The Host: Chapter 7
Chapter 7
I felt like a charlatan, coy and glib. I was a superhero. I was like a famous sleuth, on the way to pick up his trusty sidekick. I needed someone to aid in my adventure, to ‘yes’ me and to envy my powers of perception. I looked forward to the exploits that my future would bring as glorious moments that would illuminate my memories, make my past important. It was me who hardly had a self anymore. My life had run like slides before, but now I was a forward flow, an existential shaman who could forego the past as well as shirk any obsession with the future. For me, it would be enough to only live the mystery of each present second.
But I noticed the dark as I drove. I noticed the large, orange moon. I noticed the houses that still had their Christmas lights up. I noticed that my knee was still sore from when I banged it on my desk. I noticed the stillness of the side streets, and the squirrels that had yet gone in for the night. I noticed that I was speeding…and I noticed that I still wasn’t happy. I noticed that I really was a sad man, a powerful, mystical, sad man.
It would only take about one more minute to get to Max’s. I thought about how happy he was, with his house. He lived in an old Victorian house that had been converted into a two family. It was light grey with red trim and red shutters, and the exterior suffered. The family that lived in the downstairs apartment had three children. The kids had littered the lawn with toy cars, bouncing balls and bicycles. They had surely picked at the paint, especially on the door. Every time I went there I noticed how behind the paint the wood of the door was dark and old.
Max owned the upstairs apartment. It had an eat-in kitchen, a small living room?That room was always flooded with light. With more windows in the room then there was wall, the light of day was the living room’s most prominent feature. The light showered the contemporary furniture, steel end tables, the black canvas couches, and the large mirror cube that Max had made his coffee table. He had one of those flat TVs, a gift from his parents, that hung on the wall, and around it…Max had built a frame.
It was a brilliant contraption, this frame. It was made up of cubes of four colors, either red, green, blue or purple. The cubes were set in a rectangular track. As a whole, it looked like a border of alternating colored squares, jumbled and not in any specific pattern. But that wasn’t the brilliant part. A loop of the track extended out from the right corner of the frame, and in between the colored squares were small parts that pushed the cubes around the track. Off of the lower left corner the frame had a small motor that drove pulleys, and a small computer, not unlike one found in a hand held video game. When the frame was plugged in the colored cubes traveled around the track, unarranged and random. But every once in a while one cube would go into the attached loop. It would change tracks. When it finished traveling the length of the loop it would fall back into a space in the rectangle, right next to a cube of the same color. It was like a stretched out, self-solving Rubik’s cube. Max never told me how it did that. He had worked with a computer artist from New York to make it. I think he wanted its entire mechanics to be a secret, but he did tell me its purpose. “If the colors ever all line up, so that each side of the rectangle is a solid color, well…then that means that I’ve watched too much TV.” It was a timer, the simplest one the artist could think up.
Max’s workspace was the attic of the house. It was huge, the span of the whole roof. Max didn’t do too much to decorate it though. He just arranged hundreds of candles around it. Some were in holders and candelabras, and some just stood up in the middle of wax-puddles on the floor. He once said, “My creativity is merely the influence of a candle lit room on an unstable individual.”
Max was a wonderful man to understand. He was directed and inspired. He worked hard, and never doubted that he would get the fame he wanted, that he would make something beautiful that people would love much longer than he would be alive. Max was a man of faith, in himself, in his vision, in the quirks that made him crazy and the brainstorms that washed out his life. I was glad to be his audience, to have seen his mind even before I had the gift, and I wasn’t anxious to hear what was inside Max’s head. I had already seen it on canvas.
…..
Max and I were fairly drunk when we went to orientation. We spent the whole time either chuckling at the orientation guides, with their New Guernsey State College sweatshirts and the boiling enthusiasm that they had for the longevity and landscape their college, or we pointed out the pretty girls and made quiet, lude comments to each other. The forties we drank had really worked well. As we walked with the group through the campus we kept bumping into people and tripping over our feet.
We were both pretty unimpressed with the campus aesthetic. The buildings were plain squares and the sidewalks were beige concrete.
“Ivy League’s much prettier,” Max said.
“Yeah. Much more expensive too.”
