Cages & Those Who Hold the Keys Read online

“Nothing. I am going to do nothing. I am going to sit in my car and listen to a classic rock station while eating something that’s bad for me that I plan on picking up at the first choke-burger drive-thru joint I pass on the way. And I will love Every. Minute. Of. It.”

  “Damn, that sounds great.”

  “It will be.”

  “Far be it from me to keep a person from a higher cholesterol count.”

  Dr. Hayes smiled, put down her pen (she’d filled both sides of the file cover with notes, anyway), folded her hands, and said: “So, what were you doing?”

  Martin thought about, then answered her question, surprised at how easily and quickly it came out, surprised even more with how much he realized while telling it to her, and found that he actually felt a little better once he finished. Dr. Hayes seemed equally pleased, and promised to bring a croissant along with the coffee tomorrow morning before she thanked him for a good session and went on her way.

  It was ten-thirty. He had ninety minutes to himself. What to do, what to do?

  He leaned forward to turn on the television, remembered what he’d seen the last time he tried to watch something, and decided to take a stroll around the gym, instead.

  The stroll took all of ten minutes and lost its appeal in a hurry; the gym itself was less than half the size of a standard basketball court, and had only one window, a single basketball hoop, several folded risers, and a bunch of folded tables. Even though Martin had turned on the lights before entering (almost falling down the four stairs, which he’d forgotten about), the place was still awfully dim. It was the middle of the morning; there ought to be more light. Maybe it would look brighter at night. He could come back this evening and check.

  Something to look forward to.

  He went back to the main area and browsed through the movie selection, found a copy of The Best Years of Our Lives (Dad’s favorite movie), and was getting ready to put it in the VCR when he noticed a watercolor painting that was hanging on the wall among the children’s drawings.

  It was a painting of a large, dark, Richardsonian-Romanesque gothic building—an old school, perhaps— complete with turrets and a belfry.

  Two things immediately registered: he’d seen this building before, and recently, and damned if it didn’t look like it had been painted by the same guy who’d done the watercolor he owned.

  Looking over at the nurses’ station to make sure no one was watching him, Martin took the watercolor from the wall and went back to his room. True to her word, Amber had returned his painting, leaning it on the desktop. Martin grabbed it and sat down, holding the two paintings side by side.

  It didn’t take an expert to recognize that the style of both paintings was exactly the same—all you had to do was look at the signature in the lower right-hand corner: R.J. Nyman.

  Martin Tyler was not a man who put a lot of stock in meaningful coincidence, having experienced so little of it during his lifetime, and anytime he did encounter something that might be chalked up to it, he did then what he did now: shook his head and came up with a reasonable explanation: Okay, so the same guy painted both of these; so what? It doesn’t mean anything. The guy told you that he made part of his living doing this, painting watercolors of local landmarks and buildings. Stands to reason that he’d do a lot of them, and that one of them would end up here.

  This almost worked, until it dawned on him where he’d seen this other gothic nightmare of a building.

  Rising to his feet, he walked over to the only window in his room and looked out through the streaked glass and wire mesh to the building across the street, whose sign declared it to be Miller Middle School, a building that would be right at home in a Boris Karloff, Vincent Price, or Bela Lugosi fright-fest.

  Martin would have dismissed this as another so what? had it not been for the things standing at various spots across the length of the roof; near the edge, atop the turrets, above and even inside the belfry, at least a dozen of the camera-creatures similar to the one from the other night milled about, hopping to and fro, beaks and wings working furiously, all of them turning in his direction at once and freezing as if challenging him to a stare-down.

  Martin backed away, not looking away from the sight until he nearly fell over the chair.

  It’s the drugs, he told himself. That has to be it; you’re still wonky from the meds and your brain is just dredging up this same weird crap like it did last night.

  Setting the watercolors on the desk, he took a deep breath, released it slowly, and looked back.

