* * *
When Johnny finished his story, his face was wet with flop sweat and he felt exhausted, as if he had been running and Ronnie had been pursuing him.
“Interesting,” Dr. Anderson said.
“That’s it?” Johnny said. “Interesting? You can do better than that, I hope. Is there a way to stop dreaming about this? Maybe I should come forward, tell the police what happened all those years ago. I’m responsible.”
“It was an accident.”
“Whatever you call it, if I explain what happened, perhaps I can get it off my conscience. You have no idea how real that dream felt. It was as if Ronnie was actually at the top of the stairs.”
“You absolutely believe this was more than a dream?” Dr. Anderson asked.
“I do. I’m scared. I feel that Ronnie has come back from the grave, and he won’t be done until he finishes doing what he started out to do so long ago.”
Dr. Anderson nodded. “If your life is truly in danger, as you think, it may be my fault.”
“Now you’ve really got me scared,” Johnny said.
Dr. Anderson was silent for a long moment, and then he cleared his throat and spoke.
“I am not what you call an average therapist. Well, I may be average, but I’m not the run-of-the-mill therapist. Wrong again. I am not an everyday therapist.”
“What the hell does that mean?” Johnny said, and sat up on the couch, leaned toward the desk behind which Dr. Anderson was sitting.
“The incense I had you sniff is rare, and between you and me, illegal. It’s associated with supernatural and metaphysical activity.”
“What?”
“Yep. I’m into that. It opens the mind to hypnotic suggestion. For whatever reason, it works really well on smoking problems, but if something dark is hidden inside your memories, the results are different.”
“So you’ve been through this before, and you didn’t warn me? You’re like a goddamn witch doctor.”
“I sort of did warn you, and yeah, I suppose the title of witch doctor might be fitting. Witch doctors used to be considered healers.” Dr. Anderson stared off into space for a moment, as if to remember the good old days. “Most people’s skeletons are a lot smaller than yours. The death of Ronnie, you tucking it back into your memory for so many years. It has grown back there, Johnny, and it wants out, and might stay out until it finishes what it needs to finish. The sound you heard, the doors opening and slamming, that’s frequently associated with metaphysical activity. Certain ghosts are called door slammers, and the reason is they use our actual doors to enter in from other dimensions.”
“No shit?”
“No shit. We can create living monsters out of our thoughts, especially ones that have been blocked, held under a kind of mental lock and key. It’s like a kettle that can’t let off steam. Finally it will burn up or explode. You are on the verge of exploding.”
“Can you stop it? I mean, surely you’ve got a trick or two.”
“I practice a bit of this and that not found in the psychological text books. But I only had this kind of thing go bad once before. Minor, not worth talking about. Easily fixed with suggestion.”
“Then suggest it out of me.”
“I think your situation might be considerably less simple than that.”
* * *
Dr. Anderson went home to get supplies, and the plan was to meet at Johnny’s home. Johnny sat out on the porch, nervously awaiting his arrival, the day dying.
Dr. Anderson arrived carrying a rumpled black satchel. Johnny let him in. The doctor opened the satchel on the couch and took out the goods.
A box of salt. Silver pellets, he said. A variety of amulets, tokens, and herbs. A bit of a nasty-looking liquid in a small bottle with a cork.
“This is what, witchcraft?” Johnny said.
“Therapy is actually a kind of witchcraft. More an art than a science, no matter what anyone tells you. A therapist is probing and guessing. It’s mainly about someone talking themselves out of the bad things they’re thinking and feeling, and about the therapist making a nice chunk of change per hour. I on the other hand, do not make a nice chunk of change, but there will be a bill. And yeah, this is hoodoo shit. According to what I read off the Internet—”
“The Internet.”
“You have to know what you’re looking for. Your man, Ronnie, he’s becoming stronger with each entry into this world. He comes when your mind is at its most relaxed.”
“When I’m sleeping?”
