by Jack Martin
He veered to the curb and cut his lights.
The shape was no longer there.
He leaned back into the headrest and did something he had not done for a very long time. He flipped open the glovebox, rummaged for a crumpled pack of cigarettes he’d left there as a reminder of the day he had quit, and fumbled a stale filter tip into his mouth. He pressed the dashboard lighter and straightened the cigarette and waited. But the paper was wet and it crumbled apart in his fingers.
The glovebox, he realized, was leaking again. One more thing he didn’t have the money to fix. Angrily he threw down the remains of the pack.
He observed the front of the house and the yard for further sign of movement. There was none. Only the motion of leaves in the latticework of rain.
Had he seen a man there or not?
Welcome, he thought, to my nervous breakdown.
He took another pull from the bottle of Wild Turkey, opened the door, rolled out of the car and entered the sea of falling water.
He slogged across the grass and mounted the steps. He thumbed the bell and concentrated on his shoes, WELCOME, said the doormat. Automatically he wiped his feet. The mat was soaked; it made no difference.
A minute passed. Once he believed he heard feet bounding across the living room floor, but it was only the thumping of a branch against the side of the house.
He tried the doorknob. It was slippery but unlocked.
“Anybody home?”
For a second he wondered if he had stumbled into the wrong house.
Then he recognized a familiar piece of furniture, another, items they had acquired together over the years, the residue of their marriage and now all hers. The front room had been entirely rearranged. It now looked like a model living room from some fashion magazine, but somehow unfinished, off-center.
She couldn’t wait, he thought, to have me out of here.
He caught a glimpse of himself in a hall mirror. His water-stained jacket, his puffy eyes, the unshaven whiskers on his face . . . He did not fit in with the decor.
I was a fool, he thought, to have ever deluded myself into believing I could.
He swung the door shut.
From the dining room, the sound of chairs scraping the floor.
“Daddy!”
“Daddy’s here! Yea, Daddy!” That was Willie.
Above the running, the clink of a fork hitting a plate.
“Children, we leave our food at the table!” That one was Linda.
The kids came waving spoons.
“Whadja bring us?”
Their combined weight struck his legs and almost knocked him off his feet.
“Lemme see! Whadja bring us? Lemme see!”
“Hey, take it easy . . .” He hugged them to his sides but watched the archway to the dining room. He actually believed he could feel her coming. Negative ions, he thought. Or is it positive? Anyway, the wrong kind. A stormfront of negativity moving across her tidy universe, ready to repel any intruder.
Bella, who was taller, clamored to get her paper bag away from him while Willie scooted his hands up under his father’s jacket to find the other bag.
Enter the wife.
Challis glanced with painful casualness over their heads at the dark woman who now stood on the far boundary of the carpet.
“Hi,” said Challis. “Sorry. Bad timing.”
She did not smile.
Her hair was vaguely restyled, still curled but now brushed more to one side. This new emphasis threw the asymmetry of her thin features even further out of balance. One of her eyes seemed unable to locate him.
“I’m used to it,” she said. “Remember?”
She waited a beat, pretending not to notice his shoes. My move, he thought. He resisted an impulse to wipe his feet on the rug. He would not give her the satisfaction. He allowed himself to be distracted by the children.
“All right,” he said, “all right.”
He handed one of the bags to his daughter. Her face was drawn, longer than he remembered. He had not realized how fast she was growing.
“Here.”
He gave the other to Willie. Little Willie-boy. He wanted to scoop the boy up in his arms but felt inhibited by Linda’s glaring, which he could not ignore.
He and Linda, separated by the children, watched them tear into the bags.
Two masks, the smaller, dollar-fifty variety, dangled from four small hands. In the lamplight they looked crude and sloppily painted. Oh jeez, he thought, as the masks drooped in unison to touch the floor. I knew it. I should have gotten the bigger ones.
“What’s wrong? Don’t you like them?”
