He spent another moment casually brushing dust from his clothes and used the time to look the stranger over. The man’s boots and jeans were almost the same color, with the natural fading of the materials and the dirt encrusted liberally over them both. He wore a dark blue shirt of good quality, though the material was worn in places and the collar was frayed. A black vest with three silver buttons, dulled from lack of attention, completed the man’s wardrobe. He also wore a matching black hat that cast a shadow over his face but Carter could see that he was relatively clean shaven and that his hair was still quite short, the ends only curling slightly above the frayed collar.
Not dead that long then, he mused as he continued to study the figure. Hair had become the accepted method of judging the duration of a dead person’s existence. Hair seemed to grow for quite a while after death, so many of them had long hair and uneven, scraggly beards. The dead seemed to have no interest in hygiene, so most of them smelled foul, somewhere between rotten meat and an open sewer. Their hair was usually matted and infested with all kinds of parasites.
Carter came to a stop at the table. The man moved his head slowly and regarded him with a cool appraisal of his own. The man had a strong jawline but his desiccated skin was pulled too taut over the bone. This made the man’s face angular rather than strong. His nose seemed too long and narrow with the flesh having receded in death, giving him a hawkish appearance that threw shadows over his already sunken eye sockets. His eyes bore the hallmark of the dead. Skin stretched tightly at the sides, making them appear as if they were constantly squinting. The high cheekbones, where the bone protruded and stretched the skin around his mouth, gave the stranger an insane-looking grin. It was unnerving, looking at someone who grinned constantly, but it was the eyes that held him, as they always did. They were yellow with a small bead of black in the centre. There was no sense of life in those eyes as they regarded him, nothing but dark ovals of purest black.
The recent Civil and Indian wars had left thousands dead. The graveyards full to capacity. When the dead had begun to rise, there had been no shortage of corpses. Suddenly towns and cities filled with ambling corpses that, while they seemed to pose no immediate threat to the population, did make everyone uncomfortable. The first response had been to kill them. Thousands died, again, but the dead did not simply stand still and let it happen. Once they got over the shock of finding themselves walking around, the dead began to regain their wits and began to protect themselves. They were also bloody difficult to kill. They could survive almost any wound and only finally died when their brains were destroyed.
The figure nodded to him and Carter nodded back as he finished his appraisal. The man might be dirty and rotting but the two Colts strapped to his sides were in beautiful condition. Even the holster shone with a recent oiling and the weapons’ worn bone handles testified to long years of use. He also noted that both guns were tied low on the man’s thighs. A gunfighter. Carter cursed his luck. He was not slow on the draw himself but he just knew as he looked into the stranger’s eyes that he would be no match for this man. Dead or not, this man exuded competence. The dead tended to move more slowly than they had in life—something to do with the blood stagnating in their veins he had been told—but this corpse did not look slow. He had moved with an easy grace when he turned to face Carter and not the exaggerated slowness of many of his kind. Carter also noted that the man had cut his fingernails short to accommodate a fast draw and he felt his heart beat faster.
People had begun to grow worried when the dead began to defend themselves. It was assumed that, strange as it was, the phenomenon was still an isolated incident and once they killed off the walking corpses, things would return to normal. It was only when they realized that even those who had recently died also rose again that things had gone to hell. The government had been forced to call for a cessation of hostilities on both sides until something could be done. The most popular solution seemed to be that a reservation, similar to that put in place for the Indians, would be provided and everyone seemed to calm down while plans were laid.
The subsequent discovery that the dead needed gold to survive threw everything into chaos. Hostilities broke out again. It had been at that point that one of the dead had written a legal paper citing that the dead still had rights and as such should have access to all the protection that the law could provide. The paper also called for the return of all the dead’s assets. The banks disagreed. The banks had gotten used to keeping the money and assets that the dead left behind, when no beneficiaries were involved, and they did not want to have to give these assets back. Cases were brought against the banks by a growing number of dead people, but until the question of their rights was addressed there could be no decision on who owned the money. This of course meant that the dead had no means of purchasing the gold they required to survive.