I guess Max and I both had our reasons for choosing New Guernsey that had little to do with the aesthetic of the campus buildings and layout. Max wanted out of New York City, but not too far out. The painting program at the college was very respected, and the art studios were comfortable and private. Max wanted to be in the mountains, but he mostly wanted to be farther from his parents. I just wanted to be far from Maine and close to New York City. I also liked that the college had a competitive boxing team, but not a renowned one. I hadn’t ever boxed for real, so I guess I chose the least threatening of places to try it out. My only criteria was that there be a team, period. Not a good boxing team. I still didn’t know if I was any good.
One of the orientation guides noticed that Max and I were lagging behind the rest of the group. We were laughing and throwing rocks into the pond as we passed it. The guide walked to the back and confronted us.
“Listen guys, just try to keep it down a bit. Some people do give a shit about this orientation,” he said.
“I’m sorry. We’ll keep it down,” I said.
“Yeah…sure…and guys, seeing as you’re freshman and all, why don’t you chew some gum next time. They can be pretty strict about these things…understand,” he said.
“But gum ruins the flavor of the beer. It might even make me throw-up and then my breath would really smell,” Max said.
“Don’t give me a hard time kid. Just relax a bit. Hold your drink like a man, not a little boy,” he said.
Max belched and walked away. I laughed and followed him.
We walked up to a willow tree on the side of the pond and sat down. It was pretty warm in the sun, so the shade of the willow helped stunt the spinning in my head. Max pulled out a pack of Camels and lit a cigarette.
“So I guess you don’t care much for authority either,” I said.
“It’s not that,” he said. “We were only laughing and having a good time. Nobody was bothered. I just can’t stand it when there’s a situation where it’s expected that you be quiet, mindless, and orderly. It seems a little too militaristic for me. What the fuck? We’re just walking through this relatively simple campus, being told the names of buildings that already have signs on them. How does that constitute a solemn occasion. It’s not like we’re touring famous battlegrounds, or visiting the graves of martyrs. It’s just another school, and I’m not going to tolerate it if it feels like a prison,” he said.
“Sure Max…but we are underage.”
“Yeah, but that guy’s no cop,” he said.
Max calmed down pretty quick, smiled and said, “Fuck it.”
I looked up and noticed two girls coming our way. They smiled at me as they walked.
“Hey Max. I think we’re having visitors.”
“Of course we are Benny. Chicks love a non-conformist…at least…for a little while.”
“What?”
“Forget it,” he said.
The girls were real pretty. One had on jeans and a tight orange t-shirt. She had straight blond hair, a small round nose, and an inch of her belly showed where her shirt failed to cover. The other girl was shorter, and a brunette. She had on jeans and a tight blue collared shirt. Only about a half inch of her belly showed. She had a round face, sort of a big nose, dark eyebrows, and really big tits.
Max and I both looked up at them. I said hello. Max said nothing.
“Hey guys, we saw you leave the group,” the blonde said.
“It looked nice over here,” I said.
The blonde girl pulled out a pack of Marlboro Lights and lit a cigarette. “I’m Lauren,” she said.
“Hello. I’m Benny…and this is Max.”
Max looked up, cigarette hanging from his lip. He looked at the brunette and said, “What about you?”
“Emma,” she said.
“Well, it’s nice to meet you two. You want to sit down?” Max said.
It was warm and humid, but in the shade the breeze felt cool.
“Where you from?” Lauren asked Max.
“New York.”
“City?”
“Yep.”
“Cool. I’m from Connecticut.”
“Sorry about that,” said Max.
Lauren made a slight, intrigued laugh.
“How about you?” she asked me.
“I’m from Maine.”
“Cool. It’s pretty there. My family goes to Scarboro in the summer,” she said.
“You’re right, it’s pretty there, but actually, I’m a bit north of Scarboro,” I said.
“OK,” she said.
“How about you?” I asked Emma.
“Oh, I’m from Mill Rift, Pennsylvania.”
“What’s it like there,” I said.
“It’s a small town. It’s right where New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania meet…. There isn’t much to do except go rafting on the Delaware, or buy crap at the Sunday Flea Market,” she said.
“That’s cool,” I said.
Max finished his cigarette and buried the butt in the grass.
“So did you get bored of the tour, or are you too drunk to participate as well?” said Max.
“Yeah, it did get pretty boring, and I guess you boys looked like you were having more fun,” Lauren said.
Lauren flipped her blonde hair.
“Well…what are you two doing after dinner,” Max said.
They looked at each other and smiled.
“Nothing,” Lauren said.
“We’ve got to go register for classes now, but why don’t you come to our room after you eat. We can have a few drinks and maybe tour this place for ourselves,” Max said.