Bella, she of the liquid eyes and perpetually quivering lip, looked at him in disbelief, as though he had just served them up Lassieburgers on a bun. She could not bring herself to speak.
“Mommy already got us masks,” said Willie, always the diplomat.
Of course, thought Challis.
Bella’s eyes darted past him, her attention refocused. “Yeah, Silver Shamrock. Look!”
His face fell as the children’s expressions became animated. They scampered for the sofa.
Challis was left alone in the middle of the room.
His ex-wife moved closer to him as a brilliantly painted skullface emerged from behind the cushions. Seconds later Bella, a bilious green witch’s head in place over her own, joined her brother.
“Silver Shamrock!” they shouted through the rubber mouth openings. Their voices were muffled wetly. He might not even have recognized them. “Silver Shamrock!”
They danced around the room, mimicking that ubiquitous TV spot.
Without looking at him Linda said, “Nice try.”
Challis stooped to pick up his dollar-fifty masks and stuffed them under his coat. Thank you, he thought, for that. He faced her.
“So. How you been?”
She met his eyes but seemed to be viewing him from a great distance. Her expression was veiled and detached, noncommittal. She moistened her lips with that lizard tongue of hers and opened her mouth to speak.
Suddenly one of the children cranked up the TV volume. It had been on all this time, glowing silently in the corner. An announcer with a clipped, proper voice spoke from the screen. It was the Cable News Network. Challis and his ex-wife turned and observed the newscast disinterestedly over the heads of their children.
He noticed her profile as she stood next to him, shoulder to shoulder now but not touching, her arms folded, her chin high and proud. She was smaller than his memory of her, and thinner. Her bones poked sharply through her clothing. He knew instinctively that were he to touch her she would feel like no one he knew. The curves and surfaces his hands remembered were no longer there.
“. . . LEAVING BRITISH AUTHORITIES STILL BAFFLED AND WITHOUT ANY SUBSTANTIAL CLUES NINE MONTHS AFTER THE THEFT. THE BLUESTONE WAS ONE OF NINETEEN BELIEVED TO REPRESENT THE NINETEEN-YEAR CYCLE OF THE MOON. IT WEIGHS MORE THAN FIVE TONS, MAKING ITS DISAPPEARANCE A MYSTERY INDEED . . .”
What were they listening to? Some nonsense about a theft in England. Who cares? he thought. That’s thousands of miles away. Almost as far away as I am right now from Linda. We’re listening to it because it beats talking to each other.
Still clutching their garish, oversized masks, the children were poised impatiently in front of the set, ignoring their parents as if they had always been there and would continue standing that way, overseeing the household, forever. Till death do us part.
“. . . BUT THE FESTIVAL-GOERS SEEMED NONE THE WORSE FOR IT, AS HAPPY CELEBRANTS GATHERED TO WELCOME IN THE SEASON . . .”
A smattering of an Irish melody crept into the background, followed by an electronic beeping. This latter did not come from the TV.
Challis snapped to.
He slapped his belt, shutting off the paging device.
“Oh no,” he said.
“DEREK SMITH . . . AT STONEHENGE.”
“What?” said Linda.
“I’ve got to call in,” he explained, lea
ning toward her.
Linda drew in her chin and stepped away from him. “Drinking and doctoring. Great combination.”
He sighed and headed for the phone. Miraculously, it had not been moved.
“Turn that down!” she said to the children.
He dialed the hospital. While he waited for Agnes to come to the phone, the TV screen went black, then grew a rich orange eye in the center. The eye became a pumpkin, bobbing to that insufferable Silver Shamrock tune. Bella and Willie donned their masks and danced along. Curiously, the commercial music was a virtual continuation of the report on that celebration or whatever the hell it was in England. Nice segue, thought Challis. Synchronicity.
Agnes came on the line. She was out of breath. “It’s an emergency,” said the nurse, “though nobody’s sure yet what kind.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You’d better come and see for yourself. He—I can’t describe it. I may be overreacting, but . . .”
“Don’t apologize.” He was perversely thankful to be called away on whatever pretext.
