The Mall of Cthulhu Page 6

  "So as you can see it's a little snug, but it's easy walking distance to Brown and downtown, and of course the mall. The State House—didn't you say you'd be working at the State House?"

  "Yes."

  "That's great. You can walk to work in twenty minutes, or drive in five. And hopefully you and your fella can put some money away while you're here so you can afford a better wedding."

  Laura pasted a smile onto her face. "That sounds great. I haven't even dared to tell him what the dress cost."

  "Honey, take my advice. Don't. Don't tell him what anything costs. What he doesn't know won't hurt you." Aline grinned conspiratorially at Laura, who gave a giggle that she hoped was the appropriate response for one of these "we sure do put one over on the boys" conversations that her real self would never have.

  She went back to Aline's office, signed a check and the rental agreement and got the keys. She spent the next hour procuring a futon with sheets and a blanket and a prepaid cell phone for Ted's use. She dumped all the stuff in the apartment and went to the coffee shop to meet Ted.

  He was in line right in front of her and surprised her by not waving and smiling and blowing their cover. As Laura added milk and Splenda to her coffee and Ted fumbled with the half-and-half, she laid the key and Aline's card with the apartment address on the counter by the stirrer sticks and Ted palmed it like a pro. She took her coffee to go and looked back at Ted sitting alone at the table. As she walked back to the car, she felt a terrible sadness and longing to go back and be with Ted. She wondered if this was how parents felt when they left their kids playing in the block corner in preschool and went off to work for the first time.

  It was dark as she drove back to Boston, and she tried listening to NPR, but she couldn't focus. She found herself worrying about Ted. She resisted the urge to call him until she got half an hour away, and he didn't answer. Her heart started pounding, and she wondered if she should turn around at the next exit. She told herself she was being silly, that she'd try him again in ten minutes, and she was reaching for her phone to call him again when it started ringing. She saw it was Ted and felt a surge of relief.

  "Hey," he said. "Sorry I missed your call, but I kinda had my hands full, if you know what I mean. You think you could have furnished some tissues here?"

  "Aaagh! I just wanted to check and make sure you were okay, but obviously you're well enough to be disgusting. Good night."

  "Good night. Oh, and, um. Thank you. For everything."

  "You're welcome," she said, and hung up the phone.

  Seven

  Ted woke up disoriented, then realized he was in his new apartment in Providence. He shuffled to the bathroom, his footsteps echoing loudly through the nearly empty apartment, peed for a really surprising length of time, and went into the kitchen nook. The peeling brown linoleum on the floor felt disgustingly moist on Ted's feet. He opened the fridge and found it empty and smelling slightly musty. Okay. He had to get out of here.

  He padded back to the futon and found the instructions Laura had written out for him. She really did think he was an idiot. "Drink only enough caffeine to stay alert—you don't want to pee too much," she'd written, followed by, "Bring a container to pee into if you think you can do it discreetly. Getting arrested for indecent exposure would compromise your investigation. ☺" The smiley face was doubly annoying because it was so un-Laura and seemed to be saying, "I am completely serious but I think you'll take my condescension better if I present it in a semi-joking way."

  And, anyway, temple surveillance sounded boring as shit. Laura had obviously spent too much time in a cubicle doing the boring scutwork of law enforcement. Well, she had to do what her superiors said, but Ted sure didn't. He wasn't going to lurk around watching kids go to Hebrew school while a pack of deranged killers who were, at least in their minds, in league with supernatural forces of evil, roamed the streets free. No. The hell with that. He was going looking for the Necronomicon.

  Or at least looking for the people looking for the Necronomicon. The first stop was the library at Brown. He went back to the bathroom and examined himself in the mirror.

  He was unshaven, he hadn't brushed his teeth, his head was looking slightly stubbly, and he was wearing clothes he'd slept in. "Perfect day to impersonate a grad student," Ted said to his reflection. He grabbed the stack of cash Laura had left so that he could go to the mall later and get himself a new wardrobe, pocketed his key, and left the house.

