Mercury Man Page 13

  He came out near the great pier that lay at the bottom of Harbour Street, beside a sprawl of condemned buildings. As his uncle had explained, this place had once been a centre of the river traffic. Boone Jetty, as it was called, consisted of a long wooden ramp, a few ramshackle sheds, and myriad old tires painted white and nailed to rotting posts. Nearby lay the wreck of a barge, a brown hump covered with bright green slime.

  The jetty was known as a dangerous place at night — and sure enough, a couple of Camaros were zooming around, horns blasting and tires squealing as they criss-crossed paths and charged at each other. The wooden planks roared, the shacks trembled, the old tires swung on their posts. The young drivers leaned out the windows of their vehicles, swearing and threatening each other, while a couple of male bystanders laughed and calmly urinated into the river.

  Tom hung back, safe in the shadows of a half-collapsed warehouse, and waited for the action to subside. When, amid a volley of vicious threats and swearing, the cars finally roared away, he slipped across the end of the jetty and cut back to the bottom of Harbour Street.

  This was a curious area, some of it redeveloped and near genteel, like Water Street, from which he had last approached Fabricon — while other parts were shameless slums.

  As he followed the fence away from the river he encountered not a single pedestrian, although the Fabricon tower, further up the street, rose above him like a challenge.

  “Two-twenty-one,” he said aloud, then murmured it again, like a mantra. “Two-twenty-one.” That was the place the ring had come from. He vaguely remembered a house standing between Fabricon and the amusement park, but it was a mere ghost in his mind.

  He walked in that direction, however, following the high fence that enclosed the old amusement park. Above the fence loomed the roller coaster track with its single stalled car — a crazy sculpture out of a child’s dream. Thanks to a few boyish incursions, he knew that behind the fence there were many buildings, in various states of decay; a house in reasonably good repair with a small garden beside it; a huge field, empty and desolate; a large shed full of old cars and equipment for long-abandoned rides and exhibits; a large pond drained of water.

  Mercury House, he was sure, would be the next building. It was right next to, and in its decrepitude almost a part of, the amusement park.

  He walked a little farther. An old house rose up where the long fence ended. Beyond that was a huge parking lot, a row of nondescript sheds, and then Fabricon. Everything in his life seemed pushed close together.

  Two-twenty-one itself, a large clapboard structure from which the paint had long ago peeled, looked eccentric. A half-collapsed porch, unexpected dormers,

  and ramshackle sheds on either side made the house seem enormous.

  Tom hesitated, suddenly under the spell of the place. No lights were visible, and he heard no sound — the building might have been abandoned decades ago. It was a house to breed memories and shadows.

  “Two-twenty-one,” he repeated. Someone had responded to his letter. The porthole had opened. A beautiful girl had arrived with the ring. And now he was going to find out who and why.

  At the same time he felt uneasy. He couldn’t bring himself to go right up to that door and knock. It would have been like trying to open a tomb.

  He retreated and stood in the shadows beside one of the sheds. Night was falling on the city; the lights of the Fabricon tower blinked above him.

  Then Tom noticed that the shed door beside him was slightly ajar. He pushed and it swung open. Pinpoints of light in the darkness — cat’s eyes — and a soft purring voice.

  He stepped into a small room and in the reflected street light saw piles of wood, tires, old shelves, and, comfortably settled on a huge barrel set before another door, a Siamese cat.

  The cat looked benign enough, and Tom approached and stroked it. It greeted him in a plangent Siamese voice and licked his fingers. As he touched it with reassuring fingers he noticed the collar and nametag. The latter he could just barely read in the dim light. It read: “Sinbad.”

  “Hello, Sinbad,” Tom said aloud. “What should I do now? I want to find my way to somebody mysterious.”

  The cat suddenly stood up on all fours, stretched its neck, licked one paw, and then jumped briskly from its perch. This motion set the barrel rocking, its metal hoop bumped against the inner door, and Tom saw at once that it, too, was open. He took a deep breath and shoved at it. It creaked and swung back. The cat seemed to have disappeared.

