The Future of Horror

by Jonathan Oliver

  I went into the kitchen. I had the Colt in my hand because wasn’t that what my little Junebug made me keep it for? In these parts a man who wanders into another man’s house is liable to end up six feet under. Half the folk think they were born from a misplaced squirt from Billy the Kid’s cock.

  Not me. Sins I have in plenty, but I never thought it in me to kill a man. Not without asking his name first.

  Still, I kept my finger on the trigger. I ain’t stupid neither.

  But the man. Well. When I saw him standing like nobody’s business in my kitchen with that sad song on his lips, I knew I recognised him. Not enough to wave, but enough to know I’d seen him before. It took me a moment, but I’m good with faces. I’d given him a dollar or two when I had one to spare. Bought him a Coke outside the drugstore once. Sure enough, I looked down and there were the two bald knuckles of his left hand rapping lightly against my kitchen table. His sign had said he was a vet. He had that half-vacant look in his eyes. True or not, I believed it.

  He catches me looking and his lips twitch. He flips me a slow, three-fingered salute, and I swear, just like Pappy, the moonlight takes him. It seemed clear enough whatever I meant to do with the Colt, worse had happened.

  He wasn’t back the next night, but three nights later he was. I woke with that itch between my shoulder blades that someone was in the house. I didn’t say nothing to him, but he looked so sad. And something else too. A sharpish, black-eyed look. I sat with him a while. And the next night too. And the next.

  Until he didn’t come back no more.

  THIS IS HOW I discovered girls.

  If you know this, maybe the rest will be clearer. Maybe.

  I was sitting with Pappy at the bus station getting ready for my first real haircut. Maybe six years old? Haircuts were a big deal in my family. We were dead broke, but it was my birthday and Pappy was clear. The cut makes a man. I was nervous. I knew this was a grown-up thing and Mammy and Pappy had fought about it. A big ole screaming match. I knew this was Big Boy stuff.

  Pappy knew I was nervous. He starts horsing around, trying to let me know that it’s no big deal. But I’m this sullen cinderblock. I don’t move a muscle. I don’t smile.

  So he gets down on his knees in front of me, dusting up his best pair of trousers in the dirt. He’s pulling faces. At first I won’t crack a grin, but the faces get bigger and bigger. And there’s Pappy down on that dirty floor with all the other folk starin’ and he’s yanking at his lips and tugging at his nostrils. Now some of them are laughing, and now I’m laughing too, these giant yuk yuk laughs that are half hiccups. My chest is sore from laughing. Now I’m on my knees, half running, half-crawling through the rows of chipped orange chairs because this big ole monster of a Pappy is grunting and chasing after me.

  I duck and juke, then I skid to the end of the last row.

  I hardly notice someone’s there.

  A woman.

  Ten seconds ago I was twisting on skinned knees but suddenly I am transfixed. I am staring straight up the skirt of this young college girl with legs smooth as stripped timber and black stockings running up her perfect thighs.

  I have never seen such an elaborate set of machinery as the garter belts that kept those stockings in place. Erector sets had nothing on whatever those were. Nothing.

  I’m telling you this because there is still nothing sweeter than those fancy snaps and laces that make a lady a lady. To this day I swear it was seeing the buckle of Juney’s garter slipping out from under the hem of her church dress that stopped my breath. That sly sweet smile when she caught me looking.

  I was in love. Same feeling at six as it was at twenty-six.

  I never meant to hurt Juney. I swear. But women have always been my weakness.

  The second woman I loved was Kelsi Koehler. She was a regular feature at the Glendale 9 Drive-In. A scream queen of the highest caliber. The leading lady of every wet dream I had between the ages twelve and sixteen.

  Miss Koehler had this thick glossy hair. The most adorable way of shrugging her shoulders and quirking her eyebrows so they almost kissed at the centre of her forehead. The best part was you could find her every other night for the cost of admission. It was Boomtown for the Weissman family during those years – no more fights over haircuts, not then!

  It wasn’t the hair toss or that perfect little moue that got me though. It was her voice. The super sultry huskiness of it.

