by Brian Keene
On Saturday morning, after grabbing a few hours of sleep, I rented a moving van and a storage unit and moved all your stuff into that, because I wasn’t sure what you’d want done with it. I couldn’t bring myself to throw it out, but I couldn’t live amongst it either. I was tired of hurting. Tired of the constant pain—pain that was supposed to have stopped with your departure, but still lingered, festering like a wound that just won’t heal. Every time I saw your stuff, it was like picking the scab off again.
Moving your stuff into storage took most of the day. When I got home Saturday evening, after returning the truck and getting my deposit back, I walked into the house and I could still smell you—your body lotion and perfume and shampoo. So I cleaned some more until the house smelled like lemon furniture polish and lilac toilet bowl disinfectant. I vacuumed the carpets and swept the wooden floors, and in doing so, found a thousand more little reminders of you.
Your hair.
The first time we met, I saw your hair before I saw you. My previous girlfriend had short, brown hair. But not you. There you were, sitting on a stool by the pool table at the bar, with your back turned to me. You and your friends laughed, which caught my attention—but it was your hair that kept it. Black as a raven’s feathers, thick and luxurious, and reaching all the way to the small of your back; it was the kind of hair men (and perhaps women, as well) longed to feel between their fingers and brushing across their bare skin. And I did. Oh God, I did. I’ll never forget how your hair felt that first time we made love—and every time we made love after that. Even later, when our relationship started to sour, and we lost our emotional connection and grew distant from each other, and our lovemaking gave way to just having sex more often than not, I was still enthralled by your hair. I loved how it felt on my chest, and running my hands through it, and giving it those playful pulls, and especially how it smelled.
That smell was probably the most powerful ghost of all.
That night, as I was vacuuming the bedroom carpet, the aromas of lemon furniture polish and lilac cleaner were soon overpowered by something else—the stench of burned rubber. The little belt inside the vacuum cleaner had burned out. Sighing, I unplugged the vacuum from the wall and flipped it over. Sure enough, strands of your hair had gotten wrapped around the rollers, choking them until they wouldn’t turn anymore. I grabbed a pair of scissors and started cutting, remembering something your Dad had once told me, that I wouldn’t have believed how many vacuum cleaners he’d gone through when you were growing up. But I did believe it. This was my third, in three years of being with you. Small price to pay for being able to enjoy your hair.
You were gone now, but your hair remained.
I cut the tangle free from the rollers, and stuck it in my pocket, intent on throwing it away when I went back downstairs. Then I plugged the vacuum back into the outlet, and crossed my fingers, hoping it would still work. It did, though the burning smell soon returned as your hair clogged the rollers up again. I spent more time cutting that clump free, and added it to the tangle in my pocket. When I tried the vacuum a third time, the belt was shot. The motor got hot and there was no suction power left.
I went downstairs, grabbed the broom and dustpan, and began to sweep the kitchen floor. There amongst the detritus of fallen cereal flakes and bread crumbs, stray fingernail clippings, lint, dust bunnies, dead stinkbugs, and twist-ties, was more of your hair. After sweeping the pile into the dust pan, I paused, hovering over the garbage can. Then, without really thinking about it, I rescued your hairs from the dirt and emptied the dust pan into the garbage. Then I added those hairs to the clump from my pocket.
As I’m sure you’d remember, on the mantle in the living room is a beer stein from Germany, circa World War Two—an heirloom passed down to me by my great-grandfather. After a moment’s consideration, I decided that the stein seemed an appropriate place to keep your hair. I’ve had that mug since I was a kid, and it holds many treasures from both childhood and my adult life—a seashell from my first trip to the beach, an arcade token, a baseball card, an empty brass bullet casing, ticket stubs from concerts long past, my grandmother’s Saint Christopher medal, fur clippings from my dog (passed on six years now)—each one with a special meaning and memory attached.
I rolled your hair between my fingers for a moment, and then reluctantly dropped it inside the stein. Then I took a shower and went to bed. It was the first time I’d lain in our bed since you’d gone, and I couldn’t sleep. It felt empty, without you there. The sheets still held your impression on your side of the bed, and when I put my face to your pillow and nuzzled it, I smelled you. I smelled your hair.
I blinked away tears and there they were—three long, black hairs on the white pillowcase.
I shuffled downstairs and added them to the rest. Then I went to sleep on the couch, television playing in the background. I don’t know what channel it was on, because I didn’t watch it. I just needed the background noise. I needed something to trick me into believing that I wasn’t alone.
Life went on like that for a while. Although I don’t know that you could actually call it a life. In truth, I was just going through the motions. Moving on because that’s what you’re supposed to do after something like this. Move on. Get over it. So I tried. I went to work every day. Came home. Watched TV. Slept on the couch. Then I got up the next morning and did it all over again. I didn’t date. I didn’t want to. I’d never had that much of a social life even before I met you, and as for the few friends I’d had over the years—I lost touch with them after you and I started dating. I spent my time with you, rather than them. They’d drifted away. Or maybe it was me who had drifted. I don’t know, but I do know that I didn’t really miss them. I only missed you.
