by Brian Keene
THAT WHICH LINGERS
Sarah awoke to the wailing alarm clock. Blurry-eyed and still half asleep, she went for her morning run—from the bedroom to the bathroom. Three seconds later, she knelt, retching as she’d done every morning for the past two months.
Finished, she collapsed onto the couch and lit the day’s first cigarette while the coffee brewed. A dull ache behind her temples was all that remained from the night before. Sarah frowned, trying to recall the exact details. She remembered arguing with the bartender. He hadn’t wanted to serve her, commenting on her condition. After some flirting, she’d managed to hook up with several men who were willing to buy a girl a drink in exchange for a hint of things to come.
At least she hadn’t gotten completely smashed and ended up bringing one of them home. Her empty bed testified to that. She hadn’t shared it since Christopher walked out on her four months ago. She inhaled, letting the acrid smoke fill her lungs, and fought back tears.
Sarah showered, trying to wake up as the water caressed her skin. Trying to lose herself in a flood of happy thoughts. Trying not to notice the swell of her abdomen as she lathered her lower body. Trying to cope.
She wrapped her long, chestnut hair in a towel, and cinched another around her waist. Then she grabbed breakfast. The coffee was good, but a single bite of the granola bar made her stomach nauseous again.
She let the towels drop to the floor and caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror. This too, reminded her of Christopher.
They’d dated for three years. The pregnancy had been unplanned. Christopher had been ecstatic—and crushed when he learned that she didn’t feel the same way. She’d tried to explain how she felt. How the timing wasn’t right. She still wanted to go back to school and get her bachelor’s degree. She wanted to do more with her life than working as a waitress. Having a baby now would jeopardize all of that.
What she hadn’t told him was that she worried about his drinking and of how he was turning out to be just like the father he hated. She didn’t express that she had come to seriously doubt their relationship.
Christopher was completely opposed to the abortion.
Sarah noticed how her breasts were growing fuller while echoes of Christopher’s pleas rang in her ears.
The abortion had devastated him, killing whatever chance of love they’d still had. A part of both of them had died that day.
That was four months ago.
Collapsing onto the unmade bed, she began to cry. How could she possibly deal with what was happening to her alone? She needed Christopher.
She’d considered having an ultrasound, but knew that nothing would show up during the procedure.
She wasn’t crazy.
She was haunted.
Deep inside, Sarah felt something kick.
STORY NOTE: Another of my very early stories, and one of the first I ever sold for publication. When it was first published, it caused a minor stir on early internet message boards among both pro-life and anti-abortion readers. That surprised me at the time, but the internet was young and new then, and things like flame wars and trolls hadn’t been invented yet. Rest assured, I had no political agenda with this tale. I just thought it was a pretty cool ghost story.
HALVES
We walked outside one morning and my daughter, Ellie, stepped on half of a dead mouse.
It was my turn to take Ellie to school. She’s in second grade, and shy. A few of the older kids on the school bus like to pick on her. They call her names—’Smelly Ellie’ being one of the more obnoxious ones. For the record, my daughter doesn’t smell, unless you happen to think that Johnson’s baby shampoo and soap stink. Apparently, smelly is the only word the little cretins could find to rhyme with her name. We complained, of course. It did no good. The bus driver was unwilling or incapable of putting a stop to it, and the administration assured us they’d look into it, but they never actually did anything. Mean-while, Ellie came home every day in tears. So my wife, Valerie and I, began taking turns giving her a ride to school each day on our way to work.
That morning—a Monday in late May—started off really nice. It was a beautiful day outside. Sunny and warm, but not hot. A gentle breeze rustled the trees in our yard, making them sway back and forth. Butterflies flitted about. Birds sang and rustled around in the shrubs. The sky was light blue and filled with fluffy, slow-moving cotton ball clouds. Ellie was in good spirits. No big surprise there. After all, she only had a few more weeks until summer vacation started. Her mood was infectious. I remembered what that felt like—having the open promise of the entire summer spread out before you.
