by Laird Barron
“Death isn’t the worst. There’s dementia. Mental anguish. Physical debilitation. Torture. Death is sleep.”
He thought sleep sounded terrific. His eyes were heavy. “Baby, come over here.”
“Come over where?”
He patted her pillow. The case had several large hearts sewn in. A fresh drop of blood formed at the heart of a heart, grew fat, and stained the cotton. A flute shrilled from the shadows where the ceiling sloped down to meet the wall.
She twisted to look at him. Her eyes belonged to an impressionist painting. Eyes Picasso might have given a woman were he in a savage mood. Her smile extended to her ears. She climbed atop the bed and began to dance. Every gyration swung her jackknifing upper torso closer to him. Her hair grazed his lips. Her lips grazed his lips.
He longed to protest. His muscles were paralyzed.
Somewhere, Sometime III (phone recording; probably Alaska, probably 1979):
Esteban: “…I don’t…remember. A fire? Why don’t I have scars? Kids screaming…it’s like a dream. Not even real though it scares me shitless.”
Concerned Friend: “You have nightmares?”
Esteban: “Nightmares, daymares. Flashbacks. It’s driving me nuts and all I get are jags of images and sounds. Like a bad trip.”
Concerned Friend: “My brother’s platoon got hit with a mortar round in ‘Nam. Killed thirty-eight of his buddies. He took shrapnel in the leg. Doesn’t remember anything. Doctor had to tell him the story when he came to.”
Esteban: “Paper says the park exploded. Gas pipes weren’t up to code. Whole damned place was sketchy as hell. Duct tape on the rides. Half the staff had prison tats and smelled like liquor. Makes sense there’d be an industrial accident. Makes a plausible story.”
Concerned Friend: “Makes sense because that’s exactly how it went down. Don’t go wrapping that fat head of yours in tinfoil.”
Esteban: “I’m not sure. Story they fed the parents, the press, the entire world, is that somebody spiked the refreshments with acid and when the accident happened, we panicked. Bullshit. A couple of the kids were tripping, sure. And we were all boozing, yeah. Acid in the water? No way.”
Concerned Friend: “Ain’t gonna argue.”
Esteban: “Nine kids died. Molly Vile disappeared. None of us talk about it. We try to pretend it didn’t happen. Except Butch. Butch thinks it’s amusing.”
Concerned Friend: “People cope in different ways.”
Esteban (after a long pause): “I think Lucius is cheating on me.”
Concerned Friend: “She loves you, man.”
Esteban: “Maybe. Her mom sleeps around. Everybody knows it except for Mr. Lochinvar. Like mother, like daughter.”
Concerned Friend: “How much you have to drink? Are you crying? You’re done and you’re full of shit. Lucius ain’t fucking around. Sleep it off.”
Esteban: “She digs older guys…”
Somewhere, Sometime IV (Probably Alaska, probably the latter 1980s):
From the mind of Esteban Mace:
We’d been an item since junior high, but we moved in together during a false Alaska spring in 1980, several months after we realized baby Jessica was on the way. Come real spring I’d ship out for Camp Pendleton and my stint with the United States Marine Corps. My parents were none too pleased and I guess hers weren’t either.
One night we lay in bed as flurries of snow piled against the window. The local oldies station said it wasn’t quite a blizzard but stay indoors with your main squeeze to be on the safe side. As we neared the bottom of a bottle of red wine, she started talking about dead dogs she’d known.
“When I was eleven, my folks went to Florida for a week and I stayed behind with Sasha, the family dog. My dog, really. She was a mix; retriever and something else. Her fur was so soft and it gleamed. I didn’t even brush her that often. She was the mooch queen. Whenever my family would swing over, my parents’ friends were like, ‘Hey, I’m grilling a steak, maybe Sasha would like one’…had to be those big brown eyes, the pleading look. She was a pro, my old gal. You’d a loved her. Everybody did. She slipped out the door one night and got hit by a car on Spenard Road. Vet tried every trick in the book. Six grand later we finally gave her the needle. Shitty way to go.”