That left the dead with few choices. If they wanted to continue to exist they only had two options; either they earned their money or they would have to steal it. Most of the living would not employ the dead, so many of them were forced into crime to survive. It was this fact that branded all of them as criminals. This had the result of the dead being shunned. Violence had a habit of breaking out regularly when they came to town. While Carter was not allowed to throw the dead out of his jurisdiction, just because they were dead, he did make sure to warn any who came through that he took a dim view of anyone causing trouble in his town.
He took a deep breath and addressed the man. “Morning,” Carter managed finally, pleased that his voice didn’t break. The corpse nodded back, his mouth still grinning insanely at him. As a law officer he was not allowed merely to kill the stranger on a whim. Until the lawyers ruled one way or the other, this corpse had as many rights as any of the town’s citizens. His hands were tied.
Only the elite Texas Rangers could kill without recourse, and they hardly ever came this far north. The Governor had made the Rangers exempt in an attempt to mollify his richest supporters. He had dressed it up in fancy language extolling the Rangers’ proud history and supporting their judgment when on missions. It just wasn’t practical, he had stated in his address to the papers, to force these men to check in before they acted. It would be suicide for these trusted men to be second-guessed for every decision. The result was that the Rangers had become untouchable. Carter had heard stories of Rangers combing the state and quietly executing the dead. It seemed that the Governor was making sure that whatever might be decided by the government about the issue of the dead’s rights, it would not have an impact on the Governor’s own finances.
Stories were becoming more frequent of Ranger deathsquads sweeping the state trying to accomplish their mission before the lawyers came to any decisions. Carter didn’t really care one way or the other. The dead were dead. Who cared if they were put back in the ground? Carter knew more than most about the current situation because the Governor’s mistress lived in his town. Each time he came to visit, Carter made sure that he got an update from the Governor’s bodyguards.
Carter shifted on his feet nervously. Most of the dead he dealt with were easy prey. He could intimidate them easily, but this corpse seemed far too confident. He had never seen such confidence in the dead before, and it worried him. He cursed himself for letting Boyle go on to the hotel. He could have done with the younger man’s support. Outside the bells finally stopped tolling and he sighed in relief as the pounding in his head began to subside. The sun flared briefly outside in momentary relief from the wind and its glare blazed through the glass and reflected off something on the man’s chest.
Carter frowned as he blinked and then the glare suddenly stopped as the wind picked up and the sand once again drew its veil over the sun. He studied the man’s chest and saw that there was a badge there of some sort. Was he a lawman too? That would certainly make things easier. A lawman, even a dead one, would understand his predicament. He looked harder at the badge; the edges were not pointed like his own and it was more rounded just like
...
Oh shit! Realization flooded through him. He’s a Texas Ranger. A dead Texas Ranger. No one had foreseen that. Did that mean he still had his immunity to the law? Shit. He had to warn the Governor.
Suddenly a terrible thought struck him. If this Ranger killed the Governor, would the Governor still retain his powers of office after death? That could turn the whole state upside down. The dead already outnumbered the living in the state. If they were in charge, they might be able to pass laws that would make living in the state almost impossible. Up till now the dead had been limited to two options to obtain the gold they coveted—employment, which was unlikely, and crime, which gave the living an excuse to kill them. It struck Carter they had discovered a third option to their problem. If they controlled the law, they could control the gold. Up till now people had considered the dead to be stupid, merely an inconvenience rather than any real threat. If they were capable of such planning, it showed an intelligence that sent a cold feeling of fear flooding through his veins.
These thoughts flooded his throbbing head in a flash. The Ranger merely smiled insanely at him.
