At the bottom, a note had been added. It was in rough, spiky writing and blue ink, and I could almost picture Stumpy forming the letters, his tongue poking out of his mouth: Go at 4.00 a.m., when the walls are thinnest.
I snapped the book closed and stared at the wall of my cell. Smiled and shook my head, as though Stumpy were having one last laugh. Did I ever tell you how I lost my thumb?
And then I started to dream of it, walking with my back straight, looking people in the eye, a free man. Tasting the air. Just – climbing out. Climbing right on out. And a rope, seen for a moment from the corner of my eye, hanging from nothing in the middle of a cell.
Think of a reason and the rope will answer.
What reason had Stumpy had that could be strong enough? All he had was revenge. I saw again the way he’d talked about his wife, and eyes, and grinding, all the time staring at that thumb of his. His obsession. But it hadn’t been strong enough to get him out.
I had no thoughts of revenge. Everyone I hated was already dead. I had no love either, no one waiting. So I tried to think about why. And what came into my mind was a park, a soft, green park, where people sat in the sun. They splotched the grass in twos or threes or fours, talking and laughing, the girls wearing white halter-tops so you could see their shapes beneath. I stood there. I would stand there, and I would turn my face up to the sun, and breathe. Only that.
His insides had turned to soup.
In the cell next to mine was a rope. It hung in the air beneath a blank ceiling.
I looked again at the book and in that second, just in the corner of my eye, it looked as though the tip of my thumb was gone. My left thumb, from the middle knuckle to the nail, leaving only a thick, flexible stump.
I pulled my hand back, dropping the book. I should burn the thing, I thought. Take a match, strike it on the concrete floor, and burn the damn thing right here in my cell. But I didn’t strike the match, and I didn’t burn it. What I did was slip it back beneath the sheets of the bottom bunk; then I sat down and stared at the wall for a long time.
Some people shouldn’t think of some things, I knew that. I was one of those people. Waiting: I was good at waiting.
But somewhere, in the cell next to mine, was a rope. Go at 4.00 a.m., when the walls are thinnest. I swallowed.
However stupid the idea of the rope, it was too late. I knew I couldn’t let it go, and it wouldn’t let go of me.
The cell door wouldn’t open. I tried to slide it, and it wouldn’t move. I got my weight behind it and pushed, hard, but it wouldn’t move. Of all the things that occurred to me that might go wrong, I never once thought the door wouldn’t open.
I glanced at the clock. It was 4.03 a.m.
I kicked the door. It still wouldn’t open.
I sat down on the bottom bunk, and felt the book beneath the sheets. All the air went out of me and I sat like that, my head down, for what seemed a long time. When I looked at the clock again, though, it said 4.07.
The rope, I thought. I had to get to the rope. Now, when the walls were thinnest. I reached out and put my palm to the wall between my cell and Stumpy’s. It felt thick and solid and cold.
And then it came to me: it had to be mine. Whatever this was, whatever crazy game, it had to be my reason and my rope.
I closed my eyes and saw the park. A group of kids were playing Frisbee by the lake. The Frisbee spun, too high, out over the water – and was snatched from the air by a young lad, who fell back to earth, laughing.
I opened my eyes and the rope was there. It hung in the middle of the floor, a strong, thick rope, in a little pool of spring light. I dropped to the floor and kneeled by it, but I didn’t touch it, not yet. I put my hand into that light, feeling it on my skin.
And then I saw my hand, really saw it, and drew in a sharp, hissing breath.
My thumb was gone. My left thumb. Not all of it, just the part from the middle knuckle to the tip.
I turned it in the light and it was a short, thick stump. Pulled it out and my hand was whole again. I grabbed the rope, pulled on it, and it held. It was a strong rope, a good rope. But there was a sour, sick taste in the back of my throat, and I wondered just how far away Stumpy was.
Dimensions, the book had said. Bending things with your mind, so that what is there is also here. What if Stumpy didn’t fall, not really? What if he climbed until he found a door, only it didn’t lead to a park, or a house, or a gazebo: it led to a place a little like this, and through the door was someone a little like him. And he bent things with his mind, and turned them, and he changed places.
Because at this time of night, at 4.00 a.m., it seemed the walls between were thin. I could feel it, like I could taste that sour taste in my mouth. They were thin, and in that moment, it didn’t seem like Stumpy had gone very far at all.
I swallowed. Stumpy believed in payment. You always had to pay for things, even if it was just a story. It was what he saw as right, his way of slapping meaning on the world. What had he said? I always pay. I always pay and I always expect to be paid.
Now I had to pay. I had Stumpy’s book, after all. And I thought of his wife with the gardener, grinning, laughing, while Stumpy worked on her gazebo, making a love seat just big enough for two. I closed my eyes, and thought of hitting, and eyes, and of grinding. And in the middle of it all, a rope.
I thought then how lucky it was that Stumpy had shown me that picture, the photograph of his wife; how lucky it was I knew what she looked like. Because I had a feeling I’d be paying her a visit real soon. And then we’d have a chat, a quiet little chat, me and Stumpy’s wife. Payment.
I looked up, swallowed hard, trying to get rid of that taste, and I tried the rope once more. It was solid. So I took hold, and lifted my feet from the floor and wrapped them around it. I closed my eyes, then opened them again, but didn’t look down. I saw only that park, the sunshine, felt the clean air in my lungs. I saw them, and held them in my mind, and I started to climb.
THE CASE OF DEATH AND HONEY by Neil Gaiman
IT WAS A mystery in those parts for years what had happened to the old white ghost man, the barbarian with his huge shoulder bag. There were some who supposed him to have been murdered, and, later, they dug up the floor of Old Gao’s little shack high on the hillside, looking for treasure, but they found nothing but ash and fire-blackened tin trays. This was after Old Gao himself had vanished, you understand, and before his son came back from Lijiang to take over the beehives on the hill.
This is the problem, wrote Holmes in 1899: ennui. And lack of interest. Or rather, it all becomes too easy. When the joy of solving crimes is the challenge, the possibility that you cannot, why then the crimes have something to hold your attention. But when each crime is soluble, and so easily soluble at that, why then there is no point in solving them. Look: this man has been murdered. Well then, someone murdered him. He was murdered for one or more of a tiny handful of reasons: he inconvenienced someone, or he had something that someone wanted, or he had angered someone. Where is the challenge in that?
I would read in the dailies an account of a crime that had the police baffled, and I would find that I had solved it, in broad strokes if not in detail, before I had finished the article. Crime is too soluble. It dissolves. Why call the police and tell them the answers to their mysteries? I leave it, over and over again, as a challenge for them, as it is no challenge for me.
I am only alive when I perceive a challenge.