Chasing the Moon

CHAPTER TWO

“Third rule is don’t pet the dog,” said Mr. West.

A sad-eyed puppy sat in front of one of the three doors in the hallway. It was white with brown and black spots and big floppy ears, and it whined as they walked past.

“Does it bite?” Diana asked.

“No.”

“Whose is it?”

“It belongs to Number Two,” said West, “but he lost control of it about a year ago. Now he’s lucky if it lets him out on the weekends to pick up groceries.”

He wheeled and stared at her with tightly narrowed eyes. So much so she wasn’t sure they were even open.

“Mark my words, Number Five. Bad things happen to those who don’t follow the rules.”

His long mustache twitched and he scratched his shaggy head, then turned back, walking up the six steps to Apartment Number Five. He fumbled with an overloaded key ring. As far as Diana could tell there were only seven apartments in this small building, but he must’ve had at least three dozen keys on that ring.

“This’ll be yours,” he said.

She wasn’t so sure. The rent on this place was remarkably cheap, but if a creepy landlord came with the package, she’d have to think it over.

She didn’t have to think it over for long.

The small apartment was fully furnished. It came with a brand-new sofa, a television, an old-fashioned jukebox like she’d always wanted. The jukebox even had all her favorite songs on it.

“Does this work?” she asked.

West shrugged and mumbled.

The kitchenette was bare except for some silverware in a drawer, but she didn’t cook anyway. There were a few Mr. Fizz sodas in the fridge, though.

“I didn’t know they still made this brand,” she said. “They’re my favorite.”

“Help yourself.”

“Really? Are you sure it’s okay? What about the former tenant?”

“He’s gone.”

“But won’t he be coming back for his stuff?”

“I doubt it.”

She hesitated but decided that one soda wouldn’t hurt anything. It tasted just as good as she remembered. Better.

He showed her the bedroom. Superman posters decorated the walls, along with art prints and a huge black-and-white photo of the Arc de Triomphe and another of the Eiffel Tower. It was bizarre. She knew she had eclectic tastes, and she had never expected anyone else to share them.

“There’s no way anyone would leave this stuff behind,” she said.

“It’s not his stuff,” he said.

“It’s yours. If you want it.

The rent on this place was half what she’d expected, and the décor meant she could just grab her three suitcases from the car and be unpacked within the hour. It was too good to be true.

“What’s the catch?” she asked.

He smiled. “Ah, there’s a smart girl.”

She stiffened. Her first thought was that this guy was a fiend who lured innocent young women into a life of orgies and pornography, but it would take more than a jukebox and a sixpack of soda to get Diana to strip on a webcam. Maybe if a good cable package came with the deal…

“Rule number two,” he said. “Never open this closet.”

He pointed to a door tucked away beside the bathroom.

“Why?” she asked.

“A good question. People who ask too many questions don’t usually last. Number Seven asked a lot of questions. Used to.”

He fumbled with the key ring and managed, after some rattling and grumbling, to pull off the key to the apartment and offer it to her.

“It’s all yours if you want it.”

She didn’t reach for the key just yet. A sixth sense warned her that she was striking a Faustian bargain. Odd, since she wasn’t sure what a Faustian bargain was. But it was something not to be taken lightly. She knew that.

“If you don’t want it,” he said, “somebody else will.”

“What’s the first rule?” she asked. “You told me the third and second rules, but not the first.”

He paused, chewed his lip.

“The first rule is turn the lights off when you leave a room. Just because I pay the utilities that doesn’t mean I’m made of money.”

Diana would’ve sold her soul for paid utilities, so she snatched the key. West was surprised enough to open his eyes to a softer squint.

“Where’s the lease?” she asked.

“There’s no lease. You stay as long as you’re able, Number Five. Leave whenever you’re willing.”

She followed him out the door. Her three suitcases were already sitting in the hallway.

“Hmm,” he said. “Apartment must like you. That’s a good sign.”