  The camera-creatures were still staring at him, only now their brass eyes were opening, and from each set emerged a bright golden light, the beams crisscrossing until it appeared the top of the school was encased in a giant, shimmering web of gold.

  Easy there, sport, he told himself. There’s an quick way to prove that you’re still hallucinating.

  Opening the door of his room, Martin leaned out into the hallway and called, “Bernard?”

  The attendant came out of the nurses’ station right away. “Something wrong? You okay there, bud?”

  “Could you come in here for a minute, please?”

  Bernard approached him slowly. “What’s going on, Martin?”

  Ethel and Amber stood at the door, watching.

  Think fast, sport; don’t make this any worse. “I was just wondering about this building across the street.”

  “The school?” asked Bernard.

  “Yeah . . . I was wondering if it’s the same building in this picture I found hanging on the wall out there.”

  Bernard came into the room. Martin handed him the watercolor. “It looks like this is the same building. Is it?”

  Bernard looked out the window, as did Martin.

  The creatures were still there, but if Bernard saw them, he gave no indication.

  “Oh, yeah, it’s the same place. The guy who did this, he’s got stuff all over town. You ever been inside the Sparta or the L&K restaurant? They got watercolors he did of their places hanging in there. He did one of the courthouse, the old Savings & Loan . . . hell, you can’t go into a restaurant or city building and not see one of his watercolors.” Bernard looked at the painting. “‘R.J. Nyman’. So that’s his name. Huh.”

  Martin realized that he could just ask Bernard if he saw the things on the roof—at least that way he’d have his answer—but he suddenly didn’t want to know; if Bernard said yes, then reality as Martin knew it had wandered off the highway; if Bernard said no, he’d follow it up with a lot of questions—Why, what do you see? Camera-creatures, you say? With wings and wolf’s legs and brass eyes? A giant golden web, you say? Hang on a second, I think Ethel might have another cup of pills for you . . . .

  Better to stay quiet.

  “I thought something about this painting you brought with you looked familiar,” said Bernard, holding the watercolors side by side. “You buy this off him, did you?”

  “A few years back. I gave him fifty dollars for it.”

  “I’ll bet he appreciated that. Huh—small world, isn’t it? You having a painting of his.”

  “I guess so.”

  Bernard handed them back. “I wonder whatever happened to that guy.”

  “Yeah.”

  Bernard stared at him for a moment, then asked: “Was that all you wanted?”

  Martin nodded. “Just making sure that I wasn’t seeing or imagining things.”

  Bernard laughed, then clapped a hand on Martin’s shoulder. “You’re not ready for a ride in the Twinkie Mobile just yet; it’s the same building.”

  “You have any idea how it . . . how the watercolor came to be here?”

  Bernard thought about it for a few moments, then shook his head. “Beats me. You wanna ask Ethel? Maybe she knows.”

  “No, it’s all right. I’m not all that curious.” Which was a lie, but he didn’t want to risk drawing any more attention to himself than he already had.

  Reminding him that lunch was in an hour, Bernard left Martin’s
room and returned to the nurses’ station, where he informed Ethel and Amber that it hadn’t been anything important.

  Martin closed the door to his room, then walked back to the window.

  The golden web was gone, as were the creatures.

  And Martin was scared—scratch that: he was (as Wendy would undoubtedly put it) fuckin’ terrified. Yeah, some of this could be chalked up to all the drugs that had traveled through his system in the last twelve or thirteen hours, but not all of it. Jesus! Had he done something to mess up his brain chemistry? Had some of the pills from last night done serious, irreparable damage before he’d gotten sick? Was this temporary or was it going to get worse? After all, he hadn’t given a second thought to brain damage when assembling the ingredients for his Shuffling-Off Cocktail (as he’d thought of it), no; he’d intended to go all the way, so why bother worrying about the possible consequences of what might happen if he didn’t finish the job?

  Oh, God, he thought. Have I . . . damaged something?

  Calm down.

  Take a few deep breaths . . . that’s it.

  Think about something else, anything else.

