"You sure?" the kid said. "I'm good with my hands."
I would have bet that he was. I considered. If she was alone I could handle it and if she was out that would give me time to get set up while I waited for her to come home. But if she was not alone there might be complications.
"Still want to be on the show?" I said.
"Sure. Ten million greenbacks!"
"It's easy. All you have to do is give the wrong answer. Prove that you're an asshole, in other words, like everybody else."
"I know."
"If I gave you something to hold, could you do that, and not ask any questions?"
"Like what?"
"What would you do if you saw a rat?"
"Um, kill it, I guess."
"That's right. You've got to kill them, don't you?"
"Hell, yeah."
"Then come on."
"Where are we going?"
"I want you to meet my wife."
He swung his legs back in and closed the door. "You'll put in the word?"
"Sure."
"When?"
"Next week."
"Cool!"
We drove around to the multi-level ranch houses at the end of Circle Vista.
"Uh, one thing," he said, "just so's you'll know. I'm not into anything weird."
"That's cool," I told him. "Neither am I."
Her lemon-colored car was in the driveway. I took the hardware store bag from the back and as I climbed out a curtain flapped shut in an upstairs window. The bedroom.
"Wait here," I said.
"You got it."
I started along the flagstone walk to the side of the house. Better check it out, I thought, before you bring the red can from the trunk, just to be sure. Before I got very far the front door squeaked open and I heard a voice.
"Ray…?"
I backtracked, holding the bag casually at my side.
"Hi, honey."
I waited for her to ad lib an excuse to keep me outside. Her eyes were puffy, almost swollen shut. She hadn't been getting much sleep, either.
"Ray, I'm so glad you're here!"
"Are you?"
"You don't know…"
"What's wrong?"
"It's Mother."
I nodded knowingly. "Your mother? I see. Is she still 'sick'?"
"She's…gone."
"Oh, really? Where did she go?"
"She passed away last night. This morning. I tried calling you from Kaiser but you'd already checked out. I don't know what to do. I have to make the arrangements…"
I dropped the plastic bag and held her off, feeling her wrists trembling, so thin I could snap them like chicken bones. She came at me again and struggled as I pushed her away. Then her face twisted up and she started sobbing. I grabbed her around the waist and lifted her off her feet, carrying her out of the yard before the neighbors could see our hysterical little scene. The only one who saw was the kid. He watched from the car, taking it in.
"What's wrong with you?" she screamed as the sirens started closing in.
Why is a mouse when it screams? I thought. (a) Still shitting me, (b) scared shitless, (c) full of shit, or (d) shit out of luck…
The next thing I remember is this:
She got her arms around my neck and then I wasn't fighting her anymore. I stood there feeling her lips against my neck and her breath was hot like a child's from the crying and my eyes finally closed all the way. And when they opened again it was like I was waking up.
I smelled her hair and tasted her skin and knew where I was. Everything else had been a dream. The sirens receded and there was only the quiet lapping of blue water behind our house. The weight lifted and the sky opened and there was light again and the pounding in my ears was her heart beating in my chest. Then her legs went out from under her and I had to hold very tightly to keep her feet from dragging as I pulled her inside.
I was sorry the kid had to witness any of this. He would have to walk home from here. I had a vague recollection of the bitter, twisted things I had said to him and felt ashamed. Someday he would understand how burned-out a man can get when he's really exhausted and wired and how bent out of shape things seem when you're like that, and maybe he'd forget this day. I had been out of my head. It can happen to anybody, I told myself.
Her clothes were so wrinkled she must have slept in them for days on a cold bench somewhere and her hair had come loose and there was no makeup on her pale face. I set her on the couch.
"I'm so sorry," I said and kissed her forehead.
"I have to call the funeral home…"
"Let me."
"And my brother — "
"I'll take care of it. Rest."
"Where are you going?"
"The phone. I'll be right there, in the kitchen. Okay?"
She nodded.
I found her brother's number by the phone. No answer. He was probably on his way. I'd try again in a few minutes if he didn't show up. The next thing would be to call the funeral home. I didn't know which one it was. I started back to the living room and heard her cry out suddenly, louder and more desperate. The sound stopped before I got there.
The kid moved in front of the couch to block my way.
"Everything's cool," he said.
