
A Box Set of Three Story Collections
By Scott Nicholson
Copyright©2011 Scott Nicholson
Published by Haunted Computer Books
Scott's Amazon Author Central page
"Keep both hands on your pants, because Nicholson is about to scare them off."---J.A. Konrath, Origin
ASHES
A Ghost Story Collection
By Scott Nicholson
Copyright ©2010 Scott Nicholson
Published by Haunted Computer Books
Scott's Amazon Author Central page
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction: The Horror Of It All by Jonathan Maberry
7. Bonus Story: The Bleeder by J.R. Rain
Other Books by Scott Nicholson
Scott's Amazon US Links
Scott's Amazon UK links
Scott's Amazon Author Central page
Return to Master Table of Contents
The Horror Of It All
By Jonathan Maberry
Horror is a scary word.
Especially to people in the horror industry.
To readers, it's a great word --full of dark promise and wicked delights. To the largest of the mainstream publishers and most chain bookstores, "horror" is a bad, bad word. Horror books don't sell. You hear that all the time. Horror is just gore and exploitation. You hear that, too.
Often it's true. Except when it's not.
Here's the thing. Once upon a time "horror" was a nice word that was used to embrace a broad genre of spooky tales ranging from classic ghost stories to vampires to all sorts of creatures that go bump in the nighttime of our imagination. Horror tales didn't have to be supernatural; of course, Edgar Allan Poe proved that with his psychological thrillers that gouged barbs into our paranoia and private fears. Horror could overlap with other genre--science fiction (you want to tell me Alien wasn't a horror flick?), speculative fiction (Richard Matheson's 1954 classic novel I Am Legend, nicely bridged the gap between "what if?" and "what the hell's that!"), mystery (Robert Bloch nailed that one with Psycho), fantasy (Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos), Fantastique Populaire (Alexandre Dumas brought werewolves into the modern age of fiction with his 1848 story Le Meneur de Loups (The Leader Of Wolves), comedy (start with Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein, keep going through Young Frankenstein and put the pedal all the way down with Shaun of the Dead), and even social commentary (Night, Dawn and Day of the Dead).
Horror has been the framework and vehicle for centuries of great storytelling. Millennia, if you factor in the ancient myths of dragons, Cyclops, revenants, ghouls, mummies, and other beasts going all the way back to The Epic of Gilgamesh--the oldest surviving piece of writing, which is rife with monsters.
So why is it a bad word?
The short answer is "marketing." In 1978 Halloween hit movie houses like a bloody tsunami. Eerie, unnerving, horrific, terrifying. Halloween was everything good horror should be. And it was a horror film. Michael Myers was an unkillable embodiment of evil. Good job John Carpenter. If there had been no sequels and if a lot of folks hadn't taken an incidental aspect of the movie and build an entire genre on it, the word 'horror' might still be safe for polite conversation within the publishing world. But a lot of folks in Hollywood who are not and never have been aficionados of horror or even readers of horror, went on to focus on the big fricking knife that Michael Myers carried and the plot device of his killing several people in inventive ways. The weapon and the method are not core to the story. The unstoppable nature of evil and the struggle between overwhelming threat and the natural impulse to survive are what the movie was all about. Those are tropes of the horror genre. But Hollywood can never be accused grasping the subtleties of theme and structure; hence the Slasher movie genre was born.
Most of the Slasher flicks--and the natural off-shoots, the Slasher novels---were, as I said, not written by horror writers. They are pre-packaged tripe whose purpose is to tantalize with young flesh and then indulge in ultraviolence that has no thematic value and no artistic flair. They're mind candy of the least nutritious kind.
The Slasher films collided with another horror sub-genre --the Serial Killer film. There are good and even great novels and movies about serial killers. Bloch's Psycho, Thomas Harris' Red Dragon and Silence of the Lambs, Jack Ketchum's Off Season are examples for the sub-genre in print; the film versions of most of these are terrific, and there are horrifying entries like Henry, Portrait of a Serial Killer. But the genre was truly born out of films like Last House on the Left and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and despite their huge fan followings, neither is a horror film. Chainsaw is probably the more debatable of the two since there are real moments of tension; but it's been spoiled by sequels and remakes that are so overtly exploitive that many viewers have stepped back from the genre in disgust.
In the late 90s and early 21st Century, we saw the rise of yet another genre that polluted the word horror: torture porn. Films like Hostel, Saw and their many imitators are shock cinema. They're disturbing to be sure, but perspective makes true horror aficionados wonder at just what is attracting the audiences. The films are sexist and misogynistic in the extreme. The torture seems to be the point of the film rather than an element of a larger and more genuinely frightening tale. The technique appears to be shock rather than suspense.
Good horror is built on suspense. Shock has it moments, but it isn't, and should never be, the defining characteristic of the genre.
Here's the bottom line. Slasher, Serial Killer and Torture flicks have all been marketed as "horror." Go to Blockbuster or check Netflix...that's where they are.
Discerning audiences, those who enjoy the suspense and subtlety of true horror storytelling were repelled, and they also moved away from all horror because to modern audiences horror equals graphic and relentless violence.
Horror took it in the back.
It doesn't help that many of the most popular authors of horror novels--folks like Stephen King, Dean Koontz, Robert McCammon, Peter Straub---don't consider themselves to be horror authors. They prefer to be known as authors of "suspense" or "thrillers" or other more marketable genre labels,
I can't blame them. My own horror novels, the Pine Deep Trilogy (Ghost Road Blues, Dead Man's Song and Bad Moon Rising) were released as "supernatural thrillers." One of my best friends, L. A. Banks sees her vampire and werewolf novels published as "paranormal romances." The list goes on.
So, is horror dead?
Nope.
The book you're holding is proof of that.
Some writers have managed to hold the line against the propagandized war against "horror." Scott Nicholson's been at the forefront of that phalanx for years. He writes horror novels. He writes horror short stories. He writes horror. Make no mistake.
Sure, Scott can spin a mystery or a thriller with the best of them. He's a true writer and true writers can write in any damn genre they pick. But what sets Scott's horror fiction apart--or, perhaps, raises it as an example---is that it is horror. It's subtle, layered, textured, suspenseful and pretty goddamn scary. There are shocks, sure; but you won't find one cheap shot in this whole collection. There's blood, too--Scott's not afraid of getting his hands dirty when it comes to violence. But those are elements he selects with care from a large toolbox of delicate instruments. Like all true horror writers, Scott is a craftsman who knows how to build a story on character and plot nuance, and then tweak this and twist that so that the story begins to quietly sink its claws into the reader.
Ashes is a wonderfully creepy, powerful and inventive collection of horror tales that will open doors in your mind--to let things out, and to let things in.
This is a book of horror tales from someone who understands--and loves---the genre. A lot of folks joke about having to leave the lights on when they read horror. Go ahead, try it. It won't help. This is a different kind of darkness: older, more devious, and if you're reading this then the darkness was already there inside you, waiting for a nightmare wizard to set it free.
---Jonathan Maberry
Multiple Bram Stoker Award-winning author of PATIENT ZERO. THE DRAGON FACTORY and ZOMBIE CSU; and co-creator/consulting producer for On The Slab (ABC Disney)
THE END
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###
HOMECOMING
The wind cut through the valley like a frozen razor. Black clouds raced from the west, shrouding the setting sun. Leaves skittered over the brown grass. The air smelled of electricity and rust and dried chestnut and things long dead.
No ghosts flickered among the sagging fence posts outside, no spirits swept over the hay-strewn barnyard. Only earthly shadows moved in the twilight, nothing but swaying trees and nightbirds and loose gates. Charlie Roniger turned from the dark glass of the window.
"It's gonna come a storm," he said, drawing the dusty curtains. His wife, Sara, sat in her ragged easy chair and said nothing. She looked deeply into the flames crackling in the fireplace. Her wrinkled hands were folded over the quilt in her lap, hands that had once snapped green beans and wrung out wet sheets and caressed the soft down on a baby's head.
Charlie studied her face. It was fallen, as if the framework behind it was busted up like an old hatbox. He never thought she'd end up broken. Not the way she'd always been able to show her feelings, to hold the family together, to love the only two men in her life.
She was too much like that old spring up on the hill, just kept on slow and steady until you came to expect it to run on forever. Then when it dried up, you got mad, even though you had no promise that it would keep running. Even when you knew you had no real right to it. It was a blessing, and blessings weren't made to last. Otherwise, the bad things that God sent along wouldn't get their proper due.
Charlie reached into the front pocket of his denim overalls and pulled out a plug of tobacco. He twisted off a chaw with his three good teeth. His gums mashed the tobacco until it was moist and pliable. Then, with his tongue, he pushed the wad into the hollow of his jaw.
He walked to the door, unconsciously checking the lock. On a peg beside his overcoat hung the baseball glove he'd given Johnny for his tenth birthday. The leather had shrunk and cracked from all the years Johnny had lobbed dewy walnuts on the tin roof of the barn, pretending he was catching fly balls off Yankee bats. Johnny had been a southpaw. He'd gotten that from Sara's side of the family.
Charlie wished he'd had more time to play catch with his son. But the fields always needed his plow, the hay had to be pressed into yellow squares, the hogs squealed for slop, the corn cried for water. The forest gave its trees but demanded in trade hours of stretched muscles and stinging sweat. Even the soil begged for his flesh, whispering to him to lie down and rot and feed the new roots.
So time went away, the sun rose and fell like a rib cage drawing in deep breaths. And chores and meals and church on Sundays stole the years. Charlie wondered if all you were left with at the end was the memory of all the things you should have said but never could. Things like "I love you."
He touched the glove that was as rough and parched as his own skin. He always thought it would be the other way around, with him fading out slow and gaspy and full of pain, while Johnny stood over the bed and tried to get up the nerve to hug him. And Charlie thought he might have been able to say it then, when they were both scared and had nothing to lose. Back when death looked like a one-way road.
Charlie stooped, his spine popping as he reached into the firebox and grabbed a couple of oak logs with his arthritic fingers. He carried the wood into the living room and tossed them onto the fire, sending a shower of sparks up the chimney. The reflection of the fire danced in his wife's glassy eyes, red-orange pinpricks on bald onyx. She didn't blink.
"Fire feels good, don't it, honey?" he said gently, squirting a stream of brown juice into the flames. The liquid hissed and evaporated as he waited for an answer, knowing it wouldn't come. Language had left her alone, even if the dead folks hadn't.
Outside, the wind picked up. The old two-story house creaked and leaned against the coming gale. A few loose shingles flapped, and the upstairs windows rattled. Blasts of cold air swirled under the front door and the first raindrops spattered the porch.
He gingerly led Sara up the squeaky stairs to bed and tucked her under the thick blankets. Charlie checked the weather once more, but all he could see was black and his own reflection. He tossed on a back log, spit out his chaw, and locked the door. He went upstairs to wait for them.
He fell asleep with his arm around Sara, nuzzling into the hard edges of her bones. The howling wind came into his dreams and turned into a familiar moan. He awoke in a sweat and blinked into the blackness around him. Faint blue-white shapes hovered above the bed. He reached for his wife, but felt only the cool sheets in the little hollow of the bed where she should have been.
She was with them, dancing and waving her frail arms, as she had every night since Johnny had been buried. The translucent wisps flowed over her, caressing her skin and weaving around her worn flannel nightgown. She floated two feet off the ground, embraced by the spirits. They were all locked together in a hoe-down of resurrection.
As Charlie's eyes adjusted, he could make out the feathery shapes taking form. It was the regulars, the happy hour crowd of the dead set. The ghosts filled the room like joyful clouds. They cavorted like they had time to kill and forever to do it in.
Familiar faces coalesced among the mists. There was Doris, the school teacher, who had passed on in the winter of '73, now as withered as a forgotten houseplant. Freddie, Charlie's old fishing buddy, was moaning and hooting like an eviscerated owl. He had drowned several years ago and his skin was stretched and pale like a bleached water balloon. Freddie had lost his hat, and Charlie noticed for the first time how large his ears were.
Colonel Hadley was hovering like a shroud on a coat hanger, wearing his military dress blues even though his ramrod days were over. The town gossip held that Fanny Coffey had run off with a traveling Bible salesman, but she couldn't have made it far on those amputated legs. The Bible salesman had answered a newfound calling to be a sex murderer, an about-face career change that caught Fanny by surprise. Consumptive old Pete Henries fumbled at his chest, aimlessly searching for another of the cigarettes that had nailed his coffin lid shut. The Waters bunch looked on, father and mother and child, still as ashen as they had been on the morning they were found in their garage with the Buick engine running.
Rhetta Mae Harper was among them, Rhetta Mae who had tried to seduce Charlie when Sara had been so knotted up with pregnancy that she couldn't bear her husband's touch. Sara's womb had taken his seed in late middle age, and the fetus that would be Johnny kept her in constant discomfort. Charlie had tasted Rhetta Mae's temptation and had nearly swallowed, but in the end his love for Sara kept him true. Rhetta Mae had been shot during some drunken, jealous frenzy, her voluptuous figure shredded by number eight buckshot pellets. Charlie found her charms much easier to resist now.
He kicked off the blankets and rolled out of the old cast-iron bed, the mattress springs and his bones creaking in harmony. The cold pine floorboards chilled his feet as he walked over to his wife. The ghosts crowded Charlie's face, but he brushed them aside like cobwebs. He put his hand on Sara's arm. She tried feebly to fight him off. She wanted to play with her see-through friends.
"Johnny isn't here," Charlie said to Sara. "They won't take you to Johnny."
She tried to answer but could only gurgle like an infant. She was finding ecstasy in those icy arms.
"Now get the hell outta here, you bunch of deadbeats," Charlie shouted at the ghosts, trembling with chill and outrage. For some reason he didn't understand, they always obeyed him, as if they hadn't a will of their own and took their masters where they found them.
The ghosts turned to him, blank faces drooping, like children who had been scolded for taking baby chicks out of a nest. They gently lowered Sara and she stood on the wobbly sticks of her legs. The figures flitted into shadows and disappeared.
The storm had blown over now and a sliver of moonlight spilled across the bedroom. Charlie laid his wife down and tugged the blankets over her. He got in beside her and watched the corners of the room. Johnny's photograph was on the dresser, the portrait grinning in the weak moonlight. Smooth skin and a proud shy smile, those eyes that Sara said were so much like his father's.
Damn shame about that boy, he thought, as his rage faded like the ghosts had. Sorrow rose from a shallow grave in his heart to take its place.
They said Johnny had slipped down at the sawmill, his flannel sleeve yanked by the hungry blade that didn't discriminate between limbs of poplar, jack pine, or flesh. The lumber company sent a check and paid for his funeral. It rained the day they lowered Johnny's purple casket into the ground. Rivulets of red streaked the clay as the gravediggers shoveled. Charlie thought it was funny how they threw in that coffin and all that dirt, and the hole still wasn't full. He and Sara watched the rain drill down into the man-sized puddle long after the minister had fled for the shelter of his powder-blue Cadillac.
The ghosts had paid their first visit that night. Sara's mind, already splintered by grief, took a final wrong turn down the dirt road of madness. Charlie had been disbelieving at first, but now the midnight stops were another part of the day, as fixed in the rhythm of his life as milking the cows and gathering the eggs. Just another hardship to be endured.
Charlie turned his eyes from the photograph and reached for the tobacco. Since he was awake, he might as well have a chaw. He rested his wiry neck back on the pillow and worked the sticky sweet leaf with his gums. Something rustled by the dresser.
"You're a little late, the show's over," Charlie said. The noise continued.
Charlie raised his head and saw a faint apparition trying to form by the closet. Damned if it ain't a new one, he thought. Threads of milky air spun themselves into a human shape. Charlie blinked and looked at the photograph.
"Can't be," he muttered. Then he realized it was the one he'd been waiting for, night after long night. "Johnny? Is that you, boy?"
A voice like December answered, "Yeah, Dad."
Charlie sat up in bed, his heart pounding. He glanced sideways at his wife. Her eyes were closed, and the blankets rose and fell with her even breathing.
"How's it going, son?"
"Not too bad. I've been a little confused here lately."
"Didn't I tell you to keep an eye out for that damned saw blade? Just look what you've gone and done to yourself."
Johnny materialized more fully and stepped forward into the moonlight. Flesh hung in ropes from his ruined cheeks. His nose was missing, and chunks of his hair had been torn from his savaged scalp. His Adam's apple bobbed uncontrollably, dangling by a tendon from the gash in his neck.
Charlie gulped, feeling the tobacco sting his throat. "You're looking real good, son."
"How's Mom?"
"She's fine," Charlie said. "We better let her sleep, though. Her spring's dried up."
Johnny nodded as if that made sense. The Adam's apple quivered and made a wet sound.
"They took your pitching arm, son. That was supposed to win you a college scholarship."
Johnny contemplated his missing left hand as if he could still see it. "It happened so fast, Dad. Hurt for a second, like when you get rope burns or something, but then it was over. Seems like only yesterday, but seems like it never happened, too. Lots of things are funny that way anymore."
Charlie looked into Johnny's eyes that were deep as graves. He suddenly remembered teaching his son how to tie a slip-knot on a fishing line. They had stood in the shade of a sycamore, where the branches were highest, so the hooks wouldn't snag. Johnny's stubby fingers had fumbled with the line as his face clenched in determination, but now the fingers of his remaining hand were ragged and moldy, with dirt packed under the nails.
Charlie felt the blankets slip from his shoulders, and a coldness flooded his chest, as if his heart had frozen. "You feel like talking about it, son?"
"Well, I'm supposed to be looking for something. I thought I ought to come here," Johnny said, the bone of his head slowly swiveling.
"Home is where you go when you got trouble," Charlie said. "I told you I'd always be here to help you."
"Dad, it ain't the hurt, 'cause I don't feel nothing. But I'm lost, like. Can't seem to find my way."
Charlie gummed his chaw quickly and nervously before answering. "You know you'd be welcome here, but I don't think that's right. There's others that are your kind now."
"I reckon so," Johnny said softly, looking at and through his own torso as if finally understanding. Then his hollow voice lifted. "You remember when those Corcoran boys were picking on me, and you stared down their whole damned brood? Walked right up on their front porch, standing on them old boards ready to fight 'em one at a time or all at once. That sure took the steam out of their britches."
"Nobody messes with my boy." Charlie looked into the shadows that passed for Johnny's eyes.
"Say, Dad, whatever happened to Darlene?"
Charlie didn't want Johnny to rest any less easily than he already did. He couldn't say that Darlene had married Jack Corcoran when Johnny was barely six weeks in the ground, before the grass even had time to take root over his grave. Fond memories might give the dead comfort, for all Charlie knew. So he lied.
"She pined and pined, boy. Broke her poor little heart. But eventually she got on with her life, the way a body does. That would have made one fine wedding, you and her."
"I only wanted to make her happy. And you, too, Dad. I guess I'll never get the chance now."
The dark maw in the center of Johnny's face gaped like an endless wet cave.
"We all got our own row to hoe, Johnny. I taught you that we take care of our own. But I also told you that you gotta make hard choices along the way. And it looks like this is one path that you better walk alone."
Johnny shuffled his shredded feet. "Yeah, I reckon so. But I ain't scared. I guess it's what ought to be."
Charlie felt a stirring in the blankets beside him.
"Them other ones been here lookin' for you. Been here ever damn night, bugging hell out of your mom," Charlie said quickly.
Sara sat up, her eyes moist with sleep. She gasped as she saw the scraps of her son. Charlie put a hand on her shoulder to keep her from getting out of bed.
A thin strand of drool ran down her chin as she tried to speak. "Juhhhnn..."
Johnny drifted forward. "Mom?"
Charlie pressed Sara's head down onto her pillow. "You'd best be getting on, son. No need to stir up trouble here."
Johnny moved closer, though not one of his limbs moved. He was beside the bed now, and Charlie felt the stale cold draft of his son's deathwind. Johnny reached out with a hand that was the color of a trout belly.
Sara squirmed under Charlie's arm, but Charlie pinned her and pulled the quilt over her face. When he looked back at Johnny, the vacant expression had been replaced by a look that Charlie had seen one other time. A possum had crawled under the henhouse wire, and Charlie went after it with a pitchfork when the animal refused to give up its newfound territory. Charlie must have jabbed the possum fifty or sixty times, with it hissing and snarling every breath right up until it finally died.
Charlie wondered what kind of pitchfork you used on a ghost.
The mottled hand came closer, and Charlie clenched his teeth. "Ain't proper for a grown man to be making his mother cry."
Johnny paused for a moment, and his eyes looked like they were filled with muddy water.
"That's right," Charlie said. "Your spring's drying up. You got other rivers to run to, now."
Sara kicked Charlie's leg, but he wasn't about to turn her loose.
Johnny reached out and touched Charlie's cheek. His son's fingers were like icicles. The hand trailed along the line of Charlie's stubble, as if remembering the scratchiness he'd felt against his infant skin. It was the first time they had touched in nearly twenty years.
"I'd best go with them. Seems only right," Johnny whispered in his lost voice. Affection and a strange pride fluttered in Charlie's chest. This was his only son standing before him. Did it matter that his decaying guts were straining against the cotton of his burial shirt? As a father, it was his duty to teach his son one more of life's harsh little lessons.
"A man's gotta do what a man's gotta do." Charlie pointed to the far corner of the room. "They went that-a-ways."
Johnny turned his mutilated face, a face that only a mother could love. Then he looked back. He leaned over Charlie and spread his arms wide. The raw meat of his throat jogged as he spoke. "I love you, Dad."
Without thinking, Charlie reached up, his hands passing through the moist silk of Johnny's flesh. But how could you hug a dried-up spring? How could you hug a memory?
Charlie loved the son who had walked this earth. The small boy who had sat between Charlie's legs on the tractor, pretending to steer while making engine noises with his mouth. The son he had taken to see the Royals play, who had built an awkward birdhouse in eighth-grade shop for his mother, who had slept in the hayloft in the summer because he liked the smell. The son who had buried his old hound himself because he didn't want anyone to see him cry. Johnny did those things, not this blasphemy hovering over him.
Johnny had been the flesh of Charlie's flesh, but this thing was beyond flesh. Resting in peace was a comfort for the living, not the dead.
He almost said the words anyway. But he found he'd rather take his regrets to the grave. Second chances be damned.
"It's good to see you, son." Like hell.
"Tell Mom that I miss her." Johnny's maw opened and closed raggedly. Sara was sobbing under the blankets, her fragile bones trembling.
"I will. You take care, now." Like he was sending Johnny off to summer Bible camp.
Johnny shimmered and faded, the dutiful son to the last. His stump of a left arm raised as if to wave goodbye. The essence that had been Charlie's only son fluttered and vanished just as the first rays of dawn broke through the room. The ghosts wouldn't be back. They had what they had been looking for.
Charlie relaxed and pulled the blankets off his wife's face. She turned her back to him, her gray hair matted against the pillowcase. He touched her shoulder but she shrugged him away. Something rattled in her chest.
He rose from the bed and dressed, working the tightness out of his stringy muscles. He rubbed his hands together to drive away the lingering chill of his son's touch. His heart felt like a charred ember in the ash of a dead fire. His eyes burned, but they had always been miserly when it came to making tears.
He knew you couldn't expect it to keep running forever. When the spring dries up, you had to remember that you had no promise that it would keep on. The water's for everybody or even nobody at all. You had no real right to it in the first place.
Charlie stopped by the front door and put on his overcoat and heavy work gloves. Firewood was waiting outside, frosty and unsplit. He took his ax and his loving memories out under the morning sun so he could hold them to the light.
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###
HAUNTED
"Do it again, Daddy." Janie's coloring book was in her lap, forgotten.
Darrell smiled and thumbed open the top on his Zippo lighter. He struck the flint wheel and the flame burst to life. The dancing fire reflected in each of Janie's pupils. Her mouth was open in fascination.
"It's pretty," she said.
"And so are you. Now back to your coloring. It's almost bedtime." Darrell flipped the silver metal lid closed, snuffing the orange flame.
Janie put the coloring book in front of her and rolled onto her stomach. She chose a crayon. Gray. Darrell frowned and placed the lighter by the ashtray.
Rita tensed in her chair beside him. She reached out with her thin hand and gripped his arm. "Did you hear that?" she whispered.
Darrell listened. Janie was humming to herself. The wax of the crayon made a soft squeak across the paper. The clock on the mantel ticked once, again, three times, more.
He tried to hear beyond those normal sounds. His hearing was shot. Too much Elvis, Rita always said. Too much Elvis would make anybody deaf.
"From the kitchen," she said. "Or outside."
Janie heard the same noise that Rita was hearing. She cocked her head, the crayon poised above the page. She stopped kicking her feet, the heels of her saddle shoes nearly touching her back.
"Mice, most likely," he said, too loudly. He was head of the household. It was his job to put on a brave face. The expression fit him like a glass mask.
Why didn't the damned dog bark? Dogs were supposed to be sensitive to spirits from the other side. He put down the newspaper, paper crackling. Mayor Loeb and Martin Luther King looked out from the front page. Black and white.
"Terribly loud mice," Rita finally answered. Darrell shot her a glance, then rolled his eyes toward Janie. Rita was usually careful in front of their daughter. But having those noisy things around had been stressful.
"Sounds like it's coming from the kitchen," he said with what he hoped was nonchalance. He pulled his cigar from his mouth. He rarely smoked, and never inside the house. But they were a comfort, with their rich sweet smell and tangy taste and the round weight between his lips.
He laid the cigar carefully beside his lighter, propping up the damp end on the ashtray so the dust wouldn't stick to it. The ashtray was shaped like a starfish. They'd gotten it on their honeymoon to Cuba , back when Americans were allowed to visit. He could still see the map of the island that had been painted on the bottom of the glass.
Darrell stood, his recliner groaning in relief. He looked down at the hollow impression in the woven seat of the chair. Too much food. Too much food, and too much Elvis.
Can't go back. Can't get younger. Can't change things. He shook his head at nothing.
"Don't bother, honey. The mice won't hurt anything." Rita chewed at the red end of her index finger.
"Well, we can't let them have the run of the house." It was their secret code, worked out over the long sleepless night. Janie didn't need to know. She was too young to understand. But the things were beyond anybody's understanding, no matter what age a person was.
Darrell glanced at the big boxy RCA that cast a flickering shadow from one corner of the room. They usually watched with the sound turned down. Barney Fife was saying something to Andy, his Adam's apple twitching up and down like a turkey's.
"Get me a soda while you're up?" Rita asked. Trying to pretend everything was normal.
"Sure. Anything for you, pumpkin?"
Janie shook her head. He wished she would go back to coloring. Her eyes were wide now, waiting. He was supposed to protect her from worries.
She put the gray crayon back in the box. Fifteen other colors, and she almost always used gray. Freud would probably have made something of that. Darrell hoped she would select a blue, even a red, something vibrant and found in rainbows. His heart tightened as she chose black.
He walked past her and turned up the sound on the television. Beginning to whistle, he headed across the living room. No tune came to mind. He forced a few in-between notes and the music jumped track somewhere in his throat. He began again, with "I See the Moon." Janie's favorite.
Where was that dog? Always underfoot when Darrell went through the house, but now nowhere to be found. Nothing like this ever happened back in Illinois . Only in Tennessee .
He was in the hall when he heard Aunt Bea's aria from the living room: "An-deeeee!"
They used to watch "The Outer Limits," sometimes "The Twilight Zone." Never again. They got too much of that sort of thing in real life. Now it was nothing but safe, family fare.
Darrell eased past the closet. His golf clubs were in there, the three-wood chipped where he'd used it to drive a nail into the kitchen drawer that was always coming apart. Cobwebs probably were stretched between the irons. Par for the course, these days.
He stopped outside the kitchen. A bright rectangle of light spilled into the hallway. Mice were supposed to be scared of house lights. Well, maybe mice were, but those things weren't. Then why did they only come at night?
There was a smudge of fingerprints on the doorway casing. Purple. Small. Grape jelly.
He tried to yawn, but his breath hitched. He checked the thermostat, even though it was early autumn and the temperature was fairly constant. He looked around for another excuse for delay, but found none.
The kitchen floor was off-white linoleum, in a Pollock sort of pattern that disguised scuffs and stains. Mice would find nothing on this floor.
The Formica counters were clean, too. Three soiled plates were stacked in the sink. He didn't blame Rita for avoiding the chore. No one wanted to be alone in the kitchen, especially after dinner when the sun had gone down.
A broom leaned against the little door that hid the folding-out ironing board. He wrapped his hands around the smooth wood. Maybe he could sweep them away, as if they were dust balls.
Darrell crossed the kitchen slowly, the broom held across his chest. As he crouched, he felt the bulge of his belly lapping over his belt. Both he and his cross-town hero were packing on the weight in these later years.
Where was that dog? A few black-and-white clumps of hair stuck to the welcome mat at the back door. That dog shed so much, Darrell wouldn't be surprised if it was invisible by now. But the mess was forgivable, if only the mutt would show up. A good bark would scare those things away.
He parted the curtain on the back door. The grass in the yard had gotten tall and was a little ragged. George next door would be tut-tutting to his wife. But George was retired, he had nothing on his mind but lawn fertilizer. There was a joke in there somewhere, but Darrell wasn't in the mood to dig it up.
A little bit of wind played in the laurel hedge, strong enough to make the seat of Janie's swing set ease back and forth. Of course it was the wind. What would those things want with a swing set? The set's metal poles were flecked with rust. He didn't remember that happening. Gradual changes weren't as noticeable, he supposed.
In the dim light, the world looked colorless. Nothing else stirred. If they were out there, they were hiding. He almost expected to hear some corny organ music like they played on the "Inner Sanctum" radio program.
He was about to drop the curtain and get Rita's soda, and maybe a beer for himself, when he saw movement. Two shapes, wispy and pale in the faded wash of the backyard. Trick of the moonlight. Yeah. Had to be. They didn't exist, did they?
He looked forward to the beer bubbling in his throat. The bitter sweetness wasn't as crisp as it used to be back when he was young. Maybe everything got flatter and less vivid as a person got older. Senses dulled by time and timelessness.
The big General Electric was nearly empty. The celery had wilted. Something on the middle wire shelf had separated into layers. He didn't dare open the Tupperware container to see what was inside. A half-dozen eggs roosted in their scooped-out places. One had a hairline crack, and a clear jewel of fluid glistened under the fluorescent light.
He fished out the drinks and closed the door. There was a hiss as the motor kicked in and sucked the seals tight. A fluff of lint shot from the grill at the base of the appliance.
The drinks chilled his palms. Sensation. He pressed a can to his forehead. Great way to cure a headache. Too bad he didn't have one.
He went back to the living room. Janie was still coloring, the tip of her tongue pressed just so against the corner of her mouth. Her eyes were half-closed, the curl of her lashes making Darrell's heart ache. He sat down.
Darrell gave Rita the soda, then pulled the tab on his beer. The can opened with a weak, wet sigh. He took a sip. Flat.
"See any mice?" Rita asked, trying to smile.
"Not a single Mickey Mouse in the place. Saw a Donald Duck, though."
Janie giggled, her shoulders shaking a little. Her ponytail had fallen against one cheek. Darrell hated lying. But it wasn't really a lie, was it? The lie was so white, it was practically see-through.
He settled back in his chair. The newspaper had slipped to the floor and opened to page seven, where the real news was located. More stuff on Johnson's mess in Viet Nam . Right now, he had no interest in the world beyond. He looked at the television.
Gomer was doing something stupid, and his proud idiot grin threatened to split his head in half. Barney was waving his arms in gangly hysterics. Andy stood there with his hands in his pockets.
Television was black-and-white, just like life. But in television, you had "problem," then "problem solved." Sprinkle in some canned laughter along the way. In life, there were no solutions and not much laughter.
He took another sip of beer. "You want to visit your folks again this weekend?"
Rita had gulped half her soda in her nervousness. "Can we afford it?"
Could they afford not to? Every minute away from the house was a good minute. He wished they could move. He had thought about putting the house up for sale, but the market was glutted. The racial tension had even touched the midtown area, and middle-class whites didn't want to bring their families to the South. Besides, who would want to buy a haunted house?
And if they did manage to sell the house, where would they go? Shoe store managers weren't exactly in high demand. And he didn't want Rita to work until Janie started school. So they'd just have to ride it out for another year or so. Seemed like they'd been riding it out forever.
He put down the beer and jabbed the cigar in his mouth. "Maybe your folks are getting tired of us," he said around the rolled leaf. "How about a trip to the mountains? We can get a little cabin, maybe out next to a lake." He thought of his fishing rod, leaning against his golf bag somewhere in the lost black of the closet.
"Out in the middle of nowhere?" Rita's voice rose a half-step too high. Janie noticed and stopped scribbling.
"We could get a boat."
"I'll call around," Rita said. "Tomorrow."
Darrell looked at the bookcase on the wall. He'd been meaning to read so many of those books. He wasn't in the mood to spend a few hours with one. Even though he had all the time in the world.
He picked up the Zippo and absently thumbed the flame to life. Janie heard the lid open and looked up. Pretty colors. Orange , yellow, blue. He doused the flame, thumbed it to life once more, then closed the lighter and put it back on the table.
Rita pretended to watch television. Darrell looked from her face to the screen. The news was on, footage of the sanitation workers' strike. The reporter's voice-over was bassy and bland.
"Do you think it's serious?" Rita asked, with double meaning.
"A bunch of garbage." The joke fell flat. Darrell went to the RCA and turned down the volume. Silence crowded the air.
Janie stopped coloring, lifted her head and cocked it to one side. "I heard something."
Her lips pursed. A child shouldn't suffer such worry. He waited for a pang of guilt to sear his chest. But the guilt was hollow, dead inside him.
"I think it's time a little girl went beddy-bye," he said. Rita was standing before he even finished his sentence.
"Aw, do I have to?" Janie protested half-heartedly.
"Afraid so, pumpkin."
"I'll go get the bed ready, then you can come up and get brushed and washed," Rita said, heading too fast for the stairs.
"And Daddy tells the bedtime story?" Janie asked.
Darrell smiled. Rita was a wonderful mother. He couldn't imagine a better partner. But when it came to telling stories, there was only one king. "Sure," he said. "Now gather your crayons."
The promise of a story got Janie in gear. Darrell heard Rita's slippered feet on the stairs. Her soles were worn. He'd have to get her a new pair down at the store.
He froze, the hairs on his neck stiffening.
There.
That sound again.
The not-mice.
Where was that damn dog?
He got to his feet, stomach clenched. Janie was preoccupied with her chore. He walked to the back door and parted the curtain, wondering if Rita had heard and was now looking out from the upstairs window.
The moon was fuller, brighter, more robust. Why did they only come at night?
Maybe they had rules. Which was stupid. They broke every natural law just in the act of existing.
There, by the laurel at the edge of the backyard. Two shapes, shimmering, surreal, a bit washed out.
He opened the door, hoping to scare them away. That was a hoot. Him scaring them. But he had to try, for Janie's and Rita's sake.
"What do you want?" he said, trying to keep his voice level. Could they understand him? Or did they speak a different language in that other world?
The shapes moved toward him, awkwardly. A bubbling sound flooded the backyard, like pockets of air escaping from water. One of the shapes raised a nebulous arm. The motion was jerky, like in an old silent film.
Darrell stepped off the porch. Maybe if he took a stand here, they would take what they wanted and leave his family alone.
"There's nothing for you here," he said. "Why don't you go back where you came from?"
A sudden rage flared through him, filling his abdomen with heat. These were the things that bothered Janie, that made Rita worry, that was the fountain of his own constant guilt. These things had no right to intrude on their space, their lives, their reality.
"I don't believe in you," he shouted, no longer caring if he woke Neighbor George. If only the dog would bark, maybe that would drive them away.
The bubbling sound came again. The spooks were closer now, and he could see they were shaped like humans. Noises from their heads collected and hung in the air. The wind lifted, changed direction. The noises blew together, thickened and became words.
Darrell's language.
"There's where it happened."
A kid. Sounded like early teens. Did their kind age, or were they stuck in the same moment forever?
Darrell opened his mouth, but didn't speak. More words came from the world of beyond, words that were somnambulant and sonorous.
"Gives me the creeps, man." Another young one.
"Three of them died when it burned down."
"Freaky. Maybe some of the bones are still there."
"They say only the dog got away."
"Must have been a long time ago."
"Almost thirty years."
"Nothing but a chimney left, and a few black bricks. You'd think something would grow back. Trees and stuff." A silence. Darrell's heart beat, again, three times, more.
"It's supposed to be haunted," said the first.
"Bullshit."
"Go out and touch it, then."
"No way."
A fire flashed in front of one of the shapes, then a slow curl of smoke wafted across the moonlit yard. The end of a cigarette glowed. Smoke. Spirit. Smoke. Spirit. Both insubstantial.
Darrell walked down the back steps, wondering how he could make them go away. A cross? A Bible? A big stick?
"I only come here at night," said the one inhaling the fire.
"Place gives me the creeps."
"It's cool, man."
"I don't like it." The shape drifted back, away from the house, away from Darrell's approach.
"Chicken."
The shape turned and fled.
"Chicken," repeated the first, louder, sending a puff of gray smoke into the air.
Darrell glanced up at Janie's bedroom window. She would be in her pajamas now, the covers up to her chin, a picture book across her tummy. The pages opened to a story that began "Once upon a time..."
Darrell kept walking, nearing the ghost of shifting smoke and fire. He was driven by his anger now, an anger that drowned the fear. The thing didn't belong in their world. Everything about them was wrong. Their bad light, their voices, their unreal movement.
He reached out, clutching for the thing's throat. His hands passed through the flame without burning, then through the shape without touching. But the shape froze, shuddered, then turned and fled back to its world of beyond.
Darrell watched the laurels for a moment, making sure the thing was gone. They would come back. They always did. But tonight he had won. A sweat of tension dried in the gentle breeze.
He went inside and closed the door. He was trembling. But he had a right to feel violated, outraged. He hadn't invited the things to his house.
He had calmed down a little by the time he reached the living room. A Spencer Tracy movie was on the television. The glow from the screen flickered on the walls like green firelight.
Rita was in her chair, blinking too rapidly. "Was it...?" she asked.
"Yeah."
"Oh, Darrell, what are we going to do?"
"What can we do?"
"Move."
He sighed. "We can't afford to right now. Maybe next year."
He sat down heavily and took a sip of his beer. It was still flat.
"What do we tell Janie?"
"Nothing for now. It's just mice, remember?"
He wished the dog were here, so he could stroke it behind the ears. He thought of those words from beyond, and how they said something about the dog getting out. Getting out of what?
He reached for his cigar and stuck it in his mouth. After a moment, he said, "Maybe if we stop believing in them, they'll go away."
The clock ticked on the mantel.
"I can't," Rita said.
"Neither can I."
The clock ticked some more.
"She's waiting."
"I know."
Darrell leaned his cigar carefully against the ashtray. He noticed his lighter was missing. He shrugged and went upstairs to read Janie her story. He wondered if tonight the ending would be the same as always.
Return to Ashes Table of Contents
Return to Master Table of Contents
###
THE CHRISTENING
The sky gave birth to night without a single moan, but Kelly Stamey knew her time wouldn't be so easy.
She wrapped her arms around her swollen belly. How could you love something so much, something that you'd never even seen? How could you treasure this thing that carried the genes of one of the world's all-time biggest losers? How could you go through all of this alone?
But she wasn't entirely alone. She brushed back the curtains and looked across the cold, dark field. The strange shape bobbed among the sharp shadows of the October trees. The shape looked as if it had been carved out of moonlight with a dull knife. It was as tall as the fence that circled part of the farm's property and half as wide as the potato barrel huddled by the barn door.
The baby squirmed, and the shape outside wiggled in harmony with the strange rhythm of the life inside her. Kelly shuddered and went away from the window. Bad things didn't exist if you didn't see them. Just like Chet. Out of sight, out of mind.
Except he wasn't out of mind. And not entirely out of sight, either, if you counted the photograph on the TV set. It was one of those stiff, formal portraits that the Rescue Squad gave to volunteers at the annual fundraising potluck. Kelly, in what she called her "twenty-dollar redneck hair," looming behind Chet, her lipstick a little too bright, her hands folded over his checkered flannel shoulder.
Chet, grinning, a dark gap where he'd lost a tooth in a fist fight. Chet, chin up. Chet with the square and dull face that, if you didn't know better, made him look like the kind of man you'd want working the Jaws of Life if you were pinned in a car. Solid and reliable. If you didn't know better.
She turned the picture face down. She only saved it so that one day she could show the baby. "There's your father," she would say when the child was old enough to wonder why he didn't have two parents. "He." She was thinking of it as a "he" even though she didn't know the gender, and certainly couldn't afford a sonogram to find out.
And when the child asked what his father was like, well, she'd deal with that part when the time came.
The tangible reminders of Chet were mostly gone. He'd taken his fishing rods, his sweat-stunk sleeping bag, the neon beer light, his thick fireman's coat. But still Chet lingered, insubstantial but stubborn, like that white shape out in the meadow. She expected him to walk into the room at any moment, cigarette dangling from his lips, eyes squinting against the smoke.
But he hadn't walked these floors in months. The only walking he'd done lately was the away kind. Wasn't no woman going to strap him down with a baby, no way in hell. If it was even his, more likely a "Daddy's maybe."
Chet didn't believe in fidelity. He didn't think humans could love, and sleep with, the same person for an entire week, much less a lifetime. So of course he would accuse her of straddling his fishing buddies. Every time he emerged from a drunken blackout to find her side of the bed empty, he immediately assumed she was working the springs of somebody's Chevy. Hell, she was so low in his mind, she'd probably do it in a Ford.
Kelly turned off the lights and went up the creaking stairs. Her groin throbbed with ligament pain, and the baby elbowed her intestines to punctuate the other aches. She was breathless by the time she reached the top of the stairs. A draft blew across her face, like cool, soft flowers brushing her cheeks.
The house was over a hundred years old. The Stamey Place was crumbling and musty, but at least it was rent free. Other family members had worn out these floors, scuffed the stairs, chipped the door jambs. But they were all gone now. She was the last Stamey, not counting the one that twitched inside her.
The baby kicked again, harder, sending a sharp pain through Kelly's bladder. Kelly didn't want to go to the bathroom so soon after the last trip. The toilet seat was frigid. The heating oil had run out, and she didn't have the money to refill the rusty tank out back.
From the bedroom window, she could see most of the farm. The moon spilled silver over the dark skin of the Earth. A stand of brush marked the boundary of the creek, and the old Cherokee ceremonial mound was stubbled with cornstalks. The barn stood black and empty beside it. The Stamey graveyard was on beyond that, on a little rise near the forest.
The white shape hovered along the fence line, immune to the breeze. Kelly knew the thing didn't belong here. Not on the farm, not on this Earth. But she wasn't afraid. In a strange way, the shape was comforting. They both haunted this same stretch of ground, both were bound to the Stamey place by the same invisible chains.
She'd first started seeing the shape around the time the morning sickness hit. Only then it had been a thin smudge, transparent and nearly invisible. The shape had grown thicker, brighter, and more substantial as her belly expanded and her breasts swelled and Chet turned sullen.
She'd even tried to point out the shape to Chet. She'd almost called it a "ghost" but knew Chet would have nearly laughed himself sober. He made fun of her for going up to the family cemetery and paying visits to the dear departed. Even a prayer drew a cuss and a laugh. He had no use for spiritual matters. To him, if you couldn't smoke it, drink it, or stick part of yourself in it, then it didn't add a damned bit to the day.
As Kelly watched from the window, the thing bobbed closer. Eight months old. But that wasn't right. Ghosts couldn't age, could they?
Her belly buddy squirmed. She began singing. "Hush, little baby, don't say a---"
She left the melody suspended, the creaking house adding useless percussion. Because the next line started with "Daddy." Chet. He wouldn't buy anybody a mockingbird, even if their lives depended on it.
She could always change the gender, make it "Momma's gonna" do thus and such. But she'd lost the mood, and the baby had settled. Outside, the ghost also settled, a sodden sack of spirit.
Kelly climbed into the cold bed. She rolled into the cup of mattress where she and Chet had once cuddled, played, made a baby. She wondered if she would dream of her baby's gender. Some women did that.
The quilts were nearly warm by the time she fell asleep.
Kelly walked the frosted morning on her way to feed the chickens. She tugged up her oversize sweat pants as she went. Her breath hung in front of her, a silver miracle that died away to make room for the next. Breath like a ghost.
The chickens gathered around her feet, pecking the kernels she thumbed from hardened corn cobs. There might be a couple of eggs. The baby would like that. He always gave a kick of joy when that food energy flowed through the cord.
Kelly wondered if the ghost kicked each time she ate. Or did it feed from somewhere else? An umbilical cord for the dead, with energy flowing to them from the living. Invisible, with soul juice pumping into the amniotic sac of the afterlife to keep them from fading into nonexistence. Were they connected to one another?
The cemetery was only a couple of hundred feet farther. If she were careful, she could manage the frozen-dirt trail without slipping. Being pregnant helped her keep her balance, for some strange reason. Hard on the feet, though.
She was swelling today. The health department had told her swelling might be a sign of pre-something-or-other. High blood pressure. Bad news.
She made it to the white stumps of stone, old rain-worn markers. Granite. One of them just a piece of bleached quartz about the size of a baby's head. Little flecks of mica sparkled on the skin of the quartz.
Twenty-seven Stameys. She counted again just to make sure.
Susan Eleanor, Donna Faye, Laney Grace, Melville Martin, Timothy Mark, Simon Martin. Her father John Randolph Stamey, the ten-dollar letters chiseled neat and final.
More. Many without names, all connected by the dirt.
Some older ones, the name spelled S-T-A-M-Y.
Off by itself, where the dust and dead bones were cuddled by the roots of an old apple tree, stood a lonely grave. It bore the only marble marker in the lot. A fine hand had etched a lamb near the top, amidst some Biblical-style scrollwork.
The name, Lewis, engraved in the marble.
Her father's twin, who died so quickly after birth that he never got a middle name.
The grass in the shade of the apple tree was brown. One lone apple clung to a branch, shriveled and spotted. The baby squirmed as Kelly approached the grave.
She knelt before the marker. How sad that this child had never danced across the yard, napped in the hayloft, chased leaves in the October sundown. This child had never tasted the April air, a corn bloom, the cold mist of the creek. This child had never known his mother's arms.
This child never connected.
At least Lewis had been buried with love. Paying for such a fancy monument must have been a strain on a mountain farm family. But the Stameys had always taken care of their own. From the cradle to the grave.
"Since I'm the last, who will bury me if I die?" Kelly whispered to the morning.
Chet. He would come back to bury her. Chet wasn't all bad. Once, when Kelly had a deep cut across her hand, Chet didn't make her wash dishes for a week.
But Chet was gone. And she would not be the last. She rubbed her belly. "You'll live," she said.
She had dreamed it was male. He had talked to her last night, even though in the dream he was not even old enough to walk, his skull still pointed from the pressure of birth. His eyes were brown, like John Randolph Stamey's. The family brown.
She told her belly, "You will carry on the name."
Kelly leaned forward and touched the marble. She would have a family. Her baby would live and grow. She would be connected.
She groaned as she struggled to her feet, pulling on a tree limb for balance. The sun had killed the frost and the ground glistened in a thousand wet sparkles. A mile away, rising from the forest, came a thread of chimney smoke from the Davis place. Beyond that, the Blue Ridge mountains stretched toward the horizon. Blue as a stillborn.
Mothers weren't supposed to think that way. Sure, you had your little fears, but you let them pass and thought only of the baby against your breast, alive and grunting in ceaseless need. You hoped and prayed that everything would be perfect. And you forgot about everything that could go wrong. Just like you forgot about Chet.
She made her way back to the farmhouse. Her back ached, so she sat in a rocker in the kitchen. The sun through the window fell on her belly, warmed her. The baby kicked, then rolled in her womb so that either a shoulder or a knee squeezed her bladder.
"You're going to be a mover," she told him. "Just like your daddy."
Chet, who wriggled like a snake. Who moved so fast that nothing stuck to him, no responsibility, no steady job, no woman. No family. No connections.
She looked out at the Chevy in the driveway. She'd drive herself in, when the time came. She'd have to do it early on, because you never knew what to expect with a first pregnancy. They said some women spent two days in labor, while others dropped them five minutes after the first contraction. You never knew.
Chet's sister had offered a room in town, right up close to the hospital. But Kelly belonged here, on Stamey ground.
The baby squirmed again, probably hungry. Kelly had forgotten to look for eggs. All this foolishness over graves and ghosts, and she wasn't taking care of duties. She rose from the rocker and went back to the barn. It was either that, or oatmeal again, and if she ate any more oatmeal, she'd probably give birth to a colt.
"You can't see ghosts in daylight," she told her belly.
But you could see them during the day, if the place you're in is dark enough. The barn had only a couple of windows, set high in the plank walls and covered with chicken wire. She'd tried to get Chet to run electricity to the barn, but there was always fishing or hunting or a Squad meeting. The important things.
The ghost was closer now, the closest it had ever been. She'd come around the corner and nearly dropped the little basket of eggs. But if the ghost wanted to hurt her, it had missed plenty of chances.
She couldn't run, anyway. She could waddle, maybe, take three or four steps while her hip ligaments caught fire and her breath left her. How fast was a ghost? No, if it wanted her, it would have had her any night while she was asleep.
The ghost wiggled in rhythm with the baby. Kelly tried to look at the ghost's face, but it was like watching patterns on the surface of a windy lake. Shifting, sparkling, not knowing what it wanted to be. She stood before it, waiting.
The sound came from between the trees. She knew it well, she'd laid awake many nights listening for it. Chet's Chevy pick-up, with the rusted muffler. The truck was coming down the long driveway.
Kelly smiled. Somehow, she'd known he would come back. He was a good man. He loved the good times, sure, but he knew when to stand up and be a man.
Kelly set the basket on the hard dirt floor, and the first contraction hit when she raised back up. She'd had a few Braxton-Hicks contractions, the false ones that were just practice for the real thing. This one was different. This rippled around her womb and clenched like a fist.
She gasped, but her lungs were stones. The ghost hovered nearer, its substance touching her, ice cold, and she tried to wave it away. Chet's truck stopped by the house, and she fought for enough air to call him. Another contraction hit.
Chet yelled her name. Was he mad? Did he expect to drive in after ten weeks gone to find breakfast waiting for him on the table? She'd take him the eggs, make him happy. Or throw them at him.
The next contraction drove her to her knees. They weren't supposed to come on like this, one on top of the other at the start. The health department had told her what to expect, and this was none of the normal things. This was one of those symptoms that meant you'd better get to the hospital and fast.
The ghost moved closer, Kelly could see the silver and white threads of the borrowed life that held the thing together. It was like one of Mamaw's old quilts, stitched after the woman's eyes had failed. Loose and tangled, nonsense. If not for ache in her guts, Kelly could have watched for hours, tracing the nearly-invisible lines.
The pain came again, like a knife blade and a punch at the same time, and Chet yelled her name from outside. She crawled toward a pile of hay, sucking for air. The ghost hovered over her, shaking and spasming like linen on a December clothesline. She wondered if the baby was spasming, too, but she couldn't feel him through the globe of hurt.
Maybe the ghost was causing all this, the pain, the fetal distress. If the ghost and the baby were connected, like to like, one jealous dead and the other with an entire life yet to live, years and years and years stretching out ahead, a billion heartbeats owed him . . . .
Chet called again, and this time she managed to shriek. Nothing to write home about, but it was loud enough to get through the walls of the barn. Then she curled up in the hay, clutched her stomach, and tasted the dust that spun in the air. Her water broke beneath the tails of the long flannel shirt she wore. The barn door banged open, and daylight sliced through the ghost and cut it to nothing.
"What the hell's going on?" Chet blinked into the shadows.
Kelly gulped for another breath. "B---baby..."
Chet hurried over, the smell of bourbon arriving before he did. He looked down at her, at the basket of eggs, at the amniotic fluid soaking her clothes between her legs. Kelly tried to smile at him, but her lips were dumb.
"It's our baby," she said. Everything would be okay now. The hospital was only twenty minutes away, you could hold out until then, why, the pain was nothing if you held onto that dream of brown eyes. And the baby was part Stamey, it was tough, it could bear up under a little trouble. Kelly was heavy, but Chet could manage, he would put her in the truck and slow down for the bumps.
"It ain't mine." Chet smiled. Except the smile was turned down at the corners, sharp as sickles.
His boot came fast, knocking over the basket. She heard the damp crack of the eggs, and then her mind screamed red because the boot was at her stomach, into her stomach, fast and then again, the pain worse than the contractions even. He tugged at her waistband, and she thought at first it was some new kind of pain, then cold air rushed over her skin.
Chet pulled the bloody pants down to her ankles, laughing, grunting.
"Ain't mine." He walked away, leaving her numb and broken and half naked. The truck started, backfired, and headed toward Tennessee or wherever it was he went to hide from himself.
Chet wouldn't bury her after all. No one to bury her.
Kelly, alone and dying. No, she wouldn't die alone. She would bring this child into the world. The child that was on its way, hospital or not. Dead or alive.
She writhed in the hay, wracked by waves of a new hurt, as if her pelvic bones were being ground to powder. The muscles in her stomach ached from pushing. The child inside her squirmed toward the world, toward the light, toward the land of pain and promise.
Kelly's eyes squeezed closed, tears leaking, the same saltwater that had filled the amniotic sac. The water of life. She pushed again and something tore free down below. She was going to pass out, die without ever seeing the flesh of her flesh, without ever connecting.
She forced her eyes open. The ghost hovered again, settling down upon her in the dark corner of the barn. She had no air to scream. Her final breath would be stolen by this thing of mist and dreams.
Except, as the ghost wafted over her, gentle as lamb's wool, a warmth flooded through her. This time, its touch was soothing. The pain lifted, vanished like a spirit in sunshine. The ghost pressed against her, embraced her, bathed her in whatever energy and life it was able to give back. She rose to meet it, like a lover or a penitent surrendering to a force of faith.
Kelly felt strong again, and she pushed, grunted and pushed again. The baby slid free, and she reached down between her legs. He was slick from her fluids, warm, but still. Too awfully still.
She sat up and clutched the child to her chest, wailing, all rain and thunder. The child's skin was blue. She rubbed him, shook him, pinched the tiny nose and blew into his mouth. Even though he was already dead, she admired the beautiful face. He was Stamey, all right.
"Don't leave me," she cried, the limp umbilical cord tangled across her thighs. She rubbed its chest and shared her heat. She half-crawled, half-wriggled toward the cemetery, the chill of the infant's flesh reaching deep into her soul. Blood oozed from her birth channel and her scraped knees and palm as she tugged herself over twisted roots and jagged gray stones.
Her muscles were gone but she tapped faith for fuel, dowsing for some hidden wellspring. The pale outlines of the grave markers appeared through the foliage. She continued her crippled crawl, compelled herself forward to hallowed ground, pushing over the scrabbled turf until she collapsed before the slab of etched marble.
And the ghost was there, forming again, smaller this time, its effervescence less bright. The milky threads of the ghost settled over the baby, swaddled him, gave to him that same strange energy that had revived Kelly.
The baby coughed weakly, shuddered, and then the cord pulsed. The small heart pumped, unevenly at first, then more steadily. His lungs got their first taste of air, then he let loose with the first of many complaints to come. He breathed.
Kelly hugged him, wiped the stray fluids from his mouth, smoothed his slick wisps of hair. She clawed a scythe from the barn wall and severed the umbilical cord. Then she wrapped the baby in the folds of her shirt, pressing him against her warmth. When the cries died away, she gave him her breast, and he fed.
She lay in the hay until the placenta was delivered. She looked around for the ghost, but knew she would never see it again. Not as a ghost, anyway. The child blinked up at her. In his brown eyes, those strange Stamey eyes, were those silver and white threads. As she watched, the soft threads dissipated, but not completely.
The Stameys had always taken care of their own. From the cradle to the grave, and back again.
She named him Lewis Kelly Stamey.
And it named her Mother.
Return to Ashes Table of Contents
Return to Master Table of Contents
###
SHE CLIMBS A WINDING STAIR
Outside the window, a flat sweep of sea. The ocean's tongue licks the shore as if probing an old scar. Clouds hang gray and heavy, crushed together by nature's looming anger. In the distance is a tiny white sail, or it might be a forlorn whitecap, breaking too far out to make land.
I hope it is a whitecap.
Because she may come that way, from the lavender east. She may rise from the stubborn sandy fields behind the house, or seep from the silver trees beyond. She could arrive a thousand times, in a thousand different colors, from all directions above or below.
I can almost her hear now, her soft footsteps on the stairs, the whisper of her ragged lace, the mouse-quick clatter of her fingerbones on the railing.
Almost.
It's not fear that binds my limbs to this chair, for I know she's not bent on mortal vengeance. If only I could so easily repay my sins.
Rather, I dread that moment when she appears before me, when her imploring eyes stare blankly into mine, when her lost lips part in question.
She will ask me why, and, God help me, I will have no answer.
I came to Portsmouth in my position as a travel writer on assignment for a national magazine. In my career, I had learned to love no place and like them all, for it's enthusiasm that any editor likes to see in a piece. So neither the vast stone and ice beauty of the Rockies, the wet redwood cliffs of Oregon, the fiery pastels of the Southwestern deserts, the worn and welcoming curves of the Appalachians, nor the great golden plains of the central states tugged at my heart any more or less than the rest of this fair country. Indeed, much of my impression of this land and its people came from brief conversations and framed glances on planes, trains, and the occasional cab or boat.
So the Outer Banks held no particular place in my heart as I ferried across Pamlico Sound to Ocracoke. To the north was the historic Hatteras Lighthouse, the tallest in the country, which was currently being moved from its eroding base at a cost of millions. I thought at the time that perhaps I could swing up to Hatteras and cover the work for a separate article. But assignments always came before freelance articles, because a bankable check feeds a person much better than a possibility does.
So on to bleak Portsmouth for me. At Ocracoke, I met the man who was chartered to take me to Portsmouth. As I boarded his tiny boat with my backpack and two bags, my laptop and camera wrapped against the salt air, he gave me several looks askance.
"How long you going to stay?" he asked, his wrinkled face as weathered as the hull of his boat.
"Three days, though I'm getting paid for seven," I said. "Why?"
"You don't look like the type that roughs it much, you don't mind me saying." His eyes were quick under the bill of his cap, darting from me to the open inlet to the sky and then to the cluttered dock.
"I'll manage," I said, not at all pleased with this old salt's assessment of me. True, I was more at home in a three-star hotel than under a tent, but I did hike a little and tried to be only typically overweight for a middle-aged American.
The man nodded at the sea, in the distance toward where I imagined Portsmouth lay waiting. "She can be harsh, if she's of a mind," he said. Then he pushed up the throttle and steered the boat from the dock in a gurgle and haze of oily smoke.
We went without speaking for some minutes, me hanging on the bow as the waves buffeted us and Ocracoke diminished to our rear. Then he shouted over the noise of the engine, "Hope you brought your bug repellent."
"Why?" I said, the small droplets of ocean spray making a sticky film on my face.
"Bugs'll eat you alive," he said.
"Maybe I can borrow some at the ranger station," I said.
The man laughed, his head ducking like a sea turtle's. "Ain't no rangers there. Not this time of year."
"What do you mean?"
"Hurricane season. That, and federal cuts. Government got no business on that island no way. Places like that ought to be left alone."
My information must have been wrong. Portsmouth was now administered by the National Parks Service, since the last residents had left thirty years before. An editorial assistant had assured me that at least two rangers would be on duty throughout the course of my stay. They had offices with battery-operated short-wave radio and emergency supplies. That was the only reason I had agreed to take an assignment to such a desolate place.
Not for the first time, I silently cursed the carelessness of editorial assistants. "The forecasts are for clear weather," I said, not letting the boatman know that I cared one way or another.
"You should be all right," he said. "Least as far as the weather's concerned. Still, they blow up quick sometimes."
I looked around at the great blue sea. The horizon was empty on all sides, a far cry from the past glories of this area's navigational history. In my research, I had learned that this inlet was one of the first great shipping routes in the south. Decades before the Revolutionary War, ships would come to the shallow neck and offload their goods to smaller boats. Those boats then distributed the cargo to towns across the mainland shore. Spurred by this industry, Portsmouth had grown up from the bleak gray-white sands.
"A lot of shipwrecks below?" I asked, more to keep the old man talking than to fill any gaps in my background knowledge.
"Hells of them," he said. "Got everything from old three-mast schooners to a few iron freighters. Some of them hippie divers from Wood's Hole said they saw a German U-boat down there, but they was probably just smoking something funny."
"So the bottom's not too deep here?"
"Depends. The way the sand shifts here from one year to the next, could be fifteen feet, could be a hundred. That's why the big boys don't come through here no more."
And that's why Portsmouth had died. As the inlet became shallower, ships no longer wanted to risk getting stranded or else breaking up on the barrier reefs. The town had tried to adapt to its misfortune, and was once an outpost for ship rescue teams near the end of the 19th century. More than a few of the town's oarsmen were lost in futile rescue or salvage attempts.
Then ships began avoiding the area entirely, and the town residents left, family by family. The population dwindled from its height of 700 to a few dozen in the 1950s. The stubborn Portsmouth natives continued to cling to their home soil despite the lack of electricity, no steady food supply, irregular mail service, and a dearth of doctors and teachers. But even the hardiest finally relented and moved across the sound to a safer and less harsh existence, leaving behind a ghost town, the buildings virtually intact.
"There she is," the boatman said, and I squinted against the sparkling water. The thin strand came slowly into view. The beach was beautiful but bleak, a scattering of gulls the only movement besides the softly swaying seagrass. Low dunes rolled away from the flat white sands.
"Used to be a lot of wrecks right along this stretch," the boatman said.
"I read that they'd go out in hurricanes to rescue shipwrecked crews," I said.
"Brave folks, they was," he said, nodding. "'Course, you'd have to be brave to set down roots in that soil, or else crazy. My people came from here, but they left around the First World War, when the getting was good. They's still lots of them on the island, though."
I was confused. "I thought the town was abandoned, except for the rangers."
He gave his dolphin-squeak of laughter. "Them that's under the sand, I mean. In the cemeteries. Got left where they was buried."
He guided the boat toward a crippled dock that was barely more than black posts jutting from the shallow water. The engine dropped to a groaning whine as he eased back the throttle. When we came broadside to the dock, he tied off with his crablike hands. I climbed out onto the slick, rotted planks.
"You ever go back?" I asked. "To have a look around, to walk through the houses that your folks used to live in?"
He studied the swirling foam and shook his head. "Nope. The past is best left dead and buried. You'd be wise to remember that."
I took my baggage from him, and I thought he might at least help me carry it to dry land. But he didn't move from the helm.
"You'll meet me here at four o'clock on Friday?" I asked.
He nodded, avoiding my eyes. "Unless a hurricane blows up, I'll be here."
"I trust the check came through okay?" I knew that publishers' checks could sometimes be excruciatingly slow in arriving, and I didn't want my ticket back to the mainland to be voided. This man was my only link with civilization, unless I somehow gained access to the short-wave radios.
"The money's good," he said. "I reckon that's the only reason you're doing this."
"That, plus I'm curious," I said. "There's not many places where a person can get lost in time anymore."
"Just make sure you don't get too lost," he said. "See you on Friday. Be sure and stay out of the houses, and for the Good Lord's sake, don't go in the graveyards."
He untied and shoved away, then turned the rudder until his back was to me. I waved, but he didn't turn around. The boat was out of sight by the time I had wrestled my bags up to the sandy hills that protected the island from the worst of the wind.
As I crested the dunes, the dead homes of Portsmouth lay sprawled before me. They were as gray-white as the ground, the paint flaked from the Colonial-style houses by decades of natural sand-blasting. The houses were hundreds of feet apart, all perched several feet off the ground by concrete or brick piers. A few water oaks and scrubby jack pines filled the expansive gaps between the structures. I set down my bags on the first porch I came to, at a three-story home that was the tallest on the island.
I didn't believe the boatman that the island was completely lifeless. Even if the ranger stations were abandoned, surely a few campers or day-tripping sailors were on the island. I didn't think my equipment would be stolen, but my laptop was worth several thousand dollars. And if my food supplies were stolen, I couldn't walk around the corner to a convenience store and replenish them.
Despite the boatman's warning, I entered the house, the old dark pine boards groaning under my feet. The shade was a relief from the August sun, and the narrow windows broke the breeze until it was comforting instead of brutal. The several rooms on the bottom floor were empty. I found the stairs to the left of the parlor and climbed the well-dried treads. On the second floor, I found a couple of old chairs, one a rocker. I then explored the third floor, which was barely more than a gabled attic. The view was spectacular from the lone window, and I could see most of the town as well as both the lee and Atlantic shores, since the island was scarcely a mile wide. The window also had a small ledge suitable for typing. I determined to make the room my headquarters for the brief duration of my visit.
Under park rules, visitors could tour the homes but were forbidden to stay in them. I was usually scrupulous about such matters, but if even the rangers had left this place to the elements, then I rationalized my squatter's rights by the fact that I myself was a natural force. Besides, after my article came out, perhaps renewed interest in the place could generate some users' fees for the National Park Service. Good publicity never hurt come budget time.
The sun was sliding rapidly behind the sea to the west. I stuck my supplies in a dark doorless closet, carried the rocker up to the room, and sat before the window to rest. Looking down, I imagined the town as it must have been a hundred-and-fifty years ago, with a bustling trade down by the shore, children running through the rutted sandy streets, women in long dresses going about their business. Perhaps a horse or two, certainly no more, had plodded along pulling carts laden with shipping goods, kegs of water, thick coils of rope, and sacks of meal or flour. I could almost hear the sailors' cries and shanties as they loaded and unloaded their longboats.
Behind an old drooping oak to the north lay a gated cemetery. Some of the markers had fallen over, and the few angels and crosses that still stood against the wind were pitted and worn. I thought of the boatman's words, how the cemeteries should be avoided. But nothing wrote out the history of a place better than the names and dates of its dead, and I knew I could not resist visiting them.
I may have dozed, though I rarely slept before the sun did. The next thing I knew, I was walking in the cemetery, feet bare against the wiry grass. The sky was a deep azure, moving toward a nearly starless twilight. The sea breeze moaned between the marble markers, the air tasting of salt and seaweed and driftwood.
She arose from nowhere, as pale as the sand. Dark hair spilled across her pretty face, and her eyes were in black contrast to her skin. Her dress was Victorian-era, long-sleeved and elegantly white, the waistband high, the shoulders and hems sewn with lace. She came forward from the shadows and held out her hands.
She was young, probably eighteen, though her hair was not at all of modern fashion. For a moment, I thought she and some of her friends might be having a costume party on the shore, gathered round the bonfire with guitars and wine and laughter before coupling off for sandy sex. But her expression was far too serious for a beach party refugee's.
"Please, sir, there's a wreck in the bay," she said, her voice tremulous but strong. "Can you help?"
"Pardon me?" I said.
"They're out there," she said, waving a wild hand to the east. "The Walker Montgomery ran aground, forty hands on her, sir. Our men shoved off in the boats, but now I fear they, too, have found trouble. They have been gone so long, sir, so very long."
Her eyes brimmed moistly in the glimmer of the sallow moon. I shook my head, sure someone was playing a prank on me. They must have seen me and taken advantage of the isolation at my expense. I fully expected her companions to emerge from the darkness, laughing boisterously, then inviting me for drinks.
But her eyes stared, beautifully haunted eyes, eyes that bore into me like harpoons. No mirth was hidden in them. She touched my arm, and her fingers were cool. "Help them," she said. "Help him."
"Him?" I said stupidly.
"My Benjamin," she said. "At helm of the lead rescue boat."
I held my hands apart. "I . . . I don't understand."
She pulled on my sleeve, her hair shielding her eyes. "There's another boat by the bay," she said. "Perhaps you and I, working the oars together, can reach them in time. Please hurry, before the storm takes them all."
There was no storm. The waves broke on the shore in their eternal, soft wash of sound. The wind was hardly strong enough to raise a kite. But something in her voice made my heart beat faster at the same time that my blood chilled. The moon was suddenly swallowed by the high clouds.
"Follow me," she said, turning and heading between the gravestones into darkness.
I stood where I was, then glanced back at the three-story house where I was staying. A dim light shone there, perhaps the candle I had used for reading. When I looked back, she was gone, and though I ran some distance through the sand, I couldn't find her.
Just then the wind gained speed, the clouds divided, and the quarter-moon's glare bathed the beach. The bay was barren and calm. There was no sign of the lady in white, not even a footprint in the wet sand.
Somewhat disconcerted, I finally made my way back to the house. I went upstairs to the room where I had spread my sleeping bag and laid out my books and laptop. The candle had burned down to half its length. I must have been out on the beach for hours. Numb, I crawled into the bag and sought refuge in sleep, images of her beautiful face dominating my restless thoughts.
In the morning, I laughed at my strange dreams and laid out a few more of my supplies. I opened a tin of fish and ate an apple, then spent an hour at the keyboard, typing my impressions of yesterday's debarkment. Satisfied that I had given my editor a good start for her money, I changed into shorts and a light shirt and headed into the heart of the ghost town.
As I walked past the vacant homes and blank windows, I felt as if eyes were upon me. I even shouted once, a great questioning "Hello," still not convinced that the island was completely uninhabited. Nothing answered me but a keening gull's cry.
I found the ranger station, but it was securely locked, the doors and windows barred with steel. Next to it was a building that must have been a general store, for it had benches and a watering trough out front, and assorted rusty hooks and hangers covered its front wall. The interior was desolate, though. I walked past the long, collapsed counter to where the rear of the building opened onto a pier.
I pushed the door aside from where it dangled on warped hinges, then went to the end of the pier. The Atlantic was laid out before me, bejeweled and glorious, a million diamonds on its surface. I looked out across the bay to the protective cup of dunes four hundred yards away. Then I recalled the previous night, and for the briefest of moments, I saw a clipper, its bulkheads shattered, the prow tilted toward the sun, the sails like tattered ghosts. I blinked and the illusion passed. I laughed to myself, though sweat pooled under my arms.
The day grew rapidly warm, and since the tide was calm, I removed my shirt and shoes and jumped into the water. After a swim, I returned to my makeshift studio, regretting the lack of a shower. I ate a ready-made lunch, then gathered my camera to make the four-mile journey to the island's southern tip.
As I walked that narrow barrier island, I discovered why all the settlement was on the upper end. The land was little more than a grim cluster of dunes, with swampy pockets of trapped water scattered here and there along the interior. They weren't the vibrant, teeming swamps such as those in Florida. These were bleak, lifeless pools where only mosquitoes seemed to thrive. The parasitic insects set upon me in clouds, and I spent more time beating them away than I did finding suitable photography subjects.
I gave up barely halfway to my destination because the scenery was so hopelessly unvarying. I decided I'd capture some sunsets and sunrises instead, to focus more on the grandly archaic buildings and the Portsmouth beaches. I slogged back to the abandoned town, hoping to write a little more before dark. But I couldn't concentrate on my work. Instead, I stared out the window as the fingers of night reached across the town, thinking of my dream woman and comparing her beauty to that of all the other women I'd known.
Restless, I walked the beach at gray dusk. I kept to the Atlantic side, along the bay. I was nearing the old store when she came from the darkness beneath the pier. She wore the same dress that had graced her gentle curves on the previous night. Her fine hair fluttered in the wind, and rarely had I seen such a fine creature. Her pallid skin was the only flaw, the only thing that separated her from perfection.
Once again her dark eyes searched me, silently begging. "Can we go now?" she said. "They must surely be near drowning."
I had decided that perhaps she had lived on the island for some time. And though I had convinced myself that the night before had been a dream, a part of me had been hoping it was real, that I might have a chance to gaze upon her lovely likeness again. And there she was before me. "Where are they?" I asked, nearly breathless.
She raised her hand and pointed across the bay to where a streak of moonlight rippled across the water. "See them, oh, what a terrible storm."
And for an instant, I saw, waves rearing fully fifteen feet high, the rain falling in solid silver sheets, the longboats tossed on the angry ocean like bits of cork in a storm grate. I felt the blood drain from my face.
"Please hurry, sir," she said. "My poor Benjamin is out there."
She brushed past me, grabbing my hand. She was solid, not a mere captivating vision. My senses swirled, sound, touch, and sight all confused. I was as enthralled by her beauty and nearness as I was mortified by the vision of the storm. I let her pull me along, her hurried entreaties competing with the roar of the vicious wind. In those moments when I could take my eyes from here, I glanced at the shoreline ahead of us.
A boat lay beached on the sand, the tide frothing around the stern. The waves grew in force, slapping angrily and reaching farther and farther up the beach. The first drops of rain needled my skin, but the sky was nearly cloudless. I didn't question any of the impossible events. I thought of nothing but the delicate yet strong hand that gripped mine, and how I hoped it would never let go.
We reached the boat, and she made to shove off. The rain's intensity had increased, and her wet dress clung closely to her corseted body, her hair draped in wild tangles about her shoulders and back. I must have watched transfixed for some moments, because she turned to me and shouted, "Come, help me. We've not much time."
I ran to her side, bent my energies against the bow, and felt the boat slide into the water. A tremendous wave lapped up and pulled it free of the sand. She clambered over the side, motioning for me to follow. The storm raged about us, the wind now so strong that I could scarcely stand against it. In the darkness, I could no longer see the broken, tilted ship or the would-be rescuers.
She reached her hand to me. "Come, I can't work the oars alone. Benjamin is out there."
I lifted my hand to take hers, then dropped it suddenly. I shook my head, more to myself than to her. This was madness. All madness.
A great wave crashed and rolled back into the sea, the current pulling her away in the boat. The last I saw was her open mouth and startled eyes, stark against the whiteness of her exquisite features. Then she disappeared into the howling storm. I backed away from the rising waters, my arms thrown over my face to block the blinding rain. I came to the dunes and scrambled onto and over them, and found myself among the houses of Portsmouth. I collapsed in exhaustion.
The storm abated as suddenly as it had arisen. When I finally opened my eyes again, the moon was out and the wind softly blew the tickling seagrass against me. I stood, disoriented, and looked over the bay. The water was as smooth as dark glass.
I walked between those silent houses, back to my room. Surely I was dreaming, I would wake up and find my article half-written, a litter of empty cans and dirty clothes around me, my face stubbled and in need of a shave. Surely I was dreaming.
Yet I awoke in clothes soaked with saltwater.
I spent the next day wandering around the town. I forgot all about my assignment, and left my camera sealed in its bag. I told myself over and over that I only had to get through one more night, and then a boat would arrive to ferry me back to the sane, ordinary world. I wouldn't let myself go mad there in that isolated and grim ghost town of Portsmouth.
I came upon the cemetery and impulsively passed through its fallen corroded gates. I went to that place where I had first seen the young woman. In that brilliant light of day, the sun reflecting off sea and sand, I saw the details on the markers I had not observed on my first night on the island. The two tombstones were identical in both shape and the amount of erosion.
The first read "Benjamin Elijah Johnson, 1826-1846." Under that, in smaller script: "Taken By The Sea." The one beside it, etched in alabaster, read "Mary Claire Dixon, 1828-1846." Hers bore a subscript identical to the neighboring marker's.
What was most striking about the stones were the engraved hands. The hand on Benjamin Johnson's marker, though well-worn by a century-and-a-half of exposure, was clearly reaching to the left, toward Mary Dixon's marker. Mary's hand, slimmer and more graceful in bas-relief, reached to the right, as if yearning for a final touch. The poignancy was plainly writ in that eternal arrangement.
Mary's hand. I bent forward and placed my fingers on it, lightly explored it. I knew those curves and hollows, those slender fingers, the sculptor's skill too finely honed. I had held that hand before.
I don't know how long I stood in the graveyard. The shadows eventually grew long, the breeze changed direction, and I knew that if I didn't move soon I might be forever rooted in that spot. I tore myself away from the twin graves and raced back to my room. I would not leave it, I decided. I would remain there, in the sleeping bag or rocking chair, until my boat arrived.
That night the clouds massed from the southeast and the wind rattled the few remaining shutters of the ancient house. I hoped with all my might that the weather would hold clear, lest my boatman lose his nerve. But as I watched from my high window, the storm raged toward the island, the wind screaming as the rain began. Suddenly a bolt of lightning ripped across the charred sky, and I saw her in the yard below the house.
My Mary.
She looked up at me with those familiar, ravishing eyes, that long hair darkened by rain, her comely form encased in that grand dress. My heart beat faster and my pulse throbbed with equal parts dread and desire. On a second lightning strike that followed closely on the heels of the first, I saw that she was motioning for me. I tried to pull my eyes away, but I could not.
Though I commanded my flesh to remain by the window, my legs found a will of their own and carried me to the stairs. I went down, a step at a time, my heart racing with dreadful anticipation. When I reached the first floor, the rain had increased, and the whole house shook on its flimsy pilings. She was waiting on the porch for me.
"Will you come?" she asked.
"Mary," I said.
She nodded, then, without a word, she turned and ran into the brunt of the storm.
I jumped after her, dashing madly through the dead town of Portsmouth, shouting at the sky, my curses lost against the fury. The wind among the hollow houses sounded like the laughter of a great crowd. I ran on, toward the beach where I knew the longboat would be.
She had already worked the boat into the water, and beckoned me with an oar. I fought through the turbulent sea, finally gaining the stern and climbing aboard. She had locked two of the oars and arched her back, dipping the oars into the churning sea. I found two more oars in the bottom and locked them into place, clumsily trying to match my strokes with hers.
It was useless, I knew. We were two against the ocean's might, two against nature, two alone. But I didn't care. All that mattered was Mary, pleasing Mary, being with Mary.
Lightning lashed again, and I saw the now-familiar tableau of sinking clipper and endangered rowboats. It may have been my imagination, but I thought I saw a man standing in the fore of one of the rowboats, waving his arms in our direction. Certainly I imagined it.
"Benjamin!" she shouted, looking over her straining shoulders. A wave crested nearby and the salt stung my eyes and nose and throat.
"Row faster," Mary yelled to me. "We have to save Benjamin."
And if we did? If somehow we managed to beat the brutal sea and pull alongside his boat, if we then were blessed with the miracle of returning to shore, what then?
Mary would have her Benjamin, and I would have nothing. I would lose Mary.
I stopped rowing, and the longboat careened against the waves. Mary saw that I had stopped.
"Help me," she said, those beautiful eyes confused, her precious mouth moving in silent question.
I shook my head. "No," I said. "Benjamin's dead. You're mine, now."
I reversed direction with the oars, working one side until I turned the boat around. I expected her to fight, to thrash her own oars opposite mine. But she released them, and they slid into the waves.
She stood in the rocking boat, all grace and glory and the deepest beauty ever crafted. Without a word, she dove into the sea.
I shouted, "I love you," but I don't know if she heard me.
I waited several minutes that seemed hours, fighting the currents, watching for her to surface. The lightning struck again, and in its luminance, I saw that the clipper and rescue boats were gone, victims of the callous ocean. I imagined that each flash of foam, each breaking wave, was the lace of Mary's dress.
But she didn't appear. I battled the oars and clawed my way toward shore, though I lost my sense of direction. All that remained was to row and row, to drag the foundering boat through the sea that desperately wanted to swallow it.
The storm soon dwindled and died, and I found myself on the sand. As I coughed the salt water from my lungs, the east glowed with the pink of dawn. I struggled to my hands and knees and looked across the bay. No boat, no wreck, no Mary.
I hauled myself back to the house where I was staying. It took me many minutes to navigate the stairs, then I finally made it to my room and my chair and my high window. I took up my post, a watcher, a lighthouse keeper for the dead.
Three days, and still I keep my post.
I hope the boatman has given up on me. As much fear as filled his eyes when he hinted at the island's secrets, I don't think he even came ashore. I wonder if he will report my absence, or if he has his own orders, his own obsessions. It may take a week or more before anyone finds me.
Plenty of time for her to find me first, if she so desires.
Desire is an odd thing, a destructive thing, a strangely beautiful thing. Perhaps that is the lesson of this tale, the one that has replaced the travel article on my laptop. Whoever finds this account can make of it what they will. For the story was written many decades before, the ending the only thing left in the balance.
The ending.
I hear her now, below me, her footsteps as graceful as the rhythm of the sea. She climbs a winding stair, closer now.
Or perhaps it's only the wind creaking ancient wood.
I don't know which I dread the most.
Her arrival in lace and deceived rage?
Or her never arriving, never again granting me a glimpse of her everlasting and nonexistent beauty?
I can almost hear her now.
Almost.
Return to Ashes Table of Contents
Return to Master Table of Contents
###
MUST SEE TO APPRECIATE
This was the part that Reynolds hated the most.
The deal was so close he could almost smell it. The fish was nibbling, practically had the worm between his nubby gums. Reynolds had wowed the mark with the double bay windows, the parquet flooring, the loft bedroom with skylight, and the view of the Appalachian Mountains stretching a blue hundred miles in the distance. Custom cabinets and a cherry stair railing hadn't hurt, either, and the deck was wide enough to field a baseball game. Surely that was enough to convince anybody that this twenty-acre piece of real estate and 7,200-square-foot floor plan was the steal of a lifetime, especially at the sacrificial price of four hundred grand.
But the mark wanted to see the basement. They always wanted to see the basement. It figured. Reynolds was stuck handling the only haunted house on the local market, and these idiot buyers didn't make the job any easier.
"The bulb's burned out in the basement, David," Reynolds said. "Had the caretaker up here the other day, and said he'd get around to changing it. You'd think he'd carry one in his truck, you know it? Good help is hard to find around these parts, David."
Maybe he shouldn't have said that last bit. This buyer was from Florida, and might think that poor work habits were an Appalachian trademark. Reynolds looked David in the eye and smiled. It was Reynolds' plastic smile, the closer smile, the glib smarmy hypertoothiness that he'd learned in salesman school.
The man reached into his back pocket and pulled out a flashlight. "I used to be a builder," David said. "You can tell a lot about how a house is put together by looking at the floor joists. A house needs a good foundation, especially when it's clinging to the side of a ridge."
Damn, Reynolds thought. "David, you're a man after my own heart. A real fixer-upper, I'll bet. Not that you'll need to do much work on this house."
Even though every corner is slightly out of square.
Reynolds thought about slapping David gently on the back to punctuate the statement, then decided against it. David seemed more like the firm-handshake, no-nonsense type. A tough sell. A man that was hard to sucker. The kind of man who wore a little tape measure on his belt.
Reynolds headed toward the door that led to the basement stairs. The chill crept over him as he palmed the door handle. He put an ear to the door, pretending to check the hinges when actually he was listening for the spook. Damned thing had cost him a commission three times already.
Reynolds made a show of looking at his watch. "You said you had to meet your wife at the airport?"
"Yeah," David said, studying the blown gypsum ceiling for cracks. "But there's plenty of time."
"Traffic can be a bear around here. You may have noticed that all the roads are twisty, and you're bound to get behind some flatlander tourist---no offense, mind you."
David stepped to the basement door. "I'll manage."
"David, this is a whole lot of house for the money, David," Reynolds blurted. Had he said David's name twice? In realtor finishing school, he'd learned that you used the name of the potential buyer as much as possible. But maybe he was overdoing it.
He was losing his concentration. Sweat pooled in the armpits of his shirt and stained his serge jacket. He lightly bit his lip to bring himself under control. The bite turned into a disguising smile.
David smiled back. The man was too patient, in Reynolds' opinion. One of those forty-somethings who had already finished his life's work, his bank account probably set for the downhill run. Had a kid at Duke and one in an academy somewhere, a tennis-playing wife who probably came from old textile money. Reynolds saw no troubles in that tan, placid face, and a flare of jealousy rocketed across his heart.
But it wasn't David's fault that Reynolds dropped eighty grand in a sour time-share deal. No, not time-share. Interval ownership was the new gold-plated term for it. But by any name, Reynolds was in the hole and had a lot riding on this sale. Haunted house or not.
David switched on the flashlight. Reynolds turned the knob and let the basement door swing fully open. The hinges creaked like an old woman's bones.
"Going to need a little oil there," David said, playing the light over the hinges.
"Y---yeah," Reynolds stammered, as the cold crypt air wafted up from the basement and bathed his skin.
"You going first?"
"You're the guest."
"But you know the territory better."
"Yes, yes, of course, David."
Careful, Reynolds chided himself. He was oh-so-close to nailing this one down. All he had to do was smile and walk down the stairs, let David have his little look, rap on a few floor joists, kick the support beams, and they'd be back in the office in no time, running some numbers and working up papers. And Reynolds would be rid of this house forever.
All Reynolds had to do was finish the tour.
He surreptitiously wiped the sweat from his brow and stepped past David into the murk. His feet found the steps and he laughed aloud, trying to hide his nervousness.
"What's so funny?" David said.
"I forgot to tell you, the basement's half-finished. The previous owner was converting it into a rec room. Talk about your amenities, David. Only a little bit of payout, and you can have the perfect little hideaway. From the wife and kids, know what I mean?"
"I like my wife and kids," David said. "What about the previous owners?"
Damn, damn, damn. They always asked that question. Reynolds cleared his throat and continued down the roughed-in wooden stairs, following the flashlight's beam. The darkness swallowed the light ten feet ahead as hungrily as the crawl-space swallowed the sound of their footsteps.
"Well, David, the previous owners were---" This was the real no-no. The one thing he'd learned was that you didn't talk about people who had died in a house, especially a house you were trying to sell. Buyers were superstitious.
"The previous owners were old, and this was a little too much house for them. They bought into a sweet condo deal on the coast." Reynolds found lying distasteful. Sometimes lying was difficult for a salesman to avoid. But he preferred the more sophisticated methods of distraction, bait-and-switching, and blinding the customer with useless but eye-catching extravagances.
A nice window treatment kept them from noticing that the window was broken. A crystal chandelier hid stains caused by a leaky roof. A gilt-edged and wall-mounted mirror kept them so busy looking at themselves that they failed to see the odd shapes hovering in the alcove.
David shined the light into the belly of the house as they reached the smooth concrete floor at the bottom of the stairs. "Going to need a few strip lights down here."
"Great place for a pool table and a big-screen TV," Reynolds said, looking around warily.
David studied the plain gray walls, the nails visible in the sheetrock. "Smells a little musty," he said.
"Yeah, been closed up too long. You get a little air in here, it'll clear up in no time."
It's just a little decay. And that odor that never seemed to go away completely. Nothing unusual.
David sniffed again. "Sure there's no mice?"
Mice? Everybody had mice. But maybe David didn't tolerate mice. Some buyers were like that, even a man's man like David.
Everybody's got their own little quirks, don't they? You, for example. Acting like a big-shot wheeler-dealer, cool as a termite, like you could care less whether anybody ever takes this dump off your hands.
"Look how solid this construction is, Dave," Reynolds said, sneaking a peek to see if David minded the shortened form of his name.
David pounded on the sheet rock partition wall and frowned. "Sounds hollow."
Reynolds licked his lips. The spook should be here by now.
"So, why are the owners selling?" David asked. He shined the light into Reynolds' face, causing him to squint.
"Uh...they wanted to move to a warmer climate. These Appalachian winters can be tough."
Oops. You need to sell them on the summers, when the air is fresh and the shade inviting and the cool creek bubbling beside the house is an asset, not an ice-coated hazard. Play up the investment angle, too.
"They move to Florida?" David asked, investigating the galvanized ductwork that ran beneath the flooring. Yellow insulation filled the gaps between the floor joists.
"Sure. Doesn't everybody?" Reynolds chuckled. He kept his eyes glued to the bouncing circle of the flashlight beam, though the thing he really wanted to see was probably hiding in the darkness, mere inches from the edge of light. His dread was nearly matched by his curiosity.
"You wouldn't be lying to me, would you, Reynolds?" The light exploded in his eyes again. "About somebody living here?"
He blinked rapidly. "I don't know what you're talking about, David. Now, we need to be getting back. Afraid I've got another appointment."
The light remained on his face. Reynolds could see nothing of the man behind the bright wash.
"Haven't you seen enough?" Reynolds said, a little bit of the hey-old-chum tone still working its way into his voice. He decided to give one last try at turning over this property. "You just can't find places like this anymore. More than a mile from the nearest house. You don't have to worry about the neighborhood brats bugging you."
"I like kids," David said.
"Sure, David. And your kids will love it here. Plenty of room to play, hike, or just scream at the top of your lungs if you feel like it. You can scream for days and no one will notice."
"And why would somebody need to scream? Is this place occupied or something?"
David's words were eaten by the shadows. The stillness of the basement was broken only by Reynolds' ragged heartbeat and breath.
"Occupied?" Reynolds said, not even having to pretend to sound startled. "This place isn't occupied."
"You wouldn't lie to me, would you, Reynolds?"
He wasn't lying. The house wasn't haunted. Rather, it was...what was that catch-phrase? Oh yes, multi-dimensionally possessed.
Still, beads of sweat erupted on the high bare plane of Reynolds' forehead. The light mercifully fell away and raced across the smooth white-gray of the cement.
"David, David, David," Reynolds tutted, recovering somewhat now that his face was hidden by the darkness again. "I'm not a high-pressure kind of guy. If you don't want the house, that's fine with me."
Well, not all THAT fine, because then I might have to drape a rope over the ductwork and twist a little noose and take myself a midnight swing.
Not many buyers existed for a palace like this. While the layout was great, the house was a little too angled. You stepped inside and you felt uneasy. The walls listened and the electrical sockets were tiny black eyes and every single nail and screw and chunk of spackle whispered and every board groaned, even when the wind was still.
Surely David had sensed it, too. That's why he'd asked the question. It's the kind of house you'd expect to be occupied.
"I'll have to put some deadwood braces between those joists," David said. "They're starting to bow a little."
Reynolds smiled to himself. David had spoken possessively. The deal was all but sealed.
If only she would stay away long enough to get David back up the stairs.
"Uh, David? Don't you have a plane to catch?"
"Uh?"
"Your wife. You said you were picking her up at the airport."
"Oh, yeah. Guess I've seen enough, anyhow." David headed for the stairs.
Reynolds' heart flipped for joy. He didn't even mind that David had left him in darkness. He hurried after David.
That's when it came out, built itself from the bricks and mortar of nightmare. Nailed itself together with the claw hammer of insanity. Staple-gunned its mockery of flesh into form.
It was her.
She looked him in the face, her eyes deeply bright and strange, her mouth curled into a smile. "You're real," she whispered, no fear in her voice.
Reynolds drew in a sharp breath, then swallowed the scream that filled his lungs. The basement air tasted of fiberglass and tomb dust. David paused on the stairs, then whipped the light around.
"What was that?" David asked.
"Nothing," Reynolds said. "Nothing but a bunch of nothing."
David thundered down the steps, splashed the light around in the corners of the room. "I know I saw it."
Reynolds adjusted the necktie that seemed to be choking him. "Listen, David my man, you've seen all there is to see."
"Except the breather."
"The breather?" Reynolds shrugged innocently. The last three prospective buyers had said nothing, only shivered and hurried up the stairs. None of them had returned Reynolds' follow-up phone calls. But David seemed to be immune to the skin-crawling sensation caused by the basement's tangible tenant.
