No watch, no phone, and no wallet. Thank God for Dad. Thank God for the days of actually remembering numbers instead of storing them into BlackBerrys or iPhones or whatever the next big thing was. He looked back at that empty space on his wrist. He never took his watch off.
A short burst of wind gusted from across the street and he looked up. Although the sun was still relatively high in the desert sky, dark shadows were stretching out lazily between the tired, abandoned buildings whose glass eyes glinted at him. He hadn’t seen a town sign on his walk in, and he wondered if maybe it had been blown away in a sand storm. A lot of the road had been hidden by dust blasted across it and there had been no tyre tracks at all that he could recall.
The dead buildings were still in relatively good condition. Had this place been a salt mining outpost? It might not be the largest of towns but even from where he was, on the other side of the wide road, he could make out streets that went quite far back, and he was sure that one of those signs read “Diner”, although his eyesight wasn’t what it used to be. It was a garish shopfront, at any rate, with what looked like a Betty Boop-style cartoon woman running down one side. Even under the thick layer of filth her red dress was visible.
His eyes ran over the outlines of each store and house. There was a lot of dirt. The sidewalks were lost. Most of the buildings were a uniform brown as if they really had grown out of the desert earth rather than been built, in different-coloured wooden façades, by the hand of man. The winds must blow strong through here to get that much grime embedded. Either that or the town had been empty for so long that the sand had simply claimed it, inch by inch.
The sun beat on the back of his neck as he squinted. He’d burn if he wasn’t careful. He was probably burned already. Some of those shadows across the way were really quite dark. It might be cooler over there, he decided. He’d still be able to see the road and he wouldn’t burn. He glanced up. The sun had moved another few inches across its playground of the sky. How long had he been looking at the ghost town? No more than ten minutes, surely? He glanced down at the space on his wrist with mild irritation. He never took his watch off. It bothered him that he wasn’t wearing it.
A breeze gusted sand across his shoes and he took the first step on to the road. Something scurried in the shadows on the other side. He paused, suddenly tense. What had that been? A piece of garbage, perhaps? Probably a rodent of some kind. He looked again at the buildings that stared back at him from within their strange shadows. Out here, so far from any big city, who knew what the town was now home to? Rats and probably worse. He didn’t know much about the desert. What lived out here anyway?
He took a step backwards and was sure he heard the wind moan in disappointment as it slashed its way through the streets opposite. At least he hoped it was the wind. He almost laughed. He wasn’t a child to be scared by dark shadows and the things that might live in them, but for a moment it had seemed as if those dark patches had stretched out suddenly towards him, as if they could grab him back. It was ridiculous, he chided himself. Simply a trick of the eyes.
Still, he thought, looking up at the windows, he was plenty glad he wasn’t a boy any more. There was definitely something creepy about this place. Something flashed within the small frame of a window on the darker side of the road. He frowned and his mouth dropped open slightly. Whatever had been there was now gone, but he was sure he’d seen someone in one of the upstairs rooms of the closest building. Just for the briefest moment. Had that been sunlight reflecting or had something really been clawing at the windows? A figure? Trying to get out? Was someone really in there?
“Hey.”
The voice startled him and he whirled round, going over on his ankle as he did so. Pain flared up his leg. The figure in the window was forgotten. He hobbled back to the sidewalk.
“Hey,” he said. “You made me jump. I didn’t think there was anyone out here.” He smiled and held out his hand. “Lee Moseby.”
The woman stared back at him for a moment, her brow furrowed. She was sweating under her pancake foundation and it didn’t make for a good look on a woman her age.
“It’s hot,” she said. She didn’t smile, and nor did she shake Lee’s hand. That made him feel less sorry for his unkind thought. Her clothes were dusty, just as his were, but her blouse and skirt looked more uncomfortable than his chinos and golf shirt, and her high heels must have been a bitch to walk in if she’d come to town the same way he had. Weird how he hadn’t seen her behind him. Just how long had he been here?
