“C’mon, Don,” he said, pushing. “Really now—how do you want it done?”
I thought for a moment, recalling what my “real” serious answer was. “Oh, I guess I’d want to be cremated, you know. Have my ashes hauled around in some nice Chinese jug—put up a tasteful brass plaque somewhere. Have it read, ‘I knew something like this was going to happen’.”
“There you go,” Jack said, lifting his glass to me. “That’s the spirit. Why be serious about it? Hell, it’s only death, after all. Nothing to worry about.”
Jack shut up for a moment. He was an insurance salesman, and he could be a real pain in the ass, sometimes. Besides, I had been serious—and it hurt a little for him to think I was joking about what I wanted done. But he gulped the rest of his drink down and turned to Chelly for a refill. It was all dusty-windy outside, the hot summer wind picking up the desert sand and playing attack civilization with it. A little Rebel Yell went a long way toward giving a man like Jack the courage to face the desert and go home to an unhappy marriage with a semblance of a smile on his face because maybe things ain’t as bad as they look sober. Even if, as Jack did, he lived only a block from the bar.
Chell took his glass and began to pour from the thick-necked R.Y. bottle. When the front door slammed open she spilled some on the counter. I looked at it for a moment and thought Damn. That’ll take the varnish off.
And it suddenly grew chillingly hot. I thought it was only the wind and wet and emptiness from the storm outside. Thunder cracked and lightning flashed. I sure wasn’t looking forward to the drive up the mountain home.
Everyone’s eyes were on the stranger. You could almost see the dust fall off him as he seemed to shake himself. He stomped his feet up and down to knock the wet dirt off them. He was all dressed in black—black boots, black jeans, black shirt, black jacket and a big, shiny black Stetson hat which he held in one hand as he brushed his hair down with the other. He wasn’t no local, that was for sure—else I’d have seen him before.
“C’mon in, partner,” I said. “Have a seat and a shot to make yourself comfortable.”
I like to try to be friendly with newcomers. Jack and Chelly were looking at him like they thought he was a man from Mars or some such. I figured him for an old biker-cowboy, sort of like a tourist, but not in as much of a hurry. Or else he’d just ended up in Satan’s Rockpile by accident—some of ’em still did that since they’d moved the freeway.
He stomped on over to the bar and hunkered up onto the chair right next to mine. That gave me a chance to study him a mite closer. He was an odd lookin’ fella—all dry skin and chapped bones and angles—road worn—elbows and knees stickin’ out like the vanes of a ramshackle windmill. One of those fellas that don’t look like they belong in the body they’re wearing.
He looked like he hadn’t had a decent meal in a week, maybe more. His cheekbones were red and raw and high, and his eyes were sunk tired and deep. Under his hat, his head was nearly bald, with only a few stringy ropes of tangled blond hair hangin’ down at the sides and back—long and straggly. A pitiful lookin’ cuss, all in all. It looked like he had let himself go a long time ago, bone tired. A little like I felt sometimes.
Chelly sidled on over to him, wiping the counter off with the towel she keeps hangin’ out her back pocket and settin’ a napkin down in front of him. She was a good ole girl and a crack waitress.
I heard a little tremble in her voice when she asked, “What’ll it be?” that made me think this stranger had upset her, or frightened her, though I didn’t know why.
“I’ll have a beer,” the stranger said, “a Grizzly beer.”
His voice was low and deep and hoarse, as if he’d been riding for miles and years in the throat-ripping desert heat.
Jack came suddenly to life. “Hey, buddy,” he said tentatively. “Where you from?”
The stranger looked at him oddly. “Where am I from?” he asked with a sigh. “Well, I guess you could say I’m from all over. From Texas, originally—but I’ve been many places since then. All over the world.”
“Iz’zat a fact,” Jack commented, brightening up. “What do you do for a living?”
The stranger sighed and took a long drink of his beer. I was surprised to see the glass was empty when he set it down on the bar again. I signaled to Chell to fill it again—which she did—while he continued.
