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

by Joe R. Lansdale

  He was uneasy now. No raccoon was strong enough to do this. He didn’t know many men who could do it without a crowbar. This was getting out of hand. He suddenly wanted to get downstairs and bolt the attic door behind him. He’d call a professional exterminator as soon as they got back from Orlando.

  He spun about, sure that something had moved behind him, but all was still, all was dark but for the pool of light under the bulb. Yet…

  Quickly now, he headed back toward the light, toward the ladder, toward the empty traps. As he sidled along, he checked in the corners and along the eaves one last time, and wondered how and why the traps had been sprung. He saw nothing. Whatever it was, if it had come in, it wasn’t here anymore. Maybe the attic light had scared it off. If that was the case, he’d leave the light on all night. All week.

  His big mistake was looking for it along the floor.

  It got him as he came around the heating unit. He saw a flash of movement as it swung down from the rafters—big as a rottweiler, brown scruffy fur, a face that was all mouth with huge countless teeth, four clawed arms extended toward him as it held onto the beams above with still two more limbs—and that was all. It engulfed his head and lifted him off the floor in one sweeping motion. For a few spasming seconds his fingers tore futilely at its matted fur and his legs kicked and writhed silently in the air. As life and consciousness fled that foul smothering unbearable agony, he sensed the bottomless pit of its hunger and thought helplessly of the open attic door, of the ladder going down, and of Gloria and the twins sleeping below.

  — | — | —

  SEARCHING

  MONICA J. O’ROURKE

  He’s spent years searching for me. Traveling through deserts rife with expansive waves of heat, through rivers of sand that stretch into the sky further than the eye can see. His thirst is great yet he never stops, never gives up. Longing for shade doesn’t slow him. He swims vast oceans, endures fierce waves and brutal winds, his face whipped by icy, salty water, his eyes stinging.

  I thought I saw him the other day. I have his eyes: chocolate brown, with flecks of green. We have the same chin, the same mouth. I would easily recognize him. I know I would. It will be like looking at my own reflection. Playing checkers will be his favorite game. He’ll like chamomile. One spoon of sugar and no milk, just like how I drink mine, like I’m grown up. He’ll want to play dolls, but I don’t care for dolls. They’re silly. I like my stuffed bears and cats. They look like the real thing, and sometimes I imagine they really are real, and I talk to them and read Mercer Mayer books to them until they fall asleep. I’m too big for such books now, but I still read them out loud, because they enjoy it. Books left over from when I was a little girl, not big like I am now.

  Years and years he’s spent driving across the country searching for me. I can’t remember how he lost track in the first place. Maybe I once knew and forgot. He drives and drives for hours and days at a time, calling out my name, stopping people in the street to show them my picture. He has my photo because he imagined what I would look like and he created it, because he can do anything he wants. He’s like a magician, only better, because he’s real.

  I lie on my bed with my feet up on the wall and my head hanging off the edge. It makes the blood rush to my brain and makes my ears ring. Looking at my room upside down makes me giggle. My stuffed animals hang from shelves from the bottoms of their feet. My board games are suspended in midair, defying gravity. The tiny hotels and houses and Monopoly money never fall to the floor.

  Mom yells at me. “Get your dirty socks off the wall.” She picks up my underwear and throws it in the hamper. “Young lady, you can be such a slob.” I’m not a slob. I’m just lazy. When I’m sure she isn’t looking I stick my tongue out at her.

  “I have to write a paper for science,” I tell her as she flits around my room like a warm breeze. “Make a poster too.”

  “Of what?”

  “Our solar system.”

  “That’s nice,” she says on her way out the door, but I don’t think she really thinks it’s nice. I don’t think she cares much about it at all.

  He’s still looking. I can tell. He’s looked in every toy store because he thinks that’s where all kids hang out. But I like books. And suddenly he thinks of that, because he likes books. He suddenly realizes we’re so much alike his search for me grows even stronger. In fact, he vehemently searches for me. (Vehemently: eagerly, passionately. This is today’s word in my word-a-day calendar.)

