Stories (2011)

by Joe R. Lansdale

  "Easy, pal." I finally got him out of the dining room and into the den, into one of those big chairs in front of the fireplace. I fixed up the fire some, went out and got the beer and wine. After a glass of the wine he seemed to calm down a bit.

  "I've pulled it out of there," Gardner said. "I've unleashed the goddamn parasite and it's feeding on me. I feel like I'm inside a husk looking out sometimes... like I can't control my actions.

  Actually saw it... me, take hold of Meko and... God! It's got me, Rocky." Suddenly he was keyed up again.

  "Have some more wine." I poured him another glass and he upended it.

  "It soaked up Meko's energy like a sponge soaks up water. It was terrible... exhilarating in a way... Evil, Rocky, very evil."

  "You're tired, Gardner. Meko scratched you... you're not quite yourself."

  "I didn't kill Meko," Gardner said at the top of his lungs.

  "You've got to believe me, Rocky. If you don't I'll lose my mind.

  It's like that writer, Lovecraft... things are out there, waiting, just waiting to slip through time and space into this world. I've let one through, and my body is the gate. When the emotions are up, the ghoul feeds, and then when the emotions die down, the gate starts to close. It gets sucked back, back to the abysmal darkness beyond this world.

  "I was a fool to try and open the way to let myself be a sort of human sacrifice, just because I was curious."

  A horrible thing went through my mind: Curiosity killed the cat!

  "Listen, Gardner. It feeds off emotional stress, right? Well, if you take it easy, if you let the stress die out cold, can it survive?"

  "I don't think so... It can at least be controlled."

  "Then try and relax." I knew I was talking crazy, but Gardner wasn't going to listen to logic. He was too flipped out. I poured him another glass of wine, and somehow we managed to slip away from the subject and into other matters.

  An hour later we were talking rapidly about anything and everything under the sun — except the supernatural. When Gardner seemed to have himself pretty well together, we buried Meko and cleaned the blood off the wall and tossed the Ouija board out.

  As I was leaving for home Gardner said, "Thanks, Rocky."

  "All right," I said. "You've just been working too hard. Stress.

  Get some rest."

  He gave me a wan smile as I left him at the door. I drove away from there with a chill at my back like the North winds blow.

  You've seen those ads about problem drinkers. The ones that ask the question: "If you let him drive home drunk, are you a real friend?"

  What the ad's getting at, of course, is being a friend isn't always easy. It isn't a great lot of fun to tell your old pal that he's a goddamned sot and he ought not to drive home; ought not to walk home, for that matter, in a drunken condition. The good friend is supposed to do the driving for him, or make him sleep over, offer help in some sort of way.

  That's what I should have done, and I feel guilty now. I blame myself for what happened to Gardner. Maybe I could have gotten him a head shrinker, someone who could have helped him with his problems. I like to think I didn't do that because I don't have much faith in those folks to begin with.

  Whatever the excuse, there's no doubt I knew my friend Gardner was losing his grip. I was just foolish enough to think it might go away, like a cold or something. It's hard to admit that a friend's losing it, that his dough isn't done in the middle.

  I laid low, didn't call Gardner, didn't go by. Deep down I probably didn't want to see him; didn't want to look at that wild look in his eyes, or hear him ramble on about elemental ghouls from beyond. Truth to tell, if it hadn't been for something I read in the papers, I might not have gone by there the night it happened.

  I'm not much of a paper reader, and I guess by the time I got to the article it was a couple days old. Don't really remember.

  Out back of this lumber yard they'd found the body of a college girl and her head was twisted on her neck like some sort of rubber doll's head. That made me think of poor Meko, the way she looked lying up against Gardner's dining room wall. The thing got to working in the back of my mind like a dog scratching at a screen door, wanting to be let in.

  But still, I didn't go over there.

  A few days passed, and like before, a couple days late, I read the newspaper. Found out that there had been two more murders, each as ghastly as the first. One of the victims had been a college boy, the other a little girl. Same method of operation. No obvious motive.

