The Complete Short Fiction of Charles L. Grant Volume 1: Nightmare Seasons (Necon Classic Horror)

by Charles L. Grant

  The sun bled lower and the air drifted to bronze.

  A loud sigh of comfort, and he held the cigar away from his face and sniffed, catching the faint scent of burning leaves and smiling. This, he thought, was the most perfect of all seasons. More than a simple cleansing of the air, it was the absolute example of how to die right—in a blaze of unmatched color impossible to duplicate, complete with the distant cheers of a successful football game, the rush of automobiles from business to hearth, the giggling and snuggling under freshly aired blankets. Winter made you work too hard to get warm, spring was too tantalizing, summer too lazy. Autumn, on the other hand, was the unrepeatable blend.

  A second sigh to underscore the comfort. Then he gazed over the lot and counted for the hundredth time the cars waiting there, their paint and windows hinting at the sheen of frost which would be born by morning. The green Studebaker Hawk belonged to Tony Winston, the youngest and most ambitious of his postmen; he, Patrick had decided sometime during August, would not last out the year, would succumb to the lure of higherpaying employment as soon as he figured out what he wanted from his life. The black Pontiac that should have died with the Korean War was Karen Redmond’s, she of the sullen red hair and veil of pinprick freckles, with three kids and no husband and a figure that belonged in the middle of a cornfield. The ’57 black-and-silver Chevy was polished three times a week by Harv Green, a compulsive janitor nearly Patrick’s age who cleaned twice anything that didn’t move out of his way. Harv was inside now, mopping down the lobby. The white DeSoto was Jack Fawn’s.

  And Patrick’s eyes narrowed when he reached the back corner, under the hickory, where his own behemoth Caddy was parked, two spaces away from the nearest intruder. He hadn’t really wanted to buy it, not at first; it seemed definitely too ostentatious for a mere postmaster to own. But Karen and Tony. their youth bubbling with fiscal mischief, had talked him into it in less than a week—with, admittedly, a little starry-eyed help from himself—using the argument that, without a family, a mortgage or backbreaking loans, why shouldn’t he indulge himself before he was too old to enjoy it? Indeed. Why the hell not.

  He grinned, examined what was left of the cigar, and glanced at his watch. It was just past seven, and Jack would be wheeling around the hospital to the mailbox there, Karen would be at the depot to pick up the evening drop and Tony would just be reaching the far end of Williamston Pike, out in the valley . . . if he hadn’t stopped to gab with every woman along his route. Within the hour, then, all three would be back, the soiled grey sacks thrown onto the apron, a few words, a few quiet laughs, and he would be alone to begin the next day’s sorting and put together the late-night pickup for the last train from the Station. They had all been after him to stop such extra work, even Jack of the sardonic grin and slick black hair; but he used the same argument they had thrown at him for the Caddy: without a family, not being much of a social drinker, no television, barely a reader at all . . . why rush home? Indeed. Why rush anywhere.

  Excitement, by almost any definition, was not now, nor had it ever been, a part of his life. When he was young and craved it, it had avoided him, and as he grew older whatever sense of adventure he might have had was lost. Buried, perhaps. He was not at all sure. And the regrets he had had for such a sedentary life had long since given way to a grudging, automatic acceptance.

  A quiet life. Small pleasures rather than avalanches that left behind them too much peace. Cumulative enough for late-night memories that eased him into sleep without too much of a pang. It was the way of things, he had taught himself. The way of things. Let the others have the adventures, then, and he would take the solitude. Besides being bad for the heart, excitement lent itself to letdowns, which were definitely not prescribed for a man living alone.

  He sniffed loudly, pulled a handkerchief from his hip pocket and blew his nose. Then he shook his head at himself. He was listening to too much poetry on the radio or something; thoughts like that only led to stupidity, depressions and the wasting of hard-earned dollars.

  And they also made his house too large.

  He coughed, violently, and was glad for the noise.

