Dean R. Koontz - The Book Of Counted Sorrows

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October 2001

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The Book of Counted Sorrows

Otherwise Known As:

The Book of Counted Sorrows

Being the Mind-Bending,

Heart-Stopping, Bowel-Freezing,

Spleen-Tickling History of the Most

Dangerous Book of Poetry Ever

Written, Including the Text of That

Cursed Book Itself, With the Prayer

that God Will Protect You from a

Spontaneous Head Explosion

(and Even Worse Potential Fates)

If You Dare Read It.

1992, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997 by Nkui, Inc.

This edition published by Barnes & Noble Digital, by arrangement with Dean

Koontz

manner whatsoever without the written permission of the Publisher.

2001 Barnes & Noble Digital

ISBN 1-4014-0022-1

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Dedication

To all the readers who have written to me over the years, demanding

this book. Without You, it would never have been written. If Hell

exists, perhaps all of you should be worried.

Table of Contents

For the Introduction

The Dark, Peculiar, Mysterious and Ultimately Incomprehensible

History Of the Volume in Question.

1. Before the Glass of Sherry.

2. After the Glass of Sherry.

3. The Hideous Fate of Langford Crispin.

4. The Hideous Fate of Langford Crispin, Resumed.

5. The Hideous Fate of Langford Crispin, For Real This Time.

6. The Curse of Too Much Knowledge and a Trail of Frightful Destruction.

7. Bruno Kronk, Masseur Extraordinaire and Monkey Mechanic.

8. Everything Additional That I Know About The Cursed Book.

And Now the Text of the Cursed Book...

The Book of Counted Sorrows

Being the Mind-Bending,

Heart-Stopping, Bowel-Freezing,

Spleen-Tickling History of the Most

Dangerous Book of Poetry Ever

Written, Including the Text of That

Cursed Book Itself, With the Prayer

that God Will Protect You from a

Spontaneous Head Explosion

(and Even Worse Potential Fates)

If You Dare Read It.

Dean Koontz

The Dark, Peculiar,

Mysterious, And Ultimately

Incomprehensible History Of

The Volume In Question.

Before the Glass of Sherry.

In 1981, I began citing lines of verse from The Book of Counted Sorrows as epigraphs at the

beginnings - and occasionally at the part divisions - of some of my novels. Little more than a

decade later, mail from readers, specifically inquiring about this exotic volume of poetry, had

risen to 3,000 letters a year.

Dealing with these earnest but exhaustingly repetitious inquiries became so annoying to

one of my assistants - Basil Keenly - that he gave up his lifelong dream of serving as a

novelist's right-hand man, signed up for a series of university courses toward a new career in

body waxing, subsequently worked as a customized-cake salesman (your face or favorite body part

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realistically rendered in exquisitely subtle shades of icing), briefly returned to personal-

assistant work as the right hand to Porky Pig, but was dispirited by the endless jokes about

stuttering and ham that came with the job, attempted to hold up a 7-Eleven with a lump of cake

cunningly decorated to resemble a handgun, and eventually took a leave from the secular world by

joining a tiny and somewhat curious religious community that worships squirrels. Tragically, while

working with other cultists in urgent preparation for a hard winter, he was crushed when the

community hoard suddenly shifted, burying him under millions of acorns, walnuts, and dried

legumes.

I miss him.

We all miss him here at the Koontz manor.

Well, not Mrs. Scuttlesby, whose standards of excellence are so high and whose commitment

to her work is so complete and unrelenting that she feels nothing but contempt, and rightly so,

for the rest of us engaged in this enterprise. She said good riddance to Basil when he left our

employment, as she says good riddance to all, as she says good riddance to me and my wife each

time that we depart on a brief holiday, and when she received the news of Basil's death, she shed

not a tear, but said only, "This is precisely the end I expected he would meet.

In the receiving room, on the north wall, which we call the Wall of Honorable Service,

dear Basil's photograph is handsomely framed and hung among the equally handsomely framed

photographs of other former members of our staff who have performed their duties with exceptional

ability and conducted themselves with moral probity, with great courage, and with no fear

whatsoever of the words "Girl Scout Cookie sale," in even the most difficult times. Some of these

much missed employees have moved on to enjoy stellar careers assisting far more luminous literary

figures than I: Among the most notable of their new employers have been Nobel-nominated novelist

William Shatner, self-help guru Caesar Zedd, and the anonymous copywriter of the Calvin Klein

advertisements; indeed, our very special Emily Vlick, who was with us seven years, accepted a

position with the late V.C. Andrews, who has produced more novels following her demise than she

did during her lifetime. Other beloved employees have left our service due to fork-lift accidents,

alien abductions, non-cancerous but weird chin tumors the size of pumpkins, incurable addictions

to Spam, and, of course, due to that greatest of all impediments to the maintenance of a full and

happy staff - death.

