by Neil Jackson
He fished out the drinks and closed the door. There was a hiss as the motor kicked in and sucked the seals tight. A fluff of lint shot from the grill at the base of the appliance.
The drinks chilled his palms. Sensation. He pressed a can to his forehead. Great way to cure a headache. Too bad he didn’t have one.
He went back to the living room. Janie was still coloring, the tip of her tongue pressed just so against the corner of her mouth. Her eyes were half-closed, the curl of her lashes making Darrell’s heart ache. He sat down.
Darrell gave Rita the soda, then pulled the tab on his beer. The can opened with a weak, wet sigh. He took a sip. Flat.
“See any mice?” Rita asked, trying to smile.
“Not a single Mickey Mouse in the place. Saw a Donald Duck, though.”
Janie giggled, her shoulders shaking a little. Her ponytail had fallen against one cheek. Darrell hated lying. But it wasn’t really a lie, was it? The lie was so white, it was practically see-through.
He settled back in his chair. The newspaper had slipped to the floor and opened to page seven, where the real news was located. More stuff on Johnson’s mess in Viet Nam. Right now, he had no interest in the world beyond. He looked at the television.
Gomer was doing something stupid, and his proud idiot grin threatened to split his head in half. Barney was waving his arms in gangly hysterics. Andy stood there with his hands in his pockets.
Television was black-and-white, just like life. But in television, you had ‘problem,’ then ‘problem solved.’ Sprinkle in some canned laughter along the way. In life, there were no solutions and not much laughter.
He took another sip of beer. “You want to visit your folks again this weekend?”
Rita had gulped half her soda in her nervousness. “Can we afford it?”
Could they afford not to? Every minute away from the house was a good minute. He wished they could move. He had thought about putting the house up for sale, but the market was glutted. The racial tension had even touched the midtown area, and middle-class whites didn’t want to bring their families to the South. Besides, who would want to buy a haunted house?
And if they did manage to sell the house, where would they go? Shoe store managers weren’t exactly in high demand. And he didn’t want Rita to work until Janie started school. So they’d just have to ride it out for another year or so. Seemed like they-d been riding it out forever.
He put down the beer and jabbed the cigar in his mouth. “Maybe your folks are getting tired of us,” he said around the rolled leaf. “How about a trip to the mountains? We can get a little cabin, maybe out next to a lake.” He thought of his fishing rod, leaning against his golf bag somewhere in the lost black of the closet.
“Out in the middle of nowhere?” Rita’s voice rose a half-step too high. Janie noticed and stopped scribbling.
“We could get a boat.”
“I’ll call around,” Rita said. “Tomorrow.”
Darrell looked at the bookcase on the wall. He’d been meaning to read so many of those books. He wasn’t in the mood to spend a few hours with one. Even though he had all the time in the world.
He picked up the Zippo and absently thumbed the flame to life. Janie heard the lid open and looked up. Pretty colors. Orange, yellow, blue. He doused the flame, thumbed it to life once more, then closed the lighter and put it back on the table.
Rita pretended to watch television. Darrell looked from her face to the screen. The news was on, footage of the sanitation workers’ strike. The reporter’s voice-over was bassy and bland.
“Do you think it’s serious?” Rita asked, with double meaning.
“A bunch of garbage.” The joke fell flat. Darrell went to the RCA and turned down the volume. Silence crowded the air.
Janie stopped coloring, lifted her head and cocked it to one side. “I heard something.”
Her lips pursed. A child shouldn’t suffer such worry. He waited for a pang of guilt to sear his chest. But the guilt was hollow, dead inside him.
“I think it’s time a little girl went beddy-bye,” he said. Rita was standing before he even finished his sentence.
“Aw, do I have to?” Janie protested half-heartedly.
“Afraid so, pumpkin.”
“I’ll go get the bed ready, then you can come up and get brushed and washed,” Rita said, heading too fast for the stairs.
“And Daddy tells the bedtime story?” Janie asked.
Darrell smiled. Rita was a wonderful mother. He couldn’t imagine a better partner. But when it came to telling stories, there was only one king. “Sure,” he said. “Now gather your crayons.”
The promise of a story got Janie in gear. Darrell heard Rita’s slippered feet on the stairs. Her soles were worn. He’d have to get her a new pair down at the store.
He froze, the hairs on his neck stiffening.
There.
That sound again.
The not-mice.
Where was that damn dog?
He got to his feet, stomach clenched. Janie was preoccupied with her chore. He walked to the back door and parted the curtain, wondering if Rita had heard and was now looking out from the upstairs window.
The moon was fuller, brighter, more robust. Why did they only come at night?
Maybe they had rules. Which was stupid. They broke every natural law just in the act of existing.
There, by the laurel at the edge of the backyard. Two shapes, shimmering, surreal, a bit washed out.
He opened the door, hoping to scare them away. That was a hoot. Him scaring them. But he had to try, for Janie’s and Rita’s sake.
“What do you want?” he said, trying to keep his voice level. Could they understand him? Or did they speak a different language in that other world?
