“Sleep, dude!” he says.
We head in separate directions—he most likely toward wine, women, and song, and me to Buy the Book, and then home. Buy the Book is one of very few bookstores on the North Shore, and one of even fewer privately owned ones dealing in new and used titles, the kind of store I prefer to support. I stop in like clockwork on Fridays to browse the newly received used titles, and to pick up whichever of my pre-orders have come in. But the way I am feeling, I won’t be browsing tonight.
“Hey, Sparky!” Tom greets from his station behind the counter, which is a cityscape of piled books that looks ready to cascade should he risk adding anything more.
Tom Bossey is the only person who consistently calls me Sparky, my nickname for obvious reasons. Henry has told me on a few occasions to beware of people who give other people nicknames, but Tom seems harmless enough. Tom started at Buy the Book eight or so months ago. He’s fiftyish but appears older. Large and untoned, he looks soft, like someone who spends far too much time sitting and snacking. His ovoid head is devoid of hair aside from scant eyebrows, and nests into his shoulders as if he has no neck. As a whole, he looks quite like an egg. As you can imagine, he is not an attractive man, but he is amiable and knows his books. Seeing me up close he scrunches his nose in distaste and it dramatically transforms his face.
“Whoa, you look like shit!” he says, and then hunches his shoulders, realizing he has cussed aloud. A young woman chuckles from a couple of rows away. He cups a hand near his mouth and whispers, “I hope she was worth it.”
The woman comes to the head of the aisle, looks at me, smiles coyly, and returns to browsing. She is bookish and pretty, but, as I am wont to do, I dismiss her, assuming she is judging me or is displeased by what she sees.
“Hi, Tom,” I say, and smile apologetically. “Yeah, I’ve been under the weather lately. Won’t be doing much in the way of shopping today, but I’ll pick up my orders.”
“Can’t say I blame you,” he says. He turns laboriously in his chair to scan the towering stacks on the shelf behind him. “Three this week. New titles from Jonathan Kellerman, Tawni O’Dell, and that Christopher Golden fellow who lives in town.”
He deftly slips the books from the stack without spilling the works and places them on the counter. I pull four twenties from my wallet and lay them on the counter as Tom rings it up.
“Oh!” he says, recalling something. He stands and shuffles to a nearby shelf, removes a book titled The Hidden Meaning of Dreams, and tosses it on the counter. “This just came in. Thought it might interest you since you asked about dream books last week.”
“Thanks! How much?” I ask.
“On the house,” he says. “Our thank you for sticking with us and not buying online for a fraction of the cost.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it,” I say, although I have. “You sure?”
“Yes. Cost us nothing. It came from a box of books an old lady gave us. Get out of here. Go home, pop a couple Nytol, and get some sleep.”
I arrive home around 5:30, put a frozen pizza in the oven, and stare uncomprehendingly at the television until the smoke detector protests. I throw the charred gluten Frisbee into the trash and settle for three Kraft singles, chased with a glass of water and two Sominex tablets from a travel pack I purchased from a convenience market.
I embark on a drawn-out session of page flipping through The Hidden Meaning of Dreams, trying to decode my nightmares until my eyes burn, and my head-drops justify the threat of whiplash. I remove myself to my bedroom, strip, and slip between my grimy sheets, too drowsy to let the smell bother me. I ask a short, silent prayer that the Sominex will help me sleep soundly and nightmare free.
It doesn’t work. I don’t fall asleep…I plummet into it, entering my night-world headlong.
Utter darkness.
Beneath me the surface is unforgiving, cold concrete. The space is tight, box-like, and sloped overhead … a staircase. It reeks of urine and waste. I can feel the dampness of it on the floor. There is no escaping from it. I sit with my back against a wall, my legs extended. My foot is touching another bare foot. A child’s. A third child sidles a little closer to me until our shoulders touch.
A door slams somewhere distant above us and we all gasp in unison. Footsteps traverse overhead, concussing like kettledrums. The boy closest to me starts crying, a soft mewling that makes me feel sorry for him, but also irritates me. We are all boys, this I know for some unknown reason.
