by Rick Hautala
“Whatever you do, don’t look in the trunk!” the GPS unit said.
Mark glanced at the patrolman and saw that he was staring at him, now with a cold, downright mean expression.
“Go on,” the cop said, his voice as toneless and merciless as the GPS’s. “Open the trunk.”
Mark swallowed once—hard—and then his fingers hooked under the metal edge of the trunk latch and pulled up. The trunk rose slowly on rusted hinges, and there on the floor of the trunk, lying in tight fetal positions, was the body of his son, Jeff. The stench of rotting flesh after four days arose like a noxious cloud. Jeff’s abdomen was swollen with gas, looking like he had a huge beach ball tucked under his shirt. The skin around his mouth had turned purple, and his pale lips were pulled back, exposing his teeth in a wide, gruesome grin. His eyes were closed as though he slept, but there was no peace in the expression on his face.
Mark had to turn away, but he could still see his dead son reflected in the patrolman’s mirrored shades. The patrolman turned away, too, and let out a long, agonized moan from somewhere deep inside him. Then he leaned over, his hands braced on both knees, and vomited onto the side of the road.
“He’s my son…” Mark said, his voice strangled with emotion. “They’ll find her back at the house, but I…I couldn’t leave him back there with her…not with that bitch!”
*****
Under his own name, Rick Hautala has written more than thirty novels, including the million-copy bestseller Nightstone, as well as Winter Wake, The Mountain King, and Little Brothers. He has published two short story collections: Bedbugs and Occasional Demons. A new collection, The Back of Beyond, is due soon. He has had over sixty short stories published in a variety of national and international anthologies and magazines. Writing as A. J. Matthews, his novels include the bestsellers The White Room, Looking Glass, Follow, and Unbroken. His forthcoming books include the “Little Brothers” novella Indian Summer, three novels: Star Road, Waiting, and Chills, and a collection of novellas titled Yesternight.
Born and raised in Rockport, Massachusetts, Rick is a graduate of the University of Maine in Orono with a Master of Arts in English Literature. His three children are all grown up. He lives in southern Maine with author Holly Newstein.
For more information, check out his website www.rickhautala.com.
LOOK BEHIND YOU
Eric Shapiro
1.
“Dad,” I ask him, as he’s about to die, “what happened to Mom? You have to tell me.”
2.
“Son,” he says, ’cause he’s from a generation where fathers say that, “you know I like to keep certain things private.”
3.
But I asked him anyway, for three simple reasons:
The first was that time we were walking in Connecticut. 1987. It was him and me and my Uncle Joey. Just shopping, nothing dramatic. But Uncle Joey made it dramatic. He turned to my dad and said, “Did you hear that Beth died?”
Strange, that question. Since Beth was my mother. Uncle Joey: her brother. Why would Joey know and not my dad? More to the point: What did both of them know that I did not?
I didn’t ask any such questions, though. My dad, he’s got a wall around him. You don’t just bring things up; everything is delicate.
The second reason was because that service was a scam. One of those ones that you find on the web. They say they’ll look into your family heritage. I emailed and explained that my mom had vanished when I was a boy, and that I didn’t really remember her, and that my dad had kept her fate a secret.
I would have thrown in the Uncle Joey story, but that would have been like giving hints to a psychic.
According to their info, she died in a mental hospital. The Allison Facility in Southern Maryland. Only that was just bullshit. Know why? ’Cause five years later, at a New Year’s Eve party, I met a girl who used the very same service. Her aunt had gone missing. Her supposed fate? You guessed it: The Allison Facility. The capper was when the girl reached into her purse and showed me the document.
Same as mine, exactly. The crinkles and blotches. Identical.
My mother still lost.
Reason three: the emphysema. It’s got my dad’s lungs all crunched and crusted. He’s readying himself to go, and I’m intent upon getting the story before he does.
4.
The word intrepid is in my mind. That’s what they call reporters who go bravely after facts, no? Only I’m an accountant, and not brave so much as goddamn curious.
