Red Dreams

by Dennis Etchison

  I was never angry at her. Hurt, yes. And confused. I would have married you myself, did you know that? But angry? I could never let myself feel that, and now it's part of another life, what happened then. One thing is certain: she can't speak for him, Iago in a crewneck sweater. She couldn't then and she can't now. He had a chance, once, to face me. He didn't. And now it's too late.

  "Forget it," he said. "Things happen. Even among friends. Especially among the best of friends."

  Her eyes lifted and glared, pinwheels in the centers.

  "You were always so damned forgiving. Do me a favor, Marty. Stop being so understanding! You know you hate him. Admit it."

  Was she daring him? He could not imagine why. What would be the point?

  "Christy, I meant what I said. I want to know that you're happy. That's all. If you don't believe that, then you never really knew me."

  "But I do know you. That's why, Marty. That's why I need you now."

  Her voice softened and the years disappeared like wildflowers over the hills. He remembered or imagined her, he did not know which, sprawled across his lap, curled against his chest. So many nights…

  "Marty."

  Then, just as unexpectedly, he was snapped back to the present as her tone tightened again in a rising glissando of barely-suppressed emotion.

  He began to doubt himself. Had it been his fault, then? Some incident he had conveniently forgotten all this time which had sent her packing and into Sherman's arms? Had he somehow misremembered for so long what happened that night? Was that possible?

  Marty. Only she had ever called him that. Perhaps no one else ever would, no matter how many more years were left to him.

  She moved her body until they were close enough to touch, and yet they were not touching. He was aware of the heat radiating from her skin, trembling the taut membrane of his clothing. The scent of her burned his nostrils. He forced himself to breathe.

  "Marty," she said. A single strand of hair, invisible as a spider's web, touched his cheek. "Do I have to beg? I need you.”

  She told him it was five minutes away. Whether it was more or less than that he did not notice.

  Behind them the Queen Mary's raked funnels, piped in red and black and towering like the truncated stacks of a nuclear power plant, gave the converted liner an illusion of movement, as if the ship had docked there only temporarily and was even now pulling up anchor to pace the car out of the old Naval Yard and around the misty intersections of the coastline.

  She looked at him once as a blurred refinery passed outside, but she was not seeing him. The plume of an endless fire licked the sky, the natural gas burn-off of a pipeline to the center of the earth. She was seeing through him, a translucent X-ray of his flesh and bones in position there against the glass where she had arranged for it to be.

  A sign with the words DE LUXE APARTMENTS swam into view.

  She turned past it, again, then fine-tuned the wheel at the end of a cul-de-sac behind the building and parked beneath power lines that crackled as if underwater.

  It was one of those courtyard blocks that dead-end at the ocean, where accelerated disrepair is rationalized as quaint because there is nowhere left to move once one has reached the edge of the continent.

  The headlights clicked off and the fog stopped swirling. A steady corona encircled a streetlamp like a halo around the moon. The pulse of the motor was replaced by the breathing of an unseen tide.

  She leaned across him. Against his will his fingers curved to receive her.

  "Wait," she said. "We're almost there. God, I've waited so long for this. You don't know."

  She retrieved her purse from behind the seat, put away her keys and swung out of the car.

  Their footsteps clacked on the sidewalk. A rusty tricycle like a twisted spider littered a shadowy yard. Somewhere television voices were muffled by flickering blue window shades. A cat cried from a hidden place with the voice of a human baby. They climbed steps to the second floor. The corroded screen door creaked with the sound of a fingernail on a blackboard. A deadbolt lock glistened under the scratchings of her key.

  "Here. We won't need the lights."

  She led him into darkness. A soft cushion met the backs of his legs.

  The room took on dim form. Gradually black oblongs of furniture appeared around him, only to dissolve when looked at too closely. Through a doorway, in the cavern of another room, the constant eye of a pilot flame burned coolly beneath a gas appliance of unknown shape.

  Seconds passed.

