Twelve O'Clock Tales

by Felice Picano

  He quickly dressed again and dashed out. Periodically during the day at school he would find himself shaking all over. When Cregnell came upon him having a late cup of tea, he wondered how archly the Assistant Prof. would react to the threat of being beaten and gang-raped by a rugger team, but thought it prudent not to reveal an iota of his distress.

  He did return to the club, slowly, every three days, each at differing times, so as to avoid detection, and each time found himself blissfully alone; except one time when there was a boys’ team at the club, none over the age of ten.

  So it was that slowly, he began to be less afraid of the rugby champion and his threat.

  *

  Pauline LaFoyant had said yes. Or as much as had said yes, which was good enough for him. This evening in the garden at the Applewhite Arms American Studies department party they’d found themselves alone, wandering. She’d come closer, they’d kissed, he’d been enveloped in a lacework frisson and their kisses had deepened and continued. He’d “taken liberties” with her soft upper body until the two of them had nearly coalesced into one, with her at last pulling away for breath, which he had to admit, he was in need of too. With none of their compeers anywhere near, they’d once more coalesced for an even longer time, and when they’d been forced to break away by the arrival of others in the lantern-dimmed garden, he whispered, “I must see you again…alone.” And she, thoughtfully, had responded, “Jocelyn won’t be home tonight. You know where we live?”

  Did he ever. But they mustn’t be seen going there together, of course, she said. And Jocelyn might still be home a few minutes before she left, so he’d need to stand out on the street where Pauline would signal him with a window shade, and of course, he needed to make certain to bring with him “protection,” didn’t he? All tiny little travails, silly small obstacles, easily leapt over.

  Which was why, however, he found himself racing up the entrance to his hotel at eleven thirty of a Saturday night, then stopping dead at the sheer population, noise, and depth of some kind of party being thrown at the hotel bar, a completely unprecedented thing, which seemed to even include the mumbling old Asiatic, on his stiff chair just inside the bar, who was decorated with the green and silver colors of whatever team or group it was celebrating.

  He’d been threading with difficulty through the crowd, being forced to say hello, to “make nice” to this one and that, including the three grotesques who always sat at their table—now newly festooned in some team’s colors—when he realized with a bump why he knew those colors so well. They were from Blethworthy’s football club. A closer glimpse at the festivity-makers made it clear that one or more of them were team members.

  “…off to Madrid! I tell you! A first for our boys! Then on to take those Juventus wogs and the World Cup itself!” Someone instructed him so he understood that the team he showered with had risen to the very top of their nationals and was headed out. Good for them, he felt, with a bit of shared pride, and even downed the dregs of a half pint an overcosmetized brunette offered him to toast them.

  But he had other matters to attend to now. Pauline LaFoyant, to be precise. He was trying to remember where he’d hidden the condoms he’d packed so many months ago. He’d have to crack at least one out of its packet to see they were still lubricated. Maybe even give himself a fast sponge bath, highlighting areas soon to be exposed.

  At last he got through the crush and onto the back stairway. More partygoers loitering there and on the first landing, he had to sidle around several, until he could get free to the next floor.

  Just as he did, a hand shot out and grabbed his foot from below.

  “Hey there!” He turned to a young face he didn’t recall. “Aren’t you him? That toff of Derek’s?”

  “Who? What?” Fear shot up the back of his head, as he pretended not to understand. Then he faked cheer. “Congratulations, fellows. You’re the best! Knew you could take the nationals.” He managed to shake off the hand by reaching down to shake it. “Sorry to leave. Nature calls.”

  He sprinted up the stairs, thinking is he following, is he following me? Stopping, to try to hear, above the renewed noise from downstairs as the door opened into the bar whether he could hear anyone following. Yes. No. Who knew? And now nature did call.

