The Year's Best Horror Stories 4

by Gerald W. Page (Ed. )

  He thought: as he had left the clearing with Tommy, one backward glance had been sufficient to note that the snow where the wolf had been pacing was clean. There were no depressions to indicate an animal of that size had walked a warning.

  "Mars, you're frightened, aren't you?"

  He watched the sparks like fire-rain raise up into the chimney. "Venus," he said, "we've done bad by our children. One we drove into the army, the other we just drove. I don't think we ever really knew how to be parents."

  "We did the best we could."

  It was a tired argument, one that usually left them not speaking for hours.

  "I should have cared more, I guess, been more ambitious, but the store was good enough for me."

  "They went to school, Mars. They learned things."

  "Yeah," he said, scratching his stubbled jaw, "and blamed me for not doing the same."

  A commotion on the steps forestalled her answer, caused her to straighten as if her sons would have been affronted by their parents' intimacy.

  They came down into the foyer carrying suitcases and already wearing their overcoats. As Mars strode angrily toward them, Carter lifted a hand. "Don't say it, Pop, but we have to go. It's no good here, and you were right yesterday."

  "The dear captain's going to get me something at the PX," Jonathan said.

  "But why now?"

  "Listen, Pop, there's no sense in our making it any harder on any of us. Some folks got the touch to do things right, and some don't We don't"

  "What's the matter with your eyes?"

  "I been drinking a lot in case you hadn't noticed. Just let us go quietly, and maybe one of us will write when things get settled. When we get the time."

  Venus remained on the sofa, tilting her cheek to her sons' kisses, brief and without even momentary affection. And they were out the door before Mars could think of an appropriate farewell to forty years.

  "Samantha," he said, his back to the room, "don't ever let anyone tell you that I didn't love you."

  Suddenly there were shouts, and Carter came running back inside.

  "Your rifle, Pop, where is it? Never mind," and he snatched at the weapon cradled in the wall rack in the hall. Mars hurried to the door, but Carter brushed past him, answering with a wordless shout the urgings of his brother.

  "God," he said, stopping long enough to pull a box of cartridges from a breakfront and stuff the magazine. "You should see that animal, Pop. Biggest damn thing in the world."

  "Oh, my Christ!" Mars said and ran into the kitchen, grabbed his coat, and slapped on his hat. Venus he pushed back into a chair as she tried to follow, and with a muttered "Samantha" rushed outside, nearly colliding with his sons who were standing on the edge of the porch. Jonathan had the rifle to his shoulder, sighting, waiting until Mars saw the white wolf trot unconcernedly from behind the spruce in the center of the yard. His son fired; the bright star flared from the barrel, and a puff shattered from the snowman's head. The three men descended to the walk when it was obvious Jonathan had missed.

  "Never could shoot worth a damn," Carter said, grabbing for the stock, being pushed roughly aside.

  "That will make a hell of a coat," Jonathan said, stalking now as the wolf padded from the yard to the slippery road. Immediately, lights in the Dovny house blinked on sporadically until the grounds were lighted with squares of pale sun. The front door opened and Tommy stepped out

  Mars watched the progress of the wolf, unable to speak, dizzy from the cold that lanced at his face in droplets of sleet Tommy called out, waving, and began to climb down from his porch. Jonathan swung the rifle and fired again.

  "The boy!" Mars shouted. "Goddamn it, Jon, watch the boy!"

  "Shut up, Pop," one of them said.

  Tommy had reached the bottom of the steps, was angling across the front of the house when the wolf broke into a run toward the corner nearest him. Tommy sprinted after it, and Mars, unthinking, ran across the road toward him.

  Someone shouted and the wolf halted, gray now beyond the light.

  Tommy clapped his hands and shouted encouragement as Jonathan moved to the center of the road and took aim.

  The wolf moved, placing the boy between it and the rifle.

  Mars, arms spread and mouth open, flung himself into the air.

  Jonathan fired.

