Swift to Chase

by Laird Barron

  Behind them and on a steep grade in the road, a pair of headlights clicked on and pierced the gloom. He understood this was the panel van he’d seen cruising town. He knew with absolute infallibility who inhabited the idling vehicle and what they intended to do with their ropes and machetes and plastic bags. The dog, or wolf, howled again. Its cry bounced from the fog and could’ve originated anywhere.

  She turned to him and her expression was hidden. “We’re not going to die tonight. I promise.” Then she released him and stepped backward and vanished. Somewhere in the town ahead, a distant solitary porch light winked into existence.

  “What about your sense of impending doom?”

  “Melted away by the power of love. Come on.”

  A pair of red eyes flashed low to the ground and were gone. If they’d ever been.

  “I felt afraid,” he said, meaning it in every sense of the phrase.

  “We’re not going to die. Trust me, trust me.” Her voice was faint and fading. She laughed a ghostly laugh. “Probably something worse.”

  He waited for a time, listening to the night and preparing for the inevitable. But nothing happened. In a while he squared his shoulders and began to walk toward the light that flickered and receded with each heartbeat.

  Slave Arm

  …and begin, again.

  Don’t begin with a white room, it’s not, it’s a black room. Hothouse humid, oasis in the subarctic night. A glitter ball strobes, synched with the aurora borealis, the background radiation of the stars. Scandalously clad kids slam dance to a metal band, the bass player wears an executioner’s hood, the lead singer has a beard like the front man for Clutch. Smokes a cheroot, swills whiskey, and breathes fire. Benny Three-Trees and Jasper Hostettler were flown in from Anchorage and Fairbanks to make sure this party’s got its favors. Blotter, X, Jack Daniels, vodka, tequila, blow, crystal, hash, peyote, smack, Black Bombers, Viagra, California Gold, Matanuska Thunderfuck, nitrous. Window glass quivers like jelly in Dixie cup shooters. It’s three A.M. Fuck the police. Your friends are here. Your enemies are here. Everybody you’ve ever slept with is here. Except Jessica. She’s off wandering the earth, righting wrongs. You’ll never see her again. That leaves Tom, Margie, Rod, Bill, Thurman, Shelley, Frank, Lisa, Becka, Tomra, Justin, Everett, Kurt, Mina, Tabby, Klein, Regan, Merrit, Luther, Jackson, Morton, Tashondra, Donte, Violet, Simon, Bart, Darcy, Sarah, Clute, Bowie, Pilar, Carol, Eric, Camilla, Brian, Jason, John, Lori, Miller, Parish, Will, Nick, Berrian, Jody, Chandler, Mary, Erin, Clay, Tobias, Judith, Rich, Nelson, Warren, Bob, Sam, Philip, Castor, Steely J, Julie Five, Newhouse, Cole, Esteban, Amy, Tyree, Vernon, Esther, Glenn, Kate, Kathy, Mark, Mark, Jake, Lucy, Ashley, Kyla, River, Arrow, Marsha, Cory, Stephen, Roger, Glory, Grant, Howard, Flynn, Victor, Bubba, Samantha, Custer, Alabama, Truman, Rupert, June, Ruby, Kirsten, Kevin, Lambert, Robard, Dickie, Ralph, Quinn, Hester, Felix, Dusty, Paul, Byron, Kareem, James, Gunther, Abelard, Queenie, Suri, Rochelle, Theodore, Brunhilde, Molly, Cooper, Wanda, Morris, Michelle, Tammy-Lynn, Starling, Hector, Earl, Kellen, Tiberius, Chance, Dakota, Monson, Spencer, Wayne, Lily, Ramses, Chuck, Portia, Terry, Terri, Trish, Craig, Delaney, Vance, Ed, Carmine, Russo, Penny, Ferris, Noah. The last two are a pair again after a few years apart. Sweet. You don’t know the rest, the hangers on, freeloaders, strangers. Moving shadows. The happening is happening at the ancestral home of young rotund Zane Tooms himself, poor rich boy, wannabe Satanist, friend to no one no matter how cool his digs may be, and they are indeed cool. A three-story mansion and an unfinished basement. Basement expands deep into the hillside, ancient bear den, crumbled arches, moldering catacombs, bat roosts, portal to Pluto’s Ballroom. Downhill, a lovely hillside, a copse of