The Outcast Hours

by Mahvesh Murad

  The promenade was deserted. The buildings in the street seemed to lean on each other and whisper. My head was wide and empty as a cave. I must have put my gloves on at some point. We slipped our—what’s the word? The wool hats that come down over your face? Whatever—we slipped our hat-masks in our pockets and eased across the street. We were very casual. I didn’t know why we were dressed all in black, since it wasn’t dark, and wouldn’t be for months, but it was too late to ask. We stalked in through the back and stood in front of Vanzant’s display cases, fogging up the glass with our open mouths. It was the first time I’d seen his octopus, Raymond, up close. What a creature. I stared at him. And he stared at me, sullen eyed. Dad put down his tins of paint and excrement. We had brainstormed some phrases we might smear on the walls, and I had written down a list so I could get the spelling right. I was worried the sound of my beating heart could be heard from the street. We could see Berezov’s shadow in the window of his shop. He gave us an encouraging thumbs-up.

  Then Jing said, “Okay, it’s on,” and stanced up in front of a fish tank with his rat-bat trembling, but Dad shot up a hand and said “Wait! What’s that sound?” There was a large studio-room at the back of Adberhalden’s old shop, and there were definitely sounds coming from it. My heart. We moved down the room, ears cocked. Jing still had his rat-bat raised. My heart had left my body. The air was pounding hot. We’re decent people from a decent town. I don’t know why I said that. Strange thoughts were popping in and out of my head. The door to the studio was a black shape edged in fire. A child’s voice said something I couldn’t make out, and for a moment I thought it was me. Then an adult’s voice said, softly, “Sh-h-h-h-h-h now. You’re safe. Uncle Vanzie is here. You’ll be cooler with your blouse off. I’ve taken mine off. See? Isn’t it so much cooler with your blouse off?”

  Dad looked at Jing. Jing looked at Dad. Dad looked at me. I looked at Jing. Jing looked at Dad again. I began to ease away, slowly, assuming our next move would be to exit the store and regroup. But Jing lifted one of his gangly legs and kicked at the door, and the door whiffed slowly open.

  Hours it took.

  Burning daylight.

  A groan of hinges echoed off the hills—the mountains, maybe—the howl of a wolf fell to a thin growl drowned out by the sounds of a rising cry from a human child—not me—before everything snapped back—ka-spack!—and I was there asleep—surely—because what I saw in that room could only be a dream.

  Jakob Novermeyer. Naked from the waist up. A wreath of summer flowers spilling down his bare chest, in a room which seemed sunlit and smelled of expensive lotions. His lips and lids and cheeks painted pale shades of blue/green/orange and blazing under studio lights. He had been arranged for my eyes on a soft chair decorated with ornate cushions and a strip of flowing, purple velvet. I heard music, though I’m sure there was none. It took me a while to see anything else in the world—even Vanzant, who was floating beside one of Abderhalden’s big old cameras, his mouth shouting words that somehow never found my ears, but which I assume concerned who we were, and why we were there. He wore a flowing white shirt, unbuttoned, and a kind of loincloth, like a baby’s nappy. His extraordinarily hairy legs were bowed like a goblin’s. His shoulders had tattoos that looked like children’s drawings. Jing’s tall frame almost smashed me down as he swept past, pistol in hand, and I saw his mouth make the words: “Get on the floor! Get on the floor! Get on the floor!” Jakob must have been screaming, too, because his mouth was wide and the veins in his neck were bulging. Time seemed to ooze like a winter river.

  My hearing came back, and my heart returned to my chest, and I went to help Dad tie our prisoners to chairs. We felt bad about tying Jakob up, but we were scared he’d flee half-naked into the street and start shouting about what was happening. We wanted to understand what was happening before anyone started shouting about it. But it was hard with Jing striding around and shouting rules he just made up. “Rule One! No more crying. Rule Two! Total quiet!” His voice stung my brain. I recognised the antique pistol given to him by his granddad, Otis. With every rule Jing made up he’d wave his gun and we’d all curtsey. Then, in the middle of a rule—“Rule Ten! This gun is for YOUR protection!”—Vanzant said quietly, smirking, “You’re Dan, of course.”

