Chasing the Moon

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

The door to Chuck’s apartment opened a crack.

“Are you alone?” he asked.

“Yes.”

The door closed quietly. There was rattling behind it, but it didn’t open. When she tried the handle, it was still locked.

She knocked again.

His door parted, allowing half his face to be seen. “What do you want?”

“Weren’t we supposed to have dinner tonight?” she asked.

“Dinner? Dinner?” His eye darted to and fro. “I can’t right now.”

“Is something wrong?”

“Something?” Chuck laughed mirthlessly. “Is something wrong? Everything is wrong. What isn’t wrong? It’s all wrong.”

He shut the door again.

Diana stood in the hall a minute, waiting for Chuck to reappear. He didn’t. She placed her ear against the door. She heard talking, maybe two or three voices in a rapid exchange, followed by a thump and a crash.

She considered knocking again, but he was going through something. She didn’t know what that something was, but she withheld judgment. She knew Chuck came with baggage. Everyone did.

She was halfway down the hall when Chuck’s door was flung open.

“I need you!” His eyes flashed with manic energy as he dashed out, grabbed her by the arm, and pulled her back to his apartment. “I know how to stop it! I know how to make it all go away!”

She didn’t resist, allowing him to tug her along.

“See? It’s all about corners! Corners! Corners?”

Diana didn’t recognize him. The tall, good-looking man was there, but everything had changed. He was stooped, twitchy. His eyes were squinty, darkened slits of suspicion.

He grabbed her by the shoulders. “Don’t you get it? Don’t you see?”

“The corners,” she replied. “Sure, I get it.”

He stared deep into her eyes, then scanned the room, taking a few seconds longer to scrutinize the ceiling.

“I knew you’d know. I knew you’d understand.” He grabbed a roll of duct tape and started slapping it along the bend where two walls met. “They need corners. They need them to come through, to stay here. But if I get rid of the corners, all of them, then it’ll be over. Finished!”

He cackled.

The air of madness around him was distracting, but now she noticed that the apartment was covered in silver tape. Every corner. Every joint. Every place with an angle. He’d done half of the living area.

“Chuck, maybe you should take a break.”

“Not now. If I stop now, then they’ll get me.”

“Who will get you?”

“Them. All of them.”

She watched him work, debating how to handle this. He was an entirely different person now. She wouldn’t say madness had consumed him, but lunacy had taken a small bite out of him.

But was he really crazy? How did she know that he wasn’t right? How did she know that all that was needed to keep away the bogeymen wasn’t enough time and duct tape?

“Don’t just stand there,” Chuck grumbled. “Help me. You can do the couch.”

“Yeah, okay.”

She started taping the furniture. Not seized with Chuck’s madness, she wasn’t certain how best to apply the duct tape. She followed the lines as best she could, paying special attention to the edges where two or three angles met. After a while it stopped being weird, and when she finished with the sofa she stood back and appraised her work.

“That’s right,” he grumbled. “I knew you’d get it. I knew it.” She put her hand on his back. “Maybe we can take a break. Have a seat.”

“It’s not safe.”

“No, I taped the sofa,” she replied. “It’s perfectly safe.”

He frowned at her with a touch of suspicion, then his gaze fell on the sofa.

“You need a break,” she said. “You can’t finish this all at once. If you get too tired, you’ll make mistakes.”

Every bit of his manic energy subsided. He deflated, but she suspected it was only a brief respite. He was like an engine that had slipped into neutral. It didn’t look like it was doing anything, but the gears were still spinning.

They sat in silence. Rather, she sat in silence while he mumbled to himself. She wanted to know the thing to say to make it all right, but what was there to say? She wasn’t even sure he was crazy.

She stood. He clutched her hand a bit too tightly.

“It’s okay,” she said. “I’ll be right back.”

He clung to her. But it was more than that. He was clinging to something vital inside himself. Something intangible slipping through his fingers.

Maybe he wasn’t crazy, but he was in bad shape. She understood more than she wanted to admit. She’d only been living here a few weeks, and already she could feel it. The pressure building within, trying to get out. The human mind wasn’t made to know what the building revealed. Secrets and truths that could loosen the steadiest soul. Like a dripping faucet filling a bucket. It might take a long time, but eventually that bucket would have to be emptied, one way or another.

She put a hand on his cheek. He pulled away, buried his face in the sofa, and shook as he either laughed or sobbed. She wanted to take him in her arms, tell him that everything was going to be okay. The words would’ve been meaningless. He wouldn’t have believed her. There was no reason he should when she didn’t believe it either.

Rather than waste her time with empty platitudes, she slipped out of the apartment. She tried knocking on Apartment One, but West didn’t answer.

“Damn it.”

Apartment Three’s door opened. Stacey and Peter-thing came out.

“Is there a problem, neighbor?” asked Stacey.

“It’s Chuck. I think he’s losing it.”

“Oh, that’s a shame,” said Stacey with an exaggerated frown that would’ve seemed ridiculous on someone else. “He was such a nice young man.”

