The Dark

by Ellen Datlow

  What Batu thought Eric should say to Charley, if he really liked her: “Come live with me. Come live at the All-Night.”

  What Eric thought about saying to Charley: “If you’re going away, take me with you. I’m about to be twenty years old, and I’ve never been to college. I sleep days in a storage closet, wearing someone else’s pajamas. I’ve worked retail jobs since I was sixteen. I know people are hateful. If you need to bite someone, you can bite me.”

  Baka bir yere gidelim mi?

  Shall we go somewhere else?

  Charley drives by. There is a little black dog in the passenger window, leaning out to swallow the fast air. There is a yellow dog. An Irish setter. A Doberman. Akitas. Charley has rolled the window so far down that these dogs could jump out, if they wanted, when she stops the car at a light. But the dogs don’t jump. So Charley drives them back again.

  BATU SAID IT was clear Charley had a great capacity for hating, and also a great capacity for love. Charley’s hatred was seasonal: in the months after Christmas, Christmas puppies started growing up. People got tired of trying to housetrain them. All February, all March, Charley hated people. She hated people in December, too, just for practice.

  Being in love, Batu said, like working retail, meant that you had to settle for being hated, at least part of the year. That was what the months after Christmas were all about. Neither system—not love, not retail—was perfect. When you looked at dogs, you saw this, that love didn’t work.

  Batu said it was likely that Charley, both her person and her Chevy, were infested with dog ghosts. These ghosts were different from the zombies. Non-human ghosts, he said, were the most difficult of all ghosts to dislodge, and dogs were worst of all. There is nothing as persistent, as loyal, as clingy, as a dog.

  “So can you see these ghosts?” Eric said.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Batu said. “You can’t see that kind of ghost. You smell them.”

  “What do they smell like?” Eric said. “How do you get rid of them?”

  “Either you smell it or you don’t,” Batu said. “It’s not something I can describe. And it isn’t a serious thing. More like dandruff, except they don’t make a shampoo for it. Maybe that’s what we should be selling: shampoo that gets rid of ghosts, the dog kind and the zombies, all that kind of thing. Our problem is that we’re new-style retail, but everything we stock is the same old crap.”

  “People need Mountain Dew,” Eric said. “And aspirin.”

  “I know,” Batu said. “It just makes me crazy sometimes.”

  Civarda turistik yerler var mi, acaba?

  Are there any tourist attractions around here, I wonder?

  Eric woke up and found it was dark. It was always dark when he woke up, and this was always a surprise. There was a little window on the back wall of the storage closet, that framed the dark like a picture. You could feel the cold night air propping up the walls of the All-Night, thick and wet as glue.

  Batu had let him sleep in. Batu was considerate of other people’s sleep.

  All day long, in Eric’s dreams, store managers had arrived, one after another, announced themselves, expressed dismay at the way Batu had reinvented—compromised—convenience retail. In Eric’s dream, Batu had put his large, handsome arm over the shoulder of the store managers, promised to explain everything in a satisfactory manner, if they would only come and see. The store managers had all gone, in a docile, trusting way, trotting after Batu, across the road, looking both ways, to the edge of the Ausable Chasm. They stood there, in Eric’s dream, peering down into the Chasm, and then Batu had given them a little push, a small push, and that was the end of that store manager, and Batu walked back across the road to wait for the next store manager.

  Eric bathed standing up at the sink and put on his uniform. He brushed his teeth. The closet smelled like sleep.

  It was the middle of February, and there was snow in the All-Night parking lot. Batu was clearing the parking lot, carrying shovelfuls of snow across the road, dumping the snow into the Ausable Chasm. Eric went outside for a smoke and watched. He didn’t offer to help. He was still upset about the way Batu had behaved in his dream.

  There was no moon, but the snow was lit by its own whiteness. There was the shadowy figure of Batu, carrying in front of him the shadowy scoop of the shovel, full of snow, like an enormous spoon full of falling light, which was still falling all around them. The snow came down, and Eric’s smoke went up and up.

