The Sandman, page 12
Hunter said, “Something wrong?”
“Just a crazy idea. Maybe it’ll turn into a story.”
“Really?”
“You never know.”
“Ah.” Hunter cut into his dessert. “What you said about art out of dead things. That’s a metaphor, right? So it’s not relevant. Who do you feel for when you write? Honestly?”
Confry finished his Tokay, then smiled. “Honestly? Okay. I admit it, I love my monsters.”
“I knew it!” Hunter slapped the table, rattling glassware.
“The monsters can do anything,” said Confry, his meal and his suspicions forgotten. “Which means I, in turn, can do nothing at all. It’s the greatest freedom, having characters act for you.”
“Oh? Which is greater, the shadow or the substance?”
Confry laughed. “The shadow. The police don’t get you for fiction, no matter how badly written.”
“You’re never tempted to act out the things you imagine?”
“Imagining them is the acting out.”
After a sip of coffee, Hunter said, “You do a lot of research.”
“Some.”
“Ever interview a killer?”
Confry shook his head. “I read a lot. And I know enough about my own impulses to extrapolate, I like to think. Besides, real killers are pathetic.”
“Oh?”
“Sure.” He had made this argument before, so it came easily. “Your average killer’s someone who’s drunk or high who kills a friend, a neighbor, or a family member. Nothing interesting there. Hired killers tend to be simple people with little education. They don’t have any real sense of the humanity of anyone who isn’t part of their family, clan, business group, or”—he smiled at his cleverness—“in the case of armies, nation. That’s not very interesting either. Mass murderers and serial killers are the sorriest of the lot. They’re stupid or ignorant and usually both, and they only succeed for as long as they do because they’re so pathetic that no one suspects them. Usually they’ve been abused as kids. Look at the Wisconsin boys, Ed Gein and Jeffrey Dahmer. Once you learn a little about them, they’re pitiful, not horrible.” Confry sighed. “That’s why I write about brilliant sociopaths and wealthy megalo-maniacs. Dracula’s heirs. The stuff of fiction. Of fairly popular fiction, if you’ll forgive a bit of immodesty.”
Hunter sipped his wine. “You don’t think people like that exist?”
“About the best you get is Ted Bundy. And he was a lying little weasel compensating for a failed personal life.”
“Which is the failed life? The life in a world that couldn’t understand him? Or the life that he made for himself in private with his prey?”
Confry set down his glass. “Hey, I can entertain that argument, but it really doesn’t amuse me.”
“Fine.” Hunter smiled. “Bundy was a failure. He was caught. But what about the ones who aren’t? Who knows how many they are, or how clever they may be?”
“How many miles of unexplored caves in Carlsbad?” Confry laughed.
“Seriously.”
“Seriously? Well, sure, there are some who’re never caught, but that’s because they quit before the police get close. They get frightened, or find religion, or kill themselves. It doesn’t change the profile.”
“They must get caught?”
“They tend to get caught. You kill a few people, you’re going to leave a trail.”
“Really?” said Hunter. “This country expects to find people killed. Forty thousand automobile victims a year. Thirty thousand suicides. Twenty thousand fatal home accidents. How many of those were faked? Then there’s missing people. How many of them—” Hunter’s eyes narrowed. “Does this bother you?”
“What?”
“Talking about killing with a fan you don’t know.”
Confry made himself laugh. “Isn’t that what most of my books are?”
Hunter smiled. “I knew you understood.”
Confry knew then that he understood, too. If his understanding was wrong, he might look foolish. If his understanding was right, he could not stay in this hotel. “I should make that call before opening ceremonies. I noticed a gas station down the block.”
“Damn, I wish there was more time. We start in a couple minutes.”
Confry stood. “Tell you what. You get the bill. I’ll run to the corner. Won’t take five minutes.” He looked around the room. Only a few attendees were still in the restaurant, and none of them were paying attention to him.
“You’re determined?”
Confry began walking away. “It’s important. Jan’s expecting it. I’ll be right back.”
