The Fire Without. (Part 2)
Chief inspector Quinn has an annoying case on his hands: The citizens of Oakenford spontaneously combust in broad daylight, and he doesn't know whom to arrest. Because you can't slap cuffs on a corpse. He convinces private investigator, Carter Wolf to take the case. Reluctant at first, Carter warms to the mystery when it turns out the latest combustible victim was not a healthy man. In fact, he was dead before he died.
If Lester Finch had known he would be a corpse by lunch, he would have bought himself a pastrami sandwich.
But he shuffled past the Jewish deli, ignored the German bakery and paid no notice to the French Patisserie. Far from being a food nationalist, Lester Finch greeted dishes of any culture, color and creed with an open palate. That was, before he had his operation. Lately, he didn't have much of an appetite. It wasn't that Lester was a finicky eater, or he was on a diet. Quite the contrary. But the surgeon who removed a tumor the size of a tennis ball from his liver, had also plucked out his appetite and ditched it in a bag stamped for incineration only. Lester's cell phone vibrated in his coat pocket. It was an unknown caller, hiding behind an anonymous number. Probably the usual sales agent hawking subscriptions, or some insurance company promising eternal life. Lester couldn't care less. But he was a man of habit, and his right hand on auto-pilot reached for the mobile when it rang again. A woman answered "Do you want flowers with that order?" She sounded annoyed, Lester noticed with little interest.
"Order? What order? I didn't put in no goddamn order."
Lester hung up without saying goodbye. "Crazy bitch," he mumbled and put his mobile back. He was about to walk on, when a bunch of red roses slapped him across the face. "What the!" he cursed. Lester had collided with a young woman who balanced a bouquet of long-stemmed roses on the top of too many boxes in gift-wrap. The woman apologized, fumbling around for two boxes that had fallen off her stack. She smiled shyly at Lester and tried to pick them up with her left hand while avoiding dropping anything else.
"Guess I'm supposed to help her or something?" Lester thought. He bent down to pick up the two packages. "Thank you," said the woman, smiling. "Let me give you a little something in return..." She reached into her bag but Lester waved her off. "No need," he said. "I don't care." He wiped sweat and cold flower-dew from his face, and looked towards Oakenford park. I should drink something. Lester's mouth felt parched under the warm June sun. He turned to the park where Bobby Saville had his hot-dog stand. A soda perhaps?
Halfway across the manicured lawn, Lester's left arm caught on fire. He stopped momentarily, to inspect his burning hand. "This must mean something," he thought. There was no pain or discomfort to this unexpected condition, so Lester shrugged it off and kept walking across the lawn, carelessly dropping smoldering clothes with every step. An acrid smell of sweet pork rose from his burning flesh. The fake leather of Lester's shoes melted away, leaving his feet to imprint naked footprints into the tarmac with every step. Lester Finch stumbled forward, with the sole purpose of buying a Coke Zero. He ignored the "no loitering" sign and the shocked park guests who eyed him from a safe distance. Oblivious to the fact he had turned into a human torch, Lester stopped fifteen feet short of the hot-dog stand. He stood there, motionless like a wind-up toy with a broken spring. His eyes and face had long melted away, exposing white bone and teeth. His ears were deaf to the horrified shrieks of park visitors and the dog walkers. He shouted out the strangest order Bobby Saville ever had in his twenty years as a snacks salesman, given the circumstances:
"Gimme a large Coke Zero... to go."
"Are you hearing voices now, Carter?" Asked Dr. James Bentley.
"I'm hearing YOUR voice," I replied." Clear as day."
Dr. Goldberg, my regular shrink had gone on sick-leave, thanks to a bad back. In need of fresh medication I flipped through the phone book to find myself another shrink. That's where I found out what had become of my old pal, Jim-bee.
"Would you like to lie down?" Asked Dr. Bentley. "Sometimes it helps my patients relax."
He wore a gold wedding-ring on his right hand. I wore a Casio digital; a gift from Irene before we broke up. Maybe I had become a nutcase, but I wasn't ready to lie down just yet.
"Let's talk about the voices in your head."
