Deep Cuts

by Angel Leigh McCoy

  “I’ll be back.” Mick stood, took a last drag from the cigarette and tossed the butt at Sean’s feet.

  Sean stomped it out, but when he moved his foot away, there was no cigarette butt there. He struggled up the steps to the porch, giving Mick a wide berth, opened the door, and hurried inside.

  When Sean looked out through the screen door, Mick had vanished. Sean crept back out onto the porch to look up and down the street, but Mick was nowhere to be seen.

  In the aftermath of Mick’s departure, silence pervaded the neighborhood. No birdsong, no shushing of leaves in the breeze, no road noise off Holabird Avenue.

  A slow dread chilled Sean, filling the ache around his heart with fear. He fled into the house and locked the door.

  ◙

  A squeak from the open window in his bedroom woke Sean.

  He scanned the room for anything out of the ordinary and saw the red hot glow of a cigarette hovering over the chair near his desk. His heart clanged once against his ribcage, paused, then galloped in a relentless rhythm.

  In the moments it took for his eyes to adjust, Sean watched Mick materialize out of the darkness, lips clasping the lit cigarette. A thin curl of smoke rose toward the ceiling.

  “What are you doing here?” Sean said.

  Mick’s cigarette bobbed as he answered. “Making sure I collect. I told you I intend to. You owe me.”

  “Even if you’re right," Sean said, “I don’t know what you expect from me.” He ran a hand threw his hair. “Besides, it’s your own fault the accident happened.”

  Mick stood and walked toward the open window. Faint moonlight illuminated a semi-circle of carpet just beyond the drapes. He took one last drag on the cigarette and flicked it outside, then knelt to examine a box sitting in the puddle of a moonbeam.

  “What are you doing with my CDs?”

  “Your mom gave them to me,” Sean said. “They were here when I got out of the hospital.”

  Mick picked up a Black Flag CD. “I could never live without my music.”

  “Take them. They’re yours. Your folks moved away before I had the chance to give them back.”

  Mick shook his head, pulled another cigarette from the soft pack in his T-shirt’s breast pocket and lit up. “You’re just racking up the debt, Sean.”

  “I still don’t know what you expect me to do.”

  “You’ll figure it out,” Mick said. “You always were the smarter of us two.”

  He rose, and the Black Flag CD toppled back into the box on the floor. He put one foot up on the sill and grasped the window frame in his hands, then turned to face Sean still lying in his bed.

  In the moonlight, Sean could see the livid bruise, the bloodstained T-shirt Mick wore.

  “Until next time,” Mick said, crawling out the window to the waiting oak.

  Sean heard a step on the branch, the rustle of leaves as Mick departed, then he sprang out of bed and bent his head through the open window. He saw nothing, heard nothing.

  Mick had vanished, like the smoke from one of his cigarettes.

  Sean shivered, closed the window, and crawled back into bed, yanking the covers up over his shoulders.

  He was nearly asleep when he had a thought, I hope Mom doesn’t smell the smoke from Mick’s cigarettes. It was a thought he’d had many times over the years.

  Then, like a jolt of caffeine, Sean was wide awake. He hadn’t smelled the cigarette himself, didn’t detect any odor of it right then. The room smelled as fresh as if his mom had just changed the sheets.

  Sean lay there, shaking, wide awake until the sun came up and sleep finally claimed him. His last thought was that Mick said he would pay…and he was. He was paying. The question was, how long would Mick make him pay?

  ◙

  Sean awoke to Joey Ramone singing about Sheena the punk rocker. It came from outside, but the music blared so loudly, it rattled the window of his bedroom.

  Why wasn’t his mother yelling?

  He got out of bed, went to the window, and opened it. The music roiled out of the speakers of his car. He hadn’t known they could play so loud.

  Dammit. Any more of that and his brand new subwoofers would buzz like Mick’s. All four car windows gaped open, and Sean could just barely discern a stream of smoke spilling out the passenger side.

  Who was in his car? As if he didn’t know.

  He dressed as fast as he could and limped down the stairs. His mother was reading the newspaper at the kitchen table, a cup of coffee at her elbow.

