The Year's Best Horror Stories 12
Page 15
“They’ll be out in a few years,” said Sherman, “if they aren’t already. I know they’ll find me. They always have. And when they come for me this time, I’ll be waiting.”
The nearest light bulb sang with current, electrifying the air.
Martin became aware of a feeling he had suppressed all night. It was that tingling you begin to register when you know something is terribly wrong but you don’t quite know what it is yet. It was here, not only inside him but all around him, prickling his legs like pins and needles. That he could not name it made it no less real. He could ignore it no longer.
He saw the other man as if for the first time.
Martin flexed his legs and started out of the chair.
The pale man was on his feet. In one quick step he was standing over Martin.
He reached around the chair.
Martin looked down.
A strap dropped from under the armrest and buckled over his wrist, cinching it to the chair. First one wrist, then the other. He watched. It might have been happening to someone else.
Sherman swayed over him, his breath sour, light coruscating through the filaments of his hair. Then he doubled over in a bowing motion. Martin heard the ringing of another buckle, another as straps closed over his ankles.
“What ...?” he began.
“You want to know what this is, Jack? Look over there.”
The framed face of the sullen young man wavered on the wall alongside the other posters. The thick bifocals, the defiant sneer, the ’fifties haircut ...
“That,” said Sherman, “is the Bantam Red Head himself. Old Dead Eye, they called him. One of the worst bastards who ever lived. He blew away eleven people before they got him. But they got him good, didn’t they? June 25th, 1959, the basement of the Nebraska State Penitentiary. It was painted white. Just for him. Charlie Starkweather. You’ve heard the name?”
Martin listened to Sherman’s flat, expressionless voice as the blood pounded in his ears.
“And this is what they used. That buddy of mine, he let me know when they retired it. Had it shipped out piece by piece, just for me.” Sherman patted the high backrest proudly. “Charlie Starkweather’s chair. The same one, by God. And now it’s mine.”
Martin felt himself trapped in a nightmare from which he could not awaken.
“Why?”
Sherman’s face split in a tortured smile. “Twenty-two hundred volts, that’s why. I had to wire this room special. Still, if I don’t turn off these lights, every fuse in the building will blow.”
He wagged his head with satisfaction.
“I read everything there is to know about it. First the body turns red, then black. If you leave it on long enough. The brain cooks hard as an egg and the blood burns down to charcoal. Never fails. It never has yet, and they used it twelve times. Fast and clean, you know. It does the job right—takes care of a lot of paying back. In less than sixty seconds.”
With a casual motion Sherman turned off the first light.
“But why?” said Martin. “Why are you doing this?”
Sherman shuffled to the next light.
“Who knows why anything ends up the way it does, Jack? If I’d never met you. If I’d never met Chris. If I’d never gone to work where I did. A whole lot of ifs. If you hadn’t treated her like you did.”
He switched off another lamp.
“If you hadn’t let me marry her.”
Click.
Martin strained against the straps. The leather cut into his wrists.
Click.
“You might say those are the mystery parts, I guess. But I know one thing. I’m going to start living in my own house justified. And that’s a fact.”
Click.
A growing darkness spread as Sherman spoke from the shrinking, impenetrable depths of the room. Martin was nearly blind, the ghosts of the lamps burned into the backboard. But the straps held.
Sherman hesitated by the last lamp. His silhouette blazed in bas-relief.
Then he reached into a fuse box by the door.
Martin’s heart was ready to burst out of his chest.
Sherman lowered his hand. He relaxed and slumped against the white wall. His eyes twinkled out of the shadows.
“Anyway. You get the picture. That’s the way it’ll happen. When it happens.”
He wheezed, his body rocking with compressed laughter.
“See how easy it is? No matter what time of the day or night they come for me, I won’t have anything to worry about. Will I, Jack?”
He lumbered back toward Martin.
With a flick of his fingers he released Martin’s arms. As he knelt before the chair and unstrapped the legs, he raised his chalky face.
“Well,” he asked, “what do you think of my little demonstration?”
Slowly, very slowly Martin raised himself. Though his legs would not work properly, he dragged himself to the door. He said nothing. There was nothing to say.
One by one Sherman switched the lights back on. The bulbs shivered to life with a faint high-frequency whine.
Martin swung one foot over the threshold behind him, into the waiting blackness of the hallway.
Sherman collapsed wearily into the big chair. It was larger than Martin had realized, made of heavy boards bolted together in a grotesque, inhuman design. The weight of it, the edges and the extreme angles gave it the appearance of a malevolent throne.
Sherman rested easily in it. As if his body had molded itself to the rigid contours, the unyielding angles with years of practice. As if he belonged there.
“Anyway,” he said. “It was nice to see you. Jack.”
Already his voice was withdrawing, slipping away.
“Stop by again. Anytime. Bring a friend. I don’t go out much anymore. Inside, outside. What’s the difference? It’s all the same. Isn’t it.”
