“If you don’t get out of here,” Stuart stated, “I’m calling the police.”
William snorted and took another step forward. Stuart moved back, never taking his eyes off William, and reached behind him for the wall phone. “I’m not kidding!” The receiver came loose from its cradle, slipped from his grasp, and banged loudly against the counter. A plaintive howl sounded from the back yard.
William took another swallow of his beer. “We got that pet you wanted.”
He was in the habit, Stuart remembered, of referring to himself and Marilyn in the first person plural, as if they were the couple. There was no doubt about it, the man was disturbed.
“We put his food under the sink,” William added as he strolled out of the kitchen, “and he needs to be fed.”
“Go get a haircut,” Stuart called after him.
In the backyard he found a dog, a St. Bernard of all things. At first the animal growled at him when he tried to approach, but once he filled its dish it settled into dinner and ignored him. As he watched the dog eating, he sighed deeply. He supposed he could learn to live with it.
Back in the house there was no sign of William except for his third beer bottle, empty, on the arm of the living room sofa. Stuart made sure the front door was locked so he couldn’t return. Then he went to Marilyn’s studio. A thin crack of light showed under the door.
“Marilee,” he called, “I like the dog.”
Silence.
“Do you have a name for it yet? I had a dog when I was a kid. We named it ‘Buck.’ He was a collie. Remember, I told you about him.” This was ridiculous, Stuart thought. Having a conversation with oak paneling. And veneer at that! “Well, any name’s okay with me, as long as it isn’t ‘William,’” he added spitefully.
He was turning back to the kitchen to get something to eat, when he heard voices from the studio. Not a voice, but voices. Damn, Stuart thought.
“Is he in there, Marilee? I told you I don’t want that man in the house. He’s unstable. For all we know, there’s a warrant out for him right now. It wouldn’t be the first time. And I don’t want you taking any of his drugs!”
Stuart considered pounding again, but the heel of his palm was still sore from the last time.
On Friday morning Stuart left for a management conference in Houston that would run through the weekend. The conference was a washout: a series of boring exhibits and tedious presentations. He hadn’t expected much else. His frequent out-of-town trips weren’t taken with the expectation of any professional development, but rather for the extramarital opportunities they provided.
On Sunday night, three hours before his return flight was to leave, he met an ethereal and glitzy blonde in the hotel bar. She was the perfect counterpoint, Stuart thought, to Marilyn’s increasingly stocky domesticity. When he steered the conversation in the right direction and told her of his recent surgery and its as yet untried results, the inevitable followed. Back in his room, which he had reserved through Monday in the hopes of such an encounter, he confirmed his doctor’s claim more than once.
When he finally reached home at four in the morning, an endearing Texas drawl still echoing in his ears, he heard the St. Bernard howling in the yard. Stuart found its empty dish on the kitchen floor. He opened a can of dog food, the foul gravy spurting out and staining the sleeve of his suit coat. When Stuart deposited the dish on the back porch, the animal was so ravenous it nearly took his thumb off.
After he bandaged the cut, his mind rife with thoughts of blood poisoning and rabies, all Stuart wanted to do was get to bed. In the upstairs hall he was stopped in his tracks once again.
An aquarium, twenty-five gallons if it were an ounce, now dominated their French provincial sideboard. As he edged past the loudly bubbling tank, edged quite literally in the narrow hall, he couldn’t help but take a look. The water seemed overcrowded . . . and with one of the oddest assortments of tropicals he’d ever seen. A transparent worm-like creature, resembling a centipede more than a fish, scurried up and down one side of the glass. On the floor of the tank, which was covered with multicolored gravel, what he had at first taken for a large red rock suddenly darted behind a ceramic treasure chest from which bubbles spewed. Near the top of the water, a black angelfish, a species he could identify, listed badly to one side and swam in circles. Its delicate fins were slack and ragged. A school of smaller fish tracked its death dance and nipped at it unmercifully.