spruce trees, boulders, a field where fireweed grows; farther on lies the bay, ink-black under a tilted moon, cracked. Moms and Pops jetted to Acapulco for the weekend and the mice will riot. Upstairs in the master suite, you’ve got your cock halfway into that Ukrainian transfer student, the cheerleader, what’s-her-name, and she’s throwing her blonde head like a mare, impatient. You’re thinking ouch, and man, this is a hell of a fancy bed, are these sheets satin, is the demon-face headboard mahogany, and good God what’s with the creepy Gothic architecture anyway, and who’s that guy walking into the frame? Is it the cheerleader’s boyfriend, what’s-his-name, captain of the varsity squad, ‘cause that would be very bad, you’d want your steel toe boots for an ape with forearms like he’s swinging. No, not the jock. Wait, is that Russo? Definitely looks like Russo who runs the forklift on the fresh floor of the cannery. Different though, filling the doorway, cropped hair, pale complexion, eye shadow thick enough for a Star Trek cameo, original series, features smoothed and stretched plastic masklike, loose dark shirt and too-tight pants tucked into combat boots. Hefts a club, or a mace, a car axle, something out of a medieval manual of slaughter, two and a half feet of steel wrapped in barbed wire, electric tape on the grip, funny the photographic detail your brain records in moments of stress. The girl kisses your neck, she hasn’t seen the freak. It’s all wrong. Uncanny resemblance notwithstanding, this isn’t the Russo you were blazing with on the loading dock just yesterday, not the Russo who’s got a thing for the color grader from Caltech, not the Russo who lost his license drag racing on the Parks Highway and needs a lift everywhere, not the one who’s built for a run at the middleweight title but wouldn’t hurt a fly, the pacifist, conscientious objector, tofu-munching emo rocker. This Russo has taken an ice pick to the brain and become Mr. Flat Affect. He licks his liver lips, and Gene Simmons would shit a brick at the yellow tongue drooped to that pointy chin. Mr. Flat Affect crosses the room in an awkward lunge, the way a toad suddenly decides to jump, and it’s so fast your breath stops. You roll off the opposite half of that acre of satin and the club wallops the cheerleader instead of your naked ass. Prior to this moment you’ve always considered yourself a bit of a tough guy. Lean, mean, scars on your knuckles from a respectable number of barroom brawls; only last fall you socked Tom Gorski in the kisser after one wisecrack too many, dropped him like a bad habit. You’re no punk, no wuss, no pantywaist, had your nose busted plenty, lost some teeth in the bargain. You have also come to the realization you aren’t Chuck Norris either. The bludgeoning thuds are a message from the universe. You’re no shark, you’re a feeder fish, aren’t you? The interloper whacks her a couple of times, lazy and disinterested. There’s blood, a lot of it, all those September hunts when Dad shot the caribou with his .7mm and you slashed the dumb beast’s throat and its life gushed out over your Wellies, this is similar. You make your move and fly for the door. You’re howling. Demon Russo would catch you, because next to him you’re stuck in quicksand, but the club gets snagged in a nest of guts and that second or two is all you need to escape. It’s dark and the house is a maze. You’ve visited twice during daylight when it was just the Tooms family and everybody in polo shirts and golf slacks, sunny dispositions, dinner on the deck with the gob smacking view of Settler’s Bay. This is the nightmare version of that scenario, the Bizarro World iteration. Doors are locked and impenetrable. Music rumbles far below and nobody responds to you screaming bloody murder. An accent lamp floats in a golden bubble way down at the end of the hall and you sprint for it, jagged claws of your shadow outstretched in desperation.