  He walked across the road to where Batu stood, peering down into the Ausable Chasm. Down in the Chasm, it was no darker than the kind of dark the rest of the world, including Eric, had had to get used to. Snow fell into the Chasm, the way snow fell on the rest of the world. And yet there was a wind coming out of the Chasm that worried Eric.

  “What do you think is down there?” Batu said.

  “Zombie Land,” Eric said. He could almost taste it. “Zomburbia. They have everything down there. There’s even supposed to be a drive-in movie theater down there, somewhere, that shows old black-and-white horror movies, all night long. Zombie churches with AA meetings for zombies, down in the basements, every Thursday night.”

  “Yeah?” Batu said. “Zombie bars, too? Where they serve zombies Zombies?”

  Eric said, “My friend Dave went down once, when we were in high school, on a dare. He used to tell us all kinds of stories. Said he was going to apply to Zombie U. and get a full scholarship, on account of living people were a minority down there. But he went to Arizona instead.”

  “You ever go?” Batu said, pointing with his empty shovel at the narrow, crumbly path that went down into the Chasm.

  “I never went to college. I’ve never even been to Canada,” Eric said. “Not even when I was in high school, to buy beer.”

  ALL NIGHT THE zombies came out of the Chasm, holding handfuls of snow. They carried the snow across the road, and into the parking lot, and left it there. Batu was back in the office, sending off faxes, and Eric was glad about this, that Batu couldn’t see what the zombies were up to.

  Zombies came into the store, tracking in salt and melting snow. Eric hated mopping up after the zombies.

  He sat on the counter, facing the road, hoping Charley would drive by soon. Two weeks ago, Charley had bitten a man who’d brought his dog to the animal shelter to be put down.

  The man was bringing his dog because it had bit him, he said, but Charley said you knew when you saw this guy, and when you saw the dog, that the dog had had a very good reason.

  This man had a tattoo of a mermaid coiled around his meaty forearm, and even this mermaid had an unpleasant look to her: scaly, corseted bottom; tiny black-dot eyes; a sour, fangy smile. Charley said it was as if even the mermaid was telling her to bite the arm, and so she did. When she did, the dog went nuts. The guy dropped its leash. He was trying to get Charley off his arm. The dog, misunderstanding the situation, or rather, understanding the situation but not the larger situation, had grabbed Charley by her leg, sticking its teeth into her calf.

  Both Charley and the dog’s owner had needed stitches. But it was the dog who was doomed. Nothing had changed that.

  Charley’s boss at the shelter was going to fire her, any time soon—in fact, he had fired her. But they hadn’t found someone to take her shift yet, and so she was working there for a few more days, under a different name. Everyone at the shelter understood why she’d had to bite the man.

  Charley said she was going to drive all the way across Canada. Maybe keep on going, up into Alaska. Go watch bears pick through garbage.

  “Before a bear hibernates,” she told Batu and Eric, “it eats this special diet. Nuts and these particular leaves. It sleeps all winter and never goes to the bathroom. So when she wakes up in spring, she’s still constipated and the first thing she does is take this really painful shit. And then she goes and jumps in a river. She’s really pissed off now, about everything. When she comes out of the river, she’s covered in ice. She goes on a rampage, and she’
s insane with rage, and she’s invulnerable, like she’s wearing armor. Isn’t that great? That bear can take a bite out of anything it wants.”

  Uykum geldi.

  My sleep has come.

  The snow kept falling. Sometimes it stopped. Charley came by. Eric had bad dreams. Batu did not go to bed. When the zombies came in, he followed them around the store, taking notes. The zombies didn’t care at all. They were done with all that.

  Batu was wearing Eric’s favorite pajamas. These were blue, and had towering Hokusai-style white-blue waves, and up on the waves, there were boats with owls looking owlish. If you looked closely, you could see that the owls were gripping newspapers in their wings, and if you looked even closer, you could read the date and the headline:

  “Tsunami Tsweeps Pussy Overboard, All is Lots.”

