I know there’s, like, a million or more fans out there who wouldn’t mind giving me a little sympathy. But that’s not what I want. Sympathy? Shit. I don’t write sympathetic books. I write about how the dead don’t die. They come back from the grave and haunt you and rip up your life.
Why? The fuck if I know. They just do.
Actually, that’s not true. They haunt you because otherwise you’ll kill yourself from depression and boredom and feeling like you’re never going to escape your day job. When you’re like that, you can’t tell whether you’re alive or dead. If someone told you the world was gonna end, you’d be like, “Hey, okay, bro, you only live once.”
I used to be like that. I felt like nothing I did had any meaning, nothing anybody did had any meaning. I was standing behind a veil, and on the other side was life, and it was too fucking stupid out there to give a shit about.
I just wanted to take all the shit that normal people believe in and break it. And I thought, either I become a serial killer or a writer, and if the writing thing doesn’t work out, then I can always take up the hatchet, you know?
Because having the shit scared out of you will, unlike anything else ever could, make you appreciate being alive.
So, in my own way, I write about hope. Just, you know, with a lot of fuckin’ blood and guts to oomph it up a little.
But even someone like me runs out of hope sometimes. Which is where you come in.
If I pursue this thing aggressively, which is what my doctor wants, I have six to nine months to put everything in order, lose my hair, vomit all the time, and turn into a mummy. And I don’t want to do that. And I feel like I wrote everything I needed to write, you know?
But don’t worry! I’m not turning serial killer on. See? No ax behind my back or anything. You’re safe.
I talked to my doctor about some test results this morning—stuff’s getting a lot worse, really fast—and I knew I had to do something fast, before I went too far downhill, but I couldn’t figure out what. So anyway I was hanging around the window seat in the library, staring out the window like a dork, when the neighbor across the street waved at me. He was poking around with his roses again. Roses must be a huge pain in the ass, because he’s out there all the time. He uses a wide variety of garden tools, and they all look like they’d make great fucking murder weapons. I like watching him work. It’s kinda soothing.
I went outside, because what else did I have to do? “Yeah?” I said.
He leaned his hands on his knees and cracked his back. It sounded painful. “Just thought you should know, cops drove by earlier this morning, before you got up. Six cars full of them.”
“What did they want?” I asked, feeling like my gut’s full of lead. I’m always afraid someone’s going to come to my house and accuse me of killing somebody right after I finish a book. Because in my head I feel like I really did. But that wasn’t it.
“Just checking out the ghosts,” the old guy said. “Sergeant MacMuertie brought some new guys to see ’em, because they never will just take his word for it. His way of making sure you don’t get hassled.”
I sighed. “Look, I know I’m a horror writer and all, but I can’t see ghosts. Just tell it to me straight. That kid didn’t drown, did he?”
“Nope,” the old guy said cheerfully. “Right in the front room. I saw part of it. They never did catch whoever did it—and all I could see was a couple of shadows, didn’t think twice about it until later. But blood got all over the place. That’s why it’s painted red in there. So the ghost blood doesn’t show so up bad when the ghosts are acting up. I’m surprised you don’t smell it. Some days I can smell it right through the window.”
He stuck his hand spade into the ground with a sound like an axe chopping through someone’s neck. The green blood of the grass filled the air. Then he leaned back on the spade. Roots ripped like flesh, and a piece of grass that’d grown too close to the roses popped out.
Dirt sprayed.
I looked back at my window, but I couldn’t see any ghosts. Fuckin’ nothing.
Okay, I lied about one thing. Misled you, anyway. I did see a ghost once. Only once, when I was kid. Down in the basement of my parent’s house. I didn’t know what it was at first. It didn’t look like a ghost; it looked like another kid. But of course it wasn’t.
