When Things Get Dark

by Ellen Datlow

  “Well?” Kayla said.

  “Wait a minute,” Jenna said.

  The yellow curtain in front of Mother and Father’s room rustled and flapped. The finger of light on the floor widened to two, three, four fingers, then dimmed as Mother stepped into the living room. She hauled the curtain closed behind her. Mother was dressed in her white housecoat, over which she had tied the green apron on which white letters demanded, DON’T MAKE ME POISON YOUR FOOD. Apron and housecoat were heavy with blood, as were Mother’s slippers. Blood dribbled from the heavy kitchen scissors in her right hand. Because of where she was sitting, Jenna couldn’t see what her mother was holding in her left hand.

  “Girls,” Mother said past the cigarette between her lips. “Come here.” Samantha closed her Catholic Bible and slid it to one side. Kayla left her cards in their placement on the kitchen table. Jenna uncrossed her numb legs and descended the ladder haltingly. Together, she and her sisters formed a half-circle around Mother. Mother’s cat’s-eye glasses, Jenna saw, were speckled with blood. Mother cast what was in her left hand onto the floor. It landed with a meaty splat. For a moment, Jenna saw the twisted, bloody mess and thought it was the snakes from her vision.

  “We’re going to learn haruspexy,” Mother said. Ash dripped from the end of her cigarette as she talked.

  “What’s that?” Samantha said.

  “Organ divination,” Kayla said.

  “Divination with organs,” Jenna said.

  “Same difference,” Kayla said.

  “Pay attention, now,” Mother said.

  For Fiona

  Money of the Dead

  Karen Heuler

  LAURA and her three elderly neighbors had been living in a West Village tenement for over forty years. They weren’t close friends, but as the tenants in the rest of the five-story walkup came and went, they clung to their shared connection to the building’s history and their own place in it. Each floor had a slightly different odor, created—Stella on the fourth floor once told Laura—by the skin cells they each shed every day over the decades. She said that the cells stuck to the walls and produced an odd stippling effect after a fresh paint. There would be the smell of paint for a week, and then the old smells would creep back like spiders repairing their webs.

  “The fifth floor has wallpaper showing through,” Alberto pointed out. Stella remembered that wallpaper, with its pattern of foggy trees and mountains. She recalled the janitor who had put it up, who later fell off a ladder, who had been taken away and never came back. The four old people had, over the years, known neighbors who had died behind their closed doors. The smell had given it away. Stella, for instance, had moved into an apartment where someone had died. She still had a tendency to sniff suspiciously on damp days.

  It was best not to think about that.

  Alberto lived down the hall from Laura, and when she found a package wrapped in red paper outside her door, she naturally asked him about it. He had found one as well. As did Stella. As did Gerald on the first floor. They all contained flimsy but beautiful dollar-sized papers, of various denominations, with Money of the Dead written in script on them. Laura invited her neighbors over for coffee or brandy, whatever they chose, so they could discuss the situation.

  “At first I was afraid it was some notice from the landlord,” Stella said. She was in her eighties but stood straight and slim, with hair cut short like a boy’s. “Is someone pointing out that we’re all old? Is that what it is?”

  “It might be a joke,” Alberto agreed. “There’s an old story where I was born, that ghosts get tired of the places where they died, and search for a nicer place to live. Ghosts are restless.”

  “And do they pay rent? Is that what the money is for?”

  He shrugged. “Someone knows the story and is making a joke? Could be.”

  “Maybe not. Maybe they’re giving it to us to use it for something,” Gerald said. He had a bad habit of winking, which he did then.

  They had all brought their packages and they sat around the table, counting and studying the money. “There are no signatures on any of the bills, and no serial numbers. Just the amount, and Money of the Dead, and a dark image.” Alberto was the most meticulous of the bunch, neat and analytical and, sometimes, slow.

  “It looks like a road at sunset,” Laura said. She considered herself sensitive to the arts.

  “That would be fitting.”

