Never Fear

by Heather Graham

  He leaned against the counter with his head down, waiting for the pain pills to take effect.

  “Morning.”

  The girl had gotten up. Laurie? Carol? She was wearing his shirt, not quite buttoned up all the way. She was dark haired and way too young for him.

  “Hey,” he managed weakly, turning to greet her.

  “Oh, are you hung over? Poor baby,” as she hugged him. Her breasts pressed against him through the thin cotton, and despite his head, his body responded. No. I have to get her out of here. She moved away and opened the fridge.

  “I’ll call you a cab…” he began.

  “Why’s it so dark in here? That view was so amazing last night. Oh my god, I would love a Starbucks right now. Let’s go get some. Your fridge is empty and I’m literally starving.” She faced him and whispered conspiratorially, eyes wide. “Hey, do you have any more coke?”

  Barnett stared at her. Where to begin? He tried to remember her name. Something with an S?

  “Uh, okay. Sure.”

  He went to the wall switch and metal shutters began to rise. The light wasn’t so bad this time. He walked to the window and gazed outside. He heard sirens.

  “Hey, where’s this go?” the girl asked from behind him.

  Barnett slid open the door to the balcony. Fresh air was good for hangovers, he had read somewhere. He put his hands on the waist-high railing, took a deep breath and leaned over. Two police cars raced past, sirens screaming. Some people stood on the sidewalk outside the apartment, just milling around. They seemed to be looking up him. That’s odd.

  He could hear sirens now, but could also smell smoke. In the neighborhoods beyond the strip. A plume of dark smoke rose into the afternoon sky.

  “Oh my god!” the girl cried out. Lisa! That was her name! He walked through the living room and saw that the door to the maid’s quarters was wide open. Oh shit, I forgot to lock it! He had time to register. He turned, expecting the worst. He raced through the door, down the short hallway, stopped in the doorway of the room. The room.

  “What is all this? This is awesome!” Lisa was just inside the doorway, looking around, an amazed smile on her face. The Kid stared impassively at her.

  Barnett watched her warily. She hadn’t reacted to the Kid. Maybe she can’t see him? But when she stepped too close to the circle Barnett yanked her away.

  “Hey! What the fuck?” She rubbed her arm where he had grabbed her.

  “You need to leave. Now.” Not angry. Not yelling. Firm. No need to create a scene.

  “What is all this?” Lisa asked, ignoring him. “Are you a musician?” She held up her cell phone and started snapping photos.

  “No!” screamed Barnett, snatching for her phone with one hand and clutching a fistful of shirt with the other. A button popped off and spun through the air. He tugged her out of the room into the hallway.

  “You need to leave.”

  “Let go of me!” Shrieking, spinning away from him. “Don’t you fucking touch me!”

  “All right, all right, just calm down!” Barnett held up his hands in a placating gesture, but she pushed him away.

  He quickly looked back in the room. The Kid was still standing there, staring at him. Barnett closed the door. He followed Lisa into the kitchen, locking the door behind him this time. It felt as though an iron spike was being jammed into the base of his skull. All he wanted was to go back to bed. But first, he had to deal with this.

  In the living room, Lisa had a cell phone out. Now she was texting. Shit! Barnett lunged toward her and slapped the phone out of her hand. It skittered across the floor. His head was throbbing.

  “Just wait a minute,” he started, “You can’t-.”

  “Get away from me!” she screamed, chasing after her fallen phone. “Don’t you fucking touch me!”

  She scooped it up and went out to the open balcony door, still pushing buttons.

  “Wait a minute! You have to delete those pictures!” Barnett shouted, going after her. Lisa turned her back, shielding the phone with her body.

  Barnett’s head was pounding and it was difficult to process what was happening. Get her phone. No pictures. That would ruin him.

  He lunged for her phone again. She spun away from him and her free hand reached out and raked her nails across his face.

  “Shit!” He was blinded, in pain and enraged. This idiot was going to ruin everything.

