Broken Shadows
Author: Tim Waggoner
Date: 2009-01-01 00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Horror
Description: Fissures appear in the darkness. Shadows break, collapse, and crumble away to nothing, revealing that they are far more than the mere absence of light. Shadows are our friends. Shadows protect us. Because what lies behind the darkness is so much worse . . . Fourteen stories by the author of Like Death, Pandora Drive, and Darkness Wakes.
Publisher: Darkfuse

Table of Contents

- BROKEN SHADOWS
- Connect With Us
- Other Books by Author
- When God Opens a Door
- Zombie Dreams
- Portrait of a Horror Writer
- Waters Dark and Deep
- Met a Pilgrim Shadow
- Open House
- Extern
- ’Til Voices Drown Us
- Knock, Knock
- Outside the Lines
- Provider
- Broken Glass and Gasoline
- The Tongue is the Sweetest Meat
- Ghost in the Graveyard
- About the Author

BROKEN SHADOWS

Tim Waggoner

First Edition

Broken Shadows © 2014, 2010 by Tim Waggoner

All Rights Reserved.

A DarkFuse Release
www.darkfuse.com

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

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OTHER BOOKS BY AUTHOR

The Men Upstairs

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WHEN GOD OPENS A DOOR

A metal door, rust nibbling at the edges, fuck scratched into the gray paint. No, one of the K’s lines is so faint that it resembles an L. Fucl, then, like a code or a word in some exotic language. From behind the metal, muffled but still clearly audible, come screams. Those of a woman, or perhaps a child. Screams of agony, screams of pleasure? He can’t decide. Both, maybe.

To the immediate right of the door is a row of newspaper vending machines. USA Today, the daily from the nearest city, Ash Creek’s weekly, and freebies like Employment News and Apartment Finder. The machines are empty, every one, as if they’re never stocked and instead are here merely for decoration. Or camouflage.

Past the empty machines is a store called I’d Buy That For A Dollar, selling odds and ends that cost—you guessed it—a dollar or less. Of course, with sales tax, you can go over a dollar easy, and usually do, but what the hell, anyone who’d shop there isn’t about to sue for false advertisement. To the left of the door is another store, Hand-Me-Down’s. The owner got the hyphens right, but screwed up on the apostrophe. This establishment sells second-hand clothing and toys for children, one of many such businesses in town. In the display window are three creepy kid mannequins, two girls and a boy, heads tilted up, gazing to the left (their right) with wide-open, flat-painted eyes, as if looking away from the door.

The door fascinates him. The screams, of course—sometimes interrupted by what sound like sobs, gasps, moans or sighs—but also the door’s aspect, its placement, its very existence. He’s walked the length and breadth of this tiny shopping center, built before the days when it would’ve been called a strip mall, past a hardware store, paint store, diet workshop, the dollar store and the second-hand clothing store, of course, and a couple empty stores with FOR LEASE signs in the windows. Stardust Video, as well, where he rented the two DVDs in the white plastic bag dangling from his left hand. But this is the only metal door, and the only one not clearly attached to a specific place of business. At first, he supposed it could be an access door to a storage area for one of the stores, but if so, then why was there only one? And why would it be in the front of the building as opposed to the back? Perhaps, he’d thought, it led to some sort of maintenance area for the entire shopping center, climate controls or circuit breakers, maybe. But wouldn’t each individual business have its own such controls, and again, why would the door to such an area be in the front?

And then there is the screaming. The sound sets his teeth on edge, like fingernails raking chalkboard, but it also excites him, electric tendrils of arousal curling their way into his cock, making him grow hard.

The door looks locked, which is a stupid thing to think: after all, how can a door appear to be locked? But this one does. Maybe it’s the forbidding solidity of the metal or the crumbling neglect of the rust, but it looks as if it hasn’t been opened in years.

Only one way to find out for sure if it’s locked.

He reaches for the round metal knob—smooth, no hint of rust here—and he’s surprised to see that his hand is trembling. In fear or anticipation? At this point, he decides, there’s no real difference.

But before his flesh can come in contact with the metal, a horn sounds, making him jump. He whirls around, feeling a surge of embarrassed guilt as if he’s a fourteen-year-old boy caught masturbating in the bathroom by his mother.

“Sorry it took me so long, but I was almost out of gas and I stopped to fill up.”

The passenger window of their SUV is rolled down, and she’s leaning over from the driver’s side, a smile on her face, but is there suspicion in her eyes? Maybe. He puts a smile on his own face and walks toward the vehicle, struggling to hide his disappointment. If only she’d gotten here a minute or two later…

He feels the door’s presence behind him, tugging at him, as if it’s reluctant to let him go.

He opens the SUV’s passenger door and climbs inside. His wife—a pretty blonde with a hint of crow’s feet around her eyes and the beginnings of middle-age sag in her cheeks and beneath her chin—gives him a quick kiss which he barely registers.

As he buckles himself in, he says, “No problem. I picked up a couple movies—” he holds up the plastic bag containing the DVDs for emphasis— “and then I strolled up and down the sidewalk in front of the shops a few times. Got my exercise for the day.”

“Good boy. Your cholesterol level will thank you.” She puts the SUV in gear and presses lightly on the gas pedal.

As the oversized vehicle begins to move forward, he wants to shout No!, wants to tell her to stop, wants to get out of the car, rush to the door, and try that goddamned handle, fling the door open wide and see what the hell is inside. But he doesn’t. He merely sits quietly as they pull away from the small shopping center, the sounds of faint, almost imperceptible screams lingering sweet and mysterious in his ears.

* * *

It’s not enough.

Darrell woke with these words whispering through his mind, almost as if they weren’t his, as if they had been thought—or perhaps spoken aloud—by someone else. Next to him, snoring softly, naked and covered by a single thin sheet, lay Patti. As usual, she slept on her side, but she was facing away from him right now, which was fine with him. Her breath tended to get sour as the night wore on, and when her head faced his, he couldn’t escape breathing in the smell. Funny, they’d been married close to twenty-five years and it had only been during the last few that he’d noticed her night-breath.

On second thought, maybe that wasn’t so surprising. A lot more than Patti’s breath had seemed go sour for him lately. Take his fabulous certified pre-owned Lexus: his status symbol announcing to the world that he had finally, at last Made It—or at least made it enough to afford a very expensive used car. The goddamned oil light had been blinking on and off for no apparent reason lately, and Darrell had been forced to drop it off at a BP ProCare after work because he hadn’t been able to afford the extended maintenance contract the dealer had offered. He’d called Patti on his cell phone and asked her to come pick him up, but since he hadn’t felt like waiting at the ProCare, he told her he’d walk across the street to Stardust Video and pick up some movies, and she could meet him there.

But she still hadn’t come by the time he’d rented the DVDs, so he’d wandered the sidewalk in front of the shopping center, and that’s when he’d discovered it.

The door.

Moonlight filtered through a space between the curtains, bleeding a blue-white sliver of light onto the opposite wall. He closed his eyes and in the darkness of his mind, summoned the image of the door. He saw gray paint, rust, the enigmatic word fucl…heard once again those faint, high-pitched, almost childish screams, and he felt a shiver pass through his body, tremors rippling along his nerves like surges of electric current. If only he’d had a chance to try the knob before Patti had driven up, maybe now he wouldn’t be so…

Obsessed?

That might be overstating the case, he thought, but if so, it wasn’t far from the truth. The door was just about the only thing he’d thought about all night. He’d been distracted during dinner, hadn’t been able to concentrate on the paperwork he’d brought home from the office—not that he’d ever found drawing up wills to be all that captivating on any occasion—and he’d only half-listened when his daughter had called from college to say that she’d be coming home to visit this weekend.

Even worse, as they were getting ready for bed, Patti had suggested they make love. She didn’t initiate sex very often, and Darrell knew she’d feel rejected and hurt if he declined, so he agreed, though he felt no desire for her whatsoever at the moment. At forty-seven, she looked at least ten years younger, her large breasts were still mostly firm, and thanks to regular exercise, her belly, while softer than it had been when they were first married, was still flat. And even though for most of their marriage it was he who was the aggressor in the bedroom, once they got started, she always proved an enthusiastic partner.

But tonight, despite her best efforts to arouse him—efforts that might’ve made another man cum numerous times—he’d barely been able to sustain an erection. He kept thinking about how he supposedly had it so good: a sexy, loving wife; a smart, beautiful daughter; a successful career; a five-bedroom, two-and-a-half bath house with a large yard in the right part of town, and of course his prized Lexus…but none of it was satisfying, none of it was enough, and he didn’t know why. Sure, money was tight, especially with paying for Catherine’s tuition (hence the trip to ProCare), but Patti and he weren’t in danger of starving anytime soon. By most people’s standards, he was doing just fine, was well ahead of most of the other rats in the race—but he didn’t give a damn.

He’d started to go soft inside Patti (for the second time) when he found himself thinking of the door again, hearing those screams, and his erection returned with a vengeance. He kept replaying those screams in his head as he thrust into his wife, and he finally managed to achieve a climax of sorts, brief and unsatisfying as it was. If she’d sensed any problem on his part, she didn’t mention it, just kissed him sleepily, told him she loved him, then rolled over and went to sleep, leaving him alone with his dark thoughts until, after some time, sleep finally came to him as well.

But now it was—he opened his eyes and glanced at the digital clock on his nightstand—2:17 in the morning, and he was wide awake. He lay there for twenty more minutes, waiting for sleep to find him, but it was no use.

He sighed (not too loudly; he didn’t want to wake his wife) and got out of bed. He dressed in the dark—sweat-shirt and jeans—and slipped out of the bedroom, leaving Patti snoring softly, alone in their bed.

He went into the family room, with its almost brand-new furniture and state-of-the-art entertainment system, intending to turn on the TV in hope of finding a good movie on cable. But just as he was about to sit on the couch and grab the remote, his eye was drawn to the two DVD’s he’d rented from Stardust Video. They sat on the shelf next to the television, propped up on their sides against it. Patti and he had watched one of the movies tonight, a new film by Robert Altman that Patti had thought hysterical but which Darrell had found meandering and only sporadically amusing. But it was a new release, and at Stardust, if you brought a new release back the next day, you received a dollar credit toward your next rental.

He looked at the DVD for a long moment before going over to the entertainment center and pulling it off the shelf.

What the hell. It wasn’t like he had anything else to do right now. Maybe running a late-night errand would help make him sleepy.

He snuck back into the bedroom to get his watch, wallet and keys, and to put on a pair of running shoes (no socks). He left the bedroom, made his way through the kitchen, past the laundry room, and opened the door to the garage. He closed the door behind him, and as he got into the SUV, he told himself that he was just going to return the movie, that’s all. But his hands were trembling in anticipation just the same.

* * *

The DVD made a chunk! sound as it slid through the return slot and fell into the plastic bin inside the store.

That’s one dollar credit, he thought. One dollar wasn’t much, but with the expenses he had these days, every dollar helped. Nothing to do now but get back in the SUV, head home and try to get what sleep he could before he had to get up and go to work.

But he didn’t turn and head back toward the parking lot. Instead, he looked toward the door. He listened, trying to catch the faint sound of a woman-child screaming, but he heard nothing.

The shopping center’s parking lot was well lit by fluorescent lights, and there were a scattering of cars still in the lot, most of them down by the bar at the far end of the center, despite the lateness of the hour. It was well past closing time. Maybe the cars belonged to employees or perhaps to patrons that had gone home with someone else for the night—either because they were too drunk to drive, too lonely to go home alone, or both.

But there were other vehicles here and there. His SUV, of course, but also a blue Tercel, a gold Saturn, a beat-up Pinto, and a VW bug. He wondered who their owners were. Cleaning staff? Not this late, he decided.

Maybe they’re on the other side of the door.

Maybe.

Well. you’re here and no one else is around. What are you waiting for? Do it, if for no other reason than to get it out of your system.

He hesitated a moment, two, then took a deep breath—night-air cool and sharp in his lungs—then started walking toward the door, past I’d Buy That For A Dollar, past the row of empty newspaper vending machines.

And then he stood before the door once again.

It looked exactly the same: rust at the edges, gray paint, fucl scratched into the surface. He listened, turning his right ear toward the door so he could hear better.

He heard the soft sound of a gentle breeze stirring the air, but when he didn’t feel it touch his skin, he realized that what he had heard hadn’t been a breeze at all, but rather a long exhalation that seemed to come from just the other side of the door. Not exactly a sigh. More like the weary release of air after long exertion. Or perhaps the last breath filtering slowly from the lungs of the dying.

The last thought made him smile. Amazing what—he glanced at his watch—3:04 in the morning will do to a man’s imagination.

He listened again, but this time heard nothing.

You wouldn’t, would you? No one gets a second last breath.

He did his best to ignore this latest 3:04 a.m. thought, and reached for the knob. The metal was cold, colder than it should’ve been. It was early October, but it had been unseasonably warm this fall; the leaves, fooled into thinking that summer was defying the calendar, had barely begun to drop. But the knob felt as if it were the dead of winter—almost burning-cold to the touch.

Just another morbid late-night imagining, he told himself. Nothing more.

Quit stalling and give the fucker a turn!

Darrell took his own advice and tried the knob.

It wouldn’t budge.

He tried several more times, attempting to twist it one direction then the other, but it didn’t move, not even a fraction of an inch. There was no rattle of metal, no looseness, no give at all. It was as if the knob and door were a single solid piece of metal.

Disappointed, but also on some level relieved, he let go of the knob.

That’s that, he thought. The damn thing’s locked, and maybe rusted solid to boot. No one’s getting in there without some serious tools.

But another thought tickled its way into his consciousness.

You could always try to pick the lock.

Darrell examined the knob more closely. Yes, there was a keyhole, but if the knob was rusted on the inside (for its smooth, cold metal showed no sign of rust outside), then attempting to pick it would hardly do any good. Besides, who was he kidding? It wasn’t like he was a goddamned locksmith. He wouldn’t have the first idea how to—

The knob began to turn.

Startled, he took a step backward and then, as if he were a kid caught in the middle of playing a prank, he turned and ran back toward the video store. At first, he ran out of instinct, but as he neared the store, he told himself to stand in front of the return slot to make it look as if he’d just put his movie in. It might seem a little odd that someone was returning a movie this late, but then people kept all sorts of strange hours, didn’t they? They worked different shifts—some couldn’t sleep. So it might seem odd, but not that odd. Hadn’t he just returned a movie a few minutes ago?

He made it to the return slot just as the door swung open. He turned, trying not to look like he was looking and failing dismally. Plus, he was breathing hard from his sprint down the sidewalk, and whoever was coming out had probably heard the rubber soles of his running shoes slapping the concrete as he ran.

You’re some smooth operator, he thought. But he forgot his worries and recriminations when he heard the sounds coming through the now open door—moaning: in pleasure, pain, or from some sensation he couldn’t name. And the smell—a combination of sweetness and rot, like dying flowers standing in a vase of stagnant water.

A woman came out, the door shutting behind her with a solid chunk! She stood for a moment, as if unsure what to do next. She rocked on her feet, forward and back, forward and back, and for a moment Darrell thought she was going to faint. But then she turned and started walking—toward him.

She was petite, her figure almost boyish. Her short brown hair looked as if it could use a good washing, and her bangs were slightly crooked. Her round face was slack, devoid of expression, and her eyes were wide, glazed, and unblinking.

As she came closer, Darrell experienced a strong feeling of recognition. He knew this woman, he was sure of it, but he couldn’t quite remember where from.

She wore black shoes, tight jeans, and a simple white T-shirt. As she drew near, he saw tiny red splotches marring the white cloth of her shirt directly over the nipples of her small breasts. Splotches that were widening.

By the time she reached him, he had given up all pretense that he was returning a movie, and he just stood and looked at her. She gazed past him, and he thought she would continue on without so much as glancing in his direction, let alone stopping. But then her eyes—eyes which he could now see were shot through with purple-red veins, and were the pupils tinged red as well?—flicked toward him, and she stopped and frowned.

“Darrell Gregerson?” Her voice was rough and hoarse, as if she’d been yelling. Or screaming.

Suddenly it came back to him. “LeAnne…Ruland?”

She smiled, and he saw her teeth and gums were slick with blood. “It’s Hilles now.”

That’s right. He’d represented her during her divorce a few years back. He wasn’t especially fond of handling divorces and didn’t do all that many, but she’d been recommended by a friend, and so he’d taken her as a client. The divorce had gone smoothly enough, and he hadn’t seen her since. Now here she was, coming out of whatever lay behind the door he hadn’t been able to open.

He struggled to come up with something to say. The normal small talk—How’ve you been? You look great—hardly seemed to fit the situation. But she saved him by speaking first.

“Did you come for the Place?”

He could hear the capital P when she said Place. “I…yes, but I couldn’t get in. The door was locked.”

She laughed, a brittle, hollow sound, like the empty dried husks of insect carapaces rubbing together. “Of course it was, silly! It only opens if you know how to make it open.”

He felt a surge of excitement. “And how do you do that?”

She shook her head. “I can’t tell you. It’s against the rules. You have to figure it out for yourself.” She looked around as if afraid someone might overhear, then leaned forward and whispered, “It’s how you prove yourself worthy.”

This close, he could see that her pupils were definitely tinted red. Colored contacts? He doubted it. Her breath was sour and sharp, from the blood coating her gums and teeth, he thought. He glanced at her chest and saw the red stains had gotten large enough that their inside edges nearly touched. Soon they would be one large red blotch.

He wondered if the Place was some sort of S&M club. If so, it would make sense why there was no sign above the door, and no windows to see inside. It was late for a club to still be open, but if they didn’t serve liquor, they could operate as late as they wanted—especially if they paid off the cops. And this “prove yourself worthy” business might just be another part of the fun and games.

He was a little disappointed. The idea of an S&M club existing between such ordinary businesses, places where simple working men and women took their children everyday, was intriguing, but it lacked the allure of mystery that the door had held for him when he’d first seen it. As exotic as an S&M club might be in little Ash Creek, Ohio, it was still just one of thousands in the world. Just another place to go in search of an orgasm, with a few cuts and bruises thrown in for good measure.

“Thanks for the tip, LeAnne, but I’m not sure the Place is for me after all.” He was about to bid her goodnight and head for his SUV, but she grabbed him by the wrist, her grip surprisingly strong for such a small woman.

“Keep trying to get in, Darrell. If you give up, you’ll regret it the rest of your life. There’s nothing to compare to the Place. It’s beyond anything you’ve ever experienced before. It’s…” She paused, searching for words, but then she scowled and gave her head a quick shake, as if annoyed at her brain for failing her. Then she looked up at him, vein-filled eyes wide, expression now one of almost religious ecstasy. “It’s everything.”

She gave him a smile—displaying those bloody teeth one last time—squeezed his wrist affectionately, then released him and walked into the parking lot toward the Beetle. He watched her get in, start the car, then drive away, giving one soft toot on her horn as she went.

He thought for a moment about what she’d said, about the look on her face, the tone of mingled reverence and lust in her voice. Then he turned and looked in the direction of the door.

* * *

On his way home, he passed a church with a sign board in the yard, red plastic letters spelling out an insipid homily: Happiness isn’t a destination to reach; it’s a road to travel.

Bullshit, he thought.

Back home in his bed, Patti sleeping soundly beside him, he tossed and turned, and when he did manage to drift off, he dreamed of locked doors and naked women with blood squirting from bruised nipples.

The next morning he said little to his wife as they got ready for work—Patti was a pharmacist at DrugRite—and he would’ve walked out the door before she could kiss him goodbye…if, that is, he had his Lexus. As it was, he had to wait for her to finish getting ready, then they both climbed into the SUV and he dropped her off at the drugstore.

He had his cell phone in hand and was dialing his office before he pulled out of the parking lot. He worked at a small practice, only two other lawyers beside himself, but it was large enough to need a secretary, and when she answered the phone, Darrell told her that he’d come down with the flu and wouldn’t be in today. He didn’t bother trying to sound as if he were sick; he didn’t really care if the woman believed him or not. He disconnected as she was telling him to take care of himself and get some rest, dropped the phone onto the empty passenger seat, and headed for the shopping center.

I couldn’t get in. The door was locked.

Of course it was, silly. It only opens if you know how to make it open.

There was a way in—LeAnne had said so. And he was going to find out what it was, was going to prove himself worthy.

He had just about everything a man could want: the family, the career, the house, but along with it all came two nagging questions: Is this all there is? Is there no more?

He supposed he was going through a midlife crisis, which made him nothing more than another affluent, soft-bellied cliché of a man, but he didn’t care. He’d tried other things to fill the emptiness over the last few years: booze, affairs, drugs, gambling, exercise, the stock market, but none of it worked, not for very long, anyway.

There’s nothing to compare to the Place. It’s beyond anything you’ve ever experienced before. It’s…it’s everything.

If what LeAnne had said was true, then maybe he’d finally found what he was looking for. He pressed down on the gas pedal and clutched the steering wheel to keep his hands from shaking.

* * *

By noon, he had seen three people enter the Place. The first was a fat woman wearing a tent-like muumuu with a flower print design and flip-flops. She carried a large wicker bag with handles, and looked for all the world as if she were bound for a day at the beach. The second was an elderly man in a brown suit, carrying a briefcase. He was missing his left arm, and his suit sleeve was pinned to the shoulder. The third was a girl who couldn’t have been more than thirteen, fourteen tops—Shouldn’t she be in school? Darrell wondered. Her black hair was shot through with spray-painted streaks of red and blue, and her khaki backpack was decorated with anarchy symbols of various sizes drawn in magic marker.

Despite their differences in appearance, each of the three went through the same procedure. First they approached the door during a time when the shopping center’s sidewalk was deserted. Then they walked up to the door and leaned their faces close to the crack between it and the wall. They remained that way for a second or two, then pulled back, waited another moment, then reached for the knob, turned it, opened the door, and walked in. The door, of course, always closed quickly behind them, and Darrell didn’t have to hear the click! to know it locked again.

He knew one other thing, too: whatever the Place was, it operated day and night.

Now if he could only figure out how to get in!

His stomach gurgled, but he ignored it. He didn’t care that he was missing lunch, anymore than he cared about the clients he would inconvenience by skipping work today (not to mention his two partners). While Darrell was growing up, his father—who had also been a lawyer—used to go on fishing trips with his buddies the last weekend of every month, no matter the season or what else might be happening with his family. Birthdays, illnesses, school plays, award ceremonies, graduations…none of them stopped Darrell’s father from going on his monthly trips.

When he was a teenager, Darrell had asked his father why those trips were so important to him. (What he really wanted to know was why they were more important than he was.) His father had thought about it for a moment before finally replying, in a voice almost completely devoid of emotion, “A man has to do some things for himself.”

Darrell had nodded then as if he understood, even though he hadn’t, but now that he was older than his father had been at the time, he truly did understand. His father had needed an escape, even if only a temporary one, from the straitjacket his life had become. Darrell had been searching for his own escape for years, and now that it looked like he’d finally found one, he wasn’t going to give up on it.

He got out of the SUV and headed across the parking lot toward the door. But before he was halfway there, the door opened and the elderly man in the brown suit came out. He no longer carried the briefcase, he was smiling, and he had two arms.

Darrell couldn’t help staring as the man passed him. For his part, the old man looked at Darrell, and his smile turned into a grin. He gave Darrell a jaunty wink as if he recognized him, and said, “Mum is most definitely not the word, son.” Then he saluted Darrell using a hand he hadn’t possessed when he’d first gone through the door, and continued on into the parking lot. Darrell watched him get into a blue Cadillac, start the engine and drive away, the old man giving Darrell a last goodbye wave with his new hand.

Darrell stood on asphalt and watched the caddy go down the road until he couldn’t see it anymore. He thought about what the old man had said, and then it came to him. When the people going into the Place leaned close to the crack between the door and the wall, they were saying something—a password! That’s what the old man had meant: mum wasn’t the word because something else was!

Darrell turned and hurried to the door, excitement building. He was close, he knew it! If only he could figure out what…

And then, as if it were staring him in the face (because it was), he once again read the word scratched into the gray paint. Fuck. He almost laughed out loud. He looked around to make sure no one else was watching, then he leaned forward and opened his mouth to say the word, but at the last moment, he hesitated. It wasn’t fuck that was written on the door, was it, not the way the K wasn’t quite finished.

“Fucl,” he whispered.

He straightened, waited for a couple seconds, then grasped the knob. It turned easily in his hand.

He took a deep breath, opened the door, and stepped into darkness.

* * *

Cold metal around wrists and ankles, the soft jangle of chains when he moves. Beneath his bare flesh, the surface of a stone table, gutters carved into the sides.

Blades so sharp they slip beneath skin as if it were water.

The song of blood in his ears: sweet, strong, and pure.

Other instruments appear in dark hands, the metal twisted into ever more exotic shapes. And as those hands go to work on him, he closes his eyes, opens his mouth, and sound issues forth—part scream, part moan, all pleasure.

* * *

Darrell got out of his Lexus, which he had picked up earlier that evening, closed the door, and began hobbling across the parking lot. The mechanics had done a good job, and for a reasonable price, but he didn’t care about the car, not anymore. He’d found something far better.

Though there were no visible wounds on his body, not even so much as a scratch, he was sore all over. It felt as if every one of his muscles had been pulled from the bone, pounded with a meat tenderizer, and then reattached. Not too far from the truth, he thought, then smiled, displaying teeth that were still not quite settled back in their sockets.

It was a little after midnight, just about twelve hours since he had first opened the door and entered the Place, and now he was back. He’d tried to resist—after all, how much could his body and spirit take in one day?—but as soon as Patti had fallen asleep, he’d gotten into his car and driven to the shopping center at nearly twice the speed limit. He wanted—no, he needed—more. Much more.

He almost ran up to the door, didn’t bother checking to see if anyone was watching, leaned forward, whispered “Fucl,” then pulled back. He counted one Mississippi, two Mississippi, and turned the knob. Or rather, tried to. It wouldn’t budge.

He felt the first spiderleg-touch of panic in his belly as he leaned forward and tried the password again, but still the knob refused to turn.

Was he pronouncing the word wrong? Was he not waiting long enough between saying it and trying the knob? He looked at the door and saw that the gray paint that covered its surface was smooth and unmarked. Fucl was gone, and there was no new word to replace it.

He was locked out.

“No.” He shook his head, unable to believe it. After all this time, he had finally found what he’d been searching for, and now it was denied him. Had he done something wrong, had he failed to prove himself worthy?

“Hey, Darrell.”

He turned to see LeAnne approaching. She wore the same clothes she did yesterday—the blood stain on the chest of her T-shirt now brown and hard—but this time she carried a canvas bag at her side. The bag hung full and heavy, and the bottom was crimson-wet.

“Something wrong?” she asked.

“I…can’t get in again.”

“Of course you can’t.” Her tone was both amused and sympathetic. “Only the first time is free. After that, you have to pay.” She held up her canvas bag. A thick red drop fell from the bottom and splattered onto the sidewalk.

Darrell felt cold and feverish at the same time, and his skin cried out for the touch of cool metal. “Pay how?”

LeAnne smiled as she lowered her bag. “I’m sure you’ll think of something.” Then she brushed past Darrell, bent toward the crack between the wall and door, whispered a word that he couldn’t quite make out, opened the door and stepped inside.

He hurried forward, hoping to sneak in while the door was open, but it slammed shut before he could get to it. He tried the knob again, gripped it tight and twisted for all he was worth, but it was frozen once more.

He let go of the knob, stepped back, and thought about the fat woman’s wicker bag, the old man’s briefcase, the girl’s backpack, and especially about LeAnne’s canvas tote.

Patti was home in bed asleep right now. And their daughter would be arriving tomorrow night to spend the weekend.

Some prices are too high to pay, he thought.

“A man has to do some things for himself,” he said.

He started back toward his car.

ZOMBIE DREAMS

Jared ran.

Sweat pouring off his body, heart pounding in his chest, lungs heaving, each breath a sharp knife in his side. Branches whipped his face, hands, and chest, scratching, cutting, bruising. He’d left the trail behind and the ground was uneven here, covered with underbrush that snagged his pants legs and threatened to trip him. But he couldn’t let himself stumble, couldn’t allow himself to fall. For if he did, they would get him for sure. And once they got him, it would be all over.

Something hit a tree to his right, splitting off a chunk of bark and spinning it away. A second later Jared heard the crack of a rifle. He knew he shouldn’t turn, couldn’t afford to slow down for even a second, but he couldn’t help himself. Instinct forced his head around even though he knew damn well who—or what—pursued him. The movement threw him off balance, his legs twisted, and he crashed to the ground, flattening underbrush and knocking the wind out of him. His mouth gaped like a fish out of water as he tried to suck in air and re-inflate his lungs. He attempted to get up, but sharp pain lanced through his left ankle, and he feared it was twisted, or worse, broken. Still gasping for breath, he put his weight on his right foot, hoping that it wouldn’t betray him too, and pushed himself up. His right ankle held, and he managed to stand once more. His lungs ached and felt heavy as lead, but they had enough air in them now that he thought he could start moving again. But before he could take a step, another chunk of bark was blasted from a tree, and another rifle shot echoed through the woods. It was too late; they’d caught up with him.

There were three of them, all male, all wearing dirty jeans, soiled flannel shirts, and ball caps mottled with old sweat stains. John Deere, NASCAR, and Cincinnati Reds. Two of them carried guns—a double-barreled shotgun and a rifle, respectively—while the third held an axe, the rusty head covered with dried blood and bits of hair. They shared one more horrid similarity: they were all dead. Their flesh was grayish-green tinged with black where it had begun to rot. Dry yellowed eyes were wide and bulging, black mucus running from the corners as if fluid were building up behind the eyes, threatening to pop them out of their sockets any moment. Their lips were cracked and leathery, stretched into grins far wider than they could’ve managed in life, teeth brown, tongues nothing but lifeless lumps of gray meat.

Jared didn’t know how it was possible for these things to chase him, let alone catch him. They took in no oxygen, their hearts pumped no blood, their muscles were dry and tight as jerky. They shouldn’t be able to move at all, let alone keep up with a living man. Jared might not have been the most fit forty-one-year-old man in the world, and he carried twenty pounds too much around his middle, but he was alive, goddamnit, while these fucking things weren’t. They should’ve been shuffling, jerking, stiff-limbed marionettes manipulated by a puppeteer with severe arthritis. But the hunters moved with a swiftness equal to, if not greater, than his own.

A German phrase whispered through his mind, one that he’d heard or read before, though he couldn’t recall where.

Die Toten reiten schnell.

The dead travel fast.

The gray-skinned hunters just stood looking at him with their bulging eyes and too-wide grins for several moments. And then finally the one with the John Deere cap raised his shotgun and aimed it at Jared’s forehead. A rotting finger tightened on the trigger, and Jared tensed for the impact to come, knowing there was no way even a dead man could miss at this range.

Thunder crashed and Jared screamed.

* * *

“God, Hon, you look like death warmed over.”

“Not funny,” Jared mumbled. He pulled out a chair and flopped into it. He leaned his elbows on the dining table and propped up his chin with his hands. Peter and Heather were too busy shoveling Kix into their mouths to pay their dad any attention. He glanced at the grandfather clock in the corner and saw that it was 7:20. No wonder the kids were eating so fast; the bus would be here any minute. Michelle came in from the kitchen carrying a mug of steaming coffee. As she set it on a coaster in front of Jared, he said, “I knew there was a reason I married you.”

His wife grinned. “You mean beside the fact that I’m a total hottie?”

That got the kids’ attention. They both looked up, but while Peter smirked, Heather—who was two years younger and had just started fourth grade—scrunched up her face.

“Mom, that’s gross!” she said.

Michelle laughed. “Since when did we start raising the world’s youngest prude?”

“Mo-om!”

Jared doubted Heather knew what a prude was, but she sounded mortally offended just the same.

Normally Jared would’ve been amused by the domestic banter, but not this morning, not after the night he’d had. He ran his fingers through sweaty, sleep-matted hair. “Didn’t the alarm go off?”

Michelle sat down next to him. She didn’t have any food or coffee in front of her, but then she was both an early riser and a light eater, especially in the morning. She’d doubtless already nibbled on something before he’d gotten up.

“It did, and it kept buzzing for five minutes before I turned it off. From what I could tell, you hadn’t moved a muscle. Bad dreams again?”

“You could say that.” Though the coffee was still way too hot for him, he took a sip anyway, instantly regretting it when he scalded his tongue. Though everyone else was dressed and ready for the day, he still wore the briefs and T-shirt he’d slept in, he needed a shave, and his mouth tasted sour and sticky, as if a small rodent had crawled inside sometime during the night and died in there. Usually, he was ready to go to work by this time. Of all the days to be late…

He took another scorching sip of coffee. “I gotta hit the shower.”

As he started to get up, Michelle said, “Aren’t you going to eat something?” She worked as a dietitian for a nursing home, and though she was good about not nagging him too much about his eating habits, she didn’t ignore them entirely.

“I’ll grab something on my way out the door.” He picked up his coffee and started shuffling away from the dining table. “I’ve got that presentation today.”

Michelle started to say something more, but a loud horn sounded outside.

“There’s the bus! C’mon guys!”

Jared waved to his children as they jumped up from the dining table and hurried into the living room to grab their backpacks. They didn’t wave back. He trudged down the hallway toward the master bedroom, hearing the front door open, Michelle saying goodbye to the kids, the door closing again. By the time he’d gotten a towel and washcloth out of the linen closet in their bathroom, Michelle had joined him.

“Want to tell me about it?” She leaned back against the bathroom counter, arms folded, gazing at him with slightly narrowed eyes. She might’ve been a dietitian, but she’d always been interested in psychology and fancied herself something of an amateur psychoanalyst. As far as Jared was concerned, it was one of her less-endearing qualities.

“Not much to tell, really.” He turned on the water in the shower, leaving it colder than he usually liked in the hope it would help him wake up faster. He then took off his clothes, stepped into the shower stall, and slid the door closed. He hoped Michelle might take the hint and leave, but she remained leaning against the counter.

“You haven’t slept well all week.”

Jared picked up the soap and began lathering up. “Don’t make it out to be a bigger deal than it is, Shell. I’ve been working on these budget cuts for the last several weeks, and while I think I’ve done a good job, I don’t know how the rest of the department is going to react to them. Especially Ned.” Ned was his immediate supervisor and the man who’d first tasked Jared with coming up with budget cuts. Almost certainly so Ned wouldn’t have to do them himself. “We’re going to have to eliminate some personnel, and Ned hates that.”

“You mean he hates looking responsible for it,” Michelle countered.

“Yeah.” Jared rinsed the soap off his body, then reached for his shampoo. “One way or another, he’ll make sure I’m the bad guy.” He began working thick blue goo into his wet hair. “I’m really not looking forward to today.”

“Look at it this way: by the time you get home tonight, it’ll all be over. Maybe then you’ll be able to get a decent night’s sleep.”

As Jared scrubbed his scalp, he thought of the three dead hunters grinning at him, heard the sound of a rifle blast cutting through the woods.

“I sure hope so.”

* * *

Michelle had already left for the nursing home by the time Jared pulled his Nissan Maxima out of the garage. It was late July, and the interior of the car was stuffy, the air thick and humid. Breathing it made him think of how he’d had the wind knocked out of him when he’d fallen in his dream, and he turned the AC to high. He reached for the remote attached to the visor and thumbed the button to close the garage door. He then backed into the cul-de-sac, braked, put his car in drive, and started forward. He glanced at his house as he drove away—a large Tudor with perfect landscaping and a neatly trimmed and edged lawn. On days like today, it helped to remind himself why he worked, and this house, along with the picturesque strand of woods it sat next to, was a big part of the reason. Michelle had been right. Today might not be a whole lot of fun, but he’d have his family, this house, and their woods to come home to. It was a good life he had, and today he was going to earn it all over again.

As he drove down his street, he saw Dale Baxter out watering his front lawn, ever-faithful border collie Zoe sitting next to him. Dale was a retiree and a widower, and roamed about the neighborhood always looking for someone to talk to and ease his loneliness. Jared felt sorry for the old guy, but not so sorry that he didn’t run inside whenever he saw Dale walking down the sidewalk with Zoe. Jared had learned from experience that if Dale caught you, he’d bend your ear for the better part of an hour, if not longer.

Dale waved as Jared drove by, and though Jared wanted to ignore him—for he was certain Dale was outside right now only to wave at whoever was leaving for work or school—he waved anyway. As if she recognized his car, Zoe barked once and wagged her tail. Jared had always liked dogs, though since Michelle was allergic they’d never had any pets. He smiled as he continued driving. Maybe Zoe’s greeting was a good omen and today wouldn’t turn out to be so bad after all.

* * *

Jared was stopped at an intersection, waiting for the light to change, when the smooth jazz station he’d been listening to cut out. Not particularly a patient man, he began pushing pre-set channel-select buttons, searching for another station. But they were silent as well, and he’d begun to fear the radio was broken when he pushed the last button. At first there was nothing, but then he heard soft moaning punctuated with occasional grunting. What the hell was this? Some kind of rock song with simulated sex noises, like those Donna Summers disco hits when he’d been a kid? But there wasn’t a sensual quality to these sounds. They were mournful, bestial, mindless… Then a new noise was added to the mix, a wet tearing followed by what sounded like chewing. Jared imagined someone sinking teeth into raw meat, ripping away ragged crimson mouthfuls, jaws working rhythmically as blood trickled over the lips. The image was nauseating, and yet on some level, it was appetizing as well. His stomach gurgled, but whether in discomfort or hunger, he couldn’t tell. Michelle had been right. He should’ve eaten breakfast.

A car horn blared, startling him. Jared looked up and saw the light was green, and the car ahead of him was already through the intersection. He glanced at the rearview mirror, at the same time raising his hand in an apologetic wave to the person behind him. A woman at the wheel of a dark blue BMW was shouting at him, her face contorted with anger, and he was glad he couldn’t hear what she was saying. He started to take his foot off the brake, intending to stomp on the accelerator and get through the intersection before the light changed. But in the rearview mirror, he saw the face of the woman begin to transform. Her skin took on a grayish cast, and her blond hair became waxy and coarse as straw. Her left eye deflated like a balloon losing air and subsided into the socket. A flap of skin peeled away from her right cheek all the way down to her jaw, revealing bone and teeth.

Jared gripped his steering wheel tighter as he stared at the thing reflected in his mirror. It looked just like the undead hunters in his dream, same ghastly pallor, same dead eyes…er, eye. The woman was still yelling, the motion jiggling her flap of cheek-skin. Bloody spittle flew from her mouth, stippling the inside of her windshield. She flipped him the bird with a skeletal finger, and jammed her other hand into the center of her steering wheel and let out a long blast on her car horn. When the horn’s noise died away, the woman was normal again, left eye restored, cheek unmarred and intact, skin pink and healthy.

Jared looked at the light and saw it was yellow. He stepped on the gas, his tires squealed, and he fishtailed through the intersection. The light turned red before he was halfway through, leaving the woman in the BMW stuck behind him. She honked once more, but Jared refused to look in his rearview mirror this time. The radio was playing smooth jazz again—a David Sanborn tune, he thought—but he stabbed his finger at the power button and turned the radio off anyway. He drove the rest of the way to work in silence, telling himself that there was no need to be stressed, it would all be over soon.

* * *

“Today’s the big day, eh?”

Jared had been running through his PowerPoint presentation for the fifth time that morning, tweaking a little here and there. He made one last change before looking over the top of his monitor and seeing Malcolm Posner standing at the entrance to his cubicle. Malcolm was nine years Jared’s junior, though sometimes he acted much younger than that.

“Guess so,” Jared said.

“Nervous?”

Malcolm was a good enough guy, but he was one of the prime distributors of office gossip, and Jared knew he was fishing for information.

“A little,” Jared said, knowing that Malcolm would never buy it if he denied being nervous at all, but not wanting to give the office weasel any more ammunition than he had to. “But that’s good, right? Gives you a little extra energy when you present.”

Malcolm shrugged, clearly disappointed with Jared’s less-than-forthcoming response. “If you say so. Nice suit. Is it new?”

Jared had bought it earlier in the month just for today, though he had worn it to the office on one previous occasion, so it wouldn’t look like he’d bought it special for today’s presentation. “Not that new. I’ve had it for a while. Still, it’s the nicest one I own, so I figured today would be a good time to wear it.”

The suit was navy blue, and Jared wore a white shirt and a maroon tie along with it. He’d found the suit at a closeout sale at the Right Look in the mall, but he’d never tell Malcolm that.

“Can’t argue with that.” Malcolm paused, as if waiting to see what, if anything, Jared might add. But when Jared just kept looking at Malcolm silently, the younger man said, “Well, I’d better get back to it. Good luck today.”

“Thanks,” Jared said as Malcolm departed. Jared wondered what the it was that Malcolm intended to get back to. Whatever it was, Jared bet it wasn’t work.

He ran through his presentation one more time, nearly nodding off as he reached the last slide. He needed another cup of coffee. The last thing he wanted was to be yawning and fighting to stay awake during his presentation. He got up from his desk, walked out of his cubicle, and headed for the break room. His limbs felt heavy, as if they were weary and trying to drag him down into sleep with them. Later, he thought, almost as if he were trying to placate his body. I can take a nap after I get home.

The break room wasn’t much—just a couple snack and beverage vending machines and a half-dozen round white tables with black plastic chairs. There was a microwave oven on the counter for those who brought their lunch and wished to heat it up. No refrigerator, though, so there was a limit to what you could bring from home. The break room was often empty throughout the day, but three other people were there at the moment, two women and one man, all sitting at the same table. They held 16 oz plastic soft-drink bottles in their hands, and they looked up as Jared came in, staring at him with empty expressionless gazes. Jared smiled and nodded to them, though he didn’t know any of them well, couldn’t even remember their names. But none of them acknowledged his gesture. They just continued looking at him.

Jared felt a nervous, crawly-tingly feeling in his stomach, but he did his best to ignore his three rude co-workers as he stepped over to the vending machines. He wasn’t really all that hungry, but coffee—especially the thick tarry stuff that came out of the machine here—had a tendency to upset his stomach, so he thought it best that he nibble on something. Besides, nervous as he was, he doubted he’d eat any lunch before this afternoon’s meeting, so he’d better put something in his stomach now.