Something small and furry skitters across the floor, over our legs and away, causing the boy to mewl louder.
Kenny…his name is Kenny, and the other one is Paul. We had disclosed this earlier through whispers. Kenny is the newest here, then me, and then Paul. Paul doesn’t cry anymore. Glen was here the longest, but he isn’t here anymore. I hope he got away. Like Paul, Glen didn’t cry either.
Above us thunders the cannon-shot pounding of feet as something huge descends the stairs, and then it becomes comparatively silent as they contact the concrete floor. Metal clacks, clicks, bullwhip loud, and the three of us retreat, afraid of the light we know will come.
Then it comes—a blinding portent—and I, too, cry.
An arm, freakishly long and thick, reaches in, piercing the intense light. The pale skin is matted with bushy dark hair and riddled with a host of dime-sized scars, long healed. It swipes the air, missing us, then returns. It grasps my hair and pulls me through the opening into a dimly lit basement, crowded with cast-off domestic items from an earlier generation. It is a man, a fat shadow-giant; he blocks the brilliance of the light bulb, leaving him featureless in shadows. I fight with my thin arms and try to escape on adolescent legs, to no benefit. Metal clacks and clicks again; a lock engages. I am dragged up the stairs, down a hallway, into a bathroom.
I see him: a man, but a hallucination, a creature of nightmares. He is made anonymous by a full beard and mustache, copious amounts of hair, tangled and falling to his shoulders.
“You stink,” he says, and grimaces with distaste.
He looks feral, a sneering wolf that terrifies me and I’m not certain he won’t attack me, sink his teeth in, and rend pieces of flesh from me. He orders me to remove my shorts and tee shirt; I know better than to contend. He twists the shower faucet, pushes me inside, and orders me to wash. The water is frigid and I turn from him and stare at the missing tiles and the creases of thick, black mold.
He throws a towel at me and pushes me into a cluttered bedroom, a hoarder’s bedroom, where he makes me do hideous and painful things. I close my eyes to hide from him and his sickly slug-like skin, all that black hair and countless dime-sized scars…rings upon rings…that ring and ring like a phone rings…
I shove the covers off and scramble out of bed, yelling my anguish and disgust. I am soiled by the imagery of the dream. I want to vomit. I need to shower, to cleanse myself of such filth. I can’t breathe.
My cell phone rings again and the image of the little circles return. Cigar burns, my mind reasons, and I know it’s true. I grab my cell phone from my nightstand, sending my glasses to the floor and nearly toppling the lamp.
“Hello!” I gasp, still breathless, still wanting to vomit.
“Bonjour, amigo! You never called last night, dickhead!” says Steve in his too-loud and buoyant voice.
“Yeah. Parlez-vous fuck you,” I croak in return. I weave my way around the bed and into the bathroom, feeling my bladder will fail. I look at my bathtub, the tiled wall, and although it’s clean—well, bachelor clean—I feel my gorge rise.
“You still sleeping, man? It’s past noon!”
“Bullshit,” I say, but look at the face of my cell phone. He’s right. I sit on the throne, too unsteady to risk misfiring.
“Kicked the insomnia thing, it seems.”
“Maybe, but the nightmares went into hyperdrive.”
“Really? That sucks. Come for dinner today. It’s at six, but come at four, or earlier, I don’t give a shit.”
�
�I…”
“Have no choice in the matter, asshole,” he interrupts. “Becky’s making your favorite, American chop suey.”
I think to myself, I hate American chop suey and he knows that.
“Fucking with you,” he says. “Steaks, fried zucchini, summer squash, and copious amounts of beer.”
At dinner with Steve and Becky is where I get my first inkling of why I’m having the nightmares. Emily is here, too. Steve insists it is totally innocent and unplanned. I believe him. She is Becky’s best friend.
I explain the dream in detail and receive a lot of speculation in return, most of which I’d rather not consider, but Becky makes a comment, highlighting a single word that changes my approach.
