The address on the card turned out to be a retirement home: Oaksdale Assistant Living. It looked...like an old folk's home. A nice one, but not what I expected. I walked in and there was a bored looking receptionist. I asked to speak to Mr. Houdin. I lied and said I was his grandson. She didn't actually seem to care - she just spoke to someone over the phone and then told me 'Bob' was in the garden.
As I walked through the retirement home, I saw all the elderly. They were sleeping and playing chess and reading the newspaper and watching television. It seemed so mundane after what I had been through.
I was expecting to find Houdin in a fortress-like home, where he would have a dozen locks and a massive security system. Instead, I found him in a wheelchair next to a row of hedges reading a yellowed paperback. He looked old, at least in his seventies. "Hello," I said.
"Hey," he said. "Someone send you?"
"Yes," I said and used the code phrase the man had told me to say. "A lad insane."
Houdin smiled. "Sane, huh. I should have figured. Can you do me a favor? Can you look over there?" He pointed at some trees. I looked. "See anything?"
"No," I said.
He nodded. "That's good. Sit down, kid. Let's have a chat." I sat down on the bench next to him. He looked me over and nodded again. "Well, you haven't looked up in the sky since you got here, can't be the birds. You're not scratching or itching or washing your hands, so it's probably not the doc. And you looked at the trees and didn't see anything, so we can rule out our skinny friend. So I'm going to guess...the cold one."
"Yes," I said. "They said I should run."
"They always say that," he said. "And it is the best strategy sometimes. It makes it...more of a game, you might say. Cat and mouse. But you can't run forever. Eventually, you give up the ghost. I ran for years. I missed my entire midlife crisis to running. I crossed the entire world. I went to places I never thought I'd go, yet I never really took the time to appreciate them. Because I was always running."
"How'd you live for so long?" I said. "I mean...you're still alive. And you're not running anymore. I thought...I actually thought you would be living like a hermit in some sort of fortress."
He laughed at that. "Nah," he said. "That's what you want at first, but soon you realize it doesn't matter. All the locks you could buy won't keep out one of them. If they want you dead, you're dead. The trick is to make them not want you dead. I remember the Cold Boy." He closed his book and looked up. "I had cut everyone out of my life. I figured I had to go alone. And after a few months of that, I started to hear this singing. I thought I was going insane at first, but I kept hearing it. 'Row row row your boat, gently down the stream. Merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream.' Over and over."
"That's happening to me," I said. "Exactly like that. How...how did you stop him?"
"Figured it was because I was isolated," he said. "So I started making friends again. I was a naturally friendly guy, so all I had to do was walk into a bar and buy a few rounds and soon I had a dozen new friends. They weren't real friends, but they were enough to keep the Cold Boy at bay until I could get back in touch with my family. He likes the lonely. If you aren't lonely, sometimes he won't go after you."
"Sometimes?" I said. "What does that mean?"
He shrugged. "That means that they got a strange set of rules. They behave in certain ways. They target certain people. You aren't one of those people, maybe they won't target you. Or maybe they will. Guess it just depends."
"On what?"
"If you're lucky." He scratched his chin. "Me? I've been lucky. Met a few of them and came out without dying. Can't use my legs anymore, but since I'm an old man, I figured I don't need 'em that much anyway."
"How long?" I asked. "How long did you run?"
"Started in '63. Stopped...oh, sometime in the '90s. Felt I couldn't run anymore. I said screw it and waited for one of them to come kill me. Funny thing is, none of them did. Oh, I still see them every now and then. Look at those trees again for me, will you?" I looked at the trees. There was a man standing next to them now. "What do you see?" Houdin asked.
"A man," I said.
"What's he look like?"
I looked closer at the man next to the trees, but my eyes become watery and started to hurt. "I can't...I can't see him that well," I said.
"'Course not. He's just dropping by, a visit from an old friend. I figure someday he'll appear right inside my bedroom and then I'll be gone. But I've lived long enough that I don't have many regrets. You, however, probably have a few."
"What can I do?" I asked.
He looked at me. His eyes were old and the skin around them was sharp with wrinkles. "Don't be so lonely, kid," he said. "Try to find someone you can run with. Even if you're afraid of exposing someone else, you can't stay alive and stay alone. Wish I could do more to help, kid, but that's as much as I have."
I got up. "Thanks," I said and started to walk away.
"Hey, kid," I heard him call out. "Get yourself a digital thermometer. It'll tell you when he's near. Won't stop him, but you can at least know."
"Thanks," I said again and left.
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