Strange Tales for Cozy Nights 1

by Brian Bakos

  ***

  Sharon stretched herself luxuriously between the newly laundered sheets and cuddled up against her first, only, lover.

  “So, how many others have there been?” she asked.

  Richard felt an embarrassed blush entering his face.

  “Uh ... girls?” he said. “W-well, I ... ”

  “No, silly, I don’t care about that!”

  She gave him a playful nudge.

  “I mean, people like me, people you’ve helped.”

  “Oh,” Richard said.

  Sharon felt him go rigid and pull away from her.

  “I didn’t mean to upset you, honey,” she said. “You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want.”

  A damp shroud of silence fell upon the once cozy scene. Sharon began to wonder if an exit might be advisable. Finally, Richard spoke.

  “I’m not sure,” he said. “I try not to remember. Could be ten or twelve by now.”

  “Did any of them ever visit you?” Sharon asked.

  “Never!”

  Or almost never. Richard recalled a near confrontation with a person he’d healed – maybe two years ago. It was another young woman, and she’d almost come up to him on the sidewalk when she seemed to lose her nerve and hurried across the street instead.

  “I’m glad,” Sharon said.

  A few minutes of uneasy silence passed before the warm glow started to return. They drew together under the covers. Sharon picked up the wine glass from the nightstand and sipped.

  “I’m going to have your baby,” she said.

  “What!”

  “Oh.” Sharon blushed. “I was just dreaming out loud. Sorry.”

  Richard did not reply.

  “I didn’t intend to shock you,” Sharon said. “I mean ... it’s only natural to think in such terms, right?”

  “Can I have some of that?” he asked curtly.

  “Sure, honey.”

  She raised the glass to his lips and tipped it for him. The final contents went down his throat.

  “Is there more?”

  “No,” Sharon said, “but I can rush out and get another bottle ... just the way I am!”

  She flung off the covers to reveal her beautiful nakedness. Despite himself, Richard burst out laughing. Tension exited the room.

  “I think you should stay put,” he said. “It’s a bit cold out for the Lady Godiva routine.”

  He stroked her back, and she moaned with contentment. She’d seemed such a child this morning when she’d stood on his porch. Not any longer.

  “You must be so lonely in this place,” Sharon said.

  “Yeah.”

  “It doesn’t have to be that way, you know.” She nestled closer. “It shouldn’t be, ever again.”

  They pulled the covers up over themselves. Under the bedside lamp’s subdued light, the tacky room looked appealing and cozy. Richard enjoyed the warm glow of the wine and of Sharon’s company. The grim realities of his life seemed to fade into the distance.

  Sharon wanted the moment to last forever, but even more strongly, she felt the need for answers. She decided to risk shattering the atmosphere.

  “Richard ... ”

  “Yes?”

  “Why are you so defensive about your wonderful gift?”

  He was prepared for her inquiry this time and offered a blunt reply:

  “Because my ‘gift,’ as you call it, is killing me.”

  Sharon sat upright. “Really?”

  “Every time I use it, there’s less of me remaining,” he said.

  “Well ... maybe we can stop it, the two of us together,” Sharon said.

  Hope began to push aside the alarm in her face.

  “There has to be a deeper reason why you found me instead of somebody else,” she said. “I can help you get over it.”

  Richard smiled.

  “I sure hope that’s true,” he said. “I don’t want to end up like Dad – the ‘gift’ killed him, no question about that.”

  “He must have been a fine man,” Sharon said. “Tell me more about him.”

  Richard felt himself stiffening again.

  Why’d she have to say that? Why did I have to shoot my mouth off about him in the first place?

  He saw again the pale and sunken face of his father – just like him, father and son, both in possession of the awful power.

  Before his death, he’d left his son with a chilling admonition: “The healer must heal, whether he wants to or not.”

  “What’s the matter?” Sharon asked.

  Richard forced himself to relax.

  She’s right, he thought, I need to bring the whole thing into the open.

  His voice came out dead, toneless:

  “Father was a cruel and unreasonable man, at odds with the world,” Richard said. “He was total son of a bitch, actually – a frustrated serial killer.”

