“And it was great, those first few days with her. You saw for yourself how well we got along. It wasn’t until afterwards that everything went wrong, when she started telling me about all the stuff she wanted, giving me orders, making me do crazy things.”
“Look,” I said. “If there’s anything crazy going on around here, you’re the one who’s responsible. And you better get your act together and put a stop to it right now. Maybe you can’t do it alone, the shape you’re in, but I’ve got a friend, a doctor—”
“Doctor? You think I’m whacko, is that it?” He started shaking all over and there was a funny look in his eyes. “Here I thought you’d help me, you were my last hope!”
“I want to help,” I told him. “That’s why I came. First off, let’s try to clean this place up. Then you’re going to bed, get a good night’s rest.”
“What about Estelle?” he whispered.”
“Leave that to me. When you wake up tomorrow I promise the dummy’ll be gone.”
That’s when he threw the bottle at my head.
I was still shaking the next afternoon when I got to Dr. Mannerheim’s office and told him what happened.
“Missed me by inches,” I said. “But it sure gave me one hell of a scare. I ran down the hall to the living room. That damn dummy was still sitting in front of the TV like it was listening to the program and that scared me too, all over again. I kept right on running until I got home. That’s when I called your answering service.”
Mannerheim nodded at me. “Sorry it took so long to get back to you. I had some unexpected business.”
“Look, Doc,” I said. “I’ve been thinking. Curtis wasn’t really trying to hurt me. The poor guy’s so uptight he doesn’t realize what he’s doing anymore. Maybe I should have stuck around, tried to calm him down.”
“You did the right thing.” Mannerheim took off his glasses and polished them with his handkerchief. “Curtis is definitely psychotic, and very probably dangerous.”
That shook me. “But when I came here last week you said he was harmless—”
Dr. Mannerheim put his glasses on. “I know. But since then I’ve found out a few things.”
“Like what?”
“Your friend Curtis lied when he told you he quit his job. He didn’t quit—he was fired.”
“How do you know?”
“I heard about it the day after I saw you, when his boss called me in. I was asked to run a series of tests on key personnel as part of a security investigation. It seems that daily bank deposits for the store show a fifty-thousand dollar loss in the cash-flow. Somebody juggled the books.”
“The Mercedes!” I said. “So that’s where he got the money!”
“We can’t be sure just yet. But polygraph tests definitely rule out other employees who had access to the records. We do know where he bought the car. The dealer only got a down-payment so the rest of the cash, around forty thousand, is still unaccounted-for.”
“Then it’s all a scam, right, Doc? What he really means to do is take the cash and split out. He was running a number on me about the dummy, trying to make me think he’s bananas, so I wouldn’t tumble to what he’s up to.”
“I’m afraid it isn’t that simple.” Mannerheim got up and started pacing the floor. “I’ve been doing some rethinking about Curtis and his hallucination that the dummy is alive. That canary you mentioned—a pity he didn’t get it before he stole the mannequin.”
“What are you driving at?”
“There are a lot of lonely people in this world, people who aren’t necessarily lonely by choice. Some are elderly, some have lost all close relatives through death, some suffer an after-shock following divorce. But all of them have one thing in common—the need for love. Not physical love, necessarily, but what goes with it. The companionship, attention, a feeling of mutual affection. That’s why so many of them turn to keeping pets.
“I’m sure you’ve seen examples. The man who spends all his time taking care of his dog. The widow who babies her kitten. The old lady who talks to her canary, treating it like an equal.” I nodded. “The way Curtis treats the dummy?” Mannerheim settled down in his chair again. “Usually they don’t go that far. But in extreme cases the pretense gets out of hand. They not only talk to their pets, they interpret each growl or purr or chirp as a reply. It’s called personification.”
“But these pet-owners—they’re harmless, aren’t they? So why do you say Curtis might be dangerous?”