“OK.”
“Great.”
Max stood up, so I stood up after him.
“We’ll see you later then…Studling Hall, Room 304,” Max said.
“That’s our dorm too,” Lauren said.
Max started to walk away.
“Bye,” I said, and turned around to catch up with Max.
We walked away from the pond in silence. When we got far enough away I said to Max, “Dude, we don’t have to register for an hour.”
“It doesn’t matter,” he said.
“But you just got up and ditched them.”
“Hey Benny, I invited them over later didn’t I?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, we’ll see them later then.”
“Sure Max, but what’s wrong with right now,” I said.
Max shook his head.
“I gotta piss, don’t you?” he said.
I did. I had been holding it for a while.
…..
I pulled into his driveway and parked next to his house. When I opened the door and stepped out of the car the smell of Lester’s piss reminded me of how scared he was when he ran away. Maybe he’d go home and change his mind.
I walked down the cement path, past the toys in the yard, to the grey porch. Max’s was the door on the left. The wood seen where the paint was peeled was dark and old. The porch light cast my shadow long, across the porch and the bushes in front of it.
I opened the door without ringing the bell, I didn’t have to. I was anxious, excited…and honestly…I felt important. I could hear human thoughts, who else could do that? I was on top again, like a champ, and who’s gonna tell the champ to use the doorbell. Hell, I might tell your mother what you think of her cooking, of tell your girlfriend where you really were that night. Sure, it was arrogant of me, but it wasn’t negative, it wasn’t rude, to realize that I was special, that I was not to be barred from anywhere. I was a supernatural hero on a quest to find a murderer.
As I stood in the open doorway, spying up the staircase that led to Max’s apartment, I noticed a musk in the damp air. There were filled bags of garbage that lined the length of the stairs. The oak banister looked dull, and there were red-paint handprints up and down it.
I had never seen any part of Max’s be this dirty. He was proud of his house, and with the exception of his studio, he kept it clean, like a museum.
I started to walk up the stairs, investigating the garbage bags and the handprints. The stale musk in the air became a stronger invisible funk. I could taste the damp, diseased smell that lingered. My hands felt dirty sharing the same air as the sour odor.
At the top of the stairs I knocked on the door and waited…. No answer. Normally, I would have left and been satisfied to wait until I met him at Rusty’s, but something felt wrong and I wouldn’t ignore my impulse. Max was my greatest friend, and something told me that he needed me. I turned the doorknob. It wasn’t locked. Maybe he was home after all.
When I opened the door the stale smell became fresh and pungent. His living room was covered in clothing, clean, dirty, it was hard to tell. They seethed in knotted piles. The TV was on, muted, the channel MTV, and as I espied the unkempt room I saw the last green cube fall into its place in the frame. All sides were a single color. A bell chimed from the motor box.
His clothes stuck out of every crevice. Socks strewn over shirts and slacks. In between the couch cushions there were sweaters. On the mirror-cube coffee table there were a pile of crusty bowls, caked with grens. I noticed my face reflected in the cube. I looked as freaked-out as I was. There were dirty glasses that were covered in grips of re-paint handprints. Red paint was everywhere, on the upholstery, the lamps, the windows, the rug, the curtains. It was a sick sight, all of the filth. I walked out of the room, and made sure not to touch anything.
The kitchen was a foul hovel. Fruit flies and houseflies hovered over empty cans of black beans and bottles of Tabasco sauce. The buzz sounded like freezing rain falling on glass. It was one sound made by thousands. They flew in spirals, and the houseflies fought in the air.
The cans were everywhere. They lined the counter and fridge top. The cans were on the floor and on the windowsills, cans smudged with red handprints in which maggots peered and gangs of flies went to spawn. I gagged and cowered, breathing through my nose until the smell made me gag and then opened my mouth to breathe until my teeth felt dirty and I shut my mouth and breathed through my nose until the smell made me gag. The sink was full of beans, paint, dirty bowls, and unrecognizable grens. But there were no dirty pots, no dirty pans, just bowls and spoons.
“Max,” I hollered. “Are you here.”
No answer.
The cabinets were open, and on the refrigerator door, finger painted in blood red…was the word, ‘Hell’.
I was frozen, not sure if I would run out screaming or still search the house…
A tornado is reflective reason
And so I decided…. I would run out screaming.