"I know there's a breather here," David said, sounding like all the other pompous out-of-staters who thought money gave them the right to bully around mountain people.
"No breathers," Reynolds said. "Breathers don't exist."
"Most of the summer houses in the Appalachian Mountains are supposed to be empty. I'll be damned if I'm going to own a house that has a restless spirit banging around. Where's the peace in that?"
The woman stepped into the flashlight's beam. Reynolds stumbled backward, bumping into the bottom step and nearly losing his balance.
"I see you," she said, reaching out her hand as if to touch an expensive fabric. "I knew this place was haunted."
David splashed his beam of light on the breather. Her satisfied grin absorbed the light, sucked it into the netherwhere of her chest. The dim basement grew even darker, became the pit of a hell so bleak that even fire could not draw air. The only luminescence came from the strange glowing eyes of the human, floating like the lost moons of insane planets.
Reynolds fell to his knees, his only comfort the hard, cold concrete. He hated this next part. The only thing worse than losing a sale was watching a fellow ghost have his very foundations rocked. The prospects either went insane or found a religion that worked, but either way Reynolds remained stuck with this damned piece of overpriced unreal estate.
The woman flipped on the overhead lights and punched at her cellular phone, her breath as sharp as a winter wind in her excitement. "Meryl?" she said into the phone. "You know that house I just bought? It's haunted! Oh, this is just so terribly delightful."
David backed up the stairs slowly, disgust and horror etched on his face.
"Jackie's going to simply die with jealousy," the breather prattled into her phone. "We'll get together for a séance soon, I promise. Right here in the basement, that's the cold spot. Of course, I'll have to redecorate first."
Reynolds drifted after David, who had already reached the top of the stairs. "David. It's not what you think. I can slash it to three-and-a-quarter, David. But the offer's not going to be on the table long."
David was pale, shocked, too recently dead to comprehend all the workings of the immaterial world.
"Excuse me, I...I have a plane crash to catch," David said, looking down at his hands as if expecting to see an owner's manual for his amorphous flesh. Then he shimmered and whisked across the room.
"Call me?" Reynolds said weakly, but David was already through the wall.
Reynolds succumbed to the sideways gravity and the interdimensional currents dragged him to the basement stairs. He sat on the hard wood, mingling with the dust that the breather had stirred with her industrious cleaning. Her words echoed off the concrete walls, frightening and shrill.
"And black velvet drapes," she said into the phone. "No, there are no windows down here, but drapes are called for all the same. One can't have a séance room without black velvet drapes. I'll have some crates of candles shipped in for the occasion. Oh, this is going to be simply divine."
Reynolds rubbed at his weary eyes and looked up at the beam where he had draped the noose. The wood was slightly splintered from the friction caused by his body weight. Eighty grand in the hole hadn't been worth killing himself over. Not to get trapped in a hell like this one, where he had to close a final deal before being allowed to rest in peace.
"Oh, I'm certain he'll be back," the woman said. "He had that look. You know, the one your second husband had? Yes, the 'doomed puppy dog' look." Her laughter hurt Reynolds' ears.
Reynolds stood and brushed the cobwebs from his sleeves. No use hanging around here. He'd be summoned back soon enough. In the meantime, self-pity wasn't going to get this house moved. He'd learned that in salesman school. The only way to unload property was to circulate, press the flesh, talk fast and smile faster.
Maybe the breather would take a vacation, fly down to Florida, go on a tour of America's haunted houses or something. A window of opportunity would open, another mark would want to be shown around. All Reynolds had to do was keep the old confidence, comb the hair over his bald spot, and act like a generous uncle who wanted to make someone's American dream come true, and maybe soon this house would be somebody else's problem.
She'd said he looked a doomed puppy dog. What an insult. The living had absolutely no sensitivity. Well, at least he didn't lurk in dark basements hoping to catch a glimpse of the other side.
Reynolds tried on a glib smile. His "closer face." A good salesman didn't stay down for long. He whistled as he drifted through the wall and under the moonlight in search of buyers.
A sucker was born every minute, he reminded himself. And just as many suckers died.
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###
THE THREE-DOLLAR CORPSE
The morning sky was red-orange, the colors of hell and Georgia August. Ragsdale squinted into the brightness and marveled at how rapidly the scant dew had evaporated. Another fifty men would die today, but that was today. At the moment, the only dead that Ragsdale cared about were yesterday's.
The corpses were in a line, laid out like sacks of grain. Some had been stripped of their rotted clothing, leaving pale skin stretched taut over bones, flesh exposed to the unblinking eye of dawn. Others, treated more mercifully, had scraps of blankets covering their rigid faces. Those lucky souls were tended by friends. The rest were accompanied by traders like Ragsdale.
Ragsdale could see Tibbets' corpse, down at the end of the row where the freshest ones were. He mourned the waste of a good body. As a tent mate of Tibbets, Ragsdale had a right to be the one who bore the corpse to the dead-house. But a corpse at the end of the line was nearly worthless, and brought only fifty cents for the privilege of carrying it out. So he'd sold the privilege and bought the three-dollar corpse at the front of the line.
Those near the front of the line had first chances with the smugglers waiting in the woods beyond the stockade walls. A good day of trading kept one's belly full and made a handful of dollars besides. The war would end someday, and Ragsdale planned on having a small fortune tucked away inside his boots the day he walked out of the camp for good.
Some of the soldiers freely distributed their smuggled goods to keep others alive. Ragsdale didn't believe in camaraderie. Only each man to himself, each man to live or die as his wits allowed, each man abandoned and alone, even though 40,000 of them were cramped into a place barely 25 acres across. And each death was welcomed, if not by the poor sufferer himself, then certainly by the huckster tradesmen like Ragsdale.
He held his kerchief over his face to block out the wave of corrupted air, but the kerchief smelled as bad as the bodies. He had once used the kerchief to filter the water from the sluggish stream that served as both drinking supply and sewage for the prisoners in the Andersonville camp. Even after several strainings, the water still looked like tea in the bottom of his dented tin cup. But all he could do was grimace and swallow, the fetid particles imparting a sweetly foul aftertaste. Ever since he'd become a huckster, though, he had all the fresh water he could drink.
"You see Tibbets go over?" It was McCloskey, a young tough who had the corpse next to Ragsdale's. McCloskey had been working his way up the line over the last few weeks, a sign of affluence. Ragsdale didn't like the competition. McCloskey was starting to get some of the better trade goods, things like cigars and real bread and even an occasional pint of whiskey. Damned Irish, Ragsdale thought. But he kept his face as stolid as those of the dead.
"Yeah," Ragsdale said, quietly, so that the guards assembled by the gate didn't snarl at him. "I wish I coulda got that fresh one instead of this here sorry sack of maggots." Ragsdale nudged the corpse with his boots.
"You got the first one," McCloskey said. "Every first one is beautiful."
"Maybe. Damn shame about Tibbets, though." What Ragsdale meant was that if Tibbets had any consideration, he'd have died early in the day so that Ragsdale could have made more profit from his corpse.
Tibbets was from the 82nd Regiment New York Volunteers, the same as Ragsdale. Tibbets was the religious sort, always chattering in his sleep about the divine hand of God that would deliver him from suffering. He never bothered to make any money, and never asked Ragsdale for extra portions, though the smell of smuggled food must have been overpowering in that small tent. Maybe he knew Ragsdale would have denied him.
So Tibbets wasted away on camp rations and prayer, until the previous evening. He had eaten his palmful of raw corn meal, not even bothering to pick the larger pieces of dry cob from the ration. Soon the food was gone, leaving only a few white specks in Tibbet's beard, his lips being too dry for the meal to stick. But the fool had not stopped there. He continued gnawing at the toughened skin of his fingers, perhaps imagining them to be fine Illinois sausages.
Ragsdale had slapped Tibbets' hand away, but the man's jaws continued to gnash together. Those teeth rattled like sabers, a percussive counterpoint to the low somber dirge made by the groans of ten thousand sick, wounded, and dying. Tibbets' eyes went bright and wide, looking past the high stockade walls and the coarse Southern clouds to that high place where He was trampling out the vintages. Before Ragsdale could stop Tibbets, if he had even thought to stop him, the man had vaulted to his feet and dashed through the rows of ragged tents.
The stricken man was all bony limbs and rags, jerking like a windy scarecrow on a wire. The nearby prisoners paused in the eating of their rations to watch him run. Shouts arose, half of the voices pleading for him to stop, the other half urging him onward. They all, Ragsdale included, watched as Tibbets neared the slim gray railing that marked the dead line.
The dead line was a single wooden rail laid about twenty feet inside the walls and circumscribing the perimeter of the camp. Any prisoner who crossed the rail was assumed to be attempting escape, and was instantly shot. It was the only activity that kept the Rebel guards alert, for they had been denied the glory of battle by their ignominious posts. A Union prisoner might be their only quarry of the war, so they competed among themselves to be the one who fired a successful shot.
Three rifles rang out as Tibbets vaulted the fence. Tibbets stumbled, fell to one knee, then rose and continued staggering toward the stockade wall. Maybe his fevered brain thought that reaching the wooden wall itself was some kind of victory, as if a door might open and usher him to Elysian fields. In any case, Tibbets fell dead when a fourth shot pierced his skull.
But he'd died in the evening, and a whole day's dispatch of dead were already waiting to be carried outside before him. So Tibbets lay stiff and nearly worthless near the end of the line, attended by some amateur hucksters who were no competition to the likes of Ragsdale and McCloskey.
"What got yours?" McCloskey said, biting off a small plug of chewing tobacco. Ragsdale watched him with disguised envy, then looked down at the corpse at his feet. The flesh around the sunken eyes was as black as the inside of coalstove pipe.
"Dysentery, diarrhea, the Tennessee trots, take your pick."
"At least the lice is off him, eh?" McCloskey cackled juicily around his chaw.
"Every dark cloud," Ragsdale said, tired of talking. But McCloskey was right. If you happened to be near a man at the moment the heat started fading from his dead body, all the fleas and lice and invisible parasites hopped and jumped onto the closest host. Ragsdale scratched his beard, remembering the things crawling there.
He looked off toward the center of the camp, at the stretch of swamp that served as the camp's sewer. A few men were in the thick of the morass, relieving themselves. A new prisoner stood at the edge, his face curdled in horror at what the others had accepted as routine. The surface of the swamp churned with the breeding of maggots. Ragsdale looked away as the new prisoner squatted at the edge of the soiled water.
The front gate opened, and a half-dozen Rebels slouched in, their guns lazily angled toward the ground. They were near-corpses themselves, gray-faced and war-weary and noses wrinkled against the constant fecal rot of the camp. A captain accompanied them, head high, wearing leather leggings and his brass polished and gleaming in the dawn. Ragsdale cursed under his breath.
This was the man whose pockets were filled by the mass misery. But Ragsdale knew he was no more honorable himself. He only begrudged the captain skimming off the profits, and avoided all reflections on morality. Now, with the guard coming, he thought of nothing but the tradesmen waiting outside, the smugglers and dealers waiting along the route to the dead-house and the grave ditch.
And he had first opportunity. Sure, it cost him a good thirty percent of his take, but he was making a killing inside the stockade. He was fat, which was a prisoner's true sign of wealth. He had clean water and cotton blankets and molasses and pipe tobacco. He had a pillow. And no one would touch him, because to cross Ragsdale meant getting no smuggled goods, subsisting on the meager camp rations, and likely a slow death.
The Rebel captain gave the command for the detail to move out. Ragsdale lifted his corpse with ease. The fellow was hardly more than a skeleton. That was another advantage of a disease victim. With fresh ones like Tibbets, two men had to carry the corpse on a makeshift stretcher, which split the profits.
Ragsdale dragged the corpse past the open dead line toward the gates. The guards watched, hollow-eyed, not even joyful about the goods that the hucksters would slip them upon the return trip. They were as much prisoners of war as the Union troops. All were bound to this boiling swamp of disease and death, and sometimes Ragsdale could imagine the war never ending, their ghost-like daily struggles extending into an afterlife of misery.
He never imagined anything for long, though. In the camp, dreams were dangerous. If you dreamed, you were apt to lose your reason. That was one of the few differences between the living and the dead: only the dead could afford to dream.
So he shook his head and damned himself for dreaming. All one had to do was look back toward the camp, at the pathetic shebangs made of old coats and tent scraps and dry tree limbs, with not even enough of a breeze to flutter a stray thread. And in front of the makeshift tents, or dying inside them, were men. Men who had letters from home folded carefully in their pockets, men with children waiting, men with hearts swollen by religious faith and patriotism and all false hopes.
Ragsdale smiled to himself. He wouldn't cling to bravery. He would survive. He pulled the corpse through the gates.
The captain nodded as Ragsdale passed.
"Morning, Johnny," Ragsdale said, using the only term of address that the prisoners were allowed.
"Going to be a dandy one, Yank. Don't ya'll forget me on the way back in."
"No, suh," Ragsdale said, imitating a Southern accent. He kept his grin plastered on, and wondered if that was how the Negroes felt, smiling and smiling as the lash came down across their backs. He didn't know, because he'd never met one.
The haul to the dead-house was about a hundred yards. The corpse-bearers passed the cookhouse on the way, and a charred smell drowned out the rot of corpses. A gaunt civilian came from the cookhouse and dumped a thick greasy liquid into the stream. Ragsdale watched the gray slick make its way down the creek towards the stockade.
When Ragsdale reached the dead-house, which was an open covered area, he laid the corpse down and went into the shade of the high Georgia pines. The other hucksters laid out their corpses as well. In the dead-house, Confederate officials tried to determine the names and units of the dead and keep careful records. But as the death tolls mounted over the summer, the effort had become hurried and careless.
But, brief though the respite was, there was time enough for Ragsdale to do business.
"Hi, Johnny," Ragsdale said to the Rebel guard who was slouched against a tree. The guard might have been a civilian from the manner of dress, but Ragsdale took no chances.
"Howdy." The guard scarcely looked up. "Don't you go and try to run, or I got to put a bullet in your back."
"Wouldn't dream of it, Johnny." And he wouldn't. He was making too much money. "What's good today?"
"Hear tell there's some sweet potatoes. Smoked pork, too. Eggs."
Eggs. A good egg could fetch fifty cents, a rotten egg a dime. Ragsdale smiled and reached inside his shirt, which was overlarge and worn loose so that he could smuggle as many items as possible back into camp. He pulled a small sack of dried beans from a hidden pocket and passed it to the Rebel.
"Much obliged," the guard said, without looking up. Ragsdale hurried into the trees. McCloskey and the other hucksters would be along soon, and Ragsdale wanted his choice of merchandise. He was scarcely twenty feet into the forest when a man stepped out of the brush.
Their eyes met. The man held out his hands, revealing four small brown eggs.
"How much?"
"A quarter," the man said. Deal done. Ragsdale then purchased some stale tobacco, pork that had not yet gone rancid in the heat, a dozen wrinkled potatoes. All for a dollar, which he would turn into ten dollars on the inside, and have a full belly besides. He put the goods inside his clothes, except for the eggs, which he wanted to protect until all the bodies were counted and it was time to bury the three-dollar corpse.
He started back toward the dead-house, pleased with his purchases. Another man stepped from the trees.
"Sorry, Johnny, all done up," Ragsdale said.
"That's a shame," the man said. "Because I got quality goods."
Ragsdale glanced at the face. That dark hair, those bright eyes--
Ragsdale nearly dropped his eggs. Tibbets stood before him, smiling.
"Yeah, it's me." Tibbets' mouth yawned open in speaking, and Ragsdale saw where the fatal bullet had shattered the man's jaw. Ragsdale felt the blood drain from his face. His mind screamed at him to run, but his legs were rooted to the Georgia clay.
"Nuh---" Ragsdale grunted, unable to formulate any words which would explain the impossibility before him. It was Tibbets, all right, fevered and pale and exactly the same as he had been yesterday, with the exception of the bloody holes in his worn tunic.
"It's better out here," Tibbets said, again flapping the damaged lips. "Look."
The dead man held out his thin hands, palms full of pink soap and razors and fine Illinois sausage and eggs the size of apples. Despite his shock, Ragsdale couldn't help coveting the merchandise.
It's a dream, Ragsdale said to himself. My belly's full and I'm dozing in the shade of my tent.
But the fine fragrance of the soap beckoned him, too real for dreams, more vivid than any sensation he had ever known. He reached for it. "How much?" he managed to gasp.Tibbets pulled the goods back into the folds of his tunic. "Not for sale."
Not for sale? Why, everything was for sale, ever since those 3,000 Plymouth prisoners had been brought in. Just before their capture, they'd been furloughed from the Union army, and under the terms of their conditional surrender, they were allowed to keep the veteran's bounty that filled their pockets, hundreds of dollars per man. Since then, the huckster business was booming.
And Tibbets wasn't going to deny him what was rightfully his. He'd paid his three dollars for that first corpse, he'd bribed his captors, he'd earned first chances on the merchandise fair and square. What was it to Ragsdale if some men starved because they couldn't afford his mark-up?
"That soap," Ragsdale said. Imagine the luxury of soap in a camp where the prisoners waded into an open swamp to relieve themselves? Where the odor of fevered sweat and gangrenous flesh and death, death, death, hung in the air like a solid thing? Who wouldn't want to scrub such misery from their skin? Why, soap would fetch five dollars a bar.
"You can have all this," Tibbets said. "And more."
"More?"
"Pumpkin and corn, raspberries, honey, sugar, coffee. All free."
As if by magic, what had to be magic, the scent of those products wended into Ragsdale's nostrils. How long since he had tasted real coffee? Chickamauga , nearly a year ago?
There was a crashing in the brush nearby, and he knew that the guard had come to herd the hucksters back to the dead-house. Only moments to act. He knew he must be mad, and that Tibbets couldn't exist. Still, those smells haunted him as no mere ghost could.
"Yank?" called the guard from beyond the trees.
Ragsdale leaned toward Tibbets and whispered. "How?"
"Cross the deadline," Tibbets said, his ragged lips stretching into a smile. "It's all here waiting. We've got a camp set up behind the forest."
And as the Rebel guard blundered cursing through the bushes, Tibbets vanished back into the pines. Ragsdale gave the guard an egg to soothe the man's anger, then allowed himself to be led back to the dead-house. All the while, Ragsdale thought of those smells, tried to recall them and keep them full in his mind.
As he dragged the three-dollar corpse from the dead-house to the grave ditch, he looked at the others with their corpses and searched madly for Tibbets. Ragsdale and the others stooped and strained with their shovels, widening the ditch to add their fifty to the thousands already returned to the soil. McCloskey was digging beside him, stripped to the waist, the sheen of sweat bright on his muscles.
"McCloskey, have you seen Tibbets?"
"Tibbets? Who cares about Tibbets? I've got a pound of tobacco to sell when we get back inside."
Then the deed was done, the bodies covered but the ditch still open and awaiting tomorrow's supply. As they went back to the stockade and again entered that dreary mass of groaning men, Ragsdale could take no joy in his smuggled goods. He gave the captain an egg, then went among the disease and squalor and filth and sat in his tent, thinking of orange pumpkins and strong coffee and, most of all, that sweet, sweet soap.
The afternoon came and two dozen died in the heat. Evening food rations were parceled out. Still Ragsdale sat, heedless of the eggs and potatoes in the folds of his shirt. The prisoners who eagerly came to him with cash were sent away grumbling about how smugglers held out on goods to drive up the price. But Ragsdale cared nothing for their money. Because out there, in the high bristling trees beyond the stockade walls, was soap and coffee and bacon and perhaps a pint of fine bourbon.
All he had to do was cross the deadline.
He stood on trembling legs. His eyes were bright and looking toward where vintages might need stamping.
As he broke into a run, he heard shouts erupt from the tents, and from the little circles of men gathered around their cooking fires. But he didn't stop, he didn't even hear them, and then he saw what Tibbets must have seen.
A large shining field, rolling out in gold and green and red, all harvest colors. And to the sides, under shady trees, were stalls and wagons loaded with every luxury known to civilized man. Crisp tents and bright campfires stretched into the distance, and the smell of frying bacon mingled with the woodsmoke.
Ragsdale vaulted the rail and shouts rang from above. Still he ran, the blood roaring in his ears. A wetness poured down his head, surrounded him, and he lost his balance as darkness fell.
Dawn found him outside the walls. He searched for Tibbets, but saw nothing but scrub forest. Sounds from the prison gate drew him back to the edge of the woods. The grave detail was heading out. Ragsdale thought that McCloskey would take his place at the front of the line, but all the prisoners were strangers.
Ragsdale saw his own corpse down near the end of the line. A fifty-cent corpse. He looked hopefully at the two hard-eyed Union prisoners that carried the flesh that Ragsdale had so recently worn. Ragsdale was annoyed that someone had made fifty cents off his corpse. That money was rightfully his.
Maybe he could hail the soldiers, send them away with a quick profit and no work. Ragsdale searched his boots for money and found none. Someone had robbed him as he lay dead. And he had nothing to trade. He watched from the woods as his body was counted, then thrown in the ditch and buried.
As the dirt was thrown over his face, night fell, then the sun rose and found him watching the next grave detail. Again his corpse was dragged before his eyes. A different pair of soldiers carried him that morning. He again felt the anger at someone profiting from his death.
A week of such dawns, a month of funeral processions, and Ragsdale became accustomed to the stench of corpses. In fact, he welcomed it. Because the stench helped drown out the maddening aromas that drifted through the trees, the exotic smells of soap and coffee and bacon, goods that were being enjoyed by others in peaceful distant bivouacs. If only Ragsdale had some money, he might go there and trade in the land where everything was free.
Sometimes, just as the dirt was thrown on the face of his corpse and night again fell, he heard laughter and singing from the far camps. It was the sound of men with full bellies.
A year passed, and Ragsdale still had no money, not even the fifty cents that his bullet-riddled corpse brought each day. He sat and watched the grave details, his stomach rumbling with an emptiness greater than hunger.
Ten, twenty, a hundred years of soft parades.
In the trees, forever in sight of the stockade walls, Ragsdale waited for the war to end.
THE END
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###
BONUS STORY: THE BLEEDER
By J.R. Rain
Leo Dershowitz stood in front of his painting and frowned. It wasn't quite right. He had a firm image in his head of what he wanted and this wasn't it. The color was wrong. And the shading was off. Yeah, that was it. The shading.
The problem was that the clear image in his head was fading, becoming hazy around its edges, amorphous.
Which meant only one thing.
He must be scabbing over again. He hated when that happened.
Leo looked down at his right arm, which hung over a white plastic bucket, inside of which was splattered with blood. His blood. Sure enough, the gash in his forearm was threatening to close. The steady flow of blood was nearly being cut off by a thick, congealing scab.
Using a very clean surgical knife, Leo deftly flicked away the scab, which broke off and fell with a splash into the bucket, itself partly filled with a finger or two of his own hemoglobin. Now, once again, sweet blood pumped freely from the gash just below his elbow, flowing rapidly over the many horizontal scars that lined the inside of his arm. Leo always thought the scars looked like piano keys.
Even though he had performed many such blood-letting rituals before, the site of so much blood at once gripped him briefly with nausea and an old fear. The fear of dying.
What if I bleed too much this time? What if I pass out and never awaken?
Leo knew the answer: If he passed out while bleeding, there was a very good chance he would never awaken. That he would bleed to death.
Then don't pass out.
Good idea.
But Leo had learned long ago to ignore such inhibiting fears. He had to ignore them. Because the moment he began to bleed, the moment the life-force flowed from his wounds, a magnificent vision would appear. A vision that hovered tantalizingly in his mind's eye. Clear as day. A vision that only lasted for as long as Leo would bleed.
And now, as the blood dripped steadily from his dangling fingertips, the vision, which had been losing it sharpness with the congealing of his blood, came starkly back into focus.
Leo had a painting to do.
He touched the tip of his paintbrush to his palette, rolled it gently, applying the perfect measure of light desert auburn mixed with pure white, and turned to the half-finished painting before him. And for the next hour or so he transferred the burning image of his mind to the canvas, twice more knocking away the damnable coagulating scabs.
And when the painting was done, when the bucket was splattered with his blood, Leo nearly wept at the painting's beauty.
\*
Seven years ago, Leo Dershowitz discovered his artistic muse. It came, quite literally, with a bang.
Seven years ago, the now very famous artist Leo Dershowitz would be the first to admit that he had been just a very average artist. None of his work stood out. He had been twenty-eight years old and he was miserable. By this age he was supposed to have been a famous artist, right? In the least, he was supposed to have his own art gallery, or a line of greeting cards.
Due to his predisposition for laziness, Leo had decided early on in life that he would become a professional artist. This was back in junior high, back when he was already sick to death of hearing his damn alarm clock going off each morning. It was on such a morning, after having pressed the snooze button for the umpteenth time, that he decided that he was going to find an occupation in which he never had to wake up early again, an occupation in which he could sleep in as long as he wanted, an occupation in which he made his own hours.
Having just made the bus and looking down at the fairly simplistic-looking Latin-American painting on his Spanish textbook, Leo was struck with an idea.
He, too, would become a painter!
After all, he enjoyed creating and didn't his second grade teacher, Mrs. Garth, once say that a finger painting of his had been fairly good? She had indeed. Most importantly, though, Leo was fairly certain painters could sleep in as late as they wanted.
He never looked back.
Leo threw himself into art, taking class after class, in high school and college, leaving behind an insubstantial trail of uninspired paintings. You see, Leo wasn't very good at painting.
Leo eventually flunked out of college. His major, of course, had been art. Many of his classes were before noon, and that just wouldn't do.
In the real world, he refused traditional jobs, especially jobs that called upon him getting up too early. Leo valued sleep above anything else, even above eating and having a roof over his head. At one point he lived under a freeway overpass, where he sometimes slept all day, lulled comatose by the steady drone of car engines.
Interestingly, Leo really did love painting. And the more he doggedly pursued it, the better he got at it. But getting better at painting, didn't necessarily mean he was still any good at it. At least, not good enough to earn him any sort of steady income.
Which is why he often lived with older women who supported him. He called them sugar mommas, but not to their faces. To their faces, he called them whatever they wanted to hear. When the sugar mommas got sick of him freeloading off them, Leo would move back in with his parents. Leo didn't care where he lived. As long as he had his precious, uninterrupted mornings---and a place to paint.
Through thick and thin, Leo Dershowitz never gave up. Give him that. He was going to make it as an artist, even if it killed him.
And, in the end, it did.
\*
Seven years ago, Leo Dershowitz's mundane, uninspired life would forever change with a shard of glass.
After a night of partying---and living alone for the first time in a long, long time (his last girlfriend had tossed him out after discovering him riffling through her purse)---he had been taking out the trash the next day.
The Hefty bag was full of glass bottles, some broken, from the small party he had thrown the night before. Leo often threw such parties with his local artist friends in Los Angeles, many of whom were not very good either. Leo hated good artists. He was deathly envious of them, mostly because he could not understand them.
So Leo's parties were generally small affairs, filled with other artists like himself; that is, the uninspired, the hacks, and the unimpressive. Leo liked it that way. He was fairly certain that he was at least as good or better than most of his unimaginative friends, and that always made Leo feel good. Of course, if any of his artist friends did become too good, or too successful, Leo would drop him or her immediately---and have nothing more to do with them.
Now, heading to the dumpster that late afternoon, the half-asleep Leo swung the plastic trash bag about rather recklessly, a bag full of bottles and, most importantly, broken bottles.
Leo couldn't help but notice when the bag stopped swinging. He especially couldn't help but notice the blinding pain in his left leg.
He looked down. Amazingly, the bag appeared stuck to his leg. But that wasn't right. No, a broken piece of glass, poking through the bag, was, in fact, embedded in his left leg.
Leo yelped---and pulled the bag away. As he did so, a crimson arch of blood spurted from the very deep wound in his shin. Leo felt lightheaded. He was certain he was going to faint.
But he didn't faint. And that's when it happened.
For the first time in Leo's life, inspiration struck. And boy did it strike. Leo literally stumbled backwards as a powerful and very elaborate vision burst into his mind. Searing into his thoughts like a scene from Heaven. Mind-blowing. Blinding. Now Leo really did fall back on his ass, but not because he felt faint. But because he was thunderstruck.
Leo scuttled back like a wounded crab, but the vision scuttled back with him. His frantic mind raced to understand what was happening to him. Had he taken drugs last night? No, he hadn't. Just beer, and lots of it. Maybe someone had slipped him a Mickey or a roofie.
This was, after all, the mother of all hallucinations. And that's when it occurred to him: It would make one hell of a painting.
My God, the colors, thought Leo. And now he stopped crawling backwards, stopped trying to run from the image.
Instead, he found himself lost in it.
Before him was a beautifully detailed and completely original scene. The colors were vibrant and out-of-this world, arranged in a way he never thought possible. Or, more accurately, could never have conceived on his own. The vision was a one-of-a-kind burst of inspiration that Leo knew may never strike him again.
He scrambled to his feet and stumbled back to his apartment, leaving behind the spilled bag of trash...and a trail of dripping blood. Leo shoved aside his snoring freeloading artist friends and took up his brush. With shaking hands, he applied the right amounts of oiled paint to his palette. Next, he quickly transferred the vision in his mind onto the canvas before him, using all the skills he had ever acquired.
And when the blood stopped flowing from his wound, the vision disappeared as well. But Leo had managed to capture most of its essence. And as he stumbled back from his canvas, dropping his brush and stepping into a puddle of his own blood, Leo wept. This was, he knew, his first great piece of art. Far surpassing anything he had ever attempted before, or, for that matter, could ever even imagine.
But how had this come about? What had led to this masterpiece? Was it because of the blood? The pain? The shard of glass? Booze? Drugs? Or a combination of all the above? Leo didn't know, but he was determined to find out.
But first, he needed some fast cash.
Over the next few days, he went around town shopping the painting around, hitting up familiar galleries and those who had shown some interest in his work in the past. To Leo's amazement, there was real, honest-to-God excitement about the painting. More than excitement. There were offers. He sold that first painting for twenty-five hundred dollars. Exciting, yes. Even more exciting was that the buyer wanted more.
Except Leo didn't know how to give him more. After all, he didn't have any clue how he had produced the first one!
So Leo experimented. He tried drugs. Nothing. He got shit-faced and painted. Nothing. No visions. No beauty. No out-of-this world images. Just the same crappy shit he had always painted.
Was he a one painting wonder?
In desperation, Leo duplicated everything that had led up to the vision. He threw yet another party---and invited exactly the same friends. Hell, he even tried to arrange them around his little apartment so that they passed out in the same locations. He bought the same beer, ordered the same food, played the same music, did the same drugs. Nothing worked.
Leo knew he was forgoing one thing in particular. It was the one thing that he hoped wasn't the source of the vision.
The following morning, like a condemned man digging his own grave, Leo methodically broke half a dozen beer bottles. He tossed the jagged shards into the Hefty trash bag along with the other trash from the previous night's party. Already feeling sick, he headed out to the Dumpster.
The morning was cool. The sun was bright. Leo, for once, was surprisingly alert considering how early it was. Of course, being terrified had a way of waking up even Leo from his morning stupor.
I'm really doing this, he thought.
Now he began swinging the plastic bag filled with broken glass. Hesitantly at first, but then higher and higher.
I'm crazy. This is nuts.
He could hear the broken glass clinking within. He continued walking along the narrow pathway between apartments. The rising sun, still low on the horizon, shone straight into his face. He squinted, and swallowed hard. The rising sun was a new site for him.
He swung the bag more recklessly. Once or twice it hit his legs, ricocheting off, the sharp projectiles only grazing his skin.
Leo's mouth had gone completely dry minutes earlier. He was also trembling. In particular, his legs were trembling. He sensed he was going into a sort of pre-shock in anticipation of the pain and blood to come.
I don't want to do this.
Yes, you do.
On the next swing, he raised the bag up higher. At its apex, as it hovered briefly in space, something flashed in the morning sun. It was a shard of glass glinting in the sunlight, poking through the plastic bag.
The bag started down again, picked up momentum, and slammed hard into his right shin. The pain was immediate---and intense.
"Son-of-a-bitch!"
Something---no doubt the glass---lodged deep into his lower leg. Leo's blue eyes bulged. He doubled over. He could see now the dark little shards sticking through the black bag and into his flesh. The bag, however, had hit a different leg this time. His right leg. Right, left---did it matter? He didn't know, but maybe, since there was no vision.
Leo thought for sure that it had been the intense pain that caused the vision to appear.
He was wrong, and now he was sickened by what he had done to himself. The glass, from all appearances, was lodged deep in his leg. Much deeper than the first time he had done this, back when he had accidentally cut himself.
Leo wanted to be a great artist. Hell, he craved just to be considered good, let alone great. But that painting last week wasn't just good or great....
It had been a masterpiece.
The vision had been his answer, of course. The vision had been his way out of mediocrity. The vision was what he had been waiting for all his life.
And now it was gone. Damn.
This crazy plan had really been his last hope. Now the very real, and grim, thought that he might have to actually give up his dream of being an artist weighed upon him. Standing there with the glass shard still sticking in his leg, feeling hopeless and stupid, Leo imagined himself getting up every morning to an alarm, relentlessly hitting the damn snooze button, working for some asshole in a suit and tie---and nearly wept. This wasn't how it was supposed to be. Life was supposed to be fun and carefree.
Yes, sugar mommas were still a valid option, but satisfying their needs was almost as bad as getting up early for work.
Almost.
Confused and lost, Leo focused again on his leg. The pain seemed to be intensifying. The glass was really in there deep. Mutilating himself for his art. Leo felt like an idiot.
And all for nothing, too.
There was still little or no blood, as the glass was basically plugging up the hole in his leg. He knew the moment he freed the glass, his leg was going to gush. Steeling himself, he reached down and gently took hold of the glass. It was still poking through the plastic bag. In effect, the trash bag was attached to his leg. The moment he touched the glass, white hot pain ripped through him.
Leo nearly passed out just touching the glass.
How am I going to pull it out? he thought.
Just yank it out.
But I can't; it hurts too much.
Yes, you can. You have to.
I'll call an ambulance. They can do it.
And you'll pay them how?
Leo had no money for an ambulance, of course. Leo had already burned through the twenty-five hundred from the last painting.
Just do it.
Do it!
And so he did. Screaming, he pulled the long and bloody shard of glass out of his leg. Screaming. Gasping. Fighting an urge to vomit. Fighting an urge to pass out.
Out the glass shard came. Slowly. Bloodily.
And then it was out completely and blood spurted free in a great crimson arch, spraying across the cement walkway, and even out into the grass beyond.
And the vision that hit him nearly knocked him off his feet. So blinding. So powerful. So beautiful. Leo stumbled back, fell into the wet grass and felt joy unlike anything he had ever felt in his life. Groping blindly, he turned and found his feet and sprinted awkwardly back into his apartment, pushing aside the same slumbering lummoxes.
That morning, Leo painted his second masterpiece.
This time it sold for ten thousand.
\*
That was four years ago.
Now Leo Dershowitz lived in a beautiful artist's loft in Brea, California. Museum directors (the same ones who sniffed haughtily at his past work) were soon pounding down his door, offering to pay him staggering fees to showcase his work. He granted permission to some, others he didn't. In a matter of years, Leo quickly acquired that kind of power. He also had women over, too, but these were much younger and much prettier than the old hags he was used to date. And now Leo gave them allowances. That felt good to him. Really, really good.
Lately, Leo's best friend was his accountant, Larry Steingold. The two men had little in common except a love of money---especially Leo's money.
Leo had a need to tell someone about his bleeding. Up to this point---four years now!---he had kept his macabre painting habits a secret. He needed to get it off his chest. Leo suspected he would have been better off telling a shrink about it, but he wanted to tell someone he knew, someone he trusted, and then look them in the eye to see if they thought he, Leo, was crazy. Because sometimes---sometimes---Leo thought he was seriously going crazy.
Leo was desperate to reach out, to explain, to connect. To be told he wasn't crazy. To be told that his bloody muse was perfectly normal. Lawrence the accountant seemed a perfect candidate. He was reasonable, non-judgmental, and had proven to be a decent friend over these past few years. In short, Leo trusted him with his most trusted secret.
And so one evening, when the two were sitting opposite each other at a posh L.A. sushi restaurant, drinking saki and eating raw fish, Leo found himself in a talkative mood. So talkative, in fact, that he blurted out his bloody secret. And when Leo was finished talking, blabbering really, Lawrence swallowed his last bite of food and carefully set his chopsticks across his unfinished plate of salmon rolls. The little man blinked once, twice, three times, and then looked Leo squarely in the eye from across the table.
"This is a joke, right?" he said, speaking slowly and carefully, as he always did.
"I wish it were," said Leo.
"But...but why do you do that to yourself?"
"I told you why, Larry. I have to. I have no choice."
"But you do have a choice. You just stop."
"If I stop, then the visions stop. If the visions stop, the paintings stop. If the paintings stop, the money stops."
"You have plenty of money."
"Are you recommending I stop?" Leo asked, somewhat surprised.
"Well, I care about you. I'd hate to think you're hurting yourself." Lawrence, after much restraint, finally looked at Leo's left arm, his non-painting arm. His bleeding arm. "Would you mind?"
Leo didn't mind, and as he showed Lawrence his mutilated forearm, he studied his good friend's expression closely. Lawrence sat forward and pushed up his wire-rim glasses. Leo didn't have to look at his own arm to know what his friend was seeing was seeing. Leo had looked enough.
A small sacrifice, he always thought. A blood sacrifice.
The accountant's face froze, and, as if someone had pulled a plug from the base of his skull, the color drained from the man's face. Lawrence looked up sharply, and Leo had his answer.
He thinks you're crazy, thought Leo, calmly rolling down his sleeve.
Maybe I am.
Leo and Lawrence never talked about the subject again.
\*
Three months ago, Leo woke up from a dead sleep and knew he was going to die.
It was in the middle of the night and his heart was racing madly. In his dreams he saw a fragmented image, the sort of image that only occurred to him when bleeding. A vision. Leo quickly realized the relevance of this.
A vision had come to him without bleeding. This was big.
No more bleeding!
Now, if he could just grab hold of this elusive image trying to make its way into his conscious thoughts from his dreams---or from wherever these vision came from. So he lay there in bed and tried his hardest to grab hold of the amorphous vision.
No good.
The harder he tried, the more it slipped away. He likened it to a photograph held just beyond his peripheral vision, a photograph that was slowly burning. And the more he strained to look at it, the faster it burned.
Still, from what he was able to see, it was clear that this scattered picture, this kaleidoscopic hint of beauty, would be greater in scope than any of his past work. It would be, he was sure, his life's masterpiece.
Leo got out of bed, lit a cigarette, paced his large room, and tried with all his might to grab hold of the chimerical image. But now it was nearly indefinable, taunting him from the edges of his imagination, as if daring him to fully summon it.
And that's what scared Leo. One way to fully summon this vision, this powerful glimpse of Eden, he would have to bleed, and he would have to bleed a lot.
A very troubled Leo went to bed three hours and a pack of cigarettes later.
\*
The vision stayed with him for most of these three months, haunting his dreams, calling to him, mocking him, challenging him. The glimpses he saw were nothing short of spectacular, nothing short of Heaven.
Leo was terrified.
In some ways, he fell in love with this incomplete jigsaw puzzle of Paradise. In the mornings, when the vision was still fresh on the periphery of his dreams, he would weep at the heartbreaking beauty of its promise. But with each passing minute of consciousness, as the noon sun burned in through his second-story window, the vision would dissipate like the early morning mist. And Leo would weep again because he was never certain the image would return.
One night, upon waking from a particularly powerful dream, he called Lawrence. On the third try, his accountant finally answered in a barely intelligible mumble.
"Leo...is something wrong?" asked his friend.
"Yes."
The mumble disappeared. "What is it?"
"I'm going to die."
"What do you mean?"
So Leo told him about it. Lawrence listened quietly, or perhaps fell asleep. Either way, when Leo was done, his accountant said, "Well, you don't have to paint it, do you?"
"Yes and no."
"What do you mean?"
"If I don't paint it, I'll never paint again."
"That's preposterous." His accountant liked to say words like preposterous and astronomical, even, apparently, when half asleep.
"No, it's not," said Leo. "Think of it this way: this painting, this vision, is the next in line. It's this one or nothing."
"Well, can't you paint it in bits and pieces? Say over the course of three or four sessions? Do you have to, um, bleed all at one time?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
"Because once the vision comes to me in full force, it will never come to me again. I get one shot to document it, to paint it, to record it, and then it's gone."
"This is crazy."
"Yes, it is," Leo agreed.
"What are you going to do?" asked his accountant.
"I don't know, but I need to do something. The dreams are becoming less frequent, less vivid. The image is leaving me. I fear it might someday leave altogether."
"Good. Let it go."
"Then I may never paint again."
"You have made plenty of money, Leo. Your investments are through the roof, thanks, in large part, to me."
"Painting is who I am. Even when I was bad, it was my sole identity."
"Then go back to being bad."
Leo had thought of that, and he knew there was no going back.
"The vision is quite beautiful, you know," he said idly.
"Then paint the fucking thing. Bleed like a bloody ghoul into your disgusting bucket and paint the damn thing. But just know I am fully against this."
Leo hung up and smoked another pack of cigarettes, then got up from bed and walked calmly downstairs into his art studio.
\*
Months ago he had prepared for this moment.
He had placed a big fifty-by-thirty inch canvas onto the heavy wooden easel. Twenty-three different tubes of oil paint were lined neatly on the poker table in front of the paint-encrusted palette. He had put in a new light bulb in the adjustable light, and Bach was in the CD player.
Leo changed into a favorite paint-and blood-stained sweatpants. He put on a fresh T-shirt. He seated himself on his rickety stool before the blank canvas. He pressed "Play" and Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier performed on a Flemish harpsichord filled his spacious art studio.
Now, with a rare German Quillon double-edged dagger he had purchased for ten thousand dollars at auction for just this occasion, Leo proceeded to open a familiar scar on the inside of his right forearm, just below his elbow. As he did so, his tongue stuck out like a kid carving his first Jack-o-Lantern. Except, in this case, Leo was carving himself.
Blood welled up immediately from the wound, almost eagerly, as if it, the blood, had been waiting all these many months for sweet release. It hurried excitedly down his arm like a child at recess, pausing briefly at his wrist, then building up momentum and burst over the padding of his palm. It corkscrewed playfully around his middle finger and finally dripped free at his nail.
Leo watched it all, fascinated.
And only when that first drop of blood hit the bucket, as the ping of it reverberated within the plastic walls and echoed up to his ears, did the vision come to him in full force.
The entire vision.
The complete vision, with nothing left out or merely hinted at.
And it was breathtaking. If ever there was a heaven, this was surely it. Hovering right there before Leo's eyes, waiting to be painted.
Hurry, he thought, knowing that this epic painting, this masterpiece-in-waiting would take hours to complete.
Could he bleed for hours? Leo didn't know, but he was about find out.
With his left hand bleeding uselessly into the bucket, Leo used his right hand to squeeze out the various colors he would need and used his thick sable brush to mix the colors to his liking---all the while blood dripped-dripped steadily into the white bucket.
The bucket itself was certainly a ghoulish sight, and Leo himself generally preferred not to look inside it. Looking inside for too long always made him queasy and sick. And now was not the time to be queasy or sick. The vision was here, and Leo's time was limited, literally, by how long he could remain conscious.
Now, with masterful swipes and guided by the vision, he completed the background to the painting in a matter of minutes. Already, the bottom of the bucket was covered with Leo's fresh blood.
An hour into the painting and Leo's left arm was cold and numb. He had to knock scabs away twice to keep the blood flowing. He always knew his blood was coagulating because the vision before him would start to fade, wavering like a distant mirage.
The hours marched on. His stomach growled off and on throughout the day, a lonely sound that went unanswered. His left arm had long ago turned deathly pale, as it usually did when bleeding. Leo ignored his left arm. It had one purpose and one purpose only: to bleed.
In the vision were various people. Leo didn't know who they were or why they were in his painting, and he didn't care. They were part of the vision, and that's all that mattered. He painted them all. At one point, an old man in his painting seemed to be smirking. Leo cross-checked the image burning in his mind. Something seemed off. Indeed, there was no smirk in the vision. So Leo touched the old man's lips with his fine brush, and a few strokes later the old man's smirk turned into a devilish grin.
In the bucket below, Leo's blood reached the one-inch mark.
His wound tried to scab over again and again. And each time Leo flicked away the pathetic scab. His body, perhaps sensing that something very bad was about to happen, seemed to be doing all it could to save Leo's life. Leo was tempted to cut his arm deeper, to draw even more blood so that the flow would be too great to scab over, but he resisted. More blood emptying from his body would cut his life shorter.
And then he wouldn't finish the painting.
Faces now crowded his painting. They seemed to reach down through the ages. All were dressed in different styles and wardrobes, and Leo thought he might have recognized some of them, but he wasn't sure. His knowledge of history was really quite scant. He spent his time painting, after all. Not reading history books.
Dinnertime came and went and Leo bled alone with his masterpiece. The phone rang several times throughout the day, but he ignored it. He heard his cell phone vibrating in the next room, as text after text were received---probably from a very concerned and worried Lawrence. Leo left the messages unread.
Blood in the bucket was now at the four-inch mark. A child of five would have had trouble lifting the bucket.
At the five-inch mark, Leo's whole body began shaking---everything, that is, but his painting hand, which he held steady. He always managed to hold his painting hand steady.
And, later, when the vision suddenly blurred, Leo looked immediately at the gash in his left arm, assuming the wound had congealed over again. But it hadn't. Indeed, the blood was still dribbling freely, although with less reckless abandon.
What was this?
The visions had only blurred when his flowing blood had been staunched---or when the painting was complete. Neither was the case here. Leo paused briefly and closed his eyes and relaxed his tired lids. Maybe he needed a break. Already he had painted longer and harder than he had for any of his previous paintings.
A moment later, he opened his eyes and the vision was mercifully still there, stronger than ever. Leo smiled. He resumed painting. He just needed to rest.
An hour later, as an exhausted Leo compared the vision to his painting, he saw with elation that the painting was nearly complete.
Nearly.
Still, the apple tree off to the left of the young man in the painting was in sad shape. Leo spent a half an hour on the tree, adding minute changes here and there. And as he was about to add a touch of gator green to some background leaves, his painting hand hand finally began shaking.
Shit.
Never before had he reached the point where his painting hand shook. And as it shook, a voice inside him protested this madness. But not loudly enough. Mostly, the voice was tired and wanted to sleep. A long, long sleep. The big sleep. Still, it begged him to please, please, please look into the bucket, to please look at what he was doing to himself.
So Leo did just that. He forced himself to pause long enough to glance into the mop bucket. It was seven inches full of his precious hemoglobin. If dumped into a bathtub, it would spread over the entire surface and take a minute or two to drain.
I'm killing myself.
Leo closed his eyes and told himself to finish the painting another day; after all, the painting was nearly complete. As it stood now, it was still a masterpiece.
But it's not finished.
If Leo stopped, the vision would be gone, and the fine details would be lost. In particular, there was one last face to fill in. That of a young man, standing among the other, older men.
The pause did Leo good. His right hand had stopped twitching, albeit briefly, and so he raised the brush, ignored the voice protesting faintly in the back of his skull, and dabbed some color from the palette and proceeded to add the details of the young man's face. The face looked achingly familiar, but Leo was in no condition to plumb his memory for the reason why.
He continued with the face and, once done, he touched up the rest of the painting here and there, sharpening images, enhancing colors, perfecting his vision.
And then he was done. Or so he thought.
As his heart beat so softly that he wondered if it was beating at all, dark fingers reached from behind his head and slowly covered his eyes. His painting hand dropped to the floor; Leo's head tilted to one side, and he closed his eyes. Blood still trickled slowly into the bucket.
But the demon muse that lived within him was not done with him. No, not by a long shot. It shone a burning spotlight into his nearly unconscious brain.
It's still incomplete, said the voice. You're not done! Wake up! Wake up! You cannot die now with the painting still incomplete!
And with a force of will that surprised even him---for Leo was always one who loved sleep more than life itself---the young painter managed to stir himself awake. He cracked open his heavy eyes and lifted his alabaster white face toward the magnificent painting before him. He spotted immediately what needed to be done. A fallen leaf was missing. A leaf, and no more. And it needed to be placed on the dirt path that led to the jeweled city shining gloriously in the far distance.
And so Leo raised his arm, lifted the tip of the brush to the palette, found the colors he needed, and moved the tip over to the canvas. He flicked his wrist once, twice, and the perfect leaf appeared on the path, gleaming wetly.
But, alas, Leo knew that he was still not done. The devil muse would not let him off that easily. Oh, no. The painting needed one last touch. One last personal touch. Leo finally understood.
He commanded the fingers of his cold left hand to work. They ignored him at first, but finally jerked once, then twice. A corpse awakening. Now he commanded his fingers to grip the edge of the nearly full bucket. They did so, albeit clumsily.
Leo stood on shaky legs. Darkness attacked him, like a massive black wave rising up before him. He fought through it. As he stood, lifting the bucket of blood, the painting before him seemed to recede rapidly. To Leo, it now looked like a tiny stamp at the far end of a long, black tunnel.
With his last remaining strength, Leo heaved the contents of the bucket onto his painting. A crimson wave of death slammed into the canvas, knocked it over.
Leo lost his balance and fell. The bucket landed on top of him, and the remaining blood spilled out from it and covered his face and mouth and drowned what little breath remained in him.
Leo slept forever.
\*
In contemporary art history books one might find a sentence or two, perhaps even a whole paragraph, on Leo Dershowitz. In one such textbook, after commenting on Leo's contribution to contemporary art, it finished with this: "Leo Dershowitz committed suicide soon after creating, arguably, his greatest work, a macabre vision of what many believe to be the afterlife. Populating the piece are many of history's greatest artists, in which Leo, perhaps egotistically, included himself. In the painting, Leo can be found walking along a wooded, tree-lined path toward a jeweled city in the far distance, a city that many believe to be Heaven. The painting, amazingly, was doused with Leo's own life blood, perhaps a statement of the price of art, of the sacrifice of art, and of one man's devotion to his craft."
THE END
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###
AFTERWORD: FROM THE ASHES
Looking back over old work is like looking at photographs: you see that younger, more innocent, and more foolish version of yourself and wonder how you ever got this far, and how you never really understood much of what was shaping your life at the time.
Writers love their own words. They have to. They spend much of their time isolated, hunched over a keyboard, squinting at a screen until their eyes burn and their spines scream and their wrists stiffen in protest. And all they have to show for the sacrifice is a scattering of glyphs that sometimes seems to have no meaning in any language. To then assume that barrage of symbols will take on a comprehensive narrative and satisfying arc is truly an act of arrogance.
But writers go one step further--we expect people to not only read the words, to not only piece them together into a coherent story, but we demand adoration for our act. And, occasionally, a little bit of cold coin.
The only time I will voluntarily reread an old story is when I am revising it or proofing it for a book like the one you hold in your hands. Because my first instinct is to correct all the flaws that are now so obvious to the wiser and more battle-scarred version of myself, and the second is to cringe and fling the offensive prose into the recycling heap. Sure, there was youthful vigor aplenty in the tales, a little brashness and vanity, and a barely hidden glee in the process of stacking words as if they were a child's alphabet blocks. But just as the parent must come in and clean up what the petulant child has kicked over, the writer must look at his older work with nothing less than total dismay.
There is one saving grace, though. These stories saved my life and helped me reach this little scenic turnout in the journey.
I wrote most of these stories when I was struggling with alcoholism, depression, fatherhood, divorce, selfishness, fear, and other personal trauma, all of it self-inflicted. And all I could do was scream onto the page in much the same way pre-morphine amputees screamed into the pillows in the field hospitals of bygone wars. Hear me, don't hear me.
As a result we have this collection as documentation of that period of my life when I could easily have gone the other way--into the darkness and despair that I so often ridicule others for embracing as poseur stage costume. Perhaps there's a lesson in the cumulative pile of burnt offerings, but that old photograph is as much gray as it is black and white.
So here's a little color commentary to flesh out the fantasy.
Homecoming-I don't know how many different versions of this story I've written. It began in a college writing class and was almost universally panned by my fellow students. I knew something was in there, though, something that kept calling me back. I still remember my instructor Jade Hyunh's words: "You write with feeling. I say go for it."
The story was originally published in 1998 in Maelstrom, a tiny fold-and-staple publication. After the story was published, I found a much longer version in a drawer. Good. Charlie is a man of few words, anyhow.
Haunted-Written in the summer of 1998, it started with the idea of "What of ghosts are themselves haunted by the living?" It appeared in the anthology More Monsters From Memphis, was first runner-up for the Darrell Award, and received an Honorable Mention in Year's Best Fantasy & Horror.
The Christening---This story appeared in the summer of 2008 at WrongWorld, a short-lived publisher who was attempting to sell fiction via compact disc. Probably about eight years too late, and even then, the CD market for fiction would never have been cool because of all the fuss you have to go through. Another "haunted pregnancy" story. You think pregnancy does weird things to a woman, try being a man sometimes . . .
She Climbs A Winding Stair-- This story spun itself from an image of a ghost woman looking out on the sea, waiting and waiting for her seafaring love. I'd done some research on Portsmouth Island off the North Carolina coast, which was abandoned with buildings intact and is now a part of the National Park system. Ghost towns aren't necessarily limited to the Old West. Originally published in The Book of Dark Wisdom #9.
Must See To Appreciate--- It's hard to come up with a new twist on the haunted-house story, so I decided to throw in the twist right from the beginning and make the tone a little humorous and sardonic. Possession works both ways. Appeared in Black Static #2.
The Three-Dollar Corpse--- This story marked a couple of milestones for me, selling on its first trip through the mail to the Dead Promises anthology. I'd read a number of personal accounts of the Andersonville prison camp in the Civil War, and those haunting, resonant details brought the story to life.
The title comes from the practice of soldiers selling the right to carry bodies out of the camp for burial, because getting outside the gates allowed one to trade or buy enough goods to survive until the next day's funeral procession.
The Bleeder-J.R. Rain. I've collaborated on four books with J.R. Rain, author of the immensely popular Vampire for Hire series. J.R.'s generosity and imagination have been true blessings in my life, and I am honored to include one of his stories here. You can learn more about him at www.jrrain.com.
Thanks for scattering my ashes in the wind, and for helping my whispers linger. In many ways, my spirit is a phoenix risen from these ashes and I look forward to sharing many more adventures and tales with you. God willing and the Tao being receptive, I will. I am. We are. It is.
THE END
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###
AMERICAN HORROR:
A Story Collection
Edited By Scott Nicholson
Copyright ©2011 by Scott Nicholson
Stories copyright individual owners
Published by Haunted Computer Books
Scott's Amazon Author Central page
American Horror Table of Contents
Introduction: The Last American Horror Writer by Scott Nicholson
1. EL CAZADOR by Lisa Morton
2. THE MAN IN BLACK by Nate Kenyon
3. STARVATION ARMY by Joe McKinney
4. BOY IN THE CABINET by Jeremy C. Shipp
5. DOWN AMONG THE BOSNIAN DEAD by Joseph Nassise
6. OUTSIDE by Kealan Patrick Burke
7. THE SUNSEEKER by Simon Wood
8. THOUGH THY LIPS BE PALE by Maria Alexander
Other Books by Scott Nicholson
Scott's Amazon US Links
Scott's Amazon UK links
Scott's Amazon Author Central page
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THE LAST AMERICAN HORROR WRITER
By Scott Nicholson
I am a horror writer.
The last of a dying breed.
Actually, perhaps I'm already dead and just don't know it yet.
I didn't intend to be a horror writer, and if I'd had any commercial sense at all, I would have delved into paranormal romance, chick lit, suspense, mystery, and fantasy. All of which I write, by the way, often in the same book, but the word "Horror" is stamped on the spine. At the fork in the publishing road, as Robert Frost wrote, I took the one less traveled by, and all the difference has been made.
Showing up early for a recent signing, I had time to browse the store a little bit, checking out the competition, wading past the pirate and Da Vinci material to reach the fiction section. I looked for the titles of my friends, who are also horror writers. Miraculously, practically overnight, the spines of their books had been changed to read simply "Fiction."
I was all alone, and that was scarier than any ghost or monster I had ever penned. I'm not vain enough to believe I had suddenly become the standard bearer for a fading genre. No, what had changed was the publishing industry perception of the label. The publishers' sales teams believe horror doesn't sell, so they convey this lack of enthusiasm to the bookstores. The bookstore owners don't order it, and because readers don't see it on the shelves, they believe horror must no longer be readable.
Horror is many things to many people. Author and anthologist Doug Winter once announced "Horror is an emotion, not a genre." He said this a decade ago, long after the end of the 1980's horror boom, when evil dolls, sharp-toothed critters, and decrepit manors adorned dozens of books each month. The genre born with "The Odyssey" and "Grendel," passed up through "MacBeth" and on to "Frankenstein" and "Dracula," reached its zenith with "Rosemary's Baby," "The Exorcist," and an extraordinary average guy named Stephen King. Horror was selling like hotcakes, and even when the good times faded, largely due to an avalanche of crappy hackwork, a couple of publishers still maintained horror lines, turning out one or two horror titles a month.
Until a few years ago, when I alone survived, though I was already half dead because my mass-market shelf life was comparable to that of cottage cheese.
Within the horror community, the discussion over the "death of horror" was broken into two separate issues---a belief that "horror elements," the ghosts, vampires, serial killers, and essential human fears that are the root of good storytelling have expanded and are touching more genres and writers and readers than ever.
Romantic suspense writer Iris Johansen wrote a novel that features a woman who wants to turn people into zombies. Kay Hooper's bestselling series features psychic special agents. "The Lovely Bones" and "Beloved" are built on supernatural frameworks. One can hardly turn around without being poked by a stake-wielding, scantily-clad woman on a book cover who is drooling over a well-oiled Fabio with fangs. So horror, the emotional effect, seems to be quite popular.
And then there's "horror," the label, the market anathema.
The brand that's no longer in stores, despite the plethora of ghosts, goblins, witches, and vampires that still crowd the shelves. The brand that rarely merits its own bookstore section, and when it does, those shelves contain little more than King, Dean Koontz, and Anne Rice, whose books are all labeled "Fiction."
I watched people's faces at my signing. Some saw the "horror" label, set the book down, patted the spooky scarecrow cover, grimaced, and made a brisk escape. A couple muttered, "I don't read that kind of stuff," or, "I don't read horror, I only read King and Koontz."
"But it's not horror," I wanted to say, not sure whether this constituted smart marketing or just plain lying. "This book is about the relationship between a mother and her daughter---it's chick lit! It draws on Appalachian culture and religion. It's a mystery, a paranormal romance, a psychological thriller---whatever category you want it to be!"
Who cares about the man-eating goats? What about the long sex scene where the new wife is possessed by the ghost of the dead wife? Those are sprigs of parsley, added for color and not taste. Those who take the time to talk to me about the story usually end up buying a copy, even people who profess a dislike for the genre. Once they get past that "H-word," they see the story may serve up more than just the rehashed tropes and murder-by-numbers plots that plague too many modern horror movies.
My horror peers were a step ahead of me. They quit calling their books "horror novels." Now their agents pitch them as "supernatural thrillers." Same books, different words, higher advances, more marketing, a collective sigh of relief from the sales departments. At last they have books they can sell without embarrassment, as if horror were the literary equivalent of naughty pictures.
And then the indie revolution happened, and horror is back out of the closet, breaking the invisible chains that sought to keep it from the light.
I was the last horror writer in America, but only for a dark moment in literary history. Now we are everywhere, shambling, clawing, growling our way back into the hearts of readers, you who thirst like a coffined vampire or hunger like the last of the living dead.
Eight of my writing peers are happy to march in the ranks, and their contributions are shared here in our communal anthology project. Vampires, ghouls, zombies, serial killers, and other creepy creatures of the night infest these pages, proud to disturb your sleep or stir your fevered imagination.
Horror is back, but it never really left, because horror doesn't die. And it doesn't care. Horror just is.
---Scott Nicholson
June 2011
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EL CAZADOR
By Lisa Morton
This manuscript is not written in blood.
El Cazador's name has already been written enough in that vital ink; if there were colors for sweat and tears, he would've found a way to use those as well. No, what you see here is only printer's ink, black and unalive, and so not his art...perhaps more like the artist himself. I can say that because I've known him. I may not know exactly who he is or how he became El Cazador, but....
I know what he is.
###
Unfortunately this story starts with me. Not a very good journalistic practice, but then I wasn't a very good journalist. I was a freelancer earning my keep as a waitress, living with two roommates in a two-bedroom apartment and looking for that one big story that would excite some movie producer and get me into the studios. So far I'd sold one article on the origins of molé sauce. It had not become the next Like Water For Chocolate.
My interest in El Cazador began with someone else's article in the paper, a short single column buried in the Valley section of a Tuesday morning Times. It noted only that the mutilated body of a gang kid had been discovered not far from one of the tags of "El Cazador", a notorious graffiti artist who had frustrated police and citizens' action groups in North Hollywood/Sun Valley for over a year now.
I already knew the name. I remembered seeing it once on an overpass of the 118 Freeway. It was intricate, in red and orange and black, and the three of us in the car at the time had wondered who would have been insane enough to hang from a freeway while traffic sped by below just so they could scrawl their name.
"Scrawl," though, wasn't appropriate. Even while the others were laughing about it I remember thinking it was surprisingly fluid, dynamic. It left its imprint on the mind's eye as if the tagger had personally written it there. When I suggested to my friends that there was no real difference between the work of Keith Haring and that of El Cazador, they'd scoffed, derided me the rest of the day. But I knew the truth about El Cazador's work.
It was art and it was magnificent.
###
A year later I saw the newspaper article and within hours I was determined to be El Cazador's definitive chronicler. It was perfect: I would find out what Valley gang he ran with, track him down, get his bio, sell the article, and split the million dollars that Paramount or Columbia would pay us for the film rights.
Of course I was aware of a few little problems with this plan. I was a 26-year-old white female whose grasp of Spanish was---well, not even a fingerhold. I didn't know anything about Latino gangs or taggers or that part of the Valley. I knew it could be dangerous, certainly, but I had my pepper spray and a 1980 Plymouth Horizon nobody would want to steal.
I decided to start by driving around, finding whatever I could of El Cazador's work, photographing it and documenting the location. Then I would assemble an album, evidence of my serious interest, and locate him by questioning the locals.
The first part of the plan proved to be easy. El Cazador's work was plentiful and identifying it was as simple as picking a genuine Van Gogh out of a paint-by-numbers collection.
Commencement was the discovery of a mural on the side of a crumbling apartment complex on the northern end of Vineland. It covered the entire wall of the ramshackle building, three floors high and two apartments wide. It could be seen blocks away, dominating a neighborhood of dented, overflowing garbage cans, ancient bungalows with brown lawns and barred doors, liquor stores with wooden boards over the windows.
The subject was survival, violence: A snake fighting an eagle. The two combatants were locked in a full-on struggle, yet the serpent was clearly winning. Its venomous fangs were buried halfway in the eagle's carefully-feathered neck, its sinuous length coiled once around the contorting bird. One of the eagle's wings was nearly torn off and its head was tilted back, beak open, screeching its agony. The snake was grinning.
At the bottom, formed from the shower of avian blood, was the signature "El Cazador."
It was breathstopping, rendered in colors so extravagant I had to remind myself they had all come from mere spraypaint cans. It bespoke careful planning and long nights of exhaustion. It brought associations to mind, pricked the backbrain with unnameable mythologies...and yet the political statement was clear as well.
In the Mexican flag, the eagle is winning.
The surrounding space was cluttered with simple black graffiti letters, most in the pointed, sharp style that always appeared vaguely extraterrestrial to me. These lesser tags were layered thick on top of each other, spilling haphazardly, something that might have been "Killahs" across "Felipe Z" covering "IMAW," but no one had touched El Cazador's. Even the lifeless dirt at the base of its wall was clean of the usual rubbish. It was obviously held in veneration.
I had to walk halfway down the block to get it all in my lens. While I was snapping shots, a boy, maybe 10, walked up to me. He had dark skin, serious eyes, a Tecate beer T-shirt.
"You from County?"
"County?"
"Yeah, you know, clean up or somethin'?"
I looked down at him, trying to seem open and friendly. "No, I like the painting."
It succeeded. "Oh, tha's cool. El Caz, he's the best, man."
Could it really be this easy? I asked, "You a friend of his?"
The boy frowned, disappointed. "I wish. Ain't nobody his friend."
"Somebody must be." I nodded at the mural. "He couldn't have done that alone."
"He did, an' in one night."
"One night? No way."
"Yas, man, I'm tellin' you, was one night. See how all the streetlights an' shit is broke out?"
I glanced around. He was right---every light in the immediate area was smashed.
"That's so he'd be harder to see while he did it."
I smiled and asked, "Then how'd he see?"
The boy answered, "I dunno. He's El Caz. Me, I only live in the building."
Then he got on a skateboard and rode off.
I watched in disbelief. He wasn't lying---he skated in through the main entrance of the building.
Wait a minute, so maybe he did live there, that didn't mean he hadn't lied about the rest. The only way that painting could have been completed in one night would have involved a small army of artists with their own lights and the boy had said El Cazador worked alone. Of course I was still the outsider, the dipshit who could be had for a ridiculous fairy tale. That kid was probably in one of those apartments right now laughing his head off at the stupid chiquita who bought that dumb story, man.
Maybe this wouldn't be so easy after all.
###
I photographed six more El Cazador tags over the next two weeks. I also clipped three newspaper stories about gang slayings that had occurred not far from the tags.
Pedro Lopez, 18, was found a quarter-mile from a Los Angeles river concrete wash on which two gleaming, blocky robots battled it out, red fluid spraying from vents in their silver plating. Pedro's throat had been ripped open. Fourteen-year-old Eduardo Maneiros was found nearly severed in half beneath a warehouse wall displaying an Aztec priest ripping the heart from a pale, shrieking girl. A depiction of a gang shootout with bullets the size of basketballs, painted in an alley, could have been the last thing 15-year-old Tony Castro saw before he was slashed repeatedly with a sharp object.
Were El Cazador's paintings inspiring violence? Were these killings morbid homage, sacrifices to the legendary tagger king? Or was it coincidence? There were kids dying everywhere, after all.
The people I talked to in El Cazador's neighborhood couldn't offer much. Most didn't know anything. Some didn't speak English. Several laughed at me. One twenty-three-year-old gangsta named Cruz told me nobody knew who El Caz was, he was solo, didn't run with a gang. Then Cruz asked me out. He told me I'd never find El Cazador if I hadn't experienced how he lived. He followed me all the way to my car, then leaned on the hood until I pulled away. I could see him grinning in the rearview mirror. I've had a couple of dreams about Cruz since then. They were bad.
One early morning, a little past eight, I found an old man who spoke only Spanish staring at a fifteen-foot-high scene of robocops battering a crouching boy, painted on the back wall of a building housing a hardware store. When he saw me, the old man gestured at the wall and the broken lights, rattling off an angry string. I could gather only that the painting was recent and he wasn't too happy about it. When I shook my head apologetically, he walked closer to the wall and tapped at the brownish-red letters spelling out "El Cazador".
"Sangre, sangre," he shouted.
I knew that word, at least. Sangre.
Blood.
Then the old man shook his head angrily, murmured "policia" and hobbled back up to the main street and into the tiny panaderia bakery he owned.
I stared at the stylized signature, wondering what he'd meant. Sure, it was the color of dried blood, the implication was there....
What if it wasn't implication?
I touched the wall, brushing my fingertips over the surface. All I felt was the coarse brick and mortar construction. Other tags covered any surface not taken by El Cazador's, but they were scribbled by clumsy, insensitive hands and looked old, ignored.
I scraped at the dark side of one of the detailed assailants. The chromium blue felt sealed, like spraypaint. It didn't come off.
When I scraped at the red lettering in the name it was still slightly damp.
A sticky blob came off on my fingertip. I rubbed it against my thumb and it dissolved into something thick and very dark red.
I backed away, staring at my fingers, a nervous thrill in my stomach. The meaning revealed there was obvious. El Cazador, my elusive quarry, was not just a kid with a talent for creative vandalism. This was something darker, something-
I nearly lost my balance as my right foot caught behind me. I glanced down, expecting to be disgusted by dog shit or old newspapers-
-and saw instead a boy, a dead boy, his torso torn open, red and gray matter spilling out. His face was smeared, the ground all around him black and viscid. There was a gun not far from him, lying useless. The fingers of one hand still seemed to be clawing for it. The flies had already settled on him.
What I did next...usually people say they felt sick, they felt weak, they screamed.
I took a picture.
Then I turned and ran for my car.
###
In the paper the next day was a back-page item about another gang slaying that had evidently taken place less than a block from one of El Cazador's tags. This time his name was mentioned, but police were uncertain whether a connection "can be absolutely drawn to the graffiti artist." They were also seeking a possible witness, "a woman, white, blonde hair, early twenties, carrying a camera."
I would give it up, this story. It should ideally be written in a language I didn't speak. A language in which "sangre" meant a color in the arsenal of a tagger.
I would go back to my life, my world. I would write articles on school kids who get to interview the president, on cats who could mouth the word "hello," and whether herbal remedies actually helped or not. Eventually, perhaps, I might write a screenplay. A gentle romantic comedy. A coming-of-age drama. Anything without images of boys, ripped apart, dying beneath murals painted in passion and blood.
###
I wish I could say it was a dream or a vision that changed my mind, that I was obsessed, driven, that I had an unquenchable curiosity or thirst for knowledge.
But it was simple, stupid, anger, of the righteous type.
It was a bit on a local weekly television news show about a group called CANT-Citizens Against Neighborhood Tagging. They were mainly white, lower-middle class, male. El Cazador had re-created a grisly, fatal traffic accident on a brick wall near a treacherous intersection. The members of CANT busily blanketed the wall, regardless of the fact that the brick was red and their paint wasn't. Gray rolled over the face of a woman, screaming above the body of a boy. Gray covered a car in which the chrome was so intricate you could imagine the owner polishing it on a Sunday afternoon. Gray overspread the vivid crimson splashes of El Cazador's signature.
The spokesman for the group said it was "time citizens take a stand against vandalism in their own communities." When asked, he admitted he didn't live anywhere nearby; he did, however, own a real estate firm which held property in the area.
The worst, though, was Henry Colson. Henry was 32, unemployed, had joined CANT because it was "high time somebody stood up for the right to live in a clean, decent neighborhood free of scum." Henry said he advocated "whatever methods necessary." By the time he got to the part about "welfare children who can't even speak the language of the country that's supporting them," he had gone on so long without pause that they had to cut away from him in mid-sentence.
El Cazador was possibly dangerous, but it was a danger that represented mystery, fire, heart, and soul. He wanted to decorate his world in shades of red, shades that disturbed, true, but that also provoked, inspired, enlivened. These others would protect their territories by pissing gray in all the corners.
I knew now I had to write this. I couldn't let El Cazador be buried by the people who wanted us all to live in their soft shades of ash. I would have to find him. I would have to accept the risk of becoming the palette for his name.
###
Several weeks later, weeks of fruitless driving, unanswered or misunderstood questions, fearful encounters, shameful encounters....
...I found the unfinished one.
At first I didn't know it for what it was. I knew only that it was different from the rest.
The area was an industrial nightmare, partly abandoned foundries, boarded-up warehouses, parking lots whose asphalt had long since cracked and sprouted ragged sage. I passed few cars and no pedestrians going in or out of the vicinity. The canvas was a concrete freeway support wall; fifty feet overhead traffic rushed, unaware of this rotten underworld. The scene was two half-human demons locked in hand-to-hand combat. Ichor gushed from wounds made by tooth and talon. I could virtually feel the pressure of locked muscles, straining backs, tearing hide. It was nearly thirty feet tall, still twenty-five feet below the freeway. How does he do it?, I wondered, not for the first time. The scarlet signature was there, but it trailed off strangely at the lower left corner.
I glanced around, saw I was alone, then got out the camera and started snapping. It was late in the day; the painting faced west and the low sun was golden. I was framing another angle when I noticed something through the viewfinder: A small white square on the street below the mural. It looked as if it was stuck there by tape or glue.
I lowered the camera and walked up to it. When I realized what it was, I felt a treasure-hunter's thrill.
It was a rough sketch of the painting above. It had been taped to the wall for reference. It also clearly proved that the bigger work had been left incomplete, because in the lower corner a group of small boys watched the vicious combatants, their expressions both enrapt and afraid. Two of them had broken into their own fight, imitating the main event.
He hadn't had time to finish here. What if it had been last night? What if he might be back tonight to finish it?
I returned to my car and moved it into an empty parking lot, partly-hidden by overgrown scrub brush. I moved the seat back for comfort, locked the doors, and settled in.
I would be here when he came.
###
It was after eleven when the lowrider car appeared, stopped where its headlights splayed out across the mural, three figures inside pounding armrests to the beat of gangsta rap.
For some reason, I'd never thought about the flesh El Cazador to match the blood. But if I had ever stopped to picture him, the boy who got out of the car and studied the unfinished tag would have been image come to life.
Lit by his car's headlights he was no more than 18, but already tall, over 6 feet, well-built. He wore a sleeveless T revealing muscled, tattooed arms. Handsome, with deep-set eyes and thick, lustrous black hair curling to his neck.
The tattoos on his arms were miniaturized versions of all of El Cazador's tags.
The tattoos, the way he studied the piece with such intensity... it had to be him.
I unlocked the car door, took the photographic album I'd compiled (the catalogue raisonné), and, holding the rough sketch before me like a truce flag, approached. He had turned at the sound of the car door opening and watched me, expressionless.
I stopped five feet away. "Is it you?," I asked, nodding at the mural.
He glanced at the sketch, then back at me, smiling. "Maybe."
Suddenly my heart was pounding, my fingers shaking as I held the album up, flipping through the pages for him to see. "I've been documenting your work. I want to write about you, so people can understand what you're doing...."
"What do you think I'm doing?"
I looked into his black eyes and answered, "Putting your soul on display."
He considered, then said, in that accent peculiar to this part of the Valley, "You wanna write 'bout me, huh? So you can make a lotta money, right?"
"Well-sure, I mean we both can. But what I really care about is the work. The art. The citizens' action groups think you're nothing but a vandal. They want to whitewash your tags."
"Whitewash, huh? I guess that's somethin' you'd know all about." His eyes flicked behind me. "That your car?"
No, this was wrong. "My car....?"
"In this neighborhood, somebody could steal it." He was advancing on me now, grinning. I started backing away.
Then he called out in Spanish past my shoulder. I jerked around and saw the other two in the car. They were getting out now, moving slow, enjoying this. One walked over and deliberately slouched himself against the driver-side door of my car. The third stopped a few feet from me. They both had bottles of bad malt liquor and moist blunts.
I faced the original boy, trying to keep my voice even. "You're not him, are you?"
"Why not?"
"Because he works alone."
He pretended to think that over, then laughed. "Guess you're right, chiquita, 'cause we always do everything together."
The one closest to me, wiry, bad teeth, buzzcut, stepped up to my side. "Bet you never had any real Mexican food, huh, baby?"
"I'm just looking for El Cazador. If you know him, you can tell him for me-"
The first one slapped me. Not hard, but enough to leave my face stinging and bring tears to my eyes. "Why the fuck you think El Caz'd wanna talk to you?! He's not yours, you dumb college bitch. He's ours. You even know what his name means?"
Oh Christ. All these weeks and it had never even occurred to me that the name itself meant anything.
"Goddamn, you ain't much of a writer, you didn't even do your homework. El Cazador means 'the hunter'. That's us. That's what we do, like him. We hunt."
"Loco lobos," Bad Teeth giggled.
"We protect our territory. And you strayed into it, little white rabbit-"
I made a break for my passenger door.
I didn't make it. They got me, bent me back on the hood. Bad Teeth was clawing at my shirt while the others held me down, whooping and taunting in half-Spanish, half-English.
I can't say for sure what happened next.
The gangstas over me were blown apart, like dead leaves in a sudden hurricane. I saw Bad Teeth grappling with someone, then he shouted a hoarse obscenity, a knife blade appeared through his back, and blood splattered my legs and the car. Oh God that thick metal smell...Tattoo had a gun out, the third one had his own knife. Whoever-whatever-had hit them went for the knifeholder first. The hand holding the stiletto was suddenly bent backward, little cracks sounding. The knife fell and its former possessor shrieked. The assailant shoved him away and stared at the boy with skin art and gun. "Go, vato! Now!"
Tattoo looked around frantically and realized he was alone now; his friends were either dead or fled. His fingers were shaking as the man with his back to me pointed at the tattoos and said softly, "I let you go 'cause'a the art, man."
Tattoo stowed the gun, got in his car, gunned the engine and peeled out.
I was crouched on the ground, huddled against the protective metal of a fender. Now the aggressor turned and I saw him by the dim light of overhead freeway traffic.
He was no man. He was young, more so than the others-16 at best. Small, skinny, acne-scarred face, stringy unwashed hair.
This couldn't be him.
The Hunter.
"El Cazador...."
The boy with the teeth and the knife in his back moaned and scrabbled at the asphalt. His attacker turned away from me, walked idly over and pulled the knife out of him. Then El Cazador-because this was him-knelt beside the twitching boy, flipped him onto his back-
---and tore his throat out with his teeth.
This was not the polite seduction of a thousand midnight movies. The victim pinned beneath El Cazador was flailing wildly in his last seconds of life. He tore at his killer's hair and clothes, uttered choked babbling cries, bucked his body, tried to dislodge the thing sucking him dry. Blood puddled beneath him and began to run.
I picked myself up and sidled to the passenger door. I'd forgotten it was locked. The keys were in my pocket. I got them out, wrapping my fist around them to stop the jangling noise. The click of the key in the lock, the creak of the door opening sounded like cannonfire to me, but El Cazador paid no attention, still embroiled in his grotesque feast. I slid in and locked both doors. My fingers were shaking as I got the keys into the ignition. I started the engine-
---and the driver-side window shattered in.
He had moved so impossibly fast there was no space to even react. His hand was through the glass, pulling up the lock, opening the door, dragging me out. Then he held me there against the car. His face was smeared with blood and two of his teeth were too long. Light flowed from his eyes.
I think I was screaming over and over, "Please let me go, please-let me go-"
He laughed and shook his head. "No way. You're my dessert."
I found a last reserve of determination, then, and answered, "Fine, but before you kill me look at the book on the ground behind you."
It was where I had dropped the album. His eyes flicked around, saw the object. Then he threw me to the ground, hard, and turned to grab the album. I lay there, hurting, hoping, while he went through the pages of his book. His expression didn't change, but he began to turn each page slower, taking longer to study the photos.
To appraise his work.
Finally he closed it, dropped it back in the car. "So?"
"So I want people to know about your tags."
"People do know."
"But only the ones around here."
He frowned for a moment, then walked away from me to where Bad Teeth lay dead on the cracked sidewalk. He leaned down, drove his hand into the dead man's midsection, pulled it out wet and sticky. Then he went to the wall and fingerpainted, finishing his signature. Wiping his hand clean on his shirt, he told me, "Blood's no good after they're dead, so I use it for the tag."
Was he offering himself to me? I took the chance. "Let me write about you. For the newspaper. I can sell them an article, a big article. You tell me what to say, that's all I'll put in. It'll be just about you, why you do it, what you're saying-"
"So all the Beverly Hills assholes can go, like, 'Oh, now I see,' that it?"
"Yes," I answered, "and maybe then they won't be so anxious to paint over your stuff."
"Who's painting over me?," he demanded.
"Not other taggers. People who think it's graffiti, vandalism."
"And you think you can stop that?"
"You can't by yourself, Cazador," I told him. "Sure, you can take out a couple of stoned gangbangers, maybe some unarmed stupid little girl, but you can't stand up to the rest of the world alone."
After a long pause he toed the corpse of Bad Teeth. "What about him? You saw what I did."
Was there a hint of self-disgust there? I started to pull myself up. "Yes, I did."
"And?"
"Too much bad crack, Caz."
He smiled and I saw with relief that those long teeth didn't look so long any more. "Hey, you're pretty brave, y'know? Dumber'n shit, but brave. Maybe I talk to you."
"Yes, talk to me. But you've got to guarantee my safety when we're done."
He spread his hands in mock resignation. "Now, how can anyone do that in this neighborhood, huh?" Then, bending close to me, he said, "You're in my world, so you're gonna take what I give, okay?"
He strode off a few feet and reached for a backpack he must have brought with him, opened it and pulled out paint cans, several of which he jammed into his cavernous baggy pants pockets. Then he went to his mural and called back to me, "I show you how I paint, but you can't write it, okay?"
I muttered agreement and asked if I could turn on my car headlights. He said no, I'd have to use my night vision. He floated up twenty feet and began to paint.
I should have been terrified, or incredulous. I should have scrambled for safety, screamed for help, gotten in my car and squealed out of there. Instead I felt only...rightness. It all fit together now and, watching, I believed it was his fervor that lifted him. In the dark I could see his arms move, first contained and precise, next in grand sweeping arcs, and colors appeared. He layered them, the colors, he had special nozzles he switched between cans, he knew his materials with the intimacy required of any great artist. Sometimes he masked areas with his hand, carelessly letting the blue or red or black whoosh out across his brown skin.
And all the time he talked. He told me about how he'd been just another Mexican gangbanger, ditching school and chasing girls, until at 13 he'd discovered he could paint. At 15 the police had caught him and he'd done six months in a juvie honor camp. While there he'd heard rumors about "some crazyass motherfucker in Echo Park" who sucked blood like Dracula and he wanted that so he could paint forever. Upon release from the honor camp, he'd gone searching and on a dark, cloudy Saturday night had found what he'd been searching for-or, rather, it had found him. He'd managed to bite his assailant before he was drained and so he had turned. Now he disguised his feedings as gang acts, letting the press draw the conclusions for him. His family watched over him in the day, protecting their treasure, their Cazador.
"Do they know what you are?," I asked.
"I dunno. I think they gotta, but... don' ask, don' tell, kinda the way it is in my house, comprendé?"
The sky was purpling by the time he came back down to earth. Even in that shallow light I could see the finished work was magnificent. If I didn't remember everything he'd told me, the new tag was a living document, it would endure.
I squinted at the violet sky, and shivered in the morning chill. "It's almost dawn. Would you get hurt if...."
"You ever forget you left shit on the barbecue?," he asked.
I laughed, despite my cold and my hurts and the dead boy 20 feet away. "Will you make it?"
"No problem. I don't live far, an' you wouldn' believe how fuckin' fast I can run now."
A car drove by a block away. Early workers, beginning to file back to the few buildings still functioning in this urban hell. "How can I reach you again?"
"You can't," he answered.
"But I---"
He interrupted, "My deal, remember? You jus' go home, write the story, get it in the paper. Not like I need the money, after all."
I nodded-
-then jumped at the sound of a voice behind me. "Freeze!"
I whirled to see a man 50 feet away, holding a gun out. Where....? Then I realized-he'd been in that car that had driven past.
He walked closer. "I'm making a citizen's arrest."
As he neared, revealed in the dim light, I recognized him. It took me a minute to make the connection, then it burst out of me: "Henry. Henry Colson. I saw you on the news."
Henry smiled, but didn't waver his grip on the pistol he held steady. "That's right, you're face to face now with a local hero."
"Right. Now put the gun away, Henry, that's-"
"Shut up! He's the one I want." He waved the gun at El Cazador. "I heard it on my police scanner. When they took his friend to the hospital to fix his broken arm. Lucky me, I beat the cops. Guess they got other shitheads to worry about, so I'm holding you until they get here."
I glanced at El Cazador, knowing what he must be thinking: Henry would get more than a citizen's arrest in about twenty minutes, when the sun edged up past the horizon.
The Hunter wasn't going to wait.
He launched himself at Henry. He was little more than a streak, a crazy panel out of a comic book. Henry panicked and popped off a shot before Caz plowed into him.
The shot hit me.
The impact threw me down, then the shock hit. It was in my left shoulder. There was blood everywhere-and o god it was my blood my blood this time spilling out-
I heard Henry scream as something ripped. Then El Cazador was over me, his face smeared with Henry's blood, his eyes actually concerned. "Son-of-a-bitch, man, he got you-"
I think I told him to go.
He never saw. Never saw Henry, not dead yet, his chest laid open, his mouth an "o" of astonishment and agony, the gun still in his fingers, bringing it up, firing, once, twice...
El Cazador toppled. Two holes in his chest.
I got to my knees. I looked at Henry first, to see if he would fire again. He was on his back, eyes open, staring at the cobalt blue sky. I thought he was dead.
Cazador was coughing, trying to lift his head to look at the wounds. "Shit," he muttered.
My hands fluttered above him helplessly. "I thought bullets couldn't kill you."
"They can't, but the blood's leakin' out, makin' me...making me weak. If I don't get blood...I won't make it home before...before...."
"What about Henry?"
El Cazador's nose wrinkled. "I can smell him from here-he's dead, the motherfucker. Can't have dead blood."
"Then take me."
He blinked at me in surprise. "You been shot, already lost blood. I could kill you...."
"El Cazador will die otherwise."
I put my wrist to his mouth. I was shaking, from cold, from shock, from weakness, from terror. He pushed the wrist away and I thought he was refusing me. Then he gently pushed me down and rolled towards me. There was nothing beautiful about his scarred face as it bent over me, I could smell the blood and paint on him, I could feel his weight...but when his teeth slid into my neck, what I saw was beautiful, glorious, transcendent. I saw his art, all his tags, the way he saw them. I saw the colors, the layers of shimmering shades, the figures so vivid they seemed to move if you turned your gaze to the side. I felt the rage and the pride and the desperation. It was all there before me, a magnificent panorama of vision.
A vision worth dying for.
###
But I didn't die.
When I came to, I was in the back of an ambulance, on the way to County.
It turned out the police had come about the time the sun had risen. They'd found Henry Colson and the boy with bad teeth. At first they'd believed me to be a third corpse, but the paramedics found a weak pulse and started transfusions immediately.
Of course they asked me what had happened. I told them I'd been following Henry Colson for a story and he'd been attacked when he'd foolishly tried to step into a gang rumble. They didn't believe me, but it made as much sense as anything else.
I got out 10 days later and wrote the first story. Of course, it didn't say El Cazador could float or drank blood or would live forever as a 16-year-old kid. What it did say was good enough that the paper did publish it. They even put it in the Sunday magazine; you probably read it, then forgot it as your weekend wore on. The check helped defray part of my hospital costs. One production company called, but nothing much ever came of it. Meanwhile, a major studio has gone into production on THE HENRY COLSON STORY.
I'm still waitressing these days. I haven't thought much about writing again. Sometimes I do, then I see the scars, the ones in my shoulder and throat.
El Cazador disappeared, no new tags. For a while I thought he hadn't made it, that my blood had not been enough, that he'd been snuffed out by the sun's blistering whiteness, vaporized into nothingness.
Then one day I was on my shift when four Mexican kids came into the restaurant. They sat, giggling and joking among themselves. I went to pour coffee-and nearly dropped the pot.
One of them was wearing an expensive jacket with an airbrushed painting on the back, showing a brown fist hovering in the air over the Los Angeles skyline.
It was unmistakably his work.
I asked the kid where he'd gotten the jacket. Something in my face or voice must have told him I was serious, because he stopped kidding around, looked at me and said only, "What diff'rence does it make?"
I nodded and knew he was right.
THE END
Learn more about the author at www.lisamorton.com
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###
THE MAN IN BLACK
By Nate Kenyon
"I want to know more about this obsession," Dr. Devey said. "Tell me about the man in black."
Andy looked around the perfectly square room. The walls had been painted a soothing shade of green, presumably to cool the heated minds of the psychotics. A ceiling fan ticked lazily overhead.
He tried to cross his legs and found the restraints wouldn't allow it. "I'm not a violent man, for Christ's sake," he said. "Ask Annie, she'll tell you. Can't you loosen these a little?"
Dr. Devey blinked at him. Devey was a small man with an overly large head, bald except for the barest wisp of hair around his ears. He looked like a chicken, Andy thought to himself, with his hooked nose and beady eyes.
"We'll leave them for now," Devey said. "I want to avoid those...outbursts of yours."
Andy sighed. The man in black had taken over his life like some kind of fast-spreading cancer. What he had been forced to do in that alley made him sick. He'd been seduced, used and discarded like so much garbage. But nobody wanted to hear the truth. Devey had his own agenda and his own rules, and he was in charge here.
"I don't expect you to believe me," Andy said. "It sounds crazy." He shook his head. "Possession? I can hardly believe it myself."
"Just start at the beginning," Devey said.
And so Andy did.
\*\*\*\*\*
The man in black first appeared to him in a dream (at least he'd thought it was a dream then); this was about a week after Annie left.
Andy tended to drift when asleep like a boat in a strong wind. A distant memory of his father, come to life again in a stiff white shirt and bowtie; his father began to speak and dissolved into a car that ran without wheels on tracks through the night sky, and the car turned into Annie's pixie face, and then that dissolved into the hallway of his old high school in White Falls, where the doors to classrooms were all shut tight and locked from the inside and he was alone among his own echoing footsteps.
Andy tossed and turned, twisting the starched sheets around his body in his sleep, and on the mattress next to him the dog lifted his head and whined into the darkness.
At the sound of the dog, he drifted towards consciousness. That was when the man in black appeared at the foot of his bed. He wore a tuxedo suit with a black bowtie and a black shirt underneath. A black cummerbund was tied at his waist, and a black flower decorated his lapel. His eyes glowed like two red coals in the ashes of his face.
"Who the fuck are you?" Andy said hoarsely. He sat up and clutched the sheets to his chest.
"Don't act so frightened," the man said. "I think you know who I am. Yes, indeed."
"Get out of my room!"
"Why are you trembling? Why do you try to pull away after the effort you extended to bring me here? Such a shame that you don't have the guts to face me after all you've suffered through. I expected more from you, Andrew, really, but perhaps I was fooling myself. I've watched you live your pathetic little life for too long, and I'm tired of it."
The man waved a hand through the air like a hypnotist counting down from ten. "Goodbye for now. Sleep. You'll see me again soon enough."
The next morning Andy tried to dismiss what he'd seen as nothing more than a bad dream. The dog hadn't moved from the bed, after all; if someone had actually entered his room, surely the dog would have chased him off.
He got up at six and went downtown as usual, where he worked as a clerk at a small law firm. He spent most of his time at the office writing letters, filing papers (which required nothing more than a stamp from Municipal court), and buying lunch for the lawyers. He worked on a summer clerk's salary that allowed him to pay his rent and buy food, and left nothing else. He had little use for money. Annie had paid for most of the things they did, and now that she was gone, he did not feel the need to go out.
