Past Imperfect (Jerry eBooks)

by Martin H Greenberg

  As he watched, a milky swirl of that whiteness rushed at the glass of the window, making him pull back with a start . . . it was as though the mist had momentarily sensed him watching it, like a shark suddenly becoming aware of the presence of the caged underwater cameraman and his deep-sixed recording lens. Then the cushion of mist moved off, lumbering, up and over the house . . . out of sight. Bennett craned forward and tried to look up after it . . . to see what it was doing now.

  Just for a second, he considered running to the spare bedroom, where Shelley always kept a window wide to air the room . . .

  But then his bladder reminded him it needed emptying. He turned away from the window and padded out to the bathroom.

  Taking a pee, Bennett was suddenly pleased that Shelley wasn’t downstairs. Pleased that she hadn’t heard the newspaper hit the screen door because then she would open it, bring the paper inside into the warmth.

  And that would mean she would let the fog inside.

  He hmphed and shook his head, flushed the toilet.

  Downstairs, on the radio, The Mamas and Papas were complaining that all the leaves were brown. Bennett knew how they felt: roll on summer!

  He closed the bathroom door and stepped into the warmth of the shower, feeling it revitalize his skin.

  Through the steamed-up glass of the shower stall, Bennett could see the whiteness pressing against the bathroom window. Like it was watching him. Lathering his hair, he tried to recall whether he had heard the radio anchorman mention the fog.

  After the shower, Bennett shaved.

  The man staring back at him looked familiar but older. The intense light above the mirror seemed to accentuate the pores and creases, picked out the wattled fold of skin beneath his chin . . . a fold that, no matter how hard he tried and how hard he stretched back his head, stoically refused to flatten out. That same light also highlighted the shine of head through what used to be thick hair, the final few stalks now looking like a platoon of soldiers abandoned by their comrades. If he were still able to have a secret name now, it would be “Baldy” or “Tubby” or maybe even “Turkeyneck.” As he shaved, he tried to think of what names he did have as a boy: he was sure he used to have one, and that it had annoyed him for a time, but he could only think of Ben.

  He pulled on the same things he’d been wearing last night. Despite the fact he had two closets literally brimming with shirts and sweaters, jogging pants and old denims that were too threadbare to wear outside the confines of the house, Bennett considered the wearing of yesterday’s clothing as something of a treat . . . and something naughty, something he could get away with the way he used to get away with it as a kid.

  There were so few things an adult could get away with.

  Feeling better, more refreshed, he opened the bathroom door and stepped out onto the landing. As he neared the staircase he could hear thick static growling downstairs and, just for a second, he almost shouted out his wife’s name as a question, even though he knew she was long gone to the mall.

  He padded downstairs slower than usual, checking the layout over the rim of the handrail as the next floor came into view.

  In the kitchen everything was neat and Shelley had left out the cutting board, a jar of marmalade and a new loaf out of the freezer. The coffee smelled good. But first things first: he had to attend to the radio. Bennett leaned on the counter and pushed a couple of the preset buttons to zone in on another station . . . anything to relieve that static. But each time he hit a button, it was the same . . . didn’t even falter, just kept on crackling and hissing and . . .

  whispering

  something else. He leaned closer, put his ear against the speaker and listened. Was there a station there? Could he hear someone talking, talking quietly . . . very quietly indeed? Maybe that was it: maybe it was the volume. He twizzled the dial on the side but the static just got louder.

  Bennett stepped back and looked at the radio, frowning. He had been sure he could hear something behind the static but now it was gone. He switched it off and on again, got the same, and then switched it off. He’d watch TV.

  After flicking the set forward and backward through all the available channels, Bennett gave up. Static, static everywhere. Static and voices, soft faraway whispering voices . . . saying things—he was sure they were there and they were saying things, but he just couldn’t get them to register. He tossed the remote onto the sofa and sat for a few minutes in the silence.

  Coffee. That was what he needed. That would make things right.

