A Hideous Beauty Read online

  Shepherd paused in his page-thumbing. He silently read a sentence or two and grinned. “It’s pedantic,” he said, “but adequate for our purposes.”

  “Pedantic?” I blurted, louder than intended.

  “Unimaginative, pedestrian, bookish—”

  “I know what ‘pedantic’ means.”

  “Sorry. Teacher’s habit.”

  But he wasn’t sorry. He’d baited me and I’d bit.

  Shepherd slapped shut the cover and tossed the book onto the desk, this time back-cover up. I found myself staring at myself and wincing. I’m one of those guys who doesn’t look as good as his publicity picture.

  “What exactly about the book do you find pedantic?”

  Shepherd smiled that smug, insufferable smile of his. “Jana looked good at the assembly this morning, don’t you think?” he said.

  The change of topic blindsided me. “Jana? Jana was here?”

  “You didn’t see her?” Shepherd sniffed. “Given your past involvement, I would have thought she’d get an exclusive interview.”

  “Last I heard she was in Chicago.”

  “KTSD. For about a year now.”

  “Local station . . . that would explain it. The White House staff handles all media arrangements. They give preference to the national networks.”

  “So much for old friends, huh?”

  I ignored the cheap shot. My thoughts were on Jana. The last time I saw her was the day she walked out on me. I was a cad. She cried. Since then we’d exchanged an occasional e-mail, but nothing recently.

  Shepherd slapped my book with the flat of his hand. “You know what amazes me about historians?” he said, changing the subject again. “The way they interpret events to suit their own purposes. Doesn’t that strike you as dishonest?”

  I didn’t hear him. I was still wading in nostalgic waters.

  “Of course,” Shepherd pressed, “you could make a case for the argument that all recorded history is essentially a collection of legends, half-truths, and lies.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Don’t get me wrong. I’m sure you did the best you could given your limited access and understanding of the forces at work.”

  I’d had enough of this.

  “Sour grapes, Myles?” I snapped. “It’s beneath you. You know fully well that for a project of this scope I had to be granted complete access both to records and to people. My research was extensive. I’ve logged hundreds of hours interviewing the president, his family, his staff, and world leaders. My work is meticulously documented.”

  Shepherd chuckled. “Don’t get defensive, old boy. I’m sure you dutifully read the documents that were set before you and recorded everything they wanted you to record. It’s not your fault it’s all a lie.”

  That did it. Even if he asked for my autograph, he wasn’t going to get it.

  “Give me one example of a lie,” I demanded.

  Shepherd gazed at something in the distance as though he hadn’t heard me. “Actually,” he said, “we’re quite pleased with the finished product, and with you. You’ve done exactly what we’ve expected of you.”

  I was on the edge of my seat, spoiling for a fight, if only Shepherd would settle on a topic long enough for me to take a swing. “That’s the second time you’ve inferred you had something to do with the publication of my book.”

  Shepherd smiled.

  His smile had a history, one that jangled my giblets and caused my flesh to crawl. It wasn’t your garden-variety grin, more like the smile of a gladiator looking down on his vanquished opponent just as he is about to deliver the coup de grâce.

  I associate his smile with our sophomore year. The school was going through a chess craze. Guys carried miniature boards with magnetic pieces around in their pockets. We’d play chess before school, after school, and at lunch. When we thought we could get away with it, we played during class, passing the game back and forth across the aisle like lovesick girls passing notes. I remember one time seeing two guys standing in the showers after gym finishing a game.

  On three occasions I sat across a chessboard from Myles Shepherd. The thing I remember most about our games—other than the fact that I lost all three—was the moment I knew I was going to lose. I would remove my hand from a piece after making a move. Myles would lean over the board and say, “Maybe you see something I don’t . . .”

  Then, he would smile that smile.

  That smile was a torpedo with my name on it. Had I been a ship, rats would have been jumping overboard.

  But things were different now, I told myself. We were no longer sophomores and this wasn’t a chess game, and maybe Myles thought he knew something I didn’t, but I wasn’t about to concede anything.

