The Year's Best Horror Stories 6

by Gerald W. Page (Ed. )

  “I’m not laughing,” Nicholas said. “I don’t either—know what my motives are, I mean. Except that they’re not blameworthy or unnatural.”

  “I’d better go.” She eased herself out of the underslung plastic chair and draped her bag over her shoulder.

  “When can I see you?” His eyes were full of remonstrance and appeal. “The company wants me here another week or so—problems with a delivery. I don’t know anyone in this city. I’m living out of a suitcase. And I’ve never in my life been married, if that’s worrying you.”

  “Maybe I should worry because you haven’t.”

  Nicholas smiled at her, a self-effacing charmer’s smile. “When?”

  “Wednesdays and Sundays are the only nights I don’t work. And tomorrow’s Wednesday.”

  “What time?”

  “I don’t know,” she said distractedly. “Call me. Or come by the boutique. Or don’t. Whatever you want.”

  She stepped into the aisle beside their table and quickly worked her way through the crowd to the capsule-lift outside McDonald’s. Her thoughts were jumbled, and she hoped feebly—willing the hope—that Nicholas Anson would simply disappear from her life.

  The next morning, before any customers had been admitted to the mall, Marilyn Odau went down to Summerstone’s first level and walked past the boutique whose owner had elected to sell Nicholas's Liquid Sheers. The kits were on display in two colorful pyramids just inside the shop’s entrance.

  That afternoon a leggy, dark-haired girl came into Creighton’s Corner to browse, and when she let her fur-trimmed coat fall open Marilyn saw a small magenta rose above her right knee. The girl’s winter tan had been rubbed or brushed on, and there were magenta seams going up the backs of her legs. Marilyn didn’t like the effect, but she understood that others might not find it unattractive.

  At six o’clock Nicholas Anson showed up in sports clothes and an expensive deerskin coat. Jane Sidney and Cissy Campbell left, and Marilyn had a mall attendant draw the shop’s movable grating across its entrance. Despite the early Wednesday closing time, people were still milling about as shopkeepers transacted last-minute business or sought to shoo away their last heel-dragging customers. This was the last Wednesday evening before Christmas that Summerstone would be closed.

  Marilyn began walking, and Nicholas fell in beside her like an assigned escort at a military ball. “Did you think I wasn’t coming?”

  “I didn’t know. What now?”

  “Dinner.”

  “I’d like to go home first. To freshen up.”

  “I’ll drive you.”

  “I have a car.”

  “Lock it and let it sit. This place is about as well guarded as Fort Knox. I’ve rented a car from the service at the airport.”

  Marilyn didn’t want to see Nicholas Anson’s rental car. “Let yours sit. You can drive me home in mine.” He started to protest. “It’s either that or an early good-bye. I worry about my car.”

  So he drove her to Brookmist in her ’68 Nova. The perimeter highway was yellow-gray under its ghostly lamps and the traffic was bewilderingly swift. Twilight had already edged over into evening—a drear winter evening. The Nova’s gears rattled even when Nicholas wasn’t touching the stick on the steering column.

  “I’m surprised you don’t have a newer car. Surely you can afford one.”

  “I could, I suppose, but I like this one. It’s easy on gas, and during the oil embargo I felt quite smart . . . What’s the matter with it?”

  “Nothing. It’s just that I’d imagined you in a bigger or a sportier one. I shouldn’t have said anything.” He banged his temple with the heel of his right hand. “I’m sorry, Marilyn.”

  “Don’t apologize. Jane Sidney asked me the same thing one day . . . I told her that my parents were dirt-poor during the Depression and that as soon as I was able to sock any money away for them, that’s what I did. It’s a habit I haven’t been able to break—even today, with my family dead and no real financial worries.”

  They rode in silence beneath the haloed lamps on the overpass and the looming gray shadow of Satterwhite’s.

  “A girl came into the boutique this afternoon wearing Liquid Sheers,” Marilyn said. “It does seem your product’s selling.”

  “Hooo,” Nicholas replied, laughing mirthlessly. “Just remember that I didn’t bring that up, okay?”