I am deeply pained to recall how some of our most cherished and enormously missed

employees perished, but I have committed myself to revealing the inside story, the unvarnished

truth, and the full poop about Counted Sorrows; consequently, it seems to me that I absolutely

must relate to you how these adored and grievously missed staffers died, although at the moment I

see no connection whatsoever between the circumstances of their deaths and this book. Perhaps we

will achieve enlightenment together. One died in a cataclysmic rickshaw collision, two in separate

incidents of spontaneous human combustion, one while spiritedly arguing the fine points of

creative napkin-folding with Martha Stewart, one in a gorilla suit that had been manufactured from

toxic fabric, and three in the panic and turmoil that arose at a Dali Lama look-alike contest. One

died by flaming arrow, one by the excess fizz in an irresponsibly over-carbonated sparkling

beverage, one by catapult, two by parakeet. Two bought the farm when they fell off the high wire

at a circus while tap dancing to "Mr. Bojangles," and another bought the farm after literally

buying a farm, only to discover too late that the cows that came with that particular property

were ill-mannered and vindictive. And Basil, of course, pinned beneath a deadly weight of assorted

nuts.

This recitation of misfortune has left me unable to go on. I must pause to brood on the

fragility of life, on our powerlessness in the face of great cosmic forces, and on the meaning of

these untimely deaths, not one of which occurred precisely on the hour, on the half hour, or even

on the quarter hour, but always at odd minutes.

Fortunately, a glass of fine sherry has appeared at my side as if by magic, offering me

the consolation of its nutty flavor and alcoholic content. Although lacking any corroborating

evidence, I am morally certain that the sherry placed on the table beside my armchair was put

there by Mrs. Scuttlesby, whose sense of what is required at any given moment is so uncanny as to

suggest divine omniscience, although serving sherry is not, as far as I am mare, any more a part

of her job description than crocodile wrestling, at which she is also more than merely proficient.

Now I shall raise a sherry to toast the dear departed, brood deeply as we novelists are

frequently wont to do, and continue with the story of Counted Sorrows once I have come to terms

with all these losses and with the madness of existence.

Cheers.

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After the Glass of Sherry.

Where was I?

Oh, yes, we are at Basil Keenly's handsomely framed photograph on the Wall of Honorable

Service in the receiving room of the Koontz manor. Under this long row of former employees' photos

stands an equally long and richly carved rosewood altar table: Chinese, from the Tang Dynasty.

Neither the table's country of origin nor its period have any significance, as relates to the

photographs. We just think it looks pretty here.

From time to time, on the table, under the various photographs, members of our family,

many friends, and our surviving employees -once, even a burglar - place items in memory of those

who have passed on to other employment or who have simply passed on. Flowers are popular memorial

leavings. Ribbons, candles, inexpensive jewelry, sticks of chewing gum, and on-the-anniversary-of-

your-death greeting cards. Under Basil Keenly's photo, one often sees acorns, walnuts, and dried

legumes, quiet and touching reminders that he died in the practice of his faith. A few times, road-

kill squirrels have been left for him - and once a rabbit, offered by the same type of well-

intentioned but ignorant person who might mistake a High Episcopalian for a Catholic; discreetly,

but with characteristic efficiency, Mrs. Scuttlesby removed the rabbit minutes after it was

deposited, whereas our practice is to leave the squirrels on display for twenty-four hours.

Librarians in particular, when visiting the Koontz manor as invited guests or as members

of a tour group, or in kamikaze assaults in the black of night, inevitably gravitate toward

Basil's photo on the Wall of Honorable Service. Basil, you surely remember - unless you have

guzzled two sherries while I enjoyed a single serving - was at one time responsible for answering

reader inquiries about The Book of Counted Sorrows. (You knew we'd come back to that eventually.)

Among those 3,000 letters a year, a few hundred were from librarians, who had often spent ten or

twenty hours - or, in the case of several dangerously obsessive types, even a hundred or two

hundred hours - searching for this rare book without success, at the request of their patrons. In

his inimitable and gracious way, Basil explained to each that (1) Counted Sorrows is the rarest

book on the planet, with only one known copy extant, (2) this copy is in our possession, (3) we

decline to lend it or to photocopy it, and (4) in any event, it is inadvisable for anyone to read

the entire contents of the book, because everyone who absorbs every word of the text is driven mad

by the terrible burden of the knowledge thus acquired - or he explodes.

Legend warns of this dire curse, and our distressing personal experience confirms it. One

of our esteemed and adored employees, Thelma Kickmule, as rock-ribbed and tough-minded an

individual as you will find this side of the Marine Corps, read Counted Sorrows from first word to

last, certain it would not affect her, and within nine minutes of closing the volume, she became

convinced that she was a chicken. No amount of therapy, drugs, or slaps upside the head could

dissuade her from this new perception of herself. Thelma now lives in a coop in Iowa, where she is

shunned as the "Featherless Hen" by other residents and mercilessly threatened by the farmer who

resents that she consumes so much grain without producing a single egg.

