Mister October - Volume II: An Anthology in Memory of Rick Hautala

Mister October

An Anthology in Memory of Rick Hautala

Volume 2

Edited By

Christopher Golden

JournalStone

San Francisco

Copyright © 2013 by Christopher Golden

Clive Barker’s illustration is © 2013 by the artist.

Cortney Skinner's illustrations are © 2013 by the artist.

Tom Requiem is © 2004 by Clive Barker.

Little Red's Tango is © 2002 by Peter Straub. It first appeared in Conjunctions 39: The New Wave Fabulists, ed. Peter Straub and Bradford Morrow.

Hologram Skull Cover is © 2013 by Jeff Strand.  It was written specifically for this anthology.

Lux et Veritas is © 2002 by Thomas F. Monteleone.  It first appeared in Lighthouse Hauntings: 12 Original Tales of the Supernatural, edited by Charles G. Waugh and Martin H. Greenberg.

Devotion is © 2013 b J.F. Gonzalez.  This is its first publication.

Inn Cleaning is © 2013 by Stephen R. Bissette.  This is its first publication.

Breathe My Name is © 2007 by Christopher Golden.  It first appeared in Five Strokes to Midnight, ed. by Gary A. Braunbeck and Hank Schwaeble

"Magdala Amygdala: is © 2012 by Lucy A. Snyder. It first appeared in Dark Faith: Invocations, ed. by Maurice Broaddus and Jerry Gordon.

The Bohemian of the Arbat © 2007 by Sarah Pinborough. It first appeared in Summer Chills (Carrol and Graf) edited by Stephen Jones

Johnstown is © 2011 by Brian Keene. First appeared in Portents, ed. by Al Sarrantonio

Road Kill is © 2013 WordFire, Inc. by Kevin J. Anderson.  This is the first print publication.

Just Breathe is © 2012 by Tim Lebbon.  It first appeared in Nothing as it Seems, PS Publishing

Catfish Gal Blues is © 1999 by Nancy A. Collins. It first appeared in 999: New Stories of Horror And Suspense, ed. by Al Sarrantonio

‘Illimitable Domain’ is © 2008 by Kim Newman.  It first appeared in Poe, edited by Ellen Datlow.

Independence Day is © 2007 by Sarah Langan. It first appeared in Darkness on the Edge, ed. by Harrison Howe, from PS Publishing.

The Ghost of Lillian Bliss © 2011 by Rio Youers, first published in POSTSCRIPTS 24/25: THE NEW AND PERFECT MAN, edited by Peter Crowther and Nick Gevers.

Hotline © 2007 by Dallas Mayr.  It first appeared in Closing Time and Other Stories.

The Light Of All Possible Worlds is © 1982 John Skipp.

War Stories is © 2002 by James A. Moore. It first appeared in War Fear, ed. by James Shimkus and Byron White.

It’s… is © 2013 by Amber Benson. It first appeared in the program booklet for World Horror Convention 2013.

The Dreamcatcher is © 2010 by Nate Kenyon. It first appeared in The Horror Library Volume 4 by Cutting Block Press.

Kristall Tag is © 2012 by Holly Newstein.  Published in EVIL JESTER DIGEST VOL. 2, ed. Peter Giglio, Evil Jester Press.

Ghost Trap is © 2010 by Rick Hautala.  It first appeared in The New Dead, edited by Christopher Golden

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

JournalStone books may be ordered through booksellers or by contacting:

JournalStone

www.journalstone.com

www.journal-store.com

The views expressed in this work are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

ISBN: 978-1-940161-20-4 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-940161-21-1 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-940161-22-8 (hc—limited edition)

ISBN: 978-1-940161-23-5 (ebook)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2013945702

Printed in the United States of America

JournalStone rev. date:  November 8, 2013

Cover Design: Denise Daniel

Cover Art: Glenn Chadbourne

Interior Art: Clive Barker, Cortney Skinner

Edited by:  Christopher Golden

Introducing Mister October

On March 21st, 2013, I received a phone call from Holly Newstein telling me that her husband, Rick Hautala, had suffered a massive heart attack.  That piece of information shocked me into a surreal sort of panic, so much so that at first I could not make the leap to the next thing she said…that he had died.  It seemed impossible.  Rick had been such a good friend, such a consistent and stable force in my life, that the idea of him being so suddenly removed from this world…I just couldn’t make sense of it.