“Do you have the time?” he asked.
She shook her head and then they both looked up at the sky. The sun had moved further round and Lee realized they were now in the haze of the late-afternoon.
“I wondered if you had a quarter,” she asked, and then nodded at the booth. “For the phone. I need to call someone.” She chewed her lip and the warm red lipstick stuck to her teeth. “Aren’t you hot?” she asked. “Why ain’t you sweating?”
“Just must have got used to it,” Lee said. “I’ve been here a while.”
“A quarter?” she asked again.
“Sorry.” Lee shrugged and pulled his pockets out. “I don’t even have a dime.” He wondered why he’d made the ridiculous gesture. Never once in all his years had he actually turned the pockets of his pants out. But then, he realized, as he looked down at the fabric, it was rare that his pockets weren’t full. Change, keys, receipts, all the usual bric-a-brac of life. “But the phone works,” he said. “Call collect. That’s what I did.”
“You got someone coming to get you?” Her heavy face lit up slightly, and she pushed a wayward curl away from her face. She had that kind of over-styled and sprayed hair that was common amongst the older southern belles.
“Yeah,” he said. “My dad.” He thought he should feel embarrassed about that, but somehow he didn’t. “I knew his number,” he added.
“Uh-uh,” she said. She wasn’t ready to smile at him yet, but the frown had at least abated slightly. She looked past him at the town. “I guess I’ll try that. I know my folks’ number too. And my sister’s.” She turned and wiggled on her dusty heels to the phone box. “And Adele’s, but I can’t see that bitch getting off her fat ass and coming all the way out here to get me.”
She disappeared inside and Lee decided she was talking as much to herself as to him. He rubbed the back of his neck and found it was cool, not burned at all. Despite the way the nameless woman was sweating, he hadn’t found the heat overbearing during the course of the day and he still wasn’t thirsty.
With his back to the phone booth, he walked to the crossroads and peered down the road. It was empty. Surely his dad would be here soon. In the distant shimmer he couldn’t see any more walkers headed this way. Probably a good thing, he decided. He wouldn’t want to be waiting out here for a ride when it had gotten dark.
He found a boulder and squatted down on it. His knees rose up almost to his chin, so he spread his legs a little wider and rested his arms on them. He felt like a cowboy. His boots, dusty and scuffed, looked like cowboy’s boots. He smiled again, momentarily happy. His irritation at the lack of a watch disappeared. His dad would get here eventually, he was reliable like that, and sitting in the sunshine wasn’t such a bad way to spend a lazy afternoon. He stared at the ground between his feet for so long he could almost make out each grain of sand that made up the earth. Some were dull and others shone like diamonds. He picked up a handful and let it run between his fingers. It felt good.
Eventually, she came out of the booth. He’d been so lost in his study of everything and nothing that he’d almost forgotten she was there. When he got to his feet, his legs were stiff. The air had cooled slightly. The woman, however, was still sweating.
“No one was home,” she said. “Can you believe that? Not even Adele, and she’s always at home watching TV.”
“Did you dial the right numbers?” Lee asked. He wasn’t sure what else to say. She was frowning again, sharp lines running across
her forehead and forcing her eyes to narrow.
“Sure I did. Who forgets their family’s number?” she snapped. “They’re not in, though.” Her voice softened, and she turned to look over at the town. “Weird. My mom’s always in. Disabled. Doesn’t get out much apart from to drive to the store.”
The light was fading into gloom, and Lee followed her nervous gaze over to the ghost town. “Do you check in on her often?” The shadows were getting darker, and this time he was sure he could see flashes of eyes as small creatures scurried here and there just out of sight.
“Nah,” she said. “Carrie, my sister, she does all that.” Like him, her eyes were fixed on the suddenly sharp angles of the abandoned buildings and streets opposite. “I was never good with old people.”
“Try again later,” he said.