Anyway, with fond memories of the charming correspondence they so much enjoyed with Basil

Keenly, every librarian is drawn to his photo. Perhaps moved by his handsome face and by the

thought that he was called from this world at such a young age, Basil's librarian friends

evidently kiss his portrait, for after a group of them has passed the Wall of Honorable Service,

the glass over his image and the frame around it are literally glistening with saliva.

The high point of every tour of the Koontz manor, especially for librarians, is a walk

across the Bridge of Nails, through the Curtain Devouring Fire, along the Tunnel of Deadly Spring-

Loaded Spears, to the Great Vault of Unimaginable Torment, where The Bask of Counted Sorrows is

kept on display in a case ten-inch-thick, bomb-proof glass. Flanking the display are

supernaturally alert and lightning-quick Ninja assassins. Flanking the Ninjas are seven-foot-tall,

massively muscled guards so pumped full of steroids that their livers are bigger than basketballs.

Flanking the guards are genetically engineered, two-hundred-pound pit bulls trained to kill any

visitor who matches at least seven of ten indicators on the FBI's standard psychological profile

of a typical rare-book thief. Having been drilled in those ten indicators by the finest dog

trainers in the world, the pit bulls cannot be easily deceived - although a dried dribble of gravy

on a visitor's neck tie or sweater is also likely to instigate horrendous violence. Finally,

flanking the pit bulls are attorneys who insist that each visitor sign and have witnessed, on the

spot, a statement to the effect that he or she swears that he or she has no intention of

committing an act of larceny while in the Great Vault of Unimaginable Torment and will not attempt

to damage, deface, dog-ear any page of, or lick The Book of Counted Sorrows.

Librarians, a dangerous and fearless lot, have not a1ways been deterred by the Ninjas, the

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steroid-pumped guards, the pit bulls, and the bomb-proof glass. Because of their respect for the

written word, however, every last one of them, at least thus far, has been deterred from reckless

action by the document of forswearance presented by the attorney. As an extra precaution, to

encourage the expression of their basic genteel nature, we serve scones and Robertson's lemon

marmalade immediately upon entering the Vault, as well as tea laced with Prozac.

What the librarians see beyond the thick, impurity-free glass is a slim leather-bound book

with a sewn-in ribbon page marker. The same thing is seen, of course, by visitors who are not

librarians, which includes but is not limited to teachers, bankers, stevedores, peg-legged

pirates, pirates without handicaps, butchers, bakers, candlestick makers, software designers,

politicians, obstetricians, mathematicians, electricians, professional underwear models, nuclear

physicists, artists, car-wash guys, the odd people who design and manufacture those tacky musical

toilet paper dispensers, clergymen, grocers, carpenters, worm farmers, hat designers, hat makers,

hat blockers, hat dealers, hat critics, post-market hat customizers, clowns, mimes, peanut

vendors, private detectives, successful thugs involved in every aspect of criminal enterprise,

dentists, dessert chefs, specialty plumbers, mink ranchers, mink gutters, mink sinners, mink-

rights activists (that was a bad day on the tour), florists, film-makers, show girls, phlegm

analysts, painters of elaborate scenes on collectible thimbles, hair salesmen, and any number of

wealthy snots who haven't done anything all their lives except live off the money earned by their

parents.

The binding of the book is enhanced with a geometric Art Deco design crafted with inlays

of leather in blue, black, green, and a fourth color for which no one has managed to find a name.

Although the volume bears a copyright date Of 1928, the slightly creamy off-white paper has

suffered no yellowing in all this time, and it has an exceptionally soft smooth finish equal to

the flawless skin of a king's concubine, supposing that kings in these classless times still

possessed the discretion and good sense to keep concubines instead of chasing off after girl pop

singers of dubious talent and topless lap dancers, as does every common gink in the kingdom. In

spite of its age, the book is as pristine as any tome just off a printing press, with no smudges

or spots, no creases or soiling - with the sole exception of the dried maroon smear of blood on

page 22, which recent DNA tests have proven to be extraterrestrial in origin.

The name of the publisher is Inevitable Doom Press, of which no record exists in any

country on the face of the earth, although there was an Inevitable Doom Soup Company operating out

of Cleveland in the 1950s and '60s. Inevitable Doom Soup was a thriving business with ninety-six

varieties of soup, consommé, and chili con carne. In 1968, several cans of their Crunchy Bean

Chili with Goat Meat, contaminated by botulism, left nineteen customers indisputably dead and

resulted in the bankruptcy of the firm following successful legal actions brought by families of

the victims. More than a few in the media and in the hotly competitive soup industry noted a

certain irony in the company's name, in light of the Crunchy Bean tragedy. Fate is funny.

