Seven Deadly Pleasures

by Michael Aronovitz

  "What about The One-Armed Brakeman?"

  "Too stupid. Why don't you make one up? Do you know how to do that? Make one up?"

  She blinked a few times as if in pure disbelief at Denny's smart mouth, then looked away, thought for a moment, and turned back. Her voice went creepy.

  "Turn off the overhead light, Denny, and flip on that table lamp over there. We need atmosphere to do this just right."

  He obeyed and the room wore its shadows a bit deeper. The thickening winter darkness outside seemed to press against the windows and Denny got ready for a thrill. He had asked for it.

  It was 4:09 P.M.

  4.

  "Stand over in the corner, Denny."

  "Why?"

  "Just do it."

  "But you're drawing. I thought you were going to tell me a story."

  "Don't worry about what I'm doing just yet."

  "I wanted to hear a story!"

  "The story has already started. Just stand there quietly and whatever you do, don't touch anything. It's a matter of life or death."

  Denny tried lifting his chin, going up on tip-toes, and jumping in place, but he could not see what Josephine was creating from his angle by the dining room archway. She was bent over the coffee table with one arm covering the work and the other drawing sweeps across the page. These broad motions were intertwined with little flicks of the wrist, rapid back to forth straight-hand, and various moments of smudge rubbing. Every ten seconds or so she would switch charcoal sticks and with each stick, she changed the grip at least twice. Her eyes remained hidden behind dangling braids. She was good. Denny knew this without even seeing the picture, for he could tell by her arm technique alone that she was a machine.

  "C'mon!" he said. "Show me! What is it? How is it part of the story? What are you doing?"

  She raised her head slowly. The lamp light caught her eyes and made mirrors. Her voice had gone toneless.

  "I'm going to use the picture frame. Don't try to stop me."

  She turned her drawing face down on the table, rose up, and made for the short mantel above the fireplace. The old, dusty picture frame she was going for sat at the back of the narrow shelf, wedged behind Dad's upstairs toolbox and a Rayovac security flashlight.

  The article in question was Denny's first attempt at making straight lines, back from age one and a half. His mother had made a big deal about it by setting the paper into the oversized twelve-by-sixteen frame, but through the years the importance of the whole thing had faded. In fact, Denny had sort of forgotten the picture was there in the background until Josephine brought it up.

  "Nice," she said, once the copper pinch-borders were removed and the pre-school scribbling was slipped out from between the thin glass face plates. For a moment Denny thought her tone was sarcastic, but her face was one of appreciation. She carefully placed the ancient page on the chair and set the now-empty frame next to her drawing on the table. She sat, clasped her hands, and looked over.

  "Turn away while I frame my page, Denny. This is it. One peek while it's not caged behind the glass and both of us could be killed. For real, for real."

  Denny spun toward the kitchen as fast as he could. Not only was the set-up getting better by the minute, but there was something about Josephine Thompson herself that was actually starting to spook him a bit. She was deep with this, no laughs and no smiles. She really wanted to scare him.

  Cool.

  "OK, you can turn around," she said. "The danger is locked up for now."

  Denny raced back into the living room, eyes wild and ready, but the picture frame was still laying face down. Not fair! Bogus times two, and he was about to stamp, whine, and complain about it when Josephine asked him a question.

  "Ever kill a bug, Denny?"

  His eyes widened. Most ghost stories started something like, "Deep in the dark woods outside this summer camp in the Catskills," or "Years ago in this old house on the hill," but this one was going to be personal.

  Double cool.

  "Yeah, I've killed bugs."

  "Ever kill bugs just for fun?"

  "Yes, yes!" he shouted, thinking about the ants he'd torched with a magnifying glass last spring by the old dumpster behind the 15th Street Pep Boys. Then of course was the hot July afternoon when he was hiding under the Wilton Avenue Bridge, plucking the legs off daddy long legs spiders and watching the wriggling oval bodies cut across rainbow patterns in the oil slicks. And who could forget the countless lightening bugs he got by handclap, the houseflies he got by TV Guide, and the basement waterbugs he got by the old-fashioned sneaker. Oh, he was guilty of the crime all right. He was guilty as all hell.

