Wicked Haunted: An Anthology of the New England Horror Writers

by Daniel G. Keohane

  The scent of ether. A cotton wad in her hand, so soaked it dripped, drops splashing floor where she stood.

  Her masked face turned to Henry. He saw her beautiful eyes swelling with tears.

  “You knew him. Who was he to you? A husband? A lover? A brother?”

  She ignored Henry and pushed cotton wad against the ghostly man’s face.

  “You.” Henry’s eyes went wide. “You killed him!”

  She raised her hand of sleep and death.

  “You euthanized him.”

  She stepped away from the dead ghost and turned toward Henry.

  She let her mask fall.

  Henry couldn’t understand why he’d screamed in the operating room. She was lovely.

  Until she crossed the boundary. Then her face held all the charm of death, a skeletal relief of malice.

  Henry broke his trance, gave an inarticulate cry and stepped back. He had forgotten the I.V. stand, and he tripped over it. His ass hit the hard floor. The nurse of death loomed over him.

  “It’s not me!” He wanted to shout but he clamped down on his hysteria. After the waiting room incident and what he had told the nurse about being gassed, the staff were already eyeing him warily. He didn’t want to be carted off to a lunatic asylum. “I wasn’t the motorcycle crash! I’m not the one repeating history! He already died!”

  He pointed at the bed. “Whoever that man was, whatever year he died, he wasn’t me. Isn’t me. Leave me alone!”

  Her skull face leaned in close. Henry smelled an undercurrent of perfume while the ether stench overwhelmed his nostrils. She held her hand of merciful death to her side, pausing and uncertain.

  She nodded then, withdrew across the boundary back into the sepia scene. She approached the bed. An unheard sobbing shook her shoulders.

  Henry closed his eyes.

  When the ache in his head stopped, he opened his eyes. The room was normal. The second bed, modern and empty. The sepia tones were gone.

  He climbed back onto his bed.

  There were no further spectral incidents, though they did appear in his nightmares. The following day, hospital couldn’t discharge him fast enough.

  Henry spent the better part of an hour walking along Meridian Street, searching for his rental car. When he found it—covered in tickets but thankfully not towed—he made it a point not to look at the building facade where it was parked.

  The East Boston Relief Station belonged to the past. Henry wanted it to stay there.

  The Mouse

  Larissa Glasser

  1

  A year before I was stabbed to death, I saw a mouse in our living room. I was pretty baked at the time, so I hadn’t noticed it at first. I’d been watching some old noir film left running on the TV by someone else in the house and I was trying to figure out what it was.

  I lived on the top floors of an early-20th century duplex with these two other trans girls Brooke and Debbie who were around the same age as me. The apartment got dusty a lot and was difficult to keep clean. But it was warm and cheap and our landlady was good to us.

  I didn’t have much to do that afternoon so I’d sat down on the big couch and decided to see if I could gather which film it was. I used to study film as an undergrad but I’d dropped out during my second semester because I went broke. This film didn’t ring a bell, but it starred Laurence Tierney. His character killed a lot of people.

  My throat got dry, so I reached for my Diet Snapple. When I turned my head, I noticed the mouse resting on the smaller couch at the far end of the wall. It was facing sideways, and when I realized it wasn’t afraid, I watched it for a while instead of the movie.

  The thing was brownish and very small, no bigger than two inches not counting its tail. The room got darker as evening came. The TV became the only source of light, a cheerless, icy glare. The movie finished, and the closing host commentary was annoying—too chipper—so I muted the sound but kept the TV on so I could keep watching the mouse. I was too invested in this new activity to get up and turn the big light on.

  The mouse was breathing rapidly. It never moved from the spot, nor did its tail move.

  I knew we’d had a so-called “mouse problem” for a few weeks. We could hear them scuttling in the walls. Brooke, the most industrious member of our household, said she was sick of finding mouse turds in her workshop, so she was going to get some poison before the infestation got worse. I didn’t want her to kill anything, but my girlfriend Jennifer had tried to convince me that Brooke was doing the right thing, because mice were all vermin who needed to be killed.