Kids are good at reawakening emotions and joys you’ve long since forgotten. The sleepless anticipation that comes the night before Christmas or your birthday. The fun of getting dressed up for Halloween. The excitement of going someplace new or seeing something different. The simple pleasures of favorite books, television programs or a special toy. I relive my childhood through my daughter every single day. Childhood is better the second time around.
Valerie was pouring coffee into a travel mug in preparation for the morning commute. Ellie gave her mother a kiss goodbye. Then Valerie went into the bedroom to finish putting on her make-up. Ellie and I walked out onto the deck, basking in that beautiful day, and we hadn’t taken more than a half-dozen steps when Ellie glanced down at her shoe and screamed.
It was pretty gruesome. The mouse’s upper half was missing. Where there should have been a head and forepaws, there was only a pink and purple mess of tiny entrails. Some of it stuck to the bottom of Ellie’s shoe, and stretched like gum that had been left out in the sun for too long.
“Ewwww,” she wailed. “That is so gross!”
I told her to wipe her shoe off on the outside doormat as best she could. Then I thought better of it. Valerie would kill us both if she did that, so instead, I told her to go wipe it off in the grass. While she was doing that, I got a shovel out of the garage and scooped the grisly remains off the deck. Then I tossed the little corpse in the trashcan. When I returned, a small, wet stain was all that remained of the mouse. By the time I got home from work, that would be gone, as well. Flies were already buzzing around it.
“Come on,” I said. “We’ll be late.”
Ellie pouted as I buckled her in.
“That poor mouse. What happened to it, Daddy?”
“I don’t know, sweetie.”
In truth, I did know what had happened to it. I just wasn’t about to tell my daughter the truth—that the hapless mouse had had the misfortune to come across Hannibal, and Hannibal had done what he did best.
Hannibal is our cat. He showed up during the winter, bedraggled and skinny, with matted, dirty fur and a pronounced limp. His age was indeterminable, but I guessed he was under a year old. He was wary of us, at first, but once I fed him, he rubbed up against my legs and purred. After that, he let me care for him. I brushed his fur and got rid of the knots, and in lieu of a bath, I wiped him down with some sanitary kitchen wipes. When I was finished, I discovered that beneath the dirt and grime, Hannibal had a beautiful, luxurious coat; his fur was as white as snow, shot through with pale yellow streaks. I checked with our neighbors, but nobody was missing a cat. Assuming that either someone had abandoned him, or he’d grown up feral and wild, I took him to the veterinarian, got him fixed, wormed, and checked out. Other than a bad ear mite infestation, Hannibal received a clean bill of health. The limp, as it turned out, was caused by a cut on the pad of his front paw, and that soon healed. He settled in quite nicely, and was affectionate and quite grateful for his new home.
He expressed that gratitude each and every day by bringing back dead animals. Mice, voles, birds, newts, butterflies, frogs—whatever he could find. Each day, there was a different carcass lying on the deck or in the driveway. Once he’d brought back a four-foot long black snake, and another time, I found a squirrel. Those last two shocked me; they seemed much too big for Hannibal to tackle, but evidently, he was a scrapper.
Usually, his prey was less-than-intact by the time he brought it home. I don’t think he ate them—not with all the food I gave him at night. But he didn’t exactly bring his kills home in one piece, either. I can’t tell you how many half-rodents, half-frogs, and butterflies with missing wings I’ve cleared out of the way since Hannibal’s arrival. Until that morning, I’d done a good job of not letting Ellie see them.
Valerie wasn’t thrilled with Hannibal’s gifts. She liked having wildlife around the house—liked having daily visitors to the various birdfeeders she’d hung up all over the lawn. But she liked Hannibal, too—right up until he began doing what outdoor cats do. Then, he wasn’t so cute or cuddly anymore.
