Mr. X. Peter Straub

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СКАЧАТЬ if all of my ewes produced lambie-kins, I was prepared to slaughter every last one, but I assumed that I would recognize the Anti-Christ when I saw the little turd. I took for granted that when little Mr Sweet of Face but Nasty of Purpose tumbled from Heather’s, Moongirl’s, Sarah’s, Rachel’s, Nanette’s, Mei-Liu’s, Skunk’s, Avis’s, Subindra’s, Pang’s, Low Rider’s, Arquetta’s, Sujit’s, Tammy’s, Georgy-Porgy’s, Akiko’s, Conchita’s, Suki’s, Sammie’s, Big Indian’s, or Zelda’s womb, the brat would arrive all but surrounded by flashing arrows and neon signs. Despite my inspired exertions, none of these ardent maidens bore fruit. Of all the art-infatuated, experiment-minded dumbbells I bedded during this enchanted period of my life, only Star Dunstan managed to get pregnant.

      The voice of revelation was not kidding around when it informed me that my adversary would prove elusive. Foolish me, I thought I had it all sewn up. After Star discovered that she was pregnant, I countered the usual whines about ‘commitment’ even an airy-fairy type like Star could not keep from uttering by suggesting the next best thing, that she move in with me. Star was so grateful I didn’t order her to an abortionist that almost anything I proposed would have made her happy. She could not have known that the whole point of rogering her had been to get her pregnant. I wanted a good, healthy birth. A few days after Mommy and Cherub returned from the maternity ward, I would press Cherub’s face into his pillow until he went limp. It was a flawless plan, but as the voice had promised, it blew up in my face, not through any fault of my own.

      I forced myself to utter the nauseating endearments expected by a female with an expanding belly. For a couple of months, I made cutesy-poo faces and uttered lies about the golden future. Yet there came a night when I went out on a ramble and returned to an empty house. Empty, that is, of my bloated companion and her possessions. She had scarpered – taken flight. I suspected a new boyfriend. I still think I was right, but because I could not find her in spite of looking under every rock within a fifty-mile radius, I had no proof. In desperation, I sought the help of Johnson’s Woods and learned that, having spoken, the Voice was now eternally silent. A month later, I heard from Erwin ‘Pipey’ Leake, at the time still clinging to his position at Albertus, that my beloved had turned up back in Edgerton and given birth. Wearing a cheap wedding band, she was presently ensconced in one of her aunts’ houses on Cherry Street.

      Fine, I thought: a few tentative visits accompanied by bouquets of flowers and boxes of chocolate, a statement of total forgiveness, a show of infant adoration, and she’d be back in an eye blink, the precious lad clamped to a handsome mammary. Then I could suffocate my only-begotten darling. A few hours later, the arrival on my doorstep of two blueboys instructed me that someone had ‘dropped,’ as they say, ‘the dime’ on my participation in a number of illegal activities. A speedy trial led to a second imprisonment, this one in the state facility known as Greenhaven.

      I brought with me a reputation guaranteed to ensure respect, obedience, power, and the considerable degree of comfort to be obtained in such quarters. Whatever I desired, but for the opportunity to rid the world of Star’s spawn, was provided on the double.

      I took this deprivation with a lighter heart than I would have those of an adequate suite with a private bathroom and telephone line, decent meals, sexual encounters with female visitors, the various books and magazines important to my researches, including those relevant to the life and works of the Providence Master (then experiencing something of a revival), and enlightening conversation with amusing companions, all of which I had in spades. The little darling was still advancing from diapers to the potty, from baby-babble to his first lisping excursions into English, and could not for decades pose a threat to my destiny as Herald of the Apocalypse. That I had been told my task would be arduous reinforced my faith in the wisdom of my inhuman ancestors. I could kill the little beast when I got out, and I positively looked forward to the hunt. In the meantime, a good deal of my research dealt with the shape and direction of the coming pursuit.

      Just at the time I grew tired of pampered confinement, a prison riot enabled me simultaneously to exit Greenhaven and guarantee my anonymity, never mind how. Let us say, a mild exercise of my powers enabled me to inter my official identity in the safest of repositories and walk free. I returned to my hometown, there to live in seclusion as I carried out the search that continues to this day.

      The years have been long and frustrating. The adversary proved as slippery as promised, and there were times when he escaped my grasp just as it seemed to be closing around his miserable little neck. However, the year I escaped from prison I found that I had been granted one final, annually bestowed, ancestral boon, and this gift, which each year thereafter I anticipate with a savage, ferociously tender eagerness still capable of quickening my step and heartbeat alike, has sustained and nourished me throughout the bleak decades. By the indulgence of the Ancient Gods, a shadow’s shadow who was Star Dunstan’s son became present to me each year on his birthday.

      He has one more birthday left to him, his last. And wherever he is now, whether he slinks and skulks through the hospital corridors, the old houses on Cherry Street, or the Hatchtown taverns, whether he hides himself or walks unknowing through Edgerton’s avenues, streets, and hidden lanes, that day arrives in exactly one week.

2 How I Learned About River-Bottom

       16

      Nettie’s running shoes slapped against the hard red tiles, and a carpet-weave bag the size of a suitcase bounced against her hip. Most of the nurses and technicians inside the oval of the central station raised their heads. They wore loose green scrub suits like pajamas, and my state of mind gave them ash-blond hair and Nordic eyes. The combination suggested science fiction and alien abductions, an effect heightened by the space-station glow of their realm.

      Far down the room, Aunt May turned to the nearest crew member and announced, ‘That’s my niece’s son, Ned. He has fits.’

      Nettie pulled me into an embrace. Through the fabric of her bag I felt the hard shapes of bottles and jars. ‘When I called your place this morning, the phone rang and rang, and I said to May, “The boy’s on his way home,” didn’t I, May?’ She looked over her shoulder without releasing me, and the bag knocked into my ribs.

      ‘The Lord is my witness,’ May said.

      ‘Please,’ said Nurse Zwick. ‘I shouldn’t have to remind you people that this is an intensive care unit.’

      Nettie dropped her arms and stepped back. ‘Zwick, when you call us “you people,” what does that mean?’

      For a moment Nurse Zwick savored the pleasures to be had from explaining the meaning of the term ‘you people.’ Then she swung her chair toward the counter. ‘I was merely asking you to speak more softly.’

      The nurses and technicians had returned to their desks and private conversations. One of the men inside the station was an Indian or a Pakistani and one of the women was black, but to me, they still all looked alike. ‘Nettie, what happened?’ I asked. ‘How bad is it?’

      Her broad face was nearly unlined, but the misleading air of serenity given Nettie by smooth cheeks and a youthful forehead had been eroded by worry. ‘It’s bad,’ she said.

      Aunt May came toward us, supporting herself on a shiny metal cane. ‘It does me good to see this boy back in Edgerton.’ Both sisters wore the loose print dresses they had always favored, but where Nettie filled out hers with a columnar massivity, Aunt May’s hung like a sack. The cords of her neck stood out beside a deep hollow. When I got СКАЧАТЬ