  No revelers this high up or this far away from the bar. No one in the hallways. So he dashed to his door and struggled with the key. Inside, it was, as always, Baffin Island, and he threw off his jacket and kicked off his shoes on the icy floor and rushed into the lav with its Moons of Uranus frigidity, where he relieved himself and began to run what he hoped, dreamed, would be the merest speck of non-frozen water to bathe his face and genitals in—who knew what she’d think to touch, being French—and heavens be, he managed it, got water to come out of the H which if not really hot then at least was more than tepidly warm.

  Of course it all got very damp and cold immediately after, given the milieu. Him more or less clean, he felt dankish. Must change his undershorts.

  He was back in his room in the midst of that, humming to himself, when there was a rapping at the door.

  No one had ever once in the months he’d been here rapped on the door. He looked through the peephole provided, but it was almost frosted over with age and wear: All he could make out was a rather distorted face. The rapping resumed with more force.

  “I know you’re in there.” The sound came through clearly. And the voice now seemed familiar. He peered again through the frosted porthole, trying to see if was at all possible if—

  “We know where you live now,” the voice repeated, and even though it was somewhat slurred, he knew now it was indeed, and the porthole confirmed it distortedly, Derek Stransom.

  “We know you’re in there. Robbie saw you go in just now. Didn’t you, Rob?”

  Words of assent followed, joined by the sound of yet another, then another person. There were at least four of them. Maybe five.

  “What do you want?” he began to ask. Just then a body slammed against the door. “What is it you want?” he repeated in a more strained voice. Another body slammed against the door, which took it poorly.

  “What do we want?” was yelled into the crack between the door and the molding. “Don’t you read the adverts all over town, you bad little toff? What do they read, boys?” There was an inarticulate shouting. Then “That’s right! The Derrick’s Going to Do You Right!—And his boyboys too!” This was illustrated with another slam against the door, then another.

  Fear filled his head. He leapt to the bed to the window. It opened, barely enough for him to squeeze his body through. But there was no landing, not even a shelf for a foot. At least not for another forty feet down. And what he’d land on would be the concrete lip of a side roof of the car park. No.

  Two more slams against the door shook the timbers of the room. He could see the door frame splitting. If there were five of them out there, drunk and enraged, they’d have the door down in a few minutes. Gathering up all of his strength, he managed to pry the bed away from the side wall and semi-wedge it against the door, which was now being slammed into so regularly and with such shouting and cheers from the other side that it would clearly go in a minute. He threw suitcases upon the bed against the door, just as a section of door frame ripped loose on one side and a shoulder smashed through the wood of the door.

  “The Derrick’s Going to Do You Right Good!” two of them shouted, and arms reached in, tossing the suitcases aside, ripping down the door to unwedge the bed.

  He retreated into the frozen bathroom. Locked the door, had the sense to wedge one last piece of luggage under the door handle. But they’d gotten into the room now and were shouting, headed here, and this flimsy door was already under barrage.

  There was no explanation for why he suddenly turned and opened the shower bath door, a door he’d not opened in months. In his mind the place had been so disgusting that he couldn’t even think of it. There was no real reason why he opened it, except that in his extreme
panic, it beckoned him, glowing cleanly, healthily, pink and wholesome for the very first time.

  He peeked in, curious, as the assault continued on the bathroom door, which couldn’t last even as long as the room door. They still chanted with glee: “The Derrick’s Going to Do You Right Good! And We Are Too!” and he looked at himself in the shower glass’s sea wave reflection, thin, wearing only one little under-brief, utterly set for the taking. As the party raged on, as the revels in the street outside continued for Their Boys, he would be assaulted, raped again and again, harder and harder, beaten and pummeled all the while, with no one to hear his screams, until there would be no life left in him. He didn’t understand how this had come to this, only that it had. He had no choice.

