Nevermore by William Hjortsberg Read Free Book Online Page B

long and half the night …”
    Her angry stare focused not on Bloom, but Chester, slumped in his ratty armchair, fiddling with the dial of a little single-tube reflex circuit Crosley 50. Ever since he first bought an experimental crystal set five years ago, he’d been addicted to radio. Maude thought it just another fad. She still called it the “wireless,” wisecracking that it had less future than their act.
    “I don’t hear anything,” Bloom said.
    “Just wait.” Maude pointed at the wall. “It’s like someone is getting skinned alive in there.”
    They waited. An uptown train rattled by on Sixth Avenue just as the howling started. Bloom couldn’t be sure. There was too much racket.
    “Shhh!” Maude put her finger to her lips like a schoolteacher.
    Bloom remained quiet. He kept glancing at the door, thinking this a waste of time. Suddenly, the most unearthly shriek came through the wall, a wail of torment echoing all the way from the depths of Perdition. Bloom jumped, giving a mouselike squeak of terror. “What’d I tell ya?” Maude’s knowing smirk once carried to the back row of Keith’s Union Square.
    “My goodness! Whatever could that possibly be?” Bloom did not look like a happy man.
    “Ain’t it your job to find out?”
    “Six-D is Mrs. Speers’s room. I believe she’s out on tour.”
    “So, you gonna wait till she gets back? Me and Marconi here gotta put up with that caterwauling in the meantime?”
    The tortured howl made Bloom’s flesh crawl. “I’ll get to the bottom of this,” he said.
    Maude Marchington followed Mr. Bloom out into the hall and watched as he rapped his knuckles on the door to 6-D. No answer. He shrugged his shoulders and knocked again with somewhat less enthusiasm.
    “Either you do something about it, or I’m calling the cops,” Maude said.
    “The passkey’s in my office.”
    Maude waited by the elevator until Bloom returned. Less than five minutes had elapsed. “It’s just as I thought,” he said, the scissor gate rattling shut behind him. “Mrs. Speers informed the front desk she was leaving Tuesday, to go out West for twenty-eight weeks on the Orpheum Circuit.”
    Bloom was a catty sort and knew this last information would hit a nerve. He got to observe tenants twice in their careers: first on the way up, and later, on the way down. Mrs. Speers had played the Palace at the beginning of the month and was clearly ascending. The same could not be said for Mrs. Marchington.
    His remark had its desired effect. Maude remained silent, following him down the dusty hall to 6-D. Bloom imperiously inserted the passkey. When the door swung open, the morbid wailing diminished. They both stood apprehensively on the sill, peering into an empty room.
    Not precisely empty. Aside from the usual run-down furniture and threadbare carpet, an H & M wardrobe trunk and several suitcases stood in line along the wall by the door, waiting for the express men to come and collect them. Maude stepped inside first. An unfamiliar sweetish smell hung in the air. Bloom sniffed, wrinkling his nose, trying to place it.
    “So, she went on tour and din’t take no luggage,” Maude sneered.
    “Perhaps she changed her plans.” Something definitely wrong here, aside from the unearthly noises. Bloom struggled to put his finger on just what it might be.
    Maude glanced around, a disgusted expression souring her features. “Nice to see the management doing all this redecorating,” she said. “They wouldn’t tumble for as much as a can of paint when we asked for something to be done about our dump.”
    That was it. Fresh wallpaper. Bloom ran his fingers along a moist seam. He smelled the drying paste. Someone had recently papered the room. Bloom couldn’t imagine Mrs. Speers doing such a thing. She was never coming back to this fleabag.
    A low moan filled the room, like a child weeping. Bloom and Mrs. Marchington stood stock-still, transfixed by the desolate wail. Gradually, the sound