Stuart grimaced and stumbled into the bedroom where once more there was no sign of Marilyn. He slammed the door to block out the bubbling of the tank.
In the next few weeks additional pets continued to appear at the house with frightening regularity. Stuart would arrive home from work, usually late, increasingly intoxicated, never knowing what new animal he would have to confront or what catastrophe he would have to assimilate into his evening.
Tuesday. A plump calico cat was perched atop his easy lounger, its claw marks already visible upon the leather. Stuart chased it into the yard where it immediately tangled with the dog.
Friday. A pair of guinea pigs in a wire cage in one corner of the kitchen, arduously mating while he ate his warmed-over dinner.
The following Monday. A large green parrot, so tame it was cageless, perched by the bay windows in the living room, its droppings staining the hardwood floor Stuart had refinished himself. He spread newspapers under the perch and sent a prayer on high that whatever pet store Marilyn was frequenting didn’t stock orangutans or asps.
Stuart decided that the animals must be Marilyn’s way of punishing him. Then it occurred to him that it could be William who was responsible. He swore his imported beer was disappearing faster than he was drinking it. At least once he thought he detected his brother-in-law’s distinctive odor, though he couldn’t be sure since the downstairs reeked from the cat box and the upstairs from the aquarium, which had quickly transformed itself from crystal clarity to a disgustingly cloudy morass.
Stuart had always thought of himself as someone who liked animals. On the other hand, he now realized that he didn’t like taking care of them. He remembered that was how he had lost Buck. His father had taken the dog to the pound because he always forgot to feed it. And besides the time and trouble, there was the expense. Financial freedom was one of his reasons for not having children. Granted, the pets would never go to college or get married, but the food bills for this burgeoning menagerie were no pittance and the trips to the vet had already begun: the dog had developed an abscess in one eye where the cat had mauled it. Yet what annoyed Stuart most, beyond the time spent, beyond the money expended, was the parrot.
For the most part the bird remained as motionless on its perch as a piece of bric-a-brac. It was nothing the parrot did that upset him, but what it said. Only one phrase, repeated endlessly: “Tell them Willie-boy was here. Tell them Willie-boy was here.” A coincidence, Stuart thought, or further evidence that William was involved?
Regardless of who was responsible for the pets, his wife, her brother, or the pair of them in conspiracy, the presence of the animals had done nothing to soften Marilyn’s behavior toward him. If anything, she was even more remote than upon first hearing about his operation. Every time Stuart entered the house, she retreated to her studio and locked the door. No amount of pounding—the veneer was beginning to splinter—or pleading could elicit a response. Their sex life, which he had sincerely hoped the vasectomy would help, was nonexistent. And their once-active social life had followed suit.
At first he tried to go to the usual round of parties, to see their usual friends and maintain appearances. Stuart quickly grew tired of making excuses for his wife, excuses that were met increasingly with knowing nods. His so-called friends, most of them divorced or already on their second or third marriage, seemed to be taking a perverse pleasure in the fact that his marriage was on the ropes. Stuart had never dreamt that his life could disintegrate so rapidly, or that so many would take so much satisfaction in its collapse.
R
eturning home early from one of these parties, Stuart sank into a morose reverie. His worst fears took flight in a nightmare scenario of exaggerated proportions. He saw his house transformed by William into a zoo both animal and human, inhabited by a hippie cult, with black-light posters on the walls, cat shit on the floors, dog fights in the hall, heavy metal on his turntable, his demented and ursine brother-in-law presiding over an unwashed assemblage of freaks and burnouts, dispensing unknown drugs in indiscriminate quantities and preaching on the demise of civilization. It was just such an environment he had rescued Marilyn from in the early days of their relationship, and as his imagination continued to play, he saw her returning to her old ways, glassy-eyed, heavily adorned with costume jewelry, lighting incense and wearing beaded shawls. But no, he assured himself, even William couldn’t pull that off. People just didn’t live that way anymore.
