Joye snuggled up closer, leaning her head on his shoulder. “Aw. I like it,” she said. “He looks sweet. I want to know who he grew up to be.”
Sam snorted a short laugh. “He’s been lost for a long time.”
“I found him, didn’t I?”
He nodded. But he’d found his own way back. The ghost of a boy back from the Never Never.
Scrying Through
Torn Screens
Patricia Gomes
In an old house on Court Street, brown craft paper covers the windows of the sun porch. The paper is folk art hearts, laurel wreaths, and doves cut to disguise neglect.
I see spectral women quilting on the other side. Cloaked in tan light, they’re whip-stitching jagged teeth and baby hair to bamboo mats. My father-in-law, four years in his grave, visits here; they treat him well.
Uncomfortable and tense, I sit cross-legged on the drafty floor reading wills and final testaments. The sun porch is unheated, but there you are in just an undershirt thirty years before my baptism. I would bring you sweet cold wine if I’d be allowed to kiss
the stain from your lips.
The stingy light coming through the Amish hearts is barely sufficient for a game of anagrams. Home is better far better than this.
They, Too, Want to be Remembered
KH Vaughan
The horses are screaming. They struggle to stand, but the more they twist and thrash, the worse it gets. Their noses and throats clog with something thick and viscous. Suffocating. It’s forcing its way into their lungs. It bubbles from their noses until it gets too thick and they grow still, eyes rolled back, moving only with the sluggish, spreading tide. I wake up in a cold sweat, hyperventilating, a cloying taste in my mouth.
The nightmares have been coming more frequently. Night-mares. It would be funny if it wasn’t terrifying. I need an Ativan to calm down enough to get ready for work, and I’ll need an extra-large Dunkin to make sure I don’t fall asleep on the T.
I change for work: jeans, thermal-shirt and flannel, and a heavy Carhartt jacket. The ground is usually frozen solid in January, but this year hasn’t been so bad, at least until this weekend. Today will be frigging freezing. I stuff cigarettes and leather gloves in my pocket on the way out the door. It is dark as I walk to the Red Line and the footing is treacherous after the snow over the weekend. People in Boston will fight over the parking spaces they cleared, but their sidewalks? Screw you, buddy. Grow a pair or move to Florida. My breath trails away in the light wind and I turn my collar up. The tips of the corners cover my peripheral vision. A gust catches me as I enter the Porter Square Station. It will be more comfortable below ground.
Even at this hour, the station is busy. Working people, suits, and all the service people that have to be there for them. They say construction is a rough gig, but I couldn’t do restaurant or delivery. Those people work hard and don’t get much back. I guess we’re all invisible to the investment bankers and brokers up in their office towers. I hear an incoming train. The squeal of brakes and the rattle of the wheels on the rails echo down the tunnel and against the high tiled ceiling of the station, and it reminds me of my dreams again. Fuck. I focus on my coffee and the chill and the battered sneakers of the woman in the skirt and jacket across the aisle. No doubt she will trade them for heels when she gets to work, unless she’s in one of those offices where they won’t allow her to walk in without proper dress. They slip on shoes at the top of the escalator or hop awkwardly on the sidewalk around the corner from their work so their manager doesn’t see.
By North Station the train is crowded. I could have gotten a ride with one of the other guys, but I’d rather take the subway. Trapped in the cab of someone’s truck you have to make small talk. On the train, people leave you alone. It’s short walk down Causeway to Commercial and the park. Light flakes of snow drift in the air. Langone Park is right on the water at the mouth of the Charles between Puopoulo field and the skating rink. A ball field, playground, and some benches. All of it has about six inches of heavy packed snow. There’s tons of history around this place. Across the water is Bunker Hill, and behind us, just a little over, is the church where they hung the lanterns for Paul Revere, and the old Copp’s Hill Cemetery. When we dig, we find debris from the last dig. Some places, you find old, old stuff, but we aren’t going to here. This land is fill, like a lot of the city. They built out between the piers with salt mud, coal ash, gravel, and garbage. No history like there is across the street. When the next crew has to do a job here, they’ll find the same shit we did, plus whatever new trash we leave behind in the trench.
