The Deadenders

by Bruce Jones

  “Are you saying you might still be sick, that he lied to you?”

  “Maybe I wasn’t sick in the first place…”

  She wasn’t buying it. “Maser wouldn’t do that to you. He’s your best friend!”

  Richard nodded distantly. “Yes…cold-blooded, analytical Maser…”

  Laurie watched him.

  Richard leaned forward against the table, rested his forehead in one hand. He shook his head. “I don’t know, Laurie….I just don’t know. I don’t know anything anymore.” He shook his head again. “But crazy as it sounds, I get this feeling he’s still my friend, but at the same time doesn’t want me alarved.”

  “Doesn’t want you what?”

  “Around.”

  “You said ‘alarved.’ Which isn’t a word. Did you mean ‘alive’?

  He stared at the table top. Finally nodded slowly. “Yeah. Yeah, I think that is how I feel. Like sometimes he’d like me dead.”

  “Like Scroogie?”

  He looked up at her quickly. His eyes were swollen, red. “Maybe. Maybe Shivers, too. All the Deadenders. We did something, Laurie. As kids, we did something bad. Something terrible, I’m sure of it. Only I can’t remember what. I think none of us can remember what. We’ve blanked it out somehow. That’s how bad it was. So terrible we wiped it from our consciousness.”

  “But not your subconscious.”

  Richard nodded. “And now it’s back. Now it’s come back to us. In the form of this monster. Back in our dreams. Maybe back in reality, I don’t know. But it’s come back to haunt us all.”

  “All?”

  He looked over at her; his throat moved. “Except Maser.”

  He nodded slowly again, almost trace-like. “He’s the only one that never talks about the thing, never has the dreams. But he knows something, Laurie. He knows something the rest of us don’t know, or can’t remember. And I think maybe Scroogie knew too, or was beginning to.”

  “So Maser tried to kill him. With something in the syringe.”

  Richard shut his eyes, winced as from a sudden sharp headache. “Yes. No. I don’t know. It’s all…guesswork. I’m so close, so close…something Zelda said…but I can’t quite…just can’t quite—“

  Laurie reached for him. “You need sleep, baby--”

  Richard’s fist slammed down on the table so hard she jumped. “I can’t sleep! I’ve got to find out! Now! Before Sally pulls the plug on Scroogie! I can’t let him die not knowing!”

  Tears of frustration brimmed his eyes. Laurie took his arm gently. “Why, baby? Why do you feel that’s so important?”

  He jerked his hand away, pressed both palms to the side of his head as though shutting out the light, the world. “I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know…”

  Laurie sat back in sympathetic frustration, watched him quietly.

  Richard sniffed, wiped his hand under his nose. “You think I’m crazy, right?”

  “No.”

  He grunted. “Well, what do you think?”

  She watching him, squeezed his arm once. “I think you know…”

  * * *

  Laurie led him into the bedroom.

  She disrobed and drew him to her breasts, held him there until his breath and her nipples became hard.

  She tugged down his jeans, pulled his shirt over his head, like undressing a little boy. She bent and took hold of him and kissed his penis. Then she lay back across his bed curved on one hip and held her arms to him. Richard came to her, kissed her down there and fumbled with himself, but she pushed him gently over on his back, drew a smooth leg over and straddled him, reaching between them.

  Richard saw a figure at the bedroom doorway watching them. Saw this and was not afraid, almost glad in a way because he feared he might not be hard enough for her and he loved her and wanted very much to please her just then.

  The figure moved quietly toward the bed through pools of shadows and became his father. He was younger than Richard remembered, closer to his own age now and he was smiling warmly and Richard was glad to see him and felt nothing but benevolence and warmth from his father’s presence. His father said hi and Richard said hi back and his father looked over at naked Laurie, who was beside Richard on the bed now, asleep on her back with her slim waist and raven hair and his father winked at Richard and said, “That one’s a keeper.”

  “Yes,” Richard nodded, smiling, feeling very happy, very proud and not embarrassed for Laurie in her nakedness, knowing somehow his father saw only beauty there.

