He looked at Poppa’s glass again, the glass that continued impossibly to fill itself. Then he looked at the decanter, the sway of candle-flame making the contents appear to move, to ebb and flow like a seductive tide of—
Jesus Christ.
Archie looked away from the bottle, focused on the old man, focused on slowing his breathing. “What’s happening, Poppa? How is the glass doing that?”
How are you doing that? And why do I want nothing more than to grab that decanter and empty the contents into my mouth?
Poppa shook his head. “Not the glass, Arch, it’s the wine—”
No, it isn’t.
“—at least I think it’s wine. I can’t really taste it anymore. But why am I telling you? Don’t pretend ignorance, Archie.”
“I don’t…please, help me understand what’s happening so I can help you.”
Lift. Drink. Grimace and swallow back another surge of vomit.
“The Bishop’s Wife,” Poppa said. “That’s the one. God, such a long time ago. Remember that scene with the wine bottle that kept refilling in Monty Woolley’s apartment? Grant—the angel—was making it happen. I didn’t write that scene, but I talked to Woolley during a break.” Poppa’s eyes glistened with the memory, his hand still lifting automatically, the drink going in, the glass refilling as it slowly descended. “Monty would laugh and say how much he could go for a bottle like that, you know, that kept refilling. Oh the money he would save on booze.”
Poppa chuckled at the memory, but then his look soured. He watched the glass coming toward his mouth, his face twisting in a look of utter revulsion. “It’s not a gift, Archie, and damn you for sending it to me.” Then he drank, and when he vomited this time there came the sound and smell of emptying bowels.
Archie felt his gorge rise. He stumbled from the chair, away from Poppa—away from that fucking decanter—spilling his own drink in the process. “Poppa, I…I don’t know what you’re talking about. What gift? How is the glass refilling? Please now, come with me we need to get you out of here, get you cleaned up.”
Hateful or not, no one deserves this kind of indignity. And I’m not sure how much longer I can stay in here without—
“You haven’t been listening, Arch. I can’t leave. It won’t let me.”
Lift. Drink.
“What, Poppa? What won’t let you? The glass? The wine?”
Don’t pretend ignorance, Archie.
The old man somehow managed another drink while shaking his head back and forth. “You know what, you little bastard.” His eyes flicked to the table between the chairs and Archie followed his gaze.
Tell me it’s the candle, Poppa. Or maybe that shitty little table, even though I know that’s been here forever. Anything but that crystal bottle, please not that, because I don’t think I could keep from...
Then he saw the tag hanging around the neck of the decanter, attached with a golden thread. Breathing through his mouth, he approached the table and lifted the tag. A spidery script read:
My dearest Poppa. Drink and be filled.
Archie’s skin tightened and he let the tag drop as though it had burned his fingers, his desire to drink whatever was inside suddenly, inexplicably gone.
“Poppa…I didn’t send you this. When did it come?”
The old man belched, grimacing against the acid burn. “It was on the doorstep yesterday morning. There’s no one left alive who calls me Poppa, you son of a bitch.”
Drink.
“I thought maybe you were trying to weasel your way into my will. I figured if you were stupid enough to try a bribe I would damn well drink to your stupidity. So I sat down right here and poured a glass, drank it down. At first it was fine and sweet and good. Then I noticed the bottle still seemed full. I poured another, drank it down.”
He demonstrated by emptying his glass.
Drink and be filled…but that’s the thing, isn’t it? He’s drinking but can’t get enough.
“I thought I must be getting more than a little drunk, because the bottle was still full. That’s when I remembered that conversation with Monty all those long years ago. So I poured another, and another, thinking maybe a gift like this warranted a penny or two of my money.”
Another long drink, a tendril of drool stretching from lip to glass as it lowered, refilled.
