“Someone who’s obsessed,” Bumby murmured.
“Lester doesn’t even read,” Papa said. “I just don’t—I just don’t see him doing this, you know?”
“Did you notice this is the only place in the house that isn’t dusty? He probably lives down here.”
Papa pointed. “You may be right, I just noticed that door in the corner. If it’s a bedroom I’m gonna be creeped out.”
Bumby was staring at the memorabilia with a look of sublime awe, like he was watching his savior drift down from heaven.
“C’mon, Bums. Let’s finish up here, grab some stuff and get out. And don’t give me any shit about taking anything, because it’s already stolen.”
Bumby still didn’t say anything, and Papa jerked him around, snapping him out of his trance. “Sure,” Bumby mumbled.
The door in the corner, a narrow wooden door cut into the cement wall, was unlocked. There was a light switch beside the door, and Papa flicked it. A dull glow seeped beneath the door. Papa turned the knob and stepped through.
When he saw what was inside, he put a hand on the wall for support. “Oh hell. Oh sweet Jesus.”
Bumby stepped through and gasped.
The walls of the boxy room were lined with black cloth. There was a bookshelf against the wall to the right and a couple of antique storage trunks along the wall to the left, but it was the thing against the far wall that stole their breath and leeched their courage: a two-tiered, black-painted wooden altar sitting underneath an obsidian pentagram. Two human skulls sat on the top ledge of the altar, and hanging underneath them was the centerpiece: an upside down cross covered with dark stains and draped with a necklace of tiny cat skulls. Gutted candles stood on either side of the two larger skulls, and on the bottom ledge was a black-and-white photograph lying on top of an aged tome covered in mystic sigils.
Papa was crouching with a shocked face, as if he had just defecated. He reached towards one of the two bleach-white human skulls, stopping just before he touched it.
Bumby approached the altar with faltering steps, his drained white face next to the black cloth of the walls giving him a ghoulish appearance. He picked up the photograph and let out a long, wrenching moan.
Papa snatched the photo out of his hands. It was a photo of Hemingway typing in his writing studio. Papa read the title of the book underneath the photo: Magicke Rituals For Summoning and Binding.
A page was marked, and he flipped to it. The entire page was highlighted, and he started reading out loud. “It is best to bind the summoned spirit to a physical location known well to the entity. To bind the spirit, two sacrifices must first be taken by the aforementioned ritual, their blood poured into the chalice and quaffed, their skulls placed atop the altar—”
Papa threw the book down as if it were diseased. “Sick bastards. Let’s get the hell out of here.”
Bumby had grown so pale he looked as if he were about to faint, and a catatonic sheen glazed his eyes. Papa slapped him across the face. “Bumby! Forget about that twisted mumbo-jumbo shit. We’re getting out of here, now.”
Papa pulled Bumby out of the ritual room and back into the room with the memorabilia. Papa left Bumby standing by the ladder to the living room like an automaton, then went and scooped up the photos and two of the notebooks. He clutched them to his chest and pushed Bumby up the ladder with his other hand. When they reached the common room, Papa closed the trap door and threw the rug in place.
Just as Papa started for the front door it flung open, and Lester stood in the doorway with a shotgun. Papa managed to take his gun out of the back of his pants just as Lester blew a hole in his chest and sent him flopping across the room in a bloody heap.
Papa’s gun landed a few feet from Bumby, and Bumby snapped out of his trance and dove for it. Lester cursed and pumped his shotgun as Bumby, possessed of some preternatural surge of agility, managed to grab Papa’s gun, roll on the floor and avoid most of Lester’s next shot. A few pellets struck Bumby in the leg, but before Lester could pump and fire again, Bumby got off two shots, and one of them hit Lester in the stomach. Lester writhed on the floor and clutched his stomach, but the light in his eyes was already starting to fade.
Bumby looked at his hand holding the gun in a daze, then slowly lifted his head to look at Lester, gasping on the floor like a fish out of water. Papa lay dead beside him. Bumby stood and approached, his feet squishing into the fresh blood, and he kicked the shotgun away with his foot. He wiped the pistol with his shirt, wrapped Papa’s dead fingers around the handle, then let it fall beside him.
Bumby noticed Lester was trying to say something, and Bumby bent down, right next to Lester’s crooked, tobacco-stained teeth.
“I’m sorry,” Lester whispered. “He made me do it.”
They were the last words my poor Lester would ever say.
Sergeant Cohn approached the Hemingway house a few weeks later, stopping at the front entrance to admire the grandness of it alclass="underline" the façade from a bygone era, the wraparound balcony caressed by fronds, the proud green shutters and paradisiacal setting. He waded through the tourists and went around to the back, following the garden path until he came to the caretaker’s house, which looked a little brighter these days. It had a fresh coat of paint, and flowers had been placed on the narrow balcony.
Sergeant Cohn knocked on the door, and a few moments later it opened and Bumby stood in the doorway, leaning on a crutch, pad in hand and pen behind his ear.
“Come on in, Sergeant. I was just finishing up a chapter.”
“How’s the writing coming these days?”
“Better than ever, better than ever. What can I say? This place has been an inspiration. Change is good for the soul.”
“There’ve been a lot of changes in your life, from what I hear around town. No more Hemingway impersonations, no more visits to Madame Gertrude, and I even hear you broke things off with your writing group. Jean-Paul says you never leave the house, except to take care of the estate.”
“I think a little solitude was just the change of pace I needed. And I won’t deny that living here, with all these memories, has been good for the muse.”
Sergeant Cohn smiled thinly. “Memories, eh? It was real good of you to take over Lester’s job. Some men might’ve been a little squeamish, living in a house where he watched his friend die.”
Bumby shrugged. “Old Lester wasn’t quite right in the head. I don’t hold it against him, you know?”
“It takes a big man to forgive someone who killed five of his close friends.”
Bumby spread his hands. “I’m not a very big man, so I don’t know what to say.”
The Sergeant grunted.
“Would you like a drink?”
“Nope, just stopping by. There’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you, though.”
“Anything, Sergeant.”
“I know we discussed this already down at the station, and the DNA evidence is conclusive that Lester did all the killings. We found a pile of clothes with dried blood under his bed, for God’s sake.”
Bumby shook his head with appropriate disbelief.
“I was just wondering, since you’ve been here a while now, living what some might call another man’s life, if it’s given you any insight as to why he might’ve done it?”
“Sorry?”
“Lester’s motive. Why he killed your friends, went on a rampage against the Hemingway impersonators in town.”
“I wish I knew, Sarge, I wish I knew. Just went a little crazy in the end, I suppose.”
“The six of you weren’t involved in anything I should know about, were you now?”
“Nothing besides doing our best to honor a great man.”
The Sergeant glanced behind Bumby to the interior of the house, at the freshly-cleaned rug, the photos still on the mantle, Bumby’s new writing desk in the center of the room. His gaze returned to Bumby, and he gave him a long stare. “You take care of yourself, you hear?”