The Dark Country

by Dennis Etchison

  Raphael stonewalled Macklin at the first mention of Juano; his beady eyes receded into glacial ignorance. No, the night man was named Dom or Don; he mumbled so that Macklin couldn't be sure. No, Don (or Dom) had been working here for six, seven months; no, no, no.

  Until Macklin came up with the magic word: police.

  After a few minutes of bobbing and weaving, it started to come out. Raphe sounded almost scared, yet relieved to be able to talk about it to someone, even to Macklin.

  "They bring me these guys, my friend," whispered Raphe. "I don't got nothing to do with it, believe me.

  "The way it seems to me, it's company policy for all the stores, not just me. Sometimes they call and say to lay off my regular boy, you know, on the graveyard shift. 'Specially when there's been a lot of holdups. Hell, that's right by me. I don't want Dom shot up. He's my best man!

  "See, I put the hours down on Dom's pay so it comes out right with the taxes, but he has to kick it back. It don't even go on his check. Then the district office, they got to pay the outfit that supplies these guys, only they don't give 'em the regular wage. I don't know if they're wetbacks or what. I hear they only get maybe $1.25 an hour, or at least the outfit that brings 'em in does, so the office is making money. You know how many stores, how many shifts that adds up to?

  "Myself, I'm damn glad they only use 'em after dark, late, when things can get hairy for an all-night man. It's the way they look. But you already seen one, this Juano-Whatever. So you know. Right? You know something else, my friend? They all look messed up."

  Macklin noticed goose bumps forming on Raphe's arms.

  "But I don't personally know nothing about it."

  They, thought Macklin, poised outside the Stop 'N Start. Sure enough, like clockwork They had brought Juano to work at midnight. Right on schedule. With raw, burning eyes he had watched Them do something to Juano's shirt front and then point him at the door and let go. What did They do, wind him up? But They would be back. Macklin was sure of that. They, whoever They were. The Paranoid They.

  Well, he was sure as hell going to find out who They were now.

  He popped another Dexamyl and swallowed dry until it stayed down.

  Threats didn't work any better than questions with Juano himself. Macklin had had to learn that the hard way. The guy was so sublimely creepy it was all he could do to swivel back and forth between register and counter, slithering a hyaline

  hand over the change machine in the face of the most outraged customers, like Macklin, giving out with only the same pathetic, wheezing please, please, sorry, thank you, like a stretched cassette tape on its last loop.

  Which had sent Macklin back to the car with exactly no options, nothing to do that might jar the nightmare loose except to pound the steering wheel and curse and dream redder and redder dreams of revenge. He had burned rubber between the parking lot and Sweeney Todd's Pub, turning over two pints of John Courage and a shot of Irish whiskey before he could think clearly enough to waste another dime calling the hospital, or even to look at his watch.

  At six o'clock They would be back for Juano. And then. He would. Find out.

  Two or three hours in the all-night movie theatre downtown, merging with the shadows on the tattered screen. The popcorn girl wiping stains off her uniform. The ticket girl staring through him, and again when he left. Something about her. He tried to think. Something about the people who work night owl shifts anywhere. He remembered faces down the years. It didn't matter what they looked like. The nightwalkers, insomniacs, addicts, those without money for a cheap hotel, they would always come back to the only game in town. They had no choice. It didn't matter that the ticket girl was messed up. It didn't matter that Juano was messed up. Why should it?

  A blue van glided into the lot.

  The Stop 'N Start sign dimmed, paling against the coming morning. The van braked. A man in rumpled clothes climbed out. There was a second figure in the front seat. The driver unlocked the back doors, silencing the birds that were gathering in the trees. Then he entered the store.

  Macklin watched. Juano was led out. The a.m. relief man stood by, shaking his head.

  Macklin hesitated. He wanted Juano, but what could he do now? What the hell had he been waiting for, exactly? There was still something else, something else. ... It was like the glimpse of a shape under a sheet in a busy corridor. You didn't know what it was at first, but it was there; you knew what it might be, but you couldn't be sure, not until you got close and stayed next to it long enough to be able to read its true form.