  “I’m the lady of Good Times,” I remember her saying. “I’m the lady of Good Things Coming.” When she said that it was like she was speaking directly to me. Her voice low and sexy, cutting the cuteness the way whisky cuts coke.

  After that I dedicated every pencil erection my teenage self got to her. She was my queen. My goddess. My lady of Good Things Coming. I worshipped her with paper route money and discount ticket stubs every Friday night.

  And three days after the dead vet flashed me his final three-fingered salute, there she was.

  The glorious track of red hair. The girlish set to her shoulders. The B-Movie smoulder.

  My lady of Good Times. My lady of Love At First Sight.

  And then she winked.

  HERE’S THE THING you got to know about my Pappy. Billy Weissman was a Bible salesman. It always struck him as funny that a Heeb like him could get work slinging the gospel. He had a big Jew nose just as I’ve got, but people took him for a cheech. Or a wop. An Apache, even.

  He was gone most of the time when I was growing up, but when he was in town, it was always a party. Mammy and I’d get in the car and we’d drive out to God knows where and Pappy would take out a bottle of whatever was rolling around in the back. We’d watch the stars. Sing old Hank Williams songs. Pappy would drink the road dust out of his throat and get a bit friendly until Mammy gave him that look all men know.

  I loved those nights. All three of us together.

  What I didn’t know was that wasn’t his first bottle. It might not even have been his second. Maybe Mammy was happy. I don’t know, but you gotta wonder what a mother’s to think about being so broke in those early lean years her son has to stitch his shoes together with safety pins while his Pappy’s got the cash for whisky.

  Well. You know how that ended.

  And when it did I got a gun, a briefcase full of the Good Book, and a taste for the bottle.

  It hadn’t been good between Juney and me for some time.

  There were times when I was glad she worked the night shift so she didn’t have to see me crawling in at three or four in the morning. But, God, I still remember that girl I saw in church. Her garters slipping out from under the hem. Her stockings drooping.

  I didn’t know how bad it was though.

  I didn’t know that she musta been over at Carl’s place crying some mornings after her shift, in that trailer of his with its jars full of choking flies. What it musta been like for her to go to her big brother for help.

  Even though he was mean.

  Even though he could be vicious as a mad dog.

  Maybe we all have blind spots.

  WHEN I FIRST see Kelsi Koehler I think maybe I’m looking through the thick, glass bottom of the bottle. It isn’t real. It could be any woman with her hip up on the kitchen table, her thigh leaving the lightest trace of sweat there.

  “Hiya, honey,” she says. That voice.

  “Hi yourself,” I say.

  “Pour a woman a drink?”

  I nod. Maybe I nod. I find a bottle, anyway, and pour out whatever is in it. Something cheap, I imagine. It’s whisky I was drinking that night. I get two ice cubes from the freezer and her eyes are following me as I do that. Plop they go. They chime as they hit the glass. I’ve always loved the sound of ice cracking in whisky.

  She takes the drink without saying a word. Makes a face when she tries it.

  “This is the best you’ve got?”

  I shrug. She cocks her head and now her eyebrows are doing that kissing thing I remember so well from the big screen.

&nb
sp; “Am I dead?” I wonder. It could be. Maybe I’ve flipped my car on that tricky bend coming out of the canyon. It could be. I guess I’m wondering out loud, because she laughs in that low and husky way of hers.

  “No, honey,” she says. “I am. Ovarian cancer. It’s bin eating away at me for years now. Guess it must have won out.” She pauses. Takes a sip of the whisky. “And Nurse said I bin having a good day.”

  I look again. She must be, what, in her sixties? Not that she looks it. Her skin is flawless, breasts small and perky as apricots. Her thigh is one long, smooth curve. There’s a sweet little divot in her dress at the delta where her right leg crosses her left.

  “Careful,” she says, “you’ll catch flies.” And she laughs again.

  I am thinking, “But what have I caught here?” I don’t know. Lord help me, I don’t know.

  And then she’s gone. Fast as that, the moonlight’s got her. Fast as the curtains pulling shut. And I am left holding a glass of whisky and water.