He scanned the snack machine offerings, expecting to see chips, cookies, candy bars, granola bars, and chewing gum. But today the machine contained a very different selection: severed ears, fingers, toes, noses, tongues, eyes, lips, nipples…At first he thought it was some sort of grotesque joke, that the body parts were merely rubber novelties, the kind of thing you could buy anywhere around Halloween. But the texture and color of the skin was too realistic, and the blood smeared on the end where each part had once been connected to a body looked like the real thing too. Jared glanced to the right of the snack machine at the cold beverage dispenser. Instead of colas, lemon-lime drinks, or bottled water, this machine offered plastic bottles filled with blood (both white and red cells), plasma, spinal fluid, urine, pus, and bone marrow.

Unable to believe what he was seeing, Jared backed away from the vending machines. He turned and started for the doorway, but he stopped when he saw the trio sitting at the round table still staring at him. In unison they raised plastic bottles to their lips and drank deeply, various bodily fluids dribbling from the corners of their mouths.

* * *

A branch only inches from Jared’s head exploded in a shower of splinters, a number of which became embedded in his cheek, barely missing his eye. It felt like dozens of fiery needles had been inserted into his flesh, and he could feel warmth as beads of blood began to well forth from the tiny wounds.

John Deere lowered his shotgun, and his undead companions shook with silent laughter. Jared understood that the hunter hadn’t missed; the sonofabitch was toying with him. Even so, Jared had an opportunity, and he was determined not to waste it. He turned and started running through the woods once more, ignoring the pain that shot through his twisted ankle with every step. This time, he wove between trees, hoping their thick trunks would shield him from the hunters’ guns. His tactic seemed to be working when he heard two more shots—the boom of John Deere’s second barrel and the crack of Nascar’s rifle—but neither hit him.

Jared was running downhill now and picking up speed. His surroundings became a blur as he plunged through the woods, knocking aside tree branches, crushing undergrowth beneath his clumsy feet, birds and small animals fleeing to get out of his path. He heard the stream before he saw the gurgling, rushing water, and he knew it was flowing high as a result of last week’s rains. Normally the stream was so narrow that even a pot-bellied middle-aged man like himself could jump over it, but now…Still, he felt a surge of hope. The stream was not far from his home. The edge of the woods was maybe twenty, thirty yards on the other side, and his house lay just across an open field, perhaps an acre-and-a-half beyond that. Once he made it home, everything would be okay. He’d be safe, because that’s what home was, right? The place where you were safe. Home-free.

The bank sloped sharply down to the swollen stream here, but though he tried to slow down, momentum and his injured ankle got the better of him. He lost his balance and tumbled headfirst toward the water. He managed to get his hands out in front of him in time to catch himself as he hit muddy-brown water that was surprisingly cold for late July. Water sprayed against the side of his face as the stream rushed around him, and he closed his eyes, though his mouth stayed open, treating him to a taste of grainy silt. His chest and waist were soaked, but his legs—which still remained on the bank—were dry. As he pulled himself to his feet, he looked down at the muddy wet stains on his suit jacket and pants, and though he was running for his life and knew it was absurd to think about his clothes right now, he couldn’t help feeling a wave of disappointment. He’d just gotten this suit a couple weeks ago, and now it was probably ruined.

Jared heard a sound behind him, and he whirled around to see the three undead hunters standing at the top of the bank. John Deere raised his shotgun to his shoulder, took aim, and let loose with both barrels this time. As the shot tore through Jared’s clothing and into his skin, he knew that a few mud stains were the least of his worries now.

* * *

Jared jerked awake and sat upright in his chair. He saw the PowerPoint presentation playing automatically on his computer screen, but at first he didn’t know what it was. But then his mind cleared and he realized what had happened. He’d been so exhausted that he’d fallen asleep at his desk. How long…

He glanced at the time display in the lower right-hand corner of the screen. 1:06 p.m. He’d slept through lunch hour and was now officially six minutes late for what might well turn out to be the most important meeting in his life. He yanked the disk containing his presentation out of the computer without bothering to close the PowerPoint program, leaped out of his chair, and ran from his cubicle. He hurried past the other cubes, ignoring the curious stares and knowing snickers from his fellow wage-slaves, and headed down the hall toward the meeting room. Ordinarily he would’ve stopped off in the men’s room to check his hair, straighten his tie, and make sure his shirt was tucked in. But it was too late to worry about the niceties of personal grooming. Maybe too late to worry about a lot of things.

He walked the last few yards to the meeting room, both so that no one would hear him running and to give himself a chance to catch his breath. He took a last deep breath and then entered. The lights had already been turned off for his presentation and the room was dark. He couldn’t see much more than their silhouettes, but he knew they were all there—Donna from Human Resources, Robert from Accounting, a half dozen more…including Malcolm, who no doubt was doing a piss-poor job of trying to conceal a smirk. And sitting at the head of the oval table and undoubtedly scowling in the dark was Ned Wilkerson, AKA The Boss.

Jared tried to sound calm and relaxed as he spoke. “Sorry I’m late everybody.” He didn’t bother to offer an excuse. Not only did Ned frown on them, no matter how legitimate they might be, Jared didn’t have the mental energy to think up a good lie just then.

The presentation screen had already been erected in a corner of the room, and the laptop and projection unit on the table were on and running. Jared walked over to the computer and inserted the disk with his presentation. He opened it, and the words New Challenges, New Opportunities appeared on the screen.

“If no one has any questions, I’ll go ahead and start,” Jared said.

“You don’t mind if we snack while you talk, do you?” Donna asked. “I worked right through lunch today, and I’m starving.”

“Me, too,” Robert said. “But Ned wouldn’t let us touch anything until you got here.”

Because the lights were off, not to mention how nervous he was, Jared hadn’t noticed what sort of food was on the table. Ned always made sure there were snacks of some kind, though. Often, it was the only way to guarantee attendance at the meetings—especially the most boring ones. It was never anything elaborate, just finger food, but Jared’s co-workers had gotten so used to having it at every meeting that he sometimes thought they’d go on strike if they didn’t get it.

“Sure, don’t let me stop you.”

Shadowy hands reached toward a large serving bowl, snatched fistfuls of goodies, and deposited the food on smaller plates. Then Jared’s co-workers pulled their snacks over in front of them and began to feed. They tore into their food with more gusto than usual, and Jared wondered if they’d all skipped lunch.

He cleared his throat and started talking.

“As you all know, the downturn in the economy has hit our industry hard in the last six months, necessitating that we take a clear-eyed, rational look at our current budgetary needs, and decide what we need to do to keep our company strong and healthy as we move forward.”

He paused for a moment to gauge everyone’s mood, so he’d have a better idea how to proceed. Should he be serious and somber, encouraging and guardedly optimistic, or continue with light-hearted fatalism? But all he could hear was the sound of his co-workers chewing, several of them moaning softly just like…on…his… radio.

Trembling, he walked over to the wall, fumbled for the switch, and turned on the lights. He already knew what he would see: everyone would be gnawing on fingers, toes, ears, and other parts from the vending machine in the break room. But he was wrong. Because of the importance of today’s meeting, Ned had pulled out all the stops and ordered some truly special food.

A glistening mound of organs sat inside a chrome serving bowl in the center of the table. Loops of intestine, livers, kidneys, gall bladders, spleens, hearts…Jared’s co-workers were stuffing the soft wet delicacies into blood-rimmed mouths, gore and bits of meat splattering onto the table as they feasted. One by one they stopped chewing and looked at Jared—faces grayish-green, dead eyes wide and staring—as if they’d only just realized that he’d stopped speaking and had turned on the lights.

Ned—bald, bespectacled, looking like a rotting version of the husband in the American Gothic painting, only in modern dress—mumbled through a mouthful of pancreas. “Somefing wong?”

“Don’t ssstop,” Donna said, spraying a tiny jet of blood as she pronounced the S. “It was jussst getting good.”

“We’re looking forward to hearing your ideas about the budget,” Robert said, a coil of intestine drooping from one corner of his mouth.

Ned grinned, displaying blood-slick teeth with shreds of pancreas caught between. “Especially the cuts.”

Everyone laughed. Jared turned and fled.

* * *

Everything would be fine once he reached home. Fine-and-fucking dandy.

Jared drove well over the speed limit, wove in and out of traffic, ran stop signs and stoplights, and had more near-collisions than in the entire twenty-five years since he’d received his license. His tires shrieked as he whipped the Maxima into his cul-de-sac, and he nearly lost it right there, almost spun into the front yard of the dentist that lived on the corner. He managed to maintain control out of sheer desperation, and he zoomed down the street, the Maxima’s engine roaring and juddering as if it was about to explode. Hold on, just a little more…

He saw Dale sitting on the sidewalk in front of his house, Zoe’s savaged corpse splayed on his lap. The old man’s gray-green face was smeared with the dog’s blood, and he waved one of her chewed-up legs at Jared as he passed.

“Home, home, home, home, home…” Jared repeated the word as if it were both a calming mantra and a protective charm. He was almost there, almost home-free.

He pulled into his driveway, not bothering to open the garage door. He slammed on the brakes, leaving skid marks on the concrete as the Maxima slid toward the garage, but the front bumper only tapped the door before the car finally came to a stop. Jared turned off the engine without bothering to put the vehicle in park, and then threw open the driver’s side door. He left the keys in the ignition as he got out, not caring that the car might roll back into the street, not caring that someone might come along—maybe Dale with his bloody mouth and half-eaten dog leg—and decide to take the Maxima for a spin. All that mattered was that he’d made it: he was home.

As he started toward the front door, he heard a gunshot echo through the woods, followed closely by a scream of pain. He then heard someone thrashing through the brush, yelling, “Help! Help me!” in a desperate, terrified voice.

Jared wanted to ignore the pleas for help, wanted nothing more than to go inside his house, lock the door, and never come out again. But he turned in the direction of the trees, and walked away from his car, his driveway, and his beloved home, toward a figure in a mud-stained blue suit emerging from the woods. As they drew near one another, Jared could see the man was drenched with sweat, one side of his face bleeding from dozens of tiny wounds, his paunchy stomach bleeding from a single large one. One Jared fell into the arms of the other, looked up into his own eyes, and in a hoarse voice whispered, “Run…”

Jared released his other self, and the wounded doppelganger slumped to the ground, dead or close to it. Jared looked up and wasn’t surprised to see the three undead hunters come striding out of the woods, grinning their too-wide grins, weapons held at the ready. Nascar stopped, lifted his rifle, and squeezed off a shot. The bullet slammed into Jared’s shoulder, nearly knocking him off his feet. The wound blazed with fiery pain, and he pressed his hand to it, finding the navy blue cloth of his suit already moist with blood. He turned and started running toward his backyard as Nascar fired another round. This one missed, though, and Jared kept on going. He didn’t look back to see if the hunters followed. Of course they did.

He nearly laughed with joyous relief as he entered his backyard and saw the old oak tree with the tire swing, the green turtle sandbox with the lid slightly askew, the inflatable wading pool filled with water. But then he realized: his family was home, and he had come bringing Death in his wake. He started to turn, intending to run back across the field at an angle, hopefully make it into the woods once more before the hunters could finish him off. He didn’t care about his own survival now. All he cared about was luring the three grinning killers away from his family. But before he could take a step, he saw that the water in the pool was tinted a faint red.

Despite the afternoon heat, Jared shivered with cold as he walked over to the edge of the pool and saw what was left of Peter’s body floating there. He heard the back screen door open and shut, and he looked up to see Michelle walking toward him, carrying Heather’s head by the hair. She brought the head up to her mouth and took a bite out of it, as if she were eating an apple. She chewed as she continued toward him, swallowing as she stopped.

“What’s wrong, sweetheart? You don’t look so—”

A rusty axe blade hissed through the air and buried itself deep within Michelle’s skull. She dropped Heather’s head as blood jetted out of her own, and the hunter in the Reds cap yanked the axe free and struck her again. Michelle’s body jerked and spasmed as the damaged brain inside her split skull misfired one last time, and then her body fell to the ground.

Jared looked at the man in the Reds cap. He stared at Michelle’s corpse, axe handle held tight, blood dripping from its blade and pattering onto the grass. He was breathing hard, and lines of sweat ran down his face…a face that was no longer that of a dead man. Jared turned to look at John Deere and Nascar and saw that they too appeared to be perfectly normal, living men.

Then he looked down at his own grayish-green hands.

“End of the line, motherfucker,” Nascar said, and pointed his rifle barrel at Jared’s forehead. “Game’s over.”

Jared looked up just in time to witness the muzzle flash with his dry, dead eyes.

* * *

“You ever wonder what goes through their heads?”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“You know how they say that when it’s your time, your life flashes before your eyes? I just wonder what goes through their heads at the end. I mean, sometimes they just look so surprised, you know?”

“I’ll tell ya what goes through their heads—a fucking bullet, that’s what.”

The three men laughed as they walked away from the Tudor house and returned to the hunt. But despite their laughter, the men were hardly enjoying themselves. What they did was hard, bloody work, and it wore on a man after a while. But they couldn’t afford to rest, for there were a lot more deaders out there that needed to be put down, a hell of lot. The only thing that made it possible for them—and all the others like them—to keep going day after day was the knowledge that what they were killing wasn’t human. Oh, sure, they’d been human once, but not anymore.

Not anymore.

PORTRAIT OF A HORROR WRITER

You stare at the laptop screen, trying to come up with a good opening line, one that’s suggestive without being obvious; atmospheric without being vague. No: It was a dark and stygian night.

Slow minutes pass, but nothing comes, and now even dark and stygian night is starting to look good.

You decide to try beginning with an image—it’s worked for you in the past—so instead of focusing on words, you now sift through pictures in your mind, odd snatches of daily life that impressed themselves upon you over the years: a single bloody sock you found at the end of your driveway one afternoon (perhaps thrown out of the window by someone in a passing car?), a purple rubber dildo attachment for a vibrator you almost ran over with the mower one spring (though how it got there, and what happened to the vibrator itself, you haven’t a clue), a replica of an electric chair bolted to the roof of a frat house down by the university. You read about it in the paper, clipped out the picture that accompanied the article and stuck it in your idea folder, though you’ve long since lost track of it. It’s probably packed away in one of the boxes stored in the attic after you moved a few months ago, along with dozens of old computer disks and print-outs containing the text of far too many stories and novels that will never be published but which you can’t bear to dispose of. Too bad. That folder sure would come in handy today.

You glance at the clock on the dining room wall behind you (you know better than to set up your laptop where you can see the clock while you write—or in this case, try to write). 10:48. It won’t be long before your wife and three-year-old daughter get home from Tuesday morning playgroup. Have you really been sitting here struggling to get something down since they left at nine? It seems hard to believe, but clocks don’t lie.

Wait, maybe they do! There’s an idea that just might…the initial rush of enthusiasm is gone before it has a chance to build. Stupid thought, not even worth jotting down and sticking in the idea folder—that is, if you knew where the damn folder was to stick anything into.

Maybe another cup of coffee. You lift your hands away from the computer and notice how they tremble and decide that you’ve had enough coffee for now. How about a walk, then? A little exercise to get the old creative juices flowing. Besides, you’ve been meaning to do something about the spare tire around your middle. No time like the present, right?

You leave the laptop on—it’s not like you’re going to be gone that long—get up from the dining table and walk through the living room, glancing out the picture window on your way to the hall closet. It’s been snowing on and off the last few days, and the ground is covered by white. Some flakes are drifting down, but the snowfall is light and will probably taper off to nothing soon. Good. You’ve never much liked snow.

You put on boots and your winter coat (you decide to do without a hat, you hate the way your hair gets all matted down when you wear one), open the door and step outside. The air is cold and crisp, and when you inhale your sinuses throb. You figure they’ll adjust to the temperature soon enough, and you take your keys out of the pocket of your jeans, lock the door (this is a safe suburban neighborhood, but still you never know), put the keys away, turn and start down the terraced front walk. You shoveled it off yesterday evening, but enough snow fell during the night that it’s covered again. You know you should probably clear the new stuff away, but you don’t want to put off your writing. Yes, you know that going for a walk is an excuse for not working, but at least there’s a chance you might really come up with an idea while you’re out. If you stop to shovel snow, you won’t even have the illusion that you’re still working.

You make your way down the walk carefully, the corrugated tread of your boots giving you plenty of traction. Snowflakes descend lazily around you, and as they fall, you fancy you hear tiny shrill screams. A flake lands on your cheek, an instant of cold on your skin and then it starts to melt. You imagine the snowflake isn’t really a snowflake, that it’s some small creature that’s only masquerading as snow—one of hundreds, perhaps thousands that are falling from the sky—and now that it’s made contact, it’s not melting but rather seeping into your flesh, entering your bloodstream, riding the surging tides of your circulatory system toward your heart, or perhaps your brain.

You smile. Not bad. You might be able to work with it.

Feeling vindicated in your choice to go for a walk, you continue, dozens of tiny screams echoing in your ears as the “snow” keeps falling. You slip your hands into your coat pockets (you hate wearing gloves) and step off the curb and into the street. Your house is on the end of a cul-de-sac which borders a small park—open fields, a half dozen picnic tables, a swing set and slide. Sometimes in the morning, looking out the window and sipping coffee as you try to wake up, you see people walking their dogs in the park. One woman always brings three small white poodles, sometimes dressed in matching green and blue sweaters. You hate poodles…yappy little things with rheumy eyes that shiver and squirt pee when they get excited.

No Poodle-Woman today, though. Probably too cold out for her precious darlings. Maybe…maybe the poodles are really the masters, and they’re taking their human for a walk? You grimace and shake your head. Been done a billion times. Keep walking, keep thinking.

As you head across the cul-de-sac toward the park, you glance at the house across the street—a ranch like yours, with only minor variations in color and design to mark it as any different—and you see a SALE PENDING sign. You stop and look at it, thinking that this is the fifth time the sign has gone up. Four times before FOR SALE has been replaced by SALE PENDING, and four times the latter has come down and the former returned. You don’t know the owners well, an old couple whose kids are grown and long moved away, but you guess that there’s something wrong with their house that’s revealed when potential buyers have an inspection done. Maybe the basement leaks and there’s water damage…something like that. Still, these flip-flopping signs seem vaguely sinister. Maybe there’s another reason why SALE PENDING never lasts long. Maybe the owners aren’t so much interested in selling their house as they are in attracting people to come look at it. And once these folks are inside…

A sigh escapes your lips, expelled breath turning to curls of white steam in the frigid air. The idea’s nothing but a variation on the “Venus flytrap” scenario, a story structure so old it was probably a cliché back when primitive tellers of tales squatted around campfires and told their stories with grunts and gestures.

In the house, a window curtain that was held open a few inches is released, and the fabric falls back into place, concealing whoever—or whatever—was watching you. You look at the window a moment longer before shrugging and continuing toward the park. You step off the asphalt of the cul-de-sac, which has been plowed clean by city workers, and onto the snow-covered field of the park, snowflakes still drifting down around you, screaming in their faint, high voices.

The top coating of snow is hard, and it resists your weight for a second before collapsing under your boot with a satisfying crunch. Before you the spread of white is unbroken, save for a single line of tracks left by something with long, thin toes that end in claw-points. Raccoon, you guess. You don’t even bother to imagine what else might have made the tracks; it’s not worth the effort. A line of trees, branches bare save for a dusting of snow clinging to the topside of the wood, begins a dozen yards off to your right. You remember how excited your wife was when you first looked at your house—back when it had a FOR SALE sign in front.

“It’d be so great living next to a park. Jenny would have so much fun—running through the field, swinging, sliding, exploring the woods…”

“It’s not that big of a park,” you said, knowing that it didn’t matter what you thought, that she’d fallen in love with the house and the park and you were going to buy it. Despite the fact that there were no streetlights here and no lights in the park, either. Anyone could approach from the dark woods, make their way across the unlit field and the empty cul-de-sac, up the driveway (which is illuminated at night, if poorly by a low-wattage fluorescent bulb), around the back of the house where the bedroom windows were—where Jenny’s window was.

The thought of anyone trying to get into your daughter’s room makes you shudder, but you don’t even consider using it for your story. Unfortunately, it’s a news item that’s all too common. Besides, some things hit too close to home to write about.

Coward. That’s exactly what you should be writing about.

“Fuck off,” you mutter and keep walking. You notice the raccoon tracks veer off toward the woods, and that their shapes change the closer they come to the tree line, becoming larger, gaining extra toes and longer claws. Something rustles among the trees, something big, and do you hear heavy, labored breathing? You’re tempted to look more closely, maybe even walk over to investigate, but why bother? Whatever you’d find probably wouldn’t be worth writing about.

You can see the next street over from here, which ends in a cul-de-sac just like yours, and you decide to head for it. No particular reason; it’s just someplace to go. You keep crunching across the field, leaving a line of tracks behind you. You imagine the tracks filling in until the snow is smooth and unbroken once more, imagine another pair of tracks appearing next to yours, even though you’re alone. The images drift away as easily as they came, no more substantial or significant than a solitary flake of melting snow.

You reach the other side of the park and step over the curb and onto asphalt. The home before you, while in the same basic position relative to its cul-de-sac as yours (facing your house, like a mirror image) is yet another ranch, but it’s smaller than most around here, the brick painted white, the roof and shutters black. And the front door’s open—not wide open, less than a foot probably, but it strikes you as odd. It’s far too cold to leave a door open for any length of time. You’ve only been outside for a few minutes, but already your ears are numb and your nose is running.

It’s nothing, you tell yourself, trying to ignore the crawling sensation on the back of your neck that has nothing to do with the temperature. Whoever lives there just left the door open while they bring in groceries from the car, that’s all.

No car in the driveway, though, and none in front of the house.

The crawling sensation is getting worse.

You hesitate for a moment, two, and then start walking toward the house. You tell yourself that you shouldn’t be doing this, that you should call the police and let them check it out, but you left your cell phone charging on the kitchen counter. If this were one of your stories…

But it’s not, so you keep going. You don’t know who lives here—you haven’t been in the neighborhood that long, and truth to tell, you’re not the most sociable person in the world—and you feel like an intruder as you start up the driveway. It hasn’t been shoveled and your prints are the first since the snow fell. You start across the yard toward the open door, and you notice a set of tracks coming from the next house over. They’re clear and crisp, which means they’re recent…and they lead up to the front door, but there are none coming out. Which means whoever made them is still inside.

Don’t be so sinister, you tell yourself. Someone could’ve just come over for a visit, and after they went in, the owner didn’t shut the door tight and the wind blew it open. Except there is no wind. The air is still (you resist thinking it’s dead), snow drifting slowly, if not silently, down around you.

Now that you’re close to the house, you see that the paint on the brick and shutters is old and flaking. The curtains are drawn, so you can’t see inside, but you can tell that the glass is coated a dingy yellow. Whoever lives here definitely hasn’t earned the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval. You reach the porch, careful not to step on the tracks that are already there, just in case.

Just in case what? That they might be evidence?

Maybe.

You stand there, hesitating, trying to decide what to do next. Do you just pull the door closed and leave? Do you knock and wait to see if someone answers? Do you push the door open a little wider, lean your head in and call out “Hello? Anyone here? Your door is open!”

While you’re trying to decide, you hear something. A voice mumbling words you can’t make out, and the shhkkt-shhkkt-shhkkt of scissors cutting. The sounds are coming from somewhere in the house, of course. Where else?

An alarm goes off in your hindbrain, telling you “Something Is Wrong” and that now would be an excellent opportunity to prove that discretion really is the better part of valor. But your hand reaches for the door knob of its own accord (you’ve written about this, people watching as their bodies do things—walk forward, peer around a corner, grip a door knob—as if they were no more than puppets and someone else was working the strings, but this is the first time you’ve experienced it). You push the door open, and by Christ if you don’t step inside, just like one of those moronic characters in cheap-ass horror movies who, as a friend of yours once put it, exist only to get “slurped by the glop.” You’ve never had any sympathy for those sacrificial lambs, figuring that anyone who’s dumb enough to walk into the house of horror deserves whatever grisly fate awaits them, but now you wonder if they (thinking about them as if they truly existed) are gripped by the same fascination you are, a compulsion, really, almost hypnotic in its power, to keep going despite the fact that all your instincts are screaming (much louder than the snowflakes) to get-the-hell-out-of-here-NOW! But you don’t because, even though you know you shouldn’t, like Lot’s wife, you have to see.

But you smell first, a stink so thick you could take a bite out of it. Once when you were a teenager, you were mowing the field—you grew up in the country, on six-and-a-half acres, which meant a lot of mowing every spring and summer—and you ran over the flattened, yellowed desiccated carcass of a groundhog. You were on a riding mower, and you jammed your foot on the brake, but not in time. Bits of leathery skin and broken bone shot out the mower’s side, and a truly hellacious stench filled the air, greasy and rank.

This smell is worse.

John Wayne Gacy, Jeffrey Dahmer…bodies buried in the basement, sealed in plastic barrels…

You’re in the foyer, and a glance to your right shows you the living room. Aside from the curtains, which you now see are nothing more than tattered gray sheets hung over the window with nails, the room is bare. No furniture, no carpet…even the walls are unpainted. The “curtains” are thin enough to allow some light in; otherwise, the house is dark.

The mumbling is louder now, the shhkkt-shhkkt of the scissors faster. And you become aware of a new sound: the soft mewing of cats.

The marionette strings tug at your limbs and you continue down the foyer to a hallway, turn right and walk toward the sounds. The rooms have no doors, and the first two you pass are empty, completely so save for more curtain-sheets, but the third bedroom (the master, you guess, from the size) is not. The floor is littered with debris: scattered newspapers, soiled fast-food wrappers, and empty styrofoam cups. Tiny black shapes skitter among the trash, and you shudder with revulsion. But the insects are far from the worst. Cats—a dozen at least, maybe more—are gathered around the still form of a man in a mail carrier uniform. He’s lying face-up on the floor, coat open, his chest and belly covered with wet crimson. There’s blood on the floor around him, splattered onto bits of trash, and the cats are lapping it up eagerly, as if they’re starving.

The mail carrier can’t be more than thirty, you guess, though it’s hard to say, what with all the blood covering his face and the cats clustered around and on top of him. You’ve read numerous stories and novels where a character, confronted by something awful beyond imagining, loses control over his bodily functions and warm urine runs down his legs, soaking his socks and shoes before dribbling onto the floor. You’ve never used that tired old gag in your own writing, always figured that it was a cheap way to indicate overwhelming fear. But now, even though you don’t piss yourself, you understand why someone in this situation might. Oh, yes you do.

Sitting on a simple wooden stool in the middle of the room is a grossly overweight man wearing only a muscle T-shirt (spattered with blood, of course) and dingy boxer shorts. On his lap is the mail carrier’s bag, and he’s holding a letter with one sticky-wet hand and cutting it in half with a pair of gore-slick scissors. The two halves of the letter fall to the floor, to join a pile of other halves.

You can make out what the fat man is mumbling now.

“In the beginning was the Word and the Word was awful and the Word was wonderful and the Word was death and the Word must die must stop the Word must cut-cut-cut the Word cut all the Words…”

The man suddenly notices you and looks up. He frowns for a moment, clearly puzzled, but then recognition fills his eyes and he scowls.

“Say, aren’t you that fellow who just moved in over by the park? The one who makes Words?”

The most awful thing about his voice is that it sounds so normal: no guttural tones or demonic echoes. In a way, this is worse than the empty house, the dead mail carrier, even the ravenous cats, for the fat man doesn’t sound like a monster…he could be any man, in any house, in any neighborhood, anywhere. The sheer horror of this realization (and now the word horror means so much more to you than it did only a few moments ago, more than just a descriptor in a market listing or label on the spine of a paperback) breaks your trance, and you turn and flee the room.

The man bellows and you hear the mail bag drop as he stands, hear thrashing as he kicks his way through the debris, hear the protesting reeeeee-ows! of cats getting out of the way. Hear the slap-slap-slap of bare feet on uncarpeted floor, and you know he’s coming after you, scissors in hand. Of course he is, you think, an edge of hysteria to your thought-voice. It wouldn’t be much of a story if he didn’t.

Down the hallway and the foyer, through the front door, onto the porch, leaping over the steps, landing in the snow and almost slipping, managing to stay on your feet, then running toward the park. Heart pounding in your ears, lungs heaving, breath fogging the air like white smoke. He won’t come after you, you tell yourself, not in his underwear and bare-footed, not in this cold and not with snow on the ground.

You almost make the mistake of slowing down, but then you hear feet smacking the front porch, hear a bestial growl (which strikes you as more appropriate, and somehow more comforting, than his “normal” voice) and you know that the fat man doesn’t give a good goddamn about the cold. You run into the park, tromping across the tracks you made during your previous crossing, obliterating the raccoon-thing’s, too. (And do you see, out of the corner of your vision, a feral-eyed, fur-covered face staring at you from between a pair of trees? Maybe).

You’re halfway across now, and although you feel an almost irresistible urge to look behind you and see how close your pursuer is, you don’t. The sounds are more than enough to indicate his progress—pounding feet, harsh breath, his half-growl, half-whine a mix of anger and frustration. You almost slip as you leap over the curb onto the asphalt of your cul-de-sac, and you imagine that he’s so close he takes a swipe at you with bloody scissors, blade raking the back of your jacket but sliding off without cutting, thank Jesus. At least you hope you imagine it.

You make it to your front walk and begin bounding up the terraced stone steps. Snowflakes are still falling, but they aren’t screaming anymore; they’re laughing, laughing their cold, crystalline asses off.

You reach the door, grip the knob, start to turn it—

It’s locked.

Of course it is, you always lock the door when you leave. Ironic that a basic safety precaution is going to spell your D-O-O-M. You jam your hand into the front pocket of your jeans, but you know you’re not going to get your keys out in time, let alone unlock the fucking door. You can’t resist any longer, and really, what’s the point? You turn around and look.

If this were one of your stories, you’d see a flash of wild eyes just before sharp scissors plunged into the too-soft flesh of your neck. But it’s not. The fat man is standing at the edge of the cul-de-sac, scissors gripped in a tight fist, bare feet in the snow, unmoving, as if he’s encountered an invisible barrier that he cannot cross. His head’s cocked to the side, and you realize he’s listening to something. The snowflakes fall silently now, and you can hear it, too, barely: a high-pitched, plaintive mewing. His little ones are calling.

He looks back toward his house, then he turns to give you a final glare before starting back across the park, muttering to himself as he goes.

You don’t wait around to watch; you pull out your keys and gripping them in a trembling hand, unlock the door, practically fall inside, and slam it closed behind you. And yes, you lock it.

You slide to the floor and sit there, your back against the door, until your breathing slows to something approaching normal. You stand up, those marionette strings at work again, take off your coat and hang it in the closet. Then you walk into the living room and look at the phone sitting on a stand by the entertainment center. You should call the police and tell them what you’ve seen. You really should. But instead you walk across the carpet into the dining room, sit down at the table in front of your laptop, and start to type.

* * *

“So, how did you kill us this time?”

Startled, you look up from the computer screen. You hadn’t realized your wife had come home. You glance over and see your three-year-old daughter sitting on the floor in front of the entertainment center watching a cartoon. You have no memory of them coming inside the house, or of the TV being turned on. You’re used to getting lost in your work, but not quite this lost.

Your wife goes on. “Are we eaten by rotting zombies? Gutted by a deranged killer? Devoured from the inside out by alien parasites?” She’s smiling, but there’s a coldness in her voice. Your endings—often featuring the deaths of a mother and child—have become an issue between the two of you over the years. You’ve told her you don’t know why you do it, that maybe it’s because their deaths are the worst thing you can think of, and that’s what horror should be about, right? But she’s never bought it, and truth to tell, neither have you.

You try to smile. “You’ll be happy to know that you and Jenny aren’t even in this one.”

“Oh?” A hint of curiosity in her voice, and she leans over your shoulder to peer at the screen.

You’re always uncomfortable with people reading your work before it’s finished, but all you say is “It’s not done yet. I still need to think of an ending.”

She finishes reading the text on the screen and looks at you, a skeptical eyebrow raised. “A crazy shut-in and cats?”

You sigh. “You’re right. It’s stupid.” Your fingers move across the keyboard and you delete the file without saving it. Before your wife can protest, you say, “It’s no big deal. It was just something I was playing around with.”

Your wife leans over, gives you a kiss on the top of your head and disappears into the kitchen. Your daughter giggles at something on the TV. You don’t look up to see what it is.

Instead, you stare at the blank-white on the laptop’s display—as stark and barren as an arctic snowfield—and you reach out and press your fingertips to the screen.

“Please,” you whisper, “let me in.”

For an instant, you feel the plastic begin to yield, grow soft and welcoming, but then it becomes firm once more. Impenetrable, in the truest, most awful sense of the word.

Your wife calls from the kitchen. “Hey, hon! Would you like to see what I picked up at the hardware store on my way home?”

Tears well from your eyes, slide down your cheeks, become snowflakes as they fall to the keyboard and melt.

You sense movement behind you, and the side of your head explodes with pain and a surprised chuff of air escapes your lips. Though you can barely think through the agony blazing in your skull, you realize that something has hit you on the head, something hard, and you turn to see what it is, too dazed to think of doing anything else.

You see your wife holding a hammer, eyes wild, teeth bared in a cruel grin.

“How’s this for an ending to your piece of shit story?” She screams and swings the hammer at your forehead, far too fast for you to even think about ducking.

A bright flash erupts behind your eyes. The blow is so hard that it spins your head back around and you slump forward onto the laptop’s keyboard. You hear your daughter laughing in delight and clapping her hands.

“Hit him again, Mommy! Hit him again!”

The computer screen is splattered with red and you can hardly see the line of letters on the display—letters created when your cheek hit the keys. It’s difficult to focus your eyes so close to the screen, especially with the gray haze nibbling at the edge of your vision, but you read the text, some of it obscured by blood.

ANFORKOMYUHVVBXUHJNCKOP

“Well?” your wife says with satisfaction. “What do you think of my ending?”

Darkness rushes in like an ebon wave and you answer her with your final thought.

It’s been done.

As the black closes in, you reach over with trembling fingers, turn off the laptop, and the Word goes…

WATERS DARK AND DEEP

Water roaring in her ears, pushing heavy against her eardrums. Hands clawing for purchase, feet kicking, trying to find something, anything solid to stand on, but there’s nothing—nothing but water. She opens her mouth to scream, takes a deep breath first, but instead of filling her lungs with air, liquid rushes down her throat and a shower of bubbles bursts from her mouth. Her lungs feel full and heavy, as if they’re filled with concrete and it’s weighing her down, down, down…

My camera! she thinks. I can’t lose my camera! Mom and Dad will kill me!

She looks up, sees a scattered diffusion of light somewhere above her—five feet? Five hundred? There’s no real difference at this point. There’s a whole world of air up there, if only she could reach it. If only she was wearing a life jacket, if only she had learned how to swim…

A small shape slides toward her through the gray murk: sleek, scaled and streamlined. It’s a fish of some sort. Daddy would know what kind, but she doesn’t. It turns as it nears her face, displaying its flank, a cold black eye looking at her with supreme indifference as it passes, and then it’s gone, returned once more to the darkness it came from, and she’s still going down, down, down…

* * *

“It’s all right! You’re all right!”

Tina struggled to catch her breath. She was sitting up in bed, covered in sweat, chest heaving. Carl sat next to her, hands firm on her bare shoulders as if he were trying to hold her down. The bedroom was dark; it was still night. The darkness made her think of her dream—of the water—and she shivered.

“Light,” she managed to gasp out. “Please…turn on the light.”

Carl removed a hand from her shoulder and leaned over to switch on the nightstand lamp. Soft yellow light illuminated her small apartment bedroom, but the corners remained dim and shadowy. Murky, she thought. Like water.

Carl began gently kneading her shoulders. “You had a bad dream.”

Tina’s pulse was racing, and she felt as if she couldn’t catch her breath, but she still managed a soft chuckle. “No kidding.”

They were both naked; normally she slept in a nightgown, but not when Carl stayed over. The sheet was thrown back, the blankets twisted into knots. She must’ve thrashed around quite a bit before Carl woke her. Without thinking about it, she leaned forward and began straightening the covers.

“Same one?” Carl asked.

She nodded. “That’s the third time I’ve had it this week. I don’t know why. I mean, I used to have it a lot when I was kid, but I haven’t had it for ages.” She paused, checked the sheets and covers, gave them one last smoothing with her palm. There.

“Until now,” Carl added.

“Yes.” She turned toward him and forced a smile. It wasn’t hard to do. He was a boyishly handsome man who kept himself trim by working out and doing a little bodybuilding. Maybe he was no Mr. Universe, but he sure looked good with his clothes off. Besides, she loved him like crazy, which was a good thing considering that they were engaged to be married.

“Maybe it’s just stress. You’ve got a lot going on in your life: your job, getting ready to start on your MBA…”

She smiled. “And don’t forget our impending nuptials.”

A flicker of something passed across his face, a hint of an expression that was gone before it could be fully born. It was his turn to smile then, but it was a thin smile, one that hardly counted as a smile at all, really.

A second passed, then another, before he answered. “Right.” The word seemed toneless and devoid of meaning, like it had been emitted from a computer speaker rather than the mouth of a man she intended to marry.

She wondered if something was wrong, if she should ask him if everything was okay, but then she glanced at the digital clock on the night stand and saw that it was sixteen minutes after four in the morning. He was probably just tired and out of sorts from being woken by her thrashing about. That’s all.

She snuggled into his arms and they lay back on the bed, holding each other.

“You know what I say about stress.”

He sighed, but smiled. “’Pressure makes diamonds.’ I think you’ve attended one too many corporate training seminars.”

She ignored the dig. “It’s all a matter of whether you let things get to you or not. Anything can be controlled—including stress—if you work at it hard enough.”

“It’s a good life if you don’t weaken, eh?” He kept one arm around her as he rolled halfway over and reached for the lamp.

“Carl? Could you…leave it on? Just for a little bit, until I fall asleep?”

He hesitated, but then said, “Sure,” and rolled back over to kiss her. It wasn’t a quick kiss, but it wasn’t exactly a lingering one, either. “Night.” He disengaged from her and turned over on his side, his back to her. She felt hurt, even though he slept like that a lot of the time. But after the nightmare she’d had, she could’ve used a little extra TLC.

Her lips were still moist with his saliva, and it felt…funny, thicker than it should, cooler. She touched fingers to her lips, brought them to her nose, sniffed—

—and smelled the faint, brackish odor of lake water.

* * *

Tina hoped she wasn’t sweating too badly. It was late June, and in southwestern Ohio, that meant high humidity. She could feel moisture being sucked out of her pores with every clack of her high-heel shoes, and she wished she hadn’t worn her blue blazer and skirt today. The fabric was way too heavy for summer, but it was the nicest outfit she had, and she wanted to make a good impression on the doctors at this practice. Maybe free samples were what really sold pharmaceuticals—and her case was bulging full of those today—but looking good in the bargain sure didn’t hurt. Especially when the practice was staffed by all male doctors, like this one.

As a pharmaceutical sales rep, she was always careful not to park too close to the entrance of a physician’s office. Docs hated it when you took up spaces they thought should be reserved for their patients. Ordinarily, it wasn’t much of a hassle, but the office park was crowded today, and she’d been forced to park her Geo Metro in front of an orthodontist’s the equivalent of a city block away. The way she was sweating, by the time she got inside, she’d be lucky if she didn’t look like a drowned rat.

She remembered the dream she’d had last night, and despite the heat of the day, she felt a chill ripple along her spine. Maybe drowned rat wasn’t the best choice of image for a simile.

Tina heard a soft squeeek-squeeek-squeeek of turning wheels. She turned toward the sound and saw a small woman—really small, so tiny she looked more like an ambulatory doll than a creature of flesh and blood—pushing herself across the parking lot on a stainless steel scooter. Tina wondered if there was something wrong with the woman’s legs, if they were too weak to support even her minimal weight and she needed the scooter to get around.

The woman had blonde hair down to the center of her tiny back, and she wore a white dress and shoes that were so small they looked like they belonged on a doll rather than a person. The woman’s head was out of proportion with her body, so much so that it seemed she might topple over any moment, her head dragging the rest of her body down to the blacktop of the parking lot. She was so small, so thin that Tina imagined she wouldn’t make much of a sound when she hit, no more than a child’s stuffed animal dropped onto carpet. The little woman held onto the handlebars with stubby sausage-link fingers as she half-walked, half-scooted toward Tina, wheels squeeeeeking softly.

Tina felt the flesh on the back of her neck crawl as the woman approached, and she almost turned around and hurried back to her car. But she stood her ground, afraid of hurting the woman’s feelings and, more to the point, blowing her sales call. Besides, if Tina avoided contact with the woman just because of her appearance, that would make her a…what? Not a racist. A height-ist? Something like that.

As the woman drew near, Tina relied on her years of sales experience to conceal her true feelings. Just act like you’re talking to a customer. She took a breath, released it, forced her body to relax and put on a “you don’t know me yet, but we’re destined to be good friends” smile.

The little woman reached the sidewalk, stood and half-lifted, half-walked her bike onto it, sat back down, and then rolled right up to Tina, the front wheel of her scooter bumping into Tina’s left shoe. Tina didn’t wait for the woman to speak; in sales, it was vital to get the first word in yourself.

“Hi.” Opening lines flashed nervously through her mind and were discarded just as quickly as they came. Nice day for a bike ride…Doing a “little” shopping?…How’s the weather down there?…

But whatever Tina might’ve said died unspoken when she took a good look at the woman’s face. Her skin was pale, almost grayish-white, her lips round, the flesh puckered and tight as if they didn’t belong to a mouth at all but an entirely different orifice. Worst of all, though, were the little woman’s eyes. They were large, moist and black, like ebon marbles with petroleum jelly smeared on the surfaces. Tina had the impression that she’d seen these eyes before, but she couldn’t…

And then she remembered. They resembled the eyes of the fish that had swam past her face when she’d almost drowned as a kid. These eyes had the same cold alien quality: detached, distant, and utterly devoid of any shred of human emotion.

The orifice that served at the woman’s mouth irised open and she spoke, her voice liquid and phlegmy. “In the end, control is a fragile illusion. The more you struggle to hold onto it, the more easily it shatters in your grasp.” Her mouth opened and closed once, twice more without making any sound, as if she were gawping for air. She scooted backwards a foot, turned the front wheel of her tiny bike, and then advanced, making her way around Tina, wheels squeak-squeak-squeaking.

