by Shock Totem
“I just went to the grocery store!”
“Yeah, and how long’s it been since the last trip?” He stepped closer to me. “You’re skin and bones, Etta. You can’t keep doing this to yourself. It’s not healthy, spending all your time with the dead.”
I laughed. “You’re going to talk to me about what’s healthy? You?”
“Etta—”
“No, just—just get the hell out of here. Go home.”
Rob nodded. He turned and started down the road, but only a few seconds later, he stopped and turned around. “You think I was jealous,” he said. “And maybe I was sometimes, but that’s not why it ended like it did. I know those ghosts mean a lot to you. I know you love them, but Etta, you need to be more careful, you’re going to end up one of them, and I don’t want to watch that.”
“Then don’t look,” I said, and headed back inside.
• • •
I headed straight for Jim Beam, and Alex’s fingers found my wrist again. “The hell do you care?” I asked, spitefully tugging out of his grip and pouring myself the shot.
He touched my face gently.
“Asshole.” But I let go of the glass.
I walked into the living room and fell back on the couch, kicking off my shoes with more vehemence than they deserved. “This is why you don’t screw your best friend. You lose one, you lose both, and then who do you talk to?”
Alex touched my face again. Cold radiated down the side of my neck.
“You don’t talk,” I reminded him. “Won’t. You just play your little charades. And besides that, you’re dead, and that means I lose you too.”
His hands were on both sides of my face now, sinking straight on through. I closed my eyes and saw church bells and question marks.
“Don’t know if they’re church bells,” I told him. “I don’t even know what they are. God? Another medium? I can’t hear em. Only the dead. And it’s always the same—ghost finds me, stays a while, hears the bells, has to follow em. Once he’s gone, he don’t come back. New ghost comes instead. Rinse, repeat.”
Alex kissed me then, and there wasn’t nothing platonic about it. I let him because I was lonely, because I missed someone touching me, even if his touch made me shiver for all the wrong reasons. But I told him he couldn’t save me, that no one beat the bells, and I sure couldn’t afford to believe otherwise. It hurt too much, believing, and it was so damn easy to do.
But folk, living or dead, well, they hear what they want, don’t they, and Alex didn’t want to listen. He lowered himself on top of me and into me and into me, and we became one person, at least for a little while. I knew how cookies smelled, fresh out of his momma’s oven; and I knew how blood tasted, as it came up through his throat. I knew if he had committed suicide, he’d have done it by jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge.
I kept my eyes closed during. Didn’t want to see that I couldn’t see him.
Afterwards, I was shaking too much to sleep. I huddled underneath every blanket I owned, and I heard whispers in the dark, more like echoes than actual words. Ever... ever... ever... oh... oh... oh.
Never go, he was saying. I’ll never let go.
• • •
We had two months together.
Alex performed Shakespearean tragedies with my teddy bears. Made sounds instead of words, so it was like listening to an adult in one of them Peanuts cartoons, only a lot more melodramatic. Took me forever to figure out what he was doing, and sometimes he still had to cheat, touch my skin and fill it with soliloquys. I liked it, when he cheated.
We watched black-and-white comedies. I put on Willie Nelson just to see him bitch. We spent whole days lying together, swapping stories without saying a word.
And then we were sitting on the couch, watching The Apartment, and I heard him breathe in sharply.
And I knew.
• • •
Alex tried to fight it, of course, spent days trying to shake it off. Kept asking me to turn up the volume. Kept laughing too hard, too much. He tried to tell me what it felt like, showed me a white rabbit and a pocket watch. I’m late; I’m late for a very important date. But he couldn’t remember what the date was for.
By the end, he could barely hear me. The bells got louder the longer they were ignored, and Alex kept asking me what I had said, sometimes even forgetting what he was saying. He tried to distract me, make me laugh. He performed Romeo and Juliet because it was my favorite to mock. But he kept losing focus, and the teddy bears kept crashing to the floor.
