The Return of Count Electric & Other Stories

by William Browning Spencer

  I said I thought I would sleep in late and my father nodded. Surprisingly, I didn’t feel any disapproval in his nod.

  I didn’t sleep well, plagued by bad dreams. Once, getting out of bed to relieve my bladder, I stumbled, discovering that my left leg was without sensation. I hobbled to the bathroom and blinked at my reflection in the mirror. I was rapidly approaching forty, and the mirror, aided by a cruel fluorescent light, held an unflattering reflection. The left side of my face had stiffened somewhat under the advent of the migraine, and I looked querulous and thin-lipped and more than a little like my father.

  I went back to the sofa and lay down but could not sleep. Bright swarming lights suggested that a bruising headache was on its way. I walked out into the backyard, saw the toolshed, and decided to investigate. This wasn’t prudent, of course. But I needed some distraction, something to perhaps keep the migraine at bay.

  I was looking for the suitcase my mother had written about. There was no great likelihood that it still existed, or that, if it did, it still contained the machine that had frightened her. Still …

  The toolshed had not had time to acquire the organic clutter and rich moldiness that is a toolshed’s natural destiny. It held an old canvas tarp, gardening tools, a shovel, mason jars of nails and bolts, a wheelbarrel. Under the bare electric bulb, I was able to ascertain, in less than five minutes, that the shed contained no suitcase.

  I went back inside the house and drank a glass of water. The lights had subsided in my head, and I could feel my left foot. I felt oddly alert.

  The kitchen was cozy, and I sat at the formica-topped table where we had eaten dinner. The gas stove and round-shouldered refrigerator were old but not in disrepair. They seemed cheerful, comfortable, far less intimidating than my own kitchen’s modern appliances. I found myself envying my father’s domesticity. Next to the refrigerator was a door. I opened it—it was warped and popped open with a waffling hum—and flicked a light. Stairs led down into a cellar of cinderblock walls and an earth floor.

  I found the suitcase on a wooden shelf under a pile of old National Geographics. It was not locked and I opened it, prepared, as always, for disappointment. And there it was. I removed it carefully, with an odd sense of rescuing it from its confinement. I placed it on the bare floor and stood back.

  After all these years, it gleamed, a thing of polished metal surfaces. I now understood my mother’s inarticulateness in its presence. It suggested a steel spider or dog, veined with insulated wires. Needles gleamed at the ends of jointed appendages. I sat down and studied it at great length. It contained a number of leather straps, and as my mind adjusted to the machine, I realized that these straps would bind it to its victim.

  I found myself grinning, wondering what, indeed, my mother must have made of this thing. A bundle of thick wires traveled down its spine and under its belly entering what was unmistakably a large silver dildo. Close inspection showed that this prosthetic penis was made of steel, machined and polished on a lathe. My father had owned just such a lathe.

  An electrical cord protruded like a tail—it was impossible not to think in terms of an animal. A dial on the back and a number of switches suggested that current could be directed to various appendages and regulated as to voltage.

  I have an analytical mind and a quick imagination. We were talking electrical rape here. Count Electric’s reputation for perversity was, apparently, deserved. No wonder the newspapers were vague about the precise nature of death. I now recalled one newspaper speaking of “the unusual nature and location of burns resulting from high voltages.” Unusual, indeed!

  I was lost in contemplation of this strange machine, and did not immediately notice my father at the top of the stairs. I have no idea how long he had been standing there, but when I turned, he spoke my name.

  “Mark,” he said, “you have abused my hospitality.”

  I laughed. It was such a formal thing to say, under the circumstances.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “Excuse me, Count.”

  Now he frowned. “Count?” He shook his head. “I am not the author of that machine. If you think that, your snooping has not rewarded you with the truth.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Well, if you are not Count Electric, then who is?”

  “Why you are, of course.”

  I blinked at him.

  My father nodded slowly. “You don’t remember. Count Electric is dead, and I should have destroyed his machine a long time ago. What possessed me to keep it? I have no idea.” My father began to come down the stairs, stopped. “I waited for his return, always fearing his arrival. But he appeared to be gone for good. He had been cauterized in the accident. You were free of him. I couldn’t bring any of those girls back. And you were—are—for all our differences, my son, my blood.”

  I did not know what he was talking about, although some clamoring thing inside me seemed to tear at the knowledge.

  My father explained.

  I had been living with them then, a morose stranger in their house. My father had seen me coming and going at all hours, but he had said nothing. He understood that I was, after all, twenty-two years old and if finances prevented me from finding a place of my own, they did not prevent me from living my own life.

  One night he had been awakened by a scream. My mother continued to sleep, and my father went downstairs. He was almost convinced that the scream had been a product of dreams when he heard a curious buzzing noise which led him to the door to my room. The sound was coming from behind my door, and he could see, in the crack beneath the door, a flickering blue light. The door was locked, so my father ran outside, found the window to my room, broke it, and entered. The scene that greeted him was extraordinary. I seemed to lie in a blanket of blue light while being savaged by a ravenous creature made of steel. For a moment, he was paralyzed with fear. The oxygen had been leached from the air, replaced by coppery smoke. My father found the cord, yanked it from the wall, and the blue light vanished; the steel beast crumpled on its side. My father called an ambulance, returned to my room and, sensing the diabolical nature of the machine, shoved it in a closet. Realizing that some source for the shock would be required, he poured lighter fluid over my television and set it on fire.