“It started not tasting so sweet; it was sour, and there was something…wrong about how it tasted. Like I was somehow drinking poison but not so much that it would kill me. After a while I could no longer move to refill my glass. I was glad at first, figuring the poison would wear off and I could get out of this cursed chair. But it wasn’t the chair that was cursed, was it? That wasn’t how you planned it, is it? Only thing I could move was my arm, the one holding the glass, but that didn’t matter if I couldn’t refill the damned thing, right? But as you can see, your little curse didn’t need my help. Once the glass had been filled, the decanter took care of the rest. I don’t know exactly how you managed this, but you can see it for yourself. This glass hasn’t been empty since yesterday. I don’t why I’m even still alive…or if I even am.”
Lift. Drink. Slow, silent puke.
His voice was a liquid rasp: “You little prick, I don’t how you done it, but you’re not getting a fucking dime out of me.”
Archie stared at the gift tag, lifted it again and read: “My dearest Poppa…”
And then he knew.
But that’s impossible.
Is it? Impossible as a glass that keeps refilling before your eyes?
“Poppa, I—”
“Fuck you, boy.” Lift. Drink.
The room suddenly felt somehow…congested. But this was different than the closed-in feeling of the entryway; this was the claustrophobia of a crowded elevator, too many people in too confined a space.
“Poppa, I didn’t send you the decanter.”
Drink. “Of course you didn’t. Jesus sent it. Turned a little sewer water into wine and left it on my doorstep.”
“I’m not the only one who called you Poppa. And there is only one person I know who ever called you ‘dearest’ Poppa.”
The glass stopped, and for an instant it looked as though he might drop it. The scowl drained off his face as though the skin had softened and begun to melt. He looked to Archie, the anger gone, his face a mask of perfect dread. “No…”
Archie began backing away, not sure what exactly had happened or how she had pulled it off.
“She’s still here, Archie, not gone, still here, in the kitchen, in my study…”
He almost made it to the door, was about to turn, run into the hall and out into the street and never look back.
As he was turning, he jerked to a halt, the musk of her ever-present perfume washing over him—it was, aptly enough, Ralph Lauren’s Poison. And beneath the too-sweet fragrance, another, deeper smell; something closer to decay.
He felt his own bowels loosen as her rancid breath washed over him and she whispered in his ear. Two words: “The will.”
Poppa sat staring at Archie, his eyes glazed. Then he focused beyond him, his gaze sharpening and fixing on something over his left shoulder.
He sees her. She’s really there. Oh Jesus.
A hand gripped his shoulder. His bladder let go.
“P-Poppa…she wants the will. I didn’t do this, any of it, I swear. Please, maybe she’ll stop.”
“But…why?” Poppa’s lips trembled. “She’s…Janice…Janny, honey? The will’s no good to you. You’re…you’re not supposed to be here. You can’t be here.”
Archie watched the old man’s face tighten with pain, his body pulling into itself against some internal spasm.
Jesus…he’s having a stroke.
Archie heard her voice again—felt it against his cheek—“On the mantle. The cigar box. The will.”
His feet began to move, and then he was at the mantle, opening the box, lifting the top tray and removing the envelope. He turned, saw the faint outline of his dead mothe
r now standing behind Poppa.
She’s not there. I’m not here. None of this is happening. A nightmare, nothing more.
Her voice—it’s coming from the decanter—more thought than whisper: “Come…bring it.”
And then he was at Poppa’s chair, holding out the document, still not knowing why, or even if he was actually here at all.
He stood, swaying, as Poppa’s free hand snatched the paper, spread it on the table, pulled a pen from his shirt pocket, began to scribble…
All my worldly possessions…to my grandson, Archibald Macklemore…
Archie was now certain that he was either dreaming or insane.
Something in the vodka. Yes, he drugged me.
Mother saying, “It is finished.”
Poppa sighing as whatever spasms had visited him departed, then smiling as he seemed to notice his glass again, lifting the glass…but it is empty.
Poppa frowned at the glass, confused, reached for the decanter. And found it empty.
Archie stood alone in the long, dark hallway, listening to Poppa die, his screams of pain, the light shatter of the glass, the darker, deeper shatter of the decanter.
