by Bruce Jones
“Problems at work, I’m guessing.”
Peterson smiled weakly. “Not exactly.”
“I’m pryin’.”
“No, it’s okay. I think we’re friends now. My wife left me. Simple as that.”
“But not simple at all, eh? Widowed man myself. Know the feeling.”
Still? Peterson doubted, eyes drooping comfortably. Maybe he would sleep tonight.
Marston patted his arm paternally, smiled crinkles. “You brought back the kitchenware within the hour. That’s good, son. A good boy.”
Peterson shrugged. “It’s nothing.”
“Oh, but it is. It’s a lot. It says a lot.”
“Does it?”
The old man’s expression evened. “Durn right. Means you’re a person can be trusted. And that means something these days, ‘specially these days.”
Peterson smiled sleepily. He suddenly recognized the odor now deep in the old man’s flannel robe: incense.
Marston nodded, appraising the other man intently. “You’re an Aries, I bet.”
“I am.”
Marston’s head bobbed enthusiasm. “Thought as much! Yep. You got all the signals, I kin tell! All the vibes, as the young ones say.” He stood there a long moment more that almost became uncomfortable before adding. “You get some sleep now, here. Things are gonna work out for ya.”
Peterson waved as the old man limped down the shadowed hall. “Thanks again,” he called, “thanks a lot Mr. Marston!”
“Always glad to help!”
He couldn’t sleep.
Not that the old man’s seltzer hadn’t done the job; it had. But all he could do tonight was lie there in the dark and rerun the same familiar home movies in his mind, the ones that always starred Glenda. Only it was worse tonight, worse than it had been in weeks; maybe feeling trapped inside by the weather, and the curtains of sleet outside reminded him of that final evening with her…or maybe tonight he was finally admitting to himself that she never was going to call, it had been his private delusion, ongoing denial; he was never going to see her again and that was the truth of it. And life without her really wasn’t life at all. He’d once known a brief lofty peak of existence, of golden days and wondrous nights…but he could never climb that beckoning edifice again. Never. When the very best of life is behind you, all that followed would pale in mocking comparison. And he was tired of the mocking…so very tired.
By two a.m. he had given up the idea of putting her sweet, smiling face out of his mind.
By three a.m. he had thought he might finally be on his way to a painless method of suicide.
At four a.m. there was a gentle rap at the door.
Something turned deep in his chest. He couldn’t image frail old Marston still up and about at this hour. Was it a special delivery from work? Had he been fired, too many days off lately? Whatever he imagined to find on the other side of the dark-framed apartment door didn’t prepare him for the shock of what was there. He pulled back the knob wearily. Looked into the dim hall and felt his heart stop.
Glenda stood smiling meekly up at him, eyes glistening. “Robert.”
He felt for a moment he might quite literally fall straight through the floor like some ethereal ghost…slip down into some other dimension that could only be another heartbreaking dream, another torture to wake to. He closed his eyes, jammed them shut a moment…opened them again. And she was still there. Really there. Not a dream at all. As real as the dreary apartment around her. She was back.
He couldn’t seem to find his voice. Couldn’t yet conceive it was truly happening. Yet there she was, there she was. There could be only one Glenda, and there she was before him.
It was she who finally broke the spell. She reached out a trembling hand, touched his chest tentatively from the doorway, looked up at him with the eyes of a lost child. “Robert. I’m…please…it’s cold…”
He shook it off instantly, flung the door wide, stepped back. “I-I…of course! I’m sorry! Come in! Come in!”
Arms wrapped tightly about her from the outside chill, she glided meekly into the room, turned shyly on threadbare carpet as he closed the door. Closed it and locked it. Locked out the night and the chance of ever losing her again. He could only stare for a moment. She was never more lovely.
“Glenda! I…--“
She rushed to him, pressed a cool finger to his lips, then moved warmly into his arms, held him, pulled him close, breathed into his ear. “Shh! Don’t talk, darling! Don’t let’s waste another second! Just hold me! Hold me!”
He held her. They wept together.
* * *
She pulled him toward the darkened bedroom, lay back on the blankets, golden hair spilling out like a halo about her. She held out her arms. “Please, Robert…if you still want me…”
If he still wanted her!
And it was perfect. In all the years he had known her, nothing compared to the next hour. Later, he would recall phrases like ‘total unity’ and ‘complete euphoria,’ but even that didn’t adequately describe it. If the poet had ever successfully defined the meaning of true love they wouldn’t still be trying, still, after endless ages past, endless ages to come, be writing about it. All Robert Peterson knew for sure was that life suddenly became possible again. And he swore to himself—swore to her—he’d never, never let her out of his sight. She silenced him again with her soft palm and snuggled tight against him. Outside the first visible stars in day shone brightly in icy clear sky. Tomorrow was going to be a splendid day.
* * *
“I have to go.”
He turned to her in the darkness, the shadow-swept bedroom. It didn’t register. Not after what they’d just been together, created together. “Go? Where? Glenda, I love you! I’ll always love you. I don’t want us to be apart again, ever!”