* * *
I’m early on the site. The foreman, O’Brien, is already there. He’s Irish from Southie. Likes to throw in Matt Damon quotes in an exaggerated accent. He nods his chin at me and throws me an orange safety vest.
“Hey, Gomes. You want to start on the backhoe or down in the trench?” he says.
“You giving me a choice?” I say.
“Well, I’m feeling generous today and that little shit Parker ain’t here yet, so you get to choose.”
“I’ll start on the backhoe then.”
“All right, then. You watch the games this weekend?”
“A little. Wildcards are usually uneven, you know? It’s the divisional games where it starts to get competitive. Besides, the Pats… I don’t know. They’re playing with a grudge this year, but that defense…”
“They’re gonna jam that Lombardi right up Goodell’s ass.”
“Maybe. Pittsburgh’s tough and I don’t think we can hang with Atlanta.”
We go back and forth and in a few minutes Parker pulls up in his pickup with Reeve and Biggs. O’Brien waits for them to get out of the cab and stamps out his cigarette.
“Hey, Pahkah!” he yells. “You’re in the hole. How d’ya like dem apples!”
* * *
We tear up the asphalt in the rectangle we’d cut with a concrete saw last week, careful to avoid the communication lines underneath. Com is marked in orange spray paint, gas in yellow, electric in red. You don’t want to dig up the wrong shit or you will pay for it. I’m glad for the backhoe’s cab. It’s not even twenty degrees outside. I get about an hour out of the cold before O’Brien switches me out so Reeve can warm up and Parker can go for coffee. Weather like this, we’ll rotate a lot. I climb down and pick up a shovel. The North End project has been going on for a few years now. Gas, sewer, water mains, storm drains. A lot of crews working, trying to keep it all coordinated. There’s pipe a hundred years old down here and a lot of houses still have lead hookups.
It’s a clean trench. We’re through the gravel backfill, and I scrape around the bottom to get at the flange from the catch basin to the old iron pipe to the storm drain. Getting into old dirt.
The hole is out of the wind so it’s not too bad down here. Parker comes back from picking up coffee and is handing out the cups from a cardboard tray. Biggs is laughing at something Reeve said when my shovel hits something hard in the dirt. My hands sting and I drop the handle.
“Ah, son of a…” I say, and bite my lip.
“You got a stinger there, Joachim?” O’Brien says. Everyone calls me Jack, even my pop, but O’Brien likes to call me by my Portuguese name when he’s in a good mood.
“Yeah,” I say through gritted teeth and try to shake the mix of numbness and needles out of my hands. “Got me good.”
“Oh, man,” Reeve says, laughing. “That softball game against the Boston Gas guys last year I caught a good one, yo. You remember that?” He’s hopping up and down at the edge of the hole, trying to stay warm. I don’t, especially, but I nod anyway. I bend down to dig through the packed dirt to get the old paver or chunk of concrete I hit. I pull up a piece of metal. Confused, I knock the dirt off of it.
“The fuck?” I hold it up so they can see up top. “It’s a horseshoe.”
“So? You want a cookie?” O’Brien says. “Throw it on the pile and let’s go.” He takes a sip from the Styrofoam c
up and spits. “Jesus Christ, Parker! How much sugar did you put in this?”
“I told them two like you like,” Parker says. “They marked it right on the cup.”
“Well, I can feel my fucking fillings falling out,” O’Brien says. “Jack, what the hell are you waiting for down there?”
“What’s a horseshoe doing under the street?” I say.
“Came over on the Mayflower. Fuck should I know? Jesus. All right, climb out of there and get your coffee.”
“They got horses on the Mayflower?” Parker says. “I didn’t know that.”
Biggs snorts and almost chokes on her coffee laughing. Never used to have women on the crews, but Biggs did a couple of tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, so she’s plenty rugged enough for this and doesn’t take any shit from the guys.
