Haunts

by Stephen Jones

  *

  He dreamed of Janet at last. And it was the last dream he ever had, or, at least, the last dream that was truly his.

  She was wearing her favorite summer dress, the one she’d wear even when it was cold and raining because she’d say it made her feel better.

  “I’ve been waiting for you,” he said, “and for such a long time!” And she kissed him, but as her face leaned in to his she changed direction, she avoided the lips altogether and plumped for the cheek. And what was the good of that, he couldn’t taste it at all?

  “Should we eat?” she said, and they took their places in the restaurant. It was the same restaurant at which they’d had their first date. Where he’d first dared use the “love” word on her. Where he’d proposed. And it was odd, because they had all been different restaurants.

  “How have you been?” she asked. “How have you been holding up?”

  “I miss you,” he said.

  It took a couple of hours for the waiter to take their order, but that didn’t matter, and they swapped stories of old adventures together, two lives well led. And after a while David realized he was the only one doing the talking, and Janet was just sitting there, listening, smiling, drinking his memories in, drinking in his happiness.

  The food arrived, and it wasn’t what David had ordered; he’d thought they were somewhere Italian, but now it was all Chinese. And he didn’t expect he’d be able to taste his meal, but it was good, it was so good, that sweet and sour sauce was simply to die for, he cried at how good it was.

  They ate their fill. Once in a while David would have to turn his head away, spit out a few worms here and there. And Janet would tut amiably, and say, “David, I thought I was the one who’s dead!” They’d laugh a lot about that.

  It was the same restaurant in their honeymoon hotel. It was the restaurant of every birthday and anniversary. It was the restaurant to which he’d take her to say sorry after they’d had a fight, and where, by accepting the invitation, she was assuring him it was all right, everything was all right, she still loved him.

  “I didn’t know where to scatter your ashes,” he said.

  “That’s okay.”

  “I scattered them in the park. I’m sorry.”

  “But it’s a nice park,” she said.

  “I can’t remember,” he said. “I keep trying to remember. What the last thing I ever said to you was. Do you know? Can you tell me? Tell me it was something nice. Tell me I said I loved you. Please. I loved you.”

  It was the restaurant where she’d told him she was pregnant. It was the restaurant to which he’d taken her once she lost the child, because they couldn’t face being at home, they didn’t want to eat at all.

  “Why do you haunt my face?” he asked her. She looked a bit hurt at that.

  “You need to move on,” said Janet, at last.

  “I can’t move on.”

  She paused. “I’ve moved on.”

  He took this in.

  “Are you breaking up with me?” he asked.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Is it something I’ve done?”

  “No,” she said. “No. It was just. An accident of circumstance. Oh, baby, please. Please don’t cry.”

  “But I love you,” he said, and the tears were flowing now, why was he crying now and ruining the date, why now when he’d all those weeks of numbness to get through? “I love you,” he said, as if that solved a blind thing, as if that did even the slightest bit of good.

  “I know,” she said. And she took his hand. And she squeezed it. And she let it go.

  It was the restaurant in which he had the dream his dead wife didn’t want him any more.

  They talked a bit more after that. Other adventures they’d had, some of them just the same adventures as before, he repeated his anecdotes a little.

  “Save me,” David said, but it was so quiet he didn’t think she heard.

  The waiter brought them the bill. “I’ve got this,” said Janet, “it’s on me.” She took money from her purse, lots of money, and gave the waiter a generous tip. He bowed his thanks.

  “Well,” she said.

  “Well,” said David.

  “Well,” she said, “this has been fun. We should do it again some time.”

  “Yes,” said David, and he knew they wouldn’t. And he got up from the table to get her chair, and she thanked him, and let him give her a peck goodbye.

