Lost Echoes

by Joe R. Lansdale

  Harry knew his dad had been able to pick out a few words, but couldn’t read well enough to get the whole of the story, all that missed school, something about reversing letters when he tried to read, which was why he had called in Mom.

  She read a bit of it from the paper. Harry got up from the floor, strolled over, slid in between them.

  It was the front page of the local paper. It had a large headline.

  KILLER OF BAR OWNER CONFESSES

  There was an article, and Harry’s eyes just hit the high spots. Ex-husband admits to killing his wife, the owner of Rosy’s Roadhouse. Had a key. Waited until the place was empty and she was closing. He was upset about their split-up. He wasn’t happy she was seeing another man.

  “That’s the place down the hill,” Harry said.

  “That’s right,” Mom said.

  Mom turned the page, went to where the story was continued. There were two photos.

  One of the victim.

  One of the murderer.

  Harry knew them both. Or rather, he had seen them both. Down there in Rosy’s. The night he slipped out with Joey and Kayla. The night he fainted.

  He leaned over and looked closer at the picture of the man in the newspaper. It was him, all right. The man with the black hair, the scars, and the sharp, curved knife, the guy that cut the woman’s throat, knocking her against the jukebox. He could remember the light and the warmth, the record playing. That feeling of tightness. It all came back to him. Just for a moment.

  He looked at the woman’s photograph. She looked better than when he had seen her, frightened, cut, then dead. But it was her.

  His eyes bounced along the paragraphs in the article as his mother read them aloud to his father.

  Slit throat.

  Up against the jukebox.

  Blood on the wall.

  Murdered with a knife.

  Harry stepped back, and he was no longer remembering the warmth and the light. It was as if his very being were falling backward, down a long cold tunnel. It was a terrible feeling, and it made his stomach churn.

  “I saw him do it,” Harry said.

  “What?” his mom said. “What did you say?”

  “I saw him,” Harry said.

  “You saw this guy?” his dad asked, thumping his finger on the photograph.

  “Yeah. I saw him.”

  “How the hell did you see him?” Dad said.

  “In my dreams.”

  There was a long moment of silence, large enough and empty enough for an elephant to walk through.

  “Dreams?” Dad said. “Son, you need some rest. You don’t dream people you ain’t never met. You seen that on some TV show or something, read about it in one of those crazy stories you’re always reading.”

  “You just think you’ve dreamed it,” Mom said. “You’re seeing his face in the paper now, just now, and you’re thinking you’ve seen him before. Maybe he reminds you of someone.”

  Harry shook his head. “No.”

  He turned slowly and walked out of the room toward his bedroom. He turned on the little rotating fan and lay down on his bed and looked at the water spot on the ceiling, the one that looked like a bear’s head with its mouth open. There was another water spot not far away. It looked like a mouse. The mouse appeared to be running toward the bear’s mouth, and the bear, silent and waiting, was going to surprise him. Big-time.

  His mother stood in the doorway.

  “You okay, baby?”

  “Yeah, Mom. Okay.”

  “We shouldn’t have let you see that.”

  “No. That’s all right. I always read the paper.”

  And he did. He had started last year, because of a school class that was teaching them about current events. And it always depressed him. Someone was always killing or hurting or stealing or lying to someone else.

  “It’s just someone reminds you of someone else,” she said.

  “Yeah. Sure. It just sort of got to me.”

  “You want some water?”

  “No.”

  “Got some Coca-Cola, you want it.”

  “No. I’m fine.”

  She reached out and touched his hand. She smiled at him. He tried to smile back.

  “Well…okay. You call you need something. All right?”

  “Sure.”

  She went out and closed the door.

  Night had fallen when his father came into the room. A big slice of darkness lay across the sheets. A bit of wind came through a couple of cracks in the wall, which in the summer was all right. During the winter, though, it was a bitch. Still, it was an all right room. At least he had his own space. Joey, he slept on the couch in a house worse than this, and over there no one even tried to make it a home.

  “You sure are upset,” Dad said, and stretched out on the bed beside Harry, under the wedge of darkness, causing the old bed to dip. He could feel his father’s hand close to his. He didn’t look at it and he didn’t touch it, but he could feel the heat off of it, and he knew it was short fingered and thick like a catcher’s mitt, scarred all over from wrenches that slipped and slammed them into bolts and sharp-edged metal.

  “I’m just not feeling well.”

  Harry said this while looking at the ceiling, studying the bear-head water spot, which was hardly visible now. The mouse he couldn’t see at all.

  There was some light coming from the hall, but the darkness was stronger. It shoved the light out.

  “You sure you seen those people before? Ones in the newspaper?”

  “Yes, sir. I guess. I don’t know, really.”

  “Maybe you did. Maybe long ago you did. Then later, see, you dreamed about them, or thought you dreamed about them, when really you were just remembering seeing them. I don’t know about that kind of thing, but it could be like that. Down the hill there, you could have seen them, don’t you think?”

  “Maybe.”

  “You’re letting it get to you, this dream. No use in that.”

  Harry thought, No, not for you. You handle things when they happen. You just go in and take hold and wrestle them to the floor and beat their ass.

