“How come you’re so interested in that house, Jack? Any naked girls move in over there or something?”
“No. No naked girls.”
“Well,” Vicky smiled, bringing her wine glass to her lips, “There used to be. Shit, that guy knew how to party. Till his money ran out. All that booze and blow. Loud music every night. Funny thing is, he never used to be that way. Till he lost his girls...”
“His girls..?” Suddenly, Jack could see it. The police boat just offshore, the man in the blue windbreaker standing alone far up the beach, his face a distant, ruined blur.
“Yeah, you remember,” Vicky continued. “First his girls drown, then his wife left him. Pretty soon, no more parties. I used to watch him wandering around over there in that big empty house...”
“Vicky...” Jack looked up and saw Danny standing in the doorway glaring at her.
Vicky raised her hand to her mouth like she was trying to hush herself, then her shoulders started to shake. “Jesus,” she said, and Jack realized she was laughing. “All that great big ocean right there in his front yard. And the asshole goes and hangs himself...”
“Vicky––goddamn it...” Even in the dark, Jack could see Danny’s mouth trembling. Standing quickly, he hurried past his brother and down the hall to his room.
Jack locked the door and sat on the floor right in front of the window and looked across the alley for the bright green window. But it wasn’t there. Only darkness.
He closed his eyes and concentrated on the sound of the waves, thinking of the green window shining in the darkness. Please, he thought, like he had the first time. Please. And when he opened his eyes, there it was. The little figures he’d seen passing back and forth were there too. This time they were not running but were sitting in plain sight playing in the sand, their backs turned. But he knew them. He knew them. He watched and his heart filled with a longing that lifted him up until it felt like he was there with them in that bright warm place.
The drive to Allentown was longer than he remembered, and he stopped twice to check the map and make sure he hadn’t gone too far. The sky was a molten iron gray rimmed with red like he was driving into a tornado or a forest fire. When pulled up in front of Vicky’s sister’s house and opened the car door, he felt the first drops of rain hit the back of his hand. By the time he reached the front door his shirt was soaked.
He rang the doorbell twice before he started banging on the door. He’d promised himself that he wouldn’t do this, that he would not pound on the door or call out her name, but that promise felt useless now, as useless as the sound of his own voice coming back to him in the rain.
He tried the doorknob; to his surprise, it turned in his hand and the door swung open. Stepping across the threshold, he listened for a moment. Hearing, nothing, he began to move through the house, his heart pounding harder in his chest. “Billy? Kaitlin? Sweetheart, it’s Daddy...”
He thought of how long it had been since he’d heard her call him that. Kaitlin had stopped calling him Daddy when she’d turned thirteen, about the same time he’d left. That was going to change, he decided. That was all going to change, starting now.
He climbed the stairs to the guest room where they usually slept and it was empty, no sign of their clothes or luggage. He opened the closet door and froze when he saw what was scrawled in black marker on the wall.
F U C K Y O U A S S H O L E I H O P E Y O U D I E
He stared at the black letters, feeling everything drain out of him. It wasn’t Kathy’s handwriting he was looking at. It was Kaitlin’s.
Jack had turned around and driven back from Allentown without stopping; the four hours behind the wheel he could only remember in jagged pieces like a bad dream.
Danny’s face had looked worried when he’d opened the door. “What happened, Jack? What’s wrong?” Jack couldn’t answer at first. He took the glass of water Danny handed him, and when he closed his eyes to drink he saw headlights and the white lines of the highway flying toward him out of the dark.
All he wanted was to lay down, close his eyes and hear nothing, see nothing, feel nothing for a while. When he finally finished telling what had happened, he looked up and was shocked to see Danny crying.
“I’m sorry, Jack. I’m sorry,” Danny’s voice sounded small and strangled. “You can’t stay here. Vicky’s been really patient. You’ve been here a lot, Jack. A lot of times. That’s why I gave you the car. I was hoping...” Jack stared at Danny’s wet, red face, his mouth twisted out of shape, unrecognizable. “Vicky’s been really patient, Jack. She’s been patient with me too. You know what I mean. I can’t blow that, Jack. I can’t.”
Danny stopped to wipe his eyes. When he spoke again, his voice was steadier but still fragile-sounding. “You can stay here tonight. You’ve got someplace to go, right?”
Jack could only nod his head. Yes. Yes I do.
The green window was still blazing bright inside the house across the road, just like he knew it would be. As he sat staring at it, finishing the last of the bottle of vodka he’d found in the kitchen, it all became clear to him. These past three weeks, the months and years of anger and separation, the ugly black letters on the wall. None of it was true. This, the green window shining in the dark, the beautiful figures that moved and called to him from the light and the fierce and powerful yearning inside him that answered them. That was true. And if it wasn’t, it was all he had.
It was a short walk across the alley to the empty house. When he climbed the wooden steps and approached the sliding glass door, he could see the green window flickering inside, closer than ever. Then his whole body went numb with fear. A man’s face, pale and hollow-eyed, stared back at him. He cried out and struck at it, and the face shattered into pieces of glass that fell at his feet. His hand was cut but the pain felt distant, unimportant. Only the green window mattered, and the small familiar figures waiting for him on the other side.
