999

by Al Sarrantonio

  “I told you not to go up there.”

  “I’ll send you the keys. I … I can’t go back.”

  “You will,” Mr. Carr said sadly.

  “No.” Putnam felt tears welling in his eyes.

  “Yes you will.”

  “No.” He was crying now, the tears coursing down his cheeks. “No.”

  “Yes,” Mr. Carr said softly.

  Putnam hung up the phone, held the receiver, picked it up again. “Yes,” he whispered to the dial tone.

  The bookstore was the only place where he didn’t think about the theater, about the dolls. At home, in the mall, on the streets, he could not get the images out of his head. He kept anticipating appearances by one of the figures or its brethren, appearances which never arrived. He kept expecting to see the small horrid shapes in cars, behind bushes, in bathrooms, on shelves.

  But when he came to work each morning, it was as if a switch was shut off inside his head, denying the thoughts and images all access to his brain. The moment he walked through the doorway, he was able to function normally, was like his old self, able to think of the past, the present and the future without the specter of those … things … intruding.

  He did not talk to Mr. Carr about what he’d seen, and the old man did not mention the episode.

  The thought occurred to him that everything was preplanned, predestined, that things were supposed to work out this way and could not have worked out any other. In this scenario, he was meant to find a job at the bookstore, meant to discover the door, meant to sneak upstairs.

  Meant to see the theater.

  He forced himself to think of something else. That line of thinking frightened him. To ascribe such power to the theater and its inhabitants, to admit that they had any meaning or resonance at all in the world beyond the stairs, meant that the ideas and beliefs he had held all of his life were nothing more than comforting and reassuring lies.

  He told himself that it had all been coincidence. Bad luck.

  He tried to believe it.

  At home, his mom continued to be interested in politics and her career. His sister continued to be interested in playing and television.

  He took to walking through the neighborhood and driving around the city alone. Both activities scared him, and he thought that perhaps that was why he forced himself to go through with them.

  He was walking past the liquor store on the corner of Eighth and Center one evening when he was accosted by a hairy bearded man who grabbed his shoulders while looking wildly up and down the street. The man was wearing a dirty mismatched suit jacket and pants, and he smelled of sweat, vomit and old alcohol. His crooked teeth were colored in several gradations of yellow.

  “Where’s Bro?” the man demanded.

  “Who’s Bro?”

  “My dog, man! Bro’s my damn dog! You seen him?”

  Putnam shook his head, backed up away from the man. “No,” he said. “I don’t think so. W-what’s he look like?”

  Something shifted, something in his perception, something in the man’s face, something in the air itself. The man smiled, and the rotted teeth in his mouth looked suddenly

  fake.

  “He’s about six inches high,” the man said, and his voice was no longer high and hysterical but calm and low and reasonable. “He’s orange and squishy and he used to be a yam.”

  Putnam fell back, caught himself against the liquor store door, and felt the scream rise in his throat.

  “Huh?” the man asked, his voice wild again. “A big black sucker? Looks like a damn Doberman?”

  “No!” Putnam screamed. “I’ve never seen your dog!”

  He ran all the way home.

  A week or so later, his mom added two new crops to her garden at the side of the house.

  She planted pumpkins and summer squash.

  * * *

  Mr. Carr grew even colder, stiffer and more contemptuous than he had been before, the understanding he had momentarily exhibited on the phone that day gone and apparently forgotten. He seldom talked to Putnam now and when he did it was out of necessity and with a rarefied sort of disgusted disdain. The old man seemed to be deliberately attempting to anger him, and it seemed to Putnam as though Mr. Carr was trying to get him to quit.

  He had the unsettling impression that the bookstore owner was, in some strange way, jealous of him.

  But he could not quit, as much as he often wanted to. The bookstore was hell to him, and his insides knotted each day when he drove to work and looked up at the hidden second floor of the building, but the store offered the only sanctuary from the twisted tortured thoughts that festered in his brain. It was only within the boundaries of those walls that he was able to think of the dummy in the audience instead of the figures on the stage.

