THE SUBWAY COLLECTION-A Box Set of 8 Dark Stories to Read on the Go

by Billie Sue Mosiman

  She was also wrong, as usual. I hadn't had a drop to drink. I knew that much. And this wasn't an alcoholic stupor or a hangover or anything else I could put a name to. It was a world gone mad for me, is what it was, but I had to see Davey again if I could...if only I could. I had told him, "Davey, don't join the Marines." I had pleaded, "Davey, think about it some more. You'd make a good mechanic like me, I could teach you." I had cried in my beer the night he left for boot camp and said, "Davey, you're gonna wind up dead over there, you know that, right? Don't go."

  Yet he had gone, I know he did. I saw him off on the bus that day. I handed him his ditty bag. I saluted him as a joke and he cuffed me on the head and said, "You worry too much. I may be younger than you, but that doesn't mean you have to worry about me all the time like you're some old mama hen."

  Then he was on the bus, swinging up like the big Marine he was going to be, and I never saw him again.

  #

  He was sitting at a back table with a draft beer in his hand. He saw me come in the door and smiled like the big, goofy fool he was. It was Davey. He was alive! My heart felt like busting open and tears came into my eyes as I walked over to him. He stood and hugged me and I couldn't let go. I couldn't let this moment go because what if it was a dream and I might wake up and he wouldn't be in my arms, alive and warm and real?

  Millie slapped me on the shoulder and said to Davey, "Don't mind him, he's been, well, you know, tipping the bottle back a little too far lately."

  I let him go then and wiped my eyes. "Davey."

  "Lane. You're late for my birthday bash, as usual. I'd have never forgiven you if you'd missed it. I have to leave tomorrow, remember? This is my last hometown hurrah. Let's get drunk, buddy." My heart lurched in my chest. He couldn't be talking about leaving for boot camp. Could he? He laughed the way he did when my sentimentality embarrassed him and gestured for the waitress--who was some girl I didn't know and not Millie--to come take an order.

  "Where you going?" I asked it in as normal a voice as I could manage, which sounded to me like a high whine of a bad engine.

  "Going? You know where I'm going, it's all your damn idea, big brother! I am going in the Marines and I'm going to be the baddest badass Marine they've ever seen."

  My idea? No, this wasn't happening. None of this was right, the world and reality had sidestepped and twirled everything around and upside down and this could not be happening.

  In the real world, the one that began to change the night before with my missing beer in the Alibi, my brother was dead and buried for eight months and I had begged him, really begged him to not sign up.

  In this world I evidently was hooked up, if not married, to his bitch of a wife Millie, Davey was alive--for now--and I had talked him into going into the military.

  Wrong. So wrong that it made my head hurt. It made the room spin. Millie grabbed my arm and whispered in my ear, "You snap out of it. Don't go ruining Davey's birthday. A man doesn't turn twenty-one every day."

  But Davey wasn't just twenty-one; he'd been twenty-three and unemployable because he had no trade and few skills or education. That's why he felt joining the Marines was his only choice. And his birthday was in May, not October. Was this even the real Davey? Was this even the world? Was I asleep?

  I slapped my own face and Millie saw it. She ground her teeth and shook her head at me. Davey had his back turned, talking to the barmaid I didn't recognize. I couldn't wake up. But just in case this wasn't a dream, just in case I was experiencing some kind of slip in time where relationships were different, where people were the wrong age, where coat racks and beers disappeared and cabinets appeared--and where dead men walk--I had to do something to stop my brother from leaving the next day.

  Keeping my mind as calm as I could, I toasted Davey, hugged Millie to my side, and we all went to Big Boy Steaks--that impossible restaurant I had never entered before--and had dinner. When the cake was brought out, I smiled as my brother blew out the candles, but my insides were churning. I had to figure things out quick. I couldn't keep panicking because my reality had turned into a funhouse hall of mirrors. The important thing was to prevent Davey from ever boarding the bus tomorrow for boot camp. If I could get nothing else right, I'd have to find a way to get this one thing right. His life depended on it. The life he'd lost once already.