The nurse was saying, “. . . But I don’t think so. Dan, you should see this one.”
“I’m not arguing.”
“EIGHT MORE DAYS TO HALLOWEEN . . .”
Agnes wasn’t ready to hang up, but now he couldn’t make out what she was saying. Something about eyes. She was almost babbling, which was not like her. Not like her at all. He broke in.
“Vital signs?”
“Down and dirty, but holding on.”
“Keep him holding on, Agnes.”
“Dan, I really think . . .”
“I said I’ll be there. Didn’t I say that? Agnes, tonight I am definitely not resisting.”
He put down the phone.
Linda had sidled up while he was talking. She was standing there, waiting smugly for him to say it.
The hell with her.
“I’ve got to go.”
“That’s a familiar line,” she said, her lips barely moving.
He ignored her. “’Bye, kids.”
They did not acknowledge him. They were in a trance, prancing to their morbid little sing-along.
“HAL-LO-WEEN, HAL-LO-WEEN . . .”
He zipped up his jacket and made his break.
Linda was right there.
“Dan, now listen to me. Saturday morning, ten-thirty. You’re picking them up, right? No excuses this time?”
He lowered his head and yanked the door open.
“Linda—”
“It’s been four weeks, nonstop.”
Now it all comes pouring out, he thought, just when I have to leave. The instant my life threatens to impinge on her all-consuming self-interest, her color-coordinated plans . . .
“They’re your kids too, damn it. I’m going out of my mind, Dan! I need some personal space!”
“Where did you learn that one? Come off it, Linda.”
“You promised me!”
“What did I promise you? What? Can you cut the jargon and tell me specifically how I’ve let you down?” He didn’t wait for an answer. He turned to the rain and the wind outside.
Before he left he said, “All right. Saturday.” He practically spat the words.
“EIGHT MORE DAYS TO HAL-LO-WEEN, SIL-VER SHAM-ROCK!”
“Bastard,” he heard Linda say as she slammed the door.
I don’t know what I came home for, he thought. This time I really and truly don’t. I don’t know why I bothered.
Lightning lit up the sky. He closed his collar and buried himself in his jacket. Thunder rolled toward him along the street like the warning of an avalanche.
Work, he thought. The hospital, he thought. My job, he thought. That’s all I have to think about from now on. What else is there?
He would go back to another case.
So it begins again. The real thing. The evasions are over. I thought I could get away. But I couldn’t.
Happy Halloween, he told himself, gunning the motor and roaring away from the house, his house, the house he had built and would continue to maintain forever, undoubtedly even unto death and beyond the grave, if his ex-wife and the lawyers had their way. Trick or treat?
He knew the answer, and would never ask the question again.
A FIRE
IN THE NIGHT
C H A P T E R
3
The rain became a spray of mist, fine needles from an invisible jet to gloss the windows and flatten perspective outside the car long before he reached the hospital.
Colors softened to monochrome, the mist silvered in the headlights, and unseen traffic swished past in unknown directions. He kicked on his high beams, but that only made the road a solid wall of whiteness which swallowed signs as well as the shapes of pedestrians waiting on streetcorners for rides where there were no bus stops.
He counted stoplights. By the time the lane ended at a wide driveway and the fuzzy words EMERGENCY ENTRANCE came up, burning cool and pink through his frosted windshield, his shoulders were locked and his neck stiff and sore from the effort. He felt as though he had been driving with his eyes closed, negotiating turns out of sheer instinct. It was only a few miles, but he could not remember how he got there.
The hint of other cars loomed throughout the lot, and two or three overcoated figures loitered near the ramp. He parked next to a water-beaded motorcycle and hurried for the glass doors.
From out of the corner of his eye a tall, gray figure came shambling up along the railing, but before it could speak to him Challis was inside.
He shook dampness from his collar and strode to the admissions desk.