He felt as though every eye in the hotel rode upon his shoulders. That made him think about the jar of eyes, and the sounds from the crate, and the jerky he had eaten. He kept his face still. He had no idea whether he was walking too fast or too slowly or perfectly normally, but he knew he wasn’t running, and, more importantly, no one was running after him.
At the front door, he felt something like hope and something like embarrassment. He wanted to turn and agree that the call could wait. An active imagination was an occupational hazard. Would he really go to the nearest phone, call the police, and tell them that most of the country’s serial killers had gathered for a convention? The idea was insane, but when he thought about what he had seen and heard, he knew he would rather be paranoid than dead.
The night air, cool and moist, drove his doubts away. He strode across the well-lit sidewalk and headed for the parking lot. Someone walked toward the hotel, undoubtedly another member of the convention. Confry continued on, keeping his eyes averted, planning to run only when he was out of the parking lot lights and close to the street.
Something about the man’s silhouette seemed familiar, familiar enough to draw Confry’s gaze until he recognized Karl-with-a-K, the Commando-Wanna-be from the signing.
Karl-with-a-K said, “I came to hear you talk.”
“That’s great! I got to make a call, ’cause the phones are out here, but—”
Karl-with-a-K seized his arm, spinning him toward the hotel. Fan Man ran silently toward them, and Hunter walked behind him at a comfortable pace.
Confry said, “Please. Let me go. I don’t know any of your names.”
Karl-with-a-K said, “You know mine, Mr. Confry.”
“I sign thousands of books, I—I don’t remember anything that the police could use. I thought—” Confry swallowed. “I thought you liked my work.”
Fan Man nodded several times. “That’s why you’re here.”
Confry screamed, “Police! Help me! Police!” He stopped when he heard the others join in like a chorus of drunks or madmen. Karl-with-a-K shouted, “Eee-hah!” and Fan Man shouted, “Listen to this!” then screeched even louder than Confry had.
In the following silence, Hunter said, “Smokey’s a state trooper. Even if someone came to investigate, they’d leave after he said a few of the boys had had a li’l too much to drink.”
Confry said, “This is, ah, a joke. Some kind of hidden video show, right? Scare the scaremeister, am I right?”
Fan Man drew a Swiss Army knife from his pocket and opened one of its shorter blades. “I’ll cut something off you if it’ll make you feel better. I collect Peter Confry mementos.”
Confry shook his head. “You—” He bit back the impulse to say, “—can’t let me live,” and finished, “—won’t hurt me?”
Hunter said, “We don’t want to hurt you.”
Fan Man, pocketing his knife, said, “And we don’t want anyone else to hurt you. We all agreed.”
Hunter tapped Confry’s chest. “We want you to write about us.” He smiled. “Because no one will believe you. Isn’t that right?”
Confry nodded, pursed his lips, then nodded again more slowly to show them he thought that was reasonable. “I’d do that. I’d love to do that. It’d be a great book. Sure. It’s a deal.”
“Good. Let’s go inside.”
“Oh. Sure.” He looked at them, wondered how far he would get if he ran, and began to walk toward the hotel.
In front of the door, though he knew it was too late, he stopped. The others looked at him with something like kindness, and Hunter said, “Yes?”
“How do I know? That you know. That you can trust me?”
Hunter nodded. “It’s simple, really.”
“Simple,” Karl-with-a-K agreed.
Hunter put a hand on Confry’s shoulder, propelling him into the hotel. “When we disperse at the end of the convention, and you get left at the airport, you could go to the police and describe some of us well enough to catch us.”
Confry said, “I wouldn’t.”
Hunter smiled. “But you couldn’t hope to find all of us. And you know that any of us could find you, now, don’t you?”
HIS THROAT WAS so dry that his tongue felt like a dead toad. He would remember that the next time he needed to describe a nagging awareness of an unconfirmed fear. He sat on a metal folding chair in the front row of the Rhett Butler Room and listened as Hunter took the stage. Fan Man sat on one side of him, and Karl-with-a-K, wearing a badge naming him. “The Neat Freak,” sat on the other. The guards were not necessary. A hundred people or more filled the room. All of them knew he was not one of them.