The closer he came to it, the brighter the light grew until he had to shut his eyes. He felt for the windowsill with both hands, gripped it and pulled hard until he felt it slide up. Then he climbed through.
The moment he was on the other side he knew something was wrong. The air here was not warm but icy cold and felt thick and hard to move through. As he walked, the sand rose up around him in grainy, swirling clouds, and his limbs moved slowly and heavily as if he was dragging them behind him.
By the time he reached the small figures in the sand, he understood they were not his children. When they began to turn their heads, their long hair swirling around them in the thick, green air, he covered his eyes. He didn’t need to see their faces to know what they were. He didn’t need to feel their cold, damp fingers on his wrist to know where they were taking him. He had known that for a long time.
David Surface lives in the Hudson River Valley of New York. His stories have been published in Supernatural Tales, Shadows and Tall Trees, Morpheus Tales, and the Tenth Black Book of Horror. He also writes a blog, Poe's Doorknob, on the many faces of horror in fiction, film, and life, at http://dsurface.wordpress.com. He is honored to be published with so many other fine writers in Darkest Minds.
Walking the Borderlines
Tracy Fahey
I’m writing the story of me and Charles Anderson. It’s a story from the year I turned twenty and went travelling. It’s a story of where we went and what came back.
#
My memories, inevitably, have been shaped by photographs. In the photo, he’s smiling an all-American smile, the sun is shining and he’s linking arms with me and the hostel desk clerk, Philippe. He looks like a young Rob Lowe.
I’m sitting here, trying to remember what happened fifteen years ago.
I remember lots of disjointed things about that Parisian summer, like a recovering amnesiac. I remember huge dogs, fetid gratings masquerading as toilets, post offices like palaces, palaces like boulevards, beautiful bridges topped with cherubs, the sinister red-lit Redons in the Musee D’Orsay, and the
overriding smell of the Seine – a dank, foxy smell of sun-warmed urine.
And Charles and all that happened after. It all happened. I remember it with almost-sadness; nostalgia for the person I was.
#
It was late afternoon beside Notre Dame, sun slanting low and yellow across the bar table. Charles and I were talking about life and death and life after death.
No, back further than that.
#
We met in the hostel lobby standing by the desk. Charles. It was a strange feeling. We smiled broadly at each other, smiled like old friends, and I felt an immediate shock of recognition. There wasn’t even a desire to start talking immediately. He was standing with my Irish back-packing friends Dee and Adele and we all started chatting. Finally, inevitably, I turned to him.
The next bit is a montage of the lobby, the street outside, the bar, the bar table, his pack of Marlboro lights, his soft Georgia accent, our conversation.
“He’s nice, isn’t he?” Adele asked.
“Yes” I agreed.
But how did I really feel about him? Even back then, that first night, I had that inflated, giddying feeling when you meet someone you click with, when you can think of nothing more intoxicating than becoming the friend of this new, fascinating person.
The next day we went to my “usual” café, Le Chat Noir. It was late afternoon beside Notre Dame, sun slanting low and yellow across the café table. Charles and I started talking about life and death and life after death.
“Do y’all believe in an afterlife, another dimension?” He cocked an eyebrow at me.
“Well, I do think that there are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio…” I began my pat answer, and then stopped, recklessly. “Actually yes, I’ve had weird things happen to me – I’ve heard and felt things I can’t explain”
He nodded peacefully
“I mean really strange things. Once in college, some friends were messing around with an Ouija board at a party. They started screaming about someone moving the board. I thought it was just a ploy to get attention, until I heard a strange noise, like a group of people whispering in unison. I didn’t even think. I just acted.”
My voice grew smaller. I snatched a quick look at his face to gauge its expression. He continued to nod, slowly.
“So I put my palms on the table and started saying the Our Father, over and over. All around me I could hear people calling to each other. Under my hands I could feel- I don’t know – a kind of a thrumming”. I searched for words. “Like when you put your ear to an electricity pole as a kid. I kept saying it – some people joined in – and then, suddenly it was over.” I sat back in my chair, remembering. “Funny thing is, no-one ever mentioned it again. But I lost a few friends that night. People don’t like it, it turns out, if you think you hear noises from another dimension. Strange, that.”
I sneaked at look at him from under my eyelashes. He touched my hand.
“S’all right now”. His voice was soft as syrup. “No need to make a joke of it. Folks are just afraid of what they don’t know. There’s more than you, you know. I call them borderliners. People who can see or feel things like you.”
I looked straight at him, eyes wide.
“Why do you say that?”
“Because I’m a borderliner too.”
I sat there in the warm sunshine, looking at his blue, unafraid eyes. In another world, close by us, everything ticked onward, the buzz of voices continued to sound around, a car horn blared, two dogs barked in quick succession. At our table, there was nothing else but our conversation.
“Tell me about you.” I urged. “I thought I was the only one.”