I’d seen plenty of pictures of Sasha. A sleek red dog who’d hammed for the camera. A lot of other dog pics too; my girl apparently had a thing, but mostly Sasha. I realized, and for the first time, that she didn’t keep any shots of her current pet, Lily, even though she’d kept the Cavalier Spaniel for seventeen years having inherited full ownership from her mom and dad junior year of high school. Neither of us really spoke of the dog either. Wheezing and coughing, eternally moribund, Lily had become another piece of furniture, albeit one that had to be moved several times a day. Maybe that was weird.
“Mine committed suicide,” I said.
She lit a cigarette, then rolled onto her side and gazed at me. Her eyes shone in the gloom, as if she’d been crying. “I didn’t know that was possible. Animals opting out.”
“It’s possible. Once in a blue moon kind a deal. We had a black lab when I was a kid. Inherited from my granddad who’d named him Buster after that actor Buster Crabbe. Guy who played Tarzan in the dark ages before network TV.”
“Handsome fella that BC,” she said with languid appreciation.
“Oh, yeah? You ever watch him? Talk about way before our time.”
“Grandmother was a fan. Had a steamer trunk with a shitload of memorabilia. She chased autographs when she was a girl. Gable, Hepburn, Kirk Douglas, Douglas Fairbanks, Vivien Leigh; you call it, she had a postcard or photo with the star’s John Hancock on there. Crabbe gave her a signed photo of him in his swim trunks, gold medal around his neck. She swooned every time we took it out of the box. Me too, I guess. First erotic dream I ever had was about Buster Crabbe.”
I shook the empty wine bottle. “That’s a new one on me, honey. Anyway. My black lab didn’t give a tinker’s damn about Gramps. However, the mutt made friends with one of the horses. They were real tight. Bumped muzzles whenever we visited the corral. After the horse died, poor Buster became despondent and one day he ended it all.”
“How did the horse die?”
“Dad shot her.”
Lucius exhaled smoke. “Your dad had a good reason?”
“He was a little trigger happy.”
“Okay, on with the ballad of Buster.”
“Thank you. Buster moped around for weeks. Wouldn’t eat, got really skinny. I tried to cheer him up. You know how kids are. He was my pal. But nothing doing. He sat by the corral gate, head down, mourning. Slept there, rain or shine. Dad had to lug him inside at night because he wouldn’t come on his own. One morning I looked out the window as Buster climbed under the fence and walked into the duck pond. Trudged straight in and sank. Didn’t doggie paddle or anything. Glub, glub, glub. Bunch a bubbles, then zilch. Nobody was around, so I jumped in. Couldn’t find him, though. Dad came home and called a couple of his work buddies to help drag the pond. Found Buster in the silt.”
“That’s it?”
“All she wrote.”
“Might’ve been an accident,” she said.
“No way. I hollered at him right before he went into the drink. He glanced back at me. Never saw an expression like that on a dog. Same look you see on a war widow’s face as she’s weeping in a bombed-out village. Despair. Pure despair.”
We fell asleep on that happy note.
The radio alarm blared “I love the Night” by Blue Oyster Cult at three in the A.M. Time to walk Lily again. Every four hours it had to be done; like feeding and changing an infant, only in this case a dog who’d regressed to puppyhood forever. Lucius snored on her side, belly bulging the coverlet, reminding me that one soul enters as another leaves.
The truth of it was, while I liked dogs, and probably would’ve gotten attached to dearly-departed Sasha too, I didn’t harbor much affection for Lily. She wasn’t particularly
friendly, a fact I’d attributed to my status as a Johnny-come-lately, and to her ancientness. She preferred to be left in peace under the table, a vague lump, eyes glistening with inscrutable philosophies; Queen of the Dark upon her satin pillow.
Something is wrong with the baby. You won’t ever know what, you won’t even be alive by the time her curse manifests in full. Neither will Lucius. Lily yawned and her ancient, corroded fangs were larger and brighter than any dog had a right to own.
I snapped awake from the dream-within-a-dream to BOC playing my wakeup serenade, Lucius and the dog snoring and a cold dread in my heart.
Thirty-odd years have rolled by since that dream and the phantom dog had it right — Lucius is vanished, likely dead; my boy Elwood, he’s gone too, blown to smithereens in Afghanistan; this ship is taking on water and the black sea will soon drag me down the way it dragged down my would-be son-in-law (see you soon, Jackson Bane!) ... Small mercy, Jessica is alive and well and living in Eagle Talon.