“Correct. According to what I read, in time, he’ll become solid. He won’t leave then. He won’t go back in your head behind doors and barriers. He’ll be flesh and bone, at least in appearance. He’ll be able to lay hands on you, but he’s a revenant just the same. He won’t go back into the ether, so to speak, until he finishes what he started. There has to be a finale. He left the world unfulfilled, so he will either fulfill his plans, or they will be thwarted for good. I’ve always wanted to use the word thwarted.”
“You mean I have to kill him all over again?”
“You didn’t kill him in the first place, and you can’t kill something that’s already dead. Okay. Technically, I guess that’s exactly what we’re hoping to do. Let’s say you’re sending him into nothingness, and if you’re able to do that, he won’t bother you again. I’m not suggesting your memories will go back into hiding, like before, but Ronnie the Revenant, he’ll be gone from your mind and your life and you’ll be able to deal with what happened, and move on. And remember, Johnny. It was an accident. He may not see it that way, but you should.”
“What if I stay awake?”
“That’ll work for a while, but eventually you have to sleep. I’ll stay awake and let you get some sleep, and when he comes you’ll wake up, and we’ll be waiting for him.”
The doctor poured salt from the box into a leather bag he pulled from the satchel and gave it to Johnny.
“Revenants hate this shit,” the doctor said. “You can pour it out and toss it at them.”
Now the doctor placed the silver beads in another bag, along with a batch of foul-smelling roots and herbs. He gave those to Johnny as well.
“These are supposed to ward off evil,” Dr. Anderson said.
“Supposed to?”
“Yep. Can’t say for sure.”
Dr. Anderson uncorked the bottle and poured some of the nasty-looking liquid in a circle around the couch and armchair where he would be sitting, and then he poured salt in a circle around both.
“Might as well sleep, Johnny. Ronnie has to be faced sometime.”
“With salt? That doesn’t exactly inspire confidence,” Johnny said.
“Tell me about it,” Dr. Anderson said.
Before they settled in, the doctor gave him a mild sedative to help him sleep, but he assured Johnny that he would snap awake in a moment if the need should arise.
Johnny slept on the couch and Dr. Anderson sat in a chair nearby, reading from his Kindle. As Johnny drifted off, one foot dangling from the couch, touching the floor, he hoped what the good doctor was reading was an excellent text on witchcraft. Johnny had a packet of salt in his coat pocket, and he had a bag of herbs and silver pellets, same as Dr. Anderson. He felt he was going to a ghost fight with a wish and a half-assed promise.
* * *
Fear alighted like a locust swarm and gnawed into his memory. Everything that had been pushed down that day came back to him. He heard a door slam upstairs, and then he experienced a spine-nibbling sensation that something was in the house. In due time he heard the stairs creak with heavy footsteps, and Johnny could smell as well as sense the presence; it had a stench like garbage, dead animals and offal. The skin along his neck crawled, and every fiber of his being was calling for him to wake up.
The doctor said he would be able to come out of his drug-induced sleep easily, but Johnny discovered this was less than true. He had an all-consuming feeling that something ghastly was inching toward him, and yet he was unab
le to surface from the dark waters of sleep.
“Step by step,” he heard a voice say, the same words Ronnie had used that day on the hill overlooking the highway.
And though he could only sense the presence, he knew that was exactly what Ronnie was doing, coming step by step toward him. He couldn’t wake up, and then Johnny felt icy fat fingers around his throat and a knee on his chest, pushing him deeper into the couch cushions.
Johnny tried to yell, but all he could do was make a sound so soft it could have been cancelled out by a rat breaking wind. The weight had grown heavier. He flailed about, trying to claw at whatever was atop him, but it just leaned in further. Johnny’s fingers touched cold, slippery flesh. Hands. Strong hands. He couldn’t pull them from his neck. He smelled the sticky warmth of foul breath. His own breath grew jagged and weaker by the moment.
“Go away. Go away!”