"I don't have voices in my head," I replied. "Never did."
Neurotypicals always assume, when you hear voices, they originate inside your head and talk to you like some loud inner monologe. If it were only that easy, I wouldn't need medication. The voices I hear, come from without; never from within. They come from a point behind me, slightly off center and to the left. Sometimes they hide inside other sources of noise, like the whisper of passing traffic, the hum of electric fans or the roar of a thunderstorm. But they are never inside my head. They are as real, as if you were in a crowd, listening to strangers talk about the weather or how the Boston Celtics performed last night. They talk about their wives and their promotions and how their kids have taken up piano lessons. MY voices warn me of enemy agents, murders about to happen, and of course... the abyss.
"The abyss" is my word for an outside world that is on a collision-course with our own. It's been like that for thousands of years, so there's no need to panic just yet. The two worlds share the same space-time coordinates, so I guess we kinda overlap. But It's not like we will slam-dunk into each other and break into tiny atoms. The two worlds exist in separate dimensions at the same time, so we're more or less safe from one another. The physics behind the clashing worlds go way over my head, but that's how my voices explain it. The space-time dimensions are not flat, but have highs and lows like mountain ranges. Sometimes two ridges rub elbows. That's when rifts open, and our two worlds connect for a short while, until they have passed by each other.
Dr. Bentley whistled. "That's some story, Carter. You were always the imaginative one of us... it's funny."
"Once you look into such a rift and see what lives in there, it's really not that fun anymore," I sneered. The rifts are like 6ft black cracks floating in mid-air that spring open where you least expect them. The inside of the abyss is almost completely dark, with only the faintest hum of background light. It's a multi-dimensional place, which plays tricks on the eyes when we're used to walking around in our normal, three dimensional space. Things around you, move when you make a move, and they stand still when you don't. The horizon is almost within reach. Because of this curvature, I took a while to recognize the odd, furry shape straight ahead of me, as the back of my own head. Looking into the abyss is like watching yourself in a strange, misshapen mirror. If your mind is sound, this is the last place you want to spend time in.
"You mentioned... creatures?" Dr. Bentley waved both hands to chase the smoke from my Pall Mall away. "Oh, and please don't smoke in my office. I have patients, VERY Sensitive to cigarette smoke."
"Werewolves?" I paused between two puffs..
Dr. Bentley looked at me, confused. "No. Just regular... you know...humans."
I drew a long puff and French-inhaled the smoke to suck out every molecule of nicotine, before ditching the butt in my complementary cup of Folgers.
"You wanna know about the creatures of the abyss? Why? I thought it was all a figment of my condition."
Bentley shrugged. "They might tell us something."
"About my mother?"
"-about that "world" your mind has created for you. It's remarkably consistent for someone with your condition."
Dr. Bentley stood up from his chair. He opened the windows to let the smoke out, while I told him all about the denizens of the abyss. I told him about the mile long, snake-like creatures that float around the void. They move at near light-speed, because they are not limited by linear dimensions. I told him about the mindless, tentacled creatures that reach out through the rift and into our world to probe and steal whatever they can wrap themselves around. I told him about their pin-prick, emotionless eyes, their flat heads and their never closing mouths. I told him how my voices insist I'm a gatekeeper between worlds, and how my job is to make sure nothing comes out and nothing goes in. It's not a task I would have chosen myself, and I've made a pretty lousy job of it, which is something my voices make sure to remind me. But on a daily basis, I have more real and immediate issues to care about. Like paying rent and coping with loneliness after Irene and I split up. Like abandoning my share of the Phanom Cat nightclub; the one place that gave me an identity other than that chain-smoking dude who talks to himself. But also like making a living from the odd cases I solve for the police and the MI-16. I abstained from telling Jim-bee about my urges to shape-shift into demon form and hide in the mountains.
"There!" Dr. Bentley said. "That's much better. I'll just give the office a quick whiff of Fabreeze and my secretary will never know someone's been smoking in here."
Relieved, he sat down again and examined me, looking over the rim of his glasses.
"Do you remember our plans of going to Africa and dig for diamonds?
"Sure."
