Inside the sealed worlds of individual cars, it was anything goes. Brian did not feel comfortable with the man. Not yet. But he was getting used to him, and it was probably only a matter of time before he came to accept him.
That was truly terrifying.
Brian squinted his eyes. Ahead of them, on the side of the road, was a stalled car, a Mercedes with its hood up. Standing next to the vehicle, partially leaning against the trunk, was an attractive young lady, obviously a professional woman, a career woman, with short blond hair and a blue jacket/skirt ensemble that spoke of business.
"Pull over," the man said.
Brian slowed, stopping next to the Mercedes.
"That's okay," the woman began. "A friend of mine has already gone to find a phone to call Triple A—"
"Get in the car!" The man's voice was no longer high and feminine but was low and rough, filled with an authority backed by a veiled threat of violence.
Brian saw the woman's eyes dart quickly around, assessing her options. There was no place to run on the flat desert, but she was obviously trying to decide if she could make it into the Mercedes and close her windows and lock her doors in time. Or if that would even help.
He wanted to tell her to run, to get the hell away from the road, that they wouldn't leave the road to find her, that the man never got out of the car. He wanted to shift into gear and take off, leaving her there safe and unharmed.
But he remained in place, did nothing.
"Get in the car, bitch!" The violence implied in the man's voice was no longer so covert.
The woman's eyes met Brian's, as if searching there for help, but he looked embarrassedly away.
"Get—" the man started to say.
She opened the door and got into the back seat of the Blazer.
"Drive," the man said.
Brian drove.
None of them spoke for a long time. The landscape changed, became less sandy, more rocky, hilly canyons substituting for rolling dunes. Brian looked at the clock on the dashboard. He would be just getting off his afternoon break now, walking through the hallway from the break room to his desk.
"Panties," the man in the passenger seat said.
Brian turned his head.
Frightened, the woman looked from him to the now grinning man. "What?"
"Panties."
The woman licked her lips. "Okay," she said, her voice trembling. "Okay, I'll take them off. Just don't hurt me."
She reached under her skirt, arched her back and pulled off her underwear. In the rearview mirror, Brian caught a glimpse of tanned thigh and black pubic hair. And then the panties were being handed forward, clean and white and silk.
"Stop," the man said.
Brian pulled over, stopping the car. From the pocket of his blouse, the man took out a black Magic Marker. He laid the underwear flat on his knee and began drawing on the cloth, hiding his work with one greasy hand. When he was done, he rolled down his window and reached outside, to the front, grabbing the radio antenna and pulling it back. He quickly and expertly pressed the metal antenna through the white silk and let it bounce back.
The panties flew at the top of the antenna like a flag.
On them he had drawn a crude skull and crossbones.
"Now we are whole," he said. He grinned. "Drive."
The day died slowly, putting up a struggle against the encroaching night, bleeding orange into the sky. Brian's muscles were tired, fatigued from both tension and a day's worth of driving. He stretched, yawned, squirmed in his seat, trying to keep himself awake. "I need some coffee," he said. "I—"
"Stop."
He pulled onto the sandy shoulder.
"Your turn," the man said to the woman.
She nodded, terrified. "Okay. Just don't hurt me."
The two of them traded places, the woman getting behind the wheel as Brian settled into the back seat.
"Drive."
Brian slept. He dreamed of a highway that led through nothing, a black line of asphalt that stretched endlessly through a desolate featureless void. The void was empty, but he was not lonely. He was alone, but he was driving, and he felt good.
When he awoke, the woman was naked.
The driver's window was open, and the woman was shivering, her teeth chattering. None of her garments appeared to be still in the car save her bra, which was stretched between the door handle and the glove compartment, over the man's legs, and held two thermos cups filled with coffee. From this angle, Brian could see that her nipples were erect, and he found that strangely exciting.
It had been a long time since he'd seen a woman naked.
Too long.
He looked at the woman. No doubt she thought that he and the man in the passenger seat were both criminals, were partners, fellow kidnappers. Since she had come aboard, he had not behaved like a prisoner or a captive and had not been treated like one. He had also not made an effort to let the woman know that he was on her side, that they were in the same position, although he was not quite sure why. Perhaps, on some level, he enjoyed the false perception, was proud, in some perverse way, to be associated with the man in the passenger seat.
But that couldn't be possible.
Could it?
His gaze lingered on the woman's nipples. It could. In a strange way, he was glad he'd been kidnapped. Not simply because he'd had a chance to see a nude woman, but because an experience this extreme gave perspective to everything else. He knew now that, prior to that moment in the bank parking lot, he had not been living. He'd been simply existing. Going to work, eating, going to sleep, going to work. The motions had been comfortable, but they had not been real, not life but an imitation of life.
This was life.
It was horrible, it was frightening, it was dangerous, it was crazy, and he did not know what was going to happen from one moment to the next, but for the first time in memory he felt truly alive. He was not comfortable, he was not merely existing. Travelling through the darkness toward an unknown destination with a man insane, he feared for his safety, he feared for his sanity.