  Batu had spent a lot of time reorganizing the candy aisle according to chewiness and meltiness. The week before, he had arranged it so that if you took the first letter of every candy, reading across from left to right, and then down, it had spelled out the first sentence of To Kill A Mockingbird, and then also a line of Turkish poetry. Something about the moon.

  The zombies came and went, and Batu put his notebook away. He said, “I’m going to go ahead and put jerky with Sugar Daddies. It’s almost a candy. It’s very chewy. About as chewy as you can get. Chewy Meat Gum.”

  “Frothy Meat Drink,” Eric said automatically. They were always thinking of products that no one would ever want to buy, and that no one would ever try to sell.

  “Squeezable Pork. It’s on your mind, it’s in your mouth, it’s pork. Remember that ad campaign? She can come live with us,” Batu said. It was the same old speech, only a little more urgent each time he gave it. “The All-Night needs women, especially women like Charley. She falls in love with you, I don’t mind one bit.”

  “What about you?” Eric said.

  “What about me?” Batu said. “Charley and I have the Turkish language. That’s enough. Tell me something I need. I don’t even need sleep!”

  “What are you talking about?” Eric said. He hated when Batu talked about Charley, except that he loved hearing her name.

  Batu said, “The All-Night is a great place to raise a family. Everything you need, right here. Diapers, Vienna Sausages, grape-scented Magic Markers, Moon Pies—kids like Moon Pies—and then one day, when they’re tall enough, we teach them how to operate the register.”

  “There are laws against that,” Eric said. “Mars needs women. Not the All-Night. And we’re running out of Moon Pies.” He turned his back on Batu.

  SOME OF BATU’S pajamas worry Eric. He won’t wear these, although Batu has told him that he may wear any pajamas he likes.

  For example, ocean liners navigating icebergs on a pair of pajama bottoms. A man with an enormous pair of scissors, running after women whose long hair whips out behind them like red and yellow flags, they are moving so fast. Spiderwebs with houses stuck to them. An embroidered pajama top that records the marriage of the bearded woman and the tightrope walker, who perches above the aisle on a silken cord. The flower-girl is a dwarf. Someone has woven roses and lilies of the valley into the bride’s beard. The minister has no arms. He stands at the altar like a stork, the sleeves of his vestments pinned up like flat black wings, holding the Bible with the toes of his left foot.

  There is a pajama bottom embroidered with the wedding night.

  Some of the pajamas are plain on the outside. Eric once put his foot down into a pair, once, before he saw what was on the insides.

  A few nights ago, about two or three in the morning, a woman came into the store. Batu was over by the magazines, and the woman went and stood next to Batu.

  Batu’s eyes were closed, although that doesn’t necessarily mean he was asleep. The woman stood and flicked through magazines, and then at some point she realized that the man standing there with his eyes closed was wearing pajamas. She stopped reading through People magazine, and started reading Batu’s pajamas instead. Then she gasped, and poked Batu with a skinny finger.

  “Where did you get those?” she said. “How on earth did you get those?”

  Batu opened his eyes. “Excuse me,” he said. “May I help you find something?”

  “You’re wearing my diary,” the woman said. Her voice went up and up in a wail. “That’s my handwriting! That’s the diary that I kept when I was fourteen! But it had a lock on it, and I hid it under my mattress, and I never let anyone read it. Nobody ever read it!”

  Batu held out his arm. “That’s not true,” he said. “I’ve read it. You have very nice handwriting. Very distinctive. My favorite part is when—”

  The woman screamed. She put her hands over her ears and walked backward, down the aisle, and still screaming, turned around and ran out of the store.

  “What was that about?” Eric said. “What was up with her?”

  “I don’t know,” Batu said. “The thing is, I thought she looked familiar! And I was right. Hah! What are the odds, you think, the woman who kept that diary coming in the store like that?”

  “Maybe you shouldn’t wear those anymore,” Eric said. “Just in case she comes back.”

  Gelebilir miyim?

