I bit a fingernail. Slowly one word bubbled up into consciousness.
Today.
That’s when I rolled out of bed. I dressed, went to the kitchen, and broke a few eggs in a pan. After I’d eaten, I had my first cigarette. It tasted terrible.
Then I remembered the calendars.
It’s funny about calendars; I used to like them. At one time the two of us enjoyed jotting down comical little notes on those oversize monsters you can find in office supply stores. We enjoyed X-ing out the last days before the wedding. We even had two calendars in the house, one blackly webbed with scribbling, one clean and fresh.
Not any more. Now I can’t stand the damn things.
But I still need them.
I dumped the dirty dishes in the sink, pushed aside the rusty screen door on the back porch, and walked down the creaking wooden steps that lead out into the backyard. The calendars were there, hidden somewhere in the tired little shed the realtor had once shamelessly called a garage.
The screen door slammed behind me. I looked back at the house.
It’s a small place, almost a cottage. When we first bought it the mortgage was as handsome as the building. Now that it’s paid off, nobody wants it—the roof sags, and it needs paint. But no one complains. The far end of our place faces an empty canyon, and last summer the house next door was torn down. My nearest neighbors, the ones beside the weed-choked lot, don’t even know I’m alive.
They drink. Almost as much as I do. At night I lie on the sofa in my cramped little living room, hazed by alcohol and the glow from a small black-and-white portable, and listen to them laugh ... or scream.
The interior of the shed was cool and dark. It took me a while to remember where I’d hidden the calendars. I had to fumble around in the dim light with the stink of musty paper in my nose, poking through the stacks of her old clothes and my old tools until I found them. They were piled in a greasy cardboard box which had been pushed under a far corner of the workbench. I was probably drunk when I did that. I got down on my hands and knees, pulled the box out, and carried it into the house.
The container made a sodden thumping noise when I dropped it on the tiny kitchen table. I scraped back a chair, sat down, and regarded the box for a while. Then I glanced out the kitchen window. A leafless apricot tree quivered in the empty lot next door, its thin branches pawing at the fat leaden clouds behind it. For days the sky had been threatening to crack open. So far it hadn’t.
I sighed, lit another cigarette, and pulled the pile of calendars out of the rotting box. A silverfish scuttled across my hand and forearm, then dropped to the floor near my foot. I crushed it.
There were nearly a dozen calendars in the stack, cheap little freebies I’d impulsively picked up at banks and liquor stores. Last year’s glared at me from the top of the pile. I pulled it away, flipped through its pages until I found December. A heavy red circle had been drawn around the twentieth with a felt-pen. Today was the twenty-second, which was just about right. It never happens on the same day, like birthdays or our anniversary, but it’s always close. I still wonder about that.
A sudden tremor went through my legs, and my stomach constricted into a tight, painful knot. I closed my eyes and clenched my fists, concentrated on my breathing. My palms were damp. A long time ago I went to a doctor, before I really understood what was happening to me. He’d prodded, asked questions, then told me I was suffering from all the classic symptoms of acute anxiety attacks. Diligently I took the medicine he prescribed and the advice to “go slow.”
It didn’t work.
The cramp faded; the heat returned to my hands. I opened my eyes. Outside, the naked tree shuddered in the wind.
The rest of that day crawled by with agonizing slowness. I did the laundry, I made the bed. I even swept a little. Finally I just sat, smoking as I watched the shadows lengthen. By the time the sun went down I was ready to jump out of my skin. I’d stayed away from the booze all day, knowing I’d need some semblance of sobriety later on, but with the darkness came the realization that I’d never make it without a beer. I got up and went to the refrigerator.
Pulling a can from the six-pack that had been tempting me all that long, long afternoon, I popped the tab and drained it in a simple swallow. The fluid coldness hit like a fist. Some of the tension leaked away.
By now it was so dark I couldn’t see the apricot tree. I got rid of the empty, opened another beer, and sipped it. Slowly.
Time to leave.