  “Nice try, Myles,” I said. “I suppose you’re also going to take credit for my Pulitzer Prize.”

  His grin widened. “More than you know,” he replied.

  “Sorry, old boy, but that dog won’t hunt. You can sit behind your desk and cast all the aspersions you want . . .”

  “However, we’re not finished with you,” he said, talking over me. “We need you to write one final chapter.”

  “. . . and maybe you can convince some of your less intelligent students that you’re the man behind the author, but we both know . . .”

  “We need you to write the chapter of R. Lloyd Douglas’s assassination.”

  “. . . that you had nothing to do with . . . what did you say?”

  Reclining in his chair, Shepherd did the steeple thing with his fingers. “Your task will be to secure R. Lloyd Douglas’s legacy alongside that of Lincoln and Kennedy.”

  “Myles . . . if this is a joke, it’s not funny.”

  “Have you read William Manchester’s Death of a President? Of course you have. We want something similar.”

  With difficulty I climbed out of my chair. “Look, Myles,” I said. “Joke or not, I have to report this conversation. You know that, don’t you?”

  Shepherd stared at me long and hard and I could have sworn that at that moment the lights dimmed. “I’d be disappointed if you didn’t try,” he said.

  “Whatever game you’re playing, Myles, this time you’ve overplayed your hand. All I have to do is pick up the phone and—”

  “He won’t take your call. Ingraham, that is. That’s who you were going to call, isn’t it? Chief of Staff Ingraham? He won’t take your call.”

  His comment knocked me off balance. How did he know I was thinking of Chief of Staff Ingraham?

  “I’m . . . I’m sure you won’t mind if I don’t take your word for it,” I stammered.

  “And that cell phone number the president gave you at Camp David? Disconnected.”

  “How . . . how . . . do you know about that? No one knows about that, not even Ingraham.”

  “The president knows.”

  Pushing back his chair, Shepherd rose to full height. He looked every inch the self-satisfied prig I’d loathed for years.

  “And that cute little number,” he continued, “what’s her name? Chrissy? No, Christina. Ingraham’s aide. Despite your little dalliance, she won’t take your calls either. You’re cut off, Grant.”

  Shepherd’s matter-of-factness unnerved me. At this point I had but a single thought—get away from him. Alarms were going off inside of me, warning me to get out now. I took a step toward the door.

  “Besides,” Shepherd said, easing around his desk, “informing the president about an attempt on his life would be a waste of time.”

  I took another step back.

  “Do you want to know why?” He smiled his gladiator smile. “Because he already knows about it. In fact, he’s the one who’s planning it. Ingenious, no? A president who plots his own assassination.”

  A cold chill poured over me like ice water. His little bombshell was one of those statements that are so outrageous, so unbelievable, so farfetched that you wanted to dismiss them as frivolous, but in your gut you knew they were true.


  Shepherd rubbed his hands together in a that-settles-that manner. “Now, let’s talk about the literary style of the assassination chapter. You’ll want to avoid the pedantic tone you used in the first five chapters of the biography.”

  My knees went weak. Only with effort did I take another step back.

  “Don’t go, Grant. We’re not finished.”

  My feet stopped moving. I didn’t stop them.

  “Poor Grant,” Shepherd said. “You’ve been in over your head from the beginning.”

  I tried to move my feet. Couldn’t. “Oh yeah?” My voice quivered as I tried to break free. “Well . . . I’ll find a way to stop you . . . somehow. Count on it.”

  I began to panic. Maybe I was overreacting, but losing control of the ability to move my legs has that effect on me. “I . . . I . . . don’t . . . know what you’ve gotten yourself mixed up with, Shepherd . . . but I’ll expose you . . . I’ll alert the Secret Service . . . I’ll phone the media . . . I’ll . . . I’ll . . . I’ll tell the principal!”

  I’ve never been good at trash-talking. It always comes out sounding like a two-year-old’s tantrum.

  Shepherd chuckled. It was a deep, throaty rumble that made the cinder-block walls shudder and the picture frames rattle. “You can’t stop us,” he said. “We’ve been doing this for millennia.”

