Book Read Free

Visions of Fear - Foundations of Fear III (1992)

Page 50

by David G. Hartwell (Ed. )


  least not so I could see, and part of the time my duck had

  been flopping across the lawn after me I’d just been

  standing still watching it, not moving at all. So if Mother

  still wasn’t home tomorrow I’d put the goose in the

  microwave just before sunset and get it out in the yard all

  hot right when the sun went down to see if that would

  make the duck attack it.

  398

  Scott Baker

  Mother called in the next morning while I was cleaning up after breakfast to say she was going to be gone at least two more days because she had to take over liaison

  duty with the state police on an arson charge. I asked her

  if she’d had a chance to find out anything for me about

  James Patrick Dubic. She said, yes, he was still in prison,

  but even though his behavior there was very good and he

  was not only doing some sort of on-the-job-training

  program for some outside company that would look

  good to the parole board but had also volunteered for

  something called Aversion Therapy that was going to

  make it impossible for him to ever touch another bird

  again without getting sick and passing out, they still

  weren’t going to let him out for at least three or four

  more years.

  It wasn’t quite eight in the morning yet but I could still

  hear what sounded like a party in the background, a lot

  of drunks and yelling and music and laughing, or maybe

  she was in a bar or a gambling casino in Lake Tahoe or

  Reno or Las Vegas or wherever she was. I could tell she

  wasn’t anywhere close like she pretended she was because there was so much static on the line I could barely hear her.

  She told me to go down and see one of her friends at

  the station after school, Desk Sergeant Crowder, and

  he’d have twenty-five dollars for what she called my

  “baby-sitting time.” That made me really angry again,

  not that she was trying to bribe me to keep me on her

  side but that it was Sergeant Crowder who was covering

  up for what she was doing with the mess sergeant

  because even though he didn’t come around to see us

  nearly as much anymore as he used to, he’d always been

  one of Father’s best friends and Father thought he still

  was.

  After Mother hung up I told Father that she wasn’t

  going to be home for another two days but I didn’t

  mention anything about Sergeant-Crowder. He looked

  The Lurking Duck

  399

  unhappy, more miserable and hopeless than angry for a

  minute, but then he grinned at me even though I could

  tell he was making himself do it and said that in that case

  maybe I’d better dial the school for him so he could tell

  them that even though I was starting to feel a little better

  he wanted to keep me home with him for two more days

  to be sure.

  After the phone call I wheeled him into the living

  room and set everything up right for him and put a beer

  in his bottle, then I went back to the shed and got the

  duck. I didn’t bother to be extra careful this time, I just

  picked up the sack and dumped the log out of it into the

  middle of the backyard, then made sure the backyard

  gate was locked. 1 waited until the log started to hump in

  on itself then went back inside and drew all the curtains

  and locked the back door, so that nobody who happened

  to come by would see the duck.

  I played checkers and cards with father most of the

  morning— I moved all the checkers for him and we had a

  little rack set up so he could see the cards in his hand

  even when I couldn’t that he used when his friends came

  over to play poker— and I let him win a lot, even though

  I was better than he was. I fixed him a hot lunch around

  noon and refilled his bottle with beer two or three times

  and cleaned him up a bit before I left him in the living

  room with a new Ed McBain mystery in his reader

  because the afternoon TV looked pretty boring.

  Then I went down to the lake to watch the ducks for a

  while and think about my duck and what I was going to

  do with it, but also to keep a lookout and find out if there

  was anybody else there watching and trying to leam

  what’d happened to my duck. I didn’t think there would

  be, not with Dubic still in prison, and there wasn’t.

  About four o’clock I rode my bike over to the station

  and got the money from Sergeant Crowder. One of the

  other cops, somebody I didn’t know, came over just as if

  it was something he’d thought of doing on the spur of the

  400

  Scott Baker

  moment and told me what a good job my mother was

  doing and how much she was sacrificing for her work and

  how they hoped that pretty soon she could get the kind of

  rest she needed and stay at home like she wanted. I said

  that it was OK for me, I had school and everything, but

  that Father got a little lonely sometimes and Sergeant

  Crowder said it’d been too long since he’d come by to see

  us and that he’d drop in on us as soon as he had a few

  hours free. I said that would be nice.

  I got Father cleaned up before dinner, then put a whole

  Librium in his beer so I could cook the goose and

  everything without him smelling it or noticing I was

  doing anything strange. He fell asleep right at the table

  and I took him into his bedroom and put him to bed with

  plenty of time to get the goose cooked before sunset.