This isn’t the place for me to put my grief on display.  Suffice it to say that Rick’s passing hit me hard.  Not a day goes by that I do not feel the pain of his absence.

Soon after his death, I remembered that he had told me—only weeks before—that his financial struggles had caused him to let his life insurance lapse.  I thought it would be temporary, that in time he would get a new policy, but it was not to be.  The timing of his death was the cruelest of ironies.  Rick has left a fantastic legacy of wonderful novels and stories, but his wife and sons would have no financial help in dealing with the expenses related to his death and no insurance to help make the transition to life without him.  Nothing could be done to alleviate their grief, but some financial assistance would help to ease the burden of that transition.

Within days of his passing, I shot off e-mails to dozens of writers and artists who I knew were either friends of Rick’s or who had not known him but had admired his contributions to horror literature. I wanted to put together an anthology in Rick’s memory, the proceeds of which would go entirely to benefit his widow and his sons.  I also wanted to do it as quickly as possible, which meant it would have to be a reprint anthology—I didn’t want to wait for people to find time in their schedules to write something brand new, and without pay.

In the midst of my mourning, I sent out dozens of emails.  Dozens.  And I never stopped to consider that nearly everyone would say yes.  Thus, what had been intended as a single volume quickly became TWO volumes, featuring an astonishing array of talent.  And when the stories came in, many of the reprints were true rarities, including Kevin J. Anderson’s tale, which has only ever been published in ebook form.  The real surprise, however, was that not all of the stories were reprints.  I received unpublished stories from Mark Morris, Tom Piccirilli, JF Gonzalez, Stephen R. Bissette, and Matthew Costello.  And Jeff Strand did something wonderful…he went off immediately and wrote Hologram Skull Cover, an original story written specifically for this anthology, a story that revolves around a teenage boy discovering Rick Hautala’s novels for the first time, and the evil that inhabits the boy’s copy of The Night Stone.

And then, at the very end of my work on this book, I received the final story, also an original.  Matti Hautala, Rick’s youngest son, emailed to tell me that he’d written his first short story a while back and his dad had thought it wasn’t half bad.  Did I have any interest in looking at it for potential inclusion in the anthology?  Of course I did.  Matti’s story, Never Back Again, is a fine piece of work—a lot better than my first effort—and it gives me great satisfaction to be able to present it to you.

Rick would truly never have imagined that so many amazing people—wonderful writers and artists—would want to honor him like this.  Those of us who loved him are not at all surprised.

Perhaps the most startling bit of kindness related to Mister October, however, came on the part of its publisher.  Only weeks before his death, Rick announced that he’d made a deal with JournalStone to publish what would end up as his last two novels, The Demon’s Wife and Mockingbird Bay. I’d been in touch with Christopher Payne from JournalStone about another project, and so when Mister October occurred to me, I emailed him to ask if he’d consider putting out the book…and donating all profits to Rick’s heirs.  Publishing, my friends, is a business.  As kind as many people who work in the industry are, it is still a business.  JournalStone seemed the right home for this project, but I didn’t know Chris Payne other than through a handful of emails.  When he agreed—emphatically—to publish this project and take only the actual costs of the project, not a penny of profit for himself or his company, I knew Rick’s final novels were in excellent hands.

I have no doubt that readers will treasure this two-volume set.  It is my hope that as you read, you will ruminate a little bit about the man for whom we all have come together within these pages.  And I hope you’ll urge others to pick up their own copies of Mister October as well.

That’s enough about the anthology.

I want to share a little bit with you about the man who inspired it.

In the aftermath of his death, I have written a great deal about him, but my thoughts on his passing and what it meant to him to be a writer are probably best expressed in the following piece, originally written for my (rarely updated) blog.

********************

WRITERS AND PUNKS

I have written about Rick Hautala many times over the years—his bio when he was Guest of Honor at our beloved Necon, the introduction to the reissue of his wonderful first novel, Moondeath, and the announcement of his HWA Lifetime Achievement Award, among others—but I never thought that I would be writing this.  I hope I might be forgiven, then, for plagiarizing myself in these dark days, when words don’t come easily.  The things I’ve written about him before are all still true—it’s just that they mean more to me, now.

