Mr. X (77 page)

“Life-or-death important.”

So softly that I could barely hear him, Nolly whispered, “There’s a name you can’t say, because he can hear through walls. Those that see him when he doesn’t want to be seen are taught to be sorry. That is B.D. You know what I mean by that name?”

“Yes,” I whispered back.

“He lives at night, and he has always been here. B.D. is not a true human being. Most of those back there, they see him as a vampire. I say, he’s not a vampire but a demon from hell.”

“He’s always been here?”

“He was made when
Hatchtown
was made. B.D.
is
Hatchtown, as I think. That’s why things are this way.”

“Which way?” I asked.

Nolly made a contemptuous noise. “Water’s bad, sewers don’t work. Every time the river floods, we’re underwater and covered
in mud. This is Hatchtown. B.D., he’s like
us
, except he’s a demon. If there is a Mr. Hatch, I reckon he made B.D. but I wish he hadn’t.”

I leaned back against the wall and put my hands over my face.

Nolly bent closer. “Earl Sawyer will be another five dollars.” I gave him the bill.

“Mr. Sawyer is a sour old creature,” Nolly said. “He’d sooner kick you than say a kind word, which he never does.”

“Where does he live?”

“I usually see him in the vicinity of Leather Lane. But when he goes to ground, he goes to ground like a fox.”

“All right,” I said, and stood up. Nolly urged me toward the door and slid it open. I stepped into the lane, and, to my surprise, he slipped outside behind me. What I could see of his face looked like a catcher’s mitt. He glanced from side to side and whispered something so quietly I merely saw his lips move.

I bent down, and he put his mouth close to my ear. “From what I heard, it was you seen two nights ago in Fish Lane with Joe Staggers from the town of Mountry.”

“It might have been,” I whispered, realizing that these kids heard everything.

“Joe Staggers has not been seen again. Which has caused no tears to fall. Not in Hatchtown. Nor in Mountry, either, I figure.”

“The gentleman was called away,” I said.

“It must have been a powerful call.”

What was Nolly doing, what was he looking for? “Too powerful for him, anyhow.”

“A gun was fired, but no one was hit,” Nolly said. “That’s not your way, is it?”

“Nolly,” I whispered, “do you want to tell me something?”

He hitched up one shoulder and tugged at the waistband of his trousers. He shifted his feet and jerked his head back and forth. In an imitation of Frenchy La Chapelle even better than the lookout’s, he pulled at his sleeves and squinted as if trying to see around the curve in the lane. Frenchy had been one of these children, I realized, he had spent his nights in the old lavender warehouse and performed occasional services for B.D., the Hatchtown vampire. I thought Frenchy had continued to perform these services for the remainder of his wretched life.

Nolly was still trying to peer around the corner. “Do you know Horsehair?”

I shook my head.

“Horsehair is
small
, and it is
dark
. Horsehair winds
back
and
forth
. In Horsehair, you can get to where you are going without no one knowing you are already gone. The general public never sees it, on account of its being the kind of thing it is.” Nolly again tilted his mouth to my ear. “
He
uses Horsehair. So if you wanted to find him, which I never did, you could maybe find him there.”

“Where is it?”

“Everywhere,” Nolly whispered. “For one example, right
there
.” He pointed a grubby hand at a barely visible gap between two buildings and vanished back into the warehouse.

109

I stepped inside the space Nolly had shown me. Ahead, a dark, narrow artery stretched out for twenty feet or more before curving leftward. I felt as though Nolly Wheadle had shown me the secret within the secret, the key to Hatchtown’s true interior. Horsehair brought me to Raspberry, then into desolate little Barrel Lane, and from there on a winding trail leading, I hoped, in the direction of Veal Yard. Sounds from other lanes reverberated off the narrow walls. A stench like that of Joy’s house came to me, then sank back into the bricks. From somewhere near, I heard a man humming “Chattanooga Choo-Choo” and thought it was Piney Woods, staggering down Leather Lane. When at last I emerged into Veal Yard, I saw Horsehair opening like a paper cut beyond the dry fountain and knew how Edward Rinehart had witnessed Robert’s first appearance before me.

110

The next morning I wished myself a happy thirty-fifth birthday and hoped I would live to see thirty-six. When it came to birthday presents, you couldn’t beat survival. After I dressed for Toby’s funeral in a clean white shirt, gray trousers, a rep tie, and my blazer, I picked up the telephone and got the number for the Fortress Military Academy in Owlsburg, Pennsylvania. Who was W. Wilson Fletcher, I wondered, and how did Rinehart get his book? If Fletcher had made it through World War II, he was probably still alive, and he might remember giving the book to a fellow student.