  And in the silence echoing from flake to flake as sleet turned to snow, Mars sprawled on the ground, twisting his head from side to side as if searching for a door into a room without pain. He gasped as Tommy roughly rolled him onto his back, heard the careless shriek of tires as a car skidded, straightened, and bulleted toward the village. They'll never make the turn at the railroad, he thought

  Distantly, he heard Venus screaming.

  Into the snow he opened his eyes and saw Tommy kneeling beside him.

  "You never ate the chocolate I gave you," he said through the sparks that wouldn't leave him be. "Probably threw away the stew, too." He arched his back and gasped. "Don't suppose I could get a second chance, could I? I could do better."

  Tommy shook his head. His left arm nestled in the ruff around the neck of a white wolf. His right hand stroked the head of another. He bent his face closer to peer into Mars's face, and Mars saw the glimmering green in his eyes, feeding on his failure before he died.

  "Daddy's home," the boy said. "You said you wanted to meet him."

  LIFEGUARD by Arthur Byron Cover

  Summer between school years. A job lazing around the pool, soaking up a tan, nothing to worry about, nothing more serious to do than driving around and smoking grass and finding girls. Where could be the horror in that? Arthur Cover has said he enjoys writing horror fiction because it's the only chance he has to write social realism. Indeed, if you've read his wild and surrealistic comic novel Autumn Angels, "Lifeguard" might come as something of a surprise. But a pleasant—to say nothing of chilling—one, we think . . .

  The summer following my third year in the state college wondering what I wanted to do with the rest of my life, I got a part-time job as a lifeguard so I would have more free time to spend smoking grass. There wasn't supposed to be any grass in Blackton, Virginia, according to an article the local newspaper had run on the opinions and witticisms of the town sheriff. "The kids here are good kids," the sheriff had said. "There hasn't been any hint of marijuana or that so-called hard stuff in Blackton." My friends and I had a good laugh over that one. Alcohol was out; the nineteen-seventies had finally arrived; and I was tired of the embarrassing scenes of my brother and I coming home drunk; i.e., like the time I had the dry heaves and, much to the chagrin of my mother, passed out while leaning over the commode. She pulled me out by the hair.

  It started out to be a good summer; I was counting my blessings. Three days a week I, Bob Strawn, took it easy getting a suntan, and the other four days I slept, smoked, drove around, balled, played bridge and poker, and did all the other things the fine upstanding kids did. Sometimes I read books and thought deep thoughts about the social revolution of our times, but that was only a gesture; apathy was sinking in fast Other times I wondered if I should go on and get my masters or just bum around the country for a few years. No matter what, I didn't want to wind up like some of the kids I had graduated from high school with—staying in Blackton all their lives and basically just stagnating.

  Not that the country was bad. During the summer the trees were thick with dark green leaves and the sun was bright and the air woke you up in the morning. I liked to walk in the mountains and kick the fragile, damp leaves which had fallen the autumn before and smoke grass, all by myself. I watched the white clouds roll their way across a sky that was as blue as anything I had ever seen. I was really living, Wordsworthian style, I told myself.

  But the reverie would soon be over; I had one more year of school and there just wasn't that much to do in Blackton or in Blackton County. I didn't want to get married and sell used cars with my father. Somehow I had it figured that there were great things in my future, thou
gh I didn't know exactly what However, I didn't think about the future much.

  The morning after the Fourth of July weekend, I was sweeping gravel from the concrete and picking up the trash around the pool when that friendly neighborhood pusher, Jack Walker, arrived and told me he was getting some great stuff in that night Of course I didn't believe him; Jack was a little guy with a crew-cut and a lot of zits and he was mostly mouth. That day he was wearing baggy blue shorts and a red shirt I couldn't look at without my sunglasses. He had scrawny little arms and scrawny little legs and a beer-gut which rivaled my father's. He tried to be friends with everyone; he tried very hard, which is why he never succeeded. As far as I knew, no one had ever bought any of that great acid he had been selling all through June. He bummed a cigarette from me, let the smoke linger in his mouth like he was really enjoying it, and sat down on the bench beside the wooden table people were supposed to eat at. He leaned back, spread his legs, and draped his arms over the table; he looked like a spider. "I tell you, Bob ol' boy, it's fantastic. I smoked a sample last night." He leaned forward, nodded, and assumed the manner of a fifty-year-old executive. "Look, I just know you'll want some."