We huddle in a small circle with our cups. I look down toward the water across the untouched snow crust of the ball field. The water is gray. Even the gulls have sheltered somewhere. I can see the masts of the Constitution across the inner harbor and if I walked to the water’s edge I could see the Cassin Young too. I like those old ships. There is a break in the wind and more of those light feathery snowflakes drift lazily around us. I’m finally settled from the morning. Just enough coffee to keep me awake without feeling like I’m vibrating. Looking at the rest of the crew, they all look tired. There is a scream nearby and I start, but it is a gull, not a horse. Biggs tenses up at well, but her face goes hard fast. Coffee finished, we go back to work. No one is talking much now. I take over flagging, wave the traffic by. It’s a little light. Only the people who have no choice are out today. Cabs. Delivery drivers with their trucks full of whatever. I stifle a yawn.
On the way home, the subway is filled with exhausted people lost inside themselves and, on the turns, the metal groans from strain. And somewhere in the background beneath the clatter and squeal of the steel wheels I can almost hear the horses again.
* * *
I’m on the second floor of an old three-decker with faded vinyl siding and an absentee landlord who lives in Jamaica Plain. I nearly fall on the ice on the stairs. The plastic bucket of ice melt in the front hall is empty, so the neighbors dumped it out and then didn’t bother to refill it. The landlord keeps the extra salt in the basement because, I guess, someone might break in and take it out of the hallway. I unlock the door and find the light switch. There’s no cover on the switch, and I can feel the edges of the metal electric box. The stairs down are narrow. I have to crouch because the hall stairs are right above these, a low slanted ceiling.
The building is old. The stone is settling because the old wooden pilings beneath the streets are beginning to rot. Cracks in the plaster, with crumbling brown undercoat falling away down to the lathing. Cracks in the stone foundation. A hard turn at the bottom of the stairs by the fuse box. Half the breakers are double-tapped and there are old-school fuses in small cardboard boxes on the wooden shelf next to it, all covered in thick grey dust. There’s no way this is up to code.
The basement is low with an old dragon of a boiler and pipes wrapped in thick asbestos. There are three stalls along the wall, wooden pens with chicken wire door frames, maybe seven by ten. Storage for each floor. I don’t keep much in mine.
The salt is under the stairs in a heavy wooden shipping crate stenciled with “The Murray Company” on State Street. A yellowed sticker reads “grapeade soda.” Full of salt, it weighs a ton. I can’t imagine having to haul freight back in the day. I reach for the coffee can that I use to carry salt upstairs and I hear the thumping of the first-floor tenants. The Milsons are usually quiet, but they are sure loud tonight, running heavily back and forth the length of the floor, knocking dust from the unfinished subflooring overhead. The motes swim in the florescent light. I grab the can and turn. The hanging lights are swaying slightly.
The boards flex so much that they pull the nails from the wood. There is a terrible creaking and a sound, rat-tat-tat, like a machine gun. A dark tide begins to seep in through the windows and foundation cracks in the basement, at once both horrifyingly fast and languid. It rises up and I struggle to swim. It presses on me, thick and sticky. I cannot move in it. The fluorescents flicker as I lose my footing and begin to sink. I gasp for air but the muddy water clings to my face like a caul. I inhale it deeply, pull it into my lungs like mucus. My ribs ache from pulling against the thickness filling my throat. I cannot get any air.
Dark forms move in the flood, kicking and thrashing beside me. I can’t make out their shapes, but they, too, are dying. Then I cannot see, except for red flashes behind my eyes, and then nothing. Eventually, I wake on the floor beside the crate. The basement is dry and I am alone. Inches from my nose, in a glue trap by the wall beneath the stairs, a mouse lies dying. It cannot move at all, and takes rapid shallow breaths. As I watch, helpless, its breathing becomes sporadic and stops.
It’s all the sleep I get.
* * *
By Wednesday, time seems to be stopping for me, days bleeding into each other. I’m pounding Red Bull to keep my eyes open. It warmed up so fast, from the twenties to the fifties in two days. Joggers and walkers are out in force, on the sidewalks and along the seawall. I’m wearing a t-shirt under my vest, waving traffic past the site with a flag. It’s been spitting a little rain on and off, but not too bad.