When we went to bed that night, he showed me sunlight and kisses and bacon. He was telling me he’d see me in the morning.
Alex was a liar. But this time, I let it slide.
• • •
When Rob walked up the driveway, I was sitting on the porch, drinking a beer and idly thinking how I wouldn’t be leaving anybody. Everyone I could leave had already left. I’d blow out the back of my skull and maybe chase the bells myself for a change. It was a comforting notion.
“Look, I really don’t got any of your things,” I told him.
He sat down beside me. “I know.”
“You ever find the record?”
“Never went missing.”
I stared at him.
“Sorry,” he said.
Two apologies in one year. I’d be worried if I wasn’t so pissed. “Your granddaddy didn’t even have a watch, did he?”
Rob shrugged. “He might’ve. Never passed it on, though.”
“So, you been coming over...why? See if I was miserable and lost without you?”
“Didn’t have nothing to do with us. I just wanted to see you were okay. And you weren’t, but then I didn’t know what to do about it.” He scratched the side of his face where a beard was starting to grow in. “Guess I made a mess of things.”
“You guess.” I shook my head. “So, when I said you were spying on me a couple months ago...”
“I really did run into Judi; but yeah, I was spying.”
“Why?”
Rob didn’t answer right away. He pulled a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket and casually swiped my lighter, like we were ten again. “That day we fought, I’d come by to take you to the movies. You remember?”
I did. Going to the movies was a special occasion—the theater was over an hour away.
“Figured you’d be on the porch, but you weren’t. So I came inside and called your name. Called it three times, but you didn’t answer.”
“I fell asleep,” I said.
Rob ignored me. “You had to be in the bedroom. You weren’t anywhere else, but the door was shut, and I didn’t want to open it. I was scared to.”
“Of what? Finding me on my knees, blowing a ghost?”
He threw his cigarette to the ground. “God’s hooks, Etta. I was scared of finding you dead.”
“Dead—”
Rob shook his head. After a minute, he stomped out the cigarette and methodically lit another one. “Your ghost is gone,” he said.
I couldn’t see how Alex had anything to do with anything, but I didn’t rush him. Rob got to places in his own time. “Yeah,” I said. “Well, that’s what they do. Remember?”
He ignored that too. “I could always tell,” Rob said. “I can’t see ‘em, can’t hear ‘em, but it’s different when they’re gone. You’re different. It’s like you...fade just a little.
“When I said what I said, about you loving them more than me, I didn’t mean you were in love with them. I meant—that little girl, Adele—you took to her like she was your own, and when she was gone, and that door was closed, and I kept calling your name, and with that shotgun you keep by your bed—”
“Okay,” I said.
Rob stopped.
“You want a beer?” I asked.
He nodded.
I went inside and got two more beers. When I came back out, Rob was looking down at his hands again. His fingernails were dirty. So were mine.
“I wouldn’t have done it,”
I said. “Everyone thinks about it sometimes, but I’d never really do it, you know.”
“It’s just...you could be happy, I think. You don’t have to invite them in. I know you can’t stop them from coming, but you don’t have to talk to em, take care of em. Hell, if you left this podunk town and actually went somewhere, maybe you could even outrun em. Find someone living to love.”
“I have someone here.”
“Yeah?”
“He’s kind of an asshole.”
Rob smiled. “Yeah. He is.”
“He taught me how to ride a horse, and I taught him how to smoke a cigarette.”
“You also got him through high school.”
“You’d have gotten there.”
He snorted. “Not likely.”
“Hey.” Rob didn’t look at me, so I took him by the hands. His skin was sweaty and solid, and it told me nothing at all. I could never know Rob the way I knew Alex, could never touch his skin and see the things he didn’t have voice for, but I still knew him better than anyone else alive.
“Your daddy,” I said, “is a mean sonofabitch, and I wish you’d stop listening to the lies he’s been selling. There’s more to brains than numbers, Rob, and there’s more to a man than how hard he hits.”
