Dead Lines

by John Skipp; Craig Spector

  So he weighs it all very carefully in his mind before speaking, and he tries to make it as meaningful as possible. He says, “It’s a dangerous job. No doubt about it. There are a lotta crazies runnin’ around here, and some of ‘em would just as soon kill ya as look atcha.”

  They are hanging on his words now, Kathy’s gaffe entirely forgotten.

  “But,” he adds, and this is the difficult part, “as far as my experience goes, dyin’ is no big deal. I mean, it’s bad,” and they all laugh nervously, “but it’s worst for the people that’re left behind. You know?” They know. “It’s like, I lost some of my favorite people ta fuckin’ creeps and crazies…” and then he stops, knowing that he’s going too far.

  They wouldn’t believe it if I told ‘em, he reminds himself. He takes a deep breath to calm down. It works. He looks in the rearview mirror. They’re waiting.

  “… but, ya see, I’m a cab driver. I been drivin’ this cab for twelve years now, an’ I think I’ll probably be drivin’ it forever. It’s as simple as that. You know the risks. You take your chances. And you hope ta hell…” pausing, great difficulty in his voice, “that nothin’ ever happens to ya. That’s what life is all about, I think.” And he leaves it at that.

  “Yeah,” says Kathy, after a respectable pause. “I guess there’s really nowhere safe anymore, is there?”

  Tom’s voice, as he stares out the window at the City of Hollow Mountains, is strangely soft and faraway. “Nowhere,” he almost whispers.

  Nowhere. The word echoes in Harry’s mind. Nowhere. He sees himself on the long ride, endlessly drifting through the endless night…

  … and then, mercifully, somebody changes the subject.

  By the time they get to St. Marks Place, they’ve rapped about everything from Reagan to rubber love dolls, and Harry wishes that this part would never end. But the street is alive with blue-haired punks and neon and smoke and intensity, and Kathy’s boyfriend is waiting in his wild East Village apartment, and Harry knows the end of a road when he sees one.

  The fare comes out to a whopping $1.30. A quick pooling of resources, and four smackers are plopped into Harry’s hand. He pshaws a little, but it’s to no avail. “That was better than a roller coaster, man,” Tom informs him. “Have one hell of a good night.”

  “You have a good night,” Harry replies. “An’ welcome to the city, kids.”

  There are a couple of moments of awkward, well-meaning cheerfulness, and then the kids slide out of the cab. The other two start to wander off, stunned by their new surroundings; but Blondie stops at Harry’s window and crouches before it, giving him a look that makes his old heart flutter. “Take care of yourself, Harry,” she says finally.

  “You don’t have to worry about me,” he answers, warm and slightly embarrassed. A tiny smile plays across his lips. She gives one back. It says but we will, anyway. Then she turns (her friends are waiting now), and they disappear into the East Village shadows.

  “Have the time of your lives,” Harry whispers, watching them sadly. He doesn’t envy them their life, their vitality. He’s already had his turn,

  Forget it. He issues the silent command. Just forget it.

  Harry pulls the white envelope out of his pocket, counts the bills. $126.00 so far, he notes, rounding it off with the four new bucks. He looks at his watch, it says 10:45. The night is young, so far from over.

  “You’re good ones, God bless ya,” he calls after the kids, long gone. Then he pats his pal the dashboard and wheels into the street again. )ust the two of them, machine and driver, on the long long ride.

  Harry picks up one of the bad ones around three that morning. A freaky-looking guy, all dressed in black, with mascara and an earring and a terrible nervous twitch that gives him instantly away. Harry picks him up anyway. You don’t have to worry about me.

  “Where’re ya goin’,” Harry asks as the guy clambers into the backseat.

  “Uh, 110th Street, man.” He talks fast, this one. Probably hopped-up on speed or something. “110th and, uh, Columbus.”

  The guy slumps back in his seat, looking nervously from side to side. Harry doesn’t like him a bit, quickly dubs him Weirdo. The alarm is ringing in the back of Harry’s head. It’s a sound that he knows too well.

