BLACK STATIC #42

by Andy Cox

  Although terrible, the story is not your concern. The city is full of troubles, many of them serious, but at this moment you are the injured one, and should take time for your own mental health.

  You click the Close box.

  ***

  Months pass. You develop a close, trusting relationship with your counselor. The weekly sessions are full of tears and yet reassuring. You do not yet know what horrible trauma your vampire fantasy is masking, but you both feel that you are coming close to a breakthrough. Your friends and co-workers say that you seem calmer and more self-assured.

  As you gain in confidence, you begin to be able to leave the house in the evening. You suspect you may never be able to go clubbing as you once did, but perhaps that is not such a bad thing. You’re not as young as you were, after all. Instead of hitting the bars, most evenings after supper you walk down the street to a pleasant coffee shop in your neighborhood. It’s quiet and well-lit, with overstuffed chairs, light classical music, and free wifi. You spend an hour or two each night sipping tea and catching up on social media, enjoying the music and quiet chatter around you.

  You begin to recognize the regular patrons, even get to know some of them a little. Nothing too serious, just chats about pets and the weather. But one old gentleman intrigues you.

  He looks to be about seventy – rail-thin, with parchment skin and hair white as lilies – but he carries himself well, without stoop or tremble. The only truly curious thing about him is that he wears dark wraparound glasses at all times, even at night. You had thought at first that he might be blind, but he doesn’t have a cane or dog and he moves without hesitation. Perhaps he is an albino and even the coffee shop’s unobtrusive lighting hurts his eyes.

  There is another possible explanation, of course. But you resist even considering it. To do so risks losing the mental stability you have spent so much time and effort building up.

  But still…like the itch under the bandage, so difficult to resist, your wounded, healing mind will not let you be.

  All you need to do is have one look. Beneath those dark glasses, no doubt, lie perfectly normal eyes. One glimpse of them will sate your curiosity, relieve the itch, let the healing process continue.

  You know that it would be impolite to ask, even ruder to try to sneak a glimpse. But still, he must take them off sometime.

  ***

  You try to shake off your concerns. He’s just an old man with dark glasses. But curiosity drives you to websites you have not visited in months.

  One site, the supposed diary of a vampire hunter, draws you back again and again. It is fiction, of course – merely a blog chronicling the weekly sessions of an ongoing fantasy role-playing game. Or is the game a shroud that masks a secret truth? The author’s experiences and suspicions seem to echo your own.

  There is no contact information on the blog.

  The Overpass Killer still has not been caught.

  ***

  The old man doesn’t show up every night. When he does, you watch him as closely as you dare, positioning yourself so that his face hovers just above your laptop screen, glancing his way whenever his hand strays near his face. Once your heart pounds as he removes the dark glasses completely and rubs the bridge of his nose, but the eyelids remain closed the entire time.

  This is silly, you tell yourself. You’re seeking evidence for a damaging fantasy when you should be focusing on healing. You pour out your frustrations to your counselor; she gives you exercises in journaling and guided visualization to help return your mind to reality and your relationship to it. But nearly every evening you find yourself in the coffee shop, hoping he’ll be there, hoping he won’t.

  There is nothing to connect this harmless old man with the Overpass Killer. But the news reports are frustratingly vague as to time, location, and details of the killings. You know that the police deliberately withhold information on this type of case. Is “mutilated body” code for “puncture wounds in the neck, drained of blood”?

  Sometimes the vampire hunter’s blog mentions dice and rulebooks. Accidental slip-up, or deliberate misdirection?

  ***

  And then comes the day he sits down next to you.

  “May I?” he asks, cup and saucer in hand, and gestures to the empty space on the couch. His voice is surprisingly deep for one so frail, the accent cultured and slightly Eastern European.