  Stray light began to creep in from the courtyard outside, so that the indistinct plane of slatted window blinds cast the suggestion of bars over his hands.

  He smelled an old perfume, and then she was gliding down and down next to him in the overstuffed chair. He heard the whisper of her stockings, her body as it moved in her clothing.

  "Christy…"

  She stopped his mouth with cold fingers. He saw the glint of her eyes as they focused past him.

  "What?" he asked.

  "Shh."

  He followed her gaze across the room.

  A thin strip of light glowed beneath a door at the end of a hallway.

  Was someone else here?

  Not him. Surely she wouldn't have—

  A child, then. Why not?

  Of course there would have been a child for them. It was only natural. Why hadn't he expected it?

  Still the thought took him by surprise, even unnerved him. How old? he wondered. How long after she left him had—?

  But no. He put that possibility from his mind.

  He touched her awkwardly, unsure of the moment.

  She moved her head from side to side, and her lips brushed his. They were, he thought, as cool and dry as desert flowers.

  "No," she said hoarsely. "Later. I promise. But first there's something you have to do."

  "Wait," he said, realizing where he was and what he was doing. "You've got me wrong. I didn't come here to…"

  "Didn't you?" She blinked at him. Was she mocking him? She was, he decided. She was.

  She rose, pulling him out of the chair. In spite of himself his body strained after her.

  An afterimage of her crossed the room.

  He heard a knocking.

  She was standing at the end of the hall, in front of the closed door.

  He followed as, on the other side, a shadow passed across the crack of light.

  Something moved. Something heavy.

  There was a jangling of keys, and the door opened.

  Martin was momentarily blinded by a flood of light. When his eyes were able to adjust, he saw the figure of a man before him.

  "Honey," she said, "I—I"ve brought someone home for you."

  The figure stood so stiffly for so long that Martin began to wonder if it might be a mannequin. Finally he detected movement in the eyes, tiny dots peering out of tunneled sockets. Then the shoulders slumped, the low bulk shuffling aside, the thinning spikes of uncombed hair vibrating in the flare of a dozen or more high-intensity light bulbs which were plugged into every corner of the small room.

  She fidgeted, her tone winding up like a violin string again.

  "You remember Jack, don't you?"

  Her eyes darted nervously between them. The irises were closed down to pinpoints. He could not help but notice now a fine webbing of lines etched around her eyes, radiating outward, imprinted there as if by years of squinting under a merciless sun. The pupils were washed out like a faded photograph.

  "Don't you, Sherm?" she said.

  Martin stared at her.

  What the hell is she doing? he thought. What kind of sick game is this?

  The man in the bedroom smoothed his hair and rubbed his soft hands over his white face, and straightened.

  Martin had no choice. He stepped over the threshold.

  There was a closeness in the air, a sickly-sweet incense that was a mixture of old clothes and unchanged bedding and slow currents of exhaled air circulating and reci
rculating above overheated lamps. The man made an effort to draw himself up to his full height, and Martin was overcome with disbelief.

  He remembered Sherman as several inches taller, his own height exactly, in fact. But it was as if the frame had contracted with time, the spine settling, the posture folding in on itself to support so much sagging flesh. Martin tried to believe his eyes.

  Often lately he had found himself wondering what a man his own age was supposed to look like. As a point of reference he had hoped to identify at least one passing on the streets. But he had never been sure.

  Now he knew.

  A shudder crept up his spine and over his scalp.

  And then something which had once seemed so important left him with an inner shrugging that was like a sea change, a great burden lifting and departing in a flash. His eyes stung.

  He glanced back and saw that Christy was no longer there.

  "Jack," said Sherman tightly. It was Sherman, all right. "Jack Martin. We have a lot to talk about. We must have. Sit down. Won't you. Jack."

  The son of a bitch, thought Martin. The poor, tired, worn-out, sorry son of a bitch. The years with her, years that were supposed to be mine, and look, just look what they've done for him.