  “And dark shapes at the end. Indistinct. Trees? People?”

  “No one ever knows what’s at the end,” Alberto suggested.

  They had different amounts, ranging from one hundred to five hundred, and no one knew whether it was better to have more or less of it. Who wants to have dead wealth? Were they supposed to buy something with it and pay someone for it?

  “We should wait a day or two,” Gerald said, “in case we get a catalog.” He winked again.

  “Not everything is funny,” Laura said.

  “I believe this is money for the dead,” Stella said. “But what do they want us to do with it?”

  “Exchange it for someone who’s dead?” Laura asked.

  A sudden chill ran through each of them.

  Yes.

  * * *

  Laura went through her photo albums, turning pages to look at her little boy. She had very few of Brian as an adult, and those she did have showed a steady growth of depravity. She chose one photo when Brian was eight and studied it. He had turned into a cold, impatient man and he had dabbled in crimes she could only imagine. He gloated about cheating people. One of his victims had killed him.

  She decided that having her son back—the good son, the boy she remembered—was worth every bit of money she had.

  She told the others what she was thinking.

  “Don’t do it,” Stella said. “I wouldn’t. No good can come of it.”

  “But what else is the money for? They left it for us because we know so many of the dead. They gave it to us for a reason!” She looked around at them, waiting for them to agree.

  Alberto shook his head. “I don’t know. There’s something bad about this.”

  Laura blushed in irritation. They had lived down the hall from each other for almost forty years, and they had little in common. She felt, very often, that he disapproved of her. For what? For the failure that was her son?

  “What else would the money be for?” Laura repeated. “Why else would they choose us?”

  They looked around uneasily; Gerald even raised his eyebrows instead of winking. Stella believed they were the only ones in the building to get the money. Everyone else was young, and the dead don’t matter to the young. But these four were old, and they knew some of the dead.

  On one side, life; on the other, death. It was almost, sometimes, as if they could see across the divide, or hear a furtive, melancholy whistle. Their friends were there, as were their enemies. Did the dead think about them? How often?

  “Maybe we’re supposed to do something special,” Alberto said, lifting his head. They had each been lost in thought. “But I wouldn’t be hasty. We can remember our beloved dead the usual way. Candles. Prayers. No exchange. You’re suggesting an exchange.”

  “I don’t know what to call it,” Laura said. “Reaching out—that’s how I think of it. Like sending money so my boy can visit me.”

  “I think we should be very cautious about this,” Stella said softly. “I imagine there’s a right decision and a wrong decision here, and, since we each have the money, we’re in it together. Let’s think about it some more before we act.”

  The debate continued. Laura sat there, watching it fly around from one insistent neighbor to another. They weren’t going to agree that night, and she had already decided what to do. They could get angry, it didn’t matter. She could recall the years when she was happiest, when Brian still loved her, and here was a chance to have it again. She thought he would come, stay for a while, and then leave. Maybe fade away, like a memory.

  That night she took all the m
oney, folded it in the red paper along with a note that said, Brian, age eight, and the photograph. He was all smiles, looking happy. She placed it outside her door.

  Anxiety kept her awake. She was torn between feeling stupid, regretting such a risky, unpredictable move, and hope. He used to look at her with love, with unrestrained confidence; he used to check in constantly, assuming she knew everything and would always know everything. Perhaps he had never recovered from the realization that she didn’t. It was so hard to believe that a cruel man had been waiting inside that gentle little boy. He had been a radiant child.

  What had changed that child into a thug, a monster, a bully, and a cheat? She had seen nothing—no, there was nothing to see when he was a child, none of what he would come to be. There was no point in blaming herself, was there? They had loved each other then. She had done her best with him and he had repaid that by growing into a man who had stolen from her, threatened her, ruined people she knew, and died in a fight on a dark corner.

