MR. ADLER, A MAN OF MANY MYSTERIES

 

Six foot four, maple skin. Mismatched marble eyes-- one brown and one blue-- brighter than every beacon guiding ships to shore.

On January 23rd of this year, I went to bed living across from Edmund Wilkes and woke up to a foreign entity occupying the old man’s home. No boxes, no moving truck, not even the faint whisper of the footsteps of Death gliding through oil-spill streets to announce that my elderly neighbor had finally kicked the bucket. As far as I knew, Wilkes had simply disappeared and been replaced by a man with a monogram name during the moon’s rotation. 

I didn’t know much about Mister Adler, but I knew he was a man of many mysteries. After his elusive appearance, I became obsessed with unraveling his web.

How did he get here and why? Was he an old friend of Wilkes or just the recipient of the fastest home auction in history? Maybe Wilkes died and put his home in the will?

I had almost no answers after nearly three months of observing this man. Try as I might, there was an eel behind his deerstalker hat and zigzag grin, writhing and slithering its way out of any and every question I threw at him. Sometimes he spoke as if he were memorizing sentences phonetically, vomiting vowels and consonants that sounded like words but had no meaning. Other times he was reading from invisible cue cards across the room, patterned eyes starting through me to make out the script behind my head like an actor perfecting his lines. 

“It is an excellent day for running.” He’d say. “Fantastic, is it not? The sun is shining.”

Or occasionally, he would abandon conversation completely and go off on a tangent of alphabet soup. 

“I hope you don’t mind the cobwebs. I do a bit of traveling,” He said one time I was over. “Quite fun, traveling is. I went to Topeka recently and there was this funny looking grocery store whose logo was a crying cow.” Mister Adler grinned at the memory. “Cows are much more sentient than people give them credit for, you know. I don’t eat them myself, but I’ve heard they’re making fake cow meat these days. A patty, all out of vegetables. Who would have thought?”

He laughed at such a silly notion and continued to connect dots that weren’t there. It was fascinating to listen to but impossible to get a word in. Eccentricities like these, on top of many others, left me bewildered. Mister Adler had so many quirks that did not sit right with me.

________

He invited me over for tea a week after he moved here as a way to ingratiate himself within the neighborhood. I accepted politely and entered his home at one o’clock, eager to see what he’d done with old man Wilkes’ house.

The entire place was a breathing artifact; every last detail of Wilkes’ home remained exactly as it was before he left. Vinyl loveseats clinging onto the 60’s, black and white photographs of dead smiles and infant grandchildren that were now middle aged… it was a time capsule of its faithful ex-tennant, completely devoid of Mister Adler’s personal style. I wondered if he was simply too lazy to renovate or was maintaining the upkeep of the house in case the old man ever came back.

That afternoon, Mister Adler poured me earl gray and arranged a variety of finger foods on a platter while I ogled his strange getup. I could drone on about his perplexing choice to wear a draping kimono, but there are more pertinent details to note about our tea date. Alongside the lemon scone bites and freshly picked berries placed before me sat a small pile of dried crickets, wings frozen into caramel brittle and spindly limbs twisted into curlicues.

To my horror he popped them into his mouth with an unfettered normalcy, as if the coalition of dead bugs before him was nothing more than an innocuous charcuterie spread. I watched as the insect heads snapped off with ease, ground to paste under the mortar and pestle of Mister Adler’s massive incisors.

“Do you eat these things often?” I inquired. Mister Adler stopped crunching his crickets to chew over my question.

“Not everyday but certainly on a regular basis. They’re popular where I’m from.”

“And where would that be? What’s your hometown?”

“Home is a subjective kind of word, don’t you think? You can be born in one city and grow up in another, so which one would your hometown really be?” Mister Adler paused to behead another cricket. The corners of his mouth twitched in amusement. “When people ask where I’m from, I tell them I’m from everywhere. Anywhere there’s dirt or soil or rock. I’m from Earth. I’m from the earth. Aren’t we all, in a way?” He took a sip of his tea and grimaced. “My goodness, this is bitter.”

Mister Adler got up and grabbed maple syrup from a cabinet. He poured some into my tea.

