In the alley’s narrow blue sky, birds soar back and forth. Birds and clouds that aren’t cobwebs. In a blue that isn’t velvet or paint.
With his head stuck out the door, Saint Gut-Free says, “I know where we’re at.” Squinting, he says, “They’re still here.” He points with one hand, saying, “Miss Sneezy, wait . . .”
Mother Nature’s fingers holding tight to his shirt and the waist of his pants, he keeps crawling, swimming, saying, “Please, stop.”
Half out the door, his hands dragging him through the broken glass and trash of the alley, all of the beautiful garbage warm from the afternoon sun, Saint Gut-Free says, “Stop!”
While two figures stagger toward the alley’s entrance: the girl close by, the old man almost a city block away, his arm raised as a taxi pulls to the curb.
Toward this, the Saint shouts, “Miss Sneezy!”
He shouts, “Wait!”
Miss Sneezy turns to look.
And . . . then . . . and. . . Shooo-rook!
The knife from the floor, the paring knife that Chef Assassin tossed at Mr. Whittier, Mother Nature’s brought it with them.
That knife sticking out of Miss Sneezy’s chest, it still shakes with each beat of her heart, shaking less and less as Mother Nature and Saint Gut-Free drag her back inside the door. Back into the dark.
The knife shakes less as they climb to their feet and wrestle the door shut, the metal rollers squealing. The sky, getting more narrow, until the birds and clouds and blue are gone.
In the alley, Mr. Whittier’s voice shouts from closer and closer, for them to stop.
The knife shakes even less as Mother Nature says, “I told you:
“Not yet.”
And then the knife stands still. The coughing, sniffing, sneezing little person we’ve waited to see die from the day we arrived here—at last, dead.
We haven’t so much saved the world as we’ve preserved our audience. Kept alive the people to watch us on television, read our books, go to our some-day movie. Our consumer base.
Saint Gut-Free holding the door shut, the lock clicks open from the outside. The knob rattling. The Saint clicks it locked, and again it clicks open.
The Saint clicks it shut, saying, “No.” And the lock clicks open, turned by a key from the outside.
Back in the dark, back in the cold, Mother Nature pulls the sticky blade out of Miss Sneezy. Mother Nature sticks the blade into the lock and snaps it off.
The lock, ruined. The knife, ruined. Poor Miss Sneezy, with her red eyes and runny nose, reduced to being a prop in our story. A person made into an object. As if you cut open a rag doll with a silly name, and found inside: Real intestines, real lungs, a beating heart, blood. A lot of hot, sticky blood.
Now the story split another less way. What was done to us.
For now, we’re still here. In our dim circle around the ghost light.
The voice of Mr. Whittier, he’s wailing outside the steel door. His fists, pounding. Wanting to come inside. Not wanting to die alone.
For now we wait, repeating our story in the Museum of Us. In this, our permanent dress rehearsal.
How Mr. Whittier trapped us here. He starved and tortured us. He killed us.
We recite this: the Mythology of Us.
And someday soon, any day now, the world will come open that door and rescue us. The world will listen. Starting on that sun-glorious day, the whole world is going to love us.
PUBLISHED BY DOUBLEDAY
A division of Random House, Inc.
DOUBLEDAY and the portrayal of an anchor with a dolphin are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Palahniuk, Chuck.
Haunted : a novel of stories / Chuck Palahniuk.— 1st ed.
p. cm.
eISBN 0-385-51583-9
1. Artists—Fiction. 2. Prisoners—Fiction. 3. Torture victims—Fiction. 4. Social isolation—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3566.A4554H38 2005
813'.54—dc22
2004059380
Copyright © 2005 by Chuck Palahniuk
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
All Rights Reserved
www.doubleday.com
v1.0
There was much of the beautiful, much of the wanton, much of thebizarre, something of the terrible, and not a little of that which might have excited disgust.
“The Masque of the Red Death”
by Edgar Allan Poe
Guinea Pigs
This was supposed to be a writers’ retreat. It was supposed to be safe.
An isolated writers’ colony, where we could work,
run by an old, old, dying man named Whittier,
until it wasn’t.
And we were supposed to write poetry. Pretty poetry.
This crowd of us, his gifted students,
locked away from the ordinary world for three months.
And we called each other the “Matchmaker.” And the “Missing Link.”
Or “Mother Nature.” Silly labels. Free-association names.
The same way—when you were little—you invented names for the plants and
animals in your world. You called peonies—sticky with nectar and crawling with
ants—the “ant flower.” You called collies:Lassie Dogs.
But even now, the same way you still call someone “that man with one leg.”
Or, “you know, the black girl . . .”
We called each other:
The “Earl of Slander.”
Or “Sister Vigilante.”
The names we earned, based on our stories. The names we gave each other,
based on our life instead of our family:
“Lady Baglady.”
“Agent Tattletale.”
Names based on our sins instead of our jobs:
“Saint Gut-Free.”
And the “Duke of Vandals.”
Based on our faults and crimes. The opposite of superhero names.
Silly names for real people. As if you cut open a rag doll and found inside:
Real intestines, real lungs, a beating heart, blood. A lot of hot, sticky blood.
And we were supposed to write short stories. Funny short stories.
Too many of us, locked away from the world for one whole
spring, summer, winter, autumn—one whole season of that year.