He strained desperately against the straps, but they held firm.
“No use pushin’ like that,” said the mechanic in the rotted dark coveralls. “You ain’t goin’ nowhere. Sheriff Morland fixed them straps personal. They’re good and tight.”
He felt himself weakening now. Moment by moment, his strength was being bled away—into them. As he grew weaker, they grew stronger. Their eyes were brighter; their cheeks began to acquire a glow.
The waitress tipped back her head, closed her eyes. “Ummmmm, sure feels good!”
“Nothing will be wasted. I assure you,” Exetor said. “We use everything. Even the marrow.”
“Bone marrow’s good for the teeth,” said the teenaged boy. “And we need healthy teeth for our baby.”
“Tell us your name and we’ll call it after you,” said the teenaged girl. “As a gesture, you might say.”
“He won’t tell,” said the hotel clerk. “Gene Johnson was on the card, but I bet you ten dollars that name’s a fake.” He blinked downward. “Will you tell us your real name, mister?”
He gasped out the words: “You ... can ... all ... go ... to hell!”
They looked at one another. The bony deputy shook his head. “Well now, we sure hope the good Lord don’t see fit to send us down there. We’re all decent folk, here at the Mill. Always have been.”
The figures in the rustling circle nodded agreement.
Things were dimming in the room. He blinked, feeling weak as a newborn cat. The anger was gone. The fear was gone. He was tired. Very, very tired. It was like being on the bus again, with the thrumming wheels making him drowsy. His eyelids were heavy. He wanted to close them. Did.
Darkness now.
And rest.
No more worry.
No more pain.
Everything was fine.
THE WOMAN IN BLACK by Dennis Etchison
Dennis Etchison is another of that small group of first-rank horror writers who have only with the recent upsurge of interest in horror fiction begun to receive the critical recognition they have quietly earned over the years. Born in Stockton, California on March 30, 1943, Etchison now lives in Los Angeles, where he teaches creative writing at U.C.L.A. An avid film fan, Etchison claims to know more movie trivia than David J. Schow. In spring of 1985 he was a staff writer for the HBO series, The Hitchhiker. Scream/Press has published two excellent collections of Etchison’s short fiction—The Dark Country and Red Dreams—and a third is forthcoming. A novel, Darkside, was a summer release from Berkley Books. As editor, the versatile Etchison also has a series of reprint anthologies due from Tor Books, Masters of Darkness, as well as an anthology of original fiction from Doubleday, The Cutting Edge. Other books include novelizations of the horror films, The Fog, Halloween II, Halloween III, and Videodrome (the last three under the pseudonym Jack Martin).
When they took his mother away he went to live in the big house.
There he discovered rooms within rooms, drapes like thick shrouds, a kitchen stove big enough to crawl into, overstuffed furniture that changed shape as he passed, a table with claw feet larger than his head, ancient carpets with designs too worn to read, floor heating grates that clanged when he walked on them, musty closets opening on blackness, shadowed hallways that had no end.
These things did not frighten him.
For soon he made friends with the boy across the street; his aunts and uncles came by to help with the meals; it was summer and the back yard stayed light forever.
Before long, however, after only a few days and nights, he found that he could think of but one thing: of the lot next door, beyond the fence, of the high wall that kept him from its bright and dark treasures.
He was in the grove behind the arbor, about to pluck a fig from a low-hanging branch, when someone opened the front gate.
The fig hung there among pale jigsaw leaves, swinging to and fro like a black teardrop. He looked over his shoulder, through luminous bunches of grapes clinging to the lattice. The air was still. At the end of the arbor a plum dropped from a tree, splitting its skin as it landed and spattering the grass below with glistening juice. A piece of heavy iron groaned on the other side of the fence, the same sound he heard at night when the blue lights began to flicker; he was thankful it was day time now so that he could try to ignore it.
He turned his head in time to see his uncle striding toward him along the path, grinding fallen grapes into green stains on the gravel. The boy breathed again and returned his attention to the translucent leaves and the pendulous fruit swaying there.
“Hi, Uncle Ted.”
“Willy.” His uncle came up next to him and stood squinting sadly at the untended yard, at the scraggly weeds poking their way under the fence. “Have you talked to Grandma today?”
“When I got up. I made my own breakfast. I went into her room for a while. Then I went over to Vern’s to play.” He closed his fingers around the fig and pulled; the soft tissue bent and snapped and a milky drop of sap oozed out of the stem.
Uncle Ted shifted his weight and studied his shoes. “Do you like it, living here?”
“I like it fine. Uncle Ted, the Fair’s coming to town next week. Vern says they have different rides this year. New animals, too. We’re saving our money. Can I go?”
“We’ll see, Willy, we’ll see.”
A breeze passed by, rustling the leaves. The tall iron that showed above the security fence groaned again but did not really move; that was only a tree throwing its shadow against the rusty bolts. On the next block a dog barked; Grandma’s chickens clucked suspiciously in response. William peeled the fig and opened it like a flower in his hand. It was sweet and the tiny seeds popped in his teeth like soft sand.
“I know you miss your mother, Willy.”