  They left the expressway and drove down several elm-lined residential streets. The Brookmist complex of townhouses came into the Nova’s headlights like a photographic image emerging from a wash of chemicals, everything gauzy and indistinct at first. Marilyn directed Nicholas to the community carport against a brick wall behind one of the row of houses, and he parked the car. They walked hunch-shouldered in the cold to a tall redwood fence enclosing a concrete patio not much bigger than a phone booth. Marilyn pushed the gate aside, let the latch fall behind them, and put her key into the lock on the kitchen door. Two or three flower pots with drooping, unrecognizable plants in them sat on a peeling windowsill beside the door.

  “I suppose you think I could afford a nicer place to live, too.”

  “No, but you do give yourself a long drive to work.”

  “This place is paid for, Nicholas. It’s mine.”

  She left him sitting under a table lamp with several old copies of McCall’s and Cosmopolitan in front of him on her stonework coffee table and went upstairs to change clothes. She came back down wearing a long-sleeved black jumpsuit with a peach-colored sweater and a single polished-stone pendant at her throat. The heat had kicked on, and the downstairs was cozily warm.

  Nicholas stood up. “You’ve set things up so that I’m going to have to drive your car and you’re going to have to navigate. I hope you’ll let me buy the gas.”

  “Why couldn’t I drive you and just sit back and enjoy the ride?” Her voice was tight again, with uneasiness and mild disdain. For a products consultant Nicholas didn’t seem quite as imaginative as he ought. Liquid Sheers were a rip-off of an idea born out of necessity during world War II, and the “novelties” he’d mentioned in his spiel on Monday were for the most part variations on the standard fare of gift shops and book stores. He wasn’t even able to envision her doing the driving while he relaxed and played the role of a passenger. And he was the one who’d come to maturity during the sixties, that fabled decade of egalitarian upheaval and heightened social awareness . . .

  “The real point, Marilyn, is that I wanted to do something for you. But you’ve taken the evening out of my hands.”

  All right, she could see that. She relented. “Nicholas, I’m not trying to stage-manage this—this date, if that’s what it is. I was surprised that you came by the shop. I wasn’t ready. And I’m not ready to go out this evening, either—I’m cold and I’m tired. I have a pair of steaks and a bottle of cold duck in the refrigerator, and enough fixings for a salad. Let me make dinner.”

  “A pair of steaks?”

  “There’s a grocery store off the perimeter highway that stays open night and day. I stopped there last night after work.”

  “But you didn’t think I’d come by today?”

  “No. Not really. And despite buying the steaks, I’m not sure I really wanted you to. I know that sounds backwards somehow, but it’s the truth.”

  Nicholas ignored this. “But you’ll have to cook. I wanted to spare you that. I wanted to do something for you.”

  “Spare me another trip down the highway in my car and the agony of waiting for service in one of this city’s snooty night spots.”

  He gave in, and she felt kindlier toward him. They ate at the coffee table in the living room, sitting on the floor in their stocking feet and listening to an FM radio station. They talked cursorily about sports and politics and movies, which neither of them was particularly interested in anymore; and then, because they had both staked their lives to it, Marilyn lifted the taboo that Nicholas had promised to observe and they talked business. They didn’t talk Liquid Sheers or
profit margins or tax shelters, they talked about the involvement of their feelings with what they were doing and the sense of satisfaction that they derived from their work. That was common ground, and the evening passed—as Jane Sidney might have put it—“like sixty.”

  They were finishing the bottle of cold duck. Nicholas shifted positions, catching his knees with his right arm and rocking back a little.

  “Marilyn?”

  “Mmm?”

  “You would never have let me drive you over here if I hadn’t reminded you of this fellow you once knew, would you? This fellow named Jordan? Tell me the truth. No bet-hedging.”

  Her uneasiness returned. “I don’t know.”

  “Yes, you do. Your answer won’t hurt my feelings. I’d like to think that now that you know me a little better my resemblance to this person doesn’t matter anymore—that you like me for myself.” He waited.

  “Okay, then. You’re right.”

  “I’m right,” he echoed her dubiously.