Dr. Mannerheim leaned forward in his chair. “After talking to the people at the store I did a little further investigation on my own. This morning I went down to the courthouse and checked the files. Curtis told you he got a divorce here in town three months ago, but there’s no record of any proceedings. And I found out he was lying to you about other things. He was married, all right; he did own a house and furniture and a car.
But there’s nothing to show he ever turned anything over to his wife. Chances are he sold his belongings to pay off gambling debts. We know he did some heavy betting at the track.”
“We?” I said. “You and who else?”
“Sheriff’s department. They’re the ones who told me about his wife’s disappearance, three months ago.”
“You mean she ran out on him?”
“That’s what he said after neighbors noticed she was missing and they called him in this morning. He told them downtown that he’d come home from work one night and his wife was gone, bag and baggage—no explanation, no note, nothing. He denied they’d quarreled, said he’d been too ashamed to report her absence, and had kept hoping she’d come back or at least get in touch with him.”
“Did they buy his story?”
Mannerheim shrugged. “Women do leave their husbands, for a variety of reasons, and there was nothing to show Curtis wasn’t telling the truth. They put out an all-points on his wife and kept the file open, but so far no new information has turned, up, not until this embezzlement matter and your testimony. I didn’t mention that this morning, but I have another appointment this evening and I’ll tell them then. I think they’ll take action, once they hear your evidence.”
“Wait a minute,” I said. “I haven’t given you any evidence.”
“I think you have.” Mannerheim stared at me. “According to the neighbors, Curtis was married to a tall blonde with blue eyes, just like the window dummy you saw. And his wife’s name was Estelle.”
It was almost dark by the time I got to the bar. The Happy Hour had started, but I wasn’t happy. All I wanted was a drink—a couple of drinks—enough to make me forget the whole thing.
Only it didn’t work out that way. I kept thinking about what Mannerheim told me, about Curtis and the mess he was in.
The guy was definitely psyched-out, no doubt about that. He’d ripped-off his boss, lost his job, screwed up his life.
But maybe it wasn’t his fault. I knew what he’d gone through because I had been there myself. Getting hit with a divorce was bad enough to make me slip my gears, and for him it must have been ten times worse. Coming home and finding his wife gone, just like that, without a word. He never said so, but he must have loved her—loved her so much that when she left him he flipped-out, stealing the dummy, calling it by her name. Even when he got to feeling trapped he couldn’t give the dummy up because it reminded him of his wife. All this was pretty far-out, but I could understand. Like Mannerheim said, everybody needs a little love.
If anyone was to blame, it was that wife of his. Maybe she split because she was cheating on him, the way mine did. The only difference is that I could handle it and he cracked up. Now he’d either be tossed in the slammer or get put away in a puzzle-factory, and all because of love. His scuzzy wife got away free and he got dumped on. After Mannerheim talked to the law they’d probably come and pick him up tonight—poor guy, he didn’t have a chance.
Unless I gave it to him.
I ordered up another drink and thought about that. Sure, if I tipped him off and told
him to run it could get me into a bind. But who would know? The thing of it was, I could understand Curtis, even put myself in his place. Both of us had the same raw deal, but I’d lucked-out and he couldn’t take it. Maybe I owed him something—at least a lousy phone-call.
So I went over to the pay-phone at the end of the bar. This big fat broad was using the phone, probably somebody’s cheating wife handing her husband a line about why she wasn’t home. When I came up she gave me a dirty look and kept right on yapping.
It was getting on towards eight o’clock now. I didn’t know when Dr. Mannerheim’s appointment was set with the Sheriff’s department, but there wouldn’t be much time left. And Curtis’s apartment was only three blocks away.
I made it in five minutes, walking fast. So fast that I didn’t even look around when I crossed in front of the entrance to the building’s underground-parking place.
If I hadn’t heard the horn I’d have been a goner. As it was, there were just about two seconds for me to jump back when the big blue car came tearing up the ramp and wheeled into the street. Just two seconds to get out of the way, look up, and see the Mercedes take off.