The shapes moved toward him, awkwardly. A bubbling sound flooded the backyard, like pockets of air escaping from water. One of the shapes raised a nebulous arm. The motion was jerky, like in an old silent film.
Darrell stepped off the porch. Maybe if he took a stand here, they would take what they wanted and leave his family alone.
“There’s nothing for you here” he said. “Why don’t you go back where you came from?”
A sudden rage flared through him, filling his abdomen with heat. These were the things that bothered Janie, that made Rita worry, that was the fountain of his own constant guilt. These things had no right to intrude on their space, their lives, their reality.
“I don’t believe in you,” he shouted, no longer caring if he woke neighbor George. If only the dog would bark, maybe that would drive them away.
The bubbling sound came again. The spooks were closer now, and he could see they were shaped like humans. Noises from their heads collected and hung in the air. The wind lifted, changed direction. The noises blew together, thickened and became words.
Darrell’s language.
“There’s where it happened.”
A kid. Sounded like early teens. Did their kind age, or were they stuck in the same moment forever?
Darrell opened his mouth, but didn’t speak. More words came from the world of beyond, words that were somnambulant and sonorous.
“Gives me the creeps, man.” Another young one.
“Three of them died when it burned down.”
“Freaky. Maybe some of the bones are still there.”
“They say only the dog got away.”
“Must have been a long time ago.”
“Almost thirty years.”
“Nothing but a chimney left, and a few black bricks. You’d think something would grow back. Trees and stuff.” A silence. Darrell’s heart beat, again, three times, more.
“It’s supposed to be haunted,” said the first.
“Bullshit.”
“Go out and touch it, then.”
“No way.”
A fire flashed in front of one of the shapes, then a slow curl of smoke wafted across the moonlit yard. The end of a cigarette glowed. Smoke. Spirit. Smoke.
Spirit. Both insubstantial.
Darrell walked down the back steps, wondering how he could make them go away. A cross? A Bible? A big stick?
“I only come here at night,” said the one inhaling the fire.
“Place gives me the creeps.”
“It’s cool, man.”
“I don’t like it.” The shape drifted back, away from the house, away from Darrell’s approach.
“Chicken.”
The shape turned and fled.
“Chicken,” repeated the first, louder, sending a puff of gray smoke into the air.
Darrell glanced up at Janie’s bedroom window. She would be in her pajamas now, the covers up to her chin, a picture book across her tummy. The pages opened to a story that began ‘Once upon a time...’
Darrell kept walking, nearing the ghost of shifting smoke and fire. He was driven by his anger now, an anger that drowned the fear. The thing didn’t belong in their world. Everything about them was wrong. Their bad light, their voices, their unreal movement.
He reached out, clutching for the thing’s throat. His hands passed through the flame without burning, then through the shape without touching. But the shape froze, shuddered, then turned and fled back to its world of beyond.
Darrell watched the laurels for a moment, making sure the thing was gone. They would come back. They always did. But tonight he had won. A sweat of tension dried in the gentle breeze.
He went inside and closed the door. He was trembling. But he had a right to feel violated, outraged. He hadn’t invited the things to his house.
He had calmed down a little by the time he reached the living room. A Spencer Tracy movie was on the television. The glow from the screen flickered on the walls like green firelight.
Rita was in her chair, blinking too rapidly. “Was it...?” she asked.
“Yeah.”
“Oh, Darrell, what are we going to do?”
“What can we do?”
“Move.”
He sighed. “We can’t afford to right now. Maybe next year.”
He sat down heavily and took a sip of his beer. It was still flat.
“What do we tell Janie?”
“Nothing for now. It’s just mice, remember?”
He wished the dog were here, so he could stroke it behind the ears. He thought of those words from beyond, and how they said something about the dog getting out. Getting out of what?
He reached for his cigar and stuck it in his mouth. After a moment, he said, “Maybe if we stop believing in them, they’ll go away.”
The clock ticked on the mantel.
“I can’t,” Rita said.
“Neither can I.”
The clock ticked some more.
“She’s waiting.”
“I know.”
Darrell leaned his cigar carefully against the ashtray. He noticed his lighter was missing. He shrugged and went upstairs to read Janie her story. He wondered if tonight the ending would be the same as always.
LUCKY
Brooke Vaughn
His name was Greg.
He’d been in a car accident.
He’d lost his spleen and left kidney and was lucky to be alive.
He knew this because the nurse – late thirties, neat as a pin, pretty in a school mistress kind of way – had told him so when he’d woken up groggy and disoriented.
He was in a hospital in Serbia, where he’d been travelling when he’d had the accident. They were attempting to reach his family, but it was proving difficult. They would keep trying.
After Greg had taken a few meagre sips of water, the nurse hovering with quiet concern as his stomach decided whether or not to revolt at the invasion, he sighed and let his head fall weakly back against the pillow. Smiling, somehow warm and clinical at the same time, she left him alone with his empty thoughts.
Had she said her name was Senka? He couldn’t remember. He supposed that it wasn’t particularly important given that he couldn’t recall his own name or anything else about himself. He felt...weirdly numb. Both inside and out.
