Uttuku

The Books of Darkness

by Robert N. Stephenson

Chapter 19

I sat drinking scotch at the Hilton sofa bar. I’d given up looking for the book Steven had plagiarized. I started to think just maybe he did write the work, but too many inconsistencies in style plagued me. The connection to the death author Kurt von Trojan, though tenuous, did give me some hope.

For now I needed a few drinks, and a quiet place where I could safely observe people going about their everyday, boring lives. These observations helped me to develop characters.

The hotel felt comfortable. I’d dressed for clubbing later in the evening, not kids’ clubbing, but the get-togethers where Ozzy Osborne was King and Marilyn Manson his daughter.

I hadn’t applied the dark eye makeup yet, it would have drawn attention to me in such a pricey hotel. Polished brass and long tube lights helped settle my mind.

I’d been searching for the book and author for almost two months. Steven was doing an Australia-wide book-signing tour and he was the darling of the press. Whenever I turned on the TV he was there, on a talk show, a news program, even selling breakfast cereal to children. The man made me sick.

“Diana Arlyn?”

I looked away from the lifts, saw an old man standing before me. He looked ninety if a day. “Good evening,” I said. Usually only the young fans recognized me.

“May I sit?” Polite, too. I offered him the tub chair on the other side of the small drinks table.

He looked nervous, as if he shouldn’t be seen with me. He placed a briefcase on the table and wiped sweat from his age-spotted bald head with a handkerchief. His suit was straight out of the fifties, dark, wide pinstripe, wide lapels.

“How can I help you?” I said, putting my notepad down and folding my hands in my lap.

“Steven Opie stole something from me,” he said. The man had my full attention.

“Who are you?”

“Paslenov, Uri Paslenov.” He didn’t sound Russian. “I hired Mr Opie to edit a book. He stole the idea and wrote a book based on its contents.” Uri said Kal’s name with obvious distaste. “Now I am in trouble with the... with my employer.”

“You have evidence to prove this?” I sat forward, the pad slid to the floor.

The man placed his left hand on the case. “Here is the book, the one he copied.”

“Why haven’t you reported this?” If he knew, then why not tell the publisher?

“I have to leave, and very soon.” His eyes, wet and red-rimmed; they showed age and absolute fear. “My employer is unhappy with me. I broke into Mr Opie’s house last night and stole the book back, but it is too late. I am being followed.”

“What’s too late, Uri? And who’s following you?” I tried to sound friendly, to contain my excitement.

“I have to go.” He stood, old muscles not as quick as they once were. He hurried away, an old-man shuffle mimicking urgency.

I should have grabbed the bag and followed him, but this was what I’d been looking for, and it had found me. Why, I didn’t know and didn’t care. I spun the case around, the tumbler security locks were locked. I felt a moment of panic, then tried what I’d seen in a movie. I turned all the tumblers to zero. The locks released and I opened the bag.

What looked like six hundred handwritten notes stared up at me. Old script, written by an old hand. By the look of the style, it had all the ornate curvature of European skills. No one wrote like that anymore.

I pulled out the top page. It felt stiff, equally as old as the script. It had been written with a fountain pen, the dobs of ink at the ends of the letters, the fine starts until the nib began to pump properly. I’d tried calligraphy for a time, but I didn’t have the patience.

The whole first page was straight out of Steven’s book. Word for word. The title of the book, simply Me and Him, was authored by Ferenc Dezsõ. I snapped the case closed, left my pad on the floor and my drink untouched. I had work to do, an email to write. It was Thursday night, I could have an email and a scan of the page to Steven’s publisher by morning. Now that lying bastard would get what he deserved.

I spent the night reading more of the manuscript. I didn’t understand the story. It was clear Steven had made improvements, and also where he’d added his own story line to create a mystery, but the areas dealing with someone simply known as “him” and “the dark” sounded too real to be fiction; the sign of a good storyteller.

Ferenc could tell a good story, but his use of English was appalling in places. I’d already sent my venomous letter to Maxine Rickson with the attached page. I also put the original first page in an envelope and addressed it to the her, with a note saying I have six hundred other pages of the original book.

Vengeance was mine. I opened a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc to celebrate. Feeling good for the first time in months, I masturbated while thinking of Samantha. Glass of wine in one hand and touching myself with the other. I knew I had won. Samantha had no choice but to leave him now.

