Haunted Worlds

by Jeffrey Thomas

  “The supermarket over there and everything?”

  “Huh? Oh, that old supermarket, yes. But there’ll be a new supermarket within Funtown. And so much more! Therefore, demolition of this old eyesore here is going to commence shortly, my pet—next week, in fact—so I’m afraid everybody who’s been staying and playing in here is going to have to move it along very soon.”

  “Very soon?” she echoed, trying to absorb all this.

  “Yes. But the Funtown bunch are concerned for your welfare, believe me, so they’re going to help you all with the transition. See here.” From a shopping bag he’d been carrying—with the same image of a fanciful pink city on it that Posy had seen on the sign affixed to the security fence—Cannula withdrew two folders with glossy pink covers and extended them to Posy. “For you and your friend, here. These booklets contain a whole slew of great vouchers for free food and clothing from a bunch of markets throughout the city. Plus—see inside, there.”

  Posy opened her folder. She had tried to hand Aargh his own folder, but he wouldn’t touch it. From inside, she pulled out a white card with raised pink ink.

  “That there,” Cannula said magnanimously, “is an invitation for you to stay at any number of a dozen participating homeless shelters in the city, the city’s top homeless shelters, for a whole month, all the associated expenses funded by the Funtown bunch. Until you folks can get your feet under you. They have programs to help you look for work, see, and find a permanent place to stay . . . so you don’t have to live a sorry life like this anymore, Posy. Stealing,” and here he nodded at Aargh’s glinting fist, “to survive.”

  “But . . .” Posy began. She couldn’t articulate her protest. After all, she didn’t want to live in this shell of a building forever—did she? So she could only say again, “But . . .”

  “Let me show you something, my little posy,” Cannula purred, crouching down beside her now and pulling aside the flap of his pink jacket. A gun holster was strapped to his side, and he slipped out a pistol, holding it on the flat of his upturned palm.

  Aargh raised his coppery fist above his head, like a hammer.

  “Whoa! Tell your friend easy . . . easy,” Cannula said, raising his free hand. “I only want to show you how beautiful a thing this is.”

  It was a beautiful thing, Posy had to admit. Oddly, though its outlines appeared modern, the gun was made almost entirely of wood, with only bits of trim in what appeared to be gold. The wood was a deep red, with swirls and whorls under its thick glossy finish.

  “I take pride in the beautiful things I own,” Cannula cooed, like a father giving her an important life lesson, “because I worked hard for them. I earned them. Wouldn’t you like to have a whole bunch of nice things of your very own someday? Well, you never will unless you take the first bold steps to turn your life around, dear. And that’s what Funtown is offering you. You can’t put a price on that, can you?” He shifted the gun on his palm, so that light played across its varnish and gold hypnotically. “Things like this, and so many other beautiful things, will fill the shelves of Funtown, Posy. Thousands and thousands of beautiful things.”

  “A person needs money to buy beautiful things,” Posy noted sourly.

  “Ha! Of course they do! But Funtown is going to give jobs to tons of people—you see?” Cannula tucked his handgun away again, apparently content with whatever point he had intended to make. He rose to a standing position.

  In a bold voice, still sounding dubious, Posy said, “Maybe we’ll think about it . . . if you bring us some burgers.”

  Cannula stared down at her for several seconds, as if he simply couldn’t translate her words. Then a grin cracked his face and he barked a laugh. “She wants burgers,” he said to the security trooper on his right. “Gerry, go fetch the princess and her friendly ogre some burgers.”

  “You want me to go alone?” the man named Gerry said via his helmet mic.

  “Precisely, yes, I want you to go alone. Go get her some burgers right now .”

  “Will you be waiting here for me?” Gerry asked, with an unmistakable touch of nervousness.

  Cannula turned to face the man directly, his eyes gone wide. “No, I will not be waiting here for you. Lon and I are going back to the car. These two will be waiting here for you to return.” He grinned down at Posy again. She saw a twitch in one corner of his grin. “Won’t you, my little beauty? But I suggest you do more than ‘think about’ my offer. It’s a one-time offer. One time means there won’t be a second time.”