He went to his desk, located in a cubbyhole outside Mr. Welk's office. There was mail to open, form letters to be copied and sent out, filing to be done, but lately it all seemed so unimportant. The lawyers moved around him as if he were invisible.
Mr. Welk came looking for the correspondence file for the Edwards case. Welk was a heavy man who combed his hair up over his head to hide a bald spot.
"This is important, Andrew---we go to trial in two days."
"I haven't seen the file, Mr. Welk."
"I've got a lunch appointment. Could you hunt for it in my office?"
Welk's office was a mess. File boxes stacked on top of one another leaned in one corner by the window. Casebooks and supplements littered the floor. Andy went through it all patiently. He moved to the big desk and sorted through a jumble of pens, pencils, scratch pads, batteries, paper clips, computer disks, candy bar wrappers. He failed to come up with Edwards file.
Discouraged, he moved to the center drawer. There, under a couple of legal pads and sheets of stationary, he found the money.
\*\*\*\*\*
"That's what set you off, isn't it?" Dr. Devey interrupted. "Seeing all that cash just sitting there for the taking."
Andy sighed and shook his head. Devey simply didn't understand. The money really had nothing to do with it. He had been visited by something that defied description. He had been seduced, possessed and ultimately betrayed at his moment of greatest weakness. Whatever that thing was, it was long gone now, and he had been left alone to be locked up here.
"We'll stop there for the day," Devey said. "I think we've made some progress, don't you? I simply want to understand you, Andy. I want to help."
Andy shrugged. What did it matter? Devey was an idiot.
The men came in and released him from his chair bonds, and Andy let them dress him in the straitjacket before they led him down the soft green hallway to his cell.
\*\*\*\*\*
The next session with Dr. Devey began the following morning at nine o'clock. Andy was brought from his padded cell to the green room, where the doctor waited, pad in hand. He looked even more like a chicken today, with his wisp of hair fanning out behind his skull and his eyes darting here and there. No, not like a chicken, like...some other kind of animal.
The two orderlies sat him down and began the tedious process of worming him out of the straitjacket and into the chair's bonds. Andy often wondered why they didn't just leave him in the jacket. After all, he wasn't about to go leaping at the doctor and tearing at him with his teeth. Devey might have been an idiot, but he wasn't particularly offensive. And ever since the man in black had left him alone, Andy had felt himself again. Perhaps they wanted to afford him the remains of his dignity; but bonds, after all, were bonds. Did it really matter if they came in little leather straps instead of a straitjacket?
"Where did we leave things yesterday?" Devey asked. He looked at his notepad. "Ah, yes. You found the money. What happened then?"
"I went to look for the file somewhere else."
"You didn't take the money at that point?"
He shook his head. What could it have done for him? He lived a simple life.
"You knew the money was there if you needed it. Do you think that knowing you had a means of escape somehow facilitated the act?"
Andy stared at Devey. He couldn't believe the depth of the man's ignorance. "The money had nothing to do with what happened at the club. Nothing at all. That was self-defense. He attacked me. I didn't plan it."
"I see. And the others?"
Andy didn't say anything. How could he possibly say what he believed to be true? That he had been terrorized by a demon? That he had become a kind of plaything in a much larger game?
Devey leaned back and crossed his legs, as if flaunting his own freedom to move as he wished. I was wrong, Andy thought. He was starting to find Devey offensive, after all.
"Tell me what happened next, Andy. Continue the story."
\*\*\*\*\*
He worked through the next day as usual, and the next. The Edwards file remained missing, and Mr. Welk went on without it, albeit in a foul mood.
As the days passed Andy began to dread going home to his empty apartment. His thoughts and feelings were becoming disjointed, erratic. Ever since Annie left, he had been wading through a hip-deep stretch of dark water, and lately he had felt it rising. Soon, he feared, it would be over his head and he would drown in loneliness.
Annie used to tell him he was selling himself short. "When are you going to wake up? You just have to find the guts. People take what they want in this world, and if you let them, they'll take it from you."
She finally left him after two decent years for a man with "more guts." When he'd found her note, it drove the air out of him like a fist to the stomach.
Over the next several nights, Andy saw the man in black every time he closed his eyes. Tuesday morning he sat bolt upright in bed. Something had been chasing him down pitch-black corridors. Andy had run blindly through the darkness, hands in front of his face, through corridors that were without end. He ran through the center of the earth and back again, sure that the man in black was at his heels. The corridors bounced sound in such a way that it was impossible to tell which way to turn. Finally he saw the light ahead and pressed forward, his throat locked in a silent scream; and when he had reached the light, he turned to face the creature chasing him---and found nothing but emptiness.
After the horrible dream, he took a sick day to go to the zoo, hoping to calm his nerves. That was where he saw that the man in black had followed him out of his dream world.
The zoo was a favorite place of Annie's. She had loved to watch the lions pacing their cages, the monkeys swinging and chattering, the big birds preening in all their glorious colors. "Animals are so refreshing," she said once. "They don't care what other animals think of them. They just go about their business."
Andy began to understand what she meant as he watched the monkeys in their cages. They fought and chased each other with a seemingly endless supply of energy; they exposed themselves, defecated, made love without restraint. They were not held back by any moral code. If one monkey was larger than the others, he simply took what he wanted. That was the nature of things, as Annie had often told him. Eat or be eaten.
His skin began to crawl. He turned away from the cage and froze. The man in black was standing in his shadow.
"Have you learned anything yet, Andrew?" he asked. "Or do we need to watch a while longer?"
Andy turned and ran, and the man in black's laughter followed him all the way through the park to the gates.
After that, Andy began to see the man in black everywhere. Through the windows of shops, in the rush-hour crowds on the street, at the bus stop. He seemed aware of Andy's every move, and positioned himself for the moment of greatest surprise. Appearing in mirrors, or as a shadow glimpsed out of the corner of the eye. Andy wandered through the city streets without direction, the words of the man in black following him everywhere. Have you learned anything yet, Andrew? Or do we need to watch a while longer?
Finally, a nervous wreck, he ended up at the office after the sun went down. The empty spaces were like tombs. He walked past the conference room behind a wall of glass, and Mrs. Underwood's office with its strange African sculptures like offerings for the dead. He entered Mr. Welk's office, then crossed the floor quickly and rummaged through the center drawer. His trembling fingers found the envelope and he fumbled to open it, almost dropping the money onto the floor. He counted it out. $1,600 in cash. It was a small fortune to him, over two week's pay.
Then he imagined them catching him in the act. Mrs. Underwood calling the police from the front desk. Mr. Welk, a look of disappointment darkening his chubby face as he stood in the doorway shaking his head. Andy could almost see him there now, watching. The images were so strong he could see where they might lead, and was helpless to shut it all out; Mr. Welk's body sprawled across his desk, his fat belly slit open, Mrs. Underwood with purple handprints around her neck.
Andy shuddered. The emotion that had carried him thus far died in his breast. He replaced the envelope, slid the drawer shut and left the office.
On the way out he almost ran headfirst into the janitor. The man shied away like he was being threatened. "Mr. Lomos!"
Andy kept his hands shoved deep into his pockets and told himself to be calm. He had not done anything. He was not a thief. He caught a sudden brutal image of the man like a snapshot; lying across his cart, bloody, staring, his eyelids cut out. The man in black stood beside the corpse, his eyes red-rimmed with hell-fire.
Andy clenched his teeth and did not scream. "I'm sorry if I startled you," he said.
"Didn't know anyone was here. Be out of your way in a minute."
"Take your time. I was just leaving."
The janitor gave him one more look and pushed his cart full of spray cleaner and rags out ahead of him.
Andy left the office and began to wander again, and the man in black followed him. There was something more insistent in the man's gaze now, an eagerness that had not been evident before. He became bolder, showing himself in every angle, every crevice and alleyway. There seemed to be a pattern to his movements, as if he were directing their path to an awaited end.
Eventually he sought refuge inside a club on Seventh Avenue. Lights flashed above him. Bodies writhed together on the dance floor. He ordered a beer, drank it down, and ordered another, and yet another, feeling the heavy beat of the music deep in his chest. Soon he was turning and moving with the crowd. It had been a long time since he had felt this way among a group, his own insecurities and self-consciousness dissolving in a bubbling stew of colored lights, naked flesh, and sweat. Each of the dancers around him had their own smell, he noticed; a pretty young girl, her sweat clean and light, and a man with a heavy belly who smelled like sour milk. What did he smell like to them, Andy wondered. Did he have a recognizable odor, and if so, was it pleasant or offensive? That was something he wished he had asked Annie.
At the thought of her the room darkened and the colors bled out of the lights until they flashed in shades of gray. The faces that surrounded him were pale, fleshy lumps; they leered at him as the light played games with their features, elongating noses and deepening the pouches under their eyes.
Andy danced and drank with the wolves and a while later he noticed the man in black standing in the shadows across the room, watching him. The man in black's eyes glowed blood-red among the grays.
\*\*\*\*\*
He did not know when the girl started dancing next to him; it seemed as if she had just appeared there all at once. She wore a blue halter top that showed the upper halves of her breasts and cut away to reveal her belly below. He fixed his gaze on her like a man drowning in the ocean, and she stared back, unashamed, her body moving with the music as if of its own accord. Andy clung to her like an island in a storm.
They danced together until suddenly, without warning, one of the wolves poked bony fingers into his chest. "You think you're hot shit," the wolf said, his hairy face slick with sweat. His tongue lolled from one corner of his grinning mouth. "That's my girl. I think you and me, we go for it, right now."
The girl frowned and held Andy's arm. "Leave him alone, Brian."
"What, you gonna get with this guy now?" the wolf said. "He's a sorry piece of shit."
"Stop it, Brian. Just stop."
Andy could feel her hot flesh against his arm. Annie had liked to do that when they were in public; holding his arm as they walked, touching his knee under the table at restaurants.
The wolf grabbed for her, and the girl shrank back. The lights and the beer and the smell of flesh overwhelmed him. The dancers spun on all sides, leering at him. He caught a glimpse of the man in black again. He was standing closer now, just over the wolf's left shoulder. As Andy watched, the man in black raised a finger to his throat and slashed.
"Why don't you leave her alone?" Andy said.
The wolf grabbed him by the shirt. "Not here," Andy managed to whisper, and then they were shoving people aside in their rush for the door. He felt consumed by an urgent need for conflict of any kind; his very muscles ached.
The wolf dragged him into a darkened space between two buildings. "I told you to stay away from my girl, man," the wolf said. "Now you're gonna learn to listen when I talk to you."
It was dark, and a red neon sign advertising some beer lit up the wolf's face just slightly, causing it to pulse and move with the light like a wound. But that was not what had caught his attention; over the wolf's shoulder stood the man in black again.
He was grinning.
The wolf swung a fist at him. He moved to one side as the wolf's claws glanced off his skull, and then he swung his right fist upward from his hip with all his strength. He heard the hiss of breath as he connected and then Andy slipped and fell, hitting the slimy brick wall of the alley hard with his shoulder. The wolf lay on his side, wheezing painfully and holding his stomach.
Andy struggled to his feet as the dampness of the alley floor soaked through the knees of his pants. His head was spinning; he felt the music beating through the wall next to him, smelled the mold in the dark corners and the rot of old buildings. This was what it was like to lose control like an animal. The feeling was glorious!
He caught movement below him and looked down as the wolf lunged upward from a crouch. Silver flashed in the wolf's claws before he felt a biting pain near his elbow. He managed to push the wolf away from him, feeling the wetness he knew was his blood trickling down his forearm into his palm. Enraged, he struck the wolf in the back of the neck, sending the creature into the wall with such force that pieces of the crumbling brick fell to the pavement. He heard the blade click against the brick and then the ground.
Both of them scrambled for the knife. Andy got to it first. An animal growl rose unbidden to his throat. He gripped the knife and thrust it blindly upward, feeling it jerk and slide in deep.
The knife leapt in his hand like a fish at the end of a line. He let go and the wolf fell.
Sudden silence met his ears. Andy climbed to his feet. The handle of the blade stood up from the wolf's left side, a quivering, silver-and-red-stained flag. Andy raised his wet and bloody hands towards the light. He felt a great pressure on his legs as if he were sinking into the pavement.
When he looked down again, he saw that the creature lying at his feet was only a man. Horrified, he backed away, until he felt something hard and rough against his shoulders, and there he crouched.
Andrew.
He cringed; the man in black stood over him in the shifting light. He started to shriek, "Go away!" but was drowned out by the creature's voice, which echoed through his head:
The world does not care whether you live or die---it has always been that way, and those who have the will to survive continue to flourish while all others are eaten. You are no different from them. You have the devil inside of you, as everyone does. There is nothing noble about having your face pressed into the dirt. Learn to fight, and conquer. Take what you deserve.
Andy felt a change in himself. A clarity of thought, of purpose, that he had never felt before. A stranger lived beneath this familiar skin; all these years, he had been comforted knowing that the dark corners of his mind were known to him and that the worst was not so bad. But now there were new corners and new nightmares.
Andy left the alley with the man's blood on his hands and jacket. He did not know where he was going, only that he needed to be moving. As he passed a large store window, he caught his reflection in the glass and stopped short. A hairy, snarling face with heavy brows and glowing eyes stared back at him.
\*\*\*\*\*
"And you truly believed at that point that you had become ... this beast?" Devey sat poised over his notepad, as if he were studying something. But Andy could see the look on his face, a look of disbelief, the look a sane man reserves for the insane, or the weak. For wasn't that what insanity was, in the eyes of others? A weakness?
"Yes," Andy said. "But I don't anymore, of course."
"I must say, this is extremely interesting," Devey said, lifting his wire-rimmed spectacles from his nose and examining their curved lenses. He lifted the sleeve of his shirt to polish them, and then settled them back on his nose again. "Although you became quite disjointed in telling the story. Jumping around from place to place and time to time. I had some trouble following you."
"That's the way I remember it," Andy said. "I can't tell it any other way."
"Yes. Well, I'd like you to relax. Just take a deep breath." Devey waved his hand. "That's better. So you went back to the office the next day?"
"No." Andy was puzzled. "I went home and went to bed."
Devey knew perfectly well what he had done. The police had roused him from a sound sleep at his apartment that morning, when they had made the arrest.
"Ah." Devey set the pad down on the desk. "Tell me about the money, Andy. When did you actually take it?"
"I didn't take the money. I told you."
"But we found it in your possession. The police did. Surely you remember. Did the lawyers surprise you at the office earlier that day? Did they walk in on you at an awkward moment? Perfectly understandable. You had no choice. I sympathize."
Devey's falsely soothing voice enraged him. He still can't grasp it, Andy thought. No one can.
If he hadn't killed the man at the club, the man would have killed him. Self defense. He had committed no other crime. He was not responsible for anything other than ignorance. He had been pushed to the brink of madness by one of the creatures that haunted those shadowed places between this world and the next. His only mistake had been in listening to its ravings. But he had been in a vulnerable state, with Annie gone. Surely the doctor understood that much.
But no, Devey was once again missing the point. There were more important things to consider here.
"What does the money or the rest of it matter?" Andy whispered. "He was real."
"You're talking about this man in black."
"Of course."
Devey reached down and opened a drawer of his desk. Andy saw with some surprise that the man's hands were shaking; he could show emotion, after all. "I wasn't going to do this," Devey said. "I was afraid it would overwhelm you. But I don't see that I have any choice."
He pulled out an envelope and spilled its contents on the desktop. A series of photographs in vivid color; Mr. Welk sprawled across his desk, his throat cut in a wide red yawn, his entrails hanging down like monstrous purple worms; Mrs. Underwood in her sterile cold office, her neck twisted, her tongue visible between puffy lips. Devey held up another photo. The janitor in his dirty yellow jumpsuit now spattered with blood, thrown across his cleaning cart, fixing the camera with a wide-eyed stare. The janitor's eyelids had been cut out.
"Do you see these?" Devey said. "You did this, Andy. You. No ghost, no spirit. Nobody else. They were helpless, innocent people. You murdered them in cold blood."
"I don't believe you," Andy whispered. His mouth was a dusty bowl, his temples throbbed. Had Devey's ears grown more pointed? Was that a shadow of hair along his jawline?
"The police found the Edwards file at your apartment along with the money. Do you understand? You took it."
"No! The man in black---"
"This is how they found you that morning, Andy," Devey said. He held up the last picture. "Here is the man in black."
Andy could not speak. His heart was racing and his throat closed as he stared at the last image captured on film. A picture of himself in police handcuffs, standing against the wall of his apartment. He wore a black tuxedo suit with a black bow tie, and a black shirt underneath. A black flower decorated the lapel. The camera had turned one final, ironic trick; in the light of the flash, his eyes glowed red.
"There was one more body, Andy," Devey said. "It had been there, under the floorboards, for some time. A female. Do you understand what I'm saying?"
The green-colored room spun across his sight. It could not be! Annie. No. Annie had left him alone with the demon, and his flesh had been weak, but he was not a cold-blooded murderer! He had not done this!
When he looked up again, Devey was grinning at him. His nose had stretched itself into a snout, his ears grown long and pointed with tufts of hair, his teeth sharp and yellow. One of the others. Why hadn't he seen it before? Dr. Devey wasn't a chicken at all. Devey was a wolf.
As he realized this, the room seemed to darken, and out of the darkness stepped the man in black. He stood directly behind the doctor, and as Andy watched, his mouth opened wide. Inside, it was deep and very red.
Am I wasting my time here? Will you let them take you under like so many sheep, or will you act?
"Andy?" Devey still held the last photo in one hairy paw. Now it showed nothing more than an empty bedroom, which of course was what it had shown all along. "Are you all right?"
Andy made a fist. One of the straps was loose. The letter opener on Devey's desk was within reach.
"I'm feeling much better now, doctor," he said. "Thank you."
THE END
Learn more about the author at natekenyon.com/
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###
STARVATION ARMY
By Joe McKinney
From the window of his abominably small second story room, Jonathan Nettle could see the alleyway where he'd found the body earlier that morning. He'd stumbled on the corpse by accident, while he was wandering the huge, unending slum of London's East End, looking for the homeless shelter on the Mile End Road where he was to take up his new post as assistant minister.
He'd smelled the noisome stench moments before he came across the homeless man's body, and he'd spun on his heel and vomited all over the sidewalk when he saw the black, iridescent flies swarming around the mouth and eyes. After that, he'd stumbled out of the alley way and grabbed the first policeman he saw. He babbled and pointed and grunted until, at last, he made himself understood enough for the policeman to follow him.
The policeman looked at the body, at the bruise-like splotches on the skin that weren't bruising, but lividity, at the emaciated, rail-skinny arms and legs, and merely nodded.
"Yer an American, ain't ye, sir?"
"Huh?" Nettle said, the back of his hand against his lips. "Uh, yes."
"What are ye doin' here in the East End?"
Nettle told him he was looking for the homeless shelter, and the policeman merely nodded. "The peg house yer lookin' for is over there," he said, and pointed over Nettle's shoulder.
Nettle could barely take his eyes off the body, but he did long enough to see the tumbledown, soot-stained building the policeman pointed out for him. He looked back at the policeman---at the bobby, he reminded himself---and said, "What...happened to him?"
"This bloke? Prob'ly starved to death'd be my guess, sir."
"Starved?"
"Aye," the bobby said.
Nettle had said nothing to that, only nodded as he tried to take in the wonder that a grown man could starve to death in the middle of the largest city on Earth, in the heart of the most powerful empire the world had ever known. He tried, but couldn't wrap his mind around it.
His stay was supposed to be brief, only long enough for him to get some experience with the great things William Booth and his "salvation army" were doing for the poor here in London, so he could take those practices back to his Methodist ministries in New York and Boston. But he could already tell that the "problem of the poor" that such great orators as the Reverend Merle Cary of New York had spoken of so eloquently to audiences up and down the New England seaboard all that preceding summer of 1875 was far worse than he had been led to believe.
Just then, almost as if on cue, several men began lugging bags of garbage out of the hospital across the street and dumping them on the sidewalk below Nettle's window. The bags split open on the ground and soon there was an almost liquid pile of corruption festering in the open air. Nettle watched the pile grow into a shapeless mass of rotten vegetables, scraps of meat, orange peels, and bloody surgical rags and blankets. The street was a miasma of squabbling and obscene yelling and fighting, and yet no one said a word about the garbage. Indeed, after it had been sitting there for a few minutes, children converged on it, burying their arms in it up to their shoulders, digging for any kind of food they could find and devouring it on the spot.
One boy, a stunted little runt of perhaps six years old, came up with something black that might have once been a potato, and tried to steal away with it. Several older boys surrounded him, punched him till he fell, then kicked him till he gave up the nasty potato thing he clutched near his groin.
For Nettle, it was too much. His sister Anna had snuck a dozen oranges into his luggage as a treat for him. Fully aware that indiscriminate charity is cruel, he made up his mind to be cruel. He collected the oranges in a paper sack and went down to the street.
"How old are you, son?" he asked the boy.
"Twelve, sir," the boy said.
Nettle blinked in shock. Twelve! And he had envisioned the boy a runt of six. How this place must beat them down, he thought.
He handed the boy the oranges, and the boy's eyes went wide, like he'd just been given all the jewels in Africa.
"Go on," Nettle said. "Enjoy."
The boy was gone faster than the sun from a November day, and Nettle, feeling a little better, went back up to his room to write a letter to his sister in New York.
The porter's name was Bill Lowell. He was a weathered, bent-back old man whose job it was to watch the door to the shelter and tell the poor wretches who came there for shelter when there was no more space available. Most nights, there was room for between 20 and 50 people, depending on the shelter's food stores and what work needed to be done---for the cost of a bed indoors and a hot meal was a day of hard, hard labor.
"We open the doors at six," Bill said to Nettle, who'd been told he'd work at each job in the shelter so he could better learn its overall operational strategy, "but the line'll start formin' 'fore noon. By four the blokes'll be lined up 'round the corner."
"Even when there's only room for a few of them?"
Bill shrugged. "We'll need to search 'em as they come inside," he said. "Sometimes, they try an' sneak tobacco inside in their brogues, and they ain't allowed that."
Nettle glanced through a window next to the door, and sure enough, a long line had already formed and was snaking its way down the sidewalk and around the corner. Word had gone out earlier that there was only room for twenty-five, and yet no one in the line seemed to want to leave his spot.
The faces he saw all looked hollow, the eyes vacuous. It wasn't until several days later that Nettle learned why everyone he saw shared the same corpselike expression. London law didn't allow the homeless to sleep outside at night. The idea was that if the homeless weren't allowed to sleep outside at night, they would find somewhere indoors to sleep. To those who only saw the problem from the stratospheric heights of wealth and power, it was a clear example of give a man a fish and he eats for a day, teach him to fish and he eats for a lifetime. The reality, though, was a homeless population that was constantly driven from one doorway to the next by the police, forced to stay awake by the toe of a boot or the bite of a baton, resulting in an expression of slack-jawed exhaustion that stared back at Nettle from every pair of eyes he met.
Bill himself had nearly shared that fate, he told Nettle. He had had a family once---a wife, three daughters, and a son---but had outlived them all. His wife and daughters he'd lost to scarlet fever, all within a month of each other, but the son survived, and had helped Bill in his work as a carpenter in days past.
One day, Bill had been carrying a load of nails that was too much for him. "Something in me back just broke," Bill said. His load of nails had spilled, and he'd ended up flat on his back, unable to get up. He was taken to a hospital, but they refused to admit him, telling him, essentially, to "walk it off."
This he had tried to do, but two hours later was on his back again. He was taken to a different hospital, and this time spent three weeks in bed. He emerged a broken man, unable to do the hard labor that was, unfortunately, the only kind of work that he and most of the men like him were qualified to do, only to learn that his son had fallen from a rooftop and died the week before his release. The boy was buried in a pauper's grave, unmarked, along with a dozen others.
He lived on the streets after that---carrying the banner, as the expression went---chased from one doorway to the next by the police, until, as luck would have it, he ended up in the Mile End Road shelter on the day they had an opening for a porter who could also do a little light carpentry. His nine pounds a year in salary made him a veritable Croesus among the East End's poor.
Nettle thought idly that such a man as Bill, who had narrowly escaped a cruel death by exposure and malnutrition, would be more charitable toward his fellow men, but such was not the case.
Bill, much to Nettle's unease, seemed to heartily enjoy his position of relative power over the poor, and stared down his soot blackened nose at all who entered, demanding from each their name, age, condition of destitution, and what kind of work they were good for, before searching them all with a rough, hard hand.
In one of his searches he found a ragged pouch of tobacco inside a man's sock. Bill proceeded to beat the man with a stick he evidently left by the door for just such a purpose, and probably would have gone on beating him indefinitely, Nettle figured, had he not intervened.
When Nettle tried to berate him for his violence, Bill only scoffed. "Why, 'e's nothin' but a worthless beggar, 'e is," he said, and, with all the sour disposition of a man who kicks the cat because he's afraid to kick his wife, went to the door, where a wrecked shell of a man stood on the threshold waiting for admittance, and said, "Be gone, you. Full up!"
"Please, sir," the human wreck said. "Please, I ain't 'ad food in me belly for five days."
"Full up!" Bill said.
Nettle's heart broke to see the pain in the man's eyes, and before Bill could close the door, he was at Bill's shoulder and said, "We can take this man in, I think."
"But, sir," Bill said, "there's only room for twenty-five tonight. We're full up."
"And that man," Nettle said, pointing at the bleeding bag of bones Bill had beaten for the insolence to smoke cheap tobacco, "was to be number twenty-five. Now, I believe, this man is twenty-five."
Bill said nothing, but his eyes did.
"Thank 'e, sir," said the wreck, and walked inside.
Bill's other job at the shelter, after the doors were locked and the homeless shuffled inside, was to monitor the bathing room.
Making the homeless take a bath seemed like a good idea to Nettle---that is, until he saw the process in motion. The overnighters were all lined up, and one by one let down into a dark room with a single tub of warm water and a single threadbare towel hanging from a hook on the wall. Each man used the same water and towel as the man before him, and by the time the man Nettle had forced Bill to let in got his turn, the water in that tub was a frightful stew.
But the human wreck didn't notice. He stripped off his rags and his appearance made Nettle gasp. His body had no meat on it. He was all ribs and distended belly, his back a mass of dried and fresh new blood where he'd been attacked by vermin.
He cleaned off several layers of dirt and blood and changed into a shirt and pants from the shelter's wardrobe. Then he followed the others to the dining hall for a meal of stale bread and skilly---a sort of oatmeal mixed with tepid water so unclean Nettle doubted a dog would drink it---and he would have received that meal had he not had the misfortune to pass Bill on his way inside.
"You!" Bill said, his eyes turning hard as flints with surprised anger, his tone like that of a man who's just found the boy who made his daughter pregnant and then made a run for it.
The man stopped in his tracks.
"Look who we 'ave 'ere," Bill said loudly, looking around at the crowd.
Slowly, every head in the place turned to look.
The man kept his eyes on the floor.
"I'll be damned if it ain't Barlow the Butcher. Look 'ere, we got Barlow the Butcher!"
This meant nothing to Nettle, but it clearly did to the peg house crowd, for in short order they became a riotous mob. They fell on Barlow and began to beat on him with a savagery that would have made a tribe of cannibals blush.
Nettle waded in and pulled Barlow out of the flurry of fists. Barlow, though, didn't wait around to thank him. As soon as he was clear of the mob, he made for the door and ran off into the night.
Nettle was left with a decision to make. He was ringed by angry faces, some of them bleeding where they'd been hit by others trying to land blows on Barlow, and he had a feeling he knew what would happen if he stayed there, now that they had the taste of blood. He wisely went for the door himself, stepping out into the street in time to see Barlow, or, rather, a crowd of homeless at the end of the street, separating for Barlow, as he rounded the corner onto Stepney Green.
Nettle ran after him, and managed to follow him for a good ways before he lost him in the maze of the East End's soot-stained back alleys. He became lost in short order, every cross street and alley meeting him with endless vistas of tumbledown misery and bricks.
Walking with his head on a swivel, trying to find something familiar, he eventually stumbled onto the Brown Hay Road, where he stopped in front of an enormous abandoned warehouse. It was a blackened, eyeless hulk, not a single window down its entire length, and it made him feel strangely uneasy. There were, Nettle had seen already, very few empty buildings in London's East End. Real estate, any real estate, was at a premium, as landlords could pack as many as eight families into a home no bigger than the small, one-story apartment he had shared in New York with his mother and his sister Anna. One was more likely, he'd been told, to see a giraffe swimming down the Thames than to find an unoccupied building in the East End.
But the moldy warehouse in front of him was most certainly abandoned, and something about it made the skin crawl down his spine. And then someone was there, staggering toward him from the other side of the street. A patchwork of shadows played across the man's face, but the little Nettle could see was ghastly. The man's joints had swollen, and his body had withered away to almost nothing. His skin was black in places, almost mummified, like it had begun to rot, and it wasn't until he got halfway across the street that Nettle could tell part of the man's leg had been torn up as if by some sort of animal.
The man raised his hands and flexed his fingers in a weak grab at Nettle, moaning as he stumbled closer. At first, Nettle thought it was just a moan, meaning nothing beyond the pain it obviously conveyed, but then he recognized the word inside the pain.
"Fooooood," the man moaned.
Nettle turned on his heel, thinking robbery, and started to walk the other way.
"Fooooood," the man groaned again.
"See here," Nettle said, "I don't have anything for you."
He was very close to running then, and had already stepped up his pace, when a hansom cab suddenly lurched around the corner at a full sprint and mowed the man down. The driver of the hansom never slowed, and a moment later, he was gone.
Nettle was frozen with shock. What was left of the man after he'd been trampled by the horses and his body sliced open and dragged by the hansom's wheels was in two gory pieces connected by a clotted smear of liquefied meat.
The man's legs were still in the street, but his torso was near the curb. Nettle staggered that way, hands over his mouth, and knelt down next to the bent-over-backwards mess that the hansom had made of the man.
He started to pray...and then the man opened his eyes.
Nettle fell backwards onto the wet cobblestones. The man's eyes were horrible, like staring into the void.
"Fooooood," he groaned, and tried to claw his way toward Nettle, his fingers digging so hard into the edges of the cobblestones that the fingernails shattered and tore loose.
Nettle got up and ran and ran and ran. He ran till he broke down, and then he cried. He was still crying when, by chance, he stumbled back onto the Mile End Road.
The next morning, still badly shaken by his encounter, Nettle packed his bags and knelt by his bed to pray. He had fully expected to leave that afternoon, but his prayers had taken him in another direction, and when he rose to his feet he had made the decision to stay, and half convinced himself that what he seen the night before couldn't have happened. He was upset, nothing more.
Nettle's faith had never led him astray, and the next few days, and a chance encounter with the man the mob had chased out of the peg house on his horrible first night there, reinforced the wisdom of the decision he had made during prayer.
Nettle took to wandering up and down the Mile End Road, watching the people as they struggled for existence, and he noticed a curious little thing. The homeless always seemed to keep one eye on the spittle-flecked sidewalks, and when they'd see a morsel, they'd snatch it up and eat it on the fly. Most, it seemed, could pluck an orange peel or an apple core from the cobblestones without ever losing a step.
Nettle had been watching people go by late one afternoon, and Barlow had been coming the other way on the same sidewalk. Barlow had stooped to pick up something nasty, and when he rose, his nose collided with Nettle's chest, for Nettle was a good six inches the taller of the two.
"Oh, hello," Nettle said, and had a devil of a time over the next few moments trying to assure the man that he had no intention of braining him to death.
They talked in the eaves of a coffee shop, and gradually the look of a rabbit trying to find an opening through a pack of hounds faded from Barlow's eyes. And then a strange thing happened. Nettle, whose over stimulated humanitarian urges were in danger of melting down if he didn't find some specific point, some single human face to put on all this misery he had been witnessing, bought a pint of beer for Barlow, who was desperately in need of some kind person to buy him a pint of beer.
It was the first pint of beer Nettle had ever bought, and it was the first full pint of beer Barlow had had in a very long time. Nettle bought a second round, and by that afternoon, as the windows of the coffee shop sizzled with rain, he had come to a conclusion. He was not going to be the salvation for all the world's poor---indeed, there was no way he could be, and it was vain to think so---but he could be the door to this man's salvation. Nettle had a project now, something he could manage.
And so they sat there in the coffee shop, the rich, well-meaning American and the homeless, nearly starved Londoner, and the American talked about God and goodness and reward, and the Londoner drank his beer and nodded.
They met in the afternoons at the same coffee shop over the next week, and gradually Nettle began to realize that it wasn't the man's grotesque, almost troglodyte appearance that had sparked his philanthropy, but rather his cynicism. The man cared little for his own life, and not at all for anyone else's, and Nettle found it hard to believe that a creature who so hated life could actually go on living.
"Beer," Barlow said. "Beer's what makes a man feel like a man. You can take all the rest of it away, but you take away a man's beer, and there ain't no reason left for 'im to go on bein'."
Nettle squinted at his own almost untouched beer and thought about that as a philosophy of life, and it seemed tragic, empty.
"What about a family?" he asked. "A home? A wife and kids?"
Barlow snorted with laughter. "I saw enough of that growin' up," he said. "I saw what me Ma did for me old man. That was enough. Made 'im mis'rable, she did, always a-bangin' me brothers and sisters about, makin' 'is 'ome a noisy racket. 'e no sooner walk through the door and she'd be a-yellin' at 'im, barkin' at 'im like a dog. Take me word for it, mate, and don't waste yer time on a wife 'n kids. Do nothin' but take yer 'ard earned money and keep you from drinkin' a beer when it suits you."
Nettle was stunned, bewildered. Such a wasted life! His mind raced for a response, for something worthwhile to say, and at last, he found it. "William," he said, "I want you to pray with me. Will you do that?"
"Pray?"
"Yes, William. There's a power in prayer that has sustained me through my hard times. I think it can do the same for you."
Barlow wrinkled his brow, then a huge smile crossed his face. "Let's pray for another beer, mate. You want me to pray? I'll pray for that."
But Barlow wasn't Nettle's only project. He was still expected to learn the ropes at the shelter, spending time in each of the numerous jobs that were necessary to keep the operation going on a day to day basis, and a few nights later he was back with Bill, the porter, passing out blankets in the sleeping quarters. The overnighters would come in, take a blanket from Nettle, and head to a long, narrow room with two large oaken beams traversing its length. Rough pieces of canvas were stretched between the beams, and the men slept on the canvas. When he first heard about the arrangement, and before he had seen it, Nettle thought of seamen in hammocks, rocking to sleep with the rhythms of the open sea, but the reality was nothing like that, and the actual arrangement lacked any of the adventurous dignity a landsman could envision for the life of a sailor at sea. The men were packed in shoulder to shoulder, and the room was dreadfully noisy with snores and coughs and breaking wind, and in the right light, the whole room shimmered with a living cloud of fleas.
He was watching this sad display with a heavy heart when Bill appeared at his shoulder.
"What are you about, sir, talkin' with Barlow the Butcher?"
"Excuse me?" he said, alarmed by the man's tone, even though he was a good six inches taller, and maybe forty pounds heavier.
"You become 'is reg'lar drinkin' mate's what I 'ear."
"I have not," Nettle protested. He stammered, trying to rise to his own defense, and finally managed to tell Bill his plan, how his goal was the man's salvation.
Bill just laughed.
"What's wrong with going after a lost sheep?" Nettle said.
"'e ain't no sheep," Bill said. "A devil, aye, but 'e ain't no sheep."
"What do you mean?"
"There's an em'ty warehouse down on the Brown Hay Road. D'you know it? A big, ugly brute of a buildin'?"
"I've seen it," Nettle said, cringing inwardly at the memory of the beggar and the hansom cab.
"Your mate used to be the union man there. 'bout two years ago."
Nettle eyed him warily.
"Did 'e tell you 'bout the people 'e killed there?"
"Killed? What are you talking about?"
Bill sneered at Nettle. "Aye, I thought not."
"Tell me what you mean, sir. You cannot accuse a man of such a crime and not state your proof."
Bill only shook his head. "Nothin' was ever proved 'gainst 'im. Didn't 'ave no blood on 'is 'ands. None that the courts could see, anyway. But 'e killed 'em all right. Just as pretty as you please."
Nettle searched the man's face for some indication that this was a joke. It had to be. He searched the creases in the old man's face, the cracked red map of lines that colored the whites of his eyes, but found nothing to indicate that this was a joke.
"When you say 'killed,' do you mean..."
"I mean 'e murdered 'em. Sure as the Pope eats fish on Fridays. Murdered more'n an 'undred people. Men, wimmen, and children, just as pretty as you please."
Nettle felt his legs go to gelatin. He fell against the wall and said, "A hundred people?"
"Aye."
"But, how?"
"Why, 'e starved 'em. Locked 'em in that warehouse for full on twelve days. When they finally opened 'er up, every one of 'em, men, wimmen, and children, was dead as dead can be." Then he leaned close and said, "I 'eard tell some of them bodies was eaten on."
"That's impossible," Nettle countered. "How could he do such a thing?"
"I already tol' you, sir. 'e was the union man, and those people went on strike. The comp'ny tol' 'im to fix the problem, and 'e did."
"A man can't starve to death in twelve days," Nettle said.
"You've seen these men," Bill said. "Not a one's more than a week away from death's door."
"But somebody would have done something to stop him," Nettle said. "You can't just kill a hundred people and expect to get away with it. Somebody would have said something."
But Nettle didn't need see the blank expression on Bill's face to know that wasn't true. Not here in the East End.
Feeling angry, and confused, and betrayed, Nettle ran from the peg house and set out for the coffee house where he and Barlow had been meeting in the afternoons. He knew no other place to look for the man, but as it turned out, it wasn't necessary to look anywhere else. He found Barlow in the back alley behind the shop, rifling through a paper bag of trash he'd found on the curb, pulling out little bits of orange peels and tearing what remained of the pulp from the pith with his blackened front teeth.
"Mr. Barlow," Nettle called out from across the street.
Barlow looked up and smiled. But then his smile fell. Perhaps he saw the savage expression in Nettle's eyes, or heard something sinister in his tone, but whatever it was, his expression instantly changed, and he took off running into the night.
Nettle didn't bother to chase him. It was enough, for the moment, to see him run. That was all the proof he needed that Mr. Barlow, also known as Barlow the Butcher, was a devil of the highest magnitude.
Some men snap by degrees. Like green wood, they bend a long ways before the tension takes its inevitable course. But other men break like porcelain. They cleave with sudden fury, shattering into thousands of irredeemable pieces, their edges left razor sharp.
Nettle was of the later sort, and when his mind snapped, it came with the illusion of sudden clarity. It seemed he was thinking clearly now for the first time, like somebody had turned a light switch on in his mind, and the path before him seemed clearer now than it had ever been before.
He suddenly saw in Barlow, not an individual's face to put on all of humanity's troubles, but a cause of its misery, and there was only one thing to do with such causes. The fact that he had befriended such a beast, that he had bought such evil a drink, for God's sake, didn't terrify him so much as instill in him a sense of personal responsibility. His proximity had given him ownership over the ending to Barlow's sordid little history, and he set out to bring that history to a close.
He carried the banner that night, walking the streets of the East End without stopping for rest or sleep---indeed, without even feeling the need for rest or sleep---ferreting out the hiding places of the homeless, but with his mind on only one man.
He caught up with Barlow in a doorway, the man sitting on the top step, his knees bunched up to his chest and his head bent down between them, trying to sleep.
Nettle kicked his foot. "Wake up," he said. "I want a word with you."
Barlow thought him a policeman at first, and had already half pulled himself to his feet when the haze of sleep left him entirely, and he realized who was standing in front of him.
"You owe me an answer, Mr. Barlow."
But Barlow didn't stand still to give it. He turned and ran with all the energy a scared, weatherbeaten, and prematurely old man could muster.
Nettle followed him at a jog, yelling "I want an answer!" over and over again at Barlow's back, and as they slipped deeper and deeper into the warren of slimy streets that made up the bowels of the East End, a cold, light rain began to fall.
Nettle finally closed on him in a back alley off the Brown Hay Road, the streets deserted now and splashy beneath their feet. Barlow had curled up under a flight of stairs and was trying to hide his face with his arms.
"You have some explaining to do," Nettle said. The rain rolled off his face unnoticed.
Barlow stared up at him with abject fear.
"What did you do? Answer me!"
"For the love of all that's 'oly, sir, please don't yell. You'll---"
"I'll what? Wake the dead? Go on, you villain, say it! Say it! Are you afraid they'll hear us?"
Barlow looked seasick. His eyes pleaded for silence, but got none.
"Spill it!" Nettle roared. "Tell me what you did."
Nettle waited, and for a moment there was no sound but the pattering of a gentle rain on cobblestones, but then it came, as both Nettle and Barlow knew that it most assuredly would, the sound of slow, plodding feet dragging on the cobblestones behind them.
Nettle looked over his shoulder, and saw a small crowd of shamblers had appeared out of the mist. There were men, women, and even children in that crowd. Their faces were dark with disease and their cheeks empty from extreme hunger. Their eyes were carrion eyes, and a smell that could only be death's smell preceded them, filling the street with its sad, inexorable power.
A man in the front of the crowd raised his arms, and it looked like one of his hands had been partially eaten. He groaned, "Fooooood," and Barlow jumped to his feet and tried to run.
"Where are you going?" Nettle yelled after him. "Don't you know you can't run from this?"
Barlow didn't make it very far, only to the middle of the Brown Hay Road. There, he stopped, wheeling around in a panic, surrounded by the dead on every side. They stepped out of every doorway, out of every alley, from behind every staircase, taking shape out of the shadows. He fell to his knees in front of Nettle and started to cry.
"Please," he begged.
"Tell what you've done," Nettle said.
Barlow looked at the groaning, starving dead, and he shook his head no. NO, NO, NO, NO, NO!
"Say it," Nettle said. "While there's still time."
But there wasn't any more time. Barlow could no more belly up to the magnitude of what he'd done than he could force himself to stop breathing, and as the rotting dead shouldered their way past Nettle and closed on Barlow, all that he could do was close his eyes.
The dead tore at Barlow with their hands and their teeth, ripping his flesh like fabric. Nettle stumbled away, into the dark, and as he walked he heard Barlow's screams carry on and on and on. They seemed to go on far longer than it seemed possible for any one man to suffer, but go on they did, and they echoed in Nettle's mind even after the shrillness of them disappeared from his ears.
After that, Nettle wandered, his mind unhinged, until he began to see people. These he tried to tell what he had seen, but they flinched away from him, alarmed at the intensity in his eyes and the urgency in his voice and the complete lack of sense in his speech.
As day broke, a russet stain behind plum colored smoke clouds, Nettle collapsed less than 50 feet from the doors of Stepney Green Hospital. He lay there, lips moving soundlessly, eyes still as glass beads, until an orderly from the hospital knelt beside him and said, "Hey, mate, are you hurt? What is it? Are you 'ungry?"
If the smile wasn't on Nettle's face, it was nonetheless there, in his mind. Eat, he thought, and sensed his body in complete revolt at the idea. God no, I'll never eat again.
THE END
Learn more about the author at joemckinney.wordpress.com/
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###
BOY IN THE CABINET
By Jeremy C. Shipp
Live anywhere long enough, and eventually the space becomes a home. And maybe if I keep thinking at you hard enough, someday you'll become more than a Styrofoam cup. Maybe you'll sprout a brain, or at least a nerve cluster, and you'll hear me.
And when that happens, you won't confuse me or disagree with me all the time. You'll be an ideal companion, unlike a certain creature I know.
Speak of the feline devil. The Death Cat won't stop scratching the wood until I open the door, so I obey her command. "What do you want?"
Holly hacks up a ball of carnage onto the table. "Happy birthday, Boy."
"It's not my birthday."
"Yes, it is. I have a seventh sense for these things."
So I study the notches on the cabinet wall. Holly's right. Today's the anniversary of my life. Not to mention my mother's death and my father's transformation.
Trembling, I almost drop my mason jar filled with tears. "I told you last year. I don't celebrate birthdays."
"Well, I do." With her claws, the cat sifts through the wad of hair and clothes. "Here we go."
My eyes widen.
Holly licks the permanent marker clean, then sets the gift on my palms.
"You stole this from someone," I say. "Didn't you?"
The Death Cat washes her face with a paw. "It doesn't count as stealing if you eat the person first. Then the person's part of you, and you can't steal from yourself."
"Killing humans is even worse than stealing from them."
"I was hungry."
"That's not a good enough reason to murder somebody."
"So with a good enough reason, I'd be able to justify to you the killing of one of your kind?"
"Of course not. And maybe that proves what you're doing is wrong."
"Wrong for you, Boy. Not for me."
"How can you be so cruel?"
Holly sighs. "How many times do I have to tell you? I'm incapable of cruelty, because I don't empathize with my prey when I'm hunting them."
"You're a monster."
"Monsters don't have hearts. But me, I love my food. Just not the way you want me to."
"You shouldn't hurt the ones you love."
"Can't we agree to disagree?"
"No." I grab the doorknob. "Thanks for the present, cat."
"Wait, you---"
I close the door.
And by the light of my tiny sun, I draw you a smiley face and a prominent pair of ears.
Finally, you're real enough for a name. And while I've never met a Salvador, you definitely look like one.
"Can you hear me, Sal?"
My muscles ache with hope and the power of my birthday wish.
But you only grin in silence, a best friend waiting to happen.
Maybe next year.
\*\*\*
Holly never visits after my sun burns out, so the scraping must be caused by some horrible fiend come to rape and pillage.
I imagine my body ripped in two, and I know I should embrace my fear.
But this fiend could be my father.
So I open the door.
"Holly," I say. Disappointed. Relieved.
"Hello, Boy." The Death Cat taps my chin with the top of her head.
"What are you doing here so late?"
Holly sits. "It's your birthday."
"Didn't we already have this conversation?" I try to sound sarcastic, but in truth, I'm not sure of the answer. My memories can be a little temperamental.
"Today's supposed to be special for you," the cat says. "You deserve more than a permanent marker."
"I'm sorry if I seemed ungrateful earlier. I really do like the gift."
"Whether you like the marker or not isn't the point. You deserve more. You need more. More than I could ever give you."
"If you can't help me, then what are you doing here?"
"I didn't say I was useless. I can still affect your choices."
"But you always say you don't like to involve yourself with the way other creatures live their lives."
"That's true. But you're not living. Not really."
I check my pulse, just to make sure. "You don't know what you're talking about."
"No, you don't know what I'm talking about. There's a difference."
"Then what are you talking about?"
"You need to get out of the cabinet."
I laugh, for the first time in ages. "But I'm the Boy in the Cabinet. If I leave here, I'll cease to exist."
"Or you'll change."
"That's even worse."
"Transmogrification can be a good thing."
"Tell that to my father."
The Death Cat touches my leg with her paw. "I understand your reservations, and I can't promise you that you'll live happily ever after in the world outside. But I can assure you that there's nothing worse than a wasted heart."
"I'm not wasting anything." And I hold you in front of the cat's face.
"That's a Styrofoam cup."
"For now."
Holly sighs. "You can't create life on your own, Boy."
"What do you know about life? You're just a stupid Death Cat."
"Death isn't separate from life."
I almost laugh again, but the swell of sorrow in my throat prevents me. "If that's true, then where's my mother? Why isn't she here?"
"No matter what I say, you're not going to believe the truth about death until you die. So we might as well drop the subject and move on."
"Fine. But you should know, you're not going to talk me into leaving here. Every word you say makes me want to throw up."
"Then I've failed you."
"Yes. You have."
I slam the door, and my jars clink together. And I hold on to my fury for as long as possible, but the feeling soon dies away. Because in spite of what happened to my mother, I don't hate Holly. I don't know how.
So I create a crack in my door, and find the cat curled up and crying.
"What's wrong?" I say.
"I want to help you," she says. "But I don't think I can. I'm sorry."
"Sorry? But I thought you can't feel any empathy."
"I never said that."
And as the cat continues to weep for me, a haze of faith spreads through my mind and clouds my thoughts.
Maybe she really cares about me.
Maybe I need to escape this place.
"You're trying to trick me," I say. "As soon as I leave the cabinet, you'll eat me."
Holly unfurls herself and looks at me with sparkling eyes. "If I was meant to eat you, do you really believe the cabinet could protect you?"
"Yes."
"Just because you feel safe somewhere doesn't mean you are."
I clutch you close to my chest. "I don't believe you."
"I'm afraid your beliefs don't have the power to shape this aspect of your reality. Sooner or later, death will find you in the cabinet."
"How?"
"I'm not destined to eat you, so I don't know. Maybe a monster or another Death Cat. Of course, if you survive long enough, your food and water jars will eventually run out."
I examine my supply with frantic eyes. "But they've never run out before."
"Be that as it may, only love can last forever."
Once again, the stupid Death Cat's ravaged my mind beyond recognition. And I can't seem to think the same thoughts anymore.
I don't want to die.
But if that's my only choice, I want to die with love in my heart.
And for the first time in my short life, the cabinet feels too small.
So I say, "How do I do it? How do I leave the cabinet?"
"Well," the cat says. "You step out."
The concept seems more than a little ridiculous, but I follow her direction anyway.
And in an instant, I find myself on the table.
And I collapse, shaking all over.
Holly curls up beside me. "I know you feel especially vulnerable, but you're in just as much danger as you always were."
"That's supposed to make me feel better?" I say.
"Hmm. Good point. Pet me, and I'll give you some of my strength."
I don't hesitate.
And as she purrs, my body warms and tingles.
"That's enough," she says.
So I remove my hand. "What do I do now?"
"Move on."
I scan the hundreds of exits in the room. "But which door is the right one?"
"You shouldn't think that way, Boy. Just pick a door and walk out."
"But what if I hate where I end up? I'm not like you. When I leave this place, I won't be able to return again."
"True. But if you become consumed by your power of choice, you'll never leave."
"Will you choose for me?"
"No."
I feel the urge to close myself off again, so I face my cabinet. But instead of climbing inside, I grab a jar of piss and shit.
And with this weapon in one hand, and my jar of tears in the other, I approach a simple wooden door that reminds me of home.
Then I face the Death Cat once more.
I'm not sure if I want to thank her or curse her.
But in the end, I say, "Thank you, Holly."
"You're welcome," she says, still too weak to sit up. "I hope you die a wonderful death."
"You too."
And with that, I touch the doorknob.
I imagine a life of monsters and misery on the other side, and part of me wants to embrace my fear.
But this path could lead me to love.
So I open the door.
\*\*\*
The wide, wide world pulls at me from every direction, and if not for the thorny bush rooting me to the ground, I'm sure I would ascend into the azure abyss above.
I hate this place already.
And this place obviously hates me back.
But a drop of optimism dilutes my terror as soon as a girl in green appears atop a boulder.
"How do you do that?" I say.
She jumps and lands in front of me. "Do what?"
"Not fly."
"That's easy. I just don't become a bird."
"Is it common for children to become birds?"
"Not common at all, I'm afraid. I'd love to fly. At least for a few days of the year."
"Why?"
She gazes up at the horrible blue void. "The sky's beautiful. Don't you think?"
I try to imitate her warm expression, but I can't see through her eyes. "I don't like the sky."
"Don't worry. You will someday." She touches my arm.
And in that moment, I release my grip on the shrub.
And I don't soar to my death.
So I pick up my weapon once more, but the jar of excrement slips from my bloody hand. "Shit!"
"What is that?" the girl says.
"Porridge. Are there many monsters around here?"
"It doesn't smell like porridge."
"Never mind that. What about the monsters?"
"I'm the Girl Who Monsters Fear." She takes my hand. "I'll protect you."
I believe her.
And for some strange reason, I want to run at her as fast as I can. I want to smash into her, and jumble pieces of me with pieces of her.
Maybe she's a wife waiting to happen.
But I don't want to make my father's mistake. He fell in love with the Woman Who Can't Bear Children, in spite of her mortality. And he suffered the consequences.
The day I came into being, my mother ceased to exist.
And one day, a monster will refuse to fear the Girl Who Monsters Fear, and she'll probably disappear too.
In the end, I need to find a partner I can't love to help me create life.
So I release the girl's hand, and escape the trap.
\*\*\*
The door I knock on tonight looks almost exactly like the door I passed through to enter this world.
Or maybe not. My memories like to play with me sometimes.
But I'm not in the mood for games.
So I ignore the door and focus on the man.
"I'm sorry to bother you, sir," I say. "But I'm tired and hungry. I haven't eaten for days."
The man shrugs. "I couldn't care less."
"You couldn't?"
"No."
I smile. "Are you in need of a servant? I'd be happy to work for food and shelter."
The man rubs his beard, then opens the door wide.
I follow him inside.
His home would remind me of every other home in the area, if not for the pyramid of stacked excrement jars.
"What can I do for you?" I say.
He motions to the far wall. "Everyone in the world wants to live inside my cabinet, but I hate when people stay in there. So I need you to stay in there and stand guard."
"But if you hate when people go in there, won't you hate when I go in there?"
"No."
"Why?"
"Because you don't count."
"Why not?"
The man sighs. "It's a complicated issue. And on my list of things I hate, complicated issues are ranked fourteen. That's fourteen out of six thousand and twenty seven. So you can understand my reluctance to answer your question."
"Of course."
"So you'll take the job?"
I nod.
And the man forces me into the cabinet, closes the door, and locks me in.
I'm home again.
\*\*\*
Sometimes, the Man Who Can't Smile allows me to join him for dinner, but I don't think he yearns for my company the way I yearn for yours. I think he likes to watch me enjoy my meal the way he can't anymore.
But the dinners never end well, because he can't taste through my mouth, no matter how hard he tries.
So like always, he knocks over the table, and says, "Get back in the cabinet, Boy."
I don't. "I'm not going to help you anymore, unless you help me bring Salvador to life."
"Who's Salvador?"
I pull you out of my pouch.
And the Man scoffs. "What a stupid-looking cup."
"He's not stupid," I say.
"I didn't say he's stupid. I said he's stupid-looking. Although I'm sure he's as stupid as he looks."
You don't deserve this, so I try to cover your ears.
But the Man snatches you away from me.
"Give him back!" I say.
The Man throws you on the floor, and grabs me by the arms. He forces me back into the cabinet.
"Let me out!" I say.
He doesn't.
And through the keyhole, I watch him drink from you as if he owns you.
Now, I'm sure.
I'm going to die in here. Unloved. Alone.
\*\*\*
You have to understand.
Normally, I wouldn't try to kill another person, but I don't think this thing counts as one.
I'm almost positive.
So I say, "Have you heard the one about the decapitated mouse and the talking intestines?"
The Man shakes his head.
So I tell him the only joke I know, but the Man doesn't seem to appreciate Death Cat humor, because he doesn't even smirk once.
I sigh.
Then I notice the notches on the cabinet wall.
"It's my birthday," I say.
"So?" the Man says.
"I want to hold Sal."
And my muscles ache with hope and the power of my birthday wish.
Finally, the Man says, "It's my birthday too. Therefore, my wish cancels out your wish. You get nothing."
I want to cry, but my mason jar can't hold any more tears.
So I watch in silence as the man pours hot water into you.
Then, after all my years of waiting for you, you scream.
And I want so much to hold you in my arms.
"It hurts!" you say.
And I know what it's like to burn, because a strange fire always flares up in my face whenever I think about what happened to my parents.
"Help me!" you say. "Help me!"
I realize now that you're more than my friend.
And of course I want to save you, but I don't want to face the Man outside. I recognize him now. I recognize myself in him. And if I leave this cabinet, I'll probably end up becoming him.
I'm better off locked up. If I ignore your pleas and my heart long enough, all my suppressed emotions will transform me. And become me. And in this state, I'll never feel anything ever again.
I imagine myself as a monster, and part of me wants to embrace a life without fear.
But I love you enough to love myself.
So I kick open the door. Easily.
And I say, "Pour out the water."
"Never," the Man says.
"I'll fight you if I have to."
"You don't stand a chance."
"I don't?"
"You're a Child. I'm a Man."
I feel the urge to close myself off again, so I face my cabinet. But instead of climbing inside, I reach for a container of piss and shit.
Then I change my mind.
So I throw my jar of suffering at the Man's face.
And he bleeds and shrinks and cries my tears.
And maybe he feels happy for me, because he smiles, too, even when Holly pounces from the shadows and rips him apart.
And in the Man's place comes the Man With a Cup for a Son.
So I dump out the hot water, and fill you with love.
THE END
Learn more about the author at www.jeremycshipp.com
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###
DOWN AMONG THE BOSNIAN DEAD
By Joseph Nassise
They were being hunted.
After this morning's events, Sergeant Michael Raines, U.S. Special Forces, was convinced of it.
The only question he had left to answer was who, or what, was doing the hunting.
It had begun innocently enough. The Fourth Cav had arrived by convoy over the swollen banks of the Drina River two months ago. Camp Walton, or "Wasteland" as it was unofficially known among the troops, had quickly been laid down on an area the size of three football fields laid side by side, smack dab in the middle of what the Dayton Accords had labeled the ZOS -- the zone of separation that divided the Serbs, the Croats, and the Muslims.
Concertina wire, claymores, and tank traps had quickly surrounded the camp, as if that muddy stretch of barren terrain had some inherent value that needed protecting from the broken remnants of the population that surrounded it. Barracks and command bunkers swiftly followed, and the US military had hunkered down to do what they had come here to do.
Which, in Raines' view, was nothing.
The US Army was being used as a show of force, carrying out a political saber-rattling exercise, and had absolutely no intention of doing the citizens of this war-torn land the least bit of good. Like Mogadishu, Haiti, and a hundred other shitholes he had been in over the last few years, Raines knew that this place would go right back to the way it had been less than five minutes after they pulled out.
What a waste, he thought, and wasn't even certain himself if he meant the presence of the US military or the condition of the country around him.
Not long after the camp had been established, the UN Peacekeeping forces had sent in the forensic teams, tasked with investigating the reports of wartime atrocities that the press had begun to leak to the world at large. Walton had become a focal point for one such group, as it sat at the center of a stretch of ground that contained not one, not two, but four major burial sites where the Serbs had done their best to hide the evidence of their atrocities against their fellow countrymen.
The latest excavation had begun earlier in the week at a site designated on the map as Kilo Two-Zero. When he'd first heard the name, Raines had idly wondered if that meant this was the twentieth such site the forensic team had excavated and catalogued. After spending a day flying over the site in an Apache and estimating that there must be over eight hundred bodies concealed in that pit, Raines quickly came to the conclusion that he really did not want to know the answer to his question.
The prospect, if he was right, was too horrifying to contemplate.
He was better off not knowing.
The killings had begun shortly after the forensic teams had opened up K2Z.
In the last four nights, they had lost five men. After the first one, the Colonel had sent out a search party, assuming the missing private had simply strayed into town or had gone AWOL. The party itself has come back one man short. The following night they had lost the two men working the listening post just beyond the camp perimeter. Their relief had found their equipment strewn about the ground, but no sign of the men remained. Convinced that the Serbs were up to no good, the Colonel ordered a full sweep of the town yesterday, but still no trace of the missing men could be found. Last night, a fifth man had disappeared on his way back from the latrine.
The fact that he had vanished inside the camp perimeter had thrown the troops into a frenzied panic.
The Colonel had been on the phone all afternoon with his superiors, but Raines had not waited to hear what the outcome of those conversations had been. He'd been in the army too long to expect headquarters to be much help in this situation. Instead, he'd checked into things on his own, talking to the troops, walking the perimeter, even making a few forays into the surrounding area to talk to the locals.
Unfortunately, he hadn't learned a damn thing.
This morning, when the watch had changed, they'd discovered the partially eaten remains of Private Daniels, the second man to go missing, jammed in among the concertina wire on the west side of camp. The brass probably would have been able to make a case for the existence of a marauding pack of wolves with a taste for human flesh, which is just what they tried to do, if Daniels' head hadn't been discovered propped on a stake outside the east side of camp half an hour later.
The rest of the day had been sheer confusion, with the troops too afraid to leave the camp and the brass completely clueless as to what to do next. Fear and superstition ran amuck and everything from the Serbs to vampires was blamed for the attacks.
Now, about three hours after sundown, the camp felt deserted. Every building, tent, and bunker had been locked down for the night as best its inhabitants could manage and only those required to work sentry duty could be seen outside after dark. The rain was still falling steadily, obscuring vision and turning the camp into a sea of mud.
Snubbing out his cigarette, Raines turned away from his visual study of the camp perimeter and made his way through the maze of tents to one of the command bunkers. For a moment his form was silhouetted against the lights of the nearby tents and then he descended several steps between large mounds of sandbags and entered the scientific station in the bunker below.
"Talk to me, Simmons," he said as he walked inside.
The civilian technician seated at one of the computer consoles shivered at the sound of his voice, most likely in memory of what Raines had threatened to do to him earlier in the day if he did not agree to use all that fancy equipment to figure out what was happening, but his fear didn't stop him from trying to help. He knew it eventually might be his head shoved onto a stake just outside the perimeter of the camp if Raines couldn't stop whatever it was that was out there. "Just a second, Sergeant. I'm bringing up the KH-10 images now."
KH-10 was one of the government Keyhole satellites, presently swinging past Eastern Europe on its nightly patrol. A moment later and the set of monitors surged to life. A computer in the depths of the bunker overlaid the ghostly green images being fed from the satellite with known radar date and provided a ghostly map on the screens in front of the two men.
"Gotcha!" the tech said beneath his breath with satisfaction. In order to help Raines, he'd hacked into the KH data feeds, no easy feat. Once he was in, however, the system became much friendlier and in moments he had a variety of views laid out on the flickering screens. He pointed them out to the Sergeant.
"Okay, we've got UV over here. Gamma on that one. Spectro here. Infrared.on the last screen to the left. The other three are real-time, low-light images."
It was these that Raines was interested in. He looked over the images, then pointed to a particular set of coordinates on the map. "Can you bring this in closer?"
Confident now, Simmons shrugged nonchalantly. "No sweat." He typed a series of commands into the keyboard. On screen, Raines watched the image jump closer in measured amounts, until it showed the area as if you were looking down on it from a height of about 5000 feet. The mass grave the scientists had uncovered earlier in the week before the rains had begun showed up on the image as a large area filled with water. From this height, the bodies that Raines knew were piled more than ten deep in that pit were no more than dark, featureless shapes that occasionally broke the water's surface.
While Raines was studying the images, Simmons wandered over to another workstation. After a moment, he swore beneath his breath and rushed back over to the console beside Raines. He frantically stabbed a series of commands into the keyboard and the screen to Raines' right suddenly blossomed with a cloud of pink light.
"What the hell is that?" Raines asked.
"Nitrogen," Simmons answered. "A big cloud of it. We planted spectrometers around the excavation site to try and understand just what we might be facing in there in regard to biological or chemical threats."
Raines pointed to the cloud on the monitor. "Is that normal?" he asked.
The tech continued to fiddle with the equipment, trying to further define the data as he answered. "The human body has a fair degree of nitrogen in it. When it starts to decay, some of that nitrogen releases into the air around the corpse. In this case, you've got several hundred bodies, maybe more, suddenly disturbed by us and by the rains. You'd expect to see some sign of that release on the graphs, but that cloud is way too big for it to be natural."
"Can we get in for a closer look at what might be causing it?" asked Raines.
"Not with the Keyholes. But I can probably have one of the spy boys' Predator drones overhead in about than ten minutes."
"Shit! Why didn't you say so in the first place? Do it." Raines ordered.
In a short time the drone was sending back images from less than 5,000 feet. At Raines' command, the tech ratcheted the image even closer until they were showing images in a 10-meter square from less than 1,000 feet off the ground.
In the strange green light of the drones' night vision lens, Kilo Two Zero looked even worse than it did during the day.
The incessant rains over the last four days had flooded the massive pit with several feet of water. The bodies that had filled the pit to near capacity now floated on the surface of the water or lay beached on its edges, like so much casually discarded waste. The steady downpour caused the image to shimmy and shift, as the camera lens did its best to filter out the interference. Every few moments the image would disappear altogether as lightning flashed across the sky, only to flicker and return seconds later as the equipment compensated for the light. The two men watched the screen for several long moments without seeing anything out of the ordinary.
"What's so special about this place?"
Raines shrugged. "Just a hunch, I guess." It was more than that, but he didn't have the energy to explain the connections.
Abruptly, on screen, a form surged up out of the water.
"Fuck!" Simmons cried, flinching away from the sight in surprise. Raines, having seen much worse during his time in the Army, barely flinched. His gaze stayed glued to the screens.
The man had probably once been a school teacher or a shop owner, though since he'd been dead for many months it would likely be difficult to tell conclusively at this point. What remained of his clothing showed he'd taken care with his appearance, dressing fashionably but inexpensively. Raines noted the baling wire that was twisted savagely around the corpse's hands, as well as the entry wound just above his right eye, as if he had decided to face his fate and had looked up just as his executioner had pulled the trigger, and knew without a doubt that this man had never been a soldier.
The corpse bobbed upright for a moment in the water, face thrown back is if looking directly at the drone taking its picture overhead, and then twisted to the side and fell back into the water with a silent splash.
Raines looked over at his companion. "Are you gonna give me some natural explanation for that?"
The technician swallowed nervously and looked away, trying to regain his composure. "Expanding gases? A sudden shifting of the bodies? There are probably a dozen I could come up with."
Raines listened with only half his attention. A sense of anticipation had swept over him the moment the corpse had popped into view. It was the same feeling he got when he was out on patrol or before he dropped into a firefight, that sixth sense veterans develop that says, "Here it comes". Something was about to happen, he was certain of it, and it didn't matter what type of explanation the technician came up with, not really.
A moment later another body surged up from down below, followed closely by a third.
Beside him, Raines heard the technician mutter, "That's not caused by expanding gases, I'll guarantee you that."
Raines' combat alarm was ringing full blast by now and he had little doubt that his companion was right. He impatiently drummed his fingers against the tabletop. 'Come on, come on, show yourself, you bastard," he whispered at the screen.
As if in response, something else suddenly emerged from that stagnant pool of water and death.
The rain and the lightning conspired to prevent them from seeing clearly, but it looked almost human. It was even dressed in the tattered remains of what had once been a business suit and had a few wisps of thin hair on its skull. That is where the similarity ended, however. Its fingers were longer than normal and even in the poor light Raines could see the claws that extended from their tips.
As they watched, the creature rose up out of the muddy water like an apparition from the depths of hell. It glanced cautiously, left and then right, before rising to its feet and moving toward the corpses it had just rescued from the pit. It shook the water off itself like a dog and then grabbed one of the corpses by the arm, dragging it further away from the water before squatting down beside it. Raising the dead flesh to its mouth, the creature tore off a chunk with its ragged teeth and began to eat.
"Jesus Christ!" Simmons exclaimed in disgust. "What the fuck is that?"
Smiling grimly, Raines answered, "It's dead meat. It just doesn't know it yet." He moved to the other side of the console. "Can we get thermal and UV from the drone as well?"
Without a word Simmons activated two more screens.
Under the thermal imaging, the newcomer looked nearly identical to the corpses on the ground beside it, removing any doubt that what they were dealing with was even remotely human. If it had been human, it would have shown up under the infrared light. The ultraviolet light gave them no more information than had the infrared. Raines had Simmons go to the night-vision lens, but that proved even less satisfactory than the other options they'd tried so far.
Frustrated, Raines went back to watching the creature under normal light conditions. It was enjoying its dinner and didn't appear inclined to move soon, which was something the sergeant was pleased to see. The creature also seemed oblivious to the weather, squatting there in the mud while the thunder boomed and the lightning flashed overhead.
As Raines watched, a sudden flash of lightning lit the scene once more, revealing something metallic hanging about the creature's neck. Just to be certain it hadn't been a trick of the eye, Raines waited until the next flash before turning to Simmons.
"Can you get any closer with that camera?"
Simmons thought about it and then answered, "I can bring it all the way down on the deck if you want. Thing is, that baby's pretty damn big. Its wingspan is something like fifty feet. Too much lower and that thing out there will know we're watching."
"I thought I saw something around its neck. Bring it down another 100 feet and let's see if we can get a better look."
Simmons complied. The picture improved only slightly, but the two men decided it would be best not to bring the drone any close to the ground and chance scaring the creature away. After watching the thing for a few more minutes, Raines suddenly pointed at the screen. "Can you freeze that?"
The technician did and then printed a hard copy image. The picture was taken from the creature's left and slightly over its shoulder. Its face was turned away and tucked down out of sight, but the image clearly showed what it was that Raines thought he had seen earlier.
"Son-of-a-bitch," both men said at the sight.
Hanging around the creature's neck were five sets of US military dog tags.
They had found their killer.
Instantly, Raines began considering what it would take to get there. It was about two klicks to the excavation site. Considering the weather and the condition of the countryside, it would take him some time, even if he took one of the unit's ATVs. That would mean he would need Simmons to keep the drone in place and keep the creature under surveillance until he could get out to the site.
"How long can you keep the drone in the air?"
"Another forty minutes or so," Simmons answered, after looking at the fuel readouts on the control panel.
"Good enough," Raines replied, turning away and heading for where his equipment was stacked beside the door.
"Hey, wait a minute!" cried Simmons. "You're not really going out there alone, are you?"
Raines snorted. "Do you see anyone else lining up to volunteer?" he replied sarcastically. He pulled on his cape and picked up his weapon. "I'll take one of the ATCs. That should allow me to get there in about 20 minutes, even with the weather. I need you to stay here and let me know over the radio if that thing starts to move. Without you, I've got no way of knowing what its up to until I get too close to do anything about it. Got it?"
Simmons nodded and caught the headset that Raines tossed to him.
"Don't leave me hanging out there, Simmons, " Raines warned as he went out the door.
The rain had picked up in the last hour and was now coming down fairly hard. Raines hoped it wouldn't cause any difficulties for the drone. Wrapped in his poncho, he passed through the camp like a wraith in the night, nothing more than a dark shadow against an even darker background. He entered the hanger that had been erected to serve as a vehicle pool and signed himself out one of the ATCs. The private on duty didn't ask to see his orders, no doubt figuring that no one in their right mind would go out on their own initiative after all that had happened.
The same held true for the men stationed at the perimeter. After a perfunctory check of his ID they let him out the side gate without any trouble. With a quick turn of the throttle, Raines headed overland.
He'd considered taking the main road, which would have gotten him to the site faster, but he couldn't quite break the years of habit that told him to remain undercover and out of sight. His pace was slower off-road than he would have preferred due to the weather and the condition of the landscape, but he felt that was a fair trade for his peace of mind and the decreased chance of falling victim to a sniper's bullet.
Not that anyone but a maniac would be out on a night like this, he thought, grinning wildly and enjoying every minute of it. The rain pelted down with savage ferocity, whipped into a frenzy by the wind and the motion of his ATC. It wormed its way past the protection of his poncho to run down across his clothing beneath, leaving him cold and wet soon after setting out. Overhead, the thunder boomed and the lightning flashed, robbing him of his night vision at regular intervals.
The ground here had been carved into a seemingly endless series of trenches that stretched for miles, evidence of how savagely contested this area had been prior to the arrival of the UN peacekeeping forces. Raines was repeatedly forced to backtrack to avoid the shell craters and other debris that littered the landscape. At one point, riding along the berm between two deep trenches, he almost lost control when the ATC's tires slid sideways in the mud and left one rear tire hanging suspended over thin air, but a quick burst from the throttle allowed him to recover control sufficiently to escape the danger.
Fifteen minutes into the journey, a figure suddenly loomed out of the darkness in front of Raines as he crested a small rise. Raines expertly slewed the vehicle sideways with one hand and brought his weapon to bear with the other, but stopped himself from firing at the last second when he realized the figure wasn't moving. A closer examination showed it to be a scarecrow dressed in a soldier's uniform, bound to a crude wooden cross to hold it upright. Dozens more were revealed on the plain before him in the next flash of lightning. He could feel the weight of their stares like a physical thing, heavy and menacing in the gloom.
For one long moment, he considered turning back, rather than making his way through that grim, silent company, but then his sense of purpose reasserted itself. Raines remembered how the Allies had used the same technique to make their numbers seem higher in the trenches along the Maginot Line in World War One. He wasn't about to let a bunch of scarecrows turn him away from the job that needed to be done.
Even if some of them look suspiciously like real bodies instead of stuffed dummies.
He slowly began to wind the ATC through the silent throng as quickly as he dared. On more than one occasion, he could hear the crunch of bones beneath his tires, but he did not stop to see who it was lying forgotten in the mud of this aging battlefield. These were not his comrades, and deaths months old had no interest for him.
Not knowing how good the creature's senses were, and not wanting to give it advance notice of his arrival, Raines used the GPS mounted on the handlebars of the ATC and stopped the vehicle several hundred yards away from the excavation site.
"Simmons, this is Raines. Can you hear me, Simmons?"
Simmons voice came back to him immediately, the high quality communications gear making it seem as if the other man were whispering in his ear. "I'm here, Raines. The thing hasn't moved. It should be about 300 yards ahead of you, on the other side of that small hill to your right."
Raines looked around until he had spotted the landmark. "Got it," he replied. "I'm headed in." Dismounting, he slid his Mark 23 combat pistol from its shoulder holster, chambered a round, and headed out on foot toward the site.
The mud was thick and pulled at his feet, while the rain and steadily increasing wind conspired to push him back in the direction he had come. He'd been trained by the best the US military had to offer, however, and very quickly crossed the remaining distance to the foot of the hill.
Speaking in a voice no louder than a whisper, Raines asked "Simmons?"
The other's voice came back to him once more. "Still there."
Raines clicked his mike in reply. He bent lower to the ground and slowly made his way up the side of the hill. Just below the top, he lay face down in the mud and inched the rest of the way to the top. With all the skill his training had given him, he slowly raised his head and peered over the top of the hill.
The creature was right where Simmons had said it was, less than 150 feet away on the other side of the excavation. It was turned partially away from him and was consumed with its dinner.
Raines slowly brought his arms up over the edge and pointed his weapon at its target. He got himself into a comfortable firing position, and then waited for the next crash of thunder. As soon as it began, he thumbed the switch that activated the targeting laser. A thin red beam of light shot across the watery grave and came to rest on the left side of the creature's chest.
Raines didn't waste any more time; with the ease of long practice he fired two swift shots.
Both bullets found their mark.
Without a sound, the thing toppled over facedown into the mud.
"Nice shooting!" Simmons' voice whispered in his ear.
"Thanks," Raines replied dryly.
It had been far easier than he'd thought.
"I'm just about out of fuel on the bird," Simmons said. "Unless you object, I'm gonna bring her back in."
"Go ahead. Nothing more to see out here anyway. I'm gonna grab the body and head back to camp. I'll meet you at the motor pool in about half an hour."
Raines heard the hiss of an empty radio channel and turned off his headset. With his weapon held casually in one hand, he carefully made his way back down the hill in the direction he had come, and then walked around the perimeter of the excavation site until he stood next to the creature's corpse.
Squatting down on his heels, Raines reached out with one hand and turned the thing over.
This close, Raines did not need any high-tech equipment to recognize what he was looking at it. His Polish grandmother would have crossed herself at the sight and flashed the sign to ward off the devil. She would have called it an upior, but Raines was happy enough calling it by its American name.
Ghoul.
The creature's skin was wrinkled and gray, as if it had spent a long time submerged underwater. Its nose was partially decayed, resembling a snout now more than a pair of human nostrils. Its teeth were yellowed and roughly filed sharper to help it tear the meat of its prey. At top its misshapen head, a few straggling wisps of thin blonde hair were plastered down by the rain against its skull. Its eyes were closed, as if it were sleeping.
The bullets from Raines' gun had entered just to the left of the sternum and had blown a fist-sized exit hole right about where the thing's heart used to be.
"Well my friend," Raines said to the corpse. "Whatever you were, ghoul or not, now you're nothing more than one dead critter."
Raines reached out to remove the dog tags from around the thing's neck.
Before he could touch them, the creature's eyes snapped open.
Overhead, the lightning flashed, and by its light Raines could see the thing's eyes were a strange yellow hue in which sat a blood red pupil. All the world's malevolence seemed to be bottled up inside those eyes and for the first time in what seemed like years Raines grew scared.
With lighting speed, the creature grabbed Raines about the throat with one clawed hand and with the other knocked his pistol out of his hand.
He watched in shocked horror as his weapon sailed through the air and landed with a splash out in the middle of the mass grave.
It disappeared from sight before the lightning could flash again.
The creature then leaned forward and savagely bit Raines' right ear off.
Ignoring the pain and the sudden surprise of the attack, Raines didn't hesitate to counter. His left hand flashed out and struck the creature on the pressure point below the rib cage while his right quickly sought the combat knife strapped to his right calf.
It was a good thing the knife was where it was supposed to be, however, for the percussive strike with his left hand was an absolute failure.
Instead of immobilizing his opponent as it was designed to do, Raines found his hand buried wrist deep inside the creature's ribcage instead.
The ghoul ignored the attack, clamping its free hand around his neck alongside the other and squeezing them both tight, trying to cut off his air. The thing's hot, fetid breath splashed across his face.
Raines jerked his knife free and shoved it into the ghoul's side.
It had no more effect than the strike with his hand.
It was at that point that Raines started to panic. The creature's hands were slowly squeezing the life out of him. He'd been unable to draw a clean breath for almost a minute now and in his exhausted state his vision was starting to gray out around the edges from lack of oxygen to his brain. He had to do something quickly to break free.
Raines pulled both of his hands free and desperately struck upward at the creature's arms.
The ghoul snarled in response, the sound like tearing fabric, but refused to let go.
Desperate now, Raines did the only thing he could think of.
He twisted sideways and threw himself, and the ghoul holding onto him, into the water-filled pit beside them.
The surprise move did what his attacks had not been able to do. For just a second the ghoul's hands relaxed their grip as it tried to react to its new surroundings.
That was all the time Raines needed.
He pushed away from the thing, then ducked beneath the reach of its arms and struck out for the bottom in an attempt to get away from it. He had gone no more than a few feet, however, when he swam straight into the submerged pile of corpses the forensic team had been unable to catalogue and remove.
The pile slipped free with the impact of his body from whatever had been holding them beneath the surface. Raines suddenly found himself tangled in a confusing whirl of arms, legs, and torsos. He thrashed against them, trying to work his way free, only to feel a hand with needle sharp claws clamp itself around his left ankle.
The ghoul had found him again.
As he was pulled away from the drifting corpses, the ghoul struck again, this time opening a deep gash in his rib cage several inches in length. Raines could feel the blood rushing out of his body and knew he couldn't survive much longer.
He thrashed and flailed his arms, trying to work his way free, and quite by accident discovered that he was still holding on to his combat knife. With strength born of desperation and a sudden overwhelming desire not to die here in the disease-infested waters of a mass grave in a country that he couldn't care less about, Raines struck downward with the weapon once more.
This time, his aim was true.
The knife sunk to the hilt through the rotten tissue of the creature's skull and pierced what was left of its brain.
Instantly, it let him go.
Knowing he had only seconds left to survive, Raines struck out for the surface and burst upward into the night air in unconscious imitation of the corpses the ghoul had harvested for food.
Gasping, Raines dragged himself over to the shoreline and several feet away from the water before collapsing into the mud.
Second later he passed out.
\*\*\*
Raines regained consciousness in the camp infirmary, his chest and head swathed in bandages. A nurse stood by his bedside taking his blood pressure. When she realized he had come to, she told him to lie still and ran to get the doctor.
Lying there, Raines could see he was in a small ward. Only three of the 10 beds were occupied, including the one in which he lay. A man with a leg up in traction was in the last bed in the row, on the far side of the infirmary, absorbed in reading a book. The bed directly next to Raines was also occupied, this one by a man who appeared comatose, his face covered with a breathing device. The whine and hiss of his mechanical breather accompanied the rise and fall of his chest.
Raines' attention was drawn away from the man by the sound of the infirmary door opening.
"Well now, " said the physician as he entered the room, a wide smile on his face. "Nice to see you've rejoined the living."
Raines didn't appreciate the joke, but he was too weak to protest. His limbs felt strangely heavy and his throat was incredibly parched. He managed to croak out a request for water and the doctor sent the nurse to fetch a cup of ice chips for him. After a few sips he was able to speak more clearly.
"How long?" he asked, his voice like gravel.
"Two weeks," replied the doctor, cheerily. "The morning after you went AWOL, a long-range patrol found you alongside the excavation at site Kilo Two Zero. Your wounds were already filled with a raging infection, particularly that deep gash in your ribs. Frankly, I'm amazed that you didn't succumb to sepsis or the plague, considering where they found you. Just what on earth were you doing out there?"
The doc's cheery nature and casual reference to his having been AWOL set Raines self-preservation mode into high gear. The only person who knew what he'd been up to had been Simmons; so far, it seemed as if he hadn't talked. Which meant that if Raines kept his mouth shut now, he could probably find a way to get out of this without any major problems.
Raines mumbled something unintelligible, dropped his head back onto the pillows, and pretended to drop back off to sleep without answering the doctor's question. The ruse seemed to work, for the other man stood there for a moment longer and then softly ordered the nurse to come get him when Raines had woken up again. He had only taken a few steps toward the door, however, when an alarm started blaring from the bed next to Raines.
Raines opened his eyes slightly and watched as the doctor and his nurse rushed over to the patient. It appeared to Raines that the man had gone into cardiac arrest and the arrival of the defibrillator moments later confirmed that suspicion. The fight to resuscitate the man went on for over 20 minutes, Raines surreptitiously watching all the while, but eventually the staff gave up their efforts and left the man's body, and Raines, alone.
In the quiet following their departure, Raines actually did fall asleep, his injured body not yet fully up to the task of keeping him awake. His sleep was full of uneasy dreams.
When he awoke again, it was night. Except for a few small utility lights and the illuminated dials of various pieces of medical equipment here and there about the ward, the room was dark. Surprisingly, Raines could still see fairly well. The injured soldier down at the end of the ward was fast asleep, blissfully snoring away. The body in the bed next to Raines was still there, though now a sheet had been used to cover it with the exception of one errant foot that had somehow slipped out from beneath it to hang limply over the side of the bed.
Raines lay awake for several long moments without moving, trying to gauge how he felt.
The long wound in his side where the creature's claws had torn through his flesh was tender and sore, but did not hurt as much as he had expected it to. The skin around it itched horribly, however, and he wondered if he was having some adverse reaction to the anti-infectants they must have spread liberally around the wound. He resisted the urge to scratch for only a few moments and then gave in to the need with a deep, perverse pleasure. His fingers dug into the flesh around the wound and left several long scratches in his skin, but he barely noticed. He was too intent in finding some relief from the itching.
He noticed a small washroom in one corner of the ward and decided to see for himself just how bad things were. Using the bed's handrail, Raines pulled himself into a sitting position and then swung his legs out from under the sheet and over the edge of the bed. The floor was cool on his bare feet. He waited a moment, double-checking he was up to this so soon after awakening from what was obviously a coma-like sleep, and then carefully pulled himself to his feet.
When he didn't immediately collapse in a wave of dizziness, Raines headed across the room with a slow, shambling gait. He managed to reach the doorway of the room without too much trouble and stepped inside, closing the door behind him. Only then did he turn on the light.
Excruciating pain surged through his eyes and into his brain.
Instinctively, Raines squeezed his eyes shut and smashed his fist through two of the three fluorescent bulbs that provided lighting inside the room.
In the dimmer light, the pain slowly faded.
When he felt he could stand it, Raines opened his eyes and looked at himself in the mirror.
Most of his head was covered with a wide set of bandages, no doubt protecting the open wound on the side of his head where his ear used to be. His eyes seemed to reflect some of the light from the remaining fluorescent lamp and had a yellow tinge to them that told Raines he'd lost a fair share of blood. What was most disconcerting to him, however, was the fact that his skin seemed to be jaundiced as well.
Could he have contracted some weird disease from that water as the doc had said, he wondered, staring at himself in the mirror. Is that why he felt so queasy? Or was he having some kind of anaphylactic reaction to the medications they been pumping him with while he'd been in the coma?
He didn't know.
A sharp sting of pain shot through his mouth and Raines was surprised to find he had bitten his tongue without realizing it. If he kept this up, he'd never recover.
It was time to get some rest.
He turned off the light and opened the door to the ward. With slow, careful steps, he made his way back over to his bed. As he was getting ready to climb back up on the mattress, he noticed that errant foot sticking out from beneath the sheet covering the corpse in the bed nest to his.
He froze where he stood for several long moments, staring at it
Then, with a quick jerk, he pulled the sheet down further so that it covered that foot as well.
THE END
Learn more about the author at josephnassise.com/
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###
OUTSIDE
By Kealan Patrick Burke
The morning bleeds a feeble light better suited to dusk.
Early birds have forgotten worms and instead shriek their protests into the vermilion sky. Winter is gone and the grass flushes with unhindered vitality, a new emerald hue lending a freshness to this time of the season. Around Alec Martin's garden, a still-naked ring of trees join spindly arms, engaged in some fraternity he cannot hope to understand, lost in the gentle song of morning.
The house is quiet.
He stands by the window, gazing out at the burgeoning morning and the odd light hanging in the air like a secret mist. In contrast, his thoughts are lucid, unobstructed for once by the chatter of the dawn people on the small radio which sits atop the counter. Silently. A flick of the switch when he first entered the kitchen, earned him nothing but white noise and a shifting, undulating wave of gibberish he was quick to mute.
The house is quiet.
Shadows stretch and waken and crawl towards the house from the bottom of the garden. Alec sips his coffee. It scalds his tongue. He winces. It will be a lingering hurt for the rest of the day. Much like thoughts of Maury. He touches his tongue, feels it recoil.
He will be okay. Has to be. On a team with only one player, spirits must remain high. Peristalsis forces away the bile-like taste of betrayal and he shivers off the chill he imagines has snuck unseen around the spaces in the front door. He turns away from the display of nature and pauses, the coffee cup frozen inches from his scalded mouth. The belated image registers of something moving in the garden, something low, pale and slender emerging quickly from the trees at the bottom of the garden. Like a deer, if deer were limbless and crawled.
Slowly, already chiding his penchant for melodrama and more than certain he is subconsciously seeking distractions to keep himself sheltered from the towering weight of anguish, he turns.
A worm-like appendage whacks against the glass, rattling it in its frame as the pale thing flashes past the door mere inches away from his face. Jesus!
The coffee sloshes over the rim of the cup and instinctively he holds it at arm's length; looks down to see if his suit is ruined.
Something thumps against the house and he looks in that direction. Silly, of course. The pine cabinets there reveal nothing. The noise has come from outside and the crippled deer driven mad with pain, for surely it can't be anything else.
I should take a look, he thinks with a mind braver than his body. The something, whatever it was, whatever it is, has summoned unwanted images torn from pulp magazines he used to curl up with as a child--monstrous things borne of fetid caverns yawning from the earth...Back then he used to wonder at the patience of the illustrator to cross-hatch and shade such intricate abominations. Never did he imagine something akin to those drooling, albino, skinless horrors would be skittering around outside the door to his home, searching for a way in.
He swallows, carefully sets his cup on the counter top and dares to lean forward, his face inches from the door, widening his field of vision so that now the old barn sidles into view. It is crumbling, has been for decades. His parents' barn. Before that, his grandparents' barn. Martin's only dealings with the building have been to sell the wood from it to local crafts makers seeking aged material for their candleholders and whatnot.
He almost smiles. The white loping thing slams against the door, knocking the glass against Martin's forehead, and he yelps in horror instead, sent pin-wheeling backward by shock and the force of the door. Through the fright, he is vaguely aware of a lipless mouth, ringed with many teeth and leaving viscous, transparent drool on the door. It smiles at him as he steadies himself against the far wall, regulates his breathing and reaches for the phone with a trembling hand.
"Doctor Lords, please," he breathes into the mouthpiece once the stuttering chirp of speed-dial has ended and a connection is made.
The deep timbre which swells the line is soothing. "Martin?"
"Doctor Lords. Thank God."
"Has he come back?"
"Yes. And I'm scared. He's frightening me. I think, on purpose."
"Now Martin," the doctor chides, "I did warn you he might escape. You should be relieved he's come back. He wasn't engineered to be that loyal. I would think of his reappearance as miraculous, and significant of the bond between you two, wouldn't you say?"
Martin ponders this. Looks toward the door. The creature has moved away, leaving an orb-shaped ring of slime on the glass. The porch boards creak under its weight as it circles outside. "Why did he leave?" he says, his fingers tightening on the phone. "Why did he go in the first place?"
The doctor sighs. "Did you two argue?"
Silence.
"Martin?"
"Yes, we did. It was silly. It was about the children. I didn't want to keep feeding them to him. I was starting to feel bad. I wanted to stop. He told me I had no choice but to feed him or he'd find them himself and did I think he wouldn't be noticed wandering around the neighborhood. So he broke the basement window somehow and crawled out. I was glad at first. Relieved. I thought it would be much easier without him. Without having to look after him."
"But it wasn't, was it?" the doctor asked.
"No. I missed him." A shaky sigh. "Still do."
There is a smile in Doctor Lords' voice. "Then let him in, Martin. You were meant to be together. Don't deny your feelings and don't let silly little arguments get in the way of your happiness."
Martin nods and hangs up. A scratch at the door. He turns and cataract-clouded eyes beseech him through the glass. A tentacle squeaks against the panes. Martin's eyes fill with tears. He notices a pink ribbon, with blotches of red, trails from the corner of the thing's mouth but it matters little.
He rushes to the door and throws it wide.
White eyes look up in adoration.
"I missed you, Maury," Martin says as his lover slides into the kitchen.
THE END
Learn more about the author at www.kealanpatrickburke.com
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###
THE SUNSEEKER
By Simon Wood
I don't think a man who has watched the sun going down could walk away and commit a murder.
---Laurens van der Post