I was in the basement, playing with a couple of old knock-off Barbies and a steak knife, when suddenly this kid about my age slid out of the spare bedroom. She was crawling on her stomach because her legs had been chopped off just below her waist, leaving stubs that looked kind of like ham. She was dragging herself along by her forearms; her hands were balled up in fists. She’d slap one fist down on the tile floor, drag herself forward a couple of inches, and then bam, slam another arm down. It seemed to take forever.
As she passed me I smelled something that was a lot like bad cat breath. She was leaving a trail of glowing green slime behind her. She didn’t see me. She went into the laundry room, and I followed her, holding that steak knife in both hands in case she changed her mind and attacked me.
The slime soaked through my socks. It was as cold as walking on wet snow.
In the laundry room, the ghost dragged herself over to the drain, inch by inch, then shoved her face down the hole and slid in. Her body folded in on itself, then stretched out. Her arms sank into her sides and disappeared. Her dress—she was wearing this white nightgown thingy—sank into her skin and disappeared. The stumps of her legs stretched out and blended together into a snake’s tail.
Then she was gone.
I was eight, and I never went into the basement alone again.
They say Mother Theresa spent the last fifty years of her life begging God to talk to her again. He talked to her a lot as a kid. I mean, a lot. Then one day, nothing, no matter how hard she begged. But she never stopped serving God, even though she didn’t believe in him anymore. That’s faith. That’s the kind of faith I want. Just…not in that direction.
After I got back from the neighbor’s house, it hit me. The whole plan. Here it is. I ordered a pizza.
I picked you guys because you have the pepperoni that curls up into the little grease cups. Oh, it’s horrible. But, I mean, it’s not like it can hurt me now. Here’s a hundred. Keep the change.
What I want you to do—just as a favor—is look through the bay window. Just a favor.
Do you see them? The ghosts?
Fuck. Well, I had my hopes. Thanks for looking. And thanks for the pizza.
No, I can’t take it—it’s too heavy. You keep it. I just—I just wanted to smell it, one last time.
Yeah, um, there is a woman behind me on the floor. She’s dead. It was quick and clean and she barely felt it, I promise. She used that steak knife, I mean, she sharpened the holy shit out of it first, but it’s the same one she used when she was eight.
Hey, man.
If you want a souvenir before the cops get here, all you have to do is step in and take it.
* * * * *
“There!” Facunde cried, clacking her beak at Old Loyolo in a manner that was as ridiculous as any hatchling’s. “Are you happy?”
Old Loyolo shook his head at her. “Too short. I’ll only call on you more often, if you keep telling stories that are too short.”
“I’m done telling stories.”
“You’re not done telling stories until I say you’re done. If you keep being this rude, then I’ll make you choose the storytellers when I’m gone.”
“Good!” Facunde shouted. She beat her wings in the air. “I’ll choose someone else every time, and I’ll never have to tell stories again.”
“You’re a silly chick,” Loyolo said.
“You’re a…” Facunde hopped around on the girl’s shoulder, raised her tailfeathers, showed her vent, and shit down the girl’s shoulder.
Old Loyolo laughed. He laughed such a laugh as destroys silence for days, a laugh that would be talked about until spring came and we were too busy gorging ourse
lves for talking. He laughed a laugh that echoed in the ear. A laugh that mocked death.
I was glad of it.
The rest of the chicks were chuckling nervously, the way chicks do, not because they understood the humor of it, but because one of the elders was laughing and so they had better laugh too.
The girl’s hand snaked out and stroked the back of the crow that was nearest her on her lap, who happened to be Ibarrazzo. Ibarrazzo preened under the girl’s hand, rubbing her old head against the girl’s warm skin, rolling it around on a neck as flexible as a snake’s.
“Zubalo!” Old Loyolo shouted, startling them all into silence.
Zubalo, the poor chick, was shoved into the middle of the truck’s roof, with all the other chicks pulled back from him.
“You next!” Old Loyolo said.
Even I was surprised, and I thought that he would refuse to speak. You can, you know, if you’re willing to put up with Loyolo haranguing you the rest of the night. But the young crow jumped into the air and flew to the mirror as though he had been expecting to be called, had felt it coming like the pressure of a storm. Perhaps he had.
