"I thought you were a cop,” she said. “Are you a cop?"
I laughed. “No,” I said. “I'm not a cop."
She ducked her head, and I thought she was crying again. Her voice came up from under her hair. “I could help you, maybe,” she said. “If you hear voices, maybe we could talk about it. Maybe they're there for a reason."
"Oh, for God's sake, who do you think you are?” I asked her. “I saw you at a goddamn gas station. I hadn't even been following you. That's the kicker. That's it. You were in the wrong goddamn place at the wrong goddamn time. You can't talk to me about anything. I don't want to talk about anything. All I want are for the voices in my head to stop. Can you get that? Can you?” I leaned over her, and she shrank away from me, scooching back against the tree trunk. The voices were screaming again, the red haze creeping back up. God, when had this started? I couldn't control it anymore. I pressed a fist against my temple, towering over her in the amber glow of the trunk light. She sagged at my feet like a sack of rotten fruit.
"You can't make a deal with me, do you get that?” I asked. “Do you get it? I would have let you go already if it were coming to that. But you're going to help me instead.” I stepped back and took a deep breath, wheezing a little. “You're going to help me do the right thing. That's the kicker, isn't it? It's the wrong thing, but it's the right thing, too."
"What do you mean?” she asked. If the girl could have shrunk into the tree, she would have.
"You're going to help me end all of this,” I told her. “I know it's wrong. I know what I've done is wrong. The voices, they're killing me. So you're going to help me end it."
A horizon of hope dawned across her face. “You want me to kill you?” she asked, her voice very small in the shadow of the summer house behind us.
I laughed as if she had told a very excellent joke, and the tension in my back faded a little. I reached for my cigarettes. There was only one left in the pack. “In a manner of speaking,” I said. “You're going to help me die.” I lit up the cigarette and coughed a little on the first drag. When I exhaled, the red haze had lifted and the voices were quiet. It was just me again, in control of the machine. “One more to go,” I said, and smiled.
* * * *
The sheriff stood on the boat dock, waiting for the divers’ signal, checking his watch. The Trevino family wasn't there, just a pack of state troopers and some folks from the medical examiner's office. Below me, a crime scene unit combed the landscape for clues to my identity. They had already found my pack, the hard place on the ground where Lily had been tied up and I'd had my last cigarette. They were lucky; it hadn't rained in a week, and some of the evidence remained for them to find. I didn't care; I hovered in my dogwood, watching. The white blossoms were starting to turn, the tree fading from snowy white into a cacophony of mint and sage, and every so often I would gather up the energy to rustle the leaves and send a few down onto their stooped backs. I didn't know why Lily wasn't here with me, lurking in the trees or behind the boat house. Every once in a while I would see someone else like me, someone who hovered vaguely in the shadows, a man dressed in 60s style fatigues with a bloody hole in his belly, a farmer with half his skull missing. I couldn't tell if they could see me or not. Lily, though—she was nowhere to be found.
She had prayed a little, when it came to the end. She had watched me smoke for the better part of ten minutes without saying a word, and then she had bucked her chin out and said the one thing I never thought she would say.
"I can't kill you."
I coughed on my inhale. The cigarette was three quarters gone, and the moon was almost at its apex. “Excuse me?"
"I can't kill you,” she said again.
"Are you out of your fucking mind?” I asked. “In case you've failed to notice, you don't have a choice in the matter."
"If you want to die, that's fine,” she said. “But I can't do it. It's not right with the Lord.” She sat up straight against the tree trunk, flexing her elbows as much as she could against the nylon rope. She shrugged her shoulders back, her tits pushing out against the knit of her shirt, and then collapsed back into a slump.
"What the hell are you talking about?” My voice was even, but her words had started my stomach rolling, over and over, like a car going over a cliff. Maybe she was bluffing; but when she looked up at me, her face was ashen and tight with strain, tears making dirty tracks down the skin stretched drum-tight over her cheekbones. I didn't believe she was bluffing.
She shrugged and dropped her head. “I know it sounds stupid."