  He stepped into the shower bath and it wasn’t gross and splotchy, loathsome and awful. Instead, it was rather sparkling. To block out the noise and chanting, the fearful sounds he could no longer hear, he reached up and turned on the faucet’s H. And it came out warm. Not tepid. But warm. He held himself against one side of the shower, waiting for it to turn cold. But it didn’t. It got warmer, and a steam even developed around his feet. That was when he thought, well, might as well, and removed his undershorts and stepped under the showerhead.

  It was warm. Luxuriously warm. And the soap was soft, so he tossed his underwear out the shower door, and settled into the shower box, indulging himself in the first warm shower he’d ever had in the wretched little frozen rooms.

  They must have crashed through the bathroom door just in the nick to have his shorts flung at them. Because they came at the shower stall enraged.

  And the most curious thing happened. The shower seemed to simply seal up. It was like fresh warm putty rushing out of the walls and sealing off the door, from the sides, then top, then bottom of the door, as they pounded on it. It began doing cross stripes of sealer all across the door, on the frosted glass ceiling, each stall side, as their shadows dimmed the outside light, and he no longer felt in any away afraid that they would get in, but instead, safe, utterly safe. After a while they seemed to give up, to go away, and he showered until he was happy, and warm, if utterly exhausted, so he sank down slowly into the caressing waters of the shower bath, which received him tenderly and rocked him like a blanket-lined bassinet into the supplest, gentlest slumber he’d ever imagined. All safe now. Free from harm.

  *

  Detective Sergeant Gryce hated this sort of thing. Hated the poorly or badly explained crime. The criminal not there. The victim plain as day and wrong, off, daft in some way as this one was, fetal, smiling, holding the curled-up face cloth to his face like a baby with a blankie, drowned in his own shower bath in mere inches of water, and who was to say how or why it even had collected there when it should have flowed out, while the football party went mad outside and downstairs, and room doors were torn off and luggage strewn about by perpetrators unknown. It wouldn’t do. Looked bad in reports, Looked worse in his mind and memory. Hated it. Simply hated it.

  “That police tape is up there for a reason!” he lectured the kohl-eyed Wog Ponce behind the desk. “You understand. Once we’re done here, all that shower must be torn out and replaced. It won’t do to have shower baths that can’t drain properly. And when repaired it shall be inspected.”

  The dark-skinned Nancy pouted his understanding.

  Detective Sergeant Gryce looked about one last time at this dump of hotel and just then noticed the wizened old brown creature on his chair, vibrating like a mechanical top, trying to get his attention.

  “Yes, old-timer!” Going up to him. “What is it you want to tell the police?”

  He got nearer and heard the thin old voice pronounce, “There’s something not quite right.”

  “Something not quite right?” Detective Sergeant Gryce asked. “Something not quite right about what?”

  “Something not quite right about Room Nine,” the voice barely whispered.

  Detective Sergeant Gryce stood up. “Thanks, old fellow. I’ll heed that advice. Jermell! Douad! Take over! I’m done with this scene!”

  One Way Out

  Bay threw down the apple core and stomped it into the soft loam until only a little mound of dirt was left. The bells from a distant steeple—the highest point of a tiny village nestled in the New England hills—were just striking twelve. It was Sunday. That would mean even less traffic than usual, less chance of truckers and easy pick-ups, especially as this wasn’t a highway, only a double-lane country road.

  He tightened the straps of the knapsack over his shoulders and loped off the ridge back down onto the road. He tried to adjust his mind and body for a long afternoon walk, trying to stay off the frayed edge of the macadam and on the dirt as much as possible, to make the trek easier on his feet.

  After ten minutes or so, he still hadn’t seen a car. Everyone must be at home, having dinner. The dark gray of the road shot away from under his feet down a long incline, rising up to another ridge half a mile away where it hid from sight, then rose straight up to another ridge, rising and dipping, again and again, into the spine of hills—like a ribbon grabbed by the wind.

  Bay was just bracing his legs for the long incline when a rush of air and force slashed past him. Swop, swop, it went, knocking him to the ground amid a flurry of dust and small pebbles.