  He strolled back into the kitchen, poured a cup and walked across the hall into his office.

  The cumulative smell of books and words met him as it always did, welcomed him back for another day.

  He powered up the old Aptiva, heard it click once—the single bell-tone it always made—and then watched the screen go fuzzy.

  “Huh? What the hell’s going on here?” he asked the room.

  The millions of words and sentences tucked up in the double-stacked shelves of books and magazines shuffled amongst themselves but, clearly unable to come up with a good response, remained silent.

  Bennett placed his coffee on his mouse mat and shuffled the mouse. Nothing. The computer wouldn’t even boot up. He pressed the volume button on the CD-ROM speakers and heard the static invade his office.

  Along with the faraway whispering voices.

  He flipped the Rolodex until he got the number for the maintenance people and pressed the hands-free key on the fax/telephone at the side of his desk. This time he knew there were voices in that white haze of crackle coming from the fax machine . . . and the voices sounded like they were chuckling.

  Forgetting the coffee, he went out into the lounge and picked up the handset of the house line.

  It was the sound of the sea and the wind, the hiss of the tallest trees bending to the elements, the hum of the Earth spinning. All this and nothing more. Nothing more except for the unmistakable sound of someone—something—calling his name . . . calling it as though in a dream.

  Now the panic really set in. It had already been lit and its flames fanned without him even seeing the first sparks, but when Bennett walked quickly to the front door, opened it and stepped out onto the stoop, the fire became a conflagration in his stomach.

  The fog was everywhere, thick and solid, unmoving and ungiving, leaving no single discernible landmark of the street he and Shelley had lived in for more than twenty years. It was an alien landscape—no, not so much a landscape as a canvas . . . a blank canvas sitting on an old easel in a musty loft somewhere in the Twilight Zone, and Bennett was the only dab of color to be found on it.

  And he felt even he was fading fast.

  He stared towards the drive at the side of the house and was pleased to see that he could make out the fence running between his property and Jerry and Amy Sondheim’s. He didn’t know whether to be relieved or dismayed by the fact that Shelley had the car. Then he decided he was relieved: if the car had been there, he would have gone to it, slid into his familiar position behind the wheel and driven off.

  Driven off where? a soft voice asked quietly in the back of his head.

  Bennett nodded. He couldn’t have driven anywhere in this. Nobody could drive anywhere in this. Christ, what the hell was it?

  He stared into the whiteness trying to see if there was just the tiniest hint of movement. There was none. The fog looked like a painted surface, as though the entire planet was sinking into a sea of mist, submerging itself forever, removing all traces of recognizability. No radio or TV, no telephones . . . not even any Internet! Was this the way it was all going to end? The whole planet being cut off from itself as though nothing existed? As though nothing had ever existed?

  It was right then—as Bennett was looking first to the left along Sycamore Street to where it intersected with Masham Lane, trying to imagine the old bench Charley Sputterenk erected in memory of his wife, Hazel, and then to the right, down towards Main Street, trying to see if he could he
ar the distant sound of moving traffic—that he heard something moving in the fog.

  He snapped his head back to face front and stared, stared hard. But he couldn’t see anything . . . except now the mist seemed to be swirling a little, right in front of his face . . . as though something was pushing it towards him. Something coming towards him and displacing it . . .

  “Hello?” His voice sounded weak and querulous and he hated himself for it. Hated himself but was unable to do anything about it. The mist continued to swirl and Bennett’s eyes started to ache with the effort.

  “Somebody out there? Need any help?”

  This time he had tried to make his tone initially mock-serious—Jesus Christ, is this some weather or what?—and then helpful . . . a fogbound Samaritan calling to a lost and weary traveler.

  The sound came again—a hesitant shuffle of shoes on sidewalk, perhaps?—and was accompanied by what sounded to be a cough or a low, throaty rumble.