Sometimes at night, when the loneliness and oppression became too much, I’d get your hair out and hold it. It still smelled like you, even as months went by. I’d stroke it and fondle it and put it against my cheek. Some nights, I whispered to it, and told it that I loved you.
Every week, I cleaned, and every time I found more hair. It didn’t matter how many times I swept the floor or shampooed and vacuumed the carpets—there was always a little bit of you left behind. Each time I found a strand, my emotions were conflicted—pangs of heartache and regret, followed by a bittersweet happiness that at least a part of you still remained. And so, I added to my collection—my shrine to the memory of you. The hair went from the size of a golf ball to a softball. Within a few months, my great-grandfather’s old beer stein wasn’t big enough to hold it all, so I had to find another place to keep it. That was when I finally started sleeping in our bed again, with the ball of your hair tucked beneath my pillow. By then, it was bigger than a football.
After that, the house didn’t seem so haunted—or empty—anymore, and I didn’t feel so alone.
I began to hold your hair to my chest at night, tucking it in the crook of my arms as one might do with a stuffed animal or pillow. I’d fall asleep breathing you in. Occasionally, when the need grew too strong, I’d turn the lights off and lay there in the darkness, caressing myself with the remnants of you, stroking my chest and face and legs with your softness, before stroking other, more urgent parts of myself, as well. I was always careful to pull your hair away before I came. The last thing I wanted was to taint all that remained of you. I needed to keep your essence as pure as possible.
Then I started to worry that sleeping with your hair under my pillow might be detrimental to insuring that overall quality. Your scent was beginning to fade, and the hair itself had lost some of its luster. So I re-shaped it into a ball again, and laid it on your pillow. In the dark, I could almost imagine that it was your head, lying there.
Which led me to search for more of you. I vacuumed and swept daily, desperate to retain every strand. When that didn’t produce enough, I checked the shower drain. I’d cleaned the tub since your departure, of course, but only the surface. No, to find you, I pulled up the grate and checked down inside the drain itsel
f. Sure enough, there you were, mixed in with bits of myself. This hair retained none of your texture or smell. It was cold and wet and slimy with residue soap scum, but I put some tissue paper on the sink and spread the hair out on it to dry. When it had, I was able to separate us both from the filth, and then separate you from myself. It was easy enough to do. My hairs were short and coarse. Yours were long and beautiful.
I added those hairs to the ones in the bed, and that night, with the lights off and a sliver of moonlight shining in through the window, I could almost believe that you were there. It looked quite like the profile of your head, neck, and shoulders. I slipped an arm around you, and snuggled close. Your hair tickled my nose. I breathed you in and gave you a goodnight kiss and told you how much I loved you and missed you. I told you then that I’d been wrong, that I’d made a mistake. That it hadn’t been you. It was me. I begged you to come back, but I knew you wouldn’t.
Your hair grew wet with my tears.
It still wasn’t enough. I needed more of you. All of you. Sadly, there doesn’t seem to be any more left. Every remaining trace of you is either packed up in that storage unit or laying there in our bed.
I think about that lovely head of hair. I bet it’s still growing, longer than ever before. They say that happens, you know. That the hair and the fingernails keep growing.
Tonight, I’ll take a drive out to the woods, and hike in to the place where I buried you, and I’ll find out.
And then, I promise that I’ll bring you back home.
STORY NOTE: Not much I can say about this one that I didn’t already say in the story. My girlfriend (author Mary SanGiovanni) and I broke up, and I drew on that pain and channeled it right onto the page. This tale was the result. Before it was published, I decided to test the story out on a live audience. My friend and occasional co-writer Nick Mamatas and I were slated to give a reading at the legendary KGB Bar in New York City. After I’d been introduced to the standing-room-only crowd, I took to the podium and read this. Afterward, many of those in the crowd said they were going home to kill themselves. I hope that means they liked it. Mary and I got back together about seven months after. And we’re still together now, as I write this, so there’s a happy ending for you.
LOST CANYON OF THE DEAD
The desert smelled like dead folks.
The sun hung over our heads, fat and swollen like that Polish whore back in Red Creek. It made me sweat, just like she had. The air was so thick, it felt like we were breathing soup. The heat made the stench worse. Our dirty handkerchiefs, crusted with sand and blood, were useless. They stank almost as bad as the desert. Course, it wasn’t the desert that stank. It was the things chasing us.
We’d been fleeing through the desert for days. None of us had a clue where we were. Leppo knew the terrain and had acted as our guide, but he died of heatstroke on the second day, and we shot him in the head before he got back up again. We weren’t sure if the disease affected folks who’d died of natural causes, but we figured it was better to be safe than sorry. Since then, we’d been following the sun, searching the horizons for something other than sand or dead things. Our canteens were empty. So were our bellies. We baked during daylight and froze at night.
All things considered, I’d have rather been in Santa Fe. I knew folks there. Had friends. A girl. From what we’d heard, the disease hadn’t made it that far yet.
Riding behind me and Deke, Jorge muttered something in Spanish. I’ve never been able to get the hang of that language, so I’m not sure what he said. Sounded like, ‘There’s goats in the swimming hole’ but it probably wasn’t.