  "Yes. I kill them! I kill them all the time!" His eyes were shining and Josephine's eyes were shining right back.

  "Sit down and chill, Denny."

  He sat.

  "Breathe deep."

  He breathed. She folded her hands and leaned in.

  "We kill those little pests because they're small and ugly. They crawl, they buzz, they bite, and they sting, so we squash the life out of them every chance that we get."

  Caught in the trance of her eyes, Denny suddenly felt his skin come alive with a sick rush of the creepy-crawly itchies. He scratched his arms and legs furiously.

  "They hate us," she continued. "We kill them by the thousands and think of them as helpless, but they are not. From the beginning of time the souls of all dead bugs have been gathering in the deepest pit of the earth, growing and forming a nasty demon-king, the dark spirit of all insects that waits for revenge in a hot puddle of slime."

  "Revenge?"

  "That's right, revenge. And if its soul was ever released the beast would keep on coming, never ever to stop." She picked up the picture frame and started to turn it around. "This is the Slither-Shifter, never before seen by human eyes."

  The portrait came around to full front and for a moment Denny was speechless with awe. It was a horrid picture of partials and pieces, all drawn in fine detail. There were ten slanted eyes, all without pupils and each made up of what seemed like hundreds of miniature black bulbs. Below them was a lipless mouth overrun with jagged, uneven fangs. There was no body, but the proportion was cleverly hinted by two half legs, barbed at the joints and reaching out with dripping pincer claws. The one drawn wing had poisoned-looking stingers poking out at the veined cross-sections of webbing, and the whole thing looked mad as blazes.

  Denny put on the best tough-guy face he could muster.

  "Where's the rest of it?"

  "It's not full-bodied," she said. "It's a spirit. But if it ever gets out from behind the glass, you're a goner."

  "Why? What does it do?"

  "It joins with things to become whole."

  "What things?"

  Josephine put her finger against Denny's chest.

  "Anything you touch with both hands." He sat back and tried to treat the fascinating picture on the table as casual background while he hashed out the new boundaries.

  "So, if I touch a pencil . . ."

  "It becomes a pencil-bug. The point would turn into a stinger, the eraser would become an eye, and the body would sprout a thousand scrambling legs. Then it would start to slither. It would come at you until you were trapped and then it would get you."

  Denny frowned and made laughter come through his nose.

  "I'd lock it in a room and run away. That's too easy."

  "No, no," Josephine said. "It's a Slither-Shifter. It shifts and changes. The very next thing you touch with both hands becomes a new monster. The 'shift' is forever stuck in your fingers and that's how it follows you."

  "How do you kill it?"

  "Can't. It never dies."

  Denny squinted a bit. Every monster had its weakness. Those were the rules and it was up to him to uncover the flaw.

  "How do you stop it from shifting?" he said.

  Josephine hesitated.

  Got her! She's got to think of an answer or the story is a major league boner. I'm going to win and la
ugh at her picture and laugh at her.

  But she made a mental rally. She grinned and stood up.

  "The only way to re-cage the Slither-Shifter once it cuts loose is to make it like you."

  Denny grimaced.

  Girly ending, gross but legal.

  "Yuchh," he said. "How do you do that?"

  "It's a riddle."

  "Hmm."

  He offered out a bit of a smile, and Josephine returned the gesture. Her story had been a good one and in their brief moment of smiling at each other, like it or not, Denny felt himself and this newcomer becoming something like friends.

  "OK, Denny. Let's go. It's time to put this thing in its place." She grabbed the picture and set it under her arm. Denny sat on his hands.

  "What do you mean?"

  "You know."

  Denny snorted and mimicked her doorbell-like tone.

  "No I don't."

  She put her free hand on her hip and rolled her eyes up at the ceiling.

  "Where's the scariest place in the house?"

  "The basement!"

  "Well, lead the way, mister."

  Denny sat where he was.

  "Why?"

  "What's the matter, you scared?"