  Trying to be nice, I said, "I spent all my money last weekend. That party at the Lutz's, you know."

  "I know. I was there."

  "Oh. I had forgotten. Well, uh, if you know, then you know. I ain't got no jack, and I ain't gonna get none until I get my check next week. Talk to me about it then."

  He flipped his cigarette outside the wire fence into the parking lot and watched me work for about five minutes. Then his face assumed that slimy smile which always brought out the best in his yellow teeth. "I tell you what," he said, "I'm supposed to get the stuff at Cook's Cabin; that's where I always make my heavy connections. I'll leave a few joints in there for you tonight, 'cause I'm going straight to Richlands to get me a piece of ass." He chuckled and did a poor imitation of Groucho.

  "You?"

  He didn't answer. "I'm going to have to get rid of this stuff fast because I think my parents are catching on. So pick them up, will you? If you vouch for it, then everybody else will know it's OK."

  I wanted to ask Jack if he thought the police were watching him; I knew the sheriff couldn't be as dumb as we thought. But before I could do so, he slapped me on the shoulder and told me he had to be going. "You will get them, won't you?"

  "Yeah, I guess," I said, not knowing whether I would or not.

  He left, driving over the gravel road at forty m.p.h., raising dust everywhere. I thought bad thoughts about him, then promptly thought about other things.

  Later on that day I sat at the bench in the same position Walker had; I was talking with Chip Anderson, a med student trainee at the Health Department, and with Ted Maxwell, the nicest redneck I ever met. Ted was a cadet at the state college, but I rarely saw him unless we were both in Blackton; he was lanky, with short black hair and an accent that made me sound as if I had come from the English stage. Chip had thick glasses and wiry brown hair covering his ears; he was twenty pounds overweight and still had complexion problems. After we had discussed various topics for a while, Chip started talking about alcohol again; he compared it to the feeling people were supposed to get from grass. "I can't get high off grass," he said for the hundredth time. "Maybe if I tried some really powerful stuff . . ."

  Naturally that reminded me, and I related my conversation with Jack Walker.

  "Why don't we go tonight?" asked Ted. "We got nothing else to do."

  "Oh yeah, Ted?" asked Chip. "We gotta help my aunt move tonight."

  Ted grimaced and said, "Well, I got another idea. Why doesn't Bob go and get the joints? If the stuff is good, we'll buy a few ounces and get Chip so stoned he won't be able to talk."

  I said I would go.

  At seven I borrowed the car and drove to Cook's Cabin; the radio was loud, but then the station played a song I hated, so I turned it off. The sun was sinking behind a mountain; a thin grayness was settling over the countryside, although the sky was as blue as ever. I paid no attention to my driving; I knew every curve by heart and my mind was blank. I felt as if I were trying to think some thought new to me, a thought alien to my experience. I wondered if Blackton County was a dim dream. I was wasted inside; maybe I had been playing too hard and needed some rest. My eyes lingered over fragments of scenery: a cow chewing his cud and sticking its head over a barbed-wire fence; a junked Chevy in someone's front yard; the brick home of a girl I knew only passingly but always wanted to catch sight of. And other things I guess; I forgot them as soon as my mind wandered to something else.

  Cook's Cabin was on a hill next to the forest, twenty yards from the highway leading toward Richlands. I don't know if it had ever been renovated or not; a silver marker with black letters called it a historic landmark—built by the first settlers of Blackton County two hundred years ago. Across the highway were fields reputed to have been an Indian burial ground.

  I made a left turn into the shoulder next to the cabin and got out of the car. I felt nervous, but I ascribed that to my keen sense of paranoia; I told myself again that the police were not that dumb. I looked around to see if anyone was there; sometimes people were. A green picnic table was close to the cabin, presumably as a tourist attraction. I walked toward the cabin, trying to make it seem as if I were just wandering around for the benefit of any unseen eyes.