She sat up, staring solemnly at the dim outline of the bedroom door. “I can’t deny I feel the same, darling.” She swallowed thickly. “But I can’t stay with you tonight, Robert.”
She sat up, slipped to the edge of the mattress. He grabbed her arm. She turned and looked down at him as if praying he could dissuade her.
He talked then. He talked for a long time and he put everything he felt into his words. He talked about love and he talked about forever and he talked about two people standing together as one. He talked about life with her in his arms. He talked about the absence of life without her.
And when he was done, there were tears in his eyes and tears on her cheeks. She moved to him tenderly and placed a cool hand on his cheek and looked at him the way she’d never looked at him before. It was a look of great longing.
And then she ran.
“Glenda!”
She was out of the bed and at the door so quickly he hardly had time to be startled.
“Glenda!”
He vaulted from the bed, grabbed his jeans, leapt after her. But his legs tangled in the bedclothes, which dragged at him, pulled him down. He tore free and lurched for the living room.
In the small hallway he skidded to a halt, looking everywhere at once. “Glenda!” A frigid draft whipped his bare legs from the open front door. He rushed down the narrow corridor frantically, trying to hook his jeans. By the time he got organized he was in the parking lot bucking a black wall of Arctic wind. The fresh fallen snow bore no tire marks. Had she taken a cab here?
Peterson turned, heart hammering in his ears, lurched back to the lobby door. He’d call the police and get help: that was the thing to do! He rushed inside, started back to his apartment--noticed old man Marston’s door down the dim hall. It stood ajar. If Marston had a car! He bolted for the opening.
Peterson pushed inward, stepped inside.
It was pitch black except for a pale greenish light pulsing from somewhere ahead. “Mister Marston! It’s Peterson! Where are you?”
He made his way furtively through the gloom, feeling like a blind man for invisible objects, hidden furniture, eyes trying to bore into the darkness, penetrate indefinab
le shapes. He kept glancing down. A lake of emerald tendrils misted at his ankles, became a stream, guiding him. Then, a rich, overwhelming stench--searing his nostrils. Peterson craned away, gagging, covered his mouth, stumbled on. “Marston!”
That’s when—eyes finally adjusting to the gloom—he noticed the books. There must have been hundreds of them, thousands, virtually walls of them in all sizes and colors. A hedge maze of books, some in teetering stacks higher than his head. In the pulsing glow they swelled and shrank gelatinously, towering sentinels arranged in a kind of deliberate semi-circle just ahead of him. “Marston!”
Peterson’s moved closer, eyes burning, saw the fat, oriental floor braziers, oozing green smoke, one aligned at each end of a series of angular lines, a five-pointed star chalked crudely at room’s center. It was around this the towers of ancient-looking tomes looked down.
Something lay at the star’s center. A woman’s figure, supine and still sprawling the livid lines of chalk.
Or what had once been a woman.
Little remained of the face save a layer of parchment thin skin stretched mummy-like over protruding cheekbones, sunk deep in hollow eyes. The odor was terrible now. Her hair…
…her golden hair spilled out like a halo around her…
Peterson’s mind went white.
There was movement behind him. He spun, found the old man hunched naked, an emaciated gargoyle. Yellow eyes burned anger and betrayal. A bony finger indicated the thing on the floor.
“An hour!” the old man hissed. “I told her to be back within the hour! She promised!”
The yellow eyes accessed Peterson’s bereft of compassion. “Died that night she left your home last March. Car turned over in the ice. I thought you’d like to see her one more time, I did, always glad to help out! But I can’t hold the spell past an hour! I told her to be back in one hour!”
Peterson sagged. Then chuckled insanely.
An hour. An hour.
It took him far longer than that to stop screaming…
For those interested in keeping track of such things, this story—this last one for Something Waits--was also the last one to appear in the original 1987 Twisted Tales trade paperback. It’s only the second time the story has seen print and it wasn’t originally intended for that first collection. Back then, going over the material for Twisted Tales, I decided a couple of pieces might not be palatable to 1980’s reader’s tastes, some being derived from hairy chested men’s magazines of the decade before, a little raw around the edges for a family-oriented publishing house like Blackthorne. That none of them feels that way now is, I suppose, a sign of the times. But removing those stories, I felt, made that first collection slightly wanting in word count. It needed one more tale to fatten up the book. So I sat down in 1987 just before publication and penned (in long hand in those days) a story I’d been meaning to get to for ages. And that’s the one that follows.
As stated, many of the stories for this present iteration were taken (and refurbished in some cases) from the above mentioned Twisted Tales--but not all. Some that appeared in the old collection were left out of this new collection because I wanted the new book to lean most heavily toward my mystery/horror yarns (with the exception of “Pride of the Fleet”, I guess). In their place I’ve included some new stories—to my mind—some of my best.