I whipped my head around, intent on cascading towards the door, but I caught a glimpse of Max’s room across the hall. What I saw made me curious again, but no less worried and no less scared.
Max’s bedroom was perfect. It had shine. It was calm. The bed was made, the blankets were tucked. The furniture looked polished, and I could see clearly the tracks of a vacuum like a grid on his carpet. The awful smell was still present, but the rotten care of his house had not steeped through his bedroom door. Inside his room there was no red paint, no filth. It was cleaner than I had ever seen it before, and I didn’t know what the hell was going on.
The ghost, the phrase was near. It was time to shake the fear. I decided to check his studio. I was letting fantasy take over my brain.
…..
Maybe Max is being held prisoner. Maybe by a gang…or terrorists….art racketeers?I don’t know. Maybe his kidnappers had forced him to call me at work. So no one suspects anything. They could be holding him up there, at gunpoint. He did sound very…forlorn on the phone, and he was very mysterious when he told me that he ‘had to take care of something’. He probably wanted to tell me, but they threatened him with?a pistol whipping, or even worse…sodomy. Fuck. They could have taken his paint and used it to vandalize his house, and painted ‘Hell’ on the fridge as…a reminder…of where they would send him. Maybe they’re force feeding him cold beans and Tabasco…as torture. They could have locked him up there while they ransacked his apartment?wait…shit…look at this. The door doesn’t even have a lock on it. Shit…I’m an idiot, some sleuth. Quit wasting time, he’s probably up there…. Who ever heard of Tabasco torture anyway…. I am not afraid.
…..
I flipped on the light switch at the bottom of the stairs and climbed with ginger steps. I felt panic, but also I felt draped in wool as I, too, felt gentle. It seemed that Max needed my help by the look of things. I felt like less of an egotist and more like a friend. I pushed away the fear.
The smell was just as grotesque, but there was a new element to the whiff. It was the smell of smoke, but not cigarette smoke, or even the cozy scent of burning wood. It was the chestnut smell of a candlewick that has been extinguished. The smell of its smolder.
I was right. In the studio there were hundreds of candles checkered across the floor. Some wide and some narrow. Some in tight clumps and some standing like a sentinel, alone. Some were placed in beautiful candelabras that had the bleed of melted wax hardened on their bases. Some spilled over shot glasses, wooden bowls or were simply on the floor. Some were even floating in water, water in the empty cans of black beans. Wax was on the floor, solid puddles that reflected the blackbody coil of the single light bulb that hung from the ceiling by its cord. There were more dirty bowls, bean cans, and empty paint cans that were tipped over and spilling their last red drops onto the dull wood of the attic floor. There were paintings stacked in the corners, and in the center of the room was a canvas.
The canvas was mighty, maybe twelve feet wide and eight feet tall. It was in the center of the room. That was the only place it could fit without touching the ceiling. It stood under the apex of the roof. It was covered with a black tarp made of plastic. I imagined that it was meant as a pool cover. Around the base of the canvas were cans with brushes sticking out of them and a pile of palates were stacked on top of a small card table that stood like a guard next to the right edge of the canvas.
“Max, you up here?”
I knew he wasn’t. The only evidence that pointed to Max’s having been there recently was the small brush that was posted in a transparent cup of evergreen paint. I walked over to it. The paint was still wet, no film had formed on top.
At first, I figured that I’d leave. Max wasn’t there and I had to find him. If he was losing his mind I could see it. I could be objective and help him to understand whatever his crisis was. And if he did find it, I could help him remove it, remove the thought that he couldn’t handle. He was my best friend, who had been that for many years, unchanged and loyal. There were many times when he had helped me, when he had soothed me when I freaked out. I would return the favor threefold.
I was going to leave, but stopped myself. The canvas, what was on it? Perhaps to see it would help. According to Max, it was he who was concealed under that black plastic sheet. I would uncover it.
I walked up to the canvas and pulled lightly on the cover. My heart eschewed a faster pace with each anxious thump of it. With just that slight pull the tarp slid off and fell in front of the painting?and there it was…the most horrifying vision I had ever seen.
My mouth went dry. My forehead became moist. I held my breath and was unable to react, to think.
