The music drifted closer. She almost heard the complete song. Where had she heard it before? It was familiar, yet unique.
Allie walked past her, heels clucking quickly, hatefully. Maribel couldn’t wait until the woman got relocated. What a pain in the butt she’d been. Opening the cupboard, the woman knelt and started pulling things out.
Maribel sighed. “Looking for something?”
“Why do we still have this diorama project?” Allie asked, pretending not to hear the question. “Is this like your little shrine to the one who got away?”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“These are your students, not your children. You should be their teacher, not their mother. It would help them.”
Maribel let another pile of workbooks fall with a loud snap on top of the others. “And why would I listen to you?”
“I thought you would, for a change.”
“Can we not begin our day like this? Please. Let’s just do our work.”
“You should throw this diorama away,” said Allie decisively. “It’s unhealthy to keep it here. Pathetic too.”
“I like keepsakes. But fine, do whatever you want with it.”
Allie stood and set the cardboard box on a desk. She stared down at it, one fist planted in her hip. “I wish others could see what I see, when I look at you.”
Maribel put fists into her hips. “Do I need to call the AP in here?”
Allie shrugged, snatched the diorama off the desk and strode off. She went into the quad between classrooms, and most likely would stay there, sulking, until the kids got their snacks.
Maribel supposed she’d have to put all the worksheets out on the tables herself. Oh well. All pays the same. Every page she took off the stack swished…gentle, breathlike, exhaling, beating….
The rhythm came all at once.
A stunning ballad filled her mind, just as her first student tapped at the door. Weird that she’d had such a difficult time recalling the song before. The balladeer sang in a magnificent range, from bass to tenor to alto to soprano and beyond. Drums pounded. Symbols crashed. A story emerged for the first and last time. A newborn and dying-old story.
Maribel didn’t like the song, but was in awe of it, as she opened the door to the smiling faces of her kids standing outside, already consumed by the infernal heat from the sun.
They all wore the same black shirts.
Wore the same white shorts.
The same tennis shoes.
Same bodies.
Faces.
Same smiles.
The same cyanide eyes.
Bowed, backs with the same crooked posture.
They moved the same ambling, out-of-control, out-of-their-mind way.
Shadow-beings with torn-out faces, who must have been their parents, shuffled back to rusted contraptions that must have been automobiles.
The children rushed inside the room, and Maribel gasped and retreated to a corner, watching them pass, the odor of sour milk wafting by.
No matter if the Kindergarteners had turned into other things, she had to keep control of them and control of the class. That was her job. She was good at it. She had to keep being good at it.
“Class, you have to get in a circle on the carpet.” Her voice was hoarse, unconvincing. “Class?” She tried to find the usual troublemakers, but the children’s new features all resembled the same haggard creature with the face of every bad student she’d ever had.
They ran around, tackling each other, punching each other, laughing and kicking each other. Maribel chased them but could never arrive in time to stop any of the misbehavior.
“Allie, can you come help me please?” she shouted.
Maribel waited, but the door to the quad didn’t budge.
“Allie!”
Frantic, she took out her cell phone. She normally never called home during class, but if Allie was going to be a jerk all day, maybe Luke could drop by. Sometimes the kids settled down when he showed up with lunch. After she dialed, she looked up…all the kids were hiding under the tables.
Giggling.
Smacking their lips.
Whispering.
“Luke?”
He’d picked up but didn’t say anything. Finally, “Yeah Maribel?”
“What’s up with you?”
“Nothing.”
“Hey, I need you to stop by the school real quick. These kids are really insane today—”
“Really…I just wanted to soak my hand in the bath. It still hurts, don’t you remember?”
She flinched and straightened. “Of course I remember…sorry.”
He sighed. “I spoke to Dara.”
His voice was small, like something coming from another lifetime; she couldn’t appreciate his morose tone, though she could slightly detect it. “Is Dara okay? Is there any news?”
“It’s not about that. What was in those letters, Maribel? There’s too much going on right now to play games.”
“We can discuss this tonight.”
A quivering breath escaped through the phone. “Did you go see someone the other day?”
Maribel watched one child break away from a huddle under a table. He leapt on the wall, one hand over the other, and with animal grace began climbing to the ceiling. A scream lay at the back of Maribel’s throat but her shock overcame it. “You’re not allowed to climb the walls!” she at last cried. She hung up on Luke and dropped the phone back in her pocket.
Stretched on her tiptoes, she reached for the child. Like an overgrown rodent, he sped around the ceiling.
“You’re going to fall! Get down…uh….” She tried to match the squealing child’s face with a name and could pull nothing up from her music-filled mind.
At a rising clatter Maribel turned. Twenty other children had climbed the walls, with the remainder trailing after them. She ran to those children closest to her, never able to reach any of them.
Allie walked in, carrying a small video camera. The red recording light was on. She was filming.
“Thank God. Allie! Help me! Don’t you see the kids?” Maribel stepped up on a desk. “We have to get them down from there.”
“This is my Truth Camera.” Allie’s voice was husky, almost aroused. “I can see you, Maribel. The real you.”
“Stop fucking around and help me!”