  Cannula started to turn away but gave Posy another look, and on a whim stepped nearer to her and snapped free one of the last remaining synthetic flowers on her hat. He tucked it into the buttonhole of his breast pocket like a groom’s boutonnière. “Adieu, princess,” he said with an exaggerated, sweeping bow.

  *

  Gerry came back within the half hour—rushing, perhaps, in the hope of still rejoining Cannula and the other trooper—and gave Posy a bag of BurgerZone burgers (one for her and three for Aargh), cups of soda, and bags of fried dilkies. Posy wondered if he’d been wearing his helmet and even carrying his gun when he ordered the food.

  When he’d trotted away, Posy held her hand out, wiggling her fingers, for one of Aargh’s three burgers.

  That night, huddled within their corner shelter, burning some flammable oil in a metal can for a measure of heat and light, Posy fretted aloud to Aargh, “What if the homeless shelter we go to tries to send me to some kind of foster home? Or a school? Someplace you and me can’t be together?” She wagged her head. “Where will the snipe go if they tear this place down? If they see it, they’ll kill it. And what about Welder? When they find him behind the zapper, they’ll scrap him.” She looked up from the flames at Aargh, and he seemed to be listening to her thoughtfully with the firelight flickering in his three black pearl eyes. She was sure he understood her sentiments, if not her words. She told him, “This is my home .”

  Before they turned in for the night, they ventured back down to the ground floor, and Posy placed the burger she had taken from Aargh on the stack of wooden pallets for the snipe.

  *

  Over the following days, it was easy to fall into denial about the changes the man named Cannula had described to Posy. Nothing seemed changed; every day unfolded the same as ever. Maybe he had been lying, to frighten them all off the property. Maybe these vouchers and the invitation to a homeless shelter weren’t worth the paper they were printed on. She hadn’t tried redeeming any of the vouchers herself yet, and Aargh still hadn’t wanted to touch his folder. So, paralyzed by uncertainty and disbelief—and the naturally helpless state of being a child—Posy did nothing but go along with her usual routine. If it really came time for change, then fate would push her where it would . . . as it always had.

  Today they brought bags of cans with deposits to the redemption center at the grubby little supermarket, and now Posy was nostalgic in advance, thinking how Cannula had said the poor old market would be torn down, too. Was it true? If so, the Redemption Express would never stop here again. Thinking of the shunt car bearing that name made Posy count off days in her mind, and she knew it would be making its collection this very evening. As she always did when thinking of the shunt, she recalled her dream of scampering onto the top of the cable car and riding it to some brighter destination. Was she to be denied even the comfort of that fantasy?

  When they returned from their excursion to the supermarket, they were met by a trio of mutants on their way out into the sunshine from the murk of the incomplete building. The mutants carried bed rolls and plastic bags of their meager belongings. One mutant with growths like the squirming tails of huge larvae growing out of his forehead and cheeks, whom Posy knew as Nester, said, “Good luck to you, child. We’re heading out now. That man Cannula came around again and said today is our last chance to leave. He said something about turning over the rock now, so all the bugs underneath will have to run away.”

  “Where are you going?”


  “To a shelter on Forma Street. It’s one of the places on the invitation.”

  “Do you know if anyone else is leaving, too?” Posy glanced over Nester’s shoulder, into the cavernous interior of the construction site.

  “Some have, some haven’t. But—”

  Nester’s words were cut off, as from deeper within the building came the clatter of automatic gunfire. At the sound, Nester and his two companions scurried away toward the street. Posy and Aargh, however, turned toward the sound. They looked to each other . . . and then moved stealthily into the gloomy depths of the construction site, to investigate.

  From behind a riveted metal support column the two of them peeked toward a number of idling vehicles that had obviously driven onto the site in their absence. Two of them, bright yellow in color as Welder must have once been—and maybe they were even robots themselves—were plainly construction vehicles, with the formidable hulking shapes of demolition machines. A third vehicle, painted red, was apparently a mobile trash zapper. The trash zapper was close to one of the entrances to the basement, where the gang called the Snakeheads made their home.

  Posy flinched at another burst of gunfire. It was strangely muffled. Underground, she realized.