Personally, I would feel uncomfortable eating any product produced by an enterprise calling itself

the Inevitable Doom Soup Company, though I will admit to being a finicky eater. Not that I am

entirely lacking in culinary adventurousness; I would, for instance, have no problem eating any

product whatsoever produced by an entity calling itself the Possible Doom Soup Company.

Where was I?

Oh, yes: I was telling you what little is known about the mysterious publisher of The Book

of Counted Sorrows. Inevitable Doom Press never produced another book (or any soups, for that

matter), never paid taxes, never sued or was itself sued in a court of law. The publisher's

colophon, which appears at the bottom of the title page and at the top of the copyright page, is

an image of a startled hedgehog.

acclaimed star of James Cameron's Titanic, because that Leonardo DiCaprio had not been born in

1928, but also because the actor does not make a practice of bracketing his name with quotation

marks as does the "Leonardo Di Caprio" who holds the copyright on Counted Sorrows. Since this

mysterious volume first came into my possession, in 1980, I have hired a series of private

detectives in a thus far vain attempt to learn just one telling fact about "Leonardo DiCaprio,"

and in pursuit of this enigmatic figure I have spent a sum of money that, were I to cite it here,

would make you vomit. Considering my abject failure to sweep up even a single crumb of knowledge

about "Leonardo DiCaprio," the book might as well have been copyright by " ".

I have been able, however, to ascertain the name of the first person ever to own The Book

of Counted Sorrows. His name will be known to those of you who are film buffs and/or knowledgeable

about the history of performing capuchin monkeys.

Before continuing, I would like to pause to brush my teeth. While composing this

introduction, I have been eating string cheese, and now my teeth feel furry. I dearly love string

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cheese, but this fuzzy plaque is the regrettable and unavoidable consequence of indulging in the

stuff. Annoying, yes, but better than botulism.

Until I return, you may wish to stretch your legs or have a beverage.

The Hideous Fate of Langford Crispin.

I wish someone would produce a pleasant-tasting toothpaste with something other than a mint-based

flavor. The insistent, not to say relentless, not to say psychotic use of one mint or another in

all available products in this category has made toothpaste a cliché in a tube. I'm convinced a

huge market exists for cinnamon- or lemon-flavored toothpaste, not to mention chocolate, and I for

one would buy an entire case of veal-Parmesan toothpaste if I discovered it in the market. The

same criticism could be leveled at mouthwashes and Christmas candy canes. A good lobster-flavored

mouthwash or a salmon candy cane would go a long way toward improving the quality of modem

American life and make our world seem less medieval. I forgot to floss.

Excuse me.

The Hideous Fate of Langford Crispin, Resumed.

I didn't intend to take quite so long for a flossing break, but once the task was completed, I had

to carry the used floss to the former carriage master's cottage adjacent to the old carriage

garages at the back of the estate, which is a considerable distance from the main house,

especially as one cannot walk it in a straight line due to the 2,743 works of topiary that grace

the back lawn.

Most topiary depicts animals: dogs, cats, dolphins in mid leap, horses, deer, hulking

grizzly bears savagely gutting each other in ferocious territorial disputes, bunnies, wildebeests,

copulating penguins, and the like. Here at the Koontz manor, we encourage creativity among the

gardening staff, as among all our exceptional and adored employees. As a result, we boast the

world's only collection of topiary that takes for its subject flora instead of fauna. Here, an

immensely tall length of boxwood hedge is carved into a series of pine trees. And here, the dense

foliage of a line of dwarf yew trees has been trimmed to resemble a boxwood hedge. Oh, and look

here: A great mass of oleander has been meticulously shaped into what appears to be a moss-hung

magnolia. And over there: A potentially massive California live oak was stunted and deformed with

chemicals, brutally trimmed, pinched at the roots, and ruthlessly compressed until it now appears

to be a four-foot-tall, gnarled, eccentrically shaped bonsai evergreen. And how about that giant

tulip formed from a thoroughly terrorized phoenix palm?

This essay is not about topiary, however. Neither is it about flossing, although now that

you've insisted upon knowing why I took such a long floss break, I must finish the account of my

journey through topiary to the old carriage master's house at the far end of the estate.

By the way, please understand that I do not mean to imply that the carriage master himself

is old. He is, indeed, a strapping young fellow who, if only he produced leaves, could easily be

trimmed and trained to resemble a sturdy oak. He is remarkably handsome, as well, and would surely

be a film star of the magnitude of Tom Cruise were it not for the perpetually bloodshot third eye

that sits slightly off-center in his too prominent forehead.

For the longest time, Skippy - the carriage master - had so little to do here on the

Koontz estate that he turned in quiet desperation to a correspondence course in boredom

management, offered by Harvard University. We have no horse-drawn carriages, you see. Furthermore,

we keep our automobiles, SUVs, trucks, motorcycles, tanks, missile transports, ice cream wagons,

and bulldozers in more modern garages closer to the main house.