  I made him stay that night at my house, insisted until he relented. It had been his house, but he didn't remember it that way, and Millie, who was undressing in the upstairs bedroom had been his wife, but he didn't know that either. And neither of them knew Iraq was going to be the place Davey died. I was all he had. I was the only one who could stop it this time.

  Hauling out some beers, we sat in the living room with the TV off. Millie had waved sleepily at us and trundled off to bed wearing a long gown and yellow bunny slippers. Davey said, "You know if I'd been a couple of years older, I'd have stolen Millie from you before you could do squa-deuce."

  I bit the inside of my lip and said nothing. Finally I cleared my throat and said, "I was wrong, I don't think you should go."

  "To boot? I have to, are you nuts? I already signed up."

  "Tell them...tell them you have a bad back or...that you have to go pee every five minutes...or..."

  He laughed, his hair fell over his eyes and I loved him more than I ever had before because I had him back, back from the dead, and I wasn't letting him go there again. If this was a reprieve, I was taking it for both of us.

  "You can't fake out the Marines, man. What happened to your gung-ho? I thought you said it would be good for me, that there was nothing for me here, that if I joined up, I would end up with some veteran's benefits and maybe a job skill..."

  "I was wrong, all right!"

  He sat back on the sofa, the beer in his hands. "What's going on with you, Lane? I'm having a hard time tonight understanding you."

  I looked down and saw I was wringing my hands. Hands that were calloused and hard from laborious work. "Davey, you can't go. I won't let you."

  "Why? What's changed in you?"

  "It's not me that's changed. It's...well, I have a bad feeling. They'll send you to the war. If they end in the war in Iraq, they'll send you to Afghanistan. It's too dangerous. A lot of boys have died. I don't want to lose you, Davey." I almost added again.

  "Nothing's gonna happen to me. You're always worrying."

  I heard a clatter of footsteps on the stairs. Davey and I turned to see Millie burst into the living room, hair disheveled, eyes wild. "Someone's out back creeping around!"

  "What?" A greater feeling of disorientation came over me.

  Davey leaped to his feet. "What?"

  "I heard something and looked out the upstairs bedroom window. There's someone out there, in the back yard."

  "I'll take care of it." Davey set down his bottle of beer and walked directly to the cabinet in the hall. He opened it and leaning down came up with the .38.

  Now I was on my feet and trying to cross the distance between us. "Davey, no. Let me call the police."

  "No way, big brother. I'm a Marine now." He was down the hall leading to the back door before I could reach him.

  "Get out of my way!" I pushed Millie aside and hurried after Davey. Now I understood two things. The gun, which I loathed, was not mine. It was Davey's and being stored here. And whoever or whatever was prowling in the dark in the back yard was Davey's killer. Because Davey didn't really belong anymore, not in any reality. If I couldn't stop him from going out the back door, Davey wasn't coming back.

  I slipped near the stairs on one of Millie's slippers. She must have lost them on her rush down the stairs. My left foot went out from under me on the slick wooden floor and I tried to grab for the stair bannister, but I missed. I came down hard on my ass with a yell. I screamed for Davey, who was moving purposefully toward the back of the house and beyond my reach. "Davey!"

  Millie tried to help me up. I rushed away through the shadowy hallway, breathing heavy, my heart not just po
unding, but throbbing like an iron fist opening and closing in my chest. This wasn't fair. This was not fair. If I had in some way slipped over into an alternate reality where things were changed and I had a chance to keep my brother safe, then these precious minutes were a joke on me. Because I felt it, the reality behind the reality. The truth of it. If a person has died, and you enter some strange other world or reality where they are alive, they're not going to stay alive.

  That kind of thing is bigger than a missing beer or a shabby coat rack.

  Larger than a strange pile of rocks that some boy must have gathered, photographs in a place they weren't before or a gun that had never existed.

  And it was stronger and more important than a wife switching brothers or a different birthday or a change in attitude about military service.

  Death, in any reality, was final.

