Shivers 7

by Clive Barker

  She reached out her hand, brushing lightly over the blanket, feeling the warmth of her boy. Satisfied, she turned away.

  She plucked out cigarettes and lighter from her handbag. She kicked off her heels, and crawled across the satiny expanse of quilted gold sateen bedspread. The bed felt as hard as she remembered. She propped herself up with the pillows, pulling a heavy glass ashtray into her lap and she lit up. The nicotine relaxed her, slowed the slamming of her heart. With each breath, the bluish light warmed, and at last she could relish the end of her search.

  Thinking back, she realized there had been clues to the rightness of this city. This train station had seemed more familiar than the others, with its seven sets of rails, the girders arching over the opening of the station, the green lacquered benches. At the previous train stations, she’d seen perhaps one recognizable landmark—the benches or the seven sets of rails—but not all the attributes together. As her train pulled into this station, she’d seen the large, rolling luggage carts with their oval signs, green on custard-yellow, and it was the last piece. She even felt, without a doubt, she knew which direction to exit to the street.

  Farad, her taxi driver, treated her the same way the others had in all the cities prior. When she described the hotel (she didn’t know the name, but it was old-fashioned, had a long lobby that ended in a wine-colored marble tile and mahogany desk, where the staff wore uniforms the color of bruised apples, or was it grape?) and asked to be taken there, said that she’d know the hotel when she got a glimpse of it, she saw in the rear view mirror that he rolled his eyes. They all rolled their eyes. He told her there were fifty hotels like that in the city, that he could drive her around but it would cost her. When she opened her purse and showed him a thick stack of bills, he warmed to the idea of a mid-morning drive, and to her. She was still beautiful, after all. He even winked at her before turning back to drive.

  Her reverie was broken by the thought of her husband. Older, extremely wealthy, James Prescott was used to getting his way. It pleased him to have a gorgeous wife who had no interest in a career of her own, who wanted children, and would make him look good. With five former wives he’d discarded when they disappointed him, he thought he’d found someone young and sufficiently pliable to make into the perfect wife. He treated her with the same careful consideration he gave all his businesses; measured attention, just enough, and threw money at her as if coinage equaled affection. Then he sat back and expected a good return for his investment. Naïve and grateful, she was obediently pregnant eight months after they married.

  In the beginning, she’d thought him the most attractive man she’d ever seen, powerful, yet generous and thoughtful. But within weeks of the lavish wedding he’d paid for, he began to browbeat her about her smoking and drinking, the pills she took for her sensitivities. He forbid her to see the friends she’d made before they started dating (They’re beneath us!). When she was five months pregnant, he didn’t want her seen in public (That belly!), and stopped having clients to the house (Once the baby’s born, and you look good again, we’ll have parties…lots of them!). Captive in her enormous bedroom suite with a television, telephone, and personal maid, her smoking, drinking and medications were all that kept her sane. The pregnancy was uneventful, but she looked forward to doctor’s appointments because then, for a few hours, she escaped the gilded trappings.

  She smiled at that last thought, then exhaustion stole her pleasure and she drifted into sleep. Dreamless, but restful, she slept for hours. When she woke, it was with the baby’s cry.

  The room was dark except for the dim glow of a streetlight a few dozen feet down the street. She glanced about, looking for the crib, heard pounding, expecting it to be beneath the window. Now it stood against the wall next to the door. When she saw the light puddled beneath the door, she wondered if someone had come in and moved the crib while she slept. The growing chill of dread spread in her gut.

  Had he found her? Was he playing his games with her again? Or had she simply forgotten where the crib had been?

  As she started toward the crib, the crying stopped. She crept up, tucked the blankets in around the slumbering form, and tip-toed back to the bed. She stripped off her suit, her hosiery and crawled into bed in her underwear, too tired to open her suitcase.