“Trigger,” she says. “Something must have triggered you to initiate all these nightmares. Do you remember anything happening, or is there something in the dream that triggers you?”
“Everything,” I say, but the light, the cigar burns, and that wolfish sneer stand out.
Emily notices my discomfort and asks, “What is it? Do you think it happened to you?” I sense her concern and I’m torn between appreciation and irritation. “Do you remember something?”
“Trigger,” Becky says knowingly.
“That would cause depression,” Steve offers. I glare at him.
I shake my head in denial as they try to delve deeper into my darkness. I tell them I recognized nothing until they finally dismiss it, but I do remember something. I’m not certain what or who, but it lingers with me like a bee sting, burning at my conscience until it slowly emerges…a possibility.
I dismiss myself, proclaiming exhaustion, but my senses are reeling. I’m going to look for cigar burns and a sneer I think I’ve recently seen. We exchange hugs, Steve, Becky, and then Emily, who quietly whispers to me, “I miss you.”
I smile at her, not sure how to respond, feeling inadequate because of it…feeling helpless and like an asshole.
I open the door and carry a box into Buy the Book.
“Hey, Sparky,” Tom says from his post behind the counter.
“Thirty or so hardcovers for credit,” I say, and set the box in front of him.
“Any more credit, you’ll own the store,” he says, pulling the box to him.
The store policy is, return credit can only be applied to used titles. I buy primarily new unless something rare or unusual shows up. My credit passed the eyebrow-raising point a couple years earlier. I know I’ll never use it but consider it support for the small business.
“Maybe you should have taken the dream book off,” I say, and Tom chuckles.
“Did it help you any?”
“Not yet. Had nightmares again last night, but I was too tired to read it.”
He lifts a stack of books from the box and sets them on the counter. Despite the summer heat, Tom is wearing a long-sleeve dress shirt, fastened one button short of his neck. Has he always worn long sleeves? I wonder. I never had reason to consider it before.
I wander down the fiction aisle. “Any old Harry Crews come in?” I ask, watching Tom through the gaps in the shelves.
“Doubt it. Not on my watch. Just the standard crap,” he says.
“Did you just refer to Harry Crews’ literature as crap?” I ask, trying to sound playful. I pull a random title from the shelf and pretend to read the back cover.
“I suppose I did,” he says.
He reaches into the box and recoils, his face crumpling in disgust. It’s difficult to tell with his lack of any hair, but to me the sneer looks savage, quite possibly wolfish, quite possibly the sneer of my nightmares…but maybe not.
“There’s something dead in here,” he says, stepping back from the box.
I walk to the counter, place the novel down, and look inside the box. I feign surprise at the offending field mouse, although I had put it in the box that morning.
“Well look at that,” I say, picking up the minuscule creature by the tail. “No credit for this?”
“I’d say not,” Tom says, cowering as I toss it into the trash barrel behind the counter.
“Is that a new Howard Schatz?” I ask, pointing to a tall book on the top row of the orders shelf behind Tom. I pray that it’s an art book. It looks like one, and it is the only book on which I can read the author’s name clearly.
“You’re into photography?” Tom asks.
“Schatz’s photography,” I say. “Can I have a look?”
“Sure, but it’s a customer’s copy.” Tom turns and reaches for the book and I have to calm my reaction when his shirt cuff drops back enough to expose a set of dime-sized burn marks.
(Trigger)
Tom notices, too, and adjusts his sleeve, but he also sees the change in my expression.
“What’s wrong,” he asks cautiously, slowly setting the large book on the counter between us.
Think fast…think fast.
“Were you a welder?” I ask. “My dad was a welder and he had similar marks on his arms.” It’s a bold lie, but not unfounded; I had seen similar marks on welders.
He watches me and I can almost hear the thoughts and questions shuffling about inside his head. “Yeah,” he says, studying me. “Thirteen years at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard.” I can tell he is lying, too.
“Wow, that must be painful,” I say, thinking, pamper his ego. “My dad never complained, either, but I can’t see how that didn’t hurt. You have to be pretty tough.”