  Mom calls me for dinner and I bring my science book with me.

  “Look,” I say, opening to page fifty-three. “This is our solar system.” I hold up the book so she can see.

  “Put that away during dinner.” She scoops macaroni and cheese onto my plate.

  I place the book on my lap. “Where’s Dad?”

  “He’s coming.” She calls his name again and I hear him getting up from the sofa, the fake leather making a noise like fingers rubbing a balloon. It also sounds like farting sometimes, and that cracks me up. In the summertime when it’s hot and no one remembers to turn on the air, my legs stick to the sofa cushions and I have to peel them off.

  Dad sits and starts eating. We’re having meatloaf, which I don’t like.

  When he finds me, we’re going to have duck every night for dinner. I’ve never had duck before, and I don’t even know if I’ll like it, but it sounds very elegant and it’s the kind of food I’m sure he eats. Duck, and shrimp cocktail. And oysters. Those are grown-up foods and we’ll eat them every night.

  “I have to do a report, Dad.”

  He looks at Mom. “Gas prices are going up. Again.”

  “So?” She sits down and starts eating her dinner.

  “What? So? So it’s insane.”

  “We don’t even have a car.” She eats her green beans before anything else. Mom always eats her vegetables first.

  “Dad?”

  He shoves food into his mouth and talks anyway. “That doesn’t bother you?”

  Mom shakes her head. “We’ve got our own problems. No need to worry about the cost of gas on top of everything else.”

  “Daa-aad, look. Lookit this. Da-ad!”

  He glances over his shoulder, and even though he’s looking at me, he’s talking to Mom. “Cost of gas goes up, then taxes go up, it never ends.”

  Mom laughs and says, “Oh yeah?” and eats another forkful of green beans.

  “Dad?” I say quietly, holding up my textbook, staring at the photographs of the galaxy.

  After dinner Dad sits on the sofa and Mom washes dishes, so I sit on the sofa too. I don’t want to have to dry but she’ll probably yell for me to do it anyway.

  I hold up my science book and open it to page fifty-three. “Lookit,” I say, laying it across his lap, running my fingers over the glossy picture. “Daddy? See? I have to do a report.”

  He’s staring ahead, at the television. The news is on. I hate the news.

  “Dad?” I wait for an answer. “Dad?” I stare up at him. “Dad? Daddy?”

  “Can’t you see I’m busy?” he yells, knocking the book off his lap. It tumbles to the floor. He makes a sighing noise and goes back to staring at the television.

  I pick up the book and bring it to my bedroom.

  Later in my room, I start my assignment. “The Solar System, by Karen Brown. Our solar system has eight planets. We used to have nine but now it’s only eight. One planet that’s not a planet no more is Pluto, and they named that one after a dog. The other eight planets are—” I copy the names of the planets. I copy some other stuff too. I draw a picture that looks like the one in the book.

  Sometimes I pretend he stops watching the news and comes in to see me and throws his arms around me and tells me how much he loves me. But that doesn’t happen.

  Sometimes I wonder if he’s any closer. It’s taking him so long to find me. My real father. The one who looks like me, talks like me, loves books the way I do. The father who would never ignore me to watch TV.r />
  There must be a way for me to send him a signal, to let him know when he’s close. One time I asked Mom who my real father is and she looked at me funny and asked me what I was talking about. So maybe she doesn’t know. Maybe she thinks the man who lives with us is my real father. Maybe they switched places one night, and this stranger took my father’s place. Because he can’t be. He can’t be my real father.

  He just can’t.

  My real father is searching for me. He walks or runs when he can’t find a car or a plane. Sometimes he even hitchhikes, because he’ll never give up. He knows he’ll find me if he just keeps looking. I know my science projects will be fantastic when he helps, because he’s really good at stuff like that. He’s a scientist, and a doctor (brain surgeon), and even a lawyer. An actor too, I’ll bet. He searches, and I’m looking too. Like the other day, I saw a man who looked like me. That had been so close. I know it’s going to happen. I just have to be patient. And when my real dad finds me, it’ll be great.

  Everything will be perfect then.