  * * *

  Even all these years after the fact, you recall the cheerleader’s expression in a smash close-up. Homegirl doesn’t know she’s dead, keeps blinking at you, confused as she drowns on herself.

  * * *

  Your father dies in a tavern parking lot when you are twenty-two. Your mother goes home to Tennessee, sends postcards now and again, the weather’s fine. Little brother joins the Marines, like his old man, earns a Bronze Star, opens a gun store in Texas, shoots a couple of kids who try to rob the joint. The jury decides he’s justified. You sleep with a lot of women with the light on, lose your erection whenever you stop to think. There are nightmares. One that recurs has you as a child in your old bedroom, you stand near the dres
ser and a poster of Buck Rogers. A skinny hand and arm slither from beneath your bed, followed by your father. Except his face is angular and cold with alien emotion. He moves the herky-jerky way a marionette does. He wants your blood, projects that desire into your thoughts without opening his mouth. You always awaken before he gets you. Hell of it is, you don’t know whether it’s really a dream or a suppressed memory. So, you drink. We won’t speak of wife one.

  * * *

  Wife two is Amie. You stole her from Mack the slack, Mack jumped off the bridge into Hurricane Gulch. Oh, Amie, baby, who wouldn’t? Brunette, Libra, whip smart, hot as fire. Most importantly, she doesn’t give a goddamn how screwed up you are, how wild and strange you are, how damaged, or else she cleverly looks past it to the good points. You have several. Got all your hair, make a decent wage in construction, still cut pretty sharp in a suit. Two of three children tolerate your presence; the dog is also fond. The dog is a German Shepherd you named Chip because of a story that science fiction author Bradley Denton wrote when you were a kid. You and Chip go hunting for ptarmigan every fall, the only good thing you can recall sharing with your dad. Last September you load the guns and drive out to the Little Susitna, follow a game trail away from the Parks Highway, three, maybe four miles where the spruce grows tall and close in, a mossy shadow land. Crack yourself a cool beer, prop against a tree, loyal hound at your feet, the sun a pale reflection against the underside of the canopy. Even sweet wife fades into the ether for a while. Chip looses a stream of piss and whines and then you hear, echoing from not too far away in the arboreal deeps, the most sinister birdcall ever. Laughter of a raven mimicking a man mimicking a hyena. Cackles your name, calls to Chip. C’mere, doggy! This lone cry becomes a chorus, converging. Shotgun or not, you and the dog run for your lives. That shrieking laughter pursues you nearly back to the car. You break the speed limit gunning for home, Chip cowers on the floorboard, fangs bared as if some horror rides in the back seat. We’re waiting for you, pal. We know where you live.

  * * *

  Zane Tooms got on the Tony Robbins bandwagon and dropped sixty pounds, tried to make something of himself, didn’t try all that hard. Heartthrob handsome after the sea change, but fat wasn’t truly the root of his problems. Something dark and rotten was going on in that noggin. Capped teeth and a chiseled physique couldn’t mitigate the filth beaming from his eyes. He lived alone in that mansion on the hill after Mr. and Mrs. died. Spent his nights at the Bohemian cocktail lounge hitting on the young lasses, became known as the Rohypnol Romeo, bought himself an indictment with a suggested sentencing range of twenty-five to life if it stuck. Blew town and disappeared to the bottom of the FBI most-wanted list. Sends you a letter the day before Christmas, first contact after a decade of silence, arrives in a grimy, blood-spotted envelope, sum of the message a Mexico City phone number, initials ZT, smudgy fingerprints all over the stationery. You are wary, but intrigued. There’s a twenty-five-thousand-dollar reward, which you don’t give a shit about, money isn’t a problem for you anymore, you have questions, you have a redaction scribble in the middle of your brain where dreadful memories once clamored for release. You want to talk to fat boy Tooms, want to wring his neck, beg him to put the pieces together. He’s living under an assumed name in a fancy hotel on the outskirts, keeps a whole suite to himself. His transformation impresses, dresses in a linen suit, smokes French cigarettes, seems at ease in his own expat skin, but you recognize him, the real him, instantly. You don’t talk about what he’s done, don’t mention the fact FBI and INTERPOL are on the case, could be staking out the joint at that very moment, recording everything for the blockbuster trial. That’s a foregone conclusion, written in the stars. You’re here for other unfinished business. He pours two glasses of mescal, no lime, no nothing, utters a prayer and downs his, then flashes a revolver and says he asked you here to apologize or to kill you. It depends. Actually, that’s a lie, he’s already made up his mind, he wants to chat first, so drink your drink, old friend, and you do. Once everything’s cozy, you’ve chuckled over the hijinks of days of yore, his finger relaxes from the trigger and you ask what the hell man? What happened way back when in the bear den beneath the house? He smiles sadly, professes ignorance, but his eyes belong to a snake and though you ask again, nicely, he refuses to answer truly. He was a child then, he dicked about with childish things, any real diabolism that resulted is purely coincidental. The room spins as you go belly up. They don’t call the bastard the Rohypnol Romeo for nothing. In the half-dozen beats until the world goes dark you watch a tremor pass through him, crown to toe, and your subconscious wants to make an impossible connection, suggests he’s a finger puppet of some primordial malevolence and it’s show time. The flesh of his face snaps upward, much as a bank robber pulls on a nylon mask, except from the wrong direction. Hello to Mr. Flat Affect, your old friend.

