Hideous Faces, Beautiful Skulls. Mark McLaughlin
potbellied mechanic pointed to a gray, two-story house. On the upper floor, a single window gave forth a faint blue glow. “He lives there. See that light? Now gimme my fifty bucks.”
As Michael handed him the money, he took a good look at the older man’s face: red nose, shiny cheeks, eyes all but buried in flesh. A too-ripe face. The mechanic counted the bills twice, then shoved them in a pocket and ran down the road.
The weedy yard around the house was littered with broken bottles and old boards, so Michael had to watch his step. At the door, he debated whether or not to knock. He turned the knob; it wasn’t even locked. He walked into the house.
The windows were incredibly filthy. Even though it was mid-afternoon, the entry hall was as dark as night. He fumbled a hand along the wall until he felt the plate of the light switch. But only the plate—the switch had been broken off.
Eventually his eyes grew accustomed to the dark. He located a stairway a few feet to his left and began to ascend. What was that sound—that high-pitched hum? He thought for a moment. Telephone wires in the wind? That hardly seemed possible. It was a windy day, but he hadn’t heard the hum outside the house.
On the top floor, he found an empty hallway awash with blue light from an open doorway. The humming sound issued from the room beyond. A floorboard popped as he moved toward the door.
“Who’s there? I have a gun.” A voice from the room—young, male, tremulous.
“Don’t shoot. I need to talk to you.” He paused for a moment, thinking how best to explain his reasons for this intrusion. “Someone we both know said you could help me.”
There was a creak of bedsprings. “Fine. Cover your face and come in.”
Michael dug a handkerchief from his pocket. “My whole face?”
“Do the best you can. You don’t have to cover your eyes. I’m not a Gorgon.”
Michael tied the handkerchief robber-style across his lower face. He wasn’t quite sure what a Gorgon was. One of those batwinged things on old churches? No, those were gargoyles. He walked up to the door and looked inside.
The blue light came from a tinted bulb in a shadeless lamp. Thin copper wires were strung across the room at various levels; every piece of furniture seemed to be caught up in the tangle. The breeze from a fan on high-power made the wires hum. On a brass bed in the center of the room reclined a pale man, bundled in quilts and pillows. His long black hair was thick and coarse, like a horse’s mane. He wore a tattered bathrobe over a gray sweatsuit. Michael decided the pale man was probably twenty-five, just a few years younger than himself.
Michael brushed a hand over the lump in his pants pocket. He had a roll of bills totalling three-hundred dollars, in case the pale man had a price. “I met somebody in a bar—a mechanic. He’d told me you made his wife go away.” It dawned on Michael that the mechanic might have violated a trust. “You can’t really blame him for talking. He’d had a lot to drink and…well, I bought him a few drinks, too. He seemed pretty miserable.”
The pale man shrugged. “No worry. I appreciate references, if discretion is observed. I’m sure Mr. Curtis has selected well. My name is Card.”
“I’m Michael. I guess you don’t really want to know who I am, though, since you told me to cover my face.” He twanged at one of the copper wires. “What’s with the spiderweb?”
“Be careful, will you?” Card nodded as Michael stilled the vibrating wire with a fingertip. “Yes, it is like a spiderweb, isn’t it? Except there’s no pattern. Still, do you see the appeal? Everything connected to everything. Beautiful, like a work of art.”
“Can I get through?”
A brief, worried look crossed Card’s face. “I suppose so.” The pale man watched intently as Michael threaded his way across the room. “Careful there, a wire is snagged on your coat. And your handkerchief is coming loose. Don’t let it fall off. If you should ever show me your face, I would want it to be a conscious choice.”
At last Michael reached the brass bed. He turned away for a moment to pull the handkerchief tighter and retie it. Then he climbed over the pillows and sat cross-legged next to Card.
“I don’t really have a gun,” the pale man said. “I don’t need one.” He shifted on his pillows. “So tell me. How did you know that Mr. Curtis wasn’t lying to you?”
“I remembered reading about his wife’s disappearance in the papers. They found a pile of dust in her bed. Real weird.” Michael studied Card for a moment. The pale man had fine wrinkles around his eyes. Perhaps he wasn’t so young. “This thing you do. With people. What are you?”
Card looked up. “A man in a room.” The look in his eyes was intense. Almost feral. “You are having problems with someone. Someone who should go away. A lover, perhaps? Isn’t it odd about lovers? So beautiful when you meet them, so horrid when the love grows cold?”
* * * *
The next morning, Michael didn’t go to church. After examining the newspaper, he threw it in the trash. What did he expect—a front page headline? HOMELESS MAN DISAPPEARS: DUST HEAP FOUND IN ALLEY. Of course not. He knew that no one would be too concerned about Mr. Linfield’s disappearance. If anything, a few of the shopkeepers downtown would be glad of it.
He flopped down on his sofa, turned on the television and flipped through the channels. Sermons, news shows—at last a cartoon popped up. The show, a teenage space opera, was poorly drawn and woodenly animated.
If only Doc Feisty’s Cartoon Cavalcade was still on the air—a great show with great old cartoons. Each week, fat Doc Feisty would have a different child as his co-host. At the beginning of each show, the lucky boy or girl would pop out of a giant rabbit hole and Doc Feisty would playfully grab the child by the neck. Michael’s mother had sent in his name, but he never got to be on the show.
Too bad the real-life Mrs. Doc Feisty had to spoil everything. She’d killed herself by drinking something awful. Drain-opener or oven-cleaner. Something incredibly caustic. Something that made for an incredibly colorful death.
After that, Doc Feisty was no longer funny.
Michael had been nine when the show was cancelled. It wasn’t until he was seventeen that a friend of his pointed to a confused old man on the streets and informed him that this was old Doc Feisty: real name, Corliss Linfield. His friend went on to tell him that Doc had spent the last few years in an institution.
Mr. Linfield had changed. The fat Doc Feisty belly had swelled into a bag of sickness. The wavy Doc Feisty hair had become a matted rat’s nest. The bright, expressive Doc Feisty eyes had dwindled into twin pits of despair.
The cartoon’s credits rolled, and Michael sighed. Maybe the next one would be better.
Card had asked for a picture. Of course, Michael didn’t have one. The pale man then pulled a sketchpad from under the bed and told him to give a description. In twenty minutes, Card produced a realistic drawing of Mr. Linfield’s face.
“Is this man so beyond hope?” Card had asked. “Are you doing this for him or for yourself? Not that it matters to me.”
The question had momentarily weakened Michael’s resolve. Was his request a mission of pity—or scorn? Maybe both: he often felt obligated to give alms to the homeless; and yet, the sick temptation to kick at them, to laughingly pile them with trash, was also there.
His was a mission of liberation. Time would erase any doubts on the matter.
He had not questioned Card too closely; he hadn’t even asked what void would house the vanished Mr. Linfield. He only knew that the old man’s torment on earth would soon be over. Or possibly, was already over; the pale man had not specified when the disappearance would take place.
The next cartoon was about a little girl whose imaginary playmate, a giant wise-cracking caterpillar, was always getting her into trouble. He had to admit that the animation