  "No!"

  "Then let's go," she said. "We have to find the darkest corner of the scariest room and cover the monster up for the night. That is, unless you're chicken to have it actually growing two floors beneath you in the dark while you sleep."

  Denny jumped up and raced for the cellar door. Totally cool! She made it so her story could go on all night in a lingering creep-fade. He flipped the butterfly bolt lock, grabbed the copper knob, and swung open the door so hard it banged the wall of the short kitchen archway.

  The light high in the basement stairway winked on, and when Denny released the pull string a cone of tiny dust pieces swirled up toward the bulb. The wooden stairs led down to a furl of black shadows, and Denny vaulted to the bottom. Behind was the creak and groan of the steps as Josephine fought to keep up, and when she reached the basement floor she was quick to say, "Where's the next light?"

  She shielded her eyes at the brow as if it would help her to read the new blindness, and Denny covered his mouth to muffle the giggle. He stood but two feet away from his babysitter and though it was her mission to scare him, it was now Josephine Thompson who had no clue a rusty water boiler was parked three feet to her right. She could not see that a roll of chicken wire sat directly to her left beside two rescue pickaxes, a spaghetti mop, and a pair of floor brooms with worn, curled-in bristles either. All she saw was Mr. Strange Darkness, and he was a stranger nobody liked especially during first visits to cellars.

  "Over here!" Denny said. She jumped and Denny let go his laugh. He was closer than she had anticipated and fifteen years old or not, his sudden call had given her a kindergarten sort of a fright.

  "Turn on the main light, Denny."

  Her voice had gone out of story-telling character, and Denny went up on his toes for the string. The bent hanger, twisted onto the short length of clothesline that was tied to the light chain up at the bulb's base, soon came to his grasp, and Denny promptly gave it a yank. After all, it was in his best interest to do what she said. It was her picture. It was her story. And hadn't she promised that the best was still coming?

  Maybe the scare he just gave her guaranteed it.

  The overhead light made a weak yellow oval on the dingy floor and Denny turned, ready to guide her to the farthest corner of the basement. To the left just outside the dim ring of light was a haphazard arrangement of cardboard boxes next to a Westinghouse washer and a dryer missing its label plate. To the right sat a grouping of gray metal shelving units filled with paint cans, turtle wax tins, shoe polish, and varnish. On the wall behind, there were rows of power tools hanging off nails. Denny reached in between Dad's two-speed Sawzall and the cordless drill for his finger flashlight with the soft rubber grip.

  "It's scariest back here," he whispered over his shoulder.

  "Solid," Josephine whispered back. Denny's light cut slashing lines into the room's thickest darkness. Back by the heater, Denny stopped and shone down his beam.

  "Here," he said. "The place for the picture is here."

  Her hand fell on his shoulder then, and it took everything in Denny's power not to jerk at the touch. He had not expected it. Oh well, she got backsies on him. No problem. He supposed he'd had it coming.

  Still, her voice was not filled with the triumph that he had anticipated. It was flavored with something he didn't quite get, quiet on the high edge of weird with a protective cover on top of it all.

  "Denny, what is that stuff?"

  He turned but could not see her eyes in the dark. He turned back and looked down into what the flashlight was showing. There was nothing there, however, except a few of his comics, a sleeping bag, and a bottle half filled with some Mountain Dew from last night.

  "What stuff?" he said. "It's nothing, just some of my gear for basketball nights and Lady Weekends."

  "What?"

  He turned and aimed up the flashlight beam so it rode between them. Her eyes seemed strange and focused and hot, kind of like before when he had spoken of eating leftovers for dinner each evening. Or maybe it was just the lighting.

  "It's my basketball gear," he said. "When Dad watches his games, he'd, I mean I'd rather play down here by myself. It's my doom-room, my bad-pad. Comics are best read in the dark with a flashlight anyway, right?"

  "And what the hell is a 'Lady Weekend'?"

  Denny looked back at his sleeping bag and twirled the flashlight so it made tight little circles on it.