He sighed, his cracking voice barely audible.
“They should have finished me off,” he added, “when they had the chance.”
On the wall, close to the door jamb, was the power box. The cover was open, a gleaming switch inside waiting to be thrown. Martin measured its proximity to his hand.
Maybe I’d be doing him a favor, he thought. Maybe I’d be doing us all a favor. I couldn’t have known that until I saw. For one shining moment I actually thought that I could forgive him and everything would be all right. But now that’s asking too much. How can there be forgiveness for the unforgiving? His judgment will have to come from someone stronger than myself.
There was a movement behind him.
“You can do it.”
The words were whispered directly into his ear by a voice at least as detached and bloodless as Sherman’s.
“You know you can!” she hissed. “You’ve always hated him. Admit it! It will make you free. It will make us both free. You’ll see! It will—”
Her tone was seductive, excessively reasonable. The sound of it was almost cruel. The words were almost kind.
Martin met her eyes.
Her face was no more than an inch away. It glimmered there, half in darkness and half in the synthetic light, a film of excitation giving off an unnatural redolence. Her breath was hot, passionate at last. A rising pulse raced through the vein at her throat.
It was, he decided, a face he no longer knew.
“I—I can’t do it myself. I’m not strong enough. But you! You can. You know you can. And then—”
He lurched past her and plunged into total darkness.
As Martin stepped out of the cab, an enclosed boarding ramp pointed the way up to the Queen Mary Hilton’s foredecks and tiered rooms like a tunnel leading him back into the heart of a sleeping juggernaut.
Despite the hour, the parking lot contained the cars of several hundred late visitors, scattered in irregular rows beneath the mercury vapor security lamps. Surely at least some of the cars belonged to diehard members of the reunion party.
He mounted the ramp and headed for the escalators.
A reflection of the bay outside rippled across the ornate ceiling, creating an impression that the entire deck lay submerged beneath the waters of the harbor. At the end of one of the connecting corridors an electric floor polisher whirred on through the night; the sound seemed to be coming from more than one direction at once.
Martin walked through the hall to the damp Promenade Deck, but there was no one in sight.
He turned up his collar and left the area.
He searched long passageways of locked staterooms from which no sound could be heard. An occasional room service tray blocked his path, littered with half-eaten snacks or the remains of party setups. Once he saw a cart loaded with dirty glasses and buckets of drained champagne bottles. He hesitated by the door. There was a do not disturb warning hung on the knob and no light or movement was detectable within, only the low drone of a fitful snoring.
He moved on.
As he approached the lounge at the end of the ship, he heard the cacophony of cheap disco music overlaid with raucous voices and the chiming of glasses raised in desperate celebration.
He rounded the last corner and stood watching. Inside, men in wrinkle-proof suits and women in stiff gowns and uncomfortable shoes lifted a last round under the patient eyes of a half-dozen weary cocktail waitresses.
He came to the carpeted entrance.
“I’m sorry, sir,” said a young woman, “but we’ve already had last call. The coffee shop is still open if you’d care to—”
“Hey, Macklin!”
“That’s fine,” said Martin. “It’s all right. I’m looking for someone.”
“Jim Macklin!” A man with a loose tie tipped his glass from a table by the window.
“Excuse me,” Martin told the waitress. “I think I see him now.”
He dodged barstools. As he neared the window, a hand from an adjoining table clamped over his wrist.
“Where you goin’, Jer?” It was Crabbe, the baseball star. “Take a load off and pull up a chair.”
“Thanks, I ...”
“Bill, I think you’ve had one too many,” said a woman with a beehive hairdo. “This here’s Dave McClay. I’d know him anywhere.”
The man at the window table leaned close. “Aren’t you Jim Macklin? I could’ve sworn—”
“What are you talking about?” said a man with thinning hair. “I’d know my old friend Marston anywhere! Remember how we used to go toolin’ around at night, up by the graveyard where—”
“Hello,” said Martin. “I don’t mean to intrude on your party.”
A waitress appeared carrying the bar tab on a platter.
“What you drinkin’?” asked Crabbe.
“Sorry, folks, the bar’s closed.”
“Boo!”
“What time is it? It can’t be that—”
“Come up to my room,” said the man at the window table. “I got a suite for the weekend. Had to fly all the way from Salt Lake City and—”
“And boy are your arms tired!” said the woman with the beehive hairdo.
They all had a good laugh over that.
On the way out, Martin said to the baseball player, “Do you remember a guy in our class named Sherman?”
“Sherman,” said Crabbe. He navigated the barstools uncertainly. “Oh, sure! That jack-off? Everybody on the team hated his guts. Aw, is he here tonight?”
“Not exactly,” said Martin.
They arrived at the elevator.
“Let’s have a real party,” said one of the women. She tried to punch the call button and missed.
“Old Sherman,” said Crabbe thoughtfully. “Christ, the only party he ever got invited to was on April Fool’s Day.” He shook his head. “What a dork!”