He waddled away without saying another word. The moment he was out of sight, even the jangle of his keys disappeared. Silence filled the hallway. No, that wasn’t quite right. Music came from somewhere. So light it almost couldn’t be heard. Like a chorus rehearsing. She couldn’t figure out where it was coming from, though.

The puppy in front of Apartment Two glanced forlornl in her direction and whimpered.

She glanced around her shiny new apartment. So what if the landlord was a bit of a nut? This place was made for her, and with the run of bad luck she’d had in the last few weeks, this was a good omen. Things were turning around.

She fed the jukebox a nickel. The mechanical arm grabbed the gleaming vinyl disk and set it on the turntable. Frankie Avalon sang about the virtues of beach life, and she smiled.

Diana wasted no time getting unpacked. She needed to claim this apartment. She’d been living out of suitcases too long, bumming off of friends like a vagabond. She shoved her clothes into the dresser so eagerly that she didn’t fold most of them. But once she closed the drawer she felt she’d made her mark. She lounged around for an hour, sitting on the sofa, drinking soda, watching TV, just relaxing. Chubby Checker, Aretha Franklin, and the Big Bopper kept her company. And when she was tired, she fell asleep on the nice comfortable bed and dreamed the strangest dreams.

She was herself, but she wasn’t herself. She flew across other worlds, strange realms without form or substance, lost cities and ghosts of forgotten civilizations passing beneath her. Time rendered everyone and everything into dust. From the tiniest speck to the greatest of the ancients. In the center of it all the slumbering god lay still, wrapped in the dream that foolish mortals and inhuman deities alike called reality.

The god opened one of his countless eyes. An eye bigger than the sun. And though she was just a mote, the yellow-andblack orb focused on her. The weight of a vast, incomprehensible universe threatened to crush Diana. She tried screaming. Her throat filled with bile and her brain melted as every cell in her body convulsed in absolute horror before exploding.

She awoke covered in sweat. Her heart pounded. A chill in the air turned her breath frosty. And just for a moment she thought the walls were moving, and something else was swimming under the covers.

She turned on the lights. Everything snapped back to normal. Her terror vanished as quickly as it had come. The air warmed. She marveled at how alien and real the dream had been. Although it was all fading now, transforming into shadowy memory the way dreams did.

Diana got up, grabbed a glass of water, and headed back to bed.

“Bad dream?” someone asked.

She jumped and whirled around. Self-defense courses sprang to mind, and she was ready to shout and gouge and do what needed to be done.

Nobody was there.

“Settle down, girl,” she told herself. “You’re imagining things.”

“No, you’re not,” said the voice.

She jumped again, but this time had the presence of mind to listen for the source.

It was coming from the closet.

“Hello?” she asked quietly. “Is there someone in there?” There was no reply

“Hello?”

No answer.

She went to the bathroom, splashed some cold water on her face, and dried herself with a towel. She was sticky with sweat, and a shower sounded appealing. But she’d seen enough slasher movies to know what happened next.

Part of her said it was time to leave. Don’t pack anything. Don’t change out of your pajamas. Just walk out of the apartment and never look back. But that was stupid. She wasn’t about to be spooked out of her new home by a crazy dream.

Another part of her suggested that this was still just a dream. She’d wake up in another moment and laugh at herself. But it was all so clear, so lucid. She’d never dreamed anything as weird as the flying segment at the beginning. Nor anything as ordinary as walking around her apartment, looking for a phantom voice.

“Bad feng shui,” she remarked to herself, as if that explained everything.

“Oh, I agree,” said the closet. “The couch really should be a few more feet to the right. And the coffee table counteracts the openness of the room.”

The voice wasn’t threatening. Diana was determined to stay calm, but she wasn’t going to stick around or investigate. Most stupid victims in movies tended to die because they weren’t smart enough to go away from the sound of the chain saw. She didn’t want to run around in her underwear since that seemed like a cliché too, but stopping to get dressed in the name of vanity also got you killed in these situations.