"You're goddamn right it sounds stupid. It sounds ludicrous."
"I know,” she said. “But it's not my call. I can't kill you. There are some things that are right and wrong, and if I killed you, it would be just as wrong as—” She stopped.
"What?” I had to catch my breath a little before I took another drag on the cigarette. “What?"
"As this,” she said. “As what you're doing to me. And I can't do that. I'll hit you over the head and run away if I can. But I can't shoot you or stab you or any of that."
I leaned back against the car trunk again and stared at her. The breeze had died, and the night air was still. She sat, not moving, her image flickering in the dim light like a projection from a broken television screen, and for a moment, I couldn't tell if she was really there or just a hallucination, an extension of the voices in my head. I sat like that, silent, afraid to move or even breathe, until the breeze picked up again and blew her hair in a halo around her head and I could tell she was real again. I exhaled my last breath of nicotine, relief and anger washing over me, and dropped the stub, grinding it out in the dirt.
"Well, luckily for you, you sanctimonious bitch,” I said, “you don't have to.” I reached behind her and untied the length of rope wrapped around the tree, the leash that connected to her hands.
"Get up."
She sat in her slump. I jerked the rope, and she fell over in a heap, sniffling in the dirt. The sound of her snot woke up the voices in my head, and this time they weren't at medium volume; this time they were at full fucking throttle: wrongwrongwrongwrong. WRONG. WRONG. WRONG. WRONG. I wanted to scream, I wanted to throw myself in the lake right then and there, but the truth was I was too fucking scared to do it by myself. That was why she was there, why I had picked her; I was too scared to do it by myself. I jerked the rope until she cried out, and I could see her wrists were bleeding. I grabbed her by that ash blonde hair, and dear God, I was crying, I was crying, the voices were going full throttle, full decibel, and I couldn't fucking make them stop. I jerked her head back so that she could see me, my tears and her sniveling and all of it.
"You are doing this with me,” I told her. “And you can thank your God for it because you are going to be a goddamn martyr, you are going to save lives by dying with me today, but you have to get this, you have to get it—I can't do this by myself. Do you get it? You have to go with me. You will go with me. I can't go by myself. And if I don't go, I will kill you and then I will kill a hundred other women because I can't fucking stop. You have to go with me."
She just stared up at me, her face and shirt covered in dirt and sweat and tears. I thought she might die right there, in my arms. She made a big heaving, sobbing noise, and bucked up, and with no thought whatsoever I smacked her in the head with my open palm. She collapsed back to the ground, sobbing.
"Oh God,” she said. “Dear God."
I grabbed her by the shoulders and pulled her up to face me.
"That's right,” I said, trying to push away the voices. “That's right. Think about your God. That's right."
She steadied there, watching me, and it was the longest moment of my life, one of the last; and then she nodded, crying, snot running down her face.
"Okay,” she said. “Okay. What do you want me to do?"
I pulled back from her, shaking, and then reached under her armpits and pulled her to her feet. “Get in the car,” I said. She looked at me again, wondering,
and I shook my head. “Just get in the goddamn car."
* * * *
It took the divers and the wrecker an hour to pull the Buick up. The trunk came up first, rising from the lake's surface at a crazy, canted angle. Dark water poured off the bumper. The back window had busted with the rest of them, but I couldn't see anything inside. Two round balls bobbed up beside it, and it took me a second to place them as the divers’ heads. The sheriff waved them in.
"He's holding her,” one of the divers said as he mounted the dock. He shrugged his tank off. “Have you ever heard of that? He's holding her like a lover."
I watched as the Buick cleared the water and the wrecker maneuvered it onto dry ground. The crime scene team swarmed around it, examining the broken windows, the busted door lock on the passenger side. They popped the trunk and dug into the wheel well, finding my stash of trinkets. From my perch in the tree I could see our bodies, black and bloated, through the back window. My head rested on the passenger seat; Lily's arm fell out the window at an unnatural angle. I waited in the silence, waited for the rustle of breeze to come carry me away, to whatever heaven or hell was waiting for me. Surely, it was time for my release. The mockingbirds and jays were silent on the branches. But—nothing. The air was still. And then, in the silence, I heard the whisper: wrongwrongwrong.