Johnny strained and finally opened his eyes.
It was Dr. Anderson yelling.
And there was Ronnie, looking down on him. There was something fish-like about his mouth, like a hook belonged in it. It was stretched beyond reason, revealing teeth and gums dripping saliva, and then the sunlight dappled through the patterned curtains and lay across Ronnie like camouflage netting. His eyes were sunken and dark like shiny balls of coal. Breathing his stench was like eating something rank and solid. Ronnie’s head nodded on its neck, as if on a precarious peg.
Beyond him he could see Dr. Anderson screaming, “Go away,” and stringing salt from the box through the air, some of it raining down on Ronnie, causing his head and face to sizzle and pop. Then the light outside grew brighter and the camouflage lightened in the dark spots and brightened in the light spots, and Ronnie became a whiff of smoke and shadow, and was gone.
Dr. Anderson was staring down on Johnny, the box of salt in his trembling hand, a look on his face that gave the impression that something cold and sharp had been shoved up his ass.
* * *
Later at the coffee shop down the street, Dr. Anderson said, “As of this moment, I’m retired.”
“So you never thought what I was telling you was real?”
“Would you believe that shit? Think about it. I was humoring you. It was a form of therapy. Enter into your belief system, play it out to the end, and the end would be you having a good night’s sleep and no revenants. I really do know a bit about the occult. Stuff I told you I got from books and the Internet, but it’s a lifelong curiosity, not a belief. Until now. After we talked in the office, I went home, found some things I thought fit the materials listed in the occult books, and put them in a satchel. The silver pellets are actually soap beads. I was hoping you wouldn’t look too close. I don’t think soap is supposed to do anything. But the salt I sprinkled on it actually seemed to work. As for the salt circle around the couch, I noticed you had broken it with your foot dangling off. That may be why it was able to get through to you. According to the books, the circle has to be complete; any lapse in it, and things can get through. Listen to me. I’m talking now like I know what the hell I’m talking about.”
“Ronnie giving up may have had as much to do with daylight as salt,” Johnny said.
“Fair enough. Listen, kid. Don’t go back there. You can’t sleep in that house.”
“I doubt it matters where I go,” Johnny said. “I think Ronnie goes with me.”
“Sorry I can’t actually do anything to help you. I have to wish you the best and say don’t come see me again. It might come with you. What a smell. Holy Mother of Shit.”
Johnny touched his throat. “You should have been on my end of the deal.”
Johnny had a ring of bruises around his throat, finger marks and thumb prints. The bloodshot look in his eyes was not from a lack of sleep, but evidence of hemorrhaging from attempted strangulation.
Johnny noticed Dr. Anderson staring at the damage, said, “You should have seen the other guy.”
“I did, and he looked rough all right, but I don’t think it’s anything you did to him.”
“If you count that time back in high school…”
“Good point.”
Dr. Anderson raised the cup of black coffee to his lips, his hand shaking. “I keep thinking I’ll wake up.”
“I kept thinking that too, but wait, someone gave me a goddamn down in the well sedative.”
“Sorry. Here’s my last bit of advice…”
“I’m not sure I want to hear it,” Johnny said.
“Take it or leave it, but the books I have, stuff I have always considered a hobby, it suggests that the more this thing comes back, the more flesh-and-blood-like it becomes. It’s still a monster, but it begins to have more human traits, in appearance anyway. That’s why it was able to choke you.”
“I figured that part out,” Johnny said.
Dr. Anderson stood up, reached in his wallet and took out a few bills and put them on the table. “The least I can do.”
Johnny watched as Dr. Anderson hurried away.
* * *
Johnny had two more cups of coffee and walked to the park where the false hanging tree stood. He sat near it, on a bench in the sunlight. Now that he had remembered what had happened those long years ago, he began to lose his guilt. Ronnie had meant to kill him that day up on the hill, and he had only been lucky he had not. Still, that day with the ants made Johnny realize that inside of him was a potential killer, not only of insects, but of most anything. For the moment, he embraced that.