“Sure.” He sucked the fleshy pulp until his tongue tingled, smearing his face, and wiped his mouth with his sleeve. He discarded the skin and glanced up. Uncle Ted was waiting for something. What was William supposed to say? “Is she coming home today?”
“We all miss her. Very much.”
“Tomorrow?”
“I’m afraid not.”
“Saturday? Maybe Aunt Emily and Aunt Grace could come over and we could make a special dinner for her. I can wash the dishes, and afterwards—”
Uncle Ted cleared his throat. He twisted his fingers together behind his back and pointed his chin at the sky and took a deep breath so that his chest puffed out, his tan shirt taut. He was looking toward the top of the iron crane towering above the fence, but that was not what he was thinking about. It must have been something a long way off, higher and farther than William could see.
“No,” said Uncle Ted.
“Oh.”
The man sighed. He unclenched his hands and ran them nervously over his head. William remembered the way his uncle had looked after his last tour of duty, his close-cropped hair and the sharp creases in his shirt. Since he got back he wore looser clothes and did not stand so rigidly, but his hair was still short and brushed slick.
Now Uncle Ted stood straight again, locking his knees till he was as tall as he could make himself. William almost expected him to salute.
“You haven’t been trying to climb over the fence, have you?”
“No, Uncle Ted. Only—”
“Only what?” The man squinted again, and this time his brow furrowed with anger. He began opening and closing his eyes very rapidly. He set his jaw and glared down at the boy.
“N-nothing,” said William.
“You got something to say, boy, say it!”
“Well—” What was his uncle so upset about? William was sure it could be nothing he had done. “Well, sometimes I wish I could see what’s on the other side. Do you know what’s over there, Uncle Ted?”
“Nothing for a child to worry about. It’s private property and don’t you forget it. From the fence down to the river it all belongs to the government. Only thing for a little boy to do over there is slip and fall and get hurt, get
himself into a whole lot of trouble. But we’d better be glad it’s there. And proud! We’d better be!”
“I believe you, Uncle Ted. I never tried to climb over. I wouldn’t even go near it. I know I’m not supposed to—to—”
His voice broke and his eyes watered so that the branches wavered and his uncle’s legs buckled as if they were made of jelly. He felt an ache in his chest and a numbness in his lips and cheeks; suddenly the air around him was unseasonably cold, a warning of some impending change in the weather. A hurting welled up in him that went far beyond this argument which was no argument at all and which seemed to make no sense.
A strong arm encircled his shoulders.
He opened his eyes wide. What he had seen a moment ago was true: now his uncle stood less tall, slumped as if the wind had been knocked out of him, his shoulders rounded under an oppressive weight. The man removed his arm self-consciously, put his hands together until his nails were white, and cracked his knuckles. The sound was painfully loud in the stillness, like bones breaking.
“I know, Willy,” said his uncle, “I know.” His eyes glazed with that same faraway look. He pinched his nose and massaged the furrow from his brow. William noted that the man’s hand was shaking. “I’ll take care of everything. From now on. We’ll keep you safe and strong. We can do it. I know we can. Anything you need, you ask Aunt Emily or me and we’ll do our best to ...”
William said, “I think I’d like to visit my mother, if she’s not coming home Saturday. I’d like to go soon. If that’s all right.”
The man shook his head, a decisive twitch. “They wouldn’t let you in. Not even that. They never would.”
William swallowed and cleared his head, trying to shake off the bad feeling. “Well,” he said, “when are they going to let my mother out of the hospital?”
“When?” said Uncle Ted absently. “Wh ...” And here his voice failed him for the first time. William wanted to do something to help him, to thump him on the back the way he did when Grandma got to coughing, but he could not reach that far. “I’m afraid,” said the man, “that your mother’s never coming back to Greenworth. You understand, don’t you boy? Do you understand what I’m telling you?”
The moment was frozen in time. William wanted badly to break and run. His eyes darted around the yard, desperate to find a way out, a secret passage, a doorway in the fence that he had not noticed before.
His uncle held him by the back of the neck. But it wasn’t necessary. He couldn’t run now.
For there, behind the screen of the back porch, halfhidden but visible in dark outline, was the figure of a woman. She was dressed in a flowing black garment. William could not make out her features, not even her eyes, but he knew that she was watching him as he stood in the garden.
He sat with his grandmother, rubbing the circulation back into her wrists, as the day came to an end.
“Oh, you must go darling,” she was saying. “Don’t be afraid. There will be so many interesting things to see!”
“I don’t want to,” said William.
He knew his grandmother always let him have his way, even when it was not what was best for him, and he loved her for that. But now he had had a change of heart about going to the Fair and she would not understand. Had she turned against him at last?
It was as if she refused to acknowledge what had happened. She sat propped up in bed, looking out her bedroom window as usual, an expression of serene acceptance on her face. Didn’t she notice that the back yard would soon be overgrown with stalky weeds like the ones near the fence? My Grandma’s getting old, he realized, and then tried to force that thought from his mind.
She smiled and took his wrist in both of her hands. “I understand how you feel. It’s only natural. But no one is ever quite ready for anything when it comes along. Besides, who knows what wonders you’ll find waiting for you when you get there? It’s not far at all.”