Skippy's duties became markedly more complex and fulfilling upon the establishment of the

floss-collection project. In excess of two hundred dedicated individuals are employed and housed

on the estate, as well as a variety of less dedicated but much appreciated and much cuddlier

animals of many kinds. Our Mrs. Scuttlesby requires that every last one of them - including me and

my incomparable wife - floss after breakfast, lunch, and dinner, as you might expect, but also

after every snack and even after consuming something as apparently inconsequential to dental

health as a diet cola or a glass of water. When I say "every last one of them," I mean toinclude

the animals. Mrs. Scuttlesby is a demon about oral hygiene regardless of species. On a difficult

day in the Great Vault of Unimaginable Torment, when the genetically engineered two-hundred-pound

pit bulls are called upon too frequently to protect The Book of Counted Sorrows from would-be

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thieves and deranged poetry haters, these dogs alone can use hundreds of feet of unwaxed and waxed

floss to remove stubborn shreds of visitors' flesh from between their teeth. By the explicit and

vigorously enforced order of Mrs. Scuttlesby, all used floss must be conveyed to the carriage

master immediately upon completion of the flossing procedure, which is most vividly, not to say

painstakingly, described - with diagrams, charts, graphs, and satellite photos -on pages 376

through 394 of the official estate manual. (An accompanying videotape demonstration of the

required procedure, with compulsory flossing techniques, stirringly narrated by James Earl Jones,

can be obtained from the estate librarian.)

Upon receipt of each length of used floss, Skippy measures it with a laser micrometer,

photographs it against a black velvet cloth, fills out an official floss receipt (pink copy to the

user of the floss, yellow copy to Mrs. Scuttlesby, white copy directly to the nuclear-proof

archives deep under the carriage master's cottage), and only then ties the latest contribution to

the correct ball of accumulated floss.

The old carriage garages, next to the carriage master's cottage, no longer house

carriages, but contain hundreds of balls of floss, of varying sizes, each clearly labeled with the

name of the person or animal who has contributed to it. In recognition of the fact that the

extraordinary frequency of flossing required on the estate will lead to enormous floss balls, the

walls and roof of the old carriage garages were raised from one story to four, providing forty-

foot-high interior clearance. The corroded gas lamps were replaced with top-of-the-line, cold-

cathode lighting that makes it easy to read the labels on the balls and to find loose ends of

floss.

Skippy - or sometimes his assistant, Werner - securely adds the latest contribution to the

proper ball, under the watchful eye of the contributor. Thereafter, the necessary legal papers are

signed and notarized, and one is free to go about one's business until after the next meal, snack,

or diet cola.

Skippy and Werner conduct themselves at all times with the very deepest respect - nay,

with reverence - for the rules in the official estate manual. Were either man to tie a floss

contribution to the wrong ball, and were this mistake to be recognized by Mrs. Scuttlesby when she

reviewed the 24-hour-a-day videotape record of the floss collection, the offender would be offered

his choice of punishments: (1) His right thumb would be cut off with a dull cheese slicer; or (2)

his nostrils would be stuffed with peanut butter and his nose offered as a canape to a ravenous

weasel; or (3) he would be hung by his testicles from the carriage garage rafters and flailed with

live rattlesnakes.

Such punishments may seem extreme, but at Mrs. Scuttlesby's insistence, these - and other

more frightful potential chastisements - are incorporated into the employment agreements of all

workers who serve in sensitive posts on the estate. Having been admitted to the California Bar

Association by a sheer act of stubborn will, she has defended these contractual terms - in the

case of another employee, Casper Nork - all the way to the United States Supreme Court, where the

justices delivered a precedent-setting unanimous decision in her favor, thus requiring Nork to

surrender his left ear to be used as Mrs. Scuttlesby's key fob.

In triumph, addressing the lopsided Nork, Mrs. Scuttlesby said, "Never underestimate the

determination of a British head housekeeper. You useless idiot, have you never read Rebecca?"

After delivering my used floss to Skippy, I pocketed my pink copy of the receipt, made my

way across the back lawn, through the stunning topiary, to the main house. Thirsty, I considered

stopping in the kitchen to acquire a diet cola from Sedley Nottingham, the Commander of Beverages,

but my thirst was cured by the thought of returning so soon to the carriage master's cottage with

another length of floss.

Thus I returned here to my study to offer you my sincere apologies for such a prolonged

absence.

The Hideous Fate of Langford Crispin, for Real This Time.

The first recorded owner of The Book of Counted Sorrows was Langford Crispin, the immortal film

star. Born Nate Furt, the only child of Sepsis and Donna Furt of Cheese Falls, Wisconsin, he went

on the vaudeville circuit at sixteen, tap dancing while singing and simultaneously juggling

flaming snakes, in blackface.

