It's certainly something to think about.
“Roger?” Herb asked. He was still standing by his door, and he sounded timid again. “She... she's not in there, is she?”
“No,” Roger said absently, “you know she's not. Sandra's on her way back from Cony Island. But our friend from Central Falls is finally present and accounted for.”
We gathered around the door and looked in.
Carlos Detweiller lay face-down in what Anthony LaScorbia would undoubtedly call “a gruesome pool of spreading blood.” The back of his suit-coat was pulled upward in a tent-shape, and the tip of a knife protruded through it. His hands were outstretched toward the desk. His feet, pointing toward the door, had already been partially covered by thin green bows of ivy. Zenith had actually pulled off one of his loafers and worked his way through the sock beneath. Maybe there was a hole in the sock to begin with, but somehow I don't think so. Because there were broken strands of ivy, you see. As if it had tried to pull him out, out and down toward the main mass of the growth, and had been unable. You could almost feel the hunger. The longing to have his carcass the way it had undoubtedly already had the General's.
“This is where they fought, of course,” Roger said, still in that absent tone of voice. He saw the Rainy Day Friend lying on the floor, picked it up, sniffed at the little hole on top, and winced. His eyes began to water at once.
“If you set off the siren in that thing again, I will be forced to kill you as dead as the asshole at your feet,” Bill said.
“I think the battery's fried,” Roger said, but he set the thing down on Sandra's desk very carefully, also being careful not to step on Detweiller's outstretched hand.
Carlos had been in my office, because I was the one against whom he'd built his grudge. Then he left for something.
“I think it was food,” Bill said. “He got hungry and went looking for food. The General jumped him. Carlos got to Sandra's gadget before Hecksler could give him the coup de grace, but it wasn't enough. Do you see that part, John?”
I shook my head. Maybe I just didn't want to see it.
“What's this?” Bill was out in the hall. He dropped to one knee, moved aside a clump of ivy, and showed us a guitar pick. Like the leaves of Zenith himself, the pick was as clean as a whistle. No blood, I mean.
“Something printed on it,” Bill said, and squinted. “JUST A CLOSER WALK WITH THEE, it says.”
Roger looked at me, finally startled out of his daze. “Good God, John,” he said, “that was him! He was her!”
“What are you talking about?” Bill asked, turning the pick over and over in his fingers. “What are you thinking about? Who's Crazy Guitar Gertie?”
“The General,” I said hollowly, and wondered if he'd had the knife when I gave him the two dollars. If Herb had been there that day, he'd be dead now. There was absolutely no question about that in my mind. And I myself was lucky to be alive.
“Well, I wasn't there, and you are alive,” Herb said. He spoke with his old don't-trouble-me-with-the-details irritability, but his face was still pale and shocked, the face of a man who is running entirely on instinct. “And congratulations, Gelb, you just left your dabs on that guitar pick. Better wipe em off.”
I could see other stuff scattered amid the thickening greenery back down the halclass="underline" shredded bits of clothing, a few pieces of what looked like a pamphlet of some kind, paper money, coins.
“Fingerprints aren't a problem because nobody's ever going to see any of the old coot's stuff,” Roger said. He took the pick from Bill, briefly examined the printing, then walked a little way down the corridor. The drifts and clumps of ivy drew back for him, just as I had known they would. Roger tossed the pick. A leaf folded over it and it was gone. Just like that.
Then, in my head, I heard Roger's voice. Zenith! As if calling a dog. Eat this crap up! Make it gone!
And for the first time I heard it speak a coherent reply. There isn't anything I can do about the coins. Or these damn things. Halfway up the wall, just beyond Herb's office door, a shiny green leaf almost the size of a dinner plate unrolled. Something bright dropped to the carpet with a clink. I walked down and picked up Iron-Guts's Army ID tags on a silver beaded chain. Feeling very weird about it—you must believe me when I say words cannot begin to tell—I slipped them into my pants pocket. Meanwhile, Bill and Herb were picking up the General's silver change. As this went on, there was a low rustling sound. The bits of clothing and shreds of paper were disappearing back into the jungle where the front corridor becomes the back one.
“And Detweiller?” Bill asked in a hushed voice. “Same deal?”
Roger's eyes met mine for a moment, questioning. Then we shook our heads, both at the same time.
“Why not?” Herb asked.
“Too dangerous,” I said.
We waited for Zenith to speak again, to contradict the idea, perhaps, but there was nothing.
“Then what?” Herb asked plaintively. “What are we supposed to do with him? What are we supposed to do with his goddam briefcase? For that matter, what are we supposed to do with any little pieces of the General we come across in the back corridor? His belt-buckle, for instance?”
Before any of us could answer, a man's voice called from the reception area. “Hello? Is anyone here?”
We looked at each other in utter surprise, in that first moment too shocked for panic.
From the journals of Riddley Walker
4/5/81
When I got to the train station, I stuck my suitcase into the first unoccupied coin-op locker I came to, snatched the key with the big orange head out of the lock, and dropped it into my pocket, where it will undoubtedly stay at least until tomorrow. The worst is over—for now—but I can't even think about getting my luggage, or doing any sort of ordinary chore. Not yet. I'm too exhausted. Physically, yes, but I'll tell you what's worse: I'm morally exhausted. I think that is a result of returning to Zenith House so soon upon the heels of my nightmare falling-out with my sisters and brother. Any high moral ground I might have claimed when the train pulled out of Birmingham is all gone now, I can assure you. It's hard to feel moral after you've crossed the George Washington Bridge with a body in the back of a borrowed panel truck. Very hard indeed. And I can't get that goddamned whitebread John Denver song out of my head. “There's a fire softly burning, supper's on the stove, gee it's good to be back home again.” That's one wad I'm tard of chewin', Uncle Michael might have said.
But 490 Park Avenue did feel like home. Does. In spite of all the horror and strangeness, it feels like home. Kenton knows. The others, too, but Kenton knows it best of all. I've grown to like them all (in my own admittedly involuted way), but Kenton is the one I respect. And if this situation starts to spin out of control, I believe it's Kenton that I'd go to. Although I must say this before plunging back into narrative: I'm afraid of myself now. Afraid of my capacity to do ill, and to carry on doing ill until it's too late to turn around and make amends.