Poe's children: the new horror : an anthology - By Peter Straub Page 0,138

I threw at you.”

“Were you mending them or something?” I asked innocently, checking them as if looking for the scars of repair.

“No, he just didn’t have time to put them back on the other night when I threw him out, you know what I mean? I’m moving out of this creepy dump just to get away from him, and you can tell him those words.”

“Please come in from that drafty hallway and you can tell him yourself.”

I smiled my smile and she, not unresponsively, smiled hers. I closed the door behind her.

“So, do you have a name?” she asked.

“Penzance,” I replied. “Call me Pete.”

“Well, at least you’re not Harold Wackers, or whatever the name is on those lousy books of Norman’s.”

“I believe it’s Wickers, H. J. Wickers.”

“Anyway, you don’t seem at all like Norman, or even someone who’d be a friend of his.”

“I’m sure that was intended as a compliment, from what I’ve gathered about you and Norm. Actually, though, I too write books not unlike those of H. J. Wickers. My apartment across town is being painted, and Norman was kind enough to take me in, even loan me his desk for a while.” I manually indicated the cluttered, weeped-upon object of my last remark. “In fact, Norman and I sometimes collaborate under a common pen-name, and right now we’re working together on a manuscript.” That was an eternity ago, but somehow it seems like the seconds and minutes of those days are still nipping at our heels. What tricks human clocks can play, even on us who are no longer subject to them! But it’s a sort of reverse magic, I suppose, to enshackle the timeless with Granddaddy’s wrist-grips of time, just as it is the most negative of miracles to smother unburdened spirits with the burdensome overcoat of matter.

“That’s nice, I’m sure,” she replied to what I said a few statements back. “By the way. I’m Laura—”

“O’Finney,” I finished. “Norman’s spoken quite highly of you.” I didn’t mention that he had also spoken quite lowly of her too.

“Where is the creep, anyway?” she inquired.

“He’s sleeping,” I answered, lifting a vague finger toward the rear section of the apartment, where a shadowy indention led to bathrooms and bedrooms. “He’s had a hard night of writing.”

The girl’s face assumed a disgusted expression.

“Forget it,” she said, heading for the door. Then she turned and very slowly walked a little ways back toward me. “Maybe we’ll see each other again.”

“Anything is possible,” I assured her.

“Just do me a favor and keep Norman away from me, if you don’t mind.”

“I think I can do that very easily. But you have to do something for me.”

“What?”

I leaned toward her very confidentially.

“Please die, Desiderata,” I whispered in her ear, while gripping her neck with both hands, cutting short a scream along with her life. Then I really went to work.

“Wake up, Norman,” I shouted a little later. I was standing at the foot of his bed, my hands positioned behind my back. “You were really dead to the world, you know that?”

A little drama took place on Norman’s face in which surprise overcame sleepiness and both were vanquished by anxiety. He had been through a lot the past couple nights, struggling with our “Notes” and other things, and really needed his sleep. I hated to wake him up.

“Who? What do you want?” he said, quickly sitting up in bed.

“Never mind what I want. Right now we are concerned with what you want, you know what I mean? Remember what you told that girl the other night, remember what you wanted her to do that got her so upset?”

“If you don’t get the hell out of here—”

“That’s what she said too, remember? And then she said she wished she had never met you. And that was the line, wasn’t it, that gave you the inspiration for our fictionalized adventure. Poor Nathan never had the chance you had. Oh yes, very fancy rigmarole with the enchanted trousers. Blame it all on some old bitch and her dead husband. Very realistic, I’m sure. When the real reason—”

“Get out of here!” he yelled. But he calmed down somewhat when he saw that ferocity in itself had no effect on me.

“What did you expect from that girl. You did tell her that you wanted to embrace, what was it? Oh yes, a headless woman. A headless woman, for heaven’s sake, that’s asking a lot. And you did want her to make herself look like one, at least for a