Certain unnamed associates of the legendary performer Al Jolson -who did not himself

juggle snakes, flaming or otherwise, but who did frequently appear in blackface, which is surely

no less bizarre to our modem sensibilities - waylaid poor Nate in an alley behind a theater in

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Cleveland. These show-biz rowdies terrified him with much aggressive finger wagging, rude use of

the word foam (the verb form, not the noun), and with dire threats to tell his saintly mother,

back in Cheese Falls, that while on the road he had become a sissy boy who wore women's clothes

and conducted an immoral romantic relationship with the woolly half of Laura Lunney's famous act -

Laura Lunney and Her Singing Llama. This was, of course, a filthy lie, but Nate never again

performed in blackface. Partly to make himself less visible to Jolson's ruthless associates and

also as a consequence of a belated realization that Nate Furt was not an ideal name for a would-be

vaudeville star, he legally changed his name to Bob Furt, later to Burt Furt, later still to

Melbourne Furt, then to Foghorn Leghorn, subsequently to Yosemite Sam, then (only briefly and in

desperation over his floundering career) to Al Jolson, and finally to Langford Crispin.

Although a miserable failure in vaudeville, Langford Crispin was a huge and immediate hit

in films, which was a new and exciting art form that had not yet been taken over by the dreaded

Stupid Mafia - a criminal conspiracy of the intellectually challenged - which had fully seized

control of the movie business by the late 1960s. Langford was nominated for an Academy Award in

1930, for All Quiet on the Western Front. If you have seen this classic movie, Langford's

astonishing portrayal of Lew Ayres' brother, Jinky, will stay with you forever. Jinky, a carefree

circus clown, trades in his polka-dot jumpsuit for a uniform and his giant floppy shoes for combat

boots, to go off to Europe and fight for his country and for the dignity of humanity. In the

brutal trench warfare against the Germans, on blasted landscapes smoky with mustard gas, Jinky

learns to his surprise that war really is hell -and that a unicycle is more difficult to pilot

through bomb craters than around Barnum Bailey's center ring. Nevertheless, through the

unremitting horror, he holds fast to his sense of humor, and even as he is dying, he manages to

squeeze the hand-pump bulb that operates the squirting flower in the lapel of his torn battle

jacket, thoroughly wetting the startled face of the medic who is trying without success to staunch

his wounds.

Langford was again nominated for best actor for his role in in Cimarron, 1931, the epic

adaptation of Edna Ferber's novel, in which he starred with Richard Dix and the lovely Irene

Dunne. In this tale of a pioneer family determined to build an empire in early Oklahoma, Langford

played Richard Dix's gentle brother, Soupy, who wants only to spread Christian fellowship and a

proper appreciation of flower arrangement to the crude communities of the primitive prairie. His

sweetness and innocence are ultimately met with mockery, gunfire, and a blazing wagon loaded with

dynamite.

Langford was first seen reading The Book of Counted Sorrows between takes on the set of

Cimarron, during filming in 1930. By the time he was making Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde with the

brilliant Fredric March, in 1931, he kept the book always within reach and carried it with him

wherever he went, when not actually before a camera. If his hands were full of parcels, he carried

the book on his head, balanced with the confidence of a man who had begun his vaudeville career

juggling flaming snakes. If his hands were full of parcels, and if something was already balanced

on his head - such as a basket of bread or a big water jug, or a dwarf (his vaudeville friend,

Tiny Johnson, shorter than a yardstick, enjoyed the view from this high perch) - then Langford

carried the precious book in his teeth. If his hands were filled with parcels and if a water jug

or a cheerful dwarf was balanced on his head, and if also he was involved in a conversation, then

he carried the book between his knees, which required him to walk funny and drew stares from

strangers, but he was not a man who ever cared what others thought of him.

In Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, you will remember Langford as Fredric March's half brother.

Jerry Jekyll, who was on the lam, pursued by the London constabulary for roughing up a group of

children carolers when they insisted on singing "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen" instead of "Rockin'

Around the Christmas Tree", which he had requested in return for a donation of a shiny half pence.

By the end of the film, Jerry learns all the wrong lessons from the disgrace and death of his

arrogant brother. Vowing to achieve a scientific breakthrough even more dazzling than that of the

late Dr. Jekyll, Jerry flees to Europe, changing his name to Victor Frankenstein, with the intent

to prove that sundry parts of various dead people can, through the miracle of electrical shock, be

assembled into a presentable new person capable of providing cheap but nevertheless high-quality

domestic labor.