Copyright © 2007 Susan Overcash Walker
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LAST STOP ON DOWLING STREET by Scott William Carter
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In the last three years, Scott William Carter has sold over two dozen stories to such places as Analog, Asimov's, Ellery Queen's, Realms of Fantasy and Weird Tales, as well as to anthologies by Pocket Books and DAW. He lives in Oregon with his patient wife and two young children. Find out more about his work at www.scottwilliamcarter.com
* * * *
Frank Granger woke possessed with the feeling that someone was in his bedroom. He bolted upright in bed, his T-shirt drenched with sweat, the metallic taste of fear in his mouth, his heart pounding so hard it was a moment before he noticed it was raining outside. Not just raining but pouring, coming down like God taking a piss after a night of drinking, as his buddy Jim used to say.
His feet were tangled in a mess of sweaty sheets. Darkness suffocated his room, no moonlight, no light from the bathroom spilling in from the hall. The smell of mold was strong; his trailer always smelled like mold when it rained. A hundred miles west of Houston, surrounded by scrub grass and tumbleweed, not another neighbor within half a mile, there wasn't any light from outside without the moon. But the bathroom light being off, that bothered Frank, because he always left the light on in case he needed to take a leak in the middle of the night. Plus ever since his old buddy Jim decided to see what the mouth of a shotgun tasted like two years back, Frank liked having a light on. He couldn't say why exactly. It just seemed better that way.
Damn power must have gone out, Frank thought. Maybe it had something to do with the riots in Houston. It had been a week since that black preacher had been shot, and the damn niggers were causing trouble everywhere. His heart just would not slow down, and he peered into the darkness, trying to make out the familiar objects in his room. The darkness seemed to have shades and hues, and if he strained he thought he caught hints of his surroundings. Was that his dresser there by the closet? Was that the wicker chair in the corner? The longer he looked at where he was sure the wicker chair was, the more he was sure that there was somebody sitting in it. Frank himself never used the chair. Alice had bought it at a garage sale, saying it would be perfect for them to sit in when they put their shoes on, but she never sat in it either as far as he could remember. He had harassed her about it for years, telling her that they really should get rid of that damn chair. Then she went and died, just passing quietly in her sleep three days short of seventy, and Frank stopped caring about the chair.
But there was somebody sitting in the chair, something about the darkness, the complexity of it. Don't be a damn fool, he told himself. Why would somebody sneak into your house just to sit in your wicker chair? Mind playing tricks, that's all. You don't own nothing worth stealing and you keep to yourself.
Finally, as his breathing became regular, he began to ease himself down into bed. That's when he heard a sound that could only be one thing: the distinctive crackle of a body shifting in the wicker chair. He froze, his heart pounding furiously, his mouth dry and coarse like sandpaper, and stared at where he imagined the person was sitting.
"Who's there?” he said.
When there was no answer, Frank reached to turn on his bedside lamp, and it was only then that the person spoke. “Don't."
Frank jumped as if he had just been poked in the ass with a branding iron. It was a deep, hoarse voice. Christ, there was somebody in his room—in his damn room! He had a Colt .45 in the drawer next to his bed, and he started to move his hand toward it.
"I wouldn't do that,” the man said. Then there followed the far more terrifying noise of a pistol being cocked.
The man sounded nervous. He also had a Texas accent, and there was a certain quality to it that led Frank to believe he was a nigger. Frank's mind raced as he tried to think of any niggers who would want to kill him. There had been a lot of niggers who rode his bus back in Houston, the Dowling Street route, the one that none of the other drivers wanted because it was mostly niggers. But he had never treated them badly, not really. He had to keep them in check now and then, but he had been kind to them, kinder than they deserved, really.
"I don't got no money,” Frank said.
"That's not surprising."