He paused. “Well, it’s a long story. It kinda starts when I was a kid.” He stopped again. “I’m telling it all wrong. I mean, I can’t remember a time when that stuff wasn’t going on. Right beside my bed, when I was little, I’d see a man watching over me when I slept. My momma told me he was there to protect me.”
“You’ve seen things – people?” I couldn’t imagine the awfulness of it.
He ducked his head. “Yeah. I’ve thought about it a lot and I guess crossing the borders is like climbing rungs on a ladder. First step is feeling things are weird, or a bit wrong. Then comes hearing. Then seeing. I’m at a different level of the ladder than you, because I’ve seen stuff too. Not just felt it.”
As he talked, I felt a slow sigh of relief escape me. Not mad, my mind insisted. Not mad like the people from the home up the road with their slurred, muffled talk speech, and their slow, blank eyes. Just sane. Just like Charles. I felt my old never-voiced terror start to wash out in great, breathless surges.
#
Charles left Paris soon afterwards. I was only consoled by the thought I would follow him to London to stay in his step-mother’s apartment. A few weeks later, after a prolonged overnight coach-ride in a bus where the French driver played rap music and no-one slept, I arrived in London with Adele, full of tired elation to see him again.
And it was lovely. The glad, face-aching smiles at meeting again, the trip round the supermarket to buy food and strong cider for the evening. Over the bread counter he held my arm - “I am really so glad you’ve come over.” I felt a little, warm wriggle of happiness in my stomach. Adele walked back with us, agreeing to stay for dinner before meeting her relatives in Camden. We were all tired, but it felt nice to reassemble part of the old Paris group. In fact everything was lovely until we got back to his step-mother’s apartment in Battersea. Nice neighbourhood, rows of Sloaney houses and tidy trees. The people were smartly dressed, even the dogs looked more manicured than usual.
Then I stepped in the door of the apartment. It was all wrong. The sunlight of the late afternoon lay flat and yellow against the walls, which seemed just a little darker at the top than they should be. It was quiet and a little cold, despite the golden heat of the summer day outside.
The corridor in front was a pool of empty silence.
I looked around out of the corners of my eyes.
“This is nice.” Adele enthused. Charles looked at me sideways. I opened my mouth to politely agree, and then closed it again.
Rosemary’s Baby, went the insistent voice in my head It’s like the apartment in Rosemary’s Baby.
My mind felt slow and puzzled. No it didn’t. There was really no physical resemblance.
“Grocery bags?” Charles was still watching me.
“Oh yes!” Confused, I followed him to the cool, white kitchen and started unpacking.
Later that night, we were tired and a little drunk, especially Adele and Charles. I’d tried to explain that English cider was stronger than French, but their blurred, pink faces told me they hadn’t listened. My home-made hamburger lay half-finished on my plate, bleeding ketchup. My mouth was almost too weary to chew.
Yawning and lusting for sleep, I stumbled into the spare bedroom savouring the smell of fresh cotton and the cool, slithery mass of pillows. I lay half-awake in a sensuous swoon of fatigue. At the end of the corridor I could hear Adele laughing at the door, then sounds of diligent, drunk Charles clearing up in the kitchen, banging plates and glasses heavily against the draining board. And then silence. My eyes closed, I stretched out my throbbing leg muscles.
Seconds later, I was awake, exasperated. Upstairs, there was the distinct sound of feet walking then running, a quick, light thumping. It was no use. The running feet were in my head, read and visible. Round and round they went. My shut eyes projected visions of them, neatly shod in trainers, completing perfect circuits, over and over, overhead.
I’ll never sleep now, I thought, almost savage with tiredness. Stop running!
And then it was morning. A smell of coffee and toasting bagels drifted into the room. I sniffed. Sesame seeds? My stomach remembered my half-finished dinner and propelled me up.
Charles sat with his back to the window. His hair was unusually unkempt, the back sticking straight up, framing his head like a spiky halo. He snapped the lid of his
Zippo back, cigarette tilted between his lips. I took a bagel and buttered it.
“You OK?”
“Yeah, fine, feel a lot better. Except for your bloody neighbour keeping me awake.” I smiled to bely my angry words, last night’s annoyance fading.
He looked directly at me.
“Your upstairs neighbour walking round and round. Actually, it was more like a run. Weird time of night for it.”
Charles exhaled, dropped his eyes to stare at the cigarette in his hand.
“There is no upstairs” he said quietly. “This is the top apartment.”
The bagel felt like dough in my mouth
“There was no-one upstairs.” He kept his gaze on his hand, tapping the cigarette into the ashtray.
“But you’re right. There were a lot walking last night”
“Who was walking?” My voice was tiny, my insides airless.
“Well, y’all for a start.”
Fear hung low and cold inside me. “Me?”
“Yes” he said quietly. “Found you in the kitchen. Fast asleep. I guess you were sleepwalking. Walking the borderlines.” He ground out his cigarette, hard, and looked up. His blue eyes seemed glassy as marbles.
“But I do think you heard footsteps. That running sounds right.”
“It’s this apartment, isn’t it?” My voice felt dry and light in my throat. “There’s something wrong here. Tell me what it is!”
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