  Dad froze when he heard his name. And Jing too, on one leg, gun in the air, as Vanzant gave his finger a flick and said, “The haaaaaands, boy.” Dad had taken off his gloves to tie the ropes, which was kind of stupid as he had distinctive hands. They had scars, and his nuptial band was yellow gold and shaped like two dragons kissing. “And that means you’re Li-i-i-d-ya.” Vanzant squeezed out my name as he turned his eyes on me, and Jakob said, in a fearful stutter: “Luh-lid-ya?”

  “Nope!” I said in a deep voice. But the game was up.

  “Lidya and Dan,” said Vanzant, “A family in crime. Can’t see this ending well for you.” Dad ripped off his hat-mask and rubbed his eyes, and I did the same, even though my eyes weren’t really tired. I was the opposite of tired. Jing pointed out that Vanzant was in a fix, too, since he was taking illicit photos of a child. But Vanzant laughed and said he’d never touched the boy, except to put the makeup on. “Poor Jakob’s school portrait didn’t come out, remember? A technical glitch.” He showed us his teeth. “So his parents sent him along to have another taken. All above the boards.”

  “Well, we’ll just show them the photos and they can judge what’s ‘above the boards’,” said Dad, and the chemist drawled, “What photos?” He still clutched the film plate he’d ripped from the back of his camera the moment he saw us. And he pointed out that taking a photo of a shirtless boy wasn’t illegal. Unlike armed robbery and kidnapping, which definitely was. “You think old Abderhalden wasn’t in on this racket? He made a fortune selling photos of your spawn to the cartel.”

  Suddenly certain wrestling-themed tableaus the old man had taken made sense. I felt kind of sick. I couldn’t even look at Jakob. For months I’d been inventing scenarios in which I finally got to see his bare, brownish body. I never imagined the real scenario would be me and my dad tying him to a chair and keeping him prisoner.

  Vanzant was saying, “I know Berezov put you up to this.” Dad tried to argue, but it was obvious we were working for the old man. The bucket we’d brought our faeces in had “Berezov’s Dispensary” stamped on the side. “Did that old fool want you to drive me out of town? Well that isn’t going to happen. I have a cartel contract. You may as well untie us so we can negotiate properly.” He looked like a twisted little ghoul, with his pointed chin and fine, babyish hair.

  Jing, no beauty himself, rose tall and said, “Not gonna happen, sir! No way!” His gun clicked like a silver beetle as he shook it at Vanzant, who yelled, “Quiet! From now on, you’re working for me. You’ll be my double agents. I’ll show that old shit-tip he can’t mess with me. You’re going to untie us, Dan. Jakob is going to tell everyone he came to have his photo taken, but I wasn’t in.”

  Dad called a huddle, but there was nothing really to be said. Dad finally sighed and stomped off into the storeroom to work on Vanzant’s ropes, and Jing strode behind hissing, “Don’t do it, Dan!” Dad said, “Come and help me with these damned cords, Lid.” So I went in and set to work on Jakob. I noticed that his hands had started to go purple. My heart. Jing was saying, “This is no good! No good!” I accidentally grazed Jakob’s wrist with my finger, and I must’ve yelped because Dad said “What!” I heard Jing say “I’m telling you, Dan, we can’t trust this pointy fucker!” I felt Vanzant’s tall frame rise up slowly above me, his ropes clattering to the floor as he cried, “Oh shut up Jing you piece of living shhhh—!” and that’s when two cracks tore the night in half.

  Jing had fired his grandfather’s pistol over his shoulder into the main room without looking. We heard the crash of glass and the gush of pills rushing across the floor. We heard Jing shout, “Now, will you all finally just LISTEN a minute!” but then nothing more. The whole town was listening. We cou
ld hear a trickle of running water. We shoved our heads into the shop and saw a whip of trembling silver coming from a tank of tropical fish. Berezov was standing in his window, both hands pressed to the glass, mouth wide. We could hear shouts bouncing down the quiet street as people tried to work out where the shots had come from, and Vanzant’s voice behind us saying, “Idiots. Now you’ll rot in jail. If you’re lucky. Give me that damned gun!” Jing gave no fight as the pistol was snatched away. “Baikal will be here soon enough,” Vanzant went on. “For the gods of all fuck, boy, don’t just sit there, put your blouse on!” He pulled his own on roughly. “You and I have the same story. You came here for a photo session. These boys came in to rob the place and tied us up. And if your father has any problems with that version he can damn well come here and discuss it with me.”

