Somebody Up There Hates You by Hollis Seamon

Author:Hollis Seamon
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Algonquin Books
Published: 2013-08-12T21:00:00+00:00

11

NEXT MORNING, I’M UP and showered and dressed and I’ve had my little breakfast of broth and coffee, nice and early, just like I actually have something to do, a real busy day ahead of me. There’s sunshine outside the windows, and I’m feeling decent. I pick up the package that Br’er Bertrand left. The aide that cleaned up my room left it on the night table.

It’s a big envelope, the padded kind. Inside, on top, there’s a note. It’s obvious, right away, that it’s from Uncle Phil—the handwriting is all bold and messy, and the paper smells like him, cigarette smoke and beer. Your Majesty, it starts. Sorry I had to abandon you. Had to get out of Dodge, pronto. But sat up all night long, working on these. I’ll be back real soon, I promise. He signed it, Your loyal lackey, Philip the Fool. Then there’s a PS: I trust you’ll find the secret clues, my lord.

I pull out the sheets of thick paper, each one ragged on top, like they were ripped out of one of those big artist’s pads you can buy. They’re drawings, charcoal I think at first. But then I realize that they must be pen and ink, the lines are so fine. Black-and-white, no color. The top one is labeled The Woman in the Coma. October 31. Funny, his writing here is perfectly neat and square. Like once he goes into artist mode, Phil’s a different guy. I’m almost scared to look real close at the picture, so I take a few minutes to spread all of them out on top of my bed. There’s five altogether. They’ve all got labels and dates: Family Lounge. October 31. The Two Old Guys, Room 304. October 31. Sylvia. October 31. Richie’s World. October 31.

My heart, for some reason, is up high in my throat, just glancing at the pictures. They’re really detailed, so finely drawn that there are, like, hundreds of details in each one. I don’t know why drawings should scare me, but they do. It’s like, I don’t know, like I’ll see things I don’t want to know. Like, in black-and-white, the reality of this place will be too much. But there they are, on my bed, all in a row, and I think how wussy it would be not to study them, appreciate all Phil’s work, anyway. I mean, it’s clear the guy’s got a gift. And that he worked like hell on these. But they’re hard to take, all at once. So I pile them up, in an order that seems to me to be least to most scary, least on top. You know, so I can look at a couple and leave the rest, if I want to.

I lean over The Woman in a Coma and try to figure it out. All the angles are weird, like everything in the room radiates out from one central spot. Everything’s there: the windows, the door, the ceiling, the walls, the bed table with its suction equipment, all of that.

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