  In the middle of the next day, she ordered breakfast. Room service delivered it and when the boy reached out for his tip, she held back, asking him why someone might come in during the night and move the crib from under the window. He’d looked at her oddly and told her that they never put cribs under the window. It was too cold there at night, and the sun baked in during daylight hours. They were always put where it was now. It made perfect sense to her. She handed him a dollar and he left.

  The bacon, eggs, potatoes and buttery toast were delicious. She drank the entire pot of tea and then settled in to smoke a cigarette. The baby was quiet. She went to the window of the room and looked out. The windows were a bit dirty, she noticed, as if there had been spotty rain since the last time they were washed.

  Below her, she saw the movement of traffic, strangers walking to or from their destinations. She wondered if they were tourists or lived in the city. It saddened her that as anonymous as she was to them, so were they to her. The loneliness of running, searching, got to her. The familiar warm ache in her throat signaled the onset of a weeping assault. She fought it, knowing she’d be useless if she indulged the emotional slide into sorrow. Joseph. He was all that mattered now.

  Soon, the rhythm of the cars and purposefulness of the people dissolved her anguish. Cities fascinated and terrified her. That had been why she’d taken Joseph someplace her husband wouldn’t have suspected; to a roiling city, not a small, quiet town like Buskirk, where she’d been raised. As she moved from one city to another, seeking the most unlikely place he’d look for them, everyone had been so solicitous to her and Joseph. He was only two months old, and she was traveling on her own. People suspected she was on the run from an abusive husband, she thought. After all, she had scads of cash, dressed well, wore a huge wedding ring, and had the kind of movie star looks that made others think they needed to be discreet about seeing her.

  But he’d found her. He told her, “Nobody goes anywhere in this country without me knowing where, how and when. You want to disappear? Go to China.” He’d laughed. “Good luck with that…you have a passport, darling?” Of course she hadn’t. She didn’t even have a driver’s license. He wouldn’t let her drive. He’d given her a chauffeured car. She still had the tiny gray card with her social security number on it, but she couldn’t recall where.

  The light in the room seemed to shift, go blue again. She felt grimy from traveling, but didn’t dare take a bath and leave Joseph alone. She wasn’t going to lose him again. Maybe it was her pills. She hadn’t taken them when she got up.

  She laid her suitcase on the bed, plied it open and sighed. Her two dresses, low-heeled shoes, and cloth case of toiletries barely filled the small piece of luggage. Her pills were lined up along the inside edge, tucked behind the silk ruched fabric. She took a pill from each vial and went into the bathroom to drink them down. The water from the faucet in the sink was cold and fresh.

  She glanced at herself in the mirror and had one of her moments when she didn’t recognize herself. The woman she saw was in her late sixties, with graying hair swept up in a loose spinster’s bun. The deep blue eyes were ringed with dark skin, wrinkled and drooping. The lips were thin, colorless, and the smile, when it came, was yellowed to near brown, tar-stained. Sometimes the woman wore glasses that made her eyes seem larger. Not today.

  Hurrying from the bathroom, she looked out into the room and didn’t recognize it. Panic set in and her heart raced. She felt her face, the smooth unlined skin, and the lively auburn curls over her shoulders, and knew she was herself, but the room! It was dark. Hadn’t it just been morning? The bed was under the window and the crib was beside it. The railing was down and she ran to see if Joseph was still th
ere.

  Gone! She felt around the crib for him, throwing off the blankets. The sheet was still warm. He’d just been there! Turning on the brass lamp by the bed, she could see her suitcase in the corner on the folding carrier, closed tight. She blinked as she swept the room, looking for signs of her son. The bed was unmade and she saw then that next to where she’d slept was the nest of pillows she’d set up to protect him from rolling off. There he was, on his back, his head turned to the side, his tiny fists against the curves of the pillows.

  Once she saw he was all right, she lay beside him, staring at his perfect little face. Was he hungry? No, he’d be crying if he was. But her stomach growled. She reached for the phone and ordered a meal.