  Bennett took a step back, reaching his hand behind until it touched the reassuring surface of the doorjamb, and felt something under his foot. Quickly glancing down he saw the folded newspaper. There was something sticking out of it, a gaudily-colored handbill protruding from the printed pages.

  He bent down and scooped up the paper and its contents and then backed fully into the house, allowing the screen door to slam and pushing the house door closed without turning around, and securing the deadbolts top and bottom before turning the key.

  There had been no sound out there, no sound at all. And there should have been. Even if the fog had shrouded the entire county—though it was far more likely that it had merely entrapped Forest Plains, and possibly only a couple of the town’s many streets—he should have been able to stand on his own doorstep and hear something . . . a siren, a voice, a car engine, someone’s dog howling at the sudden claustrophobic curtain that had dropped down.

  But it was silent out there.

  More silent than he could ever have imagined.

  And he should have been able to see something . . . anything at all: a glimpse of windowpane across the street, the muted and silhouetted outlines of roof gable or drainpipe, the indistinct shape of a parked car whose owner was either unable or unwilling to brave the murk.

  But there was nothing to see at all through the whiteness.

  The thought came to him . . . somehow I don’t think we’re in Kansas any more, Toto

  that it wasn’t Sycamore Street at all. And it wasn’t Forest Plains. And the mall where Shelley was shopping-till-she-dropped with her sister Lisa was a world away.

  He went to the window at the side of the door and looked out into the street. It was the same as before. He could see his own drive and his own lawn run down to the sidewalk, and he could see the vague outline of the road . . . but nothing more.

  The handbill slipped out of the newspaper and fluttered to the floor at his feet just as he thought for a moment that he could see a shape forming out in the whiteness, but nothing appeared . . . though the mist now seemed to be swirling thickly in the middle of the street.

  Bennett lifted the handbill and stared at it.

  It was just a regular-sized insert, like any of the ones that dropped out of Bennett’s Men’s Journal or Shelley’s Vanity Fair . . . ablaze with color and just three lines of curlicued fonts, seraphed letters and ubiquitous exclamation marks, all of the text bold, some of it italicized.

  It read:

  Congratulations to Bennett Differing!

  in huge letters in the very center of the sheet, with Bennett’s name appearing to have been typed into place on a line. Below that, the handbill announced

  YOU HAVE WON A VISIT FROM YOUR FATHER!

  with the words appearing in slightly smaller lettering, employing the best sideshow-barker’s spiel, and in a typesetting nightmare of a mixture of small caps, dropped first letters and the typed-in words “Your Father.” And then:

  Have a Good Time!

  And that was that.

  Bennett turned the sheet over to see if there was anything on the back, but there was only a pattern of swirling lines, like the ones printed for security on foreign currency.

  Won? How could he have won anything when he didn’t recall even entering any competitions? And his father? John Differing had been dead some twenty-seven years. Maybe it was some kind of gag. Maybe everyone on the street—maybe even everyone in Forest Plains—was receiving a similar handbill in their newspaper. Bennett wished he could ask young Will Cerf to look in the other papers he was delivering to check out that particular theory.

  Outside, a haurrrnk! Sounded . . . like a ship’s horn.

  Bennett looked up at the window and saw a shape forming out of the thick swirls of mist in the middle of the street. Someone was walking towards the house . . . walking slowly, even awkwardly. Someone had been hurt.

  With the handbill still clutched in his hand, Bennett rushed to the door and started to release the deadbolts. But then he stopped.

  Who was this person? Maybe it was some kind of weirdo, some transient brought in with the fog . . . like the guys that howl at a full moon. And here was Bennett busily opening the door to let him inside.

  He pushed the top bolt home again and moved back to the window.

  The shape was now fully emerged from the mist: it was a man, a man in a dark suit, no topcoat—no topcoat! and in this weather!—and wearing a hat. Bennett immediately assumed an age for the man—he had to be older than seventy, maybe even eighty, to be wearing a hat. Hardly anyone he knew wore hats these days, at least around Forest Plains.

