Stanley
“Wake up.”
“Wake up!”
And this was how it turned out?
And look what that had come to.
“Stanley, you’re embarrassing yourself.”
The voice came from over his shoulder: a man’s voice, vaguely familiar, whispering in Stanley’s ear.
The voice brought with it another itch on the back of his neck, that cold creeping of insect feet, long nails, sharp fingers.
Stanley shuddered against the ropes that held him—why had Ryan Fucking Phan just left him like this?
—and he turned his head, following the voice.
There was no one back there.
“Don’t waste time, Stanley,” the voice whispered in his other ear now, and Stanley realized where he’d heard it before.
A moment ago, Stanley had thought the supply room was cold. He thought he’d known what cold was. He thought he’d known fear.
Ha. Ha. Ha.
Earlier tonight, Fernanda had come barging through the door of Stanley’s room with a gun and a pissy attitude and awoken Stanley from a deep slumber.
She’d laid out in very clear terms that she was running away from Frank, she was getting her revenge on Frank, and by God if Stanley wanted to keep clear of trouble, then he wouldn’t try to stop her.
I have photographs that implicate you in many crimes, Fernanda had said. If you want those photos to disappear, then you will stay out of my way.
Stanley had been too tired after his trip to Mexico City to give much of a shit.
He’d nodded along to Fernanda’s terms, hardly bothering to listen.
Frank was due to arrive at some point this evening.
Sarah Powers had already made sure of that.
Sarah had called both Frank and Stanley this morning and said simply, It’s time.
Fernanda could have all the pictures she’d like; it wasn’t as if Frank wouldn’t get them right back the minute he arrived.
But when all this was over, Stanley and his old buddy Frank would need to have a nice hard talk about the way Frank had sampled the wares.
Stan had warned Frank, time and time again, that the man was a fool to keep Fernanda at his house like some goddamn princess under ransom.
Fernanda was smart—dangerous smart—with a retard brother in Mexico she thought Stanley and Frank didn’t know about.
Women like Fernanda lose their heads over brothers like that. She was bound to try a stunt like this.
All Stanley had said to Fernanda tonight, however, was, “You didn’t kill Frank on your way out of Stockton, did you?”
“No. We killed Lance.”
That had made Stanley arch an eyebrow. “Lance got in your way? Kyla Hewitt’s boyfriend? I thought y’all were going to the cartel.”
Fernanda had hesitated. “We are.”
“And Lance tried to stop you? I was starting to think he was working for them more than he was working for—”
Fernanda’s face had gone dark. Was it fear there, or anger, or shame?
The result was the same. She’d hit him—hit him—with the butt of her fucking gun. Busted Stanley’s lip wide open. She’d stood over him, panting, as Stanley dabbed blood from his chin.
He’d looked up. He’d seen tears in her eyes.
“He was trying to help you, wasn’t he?” Stanley said. “Lance was trying to help and you made a bad, bad call.”
Stanley had thought Fernanda would hit him again. She turned on her heel and left without a word.
He hadn’t given this much thought. It wouldn’t matter, would it, when Frank came?
Stanley hadn’t realized until that moment that Penelope wasn’t there, in the room’s other bed, and he told himself he should be more worried about this.
Even after all he’d done to get Penelope back from that reprobate Ryan Fucking Phan, in all honesty Stanley couldn’t actually stand being around his granddaughter.
Even if the girl didn’t have the attitude of a colt (and the same tendency to bolt), the guilt Stanley felt every time he saw the scar on her forehead would have defeated ten better men than him.
But then, back in his room earlier this evening, as he rubbed his busted lip and glanced over his shoulder at Penelope’s empty bed, his eye had settled on the mirror inside his wardrobe’s open door. His heart had plummeted into his stomach. His mind had briefly shut down.
In the reflection of the glass, Stanley had seen a man—imagined he’d seen a man—standing behind him at the side of the bed. A man in a gray gabardine suit.
“Stanley.”
That voice—that man—was whispering in his ear. Here in the supply room. Here in the cold. “I just want to give you a warning.”
“You’re not real,” Stanley’s anxious voice echoed off the concrete floor, the concrete cladding of his mind.
