Just After Sunset Read online

  But!

  I saw with my own eyes. There is a world behind this world, filled with monsters

  Gods

  HATEFUL GODS!

  One thing. If I kill myself, what? If it's not real, the torment still ends. If it is real, the eighth stone out there solidifies again. At least until someone else--the next "CARETAKER"--goes heedlessly prospecting up that road and sees...

  Makes suicide almost look good!

  October 9, 2007

  Better lately. My ideas seem more my own. And when I last went out to Ackerman's Field (2 days ago), my worries were all for naught. There were 8 stones there. I looked at them--solid as houses--and saw a crow in the sky. It swerved to avoid the airspace over the stones, "ziss is true," (joke) but it was there. And as I stood at the end of the road with my camera hung over my neck (nix pix in Motton stix, those stones don't photograph, N. was right about that much, anyway; possibly radon??), I wondered how I ever could have thought there were only 7. I admit that I counted my steps back to my car (and then paced around a little when an odd number brought me to the driver's door), but these things do not let go all at once. They are CRAMPS in the MIND! Yet maybe...

  Do I dare hope I'm getting better?

  October 10, 2007

  Of course there is another possibility, loath as I am to admit it: that N. was right about the solstices. We are moving away from one and toward the other now. Summer gone; winter ahead. Which, if true, is good news only in the short term. If I should have to deal with such wracking mental spasms next spring...and the spring after that...

  I couldn't, that's all.

  How that eye haunts me. Floating in the gathering darkness.

  Other things behind it

  CTHUN!

  November 16, 2007

  Eight. Always were. I'm sure now. Today the field was silent, the hay dead, the trees at the foot of the slope bare, the Androscoggin gray steel beneath an iron sky. The world waiting for snow.

  And my God, best of all: a bird roosting on one of those stones!

  A BIRD!

  Realized only when I was driving back to Lewiston that I didn't bother counting my steps when going back to the car.

  Here is the truth. What must be the truth. I caught a cold from one of my patients, but now I'm getting better. Cough gone, sniffles drying up.

  The little joke was on me all along.

  December 25, 2007

  I shared Christmas dinner and the ritual exchange of presents with Sheila and her family. When Don took Seth to the candlelight ritual at the church (I'm sure the good Methodists would be shocked if they knew the pagan roots of such rites), Sheila squeezed my hand and said, "You're back. That's good. I was worried."

  Well, you can't fool your own flesh and blood, it seems. Dr. J. may only have suspected something was wrong, but Sheila knew. Dear Sheila.

  "I had a sort of crisis this summer and fall," I said. "A crisis of the spirit, you might call it."

  Although it was more a crisis of the psyche. When a man begins to think the only purpose served by his perceptions is to mask the knowledge of terrible other worlds--that is a crisis of the psyche.

  Sheila, always practical, said: "As long as it wasn't cancer, Johnny. That's what I was afraid of."

  Dear Sheila! I laughed and hugged her.

  Later on, while we were doing a final polish on the kitchen (and sipping eggnog), I asked her if she remembered why we used to call the Bale Road Bridge the Fail Road Bridge. She cocked her head and laughed.

  "It was your old friend who thought that up. The one I had such a crush on."

  "Charlie Keen," I said. "I haven't seen him in a dog's age. Except on TV. The poor man's Sanjay Gupta."

  She whacked my arm. "Jealousy doesn't become you, dear. Anyway, we were fishing from the bridge one day--you know, with those little poles we all had--and Charlie peered over the side and said, 'You know, anyone who fell off this thing could not fail to kill themselves.' It just struck us funny, and we laughed like maniacs. You don't remember that?"

  But then I did. Bale Road Bridge became Fail Road Bridge from that day on. And what old Charlie said was true enough. Bale Stream is very shallow at that point. Of course it flows into the Androscoggin (probably you can see the merging-point from Ackerman's Field, although I never noticed), which is a lot deeper. And the Androscoggin flows to the sea. World leads onto world, doesn't it? Each deeper than the last; this is a design all the earth proclaims.