And beneath it all, surrounding him, following him in his flight down the hall and out into the street…the liquid gurgle of Mother’s laughter.
Now, this canning jar is full of organic honey that you can’t buy in other stores. I should mention that, in this case, organic does not mean all-natural. Supernatural would cut closer to the bone.
Gregory L. Norris and his emerald-eyed muse brought us this jar. He is a full-time professional writer who lives and writes in the outer limits of New Hampshire with his husband and their small pride of rescue cats.
MAD HONEY
Gregory L. Norris
AS OFTEN happened following one of his assignments, Jody Coyote began to hear the voices. A laugh filtered up from beneath the driver’s seat where he’d stashed the gun, furtive at first but increasingly bold and attempting to engage him in conversation as the long, bucolic stretches of Route 2 passed by in a green blur. The Berkshires were only mountains, though, and he’d seen bigger, more impressive ranges across the North Americas and sections of three different countries. The voice from under the driver’s seat wasn’t as easy to ignore.
“You’ll want to get off this road,” it said, and then repeated the sentiment.
Jody Coyote eased his foot off the gas and kicked the seat with his heel, hoping to un-stick the voice from skipping, like he’d seen the old man do to platters on a record player in the foggy, long ago days of his youth.
“Seriously, you should listen. Right or left, pal—it don’t matter which.”
After the first few cycles—assignment, action, escape, disembodied voice or multiple combinations of voices—Jody Coyote had decided the speakers were a manifestation of his guilt. He never knew the people he was assigned to liquidate, and he didn’t believe in gods or an afterlife. Not completely. Not a hundred percent. Still, the tiniest fraction of doubt persisted, and when Jody Coyote pulled the trigger he accepted that he was willing to admit he could be wrong about the possibility. He figured it was in this tiny gray space that the voices originated.
This latest, mellifluous in nature, chuckled again. He passed a Massachusetts Statie—big, muscled cruiser, shiny green and brown. The invisible demon that lived in his gut roused, sending danger juice into his bloodstream. Jody Coyote tipped a look at the speedometer. Only two miles above the last posted limit. He was in his second rental since Albany, site of the deed. Even so, if the voice had insider knowledge, it was probably best to heed its advice.
He turned a bend, travelled around the next slab of granite rising up from the roadside, and was greeted by a sign, powder blue with white letters, welcoming him to the fair village of Chalfont. This stretch of the hamlet was comprised of old New Englanders and triple-deckers bunched together along the slopes. The first turnoff apart from driveways led straight into a brick factory’s parking lot.
“Mi amigo,” the voice said. “Mein Freund…mon frer…”
Jody Coyote’s heart galloped. The one other time the voices had spoken in tongues—
He turned left. Back tires kicked up gravel. He didn’t know where the driveway led, and didn’t care. A flag spelled out WELCOME in pastels of yellow on green. An ancient red barn with a noticeable degree of sag materialized to his immediate right. To its left, a flagstone path meandered up to a brooding house with a tan exterior and a gabled roof.
The Chalfont Inn, a sign proclaimed. A sandwich board stood beside the front entrance and spelled out the specials of the day.
Jody Coyote slammed on the brakes. More gravel flew. The voice beneath the seat—beneath his balls, his ass, he thought—held its tongue. He glanced into the rearview right as two more police cruisers raced down Route 2, the encounter barely avoided because he’d listened and turned left.
Jody Coyote waited. No police cruisers turned into the Chalfont Inn’s parking lot, and the voice and voices kept silent, which he interpreted as a good sign. He parked the rental beside the old barn and got out of the car. Sunlight rained down through breaks in the lush canopy of branches. Behind the ancient house, a wash of vibrant magentas, purples, and whites dotted the slope of a hill. Rhododendrons, he realized, accessing the memory with ease. The time of the year was right and, for a second or two, he stood again in his grandmother’s front yard on a warm spring afternoon, long before he had blood on his hands and voices from other realms to consult over driving directions.