  "You know, Lady Weekends. Dad calls this special number and a lady shows up. He helps them. It's his weekend charity. The ladies always wear a lot of perfume, and Dad says I could catch something from it if I'm around. When I was younger I used to cry, but I'm a lot bigger now. A month ago I even went a weekend and a Monday without ever coming up, even for food. Dad gave me a dark chocolate Hershey Bar for that."

  He put the flashlight right under his chin and gave a monster laugh.

  "Mwahh, hahh, hahh!"

  Josephine said nothing back for a moment, and with the light in his face, she looked like a burning, white outline. Then her breathing seemed really loud.

  "Come, Denny, now!"

  She spun and marched back toward the stairway. When she noticed that Denny hadn't followed in tow, she spun back.

  "Now, I said!"

  "Why? I thought the Shifter had to be put in the darkest, scariest—"

  "Plans have changed. It's got to be put elsewhere or the magic air currents won't match up with the stars. I forgot that it's different in the winter, so c'mon, hurry up."

  She was standing under the light now and her smile looked about as fake as the new, slipshod twist to the story. And as Denny dragged his feet across the floor he wondered why Josephine seemed not to want to be friends anymore.

  5.

  When he emerged from the basement Denny was surprised to see that Josephine was not waiting for him by the couch. Instead, she was standing at the foot of the stairway that led to the second floor and hugging the large picture frame, drawing side in. She pivoted, walked up the first four stairs, and turned back.

  "Ready?"

  Denny approached and rubbed his toe on the first stair.

  "Ready for what?"

  "It's got to go in your room and you have to survive the night alone with it, Denny. And there's no sticking it under the bed or inside the closet either. It's got to stay in full view, that is, if you've got the guts for it."

  Denny did not trust the new deal and he stayed where he was. The integrity, rhythm, and essence of the ghost story had been clearly discarded, and this new stuff had everything to do with Josephine Thompson's obvious need to be shown the upstairs. It was creepy and Denny just couldn't figure out why it had all become so important all of a sudden.

  "You know I ain't scared," he said.

  "T
hen let's go. Straight ahead, then to the left or the right?"

  "The left," his distant replay. He sidestepped up the stairs, pretending to study the paint chips in the banister, and a light beckoned down proving Josephine had found the hall switch. Denny looked up. She was studying him from the landing.

  "Coming or what?"

  He glanced down and by the time he raised his eyes the landing was empty. She had made her way down the hall without him.

  "Hey!" he said.

  Nothing.

  "Not funny," he said, forcing a laugh into it.

  Nothing still, and he made himself trudge up the stairs. Why was she playing possum at this point? What did it mean? He turned the corner and saw her frozen in his bedroom doorway, facing in and away. The bare bulbs of his combination ceiling fan/ceiling light stretched her shadows down the hall almost to the bathroom.

  "Well?" he said.

  Silence. She remained a statue in the doorway and Denny took a cautious step toward her. His breath quickened.

  This was all starting to spook him for real.

  Denny had it figured by the time he shuffled past her and he tried to cover his sigh of relief. Mystery over; Josephine Thompson was just a bit shocked by the mess, nothing more, no reason to freak. Denny hadn't cleaned in a while; in fact, he could not remember the last time he'd reshelved a magazine or wiped off a table. Oh sure, everything looked just peachy to him, but Denny tried hard to put himself in his babysitter's place.

  To her it must have seemed pretty gross.

  The bed was unmade and rumpled with an old yellow checkered summer sheet balled in a blanket that had faded pictures of tugboats and trains on it. By the footboard, a pillowcase popping lint balls along the seams was crammed to the gills with gadgets, toys, and rolled-up Monster Truck posters. A bit farther up on the mattress there was a stadium air horn turned down on its bell, and next to that a Stomp Rocket Load Launcher with a busted tripod. The place of honor atop Denny's pillow was occupied by the PlayStation controller and an empty case that read "Twisted Metal II," while in the darkness beneath the box spring an ancient, half-deflated kickball could be seen next to an orange squirt rifle that had a snapped trigger from two summers before.