this, he moved up to the second step and stood less than two feet away from the business end of the shotgun.
The Bowlers clustered nearer the porch, some leaning their heads to the left, others to the right, all of them evidently fascinated by what they saw.
Magritte-Man pointed to his right hand, then to mine, and that’s when I figured out he was drawing their attention to what I’d done with the duct tape.
Again, the Bowlers began to applaud, except for a trio who moved to the side, conferred among themselves for a few moments, then held up more placards: 9.5, 10, 9.7.
Magritte-Man gestured toward the judges’ scores and applauded soundlessly.
I didn’t know whether to laugh, scream, or just sit down on my ass and cry, so I did the next best thing: I stepped forward and shoved the barrel of the Mossberg under Magritte-Man’s chin.
“Speak to me, right now.”
He shrugged and stepped back down onto the walk, lifting his hands into the air. He bent his fingers down against his palms and began to strike at nothing-no, not strike; paw. He was imitating an animal pawing at something.
At the same time, two Bowlers took up places on either side of him and held up a small barred door taken from a cage. Magritte-Man pushed his arms through the bars and continued pawing while a third Pedestrian-the one who’d worn the wig before-held another placard over his head: SANCTIONED PERSONNEL ONLY. All of them began opening and closing their mouths as if trying to form words – lips squirming in a mockery of communication, sounds that were a burlesque of language – I shook the image of the old man on the highway out of my head and moved back into the front doorway, the Mossberg still at the ready.
They were crowding around the bottom step, their hands pawing, their mouths working soundlessly, the thin bright red beams of their goggles creating laser-show patterns before my eyes. The mist became thicker, the faces of the countless animals within pressing outward like bas-relief masks. I couldn’t lift my left hand to shield my eyes because that would mean letting go of the shotgun and I wasn’t about to give them an opening to rush me-and what the fuck had I been thinking, coming out here like this?
In perfect synchronization, all of them-Magritte-Man included-reached up to loosen their ties and unbutton the tops of their collars.
Every last on of them had a curved scar that ran from one side of their neck to the other. They turned their “paws” toward themselves and began to claw at the scars, all the while still moving their mouths and – when there’s this many, they cut out their vocal cords – Magritte-Man flexed his fingers, and with an overly theatrical flourish reached up to remove the bowler from his head.
Another placard: YOU GET USED TO THE SMELL.
He was bald. Not a stunning revelation, I know, but for a moment that was the only thing I would allow to register. He was bald. He wore the bowler because he was bald underneath. I suspected that all of them were bald underneath. But the old man on the highway, he hadn’t been bald-hair extremely thin and sparse, sure, but not bald. I remembered that. I remembered that clearly. I remembered the way he’d grabbed my shirt pulled me toward him; I remembered his blood seeping into the cotton of my shirt as I lifted the bowler and showed him that it was undamaged; I remembered the way he looked into my eyes, lips squirming in a mockery of communication because his vocal cords had been cut out long ago – no, no, that didn’t belong there, that wasn’t right, it couldn’t be, there hadn’t been any scar running across his neck and throat, right? Right-I was getting confused, the Bowlers’ little vaudeville had thrown me a curve, that was all. The old man on the highway did have some hair-not much, not shining, gleaming, glowing, flowing, waxen, flaxen, wear it down to there hair-but he’d had some. Magritte-Man was bald; shiny, shiny skin covered his head, except for the spots where matchbox-sized rectangles with electrical wires were implanted in his skull. The shiny, shiny skin of his bare scalp was crusty and red where it joined the metal.
Another Bowler began flipping through another series of placards:
CARE ENOUGH ABOUT SOMEONE AND YOU’LL FIND A WAY TO HELP THEM NO MATTER WHAT.
He waited a moment, then flipped through three more.
NO MATTER WHAT!
He wasn’t repeating anything with this-he was issuing a threat.
He tossed away the third placard to reveal one more:
THERE OUGHT TO BE A PLACE
I felt my stomach tighten.
Magritte-Man turned his head to offer his profile, then used his index finger to bend forward his ear and give me a good look at the blue plastic tag attached to it. I didn’t have to be close enough to read what was printed on it to know what it said because at that moment all the tumblers fell into place and the door of the safe swung open and out came everything from all those years ago I’d been forcing myself to forget every second of every day of every week, month, and year of my stale existence… until now.
Until this
(You’re getting awfully close to leaving me with no choice, pal
…) moment.
Until this moment
(You did the wrong routine…) of this day.
Until this moment of
(Dammit, I’ve helped people, you know? I’ve cared for them when no one else wanted to…) this day where I’d watched an old man die on the highway for want of hat and crawled in blood-soaked clothes under the porch to comfort a dying dog as my nephew who wasn’t really my nephew but an angel of Long-Lost because I had no sister Jesus God I had no sister, she was just a trick of Long-Lost’s, something to ensure that I would be the guardian of his little special agent, his angel of the pencil and paper, but that hadn’t stopped Carson from changing into what he should have been all along while Magritte-Man and his troop of players surrounded me and a mist crowded with bas-relief ghost-animals formed an impenetrable dome over my house and shrunk the boundaries of what I laughingly thought of as my world until I
(… might say they’re not from around here…) had to come out and watch my own private production of Godspell On Crack just so these bastards could rattle my cage and jar everything loose and I didn’t want to remember these things about Beth and her aunt Mabel and their Its and what happened to all of them and to me during that terrible sick-making three-hour period the year I turned twenty-one and I only had a few moments to try and shove it all back inside and slam the door before it took over and swallowed me whole but I wasn’t sure what I was going to do because I was hurt and frightened and my house was under siege and so much of it was already out and right there in my face and suddenly I thought
(There ought to be a place) of something I’d read about Nietzsche who’d said there are times when things get so horrible that you have only two choices laugh or go crazy so I opted for the former and barked out a single laugh that sounded berserk even to me and then I did the only other thing I could think of to keep the memories from engulfing me again, like the jaws of some mythic beast – I opened fire.
FIVE
The first shot hit one of the Bowlers right in the center of his chest, opening a fist-sized hole that blew him back into the mist and almost knocked me on my ass, but I managed to stay upright, plowing off another shot into the next Bowler, and it was with this second shot I realized that I couldn’t hear anything. It wasn’t that the first shot had deafened me or that the makeshift earplugs were working wonders, it was that all sound had been sucked from the world; all I could hear was my own breathing echoing from within, and everything without was a silent movie.
The first Bowler stumbled out of the mist, frantically patting at the smoking hole made by the shell as it tore through his clothing and into his flesh. He wasn’t bleeding at all. Neither was the second one. Oh, they were moving kind of slow like Uncle Joe at the Junction, were obviously dazed and in pain, but they weren’t even close to dead. It was absurd that they should still be alive and moving, and to emphasize this point I shot each of them a second time. It slowed them down even more, but that was about it.
