by Bruce Jones
Followed by the always enjoyable memories of his boot camp mantra while with the National Guard, running through muddy fields or sweltering heat, rifle at port, arches falling, breathless mouth chanting, This is my rifle, this is my gun—this one’s for shooting, this one’s for fun!
Or, best of all, he could gaze upward at the darkened proscenium arch of their bedroom ceiling as his mercilessly masochistic writer’s mind opened yet another curtain on yet another carnal play featuring himself with the capering legs of a goat and the Herculean erection of a javelin, plowing the fields of ancient Greece with every diaphanous nymphet within grabbing range.
He was, in fact, engaged in just such a ribald scenario when the thing first made itself known to him, made it initial appearance from out of the night. Ringing down the curtain on his midnight fantasy in short order. Making his heart leap high and painful in his chest.
The smell proceeded the thing.
The terrible odor. Like a kick between the eyes by a Missouri mule. The same odor that had come from behind the door. It was the odor of the outside, of the deep woods. It was the odor of rich, dank humus and musk, freshly turned sod, and things gone ripe with early decay. As though whatever the thing was, it had just minutes before under scant moonlight and creaking boughs clawed its way from the earth…inch by crusted inch…stood swaying and dripping on thin, uncertain legs.
It’s like those comics, he thought. Like those old EC comics they sometimes found in a friend’s older brother’s stash, what were they called?—The Vault of Horror--the kind of delicious trash every mother of the Fifties abhorred and every one of their kids couldn’t fill their warped little minds enough with. Those wonderfully wretched etchings by Graham Ingles or Jack Davis of the hollow-eyed, skeletal-faced living corpse shambling across a field or swamp—maggots dripping--toward some unsuspecting victim’s glowing hovel, shoving its livid, putrescent face against the autumn pane, lipless smile skinned back from yellowed teeth, or stumbling through the cabin door, bent, desiccated legs trailing graveyard clods, lidded eyes glowing with dull insanity, talon fingers reaching…reaching…
And that, of course, was the point in the dream when Richard was supposed to wake up. Wake up with a little gasp maybe, a little thrill still clutching his heart but none the worse for wear and safely snug in his own bed beside his own softly snoring wife. Just as he’d done the other evening after that warped little night-tripper involving first love and very hot of tongue and palette Laurie Seasons. Except this time it wasn’t happening.
This time he wasn’t going to come up and out of EC comics dream and into his warm bed because he was already out, already up, sitting half up in the not so warm bed, back pressed against the oak headboard, wide-awake eyes riveted to the soft glow of chrome knob on the door…the closed bedroom door…
is it locked, did I lock it, please God tell me I locked it, make it that I shut it tight in its sturdy wood frame tonight and locked it, locked it tight for reasons I can’t remember just now
…ears pricked, yes pricked like a dog’s, jaw clenched, head tilted for the sound, for any sound, any faint little sound that somehow he just knew was coming and further knew would not be a sound he liked, no not at all, it would be a sound that left his T-shirt sticking to him and his pajama bottoms clinging damply…and it will begin…it will begin…it will come from—
phump
--the backyard, the long stretch of backyard that ends at the edge of deadfall bordering that dense thicket of trees and weeds. But mostly the jutting, crumbling slabs of weathered grave stones from the Civil War vintage cemetery the county kept promising to plow under, or at least move (“something that old might be of historic value!”) Only Richard doesn’t see how, and wishes to Christ they’d moved the hateful, God-forsaken little bone yard with its hag’s teeth of markers and its dirty necklace of broken iron gate years ago—Christ, he could remember the damn thing from his fruggin’ childhood and—
phump
--closer now, a dragging kind of sound like those horror comic’s shambling dead, and a lot closer, nearly to the back screen door. It had to be the fruggin’ screen door in the middle of the fruggin’ summer, not the nice cold winter with the heavy, oak storm door shut all tight and snug, safety lock in place! Noooooo, that would be too—
phum-phump
--a lot closer now, a whole lot closer and funny sounding wasn’t it? Kind of strange sounding for some reason he should know…now why didn’t he know that…?