7. The Haunted Room
Andrew had had plans for the front parlor since he was six. The lace curtains were old and yellowing even then, and the heavy brass rod had smashed his toe when he’d pulled the curtains down to shove them in the fireplace.
It had only taken a minute. Aunt Pamela was bringing sandwiches for their tea so they could sit in the high-backed armchairs and pretend to be fancy for a few minutes while they discussed school. She didn’t know much about kids. Having raised two sons, Andrew couldn’t imagine any outcome of having a sticky little boy in the front parlor where it didn’t end in tears, broken china, and smeared sofas. But she’d tried.
The curtains had gone up like flashpaper. He had stood between the fire and the metal fire screen, watching the flames run up the curtain rod and onto his arms when she’d found him. She’d screamed and dropped the silver tray with a clang and an explosion of crustless white bread that sprayed ham salad on the striped yellow-and-pink cabbage-rose wallpaper. She beat at the flames curling around him, then flung the fire screen aside and rolled him on the floor. Andrew, Andrew!
Somehow the curtains had been replaced and the pale carpet and girlish wallpaper cleaned without stain.
Even when Andrew had become an adult, she’d refused to change the room. The wallpaper seemed as fresh (yet stale) as ever, the carpet pile as tidy and bright as it had been when he was six.
Now she was dead, and he could do whatever he liked with the place. He wanted to open it up. Add more windows. Strip out the carpet and see if the floor underneath was as beautiful as it was in the rest of the house, just waiting to be finished. He wanted emerald green and hardwood and chrome in this room.
But Aunt Pamela wan’t going to let him.
First thing, he’d taken the curtains down. Then he had a double of Scotch, having rolled the curtains up in a loose ball and left them on the dining room table stacked with moving boxes and broken things that hadn’t survived the trip.
When his wife had left him, after their second son was safely off to college, Aunt Pamela had sat him down in the front parlor with seriously stale coffee and told him that he had to let his wife go, the same way his father had, the same way she had. It was a kind of family curse.
She hadn’t so much refused to change the room as let his suggestions slide off her, unheard.
After he’d rinsed his glass in the sink and left it upended in the dish drainer, he’d gone back to the table to put the curtains in the trash, but they were gone.
The front parlor was unchanged. He unhooked the curtain rod, pulled the decorative fleur-de-lis off the end, and slid the curtains free again. He put the rod back up.
“Andrew! What are you doing?”
He froze guiltily. Turned.
Aunt Pamela was in the chair next to the fire, reading a book.
He listened to his own breath as she glared at him.
“Leave those alone.”
He laid the curtains across the back of the nearest chair (pink with feet in the shape of dark-stained claws clutching at balls) and walked toward her. She glared at the curtainless window still. “Andrew! Stop that!”
She was talking to a little boy, not to him. He reached the side of her chair and touched her arm. His hand moved through it, touched the arm of the chair, gently. The starched doily was stiff under his hand.
“Aunt Pamela?”
“Out,” she ordered him, or rather the little boy he had been. Then she sighed. “I suppose it is time for a snack. I’ll be right back. Don’t touch those curtains,” she warned him. She set the book aside, stood up, putting her hands to the small of her tiny back, and stretched.
He tried to follow her out of the room, but she vanished at the parlor door. He gathered the curtains, took them outside, and stuffed them in the trash. Poured himself another double and stood at the doorway of the front parlor. The curtains were gone.
—
He had no warning, no chill breeze or involuntary shiver. Aunt Pamela just appeared in front of him, her elbows jutting out a little from carrying the tray. She shrieked and dropped the tray, kicking it as it reached the hem of her dress. The little white triangles of ham salad sandwiches flew across the room just as he remembered them.
She threw herself at the fireplace, waving her hands at the air, then leaning back and putting her forearms to cover her face. Andrew, Andrew!
