossed to the light switch and toggled it up. When the light above the bed burst on, Ken’s heart leapt as if witnessing some conjured magic, but Travis had accounted for a lot of things before his death. Obviously, keeping the power pulsing through Wonderland was one of them.
Ken crossed the room to a bookcase lined with hundreds of dust-frosted volumes. He was searching for a specific book, a leather-bound text from which he’d read countless times. He found it resting at the end of a shelf, next to a row of small journals of varied binding. Dragging the book from its nest, he brushed the dust from the covers, front and back. It had no title, no inscription. He leafed to a random page. The typeface, stark and precise, without a hint of a publisher’s elegance, brought back pangs of fear and wonder and longing.
Book in hand, Ken returned to the bed and reclined against the headboard, resting the large leather-bound volume in his lap. Once comfortable, Ken opened the book. It had no table of contents or preface. On the first page was the first story. Each chapter was marked by a name. He thumbed through, remembering fragments of narrative, sometimes so clearly that entire tales unwound in his mind from the prompt of a single sentence. But the story he most wanted to read, the first story he would read, told of a young Native American couple. This story connected Travis to Vicki Bach, or so Gordon Lawless had suggested.
Tell me a story.
The disease of memory returned with virulence, and Ken began to read.
~~~
The Fathers looked upon the children as sacred. They would be the gold amongst the dirt. In the boy, White Dog, and the girl, Passing Cloud, they saw their future a prosperous place.
Wind made the grasses bow to the children. Rain showered them with glory, and their families gazed on with pride as boy and girl moved as a single being. No question was ever spoken of their marriage. It was as certain as the moon’s rise and the brightening of dawn.
But all was not well.
The day before their union was to be celebrated, Passing Cloud ran into the village. She cried, wailing from grief and fear. She showed the elders her hand, and they counted only four fingers. White Dog had taken her finger, she explained. He was making a pact with evil spirits. The elders found the girl’s words difficult. They had no evil spirits in the village. The ground had been cleansed, and no omens had arisen to tell of an approaching manitou.
The elders scoffed at the girl. They made her wait in the long house until her man returned from his wanderings. But Passing Cloud’s mother, Lame Bull, insisted that she be allowed to speak with her child. She was admitted an audience with her daughter, who lay curled in a corner of the great building.
To her worried mother, Passing Cloud explained that White Dog was not one of them but rather a spirit traveler born into the tribe by accident. He spoke of powers. She had seen manifestations of his powers in the meadow by the river, where, Passing Cloud said she saw a man with a bear’s head rise up from the rushing water, and he danced there for her. At first, she had found the vision greatly humorous, but then she realized it was an omen.
White Dog told her that she too could travel as he had.
They could become the parents of a new powerful tribe. They could wipe out any who opposed them for in their children would be the power of the spirits.
And that morning, the morning before the morning of their wedding, White Dog made her take a spirit into her body. He called it up, and it glimmered like iron dust. She felt it come into her, working through her skin like blowing sand. Then White Dog took her finger.
Even now, he remained in the meadow, making charms from the finger. The charms were for the spirit. They guided the spirit once the body went to the Earth. With the charm, the Spirit could find its way back into the world of the living. Then Passing Cloud cried, not because the wound ached but because it did not, and she knew it was a sign of a true curse.
Lame Bull was terrified for her daughter. Never would the horse come to guide her to her people’s souls if she had bargained with the evil ones. She would remain in the ground, her spirit lost without its guide. Mother spoke to daughter, telling her to pretend. White Dog, the spirit traveler, must not know of this betrayal until the spirit could be taken from Passing Cloud’s body.
But White Dog already knew. As he entered the village carrying two rings and a necklace in his hand, the elders converged on him, and told him that his woman was taken with fever. She spoke craziness, spoke of demons and evil, and said that White Dog was not truly of them. Had he really taken Passing Cloud’s finger?
The accusations enraged White Dog. Clutching the jewelry tightly in his fist, he went to the longhouse. He cast Lame Bull out, cursing her.
In the shadowed shelter, he pleaded with Passing Cloud. Again he told her of the new tribe. He showed her the beautiful rings he’d made from the bones of her finger, showed her the necklace on which the largest bone hung like a bear tooth, filed and polished into a sharp point. But Passing Cloud begged to be released from him, from the spirit that threatened her soul.
White Dog beat his woman, screaming like the hawk. His fists fell upon her. The elders, hearing this disturbance, came into the longhouse and watched as White Dog expelled his rage. Then, the betrayed husband began screaming in a foreign tongue. Like the white men who traded with the tribe, White Dog’s voice came. The Elders grew frightened.
Passing Cloud’s mother drew her skinning knife and ran for White Dog, but as Lame Bull approached, she began to scream, cutting at the air as if attacked herself. Moments later she fell dead on the hard dirt floor.
Then, White Dog pulled his own knife and slid it into Passing Cloud’s belly. He pushed his hand deep into the wound, leaving the charms he’d made from her lost finger inside the warm cavity. Tears burned along his cheeks as his bride crumbled to the ground. A cry of agony filled the longhouse, the village, and the sky surrounding them.
The Elders backed away as White Dog left the longhouse wearing Passing Cloud’s blood on his hands and her death in his eyes. He walked out of the village, and the spirit traveler was never seen again.
~~~
Ken closed the book, placed it on the musty sheet, and stood from the bed. On edge, he took to pacing the room as he considered the story. He grasped the Thorn at his neck and thought of the charms the man had made of his intended’s finger. Likely, the necklace at his throat was made of similar material, not ivory at all, but a piece of human bone. Disgusted, Ken released the bauble and walked to the doors leading to the balcony. He pulled them open and stepped outside.
The air was gray with rain but still sauna hot. A startling dislocation greeted him when he looked over the railing. The last time he’d looked down from this vantage, four boys had destroyed one another on the stones below. Like Passing Cloud’s mother, Reggie had tried to defend himself against a nightmare no one else could see. But where Lame Bull’s knife had found only air, Reggie’s had found skin and bone and blood. Puritan Crowley had run into a busy street, fleeing some invisible danger, and his behavior had been attributed to insanity or drugs, but it was Travis.
He didn’t ask for permission to get into people’s heads; he just got in there.
Gordon Lawless’s words found new relevance for Ken. This was the talent the lawyer had spoken of. Like White Dog, Travis could paint nightmares and display them in the minds of his victims. How many of these dreams had Ken endured, all the while telling himself it was the product of his own wasting sanity?
He imagined David hanging from a ceiling, from a balcony, from the eaves of a house. Brugier’s talent hadn’t died with him.
The story of the Native American couple might have been nothing more than legend, but Travis had seen himself in White Dog, and as such, he’d included the tale in his storybook.
What else might Ken find between its covers?
Ken returned to the bed, to the book. On the first page, he read the name Alice, and then he read her story.
~