I’d just put some dishes in the dishwasher when the phone rang. It was Maxine, she was cautious, worried. She tried to buy my silence at first. Fifty thousand to forget about it. I got more than that for the release of my first children’s book into the U.S. I refused, she abused and I refused some more.

I told her if she didn’t release the information, I would, and that I would do it through the local current affairs program, who were notorious for brutalizing people. Maxine agreed after a barrage of abuse, saying a press release would be out by noon. She called me a dyke, then hung up.

I felt vindicated, elated after the call. I sat in a sofa chair, reading the morning paper. The usual sports stories crowded the front page, Adelaide Crows stood good chance for the finals, Basketball great retires. It wasn’t until the fifth page that anything of the news outside of the state emerged.

The big stories, surrounded in advertising were boring, so I read the little outtakes, and brief items that ran the columns alongside large photographs and ads. Guinea pig falls to death off house roof in China. That one made me smile. Old man found dead alongside river. A lot of homeless people die on the river.

I read a little further. Mr Uri Paslenov, was found dead this morning by joggers. His death was being put down to exposure to the elements. The story went on to examine the dangers to old people out in the weather at night.

Feeling unnerved, I had a shower, using the water to try and help me think of what to do. I had the book from a man who had just turned up dead, a man who had told me his employer was unhappy with him, and was being followed. Damn it, a book Steven had stolen in the first place.

I had wanted Samantha, but not this way. Should I contact the police? No, there wasn’t anything to tell them; besides, it would distract the media away from Steven. He would pay for causing the death of the old man. If he hadn’t stolen the book, Uri would still be alive. I dried and dressed, trying to think of what to do with the manuscript. Did the old man say who he’d given it to? Was I now in danger?

I threw the case on the back seat of my car and drove down into Norwood, where Sam and Steven lived in a townhouse. They wouldn’t be home, but I knew where the spare key was kept: a typical fake rock in the garden, a professional burglar’s dream.

I let myself in. I placed the briefcase in the middle of their dining table; no note. The investigation into his fraud would find the book in his possession, I was sure of it. I wiped my prints from the case and left. My part had already been done, I didn’t need the book anymore. The media would hound Steven, and I could sit back and watch the show.

I’d parked a few streets away, so no one would notice my yellow Volvo, so the walk back helped calm me some. All the time while I had been in the house my heart felt like it was going to explode. Someone was sure to see me, call the cops, and I’d be caught inside, and then it could be claimed I was planting evidence against Steven.

Even with the case gone, my mind had difficulties understanding what was going on. There was a lot more than just a stolen manuscript here, but I didn’t want to know or need to go further. I needed a drink.

Beth lived across the road from the Norwood tenpin bowling centre. I parked in her drive and sat in the car for ten minutes struggling with myself. I could tell Beth what was going on. She was a good woman, a hard-core Goth with money, and a good friend, sometimes.

My hands had stopped shaking enough for me to get out of the car, though my knees buckled a little. I walked along the house’s wide Tudor verandah. The house had been painted bright white with black borders around everything. The tiles of the verandah were brilliant red. The worse part about visiting Beth was the door bell. I steadied my self with my left hand against the door before pressing the red button.

Even knowing it was coming, the female scream still made me jump.

I’d known Beth for about three years, we’d met at a blood party and hit it off straight away. She was a big girl, wide-faced and wide-hipped. Her husband had cheated on her, and she got the house and the bank account. He got a young, unemployed slag with bad hair, as Beth put it.

The door opened. Her white made-up face, dark eyes and black lips stared at me. She tilted to the right slightly, like a dog unsure of what it is seeing.

“It’s me; Diana,” I said. Beth could phase out sometimes.

“Oh,” she said, turning about and walking back down the hallway to the back of the house. I followed, closing and locking the front door behind me. Beth often didn’t say much. “Coffee?” she asked, as we entered the small, back kitchen. Dishes cluttered the sink and the place smelled of incense.

“Anything stronger?”

“Vodka?”

“A big one,” I said.

“You can have the whole bottle. I hate the stuff.” She grabbed a bottle from a grime-stained, supposedly blue, overhead cupboard. It was filled with bottles. I recognized a label.

“Can I have a Johnny Walker?”

“Whatever.” She grabbed the red-labeled bottle, slammed the cupboard closed and put the bottle down hard on the table. She was in one of her better moods. On the sink I found a glass that wasn’t too dirty and poured myself three full shots.

Beth studied me while I drank, then sat at the cluttered table, pushing junk onto the floor so her pudgy arms could rest. Beth was slow to engage in conversation; she was a minimalist in pretty much everything she said. The whisky burned my throat, but it worked.

