by Clive Barker
“And I don’t want to leave, Mom. But it’s not as bad as I thought . . . I mean . . . I’ll miss you and everything, but . . . ”
“But what, sweetheart?” she asked, her voice breaking.
Scott pulled away from her, looked at her sleeping face and smiled though she couldn’t see it.
“It seems easy, Mom, really. I mean, easy to give it up.”
“Easy? Scotty, how is it easy?”
“I didn’t have it for very long, Mom.”
Scott kissed her again, each cheek, her forehead. As he rose, he felt her hands slip from his hair, caress his face as they fell away.
That memory, more than anything else, was the one he’d carry with him.
“I love you, Mom,” he said, and he wasn’t sure if the fog had crept into the house or if his eyes were clouded with tears.
Both, really.
“I love you, too Scotty. I always will,” his mother breathed, snuggling back down into the couch. “I always will.”
Scott stepped away slowly, made his way to the front door.
Turning, he looked back at the curl of his mother on the couch.
“Mom?”
“Yes, Scotty?” she murmured, sinking slowly into the dream world he’d roused her from.
“Don’t be too hard on Dad . . . about the bike. I loved it . . . every minute of it. Please tell him that I love him, too.”
With that, he stepped through the front door and out onto the lawn.
Flattop was there, waiting.
Scott scrubbed the heel of his hand across his eyes, cleared the tears there.
“Now, we need to go,” Flattop said, holding out his hand to Scott.
For a moment, Scott was confused. Then, he knew.
He slid his hand into his pocket, fished out the remaining quarter his mother had given him.
He dropped it into Flattop’s outstretched palm, lifted his bike from the grass.
Looking down, he was surprised to see the baseball cards were back, pristine and whole, clipped so that they clacked against the spokes.
***
Can I ask you a question, here at the end?
Sure. At this point, though, you might know the answer better than me.
Can you tell me how to let go of something? Something precious?
Simple. You don’t . . . not really. You take it with you, hold it in your heart, in your memories.
Forever.
***
The flattop kid mounted his bike, and led them away.
Scott followed him into the grey nothingness.
Into everything.
CELLAR’S DOG
Amanda Gowin
If only the Internet hadn’t gone out and sent her tapping her boyfriend’s number, if only she and Will hadn’t stopped at Logan and Chrissy’s for a dime bag, if only Douglas and Irving Cellar hadn’t been planted in the middle of that sagging sofa like two jagged teeth in a brown microfiber grin, if only Doug Cellar hadn’t been ripe for a larger audience and flashing baggies—a magician rolling temptation over and under his knuckles with winks and taunts at Will—Laticia Deal wouldn’t be shackled into the loose circle of a makeshift Friday night party. She could tick ifs on her fingers until dawn, but it didn’t bring her any closer to the door or make time pass faster.
Far as she could tell, the clock had been sitting at quarter to midnight since she fell into the circle and the cluttered coffee table snapped a bracelet on her ankle.
“Fucking monster, is what he is,” Douglas Cellar wrapped his thick fingers around the pipe and coughed around a cloud of smoke. “Black as one of them movie-star coloreds.” He laughed and Logan laughed with him. Laticia twisted away from Will’s snaking Don’t Say Nothing grip, and she tried not to look at Doug’s son, Irving. “Me and the boy was up huntin’ offa the Ball farm—back where they was logging—and caught it in a old bear trap. We just took it up there ‘cause we found it in Pap’s shed, think he used it to trap beaver,” Doug looked at Laticia and grinned. “Didn’t expect nothing to come of it.”
A box fan pointing outward rattled in the window, sucking a little of the smoke and static electricity from the living room, but not enough to breathe easy or see clearly.
“Took what up where?” Chrissy was stretched like a lizard over the recliner, and opened her eyes a slit to take the pipe as it came her way.
“The trap, whatcha think?” Logan snapped, and reached past the boy to turn on the flat screen. He punched up the game on the PlayStation and tossed the second controller to Will. War filled the room, the canned sound of killing, the speaker so close to the boy’s head Laticia wondered if he could hold a thought but the sound of guns. Laticia came close to eye contact, but spun her head when she caught herself drifting below his pale eyebrows. She hit the pipe and clanged it, cashed, on the glass coffee table.
“Daddy—”
“Hush. But we caught him, alright. Damn near skinned his back paw like a glove, but I had a grain sack over his head before he could pull loose. I tied him and tossed him in the back and we lit out—nothin’ we done wrong, just wanted to get that beast home.”
“Why? Whatcha gonna do with some wild dog? Besides get rabies,” Chrissy tittered laughter over the sound of the guns, and stretched further, Chester Cheetah’s faded ears and sunglasses peeking over the edge of her top.