“I suppose,” he said—a little sadly, I thought, “I suppose you could call me an undertaker, of a fashion. I deal in death, at any rate.”
Jack’s face beamed like he’d just found a flapping catfish on a muddy bank and was determined to lie and say he’d caught it himself. Course, he’d throw it up in the air, first. Some of Jack’s best customers were undertakers.
“Well,” he said, “that’s a strange coincidence. Just when you came in, we were all talking about that very subject—death and burying, I mean. We were all saying just how it was we all wanted to be laid out and buried.” Jack smiled again, rather maliciously, and his gaze rested intensely on the man. “What about you, Mister ... ah, what’d you say your name was?”
“I didn’t,” the stranger said, giving out with a short, cackling laugh. “But you may—if you must—call me Spider. Spider Ransome.”
“Well, Mister Spider. What about you? How do you want to be done up?”
“Oh, I suppose I’d prefer to be burnt. It seems so clean. There’s just something comfortable and purifying about the flames.”
“You’d have something in common with Don, then. He feels like he wants to be cremated, too.”
The stranger turned to me—there was a hungry, curious look on his face. I stared into his eyes—deep and black—and for a moment, I was afraid. Don’t know why, but even after the fear passed I was still uneasy.
“Indeed!” he said. “Is that true?”
“Yep,” I answered. “Leastways, I think so. To tell you the truth, I ain’t plannin’ to die at all, if I can help it. You know? But if I have to, I guess I’d prefer to be cremated. I know I don’t relish the idea of bein’ planted in the ground—not this damn ground, anyway. I’d be afraid of what might grow from outta me.”
The stranger didn’t crack a smile or raise an eyebrow—just looked at me all serious-like.
“A commendable attitude, friend. Very sane. But ... you don’t have to at all, you know.”
“What?” I asked. I was a little high from the three glasses of beer I’d drunk, and I didn’t quite understand what he’d meant. “Don’t have to be planted?”
“No,” he said in a whisper, “you don’t have to die.”
He looked at me expectantly. Chell was just starting to pour Jack another glassful and they were talking to one another, ignoring the stranger and I. Chell caught me looking at her and raised an eyebrow, but I signaled her that it was okay and her attention wandered back to Jack. I leaned closer to the stranger so I could hear him better. “Would you say that again, partner?” I asked him. “I don’t think I heard you quite right.”
He smiled at me and drank the rest of his second beer. He smacked his lips an sighed. “You. Don’t. Have. To. Die.” he said. “Not at all. Not ever.”
I suddenly felt, somehow that I was going to vomit my boots up from my throat. I swallowed hard and looked straight at him. “Whad’ya mean, mister? And what was it you said your name was?”
“My name has no relevance,” he said. “I have been called many things. Been called a son-of-a-bitch and worse. But you, Don—you may call me Death.”
“Shit!” I laughed. “How many bars you been to tonight, partner?”
“This is my first,” he said—and he was dead serious. “This is my first stop of the night. And,” he said, draining the remains in his glass, “with luck, it’ll be the last.”
I tapped him a new glass of Grizzly and he sipped at the froth and sighed.
“I’m tired,” he said. “I’ve been looking for a replacement. Looking for someone—someone just like you—so I could retire.”
The stranger just laughed. “No,” he said. “I assure you, Don, I’m not. He grinned—an impossibly toothy, ear-to-ear grin. The flesh was beginning to flake away from his face like ancient peels of skin from a healing sunburn. His cheekbones shone through, white and shiny, as if he had no blood. I could smell the odor of over-ripe meat and his eyes were turning glassy and gelid—the pupils expanding into blackness.
“Truly,” he said. “I’m old—older than you could ever imagine. Well, maybe not that old, but I have been Death for a long time—a very long time.”
The stranger sighed and seemed to slump in his chair until he looked nearly as old as he claimed to be. He drained the last of his beer and pushed the empty glass away with his spider-leg-thin fingertips.
“It is someone else’s turn, now. It’s time for new blood—new attitudes. Time for me to lay my burdens down, lay my soul down. I have given more service than was asked for, and I am tired of making decisions. I offer it to you—that you become what I am.”