  In the middle of the night she regretted offering all the money. Why hadn’t she held some back, just in case? Money might be needed for something else, something she couldn’t imagine yet. She tiptoed out to the door, opened it, and saw the package was still there. A longing suddenly overtook her, a longing for the sweetest part of her life. It didn’t matter how much it cost.

  It might be wrong to change her mind, anyway; it might be insulting to remove some money. She left it.

  Brian was filling her head. How she missed that boy, how she missed the love they’d had for each other. No other love had rivaled that—certainly not the love she’d had for Brian’s father, who had died when Brian was two and had been easily forgotten. The boy had been all that mattered, and had made her life whole.

  Such good thoughts! She slept for a while and woke with anticipation. She got up, her heart beating wildly, and opened the door. The hallway was empty.

  Nothing. Laura was hit by disappointment. She would not see the boy she cherished so much. She had a quick image of the adult Brian, pushed it away, and then flushed in shame. But she hated to think of him as an adult. It was better to forget what he’d become. Over time, he had changed and she had changed too, holding herself back as the ten-year-old, the twelve-year-old, the fourteen-year-old stared her down with contempt. She had lost control totally at fifteen, with his piercings and shaved head or dyed hair, his ripped clothes, and the snarl in his voice. At sixteen, he took her money and a credit card and left. Just left. She hadn’t the heart to cancel her card (it was the one way she knew he was still alive) until the bill came. It took her two years to pay it off. And after that, it got harder. Phone calls, threatening letters, all from people he had cheated. And police visits.

  She turned to make herself some coffee, and stood staring blankly at the wall when Brian came in, rubbing his eyes, asking for cereal. “Mommy,” he said. His voice was soft and familiar and cozy, as if this had been going on every morning of his life—as, of course, it had, at that age. She had missed the sound of it so much, had missed the ease of it.

  She held her breath at the first sound of his voice; she finally let it out. “Eggs?” she asked. “We’re out of cereal.”

  His childish eyes looked at her with attention. “Did you forget me, Mommy?”

  “I didn’t forget you,” she murmured, getting out the eggs. “I forgot the cereal.”

  * * *

  From the moment of his return, Brian shadowed her. That was soothing at first, and confirmed how good they were together. But he never gave an inch. After a week, she was aware of how he crept up behind her and startled her with his breath on her neck. He would push in beside her when she sat on the sofa, and drape his arms around her shoulders and across her chest. How much he loves me, she thought at first, but day after day his hands got tighter and his breath got hotter. “Let me breathe,” she would murmur as she untangled him.

  “Don’t you love me?” he asked sadly and then, once, “Don’t you love me as I am?”

  What did that mean? Why did her heart drop? Had he ever asked her anything like that when he was a child?

  Of course not. She would have remembered. Or would she? Was this love and she had forgotten?

  * * *

  “Who was that?” he asked when Alberto knocked and asked to meet the following night. “He doesn’t like you. He thinks you’re a pushover.”

  “Brian!” she had said, shocked.

  “Well, I think you are, too,” he said without rancor.

  Just that morning he had told her she shouldn’t go out so often, that it was careless. “Why do you always go away? Why won’t you stay here with me? I’m always alone. Is that what you want—to leave me? You can’t stand to be with me?”

  “Never!” she had said, anxiously sitting down beside him so she could hug him. He held his body stiffly, however. Had he felt unloved as a child, is that what he thought? He had been everything to her; what had she been to him?

  And then one day, without preparation, without thought, after he had accused her of staying away too long—he didn’t want her leaving, he said; ever—she blurted out, “And where have you been?”

  All sounds stopped; nothing came through from outside, no sound from the street, no sound from the hallway. Nothing in the sky, even though she couldn’t see the sky. She knew it. The silence layered into deeper and deeper thicknesses, and her heart beat with each ratchet down into the silence. He looked at her as if he’d been waiting for a long time for this question, as if it would all turn on what happened after this moment. What would turn? She wondered that in the side of her mind, a mere notation.

