Where the Summer Ends - By Karl Edward Wagner Page 0,50
kitchen table.
A space had been cleared by pushing away the debris of dirty dishes and stale food. In that space reposed a possum-jawed monkey’s skull, with the yellowed label: “Jap General’s Skull.”
There was a second skull beside it on the table. Except for a few clinging tatters of dried flesh and greenish fur—the other was bleached white by the sun—this skull was identical to Gradie’s Japanese souvenir: a high-domed skull the size of a large, clenched fist, with a jutting, sharp-toothed muzzle. A baboon of some sort, Mercer judged, picking it up.
A neatly typed label was affixed to the occiput: “Unknown Animal Skull. Found by Fred Morny on Grand Ave. Knoxville, Tenn. 1976.”
“Someone lost a pet,” Mercer mused, replacing the skull and reaching for the loose paper label that lay beside the two relics.
Linda had gone to the stove to turn off its burner. “Oh, God!” she gagged, recoiling from the steaming saucepan.
Mercer stepped across to the stove, followed her sickened gaze. The water had boiled low in the large saucepan, scorching the repellent broth in which the skull simmered. It was a third skull, baboonlike, identical to the others.
“He’s eating rats!” Linda retched.
“No,” Mercer said dully, glancing at the freshly typed label he had scooped from the table. “He’s boiling off the flesh so he can exhibit the skull.” For the carefully prepared label in his hand read: “Kudzu Devil Skull. Shot by Red Gradie in Yard, Knoxville, Tenn. June 1977”
“Jon, I’m going. This man’s stark crazy!”
“Just let me see if he’s all right,” Mercer insisted. “Or go back by yourself.”
“God, no!”
“He’s probably in his bedroom then. Fell asleep while he was working on this... this...” Mercer wasn’t sure what to call it. The old man had seemed a bit unhinged these last few days.
The bedroom was in the other rear corner of the house, leading off from the small dining room in between. Leaving the glare of the kitchen light, the dining room was lost in shadow. No one had dined here in years, obviously, for the area was another of Gradie’s storerooms—stacked and double-stacked with tables, chairs and bulky items of furniture. Threading his way between the half-seen obstructions, Mercer gingerly approached the bedroom door—a darker blotch against the opposite wall.
“Mr Gradie? It’s Jon Mercer.”
He thought he heard a weak groan from the darkness within.
“It’s Jon Mercer, Mr Gradie,” he called more loudly. “I’ve brought your keys back. Are you all right?”
“Jon, let’s go!”
“Shut up, damn it! I thought I heard him try to answer.”
He stepped toward the doorway. An object rolled and crumpled under his foot. It was an empty shotgun shell. There was a strange sweet-sour stench that tugged at Mercer’s belly, and he thought he could make out the shape of a body sprawled half out of the bed.
“Mr Gradie?”
This time a soughing gasp, too liquid for a snore.
Mercer groped for a wall switch, located it, snapped it back and forth. No light came on.
“Mr Gradie?”
Again a bubbling sigh.
“Get a lamp! Quick!” he told Linda.
“Let him alone, for Christ’s sake.”
“Damn it, he’s passed out and thrown up! He’ll strangle in his own vomit if we don’t help him!”
“He had a big flashlight in the kitchen!” Linda whirled to get it, anxious to get away.
Mercer cautiously made his way into the bedroom—treading with care, for broken glass crunched under his foot. The outside shades were drawn, and the room was swallowed in inky blackness, but he was certain he could pick out Gradie’s comatose form lying across the bed. Then Linda was back with the flashlight.
Gradie was sprawled on his back, skinny legs flung onto the floor, the rest crosswise on the unmade bed. The flashlight beam shimmered on the spreading splotches of blood that soaked the sheets and mattress. Someone had spent a lot of time with him, using a small knife—small-bladed, for if the wounds that all but flayed him had not been shallow, he could not be yet alive.
Mercer flung the flashlight beam about the bedroom. The cluttered furnishings were overturned, smashed. He recognized the charge pattern of a shotgun blast low against one wall, spattered with bits of fur and gore. The shotgun, broken open, lay on the floor; its barrel and stock were matted with bloody fur—Gradie had used it as a club when he’d had no chance to reload. The flashlight beam probed the blackness at the base of the corner wall, where the termite-riddled floorboards had been torn away. A trail of blood crawled into the darkness beneath.