  He closed his eyes, saw an image in the darkness of his father sitting in front of the television, his body weak, his skin pale, sipping juice from a straw, asking Martin or Mom to turn up the sound a little, he couldn’t hear so hot, and, son-of-a-bitch these treatments really took it out of you, if he had it to do over, he’d’ve told them damn doctors to just cut out his prostate and be done with it instead of keeping the bastard . . . .

  Martin went back into the main area, shoved in the videotape of The Best Years of Our Lives, and sat down, focusing all of his attention on the movie. It was a good movie, a damn fine movie, a movie he’d seen at least half a dozen times, and you couldn’t really get enough of Fredric March, Dana Andrews, and Harold Russell, especially in that glorious first half-hour, and here they were, all three of them, playing their roles to perfection, these three characters fresh from WWII trying to find a plane home, finally catching a ride in the cargo hold of a small transport, getting to know each other, talking about the war, what it was going to be like going home, then Harold Russell did that famous business with his prosthetic hands—his hooks—lighting everyone’s cigarettes with a single match, and then—

  —and then all three of them stopped talking, stopped moving, and for a second Martin thought maybe the tape had gotten caught, it was an old VCR, after all, he was lucky it had played this much of the movie, so he leaned forward to hit the STOP/EJECT button—

  —and Harold Russell looked right out at him, right into the camera. “We’d really prefer it if you didn’t do that just yet, Martin.”

  “You need to hear the rest of the story,” said Dana Andrews. “It won’t take that long, we promise.”

  “By the way,” said Fredric March, “we’ve been asked to apologize to you for the manner in which this is being sent your way.”

  Pulling the cigarette from his mouth, Harold Russell added: “We’re a little pressed for time.”

  Dana Andrews nodded. “You can say that again.”

  “Fellahs,” said March, “could we get on with this while he’s still alone?”

  Martin began rising to his feet. “What the hell is—?”

  Andrews pointed a finger. “This will go a lot easier if you’ll just please sit still and shut up.”

  “What my friend means,” said March, “is that we know how difficult this must be for you, but there is a good reason, and you’ll understand everything a lot better if you’ll just bear with us a little longer.”

  Harold Russell winked at Martin. “‘Keep your eyes open and your ears peeled and—’”

  “‘—your ass will stay attached,’” said Martin, tears welling in his eyes. “Dad used to say that all the time.”

  “It was his unit’s motto during the war,” said March. “71st Infantry, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  March nodded. “A good bunch of fellahs, your Dad’s unit. Destroyed one of Hitler’s secondary bunkers, didn’t they?”

  Martin nodded. “Dad carved his name into Hitler’s desk before he spit on it.”

  Andrews laughed loudly. “Oh, I like that! Your dad must’ve been a helluva guy.”

  “Yes . . . yes, he was.”

  Fredric March pointed to his watch, and the other two nodded.

  “I’ll start,” March said. Then, looking directly at Martin:

  “‘An old magic man’s new apprentice learns his lessons well, and soon is as powerful as the magic man himself. But this irritates an old magic man, who demands that the apprentice stop being such a show-off all the time.’”

  “‘They argue,’” said Russell, taking up the tale. “‘Each grows more and more angry. The apprentice loses his temper and pulls the drain-plug from an old magic man’s head, re-opening the hole. The magic gushes out and the apprentice begins stealing it.’”

  “‘An old magic man attacks the apprentice,’” said Andrews. “‘They claw at one another, screaming and thrashing and biting. Great gobs of flesh drop from their bones and smack against the surface of the wooden mask and begin to wriggle.’”

  After this, Martin lost track of who said what; he only listened, he only watched, trying to make sense out of everything, trying to find a rational explanation; finding none, he could only accept what his senses dictated was real.

