American supernatural tales

by S. T. Joshi

  Etchison has been less successful in the novel form. His first novel, Darkside (1986), is an able treatment of the nihilism of modern teenage culture, but Shadowman (1993), California Gothic (1995), and Double Edge (1997) are only occasionally effective. Etchison is also an accomplished editor, having assembled the three-volume series Masters of Darkness (1986-91), in which leading contemporary horror writers have chosen their own favorite stories, as well as Cutting Edge (1986), MetaHorror (1992), and The Museum of Horrors (2001). Several of these volumes contain introductions featuring Etchison’s pungent comments on the current state of the horror and science fiction fields.

  “The Late Shift” (first published in Kirby McCauley’s ground-breaking anthology, Dark Forces [1980], and collected in The Dark Country) demonstrates Etchison’s skill at evoking horror from the most mundane elements of daily life, by the utilization of a subtle and evocative prose style reminiscent of such other California writers as James M. Cain or Raymond Chandler.

  THE LATE SHIFT

  They were driving back from a midnight screening of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (“Who will survive and what will be left of them?”) when one of them decided they should make the Stop ’N Start Market on the way home. Macklin couldn’t be sure later who said it first, and it didn’t really matter, for there was the all-night logo, its bright colors cutting through the fog before they had reached 26th Street, and as soon as he saw it Macklin moved over close to the curb and began coasting toward the only sign of life anywhere in town at a quarter to two in the morning.

  They passed through the electric eye at the door, rubbing their faces in the sudden cold light. Macklin peeled off toward the news rack, feeling like a newborn before the LeBoyer Method. He reached into a row of well-thumbed magazines, but they were all chopper, custom car, detective and stroke books, as far as he could see.

  “Please, please, sorry, thank you,” the night clerk was saying.

  “No, no,” said a woman’s voice, “can’t you hear? I want that box, that one.”

  “Please, please,” said the night man again.

  Macklin glanced up.

  A couple of guys were waiting in line behind her, next to the styrofoam ice chests. One of them cleared his throat and moved his feet.

  The woman was a trying to give back a small, oblong carton, but the clerk didn’t seem to understand. He picked up the box, turned to the shelf, back to her again.

  Then Macklin saw what it was: a package of one dozen prophylactics from behind the counter, back where they kept the cough syrup and airplane glue and film. That was all she wanted—a pack of Polaroid SX-70 Land Film.

  Macklin wandered to the back of the store.

  “How’s it coming, Whitey?”

  “I got the Beer Nuts,” said Whitey, “and the Jiffy Pop, but I can’t find any Olde English 800.” He rummaged through the refrigerated case.

  “Then get Schlitz Malt Liquor,” said Macklin. “That ought to do the job.” He jerked his head at the counter. “Hey, did you catch that action up there?”

  “What’s that?”

  Two more guys hurried in, heading for the wine display. “Never mind. Look, why don’t you just take this stuff up there and get a place in line? I’ll find us some Schlitz or something. Go on, they won’t sell it to us after two o’clock.”

  He finally found a six-pack hidden behind some bottles, then picked up a quart of milk and a half-dozen eggs. When he got to the counter, the woman had already given up and gone home. The next man in line asked for cigarettes and beef jerky. Somehow the clerk managed to ring it up; the electronic register and UPC Code lines helped him a lot.

  “Did you get a load of that one?” said Whitey. “Well, I’ll be gonged. Old Juano’s sure hit the skids, huh? The pits. They should have stood him in an aquarium.”

  “Who?”

  “Juano. It is him, right? Take another look.” Whitey pretended to study the ceiling.

  Macklin stared at the clerk. Slicked-back hair, dyed and greasy and parted in the middle, a phony Hitler moustache, thrift-shop clothes that didn’t fit. And his skin didn’t look right somehow, like he was wearing makeup over a face that hadn’t seen the light of day in ages. But Whitey was right. It was Juano. He had waited on Macklin too many times at that little Mexican restaurant over in East L.A., Mama Something’s. Yes, that was it, Mama Carnita’s on Whittier Boulevard. Macklin and his friends, including Whitey, had eaten there maybe fifty or a hundred times, back when they were taking classes at Cal State. It was Juano for sure.