or maybe Allie locked it! she did that sometimes in the summer when the humidity was low and the breeze cool enough not to need the AC and maybe that’s what she’d done tonight bless her heart his dear sweet Allie with the great hooters and great ass and why the hell was he dreaming about frugging Laurie Seasons anyway
phump-phump
inside the house now, no question about that, no siree, right down there through the back door and into the kitchen dragging itself along, leaving whatever it was leaving on Allie’s fresh waxed linoleum, bringing its awful stench wafting before it…already filling the bedroom with that rank of decay and fresh-turned earth and what the hell was he just sitting here for anyway, just sitting here like a royal frugging dufus while the thing made its way across the hall carpet to the foot of the stai—
phump-PHUMP
--no, missed that one there Rich old man, let that get right by you, you scared shitless candy ass, the thing was already on the stairs, already on them and—from the awful, hideous squishy sound of it—about halfway, maybe more, to the landing. Where it only had to gain the top step then turn left then stumble all reeking and maggoty a few short darkened yards to the den door. Then the bathroom door. Then—guess what then, Richo? Why, right there outside the frugging bedroom door, of course! All ready to reach up a maggot-dripping hand and turn the chrome knob from the other side, until the other side became the inside, and here it was, big as life and grinning to shit blueberries, just like the big C, just like Mr. Cancer-Guy, here to stay and fuck up your life. Only not over a period of weeks and months, Richo, no fucking way, only over the period of time it takes to shamble its way the short distance between the open bedroom door across the hooked rug and to the foot of your nice warm bed—yours and Allie’s—who, if you weren’t such a candy-ass, gutless coward, might somehow survive this night if you’d quit fucking sitting there against the frappin’ headboard staring like a moron at the goddamn door knob…
…which, by the way, and just so you know, is turning, old man…can you see it, can you comprehend that in your present Zen-like state ole Richeroo, the knob-a she’s a surely turnin’ there goom-bah, and it don’t look like the comforting ching of a lock is going to drift across here to the bed at you any time soon…and hey, guess what, it doesn’t matter anyway, bucko, because the door is already opening, and the stench, the awful, vomitous, bile-inducing stench is like a fist punching you square in the nose, like that time with Tommy Rilling on the Boswell playground, punching your nose and filling every fraction of space in your sinus cavities with its throat-closing, impossibly acid reek, which—when you think about it—is probably the least of your problems as even the worst smell in the world can’t really hurt you but boy that thing lumbering across the carpet, across the hooked rug, that thing with the dead yellow eyes and the runner of green slobber hanging from its putrid lower jaw, that thing, that thing looks like it could do you a world of hurt, no shit, that thing could certainly--
PHU-LUMP
Jesus, Joseph and Mary, no wonder it was making that dragging sound, that unutterable squishy noise, the fucking thing’s on all fours! Can you beat that shit, the bloody thing looks more like a, like a, more like a…
…hey, Richo…I don’t think that’s a salutary grin on its picket fence mouth you’re starin’ at; I think it has something on its unutterably squishy mind…I think it’s about to say something to you….
And it does.
In a voice straight from the cockles of hell.
�
�Hell-o…Ri-chard…room for…three in there…?”
* * *
And it’s a long time.
A long time, sitting up there in the damp bed, staring wide-eyed and blood-drained at the empty rectangle of bedroom door--Allie shaking his shoulders, shaking hard and yelling loud inches from his ear.
It’s a very long time before Richard finally stops screaming…
FIVE
It wasn’t going to be a good day.
He knew that just from waking.