“What are you doing!?” I cried. “Why are you putting that in my drink?!”

Mister Adler seemed offended by such a question. “What do you mean? Isn’t it common to put sweeteners in tea?”

“Yes but… not maple syrup? Don’t you have any honey or sugar?”

“Oh, my...I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to ruin your Earl Gray.” He grabbed a sticky note from his desk and scribbled something down furiously. “I’ll get you some honey next time. Would you prefer store bought or raw? You will come over again, won’t you?”

“Yes.” I lied. 

Was Mister Adler trying to poison me? No, that couldn’t be it. But why did that syrup look so thin? But then again, why didn’t he put any in his cup? Maybe I’m overthinking.

I downed my tea as quickly as possible then puked it all up just in case.

                                                                ________

Last week I caught Mister Adler wearing a trench coat and gloves in seventy degree weather-- another noteworthy outfit of his. He was stalking towards his house the way he always does, hunchbacked and head alert, eyes scanning over every object in sight like a motion-sensor security system. All the while he was clutching an overstuffed grocery bag with formless arms, their shape lost amongst a sea of burgundy tweed.

Watching Mister Adler drown in bulky layers on the first day that peaked above fifty degrees was both unusual and fashionably offensive. Even after spring settled into the cracks of the earth, he continued to frolic around in ponchos, peacoats, or anything else that masked his figure. Sometimes Mister Adler resembled a zebra with a pack of lions in those horribly passé clothes; the tank tops and daisy dukes roaming the square made him stand out even more as summer slithered into the picture. 

But what perturbs me most is the fact that those examples aren’t even the tip of the iceberg.

Sometimes he doesn’t leave the house for days, or even weeks on end. The amount of time he spends locked up in his two-story denizen always leaves me wondering where he scuttles off to when I’m not looking. There are patches of time when the lights don’t turn on in the evening, the lawn grows into an unkept tangle of green tentacles, and his mail piles up at the door like presents under the Christmas tree for an exceptionally spoiled child.

“Mister Adler?” I’d call on the days where I was daring enough to investigate. “Mister Adler, are you home? You’ve got a lot of mail out here! Packages too. If you don’t collect it soon, someone might swipe it right off your porch!”

But of course, the only answer was silence. That coy, mocking silence-- the kind that laughs in your face from every angle and can only be matched by the labored sound of your own breathing. I heard that kind of silence every time I’d walk past his abandoned postage stamped with dates older than the perishables in my fridge. 

Were those packages for Wilkes or Mister Adler? If they were for Wilkes, why were they still being delivered to his home? Was Mister Adler a squatter? Or maybe he killed Wilkes for the house. But why would he want to murder the old man?

I was always too scared to check the addressee.

When Mister Adler was home, I’d catch him taking strolls in the dead of night, his dark coat dissolving into the vantablack sky. And then he’d come home with a shovel or mining tools and bring them into his house, not even bothering to hide his purchase.

Maybe he did kill Wilkes after all. And now he’s digging to hide the body.

________

The leftovers of a hurricane down south brought an unrelenting three-day storm and enough rain to saturate every last nook and cranny in town. I came home to an indoor water park waiting for me after work and brought my mops and rags to tears trying to soak up every drop. Within minutes their fibers swelled to maximum capacity and almost all of my furniture was still sitting on a damp carpet. Unless I wanted to share my basement with the fetid stench of fermenting rainwater, I was going to need some help.

I knew better than to approach the Donohues at such an ungodly hour. Old, wrinkly, and generally round, they were the human embodiment of California Raisins and certainly wouldn’t appreciate a knock on their door in the middle of their Love Boat marathon.

Jordan Kravitz was also out of the question. During my time espying Mister Adler, I had also picked up on her habit of sneaking out to see what I presumed to be a mistress every Tuesday night from eleven to three in the morning. She always returned with disheveled hair and a Grinch-like tiptoe.

With my options limited, I was forced to turn to the anomaly himself for some help in a pinch. I whirled across the street with my jacket on my head as the rain pelted down on me like liquid bullets. To my surprise his front door was cracked open when I reached the house, the darkness from his living room pooling onto the porch in a thick, inky puddle.