  And, thinking that, so much hate went—somewhere. Anywhere. Receding into the white light, going, and gone. All at once he felt himself very old, like everyone else a victim of unforeseeable circumstance. Like the ones back on the hotel liner, the rest of his classmates. They were no longer so very strange, were they? And neither was this man. This old friend. It was true, wasn't it?

  It was. And there was nothing he could do about it.

  He sat.

  "I reckon you heard. About me and Chris getting married."

  "Yes," said Martin.

  Sherman lowered himself gingerly into a straight-backed chair.

  Martin noted that the room was nearly bare, with no concessions to comfort. Everything in sight had been painted in blacks and whites. There was a collection of FBI "wanted" posters framed plainly on the walls; he recognized the faces of a kidnapped heiress and a famous black radical teacher; another, that of a square-jawed young man with rimless glasses and a doomed, defiant expression, eluded him. Somewhere a simple electric clock ground through its endless cycle.

  "So. How the hell are you, Jack?"

  Spare me, he thought. Spare us both. And yet how else to get through this conversation?

  "Can't complain." Quickly Martin acted to forestall the inevitable personal histories. "Say, what's with all the lights?" It was a reasonable enough question. He really did want to know. "Not running scared of the dark in your old age, are you, man?"

  It was also at least half a joke, but that part of it didn't work.

  Sherman regarded him with detachment, jingling an oversized key ring. On a shelf behind him two miniature armies of historical foot soldiers collected dust on a board, eternally poised to relive some long-forgotten battle.

  "Yeah, well. Guess you could say I got my fill of dark places in the Corps, you know what I mean?"

  At some point down the years Martin had allowed a single bit of information about Sherman to enter his consciousness: that he had served in some branch of the armed forces. Enlisted, he seemed to recall.

  "Marines?" he asked.

  "Army Corps of Engineers. They had me doing field work in New Mexico. You know what a spelunker is, Jack?" He said it with a trace of pride.

  "I think so." Martin racked his brain. "You mean you made maps of caves, that sort of thing?"

  Sherman nodded. "Carlsbad was blacker'n the place where the Devil throws his old razor blades."

  "Ah." That explained it, then. After a fashion. He guessed. "So. What have you been up to since?"

  "Well, there was Chris to consider, of course." Of course. "I needed something with, you know, more of an opportunity for advancement."

  "Right."

  What's a former spelunker to do? wondered Martin. It seemed absurd. But then what did not? For the life of him he could not think of an appropriate follow-up occupation. Indeed he could not even imagine making a living by crawling around caves with a flashlight and a notebook.

  It takes all kinds, he thought. And, really, was it any more ridiculous than the way he himself had found? Yes, he thought, it takes all kinds. Any way is good enough to make what people mean when they point at something and call it a life. Who am I to judge?

  "So," Sherman was saying, "I went into a career in law enforcement."

  What else? thought Martin. Why not? For those who like that sort of thing, well, I'd have to say that's more or less just the sort of thing they would like. Right?

  "After I graduated from Texas A & M, a buddy of mine got me an in with the Department of Corrections. I had it all planned out. I was going to work my way up through the system—they start you out as a jailer no matter where you train—and then transfer back here. It was as good a place as any to start."

  "Beats Terminal Island, eh?" He didn't know what else to say.

  "Yeah. That was what I thought. Till those bastards got hold of me."

  Martin drew a blank.

  Sherman sat forward on his chair, his eyes bulging. "They took thirteen hostages."

  "They did?"

  "Yeah. When it was over, two of us got out alive."

  Martin shook his head. "I'm sorry," was all he could come up with. "I didn't know."

  I still don't, he thought. Some kind of prison riot, was that what Sherman was talking about? There had been the one at Attica, others. Quite a few others. He couldn't remember the names of the institutions. He didn't want to ask.

  "You know what those bastards did?"

  Martin held up his hand. "No, I don't, but…"

  "They did things to us." Sherman was shaking with rage. "Things that shouldn't happen to any man."