Tina turned to watch the little woman continue down the sidewalk away from her. The woman’s cryptic words swirled around in her mind, but they weren’t what bothered Tina the most. What truly disturbed her was the glimpse she’d gotten of the little woman’s hands as she’d pulled her bike back and then moved forward. She’d seen that those stubby fingers were connected by gossamer-thin webs of skin—skin covered with glistening scales.

She felt dizzy, nauseated, and then Carl’s words from last night returned to her.

Maybe it’s just stress. You’ve got a lot going on in your life: your job, getting ready to start your MBA.…Not to mention the wedding, which Carl hadn’t. But maybe he was right. She was under a great deal of stress, more than she ever had been before. So she had encountered a strange little woman on her way to a sales call—what of it?

What about those eyes…those fingers?

Stress could do funny things to a person’s perceptions. The little woman on the bike had been real enough, and she’d said those words, whatever the hell they were supposed to mean, but the eyes and the webbed fingers? Uh-uh. Not a chance they were real. A trick of the light, the mind, or both. Best to just forget about them and move on.

She continued down the sidewalk, passing office fronts—real estate, financial planning, an optometrist’s—on her way to the doctors’. The encounter with the little woman might have shaken her a bit, but at least it hadn’t put her behind schedule.

She was mentally rehearsing her opening spiel for whichever doc might be available to see her (and trying to decide if it would be too obvious if she undid another button on her blouse), when she felt a tightness in her chest. It wasn’t much at first, just a sensation as if she were wearing constricting clothes, but then it worsened, and her lungs began to feel heavy, as if they were filling with fluid. Breathing became more difficult, until it felt as if she were trying to suck air through a mouthful of wet cotton. Her pulse rate soared, and she could feel her heart pounding in her ears, the sound not unlike the rushing-gurgle of water.

Panic surged through her. She dropped her sample case and ran toward the doctors’ office, high-heels clack-clack-clacking on the sidewalk as she wheezed and gasped for air. Her vision began to go gray around the edges (a gray that resembled the murkiness of silty lake water) and she prayed that she’d reach the office doors before she lost consciousness.

Almost there, almost—

* * *

Tina drove away from the doctor’s, embarrassed and angry at herself. She was a professional woman, goddamnit, not some simpering little thing that let her “nerves” get to her.

I suggest you make an appointment with your regular doctor to see if he or she would like to run some more tests, but based on my examination, I’d say you experienced a mild panic attack, brought on most likely by stress. Not a lot of fun, of course, but nothing serious.

The doctor had smiled then—a patronizing smile, Tina thought, one that said “There’s nothing wrong with you, so leave now and let me get on with seeing patients who really need me.”

He’d also offered to write her a short-term prescription for anti-anxiety medication until she could get in to see her regular doctor, but she’d declined. She hated the idea of taking pills to alter her emotions. They were her emotions, and if they needed to be controlled, then she would be the one to do it, not some damn medicine. Not exactly an attitude her supervisor at Pharm-Tech would approve of, maybe, but that’s how she felt.

The words the little woman (the little fish woman, she couldn’t help thinking) had said came back to her then.

In the end, control is a fragile illusion. The more you struggle to hold onto it, the more easily it shatters in your grasp.

“Bullshit,” she whispered, but without much conviction. She continued driving toward her next sales call and tried not to think about the little woman’s cold, black eyes. Tried very hard.

* * *

When Tina was twelve, she almost drowned.

Her family had been vacationing at a state park that summer: her father, mother, little brother and herself, all crammed into a tiny tin can of a trailer for a week. She’d never been the outdoorsy type and was well and truly bored after the first couple days. Besides, there really wasn’t that much to do, not with her parents. Her dad liked to go fishing, but her mom was too afraid to get into the boat—she was worried about tipping over, about getting sunburned, about getting eaten alive by mosquitoes—so she remained at the trailer, staying inside reading or watching the portable TV they’d brought, even though they could only pick up two local channels out of Cincinnati. Her brother liked to fish, too, so he accompanied their father, which left Tina (who loathed fishing) with only two choices: stay at the trailer with mom or roam around the park and see what trouble she could get into.

And on the last day of their vacation, Tina found trouble all right. Found plenty.

She wandered down to the boat dock, hoping to see the cute guy who worked at the nearby food stand. He was a teenager—sixteen, maybe seventeen—and, at least in Tina’s eyes, he was movie-star handsome. She had no illusions that the boy would fall in love with her. At twelve she was coltish and awkward, and besides, her family was leaving for home later. But she just wanted to see him one last time, and maybe, if she was lucky, snap a picture of him with the camera Aunt Karen had given her for her last birthday.

But—rotten luck—the boy hadn’t been working that day, so bored and depressed now, she walked to the end of the dock, thinking maybe she might see a crane or something flying over the water and get a picture of it.

Her mother would’ve had a fit if she’d seen, because Tina had never learned how to swim and, despite Mom’s advice, she wasn’t wearing a lifejacket. There was no way Tina was going to wear one of those bulky orange things. Not only would she look like a big geek since all she was doing was walking on the dock, they were itchy and uncomfortably hot. She wasn’t stupid; she’d be careful not to get too close to the water. And even if she did fall in, she’d be so close to the dock that she could pull herself out easily.

So she stood at the end of the dock, sandals hanging over the edge by a half inch, and she looked down and saw a school of small darting fish in the water. They weren’t exactly cranes, but she figured they’d do. She brought the camera (which was hanging by a black strap around her neck) up to her eye and gazed through the lens, struggling to focus it. She wasn’t sure if she’d be able to get the picture—would the camera be able to shoot something that was under the water? Maybe if she leaned down a little…a bit more…just a—

And then the world swayed, tilted, and she was in the water.

She went down once, twice, and was about to go down for the third time when she felt a strong, sure hand close around her wrist and pull her up. Let it be him, she thought, hoping that the cute food-stand boy would turn out to be her savior. But it wasn’t. She was saved by a fat little man with bad skin and a sunburned bald head. Still, she wasn’t too disappointed. She was alive, after all, though her camera was completely ruined.

Her T-shirt and shorts were still sopping wet by the time she got back to the trailer, and her mother nearly had a heart attack when Tina explained what had happened.

She hugged Tina so tight she could barely breathe and said, “I’ll never take you to such a dangerous place again!”

And she was true to her word. Tina’s family never went on vacation after that, not even a simple day trip. Before long her mother didn’t want to go anywhere, for any reason. By the time she died of congestive heart failure when Tina was twenty-five, her mom hadn’t left the house for over a decade.

Tina had been terrified by the experience of nearly drowning. The complete and total loss of control—not being able to breathe, unable to stop herself from sinking—had shaken her to the core. But when she saw how her mother reacted to the incident, Tina decided that she wouldn’t let it get to her, wouldn’t let her fear make her retreat from the world. She took a paper route, saved her money, and signed up for swimming lessons at the Y. By the time she entered high school, she was good enough to be on the swim team, and by the time she graduated, she was able to go to college on a partial swimming scholarship.

Tina first heard the phrase “pressure makes diamonds” from her swimming coach in high school, and she liked it so much she decided to make it her personal motto. Whatever happened to her, no matter how bad it was, she would handle it. She’d taken control of her life, and she was never going to let it get out of her control again.

* * *

“C’mon, c’mon…” Tina urged the driver ahead of her to go faster. The idiot was barely doing twenty, even though the speed limit here was forty-five. Yes, it was raining, but not that hard. It was—she glanced at the dashboard clock—six thirty-seven. She was supposed to meet Carl at the restaurant at six thirty.

She slapped her palm on the steering wheel and swore. The windshield wipers arced back and forth, back and forth, moving at their highest setting, but even so water rippled across the glass as if the wipers weren’t even there. The car ahead of her (the slowpoke!) was little more than a blurry outline with a pair of reddish smears for brake lights.

She looked at the clock again. Six thirty-eight.

Carl would wait, of course he would, and he wouldn’t be upset. Being exactly on time was one of her things, not his. But that didn’t make being late any easier to deal with, especially not after everything that had happened today. After her encounter with the little woman on the bicycle and the resulting panic attack, Tina had tried to make the rest of her scheduled sales calls, but while she managed to fit them all in, her timing was off. She was hesitant, unsure, unfocused, and the doctors she saw (when she got to see any; a number of receptionists didn’t send her back) were short with her, cutting her off in mid-spiel and asking her leave her samples and go, they hated to be rude, but they were especially busy today, just swamped. Summer allergies, summer flu, check-ups before summer vacations. A shrug, an apologetic smile. You know how it is.

She knew, all right—knew she’d had her worst day on the job since she’d started with Pharm-Tech. She was furious with herself for letting that weird little woman get to her. She’d been no diamond today. Hell, she hadn’t even been a cubic zirconium.

And to top if off, now she was late for dinner with Carl. Tonight was supposed to be special, the night they made final decisions on the wedding, everything from the invitations, to the reception and the honeymoon. She had a notebook filled with ideas, samples, and brochures that was she eager to finally show him. Like a typical man, he’d been ducking the detail-work of the wedding, but she’d finally pinned him down on making some choices over dinner tonight. She could’ve just gone ahead and picked whatever she wanted—she knew exactly what her preferences were—but she was determined to get Carl’s input. After all, it was his wedding too, right?

But she wasn’t going to get his input if she didn’t make it to the goddamned restaurant!

She took a hand off the steering wheel, intending to lay on the horn so that the driver ahead of her would either speed up or pull over to let her by, when she noticed the way the water undulated across her windshield. It didn’t look like it was coming down in drops anymore. In fact, it almost looked as if she were driving underwater.

She gripped the steering wheel more tightly, eased off the gas, and concentrated on taking slow, deep, even breaths as she continued driving toward the restaurant at a crawl.

And if out of the corner of her eyes she saw dark, streamlined shapes moving gracefully through the dimness beyond her car, she told herself it was just an illusion conjured by the rain, that’s all.

Breathe in, two-three-four. Out, two, three, four…

* * *

Cocooned in water, arms and legs thrashing as she sinks, unable to stop her descent. She’s a damn good swimmer, but her training is no use to her now. Her body’s deadweight, falling down to darkness.

The water is murky-dim, but she can still make out objects floating around her: foil-encased sheets of pills, all different colors, shapes and sizes; decongestants, antihistamines, anti-inflammatories, antibiotics…loose wedding invitations on cream-colored paper, tumbling slowly end over end. Come celebrate the wedding of Ms. Tina Gensen to Mr. Carl Corelli on Date Yet to be Determined.

A fish emerges from the outer darkness and comes swimming toward her. Its head is larger than it should be, long, fine tendrils trailing behind as it swims. No, not tendrils, she realizes. Hair. Blonde hair.

The fish swims up to her face and matches her descent so they can remain eye to piscine eye. It opens its tiny pucker of a mouth, and even though they are underwater, its voice comes easily and clearly to Tina’s ears.

“Control is a—”

Tina doesn’t want to hear. She covers her ears with her hands and tries to scream, but there’s no air left in her aching lungs.

“—fragile illusion.”

* * *

Tina woke up, fists jammed tight against her ears. It took a moment before she realized where she was—her bedroom—and what had woken her—the ringing of the phone on the nightstand.

She sat up and reached for the phone, but before she could pick it up, the answering machine clicked on. She listened to her own voice greet the caller and ask whoever it was to leave a message at the sound of the tone.

A pause, then, “Tina? If you’re there, pick up.” Another pause. “All right, you’re probably mad at me for standing you up tonight, and I don’t blame you. I just…well, I was going to say I got tied up at work, but that’s an excuse. The truth is I’m…not entirely comfortable with getting married. I know it’s a cliché, the man getting cold feet, but that’s not it. At least, not all of it.”

A third pause, this one so long that Tina thought Carl was going to hang up, but he didn’t.

“It’s just that you can be so…I mean, you always want things to go a certain way, and I don’t…Ah, hell. Forget it. Blame it all on me if you want. The bottom line is I don’t want to get married. Not right now.” A fourth pause, not very long this time. “Not ever.” Click.

Tina sat there, struggling not to cry. Finally, a single tear rolled from the corner of her left eye, slid down her check and onto her lips. She told herself it didn’t taste like lake water.

* * *

It had continued to rain on and off all night, and the parking lot was covered with puddles. Tina sat behind the wheel of her car, waiting. She’d been here since five a.m., telling herself over and over again: We can make this work, we can make this work, I KNOW we can…

At eight forty-eight, Carl’s certified pre-owned Lexus pulled into the lot. Tina got out of her car as he parked and hurried toward him, running shoes splashing through puddles. She reached him just as he was closing his door, and she called out “Carl!” She tried not to sound pathetic, upset and needy, but she couldn’t help it.

He turned toward her, car remote in one hand, briefcase in the other, and whatever emotions she’d expected to see on his face—joy, anger, confusion, irritation, disgust—there was nothing. His expression was completely neutral, and that was far worse than anything he could have said or done to her.

She was suddenly aware of how she must look to him. Carl was a mortgage broker, and he was dressed for work in a gray suit and maroon tie, while she wore a faded green T-shirt and jeans that were frayed at the cuffs. She hadn’t washed her hair since yesterday morning, and it was a matted tangle. She hadn’t put on any make-up either, and her face looked pale and washed-out, her eyes bloodshot and puffy from lack of sleep. There were other people pulling into the lot, parking, getting out of their cars, walking toward the office building, looking at the two of them and no doubt wondering who she was and what she was doing here, confronting one of their professionally attired brethren looking like trash. But she didn’t care what anyone else thought; all she cared about was making things right between them.

“Don’t do this to me, Carl. Don’t do this to us.”

“Jesus, Tina. There is no us, okay? Not any more. I’m sorry, I really am, but that’s the way it is.” He started to step around her, but she grabbed his arm and stopped him.

“Don’t walk away.” She spoke through clenched teeth. “We’re still talking.”

Now anger did twist Carl’s features and he pulled free of her grip. “No, we’re finished. In every sense of the word.” Then more gently, “Just let me go to work, okay?”

Tina became aware of a faint sound coming from somewhere behind her, a soft squeeek-squeeek-squeeek of wheels turning. She ignored it. “Not until you agree to try to fix things between us—and we can fix them, Carl, I know we can. It’ll take some work, and some time, but in the end it’ll be as good as before. Better, even!”

“This is the end, Tina. Accept it and move on.” Carl gave her a last look that was a mixture of love and regret, resentment and pity, before walking toward the entrance of his office building.

Squeeek-squeeek-squeeek. Louder now. Closer.

“It’s not over, Carl!” she shouted. She took a step forward until she was standing at the edge of a large puddle. “Do you hear me? It’s NOT!”

Other people heading into work turned to look at her, but Carl wasn’t one of them. He just kept going.

The squeeeking drew up behind her and then stopped.

“I’m not going to turn around,” she said, almost smugly.

She heard a rustle of cloth, a soft grunt of effort, then shuffling footsteps. The little woman had gotten off her bike. She hobbled to Tina’s side and they stood there, silent, watching as the last few men and women made their way into the building to begin their workday. Moments later the parking lot was empty except for the two of them.

“It’s not an illusion,” Tina said, still stubbornly refusing to look down at the little woman. “Control is possible; all you have to do is—”

“Work hard enough,” the little woman finished for her in a mocking voice.

Infuriated, Tina turned to the woman, intending to…to…she wasn’t sure what, but intending to do something. But when she saw the woman’s face, she froze. She was more fishlike than before—eyes wide, black and empty; cheeks covered with a scattering of scales; tiny gill slits on each side of her neck, opening and closing as they struggled to extract oxygen from the unforgiving air. But there was something else, something familiar about the shape of her nose, eyebrows, forehead, cheekbones, chin…Then Tina realized where she had seen those features before: on her mother’s face—and in the mirror every morning.

The little woman’s pucker of a mouth stretched open in a hideous parody of a smile, revealing twin rows of tiny sharp teeth. Then with a swift, sleek motion she dove headfirst into the puddle, sending up a splash of water that smelled like rotting algae and dead fish.

Tina watched until the ripples subsided and the surface of the puddle grew still once more.

Walk away, she told herself. Just turn around, go get in your car, and go home.

But she didn’t. The puddle was just a puddle, not even an inch of rainwater over blacktop, and she was going to prove it.

She took a step forward.

* * *

Water around her, below her, above her…dark, so dark…but she’s not scared this time. She’s not a kid anymore, and she can swim, swim like a goddamned fish. She’s in control.

She kicks toward the surface. Her wet clothes make swimming awkward, but she concentrates on remaining calm and strokes harder. Soon she’s rising through the black water. Up, up, up…and still there is no light, only darkness surrounding her on all sides. Her lungs begin to burn for air, but she ignores their need and keeps swimming.

A thought occurs to her then: what if there is no surface—just an endless ocean of Nothingness above her?

She dismisses the thought immediately. There is a surface because she says there is, and she’ll reach it. All she has to do is work hard enough.

She senses unseen shapes moving in the water around her, circling, keeping pace with her, but she pays them no attention, continues moving her arms and legs, continues rising toward where the surface is—where it has to be.

Rising…rising…rising…

MET A PILGRIM SHADOW

“That’s right…take a look, Mikey-boy. Take a good, long look…”

* * *

Michael Barnhorst was back by the pharmacy checking a display of cold and flu medicines—making sure all the major brands as well as generics were included, and that the boxes were straight—when he saw the man who had abducted him when he was a child. He froze, hand halfway to a box of Drixoral that was slightly askew, and stared, not trusting his eyes. After all, it had been thirty-two years since…since what he had long ago come to think of as That Day. Maybe his eyes and his memory were playing tricks on him.

First off, the man was too young, not that much older than Michael. Mid-forties, early fifties, tops. Then again, if the man—if Chester, his mind whispered—had been in his twenties back then, he’d be in his fifties now. So it was possible, if not likely. After all, what were the odds the man would walk into the drugstore where Michael was a manager three decades after That Day? Then again, the fabric of life was often woven from strange coincidences. Seeing the man here was no more remarkable (in a statistical sense) than seeing someone Michael had once gone to high school with. People sometimes bumped into one another again years and even decades after the last time they saw one another. It happened all the time.

The man who Michael didn’t want to think of as Chester wore a blue jacket over a plaid shirt, along with jeans and tennis shoes. He stood before the shelves containing first-aid products, holding a roll of white tape—the kind used for keeping bandages in place—and reading the information on the back of the package.

Wonder what he plans to do with that tape? Michael thought. Use it to bind young, thin wrists and ankles? Secure a gag over a mouth outlined by soft, tender child-lips?

The man had short brown hair shot through with gray, a narrow clean-shaven face, and long, delicate fingers that Michael thought resembled spider legs. He remembered fingers just like that reaching out, wrapping around the soft flesh of his upper arm, and pulling him forward…

Michael’s outstretched hand began to tremble, and sweat beaded on his upper lip. His head swam and gray nibbled at the edges of his vision. A cold sick feeling crawled around in his stomach, and acid splashed the back of his throat. He clamped his jaws tight to keep from throwing up.

It was him. Chester the Molester.

Evidently satisfied with the product he’d chosen, the man turned—without looking in Michael’s direction—and started toward the front of the store where the registers were. Michael experienced two equally strong but opposing emotions: the first was relief that Chester had departed without seeing him, and the second was fear—fear that after all this time, Chester was going to get away, that Michael might never see him again, never get a chance to confront him, miss his one chance to finally know.

Two choices. Michael could stay where he was (stay safe), wait for a few minutes until Chester had paid for his first-aid tape and left, and then return to straightening the display of cold and flu medicine and do his best to forget that he’d seen the man. Or…

He took a deep breath (not that it helped) and followed Chester to the front of the store. Along the way, Michael passed an elderly woman standing before shelves full of hair-care products, a confused look on her face.

“Excuse me,” she said as Michael approached. “Do you work here?”

No, Michael thought. I’m just wearing this white shirt, these black pants, and especially the plastic badge that reads “Michael Barnhorst, Manager” for the fun of it. Out loud, he said, “Yes, ma’am, but I’m afraid I can’t stop to help you right now. I’m…following a shoplifter. I’ll send someone back to assist you as soon as I can.”

“Shoplifter? Oh my!” She looked around as if she expected to be attacked any second. “Should I leave? Is it safe to stay here?”

He wanted to tell her that there was no such thing as “safe,” but instead he said, “Everything’s under control, ma’am. Don’t worry.” And then he was past her and moving toward the cash registers. Ashley was working checkout this morning, early twenties, mouse-brown hair, pale skin with a sprinkling of freckles, a mouthful of braces, and her usual dull-eyed stare. She was wearing her orange Pharm-o-Rama vest like a good little worker bee. One of the few perks of being manager was that Michael didn’t have to wear one of those ugly things.

“Thank-you-sir-have-a-nice-day,” she said as she handed Chester a small plastic bag containing his purchase, her tone completely devoid of emotion. Chester said nothing, just turned and headed for the exit.

Michael stopped and watched as the automatic door swung open and Chester walked through. Then Michael hurried up to the front counter.

“I’ve…got to go out for a few minutes.” His voice sounded strained and too high-pitched, like he was on the verge of hysteria (which maybe he was), but he couldn’t help it. “Can you hold down the fort until I get back?”

Ashley just stared at him, expressionless. He might as well have been speaking Farsi for all her reaction.

“Thanks,” he mumbled, praying for the day when computerized self check-outs would make the Ashleys of the world no longer necessary, and then hurried after Chester. He was going so fast that he almost banged into the automatic door as it opened, but he turned sideways and with a skip-step managed to slip through the exit without collision and then he was outside, blinking in the sunlight, cool autumn air on his skin.

His breath caught in his throat, and he felt a wave of burgeoning panic. He was outside…where it wasn’t safe. But he fought the feeling down, and quickly looked for Chester. He expected to see the man getting into a car, but Chester was walking, heading down the sidewalk at a slow, steady pace, the plastic bag no longer visible. Probably tucked it into his jacket pocket, Michael thought.

After a moment’s hesitation, he followed.

* * *

“Do you know what you are becoming, Mikey? A seed. My seed—and I simply cannot wait to cast you upon the ground.”

Mikey tries not to look at the awful things the dark man is showing him, but no matter how hard he tries, he can’t turn his head, can’t even shut his eyes.

“Are you the devil?” Mikey whispers, tears spilling down his cheeks.

The dark man laughs, the sound harsh and brittle as snapping bone. “I’m something worse, little one. Much worse.”

Mikey can’t see the dark man’s face, can only see the horrible images the dark man is showing him—atrocities beyond measure, blasphemies without number—but he can hear the grin in his voice.

“If you must give me an identity, think of me as a gardener. No, better yet, as Johnny Appleseed…and you, my fine young fellow, are going to be the fruit of my dark loins.”

More laughter, only this time Mikey can’t tell if it’s issuing from the dark man’s mouth or sounding inside his own head. And still the images keep coming, one after another after another after another after…

* * *

Street sounds assailed him: rumbling engines, squealing brakes, blaring horns…the sound of shoes slapping pavement, people talking, laughing, yelling…Smells, too, the acrid stink of vehicle exhaust, spilled gasoline, dripped motor oil…Too much movement, too much noise, too damn much everything.

He stopped and stood motionless on the sidewalk in front of the Pharm-o-Rama, unable to take another step, heart pounding in his ears, breath coming in short, sharp gasps. His lungs felt heavy, and he could’ve sworn that his throat was beginning to swell shut. Another few seconds and it would close entirely, cutting off his air. He’d start to feel light-headed, his vision would swim, begin to grow dark, and then he’d black out…

Stop it! There’s nothing wrong with you—it’s just a panic attack, that’s all.

That’s all…that was more than enough, wasn’t it? He wanted to turn around, go back inside the store, and hide in his office (which was actually just an old metal desk and chair inside the storeroom) until he felt better. It wasn’t that he was agoraphobic, at least not technically, but out here, on the street, there were just so many things that could happen. So many dangerous things…A car could jump the curb and slam into you. A mugger might reach out from an alley, grab you by the arm, and drag you into the shadows. The people that walked by, so many of them coughing and sniffling…who knew what sort of diseases they had?

He remembered what the old woman standing in front of the shampoo had asked him. Should I leave? Is it safe to stay here? And he remembered what he’d thought in reply, that there was no such thing as “safe.” But there was, however, such a thing as safe-er. Inside the store he would definitely be safer than he would out here. If nothing else, he’d at least feel calmer.

But if he gave in to his panic and went back inside, he’d lose Chester, maybe forever this time.

I can live with that, he thought. A second went by, two, and then, No, I can’t.

He took a deep breath, or at least as deep a breath as he could manage, and continued after Chester, keeping his gaze fastened to the back of the man’s head and doing his best to avoid contact with the other pedestrians as he followed.

* * *

“You better watch out, Mikey. Chester the Molester’s been cruisin’ the neighborhood.”

“Yeah, and you’re exactly the kind of kid he’s lookin’ for.”

“He likes them small with a little meat on ‘em.”

“Easier to get a hold of.”

“Easier to hold on to.”

“More cushion for the pushin’!”

The big boys laughed, but Mikey just kept swinging and tried to ignore them. He knew from experience that if you responded in any way, it only encouraged them. There were three: his big brother Randy, Dwight Terrell and Morgan O’Brien. They were fifth-graders, and to six-year-old Mikey’s eyes, they were as close to grown-ups as to make no difference. Which meant that maybe they knew what they were talking about, maybe they were telling the truth. The problem was, they might just as easily be lying.

“Why do we gotta hang around the park for?” Dwight asked. “Let’s go down to the river and see if we can catch some frogs.”

“Yeah,” Morgan chimed in. “I got some firecrackers back home that I’ve been saving since the Fourth of July. We can stick them up the frogs’ butts, light ‘em, and KA-BOOM!”

The boys laughed, and Mikey laughed too, though he didn’t find the thought especially funny. In fact, it made his tummy queasy to think about a frog exploding. And did it hurt to have a firecracker stuck up your behind? He bet it did, bet it hurt lots.

“I can’t,” Randy said. “I gotta stick around and watch my brother. Mom’s orders.”

“Aw, he’ll be okay,” Dwight said. “He may be a little squirt, but he’s big enough to swing in the park by himself.”

“Not when Chester’s on the prowl,” Morgan said, and giggled like a girl. The other two boys didn’t laugh this time, though. Instead, they looked a little worried, which frightened Mikey. He couldn’t imagine anything worrying his big brother.

Mikey lowered his feet to the dirt and allowed them to drag until the swing came to a stop. “Randy, is he real? Chester, I mean.”

The three boys exchanged glances, and Mikey thought they were going to start teasing him again, but Randy said, “Yeah. He’s some perv that drives around in a car talking to kids, trying to get them to take a ride with him.”

There was something about the way that Randy said take a ride that made Mikey shiver. He wasn’t sure what a perv was, exactly, but he knew it was something bad.

“I heard my mom and dad talking last night,” Morgan said. “They said Chester almost got Mary Ellen Parker yesterday, had hold of her arm and was just about ready to pull her in through the open car window when a man came by walking his dog. When Chester saw the guy, he let Mary Ellen go and drove off.”

“Big deal,” Dwight said. “My dad says that all sickos like Chester want to do is wave their wanker in front of kids and that’s all. He says it gives them a thrill, but that they don’t really hurt anyone.”

Mikey didn’t like the idea of having to look at some stranger’s thing, but if that’s all he did, if he didn’t really do anything else, it wouldn’t be so bad.

“That’s not what my parents say.” Randy gave Mikey a sideways glance, as if trying to determine how much detail he should go into. “They say if men like Chester get kids into their car, then they do…bad things to them. Sometimes the kids never come back.”

Mikey was really getting scared now, and his bladder ached as if he had to pee real bad, even though he’d used the bathroom before they left the house. “Randy, what kind of car does Chester have?”

“Nobody knows his real name,” Randy said, sound-ing exasperated, as if he were growing tired of the subject (although Mikey wondered that if, in truth, his big brother wasn’t more than a little scared, too). “It’s just a nickname people—” He broke off suddenly. “Why do you want to know?”

In answer, Mikey pointed. The park they were in was small, just a few swings, a slide, merry-go-round, teeter-totter. No fence, no trees to shield it from the street. Parked at the curb, engine idling, was a dark blue car—so dark it was almost black. The engine rumbled softly, sounding like the relaxed breathing of a large animal that was, for the moment at least, resting. The car window was rolled down, and though they couldn’t see far enough inside to make out the driver’s features, the man’s arm rested on the door, and they saw a flannel shirt sleeve, a plaid pattern of light and dark browns, and a hand that ended in long, tapering fingers.

Mikey didn’t need the big boys to tell him that it was Chester the Molester.

The man sat there for a moment, watching them, and then the car door opened.

“Shit!” one of the boys said (which one Mikey couldn’t tell; his attention was completely focused on that car, that arm, those fingers), and then they were running, Randy included, running past him, leaving him, hollering for Mikey to get the hell off the swing and run too, but Mikey didn’t, he couldn’t, he just sat there, swaying gently on the swing, hands clutching the chains as Chester got out of his car, closed the door, and began walking toward him.

The first thing Mikey noticed about the man was his smile. The second thing he noticed was the man’s eyes. The third thing he noticed was what flickered and danced behind those eyes.

And that’s when Mikey started to cry.

* * *

It didn’t happen all at once, of course. Michael didn’t immediately retreat from the world after Chester released him. It was days, maybe even weeks before he began to feel funny about going outside, riding the bus to school, walking down the hallways to gym and lunch. But gradually, as time went by, he found his heart beginning to pound, his throat swelling shut whenever he was forced to go someplace where he felt exposed…vulnerable…which was just about anywhere.

Despite this, he made it through high school, managed to get a job, move out on his own, and create at least a semblance of a life for himself. But now, in his late thirties, his entire world consisted of his one-room apartment, his used Tercel, and the Pharm-o-Rama. He didn’t feel comfortable, didn’t feel safe, anywhere else.

Whatever supplies he couldn’t buy from work, he ordered over the Internet and had delivered to his home. He had no friends (his co-workers didn’t really count), and the thought of dating a woman, marrying her, and starting a family was ludicrous. How could he possibly bring himself to love anyone when so many terrible things could happen to either them or him at any moment? Better to live alone.

Michael knew that ultimately safety was nothing but a cruel illusion—Chester had taught him that, taught him damn well—but he had come as close to creating a safe existence as anyone could. And it wasn’t such a bad life. Not really.

* * *

“Can I ask you a question?”

Michael looked at the elderly black man—he wore a brown suit, white shirt, brown tie, brown hat, black shoes; his face was lean, with large kind eyes and a salt and pepper mustache—and gave his head a quick shake.

“No.”

The man looked startled, frowned, said, “Okaaaay,” and kept moving past Michael.

Michael knew the man had probably just wanted to ask the time, or maybe he merely needed some directions. But it was all Michael could do to keep walking, keep following Chester. He couldn’t bring himself to talk to any strangers (as if they came any stranger than Chester). Besides, he couldn’t afford the distraction; if he stopped to help the man, he might lose sight of Chester, maybe lose track of him for good. And Michael was determined to catch up to Chester and confront him, no matter what—because he had to know.

Know what had happened after Chester had grabbed his arm and escorted him back to his car, know what had taken place during the seventeen hours Chester had held him before letting him go to wander the streets in the middle of the night, dazed, almost catatonic, to eventually be found by a patrolling police officer and taken home. His mom and dad, relieved to have their youngest son back but terrified by what might have been done to him by his abductor, took Michael to the hospital, but aside from a bruise on his arm where Chester had grabbed him, the ER doctor found no signs of physical or sexual abuse. Whatever games Chester the Molester had played with Michael during the seventeen hours they had been together, they hadn’t been games of the flesh.

Michael had no memory of his time with Chester. He remembered Chester taking him to the car, and he remembered walking down the sidewalk, shivering in the cold night air. But nothing in-between. For thirty-two years he had been haunted by the mystery of what the man might have done to him, what had been so awful that little six-year-old Mikey had chosen to bury the memory so deep in his subconscious that it would never resurface.

Maybe, Michael thought, if he knew, no matter how terrible that knowledge might be, he could deal with it, put it past him. Maybe he could learn not to be so afraid all the time. Maybe he could get his life back.

If he could catch up to the sonofabitch, and if he could make him talk.

A little farther, a little faster, ignore the thud-thud-thud of your pulse in your ears, ignore the ache in your chest, the thick-tight wet-cotton feeling in your throat. Shove past people, excuse me, sorry, get the hell out of my way! Almost there, reach out—do it, dammit!—grab his shoulder and make… him…stop!

Michael spun the man around, grabbed him by both shoulders, opened his mouth to say…something, he wasn’t sure what, but whatever words might have come died before he could speak them. The man before him wasn’t Chester the Molester.

Now that he was close to the man, Michael could see that while there was a superficial resemblance—the height, the shirt, the hair—the face wasn’t quite right. It was rounder than Chester’s, the complexion more ruddy.

“What the fuck?” the man demanded, half-scared, half-angry.

Michael jerked his hands away from the man as if he’d been burnt. “I’m sorry, I thought, I thought you were…”

The man planted a hand on Michael’s chest and shoved. “Get away from me, you crazy bastard!”

Michael took a step backward, almost stumbled, but he managed to maintain his balance. The man who wasn’t Chester turned and hurried off down the street, obviously eager to put as much distance between himself and Michael as fast as he could.

“I thought you were someone else,” Michael said softly as he watched the man go. Jesus, what the hell had he been thinking? Of course, it hadn’t been Chester, not after all this time. He was losing it, plain and simple. Time to seriously think about pulling out the Yellow Pages and turning to M for Mental Health Services.

Michael turned, intending to head back down the sidewalk toward Pharm-o-Rama, when he saw a car had pulled up to the curb, engine idling. A blue car…dark blue. So dark it was almost black.

“Hi, Mikey-boy. Long time no see.”

There was no mistaking that voice, no mistaking the face of the man that was leaning over and looking at him through the open passenger window.

Michael felt frost gather on his spine. The sounds of the city, so loud a moment ago, had fallen away, and all he could hear was Chester’s voice. Chester, who hadn’t aged a day in the last thirty-two years.

“How’s my little seed doing?” Chester gave him a grin. “Do you know why you chased that man, Mikey? Because you wanted to see me again. No, you needed to see me—needed it so badly that you hallucinated that man was me. Your need called to me, Mikey. It brought me back.”

He opened the passenger door.

“Hop in. Let’s go for a ride.”

Michael shook his head, tried to say no, but his mouth refused to form even so simple a word.

Chester continued to smile, but his eyes flashed, and unspeakable images slid across their dark, wet surfaces.

“Don’t you want to know? To be free?” A mocking tone to this last word.

Michael hesitated for a moment, two, and then before he realized it, he was stepping toward the car.

* * *

“The loving uncle who finds his fingers straying too close to his niece’s bottom as they play tickle-torture one sunny afternoon in the back yard. The former honor student who is no longer satisfied to make due with mere fantasies of raping cheerleaders. The devoted mother who wakes up one morning and decides that, instead of giving her kids a bath, she’ll drown them instead.…These are all my children, Mikey. My sweet, sweet fruit.

“Did you ever wonder why, when reporters interview family members and neighbors, they always say the same thing? ‘He was such a quiet man…so sweet. We just can’t believe he’d ever do such a thing.’ It’s because of me, Mikey, and others of my kind. We travel the world, borrowing children, showing them the wondrous dark potential that exists inside them, encouraging it to grow. And when our teaching is done, we release them. They become our seeds, Mikey. Seeds of darkness. Sometimes they sprout weeks later, sometimes months, sometimes years. But eventually they all blossom.

“It’s your time to blossom now, Mikey. But you’re not going to do anything so mundane as poison a neighbor’s dog or go into work with a loaded gun. I’ve got something much more special in mind for you.”

* * *

“Well, what do you think?”

The woman frowned. “It’s a little out of our price range.”

The man gave Michael a “don’t-listen-to-her-we-can-afford-it” smile. “I think we can manage it, hon. If we want to buy it, that is.”

“It’s up to you, of course,” Michael said. “But it’s a great house for the money, and it’s in a good neighborhood. A safe neighborhood.”

The woman gave her husband a glance that said We Need To Talk. Michael had been in real estate now for four years, more than long enough to know he should make himself scarce.

“I’ll just step outside for a minute.” He left them in the living room, walked into the kitchen, opened the patio door and stepped into the yard. The couple’s twelve-year-old daughter was doing cartwheels on the grass.

He closed the patio door and walked toward her.

“What do you think about the house?”

The girl finished her cartwheel and came to rest on her feet. She looked at Michael and shrugged. “It’s okay. I like the house we have now better, but Dad says we have to move because of his new job.” She cocked her head, as if she’d just thought of something. “Do you like your job?”

Michael smiled. “Yes, very much. I enjoy getting out and meeting people. But do you know what I like best about my job?”

“No, what?” She was already beginning to sound disinterested, but Michael didn’t mind. That was just the way children were.

He reached out and put a hand on her shoulder, and darkness moved across the surface of his eyes.

He smiled. “Planting apple seeds.”

OPEN HOUSE

Smell of burnt, blackened flesh clogging his nostrils. Charcoal-dry voice whispering a question in his ear.

“Truth or dare, Carl? Truth or dare?”

* * *

Carl Lockhart was looking out the window, trying to decide whether his driveway needed shoveling, when he noticed that the door of the house across the street stood open. Not wide open, hardly more than a crack, really. But open.

It was the first week of February, and it had snowed last night, only an inch or two, but enough to cover the lawns, driveways, and sidewalks with white. It had been unseasonably warm lately, and Carl was hoping that when the sun came out, the snow would melt on its own and save him some work. He’d been about to go turn the TV to The Weather Channel and check the local forecast when he happened to glance across the street—not that he was nosy; Carl was the kind of man who made a virtue of minding his own business, but the house was directly across the street so how could he not look at it?—and saw the open door.

Cracked door, he mentally amended. Open only three inches, five at the most. Then again, how far open did a door have to be to qualify as being truly open? Ten inches? Halfway? Three quarters? He scratched a stubbly cheek as he thought.

He knew that he was partly putting off getting his day started. Kate had taken the kids to visit her mother in Akron this weekend, and he’d slept in for a change. It was five after ten—late for him to get up, even for a Saturday—and while he would’ve loved to lounge around the house in his T-shirt and sweats all day, unshaven, sleep-matted hair unwashed, just enjoying being a grubby bachelor again for the first time in nearly seventeen years, he had work to do. Work that had nothing to do with shoveling snow.

Bright and early Monday morning, he was scheduled to deliver a presentation to a major new client about Pro-Tech’s latest security system. Not only did he need to bone up on the technical details of the system this weekend, he was supposed to meet his supervisor for dinner tonight and go over the selling points in detail. And, if Carl knew Anderson well enough, he’d have to give a practice presentation during the meal.

Carl hated working on the weekends, so much that he’d almost rather have gone to visit his mother-in-law in Akron. Almost. But he was angling for a raise, and if his boss wanted him to work this weekend, then work he would. But that didn’t mean he was eager to get started.

But there was another reason why he stood before his picture window, looking at the house across the street and trying to decide on a suitable definition of open. While Carl wasn’t particularly close to any of his neighbors, he was familiar with their habits. For example, the guy who lived next door on the right fancied himself a weekend Hell’s Angel, even though he was an accountant the rest of the week. Every Saturday and Sunday, weather permitting, he’d don his leather jacket and sunglasses (no helmet, of course), hop on his bike and roar off to God knows where, returning only at sunset. Carl hadn’t heard the motorcycle engine revving this morning, so he supposed the snow was too much for Hell’s Accountant to brave today.

And across the street, to the left of the house with the door open, lived an overweight single mother who stepped out onto the porch a half dozen times a day and sat in a plastic lawn chair to smoke. She was always barefoot, no matter the time of year.

But it was a different story for the house directly across the street from Carl’s. In the four years he had lived here, he had never—not once—seen anyone go in or come out of the house. He’d never seen a car parked in the driveway or in front alongside the curb. He had noticed lights on sometimes at night, shining behind closed blinds, but not often, and he’d never seen a silhouette pass a window. He assumed someone lived there, of course. Somebody had to pay the light bill, and the lawn was always kept trimmed in spring and summer, leaves raked in fall, snow shoveled off the driveway in winter (though not today, he noticed). But he’d never seen anyone doing these chores. They just…got done.

Once, he’d asked Kate if she’d ever caught a glimpse of the neighbors across the street, but his wife had only cocked her head, grinned, and said, “Since when did you become the neighborhood busy-body?” He’d never asked her again.

So seeing the door of the house across the street open (cracked?), even if only a few inches, was a major development. How could it fail to fascinate? And looking out the window at it sure beat the hell out of starting work on his presentation.

But as he watched, he heard a voice in his mind. An angry, disappointed voice.

No son of mine is going to be a goddamned peeping Tom! Your mother and I raised you better’n that, boy! You hear me?

“Yessir,” Carl whispered, unaware that he’d spoken aloud. He turned away from the window and headed for the bathroom and a shower. He’d put off starting his day long enough.

* * *

Even though it was winter, Carl ran the water slightly cold. After the night he’d had, he needed help waking all the way up—more help than the two cups of coffee he’d already had could provide. There was a reason he’d slept in so late, a reason beyond the absence of his family. Last night, he’d had the dream again.

It started the way it always did: Carl was ten, and sitting cross-legged on the front lawn of his parents’ house with his sister, Judy, and her best friend, Marta. Carl always thought of where they lived as “out in the country,” though in truth it was only a couple miles outside town. Judy and Marta—who had ridden her bike from her home in town—were both twelve and, while they often invited Carl to play with them, it was usually so they could play some sort of trick on him. Carl knew this, but he played anyway. He had no friends that lived close by, and none in town that were old enough to ride their bikes here. Besides, though he’d have rather died a thousand times than admit it, he thought Marta was kind of cute.

They sat on the grass in the shade of an oak tree, Judy and Marta next to each other, Carl across from them. It was late summer, hot and muggy, the heavy air thrumming with the sound of cicadas.

“Let’s play Truth or Dare,” Judy said.

Marta giggled at the suggestion, her small, freckled nose crinkling in a way that made Carl feel weird inside, but a good weird. He’d never heard of this game, but he’d played with Judy and Marta often enough to be suspicious.

“What’s that?” he asked.

Marta explained. “We take turns asking each other questions. And you either answer the question—”

“You have to give a true answer,” Judy put in. “No lying is allowed.”

Marta nodded. “Or you take a dare.”

“And if you choose a dare, then you have to do the dare,” Judy said, “no matter what it is.”