“You look like hell,” she said, doing the head tilt again.

I told her about what I’d done. Beth stared, and stared some more but said nothing. Her placid, brown eyes and badly dyed hair looked like a bad clown face. I didn’t know if she’d heard anything I said or understood the implications of my actions, but talking about it was helping. What I did was right; it had to come out that Steven hadn’t completely written the book himself. He hadn’t deserved the SPA. I down another glass, the bit gone, my nerves calmed or numbed.

“Party tonight, wanna come?” Beth said, as though I’d just walked into the room. “Special gathering.”

I poured another large one and drank it in one gulp. My neck tensed as I forced it to stay down. “Why not?” It took a few moments. I preferred the smoothness of old scotch, but right now I dare say I would have even had a beer.

“It’s at ten. I have to take you.” Beth’s voice was pure monotone. Her stare was empty, large eyes lost in the black eyeshadow. “Be ready by nine-thirty.”

“I have to tell you something first,” I said, the whisky freeing my tension slightly. “What I’ve done might have caused the death of a man.”

Beth, still vacuous, didn’t blink. “Good,” she eventually said. “Less men, the better.”

I laughed, not because it was funny, but because I was suitably drunk.

The party, loud, dark and moody, was all death-looks and vampire parodies. I’d done my best to fit in, but I couldn’t really go the full Goth. I found it depressing. I had a black T and jacket, black, long, beaded earrings but I still wore blue jeans and red shoes. Red lipstick made me stand out considerably in the crowd.

Beth had supplied all the drinks, she could afford it, and a private donation supplied the location, the equipment and furniture. These people might have looked disconnected from the so-called normal world, but they weren’t without substantial resources.

Someone had got the latest Magnum Carnage release by the sounds coming from the back of the house. I knew the band, and some of the music, but this sounded new. Beth left me in the front room of the house with a group of women, well girls, drinking vodka from long-stem wine glasses.

A large LCD screen on the wall played an old and very scratchy black and white horror film. Vampire, of course, but I found it distracting, the grey light, flickering across the smoky muted candle light of the established mood.

“You that writer chick?” a tall woman asked, handing me a glass. The music didn’t drown out conversation in this room.

“Yes I am,” I said, sipping the vodka, “Have you read my books?”

She shook her head.

I didn’t know what else to say, she just looked at me as if I were an oddity in a museum. She left me standing, feeling dumb. She joined a group of men sitting on a long, leather sofa. The smell of cigarettes and patchouli oil drove me toward the back of the house and the loudness of the music.

Fifty or more people crowded the hall, the rooms and the spacious modern kitchen. A band was setting up in what could have been a games room. Black curtains blocked off the window, the ceiling ballooned with black scrim curtain, and a reddish standard lamp offered the only light. The recorded music was loud enough for me, but a full band would swallow conversation. I was starting to think the party idea wasn’t the best in my state of mind.

I found Beth out in the back garden. She was smoking a joint with an equally overweight man, her laughter seemed out of character. She wore a long black Indian dress with tassels around the hem, a thick black coat and a deep plunging black blouse. She’d covered her impressive breasts with what looked like hundreds of silver chains with charms. In the dark, where the only light was low garden halogens and the full moon, the pair looked a little frightening.

“Diana,” Beth called. She sounded happy. “Come here and meet The Ax.” The big man turned and offered a crooked tooth smile. His eye makeup accentuated the wideness of his eyes.

“I have to leave,” I said, joining them. “I don’t feel well.”

“But you haven’t met our special guest.” Her smile looked out of place. I rarely saw anything approaching joy in Beth.

“I’m sorry,” I said, kissing her on the cheek. The smell of dope — strong, laced with the ivory perfume she liked to wear. “But I have to go. Thank you for listening to me and bringing me here.”

“I’ll get Ax to drop you home; he doesn’t drink,” Beth said, even sounding more coherent than usual. Perhaps she could be a case of marijuana’s being helpful?

I kissed her again, and the large body of Ax cut a path through the darkness down the side of the house. He drove me home in his silver BMW. He didn’t say a word, just grunted when I gave him directions. I stood in my driveway watching the moon for about an hour after he’d left. I was drunk, very drunk, but it still wasn’t enough to drive away the death of Uri. Was it a coincidence he died after giving me the book? I hoped so, I seriously hoped so.

Proceed to Chapter 20...

This link goes to the book website.