  He grabbed her in a bear hug, his hands trying to wrench the phone away from her. He lifted her but she got her feet up on the balcony railing and pushed. She was stronger than she looked and Barnett stumbled back into a chair, knocking it over, but didn’t release her.

  “Will you just listen for a second?” he gasped.

  “Let go of me! Help!”

  His ankle tangled with the leg of the chair and he lurched forward, sending them both off balance. Lisa slammed into the railing and let out a whoosh as it collided with her midsection. The sound reminded him of air being released from an air mattress. She kicked her heels back, landing a solid shot in his nuts and he instinctively pushed her away. He stumbled back and landed on his butt. Lisa went over the railing.

  Oh shit.

  He scrambled to his feet and looked down, although every part of him warned him not to.

  She lay in a small heap. The white shirt stood out in the dark street. One of her hands was outstretched, perhaps reaching for her phone. The people down there didn’t seem to notice. None of them went to her. They were just looking up. At him.

  As he watched, in horrified fascination, she twitched and began to move. She struggled to her feet, fell back and began crawling toward the sidewalk. And he wasn’t sure, but he thought she looked up at him.

  He thought now might be a good time to head back to California.

  After half an hour, Barnett threw down his phone in frustration. Not only was Stuart not picking up, but he couldn’t even make a reservation himself. All the flights from McCarran Airport were grounded. Nothing in, nothing out. Whatever was happening was being treated as a National Emergency. Cable news reported that there had been several suicide bombings in the last few hours, including several in Washington DC. The country was on lockdown. But of course they weren’t really “suicide” bombings any more, were they?

  He’d have to drive. Eight hours. Along with all the other unlucky folks driving back to California because they couldn’t get flights. Make it twelve hours.

  After double checking all the locks, he headed out.

  The building was roughly T-shaped. The elevator was located at the junction of the top bar of the T. The two shorter ends led to stairs.

  Barnett stepped around it and hurried to the elevator at the end of the hall. He pushed the down button. It lit up. He looked around nervously. Nothing had changed. The light above the elevator indicated it was on the fourteenth floor. Twenty-six more to go.

  A door slammed shut and Barnett jumped. A figure was approaching from the end of one of the long corridors. Female, long hair.

  “What the hell are you doing up here?” Barnett shouted. She ignored him, kept walking. There was something odd about the way her head moved. It bounced with each step she took.

  “Hey! I’m talking to you!”

  “Logan Barnett,” she said, her voice faint and raspy. “You’ve done something you should not have.”

  “Get the fuck out of my building!” He started towards her, but then he saw her. Really saw her.

  Her pale face was slack, her eyes wide and unfocused. The pale pink silk nightgown she wore was covered in blood. Her throat had been slashed from ear to ear. She staggered closer and closer and he backed up. “Why did you do this?” Her voice was soft, full of pain. “Please. It hurts. This is your fault.” She started towards him.

  “No, I never--” Barnett wasn’t sure what he was going to say he had “never” done, because at that moment the elevator bell went off and the doors slid open.

  He sensed, rather than saw movement from the cor
ner of his eye and ducked away from the grasping hands. Off balance, he stumbled away and fell to one knee, and desperately crawled away from whatever was coming out of the elevator. Even without looking, he knew what it was. Scrambling to his feet, he headed for the stairs.

  “Why? Why did you do this?”

  “Look what you did to me!”

  “Whuh yuh Wn?”

  “Why? Why did you do this?” came the haunted voices of the dead, alive.

  “Only you can help us!”

  He pounded down the stairs two at a time. Just get out. He ran madly, heedlessly down the stairs, almost falling. He caught himself and he leaned against the wall, gasping. The stairwell door slammed open up on the fortieth and the voices above called down. Asking him why, why?

  “LEAVE ME ALONE!” he roared. He tried the nearest door (thirty-second floor), and it opened. He entered the hallway warily and headed toward the nearest elevator.