  When he woke up he wasn’t crying, his face was still dry, he’d wanted to cry, but only in the dream, just the bloody dream. And he thought that he’d lost her, he patted at his face, to tried to find some trace of her, and part of him wanted her gone—wanted that freedom, his face back to normal—and another part was terrified she’d kept her promise and had gone for good, and then what would he do, who would he even be? And she was still there—she was still there—she hadn’t deserted him—still the numbness—still numb. And he laughed and she laughed in unison, and he gulped for air and she gulped too, and he went back to sleep wrapping his arms around himself in a tight hug.

  *

  “Look, fizzy water!” said Alex, as he opened the front door, and he laughed, and he waved the bottle about like it was some sort of trophy. He showed David into the house. It was quite a small house; David still felt his own was conspicuously designed for two people, and rattling about there on his own was awkward and embarrassing—but it was hard to believe that Alex had shared this house with his wife, there surely wasn’t the space to keep her anywhere. “Nice place, isn’t it?” asked Alex, and David agreed. Alex was in a good mood. He seemed very proud of whatever he was concocting in the kitchen, he kept on winking and going back in there to stir it and telling David it’d be a surprise. And, “It’s just so nice to have you here, mate,” he said. “It’s just so nice to have company.”

  They settled down in the sitting room together for a little while— Alex told David that this stage of the cooking could take care of itself. There wasn’t much room, David and Alex sat close, side by side on the sofa. “So,” said Alex, “how are you holding up?”

  “I’m not sure,” said David, honestly.

  Alex nodded at that, as if it were the wisest thing he had ever heard. “Not still adjusting, then?”

  “What?”

  “You said you were ‘adjusting.’”

  “Oh. Yes. Yes, I don’t know.”

  Alex nodded again. “As for me, I took your advice. Knocked the booze on the head. Thanks. Thank you for looking out for me.” He waggled the bottle of water again. “Refill?”

  “Why not?” said David.

  “It’s helped me to clear my head a bit. Know where I stand with this whole death thing. The drink, it was keeping me away from those important decisions. But now I know what’s going on. What we both need to do.”

  “Oh?”

  “But there’s time enough for that,” said Alex, as a timer went in the kitchen. “And I think dinner is served!”

  “I hope you like this,” said Alex, as he brought over to the table a steaming saucepan. “Tracey’s the real cook. Well. But I’ve been practicing. Got a book and everything.” He tipped onto David’s plate a pile of spaghetti Bolognese. “Enjoy!”

  Each time David lifted his fork he saw worms wriggle on the end of it. Each time he lifted the fork near his mouth, he at first had to pass it through the back of Janet’s skull, and he didn’t know why, he thought that as the worms brushed against her brain they became her brain somehow, that her brain was unraveling into these flapping tendrils, that in death the brain was finally rotting to these thin white ribbons. In his mouth the brain tasted of soil, and he was used to that, but it was a squirming soil, if he didn’t gulp it down quickly it’d try to escape back into Janet’s head, and he couldn’t have that, you couldn’t go home again.

  So he sucked in those earthworms, and those strands of his dead wife’s mind too, he stuffed them in his mouth, he swallowed, swallowed hard so they couldn’t come up again and beat a
path to freedom; he did it again, the same mechanical exercise, gulping down, trying to gulp all the food away. It took him a minute or two to realize that Alex was looking at him, hard.

  “You’re not enjoying that, are you?”

  “It’s fine.”

  “Fucking typical. Well, then.” And Alex got up, and he took David’s plate away, and he slammed it into the sink.

  David said weakly, “I don’t like pasta very much.”

  “Right,” said Alex. “Of course not. You know, I don’t think you’re putting much effort into this relationship. I’m the one who’s doing all the running. Aren’t I? I buy the drinks, the cinema tickets, it’s me that cooks dinner. You didn’t even bring any wine, did you?”

  “You told me you weren’t drinking.”

  “Always some excuse with you. Is this what you were like with Janet? Christ. No wonder she drank. No wonder the poor bitch killed herself.”

