Death Is a Lonely Business (Crumley Mysteries 1)

“With nothing trembles—”

Instantly, I awoke.

“What,” I said to the empty ceiling.

Had Lady Macbeth said that?

With nothing trembles.

To be afraid of nothing for no reason.

And having to live with that nothing until dawn.

I listened.

Was that the fog bruising my door? Was that the mist testing my keyhole? And was that the special miniature rainstorm prowling my doormat, leaving seaweed?

I was afraid to go look.

I opened my eyes. I looked at the hall which led to my two-by-four kitchen and my two-by-two Singer’s Midgets bathroom.

I had hung an old torn white bathrobe there last night.

But now the robe wasn’t a robe. With my glasses off and lying on the floor by my cot—my vision being what it was, almost legally blind—the robe had … changed.

It was the Beast.

When I was five years old, living east in Illinois, and had to go up some dark stairs in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, the Beast was always at the top of the stairs, unless the small stairwell light was lit. Sometimes my mother would forget to turn it on. I would try terribly hard to make it to the top without looking up. But always I was afraid, and I had to look up. And the Beast was always there, with the sound of the dark locomotives rushing by far out in night country, funeral trains taking dear cousins or uncles away. And stood at the bottom of the stairs and …

Screamed.

Now the Beast was hanging here on the edge of my door leading into darkness, the hall, the kitchen, the bathroom.

Beast, I thought, go away.

Beast, I said to the shape. I know you’re not there. You’re nothing. You’re my old bathrobe.

The trouble was, I couldn’t see it clearly.

If I could just reach my glasses, I thought, get them on, jump up.

Lying there, I was eight and then seven and then five and then four years old, getting smaller, smaller, and smaller as the Beast on the door got bigger and darker and longer.

I was afraid to so much as blink. Afraid that that motion would make the Beast float softly down to …

“Ah!” someone yelled.

Because the phone, across the street, rang.

Shut up! I thought. You’ll make the Beast move.

The phone rang. Four in the morning. Four! Christ. Who—?

Peg? Trapped in a Mexican catacomb? Lost?

The phone rang.

Crumley? With an autopsy report I would hate to hear?