I’ve talked elsewhere about Rick as a friend and as a man—about his humor and his struggles and his love for his wife and sons.  But in truth, if you’d asked him what he was, he wouldn’t have said a friend or a man or a father or a husband…he’d have said he was a writer.  He believed more firmly than anyone I’d ever met that writers were born, not made, that he had no choice in the matter.  His career had some breathtaking highs, but even at the lowest points, when others might have urged him to cut his losses and find some other vocation, Rick felt helpless in the face of his nature.  He didn’t even truly understand the suggestion that there might be some alternative.  He was a writer.  How could he conceive of being anything else?

I loved him for that.

Rick liked unique and funny t-shirts and would always have a new one to show off at Necon every July.  The best—the one that author Jack Ketchum and I recently agreed best represented the true Rick—was emblazoned with the following:

What are you, a writer or a punk?

That was Rick.

No one wrote horror with as heavy a heart, or with as deep a sense of foreboding and sorrow, as Rick Hautala.  His characters are ordinary people, so full of worry about mundane, human things that when the extraordinary begins first to invade and then to tear apart their simple lives, we feel the tragedy on a visceral level that so many who came after Hautala never achieved.

Right from the beginning of his career, Rick achieved something that marked him out as a force to be reckoned with—he didn’t write like anyone else.  When you crack the pages of a Hautala novel (whether under his own name, or his AJ Matthews pseudonym), there’s no mistaking that voice for anyone else.  There’s an anguish in his characters and a terrible claustrophobia to even the most open of settings that marks his novels indelibly.

With Rick Hautala and the modern ghost story, author and subject formed a perfect bond.  The horror in Rick’s work is the sorrow of isolation and the fear of the unknown future that lies ahead, often laced with echoes of past mistakes.  He didn’t go for the cheap scare, ever.  Instead, he created a supernatural catalyst with which he deconstructed human frailties and the fragile ties that bind us.

These themes are found everywhere in Rick’s work.  Some of the best examples include the million-copy, international bestseller Night Stone, the milestone short story collection Bed Bugs, and the extraordinary novella Miss Henry’s Bottles, which may be Rick’s finest work.  Fan favorites include the novels Little Brothers and The Mountain King.  Hautala’s in top form in Winter Wake and Cold Whisper, as well as the novels he wrote as AJ Matthews, in particular Looking Glass and Follow.

With The Demon’s Wife—the last novel he completed—he had begun a new phase in his writing career, written something truly unique.  We can only wonder where his ruminations would have taken him next.

The tragedy of Rick’s life was that he never knew how many people loved him, how many held him in high regard—or if he knew, he never quite believed it.  He never knew how good a writer he was.  Oh, he wanted you to read his novels, and he wanted you to like them, but even the books of which he was most proud he dismissed with comments like, I think that one worked out pretty well.  That was the highest compliment he could give himself.

Rick Hautala was the horror writer's horror writer. He never looked down his nose at the genre, but embraced it instead. Legendary for his kindness and his generous spirit, he influenced a great many young writers and exuded a sense of camaraderie that became infectious.  In Rick’s view, we were all in the trenches together. Self-effacing and approachable, he combined a blue collar work ethic with literary sensibilities shaped by his love of Shakespeare and Hawthorne. His passion for the horror genre was second only to his love for writing, and all of those elements conspired over decades to transform him into a determined mentor, offering critical feedback and quiet encouragement to many new authors as they began their own careers. Despite the mark he has made on the genre and his quiet mentorship of other writers, Rick was rarely recognized for his work until 2012, when he received the HWA's Lifetime Achievement Award.  That honor meant the world to him.

I worry that Rick Hautala and other masters are in danger of having their legacy forgotten.  That can’t be allowed to happen.  Go and pick up a copy of Winter Wake or Little Brothers or one of Rick’s fantastic short story collections. Connecting with readers, making them feel…that was the only reward that ever really mattered to him.  So go and read some Hautala, and spread the word.

Don’t forget.

