Weird Tales #327

by Tanith Lee

  He was stingy, too. Other in-laws bore their relatives off for the day to the city, at least to the malls of Lake Naro. But Greg kept rich by giving little and taking as much as he could. The tea and cakes here would show on Ernestine’s monthly account, not his billfold. Did he realize that she did not mind so much, because the thought of being ‘treated’ by Greg would have been far, far more revolting?

  “Is it OK, Mom?” Lois asked her, as opposed to telling her it was, when Greg had gone off in pursuit of Nancy and/or another cigarette.

  “It’s fine, honey,” said Ernestine, trying to inject a little mild enthusiasm. “You’re not unhappy? You look well —”

  “I am well. I’m not unhappy. And it is very good to see you. If rather a surprise.”

  “Well — well they called us,” Lois blurted.

  “Who called, dear?”

  “I probably shouldn’t — Greg said we shouldn’t —”

  “Damn Greg, he’s an asshole,” said Ernestine precisely. Lois blinked. But she had seen her mother’s battle flag go up before, not often, but enough times to recognize. “What shouldn’t you?”

  Lois looked flustered, Staring at her unfinished blueberry muffin, she told Ernestine how Gracious Pines had called up to tell them Ernestine had been acting a little strangely. “Wandering about the grounds in the dark,” said Lois, watery-eyed with nerves.

  “Wandering in the dark — the chance would be pleasant. They’ve started to lock up after six o’clock. Oh, once — once — I came back just after six. I’d been for a walk — which is healthy, so they should have been delighted. But they’d already locked the doors, so there was a scene. You’d think I’d tried to escape.”

  Lois stared. “Oh Mom. You make it sound like —”

  “Alcatraz?” Ernestine bit back her anger. “I’m sorry, Lois. I’m only a little — well, offended by their whining to you. Scaring you, too, I can see. I suppose Greg wanted to come see me to gloat — but as you see, I’m not acting strange. I’m not going nuts. Everything is fine and dandy.”

  Greg was returning, smiling a fat secretive smile. As if he had done something sexy and clandestine behind Mom-Lois’s back. “Don’t say I told you, Mom.”

  “You’re afraid of him.”

  “No — no, of course I’m not. It’s just —”

  “You’re afraid of him.”

  “Afraid?” said Greg. “Who’s afraid?”

  “Of the big bad wolf,” said Ernestine.

  Greg boomed with laughter and many heads turned. “That Nancy sure as Hell ain’t,” said Greg.

  * * * *

  They stayed on for dinner. This was allowed, occasionally, to the residents — unfortunately.

  Greg put on his usual performance, grinning around, complimenting everyone on the great ‘home-cooking’, (but then he had requested and received the pan-fried chicken that the inmates seldom attempted. For reasons of cholesterol it was strictly rationed.)

  Sometimes he made comments on the others, too, in a loudish low voice. “That old charmer sure has some hot rocks there.”

  “That’s Coral. Her husband left her a pearl and diamond collection when he died,” said Ernestine in, she thought herself, far too poisonous a widow-making voice.

  But Greg never noticed.

  Or did he? He came back at once.

  “Shame Jim couldn’t help you out that way, Ma.” (He called her Ma only at optimum.)

  She refused to show how she hated it. “Jim left me some memories I wouldn’t trade for diamonds.”

  “Sure he did. What was that dumb thing you did back then? Hey — you went to a medium, right, Ma? I mean, when he died.”

  “Yes.”

  Lois said, “Greg, honey, let’s not —”

  “Ernestine doesn’t mind, do you, Ma? And this woman told you — what was it?”

  Rather than let him see visibly how much pain he must know he was causing her, Ernes­tine asked levelly, “She told me Jim was doing well, but he had reincarnated.”

  “That’s the one! Yeah, that’s the one. What a prime bitch. There you go, Jim gone only two — three years, and you want her to say ‘Oh, he’s waiting for you, baby, in the sweet by-and-by.’ And the witch tells you ‘No, he’s back already, couldn’t even wait up there a few years.’ ”

  “Yes, Greg,” said Ernestine. “But why should I be greedy? I had him a long time. If it’s true, now someone else will have him, and he’ll be young and fit again.”

