W MINUS FIVE

You saw Doctor Goodstory yesterday and again this morning. He said Captain A is going to make this a pretty quick journey because you are now in the advanced club, all the way baby, from zero to a hundred in just a matter of months. Aside from being tired a lot more often, you told him you don’t really feel a lot different. Sure, you feel muddled sometimes, but otherwise very much yourself. When you got home, you printed out the Ray Bradbury quote you like so much, and put it into a frame where you can see it from your desk. Things really do feel like they’re all over now, just like the quote says.

Sandra and Eva are still running around like the sky is falling. You spent this afternoon with them at the church Eva is getting married in, Saint Something or Rather. It’s a really pretty stone church with lots of beautiful gardens out the front and a cemetery out the back, a horseshoe ring of poplars and oak trees separating the two. You can’t deny there’s a creep factor to the place, what, with all those bodies in the ground only a minute away from where Eva and Rick are going to exchange their I dos. Of course that’s the old horror writer in you thinking that. You’ve probably forgotten this by now, Jerry, but your first few manuscripts were about vampires, and zombies, and shape-shifters. Back then if you knew the real horror was waking up at three in the morning confused while taking a piss against the bedroom wall, that the real horror was stepping out your back door and stepping through a memory wormhole, then you’d have written a successful horror novel years ago. Eva getting married at a church by a graveyard—the failed-to-be horror author can’t help but see the timing of all of this coinciding with the timing of the zombie uprising, the zombies choosing your little girl’s big day for a little big day of their own. You feel bad Eva’s marrying her hip-hop-loving boyfriend in a place like this, but they’re doing it because of you, because

Captain A

Is taking you away,

Yo.

After the church visit, you all headed out to the winery where the reception is being held. Eva and Rick were lucky there, because there was a cancellation, so everything worked out. It’s out in the country a little, mountains in the far distance, vineyards in all directions, a lake, a beautiful building, all of it stunning, stunning, stunning. And expensive. If there is a zombie uprising on the day, just hope nobody tells them it’s an open bar.

The last few days have been full of meeting people and ticking i’s and dotting t’s—the priest, the florist, the band, the caterers, picking up your suit, and you had to go back into town and see the dessert baker again. You had to stand there and nod and pretend you had no idea what was going on between him and Sandra, who again wore her hair down. Henry keeps saying you have to take care of that situation, and you will, after the wedding. There’s the rehearsal in a few nights’ time, where you’ll be shown how to walk in a straight line with Eva on your arm, how to shake Rick’s hand, then how to sit down in the front row next to Sandra. Everybody is worried you’re going to mess it up, that you’re going to make it halfway down the aisle, shit yourself, and trip over the priest.

Oh, another thing, you got the notes today that your ghostwriter has written up. There are some changes he’s planning on making, but none make any sense. He’s even suggested a name change to the novel. They’re going with Burn Time. You emailed Mandy and told her to go ahead, that everything looked fine, because it’s easier just to let it all happen now. Since you can no longer have the title you wanted, you’ve written The Captain Goes Burning on the spine of the Madness Journal so, if you’re wondering why it’s there, well now you know.

Hans came over again today. He brought more gin. You hid it away in the office after he was gone, but you’re not going to touch it, not till after the wedding, then you’re going to drink as much of it as regularly as you can. You’ve always wondered if the difference between being an okay writer and a great writer was sobriety. All the greats—they’ve spent time coked out of their minds or starting the day with a morning Scotch. Future Jerry, there are more days in your past than your future—that has been true for some time now, but even more true now. Spending your days in a nursing home staring out the window while a nurse wipes the drool off your face isn’t the future for you. When the wedding is over you’re going to drink yourself to death. You should get to decide how you want to go out, and that seems like a pretty good way. It does mean this journal doesn’t really have much of a purpose anymore, except maybe as a coaster.

You were out on the deck with Hans when the florist came over to see Eva. She smiled at you through the window of the French doors and you smiled back, and Hans grinned and slowly shook his head.

Got yourself a little crush there, have you?

No, you said, and shook your head.

I hear ya, mate. If things get to the point where you have to go into a care facility, and I’m sure they won’t, but if they do I’ll make sure there are some nurses in there who look like her.

Of course there’s no way he can do that, but the sentiment made you both laugh, and you can’t deny to yourself that if the nurses looked like the florist, then the nursing home can’t be all bad. You told Hans you’d started talking to yourself, and he said everybody does that sometimes, but he thought you meant you were saying things like Hmm, now where did I put the phone? You told him about the conversations with Henry.

Is he asking you to do things? Hans asked.

Like what?

Like hurting people.

You shook your head while you answered. No, it’s more normal than that. Like the conversation any old two friends would have.

He the one who told you to spray-paint the neighbor’s house?

It was a good question, and one you couldn’t answer. If you did spray-paint her house, was it on the suggestion of somebody who doesn’t exist?

At least you can’t leave the house without the alarms going off, right? Hans pointed out.

I can sneak out the windows.

Just don’t let Henry talk you into sneaking out to visit your florist, huh?

He laughed then, and you laughed too, and why not? Everything is funny in Batshit County.

Good news—the weather report is good for the weekend. It’s plain sailing ahead.

Bad news—you’re going to Rick’s bachelor’s party later this week. You don’t want to go, but Rick’s dad has promised to look after you. You’re only staying for the dinner part of the evening. Could be fun. Or it could be a nightmare. Things will be better when this is all over. Not just the wedding.

It turns out Jerry does know what to do. Of course he does. It’s why he took Fiona Clark’s cell phone and searched her purse for cash. It’s like he was telling himself (or Henry was telling him) back in the house: he has to think of this like one of his books. What would the Bag Man do if he were innocent?

He wasn’t.

He starts walking again. The streets are different but look the same—same houses, same cars, same atmosphere, but then he finds a street that gets a little busier, and he follows it, like following narrow streams to bigger ones until you find the sea, and that’s what happens here, a sea of traffic, of people, a main road he can identify. The good thing about Christchurch is you can’t drive for ten minutes in a straight line without passing within a mile of a mall, and he figures he’s about a thirty-minute walk from the nearest one now. He must be used to walking, because the nursing home is a good distance out of town. He wonders how long it took him to walk from there. A long time. Maybe all night. It takes him forty minutes to reach the mall. He hates malls. Yet he’s always thought that if you took the malls away, society would fall apart. It would be like watching the world if the wheel had never been invented. He dismisses the idea of dumping the knife in one of the bins there. Whoever empties them could find it.