A Graveyard for Lunatics

He slammed the door and lay against it. ?The landlady! I can?t let her see!?

?See?!? I looked around.

We were in Captain Nemo?s undersea apartments, his submarine cabins and engine rooms.

?Good God!? I cried.

Tom Shipway beamed. ?Nice, huh??

?Nice, hell, it?s incredible!?

?I knew you?d like it. Roy gave me your stories. Mars. Atlantis. And that thing you wrote on Jules Verne. Great, huh??

He waved and I walked and saw and touched. The great red-velvet-covered Victorian chairs, brass-studded and locked to the ship?s floor. The brass periscope shining down out of the ceiling. The huge fluted pipe organ, center stage. And just beyond, a window that had been converted into an oval submarine porthole, beyond which swam tropical fish of various sizes and colors.

?Look!? said Tom Shipway. ?Go on!?

I bent to peer into the periscope.

?It works!? I said. ?We?re under water! Or it seems! Did you do all this? You?re a genius.?

?Yeah.?

?Does? does your landlady know you?ve done this to her apartment??

?If she did, she?d kill me. I?ve never let her in.?

Shipway touched a button on the wall.

Shadows stirred beyond in the green sea.

A projection of a giant spider loomed, gesticulating.

?The Squid! Nemo?s antagonist! I?m stunned!?

?Well, sure! Sit down. What?s going on? Where?s Roy? Why did those bums come in like dingos and leave like hyenas??

?Roy? Oh, yeah.? The weight of it knocked me back. I sat down, heavily. ?Jesus, yes. Roy. What happened here last night??

Shipway moved around the room quietly, imitating what he remembered.

?You ever see Rick Orsatti sneaking around L.A. years ago? The racketeer??

?He ran with a gang??

?Yeah. Once, years ago, at twilight, downtown, coming out of an alley, I saw six guys dressed in black, one guy leading them, and they moved like fancy rats dressed in leather or silk, all funeral-colored, and their hair oiled back, and their faces pasty white. No, otters is more like it, black weasels. Silent, slithering, snakelike, dangerous, hostile, like black clouds smoking out a chimney. Well, that was last night. I smelled a perfume so strong it came under the door.?

Doc Phillips!

?? and I looked out and these big black sewer rats were easing down the hall carrying files, dinosaurs, pictures, busts, statues, photographs. They stared at me from the sides of their little eyes. I shut the door and watched through the peekhole as they ran by on black rubber sneakers. I could hear them prowling for half an hour. Then the whispers stopped. I opened the door to an empty hall and a big tidal wave of that damn cologne. Did those guys kill Roy??

I twitched. ?What made you say that??

?They looked like undertakers, is all. And if they killed off Roy?s apartment, well, why not undertake Roy? Hey,? Shipway stopped, looking in my face. ?I didn?t mean?but, well, is Roy???

?Dead? Yes. No. Maybe. Someone as alive as Roy just can?t die!?

I told him about Stage 13, the ruined cities, the hanged body.

?Roy wouldn?t do that.?

?Maybe someone did it to him.?

?Roy wouldn?t hold still for any sons-of-bitches. Hell.? And a tear rolled out of one of Tom Shipway?s eyes. ?I know Roy! He helped me build my first sub. There!?

On the wall was a miniature Nautilus, some thirty inches long, a high school art student?s dream.

?Roy can?t be dead, can he?!?

Then a telephone rang somewhere in Nemo?s undersea cabins.

Shipway picked up a large mollusc shell. I laughed, then stopped laughing.

?Yes?? he said into the phone, and then, ?Who is this??

I all but knocked the phone from his hand. I yelled into it; a shout to life. I listened to someone breathing, far away.

?Roy!?