Carl wasn’t sure he liked the sound of this. “Who picks the dare?”

“The same person who asked the question,” Marta said. “Who else?”

That would mean that when it was his time to answer a question, either Marta or Judy would ask it. And if he didn’t want to answer it, then one of them would come up with a dare for him to do. He wasn’t too worried about Marta. She liked to tease him, but always in gentle ways. But Judy could be awfully mean to him when she wanted to. And if she was the one asking him the question…

“I don’t think I want to play,” he said.

“C’mon!” Judy slugged him on the arm. “Don’t be such a baby!”

“Please?” Marta added. “It’s not much fun with only two.”

That please was all it took. Carl smiled and said, “Okay.”

Judy clapped her hands. “Good! I’ll go first.” She turned to Marta. “Truth or dare: did Ben Sanders kiss you behind the concession stand at the park last week?”

Marta giggled. “He tried, but I didn’t let him.”

“Truth, now,” Judy warned.

“I swear!”

Judy looked doubtful, but she let it pass. “Okay, now you ask Carl a question.”

Carl relaxed. If they kept going around in a circle, that meant Judy would never get to ask him a question, only Marta. And better yet, he’d be the one asking his sister questions—and making up dares for her when she refused to answer. Maybe this game was going to turn out all right after all!

Marta thought for a moment. “All right, Carl. Truth or dare: do you have a girlfriend?”

Carl felt his insides go cold. He didn’t sense any malice on Marta’s part—her eyes weren’t narrowed and her mouth wasn’t twisted into a mean half-smile, as happened with Judy—but of all the people in the world to be asking that question! He supposed that technically she wasn’t his girlfriend. He just kind of liked her, but on the other hand, that might be close enough to qualify for this game. And he knew he couldn’t lie. Every time he tried to lie, he smiled, and the bigger the lie, the bigger the smile. Marta night not know that, but Judy did. If she even so much as saw his lips twitch, she’d know he was lying.

But if he answered the question truthfully…No, there was no way he could do that.

“I guess I’ll take the dare,” he said in small voice.

Judy laughed. “That means you do have a girlfriend! Fess up, who is it?”

Marta came to his defense. “He doesn’t have to tell. That’s the way the game works.”

Judy made a face like she’d just bitten into a big, juicy bug, but she said, “Oh, all right. What’s his dare?”

Marta thought again, longer than last time. So long that Carl began to get nervous, began to wonder if maybe he should’ve answered her question truthfully regardless of the consequences.

Finally, Marta said, “Go and peek in the neighbors’ window.”

Carl felt a stab of fear that was almost as bad as when Marta had asked if he had a girlfriend. He turned to look at the neighbors’. A one-story red brick ranch that looked pretty much like his parents’ house, except the neighbor’s had white shutters and a green roof, while Carl’s folks had black shutters and a black roof. Despite this being “out in the country,” the two houses were only twenty or so feet apart, no farther apart then they might be in a suburb. There were two windows on the nearest side of the neighbors’ house, both with their curtains drawn back and windows open to let in what little breeze there was.

“You have to do it, Carl,” Judy said, voice full of sadistic delight. “Unless, of course, you want to change your mind and answer the question.”

Carl thought about it. His parents weren’t really friends with the neighbors, so all he knew about them was that the husband was named Kenny, and the wife was named Jane. He couldn’t remember their last name. They didn’t have any kids (which was too bad), and while they waved whenever the two families happened to be outside at the same time, they didn’t come over to talk, and neither did Carl’s parents go over there.

So he had no real reason to be afraid of them, but they’d never been especially friendly toward him, either. And he’d never set foot on their property before.

He looked at Judy. He knew that she’d never let him quit at this point. He looked at Marta. No, he couldn’t tell. Not in a million-billion years.

So, swallowing to build up his courage (not that it helped), he stood and started walking toward the neighbors’ house. He hesitated as he came to the property line, but he crossed it and kept going. He chose the nearest of the two windows and headed for it. He was within five feet. Four…three…he could almost see inside…

“Don’t you dare!”

Carl nearly wet himself at the sound of the voice—a woman’s voice, harsh and scolding—that came from the other side of the window. He turned and ran, saw Judy and Marta were on their feet and running too, and he hurried after them. He had no idea where they were headed, but it didn’t matter, just so long as they got away from that woman, from that voice.

And then, because this was a dream and not a memory, not exactly, Carl skipped over the next few weeks, moved past the phone call Jane made to his parents’ that night, past the lectures from his father and the disappointed looks from his mother, past the no TV for a month and the extra chores that he and Judy had to suffer through. He skipped all the way to an afternoon in mid-September when he got off the school bus at the end of their long gravel driveway. Judy had gymnastics practice after school, so he was by himself. His dad was at work, and his mom’s car was gone. She (he would find out later) had gone to the grocery before stopping to pick up Judy from practice.

So he was the only one there to notice the thin curl of black smoke that rose from behind Kenny and Jane’s house. He felt a tingling at the base of his neck and a cold flutter in his stomach as an awful word whispered through his mind: fire.

He paused for moment, frozen, unsure what to do. Then he remembered what his father had said that night after Jane called to tell him about their little game of Truth or Dare. From now on I expect you to mind your own business, boy. You got that? Don’t stick your nose where it doesn’t belong. And then, for the first time since Carl had been little, his dad had started to remove his belt.

Carl looked at the smoke again. It wasn’t that much smoke. It could be coming from a grill. Kenny liked to grill, did it often, and it was still warm enough out. He was probably just cooking burgers or some steaks and the fire got away from him for a moment, that’s all. Flames shooting up, a puff of smoke, slamming the grill cover shut, some curse words at ruining the meat, and it’s over. Nothing more than that.

Smoke’s awful black for a grill fire, a voice inside his head pointed out. And is it thicker than it was a minute ago?

Carl was torn. Should he run inside and call 911? Go over to the neighbors’, knock on their door and see if they were all right? Or should he do as his father commanded, and mind his own business?

Another voice spoke up inside him then, a petty, mean little voice. All you were doing was playing a stupid game. And you never did look inside their window—she stopped you. So why’d she have to go and call your mom and dad? You got punished for something that you never did—all because of her, the old bitch.

Carl’s lips curled into a tiny smile. He knew what he was going to do now: just what his father had told him. He was going to be a good boy and mind his own business.

He continued toward his house, walking at a leisurely pace, and he didn’t look over at the neighbors’ again.

* * *

Carl got out of the shower and began toweling himself dry. The dream usually ended with him inside his parents’ house, sitting on the couch and watching TV, hearing Jane and Kenny’s screams as they burnt to death. In reality, there had been no screams. According to the firefighters, the two of them had succumbed to smoke inhalation before the flames reached them. They never did find out how the fire started, or what Kenny was doing home from work early. Carl wasn’t even sure what work the man did. But he was home that day, and both he and his wife perished in the fire.

Carl combed his hair so it would dry in place, then brushed his teeth. When he was finished, he took his electric razor from the medicine cabinet and began shaving. After all, he had to look good for his dinner meeting tonight.

Carl had never told anyone that he had seen smoke rising from the neighbors’ house that day—not his parents, not his sister, not even his wife. For a few years after the fire, he had felt guilty for not having done anything to help, but he had long ago made his peace with the incident. After all, he had only been a confused boy of ten. Yes, it was horrible what had happened to Jane and Kenny, but he hadn’t started the fire, he hadn’t told his neighbors not to install smoke alarms, he hadn’t forced them to stay in a smoke-filled house when they should’ve gotten the hell out. All he had done was what his father had told him to do.

Carl finished shaving, smeared some aftershave on his face, then went into the master bedroom to get dressed. A T-shirt and sweats would have been good enough for him to bum around in until it was time to leave for dinner, but he decided to put on a flannel shirt and jeans. Since he had to work on his presentation today, he didn’t want to be too relaxed.

Carl had minded his own business ever since the fire, over twenty years now, and with each passing year, he became more convinced of the wisdom of his father’s words. Meddling in other people’s affairs just led to mix-ups and resentments at best, and violent confrontations and lawsuits at worst. If a person wanted to help his fellow man, better to do it his way, by working for a company that provided a service that helped people help themselves. Pro-Tech’s security systems were some of the best in the industry. If Kenny and Jane had been customers (not that such a sophisticated system existed back then, but just suppose), an alarm would’ve gone off at the first hint of smoke and the system’s computer would’ve automatically alerted the fire department.

Maybe Carl hadn’t done anything to help his neighbors twenty years ago, but he’d helped hundreds of people since through his job, and he figured that had to balance the scales somewhat.

Right?

* * *

Breath furnace-hot in his ear, the air around him twisted into shimmering waves by the heat. The sharp-rank smell of his hair beginning to smolder as he mulls over his answer.

Truth or dare? Truth…or…dare?

* * *

The support materials for the new security system he needed to go over lay on the dining table, stacked neatly, right where he’d left them last night. All he needed to do now was sit down and start going over them.

But he hesitated. Was the door of the house across the street still open? He glanced at his watch. It had been forty-five minutes since he stepped into the shower. Surely the door was closed by now. Whoever lived there had probably just left it open for a couple minutes; maybe they’d been on their way out, realized they’d forgotten something, and dashed back inside to get it. Carl hadn’t watched long enough to see them come back out and close the door, that’s all.

There was no car in the driveway and none parked in the front of the house. You’ve never seen anyone enter or leave the place, remember? Besides, who’d leave their door open in February?

Then maybe whoever lived there (and someone did live there: there were lights on at night sometimes, and the lawn was kept mowed) had forgotten to shut the door tight when they left his morning, and the wind blew it open.

Blew it open just a couple inches?

Besides, it didn’t matter why the damn door had been opened, because by now another of his neighbors had doubtless noticed it, maybe while they were leaving their own houses or shoveling snow off their driveways. They’d either gone over and closed the door themselves or, if they’d didn’t feel comfortable trespassing, even in a good cause, they’d phoned the police to have them come take a look. It wouldn’t have been long before a cruiser came by, a few minutes at most, and parked in front of the house. Two officers would’ve gotten out of their vehicle and approached the house cautiously (maybe even with guns drawn if they were extra-cautious), and gone in to check out the situation. Finding nothing (Carl presumed), they’d have departed, locking the door from the inside and closing it behind them.

However the hell it had happened, he was confident of one thing: the door was closed.

So go take a look.

Carl turned in the direction of the living room, but he didn’t take a step toward it—and the picture window that provided such a good view (too damn good a view!) of the house across the street.

Go look, dammit. You know you won’t be able to concentrate on your work until you do.

But…that wouldn’t be minding his own business. His business was getting ready for tonight’s meeting with Anderson, and that was all.

Still, he didn’t sit down, didn’t pick up the first technical manual, didn’t start to read. He kept looking toward the living room.

“Screw it.”

A dozen steps later, he was standing at the picture window, looking out. The sun was shining more brightly than the last time he’d looked, but not hot enough it seemed to do anything about the snow on his driveway. Across the street at Barefoot Smoker’s house, the driveway was clear, though. He wondered if she’d suffered the indignity of putting on footwear to do the driveway or if she’d made one of her kids do the work.

Quit stalling. LOOK.

He looked.

The door was still open, maybe even wider than before by a couple inches. But not wide enough for him to make out any details of what was inside. All that he could see between the edge of the door and the jamb was darkness.

He shivered then, but told himself that it was due to the cold radiating through the window glass. He’d been meaning to put in storm windows, but he’d never gotten around to it. Next week for sure.

So…the door was still open. Big deal. His curiosity had been satisfied, now he should be able to get to work. But he didn’t leave the window.

Whoever had shoveled Barefoot Smoker’s driveway had to have noticed the open door of the house next to them. There was no way they couldn’t have! But the door was still open, wasn’t it, even more than before, if only by a few inches.

Maybe no one else has noticed the door’s open because no one else sees it. Only you.

“Bullshit.” But he shivered again, more violently than before. Then, though it was far harder than he ever could have imagined, he tore himself away from the window and walked back to the dining room and the work that awaited him there.

* * *

An hour later, Carl was standing in his driveway, shoveling snow. No matter how hard he’d tried, he’d been unable to concentrate on the technical manuals and sales material he’d brought home from work. Frustrated, he’d eventually given up and started making lunch, but halfway through preparing a grilled-cheese sandwich, he’d realized he didn’t have an appetite, so he’d switched off the stove and dumped the half-cooked mass of bread and cheese into the disposal.

Now he was outside, wearing a thick fleece coat, gloves, and boots against the cold. The temperature wasn’t too bad, but his ears were starting to sting, and he wished he’d gotten a hat out of the front closet. But he didn’t go back inside to fetch one, opting instead to tough it out.

He started at the garage, using the shovel like a plow to push the snow to one side of the driveway. Only a couple of inches had fallen overnight, and the snow was light and powdery, easily moved. He made good progress, and soon he was halfway down the driveway, then three quarters, then he was almost finished. The entire time he worked, he didn’t so much as glance at the house across the street, but he didn’t need to. He could feel the open doorway, feel the sliver of darkness, almost as if it were alive and watching him work…watching and waiting to see what he’d do next.

One last push of snow, and he was done. He stopped and leaned on the shovel handle, resting for a moment, though he wasn’t really tired. Then, with a deliberate casualness that wouldn’t have fooled anyone, he turned to look at the house.

His breath caught in his throat.

The house across the street, like most in this neighborhood, including Carl’s, was a Cape Cod: A-frame, orange brick, gray trim, gray shutters. At least, that’s what it was supposed to look like, what it had looked like when he’d stood in his living room, staring at it through the picture window.

But now…now it was a ranch-style house, red brick, white shutters, green roof. He hadn’t seen that house for over twenty years, but he knew it instantly. It was Kenny and Jane’s, his next-door neighbors when he was a kid. Though the house had changed its appearance, one very important thing remained the same—the front door was still open, more than halfway now, the darkness inside just as impenetrable as before.

It wasn’t possible, of course. He knew he was most likely hallucinating, that the stress of his job had finally taken its toll on him. Wasn’t Kate always telling him he needed to slow down, work less, rest more? He should go inside, lie down, call Kate at her mother’s, or better yet, call a doctor. Or maybe he should just get in his car, drive straight to the nearest emergency room and let them inject him with a vein full of Thorazine.

But he didn’t do any of those things. Instead, he put down his shovel and started walking across the street toward a ranch house that only an hour earlier had been a Cape Cod—because now the house, the door, and whatever lay inside was very much his business.

He reached the sidewalk, stepped up onto it, and continued into the yard, leaving boot prints in the snow behind him. Halfway across the lawn, he detected the faint odor of ashes and burnt wood, and by the time he reached the porch, the smell had become overpowering. It was so bad his eyes began to water, his sinuses ached, and his throat felt like it was swelling shut. But he didn’t stop.

He stepped onto the porch and walked up to the door. He hesitated there for what seemed a long, long time before finally pushing the door all the way open with a single gloved hand and going inside.

* * *

“You have only to answer one question.” Her voice pops and hisses like burning wood. “Did you keep silent out of fear or out of spite?”

Carl doesn’t say anything. Sweat beads ooze from the skin on his forehead, but they evaporate before they can trickle down his face. He’s surrounded by charred ruins, blackened objects that might once have been furniture—chairs, coffee table, couch, along with pieces of wall, fallen ceiling beams, scorched carpet…and of course, Them.

It’s so hard to think. So very hard.

“Truth or dare, Carl.” Her whisper is hissing steam. “Truth-or-dare.”

In the end, he cannot answer, and their laughter crackles around him like flame.

* * *

“Mom-mee, I have to go!”

Michael sneered at his sister. “You should’ve gone before we left McDonald’s.”

“That was over an hour ago! I didn’t have to go then!”

“We’ll be inside in just a minute, sweetie.” Kate struggled to keep the irritation she felt out of her voice. Michael and Jennifer usually got along well enough, but after several hours on the highway, they were bickering just to have something to do. She unlocked the front door and the kids pushed past her and hurried inside.

There was a sudden silence, and then Michael said, “Mom?”

Something about the tone of his voice sent a chill rippling along her spine. She stepped inside quickly and closed the door behind her.

Carl sat on the living room couch, staring at a blank TV screen. He looked like he had just come from outside: he had on his winter coat, boots, and gloves. His face was slightly sunken, eyes bloodshot, the skin beneath puffy and discolored. She wondered if he had slept at all last night. But his haggard appearance wasn’t the worst of it. His clothes were covered with blackened spots, as if they’d been singed, and he smelled of smoke.

Her first thought was that there had been some sort of accident, a fire, maybe. She wanted to go to him, sit on the couch beside him, ask him what was wrong, but there was something about the blank expression on his face, his cold stare, that made her step forward and put her hands on her children’s shoulders and pull them close to her.

Carl turned to look at them and blinked several times, as if he’d just become aware of their presence.

“I couldn’t answer them.” His voice was little more than a hoarse whisper. “I wanted to, but I…I couldn’t.” A tear fell from his eye, tracing a wet, clean line on his soot-smeared cheek. “I’m sorry.”

He stood and Tina saw that in his right gloved hand he held a butcher knife.

Carl gave his family a sorrowful look as he started toward them.

“I had to take the dare.”

* * *

Across the street, the door of the Cape Cod slowly swung closed and locked with a final, satisfied snick!

EXTERN

Inspired by Alan M. Clark’s painting,

The Pain Doctors of Suture Self General

“Mr. Dermot, your pancreas, please.” Doctor Feculent held out his discolored hand with its cracked, elongated nails and scowled impatiently.

Dermot was uncomfortably aware of all the other externs looking at him, more than a few grinning at his predicament. They all stood around a bed of rusty razor blades upon which rested the moaning, writhing form of something which might once have been human, but then again, might not.

It was the moaning that had tripped Dermot up. Doctor Feculent had asked him whether the patient was crying out in pleasure or pain. Dermot, unable to tell, had taken a wild guess and said pain. Obviously the wrong answer, or Doctor Feculent wouldn’t be demanding his pancreas.

Dermot had no choice. Burning with shame and anger, but determined not to show it, he reached toward the moist, quivering mass of organs which hung from the gaping, bloodless cavity which had once been his chest and abdomen, slid his hand past his liver, under his stomach and grasped the slippery prize that Doctor Feculent demanded as the price of Dermot’s ignorance. He took a firm grip and pulled.

His pancreas came free with a wet tearing sound like overcooked chicken meat falling off the bone. He held the organ out to Doctor Feculent. The doctor, a tiny, gnarled gray troll of a man with wisps of shadow where his legs should have been, snatched the pancreas away from Dermot. He popped the organ into his mouth—needing to unhinge his small jaw in order to accomplish this task—and swallowed. His jaw clicked back into place and, without so much as a last look at Dermot (let alone any comment on the flavor of his pancreas, Dermot thought sourly), he turned to another extern.

“Ms. Lavinia, can you tell us whether this patient—” One of Doctor Feculent’s shadow-wisps solidified long enough for him to kick the bed, the motion setting the bloody, shredded creature upon it to moaning even louder— “is expressing pleasure or pain?”

Lavinia smiled, displaying an enticing array of yellowed teeth jammed into sore, bleeding gums. “Pleasure, of course. But pleasure so intense that it might as well be pain.”

Doctor Feculent nodded, pleased. “Precisely right, my dear.”

Lavinia shrugged, the motion setting her exposed organs to bobbling. “Nothing to it, Doctor.” She gave Dermot a sideways glance with her delectably bloodshot eyes. “All one has to do is listen.”

* * *

Dermot made it through the rest of rounds without losing any more organs, which was good, because after several weeks of training under the meticulous and exacting Doctor Feculent, he didn’t have many to spare.

When he’d first been accepted to study at the facility, he’d been thrilled and determined to work as long and hard as it took to become a doctor. And he’d passed his first test as an extern—conducting his own evisceration, sans anesthetic and instruments—with ease. He had no trouble with the mechanics of the rather specialized form of medicine practiced at the facility. But the subtleties continually eluded him. And it was the subtleties, Doctor Feculent had pointed out to him on more than one occasion after polishing off one of Dermot’s soft parts, that made an ordinary doctor a great doctor.

And Dermot was determined to be a great doctor. No matter what the cost.

When Doctor Feculent had gone on to his other duties, and Dermot’s fellow externs—including that maddening bitch, Lavinia—were off to their disparate assignments, he returned to the scene of his humiliation.

The room was empty, save for the rickety bed upon which the bleeding, scarred and scabbed mound of flesh wiggled. Dermot could hear the sound of its thick skin parting and peeling away as it writhed against the dulled, red-brown flaking metal of the rusty razor blades. He could smell the coppery tang of fresh blood overlaying the flat, rank stench of old blood. Much old blood. He heard the soft keening sounds that drifted forth from what was left of the patient’s mouth and throat.

He had no trouble detecting these details. They were completely objective: they existed, his senses perceived them, and that was that. But to tell what the patient was actually feeling…

He heard Lavinia’s smug voice. All one has to do is listen.

He wished she were here so he could tear out her vocal chords with his teeth. But instead of swallowing her flesh, he swallowed his pride, and did as she had suggested. He closed his eyes, bent all his considerable intelligence and will to the task, and listened.

As he focused on the patient’s cries, more details became clear. A nearly inaudible wet clicking from somewhere deep inside; a soft flutter of decaying moth wings coming from the lungs; the slick sliding of sweat and blood-covered rolls of flesh. All these things and more he heard. But he couldn’t hear what Lavinia had—couldn’t hear anything that told him what the patient was feeling.

His eyes snapped open. With a roar of rage and frustration, Dermot plunged his hands in the patient’s boneless flab and violently worked the flesh back and forth across the razored bed as if it were a giant cheese grater. When he was finished, there was nothing left but greasy-red hunks of meat scattered and splattered about the room.

“While I can’t fault your enthusiasm, Dermot—”

The gore-covered extern whirled to see Doctor Feculent floating in the doorway.

“—I must say your bedside manner leaves something to be desired.”

* * *

They sat in the doctor’s office, Feculent behind the barnacle-encrusted and seaweed-draped carcass of some strange sea beast he used for a desk, Dermot cross-legged upon a plastic cushion stuffed with used hypodermics and surgical wipes. Gobbets of patient dripped off him like crimson rain and struck the plastic with wet plopping sounds.

Doctor Feculent looked at Dermot for a long time before speaking. “You’re one of the most talented externs we’ve ever had at the facility, Dermot,” he said at last.

Dermot didn’t know what he’d expected Feculent to say, but this certainly wasn’t it. The doctor plunged a hand through the hard hide of his desk and with a thick sucking sound, pulled out a mucus-slick file folder. Feculent shook the folder several times to get the worst of the muck off, then opened it and scanned the contents.

“According to our records, your talents manifested early, at the tender age of four.”

Dermot remembered. “I dissected the neighbor’s cat with an exacto knife I stole from my father’s workbench.” Dermot had performed the procedure with the utmost precision, laying the organs out on the back porch just so, examining each one in turn and, when he was finished, putting them all back exactly where they belonged. Well, almost exactly. After all, he’d been only four.

“You fulfilled your early promise,” Doctor Feculent said, “eventually moving from cats to dogs, and from dogs to your siblings, and then to your parents. And once simple disassembly began to pale—after all, there are only so many ways to take something apart, aren’t there?—you started to…experiment. It was the result of one of these experiments which drew the attention of the local authorities to you, wasn’t it? And as a result, you soon found yourself a permanent resident of an institution for the criminally insane.

“That is, until a recruiter from the facility paid you a visit. We had heard of your work, and while your efforts were somewhat simplistic—”

Dermot scowled.

“—We thought them technically proficient enough to offer you an externship.”

Dermot had leaped at the chance, and the recruiter used the facility’s connections to get him released.

Feculent closed the file and jammed it back into the guts of his desk. He removed his hand and licked his slime-coated fingers clean. When he was finished, he smacked his dry, cracked lips and continued. “And now here you are, Dermot, your work above reproach on a mechanical level, but when it comes to truly understanding what it means to be a doctor…” Feculent trailed off, shaking his head.

Dermot could see his heart pounding faster, but try as he might, he couldn’t force it to slow down. It was most embarrassing.

“I’m afraid that despite your skills, your future here is in doubt.” Feculent considered for a moment. “Have you thought of taking up serial killing? It’s not medicine, but I’m told it has its own rather pedestrian rewards.”

Fury washed through Dermot like a battery acid enema. His heart pounded angrily, and he grabbed the throbbing organ and squeezed hard to calm it. “I was born to be a doctor,” he said through gritted teeth.

Feculent looked at Dermot, a dark dangerous light flickering in the depths of his filmy white eyes. “That, my dear boy, remains to be seen.”

* * *

Dermot stalked the dank, winding corridors of the facility, pausing only to administer an occasional kick to a patient lying on the floor. How dare Feculent talk to him like that? Dermot was one of the most skilled externs the facility had ever seen! But that didn’t matter, did it? Dermot thought bitterly. Not as long as Feculent had it in his tiny dog turd of a mind that he was lacking…whatever it was. He didn’t even understand it well enough to name it. No, despite Dermot’s considerable skill, Feculent would bounce him out of the program. He’d made that quite clear in his barely veiled parting threat. And being bounced at the facility could mean so many things. So many…dreadful things.

But Dermot was determined. If he didn’t have this whatever it was, then he’d just have to get it, wouldn’t he?

And he knew just the place.

He found Lavinia in the maternity ward, helping Doctor Squib jam miscarried fetuses back into their screaming mothers.

He waited for an opportunity to speak with her. One finally came when Doctor Squib shoved a little too hard and shredded a woman’s lower torso. He dropped the fetus to the floor in irritation, called for an orderly to clean up the mess and deliver it to the cafeteria, and stomped off. Lavinia started to follow, but Dermot caught her eye and motioned for her to come over.

As she walked, her exposed organs jiggled most enticingly, but Dermot didn’t care. He had other things on his mind.

“What do you want, Dermot? I have to meet Doctor Rigor in the flensing room in fifteen —”

Lavinia was cut off in mid-sentence as Dermot slashed a scalpel through the creamy mushroom-colored flesh of her throat. Thick black blood gushed forth. Lavinia tried to stem the flood of ichor with her hands, but she might as well have tried to hold back the ocean armed with nothing but a sieve and a sponge. Dermot’s cut had been too deep, too precise.

It took a few moments before she lost consciousness and fell to the floor. The orderlies who were busy cleaning up after Doctor Squib’s last patient paid no attention; it wasn’t their place. And besides, they had no sensory organs to speak of.

When Lavinia’s heart and lungs stilled, Dermot knelt beside her and readied his scalpel. Lavinia had the Whatever-It-Was. She’d proved that today during rounds. Now all Dermot had to do was find it—and make it his.

He began cutting.

* * *

“Where’s Lavinia?” Doctor Feculent asked in mild puzzlement. “It’s unlike her to be tardy for rounds.”

The externs looked at each other, some shrugging, some shaking their heads. Dermot tried not to smile.

Feculent looked at Dermot and frowned slightly. He nodded to the freshly stitched incision on Dermot’s left temple. “Getting in some extra credit work, Dermot?”

Dermot kept his tone even. “Just trying to keep up with my studies, Doctor.”

Feculent hmpffed. “Very well, then.” He glanced at his watch. “We can wait for Lavinia no longer. Let us begin.”

The first few cases they saw were simple ones—a pair of twins in the first stages of being returned to the single egg from which they’d come, and a famous fashion model who was undergoing a reverse liposuction to receive the total amount of fat taken from all the women in the world who’d suffered through useless fad diets and painful surgical procedures to try to look like her. Nothing particularly radical or challenging, and what few questions Doctor Feculent asked weren’t directed to Dermot.

But then the Doctor led them to an area of the facility that Dermot wasn’t familiar with. They walked some time in silence down corridor after corridor until Feculent had them stop before a featureless wooden door.

“I have something rather special planned today.” He gestured to the door. “Dermot, if you’ll do the honors?”

There was something about Feculent’s tone that Dermot didn’t like, but he did as the doctor bade and stepped forward to open the door.

Inside, instead of a hospital room, was a yard. A tiny postage-stamp sized yard before a humble one-story house. A house that Dermot recognized.

Doctor Feculent grinned. “Who said you can’t go home again?”

Dermot just stood staring. He felt Doctor Feculent give him a shove, and he stumbled across the threshold and into the yard.

“Go on,” Feculent said as he gripped Dermot’s elbow and steered him forward. Dermot was dimly aware of the other externs filing in behind them, but he didn’t care. He was transfixed by the scene on the porch. A young boy, no more than four, was hunched over something that Dermot couldn’t see. But then, he didn’t need to see it, did he? He knew what it was. A cat. Or rather, several pieces of cat.

Doctor Feculent continued urging him toward the porch. “I’ve planned a little surprise quiz for you today, Dermot.” He pushed Dermot onto the front steps, then stopped. “Don’t worry, the lad can’t see us. This was a very important moment in your life, wasn’t it? Perhaps in many ways, the most important.”

Dermot nodded as he watched the little boy he’d been go methodically and coldly about his work.

Feculent went on. “It was the day your skills first blossomed. But the medicine we practice at the facility is about so much more than technique. There are many, many ways to cause simple physical pain; however, there are an infinite amount of ways to torture and degrade the spirit. To accomplish the latter, a doctor needs more than the ability to put together and take apart fleshy tinkertoys. A true doctor needs empathy, Dermot. The ability not just to feel pain, but to understand it, inside and out.”

Dermot couldn’t take his gaze off his younger self, but he heard the grin in Feculent’s voice. “Only when one truly understands pain in all its myriad glory can one effectively engender it. Only then can one become a true doctor in the fullest sense of the word.”

Feculent stepped—or rather drifted—up until he was positioned directly next to Dermot. He leaned over and whispered in Dermot’s ear, his breath morgue-frigid and stale. “The test is simple, Dermot. All you have to do is feel. Feel for this little boy you once were, feel for the dark path he has set his tiny feet upon this day. Feel for all who will fall beneath his knife in the years to come. Feel—and understand.”

Dermot concentrated, willing the small hunk of Lavinia’s brain that he’d transplanted into his skull last night to do its job. Willing it to feel. It gave a couple spastic twitches, and then a spiteful thought drifted across his consciousness, a thought that came in Lavinia’s voice.

Get bent.

And then nothing. The operation had failed.

He stared at the boy, at himself, desperately trying to eke out the slightest hint of emotion from his flat and lifeless psyche. But it was no use. The boy might have been a stranger to Dermot for all that he felt, just another patient, another piece of meat for him to work on.

Doctor Feculent tcched. “Sorry, Dermot. I’m afraid you failed.” He reached forward, gripped the little boy’s neck, and twisted. There was a loud CRACK! The boy’s eyes bulged, and then he fell limp. Feculent released the small corpse and it collapsed onto the bloody form of the cat the boy had been laboring over.

Dermot still struggled to feel something, anything. Sadness, pity, fear, despair…but all he felt was a burgeoning anger.

Doctor Feculent floated down the stairs and toward the open doorway, the other externs following behind. But Dermot stepped forward and knelt beside the still warm body of the little boy. He rolled him off the bloody, disemboweled cat and onto his back. Dermot then reached into the pocket of his lab coat and brought forth his trusty scalpel which was still coated with the dried flakes of Lavinia’s blood.

He was a doctor. No matter what Feculent or anybody else said. And he could fix this. He could heal the boy, make it so he could feel. All it would take was a little surgical skill. He ripped open the boy’s shirt and plunged the blade into the soft, virgin-pink flesh at the base of his throat and made an incision.

The skin peeled away to reveal not ribs, heart and lungs, but instead a vast, unending black void. An infinite expanse of pure, unbroken Nothingness.

And then the Nothing reached for Dermot.

* * *

Doctor Feculent closed the door on the extern’s screams.

“It’s a shame Dermot didn’t take my suggestion about serial killing. He might’ve been quite good at it. Ah, well, shall we continue our rounds, people?” The doctor drifted down the hallway, his students shuffling along behind.

’TIL VOICES DROWN US

The roads were narrower than he remembered; twistier—if that was a word—and rougher. The ditches on either side of the road were overgrown with weeds, tall grass, and stalks of Queen Anne’s lace. There weren’t many homes out here, mostly farmhouses set back a ways from the road, fields of corn and soybeans forming green barriers between their planters and the world.

Thomas Wolfe said you can’t go home again, but Michael knew that he’d gotten it wrong. You could go home, but who in their right mind would want to? But that was the problem: he wasn’t in his right mind, and so he had no choice but to return to Ashton.

“I’m hearing a K word. It’s a first name, I think. Kevin? Karl?”

“Could it be Clint?” The woman was soft-spoken, almost timid, but as soon as she said the name, he knew that was it.

“Yes, Clint. He’s…” Michael frowned. He tried to ignore the audience, the lights, the cameras and the crew, and concentrate on the almost inaudible voice whispering in his head. “He’s related to you, that’s definite. Close. Not a brother or father. Husband. He’s your husband.”

Ashton was a dirt-poor town in the middle of southwestern Ohio farmland, equally close to the Indiana and Kentucky borders. Houses with yards that always needed mowing, rusted-out cars up on blocks in the driveway, too much junk on porches, flaking paint, and drooping gutters. The main employer in the town, a bicycle factory, had closed its doors when he was a boy, and those foolish enough to stay in Ashton worked what subsistence-level jobs they could find, dull-eyed fish swimming in a river of alcohol and unfulfilled dreams, marking time until they died.

Except not everyone was content to wait for the inevitable. The grinding despair and hopelessness of life in Ashton took their toll, and every year more than a few folks decided to give the Reaper a helping hand. Gunshots to the head were a popular choice, as was driving your car at full speed into a tree. But the most common method of committing suicide in Ashton by far was jumping off the Old Mill Run Bridge into the rolling water of the Bluerush River.

He remembered an old joke from his childhood. What’s the most popular sport in Ashton? Diving.

In his mind, Michael saw the image of a sunflower growing in a garden. The flower was top heavy and drooped toward the ground, causing the stalk to bend. He wasn’t sure what the image meant—he often didn’t—but he knew it didn’t matter. His aunt had taught him that.

You don’t need to understand everything the dead show you, she’d said. You’re just their mailman; all you have to do is pass the message along.

He focused his gaze on the woman, on Clint’s wife.

Michael described the image of the sunflower, and the woman began to cry.

“I had a sunflower just like that in my garden. My husband teased me about how ugly it was, he…he used to say he was going to go out and cut it down, but of course he never did. Then one day—”

Another image came to Michael. “He took an old broom handle and used it to straighten the sunflower. He tied the stalk to the wood with a piece of twine so it would stand upright.”

The woman’s eyes grew wide, and she smiled in delight and disbelief. “Yes! But how could you know that?”

It was Michael’s turn to smile. “Because he just told me.”

He’d never had many friends growing up. To most of the other kids, he was the boy who lived outside of town in the trailer with the “old witch woman.” Luckily, that reputation had kept him from getting beaten up more than once or twice, but that was about all it was good for. Ashton was a lousy place for anyone to grow up, but for someone of his abilities, the psychic atmosphere of the town was stifling and oppressive. He had no idea how his aunt endured it. When he at last reached adulthood, he joined a traveling carnival as a medium and got the hell out of Ashton. He’d returned only a handful of times since, and then only to visit his aunt on holidays.

Even though it wasn’t that hot out for late June, Michael kept the windows of his BMW rolled up and the air conditioner running. He told himself it was because he didn’t want to set his hay fever off, but in truth, he just didn’t want to breathe the air, didn’t want to fill his lungs with the smells of grass, corn and manure. He’d spent a decade and a half purging his system of this place, and he wanted to limit his exposure to it as much as possible.

As the applause began to die down, he felt a tingling at the base of his skull. Clint, trying to get his attention. Michael redoubled his concentration, attempted to clear his mind and be open to the spirit’s energy. He could feel Clint’s presence grow stronger, as if the man had been standing a dozen yards away a moment ago, but now had stepped to within arm’s length. He felt the man take one step closer, lean forward and whisper in his ear…

But instead of words, a new image appeared in his mind. A field of darkness rushing toward him, so deep, so utterly devoid of light that it pulled everything toward it; a complete, profound emptiness demanding to be filled. Then, as the blackness drew nearer—or as Michael was sucked toward it—he saw that what he had first taken for nothingness was instead something far worse. And it reached for him with a million-million grasping ebon claws.

Michael’s eyes flew open and a scream tore free from his lips—a scream that might have been his, but just as easily might have belonged to a dead man named Clint. The studio lights spun in his vision, his knees buckled, and he felt himself begin to fall toward the floor.

He had a Beethoven CD playing—the Symphony No. 9 in D minor—the volume turned up so high he could feel the steering wheel vibrating in time with the music. But as loud as it was, the symphony couldn’t drown out the whispers that tickled the inside of his ears. Whispers that grew louder and clearer with every mile he put behind him.

He knew other tricks to shut the voices out, though. Lots of them.

* * *

“You want to touch it, don’t you? Go ahead; it can’t hurt you, child.”

Michael was six years old, and he had never touched anything dead. Not unless you counted food that had once been alive, like hamburgers and fried chicken, but Aunt ‘Lena said that wasn’t the same.

Once an animal’s been killed, reduced to hunks of meat, and then cooked, the tie to its spirit has been well and truly severed. Even then, if you’re sensitive enough, you sometimes catch an echo of its life when you eat it. That’s why a lot of folks like us are vegetarians.

Michael looked down at the dead toad. It was tiny, little more than a baby, really. It lay on its back in the middle of the dirt path that led up to the front door of Aunt Elena’s trailer. Michael was responsible for the animal’s death. He’d been skipping down the path, singing the ABC song to himself, and hadn’t seen the little toad. Without meaning to, he’d stepped on the poor thing, mushing its guts to one side of its belly, leaving the other side flat. The toad had writhed for half an hour before it died. Michael had watched the entire time, on the verge of tears, but also morbidly fascinated. When the toad had finally passed on, he’d gone to get his aunt. She’d know what to do with it.

He looked up at his aunt for confirmation, and she smiled, crow’s feet becoming deeper and more pronounced as she did. She was really his great-aunt, and while he didn’t know exactly how old she was, she was the oldest person he knew, which as far as he was concerned meant she was pretty old.

Michael stretched his index finger toward the dead toad—he was nervous, but his finger didn’t tremble, remained rock-steady—and gently touched the bulging side of its abdomen. Its skin was soft, leathery, and still warm

His vision went gray and he felt a small hot pinprick of pain between his eyes. He gasped, but he didn’t remove his finger from the toad.

“What you’re feeling is its anger,” his aunt said softly. “It blames you for its death, and it’s trying to get back at you the only way it knows how, by hurting you. Course, it’s a small spirit without much power, and so it can’t do much damage. Hurts less than a bee sting, doesn’t it?”

Michael nodded. “I didn’t mean to kill it, though. It was an accident.”

“You and I know that, but the toad is just a poor, dumb animal. All that it knows is that its life has been taken away and you were the one that did it.”

The pain between his eyes began to grow more intense. He tried to pull his fingers away from the toad, but he couldn’t. It was like he was glued to the animal.

“It’s starting to hurt worse, Aunt ‘Lena.” He couldn’t keep the fear out of his voice.

“Don’t you worry. A little old toad spirit can’t do you any real harm. And you can make it go away anytime you want.”

“I can?”

Aunt Elena nodded. “Close your eyes and imagine that your head is covered by something. A blanket, or maybe a hat.”

“How about a helmet, like the kind my army men wear?”

“That’ll work fine. Now go ahead: close your eyes and imagine you’re wearing a thick, green army man helmet. A helmet so strong that nothing can get through, not even the pain that little toad ghost is sending you.”

Michael did as his aunt instructed. It wasn’t easy to ignore the pain between his eyes—it was starting to spread, and felt more like a headache now—but he did it, and imagined the helmet so well that he thought he could actually feel its weight on his head. Within seconds, the pain began to lessen, and soon it vanished entirely. Michael was able to withdraw his finger from the toad then.

He looked up at Aunt ‘Lena and smiled. “I did it!”

She grinned, wrapped her fleshy arms around him and gave him a hug. “You sure did, Mikey! And anytime you’re pestered by a spirit that you don’t want bothering you, you go ahead and imagine up your army man helmet, and you’ll be just fine. Now let’s see about giving this little toad a proper burial, all right?”

* * *

Over the years, Michael had learned that his army-man helmet only worked so well. If a spirit was strong enough and determined to make itself heard, there was only so much you could do to shut it out. But the spirit-whispers that were plaguing him at the moment were primarily background noise, and the helmet image worked well enough in concert with the music. And if the whispers didn’t recede entirely, at least they were muted enough to ignore.

He continued on toward Ashton.

* * *

He pulled his Beemer to a stop a dozen yards from Elena’s trailer, parked, and cut the ignition. He sat behind the wheel for several moments, making himself ready. The trailer—which Elena had named Holly, for reasons that he’d never been clear on—sat at the end of a dirt path not quite wide enough to be called a driveway. Its green and white siding was tinged with rust at the edges, and the wooden front porch, which he had built and painted over one summer between seventh and eighth grade, was weathered and seriously in need of repainting. The grass was high; it had been a while since she’d mowed, but not so high that the yard looked neglected. Trees surrounded the property on all sides, taller and thicker than he remembered. When he was a child, the trees had made the place seem cozy, safe and protected, but when he’d become an adolescent, they’d been stifling, a cage made of brown, gray and green. Now, they were just trees.

He took a deep breath, held it for a count of three—just as Elena had taught him—and let it out slowly. Telling himself that he felt calmer now, though in truth he didn’t, he got out of the car and started for the porch. Branches swayed in the summer breeze, their leaves shusssshing against one another, the sound overlaid by birdsong and cicada-thrum. He listened for the whispers, but heard none. It was almost as if the dead had paused in their eternal gossiping, watching and listening to see what would happen next.

He walked up the front steps and onto the porch, turned toward the screen door, half-expecting Elena to be standing there waiting for him. After all, she had to have been aware that he was coming home. But she wasn’t there. He started to knock, then paused. Elena would chide him for knocking, would tell him that no matter how long he’d been away, no matter that he hadn’t called in months, this was still his home, and he didn’t have to knock as if he were some stranger come to sell her something.

He opened the screen door and stepped inside.

The heat hit him first. Elena hated air conditioning, said it made the air taste wrong, but she didn’t like to open the windows in summer, said the humidity made everything feel damp and caused mildew. Next came the smell, a mingled odor of cooked meals, flowers on the verge of rot, and lemon-scented furniture polish. Last, he heard the low tones of a television program drifting from the living room. A man’s voice, the cadence rising and falling, almost like he was chanting. Michael couldn’t make out the words, but he didn’t need to. Elena only watched religious programs on TV, and the man was undoubtedly a televangelist.