  Ted walked down the street in the direction he thought he remembered Brown being in. He knew he was on the right track when his surroundings turned from working-class Italian to broke-upper-class college student and the bakeries and corner markets turned into used CD stores and coffee shops. Finally he reached the Brown campus.

  It was a beautiful spring day. Ted enjoyed the smell of the air and the slightly cold breeze on his face. He found a campus map and located the bookstore and the Rockefeller Library and wandered slowly across the campus. The streets, sidewalks, and greens were full of students, and there was infectious joy about the end of winter in the air. All of the students were rushing the season—they'd shed their parkas and sweatshirts and were strolling around in shorts and short-sleeved shirts and even, right across the street, a tank top, though it couldn't be sixty degrees yet. Ted just took in the parade of undergraduate girls. Legs were visible, arms were visible, breasts were concealed by only one or two layers, and, thanks to the wind, nipples were, for the most part, erect. It was springtime, and everything seemed beautiful, and for the first time in ten years, Ted had something important to do. For the first time since Half-caf had shot up the Queequeg's, and probably for the first time since the fire, Ted had the fully formed thought that he was glad he wasn't dead.

  He exited the gate on Prospect Street and realized Laura had parked right across from the Rockefeller Library yesterday.

  The Rockefeller Library was a giant concrete cube with long, skinny windows. Ted wondered briefly who had decided that this was the default architecture for college libraries. He personally thought they should be more gothic and creepy and full of little nooks of knowledge.

  He walked up the steps and read the sign on the door. "Anyone Entering Brown University Libraries MUST Have Valid Brown ID or Affiliated Photo ID." Well, that killed his "wander around the library looking for the Necronomicon" plan. He peeked through the glass door, then slapped his forehead like he'd forgotten something, and walked down the hill to the same independent coffee shop where he and Laura had performed the James Bond-style covert key exchange yesterday. He was never setting foot in a Queequeg's again if he could help it. He ordered a large Sumatra which was served to him in a pint glass, and he took it to the bar in front of the window, sat on a stool and thought. He'd seen the usual bored student checking IDs at the entrance to the library. He didn't have the expertise to break in any other way, so he'd have to get past the ID checker. He really wanted to call Laura and ask for her expert opinion on how to infiltrate a college library, but then he'd have to explain how he was actively pursuing evil instead of peeing into a Snapple bottle outside of Temple Emmanuel. He looked around and briefly considered trying to steal somebody's card—the guy at the entrance to the library wasn't even looking to see if pictures matched faces—but unless he got very lucky, he'd have to spend days lurking around hoping somebody would drop or forget their ID, and that was going to be way too boring.

  Lacking any better plan, he had to brazen it out with the "forgot my ID" ploy. He could try it on every student drone's shift until he got away with it. But first, he'd need some more stuff to make himself look credible. He gulped down the end of the coffee, hoped that it wouldn't be too hard to find a public bathroom in forty-five minutes or so, and went to the bookstore.

  He purchased a backpack, then walked up and down the sidewalk until he saw a bus coming up the street. He ran across the street in front of the bus, dropping the bag in a way he hoped looked accidental as he ran. The bus driver blew his horn, gave Te
d the finger, and gleefully ran over the backpack. Once he'd retrieved the backpack and dusted it off, Ted decided it looked weathered enough to be credible. He returned to the bookstore and bought enough notebooks and pens to give the bag a convincing heft.

  From the bookstore, he proceeded to the library. He walked through the door and faced the ID checker—a pale guy with a mop of brown hair and stubbly cheeks. Ted made a big show of looking into his pockets, then swung his backpack around and rooted through it, opening the Velcro pockets. He hoped his "I'm surprised, flustered, and angry by my inability to locate my ID" act was convincing.

  "Aw, geez, I'm sorry," Ted said, "I must've left my ID at home. Do you think you could let me in anyway? It's a twenty-minute walk back there, and I have class in an hour . . . ."

