A Pair of Aces

  "Sure," Leroy said.

  "We hope to leave within an hour. That's where your dad's been. Down at the station getting gassed up. When he gets back, we're going to go. Sure you'll be all right? We could find Draighton and we all could go. As a family. But I'm not sure you two boys would want to sit around a hospital all day."

  "We'll be all right here," Leroy said. "I'll go find Draighton in a bit. Make sure he's back here around dark."

  When his dad and mom left, Leroy went back upstairs and looked around. He looked carefully at the stool. Yep. It was the stool he had seen in Draighton's house, out in the garage storage room. He picked it up to see if he could see blood on it, and thought in fact he could. When he did that, something fell out of the stool.

  A composition notebook. It had been in a kind of slot under the stool. A magazine slide or some such thing. You couldn't tell it was there just by looking, but you picked up the stool, you could see it.

  He put the stool down and picked up the notebook and flipped it open. It was full of gobbledy-gook and drawings and bits of writing and some of the pages had dark splatters on them. Blood?

  As Leroy thumbed through, he was startled to see a crude drawing that made him suck in his breath. It was a crudely drawn figure shaded jet black, wearing a top hat. He had very narrow ankles and his feet were fit into the open mouths of decapitated heads, wearing them like house shoes. The blackness of the man was not the blackness of a negro but the pure empty blackness that lay between the stars. This had been achieved by constant pencil shading, but there was something almost otherworldly about it. The teeth in the open mouth of the man, if man was the word, looked like needles and they had been colored with a kind of silver color with some kind of marker. It was crude but there was something about it that made Leroy uncomfortable. The main thing that made him feel that way was what the figure was holding. A razor. A large open straight razor.

  Leroy turned the pages and saw there were drawings of old style razor blades, double-edged, and pictures of knives and a picture of what seemed to be a Roman solider sticking a spear into the side of an almost stick-figure Jesus, positioned on a cross. Leroy had to turn the notebook upside down to see this, as it had been drawn in such a way that Jesus' head and that of the Roman were at the bottom of the page. Had it been drawn upside down purposely, or had he merely turned the page wrong when he began this drawing? Or had Draighton drawn it at all. Maybe it was Jimmy, Draighton's father. That made sense.

  He examined more pages and found that the writing was often English, but more often than not it appeared to be nothing more than symbols. As he tried to read, his head began to spin and the symbols appeared to move on the page.

  Leroy tossed the book into the corner of the room, and as the pages fluttered shut, they gave out shadow and the shadow cut like the edge of a razor across the room and across Leroy.

  Leroy felt cold, and for a moment he felt as if he were falling. Sideway. But when he put out his hand, he discovered he was not moving sideways at all, but was standing upright.

  He stumbled toward his bed, and then he noticed something he should have noticed before, but his preoccupation with first the stool, and then the composition book, had distracted him. Lying only partially covered by a blanket from Draighton's pallet were Draighton's leg braces. And Draighton wasn't in them.

  Leroy began at the park, but he didn't find Draighton. He went down town, and with the money his mother had given him for Draighton and himself, he went into the drugstore/cafeteria and over to the counter where food was served. He bought himself a hamburger and fries and a large cherry Coke made at the fountain, then he went next door to the movies and watched a horror film and went home.

  Draighton was still not there.

  Leroy read a couple of comics. The room darkened. Leroy got up and looked out. Night was not far away. His parents would probably not be back until late. What to do. Television was a thought, but he didn't feel any great drive toward that, and he didn't like sitting downstairs in the big living room alone.

  Instead, he picked up the notebook again and thumbed through it, and had the uncomfortable feeling that the figure of the dark man with the razor had moved from one side of the page to the other, and that he was moving from the center of the book toward the front of it, because the page he was on now only held part of him, and one of his head-encased feet was in the gully of the notebook and extended onto the opposite page.

  The light went out of the window and the darkness came in, and Leroy felt surrounded by it. He folded up the book, then jerked his hand to his mouth. A paper cut. He hated those damn things. He tossed the book aside. The room fluttered like bat wings with shadows, and Leroy decided he didn't want to be there anymore.

  He got his coat and went outside and started walking. He walked to town again and went by the drug store, but it was closed. He went over to the drugstore/cafeteria again and had another hamburger there, and a Coke, and then he started walking again, thinking he ought to go back to the house. But the notebook was there, and he didn't like the idea of it, and he determined that when he did indeed return home, he was going to burn the damn thing.

  He sucked at his paper cut as he walked, and without really thinking about it, he found himself standing outside of Draighton's old house.

  It looked different at night. More forbidding than it had looked in the daytime. Leroy went up the walk and came to the door, but he didn't try the knob. Locked most likely. And even if it wasn't, he felt uncomfortable going inside. He went around to the side of the house, to where the black painted bedroom was, pressed up against the window with his face cupped in his hands, and looked through a spot where the black markings were not quite complete.

  Being as it was dark and the room was dark, there was little to see, and Leroy was about to withdraw from the window, when something moved.

  Draighton.

  Leroy had only caught a glimpse, but it was him, and he was moving swiftly, not in his usual way. This baffled Leroy. How was he getting about without his braces? Had he been suddenly healed? And what was he doing back here?