  You make polite noises and rearrange your laptop and cable to disguise how flustered you feel. He lowers himself cautiously but with elegance onto the cushions beside you. The pressure of his body transmits itself through the springs and padding to you…you can feel how light and bony he is, and yet how contained and upright. He raises his cup to you with a slight nod and sips. You smile and return the nod.

  His cup returns to the saucer with a delicate, precise clink. “You’ve been watching me,” he says. The words are delivered conversationally, but pitched low enough that no one but you could hear them. He doesn’t face you; to all outward appearances you are merely sharing a sofa.

  You demur, but he shakes his head as fractionally as he’d nodded earlier. “Don’t bother denying it. I’ve seen how you react when I do this.” He raises one hand to his glasses, begins to take them off.

  You cannot disguise the catch in your breath, the way your entire body tenses.

  He gives a low, wry chuckle as he pushes the glasses back into place. They had moved no more than half an inch, exposing nothing. “What were you hoping to see?”

  You stammer, stumbling and fumbling over words, until you finally manage “I was just curious.” Your heart pounds in your throat. “I mean, most people don’t wear dark glasses at night. I, I wondered if there was, you know, something wrong with your eyes.” It sounds absurd even to you.

  “Hm.” He takes another sip of his chai, licks foam off his upper lip. He is still for a moment, though somehow you sense he is looking around without moving his head.

  Then, with a smooth deliberate motion, he raises the glasses and looks you directly in the eye.

  Dark brown irises with golden rims. Horizontal lozenge-shaped pupils of a black somehow more intense than any other black you have ever seen…except once.

  He lowers the glasses. “As you see,” he says, “my eyes are unusual. I hide them to avoid tedious, intrusive questions…such as yours.” His expression is neutral. “Now please leave me alone.”

  He drains his chai, stands, gives you a small bow, and departs, leaving the empty cup on the table next to your laptop.

  You sit paralyzed.

  You remain exactly where you are, your coffee growing cold, until the café closes.

  Expelled onto the street, you run home as fast as you can – the pavement striking hard against your feet, the night air cold in your lungs – then slam and lock and bolt the door.

  The crack in the door has been patched, but there’s a visible line of tape and fresh paint.

  The crack mocks you.

  The crack says that what happened before truly happened, and that any door you close between yourself and that truth is flawed and broken and doomed to fail.

  You stare at the crack and vow that this time you will not forget.

  ***

  The very next morning you buy a gun – well, you select a gun, pay for it, and fill out the paperwork; there’s a five-day waiting period – and sign up for a basic firearms class. On the way home from the sporting goods store you stop at a garden center and pick up two dozen sturdy wooden stakes. They join the ammunition and holster in the paper bag on the passenger seat.

  The gun may not kill him. But the one who attacked you was knocked off his feet by the car, so they are subject to the laws of physics. Mass times velocity. A gun can do damage at a distance, or at least push him off center.

  You sit in the garden center parking lot and consider how little you truly know. Fangs, hard to kill, wooden stakes, collapsing into dust – these myths are true. Goat eyes – this true thing is not in any of the myths. As to
the rest? Bats, vapors, mirrors, crosses? You realize that you can neither confirm nor deny any of these. For all you know, they laugh at crosses and are terrified of chickens.

  Still…the myths are a starting point.

  You ask your GPS for the nearest Christian supply store.

  ***

  You cannot be sure that this man is the Overpass Killer, but you know that he is not human.

  You are the only one who knows.

  Five women have died already. The police are clueless.

  You had thought your life was spared by chance. Now you wonder if there was a greater force that turned that drunk driver’s steering wheel and put the stake in the right place. Perhaps you were allowed to live for a reason.

  You call in sick at work.

  You cancel your appointment with your counselor.

  You prepare for war.

  ***

  Night after night you sit in your car across the street from the coffee shop, watching through a light-amplifying scope. It’s cold – your breath fogs the windshield – but your rage burns colder and you wait with steely patience.

  You learn his motions. Every few days you park a few blocks further along and watch another stretch of sidewalk. In this way you track him all the way to his apartment building.

