The Horror Megapack_ 25 Classic and Modern Horror Stories ( PDFDrive )

deep recesses of his tangled mind, genius still remained; I don’t use the word
lightly. Genius…
“My own behavior in the following couple of months was selfish, even
shameful. That whole scene had been a cry for help from a very disturbed
individual, but I tried to put him out of my mind. He was an adult, I told myself,
his own responsibility. I was his publisher, not his daddy.
“Mostly I retreated into my work. When I’d started out publishing
undergrounds, it was a lark, a mixture of joking and idealism, a way of showing
what we called The Establishment in those days that the true spirit of freaky
America had not been stifled. I never imagined that it would become a desperate,
grinding business frequently interrupted by messages from the sponsor, that is to
say the landlord, who swore he would turn me and mine out on the sidewalk if
the rent was late one more time. Then there were the artists. I managed to pay
some of them, some of the time. I felt bad about that.
“But Joe never complained. He was faithful till the end.
“The end came on the last evening of April, Walpurgisnacht. I suppose that
figured. I had been out most of the day, trying to find a second-hand typewriter
to replace my Selectric, which had rattled and gurgled its last. When I got back
to the office-cumapartment, there was a package between the inner and outer
doors, with no markings at all, save a single word scribbled on the back in magic
marker: GOOD-BYE.
“I recognized Joe’s handwriting, of course. I hurried inside and slit open the
package. Several pennies fell out, onto the carpet. The package contained
artwork, another, the final installment of Saint Toad’s Cracked Chimes,
beginning with the sacrifice scene I’d seen on his drawing table during my visit.
Well fine, I thought. He’s delivering them himself now.
“Then the phone rang. It was the printer, who wasn’t going to print the next
Zipperhead unless I paid him for the jobs he’d done on the previous four. As
soon as I got myself out of that one, another artist called and threatened to go on
strike if I didn’t pay him what I owed him.
“One thing followed another, and I didn’t manage to even think of Joe again
until quite late that night. It must have been around eleven when I noticed that
one of the coins on the rug was much larger than the others. I picked it up. It
wasn’t an American penny, but a very old, large-sized British one, with Queen
Victoria on the front.
“On the back were the words: WATCH THIS SPACE FOR FURTHER
DEVELOPMENTS.