  Sharon felt the hairs on her neck prickle.

  Stop! her mind screamed. I don’t want to know any more!

  Richard gave her a hard, questioning look.

  “Go on ... please,” she forced herself to say.

  He seized the wine glass and poured a final drop down his throat. The delicate stem seemed about to shatter in his grip.

  “Dad was a war veteran,” Richard continued. “He said the combat terrified him, but that he loved the killing part ... he was always dreaming about it and wondering how he could start killing again without getting caught.”

  Sharon’s eyes were wide and frightened in the dim light. She delicately removed the wine glass from Richard’s hand.

  “What about your mother?” she asked.

  “She left ... she was terrified. I wonder if Dad killed her, somehow.”

  The little circle of love around the bed seemed threated by terrible forces of darkness. Sharon held onto Richard as if to save him from tumbling into it.

  “Then Dad started having these seizures,” Richard said. “He found that he possessed an awesome healing power. He projected it onto random sick and disabled people – people he wanted to kill – but he cured them instead.”

  “How did he feel about that?” Sharon asked in a tiny, scared voice.

  “He said that he’d been cursed, that some ‘higher power’ was punishing him,” Richard said. “He hit the bottle hard – crashed the car into a bridge abutment one night. Suicide, probably.”

  Sharon’s breath came in tight little gasps. She wanted to flee the room and never return, charge naked through the streets screaming. But then a powerful surge of love overwhelmed her, and she held Richard even more tightly in her protective grasp.

  “I was in foster care for a while,” Richard said, “then a few years after getting out, I started having the seizures, too.”

  “Do you think it’s a punishment?” Sharon asked.

  “No,” Richard said without hesitation. “It’s more like a judgement passed on me by some authority I can’t understand. Like you’re born into a crime family – it’s not your fault, but you have to pay for somebody else’s sins.”

  “I love you,” Sharon said. “I’ll be here, whatever happens.”

  Hot tears came into her eyes, soon Richard’s own tears mixed with them. They clung together for a long time.

  Finally, Richard pulled away and turned over to lay on his back. Sharon moved her head to his shoulder, and the last of her tears dried on his chest.

  “I think I’m all wrung out,” he said.

  Sharon’s head nodded against his chest. “Me, too.”

  She was on the verge of sleep, but Richard felt energized by his catharsis. He wanted to jump out of bed and run out of the apartment shouting with joy. Instead, he opted for a trip to the bathroom.

  “I need to wash up,” he said.

  “Mmm.”

  Carefully sliding himself from under Sharon’s head, Richard got up and made for the bathroom where he rinsed his face in cascades of luxurious warm water.

  He could barely recogn
ize himself in the mirror. The dour, gaunt features had softened remarkably. Color had begun to return.

  “Handsome devil,” he chortled.

  He breathed deeply, and additional years of premature age dropped away. He felt a new power, vitality and life, taking over from the old one. He felt human. Even his gangly hands looked different.

  Then, another face suddenly appeared in the mirror – the insane visage of his father with its burning eyes and crooked mouth. Its skin was ghastly pale. Richard could almost smell the liquor on its breath.

  “You have to be sick in order to heal others,” his father said. “Didn’t you know that?”

  The face that had once terrified him held no power now. It was only absurd, cruel, dead. Richard barked a scornful laugh.

  “I’m whole now,” he said defiantly. “Don’t bother me again, you bastard!”

  “If I’m a bastard, what does that make you, son?” the image asked.

  “Better than you were, for certain,” Richard said.

  He rapped his knuckles on the glass. His father’s visage exploded like a soap bubble.

  Richard was staring at his own reflection again. It, too, looked a bit absurd, and he laughed again.

  Sharon was asleep when he returned to bed with the newspaper. He was wide awake and hoped that a little reading would help wind him down.

  It didn’t take long. By the time he reached the sports scores he was beginning to nod. An attempt at the crossword puzzle proved too demanding. At last he gave up the effort.

  He dropped the pages on the carpet and flicked the lamp switch. The parking lot’s floodlight provided the only illumination now. Richard shut his eyes to blot it out and rolled over to cuddle with his woman.

  He felt something horrible in his arms.