  “Well, you listen. After a good night’s sleep, you won’t be thinking about all that.”

  “I know.”

  “You gonna eat some dinner?”

  “I guess.”

  “Hey, tell you what, this once, what say I have Mom bring it in to you? You can eat in your room, lay back a bit. Just rest.”

  “Sure, Dad, that would be great.”

  “You got it,” he said, rolling off the bed, causing it to lift Harry up a full two inches.

  Daddy turned the little rotating fan on higher. It screeched and pushed some wind Harry’s way. His father smiled. It was a lopsided smile, like maybe he didn’t really know how to do it.

  “You’ll be all right,” he said, and went out.

  It actually was kind of fun, eating in the room, being alone, taking his time, sitting by the window looking out at the night.

  They had this thing, his family did, and it was about eating at the table. You always ate at the table, and you talked.

  It was never heavy talk. Daddy mostly listened to Mom and him talk, and Harry liked to talk, when it was easy talk. About everyday forgettable stuff.

  But there were things he couldn’t discuss.

  Comics. Books, the writers who wrote them. Neither of his parents were readers of that sort of stuff. In fact, it was his father’s shame that he could hardly read at all. Went through school up to the junior year and dropped out. Got that far and couldn’t really read. Oh, he could read signs, and a few simple things. Enough to get by, especially if you were doing mechanic work and knew your work and could sign your name. So it wasn’t a noticeable problem. But Harry knew it embarrassed him, his inability to really read well. In everything else he was as confident as Superman, but the reading, that bothered him.

  And his Mom…well, she was smart, appreciated his love of books. But discussing any of the science fict
ion he read would have been about as much fun as talking to a goat about barbecue sauce. She didn’t get it. Same with the handful of video games he played. She couldn’t see the point.

  His parents watched TV. Sitcoms and news mostly, listened to country-and-western music on old vinyl records. They seldom went out. If they did, it was maybe for a hot dog or hamburger, picking it up at the drive-through window. Visited relatives from time to time. Didn’t really have any friends. Not real friends like he had. Joey and Kayla.

  Well, Kayla anyway. Joey, he was hard to figure.

  But Kayla, she was all right.

  He thought about her all the time.

  But his parents, they didn’t have any real friends, far as he knew. Didn’t even have a good friend who moved off. Someone they could remember.

  They had each other.

  And him.

  Daddy had his work, and Mom had him to try and put knee pads and helmets on.

  That was pretty much all they had.

  But he loved them. Dearly. And they loved him back.

  His dad, a real tough guy, but soft when he had to be. He was Harry’s hero. Said what he meant, meant what he said. Talked the talk and walked the walk. He wasn’t scared of much, that Harry could see.

  He wished he could be just like him.

  Because he was scared all the time, and here he sat, whining in his room with the leftovers of his dinner. Harry got up, went to the window, and looked out. Dark.

  He pushed up the window and took a deep breath. The summer air was as thick as old tire smoke, and just as hard to breathe.

  He went to his door and closed it softly. It blotted out the sound of the television and the light from the hallway, left him in darkness.

  He turned on the light, got his magazine out from under the bed, the one with the naked women in it, looked at it, but it wasn’t doing much for him. He turned off the light, put the magazine back, and lay down on the bed with his hands behind his head.

  He thought again about his dad, how he tackled things like this. He wouldn’t just lie here. He’d go and investigate. He’d find out.

  While Harry was thinking on all this, he fell asleep.

  When he awoke it was still dark in the room. He got up, stumbled over, and turned on the light. He looked at the windup clock on the nightstand. It was five A.M.

  All right, he thought. I got to do it. Got to be brave, the way my old man is brave.

  Harry put on his clothes, turned out the light, pushed up the window, and slipped out the way he had slipped out the night he and Joey and Kayla had gone down to the tonk.

  But now it was just him, all by his lonesome, and the sky was so big and the world was so wide and the shadows amongst the old cars and the trees were so dark.

  He went softly by his parents’ window, trying not to crunch anything underfoot. He traveled across the road and down the hill at a smooth run. He knew the place well, so all he needed was a bit of starlight. He knew all the places around his home; he had played on every inch of that ground. Unless there was a new gopher hole or a snake, he was cool out there in the dark.

  He went down and leaned against the honky-tonk, next to the window Joey had broken out.

  He started to climb in, but hesitated.

  There was nothing but darkness in there, and he didn’t even have a flashlight. What the hell had he been thinking?

  Just looking inside made him nervous. The dark gave the impression of crawling, and the place looked even more desolate than when he and Joey and Kayla had been here last. He could feel bumps moving across his back, arms, and neck, like cold-legged beetles. He took a deep breath, took hold of the windowsill. A piece of glass stuck him. He jerked his hand back and bit the glass out and spit it away. He rubbed his bloody palm against his blue jeans.

  He leaned over and looked closer at the sill, found some safe spots, put his hands there, and—

  He couldn’t do it.

  Couldn’t make himself do it.

  He realized he was breathing fast, and it was making him feel dizzy, weak.