  “You believe that crap?”

  “It’s better than some of the other crap,” said Ernestine.

  Greg gave another of his laughs. He signaled to Nancy across the room as if he were in a bar someplace. Somehow, Nancy did not see. Lois said, “Mom, Greg doesn’t mean —”

  “It’s all right,” said Ernestine.

  She wanted to cry. Just like a girl. Like she had that day when she lost him, and she was only a girl of sixty-three, not a girl of seventy-six.

  We don’t change inside. The pain doesn’t. Nothing does.

  Having scored his hit (he knew he had, he had fed on it, like the chicken and potatoes, apple donut, and whipped cream) Greg belched softly and said he would take a stroll outside to smoke a couple of cigarettes.

  As Nancy cleared the table, Lois said diffidently, unlikingly, “Thank you so much. My husband did enjoy his meal.”

  “Keeps up that kinda eating,” said Nancy, “he ain’t gonna enjoy too many more.”

  Lois’s mouth fell open. Ernestine stared.

  Lois said, marshaling herself, “How dare you say —”

  “I say as I find,” said Nancy.

  She walked off.

  “I shall make a complaint about that,” said Lois. “The darn cheek —”

  “No,” said Ernestine. She broke out laughing. Could not help herself.

  Lois glared at her, then she too began to laugh. Suddenly tears were running down her face, there in the middle of the public dining-room.

  “Oh Mom — oh Mom —”

  “I know. Can’t you —”

  “No. What’d I do if I left him? I just have to hope he won’t throw me out. I don’t have a cent — he’s made sure of that. Where’d I go?”

  And Ernestine thought bitterly, You could have come to me, if I’d kept the house. Oh damn, damn.

  She took a Kleenex and mopped Lois’s face gently, mothering her, praying Greg would not come back yet. It must be soon. Though they would have allowed him, a visitor, to go outside — especially with another frowned-on cigarette — there was not much to keep him out there. Unless Nancy, as he had seemed to imply, might choose to join him. But it seemed Nancy had indicated her preferences.

  “Oh, making a fool of myself in here with everyone looking,” said Lois, blowing her nose. No good denying that, they all were. The eyes of Coral and Findlay were almost out on stalks.

  “They’ll think I’m a cruel bitch of a mother who’s made you cry.”

  “Then they’d be wrong,” said Lois. “You were the best kind of mother to me. God, Mom. The times I’ve wished I had that back. The way we were then.”

  “Oh, darling.” Ernestine knew she too would cry now, helplessly, and he would come in and see it —

  “Nancy!” Nancy answered the call at once.

  “You gals OK?” Nancy looked concerned. A first.

  “Just remembering old times — we’ve gotten sentimental. Do you think we could have a couple of vodka tonics — large ones?”

  “Sure thing,” said Nancy. “Bar’s probably closed. Don’t matter. Rocks and an olive?”

  Let the bastard come back now and see them drinking, Ernestine thought, and no third glass.

  But the vodkas had come and slowly, steadily gone down, and they were eating the olives last of all, and it was an hour later. And Greg had not actually marched in to catch them, either in tears or in their cups.

  “I wonder where…if he’s OK?” said Lois. She sounded relaxed and indifferent.

  “Perhaps
he went to look at the car — check the gas,” said Ernestine. “I guess you’ll have to be on the road soon.”

  “Yes. It’s a two-hour drive.”

  They went into the lounge however, for coffee, later than everybody. It was late. Only Findlay was still there, watching a TV program on famous fantasy writers of the ’80s, which did not include Findlay Finn, cussing occasionally.

  “I think I’d better go find him,” said Lois, standing up.

  “Sure, darling.”

  “I’ll come say goodbye before we leave. I promise I’ll visit, somehow — Greyhound, if I have to.”

  Ernestine sat alone.

  The TV program ended. It was ten P.M. — the final hour favored for the residents to make for their rooms and bed.

  Findlay got up. “That fat jackass gone?”

  “My son-in-law? Yes, I think he must have gone.” Fat jackass, she thought, warming slightly to Findlay. Evidently the jackass had not allowed Lois to come back in for any goodbyes.

  “Care to join me in my room?” said Findlay.