Over the years I’ve gotten a lot of kind requests from fans to reprint the Twisted Tales short story collection in its original form. I often seriously considered it. That volume is long out of print and had a somewhat limited run to begin with. Some out there weren’t even aware of the stories, then or now. But after a time I realized their relative scarcity—including the terrific Richard Corben illustrations inside—lent a kind of nostalgic mystique to that first collection I hated to tarnish. Some people actually collect my stuff and might not be thrilled with the idea of making it readily available again.
Also, I was never very thrilled with the ongoing confusion generated by Twisted Tales the prose short story collection, and “Twisted Tales” the comic books. They had little to do with each other except having been authored by the same writer, but the identical titles sometimes caused trouble. EBay hopefuls sometimes purchased a book of short stories while expecting a stack of comics—and vice versa. To eliminate the problem this time out, I updated not only the stories themselves but the title as well. Adding the new tales to this latest collection further distances the two editions and offer a nice bonus to you faithful readers.
So, what you will hold in your hands (or Kindle, or Nook) with Something Waits is not a clone of Twisted Tales. Several stories from that now rare collection not included here are: “Roomers”, “Jessie’s Friend”, “Black Death”, etc. If you want to read those nightmares, you’ll need to dig up a battered copy of Twisted Tales online or at Half Price Books. Or, if this volume proves popular, wait until they’re included in yet another compendium of my early New York scribblings.
Meanwhile, here’s one more. If you have a Jones for yet more Jones, please feel free to sample (uh-oh: commercial coming!) my novels as well, gut-wrenching goodies like The Deadenders or Shimmer or The Tarn. Send one to a friend, they make dandy Christmas presents or…funeral tokens, or something: the gifts that keep on giving. Not unlike those to be found in private little clubs like the one below, that caters somewhat exclusively to
Mr. Conway had passed the little shop a thousand times without once thinking about it.
This does not mean he wasn’t aware of it. He was. He didn’t, in fact, much like it. But he didn’t think about it, didn’t dwell on it, because cold weather was cold weather and restless nights were restless nights and little porno shops at Central and Sixth were whatever in heaven’s name they were supposed to be and there was nothing much you could do about such things. Something about freedom of the press, Mr. Conway supposed.
So he ignored the freezing Chicago winters, suffered though the acid indigestion that too many bottles of Sominex can provide, and drove airily past the dun colored little porno shop. Every day. On his way to work.
Except today.
Today he pulled before the red street light that shared the corner with the dingy little shop as usual. Glanced casually askance at the shop’s front and the clumsy attempts at rhetorical seduction (Beaver Books! Nudes! Must be 17!) and snorted self-sanctification. What was the world coming to? Turned back in disgust to appraise the red light—now turning green—he depressed the pedal and shot away. About two yards. After which the car stalled a moment, then quietly died.
“Oh for God—“ Mr. Conway twisted the silvery ignition key again. Nothing. He twisted it three more times, imploring nonexistent vehicle deities, twisted some more, cursed nonexistent vehicle deities, cursed the guy behind him leaning on his horn obnoxiously, finally flopped back impotently behind the wheel in resigned defeat. The street light turned red again. The guy behind him kept leaning on his horn. Mr. Conway twisted at the stupid key again, banged his knuckles furiously against the wheel, finally rolled down his window to Arctic winds and signaled the jerk behind him around with a freezing arm. Retrieved his cell phone from his expensive Armani overcoat and punched in The Auto Club. Noticed the little screen was blinking up apologetically at him: BATTERY NEEDS CHARGING.
Well, he was going to be late for work, that was obvious.
Not, he supposed, that it mattered a great deal. He’d hand trained his hand-picked staff to practically run the place without him. Wasn’t he, after all, the boss? Didn’t he own the most successful advertising agency in Chicago? Didn’t he still gross millions annually while the rest of the country wallowed in recession? Damn right he did.
So a little stalled Boxter problem on a Wednesday morning of a slow work financial week was, in the scheme of things, hardly a crisis. He’d simply have to find a phone somewhere, call the Auto Club. Be on his way again before lunch. Meanwhile, Stan, his partner and right hand, could watch the store. Run the store if it came to that. Stan was a miracle. Stan wa
s the greatest sales representative Mr. Conway had ever seen—ever hired. That was six years ago this month. In the interim months of remarkable growth, Stan had gotten out there in the field, dazzled and tap danced and secured clients like crazy, furnishing Conway and Associates with some of its highest paying accounts. Microsoft? Was it really true their company represented Microsoft now? Damn right it was. And wunderkind Stan Waterman was largely responsible. Had they made the cover of both Fortune and Time in the same week? Damn right they had, while continuing, in these economically challenged times, to run roughshod over the competition. Which is why Conway and Associates had gladly altered the logo on its company stationary to Conway and Waterman Associates, simultaneously cementing not only a new family member but a new family of blue chip accounts and Dow Jones averages. Oh, C. J. Conway knew how to pick ‘em, all right, where to find ‘em. Instinct, that was the answer. Like his father before him. He could find talent. He could find a panther eating licorice in a coal bin at midnight, as they laughed with him and patted his back at company parties. He could find anything.