In the bedroom I put on an old pea coat and watch cap. The mirror above her dusty vanity table reflected a pale, pulpy wreck, someone aged far beyond his thirty-odd years. I raised my can in a mock salute. The shabby man in the mirror drank with me.
Out in the sidewalk the house looked like a dark beast settling into a freshly dug hole. I finished the second beer and tossed the empty can onto the patchy lawn, then climbed into our van and pulled away into the night.
I drove for hours, moving aimlessly along the freeways. The van was wrapped warm around me, the tires whispering on the asphalt, the radio playing just below my threshold of consciousness. It was almost relaxing.
Most of a fresh six-pack lay on the seat next to me. Although I’d already finished four beers, that terrible mental clarity alcohol sometimes brings had sunk its fingers deep into my brain and stubbornly refused to let go. I was glad I’d stopped at an all night market for the fresh brew. I’d need it.
I drove and drank, drank and drove. Cruising. The electric landscape of motels and warehouses and harshly lit Christmas-tree lots looked alien, deserted, like an abandoned lunar colony.
Some time later I got off the freeway. My hands must have registered the huge pink-and-blue neon sign that shouldered up against the frontage road ahead, because my brain didn’t; I’d rolled down the off-ramp and was turning into one of the two narrow lanes that ran alongside that same neon sign before I consciously realized what I was doing.
Suddenly I knew where I was going: to the movies. I’d pulled into a drive-in.
I hadn’t been to a drive-in for a long time. They hadn’t changed much. I pulled up beside the small concert ticket booth that divided the two incoming lanes. A kid who looked about seventeen stepped out. He was tall, thin, wearing yellow foul-weather gear. When he leaned his gaunt face in my window, I could count the pimples on it.
I said, “One.”
He spotted the beer on the passenger seat and frowned. Then he craned his head to look into the rear compartment of the van. My age and the fact that I was alone must have satisfied him; he smiled slightly and took the four singles out of my hand. But then he hesitated.
“Are you sure you wanna go in tonight?” he asked in a reedy drawl. “I mean, the weather’s pretty lousy. Could turn to rain. ’Course we’ll give you a pass to come back if it does rain or if any fog comes in, but then you might not want to see another show here. Not for a while, anyway. It’d save you the trouble. What do you say?”
I grinned up at his hopeful face. I’d worked in a theater too, ages ago. I knew he wasn’t being courteous. If he discouraged enough potential customers, there’d be a light crowd inside, and he’d then be able to convince the manager or projectionist to close up and shoo everyone away at the first heavy sprinkle.
Fuck him.
“I’ll take my chances,” I said.
That stopped the conversation. The boy got my ticket and handed me the torn stub as if I’d just lectured him on the merits of good diet over bad complexion.
Inside, the harsh outdoor lights were up. I had come in between shows. Not surprisingly, there were few cars there. My young friend had been doing right by himself.
Most of the cars were in the middle of the lot, separated from their neighbors by as wide a margin as possible. Hardly anyone was parked up front, near the screen. I went in the opposite direction, pulled into the very last row at the end, and shut the lights and engine off. Another beer found its way into my hand as I looked around me. The nearest car was at least twenty
yards away. The van was nearly isolated. Good.
The drive-in was an old, dying place, its asphalt cracked and buckling. The only illumination came from three lamps strung up above a fading white screen. The small projection booth and snack bar looked like a grimy pillbox. When I hung a speaker on my window, I noticed that its companion had been torn from the pole, leaving only a frayed, dangling cord.
A gust of wind rocked the van. I sighed and turned up the stereo. Another atmosphere was beginning to seep into my still-tender nerves—the weight of the night, the chill of the wind. The music from the radio snapped at me like a loyal mechanical dog, trying to drive my restlessness away.
I cursed and took a deep drink of beer. The lights suddenly faded over the screen. Something scratchy whispered out of the speaker.
A cartoon came on.
An hour later, when I had almost finished the six-pack, it began to drizzle. I turned on the wipers until it stopped. It was cold inside the van, but the alcohol nuzzled with its false warmth. I hadn’t paid much attention to the film. It was German, an old, grainy, dubbed western from the late sixties.
