Hideous Faces, Beautiful Skulls. Mark McLaughlin

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СКАЧАТЬ was a mission of liberation. Time would erase any doubts on the matter.

      He had not questioned Card too closely; he hadn’t even asked what void would house the vanished Mr. Linfield. He only knew that the old man’s torment on earth would soon be over. Or possibly, was already over; the pale man had not specified when the disappearance would take place.

      The next cartoon was about a little girl whose imaginary playmate, a giant wise-cracking caterpillar, was always getting her into trouble. He had to admit that the animation was of a slightly higher quality than the previous show. Strolling through a park, the girl sat down on a bench next to a tramp sleeping under newspapers.

      The caterpillar crawled after the girl and—what was this? The tramp tore away the newspaper and began to cackle insanely; his swollen belly shook with each laugh.

      It was not an animated figure. It was Mr. Linfield.

      The mad-eyed old man pulled a length of wire out of his pocket and wrapped it around the girl’s neck, tighter, tighter—

      Michael grabbed the remote control. On another channel, Mr. Linfield was strangling the Reverend Tillson Parker with a ragged handful of copper wires.

      Michael turned off the television. For a moment, he simply sat and stared. Then he went to the door and opened it a crack.

      He could hear faint sounds from the other apartments. People talking. Televisions blaring. But no panic. No screams of horror.

      * * * *

      That afternoon, Michael went to the mall with a group of friends.

      Walking from store to store was a nightmare. He never realized how many televisions were on display. Some store windows were completely filled with them. There were cameras and monitors everywhere, to discourage shoplifters. And on each screen loomed Mr. Linfield for only Michael to see. Mr. Linfield, eyes shadowed with hatred, strangling anchormen, sports figures, shoppers.

      At one point, Michael saw his own image on a store monitor. He ran out of camera range when he saw an approaching figure on the screen.

      Outside of a shoe store, an elderly woman in ragged clothes asked him for spare change. He dug up a few coins from his pockets—eighty-five cents, total. He gave her a dime and hurried on.

      * * * *

      The next morning, Michael did not watch the news.

      Fortunately, there were no TV sets in the office where he worked. Even so, his boss complained that he seemed distracted. So he concentrated—concentrated on the bland invoices and shipping orders with a fervor that made his head pound. He needed this job and could not afford to slip up.

      * * * *

      Cross moved his pillows to make room. “I didn’t expect you back.”

      “You didn’t say that I would keep seeing him.” Michael was about to scratch an itch on his cheek, then stopped when his hand touched the handkerchief. Briefly, he recounted his experiences at home and at the mall. The wires hummed incessantly.

      “I don’t understand,” the pale man said. “What you have told me is impossible.”

      “Why? Where is Mr. Linfield now?” Michael looked to the dresser, then to the nightstand. There were no photographs of Card in the room. “In Hell?”

      Card reached under his mattress and pulled out handful after handful of sketches and photographs. “Fodder,” he said, piling them on the bed and on Michael’s lap. “Mere fodder. He’s within me, forever. They all are. Now tell me who’s in Hell.”

      Michael stared at the faces. Thin-skinned old women. Young, hard-looking men. A boy with bad teeth. A deformed infant. A girl with dark, blank eyes. Dozens of faces, many ugly, many mean-spirited. The unloved. The unwanted.

      Most of the sketches were discolored and brittle. Some of the photographs were faded with age. Michael swept the faces off his lap. “What are you?”

      “You’ve asked me that before,” Card said, “and my answer remains the same. A man in a room.”

      Michael pointed to the sketch of Mr. Linfield. “I don’t want to see him again.”

      Card sighed wearily. “There’s nothing I can do. It’s just in your mind.”

      * * * *

      Michael pulled the cord out of his television. He stayed out of the mall. Even so, he could not help but catch glimpses of his friends’ sets, or those in businesses.

      In the weeks that followed, Mr. Linfield’s video image grew more violent. After strangling his victims, he would begin to gnaw at their faces.

      Once, while walking home from the grocery store, Michael was accosted by a streetperson in a ragged sweater. He cried out—but it wasn’t Mr. Linfield. The old man grabbed his coat sleeve and offered to carry the groceries for a dollar. Michael set down the sacks and shoved him out of his path, into a row of hedges. There was a can of insecticide in one of the sacks. For one frenzied moment he considered spraying the old man’s face. Instead he grabbed his groceries and ran off.

      Michael began to wonder. Was Card more or less real than himself? Was this all a game? The pale man was clever, like a demon. He had a pained, kind face, but still, a demon could wear a mask.

      * * * *

      Soon Michael’s dreams were filled with televisions. Televisions depicting moments from his life, like scenes from home movies, always with Mr. Linfield lurking in the background.

      In one dream, Michael watched a huge TV screen floating through space and saw himself as a boy, talking with Mother on the front porch of his parent’s house. Mother was cross with him: he hadn’t finished cutting the lawn. She explained that he had to learn responsibility. Why, if he didn’t, there was no telling what would become of him. Lecture over, Mother gave him a big hug. His face was smothered against her bosom; her lilac perfume made his nose itch. But then the smell of lilacs was overpowered by a hot, meaty smell. He tore free of Mother’s embrace and screamed. Mother’s throat was wrapped in a bloody snarl of wire, and Mr. Linfield was biting into her cheek.

      The dream-scenes all ended that way. Mr. Linfield would appear with his wire to devour the face of a parent. A sibling. A coworker. A lover.

      Michael stopped seeing his friends. He stopped going to work. He felt sure that Mr. Linfield had been sent by Card. A puzzle filled his mind, and he needed time to work it through. His continued existence depended on the answer.

      He sat home alone, frightened, thinking. He didn’t use the phone or answer his mail. He kept his life to a precarious minimum so that the evil threatening him could find no new avenue for intrusion.

      * * * *

      Card’s brow wrinkled with alarm. “You didn’t cover your face. What are you doing?”

      Michael moved in a straight line from the door to the bed. In the yard of the gray house, he had picked up an old board. He used this to pound and snap the wires. His foot caught the cord on the electric fan, pulling it to the floor. The hum of the wires died. “He’s in my dreams now. I haven’t slept for days. You’ve got to call him off.”

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