She clasped his hands coolly and gazed outside again. A thin, blue twilight was rapidly descending, and already angular shadows had grown over the henhouse next to the fence, shading the tops of the machinery on the other side until the riveted joints and streaked I-beams became the jutting turrets of an iron fortress.
“Like what?” asked William without curiosity.
It would be no fun this time. How could it be? He had more important things to think about now, things he did not even know if he could make himself consider; things he felt certain he could not begin to understand. The Fair was too late this year, he knew, and his heart sank. From now on it would always be too late.
His grandmother drifted away from him, lost in the gray convolutions of the bed that marked the limits of her world now. Her eyelids closed halfway and her pupils thickened.
“Such wonders!” she said, her voice intense but growing fainter, her chest fluttering from the effort. “I’ve dreamed of them. Wings soft as clouds, doves with faces dearer than a baby’s, all God’s creatures come together at last ... oh, darling, it will be so beautiful!”
“They have all that?” How could she know? The big trucks hadn’t even crossed the city limits yet, he was sure. Only Vern seemed to know ahead of time, and that was because of his cousin who worked on the carnival crew. “Are you sure?”
“As sure as I’ve ever been of anything.”
“Well,” he said, “I still don’t think I want to go.”
“And why not?”
“I—it’d be too lonely.”
“But you won’t be alone!”
“Yes, I will,” he said. He thought of Vern and the way his friend would behave around him now, cautious and polite, afraid to say the wrong things, so careful that they would have no fun at all. He remembered the way it was the day his father did not come home from the power plant, and for weeks after—the way everyone left him alone at school and did not ask him to play, as though he were fragile and might break if they came too close. Vern would walk apart from him all the way to the Fairgrounds, offering William too much of his candy and waiting for him to decide what they would do next, ride after ride, the whole time. It was more than he could bear. He would feel different, special, and that would only make the day longer and sadder.
“Oh, darling, I wish I could go with you! Perhaps I shall,” she added, patting his hand again. “One can never be sure ...”
Of course he knew she didn’t mean it. She couldn’t.
“I wish my daddy could go with me,” he whispered.
She beamed. “He’s already there.”
“What?”
Her eyes grew strange. “Don’t you know that, child? You must try to believe. It will be so much easier for you.”
William felt a knot in his stomach. Suddenly he was no longer sure of anything. He wondered if he and his grandmother were even talking about the same thing.
“What else do they have?” he said too loudly, testing her. “Do they have—” He groped for a word. “Do they have gorillas? From Africa?”
“They do.”
“And elephants?” That was a good one. He knew the Fair was too small to have elephants.
“That, too.”
He thought of the dream last week, after he had heard the groaning sound louder than ever from deep within the enclosure. “Do they have birds with wings you can see through?”
“Yes.”
“And—and a talking pig? Do they have a pig that talks, Grandma? Do they really?”
“I’m sure of it. Anything the mind can imagine, and more.”
He sat forward, making fists. “No, they don’t. It’s only a Fair, Grandma. A Fair!”
“What a lovely way of putting it. The Animal Fair! And all just there, on the other side. So close, and getting closer all the time. Soon there will be no barrier at all. The birds and the beasts ... anything and everything, oh, yes!”
Anything? he thought. If they have everything, do they have mothers there?
He stood up in the close bedroom, his arms stiff at his sides, and stared defia
ntly at the old woman. But she only continued to peer out at the back yard as if it were a vision of the Promised Land, at the sea of weeds overrunning the grounds, the trees and vines that had grown gnarled and misshapen as her hands, the fruit that seemed to be illuminated by a cold light from within if you looked too closely in the night. Her eyes were filmed over; she could no longer see what had become of her home. Either that or she saw and embraced it all, and that possibility frightened him more than anything else.
“Don’t you understand, Grandma? Don’t you see? We—we’ve got to get away from here!”
Even after daddy got sick they had stayed because of his work, and then when it was too late his mother refused to leave out of some kind of loyalty to his memory, and because her brothers lived here, because Greenworth was her home. But now in a blinding flash he knew that they were wrong. Their faith was a stubbornness that was killing them all.
“I want to leave, Grandma. Let’s move away. I can go to another school. We can sell this house and—”
“And go where? Another house, another street, it’s all the same. Child, it’s everywhere ...”
“Someplace else, then! If we go far enough away you’ll get well and—and—”
Grandma’s shoulders moved; she was laughing or crying, he couldn’t tell which. “Don’t you see, Willy? It’s too late to run. This is the way it is now. For all of us. No use fighting it. It’s growing up all around. The only answer left is to cross over ...” Her weeping chuckle became a cough.
William moved reflexively to thump her between the shoulder blades and end the spasm. But this time he could not bring himself to strike her for fear that her frail body might not withstand the impact of his small hand. He touched the flannel of her nightgown and felt how unnaturally cool it was, saw the wan flesh of her neck above the ruffled collar. He yanked his hand away. His fingers were tingling. He looked at his palm. It was ashen, bloodless. Like her skin. Does it rub off, Grandma? he wondered in a panic. Does it?
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