“Sure,” she nodded. “Sure.”
Half an hour later, and the sun was merely a line of fire against the horizon. Evening was falling and the wind was picking up. They stood in silence for most of the time, Lee looking out into the road and the woman staring at the town. He didn’t want to look in that direction. He’d glanced round maybe ten minutes earlier and this time he was sure – definitely sure – that there had been figures clawing at the windows. Momentary and gone in a breath, but he’d seen them. There had also been things scuttling in the streets. The sounds of claws on tarmac carried over to them on the wind. Other sounds too. Wet. Unpleasant. Lee wouldn’t look that way again, not if he could help it.
“I don’t want to be here when it gets dark,” the woman said. It was the first time either of them had spoken for a while.
Lee said nothing. Over the wind and its unpleasantness, he could hear another sound, coming from the road. A familiar rattling noise that he hadn’t heard in such a long time. Years. How many? Forty?
“I don’t like the look of this place,” she continued. “I think it gets cold at night.”
Even as a silhouette against the raging death of the sun, Lee recognized the old pick-up truck. His dad’s car. The one they rode to town in when his mom didn’t come with them. The one she laughingly called “the boys’ toy”.
“Did ya hear me? I don’t like this place. Not at all. Damn stupid phone.”
Lee smiled, ignoring the woman, lost in the lift of his own heart as the truck pulled alongside him.
“You best get in, son.” His dad smiled from behind the wheel. “It’s nearly dark.”
Lee did as he was told. He sucked in the forgotten and yet familiar smell of the worn leather and old cheroot smoke.
“Thanks for coming to get me, Dad.” he said.
His dad’s crinkled face smiled back. “No problem, son. It’s been a long time.”
Lee could feel his grin almost cracking his face. His dad was wearing the old dungarees he used to wear when messing around with cars out in the barn when Lee had been maybe fifteen or sixteen. They’d built Lee’s first car together with his dad wearing those old dungarees. His dad looked the same as he had then too, no more than fifty. Healthy and happy.
Lee looked down at his wrist and the empty space there. His heart ached again.
“Where’s my watch, Dad?” he asked, softly. “I always wear my watch.” He felt fifteen again, maybe even younger. He felt of an age when your father had all the answers.
“Hey!” The woman slammed into the passenger side door, her sausage fingers with their painted tips hooked over the half-open window. Lee jumped. Her eyes glinted like the windows of the dead town.
“Hey,” she said again, looking past Lee to his old man. “Can I get a ride with you? I need to get out of here. Night’s coming.” She smiled, revealing the patches of lipstick that clung grimly to her teeth, and Lee wondered if it was an attempt at flirtation. If it was then she needed to practise. She was panting slightly and her stale breath was bad; as if something was rotting in her mouth.
Lee’s father nodded over at the phone booth, the light in it flickering on as the darkness began to take hold. “Make a call.”
“I tried that,” she hissed. “No one was home. Gimme a ride! You got the room. I’ll go in the back.”
Lee watched his father’s face. His brown eyes were unreadable but his expression had softened into something that was almost pity. Almost, but not quite.
“Everyone’s home,” he said. “They just ain’t answering.” Without warning, he put his foot down on the pedal and the old truck pulled away. The woman’s mouth fell open and she cursed as she lost her grip on the window. The truck turned in a wide loop, coming off the vague edges of the sandy road here and there, but Lee’s father didn’t stop. Once they were facing the setting sun, he cranked it up to sixty.
“Come back, you bastards!” the woman screeched after them. “You can’t leave me here!” After a moment, when she’d realized that they could, her voice rose an octave. “Go to hell! Go to hell, you pair of fuckers!”
Lee flinched and twisted round in his seat.
“Don’t look back, son,” his father said. “It’s night back there. You don’t want to see that. It’s not where you belong.” Lee looked anyway. He couldn’t help it.