He had to do something. He dropped his hand to his own weapon, adrenaline speeding his reflexes. The Ranger moved in a blur and suddenly Carter was staring at the barrel of the Ranger’s colt before he even slapped leather. He looked into the Ranger’s dead eyes and thought for a moment that he saw a widening of the corpse’s grin. Maybe that damn shaman had got it right after all! By making the dead dependant on gold he had forced them to strike at the cornerstones of the country itself—its wealth and power. For a second he wondered what it would be like being dead.
Then he heard the shot. Darkness swept over him.
JOE HILL
(1972–)
Joseph Hillstrom King, one of three children of acclaimed horror writer Stephen King, spent his childhood in Bangor, Maine. A graduate of Vassar College, he began publishing short stories with “The Lady Rests” in 1997. In 2005, he published 20th Century Ghosts, a collection of stories that was awarded the Bram Stoker Award for Best Fiction and was reprinted with an additional story in 2007. He has published the chapbooks Voluntary Committal (2005), Pop Art (2007), and Thumbprint (2007) and the novels Heart-Shaped Box (2007) and Horns (2010). His series of comic book/graphic novels titled Locke & Key began appearing in 2008. Among his many awards, Hill is a recipient of the Ray Bradbury Fellowship, a World Fantasy Award for Best Novella, the British Fantasy Award for Best Collection and Best Short Story, and the British Fantasy Society’s Sydney J. Bounds Best Newcomer Award.
20th Century Ghost
(2002)
The best time to see her is when the place is almost full. There is the well-known story of the man who wanders in for a late show and finds the vast six-hundred-seat theater almost deserted. Halfway through the movie, he glances around and discovers her sitting next to him, in a chair that only moments before had been empty. Her witness stares at her. She turns her head and stares back. She has a nosebleed. Her eyes are wide, stricken. My head hurts, she whispers. I have to step out for a moment. Will you tell me what I miss? It is in this instant that the person looking at her realizes she is as insubstantial as the shifting blue ray of light cast by the projector. It is possible to see the next seat over through her body. As she rises from her chair, she fades away.
Then there is the story about the group of friends who go into the Rosebud together on a Thursday night. One of the bunch sits down next to a woman by herself, a woman in blue. When the movie doesn’t start right away, the person who sat down beside her decides to make conversation. What’s playing tomorrow? he asks her. The theater is dark tomorrow, she whispers. This is the last show. Shortly after the movie begins she vanishes. On the drive home, the man who spoke to her is killed in a car accident.
These, and many of the other best-known legends of the Rosebud, are false . . . the ghost stories of people who have seen too many horror movies and who think they know exactly how a ghost story should be.
Alec Sheldon, who was one of the first to see Imogene Gilchrist, owns the Rosebud, and at seventy-three still operates the projector most nights. He can always tell, after talking to someone for just a few moments, whether or not they really saw her, but what he knows he keeps to himself, and he never publicly discredits anyone’s story . . . that would be bad for business.
He knows, though, that anyone who says they could see right through her didn’t see her at all. Some of the put-on artists talk about blood pouring from her nose, her ears, her eyes; they say she gave them a pleading look, and asked for them to find somebody, to bring help. But she doesn’t bleed that way, and when she wants to talk, it isn’t to tell someone to bring a doctor. A lot of the pretenders begin their stories by saying, You’ll never believe what I just saw. They’re right. He won’t, although he will listen to all that they have to say, with a patient, even encouraging, smile.
The ones who have seen her don’t come looking for Alec to tell him about it. More often than not he finds them, comes across them wandering the lobby on unsteady legs; they’ve had a bad shock, they don’t feel well. They need to sit down a while. They don’t ever say, You won’t believe what I just saw. The experience is still too immediate. The idea that they might not be believed doesn’t occur to them until later. Often they are in a state that might be described as subdued, even submissive. When he thinks about the effect she has on those who encounter her, he thinks of Steven Greenberg coming out of The Birds one cool Sunday afternoon in 1963. Steven was just twelve then, and it would be another twelve years before he went and got so famous; he was at that time not a golden boy, but just a boy.
