BUY MY STUFF ON AMAZON:
The next few days were a cornucopia of
pointless annoyances. The Phantom received a total of 18 unsolicited
pizza deliveries, 26 unwanted taxi cabs, four unordered magazine
subscriptions, and an endless string of stupid prank phone calls.
I had my suspicions about who was doing it. The best
candidate, I thought, was that loony singer I had so thoroughly rebuffed
the night all this began. I decided to look him up and give him what
for.
I was trying to track down his address and
phone number online when I heard somebody at the front door, fiddling
with the knob. The Phantom was in his bedroom, deep in the arms of
Morpheus by way of Jim Beam. I was in a waiting-for-the-last-straw mood,
and here it was. I was gonna send this goddamn taxi driver or pizza boy
or call girl away with a whole bunch of fleas in his or her ear. I
flung the door open without looking through the peephole.
It was the only time I had ever done that, and wouldn’t you just
know it, this time it actually was some jerk with a gun. It was a guy
about my age, neither handsome nor ugly, and he had one of those goddamn
Justin Bieber haircuts. And the gun, of course.
He pointed it at me and said, “You’re that girl, right?”
“You astonish me, Holmes,” I said. “However did you deduce it?”
“Huh?”
“Nothing. What the hell do you want?”
“Um, I’m supposed to kill you. Nothing personal, but my...
Uh, that is to say, Doctor Piranha has sent me to... ah... extract
revenge on the Bay Phantom.”
“Doctor Piranha,” I
said. “Well, this is actually something of a relief. We’ve just been
sitting here waiting. I think you mean EXACT revenge, don’t you?”
“Whatever.”
I rolled my eyes. “Then you ought to shoot the Bay Phantom, genius.”
“Naw, the Doc said to kill you, not him. I’m especially not
supposed to kill him, or even hurt him. Honestly, I never heard of the
dude. But my great... uh, my great criminal boss is making a major deal
out of it.”
The guy was a total idiot. On top
of that, he was wearing a pair of those dumb earrings that look like
washers that you jam into your earlobe and stretch it all out of shape.
For some reason, that pissed me off more than the gun, and I did
something I've always wanted to do to someone with that kind of earring.
I jabbed my index finger through the hole, got a grip on the earring,
and jerked down as hard as I could. The result was exactly what you
would imagine, and then some.
He clapped one hand to what was
left of the ear, and I plucked the pistol from the fingers of his other
hand, which had gone all rubbery. He was cursing as though I had torn
off something way more important than an ear, but he stayed on his feet.
I applied the toe of my shoe to a very sensitive area hard enough to
put him on his knees. A kick in the ribs sent him all the way down, and I
felt pretty good about that. I pushed the door shut.
“You little bitch,” he snarled.
“Shut up, Van Gogh,” I snapped back. I jiggled the pistol to
emphasize my position of power. “You’re on the wrong side of this gun
to be calling anybody a bitch.”
He saw the sense in
what I was saying. I stepped on his neck, just in case, and snatched his
wallet out of his back pocket. I made a vague remark about putting a
bullet in his head if he didn’t start behaving, and he stopped thrashing
and squawking and lay there breathing heavily and bleeding gently.
I thumbed through his wallet until I found his driver’s
license with his name and address. I got a chuckle out of his first
name, --which was an ironic one under the circumstances—and a big WTF
out of his surname. I wasn’t sure what it meant, but I knew it meant
something. I had planned on interrogating him, but didn’t think it would
be necessary now. I memorized the address.
“Stay put,” I told him.
I grabbed a dish towel and wet it with hot water. Then I buzzed
into the bathroom for a bottle of rubbing alcohol. Next, I ministered to
my battered miscreant. Handing him the towel, I opened the bottle of
alcohol and poured about half of it over the ear I had so cruelly used.
He yelled. I clapped a hand over his mouth, and the dishtowel to his
ear.
“Be quiet,” I said. “These walls are thin as paper. You don’t want the cops in here any more than I do, I’m sure.”
He thrashed around again for a couple seconds—during which time I
unobtrusively slipped his wallet back where it came from—but gamely bit
back any further caterwauling, and pressed the towel to the side of his
head. There was blood all over, but his life was not in danger.
I went back to the bathroom for some gauze and antibiotic
ointment. Van Gogh had become very meek by this point, and offered no
resistance as I dressed his tattered ear. I hadn’t actually torn it off.
But his earlobe was shredded. I got it squared away, more or less. When
I finished, he sat up and eyed me sullenly.
“Now what?” he said. There was fear in his voice.
“Now get out of here.”
“Huh? You’re not gonna hold me for the cops?”
“I’m not gonna call the cops.”
“Why not?”
“None of your business.”
“Um. Can I have my gun back?”