Hunter told a joke. For Confry, the sentences did not parse. At the punch line, “He used a scythe,” he laughed with the audience. That seemed better than vomiting. When Hunter told the second rule of the convention, that no one was to do any collecting until the convention was over and everyone was at least two hundred miles away, he winked at Confry, and Confry grew calmer. He felt like a reporter on the front lines of battle. When this was over, he would go home, and though he would never tell anyone what had happened this weekend, he would tell Jan that he would do anything for her and the girls, even if that meant learning how he had failed them.
Hunter introduced a man in sunglasses as the guest of honor. Fan Man whispered, “Whoa, the Corinthian!” Several seats away, someone whispered loudly, “Fuckin’ injury to fuckin’ eye fetishist.”
The man in sunglasses grinned and waved. He spoke briefly about opportunity, self-expression, and the satisfaction of pursuing a dream. As Confry tried not to wonder what someone would do to win the admiration of this crowd, Hunter took the stage again and introduced his favorite author, and America’s, Peter Confry.
Fan Man chanted, “Speech, speech, speech, speech!”
Karl-with-a-K nudged Confry. “Go on, Mr. Confry. This is what I came for.”
He walked awkwardly to the podium, clenched it in both hands, then waved to the crowd. Hunter indicated the microphone and whispered, “Say something. We’d appreciate it.”
The crowd looked much like any other crowd, and his fear was much like his usual fear of speaking before any crowd. “Hi. Er. This is, er, an honor. I didn’t, ah, prepare a speech, but, er, I’d like to say, ah, thank you.” As the applause began, he added, “I’d also like to say, ah, I appreciate your trust. And, um, I won’t let you down. I’ll write a book about this weekend, but I know how to disguise people in fiction. Um, it’ll be the best thing I’ve done. And it’ll all be for you. It’ll inspire me to keep writing better and better books, and that’ll be our secret. Ah, thanks again.”
As he turned toward his seat, Hunter spoke into the microphone. “Don’t sit yet, Pete. A few of us got together to get you a present.”
Half of the crowd smiled. The rest merely watched. Confry did not know which disturbed him more. He said, “You didn’t have to.”
“Oh, yes, we did.”
An obese man in a skull cap topped with Batman ears wheeled the crate marked “Work in Progress” onto the stage. Whistling “Hi Ho, Hi Ho, It’s Off to Work We Go,” he and Karl-with-a-K pulled nails with a hammer and a crowbar.
As the side of the crate came away, a set of black-jeaned legs and another set in torn fishnets, both bound at the ankles with silver tape, kicked outward. Continued thrashing told Confry that the people were alive, and so did their muffled, desperate grunts. High on one of the stockinged legs, a gap in the netting revealed an inked cat’s head caught in an eternal wink.
“Don’t be shy,” said Hunter. “You remember Ron and Keri from the bookstore?”
Karl and the man in the Batman cap dragged the Nice Young Couple out of the crate. They stared at Confry over wide bands of silver tape that sealed their mouths.
In the audience, several people shouted, “Hi, Ron and Keri!”
Hunter said, “Ron and Keri are from Mobile. They’re big Confry fans. They told Grandma they’d be back by Sunday. Come Monday, someone’ll start looking for them, and they’ll find their car far from here, by a river at a roadside rest that’s on their route home.”
“Please,” Confry whispered. “Let them go.”
Hunter shook his head. “There’s something I didn’t tell you. The threat about never being safe from all of us, well, that’s an appeal to logic, and people simply aren’t logical. You might get a notion that your life is worth risking to capture a few of us, or you might think the government could hide you under a new identity. You might even decide we could do for your sales what the Ayatollah did for Rushdie’s.”
“I wouldn’t. Honest.”
“I know that. But the rest of the folks here don’t. Neat Freak?”
Karl-with-a-K came back with a plastic box. Hunter said, “Battery recharger, jumper cables, miscellaneous clamps. Glue. A hacksaw. Dishwashing gloves and condoms for those who like to play safe. It’s wonderful how much fun can be had in the average home.”