The trailer’s front door opened on a small dining room that Elena hardly ever used. The dining table was covered by framed pictures of family, the older pictures to the rear, the more recent ones in the front. In back were photos of his mom and grandparents, and Aunt Elena’s husband—all long deceased. There were no pictures of his father. The man had taken off months before he was born, and had never returned to Ashton. There was a good chance he was probably dead now, too, not that Michael gave a damn. If the man’s spirit ever tried to talk to him, Michael would give him the old army helmet treatment. If his father hadn’t wanted anything to do with him in life, Michael sure as hell wasn’t going to start a relationship with him in death.

To the left of the dining room was the kitchen, to the right the living room. Michael went right.

Elena sat in the recliner he’d bought her with money he’d saved from his first job as a professional medium when he was sixteen. He’d worked as a “spirit-reader” at the county fair one summer, though he’d told Elena that he was cleaning horse stalls at the Johnstons’ farm. Elena didn’t believe in using their gifts for personal gain, and while she had clearly disapproved once she’d found out where the money for her new chair had come from—and he’d suspected she’d known all along—that hadn’t stopped her from accepting his gift.

He wondered how she felt about what he did now. His television show, The Other Side, was one of the most popular programs on cable, its ratings high enough to impress the networks, and there was serious talk of syndication. Since Michael was a co-creator of the show, that meant mucho dinero. And though his aunt had never said anything, he was pretty sure that in her mind, it counted as exploiting his gift for personal gain.

She sat staring at the TV, a white man in an expensive suit with a mound of blow-dried blonde hair atop his head stood behind a wooden lectern, talking about the glory of serving Jesus. His face and voice exuded an overly practiced sincerity that couldn’t disguise his true message: Give me money.

“Don’t be so cynical,” she said.

Michael smiled. As irritating as it was to never be able to hide his feelings from her, it was also comforting in its way. No one else in the world knew him as well as she did, and no one ever would.

She was thinner than when he last saw her, though not exactly a scarecrow. Her white hair was cut short and straight, the edges a bit uneven. He wondered if she’d taken to cutting her hair herself. The whites of her eyes were tinged yellow, and he wondered if that was a sign of some serious medical condition. Liver trouble? Gall bladder?

Her hands rested on the arms of the recliner, the joints of her fingers bulging from arthritis, or as she’d always pronounced it, ar-thur-itis. She wore a simple striped shirt which left her arms bare and a pair of orange shorts. Her legs were a road map of varicose veins, so thick and discolored it looked like a colony of fat, purple earthworms had burrowed beneath her skin.

She gestured toward the couch without taking her gaze from the television screen. “Go ahead and sit down. Unless you’re not planning on staying.”

Michael did as she ordered, having to pass between Elena and the TV to do so. He sat down, wishing he’d worn something lighter than the black shirt and slacks he had on. He’d only been inside the trailer for a few minutes, but already his skin was slick with sweat, and his clothes stuck to him like a second layer of flesh.

Time passed without either of them saying anything. Michael found himself watching the televangelist so he wouldn’t have to stare at his aunt’s face. Finally, after what seemed like a long time, but which Michael knew had only been moments, Elena spoke again.

“You’ve seen it, haven’t you? The darkness.”

Michael nodded.

Elena took a deep breath, held it for a three-count, just as she’d taught him to do, then released it slowly. When she was done, she turned to Michael, gave him a smile and held out her arms. “Well? Are you too big a TV star to come give your old auntie a hug?”

* * *

“So what was it? I mean, I’ve made contact with the other side hundreds of times, but I’ve never experienced anything like that before.” Even now, outside in the light of the late afternoon sun, the thought of that awful darkness made him shiver and raised goose bumps on his flesh.

Elena didn’t answer at first. They walked side by side, his aunt holding on to his elbow with her left hand. Her feet were covered by a pair of slippers that were hardly appropriate for outdoors, but she’d refused to put on shoes, saying they pinched her feet. They were walking through the woods, on a well-worn path that Michael knew as well as the layout of his condo back in the city, even though he hadn’t set foot here in almost fifteen years. He wasn’t sure where they were going. After they’d chatted for a bit, mostly small-talk about nothing in particular, words designed to get them used to each other again and to stave off discussion of the real reason he’d come home, she’d suggested that they go for a little walk. Michael, without saying so directly, had hinted that maybe it was too hot out for someone of Elena’s years, but she’d ignored him, and now here they were, walking in the woods, Michael fearing that his elderly aunt would have a heart attack or a stroke any minute.

At least it was cooler here than inside that oven of a trailer.

“The departed ever give you any sense of what the other side was like?” she asked.

Elena had never referred to them as dead or worse yet, ghosts. She’d always used terms like spirits and departed, the latter always sounding to Michael as if they’d just stepped out for a quart of milk or a pack of cigarettes, and they’d be back before long.

“Sure. People ask all the time when I do readings.” It was one of the most common questions he got. After someone asked if their loved one was okay on the other side, they always wanted to know what the afterlife was really like. “I always get a sense of peace and togetherness from…the departed, as if on the other side we’re reunited with our loved ones that have passed over before us, and everything is all right.”

He looked at his aunt. “Do you know what it’s like? I mean, you never said much about it, but I always assumed you believed in the Christian version of heaven—angels and saints and all.”

Elena smiled. “And you didn’t, which is why you never asked me, isn’t it?”

Michael felt himself blush. It was almost as if his aunt had told him that she’d known all along what he was doing in the bathroom with the water running so long when he was a teenager. “Well, it just never felt right to me, you know? And you always told me that I should trust my feelings.”

“That I did.” They walked in silence a bit before Elena went on. “I wish I could believe in the storybook version of heaven. I wish I was like most other people in the world: blind, deaf and dumb to anything ‘cept what’s in front of my nose at the moment. But I’m not.”

The trees began to thin, and Michael knew they were coming to the edge of the woods. He knew what lay beyond, but he didn’t want to think about that just now.

“I knew you had the gift the first time I laid eyes on you as a monkey-faced little baby.” She gave a snorting laugh. “Good thing you got handsomer as you grew up. After your mother…passed on, I made sure to teach you everything you’d need to know to be able to live with your abilities, and maybe be able to use them to help other people some day.”

Was there a gentle rebuke in her last sentence? Elena had given readings for folks all her life, but she’d never charged them much, just enough to cover the cost of food, phone, and electricity, and even then she’d always had trouble paying her bills. Since leaving Ashton, Michael had become something of a celebrity, and while his cable TV show wasn’t making him rich, he charged five hundred dollars for a one-on-one reading, more if the client was wealthy. Paying bills was not one of his problems.

“You taught me well, Aunt ‘Lena.”

“I did my best, and I think all in all you turned out okay.” She grinned, but then sadness filled her eyes and her smile fell away. “But there are a few things I didn’t tell you. Things you weren’t quite ready to hear back then. Things you may not be any more ready to hear now, but I don’t have a lot of choice about telling you.”

Elena’s voice was soft, her tone cold and flat, and it cut through him like a blade of ice. “Like what?”

She looked away, and her eyes glazed over, as if she were focusing on something far in the distance, something only she could see.

“Well, for one thing, the dead are liars. Every last one of them.”

* * *

They were past the woods and into a clearing, waving grass almost knee-high. To the west a low wall of orange brick surrounded row upon row of small weathered gravestones. The wall was only three, three-and-half feet high, easy to climb over. Michael should know; he’d shinnied over it often while growing up. There were trees in the cemetery, oak and elm; tall, old things with thick branches and lush green leaves that gave shade and shelter to the dead, not that they needed it. Michael had the impression the trees were watching as he and ‘Lena passed by. They seemed more curious than malevolent…and somewhat smug, as if they knew more than he did about what had drawn him home.

A gentle breeze blew from the north, and Michael detected a sound beneath the wind, something like an ocean wave breaking against a deserted beach. Deep, sonorous, more felt through the soles of the feet than heard with the ears. The dead weren’t bound to their physical remains, but their bodies made effective focal points for contact, and places like this, where their cast-off shells were gathered, were the psychic equivalent of a strong telephone connection.

Aunt Elena chuckled. “Seems like they get noisier every time I walk by.”

Michael smiled. “Maybe you just keep getting better at listening.”

She laughed, a rich, hearty sound that could have originated in the throat of a much younger woman. “So now it’s your turn to teach me, eh?” She grew suddenly serious. “Well, maybe it is. Maybe it is.”

It had been years since Michael had been this near Elmwood. It was a Quaker burial ground erected in 1864, and most of the folks laid to rest within its walls had been there so long that time and the elements had scoured the legends from their gravestones, rendering them anonymous. There had been only few fresh graves dug over the last half century. In fact, the last one had belonged to his—

He cocked his head. He thought he heard something rising above the ocean-noise of the endlessly whispering throng. A voice…loud, as if someone were desperate to get his attention.

“Hold up for a second, ‘Lena.” He stopped, and his aunt stopped with him. He closed his eyes and listened with a part of himself beyond his physical body.

Yes! He could hear it more clearly now. It sounded just like—

“Mother!” He released ‘Lena’s arm and started toward the graveyard wall.

His aunt called after him, but he paid her no heed, wasn’t even sure exactly what she was saying. All he could clearly hear was his mother, calling, calling after so long a silence.

He reached the wall, climbed over easily, and set foot in the kingdom of the dead.

* * *

Michael, fifteen now, sat cross-legged on his mother’s grave. The dirt had long since settled, no longer a mound around which mourners gathered with tear-puffy eyes and bowed heads, but simple, flat earth covered with grass. If it wasn’t for her headstone—Miranda Tays: Beloved Mother, She Served Her Maker Well—there would have been no sign that she was buried here at all.

It was late fall, and only a few stubborn leaves still clung to tree branches. The rest covered the ground with a blanket of brown and red, leaves curled and dry like the husks of desiccated insects. Michael had had to brush them aside to make room to sit.

He’d learned much from his aunt over the years, so much so that she let him help with readings from time to time, and he’d even done a couple all by himself. She said he had a real knack for the work, as if he’d been born to it. But of all the spirits who’d whispered to him, first animals and then people, there was one he wanted to hear from more than anyone, one who had so far remained silent.

His mother had died when was he was only two years old, from cancer, Aunt ‘Lena said, and what memories Michael had of her weren’t real memories at all, just half-formed, fuzzy things constructed out of old pictures in photo albums and stories his aunt had told him. He had no true sense of his mother as a person who had given him life, taken care of him, loved him for the two years their lives had overlapped. And the one question his aunt had never been able to answer to his satisfaction was why, if he could talk to the dead, he’d never been able to talk to his mother?

Not that ‘Lena didn’t try to give answers. It’s like trying to see the tip of your own nose—it’s just too close. Don’t worry about it none. When the time is right, you’ll hear from her.

Michael was tired of waiting. As far as he was concerned, the time was now. If the dead cared at all about the living—if his mother cared at all about him—then today they’d make contact. And if not, he’d say to hell with being a messenger between this world and the next, and start thinking about becoming an accountant or an engineer, it didn’t matter what. Any profession would do, just as long as it was boring and mundane and didn’t involve talking to ghosts.

He took a breath, counted three, let it out. “Okay, Mom. Here we go.”

He pressed his fingertips against the ground, digging them into the earth, shoving soil up under his fingernails. It hurt, but he ignored the pain, closed his eyes and concentrated on breathing.

Breath is life, Aunt Elena had taught him. To touch death, we begin with life.

Michael imagined his fingers becoming roots, snaking down into the earth, curling through dirt and rock, down, down toward his mother’s coffin. Imagined the roots touching the wood, shoots drilling through the surface, reaching inside, connecting with the empty shell his mother had left behind. A shell that might provide a touchstone between them.

He heard the dead speaking all around him, their voices the sound of dry autumn leaves rustling in a midnight wind. He sifted through the voices, searching for one in particular…

Mother?

A gentle breeze touched his right cheek, feeling more like warm, soft fingertips than any wind.

Then, so faint he wasn’t sure if he really heard it, came a loving whisper. It’s all right, honey. Everything’s okay.

* * *

Michael stood over his mother’s grave. Aunt ‘Lena remained outside the cemetery, too old to climb the wall. She leaned against it, watching him, her gaze unreadable.

Two sentences. That was all his mother had ever whispered to him through the veil that separated the living and the dead. Not much, not much at all, but it had been enough. Until now, that was.

“What do you feel, Mikey?” she called to him.

He looked at the words engraved on his mother’s stone, not wanting to answer. “Nothing,” he said in a small, lost voice. He didn’t mean that he failed to feel anything at all. Rather, he sensed a nothingness that was almost tangible, a vast unbroken stretch of blackness that was so far beyond such childish concepts as shadow and dark and night as a supernova is beyond the feeble illumination of a burning match.

And he knew he was seeing it through his mother’s eyes.

“Why?” He felt tears threaten, fought to hold them back. “Why did she lie to me?”

‘Lena didn’t answer right away. Eventually, she said, “Remember how I told you that it’s hard to contact our own loved ones because it’s like trying to look at the tip of your own nose?”

His gaze still focused on his mother’s headstone, he nodded.

“Well, that’s true enough, as it goes. But the dead have a hard time lying directly to friends and family. That’s where folks like you and me come in, Mikey. It’s easier for the spirits of strangers to lie to us, to lie through us. But we have too strong a connection with our own departed loved ones. We can see through their lies too easily, feel when they aren’t telling the truth, so they avoid contact with us.”

He turned away from his mother’s grave and walked back toward his aunt. He stopped when he reached the wall and looked deep into her eyes.

“But when you get good at talking with the dead—too good—none of them can lie to you anymore.”

She nodded. “And that’s what happened to you when you were taping your show. The man’s spirit tried to lie to you so you could pass that lie on to his wife…just like your mama lied to you when you were a young man. Like they all lie to us. To reassure us, make it easier to go on with our lives and do what we have to do.”

“But in the studio, I finally saw the truth.”

“Oh, yes.” She reached out and touched arthritic fingers to his cheek. It felt exactly like another touch, one he’d felt here in this cemetery over half his lifetime ago. Thick, viscous tears welled in ‘Lena’s rheumy eyes. “You poor, poor boy.”

* * *

They stood side by side on the Old Mill Run Bridge, leaning on the railing and looking down at the water rushing by beneath. The bridge was old, its wood gray and weathered. It felt soft beneath Michael’s hands, as if he might sink his fingers into the wood and tear away great chunks as easily as he could pull apart a slice of stale bread. The Bluerush River wasn’t living up to its name today; the water was reddish brown, a sluice of tumbling, surging liquid clay.

“It’s rained quite a bit the last few weeks,” ‘Lena said. “The river’s all stirred up.”

The river’s not the only thing all stirred up, Michael thought.

Trees formed a canopy over their heads, branches heavy with leaves, hanging low as if bowing under the weight of the summer heat. Michael was sweaty. His shirt clung to his back and sides, and he could feel rivulets running down his face and the back of his neck. He glanced at ‘Lena. The old woman wasn’t sweating at all. She kept her gaze fastened on the water, an expression of profound sadness on her face.

“This is the one place I never brought you, Michael.”

Not Mikey this time, he noticed.

“It’s time for another lesson. The last one.” She sighed and something rattled in her lungs, deep and nasty. Michael thought that after this was over, he should take her to the doctor, just in case.

“This place, this bridge, is the reason why we’re here, you and I. And when I say here, I don’t mean just in Ashton. It’s the reason we were put on this world and given the powers that we have.” She turned and gave him a small smile. “The reason why we exist at all.”

Michael stretched out his senses, tried to feel what was so special about this bridge, but beyond the ever-present whispering of the dead—which now seemed to be coming from the water flowing beneath them—he felt nothing. It was more than strange: this was a place where dozens of people had ended their lives. Despairing, feeling there was no other way out than to climb over the railing and drop into the river, letting the current take them, lungs filling with water as they embraced the final release of darkness. The bridge should’ve reeked of emotional turbulence and lingering suicidal thoughts, a foul psychic residue soaked deep into the wood. But there was nothing, nothing at all.

“I don’t understand.”

“Look down at the water,” ‘Lena said. Her voice was flat, toneless.

He did as she asked and saw the water had turned black. Blacker than night, blacker than sin, blacker even than death itself. It was the same darkness that he had seen in his vision back in the television studio. A darkness that was balefully alive and eternally hungry. Now he understood why he felt nothing here. Nothing—Nothing with a capital N—was all that was here.

As he watched, faces began to bob up from beneath the surface of the black river. Dozens, hundreds, thousands of white faces, skin bleached, eyes black holes filled with the same darkness they swam in. Mouths open wide as if shouting, but nothing came out save more maddening inaudible whispers, and try as he might, he couldn’t make out what was being said. Once as a boy, Michael had seen a school of ravenous carp feeding on water insects near the bank of the river. The big thick-scaled fish writhed and tumbled over one another, eyes cold, dead and staring as they mindlessly fed. The faces of the dead struck him the same way, and he had an awful thought. What if their mouths were stretched wide not because they were trying to say something, but because they were hungry?

“I told you the dead lie, Michael. What I didn’t tell you was the reason why. You know as well as I do what they tell us to pass along to the living: that the other side is a place of peace and contentment. All worries, all troubles are washed away in the passage from this world to the next. And that’s true enough, as it goes. What they don’t say is that the negative emotions—all the anger, envy, lust, hatred and dozens of others for which humans haven’t thought up names for yet—are carried over with them. And once those emotions are purged, they don’t just vanish. Just like the spirits they were part of, those feelings are eternal. And once those emotions are free, they have to go somewhere.”

Michael looked down at the river and into the deep shadows within the bleached-white eyes sockets of the dead. Shadows that surged and roiled as if alive and eager to be free from the hollow prisons that held them.

“The Darkness,” he said.

‘Lena nodded. “The toxic waste dump of the afterlife. And it’s alive, in its own way.”

The bloodless faces continued to gawp like fish. And was there one face that Michael recognized? A face he hadn’t seen since he was two? Maybe.

He fought to keep his voice steady. “What does it want?”

She shrugged. “What does anything want? To feed, to grow, to go on living.”

One of the faces, the one that Michael thought he recognized but which he wasn’t ready to acknowledge, oh no, not yet, began to rise up out of the black water, long raven hair (God, please don’t let it be her!) trailing behind a naked, snail-flesh white body.

“’Course, what it feeds on is emotion,” ‘Lena said. “Negative emotion.” Her voice was calm, too much so considering that the woman (not her, not her!) was rising upward on a fount of ebony water, white arms stretched toward them, mouth yawning open and eye sockets bubbling with living darkness. “And the dead don’t have any of those feelings anymore. They got rid of them when they crossed over, so the darkness needs us, the living. It’s too greedy to wait for us to die and feed. It wants to be fed now. So it comes to places like this, where the barrier between worlds is thinnest, and it pushes and pushes until it makes a tiny tear. But that’s all it needs to reach through and intensify the negative emotions of the living.”

Still rising, coming closer, within a few yards now. Cracked white lips drawn into a rictus of a smile, and the hands—nails so long they were almost talons—trembled, eager, so eager…

‘Lena went on calmly. “Ever wonder why there are some places in the world—places like Ashton—where everyone is always depressed and down on their luck? Places where people can’t helping taking to drink, drugs and crime? Where they decide it’s better to kill themselves than endure one more minute of the hell their lives have become?” ‘Lena nodded toward the thing rising from the river. “It’s the Darkness, planting seeds of itself within them, and then harvesting its crop.”

Only a few yards away now. Michael could smell the stink of fetid river water on the creature’s chalk-colored flesh. He couldn’t take his eyes off the face that he hadn’t seen in so long, a face that was in many ways as familiar to him as his own.

“The dead do their best to keep the Darkness they created at bay,” ‘Lena said. “They work to communicate with the living, to pass along the false message that everything is all right on the other side, that the afterlife is a beautiful place of peace and rest, where we’ll be reunited with our loved ones some day. It’s a lie, of course, but a beautiful, necessary one designed to give the living hope, to keep despair at bay and deny the Darkness the awful nourishment it so desperately wants.”

Rising, rising ever closer…

“And I lied to you, too, Michael. Your mother didn’t die of cancer, and she’s not buried in the cemetery. I paid to have an empty coffin put into the ground, and a stone set over it so you’d believe she was there. She was like you and me, could hear the dead whisper, but she saw through their lies earlier than most, and she couldn’t take it. Couldn’t live with the knowledge of what truly waits for us all on the other side, and couldn’t bring herself to help the dead deceive the living any more. She became depressed, convinced life had no purpose other than to feed the Darkness, and nothing I could say or do would help. In the end, she came here.” ‘Lena nodded toward the water below.

The fingers had drawn even with the bottom of the bridge now, and still they rose upward, clutching frantically, like the multi-jointed legs of some crustacean. Above the whispering of the dead in the river below, Michael could make out a high-pitched keening, as if of an infant crying to be fed.

Michael’s mind was reeling. He wanted to deny what was happening, to ignore his great-aunt’s words and pretend he’d never come home, never learned her final lesson. But he couldn’t. Part of him accepted it, as if deep in the core of his being, he had known the truth all along. When he spoke, he was surprised at how calm he sounded.

“Have you brought me here for the same reason, ‘Lena? So that I can watch you feed the Darkness the same way my mother did?”

She turned to him, surprised. “Lord, no, child! I’d never do that to you.” She smiled and touched his cheek with stiff, swollen fingers. “I may be old, and I might not have much hope left in me after all these years of helping to hold off the Darkness, but I still have a little.”

The crustacean fingers found the railing, closed over the wood, talons digging into its soft surface. With a last heave, the thing from the river pulled itself up until it was the same height as they, less than a foot away from them now. Michael couldn’t bring himself to look into its wet, ivory face. He wanted nothing more than to get the hell out of there, to run off the bridge and down the road, screaming until his throat bled. But he knew ‘Lena wouldn’t follow, and he refused to leave her alone with…with…

“What I don’t have much left of, Mikey, is time. I’m sick. So full of cancer that the doctors don’t see any point in trying to fight it. At my age, they figure the operation’s just as liable to kill me as the sickness, and if I survive that—and it’s a mighty big if—the chemotherapy would probably finish me off.”

Still smiling she withdrew her hand from his face. “I haven’t come here to surrender. I’ve come so that I can continue my fight in the next world.” ‘Lena nodded toward the one who had joined them, and Michael turned to look full upon his mother’s face.

The darkness remained in her eyes, and her skin was still pale as a fish that had lived its entire life in the deepest depths of the ocean. But her lips had formed a smile now—a loving, human smile, and he knew that his mother hadn’t come as an avatar of the Darkness, hadn’t come to feed. She’d come as an escort.

‘Lena stepped toward her niece, and Michael’s mother wrapped dead arms around her. She lifted the old woman off the bridge, and then the fount of water which held her aloft began to recede, bearing them both slowly down toward the black river.

“Wait! There’s still so much I need to know!”

‘Lena smiled. “You’ll figure it out, honey. Just remember to trust your feelings.”

Their feet touched the water, began to sink. The blackness, which was already edging back toward brownish-red, rose up to their knees, toward their stomachs… The clown-white faces of the rest of the dead dipped below the surface of the river, and the whispering that had been in Michael’s ears ever since he’d gotten near Ashton finally fell silent.

The water was up to their chests now, closing in on their necks…

“What do I do now?” Now that he knew the truth, now that he knew what he had done all his life—pass messages along for the dead—had been a lie.

“What else?” ‘Lena said as the water touched her chin and rose toward her mouth. “Keep hope alive. And remember that we love you.”

The darkness in his mother’s sockets cleared like clouds dissipating after a summer shower, and her eyes became human and blue again, just the way they were in the photo albums.

And then he heard a single word in his mind, whispered in a soft, gentle voice.

Yes.

And then they were gone and the river had returned to normal.

For a long, long time, Michael stood on the bridge, sweating in the June heat and watching the water pass by. Thinking.

* * *

“Can I…ask a question?”

She sat in the last row of the risers, a bird-thin woman in her fifties, with glasses and wispy brown hair. Behind those glasses, her eyes shone with a mix of fear and hope.

Michael gave her a reassuring nod. “You can ask anything you want.”

She seemed almost embarrassed, and despite the instructions the producer always gave to the audience before taping, she kept sneaking direct glances at the camera. “Ask my brother…ask him what it’s like where he’s at.” Her voice was hushed, as if she thought she were breaking some divine taboo by asking. “What it’s like on the other side.”

He closed his eyes to shut out the crowd, the lights, and the cameras. A vision flashed in Michael’s mind. Endless, ravenous darkness clawing at the barrier between worlds, desperate to get in, desperate to feed. But now he could see, dwarfed by the Darkness’ unimaginably vast night but still very much present, tiny pinpricks of light. Billions upon billions of souls, everyone who had ever lived and died, struggling to hold the Darkness at bay, to keep it from getting at their children.

Michael opened his eyes. He knew one of the camera operators was zooming in on his face for a close-up, so he forced a smile and prayed it was convincing.

“It’s wonderful.”

KNOCK, KNOCK

There’s a knock at the door. Three knocks, to be precise. Brisk and all business, rat-tat-tat, like the sound effect for machine-gun fire in the war comics you read as a kid. Sgt. Rock and Easy Co. Sgt. Fury and His Howling Commandos. You haven’t read a comic in years, and you sure as hell wouldn’t read one about war and death. Not now. Not after…

The knocking comes again, startling you out of your thoughts. Your mind wanders a lot these days. Only to be expected since there’s not much to occupy it. But it is a bit surprising that it’s happened now, when you’ve just heard the first sounds of life—other than those you’ve made yourself—for the first time in six months. Or maybe it’s been longer than that. Hard to tell since—

The knocking comes again. Louder, this time, almost impatient.

Right. The door.

You step up to it and reach for the knob, but your hand stops before it can come in contact with the metal. As far as you know, you’re the only person left alive on the planet. You haven’t seen anyone else since you woke up one morning to find yourself the ruler of a world full of corpses. What killed them, and why you were spared, you don’t know. There hasn’t been a radio or television broadcast since the morning it happened. That Morning, as you’ve come to think of it. No newspapers, no Internet, just a whole lot of silence. No animals or insects either. Maybe not even bacteria. You cut yourself once, on the palm of your hand, and purposefully didn’t clean the wound just to see if it would get infected. But the cut healed just fine. The plants are still alive, though. Grass and trees, anyway. Not many flowers, not without insects and birds to help them pollinate.

So if there aren’t even any micro-fucking-organisms left, then who could possibly be knocking at your door this fine afternoon half a year after the world ended?

It’s probably an auditory hallucination, you think. You’ve been expecting to start going crazy, have been surprised that you’ve held onto your sanity this long. If you open the door, there’s a damn good chance that no one will be there. And you don’t think you could stand that. Because this knocking—and it’s being repeated at regular intervals, like a signal broadcasting on an endless loop—is the closest you’ve come to human contact since the night before That Morning. That night you had dinner with your daughter who was visiting from college. The two of you had been especially close since the death of your wife from breast cancer a few years earlier, and you were a little disappointed when your daughter cut dinner short to go meet some high school friends she hadn’t seen in a while (though of course you tried not to show it). That was the last time you saw her. She never came home that night, and despite searching through the grim necropolis the city had become, you never found her remains.

You found plenty of other bodies, though. Oodles. All uninjured, except for those who had been driving when whatever happened, happened. Everyone else just fell where they were: on the street, on sidewalks, at work, in restaurants, at home…Everyone except you. You searched for your daughter for days, and then the bodies began to…change. They didn’t rot, not exactly. Just started to become different. You figured it had something to do with whatever killed them and, just in case it might affect you, you hurried home and stayed there. And, with the exception of the occasional supply run, that’s where you’ve been ever since.

So if the knocking is a hallucination, which surely it must be, then you want to keep it going as long as you can, to maintain the illusion that someone’s on the other side of the door. Just so you can remember, if only for a short time, what hope feels like.

For this same reason you don’t peer through the Judas hole in the door. You don’t want to see a fish-eye lens view of your empty front porch, your overgrown yard, the mailbox which hasn’t been opened since That Morning, the vacant suburban cul-de-sac beyond. Hell, you hate looking outside so much that you haven’t opened the blinds over the picture window in weeks.

Slowly, you crouch down before the door and place your hands on its surface. Then you lean forward and press your ear to the wood. You’re trembling and you feel tears threatening. You brace yourself to feel the vibrations of the knocking, to feel—if only indirectly through a barrier—the touch of another. Assuming your auditory hallucination will produce a tactile component, that is.

You wait but the knocking, which had been coming so regularly, doesn’t come anymore.

You begin trembling more violently and you feel a surge of cold, shivery panic in your chest. What if it wasn’t a hallucination? What if whoever it was decided no one lived in the small ranch house at the end of the cul-de-sac, turned away, and headed down the walk, off to try another house? You might have just blown your chance, your only chance, to end your loneliness. To end the days and nights wandering around your empty house, reading books, listening to CD’s on a portable battery-powered player, eating the food you’ve managed to stockpile since That Morning. Talking to yourself too often just to hear the sound of a human voice, even if it’s just your own.

And there’s something else, a thought so unlikely that you can barely allow it to take form. But if you survived, maybe someone else did. And if some kind of disease or biological weapon killed everyone else, maybe you have some kind of immunity due to a lucky genetic quirk. A quirk that might have been passed on to your child. After all, you never did find her body.

So why did she take so long to come home? you ask yourself.

Maybe she came by soon after That Morning, when you were out searching for her, for anyone who might be alive. Or maybe during one of your rare scavenging trips. Maybe you simply missed one another, an awful cosmic joke, but hardly out of the realm of possibility, especially since you were in shock during the early days after That Morning. Maybe she was in shock, too. Maybe she thought her father was dead like all the rest. Maybe now, months later, she’d come back to check one last time before finally giving up hope.

Open the door, idiot!

But still you hesitate. You weren’t much of a bookworm before That Morning. You’d read the occasional military thriller—the grown-up version of the comics you loved as a kid—but that was about it. But you’ve read an ass-load of books since, a whole fucking library full. And among all the mysteries, romances, science fiction, and nonfiction, you ran across a short story about a magical monkey’s paw that a couple uses to bring their dead son back to life. But he’s not really alive. Instead he’s a shambling corpse.

What if your loneliness and need finally grew so strong that they became your own monkey’s paw and brought your daughter home after all this time? What if she’s like the son in the story—or worse?

So what? you decide. Whatever she might be now, however bad her current state, it couldn’t possibly be as bad as the soul-crushing isolation you’ve lived with for so long.

You straighten and grab the knob with one hand as you throw back the deadbolt with the other. You fling open the door and rush out onto the porch and—with a voice hoarse from disuse—shout your daughter’s name.

She’s on the last step of the front walkway, just about to place her right foot into the cul-de-sac. She stops, turns, sees you and grins.

You take a step back, shaking your head as she starts back up the steps toward you. She’s not a walking corpse; she’s something far worse. And she’s not alone. The cul-de-sac is filled with people just like her, if people is the right word. They’re all standing quiet, motionless, staring at you with eyes that are no longer human and grinning just like your daughter with their multiple mouths.

“It’s been a long Morning, Father,” she says, voice issuing from each of her facial orifices. “But it’s finally over. We’ve come to wish you a good Afternoon.”

You stumble back toward the open doorway of your house as your daughter reaches for you with appendages that in no way resemble arms. And suddenly being alone no longer seems quite as bad as it did a few moments ago. Not so bad at all.

OUTSIDE THE LINES

Cherie was leaning with her elbows on the check-out counter—Terrorizer magazine spread open before her, Bad Religion playing on the store’s speakers—when the man strolled in. She didn’t pay that much attention to him at first. He was a norm, that was obvious from a single glance: late thirties, early forties, red polo shirt, khaki shorts, white socks, running shoes, no tats or piercings. None visible at any rate, and given his age and the way he was dressed, she doubted he had any hidden ones. She figured him for a browser, someone who’d been wandering the mall, saw the store’s wares, items made from black leather and gray steel (or plastic made to resemble steel), as he was passing and decided to take a quick walk on the dark side. He’d stroll around the store for a few minutes, maybe give her a smile—if he met her gaze at all—then leave without buying anything. Later, he’d tell his Stepford Wife and happy clone children all about the freak show he’d witnessed, can you believe they allow a store like that at the mall?

So Cherie was fully prepared to ignore Mr. Norm and keep on reading her magazine until he left. So when after several minutes he stepped up to the counter and stood there expectantly, she didn’t look up right away, figuring he was just checking out the impulse items on display there—kitschy buttons with sayings like EAT DIE AND SHIT, compilation CDs featuring various punk bands, miniature versions of the Dear Dead Dollies…But when he didn’t leave, he finally registered on her consciousness and she looked up.

“Yes?” She didn’t say May I help you since she really didn’t want to help him. All she wanted was to be left alone until Heather came back from her lunch break and they could resume the conversation they’d been having about Kirk, Cherie’s loser-ass boyfriend.

The man smiled as he looked directly at her. He didn’t glance down to check out her tits, which either made him a gentleman or gay. Cherie figured gay; it was a safer bet.

“The name of this store…Eye-Em. What does it stand for?”

There was something odd about his voice, something grating. Cherie wasn’t sure what, since he sounded perfectly normal—no surprise—but she couldn’t help wincing as he spoke. It was almost as if he were producing some sort of ultrasonic signal that accompanied his words, a signal that she couldn’t hear but was nonetheless aware of.

“I’m impressed. Most people who read the sign pronounce it I’m, as in I am.”

She thought but didn’t say people your age. “IM stands for Instant Message. It’s a computer term,” she added, just in case he really was as clueless as he looked.

His smile didn’t waver, not so much as a fraction. In fact, it seemed frozen on his face, as if he were a video image that had been paused. He remained like that for several seconds, and Cherie began to feel uncomfortable. The guy wasn’t old enough to be having a stroke or something, was he? But then someone hit play and he started moving again.

“I see. And precisely what message is it that customers are supposed to get—” He glanced down at the plastic name tag pinned to her anarchy T-shirt—“Cherry?”

She narrowed her eyes as she tried to decide whether the man had mispronounced her name on purpose, if maybe he was hitting on her in some weird, clumsy fashion. She pictured his head clamped in a giant vice grip, imagined the handle turning, turning, his eyes bulging out just before his skull popped like a rotten melon. But she quickly thrust the image from her consciousness. She hated it when she imagined sick shit like that. It made her feel all ucky inside.

“It’s Cherie. And there’s no message. It’s just a name.”

The man looked at her for a moment, head cocked slightly to one side as if he was reappraising her. “So all of this…” He gestured to indicate the entire store, the motion of his arm and hand liquid and smooth, like the movement of a well-lubricated machine. “The leather and studs, the icons of death and violence, the atmosphere of irony and mockery…It’s all simply, what? Fashion?”

She shrugged. “Yeah, I guess.” Realizing how lame that sounded, she went on. “I mean, sure, this is a store and all. But it’s not like this is the Gap or anything. This place, the people that buy this kind of stuff, it’s all an alternative to the Gaps of the world and the zombies who shop there. It’s not plastic, not fake and hypocritical.” She wanted to add like your kind, but held her studded tongue.

The man had continued smiling the entire time they’d been talking. Now his smile stretched so wide that the skin at the corners of his mouth tore slightly, and small drops of clear liquid that wasn’t blood welled forth. If he felt the injuries, or was aware of them at all, he didn’t show it. What did he have, some kind of skin disease? Was he some kind of goddamned leper or something?

“What of the sign on your shirt, that stylized A. Are you a true proponent of anarchy?”

The way this guy talked—the words he chose, the sense of menace beneath them—was at odds with his appearance. And the more she looked at him, the more she thought his skin didn’t seem like skin, or at least not enough like skin. Its color was too unvaried, and she could see no body hair, no pores. It was as if he were covered in flesh-colored rubber. Condom Man.

“Well, sure. I guess. I mean, who wouldn’t want to live in a world with no rules, a world where you were free to do anything you wanted, any time you wanted?”

The man’s smile didn’t waver as fluid continued to build at the torn corners of his mouth. “You mean a world where anything could happen…anything at all?”

Cherie tried not to stare at the growing pearls of serum gathering at the corners of his mouth. “Yeah, why not? It’s all about freedom, coloring outside the lines if you want. Hell, coloring off the whole damn page if you feel like it.”

A memory of a voice came to her then, mixed with the smells of chalk dust, waxy crayons, and pastels.

Clumsy-fingered little tramp…Inside the lines, inside! Or are you too slooooow to know the difference between “inside” and “outside?” Would you like me to show you the difference, Cherie? Would you?

Cherie shivered at the memory, and—as if the man were privy to her thoughts—his smile widened a touch more, and rivulets of clear liquid started to run down the sides of his chin. Cherie was beginning to get seriously creeped out now, and when she got scared, she went on the defensive.

“Look, I don’t want to be rude—” which was a lie—“but are you going to buy anything or not? If not, I got some stuff I need to take care of in the back.” Another lie, but all she wanted was to get out of the man’s presence right now, and she’d say or do whatever it took to make that happen.

“Every meaningless day you work here, you’re surrounded by the trappings of danger, of life lived on some imaginary edge. But when something truly dangerous happens, you’re just as frightened as any norm, aren’t you?” Without taking his gaze off her, he reached out and picked up Decomposing Dora, one of the miniature Dear Dead Dollies. “I’ll take this.”

Cherie just gaped at him for a moment, unable to believe she’d just heard what she’d thought she’d heard. This man, this freakazoid, was lecturing her? She felt like telling him to fuck off, but she figured it would be more trouble than it was worth. It would feel good, damn good, but he’d probably just pitch a bitch to her manager, and while this wasn’t the greatest job in the world, it was a hell of a lot better than being a fast-food drone at some greasy burger joint. That was why she took the doll from him and ran its UPC code over the scanner. Not because she was scared of telling him off.

Not!

As Cherie scanned the doll, she imagined wrapping a barbed-wire garrote around Mr. Polo’s neck, twisting the wire, tightening it, the barbs digging into the soft flesh and bringing forth tiny crimson beads of blood.

“Five ninety-five.” She glanced at the doll as she reached for a plastic bag with the IM logo on it. The Dear Dead Dollies were a big seller, especially with teen baby-goth girls. They looked something like the old-fashioned kewpie dolls, cherubic and of indeterminate gender, but instead of a healthy pink their skin was painted gray, green, or white, and they wore tattered, blood-stained clothes. They were four-inches tall, and their features suffered from various malformations—lesions, scars, bloody wounds, stitches, staples—and they all had feral-yellow eyes and tiny pointed teeth. Decomposing Dora had green skin, wiry black hair, and an empty, bloodless socket in place of her left eye. Her black dress was covered with mini-maggots, and ivory bone showed through open wounds on her elbow and knee joints. Cherie thought the doll was cute, in a demented sort of way.

Cherie dropped the doll in a plastic bag and held it out for the man to take. She hadn’t seen him reach into his pocket and take out his wallet, but a five dollar bill and some coins now lay on the top of the counter. Without even checking, Cherie somehow knew the coins would add up exactly to ninety-five cents.

The man didn’t reach out to take his purchase from Cherie.

“You know, Cherry, I’m something of an authority on anarchy. It’s my…calling, I suppose you could say. You don’t really understand it, do you? Not intimately. Oh, perhaps you did once upon a time, but not anymore. You’ve forgotten what you learned, and if you’re going to work here and wear a shirt like that, it’s high time you were reminded, don’t you think?” Clear fluid continued trickling down the man’s chin, gathering in drops that fell onto his red polo and made dark wet splotches that looked too much like blood.

Cherie didn’t like the way he stressed the word intimately. There were a lot of norm guys who thought a streak of magenta in the hair, a nose stud, and a black rose tattoo on the upper bicep meant a girl was an easy lay.

She wiggled the plastic bag to draw his attention to it, and in her most formal shop girl manner said, “Your purchase, sir.”

Mr. Polo nodded, as if agreeing with a point she hadn’t made—or as if he’d come to a decision.

“Tell you what, I’ve got a few things to do. Would you mind holding on to the doll for me? Thanks.” The man started to turn away.

“Wait, we don’t do that kind of thing…” But it was too late. The man was heading out of the store and back into the mall, moving as swiftly as a speed-walker, and Cherie really didn’t feel like chasing after him. She tucked the bag with Decomposing Dora on a shelf under the counter and let out a shaky, relieved sigh, hoping she’d fulfilled her whack-job quota for the day. And hoping that, despite his promise, the man wouldn’t come back.

* * *

“It was the weirdest damn thing.”

Heather had returned from lunch twelve minutes late, but Cherie was so glad to have her back that she decided not to make an issue of it.

“What was?” Heather was applying a shade of polish to her nails called Grave Mold. It looked like plain old gray to Cherie.

“That guy…the one I just finished telling you about?” Cherie couldn’t keep the exasperation she felt out of her voice. Heather could be a bit of a ditz sometimes, but she usually wasn’t this spacey.

Heather was a goth goddess: tall, thin, pale, with bony shoulders and stringy blond hair that always looked stylishly unwashed. She dressed in the requisite black, and favored dark colors for her lips, eyes, and nails. She had no piercings, though. Cherie remembered what Heather had said when she’d asked her about it.

What if I get something pierced and change my mind afterward? It’ll be too late then, right? I think I’ll just stick with the holes I was born with, thank you very much.

Whatever.

“The guy in the red polo shirt with the weird shit dribbling down his chin, like he had a couple popped blisters or something? Remember?”

Heather finished her last nail and examined her hands in the store’s fluorescent light. “Yeah, he sounds bizarre all right.”

From the distracted tone of her voice, Cherie could tell that Heather still wasn’t paying any real attention. She sighed and decided to give up on the subject.

“Before I went to lunch, you were telling me the latest about you and Kirk. So…what’s up?”

It was Cherie’s turn to go to lunch, but she wasn’t really hungry. Besides, she didn’t feel like being alone right now—especially out in the mall, where Mr. Polo might still be wandering around.

I’ve got a few things to do. Would you mind holding on to the doll for me?

She thought of Decomposing Dora waiting under the counter for him and shivered.

