The Deadenders

by Bruce Jones

  “How are feeling?”

  She looked apologetic and pulled him inside, shutting her front door. “I’m sorry. I want to kiss you, want to a lot. Just afraid I might give you something.

  Richard sought her forehead with his palm. “You’re not hot. Cool, if anything.”

  Laurie caught at his wrist, kissed his palm. “Probably just a summer cold.” She wore a satin robe, maroon, looked washed and ready for bed, smelling of bath lotion, smelling wonderful and looking wonderful. “Unless you’ve given me some terrible disease, of course. How about a nightcap?”

  “Did if forget to mention the herpes? And yes, I’d love one.”

  She made a mock groan on her way to the kitchen. “Don’t even joke. I still don’t know how we all made it through the 70’s.”

  “Having slept around so much, you mean?”

  “Screw you, Richard Denning.”

  “If you’re feeling up to it, love to.”

  She made that wonderful little laugh and got down glasses and Scotch for them, brought them back into the living room. “Nicer in here.”

  Richard sat on the sofa and watched her pour, saw now that she’d put on fresh lipstick just for him, not that she needed it, and was pleased. Found himself wondering what it would be like to be married to her, living somewhere like this with her. Just her. Just the two of them. Someplace…

  “What’s the matter?” she handed him his glass, settling in an easy chair across from him with a quizzical look.

  “Matter?”

  “You were looking strangely at me.”

  He took a sip, welcomed the burn. “I feel a little strange, maybe.”

  She started to adjust the robe’s satin hem over her leg, then seemed to change her mind, leaving her knee bare. “Thinking about Scroogie? Are you worried?”

  “I am worried,” he nodded, “but not because of that.”

  “Because of what, then?”

  He took another sip, a deeper one, maybe to stall a moment, maybe for a longer burn. “Because I’m not thinking of Scroogie. Should be but I’m not. I’m thinking of you.”

  Her throat moved and she took a quick sip to cover it. “And you feel guilty?” It wasn’t really a question, more like a thoughtful fact.

  “I don’t feel the least guilty,” Richard said. “That’s what I’m worried about.”

  She sat back, not meeting his eyes—afraid?—gazing instead at the rim of her glass. “Yes. It all happened rather quickly, didn’t it?” And they both knew she wasn’t speaking of Scroogie. “I hope…” she broke off, looked away, slightly panicked.

  “Hope what?”

  She stared at the living room window, the blank, dark panes. “…you don’t think less of me.”

  Oh, Laurie, he thought. “What I think,” he said, “is that it didn’t happen nearly soon enough.”

  She looked back at him, eyes brimming. “Oh.” Laurie swallowed thickly. “Oh, Richard. What a wonderful thing to say.”

  “I mean it.”

  “I know you do.”

  “I love you.”

  “Richard--”

  He shook his head. “I don’t care,” he blurted. “I do. I’ve been separated from my wife for three weeks and I’m living in my parents’ house for some unimaginable reason and one of my best friends is in a coma and all I can think about is you. All I’ve thought about from the moment I left the house, driving to the hospital, sitting there with Scroogie, was you.”

  Laurie shook her head, but not like she wanted him to stop.

  “When I called my place and you didn’t answer, I was afraid that…”

  “Afraid that what?”

  He wanted to take another drink and he wanted to throw the stupid glass across the room. “…afraid you’d had second thoughts, felt it—us--was all a big mistake. That you’d call me up and say--”

  “No. I wouldn’t have.”

  “No?”

  “I left your house and came back here tonight because I wanted—I felt you needed some time to think. About Scroogie, about us and…and because…”

  He smiled a little defeated smile. “And because you needed some time to think too.”

  “No!” Laurie looked away again, lips pressed tight into a white line as if she might say the wrong thing. She shook her head willfully. “No. I didn’t need to think at all. I knew that if you came back and I was still there, I wouldn’t be able to leave. That I’d spend the night with you. That I’d do anything with you.” Her eyes brimmed again and she caught at a tear with the tip of her finger with a quick, delicate movement. His hand shook. “Anything you asked.”

