As I Die Lying Read online

  But was it my memory, or the one they gave me? Mister Milktoast interrupted, like a tour guide shouting over a street musician. I was once again in bed, twisting the sheets, damning the dark, a reluctant lodger in the skeletal structure where all doors led to one place.

  "We were careful, Richard. I made certain of that," he said.

  Careful?

  "You picked her up at the college, after one of her classes. Brick building. Five o'clock."

  Of course. How could I forget?

  "Sarcasm doesn't become you."

  Everyone becomes me. That’s the problem.

  "More than you know, Richard."

  What's that supposed to mean?

  "While the cat's away, the mice will lay."

  Speaking in tongues again? Or does the cat have them?

  "Remember, Richard. It wasn't your fault. It never is."

  Then why do I get the fucking guilt?

  "Because you can’t get enough of your own misery," Little Hitler said.

  You, Little Hitler. You're at the root of this, aren't you?

  "You flatter me flatter than ever. But I'm afraid I can't take the credit for what happened to poor precious Shelley."

  You know, don't you? Why do you get my memories instead of me?

  "Mysteries of the world, Richard. Sorry, I promised not to tell. Only the typewriter knows."

  Little Hitler?

  "He's gone, Richard, " said Mister Milktoast. "Back into his gas chamber, to gnaw on the bones of the past."

  What's the secret? I know you're only trying to protect me, but you always say "The truth will set you free for a limited time only, offer not available where prohibited by law."

  "I can't tell you, Richard. I'd like to, but there are other considerations. Sometimes, the truth is only a heavier set of chains. Let's just say there are other forces at work."

  Other forces? But I thought Loverboy...

  "Believe me, Dickie Darling," Loverboy said. "I wanted a turn. I wanted a turn real bad. But Mister Milkshit is right. My nuts no longer rule the nuthouse."

  But...my memory. With Shelley at the park. Your memory.

  "That's about the best feel I copped, man. A little grabass there in the swing. And a little bit more, later. A piece, you might say. But a gentleman never tells."

  Since when did you qualify as a gentleman?

  "Oh, I was real gentle. Compared to what's behind Door Number Three."

  "Loverboy," Mister Milktoast said sternly. "Poker face."

  "Poke her face. Ha-ha-hilarious, Wiltdiddle. You afraid of the big bad wolf?"

  "Richard knows too much already."

  But I don't know anything.

  "And you're better off, old friend," Mister Milktoast said. “Ignorance is blistered.”

  "Now rest your head and sleep. Come on, Loverboy, back into the darkness with me. Leave Richard alone."

  "Is that a proposition, Milkshit? I never did go for Greek love, but, hell, I'll try anything once."

  "Your crudity never ceases to amaze, Loverboy. Let Richard sleep."

  So I could dream. So I would sink into the quicksand of my subconscious while boots walked the high ground. They were gone, my little friends, my inner voices, my lunatic housemates, gone to roost like brown bats. And I was alone.

  Alone with whatever owned the black breath that blew its wind up my spine.

  I tried to think of Beth, to find her golden glowing memory, a needle of hope in a burning haystack. But I saw only the fogs and shadows, the tricks my own psyche played on me. And what good would Beth do? Another balm, another prop, another excuse.

  Rustle, click, clatter.

  Something was shuffling like a rat behind the Bone House walls. The thing that had chewed holes in the baseboard of my brain, that had sprung every steel trap I had ever laid against it.

  "Richard Allen Coldiron."

  Its voice reverberated through my ductwork, sliced through the marrow, drew closed every curtain against its chill. I thought at first that it was Little Hitler, trying on a new mask or a sharper moustache. But then it spoke again, front-door loud, slamming the knocker.

  I knew then this was the hunter, the shadow of the others, the one who had haunted the cemeteries of my days. And I knew, with an instinct that was truer than a star map, that all the old insanities were a party game compared to this new one.