  I was in the hospital a long time. While I was there, my father made a close inspection of the machine that left no doubt in his mind as to its function. He searched my room with great thoroughness, and he discovered the newspaper clippings taped to the back of the dresser’s mirror. He resolved to go to the police. He would not have any young woman’s death on his conscience.

  No doubt I had been initiating some refinement or repair on the machine when it had shorted out and—you might say—turned on me.

  All of this, of course, he kept from my mother.

  But he hesitated. I returned to the house and he watched me. I healed slowly. I had to relearn the most rudimentary of things. And whole areas were lost to me forever. I had been, for instance, a piano player of some skill. Now I was unable to play a note and the problem was not simply one of impaired dexterity. Music itself, its logic, eluded me. I had lost that particular talent.

  And as my father watched my recovery, a hope began to grow. It seemed that the accident had killed the monstrosity within me. Count Electric was dead. And my father said nothing.

  3

  We talked a great deal that night. I was stunned by this new knowledge. To think that I had once been such a monster. What had inspired this pathology? My parents were normal enough. I was unaware of any deep hatred of women—although I confess to a conviction that there is no pleasing them. I have always been fascinated by sex, but impotent through a deep sense of fear and inadequacy. Perhaps potency was all I craved—and I sought it in a misguided, socially inexcusable fashion.

  A curious excitement overtook me. I tried to present a suitably dismayed exterior, but I found myself experiencing a furtive delight.

  In the morning, my father left for church. I suspect he had more tha
n the usual amount of praying to do. My knowing could alter things. Perhaps I would find a renewed and unhealthy interest in Count Electric. What would he do?

  I didn’t really think my father would do anything—at least not right away. But since a new life was presenting itself to me, I thought I should sever connections with the old.

  My father had installed a garbage disposal under the sink. It was capable of generating considerable voltage. I imagined a man with his hands up to his elbows in soapy water suddenly triggering all those volts. What would the trigger be? A time factor perhaps. The water itself, the pressure. A water-sensitive switch?

  The cellar was a fruitful source of electrical parts. While what I finally contrived was not elegant, it would certainly work. There were already dirty dishes in the sink and my father was a man who liked things clean and in their place.

  I left him a note saying I needed some time alone and that I was taking the horrid machine with me. I was going to dismantle it and throw its pieces in the Potomac, I wrote. I went down to the cellar and packed it in its suitcase.

  4

  Elizabeth was a great consolation during the funeral. She said that it must have been particularly devastating—my finding the body. I agreed.

  I had driven back to Waterford the next day, after dialing my father’s number several times and listening to the phone ring.

  My father lay in the middle of the kitchen with his sleeves rolled up and his eyes open. His expression was blank and in no way accusatory. A fuse had blown and after restoring the garbage disposal to a more conventional mode, I went down in the basement, found the fusebox and replaced the blown fuse. Back in the kitchen, I finished washing the dishes—knowing my father would approve—and then called the police. There was no question of foul play. My father was an old man with a weak heart.

  “You’ve suffered so much,” Elizabeth said, rubbing my neck. “You need to get away for awhile. We could go somewhere. Just the two of us.”

  I have, of course, reflected long and hard on the origin of Count Electric. Whatever could have made me assume such a bizarre personality? Was I traumatized as a child, driven from the path of virtue by poor parenting? Was I the victim of a raging inner child? Did an overly critical teacher kick me over the edge?

  Well, it is no fair looking for Freudian excuses in a troubled past. I’ve always felt that was cheating. I suspect that what we have here is simple Evil, nothing more, no apologies forthcoming.

  The machine’s short was easy to discover and repair. I saw quickly how the machine was used, how the various appendages could deliver small shocks, create a series of almost orgasmic convulsions in the victim. And, of course, the coup de grâce would be reserved for the artificial penis. There was a certain artistry involved …

  Elizabeth fondles me constantly when we are together. Poor girl, she can’t know how this demeans me.

  I have agreed to go away with her for a brief vacation. I have urged her to tell no one, and she has agreed. I have already reserved a motel room in North Carolina. I have used Elizabeth’s name for the reservation.

  Yes, I suppose I am Evil. Odd that it seems so much less than that. I am excited of course—but it is the excitement of the scientist, really. It is the sense of discovery, of uncharted worlds, that drives me on. Will the machine still work?

  5

  Elizabeth was all giggles. Although we were both grownups, there was a sneaky, adolescent feel to the whole business. She came back to the car with the keys and winked at me.

  “Too late to turn back now,” she said.

  “No turning back,” I agreed.

  I drove around to our room on the far end of the “L.” We had arrived late at night, for I had insisted on working that morning. Elizabeth ran from the car and opened the motel door. I followed her in.