It had started with the Whistler. He had changed Paul Thompson's life irrevocably but it was Thompson's life to do with as he pleased and he was doing just that. Thompson knelt on the beach waiting for the sun to rise, reflecting on the events of the last two days.


He had been an award-winning architect. He had dazzled the world with his visions, made stunning by his use of natural light. He had been the creator of the Glacier casino, a glass iceberg jutting out of the Nevada desert. He had been a lot of things but that life was been behind him now.

It all came down to one action. If he had not left his home Friday night to buy the champagne, he would not be on the beach right now.
Thompson had clinched the commission for his latest project. As a reward, he wanted to select the champagne for the celebration he was planning for his project team. Back from the presentation, he was glad to be home indulging himself in his favorite activity, watching the sunset. After four long days in a stuffy boardroom with its bleached complexion from too many fluorescent tubes, he was ready for the natural spectacle.
His beachfront property north of San Francisco, the Conservatory, was aptly designed for watching the sun with its large expanses of glass. The bay window stretched from one side of the property to the other providing an unhindered panoramic view of the ocean and the sky. The roof to the room was also glass so he could track the sun's progress from high in the sky until it melted into the horizon.
Heat radiated down from the sun and he felt his flesh tingle from its touch. He watched the sun change colors as it dissolved into the blue waters. He drank slowly from his wineglass in time with the disappearing sun. He had one more chore before his day was over.
Thompson entered Grapevine Wine Importers where he was a regular customer. He ordered two cases of Moet & Chandon for his team and bought a Californian Chardonnay and an Italian Merlot for himself. He left the store with his two bottles; the champagne would be delivered. He made his way back to his car, on a side street away from thieves and meter maids.
The whistling was loud. The Whistler was talented; the music carried easily on the night air. This was not whistling that could be produced by just anyone. This was music and the whistle was an instrument no different from a flute or piano. What was startling about the music was that no one whistled that well.
The architect recognized the music as either classical or an operatic aria, he had heard it before but he was unable to put a name to it. It was not that the sound failed to do justice to the score but that his musical knowledge was lacking. All those who heard the Whistler broke their conversations to listen to the crystal-clear music.
As beautiful as the music sounded, its menacing nature unnerved the architect. His every step was shadowed by it. Every time he changed streets on his journey he saw fewer and fewer people but the music continued to pursue, as did the Whistler. He looked to locate the Whistler but never found the source of the music. The music intensified in harmony and clarity with each street, ricocheting off the walls of the imposing buildings like a pinball. The proximity of the sound closed upon him with every step. He turned onto the deserted street a little way from the alley where his car stood. He increased the pace of his walk; the whistling matched it and exceeded it.
The chilling music was on top of Thompson. He felt the expelled air from the Whistler on his neck. He turned into the alley and looked over his shoulder, frightened. The instant he turned, the whistling stopped and no one was there. Where had the minstrel gone? He continued to move in the direction of his car while frantically searching for the Whistler.
"Did you like it?" a voice said.
It was a man's voice. His speech was calm and level; there seemed to be a smile contained within it. His tone was relaxing and had a hypnotic quality that put Thompson at ease. The voice felt like a comforting arm had been placed around him.
Thompson walked slap-bang into a stranger standing in the alley. He dropped the bag with the bottles of wine in it. They exploded on the concrete surface between the two men and a stain spread across the paper bag. Droplets passed through the porous material and a puddle formed under the men's feet.
"Shit! I'm sorry, I didn't see you there. Are you okay?" Thompson said.
"Did you like it?" the stranger said again, in the same mild manner.
"Excuse me?"
"Did you like the music?"
This guy scared him and his stomach made a complete revolution. He could not see his face although he stood right in front of him. Shadows cloaked the stranger's face in darkness, although moonlight reflected off his Porsche parked further down the alley. The Whistler was the only obstacle between him and his means of escape.
"The music? It was very good. You certainly have talent. Well, if you will excuse me I have to get home."
He sidestepped the Whistler and tried not to look as if their meeting had panicked him. He made careful, deliberate steps towards his car. To the Whistler he walked like he was about to shit himself or already had.

"What about your package?"


"I don't want it."


"Don't you think it's thoughtless to leave this broken glass where someone could cut themselves? You might even puncture your tires when you drive out of here. You could put it in this dumpster."

