Later, after a light meal, I tried to talk to her. As if I’d done anything to upset her. “What’s wrong?” I asked her.
She didn’t feel like talking.
She slumped in a chair in front of the French windows. The curtains were closed, which meant she couldn’t see the view. I pulled them back for her. It was dark now. The lights were pretty.
But with a snort she’d jumped up and quit the room as soon as I opened the curtain.
Anyone can take a hint, but it’s somehow nicer to sit down and talk things out.
She clung to the edge of the sink, her face white as enamel. “I’ll make a drink,” I suggested.
Thrusting out an arm she opened the fridge door and bent down to get the milk out. She started when she saw the car keys next to the butter. I’d put them there just after we’d arrived.
“What’s the matter?” I pleaded.
I’d often hidden her things in the fridge at my flat, as a joke; her reaction never more than a laugh or a groan.
She slammed the fridge door, ignoring me, and ran upstairs where she shut herself in her bedroom.
I took the keys out of the fridge and put them quietly down on the table, then sat down and thought about what might happen next. The simplest would be for me just to go. Would that be seen as giving in or a dignified withdrawal? Two of her Malaysian leather masks gazed unresponsively down at me from the wall above the portable television.
I became aware of a murmur of conversation through the ceiling. I stood up and craned my neck. Although the actual words were indistinguishable, I could tell it was her voice, and unanswered.
I walked quietly down the hall to the telephone extension. Hoping she wouldn’t hear the click, I lifted the receiver to my ear.
“. . . Mini was his.”
I frowned. What were they talking about?
“. . . but the things that are happening here, I’m terrified. I feel like I’m going mad or something. I keep hearing this terrible squealing.”
I dropped the phone and rubbed my forehead, which was prickling with perspiration.
I couldn’t decide what was the best thing to do, given her state of mind. But since my presence was obviously not helping, I decided to call it a day.
Closing the front door quietly behind me, I stepped into early morning darkness and thick fog. The car was some minutes’ walk away. The plastic-covered seat was cold and sweating, the windscreen obscured inside and out. I proceeded, hunched over the wheel, the choke full out, wiping the condensation away with tissues and the fog with protesting wipers. The headlamps pushed into the fog, illuminating nothing but clouds of billowing moisture. The full beam was less help.
More by chance than navigation I found the dual carriageway and caught up with a set of red lights, which, when I narrowed the gap to eighteen inches, I could see belonged to a large container lorry.
In order to continue to enjoy the false security of the lorry’s slipstream, I was obliged to accelerate to sixty miles per hour. I could scarcely credit the drivers who from time to time overtook me in the outside lane. My own knees had liquefied in the fear that I would fail to register the lorry’s brake lights, should they come on.
Because of the unshrinking blanket of fog, I never saw the sign warning of roads merging and so remained ignorant of the danger until six lanes of traffic suddenly tried to squeeze into three.
Given the appalling visibility and the speed the influx of traffic was travelling at (coming from the west, where the fog would be thinner), there were bound to be some casualties.
A USAF jeep shunted me into the lorry I’d been sheltering behind, and an Audi overtaking on the outside caught my wing.
Then, dimly, I began to understand what she had meant about the echoes. Sometimes, she had said, the echoes are like the real thing.
I only stayed long enough to pick up the tailor’s dummy.
It would function as a present and as a surprise. Hopefully, she would have calmed down overnight and was probably already indulging herself in contrition.
Driving back up with the dummy lying silently on the back seat, I saw its bulk whenever I checked the rear-view mirror. Was it not too silent and bland? It needed a mask.
Also in the mirror I saw the mask I would give it.
The car coughed and clanked, but somehow made it.
She was out, at work, as I’d anticipated.
I went to the cupboard under the stairs. Three boxes sat in a corner and a couple of coats hung on hooks. The dummy, with its mask, was the same height as me.
Patiently I awaited the end of the working day.
I heard the key in the front door, the shuffle of letters, the tap of an executive briefcase on kitchen linoleum.
Footsteps. A yawn. More steps.
She pulled open the door.
A tremor went through her body; she stepped back; her mouth fell open but any sound was choked in her throat.