  "Draighton," Leroy said, but his voice was soft and he said it in a way that didn't sound like he really meant it.

  He thought again of going home, but decided against it. He didn't like Draighton, but he wasn't crazy about being alone anymore. He thought about William, and how maybe he could go hang with him, but then the realness of it all occurred to him. He didn't know where William lived, and William didn't know where he lived, and probably didn't give a damn. William just liked him around so he could slug him on the arm from time to time, have someone to punish for any empty moment that might occur. There was no real relationship there.

  Leroy took a deep breath. Damn. Thing was, he didn't want to do that anymore. He wanted to take William's place, make Draighton his bitch. That's what he wanted. He didn't want to be William's plaything anymore, he wanted one of his own, and so far, that hadn't worked out the way he expected. Shit had not flowed downhill enough. Some, but not enough. He was, after a great moment in the cafeteria, tripping the little turd to the floor, losing his ground, and he was letting Draighton control things, and there was no reason for that. Now he felt he should take command, set things right. And finding out Draighton didn't need his leg braces might give him an edge. Draighton was maybe messing with everyone, for sympathy. And it seemed to Leroy that he had heard that as long as Draighton was in those braces, he got some kind of government check. He wasn't sure about that part, but he believed that was right. This could give him something to hold over the little bastard's head, like an anvil on a very weak string.

  Leroy went back to the front door, feeling courageous now. After all, what could a little turd like Draighton do to him? He felt angry that he had allowed himself to be overtaken by irrational fears, allowed a notebook to scare him. Yes sir, for certain he was going to burn that damn thing when he got back home.

  But for now, he was going to take over, and quit letting Dr
aighton pull all this mysterious stuff, all this boogie man shit. He was going to lay down the law and get that little gimp bastard back to the house. He had to still be a gimp. He didn't just get up one day from being stick-legged, to suddenly having juice in his limbs. He must have on another pair of braces. And he must have been wearing them when he saw Draighton through the window. He had moved quickly, all right, but that didn't mean he still wasn't on braces. Of course, where had he concealed the extra pair? They wouldn't fit in his bag, and there really was nowhere else. He couldn't just pull them out of his ass. And there was still the other possibility that he didn't need them at all.

  Leroy stalked around to the front door and took hold of it. It was in fact unlocked and he pushed it open and stuck his head in and called out Draighton's name. But his voice hadn't been as strong as he intended. The name seemed to cautiously enter the house and not go too far into the shadows, like a mouse that feared the presence of a cat.

  He tried again. A little louder. Draighton didn't answer.

  "You need to come on now. Mom and Dad have gone for the day, but they'll be back later, and we need to be home. I've got some money for you a hamburger."

  Draighton didn't answer.

  Leroy slipped inside and gently closed the door. With it shut it was very dark. The house felt odd, as if he were in the belly of a beast, swallowed whole, awaiting digestion. He wished now that he had brought a flashlight. He thought of opening the door to let in more light, but the idea of leaving it open might reveal that he was in fact trespassing, and there was something thrilling, as well as frightening, about being here, and it wasn't all a bad feeling. For the moment, anyway.

  Leroy moved through the living room toward the garage. He had a feeling that's where Draighton would be, out there looking over his father's death scene. When he came to the garage door, just off the kitchen, due to moonlight through the kitchen window, he saw that a large rat had been crucified with thumb tacks to the door and that it had been cut open and blood from it was smeared on the door in those strange symbols Leroy had seen in the composition notebook.

  This was almost too much, but then Leroy remembered being alone at home and no one to have as his slap monkey, so he turned the garage door knob, horrified to discover that the knob was coated in blood. He wiped the blood on his pants without thinking, then felt the worse for it. That would be something he would have to explain. He was going to make sure Draighton got a good beating for this. Oh yeah, he was going to beat him down and kick him around like a soccer ball.

  Leroy took the steps down into the garage cautiously. The garage was completely empty now, someone having removed the car and some of the junk that had been there, and there was nothing to see, but Leroy felt the hair on the back of his neck prick up, and this was almost enough to send him running. Then he thought, Draighton. He's in here. I can take a cripple.

  The door to the garage storage was open, and Leroy went over there and looked cautiously around the end of the open door, into the storage room.

  It too was empty.

  The garage made Leroy feel as if a heavy weight was lying on top of him. No. It was more as if the shadows were like a thick wool overcoat, and that they were trying to hold him. He went up the steps and back into the kitchen. As he did, he heard the front door slam.

  Leroy rushed over there, but the door was jammed shut. He pushed at it, but it wouldn't budge enough to open. Finally, he went into the bedroom where Draighton's mother had been murdered, and pushed up a window there. As he was climbing out, he had the distinct feeling that someone, or something had entered the room. He practically fell out the window, and when he looked back at it, there was nothing there to see, except the frame of the open window and the empty darkness of the room.

  Leroy went around to the front door and looked. A stick had been shoved under it. It couldn't be pushed forward. Damn that Draighton, Leroy thought. I'm going to get him.