She sobbed and crawled backward, turning her face to her shoulder, coughing, then collapsed. It seemed like she stopped breathing. After a while, her body jerked up into the air, bent almost in half, then floated jerkily past him, vanishing again at the door.
No. It hadn’t happened that way.
He blinked and the curtains were back, and Aunt Pamela sat in her chair next to the fire, reading.
He wanted to take the curtains down. Was that so hard? So bad? She’d left him the house. It was his to do with whatever he liked, not something he had to guard for the rest of his life, unchanging. He didn’t have to keep faith with the damned curtains. He didn’t have to put up with this ghostly, unreasonable tantrum.
His whole life he’d spent doing things her way. It had to stop. Yes, he owed her a lot. She’d brought him up. Hadn’t wanted to, but she’d done it when it was clear that his dad would be worse at it even than she was. And now she was dead.
He’d let her have her way when she was alive, to honor the fact that her life would have been different, if he’d never been dumped in her lap. Maybe it wouldn’t have been much different. But he’d honored her wishes.
Until now.
Maybe he would have had a different life, if it hadn’t been for her, and she needed to respect that, too.
Andrew didn’t question his own sanity; his aunt’s lack of compromise over this one thing, this room, was too familiar.
His glass was empty again. He refilled it and set it on the dining room table. The rest of the house had evolved over time, becoming more modern, less girlish, bearing pictures of him and his family on the walls, their fashions changing over time, Aunt Pamela staying more or less the same, only getting slightly smaller as she got older. The tiny waist, the flowered dresses, the hair that was always just barely escaping from her severe buns.
The fact was, he’d lived and she hadn’t. Her hands stayed folded in her lap, in photo after photo. She looked sad and lonely, no matter where he’d taken her.
His foot sank hesitantly into the carpet. The ghost of his aunt crossed the room in front of him to the chair by the fireplace. She lowered herself into the chair as though her back hurt, then reached over for the book.
Andrew took another step closer to the curtains, and another, watching her but careful not to bump into the coffee table in front of the yellow sofa with the tiny pillows. He just wanted a place he could call his own, without having to constantly think about someone else. A place where he wasn’t def
ined by someone else, or by the lack of someone else.
Then he was around the couch, next to the curtains. He lifted the rod off, loosened the fleur-de-lis, and slid them off again.
“Andrew! What are you doing?”
He replaced the curtain rod, then tiptoed toward the fireplace. It hadn’t been lit since she died. She wasn’t watching him; again, she was watching where he would have stood, as a child, next to the pink chair.
He passed her and pulled back the fire screen. She still wasn’t watching him, and he noticed the book she was reading. It wasn’t a book but a photo album with a childish yellow horse on the cover; he’d made it for her when he was eight. After the fire.
“Oh, Andrew,” she sighed. “I’m too old for you to haunt me anymore. Just leave them alone, will you? It’s been forty years already. I’m tired.” She looked back to her book just as he tossed the curtains into the fireplace and lit them with one of the long matches in a tin she kept nearby.
They went up like flashpaper, and then he had her attention.
“Andrew, Andrew!”
The fire jumped onto him, even though he could have sworn he was standing far enough away. He looked at his arms, disbelieving, as the fire swarmed up them.
Aunt Pamela flung the album aside—that wasn’t right, either; she was supposed to be carrying sandwiches—and tried to beat out the flames on him, but her hands only passed through the air.
The fire jumped onto the old furniture as he frantically waved his hands.
—
Pamela woke in the hospital, alone. The curtains. Always the curtains with Andrew.
They told her the house was gone, and she wondered if his ghost would leave her be, now. She almost didn’t want him to go. She longed to be the content old woman who looked out of the ghostly photograph album; nobody else could see them in those pictures, taking their ghostly vacations by the shore. It spoke well of the afterlife, that it had already been happier than the life she’d lived, even if Andrew’s ghost-wife had left him.
A Murder of Crows: Seventeen Tales of Monsters and the Macabre Page 8