The children, like roaches skittering above, broke out in a chorus: she said fuck, she said fuck, she said fuck, she said fuck, she said fuck, she said fuck, she said fuck, she said…FUCK!
Maribel captured one child by the arm. He or She wouldn’t budge. Maribel pulled harder and the kid began to cry: “I’m telling my parents.”
“I’m telling the school,” another cackled.
You’ll be fired and fired and fired and fired and fired.
“You left David in the car, didn’t you?” one kid said and the others went ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww.
Allie stood there, breathing heavily as she filmed. Her hand slid down her pants.
Maribel hopped off the table. A sick feeling wrenched through her. She usually helped a fellow teacher, Mrs. Gable, with her nephew David in the morning. Gable was a nice lady but terribly forgetful. She relied on Maribel to help her get David out of his car seat and walked to preschool.
Through the window, she could see Gable’s car.
The only car in the parking lot.
The sun blared on the glass.
Maribel forgot about everything and flew outside. Allie followed her, moaning, the camera trained on her.
Immediately Maribel was by the car. David was inside, in his car seat, unconscious, asleep, dead. The doors were locked. She kicked at the driver’s window. Go get Gable from her classroom.
The school had changed. There were no doors or windows. Maribel yelled something incomprehensible, an animal word, and turned back to the car.
High above, Allie leaned over a branch on a sycamore tree, trying to get a better shot with her video camera.
It was get
ting hotter. The California sun changed from yellow to white.
Beyond the magnifying car windows, David’s flesh brightened to lobster red.
“Help me!” Maribel banged on the car. “Please! Help!”
Sweat poured off her as the sun roared overhead. Maribel tried to think up a plan. Nothing came.
Panic lifted through her, a scattering of mad doves.
Chapter 22
Nothing sobers you up like a jail.
Johnny had, unfortunately, discovered this a few times before, although never with this insistent, nagging collection of broken chords and staccato rhythms fighting at the edge of his mind. The ballad wanted through. It was almost needy in its persistence. He wished it would just suddenly go away again. He’d rather not be confined to a cell when a nightmare showed up.
His cellmate Roberto turned on his side. “Fuckin’ concrete hurts my back.”
“S’why I’m standing,” Johnny replied and leaned his forehead against the cold bars.
“You see any of those cochinos out there?”
“Nah, they’re off on donut break.”
“Bitches.”
“Well,” said Johnny drearily, “we were shitfaced.”
“Just doin’ their jobs, right. Could have just drove us home, yeah? My buddy had this cool cop take him home one time. Some pricks have all the luck.”
“What bar did they get you at?”
“Aye man, I wasn’t even at a damn bar. Fuckin’ Food For Less. Got in a fight with a checker.”
“That’s pretty damned funny.”
Roberto’s mouth twisted a moment. “Not really. The guy didn’t deserve it.”
Johnny went quiet. The ballad flexed against his skull like a new muscle expanding from cerebral tendons.
“Where were you at? A bar?” asked Roberto. He slid on the sticky concrete bench and sat upright. His wife beater had yellow sweat stains complemented by a spattering of orange vomit designs on the side. His bony face looked cheerless and wan.
“Shasta’s.”
“Holy shit. You went to that place? Is that where—?”
“Poisonings. Yes. I heard.”
Roberto accepted his curtness. “Cool place though?”
“Been going there a while.”
“You look pretty messed up. No offense.”
“Yeah, I guess I do.”
Roberto stared down at his split knuckles. “My guy didn’t fight back.”
“No?”
Roberto snorted and leaned forward, bowed his head into his hands. “Fuckin’ head is pounding. Wonder if these cops would give me a painkiller?”
“Don’t hold your breath.”
“I’d like to tell that checker I’m sorry, but I think he’ll probably press charges.”
“Why’d you do it?”
Roberto shrugged. “I’d been to the store about five…no four…uh, fuck, I don’t remember. I’d been drinking all day, kept going back for another forty of Old E.”
“Damn.”
“It was around the third time I noticed he was looking at me…reminded me how my mother used to look at me. She worried a lot. Pretty nice lady, mi madre. She uh…she killed herself over a boyfriend who cheated on her.”
“Sorry to hear that.”
“She didn’t do much for anybody…she did care about me though. Fuck, I don’t want to depress myself. I’ll shut up now.”
“Maybe you should.”
Roberto massaged the back of his tattooed neck, while Johnny concentrated on the white bricks in the room, taking in their size and shape, counting them, anything to distract his mind from the music puzzle quickening toward completion in his mind.
“Yeah but that checker. Older guy. Maybe sixty. He looked like he could have been my mom’s brother. All that worrying, those heavy hound dog eyes. I knew what he was thinking. He was thinking he was helping me kill myself, every bottle he sold me. I couldn’t take him looking at me like that. He finally did say some shit, said I should hold off or something like that. I got in his face. He didn’t like that and pushed me. Made me fall on my ass. I got up and beat the fuck out of him. Then I threw up on the bagger who pulled me off him.”
“That’s a very pretty story. In a shitty kind of way.”
Roberto’s incensed eyes rose from his hands. “Think I don’t know that?”
Johnny folded his arms. “You tell me, guy.”