It was demonic, painted in every shade of red imaginable. In the background was painted fire that twisted like serpents, or streams of smoke. But the fire surrounded a mass of bodies. They were old, and Max had painted their charred flesh with great detail. The burning people were chained together, and they all had black spheres for eyes. They were chained to the edges of the canvas. The fire ripped through their bodies, tearing holes that spouted blood from their burnt gashes. Some had fire exploding through their skulls and some through their screaming mouths. They were painted small and there were about a hundred of them, lining the bottom background. They were naked and tortured. You could see their pain, but not through their eyes, for the black eyes showed noting. Their pain showed in their skin, wrinkled and blistered, and their mouths, torn and twisted, and their muscles painted tight. Max had painted fear in the skin, in the bodies. …That was just the background.
In the middle of the painting, as hefty as a full-grown person, was the demonic…embryo, but it did not look human, unless in a very early stage of development. It had titanic, black eyes and gills that were opened in its supposed neck. It had a curling tailbone that looked like a bony cutlass, and tiny hands sprout from its ghoulish body. No arms, just hands with round circles for flesh, for fingers. Its forehead was the largest part of its head, and it mounted thin, needle-like horns. The spine was visible against the dark pink skin. The thing had two small, black holes for a snout, and a delicate, straight green line for a mouth…and painted all around the creature, in bright reds, the word ‘Hell’. ‘Hell’ was in the corners and hovered above the beast’s head. ‘Hell’ was painted all over the black sky, each time with a different style, different calligraphy that ranged from Gothic to pure psychotic. I was taken…and for the first time since I had entered Max’s ruined house I didn’t notice the smell. It was a dead sense to me.
I didn’t want to look anymore, but I was trapped, unable to look away. The painting disgusted me, but…was sincere in an evil-effective kind of way. It pulled me into the pain and torture. I could not blink. My sense of sight?a sado-masochist, controlled by the sting, indulged in the pain and pure evil of the scene. So I stared…
…And I noticed something hidden, and I blinked.
There was a fine detail I had missed.
In the center, in each of the demon’s bulbous black eyes was a small blur of green. I walked close to the painting and examined those eyes. I knew what it was I saw…. In each of those eyes Max had painted a tiny, green tornado. When standing back from the painting they looked like only a glimmer, or a reflection of the fire’s light, but up close it was unmistakable…
…And I noticed something else.
The delicate green line that was the beast’s lips, it looked perforated. I got as close as I could, and when I saw what it was…my heart launched into a fervor. It wasn’t a line. It was a sentence, and it read,
“A tornado is reflective reason.”
I was frantic. My whole frame, even my fingernails pulsed and itched. My throat itched. The panic cannoned through every one of my nerves and my blood, my spine, my gut…everything cased in my cold, uncomfortable skin…itched.
…..
Fuck me.
…..
I stared at that curse. I had thought before that it was Max’s phrase, but I was still certain that he was not the voice of the ghost. Max’s voice was like routine for me. I could recognize it at first syllable. No, it wasn’t Max’s voice I had been hearing, that whisper…. But Max knew about it.
Had he heard it? Did he share my gift? Had he always had it? Had it made him crazy? Maybe it broke him, destroyed his home and habits, filled him with images of fire and blood…that phrase.
That phrase was an evil innocence, comfortable to float over carnage and pain. So evil that it chained us all, to burn in hell. It grew out of misery, and kept in shackles those who watched it grow, shattered their minds with an infest of fire. The painting, the phrase, a solid portrayal of what all people fear, the evil dream. It was the creator of hell. The devil was a phrase.
The gift had changed everything and I was spiraling down swift and spinning, towards hell…full of fear of fire. I felt no power, because nothing was clear. I possessed a gift that made me strong as fast as it made me weak. I no longer believed I was novel. I was just like Max.
I was afraid of psychosis, it’s dirty.
But it was time to move anyway. I had been given tasks. I would find Max first, the old man second.
My watch said 10:07.
Maybe Max would get to Rusty’s early. I knew he would eventually be there, and I knew…that I’d enough of his musky lair. Standing in that house almost made me forget that there was a normal outside world that I could harvest secrets from, harvest insight from. I couldn’t ignore that somewhere in New Guernsey lurked a man with the intent to murder someone, and before the gift could ruin me, could make me crazy like Max, I would use it to save a life.
A tornado is reflective reason
I ran out screaming, absolutely certain that the ghost wasn’t Max. I ran through the house, trying not to breathe. I felt dirty and fragile.
When I got outside and breathed deep the clean air…
…on my neck, the tick was large and full, and it held on and fed some more…. The tick was addicted.
© 2009, Henry E. Powderly II. All rights reserved.
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