Vlad groped for words. He felt as if he were on the edges of a deep, dark wood. “Is that what you really think happened? That my buried memories of all those damned old legends made me think I saw. ”
From outside the dark woods came a deep sigh. “That’s certainly one explanation, and I advise you to consider it,” said Branch, tossing down the rest of the whiskey.
Later, much later Vlad’s breath came softly and regularly from the couch. Branch slipped silently out of the room, took up the telephone, and walked as far into the kitchen as its long cord would allow. He turned on the light and a water tap, then dialed a number. Waited.
“Doctor Edward Bagnell, please. Hello, Ed? This is Branch. Yes, I know what time it is. Have a pen and paper? Okay, listen carefully. The House-Devil, Paper-Man, Boss in the Wall; well, I want to report another sighting.”
How sweetly the small old town smelled in the early summer rains. It seemed to smell of cedar and citronella and water and mint.
Annie Jenkins, Dean Jorgenson’s housekeeper said, “Was it one of those tramps, one of those awful ones? The Lord knows where they come from or why — luckily not often — oh they don’t do anything violent, not lately, they don’t even steal, the ones I’m thinking of. We used to call them Paper Men when I was a girl, because they put newspapers under their old clothes to keep warm in winter, though why in summer? — Don’t even steal, which is very odd if you think of it, they being so poor they can’t even afford soap or second-hand clothes. Oh those filthy rags. Just the sight of them, oh and the awful smell of them. I asked my husband what causes them, every so often you know. Harry said it was ‘slum clearance’. Harry says some awful old abandoned building is torn down somewhere, and then those dreadful derelicts have no place to hide, and so they just wander off, they shamble around, and sometimes they turn up here. Thank the Lord they don’t seem to stay. I have no idea where they go, but they don’t stay here. Was it one of those —? And to think of the sheriff accusing that sweet big dog. Why, when you gave him a shirt his old master had worn, Nestor took it to his bed in the barn, laid the shirt on the straw, and rested his head on it all that day.”
Dean Jorgenson said, tapping his huge hairy fingers on his desktop, “Well, good, Stewart. I told Vlad he could take the summer off if he took someone with him. I’m glad it’s you. He likes you; says you have a good mind and a good sense of humor. Fortunately this is still a private college and I can finagle you some graduate credits, and something out of the special funds without having to justify it to six state legislative committees. Consider that done. And you, in turn, won’t let him get morbid and obsessive about. ” He searched for a word, gazed at Jack Stewart with troubled eyes and concluded, “… it.”
Vlad looked as if he was fairly well recovered from a bad drunk, but Jack knew that if you looked it, you weren’t recovered at all. It wasn’t until they were bedding down for the first night, in a worn-down motel, that Vlad began to loosen up and talk.
“I understand Jorg’s going to do some creative bookkeeping, and get you some grad credits. Good. Officially we’re going on just another fun folklore ramble,” he ran his fingers over his tired face. “Good clean bright stuff; children’s jump-rope jingles, Paul Bunyan tales of the lower Appalachians, Old Darky stories about Mr Buzzard. But unofficially you are going to be my keeper, eh? We, that’s you, kid, are going to keep me, that’s me, kid, from getting into anything gamy or gritty. No folkloric spelunking. But no such luck, kid. God bless poor dear old Jorg, but I’m going after such little-known legends as the Clickers, the Rattlers, and I don’t mean snakes, I mean the Greasy Man, Paper-Man, the Boss in the Wall, see?”
Jack Stewart ran his own fingers through his molasses-colored curly hair, murmured about a shower, looked up and asked, “Why?”
“Why? Because I saw a specter haunting an old house, and it killed my uncle and sent my little girl into convulsions and my wife into a deep depression and, my god, it was awful! Why was it there? What was it, what is it? Nobody believes that I really saw it. Hardly anybody in academe even knows the legend, let alone believes it. Allbright does. We’re going to see Allbright. I’ve got to find out more about the legend, more about what I saw. I’ve got to find something that will help my wife and my daughter, help us put our lives back together. Bagnell knows about the legend. We’re going to see Bagnell. And. after that, well, we’ll see. See?”
Stewart, in turn, liked Vlad’s mind and sense of humor. But now he saw a man slumped in unhappiness, confusion, pain. There was much that he wanted to know about what happened. Much he dared not ask, which he knew would be revealed later. So he merely said, “I see.”
Vlad kicked off his shoes, rapidly undressed, said he was too tired for a shower. “Have one in the morning. Too tired even to put on the jammies. Maybe I’ll put them on in the morning, too. Going to stay up reading? Try the Gideon Bible, Job xv, 28, as a starting text. Leave the light on in the bathroom, if you like. Night.”
Jack turned on his reading light. Gideon Bible? Well, there weren’t many things you could do in a motel room. Job, huh, xv. 26, 27, ah. His finger traced its way to the verse.
28. And he dwelleth in desolate cities, and in houses which no man inhabiteth.
Jack Stewart decided to leave the light on in the bathroom.
Robert E. L. Allbright lived amidst the dense green kudzu vines, way away from anywhere, and very far away from the highways. The hand he held out was large and reddened and splotched… a description of his face, as well. His eyes were red-rimmed and he blinked a lot. “I hope, Professor, that you may have had my letter?” asked Vlad Smith politely. Blink. Blink. “In which I said that I’d like to talk with you about the possible origins of the legends of the Paper-Man, or the Boss in the Wall?” Blink. Blink.
It was not clear if Allbright had led them into his office or his dining room. At one end of a table strewn with books and papers, a late teenaged boy was sitting beside a sort of barricade erected out of old law-books, eating breakfast cereal and milk. “My grandson, Albert S. J. Allbright. In theory he is reading law with me. When he is finished he will be a foremost authority on the foreclosure of mules.” His voice had fallen into the flattening tones of the increasingly deaf.
The boy slightly turned his head and raised his hand to it, as though to wipe away Rice Crispies and, looking straight at Stewart said, low-voiced, “You got a joint?”