I rolled down the window and threw out an empty. The wind kicked it, clattered it across the undulating humps of the lot, rolling it up, down, away, toward the high wooden wall spotted with flaking green paint that surrounded that theater. When it bounced into the shadows cast by the wall, I lost interest. I picked up the final beer.
And I froze. Something had flickered in the corner of my eye. Something white. I turned around, strained to see. A faint patch of the whiteness was moving in the wall’s deepest shadows. It grew larger.
Then Carol stepped out of the shadows and into the dim light.
She was still beautiful, still young, a tall, slender woman just this side of twenty. Her clothes were different, though; this time she was wearing a creamy Irish-knit sweater and dark designer jeans. Always in style, I thought inanely. Her hair was long and blond and sparkling, her oval face punctuated by those great wide lunar eyes.
She looked toward the van and saw me watching her. Taking a hesitant step forward, she smiled.
I hated her, then. The day-long tension that had been pulling, pulling, snapped and boiled over into pure naked loathing. I yanked at the door handle, sprang to the ground. My hand, still holding the unopened beer can, was trembling violently.
Carol took another step. I threw the can at her. It went wide, striking the wooden wall with a hollow chunk.
“Go away!” I yelled. “God damn it, leave me alone!”
We were close, close enough to read the expressions on each other’s face. She seemed puzzled at first; then her gaze bored directly into my filthy, needy heart. She drew closer, finally stopping less than a yard away, the light from the screen highlighting her right profile. Darkness swallowed the rest of her face.
“Honey,” she said hesitantly. “What’s wrong?”
I groaned.
She closed the remaining distance between us and laid a hand on my cheek. “Honey, what is it?”
Her hand was solid, warm. Her fingertips caressed my skin, stroking away the hatred, soothing away the fear until I reached out, grabbed her hand with my own, and pulled her toward me. Carol came willingly, eagerly, her arms folding around my waist.
“Oh, Christ,” I muttered. I hugged her, feeling the press of cloth, the warmth of body beneath. All the misery from the past year suddenly wrenched up into my throat. I cried uncontrollably, wracked and sobbing, the kind of crying where your eyes run and your nose runs and the saliva drips unheeded from your open, quivering mouth. All the while Carol held me, stroked my hair, crooned softly as I buried my face in her shoulder and brokenly choked out her name over and over again.
At last the tide of grief crested, broke, retreated. I managed to somehow pull away from her. Wiping my eyes. Carol’s hair was matted against the side of her throat. She laughed and ran a hand through it.
Then she noticed my face, The pain. The hunger. Very slowly, Carol’s hands ran down my forearms until they rested on my wrists. She gripped them tightly.
“Let’s go back inside the car,” she whispered.
Gently she tugged me toward the still-open door, I resisted, but I was weak with fear, weak with longing. She let go and entered the van first, squirmed around the steering wheel, and moved into the back.
Up on the screen an olive-skinned cowboy with startling blue eyes fell off his horse. I swallowed, wiped my nose on the back of my sleeve, and followed her in.
Carol was lying on the dirty polyfoam pad that serves as the van’s bed. She’d taken her sweater off. A faint glimmer of light shone through the louvered glass windows and fell palely on her breasts, breasts that trembled slightly as she reached for me. Her hands touched my groin. Moved. She whispered my name.
I should have run, then. I should have leapt from the van and dashed from the theater, run or hitchhiked all the way to the ocean before throwing myself in.
But I didn’t. I fell on the pad and drowned in her.
It wasn’t sex, though that was part of it. It was mostly a shedding of pain and loneliness, and unfathomable sharing of love—dear God, so very, very much love. It was an impossible fusion, an intimate blending, and when we finally came apart the union was still there, bottomless, complete.
She lay with her naked hip against me, her hands lazily caressing the small of my back. For a long, long while we were simply content to be, cupped in a silence too comfortable for words. Finally she murmured something against my chest.
“What?” I said, shifting.
She moved her face until it was only inches from mine. Her eyes were languorous, satisfied, her breath warm against my lips. “I said, let’s go home.”