  About now I was wishing I’d taken the high road and left immediately following the assembly. I didn’t know how Myles Shepherd was doing this, but I was obviously no match for it. I kept throwing verbal jabs, hoping one of them would land. “We . . . you keep saying we,” I said. “I suppose now you’re going to tell me you’re part of some ancient brotherhood, like the Knights Templar, or the Illuminati, or some other puerile organization of losers with secret handshakes, blood-drinking initiations, and decoder rings. Do you know how perverted that is, Myles? Most of us grew out of that stuff in junior high.”

  Shepherd’s smile faded. As it did, the room grew darker, which was odd because it was nearly noon. Behind me, the sun streamed into the classroom. But it stopped at the office threshold, as though afraid to come in.

  A movement caught my eye. High in the corner, above the file cabinet, wedged between ceiling and wall, grotesque figures took shape. Three-dimensional shadows with sunken eyes leered at me like medieval castle gargoyles. One of them dropped silently onto the top of the file cabinet and clutched the tennis trophy like it was a doll.

  I blinked and they were gone.

  “Something wrong, Grant?” Shepherd asked. “Where’s that smug superiority you brought with you into the room?”

  I swallowed hard. Every instinct within me screamed for me to run. My heart banged against my chest, desperate to get out of the room, with or without me.

  “I suppose you should feel honored, Grant,” Shepherd said. “We’ve been grooming you for this task most of your miserable, pathetic life. You’ve been the perfect pawn. Predictable to a fault.”

  The shadow gargoyles reappeared. There were more of them this time, clustered in the corner, shoulders pressed against greasy shoulders. They glared at me with intense, hungry eyes, straining to get at me like hounds on a leash.

  Clouds of darkness billowed across the ceiling while the fluorescents continued humming happily. Standing beside his desk, Myles Shepherd appeared to have grown a foot taller and twice as handsome—with a radiant glow.

  I found it increasingly difficult to concentrate. I stood transfixed, my eyes locked on Shepherd. I couldn’t turn my head aside, nor could I close my eyes. Myles Shepherd wanted me to see something, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to see it. “What’s happening to me?” I cried.

  Shepherd laughed. It was a laugh not of this world, sounding like a thousand wind chimes of such clarity and tone it brought tears to my eyes; a laugh that spawned laughter, bubbling in my gut, rushing to the surface in an explosion of guffaws. I couldn’t stop it. I laughed like a madman. I laughed so hard I thought my belly would burst.

  My ability to speak—the only weapon I had left—was being swallowed by convulsive spasms of mirth. I had to fight it. Somehow, I had to force myself to speak. “This . . . is . . . about . . . the tennis . . . trophy . . . isn’t it?” I managed to say.

  “What?” Shepherd barked.

  I’d landed a blow. The satisfaction was exhilarating. It spurred me on. Two can play the taunting game, Mr. Shepherd. “The trophy,” I stammered. “We all . . . knew . . . you cheated . . . to win . . . it. We laughed . . . at . . . you . . . behind . . . your back . . . for . . . selling . . . your soul . . . for a cheap . . . plastic . . . trophy.”

  Shepherd’s jaw clenched in anger.

  The floor trembled. The desk shook. Towers of papers and notebooks toppled over. From the corner, the shadow creatures screamed silently at me.

  Scared out of my skin, if I’d had any sense I would have stopped goading him. “And our . . . chess . . . matches?” I continued. “We . . . let . . . you . . . win . . . Everyone . . . knew . . . you were . . . a sucker . . . for the . . . Sicilian . . . defense.”

  The quaking intensified. Books rained down from shelves. My feet still firmly fixed to the floor, I could barely stand.

  Shepherd roared. “You insignificant worm! You cannot begin to know the nauseating pain I endure simply by being in your presence!”

  “Whining, Myles? How unattractive.”

  The floor undulated like the sea.