  “‘An old magic man and his apprentice tear at one another until they are nothing more than slick bones that soon clatter to the floor in a heap. But the magic that has oozed and squirted from both of them covers the wooden soldier mask. The mask comes fully alive and swallows the magic. It grows a body with giant, powerful limbs and terrible wings. It rises up and shrieks into the darkness. The darkness is afraid for a moment, and cowers back. The mask opens its mouth and takes a bite out of the darkness, leaving a bright, golden hole in the night. The mask smiles, for it has the power of both an old magic man and his apprentice. It can do anything it wants.

  “‘It unfurls its terrible wings and takes flight, soaring higher and higher, looking down upon all the wondrous things that have been revealed by the golden light spilling from the hole in the darkness. But, suddenly, it smacks its head into something and comes crashing down. Angered, it again takes flight, and again is knocked back down.

  “‘“Why is this happening?” it cries out.

  “‘“Where, exactly, do you think you are?” asks a distant voice.

  “‘And the mask cries, “Show yourself!”’

  “‘“You’re only as powerful as I think you are,” says the voice. “Never forget that.”

  “‘The mask flies up again and rams into the invisible barrier—but this time does not come crashing back down.

  “‘And, suddenly, it knows where it is, and to whom the voice belongs.

  “‘“I’m inside your head, aren’t it?”

  “‘“And here you’ll stay,” says the painter. “I may be ill, but I’m not so weak as to let you devour all my dreams.”

  “‘“We’ll see about that,” says the mask.

  “‘And it remains there to this day, trapped inside the head of a painter who once dreamed a dream of a magic man and his young apprentice.

  “‘But the mask has changed, has grown more powerful as the painter grows more ill. It is stuffing itself—gorging itself—on his dreams, his images, his ideas and memories . . .

  “‘Most of all, his memories . . .

  “‘They say it waits for the day when the painter can fight it no longer, and it will tear through his skull and devour the world you know . . .

  “‘Swallow it whole . . .

  “‘It has given itself a name . . .

  “‘“Call me Gash,” it says to the darkness . . .

  “‘Gash is the destroyer of all things wondrous, the eater of wishes, the mangler of joy, the killer of spirit, the ruiner of hope, the deformer of memories . . .

  “‘Magic never dies .
. . but magic men do . . . .

  “‘And there is nothing so dangerous as the mad orphan called abandoned magic.’”

  The three actors looked at one another, then nodded.

  March crushed out his cigarette, lit another. “You know Gash by another name. One you should be familiar with, seeing as how he killed your grandmother, and how your mother was always worried he’d eventually get her, as well.”

  Martin opened his mouth to speak, but then Harold Russell shook his hooks and hissed, “Someone’s coming!”

  Wendy stumbled into the main area and fell into the easy chair opposite Martin’s. Her face was flushed and her eyes glazed. She looked right at Martin, not seeing him, then stared at the television where March, Andrews, and Russell were saying their good-byes, promising each other that they’d get together again very soon.

  “I hate these old fuckin’ movies,” Wendy said to no one in particular. “Why didn’t they make ‘em in color, anyway? Fuckin’ fuck-brains . . . .”

  Martin laced his hands into a single, ten-fingered, white-knuckled fist and pressed it into his lap, rocking back and forth.

  You know Gash by a different name . . .

  That he did.

  (Mom in the kitchen, looking around for a favorite sauce spoon: “I can’t seem to keep track of anything these days . . . must be losing my mind or coming down with—”)

  The eater of wishes, the mangler of joy, the deformer of memories . . .

  Alzheimer’s disease.

  Saying nothing to anyone, Martin went back to his room, closed the door, and sat on his bed staring at the watercolors until Bernard came a-pummeling to announce lunch.

  3

  It should have surprised—if not outright petrified—Martin to discover that the third client in The Center was the large, balding black man who’d read the first part of the story to him from within the television, but by the time he sat down to lunch that first day, he was almost beyond it; too much had happened too quickly for him to fully deal with any of it, so—after taking his afternoon meds—he decided to follow his dad’s advice: He’d keep his eyes open, his ears peeled, and his ass attached. He was feeling shiny and more than willing to go along for the ride.