Lost Echoes

by Joe R. Lansdale

  “Since when do you care what your brother says?” Kayla said. “He told us you could get a girl pregnant by putting your little finger in her butt. So what’s he know?”

  “He was just kidding.”

  “I don’t think so. I think he’s that dumb.”

  “Maybe it was the truth,” Joey said. “You want to bend over and let me try it?”

  “I do that, it won’t be your finger; I know that. Just stay your distance.”

  “You two are too nasty,” Harry said.

  “It isn’t me,” Kayla said. “He’s the one’s got the stupid brother.”

  They went on like this for a while, then eased up to the honky-tonk on the dark side. Joey grabbed at the window and pushed. It didn’t budge.

  “We got to knock it out,” Joey said.

  “I don’t know,” Harry said. “That wasn’t my idea, breaking nothing.”

  “You want to see a ghost or not?” Joey said. “That was your idea, man. The ghost. I’m gonna get punched, I think I ought to go all the way, see what’s inside.”

  “Just don’t think we should break anything.”

  And no sooner had Harry finished saying it than he looked at Kayla. She was in shadow, and he couldn’t see much of her, but he could see her shape, and in some way that was more exciting than if he could see all of her. He wanted very much for her to think he was brave. He swallowed, said, “Sure, we can do that.”

  “Maybe we ought not,” Kayla said. “It’s okay, you don’t want to, Harry.”

  “Nah,” Joey said, “it’s all right. He’s all right. He don’t mind. Ain’t nobody using this place nohow.”

  Joey picked up a rock, snapped it against a pane of glass. The glass shattered. Joey reached through the hole, got hold of the window lock, moved it. He pushed the window up easily and climbed inside.

  Kayla came next. Harry linked his fingers together so she could step into the web of his hands and mount the window frame.

  “Watch for glass,” he said.

  Kayla smiled at him. She was out of the deep shadow now, and he could see her smile. It made him feel ten feet tall.

  She stepped into his hands and through the window. He glanced at the drive-in screen before he clambered after her. It was a bloody death scene. A kung fu master with a sharp sword was beheading a warrior woman.

  Inside the shadows were thick, and so was the dust. It choked them, and Harry began to cough. Kayla pulled a small flashlight from her back pocket, clicked it on.

  There were tables and a long counter and against the wall a jukebox. The smell was strange. It gathered on them and clung like a cobweb.

  “Stinks in here,” Harry said.

  “Ghosts have a smell,” Kayla said. “I read that.”

  “Do they smell like shit?” Joey said. “Shine the light over there.”

  They caught a cat in the light, pooled him briefly in yellow. The cat bolted, disappeared behind the bar.

  “Must be a hole in the wall somewhere,” Harry said.

  “Let’s get it,” Joey said. “Let’s get the cat.”

  “No,” Kayla said.

  “What for?” Harry said. “Leave the cat alone.”

  “I don’t like cats,” Joey said.

  “Don’t you hurt a cat,” Kayla said. “You hurt a cat, I’ll never speak to you again.”

  Joey processed this information for a long moment, studying Kayla, standing defiant behind the small beam of light. He turned away from where the cat had gone, said, “That stink. It’s cat shit. Watch where you step.”

  “That won’t be easy,” Harry said. “We just got the one light.”

  “And I have it,” Kayla said.

  Harry and Joey eased up close to Kayla. Harry could smell Kayla’s hair. It smelled like some kind of flowery shampoo. And she had on a heavy dose of perfume. She always wore too much, but he liked it. He felt funny all over. He wanted to put his arm around her, but didn’t.

  “Shine it on the jukebox,” Joey said.

  Kayla did. The records were still beneath the glass. In fact, one was cocked up on the spindle, ready to drop.

  “I heard she got killed right there,” Joey said. “By the jukebox.”

  “You don’t know that,” Harry said.

  Kayla said, “It was in all the papers, Harry. My daddy told me about it. He talked to the cops were here, down at the station. She was found lying against the jukebox. Everybody knows that.”