We hadn’t intended to make him an outdoor cat, but despite his loving behavior, Hannibal simply couldn’t grasp the concept of using the litter box. Even after he was fixed, he still insisted on spraying the walls and couch, so rather than keep him inside the house, we let him roam the yard. I fixed up a box for him in the garage, and added a cat-door so that he could come and go as he pleased. It kept him dry and safe, at least, and in the winter, he stayed warm.
As I pulled out of the driveway, I pondered the best way to explain to Ellie where the mouse had come from and what had happened to it. She loved Hannibal, and he absolutely adored her. I didn’t want her to suddenly shy away from him. It was important that she learned about the natural behavior of things. But then we hit traffic on the way to school, and my cell phone rang. It was work, wanting to know if I could make it in any earlier. I put off telling Ellie until later.
In hindsight, that was a mistake. That was how the trouble started. Then again, even if I’d told her, I don’t know if it would have changed anything.
Like the song says, I wish I didn’t know now what I didn’t know then.
• • •
The next day, Hannibal left half of a bird on the deck. Ellie’s shriek of disgust was followed by Valerie screaming my name.
“Ward! Get out here.”
Muttering, I put down my coffee and walked out onto the deck, barefoot. A headless, baby robin with soft, downy feathers and only one wing remaining lay next to the spot where the half-mouse had been the day before.
Valerie glared at me, hand on her hips. “Will you get rid of it, please?”
Nodding, I started towards the garage to get the shovel. The gravel in the driveway hurt my bare feet, and I winced, stepping lightly. I stopped halfway when Ellie spoke up.
“Mr. Chickbaum says that Hannibal did this.”
Mr. Chickbaum was Ellie’s imaginary friend. She’d first started talking about him three years ago, soon after we bought this house. Our suspicion was that she’d created him to help her deal with the stress of moving to a new home, and having to make all new friends. Valerie and I didn’t mind. We’d both had imaginary friends when we were young. Mine was a talking chicken shadow named Billy. Valerie’s was a tree named Mrs. Billingsworth. We both outgrew our imaginary friends, and assumed that given time, Ellie would, as well. We thought no more of it, and even encouraged her on the rare occasions that she brought him up.
According to Ellie, Mr. Chickbaum was a little bearded man about six inches tall, who wore green clothes and a hat. The first time we heard this, Valerie and I both immediately thought of leprechauns, although Ellie insisted that he wasn’t one. Secretly, I’d always assumed that her imagination formed him based on an old Warner Brothers cartoon. When she was very young, Ellie used to sit in my lap and we’d watch Looney Tunes together (I’ve always had a fondness for the classics, and even own several original cartoon cells). One of them, an episode entitled ‘The Wearing of the Grin’, had been a mutual favorite of ours, and we watched it countless times. In the episode, Porky Pig is walking to Dublin, Ireland, and gets caught in a bad storm. He seeks shelter in an old castle, which is inhabited by some paranoid leprechauns who are suspicious of him and mistakenly think Porky is there to steal their gold. I miss those times. We stopped watching Looney Tunes as Ellie got older, because Valerie insisted they were too violent. I was certain that Mr. Chickbaum stemmed from Ellie’s subconscious memories of those times.
Ellie played with, talked to, read books with, and drew pictures with her imaginary friend, but always in the privacy of her own room. She never pretended he was there when we were in the room with her. For a while, Valerie had even set a place for him at the dinner table, but stopped after Ellie explained that Mr. Chickbaum didn’t want anyone but her to see him.
I glanced at my daughter now, walked back over to her, and asked, “What did you say?”
Ellie put her hands on her hips and stared at us defiantly. “Mr. Chickbaum says that Hannibal is the one who killed that mousy yesterday, and that he’s killed a lot of other things.”
Valerie and I glanced at each other, communicating in that telepathic way that all parents develop.
Did you tell her about Hannibal?
No, of course not. I assumed that you were the one who told her.
