Risen

by Strnad, Jan

  He pried the candle loose and inspected the bottom. The sticker was still there, the one that said "Handmade by Laurie." He had wondered at the time if leaving it there wouldn't clue Curtis that the "sacred relic" was a flea market candle Small had purchased the previous Halloween. It was a chance he had reveled in taking, an essential moral component of his modus operandi.

  When Curtis came back at midnight, they would have a good laugh about it.

  Death Went On A Holiday And All I Got Was This Crummy T-shirt

  "You don't look like a drug dealer," Lila said.

  "Secret of my success," Pascal said, which was a partial truth. The whole truth behind the remark was that his face, so ordinary as to defy description, and his body, lean but muscular, gave him a presence that seemed grown from the wholesome, Midwestern earth itself. But it was his energy that completed the façade. Pascal was no sallow-faced lurker in the shadows. He raced from drop to drop in a cherry red '65 Mustang ragtop he'd restored himself. His cheeks bloomed with the sunburn he'd picked up from some early season skiing at Vail (where he'd also scored a kilo-brick of mediocre cocaine that he would cut even further and sell by the gram to the local cokeheads).

  It was coke that brought Lila and Pascal together in the stubbly field outside of Anderson, but it was Lila's t-shirt that aroused his fascination.

  "Nice shirt," he said.

  Lila tugged at the hem of the shirt and gazed at the monster-in-a-hot-rod design as if seeing it for the first time.

  "This?" she said. "It's just something I found in the garage, in a trunk of my dad's stuff. I thought it was kinda cool."

  Kinda cool, Pascal thought. She doesn't know what she has. An original Stanley Mouse, pristine, from the 1963 Winternationals in Pomona. Hand airbrushed. Worth five hundred bucks, easy.

  "I guess my dad was kind of a car nut."

  "Tell you what," Pascal said, "I'll give you a discount. Eighty-five for a gram, you throw in the t-shirt."

  Lila didn't think twice. She shrugged off her windbreaker and peeled off the shirt with all the self-consciousness of a baseball player adjusting his cup. Her top was bare. Her breasts were firm and her nipples could have poked out the eye of a cowboy.

  "Deal," she said.

  "You want a shirt? I could give you mine."

  "I just want my gram."

  Pascal handed over the cling-wrapped coke and tried hard not to grin from ear to ear.

  "Your dad got any other old stuff like this? Posters, or...?"

  Lila had already turned her back and was striding toward her car. She held the windbreaker in one hand and shot Pascal the finger with the other.

  ***

  The first thing Lila felt when she died was a sense of relief that the worst headache in her life had disappeared. She woke up just past midnight in her bedroom, refreshed in a way she couldn't recall ever feeling before. Then she remembered Seth.

  She had met Seth on the other side. Seth had brought her back from the dead. They'd had a conversation of sorts although she couldn't remember the exact words. He had seemed very knowledgeable about her father's collection, which she had always regarded as a bunch of old junk. Apparently it had some value she hadn't been aware of.

  She loved Seth, she realized, and she wanted to help him in his work. She wanted to help by bringing more people to the other side.

  She couldn't stop thinking about Pascal. In the clear light of resurrection, Lila began to realize how badly he had ripped her off.

  It wasn't just that Pascal had sold her the cocaine that took her life. That probably wasn't even his fault. Nobody knew what they were getting these days, and no one could predict that a single gram in the nose of an experienced user would lead, now and again, to sudden death. These things happened.

  It was the t-shirt. She had thought that the whole business was his way of catching a glimpse of prime female boobie, which was okay because it was why she'd gotten the boob job in the first place. She figured the surgery would pay for itself in a couple of years, one way and another, and a discount on drugs would move that timeline forward by at least six months.

  But what if it didn't have anything at all to do with her tits? What if the shirt had really been worth something?

  Lila decided to consult the source of all earthly knowledge. She powered up the computer she hadn't used in months and logged onto the internet.

  ***

  Pascal didn't enjoy the thought of meeting Lila at his apartment, but she had promised to show him the contents of her father's trunk and wanted to do it someplace safe and out of the weather.