  He glanced up at the sky now streaking indigo and rose, straightening for a moment when he heard the sporadic cry of southward-bound Canadian geese. He could not see the flock as it passed over the Station, but it carried with it the one musical sound he had despised all his life—the sound of extreme loneliness uncurable, and loneliness unbidden.

  A frown brushed his forehead, and he cocked his head slightly to one side. Though he could hear nothing once the geese had made their pass, there was another movement in the air very much like sound. Something not meant to be heard yet, and growing all the same. He strained and listened for several minutes, shrugged finally at the nudges of imagination and plucked the cigar from its holder, mashed it beneath his heel. His left hand immediately moved to his breast pocket, patting, but he checked himself just short of digging under the sweater. It would be a waste to light one now, when the others were due soon. A waste; like Stengel getting fired, and all that tax money going up into space for a bunch of tiny tin cans.

  The frown reverted to his original tolerant grin. Crotchety is what Karen had told him he was, and even tire-waisted Harv had demanded to know if he couldn’t honestly feel in the air what Senator Kennedy promised. Incredible. Harv pretending he was twenty again, back with the Marines massing under Old Glory. Harv-the-old-soldier spouting pie in the sky just because the young senator never wore a hat. He grunted a laugh and took hold of the lion’s-paw armrests, shaking his head in slow amusement at the changes the world had seen since he had been born.

  Not that Oxrun Station had changed all that much since he came into the world in the house out in the valley. A few stores switched owners, the Town Hall had been expensively refaced with brick and Italian marble, and there was talk now of tearing down the old library—a sister building to his own post office—and erecting something that, according to the Council, reflected contemporary society while, at the same time, kept within the bounds of good taste and Oxrun’s appearance. And that, he thought sourly, was a damned contradiction in terms.

  Then, aloud: “The hell with it.” And he pulled out a fresh cigar. Lighted it defiantly. If the others objected, they could hold their damned noses.

  7:25 P.M.

  The heavy brown iron door to the loading bay slammed shut, and Patrick jumped, a hand to his chest, as he swore silently at Harv for unnerving him like that. The peace he nurtured, however, had been irreparably broken.

  Almost before Harv had lumbered to the dock’s edge the three post office trucks had lumbered down the narrow drive and into their slots. Engines coughed, a horn accidentally blared and the next fifteen minutes were spent hauling sacks indoors and hanging them from their square metal rigs for easy opening and refilling. Once done and time cards clocked out, Patrick led them all back outside, a ritual of departure for every day but Friday, when the weekend beckoned too strongly and amenities were postponed.

  There was a momentary silence, then, and Patrick heard again the sound-not-a-sound approaching the Station. When he looked to the others, however, they seemed to notice nothing. It bothered him, and he scratched hard behind his right ear. It was late, he was tired, but nevertheless there was something . . .

  He spat dryly and returned his attention to the others.

  Jack Fawn, his face pocked from a severe adolescent dose of acne, stood on the ground combing his unkempt black hair and chiding Tony none too gently for the fresh scratches on his truck, no doubt caused, he said dryly, by Tony’s tipping over fire hydrants in his frantic pursuit of skirts that never touched a knee. Harv and Karen stood by Patrick’s chair, listening and saying nothing until Jack finally paused for a breath and Tony, flushing his impotent anger to a dull red on his cheeks, lifted a trembling fist.

  “No,” Patrick said wearily. He gestured toward the front with his dead cigar. “Later, yes, out in the street. Now, if you don’t m
ind, no.”

  “Oh my, the man thinks he owns the place,” Jack said to the air, lightly and without offense.

  “The man, as you put it, is responsible for accidents and fights,” Karen told him sharply, her voice just short of shrill. Her hair was cut short and brushed back over her ears as though she, delighted in the boyish appearance it and her figure gave her. “You want to play hero, Jack, go to the park and pick on the little kids.”

  “O Lord, O Lord,” Jack said in mock consternation, his gaze lifted to the stars, his hands at his chest in a parody of supplication.

  “Jack!” she said.

