Dispatch (43 page)

On impulse, I withdrew the scissors from my waistband and started cutting the letters up without reading them. Soon I was slicing through envelopes like some martial arts master as they flew through the air. It was an instinctive reaction, and one that was as surprising to me as it must have been to him. I was possessed of a dexterity and coordination that had never been mine before, and I had no idea where it came from.

At first the Ultimate didn't seem to notice what I was doing, or didn't care. But then a funny thing started to happen. Lacerations began to appear on his arms, on his face, on exposed sections of wrinkled skin all over his body. Small at first, barely noticeable, they quickly assumed the character of whip slashes, and for each slice of my scissors there was an accompanying flinch and rending of flesh.

He's put himself into these letters, I realized. Not just figuratively, but literally.

It was absurd but true, and somehow the damage I did to the letters was transmitted instantly to him.

Either he did not believe that or did not understand it, though, because he kept on biting and folding and sealing and throwing, creating dozens of new letters every second. I clipped them; I cut them; I rent them. What did they say? I wondered. Were they pleas for me to stop? Were they threats against me and my loved ones? Were they rational arguments for maintaining the status quo?

I had to know. I couldn't help myself. I paused, and as the envelopes fluttered around me, falling to the ground, I caught one in the air and opened it.

Dear Jason
, I read—

—and then screamed in agony as white-hot pain seared across my face. I dropped the paper, my hand automatically reaching for my cheek. There was another burst of almost unbearable agony as my fingers touched blood and an open wound. My eyes were tearing, but through the blur, I could see that the two of us were no longer alone in the oversized chamber. An army was gathering.
His
army. Row after row of bureaucratic-looking men dressed in those half-suit, half-uniform deals had suddenly appeared as if from nowhere, and though I couldn't be positive through my teary eyes and in the chaos of the falling letters and blaring electronic equipment, they seemed to be multiplying.

I took up my scissors again and, screaming in rage and pain, began cutting the envelopes as they came after me, that mysterious talent reasserting itself, allowing me to slice up the letters in the air before they reached me, destroying his handiwork almost as fast as he could create it.

I expected at any moment to be tackled by that growing rank of bureaucrats, to be rushed and taken down, the scissors ripped from my hands as I was forced to read letter after letter.

But though they watched, they made no effort to intervene, made no effort to help him.

Though my arm was getting tired, I refused to stop, determined to do as much damage as possible in the time I had left. Envelopes came at me, I sliced them in two, and I was gratified to see slashes appear on his hideous flesh.

The envelopes changed, became bigger, gaudier, more ostentatious. Once again, I was tempted to pause and just take a quick peek at one of the messages, but I knew that would be a foolish and dangerous thing to do. I could afford curiosity no more than I could afford mercy, and I thought of Vicki and Eric, thought of Stan and Shamus, even thought of my mom, and I kept my scissors moving, kept cutting the letters as they came.

And he started to bleed.

I saw it instantly. From a huge deep slash on his upper right arm, thick blue liquid seeped out.

It was not blood that flowed in his veins but ink.

More and more cuts started oozing, and in what seemed like a matter of seconds, he began bleeding all over. Ink was spurting as though from a thousand broken fountain pens, and the creation of letters first slowed, then finally stopped. He staggered, stumbled, growing weak. One wild arm knocked over a pile of papers, and ink gushed all over the falling sheets.

No one came to help him.

He fell backward, slumping into his seat, and one by one the radios and televisions winked off, the chaos of noise abating one increment at a time until the massive room was nearly silent, filled only with a horrible wheezing that came from deep within his body, the metallic snap of scissors as I continued to cut through the envelopes that had fallen all around me, and the subtle sickening liquid sound of ink pumping from his body.

There was more ink in him than seemed physically possible, and it was flowing from the dais in a near continuous sheet. The scraps of torn and shredded newspaper that covered the floor soaked up the ink and immediately grew soggy, flattening out. The light in here was dim now, almost nonexistent, but in the midst of the mess on the floor I could see body parts—heads and feet, hearts and brains—that had been hidden by the tangled strips of newsprint.