  I pressed on. “As . . . for . . . Jana? It’s . . . a . . . shame . . . you . . . weren’t . . . man enough . . . to . . . keep . . . her. After . . . she dumped . . . you, she . . . told . . . me . . . kissing . . . you . . . was like . . . kissing . . . a . . . trash . . . can. Ever . . . hear of . . . breath mints, Myles?”

  The lights went out. The room was pitch-black while behind me the classroom remained flooded with sunlight. I could hear books falling all around me.

  A ray of light shot past me.

  Then another.

  And another.

  They came from Shepherd. Originating from inside him, they shot through his clothing, which took fire but wasn’t consumed. The fabric transformed to . . . to what? The folds and seams remained intact, but it looked like no cloth I’d seen before. They appeared to be folds of pure color. We’re talking laundry-detergent-commercial special effects here—the reddest reds and bluest blues I’d ever seen.

  The intensity of the colors vied for supremacy, growing ever brighter until something had to give. They began to chase each other around him, swirling around the shape that had once been Myles Shepherd, slowly at first, then faster, and faster, blending with each other until they became a dazzling white, a hurricane of radiance.

  What was happening here? Was I hallucinating? I hoped I was, because the alternative was that Myles Shepherd, my constant rival, was not of this world. The idea that I’d gone to high school for four years with ET and never knew it was hard to admit to myself.

  Overhead, the gargoyle shadow creatures—now looking mossy green and solid—stared at Shepherd with expressions of awe and adoration and painful longing.

  I knew exactly how they felt. I felt the same way. Whoever, whatever, stood before me was mesmerizing.

  Think of a perfect starlit night when you’re lost in your lover’s eyes, a moment suspended in time and bliss. Multiply that euphoria by ten thousand times, and you’ll begin to grasp the beauty that lay just beyond my reach.

  The attraction was so intense I had to grab a bookshelf to keep from dropping to my knees and worshipping it.

  Here was an elegance wondrously strange. I wanted it to go on forever. Tears marked my cheeks. I mumbled incoherently. I dared not blink lest I lose a fraction of this marvel.

  But then the light reversed itself. Blasts shot past me a second time as the glorious hurricane became a swirling accretion feeding on the colors in the room. Instead of giving off light, it began swallowing it, gulping it greedily.

  How do I describe what I saw?

  It was a vortex. A black hole
. All at once wondrous and comical.

  The red slashes on the graded exams lifted off the paper and, like snakes, slithered their way toward the vortex and were swallowed up. So, too, rivers of Times Roman font lifted from the papers, streamed to the vortex, and disappeared. Titles from books followed, peeled from the spines of the volumes on the shelves.

  The file cabinet was stripped of its yellow color, reduced to a pale ghostly white. Even the blue of my tie was sucked off, and the color lifted from my class ring, leaving the ruby crystal clear.

  The colors made the vortex—formerly Myles Shepherd, though he no longer bore any resemblance to a man—pulse with nightmarish power.

  For not only was the room stripped of all color, it was stripped of every pleasure, every good feeling, leaving me bereft, emotionally bankrupt, despairing of hope and life. I was abhorrent to myself. Spasms of depression racked me. I craved annihilation, nonexistence, confident that my death would make the world a better place. I sobbed uncontrollably, begging the entity to rid the world of me.

  He consented.

  He loosed the hounds.

  The shadow gargoyles fell upon me with a vengeance, tearing into me, plunging into the inner depths of my being. They fed on me, occupied me with contentious voices.

  My mouth contorted into a scream, but whatever sound I produced was instantly swallowed by the vortex.

  I reached out to what had once been Myles Shepherd, begging him to make quick work of me. To unborn me, if that were possible. All I knew was that I was desperate to no longer be.

  The last thing I remember were his words filling the room, sounding like a chorus of a thousand voices. He said,

  “I am Semyaza. Tremble before me.”

  My first sensation was cold tile against my cheek and the pungent odor of industrial floor detergent. It took several painful blinks before my eyes focused. I heard a moan. I think it came from me.

  Memories like lost hitchhikers came straggling back. The high school assembly. The classroom. Myles Shepherd seated behind his desk, then morphing into a whirlwind. The shadow creatures, straining to get at me, clawing onto me.