  “I wouldn’t have let you bring me home if you hadn’t looked like Jordan. But now that I know you a little better it doesn’t make any difference.”

  Not much, Marilyn told herself. At least I’ve stopped putting you in a marine uniform and trimming back the hair over your ears . . . She felt a quiet tenderness for both men, the dead Jordan and the boyish Nicholas Anson who in many ways seemed younger than Jordan ever had . . . That’s because Jordan was almost three years older than you, Odau, and Nicholas is almost twenty years younger. Think a little.

  The young man who resembled Jordan Burk drained his glass and hoisted himself nimbly off the floor.

  “I’m staying at the Holiday Inn near the airport,” he said. “Let me call a cab so you won’t have to get out again.”

  “Cabs aren’t very good about answering night calls anymore. The drivers are afraid to come.”

  “I hate for you to have to drive me, Marilyn.” His look was expectant, and she hated to disappoint him.

  “Why don’t you just spend the night here?” she said.

  They went upstairs together, and she was careful to close the door to the bedroom containing the wicker bassinet before following him into her own. They undressed in the greenish light sifting through her curtains from the arc lamp in the elm trees. Her heart raced. Then his body covered its beating, and afterwards she lay staring wide-eyed and bemused at her acoustic ceiling panels as he slept beside her with a hand on her hip. Then she fell asleep too, and woke when her sleeping mind noted that his hand was gone, and sat up to discover that Nicholas was no longer there. The wind in the leafless elms was making a noise like angry surf.

  “Nick!” she called.

  He didn’t answer.

  She swung her feet to the carpet, put on her gown, and found him standing in a pair of plaid boxer shorts beside the wicker bassinet. He had put on a desk lamp, and its glow made a pool of light that contained and illuminated everything in that corner of the room. There was no doubt that he had discovered the proof of her monstrousness there, even if he didn’t know what it meant.

  Instead of screaming or flying at him like a drunken doxy, she sank to the floor in the billow of her dressing gown, shamefully conscious of her restraint and too well satisfied by Nicholas’s snooping to be shocked by it. If she hadn’t wanted this to happen, she would never have let him come. Or she would have locked the door to her shrine. Or she would have murdered Nicholas in the numb sleep of his fulfillment. Any number of things. But this was what she had wanted.

  Confession and surcease.

  “I was looking for the bathroom,” Nicholas said. “I didn’t know where the upstairs bathroom was. But when I saw the baby bed . . . well, I didn’t know why you’d have a baby bed and—” He broke off.

  “Don’t explain, Nicholas.” She gave him an up-from-under look and wondered what her own appearance must suggest. Age, promiscuousness, dissolution? You grew old, that you couldn’t stop. But the others . . . those were lies. She wanted confession and surcease, that was all, and he was too intent on the bassinet to escape giving them to her, to see how downright old she could look at two in the morning. Consumed by years. Consumed by that which life itself is nourished by. Just one of a world of consumer goods.

  Nicholas lifted something from the bassinet. He held it in the palm of one hand. “What is this?” he asked. “Marilyn . . .?”

  “Lithopedion,” she said numbly. “The medical term is lithopedion. And lithopedion is the word I use when I want to put myself at a distance from it. With you here, that’s what I think I want to do—put myself at a distance from it. I don’t know. Do you understand?”

  He stared at her blankly.

  “It means stone child, Nicholas. I was delivered of it during the first week of December, 1968. A petrified fetus.”

  “ ‘Delivered of it’?”

  “That’s wrong. I don’t know why I say that. It was removed surgically, cut from my abdominal cavity. Lithopedion.” Finally she began to cry. “Bring him to me.”

  The unfamiliar man across from her didn’t move. He held the stone child questioningly on his naked palm.

  “Damn it, Nicholas, I asked you to bring him to me! He’s mine! Bring him here!”

  She put a fist to one of her eyes and drew it away to find black makeup on the back of her hand. Anson brought her the lithopedion, and she cradled it against the flimsy bodice of her dressing gown. A male child, calcified, with a tiny hand to the side of its face and its eyes forever shut; a fossil before it had ever really begun to live.