“It wasn’t so bad,” Rob said. “Lots of folk round here, they have it bad. It wasn’t—”
I squeezed his wrist gently, and Rob stopped.
“It was bad,” I told him. “It was, and you don’t owe that man a damn thing. The way he treated you, your momma, you should have let him rot outside whatever nursing home kicked him out. You shouldn’t be bathing him, changing him, listening to him rant and rave...but that’s what you’re gonna do, isn’t it?”
Rob shrugged. Didn’t say anything for a while. Finally, “He’s my blood, Etta.”
“Shouldn’t make him your responsibility.” I drank from my beer and set it aside, scooted closer to him on the porch. “You want I should go on some road trip, find a new life, leave the ghosts behind? Tell you what: I will if you will. How about it?”
Rob looked at me.
• • •
“Wallet?”
“Got it.”
“Suitcase?”
“In the back. You know, maybe we should just skip your place. Don’t stop there at all.”
“Can’t. No spare clothes, and I don’t think I’ll fit in your jeans. Booze?”
“In the suitcase.”
“Lighter?”
“In my purse. Shit, did you grab the peanut butter?”
Rob sounded offended. “Of course.”
“Good.” I put on my seatbelt. “Good. That’s good.”
The keys were in my hand.
I looked at them, and then past them, up through the windshield at my little blue house. House where I learned to read, where my momma died, where I met my very first ghost, playing hide and seek in a kitchen cupboard, but I wasn’t the only one hiding there. Little blue house where I knew the walls like I knew my very own skin. No surprises there, no dangers. I understood everything it expected of me.
I looked at the little house and then the open road and the horizon just stretching on and on.
The keys were in my hand. But I just couldn’t breathe.
Rob swallowed. “It’s okay, Etta.”
“It’s not.”
“I know.”
“I want to.”
“I know.”
“It’s just...”
“I know.”
I turned to look at him. “I can’t,” I said. “I can’t.” He didn’t say anything. “You don’t look mad.”
Rob shrugged, leaned back, didn’t say nothing for a while. “Maybe I am,” he said finally. “Maybe a little. I don’t know. Reckon we were never going to get very far. Wake up in the morning, probably drive right on back. No one makes it out, Etta. No one leaves it all behind.”
“No one hears the bells,” I said. “Only the dead.”
We sat there for a while. Eventually, Rob unbuckled his seatbelt and kissed me on the cheek. “Come on. I’ll fix you dinner.”
I nodded. Dropped the keys.
• • •
Rob made me Pop-Tarts for dinner because I didn’t have shit in my fridge. He went on about that for a while. I mostly ignored him. Then we sat on the porch till the stars came out, drinking beer and talking about parts of the world we’d like to see someday. Wasn’t so different from thinking how you’d kill yourself, if you could afford to.
Rob had his daddy, and I had my ghosts, and we both knew we’d keep doing what we were doing till we were dead. But it was good to have someone to share it with again, the dark things that kept you from chasing bells, from flying free.
“Rob?”
“Yeah?”
“If you were going to do it...”
“Shotgun. No note. Wouldn’t say I was sorry at all.”
I nodded and drank the last of my beer.
“You?” he asked.
I rested my head on his shoulder. “Same,” I said. “Just the same.”
Carlie St. George lives in Northern California, and may be a little strange. She works the night shift at a hospital, though, so this is only to be expected. She is also a Clarion West graduate, and her work has appeared in Lightspeed and Weird Tales. Her snarky movie reviews and other nerdy reflections can be found on her blog: mygeekblasphemy.com.
A TALE OF TRUE HORROR
THE HIGHLAND LORD BROUGHT LOW
by Catherine Grant
That Easter morning in 1989, my brothers, Joe and Chris, had gone ahead to church with Aunt Linda, but I had stayed behind to ride with our parents, taking the extra time to make sure my Easter dress was perfect. Mom had let me pick it out a month prior at the department store—a pink-flowered frock of awkward length that looked like parlor curtains, with big, puffy sleeves and a bow in the back.