When his courage was built up, he walked to a nearby grocery store, and then home. He looked at the salt circle around the couch, saw where his foot had broken it down. He placed the plastic bag from the grocery store on the floor, removed one of the several boxes of salt he had bought. He widened the salt circle to include not only the couch, but circled it up to the front door. Then he went to his bedroom, dug about in his chest of drawers for a jogging suit and socks. He dressed and put on his best tennis shoes. The jogging top had deep pockets; he filled those with salt and sat on the couch in his living room. He looked through the satchel Anderson had left. The doctor said, except for the beads, the other stuff was supposed to deter the supernatural, but so far Johnny only knew two things had affected Ronnie. Salt and daylight.
That caused Johnny to look out the window. It was still fully light.
Then he saw the electronic reader in the chair where Dr. Anderson had been sitting, grabbed it, sat down on the couch again, and turned it on, hoping it would be a text on the supernatural. What Dr. Anderson had been reading was a self-help book to strengthen the personality.
Shit, Johnny thought. My therapist needed therapy.
Johnny dropped the reader into the satchel, tossed it aside, took a deep breath, said aloud, “Okay. I got nothing.”
* * *
Johnny had to sleep for Ronnie to open the door and come into the realm of the living, and as Dr. Anderson had said, there was no avoiding that. Eventually he would sleep. Presumably, he was safe on the couch inside the circle of salt, and since he had made the circle wide and thick, there was no chance of him accidentally breaking the salt line with a dangling foot, as he had done before.
Still, Johnny was not anxious to sleep, not anxious to invite Ronnie into this realm and test the salt circle. The answer might be to sleep during the day, and stay awake nights, safely inside a circle of salt, just in case he should nod off.
Of course, that was impossible. He had a job, something of a life.
Daylight had become shadowed, and Johnny looked at his watch. Five p.m. The sun set early this time of year; another hour and the sky would be gray, and within minutes after that it would be dark. Exhausted, Johnny leaned sideways and lay on the couch, with the intention of resting, not sleeping. He found himself nodding off, popping awake from time to time.
But after the night before, he was exhausted.
I’m in the circle, he thought. I’ll be fine.
* * *
He heard the door open and slam and sm
elled the smell, and then he heard a voice say, “Johnny. It’s Darla. Open the door.”
This time he was able to awaken more easily, sit up on the couch. Through the glass panel on the front door he saw Darla’s shadowed face. She had her hands cupped to the glass panel, and her face pushed close to the glass, looking in. He remembered she said she would come by later in the week after work, and here she was, and at the same time, Johnny could sense Ronnie without seeing him; he had fallen asleep, the door to the other world had been opened, and Ronnie was in the house with him, and poor, sweet Darla was at the door.
“Oh, the door’s open,” Darla said, and turned the knob, and as she did Johnny saw a dark shadow vibrate rapidly toward the door, and then the vibrations seemed to gather themselves and solidify into Ronnie’s leather-jacketed form, his head hanging at that odd angle on his neck. He was moving just outside the salt circle toward the gap between salt and the doorway.
Johnny sprang from the couch, and as he did Darla stepped into the house. Ronnie reached out and grabbed at her light coat. Johnny, still inside the circle, clutched at her coat lapels, and lifted her over the line of salt, tried to pull her into the circle, but Ronnie had her, and Ronnie, as he had been in life, was much stronger.
Darla screamed and Johnny tugged, and suddenly the coat she was wearing was snatched backwards over her shoulders, and then it was jerked free of her arms and of Johnny’s grasp. Johnny staggered back with her and fell onto the couch.
“My god,” Darla said.
Ronnie rushed about the circle, his head shaking from side to side like a little bobble-head toy.
“What’s going on? Who is that?” Darla said, and she sounded a way Johnny had never heard before.
Dark Cities Page 19