  It’s too late to worry about that shit, Harry tells himself, but it doesn’t do any good. He thinks about what the kid said, about the dog, and he wonders if one’s fear really does bring the bad things down.

  There is a night that Harry will never forget, and he knows that he was scared when it happened, and he wonders… driving fast though there is no joy in it this time, just wanting this weird bastard out of his car.

  Weirdo lights a cigarette, drops the match to the floor with a shaking hand. He cracks the window and watches the smoke drift out like a ghostly skeletal claw, and Harry thinks hot damn, boy. You picked yerself a winner.

  Harry tries to strike up a conversation. It doesn’t work. He tries to ignore the chill that’s creeping up his spine, the deathly cold certainty, the knowledge and the responsibility it entails. That doesn’t work either.

  So he drives.

  And he drives.

  And he drives, coming nearer to the point where he knows that it all must come down. He watches the signs flash past on his left… 59th, 69th, 79th, and onward, while Central Park sprawls out like a great dark monster on his right, a beast of unfathomable size and appetite, seeming to go on forever.

  Like the long ride, forever and ever…

  I wonder if he’ll try to dump me in there, Harry muses. Dump me in the bushes, drive my cab for a coupla blocks and then dump it, too, takin’ off with the money I work my ass off for, the money that Betty needs so bad…

  “Pull over,” says the voice from the back.

  You can’t HAVE it, Harry screams in his head, and it’s so much like a d6jci vu that it makes his head swim. He pulls himself together with tremendous effort and says, “I thought you said…”

  “I said pull it over, man. Now.” And Harry feels the familiar coldness press against his neck. The nightmare coldness. Of the barrel. Of a gun.

  Very slowly, Harry eases off on the gas. The cab complains, as if it wants to resist but is powerless to do so. Harry mouths something inaudible; the cab mellows out…

  . .. and then surges forward, Harry slamming down hard and flooring it. Weirdo flies backward like a wild pitch, hits the backseat, and curses wildly. “What the hell are you doin’?" he shouts, shaking like a leaf and pointing the gun at Harry’s head with both hands.

  “You gonna shoot-me^wheo^we’re movin’ this fast, big man? You gonna take control of this baby from the backseat? Huh?” The words are loud and wild and crazy. His eyes are like saucers with bright red trim. “We’re goin’ to 110th fuckin’ Street, an’ then we’ll See about this!”

  Weirdo doesn’t know what to do. Harry is pushing seventy and running red lights like they weren’t even there; cars and trucks and buses are honking and swerving to avoid him; brakes are screeching; the engine is roaring. “You bastard!” Weirdo yelps at one close call. Harry bites his lip and keeps on driving. He can see the gun, swaying back and forth like a cobra, very clearly in the rearview mirror.

  Harry howls around the corner at 110th, a hard left followed by a harder right, jostling Weirdo around as much as possible. He slams the brakes down with all his might, fishtailing and flinging the guy forward in the process. Weirdo smashes against the front seat with tremendous force, knocking the air out of him and making him groan.

  But he does not drop the gun. No. The gun, he hangs on to.

  He drops back into his seat, practically crying now, and aims at Harry again. He can no longer control the shuddering. That’s a good sign.

  “You know what this is all about, then, right? You know what’s goin’ on!” His voice is a high-pitched squeal that reminds Harry of the little guy with the Brut O.D. “I want all your goddamn money, man! An’ I want it now!”

  Harry turns aro
und slowly. He is thinking about his wife. He is thinking about those kids. He is thinking about all the genuinely good people he has known, and he is thinking the world would be better off without this son of a bitch, this miserable creeping scum. If only I had…

  But there is no time to think of that. It’s too late for that now. So he turns, very slowly, and says, “You can’t have it.”

  “I ain’t kiddin’!” shrieks Weirdo. “I’ll kill you!”

  “You’re not gonna kill me, you little shit.” The words are ferocious. Harry’s eyes have taken on a strange light. “Little bastards like you think you run the world. You make it bad for everybody. Your best bet would be to give me that gun, while you still can.”

