Nightmare Ballad

by Benjamin Kane Ethridge

  Right?

  “Are we going to wait a while?” the cabbie asked Dara.

  Maribel stood from the table, idly laughing. She followed the other two through a side door near a glittering tropical pool.

  What was going on inside that house? With every bizarre thing that was happening, the answer could be in Dara’s reach…or the knowledge of something she’d never be prepared for.

  The cabbie grunted his impatience and leaned his bald head back on the rest.

  Dara resolved to just go home. There was too much going on right now and maybe she could discuss it with Luke—but he’d never really listen to her, would he? Because she was the one with time on her hands, the unemployed twit that would gin up all manners of controversies in the name of making herself the victim—that’s what he’d inevitably think.

  And Maribel would be beyond difficult to approach. If she didn’t want to come clean, she would be the mother who dismissed the child. That was in her power and she would use her superiority. Why else would she have gone down and chewed out those people at GeoGreen? Only because she knew Dara wouldn’t confront her about it.

  Sometimes Dara was uncertain if she lived in the same world as her husband and wife. Their perspectives were so different, and yet, they were married, so they should have been a single mind with only one viewpoint. But it wasn’t so. Reality was cloven in three for them and whether she undermined them by doing so, Maribel had always been the one to reconcile the pieces.

  The cabbie cleared his throat and adjusted the meter, so she could see the red digits slowly climbing in price. It didn’t matter. Dara was frozen in her thoughts of what might be happening in that house.

  Early on she dreaded that Maribel only stayed because she was trapped by her love for Luke. That scenario was pleasant compared to what this might be: Maribel might not want to be with either of us anymore. She was tired of fighting their battles for them, tired of stroking their damaged egos, and tired of getting nothing substantial in return.

  Dara could try to get information out of Maribel later. She could open her anniversary letter early. She could continue to hope the answers would make themselves known.

  “Ma’am?”

  “I’m getting out here,” Dara replied.

  After she paid, the cabbie reached through the window and handed her his business card.

  “I shouldn’t be long,” she told him. “I’ll give you a call.”

  The man nodded, gave her a two-fingered peace sign and drove off in a hurry.

  Dara crossed the street to get out of view from the fence line, in case they returned outside. The house was a large, pre-economy-bust, middle-class luxury palace: a fountain in the front yard, in the side yard, one across from the pool (fucking fountains everywhere!). Who were these people? Maribel should have told them if she was visiting friends.

  Maybe she had? Maybe she told Luke while Dara was passed out on the bed, but that hardly mattered now, because she couldn’t call the big dork to find out, could she?

  Dara crept over and caught sight of the massive double-door entryway. The impulse to knock came quickly and left quickly. There had never been a breach of trust between them before. How would Maribel react to this?

  Dara sidled up against the fence. She could hear voices in the house. A figure drifted past the sheer white linen drapes looking out to the patio.

  Surprisingly for an open neighborhood, the gate had no lock, just a latch. Dara wasn’t sure if this was good fortune or bad.

  Heart pounding, she lifted the latch and pushed the gate opened. She pressed against the house, shimmied over to the bat-wing doors leading to a salon. If she could just hear something that would give the situation away, she could leave. Mention teaching. Mention that Maribel teaches one of your kids. Mention something that will free me from this foolishness.

  “We want you,” the lady’s voice rose from the hallway.

  The tone couldn’t be distinguished from outside. It didn’t mean what it sounded like. Maribel was too loyal. She was incapable of infidelity, and even so, she wasn’t exclusive to threesomes for Pete’s sake. She wouldn’t go out of her way to get into another complex arrangement. There are a lot of impossible things happening right now. Maybe this is a nightmare?

  Dara shook her head. No. The music was not completely formed. Still present and ready to leap full bore into her mind, but not playing the entire song. Whatever nightmare had fallen on the other side of town had no effect here. She hoped Luke had stayed clear of it. Looking back, in her attempts to get him to understand, she’d perhaps mentioned that curtain too much. Damnit! Why hadn’t he taken his phone!