“Mister Adler?” I called his name cautiously. “Mister Adler, are you home?”

Nothing but silence. I let myself in and bolted the door behind me. The only light source on the entire first floor was the blinding static on his TV reminiscent of something out of Poltergeist. I watched the pixels writhe around like digital maggots.

“Mister Adler?” I tried again. “It’s me, Sloane. I need to use your mop, or maybe a Shop Vac if you have one? My basement flooded from the storm.”

Still no response. I sidled past the television and averted my gaze from the trinkets on the shelves. The faces of Wilkes’s porcelain figurines became gnarled and wicked at night, the harsh shadows distorting their smiles into impish grins.

As I made my way into the kitchen, I spotted an open basement door on the other side of the room.

“Mister Adler, are you down there?”

Against my better judgment, I proceeded down the worn wooden steps and into yet another Stygian abyss. I flicked on the lights to reveal a second door, this one to a cellar, medieval in design and christened with spikes. I began to wonder if Mister Adler retreated to the cellar for shelter in case the storm worsened, or if this was what he’d work on when he brought home shovel after shovel from the Lowe’s down the block. Certainly something this deep into the ground violated building codes.

Teetering on the edge of desperation and curiosity, I hauled open the mossy plank and unearthed an uneven tunnel leading further into the soil.

This was definitely no shelter. It looked like a pathway in Dig Dug, trailing all the way down to a pinprick at the bottom. With legs like jello I took my first step, the dirt crunching beneath my shoes. I instantly thought of Mister Adler’s crickets crunching in his mouth and shuddered.

The pathway must have been at least a block in length and a hundred feet in depth. The air became colder and more dingy the further I descended, invading my lungs like a frosted parasite. When I finally reached the bottom of the tunnel I was struck with a sight so bizarre I could have sworn my heart stopped.

There was Mister Adler, enveloped by torchlight, sharing strawberries with a small crowd of creatures that looked almost human. For the first time I saw his true form, no longer hiding behind the drape of his nebulous trench coat. Armadillo armor protruded from his back and a six inch tail adorned with scales sprouted below his waistline. I gasped at the sight, drawing the attention of every other monster in the cave.

“Sloane!?” Mister Adler exclaimed. His eyes glinted with embarrassment. “What in the world are you doing down here?”

“Oh my God…” I cried. “What… what are you?”

Mister Adler approached me gingerly, as if he was walking through a field of landmines. One wrong step--one word to frighten me past the brink of return-- would blow up the meticulous facade he’d been crafting since the day he moved in.

“Just… just let me explain.” He stammered. “I can explain everything.”

He placed a reptilian hand on my shoulder and assured me that everything was alright, promised there was no reason to be afraid. He was still himself after all-- the same neighbor who drank boxed tea on drowsy mornings and loved to go camping in country glens, the same neighbor who lit his fireplace each night he was home and was lulled to sleep by the warmth of its orange tongue.

That is, of course, with the exception that he was not the same at all.

Mister Adler was a Terra Sapien, a man whose ancestors evolved from humans thousands of years ago by living underground and feeding on burrowing creatures and insects. He and his tribe lived by the night and slept the sun away, their nocturnal vision matched with the sharpness of an owl. Mister Adler was selected to be a pioneer for the species-- the first of his kind to venture to the surface to discover what made humans tick. He masked his evolutionary differences with oversized clothes, people-watched at urban hubs like coffee shops and playgrounds, and bought produce in bulk to introduce to his brethren when it was time to return.

It suddenly all made sense. Such unfathomable information was making my head spin. It was thick, tangible like heavy fog, working its way into my ears like cotton snakes and clouding my brain until it was choking for oxygen. For a second I thought I’d been drugged because the next thing I knew Mister Adler was guiding me into a chair and checking to make sure I was conscious.

“It’s okay,” He repeated again. “Everyone promised they mean no harm if you keep this to yourself.”

I nodded, not evening thinking about the magnitude of what I’d just done. Mister Adler kept staring at me with his multi-colored eyes. One blue judge and one green.

He was a man of many mysteries, yes indeed.