  “What’re you talkin’ about? You’re crazy!” Weirdo’s teeth are chattering, but his aim is there. Harry can feel the black hole boring into his head.

  If a deja vu is a flash from another life, then this is a vu. Harry has been here before, and he will be here again. Harry is a cab driver.

  Again and again and again …

  Harry’s eyes. A strange light.

  So very calm.

  So very calm, as he reaches forward with one hand and says, very firmly, “Give me the gun.”

  And Weirdo pulls the trigger with a tortured little cry, and Harry’s brains explode out of the back of his head to run like fat misshapen slugs down either side of the shattered windshield. Harry jerks like a clipped marionette and slumps against the steering wheel, smearing his old pal the dashboard with gore.

  But the light in his eyes, it doesn’t go out. Weirdo has a few seconds to register the sight.

  Then everything changes.

  And the man in the backseat starts to scream…

  Betty Stone awakens with the rising sun. She groans a little, haunted by a bad dream from somewhere deep in the night. She struggles with it for a moment, but it refuses to come clear. Something about Harry, no doubt. She always dreams about Harry.

  She is alone in the double bed, of course. No surprises for Betty Stone. She takes her time getting up, wraps her old housecoat around her aging frame, hits the bathroom, and then makes her way to the kitchen.

  She gets the coffee perking, then starts on the couple of stray dishes lying around. It’s always been like this, she muses, still slightly bleary. Seems like it’s always been like this.

  Seems like forever.

  Betty Stone drinks a cup of coffee, watches Good Morning, America, then flips to some nature documentary. Time passes, an hour at a time. Then she goes and checks the mail.

  Several bills. There are always, always bills. Every bit as certain as death and taxes, they roll in every month. Thank God she’s still able to pay ‘em.

  A letter from her sister in Vermont. Thank God for Loretta. She’s been writing regularly now, ever since… ever since…

  And, of course, the white envelope is there. The white envelope full of money. The clean white envelope that has been in the mailbox every day since…

  … since Harry was murdered, shot through the head in his lousy taxicab, that horrible goddamned dream-shattering night…

  How long has it been? she thinks to herself, trying to place the date, count down the lonely days. How long? she asks herself.

  Three months, the answer comes to her. Three months now. And every day the money keeps coming. And I don’t know where it’s coming from. And I don’t know who to thank…

  Betty stands at the mailbox for a long long time.

  There is a woman at the corner of 34th and Fifth Avenue, in front of the Empire State Building. She’d had one of the best days of her life, taking in the infamous Big Apple’s million and one attractions. Freshly returned from the summit where King Kong himself once stood, she breathes deep of the gritty air and considers her options. Where to go, what to do?

  She still hasn’t made up her mind when the cab comes cruising down Fifth in her direction. Well, I’ve got to go somewhere, she ventures wildly, and then waves for the cabbie’s attention.

  The cab slides gently to a stop in front of her. She beams winningly at the driver and hops in the back, stepping over a mangled New York Post with its pages flipped open to the following story:

  GRISLY MURDER IN CENTRAL PARK

  Horrified strollers today discovered the mutilated

  body of a young man near the 110th Street corner

  of Central Park West, in what police call one of

  the grisliest murders of the century.

  “It was horrible,” said officer Glen Roark,

  who first investigated the crime. “It’s as

  if every bone in his body were broken …”

  “Beautiful day, isn’t it?” says the lady in the back.

  She’s a good one, Harry thinks, noddingly agreeing. I can feel it. Harry thanks God that he can still feel.

  It makes the long ride go down easier.

  “Well, damn.”

  Meryl took a minute to let it sink in, feeling the peculiar, tingling rush that always came when a story hit a nerve. The room came back into focus; she could hear the movie playing on the tube, feel the delicate threads of expectation emanating from Katie’s camp. She thought about going in there.

  But she didn’t. She just didn’t want to lose the buzz. It was as though—for a few minutes, anyway—the entire world had disappeared, gently deferring to the pages she held in her hands. Time, space, all things both Meryl and not-Meryl, became transparent in the face of the words.

