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

and he smelled like he hadn’t bathed in twice that. And he was haggard, his face
pale and sunken, his eyes bloodshot, his gaze wild and distracted. Like a crazy
man’s. Like the look you see on bag people, when they sit for hours in a corner
somewhere, staring into nothing.
“How are you, Joe?’
“‘Jimbo, I’m…I knew you would come by eventually. I suppose you deserve
an explanation. Come in.’
“I followed him silently along an unlighted corridor, stepping over boxes and
piles of papers. His studio was a mess, paint chipping from the walls, trash in
cardboard boxes heaped in corners, orange peels on the floor. Something moved
behind the boxes. Maybe it was a cat, maybe not.
“I wondered how he could work here. The only window looked out on a brick
wall. The overhead light apparently didn’t work, so the only illumination came
from a small lamp he’d clamped onto his drawing table.
“I· waded forward, careful not to step on any artwork, and looked at the
drawing on the table. It was a rough pencil sketch of the opening spread for what
turned out to be the final issue of Saint Toad, the scene where they sacrifice
Little Nell to Odin. I was selfishly relieved to see that, for all Joe Eisenberg
might be going mad, his creative powers were not failing. His stuff would
continue to sell comic books.
“Still Joe didn’t say anything. I turned away from the table, and began to scan
the bookshelves, reading titles as best I could in the gloom. You know, you can
tell a lot about someone by what is on their bookshelves. Joe was full of
surprises. Oh, there were lots of comics, and the hardcover reprints of the E.C.
classics, but also lots of classics in the literary sense. He had most of the
Elizabethans, and even Latin and Greek writers. And there were scholarly books
on religion, folklore, magic, that sort of thing. I could only make out a few titles:
Franz Cumont books on Roman paganism, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, the
Joshi translation of Al Azif, and a few more. Not what you’d expect for the
average cartoonist. Of course Joe wasn’t the average cartoonist, and his strips
were fantastically erudite sometimes.
“‘Jim,’ he said at last, ‘you are probably wondering…’
“‘You could say that.’
“‘I’ll bet you have.’ Then he bent over and I noticed something I hadn’t seen
before. All along one wall was a row of buckets, and they were indeed filled
with pennies. He picked up a handful of them, and let them dribble through his
fingers. ‘See a penny, pick it up, all the day you’ll have good luck. Do you know