Black Horse and Other Strange Stories

by Wyckoff, Jason A.

  The young couple dismissed any inconvenience Missy’s presence might cause; instead, they seemed only too happy to have her there and began asking Lyta about her family. Lyta, of course, had no interest in talking about her family and their current situation and asked Missy to stay in the yard as she urged the young couple into the house.

  ‘Wouldn’t it be neat if this was all there was?’ Lyta heard her daughter say in appreciation of the topiary as she shut the door.

  Lyta noticed that the woman put her hand on her belly every time she and her husband exchanged a meaningful look after one of them had made a comment about something in the house.

  ‘A dream deferred,’ Lyta accidently said out loud.

  The tour ended not long after.

  The second time Doris called on the drive back to the lake house, Lyta switched the ringer on her phone to ‘vibrate’ and turned on the radio.

  David was on the kitchen floor when Lyta got back.

  ‘What are you doing?’ she asked, then remembered immediately after that that she’d never made him the eggs as she had intended. ‘Shit,’ she said. David drew away from his mother as she bent to pick him up. ‘I’m not cursing at you, David. Sometimes I just have to curse. It’s not about you.’

  She carried him back to the couch and dropped him there.

  ‘Well, did you eat something?’

  He nodded his head. Lyta could tell he had something else he wanted to tell her.

  ‘What?’

  ‘My foot . . . really hurts.’

  Lyta stared down at him, wondering what he was expecting.

  ‘My pills . . .’ he offered feebly.

  ‘Oh, right. I left them up in my room. I’ll go get them.’

  Lyta passed Missy, her arms held straight out and making sounds like an airplane as she shuffled around the downstairs. She went up the stairs and down the hall. Just outside her room, she noticed something she hadn’t seen before: There was a long nail sticking out from the threshold of her door near the frame. This was undoubtedly the nail that David had put through his foot. Lyta wondered what he was doing coming into her room. She shook her head free from trying to understand his motivations and picked the prescription pain pills up from her bureau. She opened the bottle and picked one out and popped it in her mouth and swallowed. She sat down pensively on the edge of her bed and thought about the light that came to visit her in her room. She felt eager to see it again, to be in it again, but she felt at ease knowing without doubt that it would return tonight. She need only wait until then.

  David’s screams carried up through her window. Lyta could hear him screaming for her but she couldn’t move—no, that’s not it, thought Lyta, I can’t try to move. Then: What’s he doing out on the deck?

  The screams cut short and Lyta heard another voice, lower. A breathless man was trying to talk to David.

  The meaning of the words cleared up and came together and Lyta heard David tell the man: ‘My sister fell off the deck into the water!’

  Lyta sprang out of bed and rushed down the stairs. David was trying to drag himself with his arms after the man, towards the lake shore. Lyta passed him and dodged through the trees. A man in a suit she did not know was splashing up from the lake carrying the limp form of her daughter. Lyta gasped and tried to cry out. The man fell to his knees and went to put Missy on the ground. As he did so, her body convulsed and a small spout of water erupted from her mouth, followed by a coughing fit.

  ‘Mommy,’ Missy wailed as her mother scooped her up and clutched her tightly.

  Lyta noticed there was blood on her face, a small run of red flowing with the streams of water down from her hair.

  ‘I think she hit her head,’ said the man.

  The lawyer handling Lyta’s aunt’s estate, whose punctuality in keeping his appointment allowed him to rescue Missy before tragedy occurred, felt obliged to follow them to the hospital. The staff in the emergency room shot quick glances at Lyta whenever they passed her or when they huddled together and murmured to each other. The lawyer, having already made the trip, was reluctant to leave even though there was nothing else for him to do; he couldn’t say why. Instead he went to the gift shop and bought a comic book for David. Lyta stood and walked towards the doors leading outside. David saw her riffle through her purse as she left and didn’t ask her where she was going.

  Lyta drifted away from the entrance and wandered towards the parking lot.

  ‘Do you need a light?’