  “Her head was near cut off,” Joey said. “Let’s see if there’s blood.”

  They went over close and shined the light around. The blood had long since been cleaned off the floor and the jukebox, but there were little spots of something on the wall, and the trio decided to believe it was blood, even if it wasn’t.

  “It’s stuffy in here,” Kayla said.

  “Yeah,” Harry said. “And cold too.”

  “I thought there was a ghost if it got chilly,” Joey said. “You know, they call it cold spots. She’d be in this spot, wouldn’t she? This would be the spot, right?”

  “I look like an expert on ghosts?” Harry said. “How would I know?”

  “There isn’t any ghost,” Kayla said.

  Joey poked at Harry with his finger, making Harry jump.

  “Don’t need a ghost,” Joey said. “Harry’s scared enough.”

  Harry shoved at Joey. Hard. Knocked him back against the wall, stumbling into the jukebox, causing him to lean against it.

  “Hey,” Joey said. “I didn’t mean nothing.”

  Joey put a hand on the jukebox to right himself, jostling it further. The record on the spindle dropped and there was a clacking sound as it fell against the one beneath it.

  The little snapping together of those old-style records was to Harry like the sound of two cymbals being slammed together, and there were bursts of other sounds, unidentified—sounds that seemed to lurk behind some invisible barrier—and there was lots of light, like he had experienced before, but brighter yet, and really hot this time.

  And there was Loretta Lynn, singing about Fist City. The words to the song were at first muffled, like some kind of insect beating its wings in a bag, then they became identifiable and loud, as if the words and notes were solid things, invisible creatures hopping about the room, landing on his ears, crawling inside. And inside the darkness of his noggin a paint store exploded. Colors burst in every direction and there was a loud thump, and another sound like someone drawing a line on paper with a ballpoint pen. Then he felt warm, and there was pressure, as if he had been wrapped too tight in fuzzy wool blankets.

  Then the images: a room, the very room he was in, lit up bright and very clear. Him standing alone in its center, and yet he was somehow viewing from overhead as well.

  There was nothing else in the room in that moment, not Kayla, not Joey. Just the warmth and the light and the tight sensation, and then there was a woman in a short black dress, not a young woman, but someone his mother’s age. She was standing against the jukebox. And there was a man. Like the woman, he seemed to come from nowhere; shadows rushed out of some hole, gathered up, and made him. His face was unshaven, and he had a big scar on his upper lip, little ones on his cheeks. When he moved, his thick black hair shook as if it were a mop.

  The man had a curved-bladed knife in his hand.

  The knife flashed out and the overhead light caught the blade and made it shine like a glimpse of torchlit silver down in a mine. Then it moved out of the light and red beads leaped. The beads froze. In that moment Harry saw that the woman, who had turned and opened her mouth to speak, had a red cord around her neck. Then it came to him that it wasn’t a cord at all. It was a cut. A fine line growing wide.

  The red beads came unfrozen and flew about, and she stumbled forward, and the man grabbed her, and slung her against the jukebox. She tried to get up, a hand at her wound, but he slashed across her throat again, cutting her hand, severing the tip of one of her fingers. When she jerked her cut hand away, she fell, one hand o
n the jukebox.

  She looked up. Her dark eyes narrowed. Her expression was like the one you had when you found you’d put your hand into something you’d rather not touch.

  Loretta continued to sing.

  The man leaned forward, hooked the knife under her left ear, and pulled hard and slow under her chin, along the now thick red line he had made, pulled the knife almost all the way to the other ear.

  Her head sagged, knocked against the jukebox.

  Her eyes went flat and dead as blackened pennies.

  Blood was everywhere.

  The man stepped back and Harry could see his face, but just for a moment, because the shadows that had made him came apart and fled in all directions and the man was gone. It was the same for the woman, a flutter of darkness, and she was out of there, and the song went with her, as if the words were being sucked down a drain.