  The driver helped Juano into the van. He locked the doors, started the engine and drove away. Macklin, his lights out, followed.

  He stayed with the van as it snaked a path across the city, nearer and nearer the foothills. The sides were unmarked, but he figured it must operate like one of those minibus porta-maid services he had seen leaving Malibu and Bel-Air late in the afternoon, or like the loads of kids trucked in to push magazine subscriptions and phony charities in the neighborhoods near where he lived.

  The sky was still black, beginning to turn to slate close to the horizon. Once they passed a garbage collector already on his rounds. Macklin kept his distance.

  They led him finally to a street that dead-ended at a construction site. Macklin idled by the corner, then saw the van turn back.

  He let them pass, cruised to the end and made a slow turn.

  Then he saw the van returning.

  He pretended to park. He looked up.

  They had stopped the van crosswise in front of him, blocking his passage.

  The man in rumpled clothes jumped out and opened Mack-lin's door.

  Macklin started to get out but was pushed back. "You think you're a big enough man to be trailing people around?"

  Macklin tried to penetrate the beam of the flashlight. "I saw my old friend Juano get into your truck," he began. "Didn't get a chance to talk to him. Thought I might as well follow him home and see what he's been up to."

  The other man got out of the front seat of the van. He was younger, delicate-boned. He stood on one side, listening.

  "I saw him get in," said Macklin, "back at the Stop 'N Start on Pico?" He groped under the seat for the tire iron. "I was driving by and—"

  "Get out."

  "What?"

  "We saw you. Out of the car."

  He shrugged and swung his legs around, lifting the iron behind him as he stood. The younger man motioned with his head and the driver

  yanked Macklin forward by the shirt, kicking the door closed on Macklin's arm at the same time. He let out a yell as the tire iron clanged to the pavement.

  "Another accident?" suggested the younger man.

  "Too messy, after the one yesterday. Come on, pal, you're going to get to see your friend."

  Macklin hunched over in pain. One of them jerked his bad arm up and he screamed. Over it all he felt a needle jab him high, in the armpit, and then he was falling.

  The van was bumping along on the freeway when he came out of it. With his good hand he pawed his face, trying to clear his vision. His other arm didn't hurt, but it wouldn't move when he wanted it to.

  He was sprawled on his back. He felt a wheel humming under him, below the tire well. And there were the others. They were sitting up. One was Juano.

  He was aware of a stink, sickeningly sweet, but with an overlay he remembered from his high school lab days but couldn't quite place. It sliced into his nostrils.

  He didn't recognize the others. Pasty faces. Heads thrown forward, arms distended strangely with the wrists jutting out from the coat sleeves.

  "Give me a hand," he said, not really expecting it.

  He strained to sit up. He could make out the backs of two heads in the cab, on the other side of the grid.

  He dropped his voice to a whisper. "Hey. Can you guys understand me?"

  "Let us rest," someone said weakly.

  He rose too quickly and his equilibrium failed. He had been shot up with something str
ong enough to knock him out, but it was probably the Dexamyl that had kept his mind from leaving his body completely. The van yawed, descending an off ramp, and he began to drift. He heard voices. They slipped in and out of his consciousness like fish in darkness, moving between his ears in blurred levels he could not always identify.

  "There's still room at the cross." That was the younger, small-boned man, he was almost sure.

  "Oh, I've been interested in Jesus for a long time, but I never could get a handle on him. ..."

  "Well, beware the wrath to come. You really should, you know."

  He put his head back and became one with a dark dream. There was something he wanted to remember. He did not want to remember it. He turned his mind to doggerel, to the old song. The time to hesitate is through, he thought. No time to wallow in the mire. Try now we can only lose/And our love become a funeral pyre. The van bumped to a halt. His head bounced off steel.

  The door opened. He watched it. It seemed to take forever.