Doug raised his grey eyebrows and laid a look on Chrissy like she was a pitiful creature indeed. “Why go into space? Why grow an ear on a rat’s back?”
“What the fuck—”
“He means ‘cause he can, Chrissy,” Logan said, eyes never leaving the screen, fingers working the controller like a master pianist. “Whatcha reckon, Doug? Fightin’ him, or trainin’ him to hunt?”
“Fuck if I know,” Doug grinned with the glee of a mad scientist. “We trimmed him up nice, like they do them pit bulls. Took a chunk outta me,” He spread his palm toward them. Around the punctures of few-day-old teeth marks, Laticia looked to see if his lifeline ended anytime soon. Looked for some sign of Children’s Services, DEA, DUI in his future.
Saw only the invincibility of the very mad.
“Fuck your dog.”
Logan opened his mouth to snap at Chrissy but shifted his eyes enough to see she was crinkling powder straight onto the coffee table and that was alright; he kept with the game.
She pushed herself back into the cushions of the dirty futon and concentrated on not looking at the kid. Elbowing Will, she screamed with the bone she shoved in his ribs We gotta get outta here, but he took it for play and elbowed her back.
Laticia looked from the lines Chrissy was cutting and straight into the eyes of the boy, who read her plainly. His eyes were like saucers, blue as a pilot light, and with one slow, accepting blink he told her, There ain’t no getting out. Laticia dropped her gaze to his laced fingers, and saw how white the knuckles were. Against his knee rested the knee of his daddy, and Douglas Cellar laced his own hands.
“He thought he was tough before,” Doug muttered, somehow louder than the gunfire, “But I’ll learn him his place. Everything learns its place in the end.”
Doug locked eyes with Laticia, his as blue as the boy’s but deep with forty more years’ tinkering and malevolence. He held her there, through the smoke that hung in the room, and she clenched her teeth, didn’t dare shudder.
“Where you keepin’ him?” Will asked, when Logan paused the game to roll a dollar bill.
“The wolf?”
“Since when was he a wolf?”
“Shut your cunt,” Logan yelled at Chrissy, but Doug was content to stay the center of conversation.
“Had him in the shed but he ‘bout tore a hole through the back. I chained him up to the old Chevy ‘fore we left.”
“He’s gonna tear the bumper up,” piped Irving Cellar.
“He does I’ll kick the shit outta him.”
With a slow blink the boy’s eyes matched the blankness of his daddy’s, pupils narrowing to pinpricks as he ask
ed, “Can I kick it, too, Daddy?”
The laugh came up deep from Doug’s belly and he ruffled Irving’s hair with a mechanic’s hand, greasy nail-beds buried in that straw blond. “Yeah, boy,” he said with not a little pride, “You can kick it, too.”
Laticia reached for her purse and bumped the empty pipe on the table; it spun like a compass needle, pointing to her and the faded furniture and the coke and the weed and the PlayStation, the statue of the Indian chief in the middle of the coffee table, and finally eight-year-old Irving Cellar and his saucer-sized eyes.
“I’m goin’ on home, Will, you can walk it from here, cantcha?” Laticia stood, willed her knees not to knock and her hand to move slow and steady putting her pocketbook strap on her shoulder. All eyes on her, but she just had to make it out of the room, that was all, outside the circle. Just out of the room and all would be well.
“We’re just getting started, Tish,” Will half-whined, but she eluded his grip and in two steps made it to Chrissy’s chair. Four more and she’d make the door.
Four more steps. She leaned in to Chrissy and murmured loud enough for all to hear, “I got my time something fierce, girl. I don’t get home soon this place is gonna look like Bloodsport.”
Chrissy laughed, Chester Cheetah’s glasses rising and falling on her tit, and suddenly no eyes were on Laticia; they were anywhere else.
“I’ll see y’all later,” she made her voice steady and counted the four steps to the door, watched her fingers close around the handle, felt the invisible tether snap. She didn’t exhale, not while they called out goodbyes, didn’t exhale until the screen door shut behind her and she was down the trailer steps, until she could see the moon.
The June air smelled like honeysuckle and gasoline. Laticia breathed deep, over and over enough to make herself dizzy, cleaning her lungs of their exhaled breath and the stench of sweat and pot and Lysol. She stood at the car long enough for someone to flip on the porch light across the street, but when Laticia raised her hand the light blinked back off.
The street was a blur, she took the turns too fast and barely tapped the brakes at stop signs, widening the gap between herself and that place. She was out of the trailer court and had clipped a mirror before she slowed, cranking down both windows.
Half a mile out she passed Will’s apartment building and was on Dickason, laying on the brake to avoid a cat when she saw another set of eyes, two points of light reflected in her headlamps on the opposite side of the street the cat had run. Back on the gas, eyes forward, she passed the Cellar house.