  Whitey set his things on the counter. “How’s it going, man?” he said.

  “Thank you,” said Juano.

  Macklin laid out the rest and reached for his money. The milk made a lumpy sound when he let go of it. He gave the carton a shake. “Forget this,” he said. “It’s gone sour.” Then, “Haven’t seen you around, old buddy. Juano, wasn’t it?”

  “Sorry. Sorry,” said Juano. He sounded dazed, like a sleep-walker.

  Whitey wouldn’t give up. “Hey, they still make that good menudo over there?” He dug in his jeans for change. “God, I could eat about a gallon of it right now, I bet.”

  They were both waiting. The seconds ticked by. A radio in the store was playing an old 60s song. Light My Fire, Macklin thought. The Doors. “You remember me, don’t you? Jim Macklin.” He held out his hand. “And my trusted Indian companion, Whitey? He used to come in there with me on Tuesdays and Thursdays.”

  The clerk dragged his feet to the register, then turned back, turned again. His eyes were half-closed. “Sorry,” he said. “Sorry. Please.”

  Macklin tossed down the bills, and Whitey counted his coins and slapped them onto the countertop. “Thanks,” said Whitey, his upper lip curling back. He hooked a thumb in the direction of the door. “Come on. This place gives me the creeps.”

  As he left, Macklin caught a whiff of Juano or whoever he was. The scent was sickeningly sweet, like a gilded lily. His hair? Macklin felt a cold draft blow through his chest, and shuddered; the air conditioning, he thought.

  At the door, Whitey spun around and glared.

  “So what,” said Macklin. “Let’s go.”

  “What time does Tube City here close?”

  “Never. Forget it.” He touched his friend’s arm.

  “The hell I will,” said Whitey. “I’m coming back when they change fucking shifts. About six o’clock, right? I’m going to be standing right there in the parking lot when he walks out. That son of a bitch still owes me twenty bucks.”

  “Please,” muttered the man behind the counter, his eyes fixed on nothing. “Please. Sorry. Thank you.”

  The call came around ten. At first he thought it was a gag; he propped his eyelids up and peeked around the apartment, half-expecting to find Whitey still there, curled up asleep among the loaded ashtrays and pinched beer cans. But it was no joke.

  “Okay, okay, I’ll be right there,” he grumbled, not yet comprehending, and hung up the phone.

  St. John’s Hospital on 14th. In the lobby, families milled about, dressed as if on their way to church, watching the elevators and waiting obediently for the clock to signal the start of visiting hours. Business hours, thought Macklin. He got the room number from the desk and went on up.

  A police officer stood stiffly in the hall, taking notes on an accident report form. Macklin got the story from him and from an irritatingly healthy-looking doctor—the official story—and found himself, against his will, believing in it. In some of it.

  His friend had been in an accident, sometime after dawn. His friend’s car, the old VW, had gone over an embankment, not far from the Arroyo Seco. His friend had been found near the wreckage, covered with blood and reeking of alcohol. His friend had been drunk.

  “Let’s see here now. Any living relatives?” asked the officer. “All we could get out of him was your name. He was in a pretty bad state of shock, they tell me.”

  “No relatives,” said Macklin. “Maybe back on the reservation.
I don’t know. I’m not even sure where the—”

  A long, angry rumble of thunder sounded outside the windows. A steely light reflected off the clouds and filtered into the corridor. It mixed with the fluorescents in the ceiling, rendering the hospital interior a hard-edged, silvery gray. The faces of the policeman and the passing nurses took on a shaded, unnatural cast.

  It made no sense. Whitey couldn’t have been that drunk when he left Macklin’s apartment. Of course he did not actually remember his friend leaving. But Whitey was going to the Stop ’N Start if he was going anywhere, not halfway across the county to—where? Arroyo Seco? It was crazy.

  “Did you say there was liquor in the car?”

  “Afraid so. We found an empty fifth of Jack Daniel’s wedged between the seats.”

  But Macklin knew he didn’t keep anything hard at his place, and neither did Whitey, he was sure. Where was he supposed to have gotten it, with every liquor counter in the state shut down for the night?