  I didn't like what I was thinking, but I couldn't put it out of my mind. Five minutes after I laid the paper down I was in my car, on my way to Gardner's.

  The house was dark again. I got out of my Ford, walked on up to the door and started to knock. But didn't. I just didn't want to hear that hollow rap of my knuckles bouncing around inside that big old house — and maybe that wasn't entirely the reason.

  Something deep inside me seemed to say: "Boy, you better be quiet."

  I went around to the back of the house and found a window that wasn't latched, pushed it up and crawled inside, just managing not to castrate myself on a nail sticking up in the window sill.

  The inside of that room was like being inside someone's wool pocket. Couldn't even see my hand in front of my face.

  Although I don't smoke, I carry matches. You use them in odd ways in the janitor business — checking corners for dust, that sort of thing. I peeled one out of the matchbook I carried and lit it.

  I was in Gardner's art studio. I'd only been in there one other time when he'd shown me a painting he was doing for a Western paperback. Canvas made an alley wall on either side of me, and in the flickerings of the match, I could see the door that led into the hall and out into the rest of the house.

  I started down between those canvases and something caught my eye. About that time my match went out.

  I lit another and held it close to the painting — for that's what had gotten my attention — and got a good look. It damn near turned my stomach, and I tell you true, I'm not a squeamish sort of guy. It was a painting of a woman, a man, a little girl and a cat.

  Each of them had their heads twisted at a crazy angle, tongues hanging out of their mouths and their eyes popping like huge pockets of puss.

  When that match went out I lit another, moved it around to look at the other paintings. They all seemed to be of the same creature, but in different poses. The paintings seemed to represent some sort of huge whirlwind that was equipped with a horrible, toothy mouth. I had an idea what they were supposed to portray.

  Poor Gardner had totally lost it. Those people, those horrible murders... I lit another match and moved toward the door that led to the hall.

  Gardner stood in the doorway, a poker in his hand.

  "Gardner, it's me."

  He gritted his teeth and swung. I caught his wrist and pushed him into the hall, up against the wall. His eyes burned into mine like blowtorches. But most amazing was his strength.

  Gardner is a slight man, small boned and delicate, but he tossed me off like a dog shaking rain from its coat. I went flying down the length of the hall, smashed into the door that led to the dining room.

  Gardner stalked toward me like some sort of great praying mantis, the poker swinging at his side.

  I kicked out at him and hit him in the abdomen, knocked him back about a foot. Just enough to give me time to open the door into the dining room. At a dead run I palmed the table and went over it, and behind me came Gardner. He did the same, but with less effort. I didn't wait to see him land.

  I went into the den and to the front door, but I couldn't get it open. Either the lock was jammed or I was fumbling.

  I turned just in time to avoid the poker. The blow would have smashed my head like a water balloon. It went into the wood of the door and stuck, made an ear-shattering scrape that rocked me from head to heel.

  Gardner struggled with the poker, but it was hung. I hit him with a left hook to the gut. Once I
'd hit Archie Malone like that in a hard bout in Houston. He'd dropped to his knees like a five-dollar whore, but Gardner, he kept standing. It just seemed to annoy him.

  It did get him away from the poker though, and I gave him an overhand right to go with it. Must have broken his nose, but it didn't stop him. He forgot that poker, and as I wheeled away from the door, he came after me barehanded.

  Gardner's face was not his own. It seemed as if it had been remolded by crude and uncaring hands. The eyes were like sparks flickering with the firelight — for that ever-constant fire was blazing and smoking in the hearth. The teeth were drawn back in a horrible, ear to ear grin.

  For the first time in my life, I was really scared.

  "Gardner, I don't want to hurt you."

  He came on quick and silent. I gave him another hook to the middle, landed a right cross above his left ear. It rocked him, but he didn't go down.

  "Gardner!" I screamed, and for a moment it was as if he understood me, knew who I was. It was like something from within him was trying to grab the reins and whoa back.

