999_ Twenty-Nine Original Tales of Horror and Suspense - Al Sarrantonio [287]
He did not talk to Mr. Carr about what he’d seen, and the old man did not mention the episode.
The thought occurred to him that everything was preplanned, predestined, that things were supposed to work out this way and could not have worked out any other. In this scenario, he was meant to find a job at the bookstore, meant to discover the door, meant to sneak upstairs.
Meant to see the theater.
He forced himself to think of something else. That line of thinking frightened him. To ascribe such power to the theater and its inhabitants, to admit that they had any meaning or resonance at all in the world beyond the stairs, meant that the ideas and beliefs he had held all of his life were nothing more than comforting and reassuring lies.
He told himself that it had all been coincidence. Bad luck.
He tried to believe it.
At home, his mom continued to be interested in politics and her career. His sister continued to be interested in playing and television.
He took to walking through the neighborhood and driving around the city alone. Both activities scared him, and he thought that perhaps that was why he forced himself to go through with them.
He was walking past the liquor store on the corner of Eighth and Center one evening when he was accosted by a hairy bearded man who grabbed his shoulders while looking wildly up and down the street. The man was wearing a dirty mismatched suit jacket and pants, and he smelled of sweat, vomit and old alcohol. His crooked teeth were colored in several gradations of yellow.
“Where’s Bro?” the man demanded.
“Who’s Bro?”
“My dog, man! Bro’s my damn dog! You seen him?”
Putnam shook his head, backed up away from the man. “No,” he said. “I don’t think so. W-what’s he look like?”
Something shifted, something in his perception, something in the man’s face, something in the air itself. The man smiled, and the rotted teeth in his mouth looked suddenly
fake.
“He’s about six inches high,” the man said, and his voice was no longer high and hysterical but calm and low and reasonable. “He’s orange and squishy and he used to be a yam.”
Putnam fell back, caught himself against the liquor store door, and felt the scream rise in his throat.
“Huh?” the man asked, his voice wild again. “A big black sucker? Looks like a damn Doberman?”
“No!” Putnam screamed. “I’ve never seen your dog!”
He ran all the way home.
A week or so later, his mom added two new crops to her garden at the side of the house.
She planted pumpkins and summer squash.
* * *
Mr. Carr grew even colder, stiffer and more contemptuous than he had been before, the understanding he had momentarily exhibited on the phone that day gone and apparently forgotten. He seldom talked to Putnam now and when he did it was out of necessity and with a rarefied sort of disgusted disdain. The old man seemed to be deliberately attempting to anger him, and it seemed to Putnam as though Mr. Carr was trying to get him to quit.
He had the unsettling impression that the bookstore owner was, in some strange way, jealous of him.
But he could not quit, as much as he often wanted to. The bookstore was hell to him, and his insides knotted each day when he drove to work and looked up at the hidden second floor of the building, but the store offered the only sanctuary from the twisted tortured thoughts that festered in his brain. It was only within the boundaries of those walls that he was able to think of the dummy in the audience instead of the figures on the stage.
Mr. Carr or no Mr. Carr, he needed to work at the store.
On Sunday, Mr. Carr did not go book hunting. He stayed at the store, unpacking old boxes, shelving, leaving Putnam to run the register. It was at lunchtime that Putnam noticed that the old man was not around, not in any of the aisles, not in the oversized closet that served as a stockroom, not in the bathroom.
That meant there was only one place he could be.
Putnam considered leaving, taking off for lunch,