I sputtered for a moment while I caught my breath and calmed my stomach. “And what if I don’t want to take you up on it?” I asked. I looked over at Jack and Chell for help and what I saw pulled me off my stool and set me up on my feet. They were frozen in place—as if time had stopped. Jack’s mouth was open and even the flow of light amber liquid from the R.Y. bottle had solidified in mid-pour. That was what finally convinced me he wasn’t crazy.
“If you refuse,” he said before I had a chance to ask him what the hell was going on, “then I will simply find someone else. I have all the time in the world. It’s not an easy task to find just the right replacement—but I found you. I will find others.” He paused, looked at the watch on his bony wrist, and reached around the bar to draw himself another glass of Grizzly. He drained it in one drink, set it down and continued.
“Before you decide, let me tell you something. In,” he looked once again at his watch, “exactly one-and-a-half minutes, this bar will be hit by the worst lightning bolt of the storm. It will catch fire and everybody within will die. That means you—and Chelly—and Jack, over there. Everyone.”
“How can I believe that? Believe you?”
The skin had shredded from his face and hands until he was, now, no more than skin and bones. There was a dark shining, just beyond sight, deep within the black eyesockets of his skull. I should have been surprised or scared, but I wasn’t. I’d half been expecting it.
“What would you have me do?” he whispered darkly. “Pull a rabbit from my hat? Disintegrate every piece of glass in the bar? Call up a demon? Should I line the dead up in front of you to testify? I can do these things, and more.”
“No,” I said. Even without the fact that he was all bones now, rattling around in loose black clothes, the sight of Jack and Chell and that stream of Rebel Yell, all frozen in time while I was still moving, was enough to convince me. Either that or I had gone crazy. “I believe you,” I said. “I believe you.”
“Then what will your choice be, Don? Would you be Death and live forever—or would you prefer your life to end with those of your friends?”
I thought—harder than I had ever thought before. No kind’a weird shit had ever happened to me—Don DuPress, biker, redneck and all round wastrel. I was just a broken down bar-keep. Stuff like this only happened to people in the Twilight Zone, or on Billy Bob’s Nightmare Theatre—not in real life—and surely not to me.
I didn’t want to die—I knew that real surely. Hardly had to think about that at all. And life after death, Heaven and Hell, a just and wrathful God—all that had hardly been real to me. I’d just tried to get along and take the crap that life handed out as best as I was able. But when a man came into my bar, stopped time, shed his skin, told me he was Death—The Death—and told me I only had a minute-and-a-half to live ... well, that I paid attention to.
“I’ll bite,” I said, hardly able to talk but all whispery and quiet-like. “Okay, partner. You got yerself a deal.”
Death sighed. “Thank you,” he said, his voice stronger. The flesh began cohering to his bones again, filling out his clothes and face. I felt a sucking, deep in my soul. “Finally,” he said, smiling. “Finally. Thank you.”
I reached to shake the bubbling hand he held out. I touched him. There was a tearing crack, and a buzz that made my brain feel like Jell-O that had set in the icebox too long and turned watery, confused and a little green. I saw Jack and Chelly fall to the floor and lie still. The bottle of Rebel Yell lay on its side, emptying its contents onto the top of the bar while it slowly rocked back and forth.
There was a smell of burnt wood and sulfur. Heat radiated from all around me. My feet were numb and vibrating against the floor as the muscles in my legs and stomach convulsed.
I fell, too. Then there was a shift, a painful, yet comforting jerk that I felt deep in my stomach, and I was standing in the middle of the room, looking down at a body on the floor. It was choking and jerking and clawing at its throat and eyes. When flames began licking the weathered, wooden plank walls of the bar, their light showed me that it was myself I was looking at. It was me—or what I had been, before.
I lifted my hands to my face—touched the skin that clung, newly formed, there, unfeeling of the heat.
I was dressed all in black; Black boots, black jeans, black shirt, black jacket. And skinny, like my bones were rattling around in a bloodless shell. It was strange enough, but somehow more comfortable than my own, overweight, rundown, underattractive body had been. I figured I could go far with a thing like this.
