The Weirdness(26)
But he wants something to do other than look at this folder full of failure. And it couldn’t hurt, Billy thinks, to shoot over there and see what’s at this address. There’s plenty of time before the reading; he can bring the accordion file and look through stuff on the train. He could just go. Just to take a look. Just to know if cloaks are real.
And so then he’s in Chelsea, standing at an intersection, peering down at Lucifer’s printout. Cold November wind whips around him, threatens to snap the paper out of his hand. According to the map he’s at the right corner, but he doesn’t see any cloaked building.
Well of course you don’t see it, he thinks. That’s the whole point of a cloak. Isn’t it? Is it? Maybe he’s been punk’d after all.
Directly across the street from him is a junk-metal yard, blocked from view by tall walls of corrugated iron, lashed and bolted together. It has a foreboding, ramshackle nature that reminds him of the tower, and warlockish clangs and rumbles emit from its depths. He’s looked at it from twenty different angles now, trying to catch some sort of change in its nature, but so far, nothing.
Behind him is a gallery space: through the window he can see eight lacy forms made out of what appear to be lathe-cut blocks of industrial Styrofoam. Billy’s pretty sure that if you were trying to hide something in Manhattan you wouldn’t disguise it as interesting art, although he can hear the Ghoul’s voice in his head, making some crack about how people tune out nothing faster, these days, than an artist asking for attention.
Across the way there’s an unassuming-looking brick building that takes up most of the block. He hasn’t really checked it out that deeply, distracted as he has been by the metal yard and the Styrofoam, but now he gives it a second look. Painted directly on the brick of the building’s western face are the faded words SEAFOOD WAREHOUSING.
He reads them for a second time, really tries to think about the business model implied there.
He looks at the map, looks at exactly which corner Lucifer has pinpointed.
He crosses the street.
Tentatively, he puts out his hand and touches the building. It feels like a building. He’s not sure what he expected.
He looks both ways along the building’s front for a window that he can peek into, but there are no windows at street level, just some ornamental concrete buttresses.
There is also no door.
Interesting, Billy thinks. So, let’s say I’m a customer. He turns right, heading for the corner. Let’s say I have some seafood I need warehoused. I go over here, to the southern side—
He rounds the corner. The southern side is a long expanse of brick. More buttresses. No loading dock. No door.
Okay, then, Billy thinks, making the long trek along the southern side. The building nearly abuts another one at its southeast corner, so the eastern face is inaccessible. Billy peers into the thin, trash-choked gap between the two buildings: there’s not even enough space to fit his fist in there. So the north side is the only side left. He hurries back the way he came, and it turns out that there’s no north side either; it’s directly up against another giant brick building on that side, without even an alley to look down.
So. Two sides. No windows. No loading dock. No door.
I got you, you bastard, Billy thinks.
He crosses back over to the gallery so that he can get more of the warehouse in his view. It sits there, impassive.
Billy stands on the sidewalk for a full minute, legs apart, hands balled in fists at his sides, goggling at the building. He is rapt with concentration. He is fully focused; fully focused except the part of him that is remarking on how much he has begun to resemble homeless dudes who he’s seen staring intensely at everyday shit with a stance and demeanor oddly identical to his own. He imagines, briefly, what wonders they have seen.
In the end, it works with something like an autostereogram effect: he loosens the convergence of his eyes a little and the warehouse slowly separates into two warehouses. And there, between those wavering visions, he can see it. The horrible tower. The dread castle. Spiny bits and tar-black bones. The ornamental buttresses are still there, only they appear to writhe subtly. They heave like lungs. And right in the center of the mess is a single bloodred door, crawling with calligraphic glyphs.
He blinks and the whole thing snaps back into a warehouse again. He makes himself go walleyed and Warlock House wavers back into view.
He wishes his phone had a camera in it, although he kind of doubts that the effect could be captured photographically.
He tries to imagine what it would be like to go up to the door, go into the place, make good on Lucifer’s deal. And he suffers a complete failure of imagination. He can’t see himself going into a building that looks like that. He can’t see himself even taking one step toward the objective. He literally won’t cross the street now, even though the building looks like a warehouse again.