  When I got inside I grimaced; it sure was a mess. Dust and litter were stacked in the corners. I ran my fingers across a log and wiped them on my blue jeans. It was only a one-room cabin, and a genuine historic site at that; I wondered why the county didn't hire someone to sweep it up once or twice a year. There were no joints in the middle of the floor; I gave Jack credit for having some brains. My wasted feeling strengthened; I pretended it wasn't there by humming that song I hated. It didn't work, and I felt even more like I was part of a dream. The new thought inside me continued its attempts to take shape. I wondered why I felt someone was with me. I walked to the corner closet to the door; naturally Jack hadn't put the grass there. And just as naturally I found it in the fourth corner, underneath the biggest stack of litter in the cabin. Three joints. I told myself that it was lucky I had plenty of practice driving around stoned, but that thought didn't seem real either. Only the urge to light up and get spaced out was real. I chuckled at my keen sense of paranoia, coming and going at its own leisure. Outside the sky was darkening more quickly than usual; only a few cars were passing by. I sat down, thinking that my jeans had to be washed anyway, and lit up. It was good stuff; Jack had finally impressed me.

  Suddenly everything changed. I wasn't stoned like I was supposed to be. My head didn't whirl; my eyelids didn't feel heavy; the whish of the passing cars didn't drag out at a louder volume. I was aware of the dampening air, the coming darkness, and the thought finally nearing its final shape. It did not occur to me to fight any of this. It was not like I was engaged in a battle for my sanity. It seemed natural. It was right that I should yield to the thought, that I should surrender to the forces molding me.

  The cars whishing by were a quiet fragment of sound, holding no meaning for me. I doubted that when I left the cabin, I would see my car. My brother didn't exist; Chip and Ted didn't exist; my parents and our house didn't exist. Only Cook's Cabin was real. All else was a mist.

  The thought formed, yet I could not think of words to describe it. I saw her.

  She was a wisp of yellow smoke swirling in front of my eyes. A wisp with sex, emotion, and intellect. Now that the thought had formed and had changed me, she too could form. It seemed as if she had two arms reaching toward me, that she had pleading eyes, that she had waited for me and no others. I wanted to dismiss my impressions of her; she should have been only a fragment of my imagination, yet she was real. The longer she swirled, becoming more than a wisp, the heavier the thought felt in my brain, the emptier my stomach felt. Again, it did not occur to me to fight; she was a siren, and I belonged to her.

  Without t
hinking I lit another joint. I held the smoke in my lungs as long as I could. The world, the tiny world swayed back and forth as she shaped. The darkness from outside covered me, but she was light

  She formed.

  She formed, she was real, she was a person; yet I could not touch her, I could not see her features, I could not smell her. I had only the thought to guide me, and the thought told me she was brightness and love, grayness and pain. The thought told me that she was beautiful, and I wondered if she had yellow or black hair, green or blue eyes, large or small breasts, long or short legs, dark or pale skin. She was one woman; she was all women. I was about to try to dismiss her presence as a mere vision, a juvenile impression somehow brought about by the grass, when I heard her speak in the voice that was both frightened and calm, impetuous and well-rehearsed.

  She said simply, "Help me."

  At that point she was in such complete control of me I felt as if my pride should have been damaged. But I was too busy being sorry for her. All of a sudden I knew I would help her no matter what the cost to myself.

  "Please! You must help me."

  I didn't know if I had really heard her voice or not, but that didn't matter to me. I spoke. Not aloud, but somewhere in my mind. I asked her many things, most of them obvious—who was she, where had she come from, and what was her danger. The thought told me not to be concerned with such trivialities. I realized that her voice also belonged to the thought; it had in it all colors, all fears, all feelings.

  "You are the only person who can help. Don't you want to help? You must; you must help!"

  I wanted the thought to give me a reply. There were no more sounds from the highway and I wanted to stand up to look and see if Blackton County was still there. The thought jerked my attention from my surroundings, but did not tell me what to say.