  “I think I’m a bit too crazy, for you, Mr Finn.”

  Chuckling, he went out, and passed Lois in the doorway coming back in.

  She was flustered again, anxious. Greg could always do that for her. But then she said loudly to Ernestine, “He’s disappeared, Mom. Greg’s just vanished. No one’s seen him. Those police guys here, the patrol — they’re going out to look. With guns. Oh God, Mom, what’s happened?”

  And Ernestine, who thought she knew, with a clutch at her heart that might be terror or joy or simply the vodka not digesting, got to her feet and said, “It’s OK, honey. It’ll be OK.”

  * * * *

  They found Greg in the end near morning, at the edge of the woods. He had had a heart-attack and was immensely dead. Although, (like Donald) recent routine medical checks had revealed no problem, he was an ideal candidate for a coronary, of course. He was in the right age group, smoked heavily, over-ate consistently, and had for years been friendly with most available women not his wife. There were no marks on his body to suggest anything else. Nothing, it seemed, had even wanted to nibble him.

  Because of the situation, the scenario of in­ves­tigation was, however, complex and somewhat drawn-out; exhausting and somehow un­savory. Like everything to do with Greg. Except possibly his funeral.

  How curious, Ernestine thought, standing above the grave of Greg the Gruesome, here I am at almost seventy-seven, and there he is at forty-three.

  It was no use pretending to be sorry. She contented herself with being serenely non-­committal. She did not want to hurt or confuse Lois any more than Greg had already managed.

  As for Gruesome Junior, he came to the funeral with a couth and pretty college girl, who seemed to have the upper hand. He was not nearly so graceless, and when the girl spoke, he listened, not interrupting. Even when Lois spoke, he did not interrupt — something that had probably not happened for ten years.

  When Lois spoke to Ernestine, it was Ernes­tine who interrupted.

  “No, Lois, it isn’t that I don’t want to; I’ll be happy to stay until you feel more yourself. But live with you? No. We have our own lives.”

  To her gratification, Lois nodded. Ernestine had feared Lois, used by now to martyrdom, would put up a fight to keep her martyr’s crown intact — chained to an elderly mother if not a bullying spouse.

  “Let’s try this then,” said Lois. “Greg left me loaded. You do know that? OK. How about we put you back in your house. Get it fixed up and safe first, so it won’t be a worry.”

  “But, Lois, I sold it to the developers —”

  “No, Mom. I’m sorry, but you sold it to Greg. You just — didn’t know you had. He said he did it that way to help you get an easy sale.”

  “Sweet of him.”

  “Well, it’s going to make things simple now. Say yes. We’ll only be half an hour away from each other by car. So long as that’s enough space to preserve your style I mustn’t cramp?”

  * * * *

  The shadows had gone. They never came into the room now. Nothing leaned over to look at her, nothing ran across the distant view of lawn and pines. She thought of the starry flicker where its heart was (had been?), the ­scar-memory­ of the silver bullet. Was that why it killed that way now, instead of how it must have done, once, with fangs and claws?

  She visited the place with the stone again, in daylight. She knew where it was. She had seen with Jim how things could be refound in a forest, let alone in the narrow woodland of Gracious Pines. But the marker was no longer there. At least, she thought it probably was there, but he had hidden it deeper, Hidden it with his old grey talons, where she could not see, and was not meant to search.

  Ernestine wondered if Louisa too had been shown this, and she wondered also what Donald had done to Louisa, unguessed by anyone, that had made him a candidate for the actions of the werewolf’s ghost.

  School, she thought. Well, she had learned something here. Quite what it was Ernestine was not certain. The werewolf was old, and its concerns were with the old, but perhaps it was also learning, paying some of its karmic debt of personalized wanton murders, by judicial murders, that gave back freedom — an extraordinary, crazy and fanciful notion. It had died — perhaps — about the time that Jim had died. But any fears on that score were irrelevant. She had been told, Jim was now a baby in a city in India. If she could really believe it. But why not, if she believed in a werewolf — the ghost of a werewolf. Lois came to drive her back home in the fall.