  — | — | —

  FIRE

  ELIZABETH MASSIE

  Mac heard the familiar rumble outside his apartment and turned from the stove, shoved the heels of his hands against the wheels, and coasted to the window. Pushing back the thin, sun-bleached curtains, he stared down at the street three floors below where the silver Mercedes had come to a stop, the front right wheel on the curb, the engine still running and some indecipherable song pounding a bone-rattling bass through its glistening sides, making the car appear to be breathing.

  A few moments later the engine was cut. The music died. Another moment and two people climbed from the front—one, the driver, was a huge, muscular man in an expensive dark suit, black tie, felt fedora tipped forward, and polished, boat-sized shoes. He walked around the front of the car with a decided swagger, kicking his feet out as if knocking back invisible dogs, until he reached the passenger who was standing on the sidewalk, arms crossed, chin tipped up in feigned confidence, light brown hair brushing her shoulders. Even at this distance, Mac could see the new wounds on her face, a prominent bruise to the right eye, a gash on her chin. The man put his arm around her shoulder and turned her toward the apartment building. The large gold ring on his finger matched the size of the bruise on her face.

  As they vanished beneath the apartment’s front awning, Mac turned back toward the kitchen. The water was hissing, almost ready for the pasta. If nothing else, Mac was a whiz with foods. A former chef who had lost his job following his accident, he continued to read about cooking online and study cookbooks lent him by his crusty yet generous landlady Alva Ricardo. He ordered a wide variety of foodstuffs over the phone from the local Korean store, Greek store, Japanese store, Pakistani and Indian store. What was delivered in cardboard boxes once a week offered a unique combination of aromatic, globally-integrated culinary possibilities. When Alva was free for an evening, Mac invited her to dinner. Sometimes Alva brought her daughter, Elena and her six-year-old granddaughter, Bunny. They would sit about the battered yellow 1960’s-era kitchen table upon the wobbly kitchen chairs, but with the paper towels folded just so, and the candles lit and flickering, with the fragrances of the food practically pushing the lids from the pans and baking dishes, the evening became one of temporary elegance and grace. Even Elena, an overweight and naturally gruff young woman, seemed to absorb a bit of polish, and sat up straighter and spoke in a more civil tone when dining at Mac’s. One evening, she’d even risen to the occasion and complimented Mac and his cooking.

  “You pretty damn good with this stuff, you know,” Elena had said as she scooped up another serving spoon full of kha’geena and shook it off onto her plate. “You really should get a job in a restaurant. Or cook here and sell carry-out. No, probably not. Got to have a license, don’t you? But I like your food, much better than what my Mama used to cook when I lived at home. That was some nasty shit. I mean stuff. Sorry.”

  “You’re livin’ at home again, don’t you forget,” said Alva, her lips pressed and thin.

  “Just temporary ‘til I find another place,” said Elena. “But anyway,” she turned back to Mac, “you got a good thing goin’ here. It’s a shame you don’t cook for hardly nobody but yourself. And you ain’t a half-bad lookin’ man, beside you not having no legs and all.”

  Bunny, who’d been sitting silently, chewing on the sesame seeded roll her grandmother had buttered for her, looked around the table at Mac’s lap and the emptiness beneath it. When they’d first met, Bunny had been clearly disturbed and confused by his physical appearance, but with time she had come around to accept that the man in the chair was a real person, that he didn’t bite or drool, and that he was nice to kids.

  Alva and her family weren’t the only ones Mac cooked for, though. He also fixed meals every so often for his next-door apartment neighbor, Lisa Sterling, though he had no idea if she’d ever eaten what he’d left by her door. She never returned the dishes. Lisa was young, pretty, and shy, a waitress by trade and a drug dealer’s girlfriend by happenstance.

  The two had met through the wall five months earlier, when Mac had moved into the building. He’d wanted a first floor, but Alva only had the one on the third floor available. She’d given him a cut rate on the apartment, promising that as soon as a first floor opened up, it was his. Mac had little choice but to take the offer. His sole means of income—his computer—had been stolen from his previous flat, as had his television, stereo system, cell phone, and cash. Mac had fought the intruders as best he could but the boys, fourteen years of age at the oldest, had pistol whipped him out of his chair and left him dazed and bleeding on the braided rug. The landlord had been pissed and had kicked Mac out as a proven liability.

