"Dammit, this is the place!" he said in answer.
His hand was on the door—old, notched wood, a lock that had been replaced more than once; he pressed his hand, his body, against it.
The door opened inward easily. A push of tobacco smoke, thick as dust, greeted him, along with the stronger smells of any old bar: urinals long uncleaned, their towel machines empty, soap dish empty, a run of gurgling water in the brown-bleached sink, and a protesting squeal followed by nothing when the hot tap is turned; and beer, sour, run into every corner, dried but never gone, spills on the floor, green tiles rubbed nearly black with cigarette filters and the detritus from a thousand heavy shoes. There was a jukebox flat against one wall, in the shadows, its lights out save one faint amber bulb that pulsed like a retreating heartbeat. Pegs set into the warping paneled walls, dark as the floor, stained, another leak of water running silently from one ceiling corner to meet an ancient pool on the ground that never grew and never receded. The bar was not long but filled, smudged wood polished by coatsleeves, tarnished footstools with torn red leatherette seats. A bowling machine off in another corner showed no lights at all, a rug of dust covering its alley, the plug draped across the top.
The seats were filled with old men who turned as they entered; it was as if a nest of old birds had been disturbed, swiveling their hooded eyes to see what sort of animal approached. The bartender looked like one of them, perhaps elected to lift his aging body from his barstool, worn topcoat and all, and serve his fellow passengers. There was a glass in his hand, clouded, and he paused only a moment as they entered before turning his back on them to refill it from a bottle under the smoky mirror in back of the bar. His eyes turned up to the mirror, watching them there.
Someone at the bar snorted; swallowed phlegm.
"North Hill boys," someone grunted in dismissal, and the old men turned back to the bar, but all the eyes in the mirror, between the whiskey bottles, stayed on them.
"Dammit, this is it," Bill said too loudly. The world pendulumed up away from him, came to a standstill, pendulumed back the other way. He wanted to sit down. Once again his eyes hurt, and the world was divided into glowing blobs of light and surrounding darkness.
"We sneaked in and went right over there," he got out, pointing crookedly to an indistinct dark corner next to the jukebox.
"Follow me," he said, stumbling toward the dark corner.
His feet would not work properly, but suddenly he was there, falling onto the jukebox, his face bumping flush with the scratched dusty glass. "NIGHT AND DAY" —A-4, he saw, and then, mercifully, there were hands under his arms and he was pulled away. He expected to be taken to where damp sea air would greet him, but instead, there was a shuffling and his feet were on steps leading upward. He had never been so drunk. His boots scraped leadenly but then he remembered how to use them and he lifted one, then the other. He felt like a marionette, his feet flailing out and up in an approximation of climbing and yet smoothly supported by the arms that held him.
"Up?" he said, slurring his word horribly so that it sounded like the cry of a baby. He tried hopelessly to right his head and bring his eyes to focus, and then abruptly he could see for a moment. There was a steep up-sloping bank of steps ending in a wall. The wall got closer and then turned, and he looked up to see another series of steps ending at a huge—
"Paul? Jimmy?" A trapdoor dropped open in his mind, and he remembered it. He remembered where he had been. He heard giggling and he turned to see Paul beside him, his nine-year-old face stifling a laugh; Jimmy was on the other side and now Paul reached out, poking a finger into Jimmy's ribs and Jimmy threw his hands over his mouth, his eyes wide, trying not to cry out, and then turning to tell Paul in a severe whisper to shut up. They heard a creaking sound from below and the three of them stopped dead, leaning back against the wall and peering down into the shadows.
"You think someone saw us?" Paul whispered.
"Nah," Bill said, "not those old men. They're lost in their beer." Jimmy nodded, and they waited, still as mice, for another sound from below that didn't come.
"You really believe that crud about 'the man in the chair'?" Paul snorted in a low voice.
"You were there, you heard," Bill shot back, glancing up at what lay before them. "And pipe down."
"I think you put your big foot in your mouth," Paul persisted. He too was looking at the top of the stairway, but his tone remained derisive. "A bunch of bull— 'one man, and one only, from all the men in Greystone Bay, must always sit alone.'" He waggled his hands before him, his voice mocking in a whisper the spooky sing-song of a taleteller around a campfire. "So was the pact made, and so it continues—the safety of Greystone Bay for the life of one only." He opened his mouth and eyes wide, feigning fright, then broke into stifled giggles.
Beside him, Jimmy smiled grimly. "Didn't have to say you could find him, Bill. Everybody knows that story. I say there's nothing to it."
"I said I'd find him and I meant it. Let's go," Bill said, and they turned once more upward.
"Looks like the door from Twilight Zone," Paul said, but Jimmy hushed him as another creaking sound came. "That was you, idiot," Bill said, and he put his foot where Jimmy's had just been, producing another low crack of old worn wood.
The door was huge to them—four panels, the two on the top smaller, like squinting eyes. The knob was cut crystal, tarnished, like the ones in Bill's grandmother's summer house; he wondered if he would be able to turn it since he had so much trouble with those others—but then that had been because he was only three and he couldn't open any doors without difficulty.
"I hear somebody inside," Paul hissed, and they halted until Paul poked the two of them in the ribs, making them smother shouts. "Thought I did," Paul laughed.
"Come on," Bill said.
His hand was on the knob. It was just like those others, a thousand cut facets like imperfect prisms. It was slightly oval, fitting into the palm of his hand like a smooth Bay rock, a good one for skimming. He turned to smile at Paul and Jimmy, one step below him.
"Go ahead," Paul said, grinning stupidly, and Jimmy stared at him unblinking.
He turned the glass knob.
The door swung inward, as if pulled back by weights and pulleys. For a moment he saw nothing in the room but grey-yellow light and dust: a small hexagonal skylight choked with dirt, plastered walls with great rivers and tributaries of cracks, flaking holes, dark wood molding at the ceiling sagging out of its nail holes, pieces of it gone here and there, the floor covered with a sheen of undisturbed dust—and then he saw a chair with an old man in it.
"Holy shit," Bill said, and he reached for Jimmy and Paul but they weren't there. He heard their yells, their feet clattering down the stairway to the bar below.
The man in the chair opened his eyes once, a flutter of ancient eyelids like a lizard's, and it was over. After me, only you, Bill heard, though he didn't see the old man's lips move.
Bill blinked; time moved.
"Jimmy? Paul?" he called out. He stood over the threshold, the smell of mustiness in his nostrils, the glaring dead light from the six-sided skylight throwing the color of mustard at him. The room was empty. The arms were gone from under his; again, as before, he heard the sound of steps moving down the stairway behind him. He looked down, saw his army boots, and he felt his fatigue coat buttoned high around his neck. The room spun, came still; he saw off in one solitary corner the empty chair, high-backed, seat worn smooth—
"Jimmy! Paul!" he cried, knowing that his voice carried empty down the turning stairs, buried deep before it reached the floor below. "Jimmy..."