Read Online The Axman Cometh by John Farris - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: John Farris
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Don can smell him: the sportsman's leathery slightly sweaty tang, with a double whiff of sporting dog and gunpowder—did apparitions have an odor? Famous author or not, there is something four-square and trustworthy about him. Loyal to his friends, ruthless to his enemies—why get on his bad side? He only wants someone to drink with, isn't that it? But what is it he's just said about—
Don's fingers curl around the "Papa doble " mug in front of him.
"Work?"
"Sure. Your beauty's in a spot of trouble. Not so bad, maybe, if she were alone in that elevator; but she's not alone. He's coming out now, smoothly and cleverly, yet he's in a beastly frame of mind. Un cabron maldito . We will drink now to your valiant beauty, whose valor is not of itself enough to save her, and consider what must be done. Whatever must be done must be done awfully quickly."
Don gulps down a third of the frozen daiquiri while Papa continues to sip his own drink at a thinker's pace, the sun wrinkles bunching at the corners of his eyes.
"Shannon's trapped in the elevator? I knew it! Why didn't Petra call me—I'll call now! The fire department! They—"
"They will be useless to her. By the time they reach her, by prying open the elevator doors, she will be dead. Muerte . We are talking now of the Axman, not some ordinary evil but un malhecho grandioso —a king of a devil."
"The Axman died!"
"No one can be sure of that."
"And," Don says, confused and sore at heart and scared, "I'm sitting here talking to a dead man too, so I must have got good and drunk when I wasn't counting. I know I haven't lost my mind. There are people who lose their minds and people who will never lose their minds, and I'm one of them."
"The Axman may have died," Papa concedes, "but he was never laid to rest. More than a technicality is involved here. None of us are ever truly gone, as long as there is a single memory to keep us alive."
Papa points, as if he is aiming a gun, at the back bar photograph. With no transition Don can be certain of, the flat shadowy cat from the Finca Vigilia is crouched cross-eyed and big as life on the bar in front of Papa, who says affectionately, "How are you, you screwy old bastard?" To Don he says, "Meet a forty- year-old cat."
" Aaaaggghhh !"
"If the living recall the dead, the dead will recall the remoter dead, and soon there won't be a decent place in town you can get into. What must be done, then, is simple: keep your beauty from recalling the Axman until she is safely removed from the dark. But no firemen."
Don, looking him straight in the eye so he won't have to look anywhere else, recovers his voice. "Why not?"
"With firemen will come the fire. Which only a king of a devil may survive."
"My God. My God!"
" Tu lo crea ," Papa says solemnly. "And go now. Before she is desperate enough to draw you."
"Hey, Shannon! Give you a lift?"
(She is walking east on Cottonwood, four blocks from the high school. It is two o'clock in the afternoon on a very warm but pleasant Monday, the first of June. She has one more exam to go—second-year algebra, at eight-thirty Wednesday morning—and her junior year will be over. Then she has three days left to get ready for Dab's surprise party on Friday night. But an even greater surprise is in store: the Axman cometh. He is, in fact, already there. In Emerson, Kansas, in the spring of 1964.)
Shannon has been going over her mental preparations for the party, ticking off expenses. She turns her head incuriously to see who has called to her.
"Oh, hi, Perry—where'd you get the neat pickup?"
It's practically new, a blue-and-silver GMC. But she keeps walking, with only a block to go before she reaches Dab's hardware store, around the corner and three doors down from the main drag in Emerson, the recently named Dwight D. Eisenhower Boulevard. On Dedication Day there was a parade with six bands, fireworks, and an RCA-
sanctioned rodeo that night. John Eisenhower was there with his
Don's fingers curl around the "Papa doble " mug in front of him.
"Work?"
"Sure. Your beauty's in a spot of trouble. Not so bad, maybe, if she were alone in that elevator; but she's not alone. He's coming out now, smoothly and cleverly, yet he's in a beastly frame of mind. Un cabron maldito . We will drink now to your valiant beauty, whose valor is not of itself enough to save her, and consider what must be done. Whatever must be done must be done awfully quickly."
Don gulps down a third of the frozen daiquiri while Papa continues to sip his own drink at a thinker's pace, the sun wrinkles bunching at the corners of his eyes.
"Shannon's trapped in the elevator? I knew it! Why didn't Petra call me—I'll call now! The fire department! They—"
"They will be useless to her. By the time they reach her, by prying open the elevator doors, she will be dead. Muerte . We are talking now of the Axman, not some ordinary evil but un malhecho grandioso —a king of a devil."
"The Axman died!"
"No one can be sure of that."
"And," Don says, confused and sore at heart and scared, "I'm sitting here talking to a dead man too, so I must have got good and drunk when I wasn't counting. I know I haven't lost my mind. There are people who lose their minds and people who will never lose their minds, and I'm one of them."
"The Axman may have died," Papa concedes, "but he was never laid to rest. More than a technicality is involved here. None of us are ever truly gone, as long as there is a single memory to keep us alive."
Papa points, as if he is aiming a gun, at the back bar photograph. With no transition Don can be certain of, the flat shadowy cat from the Finca Vigilia is crouched cross-eyed and big as life on the bar in front of Papa, who says affectionately, "How are you, you screwy old bastard?" To Don he says, "Meet a forty- year-old cat."
" Aaaaggghhh !"
"If the living recall the dead, the dead will recall the remoter dead, and soon there won't be a decent place in town you can get into. What must be done, then, is simple: keep your beauty from recalling the Axman until she is safely removed from the dark. But no firemen."
Don, looking him straight in the eye so he won't have to look anywhere else, recovers his voice. "Why not?"
"With firemen will come the fire. Which only a king of a devil may survive."
"My God. My God!"
" Tu lo crea ," Papa says solemnly. "And go now. Before she is desperate enough to draw you."
"Hey, Shannon! Give you a lift?"
(She is walking east on Cottonwood, four blocks from the high school. It is two o'clock in the afternoon on a very warm but pleasant Monday, the first of June. She has one more exam to go—second-year algebra, at eight-thirty Wednesday morning—and her junior year will be over. Then she has three days left to get ready for Dab's surprise party on Friday night. But an even greater surprise is in store: the Axman cometh. He is, in fact, already there. In Emerson, Kansas, in the spring of 1964.)
Shannon has been going over her mental preparations for the party, ticking off expenses. She turns her head incuriously to see who has called to her.
"Oh, hi, Perry—where'd you get the neat pickup?"
It's practically new, a blue-and-silver GMC. But she keeps walking, with only a block to go before she reaches Dab's hardware store, around the corner and three doors down from the main drag in Emerson, the recently named Dwight D. Eisenhower Boulevard. On Dedication Day there was a parade with six bands, fireworks, and an RCA-
sanctioned rodeo that night. John Eisenhower was there with his
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