I bolted upright, grabbed her bare shoulders, almost knocked her off the pad. Under my fingers her skin was slick with perspiration. “Do you mean that?” I asked excitedly. “Do you?”
A wisp of concern drifted across her face, and sudden doubt assailed me. After all, this was something new. I tried to keep the urgency from my voice as I said, “Can you? I mean, is it possible?”
Her expression lightened. “Of course it’s possible, you idiot.” She rubbed my belly. “What’s the matter? Don’t you want to?”
In answer I leaned forward and kissed her—hard. The next moment I was slapping on my clothes and slipping into the driver’s seat. I could hear Carol chuckling as she dressed.
I pulled out of the lane so quickly that I almost ripped the speaker pole out of the ground. Cursing, I shifted the engine into neutral, cranked down the window, and threw the speaker into the darkness. Carol came forward and plumped into the passenger’s seat, giggling now.
“In a hurry?” She patted my thigh.
I didn’t answer. There was a single, desperate image in my head. Carol and I. At home. Together.
I stamped on the accelerator, rushed up and down the tar-covered humps, almost bottomed out the van. Just before we reached the ticket booth I snapped on the lights. The pimply-faced kid in the yellow raincoat leaned out of the booth and saw the two of us as we screamed past him. I caught a last glimpse of the boy as we turned onto the frontage road. He gave us the finger.
Heater on, we sped onto the freeway, the interior of the van growing sultry. The greenish glow spilling from the dashboard lights softened Carol’s features, caressing the full, sensuous mouth, the thin straight nose, the thick hair swept back from her forehead in twin foaming waves. Her head was propped against the cold window, her eyes heavy-lidded. She was humming softly to herself, the formless song of a child singing away the dark.
A horn sounded angrily. I’d been staring too long at her and had drifted toward another lane, almost tapping a small yellow Volks. It gave another bleat and surged ahead as I turned my eyes back to the road.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw Carol lean forward. She pulled one of my hands off the wheel and squeezed it with both her own. Her grip was dry and tight.
“I’ve missed you honey
,” she said softly.
A small, painful lump stuck in my throat. “Carol ...”
“Shhh,” she said. “It’s all right now. Aren’t we going home?”
“Yes,” I told her, “yes. We are.”
“And aren’t we together?”
“Yes.”
Which was, of course, when it happened.
There was a loud, sudden pop. It sounded like a firecracker or a backfire, but backfires don’t happen in the front seat. It’s a gunshot, I told myself. Then I felt Carol’s touch grow cold. I turned my head, half knowing what I would see.
I was wrong. It was worse than I’d imagined, worse than last year’s knifing or the bludgeoning the year before that. Worse than any of them.
A small hole had opened in the passenger window, a hole through which the wind shrieked and from which a multitude of tiny cracks radiated outward through the glass. And Carol—
I couldn’t help it. I screamed.
Half of her head was gone. It was as if some jagged, arbitrary line had been diagonally slashed across her face, beginning at the lower left jawbone and zigzagging upward to her right temple. Everything above that line had been erased, had simply ceased to exist. A great gout of blood and bone was splashed across the windshield. I could see her brains.
I tried to drop my hand, but Carol’s grip was impossibly strong, like iron. Still screaming, I stamped on the brakes. We went into a wild skid, fishtailing in a 180-degree arc. The dash lights shone brightly on her remaining eyeball as it swiveled in its socket to look right at me. What was left of her mouth dropped open; I could see her moving, shredded tongue.
“Darling,” she slurred, in a tone of deepest sympathy. “What’s wrong?” And she softly stroked my captive hand.
I went a little crazy. I kicked at the brakes, shrieking at the top of my lungs. Carol was flung violently away from me, hit hard against the door. The impact snapped it open, and she flipped out and disappeared into the blackness. Dimly I heard the sound of another horn, another set of squealing brakes, and a thud Then the van’s insane momentum slammed the door shut. A moment later the motor died, and with a bone-jarring jerk I came to a halt.
The Year's Best Horror Stories 14 Page 24