Present.”
I pointed at the man in question, who seemed to have grown a coating of leaves and grass that billowed in a breeze I couldn’t feel.
Slasher still held firm to my upper arm, but he did take a good long look at the twin pianists. “Well, the one that hasn’t morphed into the Green Man looks more like Marv Levy than Lee Marvin, but overall you’ve got a point.”
“Marv Levy? Don’t tell me you’re a Bills fan,” I groaned.
“Born and bred and bereft,” he said.
To hell with this guy. I bent my knees, dropped and twisted free of his grip.
“Allison!” I howled, still unable to generate enough volume to penetrate the room’s general clatter. And that was strange, too. There were very few diners left, yet the white noise level was thunderous.
I wasn’t surprised when Slasher caught up with me a moment later, and didn’t really resist when he stuck a brand-new, ice-cold bottle of something wonderful and bubbly between my lips. And again, I felt a renewed alertness and calm descend upon my soul. I also felt strangely cocky and in control, despite Slasher’s machine-like grip on my upper arm.
“Lead on, McDickhead,” I cackled.
Slasher had just managed to get us within a few feet of the archway when it suddenly began closing, iris-style, like the shutter of a camera lens. It constricted into a tiny pucker of holly, ivy, and solid rock. There was still enough of an opening for us to get through, but just barely.
He began talking, but then choked on his beer and had to use improvised hand and body gestures to communicate. He seemed to be asking if I thought I could get through what was left of the opening. I looked around and realized there was no choice but to try. The dining room was about to collapse on us.
I nodded and headed through. The back of my shirt caught on something, but Slasher freed it, then gave my legs a push that sent me much farther than I’d have thought possible. My body rotated in two mid-air somersaults, and I was still trying to figure out which direction was up when he appeared at my side again. He stood for a moment, leaning on my arm, breathing heavily.
“Hey,” he said. “Let’s stay still for a couple of minutes, catch our breath. What do you say?”
“Fine with me.” I shook my head. “Man, I’ve never been so tired in my life. What a scare back there, huh?”
Somewhere beyond the wall that had just closed up, the two piano players launched into a duet that came to us through clusters of old-timey phonograph horns that stuck out of the wall at random angles. Funny I hadn’t noticed them before.
Good King lizardfish looked out
On his feast of gobies,
When the fry squirmed round about,
Wriggling, fresh and ….
Again the singing stopped, replaced by banter. “Say, folks, that reminds me. I dated this gal a couple of years ago who always used to….”
Slasher started laughing well before the punchline, and I joined him. It was such a relief to be alive and on this side of the wall that we were almost giddy with the feeling.
I still had my beer and took a long, enlivening slug. I once again felt stronger. We were home free. All we had to do was make it out one last door, and I’d find Allison. Then we could go to someplace less psychosis-inducing than this joint and have a few calm drinks and a bite of dinner. And Slasher should come along. I probably owed him my life; the least we could do was treat him to some grub and libations for his trouble.
“Y’know,” I said, “You’re like Virgil to my Dante. You carried me piggy-back through Hell and out to Purgatory, and now I can make it the rest of the way on my own. But come along. I’d love for you to meet the wife”
“Actually, I was just thinking we’re not out of the woods yet.”
“How do you figure?” I asked.
“For one thing, listen to the sound of that wall cracking.”
“Which wall?”
“Well, I meant the wall behind you,” Slasher said, “but the one behind the counter is also coming apart now. And that enormous fish tank with it.”
“Oh, dear lord,” I said, watching the water gush toward us, preceded by long slender shards of glass. “Duck!”
The torrent of water, glass, and little fishes came down over our backs. So did plaster and lathe. So did trophies and plaques and the establishment’s first dollar bill, a priceless artifact from the 1800s – one of the first pieces of United States paper currency.
But we weren’t thinking about all that stuff. No sir. Because not only were the walls giving way; the floor was heaving and the outer doorframe was going from rectangle to rhombus to pentagon and finally to contracting iris, just like the previous doorway had done.
Slasher reached for my upper arm again, but there was no need. I shot toward that door, stumbling at breakneck speed across the collapsing room.