  Lyta looked towards the voice and saw the lanky man with the moustache. He leaned in and sparked the cigarette that Lyta had forgotten was dangling from her lip. The man said other things to her. He’s trying to make his eyes shine, she thought. The man pointed to his car. She followed him to it and got inside when he opened the door for her. The man kept talking and laughing as he pulled out of the parking lot. His body jumped and danced as he drove, and he looked at her repeatedly and said encouraging things. He pulled into a driveway outside of a Preston Aladdin kit home that needed residing. Inside, he offered her a drink, but she didn’t answer. He invited her to take off her shoes to enjoy the pale turquoise shag carpet. She sat down on it. He dove down beside her and purred in her ear. Lyta touched his face and realised that he wasn’t the lanky man with the moustache who had smiled at her in the supermarket parking lot. Lyta felt herself float free of her body and she seemed to look down at the couple on the carpet. She watched with detached bewilderment as he undressed her and then himself. Lyta thought of those (probably fictional) casual encounters described in the letter pages of certain magazines, but she couldn’t remember the actual names, so her head blurred with the ambiguous mantra: ‘Dear Magazine Name, Dear Magazine Name, Dear Magazine Name . . .’ He moved his hands over her body and kissed her breasts and entered her with enthusiasm. He looked at her and asked her if she liked it; he answered for her when she did not. He seemed encouraged when he saw Lyta dig her fingers into the shag. She felt herself on the floor again and felt the weight of him on her as a buzz sounded in her ear. Lyta turned her head and saw that she was lying next to her purse with her cell phone inside.

  ‘Don’t tell me you have to get that!’ laughed the man.

  Lyta wasn’t sure how long it was before she walked back into the waiting area for the emergency room. When she entered, she saw Jack talking to a doctor and the trooper she’d met the day before. The lawyer was just past them, conversing on a cell phone.

  ‘She’s back,’ Lyta heard the lawyer say as the others fell silent.

  Jack stepped forward and opened his arms. ‘Lyta! Where have you been?’

  ‘I had sex with a man with a moustache,’ she replied dully. Their blank looks spurred her to elucidate, ‘But it wasn’t the same man as before.’

  The men were stunned dumb. The lawyer muttered into his phone. He listened momentarily, and then stepped forward. ‘I have your divorce lawyer on the phone. Would you like to talk to him, Lyta?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘He says—he says it might be a good idea if the children went back with Jack . . . for awhile.’

  David sat on a bench hugging the comic book the lawyer had bought. His eyes were red and he ran his forearm underneath his nose.

  ‘Okay.’

  Jack lunged forward and grabbed her shoulders. ‘Lyta, what the hell is wrong with you? I understand—I understand you wanting to get away from me, I know . . . I messed up and I’m sorry, but I don’t understand what you’re doing. What’s happened? This isn’t you! Even if you don’t come back to me, you’ve got to come back!’

  Lyta shook her head languidly and smiled. His words had no effect on her. The look of concern on his face meant nothing.

  ‘You can’t talk anymore,’ she said. Close enough, Lyta thought.

  She turned and left. No one tried to stop her.

  She drove back to the lake house with no sense of hurry, even as she passed every other driver. Dusk melted to twilight as she pulled off onto the gravel path. She walked ar
ound the house and through the backyard down to the lake shore. She lay down on the pier and saw the first point of light ease through the dome of deepening blue. She watched placidly as dozens of pinpricks timidly flared to life. Then the faintest among them shied away again, then another, lost behind the soft, mauve glow beginning to emanate from Lyta. Lyta was unalarmed; it didn’t matter to her where the light came from. In fact, she didn’t have a care in the world.

  Black Horse

  The obvious reason his Uncle Karl (on his mother’s side) left him the black horse—Peter owned a farm on which one building had functioned as a stable, and he had, obliviously, left intact the crude wooden fence that once enclosed a vaguely circular horse pen—seemed unsatisfactory to Peter Willick. He thought greater consideration should be given to his near-total lack of knowledge regarding horses and their care, and even more to his total lack of empathy regarding their temperament. Peter also wondered why he had been left the single, unappealing black horse when all of Karl’s registered thoroughbreds had been otherwise sold to some trustworthy associates shortly prior to his passing. Some of the money from that sale had been included in Peter’s inheritance, though it was specified that the funds were allocated to provide for the horse’s care. Peter considered himself an honest man, and if that was what the money that came with the horse was for, then that was where most of it would go, even if the basis of Peter’s finances was managing thin margins against rotating debt. In that respect, the horse wasn’t a burden, but Peter still failed to see how it might be a gift.