The front door was gone. Only a wall. There weren’t any windows, no other ways out.

She was trapped.

“Don’t panic,” said the closet. “Let’s just keep our wits, and we’ll work everything out.”

Diana said, “This isn’t funny.”

“You don’t think I find it funny, do you?” replied the closet. “I don’t like this arrangement any more than you do.”

She tried the phone.

“Don’t open the closet,” said West’s familiar voice on the other end of the line.

She hung up, dialed 911.

“Don’t open the closet,” repeated West.

“Damn it. You can’t do this. It’s illegal. People will know I’m missing.”

“You can leave any time you want, Number Five.”

“How?”

“Open the closet.”

“But you just said I’m not supposed to open the closet.”

“Stay as long as you’re ablefont siFive,” said West. “Leave whenever you’re willing.”

The line went dead.

“Looks like we’re stuck with each other,” said the closet. Diana pounded on the walls and shouted for a few minutes. Nobody heard her. Or maybe somebody did. More prisoners ensnared in West’s bizarre game. She used a tall standing lamp as a battering ram against the wall with negligible results. She stripped the paint and chipped away some of the wood. If this was her only option, it was going to be a lot of work. Even if he didn’t have anything weird planned, even if he was just going to leave her locked in here with a guy trapped in a closet, she’d starve to death before doing any real damage.

Just the realization made her prematurely hungry. She’d have to settle for a soda, though she would’ve killed for a turkey sandwich. She found one waiting for her in the fridge. The Mr. Fizz five-pack had regenerated its sixth can as well.

Someone was in here with her. Someone other than the guy in the closet.

Lamp in hand, she searched the apartment. She came up empty.

“Where is it?” she asked.

“Where’s what?” replied the closet.

“The secret door.”

He chuckled. “There’s only one way out, and you’re talking to it.”

“I’m not stupid. Somebody had to put that sandwich in the refrigerator.”

“You did. By wishing for it.”

“How gullible do you think I am?”

“What kind of sandwich is it?” asked the closet.

“What difference does that make?”

“What kind?”

She slumped against the wall and glared at the closet. “Turkey.”

“And what kind of sandwich were you just thinking about?”

Diana dismissed the observation as irrelevant at first. But she hadn’t verbalized her sandwich desires. Assuming that there was a secret door somewhere and that someone had sneaked into the small apartment and slipped in a sandwich before escaping, all without her noticing, they’d still have had to be telepathic to know what she wanted, and have some sort of super-speed sandwich-making ability.

The rational explanation had a lot of holes in it.

She returned to the fridge. The sandwich was still there. An inspection revealed that it was exactly how she liked it. With just a touch of mayo and mustard, a single leaf of lettuce and three tomato slices. She stuck it back in the fridge, closed the door, and stared at the appliance for ten seconds.

“Orange juice,” she said, opening the door.

The sandwich was gone. In its place, a tall glass of juice.

She closed the door.

“Deep-fried Twinkie,” she whispered, throwing open the door.

And there it was.

Diana had spent too much of her life in a logical world to be convinced just yet. Only after she had pulled the refrigerator away from the wall, checked for false walls and trapdoors, and come up with nothing did she see no other choice. The guy in the closet was strange but didn’t require a supernatural explanation. A magic fridge wasn’t so easy to dismiss.

“Damn.” She circled the fridge twice before admitting defeat. “I’ll take that sandwich now.”

She ate the sandwich in the kitchen, not even sitting down, and tried to make sense of this, but it didn’t click.

The phone rang. She went to the living room, stared at the phone, but didn’t pick it up.

It kept ringing.

“Are you going to answer that?” asked the closet.

She put the receiver to her ear.

“West?”

“About time,” West said. “I may be ageless, Number Five, but I don’t have all day.” He paused. “So did you open the closet yet?”

“No.”

“Good. Don’t.”

