Chapter Eight: The Emperor Of Ice Cream.

Flick-click. Click-flick.

Martin swam through a midnight sea. Underwater. Weightless. Slow motion. Stop motion. Boundless thick crushing water supported him and controlled him. He was buoyed in a serpentine current. His ears stuffed with the siren-like beat-beat-beat of blood through his head.

Flick-click. Click-flick.

In the distance, dancing like a harem girl, like a mirage, was a wane light. Pus yellow. Man-in-the-Moon white. Vague. The surface, Martin thought. He rotated his arms and scissored his legs towards the shake-y vision. The watery envelope surrounding him clung, placenta-like, against his skin. Swimming was difficult. Slow motion. Stop motion.

Flick-click. Click-flick.

Martin made his progress towards the shifting source of light. It seemed to move away from him, sly and tempting. Deeper and deeper. Wait, he thought, this is wrong. What if it wasn't the surface? What if it was a trick? Some bioluminescent fish? An angler fish, he thought, with sharp teeth. His lungs were burning. His eye hurt. His mouth. His fingers.

Flick-click. Click-flick.

What is that, Martin thought, loooking around. Nothing. Oily blacks, bruised purples. And the sickly light far off to his left. No, now it's over to the left, he saw it. I'll never make it, he thought. He felt tired of swimming, he let himself sink for a bit. Lower. The oily blackness pressed against his mouth, forced itself into his nostrils. His eyes hurt. I'll just rest them for a minute, he thought.

Suddenly, the water in front of him was disturbed by a moving shape. It moved with an odd, falling handkerchief, cuttlefish sort of way. It was also white, like the distant light. Unlike the distant light, it was bright and crisp. As it neared Martin's face it unfolded itself like a moth's wing.

It was a piece of paper.

As Martin watched it, drawings began to resolve and shape themselves on the once blank surface. Picture after picture appeared. Martin saw the red pagoda. He saw himself entering the red pagoda. The pagoda transformed into a rocket. Soviet red, with fins like an old car. The rocket landed in the break room of Wants & Getz. All green and purple. At the table Lola Wants sat, drawing endlessly. Little musical notes hung above her stick figure self. Her crayon eyes locked onto Martin. Her little three fingered stick figure hand lifted up one of the many pieces of paper before her.

It read: CHECK YOUR POCKETS FOR FURTHER INSTRUCTIONS.

This message was quickly replaced by another.

It read: IT'S TIME TO WAKE UP, MISTER HOLLYS.

Flick-click. Click-flick.

"It's time to wake up, Mister Hollys."

Martin's eyes opened, gummy and unfocused. He was on the floor of a poorly lit room. The floor was icy. He coughed and watched a spray of red on the floor near his mouth. He allowed one small corner of his mind to think: That's probably really bad.

But that thought was soon replaced by complaints from all over his body. Loudest were the index and middle fingers of his left hand. They sent a constant stream of pain with fiber optic speed. Slower was the blunt throb from his forehead. His black eye and busted lips added an old chorus of annoyance. His spine and his lungs complained with sharp protests as he pulled himself into a sitting position.

Martin looked at his fingers. They were swollen. Red-purple. The tip of his index finger was black. It almost looked like frostbite. Holding his other hand to his face he could feel slightly crusty, slightly sticky blood drying there.

"Nap's over. Move your carcass. The boss is here."

The voice stabbed down at him from one of the hardboiled history professors. The one he hadn't shot with a magic bullet. Kafka? Clampett? Casper?

"Caspar The Friendly Ghost."

"Spelled different but close enough. Kaspar Mars. Now dig a worm."

Martin's head was still cotton candy and ground up glass. Kaspar Mars held a silver Zippo in his hands that he was opening and closing. Flick-click. Click-flick.

"Dig a worm?"

"Gotta be fast to dig up a worm. Let's go."

Kaspar Mars took Martin by his right arm and half guided, half dragged him out of the small room and down a long corridor. The carpet beneath Martin's feet was thick and had almost a trampoline bounce to it. It was covered in whorls and spirals and curlicue patterns. To either side of the hallway, thick tapestries hung, showing more loops of scrollwork. The walls were wooden and dark. Every few feet, on one side or another, there would be a door. Kaspar walked Martin passed all of them until they reached the end of the hallway and a huge set of doors.