I didn't look too closely. I didn't want to see people I knew.

The bureaucrats remained in formation, unmoving, staring, waiting. There must have been a hundred of them by now.

What were they doing? What were they waiting for? What did they want?

My hands hurting, my fingers numb, I stopped cutting up letters. On his stone throne, the Ultimate wheezed and breathed laboriously. One cloven hoof kicked uselessly at the ground. I could smell the ink, a lovely clean chemical odor that I'd always enjoyed, that all of us enjoyed. But beneath that was another smell, that faint stench that I'd encountered in the circus tent. I recognized it now. It was the foul stink of Christ's rotting body from my dream.

Maybe he was a god.

I didn't know what to do. I walked slowly forward. To my right, the shelf holding the TVs collapsed, taking part of the wall with it, and beyond was the library Stan had shown me, the immense chamber filled with letters and notes all alphabetized by writer.

In front of me, the Ultimate bit into a sheet of paper with what appeared to be his last remaining strength, only he didn't fold it or put it in an envelope. He held it up, forced me to look at it.

This is all yours
, it said.

One hand reached out, tried to hand me a quill. It had been yanked from his mouth and both ends had blue ink dripping from them.

I did not accept the offering. For one thing, I was afraid that at the moment I reached out to take it, another hand would grab me and strangle me and tear me apart. For another, it just seemed too gross, too gruesome. That thick blue liquid was both ink and blood, and the blood part made me queasy.

I'd beaten the Ultimate at his own game, but it had been too easy to do. It occurred to me that maybe this had been the plan all along. Maybe I'd been groomed for exactly this purpose, to take over as the head Letter Writer. Maybe everything that had happened to me had been designed to shape me, mold me, make me into a leader. Maybe the Ultimate had been dying anyway, near the end of his run, and he'd picked me out as his successor.

I glanced over at the collapsed wall and the letter library. Aside from writing them, there was nothing I enjoyed more than reading letters. If I was to be honest with myself, I had to admit that I could spend days in there perusing correspondence at random, not just looking at the letters written to and by myself and my friends and family, but dropping in on people I didn't know, reading up on their lives and loves, their hopes, dreams and disappointments.

That library was a repository of every letter that had ever been written by anyone anywhere.

And it was all at my disposal.

It could be mine.

He
wanted me to take over. Was it what
I
wanted? I didn't think so, but when I considered the fact that I could become the new Ultimate Letter Writer, a kinder, gentler version, that I could reshape our role in the world, make sure that we used our power for good, I was tempted.

More than tempted.

Maybe this was meant to be.

Who was I kidding? Use our power for good? That was where it would start, but that was not where it would stop. The road to hell, as they said, was paved with good intentions, and I knew better than anyone the seductive power of letter writing, the slippery slope to which that led.

I looked over at the library. It would be better to light a match and burn the whole thing, torch the fucking place so it could never be accessed by anyone.

Only I couldn't do that, either. Too much history was here. There was a lot of worthless shit, yes, and a lot of dangerous ideas, but these were historical documents, letters going back to the dawn of civilization, and I couldn't just destroy that.

I could seal it, though.

By writing a letter.

What kind? A cease-and-desist letter? A letter of reprimand? A letter of marque?

I turned my gaze toward the Ultimate. He was gone. In the last few seconds, while I'd been looking at the library, the life had left his body and now he was dead. At least I thought he was. I moved next to him, took from his hand the quill he had offered me.

He moved. His big eye blinked, rolled insanely; then one of his hands reached out and took hold of mine, squeezing tight. Even half dead, he had a grip like iron, and as I struggled to get away, his head flopped forward and that gigantic grinning mouth closed around my arm, shoulder and upper back. What felt like a thousand needles stabbed me as he bit down, quill teeth sinking into my flesh. I wanted to scream, but I couldn't ... and then I didn't need to anymore. A current of power passed from him to me, transferred by those quills.