  “Laurie.”

  She gave a helpless little shrug and this time smiled as she dabbed at her eye. “Do you know how it felt,” she said, looking up at him, “when you made love to me? Do you know how it felt to me, Richard?”

  He gazed at her, arms aching.

  “It felt like coming home.” And she sniffed defiantly, chin high as if defending the remark from the world.

  Enough aching. He set his drink down and came to her. Laurie pushed up to meet him, encircle him.

  But sweet as her lips were, warm as her tears felt against his cheek, she was heavier in his arms than before, with an unsteady straining that felt off balance. And she seemed to Richard when he finally pulled back almost desperate to regain her breath, almost to sob for it.

  Richard pulled back further, cupped the fine bone of her jaw line in his palm, searching her face with a frown. “Laurie, you’re trembling!”

  She clung to him, let her head fall against his chest with a contented sound that was almost weary. “What girl wouldn’t?”

  He felt her forehead again. Still cool. Too cool? “Sweetie, are you okay?”

  “Perfect. Now. It’s just the Scotch,” she murmured drowsily, “and the nearness of you.”

  Sweet. But she was still trembling against him, and they hadn’t drunk that much. Richard held her tight, half afraid she’d slither to the floor if he let go. “Let’s get you to bed.”

  She nodded and let him guide her to the staircase, head against his shoulder. “Sorry, darling…”

  “Don’t be silly,” he said, smiling to himself at the ‘darling.’ Wanting to call her ‘darling’ back.

  “…I’m fine, really…just lil’…tired…

  But she made no effort to resist when he swept her up and carried her to the bedroom in his arms, no effort at all…

  * * *

  This time he was certain it was not a dream.

  He said that to himself as he awoke, just as he’d said it to himself upon settling on her downstairs sofa, said it over and over as a kind of mantra until he was sick of the redundancy, this is not a dream, I am sleeping downstairs here on Laurie’s sofa, Laurie is sleeping upstairs in her bed, Scroogie is fine in the hospital, I know because I called Maser before I turned out the light down here, this is not a dream, I am sleeping downstairs here on Laurie’s sofa…

  Over and over. Until he was not only certain where he was, but that he was awake where he was, that this was not a dream. Over and over until he fully expected the endless repetition to keep him awake. As opposed to the soporific effect it eventually had, when he’d finally dozed off.

  Except for the smell.

  One thing Richard knew for a fact: there had not been the awful smell of fresh-turned earth and damp loam when he’d finally drifted off. There had been no particular smell at all except those everyday smells of Laurie’s living room, which were nice, fresh and slightly gingery. And to prove all that he’d left a back-up. The watch he’d retrieved from his house. It was just after twelve midnight the last time he’d glanced at the luminous dials propped up on lip of the coffee table in front of him, held upright there by the coil of flexible silver band; just past midnight and no awful odor. Now it was just past two-thirty in the morning and the living room reeked of—

  His breath caught at a whitish rustle at the corner of his vision. He lay frozen a moment, abruptly
soaked in sweat, clammy with it as though his pores had been open and ready for the thing’s arrival, as thought the terror and night sweats were a natural part of its appearance.

  Richard lay very still, held his breath and turned his head by nearly invisible increments toward the recurring whitish blur, the smell seeming to grow more intense as he did. His gut knotted as the whiteness jumped again from the east wall of the house. Then he groaned, let out pent up breath with a rush. Curtains. White lace curtains rustling from the half-open window. Laurie had no AC and the breeze was cool, if humid. Maybe that was the real cause of his perspiring, maybe he’d awakened already in a sweat from the heat.

  He looked down at the gleaming wood floor, even and clean and polished to a shine under Laurie’s mop. A dark, fetid trail stretched from under the open window all the way to the coffee table in front of him and past.