Then I took off too, running into the building and down the hall.
The only break I got was finding Curtis’s apartment door wide open. He was gone—I already knew that—but all I wanted now was to use the phone.
I called the Sheriff’s office and Dr. Mannerheim was there. I told him where I was and about seeing the car take off, and after that things happened fast.
In a couple of minutes a full squad of deputies wheeled in. They went through the place and came up with zilch. No Curtis, no Estelle—even the dummy’s clothes were missing. And if he had forty grand or so stashed away, that was gone too; all they found was a rip in a sofa-cushion where he could have hid the loot.
But another squad had better luck, if you can call it that. They located the blue Mercedes in an old gravel-pit off the highway about five miles out of town.
Curtis was lying on the ground next to it, stone-cold dead, with a big butcher knife stuck between his shoulder-blades. The dummy was there too, lying a few feet away. The missing money was in Curtis’s wallet—all big bills—and the dummy’s wardrobe was in the rear seat, along with Curtis’s luggage, like he’d planned to get out of town for good.
Dr. Mannerheim was with the squad out there and he was the one who suggested digging into the pit. It sounded wild, but he kept after them until they moved a lot of gravel. His hunch paid off, because about six feet down they hit pay-dirt.
It was a woman’s body, or what was left of it after three months in the ground.
The coroner’s office had a hell of a time making an ID. It turned out to be Curtis’s wife, of course, and there were about twenty stab-wounds on her, all made with a butcher knife like the one that killed Curtis.
Funny thing, they couldn’t get any prints off the handle; but there were a lot of funny things about the whole business. Dr. Mannerheim figured Curtis killed his wife and buried her in the pit, and what sent him over the edge was guilt-feelings. So he stole the dummy and tried to pretend it was his wife. Calling her Estelle, buying all those things for her—he was trying to make up for what he’d done, and finally he got to the point where he really thought she was alive.
Maybe that makes sense, but it still doesn’t explain how Curtis was killed, or why.
I could ask some other questions too. If you really believe something with all your heart and soul, how long does it take before it comes true? And how long does a murder victim lie in her grave plotting to get even?
But I’m not going to say anything. If I told them my reasons they’d say I was crazy too.
All I know is that when the Mercedes came roaring out of the underground garage I had only two seconds to get out of the way. But it was long enough for me to get a good look, long enough for me to swear I saw Curtis and the dummy together in the front seat.
And Estelle was the one behind the wheel.
Angel’s Exchange
Jessica Amanda Salmonson
Admiring the title Tales By Moonlight which Jessica Salmonson used for her anthology, we said so. She said she’d had a dream once of “the perfect title”: “I awoke in the middle of the night thinking, ‘My gosh! That’s great! I’ve got to write it down or I’ll forget it come morning!”’ She did so, and “come morning, I had indeed forgotten . . . and looked about for the scrap, which said very clearly: Night Skirt.” Seattle’s gift to fantasy did a doubletake. “Night skirt? I threw the scrap away!”
Salmonson, born January 6, 1950, finds time to see a weekly samurai film—surely an influence upon her novels Tomoe Gozen, Thousand Shrine Warrior, and her newest, Ou Lu Khen and the Beautiful Madwoman. Her envelopes are decorated, too, with colorful images of Japan—plus pictures of strawberries which actually have a fragrance! Jessica . . . surprises.
“Angel’s Exchange,” the prose-poem following, she “rather likes” because of “its oddness.” The Strange Company has collected eleven of them in a chapbook entitled Innocent of Evil, and also will be publishing her anthology of 19th century yarns, The Haunted Wherry and Other Rare Ghost Stories. To save you looking it up, a “wherry” was a broad, light barge. Salmonson has style!
“Ah, my brother angel Sleep, I beg a boon of thee,” said grimacing Death.
“It cannot be,” answered Sleep, “that I grant a gift of slumber to you, for Death must be forever vigilant in his cause.”