  He turned to her slowly, his hands lowering to his hips. He ducked his head a fraction and stared at her from beneath eyebrows that were broad slashes of black. “Hey,” he said softly, “who the hell died and left you God?”

  “No one, smartass.”

  “Hey,” said Harv, waving a three-fingered hand impatiently, “knock it off, huh? This here’s a lady, y’know?”

  “Tell me another,” Jack muttered.

  “Damnit,” Tony said then, stalking back to the dock, his thin arms stiff at his sides. “Damn it.”

  Patrick only closed his eyes and sighed to himself. He had hoped that his last year on the job would be filled with friendly bantering and gentle jibes that meant no offense, evenings on the dock watching the sun set, trading stories about the lunatics on the routes; instead, suddenly, what he was getting was internecine warfare, and it didn’t take much imagination to see that he’d be out of three good workers before the month was out if this kept up.

  But it would be too easy to blame it all on Jack. Though they did not find themselves compatible for anything more than a casual acquaintance, he could not help feeling a twinge of guilt whenever the younger man jumped on the others, as if the verbal abuse somehow had something to do with him. Not that he felt sorry for Fawn; lots of people, himself included, had no family, made little money, and just couldn’t seem to find the right formula for getting by in the world. No, he didn’t feel sorry for Jack at all; what he did feel was a curious regret that he had not been able to get through to the man. The other three had vulnerable spots they practically wore on their sleeves. Jack, however, had armored his thoroughly.

  “Listen,” he said then, and the others turned to him quickly.

  “Why don’t you all just head on home, all right? You’ll give an old man nightmares with all this bitching and moaning.”

  None of them moved. Faces were averted, shoes scuffed on the lot’s blacktop. In the distance, a truck’s horn, and the muffled shriek of a cat.

  “Hey, Pat,” Karen said quietly, “you ever miss the band and all?”

  He shrugged. It was a question he heard twice a day, every day, every damned week. And no matter how often he answered it, folks did not seem to want to believe him. “No,” he said. “Not really.”

  “The Station’s own Benny Goodman,” Harv said with a clap to his shoulder. “You shouldn’t have done it, Pat. You should’ve hung on.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, because . . .” Harv twisted his bejowled face into a semblance of deep thought. “Because, that’s why. It was your band, wasn’t it?”

  “No, Harv, it was the town’s.”

  “But you were the only one who wanted to lead it. I mean, every Saturday June and July and August there you were in that red coat and your trombone and . . . and hell, you shouldn’t have done it.”

  Tony sauntered over to the dock and leaned an elbow on it. “You did some good sounds, Pat.”

  Patrick shrugged again. Maybe he did, maybe he didn’t. The band had been all volunteers, and they’d practiced throughout the spring to ready themselves for the weekly concerts. The Council, for years, had given him a grant for music and instruments—and lessons, where needed—but two years ago had decided to temporarily postpone the concerts for lack of funds. And that, the Station knew, was extraordinarily far from the truth. What it did not know, and what Patrick would not tell anyone, was that he had been tired of the grind. One morning he had gotten out of bed and had looked in the mirror and had seen sixty, seventy—eighty, if he were lucky—staring him in the face. And his life had become so predictable that he could have filled out a yearly calendar for a decade ahead. It wasn’t the grind, he’d finally admitted, it was the apparent accuracy of the chart that showed him the rest of his life.

  The band, then, was the first casualty.

  The post office would be the second.

  The only problem was, he still hadn’t figured out what to do about the rest. He hated traveling, didn’t know many women and certainly wasn’t about to marry this late in life, would not go into politics on an overwhelming bet . . . and that left listening to good-hearted people like Karen and Harv telling him he should not have done it, not at all . . . not at all.

  “Could’ve gone on Ed Sullivan,” Jack mocked without turning around.

  “Now that ain’t fair!” Harv said.

  “All right, an right,” Patrick said wearily. “Why don’t you people just go home and leave me alone.”