“Will you shut up about the stupid closet already?”

“Suit yourself.”

He hung up.

“Ah, damn it.” Diana stared at the receiver, then the closet.

“Frustrating, isn’t it?” said the closet. “Imagine how I feel. I was spawned at the dawn of time and now I find myself bound to a small clump of transient flesh.”

“Bound by what?”

“Whatever decides these things. Primal forces that make even me piss myself. Or would if I pissed. It’s a complicated universe. Sorry if I can’t just summarize it in a pithy metaphor.”

The phone rang again. She took a moment to steady herself. Losing her temper wasn’t getting her anywhere.

“Hello.”

“Hello,” said West. “Ready to talk now?”

She sucked in a deep breath and replied in an even voice. “Yes.”

“Good. Here’s how it works. Inside that closet is an ancient entity known as Vom the Hungering. He’s actuallpretty decent sort, as ancient spawns go. But if you let him out of that closet, he will eat you.”

She lowered the phone. “You’re a cannibal?”

Vom chuckled. “Cannibals eat their own kind. I am a singular entity. There is only one Vom the Hungering, and that is me. And you are?”

She ignored the question. “You’re going to eat me?”

“Yeah, probably. Don’t suppose it helps anything if I apologize in advance.”

She put the phone to her ear. “Pay attention, Number Five. You are now Vom’s warden. You will not age or grow sick and you cannot die by conventional means.”

“Okay, this is sounding more and more like bullshit,” she said.

“Don’t interrupt. I have other responsibilities. If I don’t bring Number Three an avocado in five minutes California will fall into the ocean.”

“Yeah. Sure. Makes sense.” She admitted defeat and just listened.

“One day, Number Five, you will release Vom. Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow. Maybe not a hundred years from now. But one day, when the crawl of eternity becomes too much for you, you will open that door. He will then devour you, go back into his prison, and wait for the next warden. That is just how this works. There’s no point in complaining to me about it either. I don’t have any control over any of it.”

“But—”

“I’m not even obligated to give you this information, but you seem like a nice young woman. So best of luck.”

He hung up, and she knew he wouldn’t be calling back this time.

She checked the apartment again. Ran her fingers along every wall, probed every corner, moved every bit of furniture. If there was a way out she didn’t find it, but just to be certain she checked one more time.

If West was to be believed (though she wasn’t quite ready for that) she was a prisoner and her only way out was death. And if she was immortal there was only one form of death available, to be devoured by a monster living in her closet.

She found a butter knife in the cabinet and ran it across her palm. It wasn’t easy getting the blade to draw blood, but she managed. The shallow cut closed immediately. There wasn’t even a scar left behind.

It was as far as she was willing to go right now. Maybe in a hundred years she’d be so bored that sawing her arms off with a dull butter knife would sound amusing.

Stay as long as she could. Leave whenever she was willing. She got it now.

She went back to bed. The clock radio on the nightstand counted the minutes. She turned the bright red numbers toward the wall and tried not to think about it. If she really was immortal she had all the time in the universe. It seemed pointless to obsess over every second. Dana turned the clock toward her and frowned. Twenty-two minutes had passed.

Twenty-two minutes.

She put the pillow over her face and reflected on infinity, breaking it up into twenty-two-minute chunks. Endless bits of twenty-two, one right after the other after the other.

The crawl of eternity indeed.

She got up and turned on the television. Nothing was on. Or maybe she just wasn’t in the mood.

“Can’t sleep either, huh?” asked the closet monster. “I hate that. Of course I only sleep seven minutes every other century. And believe me, that’s annoying. I have a lot of time to kill and a nap now and then might help.”

She turned up the volume.

“We’re the only company we’re going to have for a long, long while,” Vom said. “We can at least try and be civil.”

She stared at the TV, not really watching it, just thinking about the passage of time, listening to the tick-tick-tick of the clock on the wall. Where had that clock even come from, anyway? It hadn’t been there before. She was certain of that. She’d been over every inch of this place.