Mere feet from the doorway, the ancient piano player – the one who had grown the dense coating of verdure, and now resembled that well-loved, leafy Dickens character – appeared from nowhere, blocking my way. He was even more heavily coated than before, with moss and pine bows and lichen added to the leaves and grass. Bugs circled his head as though swarming around a rotting carcass. My momentum slammed me straight into him, but he barely budged.
Time was running out. The exit was closing and we were going to get crushed. If this maniac wanted to stay here, that was fine, but Slasher and I were getting out.
I hauled back and slugged him in the jaw with all my strength. His body swayed back so far I thought for sure he was going down. A second later, however, he came upright again, as though his feet had been nail-gunned to the floor. By that time, I’d blown past him and found Slasher, who was already waiting by the shrinking exit.
This time, the remaining opening was a few feet over our heads. I jumped frantically, slapping high, missing the opening and falling away from it.
On my way down, Slasher caught me around the hips and boosted me back up to the opening. He propelled me with amazing speed. I managed to get a purchase on something solid up there, and pulled myself higher.
Then there were two sets of hands pulling at me from above, hauling me out of that cursed establishment, and out into soft, rainy daylight.
Daylight! How long had I been in there?
I lay on the sidewalk, looking up at concerned faces that were studying me. Slasher appeared and began speaking to the others. It took me some time to realize that one of the faces looking at me was that of my wife.
“Allison!” I cried with relief.
She said something I couldn’t understand, then kissed me hard on the mouth. I smiled at her. I couldn’t believe how exhausted I was, how heavy I suddenly felt.
Then I remembered the beer. I needed more of it in order to clear my head. I looked around and found one on the sidewalk beside Slasher’s crouching form. I grabbed it and took a long pull. Not as much of an effect as before, but it felt good going down.
Slasher suddenly grabbed the bottle away from me.
“Oh, crikey” he said, laughing. “Now he wants it. He kept spitting it out before.”
I frowned. Slasher’s voice sounded nothing like it had earlier. And now he was…Australian?
“I thought you were a Bills fan,” I said.
“I’m sure you did, mate. I’m sure you thought a lot of things.”
I sat up a few times, but Allison and the others kept urging me to lie down. I felt so heavy suddenly, and wondered if gravity had been different inside that horrible restaurant. Maybe something to do with…I tried to think… someone tampering with the structure of the universe. Tiny particles…. My thoughts kept blurring away from me.
Allison was in tears. “Good God, Charlie,” she said. “I was so panicked. I wanted to go with Sanders to look for you, but they wouldn’t let me.”
“Slasher,” I said. “His name’s Slasher, not Sanders.”
Slasher laughed. “You know best, mate.”
Someone was saying, “…pure. At le
ast until the next stop.”
Someone held another bottle to my lips, and I drank deeply. Everyone but Allison stood up and milled about.
And then I dozed.
Next thing I knew, I was moving again. I looked around and found that my vision was still very foggy. I could hear Allison arguing with someone, and in a second I spotted her several feet away. She had her hands pressed to her lips, her face red. She was crying again, and this time it didn’t look like they were tears of relief. She was terribly upset. I tried to wave to her, but found I could not move my hands.
Good God! I was bound!
Slasher was nowhere in sight. I didn’t recognize my surroundings. I was in a broad hallway with a paint job that screamed institution. Was this a prison?
I moved my head frantically, looking around as much as my condition would allow. The men and women around me were unfamiliar, and their clothing resembled uniforms. I couldn’t understand a word they were saying. I was strapped down to a horizontal surface, being wheeled through grim corridors by strangers.
“Where have you taken me?” I demanded. I tried to shout the question, but it came out as a dry croak. “Allison? Where are we? What do they think we’ve done?”
And then I saw a face I did recognize.
The piano player. He’d lost his leafy hairdo and was dressed in a navy blue t-shirt and jeans. He was saying something to one of the uniformed men, but I couldn’t understand the words.
Whatever I was strapped onto, it now stopped moving.
The uniformed man listened to the pianist and then nodded to one of his underlings