“My son,” he says, for he wants to be affectionate, “you are better off not knowing.”
“I don't agree,” I say. “This is part of my history. I feel that I deserve to know.”
In his eyes, I see a genuine pain. That’s when I know that (more reporter talk?) I have him. The pain’s there ’cause he’s conflicted, and would like to spill what’s what. It’s now on me to tip him toward what’s right.
“Dad,” I go, “you shouldn’t carry this. Whatever it is; it shouldn’t die with you.”
His breath is bad; it’s not coming and going as it should. He says, “I doubt that you’ll still say that once you know.”
And there it is. I have my victory. He’s intent upon telling me. It’s my job, now, to recede—not rush him. Give him space and let the story come.
5.
But that takes time. The nurse comes in. She’s cheerful, shrill. She makes the room warm (not in a good way). I feel like pulling at my collar while she’s here. She’s not even looking at my father, is looking through him. Adjusting his pillows, giving them a robust, empty fullness.
6.
“I’m giving you,” he wheezes, “one last chance to let this go. And once I pass, it’s never to be your burden.”
I’ll admit it: For a flash of a moment, I consider dropping it. My prevailing mindset, however, is in suspense. What would you do, given the choice?
“Please tell me,” I say, and just-like-that my heart is beating faster.
7.
He’s gathering his breath, as evidently he has a lot to say. The room is different. It’s no longer a drab place. It’s now an important one. A setting where grave information will be transferred.
“When you were a boy, very young, maybe four, she started talking about a man named Mr. Melvin. I didn’t quite take it in at first. She would mention it offhand, like, ‘Oh, Mr. Melvin likes roses.’ We’d be walking by a garden, and she’d say something like that. I kept my mouth shut because I thought maybe I was supposed to know who he was. Like, was he a neighbor or somebody?
“Finally, one night, while we were getting changed, I had to ask her who Mr. Melvin was. Briefly, for a few moments, she seemed confused. Almost as though I’d betrayed her by not knowing. Then she said to me, ‘He’s the man that stands behind you.’
“I asked her what she meant by this. And she told me, with a bit of anxiousness, that Mr. Melvin watched from behind. And that you could never see him, because he was always looking at you from behind. You could turn, in other words, but he’d be too quick.
“Naturally, I became very afraid. Not of Mr. Melvin, exactly, but of the way she was communicating.”
“Did you put her in a hospital?” I ask, cutting quite rapidly to the chase, and almost willfully failing to remember that that service had been full of baloney.
“No,” he says, “though that would have been the thing to do. Sometimes I wonder if they could have helped her.
“It wasn’t rapid, her deterioration, but little by little, she’d look just over my shoulder and give little nods. Not making eye contact with me. It was Mr. Melvin. I’d turn and look, but no one was there.
“I asked her how she knew little things about him, like that he liked roses or that he wore a bow-tie, and she said it was because he whispered in her ear. Sometimes I’d even see her giggling, and sort of shyly touching her cheek, like he was seducing her, this Mr. Melvin.
“It was time to get serious, though, when she started…
”
My dad’s eyes, now, are far away. My heart’s still crushing blood through itself.
I say to him, “Started what? What?”
“You can’t ask me to do this, son.”
“Come on, no. You can’t stop. Please.”
He nods. His lungs: the sound. “Okay.
“Um…”
8.
“…She said different things about Mr. Melvin.”
“Like what?”
“She started saying…”
In this room is a coldness.
“…‘Mr. Melvin is coming.’ She started saying that.
“‘Mr. Melvin is coming.’ She’d look at me from across the dining room table and say it. Knowingly. Like I was supposed to know. And be warned or something. So I’d say to her, ‘Elisabeth, I thought he was already here.’
“‘Yes,’ she’d say, with this look in her eye, ‘but he’s behind us now. He’d like to make himself known.’
“‘And when will he make himself known, Elisabeth?’
