Free Sleeping Late On Judgement Day by Tad Williams

where the vodka bottle was and brought it back to the couch. “Don’t wake me up for anything short of Judgement Day.”
    But I didn’t get to sleep anywhere near that long. Sometime between eleven and midnight my phone rang.
    â€œHi, Mr. Dollar? It’s me, Edie. You said to call. I hope it’s not too late.”
    By now my entire skull felt like a flower pot that had been dropped from a third story balcony, so I just said, “No, ’s fine.”
    â€œOkay, that’s good. Doctor Gustibus says he’ll talk to you.”
    â€œWho?” I wasn’t entirely awake.
    â€œDoctor Gustibus? You know, the guy I was working for at Islanders Hall? He says he’ll talk to you if you want. At his house. I’ll give you the directions if you have a pen.”
    Sam was snoring contentedly in my room, so I got up and walked my throbbing head around until I found something to write with. “Shoot.”
    When Edie had finished and hung up, I stared blearily at the scrap of paper to be sure it made some kind of sense, then I put it in my wallet and slid back into dreams of marching columns of Disney cartoon characters, who each stopped to punch me in the head before goose-stepping past. There were a lot of them.
    Man, that was a long night.

seven
world’s edge

    T HE PHONE woke me again about quarter to five. It was a client. Well, to be more precise, it was Alice informing me I had a client. Alice has been working for the main office as long as I’ve been an angel. She’s efficient (in an at-least-the-trains-run-on-time sort of way) but she has a voice that could strip paint and the personality of an itchy Komodo dragon. Choosing her to be our dispatcher, like the Hallelujah Chorus ringtone, shows that somebody in the heavenly hierarchy has a third-grade sense of humor.
    â€œDon’t you ever sleep?” I asked her.
    â€œCan’t. I lie awake feeling bad about having to wake up hungover bums like you.”
    See? The milk of angelic kindness positively drips from that woman.
    Sam was asleep on top of my bed, sprawled like an elephant seal on the sand and making similar noises. I took a quick shower, doing my best not to scream when the soap got into all the scrapes and cuts, then rang my friend Fatback to see if anything was happening on the research front.
    â€œMorning, Mr. D!” He sounded quite cheery for a man who was going to turn back into a brainless beast in a man’s body at any moment. “I’m just sending out that stuff you asked about.”
    â€œThanks, George. Anything interesting?”
    â€œNothing out of your normal range of weirdness. That design’s called the
Sonnenrad
, the sun wheel. It’s always been big with racial pride groups in Europe, but the occult boys in Hitler’s SS picked it up, too, and it’s associated with some of their black rituals. That means modern neo-Nazis love it, of course, and there’s a pretty nasty group these days named the Black Sun Faction—“Black Sun” is another name for that Sonnenrad design. I can’t find much about them, but they look spooky.”
    â€œCool, I’ll read it all through when I get a chance. Bill me, yeah?”
    â€œDon’t worry, I already did. I’m saving up to get this new Swedish eye-tracking software. My voice-control stuff is too old and slow, and it makes too many mistakes.”
    Just to clear up any confusion, George Noceda—at least the George I talk to—has problems using a keyboard because he doesn’t have hands, he has trotters. That’s because he’s a pig. Pig with a man’s brain by night, man with a pig’s brain by day—pretty much the shittiest kind of were-pig you could be. The reason why is a long story, but basically he got hosed by Hell. “Hope it works out for you, buddy.”
    â€œVery kind, Mr. B. I’d better get off the phone—the sky’s getting