“Well, like I was saying, Kirk keeps talking big about putting a band together, but he doesn’t play an instrument. Oh, he fucks around on an old guitar he stole from his older brother, but it’s not like he can really play it.” An image flashed through her mind: her grabbing the guitar by the neck, swinging it high, bringing it crashing down on Kirk’s head, hearing the hollow ka-thunk of his numb skull caving in. She banished the image and tried to suppress the wave of guilt that followed it. After all, it wasn’t as if she’d actually ever do anything like that. “I told the doofus that if he was serious about being a musician, he needed to…”

Cherie trailed off. Heather had dipped the brush back into the bottle of Grave Mold nail polish and was now using it to coat her tongue with long, slow, even strokes.

“That shit’s not edible. You know that, right?”

Heather stopped and frowned at her. “What are you talking about?” She licked her lips and smeared polish on them.

Cherie felt a twist of nausea in her gut. “You’ve got to be shitting me.”

“You’re acting weird. Is your blood sugar too low? You know how you get when you don’t eat regular.” Heather dipped the brush back into the bottle, raised it up to her face, and began applying polish to her right eyeball. “You should probably take your lunch break.” The polish mixed with the fluid in her eye, and a trail of watery Grave Mold color began running down her face like a sludgy gray tear.

The nausea had given way to a fluttery, panicky feeling in her stomach. “Yeah…okay. Sure.”

As Cherie walked out from behind the counter, Heather started working on her other eye.

* * *

Cherie headed for the food court. Her entire body was trembling, and she couldn’t make herself stop. She was terrified that she might encounter Mr. Polo again—she definitely couldn’t handle a return engagement of that whacked-out fuck, not after seeing Heather lose it like that—so she kept her gaze fixed straight ahead, and acted as if she had on a pair of psychic blinders. She reached the food court and grabbed a chair at an empty table. She didn’t bother getting anything to eat. She didn’t think she’d be able to keep anything down right now.

She tried to tell herself that Heather had just been playing some sort of joke on her, that she hadn’t really been using nail polish. It was some kind of new product IM was going to start carrying, something Cherie wasn’t familiar with yet. But she knew she was bullshitting herself. She’d seen the Grave Mold polish before and had recognized the container. What’s more, she’d smelled the acrid chemical stink of the nail polish. There was no way Heather could’ve faked that.

Cherie wondered if Heather had lost it, if maybe she was on drugs or something. And if that had been real nail polish, it could mess up her eyes, couldn’t it? She should go back to the store, see if Heather was all right, maybe call an ambulance. Cherie knew that’s what she should do, but she couldn’t bring herself to get up from her chair, let alone head back to IM. She just couldn’t.

She remembered something Mr. Polo had said to her before he left.

You know, Cherry, I’m something of an authority on anarchy. It’s my…calling, I suppose you could say. You don’t really understand it, do you? Not intimately. Oh, perhaps you did once upon a time, but not anymore. You’ve forgotten what you learned, and if you’re going to work here and wear a shirt like that, it’s high time you were reminded, don’t you think?

It was almost as if he’d been making some kind of promise to her, as if he’d been planning to show her something. To teach her.

So what was she saying? That Mr. Polo had done something to make Heather paint her eyeballs with nail polish? That was crazy!

Almost as crazy as what Heather had actually done.

But Mr. Polo had been wrong. Cherie did understand anarchy, or at least craziness. She’d understood it for a long time.

* * *

Cherie held two crayons—a blue and a red. She was trying to decide which would be the best color for the clown’s face. Unable to choose, she decided they’d both look good. She gripped the crayons in her tiny right fist, placed the tips onto the paper print-out that Mrs. Galston had given the class, and began coloring in the face of the clown. She had the face halfway finished and was contemplating what colors would look good for the long, skinny, curly balloon the clown was blowing up, when a thick, fleshy hand grabbed her wrist.

Startled, she looked up to see Mrs. Galston glaring down at her. Some of the kids at Kindergarten Town called her Mrs. Gall Stone, and though Cherie understood that was supposed to be a funny name, she wasn’t sure why. The woman didn’t look much like a stone to her; more like a butter squash that had been left out in the sun too long and was beginning to go soft. Mrs. Galston’s face had a yellowish tinge to it, and her puffy flesh sagged, as if she herself was a balloon badly in need of re-inflating. She wore a too-tight, too-old dress covered with a faded sunflower design. Cherie wondered why an art teacher would wear something with such ucky colors.

Cherie had once heard Mrs. Rothchild, her everyday teacher, talking to the librarian about how sick Mrs. Galston had been for the last few months. At the time, Cherie thought it might be something like the flu or strep throat. But Mrs. Rothchild had said the words brain tumor, and while Cherie didn’t know exactly what that was, she was sure it was something really bad.

“What do you think you’re doing, young lady?” Mrs. Galston’s voice was high-pitched, with an accompanying rattle that made it sound as if she had plastic buttons caught in her throat.

Cherie tried to answer Mrs. Galston, knew she would only get in more trouble by not saying anything, but she couldn’t make herself talk. Mrs. Galston terrified her, and she wished art period was over and she was back in Mrs. Rothchild’s class. Mrs. Rothchild was nice, and she never yelled or grabbed, not ever.

Mrs. Galston tightened her grip on Cherie’s wrist until it began to hurt. But even though there was a whimper of pain somewhere inside Cherie, it refused to come out. The art teacher’s doughy-slack features wrinkled into a scowl, and she leaned down closer to Cherie’s face, as if she thought the girl might be deaf.

“Look at what you’ve done.”

The teacher’s breath smelled like rotten eggs and cough syrup, and Cherie thought she might gag. At first she didn’t know what Mrs. Galston was talking about, but then she saw that the woman’s gaze was fixed on the picture Cherie had been coloring. Cherie examined the picture to see what was wrong with it. It wasn’t finished, of course—she’d only just started when Mrs. Galston had come over—but otherwise she couldn’t see anything wrong with it.

She turned back to Mrs. Galston, and though she still couldn’t bring herself to speak, her confusion must’ve shown on her face, for the teacher said, “The colors are all wrong. A clown’s face should not be both red and blue…and what’s worse, you’ve gone outside the lines.” Mrs. Galston said this last part as if she were naming one of the worst crimes imaginable, like stealing cookies or fibbing to your mother.

Cherie turned her attention back to her picture. She had gone outside the clown’s face, but only a little. She couldn’t see what the big deal was. Besides, she kind of liked the way the red and blue squiggly lines didn’t quite stay inside the clown’s face. It was like he was growing red-and-blue whiskers.

Cherie was trying to work up the courage to ask Mrs. Galston to please let go of her wrist, ‘cause it was really, really, really hurting now. She imagined the art teacher releasing her, then saw herself taking the two crayons she’d been using—the red and the blue—and shoving them up Mrs. Gall Stone’s nose…shoving them so far up that the tips poked into her brain and burst through the tumor that was growing inside her.

But despite her fear and anger, Cherie wasn’t able to get her words out. It didn’t matter, though, for Mrs. Galston finally released her grip without Cherie having to say a word.

“Clumsy-fingered little tramp…Inside the lines, inside! Or are you too slooooow to know the difference between ‘inside’ and ‘outside’? Would you like me to show you the difference, Cherie? Would you?”

Cherie didn’t dare look away from Mrs. Galston, but she sensed the other children in the class watching her. She could feel their fear as well as their cruel joy at watching someone other than themselves get in trouble.

Cherie finally managed to croak out a single word. “Please…”

“So you do want me to show you? All right.” Mrs. Galston stood, walked briskly over to her desk, and snatched up a pair of scissors. Not safety scissors, but grown-up scissors—black metal handles and long sharp silver blades. The teacher hurried back over to the table where Cherie was sitting. Tears were starting to run down Cherie’s face, but Mrs. Galston gave no sign that she noticed. When she spoke next, she sounded calm and reasonable, as if she were teaching a lesson.

“Right now, Cherie, my blood is on the inside of my body.” Mrs. Galston opened the scissors, placed one blade against her left wrist, and drew it across her skin with a single, swift stroke. Blood sprayed from the newly opened wound, splattering onto Cherie and stippling her partially finished clown picture.

Mrs. Galston smiled serenely at Cherie. “And now it’s on the outside.”

As blood continued to spurt like a fountain from Mrs. Galston’s wrist, Cherie found her voice at last and screamed.

* * *

“Hey. Heather said I’d find you here.”

Cherie’s head jerked up with a start. Kirk stood there smiling, a slightly bemused expression on his face. He pulled a chair away from an empty table, put it down opposite Cherie, and sat. Normally, that was the sort of casual, offhand rudeness that irritated her about Kirk. He didn’t ask if it was okay if he joined her, didn’t ask if she felt like company. He just sat the hell down. But right now she’d never been so glad to see anyone in her life—until he spoke, that is.

“So, what’s the problem? Heather said you were acting really weird.”

Kirk was shorter than Cherie, and a little on the beefy side. He used to shave his head, but now his scalp was covered with fine brown stubble. He claimed he was re-growing his hair so that he could go for the 80’s “big-hair rocker” look. Cherie didn’t know if he was kidding or not, but she sure as hell hoped so. He wore black pants, boots, and an old Ramones T-shirt. Like his guitar, he’d stolen the shirt from his older brother. Cherie didn’t know if Kirk had ever actually listened to the Ramones, but she doubted it. He sported a scraggly goatee that refused to fill in, large metal “studs” in both ears (he refused to call them earrings), and thick, black jagged line tattoos that encircled both wrists. Seeing them made Cherie think of Mrs. Galston slicing open her wrist with the scissors blade, and she felt hot bile splash against the back of her throat. She swallowed and then, fairly confident she wasn’t going to barf, started talking in a rush.

“She said I was acting weird? You should’ve seen what she was doing when I left! Wait a minute, if you talked to her, then you know. You saw her, right?”

Before Kirk could answer, an Asian woman approached their table. She was in her early thirties, Cherie guessed, and wore the uniform of a Wok This Way employee. She carried a brown plastic tray on which sat a small Chinese take-out container.

“Excuse me, but would either of you like a free sample?” the woman asked, a hint of an accent in her voice.

Cherie wanted to tell her to fuck off, but Kirk had never met a food that he didn’t like—especially when it was free. He stood up and peered into the open container.

“What do you got?”

“Today’s special is pierce my nipple with a toothpick,” the woman said with a cheery smile.

Cherie couldn’t believe she’d heard right, but Kirk reacted as if the woman hadn’t said anything out of the ordinary. “Sounds good!” He reached into the take-out container and removed a wooden toothpick. The woman put the tray down on the table in front of Cherie, and Cherie could see that the container held nothing but toothpicks. Dozens of them. With deft, sure motions, the woman unbuttoned her uniform blouse to reveal small breasts with erect brown nipples.

“Would you like right or left, sir?” the woman asked, still smiling.

Kirk thought about it a moment. “I don’t know. Which would you suggest?”

“Left,” the woman said. “The nipple’s a bit bigger there. You’ll have a larger target.”

“Sounds good.”

Cherie watched in numb fascination as Kirk pinched the woman’s left aureole and with a single swift motion, as if he were baiting a hook or threading a needle, jammed the sharp toothpick through the nipple. Blood spurted, and the woman took in a hissing breath that was a sound half of pleasure and half of pain.

Kirk stared at the blood dribbling from the wound he’d just created. “That was fun.” He turned to Cherie. “You want to do the other one?”

Just like all those years ago with Mrs. Galston, Cherie couldn’t make her voice work. She stood and backed away from the table, shaking her head.

Kirk shrugged. “Your loss.” He reached for another toothpick, and as Cherie turned to run, she heard the woman draw in another ecstatic hiss of air.

* * *

Fuck. This. Shit.

Cherie didn’t know if the world was going crazy or she was, and she really didn’t care. All she wanted was to get the hell out of the mall as fast as possible. Once outside, she’d run and keep running until either her legs gave out or her heart burst. Right now either would be fine with her, just so long as she was away from here.

As she ran through the mall corridors, she tried to keep her psychic blinders up, but she couldn’t shut out the images she saw. A fat woman holding a toddler with his face buried in her stomach flab, arms and legs flailing as he smothered. A group of people standing outside a sporting goods store, inserting fish hooks into the naked flesh of an old man who kept shouting, “Deeper, dammit, deeper!” Another group of people inside a pet store, skinning animals with their bare hands, eating the meat and wearing the bloody pelts like hats. And there was more, so much more, but it all merged into a twisting, swirling kaleidoscope of blood and madness. But just when Cherie thought she never would reach the exit, that maybe there wasn’t an exit any longer, she rounded a corner and saw the central fountain—water spraying into the air to splash back down into the marble basin filled with water, at the tiled bottom a scattering of coins tossed in by people who didn’t really believe in wishes but couldn’t help themselves. The mall’s main entrance lay just on the other side of the fountain. She’d made it! She’d—

Cherie stopped running. Standing in front of the fountain, between her and the exit, was a clown. Red shirt, rainbow pants held up by orange suspenders, overlarge brown shoes, white pouch slung over one shoulder. His shirt wasn’t just red, she saw, but a red polo, and his face—a face she’d seen in IM only a short while ago—was now covered by a mass of red-and-blue squiggles, as if he’d been tattooed in crayon.

The man, the clown, the whatever-he-was saw her, grinned, and waved.

“Hi, Cherry! Told you I had some things to do!”

He reached into his pouch and pulled out a slender purple balloon. He stretched it a couple times, put it to his mouth and began filling it with air. The balloon expanded, lengthened, and the tip split into three separate tendrils. Mr. Polo continued blowing, and the tendrils kept growing, writhing away from him as they became increasingly longer, as if possessing life of their own. Then the tendrils reared up as if they were serpents and lunged toward a trio of nearby shoppers: an elderly man on a motorized scooter, a pre-teen girl wearing a Johnny Depp T-shirt, and a pot-bellied guy dressed in a light-blue work shirt and tie. The balloon tentacles wrapped around each of the trio’s waists and hoisted them into the air. The scooter fell out from under the old man as the balloons, with a strength and force they couldn’t possibly possess, lifted the three over the fountain and slammed their bodies together over and over again until they were reduced to limp meat bags filled with shattered bones. The balloon-tentacles then released the bodies and they dropped into the fountain. Water splashed, and Mr. Polo—balloon now out of his mouth, end pinched tight so no air would escape—looked at Cherie and grinned.

“Make a wish,” he said.

Cherie ran like hell toward the entrance, hoping that if she moved fast enough, she could bypass Mr. Polo and make it past the fountain—without looking at the bloody, broken ruins that had only a few moments ago been three human beings. She didn’t know if she’d be any safer outside than inside—what if the whole fucking world had gone nuts?—but it didn’t matter. She couldn’t take any more of this insanity.

“Not so fast, Cherry!” Mr. Polo put the end of the balloon back in his mouth and started to blow once more. The three blood-smeared tentacles shot straight toward Cherie like rubbery missiles. With the speed of striking snakes, they encircled her waist once, twice, three times, and, though filled with nothing more substantial than air, held her in a grip like iron. She could no longer run, couldn’t move, could barely even breathe…

Slowly, the balloon tentacles began to pull her back toward Mr. Polo, and though she tried to resist, they drew her inexorably on until she was standing right next to the psychotic fuck. Though her arms were pinned to her sides, she imagined they were free and pictured herself reaching into his pouch, pulling out a handful of limp, empty balloons, and jamming them into his mouth, shoving in one handful after another, until the crazy sonofabitch choked to death.

“That’s right, that’s the stuff…” Mr. Polo’s eyes gleamed with a wild light, and he practically purred his words. “You create such lovely mental images, Cherry. When I first sensed them, I knew you were just like me: a hungry-hungry worm gnawing his way through the sweet, fat apple of creation. When you were in kindergarten, Mrs. Gall Stone taught you the most important lesson you ever learned: that anything can happen at any time, and it all means dick. You were gifted with a great insight into the true nature of existence, Cherry, but you turned your back on it. You denied the truth and became like them…” He gestured at the crowd of people that thronged the mall. No longer were they lunatics attacking or mutilating whatever moved. They had returned to their normal banal selves. Near-mindless creatures whose only purpose in life was to spend money, eat fast food, hold empty conversations on cell phones, and send meaningless e-mails with smiley-face icons after every other word.

“Worse than them, really, for you acted as if you were above them, as if you and your pathetic little tribe of Halloween-costumed playmates were the only ones who knew what true darkness was. You did know once, Cherry, when you were baptized by the blood of an insane kindergarten art teacher dying from an inoperable brain tumor. And when I wandered into your store and saw the delicious dark images in your mind…” He trailed off and smiled. “I thought I’d do you a favor and remind you of what you’d forgotten, sister. So, what’s it going to be? Are you going to force yourself to forget your lesson again this time, make it go away and be never-was? Or are you going to finally embrace the truth and become what you were always truly meant to be?”

Cherie stared into Mr. Polo’s gleaming eyes for several moments. She thought of Mrs. Galston, of the clown picture with the red-and-blue squiggles on its face, of Heather, and Kirk, and her dull-as-fuck job at IM. Then she smiled and raised a hand that had been empty a moment ago, but which now held a pair of black-handled scissors.

“What do you think?”

* * *

Heather was just about finished applying a second coat of Grave Mold nail polish to her fingers when Cherie came back from lunch.

“Did Kirk find you?” Heather didn’t look up as Cherie approached the counter. “I told him you’d probably be at the food court.”

When Cherie didn’t answer, Heather scowled. “What’s wrong? Need a refresher course in manners?”

“I’ve already had my refresher course for the day, thanks.”

There was something odd about Cherie’s voice. It sounded normal enough, but it grated on Heather’s ears, made her wince as if she were hearing fingernails being dragged across a chalkboard.

“Would you like to hear what I learned?”

Heather finally looked up, blinking painfully as she tried to get her sore eyes to focus. She wondered what was wrong with her vision. Was she starting to get sick or something? Maybe. That would account for the awful taste in her mouth, too. She decided she would stop off at Urgent Care after work.

“What are you…” Heather trailed off when she saw the lopsided smile on Cherie’s face and, though she wasn’t sure, it looked like Cherie’s eye-blinks were no longer in sync. There was some kind of oozy red glop on her T-shirt, too, crimson smeared across the A for anarchy.

And she was holding a pair of scissors.

“Today I learned about the difference between inside and outside. Let me give you a demonstration.” Cherie raised the scissors and stepped around behind the counter.

* * *

Cherie gazed down at her handiwork which lay on the floor, surrounded by a widening pool of blood, a pool that was definitely outside. She was satisfied; it looked just like she’d pictured it.

She dropped the scissors onto the body, then reached beneath the counter and took hold of the plastic bag that she’d placed there earlier. She didn’t want to leave Decomposing Dora behind. After all, her new friend had paid for her.

“The three of us are going to have a lot of fun, aren’t we, Dora?”

Cherie…no, Cherry walked out from behind the counter and headed into the mall, thinking of all the wondrously dark pictures she and her friend were going to bring to vivid, blood-soaked life.

PROVIDER

“Looks like we got a flopper over there,” Kenny said.

Robert nodded. He put Smoky Joe into low gear and pressed on the brake. The truck juddered to a stop—damn thing was overdue for a tune-up—in front of 3298 Chestnut Avenue. There was a large oak tree in the yard. Its branches stretched out over the street and its leaves, while still green, were tinted gold, red and brown. Not quite ready to start drifting to the ground yet, but almost. Fall was Robert’s favorite time of the year. It made him think of beginnings, much more so than January first. There was the first day of school, and the start of football season, of course. And given the way stores advertised, it was the unofficial start of the Christmas season, too.

At least, that’s the way it had been, back when the word dead meant a corpse that didn’t move, didn’t walk, didn’t try to sink its teeth into the living.

Robert put Smoky Joe in park, but he didn’t turn off the ignition. They needed to leave the truck running so the furnace would keep burning. If it went out, it was a bitch to get started again, and if the temperature in the back got too low, the furnace wouldn’t be able to do its job effectively. He opened the door, and stepped down to the street. He removed his gloves from the pocket of his coveralls and put them on while he waited for Kenny to come around and join him.

Kenny walked around the front of the truck. He never walked around the back if he could avoid it, and Robert couldn’t say as he blamed the man. Kenny already had his gloves on, and his clear plastic face mask, too.

“I can’t believe you still wear that goddamn thing. You’ve been on the job six months now.”

“Five,” Kenny corrected. “And I don’t care if I’m still doing this stinkin’ job five years from now, I’m still gonna wear my mask, and I don’t give a shit what anyone says about it.” Kenny’s breath caused condensation to mist the inside of the mask around his mouth.

Robert thought the breath-fog made him look kind of stupid, but he didn’t remark on it. No one commented on basic biological processes anymore, whatever they were, not even burping or farting. They were signs that you were alive, and no one made fun of that.

Kenny was a skinny middle-aged man with a scraggly white mustache and wispy white hair that brushed the tops of his shoulders. He had long, tapering fingers (hidden by his work gloves at the moment) that constantly trembled. Robert didn’t know if that was due to stress or whether Kenny had a drug or alcohol problem. Though these days the real problem for users was getting hold of recreational chemicals.

Greasy black smoke curled forth from the chimney pipe atop the truck, and flecks of ash drifted through the air. In addition, a nauseating odor somewhat like a backed-up sewer filtered through the neighborhood. Not so many years ago, people would’ve complained like hell about the pollutants and the stench Smoky Joe pumped out. But that was in the old world. Today, there weren’t any such things as environmental protection laws. Well, not unless you counted the kind of work people like Robert and Kenny did.

“Let’s go take a look,” Robert said.

Kenny grunted assent, though he didn’t look too pleased.

They walked up to the oak tree and examined the flopper bound to the trunk. It was held fast against the bark by strong rope, but whoever had put it out hadn’t slipped a muzzle on it. The thing gnashed its teeth at them, straining forward, eager to bite off a hunk of flesh. Robert looked into the corpse’s eyes but they might as well have been made out of glass for all the emotion they displayed. They were fish eyes, dead eyes.

“Fresh one,” Robert commented. No visible wounds, no sign of rot. “Probably died of a heart attack or a stroke last night.”

“I don’t give a shit what killed him,” Kenny said. His voice held a strained edge to it, as if he were on the verge of hysteria. He always sounded like this when they had to deal with a flopper. “I hate it when they tie them up like this.”

The preferred method of preparing someone for pick-up was to put a plastic muzzle over their mouth so they couldn’t bite, then to bind their wrists, ankles and legs with plastic ties. Prepackaged kits were readily available and free to any resident. Robert and Kenny had a bunch stashed under the seat of their truck. They’d handed out four kits so far today during their rounds.

“Some people can’t bring themselves to truss up their friends and family like a bag of trash,” Robert said. Though once they Went Bad, as the euphemism went, that’s exactly what they were. A scene from an old Monty Python comedy flashed through his mind then, Eric Idle pulling a wooden cart through the muddy streets of a medieval village, ringing a bell and shouting, Bring out your dead! He wondered how long it had been since he’d seen a movie. Years, he supposed.

“And this is any better?” Kenny nodded toward the flopper who was straining more vigorously against his bonds. He started making a high-pitched keening sound in the back of this throat. It was the sound deaders made when they were hungry—and they were always hungry. Luckily, deaders weren’t any stronger than the living, and no matter how hard the flopper struggled, he wasn’t going to get out of those ropes. Whoever had tied him up had done a good job of it.

He looked to be—to have been—in his early thirties, thin (most everybody was thin these days, since food wasn’t nearly as plentiful as it used to be), black hair, clean-shaven. He was dressed in a blue suit, white shirt, maroon tie and polished black shoes. Sometimes relatives dressed them up, like they used to do when the dead stayed still and were buried in boxes beneath the ground.

“Why couldn’t they have done us a favor and bashed his skull in?” Kenny asked. Robert noticed his hands were trembling again, so hard it looked as if he might vibrate right out of his work gloves. Rumor had it that before he’d gone to work as a pick-up man, Kenny’s girlfriend had Gone Bad, and he’d had to put her down. Robert had never asked—it wasn’t the kind of thing you could ask—but if it were true, he wondered why Kenny would do this kind of work. As a way of expunging his guilt, maybe? Or perhaps he was one of those people who was drawn to that which terrified him, like a moth to the flame.

“It’s not easy to desecrate the body of a loved one, even when you know it’s going to Go Bad soon,” Robert said. The only sure ways to kill a deader were to destroy its brain or burn the damn thing to ash. Not too many folks could bring themselves to do either to the remains of someone they cared about.

Kenny didn’t respond. He glared at the deader, fear and disgust mingling in his gaze. “Fuckin’ zombie,” he muttered.

Robert didn’t respond. Instead, he turned and walked back to Smoky Joe. He opened the tool box bolted to the side of the truck and pulled out a rusty crowbar. He walked back to the oak tree, his thick work boots thump-thump-thumping on the ground.

“Oh, man,” Kenny whined. “Can’t we use the gun?”

“He’s an easy target. No need to waste the ammo.” He held out the crowbar to Kenny. “Would you like to do the honors this time?”

“Hell, no. I got the last one.”

Kenny hadn’t gotten the last one, but Robert decided not to make an issue of it. “Better step back then.” Too bad this fellow’s family didn’t truss him up right, Robert thought. If they had, then Kenny and he could’ve popped the flopper into Smoky Joe’s furnace without having to “kill” him. Ah, well. Every job had its shitty side, he supposed.

He glanced at the house. The blinds were closed, and he didn’t see anyone peeking out. Good. It was easier when relatives weren’t watching. Robert took aim and swung the bar at the deader’s head. Metal struck hair, flesh and bone with the same sickening sound as a sledgehammer smashing a watermelon. The deader jerked and shuddered with the first blow, but it took three more before the damn thing finally stopped moving.

When he was finished, Robert lowered the crowbar. His arm was tired and he was breathing heavily. He needed to get more exercise. He wiped the crowbar off in the grass, then held it out to Kenny.

“No way am I touchin’ that fuckin’ thing, man.”

Robert was starting to lose his patience. “You’re a pick-up man, damn it. Do your job.”

Kenny looked as if he might protest further, but in the end he grabbed the crowbar and headed back to the truck.

“Get a knife out of the toolbox while you’re at it, will you?” Robert called over his shoulder. “These knots look pretty tight, and I don’t feel like messing with them.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Kenny muttered.

Robert looked down, saw that the front of his coveralls was splattered with blood. He checked his gloves, saw a few more splatters. Despite razzing Kenny for wearing his face mask, Robert now wished he’d taken the time to put his on. No one was really sure why the dead came back, or why their bite could make someone living Go Bad. He’d heard lots of theories over the years—a genetic weapon cooked up by one government or another, microbes brought back by a space probe, even a mutation of the AIDS virus. But whatever the reason, they did know one thing: it was infectious as hell, and if you weren’t careful, you could Go Bad too.

He removed his right glove, reached up to touch his face…and found it dry.

Robert let out a breath he hadn’t known he was holding. Looked like he was going to stay human another day. He put his glove back on, grabbed hold of the corpse under the armpits, and began dragging it toward Smoky Joe.

* * *

Come lunchtime, Robert and Kenny sat at a wooden bench in the park. Smoky Joe was parked nearby, engine idling, furnace chugging away, doing its best to reduce Blue Suit to a sooty smear. It wouldn’t take long.

Joe was expensive to operate, especially these days when fuel was difficult to come by. But the town council thought Joe was worth it. The truck might not be as efficient as gathering deaders in the back of a pick-up and taking them outside of town and burning them en masse—something the hunting patrols did whenever there wasn’t enough fuel to run Joe—but it was more psychologically comforting. Joe was like a slice of life from the time before, when cities and towns were able to provide trash service, recycling and yard waste pick-up. That’s why they’d given the truck a nickname, to make it friendlier. The kids in the town had even come up with a song which began Here comes old Smoky Joe, huff-puffing down the street…

Robert knew they couldn’t keep the truck going forever. The fuel would run out eventually, and so would replacement parts. But as long as Joe still rolled, Robert intended to be behind the wheel, huff-puffing along.

Both men had brought their food in plastic grocery bags; they could be used over more often than paper ones. Kenny had a hunk of coarse bread, an apple, a bit of cheese, and a bottle of water. Robert had the same, with the addition of a small piece of jerky.

Kenny made a face as Robert bit into the dried beef. “I don’t see how you can eat that with the truck so close by. I can barely choke down my food as it is with that smell in the air, but there’s no way I could keep down any meat.”

Robert shrugged. “Man’s got to keep his strength up. Besides, it doesn’t have much taste anyway.” He held out the rest of the jerky. “Want to try it?”

Kenny paled and held up a hand. “Hell, no!”

“Suit yourself.” Robert took another bite and chewed methodically. He liked eating lunch in the park. Not only was it pleasant—though since the place hadn’t been kept up for years, the grounds had become overgrown with weeds and bushes—but it was safe. At least, relatively so. There weren’t as many roaming deaders as there used to be, thanks to the efforts of the hunting squads who patrolled the town day and night, executing any deaders they saw. Pick-up men like Kenny and he helped, too, disposing of the deaders the patrols left in their wake, along with those put out at the curb by individual residents. But if you were going to be out in the open for any length of time, it was only smart to pick a place where you could see around you in all directions, so you could spot a deader before it got too close. They usually moved slowly enough that you could avoid them if you saw them in time. If.

Robert looked at a nearby swing set. There were two regular swings, and one baby swing. Kenny noticed where he was looking.

“Thinking about your kid?”

Robert nodded. “It’d be nice to be able to take him to a park so he could swing, go down the slide, play in the sandbox…”

“Maybe someday. They have to find a cure eventually, right?”

“Sure.” But Robert didn’t believe it. Supposedly there was some semblance of a government in D.C. again, but since there were no network broadcasts anymore, just a few local radio channels that transmitted infrequently, news was hard to come by. If there was a government again, he guessed they probably were working on a cure, but that didn’t mean they’d ever find one. Maybe whatever it was that brought the dead back couldn’t be cured, not by science anyway.

“How ‘s he doing? Your kid, I mean. What’s his name again? Bobbie?”

“Yeah. He’s fine. Just started crawling last week.”

Kenny frowned. “I thought he was already crawling. I remember when we first started working together, you said—”

“Walking,” Robert interrupted. “I meant he just started walking.”

Kenny looked at him for a long moment, his expression unreadable. Finally, he said, “Sure, man,” and turned his attention back to his lunch. After several minutes, he said, “There’s gonna be a dance in the basement of the Methodist Church Saturday afternoon.” Not at night; nothing took place at night anymore. “You think you’n Emily might come?”

“I doubt it,” Robert said. “Emily doesn’t like to go out much. She doesn’t feel safe outside the house, you know?”

“Yeah. Too bad, should be a good time.”

They continued to eat in silence, and when they were finished, they climbed back in Smoky Joe and resumed their rounds.

* * *

It was closing in on dusk by the time Robert turned onto Mapleview, the street where he lived. It felt as if his bike were harder to pedal than usual, and he made a mental note to put some air in the tires before he left for work tomorrow. He had a small bag of groceries in the basket attached to the handlebars—nothing vital: a couple light bulbs, some more jerky, a mason jar full of moonshine—and he cursed himself for taking the time to stop at the general store set up in the city building. He should’ve waited until his day off to go shopping. Now he was still out as the sun dipped toward the horizon. Deaders, while active twenty-four hours a day, were harder to see at night, and therefore that much more dangerous.

He pedaled harder, passing houses with boarded-up windows and lawns wild with tall grass. Deaders could break through glass, and lawnmowers needed gasoline, which no one would dare waste on something so frivolous as cutting grass. As he rolled by the houses, he wondered how many of them were still occupied. He realized he had no idea. People tended not to leave their houses anymore unless they absolutely had to. He hadn’t seen some of his neighbors for months, a few not for years. The only ones he knew for sure were gone were those he had picked up during his rounds and fed to Joe’s furnace.

He turned into his driveway, stopped, and got off. He carried the bike up the front walk and onto the porch. His windows, too, were boarded up, and not for the first time he thought what a depressing sight they were to come home to. Like his house had long ago been abandoned, and he a ghost come to haunt it.

He unlocked the door, carried the bike and his groceries inside, then closed and locked the door quickly. No one let doors stay open and unlocked for longer than they had to, not anymore. He propped the bike against the wall next to the door, then moved through the gloom to the dining room. He lit the oil lamp that sat in the middle of the dining table, and turned the flame low. Deaders were attracted to light, probably because they knew that light meant live folks were about. Robert was confident deaders couldn’t break into his home, but he didn’t want to take a chance, so he made sure to keep the lights to a minimum at night.

He walked into the kitchen and put the plastic grocery bag—the same one he had carried his lunch in—on the counter. He heard a soft, high-pitched sound, not unlike the one that had issued from the throat of Blue Suit this morning. But it was muffled and he was able to ignore it. He opened a cupboard, took down a plastic jug of water, and poured himself a glass. Water was distributed at the high school once a week, and going to fetch his share was one of the few times Robert drove his car.

He got a baggie of dried peaches, took them, some jerky and his water into the living room. He set his dinner, such as it was, onto the coffee table. Then he walked to the entertainment center and turned on the battery-powered stereo. First he tried to see if any of the few remaining radio stations were broadcasting, but none was. He switched the stereo to CD and put in a David Sanborn album. He kept the volume low, of course, and returned to the couch to eat his supper.

He listened to the music, closing his eyes to concentrate on the sound of Sanborn’s sax more fully. He wondered if the musician was still alive, wondered if he was playing somewhere right now, knew there was no way he’d ever know. He considered breaking out the shine he’d picked up today, maybe getting a little mellow before bedtime, but the thought of alcohol (especially the paint stripper that passed for booze these days) didn’t sound good just then, so he just sat and listened to Sanborn play.

As the music continued, he became aware of another sound intruding: that soft keening, almost like the sound a cat might make, but higher, more…human. He tried to shut it out, even risked turning up the volume on the stereo, but no matter what he did, he couldn’t ignore it. Finally, he switched off the stereo in frustration, which in the end was probably a good thing since it would extend the life of the batteries. He walked into the kitchen and stopped at the basement door. He hesitated for a moment, then put his ear against the wood and listened.

At first, he didn’t hear anything, and he began to hope that maybe tonight he’d be able to pretend there was nothing in the basement. But then the keening started again, louder this time. That meant they were closer to the door.

He went into the kitchen, fetched a flashlight from a drawer, and returned to the door. There was a small panel set at eye level, and he undid the latch and slowly opened it. He took a step back—he always did—even though there wasn’t any need. Before he’d installed the panel, he’d removed the basement stairs. There was no way they could get to the door. Not unless they stacked boxes to climb on. There were all sorts of boxes down there, junk they’d never gotten around to unpacking when they’d moved. But he wasn’t especially worried; deaders’ bodies still worked, after a fashion, but their brains stayed dead. They retained enough instinct to hunt for food, and to hide from the patrols, but that was about it.

Still, taking a step back didn’t hurt, did it?

He waited a moment, and when greenish-gray skinned hands did not thrust through the open panel, he stepped forward, clicked on the flashlight, and shined it through the opening. As always, his nostrils detected a faint odor that reminded him of a reptile house at the zoo. It was the stink of seasoned deaders, ones that had been around for a while, and kept in an enclosed space. It was the stink of his family.

Emily stood directly beneath the door, looking up at him. Her dead eyes didn’t reflect the flashlight’s illumination. She wore the tatters of a flower-print dress he had gotten her for one birthday or another; he couldn’t recall which one. Once or twice he’d tried tossing down different outfits for her to put on, knowing it was foolish but unable to help himself. She ignored them, of course. Her mold-colored flesh was dry and tight against her bones, and she had lost several fingers on each hand over the years. They’d snapped off, like dried twigs. For some strange reason her blonde hair had retained its color, though it was now tangled and matted. Her face… He didn’t like to look at her face too long.

She reached her hands up toward him and took a couple of feeble swipes. Sometimes he fantasized that she was beckoning to him, that in some dim recess of her rotted brain, she recognized him, missed him. Wanted them to be together again, as husband and wife. But he knew better: if Emily got hold of him, she’d tear into his flesh like a starved rottweiler. Her keening grew louder, and though he wasn’t certain her dead eyes could actually see him, he had no doubt she knew he was there. More, that she knew his presence meant it was feeding time. Scattered on the floor around her were small bones and clumps of fur, evidence of past meals.

He heard a second, softer keening in the darkness behind her, and he knew he shouldn’t do it, but he shined the flashlight in its direction. A small green-gray thing lay on the basement floor, tiny arms and legs flailing, mouth opening and closing like a fish gasping on dry land. His son, Robert Anthony Tollinger, Jr. His son who had never known human life, who’d been miscarried during the seventh month of his wife’s pregnancy and who’d actually Gone Bad inside her womb. Bobbie (as Robert had come to think of him) hadn’t been able to do any real damage without teeth, but he had been connected to Emily by his umbilical cord, and through that conduit or by some other means, he had managed to infect his mother before her body expelled him.

There had been no hospital to take Emily to at the time. Now there was a makeshift one set up in the city building, but Robert knew the lone doctor who practiced there wouldn’t have been able to do anything for Emily even if he had set up shop before she changed. There was no cure, no way to halt or reverse the process once it had started.

Robert had been a pick-up man then, though he’d been new to the job, not much more experienced than Kenny. He had known what to do. But like so many others, he couldn’t bring himself to do it. Instead, he’d used the hours before they Went Bad to take them down to the basement, bring down some furniture and some toys for Bobbie, though he knew damn well they’d never be used. Then he dismantled the stairs, tossed the wood into a corner of the basement, and hauled himself out. He locked the door, but he didn’t barricade it, even though that would have been the sensible thing to do. It would’ve been too much like he was putting them in a cage, as if they were nothing more than animals. He installed the panel opening right away, finishing it just as his wife and unborn child began to stir. That had been three years ago.

He knew keeping his family like this made him a hypocrite, and worse, that it prolonged their travesty of an existence. Or rather non-existence. He often lay awake at night, wondering if on some level they were aware of what they had become, of what they had once been, what they had lost. And if so, somewhere within the dead lumps of flesh that used to be their minds, did they suffer? Did they long for release?

If so, it was a release he was too weak to grant them. He needed them if he was to keep his sanity in this hellish nightmare the world had become. Providing for his family’s needs gave him a purpose in life beyond driving a traveling crematorium. Not much of a purpose, maybe, but it was something.

He turned away from the door, turned off the flashlight, and stuck it handle first in the back pocket of his worn jeans. He walked into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. There was no light inside because there was no electricity. There hadn’t been any for years. He didn’t use his fridge to keep things cold, though. He used it because it sealed tight when it shut, holding in the odors of the provender he gathered for his wife and child.

The stench was rank, worse than what he had to put up with on the job. But he didn’t care; he’d gotten used to it by now. He reached into the fridge and pulled out a plastic garbage bag. Inside were the remains of a dog he had found two days ago on his bike ride home from work. Deaders preferred human flesh above anything else, but when they couldn’t get it—and people had gotten pretty damn good at learning how to avoid getting munched since the plague or whatever it was first struck—they turned to animals. Some deader or other had taken a few bites out of the dog, but not many. Either the deader had been satisfied with what it had taken, or more likely, something had scared it off. Perhaps a hunting patrol cruising the streets.

At any rate, Robert had picked up the dog, which had been relatively fresh then, put it in his bike basket and brought it home. He hadn’t given it to his family right away, though. He didn’t like to feed them too often. It made them more active and restless, Emily especially. Besides, dog was a treat. Most dogs were wild now, and hard to catch. Normally he fed his family squirrel or rabbit caught in snares he’d rigged in the backyard, though the animals weren’t as easy to come by as they had been before the deaders appeared.

He took the dog to the basement door, feeling something squirm through the plastic. Maggots, most likely; the dog had lain out for a while before he’d picked it up. While he’d seen and done too many things since the world changed to be squeamish, he’d rather not touch maggots if he didn’t have to. So he left the dog in the bag, though he did untie it. He squeezed the animal, bag and all, through the panel opening. It was a tight fit, but he managed to get it through.

He heard the rustle-thud of the bag hitting something, and then another, louder thud. He realized with horror that the dog had struck Emily and knocked her down. He shined the flashlight through the opening and confirmed his guess. Emily lay on the ground, arms and legs waving in the air like a turtle that had rolled onto its back. Her nostrils flared, and she turned her head toward the plastic-wrapped dog. Quick as a crab, she righted herself and scuttled over to her prize. As she began tearing at the plastic, Robert was amazed anew at how fast normally slow and awkward deaders could move when they were starved and within striking distance of meat.

She pulled the dog out of the bag, lowered her head to its maggot-covered body, and took a bite. As she chewed, worms fell from her lips, pattering to the basement floor like fat, white raindrops. The baby, scenting meat, shrieked, the sound so near to that of a living infant as to bring tears to Robert’s eyes.

Emily looked at the baby as if she’d never seen it before and couldn’t quite figure out what it was. Then she bit off another hunk of dog and crawled on hands and knees toward little Robbie Jr. Once she reached the baby, she chewed for a moment, then lowered her face to the baby’s and kissed its mouth.

Back when there had been TV to watch, Robert had seen a documentary on human evolution that claimed kissing began when mothers chewed up food to feed their infants. He wondered if Emily was following a basic maternal instinct so deeply hard-wired into her genes that not even death could alter it.

The sight should’ve sickened him, but it didn’t. Yes, it was an obscene mockery of a mother’s tenderness, but it still touched him. He’d never had the chance to hold his son, not alive at any rate. He knew Bobbie wasn’t a living being, that his movements were due to whatever force—mystic curse or perverted science—animated his dead flesh. But he wished he could touch his boy, just once. Wished he could be a father to Bobbie, a real father, and not just a man who threw down dead animals for him to eat. Food he could provide, no problem. But if his wife and son still had any emotional needs (and didn’t their keening cries always seem to hold a touch of sadness and loneliness mixed in with the hunger?) there was nothing he could do for them.

He’d tried talking to them on and off over the years, but the sound of his voice always enraged them. They only grew calm when they were fed—or, in Bobbie’s case, on those rare occasions when his mother remembered he existed and touched him, sometimes even cradling him in her arms and stroking the dry, dead flesh of his forehead. Robert had often wondered if he would be able to soothe them with his touch, had even contemplated making the attempt once or twice, but he knew he’d never survive it.

He’d even considered going down and letting them have him, purposefully allowing himself to become infected. At least that way the three of them would be together. But he knew from his time on the job that if a human body was savaged badly enough by deaders—especially if the heart and brain were damaged, or for that matter, devoured completely—it wouldn’t return to life. He’d thought about opening the basement door and then committing suicide elsewhere in the house, maybe by slitting his wrists so his body would remain intact. But once he changed, how could he be assured that he’d remember his wife and son in the basement—and if he did, that he’d still want to join them? More likely he’d try to get outside and go hunt for live meat. And even if by some miracle he found his way to the basement, there would be no one to bring them food. They wouldn’t starve, but they would remain hungry. Forever.