  I was too stricken with fear at that moment to remember things properly, but apparently I laughed loudly at what he said. Dad will tell me later that I definitely laughed loudly, and then I said, “Discuss it with his father. Good luck with that.” The words must have just came out. And apparently Vanzant laughed too and said he wasn’t scared of Bilvin Novermeyer. Mr Novermeyer has thin limbs and carves trolls from sea-wood.

  But then, apparently, I laughed again. It’s funny what you remember about a time and what you don’t. I said Bilvin was not the Jakob’s dad he had to worry about, apparently. I knew certain dark things about the Novermeyers, because Nissi is my best friend. She tells me everything. And one day (or maybe night) she told me her family’s deepest secret. I’d always assumed she’d shared this secret with Jakob, seeing as they’re brother and sister. But apparently she had not. I apparently told a very short version of the story Nissi told me, and with every sentence Vanzant’s tea-brown face went a little milkier, and Jakob’s eyes got wider.

  Mrs Novermeyer used to be Mrs Baikal, I said. I could have just stopped there, but I went on, apparently. After Nissi and her brother were born, Mr Baikal became very sad, and he couldn’t explain it. He came to Berezov, who gave him something for his troubles, but it didn’t take. Even drink didn’t help. The only way to ease his pain, he found, was in the arms of another. Filled with remorse, he confessed to his wife, whom he loved more than life. She told him they couldn’t be married anymore. He said that was fair, and tried to kill himself. She came to nurse him back to health. Slowly things became better. They both remarried. He to a slightly mad beautician, and she to a very nice foot doctor. But Baikal continues to be a secret father to his babies, Nissi said. He always keeps at least one hooded eye on them. Like an alligator. An alligator who made a mistake once, but will never forget his duties.

  At the end of my story Vanzant was the colour of a dead man, and Jing was burning with happiness. “Oh!” he shouted. “Oh! You’re done for, love!” He shouted right in Vanzant’s face. Dad was stunned, and Jakob was staring at me, frozen. I felt bad that he had to find out who his real dad was while half-naked and fully terrified. But life isn’t always easy.

  When Baikal came storming in with a group of militia men, crunching over the tide of pills, Vanzant fell to his knees and confessed. He was smart enough to know the sheriff would lance out the truth eventually, and that any lies he sold now would be repaid to him later in the common currency of agonising pain. Dad and Jing, braver men, were not afraid to lie a little.

  Coming home from the Ox and Legend, they said, we heard a scream. We forced our way in to find Jakob trussed, and Vanzant waving a gun. He’d tried shooting us, but missed. Baikal listened to the story coldly. It was hard to know what he was thinking. At the end Vanzant made no protest, so Baikal very calmly gave the order to take him away, and the chemist was led off through the gnashing crowd. Then the mob turned on his shop and broke it up. Smashed everything. Normally even-minded citizens trod out over piles of broken glass, teeth bared, bat or bird of prey held high before the cheering mob. It was a hell of a thing to watch. Baikal did nothing to stop them. Maybe he realised he couldn’t. Berezov came out and stood beside us. I could still see Raymond in his tank, blinking. Every so often a hysterical looter with an expensive piece of photo equipment would slap us on the shoulders and say, “Good job, friends!” Bilvin Novermeyer came by to take Jakob away, and he stopped to thank us for our bravery. “A town needs good men like you,” he said. Jakob still looked shocked. This episode would be the start of his sleepwalking. Luckily, Berezov would have just the medicine.

  Mrs Vanzant was nowhere to be seen through all this. The windows in the big house on the hill remained unlit. We wouldn’t see her for weeks.

  By now the mob had done their work and they were juiced. It’s amazing what a community can achieve in a short time if it works together. The Midnight Marauders muttered their goodbyes and drifted off. Berezov looked pretty stunned at how well his plan had worked out.