"What is?"
Across the room the front door was still open. There were spatters on his clean white T-shirt. His bag from the convenience mart lay on the carpet with the contents spilling out: a blister pack of cheap steak knives, a roll of twine and a dispenser of wide package-sealing tape. In his hand was a pizza cutter.
She was where I had left her, only now her ankles were bound together with the twine, a piece of the tape covered her mouth and one of her arms dangled to the floor. Blood dripped from the wrist.
"I was gonna save my stuff," the kid said, "for when I get home. But I could tell you needed a hand."
I tried to get past him before the room became any blacker. He stepped aside and grinned.
"You really got it down, man, about the bitches. I guess I always knew. There just isn't no other way…"
"What have you done?"
"What you said," and he winked at me, his eyes dancing wildly in his skull. "I mean, like, you got to kill them all. Right?"
Other Dennis Etchison eBooks Available from Crossroad Press
THE DARK COUNTRY
Etchison's fiction is justly famous for its creepy ambience, and explores the terrain mapped out by Philip K. Dick, Thomas Harris, and any number of black and white horror movies. This is his legendary first collection, carefully corrected by the author for this new edition. The title story won both the World Fantasy Award and the British Fantasy Award in 1982, the first time a single work received both major awards. Contents include 15 ground-breaking stories and an introduction by Ramsey Campbell.
Included in this collection:
It Only Comes Out at Night
Sitting in the Corner, Whimpering Quietly
The Walking Man
We Have All Been Here Before
Daughter of the Golden West
The Pitch
You Can Go Now
Today's Special
The Machine Demands a Sacrifice
Calling All Monsters
The Dead Line
The Late Shift
The Nighthawk
It Will Be Here Soon
Deathtracks
The Dark Country
"Dennis Etchison is one hell of a fiction writer, and if you have not read his volume of stories The Dark Country, you have missed one of the great volumes in our peculiar field. The stories are not just good; they are without exception exciting, and in some cases genuinely great." — Stephen King
"The finest writer of psychological horror this genre has produced." — Karl Edward Wagner
"The best short story writer in the field today, bar none." — Charles L. Grant
"Dennis Etchison is the finest writer of short stories working in this field, and the rest of us ought to lear
n from him." — Ramsey Campbell
"The most original living horror writer in America." — The Viking-Penguin Encyclopedia
RED DREAMS
Featuring an Introduction by Karl Edward Wagner, Red Dreams is "A stunning collection of thirteen macabre stories by America's premier writer of horror" (Fantasy Newsletter). Included in this collection:
Talking in the Dark
Wet Season
I Can Hear the Dark
The Graveyard Blues
On the Pike
Keeper of the Light
Black Sun
White Moon Rising
The Chill
The Smell of Death
Drop City
The Chair
Not From Around Here
THE DEATH ARTIST
First published as a limited-edition hardcover (DreamHaven Books, 2000), The Death Artist presents 12 daring, unforgettable tales that define the state of the art in modern horror.
"You have seen him but you did not recognize him. When he passed you on the street you would not look his way. He stood with you in the line and took a seat as the lights went down but when you heard his footsteps later, going home, you told yourself he was not there. He is the one who sent the letter, the one on the telephone who never speaks, the one who waits behind the door. He stops for every accident and never turns away from the chalk marks and the blood, for there is a lifemap in each dying and if he does not see it all his portraits will not be true. He wants to pass it on, the laughter and the cry in the night, so much the same at the end. It is not a hobby or a diversion. It is a method and an esthetic and a religion. He does not seek to convert you. He only wants you to know. He thinks you are ready. He is an artist and his subject is the high and the low rather than what lies between. You do not have to find him. He has already found you…"
Contents:
The Dog Park
The Last Reel
When They Gave Us Memory
On Call
Deadtime Story
Call Home
No One You Know
A Wind From the South
The Scar
The Detailer
The Dead Cop
Inside the Cackle Factory
THE BLOOD KISS
Following his first two acclaimed collections, The Dark Country and Red Dreams, Etchison's much-anticipated third volume of wildly original stories continues to redefine modern horror. From the freeway off-ramps of Los Angeles to the darkest passages of the human heart, these are the visions of a writer whose imagination knows no boundaries.
