So that left the five of them waiting in the room with the flickering lights and the warm smell. The couple in the front row continued to stare intently forward, unmoving and not talking. The couple in the very back row continued their conversation. They were like himself and Althea, Tod thought. They could have gone anywhere. They were just happy to be in each other’s company. Even if they were in a room staring at nothing. That didn’t matter because they were each other’s entertainment.
And now Althea was dead and Tod didn’t think he could ever feel that again. He would never again feel what that giggling couple in the back row felt. That warmth. That belonging. That since of togetherness. Of being a part of someone else’s life.
After thinking that last thought, the power went out.
The girl in the front row screamed and then things got really weird.
The room went black. Much blacker than it should have. Tod stood up from his rickety wooden chair and, upon standing up, lost his balance and collapsed to the floor. Whoever had been in the room with him before was now gone. He waited for a crack of thunder, a flash of lightning, anything. But all he got was the constant howling growl of the wind.
He didn’t know what was happening.
The room swirled around him. He no longer knew where the door was or where it had been. He didn’t know which way was the front of the room.
And he didn’t care. He was ready to lie down on the floor and let the entire structure rain down on him. That was what he had wanted since the beginning anyway, wasn’t it?
But that didn’t happen. The room shook violently, still in that disorienting black. He felt the wind rage over his skin and it didn’t feel like anything he would run or seek shelter from. He liked the way it felt. It was cold in the stifling New Orleans humidity. Even more than that, it filled him with something he hadn’t felt in a long time.
He didn’t think he wanted to die anymore.
Now all he wanted to do was lie there and feel the wind rage across his body. That would have been enough for him. And as quickly as he thought that thought, the wind stopped.
He realized he had closed his eyes, half-expecting some kind of grim final climax to it all. But that wasn’t what happened. Instead there was a quiet calm.
He opened his eyes.
He was no longer in the room.
He was outside of a cemetery and he wasn’t lying down anymore. He was standing up, right in front of the twisted wrought iron cemetery gates hanging slightly ajar. To the right of the gates, someone had written the phrase “THERE ARE GHOSTS IN THIS CITY” in black spraypaint. For a moment, he didn’t know if the graffiti was talking about the city of New Orleans itself or this city of the dead in front of him.
He could still smell the storm in the air but it was no longer on him, if it had ever even come. Maybe it had passed. Tod didn’t have any idea. Looking around him, he wasn’t even sure he was still in New Orleans. It was like the cemetery occupied a sphere of existence all its own.
In his ear, Tod heard the whisper—Althea. Beautiful Althea breathing across the side of his head, beckoning for him to follow her.
Tod walked into the cemetery, the mausoleums towering around him, some of them fresh and clean and gleaming white beneath the moon, others in a state of complete disrepair, as though whatever had once been contained within could come crawling out at any moment. From the corner of his eye, he saw a movement and from somewhere within the back of his brain, he found a memory.
It was a violent memory.
It surged up behind his eyes, the flashing whiteness of his car cutting into the electrical utility pole.
But it wasn’t his car, he told himself. It was Althea’s car. She had been driving and she had died.
He shook the memory from his head. That wasn’t the Althea he wanted to remember.
The Althea he wanted to remember was in front of him, sliding past a crumbling gray tomb.
“Althea,” he said.
“Tod,” she said back. “We need to talk.”
“I know.”
“It’s not what you think it is.”
Tod drew closer to the ghost (was it a ghost?) in front of him.
“I know what you’re going to say. I need to get on with my life. I need to stop following you. I need to stop trying to die.”
“That’s not it at all.”
“What then?”
“I want you to join me.”
Another memory, cascading through his brain, caused him to take a step back from Althea even though she was pale and beautiful and standing right there in front of him, everything he remembered about her made crystalline and drawn into sharp focus.
Why was he stepping back?
“We could do it, Tod. Me and you could be together. Just like we used to be. All you have to do is not go back. If you never leave this cemetery, you can be with me forever.”
“I loved you, Althea.” But even as he spoke the words, he doubted the weight of them. Doubted the truth of them. Another memory stabbed at him and he dropped to one knee. This one was harsh and fuller than the rest. More than just a fragment.
In the memory, Tod was driving the car. He fought with the steering wheel to keep the car on the road but it was a battle he lost. And there was something else in the car with him but not someone. There was something else in the car with him, in his head, and there was a reason he had aimed his car at the lone pole to begin with.
“You know you want this, Tod.”
“No,” he said. He stood up, shaking the memories out of his head, swelling with the new memories flooding into it. The memories he had had before the car crash. The real memories.
“I don’t want it.”
“Why not?” she asked, her lips gone pouty.
“Because you never were.”
“But here I am, Tod. How can you say that I never was?”
“You were the figment of a lonely boy’s imagination and when I wanted you to go you wouldn’t and so I had to destroy what created you…”
“Yourself. Oh, you’ve grown so clever in your manhood. But dreams don’t go away that easily, Tod. I will be with you until you die.”
“No, you won’t.”
After saying that, the storm broke over the city of the dead. He crawled into an open mausoleum, one not yet used, to escape the winds and Althea crawled in with him.