No, there was no way they could be together again, not as a family. He could keep Emily and Bobbie trapped in the basement and feed them like animals, but that was all. It would have to do.

He turned off the flashlight, closed the panel and latched it. There was enough meat on the dog to keep them busy—and quiet—for a while, maybe all the way until morning. That was good. He didn’t think he could stand to listen to their plaintive, lonely keening anymore tonight.

* * *

The next morning he biked to the city building to find out whether they were going to send Smoky Joe out again. He hoped Joe was going to stay in the garage; he didn’t feel like dealing with any deaders today. But no such luck. The hunting squads had been especially busy last night, and during their patrol, they’d counted a half dozen more bodies put out by townsfolk for Joe to pick up.

Kenny was already there, looking a bit more nervous than usual, but Robert was in too much of a funk to care why, so he didn’t ask. They fired Joe up and chugged out of the garage and headed for the first house on the list the hunters had given them. They had an easy morning of it. The first two deaders they stopped for had been killed by whoever put them out—one by a bullet through the brain, another by a brick or a large rock to the head—and they had no problem tossing them into Joe’s furnace.

The third stop was different. Not because of the deader; she was inanimate, too, and so petite either of them could have carried her one-handed to the truck. No, the problem occurred when Kenny, who had been silent all morning, finally decided to speak.

“We’re partners, right?”

They stood behind Joe, watching the petite woman burn. She was so tiny, Robert didn’t think it would take long for her to fall away to ash.

“We work together, if that’s what you mean,” he replied, not taking his eyes off the flames.

“Yeah, right, but I mean we look out for each other and stuff. You know, like you wouldn’t let a deader take a bite out of me, and I wouldn’t let one get at you. Right?”

Robert nodded, wondering where Kenny was going with this. “Sure.”

“Well, see, the thing is, I got a problem.”

Robert glanced sideways at him. Kenny had taken his gloves off and tucked them in the pockets of his coveralls. He had his mask off, too, and beads of sweat had erupted on his forehead, were beginning to trickle down the sides of his face. Maybe the sweat was due to the heat from Joe’s furnace, but Robert didn’t think so. Kenny was trembling all over, but his hands were the worst. They were vibrating so fast they actually blurred a little.

“You probably heard that my girlfriend Went Bad and I…took care of her.”

Robert didn’t say anything, but he turned to face Kenny.

“I had to do it, right? I mean, I know that’s what she would’ve wanted me to do, but afterward…shit, I kept having these dreams, you know? Really fucked-up ones. So I started drinking.” A nervous chuckle. “I mean, I always drank. Who doesn’t, right? But I started in big-time, mostly at night, so I could sleep. If I drink enough, I don’t dream.”

Kenny fell silent and they watched the flames for a time. Robert decided to let the man continue in his own time.

“I hate this job. Hate it like fucking poison, but it pays well. Damn well ought to, shit we have to do. I mean, who the hell in their right mind would do this kind of work?” A pause. “No offense.”

Robert nodded for him to go on.

“Five ration slips a week is pretty good pay these days. I mean, it’s more than just about anyone else gets, except for the hunters and the doctor at the city building.”

“But five slips aren’t enough for you anymore, are they?”

Kenny shook his head. “I guess my body’s soaked up too much alcohol for it to work on me the same way. That, or maybe the shiners aren’t making their stuff as strong as they used to. I use most of my slips for booze, hardly eat much anymore, but I can’t seem to get drunk enough to get to sleep. Even when I do, I hardly ever sleep through the night. Those dreams…”

“Why are you telling me this?” Robert asked softly.

Kenny shrugged, a little too nonchalantly, Robert thought.

“I figure you might be able to help me.” A nervous smile. “I know about your secret. I mean, you don’t have to be a fuckin’ genius to put it together. Your wife and kid never leave the house…half the time you can’t remember how old your boy is… They’re deaders, ain’t they? And you’ve got them stashed in your house somewhere. The garage, maybe, or the basement. Because you’re just like all these poor sonsofbitches.” He made a sweeping gesture to take in the neighborhood. “You can’t stand to say goodbye to your loved ones either. The only difference is, you’re around deaders all the time, and you ain’t afraid of them. You know how to handle them, so while no one else has the balls to keep their family members once they’ve Gone Bad, you do.”

Kenny stopped, a smug expression on his face, as if he were proud of his deductive prowess.

Robert felt a cold twisting in his gut, but he worked to keep his voice level. “So you know. What are you going to do about it?”

“Nothing, partner. Not as long as you give me three of your ration slips every week. Otherwise, I’ll tell the hunting squad about Emily and little Bobbie, and they’ll be over at your house before you can finish singing the first stanza of ‘Smoky Joe.’”

Robert said nothing.

“Look, I know this makes me a real prick, but I can’t help it, man. I need those slips! I gotta get me some sleep!”

A few more seconds went by before Robert finally said, “All right.”

“Really? You mean it?” Kenny sounded surprised, as if he hadn’t expected his threat to work.

“Yes. But make it two slips a week.”

“Uh-uh, no way.” He sounded emboldened now. “It’s three or bye-bye family.”

“All right. Three. But I don’t have any on me. You’ll have to wait until we get paid.”

“That’s only a couple more days. I can wait. But if you stiff me, you’ll regret it.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll pay. Now let’s get back to work. We have at least two more stops to make today, and if we don’t keep burning deaders, neither one of us is going to get paid.”

Kenny smirked. His expression was easy for Robert to read: he figured he had his partner by the balls now, and he was no longer low man on this team. “What do you mean, we? I’ll ride along, but I ain’t getting out. I’m never gonna touch another fuckin’ deader as long as I live. You do the burnin’ from now on, got it?”

“Got it. Now let’s go.”

Another smirk, and Kenny turned and started heading for Joe’s cab—and that’s when Robert punched him in the back of the neck. Kenny collapsed like a marionette whose strings had been severed, and once he was down, it was an easy matter for Robert to keep him there. He was, after all, thin and weak from malnutrition. Robert clamped his hands around Kenny’s neck and squeezed. Kenny kicked his feet and slapped his hands on the asphalt, but Robert kept squeezing until his partner’s struggles lessened and finally stopped altogether.

When it was finished, he climbed off Kenny’s corpse and stood looking down at it.

Robert wasn’t worried that any of the residents of this neighborhood had seen, and even if they had, who would they report it to? There were no police anymore. Just the hunting squads—and pick-up men like him. Of course, he’d have to make up a story for his bosses at the city building. He supposed he could always tell them Kenny had said he’d had enough of the job and quit in the middle of today’s route, but if no one ever saw him again, they might get suspicious. No, better to say that Kenny got careless, let a deader bite him, and had to be put down. He wouldn’t be the first pick-up man that had ended up that way. That decided, the only thing left to do was feed Kenny’s body to Joe.

Robert bent down, intending to do just that, but as he reached toward Kenny, he hesitated. It seemed an awful waste to just toss him into the fire. He could still be…useful.

* * *

Robert walked into the kitchen, a heavy plastic bag clutched in his hand. Their keening was especially loud today; it had been almost a week since he had last fed them.

“Hold on, it’s coming.”

He got the flashlight and opened the basement door panel, taking his usual step back and waiting a moment before stepping forward again and shining the light inside. There was Emily, hands clawing the air, and little Bobbie, wailing and writhing on the floor behind her. But now there was a third one in the basement, much fresher than the other two and wearing a pair of coveralls. He stared up at the light with a blank, unseeing gaze, his mouth opening and closing hungrily.

Robert smiled. “I really appreciate you helping me out like this, partner. It means a lot to me.”

The male moaned, as if in response to Robert’s words, but he knew the thing was just hungry. He lifted his find—a possum that he’d managed to hit while out in Joe earlier that day—and stuffed it through the opening. The possum struck the floor, and Emily and Kenny fell on it like starving dogs.

Bobbie screamed for his share, and this time it was Kenny who took a mouthful over to the baby, feeding the boy with a gentle kiss.

Robert felt no jealousy. Not only had he provided food for his wife and child, he’d found a way to be down there with them, if only through a surrogate. Still, they were truly a family again, in every way, and that was all that mattered.

Robert watched them for a while longer, then he closed the panel and put the flashlight away. Time for bed; he had to get up early for work tomorrow. Not only did he have a new partner to break in, he had a family to feed.

BROKEN GLASS AND GASOLINE

“There he goes again!”

Susan sat in the easy chair, the upper half of her body twisted around so she could look over her shoulder and out the window. It was dusk, but there was still more than enough light to see by. A car—painted a blue so dark it almost appeared black—came flying down their street, going well over the twenty mile per hour speed limit. It was doing forty, maybe forty-five, Susan guessed. She didn’t recognize the make and model, but it was a sleek, sporty vehicle that looked something like a cross between a Camaro and a Jaguar. Whatever it was, she knew it didn’t belong to anyone in her neighborhood. No one around there could afford a car that nice.

“Brian, hurry up or you’ll miss it!” She didn’t turn around to look at her husband, who was sitting on the couch watching soccer on ESPN2. She didn’t want to take her eyes off the car, almost as if she were afraid it might vanish if she did.

“Miss what?” Bored reflex, no real meaning behind the words. She doubted he’d even looked away from the pretty colors on the screen.

The sound of the car’s engine grew louder, but it wasn’t a regular engine sound—no rumbling, no hum of acceleration. It was more like the kind of sound fingernails made scratching on a chalkboard, or like the sharp point of a knife etching a line in glass. Maybe it’s one of those gas/electric hybrid cars, she thought. She’d heard of them, though she’d never seen one. Whatever it was, it made a damn annoying sound. It set her teeth on edge and sent a cold wave rippling down her spine.

Then the car was in front of their house, flashing past in a blur of blue-black. She strained to make out the driver’s features, but the windows must have been tinted, making the interior of the car appear to be filled with solid, dense shadow. She did see what looked like a face through the window in the rear passenger’s side, though. Small, pale oval surrounded by darkness (a child’s face?), hint of blonde hair, a suggestion of indistinct features—eyes, nose, mouth. Looking this way, looking right at Susan, locking gazes with her for a split second, perhaps even less as fast as the car was traveling, and then the blue-black vehicle was past their house, running the stop sign at the end of the street, turning left without signaling.

The sound of that weird engine hung in the air for a few seconds more—crawling deep into her ears like ants with sharp little feet—but soon it too died away.

“Did you hear me? I said, miss what?”

Now she did turn around, and sure enough, Brian was still facing the TV.

“That car,” she said, trying to keep the irritation she felt out of her voice. “The one I’ve been telling you about.”

A shaving cream commercial came on, breaking the mystic hold the television had on her husband’s attention. He turned to look at her, frowning. “You mean the one that’s been going through the neighborhood too fast?”

Houston, we have communication! “Yes. It just went by again, still going way too fast.”

Brian made a noncommittal grunting noise and turned back to look at the TV. A beer commercial was on now, one that featured silicon-enhanced women in string bikinis.

“Brian, forget those bimbos. We’re talking here.” Despite her efforts, a strident tone crept into her voice. Cookie lifted her head, ears raised, and looked at Susan. The dachshund was curled up on a blanket next to the entertainment center where she’d been dozing, but the little dog was exquisitely sensitive to her owners’ moods, and the tone in Susan’s voice had alarmed her.

“It’s all right, girl,” she said in a soft, soothing voice, as if she were speaking to a child. “Everything’s okay. Mommy and Daddy are just talking.”

That took Brian’s attention away from the boobs on the TV. “I really wish you wouldn’t say things like that. I like Cookie just fine, but I’m not her daddy.”

He barely tolerated the dog, but Susan didn’t want to get into that right now. “I know you think I’m too worried about this car, but it’s really a problem. Not only do we live on a narrow street, but people park their cars alongside the curb. A driver wouldn’t be able to see a kid run out from behind one of those cars, especially if he was driving too fast. And kids play out in the street all the time, and people let their dogs and cats run loose. It’s only a matter of time before an animal—or worse, a child—gets hit.”

Brian let out a sigh that said, I’m not going to get to watch the rest of the match, am I? He picked up the remote off the coffee table and turned the TV off.

“Susie, I know car safety is a big thing with you, and that’s perfectly understandable. But I don’t know what you think we can do about this guy.”

She hated it when he called her Susie; it made her feel patronized. Worse, Brian was a high school teacher—only a substitute teacher at the moment, but he was looking for a full-time position—and he had a tendency to go into lecture mode whenever he wanted to make a point. Like now.

“A lot of people use our street as a short cut,” he continued. “You can get off Frazier, go down our street, and get onto Smithville, avoiding three traffic lights and saving close to five minutes. Hell, we’ve done it before.”

“Yeah, but we didn’t tear down the street doing more than twice the speed limit.”

Another sigh, this one saying, Why am I bothering to argue? I know I’m not going to win. In response, Cookie got off her blanket and trotted over to the couch. She jumped up, front paws on the cushion, and looked up hopefully at Brian, wagging her tail. His lips tightened in irritation, but he reached down and scratched the top of her head.

“All right, the guy’s a jerk, I agree. But I’ll say it again: I don’t know what we can do about it.”

Numbers flashed through Susan’s mind. She was a bank teller, had always been good at math, had always found numbers reassuring, comforting, and solid. Something a person could get their hands on and really work with. She’d run across these numbers while surfing the Internet the previous night.

6,356,000 accidents. 3.2 million injuries. 41,821 killed. Car accident statistics for the previous year.

She wanted to offer them as evidence to Brian, to make him take her more seriously, but she knew what he’d think: that she was obsessing over this car, to the point where she was searching the Internet for accident information. And maybe he’d be right.

She made little kissy sounds to call Cookie over to her. The dog came happily, tail whipping back and forth through the air. Cookie rolled over and displayed her belly to Susan, who leaned down and rubbed it.

“I don’t know what we can do. But we have to do something.”

Brian looked at her, eyes full of love and pity, but that was even worse than his sighing.

She rubbed Cookie’s belly harder. “Nevermind. It’s just me. I’ll get over it.”

Brian opened his mouth as if he was going to say something, but then he closed it, nodded once, and turned the TV back on and lost himself once more in the soccer match.

Susan continued to rub the dog’s belly, numbers swirling around in her mind. 6,356,000…3.2 million… 41,821…

* * *

Susan sat behind the wheel of their Honda Civic, concentrating on breathing evenly. It was dark out, but the porch light splashed the driveway with just enough illumination to see by. There were no streetlights here. It was an older neighborhood, narrow road lined with small houses, most without garages. She’d thought it quaint when they first moved here, but she’d since come to view it as a lower middle-class dump—the kind of neighborhood where dirty-faced children played in the street, and unshaven men walked around shirtless, exposing snail-flesh beer bellies to the world. Where people hung out on the front porch drinking booze, playing music too loudly, and getting into shouting arguments. She couldn’t wait to move.

Enough stalling, she told herself. Let’s go.

The key was already in the ignition. She reached for it, noting with satisfaction that her hands were steady, and turned it. The engine came quietly to life.

Susan didn’t like driving at night, and she especially didn’t like backing out of their driveway, not when there weren’t any streetlights. But they were out of so many things—milk, orange juice, bread—that a grocery run couldn’t wait until tomorrow. Besides, her period had started a couple days early, and she needed tampons. She’d thought about asking Brian to go, but he’d landed a long-term gig subbing for a middle-school teacher on maternity leave, and he had papers to grade. So unless she wanted to bleed all over her clothes for the next twelve hours or so, she had to drive to the store whether it was night or not.

She pressed her foot on the brake, then shifted the car into reverse. But she didn’t let off the brake. If Brian were here to see her hesitate, she knew what he’d say: Why don’t you just back into the driveway when you get home? That way you could pull out face-first when you leave again.

And he’d be right, of course. That would be easier for her—much easier. But that was precisely why she didn’t do it. She was determined not to give in to her fear, no matter what. So she pulled in forwards when she got home and backed out when she left, regardless of how difficult it was.

She gritted her teeth and slowly eased her foot off the brake. Their driveway sloped downward slightly, and the Civic began rolling backward. Her hands tightened on the steering wheel, and although the illumination from the porch light wasn’t enough to tell for certain, she knew her knuckles were turning white.

Her mother telling her older brother to quit bouncing in the back seat. Her brother singing the lyrics to a song he’d learned in first grade music class. “I’m going to the zoo-zoo-zoo, how about you-you-you?” Her brother bouncing up and down in time with the song’s rhythm. Susan giggling at her funny brother.

The Civic picked up speed, surely going no more than one or two miles per hour, but it felt to Susan as if the car were racing backward toward the street. She felt a surge of panic in her gut and she slammed her foot on the brake. Red light washed the driveway behind her as the car jerked to a halt.

Mother yelling at them both to be quiet so she could concentrate. Their station wagon backing into the street, the sound of a car horn blaring, Mother screaming, her brother screaming, Susan screaming too, though she isn’t sure why. A jolt, as if a giant fist punches into the side of their car, the sound of crumpling metal, shattering glass, the world spinning round and around, and everyone still screaming, their voices merging into one sustained burst of pain and terror.

Then the world is still again and Susan—little four-year-old Susan—is the only one screaming anymore.

Susan’s face and neck were slick with sweat. She could feel it running down her sides and back, trickling between her breasts… Her breathing was rapid, and her heart felt like a small, frightened bird fluttering in her chest.

Get a grip, girl. That was twenty-four years ago. Just because some drunken bastard in a pick-up slammed into your mother’s station wagon when she was backing out of the driveway doesn’t mean it will happen to you.

Another thought whispered through her mind, a dark thought, and it was quickly followed by more. Doesn’t mean it won’t, either. Doesn’t mean anything, really, other than your mother and brother died and you didn’t. If that sonofabitch had been coming from the opposite direction, they would’ve lived and you would’ve died. Your death would’ve been just as meaningless as theirs.

And her survival? Was it ultimately just as meaningless? It was a question that had haunted her all her life, long before she’d gained the ability to articulate it to herself. It was a question that she doubted she’d ever have an answer for—wasn’t sure she wanted answered.

“Fuck.”

She took her foot partway off the brake, closed her eyes, and let the car roll backward. When she felt the bump of the back wheels hitting the street, she opened her eyes and saw no headlights coming from either direction. It looked like she was going to survive another night.

She let out a long sigh, finished backing into the street, put the car into drive, and headed for the grocery store at precisely twenty miles an hour.

* * *

The next day after work, while Brian graded yet another set of papers, Susan went outside to prepare the flower beds in the front. It was mid-April, and it would be time to start planting soon. Cookie whined to come with her, and Susan put on the dog’s harness and leash, and took her outside. She tied the end of the leash to an old tent stake and pushed it into the ground. Cookie gave Susan what she interpreted as a long-suffering look.

“Don’t mope. You know you’re not allowed to run around the front yard. What if you ran into the street and got…” She trailed off, not wishing to complete the thought, almost as if by finishing it she risked making it come true. “Just be glad you’re outside where you can watch what’s going on and smell all sorts of interesting smells.”

She turned and walked to the flower bed to the left of the porch and got to work removing dead flowers and weeds, dried leaves and other debris by hand, stuffing it all into a brown lawn waste bag. Occasionally, she glanced up, looking down the street in the direction the blue-black car always came from. It didn’t come every day, but when it did, it was always about the same time. She checked her watch. Right about now, as a matter of fact.

It had been almost two months since she’d first seen the car roar down her street. It was February, and she had been out shoveling the driveway after a snowstorm. Only a few inches had been deposited, and given the forecast, there was a good chance it would melt off in the next couple days, but Susan figured she could use the exercise. Besides, she wanted to work off some steam. She and Brian had fought again last night over having children. Brian really wanted kids, but she wasn’t so sure. They were both in their late twenties, so it was a good time biologically to start, but Brian hadn’t found a full-time teaching job yet, and she only made so much as a bank teller. She wasn’t certain they were financially ready. Brian said that there was no such thing as the perfect time to have a baby, and if she insisted on waiting for one, they’d never have any children.

There was another reason for Susan’s reluctance, however, one that she wasn’t comfortable sharing with her husband. She wasn’t confident that she could bring a child into a world where you could be killed simply for backing out of your driveway. Her mother had been thirty-three when she died; her brother only seven. What guarantee would Susan have that her child would live to reach adulthood? None, of course. There never had been any guarantees in this world and there never would. Most people ignored this simple but cruel fact of existence and got on with their lives. Or, if they couldn’t ignore it, they somehow found a way to make peace with it. Susan envied such people and wished she could be one of them. But she wasn’t, and so despite Brian’s desire to be, as he put it, “a real family,” she didn’t think she’d ever be able to have children.

So she shoveled snow, putting her back into it, trying to toss away a bit more of her anger and frustration with every shovelful she cast aside.

And that’s when the car came for the first time. Moving way too fast, engine making that strange high-pitched scratchy noise, twin trails of slush splashing in its wake.

After seeing the car on a couple more occasions, Susan took to watching for it, and before long, she decided to do something about it. She called the police and complained, described the car to them, and demanded they step up patrols in her neighborhood. For several weeks, she did see police cars drive by more often, but of course, the car never came when the cops were around. She called and complained again, and this time a cruiser parked on her street for an entire afternoon, displaying a large SPEED LIMIT: 20 MPH sign next to another that said YOUR SPEED above a large liquid crystal readout. An officer stood with a radar gun, training it on every car that came by, their speed shown to all the world in large black numbers on a pale greenish background. Everyone slowed down as soon as they saw the cop, of course, but the blue-black car didn’t make an appearance that day, either.

Susan had tried getting photos or video of the car to show the police, but it was moving so fast that they couldn’t identify the make and model, let alone the license plate number. The last time she’d taken a photo to the police station, she didn’t even get to speak to an officer, was asked instead to leave the picture with the receptionist, and she knew that she had become a nuisance as far as they were concerned, a crank to be humored and then ignored. That was the last time she bothered the police.

After that, she’d tried to get a petition going to have speed bumps put in the neighborhood, but she got very few signatures, and more than a few people told her in quite rude terms what they thought of the idea before closing their doors in her face. She had a grand total of six signatures when she finally gave up on the petition.

Now, out rooting around in the flower bed, she had a new plan. What she needed was the license plate number of the car—the police wouldn’t be able to ignore that—and the only way to get it was to be outside when the car came by, to get close enough to see the number and write it down. She had a small notepad and pen in her back pocket. Now all she needed was—

She felt it before she heard it: a crawly feeling at the base of her skull that ran down her spine like a centipede with electric legs. Then the sound: fingernails on chalkboard, knife blade cutting glass, leathery tires rolling over asphalt.

Susan dropped a handful of desiccated leaves and stood up. Calmly, she began walking down the driveway, removing the notepad and pen from her back pocket. Cookie began barking, a high-pitched yarf-yarf-yarf! but she ignored it. She was trying to focus, to prepare her mind to see the license plate, to register the numbers so she could record them. The car was moving fast, and she knew she’d only have a few seconds to get the numbers down before it roared off.

She reached the end of the driveway, stopped, pen touching paper, ready to write.

The car approached, a bruise-colored blur with an impenetrably dark windshield. Susan wondered how anyone could see through that glass, it was tinted so darkly. As the car drew closer, she had the impression that the glass wasn’t tinted at all, that it was clear and what she saw were thick, black shadows roiling and seething inside. Stop it, she told herself. Concentrate on getting those numbers.

She trained her gaze on the front license plate, prepared to write, but then frowned. There were numbers there, she was sure of it, but they didn’t…look right. The figures were blood-red, and they seemed to swim in and out of focus. The harder she worked at seeing them, the more indistinct they became, almost as if they were changing shape as she watched.

Cookie’s barking seemed to become louder, and it was accompanied by another sound now, the whissk-whissk-whissk of tiny paws moving through grass. She realized what had happened before turning to look: Cookie had pulled the stake up and was running this way, running toward the street…toward the car.

She turned, dropping the notepad and pen as she did, and saw Cookie running pell-mell for the street, tongue lolling happily out one side of her mouth, the dog delighted to be free at last. Susan forgot the car, shouted, “Cookie, no!” and began running toward her pet. Cookie ignored her, of course, and put on a fresh burst of speed. The car kept coming, its strange engine noise filling the air, seeming to come from everywhere and nowhere all at once, like the rise and fall thrum of cicadas in summer.

Cookie was almost to the curb, and Susan knew in her gut that the dog was going to get hit by the car, crushed beneath its tires, little spine snapping, blood gushing out mouth and nose, intestines squeezed out her tiny rectum like coils of toothpaste from a tube. Cookie was too fast; Susan wasn’t going to be able to catch her in time, so she lunged out with her right foot and stomped on the trailing end of the dog’s leash.

The leash snapped taut and Cookie jerked to a stop with a gagging arwp! just on the other side of the curb.

The car roared by, its tires less than half a foot away from the dog.

Susan looked up at the car, saw the pale oval of a face peering out at her from the back seat. It was definitely a little girl, no more than six, maybe less. Blonde hair, big eyes…Those eyes moved from Susan to Cookie, any emotion they might have contained unreadable, and then the car was past and barreling toward the stop sign. As usual, it barely hesitated before sliding through the intersection and turning sharply, tires squealing as it drove off, leaving behind the acrid smell of gasoline and burnt exhaust.

Susan had noted that the car’s rear license plate was no more readable than the front.

She bent down and picked up Cookie, who was shivering from the tip of her nose to the end of her tail and whining softly.

“Hush, girl. You’re okay.” She stroked the top of the dog’s head. “Everything’s all right.” She stood there for a time, reassuring Cookie with soothing words, staring in the direction the car had gone, and knowing that she was lying to her pet. Everything was most definitely not all right. Not at all.

* * *

Yes, I think it’s awful that Cookie was almost hit. But she wasn’t, was she?

Susan sat behind the wheel of the Civic, engine idling.

And yes, it could have been a kid instead of Cookie. But that’s not what I’m most worried about.

Brian was still at school. He’d had to stay late for parent-teacher conferences. Too bad; if he were here, he’d see that she’d finally taken his advice and backed into the driveway when she got home from work. She’d been sitting here ever since, car in park, engine still running, watching and waiting for over an hour now.

I think maybe you should see someone. You’ve become…well, I suppose obsessed is too strong a word, but…

After Cookie had nearly been run over by that asshole in the Bruisemobile, she’d gone inside and told Brian. She’d hoped that he’d finally understand why she was so concerned about this lunatic who insisted on using their street as a racecourse.

Maybe you could get a prescription for some pills…

She didn’t speak to him the rest of the evening, and she spent the night on the couch. What little sleep she got was far from restful.

The hell of it was, on one level, she not only understood why Brian was suggesting she seek counseling, she agreed with him. But it wasn’t as if she hadn’t seen her share of psychologists over the years. More than her share, beginning with the school psychologist in elementary school and ending with a doctor she’d stopped seeing a little more than a year ago. They all said the same thing in one form or another, variations on a single psychological theme: survivor guilt. Why had she lived when her mother and brother hadn’t? If they hadn’t deserved to die, then why had she deserved to live? If she hadn’t been laughing at her older brother’s antics, egging him on, their mother wouldn’t have been yelling at them to settle down, and she wouldn’t have been distracted. Maybe Mother would’ve seen the car coming, hit the brake before the station wagon backed out into the street. Maybe…

It was Maybes like that which had been gnawing at her for more than two decades now. She knew there were no answers, no resolution, that she had to accept what had happened and get on with her life, that there wasn’t anything else she could do. But no matter how hard she tried, she wasn’t able to forget—wasn’t able to forgive the four-year-old girl she’d once been, for living.

She knew the blue-black car wasn’t the pick-up that had smashed into her mother’s station wagon so many years ago. But if she could stop it from barrel-assing through the neighborhood, prevent it from hurting anyone…well, it might not completely cure her psychological problems, but she’d feel a damn sight better.

So here she was, lying in wait for the goddamned thing, intending to pull out and follow it until it stopped, whereupon she’d get out of her Civic and ream the driver a new asshole. Then she’d get the license plate number—and maybe even the driver’s home address, too—and she’d give it to the cops and tell them if they still weren’t going to do anything about the situation, they could shove it up their collective departmental ass. At least she would’ve done all she could.

Ten more minutes she waited. And then it came.

From the same direction as always, that teeth-jangling engine noise cutting through the air, windshield as dark and impenetrable as ever. But as the car neared Susan’s property, she thought it slowed, just a little, as if the driver somehow knew what she was planning and wanted to make sure to give her enough time to get ready. Probably her imagination, she thought as she put the Civic in drive and pressed the gas pedal.

Blue-black flashed by—and that pale little girl face, too, hands pressed to the glass, looking straight at Susan with wide, wide eyes—as the Civic surged out of the driveway and into the street. She whipped the wheel around, tires squealing in protest, and tromped on the gas as her quarry continued on toward the stop sign at the end of the street. As always, the driver didn’t slow, ran right past the sign and turned left.

Susan followed, suddenly realizing that if she had any hope of keeping up with the Bruisemobile, she was going to have to drive like it. Tendrils of panic brushed the inside of her stomach, and her hands gripped the steering wheel so tight, she wouldn’t have been surprised if it snapped in two. Given her history, learning to drive in the first place had been hard as hell, but she’d been determined and kept at it, finally passing her driver’s test at the age of nineteen. But in all the years since, she’d never gone so much as a single mile over the speed limit, had never merely paused at a stop sign before sliding through the intersection. Hell, she’d never even gotten a parking ticket!

But if she wanted to stop the blue-black car…

She gritted her teeth, looked quickly both ways, and flew through the intersection, hanging a left as she did, tires protesting loudly. She expected to feel absolute terror as she continued in pursuit of the car, her speedometer hitting twenty-five, thirty, thirty-five…but she didn’t. Instead, she felt exhilarated…felt free. She was surprised to find herself grinning as she drove, gaze fastened on the Bruisemobile’s rear bumper, foot pressed firmly on the gas.

Street signs passed before her eyes, white letters on green: McKitrick, Peach Orchard, Bloomsdale, Harvey, a dozen others. Traffic signs were blurs of white on red, black on yellow: STOP, NO U-TURN, SLOW CHILDREN, SCHOOL ZONE… Modest houses gave way to larger, more expensive homes, which in turn yielded to upscale businesses: doctors, lawyers, real estate agents, boutiques…The blue-black car wove in and out of traffic as if the other cars on the road were standing still, and Susan kept pace, nearly colliding with other vehicles a half dozen times—horns blaring, middle fingers raised, faces contorted in anger—but still she drove on, one mile melting into the other, as if she traveled through a dream.

As night began to close in, Susan found herself trailing the Bruisemobile down the unfamiliar streets of a residential section she’d never been to before. A trick of the fading light made everything look distorted, as if she were viewing the world through rippling water. The trees were twisted, coiled things that jutted forth from the ground like splintered bone protruding from torn flesh. Shadows clung to their scaly bark like some sort of dark fungus. The surface of the street was hard, ridged and shiny, reminding Susan more of a beetle’s shell than asphalt. The yards were devoid of grass, the bare earth gray and pebbly, resembling the rough hide of a lizard. She almost thought she could see the ground rise and fall, rise and fall, as if it were breathing. The houses were lopsided, patchwork conglomerations of building materials and architectural styles: brick, stone, metal, and wood, held together by red, raw strings of what looked like muscle and sinew; Cape Cod, ranch, Victorian, colonial, Tudor, two-story, split-level…

Susan felt a cold numbness wash over her, and a thought drifted through her mind: You’ve gone too far. It almost made her laugh. Way too far.

The blue-black car slowed, brake lights glowing a sour yellow-green, and then it turned and pulled into the driveway of one of the nightmarish houses. Susan no longer entertained fantasies of stopping, getting out and confronting the driver. She was no longer sure that there even was a driver. Wherever the hell she was, whatever the hell was going on, she only wanted one thing: to get back to normalcy and sanity. To get back home.

As she passed the house, she saw the Bruisemobile’s doors open. A little girl climbed out of the back, and…something else…disgorged from the driver’s seat. A mass of solid darkness that moved like roiling black fog.

Susan forced herself to look straight ahead and search for a place to turn around. She braked, whipped the Civic into the next driveway, tires juddering on its uneven, insectine surface. She stopped, threw the car into reverse, and hit the gas. The Civic curved back into the street, and she put it in drive and jammed the gas pedal to the floor. For a second—an awful, sickening second—the car hesitated, and Susan feared it was going to stall, but then it leapt forward, engine roaring.

It had gotten too dark to see and Susan flipped on her headlights. She screamed as they revealed the little girl, now standing in the middle of the street, looking at Susan with those big, big eyes and smiling.

The sound of the impact was softer than Susan expected, a soft thud that she felt more than heard. She slammed on the brakes, and the Civic skidded to a halt. She put the car in park, leaving it running, lights on, hot engine ticking. She opened her door, got out, nostrils recoiling from the smell of burning oil. She walked back to the girl who now lay against the curb, arms and legs sticking out in awkward, broken angles, looking as if she were nothing more than a rag doll tossed down by a bored child.

Out of the corner of her eye, Susan saw the shadowy mass that had been behind the wheel of the blue-black car begin to slide toward her, flowing down the driveway like a wall of solid darkness. She ignored it, knelt down at the girl’s side. Got a good look at her face. It was a familiar face, though one Susan hadn’t seen in a mirror for twenty-four years. It was the face of a four-year-old girl who had once lived when others died.

Susan picked up the girl, so small, so feather-light, and cradled her broken body in her lap. And as the darkness came for them, tears began to fall from Susan’s eyes. Tears of sorrow, tears of guilt, but mostly, tears of relief.

THE TONGUE IS THE SWEETEST MEAT

He draws the straight razor across smooth belly flesh. Slowly, lovingly, watching a line of red swell in the razor’s wake. It’s the second cut he’s made—the first was a quick swipe that laid open the throat—and the feel of metal parting skin, of a newborn mouth opening wide to reveal the warm wet secrets it contains, is the most intoxicatingly transcendent feeling he’s ever experienced.

It’s his second cut…but it’s far from being his last.

* * *

Tom felt the impact more than heard it. The steering wheel vibrated in his hands, and his seat juddered, drawing the belt tight against his stomach and chest. His head jerked forward, but before it could slam against the steering wheel or smash into the windshield, a wall of white came rushing toward him. It wrapped around his face, cut off his vision, sealed his mouth and nose so he couldn’t breathe. Panicked, he tried to let go of the steering wheel and claw at the rubbery white mass that was smothering him, but whatever it was had pinned his arms, and he couldn’t move them. Tiny white flashes of light burst against the blackness in his skull, and he knew he was on the verge of losing consciousness—and perhaps losing much more.

But then the white mass began to recede, to shrink and grow flaccid. It pulled away from his face and he could see and breathe again. He took in a shuddering gasp of air, and then looked around, trying to figure out what had just happened.

Through the windshield, he saw a car on the snow-slick street ahead of him—a dark blue Grand Torino—and it was sitting at a forty-five degree angle to him. The rear bumper was dented and hanging half off the car, and the trunk was crumpled and partly open. On the bumper were a couple stickers: one read Jesus is coming, look busy! and the other said Friends don’t let friends drive Chevys.

The last thing Tom remembered, he’d been on his way home from work. He’d been listening to an audiobook on the CD player, Investing for the 21st Century, but he’d been thinking about his last patient of the day, a German shepherd whose body had been so riddled with tumors that there was nothing that could be done except put the dog out of her misery. The dog’s owner had begun sobbing violently when he’d told her the news, and all Tom had been able to do was stand there impotently, wanting to give the woman comfort, but even with all his years as a vet, he hadn’t known how.

As he’d been replaying the awful scene in his mind, he’d caught a glimpse of red lights through falling snow—taillights, he guessed—and then he’d been engulfed by the white mass. No, by his car’s airbag, he realized. He’d been in an accident.

He was still fuzzy-headed, but at least now he was starting to get a handle on the situation. He took a quick inventory of his physical condition, gingerly moving both arms, both legs, then cautiously turning his head from side to side. None of these actions produced any significant pain, and though he knew there was a possibility he was in shock and might be more injured than he knew, he thought he was okay for the most part.

A rapping on the driver’s side window startled him, and he turned toward the sound, wincing as a jolt of pain shot through his neck. Maybe he wasn’t that okay after all.

Looking in at Tom was a red-faced man with a shiny bald head, a bulbous nose, and saggy jowls. He looked like he was in his late forties or early fifties, about ten years older than Tom. The man was opening and closing his mouth, spraying spittle onto the outside of Tom’s window. Tom could hear the man’s voice, but he couldn’t make out the words. It was as if the man was shouting nonsense syllables, so enraged that he’d momentarily lost the capability of speech.

Still somewhat dazed, Tom frowned at the red-faced man as he tried to make out what he was shouting. The man pounded the heel of his fist against the window several times, and when that failed to provoke a response in Tom, he made a circular motion with his hand to indicate that he wanted Tom to roll down the window.

Now that Tom understood. He rolled his window down and cold winter air rushed in, making his eyes tear.

“What is your fuckin’ problem? Do you see what you did to my car?” The man still sprayed spit as he shouted, only now without any barrier between them, the saliva pattered against Tom’s face.

“I’m…sorry,” Tom said, not really sure whether he should be or not, but unable to think of anything else to say.

“Sorry?” The man sounded incredulous, as if Tom had just proposed he stuff his head up his ass and keep stuffing until he disappeared altogether. “Fuck sorry! I want to know what the hell you’re going to do about my car! It’s a classic, you know that? You sure as hell better have insurance, motherfucker!”

Deep inside Tom, a tiny flicker of anger flared bright for an instant. He wanted to wrap his hands around this asshole’s throat, dig his fingers into the flesh, and feel the trachea crush beneath the pressure like a fistful of dried leaves. But the mention of insurance cut through the last of his mental fog, and he squeezed his anger into a tiny ball of emotion and pushed it far down inside himself, stowing it away in the cool dark recesses of his deepest self, where it could do no harm.

He forgot his anger and tried to concentrate. What did two people do when they had a collision? They exchanged insurance information while they waited for the police to arrive. Tom undid his seatbelt, opened the door to his gold Saturn—which sported the vanity plate PETDOC—and stepped out of the car. His legs were shaky, and at first he feared they weren’t going to support his weight on the slick road surface, and he’d collapse to the asphalt, unable to rise. But he managed to remain upright, despite the layer of snow on the street.

Now that his mind had cleared, Tom took a good look at the man whose car he’d hit. He was a bit under six feet, around the same height as Tom, but he carried at least forty more pounds, most of it stored around his middle. He wore a red jacket with a NASCAR logo over the left breast, jeans, and old tennis shoes. Snow was still coming down, and Tom watched the flakes land on top of the man’s bald head and instantly melt, as if the man’s fury had raised his body temperature to the boiling point.

Tom’s coat was lying on the backseat of his car because he’d had the heater on. He wore only a white shirt, tie, dark blue slacks, and Rockports. The thin fabric of his clothes did almost nothing to insulate him against the cold, and he started shivering.

Mr. Nascar stepped forward and leaned his face close to Tom’s. “Well?”

Tom knew the man wanted him to say something, but he had no idea what. He’d already said he was sorry, though he probably shouldn’t have. He knew that neither party should assume responsibility at the scene of an accident. That was a good way to find yourself slapped with a lawsuit. Better to wait for the police to arrive and determine who was at fault.

Tom went instead with the next thought that popped into his mind. “Are you all right?”

Mr. Nascar looked at Tom as if he’d just told the man to go fuck his grandmother with a rusty chainsaw. “Does that look all right to you?” He stabbed his forefinger toward his damaged vehicle.

Tom was aware of the other drivers on the road slowly detouring around the freshly created accident scene. He could sense their gazes on him and Mr. Nascar, could feel their intense interest in the mundane drama taking place outside their windows. But he knew none of them would stop to help. He wouldn’t in their place.

Tom started to say that he hadn’t been talking about the car, that he’d wanted to know if Mr. Nascar had been injured, but he kept his mouth shut. The man seemed unhurt, and everything Tom said, no matter how innocuous, only seemed to infuriate him more.

“Look, let’s just exchange insurance information while we wait for the police to show up. I’ll call them right now.” He reached for his cell phone, but then he remembered that it was in his jacket pocket, and his jacket was in the car.

Without telling Mr. Nascar what he was doing—Tom figured the less he said at this point, the better—he turned to open the back door of his Saturn. But before he could touch the handle, Mr. Nascar grabbed Tom by the arm and spun him around.

“Do you think I’m a fuckin’ idiot? I’m not gonna let you get in your car and haul ass. You’re gonna stay right here!”

Tom felt anger welling up inside him once more. He wanted to grab Mr. Nascar by the wrist, yank his hand away, and then spin the sonofabitch around and slam him face-first into the Saturn’s driver’s side window. He could almost hear the glass crack, almost see the blood gushing out of Mr. Nascar’s broken nose. Tom’s hand twitched, and for an instant he thought he was going to really do it, but then his hand fell limp as he reflexively forced his anger down, stuffed it away in the stinking garbage bag in his soul where he stored all his other negative emotions. He couldn’t, he wouldn’t, allow himself to lose control. Years ago, he’d witnessed what could happen when humans let loose the beasts that dwelled within them, and he would sooner die than let that happen.

“Really, Tommy? Because if you mean it, I have to tell you that being dead is a real mixed bag of nuts.”

Someone else besides Mr. Nascar had spoken. Someone Tom hadn’t heard speak in over twenty years. Tom felt a chill deep in his marrow that had nothing to do with the weather as he turned around to face the owner of that voice.

Unkempt sandy blonde hair, several day’s worth of stubble, a face that was asymmetrical, as if one side had slipped a few centimeters lower than the other. Nose crooked from when it had been broken by a baseball Tom had hit one year when they’d been on opposite little league teams, eyes dark and glittering with something that most people mistook for humor, mouth stretched in a wide grin. He was a couple decades older than when Tom had seen him last, and he wore a pair of orange coveralls with a zipper that ran down the middle and the words Ash Creek Correctional Institution on the chest. But despite everything that was different, everything that mattered—the sound of his voice, the look in his eyes, that grin—had stayed the same, and Tom knew he was looking at Donald Frankel.

Except that wasn’t possible, was it, for Donald was—

“Dead? It’s true. The newspaper clipping that Trudy sent you didn’t lie.”