"I don't got no gold or coins or nothing of value."
The nigger cleared his throat. “That's not why I'm here."
Frank, his fear growing, started again for the pistol at his bedside, but the nigger spoke before he had even moved his hand a few inches.
"If you persist in that idea,” the nigger said, “I'll be forced to do something about it. Besides ... I brought my own gun, but I thought—well, no one could trace yours back to me."
That's when Frank realized that this nigger was no petty criminal come for whatever loose change he could find; this man had an agenda. “Who are you?” he said, his constricted throat choking off the final word.
"Just somebody's husband,” the nigger said.
Frank's mind, still sluggish from that late night scotch, tried to make sense of this comment. It was said with an accusatory tone. “Do I know your wife or something?” he asked.
The nigger responded with a snort. “I doubt you'd remember her, even though she rode your bus for ten years. Besides, she's dead."
"Sorry to hear that."
"Don't fucking lie to me."
It was the first time the man had raised his voice; everything else he had said had been spoken with cool detachment. The nigger sounded like one of those fancy learned types, a professor maybe. But that last bit, there was real rage in his voice, murderous rage, and Frank suddenly felt like he was falling. “Did I wrong her in some way?” he asked.
The nigger didn't answer for a long time. The rain had picked up, pinging against the metal roof. The moaning wind sounded like a woman in childbirth, full of pain and expectation.
"She's been dead for twelve years,” the nigger said, his voice now a hair above a whisper. “I never thought I'd be here, you know. I'm a man of the cloth, you see. Forgive and forget, I always say. Not that I didn't have thoughts back when she died. Awful thoughts. I looked up where you lived, in that ratty apartment back in Houston. I even stood in the shadows next to the stoop and watched you come home one night. But I didn't do anything. I still had two sons. Had to think about them."
"I guess I don't—"
"Don't speak unless I tell you to speak."
The sharpness was there in the nigger's voice again. Frank couldn't believe he was being treated this way in his own home—and by a nigger! He had to think of a way out of this mess. The nigger had his pis
tol, sure, but there was also the .22 underneath the bed. If he could find a way to roll off the bed, on the far side where he'd be out of the nigger's line of fire, maybe he could get to the shotgun in time. Then he could blow the nigger's fucking face off.
"I didn't think I was going to tell you any of this,” the nigger said. “I didn't think it mattered, but now I think it does. You need to hear it. And maybe I need to say it. Then I'll do what I came to do and finally put you behind me."
Frank's eyes were beginning to adjust to the darkness. The light was still too faint to see much, but he thought he saw the peacock-like back to the wicker chair, as well as a gleam off the nigger's bald scalp.
"I'll tell you why I'm here, Frank Granger,” the nigger said. “I'll tell you as plain as I can make. I'm here because you killed my wife."
"I never killed anybody,” Frank said.
"Shut up. Just shut the fuck up, you hear me?” He mumbled something under his breath, then spoke more calmly. “You see what you've done to me, Granger? My whole life I served to the glory of God, and you make me nothing but a raving lunatic. I've never raised my voice in anger in my entire life, and yet you'd think it was ordinary behavior for me. But it's not. It's you. You're poison to me, Granger. That's why I've got to kill you."
Although Frank had suspected that was why the nigger was here, it was the first time the nigger had said it so bluntly. A steady pressure was building in his bladder. What he needed was a distraction—something to give him a moment to duck under the bed and fish out the shotgun. But what? What?
"I swear I've never hurt anyone,” Frank said, trying to sound as meek as possible. He didn't mind sounding pathetic if it would get him out of this mess. There would be plenty of time for revenge later.
"Do—not—speak!” the nigger said. “I will speak my piece and you will listen, you worthless shit. You piece of crap. You ... You...” He trailed off, taking a few deep breaths until he had regained his composure. “You may not know that you killed her, but you did. My wife rode your damn bus near every day for ten years, but I bet you wouldn't recognize her if I showed you a picture. I'd bet money on it. I'd bet my entire life savings."
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