1408- Mike Loses His MInd

Mike set down his bag just inside the door, closed the door, and
pushed RECORD again. The little red light went on.

“According to Olin, six people have jumped from the window I’m
looking at,” he said, “but I won’t be taking any dives from the four-
teenth—excuse me, the thirteenth—floor of the Hotel Dolphin
tonight. There’s an iron or steel mesh grille over the outside. Better
safe than sorry. 1408 is what you’d call a junior suite, I guess. The
room I’m in has two chairs, a sofa, a writing desk, a cabinet that prob-
ably contains the TV and maybe a minibar. Carpet on the floor is
unremarkable—not a patch on Olin’s, believe me. Wallpaper, ditto.
It . . . wait . . .”

At this point the listener hears another click on the tape as Mike
hits the STOP button again. All the scant narration on the tape has that
same fragmentary quality, which is utterly unlike the other hundred
and fifty or so tapes in his literary agent’s possession. In addition, his
voice grows steadily more distracted; it is not the voice of a man at
work, but of a perplexed individual who has begun talking to himself
without realizing it. The elliptical nature of the tapes and that grow-
ing verbal distraction combine to give most listeners a distinct feel
ing of unease. Many ask that the tape be turned off long before the
end is reached. Mere words on a page cannot adequately convey a lis
tener’s growing conviction that he is hearing a man lose, if not his
mind, then his hold on conventional reality, but even the flat words
themselves suggest that something was happening.
...

There was dust on the glass covering the pictures. He trailed his
fingers across the still life and left two parallel streaks. The dust had
a greasy, slippery feel. Like silk just before it rots was what came into his
mind, but he was damned if he was going to put that on tape,
either. How was he supposed to know what silk felt like just before it
rotted? It was a drunk’s thought.
...

Mike raised the minicorder, pushed RECORD, and said: “Olin has
certainly started a train of thought in my head. Or a chain of thought,
which is it? He set out to give me the heebie-jeebies, and he certainly
succeeded. I don’t mean . . .” Didn’t mean what? To be racist? Was
“heebie-jeebies” short for Hebrew jeebies? But that was ridiculous. That
would be “Hebrew-jeebrews,” a phrase which was meaningless. It—

On the tape at this point, flat and perfectly articulated, Mike Enslin
says: “I’ve got to get hold of myself. Right now.” This is followed by
another click as he shuts the tape off again.

He closed his eyes and took four long, measured breaths, holding
each one in to a five-count before letting it out again. Nothing like
this had ever happened to him—not in the supposedly haunted
houses, the supposedly haunted graveyards, or the supposedly
haunted castles. This wasn’t like being haunted, or what he imagined
being haunted would be like; this was like being stoned on bad, cheap
dope.
...

Mike stopped abruptly, looking at the little red eye. It seemed to
accuse him. Brother? His brother was dead, another fallen soldier in
the tobacco wars. Then he relaxed. What of it? These were the
spook wars, where Michael Enslin had always come off the winner. As
for Donald Enslin . . .

“My brother was actually eaten by wolves one winter on the Con
necticut Turnpike,” he said, then laughed and pushed STOP. There is
more on the tape—a little more—but that is the final statement of
any coherence . . . the final statement, that is, to which a clear
meaning can be ascribed.

Mike turned on his heels and looked at the pictures. Still hanging
perfectly straight, good little pictures that they were. That still life,
though—what an ugly fucking thing that was!

He pushed RECORD and spoke two words—fuming oranges—into
the minicorder. Then he turned it off again and walked across
the room to the door leading into the bedroom. He paused by the
evening-dressed lady and reached into the darkness, feeling for the
light switch. He had just one moment to register
(it feels like skin like old dead skin)
something wrong with the wallpaper under his sliding palm, and
then his fingers found the switch. The bedroom was flooded with yel-
low light from another of those ceiling fixtures buried in hanging glass
baubles. The bed was a double hiding under a yellow-orange cover-
let.

“Why say hiding?” Mike asked the minicorder, then pushed the
STOP button again. He stepped in, fascinated by the fuming desert of
the coverlet, by the tumorous bulges of the pillows beneath it. Sleep
there? Not at all, sir! It would be like sleeping inside that goddam still
life, sleeping in that horrible hot Paul Bowles room you couldn’t quite
see, a room for lunatic expatriate Englishmen who were blind from
syphilis caught while fucking their mothers, the film version starring
either Laurence Harvey or Jeremy Irons, one of those actors you just
naturally associated with unnatural acts—

Mike pushed RECORD, the little red eye came on, he said
“Orpheus on the Orpheum Circuit!” into the mike, then pushed
STOP again.

- 1408, chapter II