  And then it hit him. Whitey never, but never drank sour mash whiskey. In fact, Whitey never drank anything stronger than beer, anytime, anyplace. Because he couldn’t. It was supposed to have something to do with his liver, as it did with other Amerinds. He just didn’t have the right enzymes.

  Macklin waited for the uniforms and coats to move away, then ducked inside.

  “Whitey,” he said slowly.

  For there he was, set up against firm pillows, the upper torso and most of the hand bandaged. The arms were bare, except for an ID bracelet and an odd pattern of zigzag lines from wrist to shoulder. The lines seemed to have been painted by an unsteady hand, using a pale gray dye of some kind.

  “Call me by my name,” said Whitey groggily. “It’s White Feather.”

  He was probably shot full of painkillers. But at least he was okay. Wasn’t he? “So what’s with the war paint, old buddy?”

  “I saw the Death Angel last night.”

  Macklin faltered. “I—I hear you’re getting out of here real soon,” he tried. “You know, you almost had me worried there. But I reckon you’re just not ready for the bone orchard yet.”

  “Did you hear what I said?”

  “What? Uh, yeah. Yes.” What had they shot him up with? Macklin cleared his throat and met his friend’s eyes, which were focused beyond him. “What was it, a dream?”

  “A dream,” said Whitey. The eyes were glazed, burned out.

  What happened? Whitey, he thought. Whitey. “You put that war paint on yourself?” he said gently.

  “It’s pHisoHex,” said Whitey, “mixed with lead pencil. I put it on, the nurse washes it off, I put it on again.”

  “I see.” He didn’t, but went on. “So tell me what happened, partner. I couldn’t get much out of the doctor.”

  The mouth smiled humorlessly, the lips cracking back from the teeth. “It was Juano,” said Whitey. He started to laugh bitterly. He touched his ribs and stopped himself.

  Macklin nodded, trying to get the drift. “Did you tell that to the cop out there?”

  “Sure. Cops always believe a drunken Indian. Didn’t you know that?”

  “Look. I’ll take care of Juano. Don’t worry.”

  Whitey laughed suddenly in a high voice that Macklin had never heard before. “He-he-he! What are you going to do, kill him?”

  “I don’t know,” he said, trying to think in spite of the clattering in the hall.

  “They make a living from death, you know,” said Whitey.

  Just then a nurse swept into the room, pulling a cart behind her.

  “How did you get in here?” she demanded.

  “I’m just having a conversation with my friend here.”

  “Well, you’ll have to leave. He’s scheduled for surgery this afternoon.”

  “Do you know about the Trial of the Dead?” asked Whitey.

  “Shh, now,” said the nurse. “You can talk to your friend as long as you want to, later.”

  “I want to know,” said Whitey, as she prepared a syringe.

  “What is it we want to know, now?” she said, preoccupied. “What dead? Where?”

  “Where?” repeated Whitey. “Why, here, of course. The dead are here. Aren’t they.” It was a statement. “Tell me something. What do you do with them?”

  “Now what nonsense . . . ?” The nurse swabbed his arm, clucking at the ritual lines on the skin.

  “I’m asking you a question,” said Whitey.

  “Look, I’ll be outside,” said Macklin, “okay?”

  “This is for you, too,” said Whitey. “I want you to hear. Now if you’ll just tell us, Miss Nurse. What do you do with the people who die in here?”

  “Would you please—”

  “I can’t hear you.” Whitey drew his arm away from her.

  She sighed. “We take them downstairs. Really, this is most . . .” But Whitey kept looking at her, nailing her with those expressionless eyes.

  “Oh, the remains are tagged and kept in cold storage,” she said, humoring him. “Until arrangements can be made with the family for services. There now, can we—?”

  “But what happens? Between the time they become ‘remains’ and the services? How long is that? A couple of days? Three?”

  She lost patience and plunged the needle into the arm.

  “Listen,” said Macklin, “I’ll be around if you need me. And hey, buddy,” he added, “we’re going to have everything all set up for you when this is over. You’ll see. A party, I swear. I can go and get them to send up a TV right now, at least.”

  “Like a bicycle for a fish,” said Whitey.

  Macklin attempted a laugh. “You take it easy, now.”