  “But mice are cute!” I’d told her when the subject came up.

  “They’re vermin!” she’d said. “They’re dirty!”

  Some of Jennifer’s outer chin hairs, softened from several months of laser treatments, glowed in silhouette in front of my blue lamp. She’d looked angelic. I’d went for a main tuft of the hairs and clutched them. She didn’t break away but had stared back at me, trying to maintain her stern expression.

  “Mice are cute,” I’d told her. “I like animals.”

  “Come on! Mice are vermin! They’ll eat all of your groceries and shit everywhere!”

  “They’re cute!”

  This game had gone on for a bit, back and forth, and had become increasingly more childish until she just dove at me, wrestled me out of my clothes, called me cute, and fucked me high and wild. We usually came at the same time. Sometimes life was nice to us.

  Anyway, it looked like the poison was working, because the mouse was breathing at a steadily slower rate. Watching it made me sad, though. I wanted to help it somehow, like with an antidote or something. I could have put it outside to face the city. It was so little. It never meant to hurt anyone. Why hadn’t it moved yet? Apart from the debilitating effects of the poison, maybe the mouse hadn’t noticed me to begin with.

  I turned the TV off, got up from the couch, and flipped the big light on. The mouse was still there and it wasn’t moving. I almost went to pick it up and keep it with me for a while, but I didn’t. Animals crawl away to die in peace. They know what they know, some sort of resigned meditation. Once I saw a cat stumble behind her owner’s couch just to die out of sight.

  I went upstairs to my room and tried to read for a while, but it was difficult to concentrate. The words weren’t reaching me.

  I went downstairs a few hours later to get some water. I hoped the suffering had finally ended for the mouse. I looked in, and it wasn’t there anymore.

  2

  The Christmas before I was stabbed to death, I went to my mom’s house just outside the city for the first time after I had finally corrected all my documentation. I didn’t dress down nor tie my hair back. I’d had it with her conditional parameters which only enabled her state of denial over who I was—her only child, her daughter. I’d stipulated this before I agreed to go visit. I’d worked too hard at this to just detransition for a 48-hour visit. My mom said “okay” in a sort of exasperated sigh, as if giving in to a child’s tantrum for the sake of blissful silence.

  I went in a biz casual, navy-blue, sleeveless A-line dress, and I did my best to look conservative and assimilated. I also wanted to prove to her that I was happier than I had ever been—that I’d done okay despite her throwing me out of the house that past Spring.

  I mostly read during the train ride down. The coach was mad-crowded, of course, passengers on their way to gluttony, MVP sports, and capitalist family drama. Many of them also looked tense as fuck, for whatever reasons.

  I kept my face down a lot. I was at that embryonic stage of transition where all you can feel are eyes on you, judging you, deriding you, and that everything you’re trying to achieve, inside and out, doesn’t amount to anything at all.

  As we approached the last stop, I put my sunglasses on, and stood up against the window as riders queued for the exit. I caught my reflection and thought I looked very Kim Novak. The trip hadn’t been so bad. I just had to keep my shoulders back. A conf
ident posture can sometimes help us pass.

  Part of the shopping area by the depot was under construction, which made me think of the poisoned mouse. I didn’t know which housemate—Brooke or Debbie—had taken its body off the couch. If it had been Brooke, she’d probably flushed it down the toilet. I would’ve buried it somewhere leafy and peaceful. I should have done something to help it, to stop the suffering as it held onto life despite the poison.

  Had the mouse felt sad? Did it blame itself for all the bad things in life, and for what was happening to it? Did it want to say goodbye to its friends?

  My mom wasn’t there. I knew I wouldn’t look quite as recognizable to her. It wasn’t that cold out, so I decided to wait, suddenly wishing I smoked cigarettes again.