  A different boy brought her a steak dinner, more a man than a boy. He stared at her, his eyes searching as if to identify an actress or celebrity, she thought. Hadn’t strangers often asked her if she was famous? Thrown a movie star’s name at her? But when she handed him the dollar, he told her they had to substitute the brand of baby formula for the one she’d ordered; they didn’t make it anymore. She nodded, put her index finger over her lips to shush him, pointing to the empty crib, and told him her son was sleeping. He squinted over her shoulder, shrugged and turned away. She shut the door quietly behind him.

  She felt as if it had been days since she’d last eaten. She filled herself with baked potato slathered in butter and chives, an enormous rib-eye, and vegetables topped with fried onions. Had she ordered the wine that gleamed in the glass on the table? How she loved white wine! The bottle was empty when she went to refill her glass. The alcohol mixed with her pills made her groggy. She had a cigarette, then put it out in the remains of her rib-eye. She threw herself onto the bed, careful of Joseph.

  She dreamed. Nightmares really. Babies falling, bursting into flames or casting blood on sidewalks like water-filled balloons breaking, spewing water on hot cement. Her pills were gigantic, like dinner plates, trying to enter her belly through her cesarean section scar. As she flailed, she felt the pressure of a straitjacket reining her in until she couldn’t move. She woke drenched in sweat, wrapped in the sheets.

  The pillow nest was gone and the crib was again by the door. She sat up and noticed two ashtrays on the floor beside the crib, filled with a week’s worth of cigarette butts. Three full bottles of infant formula stood in a row on the night stand. Empty wine bottles filled the waste basket, and crumpled chip packets littered the carpet around it. Outside, clouds obscured the sun, so the room had that blue quality she now associated with losing time. Her memory playing tricks.

  As she got out of bed, she realized she had nothing on. It was the old woman again, her body with the sagging breasts, spotted skin, protruding hip bones. The baby’s whimpering stopped her self-examination. She found her dress on the floor and pulled it over her head, ignoring her undergarments.

  He seemed blissfully asleep, pink, and healthy. The railing was half way down so she raised it. She’d had no idea she could ever love anything or anyone more than Joseph. What a handsome boy!

  When she was pregnant, toward the end, she had to go off her medications, and a depression settled into her bones. She’d not wanted him during that time, felt unprepared and unworthy to be a mother. What did she know about mothering? She was an only child, with a mother who was put away months after she was born. Her father had done his best, adoring her, giving everything his postman’s salary allowed. But he was lonely. There were women in town who were attracted to her father. He was striking, with his dark auburn hair, clear blue eyes, and lean build. Many of them brought casseroles, took in his laundry, and sat next to him in church, but the only girl he fancied in his house, in his bed, was her. Her alone.

  The night school course in secretarial skills saved her. She was good at shorthand and taking dictation and had the kind of personality her teacher said would be “Front office. Sparkling and warm.” A friend of her teacher got her a job in the city at one of James Prescott’s companies. It was the best time of her life; rooming with the girls in the hotel for employees, going out for drinks, meeting men, collecting their gifts that dotted her dresser like so many dew drops on a leaf. The quality of her clothes improved, as did her ability to afford the niceties such as manicures, and having her hair cut and styled. By the time she turned twenty-two, she was engaged to the CEO.

  She’d fallen asleep again, this time on the carpet. The cry of the baby woke her. She rolled onto her side and glanced up at the door. The crib! Gone! Hadn’t she put the desk and crib there to stop the maids and nosy bellboys from coming in? She looked around and saw that it had moved, against the wall across from the bed. Someone had gotten in again. It wasn’t him. If it had been, Joseph would be gone.

  It was raining. The sound against the window set her nerves on edge. She remembered her pills. Fumbling in her suitcase, she pulled the bottles from the lining and shook them. She was out of the mood stabilizers. She’d had a newly filled prescription when she left on her journey. That was only a few days ago! She took two each of the others into the bathroom. She avoided the mirror, went to the toilet. She sat there for a while, musing over her good fortune in finding Joseph at last. She shut her eyes, felt dizzy, opened them. She grabbed for the toilet roll dispenser beside her as she began to teeter off, fall. Her pills fell onto the marble floor. She needed a glass with water. She scooped up the pills, got herself up, let the bright bathroom settle from its wild orbit and went to the sink. She put the glass to her lips and sipped.