The chill of the winds was replaced with all the warmth of a fever. The sweating thing that never was lay beside him in this cramped quarter, trying to coax Tod in any way plausible. Trying to get him to acknowledge her in some way because the more he acknowledged her, the more he addressed her, even if it was to tell her she was just something he had dreamed up, the stronger she became. So he lay there, huddled up into himself, his eyes drawn tightly closed as her hands roamed over his body and her breath swept his ear and his scalp. Hands and breath, nothing more. Nothing more physical than that. Nothing more physical than what could have passed as wind. Nothing there, Tod had to continue telling himself, listening to the cold winds around him and feeling so very hot inside. Like he was going to erupt in fire. But that was exactly what he couldn’t do. When he had dreamed her up, Althea could do anything. She could take him to whatever pleasure limit his mind wanted to go. She could do all of that, Tod now realized, because she was his mind. He quivered, feeling the cool stone push against his fevered back, as he felt Althea’s hands move lower and lower, reaching between his legs, preparing to administer the final test. Tod knew what she wanted. He knew she wanted to find rigid stiffness there. Hardness to enclose her breath around and then, eventually, her sex. She wanted to drag him back up within her.
But what she found was nothing. Tod started to laugh. A crazy man in a tomb during a hurricane trying not to let himself be raped by his own mind. He laughed away the past, fits of coughing turning into a bout of vomiting but, sometime during the course of this fit, he felt something whoosh out of him. His head, if it was possible, felt emptier. After that, he rela
xed, sprawling back, his puke warm against his back.
He didn’t know how long he stayed like that, but eventually he found blackness. A blackness more comforting than he ever thought.
It felt like years before he opened his eyes again. In reality, it was probably little more than a day. But, in another way, he realized, it was years. He felt like he had regained the lost years after the crash. He felt like he had regained a certain amount of sanity. A sense of purpose and a sense of light filled the space he had emptied. He slid out of the mausoleum and into the wet dawn.
He walked out of the cemetery and thought about trying to board a plane or a bus back to Ohio but he suddenly found he was terrified to step foot on an airplane. Maybe, he figured, this was the place to begin his new life. With his wet clothes sticking to his skin, he turned to his left, wondering how he had made it so far out here, and began walking toward the dark and sinking city before him.
Durning
The highway thrummed beneath them.
“It’s nice of you to give up your break just to come with me,” Christina Johnson said from the passenger seat, her delicately pale hand reaching out, stroking his knee.
Adam Strafe squinted into the sunlight beading through the dirty windshield and said, “I’m not really giving up much.”
“I’m sure you miss your family, though.”
“Maybe. I don’t know. My parents are pretty preoccupied with the younger ones and... well, Maine isn’t really pleasant this time of year. Not very springlike.”
“I can’t wait until you meet Mom and Dad. They’re gonna love you.”
“I’m looking forward to it.”
That wasn’t really true. Adam didn’t really care about meeting her parents. He had a couple of motives for spending his break with her but meeting her parents definitely wasn’t at the top of the list. First and foremost, he was hoping to finally be able to sleep with her. He had the whole scenario worked out in his head. Mom and Dad Johnson would make him a bed on the downstairs couch and he would sneak up to her room after lights out. This, he reminded himself, would be her teenage high school room. There would probably be posters of rock stars on the walls and stuffed animals tucked away in the corners of the closet. And there, maybe, he would have her.
“I might just have to show you off to the whole town,” she said, smiling that perfect smile, all those straight white teeth beneath the freckled cheeks and coffee brown eyes.
“Durning, Ohio,” he said. “I can’t wait to see if it’s everything you’ve made it out to be.”
“Oh, it is. It’s the perfect town. Almost magical.”
Looking at her, he almost believed such a town could exist. He had met her in an undergraduate philosophy class at Shartles University in Pennsylvania. He sat to her right. He could almost smell the apple pie clinging to her hair. He was reminded of the part in Annie Hall when Woody Allen’s character first meets Annie Hall and thinks of her as, “Annie from Wisconsin.” That was how Adam thought of Christina. Christina from Ohio. Durning, Ohio, more specifically. The perfect town. Where the mail always ran on time and the neighbors not only knew but loved one another. That was his other reason for coming with her. He couldn’t imagine such a town. Where he came from—Salt Port, Maine—the winters were long and mean and the people were almost as harsh. Growing up, he remembered the sky as a desolate slate of gray.
“So what’s the weather like in Durning?” he asked, making small talk, car talk, something to while away the time.
“It’s usually pretty nice. Especially this time of year. Not too hot, not too cold.”
“Probably raining though, huh?”
“It doesn’t rain that much in Durning. It must have something to do with the way the land lays or something. You know, like in the Pacific Northwest?”
He was clueless. He shook his head.
“There’s Seattle, right? And everybody knows how much it rains there. But just to the east of Seattle, it’s practically a desert. That’s because of the Cascade Mountains. At least, I think it’s the Cascades. They hold back the clouds and that’s why it rains so much to the west of them but hardly at all to the east.”
