American Supernatural Tales (Penguin Horror)

by S T Joshi

  I used to come to Anson Beach a lot when I was still in high school. That was seven years before A6, and I was going with a girl named Maureen. She was a big girl. She had a pink checked bathing suit. I used to tell her it looked like a tablecloth. We had walked along the boardwalk in front of this place, barefoot, the boards hot and sandy beneath our heels. We had never tried the clam cake special.

  “What are you looking at?”

  “Nothing. Come on.”

  * * *

  I had sweaty, ugly dreams about Alvin Sackheim. He was propped behind the wheel of his shiny yellow Lincoln, talking about his grandmother. He was nothing but a bloated, blackened head and a charred skeleton. He smelled burnt. He talked on and on, and after a while I couldn’t make out a single word. I woke up breathing hard.

  Susie was sprawled across my thighs, pale and bloated. My watch said 3:50, but it had stopped. It was still dark out. The surf pounded and smashed. High tide. Make it 4:15. Light soon. I got out of bed and went to the doorway. The sea breeze felt fine against my hot body. In spite of it all I didn’t want to die.

  I went over in the corner and grabbed a beer. There were three or four cases of Bud stacked against the wall. It was warm, because there was no electricity. I don’t mind warm beer like some people do, though. It just foams a little more. Beer is beer. I went back out on the landing and sat down and pulled the ring tab and drank up.

  So here we were, with the whole human race wiped out, not by atomic weapons or bio-warfare or pollution or anything grand like that. Just the flu. I’d like to put down a huge plaque somewhere, in the Bonneville Salt Flats, maybe. Bronze Square. Three miles on a side. And in big raised letters it would say, for the benefit of any landing aliens: JUST THE FLU.

  I tossed the beer can over the side. It landed with a hollow clank on the cement walk that went around the building. The lean-to was a dark triangle on the sand. I wondered if Needles was awake. I wondered if I would be.

  “Bernie?”

  She was standing in the doorway wearing one of my shirts. I hate that. She sweats like a pig.

  “You don’t like me much anymore, do you, Bernie?”

  I didn’t say anything. There were times when I could still feel sorry for everything. She didn’t deserve me any more than I deserved her.

  “Can I sit down with you?”

  “I doubt if it would be wide enough for both of us.”

  She made a choked hiccupping noise and started to go back inside.

  “Needles has got A6,” I said.

  She stopped and looked at me. Her face was very still. “Don’t joke, Bernie.”

  I lit a cigarette.

  “He can’t! He had—”

  “Yes, he had A2. Hong Kong flu. Just like you and me and Corey and Kelly and Joan.”

  “But that would mean he isn’t—”

  “Immune.”

  “Yes. Then we could get it.”

  “Maybe he lied when he said he had A2. So we’d take him along with us that time,” I said.

  Relief spilled across her face. “Sure, that’s it. I would have lied if it had been me. Nobody likes to be alone, do they?” She hesitated. “Coming back to bed?”

  “Not just now.”

  She went inside. I didn’t have to tell her that A2 was no guarantee against A6. She knew that. She had just blocked it out. I sat and watched the surf. It was really up. Years ago, Anson had been the only halfway decent surfing spot in the state. The Point was a dark, jutting hump against the sky. I thought I could see the upright that was the observation post, but it probably was just imagination. Sometimes Kelly took Joan up to the point. I didn’t think they were up there tonight.

  I put my face in my hands and clutched it, feeling the skin, its grain and texture. It was all narrowing so swiftly, and it was all so mean—there was no dignity in it.

  The surf coming in, coming in, coming in. Limitless. Clean and deep. We had come here in the summer, Maureen and I, the summer after high school, the summer before college and reality and A6 coming out of Southeast Asia and covering the world like a pall, July, we had eaten pizza and listened to her radio, I had put oil on her back, she had put oil on mine, the air had been hot, the sand bright, the sun like a burning glass.