  “Isn’t the music bothering you?” he asked.

  “What music?” she said, not looking up from the editorial page of The Baltimore Sun. “Better close your windows,” she added, reaching for her coffee. “It looks like rain.”

  Just as Sean opened the screen door and stepped out on the porch, it began to pour.

  Great, he thought, buzzing speakers and wet upholstery: a winning combination. Add in the Ghost of Mick Past, and he’d hit the trifecta.

  He hurried to the car and clambered into the driver’s seat as fast as he could.

  “Go. Away.” Sean shoved the key in the ignition and started the car. He lowered the volume and closed the windows.

  The bruises and bloody wound on Mick’s face glowed in contrast to the pallid whiteness of his dead flesh. He curled a graying lip in a facsimile of a smile.

  “Not until you pay,” he said. “You owe me.” He took a last drag on his cigarette and flicked it out the closed window. It disappeared as if it had made it through the glass.

  “I’ve paid,” Sean said. “I’ve paid with my leg; I’ve paid with my face; I’ve paid with my peace of mind.”

  He put the car in reverse and backed out of the driveway. Raindrops pattered on the windshield to the Ramones’ throbbing beat.

  “Where are we going?” Mick asked.

  “I’m going out for a drive,” Sean said. “You, I hope, are going to Hell.”

  “No such luck,” Mick said, lighting up another cigarette. “I’m here to stay—at least until you pay up.”

  Sean could smell his own stench, the fear of sitting in an enclosed space with a dead friend—and the faint, pungent odor of long-extinguished butts in the ashtray, but the fresh, sweet aroma of new-lit tobacco eluded him. Was Mick in the car with him, or wasn't he? Had he been in the house last week, or not?

  Sean hadn’t known where he was driving to, but the split second he realized he honestly didn’t know what reality was, he made a decision. He signaled and pulled into the turn lane for the interstate.

  Exit 53, he thought, here we come.

  ◙

  Pouring rain sluiced over the windshield wipers, making everything harder to see.

  Sean was driving fast—faster than he usually drove. Fast like Mick. He lit a Camel and sucked hard on it, filling the car with smoke. His eyes burned. The exit 53 ramp was approaching fast.

  The Ramones blasted through the speakers.

  Mick’s hands were on the dashboard, his face white in the dim glow of the dash lights. “What are you doing, man?”

  “Fixing something,” Sean said, raising a shaking hand to brush the hair from his eyes. “I’m gonna wish you back to Hell.”

  “Be careful what you wish for,” Mick said. “You wish me to Hell, and you’ll find yourself there with me.”

  Sean accelerated. “I just want some peace of mind, Mick.”

  “That wish won’t buy it,” Mick said, relaxing back against the seat. “You send me to Hell, and you’ll regret it every day for the rest of your life, and then some.”

  “Tell me what you want!”

  After a moment, Mick said, “Admit it’s your fault I’m dead.”

  Sean shook his head. “You always were a jerk, Mick.”

  Mick just smiled.

  Sean kept his eyes on the road. “Saying the accident was my fault and believing it are two different things.”

  “Sure,” Mick said. “But admitting it puts you on the road to redemption, so
to speak.”

  “Right,” Sean said, his words dripping sarcasm. “If I admit I killed you, it will make me feel better.”

  “No. If you admit you killed me, you’ll recognize that you owe me. You fucked up; you pay up. Them’s the rules.”

  “And where does that get us?” Sean put the Camel to his lips and drew deep, exhaling while Mick spoke.

  “Once you realize it’s your fault, you have no choice but to use your last wish for me…not for yourself.”

  “Fuck!” Sean said. “You want me to own up to killing you, then throw away my chance for some peace of mind—for an apparition? You always were a selfish bastard.”

  Mick laughed. “Yeah. But you used to like this selfish bastard. I had my finer points.” He winked.

  Sean couldn’t help it; he laughed, then shook his head.

  Exit 53 approached. Sean signaled and jerked the speeding car onto the ramp.