Ah, Christina from Durning, Ohio. Adam didn’t know if anyone else could be truly enthralled by such trivialities. He loved it. It was almost enough to make him love her but he didn’t know if he was ready for that yet. He didn’t know if she was ready for that yet. It didn’t seem like she had enough of the world on her. Let her season, let her experience some things, ferment, and then he would see what kind of person she would become.
Continuing on I-70 West through the mountains and the Amish country of western Pennsylvania, they crossed into Ohio and Adam asked if they were close yet.
“About another hour or so,” she said, staring wide-eyed out the window.
They continued to make small talk. Christina talked nearly nonstop about Durning. He had heard about some of the people before. But she had different stories for them.
And pictures. She said she had taken a roll of film and went through town snapping pictures so she could remember them all. Adam glanced from the pictures back to the road, Christina narrating each picture. There was her dad, Thomas, smiling into the camera. He was a milkman. Adam said he didn’t know towns still had milkmen. There was her mother, Angelica. She was, of course, a stay-at-home mom. There was Town Hall. There was Memorial Park, in the center of town, landscaped perfectly, a wide expanse of lawn covered by picnickers and boys playing catch and girls playing with hula hoops. There was the soda shop/drugstore. Another throwback. And Mr. Daniels, the proprietor, wore one of those paper soda jerk hats on his head. Adam wondered if he was the pharmacist, also. He didn’t know if he would want drugs from a man wearing a paper hat. The photos revealed women who were matronly but not unattractive. The men were lean and hard-jawed but their eyes twinkled with kindness. Unreal. Adam wanted to be cynical about the whole thing but it all sounded pretty good. After he finished doing all the things he felt like a young man had to do, he could see himself settling down in a place like Durning.
“Low on gas,” he said, noticing the gauge bobbing in and out of the cautionary orange block.
“You should probably stop at the next gas station. That’ll probably be it until Durning.”
A few minutes later, he pulled into a gas station. They both got out, arching their backs in the pleasant air. It was early April and there was just a hint of summer balm in the air. Adam went around to the tank, twisted off the cap, inserted the pump and started filling.
“I’m gonna go in and get some coffee. Want some?” she asked.
“Sure. Thanks.”
He put the pump on automatic and watched her as she walked in.
She was perfect. He didn’t really want to admit that. He thought maybe he was too young to say he had really discovered perfection but there she was, strolling through the parking lot with her confident head held high. The pump stopped itself and he started for the store to pay. Spying him through the window, she motioned him away. She was paying this time too even though it was her car and she had paid before they left. He was okay with that. He would pay on the way back.
He got back in the car and watched her come toward him. Toward him. He couldn’t really believe how she had even taken an interest in him. Maybe over the summer, he could take her back to his home town and show her the backwoods shacks, the abandoned houses downtown, the junked cars littering the yards of the shoddy suburbs. He grimaced at the thought.
“Thanks,” he said as she slid into the car, handing him his jumbo Styrofoam cup of coffee. He took a sip. Gas station coffee always tasted like it was made with pencil shavings but it had caffeine and the caffeine was what he needed to get him through this last jaunt.
The last half hour or so they sipped their coffee and talked about other things, mostly common professors or projects they were supposed to be working on over the break.
She directed him off the interstate and onto a state route and
then through some winding backroads. Ohio had yet to become flat and some of the turns were pretty wicked. Then they turned onto a gravel road and rose up a steep hill that wanted to be a mountain. When they reached the top she told him to stop the car.
“Here?” he asked.
“Yeah, you can see the whole town from up here.”
“Oh, cool,” he said. He always liked those sorts of bird’s-eye-views of towns.
He eased the car over to the side of the road and downed the last of his coffee. He looked at her and she smiled and made him feel things he had never felt before.
The road dropped away on her side of the car and he crossed over to her.
“Isn’t it beautiful?” she asked.
He looked out over the valley and saw nothing. Was he supposed to see something? The only thing he saw was the gravel of the road give way to the grassy hillside and descend into a grassy meadow. A small knot of fear began in his gut.
“What are we looking at?” he asked, putting his arm around her.
“Durning,” she said.
He had never thought she was insane before that instant and it was so fleeting he almost wanted to laugh it off.
He did laugh. A low chuckle that got caught up in the back of his throat. He coughed and felt his head swim. His vision blurring, the whole green meadow swooned in front of him. His stomach kicked up. Damn the coffee, he thought. Cheap ass gas station coffee always made his stomach burn. And when was the last time he’d eaten?
“I’m not feeling so well,” he said.
“Maybe you need to lie down,” she said, beaming, moving in, kissing him on the cheek, running a hand softer than cornsilk down his forearm.
“Yeah,” he choked out.
He didn’t even remember making it back to the car.
“You’ve finally come to,” Adam heard Christina’s voice through a thick haze.
Yes. He had finally come to. He wondered what had happened to him. He opened his eyes, expecting to feel her cool and comforting hand on his forehead.
But he had trouble opening his eyes. He couldn’t focus. Once he finally got them opened, it still didn’t feel right. His vision was limited. He couldn’t see anything to his left. He felt that eyelid opening and closing but there wasn’t anything there.
Pray You Die Alone: Horror Stories Page 3