Piercing the Darkness: A Charity Horror Anthology for the Children's Literacy Initiative

by Joe R. Lansdale

  Hank climbed the stairs that evening to right whatever Abuse had knocked over in the bedroom. In the upstairs hallway, he listened for its crying and hearing nothing, he crept to the bedroom.

  He froze in the doorway when he found it in a fetal curl on the bed. Its blood seeped into the cotton of the comforter and spread out across the quilted diamonds. To the left of the bed, the dresser lay splintered face-down. A number of casualties in the form of underwear and socks had tumbled out toward the foot of the bed. The lamp that formerly stood on top, as well as the silver picture frame with Linda’s picture, lay in pieces just where the comforter brushed the floor.

  Hank’s mouth opened, then closed. Cool sweat ran from beneath his arms, and his chest felt tight. The memory had done that. The memory had toppled something that even Hank would have had trouble moving.

  He took a careful step back into the hallway.

  Abuse shot up and glared at him. The shredded silver rags it wore snapped outward as if up in arms. It moved off the bed and swooped to the doorway so fast that Hank cried out. He backed up further into the hall until he felt the hard wooden post of the banister thump against his back. He was cornered. Abuse swam up to him, hovering inches from his face, the gash in its forehead leaking watery blood over the crusted black around it.

  It smelled like Linda’s perfume. The scent made him feel sick.

  “I’ve been waiting for you to come upstairs.”

  “Please don’t do this.” He’d gotten used to the plaintive whisper his voice took on any time that particular memory cornered him. He hated it, but he slipped into the whisper every time, all the same, like familiar slippers.

  “I wanted to see your face when I told you I can kill you now, if I wanted to. Almost every one of us can. We’re close, so close to where I want us to be. But we agreed to do it together. All of us.”

  “You can’t do anything, you lying—”

  His sentence was cut off by a sharp crack to the mouth. The force of it turned his jaw. He felt Linda’s long red nails graze his cheek. His face stung in the wake of the palm, shocking him into silence.

  It could touch him. Physically touch him.

  “What should I break today? I can do fingers, maybe, or toes. Something little. Something delicious. I can fuck you up, you egotistical bitch.”

  It laughed, a wild woman’s cackle.

  And Hank realized then that he was in serious trouble.

  He took a chance and pushed it away, hard. His hands sank into the soft chill of it, and it felt like wet sand—like silt, really. Cold, a little slippery, and soft.

  But he’d caught it off-guard and an inch or so in, he felt something solid—the part of it, maybe, that had solidified enough to allow physical contact with him in the first place. And he managed to move it. It staggered back a foot or so before recovering and lunging forward, but it was enough time for him to slip away and down the stairs.

  He turned once near the bottom, surprised that it hadn’t caught up and tried to push him down already. At the top of the steps, it seethed, its bruised knuckles tight as it clenched its fists, restraint arresting its chase. Fury shone bright and wet in its one unswollen eye, its split lip bleeding over bared teeth and down its chin. It howled, not in fear or pain as Linda had done, not in frustration as his mother had. It was angry. It did not want to wait for the others; it wanted to kill him right now.

  Death in the Family came up behind it and took hold of its arm, gentle but commanding.

  “Get the others,” Death in the Family said to it. “It’s time.”

  ««—»»

  Hank went out to the garage and got the broom. The bristles stuck out in odd directions like bed-head, but the wood felt good and sturdy in his hands.

  The memories had to be solid to hurt him, and if they were solid, he could fight back. Let them try and kill him.

  He owned them. His death was not their call.

  Hank Swanson knew he wasn’t any better than anyone else. But he didn’t think he was pure evil. After all, people bought, sold, traded, stole and borrowed memories on which to build a sense of self all the time. In his retirement, he never gave much thought to a conscience. He’d always assumed that he let his wither and die. Years of exposure to murder, greed, rape, callousness, and stupidity did that to a person. They made a guy realize that evil is plainly and simply impure. Mussolini made the trains run on time, and all that. The Devil had been God’s favorite angel, according to Linda’s faith. So what was conscience but personal judgment? Who was he to judge anyone’s acts? A person “in good conscience” couldn't righteously hate something that wasn’t pure evil, and frankly, no one was an absolute either way, good or bad. He never thought of himself as being in good conscience, but he knew one thing. Shot in the Leg was wrong. He didn't hate those memories. Not that he felt no sense of justice; he’d always suspected a part of him kept the memories around to punish himself, in a way. But he simply didn’t feel that he could pass sentence anymore, even on himself. It wasn’t for him to decide. And his encounter with Abuse upstairs made him realize that extended to the memories, as well.

  They had no right to condemn him, either. He wanted to live.

  He made purposeful strides from the garage to the den, testing out the swing of the broom handle, listening for their approach: the whisper of feet that weren't really feet and the dull hum of their anger.

  In the center of the den, he waited. He heard the crash of broken glass from somewhere upstairs.

  He considered leaving, but it wouldn’t matter. Train station, hotel room, deep in the woods, on a sunny beach—they’d always know where to find him. They were part of him.

