Stalking the Nightmare by Harlan Ellison Read Free Book Online Page B

Link Dunbar had worked on a smuggling operation from the Islands to the Keys in 1971 and he had seen the artifact. He swore before Damballa that he could not remember what it looked like … but it had been as lovely as anything he knew. His face, when he said it, was a strange mix of terror at the sight of Chris and joy at the last scintilla of memory of what he had seen.
    And he told Chris the name of the smuggler who had taken the item from the boat.
    And when Chris asked him why he was so frightened of just another white man, Prince Basile said, “You been kissin’ the Old Ones. I kilt a hunnerd crows and cocks I couldn’t save mah soul if you was t’touch me, mistuh. I be jus’ playin’ at whut I does, but you… you knows the fire.”
    Chris shuddered. And that was only from a minor, weak servant of Adrammelech. He left hurriedly.
    He stood in the darkness of the alley off Perdido Street and thought about it, about True Love, whatever it was. He had wanted it for so long, had sought it in so many women, had glimpsed hints of its totality so many times, that he only now paused to examine what he had become. Even if he got it, would he be worthy of it? Wasn’t the one who found the Holy Grail supposed to be pure in every way, perfect in every way, without flaw or blemish or self-doubt? Knights on white chargers, saints, defenders of the faith; those were the candidates for the honor. Prince Charming always won Snow White, not Porky Pig.
    Without flaw. No, not without flaw. He had come too far for perfection. He had had to experience too much.
    Yet he knew he was closer to True Love than anyone had ever been. Not even those who had possessed it had known what to do with it. He knew he had it within himself to become one with True Love, as no one before him ever could. No one. Not one of the perhaps thousand owners of it before and since it found its way to the Palace of Minos, no matter how fine or great or deserving they had been.
    Christopher Caperton knew his destiny was to hold True Love in his hands. Known to demons, casting no shadow, he walked away from the fear in Perdido Street.

    The final clue was so mundane he could not even breathe a sigh of relief. True Love had been sold in blind bid auction at Sotheby’s in April of 1979. It now belonged to a man who lived high above the rest of the human race, in a tower overlooking New York, where almost eight million people gave a portion of each day to wondering where True Love resided.
    From Siri’s notebooks Chris recognized the name of the man. In 1932 he had visited New York City for the opening of the Radio City Music Hall. The artifact had been stolen from him. He had spent forty-seven years trying to regain his lost property. In the process, somehow, he had become enormously powerful, enormously wealthy, enormously secretive.
    Home again, home again, jiggedy jig.
    Christopher Caperton took one final look at the cover of the December 1980 issue of Esquire. It showed a woman in a seductive bridal gown. The cover illustrated an article called Looking for a Wife and the slug-line read “With all the beautiful, intelligent women out there, why is she so hard to find?”
    He smiled thinking they might have done the reverse on Ms. magazine, with a photograph of an equally unreachable male.
    The model they had selected for the shot was achingly innocent, yet seductive; poised in a timeless moment of utter perfection. Had he been anyone else, this might well have been the physical manifestation of True Love for him.
    But it was only the most recent in a congeries of photos, motion pictures, billboards and women glimpsed in cars going past on city streets who were idealized manifestations of what he sought.
    Tonight he would hold the real thing. Tonight he would obtain True Love.
    He put the last of the vials from Siri’s bahut he might need in the capacious pockets of his London Fog topcoat, and left the hotel. It was thirty degrees in the Manhattan streets, and