Hands moving slowly, as if underwater, he pulled aside his nightgown and inspected his new scars, tugging the gauze carefully away from his skin. He probably shouldn’t be disturbing the area but his morbid curiosity got the better of him.
The lines were thin, almost precise, but puffed with ugly bruising and swelling. He’d been stitched back together competently, that much was obvious, and he was thankful that the doctors in Belgrade were apparently of a higher calibre than he would have expected.
And if the extent of his knowledge of Serbia was limited to some vague prejudice and third-world expectations, then what the hell was he doing there?
Greg wondered whether his face was damaged too. It felt alright, but he suspected that the morphine might be clouding his judgement. Gingerly, he pressed his hands to his cheeks and felt carefully around like a blind man attempting to read someone’s features. Which he might as well have been...He couldn’t even remember what he looked like.
His face didn’t seem cut, or even bruised, and he could see that his hands, arms and legs were similarly untouched.
Wow...He really had been lucky.
Greg felt as though he should be panicking that he apparently had amnesia, but he just couldn’t seem to muster any anxiety. Yet another effect of being doped up, he assumed. He spent a little time in a semi-doze, wondering who he was, where he lived, what his family were like. He hoped that he had people to care about him. He hoped that he wasn’t a jerk.
Finally, bored of fruitless introspection and the blank wall in his head, he listened to the sounds of the hospital.
Several minutes later, frowning, he realized that all around him was silent. No squeak of linoleum. No jangle of bedpans or equipment. No beeping of machines, besides the one that he was hooked up to. No voices, no doors banging. Nothing.
The quiet was so deep, echoing around his head and making his ears hurt with the strain, that Greg understood abruptly that his room was soundproofed.
Weird.
It suddenly occurred to him that he must be really rich. His room was immaculate and he looked out onto lush gardens, more like a country estate than a facility, plus he’d obviously received excellent care. Whoever he was, he was evidently doing well for himself.
Oddly proud, he turned on the television set and flipped through the channels, grateful when he finally found HBO after sifting through incomprehensible foreign soap operas and several subtitled films.
Drifting in and out of slumber, he whiled away the afternoon, watching the orange blaze retreat across the wall as the sun began to set. Just as he was trying to find a call button, wondering why no-one had been to check on him, Senka walked into the room, quiet and businesslike.
“How do you feel, Greg?” she enquired in her almost perfect, although heavily accented, English.
“Uh, okay I guess. Still tired and drained. Achy. Mostly confused though...Did you manage to contact my family?”
“Yes, we had some success with that. They are to fly out here tomorrow.”
Greg smiled warily, full of relief but also apprehension. “Do you know who will be flying out? Parents? Am I married?”
“Yes, both. Your parents and your wife will be joining you,” she assured as she checked his machines and propped him up more fully on the pillows. “Time for a little dinner, I think.”
He nodded, distracted, wincing as his stitches pulled slightly. “What’s my wife’s name?”
Senka’s eyes flickered for a moment in a way that took Greg aback, making him think for some crazy reason that she was about to lie to him, or not answer at all.
Barely a beat later, the strange apprehension was gone as she smiled winningly. “Abigail is her name.”
“Abigail,” he repeated to himself. He probably called her Abby.
“She was so scared for you and happy to hear that you are okay. I could hear that she can not wait to get to you; you really are very lucky man.”
Greg felt cautiously happy and optimistic for the first time since waking up. As Senka exited the room to fetch his dinner, he wondered whether he carried a picture of Abby in his wallet. He’d have to ask when the nurse returned.
His name was Greg. He had been in a car accident.
The radiator had been smashed practically through to the passenger seat and he’d ended up with a lapful of dash. He’d lost his spleen, left kidney and left lung and was very lucky to be alive.
He couldn’t remember anything about the accident...or anything else. He had some form of amnesia. But it was okay; the hospital seemed really good and the nurses competent and professional.
His torso looked like a patchwork quilt, the puckered skin around the stitching ugly colors. His breathing was labored and he felt a lot of discomfort even with the morphine pills, but at least he wasn’t dead; it was practically a miracle.
Greg awoke in the middle of the night to hear muffled words near the end of his bed. Too tired and dope-hazed to open his eyes, he tried to focus on what was being said; Senka was talking to the surgeon, who also had a heavy accent, although a different one. Maybe Russian. They spoke together in English.
He was interested to hear whether they said anything about his progress, because he’d been excited to realize that day that snippets of memory were returning. He could remember where he lived in America and his mom and dad’s names. They were flying out tomorrow; it had taken a few days for the hospital to track them down.
He hoped that if he was beginning to recall things just three days after the accident then he had a good chance of recovery. The mental agony of not knowing anything about himself or his loved ones was far greater than the physical pain of his injuries, extensive though they were.
“Not until Friday?! But we can’t wait that long!”
“There is no other option. Mr. Kowalski cannot be moved from Warsaw until then.”
“He’s starting to remember...It’s dangerous to administer to him again so soon.”
“Already? Don’t worry; it’s only another three days. And what can he do?”
Greg felt a rush of alarm and apprehension, but as the figures began to move towards the doorway, voices drifting away like dissipating smoke, the morphine started to pull him back down into its lulling grey mist...