  He felt like doing a line while waiting for her, but he restrained himself. He wasn't like the town cokeheads. He could take cocaine or leave it. He was strong in that way. He had to sample the goods he sold, of course, and he reveled in the strength and clear-headedness that coke brought him. Skiing in Vail had been fantastic, lit up, despite the low-grade artificial snow that dusted the slopes so early in the season. Racing downhill, impervious to the chill, skiing was the most exhilarating thrill that Pascal knew. Even hang gliding had been too languorous to give him the rush he craved, though maybe under the right medication....

  Lila's knock was firm and measured. Pascal had hoped it would be panicky, that he could play it cool and draw out the negotiation and count on her addiction to sell him the stuff cheap. He realized too late that he was wearing the Stanley Mouse t-shirt and cursed himself for a fool. It never paid to appear too eager.

  Lila entered and set a cardboard box on the floor in front of Pascal's bed. If she noticed the t-shirt, she didn't let on.

  Pascal pried open the box and handled each item with casual reverence while stifling his desire to shout out loud, to dance around the room in unbridled glee, as his hands unearthed prize upon prize. Lila's old man wasn't a car nut. He was a Stanley Mouse nut, and he had everything from Mouse's early days airbrushing t-shirts at hot rod shows with Ed "Big Daddy" Roth to his stint in the sixties as one of the top rock-and-roll poster artists in the world, right up there with Rick Griffin and Victor Moscoso.

  Pascal drew out a Grateful Dead poster, San Francisco, the Avalon Ballroom, 1966. First use of the famous grinning skeleton and roses design that would become the band's emblem for four decades. Beneath it was the famous five-and-six dollar bill poster, Big Brother and the Holding Company and Bo Diddley at the Avalon, August 5-6th, 1966, signed. He pulled out more Avalon Ballroom and Longshoremen's Hall posters, then he hit a vein of hot rod art: monster decals circa 1964, bubblegum cards, a Mouse Monster Club membership card, 1964, in mint condition, another t-shirt, hand painted....

  Pascal's head was swimming and he'd only scratched the surface. Who knew what lay below? He wouldn't have been surprised to find original sketches. It was getting hard to feign detachment.

  "What are you wanting for this stuff?" he said.

  "What's it worth?" Lila asked.

  "Well, most of it's in pretty good shape. It's been in the garage?"

  Lila nodded.

  "There's some damp rot. But like I say, it's still pretty good. Maybe if you could find some real collectors, auction it off on eBay a piece at a time, you'd get a decent price."

  Lila shook her head. "Too much hassle," she said. "You know what I want. How much for all of it?"

  Pascal sat back and puffed out his cheeks. "I'm not a collector," he said. "Those people are nuts. I just like this shit. I don't know what it's worth. To me, maybe a coupla grams."

  "Make it ten."

  "You've gotta be kidding. Five. Tops"

  "Ten."

  "You don't really understand negotiation, do you? Seven."

  "Ten."

  He sighed. At roughly $700 worth of blow, it was a steal.

  "Ten it is," Pascal said. "Wait here." He returned a minute later with about a fifth of what he would have been willing to trade.

  Lila pocketed the ten grams. She turned to leave, then paused at the door.

  "You want to do a line?" she said. Her n
ipples pushed against the fabric of her non-Mouse t-shirt.

  "Sure," Pascal said. "Yours or mine?"

  Lila surprised him by saying, "Mine."

  Pascal closed his eyes while Lila drew out the line on a hand mirror Pascal provided. White powder was lodged in the groove between glass and frame, the sign of a user in control of his habit. A true cokehead would have dug it out during a dry spell.

  "Anyone ever try to ply you with sex?" Lila said.

  "All the time."

  "Does it work?"

  "Sometimes." Pascal savored the repartee. It looked as if the afternoon was going to pay a sexual bonus on top of the one he'd already scored. Sometimes life was almost too sweet.

  "You like speed, don't you?" Lila said.

  "Never touch the stuff."

  "No, I mean...going fast. I've seen you in your car. If Deputy Haws ever catches you driving like that—"

  "I'll buy the fat bastard off with burritos," Pascal said.