  He made it as far as his yard, stopped to catch his breath and look over at the old cars next door. They were really ratty now, having been brutally bitch-slapped by weather and time.

  He had loved those old cars once; now all he could remember was the last time he was in one of them, long ago, and that he had been scared. He didn’t remember exactly what scared him, but he did remember he had been frightened out of his wits and had never played there again.

  Scared.

  That was his theme song.

  Scared with a chorus of Scared Again.

  A memory or two unraveled, frayed. And it hit him.

  When he was a kid, that’s what had happened, out there in the car. Stuff like that night in the honky-tonk. It’s why he had quit going to the cars. He had seen faces and heard sounds. He had almost forgotten, or had tried to forget, had tucked it away, but now it was coming back to him.

  Harry took a deep breath, went over to the car that was once his favorite. The one that had frightened him those long years ago. He put his hand on the driver’s side door, hesitated.

  “You got a second chance here, boy,” he said out loud. “You don’t have to be a pussy twice in one night.”

  He opened the car door and slid inside, leaving the door open. The seat wobbled and a rat screeched and ran out from under it. Harry let out a little yell. The rat bailed through the open door. Harry watched its starlit shape hump across the ground and into the woods.

  Damn.

  Maybe that’s what had scared him that long time ago.

  A rat. A screeching rat. That could explain things. He was young and hadn’t seen it. It had startled him and made him run.

  Yeah. That explained a lot of things.

  “I’m not scared,” he said.

  He pulled the door shut. Hard.

  When the door slammed the sound was like the gate of hell had slammed, and there were other sounds, a whine, and a screech that was near deafening. A scream. Then there were psychedelic lights and flying colors, and the car was new and smelled fresh and clean and the world was bright and full of sunlight and there was a blur of cars out there on the highway and heat waves rippled and he could hear the wind whipping past, and hair, not his own, flicked long and wild in the wind from the open window.

  A woman was sitting inside of him.

  He didn’t know any other way to understand it. She was inside of him, and suddenly something dark appeared. A car, crossing an intersection, and Harry threw up his hands as they collided, and the woman inside of him, she jumped out of him, her head striking the steering wheel, and when it did a red haze filled his vision and splattered against the windshield.

  To his right, a doll was thrown forward.

  A large doll.

  It hit the window hard, shattering it, making glass shards jump: then the doll twisted into a U shape, ricocheted off the inside of the car, passed through him once, striking the woman, bounced back against the glass, came to rest on the floorboard in a wad.

  The doll leaked.

  Only it wasn’t a doll.

  It was a little girl.

  He couldn’t tell much about her looks. She didn’t have any. Just a mess of blond hair with runs of scarlet in it, her face a nest of broken glass and a pool of blood. The blood was coming faster now. The car was coated in it.

  He thought: Seat belts. Where are the seat belts?

  He fell forward and hit his head against the steering wheel and the car went dark and dull and empty and turned old; the door screeched as he jerked it open and let out a yell.

  He yelled more than once.

  He yelled a lot.

  His parents came out of the house and found him lying in the yard on his back, looking up at the stars, still yelling.

  9

  There were lots of doctors for the next few years. Doctors with charts and tests and even medicine that made him tired and a little loopy. It was supposed to help him fo
cus. It was supposed to help him with his delusions. It made him feel bad.

  A little later, he would think, yeah, I felt bad, but I was numb. And numb, that was good.

  But back then he didn’t know that.

  So, he quit taking the medicine, thought: Okay, maybe I’m a fruitcake with extra nuts, and maybe I’m not. And if I am a fruitcake, then I probably don’t know it. But I know this: My parents don’t have any money, and I’m costing them a ton because I might be nuts.

  So I got to quit being nuts.

  Or whatever is wrong with me has got to stop.

  I’ll just stop now.

  And he did stop.

  Sort of.

  He was sixteen and had his license. Had his first chance to go out and see the world from behind a steering wheel, and the truth of the matter was, he was frightened.

  There had been other episodes.

  One night, while riding in a car with Joey, who got his license first, he had “an experience.” It wasn’t the same as before. The car door closing was fine. The ride was fine. Then they hit a bump and the glove box snapped open and the lid dropped down with a reverberation, and it jumped on him.

  Different this time. Milder. Just a bumpy ride at midday, a black man yelling as a car came out of nowhere. Just a fender-bender on the right side that knocked the glove box open, that and a high kick start on a rush of adrenaline. The driver even started to smile, happy he hadn’t gotten twisted into the metal. Then the man’s face fell off like melted black wax and the world Harry knew came back and it was all over.

  Joey was sitting behind the wheel looking at him when he came out of it. Joey pulled over, said, “What the fuck is wrong with you? Quit jumping. You’re fucking me up, man.”

  “What?”

  “You’re hopping and screaming. Ain’t even any music on.”

  “Shit,” Harry said.

  “That’s what I almost did.”

  “Is this car used?” Harry asked.

  “Yeah. It is. What you think, I get an old model and no one’s ever driven it? Like it’s been sitting on the car lot for a few years till I buy it?”

  “Was it ever wrecked?”