Right before I head to the bottom, Lily’s ghost says, Every one of you had your mind wiped that night in Rally. Saps. Behold the terrible truth.
The secrets of the universe unfold then implode and suck me into an obliterating chamber. I remember everything and know everything, potentially, to come. I’d cry if the pressure and the currents hadn’t reduced me to motes of motes.
3. Anchorage, Alaska. Autumn, 1979. (Rabbit Creek)
Rabbit Creek occupied a few neighborhoods and industrial zones between Potter’s Marsh and the Chugach National Forest. Basically the ass-end of Anchorage, built atop a thin permafrost crust over primordial muck. Several state geologists had opined the whole area might well sink straight to hell in one of the region’s frequent earthquakes. Lucius Lochinvar thought such a cataclysm couldn’t happen soon enough.
Cassidy Sloan, helming an Oldsmobile she’d borrowed from her dad, dropped Lucius at Mr. Hyjak’s place. It was a few minutes before dark. A light burned on the porch of the split-level house.
Sloan popped a bubble with her pink gum and glared. Her right eye was blacked from a flying elbow at a recent roller derby match.
“Is that a pudge? You don’t button your coat anymore. You preggo? Aw shit, you’re preggo.”
“I am not,” Lucius reflexively crossed her fingers.
“Maybe I should hang around. Want me to stay? I can sit here and listen to the radio. In case…”
“In case?”
“I dunno — in case the scene goes sour.”
“He’s nice. He isn’t going to turn into Mr. Goodbar. Besides.” Lucius slapped her purse and its arsenal of knife, hatpin, and mace.
“Nice?” Pop went the gum.
“Like I said, nice. Too nice. He’s a wuss. I scare him.”
“Nice guys ain’t fuckin’ teen girls half their age on the sly.”
“He’s not married.”
“Yeah, that’s weird too. Anyway — forgetting about the Boy Scout?”
“Esteban and I aren’t married either.”
“Same diff.”
“Meet you at the diner. I can book it from here in twenty.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah, I do it whenever I come over here for a screw.” Lucius climbed out.
Sloan clutched at her sleeve and missed. “The bastard doesn’t even give you a lift after you ball him?”
“Nunya, Sloan. See you in an hour. Pancakes on me.”
“Hell with pancakes. Ronnie Diamond has some people over tonight.”
“I’m saving myself for the bash over at Tooms’ place tomorrow.”
“It’s a pre-party. I dunno. Who cares? We’re goin’ over and getting’ shitfaced to the max. If we screw it up, tomorrow night is do-over.”
“Okay. Meet me at the diner in an hour.”
Alan Hyjak worked as an engineer in Prudhoe Bay which meant he split the year between Barrow and Anchorage. He rented the house and kept a side door unlocked on the nights Lucius stopped over. She went in and felt around in the murk until she reached the living room. It glowed with firelight like the wizard’s lab in Fantasia. Peculiar music (perhaps a monumental long-lost Jethro Tull flute solo) floated from a set of speakers as wide as suitcases. Hyjak reposed naked on a bearskin rug before the hearth. Not a shabby bod for an older guy, if a bit pallid.
“Hey, cutie.” He sipped from a tumbler. “Do yourself a drink.”
Lucius sighed and perched on stool by the wet bar. “I won’t be long. We need to talk.”
“Huh. Talk. Talk is never good. Let’s skip it and say we did. Let’s screw.”
She shook her head.
Hyjak sighed. “Don’t tell me. Plans with the boyfriend? As you can see, I got dressed for the occasion. Be a shame to spoil all my efforts.”
“You look cozy.” She studied the room, squinting to discern the mounted wolf head, an oil painting of a Roman coliseum, and the odd, plastic furniture that belonged to a science fiction movie set. “Are you comfortable here? Just you, alone every night?”
“Not every night. I live plenty of my life in a modular with four other guys. Certainly don’t get to lounge around in the buff.”
“Sure you don’t.”
He stroked his chest and winked. “I suppose the joint could stand a woman’s touch…me too!” When she didn’t smile, he rose and stood directly before the fire so the red light made him a silhouette. “It was bound to come to this. The girl has melted and the woman rises in her stead. Reforged and lethal.”
“Alan, Alan. I was never much of a girl. That’s why you’re obsessed with me.”