“‘Oh, anytime now. Anytime.’”
My dad looks at me, his eyes straining and spent.
Breathing louder than he is, I say to him, “What happened to her?”
He gives me a wave of his hand, as if the answer’s so tired that it’s not worth verbalizing. “In the south, Missouri, I had an aunt named Margaret. Very kind woman. She ran bed and breakfasts. Your mother lived in one of her attics ’til she died.”
“And you didn’t know she was gone ’til Joey told you?"
He looks at me, quite lucid and present. “You remember that day?”
“Of course. I remember you turned white.”
He looks away. “I tried to forget about your mother. Only the more I tried to, the more I remembered. I sent her letters at first, but she never responded. Margaret would telephone and say that she was talking about the usual things.”
“Mr. Melvin?” I ask, the words sounding ridiculous inside of my own mouth.
He nods. “I didn’t want to hear about it. There was such a sadness. When we’d met, your mother had been so colorful. Had had so much to say.”
My heart feels broken. I understand, somewhat, why it was hard for him to talk about. But to keep it from me for so long?
“What was the reason, Dad? I would have loved to have known. I was twenty-three when she went; I could have gone to see her.”
Now his face has something within it. It’s as though the tempo in the room has begun to race. It’s fear, hot and naked. He shakes his head and says to me, “Oh, you wouldn’t have wanted that.”
“Why?”
Still, that expression. “I went once. It wasn’t good.”
I’m shaking my head. I ask him what he means. He’s then looking out the window again, but I insist that he return to me. When he does, his face is flooded with alarm.
“I went to that attic, and it wasn’t good.
“He was there.”
“Who?”
“Mr. Melvin. And he wasn’t behind us anymore.”
I feel a rush of heat in my blood. “I don’t under—”
My dad cuts me off: “He’d walk by. In front of me. In the attic. She’d be sitting there by the window, in her rocking chair. We’d talk. I’d ask her if she remembered the dances. The ones I used to take her to, at the church on Thursday nights. She looked quite radiant in the sunlight. I almost forgot what she was doing there. But then he’d walk by, in front of me.”
“You mean a man? You saw a man?”
“Jeremiah…” My father’s now using my name. “He’s coming, you know. Mr. Melvin is coming.”
“Dad! Stop. What are you talking about?”
“It’s going slow. He has to learn. First, he’s behind you. Then in front of you. But only for a moment. Then he’s gone.
“But, Son: When he comes, everything will be hurt. Do you understand? His arrival will mark a change.”
“No, I don’t understand. What are you saying? That he’s real, this guy?”
“What have I been telling you? Why would I have kept it quiet for so long?
“You’ll see him, Jeremiah, when you’re out and about. You already have, for your entire life. If you ever got the feeling that there was someone behind you, looking at you, taller than you…that’s him. He knows us all. And if you ever were in a hallway, and you could have sworn you saw a body walking down it, but then you turned and no one was there…”
I’m on my feet. “Dad! You’re talking crazy! Stop it! This is crazy!”
He shakes his head. “That’s what I told her. Over and over again. Until I saw him in the attic. Then I knew that a new time was coming. Because Mr. Melvin’s entrance won’t be quiet. For the time being, he’s a gentleman. But when he gets here fully, he’ll be angry.”
9.
He dies shortly after that. Fights it. Tries to keep himself going. I know for certain that he had more to say. But it’s too late; his eyes are fixed at the ceiling. And they’re not peaceful eyes, either. Whatever storm he was trying to purge did not make it all the way out.
10.
It takes years for me to see what he meant.
I’m at a bus stop, and there’s another stop right across the street. On the bench at that stop is a man of fine appearance: good clothes and neatly combed hair. He’s sitting, though I can surmise his height. He’s looking at me, and it’s not altogether pleasant.
I look back. I nod. He doesn’t nod back.
He stares. Tranquility. The calmness of the one with the upper hand.
I can’t let it go. I should, but I cross the street. March toward him. Try to be intimidating.