Three days ago Tom had received a letter from his sister who still lived in Akron where they’d grown up. Along with the letter, she’d enclosed a clipping from the Beacon Journal. It was a story about Donald, and with it Trudy had also enclosed Donald’s obituary.

“The paper said you’d died of a heart attack,” Tom said.

“Yep. Just like my old man. Remember? He keeled over at the plant two weeks before my trial. Guess heart disease runs in the family.”

As strange as it was to be talking to a dead man, Tom noticed something else equally odd. The snowflakes were no longer falling. It hadn’t stopped snowing, though, not in the sense that no more was coming down. The snowflakes were still in the air, but they were motionless, suspended in space. He took a quick glance around and saw that the line of cars that had been passing slowly by had stopped, their engines now silent. The only sounds Tom could hear were his own breathing and his pulse pounding in his ears. He turned to look at Mr. Nascar and saw that the man stood completely still, red face frozen in an unblinking mask of anger. Tom realized Mr. Nascar was still holding onto his arm, and he gingerly pulled free. Mr. Nascar wobbled a bit, like a mannequin that had been given a slight shove, but he didn’t tip over.

Tom turned back to Donald. “I’m unconscious, aren’t I? In a coma or something. My airbag didn’t deploy and I smacked my head into the windshield, and now I’m comatose and dreaming.”

“Two things wrong with that theory, Tommy. One, you don’t dream when you’re in a coma. And two, I’m real. This—” he gestured to indicate the motionless world surrounding them—“is real. We need to talk, Tommy, and I thought it would be best if we did so without any interruptions.”

Donald walked over to Mr. Nascar, and Tom examined his friend closely as he went. Donald seemed solid enough. His white shoes—which had no laces—left prints in the snow, and his breath curled out of his mouth like white mist in the cold air. For a dead man, Donald Frankel seemed awfully alive.

Donald looked at Mr. Nascar and scowled. “What a pussy. One good bitch-slap and he’d fall to his knees, sobbing and calling for his mommy.” Donald turned to Tom, derision plain on his face. “I can’t believe you were putting up with his bullshit.”

Despite the lunacy of being lectured by a dead man in a world where God had hit the pause button, Tom felt ashamed. “It’s understandable that he’d be upset. I mean, his car got banged up, and the accident was my fault…I think.”

Donald stepped away from Mr. Nascar and came over to Tom, his eyes smoldering, voice pitched menacingly low. “It doesn’t matter whose fault it is. All that matters is that you opened your mouth wide and let him crap down your throat, just like you always do.”

“But I didn’t—”

Donald’s right hand became a blur as he pulled something from one of the pockets in his coveralls, flicked it open, and pressed it to Tom’s throat. It was cold and thin and sharp, and though Tom couldn’t see it—didn’t dare to breathe, let alone pull his head back to take a look—he knew what it was. A straight razor: Donald’s favorite toy.

“We’re going to take a little trip, Tommy, just the two of us. I got my old Nova parked just down the street. You remember, that puke-green one I used to have back in high school? You’re going to come with me, get in the car, and listen to what I have to say. And if you don’t, I’m going to carve you a second smile, Tommy-boy. A real red beauty.” Donald grinned, but there was no mirth in his smile. It was the kind of smile a shark might make as it opened its maw to feed. “So…what do you say? Feel like going for a ride? Blink once for yes, twice for no.”

Tom blinked once.

“Good man!” He held the razor against Tom’s throat a moment longer before finally pulling it away. Tom released the breath he’d been holding and took in a fresh gulp of air. Donald shut the razor with a flick of his wrist and tucked it back in his pocket. Then without another word, he turned and began walking down the street. Tom followed, suspended snowflakes melting as they came in contact with his body. Together, he and Donald plowed a tunnel through the air as they walked.

As the Nova came into view—parked just like Donald had said, and still the ugly shade of green that Tom remembered so well—he finally found his voice again.

“Where are we going?”

Donald didn’t look back as he answered. “It’s not so much a question of where, Tommy, as it is when.”

And Tom knew right then, knew exactly where Donald planned to take him, and he wanted to turn around and run in the opposite direction, even if by doing so it meant that’d he’d feel the sharp cold kiss of Donald’s razor. But his feet kept moving him along behind his dead friend, one calm measured step after another, as if they’d been waiting for this moment for the last twenty years, as if there was an appointment that, no matter how much he might wish otherwise, he was destined to keep.

And who knows? Perhaps there was.

* * *

He caresses an exposed kidney, licks a staring eyeball, inserts his fingers into a slit on the man’s chest and scratches the ribs with his fingernails. He wonders if his nails are hard enough to engrave his initials in the bone, decides they’re not. But then, he has the razor, doesn’t he? Grinning, crimson-smeared lips pulling back from blood-flecked teeth, he withdraws his hand, wipes it clean—at least as clean as he can get it—on his pants. Then he pulls the straight razor out of his pocket, grips the handle, inserts the razor into the slit and begins to carve delicate furrows into rib-bone.

* * *

“Where are we?”

“From now on, it’s probably best if you don’t ask any questions that you really don’t want answered, Tommy. And believe me, you don’t want me to answer that one.”

Donald sat behind the wheel of his puke-green Nova, the engine rattling as if it was going to throw a rod any second, just the way Tom remembered it. A few moments ago, they’d been on the snowy street not far from Tom’s condo where he’d rear-ended the Grand Torino. But after climbing into the Nova’s passenger seat and fastening the belt—an action that had elicited a sneer from Donald—they had pulled into the parking lot of a nearby gas station, turned into an alley behind it, and suddenly found themselves here, wherever the hell that was.

The sky was slug-skin gray, and dark hazy objects that seemed only to be crude mockeries of clouds floated above. The road was smooth and black as obsidian and unmarked by dividing lines, and there were no signals or signs of any sort to provide directions for travelers. The ground on either side of the road resembled a patchwork of insectine carapace and lizard scale. Tom couldn’t be certain because they were moving too fast for him to get a good look, but it appeared that the ground was gently rising and falling, almost as if it were breathing. Treelike structures protruded from the grotesque landscape, but instead of wood, their trunks and branches were formed from wet bone with ragged shreds of meat still clinging to it. Instead of leaves, misshapen, lopsided heads hung from the branches, glaring at the Nova with hungry, baleful intelligence as it passed.

Tom tore his gaze away from the freakhead trees and stared straight ahead. “You’re right, I don’t want to know.”

“Toldja.” Donald turned on the radio and Blue Oyster Cult’s “Don’t Fear The Reaper” blared out of the tinny speakers. Donald laughed. “Man, that’s way too cliché!” He changed the channel, and BOC gave way to Boston’s “More Than a Feeling.”

“That’s better,” Donald said, and settled back to drive.

They continued down the dark road for a time, listening to classic 70’s rock—the only music that the Nova’s radio could pick up, it seemed. Tom was surprised to find himself relaxing and even humming along with the music, as if they were out for a simple night drive instead of traveling through a nightmarish landscape from one of Satan’s wet dreams. After a while, Tom glanced at his dead friend and saw that Donald had changed.

“You look younger.”

It was true. Donald Frankel had been in his early forties when they’d gotten into the car. Now he looked as if he were thirty at the most. Fewer lines on his face, no strands of gray in his hair, cheeks less full, less saggy, as if the effects of a decade’s worth of gravity had been erased.

But Donald ignored the comment about his age. Instead, he said, “I came back one last time because of you, Tommy-boy. Because you’re my friend, and because of the way you’ve wasted your pathetic excuse of a life.”

Of all the things Donald might’ve said, Tom hadn’t been expecting that. “What the hell are you talking about? You’re the one who ended up with a lifetime prison sentence!”

“Yeah, but I managed to swing an early parole,” Donald said, grinning. “Not exactly the way I wanted, but at least I’m free of the old Thorazine Hotel. Don’t get me wrong, the drugs they used in the psycho ward were primo, but the place wasn’t exactly an amusement park, you know?”

Out of the corner of his eye, Tom caught a glimpse of something large and amber-colored as it flew past the passenger window. He wasn’t certain, but he thought it had more than two wings. A lot more. He did his best to ignore it as he continued.

“I haven’t wasted my life, Donald. I went to college, became a vet, started my own business, bought a home, got married…I may not be a success with a capital S, but I got you beat all to hell.”

“I’m not disputing the basics of what you say, but let’s go into a bit more detail, shall we?” Donald looked twenty-five now, and his orange coveralls were beginning to change color and shape as well. “You may have become a vet—which I personally find hilarious considering all those ‘specimens’ we dissected when we were kids—but what did you really want to be?”

Donald’s mention of the word dissecting brought back sudden, vivid memories of Tom’s childhood. Of running through fields with Donald, of exploring woods, of setting traps to catch wild animals—and sometimes not-so-wild ones—and the things they both did to the creatures unfortunate enough to be caught in one of their snares.

“A doctor,” Tom answered. “A people doctor.”

Donald nodded. He looked twenty now, and his coveralls had become a brown flannel shirt worn unbuttoned over a T-shirt, along with a pair of ratty jeans that had been decorated with ink-pen words and pictures. AC/DC, Led Zeppelin, the anarchy symbol…

“But you didn’t even try to get into med school, did you? And you may have gotten married, but it only lasted two years.”

Tom remembered the last thing that Emily had said to him during their final conversation, the night he’d phoned her before signing the divorce papers.

Ever heard the phrase “emotionally unavailable,” Tom? Well, that’s you, in spades.

“And your so-called house is a cramped condo where you sit and stare at the TV night after night. You don’t have any friends, any lovers, any hobbies, any interests at all beyond your work, and you’re only partially engaged in that. You’re miserable, Tommy, even if you don’t like to admit it to yourself. Do you know why?”

Donald was in his late teens now, rail thin, face dotted with acne. He was almost done regressing, Tom knew—and that meant they had almost reached their destination.

“It’s because you’ve never been able to accept yourself for who you are—who you really are.”

Tom felt an icicle of terror lodge at the base of his spine. He began speaking rapidly. “I know exactly who I am, and I like myself just fine, thank you. I’m not saying there isn’t room for improvement—”

“You’ve spent your entire life running from who and what you truly are,” Donald interrupted. “And before I shuffle off this mortal coil, as they say, I intend to help you come to terms with your true nature once and for all.”

The gray sky outside was growing lighter, bluer. The dark hovering shapes were becoming fluffy white clouds, and the strange insectine-lizard hide ground was reforming into fields of corn.

“I know where we’re going,” Tom said in a wooden voice.

“Of course you know, numb-nuts. Didn’t I tell you I needed to get gas when I picked you up? I hope you got a couple bucks to kick in. I don’t have twenty dollar bills shooting out of my asshole, you know.”

Tom stared at Donald. He couldn’t have been more than seventeen now, and from the way he talked, it seemed like he’d changed in mind as well as body. He was Donald Frankel, age seventeen, just as he’d been on what Tom had forever after come to think of as That Day.

It was Saturday, and they’d planned to go fishing at the pond on Tom’s grandfather’s property. But they’d never made it there.

Tom glanced at his hands, then reached up to angle the rearview mirror so he could check on his reflection. He hadn’t changed at all. He was still a middle-aged veterinarian.

“Hey, hands off.” Donald slapped Tom’s hand away and readjusted the mirror to suit himself. “Guy’s gotta be able to see what’s behind him when he’s driving, right? It’s a simple rule of road safety, butt-plug.”

Tom almost laughed. He’d forgotten about the endless stream of profanity and unpleasant nicknames that rolled out of Donald’s mouth as naturally as another person might exhale.

“Bite me,” Tom whispered.

Donald cupped a hand to his ear. “What was that, Miss? I couldn’t hear you.”

“I said, ‘Bite me,’ jack-off!” Though Tom still retained his middle-aged body and persona, it nevertheless felt good to revert to old behavior patterns, no matter how stupid or childish they might be.

“You wish. Hey, I saw you staring at Sherry Jonas in art class yesterday.”

Tom knew what his answer was supposed to be—what it had been—and he found the correct reply coming out of his mouth now. “I wasn’t staring at her.”

“Sure you were, admit it. And why wouldn’t you stare? She’s got great tits. I’m surprised she can stand up straight, they’re so big. Her face is kinda plain, but what the hell, I’d do her. You gonna ask her out?”

“Idonno. Maybe.” But Tom had never spoken to Sherry Jonas, let alone ever asked her for a date.

“Man, you are so fuckin’ predictable! You want that girl—want to squeeze her tits, bite her nipples, shoot your load between those humongous boobs—but you can’t bring yourself to even say hi to her.” Donald shook his head. “Fuckin’ pathetic.”

“Oh yeah? Like you’d talk to her!” But even when he’d said this for the first time, Tom had known better.

“You bet your bony ass I would! Hell, if I wanted to, I’d wait for her in the park after school—she goes jogging there sometimes. I’d pick a good spot to hide, behind some bushes maybe, and when she came bouncing by, I’d jump out, grab her, pull her into the bushes, and fuck her raw.”

“Jesus, Donald…you’re a real romantic at heart, you know that?” At the time, Tom had tried to sound disgusted, but the truth was the picture Donald had painted excited him, so much so that he’d begun to get an erection.

Donald laughed. “Whatever, man. But at least I’m not afraid to say what I think and feel, and I’m not afraid to act on my feelings either. Unlike you. Sometimes I think that’s the real reason you’re my friend. You see in me the one thing you don’t have.”

Now, as then, Tom felt uncomfortable with how accurate Donald’s insight had been. “And what’s that?”

Donald flashed his trademark wild grin. “Balls.”

Tom paused for a moment. “That’s two things, Donald.”

Both of them burst into laughter.

Donald slowed the car as they approached the Speed-Thru gas station and convenience mart (open twenty-four hours a day!). The Speed-Thru was located just off Route 71, and though there weren’t all that many houses around, the station received the bulk of its business from folks just passing through this part of Ohio. As Donald pulled into the lot, Tom knew there would be two other cars present—a blue Ford pick-up at a pump, and a Chevy Citation parked in front of the convenience mart. Just exactly as they had been on that day in June over twenty years ago. No…not twenty years ago. Now.

Donald pulled up to an open pump, put the Nova in park, and cut the engine. The car chuffed and lurched for a couple seconds before the engine finally grew still.

Donald turned to Tom. “How ‘bout that gas money?”

Tom looked at Donald. “What happens if I deviate from the script? What if I refuse to give you any money? What if I got out of the car right now and started running down the street? Or to a payphone and called the cops?”

For a moment, Donald’s eyes were once more those of a middle-aged man. “Your choice, Tommy. You can play along and see where this leads or not. But if you decide not to play, good luck on finding your way back to your condo and your veterinary practice—not to mention your whole fucking world—on your own.”

Tom considered for another couple seconds before reaching into his pants pocket and pulling out a few crumpled bills. The money hadn’t been in his pants when he’d left work, but he’d known it would be in there now.

He handed the money over to Donald, who in turn stuffed the bills into the pocket of his flannel shirt. “I’ll run in and pay, but I gotta take a dump, so I’ll be a few minutes. You can go ahead and pump the gas if you want, or you can just wait for me, either one.”

At the time, Tom had found Donald’s statement odd, almost as if he’d wanted to make sure that whatever Tom did, he remained outside the Speed-Thru mart.

Tom continued with his lines. “Just try to hurry, all right? We get to Grandpa’s farm too late, and he might make us stay to help with the afternoon chores.”

Donald winked. “Gotcha.” He then got out of the Nova—leaving the keys in the ignition—shut the door, and started walking toward the convenience mart. Tom watched him go, marveling at how calm and relaxed he moved, considering what he intended to do inside.

Donald entered the Speed-Thru, the glass and metal door swinging slowly shut behind him.

When this had happened the first time, Tom had sat in the car for a while, actually dozing off for a bit. He and Donald had been up late Friday night, exploring the inner workings of the McAllisters’ Russian Blue cat, and Tom had gotten little sleep. After he’d woken—with no clear idea how long he’d slept since the clock on the Nova’s dashboard was broken—he’d gotten out to pump the gas. But when he’d tried to activate the pump, it wouldn’t start. He’d replaced the nozzle and began to head for the Speed-Thru to find out what was wrong, when Donald had come walking out the front door, completely drenched in blood from head to toe.

But middle-aged Tom wasn’t tired now, and even if he had been exhausted, there was no way he could sleep, knowing what he knew. The choice was his, Donald had said. Should he stay in the car or should he get out?

He got out.

His legs trembled as he crossed the parking lot to the convenience mart building. He felt light-headed, nauseated, and he was grateful that Donald had paid his ghostly visit before he’d had dinner. Damn decent of him.

Assuming that events would play out as they had originally—with the exception of him being his adult self—Tom knew what waited for him inside. He’d never gone in, never seen the results of Donald’s grim handiwork, but he’d read about it in the newspaper, heard about it on TV, had envisioned it in his imagination a thousand times since. The police had thought he’d been an accomplice, of course, since he’d been in the car. But the evidence, in conjunction with Donald’s testimony that Tom had had nothing to do with That Day had cleared him. But Tom hadn’t felt absolved. He’d felt—and still felt—guilty. Guilty of not detecting something different in Donald’s voice or manner that day, guilty of sitting, even napping, while innocent people lost their lives. And though he’d never admitted this to anyone else, could barely bring himself to think it even now, as his fingers closed around the metal handle of the Speed-Thru’s door, he regretted that he hadn’t seen, hadn’t known, hadn’t…

He squashed that last thought down before it could be fully realized, then he opened the door and stepped into the convenience mart.

The first thing he noticed was the quiet. No music played over the speakers set into the ceiling, and the cash register was silent. He heard no movement—no footsteps, no cooler doors opening as someone reached in for a cold Coke or maybe a carton of milk, no one picking up a bag of potato chips, the package crinkling as they took hold of it. No voices, no How much is this? Can you break a fifty? That’ll be $8.75, thank you and come again. Complete and total silence, save for the faint, almost inaudible hum of the fluorescent lights overhead.

He walked up to the front counter, saw stacks of newspapers—both local and national—on wire stands. The big story was the upcoming wedding of Prince Charles and Diana, but Tom didn’t stop to marvel that he was looking at freshly printed papers containing news two decades and change old. He was too intent on what he knew waited for him behind the counter. He put his hands on the counter, stood on tiptoes, leaned over, and looked.

Her name was Nicole Patterson. She’d graduated high school this year, though she’d been working part-time at the Speed-Thru for a couple years. Tom had never spoken to her, but he knew who she was, had seen her around school. She was pretty, if not spectacular looking, and he’d heard that she was dating a college football player, but he didn’t know if it was true.

She lay on her side, eyes wide, mouth open as if she’d started to scream but had died before she could get the sound out. Her throat was a yawning red gash, and blood spatter covered the walls of the cashier’s cubbyhole. The floor around Nicole was covered with even more blood, so much that Tom couldn’t see how a single human body could’ve contained it all. He inhaled the mingled stink of blood, urine, and feces—a smell that was only now starting to filter through the store. From what he remembered reading, the Speed-Thru had stank like “hell’s own slaughterhouse” according to the deputy sheriff who’d first arrived on the scene.

Tom looked at the girl’s body for another moment before turning away from the counter and walking toward the rear of the store, where the restrooms were located. Halfway down the aisle where the magazines were displayed, an elderly man in a light green shirt and khaki pants lay in a widening pool of blood. His name was Peter Dewey, and he’d come into the Speed-Thru to pick up a copy of Newsweek. He clutched the crumpled magazine in his hand, likely never knowing that he himself would be news before the day was out. There was so much blood—splattered on magazines, spreading across the tiled floor—that Tom didn’t think he’d be able to step over Mr. Dewey without slipping in it. He turned around, walked back to the end of the aisle, and went down another. This aisle was mercifully free of corpses who’d had their throats slashed, and Tom was able to make it to the rear of the store without any problem.

As he approached the restrooms—more specially, the women’s—he heard soft moist sounds, as if someone were gently patting wet clay. Tom stepped up to the door of the women’s restroom. There were no words, just a simple white design of a circle atop the point of a triangle with two narrow rectangles for legs. He gripped the metal handle and was surprised at how warm it was. He’d always imagined it would be cold. He looked down, saw blood flowing outward from under the door. The wet sounds became louder now, and they were accompanied by grunts of exertion, as if someone on the other side of the door was hard at work.

Tom continued gripping the knob, but he didn’t turn it. This was it, a moment that he’d imagined over and over for twenty-some years, a moment he’d both dreaded and longed for. The question now was, did he have what it took to turn the knob and open the door? Or would he wuss out at the last minute and go back to Donald’s Nova?

Donald’s voice was muffled by the restroom door, but it came through clear enough.

“Go ahead. You know you want to.”

Tom took a deep breath, and then he opened the door.

Donald knelt next to a woman in her late twenties. She lay on the bathroom floor, head near the sink, feet near the toilet. Her name was Sheila Henry, and she was a kindergarten teacher who’d only stopped at the Speed-Thru to relieve her aching bladder. She had curly black hair, delicate fair skin, and a belly swollen to the size of a basketball. She wore an over-sized T-shirt, shorts, and a pair of sandals. The shirt was soaked with the woman’s blood, and Donald had pulled it up to expose her pregnant belly. Her flesh—face, neck, hands, arms, and legs—was covered with deep crisscross slashes along with numerous bite marks. Tom had the sense that they formed some sort of pattern, but he couldn’t quite decipher what it was. He had no trouble making out the image Donald had carved on the woman’s belly, though. It was a Have-A-Nice-Day smiley face.

“So here you are, Tommy. Now what?” Donald had so much blood on him that it looked as if he’d been dunked head-first into a vat of red paint. He pulled the woman’s T-shirt above her breasts and cut the front of her bra open with his razor.

Tom couldn’t take his gaze off the woman’s aureolae. They were large and dark brown, and there were clear pearls of colostrum on the nipples.

“I don’t know what you mean.”

Donald touched the straight razor to the woman’s right breast and began drawing a slow circle around the nipple. “Now what are you going to do?” Without waiting for a response, he continued. “Do you know why I killed these three people? Well, four I guess, if you count junior there.” He nodded to the woman’s smiley-face belly.

Tom watched blood well forth from the circle Donald carved into Sheila Henry’s breast. “No,” he whispered.

“Because I felt like it.” Donald finished with the right breast, examined his work for a moment, then started in on the left. “I may have been a lot of things when I was alive, but at least I was honest with myself, Tommy. I know who and what I was, and if I wanted to do something, I did it. No hesitation, no regrets. And that’s what you admired most about me, wasn’t it? No, not admired. Envied. Because you never do anything without thinking it through first, and when you finally do something, you almost always regret it afterward. You’re afraid you made the wrong choice, done, said, or even just thought the wrong thing. I was free, Tommy, even when they locked me away and pumped me full of psychotropic meds.” He finished carving a circle onto the second breast and turned to look at Tom. “Because I was free in here.” He tapped the blood-smeared razor to his chest.

“You’re just like me, you know. Deep down where it counts. But you’ve never been able to accept your true nature. Oh, you’d cut up the occasional dog or cat with me, but that’s as far as you could take it. You couldn’t bring yourself to go to medical school because you knew you’d have to dissect cadavers, and you couldn’t allow yourself to get that close to the real you.”

Donald held the razor to his mouth and cleaned it with his tongue, licking one side, then the other. Tom couldn’t keep himself from wondering what it tasted like.

“But I’ve come to give you a second chance.” Donald pried open Sheila Henry’s mouth, took hold of her tongue, and with a single deft slice, cut it out.

He held the red wet treasure out to Tom. “Here. Take it. Take it and become who you really are.”

Tom stared at the piece of meat Donald held gently, almost lovingly, in his hand. Tom wondered how many flavors that tongue had tasted, how many words it had helped form, how many men it had kissed, how many cocks it had licked. He wondered what consistency the meat had, what it would be like to chew raw. All he had to do was reach out and take it…

He stepped back and shook his head. “No.”

Donald looked at him for a long moment, his expression unreadable. Tom wondered if his friend would lunge for him then, slash that razor across his throat, then carve designs into his skin before cutting off bits and pieces of his body. Finally, Donald just grinned.

“Your loss, Tommy. Too bad. It’s the sweetest part.” And he put the tip of Sheila Henry’s tongue in his mouth and bit down.

* * *

“Don’t look so depressed. Not every Scrooge listens to Marley. It’s no biggie.”

They were back inside Donald’s Nova, traveling down the obsidian road past the bone trees. Only now the heads hanging from the skeletal branches turned away as the Nova rolled by, as if they were too disappointed in Tom to look at him.

Donald was rapidly aging. He was in his mid-twenties now, and his clothes had reverted to the orange coverall he’d been wearing when Tom had first seen him. The blood that had covered him had long since dried, and it was beginning to flake off Donald like red-brown dandruff.

“Besides, it was good seeing you again, Tommy. Even if it was a short visit.” Donald was in his late thirties now, and still aging.

“I’m sorry I never came to see you while you were…away,” Tom said. “I just…” He couldn’t finish the sentence. Partially because he wasn’t exactly sure why he’d never gone to visit Donald, and partially because Donald had hit his forties—the age he’d been when he’d died—and was now beginning to rot. His skin had become dry and leathery, his lips thinning and drawing back from his teeth, giving him a permanent grin. His hair began to fall out in clumps, evaporating like snowflakes as it drifted downward.

“Don’t worry about it.” Donald’s voice had become guttural, his enunciation stiff and awkward thanks to his desiccated lips and rotting tongue. “I knew That Day would bond us forever.” He took a nearly fleshless hand off the steering wheel and tapped a bony finger to Tom’s chest. “In here. Where it really counts.”

The Nova’s engine—which had never run smoothly at the best of times—started to sputter and choke. Spiderweb cracks appeared in the windshield and the windows, and the upholstery on the seats began to crack and split, allowing yellowish foam rubber to poke through. Tom felt his guts twist into a cold knot as he realized that Donald wasn’t the only thing decaying away to nothing: the car was, too. The car, which at that moment also contained Tom and was—he glanced at the speedometer—traveling 72 mph along a dark road that stretched endlessly through an even darker world.

Donald’s eyes collapsed into viscous jelly that ran down his leather-skinned cheeks like tears of slime. Then the remainder of his flesh fell away to dust, leaving only a hollow-eyed, grinning skeleton dressed in a baggy, moth-eaten coverall.

“Time for me to make like a banana and split.” The skeleton’s mouth didn’t move; Donald’s voice echoed from the air within the car, coming from all directions at once. “But don’t cry for me, Argentina. I go to my damnation knowing exactly who and what I was. Will you be able to say the same thing when your time comes, Tommy?”

Before Tom could reply, the skeleton disintegrated into a shower of grayish-white powder that fell onto the seat, slid down onto the floor. The Nova was now driverless. Tom grabbed for the steering wheel, hoping to keep the car from going out of control. But before his hand could grip the wheel, the Nova followed its owner into Nothingness, exploding in a cloud of rust particles and leaving Tom to hurtle through the air.

He had time for a single short scream before smashing onto the glossy surface of the dark road.

* * *

“—listening to me, you sonofabitch?”

Tom blinked. He was standing on the road, the one in the real world, where he’d rear-ended the Grand Torino. Snowflakes, no longer held immobile in the air, drifted down around him. Standing in front of Tom, face so red it verged on purple, was Mr. Nascar.

“Christ almighty, you are one fuckin’ space cadet, you know that? One second you’re talkin’ about insurance, and the next you’re staring off into space like you’re retarded or something. To hell with makin’ you pay for the damage you did to my car—I oughta just beat the shit out of you right now!” Spittle flew from Mr. Nascar’s mouth as he shouted these last few words…spittle that splattered onto Tom’s face.

Tom gazed into Mr. Nascar’s eyes and saw the anger that burned there, wild and unreasoning. But it was a sputtering match flame compared to the fury that blazed within him. He immediately started to repress his anger, grab hold of it and shove it down deep inside himself. But he hesitated.

I go to my damnation knowing exactly who and what I was. Will you be able to say the same thing when your time comes, Tommy?

As Tom wiped the spit from his face, he felt something in his front pants pocket. He reached in and his fingers closed around a folded straight razor. A faint voice whispered in his mind.

Don’t say I never gave you anything, ass-wipe.

Tom smiled slowly at Mr. Nascar. “I understand you’re upset, and I don’t blame you a bit. But it’s really cold out here. What say we go sit in your car and exchange insurance information until a cop gets here?”

Mr. Nascar sputtered for a moment, as if this was the most ridiculous suggestion he’d ever heard. But then he let out a long sigh, and the exhalation seemed to carry away a good portion of his anger. “Yeah, all right. Beats having all these other assholes look at us as they drive by.”

Mr. Nascar turned and started heading back toward his car. Tom followed, his hand still in his pants pocket, his smile widening.

* * *

Officer Williams hadn’t had the greatest shift today. She’d been called to a “domestic disturbance” at an apartment on the town’s east side, only to discover that two latchkey kids had called 911 after fighting over the TV remote. Then she’d responded to a call at a drugstore where some bastard had left a cardboard box full of dead kittens in the dumpster behind the store. The drugstore manager was obviously a big PETA type, and she kept demanding to know what Williams intended to do to bring the “Kitty Killer” to justice. So when she turned onto Willowstock Road and saw a Saturn and a Grand Torino sitting in the street blocking one lane of traffic, she flipped on her lights and nearly cheered. Finally, a simple fender-bender. Probably no injuries, just a couple of PO’ed drivers. All she’d have to do was calm a few ruffled feathers, have the drivers pull the cars off the street, then take down some information for her accident report. Easy-peasy.

She parked behind the Saturn and got out. There was no one inside that vehicle, so she continued to the Grand Torino. The doors were closed and the windows rolled up, but the glass was fogged on the inside, which meant someone was in there. Williams walked up to the driver’s side, undoing the snap on her holster as she went, and rapped her knuckles on the window.

“Police. Anybody in there?” She waited a moment, and when no one answered, she began to wonder if maybe the accident had been worse than it looked, if maybe someone was hurt after all.

She opened the car door.

A red-smeared face turned to look at her from the back seat.

“You know something? Donald was right. It really is the sweetest part.”

Then he popped something into his mouth, chewed, swallowed, and grinned.

GHOST IN THE GRAVEYARD

You approach the black wrought-iron gate that stretches between two squat red-brick structures that remind you of stunted turrets. The metal sign bolted to the brick of the turret on your left reads WEST BRANCH BURIAL GROUND. You’ve been coming to this place now and again since you were a child, over fifty years, and you wonder why you’ve never noticed this sign before.

You’ve only been outside the air-conditioned comfort of your Camry for a few seconds, and even though initially your body is still cool, your skin is beginning to react to the heavy, moist August heat. You feel a strange, almost numbing sensation as sweat begins to build, as if your nerve endings are in shock from the sudden transition from cool to hot as hell. You don’t plan to be here long, you tell yourself. It shouldn’t be so bad.

You reach out and grip one of the gate’s bars. It’s hot and slick in your hand and you realize that it’s not metal you’re touching, but rather black paint covering the metal. Something else you never noticed before.

You peer through the gate and see that the grounds are as well kept as ever—the grass neatly trimmed, no broken tree limbs or leaves in sight. You have no idea who takes such good care of the place; you’ve never seen anyone working here. Perhaps, your imagination offers, the place looks after itself.

The gate isn’t locked; as far as you know it never has been. You push your way inside easily, the gate moving smooth and silent, well made, well maintained, perhaps both. You step into the graveyard—or is it cemetery? You always get the two confused. Burial ground, then. After all, that’s what it said on the sign, right?

You step into the burial ground and regard the rows of headstones. The markers are smaller than in more modern cemeteries, certainly smaller than in the one you just left. And while there may be less space between each stone, there’s more between each row.

You don’t want to look at the headstones, not yet, so you turn and look at the historical marker, set on a pole on the other side of the wall. You’ve never really read it before, only ever gave it a passing glance. You wonder why the marker faces inward instead of outward, so folks driving by might see it and be tempted to stop and take a look. Perhaps so they won’t be tempted? Then why have a marker at all?

You read, for the first time, the marker in its entirety. West Branch Quaker Burial Ground. Erected 1948 in memory of Samuel and Anna Jay Jones. The wall contains brick from the Friends meetinghouse which stood across the road in active service from 1804 to 1906.

You’re surprised. A Quaker meetinghouse stood across the street? For a hundred and two years? You crane your neck so you can look around the sign. All that rests across the country road now are small, nondescript houses that wouldn’t be out of place in any suburb. You wonder how you could live your entire childhood here, just down the road, and never know about the old meetinghouse. You wonder what happened in 1906 that spelled the church’s end. Fire? Age? Or perhaps its members simply grew old and passed away, and their progeny moved elsewhere. You know of no other Quaker churches in the area.

You turn away from the sign, and look at the simple gray wooden building in the far left corner of the burial ground. You stride toward it, the summer heat finally starting to get to you. This isn’t the proper atmosphere for a graveyard, you think. It should be overcast, gloomy, with a hint of a chill in the air. You wipe sweat from your forehead with the back of your hand, but there’s too much and some drips on the lenses of your sunglasses. You consider wiping the glasses off, but decide instead to remove them. You carry them in your right hand as you near the building, as if to underscore to yourself the fact that you don’t intend to stay here long, otherwise you’d put them in your shirt pocket, right?

The trees—you’re not sure what they are, oak, elm—seem to droop in the heat, their leaves limp and dry. The treetops sway in a breeze which doesn’t reach down this far. Or maybe there isn’t a breeze and the trees are swaying all by themselves, your imagination whispers. You half expect to feel a tingle along your spine at the idea, as you would have when you were a child. But you feel nothing. From somewhere off in the distance comes the lazy thrum of cicadas.

You continue toward the building, careful to avoid stepping on any graves, not wishing to give someone in the past a shiver, you tell yourself jokingly. The building is a simple structure, four walls and a sloping roof, constructed from rough, weather-beaten logs. There are two windows, unadorned, no curtains, plain white-painted wood for frames. The left has a crack in one of its panes. All you can see through the glass is blackness, as if the building were filled with solid shadow. But you know it’s just a trick of the light.

The wood of the featureless gray door is beginning to come apart in tiny threads, as if it were woven of some sort of strange cloth. Another historical marker here, this one affixed to the side of the building. 1804 Quaker Meeting House.

To commemorate the first church erected in Baker Township, Poss County, OH. This log replica was constructed in 1972 by the Baker Township 4-H Club and the Greenfield area Camp Fire Girls.

This sign you have read before. You read it aloud to your twin nephews the first time you brought them here, over twenty years ago. They couldn’t have been more than four, and both were scared of going into the meetinghouse, so you went in first, to check for ghosts, you said. The boys looked at you, eyes wide with equal measures of fear and delight. And after you came out and pronounced “No ghosts,” in a solemn voice, they repeated the phrase in awe and wonder. They walked around the rest of the day saying “No ghosts” to everyone they saw.

The boys graduated college a while back, and you don’t get to see them that much, mostly just during special occasions, like today. They looked so grown up this morning, you barely recognized them. You know it’s a cliché, but you still can’t help wondering where the time got to. Maybe it came here, you think. After all, time has to go somewhere when it dies. Why not here?

You grip the rusty metal handle and shove open the door. It doesn’t give easily, and you know it’s been a long time since anyone’s been in here. You step inside the meetinghouse—no, the replica—and find that despite the heat outside, the stale air in here is almost cool.

There’s enough light filtering in from the windows to see by, not that there’s much to look at. A half dozen crude benches made of split logs for seats and lengths of two by fours for legs. A lectern up front. The floor is covered with a scattering of dust, dirt and twigs. You look upward, half expecting to see a bat or two hanging from the crossbeams, but you don’t. Just a small black paper wasps’ nest, dry and fragile.

You wonder if anyone has actually ever used this meeting hall to hold a service, or if it’s nothing more than a kind of graveyard tourist attraction. Perhaps the spirits who used to attend church across the street now come here to worship, or whatever it is the dead do. Or perhaps this isn’t really a replica at all. Perhaps this is the hall from across the street. Perhaps this is where it came after it was no longer needed.

Your imagination again. This is just a project some 4-H kids thought up, or more likely some adult in charge of them. So what if the shadows huddled in the corners seem too thick, too dark? They’re just shadows. You walk outside and pull the door closed behind you.

You step around to the side of the building, and there, next to the chain link fence that serves as a rear wall for the burial ground is an old tree—an oak? And resting at the base of the tree, propped against the trunk, are three small headstones, their surfaces smooth and blurred by time and the elements, whatever legends they once contained lost forever. The stones are a bright green; moss, perhaps, or some sort of mildew.

You wonder why the headstones are here. Were they placed out of the way by whoever—or whatever, your imagination whispers—takes care of the burial ground? Did they fall naturally, or were they knocked over by kids? You and your friends never pushed over any of the stones during the times you played here. You always thought it was because your parents taught you it was wrong to vandalize property. Now you wonder if it wasn’t simply because you were afraid.

Maybe, your imagination supplies, the bodies whose resting place the stones marked had gone to dust. And with no one to stand over, the stones fell, their purpose gone. Maybe the tree is some sort of marker itself, a monument to the headstones’ decades, perhaps centuries, of watchful service.

And maybe it’s just a tree. You move on, walking along the fence, not ready to look at the graves just yet. Less than two dozen feet from the meetinghouse, the grass gives way to a circle of bare earth. Another broken headstone lies face down in the circle, and you realize that it’s been jammed into a hole, one big enough for a good-sized dog to go down. A groundhog hole, most likely. You’ve seen groundhogs in here before. One of your childhood friends, Eric Groves, used to say the groundhogs fed on the bodies buried here. You were always too smart to believe him, but every now and then you couldn’t help wondering.

You ask yourself why didn’t whoever it is that keeps the grass trimmed so neatly fill in the hole with dirt rather than block it with a headstone? The latter action seems completely out of character for someone who otherwise takes such good care of the place. Probably some kid’s idea of a joke. You consider removing the stone and placing it over against the tree with the others, but you decide against it, telling yourself it’s too damn hot.

You walk past the hole, thinking of the fun Eric Groves would have had making up stories about it to scare everyone. You wonder where Eric is now. Last you heard, he was a chemical engineer living in Texas. But that was years ago.

You think of all the things you and your friends used to do here. You would race weaving in and out among the gravestones, tell ghost stories to try to scare one another, and when it was dark—or rather dusk, for none of you would dare stay here once the sun was all the way down—you’d catch lightning bugs or better yet, play ghost in the graveyard.

You’re not even sure you can remember the rules of the game. It was some version of tag, except the person who was it was the ghost, and whenever the ghost touched someone, that kid had to fall down and lie still, eyes closed. The last person to be touched was the new ghost. Or something like that. It was really fun to play in full darkness, you recall, because it was harder to tag people, plus you ran the risk of tripping over the “dead” bodies. But playing in a real graveyard gave the game a special thrill that more than made up for playing at dusk.

At the time you used to wonder if the spirits in the graves you ran laughing and shouting over were angry at the disturbance. Now you think they probably miss it. You know you sure do.

Jesus, but you feel old.

You stop beneath a tree—an elm?—and wipe your forehead again, but all you do is smear sweat around. You gave up smoking when you were twenty-one, but you wish you had a cigarette now, even though smoking would probably just make you feel hotter. You wished you had a cigarette this morning, too, when you watched your father’s coffin being lowered into a grave in a much larger and nicer cemetery on the other side of town. You tell yourself Dad’s death was a blessing, that at least it freed him from the cancer. And even though you feel selfish for this—after all, it’s your father you should be mourning—you can’t help feeling that your childhood was buried along with him.

Your mother died six years ago of congestive heart failure, and now your father’s gone too. You are officially, and irrevocably an adult now. An aging adult with an ex-wife, no kids, and nothing really standing between you and the long descent into the same sort of hole that your father was planted in today.

Is that why you came here after the reception at your sister’s place? To say good-bye to your childhood? Maybe.

You step out of the shade and walk toward the nearest row of gravestones. You begin reading names and dates. John Hoover 1760-1813, Sarah Burkett (Beloved Wife and Mother) 1767-1843, Absalom Mast 1869-1908. Well, at least you stand a good chance of living longer than these folk. That’s something to feel good about, isn’t it?

You move on a few rows. The headstones here are smaller and made out of chalk-white stone. The legends are at once simpler and more ornate: Wm. S. Pearson, died 1871, 5 Mon., 12 Day, Aged 37 Y. Another row over and the faces of the stones are soft and blank, scoured by year after year of wind, rain and snow. You know just how they feel.

Despite the fact that you’re wearing dress slacks, you lower yourself to the neatly trimmed grass and sit cross-legged on the hot ground, facing the blank stones.

You wonder if some years hence—not as many as you’d like—your nephews will come here after your funeral to say good-bye to a piece of their childhood. You wish you’d made more time for them when they were young, done more things with them.

But it’s too late now.

As you sit and sweat, you fancy you see letters forming on the blank gray-white face of the stone in front of you, as if rising upward through murky water. Letters that form a familiar name. But it’s just your imagination again. There are no letters, no name. Just featureless stone.

You stand, your knees protesting in a way they wouldn’t have ten years ago.

Time to leave. You’ve got a long drive back to the city, back to an empty condo and a boring job. Back to what passes for your life.

And as you start to go, you feel a cold breeze brush the back of your neck, its sigh a dry whisper in your ear which seems to say, Tag, you’re it.

And the hell of it is, you know you are.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Shirley Jackson Award–nominated author Tim Waggoner has published over thirty novels and three short story collections in the horror and urban fantasy genres. He teaches creative writing at Sinclair Community College and in Seton Hill University’s Master of Fine Arts in Writing Popular Fiction program. Visit him on the web at: www.timwaggoner.com.

About the Publisher

DarkFuse is a leading independent publisher of modern fiction in the horror, suspense and thriller genres. As an independent company, it is focused on bringing to the masses the highest quality dark fiction, published as collectible limited hardcover, paperback and eBook editions.

To discover more titles published by DarkFuse, please visit its official site at www.darkfuse.com.

Table of Contents

BROKEN SHADOWS

Connect With Us

Other Books by Author

When God Opens a Door

Zombie Dreams

Portrait of a Horror Writer

Waters Dark and Deep

Met a Pilgrim Shadow

Open House

Extern

’Til Voices Drown Us

Knock, Knock

Outside the Lines

Provider

Broken Glass and Gasoline

The Tongue is the Sweetest Meat

Ghost in the Graveyard

About the Author