  He pressed the button to lower the driver’s window, then took one last, long draw on his cigarette and tossed it out the window. He shut off the radio with a jab of his finger, and turned his head to face Mick, his countenance solemn.

  Mick looked scared. “Do the right thing, dude,” he said.

  “I will.” Sean looked Mick right in the eyes. “Wishing you dead will bring me the peace I need.”

  He accelerated into the turn and punched the brakes hard.

  Tires squealed on the wet pavement.

  “No!” yelled Mick.

  At almost the last second, Sean smiled. “I wish you peace, Mick.”

  The car smashed through the guardrail and tumbled, end over end, down the embankment into oncoming traffic.

  Sean heard the click of a lighter and the crumpling of a cellophane wrapper. The aroma of fresh-lit tobacco assailed him.

  “This is the last time I’m taking you on a road trip,” Mick said. “Can’t take you anywhere without you getting us lost.”

  Scathe meic Beorh on Joyce Carol Oates's “Thanksgiving”

  In her collection titled Haunted: Tales of the Grotesque, Joyce Carol Oates includes her story “Thanksgiving.” When I first discovered this story, I had been reading horror for thirty-five years. Poe, Lovecraft, Machen, Gilman, Hawthorne, Le Fanu—you name the writer, I have likely read at least one story. I read “Thanksgiving” by Oates five years ago, and not only did the thing terrify me as few other tales have, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it. I thought I had gotten over being ‘impressionable.’ Apparently not. Since my reading, I have discovered the point of the story (I think), but that knowledge does nothing to assuage my fear of the nightmarish grocery store encountered by the protagonist. I dare anyone to read this well-wrought piece and not be reminded of at least one time when a busy holiday supermarket seemed like some other place altogether.

  ◙◙◙

  Pinprick

  Scathe meic Beorh

  A wee girl with two pinpricks for a nose smiled at me through her narrow mansion window, her big black eyes glistening like carrion beetles in the morning sunshine. Her fingers and the stone sill where she stood were smeared with fresh blood. She had killed something, but her features showed a lunacy that would send her to relatives—if what she had slain was human—and give her a slap on the wrist if ‘twas only her dog.

  It turned out to be human, and ‘twas my lot in life to be hired by the butler, a Mr. Renault, as the child’s personal coachman. My first assignment was, the following morning, to drive Hanna from her home in Rathmines, Dublin, through the Wicklow Mountains to her uncle’s manor in Corsillagh. An outrider had gone ahead with the revolting news.

  It would be a long day’s journey forcing us to pass through Gleann na Gruagh, a gloomy glen haunted by highwaymen and other denizens of low social esteem. Under no circumstance whatever was I to allow her to exit the four-in-hand (her privy needs while traveling to be met with a chamber pot).

  I dozed an hour at most that night, my mind unable to extricate itself from wondering who the babe had axed to death that sunny morn.

  ◙

  As one may imagine, when we reached the darkest portion of the glen, we were indeed waylaid and told to stand and deliver, for ‘twas our money or our lives. Hanna swung open the door of the coach and smiled, and the masked highwaymen smiled with their eyes, taken aback by her sweetness. She then drew two flintlocks and slew them who had hailed us so boldly—a ball entering an eye socket of one, the breast of the other.

  “Pinprick!” I said. “Get back in! Quickly! They were not the only two cutthroats living here!”

  “I like that you call me Pinprick, Mister Coachman,” she said as she swung herself back into her seat and slammed the door shut. “I have a crossbow and full quiver, Mister Coachman. What do you have up there?”

  “Nothing to your concern,” I replied as I snapped the reins so hard all four horses whinnied in anger. I figured then why I had been sent on the precarious journey alone. No need for extra servants when not required!

  “I don’t like mean people, Mister Coachman. You should be nice to me. My fingers do bad things to people who speak harshly. To me.”

  “So I hear,” I whispered, hoping she hadn’t heard me.

  “I heard you,” she said.

  ◙

  Inexplicably, we escaped the glen without further incident. We were moving along at a fair clip when, to the curdling of my blood, I registered a piercing scream which nearly unseated me. It was followed by a “Stop!”

