Cruddy - Lynda Barry [39]
“Let me have one,” said Julie, reaching her hand out for the cig pack.
“They’re not mine.”
“Well, you took one. So I can have one.”
“Except she’s not your friend. She’s my friend.”
“Who?” said Julie.
I said, “What’s on Nightmare Theater?”
She said, “Give me a cigarette.”
I tossed one to her and she caught it and got up and lit it off of the stove. I had a lighter but she didn’t want the lighter. She wanted to almost burn her face off instead. I kind of understood that.
Then we were both blowing smoke rings. In my restricted life I have had a lot of time to practice and so has Julie. If there was ever a smoke-ring championship we could possibly win it. If we ever had a mantel, there could be a trophy on it.
“I like that hat,” said Julie between drags.
“It’s not mine.”
“Obviously. And your face is dripping blood. It just started. Your nose.” She touched her upper lip. “Both nostrils. Never seen that before except on TV. Know what the movie is tonight? It’s one you like.”
It was just a nosebleed. I ran some napkins under cold water and then tipped my head back and held them there.
Julie said, “It’s that hand movie. That outer-space hand one where it has an eyeball on the back and dragging guts are hanging out of it. Remember that one?”
The saggy underwear man started shouting next door. “I am what I am and I am IT!” Julie peeped at him through the side window. “He’s just walking back and forth again.”
My nose kept bleeding. The sound effects for Nightmare Theater started, the wind blowing and the wolves howling and breaking glass and screams and eerie high-voiced singing with no words. The vampire rose out of his plywood coffin and said “Good Evening,” and while he announced the night’s presentation, I noticed an extension cord running behind one of the plywood gravestones, and I noticed he was standing on a floor that looked linoleum and that his shoes looked Sears, and I was wondering how I could not have noticed this before, I was pointing it out to Julie and she said, “Shut up, OK? He’s talking.”
I looked closely at the vampire. It was the King’s Castle Carpet man. It was suddenly very clearly the guy from the King’s Castle Carpet commercials dressed as Dracula. Had the Nightmare Theater vampire always been him? How come I never noticed it before?
I said, “Julie, do you know who that is?”
When she yelled “SHUT! UP!” her voice was unusually violent.
My nose was still bleeding at the first commercial. I leaned over the bathroom sink and rinsed my face and watched the water swirl pink down the drain. Both nostrils was unusual, like Julie said. In the mirror I saw that my pupils were still fully expanded and that the lightbulb above the mirror had ray-rings around it, the light was expanding out of it in concentric halos. I felt the creeping chills clawing their way up my back and my jaws felt tight and inside my mouth saliva gushed.
“It’s back on!” Julie shouted. The haunting Dracula music twirled up the stairs and found me. It was happening again. The rushes, the rushes. I heard the Turtle singing to me.
And then I was heaving, bent over the toilet and heaving, and more than anything, anything, I wanted to see him.
Chapter 20
YLVESTER THE nude mummified man at Ye Olde Curiosity Shoppe was not the first dead person I had seen, but he was my most influential one. He had a piece of ancient cloth over his privates but otherwise he was completely exposed.
The sign that explained him said he had been found in the desert. It was the heat and sun that dried him out before he had a chance to rot. You need moisture to rot correctly. Bacteria and certain insects that help the process have to have moisture. But if you croak in the middle of the desert during a hot time of year, all of your moisture can go very quickly and your skin can shrink fast onto your bones and if the blowing sand rolls gently over you it can make you smooth and shiny. Sylvester was smooth and shiny. His eyes were collapsed, understandably, but his mustache was there. His lips were very shrunken