  He punched the down button and looked around. All quiet.

  The elevator arrived. It was blessedly empty. He hit the “G” button and leaned against the side of the car. His head was still throbbing.

  The elevator stopped on the third floor. Barnett braced himself against the back wall. The doors pinged open.

  He waited.

  Nothing.

  No one.

  Electrical glitch?

  The doors shut.

  He exhaled. The doors opened again at the garage level. He ran to his car, but stopped. There were people in the garage. Several figures tottered towards him. Two men and a woman. How did they get in?

  “Barnett,” hissed one of the men. His voice sounded mushy, wet. He moved under a yellowish light. He was wearing a bright orange vest and a tool belt. Broken walkie-talkie hung from a lanyard around his neck. His lower jaw was missing and Barnett could see all the way down his throat. His chest was covered in blood.

  The other two were a barefoot woman wearing a hospital gown and a shirtless fat guy wearing green pajama pants.

  “Help us, Logan”, said the woman.

  Barnett walked sideways, keeping his car between himself and the three. He felt sick, lightheaded and avoided looking at their faces. Got to get out of here. He used the remote to unlock the door and quickly got in his car. He backed up, felt a solid thud as he hit the undead woman, knocking her down. He instinctively braked, rethought it, shifted into drive and headed for the exit. He was about to hit the button to open the garage door when he slammed on the brakes. The screeching tires echoed through the empty garage. He stared, unbelieving, through the windshield.

  The lower garage floor was constructed of cement poles connected by horizontal metal struts about one foot apart. They were far enough apart that the natural light was enough to see by, but too narrow for trespassers to squeeze through.

  A crowd of people was clustered around the outside of the metal garage door. The bottom right corner was pushed up at an angle, creating a small space, and a man wearing a dark suit was crawling underneath it. The mob behind him was rattling and shaking the door. They were calling out to Barnett.

  Barnett gunned the engine and accelerated, slamming into the dark suited man and the garage door. That should stop them from coming in, he thought, shifting to reverse. But when he tried to back up, he pulled the door open further. The car was somehow snagged on the door.

  Cursing, he leapt out of the car and headed back to the elevator.

  There was a street level fire exit, but that, too, was clogged with people calling, begging him. What do they want me to do? Nowhere to go but back up.

  Looking behind to make sure no one was coming after him, he ran right into pajama pants man.

  The man said, “Why did you do this? What do you want?”

  When Barnett was seven, he and his brother Robert found a dead fox out in the fields behind their house. Logan had hung back but Robert, fascinated, had grabbed a stick and pried the stiff fox up and over. He had loosened something, tearing the fox open, exposing wriggling maggots and decaying flesh. Both boys had run home screaming. Logan had nightmares for a week. He never forgot that smell of death and rot.

  This guy’s breath smelled like that. His lips were dry and cracked, and his mouth was awfully close to Barnett’s face.

  Gagging, Barnett turned his head away and pushed away.

  “Get the fuck off me!”

  There were some lengths of rebar piled off to one side and Barnett lunged and picked up a length about three feet long. He hefted it. It was heavy, but lethal.

  “Keep the fuck back,” he warned, wielding the rebar like an abnormally long baseball bat.

  Orange vest was now approaching. He and PJ pants stood side by side. The woman was creeping weakly behind them.

  The orange vest guy stepped forward and Barnett swung the rebar with all his strength which, due to the adrenaline surging through him, was prodigious.

  The bar slammed into the orange vest and the man staggered to his knees and collapsed. Then he got back up.

  Barnett threw down the rebar and ran for the elevator.

  He got off at the floor below his own and made his way up the stairs. He slowly opened the stairwell door and peeked down the hallway. There was a knot of the people outside the elevator, not trying to get in, not talking, just waiting.

  He quickly made it to his apartment door and pulled out his keys, trying to find the right one. The group turned at the jingling sound and started toward him.

  “Logan,” asked a thin woman in a torn black dress. “What do you want with us?”