  Maybe a better man would have told Juney. I wonder that, but I don’t think she would’ve believed me.

  I had to know if it was real. If Kelsi Koehler was real. And so I did just about the last thing in the world that I wanted to do. I went cold turkey.

  I emptied every bottle down the sink. Every drop of it, gone. And then the mouthwash too. And then the rubbing alcohol, because even though I knew it’d make me go blind I didn’t trust myself not to try it if things got hard.

  Juney watches me dump it all, and she don’t say a word. She’s seen this before. But still. I see a little light in her eyes switching on like I haven’t in some time.

  All she says is, “Will it stick?”

  I shrug. What more is there to say?

  It’s Hell. The shakes get real bad on the second night and I’m glad I dumped the rubbing alcohol. I think I might’ve tried anything at that point. I stay in the house. I keep the phone off the hook so none of the boys can call.

  Because I want to know. I want to know.

  And on the third night, Kelsi’s back, and this time there isn’t a drop of drink in me to cloud my vision.

  She has a look to her. Maybe I missed it with the vet because I wasn’t paying attention, but on Kelsi it is pretty damn hard to miss. She’s paler. Gorgeous? Hell, yes, but now it’s a scary kind of beauty. I don’t know how else to say it. Just that I know something is off. Maybe she’d been the lady of Good Times, once, but tonight, she was something else. The lady of Bad Things Coming. Even I could see that.

  “I’m dry tonight,” I tell her when she quirks one of those perfect eyebrows.

  “Guess that means I’m dry too, honey.”

  I stand there staring at her for a while, just making sure it’s real. Eventually she gets bored. She stands up. “Got music, at least?”

  I switch on the radio. They’re talking about the fall of Saigon. They’re talking about our boys coming home. Then I turn the dial, and out of the static comes John Lennon crooning about getting by with a little help from his friends. She’s nodding her head along. When the jockey comes on during the final fade out, she turns back to me. “Gunna stare all night?”

  “No, ma’am,” I say.

  “Good,” she says. “I can’t abide a gawper. They were always gawping at me. Well. In the beginning, at least.”

  “And now?” I say, turning down the radio low so it’s just a murmur.

  “Honey, I don’t know what now is. A way station maybe. A pit stop on the Road to Somewhere Else. Who knows how the rules work? I’m just happy to be playin’ the game a bit longer before...” She tosses her hair and the copper-red of it gleams in the buttery light. “I’m cold,” she says.

  The sun has been baking the Arizona desert all day, and inside the house, even though I’ve got the air conditioner cranked up and it’s past midnight, it’s still so hot I worry that the windows might crack. It’s been known to happen.

  But she’s cold. And I’m a gentleman.

  “Warm me up?” she says.

  And I love Juney. I’ve loved her since the minute I laid eyes on her. But this is something else.

  So I go with her. She tastes the way the desert smells after the rains. Like creosote. The black taste of tar. Her skin freeze-sticks like an ice cube, but she’s my lady of Good Times.

  She’s my lady of I’m Only Human.

  She is beautiful in the moonlight streaming through the window as I lay her down on the bed. As I kiss the curve of her breast.

  She is wearing garters. I know this should mean something to me, but in that moment it don’t.

  I slide my fingers up the silky surface of her stockings. I can feel the muscles underneath. I dream I can feel her pulse. My thumb catches on the hook.

  She’s just a way station, I think. Just a pit stop.

  She is beautiful, but now her eyes are black. Whatever it was that’s underneath her skin, that coldness, that oily sweet smell, it’s getting stronger. I don’t know what she is. It’s starting to scare me. But I can’t stop. I don’t want to stop. I want to touch her. I want the feel of her stiffening nipple between my fingers, the clench of her legs around my waist...

  And that’s when the door to the house busts open.

  Because I have left the phone off the hook.

  Because Juney has been worried. But pleased too. Pleased about me pouring all the booze down the drain. And she don’t want me to fall off the wagon. Not this time. Because this is my last chance. I know that. I know I can only break her heart so many times. And Carl knows that too. Carl knows how close Juney is to the edge. How close to breaking she is with that shit-drunk husband of hers.