  Every summer her father took her to her grandparents’ house near a lake. She couldn’t recall the name. The lake was large enough to take boats out and fish, but not so big that she couldn’t swim across. She was a good swimmer. The smell of her skin turning brown, the algae at the water’s edge, and the sweet taste of the lake water seemed so real. She expected to open her eyes and be there, under the sun, her father on the blanket beside her, watching her as she adjusted her swimsuit.

  She turned out the light and hurried into the room. The crib remained as it had been. She sighed, relieved.

  A sudden, fierce longing filled her. For the lake water? Her youth? Her innocence? She wobbled with her legs heavy and uncooperative. If she didn’t get into bed as the pills hit her, she’d end up on the carpet again. Carpet burns dotted her knees, elbows, and shoulders. She couldn’t remember how she got them.

  She checked on Joseph. His eyes were open and his arms wide. She lifted him and took him to bed. Pulling the pillows into a tight circle ready to nestle him in, she embraced him, his tiny mouth going to her full breast to feed.

  Just then, the door flung open, banging against the crib, waking her. She opened her eyes, dopey from her pills. Two men in uniforms stood beside a portly man in a suit. They filled the doorway, then spilled into the room. The man in the suit had a letter in his hand and waved it about as he instructed the men in uniforms to get her dressed.

  In a shrill voice, he explained the hotel had put the crib in the room because she’d asked for one, as if one of the uniformed men had asked why the crib was there. They’d expected perhaps her granddaughter was coming to stay with her, but no one ever came. Three weeks! There was nothing left to do but call them.

  The taller man in uniform began gathering up her clothes, shoving them into the battered, swanky suitcase while the other pulled a dress over her head, gently maneuvering her arms into the sleeves. Then he helped her to stand. She slid her feet into the low-heeled pumps at his insistence, and started pulling stray white hairs up into the flattened bunch of hair at the nape of her neck. He found her glasses on the night stand and slipped them onto her face. When he spoke, he had a deep, commanding voice, like her husband’s. For a moment, panic pushed at her stupor. He said he thought she appeared lost. He wondered who she belonged to. She wanted to shout, “Joseph!”, but all she managed was a grunt.

  The man in the suit handed the letter to the taller man, noting it was the woman’s bill, as the other held her by a scuffed elbow. He
shook his head and exhaled. What a sad case.

  Where was the baby? She felt her legs go out from under her. She went onto her hands and knees and retched. Nothing came of it. She looked up at her captors. The man in the suit seemed woeful to her, as if he’d discovered she couldn’t pay. She’d never stiffed a hotel. Never.

  She looked around to see if the baby was all right. But he was gone. One of them had taken Joseph. She was sure. But they underestimated her. She’d find him again. She always did.

  Severance Package

  Bev Vincent

  Once upon a time, not so very long ago, it would have been much more difficult for Jerry to get what he needed. He would have had to venture into disreputable parts of town and associate with people who were assertive and shameless enough to expose—even flaunt—their predilections, as well as those who preyed on them.

  Thanks to the internet, he didn’t have to leave his house. His requirements could be fulfilled via any one of dozens of websites. It was almost as easy as ordering take-out, no matter what his craving. And it was all free—and fast, which was important because time was of the essence. Like so many who frequented these sites, Jerry’s window of opportunity was narrow and his burning need had to be sated now.

  With his browser in stealth mode, he refined his search by geography. He couldn’t wait for someone to drive across the city. He sent emails to several potential candidates and, within minutes, had three responses. Two had photographs attached. Faces blurred, but nothing else left to the imagination. Jerry responded to the closest contact with his Skype ID, requesting a face-to-face before proceeding. There were a lot of whack jobs out there. Who could forget Fatal Attraction?