  Richard threw off the quilt from Laurie’s closet and bent closer to the muddy prints. There was movement there. He drew his legs carefully over the sofa edge until his bare feet hit the cool wood floor, hunkered at the waist and bent closer still. Footprints all right, some kind of footprints anyway, and amid the tendrils of dead leaves and fungi, and occasional gambol of white grave worms.

  Richards palm clamped to his mouth by pure reflex. Not that he was about to toss his cookies, at least he didn’t think so, but to pinch thumb and forefinger over his nostrils, cut off the sickly-sweet aroma of putrescence. He crouched there a moment, staring stupidly and the blindly whipping strings of worms and the childhood visions of creeping dead comic book horrors filled his brain again. Then his heart leapt to his mouth, seemed to fill it.

  He turned his head toward the hallway.

  The dark, smeary trail wove purposely toward the staircase. Laurie!

  He was up and running without further thought, without thinking at all. Only when his hand clawed for the wood railing, his body still in motion, starting up the first steps, did his mind catch up with him, and what he was likely to face somewhere up there in the dark.

  He froze again on the second step, mind racing everywhere at once—gun, rifle, club, knife…when he thought he heard it for the first time.

  A kind of wet shuffling sound above him. Directly above him. On the landing or maybe even last few steps before the left turn to Laurie’s room.

  rifle, club, knife!

  She had to have knives in the kitchen, a butcher block case like his and Allie’s or a big carving knife in a drawer somewhere.

  Richard hesitated.

  Cocked his head.

  The dragging sound again…soft, purposeful, horribly intelligent.

  He turned and sprang for the hallway, skidded down it pin-wheeling, prevented his falling by grabbing the kitchen door jamb, bolted inside and swept eyes and hands across the Formica counters. Nothing.

  Not even a glass coffee pot he could break, pick free a shard for a weapon.

  “Laurie.” His voice was piteous and impotent in the big empty kitchen.

  He began dragging open top cabinet drawers, silverware rattling musically and so loud something had to hear all the noise. Once the drawer over the oven came free under his wrenching, spilling like clashing cymbals across the linoleum floor. He found the steak knives in the next drawer over. Then, as he was turning to leave, he saw a big black handled carving knife lying silvery against the white porcelain sink.

  Richard took the stairs two, sometimes three at a time.

  At the top there was no decision to make, he’d go left to Laurie’s room no matter what. But his heart sank when he saw the winding smear of prints had beat him to it. He was halfway down the hall to her room and her door was open (he distinctly remembered closing it before tucking her in) when he heard the scream; it was like someone had shoved the big carving knife through his brain.

  He leapt the hall, skidded to the door and plunged through. “Laurie!”

  The thing was already on her, tearing at her white legs as she kicked out shrieking, hands flailing back like wild birds for the bedpost, eyes so wide they glowed. Richard launched himself at the lurching hood of filth and dripping clots of earth. “No!” He raised the knife high, stabbed down at the hulking black back with all his strength, the gleaming blade’s big handle in both hands. The blade found only soft mattress, ripped only bundles of sheets. When he looked up he found Laurie screaming at him past the creature’s dark lump of shoulder, saw a spidery claw reaching for her pale neck. Richard cursed, slipped on wet, greasy sheets and threw himself at the thing again. Laurie screamed, the sound of it tearing through him. It had her against the wall behind the bed, talons at her throat, the front of her t-shirt mottled and torn and smeared brown.

  Richard gathered himself again and sprang, dragging up the knife, the bright arc of its blade glinting a moment in the north window moonlight. Then another scream, like a woman and not, and a mist of warm red filled Richard’s eyes and mouth. He lashed out blindly, stabbing, screaming, swinging, cursing.

  He dragged an arm across his eyes, peered through red gelatin and saw the thing cringing before him, backing away, maggoty arms upraised in stumbling supplication to fend off the next blow. He had it now, he had it boxed into a corner between the bed and a gilt-framed, full length mirror. He had the bastard now…

  Richard drew up to his full height, legs braced atop the mattress, silvery blade raised high, a cry of triumph on his throat and the rush of blood on the thing’s dripping arm.

