“They will play tonight. At the festival.”
The show. Was it a good sign that even the dead knew there was a gig out in bumfuck nowhere?
“For so long we have waited for an answer, something to soothe our ears. I’ve met my grandchildren’s grandchildren but even they won’t dare. No one has been buried here in years. No one is as foolish as we were.”
The man moved forward quickly and a wave of sulfur marked the air that preceded him.
“Let me touch you, I want to feel your living flesh.”
Just then, Johnny dashed through the crowd and yanked Phil away from the man.
“We’re going to play your damned music, just let us go,” Johnny barked with a bravery that infused R.J. and Phil.
“The singer.” They awed. “Mend your words with their instruments and guide us to an unearthly light. Take us to Heaven. Let us go home”
“Sure thing, buddy,” Johnny said pulling his band mates through the clouds.
“Jesus, Johnny, how’d you find us?”
“More than a fashion statement for once,” he said and lifted a silver cross that dangled around his neck.
There would’ve been a normal ribbing for faith, but R.J. and Phil hadn’t decided if this was part of the dream or not.
“I wandered around and met some creepy guy in his car. He told me I better get you two out of there. Gave me this.” He pointed at the cross.
“They would’ve killed us,” Phil said as they passed the clock.
The clouds dissipated more as they finally reached the road. Their van was in sight once again and the area surrounding the cemetery was as clear as day.
The man in the car sat there still waiting. He shifted as he saw the three coming up behind him. The man looked at his wristwatch again, and then unlocked his car door. He stepped out calmly.
“You’re trespassing.” He said, “best be on your way now.”
He stood firmly with his arms crossed. Phil looked back into the cemetery to see the clouds were gone. It looked normal and empty.
They piled back into the van it was two o’clock.
After several hours of silence and confusion, they were in front of a crowd smaller than they’d dreamed. They couldn’t tell if the crowd liked their music. At times, it felt like they weren’t even playing their songs. But they knew their hands moved along the frets and cymbals as they always had, as they had practiced repeatedly. And when they looked at Johnny he sung their lyrics, didn’t he?
The stage filled with fog from a machine, the smell of dry ice smelled nothing like the cemetery. They played and pretended they felt safe.
They played for a whole hour before they realized they had no more songs.
All they heard was the ticking of the clock. Keeping them in perfect rhythm as they packed up the van. Like a metronome, it steered them down the road at the posted speed limit.
They felt it when it stopped.
There was a dispersing of sighs, laughter even.
It only lasted an hour.
But they didn’t want to admit to each other that they could hear it again.
Tick. Tock.
Until the end of their days.
Tick. Tock.
THE END.
STAIRS BY R. WILLIAM KENT
There was a scream and a thud. Eddie recognized it immediately and ran out of the upstairs bathroom. On the landing, he saw his wife Erin holding her knee.
"I'm alright," she said. "Probably will have a bruise." She stretched out her leg and tried to stand. Eddie was already at her side helping her to her feet. "Really, I'm fine."
"But is the baby?"
"Don't joke. I'm not pregnant." Erin said pushing him away and yanking her curly brown hair away from her face. Eddie laughed.
"Come on, I need to get your mom off my back."
Erin agreed. Every outside force known to man had pressured them. Even God was demanding them to have children, or so their Pastor told them. That was what marriage was for, having children. But Erin and Eddie had been pleased just to enjoy each other. How could they ever introduce another person into their lives when the 5 hours after work and before bed was tied up with making dinner, packing lunch for the next day and depressurizing?
"I'm okay," she reiterated. The look on Eddie's face was disbelieving. "I just wasn't paying attention and tripped."
"Well I'm going to have to carry you up to bed." Eddie dawned a big smile, placed his hands on her hips, and started to lift her.
"I'm not that little. Stop it!" She swatted his hands away and started back up the steps.
"I'm not that weak!" Eddie sprung up the steps and in laughter the two collapsed onto a queen sized bed.
That wasn't the first incident on the stairs.
When they had moved in a year earlier the third step before the landing snapped while they carried up an antique dresser. No one was hurt, but from the crack came a low hiss, like that of a wounded cat. Only when they checked beneath the steps in the closet under the stairs there were no trapped felines to be found.
The step was replaced with new wood and later the whole staircase was covered in tan carpet.
A few moments after depressurizing Eddie came down the L shaped stairs intending to get a glass of water. But a bulge in the carpet just after the landing stopped him.
"Babe, here's what you tripped on," He called upstairs.
Erin's mouth was full with toothpaste as she peaked out of the bathroom.
"It's a nail that's come up."
"Mmm." Erin mumbled something and then went into the bathroom to wash out her mouth. She returned and said, "Isn't that the one that broke when we moved in?"
"I don't think so?" He couldn't remember, "Maybe."
"Oh what are you doing?"
Eddie was tearing up the carpet.
"I've got to get it back down. Erin, take a Chill pill and breathe. We can glue the carpet back down. But I don't want to worry about dodging a nail when I'm sleepwalking down the stairs in the morning." He pulled the carpet away to reveal a new board. "It is."