  Mr. Carr or no Mr. Carr, he needed to work at the store.

  On Sunday, Mr. Carr did not go book hunting. He stayed at the store, unpacking old boxes, shelving, leaving Putnam to run the register. It was at lunchtime that Putnam noticed that the old man was not around, not in any of the aisles, not in the oversized closet that served as a stockroom, not in the bathroom.

  That meant there was only one place he could be.

  Putnam considered leaving, taking off for lunch, going home or going to McDonald’s. He considered staying at the register, waiting for Mr. Carr to return.

  But instead he went upstairs.

  He was not sure why he decided to return to the theater. There was no logical reason for it. He knew Mr. Carr was up there, so he would not be learning any new information by going up to the theater. He did not really want to go—the idea of seeing those things again made him feel nauseous.

  But he went nonetheless.

  He took the flashlight from under the counter. Mr. Carr had left the door in the alcove unlocked, and Putnam closed it behind him as he tiptoed up the steps. In the hallway, he walked quietly, careful not to make a sound, and he passed the rows of identical empty doorways until finally he reached the last one. He was nervous—his heart was pounding, and his palms were so sweaty he could barely hold on to the flashlight—but he took a deep breath, swallowed hard and shone the light into the theater.

  Onto Mr. Carr.

  The old man was seated in the chair farthest from the dummy, and he was naked. His shoes and shirt and pants lay in the dusty floor at his feet.

  On his body, in various positions and poses, were the dolls.

  Putnam stared. The old man had to know that the flashlight was shining on him, but he didn’t seem to care. He touched one figure on his lap, then another on his shoulder, shivering as his fingers stroked the slimy cheeks, ran through the horrible coarse hair.

  He was smiling.

  Putnam still hated the theater, still hated the dolls, was still filled with an irrational anger and intense loathing. But he was also, somehow, envious of Mr. Carr. Some small part of him, he realized, wanted to be naked too, wanted to be sitting in one of the chairs for the audience, wanted to be close to the dolls.

  He dropped the flashlight and ran back down the hallway to the stairs.

  He ran downstairs and out of the store.

  He did not go back, and when the next day his mom told him that Mr. Carr had phoned and had asked him to call him at the bookstore, Putnam told her that, to Mr. Carr, he was never home.

  He returned to the bookstore himself, though, two days later. He pretended to be a customer, snuck in while Mr. Carr was busy at the counter, hid from the old man in the aisles, but when he left several hours later, walking on the far side of a departing couple, he saw the bookstore owner smiling at him, shaking his head. The smile was sad, and Putnam hurried out to his car feeling guilty and ashamed.

  In the dream he was a farmer, and for miles in every direction, as far as the eye could see, spreading outward from the house, were fields upon fields of squash.

  * * *

  He killed Mr. Carr on a Sunday, after the last customers had left, after the store was closed. He clubbed the
bookstore owner to death with an oversized zucchini, bringing down the huge heavy vegetable on the frail old man’s head again and again and again and again until there was no face left, only a pulpy flattened featureless mess, until the zucchini was soft and shapeless.

  Putnam stood over the old man’s unmoving form, breathing heavily, his hands and clothes splattered with blood. He felt tired, felt good, but there was also a sense of incompletion, a sensation of unfulfillment, and he wandered up and down the aisles, still clutching the zucchini, unable to focus on the missing piece of the puzzle. Then his gaze landed upon an unopened box of books, on the X-Acto knife atop the cardboard, and everything clicked into place.

  He began pulling books from the shelves, opening their covers and tearing out the pages until there was a small mountain of crumpled paper at his feet. He hurried back up the aisle and took off the old man’s shoes and socks, pants and underwear, shirt and T-shirt.

  He stuffed the clothes with paper, tied them together with packaging twine.