  David started to explain that Janet hadn’t killed herself. Had she? She’d been happy with him. Wasn’t that the case? It’d been an accident, a tragic accident of circumstance.

  “Upstairs,” said Alex.

  “What? No.”

  “Upstairs, to the bedroom.”

  “No way.”

  “Upstairs,” said Alex, picking up a knife. “Or I’ll fucking cut you. I will. I’ll cut you, you bastard. Upstairs. Now.”

  So they went upstairs.

  “The problem with you,” said Alex. “Is you don’t know what love is.” And he opened the bedroom door, pushed David inside.

  It was like a shrine. The walls were covered with hundreds of photographs, and all of the same woman. Some were posed for, some caught unawares. But either way, whether ready for the camera or not, in each picture she had the same expression, the same smile, and that struck David as odd, how could she always make her face the same, so fixed and unmoving?

  She wasn’t a pretty woman, her head was too round—but she wasn’t ugly, had you seen a single picture of her you wouldn’t have given her a second glance. But the whole array of these pictures, this presentation of her entire facial repertoire—and she had one smile, just one—and it made David feel suddenly sick, as if he were looking upon something that wasn’t quite human, just something slightly off, something that his brain would normally have consigned to his peripheral vision. Her nostrils always flared, her eyes so wide and unblinking, and that mouth in each picture contorted into an identical smile, the smile so big and broad and covered with thick gloopy lipstick.

  “I’ve had a bad time,” said Alex. “I’ve had a very bad time. But do you see? Do you see how much I love her?”

  “Yes, I see,” croaked David through the nausea.

  “No, really. Look. Look.” And Alex grabbed David’s hair, and dragged him to the wall, and forced his face hard against a patch of photos—and all David could think of was what this would do to his invisible wife, he’ll squash Janet over all the pictures, he’ll squash my wife all over his wife, how’s that going to look?

  Close up, of course, with Tracey’s face against his, David couldn’t make out any identifying features at all.

  “I went to your house,” said Alex. “I looked for photos. Just some evidence that you were missing your wife the way I missed mine. But there’s nothing, is there? I thought maybe you’d done what I did, put all her things in one room so you could see them better. I believed that of you. But you haven’t.”

  “No,” said David.

  “She gave you all that love. And you gave none back. You can’t even feel anything now she’s dead. Can you? You’re a fraud. Aren’t you?”

  “I’m a fraud,” said David.

  “Your problem is,” repeated Alex, “you don’t know what love is. It’s not a little thing. It’s life and death. You don’t give someone your heart one day, make them the center of your life. Become a unit. And then adjust when they die. Well, I’m better than you. I’m not going to adjust. I’ll never adjust. You’ll see.”

  And he gave David the knife. David stared down at it, blankly. As ever, numb.

  “You’ve always had such contempt for me,” said Alex, gentler somehow. “Right from the start. Do you think I’m that stupid? Do you think I couldn’t see? But ask yourself. You kept coming back to me. Why did you do that?”

  “I honestly don’t know,” said David.

  “I know,” said Alex. “Because you have a job to do.” He got on to his knees. “Kill me,” he said.

  David slowly registered what Alex had said. Looked down at the knife again, then across to Alex, waiting, unafraid, even smiling— smiling like his dead wife in all the pictures about them, it was as if he were trying to parrot her.

  “I can’t,” said David, but his hand was grasping on to that knife, it was getting the feel for it.

  “And I can’t go on without her. And if you had any fucking balls, you’d feel the same way about your wife. But now. Now. Your wife killed my wife. And now you kill me. It’s fitting. It’s simple.”

  And it was simple, David could see that, any fool could see that. The hand was stroking the knife, it liked this knife. The brain didn’t like it, told the hand to stop, but no one listened to David’s brain any more. He couldn’t even feel the blade against his fingers, he was oh so numb.

  He bent down to Alex. Lifted the knife, right up to his face, right up to his eyes. And Alex flinched in spite of himself.