Alec was in the alley behind the Rosebud, having a smoke, when he heard the fire door into the theater clang open behind him. He turned to see a lanky kid leaning in the doorway—just leaning there, not going in or out. The boy squinted into the harsh white sunshine, with the confused, wondering look of a small child who has just been shaken out of a deep sleep. Alec could see past him into a darkness filled with the shrill sounds of thousands of squeaking sparrows. Beneath that, he could hear a few in the audience stirring restlessly, beginning to complain.
Hey, kid, in or out? Alec said. You’re lettin’ the light in.
The kid—Alec didn’t know his name then—turned his head and stared back into the theater for a long, searching moment. Then he stepped out and the door settled shut behind him, closing gently on its pneumatic hinge. And still he didn’t go anywhere, didn’t say anything. The Rosebud had been showing The Birds for two weeks, and although Alec had seen others walk out before it was over, none of the early exits had been twelve-year-old boys. It was the sort of film most boys of that age waited all year to see, but who knew? Maybe the kid had a weak stomach.
I left my Coke in the theater, the kid said, his voice distant, almost toneless. I still had a lot of it left.
You want to go back in and look for it?
And the kid lifted his eyes and gave Alec a bright look of alarm, and then Alec knew. No.
Alec finished his cigarette, pitched it.
I sat with the dead lady, the kid blurted.
Alec nodded.
She talked to me.
What did she say?
He looked at the kid again, and found him staring back with eyes that were now wide and round with disbelief.
I need someone to talk to, she said. When I get excited about a movie I need to talk.
Alec knows when she talks to someone she always wants to talk about the movies. She usually addresses herself to men, although sometimes she will sit and talk with a woman—Lois Weisel most notably. Alec has been working on a theory of what it is that causes her to show herself. He has been keeping notes in a yellow legal pad. He has a list of who she appeared to and in what movie and when (Leland King, Harold and Maude,’72; Joel Harlowe, Eraserhead,’77; Hal Lash, Blood Simple,’85; and all the others). He has, over the years, developed clear ideas about what conditions are most likely to produc
e her, although the specifics of his theory are constantly being revised.
As a young man, thoughts of her were always on his mind, or simmering just beneath the surface; she was his first and most strongly felt obsession. Then for a while he was better—when the theater was a success, and he was an important businessman in the community, chamber of commerce, town planning board. In those days he could go weeks without thinking about her; and then someone would see her, or pretend to have seen her, and stir the whole thing up again.
But following his divorce—she kept the house, he moved into the one-bedroom under the theater—and not long after the 8-screen cineplex opened just outside of town, he began to obsess again, less about her than about the theater itself (is there any difference, though? Not really, he supposes, thoughts of one always circling around to thoughts of the other). He never imagined he would be so old and owe so much money. He has a hard time sleeping, his head is so full of ideas—wild, desperate ideas—about how to keep the theater from failing. He keeps himself awake thinking about income, staff, salable assets. And when he can’t think about money anymore, he tries to picture where he will go if the theater closes. He envisions an old folks’ home, mattresses that reek of Ben-Gay, hunched geezers with their dentures out, sitting in a musty common room watching daytime sitcoms; he sees a place where he will passively fade away, like wallpaper that gets too much sunlight and slowly loses its color.
This is bad. What is more terrible is when he tries to imagine what will happen to her if the Rosebud closes. He sees the theater stripped of its seats, an echoing empty space, drifts of dust in the corners, petrified wads of gum stuck fast to the cement. Local teens have broken in to drink and screw; he sees scattered liquor bottles, ignorant graffiti on the walls, a single, grotesque, used condom on the floor in front of the stage. He sees the lonely and violated place where she will fade away.
Vampires, Zombies, Werewolves And Ghosts - 25 Classic Stories Of The Supernatural Page 17