  Tom groped in the dark and found a light switch. A dim bulb illuminated a long, dusty hall. Step by step he walked its length — at the other end another door confronted him. This one was both shut and locked.

  “Dead end,” he said aloud, and then noticed a small dish of milk at his feet — the cat’s dish. On impulse he bent down and picked it up. Underneath lay a key. He turned the key in the lock and the door opened.

  Once again he found the light switch. What a place he was in! It looked something like a mining tunnel, although boards and wooden rafters enclosed it instead of earth and rock. Metal tracks emerged from the darkness at the left and curved away into the dark tunnel as it continued to the right. On the tracks right before him sat a wheeled cart, like a roller coaster car. The vehicle was fitted out with plush leather seats and an old brass safety bar.

  Without hesitation Tom climbed in and made himself comfortable in the spacious seat, securing himself in with the metal bar. This was crazy! The amusement park and the house were much closer together than he had figured.

  He was just ready to climb out, to make his way back to the street, when the cat appeared at the half-open door and began to lick up milk from the bowl.

  Tom grunted and called out to the cat, which looked up at him.

  Then something happened — a sudden roar of machinery in the distance — and the boards of the building rattled all around him.

  The cart itself began to shake, and then — with much creaking and groaning of its ancient wheels — it began to move.

  Tom gasped. The cart gained speed, propelling him toward the darkness of the tunnel.

  He squirmed in his seat but held on as a neon light illuminated the cobwebs above his head. A sign winked at him: “WELCOME TO THE FUNHOUSE.”

  The cart hurtled forward. Walls rose up and vanished; the lights flickered. Tom held on, sneezing and choking in the dust. The noise was tremendous.

  He rolled around a corner. Lights flared. A figure rose out of the shadows, a black-cloaked mannequin with red eyes and a face the colour of dough. Thin hands with claw-tipped fingers groped toward him. Tom yelped and ducked away. The cart rattled onward.

  He crouched behind the metal bar, hardly daring to look back. Ahead, he saw a cave like a furnace, with heat blasting out and shapes like wraiths rising in its smoky recesses. Tinny laughter sounded. Troops of demons danced in the orange light.

  The cart picked up speed, bound straight for the furnace. Tom screamed. At the last minute it veered away.

  He was in for it now, he thought. The tunnel stretched before him; sparks flared.

  Walls slid open, and the darkness quivered with life. He saw grinning dwarves, a cave full of snakes. Skeletons glowed in gloomy recesses, giant bats swooped toward him, and three ancient crones pointed at him with crooked fingers.

  It was all machinery, Tom knew, but he shuddered and ducked despite himself.

  He was suddenly a child again, pursued by every terror. Sharks threatened him in the bathtub, a robot woman pretended to be his mother, a madman with an axe lurked in his parents’ bedroom. He was lost in the great city, surrounded by brutal playmates eager to torture him and lock him forever in some dark place. His favourite toys were broken and cast away. He had forgotten his name.

  “Stop this thing!” Tom cried aloud, but even before he had got all the words out, he felt the cart slow down. The tunnel had resolved itself into a flickering darkness. The spotlights went out and the figures faded, like dreams he was eage
r to forget.

  Suddenly, with a clanking of metal on metal, the cart stopped. The cavelike passage was wider here, the lights brighter. He saw a dusty platform and steps leading upward.

  The tracks continued, but he sprang out, fearful that the cart would start up again and that he would circle forever in that tunnel, traversing its terrors over and over only to end up where he had begun.

  He stood for a moment on the platform, listening. The place was claustrophobic, full of dust and echoes, faint sounds. Something scurried in the corner and he shuddered, thinking real rats. He clambered up the rickety steps, leaving the tunnel behind, and pushed through a door to enter a large, brightly lit room, a place with startling white walls and a curiously ramped floor. It was disconcerting. He found he could not walk easily or even stand on the tilted floor without struggling mightily to get his balance.