I slumped forward in the saddle while my horse plodded along. My tongue felt like sandpaper. My lips were cracked and swollen. I kept trying to lick them, but couldn’t work up any spit.
“They still back there?” I was too tired to turn around and check for myself.
“Still there, Hogan,” Deke grunted. “Reckon they don’t need to rest. Don’t need water. Slower we go, the closer they get.”
I wiped sweat from my eyes. “We push these horses any harder and they’re gonna drop right out from under us. Then we’ll be fucked.”
Behind us, Janelle gasped at my language. I didn’t care. According to the Reverend, it was the end of the world. I figured rough language was the least of her worries now.
“The good Lord will deliver us,” the Reverend said. “Even you, Mr. Hogan.”
“Appreciate that, Reverend. Give Him my thanks the next time you two talk.”
Deke rolled his eyes. I grinned, even though it hurt my lips.
We were an odd bunch, to be sure. Deke and I had come to Red Creek just a month ago. We’d bought ourselves a stand of timber there, and were intent on clearing it. Jorge had worked at the livery. The Reverend was just that—had himself a tent on the edge of town and gave services every Sunday. Terry was just a kid. Couldn’t have been a day over fourteen. No hair on his chin yet. But he shot like a man, and I was pretty sure that he was sweet on Janelle. It was easy to see why. Women like her were hard to find in the west. Janelle was from Philadelphia. Come to Red Creek after marrying a dandy twice her age. Don’t know if she really loved him or not, but she’d certainly carried on when those corpses tore the old boy apart in front of the apothecary like a pack of starved coyotes.
Red Creek wasn’t a big town, but it was large enough that none of us had known each other until we fled together. Except for me and Deke, we were strangers, thrown together by circumstance. That made for an uneasy ride.
The first any of us heard of the disease was when a man stumbled into town one night, feverish and moaning. There was a nasty bite on his arm, and a chunk of flesh missing from his thigh. The doc took care of him as best he could, but the poor bastard died just the same. Before he did, he told the doc and his helpers about Hamelin’s Revenge. That’s what folks back east were calling it, on account of some story about a piper and some rats. They say that the disease started with rats. They overran an Indian reservation back east, which wasn’t a surprise, as far as I was concerned. I’d seen the conditions on those reservations, and figured those people would be better off sleeping at the bottom of an outhouse. It was a terrible way to live. The thing is, these weren’t no ordinary rats. They were dead. Guts hanging out. Maggots clinging to their bodies. But they still moved. And bit. And whatever they bit got sick and died. Mostly, they bit the Indians. The Indians took ill and died off, and the government didn’t seem to care—until the Indians came back and started eating white folks. But by then, it was too late.
The man told the doc about this, and then died. Doc got some of the town bigwigs together, and while they were having a meeting about it, the dead fella got back up and ate the doc’s helpers. Then they came back and started eating folks, too.
Hamelin’s Revenge spread fast, hopping from person to person. Other species caught it, too. Before we hightailed it out of Red Creek, I saw dead horses, dogs, and coyotes attacking townspeople in the streets. And lots of dead people, of course. By then, there were more corpses stumbling around than there were live folks. Lucky for us, the dead moved slowly. Otherwise, we’d have never escaped. Even then, it wasn’t easy. They swarmed, trapping us inside the saloon. We had to fight our way out, and we burned most of Red Creek down in the process.
How do you kill something that’s already dead? Shooting them in the head seems to work. So does smacking them in the head with a hammer or a pick-axe or a length of kindling. You can fire six shots into their chest and they’ll keep on coming. You can chop off their arms and legs and they’ll keep wriggling like a worm on a hook. But get them in the head, and they drop like a sack of grain.
I glanced up at the sky, squinting. The sun hadn’t moved. It felt like we hadn’t, either. Our horses shuffled through the sand, wobbling unsteadily. Janelle coughed. I turned around to see if she was okay. She fanned her hand in front of her nose. When she saw me looking at her, she frowned.
“They’re getting closer, Mr.
Hogan, judging by the stench.”
“I know.”
“Well, what do you intend to do about it?”
I looked past her, studying the horizon. There were hundreds of black dots in the distance. Each dot was a dead thing—the population of Red Creek, and then some. Every infected animal had joined in the pursuit, too. I’ll give the dead one thing—they’re determined sons of bitches.
“I intend to keep moving,” I told her. “Stay ahead of them. We don’t have enough bullets to kill them all, and even if we did, I reckon they’re out of range. Ain’t none of us gunslingers. Even if we were, nobody’s that good of a shot—not even your boyfriend there.” I nodded in Terry’s direction. The boy blushed.
Scowling, Janelle stuck her nose into the air. I turned around again, trying to hide my grin. Deke chuckled beside me.
“She’s taken a shine to you,” he whispered.
I shrugged. It took a lot of effort to do so. I was trying to work up enough energy to respond, when something ahead of us caught my eye. The flat landscape was broken by a smattering of low hills. It looked like God had just dropped them right there in the middle of the desert. Jorge must have seen it too, because he jabbered and pointed.
“Look there.” Deke patted his horse’s flank. “We could hole up atop one of them hills. Make a stand. Shoot them as they climb up.”