  DENNIS ETCHISON

  Dennis William Etchison was born in Stockton, California, in 1943, and has spent all of his life in his native state. Etchison made his first professional sale while still in high school, and during the time he attended Los Angeles State College and UCLA he continued to sell short stories in the horror and science fiction fields. After two pseudonymous novels in the 1960s, his first official books were novelizations of the films The Fog (1980), Halloween II(1981), Halloween III (1982), and Videodrome (1983), the last three published under the pseudonym Jack Martin. In 1982 his first short story collection, The Dark Country, appeared, establishing Etchison as one of the leading literary figures in the realm of supernatural horror. Other collections, including Red Dreams (1986), The Blood Kiss (1988), The Death Artist (2000), and Talking in the Dark (2001), have followed, revealing Etchison’s skill at mingling tropes from horror, fantasy, and science fiction; in particular, such tales as “The Dead Line,” “It Only Comes Out at Night,” and “The Last Reel” exhibit Etchison’s deftness in such supernatural motifs as the vampire and the zombie and in the depiction of the California milieu that renders him a local color writer of note.

  Etchison has been less successful in the novel form. His first novel, Darkside (1986), is an able treatment of the nihilism of modern teenage culture, but Shadowman (1993), California Gothic (1995), and Double Edge (1997) are only occasionally effective. Etchison is also an accomplished editor, having assembled the three-volume series Masters of Darkness (1986–91), in which leading contemporary horror writers have chosen their own favorite stories, as well as Cutting Edge (1986), MetaHorror (1992), and The Museum of Horrors (2001). Several of these volumes contain introductions featuring Etchison’s pungent comments on the current state of the horror and science fiction fields.

  “The Late Shift” (first published in Kirby McCauley’s groundbreaking anthology, Dark Forces [1980], and collected in The Dark Country) demonstrates Etchison’s skill at evoking horror from the most mundane elements of daily life, by the utilization of a subtle and evocative prose style reminiscent of such other California writers as James M. Cain or Raymond Chandler.

  THE LATE SHIFT

  hey were driving back from a midnight screening of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (“Who will survive and what will be left of them?”) when one of them decided they should make the Stop ’N Start Market on the way home. Macklin couldn’t be sure later who said it first, and it didn’t really matter, for there was the all-night logo, its bright colors cutting through the fog before they had reached 26th Street, and as soon as he saw it Macklin moved over close to the curb and began coasting toward the only sign of life anywhere in town at a quarter to two in the morning.

  They passed through the electric eye at the door, rubbing their faces in the sudden cold light. Macklin peeled off toward the news rack, feeling like a newborn before the LeBoyer Method. He reached into a row of well-thumbed magazines, but they were all chopper, custom car, detective and stroke books, as far as he could see.

  “Please, please, sorry, thank you,” the night clerk was saying.

  “No, no,” said a woman’s voice, “can’t you hear? I want that box, that one.”

  “Please, please,” said the night man again.

  Macklin glanced up.

  A couple of guys were waiting in line behind her, next to the styrofoam ice chests. One of them cleared his throat and moved his feet.

  The woman was trying to give back a small, oblong carton, but the clerk didn’t seem to understand. He picked up the box, turned to the shelf, back to her again.

  Then Macklin saw what it was: a package of one dozen prophylactics from behind the counter, back where they kept the cough syrup and airplane glue and film. That was a
ll she wanted—a pack of Polaroid SX-70 Land Film.

  Macklin wandered to the back of the store.

  “How’s it coming, Whitey?”

  “I got the Beer Nuts,” said Whitey, “and the Jiffy Pop, but I can’t find any Olde English 800.” He rummaged through the refrigerated case.

  “Then get Schlitz Malt Liquor,” said Macklin. “That ought to do the job.” He jerked his head at the counter. “Hey, did you catch that action up there?”

  “What’s that?”

  Two more guys hurried in, heading for the wine display. “Never mind. Look, why don’t you just take this stuff up there and get a place in line? I’ll find us some Schlitz or something. Go on, they won’t sell it to us after two o’clock.”

  He finally found a six-pack hidden behind some bottles, then picked up a quart of milk and a half-dozen eggs. When he got to the counter, the woman had already given up and gone home. The next man in line asked for cigarettes and beef jerky. Somehow the clerk managed to ring it up; the electronic register and UPC Code lines helped him a lot.