The air was pleasant, sweet from the surrounding green. He wasn’t hungry, but on the mosey up the flagstone path to the front door, it struck him how tired he was now that he’d escaped the car’s confinement and the adrenaline soured in his veins. The Chalfont Inn loomed overhead. He caught the numbers—1782—above the entrance. The place looked old enough to have been built in so long ago a year. George Washington likely had slept here.
Jody Coyote opened the door. A stack of stove lengths sat to the vestibule’s left, leftovers from the recent winter. The next door led to a succession of rooms draped in shadows: a lobby set before a soaring staircase, more rooms past that, a flicker of light and noise to his right.
A woman in a sundress called to him from the restaurant, the light. “This way,” she said.
She had dark hair, was pretty according to the brief look he got. Jody Coyote followed, passing an old-fashioned telephone booth inset at the corner, the doors to the bathrooms, and an antique sketch of the Chalfont Inn hung in a gold-gilt frame.
Sunlight streamed through English panes. A breeze gusting through the screen door at the back of the dining room stirred the mélange of coffee, buttery toast, and fatty bacon. The walls were covered in rustic artwork—landscapes, a trio of antique traffic signs, a painting of a fat honeybee among the images. Wooden tables with paper placemats advertising local attractions sat mostly empty.
Upon each, along with salt and pepper shakers, ketchup, and ceramic honey pots with wooden dippers, was a glass vase with a single bright crimson rhododendron flower.
“We’re just starting lunch,” said the woman in the sundress.
“What if I want breakfast?”
He didn’t, and the note of eggs in the air caused his stomach to curdle, but she smiled at his retort. Jody Coyote saw she wasn’t as pretty as he’d first thought.
“Lunch is fine. I really only stopped for coffee.”
She glided over to his table with a ceramic cup and the pot.
“You really should try the tea.”
“Why’s that?”
“We keep our own bees out back, make our own honey.”
“The bees make the honey,” he said.
She seemed to like his challenge. “Oh, that they do,” she said, and flashed a grin that seemed more snarl than smile.
He ordered a cheeseburger. The meat was local, from grass-fed beef, she told him. Jody Coyote didn’t care if the beef came from Russia—cheeseburgers
were a good bet at most restaurants, hard to screw up. The fries—sweet potato—were perfect, even if the pickle reeked of garlic. Decent coffee. The burger, with thick apple wood smoked bacon, a slice of red onion, and leafy lettuce, didn’t disappoint.
He paid the bill, left a generous tip, and headed toward the men’s head to wash hands and wipe his mouth. When Jody Coyote emerged, his eyes traveled past the soaring staircase and into the rooms that were sitting in darkness upon his arrival to the Chalfont Inn. Someone, perhaps the woman in the sundress, had drawn back heavy powder-blue drapes, and the day’s light streamed across a sitting room decorated in a most curious manner. The walls glinted and glistened, reflecting the sunlight over and again, bouncing the beams off glass. Jody Coyote’s legs carried him back across the lobby and into the sitting room of their own will, even as his mind directed them left, to the inn’s exit.
A sitting area, yes, with tufted chairs and a camelback sofa whose upholstery looked tired. One of what he assumed were many fireplaces in the place dominated the room, whose walls were papered in a rustic pineapple print in cream and crimson.
Small-scale dioramas covered shelves on walls, tabletops, and the fireplace mantle. The strange little snapshots of life were striking in their detail. One housed in a round hatbox showed a miniature kitchen with a beehive oven, and a red-cheeked baker in the process of removing tiny tins of bread. Another hatbox was made to look like a winter wonderland, with figures sledding down a hill toward a snowman with sticks for arms. A beekeeper attending to his hives. Skaters skating on a frozen pond. Rooms with brass beds and patchwork quilts populated by frisky pups and tiny human prisoners sat entombed behind thin glass frames. The artistry was undeniable, with attention given to the finest of details. And the emotion released was one of disquiet that launched a shudder down Jody Coyote’s spine, despite the sunlight baking the room.
“I don’t like to leave the curtains open for long,” said the woman in the sundress.
Simple Things Page 3