  “This is Jordan’s son,” Marilyn told Anson, who was still standing over her. “Jordan’s and mine.”

  “But how could that be? He died during the Pacific campaign.”

  Marilyn took no notice of either the disbelief in Anson’s voice or his unaccountable knowledge of the circumstances of Jordan’s death. “We had a honeymoon in the house on Greenbriar while Maggie was off for Christmas,” she said, cradling her son. “Then Jordan had to return to his Division. In late March of ’43 I collapsed while I was clerking at Satterwhite’s. I was stricken with terrible cramps and I collapsed. Maggie drove me home to Greenville, and I was treated for intestinal flu. That was the diagnosis of a local doctor. I was in a coma for a while. I had to be forcibly fed. But after a while I got well again, and the manager of the notions department at Satterwhite’s let me have my job back. I came back to the city.”

  “And twenty-five years later you had your baby?”

  Even the nastiness that Anson imparted to this question failed to dismay her. “Yes. It was an ectopic pregnancy. The fetus grew not in my womb, you see, but in the right Fallopian tube—where there isn’t much room for it to grow. I didn’t know, I didn’t suspect anything. There were no signs.”

  “Until you collapsed at Satterwhite’s?”

  “Dr. Rule says that was the fetus bursting the Fallopian tube and escaping into the abdominal cavity. I didn’t know. I was twenty years old. It was diagnosed as the flu, and they put me in bed. I had a terrible time. I almost died. Later in the year, just before Thanksgiving, Jordan was killed at Tarawa, and I wished that I had died before him.”

  “He never lived to see his son,” Anson said bitterly.

  “No. I was frightened of doctors. I’m still frightened by them. But in 1965 I went to work for the Creightons at Capitol Square, and when I began having severe pains in my side a couple of years later, they made me go to Dr. Rule. They told me I’d have to give up my job if I didn’t go.” Marilyn brought a fold of her night gown around the calcified infant in her arms. “He discovered what was wrong. He delivered my baby. A lithopedion, he said . . . Do you know that there’ve been only a few hundred of them in all recorded history? That makes me a freak, all my love at the beck and call of a father and son who’ll never be able to hear me.” Marilyn’s shoulders began to heave and her mouth fell slack to let the sounds of her grief work clear. “A freak,” she repeated, sobbing.

  “No more a freak
than that thing’s father.”

  She caught Anson’s tone and turned her eyes up to see his face through a blur of tears.

  “Its father was Jordan Burk,” Anson told her. “My father was Jordan Burk. He even went so far as to marry my mother, Miss Odau. But when he discovered she was pregnant, he deserted her to enlist in a Division bound for combat. But he came here first and found another pretty piece to slip it to before he left. You.”

  “No,” Marilyn said, her sobs suddenly stilled.

  “Yes. My mother found Burk in this city and asked him to come back to her. He pleaded his overmastering love for another woman and refused. I was no enticement at all—I was an argument for remaining with you. Once during her futile visit here Burk took my mother into Satterwhite’s by a side-street entrance and pointed you out to her from one of the mezzanines. The ‘other woman’ was prettier than she was, my mother said. She gave up and returned home. She permitted Burk to divorce her without alimony while he was in the Pacific. Don’t ask me why. I don’t know. Later my mother married a man named Samuel Anson and we moved with him to California . . . That thing in your arms, Miss Odau, is my half-brother.”

  It was impossible to cry now. Marilyn could hear her voice growing shrill and accusative. “That’s why you asked me to lunch yesterday, isn’t it? And why you asked me to dinner this evening. A chance for revenge. A chance to defile a memory you could have easily left untouched.” She slapped Anson across the thigh, harmlessly. “I didn’t know anything about your mother or you! I never suspected and I wasn’t responsible! I’m not that kind of freak! Why have you set out to destroy both me and one of the few things in my life I’ve truly been able to cherish? I’ve just opened my soul to you—shown you my child and my shame! Why do you turn on me with a nasty ‘truth’ that doesn’t have any significance for me and never can? What kind of vindictive jackal are you?”