“Mary Rose, nuh-uh.”
“I swear on my mother’s sweet name. It happened to me a couple times, when I was real little and pitching a fit. I remember seeing that thing fly through the air toward my head – Jesus Lord! But when it hit you, it never hurt. It’d just tap you real soft, like it was saying, You better behave.”
“What happened to it, then?”
“The effect just wore off, I guess. Teresa’s got the table now, and you know how bad her kids cut up sometimes, but that table ain’t moved in thirty years. At least not that I know of.”
“Well, maybe this thing with Melly will kinda taper off.”
“I hope so,” said Mary Rose with a long-suffering sigh. “It’s hard on her, and it’s hard on me too.”
It was not at all hard on the younger kids. They loved it, and got to the point where they would egg it on. “Bet you can’t lift me up in this chair!” Henry would say, pulling his feet up in expectation of a ride. The spirit never gave him one, but sometimes it would tilt the chair and dump him onto the floor, reducing Rosalie and Gary to helpless giggles.
“Draw something in my book!” Rosalie would demand, leaving her scratchpad open with a crayon on top and hiding her eyes. When she looked again, often as not there would be a page full of meaningless scribbles.
“The baby done ’em,” Melly said one time, trying to vacuum around them.
“He did not! He was right here by me the whole time, weren’t you, Gary?”
“Lady draw,” said Gary.
“Huh, you mean you can see it?” said Henry. “Aw, Melly, I wish he could tell us what it looks like! A lady, huh?”
“Shut up!” Melly told them. “Don’t talk to it, don’t ask it to do things, just leave it alone! You don’t know how it makes me feel.”
“It’s not yours,” Henry said unkindly.
“Yes it is!” she screamed at him. The startled look in his eyes made her feel bad, but she couldn’t stop. “It is too mine! Do whatever you want, but give me . . . give me . . . oh, I don’t know what I’m saying!” She ran from the room, leaving Henry to get up and turn off the vacuum.
Little Elmer and Carl did not enjoy the spirit and stayed away from home a lot that year, immersing themselves in boy-business. All in all, though, Melly thought it was amazing what people could get used to. When she heard scratching and raps in her wall, she rolled over and tried to go back to sleep. Sometimes it stopped there; sometimes things began flying around, toilet paper and jigsaw puzzles and sausages strewn around the living room, every flowerpot in the house turned upside down. Sometimes an object would hit her, but she was never hurt or (after the St Joseph’s Day incident) even seriously humiliated. Once when she was sitting in the kitchen watching Mary Rose make a lasagna, there was a popping sound near the refrigerator and an egg rose into the air. Mary Rose hadn’t had any eggs on the counter, so it must have come from inside the fridge. It floated lazily toward Melly, then hovered over her head. Great, she thought, it’s gonna smash in my hair. Instead it tapped her lightly on the forehead, then fell and splattered gaudily against the faded old linoleum. Melly got up to fetch the dustpan, no more upset than she would have been if a dog had piddled on the floor. Once it was clear that no one was going to be hurt, the incredible had come to seem almost normal.
She wondered if this had anything to do with being Catholic, with accepting as unquestioned fact the existence of saints watching over you, helping and perhaps even hindering your enterprises; with taking for granted that the wafer in your mouth would change into flesh, the wine into blood; with praying to a ghost. She did not ponder this very deeply, because she was not a deep girl and she knew no other way to be but Catholic. When she said her prayers, she sometimes added some extra ones for the spirit in case it was a soul in purgatory.
It never spoke to her again after the night it said it was the Devil. Melly thought it might be embarrassed to have made such a claim, or possibly embarrassed to have provoked her angry response, like an overtired child who doesn’t realize he’s being obnoxious until he goes a step too far and his mother yells at him. She did not feel that the spirit had ever been angry with her; in retrospect, even making the crucifix stick to her back seemed little more than a desperate way of getting attention. Why it had wanted her attention so badly she didn’t know, nor did she wish to ponder the question.
The nights of rapping and banging came further apart; there would be two in a week, then one, then none for two or three weeks. When they did come, the raps and flying objects seemed weaker somehow, as if the force behind them was winding down. No further scribbles appeared in Rosalie’s drawing pad. Gary, though he was talking a blue streak now, said nothing more about a lady.