  NO!!

  A scream exploded in his brain. His body lurched out of bed and thumped on the floor. The covers came with him.

  “Mmm.” Sharon moaned and turned over, but did not awaken.

  She lay on her side facing him, twisted and deformed in the dim light – just like the first time he’d seen her.

  It can’t be! It can’t be!

  Richard flicked on the table lamp again. Sharon turned away from the light but did still not awaken. Richard rubbed his eyes, refusing to believe the terrible image. He ran his hands over the misshapen body to verify the horrid truth. He clamped his eyes shut.

  Change her back! he commanded desperately. I’ll go away ... anything, just change her back!

  Minutes of terror passed before he gained the courage to look at her. Sharon was prone now, snoring slightly. Her body was restored and healthy again.

  Richard sagged with relief, then bitter tears welled in his eyes

  “Damn you,” he muttered. “Why did you have to come here?”

  All the others had understood the necessity of staying away from him, but not her. Love had carried her beyond all doubt and reason ... and now this!

  He heard his father’s laughter echoing throughout the apartment. He understood then, with the clarity of a lightning flash, that love was not for him. That anything he embraced would turn ugly and distorted.

  He dressed quickly and threw together a few possessions. He was not quiet, but Sharon slept on in the grip of powerful forces that were determining her fate.

  Richard paused at the bedroom door. An overwhelming urge to remain with Sharon came over him; he took a step back towards her. A wavering distortion hovered in the the air above her; she began to twist back into a crippled state.

  All right! I’m going! Richard’s mind screamed in agony.

  With a final glance at Sharon, he left the apartment. She was still whole; she would remain whole. She was the great mother now.

  Dawn was beginning as he strode across the parking lot to his battered car. All the birds were awake and screeching; their cacophony thundered in his ears with the old command:

  “The Healer must heal! the Healer must heal!”

  He drove away. Sharon, the keeper of the line, was already a fast-fading memory. From father to son.

  Bear Country

  Tom, the son-in-law, looked out the kitchen window at little Susie playing in the snow. She didn’t notice him and would have continued to build her miniature snowman had she not seen her father coming up the path.

  She smiled and stood up. There was a weave to his walk, however, and this frightened the child. Instead of running to greet him, she dashed back into the cottage.

  Her mother saw the little girl’s agitation and said: “Your father’s home?”

  The other two children stiffened in their seats, and Tom crushed out his cigarette in the ashtray.

  A moment later, the door banged open and a big, enormously fat man – 350 pounds at least – entered the kitchen and shook snow from his shoulders and boots.

  “Little snip ran from me like I was the Boogey Man,” he laughed. “Susie, it’s me! No abominable snowman tonight!”

  The group around the kitchen table relaxed a bit.

  The big man picked up the child in his beefy arms. She detected the booze on his breath and wrinkled her nose.

  The wife ventured, “We’re having the left-over roast beef, Bill. Coffee’s ready too.”

  “Sounds good, Janet,” Billy replied.

  He kicked off his boots and rubbed his hands together for warmth.

  “Looks like that warm spell is over,” he said. “We’ll be out ice fishing again soon.”

  Richard’s face brightened at the mention of ice fishing, but it quickly grew solemn again.

  “I got the insulation in the back bedroom done,” Tom said. “We can start the paneling tomorrow.”

  Billy glanced at the young man; a flash of exasperation appeared in his eyes.

  “Glad to hear that,” he replied. “Hope we’ve got enough nails for the job.”

  He slipped his liberated feet into a pair of loafers and took his place at the table.

  Tom felt strong, rooted to his chair, one rolled up hand atop the table.

  I’d like to hammer you to the wall, he thought, flexing his hand.

  “Seems to be plenty of nails,” he said.

  “Salt please,” Richard said.

  He and Pam sat on their side of the table; the early teens looked almost like twins, although they weren’t. Only the eldest sister Joyce, Tom’s wife, was absent from the family gathering.

  Joyce had been the one to suggest this “fence-mending” mission – spend the long weekend getting on her parents’ good side by helping them remodel their north woods cottage. They were still upset about her and Tom’s elopement, after all, and they needed some currying.