  Harry was left with the tight warmth and the light. Then the light faded and it got cool and his head exploded all over the place in bursts of color. He ended up finally in grayness, then blackness.

  “Harry, you all right?”

  It was Kayla. She was holding her arm under his head, and she was leaning over him, her long blond hair dangling around his face like a curtain, and he could smell that fine shampoo smell, the overdose of perfume, and for a moment he thought the ghosts that had jumped on him, filled his head, sick and ugly as they were, might be worth it just to have him end up with Kayla’s arm behind his head.

  “I saw the ghost,” he said. “More than one.”

  “We didn’t see dick,” Joey said.

  “You had to. The woman…the knife.”

  “Dick,” Joey said.

  “Kayla?” Harry asked.

  “Dick,” she said.

  “I saw it. I tell you, I saw it.”

  “Dick,” Joey said. “There was dick. You fainted, you sissy.”

  “No, you’re not,” Kayla said. “You got hot. It’s hot in here.”

  “Sissy,” Joey said.

  “Tell me about it,” Kayla said.

  He told them.

  “Sometimes some people see ghosts that others don’t,” Kayla said.

  “We’d have seen it,” Joey said. “There was ghosts, we’d have seen them. What’s wrong with our eyes, huh?”

  Harry sat up, hating to lose Kayla’s arm at the back of his neck. Hating it a lot, but feeling he had to do it, had to sit up, try and look a little less wimpy.

  “I saw that on TV,” Kayla said. “Some people see them, some don’t.”

  “You seen that on TV, did you?” Joey said. “Where’s that? The Sissy Channel?”

  7

  “Cut from ear to ear?” Kayla asked.

  Harry nodded.

  “Wow,” she said.

  They were sitting on Harry’s porch, day after the night of the big event. Joey was not around. Harry was glad of that today. He didn’t need reinforcements for this.

  “Thanks for pretending to believe me,” he said.

  “You’re welcome…. Wait a minute. I’m not pretending.”

  “Really?”

  “I believe you believe it.”

  “Then you don’t believe me? Which is it, Kayla?”

  “I don’t think you’re lying to me, but I think you might have dreamed it, fainted from the heat, hit your head, dreamed it. We didn’t see anything.”

  “I thought you saw on TV how one person could see it and another couldn’t. Saw it on the Sissy Channel.”

  She laughed and punched his arm. Hard. It really hurt. He rubbed it.

  “Sorry,” she said.

  “You never know your own strength…. But you don’t believe I saw a ghost?”

  “It’s just hard to accept.”

  “You went to see a ghost.”

  “Sure. It was fun. But I didn’t really expect to. I just wanted to go because you were going.”

  “Really?”

  “Really. I believe you saw something. Even if you dreamed it. You wouldn’t lie to me about something like that. Would you?”

  “Nope. You’d beat me up.”

  “Seriously.”

  “Seriously, you’d beat me up.”

  “I would. But seriously. You wouldn’t, would you, Harry?”

  “Never.”

  “I didn’t think so. Did you tell your parents?”

  “No,” Harry said, shaking his head. “I couldn’t tell them where I was—you know.”

  “Sure. I wasn’t thinking. That wouldn’t be smart, would it?”

  “You didn’t tell your parents where you were, did you?”

  “Course not,” she said. “Joey’s dad found out he was out, like he always does, and Joey got a beating. Both his eyes are blacked. I saw him mowing his yard. He hardly looked at me. He was limping some.”

  “Wow.”

  “Yeah. Wow…You know what, Harry? I came to see you for another reason. Not just to talk about the ghost.”

  “What’s that?”

  “We’re moving.”

  Harry felt as if he had just been hit between the eyes with a mallet.

  “Oh. When?”

  “Coming weekend.”

  “Yeah.”

  She nodded. “I just found out.”

  “Your dad got another job?”

  “No. Mom and I, we’re moving.”

  “Oh.”

  “Yeah. They had some trouble.”

  “You don’t have to talk about it.”

  “We’ve talked about it before.”

  “He has a temper.”