  “Did you get a load of that one?” said Whitey. “Well, I’ll be gonged. Old Juano’s sure hit the skids, huh? The pits. They should have stood him in an aquarium.”

  “Who?”

  “Juano. It is him, right? Take another look.” Whitey pretended to study the ceiling.

  Macklin stared at the clerk. Slicked-back hair, dyed and greasy and parted in the middle, a phony Hitler moustache, thrift-shop clothes that didn’t fit. And his skin didn’t look right somehow, like he was wearing makeup over a face that hadn’t seen the light of day in ages. But Whitey was right. It was Juano. He had waited on Macklin too many times at that little Mexican restaurant over in East L.A., Mama Something’s. Yes, that was it, Mama Carnita’s on Whittier Boulevard. Macklin and his friends, including Whitey, had eaten there maybe fifty or a hundred times, back when they were taking classes at Cal State. It was Juano for sure.

  Whitey set his things on the counter. “How’s it going, man?” he said.

  “Thank you,” said Juano.

  Macklin laid out the rest and reached for his money. The milk made a lumpy sound when he let go of it. He gave the carton a shake. “Forget this,” he said. “It’s gone sour.” Then, “Haven’t seen you around, old buddy. Juano, wasn’t it?”

  “Sorry. Sorry,” said Juano. He sounded dazed, like a sleepwalker.

  Whitey wouldn’t give up. “Hey, they still make that good menudo over there?” He dug in his jeans for change. “God, I could eat about a gallon of it right now, I bet.”

  They were both waiting. The seconds ticked by. A radio in the store was playing an old 60s song. Light My Fire, Macklin thought. The Doors. “You remember me, don’t you? Jim Macklin.” He held out his hand. “And my trusted Indian companion, Whitey? He used to come in there with me on Tuesdays and Thursdays.”

  The clerk dragged his feet to the register, then turned back, turned again. His eyes were half-closed. “Sorry,” he said. “Sorry. Please.”

  Macklin tossed down the bills, and Whitey counted his coins and slapped them onto the countertop. “Thanks,” said Whitey, his upper lip curling back. He hooked a thumb in the direction of the door. “Come on. This place gives me the creeps.”

  As he left, Macklin caught a whiff of Juano or whoever he was. The scent was sickeningly sweet, like a gilded lily. His hair? Macklin felt a cold draft blow through his chest, and shuddered; the air conditioning, he thought.

  At the door, Whitey spun around and glared.

  “So what,” said Macklin. “Let’s go.”

  “What time does Tube City here close?”

  “Never. Forget it.” He touched his friend’s arm.

  “The hell I will,” said Whitey. “I’m coming back when they change fucking shifts. About six o’clock, right? I’m going to be standing right there in the parking lot when he walks out. That son of a bitch still owes me twenty bucks.”

  “Please,” muttered the man behind the counter, his eyes fixed on nothing. “Please. Sorry. Thank you.”

  * * *

  The call came around ten. At first he thought it was a gag; he propped his eyelids up and peeked around the apartment, half-expecting to find Whitey still there, curled up asleep among the loaded ashtrays and pinched beer cans. But it was no joke.

  “Okay, okay, I’ll be right there,” he grumbled, not yet comprehending, and hung up the phone.

  St. John’s Hospital on 14th. In the lobby, families milled about, dressed as if on their way to church, watching the elevators and waiting obediently for the clock to signal the start of visiting hours. Business hours, thought Macklin. He got the room number from the desk and went on up.

  A police officer stood stiffly in the hall, taking notes on an accident report form. Macklin got the story from him and from an irritatingly healthy-looking doctor—the official story—and found himself, against his will, believing in it. In some of it.

  His friend had been in an accident, sometime after dawn. His friend’s car, the old VW, had gone over an embankment, not far from the Arroyo Seco. His friend had been found near the wreckage, covered with blood and reeking of alcohol. His friend had been drunk.

  “Let’s see here now. Any living relatives?” asked the officer. “All we could get out of him was your name. He was in a pretty bad state of shock, they tell me.”