Fan Man spread a plastic tarp on stage, then rolled the Nice Young Couple onto it.
Karl-with-a-K reached his free hand into the trousers of his fatigue pants and drew out a black commando knife. As he handed it to Confry, he said, “Careful, Mr. Confry. It’s sharp.”
Confry glanced at Hunter, who nodded. “Okay. First I’ll cut them free, then—”
Hunter shook his head.
The breathing of a hundred or more people seemed very loud in the absence of other sound. The Nice Young Couple breathed loudest of all. What was the sound of a dog’s breath as it ran before an oncoming car? Confry could not remember. He looked at the couple, and then at the dark blade in his hand, and then at Hunter. “What do you want?”
Hunter smiled. “You get to choose. Be one of us.” He shrugged and jerked a finger at the Nice Young Couple. “Or one of them.”
Karl-with-a-K drew a Luger and pointed it at Confry’s knee. “I’ll always think you’re the very best writer, no matter what.”
Seven Nights in Slumberland
George Alec Effinger
George Alec Effinger lives in New Orleans. He has written many novels and many short stories and won many awards, and he can recommend a strange-but-wonderful restaurant with the very best of them.
Winsor McCay has been dead for many years. He was drawing comics that are stranger, more inventive, and more innovative than anything you’ll see today.
Effinger builds something more than a simple pastiche. It’s the literary equivalent of a Winsor McCay comic. But, as you’ll see, it’s more than that.
The First Night:
THE YEAR WAS 1905. LITTLE NEMO WAS SIX YEARS OLD, and he was having trouble falling asleep. He wore a long white nightshirt, and he lay between stiffly starched and ironed muslin sheets in his wooden bed with the high headboard. He said, “I hope I can get to the palace in Slumberland tonight. I do so want to meet the Princess again. Yes! I hope I don’t wake up before I get there.”
The lonesome Princess had sent many of her servants and subjects to lead Nemo to the royal palace of her father, the King of Slumberland, but almost every night some accident or adventure caused the boy to waken before he arrived. Every night Nemo’s papa and mama were roused by the sound of his tumbling from his bed in the throes of his dream struggles. Every morning they wondered what ailed the boy, and determined that he should never again be allowed to eat cheese toast at bedtime.
On this night, the Princess of Slumberland had sent a special courier with wonderful news to Nemo. The courier’s name was Lopopo, and he was a tall, thin man with a tuft of red hair and a wide, friendly grin. He was wearing a fine purple coat with wide lapels, green tights, and green boots, and he had a very high green hat that came to a point. “Oh, Nemo,” he said politely, “the Princess herself has sent me with this invitation. It is for you, yes!”
Nemo took an envelope from Lopopo and opened it. Inside were a pasteboard ticket and a brief note from the Royal Box Office of Slumberland. “This is for me?” the boy asked.
“Yes, yes. There is to be a special base-ball game played for the entertainment of the Princess. That ticket is for you. You will join the Princess at the stadium, and after the game I will present you to His Majesty.”
“A base-ball game! Oh, I am excited!”
Lopopo led Nemo down a flight of stairs that had never before existed in the boy’s bedroom. “Yes, it will be a thrilling contest, I have no doubt, a game between the New York Giants and the Pittsburgh Pirates. They are the two best teams in the National League.”
Nemo was so pleased that he clapped his hands. “The New York Giants are Papa’s favorite! He will wish that he had come with me. Oh!”
At the bottom of the stairs, Nemo discovered that they were in a low-ceilinged tunnel. Torches mounted along the sides of the tunnel gave a smoky light, and it glittered on the facets of many colored gems that decorated the walls.
“This cavern will lead us to Slumberland, all right,” Lopopo said. “It is only about a thousand miles long. Then it is but another five hundred miles through the King’s realm to the Slumberland Stadium. We will be there soon, ha!”
They walked for a very long time, and Nemo was surprised by all the bizarre and wonderful sights to be seen in Slumberland and its outlying reaches. He was beginning to grow tired, though, and he stopped and stretched. “Will we ever get there?” he asked.