He was very drunk. He was balanced on one foot on the gas meter at the back of the house. The tips of his fingers, in an uncertain purchase on the window ledge, were holding him in place. He was trying to peer into Marilyn’s studio while beneath him the St. Bernard crouched, growling softly yet from deep within its throat. Unless he was actually feeding the animal, it remained hostile.
Through the thinly cracked slats of the wooden blinds he saw only part of the room, and no sign of Marilyn. What he could see were her paintings, a half dozen new canvases mounted about the walls. At first he thought they were abstracts, like the rest of her work, but as he looked more closely he noticed that these pieces were representational. And they were all depicting the same thing. Embryos. Dozens of embryos in every shape, size and stage of development. Incipient embryos with their cargo still boneless and gilled. Final trimester embryos with full-fledged infants already sucking their thumbs. All of them a mottled and sickly green.
At that moment the St. Bernard began tugging at his pant leg and Stuart toppled from his perch into the damp hydrangeas.
His temples were pounding timpani. His mouth was stuffed with spackle and rancid cotton. Stuart cracked one eyelid . . . peered at the clock on the bedside table . . . and felt the rush of panic.
He was two hours late for work!
Struggling with his robe as the room performed several cartwheels, he tottered to the hall. Before he could reach the bathroom, Stuart pitched head first onto the carpet. He groaned mournfully as he rolled over into a sitting position and leaned back against the wall. Something had tripped him . . . and that something was . . . a turtle!
Stuart couldn’t believe his eyes. It was in the middle of the hall, drawn back into its shell, and the damn thing must have been two feet long. As to when it had arrived at the house he had no idea and he suddenly didn’t care. Despite his hangover, despite the fact that his toe was bleeding, despite the fact that he liked animals, yes, he really did, a blinding rage seized him. A wave of blood red washed across his vision as he grabbed the turtle and standing with difficulty beneath its weight, hurled it at the aquarium with all the force he could manage.
The glass exploded in an earsplitting crunch. Slimy water cascaded, flooding the floor with writhing fish and a shower of multicolored gravel. Stuart hopped back awkwardly to avoid the deluge and nearly fell again.
As he watched the turtle slowly poke its head from its shell and begin to lumber into the bedroom, he realized it was Saturday. He didn’t have to go to work.
The day had been well spent, Stuart thought.
He savored the silence as he cracked his second bottle of cabernet. He suspected he should cut down on his drinking, but the now animal-less house seemed cause for celebration. Now only one problem remained.
It had been days since Stuart had seen anything of Marilyn except her back as she scurried into her studio. Their relationship had become more of a cold war than a marriage. He would give her one more chance, he decided, then it was over.
He marched down the hall and pounded on the studio door, being careful to avoid the splinters.
“In case you haven’t noticed,” he shouted, “I’ve gotten rid of your animals. Every damn one of them!”
Silence.
“This is your last chance, Marilyn, either come out of there right now and come to bed . . . or I’m leaving you!”
Silence.
“To hell with you, then!”
Upstairs, Stuart quickly packed a suitcase and zippered a few suits into carrying bags. First thing in the morning he would take a hotel room in the city, something close to work, while he looked for an apartment. Of course that would be temporary. He knew a good divorce lawyer, and one way or another he would make sure the house remained in his name. As for women, he’d never had trouble finding one in the past, and he didn’t expect to have trouble finding another one now.
Stuart awoke in the middle of the night to hear footsteps on the stairs. For a moment he was startled, but then he saw his wife’s familiar silhouette, framed by the hall light, as she paused in the bedroom doorway.
At last, his waking mind thought with satisfaction, she’d come to her senses.
Yet as Marilyn moved across the room, Stuart sensed that something was wrong . . . terribly wrong. For although it was his wife who lowered herself onto the bed beside him, she now seemed to smell exactly like William.
“Marilee . . .?” he whispered hesitantly.
In the dark, Stuart reached out to touch his wife’s arm . . . and suddenly realized how hairy it had become. He heard a fierce growl rising from deep within her throat. He felt the claws of her nails, impossibly long, as she ripped the pajama top from his chest.