  LAteR…

  So that’s the story of the feud between Berezov and Vanzant. I’d learn later that the story I’d told about Sheriff Baikal isn’t even true. Nissi, tired of me lusting after her brother, made it up to scare me away. When I told this to Dad he laughed his fur off. We sat up all night and talked about what an interesting evening it had been. Easily in the top three most interesting evenings in our town in recent memory, we thought. Dad said it was funny how some pretty obvious stuff gets overlooked when a mob gets involved. Like, why were we dressed in black and carrying masks? Why were there two chairs with ropes in the storeroom? Why did Vanzant have rope marks on his own wrists? And why was he carrying a pistol with the inscription: “Happy eighteenth Birthday, Jon. Love, Grandpa Ming”? I also had to admit that these were pretty interesting observations. He was an interesting man, my dad.

  Everyone Knows That They’re Dead. Do You?

  Genevieve Valentine

  The wallpaper looks like wreaths when Susan first sees it, during the first tour through the little bungalow that Stephen wants to show her and she’ll probably agree to buy because it seems like the kind of house you could grow to love, once it’s yours.

  That linked-wreath paper in the parlor marches up and down in tidy lines. It’s a reproduction from an eighteenth-century pattern, the real estate agent says; a time when people appreciated tidy things.

  Susan thinks that’s a good sign. She wants a tidy life. And someone before her had wanted that, too, and had gone back in time two hundred years to find it. It felt like a promise.

  1. Susan has invoked the past, one of the early warning signs of a ghost story. (The other is to ignore the past entirely—see Fig. 2 in Appendix A for the map of dramatic irony across rising action.) Why is the past dangerous?

  a) Because what is beyond changing is beyond controlling.

  b) Because it’s made of lessons we won’t learn until it’s too late.

  c) Because it’s peopled entirely with strangers, even your own past, even when it’s you.

  d) Because it’s impossible to be certain of anything because you can never come to a consensus in someone else’s memory, and so we’re doomed to misunderstand everything until we die, and then if we’re unlucky, even after that.

  Susan doesn’t believe in talismans or signals from the universe—they’re impractical—so she tries not to take it as superstition that the wallpaper draws her in as much as it does.

  She can’t decide if she actually likes it. It feels a little old-fashioned, and she can see that occasionally the hand-printing has left a little fault. (“Adds to the charm,” says the real estate agent when she catches Susan looking.)

  What Susan likes is the idea that whoever had lived here before had known what they wanted. Had known what they were doing.

  Still, she can’t look at the parlor for very long. The wallpaper suits her, she thinks, it suits her very much—it just feels like the room is none of her business. Something about the floor keeps drawing her eye instead, like she’s dropped something on the carpet and can’t remember what it is.

  She and the realtor stand in the kitchen, light pouring in from outside. S
tephen counts off paces in the little backyard, with trees in the back and golden hops a foot thick up the back wall of the house. He’s talking to himself and flexing his hands, and Susan can’t take her eyes off the curl of his fists, but sometimes it doesn’t mean anything. Sometimes he’s just concentrating.

  The kitchen is quiet; whatever he’s saying, they can’t hear it in here. The refrigerator’s pale yellow. Susan wants so badly to be a woman who has a refrigerator like that. Who has a home.

  “What happened with the previous owners?” Susan asks.

  2. A ghost story requires a place for the fear to live. It’s never enough to just have the ghosts; we carry the ghosts with us. What item below best harbors fear of the forgotten and unknown in objects left behind for us?

  a) A toy in an empty room waiting for you to think about the last toy you lost and hoped someone else would love; waiting for you to remember it was exactly this one; waiting for you to pick it up.

  b) A locked door. All keys belong to the dead, who know better what to do with them than you do.

  c) A lie, which death always lives in.

  d) A house—always with the knowledge that someone stood here before you, that someone had to be removed before the ground was flattened and the posts laid; the dead leave warnings for the dead.

  The real estate agent flips through her papers. “Retirement,” she says eventually, looking at an exterminator report. “Community home. His younger brother is trying to sell the house.”