  Elizabeth turned and looked at me. She was not a beautiful woman, with a nose that was slightly too long and a sort of desperate, old-maidish enthusiasm. But she looked quite lovely, welcoming me. She giggled, my electric bride.

  “Is that the best you can do for luggage?” she said.

  I looked down at the cheap, battered suitcase. Mildew spotted it, and my best efforts had been unable to erase some brown stains.

  I smiled back. “Well,” I said, “it has sentimental value.”

  Graven Images

  “Well, what have we got today?” the man said, seating himself in the chair, his back to the window so that he was silhouetted against the twilight.

  “Back already?” Benny said. One of the things Benny hated about the man was his heartiness, the slick, salesman’s boom of his voice. “I thought I had seen the last of you for awhile.”

  “I can leave if you’d like,” the man said. He had the blackmailer’s upper hand, and he knew it.

  “Okay, okay,” Benny said, reaching over to the nightstand and opening the drawer. He took the photographs out and spread them on the bed.

  The man leaned forward. “We could use some more light,” he said.

  Benny walked to the door and flipped a switch. The room brightened, and he walked back as the man lifted one of the photographs and held it up.

  “Tell me about this one,” the man said.

  Benny took the photo and sat on the edge of the bed. His shoulders sagged. “Well, that’s my daughter Lucy. She was nine years old or thereabouts. And in the wagon is our dog, Zenith. She would haul that dog all over town, dress him up, go rolling down a hill with him clutched to her chest. Zenith doted on Lucy and so he let her do most anything. I guess men and dogs are alike in that respect. They’ll tolerate some rough handling from the women they love.”

  “The house in the background,” the man said. “Yours?”

  “Well, we lived there. That’s on Cedar Avenue. We rented it for three years in the early fifties. Our landlord lived next door, an old Italian man who didn’t speak much English and always wore a suit. They sold the house shortly after he hanged himself, so we had to move. I remember it was his brother who came to our door and told us the news. I didn’t know who he was. There was this small, tearful man in suspenders standing at my door. He was wearing a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and he looked real frail, and the first words he spoke were: ‘My brother he is suicided with the chair.’ And I didn’t know what he was talking about or who he was, but Eileen came up behind me—she always saw straight to a person’s heart—and walked quick past me and took him in her arms and he went to sobbing on her shoulder while she held him.”

  Benny sighed. “She was good with people, Eileen.”

  “I’ll take it,” the man said, standing up.

  Benny blinked. “What?”

  “The photo. This one will do,” the man said.

  That was in the summer—at Brodin Memorial Hospital. In November, Benny woke in his own home in the middle of the night to relieve his bladder, and he heard a sound in the kitchen.

  It was the man again, seated at the kitchen table. He had poured himself a glass of milk.

  “Just make yourself at home,” Benny said.

  The man smiled broadly. “Oh, I’m comfortable most anywhere,” the man said.

  “I bet,” Benny said. He knew why the man had come. Without saying a word, he left the kitchen and returned with the photographs. He tossed them on the kitchen table.

  The man finished his glass of milk, and tapped one of the photos.

  “That’s Lucy graduating from high school,” Benny said. “What’s to say? The day was hot, I remember that. She’s wearing a bathing suit under that black gown. So were a lot of the kids. They went … look, you want it, you got it.” Benny handed the photo to the man.

  “They went to the beach,” the man said.

  “Yeah.” Benny stood up. “You got your photo. It’s two in the morning, and I’m going back to bed. You know the way out.”

  The man shook his head. “No. I’m not interested in that one. This one, perhaps. That’s your wife, isn’t it? And the young man, who’s he?
”

  “That’s Danny Miller. He played clarinet in a band. And that’s Eileen, all right. She wasn’t my wife then. Hey, maybe you want this picture. It’s yours.”

  “I’ll take it,” the man said.

  “You son of a bitch.”

  “Well, I’m not a fool. She looks quite luminous in this picture, breathless, and the lights in her hair … you kissed her for the first time that night, or I can’t read a photo.”

  “Take it and get out,” Benny said.

  As the man walked toward the door, Benny shouted at his back: “I don’t need a photograph to call up that night. There ain’t so goddam many perfect moments in a man’s life that they get clouded with time. Ask me what perfume she wore. Ask me what the band played or how the champagne tasted or what the night air felt like or how the back of her neck surprised my hand that first time I kissed her.”

  The man didn’t turn around. He walked down the hall and out the door without a word.

  A year later, the week before Christmas, Benny was watching the rain fall, a grim, flat attack on the hospital’s parking lot. The man came up behind him.

  “You gave me a start,” Benny said.

  The man apologized. He seemed to have put on weight since Benny had last seen him. He seemed, in fact, tired, disheartened.

  “Well,” Benny said. “Here’s what I’ve got.”

  This time the man sat on the bed next to Benny, and Benny showed him the photographs.

  “This is Aunt Kate,” Benny said. “She made the best fudge brownies. And she loved to sing. She would sing ‘Amazing Grace’ while washing the dishes.”