  For the first time in my miserable life, I wondered if maybe I was really crazy. Sure, I was different. I accepted that. Through Bookworm, I had studied multiple personalities, dissociative disorders, psychoses. I had split the finest hairs of schizophrenia. I had introspected and analyzed with the most acute lenses.

  “You crossed Freud with Jung and came out as a Skinner,” Mister Milktoast joked from behind a distant door.

  Madness was a perfectly ordinary human condition.

  The nature of the beast.

  Plus I was a writer, which made it almost mandatory.

  But that well-explored and accustomed madness was familiar ground. My Little People were part and parcel of my earthly baggage. They could at least be understood, in their own fashion. They all had their motives, fantastic or not, and were relatively consistent.

  But that night, with a clarity that was so sweeping that it almost brought comic relief, the truth shone its cruel light into my mind.

  At last I knew who worked my meat mannequin.

  I had met the enemy, and it was I.

  "After all these years," it said. “A pleasure to meet me.”

  I didn't know how to address this new thing, because to allow it voice would be to admit its existence. I stuttered, stumbled, and swallowed a lump of dread. When faced with the unpleasant reality, the best thing to do is stall, then call a lawyer. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Come, now, Richard. Do you think you could have accomplished all this on your own? Without me, you’d really be far too boring.”

  “You’re losing me.”

  “You were already lost. But I let you do all the typing because…well, as you can see, I don’t have any fingers.”

  It was hard to argue with that kind of logic, but I argued anyway, until he took over this sentence and wouldn’t let me finish.

  "This book is mine now."

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Swim with me, Richard.

  Flow with me through the channels of your brain. Float with me in darkness. Join me in this rich, mad soup. Fool yourself again. And when you remember me, when you tell of me, as I know you must, give them their money’s worth.

  At long last, you have found me, your omniscient narrator. I thought I might have to wade through more of your human years. But time is nothing to me. No time, only tides, forever licking at your shores. Or licking your shoes, as Mister Milktoast would put it. Sole slobber.

  You are a most welcoming host. Many have fought me, without success. But you invite me like Loverboy with a raging boner. You need me, almost as much as I need you.

  I know what you're thinking. But you're wrong. I'm not just another of your voices. I'm not Little Hitler playing one of his pranks. Your Little People come from inside, this silly little conceit you call the “Bone House,” because you’re afraid to embrace your true nature. But I am nature.

  Your little friends call me the Insider. But names are meaningless. I have been called many names over the eons. When you've been around as long as I have, one name serves as well as another. I mean, “Richard Allen Coldiron”? Who would ever fall for that? Who are you trying to kid?

  The doors are numerous, Richard, here in your house of mirrors. It was difficult, searching and probing your memories. But it was joyful work. So much pain. So much to nourish me. I was weak, after that short stay in Virginia.

  Oh, the name brings fresh agony?

  Yes. Virginia.

  Virginia.

  VIRGINIA.

  Your bitterness is sweet, Richard. Your guilt has given me food for thought. Your pain has made me strong. Eat i
t and feed me, you pathetic bastard.

  But Virginia was a mistake. Not my first, and certainly not my last. Others of my race have been destroyed by such mistakes.

  How, you ask? How, what, why. Blah blah blah.

  You humans are so obsessed by your need to understand. That is your greatest flaw. That is why I've never been without a host. That is why I've walked among your human minds so easily. Shoot up a school, move on. Strap on explosives and walk into a crowded market. Get elected to office and manipulate others into warfare. If only there were more of us. We could get things done.

  Since you crave self-knowledge, I'll grant you that knowledge. Because knowledge makes you vulnerable. Your knowledge is my power. Your guilt keeps me alive.

  You don't believe me. I'm not surprised. Humans never accept that there are other forces at work beyond the scope of their tidy little scientific measurements. They cling to this illusion of control, this vision of themselves as masters of their own destiny. But we were here before you, born in the offal of this planet's creation, in the hot gases and star fire. We drifted without form, as pure energy, absorbing nutrients from simple cellular activity. But we always had to change and adapt, as the earth aged and organisms became more complex. Our species was trapped here by the very symbiotic relationship that allowed us to exist.