  Ted's heart pounded during the long seconds while the ID checker looked up from his fat textbook, sized Ted up, and decided he probably was exactly what he was pretending to be, rather than some pervert who wanted to masturbate in the women's studies stacks or something. "Okay," the guy said. "Sign in." He shoved a white binder with tattered photocopied pages bearing illegible signatures at Ted. Ted signed his own name in a completely undecipherable scrawl and strode through the turnstiles.

  He walked around the library for a few minutes. The directory next to the elevator said nothing about rare books, so, walking past the hideous glass globes that illuminated the stairwell, Ted walked to the basement and began a systematic search of the library. The smell of books was heavy in the air, and the quiet seemed to surround him. All he could hear was the clacking of fingers on keyboards, and the occasional page turning. He hoped that nobody monitoring the security cameras was finding him very interesting.

  When he saw the Absolute Quiet room, Ted fought back the urge to run in there and fart really loud. He imagined an instruction from Laura: "Avoid audible flatulence in situations where quiet is necessary. ☺"

  After ten more minutes, Ted had walked every easily accessible inch of the Rockefeller Library. He'd found neither Necronomicon nor Cthulhu cultists, unless they were in here doing an excellent impersonation of grad students.

  Feeling dejected, Ted trudged out of the library.

  Exiting the library, Ted decided to turn left on Prospect Street. He walked around a bunch of utility workers tearing up the street in front of the List Art Building, another rectangular concrete fortress that seemed to be a rejected college library design. Glancing to his left as he continued up the street, he saw a white building marked Hay Library. He pushed the heavy wooden door open and found himself in a marble entryway with a portrait of someone he assumed was Hay gazing benevolently down on him. To his right was a small room with a bunch of papers in display cases. A small sign read "Items from the Lovecraft Collection." Of course! The Necronomicon wasn't in the Rockefeller Library at all! It was here! Maybe.

  Ted examined the papers in the cases. There was a letter from Lovecraft in New York denouncing all of the Mongrel Races he encountered there. Nice! There was a typescript of "The Call of Cthulhu." The rest were all letters and essays and certainly not the Necronomicon. But if it was anywhere in Brown University, it was in this building.

  Ted decided to wander around. Through doors at the end of the hallway he could see the librarians behind a counter. It would certainly be no good to wander up and ask for the Necronomicon, so Ted decided to poke around. He walked up carpeted steps and found himself in another hallway under the gazes of a variety of portraits. He gingerly opened a couple of wooden doors with brass handles and saw people working behind desks. He walked up another flight of steps and found more doors and more hardworking librarians.

  Well, if the Necronomicon, certainly the crown jewel of the Lovecraft collection (if it existed), had been stolen, it was unlikely they'd put other stuff from the collection on display. It was also unlikely that he'd be able to wander more or less freely through a building that had recently had a priceless text stolen from it. Then again, would they have been able to tighten up security after the theft of a book they claimed they didn't have?

  Ted left the Hay Library and turned on to brick-sidewalked, tree-lined Prospect Street and walked aimlessly. Glancing to his right, he saw a wooden colonial house with a small wooden sign on the corner. "Samuel B. Mumford House," it read. Lovecraft had, according to a label in the display in the Hay Library, lived in the Samuel B. Mumford House at the end of his life.

  Pulse quickening, Ted walked around the back of the house, trying to pretend he was just a grad student out for a stroll. There were no cars in the gravel driveway, but there was a garbage can. Still feigning a casual attitude, Ted opened the lid of the garbage can and found what appeared to be ordinary household garbage. A recycling bin next to it held a few issues of the New Yorker and Vanity Fair. Somehow Ted doubted that these periodicals were favorites of Cthulhu cultists. Still, it could be that they were occupying the Mumford House and posing as regular people while ripping it apart searching for the Necronomicon. There was nothing else to do but break in.

  Ted gingerly removed the contents from the recycling bin and turned it upside down. Standing on it, he gently pushed upward on one of the windows, silently thankful that old colonial houses like this didn't have screens or storm windows.

  The window seemed to be stuck or else locked. Ted spread his fingers on the glass and tried to give the window a more forceful push upward. This time it did open, but just about half an inch. As Ted was getting ready to slide his fingers under the bottom of the window, an alarm began to scream.

