The Everborn - Nicholas Grabowsky [31]
INTO THE GRAVE II
a novel by
Andrew Erlandson
and below this the short scribbles of an autographed signature.
Further towards the sliding glass patio doors and after another series of book shelves, hung also a late 1960’s motion picture poster, glaring out from behind the transparent plastic of a poster frame. Sandwiched between the faded colors of crayfish-like costumed men and credits ending in the words FILMED IN TECHNICOLOR splashed across a spread of white-blank backdrop, there read
HIDEOUS MUTATED SEA DEMONS
and below this also, in the book cover’s similarly autographed longhand, looming in careful avoidance of the beginning credits,
To my son,
I in you, and you in me.
Loving timelessly,
-your Dad, A.J.
Ralston brought a hand to his lap and lifted the bulky stack of papers. As Aerosmith’s latest video faded from the T.V. screen, he thumbed through the manuscript, scrutinizing, perusing. The black of his fingerless gloves glimmered slick under the mild lamplight above. Webbed fumes rose from the mount of extinguished cigarettes within the silvery mouth of an ashtray stand at his side, one butt for nearly every three minutes of waiting for Andrew to emerge from showering.
From the view of his ghostwriter’s latest services, Ralston was pleased. He was very pleased.
This was exactly what he told Andrew when the bathroom door opened and the narrow umbra of the clandestine writer halted and rested against the living room’s entrance frame.
“Another guaranteed bestseller,” Andrew said without a hint of enthusiasm. “A sliver of my soul carved to fit medium weight bond paper.”
“Yeah,” Ralston added, nabbing what enthusiasm could have existed in Andrew and making it his own, “I’d say you’d done and shined like a million dollar penny....yeah, another six million figured penny. In a string of such, thanks to your craziness schemes and bloodletting pacts. I don’t fully understand why I’ve been ordained with such a noble existence, and frankly, why I’m the household name that I am scares the piss out of me if I think about it too much. But I’m famous, filthy famous. I have wealth, I have notoriety. And I have you to thank for it. I really must say, I didn’t know you had it in me.”
“You haven’t even read it yet,” Andrew said. “Maybe this’ll be that one downer you’re afraid of that’ll stop your roll....”
Ralston went for his coat, a black London Fog which hung on the rack near the kitchen entrance. He grabbed the bulky manuscript, cradling it within his palm against his side, his thigh toppling over a half-empty beer can which tumbled from the end table edge and emptied onto the carpet.
“Look at it this way,” Ralston told him. “Just as many millions will buy it anyway, and if they don‘t like it, well, I know I can count on you to come back with another one the critics will love. I’ve become quite a phenomenon and I’ve just now hit the ‘Big Three-Oh’, and I’m free and I have a say-so.”
It had always been important for Ralston Cooper to have a say-so. Before all of this, before he had a life, before Andrew and Andrew’s pact of taciturn lunacy, Ralston never did quite have a say-so of anything, with the exception of the renegade delinquents of his youth. Back then, he had truly been a delinquent authority, a Lost Boys Leader, a pot-smoking, shit-talking teen thing that was much to be feared among rebel-tough-guy slacker chick-magnets too good for varsity football.
Even then, however, say-so’s were few and far between. Far between fights and after-school detention, far between flights of fancy and wannabe rock-star dreams.
Say-so’s had to be won.
Until Andrew Erlandson came along.
Andrew Erlandson made say-so’s easy as pie.
Easy as a pact.
Easy as forgetting how that pact came to be.
Easier than dealing with
(nightmare memories, memories of