  Through slitted eyes: a man in a uniform that barely fit, hobbling his way to the back of the van, supported by the two of them. A line of gasoline pumps and a sign that read WE NEVER CLOSE—NEVER UNDERSOLD. The letters breathed. Before they let go of him, the one with rumpled clothes unbuttoned the attendant's shirt and stabbed a hypodermic into the chest, close to the heart and next to a strap that ran under the arms. The needle darted and flashed dully in the wan morning light.

  ' "This one needs a booster," said the driver, or maybe it was the other one. Their voices ran together. "Just make sure you don't give him the same stuff you gave old Juano's sweetheart there. I want them to walk in on their own hind legs." "You think I want to carry 'em?" "We've done it before, brother. Yesterday, for instance." At that Macklin let his eyelids down the rest of the way, and then he was drifting again.

  The wheels drummed under him.

  "How much longer?" "Soon now. Soon."

  These voices weak, like a folding and unfolding of paper.

  Brakes grabbed. The doors opened again. A thin light played over Macklin's lids, forcing them up.

  He had another moment of clarity; they were becoming more frequent now. He blinked and felt pain. This time the van was parked between low hills. Two men in Western costumes passed by, one of them leading a horse. The driver stopped a group of figures in togas. He seemed to be asking for directions.

  Behind them, a castle lay in ruins. Part of a castle. And over to the side Macklin identified a church steeple, the corner of a turn-of-the-century street, a mock-up of a rocket launching pad and an old brick schoolhouse. Under the flat sky they receded into intersections of angles and vistas which teetered almost imperceptibly, ready to topple.

  The driver and the other one set a stretcher on the tailgate. On the litter was a long, crumpled shape, sheeted and encased in a plastic bag. They sloughed it inside and started to secure the doors.

  " You got the pacemaker back, I hope." " Stunt director said it's in the body bag." "It better be. Or it's our ass in a sling. Your ass. How'd he get so racked up, anyway?" "Ran him over a cliff in a sports car. Or no, maybe this one was the head-on they staged for, you know, that new cop series. That's what they want now, realism. Good thing he's a cremation—ain't no way Kelly or Dee's gonna get this one pretty again by tomorrow." "That's why, man. That's why they picked him. Ashes don't need makeup."

  The van started up.

  "Going home," someone said weakly.

  "Yes . . ."

  Macklin was awake now. Crouching by the bag, he scanned the faces, Juano's and the others'. The eyes were staring, fixed on a point as untouchable as the thinnest of plasma membranes, and quite unreadable.

  He crawled over next to the one from the self-service gas station. The shirt hung open like folds of skin. He saw the silver box strapped to the flabby chest, directly over the heart. Pacemaker? he thought wildly.

  He knelt and put his ear to the box.

  He heard a humming, like an electric wristwatch.

  What for? To keep the blood pumping just enough so the tissues don't rigor mortis and decay? For God's sake, for how much longer?

  He remembered Whitey and the nurse. "What happens? Between the time they become 'remains' and the services? How long is that? A couple of days? Three?"

  A wave of nausea broke inside him. When he gazed at them again the faces were wavering, because his eyes were filled with tears.

  "Where are we?" he asked.

  "I wish you could be here," said the gas station attendant. "And where is that?"

  "We have all been here before," said another voice. "Going home," said another.

  Yes, he thought, understanding. Soon you will have your

  rest; soon you will no longer be objects, commodities. You will be honored and grieved for and your personhood given back, and then you will at last rest in peace. It is not for nothing that you have labored so long and so patiently. You will see, all of you. Soon.

  He wanted to tell them, but he couldn't. He hoped they already knew.

  The van lurched and slowed. The hand brake ratcheted. He lay down and closed his eyes. He heard the door creak back. "Let's go."

  The driver began to herd the bodies out. There was the sound of heavy, dragging feet, and from outside the smell of fresh-cut grass and roses.

  "What about this one?" said the driver, kicking Macklin's shoe.

  "Oh, he'll do his 48-hours' service, don't worry. It's called utilizing your resources."

  "Tell me about it. When do we get the Indian?"

  "Soon as St. John's certificates him. He's overdue. The crash was sloppy."