  Lila handed him the mirror. Pascal snuffed the white powder and instantly knew that something was wrong.

  "This isn't coke," he said.

  "PCP. Sorry. I thought you'd know."

  He might have, if he hadn't been thinking about Lila's naked body. Had she counted on that distraction to let her make the switch?

  "I hate the stuff," he said. He shoved it back at her. "This shit's poison."

  "Sorry."

  "Get out," Pascal said.

  "In a minute."

  Pascal braced himself for the rush to come, the hallucinations that had marred his first and only trial of the drug. He tried to speak, to order the treacherous girl from his apartment, but already his speech was beginning to slur. He felt numbness climbing up his legs.

  "Sit back," Lila said. "Lay your head down."

  As if he could hold it up another second.

  Lila fluffed a pillow and stuffed it behind his neck.

  '"Where'd...you get dis shit?" Pascal said, his tongue feeling and tasting like a dead toad.

  "It's some of my dad's stash. I scarfed it when they took him to the hospital. When I saw what it did to him, I put it away. I didn't throw it out, though. I wonder why."

  Pascal tried to sit up but found that his arms and legs had become logs. His tongue had stopped working altogether.

  "There's something in it," Lila said. "I don't know what. Whatever it is, it's killer. They took my dad to Kansas City. He's still there. Paralyzed. Oh, he's not in a coma or anything, don't worry about that. They say he can hear and see everything that goes on around him. He just can't move, not a muscle. He's been that way for two years. They're saying it's probably permanent. How you feeling? Oh, can't talk at all anymore, huh?"

  She brushed a strand of hair off his eyes. Pascal tried to glare at her but he couldn't move his eyelids. He felt half an inch tall, could imagine himself trapped inside his eyeballs, banging on his corneas to be let out.

  "It's kind of sad," she said, "that you won't die outright and get to meet Seth. Half-dead doesn't count, unfortunately. I hope he isn't too disappointed in me. It's petty, I suppose, but you really pissed me off, you know?

  "The stuff in that box, it's worth a helluva lot more than your junk coke. You stiffed me, and now I've stiffed you. Really stiffed you. Get it?"

  Pascal had slumped into an awkward rag doll pose on the sofa. Lila straightened him up and placed his arms on her shoulders. She began to roll up his shirt.

  "Now," she said, "let's get you out of this thing. It's an original, you know."

  Do Overs

  Some people, it seems, have to learn everything the hard way. Waylon Durgg was one of those people.

  He knew better than to drive drunk, but it took an accident that cost him a hand to drive the point home. He knew he should wear safety glasses when operating the power saw, but only a hot sliver from a lurking nail flying into his good right eye could make the argument convincing.

  He also knew that you never put your finger on the trigger until you were ready to shoot.

  Still, he was picking his way through the field of milo with the .22 pistol in his non-prosthetic hand, in the mood for a little target practice, and he wanted to be ready in case he scared up a rabbit or got a clear shot at a crow. He didn't plan to stumble, but he did, and he didn't mean for the .22 to discharge its load into his chest, but it did, and in his last moments among the living he certainly didn't expect to wake up in that same field shortly after midnight with the wound in his chest fully healed, his right eye clear and a spanking new hand growing where the plastic one had been the day before. But he did.

  Waylon was not a learned man, and he did not possess a keen, natural intellect. Most of the people of Anderson regarded him as a dunce and Waylon knew it, which is why he lived in a ramshackle house on the outskirts of town, kept pretty much to himself and devised his own simple amusements, such as regularly setting out with a gun and filling a small animal with #6 shot.

  At this point in his hunting career, Waylon had done it all. He'd stalked the wild turkey, punctured the quail, pierced the rabbit, and he'd even trekked through the wilds of furthest Wisconsin to test his mettle against the ruffed grouse. He felt himself ready for bigger game, the most dangerous game of all...man.

  For anyone but Waylon, the leap from small game to human without passing through intermediate prey such as jaguar, tiger and Cape buffalo would have been a stretch. Resurrection had enabled Waylon to bridge that gap in one mighty stride.