  “I don’t want anything with you,” he said, keeping his distance, trying not to make eye contact. Fiddling through at his keys. Where is it, God damn it?

  “Then why did you keep us from our rest?” asked a short man with what looked like a bullet hole in the side of his head.

  “It hurts,” a man with severe burn wounds all over his face and chest murmured through blackened lips. “It hurts so bad.” He smelled like burnt bacon, and Barnett’s stomach was churning. And his headache was back.

  “Look, I’m sorry, but there’s nothing I can do.” He found the key and quickly unlocked and entered his apartment. Slamming the door, he bolted the locks and stepped back. He thought for sure they would try to get in, but they only scrabbled at the door with their dead fingers, nothing more.

  He threw his keys on the counter, and headed for the balcony. He looked over the edge and groaned. There were now dozens of figures milling about on the sidewalk and street around his building. Most were standing, but a few were crawling. He saw a couple of police cars across the street, but the cops were standing and watching. It’s not a crime to stand on the sidewalk, even if you are dead.

  A TV van was out there as well.

  He took the last of his painkillers. He drank the last of the bourbon. He had no food left in his apartment.

  He tried his cell phone, but there was no signal.

  He looked through the peep hole in the door. They were still gathered in the hallway. More had joined them. Lisa was out there. Apparently, they had managed to find another way into the garage.

  He was trapped.

  He sat back on the couch and closed his eyes. His head was throbbing.

  Now

  He walked back in from the balcony, avoided looking at the front door. It was getting louder out there. He was afraid to see how many there were now. He picked up his phone. No signal. He had to hold it at an angle because he couldn’t seem to see through his left eye.

  He went through the kitchen, running one of his hands along the wall to guide him until he stood outside The Room.

  He opened the door, entered and closed the door.

  He put his back to it and slid down until he was sitting on the floor, his legs stretched out before him.

  The Kid slowly sat down as well, cross-legged. Is it everything you wanted? Immortality?

  “I can’t see out of my left eye.”

  Your cancer is very aggressive. And very
much alive. Barnett nodded. “I kind of figured that out.”

  You said it yourself. Nothing can die. Not you. Not them (arm sweeping out, indicating the dead) and not your cancer. “This isn’t what I wanted,” Barnett said, weakly, petulantly. “I don’t want to die.”

  Few do. Barnett weakly waved an arm, indicating the walls and floor. “But I did all this. For what? I can’t die.”

  And you won’t. No one will. Nothing will. And your cancer will continue to spread. “What will happen then? When I die?”

  That’s up to you. Barnett put his hands to his face. The room was silent. Just his breathing. And the muffled shouts from the hallway. They were pounding on the door now.

  “What do I have to do?”

  Just set me free. Let me do what I am meant to do.

  Logan reached out and wiped his hand across the chalk circle, smearing and erasing part of it.

  Death stood up and stepped out of the circle. He looked taller now. He stood over Barnett and held out his hand. Barnett gazed weakly up and let the darkness take him.

  It was awful.

  3

  spectrophobia

  FEAR OF MIRRORS

  ELLE J ROSSI

  “Come on, Vanessa. Stop being a chickenshit.”

  I rubbed my sweaty palms on my jean-clad thighs and shot my best friend a wry glare. Cool and calm Olivia with her sleek blond hair, big brown eyes and pouty lips; nothing ever got under her skin. If I didn’t love her, I’d hate her.

  I wasn’t being a chickenshit, per se. That would imply I was only mildly scared, when in fact I was terrified to the point my muscles were refusing to move. Stepping foot into a funhouse wasn’t something I did. Ever.

  On the off chance calliope music started drifting on the wind, I’d probably shit my pants.

  Granted my fears were irrational and stemmed from childhood nightmares that could rival the best horror movie out there, but they were very real to me. And Olivia knew it.

  I blew out a breath and tried to clear my head, but the memory refused to remain locked.