  Don and Seth came back in, Sheila's big guy and her little guy, all dusted with snow. We had a group hug, very New Age, and then I drove home listening to Christmas carols. Really happy for the first time in ever so long.

  I believe these notes...this diary...this chronicle of madness avoided (perhaps by bare inches, I think I really did almost "go over the bridge")...can end now.

  Thank God, and merry Christmas to me.

  April 1, 2008

  It's April Fool's, and the fool is me. I woke from a dream of Ackerman's Field.

  In it the sky was blue, the river was a darker blue in its valley, the snow was melting, the first green grass was poking through the remaining ribbons of white, and once more there were only seven stones. Once more there was darkness in the circle. Only a smudge for now, but it will deepen unless I take care of it.

  I counted books after waking (sixty-four, a good number, even and divisible all the way down to 1--think about it), and when that didn't turn the trick I spilled coffee onto the kitchen counter and made a diagonal. That fixed things--for now--but I will have to go out there and make another "house call." Must not dither-dather.

  Because it's starting again.

  The snow is almost gone, the summer solstice is approaching (still over the horizon but approaching), and it has started again.

  I feel

  God help me, I feel like a cancer patient who has been in remission and wakes one morning to discover a big fat lump in his armpit.

  I can't do this.

  I must do this.

  [Later]

  There was still snow on the road, but I got up to "AF" all right. Left my car in the cemetery parking lot and walked. There were indeed only seven stones, as in my dream. Looked thru the viewfinder of my camera. 8 again. 8 is fate and keeps the world strait. Good deal.

  For the world!

  Not such a good deal for Dr. Bonsaint.

  That this should be happening again; my mind groans at the prospect.

  Please God don't let it be happening again.

  April 6, 2008

  Took longer today to make 7 into 8, and I know I have much "long distance" work ahead of me, i.e. counting things and making diagonals and--not placing, N. was wrong about that--it's balancing that needs to be done. It's simbolic, like the break and whine in communion.

  I'm tired, though. And the solstitch is so far away.

  Its still gathering its power and the solstit is so far away.

  I wish N. had dyed before coming into my office. That selfish bastyard.

  May 2, 2008

  I thought it would kill me this time. Or break my mind. Is my mind broken? My God how can I tell? There is no God, there can be no God in the face of that darkness, and the EYE that peers from it. And something else.

  THE THING WITH THE HELMET HEAD. BORN OUT OF LIVING UNSANE DARKNESS.

  There was chanting. Chanting from deep inside the ringstones, deep inside the darkness. But I made 7 into 8 once again, although it took a long long long lung long time. Many loox thru the vufinder, also making circles and counting paces, widening the circle to 64 paces and that did it, thank god. "The widening gyre"--Yeets! Then I looked up. Looked around. And saw its name woven into every sumac bush and every tree at the foot of that hellish field: Cthun, Cthun, Cthun, Cthun. I looked into the sky for releef and saw the clods spelling it out as they traversed the blue: CTHUN in the sky. Looked at the river and saw its curves spell out a giant C. C for Cthun.

  How can I be responsible for the world? How can this be?<
br />
  Its not fare!!!!!!!!

  May 4, 2008

  If I can close the door by killing myself

  And the peace, even if it is only the peece of oblitsion

  I am going out there again, but this time not all the way. Just to the Fail Road Bridge. The water there is shallow, the bed lined with rocks.

  The drop must be 30 feet.

  Not the best number but still

  Anyone who falls off that thing cannot fail to

  Cannot fail

  I cant stop thinking about that hideous 3-lobe eye

  The thing with the helmet head

  The screaming faces in the stones

  CTHUN!

  [Dr. Bonsaint's manuscript ends here.]

  5. The Second Letter

  June 8, 2008

  Dear Charlie,

  I haven't heard from you about Johnny's manuscript, and that is good. Please ignore my last letter, and if you still have the pages, burn them. That was Johnny's request, and I should have honored it myself.