I told Captain Lighthouse in the Alumni Office that I was doing background for an arts-page feature in the
Edgerton Echo
concerning the world’s most extensive H. P. Lovecraft collection. For a sidebar tracing the history of the cornerstone of the great collection, a first edition of
The Dunwich Horror
, I wished to speak to its original owner, W. Wilson Fletcher, who had inscribed the book with his name, the name of the academy, and the year 1941.

“Sir, did Fletcher inscribe his name without indication of rank?”

“Just his name.”

“Then he was a pledge. Let me check the Alumni Directory.” He put me on hold. “W. Wilson Fletcher is not listed in the Directory, which means one of two things. Either he is deceased, or he fell through the cracks, which is something we don’t like to happen. 1941, you said?”

“Right.” I resisted the temptation to say “Affirmative.”

“I’ll look up the class lists for 1941 and the years on either side.”

I asked Lighthouse if he was an academy graduate.

“Affirmative,” he said. “Class of 1970. Did my twenty years and came back to help out my old school. I love this place, I really do. Let’s see, now. 1941, no, not there. Maybe he was Artillery
that year, which would put him in the class of ’42. Yep, there he is, Wilbur Wilson Fletcher, class of 1942. No wonder he used the W. I take it that you will be mentioning the academy in your article?”

“Of course,” I said.

“If you don’t mind being put on hold again, I want to check a few other sources. The Fortress Academy Roll of Honor will tell us if Fletcher was killed in action during his military service. If that fails, I’ll try Major Audrey Arndt, the Academy’s executive secretary. The major has been here since 1938, and she remembers everything and everybody. This place could hardly run without her. Do you mind waiting?”

“Not at all. I’m surprised you’re still on the campus.”

“My job goes year-round, and the major doesn’t believe in vacations. Hold on, sir.”

Captain Lighthouse kept me on hold for ten minutes. It seemed like enough time to wallpaper my room. I gathered that Wilbur had not helped raise the flag at Iwo Jima or won the Congressional Medal of Honor. I carried the telephone to the table and for the first time noticed that someone had carved, with a careful, almost witty precision, his initials and a date into its surface.
P.D. 10/17/58
. P.D. had done an elegant job. The almost calligraphically incised letters and numbers ran in an arc along the table’s edge, so small as to go unnoticed unless you were looking directly at them. P.D., I gathered, had been excruciatingly bored. I wondered if he had been a musician waiting for the start of a concert.

The line clicked, and a muted Captain Lighthouse told me, “Major Arndt is on the line.” Another click.

An authoritative female voice said, “Major Arndt here, Mr. Dunstan. Please explain your interest in Pledge Fletcher.”

I repeated my story. “I was hoping to talk to Mr. Fletcher, and I thought the academy could give me his telephone number.”

“Mr. Dunstan, the Fortress Military Academy is pleased to cooperate with the press, but cooperation works both ways. I want your assurance that what I am about to tell you will be handled discreetly and tastefully. And you will agree to fax me a draft of your article previous to publication.”

My skin prickled. “Agreed.”

“Unwittingly, I assume, Mr. Dunstan, you refer to the single unhappiest incident in the history of the Fortress Academy. Artillery
Pledge Fletcher died as the result of an assault by an intruder shortly before the Christmas break of 1941. His assailant was never identified. As a result, this fine institution was subjected to a great deal of unwelcome publicity.”

“You don’t say.”

“I would prefer that you make no mention of Artillery Pledge Fletcher’s death in your article. More realistically, I ask you to describe it as an unfortunate tragedy, and leave it at that.”

“Major Arndt,” I said, “nothing in my piece requires me to dig up a fifty-year-old scandal. There is one more favor I’d like to ask, and I promise you, the same conditions will apply.”

“Proceed,” she said.

“Pledge Fletcher can’t tell me how he acquired or disposed of the book, but some of his classmates may be able to fill in the gaps. If you would consent to fax me the 1939 to 1941 class lists from the Alumni Directory, I can take it from there. Nothing I might hear about the circumstances of Fletcher’s demise will appear in the article. I’m only interested in the fate of the book.”

“You are going to squander a great deal of time, Mr. Dunstan.”

“Here at the
Echo
, Major, we practically eat time,” I said.

111