  Why am I here and not out looking for him?

  She slipped through the bat-wing doors and saw herself in a mirror in the corner of the salon. Dara watched herself in disgust. What am I, seventeen? Jealous? Suspicious? What are you doing here idiot?

  Then….

  “...put it in me…cock!” Maribel said and a rustling sound, maybe amorous laughter followed.

  Dara went to the open hallway. That couldn’t have been what Maribel said. She had to have misheard her. Light blue shadows shifted on the walls. The pool’s reflected light rippled there. More sounds of conversation. Light. Intimate. Emotional.

  Cold-hot sensations surged across Dara’s skin. How could you do this to us Maribel? After all we fought for…

  She skulked into the hallway, again, promising to go only as far as she needed to hear proof. She didn’t want to see anything. Hell no. Not that. In the other room, nobody was talking. The only sound was an oscillating fan. Dara passed a small dressing room. These houses were incredible! How could anybody have ever afforded them?

  A door rattled shut, echoing through the house. Dara moved quickly. The hallway took two turns, one led into a vast kitchen and the other dead-ended at a large window hung with more white drapes. Footsteps snapped on the tile floor. The sound of a refrigerator door opening. Dara moved behind the drapes.

  “That took a lot out of me,” said the man with a tired sigh. “But it’s what we wanted. Right?”

  “I’m happy if you’re happy.”

  “I’m happy.”

  A can popped open and the fridge shut.

  “I’m going back out by the pool for a bit.”

  “She’s with us now. We’re not going to celebrate?”

  “Later.”

  “You sure you’re happy?”

  A pause. “Of course I am. She’s wonderful.”

  The woman came into the hallway, and through the semi-translucent curtains Dara watched her. She had a little smile on her worn but pretty face. Triumph glowed in that smile.

  A car started up outside. From her vantage point Dara could see half of the front yard, the rest obscured by palm tree fronds. Out in the street, Maribel’s mini-Cooper circled around and took off faster than the cabbie had.

  Dara stared numbly. Maribel left. Gone. And I’m still here. Shit!

  From outside came the sounds of splashing. The woman was swimming now. That was good. There might be a chance to slip out.

  The man appeared in the hall. He was tall, well built, except for a slight gut. Coors Light in his hand, he whistled sweetly as he went into the salon.

  Look’s like I’m waiting here a while.

  “Hon, I’m going to turn off the air and open the windows in the hall,” he yelled.

  Jesus Christ….

  Dara fled into the hallway, through the kitchen—stopped midway at the large sliding-glass door overlooking the pool. The woman frolicked happily through the water, while the man stood there, slouching, watching her, sipping his beer.

  Dara spotted another hall on the other side of a dividing wall. The wall ended in a large door with a chain on it. She went for it.

  The sliding glass door swooshed on its rail.

  An alcove with a grand piano became Dara’s hiding place. She ducked underneath the large instrument and scooted to the wall as far as she could.

 
; If he sits down and plays, I’m going to lose it!

  She heard windows bumping in their frames, opening around the house, one by one. Some of them sounded far off, but she dared not emerge.

  “Did you water all the plants out front?” the man called. Dara couldn’t hear the woman’s reply, but soon she saw the man’s flipflopped feet snapping down the hall.

  The chain rattled and the front door opened.

  That rattling reminded Dara of a note in the song.

  The Nightmare Ballad.

  Dara could hear the balladeer singing now, giving her every note, depriving her of nothing. The atmosphere in the house changed from lighted angles to gritty shadows. She cowered at the small demonic profiles pulling themselves up and out of those slippery wells of anti-light. It wouldn’t do any good to stay here and let them get her. This was happening. All of this.

  On her knees, she edged to the hall. A black curtain had fallen over the front door, and of course it should, because she had never been to the front porch. But the man of the house was right outside….

  Dara waited there, trying to figure out what to do, all the while wheezing ghouls watched her from the wallpaper on the adjacent wall. Her eyes opened wider, trying to cancel them out through reason, but rather than clarity coming, everything dimmed.