  "This one won't be. But first Dee'll want him to talk, what he knows and who he told. Two doggers in two days is too much. Then we'll probably run him back to his car and do it. And phone it in, so St. John's gets him. Even if it's DOA. Clean as hammered shit. Grab the other end."

  He felt the body bag sliding against his leg. Grunting, they hauled it out and hefted it toward—where?

  He opened his eyes. He hesitated only a second, to take a deep breath.

  Then he was out of the van and running.

  Gravel kicked up under his feet. He heard curses and metal slamming. He just kept his head down and his legs pumping. Once he twisted around and saw a man scurrying after him. The driver paused by the mortuary building and shouted. But Macklin kept moving.

  He stayed on the path as long as he dared. It led him past mossy trees and bird-stained statues. Then he jumped and cut across a carpet of matted leaves and into a glade. He passed a gate that spelled DRY LAWN CEMETERY in old iron, kept running until he spotted a break in the fence where it sloped by

  the edge of the grounds. He tore through huge, dusty ivy and skidded down, down. And then he was on a sidewalk.

  Cars revved at a wide intersection, impatient to get to work. He heard coughing and footsteps, but it was only a bus stop at the middle of the block. The air brakes of a commuter special hissed and squealed. A clutch of grim people rose from the bench and filed aboard like sleepwalkers.

  He ran for it, but the doors flapped shut and the bus roared on.

  More people at the corner, stepping blindly between each other. He hurried and merged with them.

  Dry cleaners, laundromat, hamburger stand, parking lot, gas station, all closed. But there was a telephone at the gas station.

  He ran against the light. He sealed the booth behind him and nearly collapsed against the glass.

  He rattled money into the phone, dialed Operator and called for the police.

  The air was close in the booth. He smelled hair tonic. Sweat swelled out of his pores and glazed his skin. Somewhere a radio was playing.

  A sergeant punched onto the line. Macklin yelled for them to come and get him. Where was he? He looked around frantically, but there were no street signs. Only a newspaper rack chained to a post. NONE OF THE DEAD HAS BEEN IDENTIFIED, read the headline.

  His throat tightened, his voice racing. "None of the dead has be
en identified," he said, practically babbling.

  Silence.

  So he went ahead, pouring it out about a van and a hospital and a man in rumpled clothes who shot guys up with some kind of super-adrenaline and electric pacemakers and nightclerks and crash tests. He struggled to get it all out before it was too late. A part of him heard what he was saying and wondered if he had lost his mind.

  "Who will bury them?" he cried. "What kind of monsters—"

  The line clicked off.

  He hung onto the phone. His eyes were swimming with sweat. He was aware of his heart and counted the beats, while the moisture from his breath condensed on the glass.

  He dropped another coin into the box.

  "Good morning, St. John's, may I help you?"

  He couldn't remember the room number. He described the man, the accident, the date. Sixth floor, yes, that was right. He kept talking until she got it.

  There was a pause. Hold.

  He waited.

  "Sir?"

  He didn't say anything. It was as if he had no words left. "I'm terribly sorry . . ."

  He felt the blood drain from him. His fingers were cold and numb.

  "... But I'm afraid the surgery wasn't successful. The party did not recover. If you wish I'll connect you with—"

  "The party's name was White Feather," he said mechanically. The receiver fell and dangled, swinging like the pendulum of a clock.

  He braced his legs against the sides of the booth. After what seemed like a very long time he found himself reaching re-flexly for his cigarettes. He took one from the crushed pack, straightened it and hung it on his lips.

  On the other side of the frosted glass, featureless shapes lumbered by on the boulevard. He watched them for a while.

  He picked up a book of matches from the floor, lit two together and held them close to the glass. The flame burned a clear spot through the moisture.

  Try to set the night on fire, he thought stupidly, repeating the words until they and any others he could think of lost meaning.

  The fire started to burn his fingers. He hardly felt it. He wondered if there was anything else that would burn, anything and everything. He squeezed his eyelids together. When he opened them, he was looking down at his own clothing.