  Several moments later, two men in pink armor emerged from the basement, their assault engines slung over their backs, carrying something in a black plastic bag. They brought it to the lip of the trash zapper’s open maw and together swung it inside. Then they returned to the basement. Shortly thereafter, they reappeared carrying a second zippered black bag.

  Posy and Aargh watched the pink troopers toss six of these bags into the back of the trash zapper, before they withdrew into the shadows which were all they clung to now . . . had ever really clung to.

  *

  Aargh took Posy’s hand and with long strides dragged her to another spot on the ground floor: the inoperative trash zapper behind which they had stashed Welder. Posy felt a pang when she saw the flower still clutched in his insect-like hand. Standing near his hover base, she watched confused as Aargh awkwardly wedged himself between the zapper and the wall, hunkered over Welder, took hold of his head, and strained with all his strength.

  “What are you doing to him?” Posy whined, feeling more overwhelmed than ever by this seeming act of violence against their absent comrade, but then she understood. “We’re going, aren’t we? And we’re taking his head. His brain.” Suddenly, her forlornness turned to a kind of excitement. Dare she even call it hope? They were going onwards, and right now where didn’t matter. Yes, they would lose this home . . . but she had lost homes before. Home could be a warm ATM booth in a winter storm. You carried home with you.

  Aargh twisted this way and that, loosened the head from its socket, then used his trusty clippers to disconnect some bright veins of colored cables. Then, with the head under his arm like a ball, he rose up and stepped out from the cramped space behind the zapper.

  “Ah!” Posy heard a voice with a familiar accent exclaim, though from her point of view at the other end of the zapper she couldn’t see the speaker. “The scavenging ogre. Drop what you have there, ugly, and move along. You won’t be stealing from this site anymore.”

  Posy peeked around the corner of the graffiti-smeared zapper to see three pink-armored security troopers and the pink-suited security chief who had introduced himself to her last week as Teddy Cannula. She saw that one of the troopers was moving in toward Aargh, whom they had backed against the side of the zapper, holding out his hand and commanding over his helmet mic, “You heard the man: let’s have whatever it is you’ve got there.”

  Posy wanted to cry out then, to either the troopers or to Aargh, to stop, stop, because she knew Aargh, but it was too late, he was already in motion.

  He swung Welder’s head in a wide fast arc against the trooper’s pink helmet, with such force that Welder’s head dented and the security man’s helmet split down the side. As the man fell away, unconscious, Aargh dropped Welder’s head, turned toward the next trooper, stepped in, and took hold of him. He lifted the soldier off his feet, spun around, and slammed him against the flank of the zapper. When he let go of the trooper, he had finished by twisting the man’s helmet around to face backwards, much more easily than he had wrenched Welder’s head off.

  But by this time the third trooper had leveled his assault engine, and Cannula had pulled his beautiful pistol of glossy red wood and gold trim from its holster, and when Aargh had released the dead trooper they both opened fire. Aargh rushed toward them silently, big as a toppling tree, even as automatic gunfire opened a strip of holes across his chest.

  Cannula was batted aside, thudding onto his back with the wind slammed out of him. Aargh slapped the soldier’s big gun aside, got his hands on the man’s helmet, and tore it off. Posy had begun screaming when ragged exit holes appeared in Aargh’s back, but now she was screaming at what Aargh was doing with both hands to the trooper’s face.

  Aargh let this man drop, too, and turned toward Posy with jerky movements. He reached into a pocket of his black clothing, pulled something out, and extended it to her in a hand gloved in blood. It was his pair of clippers.

  Looking up into his three unblinking eyes, Posy took the clippers with understanding and sobbed, “I love you.”

  Aargh fell to one knee, his only knee. And when Posy saw Teddy Cannula getting back to his feet, she darted to Welder’s head and gathered it up in both arms, cradling it to her chest. It was heavy with all the thoughts and memories she hoped still waited inside to be restored. She saw Cannula kick Aargh’s metal leg out from under him, saw Aargh fall onto his chest, and as she ducked behind the trash zapper again she heard three thundering shots that reverberated off the partial walls and ceilings of the unfinished building, like a furious ghost roaring away into an endless labyrinth.

  She crouched low to the ground, weeping soundlessly, still hugging Welder against her chest. His headless body lay at her feet, an empty suit of armor without a knight to occupy it.