  Perhaps Karl had been thinking of those few times in his youth when Peter had ridden around his Uncle’s farm and expected Peter would enjoy revisiting those memories. If Karl had thought that, he had grossly misjudged how Peter felt about those experiences. Peter was terrified of the beasts and the power in their bodies so much larger than his own; he would ride if he felt declining would make him look scared, but would cry out in alarm if the horse got up to a canter, and would dismount at the earliest opportunity when it didn’t seem overeager. Even so, Peter never felt his Uncle thought less of him than the other nieces and nephews; his Uncle singled out each for some accomplishment or attribute (with Peter, it was his ‘steadfastness’), but held none in higher regard than any other, and he was generous to each, giving both of his gregarious personality as well as gifts, toys for the boys and baubles for the girls.

  Peter’s cousins had each received a smaller fraction from the sale of the horses and other holdings, but none was jealous that Peter’s larger share came with additional responsibility. Instead, they complimented Uncle Karl’s thoughtfulness in giving the horse to the least successful of the family so that he might have something ‘special’ to console him. With a sort of condescending forgetfulness, they didn’t think to point out to each other that he was the one with the farm. And everyone sighed with knowing satisfaction after they got over the surprise that the sale of Uncle Karl’s house and land went to benefit two county orphanages; life-long bachelor Karl had never had any children of his own. ‘Why didn’t he just adopt?’ Betsy had asked, but Josie answered right away, ‘But Uncle Karl would never do that,’ which seemed to obviate the matter from further discussion.

  When a cousin intimated he was singled out for pity to receive the horse, Peter simmered with angry embarrassment; he decided that the others were wilfully misinterpreting a rare act of favouritism on his Uncle’s part, even if the selection was born from pity. The only reason he could see for Karl not selling this horse with the others was nostalgic feelings or some other particular fondness for the animal; it wasn’t too old for sale, but neither was it especially beautiful or otherwise noteworthy or valuable in some way to keep it from sale (or rendering). Therefore, Peter reasoned, I should consider it an honour to be entrusted with the horse—and so should everyone else.

  That ‘honour’ seemed small consolation to Peter once he was away from his cousins and had to deal with an inheritance he had no particular use for and mildly resented having to care for. Not that the horse was difficult or uneven in temperament; on the contrary, it was patient with its new master and seemed undisturbed by his ignorance and awkwardness. Peter had no idea where or how best to pat a horse. He would occasionally touch its jaw with a sort of jab. The horse never flinched or complained. Not knowing how best to talk to a horse, Peter would lead it by the harness and meekly offer, ‘Good girl. Good girl’, despite the obvious evidence to the contrary. Peter wasn’t sure what to call him; in the will, it was called ‘the black horse’ and its identity couldn’t be mistaken with any of the others in Uncle Karl’s stables. No one else in his family seemed concerned that the horse was unnamed; as no one wanted it, no one bothered to care what it should be called. Peter did remember to ask the taciturn and deeply furrowed old hand that came to drop off the horse at his farm what the horse’s name was.

  The man looked Peter straight in the eye and grunted, turned his head and spat, looked back, and said, ‘Just shoot him.’

  Peter was alarmed at the suggestion. Was there something terribly wrong with the horse? Or did the old hand think so little of Peter’s ability to care for the beast that he thought Peter should just get the inevitable out of the way? Then Peter remembered that horses often have strange names, even phrases acting as names, and he managed to ask,

  ‘What?’

  ‘Y’oughtta be all right for awhile. Just shoot him.’

  Peter was so shaken that he stood in confounded silence as the man shrugged at the horrified simpleton in front of him, turned and shut the trailer door and set off back down the road. More than an hour went by before Peter realised the old hand had actually reassured him about the condition of the horse’s hooves, and was not urging him to put the horse down.