The woman had lost one of her shoes and was hobbling back to the phone box as if she could find some kind of sanctuary in it. Lee thought it looked like a beacon now. One that would draw everything that lived in the dead town’s shadows. What would happen to her? He thought of fingernails clawing at glass, and shivered. He sat back in his seat, facing forward. A few moments later, a short howl rang out that had nothing to do with the wind. The truck picked up speed and the sound faded.
“My watch, Dad?” he asked again. He thought he knew the answer. He’d known it all along. He never took his watch off.
“Your Ella has it, is my guess,” his dad smiled. “A keepsake.”
Lee nodded. He guessed that was right. Ella had given him the watch on their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary and he hadn’t taken it off in the twenty years that had passed since except to change a battery and that one time it needed to be repaired.
“Will I see her again, Dad?” he asked.
“She’s a good woman, your Ella.” Lee’s dad smiled at him. “She was a honey when you were kids and she’s been a fine wife and mother and grandmother since, ain’t that the truth?”
Lee nodded. “That’s the truth.”
“Then you’ll hear that phone ringing, son. You’ll hear it ringing.”
The two dead men smiled at each other, content, and drove into the brightening sunlight.
Dead Flowers by a Roadside
Kelley Armstrong
The house is damnably silent.
I sit in the middle of the living room, furniture shoved out of the way, one chair tipped over where it fell, pushed too hard in my haste. Shards from a broken vase litter the floor. One is inches from my hand.
Amy would panic if she saw it. I close my eyes and imagine it. Her gasp from the doorway. The patter of her stockinged feet. The soft click of the piece against the hardwood as she snatches it up. Her voice as she tells me not to move, she’ll clean it up, I need to be more careful – really, I need to be more careful. What if I’d cut myself? What if Rose had run in?
In my mind, her voice is not quite right. The cadence, the tone, are fading already. Amy’s voice. Rose’s voice. How much longer before they slide from memory altogether? Before I’m reduced to endlessly playing old videos that don’t sound like them, not really, and telling myself they do, just so I can still hear their voices in my head.
I open my eyes and look at the ancient book lying open in front of me. Spidery writing, water-smeared ink, barely legible. The air smells faintly of acacia. That’s critical, the book says. The dead will not speak without the scent of acacia to pull them through the ether.
Not true.
I know it is not true because I have seen the dead. Heard the dead. All my life they’ve been there, flitting past, whispering in my ear. Never once have they needed acacia.
Yet for three m
onths, I’ve been trying to contact them. My wife. My child. I beg, I plead, I rage and shout for a sign, any sign. Comfort, any comfort. In desperation I turn to the books, to the acacia. But I hear only silence. Damnable silence.
I look down at the shard of glass by my hand.
Daydreaming again, weren’t you? Amy laughs. Always dreaming. Always distracted. One of these days, you’re going to hurt yourself.
I run my finger along the edge of the shard. As sharp as her ceramic knives, the ones I bought for her birthday, kept in the cupboard so Rose wouldn’t mistake the white blades for plastic.
And don’t you use them either, she’d said to me. Please.
Worried about me. About us. That was her nature. Double-checking door locks. Double-checking the stove. Double-checking Rose’s car seat. Even if she’d done it herself, she always double-checked. If Rose or I so much as stubbed our toes and yelped, Amy would come running.
She’d always come running.
I take the shard, pinch it tight between thumb and forefinger. Drag the edge along my arm. Blood wells up.
“Amy?”
I cut deeper. Blood drips on to the dirty pages of the useless book.
“Amy? I need you.”
Damnable silence. Always silence.
Crouched at their graves. Talking until I realize I’m only speaking to fill the silence, and I stop. I touch the marble. Cold. Always cold, even now with the late winter sun beating down.
No flowers. I took them away as soon as they started to wither. Dead flowers by a grave seem wrong. Left and forgotten. Nothing here should be forgotten.
The Mammoth Book of Ghost Stories by Women (Mammoth Books) Page 5