But he was alive.
"We killed father first," the man in the passenger seat said. His voice was low, serious, almost inaudible, and it sounded as though he was talking to himself, as though he did not want anyone else to hear. "We amputated his limbs with the hacksaw made from mother's bones and sold his parts for change. We killed sister second, gutting her like a flopping fish on the chopping block..."
Brian was lulled by the words, by their rhythm.
Again he fell asleep.
When he awoke, both the woman and the man were standing in front of the car. It was daytime, and they were on the outskirts of a large city. Houston, perhaps, or Albuquerque. The woman was still naked, and there were frequent honks and excited whoops from men who passed by in cars.
Brian stared through the windshield. The man held, in one hand, half of the woman's now torn bra, and he dipped a finger in the attached thermos cup as she fell to her knees. He placed his coffee wet finger on her forehead as though anointing her.
He returned to the car alone.
Brian watched the naked woman run across the highway and down the small embankment on the other side without looking back.
The man got into the passenger seat and closed his door.
"Where are we going?" Brian asked. He realized as he spoke the words that he was asking the question not as a prisoner, not as a captive, but as a fellow traveller... as a companion. He did not fear the answer, he was merely curious.
The man seemed to sense this, for he smiled, and there was humor in the smile. "Does it matter?"
Brian thought for a moment. "No," he said finally.
"Then drive."
Brian looked at the clock on the dashboard and realized that he didn't know what he would ordinarily be doing now.
The man grinned broadly, knowingly. "Drive."
Brian grinned back. "All right," he said. "All right."
He put the Blaze
r into gear.
They headed east.
Ghosts of Christmas Present by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
It seems like it happens every year: I reject a story and then, months (and hundreds of stories) later, I realize I'm still thinking about it, still remembering specific scenes or pieces of dialogue. When that occurs, I do the only thing I can do—I call the author and see if the story's still available because I've been told by my subconscious that I'd better damned well buy it. Such is the case with "Ghosts of Christmas Present." Its author, Kris Rusch, is the editor at The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, as well as one of the founders and Elder Gods at Pulphouse Publishing in Eugene, Oregon, and I can't imagine where she gets the time to do all that and still turn out stories that have the depth and emotional power of the one that follows.
For unto us a child is born
▼
Fog, thick and old, smelling of saltwater and decayed dreams, rolled in off the ocean. The streetlights shone yellow in the dampness. A cat hiding in the enclosed stairway leading into the bakery hissed as Michela passed.
Michela drew her coat tightly against her chest. If she strained hard enough, she could hear the waves breaking on the beach. The night was empty and she was cold.
Back home, the snow would be a foot deep and the air would be brittle. Candles would line the church steps, giving an illusion of warmth. On Christmas Eve, she and Daniel used to play in the snow. They would fall backwards into drifts and then flap their arms and legs to make angels. But the angels had grown up with them, and a smaller angel had joined the tableau.
A shiver, made of wet mist-tendrils, ran down her back. The streets were silent. Not a single car had passed her since she left the restaurant. Usually a car would swoosh by, scaring her as she walked, making her feel vulnerable and alone. She was surprised to discover that she felt more alone without one.
A hollow sound slipped into her consciousness like the drip of a faucet slipped into dreams. The noise sounded ancient and foreign. It rang like footsteps on pavement, but the rhythm was wrong. A thread of fear ran through her. She ducked into the doorway of the town's only used book store and hid back against the door. Suddenly a carriage emerged into a patch of yellow light. The horse was sleek and black, spirited, each step a display of nervous energy as if the animal threatened to bolt. The carriage was black too, with a driver perched on top and a passenger encased inside. She caught a glimpse of a luminous face peering out of the curtains and then the carriage was gone, wrapped in mist as if it had never existed, leaving only the sound of hoofbeats to echo like a fading memory.
She stepped out of the doorway and stared at the road. For a bleak half-second, she expected violins to screech and someone to leap at her with a knife. Then she smiled at her fantasies although the fear stayed with her, thick as the mist. This was Oregon in December. And she was alone in the fog.
▼
Unto us
a son is given
▼
The fog ran its ghostly fingers against her window. Michela drew the curtain and stepped back into the silent living room. She had seen fog once before at Christmas, the year of the strange winter thaw. But here, on the coast, people acted as if fog were normal. Her mother, a good southern woman now long dead, used to say that if God wanted snow at Christmas, Christ would have been born in Alaska. Yet Michela had always found something magical in the snow, a deadly purity that seemed appropriate to the season. Fog belonged to Halloween and horror movies, to crisp fall nights when children wore masks against the darkness and bonfires burned to protect the world from evil spirits.
She remembered the carriage and shuddered.
Perhaps she should have gotten a tree. It would have given the drab, rented furniture a festive air—
At the ring of the phone, the silence exploded. She stared at the princess model sitting on the stained end table. No one called her. Only work had her number and she had just left there.