  “No relatives,” said Macklin. “Maybe back on the reservation. I don’t know. I’m not even sure where the—”

  A long, angry rumble of thunder sounded outside the windows. A steely light reflected off the clouds and filtered into the corridor. It mixed with the fluorescents in the ceiling, rendering the hospital interior a hard-edged, silvery gray. The faces of the policeman and the passing nurses took on a shaded, unnatural cast.

  It made no sense. Whitey couldn’t have been that drunk when he left Macklin’s apartment. Of course he did not actually remember his friend leaving. But Whitey was going to the Stop ’N Start if he was going anywhere, not halfway across the county to—where? Arroyo Seco? It was crazy.

  “Did you say there was liquor in the car?”

  “Afraid so. We found an empty fifth of Jack Daniel’s wedged between the seats.”

  But Macklin knew he didn’t keep anything hard at his place, and neither did Whitey, he was sure. Where was he supposed to have gotten it, with every liquor counter in the state shut down for the night?

  And then it hit him. Whitey never, but never drank sour mash whiskey. In fact, Whitey never drank anything stronger than beer, anytime, anyplace. Because he couldn’t. It was supposed to have something to do with his liver, as it did with other Amerinds. He just didn’t have the right enzymes.

  Macklin waited for the uniforms and coats to move away, then ducked inside.

  “Whitey,” he said slowly.

  For there he was, set up against firm pillows, the upper torso and most of the hand bandaged. The arms were bare, except for an ID bracelet and an odd pattern of zigzag lines from wrist to shoulder. The lines seemed to have been painted by an unsteady hand, using a pale gray dye of some kind.

  “Call me by my name,” said Whitey groggily. “It’s White Feather.”

  He was probably shot full of painkillers. But at least he was okay. Wasn’t he? “So what’s with the war paint, old buddy?”

  “I saw the Death Angel last night.”

  Macklin faltered. “I—I hear you’re getting out of here real soon,” he tried. “You know, you almost had me worried there. But I reckon you’re just not ready for the bone orchard yet.”

  “Did you hear what I said?”

  “What? Uh, yeah. Yes.” What had they shot him up with? Macklin cleared his throat and met his friend’s eyes, which were focused beyond him. “What was it, a dream?”

  “A dream,” said Whitey. The eyes were glazed, burned out.

  What happened? Whitey, he thought. Whitey. “You put that war paint on yourself?” he said gently.

  “It’s pHisoHex,” said Whi
tey, “mixed with lead pencil. I put it on, the nurse washes it off, I put it on again.”

  “I see.” He didn’t, but went on. “So tell me what happened, partner. I couldn’t get much out of the doctor.”

  The mouth smiled humorlessly, the lips cracking back from the teeth. “It was Juano,” said Whitey. He started to laugh bitterly. He touched his ribs and stopped himself.

  Macklin nodded, trying to get the drift. “Did you tell that to the cop out there?”

  “Sure. Cops always believe a drunken Indian. Didn’t you know that?”

  “Look. I’ll take care of Juano. Don’t worry.”

  Whitey laughed suddenly in a high voice that Macklin had never heard before. “He-he-he! What are you going to do, kill him?”

  “I don’t know,” he said, trying to think in spite of the clattering in the hall.

  “They make a living from death, you know,” said Whitey.

  Just then a nurse swept into the room, pulling a cart behind her.

  “How did you get in here?” she demanded.

  “I’m just having a conversation with my friend here.”

  “Well, you’ll have to leave. He’s scheduled for surgery this afternoon.”

  “Do you know about the Trial of the Dead?” asked Whitey.

  “Shh, now,” said the nurse. “You can talk to your friend as long as you want to, later.”

  “I want to know,” said Whitey, as she prepared a syringe.

  “What is it we want to know, now?” she said, preoccupied. “What dead? Where?”

  “Where?” repeated Whitey. “Why, here, of course. The dead are here. Aren’t they.” It was a statement. “Tell me something. What do you do with them?”

  “Now what nonsense . . .?” The nurse swabbed his arm, clucking at the ritual lines on the skin.

  “I’m asking you a question,” said Whitey.

  “Look, I’ll be outside,” said Macklin, “okay?”

  “This is for you, too,” said Whitey. “I want you to hear. Now if you’ll just tell us, Miss Nurse. What do you do with the people who die in here?”