I said nothing, because the look I was giving him spoke volumes.
*
The Keel house was sort of out in the country
east of Zenith. The house stood by itself in the middle of a good-sized
bit of land, surrounded by woods on all sides. A narrow dirt driveway
went from the main road, through the woods, and curved around to the front of the house. Mary and I drove out there the evening after we were hired.
We decided we could keep an eye on the place from a distance. If she
came out and got into a car, we could follow. We had all kinds of
high-powered binoculars and spy cameras and various things like that.
There were woods all around the house, so we could hide in those and
observe from different vantage points. Mary took up a position to the
north of the house, and I took the south.
I spent an hour or so
setting up little remote cameras and recorders in the trees. I doubted
we'd need them, but since we had spent some of Mister Keel's retainer
money on the stuff-- honestly, we went a little bit nuts in the
electronics store-- I would have felt bad about not using it on his
case.
Mary still didn't like the whole situation. She kept coming up with weird complaints and making smart remarks and things.
"It's just a routine stakeout," I told her. "Detectives do this stuff
all the time. All we do is watch the house, and if it turns out Mrs.
Keel is cheating on her husband, we take some pictures and we tell on
her, and Mr. Keel pays us some more money."
"I still think it's
a sordid way to make a living," she grumped. Since we had been over
that whole thing about a million times, I didn't say anything. She went
to her position on the north side of the house, and we settled down to
wait.
The first night, nothing happened. Mary amused herself
with a little hand-held video game, which she found fascinating, having
lived the biggest part of her life over a hundred years ago. I was
trying to learn how to knit, for some reason, so I brought that junk
with me. Our first night out, Mary scored a million points on Space
Invaders and I ruined most of a whole ball of yarn. As dismal a failure
as the time I tried to learn to juggle.
The same nothing happened on the second night. But the third night was the charm.
It was way after midnight. It was very dark out there, and very quiet. I
was in a condition closer to falling asleep than a professional
detective ought to get while she’s on a job.
“Vionna,” came Mary’s voice over the walkie-talkie. “I’m seeing something I do not understand. Can you help me?”
“I’ll try. What is it?”
“I have no idea.”
“What does it look like?”
“I don’t know.”
“Okay… You’re making this kind of difficult.”
“Tell me, is there any such thing as an airplane that has no wings and makes no noise?”
“There might be.”
“Are they very common?”
“I wouldn’t think so.”
“Nor would I. I don’t suppose you know of any kind of aircraft that is
perfectly round and glows all over with a sort of bluish-green color?”
“Can’t say that I do. I’ve never seen anything like that.”
“Well, if you’d care to, you’re in luck. It just passed almost directly
over my head and is moving toward the house. If you stand up and train
your binoculars in this direction, you should catch sight of it. It’s
only about twenty feet off the ground.”
So I did that. It took
me a second to find the thing, you know how when you’re looking through
binoculars everything is fuzzy and jerky and hard to focus on. I saw it.
I got it in my field of view and held my hands and head as still as I
could.
It looked like a smaller, greenish-blue moon. I looked
quickly back over my shoulder at the actual moon, which was right where
it was supposed to be, and hadn’t strayed away and changed color.
I looked back at the thing and saw that it was more of a disk shape
than a sphere, and was totally smooth, which the moon is not. I couldn’t
tell what the thing was made of. From where I was standing, it appeared
to be right over the Keels’ house.
“This is weird,” I said into my walkie-talkie.
“That’s the word I would use,” Mary replied. “I believe it has stopped
moving now. It looks to be right over the house. Yes, the green light is
shining down on the roof, I can see it.”
“Well.”
“Yes. What do we do?”
I had no idea what to do.
“I have no idea what to do,” I said.
“So this is not some object that is common—or even uncommon, but known—in the 21st century?”
“Nope. What it looks like is a flying saucer.”
“So you ARE familiar with it?”
“Nope. A flying saucer is a thing that some people think exists and
other people think doesn’t exist. A lot of people that do think they
exist believe they come from other planets. I don’t know one way or the
other. I’ve never thought about it much. I’m just saying that thing
there is what one is supposed to look like.”
While we talked
about it, the flying saucer hovered over the top of the house, drifting
very slightly back and forth, like a toy balloon in a slight breeze. It
was certainly strange-looking. I closed my eyes and asked if my
“roommate” knew anything about this, but all I got was nothing.
I was about to say something else to Mary, but something started
happening that made me forget what it was, and that I cared about it.
Three little figures came drifting out of the flying saucer. They were
shaped more or less like human beings, except that their heads were too
big and their arms and legs too thin.
“I’ll be darned,” I said
out loud. Mary’s voice came through the walkie-talkie, saying something
I’d prefer not to write down. She said it again. Then she said something
different which I am also not going to write down. Finally, she said
something I don’t mind writing down:
“Are those creatures from other planets, Vionna?”