There was the immediate memory of last night, of course. And the fact that because of it he’d slept fitfully if at all. But he’d finally dropped off about the time the rest of the world was getting up for work, and overslept half the morning away. Not that that was any colossal loss, losing another morning. His usual morning writing time hadn’t consisted of anything fruitful in so long he couldn’t remember the last time he’d finished a full page, let alone a chapter. Another morning, another blank page.
Well, he was consistent.
Also he had opened his eyes this morning to discover that the pain in his right jaw over the last several weeks was not from grinding his teeth at night as he’d assumed, but instead it was apparently a toothache. Way back there on his gum line among his rear molars, back there where his wisdom teeth used to be until, somewhere in his early twenties, he’d been informed they were impacted and he’d had them yanked.
Also his head was itching again.
He’d been dandruff free for over two years now since switching to the Vo5 “Extra Body” shampoo, hoping to perhaps put some of that “Body” into the back of his skull, help hide that growing bald spot. Well, the dandruff, he noticed--checking in both the bathroom mirror and Allie’s little round hand vanity mirror, doing that double reflection thing to reveal the back of his head—the dandruff was still at bay. But the itching had returned with a vengeance. Its focal point, naturally, was the little bald spot. Which had to mean continuing loss of hair. It was time to face the truth: he’d never make People’s Sexiest Man Alive cover.
But age had its perks. At least probing his sore gums and scratching the crown of his head gave him something to do while staring at the blank typewriter page.
Or so it would have been back in the days when Richard was using a typewriter—the good old days when the mornings were easy, the blank page was easy, everything in his life was easy because writing was easy. So easy he never had to think about it: he just did it.
……believe that might be the problem right there, Richo you’re thinking about it…
Right. Thinking as opposed to doing.
Well, nothing very unusual about that. Only one of many mornings with his coffee beside him, his Hewlett-Packard e-machine in front of him, his hands on the keyboard and absolutely nothing but nothing on the blank fucking screen before him except that damn blue line of tools and format boxes at the top of the window and that stupid rectangular cursor blinking on and off on and off on and off like a smart-ass ten-year-old kid with a sticky face and a hateful expression going nanny nanny poo-poo…nanny nanny poo-poo!
Allie appears in the den doorway behind him. Beautiful face white-lipped and pinched. Arms folded tight over her bosom with exasperation.
Voice shrill.
“Just write! Anything!”
She glares at his back, he can feel it.
“Just for chrissake write something!”
And before Richard can turn in his old swivel chair from his Dad’s heavy old mahogany desk and his new e-machine, she points at him there from the door with a look of virulent finality and cuts him off before he can speak, cuts him to the quick with, “You drag us all the way from that beautiful Sherman Oaks ranch to this broken down suburban dump of your parents’--all on this big promise that the small town environment,” (and she has to stop a sec and laugh really hard and caustically at that word) “the fucking environment—whatever the fuck that might be—prairie grass and cow shit, I guess—the fucking environment will be the magic charm, the mystic vulgate that gets you writing again! California, Richard! Perfect weather and people who don’t listen to hog futures on the radio! From Sherman fucking Oaks to Topeka goddamn Kansas for the love of Christ! So what if there’s a Writer’s Strike? It will end! They always do! And do you write? Do you pen or type one single blessed word? Do you?” And she comes across the den to shove her pinched face into his for this one: “Not from where I stand, bucko! Not from what this little Cali-for-nigh-a girl can see! No, Mr. Topeka hot-shot! Mr. Big Deal Deadender! Not word one! Not a homily or a gerund! Ah, but staring! Staring blankly into space! Now that you do in spades! That you do on an hourly and daily basis! On staring, my fine—and I use the term loosely--writer friend, you have the market quite absolutely cornered!” After which she sweeps the almost new e-machine and its stupid blinking cursor from his father’s heavy mahogany desk into her not-so-tanned-anymore arms, and dashes it through the den window and into the breezy eighty-nine plus humidity and broiling sunlight of their shitty tract Topeka yard.
Only none of this occurs, of course.