  “So does Mama. But this…It’s different. Dad…He was seeing someone else. It’s probably best, him staying here. He’s not a cop anymore. Gonna open a garage. He likes mechanic work. Mom, she’s got a job in Tyler, at a dress shop.”

  “I’m so sorry, Kayla.”

  “Yeah. Well, it’s how it is, as Mom says. We’re leaving pretty soon. Mom has a house rented.”

  “Oh.”

  “That’s all you can say? Oh?”

  “I don’t know what to say…except I don’t want you to go. I want you to stay here, go to school here. We could go to college together. This is a nice town.”

  “It’s all right. But I can go to college in Tyler, maybe come back here and get with the cops, like Daddy was.”

  “I don’t want you to go.”

  “Me either. You think maybe people are meant for each other? You know, the stars and all that?”

  “I don’t know about the stars. But maybe some people are. Maybe you get lucky now and then and things are just right. Puzzle pieces fit.”

  “And now they have to unfit.”

  “Yeah.”

  “It doesn’t have to be forever.”

  “Absolutely not.”

  Kayla took his hand. She pulled it next to her and he could feel the back of his knuckles touching the side of her bare leg, just below her khaki shorts. Her perfume was strong. Harry felt warm all over. The hairs on the back of his neck prickled. Not like when he had seen the ghost, but in a good way.

  They sat silently, their fingers entwined.

  “I guess you have to go?” he said.

  “Harry?”

  “Yeah,” And when he said it, he turned his face toward her. She leaned toward him and kissed him lightly on the lips. It wasn’t much, just a touch, but he felt a kind of feeling he had never felt before. Not just movement in his tighty whities, but something else. Something strange.

  “I got to go,” she said. “I’ve already been here too long. Told Mama I would help pack.”

  “Sure.”

  “See you around, maybe?”

  “Sure. Of course you will. We’re puzzle parts that fit. Remember?”

  “I’m gonna miss you.”

  “You too. Lots.”

  She got up then and started walking away. When she got to the road she started running, and Harry noted that she could run very fast, and not the way most girls ran, but like an Olympian carrying the torch.

&
nbsp; She ran faster yet, and pretty soon he saw her turn the corner and go out of sight around a neighbor’s house. He got up and walked quickly along the long porch, followed it around to the other side of the house. Stood on the porch where the sunlight was bright. He squinted, put a hand over his eyes, like the Great Scout surveying the horizon.

  He could see her again. She was running where the road had curved, and as she ran she was blocked out by more houses. He watched as she darted between them. It was just a glimpse, but he was glad he saw her. Her long legs leaping out and her blond hair flying.

  The road turned away and a house blocked the road and he couldn’t see Kayla anymore.

  8

  Six months later, sitting on the floor in front of the TV, trying to find something to watch, cruising the television airwaves with his trusty channel changer, Harry came upon something unexpected.

  A realization.

  There really was nothing on.

  Nothing he wanted to see.

  Nada.

  The goose egg.

  The family didn’t have wide cable access. That was part of it. But they did get a lot of stations with the basic cable. But there wasn’t shit on.

  He flipped and got the news, but it was all bad and about war and people dying or killing or yelling or fighting. He caught a couple of movies, but the violence was so intense, he sort of lost sight of the stories.

  He just sat there flipping through the channels, thinking about Kayla. He had tried to go see her the next day, the day after the kiss, but no one was home, and when he went back the next afternoon, they were gone. The house was as empty as a politician’s promise.

  But he could still remember the kiss as if it were yesterday, the way she had held his hand, the way her flesh felt when she touched him. That biting smell of perfume in his nostrils.

  Puzzle pieces separated. The pattern broken. The puzzle screwed.

  “Well, I’ll be goddamn,” his father said. “Will you look at this?”

  Harry turned to look as his mother came in from the kitchen, a towel in her hands. She said, “Don’t cuss.”

  “Look here,” Dad said, and slapped a finger against a newspaper on the dining table. “What’s this say?”