  Whatever it was, it had been too fast for him to catch sight of it going by. He picked himself up, brushed off his denims, looked back in the direction he had come from, muttered a few curses, then started off again. Then he noticed something.

  Ahead, like mechanical insects rapidly climbing down the side of a wall, two small, very fast vehicles were moving toward him along the ribbon of road. They fell out of sight behind a lower ridge for a second, and as they did, two identical vehicles appeared at the top of the road beginning the drop down toward him.

  They were coming so fast that as he refocused from one pair to another, they seemed to change places. Then he saw the effect was being caused by a third pair of identical vehicles, which had now appeared at the very topmost point of the road he could make out.

  They flashed so brightly in the noontime sun that Bay could scarcely see them coming at him. He could make out that they were low, squarish, and painted a metallic green. But what was so odd after seeing no cars at all was that these seemed so regular, systematic—each one side by side, covering both lanes of the road, the second and third pairs exactly as far away from each other, exactly as distant from the first pair, as though they were in formation. Bay was reminded of a slot-car set he’d once owned and played with as a kid.

  Then a pair of vehicles was upon him. Then passing him. As they went, they made the same sound: swop, swop.

  That left no doubt. An earlier pair must have knocked him down. This time he was braced. Even so, he could barely stay on his feet in the dust and blast of their passing.

  He followed their squat, retreating figures down the road, only a double blur by now, in all the dust they lifted, following them like little cyclones. How fast were they going? Over 100, maybe 150 miles per hour? Maybe more?

  He couldn’t help feeling there was something more than a little odd about the vehicles. He braced himself on overhanging shelf of rock and shaded his eyes, trying to catch a better look at the next pair as they passed. When they did, he was even more unnerved by what he could discern.

  They were indeed unlike any other vehicles he had ever seen: low, flat boxes, angled toward some indefinable apex three-quarters along their length. No lights he could make out, front or back. No chrome or any other kind of decoration. And no glass—and therefore no way for him to see inside them—if, that is, they even had an inside. He had thought at first they were painted a metallic green, and in truth, seeing them closer, that was still the closest he could come in describing their color and material to himself. But it wasn’t metal, not really. And it wasn’t green either. At least not any green he’d ever seen. More shimmering, like the bodies of some of those Japanese beetles that liked to
chew on rosebuds. The material was an unknown substance, refracting light in a way he’d never seen any material do, with a color that seemed to both shimmer and absorb light. Worse, as the vehicles had lifted slightly going over the ridge of road, they had lifted slightly off the road—going 150, 180 miles per hour, any vehicle would do so—and they had no wheels!

  Bay was thinking whether he had noticed any military base in the area on the filling station map he carried with him. No. None. Could this instead be a testing ground for an automobile company? These could be experimental cars? No?

  The last pair finally shot past him, interrupting his thoughts, and making that dull swop, swop sound again. He turned to see if any more were coming. No, none. Then he turned to watch the last pair speed off in the direction of their predecessors, and he was amazed to see that they were instead slowing down, and then almost stopping, before swerving off the road and onto a pasture very close to the same ridge where he’d spent the night.

  All the curiosity and vague discomfort he’d felt came to a head. He had to see what these vehicles were. He turned around and ran back toward the stopped vehicles.

  It was only a few minutes back to the crags that he had left shortly before overhanging the open meadows. But in the short while, the occupants of the vehicle had gotten out and transformed the area.

  What had been a dry grass pasture now seemed to be a cleared area of some hundred feet in radius, roughly circular. Dark-clothed, helmeted figures moved about stiffly, if quickly, carrying strange objects. Two figures bent into the now-opened backs or fronts (he wasn’t certain) of the vehicles parked at the circle’s edge.

  Two other figures were setting up a hollow-looking platform exactly in the center of the circle. From a long-snouted tool one of them wielded, a pressurized liquid shot out onto the ground and hardened into a concrete-like substance the instant it touched the dirt and grass.