“They don’t look like they’re from around here,” I replied, jinking the
binoculars around to try and get a better look at them. They were
bathed in green light, so I couldn’t tell what their actual color was.
They were small, and they had big, dark eyes, and they were drifting
down toward the house. They drifted down toward the window of the Keels’
bedroom, then drifted right on in, passing right through the glass
without breaking it, as though either they or the glass weren’t really
there. But I was pretty sure both they and the glass really were.
“Gosh,” I said, “that isn’t supposed to happen.”
“Those creatures appear to have passed through solid matter, Vionna.”
“Yes, and I don’t think you can… Oh, wow! Look, Mary! They’re doing it again!”
The three little creatures emerged through the window, the same way
they’d gone in. Not only that, but they had added a fourth member to
their group.
Mrs. Keel.
*
Back in the 30s and 40s, there was a pulp
magazine with my name on it. It featured highly fictionalized accounts
of some of my cases. In some instances, tales were fabricated out of
whole cloth by writers on the staff of the publishing
company that put it out. I never minded that. It was an extra source of
income, for one thing. For another, good PR does wonders for one’s
reputation, and it can also maximize one’s efficiency. I did not
actually have to go out and be a wholesome, generous, highly moral
do-gooder in order to enjoy the benefits accorded to such paragons by
the public.
I used to get a lot of letters sent to me in care
of the publisher. Fan mail. This tapered off during the 40s, as did a
lot of things, and the magazine was cancelled in 1948. However, I still
received the odd missive now and then, from someone who had turned up an
old copy of the rag and wanted an autograph, or to practice idolatry,
or to make a sexual proposition, or to solicit my help with some
insoluble problem.
In the summer of 1957, I received one that caught my attention. I reproduce it here in its entirety:
Dear Mister Black Centipede Sir:
I write to you as I am a great fan of yours. I have read all your
magazine adventures as well as newspaper clippings about some of your
big cases that are even talked about so far away from civilization as
Plainfield ha ha.
How come I am writing to you is, I have got a
problem that I cannot seek advice about from the police or pastors or
anyone I can think of here. But I remembered some of the fantastic
crimes you have investigated and solved and how you got the better of
criminals like Doctor Almanac and Bloody Mary Jane. I says to myself if
anyone can get to the bottom of this, it is the Black Centipede. I got
the mail address out of one of your old magazines that I have a
collection of, and I hope this letter finds you and that you take an
interest.
The problem I have Sir is with my mother. She died
some years ago. But she came back. This may sound crazy, I know, but it
is God’s truth. I give you my word as a Junior Secret Centipede – which I
was and I reckon I still am, as the certificate I sent off for some
years ago has no expiration date on it. She came back to me here at my
house that used to belong to her and Daddy. At first she was just a
voice that called to me late at night. Then I begun to see her face
looking in through the windows when the sun come up every morning, and
also late in the evening just before dark. After a while of this, I
begun to see her on the inside of the house, walking around. At first
you could barely see her at all, you had to be looking just right in
just the right direction. Then she got darker and more solid looking.
Pretty soon you could tell just who it was standing there, even though
she had no color to her, like a black and white photograph.
Well, it wasn’t long before she started talking to me, and pretty soon
it was just like old times, her telling me what to do and me doing it. I
thought it was queer, but like they say, the Lord works in mysterious
ways. I had been missing Mama something awful and praying every night
that she could come back, and now here she was, so I counted myself
lucky.
One day she said something that didn’t sit right with
me. She told me she needed her a new body to live in, she was tired of
just being a ghost. Which I could sure see her point, as it never looked
to me like she was having much fun. Of course, she never looked that
way when she was alive either. So I ask her how she’s going to get this
body she wants.
She says to me that I’m going to get it for
her. I says to her I have no idea how to go about getting a brand new
unused human body. She says don’t be so stupid, son, you can’t get a new
one. Just get me one that’s already been used and I’ll make do with
that.
That seemed to make sense. Mama always did make all of
our clothes by herself, for me and her and Daddy and my brother Henry
that also died years back. I figured she could do sort of the same thing
with a body, which when you think about it some, is just a suit of
clothes for your spirit. I figured she must have known what she was
talking about, since she had already come back from the dead, which was
in itself a miracle. I figured if that miracle could take place, the
miracle of me doing something that would make Mama happy might happen
too.
Well, like I say, I didn’t like the idea. But I went out
to the graveyard the next night and dug up a woman that had just been
buried there. She was about Mama’s age and the same size, so I thought
it would be a good fit.