  Using the X-Acto knife, he carved the zucchini into something resembling a human figure. He cut a swath of his own hair and pasted it to the squishy scalp with an adhesive of spit and the bookstore owner’s blood.

  Both of his projects were unfinished—half-assed, haphazard attempts at art—but they were the best he could manage at this time, under these circumstances, and he hoped that they were good enough. He grabbed the headless paper-stuffed dummy and the naked crude doll and brought them upstairs.

  In the theater, he put Mr. Carr’s stuffed clothes on the chair next to the other dummy and placed the doll on the stage. His hatred was back, but it was not as strong as it had been before, and underneath the loathing was longing. He took off his clothes, folding them neatly and laying them on the floor. He stood there for a moment, feeling the strange cold breeze caress his naked skin, then climbed onto the stage. He picked up the doll he had made, then its brethren. Lying flat on the dusty boards, he placed the small figures on top of his body, in theatrical positions, shivering slightly at the warm sliminess.

  He positioned the final figure on his chest. Nothing happened for a moment. Then, suddenly, his hatred was gone, replaced by something like contentment, and in the silence of the theater he thought he heard an echo of singing.

  He wanted to sit up, wanted to see if anything was happening, but he was enjoying it all too much, and he remained prone, still. The singing grew louder.

  He closed his eyes, waiting.

  And on his body, in the dark, the dolls began to move.

  Thomas F. Monteleone

  REHEARSALS

  Tom Monteleone’s breakout novel, The Blood of the Lamb, deservedly won 1993’s Stoker Award for best novel. He followed it up with Night of Broken Souls and The Resurrectionist. He’s also known for his early science fiction work (he was another writer willing to make the jump from sf to horror, with successful results) and as the publisher of Borderlands Press, as well as the editor of the excellent Borderlands anthologies.

  “Rehearsals” is a Twilight Zone story all the way; if Rod Serling were still around I think he would snap this one up in a second. In fact, it’s so much of a TZ story that I’ve had a hard time since reading it believing that I didn’t see it as one of the show’s episodes. Quite an homage, I’d say—as well as a testament to Monteleone’s ability.

  Dominic Kazan walked through the darkness, convinced he was not alone.

  The idea cut through him like a razor as he fumbled for the light switch. Where was the damned thing? A sense of panic rose in him like a hot column of vomit in his throat, but he fought it down as his fingers tripped across the switch.

  Abruptly, the lobby took shape in the dim light.

  It, like the rest of the Barclay Theatre, was deserted. Crowds, actors, stagehands—everyone except for Dominic—had left hours ago. And he knew he should be alone. He was the janitor/night watchman for the Barclay, accustomed to, and actually comfortable with, the solitude. But for the last few nights, he could not escape the sensation there was something else lurking in the darkness of the big building.

  Something that seemed to be waiting for him.

  He enjoyed working alone; he had been alone most of his life. He did not mind working in almost total darkness; he had lived in a different kind of darkness most of his life.

  But this feeling that he was not alone was beginning to bother him, actually frighten him. And he didn’t want to have any bad feelings about the Barclay. It was his only true home, and he loved his job there. There was something special about being intimate with the magic of the theater—the props and costumes, the make-believe world of sets and flats. Sometimes he would come to work early, just to watch the hive-like activity of the stagehands and actors, feeling the magic-world come to life.

  All his life, there seemed to be something stalking him. A mindless kind of thing, a thing of failure and despair. Somehow, it always caught up with him, and threw his life into chaos. He wondered if it was on his trail again.

  Tonight. Trying to make him run away again.

  And he was so tired, tired of running away …

  … Away from the fragile dreams of his childhood, the traumas of adolescence, and the failures of manhood. His father used to tell him there were only two kinds of people in the world: Winners and Losers—and his son was definitely in the second group.

  Thirty-two years old, and it looked like the old man had been right. His life already a worn-out patchquilt of pain and defeat. After pulling a stint in the army, he had drifted all over the country taking any unskilled job he could find.