  None of this is a mystery novel. None of this takes much guesswork.

  So he hears the noises coming from the bedroom. He knows what those noises mean. And he knows Juney’s still on shift at the Dunkin’ Donuts.

  And, best of all, he knows where the Colt is.

  CARL’S GOT A sour smell to him. Like sweat mixed with old bacon. I can smell him.

  There’s a hot breeze that’s tugging at my hair.

  I can feel the muzzle of the Colt pressing into my back.

  “Turn around slowly,” he says.

  I am struck because I have heard this line so many times. I want to ask him, “Is this a stick up?” I want him to say, “Reach for the sky, pardner!”

  I can’t help it. I let out a snort, and he hears it. When I turn – slowly! – his face is running from stunned to hurt to angry.

  “I can explain,” I told him, but now that we’re face to face I know I can’t. What do I say? What part of this can I tell that would make sense? Carl is not a smart man. Carl is not a forgiving man. Carl will not buy whatever line of bullshit I want to sell him.

  I open my mouth. I close it again. He leans in closer. His teeth are pressed tightly together, the little nubs of them rubbing together. He is angry, but I think he is also curious about what I will say. A dull curiosity. The same look he gives the flies as they bumble around the inside of the jar. How long will this one last?

  When my mouth opens the second time, I am just as curious about what will come out.

  Because a drunk will say anything to get a drink. And a cheat? A cheat always has a happy tune to whistle.

  “I can explain...” And I surprise myself. “No. I can’t. I love her,” I say. “I love Juney.”

  “I know,” he says and his mouth twists. There is something that goes across his face – and if I stared hard enough I could catch exactly what it is – but I’m not looking that hard. I don’t what to know.

  Because by then I am moving. Because, then, I think, he has moved in close enough. There is just enough room. If I am just fast enough I can–

  And then there is a noise like a thunderclap.

  IT IS LATE when I find myself back in the house. I don’t know what time. Close to dawn because Juney has just got in. Her hair is mussed. Silvery-grey strands coming undone from her neat bun. Her Dunkin’ Donuts uniform is cre
ased a little. She somehow looks pretty. Worn, but pretty.

  My lady of Half ’n’ Half. My lady of How Do You Take It?

  “Smiley,” she says. “Did you just get in?”

  I allow that I did.

  “And are you sober?” she asks.

  “Yeah, Junebug,” I tell her. “Sober as a priest.”

  And it’s the truth.

  “Good,” she says. And then: “You look good.”

  She’s dead on her feet. I can see her swaying a little, her hands on the kitchen table, keeping her steady. But she’s smiling and that makes me happy. I’m glad for that.

  “Come to bed,” I tell her, and take her in my arms. I can feel her weight sagging into me.

  “S’cold,” she says, but I don’t say anything. Somewhere off Route 66 my body is waiting for the sun to scorch it crisp and black. Somewhere Carl is washing the blood out of his shirt. He is careful. Gentle, even. But there is a part of me that is here. Maybe the better part of me.

  I take Juney to our bedroom. I help her peel off the uniform. I kiss her gently on the forehead where she still tastes like icing sugar and cinnamon.

  I want to tell her about Carl. About how she must be careful around him. How there’s bad news coming for her. I want to tell her so bad it’s burning up like bad liquor in my gut, but somehow I can’t. Maybe it’s cowardice. Maybe it’s just that I can’t stand the thought of that forehead of hers creasing, that same old fight we spent twenty years on, same as every other fight.

  Maybe I shoulda. Maybe.

  The thing is, the dead can’t see the future any better than the living. They have to drive down that same road. One mile at a time.

  And this is just a pit stop for me. Maybe. A way station. I can’t stay.

  I don’t want to.

  There is something growing in me. Something cold. Something heavy and black as tar. Is this death? Or is this something else?

  And it is cold. And she is warm. I lay down next to her. I do not want to touch her. I can’t help wanting to touch her.