--Christopher Golden

Bradford, Massachusetts

Table of Contents

TOM REQUIEM

Clive Barker

LITTLE RED’S TANGO

Peter Straub

HOLOGRAM SKULL COVER

Jeff Strand

LUX ET VERITAS

Thomas F. Monteleone

DEVOTION

J. F. Gonzalez

INN CLEANING

Stephen R. Bissette

BREATHE MY NAME

Christopher Golden

MAGDALA AMYGDALA

Lucy A. Snyder

THE BOHEMIAN OF THE ARBAT

Sarah Pinborough

JOHNSTOWN

Brian Keene

ROAD KILL (A Dan Shamble, Zombie P.I. story)

Kevin J. Anderson

JUST BREATHE

Tim Lebbon

CATFISH GAL BLUES

Nancy A. Collins

ILLIMITABLE DOMINION

Kim Newman

INDEPENDENCE DAY

Sarah Langan

THE GHOST OF LILLIAN BLISS

Rio Youers

HOTLINE

Jack Ketchum

THE LIGHT OF ALL POSSIBLE WORLDS

John Skipp

WAR STORIES

James A. Moore

IT’S…

Amber Benson

THE DREAMCATCHER

Nate Kenyon

KRISTALL TAG

Holly Newstein

GHOST TRAP

Rick Hautala

About the Authors and Artists

TOM REQUIEM

By Clive Barker

Though there had been men in recent history who had committed crimes far worse than those of Tom Requiem, none drew the crowds the size of those who came to Requiem’s Trial. The reason? Tom was a star. He knew how to smile, he knew how to look penitent, he knew when to play the fool, and when to simply do nothing and leave his admirers to project upon his beautiful face all that they wanted to see there.

Some saw Christ. With his long, dark, curly hair and the rough beard he’d grown in prison, Requiem did indeed look like the Man of Sorrows in certain lights.

What he didn’t look like was a man who killed a woman in a sordid back-street squabble over the dividing of the profit from an afternoon of pick-pocketing. But as the prosecution reminded the jury over and over, Requiem’s many faces were not to be trusted. He was a Guizer, said the lawyer, a man who took pleasure in putting on faces to suit the occasion, not one of them more trustworthy than any other.

"I have heard men grow pale when they hear of Tom Requiem’s reputation as a great fighter, and tender-hearted women blush when they hear stories of his prowess as a lover, but when we come to inquire as to where these stories originate what do we find?  Why, that they have come from the lips of the great lover himself. He is a liar, born and bred, a man who likes nothing better than to weave fabrications and fantastications, and make the world his fool by having us believe them!  This, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I will prove today, as I uncover his crimes and deceits.  By the time I am done telling you the truth about Thomas Absalom Requiem you will find very little to admire about him, I’ll wager, and much to hold in the profoundest contempt."

Prosecutors are not always good at doing as they promise they’ll do, but this one was an exception.  By the time the lengthy trial was over, Tom Requiem’s many reputations were in tatters. His female conquests had come into the witness box and given lists of his inadequacies, while those he had reputedly fought against in human combat told of his street-dog tricks.

There you have it then, said the prosecutor. Tom Requiem is a cheat, a philanderer and a murderer. He may have an innocent look on his face right now, but I beg you—be not deceived!—he is fully deserving of the hangman’s noose.

The Jury agreed, and the judge declared the next day that Tom Requiem would be hanged by the neck until dead. And God have mercy on his soul.

That night, well after midnight, Tom had a visitor. He introduced himself as Joshua Kemp. He was to be Tom’s hangman.

I will be merciful, Kemp said, for I see no purpose in prolonging a man’s agony. He drew closer to Tom as he spoke and glanced back over his shoulder to be certain that nobody was listening at the door. But, he said, lowering his voice to a whisper. Should you find by some wild chance that I did not complete tomorrow’s business—

What are you saying?

Keep your voice down and listen. There are those parties who would like to see you preserved from so short a life.

Well, well, said Tom. Not that I’m not grateful an’ all, but why would anybody work to save my sorry neck from the noose?

Kemp tugged at the collar of his shirt, as though this subject was growing a little too uncomfortable for him. Better I don’t talk about that, he said. "I just came here to tell you to take courage and for God’s sake, play dead. You may be buried, but you’ll be dug up again. That’s a promise."

Buried... alive? Tom Requiem murmured.

That’s the word to keep remembering, the hangman said. "Alive. Alive."

Oh, I’ll remember, Tom replied.

So the next day, with his head shorn of its shiny locks and his chest shaved clean, Tom Requiem was taken to the gallows, where a huge crowd waited to see judgment done. Despite his conversation with Kemp of the previous night, he did not feel much reassured. He watched the hangman’s face—right up until the moment when the burlap sack was put over his head—searching for some sign, however small, of reassurance. A wink, a tiny smile. But there was nothing but sweat on Kemp’s face. Then the bag came down like a black curtain, and Tom heard himself breathing hard in darkness. The murmur of the crowd receded to near silence. The priest came to the end of his prayer. There was clatter, and a terrible emptiness beneath his feet.  Then he fell, down and down, and the darkness became a blaze of white, so bright that it burned all his thoughts away.