  For one thing, returning from the dead had put Waylon keenly in touch with his hatred for his fellow Andersonites, the ones who taunted him and made jokes that he didn't comprehend, the ones who felt themselves superior to Waylon because of their high school educations and ability to work the Daily Jumble. Waylon's hatred ran deep, like magma seething beneath stolid rock. Resurrection had freed the molten flow of Waylon's resentment, freed it to rain fire upon an unsuspecting populace.

  For another, immortality conveyed upon Waylon the one advantage he so sorely needed, the ability to make mistakes. Waylon made mistakes, he knew that, but he was able to learn from them, though the lessons inevitably came too late to spare him grief. His blind eye and severed hand were testimony to the fact that Waylon was what his teachers called "an experiential learner." Hunting man would involve risk, and Waylon might very well find the tables turned upon him. He might even die. But, so what? His new-found ability to regenerate himself would see to it that no lasting harm was done, and Waylon would chalk up useful experience that he could apply to the next hunt. He could play the game over and over until he came out on top.

  Poised in a field of stubble under the midnight sky, Waylon studied his new hand. The pink flesh was devoid of blemish, the muscles were strong and supple. Waylon smiled as he curled his freshly minted fingers into a fist.

  ***

  As much as he longed to stalk his fellow townsmen, Waylon realized that it would be best, at first, to choose his victims randomly. It wouldn't do to have Sheriff Clark hit upon his actions too soon, not until Waylon was skilled enough to challenge the sheriff himself. Better to draw his victims from the isolated travelers who found themselves—usually because they missed a turn—on the highway that ran just outside the city limits.

  He waited until dark to drag the dead tree limb onto the asphalt. He hunkered down in the ditch beside the branch and waited. An hour passed without traffic. The old road in this post-turnpike era was as dead as Waylon himself had been, and it would take a similar miracle to bring it back to life. Waylon was working a kink out of his left leg when he saw the cold blue headlights of the BMW approaching. The car's high-beams hit the branch and the tires squealed and the front wheels crunched wood and the car came to a halt with the branch stuck fast to the undercarriage.

  A young man stepped out of the car, cursing. He gave a few useless tugs on the branch and uttered a few more expletives. AAA would be more than an hour away, most likely, if he could even get a signal on the cell phone. He jumped at the
bark of Waylon's voice behind him.

  "Move away from the car," Waylon said. He tried to suppress the quiver of excitement in his voice.

  The young man turned to face Waylon and his 20-gauge over/under Browning.

  "This is how it works," Waylon said. "I give you a twenty-minute head start. That way lies the town." He gestured with the shotgun. "You reach town before I kill you, you win. You're safe."

  The young man help up both hands shoulder high.

  "Look," he said, "I don't know what your problem is—"

  "I ain't the one with the problem," Waylon replied. He spit for emphasis.

  The young man reached for the billfold in his back pocket. He opened it and pulled out a sheaf of bills. In the brightness of the BMW's dome light, Waylon easily made out the portrait of Ben Franklin on the top bill. He wondered how many more there were.

  "It's all yours," the young man said, stepping forward. He extended the bribe to Waylon. "Take it. Just don't do this...thing."

  Waylon was indeed going to take the young man's cash, but there was no hurry. Time enough to collect his winnings when the game was over.

  The young man took another step toward him, pleading. He was beginning to get on Waylon's nerves.

  "Time you started running," Waylon said. Or rather, it's what he would have said if the edge of the young man's hand hadn't crushed the words in his throat.

  Waylon was not sure exactly what happened next. He dropped the gun, he knew that, as he gasped for breath and the air rattled in his shattered windpipe. The young man appeared to be in three places at once as he kicked Waylon in the stomach, then slammed Waylon's head twice against his knee as Waylon doubled over, and somehow or another he spun around and grabbed Waylon's arms and there were a pair of loud snaps, and then Waylon's leg was bending backward at the knee in a way God never intended, and by the time it was over and the BMW was driving off dragging the tree limb, Waylon was back in the ditch where he'd started the encounter, unable to move and in indescribable pain.