  The figure stopped for a moment and moved its head from side to side like he was checking out the houses. The man had to have 20/20 vision no matter how old he was: when Bennett was last outside he wasn’t able to see across the street let alone distinguish one house from another.

  When the man started moving again, Bennett thought there was something familiar about him. Maybe he’d come out of Jack Coppertone’s house across the street . . . it wasn’t Jack himself—too old, though Bennett still couldn’t see the man’s face—but it could be Jenny’s father. Bennett rubbed the glass and remembered that the mist was outside the window, not inside. But, no, it couldn’t be Jenny’s father—he was a short man, and fat. Whereas the man walking across the street was tall and slim, a soldier’s gait, straight-backed and confident . . . despite the fact that he had just had to stop and check which house he was heading for. Whatever, and whoever the man was, Bennett didn’t think he posed a problem . . . and he could be in difficulty. Lost at the very least. And it would be good to speak with somebody.

  He moved back to the door, released the last bolt and pulled it open.

  The man’s shoes on the black surface of the street made a click-clack sound. The mist swirling around his arms and legs looked like an oriental dancer’s veils, clinging one second and voluminous the next . . . and brought with it now the unmistakable sound of distant voices muttering and whispering. Then his face appeared, frowning and unsure, one eye narrowed in an effort to make some sense of the house and the man standing before him, the shadow of the hat brim moving up and down on his forehead as he strode forward.

  He looked wary, this fog-brought stranger from afar. And well he might do.

  The house, Bennett knew, he had never seen before.

  And when he had last seen the man standing before him in this alien street, the man had been little more than a boy.

  The whispering voices echoed the word “boy” in Bennett’s head like circling gulls warning of bad weather out on the coast.

  He successfully fought off the urge to cut and run back into the house—to throw the deadbolts across—how appropriate that word suddenly seemed: dead-bolts—to bar the stranger’s way . . . to erase the errant foolishness of what he was thinking, of the silly déjà vu sense he had ever seen the man before. But he was just a man, this stranger to Forest Plains . . . a man lost and alone, maybe with a broken-down Olds or Chevy a couple of blocks p
arked up somewhere down near the intersection with Main Street, a trusted and faithful vehicular retainer that he cleaned and polished every Sunday but which now languished with a flooded carburetor or a busted muffler trailing down on the road.

  The man stopped and looked at Bennett, just twenty or thirty feet between them, the man out on the sidewalk and Bennett standing in the open doorway of his home, screen door leaning against him, the fresh and welcoming lights spilling out onto the mist which held their shine on its back and shifted it around like St. Elmo’s Fire.

  “Hey,” Bennett said softly.

  The man shifted his head to one side, looked to the left and then to the right. Then nodded.

  Bennett crumpled the handbill into a ball and thrust it into his pants pocket. “Quite a morning.”

  “Quite a morning,” came the response.

  It was as though someone had pumped air or water or some kind of helium gas into Bennett’s head. There were things in there—sleeping things, memory things that lay dormant and dust-covered like old furniture in a forgotten home that you suddenly and unexpectedly went back to one magical day . . . things awoken by three simple and unexciting words delivered in a familiar voice and a familiar drawl the accuracy of which he thought he had misplaced—or, more realistically, had filed away and ignored.

  These things grew to full height and shape and revealed themselves as remembered incidents . . . and the incidents brought remembered voices and remembered words: these were real memories . . . not the cloying waves of rose-colored-eyepiece nostalgia that he got watching a re-run of favorite childhood TV show or hearing a snatch of a onetime favorite song. He saw this man—many versions of him, each older or younger than the one before—playing ball, laughing, talking . . . saw him asleep.

  “You lost?”

  The man looked around for a few seconds and then looked back at Bennett. “I guess so. Where am I?”

  “This is Forest Plains.”

  “Where’s that?”

  Bennett shrugged and tried to stop his knees shaking. “It’s just a town. Where are you heading?”