Published exclusively as a limited-edition hardcover in 1988, this legendary collection of dark fantasy tales is now available for the first time in 25 years.
Contents:
Call 666
A Nice, Shady Place
The Woman In Black
A Walk In the Wet
The Night of the Eye
The Spot
The Soft Wall
Somebody Like You
Bloodgame
Deadspace
Home Call
*"The Olympic Runner"
The Blood Kiss
*(British Fantasy Award: Best Short Fiction, 1987)
CALIFORNIA GOTHIC
The preeminent master of the modern American horror story takes a bold and unsettling turn in this 1995 study of Southern California suburbia, where things are not always as they seem and earthquake forces lie just below the surface of the San Fernando Valley. This new edition presents the author's preferred text.
"The prevailing tone is not darkness, but a relentless light: the light of the sun, of life, of unwelcome truth. As John Betjeman put it, this is the day that is worse than night. A taut, delicate, breathtaking performance... California Gothic glows with literate vision. Underlying this articulate, luminous novel is an angry challenge to received wisdom, not only about the horror genre but about the way we live."
— Joel Lane
"California Gothic embraces popular culture while simultaneously transcending it, blending the character-driven mainstream novel with elements of mystery, suspense and horror. The result is a psychological study of a depth seldom found in genre fiction, overlaid with a radical reinvention of the modern Gothic tale. Etchison carries it off with an uncanny precision of language that is as clear as a mirage on the bright desert air. A stunning tour de force."
— Kent Allard
"The finest writer of psychological horror this genre has produced."
— Karl Edward Wagner
BRADBURY / MATHESON
This unique volume collects two remarkable conversations. Ray Bradbury, one of America's most widely-read authors, speaks eloquently about his intense love of writing – and for the first time goes on the record about his adventures and misadventures in Hollywood. Richard Matheson was a major writer in science fiction, fantasy and horror, whose novel I Am Legend spawned the current zombie craze and whose classic Twilight Zone episodes have been seen by millions; this is the only personal, definitive account of his extraordinary career. These are verbatim, uncensored interviews with two literary giants, conducted by Dennis Etchison and transcribed without revisions, rewriting or polishing.
"Now that they are no longer able to speak to us directly about their lives and careers, it seems only right that they have the last word. Call it the writer's cut." — Dennis Etchison
SHADOWMAN
Shadowman, a sequel to the World Fantasy Award-winning story "The Dark Country," follows Jack Martin into an even deeper darkness in Shadow Bay, where the surf echoes against the shore, wild dogs howl and children tell ghost stories by firelight. Lissa Shelby works with disturbed children, and they are all afraid of the Man With No Face. The adults call him a fantasy — until the hills collapse under a torrent of rain and buried bodies pour forth. Only one thing is certain: no one is safe...
"Dennis Etchison is absolutely one of horror's most exciting, most radical and innovative talents, and Shadowman demonstrates all of his strengths — using a chaste, transparent style, he tells an innately horrifying story that catches the reader off-balance at every step by being starkly resistant to conventional expectations. This is fat-free horror, without maps, without easy transitions or resolutions. Shadowman would be a subversive book in any context, but in the safe, imitative world of contemporary horror, it is a kind of terrorist raid." — Peter Straub
"Dennis Etchison's writing is a disturbing marvel. Filled with perfection and loss; always delicate, heartbreaking. Its language is brilliant, its images and moods dense with vision. This is a rich novel, gifted by thoughtful turns; haunting ease. It is upsetting and powerful." — Richard Cristian Matheson
DOUBLE EDGE
Jenny and Lee Marlow are Hollywood writers. After years of research, they have finally solved the infamous Lizzie Borden case. But now Jenny's sanity — and her survival — are at stake, as the killings begin again. Is someone copying the bloody crimes of a century ago...or is the axe-murderess alive in modern-day Los Angeles?
This terrifying novel offers a brilliant solution to America's most famous unsolved murders, leading to a blood-drenched climax of horror and suspense.
"The most original living horror writer in America. In both subject matter and style, he has forged a contemporary horror milieu as new and daring as the film nightmares of David Cronenberg." — The Viking-Penguin Encyclopedia of Horror and the Supernatural
Got to Kill Them All & Other Stories Page 21