  Conveniently enough, she’d gotten sick at the last minute leaving Tom to appear alone. Funny how she so often got sick or suddenly busy when it was time to see her parents.

  “Go on without me, I’ll be alright,” she’d said. “It’s just a little touch of flu.”

  So Tom had come. He could never refuse her anything. He’d quit smoking for no other reason than that she’d wanted him to. It was only since he’d been pushed into this tense situation that he’d lit up again.

  Billy’s eyes narrowed and regarded Tom over their coffee cup rim.

  “Uh, Bill,” Janet said, “have they salted the road down at the South Shore yet?”

  “Don’t know. Didn’t come that way.”

  “What way did you come?”

  It was an absurd question, since there was only one other route he could have taken from town. Billy acknowledged it with a snort. The meal passed in silence, and Tom excused himself as soon as possible.

  He took his coffee cup to the adjoining living room and spread out in front of the TV. His leg was really bothering him. These days his old injury seldom caused much problem, but now the aching was fierce. He fought the urge to light up another cigarette.

  Talk began in the kitchen. Tom turned the TV volume louder to cover the chatter. Still, he could just barely hear the convers
ation if he strained his ears a little. He couldn’t help but strain now and then.

  “I saw Florin in town today,” Billy was saying.

  “Are they still coming over Saturday night?” Janet asked.

  “Yeah,” Billy replied, “He told me he’d like to remodel his place, too, but couldn’t afford it. Where’s all this money he’s supposed to have?”

  “You know they have two boys in college,” Janet said. “There must be a lot of expenses.”

  “Right.” Billy lowered his voice, almost too low for Tom to hear. “And either would have made a good catch for Joyce. So who does she pick? A factory hand from DEE-troit.”

  Tom flinched. Nobody had to tell him that his assembly line job was tough and demeaning, despite the good pay. He wanted more, though, and was beginning classes spring term in Electrical Engineering. He’d have to work midnights to free up time for study, but he knew could do it. The Navy had taught him discipline, as well as providing training that could be credited toward the college degree.

  He and Joyce were to have sprung the happy news this weekend, but now Tom did not feel motivated to confide in his in-laws.

  Heat from the nearby fireplace caused him to strip to his T shirt, revealing powerful arms and chest. Tom was not a large man, but quite strong. He’d been a wrestler in high school and a boxer in the Navy; he’d maintained his physique well. Once in a while some jerk at the assembly plant would misread Tom’s compact size and slight handicap and would try to hassle him. Nobody ever made that mistake twice.

  Suddenly a door banged open down the hall, and Sam came bounding through, tail thumping on the floor. The little mongrel approached the table, glad to be out of its confinement in the bedroom. The youngsters froze in horror and their mother’s face recoiled, as if in anticipation of a slap.

  Billy gaped at the animal, his eyes bulging out of a reddening face.

  “What’s it doing in here?” he bellowed, “I said that dirty thing should never be in the house!”

  “But Dad, it’s cold outside,” Richard protested.

  “Enough from you!”

  Billy grabbed him by the shirt and jammed his fist into the boy’s throat hard enough to make him gag.

  “I told you not to bring in these strays around here,” he said. “I’m not fixing up this place so it can be a dog pound!”

  “Dear, they just thought he’d freeze out there,” Janet pleaded. “I was going to tell you.”

  “That’s right Daddy,” Pam added in a trembling voice.

  Billy released his grip on Richard. The boy pushed his chair away from the table and coughed from the blow he’d received. Susie fled to the bedroom from which the puppy had just come and slammed the door. These ignoble expressions of defeat from the family seemed to calm Billy.

  He spoke in a quieter tone: “Get it out of here before I dump it in the lake.”

  Janet quickly obeyed, opening the door and motioning to Sam. The puppy hesitated, yipping and wagging its tail. Billy shot out his leg and, with agility surprising for a man of his bulk, sent the dog flying with a kick.

  Things settled down again. Billy looked out toward Tom who was still seated before the fireplace. A slight, taunting smile came over Tom’s face; he broadened his shoulders in a slow stretch.

  Just you and me, fat man, he thought, two minutes is all I want.