  “You know,” he said, “I was so lonely. You sent me there, didn’t you? You wanted me there. There’s no one there, Mommy. I was all alone. Don’t send me back, Mommy!” He sobbed in a dry voice that still managed to pierce her.

  “I would never,” she told him. “I would never.” They held each other even as she recalled what a relief it had been when he died. She held him tighter. But how relieved she had been!

  “Don’t send me away, Mommy! Please, Mommy!” His teeth showed like a madhouse clown’s and he repeated that “Mommy” a few more times.

  Then he started using that word relentlessly, lisping it, snarling it, saying it dreamily or even lustily. Oh how she learned to hate it. “Where have you been, Mommy? Did you talk to anyone, Mommy? Mommy, there’s no more milk. Mommy, why were you gone so long? Don’t you love me, Mommy?”

  There were times when he looked heartbroken, his eyes gleaming, and cried out, “I don’t think you want me here, Mommy. Do you?”

  Did she? Had she made a terrible mistake? This wasn’t the Brian she remembered, the charming boy who giggled at their private jokes. This Brian was challenging, complaining, and possessive. She had always wondered how Brian had become such a brutal adult, whether she had somehow contributed to it, formed him, influenced him. Had she? How?

  She ran into Alberto a few weeks after Brian arrived, as she was leaving her apartment—or, she thought later, maybe Alberto had been waiting outside her door for a while. His apartment was in the front of the building; hers was in the rear by the staircase.

  He cleared his throat and asked, “Any problems? I mean, with the, with the—the package?”

  She had never much cared for Alberto’s stiffness, but she felt lifted up to see a person who wasn’t Brian. “It’s not what I expected,” she admitted. “I asked for my son as a child again, the best age, and it’s not what I remembered. You?”

  “I had a friend who killed himself, a long time ago, when we were in college. He was the most interesting person at school. I’ve never been able to stop thinking about him, about how I might have said something, one word, one sentence, that would have made a difference. I remember him as remarkable and vibrant.”

  “How is he now?” she asked, touching him lightly near the elbow. She had never touched him before, but it felt good; human.

  She was afraid for a moment that
Brian might see it, somehow. She let her hand drop.

  Alberto stood there, frowning, his eyes looking into the air. “It’s not what I thought,” he said finally. “I’ve always wondered if I might have made a difference. He says I would. He says he gave up because of me.”

  They both were silent until she said, “Alberto, I’m so sorry. Do you believe it’s true?”

  His eyes, which had been staring almost absently away, turned back to her. “What else can I believe?”

  Even if Brian couldn’t see them, maybe he was listening on the other side of the door. She motioned to move down the hallway; surely they couldn’t be overheard there. Still, she dropped her voice. “Are we sure that they are who we think they are?”

  He nodded. “Or the reverse. I sometimes wonder if I am who I think I am.”

  “Oh,” she said, nonplussed. They were who they’d always been. Of course they were. “I haven’t seen Stella or Gerald lately, have you?”

  “I saw Gerald a few days ago. He was coming out or going in—at any rate, in his doorway. He said he had found someone to buy his share of the money. He had listed it on eBay. I don’t think that was wise, do you? But he’s always been that way. Out for himself, I mean.”

  Who isn’t out for themselves? Laura wondered, but that was Alberto—disapproving. Although she didn’t care for Gerald either.

  * * *

  Stella lived on the fourth floor, and Laura followed Alberto upstairs to check on their neighbor. They stood outside her door while he tapped once, twice. There was no answer. What a weak knock he has, Laura thought, and pounded loudly. “Stella!” she called. “Stella! It’s Laura and Alberto! Talk to us.”

  And then they heard the lock turn, and Laura repeated, “It’s us, Stella. Your neighbors.”

  The door opened and Stella blinked at them. “Thank God it’s you,” she whispered. “Has it been you each time? Are you banging on my door every night?”

  “No,” Alberto said. “We haven’t seen you in a while, so we came by to check. What’s going on?”