by Joel Arnold
That nagging thought…bit by bit…
He shivered. His breath came out in gray wisps.
If she needs a doctor, how soon does she need one? Really need one?
And here, that nagging thought that felt a little too good…
Can I wait her out?
The cold wind whistled through the door like an out-of-tune clarinet. It bit at his cheek. He felt dizzy; he wanted so badly to suck in a deep, deep breath, but it hurt whenever he tried filling his lungs.
Can I wait her out?
It would make things easier in the long run, wouldn’t it? If he asked her for a divorce, he knew she would not just go gently into that good night. It would be bitter. Costly. But this way…
Insurance money.
The kids would be devastated, of course. But they’re not really kids anymore, are they? And at least this way, he wouldn’t be the asshole. Not in their eyes, nor the eyes of the public. All anyone would know was that it was an accident.
And it was an accident. It wouldn’t be murder if he just outlasted her, would it? Not in the eyes of the cops at least. Especially if he was in a little worse shape. If his hand, for example…
He took a deep breath and raised his right hand, flexing his fingers. How long until dawn? How long until someone spotted them? He grit his teeth, anticipating the pain.
Come on, do it!
He punched the windshield as hard as he could. Something broke. Not the windshield – his fingers. God, it hurt! He didn’t know how many he’d broken, but ow, ow, ow, God, it was enough, wasn’t it?
“What happened?” Linda asked, panic in her voice.
Dale bit back the pain as best he could. Fresh blood dripped from his nose, into his eye, over his forehead, into his scalp.
He felt lightheaded, and the pain in his hand blossomed into something he’d never felt before.
Oh God that fucking hurt!
“I couldn’t feel my hand,” he lied. “I thought if I could get some feeling back into it, I could get my keys. I didn’t think I’d hit the window so hard.”
An opportunity; that’s what this was. How many times had Linda accused him of squandering perfectly good opportunities?
He’d sure done a number on his hand, though. He really was screwed if he needed his phone in the morning. But surely someone will find us in the morning.
Damn, it was cold in here. The icy stream of wind kissed his face as blood continued to slowly bubble out of his nose. And his hand; was that bleeding now, too?
“How are you doing?” he asked.
Linda didn’t answer. How long did he need to wait?
‘Til morning. Just ‘til morning. ‘Til daylight revealed their overturned car. Would it be enough time?
He shivered. Tried to say, “I love you,” but couldn’t summon the courage for such a simple, yet blatant lie. Not now.
Another bout of shivering overcame him.
It wasn’t murder, was it? Outlasting her wasn’t really murder.
Was it?
Otherwise growing old and outlasting the spouse you no longer loved the natural way would be murder. A much slower, more devastating murder.
He could not stop shivering.
A double fucking homicide.
Dawn crept into the sky, infusing the fallen snow with a calm glow. The wind had died; the snow, too. Everything was still.
Linda looked at Dale. It was finally light enough to see him, to really see him. Frost had formed over his face and slid across his dead, staring eyes.
Damn it, Dale. She couldn’t say it had been a great twenty-six years – not even good. But still, she’d probably miss him.
“Tshh.” She sighed.
She finally – easily – switched on the smart phone she’d been holding all night, keeping it warm. The signal was strong.
At least this way, there was the insurance.
She dialed 9-1-1.
An operator answered. “Nine-one-one; what’s your emergency?”
Opportunities like this didn’t come around every day, and this one had been a doozy.
Linda cleared her throat. She added a tinge of hoarseness and panic for affect. “We’ve been in an accident!”
* * * * *
* * * * *
Last Seat on the Rapture Express – Coda
Well howdy, partner! Welcome aboard. You made it!
What’s that? You don’t have a ticket? Well, hell’s bells, lookit here. See that? Right there? You’re on the guest list!
Don’t look so surprised. You’re obviously someone with a lot going for you – a lot of gumption as my grand-dad used to say. We’ve got a special seat for you. The last seat – the very last seat. That’s right, put your chair back and make yourself comfortable.
What’s that?
Haw! You caught me! That’s right; truth be told, every place we stop, every city, every town, every backwoods hillbilly lick of humanity where we slam on the brakes...we can always find more room. Just gotta squeeze in a little tighter. Get a little more cozy. Because as you’ve probably figured out by now, there’s always one last seat on the Rapture Express.
Now remember, pardner; if you need anything, just scream.
* * * * *
* * * * *
Rerun
a bonus steampunk ghost story
by Daniel Pyle
Helm didn’t believe in ghosts. If he spotted something pale fluttering in a shadowy room, his first assumption was that it must be a window curtain or a trick of the light, not some otherworldly presence there to haunt and torment him. If he heard a groaning in the night, no matter how unnatural it might have sounded, he knew that it was natural, that he’d heard only the wind blowing through the trees outside or a pocket of air in the steam pipes below the house. But his beliefs were only so strong. When he witnessed incident after incident, when the proof began to pile up, he finally admitted that there could be no other explanation: his media center was haunted.