“I consider myself a nice man. I don’t bother anybody. I’m not asking for anybody to care about me. You know?”
“Not really.”
Leaning back again, Roberto clicked his teeth nervously for a second. “Why hasn’t anybody come looking for you in here?”
“I’ve got people,” said Johnny.
“Lucky you. I can tell you wanna criticize me. Go ahead, dude, give it your best.”
“I ain’t fuckin’ criticizing nobody. I will give some advice though.”
“What’s that?”
“Buy enough beer the first time. Five trips? That’s stupid.”
Roberto laughed. “There’s always more trips, dude. Always.”
They were quiet for a few minutes. Roberto lifted his butt cheek up and let out a fart that trilled like a toy ray-gun. He chuckled and waved a hand before his nose. “Ah man, my apologies. Smells like a bag of chicarones in here.”
Johnny tried to ignore him, although the smell was formidable.
A young police officer with an auburn crew cut walked down the cellblock toward them.
“Can I make my call now?” Johnny asked.
The cop raised a finger for one moment, turned a corner, and vanished down another hall.
“I’m running away from my mom. I think that’s it. That’s why I keep screwing up,” Roberto said to himself. “Everybody’s running from something. It’s natural. It’s easy. We’re all cowards.”
Johnny stared at him. “Stop sharing. I’m not interested in your philosophy or problems. This isn’t a fuckin’ confessional in here. They put us here because we’re both Mexican and that’s the only goddamn reason. I have nothing else in common with you. I don’t want to have anything else in common with you.”
“Well, excuse me.”
Johnny went back to the bars and looked out the window across the hallway. A black curtain dropped from the sky.
“Shit…,” he whispered.
The music hadn’t come together in his mind yet. It was for someone else.
“Hey!” he yelled and went to the bars. “Hey! Officers! Hey! I want my call! Please let me make my call. Hey!”
He kicked at the bars but no sound, not even a vibration, came from the impact. “Officers!” he called again.
The cop from earlier strolled up to the bars. Everything about his face suggested exhaustion, his blond hair even sagging limply at the temples. He sighed out his nose. “What’s all the hollering about?”
“I really need to make my phone call, sir. I think my friend might be in danger.”
The cop smirked. “How would you know, big guy?”
Johnny impatiently pressed his lips together, drawing a blank.
“Oh I see. I need to drop everything I’m doing so the drunk with the premonition can make his phone call. Is there anything else I can fetch for you?”
“It’s not like that. Please.”
“I think you need a little more time to cook.”
“No!”
“What about me?” asked Roberto.
The cop just laughed and turned away.
“More people will be in danger if you don’t let me call,” Johnny shouted.
The cop looked over his shoulder and grinned, his teeth an entwined nest of fangs.
Johnny started back; the ballad, formed and completed, beautiful death, soared to a mind-splitting volume. He retreated from the bars until his back hit the wall.
Roberto sat in the same position, not noticing anything. He was too still, almost looked inhuman, one of those automated androids in an amusement park ride that l
ost power. Through the searing symphony, Johnny could hear the man’s individual breaths. The sound gave him goose bumps.
“Listen close. Believe me. Okay? This is a dream,” he explained to his cellmate.
Roberto’s eyes opened, and a skeptical expression bent his mouth. “Oh, how I wish it were.”
“Whatever happens, just do what I say.”
“I’m through talking to you, dude.”
“If we work together, we can get out of here.”
“Oh, brother,” said Roberto. “Stay away from me pendejo, got it?”
Johnny spotted something next to the concrete slab. The worn two-dollar bill had been folded in half sideways, but it was undeniably the same bill he’d touched to gain awareness before.
Lucidity Touchstones.
“What are you looking at?” Roberto followed his gaze. “How the hell did this get here?”
Johnny plucked the bill off the ground. The object’s magic must have been used up, because he felt nothing holding it now. He examined it. Nothing seemed different about it, other than the general weirdness of two-dollar bills.
With remarkable swiftness, Roberto snatched the money from his hand. “Lemme see.”
“Wait!” Johnny cried.
Roberto screeched and doubled over, dropping the bill. He held his stomach and ground his teeth.
“What’s happening?” Johnny asked him.
“We are in a DREAM,” Roberto glanced at him with blood-red eyes. “Your dream, you bastard…I don’t want it inside me. Why did you let it get inside of me?”
“Get away.”
Horns sprouted from the man’s forehead and his skin boiled red. “I’m a dollar devil now, and I’m giving you back your Hell.”
A barbed tail thumped on the floor behind the man.
“Listen to me.”
Roberto’s mouth parted and a forked tongue slid out. “You’re looking like my mother…I don’t need your sympathy.”
Johnny’s next words were cut off as the Devil collided with him. He was on the floor, the fiery face above him screaming and sulfurous. A clawed hand caught his throat and squeezed with ruthless supremacy. Roberto’s burden from the two-dollar bill flooded into Johnny. More of the ballad’s song invigorated the already lively rendition bursting through his consciousness. He was closer to the balladeer now, could almost feel the words of the song brushed on his ear lobes with soft lips.
Nightmare Ballad Page 21