  “What are you doing here?” Richard said.

  His father stuck his hands in his front trouser pockets like he used to and said, “Well, kiddo, you don’t seem to be getting over the hump here, so I thought I’d lend a hand. That okay?” He put out his hand to Richard.

  Richard took it, the hand neither warm nor cold, solid or ethereal, and then they were in the darkened hallway and Richard knew they were headed for the cellar door. “This is a dream, right?” he said.

  His father just smiled his father smile and said, “Jury’s still out on that one, kiddo.” And Richard knew he meant he was talking about which was the most real, dreams or waking life.

  When the dark cellar door yawned before him, though, Richard grew chill. He gripped his father’s hand tighter. “I’m not sure I can.”

  His father chuckled. “What’s the worse that can happen? You could die?” He shrugged. “Hey, do I look unhappy?”

  Richard smiled a little and allowed himself to be led down the cellar stairs—which grew magically more illuminated as they went—to the cold cement floor. It was like ice when his bare feet touched it. “It isn’t really,” his father grinned.

  “But it’s cold.”

  “Think it warm, then,” and Richard did that and though it did not truly warm the floor, it seemed to become less frigid.

  “It’s your office, right,” he said, “you’re taking me to your office.”

  “Well, technically you’re taking yourself but yes, it’s your show.” And Richard thought ‘show’ a strange word to use, until he remembered what his father had said about the mingled destinies of dreams and so-called real life.

  The office door was open, or maybe Richard’s father opened it magically or maybe Richard opened it magically somehow, it was difficult to say because they were just suddenly there. The single bulb above the desk was turned off but it didn’t matter because there seemed to be plenty of light to see with, a kind of cool, bluish light almost like those purple fluorescent lights you see in novelty shops but not quite that either, though the interior of the office, including the bookcase, did seem to glow vaguely with a dim white halo effect.

  “It’s not over there,” Richard’s father said, “if you’re looking for the gold book. It’s at her house, a gift from me.”

  Richard turned from the bookcase and saw a young Zelda stretched supine across the large metal desk, naked and convulsing, his father on top of her, thrusting. She was very young and beautiful with skin so white it held the consistency of fine marble through which light penetrates a millimeter. Only her nipples were pink, like her cheeks, which were aflame, and her mouth, wide and thrown back with abandon. His father, though thrusting, seemed strangely apart of the scene on the desk, as if somehow there by also floating just above it like an amused spectator. He held the old grin as he addressed his son. “I’m sorry you had to see this part, it’s necessary, and besides…you’ve already seen it, right?”

  Zelda opened her eyes at the sound of his voice and her head lolled toward Richard and she stared unabashed at him a moment, then smiled in a way that made Richard’s cheeks both chill and burn at the same time. “Well,” she cooed, “hello there, handsome boy.” And Richard could see now that she was looking at him but also through him and that when he turned his head there was a second Richard in the open office doorway, a much younger Richard, a child whose cheeks were flaming also.

  The child turned and ran for the cellar stairs, white Keds flying, and
Richard wanted to follow him, call out to the boy, comfort him somehow—it seemed very important--though he wasn’t sure how that might work out if he ever caught up with himself.