  Arms outstretched, he made his way forward, his stomach turning over as he tried hard not to fall on his face.

  It was only a trick room, one designed to baffle the senses. But when at last he got through the doorway, it was like escaping from the gravity of another planet.

  He found himself in a hall of mirrors, blinded by glittering reflections. Dozens of images of himself, weirdly stretched and changed, grimaced at him from the walls and ceiling. An impossibly fat and dumpy Tom, a Tom so thin that he threatened to disappear, a Tom with a huge head, one with giant feet, another with a disconnected head and body — their silent mockery was daunting.

  He slipped quickly between the mirrors, keeping his eyes on his feet, trying not to look at the distortions of himself that moved and changed as he moved.

  He opened a door and made his way along a dim passageway. Yet another door led into a deeper darkness.

  A single beam of green light guided him through this place, but as he walked, streams of air blew at him, hissing in his face, ruffling his hair and clothes. It was as if he had walked into a cluster of balloons that were all deflating all at once.

  He burst through the door and into the next room.

  This place was like a crypt, its narrow walls glowing with reddish light. It smelled of incense — and of something else, something sickly and sweet. On one side of the room, on a high table, sat a huge black box, obviously a coffin. It was cobwebbed and dusty, carved and decorated in heavy wood, and surrounded by a few religious items — half-burned candles, a crucifix, and a rosary.

  The coffin was shut. Tom remembered the waxen image of a dead childhood friend, seen long ago and in nightmares since. He realized that nothing would induce him to look into that black box.

  He hurried forward and pushed through the red brocaded curtains that had been hung across the far entrance. When the thick cloth brushed across his face, he shuddered.

  The next room was strewn with half-dressed human figures, broken mannequins and models, bald-headed apparitions of pseudo-flesh, dummies with missing arms and legs, all stacked and piled together, many costumed in elaborate garb that must once have been colourful but now seemed faded, fragile, and ancient.

  Tom moved between the figures, then walked up a ramp to a door clearly marked “EXIT.”

  It was a relief to see something as ordinary as that sign.

  He shoved at barred doors that reminded him of a theatre exit; they parted and he found himself in a kind of shed. A dim ceiling bulb threw some faint light around the place. An old baby carriage, a pile of hubcaps, a canoe with a broken frame, and a few unidentifiable metal parts — all these had been shoved into the narrow space between two ancient black limousines.

  There was also a late model girl’s bicycle, with a straw hat dangling pink ribbons hung over the handlebars.

  Tom wondered where he had come to, but sensed that he was finally out of the funhouse labyrinth. To get away from this place forever, all he had to do was scramble over this junk and find the street.

  He started to exit, but before he could get anywhere the shed doors opened and a girl walked in.

  She moved forward between the limousines, stopped in her tracks, and stood staring at him.

  Tom stared back at her. He could not open his mouth. She was about his age, tall and slender with a pale oval face, curly dark hair, and delicate hands that she raised in surprise when she saw him. Dressed in a simple white T-shirt and jean shorts, she looked elegant, and somehow free. Tom felt joy in just looking at her.

  She said nothing and uttered no murmur of surprise. She only looked at him intently with her dark blue eyes.

  Tom took a deep breath and wrestled with conflicting thoughts. This was the most beautiful girl he had met in his short life. At the same time, she reminded him of someone.

  “Who … who are you?” he murmured. “I was down there” — he pointed behind him — “and the thing just started up. I went right through the tunnel. I’m looking for Mercury House.”

  Her eyes conveyed that she understood him, but she said nothing. Instead, she pointed to her lips and shook her head.

  Tom stared at her, but his joy had turned into dismay, for it was clear that the girl couldn’t speak.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Unknown Friends

  Tom climbed up on one of the limousines, walked gingerly across the roof, slid down the windshield, then shoved himself feet-first across the dusty hood.

  As he dropped down beside her, the girl smiled, took his hand, and pointed quickly at the doorway.

  They stepped out of the shed together and she led the way along a narrow path enclosed by a half-fallen fence and lit by a few dim yellow bulbs.