“That is just it,” said Death. “I grow melancholy with my lot. Everywhere I go, I am cursed by those I strive most to serve. The forgetfulness of your gift brings momentary respite and would help a wearied spirit heal.”
“I can scarce believe you are greeted with less enthusiasm than I!” exclaimed the angel Sleep, appalled and incredulous. “Despite the transience of the gift I bring to mortals, they seem ever happy to have had it for a time. Your own gift is an everlasting treasure, and should be sought more quickly than mine.”
“Aye, some seek me out, but never in joyous mind,” said Death, his voice low and self-pitying. “You are praised at morning’s light, when people have had done with you. Perhaps it is the very impermanence of your offering which fills them with admiration; the gift itself means little.”
“I cannot see that that is so,” said Sleep, though not affronted by the extrapolation. “What I would give for your gift held to my breast! Do you think there is anything so weary as Sleep itself? Yet I am denied your boon, as you are denied mine; I, without a moment’s rest, deliver it to others, like a starving grocery-boy on rounds. It is my ceaseless task to give humanity a taste of You, so they might be prepared. Yet you say they meet you with hatred and trepidation. Have I, then, failed my task?”
“I detect an unhappiness as great as mine,” said Death, a rueful light shining in the depths of his hollow eyes.
“Brothers as we are,” said Sleep, “it is sad to realize we know so little of the other’s sentiment. Each of us is unhappy with our lot. This being so, why not trade professions? You take my bag of slumber, and I your bag of souls; but if we find ourselves dissatisfied even then, we must continue without complaint.”
“I would not mind giving you my burden and taking up yours,” said Death. “Even if I remain sad, I cannot believe I would be sadder; and there is the chance things would improve for me.”
So Death and Sleep exchanged identities. Thereafter, Sleep came nightly to the people of the world, a dark presence, sinister, with the face of a skull; and thereafter, Death came, as bright and beautiful as Gabriel, with as sweet a sound. In time, great cathedrals were raised, gothic and somber, and Sleep was worshipped by head-shaven, emaciated monks. Thereafter, beauty was considered frightening. The prettiest children were sacrificed in vain hope of Death’s sweet face not noticing the old.
Thus stands the tale of how Death became Sleep and Sleep became Death. If the world was fearful before, it is more so now.
Down by the Sea
Joe R. Lansdale
When writing is published under a pseudonym, there can be many reasons for it. Fame elsewhere and fear of a conflict of interests; a reputation in maudlin poetry while the pseudonymous work is pornographic; he (or she) places so much material in the same genre that the market appears oversaturated with his customary byline; he’s ashamed of it but needs the money; etc.
There’s this safe conclusion: The author adores writing so much that he’s willing to relinquish the joy of seeing his real name in print.
Joe Lansdale’s yarns have appeared under four pseudonyms—“Jonathan Harker” one example of this full-time writer’s gall—and he’s never had to be ashamed of anything. The one writer I know who may have to write more than I is the Nacogdoches, Texas Terror, with over 60 tales of original, point-blank horror.
He’s young (October 28, 1951) yet he’s sold to Twilight Zone, The Saint, Cavalier, and such leading anthologies as Necropolis of Horror (“The White Rabbit”—“one of the truly original concepts in the genre,” said the editor); Shadows 6 (“Hair of the Head”); Fears; Spectre; and Great Stories from the Twilight Zone (“The Dump”). Joe’s psychosexual suspenses Act of Love, subtly shows the influence of his confessed “role models”: Matheson, Nolan, King, Bloch, and McCammon.
“Down By the Sea” is a tale that makes you a quivering observer—not by keyhole but by camera close-up that puts you squarely there, wringing your hands, screaming that somebody must do something. My inclination was to run . . .
Down by the sea near the great big rock, they made their camp and toasted marshmallows over a small, fine fire. The night was pleasantly chill and the sea spray cold. Laughing, talking, eating the gooey marshmallows, they had one swell time; just them, the sand, the sea and the sky, and the great big rock.
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