“Two weeks after the attack I received a letter from Seton saying telling me to leave her alone. I went to her rooming house but her landlady said she’d moved away. I couldn’t find her… Back then I had very limited resources. Several years later I heard she died. That’s about all I know.”
Will knew the back end of her story. She scrubbed floors for a living. Drank gin straight from the bottle. And tried to never touch him. She didn’t abuse him, but she couldn’t stand to touch him. She didn’t like to talk to him either. When he was eight she slit her wrists in the tub with a broken gin bottle and he went to the orphanage. After that he went to jail and back to jail and back to jail… From the age of eight until seventeen days after his twenty-fourth birthday he was locked up.
And sitting before him was the only link to his past he’d every met. Ever heard of. He was here for money not to face his past. Will tried to keep his nights full and avoid solitude or any point in time where his mother’s ghost would sit across the table or at his elbow and watch him. It was like surf, rising, a great weight pulling him from his mental steeping stones toward… Outside. The zone of stark, lonely dunes no drug could cure, no woman could kiss away.
What the fuck is this shit?
“I said everything.” The rules are simple the 9 said. “And I meant everything.”
A delicate, hollow blind man lost in the echo of a love song frightened to death by evil, Daniel Washington went down in the dark place of cold rain better left undisturbed.
“Back then I had nothing but her smile and my dream. She gave me so much love, made me so very happy, then they told me she was… When she wouldn’t talk to me, see me, I searched for details. When you take Valentine’s Day from a man he seeks redemption. For me it was in facts.”
All the horror came out. Fact after fact. The ones carved in stone and the ones his heart knew but could not prove.
“I own a gun, but have never had the guts to shoot him.”
“Who?”
“I can prove nothing.”
“Give me the fucking name.”
Daniel Washington was trying to make sense of this, but couldn’t get his mind around it. All these years he’d been faithful to her memory and now this man he thought might be her son was going to kill him. How? Why?
“The fucking name.”
“Albert Bergin raped her. Left her for dead.”
Will tried to catch his breath. He’d sat in a room face to face with the monster that had killed his mother and sent him into the tombs.
The two men in the room were stone. Outside the world in an episode of cursed sensations. In a distant valley, naked, raped, no roof or sky, only despair… And anger. Crawling from the labyrinths of heart and mind. Claws bared. Hate sharpened and raw. Hate and claws becoming the everywhere. The red wind screamed the monster’s name.
The gun lowered. Eyes choking back tears.
“I can’t be completely certain it was him.”
The room the contract was written in was in Will’s mind. The face, he studied it and studied it. Took it apart. Something about that face. The set of the jaw. The nose… It was like… Looking in a mirror.
The gun almost slipped from his hand. Will had never known a single fact about his father until this minute. Now he knew too much.
“Look at me. Can you see him in my face? Do I look like him?”
Daniel Washington strained to see through his tears. And it was there.
“Exactly how old are you?”
Will told him. Washington’s expression told him the final fact.
“Your jaw, your nose—he’s your father. You’re the product of—”
“Rape.”
The air was almost too solid to breathe.
“Can I tell you something?”
“Sure.”
“Albert Bergin and I were rivals in school. We were both studying the same subject. I was a better student and quicker. Our professors favored me. I know Bergin disliked me and was jealous… Everyone knew how in love I was. I think he raped your mother to unseat me. If I stumbled in my studies he could catch up, maybe surpass me. He destroyed her because of professional jealousy. I always knew he had a black heart, but… I can’t believe I never saw this before. Guess I’ve always thought he was drunk or something and lost his temper.”
“But why do you think it was him?”
“Once in the library he was a little drunk. He was reading the newspaper. He had this, almost triumphant, grin on his face. I don’t know, the cat that ate the canary, maybe? It was pleased with itself, and evil. Cold. It was very cold. And I thought I heard him say, ‘She should have shut up.’ When he got up he left the paper and I went over and looked at the article he had been reading. It was about your mother and the rape. I should have went after him and killed him. I went to the police but they didn’t believe me. A friend of his family was the investigator on the case and thought because we were rivals in school I was trying to tarnish him.”
Will wanted to be out in the cool night air. Running. Running from the photos, running to someplace where he could get a drink and his bearings.
“I’m not here for the reason you think. Bergin sent me to get something and bring it to him. And to kill you.”
“What are you to get for him.”
“A book. Faded red leather with a scorpion-like emblem on the cover.”
“The Navarre. It all makes perfect sense. We both studied philosophy, religion, and metaphysics back then. Do you believe in magic or the supernatural?”
“No.”
“I do. And so does Bergin. That’s what we pursued in our studies.”
“Ghosts and shit?”
“No. More like a little-known religious belief. There is a race of terrible beings who once savaged the universe. Somehow they were imprisoned, awaiting a time when they would be free. We tried to separate myth from fact regarding these entities. As a believer I have always sought to understand as much as I can to keep them imprisoned, if that’s possible. Bergin had a jealous nature and was power hungry. His lust led him to dark places and darker studies. The book he wants is said to contain rituals and spells to free these otherworldly beings.”
“Like bring the things here? He wants to tear the roof off Hell and let these monsters out?”
“Yes.”
“That’s fucked up.”
“I’m going to kill him.”
“No you’re not. My mother, he owes me for her. And for my life.”
“Then let me have some retribution too. Your gun is too merciful. I know a way.”
“I’m listening.”
Daniel Washington stood, he seemed dry, a faded summertime photograph, and walked to a bookcase. The ghost hand, now off its knees, deliberate, pushed a hidden button and a door opened. There sat a book and what looked like a rusty iron can.
“Take these items to him.”
“Is that the book?”
“It’s an exact copy. The real one is locked up.”
“And that thing.”
“Something he will think is one thing, but it is something entirely different.”
“What does he think it is?”
“He will think it holds magical vapors which grant vision. A mage who studied the things Bergin and I have studied once said, ‘Great Cthulhu sleeps in his house and shapes the dream of what shall be, dead Cthulhu waits dreaming.’ Based on an incorrect translation, Bergin believes with these vapors he’ll be able to see into the dreams of this being.”
“Shit’s poison. Ain’t it?”
“Something far worse.”
“You sure he’ll be dead?”
“Yes. Certain.”
“What do I do?”
“Just give him this and leave.”
“Huh?”
“Tell him I’m dead and give him this copy of the book—tell him it’s the only one you found. Tell him as compensation you picked this up, thinking it might interest him. Tell him you saw the sigil and it being the same as the one on the cover of the book you thought they might be related in some fashion. Then leave. Do not stay there. You do not want to be in the house when he opens this.”