All apologies, I slid forward towards her, castors squealing.
“No, Nick! No!” she managed to scream.
NORMAN PARTRIDGE
Guignoir
IN HIS Locus column, Ed Bryant described Norman Partridge as “One of the most astonishing new writers to make a splash in 1991 . . . His imagination is fresh; his versatility is amazing. Best of all, he knows how to violate reader expectations and get away with it.”
Partridge’s stories have been making a splash in such magazines as Cemetery Dance, the British Fantasy Society’s Chills, Amazing Stories and the anthologies Final Shadows, Copper Star, Chilled to the Bone, Dark at Heart, Dark Voices 4: The Pan Book of Horror, Shivers and New Crimes 3, amongst others.
“‘Guignoir’ is one of several stories set in Fiddler, California,” explains the author. “Strange things happen there. Sometimes supernatural, sometimes not. Haunted cars have been known to prowl the roads, jukeboxes play ’50s songs about dead teenagers, and everybody thinks that they know everybody else’s business.”
The following story was inspired by a photograph of a carnival peep show displaying the car of mass-murderer Ed Gein (“Look! See The Car That Hauled The Dead from Their Graves!”). Gein’s exploits were also the inspiration for Robert Bloch’s seminal slasher novel, Psycho, and Tobe Hooper’s film The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, but the story which follows owes nothing to either.
“DON’T WORRY, ELLIE,” THE KID SAID, sparking his cigarette lighter. “He’s afraid of fire.”
Blue flame singed my cheek. I reached for the kid, my manacled arms straining against steel chains anchored in the mildewed floor. I pawed the cobwebbed air just inches short of his face, the manacles chafing my wrists, my hands wild wriggling things, like hungry green tarantulas.
I growled.
The kid’s girlfriend jumped away. The back of her head struck the greystone wall making a hollow sound, like a cartoon echo.
The kid laughed. “Get a grip, Ellie. He really is afrai— ”
I caught a handful of leather jacket. The kid leaped backward, but I held on until the chains whipped taut and the manacles pinched me to the bone. Green scars peeled off my wrists. Lines of blood welled up underneath.
The kid smirked at me, just out of reach.
“You little bastard,” I whispered.
He backhanded me and my forehead caved in. “You ain’t doin’ it right,” he said, flatly. “Frankenstein can’t talk.”
“That’s right,” his girlfriend pouted.
Again the kid backhanded me, and the monster mask slipped across my face. I couldn’t see through the eye holes, but I could smell the sharp odor of melting rubber mixed with the animal scent of the kid’s leather jacket.
The girl laughed, then shouted, “Perry, watch out!”
Another cartoon echo. I tore off the melted remains of my mask. Perry slumped against the plywood wall. His eyes bulged: the Wolfman’s fingers were clamped around his thick neck.
The girl jumped at the Wolfman, scratching for all she was worth. His furry mask came
away in her hand and she squealed when she saw his face. Unbelieving, she looked at him, then looked at me. “Perry, they’ve got the same face!”
“Yeah,” Perry said, glaring at my twin brother Larry. “And both of ’em are uglier than Frankenstein. But they don’t scare me none.”
That wasn’t true. Neither part of it.
Larry’s fingers dug in, thumb squeezing hard, but the kid didn’t squirm. “Tough boy,” Larry said. “You ain’t afraid of nothin’, huh?” He eyed the girl. “Your boyfriend is awfully brave. How about you? Maybe the four of us can get together tonight and do something really scary. We’ll go for a ride in the Death Car, just like old Hank Caul used to. How about that?”
Tears welled in the girl’s eyes. Larry had struck a nerve. I unlocked the manacles and moved toward her, remembering her laughter.
“You pricks,” Perry croaked. “Hank Caul got her sister, almost got her— ”
Larry’s werewolf fingers squeezed, cutting off Perry’s words. My brother grinned at me then, and I grinned back.
I stroked the girl’s blond hair and she turned away, sobbing. “Larry, I’d like you to meet Ellie,” I said, and Larry nodded. I took Ellie by the shoulders and wiped away her tears, knowing that I’d terrified her simply by remembering her name.