What happened then was all fragments, coming and going. He saw faces, looking down at him, contemptuous faces, laughing faces. He saw a doctor come and give him a cursory glance (a doctor, it should be said, with a most peculiar look in his eyes, as though there were many fires burning in his head) and then apparently dismissing him as a dead thing; as worthless. All that was easy enough to take. What followed was not. What followed was the stuff of nightmares, and in that tiny place in his head where Tom Requiem was still alive he was a tiny ball of fear. To see the coffin sides rising around him as was put in that plain wooden box!  To see the lid slid into place, eclipsing the last of the light, until there was nothing, nothing, nothing to see but darkness! To hear the wood creak around him as the coffin was carried to the grave, and the sound of the digging, and the raw rasp of the ropes as they were hauled beneath the box to drop it down into the grave! And finally—oh worst of all, the very worst!—the sound of the earth rattling down onto the lid of the coffin, becoming more and more muffled as the grave filled up, until there was no sound at all. Nothing!

It had all been a terrible trick, he began to think. This was his enemy’s way of revenging themselves on him. Death hadn’t been enough. They’d wanted to try him by hope, leaving him alive in the grave, knowing that eventually he would lose his sanity.

He could feel it slipping away, moment by moment, heart-beat by heart-beat. There he had nothing to pray to in this darkness. No God that he believed in. No loving Virgin Mother who would have forgiven him his trespasses. He was beyond all help.

Or was he?

What was that sound in the earth?

Somebody digging, was it?

Did he dare believe that after all somebody was going to come and save him from this place of torments? Or was it just his crazed mind playing tricks on him? Yes, that it was! It was just one last proof of his insanity, because, listen, listen, the sound wasn’t even coming from above, it was coming from below!

Ridiculous. How could anybody be digging upwards from below?

And yet…and yet….

The more he listened, the more he seemed to hear the sound of shovels cutting through dirt, and voices even, the voices of the diggers, getting louder as they approached.

Finally, he heard a spade strike against the board beneath him. The coffin reverberated.  He wanted to weep with relief. He was going to be saved! The question remained as to what manner of creature would dig a man out of his grave from below, but frankly he didn’t much care: a savior was a savior, whatever shape it came in, and from whatever direction.

Now he felt hands on the coffin from all sides and people talking all around. He couldn’t make sense of what they were saying, but some of them were perhaps giving orders, for a few seconds later several powerful instruments (perhaps crowbars) were tearing at the underside of his coffin. Light broke through, yellow light, and finally the bottom of the coffin was removed completely, and he dropped into the arms of those who had worked to save him.

There were three of them: small, quick-eyed creatures with painted faces. They introduced themselves: Clovio, Heeler and Bleb.

But it wasn’t the diggers who claimed most of Tom Requiem’s attention, it was their master. He knew the man, though not his name.  This was the fellow whom Tom had presumed to be a doctor, who had briefly examined him before incarceration. No wonder he had spotted no sign of life in the hanged man. He’d been in the plot all along.

His eyes burned brighter now, and when they fixed their gaze on the dead man Tom felt the rigidities of death fall away, and life flooded back into his body, from scalp to sole.

Welcome, said the Doctor. No doubt you are surprised to see me down here.      

Yeah. I guess I am, Tom said. His voice was low from the constriction his wind-pipe had lately taken, but the Doctor had a quick cure for that.

Drink this! he said, handing a silver flask to Requiem.

Never one for half measures, Tom knocked back two full throatfuls of the liquor, which coursed through his cold body most pleasantly.

We haven’t brought you down here into the Underland out of simple compassion, Tom, the Doctor went on.

No?

No, we have work for you to do. We will dress you in a costume befitting a shaman, and you will go out into the world to lead an Infernal Parade. The world has grown complacent, Tom; and fat with its own certainties. It’s time to send some fears into the hearts of men.

Tom thought of the crowd that had assembled in such howling numbers to see him hanged by the neck until dead.

It will be my pleasure, he said. Where do I begin?