  I waited until the sun was almost entirely down, then

  put the goose in the microwave and turned it on to get it

  really, really hot. All the feathers got singed and it

  smelled really awful when I took it out because I had to

  leave it in a little longer than I’d planned so that I didn’t

  get it out in the yard too early, or it would have been too

  cold for the duck to attack it when the light went away.

  And I didn’t want to risk putting it out there too late,

  because then the duck might attack me, and I didn’t

  know how fast it could go on land when it was doing its

  scissors thing and not the thing where it came up from

  underneath the ducks like some sort of meatgrinder with

  claws.

  I propped the goose’s head up in position with toothpicks and then ran out and put it down at least ten yards away from the duck, then ran as fast as I could back into

  the house and slammed the door.

  The duck was already getting ready to attack the goose

  by the time I got turned around again with the door

  closed so I could watch it out the window. It had its neck

  stuck forward with its mouth wide open and it was doing

  its paddling thing and even though the way it was beating

  The Lurking Duck

  401

  its wings wasn’t quite enough to make it really fly it was

  still close enough so that the duck was sort of halfrunning and half-hopping across the lawn and it was going as fast as 1 could have run or maybe even faster

  until it got to the goose and then the scissors came out of

  its mouth and I was close en
ough this time to see the

  scissor blades were all jagged-edged like the saws butchers use before the duck cut the goose’s head off.

  The scissors went back into the duck’s mouth and it

  closed its bill and did that thing it’d done before, when

  it’d tried to dive down through the ground to get at me,

  only this time after it paddled a little it just stopped and

  turned back into a log.

  So I knew that all I had to do was get Mother out in the

  backyard away from any metal or the fences or the house

  when the sun went away and the duck would kill her. I

  could do it tomorrow night when she came home if I

  wanted to, or whenever I wanted to after that.

  It made me feel good. I wrapped the goose in tin foil

  and put it back in the freezer in case I found another use

  for it, then put the log back in its sack and hid it back in

  the shed. I was real excited and I rode my bike all the way

  to Lover’s Point and the Asilomar beaches in Pacific

  Grove because I felt so good and I was laughing to myself

  all the way there and back. Then I watched a late movie

  on TV, Thoroughly Modern Millie, and it was sort of

  stupid but fun anyway and I even laughed two or three

  times.

  But the next morning Father woke me up yelling

  because I was late with his breakfast and he had a

  hangover and because I’d put him to sleep so early the

  night before all of yesterday’s beer had still been in him

  and he’d wet his bed in the middle of the night and when

  he woke up and his bed was all sticky and wet and

  disgusting he had to yell and yell and yell to get me to

  wake up and come help him. He was really angry with

  me just the way he was always really angry with Mother,

  402

  Scott Baker

  even after I cleaned him up and got him breakfast and set

  him up for the day in front of the TV with his reader.

  And when he yelled at me again at lunch I realized

  something that I should’ve realized a long time before.

  He really way just like a big baby, and with Mother gone

  there’d be no one left to take care of him but me and

  pretty soon he’d hate me just the same way he hated

  Mother and I’d hate him just the same way Mother hated

  him. With maybe a little love left that would come back

  to the surface every now and then when we remembered

  what it’d been like before, but less and less until all that

  we had left was that we hated each other.

  Only it wouldn’t even be that, because they’d probably

  put me in a foster home and put him in some sort of

  nursing home, the one thing Mother’d promised never to

  do to him where she’d kept her promise, until I was old

  enough to go back to taking care of him. I’d have to get a

  job and pay for him along with me for the rest of his life,

  and I’d never be able to go away or get married or even

  have boyfriends or do anything because he’d be jealous

  of me the way he was of Mother even though he loved

  me.

  He hated what he was and the only way he could stand

  hating himself like that was to take it out on somebody

  else. It wasn’t his fault, he couldn’t do anything about it,

  but that’s what it was, he had to hate somebody and

  make them miserable and if it wasn’t Mother it was

  going to be me.

  I couldn’t get away with just running off and leaving

  him, either, not with the new interstate runaway laws

  they’d been lecturing us about at school, at least not until

  I was fifteen or sixteen. Besides, I didn’t have anywhere

  to run to, not yet, and no way to keep myself alive even if

  I got away.

  Unless I killed Father first. He wouldn’t mind, not

  really, not if he was drunk enough and I put two or three

  Librium in his beer so he wouldn’t feel anything. He

  The Lurking Duck

  403

  probably would’ve killed himself a long time ago, if he’d

  been able to and if his mother hadn’t raised him a

  Catholic. I’d heard him tell Mother that a lot of times

  when he wanted her to really know how horrible she

  made him feel.