  He takes the same route back and forth every time.

  You wonder how old he is.

  ***

  There is a stretch of blank wall along his route, the long windowless concrete side of a grocery store, where two street lights are burned out. His night vision may be better than yours, but with his dark glasses it may still be an advantage if you can strike from darkness.

  The pistol, you have realized, will not make enough of a difference. Mass times velocity, yes, but the one who attacked you withstood the impact of a moving car – over a thousand times the kinetic energy of a pistol bullet.

  The burned-out street lights are at a T-intersection.

  Physics is your friend.

  ***

  You have rented a car, a massive SUV, the largest and heaviest vehicle they had. You told them you were going skiing.

  A dozen wooden stakes are affixed to the bumper with wire, each soaked overnight in holy water from Lourdes. A twelve-inch crucifix, blessed by the Pope himself, adorns the radiator grille. You yourself have four crucifixes around your neck, evenly spaced on a choker, and one pinned to each shoulder of your high-collared Kevlar-reinforced leather motorcycle jacket. You are also wearing a motorcycle helmet. A braid of garlic dangles from the rear-view mirror.

  You recognize that, despite your precautions, you are very likely going to die this night, or wind up in jail, and that your counselor will be disappointed in you when she finds out what has happened.

  She has never looked into goat eyes.

  You grip the wheel, fingers stiff in heavy leather gloves, and wait.

  ***

  Your heart pounds in your chest – not fast, but deep – as you see him round the corner. This is the moment. You set down the night-vision scope, check your seat belt, start the engine. The headlights you leave off.

  He strolls, nonchalant, down the sidewalk as he has so many times before. He takes between nine and twelve seconds to reach the center of the darkened area after passing the fire hydrant. From where you’re parked it’s thirty-four feet and this car can cover that distance from a standing start in three seconds.

  He passes the fire hydrant. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six.

  You floor it.

  With a smell of burning rubber the car bounds forward, screeching as it charges through the intersection. You had been afraid that you would not have the guts to go through with it, but your hands on the wheel are steady and your foot on the accelerator does not waver.

  His pale face with its dark glasses turns toward you as you approach. You aim the blessed-crucifix hood ornament directly at him.

  You scream, the wordless sound loud and strange inside your helmet.

  And then, at the last moment, with impossible speed, he leaps aside.

  You slam into the concrete wall with a terrific bang.

  ***

  The windshield has shattered into ten thousand little glass cubes. There’s a smell of gunpowder and you’re surrounded by – pillowcases? No, airbags, already deflated. Your ears are ringing; there’s a hiss and a sound of dripping water. There are also sirens.

  You don’t know how long you were unconscious. Not long, you think.

  There’s a line of pain across your chest from the shoulder belt, and your neck aches. Apart from that you seem uninjured. You push the airbags aside and try to release your seatbelt, but it’s jammed.

  As you turn in your seat, worrying at the seatbelt button, you see him. He’s practically within arm’s reach, just the other side of the hole where the driver’s-side window used to be.

  He’s looking at you like an entomologist looks at a bug.

  You realize you are going to die.

  “It was you, wasn’t it?” he says. He names a date.

  It takes your rattled brain a surprisingly long time to recognize it.

  It’s the day you were assaulted.

  “Yes,” you manage. “He attacked me. I killed him with a stake.” It’s an attempt at bravado but your voice, muffled by the helmet, is too shaky to make it a threat.

  He leans in through the window and places a hand on your leather-and-Kevlar-covered shoulder. The crucifix doesn’t seem to bother him. “You did right,” he says.

  You sit, doubly stunned, unable to reply.

  “Like you, we have our good and bad ones,” he says, quite conversationally. “He was one of the bad ones. Most of us keep to ourselves, live our lives, stay out of trouble. We don’t really drink blood, you know. But that one was a rapist and a murderer. It’s a good thing that he’s gone.”