"It is what?"
"The new step we put in. And it's loose." He wiggled it around a little. All the nails had started coming up and just one had risen up a full inch. "I'll get a hammer."
He walked down the steps for a hammer. When he returned Erin was crouched over the step.
"It's making that hissing sound again."
"Wonder if it's a gas leak or something."
They both smelled the air. There was nothing out of the ordinary.
"Unless we're intoxicated it doesn't smell like anything. But now that you put it in my head, I don't think I'll sleep well imagining this house filling up with gas. I can just see the alarm going off and ka-boom!" She stood up and started back up the stairs. "You give me nightmares."
Eddie began to hammer.
"Of course that is if I can fall asleep with all this racket." She shut the door to the bedroom.
Erin couldn't fall asleep, it was after midnight, and though she thought the hammering was still going, it had long stopped. Still it was as if the echo wouldn't leave her eardrums. Eddie was not in the bed beside her. She double-checked her eyes by feeling for him. The bed was cold, the sheets still tight from being made in the morning. She tried to hear the hammering again but the house was silent. For what seemed like hours, she just listened. She couldn't imagine Eddie still being awake. He was probably watching television after he fixed the step and passed out in the recliner. He'd hate himself in the morning with a kink in his neck and that sweaty feeling he’d get from skin on leather.
She thought the idea was enough to get her back to sleep. But she knew she would be able to hear the television, even if the sound was low, there would be that hum of static in the air that she knew by heart.
After much debate, she decided she needed a glass of water. Thirst was her excuse to leave her warm bed to seek out Eddie. She fumbled in the dark to turn on the lamp and then fought yawns on her way to the do
or. She woke up completely when she stepped out into the hallway and saw what had happened to the stairs.
The carpet was bunched up all the way to the top second floor and it looked like the other half was pulled all the way down to the first floor. All the steps had been removed only the landing remained. She peered over the steps into the darkness that was supposed to be the closet under the stairs. She turned on all the lights and went along the railing to see if perhaps Eddie was on the first floor. But all she could see was the other half of the carpet.
"Eddie?" She called out, repeating his name every few moments. The only answer was silence. She listened as she started to worry. But she knew she would've heard him fall if he had fallen. The hammering. Her fear grew stronger and started to strangle her. She couldn't breathe. All the hammering she kept hearing it could've been Eddie falling.
"Eddie!" She screamed this time. A scream would wake their neighbors. They would be confused by the ensuing silence and resume their slumbers. Erin would not be so lucky. Her heart raced as she tried to figure out how she could get downstairs to check inside the closet.
She was scared that if she jumped for the landing it would breakthrough, and worse if Eddie was down below she could crush him. Only the sides of the stairs remained, an inch of more of wood with nails sticking up and a third piece ran down the middle. She had to balance herself and use the small ledge to get downstairs. It was the only way down. She looked again and held onto the railing as she twisted her left foot around a nail and started to inch down. Little by little she scooted her feet along. Every now and again, it felt like the railing would snap and she would fall backwards into the hole. She called his name again. She started to cry just as she reached the landing.
The landing offered no promise of safety. It looked like gelatin. Like it would just start to sway if she stepped on it. But it didn't. It didn't even give so much as a creak. It was firm and solid. Erin’s knees were gelatin. The soles of her feet ached from stepping on nail heads and her toes were red. She would have to do it all over again. Or she could jump. She looked at the wad of carpet and then at her surroundings. She wanted more space to run before she jumped. She tried twice to bring herself to it, but each time she stopped dead in her tracks and looked below her into the darkness. Why couldn't she see into the closet, why weren't the lights showing their coats and board games?
She was dreaming. That would make it all make sense. But she was not that lucky. It was all too real, even the abyss below her didn't feel out of place. In a dream, she could wake herself. In a dream, it wouldn't be this familiar, this painful. She did what she had to do. She forced herself along the wall, clinging to the railing, tiptoeing across nails.
The foyer felt colder than any room she had ever been in. Had the door been left open? Not the front door, that was obvious as it was still dead bolted shut, but perhaps the backdoor.
She called his name again. This time it wasn’t for anyone to hear, it was a futile thread of hope that she had forced through her darkest of thoughts. He was dead and everything was going to change for her. She didn’t know how she would call the police, tell his mother, tell her mother, tell his boss, and tell her friends.
“Eddie,” she said again louder trying to pretend that those dark thoughts could be pushed out of her mind. “Eddie?” Again as if repetition was going to change everything, like Schrodinger’s cat. He’s not dead until she opens the box. “Eddie!” She screamed.
She was at the door to the closet under the stairs. She couldn’t open it.
She finally said aloud, “Open it.” She tried ordering herself to accept the truth. He’ll be dead inside.
She freaked. In a moment, she was turning on every light in the house, searching every room downstairs for Eddie except the closet. She found nothing. No open window and no open door to explain the coldness. She had even looked out the window and seen Eddie’s SUV still parked across the street.