  They hesitated. He could sense them leaning toward their cars, thinking there was something they should say to make his evening more cheerful. Even Jack glanced at him sideways, warily, one hand lightly fingering the comb poking out of his hip pocket.

  It was Tony who made the first move, and Tony who stopped suddenly and looked toward the drive at the side of the building. For a moment they watched him, puzzled; then Patrick heard the sound he’d been aware of since he’d first taken his chair.

  A grumbling like thunder that has lost its timbre. A slow and steady shredding of October’s night air.

  A breeze gusted, and gold-red leaves fluttered down from the trees to dust the hood on Patrick’s car, stark against the white finish and somehow obscene. The shadows merged to become twilight, and twilight filtered hazily into dusk, into a textured dark. In the eaves directly overhead was the intense, flat white glare of the building’s night-light, and it bleached the color from their faces, life from their eyes, set them into razored relief against the background of the trees.

  A grumbling like thunder that had snapped lightning’s reins.

  Swollen and unwavering, and without reverberation.

  They listened without comment, frozen, curious, though Patrick could not help shuddering at a tremor of apprehension. His first impulse had been to label the sound the result of a truck lumbering in from the highway, or an automobile whose muffler had died. But a moment had scarcely passed before he knew he was wrong. And he refused to believe in the stench of premonition.

  He was about to dismiss it, then, with a caustic remark about engines and Detroit when Tony suddenly took a step toward the drive. They all jerked their heads around toward him, waiting, until Jack waved him still with a hand-slash in the air. It was evident Tony was going to disobey him, but Jack motioned again, less harshly, and the grumbling grew to a bellow.

  Patrick’s holder disappeared into his pocket.

  Karen’s thin lower lip was gnawed at by her teeth.

  Then Jack, with a soft noise of disgust, vaulted in a single motion onto the dock and headed inside. The others followed without hesitating, Patrick trailing with one hand rubbing the back of his neck. They wove through the sorting bins and warrens and through the inside door into Patrick’s front office. There was a single window facing Williamston Pike, tall and arched and gleaming from a recent washing, a dark-green shade pulled halfway down. A chipped wooden desk piled with forms, ladder-back chair that swiveled and a clanking, unpainted iron-coil radiator; a print of George Washington on the back wall; a radio with cloth grille and two knobs missing.

  Patrick refused to look at any of it. He spent as little time in here as possible, preferring to work at a grey metal desk in back where he could gossip and joke with the women who worked here half-days at the windows and sorting warrens. The room reminded him of a closet, a closet newly emptied because its owner had died.
>
  They gathered at the window, Patrick given the center without anyone objecting. The thunder was audible, giving a tremble to the wood flooring, clearer when Jack lifted the bottom sash and let the night-breeze inside.

  Karen’s hand touched his elbow, and he patted it absently, hoping his disapproving scowl would belie his jumping nerves.

  “I seen a movie once, you know,” Harv said, barely above a gravelly whisper. “These guys they come into this little town—out in California, I think it was; yeah, California—they come into this town and they take over, you know what I mean? They come in like they was some kind of gods and they do all kinds of—”

  “Yeah, yeah,” said Jack impatiently. “We all saw it a million damned times, Harvey.” He leaned heavily against the window frame to Patrick’s right, his left hand grabbing at the point of his collar. “We all saw it.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  Patrick did not know what they were talking about. At the moment he did not much care about references to movies. The thunder was beginning to sort itself into abrasive noise, and he was angry that his perfect season was being so rudely interrupted.

  He also did not like the moisture breaking on his palms.

  But he said nothing when Karen switched off the office lamp and reached around the jamb to extinguish the lobby globes as well.

  8:10 P.M.

  Buried deep in the foliage of the curbside trees there should have been a streetlamp burning; a week ago, however, the bulb had been shattered by a stone and uncharacteristically not replaced immediately after the breakage had been reported. The nearest light, then, was across the Pike and nearly thirty yards down, its weak white cast jigsawed by leaves and drained by distance. No cars headed in or out of the village, no buses, no trucks. The sidewalk was deserted.