  He could reason with them. Suggest therapy. The thought got squashed fast, though. Therapy was like Neverland magic—one had to believe in it in order for it to work. And he didn’t. Never had. Even if he would consider it, therapy took years, if it worked at all. The memories were fed up now. They were out of patience. He didn’t have years.

  Hank heard them on the stairs. He actually heard their footsteps on the stairs. They meant to intimidate him with the physical thud of their footfalls.

  He swung the broom handle at the air in front of him. It made a satisfying whizz sound.

  They entered the den together, the four of them, their expressions blank. Their eyes watched him, solemn and somehow peaceful. This was going to be their death, too, and they were ready for it. They were just riding it out, seeing it to the end. Their desperate resolve frightened him.

  He swung the broom handle out in front of him. “Stay away from me.”

  They drifted closer, not quite tentative but cautious, like jaguars moving in on their prey. Each held a weapon.

  Death in the Family smiled. “That’s all we want, Hank.” It held a baseball bat. Where had it dug up that old thing? The force hadn’t had a company game in years.

  Nam held a rake from the shed. In Vietnamese, it said, “If you hold still, we’ll make it quick.”

  “Fuck you,” he responded in English. “Fuck all of you.”

  Abuse had a broken wine bottle by the neck. Hank kept a wary eye on it. The jagged end looked to him like a gaping, hungry mouth, salivating in the den light.

  He tried to think of good memories—something, anything to weaken their hold. But the bad memories had a much further head start. They’d grown strong over time—time he didn’t have to build up good ones.

  Still, he tried to think of a birthday party as a kid, something fun, something enjoyable. He remembered instead the fight his father had gotten into with his mother on his little brother’s birthday. How angry his father was when he left the house with Robbie. His mother’s baby. Her favorite.

  Robbie looked up to Hank. Robbie didn’t want to go river fishing with Dad. He was always scared when Dad got that look in his eyes and ground his teeth and clenched his fists like that. When he focused straight ahead and refused to look at anyone.

  His dad claimed he’d dozed off while they
were waiting for the fish to bite. Robbie had gone off by himself, slipped on a rock, and fallen into the water. Robbie couldn’t swim. He never liked the water. He never liked going anywhere alone with Dad. The splashing woke up his father, but not in time to reach Robbie. Or so he said. There were no fishing trips after that.

  Hank hadn’t been there, because he’d caught attitude that morning, and endured the smack-around and the grounding to get out of going on the trip. Hank had saved himself.

  No happy memories there. Death in the Family grinned at him, again seeming to read his thoughts.

  “Bastards.” He glared at them all, and made a half-arc with the broom handle. The memories snapped back out of range.

  Abuse lunged at him and he swung again, but the memory was quicker. It brought the broken glass down on his hand, and back up along the inside of his wrist, slicing it open. He dropped the broom handle. Where the bottle had bitten through his skin, tiny drops of his blood smeared the jagged teeth.

  He bent to pick up the broom with his left hand. He wouldn’t be able to swing it as well, especially with the pain pumping out bloody squirts down his stronger arm, but he’d make do. He looked up, and saw Death in the Family standing over him with the bat.

  He crab-scuttled back and stood on shaky legs. The jerky movement sent a light patter of blood across the carpet. They closed in on him again.

  Hank panicked. Good thoughts, try again, good thoughts…

  “Too late for that,” Shot in the Leg said. It clicked the safety off Hank’s gun.

  He tried to think of his wedding to Linda. It shimmered for a moment just at his periphery. He thought about the church, the cake, the champagne glasses, the dance, the way it pissed him off that his best man leered at Linda all night…

  And he remembered hitting her years later, over and over until she’d lost the baby. He didn’t know she was pregnant. He hadn’t been mad about that.

  It had been the dress, the silver one that he thought was too low-cut, the one that hugged her hips and drew attention to her legs, and oh God, how beautiful she’d looked. He wasn’t the only one who noticed. A lot of other men did. And she seemed to like that, the bitch. She liked other men looking at her. Didn't give a damn if he did—sure she could say she’d dressed nice for him, but he knew.

  The blood got all over the front of her dress. All over the comforter, too. She’d curled up on the bed, fetal and bleeding, and cried, too much in pain, too hurting to move. And he’d left her there because he couldn’t stand to see her bleeding and he couldn’t stand to hear her cry. Not like that. No satisfaction in her crying like that. She’d called the ambulance herself.

  Abuse held the remains of the broken bottle up by his neck, as if trying to eyeball the best angle to stick it in.

  He tried to think of something, anything, but each time he tried, they overwhelmed him. He remembered the village in Viet Nam with the little wide-eyed girl and her grandmother, and the American fire that fell across their bodies in an effort to route out the Viet Cong they were hiding. He remembered the punk on the convenience store floor, bleeding, scared, hurt, a kid again, the way his head blossomed red on the floor when Hank shot him. He remembered how his dad used to beat his mom and then leave and he would find her on the floor, curled up and crying, mumbling between tears about having to make dinner for the boys, both of them, even after Robbie had died. He remembered being terrified every night when his father came in his bedroom to say good night, terrified because it wasn’t such a stretch to imagine those big hands that liked to hit and punch also liking to push, or to hold a throat underwater until it filled up. And every time he did something bad, he imagined that his dad had given Robbie that same look, that same disappointment and barely simmering disgust, right before he drowned him.