I knelt down beside Ellie and looked her in the eye. “Honey, that’s what cats sometimes do. Remember on Tom and Jerry—”
“Tom and Jerry is a cartoon, Dad.” Her tone was very serious. “The mousy and the birdie are real. We feed Hannibal every night. Why does he have to eat them, too?”
I fumbled for an explanation. “Well, because...you see...in the animal world...”
Ellie stared at me with a mixture of contempt and derision. It was the first time I’d ever seen an expression of either on her face, and it physically rocked me. I felt as if I’d been slapped. I swayed back and forth, and had to reach for the deck rail to keep my balance. Valerie was no help. She simply stared at us both, dumbfounded.
“Mr. Chickbaum says Hannibal won’t stop. He says that Hannibal is a mean kitty and that he should die!”
“Ellie!” I said it louder than I’d meant to, and now it was Ellie’s turn to flinch.
Valerie gasped. “Ellie, that’s a terrible thing to say.”
Ellie stood firm, but her bottom lip quivered. “I didn’t say it. Mr. Chickbaum did.”
“I don’t care who said it.” I lowered my voice, but made sure she knew by my tone that I meant business. “Say it again and no video games for a month.”
“But—”
“Two months.”
Tears welled up in her eyes. Her lips went from quivering to full pout.
“I’m sorry, Daddy. But why isn’t Hannibal in trouble, too? He’s so mean...”
I paused, choosing my words carefully. Then I pulled her to me and gave her a hug, stroking her hair and letting her know it was all right.
“Honey, Hannibal can’t help what he does. It’s instinct. Cats lived in the wild for a very long time before people turned them into pets, and they had to hunt to survive. They still remember that, deep down inside. Humans are the same way.”
She sniffed against my shoulder. “We don’t eat birdies like cats do.”
“No,” I agreed. “We don’t. But we still have instincts left over in us from thousands of years ago. We’re still afraid of the dark, even though we don’t really have a reason to be. Our ancestors were afraid of it because they never knew what might be lurking outside their cave—a Sabertooth tiger or something worse. These days, there aren’t such things, but we’re still afraid of the dark anyway. It’s instinct. And it’s the same way with Hannibal. He doesn’t know why he hunts smaller animals. He does it because deep down inside, something tells him to. Does that make sense?”
She nodded, then pulled away and took her mother’s hand. While Valerie led her to the car, I wiped snot and tears from my shirt.
After they were gone, I got rid of the corpse. Hannibal hid under the deck and watched me. His tail swished back and forth. When I was finished, he rubbed up against my legs and batted at my shoelace. I reached down and scratched him between the ears. Purring, he rolled over and stared up at me with those big green eyes.
“Oh, no,” I said. “You’re
making things hard around here. No belly rubs today.”
He lay there, rolling around and watching me, trying to act cute, until I went inside to change my shirt. When I came out again, Hannibal was gone, back on the prowl, keeping our house safe from critters.
• • •
On the third day, it rained. Hannibal’s present that morning was the hindquarters of a frog. He’d most likely caught it lurking around our septic system. The grass always grows taller there, no matter how often I mow the lawn, and the frogs like to hang out on that spot. I got rid of the evidence before Ellie saw it.
As I drove her to school, I noticed that Ellie was unusually quiet. There was no chatter or singing along with the radio. She simply sat in the back, staring out the window. The only sounds were the windshield wipers and the slight drone of the air conditioning.
“What’s wrong, sweetie?”
“Nothing.”
I coasted to a stop at the next red light and glanced into the rearview mirror. Her demeanor hadn’t changed at all.
“Ellie,” I coaxed. “If something’s wrong, you know you can tell me, right? What’s bothering you? Let’s talk about it. Are you still upset about yesterday?”
She shrugged. “A little. Sort of. I talked about it with Mr. Chickbaum last night, and told him what you said.”
I suppressed a grin.
“He says you’re wrong, Daddy. Mr. Chickbaum says there are still plenty of reasons for us to be afraid of the dark.”