In 1932, Langford Crispin's performance as Jerry Jekyll brought him the Academy Award for

the best supporting actor. He was the first winner ever to thank "all the little people," and when

he spoke this phrase, which countless winners would use after him, he doffed his enormous top hat

to reveal an actual little person, Tiny Johnson, sitting on his head. In our time, this stunt

might seem politically incorrect or at least insensitive, and perhaps tasteless to some. In those

long-ago days, however, the entertainment community wasn't as refined as it has become in this

most genteel age of Charlie Sheen, Howard Stern, Eminem, and Freddy the Farting Chimp. With

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perhaps the exception of Mary Pickford and Francis the Talking Mule, entertainers in those days

were largely an unseemly, unrefined, unpolished, uncouth, undulant, unplumbed, unzipped, undone,

uncaged, unearthed, unbonneted rabble. When Langford removed his top hat to reveal Tiny Johnson

perched on his pate, the crowd at the Academy Awards show roared with laughter, howled and stamped

their feet, and hooted and spat copiously.

Only sixteen years later, accepting his Best Actor Oscar for Hamlet, when Laurence Olivier

thought it would be great good fun to repeat Langford's stunt, he doffed his top hat, revealed the

same Tiny Johnson - and was met by the stunned silence of a disapproving audience so painfully

refined and classy that every last one of them was wearing clean underwear. Olivier stood in utter

mortification, his smile as frozen as a bananasicle. When Tiny Johnson lit a sparkler and began to

wave it and an American flag, in what must have seemed, in the planning, to be a stroke of show-

business genius, the offended audience griped in shock, drawing in so much air at the same time

that ushers, standing in the aisles, came dangerously close to imploding in the brief ensuing

vacuum. That the Queen of England, even many years later, could overlook this shameful spectacle

and bestow a knighthood on Olivier is incontestable proof of the resiliency and the compassion of

the British monarchy - or proof, perhaps, of the sadly short memory capacity that has resulted

from the inbreeding of all European royalty over the centuries.

I am happy to tell you that Langford Crispin - a kind and most considerate man who helped

many orphans and deserved no one's scorn - was not humiliated by Olivier's awards-show

performance, because Crispin had by then been dead many years. I can also assure you that dear

Langford was not subjected to the discomfort of having to spin in his grave, because after his

emulsified body was scraped off the ceiling of the library in his lovely Beverly Hills mansion,

his remains were not in suitable condition to be shaped into a suit for viewing at his funeral,

and the several jars of his mortal substance were at once cremated. It is possible, I suppose,

that in response to Olivier's capering at the Academy Awards show, Langford's ashes whirled in the

urn where they were stored, but that is a far more pleasant image than a decaying carcass tumbling

around and around among worms and filth and rotten grave cloth inside a termite-riddled coffin.

Where was I?

0h, yes. Langford triumphantly accepted the Academy Award for his role in Dr. Jekyll and

Mr. Hyde, and thereafter his career fell as hard and fast as the bludgeoned body of a troublesome

neighbor dropped into an abandoned well after midnight. Not, I hasten to add, that I would know

anything about the disappearance of my neighbor or anyone else's, or about the location of any

abandoned well, or about the relative speed and force of impact of a falling body that has been

thoroughly bludgeoned. I am speaking, of course, entirely metaphorically, with the free and supple

imagination of a novelist.

Although, in 1933, Charles Laughton won the Academy Award for Best Actor in The Private

Life of Henry the VIII, Langford was not merely criticized for his work in the same picture but

loudly reviled by people who should have known better. His decision to play Lord Havingstoke as a

mincing, one-armed, twelve-toed tyrant in a funny hat and elfin shoes was, in retrospect, not a

proper interpretation of the role. But nothing in his performance warranted food being thrown at

him by members of the film community when he went to dine at the Polo Lounge, nor the attempts of

paring valets to run him down with his own vehicle.

In 1934, when It Happened One Night swept all the major awards -Best Picture, Best Actor,

Best Actress, Best Director, Best Screenplay -Langford Crispin was not present to share in the

glory, because though he was not yet smeared in a disgusting emulsification across the ceiling of

his library, his role in the film had been left on the cutting-room floor. Not by accident, you

understand, but by the intent of the producer and director. Langford had played Clark Gable's

deranged brother, Norman Bates, who at one point hacks to death Claudette Colbert and eats her

liver with some fava beans and a good Chianti. Although this was a brilliant performance and far

ahead of its time, the studio ultimately decided that the entire character of Norman Bates was out

of place in a light comedy meant to lift the spirits of a Depression-era audience, and Langford

was eliminated in the final cut.

Only ten days after the picture received its five Academy Awards, Langford's remains were

discovered by his housekeeper, Mrs. Scuttlesby, when she entered the library to serve him a glass

of port wine and a wedge of wickedly sharp cheese.