  And then even they disappeared, as the story came to life in her hands and her heart. It sparked a torch of bittersweet melancholy that she harbored always within her breast. It was a familiar, albeit complex emotion. It didn’t happen often, or often enough. Too few people even had a clue of where to look.

  But John Paul Rowan, the mystery man, knew right where to find it.

  In the living room, the movie played on. The couch called in vain. Meryl sat alone in her chair, wondering what other tricks the mysterious Mr. Rowan had up his sleeve.

  Then she opened the next folder in line, and proceeded to find out…

  GO TO SLEEP

  by

  John Paul Rowan

  4:27 in the morning. Streets, naked and shimmering under a twilit patina of frost. Against the gray wall, the goat man is sleeping. Rick is watching, weighing. And nobody else is there.

  Rick can’t stop looking at the goat man’s feet. Something nasty has spawned down there… some black, bloating, hideous decay gone well beyond all hope of repair. They’re the kind of feet that some well-meaning doctor would like to amputate, in fact, because whatever slow death has taken hold down there will eat its way into his bowels. The massive body will blacken and shrivel, and the eyes will bug out, and one last inarticulate goatlike bray will rasp out against the night in agony…

  And, of course, nobody will be there, Rick muses, scanning the length of 34th Street for some sign of life. Over Herald Square, two sheets of old newspaper do a ghostly mating dance in the wind; the fate of one derelict couldn’t interest them less. And the statues are there, as always. Eternally vigilant, with their spears and armor. Eternally looking the other way.

  There are pigeons, too, in more or less the same LJat as the goat man. Sick. Homeless. Slowly dying. Rick watched them hobble around for a minute, flapping their wings abortively and pecking at the dirt for sustenance. Just be glad you don’t drink, he advises them silently. Then he drags on his cigarette and looks back at the goat man’s naked, horrible feet.

  The goat man sleeps, huddled against the gray wall at the mouth of the subway stairs. It would have been warmer for him down there, but apparently he just couldn’t make it. An empty bottle of something pokes its mouth out from under his jacket; a thin pool of whatever is freezing on the sidewalk before him. He snores, a sound resplendent with burbling phlegm. Rick sighs wearily and then crouches down in front of him.

  That leaves me, am I right? A rhetorical question. The goat man doesn’t answer. Just you a
nd me, buddy, Rick confirms with a nod of his head. The goat man snores, oblivious.

  His hands are shaking a little; he’d like to believe that it’s just the cold. The cigarette almost slips from between his fingers as he brings it up for one last drag. It tastes like shit. He snubs the butt into a crack in the sidewalk, sticks it in his back pocket when he’s sure it’s dead, returns to the task at hand.

  In winters past, the night would find Rick locked in a parlor liberal’s paralysis, debating the morality, letting right and wrong slug it out while the dangerous seconds ticked past. But the years had hardened him, filled him with chilly resolve. Right or wrong, he will do it. Now. Before anyone comes, or the goat man wakes.

  Like all the times before.

  Quickly, Rick rubs his freezing hands together, wipes a thin trail of mucus onto the sleeve of his winter jacket. Then he reaches over… slowly, slowly… to rest his hands on the matted gray Afro of the goat man’s head.

  He listens first, as he always has, for any sign of hope. He’s not surprised to find nothing there: nothing worth saving. Just the muttering voices. Rick had known, from the first time he’d seen him bellowing on a street comer, bellowing at nobody, that the goat man was simply taking too long to die.

  Pictures of the twitching dog come creeping back into Rick’s mind. He pushes them away, grimacing. The goat man jerks a little in his sleep, as though he, too, had seen them. Then he stops.

  Rick closes his eyes, summoning the power. He focuses, sending it out through his fingertips. And he whispers three words into the goat man’s being.

  “Go to sleep,” he whispers, gently. “Go to sleep.”

  It only takes a moment. Rick pulls his hands away, straightens, and turns. In the back of his mind, he hears the car barreling down Broadway in his direction. He walks up Sixth Avenue, not looking back. The statues stand watch, seeing nothing.