There was a silence in which I wondered why he hadn’t told me Alex’s real name, but I felt that in Alex we were somewhere near the center of something delicate, and I didn’t want to break any membranes that weren’t yet ready to break.
About the manuscript, though, he said as Angela West evaporated into the air. Can you send it back? I get paranoid about it. I don’t know what I’m going to do next, but I know I need to be the only person who has a copy.
Sure, I said, there’s a shipping place down the road.
Can you go there tomorrow? he said.
* * *
GAGE, I SAID, I just found out about all this as you were telling me about it, hold your fire. I was laughing while I said it but I felt defensive: I’m a safe haven.
I know, he said, sorry, I get worked up, I mean I guess I know, but on the other hand I don’t, the longer I do this stuff, the more enemies I see. If they never print this thing, maybe they’re doing me a favor, maybe I’ll end up looking at it that way, who knows. I don’t think they’re willing to print it with Siraj in it, but I kind of need to believe in Siraj, he’s there to protect the others.
We were quiet for a minute. It was dark outside. Summer in the South. Cicadas. I didn’t think anybody else would believe in Siraj, either. I thought Gage had spent too long trying to save people he couldn’t save and that the effort had clouded his vision in one way but maybe clarified it in another.
I don’t get how you can really protect anybody, I said after a while; I don’t see who there is to protect.
I know, he said, with a tenderness I didn’t expect: I know, that’s how it is with everybody, the idea that people might need to be protected from the facts of a case, it runs counter to what we’re taught, you know, but I had Jana Perez’s letter right there in front of me, like an air raid siren sounding the alarm, it matters which story you tell, it matters whose story you tell, it matters what people think even if it doesn’t matter to the people who needed it before the disaster hit. That’s the thing, those of us on this side of the disaster, we get so dazzled by the fireworks, by the conflagration I want to say, that we don’t see the gigantic expanse over there on the other side of the flames, but, you know. People have to live there.
Wow, I said.
Yeah, right, that’s it, that’s what’s left, “wow,” right, that’s the pay line in my field, he said: “Wow,” that’s the triple bars lined up right there, ha, don’t get me wrong, I made my bed on it and the sheets have a high enough thread count, but that’s what I brought back from the castle, that’s the loot, and what’s that worth to any of those guys now, right, dead or vanished, chased out, exiled, right, that would be the word, “exiled”; “wow,” maybe I can use that if I ever find a way out of the woods on this one, thanks, let me know if you’re ever in the neighborhood again.
And I said good night, then, and good luck, and we sort of spun down the moment together until the energy dissipated a little; and then I stood there, thinking about my old neighborhood, and specifically about the Mean Man, looking out from behind his blinds, seeing everybody but never seen by anybody; and about the Frankenstein monster, tied to a garage door by invisible chains, waiting for his moment, ready when it comes. Getting loose enough to visit some great terror on his captors, wholly in the moment, lost in the play. I remembered, and I stayed with that vision for what seemed like quite a while out there, on the back porch, in the dark.
Acknowledgments
Two books were invaluable to me in building the mythical Devil House from bricks: Christopher Tyerman’s Who’s Who in Early Medieval England （Shepheard-Walwyn, 1996） and R. M. Wilson’s The Lost Literature of Medieval England （Methuen, 1970）， from which I nicked many of the subheaders in part 3; world-building is tricky business, and no one knows this better than medievalists. I’m grateful for their work.
To my family and especially my wife, Lalitree, deepest thanks for the near daily forbearance of the mania that can accompany the making of a new book.
To Sean McDonald, whose editorial hand measures pressure in exactly the right proportions and who bears my love of obscurity patiently, protecting my book against its creator’s love of lost and losable things, my deepest thanks.
To my band and crew—Peter Hughes, Jon Wurster, Matt Douglas, Brandon Eggleston, Trudy Feikert, Avel Sosa, and Ryan Matteson—nothing I do is possible without you. Thank you, forever.
Finally to Donna, a great friend, consultant, and confidant at almost every step of the way for this book, the particular gratitude that comes from knowing that this book attains whatever stature it has only from the twin graces of your ear and your good words along the way. May I repay your many kindnesses!