  I told myself I was only going out as far as the Fail Road Bridge--to see the place where we all had so many happy times as kids, the place where he ended his life when the happy times ran out. I told myself it might bring closure (that's the word Johnny would have used). But of course the mind under my mind--where, I'm sure Johnny would claim, we are all pretty much alike--knew better. Why else did I take the key?

  Because it was there, in his study. Not in the same drawer where I found the manuscript, but in the top one--the one above the kneehole. With another key to "balance it," just as he said.

  Would I have sent you the key with the manuscript, if I'd found them both in the same place? I don't know. I don't. But I'm glad, on the whole, at the way things turned out. Because you might've been tempted to go out there. Simple curiosity might have drawn you, or possibly something else. Something stronger.

  Or possibly that's so much bullshit. Possibly I only took the key and went out to Motton and found that road because I am what I said I was in my first letter: a daughter of Pandora. How can I tell for sure? N. couldn't. Neither could my brother, not even at the very end, and as he used to say, "I'm a professional, don't try this at home."

  In any case, don't worry about me. I'm fine. And even if I'm not, I can do the math. Sheila LeClaire has 1 husband and 1 child. Charlie Keen--according to what I read in Wikipedia--has 1 wife and 3 children. Hence, you have more to lose. And besides, maybe I never got over that crush I had on you.

  Under no circumstances come back here. Keep doing your reports on obesity and prescription drug abuse and heart attacks in men under 50 and things like that. Normal things like that.

  And if you haven't read that manuscript (I can hope for this, but doubt it; I'm sure Pandora also had sons), ignore that, too. Put all this down to a woman hysterical over the unexpected loss of her brother.

  There's nothing out there.

  Just some rocks.

  I saw with my own eyes.

  I swear there's nothing out there, so stay away.

  6. The Newspaper Article

  [From the Chester's Mill Democrat: June 1, 2008]

  WOMAN JUMPS FROM BRIDGE, MIMICS BROTHER'S SUICIDE

  By Julia Shumway

  MOTTON--After prominent psychiatrist John Bonsaint committed suicide by jumping from the Bale River Bridge in this little central Maine town a little over a month ago, friends said that his sister, Sheila LeClaire, was confused and depressed. Her husband, Donald LeClaire, said she was "totally devastated." No one, he went on, thought she was contemplating suicide.

  But she was.

  "Although there was no note," County Coroner Richard Chapman said, "all the signs are there. Her car was parked neatly and considerately off the road on the Harlow side of the bridge. It had been locked, and her purse was on the passenger seat, with her driver's license laid on top." He went on to say that LeClaire's shoes were found on the railing itself, placed carefully side by side. Chapman said only an inquest would show if she drowned or died on impact.

  In addition to her husband, Sheila LeClaire leaves a seven-year-old son. Services have not yet been set.

  7. The E-Mail

  keen1981

  3:44 PM

  June 5 '08

  Chrissy--

  Please cancel all appointments for the next week. I know this is short notice, and I know how much flak you are going to catch, but it cannot be helped. There is a matter I have to tend to back home in Maine. Two old friends, brother and sister, have committed suicide under peculiar circumstances...and in the same f--king place! Given the extremely odd manuscript the sister sent me before copying (apparently copying) her brother's suicide, I believe this bears investigation. The brother, John Bonsaint, was my best friend when I was growing up; we saved each other from more than a few schoolyard beatings!

  Hayden can do the blood-sugar story. I know he thinks he can't, but he can. And even if he can't, I have to go. Johnny and Sheila were close to family.

  And besides: I don't mean to be a Philistine about it, but there might be a story in this. On obsessive-compulsive disorder. Not as big a blip on the radar as cancer, maybe, but sufferers will tell you it's still some mighty scary shit.

  Thanx, Chrissy--

  Charlie

  The Cat from Hell

  Halston thought the old man in the wheelchair looked sick, terrified, and ready to die. He had experience in seeing such things. Death was Halston's business; he had brought it to eighteen men and six women in his career as an independent hitter. He knew the death look.

  The house--mansion, actually--was cold and quiet. The only sounds were the low snap of the fire on the big stone hearth and the low whine of the November wind outside.