Thompson stopped. He had been walking away from the man the entire time they spoke. He had not even turned to look at him while they talked. Now he was trapped in no-man's land, he had gone over the top and he was halfway between the safety of his car and the malevolent Whistler. He turned around.
Thompson walked back to his spoiled purchases that had leaked out into the alley. His walk was a little more relaxed than earlier but he was still fearful of this man. He bent down to pick up the expensive mess. He lifted the paper bag but the sodden fibers tore, exposing the broken bottles. He cursed the inconvenience.

He did not see the fist. The downward blow struck him on the side of the head. The force of the impact instantly disoriented him and an explosion went off inside his head. His brain shook inside his skull like snowflakes in a snow dome. He fell forward onto his hands and a lightning bolt of pain shot up his right arm. He had stuck his hand into the jagged glass. It sliced open his palm and blood poured from the gash. The blood mixed with the spilt wine, making an unpalatable cocktail for most beings. He was hoisted into the air and slammed against the side of the dumpster, which rang out like Big Ben striking the hour.

"Take my wallet but don't hurt me!"
"I don't want your money! I want something more valuable than money."
Pinned down, the air squeezed from his lungs, the Whistler's face came into view. His eyes were ablaze; it looked as if every blood vessel had exploded at once. The irises were encircled in a ring of red. His lips were drawn back in a vicious snarl that exposed a deadly array of teeth that were misshapen and far too big for his head. The incisors and canines were stained yellow and brown like those of a three-pack-a-day smoker. His cruel smile looked as destructive as the broken glass that had torn through his hand.
The hungry mouth bit down on Thompson's neck. The distorted teeth tore through his flesh, penetrating tissue, bursting veins and rupturing arteries. Thompson's body hemorrhaged; blood gushed forth and the Whistler drank from the massive laceration.
The pain from the wound was intense, overruling the injury to his hand and the concussion. Mercifully, Thompson's injuries were swiftly anesthetized by the bite and he became disconnected from his body. He felt his neck twitch where the blood pumped from the severed arteries. He sensed the Whistler licking the wound, sucking at his throat and swallowing his spilt blood. The gash in his hand ceased to bleed; there was not much blood left to bleed.
A heavy weight hung over him. The weight was an inexorable desire to sleep. Not just his mind but his whole body wanted to sleep. It took too much effort to lie there against the dumpster---it was be easier to succumb to his longing. He felt himself sink into warm waters that soaked his body and his being. He gradually sank to the bottom of the waters, and the deeper he went the darker it became. He was no longer aware of the alley, the Whistler, his wounds, or his suffering. He was aware of nothing.
The Whistler wiped his hand across his mouth and licked his lips. He breathed heavily from his exertion and excitement. He had sated his lust and his need for human blood, for now anyway. He stood up putting his hand inside his three-quarter-length coat and removed a packet of lemon-scented wet wipes. He took one out and wiped it over his face and neck. He liked to be clean and this was a dirty business so it paid dividends to be prepared. After all, he had been a Boy Scout once, a long time ago.
He looked down at the crumpled heap of man and admired his handiwork. He smiled and exposed a neat array of well-tended teeth that any dentist would have been proud of. The perfect smile was only tarnished by the small amounts of blood that clogged the gaps between his teeth.
It was time to go. He bent down to the vanquished man and checked his pockets. He removed Thompson's wallet and looked for cash. He was not a thief but it was always a bonus if there was some cash to be had. It is not as if a vampire has a nine-to-five job. There were only 15 dollars and a lot of plastic, various gold and platinum charge cards.

"Christ! Another one who doesn't believe in cash."

Disappointed by the small booty, he took the cash and hoped for better luck tomorrow. He stuffed the wallet down the front of the man's shirt.
He picked up the body easily as if it was a bag of groceries. His strength always increased after a kill and the tall man was not a burden. The Whistler tossed the body into the dumpster with the trash and slammed the lid closed. He walked out of the alley into the street and disappeared into the night.
The following morning, a squad car spotted the abandoned Porsche in the alley on routine operations. They ran a check on the license plate and placed a call for a tow truck to remove the car. The tow truck driver found the abandoned car between the two derelict buildings and cursed the scumbag winos that had left the broken bottles in the alley. He picked up the broken glass and tossed it into the nearby dumpster. The driver did not see the car owner who lay on a bed of filth inside. He just got on with his task. He loaded the sports car onto the truck and drove it to the city impound lot.
The day came to an end and a new night began. Paul Thompson awoke from his slumber in his rancid coffin. A shudder ran through his body, ending in a scream. Enveloped in blackness, he remembered the attack. Frightened, he burst from the dumpster like a jack-in-the-box and sent a couple of rats scurrying for cover.
He clambered out of his place of rest and stumbled away, falling to the ground on the other side of the alley. His hand clutched at his throat for the mortal wound but found a healing scar. He looked at his lacerated hand and saw a jagged line carved into his palm. He realized he stunk like a shithouse mop and probably looked one like as well. His clothes were dirty, stained with wine, blood, and filth. The smell was of stale sweat, alcohol and garbage. He saw his car was gone, probably stolen by his attacker.
He was hungry like he had never been before. He was so hungry that his stomach felt knotted. He wanted to get cleaned up but he needed something to eat, so he went into a McDonalds. The people looked at him and wrinkled their noses at the sight and smell that greeted them. The muffled sounds of discontent reached the night manager who came from behind the service counter.

He confronted Thompson and refused him the right to food because of his condition. The architect turned to his fellow diners for support but they looked away or at their food. Others called for him to be thrown out. The manager who wanted no further disruption to his restaurant took a burger from a rack and thrust into Thompson's hand.

"It's on me," the manager said bitterly.
Thompson wanted to pay. He felt guilty for causing so much commotion and did not want to take charity. The manager did not care and pushed him out onto the street and sent him on his way with a "fuck off."
Thompson walked away from the fast food joint with the food he needed and the meat he had to have. He made large, untidy bites into the sandwich and had made two swallows before he had an idea of the food's flavor. This is revolting, he thought. It was not that the food was spoiled but that it was repellent to his palate. It was as if what he was eating was rancid and everything tasted that way---the meat, bun, the cheese, and the ketchup. He dropped the half-eaten burger onto the sidewalk.
He looked down at the half-eaten sandwich. Peasant food, he thought. He felt that this crap was inferior to his hunger. This was not the type of food that he desired. Arrogance filled his empty belly; he was worthy of better. He went to grind the burger into the concrete with his heel.
He doubled up in pain as his stomach rejected the food. He vomited over the discarded burger. His stomach had not digested the food so it pretty much came back out as it went in. Mucus-coated chunks of chewed food splatted hard against the sidewalk. He was disgusted with his lack of control. His arrogance got a slap across the face and was put back in its place. He left his mess where it lay.
He went in search of a cab to get him out of the city. He wanted to get out of this place to seek solace in the comfort of his own home. After many cab drivers refused him, he eventually convinced a cab driver with the story that he had been mugged but that he had money. He paid the cabby with the money he had in the house.
He bathed, removing the grime of the street and the memory of his misadventure. He decided not to call the police in, he had not been hurt badly and they never found these people anyway. He listened to his messages. He had one from the office that wanted him to call in to make sure he was okay. The other was from the police who had his car impounded. At least that mystery's solved, he thought. He would deal with those problems tomorrow, right now it was time to raise the drawbridge and post the guards. He drew the curtains, locked the doors and went to bed.
He awoke to a world that was already in full swing. He lay in his bed listening to it, reassured by its existence. The waves crashed onto the beach and were sucked back into the sea with a tinkling wheeze. People walked along the beach, spoke about their lives and the beautiful day, and played with their pets. Surfers completely oblivious to the ways of the conventional world spoke of the cool waves they had caught. Children played imaginatively in the sand and surf.
Partially dressed, he left his bed for the living room. The drapes did their best to cloak the room in darkness but failed to hide the daylight entirely and shadows stretched across the room. A shard of unhindered light only helped to make the model look all that more impressive.
Stopped in his tracks, his breath was taken away by its beauty. His latest project sparkled on the living room table. An overwhelming sense of pride filled him. I created that, he thought. He crossed the room to be close to his creation.
He held out an affectionate hand to touch the warmth of the sun on his model. His hand dipped into the pool of light; he cursed and retracted it at great speed. His arm shook with pain and he held it to him and stared at his injury. The light had burnt his hand as cruelly as if it was a branding iron. His flesh sizzled like meat on a grill. What is happening to me, he thought, how could the light burn me? His beloved pet had bitten him. He ran for the bathroom.
He removed the first aid kit. He looked at the mess that was his trembling hand. The puckered skin was a barbecued red and an odor like charred pork rose from it. His world had turned itself on its head and he did not know when it would right itself. What else could happen to me? he asked himself. He hoped that he had reached the final rinse and spin of the cycle and that his bad luck was over. He bathed and bandaged his hand as best as possible.
He went back into the living room and put his hand on the cord to the drapes to open them. It struck him like a blow to head, like the blow he took last night. Christ, this will burn me! He thought. Suddenly it all started to make sense. A conclusion dawned on him like a rising sun. His hand snapped away from the cord like it was a venomous snake.
He crashed onto the couch in shock. He recounted the series of events that occurred since leaving Grapevine's---the Whistler, the attack, a hunger for an unknown food, and his burnt hand.
It can't be true, he thought, am I a vampire? The evidence led him to a conclusion that he could not accept. He felt his world was a house of cards and he had just removed the wrong one. Craving a drink, he went to the refrigerator.

He surveyed the items in the refrigerator---milk, orange juice, mineral water, wine, but nothing appealed to his thirst. He gently fingered the steak under the plastic skin before he dug his fingers into the artificial membrane and scraped his nails across the meat. He removed the steak and threw it into the sink where it splatted against the stainless steel surface. He gulped down the watery blood in the base of the packaging. It was bitter like unripe fruit but it was enough to go somewhat towards satisfying his hunger.

He collapsed to the floor with tears running down his face. It's true, he thought, I am. His life was over, as he knew it. The penny dropped and he understood the bad joke; he was dead and he was last to know.
Why couldn't I have just died, he thought. He knew that his life had the prospect of being the Whistler's, a killer's life, having to exist off the living during the night. In this new world, he would have to use the power of darkness to succeed.
He moved to the living room and saw the muted light breaking through the curtains. "You bastard," he screamed at the light.
His thoughts were of the world that was on the other side of that window. He desired the pleasure of basking in the world of light. He did not want to skulk in the shadows scavenging off of the weak and the unwitting. His rage turned to the model that glowed on the table. He snatched up a college award from a shelf and stormed over to it. He decided he would smash the fucking thing that mocked him. If he could no longer enjoy the things he made, then they would not exist. He drew his arm back like a major league pitcher but hesitated and he let his arm drop to his side, the award still clutched in it.
He saw again the beauty in his creation and not the spite that he had thought was there. This is beautiful work, he thought, and how he wished he could touch it right now. He smiled in admiration of his achievement and his mind was awash with a flood of memories of his past accomplishments. There was good in his work that came from the gift he possessed. He would be a fool to destroy the memory of his work. The spoilt child within him grew up into the adult he was and returned the award to its rightful place.
He sat staring at the shadows cast by a descending sun. He would not see tonight's sunset and thought about the times he had watched it from here. He realized that he had never seen the sun rise from the sea like he had seen it descend. He had one wish, and that was to see the sun rise from the sea to give birth to a new day. He decided he would be a genie for a day and grant himself his wish. He flicked through a portfolio of his work and occasionally gazed at his model that changed in color with the sun while the night dropped from the heavens.
When it was dark, a cab drove him to San Francisco International airport. He paid the cabby a tip that he would never forget and that Thompson would never remember. He went from ticket booth to ticket booth of the various airlines. He wanted an overnight flight to the East Coast. American Airlines Flight AA476 would get him to Miami an hour before sun up. He purchased a ticket and checked in. He was asked if he had any luggage and remarked he had everything he needed and tapped the sunglasses in his lapel pocket.
The flight was uncomfortable. He could not sleep and hunger gnawed at his belly like it was an animal trying to eat its way out. He refused the food offered by the stewardess, as he only desired the food that sat in the seats around him. The flight landed on time and he left his fellow passengers at the baggage claim as he exited the deserted airport. He hailed a cab.

"Where to?" the Cuban asked.


"The beach," Thompson said.


"Which one? There are lots, there's the-"


"The closest one," Thompson interrupted.


"Okay."