  The nightmare made the room a blur.

  Chapter 16

  The pain shot through Luke’s back.

  And through his heart. Through his mind. His consciousness. Soul. How long would this go on? Every major organ in his body had made itself known, crying out, “I’m weakening, I’m failing, stop this from happening!” But with Luke’s every protest Petunia tightened her grip, and the painful despair had nearly blacked him out several times. Occasionally he would tug at his arm, but it was stuck between the storm drain’s bars.

  He wanted to live, but flirtatious thoughts of embracing death strengthened the nightmare around him. It wanted him to give up. The dandelion orbs of luminosity cast from the plant’s streetlights developed savage, eager eyes and radiant fangs. Shallow sewage puddles raced around in vortices that crackled with invisible electricity. Vast security railings around the headwork and aerator ponds stretched for the sky, the steel running together, lacing into a mesh—a web, that seethed with purple insects. Luke squinted to focus. They were a living version of the toy in the voodoo box that held his duck and Johnny’s two dollar bill. Lucidity touchstones….

  The duck had brought Luke’s awareness of the dream, but it hadn’t given him any control here. Now he had to feel the burden of the sinister yoke tied to Petunia. Feeling how terrible it was brought tears to Luke’s eyes. Had he known back in the pool…had he known how the duck joined him to these living nightmares…he would have prevented her from touching it.

  He should have tried harder to listen to Dara. It had just been natural to dismiss everything she told him.

  It didn’t want you to know.

  Too late anyway. The pale, oblong forehead dotted with perspiration, the alien’s shark-black eyes said it all; Petunia was getting her revenge now. Luke couldn’t hold on much longer. He knew if he gave in and accepted death, the nightmare would eat him up.

  For survival, his mind wandered.

  Back on the scaffold, had those women who tackled me manifested because it was how I felt about myself? Or how Johnny felt about me? Grover had been a bumbling idiot with that track hoe and that had to have been Johnny’s impression of the man, not the real actions of the man.

  It wasn’t all random. So how did these living hallucinations come to be? From my perceptions, or his?

  Or from the singer of the song?

  Or all of us?

  It was getting darker, and draped behind the largest digester tank, the black curtain appeared to weaken in the gloom, almost to the point of invisibility.

  How would Johnny find it to escape? He might be trapped in this nightmare until sun-up. Or he was dead, but the nightmare lived on.

  No, don’t think that way.

  You’ll never see him again.

  No.

  You’ll never see Dara or Maribel again.

  No.

  “NO! GOD NO!”

  Luke ripped his hand from between the bars, and bones twisted and shattered from his wrist to his elbow. Reflectively he used the injured hand to strike at the alien. His knuckles connected with her face, and Petunia reeled back in petrified shock, like something sealed in fluid at Hanger 18.

  He hadn’t even realized he’d brought the duck out in his mangled hand, and when he punched her, the toy made contact.

  “More?” the alien asked in terrified wonder.

  Her back arched at an extreme angle, she convulsed and cried out, then exploded into a column of gore. Luke covered his head, feeling blood and tissue swathe his neck and soak his shirt. The fecal smell tinged the air with a metallic tang.

  Wiping bloody matter from his hair, Luke stole a glance at the nasty aftermath. Petunia’s pastel yellow blouse and blue jeans had been reduced to clumps of fabric and string, the pieces hurled with her flesh and bones in a dramatic star formation that expanded from the spot she’d stood. Luke screwed his eyes shut and staggered to his feet. He couldn’t think of the girl, the real person, who had died right here. It would be too much. It would prevent him from moving on. He had to go and go now. He had to get out to that field and find Johnny.

  His body felt dried out and cracked inside, like he was severely dehydrated. He shambled down a ramp to a chain-link gate off the service road. In the growing darkness, the weeds were talking to him, offering to poison his ankles if he got close enough. He hurried on through the dirt, avoiding the tumble weeds that made scratchy pleas to skin him. For the most part, the field looked real, maybe as seen through a darker prism, but this was the field behind the wastewater treatment plant—he’d stood here when surveying the land for the centrifuge project. It looked the same, from the dirt clods to the dead yellow vegetation.