The first time it happened—or the first time he noticed it happen anyway—he was cleaning the bedroom on the other side of the house. The gramophone, a device he used infrequently and usually at very low volumes, turned on of its own volition, full blast, blaring an old song he hadn’t listened to in years, probably waking the neighbors, although no one had come banging on the door complaining. He’d run in and shut it off, checking the machine for damage, but it seemed to be fine.
Twice afterwards, he’d walked into the living room and found old children’s picture books playing on the media center’s secondary screen. The first time, the book had been mostly still, showing a picture of a lioness and her baby and blinking the word cub. The second time, he found the screen flipping through pages faster than anyone possibly could have read them; images and words zipped across the screen, faster and faster, becoming a multi-colored, meaningless blur. He’d shut off the reader on both occasions, irritated the first time, uneasy the second.
Then, the following weekend, as he sat in his favorite recliner, the talkie he’d been watching had faded to black, replaced by an episode of an old sitcom he hadn’t seen in ages. He hadn’t noticed the changing-arm replace the first cartridge with the second, but he knew it must have. Except that was impossible. He hadn’t touched the lever box, and there was no way the arm could have moved on its own. He’d gotten up and inspected the equipment but still found nothing wrong.
Now it was Monday night, almost a week since the first phenomenon, and he was sitting in the dark, quiet living room, waiting to see what (if anything) would happen.
The power dial was spun fully closed. And there was enough light coming from the adjoining hallway for him to watch it and make sure it didn’t move on its own.
He waited.
Thirty minutes. An hour.
He started to feel like a lunatic. Sitting there in a dark room, staring at a blank screen and an unmoving valve, waiting for…what? For the machine to come to life and growl at him?
Yes, he realized. Tha
t was exactly what he was waiting for. That or something like it.
But nothing happened. The machine remained quiet and still.
He got up and crossed the room. He checked the power coil (fine), the injection chamber (half full and unclogged), the various adjustment knobs and positioning arms (all perfect). But something was obviously wrong with the thing. He sealed off the injection chamber and unscrewed the power valve. The washer inside seemed slightly worn, but not any more so than it had been many times before, not so worn that it could have caused these kinds of malfunctions.
Nothing could cause these kinds of malfunctions. Nothing mechanical anyway. He was sure of it.
He decided to replace the washer anyway. Just to be sure. He carried the valve through the house and into the utility room. In the far corner, beside the steamer, he opened the waist-high chest of spare parts and rummaged through the compartments, comparing the old washer to the new ones but not finding the size he needed.
He searched for another few fruitless minutes before admitting he must not have had a spare. Which was ridiculous. The washer was a #2. He could have sworn he had dozens of 2s. Almost every device in the house used one.
He considered taking something else apart, one of the appliances he never used, and repurposing one of their less-worn washers, but then he wondered if he could just beg one from the neighbor instead. He didn’t think it was too late for a quick, can-you-help-a-guy-out visit. He tried not to be a bother when it came to his neighbors, couldn’t remember the last time he’d asked them for anything, or even spoken to them for that matter, but what was one measly washer between neighbors, right? Just a five-cent rubber disk and maybe a moment of irritation. Easily forgotten. No big deal.
He walked back to the living room and put the valve on the end table beside his chair. At the front door, he slipped into a pair of old loafers and transferred a weathered tweed hat from the coatrack to his head.
A blast of cool night air hit him when he opened the door. He stepped out beneath a cloudless, star-speckled sky and glanced up and down the street. Not many lights, and no sounds at all. No couples fighting through open windows, no kids getting in some last-minute outdoor play before bedtime. It seemed as if most of the neighborhood had already gone to sleep, although it was just past eight o’clock.
The house to the immediate north was black, lifeless, as were the ones across the street, so Helm turned south, to 801. He hadn’t seen the family that lived there in…what?…years? Was that possible? He guessed it must have been; it had been so long since he talked to them that he couldn’t even remember their names.
The porch light at 801 flickered, and Helm thought he saw another patch of light coming from around the side of the house, from a back room maybe.
His own porch light cast a yellow arc across his narrow lawn. He saw a patch of grass that looked as if it hadn’t been mown all year and reminded himself to check the mowers’ navigational systems when he got a chance. He was surprised nobody had come by complaining. The neighborhood homeowners association had never been overly strict, but they wouldn’t normally have let a thing like this—an eyesore like this—slide.
Helm crossed his yard and then the neighbors’. He climbed the stairs to their small, concrete porch and pressed his finger against the bell trigger.
He waited.
When no one had answered after what must have been at least a full minute, he pressed the trigger again.
Still nothing.
He rapped his knuckles against the doorframe and then against the door itself. It swung inward, creaked inward, and Helm took a step back, frowning. This wasn’t a rough neighborhood, but even on the most perfectly serene street in the world, Helm couldn’t imagine anyone leaving their front door unlocked and open. Not on purpose. Not these days.
“Hello?” he called.
No answer. He repeated the word, louder.