  "I want you to make a kill," the old man said. His voice was quavery and high, peevish. "I understand that is what you do."

  "Who did you talk to?" Halston asked.

  "With a man named Saul Loggia. He says you know him."

  Halston nodded. If Loggia was the go-between, it was all right. And if there was a bug in the room, anything the old man--Drogan--said was entrapment.

  "Who do you want hit?"

  Drogan pressed a button on the console built into the arm of his wheelchair and it buzzed forward. Close-up, Halston could smell the yellow odors of fear, age, and urine all mixed. They disgusted him, but he made no sign. His face was still and smooth.

  "Your victim is right behind you," Drogan said softly.

  Halston moved quickly. His reflexes were his life and they were always set on a filed pin. He was off the couch, falling to one knee, turning, hand inside his specially tailored sport coat, gripping the handle of the short-barrelled .45 hybrid that hung below his armpit in a spring-loaded holster that laid it in his palm at a touch. A moment later it was out and pointed at...a cat.

  For a moment Halston and the cat stared at each other. It was a strange moment for Halston, who was an unimaginative man with no superstitions. For that one moment as he knelt on the floor with the gun pointed, he felt that he knew this cat, although if he had ever seen one with such unusual markings he surely would have remembered.

  Its face was an even split: half black, half white. The dividing line ran from the top of its flat skull and down its nose to its mouth, straight-arrow. Its eyes were huge in the gloom, and caught in each nearly circular black pupil was a prism of firelight, like a sullen coal of hate.

  And the thought echoed back to Halston: We know each other, you and I.

  Then it passed. He put the gun away and stood up. "I ought to kill you for that, old man. I don't take a joke."

  "And I don't make them," Drogan said. "Sit down. Look in here." He had taken a fat envelope out from beneath the blanket that covered his legs.

  Halston sat. The cat, which had been crouched on the back of the sofa, jumped lightly down into his lap. It looked up at Halston for a moment with those huge dark eyes, the pupils surrounded by thin green-gold rings, and then it settled down and began
to purr.

  Halston looked at Drogan questioningly.

  "He's very friendly," Drogan said. "At first. Nice friendly pussy has killed three people in this household. That leaves only me. I am old, I am sick...but I prefer to die in my own time."

  "I can't believe this," Halston said. "You hired me to hit a cat?"

  "Look in the envelope, please."

  Halston did. It was filled with hundreds and fifties, all of them old. "How much is it?"

  "Six thousand dollars. There will be another six when you bring me proof that the cat is dead. Mr. Loggia said twelve thousand was your usual fee?"

  Halston nodded, his hand automatically stroking the cat in his lap. It was asleep, still purring. Halston liked cats. They were the only animals he did like, as a matter of fact. They got along on their own. God--if there was one--had made them into perfect, aloof killing machines. Cats were the hitters of the animal world, and Halston gave them his respect.

  "I need not explain anything, but I will," Drogan said. "Forewarned is forearmed, they say, and I would not want you to go into this lightly. And I seem to need to justify myself. So you'll not think I'm insane."

  Halston nodded again. He had already decided to make this peculiar hit, and no further talk was needed. But if Drogan wanted to talk, he would listen.

  "First of all, you know who I am? Where the money comes from?"

  "Drogan Pharmaceuticals."

  "Yes. One of the biggest drug companies in the world. And the cornerstone of our financial success has been this." From the pocket of his robe he handed Halston a small, unmarked vial of pills. "Tri-Dormal-phenobarbin, compound G. Prescribed almost exclusively for the terminally ill. It's extremely habit-forming, you see. It's a combination pain-killer, tranquilizer, and mild hallucinogen. It is remarkable in helping the terminally ill face their conditions and adjust to them."

  "Do you take it?" Halston asked.

  Drogan ignored the question. "It is widely prescribed throughout the world. It's a synthetic, was developed in the fifties at our New Jersey labs. Our testing was confined almost solely to cats, because of the unique quality of the feline nervous system."

  "How many did you wipe out?"

  Drogan stiffened. "That is an unfair and prejudicial way to put it."