Sounds
Kathryn Ptacek
The author of Ghost Dance and In Silence Sealed (writes reviewer T. Liam McDonald in From the Time Tunnel) crafts “powerful” horror and is “probably one of the most underrated writers of dark fantasy,” the author of subject being Kathryn Ptacek. Not “K. Ptacek” or some such maiden name madness as “K. Collinsworth Ptacek.” Kathryn, as in “Kathy.”
And yes, her writing is “potent,” “forceful,” and one I like from my thesaurus: “equal to.” As in, “equal to other respected writers of horror.” In fact, her anthologies Women of Darkness and Women of Darkness II—the latter published last winter by Tor—powerfully advanced the careers of other people who agree with what she argued in The Blood Review (January ’90): “Stop saying men write one kind of horror, and women another.” Kathy also edits The Gila Queen’s Guide to Markets, an excellent addition to Janet Fox’s Scavenger’s Newsletter. I recommend each with enthusiasm.
Darkness came into being because, as Ed Bryant has also observed, few horror anthologies were being published with more than one female contributor, many with none. In hope that Ms. Ptacek will soon have reason to edit books with room for writers who have first names like “Gerald,” let me note that four Masques books have contained 14 works by an even dozen women, the number per volume increasing with my growing awareness of the deficit. For sheer boasting, I’ll mention that my How to Write Tales of Horror; Fantasy and Science Fiction featured seven females. Where do I find them? Check out the quintet in this anthology, and go read writing by Katherine Ramsland, Ardath Mayhar, Sharon Baker, Diane Taylor, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Anne Rice, Melanie Tem, Kathleen Jurgens, Yvonne Navarro, Jeannette Hopper, and . . . Ptacek. I heard somewhere that the author of Frankenstein was a woman!
In Gauntlet, Nancy Collins (Sunglasses After Dark) was asked by editor Barry Hoffman if “female representation in anthologies” is presently an example of censorship. Like Hopper in my how-to, Ms. Collins wound up with this kind of thought: “There are only two kinds of writers in the world; Good Writers and Bad Writers.”
Exactly. Here’s a good one.
Hammer, hammer, hammer.
Faye Goodwin pursed her lips, sighed and pulled the pillow over her head. Damned roofers.
Hammer, hammer.
Even through the thickness of feathers, she could still hear the whacking of the workmen’s hammers on the slate roof next door.
She opened an eye. Read the clock. 7:07. In the morning, for God’s sake, on her one day off this month—a Friday to make a long and very welcome weekend—and she had to be awakened by that damned whacking.
Someone started a buzzsaw. She winced. She glanced over at her husband, Tommy, lying serenely on his back, one arm flung over his face. He was soundly asleep, would remain soundly asleep no matter what noise followed.
She envied him. She sighed, punched up her pillow, closed her eyes. She would fall asleep again and sleep until nine, maybe even ten, and then—
A drill whined.
She sat up in bed.
“W-What?” her husband mumbled, only disturbed a little from her abrupt motion. Then he was asleep again, snoring mildly.
Snoring.
There’d be no more sleep for her today.
She shook her head, pushed the covers back and got out of bed. She went to the window in the hallway and stared out at the workmen. They went on their ways blithely, completely unaware of her baleful glare.
She knew the workmen had to get an early start or they’d be working too many hours in the 90-plus temperatures under a burning sun. But still. Couldn’t they go about these improvements a little more silently? She grinned at the thought. She went into the bathroom, washed her face, and even over the running water she could hear the rapping.
Ignore it, she told herself, not for the first time. She tried to blot out the alien sound, tried to concentrate on the rushing water, a much more serene sound. A gentle, soothing frequency, hypnotic almost, peaceful and—
Tap, tap, tap.
No good.
She stepped into the shower, turned on the water full blast, and only then under the stinging stream did the other noise fade away.
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