Warm tears. I rubbed them between my thumb and forefinger. I couldn’t help asking. I had to know. “Ellie, did Hank Caul get your sister’s skin? Is that why you’re so shook up?”
She stared at me, speechless. Then she ran, her long hair spilling over her shoulders, blond hair flecked with blood from my wounded wrists.
I let her go.
Perry tried to break free. Larry wrenched something shiny out of the kid’s hand, then marched him down the hall, past Count Dracula and the Phantom of the Opera. I followed, my heavy boots thudding over plywood floor that had been painted to look like mildewed stone. Though I was perfectly willing to share grins with Larry, I knew that Pa would hold both of us responsible for whatever happened to the kid, and I hoped my twin wasn’t going too far.
Larry slammed Perry against the Mummy’s coffin. The midway lights angled through the doorway, slashing across the kid’s face. Pasty, terrified. His lower lip quivered when Larry whispered in his ear, and then Larry shoved him down the stairs and into the crowd.
The kid hit the ground hard. Dust puffed up around him. His greasy D.A. was a mess. The gawkers gathered round as if a new attraction had been announced. Come one, come all. See the amazing crow-eating boy . . .
Larry’s arm shot out, his fingers flexing stiff, and a bone-handled hunting knife jabbed the dirt between the kid’s legs.
“That wasn’t very smart,” Larry said.
I saw Ellie elbowing into the crowd. Trying to hide. Larry saw her too.
“Girl, you come here.”
God knows why, but she did.
Larry slipped two tickets into her hand and grinned. “You and your boyfriend come see the Death Car. On me.”
“I don’t want to hear any excuses.” Pa locked the battered suitcase and slapped the lid for emphasis. “Like I told you boys a million times: what one does, both do. It’s up to you two to watch out for each other.”
I wanted to tell Pa that was exactly what we’d been doing, but his good eye cut me down before I could get my mouth working.
“No excuses,” he repeated. “We’ve got to be careful in this town. Hank Caul did his dirty work right here, and a lot of these folks don’t see the entertainment value of our little tent show. Some of ’em had friends or relations who went for their last ride in the Death Car, and they sure don’t like the idea of us makin’ six bits from every gawker who wants to see it.”
Again, Pa slapped the suitcase. Larry and I called it Fort Knox, and I wondered for the millionth time how much money was squirreled away inside. Maybe a lot, maybe nothing worth dreaming about. The Death Car wasn’t the attraction it had been five years ago when Caul’s stab’n’skin murder spree was still big news, and I felt sure that Pa had come back to the little town of Fiddler to stir up the pot, maybe get some national press about local outrage. It was worth a try. Lately Pa had tightened the purse strings, and I was getting pretty tired of working in the Castle of Horrors just to keep some change in my pocket.
“Pa, the kid pushed us,” Larry began.
“Yeah, and you gave him free tickets,” I chided.
“Not another word. You two let me do the thinkin’.” Pa stared us down and made sure we had that straight. “The Ezell boys are gonna take the rest of your shift at the Castle, so you two can make yourselves useful around here. I’m expectin’ company, and I want the Death Car lookin’ pretty as a hunnert-dollar whore.”
As usual, Larry couldn’t keep his mouth shut. “It must be damned important company for you to close the show early,” he said. “Is Ed Sullivan comin’ to visit? He finally gonna put us on TV?”
“It ain’t for you to worry about,” Pa said humorlessly. “I got some phone calls to make. I’ll be back in an hour. No funny stuff. Remember: what one does, both do.”
Pa opened the trunk of the Death Car and placed the battered suitcase inside. “Safer than Fort Knox,” he said.
Larry smiled. “Yep, no one wants to mess with the bogeyman’s wheels.”
“Yeah,” I said, “ain’t superstition a wonderful thing?”
The Death Car was a 1950 Nash Ambassador—hardly the stuff of legend. On the highway it didn’t warrant a second glance, but inside the carnival tent, surrounded by poster-sized morgue photos and ringed above and below with a network of blood-red baby spots that had cost Pa a small fortune, the Nash became Hank Caul’s Death Car, an abattoir on wheels, ladies and gentlemen, serviced by the devil himself.