“Fair enough. I am obsessed. Although it’s not what you think.”
“My friends say it’s weird you don’t have a wife or a girlfriend.”
“What you mean is, your girlfriend, Sloan, says it’s weird.”
“Dude. You live alone in a big house. No pals, no family. You don’t even own a goldfish. Something’s funky.”
“I like to get funky. I like to get down. Why the third degree?”
“Two years. Two years and I haven’t learned anything real except your CV. My hunch? There’s nothing to learn.”
“Because I choose not to share that part of my life with you doesn’t mean it isn’t there.”
“Ouch. Guess you told me.” She spoke quietly, body tensed. The interminable fluting devolved into a single piercing bleep similar to the emergency broadcast signal, then ceased. Flames crackled. Her heart beat. She hadn’t realized how much the music had gotten on her nerves.
“Do my words hurt?” Hyjak said.
She glanced toward a hallway that led deeper into the house. “A pinprick on the Dol Scale.” She paid attention in class. “Emphasis on prick. No need to agonize in guilt.”
“Guilt isn’t my bag. We both got what we wanted and now it’s over. Going to miss your precociousness, and them perky tits.”
“Precociousness is code for bitchiness.”
“Not usually. However, Ambrose Bierce said that politeness is an acceptable form of hypocrisy. I’m curious — is this going how you rehearsed?”
“So far so good, said the man who jumped off the Empire State Building after every floor.” Again she glanced toward the hallway. “You have company?”
“Company? According to you, nobody visits me in my hermitage.” Hyjak spread his shadowy arms. He undulated to a phantom rhythm. His shadow crawled across the floor, four-armed. “It’s only me and thee.” He finished his drink and tossed the glass over his shoulder into the fire; kept on swaying. “Since this won’t matter much longer, I’ll let you in on a secret.”
“Ooh, a secret.” She reached into her purse and got a cigarette and lit up. The action disguised her true intention as she slipped the mace canister into her left hand. “Okay, I’m ready. Lay it on me.” She watched Hyjak’s undulating silhouette and considered that Sloan’s cynicism might have been warranted. Her man on the side had slipped a gear. Rejection summoned the beast from certain wrecked egos.
“I’m no
t an engineer; I don’t work in Prudhoe Bay; and I don’t feel a thing for you, you arrogant little twat.” He snapped his fingers. “Damn, that’s nice.”
“Truly fascinating. Yes, well. Bye.” Lucius stood and moved away at an angle. She didn’t think the guy would rush her, although she didn’t turn her back on him.
“Wait…You’re jetting?”
“I am.”
“Ask me what I really do for a job. Ask me who pays the freight. Lucius!”
“Piss up a rope!” she called cheerfully on her way through the door.
“I lie for a living, baby! I lie and I touch myself! My letter sweater spells CIA!”
The door slammed.
Then:
The girl left in a huff.
Mr. Hyjak turned so the heat from the flames warmed his testicles. He shimmied and capered, miming a folk dance. Mr. Speck and Butch Tooms emerged from the passage that led to the bedroom. Both men were also naked. Mr. Speck wore a black baseball cap and black shades. His paunch drooped.
Mr. Hyjak had previously asked Mr. Speck why he always wore a hat. Mr. Speck said his exposed brain matter needed protection from Earth atmosphere.
“Lucky I don’t hurt you,” Butch Tooms said to Mr. Hyjak. “Hurt you bad.”
“Say what? Why would you want to hurt me?”
“Our friend is jealous,” Mr. Speck said.
“Butch, baby — what are you jealous about? Have a drink. Have two.”
“Mr. Tooms is jealous because you’ve copulated with the female he desires.”
“Lochinvar? Yeah? You didn’t…I guess we kept it on the down low. Well, we’re splitsville now. Surely you heard that bad scene?”
“Her departure seemed abrupt,” Mr. Speck said. “The females are deadly and unpredictable. Or the tachyon bombardment of her cells precipitated a hostile mood.”
“Chick dropped me hard. Hey, Butch, go on, fix a drink.”
“Lucky I don’t smash your teeth in.” Butch Tooms spoke in a monotone. His hand tightened into a fist against his hip. “Real lucky, man. Smash your teeth.”
“Should I—?” Mr. Hyjak gestured to Mr. Speck for assistance.