Kaspar Mars knocked once, leaving his hand flat against the surface of the door for a second. Two seconds. Five seconds. There was a small electric snapping noise and Kaspar removed his hand quickly.

"You can go in."

"What if I don't want to?"

"Then I can rough you up a bit out here and then shove you through the doors."

Martin listened to the various protests and votes from the internal congress of his wounded body. The delagation that didn't want to walk through the doors were shouted down by the delagation that wasn't ready for another beating yet.

"I guess I'm going in then."

"I guess you are."

With that, Martin opening the door and stepped into the inner sanctum of Otto Cherry.

The room was brighter than the hallway but the light felt wrong. Limp. Sickly. Wane. Yellowish and corrupt. The source of the light came from floor-to-ceiling windows on three sides of the room. Each window was filled with the same bloated whiteness. Maggot-white. Fish belly. The room was empty. Martin walked toward the windows on the far side of the room. After twenty steps, he thought he should have been able to press his face against the glass. After forty steps he was no closer. Martin turned and looked back toward the double doors. They were far away in the distance.

"Who is your favorite author?"

Martin jumped and turned around. A man was standing in front of him. He was in his fifties. Tall, taller than Martin, skinny but powerfully built. His face was pleasant and narrow and pinkish. He had closely shorn white hair you could see his scalp through. He wore dress pants and a white dress shirt. The sleeves of his shirt were rolled up to the elbows. He had a silvery tie with a tie pin. The tie pin was an enamel cherry. The man was barefoot and his feet looked like they were no strangers to pedicures. He had Paul Newman blue eyes.

"Pardon me for scaring you. The Folding Room can take some getting use to . I'm Otto Cherry."

"J.R.R. Tolkien. Or Frank Herbert. Or Raymond Chandler. It's hard to choose."

At that, Otto Cherry's face wrinkled itself into a pleasant smile.

"Isn't it though, Mister Hollys. It truly depends on mood and season and time of day. Yes"

"Spring days for Tolkien. Summer for Herbert. Rainy Falls for Chandler, I suppose."

"Exactly. Well put. I. myself, was always drawn to Burroughs. Edgar Rice, not William S., mind you. Tarzan and John Carter of Mars. Impossible, improbable Africas and red planets. Barsoom. The Lost City of Opar. To think that I, myself, could find one of these places was my fondest wish."

"The NeverEnding Story. Oz. Wonderland. Whatever. A lot of people do that, sure."

"Yes. And now, here we --."

"Excuse me, but what do you want with me?"

A quick look of anger drifted across Cherry's features and was gone. He clapped his hands and rubbed them together.

"Yes, of course. Sorry, I just can't remember the last time I spoke with a fellow gatecrasher. A few tourists, sure, from time to time. But really there's nobody else but Wonderly and we don't speak much these days, of course. Anyway, follow me, stay close."

Cherry turned on his heels and walked off, Martin followed him. Over his shoulder, he called.

"No need to worry about Mister Geiger. Fixed him right up. Maybe he'll like vanilla instead of chocolate from now on or be scared of heights instead of snakes but at least he's walking, right?"

"Wha--? Who?"

"Geiger. George Geiger. The man you shot with your little Lola gun. He's going to live. Thought you'd be pleased you weren't a murderer, just a file clerk."

"How do you know I'm a file clerk?"

"Ah, here we are."

Cherry made an abrupt stop and as Martin joined him, he saw that they had come across a desk with a couple of harsh metal chairs. A huge monster of a desk. One moment it wasn't there, the next moment it was right in front of them. Like it was hidden behind an invisible wall, Martin thought. But couldn't you see something behind an invisible wall, he thought right on top of that. The double doors leading out of the room were off in the distance to the left. He hadn't seen this desk when he'd walked in. Of course, he hadn't seen Cherry either.