  That familiar voice came to her from the other side of the zapper. “All right, then . . . where did you go? Hm?” Cannula’s voice drew nearer. “I can smell you, my little unwashed beauty. You smell like the whore you’ll grow up to be. If you aren’t one already.” Now here he was, moving into view at one end of the slim channel between the zapper and the wall. He hunched down low, on her level, like a gentle father appealing to a distraught daughter. He was grinning, but his grin twitched at one corner. She saw that he still wore the flower he had stolen from her hat in the buttonhole of his breast pocket. “Don’t be afraid, Posy.” He held out one hand, wiggling his fingers, though in his other hand he still gripped his expensive pistol.

  “Remember I told you? I’m your new best friend.”

  Posy whimpered, inching backwards.

  “Come on, ” Cannula sang, like a lullaby, reaching his arm out further. Blood oozed from a gash at his hairline. “Come on, you little bitch.”

  And then Cannula was jerked backwards, jerked mostly out of view again. Only his legs showed around the edge of the trash zapper, and they kicked madly. There was a chaotic flurry of movement just out of sight—luckily out of sight—but Posy could hear the terrible snarling and the terrible gurgling.

  She turned toward the other end of the zapper and lunged out from behind it. She started running toward the nearest set of steps that would take her up to her shelter on the second floor. But she paused briefly to glance back at Cannula, and saw that his legs barely stirred now.

  The snipe raised its head, jaws drooling blood, and regarded her with its single remaining eye for a moment before it lowered its head again and resumed feeding.

  *

  After setting Welder’s head down on her unfurled sleeping bag, Posy climbed the studded rivets in a vertical girder to reach high enough to clip the wire that secured the top of one of the corrugated metal panels Aargh had installed to shield them. Hinged by more wire at its bottom, the sheet fell away from her whe
n Posy pushed at it. Its top clanged against the edge of the concrete wall facing this side of the building. Instant bridge.

  Posy rolled her child’s sleeping bag up again, with Welder’s head secured inside it. She pocketed Aargh’s clippers. Then, after hoisting the sleeping bag onto her back with a grunt, she crossed the warbling, bowing metal sheet to the shunt platform and emerged squinting into the blaze of the golden sun as it lowered behind the silhouetted skyline of Punktown.

  Posy started down the platform, already seeing in the distance the roof of the dirty and doomed little supermarket, where she would stand and wait for the imminent arrival and departure of the Redemption Express .

  Story Notes

  I thought I’d briefly discuss the stories in this collection, to give them a little context, or perhaps to enhance the reader’s experience with them after the fact.

  Carrion

  I recognize that there is a lot of similarity between the stories “Carrion” and “The Left-Hand Pool.” These two stories were written shortly after I had moved to a new town, after having lived all but a fraction of my life in another Massachusetts town, which was less rural. Though I welcomed the change, change of any type can be disorienting, throw us off center, and that seems to be reflected in these stories as I analyze them myself. And I say analyze them myself, because—while much of what I write is plotted in my mind or in notes before I set out, carefully weighed and considered—there is usually a large component to my writing that comes freely from the subconscious, often surprising me, and leaving my work open to interpretation even by myself.

  These two stories also address alienation—as do others in the collection, centering on characters who are divorced or fear losing their loved ones, or who have never known love at all. I wouldn’t want to reveal overmuch about my personal life here, except to say these are feelings I’ve known myself, as have too many of us.

  I feel stories should be about transition of some kind. The transition can be toward growth or decline. A static story is not a story. The transitions in some of the stories in this book mirror aspects of my own life, chiefly from the recent period in which they were written, when I was experiencing a sense of diminishment, which included an increased awareness of aging. Even the fact that a number of these stories focus on driving somewhere in a car, or fleeing in a car, or being forced to halt a car at a toll station, surely must relate to my having obtained a driver’s license and purchased my first car only a few years ago. (Till then, I had been too intimidated to drive, owing partly to the blindness of my left eye.) I should point out that now I love to drive; I cherish the freedom of it after years of dependence on others and severely limited horizons. This sense of moving myself to new/other places, literally and figuratively, I see unconsciously and repeatedly translated into this body of work.