When he saw me, he startled, and his eyes rolled around in his head like those little games kids get where you try to shake the marbles into holes. After a moment, they got straight, and he said, “Ricky?”
That was another reason I hated him. I didn’t like being called Ricky.
I said, “Hello, shithead. Your sister’s worried sick.”
“The music,” he said. “Put the music back on.”
“You call that music?” I said.
He took a deep breath, then rolled out of the bed, nearly knocking me aside. Then I saw him jerk, like he’d seen a truck coming right at him. I turned. I wished it had been a truck.
LET ME TRY AND TELL YOU WHAT I SAW. I NOT ONLY SAW IT, I FELT IT. IT WAS in the very air we were breathing, getting inside my chest like mice wearing barbed-wire coats. The wall Tootie had painted and drawn all that crap on shook.
And then the wall wasn’t a wall at all. It was a long hallway, dark as original sin. There was something moving in there, something that slithered and slid and made smacking sounds like an anxious old drunk about to take his next drink. Stars popped up, greasy stars that didn’t remind me of anything I had ever seen in the night sky; a moon the color of a bleeding fish eye was in the background, and it cast a light on something moving toward us.
“Jesus Christ,” I said.
“No,” Tootie said. “It’s not him.”
Tootie jumped to the record player, picked up the needle, and put it on. There came that rotten sound I had heard with Alma May, and I knew that what I had heard when I first came into the room was the tail end of that same record playing, the part I hadn’t heard before.
The music screeched and howled. I bent over and threw up. I fell back against the bed, tried to get up, but my legs were like old pipe cleaners. That record had taken the juice out of me. And then I saw it.
There’s no description that really fits. It was . . . a thing. All blanketwrapped in shadow with sucker mouths and thrashing tentacles and centipede legs mounted on clicking hooves. A bulblike head plastered all over with red and yellow eyes that seemed to creep. All around it, shadows swirled like water. It had a beak. Well, beaks.
The thing was coming right out of the wall. Tentacles thrashed toward me. One touched me across the cheek. It was like being scalded with hot grease. A shadow come loose of the thing, fell onto the floorboards of the room, turned red, and raced across the floor like a gush of blood. Insects and maggots squirmed in the bleeding shadow, and the record hit a high spot so loud and so goddamn strange, I ground my teeth, felt as if my insides were being twisted up like wet wash. And then I passed out.
WHEN I CAME TO, THE MUSIC WAS STILL PLAYING. TOOTIE WAS BENT over me.
“That sound,” I said.
“You get used to it,” Tootie said, “but the thing can’t. Or maybe it can, but just not yet.”
I looked at the wall. There was no alleyway. It was just a wall plastered in paint designs and spots of blood.
“And if the music stops?” I said.
“I fall asleep,” Tootie said. “Record quits playing, it starts coming.”
For a moment I didn’t know anything to say. I finally got off the floor and sat on the bed. I felt my cheek where the tentacle hit me. It throbbed and I could feel blisters. I also had a knot on my head where I had fallen.
“Almost got you,” Tootie said. “I think you can leave and it won’t come after you. Me, I can’t. I leave, it follows. It’ll finally find me. I guess here is as good as any place.”
I was looking at him, listening, but not understanding a damn thing.
The record quit. Tootie started it again. I looked at the wall. Even that blank moment without sound scared me. I didn’t want to see that thing again. I didn’t even want to think about it.
“I haven’t slept in days, until now,” Tootie said, coming to sit on the bed. “You hadn’t come in, it would have got me, carried me off, taken my soul. But you can leave. It’s my lookout, not yours . . . I’m always in some kind of shit, ain’t I, Ricky?”
“That’s the truth.”
“This, though, it’s the corker. I got to stand up and be a man for once. I got to fight this thing back, and all I got is the music. Like I told you, you can go.”
I shook my head. “Alma May sent me. I said I’d bring you back.”
It was Tootie’s turn to shake his head. “Nope. I ain’t goin’. I ain’t done nothin’ but mess up Sis’s life. I ain’t gonna do it.”
“First responsible thing I ever heard you say,” I said.
“Go on,” Tootie said. “Leave me to it. I can take care of myself.”
“If you don’t die of starvation, or pass out from lack of sleep or need of water, you’ll be just fine.”
Tootie smiled at me. “Yeah. That’s all I got to worry about. I hope it is one of them other things kills me. ’Cause if it comes for me . . . Well, I don’t want to think about it.”
“Keep the record going, I’ll get something to eat and drink, some coffee. You think you can stay awake a half hour or so?”
“I can, but you’re coming back?”
“I’m coming back,” I said.
Out in the hallway I saw the big guy was gone. I took the stairs.
WHEN I GOT BACK, TOOTIE HAD CLEANED UP THE VOMIT AND WAS LOOKING through the notebooks. He was sitting on the floor and had them stacked all around him. He was maybe six inches away from the record player. Now and again he’d reach up and start it all over.
Soon as I was in the room, and that sound from the record was snugged up around me, I felt sick. I had gone to a greasy spoon down the street, after I changed a flat tire. One of the boys I’d given a hard time had most likely knifed it. My bet was the lucky son of a bitch who had fallen on the fire escape.
Besides the tire, a half-dozen long scratches had been cut into the paint on the passenger side, and my windshield was knocked in. I got back from the café, parked what was left of my car behind the hotel, down the street a bit, and walked a block. Car looked so bad now, maybe nobody would want to steal it.
I sat one of the open sacks on the floor by Tootie.
“Both hamburgers are yours,” I said. “I got coffee for the both of us here.”
I took out a tall cardboard container of coffee and gave it to him, took the other one for myself. I sat on the bed and sipped. Nothing tasted good in that room with that smell and that sound. But Tootie, he ate like a wolf. He gulped those burgers and coffee like they were air.
When he finished with the second burger, he started up the record again, then leaned his back against the bed.
“Coffee or not,” he said, “I don’t know how long I can stay awake.”
“So what you got to do is keep the record playing?” I said.
“Yeah.”
“Lay up in bed, sleep for a few hours. I’ll keep the record going. You’re rested, you got to explain this thing to me, and then we’ll figure something out.”
“There’s nothing to figure,” he said. “But God, I’ll take you up on that sleep.”
He crawled up in the bed and was immediately out.
I started the record over.
I got up then, untied Tootie’s shoes and pulled them off. Hell, like him or not, he was Alma May’s brother. And another thing, I wouldn’t wish that thing behind the wall on my worst enemy.
I SAT ON THE FLOOR WHERE TOOTIE HAD SAT AND KEPT RESTARTING THE record as I tried to figure things out, which wasn’t easy with that music going. I got up from time to time and walked around the room, and then I’d end up back on the floor by the record player, where I could reach it easy.
Between changes, I looked through the composition notebooks. They were full of musical notes mixed with