As Melly lay in bed one night, she felt something strange happening in her viscera. At first she thought she was bleeding, but there was no wetness, only a sensation of something warm draining from her. She put her hand on the concavity beneath her breasts, but it began to tingle unpleasantly and she took it away again. A few minutes later the sensation stopped. She felt wonderfully relaxed. It was as if she had been in pain for a long time, and had gotten so used to it that she no longer noticed the pain until it stopped.
After that night there were no more noises, no more strange happenings at all. For some time there was an undercurrent of tension in the house and among the family, as if they were bracing themselves for another assault. None came. “I miss the ghost,” Henry said at the dinner table one night.
Mary Rose turned on him. “There was no ghost in this house, young man! Say anything like that again and I’ll warm the seat of your pants for you!”
Henry’s mouth fell open, affording everyone an unlovely view of half-chewed braciola. Poor Henry, Melly thought. That was probably the most exciting year of his life, and Momma’s never even gonna let him talk about it.
She didn’t want to talk about it either, though. Henry would have to sift through his memories alone.
Another year passed. Melly grew a couple more inches, but nothing like the rapid stretch she’d experienced just before the odd events began. Gradually she stopped fearing that she was going to be a circus freak, the Giant Lady. She’d probably gotten some extra height from Elmer, that was all. She joined the math club at school, went out on a few dates, got involved with St Peter and Paul’s youth group. All she wanted in the world was to be a normal teenage girl; she wanted that so badly that she thought she could taste acceptance, sweet on her tongue, when other kids treated her as just one of them. Kids who had no idea that a crucifix had once clung to her back like it was a magnet and she was iron, kids who never suspected that something possibly dead had once knocked on her bedroom wall.
When the scratching started up again, so soft and sly that at first it might have been her imagination, she thought for one black moment of just putting a bullet in her head. Elmer didn’t like guns, but crime in the neighbourhood had begun to spiral upward, and he had one on the high shelf of the bedroom closet. Melly knew where the bullets were kept. But she didn’t want to die, and she wasn’t going to let this stupid mindless thing tempt her into it. She rolled over and went back to sleep.
At breakfast the next morning, the saltshaker rose off the table and floated across the kitchen. Henry’s face lit up, and he began to say something. As Mary Rose’s eye fell upon him, he shut his mouth with a snap. Everyone else ignored it, even Gary, who at three was exquisitely sensitive to the feelings and wants of his family. He got along with everybody, and wouldn’t dare mention the floating saltshaker once he’d observed that the others didn’t want to see it. Melly could see that Henry still wanted to say something, but she added her own glare to Mary Rose’s, and he wilted.
There were a few more raps, a few more scratches. Then the sounds stopped again, and for a few days there was a distinctly injured air to the house, as if some unseen presence felt rejected. Then there was nothing except the usual vibrant atmosphere of a house full of children.
Melly had ski
pped St Joseph’s Day last year, but this year Gary and Rosalie were going to be angels in Teresa’s tupa-tupa, the ceremony in which the Holy Family entered the home and were fed from the altar. She couldn’t stand to miss that, so she squared her shoulders, steeled her spine, and accompanied the family to Teresa’s house.
Cousin Angelina was playing the Blessed Virgin Mary. As soon as they got there, Melly saw her standing near the altar, slightly pudgy in a white dress, a light blue headscarf, and her usual pink-framed glasses that made her eyes look a little like a white rabbit’s. She stuck out her tongue at Melly. Melly held her nose and crossed her eyes. “Who’s gonna be St Joseph?” she whispered to Mary Rose.
“Well, Teresa wanted Pete to do it, but he said that’d be incestuous since he’s Angelina’s father. So they got some boy from the neighbourhood. I don’t know his name.” As she spoke, Mary Rose herded her pair of angels up the driveway toward the carport. They were dressed in white gowns with posterboard wings and tinsel haloes. Flashbulbs started going off as if they were walking the red carpet at the Academy Awards. Gary looked a little scared. Rosalie looked smug, as if she’d always known she was destined for stardom.