The Cuban tried to engage his curious occupant in conversation and wondered what this man would want with the beach at this early hour. Thompson dismissed the questions; this was not the time for a life story. The cabby stopped curbside and Thompson gave him the last of his cash.
He had made it just in time---the sun was not far away. A faint orange glow emanated from the horizon of the Atlantic Ocean. He walked onto the deserted beach, kicking up sand that crept into his shoes but he ignored the irritation. The sun had already filled the sky with light beyond the horizon and it would not be long before it did the same on the beach. He knelt down in the sand. He put his sunglasses on and hoped they would give him protection against the light as he eagerly waited for the show to begin.
The sun broke the surface of the water. A brilliant light was cast over the sea and land like a fisherman's net. He watched the wondrous sight that blinded him even with the sunglasses. His smile was as bright as the sun that crept over the sea. Beautiful, he thought.
He had granted himself his wish of the perfect sunrise. He felt the sun on his skin and it immediately blistered wherever it was exposed. Tears of joy ran from his eyes even as they formed cataracts and it was not long before he lost sight of his final wish. His tears bubbled, evaporating into steam on the super-heated flesh of his cheeks.
The sun continued to climb from the depths of the ocean spreading more light. Paul Thompson's light-sensitive body burned like a torch on the beach. His smile disappeared in the flames, as did his undesirable future.
THE END
Learn more about the author at www.simonwood.net
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###
THOUGH THY LIPS ARE PALE
By Maria Alexander
For youth is youth, and time will have it so,
And though thy lips are pale, and thine eyes wet
Farewell, thou must forget.
---"GoodBye" by Anonymous, 15th Century France
Painful sunlight, cold air blasting between my raw lips. My head lolls forward wearily, the bells of Prime clanging faintly from the Abbey. Men in ivory belts and mail coats shing shing shing from horse to chateau, squires scuttling like brown spiders behind their dirty gold spurs. Gripping the prayer book tucked in my muff, I am wondering which horse's back holds my dowry. My thousands, our salvation. My life is not where I stand but strapped to a beast in a precious coffer I have never seen....
Three days ago my virginity was but a shadow that would darken another cloister wall. How swiftly this change of fortune visited me. I never dreamed I would be betrothed but assumed I would remain a wilting maid my whole life. My sisters were married but I was told there was nothing left for me. Perhaps I misunderstood. I sift through every handful of spilt words these last months but I remember nothing except the endless procession of ministers, priests, and manor lords come to counsel my father on the spoiled crops, uprisings, and political strife as he remains loyal to Paris. I do not recall hearing of a marriage contract, nor what might have been the visitors who would bring the bride price. Then three nights ago, Mother's proclamation of betrothal came to me in my bed chambers like the Angel's annunciation to the Virgin. I am to wed the son of a Duke in the Duchy of Normandy.
I have only thirteen Yuletides.
As Mother and I walk into the weak light of morning, my companions weep piteously from the chateau gate. One secrets a small bottle of rose, cardamom, and cumin in a silk handkerchief as a parting gift. We had whispered excitedly about the marriage: Would I run a big household? Would I have lots of children? Is my betrothed handsome? My friends assured me that with my flaxen hair and azure eyes I was pretty enough to love. And I believed them. For a moment, at least.
Mother sees my distress as I leave my companions and places a hand on my cheek, withering resignation in her touch. "Worry not," she says. "In your trousseau are great swaths of Italian damask that are blue as robin's eggs, linen fair as fresh cream, velvet black as a murder's wings, and fine woolens to fend off the damp chill of Normandy."
I do not recall seeing these fabrics in my trousseau much less the armoire that holds them. Only the carefully wrapped packs of heavily salted fish and pork, the bulky sacks of trancheor loaves, jugs of cider, dried cheese rinds and other rations. Far more than four day's travel. I suppose one cannot underestimate the appetites of men.
Wrinkled red faces peer from the kitchen. Breezes nuzzle the beech leaves overhead as I am lifted into the gaily colored cart and seated amongst plentiful furs, which I gather around me. I find some toiletries and a few small bundles of rations buried in the furs. It is eerily quiet. No saltarellos, singers, or noisemakers to celebrate my fortune and wish me well.
"Where are the men who serve my betrothed?" I ask Mother. "Why do they not retrieve me as they did my sisters?"
"We must hurry," she says and withdraws her regard. I fall voiceless.
Leaves crackling beneath their knees, the men in ivory belts brandish their swords, swear oaths to great angels and troth fealty to my mother's amaranthine beauty. My heart floats like cobwebs on a breeze when I hear such words. I sit motionless, suspended in the rapture of their praise for Mother's spiritual and physical perfections. Then, they mount their horses with a shout, heraldry held aloft. The horses clop clop clop and we move away from the chateau.
I brush away the silt of confusion. I am excited to one day soon have the service of such fine warriors who speak words of admiration, to one day inspire the good deeds and thoughts of a man who fights for both me and mild mother Mary. One day soon, I will be the one protected and honored. (Then again, the wedding might be some years from now. No one can say.) In the meantime, I can write letters to my mother and sisters, and I love my books. Surely I can have more of those, too.
After some distance, I gather my courage and skirts to crawl forward to the curtains. I part them on the far left side to reveal the patchwork bocage of Bretagne passing behind us. The black hedges of oak quilt the borders between great squares of dark verdant grasses dotted with the ashy broom bushes and the feathery heads of heather wearing tiny jewels of dew. My tongue curls over my lips as if to taste the succulent vegetation. Then the sour stench of the horses worms into the feast as one cantors up to my cart. The squire runs alongside to catch up. The man riding the horse is layered in chain mail and a bright red poplin tunic swathed at the waist with the ivory belt. I am frightened by the breadth of his meaty jaw, the cruel squint of his eyes and the faded mulberry scar ripping the bridge of his nose. A thin veil of benevolence spreads over his otherwise dark face as he speaks to me. "Hail, little one. It goes well?"
I nod.
"You are sick from the cart, no?"
I shake my head.
He raises his head to speak to the others. "Hitch a cart to this one! She is strong as an ox!"
My stomach turns sickeningly with embarrassment as they laugh. I let the curtain close and fall back into darkness. The warriors wheedle me to come out again, but instead I curl up on the furs and sleep until hunger burns all the way into my mouth. My eyes grow accustomed to the darkness. Small blades of light slash through the swaying curtains from the other end of the cart. I fumble for a small bundle of food and devour my rugged, salty dejeuner like a starved beggar. The thick painful lump in my stomach afterwards reminds me that for a few days I will have to endure poor foods.
The cart stops once for a brief rest as the magpies harshly chirp areprepreprep in the gray branches with yellowish leaves. An ill omen, but also a warning of armed men nearby. Who is he warning of our presence? After emptying my chamber pot over the open lip, I cautiously slide out of the cart and visit the trail. It seems so broken already, as if we were never a solid road at all. The men in chain mail relieve themselves, murmuring quietly to one another. Their cheeks turn ashen in the mottled light, eyes widening, lips wet with argument. Are they afraid? They cannot possibly be afraid, they who have jousted for Mother. They who have killed infidels, Englishmen, perhaps even brethren. They who have one another. They are never alone. Like me.
"Let us go, little one!" the frightening man calls to me, wincing as his squire helps him into his saddle. A handsome man helps me scramble back into the cart ("Hup!") where I hide like a field mouse in the folds of fur. I have never been out of the chateau for more than a few hours. I grow more nervous by the moment, as if evil spirits are stitching back and forth through my skin, around my bones and fingers.
As we settle down for night, the darkness ladles generous spoonfuls of dread on my skin. The men eat salted fish and drink weak beer with sober looks that skitter loosely around us into the darkness beyond. I cannot understand why they are fasting. It is neither Lent, nor Advent, nor any holy day. Later in my cart's bed, I shiver from the wolves howling as they prowl sheep fields in the distance. Every small crunch of twig and stone underfoot by the men makes me feel vulnerable to danger rather than protected. A thick heat chokes my nose and mouth as small sobs swell from my stomach. The rummy musk of dead animal skins fills my head as I inhale small fistfuls of air. I clasp the little prayer book against my chest, wordlessly repeating the prayers to The Virgin until sleep overtakes me sometime just before dawn.
The cart has been moving for some time it seems when I finally awaken to the sound of my own rapid, even breathing. Something feels profoundly different about the air beyond the cart curtains. A breeze swoops into the cart to bite my nose with a frosty beak. My entire body aches by degrees, my neck and shoulders crying loudest when I shrug them from my bedding. I gather my skirt to crawl to the cart's end and, as the cart wobbles, I scrape my knees.
This time when I draw back the curtains the murky, crippled fingers of fir trees grasp at us from all sides. The soldiers sit bolt upright in their saddles, grizzled faces sweating, eyes fixed on the ominous gaps between the trees. No one notices that I lean far from the cart, twisting upward to see the unbroken canopy of ancient birch limbs whose gnarled, hairy branches strangle one another for the retreating sunlight. The corpselike bark of the trunks contrasts starkly against the somber pines. The damp ground is clotted with rotting leaves that cling to the horse's hooves as they stomp onward in a death march. A squire slips in the damp every moment or so, then scrambles to get his footing as if a cadaver's hand might burst through the forest floor to seize his ankle.
I begin to imagine the most terrible things lurking in the darkness of the trees. Filthy naked things with black eyes, bloated bellies, and cracked claws. This place feels cursed with its silence and shadows.
"Where are we?" I dare whisper.
The frightening soldier glances at me in a panic as if by speaking I broke an oath. Then, a riot of murmurs breaks out from the forest growth and a wind hurtles past us as if chased by the Devil....
I know exactly where we tread.
We are in the heart of Paimpont, the hopeless woods where lovers are turned to stone by heartbroken witches and hapless travelers wander into labyrinths where they are devoured by godless monsters.
The air blurs as another layer of darkness settles on the narrow path, growing ever more bumpy with pallid tree roots that writhe up through the dirt. I fall back on my side as the cart jerks and rocks, bruising my shoulder. Terror drums in my chest as I try to imagine why we have come so far west. To loathsome Paimpont. I have slept so much that I did not notice we have been following the sun. Prince Jesus, I pray silently. Please take pity on me. I pray that Hell gain no mastery over me, a virgin.
Eventually the cart rolls to a stop. I hear the general noise of camp being set for the night amongst the smaller noises of twilight twittering in the surrounding undergrowth. An argument breaks out amongst the men as to who will forage for firewood. They fight as if one had been asked to sacrifice his squire. The frightening man says that they are to search together, to not roam far from the camp. To watch each other. One of the horses already carries bundles of wood from our last camp. He builds a small fire from it as the squires disperse.
"Come out, little one," the frightening soldier orders.
Wrapped tightly in my cloak, prayer book tucked in my muff, I shuffle to the cart's opening and draw back the curtains. The brisk air pinches my cheeks. I hear no wildlife, no insects. The solemn movements of the men underscore the darkness of this place. The crackling of brush underfoot of the squires echoes loudly like the sound of scourges on a prisoner's back.
"Are you hungry?"
Offered pork and bread by the frightening man, I shake my head. The men sit around the low fire and eat salted fish again. I want to ask them why they fast when there is no holy day. No reason to discipline themselves this way. Perhaps I am wrong. The days have turned around in my head like spinning leaves as they fall from the gusts of change. Instead I read from my prayer book by the fire's light, ignoring the anxious stares I draw from the men as they gulp weak beer.
Twilight dwindles to obscurity. I notice a breach in the crowded tree trunks that leads to a clearing of sweet grasses enclosed by hunched oak trees. Only the densest of shadows flickers in the grove from our firelight. I watch the dancing shadows, a carole of bleak brush strokes on the fickle canvas of light. I am startled to find the soldiers have surrounded me from behind. They carry torches, a polished pewter urn of water, blankets of bleached poplin....
I shrink from their smudged, haunted faces. "What is this?"
"Your father is in grave danger," the frightening man says. "There is something you must do for him. It is the only thing that can save him."
My father is not ill that I know, but he is in considerable trouble from threats of war and all the troubles of nobility. "I cannot imagine what you mean for me," I say. "I am just a girl. What can I do for my father but marry well and have a son?"
His big calloused hands grasp my shoulders, turning me towards the clearing. He stoops to speak into my ear, gripping me firmly. "It is a simple thing. You must sit there, in the grove, tonight until the wee hours."
"No!" I cry out, digging my heels into the damp earth, wedging them against a clump of roots. "I beg you, sir! Not in the wood!"
He pushes me forward as I lean back against him, shaking my head desperately. "NO! I beg you! NO! NO!" I sob uncontrollably as he lifts me, his scarred hands easily overpowering me as he carries me into the clearing. I am just a rag doll to him. My feet kick backwards against his shins but my heels painfully strike his metal guards.
As we enter the clearing, the other soldiers chant a monk's prayer as they spread the white poplin blankets on the grass under the bleeding smoke of the torches. They circle the blankets three times, then set the pewter urn of water to one side and stab a torch in the ground on the other. I sag in my captor's hands to resist him. "We are watching you carefully, little one. Nothing will happen to you."
Rimy tears streak my cheeks as I turn up my face to the distant heavens. So I must sit in the cursed woods. Alone. What would my family say?
What would my betrothed say?
"But why must I do this?"
"That," he says, turning me towards the urn, "is holy water. And that," he says, turning me towards the torch, "is made of wood from Jerusalem. More than that, I cannot say."
The frightening man sets me down on the blankets and I slouch with misery, listening to their retreating footsteps. The torch awakens the shadowy dancers against the naked trees. They resume their grotesque dance around me with macabre limbs capering in the smoke. I bury my eyes in my muff, dampening the fur heavily with sobs of fear. I rub my nose in the fur and pull out my prayer book, hands trembling as I leaf open to my favorite prayer. I read aloud.
I sit here for some hours, reading the prayers over and over. My tears dry as I pray. There is no danger for me here. I sigh, set the prayer book open on the blanket. The poplin is unspeakably soft, a delicate weave of pure threads. I wonder if they have taken this from my trousseau when something rustles beyond the staggering gambol of the shadow dancers. I look up expectantly. Perhaps my strange vigil is ended and the men are coming for me--
Another hiss as something steps through overgrowth.
The sloping snout of a pale beast nods between the trunks of the clearing. The creature bares its teeth viciously, swiping a snowy hoof across the grasses in challenge. It tilts its wooly head to examine me for a heartbeat. I stop breathing as it lopes toward me like a broken apostle with a holy message. Tears of awe and disbelief flood my face as it brandishes the blanching steeple from its forehead. It raises its head for a moment as if to sniff the air, wan lips trembling. Its sallow eyes glisten with distrust and heartache.
There is nothing in the world for me but this feral miracle. I hold up my open hand to it, as if offering a horse a turnip. Cautiously it sniffs at the pewter urn, laps the water noisily, then paces around the white poplin blankets as it turns an eye to the torch. I admire the supple neck when the snout swings about to lick my palm. I shudder as the rough tongue sweeps my delicate skin with broad leonine strokes. The back legs fold beneath it, and with breathless grace it rests its muscular, powerful jaw on my lap. I tentatively stroke the wiry alabaster mane. I notice with no little horror that the ridges of the blanching steeple are stained with blood. Its ears flicker contentedly and its breath rumbles like a weary horse, yet something deadly and brutish pulses beneath that waxy pelt. The blood in my hands throbs faintly in response.
The sharp whistle of arrows breaks our communion. I scream, throwing my hands over my head. The men have hidden themselves up in the trees and are shooting nets at the beast as it suddenly rears up to meet the challenge. Tangled but not tamed, the creature thrashes at the heavy mesh, slicing it cleanly in places without even a fray. More men rush the trapped beast with their swords but are confounded by the ghastly maw and threatening stance. It leans back on its haunches, squints its sallow eyes, and howls like a damned thing as it wags its frightful jaw. The cries shake some of the weaker men to their knees, ivory belts dangling on the damp ground.
But not the frightening man and his closest companions. They lunge towards the creature with massive swords drawn, slashing at it to drive it backwards. Another volley of arrows sails earthward, pinning another net over the faltering creature. Its eyes begin to fade, to blink like a housecat by a fire. A foreleg bends beneath it awkwardly, a pink froth spattering the wan mouth. The urn is knocked to the ground, the water surging over the gleaming lip to soak the forest floor. I then realize angrily that the "holy water" was poisoned with some kind of herb to make the creature succumb to the assault.
I watch the creature fall prey to the trap with mounting anguish. My miracle bound by the cruelty of ordinary men. Dreams, desires...everything innocent and simple flees from my girlish thoughts during the struggle until the creature's jaw dips against its breast from the poison and it sleeps. The men quickly bind its legs and fit an odd harness over the sloping snout that grips the neck in a helpless position. The supple neck arcs forward, anchored to the forelocks.
They spend some time examining the creature as one fusses over flowers in the garden. Each expresses his admiration for the beast's courage and fighting spirit, not to mention its strange anatomy. "But will the Duke kill it?" one man asks.
"The beast is a marvel. It should be seen," another says. He was one whose knees weakened at the howls.
"Perhaps," the frightening man responds. "The horn alone is of immense magical value--or so I am told. Enough to save the Duchy of Bretagne for certain. And to have the whole beast, alive...." He hesitates, thinking. "We will go down in legend like our forefathers if we keep it alive for now. Like Arthur and Gawain. And the Duke will want the honor of killing the wretched thing for whatever part he wishes."
"Legends!" the handsome man cries. "We celebrate!"
They haul the drowsy beast closer to the periphery of the campsite. Soon, meat is simmering in pots and copious amounts of wine is spilling down gullets. I am not offered anything, nor am I spoken to for any matter. As they brag about the capture, wallowing excessively in glory, the men do not acknowledge me or my part in the treachery against magic itself. They strip off their armor, empty their boots of rocks. I cannot take my eyes off the pitiful beast in its bonds whilst they feast and drink themselves into oblivion.
Legends? Braggarts and bastards all of them.
I crawl into the obscurity of my cart and throw the furs around me. I cannot cry. I must think of a way to help the beast before they take me to Normandy. And that is when I hear them:
"And what do we do with the girl?" asks one soldier drunkenly.
"We drop her...at the nearettthhh...nunnery," another responds. "As her father ordered."
They discuss the elaborate charade, how I could not know the purpose of the expedition or else it would surely fail. I had to be deceived. The betrayal cuts me to the quick.
"Well," announces the frightening man. The ground crunches under his boots as he stands from the campfire. "Since she is forfeit to the nuns..."
I cannot imagine what elicits the boisterous laughs that follow, but his heavy steps approach my cart. He tears aside the curtains, his apish shape terrifying in the outline of the fire's light under the arc of the cart cover. The cart dips from his weight as he climbs inside. A smell wafts into the air, musky and sweaty. Vinegary. At first I'm stunned with bewilderment but soon fiery terror swells from the pit of my stomach and my throat enflames with hoarse screams. As easily as he clasped my shoulders to carry me into the clearing, he pins me to the furs and pulls up my skirts, his thick knees wedging my frail legs apart. I panic, arcing my body to pull back my hips. My virginity is exposed to his threatening heat. Sensitive. Delicate. That slight part of me that is worth anything. As I squirm against his iron grip, his hand slams against the side of my head. An explosion behind my eyes. I fall limp. He prods the lips of my tiny opening with the naked end of his bloated, stinking penis.
"Nice and small," he says gruffly. "Just the way I like it."
He forces his manhood into my tiny opening, ripping the delicate skin. Agony floods between my legs at that tender nexus, his first thrust inside burning like a brand on sheep flesh. My narrow opening resists his passage, yet he thrusts up into me again and again, beating my womb like a fist. Nausea blooms in my belly when he removes himself. I feel the sickening dribble against my savaged virginity, the bitter stench of his seed mingling with my blood as it stripes my inner thigh.
Fire licks my sex with disabling anguish. My thighs and stomach are bruised, as are every place he has touched me....
But as soon as he descends from the cart, another enters.
And then another.
I lose consciousness during, between. There are so many.
A squire is egged on by his master, but he takes one look at me, shakes his head, and drops the curtain.
By the time they have all fallen asleep by the fire, the furs of the cart soak with the grisly fluids of my womb and the rancid puss of their violence. My hair has been pulled out and strews the floor like bits of flax. My abdomen throbs so badly I cannot sit up without feeling knives cutting me inside, slicing upwards from my bleeding opening. My small tits are ripped. Bitten. Blackened with teeth marks. My left wrist dangles broken, encircled by a hot cuff of pain. I cannot move because the pain has clasped its hands around my head. It shouts in my ear that I have been mortally wounded.
Still, the physical torment is nary a thing compared to the overwhelming disgust that consumes me. I try to flee the oppressive feelings of hopelessness by imagining myself at home with my companions, at my mother's side, or even in the sanctuary of a nunnery, but the betrayal of my family leaves a gorge in my memory where any good thought once dwelt. I start to pray and realize the greatest betrayal was from He who should protect little girls from treachery. We who have so little, who need so much....
I am alone. And I want to die.
A rising mistral of hatred stirs in the gorge where my fond memories once dwelt, fanning the winking embers of my will to live, blowing them to a spiraling flame of fury. The words come, bidden by hatred.
Do you want to kill your mother? Yes, I want to kill my mother.
Do you want to kill your father? Yes, I want to kill my father.
Do you want to kill the men who did this? Yes, I want to kill the men who did this. All of them.
Though hatred scalds my veins, I cannot kill those responsible. I am too weak. Too small. My father, my mother. Even the men sleeping around the fire would suffer little at my hand. But there is one thing that I could kill that would hurt them all very, very much....
My limbs quiver uncontrollably as I attempt to sit up. I imagine my eyes blackening, my belly swelling, my nails cracking as I wriggle inch by excruciating inch towards the lip of the cart. My lost hair sticks to my hands as I push myself along the wooden slats. Although I shiver, I feel no chill on my naked skin. Only the feverish embrace of ill intent.
I roll over the lip and hit the soggy ground. Stunned, I lie there and my eyes open greedily for the slightest noise from the camp. I hear nothing but the labored breathing of evil men. My thighs quiver with agony as I draw my legs under me. I raise my head to scan the fireside. By the remains of the victory feast, a knife lies slick with spit and fat. Shaking, I stand. Stones and twigs gouge my tender soles as I stumble around the braggarts, liars, and rapists. Those devils who swear to angels. With my good hand, I close my fingers around the wooden handle of the knife.
To think they feared things of the wood.
Gripping the knife, I hobble towards the object of my revenge. The creature pitifully bound in the odd harness winks at me drowsily. She--for I have determined it is a she--raises her sloping snout as far as she can to salute my staggering approach. As I raise the knife above my head for the strike at her exposed neck, I am overcome with pity for her and my arm falls to my side. How can I hurt something as innocent and as vulnerable as I once was? How can I take away the life that spoke so clearly to my own? I cannot, I realize, and the knife hangs feebly in my weak fingers.
Then, the creature bows its head, turning it to further expose its graceful neck. Those deadly and brutish pulses that throb beneath that waxy pelt....
It offers those pulses to me with such unspeakable dignity that I begin to weep. They say that weeping keeps away the Devil, but I place my hand on the warm pelt and watch the wan lips tremble once again. She knows she will die, one way or the other. The blood in my knife hand--in my entire body--again boldly throbs in desperate response to those brutish pulses. No one is served by love. No one--
I mercilessly thrust the blade into the creature's neck with all my hatred. All my despair. All the worthless joy of a little girl who lives in this nightmare of a world. Everything of any strength that I can imagine, I sink into that fateful strike as the creature lies perfectly still for the sacrifice.
From the wound a wellspring gushes of cloying, blackened gore. The creature twitches in gentle death throes against its harness and ropes. I withdraw the knife, which releases ripe droplets one after another in an inky torrent. Mesmerized by the rhythm of the drops, I hold my fingers under the flow and smear the gore between my thumb and forefingers. Like the starlight from a bald winter sky, the blood scintillates with mystery and unholy power. I ghoulishly press my hands to the wound as I revel in it. The sticky fluid quickly coats my hands in a lather that penetrates my fingertips with raw power. I eagerly touch a viscous fingertip to my tongue to taste the surge of triumph in my mouth. The everlasting tingles against my teeth even as I withdraw my finger.
I breathe faster, more excited.
I cup my hand under the droplets until they pool darkly in my palm. I then gingerly part my frail legs, reach up between and anoint the raging wounds of my sex with this handful of unholy blood.
Starlight and nightfall. Flaxen strands and chalky steeples. Bells peal through the canopy of the cursed wood as I collapse, crippled by the stretching of my bones until they splinter deafeningly and fold back upon themselves. My limbs in front lengthen, hands hardening into sharp stumps. My fair skin erupts in feral snowy hairs. When I try to scream, my high-pitched voice hollows to a hoarse bellow. Azure tears roll down my pale cheeks, the color leeching from my stinging pupils. An eruption behind my eyes forces them tightly closed as something gashes my forehead from within with blinding force....
The men stir from sleep at the fire. They gasp in outrage and confusion.
I lean back on my haunches, squint my sallow eyes, and howl as I wag my frightful jaw. And before any a one can lift a sword, I plunge at a full gallop between the trees into the arms of this blackest fairy night.
Because there you--and I do mean you--will never catch me again.
THE END
Learn more about the author at www.mariaalexander.net
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###
A collection of 11 mystery tales, from gangsters to domestic turmoil, with bonus tales from J.A. Konrath and Simon Wood.
CURTAINS
By Scott Nicholson
Copyright © 2010 Scott Nicholson
Published by Haunted Computer Books
Scott's Amazon Author Central page
1. Dog Person
When the family dog turns up ill, a man is faced with a brutal choice while his wife carries her own dark secret.
2. Dead Air
A late-night deejay makes a special connection with a female serial killer.
3. How to Build Your Own Coffin
A man's love of woodcraft is equaled only by his desire for a good wife and trustworthy companion.
Vincent wants to escape his past, but he has to do it as Robert Wells---or maybe Charlie Ehle. He's not sure which.
5. Good Fences
Herman is suspicious of the new neighbor, who just might be the killing kind.
6. The Agreement by J.A. Konrath
A man who goes back on his word is in for a hot time in the old town tonight.
A writer should know better than anyone that crime---and crime fiction---doesn't pay.
8. Making Ends Meet by Simon Wood
A man takes a special approach to family problems.
A reporter's coverage of a local church group goes from Page 3 to the obituaries.
10. Nothing Personal, But You Gotta Die
Vincent almost got away, but Mikey is out to make a name for himself.
11. Watermelon
Ricky reads about a regional serial killer and gets some ideas of his own.
Other Books by Scott Nicholson
Scott's Amazon US Links
Scott's Amazon UK links
Scott's Amazon Author Central page
Return to Master Table of Contents
DOG PERSON
By Scott Nicholson
The final breakfast was scrambled eggs, crisp bacon, grits with real butter. Alison peeled four extra strips of bacon from the slab. On this morning of all mornings, she would keep the temperature of the stove eye just right. She wasn't the cook of the house, but Robert had taught her all about Southern cuisine, especially that of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Before they met, her breakfast consisted of a cup of what Robert teasingly called a "girly French coffee" and maybe a yogurt. He'd introduced her to the joys of an unhealthy start to the morning, along with plenty of other things, the best of the rest coming after sundown.
Even after two years, Alison wasn't as enthusiastic about the morning cholesterol infusion as Robert was. Or his dog. About once a week, though, she'd get up a half-hour early, drag the scarred skillet from beneath the counter, and peel those slick and marbled pieces of pig fat. The popping grease never failed to mark a red spot or two along her wrist as she wielded the spatula. But she wouldn't gripe about the pain today.
Robert would be coming down any minute. She could almost picture him upstairs, brushing his teeth without looking in the mirror. He wouldn't be able to meet his own eyes. Not with the job that awaited him.
Alison cracked six eggs in a metal bowl and tumbled them with a whisk until the yellow and white were mingled but not fully mixed. The grits bubbled and burped on the back burner. Two slices of bread stood in the sleeves of the toaster, and the coffee maker gurgled as the last of its heated water sprayed into the basket. Maxwell House, good old all-American farm coffee.
She avoided looking in the pantry, though the louvered doors were parted. The giant bag of Kennel Ration stood in a green trash can. On the shelf above was a box of Milk Bones and rows of canned dog food. Robert had a theory that hot dogs and turkey bologna were cheaper dog treats than the well-advertised merchandise lines, but he liked to keep stock on hand just in case. That was Robert; always planning ahead. But some things couldn't be planned, even when you expected them.
Robert entered the room, buttoning the cuffs on his flannel shirt. The skin beneath his eyes was puffed and lavender. "Something smells good."
She shoveled the four bacon strips from the skillet and placed them on a double layer of paper towels. "Only the best today."
"That's sweet of you."
"I wish I could do more."
"You've done plenty."
Robert moved past her without brushing against her, though the counter ran down the center of the kitchen and narrowed the floor space in front of the stove. Most mornings, he would have given her an affectionate squeeze on the rear and she would have threatened him with the spatula, grinning all the while. This morning he poured himself a cup of coffee without asking if she wanted one.
She glanced at Robert as he bent into the refrigerator to get some cream. At thirty-five, he was still in shape, the blue jeans snug around him and only the slightest bulge over his belt. His brown hair showed the faintest streaks of gray, though the lines around his eyes and mouth had grown visibly deeper in the last few months. He wore a beard but he hadn't shaved his neck in a week. He caught her looking.
Alison turned her attention back to the pan. "Do you want to talk about it?"
"Not much to say." He stirred his coffee, tapped his spoon on the cup's ceramic rim, and reached into the cabinet above the sink. He pulled the bottle of Jack Daniels into the glare of the morning sun. Beyond the window, sunlight filtered through the red and golden leaves of maple trees that were about to enter their winter sleep.
Robert never drank before noon, but Alison didn't comment as he tossed a splash into his coffee. "I made extra bacon," she said. "A special treat."
Robert nodded, his eyes shot with red lightning bolts. He had tossed all night, awakening her once at 3 a.m. when his toenails dug into her calf. He must have been dreaming of days with Sandy Ann, walking by the river, camping in the hollows of Grandfather Mountain, dropping by the animal shelter to volunteer for a couple of hours.
Alison moved the grits from the heat and set them aside. The last round of bacon was done, and she drained some of the bacon grease away and poured the eggs. The mixture lay there round and steaming like the face of a cartoon sun. She let the eggs harden a bit before she moved them around. A brown skin covered the bottom of the skillet.
"Nine years is a lot," she said. "Isn't that over seventy in people years?"
"No, it's nine in people years. Time's the same for everybody and everything."
Robert philosophy. A practical farm boy. If she had been granted the power to build her future husband in a Frankenstein laboratory, little of Robert would have been in the recipe. Maybe the eyes, brown and honest with flecks of green that brightened when he was aroused. She would have chosen other parts, though the composite wasn't bad. The thing that made Robert who he was, the spark that juiced his soul, was largely invisible but had shocked Alison from the very first exposure.
She sold casualty insurance, and Robert liked to point out she was one of the "Good Hands" people. Robert's account had been assigned to her when a senior agent retired, and during his first appointment to discuss whether to increase the limit on his homeowner's policy, she'd followed the procedure taught in business school, trying to sucker him into a whole-life policy. During the conversation, she'd learned he had no heirs, not even a wife, and she explained he couldn't legally leave his estate to Sandy Ann. One follow-up call later, to check on whether he would get a discount on his auto liability if he took the life insurance, and they were dating.
The first date was lunch in a place that was too nice and dressy for either of them to be comfortable. The next week, they went to a movie during which Robert never once tried to put his arm around her shoulder. Two days later, he called and said he was never going to get to know her at this rate so why didn't she just come out to his place for a cook-out and a beer? Heading down his long gravel drive between hardwoods and weathered outbuildings, she first met Sandy Ann, who barked at the wheels and then leapt onto the driver's side door, scratching the finish on her new Camry.
Robert laughed as he pulled the yellow Labrador retriever away so Alison could open her door. She wasn't a dog person. She'd had a couple of cats growing up but had always been too busy to make a long-term pet commitment. She had planned to travel light, though the old get-married-two-kids-house-in-the-suburbs had niggled at the base of her brain once or twice as she'd approached thirty. It turned out she ended up more rural than suburban, Robert's sperm count was too low, and marriage was the inevitable result of exposure to Robert's grill.
She plunged the toaster lever. The eggs were done and she arranged the food on the plates. Her timing was perfect. The edges of the grits had just begun to congeal. She set Robert's plate before him. The steam of his coffee carried the scent of bourbon.
"Where's the extra bacon?" he asked.
"On the counter."
"It'll get cold."
"She'll eat it."
"I reckon it won't kill her either way." Robert sometimes poured leftover bacon or hamburger grease on Sandy Ann's dry food even though the vet said it was bad for her. Robert's justification was she ate rotted squirrels she found in the woods, so what difference did a little fat make?
"We could do this at the vet," Alison said. "Maybe it would be easier for everybody, especially Sandy Ann." Though she was really thinking of Robert. And herself.
"That's not honest. I know you love her, too, but when you get down to it, she's my dog. I had her before I had you."
Sandy Ann had growled at Alison for the first few weeks, which she found so unsettling that she almost gave up on Robert. But he convinced her Sandy Ann was just slow to trust and would come around in time. Once, the dog nipped at her leg, tearing a hole in a new pair of slacks. Robert bought her a replacement pair and they spent more time in Alison's apartment than at the farm. Alison bought the groceries and let him cook, and they did the dishes together.
The first time Alison spent the night at the farm, Sandy Ann curled outside Robert's door and whined. He had to put the dog outside so they could make love. They were married four months later and Robert was prepared to take the dog with them on their honeymoon, an RV and backpacking trip through the Southwest. Only a desperate plea from Alison, stopping just short of threat, had persuaded Robert to leave Sandy Ann at a kennel.
"You got the eggs right," Robert said, chewing with his mouth open.
"Thank you."
He powdered his grits with pepper until a soft black carpet lay atop them. The dust was nearly thick enough to make Alison sneeze. He worked his fork and moved the grits to his mouth, washing the bite down with another sip of the laced coffee.
"Maybe you can wait until tomorrow," Alison said. She didn't want to wait another day, and had waited months too long already, but she said what any wife would. She bit into her own bacon, which had grown cool and brittle.
"Tomorrow's Sunday." Robert wasn't religious but he was peculiar about Sundays. It was a holdover from his upbringing as the son of a Missionary Baptist. Though Robert was a house painter by trade, he'd kept up the farming tradition. The government was buying out his tobacco allocation and cabbage was more of a hobby than a commercial crop. Robert raised a few goats and a beef steer, but they were more pets than anything. She didn't think Robert would slaughter them even if they stood between him and starvation. He wasn't a killer.
"Sunday might be a better day for it," she said.
"No." Robert nibbled a half-moon into the toast. "It's been put off long enough."
"Maybe we should let her in."
"Not while we're eating. No need to go changing habits now."
"She won't know the difference."
"No, but I will."
Alison drew her robe tighter across her body. The eggs had hardened a little, the yellow gone an obscene greenish shade.
Sandy Ann had been having kidney and liver problems and had lost fifteen pounds. The vet said they could perform an operation, which would cost $3,000, and there would still be no guarantee of recovery. Alison told Robert it would be tough coming up with the money, especially since she'd given up her own job, but she would be willing to make the necessary sacrifices. Robert said they would be selfish to keep the dog alive if it was suffering.
"Want some more grits?" she asked. Robert shook his head and finished the coffee. She looked at the fork in his hand and saw that it was quivering.
Sandy Ann ran away when Alison moved in. Robert stayed up until after midnight, going to the door and calling its name every half-hour. He'd prowled the woods with a flashlight while Alison dozed on the couch. Sandy Ann turned up three days later in the next town, and Robert said if he hadn't burned his phone number into the leather collar, the dog might have been lost forever.
Sandy Ann was mostly Lab, with a little husky mix that gave its eyes a faint gray tint in certain light. The dog had been spayed before Robert got it at the pound. Robert's mother had died that year, joining her husband in their Baptist heaven and leaving the farm to their sole heir. Sandy Ann had survived thirty-seven laying hens, two sows, a milk cow, one big mouser tomcat that haunted the barn, and a Shetland pony.
Until today.
Alison's appetite was terrible even for her. Three slices of bacon remained on her plate. She pushed them onto a soiled paper napkin for the dog.
"Four's enough," Robert said.
"I thought you could give her one piece now."
"It's not like baiting a fish. A dog will follow bacon into hell if you give it half a chance."
Robert finished his plate and took the dishes to the sink. She thought he was going to enter the cabinet for another shot of bourbon, but he simply rinsed the dishes and stacked them on top of the dirty skillet. His hair seemed to have become grayer at the temples and he hunched a little, like an old man with calcium deficiency.
"I'd like to come," she said.
"We've been through that."
"We're supposed to be there for each other. You remember April eighth?"
"That was just a wedding. This is my dog."
Alison resented Sandy Ann's having the run of the house. The carpets were always muddy and no matter how often she vacuumed, dog hair seemed to snow from the ceiling. The battle had been long and subtle, but eventually Sandy Ann became an outdoor dog on all but the coldest days. The dog still had a favorite spot on the shotgun side of Robert's pick-up, the vinyl seat cover scratched and animal-smelling. Alison all but refused to ride in the truck, and they took her Camry when they were out doing "couple things."
"Do you want to talk about it?" Alison asked. She had tried to draw him out. In the early days, Robert had been forthcoming about everything, surprising her with his honesty and depth of feeling. Despite the initial attraction, she had thought him a little rough around the edges. She'd been raised in a trailer park but had attended Wake Forest University and so thought she had escaped her breeding. But Robert reveled in his.
"Nothing left to say. Maybe later."
"We can go down to the farmer's market when you get back. Maybe we can get some sweet corn for dinner. And I've been looking for a philodendron for the living room."
"I won't feel like it."
"Robert, I know it's hard. Talk to me."
"I am talking."
"Really. Don't shut me out."
"Never have."
She slammed her fist on the table, causing her flatware to jump and clatter. "Damn it, don't be so stoic. You're allowed to grieve."
Robert wiped his hands on the kitchen towel that hung from the refrigerator handle. "Thanks for breakfast."
He went past her to the hall. She heard him open the closet door and rummage on the upper shelf. One of the snow skis banged against the doorjamb. She had convinced Robert to try skiing, and they'd spent a weekend at Wintergreen in Virginia. He'd twisted his ankle on the first run. He said skiing was a rich kid's sport and it had served him right to try and escape his breeding.
Robert came back to the kitchen, the rifle tucked against his right shoulder. A single bullet made a bulge in his pocket, the shape long and mean.
"Have you decided where to bury her?" Alison had always thought of Sandy Ann as an "it," and had to consciously use the feminine pronoun. Alison wanted to show she cared, whether her husband appreciated it or not.
"She's not that heavy, or I'd do it near where I was going to bury her. I'm figuring behind the barn. She loved to lay in the shade back there."
Alison hated the back of the barn. It was full of barbed wire and blackberry vines, and once she'd seen a snake slither through the tall weeds. The garden lay beyond it, and she tended a bed of marigolds there, but she associated shadows with unseen reptiles. Sandy Ann would sometimes watch from the edge of the garden while Alison worked, but the two rarely communicated when Robert wasn't around, though Alison often left bacon for it by the back steps.
The grease from breakfast coated Alison's throat, and her chest ached. Robert went through the back door onto the porch. Alison followed him, trading the heavy smells of the kitchen for the tart, dry October morning. The mountains were vibrant in their dying glory, umber, burgundy, ochre.
Sandy Ann was sleeping in a hollowed-out place under the steps. The dog lifted its head at the sound of their feet. It must have smelled the bacon in Robert's hand, because its dusty nose wiggled and Sandy Ann dragged itself into the yard.
The sun glinted in the tears that ran down Robert's cheeks. "Good girl," he said, giving the dog a piece of bacon. The dog swallowed it without chewing and ran its rough tongue over its lips, ears lifting a little in anticipation of more. Robert moved the bacon to his rifle hand and scratched the dog on top of the head.
"Come on, girl, let's take a walk." He headed toward the woods.
Sandy Ann looked back at Alison, eyes dim and hiding pain, brown crust in their corners. She held out the bacon in her hand. Unlike the other pieces she had fed it, this one wasn't sprinkled with rat poison. The dog licked its lips once more, exhaled a chuffing sigh, then followed Robert, the yellow tail swinging gently like a piece of frozen rope.
Robert led the way across the yard, holding the bacon aloft so the dog could smell it. He and Sandy Ann went through a crooked gate and Robert leaned the rifle against the fence while he fastened the latch. He looked back at the porch. Alison waved and bit into her own bacon.
They started again, both of them stooped and limping. They reached the trees, Robert's boots kicking up the brittle leaves, Sandy Ann laboring by his side. The last she saw of him was his plaid flannel shirt.
She should chase them. Maybe she could hold the bacon while Robert loaded the gun. After all, she had cooked it. And, in a way, she was replacing Sandy Ann. If Robert ever got another dog, it would be Alison's home and therefore it would be the dog that would have to adjust, not the other way around. She didn't think they would get another dog, not for a while.
Sandy Ann was just a dog, and Alison wasn't a dog person. She was the practical one in the relationship. She could have driven Sandy Ann to the vet, even at the risk of getting dog hair in her car. The vet would have drawn out a nice, clean needle and Sandy Ann could drift off to sleep, dreaming of fast squirrels and chunks of cooked meat and snacks by the back porch of home.
Maybe Robert needed the catharsis of violence. Perhaps that would be his absolution, though surely he couldn't view the dog's infirmity as his fault. After all, it would have aged no matter the owner. Sandy Ann, like all of them, would die and go to whatever heaven was nearest. Robert's way might be best after all. One split-second and then the pain would end.
Alison went inside and poured herself a half cup of coffee and sat at the kitchen table, looking through the window. The sunlight was soft on the stubbled garden. Some of the marigolds clung to a defiant life, their edges crinkled and brown. Collard leaves swayed in the breeze like the ears of small green puppies. The shovel stood by the barn, waiting.
Her coffee mug was to her lips when the shot sounded. The report echoed off the rocky slopes and the hard, knotty trees. Alison didn't know whether to smile or pout against the ceramic rim. The house was hers.
When Robert returned, she would have tears in her eyes. She would hug him and let him sag onto her, and she would lead him to the couch. She would remind him of all the great memories, and let him talk for hours about the dog's life. She would kneel before him and remove his boots and wipe the mud from them. He would have no appetite, but she would cook for him anyway, maybe something sweet, like a pie. If he wanted, he could have some more of the Jack Daniels. She would turn on the television and they would sit together, the two of them in their house.
Her house.
Alison finished her coffee. The remaining bacon was covered with a gray film of grease but she ate it anyway, her stomach finally unclenching.
She washed dishes, a chore she loathed. She rinsed the pans with hot water. Later in the evening, she would vacuum, try to remove the last traces of Sandy Ann from the living room carpet.
Something clicked on the porch steps. She wondered if Robert had decided to come back to the house before he began digging. Either way, Alison would be there for him. She would shovel until she raised blisters if he would let her. Alison wiped her hands on her bathrobe and hurried to the door, blinking rapidly so her eyes would water.
The scratching sound was at the door now, as if Robert were wiping his boots on the welcome mat. She braced herself for Robert's crestfallen expression, the caved-in look of his eyes, the deep furrows at the corners of his mouth. She would never have inflicted such suffering if it weren't for the best.
Alison opened the door. On the porch, Sandy Ann stood on bowed legs, working her dry lips. The dog lifted a forlorn paw and dropped it with a click of nails. There were spatters of blood across the dog's snout.
One shot.
Robert couldn't have missed.
Not from so close.
Could he have . . . ?
No, not Robert.
But it was the kind of choice Robert would make.
His only choice.
A dog person to the end.
"Robert?" she called, voice cracking, knowing there would be no answer.
Alison's ribs were a fist gripping the yolk of her heart. Her legs were grits, her head popping like hot grease on a griddle. Her spine melted like butter. She sagged against her house and slid to a sitting position. Sandy Ann whimpered, limped over, and ran a papery tongue against her cheek.
The dog's breath reeked of bacon and poison and unconditional love.
THE END
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DEAD AIR
By Scott Nicholson
I leaned back in my swivel chair, my headphones vice-gripping my neck. The VU meters were pinned in the red, and Aerosmith had the monitor speakers throbbing. I turned down the studio sound level and pressed the phone to my ear, not believing what I'd heard.
"I've just killed a man," she repeated, her voice harsh and breathless.
"Come again, sister?" I said, pulling my feet off the console. My brain was a little slow in catching on. I was two hours into the graveyard shift, and the before-work beers were crashing into my third cup of cold coffee like Amtrak trains.
"I've just killed a man," she said for a third time. She was a little calmer now. "I just wanted to share that with you. Because I've always felt like I could trust you. You have an honest voice."
I potted up the telephone interface and broadcast her live to my loyal listeners. All three of them, I chuckled to myself. In five years at WKIK, The Kick, I'd come to accept my humble place in the universe. The only people tuned in at this hour were hepped-up truckers and vampire wannabes, the unwashed who shied from the light of day. I'd long ago decided that I might as well keep myself amused. And now I had a nutter on the line.
I flipped my mic key and the red "ON AIR" sign blinked over the door.
"Yo, this is Mickey Nixon with ya in the wee hours," I said, in the slightly-false bass I'd cultivated over the course of my career. "I've got a talker on the line, she's there to share. Go on, honey."
"I just want everybody to know that I killed someone. This man I've been dating got a little bit too aggressive, so I blew his damned brains out. And it felt good," she said, her words pouring out over the monitors through the warm Kansas air.
My finger was poised over the mute button in case I needed to censor her. By station rules, I was supposed to send all live callins through the loop delay. But since I got so few callers, I usually took my chances. Plus I liked the razor edge of spontaneity.
"I want to tell you that the steam off his blood is still rising. He's lying here on his apartment floor with his pants around his knees and his brains soaking into the shag carpet. If any of you guys out there think date rape is a laughing matter, I'm sharing this little story so you'll think twice."
I gulped. This was really wacky stuff. I couldn't have written it in a million years. I'd paid friends before to call with outrageous stories, but they always sounded a little too rehearsed. Now here was some dynamite, and it was exploding at no charge.
"Wait a minute, woman," I said, playing the straight man. "You mean to tell us you're standing over a warm body right now with a phone in your hand, confessing murder?"
"It's not murder, it's self-defense. I may be a woman, but I've got my rights. Nobody touches me unless I let them. Besides, I've done this before, I've just never felt like talking about it until now."
"So maybe it's what you would call a 'justifiable' homicide. Have you called the police?"
I was starting to get a little nervous now. If this girl was acting, she was too good to be stuck in a Midwestern cow town like Topeka . She was starting to sound too weird, even for me. Her voice was as sharp and cold as an icicle, but with a touch of sexiness all the same.
"That's why I called you, Mickey. I've listened to your show for a long time, and I just knew you'd understand. You think the boys in blue would believe me?"
I was almost flattered, but a reality check rose like stomach acid. Sure, years ago I was a morning star in Los Angeles drive-time, but a little FCC controversy knocked me down faster than a Mike Tyson punch. I'd bounced around a few AM stations and tried my hand at ad sales, but now I was just riding the board until the years of chemical abuse caught up with me.
"Honey, I'm here for you," I said, getting back in the game. "We love you here at the Kick, and Mickey Nixon is not one to judge other people. Live and let live, I always say...to coin a phrase."
Now I could see a row of green lights blinking on the telephone board. Four callers were waiting to be punched in. I'd never had more than two, and that was when Lefty from Promotions had fingered me a couple of White Zombie tickets to give away. This girl, whoever she was, had the audience stirring.
"Mickey, men have always disappointed me. They talk sweet and walk straight until they get what they want. Then they treat you like a rag doll or worse. Well, I'm fed up. Now, I'm the one on the prowl for easy meat. Just ask Chuck here..."
There were a couple of seconds of dead air.
"Oh, sorry. Chucky can't come to the phone right now. He's got other things on his mind, and they're called my feet. Well, Mickey. I've got to go. It's been real, and I'll be in touch."
I could hear sirens in the background just before she hung up.
"If you're still out there, remember that you can talk to me. I'll never do you wrong," I broadcast to the sleepy world. I punched up caller number two, trying to keep some momentum.
"Hey, Mickey, that tart's gone out of her mind. Did you pay a friend of yours to call in or something?" a drunken voice slurred.
"Yeah, just like I did with you, upchuck breath." I cut him off and punched up the next caller.
"I just killed a beer myself, and I want you to know your show rocks, man."
It sounded like a college student who had seen " Wayne 's World" too many times. But I wasn't choosy and I doubted I'd be lucky enough to get anyone as interesting as my death-dealing diva as an on-air guest. What was I expecting, Howard Stern or the ghost of Orson Welles?
"That chick was really wild, man," the caller continued, adding a couple of "uhs" into the mix. This show was billed as the "Talk-n-Toonage Marathon ," but the talk never seemed to keep rolling.
"Thanks for the input, 'dude.' Gotta go." I sighed, stabbed the button on the cart machine, and AC/DC started ringing "Hell's Bells."
The next afternoon, I rolled out of bed and belched stale coffee. I stumbled through the dirty clothes and back issues of Rolling Stone that served as the carpet in my one-room bachelor's paradise and elbowed open the bathroom door. I showered and even screwed up my resolve enough to shave. I felt displaced and alienated, as if I'd just come back from a long drug trip. At first, I couldn't figure out what was different. Then it hit me. I actually felt rejuvenated, as if last night's caller had given me something to look forward to.
I drove my ragged Honda down to the station and parked at the far end of the lot. All the other jocks had personal spaces. I guess the station GM figured one day I'd just disappear and she didn't want me around badly enough to invest ten bucks in a lousy plywood sign. Well, no love lost.
I went inside and checked the shift schedule, then headed for the staff lounge. I was just about to scarf a couple of donuts when I saw the newspaper open on the table. I picked it up and searched the front page. No headlines screaming bloody murder.
I was turning to the crime section when Pudge, WKIK's answer to Benito Mussolini as well as Program Director, walked in. His eyes glared from under the caterpillars of his brows. He didn't bother saying hello. He had a marketing report in his hand and he waved it like an ax.
"Your numbers are down, Mick. You know the only reason we stay on during the graveyard shift is because it's cheaper than locking up and paying security for a few hours. But I want to lead in every time slot, and you're not up to speed."
Pudge was on a mission to inflate his own ego until his head could no longer fit through doorways. He gobbled up credit like it was free pizza, but when it was time to dish out the blame, he had a list as long as his belt, and his name was on the last notch. College communications courses taught me that radio was a personal medium, but Pudge must have skipped those. At every staff meeting, he argued for total automation of WKIK.
I rubbed my cheek and felt the first blossom of stubble in the weedbeds of my cheeks.
"Well, Pu---um, Andrew, if you'd give my slot a little promotion, it might do something. Besides, I've got a loyal audience."
"Well, your audience's demographic doesn't coincide with the one our advertisers want to reach. Even at your low wage, this 'Talk-n-Toonage Marathon ' is barely breaking even. I'm tempted to change your slot to a satellite feed."
I was barely listening because I was transfixed by the flapping of his plump lips. He bored me faster than a dinner date with Andre. I muttered something appropriately offensive and incoherent and left with the newspaper and a pair of chocolate donuts. The Honda whined a little before starting, but I coaxed it home so that I could rest before the night's shift.
As I gnawed a three-day-old slice of anchovy pizza, I thumbed through the paper. On page two of the local news section, I found my item.
MAN FOUND DEAD IN APPARENT HOMICIDE
Charles Shroeder, age 29, of 417 Skylark Place , was found shot in his home last night. Police responded after a neighbor reported hearing a gunshot. A medical examiner ruled that Shroeder died from a single bullet wound to the head at approximately 2:00 AM. There are no suspects at this time, according to Lt. C.L. Hubble of the Topeka Police Detective Division.
So my mystery caller was the real thing after all. I wondered if I should call the police. I didn't have any solid evidence, if you didn't count a phone conversation, and I didn't. I decided to wait until she called again. I wanted to hear her voice, the one of blood and smoke. I only hoped she wouldn't have to kill again, if indeed she had killed at all, to be motivated enough to give me a ring.
Four long, lonely nights crawled by. "Wayne " called once and requested some Beastie Boys, and a handful of callers asked about the "murder woman," but other than that, the phone set in its cradle like a cement slipper. I slid into my regular routine, ignoring the playlist and forgetting to air the paid ads according to the traffic schedule. My cynicism began to consume me again, a snake swallowing its tail. Then, on Thursday, she called.
I knew it was her the moment I saw the light on the switchboard. I snapped the phone to my ear. "Mickey Nixon at the Kick."
"Hi, Mickey. It's me again." Her voice rushed through the miles of cable like a May breeze, warm and fresh.
"You have me at a disadvantage. I don't know your name."
"That would sort of be like kissing and telling, wouldn't it? You already know so much about me. But just call me 'Night Owl.'"
I eyed the digits counting down on the Denon player and cued the next CD. So she'd given herself a pseudonym. Not exactly a sign of emotional stability. But, hell, my real name was Michel D'artagne.
"Well, do you want to tell our audience what you've been doing with yourself lately?"
"Anything for a thrill, Mickey. Have you missed me?"
"Sure. It's a lonely life, surrounded by these cold machines. The music helps, but it's the people that make it matter. I'm sending you out live now." I potted up the interface before beginning my introduction.
"Yo, shake out of those dreams, my friend, Mickey's got the Night Owl here, the one that's to die for, and you want to twist that dial right on up."
Deejaying was one of the few occupations where you could get away with referring to yourself in the third person, along with politics and professional sports. She picked up on my enthusiasm and jumped right in.
"Hey, out there in radio-land. This is Night Owl with more good news for the human race. There's one less piece of dirtbaggage in the world tonight. I just took down number three. Johnny picked me up in a bar and wanted a double-handful of hot romance. He got an earful of hot metal instead. Just because he bought me a drink, he thought he was buying the whole package."
I could see the switchboard lighting up like a Christmas tree. WKIK's phone system could handle eight lines, and every one had a caller on the end. Apparently, word had trickled out like electricity. I'd been searching my whole career for something to strike the audience's nerves, and it seemed death did the trick.
"Night Owl, some of our audience would like to talk to you. Go ahead, caller one..." I potted up our auxiliary phone link so we could have a three-way conversation.
"Thank you for bringing joy to my life," a woman's cigarette-scorched voice came over the monitors. "I've been married to a slob for eighteen years, and suddenly he's turned into Mr. Clean, minus the earring. He heard about you down at the Pump-And-Pay, and he figured he'd better get his act together, because you never know who's going to turn into a copycat killer. Keep up the good work, girl."
I punched up another. It was Wayne, my main man. Maybe he had something bright to say for once. He stuttered a couple of times before starting. "Hey, Miss Night Owl lady, I dig your style. I know us men can be, like, pigs and stuff, but don't you think killing's a little harsh?"
"Desperate times call for desperate measures," Night Owl said. "I think thousands of years of male-dominated society are enough, don't you?"
"Well, uh---" Wayne was at a loss for words. Maybe he'd used up the dozen he knew. But he coughed and continued. "I guess there's some bad guys, but it's not, you know, a total washout with us dude-types."
"Oh, there are a few good men, and believe me, they're not in the Marines. Take our Mickey, for instance."
"Thanks, Night Owl." I was beginning to wonder if I knew this woman. I'd always had a soft spot for sweet psychos. "Do you have time for another caller?"
Wayne cut in like a cowboy at a line dance. "Would you like to, like, go out or something, Night Owl?"
"Well, you definitely sound like my type. My type of victim, that is. Who knows, maybe we'll meet. I'll keep one in the chamber, just for you."
I punched up another caller. It was a woman.
"I'm right with you, honey. I dated a clown for seven years, and ever doggone time I brought up marriage, he'd say, 'Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?' Well, I put a good dose of digitalis in a cherry cheesecake---do you bake? I got some good recipes. Been in the family for generations---well, the idiot ate it. He was grinnin' like a turtle eatin' saw-briars the whole time. Fell over dead right there at the kitchen table. Had a weak heart, I told the police. Well, I may be the cow, but he's the one who kicked the bucket. And I got you to thank for gettin' up my nerve."
"Another blow for freedom, my dear," Night Owl said. "Keep that oven warm. Sounds like you're a real killer cook. Well, folks, got to run. There's nothing I hate worse than being a cold-blooded murderer, so I try to leave before rigor mortis sets in. Bye, Mickey, smooches to you."
As she hung up, I felt like I was in a vacuum. I was annoyed by my attraction to her. I was beginning to understand the audience's fascination with Night Owl. I punched up another caller.
We filled the air of the black Kansas sky with talk about the Equal Rights Amendment, the best methods of undetected murder, and even shared a few culinary tips. The switchboard stayed full most of the shift. I slipped in a few hard rock tunes and a couple of ads without losing talkers. The night flowed by like warm honey.
By the time the sun was stabbing over the flat horizon, I was wrapping up the best shift I'd ever had. Reluctantly,. I turned the board over to Georgie Boy, host of the Kick's Morning Show. I signed off on the transmitter log and went home. I was so wired, I didn't fall asleep until noon. A lot of people probably called in sick that morning.
Night Owl didn't phone the next week, but plenty of others did. Some were women confessing murder. A few guys apologized for the whole male gender. Most people quite simply wanted to talk about death and dying, especially of the "unnatural" variety.
I played the role of arbitrator. I'd never fought in the battle of the sexes, so I just stood by and counted casualties. I changed the name of the show to "Death Radio," and I even had some celebrities dialing in. I was caught in the flush of excitement. I felt free, like a teenager with his first car and the whole bright future laid out in front of him like a six-lane highway.
There was a rash of homicides in the city, and officials had no explanation. Gun sales were up, but robbery and rape were way down. My show was number one with a bullet among the overnights in my market. When I went to pick up my check one Friday, I ran into Pudge. He looked like a cat that had swallowed curdled cream.
"Congratulations, Mick. In three weeks, you've escalated to the top of your time slot. We've got sponsors lining up to take your show. We can pretty much name our price. Freddie in sales is shopping for a new BMW, he's so confident this is going to be his big payoff. This 'death' thing is a stroke of genius. You should go into marketing."
And spend even more time with people like you, I thought. I'd rather eat digitalis cheesecake. I enjoyed having Pudge over the fire, so I rotated the spit a little.
"Well, I think we need to automate the show. People just love spending the night on hold." I was about to fan the flames a little more when smugness crept like a shadow across his doughy face.
"Oh, by the way," he interrupted, with an undisguised note of glee, "there's a policeman waiting in the lounge to see you. I hope you're not into those awful drugs again."
I'd been expecting this. The cops were slow in this town, but even they could follow a beacon like the one my show had become. I flipped Pudge a finger and walked past the studio into the lounge. At the table sat a short, wiry man in a rumpled tan suit. His eyes were beady and intelligent, like those of a field mouse. He was eating a glazed donut.
"You must be Mickey," he said, a jawful of pastry muffling his words. "I'm Detective Dietz from homicide."
He held out his hand for me to shake. My hand came away a little bit sticky.
"I've heard that you might know a little bit about this 'Night Owl' character. According to witnesses, she's called here at the station on at least two occasions, apparently just after committing murder."
"I can't control what people are going to say. There's that little matter of the First Amendment."
"There's also a matter called 'withholding evidence,' and its kissing cousin, 'aiding and abetting.' Surely you're familiar with the judicial system by now."
I was about to protest when he held up a hand. "Society considers those debts paid, Mickey. Or should I say 'Michel'? We just want to stop the killings. All this city needs is a female Charles Bronson running wild. The next thing you know, the papers pick up on it and we got a slew of imitators."
"You already know as much as I do. She says she killed some guys who did her wrong."
"Well, she seems to think you're on her side. You haven't done anything to encourage her, have you?" Dietz wiped the crumbs off his chin and licked his rodent lips.
"Look, she's good for ratings. The audience loves her. She connects with people. Maybe there's a murderous streak in all of us. It's not my place to censor immorality."
"That's why there's a Federal Communications Commission, my friend. I'd be willing to bet that a death forum is not what they consider 'in the public interest.'"
"What can I do?" I shrugged. I got the impression that Dietz would be on me like a fly on stink until he wrapped up this case.
"We want to set up a wiretap in the studio and wait for her to call again. You'll need to keep her going long enough for us to get a trace. Our technician tells me that takes about two minutes if she's on a local exchange."
I shrugged again. He would have no problem getting a court order if necessary. "I never know when she's going to call."
"We'll wait. We're on salary. And you have good donuts here. We start tonight."
My Honda broke down, so I had to catch a bus back to WKIK that night. As I walked to the entrance, I noticed a sign with my name on it. It was a good space, right next to the GM's. I noted with satisfaction that it was a little closer to the door than Pudge's.
It was a little past midnight, so I was late signing on. Dietz and an engineer who looked like a junkie were already on the job. The engineer was splicing into the phone system. Bits of bare wire littered the floor like copper worms.
I checked the transmitter readings and apologized to the jock who had to stay late to cover for me. He had a little acne around his mouth. Probably an intern. He looked at me with a flash of something like hero worship in his eyes.
"No problem, Mr. Nixon," he said, handing me the playlist. For a second, I thought he was going to ask for my autograph.
I settled behind the console like a pilot about to launch a jumbo jet. Dietz slouched in one corner with a Styrofoam cup of coffee. The engineer held an earphone against his gaunt head and nodded at him. All systems go, prepare for lift-off, I said to myself. I flipped over the mic key and addressed the waiting ears of Topeka .
"Have some fear, Mickey's here, welcome to 'Death Radio,' only on the Kick. Give me a buzz and let me know what's going down in the dark corners of your mind."
I grinned at Dietz as the board lit up. "Go ahead, caller. You're on," I said, cranking up the pot.
A woman with a stuffy nose began talking. "Mickey, I just wanted you to know how much we love 'Death Radio' here at Floyd's Truck Stop. You don't know how many loafers sit around here on their lazy hind ends soppin' up free refills and listenin' to your show."
"Glad to have you aboard, honey. So, have you killed anybody lately?"
I saw Dietz wince as she laughed. "Now, I don't think that girl's as bad as all that. So she shot a few, sounds to me like they had it comin'. And all the guys around here been tippin' real good this week. Been mindin' their manners, and eatin' with their hats off. Ever bad wind blows somebody good, I say."
"Amen to that," I said. I was beginning to wonder, and not for the first time, if I was playing to people's fears just to be a big shot. To be honest with myself, I was enjoying the success. Let people die if it was good for the ratings. I was beginning to think like a television news producer. Give the people what they want and damn the consequences.
I steadily punched up callers, and every one had a story about some man they knew who was finally shaping up or had died trying. A few knew, "first-hand", about somebody who met their Maker over a little marital indiscretion. Dietz was pale, furiously scribbling on a note pad with the stub of a pencil. He hadn't realized just how out of control the show had gotten.
"Folks, I love you," I said at the end of the shift. "Thanks for opening your hearts to me, not to mention a few holes in people's heads. Night Owl, if you're out there, fly right and keep your barrel smoking. Tune in again tomorrow, skip work if you feel like it, and deep-six somebody if you must. This is Mickey Nixon, stick a fork in me, I'm done."
Dietz was as white as a nurse's bra. He would probably be in an all-day powwow with the District Attorney's office, scrambling for offenses to charge me with. Georgie Boy walked in and surveyed the electronic carnage the police engineer had inflicted. I winked at him and poked the Denon machine with my finger. The Cars started playing "Let The Good Times Roll."
Three nights passed that way, with Dietz as my co-pilot and the skeletal technician as navigator. The phone lines stayed busy. Other stations were covering my show as a news event, and a few were trying their own Death Shows. But I was the only one with Night Owl. She called that Tuesday at about 4 AM, just after the hourly station ID.
"Hey, Mickey, honey, it's Night Owl," her voice purred over the speakers.
Dietz jumped up, spilling his coffee and adding another stain to the studio floor. The police tech rolled the tape recorder and watched his meters. I reached a trembling finger to my mic switch.
"Hello, Night Owl, it's good to hear your voice. I was beginning to think you'd forgotten old Mickey here."
"I'd never do that. Just thinking about you gets me all hot and bothered. I've been listening, and I like what I hear. It seems like murder's the biggest game in town."
"Yes, but nobody does it like you. Have you done it lately?"
"Well, now that you mention it, I was just with a gentleman who knows how to show a lady a good time. He even did the driving. It's funny how if you walk down certain streets at night, guys just pull over and ask if you want a ride. They'll even try to give you money. But, oh my, the things they ask you to do."
"What did this one want?" I was excited and scared at the same time. Dietz flicked his eyes from the tech to his wristwatch, then to my sweaty face.
"You know I don't talk dirty over the phone, Mickey. That would be unladylike. Let's just say we wound up on a dead-end road. I could feel the pounding of his cheap heart beneath his polyester suit. He said I could do it any way I wanted. The way I wanted was to put it right between his meaty chins and scatter his pea-sized brain all over his nice, clean upholstery."
"Way to go, girl," I said. The switchboard was clogged with callers wanting to talk to Night Owl. There was no time to punch someone in. The tech started nodding down the seconds, his bony head wobbling like a frog on a wire, and I felt dread squeeze my throat.
"Mickey, nobody knows how to treat a lady anymore, except you. Thanks for keeping me going when the rest of the world is going crazy. If only every man were like you--"
I suddenly felt sick.
"Hang up, there's a police trace!" I screamed into my mic, covering it with saliva. I heard a click on the monitors. It was the sound of my world coming to an end, in a stream of dead air instead of the guitar feedback I'd always imagined.
Dietz rushed at me, anger twisting his face into a mask. The tech threw his scrawny arms up in surrender. I leaned back in my swivel chair and stared at the zeroed-out volume meters. "Goodbye, Night Owl," I said, to no one in particular.
Everything moved in slow motion after that. Dietz read me my rights and was about to snap on the cuffs, but in my condition, I was about as dangerous as a goldfish. Once he regained his composure, he was kind enough to let me run the board until another jock showed up. They couldn't reach Pudge, but the GM sent in the pimply intern. I signed off with The Who's "Song is Over."
I've got a battery of lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union, and they tell me my case will be tied up for years, years I probably don't have. Night Owl left a message on my answering machine at home.
"Mickey, you said you'd never do me wrong, but you're just like all the rest." Sadness had replaced the fire in her voice, and her words twisted in my chest like a corkscrew. "All the joy's gone, but at least I still have my work. I'll see you around. And now I think I'm supposed to say, 'Don't call me, I'll call you.'"
I kept my deejay job. There was no one to fire me. It seems Pudge was found dead in his car. Ballistics tests match those of the other Night Owl murders. The GM decided I have just enough notoriety left to draw a few listeners. They've removed the interface from the studio, and all we have is a request line.
So now I sit and wait. I heard there's been a string of shootings over in Council Bluffs , with a familiar M.O., and it's not a long drive to get here. The request line blinks, as lonely as the last morning star. Wayne is on the other end.
"Looks like it's just you and me," I say.
"Rock on, dude."
I do.
THE END
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HOW TO BUILD YOUR OWN COFFIN
By Scott Nicholson
Blood and nails, that's all you need.
Larry ran his hand over the wood. Smooth as a baby's ass and a mother's tit. He'd planed the cherry himself, by hand, not with one of those machines. Sure, he'd caught a few splinters, but that was the blood part of this business.
And what were a few calluses? Skin turned to dust just as surely as brain and bone did. And your heart probably crumbled faster than any of it. The meat didn't matter. What mattered was how you walked off the stage. That's what they remembered. And Larry McMasters was going to go out in style.
He dipped his brush into the shellac and lifted it to the lamplight. The thick, golden material hung from the brush like honey. If he sealed the wood, it would keep underground for a few months longer, maybe even a year. Would that be honest, though? Wouldn't that be putting just another layer between him and his return to the dirt?
Larry wiped the brush clean on the edge of the bucket and set it to soak in turpentine. Best to go with plain, bare wood. Like what surrounded him here in the barn. The barn itself was like a coffin, except it was filled to busting with life, chickens and pigs and old Zaint the horse. Zaint was so far faded he was about half glue, but he kept heading to the pasture of a morning and turning up again every night.
Larry's pastures had seen more drought than plenty. His days in the world hadn't added up to much. Fourteen years loading produce on trucks paid him with a bad back and a smoking habit. Oh, he'd had about eighteen good years before that, when his parents were still around to pay the bills, but those were so long ago and far away that they might as well have been in a book, or somebody else's memory.
Once in a while over the years, he'd had stretches where getting out of bed wasn't such a lost cause. This last year had shown some promise, which made it the cruelest and slowest of them all. And the blame belonged squarely on Betty Ann Armfield. Betty Ann. Betty Ann.
Larry gritted his teeth and laid the crown molding along the edge of the coffin to test for length. When you mitered the joints, you had to allow for that little bit of extra distance. There would be no putty or wood filler used on this job. No crack could be wider than a spider's leg. Larry's coffin had to be as airtight as possible so the rotting would be proper, from the inside out.
The phone rang in the house. That would be her.
Larry slammed his hammer against the work bench, causing his tools to jump and raising a ruckus among the hens. He looked at the angled box before him, six sides, planks straight, the knots aligned in something approaching art. Not that Larry had much use for art, besides the art of dying. But you did things right while you were on this earth, and let things take care of themselves after you were under it.
The phone bleated again, as insistent as a pregnant ewe. Larry wiped the hammer handle and hung the tool from its pegs. The handsaw gave a dull grin, hungry for another meal of hardwood. Or maybe that was only his blurred reflection. He'd have to polish the saw later. But right now he had to answer the phone.
He stepped out of the barn into sunshine and tasted the mountain air. Rocks, water, grass, and trees, he had plenty of those. He owned seven acres of dirt, some bottom land and a ridgeline. He couldn't own any woman, though, and he couldn't make any of them love his land.
The walk to the house took thirteen seconds, another seven to get through the kitchen, and two more to get the phone to his ear. Betty Ann knew the distance, probably had an egg timer running at her end, and if Larry was ever more than five seconds late---
"Hello?"
Usually he just said, "Hello, Betty Ann," but once in a while he got a call from work and those damned telemarketers had been trying to give him credit cards lately. He didn't believe in borrowing. You pay as you go, and when you had a chance, you paid a little bit ahead.
"Larry."
"Hey, Betty Ann."
"Where you been?"
"Working in the barn."
"You and your damned wood. You ready?"
"We ought not talk about this kind of thing on the phone."
Her laughter sounded electronic, as if she were one of those pull-string dolls. "You've always been paranoid, ain't you, Larry?"
"Just cautious, is all."
"Cautious, my ass. Chickenshit, you mean. If it wasn't for me, you think you'd ever have a woman? Think anybody else could stand you? Any other woman let you play smoochie and run your hand down her skirt and---"
"That's not proper talk for a lady."
"I ain't a lady no more. Not after tonight."
Larry looked out the window, at the long dirt drive that led to the highway. "You sure you want to go through with this?"
"You ain't thinking of backing out on me now, are you? You better grow some balls and fast."
Larry expected the blue lights to come down the drive any minute, because cops could probably read minds. And if not, they knew how to tap into phone lines, and Betty Ann never could keep her damned mouth shut. "I---I'm with you, honey. I promised, didn't I?"
"A promise from a man. Hah, that's worth about as much as an egg from a mule. You only promised because I was giving you my yummy sweet sugar at the time. Remember?"
Larry clenched his hand around the phone. He nearly flung it at the Franklin stove, but the Franklin had been in the family for four generations. Maybe he'd start a fire with his coffin scraps and melt down the phone later. "Of course I remember, darling."
"And after, that part about snuggling in the dark. Bet you never heard pillow talk like that before."
He had to admit he hadn't. But he didn't want to admit it out loud. Not when they might hear. It was bad enough, him knowing. And Betty Ann knowing. And whoever Betty Ann blabbed to, at the hairdresser's or the Baptist Church or the Stateline Tavern.
"You know that kind of thing gets me all worked up," Larry said. "That's stuff's for in the dark, not out here in the daylight where God and everybody can see."
Betty Ann laughed. "You must have forgot about that time in the hayloft."
"Don't do this, Betty Ann. It's hard enough as it is."
"You know all about hard, don't you?"
Larry looked out the window at the far slopes of granite, the worn edges of the Blue Ridge. When you got mad, you just had to look way off in the distance, his Daddy always said. Daddy wasn't born a fool, just ended up that way. "That's enough of that. I made a promise, and I'll keep it. Are you going to keep yours?"
"But you ain't said what you wanted yet." She lowered her voice into the husky whisper that sounded like the result of a lot of practice. "But I got a good idea."
"I'll pick you up at seven. Like we planned."
"Like we planned."
"Bye, now."
"Bye. I love you."
The click of the phone rattled around inside his skull, bouncing against that word "love." He'd heard that word a time or two before. And then push always comes to shove, and you find out it doesn't mean a thing. It's just a word.
He went back to the barn. He spread the velvet lining in the coffin and stapled it into place. Most people went with black velvet, but Larry believed in Royal blue. There was something churchy and sacred about it. When you went under the dirt, you wanted all the comfort you could get.
Glue had leaked from one of the corners where the angled wood met. Larry took a chisel from the workbench and scraped the clot free. He felt along the joint. Not a stray splinter, tight as a mouse's ear. He was getting better with practice.
He finished up just as the sun set on the hills. He tested the fit of the lid one last time. The lid wasn't so heavy, and he'd drilled holes where the nails would go. This would work just fine.
At least, the part you could count on. Wood was straight up and honest, you could shape it and trim it and make something that would last. You could build your own coffin with no problem. But you had to have somebody to drive the nails, because you damned sure couldn't do it from the inside.
He set the lid aside, wiped his tools, and saw that everything was laid out on the workbench. He blew out the lamp and hung it by the barn door. It was time to pick up Betty Ann.
Larry sat in his Ford and looked around the trailer park. Betty Ann could do better than this place. She was plenty dumb enough to marry some farmer and have a bunch of kids. You got married to the dirt up here, one way or the other. Some put it off for as long as possible, but the mountains always took you anyway.
He blew the horn. Betty Ann wanted him to be right on the button, but she didn't mind a bit to keep him waiting. Finally, the trailer door opened and she waved.
Larry swallowed hard. She was wearing the red dress. Not a good choice for what they were about to do, because it made her easy to remember. Larry remembered just fine. Maybe a little too fine, because his pulse was running hard, and he needed to be calm for what they were about to do.
She slid into the truck beside him and squeezed his leg. "Ready for anything?"
He pushed her hand away. "I keep my promises."
"So that's how you're going to be about it."
"The things I do for you."
"Don't forget the things I do for you."
Larry wanted real bad to lean over and kiss her. She was the prettiest of them all. But she said "love" too easy and often. She looked like the lying kind.
They'd find out about all that later, whether this was for real or not. He had a promise to keep, and so did she. He started the Ford and headed toward Tennessee.
They drove fifty miles, running past the dark quiet of Watauga Lake, winding through Shady Valley where the cows outnumbered the people, and then followed a gravel road along the river.
"You scared?" Betty Ann said. She'd been quiet for the last half-hour, a long stretch for her. She must have been thinking.
Larry had been thinking, too. "Not about this. I'm scared about the rest of it. About later."
"I'll take care of you." Her hand was on his leg again. This time, Larry didn't push it away. He stared ahead where the black road met the headlights.
"I know. Because you promised."
Betty Ann murmured happily beside him. She'd probably been looking for a dream man all her life. And that was what she found. A dream man.
He said, "Other women made promises. Some got broken."
"Larry, you ought to know by now that I ain't like other women." She leaned over and her breath was on his neck, and then, brief as a hummingbird, her tongue flicked across his skin.
"You'd best quit that so I can drive."
They were under the lights now, on the four-lane. Cars skimmed by in the night. Larry wondered where the cars were headed. He was willing to bet that everybody else in the world planned on sleeping in a normal bed tonight, that they didn't have the kind of dreams Larry had.
"Here it is," Betty Ann said.
The gas station had four pumps, and Larry was relieved they didn't take credit cards. An electric Marlboro sign flickered in the window. The man behind the counter was hidden by a row of fan belts. "You sure this is it?"
"Trucker told me about it. The owner's weird, he don't believe in banks. Thinks they're all run by thieving Jews."
One truck was parked behind the store, a slow hunk of steel that had four wheels on the back axle. It was a Chevy. No need to worry about getting chased down.
Larry parked by the door and left the engine running. If he had any sense, he ought to push Betty Ann out and let her thumb and screw her way back to North Carolina. But he didn't have a lick of sense, not where she was concerned. Plus, he'd made a promise.
He took the gun from the glove box. It was Daddy's, a .32 revolver that didn't have much knock-down but was big enough to move money. He tucked the gun under his arm and opened the door.
Betty Ann leaned over and kissed him before he got out. "For luck," she said.
The kiss tasted of sawdust.
The lights were dim, probably because the cheapskate owner tried to save on the power bills. The beer cooler in back looked tempting, but Larry had a long drive home. Rounded mirrors hung in the corners of the ceiling, but there were no video cameras. He went up to the counter and chose a can of snuff, the real kind, not that sissy, grainy stuff in the plastic cans.
He laid the snuff on the counter and met the man's eyes.
"That all?" The man looked to be a hundred-and-fifty, or maybe it was the bad fluorescent lights. He looked mean and cheap. Larry didn't dread this anymore. It was just another chore, something you did to get what you wanted. It was like making two pieces of wood fit.
He pulled out the gun, and the rest of it went like they were in a movie, like they both knew what to do and wanted to get it over with. The old man cleaned out the register, handed over his wallet, and even put the snuff in a bag. Larry backed out, checked for traffic, and tucked the gun under his arm. The old man even waved goodbye.
"Here." Larry tossed the money and the wallet into Betty Ann's sweet lap. "Like I promised."
"I love you," she said.
Larry glanced into the rearview mirror. He wondered what kind of description the old man would give. Should have shot him. But that wasn't his way. You met the dirt when the time was right. He gunned the truck out of the lot and roared away into the Appalachian night.
They went back to his farm, the way they had planned. Larry had to admit the whole thing had gone smoothly. At least the first part of it, her part. He wondered if his part would be smooth, too.
They stood under the stars. Not a streetlight marred the dark view. This was how a man was supposed to live. Too bad none of his women wanted to live this way.
"Seven hundred and twelve dollars," Betty Ann said. "Plus some change."
"I could get the tractor fixed with that."
"You and your tractor."
"All you think about is getting out of here. You know how many gas stations you'd have to rob to even make it to the Mississippi?"
"It's a start."
"No. You're born to this mountain dirt. You belong to it."
"Don't start getting weird on me again, Larry."
"You're the one that keeps talking about love. And promises."
Betty Ann shut up for the second time that night. Larry would have to remember that for the future. If they had a future.
"I kept my promise, what about yours?" he said.
She came to him and hugged him, pressed those curves against him. The bills in her hand scratched his cheek. Her lips were soft. The red dress was thin.
"Want to go inside?" she whispered.
"The barn."
"Ooh. The hayloft again."
Larry took her hand and led her down the path that he knew so well. The barn was still, the animals mostly asleep. Old Zaint had put himself up in the stall, and the chickens had their heads tucked under their wings. Nobody would see.
Except maybe the cops. One day they'd get around to digging behind the barn. But maybe Larry wouldn't be here when that happened. Betty Ann might be, or might not be, depending.
He lit the lamp and took her to the workbench. The coffin glowed in the lamplight. It was his best ever. He couldn't keep down the pride that warmed his chest.
"What do you think?" he said.
"Damn, Larry. It's a . . ."
"What do you think?"
"What's going on?"
"Your part of the promise. I need to know if I can trust you."
Betty Ann backed away. She looked scared, but she didn't let go of the money.
"Do you love me?" Larry said. He picked up the hammer. And the most important part, the nails.
Betty Ann made it to the door, but Larry knew about how they tried to run. The first one had almost made it to the creek. Almost. But Larry had fixed the door after that.
She pressed against the wood, her eyes rolling around, looking for a place to hide. There was no hiding from promises. Larry approached her, holding out the hammer and nails.
"You promised," he said.
This time her whisper wasn't the husky, practiced kind. "Don't hurt me."
"I would never hurt you. I love you, remember?"
"What do you want?"
"I did for you, now you do for me." He pointed to the coffin, hoping she'd be impressed by the craft he'd put into it. "I want you to seal me up."
She didn't understand. They never understood. "Bury you? But you ain't dead yet."
"I'm just trying it out beforehand. Dying's too important a business to put off till the last minute. Need to check for size and comfort, and I can't do it alone. It takes two."
"You're crazy."
Larry stared at the lamp until his eyes burned. "You love me. At least, that's what you said. I risk life and jail and reputation for you, and you won't do one little thing for me."
He turned away. She was like the others. You ought to know better than to hope. You ought to know by now that love is just a word, a selfish, lying, hurting word.
Then her hand was on his shoulder. Something had changed between them. Maybe, seeing that Larry was willing to kill for her if necessary, Betty Ann had found a strange respect. "I always knew you was weird."
He smiled. Money didn't matter, not next to the other thing. "It won't take but a minute. And I ain't got nobody else. Nobody I can trust, that is."
He gave her a look like the one from that time in the hayloft, the one she seemed to get all swoony over. "You'll have to put the lid on. Do you think you can drive the nails?"
Betty Ann nodded. He kissed her. She took the hammer and nails. He climbed into the coffin and inhaled the cherry. She looked so good in her red dress.
The lid fit perfectly. The first nail was awkward, she missed and busted her thumb. Her blood was likely soaking into the wood. He was glad he'd passed on the shellac.
Love was built on blood and nails. You had to have both, or it didn't mean a thing.
By the third nail, she was in the rhythm, and drove it home with four blows. Sixteen nails total, while Larry's heart pounded in time to the hammer.
Her voice was muffled, but he could understand her. "Are you all right in there?"
He said nothing. The air was stale. The coffin was the perfect size. He could be buried in this, when the time came. It would be a proud way to meet the dirt.
"Larry?" she hollered.
He waited.
"Can you breathe?"
She wouldn't hear him if he answered.
"I been thinking," she said. "If I don't let you out, I get the money all to myself."
God damn. She was a keeper. Not like those others, the ones who folded when they hit a knot or caught a splinter. This might be the one he could trust sharing his land with, his life with, his death with. Two holes and two tombstones, side by side, forever.
They could get to that part later. First, he needed to see how good she was with a shovel.
He pulled the hammer and crowbar from the secret fold in the velvet and began loosening the lid from the inside, too excited to concentrate. Hope pulsed through his flesh.
This one might work out. She was the real thing, better than the others. A killer. Tight nails, warm blood, a wooden soul. And cold, cold dirt in her heart
A woman who could nail your coffin was worth keeping around.
One way or another.
THE END
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THE NAME GAME
By Scott Nicholson
When Vincent awoke, he felt as if he'd been dropped headfirst from the Statue of Liberty's torch.
He moaned and rolled over into a stack of moldy cardboard and newspapers. The avenue tasted of Queens, smog stung to the ground by the long rains of the week before. A car horn bleated, amplified by the brick canyons so that the noise rattled Vincent's eardrums. He tried to peel back his eyelids so that the brilliant green in his vision could be scrubbed away by the orange crash of daylight.
Damn this city, he thought, each word a hammer blow. And since he was bothering to think, he figured he might as well try to remember. That was a little harder. He was on his knees, supporting himself against the slick skin of a Dumpster, by the time he got past the previous two seconds and on into the last few hours.
It was morning. The aroma of bagels and coffee drifted from some back door along the alley, fighting with the stench of gutter garbage before mingling into a deeper smell of rot. And if this was morning, then Vincent was---
Late.
He was supposed to catch a pre-dawn flight, to be out of town before another sorry New York sun rose. No, he wasn't supposed to catch the flight. He remembered harder, and more painfully. Robert Wells was supposed to catch that flight.
Robert Daniel Wells, his new identity, a boring tourism official from Muncie. The Feds had set it up that way. A tourism official could go places, sleep in a few motels, get lost in America's excess. Los Angeles for a convention to pitch movie locations, then Oregon for a meeting of the Christmas Tree Growers Association, zippp down to, where was it? Oh, yeah, Flagstaff, Arizona, to sell Muncie to wealthy retirees. Good old Indiana, that scenic destination, that mecca of the masses.
Dumb damned Feds. Like Joey Scattione couldn't figure that one out. With Joey's resources, Vincent was meat no matter what identity they gave him. What he needed was a new face, new bones, a new brain, because his brain was halfway down the back of his neck. He touched the welt on his head.
Ouch.
He struggled to his feet, took a step, and nearly tripped over a pile of rags. The pile stirred, a bottle rolled to the asphalt, and a bleary eye opened amid a dark crack of cloth.
"Suh---sorry," Vincent said. He waited a moment for the bum to acknowledge him, but the eye closed, extinguished like an ember dropped in mud.
His hand went to his back pocket. No surprise, his wallet was gone. It had contained nothing but cash, a few hundred bucks. No biggie. He hadn't dared carry his fake IDs in there.
Vincent took a couple more steps. Even if he missed the flight, he still had the ticket. They'd let him catch a later one. If he had a connector in St. Louis, maybe he'd slip out of the terminal and throw Robert Wells in the ditch somewhere, dig up some new papers. It could be done. Easier that way than screwing around and counting on the Feds.
That's why he'd went alone. With a spook escort, Joey's people would have spotted Vincent a mile away. Feds' shoes sparkled like skyscrapers, and they always looked as if they should be wearing sunglasses. Might as well carry a sandwich sign that said, "Hey, bad guys of the world! I'm a spook."
So Vincent had talked them into playing it his way. Take up the tourism official act, gawk at the skyscrapers, do the same kind of dumb things an Indiana bumpkin would do. Like try to catch a cab at four in the morning.
Whoever had clobbered him must have been an amateur. Certainly wasn't any of Joey's muscle. Joey would want Vincent whole, uninjured, wide awake, and ready for some slow face-to-face. Joey's people would show Vincent ten thousand ways to die, all at the same time, and none of them easy. Joey would want it all on videotape, since he couldn't be there in the flesh.
And the Feds, they weren't in for the double-cross. Not only were they too dumb, Vincent had given them the slip back at the hotel at around midnight. Sure, they probably would have a spook or two haunting the airports, but they wouldn't want to make a scene. Better to let Vincent get out of town and track him later.
Vincent neared the end of the alley, the traffic thick on the street in front of him. Pedestrians clogged the sidewalks, hustling off to make the nine o'clock ritual. He felt better already, though his pulse was playing "The War Of 1812" in his temples. Safety in numbers, and nowhere were numbers more numerous than on a Manhattan street.
He attempted to whistle, but his throat was too dry. He put on his indifferent grimace, the mask that New York wore, and slouched into the crowd. He fell in behind a woman walking her poodle. He nearly stepped on the poodle when it stopped to relieve itself. The woman pretended not to notice either Vincent or the steaming brown pile on the concrete.
Vincent reached inside his jacket, to the inner pocket. He stopped. The ticket was gone.
Someone had taken his papers. The social security card, the Indiana driver's license, the credit card made out to "Robert Wells," even a blood donor card. All the FBI's clever forgeries, along with four more bills, were now in the hands of some idiot mugger. Or mugger of idiots, whichever way you wanted to look at it.