The ring echoed again, less harsh this time because she expected it, but still violent and intrusive. She belted her robe more tightly and then picked up the receiver.
"Hello?" she asked quietly.
"Karen?" The voice was young but it had a querulousness she associated with the elderly.
"No, I'm sorry," Michela said. "But there's no Karen here."
"What number do I have?"
Michela repeated her phone number to the caller and got a sigh in response. "This is the only number I have for her," the caller said. Michela couldn't tell if the voice was male or female. "And I don't know her last name. I guess I'm going to have to spend the evening alone."
Michela could imagine the expression on the caller's face. She had seen the look all evening in the restaurant. Solitary diners spending their Christmas money on themselves as they tried to make Christmas Eve special by eating an expensive meal. She had been kind to them, but distant; as if getting too close to their loneliness would remind her of the emptiness of her apartment. "I'm sorry," she said again.
"I bet you have company," the caller said. "And a tree that touches the ceiling—"
"No."
"—presents that glitter under the blinking lights and a turkey roasting in the oven, the smell filling the house like the sound of children's laughter—"
"No!" Michela slammed the receiver down. She stared for a moment at the offending phone and then wrapped her arms around herself. The holiday did not exist. A holiday was only a holiday if you celebrated it and she was refusing to celebrate. She grabbed a book off her shelf and flopped onto the sofa. She opened to the first page but the words seemed to run together. I bet you have a tree that touches the ceiling...
"Oh to hell with it," she said, setting the book down and turning on the radio. Christmas music wafted in, bringing with it a chill as damp as the fog.
And then the phone rang. She was reaching for the receiver before she had a chance to think. It might be Daniel, she thought as she placed the plastic against her ear, calling from Wisconsin to ask her to come home.
"Yes?" Her voice sounded strange to her own ears. She never answered the phone that way.
"I'm sorry." She was not surprised to hear the androgynous voice on the other end of the line. "You're spending the evening alone too, aren't you?"
She knew she shouldn't answer, that she should hang up before something bizarre happened. "Yes," she said.
"They don't think about us," the caller said, "those people in their warm houses, drinking hot buttered rum and playing Santa Claus for their children. They forget that some of us sit alone in tiny apartments, trying to find something on television that isn't accompanied by Christmas carols. Did you ever read Dickens?"
Suddenly she was convinced that the caller was male. Something in the question, a timbre at the edge of his voice led her to that conclusion. "Once."
"We're the true ghosts of Christmas Present," he said. "Visible, yet invisible. We don't have chains to rattle like Marley, because we're still alive, still forging them—"
"I really don't want to listen to this," Michela said and felt immediately guilty. Was he talking obliquely about suicide? She couldn't tell.
"It's okay. Why should you? A strange voice invading your own private pain." He chuckled ruefully. "I really did call back to apologize and to wish you a Merry Christmas."
She almost—almost—asked him over. For a moment his voice seduced her into believing in an evening of before and laughter before the true vision of the night set in. At best it would be two strangers sitting on opposite corners of her worn sofa, trying to make cheerful conversation. At worst he was some kind of pervert who would leave her mutilated body for the manager to find when the neighbors complained about the smell.
She heard the rattle of carriage wheels, the shriek of imaginary violins and the dripping moistness of the fog. "Merry Christmas," she said.
"Yeah. To you, too," he replied and hung up.
The Christmas music sounded tinny and the apartment suddenly fe
lt smaller. She set the receiver down slowly, wishing that she had extended the invitation after all. He sounded depressed and she would worry all night that she had been his last call before his suicide—and anything, even awkward conversation, seemed better than spending the night alone.
She shut off the radio and headed toward her bedroom to change clothes. Even on Christmas Eve, there would be a bar or two open. And maybe one of them would be playing something other than Christmas carols.
▼
Unto us
A son is given
▼
The fog seemed thicker near the entrance to the bar. Her hand nearly disappeared in the dampness as she reached for the doorknob. She pulled the door open and stepped into the dimly lit room.
The smell of pine boughs and stale beer hit her first, followed by a hollow laugh that emphasized the room's emptiness. She thought about turning around, but resisted the urge. If she didn't stay here, she would have to return home to the treeless apartment and the silent phone.
The clock near the coat tree read 10 o'clock. It was midnight in the Midwest—Christmas Day. Last year at this time, she had been standing in the front row of the church choir, staring at Nathan, sleeping in Daniel's arms. They looked so peaceful in the pew, father and son, waiting for her to finish so that they could go home. Then the director brought his hands down and they began to sing the Hallelujah Chorus. She had always believed the Hallelujah Chorus had no place at Christmas. The Savior did not become a savior until He rose. No, Handel's true Christmas carol also came from the Messiah, but the words had always chilled her. The idea of a son being given spoke more of abandonment and neglect than redemption. Who was the unspecified us the music referred to and why did they deserve a child?
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