His hand let go of mine, his head flopped back, both eyes closed, and his body slumped, sliding off the throne. This time he really
was
dead. I looked over at my arm and shoulder but could see no sign of the bite, nothing but smooth ordinary flesh.

I could feel the power in my right side, though, an electric tingling.

I stood tall, holding the quill that he had given me in my hand.

The bureaucrats had finally moved. Row after row of them sank to their knees, bowing before me in a display of choreographed fealty that reminded me of nothing so much as the Nuremberg rally. The power coursed through me, no longer just on my right side but on my left, as well, settling comfortably throughout my body and giving me a confidence and feeling of well-being that was unlike anything I had ever experienced.

I was still holding the quill, the bureaucrats bowed low before me.

This was the test. I had the power to do whatever I wanted. It was all up to me.

I hesitated.

I
could
do a lot of good.

No!

Power corrupts
, I told myself,
and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

I paused, looking around, then found a piece of paper that had not been soaked with ink, and used the quill to write a letter.
To Whom It May Concern
, I wrote.

I have sealed the letter library. It cannot be entered or accessed and none of its contents may be viewed by anyone. All Letter Writers are now free to do as they wish and are no longer employed by the company, which has been dissolved. They may return to their previous lives. I wish them well.

I had no idea what would happen. Many of the Letter Writers I'd met had been from other places, other times. Would they resume their lives precisely where and when they'd left off, or would people from the past suddenly find themselves in contemporary New York or Chicago or Los Angeles? I didn't know, but it was not up to me and was no longer any of my concern. This was it. I was done; I was finished. I would never write another letter as long as I lived.

My letter-writing days were over for good. I threw down the quill and...

The world wavered.

The bureaucrats were gone as suddenly as they'd appeared, the scores of men bowing before me no longer visible. From somewhere far off, I thought I heard screams, and I told myself they were screams of joy, though I was not quite sure that that was the case. They were the screams of Letter Writers who had been released from bondage, I tried to convince myself, who were now free to return to their normal lives in the real world and use their skills to attract lovers and complain about entertainment and do whatever they damn well pleased.

Maybe they were the screams of those bureaucrats being consigned to whatever hell they had originally come from.

That was acceptable, too.

The hole in the wall and the library beyond disappeared. The throne with the crumpled monster body at its foot faded away. The ink-soaked newsprint hardened into floor and metamorphosed into carpet.

I was back in Edson's rental house.

On the counter in the kitchen, the cell phone was ringing, and I picked it up, no longer afraid of what might be on the other end, no longer hiding from anyone or anything. It was Edson, and he expressed relief at being able to find me, told me how worried he'd been. Reading between the lines, I realized he seemed to have been worried not for my safety or his but for my sanity. I asked if there'd been anything in the newspapers or on TV about my mom's murder, and he said no. He gently hinted that I might have been mistaken about that, that there might be some alternate explanation. I didn't tell him about the blood-soaked floor and walls, but let him think that he might be right, that I might have just misinterpreted something. I'd contact the police later, find out what had really happened.

I talked to Edson for quite a while, and it calmed me down, helped me readjust, made me realize on a real, tangible level that it was all over. I was reminded of our teenage selves, who used to chat on the phone trashing teachers we hated and talking about girls we were interested in. It felt good to be in contact with other people again, and for the first time in memory, I felt free, free from unseen pursuers, free even from the nagging belief that I needed to be writing, that I was not doing what I was supposed to be doing if I was not penning letters.

After hanging up, I opened the front door and checked the mailbox.

Habit.

There was no letter inside, but there was a small box on the ground directly beneath it, addressed to me from Patrick Scholder, the private investigator I'd hired to find Vicki and Eric. I took the box into the house and opened it up. Within was a report and a videocassette. In a cover letter, Scholder stated that he was mailing me his findings since after numerous tries, he'd been unable to reach me on the phone.