I think I bruised a rib trying to suck in air during a dream, and I’m trying to keep out of shoveling. The remaining snow along the edges of the road is shrunken and packed and blackened with exhaust. The snow at the park is trampled and brown. The turf beneath is all chopped up as if someone spent the night tearing at it with a post digger. I’m so exhausted from the nightmares I can’t pay attention to anything. I swear I saw the horses in the subway tunnel, running along the side of the car outside the window where I was leaning. Chasing along with me, keeping pace.
I don’t know what’s happening.
The other guys, Biggs included, all look exhausted, but no one will talk about it. I think I hear hooves on cobbles, but when I look up it’s just the click of skateboard wheels. Parker is saying something from down in the trench, but I don’t know what.
“So, we went there, did the thing, and then we came back,” Parker says.
“Great story, Parker,” Biggs says. “You got me on the edge of my seat with that one.”
Reeve nods in agreement. If he hears the sarcasm in her voice he doesn’t let on.
O’Brien, across the trench on the sidewalk side, looks like he’s worse than any of us. He’s past fifty, and his face is drawn and paler than usual. He’s also in a foul mood, scowling down at Parker in the trench.
“No, you idiot,” O’Brien yells. “You can’t do it that way, you gotta take that one out first and then the other thing. I don’t have time for this shit. Jesus. Reeve, get down in there with him. We gotta fill this section today and keep moving.”
Three kids who should be in school zoom past us on their bikes in the small gap between the traffic barrels and a bright yellow chicken salad delivery truck.
“Damn fools are gonna get themselves killed doing that,” Biggs says. The cartoon chicken with a bowtie and paper deli hat smiles at us and gives a big thumbs up.
“Hey, Biggs. Can I ask you something?”
“Yeah.”
“It’s like, ever since we turned the corner by the rink and started digging down here by the park, I’m getting these bad dreams.”
“Oh, hell, no,” Biggs says. “I don’t know anything about it. Don’t ask me.”
“But, before I heard the horses and it looked like you—"
“Uh-uh. I ain’t about any of that weird shit, you understand me? You get your own answers for whatever you think you’re seeing. I don’t know nothing about it. When I get off shift I am going home, have a glass of wine, and read a book while my baby rubs my feet. Why are you even asking me, anyway?”
There is a squeal across the street. An Asian woman in a jacket and skirt has stumbled. Bystanders help
her up. She is tall and thin with long legs, almost gangly in her professional attire. She snapped off a heel, and is laughing with the people who helped her stand, so she must not be hurt badly. Tall heels. I’m surprised she didn’t break a leg. She hobbles off, lame but moving.
“Glass of wine sounds good,” I say. “My pop makes his own by the barrel.”
“Yeah? Well, you carry some down here I’ll bring it home and try it.”
“Portuguese wine is pretty sweet.”
“That’s all right. I’m pretty sweet too.”
We laugh. Behind us, O’Brien’s yelling sounds more complimentary and encouraging now, so I figure we can fill this part of the trench and be done with it. Maybe once we do, the nightmares will stop and I can get some sleep. The afternoon is quiet and we use the backhoe to pack the pile of excavated fill back into the hole on top of the new pipe section with the litter of coffee cups and cigarette packs. We’re not supposed to dump that stuff in, but no one will know what’s down there until someone digs it up again. Hell, the whole airport is built on trash fill, so what difference can it make?
I do not see or hear any horses on the way home, and I believe that, whatever that was, it is over now. I am happy to forget it and get on with my life.
* * *
But I am not so fortunate. I wake with a start to the sound of destruction and mayhem. There are horses in my apartment, crashing through the windows and rearing high enough to scrape the ceiling with their hooves. My coffee table and flat-screen are toppled and smashed beneath sharp hooves. Their eyes are wild and rolling.
Wicked Haunted: An Anthology of the New England Horror Writers Page 4