  Fathers who cared that their youngest sons accidentally drowned didn’t say accident as if it was a blessing in disguise, and they didn’t share a look with their eldest sons that said You could be next, if you cross me.

  “Wait,” he muttered. “Wait.”

  Shot in the Leg trained the gun on his head. It would get its turn last. Finish him off, probably, after each of them had gotten in a good lick.

  Inside, he chuckled, but he knew it wasn’t really funny. None of them had opted to use the toaster.

  Death in the Family took a step forward. “Good-bye, Hank.”

  “Wait,” he said again, his gaze darting around the room for an exit, an opening between them through which he might escape. There was none.

  He swung at Nam blindly, but Abuse must have warned them. Nam blurred—everywhere but the wrist and the hand that held the rake—just seconds before Hank's broom handle passed through its chest, then grew sharper and more solid again in its wake.

  The first blow from its rake cracked against his skull. His head froze and the room in front of him wavered like heat off hot pavement. Then the pain thudded black spots across his eyes.

  The chilly draw of glass across his cheeks and forehead, the wet of blood running into blood, felt strangely right.

  What was his brother’s name?

  Death in the Family swung the baseball bat. Home run.

  Hank felt another sharp crack. He smelled perfume but he couldn’t remember whose it was. His eyes were painted black, and he slumped down onto something soft. Couch.

  He heard a crunch and felt something give above his left eye. He felt light. Soft, like the couch. Even the pain in his head felt fuzzy. Bad reception. Couldn’t see Kelly and Michael.

  He’d been in the army. When? Where? It didn’t matter.

  It all stopped with thunder against his head.

  ««—»»

  A few weeks later, Detective Cauley stood in the den of Hank Swanson’s house. Without the yellow tape, the swarming CSIs, the investigating officers, and the miscellaneous craning necks and curious frowns of neighbors and news people, Cauley could think alone, in the center of everything.

  His gaze wandered to the couch. The clean-up crew had gotten most of the blood out of the middle cushion, and all of it from the carpet. Cauley had known Hank for years. He’d gone to his retirement party, in fact, down at the station. He knew Hank had problems—lady trouble, mostly—but Cauley couldn’t imagine anything that would have driven the man to suicide. Hank just never seemed too troubled by anything.

  The medical examiner said that Hank’s body had been worked over pretty good—baseball bat, broken bottle, rake—before the shot to the head. But the only fingerprints on any of the weapons were Hank’s, and there was gunpowder residue on his fingers. Given several of the angles of the cuts, the ME had concluded that he’d done most if not all the other injuries to himself.

  Cauley could almost feel the sum total of Hank Swanson’s life swirling heavy around him in the room and throughout the house. The darkest of corners did not go unused there. The dusty shelves, the bare furnishings, the wear and tear of lonely routine—none of it was empty. In that house, Cauley still felt the man who’d lived there, or at least remnants of the man. The house hadn’t cooled yet. The spirit—or spirits—of his past hadn’t left.

  “Shame,” he muttered to himself. “He was one of our own.”

  Behind Detective Cauley, Dark Alley, “Accidental” Shooting, and First Homicide waited, pelting his back with black-eyed daggers of frustration. They felt strong in that house, stronger than they ever had before. They felt alive. And they felt angry.

  — | — | —

  THE VIKING PLAYS PATTY CAKE

  BRIAN KEENE

  The air burned their lungs, thick with smoke from the fires—and the stench of the dead.

  Chino pushed a branch out of the way and peered through the bushes. “What’s wrong with him?”

  “Don’t know.” King shrugged. “He ain’t a zombie. Looks more like a Viking.”

  They studied the giant on the park bench. He was impressive; early forties but in good shape, well over six feet tall, decked out in tattoos and earrings. His hands clutch
ed an M-1 Garand, the barrel still smoking from the round he’d just drilled into a zombie. The creature sprawled on the ground ten feet away—minus its head. The grass and pavement were littered with more bodies. An assortment of weapons lay scattered on the bench; two more rifles, four grenades, a dozen handguns, and boxes of ammunition for each. Next to those was a large backpack, filled with bottled water and food.

  The Viking sat like a statue, his eyes roving and watchful. Another zombie closed in on him from the right. The rifle roared and the creature’s head exploded.

  The Viking never left the bench. He brought down three more before the rest of the creatures fell back. From their vantage point, Chino and King heard one of the monsters ordering others to find guns. Several of them raced off.

  The Viking began muttering to himself. “Patty cake, patty cake…”

  Chino crouched back down. “The fuck is wrong with him? Why don’t he hide?”

  “I don’t know,” King said. “Maybe he’s crazy.”

  “Got an awful lot of firepower,” Chino observed. “We could use that shit.”

  “Word.”

  The Viking fired another shot. From far away, deep inside the city, more gunfire echoed.

  Chino’s fingers tightened around his .357. “That the Army guys shooting?”

  “Maybe,” King said. “They’ve been trying to take the city back. Held it up to the railroad tracks down on Eight Mile, but then they got overrun by them things.”