  As Peter meditated unpleasantly on what he took to be the old man’s mortal admonition, he put a foot up on the rough-hewn lower board of the pen, just as he imagined a real horse-owner would, and looked at his new possession. No, the horse wasn’t beautiful, but it sure was goddamn black. There wasn’t a spot of colour on him. Peter thought that the horse might look something special in the sun (it was a dreary, overcast, receive-your-inheritance sort of day when the horse arrived; a dim wash of grey settled into the air and diluted any burgeoning autumn colour presented by the prodigious trees that bordered Peter’s fields on two sides), but already he doubted that there might be a shine to show off the contours of the muscles in the legs and shoulders: its coat was more of a soft, coal-dust shade without any deep polish. The horse was fit, and big, but not charismatic; its bearing and expression seemed as dull as its colour. Only in the obsidian depths of the eyes did there seem to lurk a hidden intelligence. The horse was neither a racehorse nor a workhorse, but one of those of medium build that Peter would have thought ironically called ‘warm-blooded’ if he’d known the terminology.

  At one point during his vigil, Peter wondered aloud, ‘Blackie?’

  The horse, without moving its head, seemed to shift its gaze in Peter’s direction, as if to indicate that, while it wasn’t overly flattered by the creative effort, it gave its assent that the name would be sufficient.

  Peter cleaned out the one stable pen that still had a working gate latch. There was an old saddle in the stables from the time before Peter owned the farm. Peter cleaned it off and rubbed it with oil he’d bought to soften an unused baseball mitt. He had to buy a new harness, but he thought that that wasn’t too big of an expense since the saddle seemed good enough. Peter had no real desire to ride the horse, but it seemed like the thing he ought to do: If you have a horse, you should ride it.

  Peter was anxious around the horse, though he tried to calm himself, remembering that someone had once told him that horses pick up your emotions, which only made Peter more afraid because he felt he couldn’t control his anxiety. He didn’t like being close to the huge head with its staring eye placidly watching the bumbling fool trying to throw the harness on while making as little contact as possible. Peter was m
ost afraid of trying to get Blackie to take the bit, so he held it out in front of the horse with a trembling hand, unsure of how to proceed. Blackie leaned his head forward slowly and, with a motion like a prolonged kiss of his prehensile lips, took the bit into his mouth and worked it back with his tongue. Encouraged, Peter put the saddle on. He flinched when he pulled the strap tight and the buckle pinched the stallion’s hide. Blackie didn’t protest or whinny, but only looked back at him with patience, letting Peter know that he should not be afraid to loosen the strap, and, in fact, he should feel encouraged to do so.

  After Peter had everything set, he led Blackie out to the circular pen (Peter was not going to try to mount Blackie for the first time in an open field). Once inside the enclosure, Peter went to put his foot in the stirrup, but Blackie pivoted his hind legs away with a quick shuffle. Peter was surprised at this first sign of rebellion. He attempted the manoeuvre again, but was greeted with the same result. He talked to Blackie soothingly (‘good girl, good girl’), but the horse kept shuffling away and making it impossible to get a foot in the stirrup. Despite his disinclination to be cross with a creature he was scared of, Peter tried to emulate anger, raising his voice to an embarrassing squeak, attempting to command the big horse. Blackie paid no regard to the verbal abuse, but dispassionately sustained its unwillingness to being mounted. Peter wanted to grab and tug hard at the bridle or maybe even slap the horse’s hindquarters, but, even though he suspected Blackie would indulge this pointless behaviour without reprisal, Peter was afraid of the power of the beast.

  This encounter replayed several times over the first week that Blackie was with Peter, invariably repeating itself in much the same way as the first iteration. When he gave up and went to remove the saddle, the horse always stood still. Once, Peter thought to trick the horse and attempted a quick kick up into the stirrup, but Blackie shuffled away as always, leaving Peter to stamp down hard on the ground and tweak his ankle. Emboldened by pain, Peter cursed the horse. Blackie dipped his head ever so slightly by way of apology, but retained his standoffish demeanour.