On the desk were a several objects. An ancient looking intercom. A flashlight. A file folder. An origami figure. A pair of gold spray painted goggles, one of the lens cracked. And a wicked looking piece of black plastic that Martin was pretty sure was a stun gun.

"How do I know you are a file clerk, Mister Hollys? It's in your file. Ha-ha."

Cherry opened the file folder and pulled out Martin's wallet and car keys, along with several typed pages.

"Martin Hollys. Only son of Gary and Diann Hollys. Parents deceased when you were sixteen. Raised by your father's brother, Chris. Mediocre grades. C student. A little college. A series of dead end jobs. Security guard. Roofing. Laying carpet and cement with your Uncle until his death. Truck driver. Delivered plastic water bottles. And then refrigerated trucks full of flowers. Mailrooms, warehouses. Movie theaters and bookstores. Unformed, unattached. Currently shuffling files from cabinet to cabinet over at Bateman, Becker & Civitello. One room apartment. No furniture. Just a mattress and stacks of books, music, movies. No friends. No family."

Martin's damaged body quieted down and he felt his face go flush. To hear his little life reduced to those sentences made his chest feel heavy. He could remember his Dad stomping after him, holding a wooden sword, playing. He could remember his Mom reading to him, telling him stories. And later, when they were gone, his Uncle listening to music with him. Grieving and inducting Martin into a new world of sound at the same time. It that really all there is to me, he thought.

"Don't be upset, Mister Hollys. If I read my own history it would look as gray. But look at us now. Betwixt!!! That's what I call it, Betwixt. Few, few people can be drawn here in the flesh. I think maybe artists, writers, musicians bleed out into it somehow, sure. It would explain some things about the people who were here when I got here."

"What are you talking about?"

"This place. Wants & Getz. The Shining Wire. Freya Drive. All of it and many, many other places. They live side by side with ordinary places. It's every empty building, every forgotten phone number, every wonderful meal served at some out of the way spot you can't get back to. Occasionally, someone stumbles onto an awareness of it. Of The Betwixt. But they lose it. Can't retain it. I call them tourists. More rare are people like you and I. The people born here call us gatecrashers. And I suppose to them, we are a bit thuggish. But who are they? Aliens, faeries? Do they have magic or high technology or some combination of the two? Don't ask me? I can't tell you. It still doesn't quite make any sense to me And I've been here forever."

A wave of nausea hit Martin and he steadied himself on one of the metal chairs.

"You're lying."

This time it was a look of hurt that quickly passed along Otto Cherry's pleasant features. It was replaced by a feral, dangerous look. He leaned back against the desk. His hand reached out and plucked up the little origami figure. It was a little tinfoil man holding a sword.

"Mister Hollys. I have been called many things. Mad scientist, hopeless romantic, and even the emperor of ice cream. But no one, not even my enemies, call me a liar."

Cherry's other hand tapped a blocky button on the intercom.

"Bring her in, Pierce."

Cherry looked down at the little bit of tinfoil in his hand. He twisted the little origami figure for a second. Two. Three. Five. He put it down and stared at Martin.

"I do have enemies, Mister Hollys. People who wish to do harm to what is mine."

"And what is yours?"

"This place."

Way in the distance, it looked a hundred yards away, the double doors opened and the figured of Butch Pierce walked into the room, dragging something along beside him. For several minutes the only sound was the metallic sound of whatever was being dragged. As he got closer, Martin could see that it was a chair. With someone tied to it. Butch pierce closed the last few feet and turned the chair around.

In it was Maddy MacGuffin, beaten and bloody.

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And that, gentle reader, constant reader, is where we will have to leave you for a bit. It seems Martin Hollys did more than just drive across town when he showed up in front of Wants & Getz. Stay tuned for the new wrinkle that Otto Cherry has in store for our bruised and battered hero in the next chapter....


The Hopeless Romantic. Chapter Nine: You're Finally Here And I'm A Mess.


Chpt 10: Come A Little Bit Closer.

Chpt 11: The Royal Army Of Oz.

Chpt 12: Ferris Wheels And Cuckoo Clocks.

Chpt 13: Mister, We Deal In Lead.

Chpt 14: Choose Your Own Adventure