Every windscreen and headlight within fifty yards exploded into flying glass. Tires flew from their axles and spun over the macadam. Panicked horses reared, bolted forward, and rammed their carts against whatever was in their way. Burlap sacks spilled potatoes across the road. I saw a horse go down and vanish beneath wreckage, its toothpick legs sawing the air. The pressure of Cordwainer's arm lessened, and the knife fell away.
Over the sounds of collisions came the screaming of horses and the shouts of men. As the swan boat swerved off the road to veer around the damage, Ellie Hatch's weeping sounded in my ear from two feet away: it was not the voice of the woman now speeding into the distance, but her voice as remembered by the child in the seat behind her. Robert and I had colonized Cordwainer's mind and memory.
A bluebird tumbled to the floor of the ruin on New Providence
Road; a naked girl of eleven or twelve pressed her hand to the wound in her bleeding chest and reeled over the filthy cement; the young Max Edison nodded from behind the wheel of a limousine;The Dunwich Horror leaped from the extended hand of a uniformed boy;a uniformed man saiddisease; in a doorway on Chester Street, a knife entered a whore's belly; cartoon monsters descended from a cartoon sky; a fountain pen glided across a lined page; something lost, something irrevocably damaged, flew through the Hatchtown lanes, and that something was Cordwainer Hatch.
Robert shouted,Kill him, kill him! What's wrong with you?
I tasted Cordwainer's egotism and the illusion of a sacred cause and thought:Iknow how this ends.
The screams of terrified horses, the noises of collisions billowed from Wagon Road. I took the knife from Cordwainer's hand.
Release me!
"Okay, I'll release you," I said, and set him free. Robert shrieked in protest.
Cordwainer stumbled back, laughing. "You're too weak, you couldn't hold me." He looked at his empty hand. "Do you think I need a knife? Without your brother, you're nothing."
"What did you see?" I asked. "Did you see yourself?"
He surged over the grass. When Cordwainer slammed into me, I twisted sideways to absorb the shock and wrapped my arms around him. The three of us fell through a sudden trap door at the side of the beaten path.
•118
•Still in the momentum of his assault, Cordwainer Hatch rolled from my grip and struck the table in my room at the Brazen Head. He groaned and pressed his hands over his eyes.
"Take your time," I said.
Cordwainer lowered his hands, examined his surroundings, and swept the hat from his head. The ghost of Edward Rinehart shone in his ruined face. "Even the weakling has a little fight in him." He glanced over his shoulder and backed against the wall, weighing his options.
Killhim! Robert urged.He's confused, he doesn't understand what happened.
It's going to get a lot worse for him,I told Robert. Justwait. To Cordwainer, I said, "Do you remember that day? Do you know what happened on Wagon Road?"
I could see him decide to sound me out. He lowered his hat to the table in a parody of a diplomatic gesture—he was hooked, and his next words proved it. "Let's declare a temporary truce. This is about the last thing I anticipated, but now we have this interesting opportunity to hear what the other has to say. I want you to describe your fantasies. When you have finished, I will explain reality. Reality is going toastound you. Considering what you did to me, my offer is extraordinarily generous. But you will pay for your obscene crime, I assure you."
Robert said,Let's put his eyes out. Let's make him squeal.
He's going to squeal, all right,I said back.The worst moments of his entire life are about to happen.
"Looks like I guessed wrong," I said to Cordwainer. "You were supposed to get so angry you wouldn't be able to function."
"Oh, youangered me. And I'll grant you this, you're stronger than I imagined. But there's no sense continuing this discussion without your brother. You've lost whatever surprise factor you were counting on, so bring him in."
“I eliminated my brother this morning. He was a useless impediment. Since you're willing to listen to my fantasy, as you call it, I want to show you a few things."
Cordwainer gave me a wary scrutiny. Whatever he saw must have persuaded him that I was telling the truth. "Congratulations. Why don't you begin by telling me what you find significant about a few ancient collisions on Wagon Road?"
At that moment, I felt very much like Robert. “Instead, why don't you begin by telling me about the house on the edge of Johnson's Woods?"
Cordwainer's face twisted into a smug, ghastly smile. "You wouldn't understand. You couldn't."
"Then I'll give you some information you probably don't know. Carpenter Hatch bought that property from Howard Dunstan's daughters. It was where Howard spent his whole life, and when it burned down, he died in the fire."
He moved alongside the table, settled his hand on the back of a chair, and gazed at the ceiling. Cordwainer had decided to humor me. "Really, this is completely absurd. The man I thought of as my father bought that land to build houses for what he called the rising scum. The Dunstans never had any connection to the property. They swarmed into Cherry Street like roaches, and they never left."
The same crazy triumph with which he had told me about secret messages in H. P. Lovecraft irradiated him. "That house was the residence of a god."
"Howard Dunstan was a sort of Elder God," I said. "That's what is so interesting about what he did to you."
Cordwainer's mouth opened in soundless hilarity.
"You're amused," I said.
“I'm in awe. Your mother filled you with the most amazing nonsense."
I took the photograph of Howard in his wing collar and high-buttoned waistcoat from the folder and slid it toward him. He smiled at it in negligent disdain. "You're looking at Howard Dunstan," I said. "Your real father."
"Did you make this up all by yourself, or was Star crazy, too?"
I moved a photograph of Carpenter Hatch alongside the first. "Which one of these men would you say was your biological father?"
Cordwainer barely glanced at the photographs. “I don't expect you to understand this, but my true fathers were not of this earth."
"Let me tell you about your half-sister Queenie," I said. "The first of Howard's four daughters. Queenie could read people's minds and go from one place to another in an eye-blink. She didn't walk, she didn't bother to open doors or climb stairs, she justwent. It's a Dunstan talent, like walking through walls, and she got it from Howard. When May Dunstan, her sister, was a young woman, a boyfriend tried to rape her. She turned him into a green puddle."
Cordwainer's face twitched. His eyes rose to meet ours.
"May caused that scene onWagon Road. The instant she saw you, she knew you were Howard's son. You looked too much like him to be anything else. Look at his picture, Cordwainer. Whatever abilities you and I have, we inherited from Howard Dunstan."
"She reduced a man to a green puddle?" Cordwainer was staring from the far edge of the table. "You know that for a fact?"