Tom watches me for a moment and then smiles, buying my story. “Won’t say I enjoyed it,” he says less suspiciously, but I can tell he’s still wary.
He totals my credit as I skim through the Schatz book. The work is impressive. I return the book to him and he points at the novel I had set on the counter.
“You want that?” he asks and I nod, having no idea what it is. “Use credit?” I nod again.
I can feel his eyes burning into my back as I leave the store, and it is all I can do not to run. I climb into my car, my mind reeling and my nerves afire; any feelings of exhaustion are obliterated. It’s surreal…unreal. The probability that he is the man in my nightmares is distressing, but not nearly as distressing as the possibility that the nightmares might be due to something that really happened, some repressed memories. I recall the pasty, slug-like blotted skin touching me in the dreams as he forces me to do the unspeakable.
I feel nauseated. I drive to a crowded parking lot at a strip mall that is cattycorner to the bookstore. I park near a hedge in case the need to purge becomes overwhelming. I want to go home and overdose on Paxil and sink into a comfortable pillow of numb detachment, but I stay. I want to know the truth, need the truth, but have no idea how to get it.
I watch Tom’s cumbersome form slouched behind the counter—for how long, I’m not sure. My dash clock reads 9:02 p.m. when the bookstore lights go out, shaking me from my stupor. Five minutes later Tom emerges, locks the door, and then walks to his car. He struggles into the old Honda Accent, which sinks dramatically beneath his girth. All is still and I wait until the lights flare and the car backs from the curb. The driver-side taillight is dimmer than the other and it occurs to me this would make following him easy. So I do. Through downtown Haverhill, onto Route 97, and clear into Salem, New Hampshire. I follow, staying well back. He drives a couple miles onto Lawrence Road until he slows and turns left near the wetlands. I drive slowly past the barely detectable dirt path Tom had turned onto and look for somewhere close but unobvious to park. The front lot of a neighboring auto junkyard offers me exactly that.
I am terrified by what I’m contemplating.
Would he even live in the same house, if it is truly him? I wonder.
What about the hair? my inner coward asks.
He shaved his head, dipshit! my inner rebel responds. It’s called a disguise.
As is typical of me, I start to doubt myself and consider driving home, but I look in the rearview at my tired eyes and I fight the urge. The burns, the sneer, it’s too much for simple coincidence
. I need to know.
I leave the car and enter the dirt road, a dual rutted path that extends into tree-shrouded darkness. In the oppressive heat of the night, the swamp smell is acrid and cloying and within seconds, swarms of mosquitoes discover me and start to feast. I keep to the edge of the path, ready to duck into the trees at any hint of movement. In the near distance I can make out the lighted windows of a house, and in the driveway, I see Tom’s Honda.
Once I’m close enough, the old New England saltbox comes into view. Its details are muted in the moonless night, but it is white and weatherworn, years, maybe decades, in need of new paint.
I circle around the left side of the house, furtive, staying nearer the path…and the mosquito-infested water. As I approach the back yard, the shape of a shed emerges, decrepit and sagging under the weight of years and neglect, and likewise, the drooping roof on the back porch.
A sense of déjà vu assails me. I freeze and stare.
The porch…
(Trigger)
Pillars formed of mortar and baseball-sized stones support the porch and roof, rising up from the ground. Behind them, under the porch, a crawlspace cloaked in blackness, a child’s face peers out from beneath.
The yard overflows with blazing light and I freeze, unaware that I have been walking toward the house. Sensitive to my vulnerability, I dash ten yards to hide behind a large oak. I wait, expecting the worst, but realize that a pair of motion-sensor flood lamps has fooled me.
“Who’s out there?” Tom’s voice rings out from the direction of the back door.
I wait, unmoving until the lights die, and a moment later, I hear the sound of the closing door. I back away from the tree, cautious, trying to keep it between the motion sensors and me. I see the porch again, the dark crawlspace beneath, and I remember…
A Variable Darkness: 13 Tales Page 24