  Ernestine saw her daughter, for the first time in fifteen years, looking attractive and well, in light make-up, cobalt-blue jeans, and high-heeled boots. Her hair was blonde, and Nancy and Findlay Finn both whistled at her as she helped take Ernestine’s things to the car.

  “Look what Nancy gave me for dessert to­night,” said Ernestine, showing the bottle of vodka, garlanded by a pink ribbon. “I thought for a moment she might break it over me, launch me like a ship.”

  Then they drove out of the gates of Gracious Pines. Every amber, red, and marigold color was in the trees; and for a second, swifter than a thought, something bounded across the road, was gone.

  “What the heck was that?”

  “Oh,” said Ernestine, “a wolf.”

  HERO’S WAY OUT, by Ralph Gamelli

  No one was more surprised than Arthur Hab­ber­nak when, acting entirely on impulse, he tossed down the bag he’d carried out of the Montgomery St. Market, leaped clumsily off the curb and raced into the street to save the fallen child.

  The corner of his eye showed him the basketball the young boy had been chasing knock against the opposite curb. The corner of his other eye, not nearly so kind, displayed the appliance delivery truck bearing down on him.

  Habbernak grabbed the boy — who had stumbled to the pavement during his attempt to retrieve the ball — and swept him up into his arms.

  The truck closed in, brakes locking, tires leaving thick trails of rubber in their wake.

  The child was only five or six and didn’t weigh much, but the lean muscle of Habbernak’s early adulthood had long ago abandoned him following years of neglect, and the fat that had succeeded it wasn’t contributing much to the cause. So he lost his grip, stumbling to one knee.

  The truck skidded noisily toward him.

  “Bobby!” a woman’s voice shrieked from a nearby driveway, where the boy had been playing before dashing out into the street.

  Habbernak stood up and took an urgent step toward the safety of the sidewalk, but the truck loomed hugely at his side. He wasn’t going to make it.

  Under the power of another impulse, he took one last step, planted his feet solidly on the pavement and heaved the kid forward with all his strength, away from danger. He squeezed his eyes shut and waited for the impact.

  He waited a bit longer.

  Then a thought poked through his panic, like a lone messenger who had elbowed his way through an unruly crowd. The message was this: You
don’t hear the brakes.

  And it was true; Habbernak realized the air-raid siren that was the truck’s brakes locking had abruptly halted in mid-wail.

  Cautiously, he opened his eyes.

  The truck was still there, less than a yard away. The driver wore a frozen grimace, his arms stiff against the wheel, bracing himself for the collision that had decided, against all reason, not to come. The man’s wide eyes were fastened on Habbernak, but they clearly no longer saw him.

  From an adjacent driveway a woman of about thirty, the shouter, appeared to be racing frantically toward the street, but in truth was nothing but a statue.

  The boy he’d attempted to throw to safety was hovering a foot off the ground, utterly motionless. A floating statue.

  The world, it appeared, had simply shut down. Completely. There was no breeze; no sound; no movement.

  He remained gawking until another messenger arrived — this one forging a path not through fear, but confusion — and he understood that he should as quickly as possible gain the safety of the sidewalk, for he had no idea when the world might abruptly decide to start behaving rationally again.

  But his legs refused to budge, an attitude his arms had taken as well. Each limb remained locked in the position they had been in the instant after he’d thrown the boy. The muscles in his neck and head were the only ones still functioning for him, yet he saw no way in which they could deliver him to the sidewalk.

  “What,” he asked himself in a quavering voice, “is going on around here?”

  “The chance of a lifetime, Mr. Habbernak.”

  Habbernak wheeled around at the sound of the cheery voice — that is, his neck and head wheeled around while the rest of his body stubbornly remained where it was.

  A smiling man in a conservative blue suit approached him from the sidewalk, his briefcase swinging with each purposeful stride. “Of a deathtime, is more accurate, I suppose.”

  Habbernak gaped.

  “Circumstances don’t appear too promising just now, do they?” Despite the subject matter, the stranger’s voice had not relinquished its sunny quality.

  “No,” Habbernak said. “Not promising at all.”

  “I gather a man your age has plenty of life insurance, Mr. Habbernak. It’s only sensible not to want to leave the wife and kids in an unfortunate financial state . . .”