Vincent had been so wrapped up in worrying about Joey Scattione that he hadn't considered falling victim to a less ruthless and much more random predator. His predicament hit him like a wrong-way cab. If he were forced to be Vincent Hartbarger, he wouldn't last a half a day in this city. Not with Joey's people on the hunt. And Vincent Hartbarger at the moment was broke, no way out, no standby plane ticket, no bulletproof vest. No gun.
"Out of the way, dude," growled a kid with a skateboard under his arm. The kid shoved past Vincent, greasy black hair shining in the lights from a nearby shop window. Vincent moved against the glass, out of the main crush of foot traffic. He glanced at the passing faces, on the lookout for Joey's people.
Calm down, take a breath. Think.
Thinking brought the headache roaring back. Goon must have used a tire iron.
He fumbled for a cigarette, then remembered that Robert Wells didn't smoke. But he wasn't Robert Wells anymore. He searched for the secret folds in his coat, the place where he'd kept his Vincent effects. Because he'd planned all along that, once he blew this town and shook the spooks, he'd return to being Vincent, at least until he could scrape together a new identity. He didn't have much faith in the Feds and their "witless protection program."
But the worse got worser. His fingers came away empty. The mugger had taken his Vincent stash, along with the extra fifty he'd tucked back for hard times. Vincent closed his eyes and leaned against the wall, inhaling car exhaust as if the carbon monoxide would dull his headache.
I'd rather be anywhere than right here, on Joey's turf, in Joey's town. Hell, I'd even take Muncie. At least in Muncie, the only thing I'd have to worry about would be dying of boredom. And I hear that takes YEARS...
Voices to his right pulled him back to the morning street. Two people were shouting, pointing into the shop window. In New York, two people talking on the street either meant a drug deal, a sex solicitation, or the beginning of a murder. But these seemed like ordinary folks, the kind who talked to windows instead of invisible demons.
Vincent looked into the storefront. It was a pawn shop, bars thick across the window, a bank of surveillance cameras eyeing the street like hookers on payday. A Sanyo television lit up the window, the flickering images reflected in the glass. It took Vincent a moment to register what he was seeing.
A shot of the East River, a harried-looking reporter trying vainly to control her hair in the breeze, a cutaway to emergency response and fire vehicles, then a wide shot of Kennedy Airport. Back to the river, a small orange speck in the water. Zoom in. A torn life jacket.
A computer graphic popped up in the corner of the screen, the station logo a leering eye. Underneath, in slanted red letters, "Flight 317 Crash."
Poor bastards, Vincent thought. Imagine what kind of headache you get from dropping a mile-and-a-half from the sky.
He was turning back to the street, his pity for the victims already fading, when the number "317" bounced back into his roaring head. He froze, got shoved by a balding man in a suit, yelled at by a package courier.
317. Hadn't that been his flight? The one that was supposed to whisk Robert Wells to a new life?
He went into the pawn shop. A bank of TVs filled one wall, half of them tuned to news coverage of the crash. The anchor had her hair in place now, must have snagged some hair spray during the cutaway. The computer graphic now read "Live!" under the station logo, in those same blood-red letters.
"We're at the scene of the crash of NationAir Flight 317, which plummeted shortly after takeoff from Kennedy Airport this morning---"
"What a mess, huh?" said a voice behind Vincent. He thought at first it was one of Joey's boys. But it was the pawn shop proprietor, a small man with glasses and a scar across one cheek. His nose looked like an unsuccessful prizefighter's.
"Yu---yeah," Vincent agreed.
"Took about a minute for it to hit the water," the shop owner said, leaning over a glass case of watches. "Just enough time for them to pray and crap their pants."
The man starting laughing, the laugh spasmed into a coughing fit. The news anchor's voice fought with the racket of the man's lungs.
"---no survivors have been found. The Boeing 747 was reported to be carrying a full contingent of 346 passengers, according to NationAir records. F.A.A. authorities are arriving on the scene---"
"It was one of them Aye-rab bombs, I bet," said the shopkeeper. "Don't see why the rest of us got to suffer 'cause the kikes and the ragheads can't get along."
"They said the plane was full," Vincent said, half to himself.
"Yep. You know how they are these days. Wedge 'em in with a crowbar. They interviewed the man who was first in line to go standby. Everybody showed, so he never got on. He was thanking God seven ways to Sunday."
No standby passengers. But what about the ticket belonging to Robert Wells? Someone must have used it. Someone---
Vincent stumbled toward the street, his head reeling.
"Hey, got a special today on handguns," the shopkeeper called after him. "No waiting."
But Vincent was already out the door. He walked fast, fell into the New York rhythm, blind to everything.
Someone must have used his ticket. Who?
The mugger.
The mugger must have checked in with the ticket, became "Robert Wells" himself, and grabbed a seat across the country. Maybe the mugger wanted out of this town so bad that he'd risk having the authorities waiting for him at LAX. And for his trouble, the idiot was probably now in a thousand pieces, feeding fish in Long Island Sound.
If so, the creep had gotten what he deserved. Vincent touched his sore head to remind himself that everybody had to go sometime. Everybody had to pay that one big debt. The trick was to put it off as long as possible.
As he turned the corner, another thought came to him. Unless the spooks had been watching, then they didn't know that Robert Wells a.k.a. Vincent never boarded the plane. They would get the list, see the name, go over the data on the terminal computer, and verify that indeed Robert Wells had met his end on Flight 317.
A perfect bow-tie on their witness protection program. Case closed. The Fed's star witness against Joey Scattione was now utterly and forever safe from the mobster's long reach. Even Scattione couldn't finger a man in the afterlife.
Vincent walked faster, excited, his pulse racing, red wires of pain shrieking through his temples. He realized that Scattione would also think him dead. Scattione was way sharper than the Feds, even though he'd been convicted on racketeering and drug charges. Thanks to Vincent, who'd been one of his best street lieutenants.
But Vincent knew a good deal when he saw one. When the net tightened and the Feds needed a pigeon, Vincent did even better than squawk: he'd sung like a deflowered canary. After, of course, he'd elicited a long sheet of promises, including permanent immunity and protection. And a new identity.
An identity that was dead.
What he needed right now was his old friend Sid.
Vincent turned into a bar, though it was scarcely ten o'clock. A man in drag who looked like he hadn't slept was slumped in one corner, holding a cigarette that was four inches of ash. Two cabbies were drinking off the effects of the third shift. The bartender kept his attention focused on the tiny black-and-white that hung in one corner. It was tuned to the same news coverage of the crash.
"Help you, buddy?" the bartender said, without turning.
"Scotch and water. A double."
"Poor bastards," the bartender said, still watching the television as he reached for the stock behind him. "We think we got it bad, but at least we ain't been handed our wings."
"Yeah," Vincent said. Catholic humor. Like everybody was an angel.
The man poured from the Johnny Walker bottle as if dispensing liquid gold. The ice cubes were rattled into the glass before Vincent could complain about the weak mix. Then Vincent remembered he had no money. He acted as if reaching for his wallet, then said, "Excuse me, where's the rest room?"
The man nodded toward the rear, eyes still fixed on the set, where the field anchor was now interviewing a witness. As Vincent headed for the dark bowels of the bar, he overheard the witness talking about airline food. The news team was groping, fumbling to keep momentum, the tragedy already sliding toward ancient history. The transvestite winked as Vincent passed, and up close Vincent couldn't tell if she were a man dressed as a woman or vice versa.
Sheesh, and I thought I had an identity problem.
But maybe the she-male was onto something. In the bathroom, Vincent studied his own face in the mirror, trying to picture himself in lipstick. He shuddered. Better to take on Joey Scattione than to pluck his eyebrows and duct-tape his gut.
He washed his hands and went out. The transvestite was waiting by the door. Vincent cleared his throat. "Say, you got change for a phone call?"
The transvestite sneered and produced some coins, then dumped them into Vincent's palm as if afraid to catch a disease. Vincent mumbled thanks and stopped by the pay phone. He dialed a well-remembered number. As the phone rang, he watched to see which gender of bathroom the transvestite chose.
Neither. The transvestite went out the back door. The line clicked as the connection was made. "Hello," came the welcome though nasal voice.
"Sid, hey, it's me. Vincent."
"Vincent? Like I know any Vincent?"
"Hartbarger. You know."
"Afraid not, friend."
"Jesus, Sid. Vincent Hartbarger. You sold me the damned name yourself, for crying out loud. Driver's license, Rotary Club membership, credit cards."
"I don't know from Hartbargers."
Vincent sighed and remembered he'd used a fake identity to get his fake identity. "It's Charlie Ehle."
"Charlie? Why the hell didn't you say so? You expect me to remember every job or something?"
"Yeah, yeah. Listen, I need another one. Like pronto."
"Rush jobs cost extra, my man. But for you, I can have you set up by five o'clock."
Vincent nodded into the phone. Sid always got chummy when he smelled green. For a document man, Sid had enough smarm to work every side of the fence: green cards, counter check scams, fake IDs, forgery, bogus lottery tickets, anything that involved paper or photographs. But Sid liked cash, lots of it, payable when services were rendered.
"Can't you do better than five? I'm kind of in a jam."
"Oh, the Scattione thing."
The Scattione thing. Damn those Feds. Vincent's testimony was delivered in closed court, the records sealed. Sure, Vincent expected stoolies in the judicial branch to leak to the Mafia. This was America, after all. But when even the criminal fringes such as Sid knew the score, that meant the clock was ticking down twice per second on Vincent's remaining life span.
"Fix me up, what do you say, pal? Just the basics."
Sid let out a slow whistle. "It don't pay to cross Scattione. But I guess you already know that, huh?"
"I can give you five grand."
That shut up the weasel. For a moment. Then the shrewd voice came across the wires. "How come the spooks didn't set you up? Figured you'd be a family man from Des Moines by now."
"We decided to part company," Vincent said. "You think I could hide from Scattione while some of them secret agent types were guarding me?"
"Suppose not. So, what are you in the mood for? Irish? Got some McGinnitys all ready to roll off the press."
"With my coloring? You got to be kidding." He glanced at the bartender, who was watching the news as if it were a boxing match. The transvestite entered through the back door, ignoring Vincent.
"Okay, okay, already. Where you at?"
"Just off Van Wyck."
"Meet me at Naomi's Deli on Greenway. Five o'clock."
"You need a recent photo?" Vincent asked out of habit. He knew Sid kept files on all his old customers. You never knew when blackmail might come in handy.
"No. And let's make it six grand. I got two kids to put through college." The phone clicked and then hummed. Vincent hung up and went back to the bar. He thought about asking the transvestite to pay for his drink, but that would be pushing it. Instead, he walked past the bar, hurried out the door, and was lost in the crowd before the bartender could react.
He walked for a while, ten blocks, until his feet were sore. He didn't know if Joey's people could find him more easily if he kept moving, or if he tried to hole up. Eventually, fatigue and the dull ache in his head sent him to a bench in one of those half-acre dirt patches that the city called a public park. The two trees clung stubbornly to their oxygen-starved leaves.
Someone had stuffed an afternoon edition, the Daily News Express, in the trash can. Vincent fished it out. More crash coverage filled the front page, photos of the obligatory grieving survivors, bits of wreckage, FAA talking suits. On page seven was a list of those believed to have been on board NationAir Flight 317.
Vincent ran his finger down near the bottom of the list. Wells, Robert.
So far, so good. Wells was officially presumed dead.
And Scattione, with his resources, would know that Vincent Hartbarger had become Wells. Scattione would get the word in his Sing Sing cell, his lips would veer to the right in churlish anger, and he'd pound his fist against the hard mattress. Nothing could tick Scattione off more than revenge denied. Vincent had to smile.
But not laugh.
He couldn't laugh until later, when Vincent Hartbarger was officially laid to rest, along with Charlie Ehle and the half-dozen other identities that Vincent had adopted over the years. Fingerprints were no problem, really. All he had to do was build up the kitty, turn a few deals, and grease a few palms. Everywhere a record was kept, there was a human recorder who had access to it. All Vincent needed was access to the recorder.
Vincent had learned that it wasn't a question of whether integrity could be bought and sold. It was only a question of price.
He managed to nap a couple of hours, keeping the newspaper over his face. Scattione had probably passed out a hundred photos. Vincent could change his name, but he was stuck with those same recognizable features. At least until he got to Cayman, where he knew a decent plastic surgeon. First things first, he needed to live long enough to get his new identity.
The walk downtown took longer than he expected. When he entered the deli, Sid gave him the once-over. Vincent's suit was rumpled, the knees dirty from being rolled by the mugger. He hadn't shaved, either.
"How the mighty have fallen," Sid said, as Vincent slid into the booth opposite him.
"I haven't fallen yet," Vincent said.
Sid was eating a Reuben, and though Vincent hadn't eaten all day, the smell of the sauerkraut curdled his stomach. Vincent checked the door. Sid wasn't known as a double-crosser. He couldn't afford to be, in his line of work. But, with Scattione in the mix, everything was subject to change.
Sid brought out a large envelope, put it beside his plate. "Hello, Mister Raymond Highwater," he said.
"Highwater? What sort of name is that? It's so phony, I won't make it to Jersey."
"I stole it out of the phone book. That's what you get when you ask for a rush job." A piece of corned beef was stuck between Sid's teeth.
"Listen, I got to ask you for a favor."
Sid patted the table. "Pay for the last one, then we can talk."
Vincent leaned over the table. A group of Hassidic Jews were across the room, two women were chatting over coffee, a college-aged kid, probably a film student from Columbia, was reading a magazine at the counter. None of them looked like Scattione's people. But in this city, the walls had ears, eyes, and sometimes a .45 automatic.
"I'm short at the moment," Vincent said. In the ensuing silence, he heard a bus honk outside, and somebody in the kitchen dropped a pan.
Sid stopped in mid-bite, took a slow chew, and then began working his jaws like a ferret. "Short," he said, spraying rye crumbs across the table.
"Listen, I can make it good." Vincent's words came fast, like bullets from a clip. "You know me. I can have it for you tomorrow. And---what say we make it ten big ones? All I need is a little time as this Highwater guy."
Sid wiped at his mouth with a paper napkin. Then he put one hand on the envelope, and in a smooth motion, slid it back inside his jacket.
"Come on, Sid," Vincent said, checking the door again. "We've done business for years."
"Always cash on delivery."
Vincent tugged at his collar, sweat ringing his forehead. He knew the window of opportunity was small. Even though Scattione thought "Robert Wells" was dead, at least one person knew that Vincent was still breathing. Sid.
With a fake credit card, Vincent might still be able to get out of the city. All he needed was a name. He'd already died once today, he'd killed off a dozen other identities in his time, but he'd always been the one to deep-six himself. By choice. "I can deliver, Sid. I know you got skills, but it only takes you an hour to crank out a set of documents."
Sid shook his head. "It's not about the money. It's about pride and reputation."
Same with Scattione. What sort of rep could a Mafiaso have if the man who'd fingered him was walking around as free as sin?
"Nobody will know, Sid. I promise. I'll deliver, then you'll never see my ugly mug again. I'm thinking Cozumel, maybe Rio."
Sid sat back and pushed his plate away. The group of Hassidic Jews continued chattering. The college kid set down his magazine and ordered something. Vincent looked at the clock.
"Please, Sid."
Sid pursed his lips. Then he stood, dropped some bills on the table to cover the cost of the sandwich, and brought out the envelope. Except this one had come from a different pocket. He dropped the package in front of Vincent and shrugged. "Joey pays twenty, and this is who he wants you to be."
The bell rang as Sid went out the door. Vincent stooped, picked up the envelope, and tore it open. Who was he this time? Not that it mattered. He'd even be a damned McGinnity if he had to.
He stared at the driver's license.
It didn't make sense. It was his face, all right. But this license was gone, floating somewhere in the East River. He read the name slowly, his lips shaping the syllables.
Robert Daniel Wells.
He moved fast, got to the street, but Sid was gone.
Vincent glanced at the crowd, among the eyes that seemed to shine like search beacons. Which ones belonged to Joey's people?
He broke into a run. A laugh tore itself from his lungs, a spasm borne of fear and hysteria. He should have known that Joey's reach, even from a prison cell, was longer than the longest arm of the law. Vincent had been around long enough to know that Joey liked to play.
Like a cat with a cornered mouse, like a spider with a stuck fly.
Vincent ran on. He thought that maybe if he ran fast enough, someday he'd catch up to himself. But somedays never come, and Robert Wells had a debt to pay.
Under any name.
THE END
Return to Curtains Table of Contents
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GOOD FENCES
By Scott Nicholson
That fence post was leaning again.
Herman could tell just by looking out the window, though the neighbor's yard was over two hundred feet away. You'd think people would have a little pride. Back in Herman's day, you kept your split rails pointing straight up to God, even here in the Blue Ridge mountains where level ground was as scarce as hen's teeth. Of course, you were supposed to keep your grass mowed down close, too.
A hippie lived in that house. The new neighbor drove by every morning, hunched over the wheel of a Japanese junkaroo with a ski rack on top. The hippie had waved the first week after moving in, but each time Herman had given him a no-nonsense, get-a-haircut stare. Nowadays the hippie didn't even look over, just rattled up the road to whatever job Communists held while plotting the revolution.
Too bad. The hippie could learn something about American pride from Herman. You keep your house painted and your windows clean. Your mailbox flap doesn't sag open. The flag comes down when it rains, even if a stoned-out longhair would rather burn one than fly one. But most of all, by God, you set your fences straight.
Fences were the first impression, the first line of defense against those who thought the world belonged to everybody. Herman would bet his John Wayne video collection that the hippie at 107 Oakdale had a peace sign poster on his bedroom wall. The peace sign was nothing but the footprint of the American chicken. Herman didn't mind a peaceful neighbor on general principle, but the lessons of history were clear. Peace started with strong borders, strong fences.
Herman was a picket man himself. There was something trustworthy about the sharp picket tips, a row of threatening teeth that promised to nip at unwelcome guests. Best of all, you could paint them church-white. Not that split rails couldn't look proper if you took a little pride in them.
The door to 107 opened. Herman dropped the curtain in disgust and sat again at his bowl of oatmeal. Doctor said oats would clean out his pipes, and if a healthy diet didn't do the job, then a pervert with a medical degree and a hospital hose would. The fear of a stranger meddling up his backside was about the only thing that could make Herman eat oatmeal. The stuff was barely fit for livestock.
As he spooned a butter-heavy dose into his mouth, he looked out the window. The hippie's front door swung open wide, and a shaggy little dog raced out and squatted in the weeds. Hippie didn't even have enough self-respect to get a boxer or a hound, something territorial that would chew the leg off a trespassing little brat. No, he had an overgrown lap dog, one that would probably be plopping piles of dookie all over Herman's yard if the picket fence weren't there.
The dog finished its business and ran to the hippie, who patted it on the head. Herman scowled into his oatmeal. Public displays of affection were the mark of a sissy who couldn't be trusted. He waited until the hippie's car passed, then he went into the garage. Tools neatly lined the rear wall, hanging on pegboard and shining under the glow of a single fluorescent tube.
He selected a claw hammer, then gritted his teeth and swung it viciously, imagining the hammer head sinking into the hippie's skull. He swung again and again, his breath rapid and shallow, his heartbeat like the salvos of an anti-aircraft gun. His arm soon grew tired and he let the hammer rest against his thigh.
The August morning sun was bright on the dew when he went outside. Mrs. Breedlove from 103 had her television turned up too loud. That was okay, because Mrs. Breedlove kept her flower gardens in military formation, heads up and rumps tucked in tight. She had her flaws, but maintaining appearances wasn't one of them.
Herman gathered a spare picket from the woodpile and tucked it under his arm. He stepped through the gate and walked down Oakdale, frowning at the dead leaves that clustered along the curb. He'd be needing the rake before long. One of the neighbor kids from 108 squealed in the distance. Brats. The budding delinquents would wear a path in your grass and not think twice.
A kid on a bicycle came out from the trees near the end of the block. It was a girl, one of the ugly redheads from 104. You'd think she'd be in school, since this was Friday. Ever since they'd made a big fuss over teachers' rights, the brats did most of their learning from each other. And the lesson they learned best was how to mess on other people's property.
Herman tucked his hammer behind his back. The redhead pedaled up, then stopped. She wore a New York Jets jersey, and the only thing worse would have been Yankee pinstripes. The early settlers of Aldridge Falls should have barred the dirt roads and burned all the bridges, because outsiders had the run of the place now. Rich folks with their Florida tans and fast New England accents and property law attorneys.
"Morning, Mr. Weeks," the girl said. "What you doing with that stick?"
"Fixing things," he said, smiling and holding up the picket. Maybe it wasn't too late to pass along the concept of respect.
"A fence?" she asked.
He nodded. "I like good fences."
"My daddy said fences are for greedy people."
"You should always listen to your father." Herman kept smiling, his face like warm wax in the sun.
The kid smiled back, confused, then pedaled on past. Herman walked to the hippie's leaning fence post. It was cedar, a little more manageable than locust though it would rot a lot faster. He knelt and examined the base of the post.
He'd repaired the same post twice already this week. Usually he fixed things right the first time, but once in a while you got hold of a stubborn piece of wood. He leaned the post until it was ninety degrees, then eyeballed the angle against the corner of the hippie's house. Satisfied, he wedged the picket into the ground, driving it with the hammer until the dirt was packed.
He reached for the top of the post to test it for sturdiness. He touched wood, and a sharp pain lanced along his finger. At first he figured he'd drawn a splinter, but the wound was clean. Herman bent for a closer look.
A razor blade had been embedded in the cedar. Its silver edge glinted in the dawn.
"Tarnation." Herman muttered under his breath, sucking on his wounded finger. A closer study of the fence revealed several more razor blades in the crosspieces.
Herman glanced at the houses along the street. This was a Community Watch neighborhood. He didn't dare trespass on the hippie's property. But he was within his rights to walk the perimeter of the yard. As a concerned citizen, mind you, checking up on things.
At one corner of the fence, the ground was bare where animals cut through the forsythia. Herman saw a long fishhook wedged into a crack in the fence. Bits of cat fur and a tiny piece of shriveled flesh hung from the hook's barb. The fur was light gray, the color of Widow Hampton's cat.
Herman hadn't seen the cat in several days. It had a habit of spraying in Herman's yard, stinking up the petunias. Cat had no sense of territory and could scamper over a fence like it wasn't there. He grinned at the thought of the cat yowling in pain after getting snagged by the hook.
Herman headed back to his house with new admiration for the hippie. You had to fight to protect what was yours. Hell, when you come right down to it, a hippie could be just like any normal person. All it took was a haircut and a Bible.
The redheaded girl rode up on her bike, stopped with a scruffing of brakes. "Sorry, mister."
Herman had been lost in thought. "Huh? Sorry for what?"
She pointed up the street. "I ran into your fence." She blushed beneath her freckles.
Herman saw leaning pickets, a whole section of them, one snapped in half. He bit back a curse. His hand went to his back pocket for the hammer. His cut finger bumped into the handle, and the pain drove his anger away.
"It's okay, honey," he said. He resisted the urge to pat her head, because he was afraid he might grab her hair and jerk her off the bicycle. A curtain lifted in nosy Mrs. Breedlove's house. Community watch at its finest.
He walked back to his house as the girl pedaled away, off to her next act of trespassing and destruction. Herman spent the rest of the morning repairing his own fence, then went in for lunch and his daily bout of Gospel radio. He took a nap in the afternoon, charging his batteries for the night's mission.
Supper was liver mush and potatoes, plus some pole beans grown in the garden out back. Back when Verna was alive, they kept up with the canning, making preserves from the apples and sauce from the tomatoes. With Verna passed on to the Lord, Herman saw little need to stock up for the future. He grew most of what he needed and in the winter there were grocery stores. Gas was so high, thanks to them sand-nigger terrorists, he didn't drive much anymore. And the radio said the Democrats had gutted Social Security again, so he tried to pinch a penny where he could. Mostly, he kept to the house, which is why he wanted the fences in good shape. When your world got smaller, the part that was yours took on new value.
Night fell, and Herman left the lights on while he snuck around the house and into the vacant lot that ran beside the hippie's house. The land had belonged to a dentist up on the hill, but when the dentist died, it fell into the hands of his sons, who were living somewhere contrary like Oregon or New Hampshire. The land had been a Christmas tree farm, and lately a hay meadow, but now it mostly just raised briars and bunnies.
He fought off the thorns and ducked into the forsythia, crabapple, and jackvine that straddled the property line. After checking the crosspieces for sharp edges, he slipped through the fence and waited. Soon enough, the hippie's door opened and the shaggy, post-pissing mongrel came out, the hippie right behind. Even with the moon out, the hippie wouldn't be able to see Herman crouching in the thicket, but the dog started whining right away. The hippie made a beeline for the post that Herman had straightened that morning. The hippie put a hand on it and leaned it forward, careful to avoid the razor blade embedded in the wood.
"There," the hippie said to the whimpering mutt. "That ought to give the geezer something to fix tomorrow. Or else a heart attack."
The hippie jumped as if electrocuted when Herman flipped on the flashlight. The longhair froze in the orange cone of light, pupils the size of BBs. Probably on meth heroin or whatever dope his kind cooked up these days.
"They look better if you do them square," Herman said.
The hippie squinted against the flashlight's beam. "Who's there?"
"A concerned neighbor," Herman said.
"You the one with the picket fence, up at 101?"
"None other." Herman stood and flicked off the light. They stared at each other's silhouettes under the quarter moon.
"Why have you been messing with my fence?" The hippie folded his arms across his chest. The shaggy mutt stopped whimpering and crouched at its master's feet.
"Why you been making me?" Herman snapped his shoulders back Marine-style, even though it was dark and the hippie couldn't get a cheap lesson in proper posture. This was his neighborhood. He had a right to take an interest.
"I like to know my neighbors," the hippie said. "The faster you peg the weirdoes, the faster you can take steps to protect yourself."
Herman's jaw loosened. "You mean you done this on purpose? Like some kind of trap?"
The hippie's high-dollar teeth caught the scant moonlight as he smiled. "One of them. The other traps are scattered around the perimeter."
A light came on upstairs in the Hampton house. From his dark vantage point, Herman could see the top half of the widow as she slipped off her robe and stepped into the shower. His pulse jumped a gear and he felt a flush of shame. Spying like trash, that's what he was doing. But she'd left her curtains open, so it was her fault.
"Ain't seen Miss Hampton's cat around lately," Herman said. "You wouldn't know nothing about that, would you?"
"You might find it at the foot of the dogwood," the hippie said, nodding to the corner of his lot.
"Dogwood?"
"I thought that was fitting punishment," the hippie said. "Get it? A cat and a dogwood?"
The mutt's ears perked up at the sound of its master's laughter.
"You buried her cat on your property?" Herman's thumb twitched against the flashlight, and he wasn't sure if he wanted to laugh with the hippie or addle the fool's brains with a sideswipe.
"Don't worry, the dogwood's bark is worse than its bite."
Herman eased backward a step, and the scrub vegetation that had minutes earlier afforded protection and cover now seemed like a prison wall, cutting off his escape. He thought about yelling, but his throat was tight and he was afraid he would sound like a sissy girl.
"I have some blueberry bushes along the rear of the property," the hippie said. "Do you think it's fair that the brats can just come on over anytime they please and stuff their faces? I pay my taxes and I send my mortgage payment to the bank on time. I've got rights."
"That why you planted the razors?"
"Yeah. Of course, they can come down the driveway, but I figure that's not sneaky enough for them. You know how kids are, they like to think they're outsmarting the grown-ups."
"Snagged any of them yet?"
"Just the cat. But it only takes once and I don't have to worry about them anymore."
"What about their parents? What if they call the cops, or Social Services?"
"I'll just say the blades came with the property. How was I to know the previous owner was insane?"
"Now you just hold on a second," Herman said. "That house belonged to Ned Loggerfeld, and not once did he let a post sag. He cleaned his gutters twice a year and snow never had a chance to melt in his driveway so long as he owned a shovel."
"I heard he died of a heart attack," the hippie said. "In the cold, your arteries narrow. Shoveling snow is about the worst thing you can do if your heart is bad."
Herman recalled the February day when Ned had flopped on his back near the mailbox, arms spread like he was making a snow angel. Turned out he was making a real angel. Herman had dialed 9-1-1 while Mrs. Breedlove performed some pervert-looking maneuvers she said was CPR. If old Ned could have seen the woman sucking and blowing on his mouth, he might have come back down from heaven for a chance to smooch back.
"Okay," Herman said. "Looks like a standoff. I got no gripe with a fellow doing what he wants on his own property, as long as he keeps up appearances."
"Oh, I'm pretty good at keeping up appearances, Mr. Weeks." The hippie grinned like he was in an organic produce market and the tofu was half price.
"How'd you know my name?"
"Deeds Office down at the courthouse. Like I said, I like to get to know the neighbors. Before I buy."
"Don't blame you none," Herman said. He wished the ugly redheaded family had left on their porch lights like they usually did. The moon wasn't bright enough to dull the shine in the hippie's eyes.
"You're a registered Republican."
"So? What are you?"
"Libertarian."
"That mean you don't eat eggs or cheese?"
"Only in a free market economy," the hippie said. "I also know you bought your two acres back in 1956. You were probably married once, judging from the Elvis decanter on the sewing machine in your living room. While you might have been an Elvis fan, I doubt you idolize him enough to collect. And being a product of the Eisenhower administration, you never saw fit to have your wife listed as co-owner of the property."
"You been peeking in my windows?"
"No. Not on purpose. You can see it when you drive by. Your house sits a little below the road and Elvis is right there between the curtains. You ought to look at your surroundings with new eyes now and then. You might be surprised at what you see."
Herman wished he had the hammer. He would fix the hippie, and then fix that damned fence post. Then he'd do what he should have done right after Verna's passing, take the Elvis decanter out back and pound it into dust. But he couldn't help himself, his head turned and he scanned the neighborhood, from 101 to 108 and back again.
All of the houses had gone through several families in his time. Widow Hampton's kids, who used to stub around in diapers, were now grown and gone, he didn't know the names of the couple in 107 or if they were even married, half of the houses now had vinyl siding, and, when you got right down to it, even with all the care and tending, his own house looked a little shabby and shopworn under the street lights. Like him, it had seen its best days, and an invisible earth digger was waiting in the wings to claim both of them.
"This is a nice neighborhood," Herman said. "Why, look at the pride Mrs. Breedlove takes in her flowers."
"Appearances are important, but they can also be deceiving. Order on the outside can often hide disorder inside."
"Maybe you're right," Herman said. "Maybe your fence ain't none of my business."
The hippie's dog skirted under the fence and pushed its nose to the ground, following the curb down to 103, where the Pilkingtons had left the trash out.
"Doggie bags," the hippie said. "They'll learn sooner or later."
"Reckon so," Herman said. "What's your name?"
"Reynolds. Peter Reynolds."
Herman was afraid that the hippie was going to stick his hand out in some jive shake or other, but he just stood there with that educated smile. Peter Reynolds had the home-field advantage, and he knew it. Herman had been caught where he didn't belong. He looked over at the Pilkington house, where the mutt was gnawing through a plastic trash bag, scattering cellophane and rumpled paper towels.
"I'd best be going," Herman said.
"Aren't you forgetting something?"
Herman thought of the razor blades, and wondered for the first time if Peter Reynolds maybe had a knife in his pocket. "What?"
The hippie pointed to the leaning fence post. "I don't know about you, but my mom taught me to leave things just the way I found them."
Herman started to argue, then thought of the maybe-knife and swallowed hard. He eased the post perpendicular to the ground and stomped his foot to tamp the dirt tight. "Good night, now," he said.
"Watch your step," the hippie, Peter Reynolds, said.
"Sounds like good advice." Herman didn't look back until he was inside his own home. He closed the curtains and hid the Elvis decanter in the closet with the rest of Verna's things.
The next day, he called the Sheriff's Office. The hippie wasn't the only one who knew how to work the system. Herman had to sit on hold for a couple of minutes, but he finally reached Bud Millwood, a deputy who had made an unsuccessful run for sheriff a decade back. Herman had supported his campaign with cash and two signs in the yard, and though Millwood had lost the race, rural politics required his repaying of such a favor.
"I need you to check something for me, Bud," Herman said.
"The city council trying to zone you again?"
"No, nothing like that. We voted that bunch out five years ago. The 'Z' word is a one-way ticket to hell around these parts."
Millwood laughed. "You can set that in stone. A fellow's got a right to do what he wants with his land."
"Sometimes. Maybe sometimes."
"What's your problem?"
"I wondered if you could run a check on a fellow. Name of Peter Reynolds. He might not be from around here, but he ain't Yankee, judging by his accent. Has Tennessee plates on his car." Herman read off the license numbers he'd written on a scrap of paper.
"He do something wrong?"
"No, not yet. He just moved into the neighborhood, and you know how it is."
"A fellow likes to know who his neighbors are."
"Yep. So if you can dig anything up, I'd appreciate it."
"Well, normally I got to have a reason to run a check. But maybe if you think he was growing dope or something."
"He's the type who might."
"Good enough for me. I'll call you when I learn something. If there's so much as a counterfeit aspirin on his record, I'll drive out and pay a personal visit."
"No, I can handle him. Just let me know."
"Sure, Herman, whatever. If you smell something funny, though, give me a holler. The way they're cutting into our DARE programs, it's a wonder the whole blessed county ain't going up in smoke."
Herman was midway through his oatmeal and eyeing a grapefruit half when Bud Millwood called back.
"I ain't for certain, but if your Peter Reynolds is the same as the one from Trade River, just over the state line, then you might want to lock your doors of a night," the deputy said. "Got into a quarrel with his neighbor over there. Deputies got called out three times for a domestic dispute."
"I thought a domestic dispute was when a man was beating up his wife."
"Yeah, that's what they thought this was, but turns out Mr. Peter James Reynolds was whopping up on a forty-year-old woman. He claimed she snuck out in the middle of the night and moved the surveying stake that marked the corner of his property. Eased it over a good three feet and then dug up the ground and planted gladiolas."
"He beat a woman for something like that?"
"Might not be the worst of it. This woman up and disappeared one night. That was a few months after the complaints. A thing like that, you figure people need to talk it out for themselves, maybe take it to small claims court instead of declaring war."
"Do they think this Reynolds fellow done her in?"
"At first. They had the bloodhounds out and shoveled up some of her yard, thinking he might have buried her there out of spite. They checked out his crawl space, took him in for questioning, but he said he didn't know nothing, sat there as cool as a ladybug in a cucumber patch. Six months later, when no body turned up, the detectives over there let the case slide. Apparently the family was happy to see her go, sold the property and split up the money. Wasn't long after that old Peter Reynolds put his own house up for sale."
"Along about April?"
"Yeah."
Herman wiped a gummy speck of oatmeal from his lip. "Probably ain't the same Peter Reynolds. Even a cornshuck place like Tennessee probably got dozens by that name. And license plates have been known to get stolen."
"Funny, though. The detective I talked to remembered something Peter Reynolds repeated over and over while they questioned him."
"What's that?"
"Said, 'She had no respect for another man's property.' Just like that. Said 'had' instead of 'has,' like he knew she was dead."
"Yeah. Funny, ain't it? I appreciate it, Bud. Send along my blessings to your folks."
"Sure will. Take care, now."
Herman hung up the phone and looked out the window at the hippie's house. All the hippies he'd ever heard of were into that peace and love business. Somehow that didn't square with murdering your neighbor. But neither did razor blades in your fence posts. Or a cat nabbed on a fishhook and buried at the foot of a tree.
Herman didn't mess around with stalking the bushes that night. He went straight down Oakdale, into the hippie's driveway, and up on the porch. He knocked hard enough for his knuckles to ache. The mutt started yapping behind the closed door.
The door opened a crack. Peter Reynolds gave a smile as if Herman were delivering a bouquet of flowers. "I've been expecting you, Mr. Weeks. Please come in."
Herman's anger took a left turn toward confusion. "Look here, I just come to talk about your fence."
"I know. We're neighbors. We need to talk these things out or else we'll end up enemies. You know what the Good Book says."
"You mean the Bible?" The mutt leaped forward and licked at Herman's shoes. He looked down and saw dried oatmeal had formed white scabs on his trousers.
"It says to love thy neighbor."
"It also says live and let live."
"I hate to disagree since we're trying to be friends, but that's not written anywhere in the Bible. There's an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, but not a thing about live and let live." Peter Reynolds opened the door wider. "Please come in. The neighbors might be watching."
Herman took a long look behind him at the row of houses. They seemed too quiet, still, and dark. What if Peter Reynolds had been busy over the last day or two, and there were now a dozen mounds of raw earth at the foot of the backyard dogwood? Mrs. Breedlove's legs tangled in the roots, the Pilkingtons with dirt in their lungs?
He stepped inside, surprised at how bright and neat the room was. He'd expected it to be dank and furnished with heavy vinyl pieces, the way it had been when Ned and Eileen lived here. But the hippie must have watched a few home improvement shows. The carpet was plush and the color of gunsmoke, the window treatments were light gray, and the trim was painted in white semi-gloss, giving the room the sort of forced order you'd expect in an FBI office or a doctor's waiting room. A computer sat on a bleached oak desk, and the rest of the furniture was arranged around it. Herman peeked into the kitchen and didn't see a single dirty dish.
"Have a seat," Peter Reynolds said, motioning toward the couch. It looked like a regular-guy sort of couch, the kind where you could prop your feet on the arm rest and balance a bowl of chips on the back cushions, scratch your balls if you felt like it. Watch the Panthers whoop up on the 49ers. Except the hippie didn't have a TV. All he had was the computer.
Herman sat, uncomfortable, wondering if dried mud filled the cracks on the bottoms of his shoes.
"You heard about Tennessee," Peter Reynolds said.
"Did you kill her?"
"I'm surprised you'd ask something like that. I would have taken you for a man who minded his own business."
"Did you bury her like you did the cat?"
"You should worry about your own problems instead of going around being suspicious of everybody."
"I don't have no problems."
"That you'll admit, anyway."
"No worries nothing."
"You're old and alone and it's slipping away. The last thing you have left to fight for is that patch of grass up there"---Peter Reynolds waved at the dark window in the direction of Herman's house---"and a picket fence. And it's getting harder to keep that fence standing straight, isn't it? The winds keep coming, a little stronger every year, the snow leans on it, the neighborhood kids get a little bigger and bolder, and a fence starts looking like a dare instead of a warning. Yes, Mr. Weeks, I understand fences. I'm territorial myself."
The hippie's gray eyes, which were the same color as the carpet, seemed far too old. "All I want is a place to spread out, a yard for my dog to dig in, a roof over my head, and no barbarians at the gate."
"Barbarians at the gate," Herman repeated, as if he had the slightest idea what the hippie was going on about. He had a fleeting image of one of those old chariot movies, where the Romans were always punished because of nailing Jesus to the cross. You never saw John Wayne in a toga, that was for sure. Charlton Heston, maybe, but that was a different nut altogether.
"I'm a loner like you," Peter Reynolds went on, standing across the room even though his guest was sitting. "I take care of what's mine. That's why I was so upset when I saw you had fixed my leaning fence post. It was an insult, you see."
Herman could see that plain, now. At the time, he'd thought the hippie has bone lazy, without a stitch of pride. But the truth was the hippie was just like Herman, proud to the point of stubbornness. Ready to fight for home ground.
"I didn't mean nothing," Herman said. "But from where I come from, you set your fences straight."
"I'm tired, Herman. I don't mind burying a trespassing cat once in while." The hippie gave Herman a look that said maybe cats weren't all he'd buried. "But I don't want to run anymore. Every time I think I'm settled in for good, that I've staked out a place to call my own, along comes some lousy neighbor to spoil it all."
Herman didn't want to think that he was spoiling anything for Peter Reynolds. Because the hippie's left eyelid was twitching just a little.
"Well, I'm not running anymore. This time, I'm trying to recruit an ally. A good neighbor. A man who respects the property rights of others."
"I've always been a good neighbor," Herman said.
"You've got more to fight for than any of us do, since you've been here the longest."
"I'll fight to protect what's mine. I registered for the draft, though I had the bad luck to come of age between Korea and Vietnam."
"You don't have to go overseas to find the enemy," the hippie said, and those gray eyes had gone even darker, on toward charcoal. "The barbarians are right at the gate."
Herman's stomach was in knots and his bowels gurgled, scoured raw by fiber. He didn't like the distant anger in the hippie's voice. That was a murderer speaking, someone who could deprive another human being of the ultimate in property rights, the right to possess a living and breathing body. He flinched when the hippie spun and stormed toward the computer.
"It's a technological age we live in, Herman," Peter Reynolds said, tapping some keys. "All the public records are right here on the county Web site. Birth certificates, deaths, deeds, criminal charges, tax liens. And look here. Building applications."
Herman squinted, trying to see around the hippie's back, that long pony tail nearly down to his rump. From behind, wearing a dress, he could have passed for a girl. Assuming he shaved his legs. But he heard women didn't hardly do that anymore. Barbarians at the gates was right.
"Next door," the hippie said. "The Devereaux heirs have been busy."
"The dentist's boys?"
"Yes. They've sold the lot to an outfit out of Texas. Highland Builders LLC."
"Damn. I knew that was going to be developed sooner or later. Wonder who the new neighbor is going to be?"
"Neighbors," the hippie said. "Plural."
"Do what?"
"Apartment complex. Six buildings. A hundred-and-fifty-two parking spaces. Legal occupancy of up to 122 unrelated persons."
Herman dug a finger into his ear, as if wax buildup prevented his brain from accepting the words he'd just heard. "No way. You can't fit that many people on such a little scrap of ground."
"You must have missed the zoning hearings. This application says the property was zoned for multi-family back in the 1980s."
"Oh, that. We didn't go to none of those. We stayed away as a protest against zoning."
"They zoned anyway."
"Tarnation."
"A foreign developer like that has absolutely no respect for the neighbors. Oakdale would be changed forever. For the worse."
"I'll say. How we going to keep all them people off our property?"You know what they say. A good fence is the first line of defense."
Herman wasn't sure he liked the gleam in the hippie's eyes. Those were Osama's eyes, the look of a man who would just as soon bury you as nail up a "No Trespassing" sign. He thought of the fence post with its embedded razor, the barbed hook big enough to snag a cat. He wondered what sort of contraption the hippie could cook up to deal with a major invasion.
"I'll bet they'll put up crooked fence posts," Herman said.
"No doubt. A Texas developer wouldn't know the first thing about building in the mountains."
"And those apartments will have kids."
"Lots of kids," the hippie agreed.
"Squalling, squabbling little yard monkeys who will wear a path in your grass deep enough to bury a mule."
"Or bury a person."
Herman looked at the window, at the dark, empty field. Fireflies blinked above the ragged vegetation. A crabapple tree swayed in the wind. Headlights cut twin yellow arcs across the small plot of land as a pizza delivery car cut into the neighborhood. Herman tried to picture the security lights, the view-wrecking walls, the cars crowded around the buildings. Four stories of noise and strangers. Bad neighbors.
The best way to stop bad neighbors was with good fences.
Fences like the hippie made.
"Want to see my shop?" Peter Reynolds said.
"You bet."
Herman was sure it was full of sharp, shiny things and heavy, black hammers. He got up from the couch, feeling younger than he had in years. His heart, which usually beat in a tired and uneven rhythm, now burned with pride and a sense of duty. There was work to be done and fences to be mended. Herman, as old as he was, figured he could still learn a thing or two about handling property disputes. They could beat this problem together.
After all, what else were neighbors for?
Bud Millwood pushed his sunglasses up the bridge of his nose, something he'd probably seen in a detective movie somewhere. Herman let the door stand open, and though the October air was brisk, he didn't invite the deputy in. Herman had nothing to hide, but a man's home was private property and Bud was here as an officer of the law, not as a friend. Plus, his breakfast was getting cold, and nothing went down rougher than cold oatmeal.
"Find anything on that Reynolds fellow?" Herman asked.
"No. It's been two months. We figure he knew the Tennessee law was closing in, so he cut out, started a new identity, maybe drifted to Canada or Mexico."
"That kind, they don't understand the value of setting down roots. They think they can just barge in any old where and call it 'home,' with no respect for what went on before."
"Maybe so," Bud said. "But he left a lot of his tools and clothes and furniture. Like he got up and drove off in the middle of the night."
"How else do shiftless hippies know how to do it?" Herman looked past Bud to 107 Oakdale. A metal "For Sale" sign was stuck in the grass, its hinged metal face swinging in the faint breeze. Bud had explained the property wasn't a crime scene anymore because there was no evidence of any crime. A new neighbor would be moving in soon, now that the bank had taken it over. There was no way such prime real estate would stay on the market for long, what with the mountains becoming such a desirable destination and all, like the Chamber of Commerce said.
"Hard to believe he killed a poor old woman over a property stob," Bud said.
"Well, that's Tennessee for you. And hippies."
"The M.E. over there said she bled to death real slow. She might even have still been alive when he poured the cement over her."
Cement. Herman looked over at the Devereaux property, the site of the new apartment complex. Those Texas developers hadn't wasted any time, they'd moved in the backhoes and bulldozers and already a cement mixer was maneuvering to pour the oversize footers, beeping as it backed up, its gray sluice chute extended.
"So, you sure you didn't see nothing?" Bud's mouth was tucked in tight at the corners, but Herman stared straight into his own reflection doubled back in Bud's sunglasses.
"I'm a big fan of this Community Watch program, but even neighbors can't keep track of every little thing that goes on. Crosses the line into nosiness."
"Reckon so."
"It's just as well," Herman said. "That fellow didn't have any sense of pride nor place. Just look at that fence post up yonder, leaning like a Thursday drunk."
Bud looked at the fence at 107 Oakdale, then at the construction site. "Going to get real crowded around here soon."
"They call it 'progress,' I reckon."
"Well, let me know if you remember anything. I got to get on to the real cases, not make garbage runs for Tennessee." Bud started to the sidewalk, back to the white picket gate and his patrol car.
"Don't lose no sleep over him," Herman called after Bud, over the rumble of the earth machines. "To run out on a mortgage like that, and to leave the place in such a mess, it goes to show he had no respect."
Bud stopped at the gate. "You said 'had,' Herman. Past tense."
"He's past tense to me. We don't need people like that around, them who think their way is the only way."
Bud nodded and lifted his hand in a half-wave, then climbed into his cruiser and eased up the street.
The redheaded girl passed in the other lane on her bicycle, the shaggy mutt running down the street after her, barking and snapping at the bike's rear tire. That dog wasn't as bad as its former master. At least the dog had a sense of territory. And it kept its bones buried.
Herman looked once more at the construction site, the men in their hard hats milling around the loud machines. The cement would be hard by sundown. New neighbors on the way. More barbarians at the gate. But, for now, the fences were mended and order restored.
He went into his garage to clean his tools.
THE END
Return to Curtains Table of Contents
Return to Master Table of Contents
THE AGREEMENT
By J.A. Konrath
Hutson closed his eyes and swallowed hard, trying to stop sweating. On the table, in the pot, thirty thousand dollars worth of chips formed a haphazard pyramid. Half of those chips were his. The other half belonged to the quirky little mobster in the pink suit that sat across from him.
"I'll see it."
The mobster pushed more chips into the pile. He went by the street nick Little Louie. Hutson didn't know his last name, and had no real desire to learn it. The only thing he cared about was winning this hand. He cared about it a great deal, because Bernard Hutson did not have the money to cover the bet. Seven hours ago he was up eighteen grand, but since then he'd been steadily losing and extending his credit and losing and extending his credit. If he won this pot, he'd break even.
If he didn't, he owed thirty thousand dollars that he didn't have to a man who had zero tolerance for welchers.
Little Louie always brought two large bodyguards with him when he gambled. These bodyguards worked according to a unique payment plan. They would hurt a welcher in relation to what he owed. An unpaid debt of one hundred dollars would break a finger. A thousand would break a leg.
Thirty thousand defied the imagination.
Hutson wiped his forehead on his sleeve and stared at his hand, praying it would be good enough.
Little Louie dealt them each one more card. When the game began, all six chairs had been full. Now, at almost five in the morning, the only two combatants left were Hutson and the mobster. Both stank of sweat and cigarettes. They sat at a greasy wooden card table in somebody's kitchen, cramped and red-eyed and exhausted.
One of Louie's thugs sat on a chair in the corner, snoring with a deep bumble-bee buzz. The other was looking out of the grimy eighth story window, the fire escape blocking his view of the city. Each men had more scars on their knuckles than Hutson had on his entire body.
Scary guys.
Hutson picked up the card and said a silent prayer before looking at it.
A five.
That gave him a full house, fives over threes. A good hand. A very good hand.
"Your bet," Little Louie barked. The man in the pink suit boasted tiny, cherubic features and black rat eyes. He didn't stand over five four, and a pathetic little blonde moustache sat on his upper lip like a bug. Hutson had joined the game on suggestion of his friend Ray. Ray had left hours ago, when Hutson was still ahead. Hutson should have left with him. He hadn't. And now, he found himself throwing his last two hundred dollars worth of chips into the pile, hoping Little Louie wouldn't raise him.
Little Louie raised him.
"I'm out of chips," Hutson said.
"But you're good for it, right? You are good for it?"
The question was moot. The mobster had made crystal clear, when he extended the first loan, that if Hutson couldn't pay it back, he would hurt him.
"I'm very particular when it comes to debts. When the game ends, I want all debts paid within an hour. In cash. If not, my boys will have to damage you according to what you owe. That's the agreement, and you're obliged to follow it, to the letter."
"I'm good for it."
Hutson borrowed another five hundred and asked for the cards to be shown.
Little Louie had four sevens. That beat a full house.
Hutson threw up on the table.
"I take it I won," grinned Little Louie, his cheeks brightening like a maniacal elf.
Hutson wiped his mouth and stared off to the left of the room, avoiding Little Louie's gaze.
"I'll get the money," Hutson mumbled, knowing full well that he couldn't.
"Go ahead and make your call." Little Louie stood up, stretched. "Rocko, bring this man a phone."
Rocko lifted his snoring head in a moment of confusion. "What boss?"
"Bring this guy a phone, so he can get the money he owes me."
Rocko heaved himself out of his chair and went to the kitchen counter, grabbing Little Louie's cellular and bringing it to Hutson.
Hutson looked over at Little Louie, then at Rocko, then at Little Louie again.
"What do you mean?" he finally asked.
"What do you mean?" mimicked Little Louie in a high, whiny voice. Both Rocko and the other thug broke up at this, giggling like school girls. "You don't think I'm going to let you walk out of here, do you?"
"You said..."
"I said you have an hour to get the money. I didn't say you could leave to get it. I'm still following the agreement to the letter. So call somebody up and get them to bring it here."
Hutson felt sick again.
"You don't look so good." Little Louie furrowed his brow in mock-concern. "Want an antacid?"
The thugs giggled again.
"I...I don't have anyone I can call," Hutson stammered.
"Call your buddy, Ray. Or maybe your mommy can bring the money."
"Mommy." Rocko snickered. "You ought to be a comedian, boss. You'd kill 'em."
Little Louie puffed out his fat little chest and belched.
"Better get to it, Mr. Hutson. You only have fifty-five minutes left."
Hutson took the phone in a trembling hand, and called Ray. It rang fifteen times, twenty, twenty-five.
Little Louie walked over, patted Hutson's shoulder. "I don't think they're home. Maybe you should try someone else."
Hutson fought nausea, wiped the sweat off of his neck, and dialled another number. His ex-girlfriend, Dolores. They broke up last month. Badly.
A man answered.
"Can I speak to Dolores?"
"Who the hell is this?"
"It's Hutson."
"What the hell do you want?"
"Please let me speak to Dolores, it's real important."
Little Louie watched, apparently drinking in the scene. Hutson had a feeling the mobster didn't care about the money, that he'd rather watch his men inflict some major pain.
"Dolores, this is Hutson."
"What do you want?"
"I need some money. I owe a gambling debt and..."
She hung up on him before he got any farther.
Hutson squeezed his eyes shut. Thirty thousand dollars worth of pain. What would they start with? His knees? His teeth? Jesus, his eyes?
Hutson tried his parents. They picked up on the sixth ring.
"Mom?" This brought uncontrollable laughter from the trio. "I need some money, fast. A gambling debt. They're going to hurt me."
"How much money?"
"Thirty grand. And it need it in forty-five minutes."
There was a lengthy pause.
"When are you going to grow up, Bernard?"
"Mom..."
"You can't keep expecting me and your father to pick up after you all the time. You're a grown man Bernard."
Hutson mopped his forehead with his sleeve.
"Mom, I'll pay you back, I swear to God. I'll never gamble again."
An eternity of silence passed.
"Maybe you'll learn a lesson from this, son. A lesson your father and I obviously never taught you."
"Mom, for God's sake! They're going to hurt me!"
"I'm sorry. You got yourself into this, you'll have to get yourself out."
"Mom! Please!"
The phone went dead.
"Yeah, parents can be tough." Little Louie rolled his head around on his chubby neck, making a sound like a crackling cellophane bag. "That's why I killed mine."
Hutson cradled his face in his hands and tried to fight back a sob. He lost. He was going to be hurt. He was going to be very badly hurt, over a long period of time. And no one was going to help him.
"Please," he said, in a voice he didn't recognize. "Just give me a day or two. I'll get the money."
Little Louie shook his head. "That ain't the deal. You agreed to the terms, and those terms were to the letter. You still have half an hour. See who else you can call."
Hutson brushed away his tears and stared at the phone, praying for a miracle. Then he had an idea.
He called the police.
He dialled 911, then four more numbers so it looked like it was a normal call. A female officer answered.
"Chicago Police Department."
"This is Hutson. This is a matter of life and death. Bring 30,000 dollars over to 1357 Ontario, apartment 506."
"Sir, crank calls on the emergency number is a crime, punishable by a fine of five hundred dollars and up to thirty days in prison."
"Listen to me. Please. They want to kill me."
"Who does, sir?"
"These guys. It's a gambling debt. They're going to hurt me. Get over here."
"Sir, having already explained the penalty for crank calls..."
The phone was ripped from Hutson's hands by Rocko and handed to Little Louie.
"I'm sorry. It won't happen again." Little Louie hung up and waggled a finger at Hutson. "I'm very disappointed in you, Mr. Hutson. After all, you had agreed to my terms."
Hutson began to cry. He cried like a first grader with a skinned knee. He cried for a long time, before finally getting himself under control.
"It's time." Little Louie glanced at his watch and smiled. "Start with his fingers."
"Please don't hurt me..."
Rocko and the other thug moved in. Hutson dodged them and got on his knees in front of Little Louie.
"I'll do anything," he pleaded. "Anything at all. Name it. Just name it. But please don't hurt me."
"Hold it boys." Little Louie raised his palm. "I have an idea."
A small ray of hope penetrated Hutson.
"Anything. I'll do anything."
Little Louie took out a long, thin cigarillo and nipped off the end, swallowing it.
"There was a guy, about six years ago, who was in the same situation you're in now."
He put the end of the cigar in his mouth and rolled it around on his fat, gray tongue.
"This guy also said he would do anything, just so I didn't hurt him. Remember that fellas?"
Both bodyguards nodded.
"He finally said, what he would do, is put his hand on a stove burner for ten seconds. He said he would hold his own hand on the burner, for ten whole seconds."
Little Louie produced a gold Dunhill and lit the cigar, rolling it between his chubby fingers while drawing hard.
"He only lasted seven, and we had to hurt him anyway." Little Louie sucked on the stogie, and blew out a perfect smoke ring. "But I am curious to see if it could be done. The whole ten seconds."
Little Louie looked at Hutson, who was still kneeling before him.
"If you can hold your right hand on a stove burner for ten seconds, Mr. Hutson, I'll relieve you of your debt and you can leave without anyone hurting you."
Hutson blinked several times. How hot did a stove burner get? How seriously would he be hurt?
Not nearly as much as having thirty thousand dollars worth of damage inflicted upon him.
But a stove burner? Could he force himself to keep his hand on it for that long?
Did he have any other choice?
"I'll do it."
Little Louie smiled held out a hand to help Hutson to his feet.
"Of course, if you don't do it, the boys will still have to work you over. You understand."
Hutson nodded, allowing himself to be led into the kitchen.
The stove was off-white, a greasy Kenmore, with four electric burners. The heating elements were each six inches in diameter, coiled into spirals like a whirlpool swirl. They were black, but Hutson knew when he turned one on it would glow orange.
Little Louie and his bodyguards stepped behind him to get a better look.
"It's electric," noted Rocko.
Little Louie frowned. "The other guy used a gas stove. His sleeve caught on fire. Remember that?"
The thugs giggled. Hutson picked the lower left hand burner and turned it on the lowest setting.
Little Louie wasn't impressed.
"Hey, switch it up higher than that."
"You didn't say how high it had to be when we made the agreement." Hutson spoke fast, relying on the mobster's warped sense of fairness. "Just that I had to keep it on for ten seconds."
"It was inferred it would be on the hottest."
"I can put it on low and still follow the deal to the letter."
Little Louie considered this, then nodded.
"You're right. You're still following it to the letter. Leave it on low then."
It didn't matter, because already the burner was fiery orange. Rocko leaned over and spat on it, and the saliva didn't even have a chance to drip through the coils before sizzling away and evaporating.
"I think it's hot," Rocko said.
Hutson stared at the glowing burner. He held his trembling hand two inches above it. The heat was excruciating. Hutson's palm began to sweat and the hair above his knuckles curled and he fought the little voice in his brain that screamed get your hand away!
"Well, go ahead." Little Louie held up a gold pocket watch. "I'll start when you do. Ten whole seconds."
"Sweet Jesus in heaven help me," thought Hutson.
He bit his lip and slapped his hand down on to the burner.
There was an immediate frying sound, like bacon in a pan. The pain was instant and searing. Hutson screamed and screamed, the coils burning away the skin on his palm, burning into the flesh, blistering and bubbling, melting the muscle and fat, Hutson screaming louder now, smoke starting to rise, Little Louie sounding off the seconds, a smell like pork chops filling Hutson's nostrils, pain beyond intense, screaming so high there wasn't any sound, can't keep it there anymore, Jesus no more no more and...
Hutson yanked his hand from the burner, trembling, feeling faint, clutching his right hand at the wrist and stumbling to the sink, turning on the cold water, putting his charred hand under it, losing consciousness, everything going black.
He woke up lying on the floor, the pain in his hand a living thing, his mouth bleeding from biting his lower lip. His face contorted and he yelled from the anguish.
Little Louie stood over him, holding the pocket watch. "That was only seven seconds."
Hutson's scream could have woken the dead. It was full of heart-wrenching agony and fear and disgust and pity. It was the scream of the man being interrogated by the Gestapo. The scream of the woman having a Caesarean without anaesthetic. The scream of a father in a burning, wrecked car turning to see his baby on fire.
The scream of a man without hope.
"Don't get upset." Little Louie offered him a big grin. "I'll let you try it again."
The thugs hauled Hutson to his feet, and he whimpered and passed out. He woke up on the floor again, choking. Water had been thrown in his face.
Little Louie shook his head, sadly. "Come on Mr. Hutson. I haven't got all day. I'm a busy man. If you want to back out, the boys can do their job. I want to warn you though, a thirty grand job means we'll put your face on one of these burners, and that would just be the beginning. Make your decision."
Hutson got to his feet, knees barely able to support him, breath shallow, hand hurting worse than any pain he had ever felt. He didn't want to look at it, found himself doing it anyway, and stared at the black, inflamed flesh in a circular pattern on his palm. Hardly any blood. Just raw, exposed, gooey cooked muscle where the skin had fried away.
Hutson bent over and threw up.
"Come on, Mr. Hutson. You can do it. You came so close, I'd hate to have to cripple you permanently."
Hutson tried to stagger to the door to get away, but was held back before he took two steps.
"The stove is over here, Mr. Hutson." Little Louie's black rat eyes sparkled like polished onyx.
Rocko steered Hutson back to the stove. Hutson stared down at the orange glowing burner, blackened in several places where parts of his palm had stuck and cooked to cinder. The pain was pounding. He was dazed and on the verge of passing out again. He lifted his left hand over the burner.
"Nope. Sorry Mr. Hutson. I specifically said it had to be your right hand. You have to use your right hand, please."
Could he put his right hand on that burner again? Hutson didn't think he could, in his muddied, agony-spiked brain. He was sweating and cold at the same time, and the air swam around him. His body shook and trembled. If he were familiar with the symptoms, Hutson might have known he was going into shock. But he wasn't a doctor, and he couldn't think straight anyway, and the pain, oh Jesus, the awful pain, and he remembered being five years old and afraid of dogs, and his grandfather had a dog and made him pet it, and he was scared, so scared that it would bite, and his grandfather grabbed his hand and put it toward the dog's head...
Hutson put his hand back on the burner.
"One...............two..............."
Hutson screamed again, searing pain bringing him out of shock. His hand reflexively grabbed the burner, pushing down harder, muscles squeezing, the old burns set aflame again, blistering, popping...
"...............three..............."
Take it off! Take it off! Screaming, eyes squeezed tight, shaking his head like a hound with a fox in his teeth, sounds of cracking skin and sizzling meat...
"...............four...............five..............."
Black smoke, rising, a burning smell, that's me cooking, muscle melting and searing away, nerves exposed, screaming even louder, pull it away!, using the other hand to hold it down...
"...............six...............seven..............."
Agony so exquisite, so absolute, unending, entire arm shaking, falling to knees, keeping hand on burner, opening eyes and seeing it sear at eye level, turning grey like a well-done steak, meat charring...
"Smells pretty good," says one of the thugs.
"Like a hamburger."
"A hand-burger."
Laughter.
"...............eight...............nine..............."
No flesh left, orange burner searing bone, scorching, blood pumping onto heating coils, beading and evaporating like fat on a griddle, veins and arteries searing...
"........ten!"
Take it off! Take it off!
It's stuck.
"Look boss, he's stuck!"
Air whistled out of Hutson's lungs like a horse whimpering. His hand continued to fry away. He pulled feebly, pain at a peak, all nerves exposed--pull dammit! --blacking out, everything fading...
Hutson awoke on the floor, shaking, with more water in his face.
"Nice job Mr. Hutson." Little Louie stared down at him. "You followed the agreement. To the letter. You're off the hook."
Hutson squinted up at the mobster. The little man seemed very far away.
"Since you've been such a sport, I've even called an ambulance for you. They're on their way. Unfortunately, the boys and I won't be here when it arrives."
Hutson tried to say something. His mouth wouldn't form words.
"I hope we can gamble again soon, Mr. Hutson. Maybe we could play a hand or two. Get it? A hand?"
The thugs tittered. Little Louie bent down, close enough for Hutson to smell his cigar breath.
"Oh, there's one more thing, Mr. Hutson. Looking back on our agreement, I said you had to hold your right hand on the burner for ten seconds. I said you had to follow that request to the letter. But, you know what? I just realized something pretty funny. I never said you had to turn the burner on."
Little Louie left, followed by his body guards, and Bernard Hutson screamed and screamed and just couldn't stop.
THE END
Learn more about J.A. Konrath
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###
"---KILL YOUR DARLINGS---"
I was wiping down the counter with an old shirt rag when he came in. The man in the yellow slicker. I saw him without looking up, drank him in the way my customers downed their Scotch and water. Years of bartending had made me a quick study. Call it survival instinct.
Big guy, woolly Groucho Marx eyebrows, but his nose was small and sharp, more like a hawk's bill than an eagle's beak. He was an easy 6' 2" if he was an inch, and he was at least an inch. He was slouching down into the collar of his slicker, trying to make himself invisible. Fat chance.
He shook off the afternoon rain that had collected on his broad shoulders. Even in the dim light of neon beer signs, I could see his black smoldering eyes roaming over the joint. He wasn't here for the atmosphere, though we had plenty of that. A television in the corner, tuned to a 24-hour sports station, the sound turned down. A row of ragged barstools, their cotton stuffing oozing out from under the vinyl seats. A jukebox by the restrooms, broken down and so old that it featured "The Brand New Hit from Hank Williams!" A couple of regulars slouched in a booth, deep in their cups despite the early hour, whiling away the day until it was time to get down to some serious drinking. And all of that was doubled back in the long, foggy mirror that covered the wall behind the bar, the mirror that had a perfect round hole from a passionate gunshot maybe twenty years ago. He wasn't here for the scenery.
And he wasn't here for the smell. Stale urine laced with crusted vomit that never completely dried, just sort of congealed half-heartedly. The musty smell of the soggy carpet, worn down to the threads or, in places, all the way through to the rough pine planks underneath. The odor of old cigarettes which had seeped so deeply into the walls that you could kill a nicotine craving by chewing on a piece of the peeling wallpaper. And, of course, the grainy smell of every kind of imbibement known to man, at least the stuff that was under twenty bucks a bottle.
No, despite all this decadent splendor, he was here for something besides a blind date with a watered-down slug of rotgut. He was looking for someone. He walked across the floor to the chipped bar and sat down in front of me.
"What's your pleasure?" I asked, still not looking up, rubbing on a cigarette burn I had been working over for a few weeks.
"Business is my pleasure," he said, his voice husky and raw, his throat a clearinghouse for phlegm and bitterness---
"Honey, time to go to work," my wife called from the kitchen. She put up with my writing, humored my foolish ambitions, and served as a whimsical sounding board for my evolving plots. She even let me use our apartment's overgrown pantry as a study. At least my new hobby kept me at home, unlike my earlier flings with surfboarding and collecting Civil war relics. My writing was fine with her, as long as the bills were paid.
I gulped down the gritty dregs of my coffee and looked at my wristwatch. "Coming, dear."
I left Marco in the middle of his story, along with the guy with the raincoat. I thought of him as "Fred," but that would probably change to something more noble and tough, like "Roman." Yeah, Roman would work just fine. Roman would be looking for his wife, who had run off in the middle of the night with his best friend. Naw, that was too banal---
"Honey!"
"Okay, I'm really coming." I hit the "save" button on the word processor and jogged out of the study and into the kitchen and gave Karen a husbandly peck on the cheek. I turned before going out the door. "Be home this evening?"
"No, I've got to pick up Susanne after her soccer and then I've got a fundraiser meeting at the library."
"Then I'll grab a burger on the way back in."
"No, you're going to heat up the pot roast and microwave some potatoes for us."
"Oh, yeah. Bye. Love you."
I was two minutes late at the magazine stand where I worked. I liked the job. From my position at the register, I had a clear view of the street, and the company was good, mostly educated people who actually relished honest differences of opinion. And it was great place for scoping out characters, finding faces that I could press into the two-dimensional world of fiction.
Henry, the store owner, gave me a little ribbing about being late, but he was never in a hurry to be relieved. I tried to picture his life outside the shop, but when my imagination followed him down the street, with a couple of newspapers tucked under his pudgy elbow, my imagination always gave out when he turned the corner. He was like a minor character who served his plot purpose and then dutifully shuffled off the page.
I restocked a few monthlies and had to rotate a couple of the afternoon editions that had just rolled off the presses. One of my favorite parts of the job was getting to smell the fresh paper and ink. I'd open a box of magazines or comic books and take a big relaxing sniff, like one of those turtlenecked actors "savoring the aroma" of a cup of expensive French roast.
To me, words on paper were magic: entire universes lined up in neat rows on the bookshelves, filled with heroes and heroines that dared to dream; fantastic voyages to the outermost edges of the cosmos or the inner depths of the mind; unthinkable horrors and profound rhapsodies; the vast revelations of consciousness, all for cover price and tax.
I was arranging the cigar showcase when Harriett Weatherspoon came in. She had parked her poodle by the door, and it pressed the black dot of its nose against the glass.
"Hello, Sil," she said, in her canary voice.
"Afternoon, Mrs. Weatherspoon. What will it be today?"
"I think I'll just browse through the bestsellers today."
"We've got the new Michele McMartin in. And probably a R.C. Adams or two. Seems like they come out every couple of months nowadays."
"Now, Sil, you know those are ghost-written. They come out of one of those prose-generating computer programs I read about in Writer's Digest."
"Million-sellers all. What does that say about the state of literacy today?"
"Charles Dickens is rolling over in his grave."
"Along with the ghosts of several Christmases."
Mrs. Weatherspoon bought a paperback and a couple of nature magazines and went out into the bright spring afternoon. She stopped at the door and unhitched her poodle's leash, and for a split-second, I thought she was going to hop on the little varmint and ride off into the sunset. But she wrapped the leash around her wrist and went down the sidewalk, chin-first.
I was watching her slip into the human stream when I saw the man in the raincoat. He stood out from the crowd because the coat was canary yellow and also because the day was sunny and warm, with not a cloud above the skyline. Unexpected showers occasionally blew in off the coast, but most of the other pedestrians needed only an umbrella in their armpit for security. The raincoat-wearer was on the edge of a meaty crush at the corner, waiting for the light to change, and in the next moment he was gone.
"Canary yellow," I said to the empty store. "Good piece of detail. Roman's slicker will be canary yellow instead of just plain yellow."
I searched my memory to see if I could dredge any more fictional sludge out of the fleeting vision. He had been Roman's height, and he had a jot of black hair. Not the dark brown that most people call black. This was shoe-polish black. But I could steal no other features from him, because I had only seen him from behind.
Arriving home after work, I started warming up dinner and went into the study. I turned on the word processor and began spewing words, with my tongue pressed lightly between my teeth the way it does when I'm onto something and I forgot where I am, when I get sucked into a world that is trying to create itself before my eyes.
"Business is my pleasure," he said, his voice a clearinghouse for phlegm and bitterness. I hadn't heard that corny line in a few months, but I wasn't about to bring up his lack of originality.
I looked into the pits of his eyes. His pupils were as dark as his shoe-polish black hair, and they were ringed by an unusual reddish-gold color. Our eyes met for only a second, and mine went back down to the bar.
In that instant, I had seen plenty. Pain. Anger. And unless I'm a bad judge of character, which I'm not, a touch of crazy as well.
"Odd place to do business," I said, with practiced carelessness.
"I'm looking for somebody." His voice was grave-dirt.
"Ain't we all?"
I saw movement out of the corner of my eye, and suddenly his hand was on the bar, palm-down. The back of his hand was a roadmap of blue veins, lined with tiny creases, and wiry black hairs stuck out in all directions. But what really caught my eye was the fifty-dollar bill underneath.
"Bartenders see things, know things," he muttered under his breath.
It was an occupational hazard, all right. I saw lots of things and knew things I wouldn't tell for twenty times that amount. But a fifty didn't walk in every day, and a G-note never did. I nodded my head slightly, to let him know I understood.
His hand suddenly balled into a fist, his veins becoming swollen with rage.
I smelled something. Smoke. I ran out to rescue the pot roast and was just sliding its black carcass out of the oven when my wife and daughter walked in.
"Order out for pizza?" I asked in greeting.
We ate the pizza, then I plowed ahead with the story. After a couple of pages, I was fighting for words, torturing myself through painful paragraphs, dangling from the cliff-edge of plot resolution like a sixth-grader's participle. What do I do with these people? I needed some fresh ideas.
After work the next day, I stopped down at Rocco's Place. Rocco was a short, paunchy Italian who was born into bartending. He wasn't a close friend, but I figured he was fair game as a model for my story. Marco. Rocco. Close, but he'd never know the difference. He probably dangled from the cliff-edge of literacy by a thin rope anyway.
His bar was much cleaner than the one in the story, but this place was too sterile to make good fiction. Readers wanted fantasy, not reality. They got plenty of reality. They got plenty of hard-backed chairs and plastic potted plants, scores of vapid muzak melodies piped through polyester speaker grills. I sat in one of the hard-backed chairs and ordered a beer.
"You that writer fella?" Rocco set a frothy brew in front of my face.
I was surprised. I didn't make a habit of telling people I was a "writer." I didn't wear tweed jackets with leather elbow patches or chew thoughtfully on a thick maple pipe. I might be crazy for trying to write, but I wasn't insane enough to advertise. But it was also nice to have my humble accomplishments recognized.
"I've published a little," I said, trying not to swell.
He wasn't looking at me anyway. He was wiping down the bar that was already so shiny customers were afraid to set down their drinks.
"Fella was in looking for you."
I stopped in mid-hoist, sloshing a little sticky liquid on my cuff. Who would look for me in a bar? I wasn't Hemingway. I could barely afford this beer, much less becoming one of Rocco's house fixtures.
"Big guy. Kinda mean-lookin'."
I laughed. "Let me guess. He thinks I'm messing with his wife, right?"
"Some people don't think it's funny. Especially certain husbands." His words were clipped and he kept his eyes down. "You're an okay guy. Don't spend a fortune, but ya never cause trouble. Been known to tip."
I was wondering if he was waiting for me to grease his palm, perhaps with my measly pocket change. But he continued.
"I know it's none of my business. But I thought I'd give you some advice, friend to friend. Keep an eye out for him. He's the dangerous type. Seen 'em before." He nodded to the perfect round bullet hole that was the only blemish in the clean silver glass of the bar mirror.
I played along. "What did he look like?"
"Beefy guy, black hair, black like licorice kinda. Weird eyes, a color you hardly ever see. And he was wearing a big yella raincoat, and we ain't had rain for a week."
Karen must have put him up to this. She must have read my work-in-progress and planned this little joke. Surely she didn't think it was me that was having the affair?
I paid Rocco and left him to wipe up the ring my half-empty mug had made. I ran the three blocks home and went into the study to re-read what I had written last night. Sweat was pooling under my arms and my scalp was tingling, the way they always did when I was lost in an unfolding plot, only this time my intestines were unfolding along with it.
His hand suddenly balled into a fist, his veins becoming swollen with rage.
I was staring at that fist, that big hunk of ham that looked like it could smash a city bus. I waited for it to relax, for the little muscles to stop twitching. When it was back in his pocket, leaving the bill, he said, "Wimpy little smart-assed writer type. Shifty-eyed know-it-all, been in here with a tall blonde. You woulda noticed her. Green eyes. Legs all the way down to the floor."
I had noticed, all right. Some hoity-toity wiseacre getting a looker like that, and us lonely bartenders paying through the nose for our company.
"What of 'em?"
"The fifty's for you. A fringe benefit of knowing things. And it's got a twin here in my pocket."
"Knowin' is cheap, but sayin' ain't."
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a greasy smile slip across his face.
"Double or nothing, then. The double's for forgetting you ever saw me."
"Saw who?"
He laid another three fifties down on the bar. I eyed the joint in the mirror to make sure no one was watching. Then I swept the money away with my towel and had it in my pocket, where it would stay until I caught up with Leanna tonight.
"Lives three blocks down. Number 216 East."
He stood up, making an awfully big shadow on the scum-stained bar. Then the shadow, and the man in the yellow slicker, were gone. I felt sorry for that weeny little guy. Any minute now, he was gonna hear a knocking on his door---
The words danced in golden orange on the black screen of the word processor. Bad writing. A little too much Spillane and Chandler . The story had gotten away. Time to dive in, chop out its heart. Where to begin? Better finish reading it first.
A pounding on the door interrupted my thoughts.
---knocking on his door, then he's going to hear a yell, a crazy voice of phlegm and bitterness---
The crazy voice that was outside the apartment door, yelling "Hey, scumbag, open up or I'll bust the door down"; yelling "I'll make you pay for all the misery you caused"; yelling "Nobody's going to mess around with my wife, especially some snot-nosed fancy boy like you."
---kicking at the door with those big heavy boots, reaching inside that canary yellow slicker, grabbing a fistful of cold gat---
And the boots were on my door, making the hinges groan under the splintery strain.
---busting through and standing over the poor little loser, who's lookin' up at his killer, beggin' , pleadin', offerin' up money he ain't got and prayin' to a God he don't believe in---
And the man in the yellow slicker is standing at the study door, holding a gun, his reddish-gold eyes blazing with insane hatred. I can see his finger tightening on the trigger. It's like a Stephen King story gone south, without the plot twists. Writer's character becomes real and comes to get him. It's been done too many times. Too trite even for me.
But the smell of metal and tension is too real, and the door is hanging like a wino from a boxcar.
---and he's sittin' at his little writing desk with his wimpy finger over the "delete" button, all he's got to do is press it and the man will go away. But he can't bring himself to do it. His work is too precious, too IMPORTANT to wipe out.
I take two hot slugs to the head, feel my brains begin their awkward eternal journey to the study wall. In its last moment of awareness, the ruined cerebellum searches frantically for a tidy ending, some way to bring the plot to completion, only it's much too far gone, much too hopeless, and the curtain of darkness...no, the veil of shadows...no, the wall of nothingness descends...
When Sil came home from work, he found Karen sitting in the study, staring at the word processor. The screen was full, and her face was orange in its glow. "What are you doing in here?" he asked.
"Oh, just messing around."
"Working on something?"
"I figured since everybody else was playing 'writer,' I might as well try my hand at it. Put myself in your shoes, to coin another cliché. Walk a mile in your gloves. But it's a lot harder than I thought. I believe I'd better take Faulkner's advice and kill my darlings."
She was reaching out to press the "delete" button when Sil caught her wrist. "Don't I get to read it first?"
"Well, if you really want to. But promise not to make fun of me."
"After some of the garbage I've written?"
Karen got up and let Sil take the chair. She said, "At least one good thing came out of this. Now I understand how you get so caught up in this stuff. You writers are nuts."
"That's we writers, dear." Sil laughed. He loved her. He began reading.
I was wiping down the bar with an old shirt rag when he came in. The man in the yellow slicker. I saw him without looking up...
THE END
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###
"Have them live here? No way," Richard said shaking his head.
The request wasn't exactly a revelation. The writing had been on the wall for at least a year. The intervals between tear-sodden appeals for cash had become shorter and shorter, and the sums had gotten larger and larger. At first, it was the odd fifty or sixty bucks now and then. But recently, it was a regular three hundred every month. Michelle's parents promised to pay it back and Michelle covered for them. But he wasn't a fool. Ted and Eleanor weren't generating the kind of income to pay back their loans. They lived in a financial minefield of their own creation and this time they'd stepped on all the mines at once--taking out more than just themselves.
It was so unfair. After five years of marriage, he and Michelle had just gotten themselves straight. The mortgage payments were manageable at last. The credit cards and student loans were paid off. The new Honda had been bought with cash. They'd limped along for years with the old Corolla while they'd saved because they didn't want another loan on their credit report. All this had been achieved through careful money management and sacrifice. He was so proud. They'd come so far. They were just starting to live the life they'd promised themselves when they got engaged.
That was what made his in-laws' screw-ups so much more galling. Twice Richard's age, Ted and Eleanor treated money with the mentality of teenagers. Only a couple of years from retirement, they had nothing to show for their lives. Their crummy, two-bedroom hovel was rented. The car was leased. Pensions and life insurance had been cashed in years ago. Retirement wasn't an option for either of them. They would have to work until they died.
Damn the American dream, Richard thought. That was the cause of Ted and Eleanor's monetary nightmares. They had to show everyone they were keeping up with the Joneses. They'd spent a lifetime trying to project the superficial image that they were at top of their game, except their lifestyle was built on credit.
He was thankful Ted and Eleanor hadn't passed on their trait to Michelle, although there had been problems when they'd gotten married. She'd run up a string of college loans because her parents were unable to support her. Only that January had he and Michelle cleared the last of her college debts. But the nail in her credit report's coffin was the credit card she'd underwritten for her parents when no self-respecting bank would issue them one. They'd maxed it out in months, with the promise they would pay it off. They never had.
"They are going to be evicted in two weeks. Do you want them to live on the streets?" Michelle demanded, close to tears.
"They're adults. It's not my problem, is it?"
"Richard!"
He snorted, getting up from the kitchen table. It wasn't like she disagreed with him. She hated what her parents had put her through. But none of that counted when parental guilt was in full effect. He leaned against the wall and crossed his arms.
"You really want them to live here?"
"We don't have a choice. Why don't you want them here?"
"Because this is our home--yours and mine--and no one else's. They may be your parents but they're still strangers to me. I would never feel comfortable with them here. I would feel like I would have to be on my best behavior. I would never be myself." He sighed. "You realize that our sex life would be over."
Michelle frowned. "Oh, Richard."
"It would be, you know. I couldn't make love with them in the next room."
"Is that all you're worried about?"
"No, it isn't. It's just one thing. I don't want to be paying for a home that your parents will be getting more out of than I will."
"Don't you mean we? The house we're paying for... My parents getting more out of it than we will..."
Richard snorted again. "See? They're not even here and they're making our life a misery."
"So, what do you suggest?"
"Tell your dad to get off his butt and get a job." Richard couldn't believe how old that comment made him sound.
"He's got a job."
"Oh yeah, it's a doozie."
Michelle's dad hadn't worked for years since he was "laid off." He'd actually been canned for some stunt that never made the light of day. Ever since, he'd sunk thousands into late night TV get-rich schemes that had only gone to make someone else rich. Richard shuddered to think what the latest flash in the pan was.
"I bet you'd be singing a different tune if this was your parents. They don't have jobs."
"Don't go there."
"Why not?"
He sighed. "It's not an issue, is it? My parents are retired now. They have good pensions. Money isn't a problem for them."
"What if their pensions dried up?"
"They wouldn't." Richard paused. "This isn't getting us anywhere."
"Okay, you've made it very clear that you don't want them living with us." Razor-edge bitterness barbed Michelle's words. "We have other options."
"Like what?"
"We can pay their rent?"
"What?" Richard was incredulous. "And pay their back rent, I suppose?"
"Obviously."
"Well, you can think again."
"Okay, we buy a second home."
Richard was laughing. "No way."
"It'll be an investment."
Some investment, he thought. His in-laws wouldn't treat their investment with any respect. Besides being a liability with money, they lived like slobs. Every house they'd rented ended up looking like a war zone. They never once had a security deposit returned by a landlord.
"And how do you suggest we finance this twilight home for your parents?" he asked.
"We can use the equity we've built in this home and take out a second mortgage."
"A second mortgage! Are you crazy? We've slogged our guts to get rid of that second mortgage and you want to put us back into that hole? I'm sorry, no."
"Richard, my parents will be on streets unless we come through for them." Michelle started sobbing.
Richard plopped down in the chair next to Michelle and slipped an arm around her shoulders. He squeezed her to him. "Let me take a look at the situation and work through the figures."
Michelle threw her arms around him. "Thank you, Richard. I love you so much. I knew you'd make it work."
Richard spent the rest of the evening with a legal pad and calculator working through the various Ted and Eleanor rescue packages. Letting them move in was the cheapest option. He could see it was going to cost them a few hundred a month. Underwriting their rent was pricey. He was looking at dropping at least a grand a month to keep them housed. Buying a second home was the option he liked most, because there was some return on their sacrifice. But it would stretch their finances to the limit. They could say goodbye to the Hawaiian vacation they'd promised each other. In fact, they could kiss goodbye any luxuries for the next decade. Michelle wandered into the kitchen.
"Are you coming to bed, babe? It's after one."
Richard checked his watch. He hadn't realized. He was tired, but not from the lack of sleep. Michelle sat at the table next to him and picked up his notes.
"How's it look?"
"Expensive."
Michelle sighed and ran a hand through her tangled hair.
"Sorry." Richard tried to smile. Michelle did likewise. "I think we could cobble something together," he said.
"That's great!"
"It'll be tight, though. We'll no longer be in the position to reward ourselves--the chance to see the world, early retirement--kids." He let that one linger. "It's all gone now, if we go through with this."
She didn't hesitate. "Okay." She nodded. "What do we have to do?"
"Well, you know how I feel about them living here."
"Let's not go there."
"We could pay their rent for them, but we'd just be pouring money down the drain. However, we can just about afford to buy a small house."
Michelle beamed.
"It wouldn't be anything fancy and probably wouldn't be in the best neighborhood, but I think we could do it."
"I knew you'd work something out."
"I wouldn't be too happy. Maui is out of the question."
She flung her arms around him and crushed him in her excitement. "I don't care."
"Well, I hope you don't care too much about cable TV, dinners out, going to the movies, name brand foods or any new clothes."
"I don't."
"For all the fuss your parents have caused, it would be cheaper to have them killed."
And there it was. He'd said it--admittedly as a joke. It was an option, though--an option he hadn't consciously considered. It was a solution, an answer to his problematical in-laws. Michelle was too wrapped up in the moment and hadn't heard his joke. She cooed sweet nothings into his ear.
By just thinking of having Ted and Eleanor killed, he was crossing a line, but as much as he hated to admit it, it was a line he crossed knowingly. His murderous thought seemed extreme. He couldn't share it with Michelle--that was for sure. But it would solve things. If he bankrolled Ted and Eleanor, he incurred their current debt and at least ten to twenty years of their yet to be squandered debt. Even long after his in-laws were dead, they would still be gnawing at his finances. With compound interest, he wouldn't be free of their touch for at least forty years. It was inconceivable. Murderers didn't serve that kind of time. He struggled to see the downside, pushing morality aside. He leaned back in his chair, letting the concept soak in.
"Come on, let's go to bed." Michelle grabbed his hand and tugged at him. "I want to celebrate."
"In awhile," he said with a thin smile. "I want to double-check a couple of things."
Michelle stood. "Okay, but don't take too long about it."
"Okay."
He watched her dance back to bed, while he contemplated killing her parents.
\*\*\*
A restless night's sleep hadn't tempered his solution--it had reinforced it. He was going to kill his in-laws. It had been three a.m. before he'd gone to bed. He'd sat in the kitchen daydreaming, plotting their demise. While in bed, he'd tossed and turned--excited by the prospect. Stronger than caffeine, his ingenious idea kept him awake. Even in his unsettled sleep, he dreamed of murdering his burdensome in-laws. Surprisingly, he'd risen the following morning in fine fettle. He felt like a million bucks.
Leaning against the sink, munching on a bowl of cereal, Richard asked as casually as he could, "When's your mom and dad's eviction date?"
"Don't say eviction."
Hell, what was he meant to call it? Their involuntary departure due to irreconcilable payment terms? Eviction wasn't a pretty word and it wasn't meant to be. That was the name of the game. He tried again.
"Okay, when do they have to move out?"
"By the 20th, I think. Can I tell them the wonderful news?"
"Hold off for now. I need to get the mortgage broker to double-check my figures."
"Okay." Michelle smiled. She was so happy. Oh well, it couldn't be helped. "Maybe tonight?"
"Maybe." He smiled back.
I've got until the 20th, he thought on the commute to work. I've got two weeks to kill them.
Deciding to kill Ted and Eleanor was one thing. Doing it was another. He had to decide how, when and where. Inspiration wasn't on the right wavelength. Nothing coming through sounded workable. He wandered through his working day as a passenger, cruising past his responsibilities. At lunch, he made the obligatory phone call to the mortgage broker and realtor, and they set them in motion. He went home that evening with his cover story, but no plan for murder. Inspiration was waiting for him in the living room.
"Richard, you don't know how much we appreciate what you're doing," Ted said.
"Very generous," Eleanor echoed.
"I couldn't wait, honey. I had to tell them. Please don't be angry."
"I'm not angry," Richard said, his blood boiling. "There's nothing to be angry about."
"Richard, you're my son now. What you've done for us elevates you way above in-law status."
God forbid me ever being of your blood, you useless SOB. Richard shook Ted's proffered hand, smiling as broadly as his anger and irritation allowed. "Thanks, Ted. That means so much coming from you."
"We can go house hunting together," Eleanor suggested. "Make it a real family affair."
Over my dead body, Richard thought. "Let's not get too ahead of ourselves."
"We should celebrate," Ted announced. "Go out to dinner. How's that sound?"
"Sounds great, dad," Michelle said.
"Great," Richard agreed.
They went for a steak dinner. Ted suggested Outback. Richard said Sizzler, because it was nearer--and cheaper. He knew he would be picking up the tab--and he did. Their last meal together might be on him, but it didn't have to be an expensive one.
He was glad to get home after seeing off his in-laws. The meal together had been good, though. It made his decision so much easier. Seated face to face with them, he felt no compunction to hand them a stay of execution, but they'd been a distraction. He couldn't think seriously about killing them when they were jabbering away in front of him. Their inane chatter prevented him from concentrating. Michelle slipped her arms around his waist.
"Thanks," she said.
"For what?"
"You know." Her face filled with sadness. "I'm sorry we argued last night."
He pulled her to him and hugged her tight. "It's all right. We've got a solution now. Last night is forgotten."
"C'mon, soldier. We've got some unfinished business in the bedroom. Let's go."
\*\*\*
For Michelle's benefit, Richard pretended to go to work. He went through the usual morning routine of his shower, shave and light breakfast. The moment he hit the road he called the office requesting a floating holiday. He had to think and he couldn't do that with Michelle around or the interruptions at work. He stopped in at the first Denny's he came across. Much to the hostess' annoyance, he insisted on a booth rather than eating at the counter. He didn't want the conversation. He ordered and gazed out the window at the freeway traffic whipping by below him.
