Night Ocean, The by Farge Paul La

Author:Farge, Paul La [Farge, Paul La]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Lovecraft, Novel, Fiction, Horror
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2017-02-02T15:11:26+00:00

5.

Charlie came home on Saturday afternoon with a black eye. With his wheeled bag still standing at attention in the hall, he got on the phone to his editor at HarperCollins. “I’m back,” he said. “Listen, I was thinking, if we can get a camera crew to the hospital . . . What? But he is Barlow. I know! Let me talk to him again. I can go back up to Parry Sound, I’m sure there’s something at his house. I don’t know. I’ll try. OK, on Monday morning.” He set his phone on the kitchen counter and looked at me, perplexed. “They want to cancel the paperback,” he said. I wasn’t sure how much surprise he needed me to express. “That’s terrible,” I said. “I have to talk to George,” Charlie said. His phone buzzed against the counter. “Hello?” he said. “Yes, speaking. No, I didn’t know. I mean there wasn’t anything to know. Because he’s Robert Barlow! Yes, I’m serious.” He hung up. “Gawker,” he said, and shuddered. He was wearing a beautiful white dress shirt, which was soaked with sweat. “What we’ve got to do,” he said, “is put Barlow on TV. He can tell his story. But no one can tell me when they’ll let him out of the freaking hospital! They have him on antibiotics but apparently there’s something going on with his lungs.” “Charlie,” I said, “have you looked at the Internet?”

In the twenty-four hours since April Hoffmann’s second program, new evidence had turned up: photos of the young L. C. Spinks, a big and actually quite dashing man, who looked very much like the person Charlie had met in Parry Sound, and not at all like the young anthropologist who had once been friends with H. P. Lovecraft. It also came to light that Spinks had legally changed his name to Robert Barlow in 1991, but he hadn’t told anyone in Parry Sound. He was Leo Spinks to the neighbors, Mr. Spinks to the shopkeepers, Leo to the hostess at Wellington’s Pub & Grill. It was, I thought, as if he hadn’t needed to convince anyone but Charlie. “Of course I looked,” Charlie said, irritably. “And?” “I don’t know,” I said, “it just seems like, maybe he’s not Barlow at all.” “Please, Marina,” Charlie said. “Hoffmann got one ID from a blurry photo. And her witness isn’t exactly the sharpest tack in the box.” His phone buzzed. “What? This is he. I don’t know, I don’t have anything for you now.” “That was the New York Times,” he said to me. For a moment he was himself again, a lost, hurt Charlie, his face as open as a child’s. “Oh, Mar,” he said, “I’m so fucked.” Then he went into the little bedroom he used as his study and shut the door.

Charlie got Barlow—got Spinks—on the phone, eventually, and Spinks said not to worry. He had letters that Don Pablo had addressed to him in Montreal: proof that he’d survived his “death” and gone to Canada.

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