LITTLE RED’S TANGO

By Peter Straub

Little Red Perceived as a Mystery

What a mystery is Little Red! How he sustains himself, how he lives, how he gets through his days, what passes through his mind as he endures that extraordinary journey…. Is not mystery precisely that which does not yield, does not give access?

Little Red, His Wife, His Parents, His Brothers

Little is known of the woman he married. Little Red seldom speaks of her, except now and then to say, My wife was half-Sicilian or All you have to know about my wife is that she was half-Sicilian.  Some have speculated, though not in the presence of Little Red, that the long-vanished wife was no more than a fictional or mythic character created to lend solidity to his otherwise amorphous history. Years have been lost. Decades have been lost. (In a sense, an entire life has been lost; some might say Little Red’s.) The existence of a wife, even an anonymous one, does lend a semblance of structure to the lost years.

Half of her was Sicilian; the other half may have been Irish. People like that you don’t mess with, says Little Red. "Even when you mess with them, you don’t mess with them, know what I mean?"

The parents are likewise anonymous, though no one has ever speculated that they may have been fictional or mythic. Even anonymous parents must be of flesh and blood. Since Little Red has mentioned, in his flat, dry Long Island accent, a term in the Uniondale High School jazz ensemble, we can assume that for a substantial period his family resided in Uniondale, Long Island. There were, apparently, two brothers, both older. The three boys grew up in circumstances modest but otherwise unspecified. A lunch counter, a diner, a small mom-and-pop grocery may have been in the picture. Some connection with food, with nourishment.

Little Red’s long years spent waiting on tables, his decades as a waiter, continue this nourishment-theme, which eventually becomes inseparable from the very conception of Little Red’s existence. In at least one important way, nourishment lies at the heart of the mystery. Most good mysteries are rooted in the question of nourishment. As concepts, nourishment and sacrifice walk hand in hand, like old friends everywhere. Think of Judy Garland. The wedding at Cana. Think of the fish grilled at night on the Galilean shore. A fire, the fish in the simple pan, the flickeringly illuminated men.

The brothers have not passed through the record entirely unremarked, nor are they anonymous. In the blurry comet-trail of Little Red’s history, the brothers exist as sparks, embers, brief coruscations. Blind, unknowing, they shared his early life, the life of Uniondale. They were, categorically, brothers, intent on their bellies, their toys, their cars and their neuroses, all of that, and attuned not at all to the little red-haired boy who stumbled wide-eyed in their wake. Kyle, the recluse; Ernie, the hopeless. These are the names spoken by Little Red. After graduation from high school, the recluse lived one town over with a much older woman until his aging parents bought a trailer and relocated to rural Georgia, whereupon he moved into a smaller trailer on the same lot. When his father died, Kyle sold the little trailer and settled in with his mother. The hopeless brother, Ernie, followed Kyle and parents to Georgia within six weeks of their departure from Suffolk County. He soon found both a custodial position in a local middle school and a girlfriend, whom he married before the year was out. Ernie’s weight, 285 pounds on his wedding day, ballooned to 350 soon after. No longer capable of fulfilling his custodial duties, he went on welfare. Kyle, though potentially a talented musician, experienced nausea and an abrupt surge in blood pressure at the thought of performing in public, so that source of income was forever closed to him. Fortunately, his only other talent, that of putting elderly women at their ease, served him well—his mother’s will left him her trailer and the sum of $40,000, twice the amount bequested to her other two sons.

We should note that, before Kyle’s windfall, Little Red periodically mailed him small sums of money—money he could ill-afford to give away—and that he did the same for brother Ernie, although Ernie’s most useful talent was that of attracting precisely the amount of money he needed at exactly the moment he needed it. While temporarily separated from his spouse, between subsistence-level jobs and cruelly hungry, Ernie waddled a-slouching past an abandoned warehouse, was tempted by the presence of a paper sack placed on the black leather passenger seat of an aubergine Lincoln Town Car, tested the door, found it open, snatched up the sack, and rushed Ernie-style into the cobweb-strewn shelter of the warehouse. An initial search of the bag revealed two foil-wrapped cheeseburgers, still warm. A deeper investigation uncovered an 8-ounce bottle of Poland Spring water and a green Clingfilm-covered brick comprised of $2,300 in new fifties and twenties.

Although Ernie described this coup in great detail to his youngest brother, he never considered, not for a moment, sharing the booty.