  I reached the back door, flung it wide, and stumbled down the three cement steps to the dark back yard. "Davey?" I thought I was choking, I couldn't breathe, I had to find him and stop...

  There was a gun shot and it was so loud and sudden it shook me from my feet to my jawbone. I ran straight into the darkness not caring what happened to me, it didn't matter about me, it was about changing things even if I thought I probably couldn't. It was about making a change that mattered to me so much that it meant I was willing to do anything to make it.

  I fell over something, let out a scream, and felt with my hands in the dark only to find what I prayed I wouldn't. I felt a man's form, my hands sliding up ribs to shoulders and the dark retreated as a beam of bright white light from a flashlight shone down on Davey's still face.

  Millie stood over him with the light, a gasp escaping her. She fell to her knees. I saw the blood on his shirt, the hole, the gun powder burns. I saw his eyes rolling back and I yelled, "Davey, stay! Don't die, Davey, please!"

  In some far distance I heard the crackling sounds of rustling bushes as the anonymous killer (or had it been the Grim Reaper, the Wild Thing that Feed on Souls, the Destroyer?) fled the yard, lost in the darkness.

  Millie was weeping. I was crying openly.

  Davey shut his eyes and he died.

  #

  Today, two months since we buried Davey for the second time, I woke to find Millie missing from bed. I looked in the closet and her clothes were gone. I don't care. In fact, I'm relieved. If reality is slipping again, I hope she's not in it.

  I got dressed for work feeling hungover. I have been imbibing too much. It's beginning to tell on me. That is the least of my worries.

  Downstairs I look in the hall at the cabinet and it's not there. I sigh and sit down wearily on the bottom stair step. In place of the cabinet is an old chest, rectangular, with brass hinges. I don't want to look in it.

  Instead, I make coffee, fill my travel mug and go outside to start the truck. It's almost Christmas and there's snow on the ground.

  In the driveway is a maroon Chevy Suburban. I feel in my pants pocket and withdraw a key with an electronic lock-unlock beeper on the chain with it.

  That's okay, I tell myself, thank you, world. The truck was old. I was hoping to get to trade it in anyway. The Suburban is a luxury boat and I enjoy it as I drive to work. When I enter the garage, Barney, the tire man, says to me, "Hey, Lane, the boss is always late, eh? We got it covered, though, you betcha. No ass wipe is slacking around here."

  I stand still trying to think. Trying to make it all straight and logical, trying to make sense of it happening again. I am not a mechanic. I am the boss of the place. I either own it or I manage it. Will these changes go on forever? Am I the only one slipping between realities or does Barney do it, does Millie do it, do we all do it?

  At lunch I eat at Big Boy Steaks. The burgers aren't half as good as Partners served, and they cost twice as much. After lunch, in my office filling out unfamiliar work forms, Millie comes by and says, "What are you going to do about being late with the child support?"

  I look at her bug-eyed. "Well?" She has her hands on her hips. I don't know why I ever thought she was pretty.

  "I'll...I'll handle it." Saying anything else is going to prolong this argument and disorient me to the point I'll just start gibbering and drooling.

  "You better handle it, or your ass is mine, Mister. Do you think Davey and me can live on air?"

  "Davey?" I felt a pain in my chest. I might be having a heart attack. Or the anxiety is so great it's going to give me one.

  "Your son? You never paid him a minute's attention when we were married, what do I expect, right? Get that check to me by 5pm. Or you'll be sorry." Her high heels were expensive and her hair was long, shiny, and expertly cut. She gave me one last hard stare and left the office.

  I put my head down on the desk and wondered what I was going to do. Davey, my brother--who I had failed to rescue from death's clutches twice--was now Davey, my son. And I knew beyond any doubt it was going to be the same person, but younger. Maybe the Davey I played ball with, the Davey whose hair always fell over his eyes, the boy younger than me who I had to keep an eye on so he wouldn't get hurt, or fail his math test, or...go off to war.

  Before I saw him I had to find out what was in the chest in the hallway at home.

  Maybe there was something in it this time that would save a life instead of take it. But if I had to bet on it...I guess I wouldn't give it good odds. Because whatever is happening, either to the whole world or just to me, doesn't seem to relinquish the dead to the living for very long.