Drawing closer to the altar, Melly caught sight of St Joseph, a tall, slim boy wearing a rough brown robe and carrying a crooked staff. He turned, and she saw that it was the boy who had held her hand in the circle dance two years ago, the boy who looked a little like Paul McCartney. The boy who had seen her crying in the street with the shape of a crucifix embedded in her flesh.
Just as she was about to look away, he gave her a smile so sweet it made her stomach flutter. “How you doing?” he said. “I looked for you last year, but you weren’t here.”
“I . . . I wasn’t feeling too good last year.”
“Well, nice to see you. Maybe you’ll dance with me later, huh?”
“Sure.” Then, before she knew what was going to come out of her mouth, she said, “But I’m staying out of the circle dance!”
For a moment he looked almost shocked, and she was sorry she’d said it. Then something else dawned on his face, a mixture of surprise and admiration. He hadn’t thought she would have the guts to bring it up, she guessed. From the corner of her eye she saw Angelina watching them jealously.
“Yeah,” he said. “I’d do that if I were you. This year the whole altar might just rise up and bash you on the head.”
“You never know.”
He turned away and headed for the house. Behind her, Melly heard Mary Rose urging the angels, “Follow Mr Joe. Y’all gonna eat soon.”
“I’ll take ’em,” said Melly. She coaxed Gary and Rosalie into the house, dropped them off with the ladies who were co-ordinating the tupa-tupa, and went into the kitchen to see if she could help with the food.
Aunt Teresa was at the stove fussing over a huge pot of red gravy. She turned and saw Melly, and for a moment fear flickered in her eyes, or maybe just sorrow. Melly wondered if she should have come after all. Then Teresa smiled, held out her arms, and drew Melly to her.
Later, as she was standing with Paul (whose real name turned out to be Tony, but she couldn’t get that first impression out of her head, wasn’t even particularly anxious to do so) looking at the altar, she saw the gold crucifix that had stuck to her back. She could tell it was the same one because there was a big blob of dried glue showing between the figure of Jesus and the cross. A rosary made of painted fava beans was looped over it, and there were oranges arranged around its base. Melly reached out a hand, hesitated, then gently touched the crucifix.
“Goodbye,” she said under her breath, and was relieved when nothing answered her.
JAY RUSSELL
Apocalypse Now, Voyager
JAY RUSSELL IS THE pseudonym of a writer born in New York, aged in Los Angeles, and currently living in London with his wife and daughter.
Brown Harvest (a World Fantasy Award nominee for Best Novel) is a textbook guide to many of his key influences and unfortunate tendencies. The novella Apocalypse Now, Voyager is the latest adventure in the fantastical/comic life of reluctant supernatural detective Marty Burns, who also stars in the novels Celestial Dogs, Burning Bright and Greed & Stuff. Russell’s other books include Blood, The Twilight Zone novelisation Memphis/The Pool Guy, and the short story collection Waltzes and Whispers.
“Marty Burns is an old friend,” says Russell. “He has now appeared in three novels (including my first) and a handful of short stories, and somewhat to my surprise, I’m still not sick of him.
“ ‘Apocalypse Now, Voyager’ is one of two lengthy Marty stories I’ve wanted to write for several years. The impetus to finally get it on paper came by way of a request from Paul Miller of Earthling Publications for a novella he could publish as a limited edition chapbook. (God knows what it will take to drag the other one out of my head . . .)
“Once upon a time, the story was going to have a Christmas setting against which the love story would play out – Christmas in Southern California feels almost as out-of-place as the L.A. River itself – with the idea that Gordon Van Gelder would be compelled to buy it as the cover story for a holiday issue of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. That never quite happened, and I still have to write Gordon a story one of these days. (Maybe if he does a Hanukkah issue . . .)
“As usual for Marty, the story is full of excruciatingly obscure references – mostly relating to Los Angeles and its bizarre history. The longer I’ve been away from the place, the fonder my memories of it grow. I think when I die – if I die – I’ll have my ashes sprinkled over something significant there. A mini-mall? A parking lot? David Hasselhoff? Got it: a taqueria!”