These people are his immediate family. Witnesses to the trials, joys, despairs, and breakthroughs of his childhood, they noticed nothing. Of the actualities of his life, they knew less than nothing, for what they imagined they knew was either peripheral or inaccurate. Kyle and Ernie mistook the tip for the iceberg. And deep within herself, their mother had chosen, when most she might have considered her youngest son’s life, to avert her eyes.

Little Red carries these people in his heart. He grieves for them; he forgives them everything.

What He Has Been

Over many years and in several cities, a waiter and a bartender; a bass player, briefly; a husband, a son, a nephew; a dweller in caves; an adept of certain magisterial substances; a friend most willing and devoted; a reader, chiefly of crime, horror, and science fiction; an investor and day trader; a dedicated watcher of cable television, especially the History, Discovery and Sci-Fi channels; an intimate of nightclubs, joints, dives, and after-hour shebeens, also of restaurants, cafes, and diners; a purveyor of secret knowledge; a photographer; a wavering candle-flame; a voice of conundrums; a figure of steadfast loyalty; an intermittent beacon; a path beaten through the undergrowth.

The Beatitudes of Little Red, I

Whatsoever can be repaid, should be repaid with kindness.

Whatsoever can be borrowed, should be borrowed modestly.

Tip extravagantly, for they need the money more than you do.

You can never go wrong by thinking of God as Louis Armstrong.

Those who swing, should swing some more.

Something always comes along. It really does.

Cleanliness is fine, as far as it goes.

Remember—even when you are alone, you’re in the middle of a party.

The blues ain’t nothin’ but a feeling, but what a feeling.

What goes up sometimes just keeps right on going.

Try to eat solid food at least once a day.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with television.

Anybody who thinks he sees everything around him isn’t looking.

When you get your crib the way you like it, stay there.

Order can be created in even the smallest things, but that doesn’t mean you have to create it.

Clothes are for sleeping in, too. The same goes for chairs.

Everyone makes mistakes, including deities and higher powers.

Avoid the powerful, for they will undoubtedly try to hurt you.

Doing one right thing in the course of a day is good enough.

Stick to beer, mainly.

Pay attention to musicians.

Accept your imperfections, for they can bring you to Paradise.

No one should ever feel guilty about fantasies, no matter how shameful they may be, for a thought is not a deed.

Sooner or later, jazz music will tell you everything you need to know.

There is no significant difference between night and day.

Immediately after death, human beings become so beautiful you can hardly bear to look at them.

To one extent or another, all children are telepathic.

If you want to sleep, sleep. Simple as that.

Do your absolute best to avoid saying bad things about people, especially those you dislike.

In the long run, grasshoppers and ants all wind up in the same place.

Little Red, His Appearance

When you meet Little Red for the first time, what do you see?

He will be standing in the doorway of his ground-floor apartment on West 55th Street, glancing to one side and backing away to give you entry. The atmosphere, the tone created by these gestures, will be welcoming and gracious in an old-fashioned, even almost rural, manner.

He will be wearing jeans and an old T-shirt, or a worn gray bathrobe, or a chain-store woolen sweater and black trousers. Black, rubber-soled Chinese slippers purchased from a sidewalk vendor will cover his narrow feet. Very slightly, his high, pale forehead will bulge forward beneath his long red hair, which will have been pulled back from his face and fastened into a ragged ponytail by means of a twisted rubber band. An untrimmed beard, curled at the bottom like a giant ruff, will cover much of his face. When he speaks, the small, discolored pegs of his teeth will flicker beneath the fringe of his mustache.

Little Red will strike you as gaunt, in fact nearly haggard. He will seem detached from the world beyond the entrance of his apartment building. West 55th Street, and the rest of Manhattan will fade from consciousness as you step through the door and move past your host, who, still gazing to one side, will be gesturing toward the empty chair separated from his recliner by a small, round, marble-topped table or nightstand heaped with paperback books, pads of paper, ballpoint pens upright in a cup.

When first you enter Little Red’s domain, and every subsequent time thereafter, he will suggest dignity, solicitude, and pleasure in the fact of your company. Little Red admits only those from whom he can be assured of at least some degree of acknowledgement of that which they will receive from him. People who have proven themselves indifferent to the rewards of Little Red’s hospitality are forbidden return, no matter how many times they press his buzzer or rap a quarter against his big, dusty front window. He can tell them by their buzzes, their rings, their raps: He