The Curator, page 43
Ike went in, put his lamp on the table, and turned it down. He climbed into the narrow bed.
The new curator lay and heard footsteps that he knew were not real. He smelled soap on the silk pillowcase, the powdered soap that Dora used, with its faint tinge of lemon. It surprised him that the scent lingered after all these weeks. But Dora was like that, wasn’t she? Never what you expected. What kind of prospector had a silk pillowcase? She’d stolen it for sure.
Ike ran his hand over his cheek and pretended it was her hand. He fantasized that the imaginary footsteps were hers, that she had come home to him.
Soon after that, Ike slept, deeply and comfortably.
The very real woman who had been watching him from the darkness stole from the museum.
* * *
The door in the Fields had been dismantled as well, obliterated with an ax. Not that anyone noticed.
* * *
Off the Great Highway, not far from the bottom of the path below the monolithic structure, Robert Barnes waited in a cave.
The cave’s mouth was screened by a curtain of roots and partially obstructed by brush. He waited, and looked through the gap in the roots, watching the nights chew up the moons and then spit them up. He waited, and spiders crawled over his wax hands, and rodents crept in to sniff at the blood that leaked from the unhealing wound of his severed neck, and he waited some more. On a few occasions, a lean, tawny, striped cat skulked through the brush and nestled beside his wax hip and worked its claws through the material of the mechanic’s pants and into the wax beneath, and purred; and they waited together. Snow fell, and he waited, and he waited—until the night that the lone silhouette of a woman appeared on the Highway.
“Robert Barnes!” she called. “Bobby!” She raised a lamp and shone it around. “Lieutenant! Lieutenant!”
He swept aside the roots and the brush, and walked to her across a winter field.
At the sound of his shoes, clomping and cracking through the icy grass, she turned. “We can use this to chip pieces from the stones,” Dora said, and drew a tiny bit from the pocket of her coat, and raised it for her darling to see.
A Note
Douglas Starr’s brilliant true crime study The Killer of Little Shepherds (Knopf, 2010) taught me about how civilians visited the Paris Morgue as a diversion, and also provided the inspiration for the Morgue Ship. Starr writes of an actual “floating morgue,” which blighted the Rhône River in Lyon for decades, until it was swept away in a storm and destroyed.
Acknowledgments
First of all, this novel wouldn’t exist if Brian James Freeman hadn’t asked me to contribute the short story that inspired it to his Detours anthology. Brian, I owe you one.
I’m also grateful to Gavin Grant and Kelly Link for publishing that original story in Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet.
Timothy Bracy, Kelly Braffet, Andrew Ervin, Joshua Ferris, Jennifer Krazit, Charles Lambert, Elizabeth Nelson, Mark Jude Poirier, and Stacey Richter read the manuscript in an earlier draft and offered criticism, insights, and encouragement that dramatically improved the story. They all belong in frames to admire.
I’ve been lucky to have Amy Williams as my agent for twenty years. Amy, thank you for all that you do.
Thanks are due as well to my foreign rights agent, Jenny Meyer.
I’m indebted to everyone at Scribner: Sabrina Pyun, Stuart Smith, Clare Maurer, Ashley Gilliam, Mark Galaritta, Jaya Miceli, Kyle Kabel, Annie Craig, Laura Wise, and especially the ceaselessly encouraging Nan Graham. It was Nan who had the brilliant idea to lure the brilliant Joe Monti away from his responsibilities at Saga Press to edit The Curator. Joe really understood the book, understood what it needed, and it was a pleasure to work with him. Joe, let’s do this again sometime!
Kathleen Jennings’s illustrations are so wonderful, I can’t imagine the book without them.
Joal Hetherington’s copyedits were extraordinarily helpful.
The short story “The Curator” was dedicated to one of my heroes, Peter Straub. He is greatly missed.
I also want to recognize the following cool cats for various acts of generosity and camaraderie: Mark Amodio, Greg Baglia, Jim Baker, Tom Bissell, Jim Braffet, Theresa Braffet, Michael Cendejas, Richard Chizmar, Christine Cohen, Lauren DePoala, Sal DePoala, Nathan Hensley, Jesse Kellerman, Josh Kesselman, Joe Lansdale, Mark Levenfus, Rhett Miller, Rob Neyer, Elizabeth Nogrady, Greg Olear, Heidi Pitlor, Lynn Pleshette, Jerry Rocha, Karen Russell, and Paul Russell.
Thank you, of course, to my dad, my brother, my sister, and most of all my mother, who was so enthusiastic about the story.
Finally, none of this would be any fun at all without my family. K & Z, this book is for you.
More from the Author
Sleeping Beauties
Double Feature
About the Author
© ANNE RAFTOPOULOS
Owen King is the author of the novel Double Feature and We’re All in This Together: A Novella and Stories. He is the coauthor of Sleeping Beauties and Intro to Alien Invasion and the coeditor of Who Can Save Us Now? Brand-New Superheroes and Their Amazing (Short) Stories. He lives in Upstate New York with his family.
SimonandSchuster.com
www.SimonandSchuster.com/Authors/Owen-King
@ScribnerBooks
Also by Owen King
We’re All in This Together: A Novella and Stories
Who Can Save Us Now? Brand-New Superheroes and Their Amazing (Short) Stories
(coeditor)
Double Feature
Intro to Alien Invasion
(cowritten with Mark Jude Poirier)
Sleeping Beauties
(cowritten with Stephen King)
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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First Scribner hardcover edition March 2023
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Interior design by Kyle Kabel
Jacket design by Jonathan Bush
Jacket art: Cat by Private Collection/Bridgeman Images; Night Sky by Pakin Songmore/Getty Images; Door by Sasar/Getty Images; Door Metal Texture by Marzolino/Shutterstock; Smoke by Kitsana1980/Shutterstock
Endpaper artwork by Kathleen Jennings
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for.
ISBN 978-1-9821-9680-6
ISBN 978-1-9821-9682-0 (ebook)
Illustrations by Kathleen Jennings
Owen King, The Curator