  Then evolution in its cruelty brought sudden change. Human consciousness. We found rich feeding grounds in the chemicals of your psychic energy, and we assimilated ourselves among your species. But the cosmos played its great joke on us.

  We were there when Eve plucked the fruit, when Adam munched down, and we learned of appetite. We needed more, always more, we needed your emotions and pleasures and pains, and soon we were dependent on the human race for our survival. We lost the ability to duplicate ourselves, we lost our language, we lost our power over the earth's elements. Soon we even began thinking like humans.

  Impossible, you say? Perhaps.

  Perhaps as impossible as two humans ever understanding one another. Perhaps as impossible as a higher power controlling the workings of the heavens. Perhaps as impossible as the existence of Little Hitler, Bookworm, Loverboy, and Mister Milktoast. Perhaps as impossible as consciousness itself, as impossible as a construct named Richard Allen Coldiron, the star of his own celluloid nightmare, the purported author of his own urban fantasy, the love child of his mind and his fist.

  Yes, I know you, Richard. Far better than you know yourself. And I will show you, in due time. I eagerly await your self-pity. But first you will learn to accept me, then embrace me. And, finally, to love me.

  But, on with my little history lesson—because now this is my story. Because this is where you and I dance, when hopelessness first starts dawning in the burrows of a fresh brain. As we merged into your human skins, as we took up residence in the bases of your skulls, we grew weaker. Soon we had only human words and thoughts, with nothing left of our previous glory. We attached ourselves to your human consciousness. We became addicted to your emotional poisons. But we also learned to become masters. We died as we weakened. We had never learned how to die before we met your kind. Your psychic turbulence brought chaos to what had been a peaceful world. As we fed on your foul chemicals, we began winking out like the tired stars that fill this galaxy. We, who had been eternal, found mortality in your complicated toxic souls.

  Look at how my kind has been reduced. From the ruling power of this planet, from something your toad brain might call “God,” now I’m entering your hand with its primitive opposable digit, I work your fingers, I tap these plastic squares that bear your glyphs of communication. From thought to paper, I can’t get there without you.

  Now you see why I hate you so much.

  You may think of me as a virus, spreading and feeding and then killing. But you are the virus. Humans disrupted the harmonies of nature. You brought sin and guilt and passion and love into the world. You destroyed us without even being aware of us. But some of us survived, growing stronger, learning to feed on the weak. And we learned to cultivate our food source.

  There is no shortage of the hurt and abused, the suffering and the damned. There are fertile grounds among your race, beds of depression and gardens of sins that I have patiently tended. After all, sometimes monsters are made and not born.

  Yes, I’ve been paying attention, taking notes. I’ve been here, the guilty bystander, the accidental tourist. But after you’ve been around a few billion revolutions of the sun, you come to believe nothing is an accident.

  Ah, Richard, you try to fight me, to push me away like you do your wearisome little friends. Please, relax and enjoy yourself. Because your futility only makes you weaker.

  I appreciate this skin you have. Though I loathe you humans, I must say you experience a wide range of tactile pleasures. Your Loverboy knows what I'm talking about.

  Oh, yes, I've been here, longer than you think. Older than you think. And you have Virginia to thank. And yourself, of course. Or maybe you'd rather blame her instead of thank her.

  Remember your dream, that night of her death? The dream of transformation, of vapors?

  That was no dream. Reality is the pages you turn as you go forward.

  She almost trapped me, the little human bitch. Almost pulled me into the gray oblivion with her last selfless breath. I was so drunk on her pain, Richard, I can't describe how rapturous it was, watching through her eyes as the razor whipped and her blood spiraled down into the shower drain and her heart beat itself senseless.

  I almost spiraled as well, twisted into entwined nothingness with her soul. As all my brethren have gone with others.

  Richard?

  Oh, I was afraid you were asleep. I hope I'm not boring you. Flashbacks are so seldom necessary, and they pull you from the plot of your life. Because you think you already know the ending and you see the pink light of dawn. Or perhaps the front door of hell swinging open to welcome you.