Two restless nights and he still wanted to kill Ted and Eleanor. He was sold on the concept, but not on his morality. He told himself that he wasn't evil. It was self-defense. Justifiable homicide. His livelihood was under threat and he couldn't let that happen. He had to do something about it. Any notion that he was just another criminal dissolved with his first cup of Denny's coffee.
He needed a killer, a hit man, but where was he going to find one? He didn't have a clue. Even if he did find one, how the hell would he know if he'd found a good one? It wasn't like he could pick up a copy of this month's issue of Best Buy--the Hired Killer addition. No, he couldn't count on an assassin. It was a stupid idea. He wasn't a mobster, for God's sake.
He examined his hands, turning them over and inspecting the calluses on his palms. He was good with his hands. He always had been. There wasn't anything he couldn't turn his talents to for professional results. He would treat Ted and Eleanor's death like any other DIY project. He would kill them himself.
He warmed to the idea instantly. What would be a suitable death for Ted and Eleanor? He had to come up with something that would be befitting of their lifestyle. Lifestyle, what a joke. Style was one thing absent from their lives. His waitress brought his breakfast.
He trawled through his cheesy and greasy choice. Ted & Eleanor's neighborhood wasn't the best. It was way better than it had been the year before they moved in, but it was still tarnished by its reputation. Drug dealers and felons were still a common sight. A home invasion wasn't out of character. He considered the scenario for a moment and dismissed it just as quickly. Home invasions were noisy and messy and required planning and more than one person. It wasn't going to work.
"Simple solutions are usually the best remedy."
"Huh?"
Richard's waitress smiled and refilled his coffee cup. "You seem to be trying to solve a weighty problem. People always complicate things. Most of time, the simplest solutions are the best ones."
Richard managed a smile. "You know what? I think you're right."
"I know I'm right," she said and moved on to the next table.
He finished up his meal and paid the check, leaving an over-generous tip. His coffeepot philosopher had been right. Simple was best. Getting back into his car, a plan was piecing itself together.
Richard parked on Hillcrest Drive. The road was deserted. Not many used the service road to the water plant. He stared down the hill at the run down development and particularly, at Ted and Eleanor's rental home backing onto the hillside.
From his lofty vantage point, there seemed to be no activity. Eleanor would be at work, but Ted would be there, pottering around, trying to make one of his damn fool schemes succeed. Even in Richard's short marriage to their daughter, there'd been too many. There was the property speculation deal--buy cheap properties with no money down and give them a quick makeover for a quick profit. The upshot had been a string of expensive home inspections that proved that cheap houses are cheap for a reason. Not being daft enough to buy a termite-infested shack, Ted had moved on to want ads, selling junk that no one wanted. Their garage was still chock full of trash. Buying cars from auctions to sell had been next. The city had confiscated six jalopies after multiple complaints from the neighbors. His current fad was telemarketing. Richard had no idea how that one worked...neither did Ted, in all honesty.
What stuck in Richard's throat was Ted's ridiculous belief that he was as successful as Bill Gates. Other people's successes were his successes. He put himself on the same level, never once acknowledging that he lived in near poverty, and he still had the audacity to consider himself better than Richard.
Just sitting there, Richard's blood pressure skyrocketed. Ted made him sick. He felt sorry for Eleanor for having to be married to that, especially since he was going to kill her too. But she was just as guilty. She condoned every one of Ted's harebrained schemes. She never said, "Ted, you're a grown man. Act like it." If she had, maybe her name wouldn't be on the death warrant.
He'd gone there to study their movements, understand their habits, in the hope of seeing a chink in their defenses. But he knew them already. There was nothing to learn.
Instead, Ted and Eleanor were feeding his hatred for them. He despised their squandered lives and the way they were attempting to squander his and Michelle's. He hated having to be the grown up on this one.
A speeding truck from the water plant roused Richard from his angry thoughts. The dashboard clock said it was after three. He'd been parked there for five hours. It was time to do what had to be done. He gunned the engine.
\*\*\*
A week had passed since he spent the day watching Ted and Eleanor's home, but tonight was the night he was going to do it. It was all planned, and he couldn't afford to waste any more time. The house buying pretense wasn't going to last much longer. The mortgage broker had a bank ready and waiting and house viewings with the realtor were a nightly affair. He'd turned down two excellent investment properties already. If he didn't act now, he'd end up in the financial hole he was trying to avoid.
Tonight was a night off from house hunting and that was his alibi. Richard was a minority in that he loved soccer. There was a night game in San Jose and he would be going alone. The drive to San Jose would take him past Ted and Eleanor's. He would kill them, go on to the game and return home to the shocking news. He would miss the first half, but that wouldn't matter. The game was being broadcast on the radio. He took his ticket from his breast pocket and popped his "get out of jail free" card in the glove box. He turned up the radio, listened to the game and peeled off the freeway off-ramp to Ted and Eleanor's.
Richard concealed his Honda in the park's overflow parking lot and joined the trail. It was dusk and essentially the park was closed, but it was unsupervised. Ted and Eleanor walked the trail every night to reflect on another great day in paradise. This was their main form of entertainment because it was free and their supposed love of nature could camouflage that. Richard hid himself in an avenue of trees a quarter mile from the parking lot. He slipped into coveralls, snapped on a pair of rubber gloves and pocketed a knife.
Waiting was hell. He kept swallowing, working his tongue over the roof of his mouth, and wiping his gloved hands on his coveralls. Paranoia seeped in. Maybe he'd screwed up and given himself away. With every passing second, he expected his in-laws to round the bend and the police to swoop in. He knew it was stupid. He was letting idiotic guilt take over, but he couldn't stop it.
But fear, paranoia and guilt evaporated in a second when Richard heard Ted and Eleanor approaching. Ted's inane banter cut through the night and Richard's hand tightened around the knife. He couldn't make out what was being said. It was all noise. But it didn't matter. He would pounce the moment they were level with his position.
They were laughing when Richard leapt out of the trees. Laughing at their good fortune at his expense, no doubt. Well, the laughing was over.
They gasped when he growled something and they spotted the knife glinting in the moonlight. How he wished their faces hadn't been lost in the dark.
"You've been taking advantage of me for too long." Richard didn't wait for a plea for clemency. He plunged the knife into Ted's bloated belly, swollen from sponging off others. Blood spilled over Richard's gloved hand and he pressed the blade deeper.
Ted crumpled, sliding off the blade. Eleanor screamed. In reflex, Richard lashed out with the knife, catching Eleanor's throat. She went down without another sound.
Richard rummaged through Ted's pockets for his wallet. Their deaths couldn't look motiveless. They had too look like a violent robbery carried out by a desperate junkie. Senseless tragedies like this happened every day. He jerked out Ted's wallet from the back pocket of his pants. Ted groaned and Eleanor gurgled.
Richard raced back to his Honda with the wallet and Eleanor's rings. He dumped them with the knife into a Ziploc he'd brought with him and stuffed his coveralls and rubber gloves into a trash bag. Peeling out of the parking lot, he headed for San Jose.
At a gas station outside San Jose, Richard filled up and dumped the trash bag in a nearby dumpster. Five miles from the gas station, he tossed the knife out the window and down a freeway embankment. Parking outside Spartan Stadium, he still had the wallet to get rid off. The rings and the wallet's contents he would keep for now and dispose of down a storm drain on the way home. He opened up Ted's wallet and tugged out his cash, credit cards and driver's license.
On the drive to the game, he'd been on a high, delirious to be rid of his burden, but not anymore. The driver's license pictured a man who wasn't his father-in-law. Just to reinforce the calamity, the credit cards didn't have Ted's name on them, but instead, the name Thomas Fairfax. The rings he held in his palm weren't Eleanor's. He'd killed the wrong people.
"Oh God," he murmured.
Richard stumbled into the stadium on uncertain legs, water gurgled in his ears and he couldn't breathe. He dropped Fairfax's empty wallet into a nearby trashcan. He handed his ticket to the yellow-jacketed ticket taker. He climbed the steep steps to his seat, not taking the free program offered.
Goals flew into the back of the net one after another. The San Jose Earthquakes were having a landmark game, but Richard couldn't raise a smile. The murders of two strangers weighed heavily on him, but that wasn't what was worrying him. Ted and Eleanor were still alive. That meant he had it all to do again.
The fifth goal went in and the crowd leapt to their feet. A man noticed Richard was the only one who wasn't cheering. "LA can't win them all, buddy."
Richard said nothing and the man dismissed him with a wave of his hand.
The game ended and Richard trudged back to his Honda. He'd left the car on a residential street and trash and recycle cans for the following morning's pick up blocked it in. He dumped the Fairfax's belongings in a can.
Driving home, he didn't know what to do. He couldn't use the same MO to kill Ted and Eleanor now. It was so perfect, but his bungled murders would lead to better security at the park. He couldn't afford to be hasty, but time was against him. Ted and Eleanor would be evicted in less than a week.
How could he have been so wrong? It had sounded like them. It had looked like them. How did he kill the wrong people?
Richard's question went unanswered. The eighteen-wheeler changed the subject. The semi's blowout rendered the rig helpless and the trailer section plowed into the Honda's passenger side. From the frenetic action inside the cab, the truck driver was doing a valiant job, but he lost the good fight. The eighteen-wheeler smeared Richard's car across the freeway and drove it into the median.
\*\*\*
Richard awakened in a hospital bed. Molasses-thick memories trickled back into his consciousness. Progress was slow. He tried to move but he only managed to move his head.
Suddenly with the intensity of a thunderbolt, he remembered and began to cry. The accident had left him a quadriplegic, but he wasn't crying because he was incapacitated for life. He was remembering what Michelle had said to him the day after the accident.
"We've all decided," she said. Standing on either side of her, Ted and Eleanor nodded and smiled. "There's no point in buying a second home, Mom and Dad can live with us. They will look after you while I'm at work. Just think, honey, we can all be one big happy family. It's the safest solution too. Did you know there were two murders near their home last night?"
THE END
Learn more about Simon Wood
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###
SEWING CIRCLE
By Scott Nicholson
"The only Jew in town," Morris said as Laney pulled into the church parking lot.
He pointed to the stained-glass window cut into the middle of the belfry. It looked expensive, more than a little country church could afford. Jesus smiled down from the window, arms spread in welcome and acceptance.
"The story's about the sewing circle, not the church," Laney said.
"Jesus as a ragpicker. Was that in the Bible?"
"You're too cynical."
"No, I'm just a frustrated idealist."
Morris rubbed his stomach. He'd gone soft from years at a desk, his only exercise the occasional outdoor feature story, usually involving a free meal. He'd given up the crime beat, preferring to do the "little old lady in the holler" stuff, the cute little profile features that offended no one. Still, the fucking quilt beat was the bottom rung on the ladder he'd started climbing back down a decade ago.
"Come on, it'll be fun," Laney said. She was the staff photographer, and true to her trade, she managed to keep a perspective on things. Cautious yet upbeat, biding time, knowing her escape hatch was waiting down the road. For Morris, there was no escape hatch. The booby hatch, maybe.
"'Fun' is the Little League All-Stars, a Lion's Club banquet where they give out a check the size of Texas, a quadriplegic doing a power wheelchair charity run from the mountains to the coast. But this"---he flipped his notebook toward the little Primitive Baptist church, its walls as white as pride in the morning sun---"Even my Grandma would yawn over a sewing circle story."
"You can juice it up," Laney said as she parked. She always drove because she had two kids and needed the mileage reimbursement. All Morris had was a cat who liked to shit in the bathtub.
"That's what I do," he said. "A snappy lead and some filler, then cash my checks."
Though the checks were nothing to write home about. He'd written home about the first one, way back when he was fresh out of journalism school. Mom had responded that it was very nice and all but when was he getting a real job? Dad had no doubt muttered into his gin and turned up the sound to "Gunsmoke." They didn't understand that reporting was just a stepping stone to his real career, that of bestselling novelist and screenwriter for the stars.
They headed into the church alcove, Laney fidgeting with her lenses. Morris had called ahead to set up the appointment. He'd talked briefly to Faith Gordon, who apparently organized the group though she wasn't a seamstress herself. The sewing circle met every Thursday morning, rain, shine, flood, or funeral. Threads of Hope, the group called itself. Apparently it was a chapter of a national organization, and Morris figured he'd browse the Web later to snip a few easy column inches of back story.
The alcove held a couple of collection boxes for rags. Scrawled in black marker on cardboard were the words: "Give your stuff." Morris wondered if that same message was etched into the bottoms of the collection plates that were passed around on Sundays. Give your stuff to God, for hope, for salvation, for the needles of the little old ladies in the meeting room.
"Hello here," came a voice from the darkened hallway. A wizened man emerged into the alcove, hunched over a push broom, his jaw crooked. He leaned against the broom handle and twisted his mouth as if chewing rocks.
"We're from the Journal-Times," Morris said. "We came about the sewing circle."
One of the man's eyes narrowed as he looked over Laney's figure. He chewed faster. "'M'on back," he said, waving the broom handle to the rear of the church. He let the two of them go first, no doubt to sweep up their tracks as he watched Laney's ever-popular rear.
The voices spilled from the small room, three or four conversations going at once. Morris let Laney make the entrance. She had a way of setting people at ease, while Morris usually set them on edge. His style was fine on the local government beat, when you wanted to keep the politicians a little paranoid, but it didn't play well among the common folk in the Appalachian mountain community of Cross Valley.
"Hi, we're with the paper," Laney said. "We talked to Faith Gordon about the circle, and she invited us to come out and do a story."
Five women were gathered around a table, in the midst of various stitches, with yarn, cloth scraps, spools of different-colored threads, and darning needles spread out in front of them.
"You ain't gonna take my picture, are you?" one of them asked, clearly begging to be in the paper. That would probably make her day, Morris thought. The only other way she'd ever make the paper was when her obituary ran. She was probably sixty, but had the look of one who would live to be a hundred. One who knew all about life's troubles, because she'd heard about them from neighbors.
"Only if you want," Laney said. "But a picture makes the story better."
"We just thought the community would be interested in the fine work you ladies are doing," Morris said. That wasn't so bad, even if the false cheer burned his throat like acid reflux.
"If Faith said it was okay, that's good enough for us," said a second woman. She was in her seventies, wrinkled around the eyes, the veins on her hands thick and purple, though her fingers were as strong as a crow's claws. "I'm Alma."
"Hi, Alma," Morris said. He went from one to another, collecting their names for the record, making sure the spelling was correct. You could miss a county budget by a zero, apply the wrong charge in a police brief, and even fail to call the mayor on Arbor Day, and all these mistakes were wiped out with a Page 2 correction. But woe unto the reporter who misspelled a name in a fuzzy family feature.
Alma Potter. Reba Absher. Lillian Moretz. Daisy Eggers. The "other Alma," Alma Moretz, no immediate relation to Lillian, though they may have been cousins five or six times removed.
"Just keep on working while I take some shots," Laney said. She contorted with catlike grace, stooping to table level, composing award-quality photographs. The janitor stood at the door, appreciating her professional ardor. He was chewing so fast that his teeth were probably throwing off sparks behind his eager lips.
"So, how did you ladies meet?" Morris smiled, just to see what it felt like.
"Me and Reba was friends, and we'd get together for a little knitting on Saturdays while our husbands went fishing together," Alma Potter said. "They would go after rock bass, but they always came home with an empty cooler."
"God rest your Pete's soul," Reba said.
"Bless you," Alma said to her.
Morris glanced at his wristwatch. Thirty column inches to go, plus he had to knock out a sidebar on a weekend bluegrass festival. All with the Kelvinator looking over his shoulder. Kelvin Feeney, Journal-Times editor and all-around boy wonder, a guy on the come who didn't care whose backs bricked the path to that corner office at the corporation's flagship paper.
"So, Alma, when did you start sewing?" Morris thought of making a pun on "so" and "sew" and decided to pass.
"Oh, maybe at the age of five," she said. Her eyes stayed focused on the tips of her fingers as she ran the needle through a scrap of yellow cotton. Laney was working the scene, twisting the lens to its longest point, zooming in to get the wrinkled glory of the old woman's face.
"Did you learn from your mother?" Morris asked, scribbling in his notebook. Maybe he could use some of this in the Great American Novel he'd been working on since his freshman year, which had been tainted by a professor who thought Faulkner was the Second Coming and Flannery O'Connor was the Virgin Mary.
"She learnt it from me," Daisy Eggers said, her eyes like wet bugs behind the curve of her glasses. Daisy might have been anywhere between eighty and ninety, her upper lip collapsed as if her dentures were too small. When she spoke, the grayish tip of her tongue protruded, constantly trying to keep her upper false teeth in place.
"Good, we'll get back to that." Morris made a note as Laney's shutter clicked. "Tell me about Threads of Hope."
"You really need to talk to Faith about that," the other Alma said. "She's the one started it. We were all sewing anyway, and figured why not get together on it?"
Reba, who appeared a little less inclined to defer to their absent leader, said, "Threads of Hope gives blankets to sick kids in hospitals. Like the Ronald McDonald House and the Shriner's Hospital. It's all about the kids. But you'd best talk to Faith about that part of it."
Okay, Morris thought. It's not Pulitzer material but at least it has sick kids. Now if I could just work a cute babe and a puppy into the story, I'd hit the Holy Trinity.
"Is it local kids, or someone with a specific type of illness?" Laney asked the obvious question. She was actually better at that than Morris.
"Oh, just ones sick any old way. Faith, she's a nurse at Mercy Hospital, and she comes in about once a month and collects them, takes them off. We'll get a dozen done on a good morning." Reba held up the quilt she was working on and pointed to a scrap of denim. "That come from Doc Watson. You know, the famous flatpicker."
Morris had written about Doc a dozen times. Doc was also up in his golden years, with six Grammys on his trophy shelf. The musician had tried several times to retire, but every time he did, someone would launch a festival in his honor and he'd feel obliged to perform there.
Lillian spoke for the first time since giving her name. "These scraps have stories in them. They're like pieces of people's lives. And we figure the kids get some of the life out of those pieces."
"And a little hope," the other Alma said.
"Threads of Hope," Daisy said, knitting a fishnet-style afghan. Her knitting needles clicked like chopsticks, pushing and hooking yarn. The janitor came into the room, and though it was cramped, he managed to sweep the tiny scraps off the floor without once brushing against Laney. Morris wrote it all down, and they were back in the office by lunch time. The ladies had been all smiles by the time they left, speculating on how many copies of Friday's edition they were going to buy and which relatives they would call.
The phone call came shortly after eleven in the morning. The edition couldn't have been on the street for more than an hour, and those who received the paper via home delivery probably wouldn't see theirs until late afternoon. Morris dreaded the post-edition phone calls. The tri-weekly had a low circulation, but the reading audience was exacting.
"Journal-Times news desk," Morris answered, in his most aloof voice.
"Are you Morris Stanfield?"
"Yes, ma'am." It was always bad when they guessed your name.
"We have a serious problem."
"Ma'am?" Morris' finger edged toward the phone, planning a quick transfer to the Kelvinator. Serious problems were beyond the capabilities of an ink whore.
"Did you write the Threads of Hope article?"
Sometimes they called to say thanks. Sometimes, but not often. "About the sewing circle."
"Where did you get your information?"
"From the ladies."
"The ladies." She sounded like a high school English teacher who was upset that a student had opted for the Cliff Notes during the Hawthorne semester. Her voice sounded familiar.
"It was a feature about a group of friends who get together and sew. A people feature."
"You were supposed to call me."
"Are you Faith Gordon?" He had meant to call her, really, but between the domestic dispute that led to a police standoff and the damned bluegrass festival sidebar, Morris had been forced to slam his story out an hour before deadline. The Threads of Hope web site had provided some history on the organization, about how the effort had been started by a seamstress in Kentucky whose son had been diagnosed with a brain tumor. A story of courage and perseverance, a true sob story, fraught with unsung heroes and all that happy bullshit.
"This is Faith. The ladies said you would call."
"I'm sorry. Deadline caught me. What's the problem?" Morris tried to replay the article in his mind. Often, by the time he finished writing one, it was seared into his memory until the next pint of whiskey or the next skull-numbing city council meeting, whichever came first. Writing was all about remembering, while the rest of Morris's life was all about forgetting.
"The headline," Faith Gordon said. "It says 'Local Women Stitch Blankets For The Needy.' These blankets are for any sick child, not just those of economic difference."
"I don't write the headlines," Morris said.
"But it has your name right under it."
"Yes, ma'am, but the editor wrote that headline. Perhaps you can speak to him."
"It says 'Local Women Stitch Blankets For The Needy' by Morris Stanfield. You've done serious damage to the organization, not to mention insulting the women in the sewing circle. You should be ashamed."
"How did I damage the organization? I don't think many people in our readership have even heard of Threads of Hope."
"Exactly. Your callous disregard for the facts has tainted Threads of Hope for the whole community. And the ladies . . . poor Alma Potter was in tears."
"I'm really sorry to hear that," Morris said. He couldn't remember if Alma Potter was the "other Alma" or not.
"No wonder people no longer trust the media. If this is any example of how you take the good intentions of an innocent group and twist it into a sensational story---"
"Whoa," Morris said. "If I made a factual error, I'd be glad to run a correction. But I took my information directly from the sewing circle's own words, with some Internet research on the parent organization."
"You didn't talk to me," Faith said.
Morris at last saw the real problem. Faith Gordon's name hadn't appeared until the third or fourth paragraph. She obviously felt she was the real story, the tireless organizer who was practically an entire spool of hope, one who lifted the entire project on her shoulders and inspired everyone who could navigate the eye of a needle to great acts of charity.
"I'll transfer you to my editor," Morris said, and punched the buttons before she could respond. By leaning back in his chair, he could see out his cubicle to the glassed-in office of the Kelvinator. Feeney was checking on stock prices, probably in the middle of an editorial column on the dubious merits of funding public libraries. Morris waited until the editor picked up the phone, then turned his attention to his own computer. He opened his e-mail and found six messages about the Threads of Hope story. Three were from Faith, reiterating her displeasure. Two were from Reba, who was concerned about a misquotation, and the last was from Lillian, who said she thought the article was good until Faith had told her what was wrong. Now, Lillian wrote, she was ashamed to have her name associated with either the Threads of Hope or the Journal-Times, and she was canceling her subscription "right this second."
Morris was in the midst of deleting the messages when the Kelvinator appeared in the mouth of the cubicle.
"Morris," the editor said. He was ten years younger than Morris, with a personal digital assistant in his shirt pocket. His eyes moved like greased ball bearings.
"Bad headline, huh?"
"No, it was problems in your copy."
"What problems?"
"Faith Gordon has a list. You can talk to her about them when you see her."
"See her?"
"Write a follow-up. That's the only way to fix the mess you've made."
"There's no fucking mess. I didn't say anything about the blankets being for needy children."
"You must have, or I wouldn't have put it in the headline. Anyway, the easiest way to handle this is to interview Faith. And use a tape recorder this time, so you won't misquote her."
"But it was just a chummy little feature---"
"It's gotten bigger than that. I had a call from the Threads of Hope's national office. Apparently Faith Gordon has been blowing smoke up their asses, too."
"So let them sue for libel."
The Kelvinator tossed a sticky note onto Morris' cluttered desk. "Two o'clock today at the church. Polish it up for Monday's paper."
"Can Laney come with me?"
"We already have enough photos. She has to cover a flower show at the mall."
Morris crumpled the note as the Kelvinator returned to his office. He wished there were enough threads to make a noose. A noose of hopelessness, by which to hang himself before he had to write another quilt story.
The church sat in a valley and a fog hung over it, rising from the river that ran beside the road. The church parking lot was empty. That seemed odd, even for a Friday afternoon. He thought he was supposed to meet the entire sewing circle. Maybe he had a solo showdown with the legendary Faith Gordon. He shuddered, opened the dashboard, and retrieved the pint of Henry McKenna and a vial of Xanax. Substances that provided his own threads of hope, or at least stuffed cotton wadding between him and his anxiety and despair.
He stuck one of the tranquilizers on his tongue and toasted the stained-glass Jesus. "Here's to you, Big Guy."
Belly warmed, Morris entered the quiet church. He had been raised Baptist but had recovered quickly, and his only religious experience since then had been a foray into the Unitarian church in a half-assed attempt to meet women. Still, the polished oak of the foyer, the sermon hall with its carefully arranged pews, and the crushed velvet drapes invoked feelings of solemnity, as if he were actually in the presence of something mystical and important. He stepped carefully, afraid to break the hush.
"Mr. Stanfield."
He turned, recognizing the shrill, strident voice of Faith Gordon. He had expected a beefy, shoulder-heavy woman with a broad face and hands that could strangle an ox. Instead, she was diminutive, even pretty in a severe way. Her cheeks were lined from years of not smiling. She was about Morris' age but had none of his gray.
Morris attempted a boyish grin, knowing this was a time to turn on the charm, even if he came off like Clint Eastwood miscast in a comedy. "Miss Gordon. I'm sorry my story disappointed you."
"It's not me I'm worried about. It's the ladies in the circle. They were so excited about being in the paper until I told them about your errors."
"We can make it right."
"You can never make it right. The damage is already done. Feelings have been hurt. And what about the children who received blankets from Threads of Hope? How will they feel when told they are 'needy'?"
Morris dropped his grin. He wanted to scream at her, tell her that a fucking space-filler in the back pages of a dinky local rag didn't cause empires to rise or fall, and, truth be told, didn't sell a single goddamned car for the dealer whose ad ran right beside it. A newspaper was fucking fishwrap, a dinosaur walking in the shadow of the Internet that was too dumb to know it was going extinct. The only people who'd read the piece of brainless crap had been the members of the sewing circle.
"I didn't write that 'needy' part," Morris said. "My editor put that in. He thought it was more of an eye-grabber."
"The article has your name on it," Faith said. "You've damaged all the children who have been blessed by Threads of Hope. God can't forgive those who don't accept their sins."
"God doesn't have anything to do with it."
"If you can't apologize to the Lord, you can at least apologize to the circle." She stood to the side and motioned down the hallway, indicating that Morris should go first.
He resigned himself to go on and get his "mission of contrition" over with, then hurry back to the office and type it up with Henry McKenna as his co-author. He was halfway to the meeting room when he felt a prick in the back of his neck. At first he thought he'd been bitten by a spider, and he reached to wipe the creature away. The janitor came out of the meeting room, eyes bright, jaws making gravel.
"Let's get him upstairs," Faith said.
At first, Morris thought Faith wanted him to help subdue the janitor, who looked as if he'd escaped from a facility for the criminally insane. But the janitor didn't flee. Instead, he dropped his push broom and approached Morris. After a couple of steps, there were two of him, and Morris's head felt as if it were stuffed with wet pillows, the silent walls drumming in wooden echoes. He spun awkwardly, and Faith held up an empty hypodermic needle, the tip gleaming with one drop of clear liquid.
A kaleidoscope played behind his eyelids as he rose from the depths of a stupor. He'd experimented with a number of chemicals in his college days, but he could never recall suffering such a sledgehammer to the brain. The kaleidoscope slowly came into focus and he realized his eyes were open. He tried to move his head.
The kaleidoscope that had heralded his return to consciousness turned out to be a stained-glass window. Jesus stood there, arms spread, catching the dying sunlight. Morris recognized it as the same window that adorned the steeple of the church. The room appeared to be an attic of some kind, and a bell rope ran the length of one wall and disappeared through a small opening in the ceiling.
He must have fainted. Heat, stress, and a good dose of whiskey on an empty stomach. Not to mention the trank. And maybe a touch of the flu had crept up on him.
Snick.
Snick, snick.
As groggy as he was, it took him a moment to place the sound. Scissors.
The members of the sewing circle were gathered around him, stitching, darning, cutting scraps of cloth. He looked from face to face, trying to focus. Both Almas were there, though Morris had forgotten the names of the others. No, Reba, that was it. The chatty one. And Lillian. And one, wasn't she named after a flower? Rose? Violet? No, Daisy, that was it. Daisy.
He tried to smile but couldn't. His lips were too numb.
"Looks like Mr. Big-Time Writer is awake," Reba said, without a trace of her earlier humor.
"A shame he can't be troubled to get a little thing right," the other Alma said. "Now, what would happen if we left a few loose threads in one of our blankets just because we didn't care enough to do it right?"
"Why, that would be like having no hope," Daisy said. "Worse, it would be like giving up hope on the children."
"Oh, but we know how needy they are," the first Alma said. "Because we read about it in the paper."
Morris tried again to lift his head. The women weren't looking at him. They concentrated on their work, snipping, stitching, working threads and needles and yarn. Morris' stomach roiled, and he was afraid he was going to vomit in the presence of these women before he could lift himself and make it to a bathroom. Flu, for sure.
"Don't try to talk none," Reba said. "You done enough harm with your words already."
Lillian giggled like a schoolgirl. "You tied that knot off right, didn't you, Reba? I know how much pride you take in your work."
"Wouldn't want to go disappointing nobody. Unlike some people."
A door opened somewhere beyond Morris' range of vision. The women stopped working and looked in that direction, their faces rapt.
"How's our latest charity project coming along?" Faith asked.
"Right fair," the other Alma said. "Not such good material to work with, but I think we can shape it up some."
"Well, after all, they say we help the needy," Faith said. "In fact, I think I read so in the Journal-Times."
Morris couldn't help himself. Sick or not, he was going to tell them all to fuck off. So what if he lost his job? He could paint houses, drop fry baskets, go on welfare. At least he'd no longer have to pretend to give a damn about little old ladies making sacrifices solely because of their own selfish need to feel useful.
He tried to speak, but his lips didn't move. Not much, anyway.
"Mr. Stanfield, Reba has been sewing for fifty-nine years, as you know, since you reported it in your article. That was one fact you reported correctly. So you can rest assured her stitches are much stronger than the flesh of your lips."
Stitches? Lips?
He screamed, but the sound stuck at the top of his vibrating vocal cords. Faith came into view. She leaned over him, appraising the handiwork. "A silent tongue speaks no evil," she said.
"And doesn't put down the good work of others," Reba said, looking to Faith for approval.
"That's right," Faith said. "I'm sorry we're having to take time from our true work. Several children won't get blankets this week because of Mr. Stanfield. But this task is perhaps just as important in the Lord's eyes. This is a true charity case."
Morris summoned all his effort and craned his neck. His clothes were sewn to what looked like the fabric pad of a mattress. He squirmed but could only move his arms and legs a few inches. He flexed his fingers, trying to make a fist.
"Alma, how was that tatting on his hands?" Faith asked.
Alma Potter beamed with satisfaction at being recognized by the circle's leader. "I done proud, Faith. Them fingers won't be typing no more lies for a while."
Morris felt his eyes bulging from their sockets. The first tingle of pain danced across his lips.
"I'm sorry, Mr. Stanfield," Faith said. "I don't have any more morphine. The hospital's supply is closely monitored. I could only risk stealing a few doses. But my sin is one the Lord is willing to forgive because it serves a greater good."
The women were busy around him, their needles descending and lifting, the threads stretching and looping. The other Alma was busy down by his feet, her gnarled hands tugging at his toes. Lillian brought a scrap of cloth to his face, but Faith held up a hand.
For the first time, Faith smiled. "Not yet, Lillian. We can close his eyes later. For now, let him look upon good works. Let him know us by our deeds, not by his words."
Lillian looked disappointed. Faith put a gentle hand on the old woman's shoulder.
"A good blanket takes care and patience," Faith said. "Hope takes patience. All we can do is our part, and let the Lord take care of the rest."
"Just like with the sick children," Lillian said.
"Yes. They're sick, but never needy. As long as one person has hope enough for them all, they are never in need."
Morris tried to communicate with his eyes, to lie and tell Faith that he now understood, that sick children were never needy no matter what the Kelvinator said, but his eyes were too cold and lost to the world of light and understanding. He was a cynic and had nothing inside but desperation. He gazed at the stained-glass Jesus, but no hope could be found in that amber face as the sunlight died outside.
The gauze of morphine slipped a little, and now he could feel the sharp stings as the needles entered his arms, legs, and torso. Reba was stitching up his inseam, her face a quivering mask of concentration as she worked toward his groin. Daisy's tongue pressed against her uppers as she pushed and tugged in tiny little motions. Silver needles flashed in the glow of the lone gas lamp by which the sewing circle now toiled. From outside, the plate-glass image must have flickered in all the colors of salvation.
But from the inside, the image had gone dark with the night. Summoning his remaining strength, Morris ripped the flesh of his lips free of their stitches and screamed toward the high white cross above.
"Look, his eyelids twitched," came a voice.
"There, there," Lillian said, as if on the other side of a thick curtain. "You just rest easy now."
"Where---" Morris was in the sewing room downstairs, flat on his back on the table, surrounded by piles of rags. They must have carried him here after they---
He brought a wobbly hand to his mouth and felt his lips. They were chapped but otherwise whole.
"I think he's thirsty," said Faith, who knelt over him, patting his forehead with a soft swatch of linen. She turned to the janitor, who stood in the doorway. "Bruce, would you get him a cup of water, please?"
As the janitor shuffled off, Faith again settled her kind, healing eyes on him. "You fainted. A big, strong fellow like you."
"Must be---" The words were thick on his tongue. He flexed his fingers, remembering the sharp tingle of needles sliding through his skin, the taut tug of thread in his flesh. A dream. Nothing but a crazy, drug-stoked nightmare. "Must be the heat," he managed.
"It's okay," Faith said. Gone was her severe and chiding tone. She now spoke in her gentle nurse's voice. "We'll take care of you. You just have a chill. Rest easy and wait for the ambulance."
"Ambulance? No, I'm fine, really, I just need---" He tried to sit up, but his head felt like a wet sack of towels.
"Your pulse is weak," Faith said. "I'm concerned you might go into shock."
"That means we need to cover him up," the other Alma said.
Faith smiled, the expression of all saints and martyrs. "I guess we should use the special blanket," she said.
"Blanket?" Morris blinked lint from his eyes.
"We made it just for you. We were going to give it to you in appreciation for writing the story and let you enjoy it in the comfort of your own bed. But perhaps this is more fitting."
"Fitting," Daisy said with a hen's cackle. "That's as funny as Santa in a manger scene."
Lillian approached the table, a blanket folded across her chest. Unlike the other quilts, this one was white, though the pieces were ragged, the stitches loose, the cloth stained and spotted. "We done our best work on this one," she said. "We know a sick soul when we see one."
"Threads of Hope sometimes come unraveled," Faith said. Her sweet tone, and her soft touch as she felt his wrist for a pulse, was far more unnerving than her previous bullying.
"That's right," Reba said. "Sometimes hope is not enough."
"And kids die and go on to heaven," Lillian said. "The Lord accepts them whole and pure, but their pain and suffering has to go somewhere. Nothing's worse than laying there knowing you're going to die any day, when by rights you ought to have your whole life in front of you."
Lillian helped Reba unfold the patchwork blanket. Morris saw the white scraps of sheet were actually varying shades of gray, cut at crazy angles and knotted together as if built in the dark by mad, clumsy hands.
"There's another side to our work," Faith said. "One we don't publicize. If it had a name, it might be called 'Threads of Despair.'"
"I like 'Threads of the Dead,'" Reba said, in her high, lilting voice. Her remark drew a couple of snickers from the old women gathered around the table. Morris didn't like the way Reba's eyes glittered.
"I'll write the story however you want it, and let you proof it before I turn it in to the editor," he said, his throat parched.
"Cover him up," Faith commanded. "I'd hate to see him go into shock."
Morris once again tried to lift himself, but he was too woozy. Maybe he really did need an ambulance. And a thorough check-up. He was having a nervous breakdown. And these fine women, whom he'd insulted and belittled, were compassionate enough to help him in his time of need. Faith was right, he was the needy one, not those sick children.
As they stretched the mottled blanket over him, preparing to settle it across his body, Morris saw the words "Mercy Hospital Morgue" stamped in black on one corner.
Sheets from the hospital?
The cloth settled over him with a whisper, wrinkled hands smoothing and spreading it on each side. His limbs were weak, his mouth slack, as if the blanket had sapped the last of his strength. Though his skin was clammy, sweat oozed from his pores like newly hatched maggots crawling from the soft meat of a corpse. He was being wrapped in fabric even colder than his soul.
Threads from the dead, from those who had lost hope.
Sheets that would give back all that had gone into them.
A handmade blanket stitched not in the attic of the heart but in the dark basement of the disappointed.
"The ambulance will be here in twenty minutes," Faith said. "Until then, cherish the despair you deserve."
She tugged the blanket up to his chin, and then, with a final, benevolent look into his frightened eyes, she drew it over his face.
THE END
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###
NOTHING PERSONAL, BUT YOU GOTTA DIE
By Scott Nicholson
So you changed your name.
Not too smart. A name's a personal thing, and you had to go messing with what your Momma gave you. What kind of thing is that? How do you expect anybody to respect you, after you go and do something like that?
Joey Scattione, he's big time, don't got nothing against you, not nothing personal. If it was up to him, just a slap on the cheek, you cry and say you're sorry, we all go down to Luigi's and eat pasta together, like in some Mafia movie. Whaddahell.
But this is business. And business means keeping your word. And standing up, playing it straight. But you hadda talk to Feds and the Feds can't touch Joey, we all know that, Joey's golden, but they get a little something on you, you lose your spine, your tongue starts running before your head turns the key, and all of a sudden we got a bad situation.
No, a person who would change his name would probably tell any kind of lie to save his own skin. It's all about constitution. Some got it, some ain't. Don't feel bad about it. Better guys than you wilted when the heat came down. Changed your name and tried to skip town, all part of your constitution.
All perfectly understandable. But that don't mean it's forgivable.
We've known each other what---seven years? Why you got to go and not be Vincent any more? I liked Vincent, for the most part.
Aw, c'mon. Don't start with this "Mikey, Mikey" stuff. Don't make it worse by begging. You wilted once, but you got one last chance to go down standing. Don't look at me that way, I got no choice, nothing personal, but you gotta die.
See, it's all about choices. You change your name, try to become somebody different, but under the skin you're still the same.
I mean, the feds and girls and guns, that's all business stuff. Taking you out, that's business. Listening to you beg, that's business, too, sort of sad but, hey, you can't change what's under the skin.
It bugs me, you changing your name like that. Shows a lack of constitution.
Me, I stick with "Mikey." There's a billion Mikeys in Brooklyn, and I'm one of them. No better, no worse. That's just part of my constitution.
The least you can do is take your name back. I'll make it clean, one through the heart, the head, whatever you want. But you ought to do things right and go out under the name you was born with. What about it?
I mean, you don't want to meet old St. Pete and tell him your name and he runs his finger down the list and no Vincent there, all them good deeds for nothing, just 'cause you ain't really Vincent no more. So he shakes his head and you got to slink away from the Pearly Gates and all because you got no spine.
So that's the only thing personal about what I gotta do. This name business. It's a lie, and I hate lies.
Whaddaya say?
Vincent. Don't go with the crying. It ain't in character. Not like you at all.
Sorry, Vincent.
Open your eyes.
See, I lied.
This is personal.
And my name's not really Mikey.
It's Vincent now. Yeah, your name. I may as well take it, since you won't be needin' it no more, and Joey got a thing for me, too.
You kind of look a little like me, too, and by the time your bones float up in the harbor, you'll be wax and cottage cheese. With my I.D. in your wallet.
So you don't like Vincent, you can be Mikey, and Mikey's dead, and I skip out as Vincent, and Joey's none the wiser.
Everybody lives happy ever after.
Oh.
Except you.
Like I said, it's nothing personal.
Tell St. Pete Vincent says hello.
THE END
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###
WATERMELON
By Scott Nicholson
Ricky bought the watermelon on a warm Saturday afternoon in September.
The early crop had arrived at the local grocer's in late June, fresh from California, but the available specimens were hard and heartless. Ricky had decided to wait for a Deep South watermelon, and those traditionally arrived many weeks after the annual Fourth of July slaughter. Besides, that was early summer. He had yet to read about the murder and his home life with Maybelle was in a state of uneasy truce.
But now it was the last day of summer, a definite end of something and the beginning of something else. The watermelon was beautiful. It was perfectly symmetrical, robust, its green stripes running in tigerlike rhythms along the curving sides. A little bit of vine curled from one end like the cute tail of a pig. He tapped it and elicited a meaty, liquid thump.
It was heavy, maybe ten pounds, and Ricky brought it from the bin as carefully as if it were an infant. His wife had given him a neatly penned list of thirteen items, most of them for her personal use. But his arms were full, and he didn't care to trudge through the health-and-beauty section, and he had no appetite for Hostess cupcakes and frozen waffles. Sheryl Crowe was singing a bright ditty of sun and optimism over the loudspeakers, music designed to lobotomize potential consumers. Ricky made a straight path to the checkout counter and placed the watermelon gently on the conveyor belt.
Now that his hands were free, he could pick up one of the regional dailies. The front page confined the woman's picture to a small square on the left. Her killer, the man who had sworn to love and honor until death did them part, merited a feature photograph three columns wide, obviously the star of the show and the most interesting part of the story.
"That's sickening, isn't it?" came a voice behind him.
Ricky laid the newspaper on the belt so the cashier could ring it up. He turned to the person who had spoken, a short man with sad eyes and a sparse mustache, a man who had never considered violence of any kind toward his own wife.
"They say he was perfectly normal," Ricky said. He wasn't the kind for small talk with strangers, but the topic interested him. "The kind of man who coached Little League and attended church regularly. The kind the neighbors said they never would have suspected."
"A creep is what he is. I hope they fry him and send him to hell to fry some more."
"North Carolina uses lethal injection."
"Fry him anyway."
"I wonder what she was like." Since the murder last week, Ricky had been studying the woman's photograph, trying to divine the character traits that had driven a man to murder. Had she been unfailingly kind and considerate, and had thus driven her husband into a blinding red madness?
"A saint," the short man said. "She volunteered at the animal shelter."
"That's what I heard," Ricky said. The cashier told him the total and he thumbed a credit card from his wallet. People always took kindness toward animals as a sign of divine benevolence. Let children starve in Africa but don't kick a dog in the ribs. For all this man knew, she volunteered because she liked to help with the euthanizing.
"At least they caught the bastard," the man said.
"He turned himself in." Obviously the man had been settling for the six-o'clock-news sound bites instead of digging into the real story. Murder was rare here, and a sordid case drew a lot of attention. But most of the people Ricky talked with about the murder had only a passing knowledge of the facts and seemed quite content in their ignorance and casual condemnation.
Ricky took the watermelon to the car, rolled it into the passenger seat, and sat behind the wheel reading the paper. The first days of coverage had focused on quotes from neighbors and relatives and terse statements by the detectives, but now the shock had worn off. In true small-town fashion, the police had not allowed any crime scene photos, and the early art had consisted of somber police officers standing around strips of yellow tape. A mug shot of the husband had been taken from public record files, showing mussed hair, stubble, and the eyes of a trapped animal. The District Attorney had no doubt kept him up all night for a long round of questioning, to ensure that the arrest photo would show the perpetrator in the worst possible light. No matter how carefully the jurors were selected, that first impression often lingered in the minds of those who would pass judgment.
A week later, the coverage had made the easy shift into back story, digging into the couple's history, finding cracks in the marriage. The only way to keep the story on the front page was for reporters to turn up personal tidbits, make suggestions about affairs and insurance, and build a psychological profile for a man who was so perfectly average that only hindsight revealed the slightest flaw.
Ricky drove home with the images playing in his mind, a reel of fantasy film he'd painted from the police reports. The husband comes home, finds dinner on the table as always, green peas and potatoes, thinly sliced roast beef with gravy, a cheesecake that the wife must have spent hours making. They eat, watch an episode of "Law & Order," then she takes a shower and goes to bed. Somewhere between the hours on either side of midnight, the husband makes his nightly trek to share the warmth and comfort of the marital bed. Only, this time, he carries with him a seven-inch companion of sharp, stainless steel.
Seventeen times, according to the medical examiner. One of the rookie reporters had tried to develop a numerology angle and assign a mystical significance to the number of stab wounds, but police suspected the man had simply lost count during the frenzy of blood lust. The first blow must have done the trick, and if the man had only meant to solve a problem, that surely would have sufficed. But he was in search of something, an experience that could only be found amid the silver thrusts, the squeaking of bedsprings, the soft moans, and the wet dripping of a final passion.
By the time Ricky pulled into his driveway, he was moist with sweat. He found himself comparing his and Maybelle's house with that of the murderer's, as shown in the Day Two coverage. The murderer's house was in the next county, but it would have been right at home in Ricky's neighborhood. Two stories, white Colonial style, a stable line of shrubbery surrounding the porch. Shutters framing windows framing curtains that hid the lives inside. Both houses were ordinary, upper middle class, with no discernible differences except that one had harbored an extraordinary secret that festered and then exploded.
Ricky fanned his face dry with the newspaper, then slipped it under the seat. He wrestled the watermelon out and carried it up the front steps. He could have driven into the garage, but his car had leaked a few drops of oil and Maybelle had complained. He nearly dropped the watermelon as he reached to open the door. He pictured it lying burst open on the porch, its shattered skin and pink meat glistening in the afternoon sun.
But he managed to prop it against his knee and turn the handle, then push his way inside.
Her voice came from the living room. "Ricky?"
"Who else?" he said in a whisper. As if a random attacker would walk through the door, as if her ordered life was capable of attracting an invader. As if she deserved any type of victimhood.
"What's that, honey?"
He raised his voice. "Yes, dear. It's me."
"Did you get everything? You know how forgetful you are."
Which is why she gave him the lists. But even with a list, he had a habit of always forgetting at least one item. She said it was a deliberate act of passive aggression, that nobody could be that forgetful. But he was convinced it was an unconscious lapse, because he did it even when he wrote out the list himself.
"I had to---" He didn't know what to tell her. A lie came to mind, some elaborate story of helping someone change a flat tire beside the road, and how the person had given him a watermelon in gratitude, and Ricky wanted to put the watermelon in the refrigerator before shopping. But Maybelle would see through the story. He wondered if the murdering husband had told such white lies.
"I had to come back and take my medicine," he said, heading down the hall to the kitchen. "You know how I get."
Maybelle must have been sitting in her chair, the one that dominated the living room and was within reach of the bookcase, the telephone, and the remote control. Her perfect world. White walls. Knickknacks neatly dusted, potted plants that never dared shed so much as a leaf. Photographs of her relatives lining the walls, but not a single member of Ricky's family.
"You and your medicine," she said. "You were gone an hour."
He pretended he hadn't heard her. He put the watermelon on the counter and opened the refrigerator. He thought of hiding it in one of the large bottom bins but he wasn't sure it would fit. Besides, this was his refrigerator, too. He'd paid for it, even though Maybelle's snack foods took up the top two shelves. In a moment of rebellion, he shoved some of his odd condiments aside, the horseradish, brown mustard, and marinade sauces that occupied the bottom shelf. He slid the watermelon into place, though its girth caused the wire rack above it to tilt slightly and tumble a few Tupperware containers. He slammed the refrigerator closed with an air of satisfaction.
He turned and there was Maybelle, filling the entryway that divided the kitchen and dining room. Her arms were folded across her chest, wearing the serene smile of one who held an even temper in the face of endless trials. Ricky found himself wondering if the murdered wife had possessed such stolid and insufferable equanimity.
"What was that?" Maybelle asked.
Ricky backed against the refrigerator. There was really no reason to lie, and, besides, it's not like she wouldn't notice the first time she went rummaging for a yogurt. But, for one hot and blind moment, he resented her ownership of the refrigerator. Why couldn't he have a watermelon if he wanted?
"A watermelon," he said.
"A watermelon? Why didn't you get one back in the middle of summer, like everybody else?"
He couldn't explain. If she had been in the grocery store with him, she'd have been impressed by the watermelon's vibrancy and vitality. Even though the melon was no longer connected to its roots, it was earthy and ripe, a perfectly natural symbol for the last day of summer. But he was afraid if he opened the door, it would just be an ovate mass of dying fruit.
"I liked this one," he said.
"Where are my things?"
"I---" He looked at the floor, at the beige ceramic tiles whose seams of grout were spotless.
"You forgot. On purpose. Just like always."
"I'm sorry," he said, and suddenly his throat was dry and tight, and he thought of the husband and how he must have slid open the cutlery drawer and selected something that could speak for him when words were worthless.
"Of course, you're sorry. You've always been sorry. But that never changes anything, does it?"
"My medicine---"
"Have a seat in the living room, and I'll bring it to you."
He went and sat on the sofa, afraid to muss the throw pillows. The early local news came on the television. A fire on the other side of the county had left a family homeless. Then came the obligatory follow-up on the murder.
"Investigators say they may have uncovered a motive in last week's brutal slaying---"
Click. He looked away from the screen and Maybelle stood there, the remote raised. "Evil, evil, evil," she said. "That nasty man. I just don't know what goes through people's minds, do you?"
Ricky wondered. Maybe the husband had a wife who controlled the television, the radio, the refrigerator, the garage, and wrote large charity checks to the animal shelter. Maybelle gave him his pills and a glass of water. He swallowed, grateful.
"I read that he was an accountant," Ricky said. "Just like me."
"Takes all kinds. The poor woman, you've got to feel sorry for her. Closes her eyes to go to sleep and the next thing you know, the man she trusted and loved with all her heart---"
"---is standing over her, the lights are off but the knife flashes just the same, he's holding the handle so tight that his hand is aching, except he can't feel it, it's like he's got electricity running through his body, he's on fire and he's never felt so powerful, and---"
Maybelle's laughter interrupted him. "It's not a movie, Ricky. A wife-killing slasher isn't any more special than a thief who shoots a stranger for ten bucks. When it comes down to it, they're all low-down dirty dogs who ought to be locked up before they hurt somebody else."
"Everybody feels sorry for her," Ricky said. "But what about the husband? Don't you think he probably feels sick inside? She's gone, but he's left to live with the knowledge of what he's done."
"Not for long. I hear the D.A. is going after the death penalty. She's up for re-election next year and has been real strong on domestic violence."
"He'll probably plead temporary insanity."
"Big surprise," Maybelle said. "Only a crazy man would kill his wife."
"I don't know. With a good lawyer---"
"They're always making excuses. He'll say his wife made him wear a dress when no one was looking. That he had to lick her high heels. That she was carrying on with the pet store supplier. It's always the woman's fault. It makes me sick."
Ricky looked at the carpet. The stains must have been tremendous, geysers of blood spraying in different directions, painting the walls, seeping into the sheets and shag, soiling the delicate undergarments that the wife no doubt wore to entice her husband into chronic frustration.
"Ricky?"
Her voice brought him back from the last reel of his fantasy film and into the living room.
"How are you feeling?"
"Better," he said, lying only a little.
"Ready to go back to the grocery store?"
"Yes."
"And not forget anything this time?"
He nodded.
After shopping, getting all the items on the list, he sat in the grocery store parking lot and re-read all the newspapers hidden beneath the seat. He looked at the mug shot and visualized his own face against the grayish background with the black lines. He pored over the details he already knew by heart, then imagined the parts not fleshed out in the news accounts: the trip up the stairs in the silent house, a man with a mission, no thought of the act itself or the aftermath. One step, one stroke at a time. The man had chosen a knife from the kitchen drawer instead of buying one especially for the job. It had clearly been a crime of passion, and passion had been missing from Ricky's life for many years.
He looked at the paper that held the wife's picture. He tried to juxtapose the picture with Maybelle's. He failed. He realized he couldn't summon his own wife's face.
He drove home and was in the kitchen putting the things away when Maybelle entered the room.
"You've stacked my cottage cheese three high," she said. "You know I only like it with two. I can't check the date otherwise."
"There's no room," he said.
"Take out that stupid watermelon."
"But I like them when they're cold."
"Put it in the bathtub or something."
He squeezed the can of mushroom soup he was holding, wishing he were strong enough to make the metal seams rip and the cream spurt across the room.
"I put dinner on the table," she said. "Roast beef and potatoes."
"Green peas?"
"No, broccoli."
"I wanted green peas."
"How was I to know? You'll eat what I served or you can cook your own food."
"I guess you didn't make a cheesecake."
"There's ice cream in the freezer." She laughed. "Or you can eat your watermelon."
He went to the dinner table. Maybelle had already eaten, put away her place mat, and polished her end of the table. Ricky sat and worked the potatoes, then held the steak knife and studied its serrated edge. He sawed it across the beef and watched the gray grains writhe beneath the metal.
Maybelle entered the dining room. "How's your food?"
"Yummy."
"Am I not a good wife?"
He made an appreciative mumble around a mouthful of food.
"I'm going upstairs," she said. "I'm going to have a nice, long bath and then put on something silly and slinky."
Ricky nodded.
"I'll be in bed, waiting. And, who knows, you might get lucky." She smiled. She'd already brushed her teeth. Her face was perfectly symmetrical, pleasing, her eyes soft and gentle. He felt a stirring inside him. How could he ever forget her face? Ricky compared her to the murdered wife and wondered which of them was prettiest. Which of them would the press anoint as having suffered a greater tragedy?
"I'll be up in a bit," he said. "I want to do a little reading."
"Just don't wait too long. I'm sleepy."
"Yes, dear."
When he was alone, he spat the half-chewed mouthful of food onto his plate. He carried the plate to the kitchen and scraped the remains into the garbage disposal. He wondered if the husband had thought of trying to hide the body, or if he had been as surprised by his actions as she must have been.
The watermelon was on the counter. Maybelle had taken it from the refrigerator.
He went to the utensil drawer and slid it open. He and Maybelle had no children, and safety wasn't a concern. The knives lay in a bright row, arranged according to length. How had the husband made his decision? Size? Sharpness? Or the balance of the handle?
If he had initially intended to make only one thrust, he probably would have gone for depth. If he had aspired to make art, then a number of factors came into play. Ricky's head hurt, his throat a wooden knot. He grabbed the knife that most resembled the murder weapon shown in the press photographs.
Ricky turned the lights low, then carried the knife to the counter. He pressed the blade to the watermelon and found that the blade trembled in his hand. The watermelon grew soft and blurred in his vision, and he realized he was weeping. How could anyone ever destroy a thing of such beauty?
He forced himself to press the knife against the cool green rind. The flesh parted but Ricky eased up as a single drop of clear dew swelled from the wound. The husband hadn't hesitated, he'd raised the knife and plunged, but once hadn't been enough, neither had twice, three times, but over and over, a rhythm, passion, passion, passion.
He dropped the knife and the tip broke as it clattered across the tiles. The watermelon sat whole and smooth on the counter. Tears tickled his cheeks. Maybelle was upstairs in the dark bed, his pillows were stacked so he wouldn't snore, the familiar cupped and rounded area of the mattress was waiting for him.
The husband had been a crazy fool, that was all. He'd cut his wife to bits, no rhyme or reason. She hadn't asked for any of it. She was a victim of another person's unvoiced and unfulfilled desires, just like Maybelle.
Ricky spun and thrust his fist down into the melon, squeezed the red wetness of its heart. He ripped the rind open and the air grew sweet. He pulled at the pink insides, clawed as if digging for some deeply buried secret. He was sobbing, and the pulp spattered onto his face as he plunged his hands into the melon again and again.
A voice pulled him from the red sea of rage in which he was drowning.
Maybelle. Calling from upstairs.
"Ricky?"
He held his breath, his pulse throbbing so hard he could feel it in his neck. He looked down at the counter, at the mess in the kitchen, at the pink juice trickling to the floor.
"Ricky?" she called again. He looked toward the hall, but she was still upstairs. So she hadn't heard.
He looked at his sticky hands.
"Are you coming to bed?"
He looked at the knife on the floor. His stomach was as tight as a melon. He gulped for some air, tasted the mist of sugar. "Yes, dear."
She said no more, and must have returned to bed in her silly and slinky things. The room would be dark and she would be waiting.
Ricky collected the larger scraps of the watermelon and fed them into the garbage disposal. He swept the floor and scooped up the remaining shreds, then wiped the counter. He wrung out a dish cloth and got on his hands and knees, scrubbing the tiles and then the grout.
The husband had harbored no secrets. A pathetic man who made another person pay for his shortcomings. He was a sick, stupid animal. Ricky would think no more of him, and tomorrow he would throw the newspapers away.
He washed his hands in the sink, put the knife away, and gave the kitchen a cursory examination. No sign of the watermelon remained, and his eyes were dry, and his hands no longer trembled.
Tomorrow, summer would be over. It was the end of something, and the beginning of something else. Maybelle was waiting, and he might get lucky. Ricky went to the stairs and took them one step at a time, up into darkness.
THE END
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CURTAINS: THE TRUTH BEHIND THE LIES
By Scott Nicholson
People who only know my paranormal stories may not know that I have written in almost every genre, including mystery, science fiction, fantasy, literary realism, and even romance, though my romance doesn't always end happily ever after. I just love to read everything and expand my borders. Patricia Highsmith, Agatha Christie, Nancy Drew, Hardee Boys, Charlotte McLeod, Elmore Leonard, William Goldman, and James Lee Burke are in my library, and all your influences turn up in your work until you get "experienced." Which means you get lazy and fall into a shallow groove and keep doing the same thing over and over again.
The Digital Era heralds Act II of my career, and my crime novels like The Skull Ring and Disintegration show a different side of me, plus I wrote a couple of screenplays that slide easily into the mystery box. With this new freedom comes an easy break from the commercial considerations that demand you build a simple, identifiable brand. Now I'm the Scott Nicholson brand, and I respect you enough to credit you with taste, looks, intelligence, and good breeding. In other words, you're willing to broaden you horizons and not get locked into reading the same story over and over with different titles and author names.
But maybe I'm trying to slip a fast one by you, run a con and take your money because you like mysteries and I'm a horror writer at heart. So here's a little examination of the facts.
Dog Person-- This was inspired by a true story. My friend Al Carson was talking about his dog's expensive medical problems and how he decided to have Sally "put to sleep" instead of spending thousands of dollars. We discussed a fictional version of the tale and, in his version, there were two shots--first was the mercy killing of the dog, then the suicidal shot. I went with the version here, where the guy loves his dog so much that he just can't face life without her. And, of course, the treacherous wife gets the fruit of her hateful labors. Originally published in Cemetery Dance Magazine #56 in 2006 and selected by esteemed editor Ellen Datlow for inclusion in The Year's Best Fantasy & Horror.
Dead Air---I wrote this while attending Appalachian State University in 1996. I worked at the college radio station in virtually every capacity at one time or another: jock, general manager, promotions director, sportscaster and news announcer. The cool think was to have a little made-up "handle," and I toyed with Ricky Nix for a while but in the end stuck with what I had. Maybe there's a little lesson about media sensationalism in here. After 16 years of journalism, I can't say I've always been proud of my other profession. Originally appeared in Blue Murder Magazine #3 in 1997, which was a progressive little PDF publication way ahead of its time.
How to Build Your Own Coffin---I conducted one of those "vanity searches," where you Google your name on the Internet under the guise of testing the effectiveness of promotional efforts while you're really just seeing if anyone out there is talking about you. And I came to another Scott Nicholson's Web page called "How to Build Your Own Coffin." Seriously. Step by step instructions, with great attention to craft. How could I pass that one up? Originally appeared in the respected U.K. publication Crimewave #8 in 2005.
The Name Game---I was toying with the idea of fake identities and how lucky it would be if your fake identity turned up dead and it wasn't you. Especially if someone wanted you dead. Of course, there's also the problem of trying to rebuild a life from scratch. And it can get confusing after a while when you burn through a few false identities. Appeared in The Death Panel anthology in 2009.
Good Fences---Like most good stories, this one grew from a real incident. A geezery neighbor up the road would come down and straighten our corner fence post whenever it leaned just a little, and I got so perturbed by the presumptuous habit that I started deliberately knocking the pole out of true, just to see how long it would take him to come creaking down with his hammer and nails. Something like that, you just have to use your imagination to take it to the next level. Published in the Cemetery Dance anthology Shivers V in 2008.
The Agreement---(From J.A. Konrath): I wrote this in college, and never tried to publish it because I considered it too violent. But after selling several stories to Ellery Queen, I still couldn't crack its sister publication, Alfred Hitchcock. After a handful of rejections, I sent them this, and they bought it. I liked the last line so much I've reused it a few times in other stories.
Kill Your Darlings---The title is from something Faulkner supposedly said, though I've seen it attributed to a couple of other writers. The idea is a writer must cut every precious phrase, no matter how elegant and beautiful, if that phrase does not further the story. I'll admit, the writer-as-protagonist bit is a darling in itself. So shoot me. First published in Blue Murder Magazine #5 in 1997.
Making Ends Meet---Simon Wood is author of four novels, including Asking for Trouble and The Fall Guy. He's also written more than 170 short stories. He's an Anthony Award winner, pilot, adventurer, and licensed private investigator. A true talent, his stories explore the dark human heart and the fallibility in all of us. Visit him at www.simonwood.net.
Sewing Circle-- Inspired by a true incident in which I wrote what we in the journalism trade call a "fluff piece" about a local quilting group. The leader of the group, who wasn't present and was barely mentioned in the article, harassed me endlessly about a minor error, to the point that I decided she was vengeful that I hadn't made her the centerpiece of the article. Since the group met at a church, it was easy to spin the idea to its most absurd and extreme conclusion. Originally published in the 2008 collection Scattered Ashes.
Nothing Personal, But You Gotta Die---I've tried a few "flip sides," where I've spun stories off of event sin another story, and here Mikey has been given the job of tracking down Robert Wells, from "The Name Game," only Mikey knows him by his real name of Vincent. There's probably a sequel in here somewhere. This is its first appearance.
Watermelon-- I'm almost embarrassed to admit this is autobiographical, but if you've read the book, then you've caught me with my pants down, anyway. One night, while drunk, I yanked a watermelon from the fridge and beat the holy hell out of it, ramming my fist inside and yanking out the pink pulp. I wasn't even that angry. But I imagined that was the sort of diffuse outlet that prevented some greater atrocity somewhere else. And as with the protagonist here, you suspect worse things down the road, life goes on, and hell lasts forever. Appeared in Cemetery Dance #51 in 2005.
That's it. That's Curtains for you.
THE END
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###
About Scott Nicholson:
I am strange, but I am very happy! I believe we build valuable ideas together, some of them inside a book, and sometimes outside a book. I am honored that you shared my ideas and brought them to life in your imagination. I invite you to write a brief review or tell your friends about these ideas we have shared.
I'm author of more than 30 books, including The Red Church, Liquid Fear, Chronic Fear, The Harvest, and Speed Dating with the Dead. I collaborated with bestselling author J.R. Rain on Cursed, The Vampire Club, Bad Blood, and Ghost College. I've also written the children's books If I Were Your Monster, Too Many Witches, Ida Claire, and Duncan the Punkin, and created the graphic novels Dirt and Grave Conditions. Connect with me on Facebook, Goodreads, LibraryThing, Twitter, my blog, or my website. I am really an organic gardener, but don't tell anyone, because they think I am a writer.
Feel free to drop me a line anytime at hauntedcomputer@yahoo.com, or visit my Author Central page at Amazon to ask a question. Thanks to my cool writer friends for letting me use their stories. And thanks for sharing your valuable time with me.
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Try these other thrillers because they are good:
CREATIVE SPIRIT
By Scott Nicholson
After parapsychologist Anna Galloway is diagnosed with metastatic cancer, she has a recurring dream in which she sees her own ghost. The setting of her dream is the historic Korban Manor, which is now an artist's retreat in the remote Appalachian Mountains. Drawn both by the ghost stories surrounding the manor and her own sense of destiny, Anna signs up for the retreat.
Sculptor Mason Jackson has come to Korban Manor to make a final, all-or-nothing attempt at success before giving up his dreams. When he becomes obsessed with carving Ephram Korban's form out of wood, he questions his motivation but is swept up in a creative frenzy unlike any he has ever known.
The manor itself has secrets, with fires that blaze constantly in the hearths, portraits of Korban in every room, and deceptive mirrors on the walls. A mysterious woman in white calls to Anna from the forest, while Mason is driven by the whispers of an unseen critic. With an October blue moon looming, both the living and the dead learn the true power of their dreams. The author's preferred edition of the 2004 U.S. paperback The Manor.
Learn more about the paranormal thriller Creative Spirit or view it at Amazon US or Amazon UK
Do you like movies? View the screenplay adaptation at Amazon US or Amazon UK
DISINTEGRATION
By Scott Nicholson
Careful what you wish for.
When a mysterious fire destroys his home and kills his young daughter, Jacob Wells is pulled into a downward spiral that draws him ever closer to the past he thought was dead and buried.
Now his twin brother Joshua is back in town, seeking to settle old scores and claim his half of the Wells birthright. Jacob's wife Renee is struggling with her own guilt, because the couple lost an infant daughter several years before.
As Jacob and Joshua return to the twisted roles they adopted at the hands of cruel, demanding parents, they wage a war of pride, wealth, and passion. They share the poisonous love of a woman who would gladly ruin them both: Carlita, a provocative and manipulative Hispanic whose immigrant family helped build the Wells fortune.
If only Jacob can figure out which of them to blame. But the lines of identity are blurred, because Joshua and Jacob share much more than blood. And the childhood games have become deadly serious.
Learn more about the psychological thriller Disintegration or view it at Amazon or Amazon UK
THE RED CHURCH
Book I in the Sheriff Littlefield Series
By Scott Nicholson
For 13-year-old Ronnie Day, life is full of problems: Mom and Dad have separated, his brother Tim is a constant pest, Melanie Ward either loves him or hates him, and Jesus Christ won't stay in his heart. Plus he has to walk past the red church every day, where the Bell Monster hides with its wings and claws and livers for eyes. But the biggest problem is that Archer McFall is the new preacher at the church, and Mom wants Ronnie to attend midnight services with her.
Sheriff Frank Littlefield hates the red church for a different reason. His little brother died in a freak accident at the church twenty years ago, and now Frank is starting to see his brother's ghost.
The Days, the Littlefields, and the McFalls are descendants of the original families that settled the rural Appalachian community. Those old families share a secret of betrayal and guilt, and McFall wants his congregation to prove its faith. Because he believes he is the Second Son of God, and that the cleansing of sin must be done in blood.
"Sacrifice is the currency of God," McFall preaches, and unless Frank and Ronnie stop him, everybody pays.
Learn more about the real haunted church that inspired The Red Church or view it for Kindle at Amazon or Amazon UK
DRUMMER BOY
Book II in the Sheriff Littlefield Series
By Scott Nicholson
On an Appalachian Mountain ridge, three boys hear the rattling of a snare drum deep inside a cave known as "The Jangling Hole," and the wind carries a whispered name.
It's the eve of a Civil War re-enactment, and the town of Titusville is preparing to host a staged battle. The weekend warriors aren't aware they will soon be fighting an elusive army. A troop of Civil War deserters, trapped in the Hole by a long-ago avalanche, is rising from a long slumber, and the war is far from over.
And one misfit kid is all that stands between the town and the cold mouth of hell...
Learn more about Drummer Boy and the Appalachian legend that inspired the novel or view it at Amazon or Amazon UK
THE SKULL RING
By Scott Nicholson
Julia Stone will remember, even if it kills her.
With the help of a therapist, Julia is piecing together childhood memories of the night her father vanished. When Julia finds a silver ring that bears the name "Judas Stone," the past comes creeping back. Someone is leaving strange messages inside her house, even though the door is locked. The local handyman offers help, but he has his own shadowy past. And the cop who investigated her father's disappearance has followed her to the small mountain town of Elkwood.
Now Julia has a head full of memories, but she doesn't know which are real. Julia's therapist is playing games. The handyman is trying to save her, in more ways than one. And a sinister cult is closing in, claiming ownership of Julia's body and soul . . . .
Learn more about The Skull Ring and False Recovered Memory Syndrome or view it at Amazon or Amazon UK
Do you like movies? View the screenplay adaptation at Amazon US or Amazon UK
SPEED DATING WITH THE DEAD
By Scott Nicholson
A paranormal conference at the most haunted hotel in the Southern Appalachian mountains...a man's promise to his late wife that he'd summon her spirit...a daughter whose imagination goes to dark places...and demonic evil lurking in the remote hotel's basement, just waiting to be awoken.
When Digger Wilson brings his paranormal team to the White Horse Inn, he is sceptical that his dead wife will keep her half of the bargain. He doesn't believe in ghosts. But when one of the conference guests channels a mysterious presence and an Ouija board spells out a pet phrase known only to Digger and his wife, his convictions are challenged. And when people start to disappear, Digger and his daughter Kendra must face the circle of demons that view the hotel as their personal playground. Because soon the inn will be closing for good, angels can't be trusted, and demons don't like to play alone....
Learn more about Speed Dating with the Dead and the 2008 paranormal conference and inn that inspired the novel or view it at Amazon or Amazon UK
AS I DIE LYING
By Scott Nicholson
Richard Coldiron's first and last novel follows his metafictional journey through a troubled childhood, where he meets his invisible friend, his other invisible friend...and then some who aren't so friendly.
There's Mister Milktoast, the protective punster; Little Hitler, who leers from the shadows; Loverboy, the lusty bastard; and Bookworm, who is thoughtful, introspective, and determined to solve the riddle of Richard's disintegration into either madness or genius, and of course only makes things worse.
Richard keeps his cool despite the voices in his head, but he's about to get a new tenant: the Insider, a malevolent soul-hopping spirit that may or may not be born from Richard's nightmares and demands a co-writing credit and a little bit of foot-kissing dark worship.
Now Richard doesn't know which voice to trust. The book's been rejected 117 times. The people he loves keep turning up dead. And here comes the woman of his dreams.
Learn more about As I Die Lying and the six people in Richard Coldiron's head or view it at Amazon or Amazon UK
LIQUID FEAR
By Scott Nicholson
When Roland Doyle wakes up with a dead woman in his motel room, the only clue is a mysterious vial of pills bearing the label "Take one every 4 hrs or else."
Ten years before, six people were involved in a secret pharmaceutical trial that left one of them murdered and five unable to remember what happened. Now the experiment is continuing, as Dr. Sebastian Briggs wants to finish his research into fear response and post-traumatic stress disorder. He's backed by a major drug company and an ambitious U.S. Senator, but he also has a personal stake in the outcome.
Only by taking the mysterious pills can the survivors stave off the creeping phobias and madness that threaten to consume them. But the pills have an unexpected side effect---the survivors start remembering the terrible acts they perpetrated a decade ago. They are lured back to the Monkey House, the remote facility where the original trials took place, and Briggs has prepared it for their arrival.
Now they are trapped, they each have only one pill left, and cracks are forming in their civilized veneer.
After the pills are gone, there's only one option. "Or else."
Read about it at Haunted Computer or view it at Amazon US or Amazon UK
CHRONIC FEAR
By Scott Nicholson
Chronic Fear is the second installment of the chilling Fear series, which began with the harrowing Liquid Fear. The story picks up one year after the notorious Monkey House trials, from which the tiny handful of survivors have scattered in the wind. For while the unwitting human guinea pigs are still alive, the experimental drugs to which they were subjected continue to wreak havoc on their emotional stability. World-renowned neurobiologist Dr. Alexis Morgan knows first-hand the horrors of the sadistic experiment: her husband, Mark, was one its victims. As a result, he is plagued by unpredictable bouts of rage and paranoia. Dr. Morgan's research into the drug leads her to suspect presidential candidate and U. S. Senator Daniel Burchfield of plotting to gain control of the drug for his own purposes, a power play that is sure to result in countless casualties unless she and three Monkey House survivors can outwit the shadowy figures behind the conspiracy---if they don't lose their own sanity first.
Read the first chapter at Haunted Computer or view it at Amazon US or Amazon UK
OCTOBER GIRLS
By Scott Nicholson
Five days until Halloween and all hell is about to break loose.
And it's all Crystal's fault.
Momma warned her not to consort with the dead and tried to teach her the magic spells that would close the portal to the afterlife. But Crystal doesn't want to be a trailer-trash witch like Momma. Her best friend Bone is only too happy to escape the afterlife and help Crystal break the rules. Bone died too young, and she'll do whatever it takes to remain among the living.
Then a young movie maker comes to Parson's Ford, and he has a very special project in mind: a horror movie starring a real ghost. The movie is rolling, the creatures are stirring, and the brainwashed teenagers are ready to welcome a new star from the other side of the grave.
Crystal and Bone must overcome drama queens, coffin cuties, and mangled magic if they want to remain best friends forever---but at this rate, forever may not last much longer.
Learn more about the paranormal romance series October Girls or view it for Kindle at Amazon or Amazon UK
CURSED
By J.R. Rain and Scott Nicholson
Albert Shipway is an ordinary guy, an insurance negotiator who likes booze and women and never having to say he's sorry.
And he thinks this is just another day, another lunch, another order of kung pao chicken. Little does he know that he's about to meet a little old lady who knows his greatest fear. A little old lady who knows what's hiding in his heart.
In just a matter of minutes, Albert's life turns upside down and he enters a world where magic and evil lurk beneath the fabric of Southern California. And all his choices have brewed a perfect storm of broken hearts, broken promises, shattered families, and a couple of tiny problems. Namely, killer mice and a baby.
Albert Shipway is finally getting a chance to right some wrongs. That is, if it's not too late.
Learn more about the urban fantasy Cursed or view it for Kindle at Amazon or Amazon UK
GHOST COLLEGE
By Scott Nicholson & J.R. Rain
First in a new series featuring paranormal investigators Ellen and Monty Drew. Ellen claims to possess a sixth sense but Monty, a former P.I., only believes what he can see. She views their work as a sacred mission while Monty just wants a happy wife and a paycheck.
Then the Drews are summoned to a Southern California bible college after workers report hearing mysterious voices at night. When they encounter the unhappy ghost of a young girl, Monty's skepticism is shaken, but he resolves to help his wife free the trapped spirit. Their search uncovers the Latin phrase "Non omnis moriar"---not all of me shall die---and they learn more about the site's history as a Catholic school destroyed by an earthquake. But a mysterious presence has plans of its own for the young ghost, and Monty and Ellen must go head to head with a Dark Master that's had more than a century of practice in demonic deeds.
Learn more about Ghost College at Haunted Computer or view it for Kindle at Amazon US or Amazon UK.
THE VAMPIRE CLUB #1: First Bite
By J.R. Rain & Scott Nicholson
A group of college students pursue their passion for vampires, but when they discover the real thing, one of them must make the ultimate sacrifice in order to preserve the undead kind. A new vampire series by the author of the Samantha Moon series and the Liquid Fear series.
View it at Amazon US or Amazon UK and look for the next book Second Sips!
BAD BLOOD
By J.R. Rain, Scott Nicholson, and H.T. Night
People call him Spider. And people come to him when they have a problem. So when teenager Parker Cole approaches Spider at night school, he figures she's just another problem waiting to happen. But then she tells him about her father, who runs a cult called Cloudland based at the foot of mystical Mount Shasta, California. And then she tells Spider about her best friend, who is now dead, her body completely drained of blood. Spider wonders if the death is the work of a fellow vampire...or if he's now the target of a sinister game designed to lure him to Cloudland, where darker mysteries await.
View Bad Blood for Kindle at Amazon US or Amazon UK
THE HARVEST
By Scott Nicholson
It falls from the heavens and crashes to earth in the remote southern Appalachian Mountains.
The alien roots creep into the forest, drawn by the intoxicating cellular activity of the humus and loam. The creature feeds on the surrounding organisms, exploring, assimilating, and altering the life forms it encounters. Plants wilt from the contact, trees wither, animals become deformed monstrosities, and people become something both more and less than human.
A telepathic psychology professor, a moonshine-swilling dirt farmer, a wealthy developer, and a bitter recluse team up to take on the otherwordly force that is infecting their town. The author's preferred edition of the 2003 paperback release The Harvest.
Learn more about the science fiction thriller The Harvest or view it at Amazon or Amazon UK
TRANSPARENT LOVERS
By Scott Nicholson
Private investigator Richard Steele must solve his most difficult case ever---his own murder---while caught between women on both sides of the grave. In a race against time as his spirit slips away, Richard confronts his many, many failings and trusts in a power beyond his understanding---love. His only weapon is faith, and he's running out of bullets. It's going to be a hell of a showdown.
Learn more about Transparent Lovers or view it at Amazon US or Amazon UK
CRIME BEAT
A novella by Scott Nicholson
Crime doesn't pay...but neither does journalism. When John Moretz takes a job as a reporter in the Appalachian town of Sycamore Shade, a crime spree erupts and circulation increases. Then the first murder victim is found, and soon a serial killer is grabbing headlines. Moretz comes under suspicion, but he stays one step ahead of the police, his fellow reporters, and seemingly even the killer.
Learn about Crime Beat or view it for Kindle at Amazon US or Amazon UK
BURIAL TO FOLLOW
A Novella by Scott Nicholson
When Jacob Ridgehorn dies, it's up to Roby Snow to make sure his soul goes on to the eternal reward. The only way Roby can do that is convince the Ridgehorn family to eat a special pie, but a mysterious figure named Johnny Divine is guarding the crossroads. When peculiar Appalachian Mountain funeral customs get stirred into the mix, Roby has to perform miracles...or else. Novella originally published in the Cemetery Dance anthology "Brimstone Turnpike."
Learn more about Burial to Follow at the Haunted Computer or view it at Amazon or Amazon UK
FLOWERS
By Scott Nicholson
Features the L. Ron Hubbard Writers of the Future Award grand-prize winner "The Vampire Shortstop" and other tales of fantasy, such as "When You Wear These Shoes" and "In the Heart of November." Includes the Makers series where children control the elements, as well as more tales of magic, romance, and the paranormal.
Learn more about Flowers and the award-winning "The Vampire Shortstop" or view it at Amazon or Amazon UK
ASHES
By Scott Nicholson
A collection of supernatural and paranormal stories by award-winning author Scott Nicholson, including "Homecoming," "The Night is an Ally" and "Last Writes." From the author of THE RED CHURCH, THE SKULL RING, and the story collections FLOWERS and THE FIRST, these stories visit haunted islands, disturbed families, and a lighthouse occupied by Edgar Allan Poe. Exclusive introduction by Jonathan Maberry, author of THE DRAGON FACTORY and GHOST ROAD BLUES, as well as an afterword.
Learn more about the supernatural stories in Ashes or view it at Amazon or Amazon UK
THE FIRST
By Scott Nicholson
A collection of dark fantasy and futuristic stories from award-winning author Scott Nicholson. Dystopia, cyberpunk, and science fiction imbue these stories that visit undiscovered countries and distant times. Includes two bonus essays and Nicholson's first-ever published story, in addition to the four-story Aeropagan cycle.
Learn more about the fantasy and science fiction stories in The First or view it at Amazon or Amazon UK
ZOMBIE BITS
By Scott Nicholson
A collection of zombie stories, from the zombie point-of-view to the shoot-'em-up survival brand of apocalyptic horror. Proof that even zombies have a heart...Based on the comic book currently in development by Scott Nicholson and Derlis Santacruz. With a bonus story by Jack Kilborn, a comic script, and Jonathan Maberry's "Zombie Apocalypse Survival Scorecard."
Learn more about Zombie Bits and see zombie art or view it at Amazon or Amazon UK
CURTAINS
By Scott Nicholson
A collection of crime and mystery tales from the vaults of Scott Nicholson. Includes "How to Build Your Own Coffin" and Year's Best Fantasy & Horror selection "Dog Person," as well as the psychological thrillers "Letters and Lies," "Sewing Circle," and more stories that appeared in magazines such as Crimewave, Cemetery Dance, and Blue Murder. Includes and afterword and a bonus story from bestselling authors J.A. Konrath and Simon Wood.
Learn more about Curtains: Mystery Stories or view it for Kindle at Amazon or Amazon UK
GATEWAY DRUG
By Scott Nicholson
After the first hit, there's no turning back. Ten tales of horror and suspense from a bestselling author. A man learns fast cars and fast women don't mix, even when they're dead. A young boy discovers the terrible power of love. A rock musician will do anything for stardom. Bonus contributions from Tim Lebbon and Shane Jiraiya Cummings, as well as the afterword "One Sick Puppy."
Learn about Gateway Drug or view it at Amazon US or Amazon UK
HEAD CASES
By Scott Nicholson
Nine stories of psychological suspense and paranoid horror, featuring the first-ever appearance of "Fear Goggles." Collected from the pages of Crimewave, The Psycho Ward, Cemetery Dance, and more, find out what happens when a writer thinks Stephen King is stealing his ideas. Bonus stories by William Meikle and John Everson.
Learn more about Head Cases for Kindle at Amazon or Amazon UK
THESE THINGS HAPPENED
By Scott Nicholson
It's been a strange life. It's been my life. Features stories, poems, and essays on relationships, romance, writing, and taking oneself far too seriously. Plus some humor. You may laugh, you may cry, you may decide you want to be a writer, too. You may hate me after if it's over. That's okay. You wouldn't be the first. Learn about These Things Happened. Or view it for Kindle at Amazon US or Amazon UK
IF I WERE YOUR MONSTER
Children's book by Scott Nicholson, art by Lee Davis
Creatures of the night teach a lesson of bravery in this full-color, illustrated bedtime story for all ages. Let vampires, ghosts, scarecrows, and mummies protect your little one from the bullies and mean people of the world. 24 screens or pages. View it at Haunted Computer or at Amazon US or Amazon UK
TOO MANY WITCHES
Children's book by Scott Nicholson, art by Lee Davis
When Moanica Moonsweep plans a Halloween party, she needs the perfect potion of stinky stew. But when she asks her friends for advice, she ends up with one big mess and lots of hurt feelings. 28 full-color screens or pages. See it at Haunted Computer or for Kindle at Amazon US or Amazon UK
DUNCAN THE PUNKIN
Children's book by Scott Nicholson, art by Sergio Castro
A momma pumpkin must teach her young pumpkin all about the dangers of Halloween, while a mysterious creature known as Skeerdy-Cat-Crow watches over the pumpkin patch. 30 full-color pages or screens. See it at Haunted Computer or view it for Kindle at Amazon US or Amazon UK
TROUBLED (UK)
By Scott Nicholson
When twelve-year-old Freeman Mills arrives at Wendover, a group home for troubled children, it's a chance for a fresh start. But second chances aren't easy for Freeman, the victim of painful childhood experiments that gave him the ability to read other people's minds.
Little does Freeman know that his transfer was made at the request of Dr. Richard Kracowski, whose research into the brain's electrical properties is revealing new powers of the human mind. Freeman simply wants to survive, take his medicine for manic depression, and deceive his counsellors into believing he is happy. When he meets the anorexic Vicky, who may also be telepathic, he's afraid some of his darkest secrets will be uncovered. But when the other children develop their own clairvoyant abilities, and insane spirits begin haunting the halls of Wendover, he can't safely hide inside his own head anymore.
The author's preferred edition of the 2005 U.S. paperback release The Home, in development as a feature film.
Learn more about the paranormal thriller Troubled or view it at Amazon UK
SOLOM (UK)
By Scott Nicholson
Katy Logan wasn't quite sure why she left her finance career in the big city to marry religion professor Gordon Smith and move to the tiny Appalachian community of Solom.
Maybe she just wanted to get her 12-year-old daughter Jett away from the drugs and bad influences. Maybe she wanted to escape from the memories of her first husband. Or perhaps she was enchanted by the promise of an idyllic life on the farm that has been in Gordon's family for 150 years.
But the residents of Solom know all about the man in the black hat. The Reverend Harmon Smith has come back more than century after his last missionary trip, and he has unfinished business. But first Katy and Jett must be brought into the family, and the farm must be prepared to welcome him home. Gordon has been denying his heritage, but now it's time to choose sides. Does he protect the ones he loves, or surrender to the ancestral urge for revenge?
Author's preferred edition of the 2006 U.S. paperback The Farm.
Learn more about the supernatural thriller Solom or view it at Amazon UK
THE GORGE (UK)
By Scott Nicholson
An experimental rafting expedition, an FBI manhunt for a delusional killer, and the worst storm in decades collide in the remote mountain wilderness...and then THEY come out.
Bowie Whitlock and a team of celebrity athletes is commissioned to test two experimental rafts in the rugged Unegama Wilderness Gorge in the remote Appalachian Mountains, considered the most dangerous whitewater rapids in the eastern United States. The expedition is tense from the start as jealousy, romance, and money are riding on the mission's success.
FBI agent Jim Castle and his partner are in the gorge looking for Ace Goodall, a deranged abortion clinic bomber. Ace, accompanied by a fragile young woman, is having visions that guide his murderous behaviour. The race is on as dark storm clouds gather, the river is swollen, and Ace hijacks the rafting expedition to make his escape. But the bloodthirsty creatures swooping down from the high cliffs have been too long without prey.
Ace has one more bomb. God is talking to him. It's raining again, and his young companion is pregnant.
And killing isn't what it used to be, because the dead no longer stay dead.
Author's preferred edition of the 2007 paperback They Hunger.
Learn more about The Gorge or view it at Amazon UK
OMNIBUS EDITIONS
You can also save with the omnibus editions
Ethereal Messenger at Amazon US or Amazon UK (contains The Red Church, Drummer Boy, and Speed Dating With The Dead)
Mystery Dance (contains Disintegration, Crime Beat, and The Skull Ring, and bonus stories and essays) at Amazon US or Amazon UK
Horror Movies: Three Screenplays (The Gorge, Creative Spirit, and The Skull Ring screenplays) at Amazon US or Amazon UK
Skeleton Tango (Cursed! and Ghost College with J.R. Rain) at Amazon US or Amazon UK
Ghost Box (contains The Red Church, Drummer Boy, Transparent Lovers, Burial to Follow, Forever Never Ends, and Speed Dating With The Dead) at Amazon US or Amazon UK
Are you a writer? Please check out Write Good or Die and The Indie Journey: Secrets to Writing Success
Contact me at hauntedcomputer@yahoo.com because I'd love to know what you think---and if you are in any way dissatisfied with this product, please give me a chance to make it right. Let me know about any misspellings and formatting issues, since books in the digital age are living documents.
Thanks to Dellaster Design, David H. Burton, and Neal Hock at Hock's Editing Services.
Scott's Amazon Author Central page
Return to Master Table of Contents
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VIEW OTHER KINDLE BOOKS BY SCOTT NICHOLSON:
Novels
Cursed (with J.R. Rain)
Bad Blood (with J.R. Rain & H.T. Night)
Ghost College (with J.R. Rain)
The Vampire Club (with J.R. Rain)
Collections
Children's Books
If I Were Your Monster (with Lee Davis)
Too Many Witches (with Lee Davis)
Ida Claire (with Lee Davis)
Duncan the Punkin (with Sergio Castro)
Screenplays
The Skull Ring: The Screenplay
Creative Spirit: The Screenplay
Writing
The Indie Journey: Secrets to Writing Success
Omnibus editions
Horror Movies: Three Screenplays
Ghost Box: Six Supernatural Novels
Scott Nicholson Library, Vol. 1
Scott Nicholson Library, Vol. 2
Scott Nicholson Library, Vol. 3
Scott Nicholson Library, Vol. 4
Mad Stacks: Short Stories
Bad Stacks: Short Stories
Return to Master Table of Contents
VIEW U.K. KINDLE BOOKS BY SCOTT NICHOLSON:
Cursed (with J.R. Rain)
Ghost College (with J.R. Rain)
The Vampire Club (with J.R. Rain)
Bad Blood (with J.R. Rain & H.T. Night)
Collections
Children's Books
If I Were Your Monster (with Lee Davis)
Duncan the Punkin (with Sergio Castro)
Too Many Witches (with Lee Davis)
Writing
The Indie Journey: Secrets to Writing Success
Screenplays
The Skull Ring: The Screenplay
Creative Spirit: The Screenplay
Box Sets
Horror Movies: Three Screenplays
Scott Nicholson Library, Vol. 1
Scott Nicholson Library, Vol. 2
Scott Nicholson Library, Vol. 3
Scott Nicholson Library, Vol. 4
Scott Nicholson Library, Vol. 5
Mad Stacks: Short Stories Box Set
Bad Stacks: Short Stories Box Set
Return to Master Table of Contents
Other Books by Scott Nicholson
Scott's Amazon US Links
Scott's Amazon UK links
Scott's Amazon Author Central page