He pushed the door open a bit wider, exposing a dark living room. The light from the porch leaked across the area just beyond the doorway but not much farther.
“Your door is open,” he yelled into the darkness. “Is everyone okay?”
Silence.
Something on the other side of the living room caught his eye. A dark shape in an equally dark chair. A person maybe, slumped and…
“Shit!” Helm ran into the room, all thoughts of trespassing and impropriety gone before they could fully form.
“Sir,” he said. “Ma’am? Are you okay?”
As he moved deeper into the house, his eyes adjusted to the darkness. The thing in the chair was not a person. Not anymore.
He stepped closer to the body.
Except it wasn’t exactly a body either. The flesh was gone. Dull white bone showed through tattered clothing. A grinning skull stared at him with its huge, empty eye sockets.
Not a body at all. A skeleton.
An empty glass sat on the table beside the corpse. A cobweb ran from the glass to the skull’s gaping jaw and from there down to the arm of the chair. As Helm watched, a fat spider crawled out of the skull’s nostril and scurried across the web.
He screamed and spun around, expecting a maniac with an axe to come rushing at him through the darkness, sure he’d stumbled into the lair of some psychotic serial killer.
But there was no one else in the room. Just him and Mr. Bones. And no sounds from the rest of the house.
He had to go, call the police. Whatever had happened here seemed to have happened years ago—or maybe even decades—but did that matter?
Not to him it didn’t. Let the cops worry about that shit; he was getting the hell out.
He turned toward the open front door and saw the second body in the unlit hallway leading away from the living room.
Another skeleton. Smaller. Wearing the remains of what looked like footy pajamas.
A child.
Helm stopped and peered at the tiny body. Its head was turned severely to the side, its arms outstretched, reaching toward Helm. The finger bones looked curled. Like claws. Like maybe the kid had been trying to drag himself across the floor.
Helm stepped away.
He turned back to the front door, already rehearsing what he’d say to the police.
I was just looking for a washer. I found the bodies. The skeletons. Must’ve been dead for years. Their names? Would you believe I can’t remember?
He was going to sound like an idiot.
Something moved in the back of the house, and Helm shrieked. He ran for the door and tripped over his own foot.
Sounds approached from the hallway. Not footsteps but a strange series of whirs and squeaks. Helm sat up and scooted toward the door on his butt, afraid to stand up, afraid he’d lose his balance and fall again.
The thing in the hallway circled around the child’s skeleton and turned away from Helm. It was the size of a small dog and carried a half-full reservoir of water on its back.
An auto-filler. Probably on its way to top off a generator. Its rusty wheels looked like they might break off at any second. Or maybe just disintegrate.
Helm coughed out a sound that was half laugh and half groan. He got to his feet and hurried out of the house, closing the door behind himself, very careful not to look back at either heap of bones.
Outside, every bush looked like a looming monster, every shadow an approaching attacker. He jumped off the porch and stumbled across the yard toward his house.
He was so focused on his door, on getting back behind it and locking it tight, that he forgot about the patch of overgrown grass and ran right through it. His foot struck something hard, and he fell again, this time on his face, the tall grass slapping at his cheeks and knocking off his hat.
His hand came down on what felt like a bundle of hard tree branches. He pushed himself to his hands and knees and looked down.
Moonlight and starlight shone down through the grass, revealing a third skeleton. This one yellowed and missing several teeth.
Helm opened his mouth to scream a
gain, but no sound came out.
He crawled away from the body and out of the unmown grass. His front door looked a million miles away.
How could this have happened? In his own front yard? How long had there been a body out here? And how could he have gone so long without noticing?
How long had it been since he’d left the house?
He hurried through the door, locking both the knob and the deadbolt when he was safely inside. He paid the media center no attention. The malfunctions and his ridiculous ideas about ghosts seemed silly now, beyond unimportant.
He had two phones. One in the bedroom and the other in the kitchen. He ran for the latter, which was closer. When he pulled the phone from its cradle and pressed it against his ear, he heard nothing. Not the gurgle of an open line; nothing at all. Total silence.
He checked the intake valve. Clean. He hung up the receiver and tried again.
Still nothing.
Glancing toward the front door, expecting the maniacal killer who hadn’t appeared at the neighbor’s to show up now, he ran back to the bedroom to try the other phone.
Same deal. Dead line.
Now what was he supposed to do?
He went to the front door and peeked through the curtained window beside it.
Nobody out there. Still nobody anywhere on the street, as far as he could tell.
He was about to move away from the window when he saw headlights in the distance. They turned off a side street and toward Helm’s property. The vehicle behind them looked big, like some kind of truck. Or maybe a van.
Helm wondered if he should run out and flag it down, maybe get a ride to the police station.
He didn’t want to bring anyone else into the situation, put anyone else in danger if he didn’t have to, but he wasn’t sure what other options he had. His own car was in the shop. They’d called him some time ago (weeks? months? he couldn’t remember for sure) to let him know it was ready to pick up, but he hadn’t needed it and kept forgetting.