  * * *

  Okay, we’ll mention wife one, briefly. Her post-coital cigarette didn’t package with a what are you thinking. Hers was a beady-eyed scowl and a demand to know what your damage was. What had happened to fuck you so thoroughly up, she couldn’t begin to fathom. Were you molested as a child? Did Daddy piss in your cornflakes? Did something awful transpire to make you so afraid of the dark? You loved her, you desired her happiness with the intensity of a death wish. But you couldn’t tell her what was buried in your heart, couldn’t articulate the queasy blackness that flooded your mind whenever you tried. If you knew where she’d run off to after your marriage fireballed, you could call her up, tell her about the time you visit Mexico to meet a childhood chum and come to taped hand and foot upon the ledge of a marble tub, IV needle in your femoral artery, half your blood oozing drip by drip through a tube into gallon bags. Classical music plays. There’s a muttered conversation that you can’t understand, and not because blood pressure drop causes your ears to ring, nor because the voices are muttering in Spanish. It’s because whatever language is formed by this combination of glottal stops, clicks and liquid hisses, it isn’t human. You manage to peel free of the tape, slick with your fluids as it is, the heat of the room, and slide over the rim of the tub into a heap. You vomit. That’s what happens when blood pressure drops to nil. Keep crawling toward the light, all you can do, coherent thought is water through a dribble glass, it makes a mess on your shirt. Three of them stand in the parlor with your host. They wear variations on the face of the grave and very nice suits. There’s a naked body curled upon a rubber mat. The body is bound in barbed wire and one of the men, Armani suit and snazzy shoes, sips from a red tube inserted at the victim’s neck. Everybody pauses to stare at you, including the dead or dying guy, his glassy eyes are wet as you drag yourself past, hand over hand. His eyes reflect your antlike toil across the killing floor. Maybe he’s reenacting Horace Greasley’s great escape vicariously through you. Maybe he’s already there. The front door swings open and uniformed men burst through screaming Policía! Their assault rifles start flashing and the room fills with clouds of dust and smoke. You crawl onward, past threshing jackboots and smoldering shell cases. Explosions and screams continue unabated. It goes on and on. Longest movie you’ve ever been in. Later at the hospital a tall handsome American sits at your bedside. Tubes everywhere, but at least the fluids are going into you this time. The man introduces himself as Agent Justin Steele. He flashes a badge and declares who he works for, although none of it sticks in your consciousness, you’re wrapped in a cocoon of drugs and shock. He lights a Rubios, starts a pocket recorder, and says to tell him everything you know, start at the beginning in Alaska when you were a kid. You comply, half expecting his face to deform at any moment. Takes a while to relate the tale, takes an eon, in fact. Agent Steele doesn’t interrupt and when you finish he thanks you for your service to your country, best to never speak of this incident again, Tooms was shot resisting arrest for extradition to the USA, and so forth. You’re weak and fading, yet you clutch his sleeve and ask what’s it all about, ask what the flat affects are, where they
come from, why were you, lowly you, lured to Mexico, and you know what the answer is before it doesn’t come. You have so many damned theories burning a hole in your imagination. Could be you babble about space vampires, demonic possession, and Count D his own bad self. Steele smiles as if the cigarette in his hand comes with a blindfold. He leans in close and whispers that he’s seen this all before, it’s always worse than you think, says it no longer matters. Go home, screw your wife, pet your dog, relive your glory days with a six-pack and a bowl. The end that Eliot spoke of is snuffling at the door.

  * * *

  Your buddy Felix, an ex-Naval Intelligence officer with connections across the US and Europe, and who also doses himself daily with LSD and vaporized marijuana while listening to talk radio, won’t permit dogs into his trailer because everybody knows the ID chips implanted at the veterinarian’s office are military grade transceivers beaming info to spy satellites. He has a theory about Mr. Flat Affect. It’s insane and you also think it has merit. Felix disappears one day, leaves a roach smoldering in the ashtray, a spackle of blood in a tight pattern on the ceiling directly above his easy chair. The police park a van across the street from your apartment for a month. Nobody contacts you.

  * * *

  The power goes dead after midnight and you lie there, a bundle of twigs, staring out the window, praying for the town lights, any of them, to return. Only stars, the black body of darkness. Chip pads in and sits, muzzle pointed at you. He is a pure black shadow. You begin to cry, terror squeezing tears from your ducts. Amie grips your shoulder, says she has something to tell you, baby. That’s when you know the jig is up, the power’s never coming back on, you’ve seen the last of the light, because Amie and Chip died years and years ago. You close your eyes and visualize the faces at Tooms’ basement party, the faces in that deathroom at the Mexico City hotel. The images move with the sluggishness of a dream. Your friends and enemies only watch pop-eyed and motionless as you flee the brute and his club. Some observers wear the demented un-mask that drips with earth from the grave. They might’ve loved or hated you before the rostrum made its pith stroke. Now they grin as you run, your bare feet slapping a treadmill that bores endlessly through a cosmic honeycomb. None of you are going anywhere.