  A black sedan kept circling, which seemed weird because most of the others were just idling for pickups. On its sixth turn, it pulled up closer to me. Out came my mom, and the trunk popped open for my suitcase. I waved and took off my sunglasses. After a pregnant moment, she smiled at me with closed lips.

  We mostly rode in silence. After a few tries at small talk, I finally gave up and watched the dull landscape go by. I missed the city already, and my tuck was coming undone as I sat in the leather car seat. I hated that, most of all.

  We got to my mom’s house. After the driver took my bags out of the trunk, my mom swiped her card and dashed into the house without saying anything. She didn’t look me in the eye ever again.

  Not even on Christmas.

  3

  A month before I was stabbed to death, Jennifer broke up with me.

  “What did I do wrong?” I asked her on the phone.

  “It isn’t you, it’s me,” she said. “I just need a little space. You know you can be intense.”

  I told her I’d try to calm down and be less so. I conceded I’d been having a hard time with my mom and being unemployed, and so much of that drama was spilling over. Plus, my estrogen levels felt random and emo.

  “Can we at least talk about it in person?”

  “I’m not sure what you think that would achieve.”

  Jennifer had taken me horseback riding the previous summer—I’d never been on a horse before, and the world looked so hopeful and green from up on its back.

  Jennifer had kissed me deeply and blown on my neck as we lay together in the shade of a wide oak. She had gotten me into new music. Sleeping with her felt so awesome. Finally, so much had begun to make sense.

  And then—it was over.

  I sat in the TV room a lot, the same place I’d seen the dying mouse. Debbie came in one time, sat down next to me, and smoked me up. We’d been talking about which Drive Like Jehu album was better or something when I suddenly asked her, “Do you remember seeing a dead mouse on the couch last summer?”

  “A dead mouse?” She looked down at the cushion and shifted her body out a little. “Gross!”

  I told her what I’d seen that one time, and that I’d just left it alone, but that it was gone later.

  “Brooke must have gotten rid of it, then,” Debbie figured. “D-CON’s one hell of a drug, hey?”

  Debbie and I had hooked up a few times before I’d met Jennifer, and I was still into her, but she was dating this other trans girl Allison by then, and I didn’t want to stir any shit. So, we gossiped about other things. I think Debbie was just being patient with me. After a while, she headed out on her scooter, and I stayed in the living room. I watched the mouse cushion. Everything seemed peculiar there, a whirlpool of energy that pulsed around where the mouse had waited to die.

  I wanted me to die instead of the mouse.

  Then, in a quick spasm, I attacked myself. I tore at my arms with my night-polished nails. I hit my forehead with my balled fists. I kicked the floor. I screamed at the ceiling.

  Sorrow convulsed me, so badly I began to hyperventilate. Oh my god—

  —I need to die I need to die I need to fucking die…

  I reached the point where I lost all faculty of language and could only scream a single word, rhythmically with each time I hit myself: DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE!—

  I only stopped because I grew exhausted. I didn’t wipe at my tears. I wanted to let them dry.

  I tried to take deep breaths. It only helped a little. My throat and lungs felt so constricted.

  I felt minus something else, though, like a crucial part of my being had dissipated from me like smoke. My eyes felt sunken. I felt terrified that I reached this new level—how close had I come to finally killing myself?

  I wanted Jennifer back. I wanted my mom to love me again. I wanted the mouse to come back so I could try to help it.

  Later, up in my room, watching the night sky from a lotus position on my futon, I thought I heard a scuffling in the wall. I perked right up and craned my head. But the sound didn’t come again.

  4

  A week before I was stabbed to death, my mom called me to say she never wanted to speak to me again. She had opened some mail that had come from the library. I had an overdue book. She took one look at the title, and blew up at me.

  “There’s no way you’re one of those creatures!” she yelled.

  “Mom?”

  I stood shaking in the kitchen, listening to her go off.