  Leroy hustled on home, the air full of the smell of rain, the clouds thick and the darkness dripping. At one point, he saw a car that looked like his parent's car. It was parked near the curb and the door on the front passenger's side was open. It looked so much like his parent's car, he started to go over and look at it more closely, but then he saw, up the block, walking fast, what he felt for certain was Draighton. He was rounding the corner of a house, walking as briskly as if the bones and muscles in his legs were brand new, but there was something about his feet. Something strange that Leroy couldn't quite identify from that distance.

  Hurrying onward, Leroy tried to catch up, but when he came running to the corner of the house and looked around, all he saw was an alleyway. He took it and crossed over to another street and walked up and came to his house, looked in the drive to see if his parent's car was there. It wasn't. He went up the steps and put the key in, but when he did, the door came open before he could turn it.

  Draighton. He had a key too.

  Inside it was dark, and when Leroy switched on a light, nothing happened. He tried other lights with the same results. He looked around downstairs but didn't find Draighton. He thought the house smelled funny, and was too cool. With the electricity off, Leroy assumed the heat had gone out of the house. As for the smell. Well, he wasn't certain. Surely the power couldn't have been off long enough for anything in the refrigerator to spoil.

  Leroy started up the stairs, and as he climbed, he felt something sticky on his shoes. He paused, leaned on the railing and lifted one foot. He couldn't tell there in the dark, but he put out a finger and touched the bottom of his shoe. It was something wet.

  All right. That was it. His parents got home, he was going to catch shit, not Draighton, not the cripple. And he was going to catch it because this loser had tracked in something from the street. He went on up more quickly, angry, and when he came to his bedroom at the top of the hall, he found the door open.

  He went inside.

  The room was full of moonlight and it framed around the shape of Draighton at the window. He was sitting, leaning back against the sill, and for just a blink of a moment, it had not looked like Draighton at all, but then the moonlight went behind a cloud and it was Draighton, and then the light was freed and it wasn't Draighton.

  It was a tall dark man wearing a top hat with silver winks of razor blade in the hat band. He had silver stick pin teeth, and he smiled them at Leroy. Leroy tried to pull his feet out of the floor, but they seemed nailed there. At the end of the long thin legs were two large balls of something. Leroy squinted.

  They were heads. Like in the drawing. And this man…this thing's feet went down and into them, and now Leroy realized that the car alongside the road had in fact been his parent's car, and they were back early, had pulled over to give Draighton a ride…and…

  He couldn't figure it. Not really. He didn't know what to do. He wanted to run. He wanted to scream. But all he could do was look at those heads. Those shoes. The heads of his mother and father.

  "Slicing through dimensions is like slicing through flesh, except the dimensions have to be in the position to be sliced, and it is not so easy to achieve that, as it is to find and slice flesh."

  Leroy was really frozen now. The thing had spoken and the voice was like cracked glass and tumbling razor blades. And the thing, it was smiling big, and Leroy knew as sure as he knew the Pope crapped in the Vatican, that he should run. But he couldn't. He felt warm all of a sudden, and urine ran down his legs and onto his shoes and the floor.

  When the acrid odor of his mistake filled the room, the thing in the window stood up and sniffed the air. "Nectar," said the voice, and it dropped its hand to its side, and Leroy could see dangling from it the huge razor.

  "Draig…Draighton?" Leroy said.

  "He's here," said the thing, tapping his chest, "trapped by the shadows, held by the moon, one foot in, one foot out."

  Leroy had no idea what this meant. A shadow rolled across the moon again, a cloud sacking it up, and when it did, there stood Draighton. He was
n't wearing his glasses. He stood there squinting, holding the razor. The heads were on his feet, his legs jammed down into the cracked-wide mouths of Mom and Dad.

  "My daddy," Draighton, "bought the razor in an antique shop. It's very old."

  Leroy swallowed, found his voice. "Draighton. You're not well. Mom. Dad. How could you?"

  "They help open the worlds. Enough blood. Enough death. All manner of things can slide through."

  Draighton stepped forward. There was no mincing movement in his step. It was sure and firm and without braces and the heads on his feet plopped nastily against the floor.

  "He demands sacrifices," Draighton said.

  That was it. Leroy's feet finally came unfastened from the floor, and Leroy bolted, and he could hear the movement of Draighton behind him, pursuing him. He looked over his shoulder as he came out into the hall and up against the railing, and when he turned, there was Draighton, his mouth wide open, clopping forward with his feet in the heads, and Leroy thinking in spite of himself (How do they fit?), and then he was running, almost making the stairs.

  Draighton had him. Draighton grabbed his shoulder and spun him. When he did, Leroy saw the razor coming down. Instinctively he shot out both hands and grabbed Draighton's wrist, and the force of stopping the blow slammed him against the railing, and he heard the railing crack, then give way.

  Leroy and Draighton fell through space.

  The couch below broke their fall and they tumbled onto the floor. Draighton somehow rolled out from beneath Leroy and stood on those horrible shoes he had made and staggered back into the shadows, which seemed to consume him, and then Leroy saw a hand come out of the shadows, Draighton's hand, and it took hold of the living room curtain and jerked it loose.