  “They see you and know they got their easy mark,” he’d said, one hand on the door, the other scratching his chest beneath his t-shirt. “Fuckin’ easy pickin’. You’re out of here, this time tomorrow.”

  Mac didn’t have the money to fight the eviction, so he gathered up what was left, moved into a shelter for a couple weeks and then landed the vacancy in Alva’s building. He bought a used laptop with what remained on his credit card, but by the time he had his “Mac’s Cheap Yet Exotic Cooking” site up and running again (featuring the popular “Recipe a Day” and “Ask Mac” column), it had been nearly a month, and he’d lost a number of subscribers. Only a few remained.

  The second evening after moving to Alva’s building, Mac had heard someone crying through the wall. He’d listened, then knocked tentatively. He knocked again and spoke into the plaster, “Are you okay?”

  A soft voice had replied, “Yeah, I’m okay,” though he could tell that wasn’t true by the raggedness of the sobs. He began to watch through the window and the peek hole in his front door to see who was so sad and scared, and thus came to know his neighbor, Lisa. Once he’d wheeled out of his apartment to her door but she refused to answer. He could tell she was watching him through her own peek hole, could hear her voice pressed up against the door. “I can’t take the chance of Darien knowing I was talking to any man but him.”

  And so Mac’s life consisted of re-establishing himself on the Internet, cooking, reading, and waiting for Lisa to be alone so he could talk to her through the wall.

  Lisa and Darien could be heard on the stairs now, moving up to the third floor. The man sauntered even when there was no one to see but his girlfriend, his voice affecting a deep tone that was more growl than language. They made it to the landing. Mac wheeled to his door, pushed himself up until his eye was at the peek hole, and gazed at the couple in the tainted light of the overhead bulb.

  Darien was all scars and sneers, unpredictable, as likely to kiss and snuggle Lisa as to punch her for saying something wrong, for moving wrong or standing wrong. This afternoon, Darien was in a particularly sunny mood. He spun Lisa around, rubbed her breasts through her pink knit top, then shoved his hand down the front of her tightly fitting jeans, wiggling his hand and his hips si
multaneously, leaning in to draw his tongue across the bruise beneath her eye.

  “Babe,” he snarled with a savage grin, “you just wait for me, you hear? I’ll come back sometime tonight. You be waitin’ for your daddy, you be ready.”

  “I will, Darien.”

  “Call me Daddy, Babe. I like it you call me that.”

  “Daddy.”

  “You keep yourself hot and wet for me.”

  “I will. Daddy.”

  “You damn right you will.” Darien laughed and shoved his hand even deeper. Lisa threw back her head and squeezed her eyes shut. Then the dealer withdrew his hand and strolled down the steps. Lisa clung to the railing, her head dropped toward the floor, then moved out of Mac’s sight to her own door. Mac could hear her key in the lock, the door creaking open then slapping shut. He waited a good sixty seconds before going over to their adjoining wall and rapping lightly.

  After a few moments, Lisa rapped back. Then, her muffled voice said, “Hey, there.”

  “You okay?”

  “Sure, Mac. How about you?”

  “Okay.”

  “Good.”

  “You have plans for supper?”

  “What?” It sounded as though she were shedding her clothes, breathing irregularly as she peeled off the tight jeans and the pink top.

  “Supper? I could bring something over.”

  “I’m not very hungry, Mac.”

  “I’ve got freshly made pasta. Tomatoes, peppers, onions, a little garlic. It’s almost ready. I think it’s some of the best I’ve ever made.”

  Another pause. “No, thanks.”

  “You have to eat something.”

  “I’m really tired. But thanks.”

  “You can reheat it later.”

  “Well.”

  “All right?”

  “Okay. All right.”

  “I’ll bring it over, put it by your door in just a little bit, then.”