The gawkers believed all that, of course. Some of them even believed that the Death Car ate flesh and drank blood, but I knew the truth: the Nash was indeed a monster, but a monster of a different kind—a giant leech that sucked Windex, paste wax and free time. My free time.
Larry misted the rear window and set to work with a squeegee. “I told the old bastard we should’ve skipped this town,” he said. “Jesus, Hank Caul’s stompin’ grounds. It’ll be a miracle if we get outta here alive.”
I nodded. “Pa’s up to something. That’s why we came back to California. He wants to get the gawkers interested in Caul’s car again.” I worked a chamois over the trunk, admiring the dark cherry gleam. “Maybe we should hang around tonight, just to make sure the old man isn’t in over his head. That kid we rousted might show up with some friends. If Pa has a deal going, the kid could sour it real easy if he did something to the car.”
“Frank, you know Pa won’t go for it. Christ, he won’t even let us count the daily receipts, let alone elbow in on one of his deals.” Larry’s voice dropped a gravelly octave in perfect imitation of the old man. “I’m the brain and you boys are the muscle, and muscle don’t talk business.”
We both laughed.
“Besides, we’re busy tonight.” Larry grinned lecherously. “On the way over here I met a young filly who thinks that twins are real interesting, especially twins who can kick ass.”
I grinned, matching Larry’s. Even though we were twins, I certainly couldn’t call the grin mine. Larry was adventurous and outgoing; but he was also content with the seamy pleasures of the carny circuit. I was not. I longed for something better, bigger; something that went beyond rubber masks and stone walls made of plywood. The other stuff, the grinny stuff, made me feel like I wasn’t much better than a gawker.
Still, I grinned. Larry’s grin. “What one does . . .,” I began in the old man’s gravelly rasp.
“. . . both do,” Larry finished.
Her hair was stringy. My fingers passed through it and away, into the soft, perfumed fur that rimmed her neck.
Larry brushed her mink coat away from her leg, his left hand playing itsy-bitsy-spider as it traveled the length of her thigh.
“That’s good,” she whispered. “When I heard
what you boys did to Perry Martin, I just knew you’d be good. Not many folks around here will stand up to that little rooster, him being the sheriff’s son and all.”
Larry’s hand froze mid-thigh. We exchanged worried looks. If Pa found out that we’d fucked with the local law, there would be hell to pay.
She giggled and encouraged the itsy-bitsy-spider to continue on its way.
We were fifty-five feet above the midway, atop the Ezell boys’ pride and joy: a revved-up Ferris Wheel that the carny folks had named The Hammer in honor of Bud Ezell’s wild method of operation. When Bud wasn’t spinning the gawkers silly, he contented himself by trying to bounce them out of their seats. For this reason, the open cabs installed by the manufacturer in Jacksonville had been replaced by enclosed cabs that, coincidentally, provided a great deal of privacy. Bud took full advantage of this—he wasn’t above accepting bribes from gawkers eager to be “trapped” above the midway with their ladyfriends while The Hammer experienced sudden mechanical difficulties. And he was always willing to raise Larry and me up to the heavens in the company of a young lady as long as we promised to share all the details over coffee the next morning.
The cab rocked. She clutched at the hem of her coat, her fists crossing. Black fur closed over her thighs and Larry’s hand disappeared underneath. Her wet lips covered mine and I tasted cherry lipstick. My fingers slipped under the fur collar—soft silk lining, small breasts.
Already I’d forgotten her name.
She moaned; her body stiffened. Then she pushed our hands away and opened her coat. Moonlight washed over her sweaty breasts. Nipples the color of olive meat, dappled with safety-cage shadow.
“Sweet Sunday,” she said. “I’ve never done it on a Ferris Wheel before.”
“Yeah?” Larry chuckled. “Well, I’ve never done it with a lady in mink.”
She smiled dreamily. “Nice, isn’t it? I got it in New York City. Daddy and I flew out last year for a morticians’ convention.” She paused a beat to gauge our reaction, and after deciding that we’d been suitably impressed, she added, “I’m the only girl in Fiddler who has one.”
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