  Panicking, Ted ran blindly from the house down Prospect Street, then turned right hoping to get downtown and cower by the river or slip into the crowds at the mall or anything to just get the hell away from this neighborhood where the police were probably already looking for him for breaking and entering and/or murder. Stupid, stupid! He cursed himself for trying to do Laura's job and fucking it up so thoroughly. He'd be lucky to get home alive.

  Ted was so busy cursing himself that he didn't realize he'd stumbled through the protective tape and into the Ocean State Power work site he'd passed earlier. He decided to brazen it out and keep running down the hill. Unfortunately, he soon found his path blocked. He stopped short and looked at the roadblock. The guard was a forty-year-old white guy who was remarkable only for the absence of the gut that most guys his age, and, indeed, most of the guys on this job site carried around.

  "Can you not read?" Mr. Average said. He was obviously annoyed, but this strange diction and relatively low volume was not the obscenity-laced tirade Ted was expecting. "Where could you possibly be going in such a hurry?"

  A part of Ted, the part that tended to speak in Laura's voice, knew he should just step around this guy and not draw any attention to himself, but another, louder part resented this guy questioning him like he was the high school principal instead of a guy digging up the road.

  "Well, I hate to keep your wife waiting," Ted said, smiling.

  The guy's face reddened and he got right in Ted's face. "I suggest," he said through clenched teeth, "that you walk away from this work area. You have disrespected me, and I cannot brook such disrespect. Uniform or not, if you are not gone from my sight in ten seconds, I shall take you into the back of the Ocean State Power van and perform such unspeakable acts of torture upon your person that you will beg me for the sweet mercy of death."

  Ted froze. How many people on earth would use the phrase "beg for the sweet mercy of death"? He was standing here like an idiot having a face-to-face argument with the guy who'd impersonated a busty blonde in Virtuality and threatened Ted's life, nay, his very soul.

  Ted quickly turned and ran, throwing "And you wonder why your wife wants a piece on the side. Freak!" over his shoulder. He ran until he found some steps down to the sidewalk that ran along the side of the river. He came to a bridge and clambered up the crisscrossing supports and hunched in the shade twelve feet above the walkway. For ten minutes he did nothing but watch the walkway beneath him. Eventual
ly he convinced himself that the coast was clear, and he climbed down and took a circuitous route home. Once he was inside his apartment, he called Laura.

  "Hey!" she said. "Find something at Temple Emmanuel?"

  "Laura, I found them!"

  "They're at Temple Emmanuel?"

  "Ah, no, not exactly. They're, uh, tearing up College Street."

  "They're tearing up College Street? How?"

  "Well, they've got Ocean State Power trucks."

  Laura sighed. "And what exactly makes you think they're evil cultists?"

  "I, um, actually spoke to one."

  "You spoke to one? Jesus, did you even look at the instructions I wrote you?"

  "Well, I got hung up on the part about peeing in a plastic jug."

  "I did not say a plastic jug! That would make way too much noise! Anyway, you . . . You know, your life could very well be in danger, and you just go toddling into even more danger! Do you want to die, Ted?"

  Ted was ashamed. "No," he said quietly.

  "Then you have to let me help you. Now. Why did you speak to this guy?"

  "Well, I got distracted because I was running away from . . . uh."

  "Running away from uh? What the hell is that? What were you running from?"

  "I set off the alarm when I tried to break into Lovecraft's house."

  Silence came on the line, stretched out, and made itself at home, not leaving for a full minute. Finally Laura spoke.

  "And what did this power guy say that made you believe he's in league with the unholy?"

  "Well, after I implied that I was late to an adulterous liaison with his wife, he told me he was going to make me beg for the sweet mercy of death."

  "Yeah? And?"

  "That's exactly what the virtual centerfold with the lead pipe said to me in Randolph Carter's room! Do you think there are two people in New England who would say 'beg for the sweet mercy of death'?"

  Silence came back, but this time it was banished after only ten seconds.