  Mostly he just wanted to turn away like the boy, to run from the scene atop the desk, but just then Zelda came, said something as she came in a new voice that was not hers or perhaps was hers, her real voice, a deep whiskey basso, she’d been hiding from everyone all this time. “Fuck, how sweet,” she said, thrusting her white hips up at his father, “oh fuck, fuck how sweet!” and Richard’s father said something back, something low and indistinct and indiscernible because his lips were skinned back over his teeth and he was scowling down at her with a look of intense disgust or pleasure or both, Richard would never know because he stepped back just then and his Keds (he wore them now) found a small stick there in the grass—the grass now, not the cement basement floor—found a stick and broke it with the dull snap of a chicken wing so the other Enders laughed at him when he looked up again. They were all there, Scroogie, and Shivers and The Maze, surrounding the desk, which had taken on a new shape and then another, had grown darker, then quite white and become a large rock, almost a boulder, and Shivers held the gold book and Maser held the Pyx and Scrooge held all his fear inside and the three of them stared at Richard and said—said altogether—“Well, do it what are you waiting for do it like it says put your wish in the Pyx like the rest of us,” and Richard looked down and saw the piece of folded, ruled paper ripped from his school Big Chief tablet and held it up and saw there was writing on it but writing that was upside down and inside the fold so he couldn’t read it though he wanted to read it wanted very much to do that and also not to move not to go to the Pyx with his wish but rather to run as far and long from the clearing with the white rock and into the surround woods as his Keds would take him maybe all the way back home to his bed where this would all be a silly dream which was after all what it was right only he couldn’t run couldn’t turn couldn’t go backwards or forward and the fact of that scared him deeply because he could tell Maser was not pleased not at all and Maser had that look on his face and all that red smeared across his chest and it was Maser who after all had the gun the rifle and then Richard screamed at the touch of something on his shoulder something just behind him and he didn’t want to turn and look turn to see it see the dog thing but couldn’t seem to help himself and so he did and he saw the dog thing staring at him with strangely human eyes and heard it open its mouth and turn into Laurie who said--

  “—Richard! Richard!”

  Shaking his shoulder now.

  “Richard, what are you doing?”

  Dreaming, I hope. He said that only it didn’t come out, or if it did, it didn’t come out right, a sort of strangled mumble but it didn’t matter because she was real, Laurie was real and he was back. She wore one of his t-Shirts, nude beneath, dark hair in frantic straggles. Yes, he was back.

  But still standing in grass.

  He blinked and grabbed her slim shoulders then, so that she shrieked and jumped back, but didn’t run away.

  “Where are we?” he shouted at her frightened face, “are we in the woods?”

  He shook her hard. “Tell me! Is Scroogie dead? Are we in the woods?”

  Laurie tore his hand from her shoulder and looked as though she might slap him. He almost wished she would. It seemed a good idea. Go ahead, do it. But she didn’t; she lowered her hand instead and said, “We’re in your backyard! What in the world are you doing? Sleepwalking?”

  Yes, he nodded, that must be it. “I had a dream…”

  She searched his face, shook her head worriedly, glanced lower down and gasped. “Oh, baby…”

  Put a tentative hand to his jeans, to the crotch, pulled it back with a heartbroken expression. “Oh, sweetheart…”

  Richard looked dazedly down—was his fly open?—saw the dark lining at his zipper, darker patch around it, spreading warm to his thigh now. “Oh.”

  And then Laurie was grabbing him, so tight her nails hurt,, crushing him to her breast. “Richard, my poor baby…”

  Not mindful of the smell, of his dampness against her.

  * * *

  His land line atop the bedroom nightstand was ringing when he came out of the shower. Laurie was downstairs making a fresh pot of coffee. Richard snagged a towel from the bathroom rack and came trailing roiling steam to grab the phone. Who but the hospital would call at this hour?

  “Pete--?”

  “It’s not Pete, Richard, it’s me.” Allie.

  “Allie! Is everything all right?”

  “Sorry, I know it’s two hours later in Kansas. But I was going to ask you the same thing, actually. Are you okay? I haven’t heard from you in awhile.”

  “I’ve called,” he said. Then, immediately regretting it: “--a man answered and I hung up.”

  “Why?”

  “Why? Because I’d called to talk to you, not Jack Stevens,” wincing even as he said it. Why was he acting like this? She could see who she wanted.

  “I don’t understand. Are trying to sound surprised or angry or something? Surely not jealous.”

  Richard stood there dripping on the bedroom rug staring down stupidly at his penis. “I’m not trying to sound like anything. I just didn’t feel like talking to your old fuck puppet.”

  A metallic, patronizing sigh. “Nice, Richard. You assume because Jack happens to pick up the phone I’m too busy giving him a blowjob.”