I
SHE SEEMED PRETTY CHEERFUL for a woman who’d just burned off most of her pubic hair. Plunking herself down on the next bar stool, she offered up a smile.
She still wasn’t wearing pants.
Or anything else for that matter.
“Buy a gal a drink?” she asked.
What the hell, I figured. How could I continue to think of myself as a stand-up guy if I didn’t buy a naked lady a drink, particularly given her display of fortitude in the face of conflagration and extremis.
Besides, I’ve always been a sucker for women who call themselves “gals.”
I waggled a finger at the bartender, who rolled his eyes heavenward, but knew her drink without having to ask. He poured three fingers of Bacardi into a highball glass then dropped in a lime wedge. She winked at him. He walked away.
“You okay?” I asked.
“Right as rain,” she said. She fished out the lime and squeezed it into her rum, then tossed the rind on the bar. She delicately sipped the drink and made a yummy noise in the back of her throat.
I didn’t mean to do it – even more than stand-up, I strive for sensitive – but it’s tough not to let your eye wander down the fleshy curves of a naked lady when she’s sitting right next to you. For all my best efforts, my gaze lingered in the vicinity of her nether regions.
She caught me ogling and another thin smile played at the corners of her mouth, as if I’d confirmed everything she ever suspected of me. I pulled a scrap of that vaunted sensitivity out of my back pocket and looked her full in the eye.
“Sorry,” I said.
“Occupational hazard,” she said with a shrug.
It made her tits jiggle. I failed to not look at them, too.
“Hell of an occupation,” I said.
“Oooh, aren’t we the judgmental one. You don’t approve, I take it?”
“I didn’t say that. No offence meant. Really. It’s just doing that routine with the fire and the ping pong ball and all. It’s impressive as all get out. But your insurance premiums must be hell.”
“You kidding? I’m female, over twenty-five and I drive a Saab. Allstate loves me. It’s my tuition bill that’s the killer.”
“Tuition?”
“You think I do this shtick ’cause I like the smell of burning bush? U.S.C. charges like money’s goi
ng out of style. I’m working on a Master’s in Communications.”
“I never went to college,” I said.
“Quelle surprise,” she said, and finished off her rum.
“Who’s judgmental now,” I muttered.
She half turned to face me, leaning an elbow on the dirty bar. She rested her head in her palm and looked me up and down. I felt like I was the one sitting there naked. I folded my arms over my chest and crossed one leg over the other. She laughed.
“So what do you do then?”
“Oh, little bit of this, little bit of that,” I said.
“Hmmmph. Like every other jack-off here,” she mumbled.
I looked around the bar – Haw Haw’s, it was called – at the drunk and doped celebrants. Bikers, mostly, in full leather regalia. Drug dealers, mules, muscle, second-story men, pimps, punks and petty thieves. A few hookers and female hangers-on liberally sprinkled among them in various states of (un)consciousness and (un)dress. A veritable convention of social deviants, moral miscreants and all-around reprobates of the worst order as far as the eye could see.
And me, of course.
“Not quite like everyone else,” I said. I glanced around again and added: “Please be to god.”
A wrecking ball swept across the room and hit me square between the shoulder blades. A hand big as Pittsburgh and tougher than an old bull grabbed me by the neck before I could tumble off my stool.
“The dead do walk!” the voice of doom bellowed. “Nice to see you, Marty, you good for nothing piece of shit. Where you been keeping yourself? Why don’t you ever call?”
“Hi, Danny,” I said. “Happy birthday.”
Daniel Gabowitz, the guest of honour at this sleazy soiree, offered up a big smile. Gabbo, as he was more commonly known, was fifty-five years old that very day. In this land of the morally blind, Gabbo was truly the one-eyed king. He was three hundred plus pounds of undiluted nastiness, with a criminal record as long as his belly button-scraping grey beard. He was dressed to the nines for this most special of occasions, with shiny new leathers hugging his massive frame, stretched tight over a beer barrel belly. He caught me admiring his duds and unzipped the jacket. He revealed a black tee shirt embroidered with gold thread reading: MY MOM WENT TO LONG BEACH AND ALL I GOT WAS SLOPPY SECONDS.
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