“Where?” said the woman.
“He couldn’t make it tonight,” said Martin.
The elevator opened and the others maneuvered to find places inside. Martin took Crabbe’s arm and held him aside.
“He wanted to come,” said Martin, “but he’s got a bit of a problem. At home. You know? I was thinking. You might be able to do something for him. Kind of lend him a hand, so to speak.”
“That creep.” Crabbe spat on the floor. “I always wanted to kick that son of a bitch’s ass around the corner.”
“Believe me,” said Martin, “I know what you mean.”
The elevator door was closing.
“Are you guys coming with us or not?” asked the drunken woman.
“We’ll be up later,” said Martin, “to celebrate.”
“Don’t start without me!” yelled Crabbe.
He was too far gone to resist. Martin steered him toward the lobby, measuring his words.
“It’s not far,” he said. “I stopped by myself a little while ago.”
They were coming up on the main exit, the ramp to the parking lot and the profound darkness outside.
“He’s just the same as he used to be,” Martin was saying, “only worse. If you know what I mean.”
They stood together on the doormat and the panels slid away before them onto the waiting night.
“Say, listen, Bill. I really think you might be able to do him a big favor. Not to mention me. And yourself. If you’ve got a few minutes. I can show you the way.”
A line of cabs hovered at the curb.
“I was wondering. Do you feel like driving? Or,” suggested Martin, “would it be quicker to take a cab?”
Crabbe regained his footing and weaved forward, allowing Martin to let him continue.
A moment later they were speeding away, red taillights disappearing in the mist, and the fog settled like rain all around where they had been, closing over the lot and the ship and the rest of the world.
NAMES by Jane Yolen
Jane Yolen is the author of over seventy books, most of them written for children, and has been called America’s Hans Christian Andersen. “Names” was first published in Tales of Wonder (Schocken Books: 1983), her seventieth book and her first collection of stories complied expressly for adults. “Names” is not a typical Jane Yolen story by any means, and it derives in part from Charles L. Grant’s challenge to her to try writing a horror story, in part from her acquaintance with a diet-obsessed woman whose mother had survived Dachau, in part from emotional struggles with her teenage daughter who felt bowed by her “name” as a writer. The story wholly proves the truism that writers of the most pleasant and benign stories can nonetheless chill their readers to the marrow when the mood is upon them. Born in 1939 in New York City, Yolen now lives with her family and pets in a rambling sixteen-room Victorian farmhouse in western Massachusetts. Forthcoming books include Cards of Grief (Ace), Heart’s Blood (Delacorte), Children of the Wolf (Viking), and The Stone Silenus (Philomel/Putman).
Her mother’s number had been D248960. It was still imprinted on her arm, burned into the flesh, a permanent journal entry. Rachel had heard the stories, recited over and over in the deadly monotone her mother took on to tell of the camp. Usually her mother had a beautiful voice, low, musical. Men admired it. Yet not a month went by that something was not said or read or heard that reminded her, and she began reciting the names, last names, in order, in a sepulchral tone:
ABRAHMS
BERLINER
BRODSKY
DANNENBERG
FISCHER
FRANK
GLASSHEIM
GOLDBLATT
It was her one party trick, that recitation. But Rachel always knew that when the roll call was done, her mother would start the death-camp stories. Whether the audience wanted to hear them or not, she would surround the
m with their own guilt and besiege them with the tales:
HEGELMAN
ISAACS
KAPLAN
KOHN
Her mother had been a child in the camp; had gone through puberty there; had left with her life. Had been lucky. The roll call was of the dead ones, the unlucky ones. The children in the camp had each been imprinted with a portion of the names, a living yahrzeit, little speaking candles; their eyes burning, their flesh burning, wax in the hands of the adults who had told them: “You must remember. If you do not remember, we never lived. If you do not remember, we never died.” And so they remembered.
Rachel wondered if, all over the world, there were survivors, men and women who, like her mother, could recite those names:
LEVITZ
MAMOROWITZ
MORGENSTERN
NORENBERG
ORENSTEIN
REESE
Some nights she dreamed of them: hundreds of old children, wizened toddlers, marching toward her, their arms over their heads to show the glowing numbers, reciting names.
ROSENBLUM
ROSENWASSER
SOLOMON
STEIN
It was an epic poem, those names, a ballad in alphabetics. Rachel could have recited them along with her mother, but her mouth never moved. It was an incantation. Hear, O Israel, Germany, America. The names had an awful power over her, and even in her dreams she could not speak them aloud. The stories of the camps, of the choosing of victims—left line to the ovens, right to another day of deadening life—did not frighten her. She could move away from the group that listened to her mother’s tales, There was no magic in the words that told of mutilations, of children’s brains against the Nazi walls. She could choose to listen or not listen; such recitations did not paralyze her. But the names:
TANNENBAUM
TEITLEMAN
VANNENBERG
WASSEMAN
WECHTENSTEIN
ZEISS