Mr. X (80 page)

Robert was standing near the window when I came in. From the edge of the table, the jewel-like arc of
P.D. 10/17/58
floated out into the room. “You got a fax?”

“Cordwainer Hatch,” I said. “Cobden’s brother. I think he killed a student at a military school to get his hands on the book I stole from Buxton Place.” Blue light flashed at the periphery of my vision, and the immense pressure in the atmosphere concentrated into a steady urgency. “You know what we have to do, Robert.”

He held up his hands. “You don’t understand. It would be harder on you than on me. I don’t know if you could take it.”

I moved toward him. An ivory-colored haze I would not have seen at any other time floated through his skin and hung like tobacco smoke. In the second before I reached for him, I took the copy of
The Dunwich Horror
from the table and rammed it into a pocket of the pink jacket. Everything crashed and boomed. I fastened my hand on Robert’s, knowing exactly what we were about to see.

115
Mr.X

O You Swarming
Majesties
Cruelties, Who Giveth with one hand and Taketh Away with the other—I begin to see—

First I must address a
more
crucial point.
I only now

It is bitter, bitter, with a bitterness I only now begin to comprehend.

*  *  *

As the decades passed—I grew accustomed to the consolation of a Fancy—that a Godlike & Ironic Amusement—abstract—beyond the ken of the Providence Master—had
Blessed
Lumbered me with the Task—Mighty—of Killing the Antagonist—or—as I have discover’d—Antagonists.—I
can only
here inscribe that the Horrors—perpetrated by these Same—have
led me to believe
taught me that I misunderstood Your True Nature. Gifts and Revelations encouraged this Servant’s Illusion of a Favored Election—
foolish
, IMBECILE me.

Last night—in Darkness—my Madness Soared—before the evidence of a Great Destruction. The Sacred Flame
boiled
tortured the Heavens—I stood in Ashes—below—

And—in Horror & Despair—Receiv’d the Gift.

I stood, as if You
didn’t know
knew not, a’midst the Ashes—as Smoke from the Cannon’s Mouth—sent Rage streaming forth—& then—Devour’d—the Substance Molten—Which is Time—& Travel’d Back—Godly & Engorg’d—to Where I shall once again slay Ferdy Dunstan, called Michael Anscombe, and Moira Hightower Dunstan, called Sally Anscombe—and Then—in Triumph—Destroy the Twin Antagonists—

Humor—has no Place in Your Realm—Irony—as foreign as Pity. I lash myself, that I so fell short—that I could not see my Gethsemane—my Golgotha—

The River-bank—has its Purpose & its Purpose—Terrifying. Pain equal to Pain—Rage equal to Rage—no Triumph without a Testing. Here are my wrists and ankles Pierced—here the Centurion’s Sword is Thrust—

Crucifixion is no picnic, let me say that. Let me add that a half-human Wretch and Outcast can only take so much! I scream—my Scream shall reach the Heavens—they have Destroyed my Work!

Yet—in the midst of Annihilation—I get the point—You Creeping Obscenities—& Bless my Wounds & Sword Slits—My Great Loss—& Torment—is foreshadowing of the Great Fire to come—For my Identity cannot be Gainsaid—the Great Fire Follows the Smoke from the Mouth of the Cannon—

Half-mad with rage—with insult—Since discovery of the
Crime, sleep has not been mine—I tremble & sweat, soak my clothing through & cannot eat—These Blessings are given in earnest of the End—when I shall Perish—to gain Eternity—

My foes Torment me—I call to them—as of old—the Advantage Mine—my Army Mightier—in Intelligence—a New Ability given me by Need—& the Foe ignorant of my Earthly Name—Even more—I known them Two—a Grand Superiority—They do not Suspect—And will Show One—whilst I conquer Time—

In the midst of Rage—I Laugh—to regard such Play—

I set down the Pen—& close the Book—the
Triumph
hastens—My Heartless Fathers—

116

A half second before we were to be delivered to Boulder, Colorado, I was united with my shadow again.

As in childhood, I recoiled from trespass and invasion; this time, I felt Robert’s revulsion as well as my own. We were thirty-five, not nine, and the shock was far greater. But I had become more like Robert than I knew: the powers I had discovered and those he had known all his life shared a common root. There came again a breathtaking expansion into unguessed-at wholeness and resolution that in no way erased our separate individuality. We knew what the other knew, felt what the other felt, but within this symbiosis remained a Robert and a Ned. Surprisingly to both, it seemed that Ned was in charge of the decisions.

In the year 1967, we stood, adorned in a pink sports jacket flecked with golf bags and putting greens, on the Anscombes’ front lawn. The moon hung like a monstrous button over a ridge of mountains, and the air smelled of fir trees. Blue fire shone from a window in a new addition at the far left of the house. The Mr. X of 1967 was prowling in search of his son. A shaft of blue light, sent as a flag of ironic welcome by
our
Mr. X, Cordwainer Hatch, flared through a crack in the living room curtains. On the steps to the attic, our nine-year-old selves were meeting for the
first time. Neither we nor the demon in the living room were to be seen, because we had not been seen
then
.