  “I don’t assume, Allie.”

  “Really? What this, the new Richard Denning I’m addressing now?”

  “Is this why you called, to start a fight?”

  “I told you why I called. I was concerned about you. Terribly sorry for bothering you.”

  She was right, he was being an ass. “Look…it’s been a long day. Sorry if I snapped.”

  “Why?”

  “I have to explain an apology?”

  “Why the long day? It’s barely morning.”

  “Oh. It’s…” he didn’t want to go into Scroogie right now, not now when he was finally feeling clean, halfway awake, mind buzzing with the possibility of dream-related answers. “…it’s been hot here. Humid. Not dry and beautiful L.A.”

  “Beautiful when you can see through the smog. You sound…strained. You okay? Seeing anyone?”

  “Are you asking because you really care or to make yourself feel less guilty about Jack.”

  Damn. Did it again.

  “First of all,” icy now, “I have nothing to feel guilty about. Secondly, it happens I do care…”

  “Is that a fact?”

  “A fact you’d know if you really knew me. But I guess you never really did, right, Richard?”

  “That goes both ways, you know.”

  “Now who’s trying to feel less guilty?”

  Stop this now, while you can.

  But he didn’t. Didn’t want to. Screw her. Screw Jack. “Pete Maser. Was that an example of how much you care?’”

  The metallic sigh was more dismissive than patronizing. “You’ve lost me, kiddo.”

  “I’ll assume that was rhetorical. I’m talking about Maser’s party, the barbecue last spring?”

  “What about it?”

  “Just wondering what you thought of his study. His big leather couch.”

  Silence.

  “Still there, Allie?”

  “Who told you? Carla?”

  “Why didn’t you tell me he had attacked you?”

  An astonished sound from the receiver.

  “Sometimes I wonder how you even manage to tie your own shoes…”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Maser didn’t attack me.”

  “I don’t care what you called it, he should have stayed away from my wife!”

  There was silence for a moment. Then:

  “You really do live in your own world, don’t you, Richard?”

  “What’s that mean?”

  Sigh. “It means that I pulled Bobby d
own on top of me on that couch, that I kissed him, not the other way around. And I would have done more if Carla Big Nose hadn’t walked in on us!”

  “You don’t mean that…”

  “Don’t I? You know, I asked him into that room to talk about the fact that you’d been impotent since the operation. Then I thought that might hurt your feelings.”

  “So you made a pass at my best friend?”

  “You’re a fool, Richard. Worse than that, a thick fool! I wasn’t sex-starved, I was attention-starved!”

  “I was always faithful to you!”

  “You were never faithful to anything but your precious writing! We were a team, Richard! If it weren’t for me you never even would have had a job in Hollywood! But you’re the writer, aren’t you? You took all the credit. I was just a shill…”

  Richard paused. “Don’t say that.”

  “It’s true, Richard. And Maser was just at the wrong place at the wrong time. It could have been any one of your precious Deadenders, as far as I was concerned. It wasn’t that big a deal…”

  “Carla didn’t think so.”

  “Who? You mean that nurse he was dating? She caught him, Richard! She was jealous!”

  “Like me? That’s why you never mentioned it?”

  “Oh, Christ.” Something in her tone gave him pause. “He was your friend! A vaunted Deadender! Part of that mythic unattainable childhood of yours! How could I hit you with that and risk breaking those rose-colored glasses of yours?”

  “‘Unattainable‘?”

  “Not that that’s kept you from trying! Your parents’ old house? Come on, Richard! Driving by the used car lot gazing cow-eyed at your old ’67 Chevy like a high school kid? You don’t live life, Richard, you act in your own novel! What was I supposed to do next, turn into the girl next door? Miss Nudie Picture what’s-her-name?”

  Laurie came into the bedroom proffering a fresh cup of coffee, big smile at finding him naked. He had to stop from covering himself with the towel: Laurie before him, Allie in his ear.

  “How’s that going, by the way? Have you run into her yet?”

  “Who?” he said lamely.