She prayed the only prayer she knew, and she only knew the gist of it. “Our father,” she started. Her voice went soft as she reached for the doorknob. She finished with an ‘amen’ that was more breath than speech. The doorknob clicked open and the door felt loose in its hinges. It opened itself. Erin couldn’t possibly have found the excitement in her to discover her husband’s corpse. She reached into the darkness and flicked on the light, even though light poured down from the stairwell. The board games were there, the jackets were there, and even the shoes and boots were undisturbed. But where was Eddie?
She slammed the door shut. How was she going to get back upstairs to bed? She decided to sleep on the couch instead. Worse ideas than his death started to seep into her head. He snuck out. He snuck out and he was cheating on her. Something he had done without her knowing for years now. He wanted to have kids and he was trying with every whore in Chicago he could find. But it didn’t make sense why he pulled up the carpet and the steps. It didn’t make sense and it wouldn’t let Erin fall asleep again.
“Screw you, Eddie,” she said. Cursing the dead felt so wrong she immediately told God she was sorry and immediately tried to send some psychic relay to Eddie, reminding him she loved him always. And that’s when there was an answer.
She heard the breathing, the moaning. It came from what remained of the stairs. Her ears perked up but she didn’t want to move. Both fear and dread encompassed her and pinned her to the couch. She could hear something stranger now.
She could hear someone walking down the stairs. Only there were no stairs anymore.
“Eddie.” She whimpered.
Erin moved from that house shortly after. Eddie never returned. She would stay at her mother’s home in Springfield until the economy improved and her house in Chicago could be sold. The stairs were fixed before the sale. They were perfect. Erin walked up and down them as she moved out her things. She watched others and was finally satisfied with the idea of mental illness. Eddie had lost his mind one night, gone off in a rage tearing the stairs apart. Unable to contain himself he ran out into the night to freeze to death. She could imagine him in some alleyway, the cold Chicago weather preserving his corpse, keeping the stink from causing alarm.
That made more sense than what Erin had experienced each night before she finally fled the house. The steps creaked and sounded as if someone was walking up them. Each time it sounded like Eddie. The same weight, the same long sigh as he decompressed from a long day at work.
The new tenants made one complaint to the realtor on their final walkthrough. There were a lot of nails sticking up from the boards on the stairs. Erin paid to have them fixed again before the sale.
A year later Erin returned. Just a drive by— visiting old haunts for the sake of having finally distanced herself from Eddie’s disappearance. She noticed that the house looked abandoned. While the rest of the street was dressed in Christmas lights, her old home was dark, and gloomy. She couldn’t resist the urge. She ran up the steps and peered in. It was too dark to see. She knocked.
No one seemed to be home. It didn’t feel right to her at all, but she reminded herself it was no longer her problem. She went to step off the front stoop. When she heard the steps. She twisted back eager to greet the person who would answer the door. She could almost hear them reach for the deadbolt. Her heart fluttered that it might be Eddie. She begged that it would be. But the lock never turned. The door never opened.
Erin waited longer than she thought she could. And then she waited longer. But finally, her heart cracked, all hope was lost. She drove to her new home vowing never to return again.
Something followed her home that night. She heard it coming up the stairs.
THE END.
AND THEY WALK THE DEAD BY JON MERCER
They all clapped. All around me, my nurses, the asshole therapist, normally the best that came out of their mouths was telling me I was doing great, I was really improving. Hell, if I was improving?
I wasn’t.
But there is something to be found in anger and desper
ation. A channel, a connection to something I never believed in. All around me, I could feel them lifting me up as if they were pushing my legs forward. I could feel them tugging at me. Each one strained under me. Braced their little shoulders beneath my calves and lifted.
“One more step,” my therapist urged.
I shook my head and she said not to give up. I shook my head because it is not me. I am not walking. They moved my leg forward. The nurses were tearing up. Was this why they work this job? Why they treat me like shit every day? So they can feel like they saved my worthless soul?
You powder my balls!
I almost stumbled back as they moved my left leg without me expecting.
“That’s enough, that’s quite enough.” She beamed, “Sit down, Mr. Berkeley.” She wrapped her arms around my waist and led me from between the two balancing poles and back into my chair. Meanwhile they tugged at my legs, trying to get me off the chair. Disappointed, they shrugged and let go. I’m pushed back to my room, as the nurse rallied up every patient and doctor. Oh, look at me will you? I supposedly walked today! Tiny Tim can walk, it’s a god damned Christmas Miracle!
The nonsense took forever to die down, but when it was finally done, I was alone in my room again, with them. They hadn’t left me since I connected with them. Since my sobs brought them to my bedside.
“Would you have me dance next?” I waved them off into a corner where they conspired in chatty whispers. Looking over cupped hands, what were they plotting?
Like the television with the sound turned off, I couldn’t hear a word. I couldn’t hear them move, they just did. As if the wretched god who gave them to this world had not conceived of ears yet and thus had no purpose to give them a noise. Maybe they’d always been here, and I just never noticed them before.
My senility brought them forth.
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