“I don’t really need to warn you, of course, but it seemed like the polite thing to do.”
“You’re not real! I imagined you! She’d hit me in the head!”
“Imagined me?” The man whispering in his ear—the imaginary man, the man who couldn’t really be here, who couldn’t fucking be here—sounded almost hurt. “But Stanley, I warned you all of this was going to happen, didn’t I? Earlier tonight, back in your room, I warned you that Sarah was already dead.”
No. No. Stanley didn’t want to remember. He didn’t like being scared.
Stanley didn’t behave well when he was scared.
“Fine, Stanley. Have it your way. Pretend that wasn’t me you saw in your wardrobe’s mirror.
Me in my best suit. Me with my hand on your shoulder.
Me whispering into your ear. Pretend I was lying when I said Sarah Powers was a fool meddling with forces she didn’t understand.
Pretend I was lying when I said that I knew your mother, that I could bring you to see her again. ”
It was no good. Remember or not, Stanley was very, very afraid. He screwed his eyes shut. He thrashed in the chair, desperate to escape this creeping, insinuating voice crawling into his ears into his skull into his mind.
“Pretend you didn’t glance over your shoulder when Fernanda left your room. Pretend you didn’t see me there, Stanley. Waiting for you. Smiling in your mirror, so keen to speak with you at last.”
“Go away. Go away.”
“Was I so terrifying, Stanley? You haven’t even seen me in my splendor. You haven’t seen what this place can do to a man.”
That creeping sensation on the back of Stanley’s neck had climbed to his scalp. It had become colder, sharper. It started to prickle along the flesh of his head. It started to scrape.
“What are you doing to me?” Stanley said, pulling at the ropes with all his strength. “That hurts. That hurts!”
“It won’t for long.”
“Stop! Stop!”
“I really don’t need your permission, Stanley. Maybe if you’d listened to me before dinner we wouldn’t be in this situation.”
“You told me…” Stanley didn’t want to remember what the man in the gray suit had told him, back in his room, back before dinner. He didn’t want to remember, but as the scraping sensation along the back of his head grew stronger, he found he couldn’t think of anything else.
“You told me… to kill everyone.” Stanley could barely bring himself to say it. “You told me to kill Penelope.”
“Because she’s always hidden herself by the time I arrive. Something keeps me from finding her. If you’d killed her when you had the chance, you wouldn’t be in this chair. You wouldn’t feel what’s about to happen.”
“What are you doing? What are you doing?”
“What am I doing?” Stanley heard a smile in the voice. “This.”
That awful burning cold: it pierced Stanley’s skin. It pierced Stanley’s skull. The sensation was so horrible and strange all he could do, all Stanley could do, was moan.
He found he couldn’t move his lips. He moaned again, the sound leaking out of him, bringing with it a ribbon of drool that eased down his chin and piddled in his lap. He twitched, like a fish on a dock. He mumbled, “Hurts. Hurts.”
And Stanley felt fingers—long, sharp fingers—burrow into the deepest recess of his brain. Felt them close around his mind. Felt them squeeze.
Whatever essence made up Stanley Holiday, whatever calcified detritus formed his soul: it broke in that moment.
Broke and flowed away, like splinters of shattered ice dissolving into water.
When the door of the supply room opened a few minutes later and a friend stepped inside, it wasn’t Stanley they found lashed to that chair. Not really.
Stanley’s eyes opened, but another man gazed out.
“Did you bring it?”
The new arrival shivered in the cold, shivered at what he saw before him. He was clearly terrified. Ashamed.
But resolved. He knew what was at stake, even if he was too stupid to realize its consequences.
The new arrival stepped into the supply closet, carrying with him the knife he’d thrown under the porch earlier in the evening, when he’d cut the Odyssey’s tires. Most nights, Jack Allen retrieved this blade himself after kicking off the fun in the office, but tonight—tonight was a new story.
At last.
The arrival cuts Stanley’s ropes. Blood flowed into the feet and hands. The new arrival passed over another item, this one stolen from the junk in Sarah Powers’s room: a grooved stone egg.
“Well done, Thomas,” Stanley said, though of course he was Stanley no longer. He pocketed the egg, took the knife.
Not-Stanley said, “Now go finish the job.”