Maybe he was, but at this point the stranger was a more reliable source of information than my own father. That knowledge had tormented me all last night, and during the train ride here. The doubt, the damage… it was in my capillaries, piping into me, deeper and deeper. My father was a liar, that much I knew. But to what extent? How far did the rabbit hole go? He was falling far from grace, and I needed to salvage something, something truthful from our sidewalk conversation last night. Something to save him, in my mind, in some small way.
Does that make sense? I needed to believe him, believe in him. He’s my dad. You can’t just give up on your dad.
I gazed at the monitor. Mary was drenched in blood. Last night on East 77th, Dad said my stranger had flayed his wife, cooked her flesh, and paraded in public, covered in her blood. That had been, what?
“Twenty years ago,” I said.
Yes. Twenty years ago. Something that grisly must’ve made big headlines back then, I realized, which meant folks older than me would remember it. People can’t help but recall creep-show oddities like that—just as they rubberneck at the sight of a smashed car on the highway.
I needed someone’s memory. I needed this to save myself from going crazy with doubt, to save my trust in my father. Even with last night’s evidence pointing to the contrary, I needed to give him one last chance.
I stepped to my desk, picked up the walkie-talkie all Brinkvale employees are ordered to carry. I switched its dial from the open, nearly always quiet emergency frequency to the maintenance frequency.
“Malcolm,” I said. “You there? It’s Zach T.” The ’talkie crackled.
“Yep.”
“Gotta talk for a few minutes. Where are you?”
Pause.
“Library. Messy. Always messy.”
“Right on,” I said. I grabbed my satchel by the office door. “Stay put. I’ll be right there.”
It’s criminal, what’s happened to Brinkvale’s library.
When I first visited this cavernous room three months ago, I’d been amazed by its endless oak bookcases, curved walls and spectacular chandeliers. The room was designed in the art nouveau style, all sweeping lines, brazen and optimistic. The Brink’s library was a paradox, a place that shouldn’t exist in such a hard-cornered, utilitarian building.
But my amazement had immediately soured. Most of the bookshelves don’t contain real books at all. The once-colorful murals painted on its walls are peeling like sunburned skin. The chandeliers are encrusted with rust and endless, ancient cobwebs. This subterranean cathedral was cursed by unsound architecture and sinful neglect. Patients rarely ventured here.
It was a lost, heartbroken place.
The library was maintained by Ezra Goolsby, a man as old and wretched as The Brink itself. The geezer had worked here for decades. Rumors about Goolsby abounded at The Brink: he’d suffered a stroke that made him physically incapable of smiling; he was a “true” Morlock, living in a small room behind the library; he had once been a Brinkvale patient… it went on and on.
Worse still, Goolsby cared less about books than the people around him. But the man was a news junky, a periodical fiend. So while The Brink’s library was a tragedy, its collection of bound newspapers and magazines dating back to the 1960s was awe-inspiring.
I entered the library, on the lookout for the grim codger. I heard the distinctive slop-slosh of a mop plunging into a metal bucket, and followed the noise. Malcolm was near the room’s imposing main desk, the place where Goolsby typically reigned over his bibliofiefdom. Malcolm looked up, gave a low-key salute.
I enjoyed being in the presence of this man. Malcolm Sashington had serenity about him, a “let it ride” vibe that I appreciated, particularly in this madhouse. Whenever I saw him, I was reminded of locksmiths and secrets.
“How goes, Zach T?” he said. He tugged the mop from the wringer and flopped it onto the tile.
“Hangin’ in there by my fingernails,” I replied. My eyes ticked around the library, glancing through the rows of bookcases, across the large tables near us. “Where’s the old man?”
“Gool’s not here. Leaves as soon as he sees me. Were I your age, I’d think he’s got a problem with me. Old enough to know better. Goolsby doesn’t hate black people. Goolsby hates everybody.”
I laughed. It echoed against the library’s curved walls.
“Sounded like you needed something,” he said, patting the walkie-talkie on his belt. His hand jostled the large metal hoop next to his radio. The keys there clinked. “Kinda urgent. You here to call in that favor?”
About a month ago, I’d gone topside to catch a breath of fresh air… and caught a whiff of something else altogether: Malcolm toking up on his dinner break. In typical cucumber-cool style, Malcolm hadn’t freaked. But he had asked me if I’d snitch. My reply had brought me a boon. A Malcolm Favor.
“I don’t think this compares, but you be the judge. You got a good memory?”
Malcolm worked the floor with his mop. “If you’re lookin’ for history, talk to Goolsby. He’s The Brink’s elephant. Never forgets.”
“Goolsby eats human souls,” I snorted. “And it’s got nothing to do with The Brink. Come on. You got a knack for remembering things or not?”
“How far we goin’ back?”
“Twenty years.”
Malcolm let out a low whistle. “Slippin’ into favor territory. Let’s find out.”
“All right. I don’t know when or where this happened, but it was probably in the city. Guy kills his wife, paints himself with her blood.”
Malcolm leaned against his mop handle and gave me an insultingly bored look.
“That’s it?” he asked. “You’re gonna have to do a lot better than that, Zach T. Wouldn’t even make a condo association newsletter in that town.”
“Would it help if the guy was a crazy vet, and ate her skin?”
My friend nearly yawned now. “Son, lots of vets came back with lots of problems. Dime a dozen. You’re looking at one, dig? So watch what you say about those who serve.”
“A veterinarian,” I replied. “Dude cuts her up. When she dies, dunks himself in her blood, streaks the town.” I grimaced. “He cooked up her skin and ate it like bacon.”
The mop stick banged against the floor like a gunshot.
“Oh hell yes,” he said, his eyes wide. “Not twenty years back. Thirty”
“Thirty?” I asked. “But that doesn’t… Are you sure?”
“Hell yeah. Super Bowl Twelve, kiddo. Cowboys versus Steelers. I can’t tell you who won that game anymore, but I remember opening up the paper that morning fully expecting to see a story about my man Harvey Martin and the Cowboys’ ‘Doomsday Defense.’ Instead, we all got that story on the front page. Nearly puked in my Cheerios.”
Malcolm stooped to pick up the mop. He stared into the bucket’s brackish water.
“Mighty hard thing to forget,” he said finally.
I nodded. “Cool, that’s enough.” I turned, now striding through the corridors of bookshelves, searching for the proverbial needle in this moldering haystack. I was surrounded by endless green books, each as tall as a man’s arm, all identical save for the handwritten notes on their spines.
(TIMES) AUG—SEPT 1984.
(POST) JAN—FEB 1985.
I moved from case to case, shelf to shelf, finally finding (TIMES) JAN—FEB from thirty years ago. I hefted the book from its dusty slot, and brought it back to one of the tables.
If Malcolm was right, then Dad was wrong. I didn’t want Dad to be wrong.