  "Rocky," he said weakly, "help me." And then the features that momentarily softened were washed away by a tide of fury and insanity.

  I backed away, got around in front of one of those big chairs in front of the fireplace. Gardner reached out, grabbed the heavy chair and flung it halfway across the room, palmed my chest and knocked me up against the fireplace mantle. The flames licked at my back, scorched my hide through jacket and shirt. I swiveled to the left, away from the fire.

  My hand touched something metal, and when I looked down, saw it was resting on the fire shovel in the poker rack. I jerked the shovel out of there and laid it hard upside Gardner's head.

  Blood trickled down the side of his head, and those eyes blazed like bonfires in the hollows of a skull. They seemed to freeze me.

  "Gardner, for the love of God!"

  He was on me, his fingers buried in the lapels of my jacket. I tried to hit him with the shovel again, but couldn't get in a good whack. Blood streamed down his face, and that horrible mask of hate was inches from my face, the teeth bared like some rabid dog... and then the face seemed to fold down like a jerked blind, and there was Gardner's face again, his eyes. Maybe it was just the shadows there flickering in the firelight, but the demonic face and that of Gardner seemed to shift from second to second, and then Gardner pushed me from him and turned toward the great hearth.

  His legs coiled, and by the time I realized what he was about to do, it was too late. He leaped straight into the fire, and the flames, like fingers, seemed to reach out and grasp him.

  I tried to pull him out, but he fought me. The last thing I remember was his face — Gardner's — and in spite of the damage the flames had done to it, it seemed at peace. But then maybe I'm just thinking after the fact, being melodramatic.

  The fire wrapped him up and took him away, and what I managed to pull from there was hardly recognizable as a man.

  That's been a while now, but sometimes I wake up and see that face Gardner wore, or worse yet, I see him looking at me out of those flames, and then his blackened body lies before my eyes and I wake up.

  No doubt about it, he wanted to die that way.

  After the inquest a lot of stuff came out. Seems Gardner had been a lot worse off than I'd known. Before moving to Nacogdoches he had been a psychiatrist, but he'd also spent time in a mental institution; even back then the idea of a soul ghoul had eaten away his rationality. They released him as cured eventually, but...

  It doesn't matter now. Those horrible murders stopped. I put his paintings in the fire the night he died. Couldn't see much use in slandering the man's reputation further. There was some hullabaloo about me murdering him, but that didn't stick. The psychiatric stuff worked in my favor, and some others who knew him said he'd been acting awful strange.

  Poor Gardner, he was as crazy as a moth in a jar. But the other day I read the paper, and they think they got the Yorkshire Ripper, a fellow more ghoulish than Jack ever was. Thirteen brutal murders to his credit.

  What got me about the article was what was said by those who knew him. "He was a model son, a perfect husband."

  Why do normal people fall off the horse?

  I don't have any answers, but Gardner's idea, the ghoul ... just too fantastic. Stuff like that just couldn't be.

  Could it?

  I TELL YOU IT’S LOVE

  The beautiful woman had no eyes, just sparkles of light where they should have been—or so it seemed in the candlelight. Her lips, so warm and inviting, so wickedly wild and suggestive of strange pleasures, held yet a hint of disaster, as if they might be fat red things skillfully molded from dried blood.

  "Hit me," she said.

  That is my earliest memory of her: a doll for my beating, a doll for my love.

  I laid it on her with that black silk whip, slapping it across her shoulders and back, listening to the whisper of it as it rode down, delighting in the flat pretty sound of it striking her flesh.

  She did not bleed, which was a disappointment. The whip was too soft, too flexible, too difficult to strike hard with.

  "Hurt me," she said softly. I went to where she kneeled. Her arms were outstretched, crucifixion style, and bound to the walls on either side with strong silk cord the color and texture of the whip in my hand.

  I slapped her. "Like it?" I asked. She nodded and I slapped her again . . . and again. A one-two rhythm, slow and melodic, time and again.