  “No,” David breathed on him, and his breath was hot, but it wasn’t his breath, it was hers, it was hers.

  “Why not?” said Alex, and he looked like a child, a sad spent little child.

  “Because I don’t care. I don’t care.” He dropped the knife to the carpet. Got to his feet. And smiled such a broad smile, and blew him a little kiss. “And I never did.”

  David left the room, left the house, left Alex weeping on his bedroom floor.

  *

  David went home.

  He went to every desk drawer, every cupboard. He took from them all the photographs of Janet. He couldn’t even remember why he had done that now. He couldn’t remember why he wouldn’t want to see her face. He looked at that face now. He looked at every single one of those photographs, and studied her face each time. He found her diary, and it wasn’t a diary, really, just a notebook of birthdays and doctor’s appointments, but nevertheless he read it from cover to cover.

  Then he went upstairs to her wardrobe, and pulled out all of Janet’s clothes. He didn’t smell many, he didn’t stroke them—well, maybe one or two. He pulled out her favorite summer dress.

  He put all her belongings into a big heap on the sitting room floor. Like a funeral pyre, waiting for a light.

  And then he said goodbye to his wife. And he cried. Without sound, but it was real, and it was long, and it hurt.

  He hurt. And he grieved. And he let Janet go. He let every trace of her go.

  He went to the bathroom mirror to wash his face. He knew now it wouldn’t be his face looking back at him. He knew, too, that it wouldn’t be his wife’s. And he was so tired, so very tired.

  He looked at her. He tried to look away. Tried to blink, even— but he wasn’t able to blink, he wasn’t able to close his eyes, and they opened wide and large and sore.

  She wouldn’t let him close his eyes. She wanted him to see her at last. She wouldn’t let him not see.

  He felt his eyes harden from lack of moisture. Felt little cracks appear in them. There was no water in his head left, he’d wasted it all, he’d wept it all away. She’d taken Janet’s life, and now she was taking his, and she didn’t care, she didn’t care, she never had, and he wanted his eyes to crack, let them fissure, let them pop. But they didn’t, they didn’t.

  “And now,” he said, and he smiled, and the smile was big and broad and sticky. “Now, let’s have some fun.”

  <>

  *

  Blue Lady, Come Back

  KARL EDWARD WAGNER

  KARL EDWARD WAGNER (1945-94) died at the
ridiculously young age of forty-eight years old. He is remembered as the insightful editor of fifteen volumes of The Year’s Best Horror Stories series from DAW Books (1980-94) and as an author of superior horror and fantasy fiction.

  While attending medical school, Wagner set about creating his own character, Kane, the Mystic Swordsman. After the first book in the series, Darkness Weaves with Many Shades, was published in 1970, Wagner relinquished his chance to become a doctor and turned to writing full time. Death Angel’s Shadow, a collection of three original Kane novellas, was followed by the novels Bloodstone and Dark Crusade, and the collections Night Winds and The Book of Kane. These books were later reissued in the omnibus volumes Gods in Darkness and Midnight Sun from Night Shade Books.

  Wagner’s horror fiction appeared in a variety of magazines and anthologies, and was collected in In a Lonely Place, Why Not You and I?, Author’s Choice Monthly Issue 2: Unthreatened by the Morning Light, and the posthumous Exorcisms and Ecstasies. More recently, all of the author’s weird and supernatural fiction has been collected together by Centipede Press as part of its Masters of the Weird Tale series.

  “There are various approaches to writing a story,” explained Wagner. “One is to write ‘idea stories’—get an idea for a story, plot it out, write it down. On the other hand, I usually write to create a certain mood—often as a response to having experienced that mood. I’m more interested in atmosphere than action, both in what I read and what I write. If a story achieves the moment that I want, then I’m satisfied.”

  I

  THIS ONE STARTS with a blazing bright day and a trim split-level house looking woodsy against the pines.