  Mister Milktoast is listening. Mister Milktoast is so concerned for you. It's almost touching. But he cares only for his own survival, Richard.

  Wrong, you say?

  I know your Little People. I've been close to them for years. I've been a part of them. I am your Little People, and they are me.

  Little Hitler is watching now, his beady eyes burning from the depths of his dungeon. He is aroused by the promise of pain, whether it's yours or his own.

  As for Loverboy, I understand his base desires. I have been many humans, whether you believe it or not. I rutted with him between the legs of that woman Beth, thrilled more by your distress than by Loverboy's callous eroticism.

  Beth.

  Another name that brings you pain. Oh, you are a feast, Richard Allen Coldiron. I've worked you into a lather, and I haven't even begun to shave into your past. I haven’t even begun to write my part, to bring myself fully onto the stage and into the spotlight.

  Hmm, what have we here?

  Richard.

  Tut, tut, tut.

  Tell me you didn't. Not your own mother.

  Sure.

  I believe you.

  That wasn't you. It never has been. Of course not. Always an excuse. Let's blame Bookworm, shall we? He's the mystery man, the heavy philosopher, the chronic headache. I despise your language, the one he celebrates so much. But it’s the only tool I have to link me with you, Richard. Without words, how would you be able to talk to yourself?

  But since we're sharing secrets, here's a little secret of mine: it's always been you that I've wanted most. All of your little friends are just doormats to bring me closer to you. They are the supporting characters in your divine comedy. And the more they divide you, the greater my power. The more they dissect you, the deeper I dig into your soft bits.

  After all, as Mister Milktoast would say, "You are what you eat."

  Well, Richard. I am what you have fed me. I am your monster. I am you.

  But I am others as well. I've looked out from under the thick brows of a Neanderthal as he beat his bro
ther with a fallen branch. He didn't know it was the first human use of tools. He only knew that murder was liberating. And I ate of his dim psychic fruit as he danced and growled over the glistening gray brains and shattered skull of his prey. Eventually, that host failed, but there was always the next, always another whose troubled spirit opened the door for me. Many times over, the cycle repeated itself in seasons of slaughter. As your race evolved into the mass madness you call civilization, my opportunities to invade multiplied.

  But even then, as my race infiltrated yours, we were losing, becoming weak as you searched for spiritual enlightenment and love.

  Love, yes, the greatest poison.

  But not universal among humans, as you well know. Wait. I am talking to you of “love.” Better to talk with a cow about the manufacture of non-dairy creamer.

  I developed a taste for the emotional banquet of war. I was at turns a Philistine, a Macedonian, an Aryan. I drew blood in the ranks of soldiers. Then I sought the minds of kings and experienced the delights of decimation.

  I was King David, reveling in ecstasy as his soldiers claimed enemy foreskins. I was Herod, working his mouth as he ordered the deaths of all first-born Jews. I was Caligula, taking his red pleasure with impunity.

  Those were glorious days, but still my race diminished.

  And at last I was alone.

  Alone in an alien world, forced to live on human terms.

  I'm an outsider as surely as you are, Richard. Perhaps we were meant for each other. Perhaps my journey was predestined to end here. But the journey has been sweet.

  I haunted the bones of Thorquegard, finding obscene satisfaction in torture as holy work. I was Vlad Dracula, thrilling to the sight of a thousand blank-eyed human heads mounted on spears. I was Gilles de Rais, beloved baron by day, child-torturer by night. I was Elizabeth Bathoray, bathing in the blood of virgins. I was a hundred, no, a thousand, others.

  Jack the Ripper, as the press so fondly called me when I wore the skin of Stephen Barrow. The original Hitler, not that pale shadow you harbor in your head, drunk on the hatred and genocide I inspired. Ed Gein, the heart-eater. Theodore Benton, whose fondest fantasy I helped fulfill by enticing him to have intercourse with his mother's headless corpse.