  It only gives out a miserly loan that has to be paid in full, with interest. I don't know that for sure. I don't know anything from one day to the next for sure. But all evidence points to the fact that these new mixed up, jumbled lives I am living are just like the one that I started out with in one particular. I never get to keep Davey for long.

  THE END

  MCMURDO SOUND

  by

  Billie Sue Mosiman

  First published in URBAN NIGHTMARES as "The Hook of Death," Baen Books, edited by Josepha Sherman & Keith DeCandido, 1997

  McMurdo Sound has been slightly changed, revised, and lengthened from "The Hook of Death."

  Copyright Billie Sue Mosiman 2012, All Rights Reserved

  I DON'T KNOW WHAT SINS I've committed that sent me to the cold wasteland of Antarctica. Brian, the radar tech, and I have often sat mulling over steaming cups of the blackest coffee we could make to figure out how we came to be stationed at McMurdo Sound. Being a government employee means taking a risk on where in the world you might wind up, but two years duty at McMurdo seems the cruelest punishment. And for my friend, Brian, the deadliest.

  He has done something unforgivable, and they have sent a team from the FBI to check us out. Tomorrow the plane should land and they will take Brian away. If I had the strength to argue, I'd beg them to take me too.

  It's the isolation that either makes you mad or kills you. They tell me a few years ago another recruit went insane and had to be locked up in a supply room for months before they could ship him out. If he'd been allowed to run amok, they feared he would have murdered everyone at the base. Another time at a Russian base in this region, two men argued over a sandwich and one buried an ax in the other man's head.

  If only we had locked Brian away...

  It began with stories. The days and nights are interminable here. Once our stations are secure and all the work complete, the hours stretch out before us like years until the next day can begin. Brian came from Alabama. He had a soft drawl and a sunny smile. At least he did back in the beginning. We had struck up a friendship early on. He had been at McMurdo for two years already when I shipped in. Since I was a replacement in Brian's sector and new and raw, he took me under his wing. The first year of my exile we played games to pass the time. Cards, dominoes, chess, darts. Brian nearly always won. He was quick-witted and able to recognize patterns inside of patterns, giving him the edge in most competitions. After a while, when it appeared I'd never improve and he would always be the victor, be su
ggested that I might like to hear some of the old tales he had heard or experienced as a boy in the rural south.

  "Sure," I said, happy to be freed of the role of loser. "I'd love to hear some stories."

  During those first few months of storytelling after work we'd take our mugs over to the heating vent in the corner of the radar room where it was quiet and warm. Brian told me about watching his grandfather pick cotton on the farm, the ice cream socials on warm summer evenings, many hunting and fishing stories involving detailed descriptions of rifles, shotguns, frog gigs, 'coons run up trees, the proper way to tan hides, and the best bait for catching bass and catfish in country fishing holes. Being from Chicago, a city boy all my life, these stories were of great interest. Picking cotton? The boles with their spiny covers that made the fingers bleed? Gigging frogs with a trident, taking them home to fry the legs for dinner? It was like an entirely new and strange world and Brian made it vivid and real for me so that I could hear the whippoorwills calling in the woods, I could see flocks of yellow butterflies hovering over a field of high green grass, I could smell the scent of wild meat frying in a big black skillet.

  "Damn, you tell good stories," I told Brian. "Makes me wish I had grown up in the South."

  "Oh, the South has dark days too," he said cryptically. "Dark and ugly days." Then he left it at that.

  The stories passed the time--the long, empty time that began to weigh like a row-long sack of cotton on the mind. It was time that was the enemy of all of us in McMurdo Sound. Men on the base used obsessions to get them through the hours. I knew guys who kept mice (shipped to them through the mail from a supplier in South Dakota), cataloged music, put together endless model car kits, wrote daily letters home, or watched old movies until they knew all the dialogue. It was like prison at the radar station, each man to himself, trying to pass the days. Telling stories was just one more way to beat down the loneliness.