When I get to him, I say, “Who are you?”
He looks up at me. A slight redness where his eyes should be white. He says to me, “I’m the one you seek.”
“Are you Mr. Melvin?” I ask.
He nods. A small smile. I could scream right here. But he then says, “I’m not ready yet, though.”
He rises, standing high above me. Looks down at me, says, “But when I am, you’ll know.”
His bus arrives; he’s gone as fast as he came.
As I watch the vehicle go, I draw my hand up to my throat. Have to make sure that my airways are clear. That I still work, despite the encounter that’s occurred.
And despite what will occur when he is ready.
*****
Eric Shapiro’s acclaimed 2005 novella, It’s Only Temporary, was on the preliminary ballot for the Bram Stoker Award in Long Fiction. He directed and produced the motion picture, Rule of Three (2010), which had its world premiere at the Fantasia Festival and its U.S. Premiere at Fantastic Fest before being released on DVD and Netflix Instant. In 2010, Permuted Press published an omnibus collection of Eric’s three short novels and a handful of selected short stories called Stories for the End of the World. His newest novel, The Devoted (2012), out from John Skipp’s Ravenous Shadows, depicts the last day in the life of a suicide cult. His debut fiction publication, Short of a Picnic (2002), originally released by the now-defunct Be-Mused Publications, was a collection of short stories about characters grappling with mental illness. It will return in 2012 from Evil Jester Press. Eric lives in Los Angeles with his wife and producing partner, Rhoda Jordan, and their son, Benjamin Shapiro.
LONE WOLF
Gregory L. Norris
Copper eyes, glinting in the sunlight like newly-minted pennies, stared without blinking through the grimy outer pane of the cafeteria window. The dead man’s eyes scanned the vast dark space inside for movement. Finding none, not seeing the two dozen bodies lined along the same wall as the window, out of direct view, the weaponized corpse plodded on. Then, one at a time, the living crept out of the shadows and resumed foraging. They packed up the supplies they had found and moved quietly out of the abandoned building.
*****
He sat alone, separate from the others. The gap of a few yards might as well have been miles, Charlse thought. All emotion was gone fro
m the soldier’s face, and only hardness remained.
The soldier scanned their surroundings from the top of a picnic table, one boot on the bench, his other leg dangling, swinging, in a pose that could have looked jaunty if not for the truth of their situation. He held his rifle, an M-16 2A that had gotten plenty of mileage between West Babylon and Kingwood; Charlse assumed the little country berg was called Kingwood because that was the name on the school whose cafeteria they’d raided. Muzzle upright, stock on the picnic table, between his legs. It was a phallic pose as well as a practical one, and Charlse found himself unable to look away.
Handsome, painfully so, his name was Joe. Maybe, Charlse mused, he once went by Joseph or Joey among his fellow unit, of which only Sergeant Bequith remained. Joe’s dark hair had grown out of its neat military cut in the weeks following West Babylon and was now an attractive thatch of cowlicks, that trendy look of bed-head chic men had once paid top dollar to attain, only to Joe it had come naturally. He hadn’t shaved in several days and a dense prickle now coated his cheeks, chin, and throat. Joe’s eyes were the greenest Charlse had ever seen, twin emerald gemstones. Sunglasses poked out of his shirt pocket. His black uniform pants and beat-up boots completed a picture that was both powerful and tragic. The soldier had given up most if not all hope. He was going only on orders now. The order was to protect the living.
The living huddled in the courtyard, serenaded by the chirrup of crickets and the lazy late summer music of cicadas. It would be time to move again soon; time to resume their march toward the coast.
Charlse’s eyes again drifted to the soldier. Joe had switched position: knees together, booted feet as well, gun stock on bench, barrel clutched in right hand. Strips of white tape circled his pointer and middle fingers. A sweat band, black, hung off his wrist. A former athlete, thought Charlse. Probably baseball. He looked like a baseball player. Maybe hockey as well, and football in the fall.