Diana muted the television.

“This isn’t fair,” she said. “All I wanted was an apartment.”

“You seem like a decent lady,” said Vom. “I’m really sorry that I have to eat you.”

She walked over to the closet. “You keep saying that, but if you were really sorry you wouldn’t. Then I could open this closet, and we could both get out of here.”

“Sounds like a good deal to me.”

“So you agree then?”

“Sure. No eating. I promise.”

She reached for the knob but stopped short of touching it.

“How do I know I can trust you?”

“You don’t. And I’ll admit I’m not trustworthy. I did promise not to eat all the others. And I really meant it when I said it. But it just sort of happens. Not always though. There was this Spanish guy who I didn’t eat. Good guy, too. Lot of fun. I miss him.”

“What made him different?”

“He had the stuff.”

“The stuff?”

“You know what I’m talking about. The stuff. The goods. The mojo.”

“What does that even mean?”

“It means what it means,” said Vom. “When someone has the stuff, you just know it.”

“That’s not very helpful at all.”

“There are mysteries beyond even my ken. Listen. I’ve done this plenty of times. I know how this game goes. Some people open the closet right away. Others hold out for a while. One guy made it a whole century. But you are going to open this door one day. So why don’t we just cut the suspense and jump to the inevitable conclusion?”

Diana wanted to argue, but if what West and Vom had told her was true, then it really was unavoidable. The question wasn’t if she would open the closet. The question was when.

It took her four days to get bored enough to think about finally opening the door. Four days of watching television, of staring at the ticks of the clock, of obsessively searching every nook and cranny of the apartment for some form of escape, of waiting for the phone to ring and for West to tell her that he’d changed his mind and she was free to go.

No one would be coming for her because no one knew she was here. If she was going to get out she’d have to do it herself. And four days of steady rumination on the subject always led back to that damn closet.

She went to the refrigerator and demanded another turkey sandwich. Then another. Then another. Then she stopped thinking small and demanded a turkey. Then she just started demanding “Food” and left it up to the refrigerator to supply whatever it felt like. She piled the sandwiches and turkeys and cakes and hamburgers and buckets of apples and haggis and everything else in the living room. When she ran out of room on the coffee table she started putting stuff on the floor. She threw everything in a huge messy heap. She didn’t stop until the mound of food filled half the room and was nearly to the ceiling.

She didn’t know if it would be enough to satisfy his appetite, but she was already tired of waiting. She wasn’t going to spend the rest of her life in this cage, dreading the inevitable. Better to just get it over with.

She threw open the closet door.

Bright green fur covered Vom the Hungering. His flat, wide head had no eyes or ears or nose. Just one huge mouth. Another maw split his potbelly. He was simultaneously lanky and pudgy. Her first instinct was that he was an old puppet, rejected from Sesame Street and banished to a limbo alongside moldy raincoats and wingtip shoes. It was only when he lurched toward her, both of his mouths licking their lips, arms raised, that she realized he was alive.

She smacked him across the head with a rolled-up magazine.

“No!” She scolded him gently, but firmly.

Vom snarled and reached toward her again.

“No!” She hit him again. “Not for you!”

He frowned, rubbing his snout.

She pointed at the pile of food. “That’s yours.”

Vom pounced on the meal, gleefully shoving down everything. She was revolted and hypnotized by the sight and watched him goras imself for several minutes. He wasn’t slowing down, and she doubted he would be full once he finished—in another two or three minutes at most.

The front door was back. She tiptoed out into the hall and shut the door quietly behind her.

The puppy in front of Number Two wasn’t a puppy anymore. It was something else. Something vaguely puppyshaped, but with a malformed skull, giant black eyes, and a sucker-like mouth.

The creature looked up at her with its three huge eyes, wagged the tentacle sticking out of its backside, and whimpered.

Diana waited until she had slunk past the hideous creature before she ran screaming into the streets.