  “Richard!” it screamed. Like a human. Using its human voice now to plead for its life.

  “Richard!”

  At the last moment, his left foot kicked one of Laurie’s pillows from the bed, catching the edge of the full length mirror, turning the glass to him. What he glimpsed was more feral than human; a madman, lips skinned back from a spiked fence grin, hollow eyes lit with agates of hate, t-shirt scalloped red. His own reflection staring back stupidly.

  “Richard!”

  His head jerked toward the thing. It had vanished from the corner, replaced by Laurie’s cringing hysteria, eyes wide with blind terror below a tornado of hair, left arm dripping purple from the rip of the carving knife, mouth stretched wide like a second wound. Red, shrill and imploring still. “Richard! It’s me!”

  He lowered the knife, waiting for someone to explain the joke. “Did you see it?” he cried, voice cracking, probably making him sound as deranged as he looked.

  “Richard…for God sake…”

  Her expression filled him with fury for some reason. “Answer me! Where did the damn thing go?”

  Laurie stayed pressed into the corner. Her teeth were chattering so he didn’t understand her.

  “What? What?” he screamed.

  She jumped as if slapped, pressed tighter into the corner.

  “Richard…for God’s sake…it’s only us!”

  EIGHTEEN

  There was the distinct possibility, he realized, that he was losing his mind.

  He might have bought that if the others hadn’t reported seeing the thing too.

  Convincing Laurie, on the other hand, was another thing.

  She wouldn’t come near him, of course.

  She shrank away and clawed the wallpaper and dredged up that terrible scream again every time he approached, even after he’d dropped the knife, kicked it away, promised it was all okay now, pleaded with her just to let him look at her dripping arm. She spit at him like a cat. Strange things came from down deep in her throat.

  In the end the only logical thing seemed to be to leave. Though stumbling to his car, Richard struggled now with what exactly logic was, what it felt like. The last thing he’d seen her doing was dialing the police from the kitchen phone.

  All the way home he anticipated the bright, flashing rack lights in his rear view mirror. Streaked with blood, agitated and disheveled, it seemed more prudent to simply drive off the road, beat the cops, the trial, the cell to the punch. In L.A. it would have been easy; there were cliffs in California, steep ones that overl
ooked the black expanse of Pacific. Drowning, he had heard, was a nice way to die, as nice as dying could be anyway. Here in Kansas there were no cliffs. A few grassy inclines, but nothing terribly dramatic; mostly flat planes of barbed wire delineated fields. He didn’t relish flipping over in some farmer’s pasture and burning alive upside down in his seatbelt.

  There was the occasional bridge, of course, and occasional bridge abutment. And there were trees, lots of trees, wide fat oaks and maples to wrap his front fender around and, with enough speed, drive the engine block through his chest and into the back seat. Richard thought of all these things, even came close once or twice, but finally declined to follow through. His depression, the deepest he’d ever known, crushed down on him like a steel weight the moment he’d left Laurie’s place. It didn’t truly abate now, but it did replace itself with something less destructive: anger. The anger felt like his own. The depression he felt, the steel weight, had come from someplace else. It felt like he was being manipulated. Realizing this, Richard began to hate the feeling of being manipulated even more, which in turn helped stoke his anger and that in turn took him outside himself a moment. A clearheaded moment in which he was able to look down on it all, separate what was under his control and what was being forced upon him by some outside force. Without the haze of depression he glimpsed things for what they were, the thing for what it was. And that was almost the scariest thing of all; because the thing was cunning. So cunning it could get inside him somehow, make it do its bidding. Knowing this almost took his breath away. But it was also a revelation. The thing fed off his fear. His guilt. Human emotions. And human emotions could be controlled. And contained.

  That last thought left a pang in his chest. Guilt.

  Guilt about what?

  What act, what incident could his subconscious be so consumed by that it left him raw and open for outside forces to manipulate him through guilt’s first cousin, fear?