  He was not talking it out. He was reliving it.

  Martin wondered if it would ever be over for him. The answer was clear enough. It was written there in the man's twisted face.

  Martin wanted to help but for some reason resisted the impulse. Besides, he asked himself, what was there to do?

  "I'm not the man I was, Jack. Not the man she married. I'm just not the same. You know?"

  Martin nodded, embarrassed.

  "I wanted to go back in and get every one of them. With my bare hands. The State swore they'd do it for me. But they didn't do the job right."

  Martin squirmed. The heavy wooden chair was beginning to wear through the seat of his pants. It certainly had not been designed for extended use.

  "Things have changed a lot since then," Sherman was saying.

  Martin was developing a splitting headache. The small, severe room with its pounding lights was becoming oppressive. He wished for Christy to return and lead him out. He had done what she asked. He had faced Sherman, or had allowed Sherman to face him, for whatever it was worth.

  "I'll make it right again, Jack. What we're going to have is another kind of revolution in this country. And it starts right here."

  "Let it go, man," said Martin gently. His throat was dry. He swallowed with pain. "Life's too short."

  "Yeah." Sherman jerked his pale hand to indicate a neat stack of books next to the toy soldiers. "That's why I'm ready."

  Martin sat forward, eager for an excuse to shift his weight from the punishing seat. He shielded his eyes. The titles on the nearest spines shimmered into legibility. Crime and Punishment in America. A New Handbook of Hanging. History of the Guillotine. Executions USA.

  "They'll be out in a few years," said Sherman, "if they aren't already. I know they'll find me. They always have. And when they come for me this time, I'll be waiting."

  The nearest light bulb sang with current, electrifying the air.

  Martin became aware of a feeling he had suppressed all night. It was that tingling you begin to register when you know something is terribly wrong but you don't quite know what it is yet. It was here, not only inside him but
all around him, prickling his legs like pins and needles. That he could not name it made it no less real. He could ignore it no longer.

  He saw the other man as if for the first time.

  Martin flexed his legs and started out of the chair.

  The pale man was on his feet. In one quick step he was standing over Martin.

  He reached around the chair.

  Martin looked down.

  A strap dropped from under the armrest and buckled over his wrist, cinching it to the chair. First one wrist, then the other. He watched. It might have been happening to someone else.

  Sherman swayed over him, his breath sour, light coruscating through the filaments of his hair. Then he doubled over in a bowing motion. Martin heard the ringing of another buckle, another as straps closed over his ankles.

  "What…?" he began.

  "You want to know what this is, Jack? Look over there."

  The framed face of the sullen young man wavered on the wall alongside the other posters. The thick bifocals, the defiant sneer, the 'fifties haircut…

  "That," said Sherman, "is the Bantam Red Head himself. Old Dead Eye, they called him. One of the worst bastards who ever lived. He blew away eleven people before they got him. But they got him good, didn't they? June twenty-fifth, nineteen-fifty-nine, the basement of the Nebraska State Penitentiary. It was painted white. Just for him. Charlie Starkweather. You've heard the name?"

  Martin listened to Sherman's flat, expressionless voice as the blood pounded in his ears.

  "And this is what they used. That buddy of mine, he let me know when they retired it. Had it shipped out piece by piece, just for me." Sherman patted the high backrest proudly. "Charlie Starkweather's chair. The same one, by God. And now it's mine."

  Martin felt himself trapped in a nightmare from which he could not awaken.

  "Why?"

  Sherman's face split in a tortured smile. "Twenty-two hundred volts, that's why. I had to wire this room special. Still, if I don't turn off these lights, every fuse in the building will blow."

  He wagged his head with satisfaction.

  "I read everything there is to know about it. First the body turns red, then black. If you leave it on long enough. The brain cooks hard as an egg and the blood burns down to charcoal. Never fails. It never has yet, and they used it twelve times. Fast and clean, you know. It does the job right—takes care of a lot of paying back. In less than sixty seconds."