  Did I stop? Of course I stopped. My father went to his grave providing me with an education, which included knowing when I was out of my depth with terrible enfants.

  “There once was a man from Kilkennyyy,” Hanna sang as she relieved herself behind a spiny blackthorn, “who thought he would never get anyyy…”

  I plugged my ears with my forefingers and closed my eyes. This was not happening to me. This was not happening to me.

  “Listen to my rhyme, Mister Coachman.”

  “Must I, Pinprick?” I heard myself ask.

  “If you choose not,” the wee murderess replied, brushing my sleeve with fingers still bloodstained from the morning before. Why hadn’t someone washed her hands? God in Heaven! I begged my guardian angels to guide me safely to her awaiting Uncle Pilchard.

  I suddenly felt an indomitable angelic presence, which indeed was comforting, and my belief remained constant that God would not put upon His children any more than we can bear. But why had I been chosen, of those with far better credentials (fellow murderers, for example), to escort a diminutive Elizabeth Bathory! Surely this was another instance, as with Job, where the Devil had wagered with God concerning my ability to endure the unthinkable—and God had accepted the challenge!

  “Mister Coachman?”

  “Yes, Miss Pilchard?”

  “Please call me Pinprick.”

  “Yes, Miss Pinprick.”

  “Pinprick by itself will do.”

  “Right. Pinprick. What can I do for you?” I opened the coach door and released the stairs for her.

  “Well…” she replied as she rolled her eyes, “I’m hungry, and the basket of food prepared for me is not to my liking. I don’t care for soda bread and apples much.”

  My blood went icy. This meant that we would have to stop at Kilmacullough, which was only down the way, and purchase whatever would be to her heart’s delight.

  “I wish to use my crossbow and kill something to eat. Like Robin Hood,” she said.

  I went light-headed and fell against the lacquered coach, the sweat on my ungloved hand causing me to slip quickly along the surface so that my next contact was an eyebrow on the brass lamp.

  “Mister Coachman?” She snapped her head to gaze into a nearby stand of gorse. “Did you see something that frightened you?”

  “Yes, as a matter of fact, I did see something frightening.”

  “What was it?” She bounced on her toes, an unsettling glee in her voice. “Ooooo! You’re bleeding!”

  I staunch
ed the seepage of blood with my kerchief.

  “What did you see that terrified you?”

  Not answering her, which made her pinch her lips together and glare at me, I found strength enough to help her back to her seat and to find mine.

  It would’ve only been a few more leagues, and we'd have arrived, safe if not sound. But we needed to stop again so that she could kill something. What would she kill? And how would we cook it? We’d be all night reaching our destination at that rate, and my post would most likely be lost. I may even be put into custody for kidnapping.

  We drove on.

  “Stop at the wee wood near Kilmacull, Mister Coachman,” cried Hanna, head thrust out of the window. “We’re near there now. I can tell by the sweeter air. And, we just passed Bloodland.”

  I couldn’t help myself. “Bloodland?” I cried, trying to direct my voice backward at full gallop.

  “It’s nothing, Mister Coachman,” she cried back, and we rode on in silence.

  I reflected upon driving straight past ‘the wee wood near Kilmacull,’ but then considered that a crossbow arrow could easily pierce the roof of the coach.

  “Good thinking,” she said.

  I froze where I sat.

  “Here, Mister Coachman. Pull over here. By the wee wood.”

  Seeing a copse of oak growing in front of farmland, I said not a word, halted the team, dismounted, and prepared to water them. I was glad ‘twas near Summer Solstice, for we had many hours of light left, though my pocket watch showed half past five.

  “Do you like my crossbow, Mister Coachman?”

  I turned and saw that the medieval weapon, which had singly altered the face of warfare in that distant era, was pointed—loaded with an arrow—at my privy parts. I hopped like a man on fire and hid myself behind the nearest tree.

  “I wasn’t going to shoot you, Mister Coachman.”

  “What were you going…going to do then? Frighten me to death?”

  “Maybe. And, careful with your tone,” she replied. “I have funny fingers. They like to dance.” Then, she tromped off into the wood.