  Can I come?

  Batu had originally worked Tuesday through Saturday, second shift. Now he was all day, every day. Eric worked all night, all nights. They didn’t need anyone else, except maybe Charley.

  What had happened was this. One of the managers had left, supposedly to have a baby, although she had not looked in the least bit pregnant, Batu said, and besides, it was clearly not Batu’s kid, because of the vasectomy. Then, shortly after the incident with the man in the trenchcoat, the other manager had quit, claiming to be sick of that kind of shit. No one was sent to replace him, so Batu had stepped in.

  The door rang and a customer came into the store. Canadian. Not a zombie. Eric turned around in time to see Batu duck down, slipping around the corner of the candy aisle and heading toward the storage closet.

  The customer bought a Mountain Dew, Eric too disheartened to explain that cash was no longer necessary. He could feel Batu, fretting in the storage closet, listening to this old-style retail transaction. When the customer was gone, Batu came out again.

  “Do you ever wonder,” Eric said, “if the company will ever send another manager?” He saw again the dream-Batu, the dream-managers, the cartoonish, unbridgeable gap of the Ausable Chasm.

  “They won’t,” Batu said.

  “They might,” Eric said.

  “They won’t,” Batu said.

  “How do you know for sure?” Eric said. “What if they do?”

  “It was a bad idea in the first place,” Batu said. He gestured toward the parking lot and the Ausable Chasm. “Not enough steady business.”

  “So why do we stay here?” Eric said. “How do we change the face of retail if nobody ever comes in here except joggers and truckers and zombies and Canadians? I mean, I tried to explain about how new-style retail worked the other night—to this woman—and she told me to fuck off. She acted like I was insane.”

  “You just have to ignore people like that. The customer isn’t always right. Sometimes the customer is an asshole. That’s the first rule of retail,” Batu said. “But it’s not like anywhere else is better. Before this, when I was working for the CIA, that was a shitty job. Believe me, this is better.”

  “The thing I hate is how they look at us,” Eric said. “As if we don’t really exist. As if we’re ghosts. As if they’re the real people and we’re not.”

  “We used to go to this bar, sometimes, me and the people I worked with,” Batu said. “Only we have to pretend that we don’t know each other. No fraternizing. So we all sit there, along the bar, and don’t say a word to each other. All these guys, all of us, we could speak maybe five hundred languages, dialects, whatever, between us. But we don’t talk in this bar. Just sit and drink and sit and drink. All us Agency spooks, all in a row. Used to drive the bartender cr
azy. He knew what we were. We used to leave nice tips. Didn’t matter to him.”

  “So did you ever kill people?” Eric said. He never knew whether or not Batu was joking about the CIA thing.

  “Do I look like a killer?” Batu said, standing there in his pajamas, rumpled and red-eyed. When Eric burst out laughing, he smiled and yawned and scratched his head.

  WHEN OTHER EMPLOYEES had quit the All-Night, for various reasons of their own, Batu had not replaced them.

  Around this same time, Batu’s girlfriend had kicked him out, and with Eric’s permission, he had moved into the storage closet. That had been just before Christmas, and it was a few days after Christmas when Eric’s mother lost her job as a security guard at the mall, and decided she was going to go find Eric’s father. She’d gone hunting online, and made a list of names she thought he might be going under. She had addresses as well.

  Eric wasn’t sure what she was going to do if she found his father, and he didn’t think she knew, either. She said she just wanted to talk, but Eric knew she kept a gun in the glove compartment of her car. Before she left, Eric had copied down her list of names and addresses, and sent out Christmas cards to all of them. It was the first time he’d ever had a reason to send out Christmas cards, and it had been difficult, finding the right things to say in them, especially since they probably weren’t his father, no matter what his mother thought. Not all of them, anyway.

  Before she left, Eric’s mother had put most of the furniture in storage. She’d sold everything else, including Eric’s guitar and his books, at a yard sale one Saturday morning while Eric was working an extra shift at the All-Night.