  You stammer for a bit, then blurt out “And the Overpass Killer?”

  He smiles, ever so slightly. “One of yours, I’m afraid.”

  The sirens are getting louder. He looks over his shoulder briefly, then turns back to you.

  “I’m sorry you were attacked, but this…vigilantism, it does no one any good. You’re most likely going to be in a great deal of trouble now, and I have to move again.” He sighs. “I’ll tell the others, though. You won’t be bothered again by any of us.” He gives your shoulder a squeeze. He must be very strong, for you to feel it through the heavy, stiff leather. “Have a good life.”

  He turns to leave, but before he can go you raise your visor. “What are you?”

  He looks back and shrugs. “What are you?” Then he gives a little salute.

  Red and blue flashing lights cast dancing shadows at his feet as he walks away.

  ***

  David D. Levine’s stories have appeared in Interzone, Asimov’s, F&SF, Analog, and many others, and he’s won or been nominated for awards including the Hugo, Nebula, Sturgeon, and Campbell. He lives in Portland, Oregon with his wife Kate Yule, with whom he co-edits the fanzine Bento. See his website at http://www.daviddlevine.com for more information and free fiction.

  DECEMBER SKIN

  KRISTI DeMEESTER

  They’d found the motel just before dark. Big drips of sky painting the pines black and jagged, and the cold palpable and worming. They had not thought to bring jackets.

  Rory crammed her meager body onto the floor of Aaron’s old F100 while he fed lies to the rheumy-eyed manager. His Pop was dying, and Aaron hadn’t seen him in years. Divorce, you know? He was headed up there now, to pay his respects, get some things off of his chest before the old sonofabitch finally bit the big one. Couldn’t he overlook that he was only seventeen and rent him a room, just for the night?

  Pressing herself against the floor, Rory tried to absorb what residual heat she could from the engine. They’d been driving for hours now, outrunning the coming night, but the shadows had grown deep and full and Aaron had left her in the truck, the keys tucked deep into his right pocket. What she w
anted was to sink those keys deep into his eye sockets, listen for the soft pop as the optic nerve separated. Her teeth chattered. From under the truck, something chattered back.

  But there was the overhead light popping on, and Aaron hauling himself behind the wheel. “Room’s around back. We’re going to have to run,” he said and threw the truck into gear.

  “You ever woken up in the middle of the night? You don’t know why, but suddenly you’re just wide awake and staring at the ceiling, and you’re sweating under the covers, and you’re lying there, listening to your heart beat, and somehow, it just doesn’t sound right? Like the beats are just slip-sliding around, and you take a couple of deep breaths. To regulate. Only it doesn’t help, and for a few seconds, your heart just stops, and you can hear everything, all the silence that’s in the spaces in between your heartbeats?”

  “Don’t,” he said.

  “You can fall into that space. Fall in and never climb out.” From beneath the truck, the chattering grew louder.

  “Stop it, Rory,” he said, and she curled more tightly against the floorboard.

  “You pretend, little brother. So full of your fake concern,” she hissed, and she thought of touching him, letting him feel the coldness living in the place where her heart once beat, but he had to get her inside, had to get her away from the gathering night and even she knew this.

  “Don’t move. I’ll come and get you,” he said. Outside, over the truck’s rumbling, something laughed deep and long.

  When he cut the engine, he leaned against the steering wheel, let his hair fall over his face. Sitting that way, he looked like a child, small and tucked into himself. For a moment she wanted to reach out to him, but her hands twitched, and she smiled at the thought of ripping his scalp from skull.

  Then he was moving, running through the gloom before throwing open the door and pulling her against him, her body suddenly weightless as he pulled her from the truck and shoved her toward a door.

  The numbers glinted against the black. “1306! 1306!” they seemed to scream. One by one, the lights around them began to blink out, the doors of the other rooms disappearing, swallowed as if some rotting maw had opened and begun to eat.