“Chuck. Good,” agreed Peter-thing.

“We have to help him.”

“Oh, he’ll snap out of it eventually. He always does.”

“This has happened before?” asked Diana.

“The dear boy just isn’t cut out for this sort of business.”

“But he’ll be okay, right?”

“Probably.”

“What do you mean, probably?”

Neither Stacey nor Peter-thing could look her in the eye.

“What do you mean by that?”

“Would you care for a piece of pie?” Stacey smiled in that wide-eyed manner of hers. It was meant to be reassuring, but Diana found it condescending.

“Cut the crap, Stacey.”

Stacey sighed. Her smile faded to merely cheerful, which was as close to somber as she ever got. “I know you like him, Diana, but I wouldn’t get too attached. Peter and I have seen many a soul pass through these halls,nd after a while one gets a feel for these things.”

“Poor Chuck.” Peter-thing lowered his head and gnashed his teeth. “Poor poor Chuck.”

“It takes a certain talent to live with this for any amount of time,” said Stacey. “A certain way of looking at the world, of accepting the unacceptable and rolling with the punches. Chuck is strong-willed, intelligent, decent, but he doesn’t have what it takes. Not for the long haul. To be honest, I’m surprised he’s lasted as long as he has.”

“Well, this is bullshit.” Diana kicked the wall. “Absolute bullshit.”

“It’s not fair,” said Stacey, “but not everyone has the proper temperament to live like we do.”

“Wait a second? We?” Diana pointed to herself. “Like you and me.” She jabbed her finger at Peter-thing. “And him.”

His lips pulled away from his fangs, and he smiled.

She shook her head slowly. She couldn’t verbalize her denial.

Peter-thing reached out and put a clawed hand on her shoulder.

“Diana good.”

“Yes, why don’t you come in and have some pie?” asked Stacey.

“No, thank you. I really should check on Chuck.”

Diana pulled away and hurried back to his apartment. She didn’t look over her shoulder at Stacey and Peter-thing. She wasn’t one of them. She didn’t belong in this place. She’d rather be driven mad.

Chuck was pulling the silver duct tape off the walls.

She approached delicately and spoke softly so as not to disturb him.

“Hi.”

He turned, smiled at her.

“Oh, hi.”

“Feeling better?”

“Yeah, I don’t know what got into me.” He tried to toss a wad of tape into a bucket of the stuff, but it wouldn’t come off his hand. “Hope I didn’t scare you.”

She forced a smile. “No, I was just worried. That’s all.”

The shared an uncomfortable chuckle.

“You know how it is,” he said. “How it gets to you sometimes.”

“I know.”

She stepped closer for a good look at his eyes. They were calm, but now that she knew it was there, she could see the hint of madness lurking behind them.

Embarrassed, he turned away.

They spent the next ten minutes quietly stripping and disposing of the tape. Afterward they sat on the sofa and watched cartoons. He put his arm around her, but neither said a word for the duration of a Frankenstein Jr. and the Impossibles episode.

“I have an idea,” she said. “Why don’t we go out?”

“We can’t go out. Not tonight.”

“It’ll be fun.”

“But he’s out there.” Chuck pointed to the door. “And he’s not going to let me leave.”

“Your dog? He’s not there. He hasn’t been there all night.”

“That’s just what it wants you to think.”

She opened the door to reveal the empty hallway.

“See? Gone.”

“It’s there. It’s just waiting.”

“Waiting for what?”

“I don’t know.”

She took him by the hand and playfully pulled him toward the door. “We’ll just go for a walk or something. Something short. Be back in half an hour. Less.”

He yanked his hand away. “I said no!”

She couldn’t see it, but the monster pup yipped from the other side of the threshold.

“I told you it was out there!” shouted Chuck. “Why did you try and make me leave? Now you’ve made it angry.”

The pup wagged its spiky tail.

“It was her fault. She wanted me to do it.”

The dog squealed.

“Yes, I’ll get her to leave. Right away.” He pushed her toward the door. “You have to go now.”

“But—”

He shoved her into the hall almost hard enough to slam her into the opposite wall.

“So I’ll see you tomorrow then?” she asked.

“I don’t know. Maybe. We’ll see.”

He slammed the door shut. The demon pup paced in three small circles before sitting at its designated post. The creature lowered its head, covered its eyes with its paws, and whined.

“Who asked your opinion?”

It belched, spewing out a foul reddish cloud.

She went back to her apartment. The monsters asked her about her date, but she just mumbled something about a change of plans and shut herself in the bathroom.

Diana studied her face in the mirror. Particularly her eyes. She searched for the same troubled psyche that she’d seen in Chuck’s, but she couldn’t find it.

Having encroaching dementia and being unable to diagnose it didn’t bother her nearly as much as the notion that maybe there wasn’t anything to see. Maybe she wasn’t going mad and, despite the weirdness of her situation, she was bearing up well.

That scared her more than mere insanity.