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I’m ru
But eventually I realized even through all the fear that nothing had caught or eaten me yet. So I looked up, wondering why not? The Brothers were a hundred feet ahead, standing still now and facing me. Why had they stopped when a moment ago they were so scared? And where was that Posafega?
I looked over my shoulder cringing because it might just be waiting to give me a nasty shock. But the only surprise was that that dog wasn’t there. “What is going on?”
“We were afraid we wouldn’t be able to get you out of there, sir. That would have been big trouble for all concerned. But here you are-you made it!”
Zin Zan looked like he was about to kiss me, he was so happy.
Instead of answering, I looked at Rolfe’s house again to make sure we were talking about the same thing. Only when I was bringing my eyes back around to the Brothers did I see a street sign: Pilot Hill. That’s where we’d been pla
“Is this what you wanted to show me? Rolfe’s house? Is that what this is all about?”
“No sir, actually it was someone else’s house we wanted to show you up here. But I don’t think you need to see it now to believe what we were saying before.”
“True. So who else lost their house on this street?”
They looked at each other to see which of them was going to drop the bad news bomb. Zin Zan said, “Everyone.”
“What?”
“That’s right.” Brooks moved his arm in a way that took in the whole area. “Every house on Pilot Hill has been taken over.”
“I don’t believe it.” I looked around again to make sure that dog wasn’t sneaking up on me from some secret angle.
“It’s true, Mr. Gallatin. If you’d like, go look in anyone’s window here and you’ll see.”
“I will do exactly that.” I crossed the street to my friend Carl Hull’s house and looked in his window because I knew exactly what it looked like inside. What I noticed first was everything was black and white in there. Or I should say in black and white. I knew Carl’s house and this wasn’t it. I stepped back and looked at the façade. This was Hull ’s house, all right. So I looked in the window again. Carl’s wife Naomi loves yellow things-furniture, pillows, rugs. But there wasn’t an inch of yellow anything in there. No couch, curtains, nothing-only black and white.
The living room was full of old fat furniture; most of it covered in some thick material like velvet. Like your Grandma’s house. Pure old people’s furniture. The Hull house I knew had a few pieces of cheap yellow furniture, a round “ Garfield ” rug in front of a TV set as big as you could get. That machine was Carl’s pride and you had to give the man credit-he didn’t scrimp when it came to home entertainment. But where was that big Sony screen today?
“Sherlock Holmes.”
I jumped. “Don’t do that, Brooks! Don’t sneak up on me. My eggs have been scrambled enough for one day. Besides, what are you talking about?
“This house-the woman who moved in here chose the décor of the first Sherlock Holmes film. Starring Clive Brook, Ernest Torrence-”
“Where’s Carl and Naomi?”
“At Lake of the Ozarks on vacation. They’ll be coming back soon to this ugly surprise.”
“Where’s their stuff? Their belongings?”
“The new tenant had it hauled away this morning.”
“Why is everything black and white in there?”
Brooks seemed surprised at my question. “Because that film was in black and white. The new occupant wanted things to look exactly like the film.”
“Well, Casablanca was black and white too. But Mel’s house was in color. You saw it.”
Brooks nodded. “He chose the colorized version. He’s not a purist. I hope you don’t mind me saying this, Mr. Gallatin, but it would be very good if we got a move on.”
“Where to now?”
“Back to your house.”
“What’s at my house that wasn’t there an hour ago?”
“A moving van.”
Three sets of eyes bounced back and forth, back and forth like Flubber for a while before any of the mouths co
“They’re taking over my house now?”
“Yes sir. That’s why we came to warn you this morning.”
“You knew about this? You knew it would happen?” We started walking-fast.
“We always know it’ll happen-just not when. We didn’t think it would be so soon and in such large numbers. That’s why we go door to door. The problem is no one ever believes what we say until it’s too late. So Beeflow decided to change the way we do things because the situation is now getting critical.”
“Was that really Beeflow who talked to me back in the truck?”
“Yes sir. Was Cyrus there too?”
“How do you know about that? I thought was my soul!”
“It is. Did it lick your hand in the dark?” He smiled and shook his head like he’d just found a fond memory in his pocket. “That’s its way of greeting you, telling you it’s there. It happens that way to us all. But ‘Cyrus’ is only Beeflow’s nickname for it. The real name of the human soul is Kopum, pronounced Coe-poon. You’ll learn all about that later.”
“Then why does he call it Cyrus?”
“It’s easier to accept in the begi
We hurried back and only when we were halfway home did I think about what I was doing or the fact I had accepted everything they’d told me as cold hard fact. The name of my soul was Cyrus, but not really because it’s actually Kopum. Okay. Dead people were moving into my house? If you say so. The craziness of it all made me slow some but not stop. I’d seen and heard enough in the last hour to know parts of my world had suddenly gone seriously damned wobbly, but this? Could it really be true?
“Look at that.”
I was so deep into thinking about all of this that my brain didn’t click until my eyes saw the scene in front of us. And then the first thing I did was burst out laughing. There’s this guy I know and work with named Eric Dickey. Just saying that name makes my lips squinch up like I ate something bad. I hate that son of a bitch. You don’t want to get me started on him because I’ve got a whole alphabet of reasons why I do not wish him well-in this life or any other. It’s enough to say that we started disliking each other in ninth grade and only got better at it as the years passed.
Anyway, Eric Dickey and his stumpy wife Sue live in a nice house a few blocks from ours. And I’ve got to admit it is a handsome place. Eric is a foreman at my company who knows how to kiss ass well enough to get promotions while the rest of us are worrying half the time about what will happen if there are layoffs. But the fact of the matter is the Dickeys to have a really nice house and at work Eric is always bragging about the new this or new that they bought for their place. They don’t have any kids so they go all-out buying top of the line air conditioners, lawnmowers, gas grills-the kind of expensive things that can be seen from the street and coveted by the rest of us slobs. A real asshole.
So anyway, I’m laughing now because what do you know-old Dickey’s stuff is piled on the street in front of his beautiful house. This time seeing a pile like that doesn’t surprise me so much as make my heart throw a fist in the air and yell ALL RIGHT! Maybe this Hell business isn’t so bad after all. But that feeling was short lived because just as I was relishing seeing kiss-ass Dickey’s stuff dumped out on the street, who should walk around from the back of his house but a caveman!
So help me God. Tat sounds totally nuts but it is the truth. And you’ve seen him before in every caveman movie you ever watched. The fucker is hunched over in a sort of monkey scrunch and has got so much hair growing on his body you can’t really make out where the head ends and the rest begins. I mean this fellow is ALL Hair and even when he looks at you, his face is hard to make out because everything is so completely covered in fur.