I picked my black Stetson hat up from the bar and put it on slowly—adjusted the angle and the sit. I started to bend down to touch my blistering body, lying on the floor—thought better of it—and walked through the flames into the dust and wind outside. He had gotten what he’d wanted, and so had I, sorta.
There was a black Harley in the dirt parking lot. I knew it was mine, now. I walked over to it and as I sat down it barked once and started. It ran with a deep purr, quiet and sneaky-like. I pulled the clutch in and kicked it into gear—grabbed a handful of the accelerator and let ’er rip. The tires lifted from the ground and I was soaring in the air, flying. The bike and I stretched out, molded together, and I was coasting on a multitude of bright, glowing lines of energy like a freeway of spinning stars.
But I knew where I was going. I didn’t need no road signs. I knew what I had to do. And I knew, now, that I had a long, long time to do it. I was Death—and Death rides the sky forever.
THE MAN WHO DID TRICKS WITH GLASS by Ron Wolfe
Ron Wolfe was born on September 14, 1945 in North Platte, Nebraska—the celebrated hometown of Buffalo Bill Cody and where, Wolfe says, his grandmother once saw Buffalo Bill ride a white horse into a saloon. While he was too young to join up with Cody, Wolfe did follow in the same line of work as his father, writer Ed Wolfe, whose stories were popular in Collier’s, The Saturday Evening Post, American, and other magazines of the ’40s.
Ron Wolfe now lives in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where he is a feature writer, movie reviewer, and cartoonist for The Tulsa Tribune. He has had stories published in Twilight Zone Magazine, Night Cry, Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, and Stardate. Wolfe has co-written one novel, Old Fears (with John Wooley), which is set in Oklahoma and is currently under option to Paramount Pictures. He is at work on a couple of other novels, one suspense and the other straight horror. The following story, from the final issue of Stardate, was begun some years ago as an attempt “to write a Charles Beaumont-type story,” Wolfe says; Stardate credited it with “a sharp Bradbury touch.” Good company, but the finished product stands very well as a Ron Wolfe story.
The metal click-clack studs in the soles of his boots rattled like hailstones against th
e mirrored floor under the mirrored ceiling adjoining the mirrored walls. “Joobie! And o-yes, but this is the place,” he said to himself and himself and himself.
“The place of the Mirrormaster, o-yes,” the Sec-robot machine echoed Birdie Rawson’s voice from the mirror-topped desk in the center of the room. “Count yourself reflected here 1,114 times.”
Some were just simple reflections. Some overlapped. Some wavered. Some made him different, in different ways. Evil and innocent, child-like, ancient, scarred, healed.
Birdie Rawson, however, lost count at himself times 53 when the mirror-faced panel to his left, or maybe right, or possibly it was behind him—anyway, went swipp-p-ppp! and opened, with a flash of light that made the diamond-faceted walls glitter. And the room count doubled.
“You! ...” Rawson peered through eyes of ice and water, into the chromium brilliance. Black-gloved and balding, he clapped like a seal. “You are real-o, after all.”
“I am real, and I am worn out, Mr. Rawson,” the Mirrormaster said. The silver of his hair shone bright as glass. “I meant to be retired.”
“But for me, you are here.”
J. Tipton Witt, last of the Mirrormasters, took his place behind the desk, sat down and made the rings on his fingers sparkle, drumming on the desk top.
“Yes, Mr. Rawson,” he said, “for you.”
“In the interest of easing these tensions between us ...” Rawson said, and withdrew a sealed envelope from one of several zippered pockets that ornamented the front of his jacket. He placed the envelope on the desktop.
“I am holding back nothing,” Rawson said. “See for yourself.”
The Mirrormaster slid the envelope, barely touching it, into a slot that opened almost invisibly. A whirring, a grinding sound followed.
“I don’t need to see,” the Mirrormaster said. “I don’t believe you.”
“Most people don’t,” Rawson said. “But I am not hurt. It helps me to get what I want.”
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