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Off he went. By then it was evening and more thunderheads building up in the west. I walked the six miles out to Lake Road. By the time I got there the rain was beating its way across the lake again. Lightning flashed. Thunder rolled. The smell of ozone in the air like an unburned burning. My car was still parked next to Elgin’s Mercedes. I went inside. He hadn’t turned on the lights and the hall was a bowl of shadows.
“Elgin?”
I got no answer. The living room was empty, the books knocked over. Beyond the Wall of Sleep was faceup. On the coffee table was a glass ashtray, a pack of Winstons, and his Zippo. I took the Zippo and put it in my pocket. I went to the former dining room, thought about going into the room with the couch, fortunately thought better of it. I went into the room with the desk instead and sat in my chair and looked through the oneway glass. What was left of Elgin the Gentleman Scientist was on the couch. Polaroids scattered all around. The beaker shattered among the photographs. His head was in what looked like a black sack. Some of the photographs, those that were faceup, showed it forming over his sleeping face. The picture of the red house with the green door was also on the floor and so was the plastic bag into which he had put his samples. Now the bag was empty. The black sack on his head was made of those filaments. It sucked in and out from what was left of his mouth as he breathed. I thought about him telling me of endless universes both out there and below our very feet. I thought of a face sliding down a man’s skull. I thought of a helicopter on fire sinking into the very sea of napalm it had created. I thought of putting Devereaux’s shoe back on his foot. I thought of all the unknown and unknowable nether creations that might exist beneath a barrier of dreams. I thought that yes, plans change. Elgin could no longer get out of this but maybe I still could.
Some of the black filaments saw me and rose from the black bag and crossed the room and plastered themselves on the glass. More came. And more. I watched as they squirmed around until they made my name: WILLIAM DAVIS.
There was a gas stove in the kitchen. I turned on all the burners and blew out the blue gas flowers one by one. I turned on the oven and opened the oven door. A pilot light came on in there and I blew that out, too. As I created this nascent gasbomb I looked constantly over my shoulder for the black filaments. I was in s? kinh h?i. Terror. I was in rùng r?n. Horror. I closed the windows. I closed the doors. I went around to the guest house and gathered up my belongings in my dufflebag and one suitcase. I put them in the trunk of my car. Then I went back to the stoop and waited, clicking the top of the lighter up and down. Lightning panfried the lake and thunder rolled. After about ten minutes the rain started, at first just pattering down, the storm’s foreplay. I opened the door. The gas was a stench. I flicked the Zippo and got a flame and tossed it and ran for my car. I got there and had just decided nothing was going to happen when the kitchen exploded. The rain came in a deluge as I drove away. In my rearview I saw the house burning like a candle under a black sky cut with lightning. There were houses and summer cottages on Lake Road but no one was out in the storm and if anyone was looking out a window they would have seen nothing but an amorphous car-shaped blob behind headlights. I drove out of Castle Rock and into Harlow. The rain slackened, then stopped. In my rearview mirror, just before the sun sank behind the mountains in New Hampshire, I saw a rainbow. Then the sun was gone and the rainbow clicked off like a neon sign. I stayed the night at a motel in Gates Falls and drove to Portland the next morning, to the roominghouse where I had been living when I worked at Temp-O. There was a rooms for rent sign in the front window. I rang the bell and Mrs. Blake answered.
“You again.”
“Yes. Sign says you’ve got a room.”
“That’s right, but not your room. It’s on the third floor and there’s no air conditioning.”
“Is it cheaper than the one on the second?”
“No.”
“I’ll take it.”
The next day I went back to Temp-O and got rehired. I had no plans to spend very long working for Mrs. Frobisher, but I wanted to have a job when the cops came. Pearson was in the break room. So was Diane. There was a talk show on the TV. Diane gave me a crooked little smile and said, “Once more into the breach, dear friends.” Pearson was reading the paper, sections piled up around his shoes. He took one look at me and raised the paper again.
“So you came back,” I said to Diane.
“So did you. Didn’t work out at Elgin’s house?”
“It did for awhile, then didn’t. He started getting strange when his experiments didn’t work out.”
“And here we are. All roads lead to Temp-O.”
Mrs. Frobisher came in. “Who wants a depo at Brune and Cathcart?” She didn’t wait for an answer, just pointed to a new woman I didn’t know. “You, Janelle. Chop-chop.”
Pearson was done with the local section of the paper so I picked it up. On the bottom of page 1B was a story headlined CASTLE ROCK MAN DIES IN GAS EXPLOSION AT DARK SCORE LAKE. It said the case was being investigated as an accident or possible suicide. It said that because of heavy rain, the fire hadn’t spread.
I said, “Holy shit, my last boss is dead,” and showed Diane the story.
“Bad luck for him, good luck for you.” She read the story. “Was he suicidal?”
I had to think that over. “I don’t know.”
The next day I had court. When I went back to the roominghouse, two cops were waiting for me in the parlor. One was in uniform, the other was a detective. They introduced themselves and asked how long I had worked for Elgin. I told them about a month. I told them what I had told Diane, that Elgin started to get dinky-dau when his experiments hadn’t been panning out, so I left. Yes, I had been living in the guest house but moved out when I quit the job. No, I hadn’t been there when his house blew up. They asked me if I knew a man named Burton Devereaux. I said I knew the name, it had been on Elgin’s list of test subjects, but not the man. I had never seen him. The detective gave me his card and asked me to call him if I thought of anything. I said I would. I asked if the detective thought Elgin had killed himself.
“Would that surprise you, Mr. Davis?”
“Not a lot.”
“He turned on the gas stove and we found a melted chunk of lighter on what was left of the kitchen floor, so what do you think?”
What I thought was a smart detective might have wondered if they found the remains of the Zippo in the kitchen, how Elgin could be on his subjects’ couch in the dining room. But I guess he wasn’t that smart.
I worked at Temp-O until September, then quit and drove to Nebraska. No reason for Nebraska, it was just where I went. I got temporary work on a farm, one of those big agribusiness spreads, and the foreman kept me on after the harvest season passed. I’m here now. It’s snowing a blizzard. I-80 is shut down. I sit at this desk thinking of galaxies beyond galaxies. In a little while I will close this notebook and turn out the lights and go to bed. The sound of the wind will lull me off to sleep. Sometimes I dream of the boondocks and men screaming in fire. Sometimes women screaming in fire. Children. Nahn tu, they cry. Nahn tu, nahn tu. Those are the good dreams. You might not believe it but it’s true. In the bad dreams I am standing outside a red house with a green door. If I tried that door, it would open. I know this and know one day I will go in and kneel at the living room doorway. Nahn tu, I will cry, nahn tu, but when this final dream comes there will be no mercy. Not for me.
Thinking of Cormac McCarthy and Evangeline Walton
THE ANSWER MAN
1