Dr. Bentley laughed. "You know, the wife and I bought a little vacation home in Tanzania. It's a lovely place. We can watch the Masai jumping around, from our bedroom window."
"Sounds great, but I don't really have the..."
Dr. Bentley blushed. "How insensitive of me! Hey, maybe I can get you a job. I've got connections down at the fish-market. You'd get fresh air and twenty percent off. That's a sweet deal for someone like..."
"I meant TIME, Jim-bee!" I interrupted. "I don't have the TIME for it. I'm on a case for the cops."
Dr. Bentley flipped through his notes, confused." But I thought you said, you were done with the police and the MI-16?"
I rose from the couch and grabbed my coat. "Sorry Jim-bee. Can't tell you everything."
Dr Bentley and I shook hands, politely.
"Call me if something... like an episode comes up."
"Will do, Jim-bee." I replied, shaking his hand. His fingers were smooth without callouses or nicotine stains.
"Oh, and by the way... I won't charge you a cent for this session."
"You're a true saint, Jim-bee... Always were." I took the prescription he'd written and left by the back door. Dr. Bentley was uncomfortable about having me for his patient, and I didn't want him as my shrink. After fifteen years of separation, we had finally found something we could agree on.
Back out on the street, I headed for the nearest pay-phone. I slipped in my last quarter and dialed Inspector Quinn.
"Carter!" Quinn sighed with relief. "Have you changed your mind?"
"I'll take the damn case," I groaned. "I'll take all of it!"
"So, you're working with the fuzz, huh?"
The caretaker of the apartment-building gave me the elevator look. Starting with my hair, he eyed me over, all the way down to my feet. You could tell by the way he wrinkled his nose, he remained uncertain I was legit. I was wearing my best clothes for the occasion: a clean pair of jeans, slightly worn sneakers, T-shirt and a Dickies denim jacket with patches on the elbows. I got it all for a tenner from the salvation army, on the corner of Fifth and Rose.
"You don't look like a cop."
"I never said I was a cop."
Unconvinced, The caretaker twirled the keys to Finch's apartment between two fingers. I knew inspector Quinn had given him the order to let me in, but you could tell he was unhappy about it. Then he shrugged and led the way to the third floor. Lester Finch had a two-room apartment in the lower east side of Oakenford, close to that park he almost set on fire. Finch had been out of work for a while. According to the caretaker, he was six months behind on rent, but the landlord cut Finch some slack while he was getting back on his feet. I knew the feeling all too well, and I thought Finch and I might have gotten along, had I known him before he ignited.
"The chief inspector said you work for them?"
"I work WITH them, not FOR them. I don't carry a badge, I don't carry a gun and I don't make arrests."
"So, you're like a private detective?"
"Something like that, yes."
"I thought you guys wore raincoats and fedoras."
I sighed. "Not when I'm working undercover."
The caretaker shrugged and finally gave me the key. "Shit! Just don't give me no trouble."
I winced when I touched his hand. It was icy cold.
"Holy shit! Dude," I said. "You guys oughta have somebody check on your heating system."
"It's on my to-do list," said the caretaker before turning around and plodding downstairs.
The smell in Finch's apartment was rancid. Not the rancid you get when you forget to air out the bedroom. But the rancid you get when something crawls inside you and dies. Combine that with the reek of raw sewage and you get the picture. How could anyone with half a nose live in here?
Lester Finch was dead. He would not be coming back to complain if I opened a window to let some fresh air in. Thick cobwebs covered the handles and the safety clasps. Finch had not opened these windows for months, which worked to explain the smell. It seemed to radiate out from the bathroom. I almost choked when I opened the door. The water in the toilet had dried out, leaving nothing to trap the stench rising from the sewer. The odor was almost as bad as the one coming from the kitchen fridge. I wished I had brought a pair of rubber gloves in case Finch stored something unspeakable in there. Like a sawn off head, or victims he'd clubbed to death with a pool cue. But there was nothing in there, except spoiled food and milk that had gone off six months earlier. Maybe Lester Finch spent most of his life in the apartment, but before his death, he had neither eaten nor taken a dump for six months.
TO BE CONTINUED