  And then he heard it again, that high, strange voice. “He-he-he! ta munka sni kun.”

  Macklin needed suddenly to be out of there.

  “Jim?”

  “What?”

  “I was wrong about something last night.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Sure was. That place wasn’t Tube City. This is. He-he-he!”

  That’s funny, thought Macklin, like an open grave. He walked out. The last thing he saw was the nurse bending over Whitey, drawing her syringe of blood like an old-fashioned phlebotomist.

  All he could find out that afternoon was that the operation wasn’t critical, and there would be additional X-rays, tests and a period of “observation,” though when pressed for details the hospital remained predictably vague no matter how he put the questions.

  Instead of killing time, he made for the Stop ’N Start.

  He stood around until the store was more or less empty, then approached the counter. The manager, whom Macklin knew slightly, was working the register himself.

  Raphael stonewalled Macklin at the first mention of Juano; his beady eyes receded into glacial ignorance. No, the night man was named Dom or Don; he mumbled so that Macklin couldn’t be sure. No, Don (or Dom) had been working here for six, seven months; no, no, no.

  Until Macklin came up with the magic word: police.

  After a few minutes of bobbing and weaving, it started to come out. Raphe sounded almost scared, yet relieved to be able to talk about it to someone, even to Macklin.

  “They bring me these guys, my friend,” whispered Raphe. “I don’t got nothing to do with it, believe me.

  “The way it seems to me, it’s company policy for all the stores, not just me. Sometimes they call and say to lay off my regular boy, you know, on the graveyard shift. ’Specially when there’s been a lot of holdups. Hell, that’s right by me. I don’t want Dom shot up. He’s my best man!

  “See, I put the hours down on Dom’s pay so it comes out right with the taxes, but he has to kick it back. It don’t even go on his check. Then the district office, they got to pay the outfit that supplies these guys, only they don’t give ’em the regular wage. I don’t know if they’re wetbacks or what. I hear they only get maybe $1.25 an hour, or at least the outfit that brings ’em in does, so the office is making money. You know how many store
s, how many shifts that adds up to?

  “Myself, I’m damn glad they only use ’em after dark, late, when things can get hairy for an all-night man. It’s the way they look. But you already seen one, this Juano-Whatever. So you know. Right? You know something else, my friend? They all look messed up.”

  Macklin noticed goose bumps forming on Raphe’s arms.

  “But I don’t personally know nothing about it.”

  They, thought Macklin, poised outside the Stop ’N Start. Sure enough, like clockwork They had brought Juano to work at midnight. Right on schedule. With raw, burning eyes he had watched Them do something to Juano’s shirt front and then point him at the door and let go. What did They do, wind him up? But They would be back. Macklin was sure of that. They, whoever They were. The Paranoid They.

  Well, he was sure as hell going to find out who They were now.

  He popped another Dexamyl and swallowed dry until it stayed down.

  Threats didn’t work any better than questions with Juano himself. Macklin had had to learn that the hard way. The guy was so sublimely creepy it was all he could do to swivel back and forth between register and counter, slithering a hyaline hand over the change machine in the face of the most outraged customers, like Macklin, giving out with only the same pathetic, wheezing please, please, sorry, thank you, like a stretched cassette tape on its last loop.

  Which had sent Macklin back to the car with exactly no options, nothing to do that might jar the nightmare loose except to pound the steering wheel and curse and dream redder and redder dreams of revenge. He had burned rubber between the parking lot and Sweeney Todd’s Pub, turning over two pints of John Courage and a shot of Irish whiskey before he could think clearly enough to waste another dime calling the hospital, or even to look at his watch.

  At six o’clock They would be back for Juano. And then. He would. Find out.

  Two or three hours in the all-night movie theatre downtown, merging with the shadows on the tattered screen. The popcorn girl wiping stains off her uniform. The ticket girl staring through him, and again when he left. Something about her. He tried to think. Something about the people who work night owl shifts anywhere. He remembered faces down the years. It didn’t matter what they looked like. The nightwalkers, insomniacs, addicts, those without the money for a cheap hotel, they would always come back to the only game in town. They had no choice. It didn’t matter that the ticket girl was messed up. It didn’t matter that Juano was messed up. Why should it?