Agnes was hunkered over the telephone, her mouth obscured by the receiver and the whites of her eyes showing too prominently. Her voice was low but urgent. The hallway was not yet back to full power, but the area was bright with starched uniforms moving in and out of the floor’s nerve center. The head nurse caught sight of him and put the caller on hold.
Her eyes flashed. “His condition is stable, but Dr. Castle left early and I thought I should—”
“That’s fine.” Challis let her lead him. “Where is he?”
They went to an intersection in the hall. Two police officers with trimmed moustaches and indeterminate waistlines lingered near a gurney, notebooks in hand. A slim, stark man in a rain slicker intercepted Challis.
“Listen,” explained the man nervously. He interposed himself between the doctor and the policemen, eager for an ally. “He just walked up out of the rain! I swear to God that’s all there was to it. I brought him here . . .”
A ragged, filthy man was stretched out on the gurney.
“I was just sittin’ there in my station, mindin’ my own business, when this dude comes outa nowhere and keels over outside the window. He never said nothin’ to me. So I got out the truck right away and—”
Challis undipped his penlight. He lifted the ragged man’s eyelid and observed the pupil dilating sluggishly under the beam. One of the policemen attempted to hand him a clipboard. Challis signed it and deflected questions. He bent over the patient and felt for a pulse.
“Got a room for him?”
“Thirteen,” said Agnes, ready at his side.
He gave out rapid instructions, but Agnes had already ordered up an I.V. and antibiotics. There were still symptoms of shock to worry about.
The policemen withdrew to confer. The gas station attendant was waiting to be cut loose. His eyes were hard-boiled eggs. He looked as if he had just run in off the moors to announce that he had seen a monster and was tired of waiting for someone to reward him with a tall Scotch.
“Hey, can I leave now?”
“Don’t see why not.” Challis stopped and extended a hand to give the man final absolution. He forced a professional smile. “Thanks for helping out.”
“Yeah, well, I always say, it might be me the next time. You never know what’s sneakin’ up on you.”
A faint strain of music began playing somewhere. A tinny
jingle. It set Challis’s teeth on edge.
The attendant heard it, too. He must have, because at the sound his head jerked around, searching for the source, as if he were being called to meet his Maker about fifty years too soon.
What was he afraid of?
High above the benches in the waiting area, an orange spot was dancing on the TV screen. The orange spot grew into a pumpkin as the novelty commercial came on for the hundredth time. Challis ignored it. The associations made his stomach clench up.
The attendant’s eyes widened. “That’s what I heard! And that’s—that’s what—!” He backed off, sweating bullets.
It must be getting to everybody, thought Challis. Eight more days to Halloween . . . It’s beginning to sound ominous; some kind of all-pervasive, subliminal advertising designed to drive us all out of our gourds. By the time it gets here we’ll be begging to be set free.
“Doctor,” said Agnes, “look!”
On the wheeled table, the ragged man’s eyes popped open. His head struggled up, shaking with palsy. His cracked lips twitched.
Challis put his ear close. “Can you hear me?”
The man’s swollen tongue smacked. “They’re . . . they’re . . .”
Challis smelled his foul breath. No hint of alcohol. His hair was matted and he had not shaved in days. He resembled a prophet gone mad from too long in the wilderness. There was a gash on his cheek but it had already been cleaned. Good old Agnes.
“Yes?” said Challis. “I’m here.”
The ragged man’s eyes bulged and focused over Challis’s head, where a horrific green witch’s mask and a luminous skull now danced with the pumpkin onscreen.
“They’re . . . going to . . . kill us! All of us!”
The ragged man beat the air with a spastic hand. In his fist he held a crushed handful of molded latex. A brilliant orange, more intense than any color found in nature anywhere on earth. It was a pumpkin mask. Silver Shamrock.
“Nurse!” called Challis. “Get me five hundred milligrams of chlorpromazine. Go!”
As the patient was wheeled away, Challis caught sight of the fearful attendant. The man’s eyes were fixed and unblinking. As he backed toward the emergency entrance, clinging to the wall, he continued to stare transfixed at the TV screen.