  "Like it?" I repeated, and she moaned, "Yeah, oh yeah."

  Later, after she was untied and had tidied up the blood from her lips and nose, we made brutal love—me with my thumbs bending the flesh of her throat, she with her nails entrenched in my back. She said to me when we were finished, "Let's do someone."

  That's how we got started. Thinking back now, once again I say I'm glad for fate; glad for Gloria; glad for the memory of the crying sounds, the dripping blood and the long sharp knives that murmured through flesh like a lover's whisper cutting the dark.

  Yeah, I like to think back to when I walked hands-in-pockets down the dark wharves in search of that special place where there were said to be special women with special pleasures for a special man like me.

  I walked on until I met a sailor leaning up against a wall smoking a cigarette, and he says when I ask about the place,

  "Oh, yeah, I like that sort of pleasure myself. Two blocks down, turn right, there between the warehouses, down the far end. You'll see the light." And he pointed and I walked on, faster.

  Finding it, paying for it, meeting Gloria was the goal of my dreams. I was more than a customer to that sassy, dark mamma with the sparkler eyes. I was the link to fit her link. We made two strong, solid bonds in a strange cosmic chain.

  You could feel the energy flowing through us; feel the iron of our wills. Ours was a mating made happily in hell.

  So time went by and I hated the days and lived for the nights when I whipped her, slapped her, scratched her, and she did the same to me. Then one night she said, "It's not enough. Just not enough anymore. Your blood is sweet and your pain is fine, but I want to see death like you see a movie, taste it like licorice, smell it like flowers, touch it like cold, hard stone."

  I laughed, saying, "I draw the line at dying for you." I took her by the throat, fastened my grip until her breathing was a whistle and her eyes protruded like bloated corpse bellies.

  "That's not what I mean," she managed. And then came the statement that brings us back to what started it all: "Let's do someone."

  I laughed and let her go.

  "You know what I mean?" she said. "You know what I'm saying."

  "I know what you said. I know what you mean." I smiled. "I know very well."

  "You've done it before, haven't you?"

  "Once," I said, "in a shipyard, not that long ago."

  "Tell me about it. God, tell me about it."

  "It was dark and I had come off ship after six months out, a long six mo
nths with the men, the ship and the sea. So I'm walking down this dark alley, enjoying the night like I do, looking for a place with the dark ways, our kind of ways, baby, and I came upon this old wino lying in a doorway, cuddling a bottle to his face as if it were a lady's loving hand."

  "What did you do?"

  "I kicked him," I said, and Gloria's smile was a beauty to behold.

  "Go on," she said.

  "God, how I kicked him. Kicked him in the face until there was no nose, no lips, no eyes. Only red mush dangling from shrapneled bone; looked like a melon that had been dropped from on high, down into a mass of broken white pottery chips. I touched his face and tasted it with my tongue and my lips."

  "Ohh," she sighed, and her eyes half-closed. "Did he scream?"

  "Once. Only once. I kicked him too hard, too fast, too soon. I hammered his head with the toes of my shoes, hammered until my cuffs were wet and sticking to my ankles."

  "Oh God," she said, clinging to me, "let's do it, let's do it."

  We did. First time was a drizzly night and we caught an old woman out. She was a lot of fun until we got the knives out and then she went quick. There was that crippled kid next, lured him from the theater downtown, and how we did that was a stroke of genius. You'll find his wheelchair not far from where you found the van and the other stuff.

  But no matter. You know what we did, about the kinds of tools we had, about how we hung that crippled kid on that meat hook in my van until the flies clustered around the doors thick as grapes.

  And of course there was the little girl. It was a brilliant idea of Gloria's to get the kid's tricycle into the act. The things she did with those spokes. Ah, but that woman was a connoisseur of pain.

  There were two others, each quite fine, but not as nice as the last. Then came the night Gloria looked at me and said,

  "It's not enough. Just won't do."