The cursing least of all. Allie has uttered probably less truly venal curse words during their entire marriage than he could count on both hands.
And she never “appears” at his den door. Because his den door—his writing door--is always closed. And even at that, she never or rarely knocks, unless perhaps the living room is afire or an earthquake is shaking the foundation, not a likely scenario here in Kansas, here in the good ole Jayhawk state--whatever in the name of comprehension a Jayhawk is and why ever it would choose to roost here.
No, these things occur in Richard’s addled mind, not his more level-headed wife’s.
Allie hasn’t bothered him all morning. Including breakfast, over which she didn’t once raise the subject of last night, and the thing with dog shit breath tripping through their moon-swept bedroom door. All of which did, in fact, make it a dream. Of course it did, what the hell else could it have been but a dream, a nightmare? And if Maser thought he was going to down any more of those pain or chemo pills he could shove them right up his ass. The real specter of impeding death was bad enough, he didn’t need this horseshit.
But Jesus God that was one bad fruggin’ dream…that was one of the original doozies! The smell alone…so real…
Richard blinked.
Found himself staring down at the computer screen before him.
The stupid blinking cursor had moved. To the end of a sentence.
An actual sentence.
And the sentence—which he himself had apparently typed as there was no one else in the room and the door was still closed—the sentence read:
The thing had the breath of dog shit.
And Richard blinked again and then did something he’d not done in quite some time seated before the computer screen; he smiled.
“Well, I’ll be frugged,” he said to the blinking cursor, “I wrote something.”
* * *
It turned into a short story.
Sort of.
He didn’t tell Allie about it, didn’t mention it. And he’d finished before she got home from working at the real estate office that afternoon, so he had plenty of time to hide it by turning off his computer. He even stuck his “fooler” manuscript atop his desk, a raggedy old piece from long ago he’d been using for some months now in place of real work. His lame hope was that she’d buy the idea he was actually accomplishing something in the morning. Anyway, he hid his just-finished short story safely on his hard drive without mentioning it to his wife.
His intention was to mention it to no one.
Never a superstitious man, Richard had nevertheless begun to lean toward the mystic of late concerning things like muses and inspiration. Elbow grease and determination (and the bank account) had always been the driving force in more fruitful days; now he was taking no chances. Okay, it was only a story, only a short story, and hardly even that, it didn’t really have a beginning and middle and it sort of just
…ended. But there it was. In a place it hadn’t been yesterday. And he wasn’t about to let something like talking to death his first wordage in months put the jinx on any future attempts.
That’s great, he regaled himself, staring down at the hall phone, you finally get writing again just before you die. Another master move on the part of the legendary Richard Denning.
And just the fact that he was standing here in the hallway thinking these thoughts while staring down at the phone told him he was already considering breaking his moment-ago pledge. The truth is he needed to tell somebody. And as Bobby Maser was so far the only other person on the planet who knew about the cancer, he seemed the logical choice. Or so Richard told himself, picking up the receiver.
“You wrote a story. Well. That’s good, Rich, that’s nice,” Maser replied with all due decorum, “but I have a patient in the waiting room I need to give some bad news to, okay?”
“Yeah? Is it cancer?”
“Gallstones.”
“Then fuck him, you can talk to me for a minute,” Richard scratching absently at the itchy crown of his head, gum line throbbing, despite two aspirin and three Tylenols.
“It’s a her as a matter of fact,” Maser informed him. “A blonde. Nineteen. Great rack.”
“That’s good, Bobby, that’s real nice. You grew up to be such a consummate fucking professional.”
“Almost as much as your consummate assholiness.”
Richard was thinking about the dream. The nightmare, rather, of last night.
“Rich? You still there? I’m on the clock here, bucko. Unless you’re starting to have pain or something, I really gotta g--”
“Yeah, I got pain. Had a doozy of another painfully weird dream last night.” He hadn’t really meant to tell Maser. Was somehow…afraid to. Now why in the world was that?