  Wave after wave of doubt and loss crashed through me. I felt like such a failure. I had done everything wrong—there was no other way to explain it.

  “Mom, can I at least try to say something?”

  “NO! There’s nothing you’re going to say that is going change my mind about what you’re doing to yourself! And you know what? I saw your browser search history at home and I’ve got your doctor’s name! I’m going to sue her for turning you into a monster!”

  “I haven’t been able to afford to see my doctor in months, Mom.”

  Brooke had stockpiled several months’ worth of estradiol and had been generously dosing both me and Debbie for months.

  “I’m still going to sue her for malpractice! That way, she’ll never be able to ruin another boy the way she ruined you!”

  I looked over at the mouse cushion in the adjoining TV room.

  There was something going on there in the place where the little rodent had held its death vigil, a tight energy of divining. Then, in keeping with my mom’s viciousness, my own desperate screams echoed back at me from the couch—DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE!—

  NO—I have to just stand up for myself, finally.

  “Mom, please stop this,” I said quietly, hoping she would reciprocate in tone. “I’m not a boy. I’m your daughter.”

  I thought I saw the mouse there on the couch again, breathing fast and dying sad. Next to it, I sensed something much larger, a shadow, hitting itself violently. But I turned away and dismissed it as a figment of my imagination, or a latent stress-factor of the conversation taking place.

  “You’re not my daughter! You’re nothing! You’re a freak!”

  I closed my eyes.

  “I’m your child.”

  “Not anymore! If I’d known what you were going to do to me, I would have aborted you!”

  Then, I don’t know how, everything inverted and I started laughing at my mom.

  “Do you think this is funny?”

  “I think it’s hilarious, mom.”

  Yeah, funniest shit ever.

  “Stop laughing, or you just lost a mother!”

  I regained my composure after about a minute.

  “Mom,” I told her, “I really think you need professional help.”

  “I’m going to make you regret this. And all you will ever know from this will be eternal misery. Idiot.”

  She hung up on me.

  I glanced at the mouse cushion again. The energies I’d seen there had dissipated, and all traces of my weeks-old screaming fit had also stopped. Everything was quiet again, and I was alone.

  I wonder what my mom did with the library book.

  5

  The day before I was stabbed to death, I bought my own copy of that book online, along w
ith a couple of others. But they didn’t get mailed to me in time for me to be alive to open the box. I hope someone else gets the books and finds them useful.

  6

  An hour or so before I was stabbed to death, I met Nora for the first and last time.

  Debbie had asked me if I’d drive her to this party a little way out of the city. Debbie’s scooter wasn’t highway-worthy, and I didn’t have anything else going on, so I said “sure, let’s go!” It would be good to get out of the house for a while and maybe meet new people.

  I’m introverted by nature, but I once we got there I felt like I’d been sprung from prison. I’d never seen so many of my people gathered in one place, not even in group. It was like we had our own nation. Maybe I’d also felt at ease because Debbie was introducing me around. I’d gotten to talking with Nora because she’d overheard me say something about David Cronenberg.

  “Wait, really?” she brightened and swooped in, “I’m from Toronto, he’s like royalty there!”

  Her face astonished me, very aquiline, and she had green eyes. She had on this sleeveless black dress that made her many arm tattoos stand out in the ochre light. She had thick, black hair that she’d tied up in a bun, and she shamelessly wore a lot of Claire’s mall jewelry.

  “Which Cronenberg’s your favorite?” I asked her.

  “Videodrome, of course!”

  “No way—that’s my favorite, too! Nicki Brand is my spirit mom!”

  “I know, right?” she beamed with rose lips. “Long live the new flesh!”

  She led me to the living room and the party became this sideways thing that didn’t concern us so much anymore. Conversations took place around us about this or that, but we were only us. I even forgot about my mom.

  “Yeah,” Nora said. “I’ve lived here for about three months. The commute to work blows, but the job is chill and I can look how I want. Sometimes I even work from home.”