  He stopped on the road and his breathe caught in his chest.

  Johnny Cruz sprawled over a dirt hill, clawed to hell, blood cascading from his long black hair, down his temples, through his bandito mustache, and all over his t-shirt. He wasn’t dead. He rested there, hands behind his head, long shorts pulled down to his ankles, watching two nude, bloody women sixty-nining each other.

  Luke shook off the disturbing sight and ran down to meet him. “Johnny! Hey man get up! You have to!”

  Johnny turned to him with bewildered eyes. “What are you doing here Luke?”

  “Come on, quickly, to the curtain. This isn’t real.”

  “Like hell it ain’t! Fuck you Luke. You think I can’t be happy too? Who the hell are you? What? You’re the only man who can have two women? Ugly, fat pieces of shit like me don’t get the same, is that right? You aren’t better than me. Don’t you dare make me sound jealous either! I’ve never been jealous. Not once! Back off! You owe this to me.”

  One woman lifted her face from the other’s slick pubic mound, bloody thigh prints pressed into her cheeks like repulsive rouge. Luke gasped, despite knowing he could see anything here. It was Johnny’s ex-wife Lisa—she was alive again, but something wasn’t right in her eyes.

  “Don’t stop,” whispered the other—Johnny’s first wife, Mandy. She bent her leg. In the garter belt, hung a two-dollar bill.

  “That’s it!” Luke frantically tugged at his friend’s pants, trying to untangle them from around his legs. “You have to—”

  Johnny caught Luke’s throat with astonishing power. His wet fingertips dug into Luke’s skin. Luke tried to disengage him, but one hand was jacked up and the other wasn’t enough.

  “Goddamn you!” Johnny’s mouth dripped with slobber. “God. Damn. You! Shit! You think you’re some fuckin’ hero? You’re as afraid as I am. But I don’t care if I die without an inspiring story. You want something triumphant, something valiant, and guess what? Sometimes things just end. There isn’t anything heroic. No story. Just
a punchline. That’s it. Grim Reaper pulls you down and you’re done. You’re over. The End. No details. Glorious, good, bad or horrible. Just…done. Fuck you for coming here!”

  With a disgusted sigh, Johnny released Luke’s neck. He sank back and stared coldly.

  “Johnny,” coughed Luke. “You have to take that two-dollar bill. Take it…man.”

  “What for?”

  “Take it!”

  Mandy looked flighty. A demon’s smile cut into her face. She leapt up about to run. Luke grabbed her foot with his bad hand and screamed out in pain. “Go on, Johnny! Take it, and I’ll leave you alone. Promise.”

  “Is that all?” Johnny shook his head and reached over. Mandy thrashed to get away. “Settle down, baby. Don’t worry. I’ll give it back—”

  She writhed to get away from him, but Johnny pinned her hip with his shoulder and pulled the two dollar-bill free.

  The stupid grin on Johnny’s face thinned, and he let the bill fall between his fingers. Mandy smirked as though it didn’t mean anything and went down on Lisa, trying to draw his attention once again. At first Luke thought she’d succeeded, but the big man pulled up his shorts and zipped them closed. He looked over at Luke, almost in tears. “This isn’t even real…is it? Are we on LSD?”

  “We have to get to that curtain before we lose sight of it,” said Luke.

  With a sad glance at the moaning women, he nodded.

  “I’m sorry.”

  The curtain drooped about twenty feet away, over a steep incline ending in what would have been a ravine if there was water around these parts. Saying nothing, Johnny stepped through the silken black folds, Luke at his side.

  Johnny’s silence didn’t last long.

  “Tell me what is going on!” He got so close he nearly bumped his belly into Luke. “That was a dream. Why am I not waking up? Why are we’re really standing out here?”

  “It’s both…,” Luke explained. “At the same time. It happens when you hear all of the music…the ballad.”