(A parenthetical aside: This was not, of course, the same Mrs. Scuttlesby who serves with

such honor and obsession as our head housekeeper on the Koontz estate. Langford's Mrs. Scuttlesby

was 46 when she discovered the actor's remains that evening in 1934, which would make her 113

years old as I write this. Our Mrs. Scuttlesby, however, is only 46 years old as I write this, and

will probably still be only 46 when I finish writing this, if I ever do. I've been assured by our

Mrs. Scuttlesby (whose assurances are delivered with such adamancy that they cannot be ignored or

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taken lightly) that she is no relation to Langford's Mrs. Scuttlesby, in spite of the curious fact

that each of these women lacks a first name. Our Mrs. Scuttlesby was born in Nome, Alaska, the

daughter of an ice farmer, and educated in domestic service at Oxford University, whereas nothing

whatsoever is known about the birthplace or the education of Langford Crispin's Mrs. Scuttlesby,

which is proof positive that they cannot be the same woman, even if our beloved Mrs. Scuttlesby

looked 113, which she most certainly does not.)

Where was I?

More important: Where was Langford Crispin?

Yes, I remember now: spread in a ghastly emulsification across the ceiling of his library.

May the same never happen to you. Nor to me. I do have a list of people I wouldn't mind seeing

emulsified and pasted to ceilings in their various residences, though I'm too discreet to provide

that list here.

So, Mrs. Scuttlesby - not ours, the other - entered the library with the port wine and

cheese on a silver tray, and a clothespin on her nose. She didn't ordinarily go around with a

clothespin on her nose, you understand. She wasn't an eccentric. On this fateful night, she had a

clothespin on her nose because she was serving, as you may recall, a wickedly sharp cheese with

the port wine. From this exotic and peculiarly green cheese, a favorite of Langford's, issued an

aroma so powerful and penetrating that it knocked small dogs unconscious, turned particularly

sensitive young children into lifelong catatonics, and caused automobile headlamps to explode at a

distance of half a block. Nevertheless, in spite of the cheese stench, Mxs. Scuttlesby - not ours,

the other - might have smelled the hideous remains of dear Langford Crispin, pasted and putrefying

on the ceiling, had she not been breathing, of necessity, through her mouth. In his official

report, the first police officer on the scene noted that the stink of Langford's remains was,

indeed, more terrible than that produced by any cheese in the world, and when he tried to

commandeer Mrs. Scuttlesby's clothespin for his own use, a fight ensued that left the husky young

constable with one broken leg, six broken fingers, two broken arms, a broken jaw, five dislodged

teeth, a nose that looked like a crushed cactus blossom, and no hair; while Mxs. Scuttlesby - not

ours, the other - sustained a bruise on her right thumb.

But I'm getting ahead of my story.

Let's back up to where the police haven't arrived yet.

Remember the scene: Mrs. Scuttlesby - not ours, the other - enters the library with a

silver tray on which are port wine and cheese, her nose pinched by a clothespin, unaware of the

horror overhead, perhaps thinking sad and deeply personal thoughts of the young man who never

returned to her from the bloody battlefields of World War I, if such a young man ever existed. She

put down the tray on the exquisite French marquetry table beside Langford Crispin's favorite

armchair - and saw The Book of Counted Sorrows tumbled on the floor between the chair and the toad-

leather footstool. Being a tidy person by nature and a housekeeper by profession, she picked up

the book and put it on the table beside the tray.

In recent days, ever since the opening of It Happened One Night, sans Langford's brilliant

portrayal of Norman Bates, the actor had been obsessed with Counted Sorrows. He had read the

volume into the wee hours of the night, and then into the even more wee hours, and then finally

into the most wee hours of all, so wee that they could not be measured by any but the most

sensitive weenometer. More than once he had told Mrs. Scuttlesby - his, not ours - that this

volume contained such stunning insights into the nature of life and the condition of humanity that

he was afraid his mind could not contain the dazzling knowledge he'd received from these pages.

"Oh, Mrs. Scuttlesby," he had said earlier that very day, "sometimes I fear that the pressure of

this dazzling knowledge will cause my head to explode and paste my brains to the ceiling, leaving

you with a frightful mess to clean up."

At this memory of her employer's expressed fear, the faithful housekeeper - and, according

to the historical record, highly skilled bird mimic - looked up at the ceiling. She did not

actually expect to find the handsome mahogany coffers splattered with gray matter, for she assumed

that the actor had been speaking metaphorically, with that free and supple imagination that actors

do not naturally possess but which he might have acquired by hanging around with a bunch of

screenwriters, who do possess it, though not to the degree that you'll find it in novelists.

Instead, she discovered that he must have meant to be taken literally. Not merely his head had

exploded, but seemingly his entire physical entity, which now festooned the library ceiling in

glutinous swags that were decidedly not an improvement to the decor.

Within half an hour, more than twenty police vehicles crowded the circular driveway in

front of the mansion, and the cobblestones were littered with shards of glass from the automobile

headlamps that had shattered under the assault of cheese stench. In the great house, uniformed and

plainclothes personnel, noses wisely pinned, puzzled over the meager evidence and vigorously

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