  Seasonal, mindless work in Lubbock oil fields, Biloxi docks, Birmingham factories. Ten years of nomad-living and nomad-losing.

  When he had been much younger, he had tried to figure out why things never worked out for him. Physically, Dominic was almost handsome with his thick dark hair and bright blue eyes.

  And mentally, he could always hold his own. He used to read lots of comics and books and never missed a Saturday afternoon double-feature. He even watched a play now and then, back when they used to run them on live television.

  But after he left home and never looked back, things seemed to just get worse. After ten years, he started getting the idea that maybe he should go home and try to start over. The letter telling him that his father had died was now five years old, and he had not gone back then. He had not even contacted his mother about it, and that always bothered him.

  Something gnawed at his memories and his guilt, and he had finally quit his rigging job and started hitching east through the South—Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia.

  One night, he was sitting in a roadhouse outside of Atlanta, drinking Bud on tap, watching a well-dressed guy next to him trying to drown himself in dry martinis. They had started talking, as lonely drinkers often will. The guy was obviously successful, middle-aged, and out-of-place in the roadside bar.

  At one point, Dominic had mentioned that he was going home, back to the city of his birth. The stylish man laughed and slurred something about Thomas Wolfe. When Dominic questioned the response, the man said, “Don’t you remember him? He’s the guy who said ‘You can’t go home again,’ and then he wrote a long, god-awful boring book to prove it.”

  Dominic never understood what the man was talking about until he reached his hometown. It was a large East Coast city, and it had changed drastically in his absence. Lots of remembered landmarks had vanished; the streets seemed cold, alien.

  For several days, he gathered the courage to return to his old neighborhood, to face his mother after so many years.

  When he was finally ready, arriving at the corner street, the correct address, he found his house was gone.

  The entire street, which had once been a cramped, stifling heap of tenements, row houses, and basement shops, had been wiped out of existence. Urban renewal had invaded the neighborhood, grinding into dust all the bricks and mortar, all the memories.

  In its place stood a m
onstrous building—a monolith of glass and steel and shaped concrete called the Barclay Theatre. At first he saw it as an intruder, a silent, hulking thing which had utterly destroyed his past, occupying the space where his little house had once stood. Perhaps Thomas Wolfe knew what he was talking about.

  But after thinking about it, he thought it was ironic that it was, of all things, a theater that wiped out his memories.

  Ironic indeed.

  In the days that followed, he tried to locate his mother, but with no success. She had vanished, and a part of him was glad. It would have been difficult to face her as a man with no future, and now, not even a past. For no good reason, he decided to stay on in the city, taking day-labor jobs and a room at the YMCA.

  As Dominic drifted into summer, he had made no friends, had not found a steady job, and had given up finding his mother. He read books from the library, went to matinee movies, and lived alone with his broken dreams. Occasionally he would walk back to his old neighborhood, as though hoping to see his house one final time. And on each visit, he would stand in the light-pool of a street lamp to stare at the elegant presence of the Barclay.

  He seemed to feel an attraction to the place, old dreams stirring in a locked room of his mind. One day, when he saw an ad in the paper for a janitor/night watchman at the theater, he ran all the way to apply.

  They hired him on a probational basis, but Dominic didn’t mind the qualification. He made a point of being on time and very meticulous in his work. As the weeks passed, he felt a growing warmth in his heart for the Barclay; it became a haven of safety and security—a place where he could live with the old dreams.

  When his diligence was rewarded with a permanent position and a raise in salary, he was very happy. He began coming early to watch current productions, and he learned the theater jargon of the stagehands, actors, and directors. The dreamscapes of the theater became real to him, and he absorbed the great tragedies, laughed at clever comedies.

  But late at night, when the crowds had dispersed, was the time he loved the best. He would go into the main auditorium and listen to the lights cooling and crackling behind their gels, and think about that night’s performance—comparing to past nights, to what he figured were the playwright’s intentions. For the first time in his life, he was happy.