  And then the duck would go back to being just a log

  again and I could hide it away until I was fifteen or

  sixteen before I used it to get Mother. Nobody’d ever

  guess what it was if I kept it hidden someplace dark.

  Only what if when the other police came all they found

  were my footprints and they took the log in to examine it

  because maybe they found blood on it? If they didn’t

  figure out what it really was they might blame me and

  then be sure it was me when I got Mother later, and if

  they did figure out what it was they wouldn’t blame me

  but 1 wouldn’t be able to use it again. And all they’d have

  to do was pick it up and they’d know it was too heavy to

  be a real log.

  But what if they never found his body, he just disappeared, like those ducks that my duck pulled under out in the lake?

  What did it do with their bodies? Why hadn’t I ever

  found even a feather with a piece of skin attached to it?

  The thing that came out of my duck’s stomach looked

  like some sort of cross between a drill and a meatgrinder.

  Maybe it ground up their bodies so small there weren’t

  any pieces left.

  He wouldn’t feel anything if there was enough Librium

  in his beer and he drank enough beer. Or if he did it

  wouldn’t be much, not much worse than it was like for

  him every day just to be alive anyway.

  And with him gone Mother wouldn’t be angry with me

  all the time, wouldn’t always be finding something else

  for me to do around the house so she could go get away

  from him. She might even go back to being more like she

  was before, the way he told me she’d been when she

  married him.

  404

  Scott Baker

  And if she didn’t, I’d still have the duck. But I had to

  find out what happened to the bodies of the ducks my

  duck pulled under when it killed them.

  Father was watching a football game turned up loud. I

  went into the living room, refilled his beer bottle.

  The duck was still back in the shed. I went into the

  bathroom and checked. It was in the comer of the house,

  with big windows on each side and a skylight Father’d

  put in when he first bought the house. There’d be bright

  sunlight in it for the rest of the afternoon.

  I opened the windows as wide as possible, so the glass

  wouldn’t screen out any of the sunlight in case that made

  a difference like it did when you wanted to get a tan, then

  got the sack out of the shed and dumped the log out of it

  into the bathtub. It was a big, big bathtub, all long and

  deep, made out of that white stuff they use for sinks and

  bathtubs and toilet bowls. The only metal in it was the

  faucet and the drain plug.

  Maybe forty-five minutes later the duck was floating at

  the far end of the tub. It didn’t seem bothere
d at all by

  the walls around it. Maybe they were pushing the same

  on it from all four sides so it didn’t have to try to go

  anywhere else.

  I put the headless goose in the microwave until it got

  hot, then tossed it in the tub. I used the curtain hook to

  pull the curtain for the skylight, then quick went back

  out into the hall and closed the bathroom door. I ran out

  the back door and around and closed the shutters for

  both windows, not quite all the way because I didn’t

  want the duck to think it was nighttime, but enough so

  there wasn’t very much light coming in.

  And my duck dipped its bill in the water like it was

  taking a drink, then dived down under the goose,

  grabbed it in its meathook-claws and used its meatgrind-

  er drill to rip it into tiny, tiny pieces. It took about five

  minutes, and then the duck left what was left of the goose

  on the bottom of the tub like some sort of mud and went

  back to floating at the other end.

  The Lurking Duck

  405

  I opened the shutters wide to let the sun in, then got

  the hoe so I could hold the metal between me and the

  duck, even though I didn’t think it would attack me with

  the sun shining on it. 1 went back in the bathroom and

  pulled back the skylight curtain with the curtain hook,

  then kept the duck at the far end of the tub with the hoe

  while I pulled the bathtub plug.

  What was left of the goose drained out of the tub with

  the water, all except a few small fragments of bone. And

  when I picked them up they weren’t at all hard and

  brittle like they should’ve been, they were all sort of soft

  and rubbery, like pieces of cauliflower. So the duck had

  to have something, some kind of poison or acid it used,

  to make sure that even the little pieces that were left

  dissolved.

  But if it could do that I didn’t know why it left the

  headless ducks floating on the surface of the water every

  night. Unless it was James Patrick Dubic’s way of

  making sure that when he got out of jail he could come

  back to the park and watch his robot duck killing ducks

  for him even if what they’d done to him made it so he

  couldn’t touch the ducks to kill them himself.

  I ran the water down the drain for a few minutes. It

  didn’t seem to be stopped up.

 

‹ Prev