  He had a thousand questions for her, but he couldn’t say a single word. His experience in the tunnel, their strange meeting, the night and this walk, the sense of her presence beside him, her affliction — these things made him silent.

  He was certain, however, that he had found the girl who had sent him the ring, and it made him glad. She sailed along just in front of him, and her every step seemed to make his own body lighter. He felt that he was on the verge of some great discovery, that some rare magic had descended into his world at last.

  They came ‘round another shedlike building and he saw the house, a great black hulk of a place, with a single light burning on a big shabby rear porch. The amusement park stretched away behind them. He knew he must have entered the old tunnel from Harbour Street and circled on the underground track to the shed where he’d come out. But who had turned on the machinery? A puzzle! Everyone in West Hope knew that the old park was just a ruin.

  They climbed up on the porch and she stopped for a minute, turned to him, reached out, took his hand, and turned it up so that the ring was clearly visible. Then she smiled at him and her dark eyes glinted with yellow fire. Her touch was gentle but tremendous. It occurred to him that she might be smiling at the idea of a dream being realized, for that was his experience at that moment — a moment so perfect he hoped it might never end.

  Inside the house it was cool and dark: the kitchen they entered a moment later had ancient fittings, old linoleum, a battered tin sink, and a slow-dripping tap. The walls, where they were not covered with pictures and much-outdated calendars, seemed waxen with grease and grime. The girl motioned him to a place at a big table, a noble relic with lion’s feet, overhung by a ceiling light with a green glass shade.

  She fetched a large pad from a bulletin board and wrote on it. She handed it to him and then pointed at herself.

  Miranda Daniel, it said.

  He looked at her in astonishment. She smiled, but he felt the anger rising in him. Of course he had seen her! He had caught a glimpse of her in Tarn’s film — this was Paul Daniel’s daughter, a victim of her own father’s betrayals. It was Paul Daniel’s fault that she had lost the ability to speak.

  Tom started to say something, but stopped as she wrote again on the pad.

  He read: I sent the ring, looked at her, and managed a smile. She seemed to sense his conflicting feelings, so she took the pen and added, I saw you at the Blanchard High essa
y contest in first year. I know exactly what you wrote. I still keep it. Ad astra per aspera — when I found that saying I thought of you. That was what your essay said to me.

  He stared at her. Someone had noticed him. She’d been thinking of him all these years!

  Once again she wrote and he read: I saw you last year at Damato’s. You didn’t even notice me!

  He couldn’t believe this and shook his head with vigour. And just at that moment, he remembered. She had come in at lunchtime one day and he wanted to get over to her table to talk to her, but he was hesitant, and the place was so busy that Willy had sent him out for extra bread. When he got back — much later — she’d left, and he’d never even noticed that she couldn’t talk!

  Now he put his hands together and bowed his head as if asking her pardon. She laughed and wrote on the pad: My father has been talking to you.

  Tom shrugged his shoulders and waited for more. Now it would come, he thought, what a hard life he’d had, how we all had to be forgiving! Well, he wouldn’t accept any of that, not even for her sake.

  My father needs your help. Fabricon hurt him. They caused this.

  Miranda touched her mouth with her fingers.

  Tom shook his head in consternation. “But Tarn told us it was all your dad’s fault. They seemed to have proof of everything.”

  She shook her head, almost with violence, seized the pad, and wrote hastily.

  Lies! They framed him. He needs your help. Come!

  Before he could react she was out of her chair and beckoning him through the doorway and into an inner room.

  He followed her as she climbed a wide staircase whose carpeting had grown shabby, perhaps because it was nearly as old as the ornately carved banister. He caught glimpses of heavy drapes, old oil paintings with little lights set on top, oriental rugs in profusion, and a huge stained glass window illuminated from behind and apparently depicting St. George defeating the dragon.

  She led him down a second-floor corridor and stopped before an oak-panelled door. She turned to Tom with a cautioning look, then knocked.