In my bedroom, I admired my reflection in the mirror. Satisfied, I then put on white socks bordered with lace and my new black leather shoes, and made my way downstairs, ready to twirl and show off my ensemble.
But I was met with silence.
My mother, also dressed for church, sat at the kitchen table, the blue sequins that dotted her sweater sparkling in the morning light. She crossed her legs, and I saw her chin quake. She frowned, lips pursed, and glanced toward the living room, where my father stood.
In his jeans and T-shirt, it was obvious he hadn’t dressed for church. Before I could speculate as to what was going on, he yelled something unintelligible and, as I went to enter the kitchen, playfully wrestled me to the living-room couch, wrinkling my dress in the process. Back then Dad was still relatively healthy, a six foot, six inch Highland Lord, heavily muscled, raven-haired, and bearded. He knocked me over with little effort, and I looked up, annoyed, but quickly hid it out of instinct.
I was horrified his playfulness had mussed up my dress, but I tried to be a good sport. He was only trying to play with me, after all, and I forced a smile, wondering why he wanted to do this when we were supposed to be heading to church. I’d been waiting a month to show off my dress, and now we were going to miss the sunrise service. I regarded my mother, as I stood and faced the couch, but she didn’t give any indication of what to do.
She looked away from me, toward my father. “We need to get to church, Steve.”
Dad waved his hand, dismissing her. He was on his knees, the bulk of his body resting on the loveseat. He grabbed a brown stuffed bear off the floor. “Bite the bear before the bear bites you!” He stuck it in his mouth, shaking it back and forth like a dog.
I took a step away from him and giggled, even though I wasn’t sure at all what he meant. I froze, watching him bite on the old stuffed animal, my smile fading. Even so young, I knew something was wrong. This wasn’t his normal play, which was usually casual or even indifferent. He pulled the bear from his mouth. Because he’d been chewing gum, the pink Bubblicious was stuck to the bear’s fur.
“Oh well.�
� He shrugged and tossed the stuffed animal over one shoulder, into the center of the living room.
My mother stood and padded over to where the bear lay. She bent down and picked it up, patting the stuffed animal with one hand, her jaw working back and forth when she saw the gum.
“You shouldn’t treat this like it doesn’t matter.” She didn't look up. Her fingers picked at a spot on the bear's fur.
Dad shrugged. “I don’t care.”
She glared at him. “We got this on our honeymoon. Remember?”
He shrugged and Mom returned to the kitchen table, bear in hand.
Dad turned back to me. “Go upstairs and get my guitar. I want to play a song.”
I was thankful to get away from him. Some of the tension in my shoulders dissolved as I climbed the stairs to the second floor and went into my parent’s bedroom. I closed the door behind me, a flimsy barrier to whatever was going on below. The black guitar case lay on the floor like a casket. I popped the locks, and looked down at the cream-colored Ibanez that Dad had owned since I was an infant. I knew he couldn’t really play, but I was going to bring it to him. I was afraid of what would happen if I didn’t.
“Bring me my guitar, woman!” I heard him scream from below, almost on cue as I reached into the case.
Any thoughts of lingering in the room fled. Dad's tone was joking, but his words were cruel and distant, as though he didn't realize it was me at which he was flinging them. I took the guitar out of the case and cradled it like a baby downstairs and into the kitchen, where my father waited, sitting on a stool.
I handed him the Ibanez and he slipped the strap over his left shoulder. He began to strum, and from his fingers flew a cacophony of discord. He grinned, showing a mouth full of white teeth beneath his dark beard, and sang nonsense. It didn’t sound like any song I knew, although at seven I'd been exposed to little more than New Kids on the Block and my mother’s country music.
He stopped playing. “Wasn’t that great?” He looked at me expectantly, and I nodded, giggling again to try to chase away the dead leaves of fear that were fluttering down, settling on my heart like a blanket. Dad pointed at a baseball resting on the floor. “Get that, I wanna play catch.”