Well, Sir, if I had any doubt that she
was really my Mama, she cleared it up by the way she carried on and
called me everything but my right name when I come back home with that
body. Boy, she says, you stupid idiot, I don’t want no body that’s been
all cut up and embalmed and buried in the ground. I want something
fresher than that, she says. I says to her, Mama, why don’t you at least
try it, I went to a lot of trouble to get it, and I could have got into
serious trouble if someone had caught me. Come on and just try it, I
says to her.
So, she did. She didn’t like it one bit, she
cursed me and carried on fussing the whole time, but she turned all wavy
like and oozed into that body like smoke.
And of course I
knew she wouldn’t like it and she didn’t. She made it stand up and
walked back and forth in the kitchen a few times, complaining every step
of the way. I don’t like these feet, she says, they’re all pigeon-toed.
This hair is ratty, I wouldn’t never be able to get it looking
half-decent, she says. She found nothing but fault from head to toe.
Well, that's Mama for you ha ha!
I saw that it just wasn’t going to do, so I asked her, well, Mama, what do you want me to do then?
She says she needs a body that has just died and not had anything done
to it. How am I supposed to get one like that, I says. She says, what’s
wrong with you, boy, you go out and get one that’s still alive and kill
it and bring it here to me. When the spirit leaves it, I can jump right
in and then patch up any holes you might make when you kill it. She
always did like to fuss about how she had to tell me how to do
everything because I was just helpless in this world.
Well,
Sir, I’m not proud of it, not proud of it at all. But I done what she
said. Mama always did have a way with me. She could get me to do
anything she wanted. And now that she’s come back from the dead, it’s a
whole lot worse. I CAN’T not do what she tells me to. I HAVE to obey
her. So I did, I went out and got her a body just like she said to.
This was in 1954. I went and got this lady that run a tavern in
Plainfield back then, and I shot her, and brought her right back here to
the house. She didn’t die when I first shot her, but she passed away
soon after I got her home, and Mama seemed very pleased about that. She
oozed right on in there, and somehow she sealed up the bullet holes I
made when I shot Mary. I didn’t like shooting her like that, but I
didn’t have any choice.
So, Mama got into that body and she
strutted up and down through the whole house like she was modeling some
fancy dress she got in Paris France. I felt relieved and I thought we
might get some peace and quiet after that and let things go back the way
they was before Mama died the first time. In some ways they did. She
was critical of everything I did, and blessed me out something fierce at
least twice a day. She even took to popping me on the head with a big
wooden spoon like she used to. It was just like the old days and I felt
content and kind of safe like in the bosom of my family, and God was in
heaven and everything was right with the world.
Until the body started rotting, that is.
It lasted a lot longer than it ought to have. There weren’t any real
problems for the first couple years. Then she started getting short of
breath and she said she felt like she was having a heart attack. She was
constipated and she couldn’t see out of the left eye any more, and I
don’t know what all. She almost quit talking to me altogether, which
made me sad and aggravated since I had gone to so much trouble to keep
her here and do like she wanted me to.
Well, after a while, I
found out that Mama had been sneaking out of the house of a night and
digging up dead women at the cemetery and hauling them back here. She
was trying to patch up that old body with bits and pieces from these
others. She hardly said a word to me during that entire time, which I
thought was unusual. I didn’t know at the time what she was doing, and
now I think it was just pride on her part. She wanted to fix everything
by herself instead of having to depend on me to do it.
Well,
it didn’t work, not at all. Mama ended up using them bodies she dug up
to make kitchen utensils and patch up the furniture and make little
curiosities and bric-a-brac like she used to do. When she was really
alive, she was always thrifty and prided herself on not letting anything
go to waste, and she is still that way now.
The body has
really gone bad. Mama says she doesn’t think she can keep it going much
longer and I bet you can guess what she wants me to do. She finally
started talking to me again, and the first thing out of her mouth was,
you need to go out and get me a new body like you got this one, she
says. I don’t want to do that, Mama, I says to her. And she says back, I
know you don’t, you wouldn’t turn a hand to help me at all, you are an
ingrate like your father and brother.
We have been going back
and forth like that for days now, and I know it’s just a matter of time
before she makes me do it. I guess she’s using up too much energy just
keeping that old body running to spare any of it to charm me, or
whatever she does. But one day pretty soon, I know I won’t be able to
stop myself. So that’s why I decided I would write to you. I have your
old magazine number 95, October 1938, where you solved the mystery of
the Murdering Ghost of Seacliff Manor, and I knew you were the man to
bring this thing to.
I sure hope you can help me, Mister
Centipede Sir. I know you must be busy, but you have to admit it’s an
extraordinary case, and I know you are famous for rising to any
challenge. I don’t have a phone here but I am enclosing with this letter
a map to my house, it’s real easy to find. Come as soon as you can!
Your Great Fan and Friend (hopefully),
Edward T. Gein
Plainfield Wisconsin