“We trimmed him up nice,” she said softly. At the stop sign she gripped the wheel until her knuckles were white as the little boy’s, and couldn’t bring herself to say out loud, Can I kick him too, Daddy?
She looped the block, headlights off, before she could change her mind and let the car creep, a gravel at a time, back down the Cellars’ block on Dickason Street.
The house to the right of Douglas Cellar’s was boarded up, and the house to the left flashed a For Sale by Owner sign canted to one side in high grass. Across the street, Laticia couldn’t say, only that there was a light on, but whoever might be home at midnight on a Saturday night, would they sic Douglas Cellar on anyone? Twenty-five and you never done one good thing. Tell yourself you’re better than all this trash, but you smoke their weed and fuck their boys and keep your goddamn mouth shut.
“Hypocrite.”
The word stung, even coming from her own mouth. When she saw eyes again she dropped the car into park and slipped out as quick as she could to cut the interior light.
Crunching up the driveway toward the truck, she held her left hand out, low. Still no dog in sight, but she could make out the chain around the bumper. If it was loose, and the beast they said it was, it would tear her to pieces, eat her up, nothing left in the driveway but eyes and the palms of her hands.
Movement beneath the truck, the shifting of gravel. She stopped. “Hey, boy,” she whispered. “Just wanna turn you loose. Just wanna let you . . . ”
What emerged from beneath the pick-up was too large to be a dog. In the almost-pitch she could only see its shape, and her heart thumped A bear, A bear, A bear. Little by little it manifested a dog-shape after all, and she whispered large breeds: “St Bernard. Sheep dog. Great Dane. That whatchamacallit from Turner and Hooch,” in the softest voice she could and willed her feet move forward. Her other hand went out, and with ten feet between herself and the mass she braced for a growl. “Cujo was a St. Bernard. But you’re not Cujo. You’re a wolf, aren’t you? A big, black wolf . . . with no tail. Oh Christ.” The chain could’ve been fifteen feet or two, but Laticia’s horror trumped fear and she left it behind, shuffling forward and dropping to her knees as the dog inched forward.
Pennies and Blu-Cote, and pine needles and the earth after it rained, her nose was full of its scent. She released a whine from between her teeth as the monster, half-slain, limped into the light.
“Trimmed you up good,” she heard herself whisper, and the dog released a rolling growl, then raised its wolf-snout into the air and howled. From their kennels, the hounds joined the cry.
The plan had been to turn the dog loose, to fuck over Douglas Cellar good and proper, to give whatever they’d trapped an honest shot. When she parked there’d been no intention to dig for bolt cutters in the bed of the truck, to let the dog smell her legs and feet, smearing her with blood as she worked the chain loose, tears streaming down her face, the Cellars’ hounds continuing to howl from the pens in the backyard, careful not to touch its ears or feet or—or the place its tail had been. She’d had no intention to crouch beside it, beside this thing almost as big as she was, spread her beach towel in the backseat and coax it into her car with a piece of leftover cheeseburger from a fast food bag on the floor.
Laticia stood at her refrigerator at one in the morning, the dog silent at her feet with glassy brown eyes cautious, and fed it leftover fried chicken. It ate from her hands, crunching the bones with huge white teeth, licking the floor for grease with a tongue nearly the size of her hand. She sang to it, cooed to it, all the while mindless of the tacky brown mess on the linoleum and the size of its jaws. When the chicken was gone she opened cans of ravioli and dumped them in an empty Tupperware dish, singing under the fluorescents in her little house as the dog lapped at the sauce, its coat shining black with blood.
When the food was gone it lowered itself to the floor, nose between its paws. “What do I do now?” Laticia whispered, and far off a dog bayed. The monster pricked jagged ears at the sound, its lip sliding back like the lid over piano keys. She took a quilt from the closet and spread it on the screen porch. “Safe,” she whispered. “We’re both safe.” It followed her out, eyes on her as she locked the outer door, then the porch door between them.
Wet hair masked her face in the shower. It’s over. All of it. She could end it with Will in the morning. If she had her way, their whatever-it-had-been would die a quick and quiet death in the quicksand of the inevitable, but it wasn’t his way. She dreaded the begging, and crying and conversations about love that were rooted less in reality than Will’s inner stock of Things to Say When a Girl Leaves You that had come with her first two break-up attempts in the short few months they’d shared a bed and a pipe. But she’d bear it this time, and it would pass—and with what lay quiet on the screen porch, if the betrayal and the severed ties were laid open in tomorrow’s light, maybe it would go quicker than she dared hope. Maybe Will wouldn’t hump the dead horse until he was sore and limp. Maybe he’d slink away to the next girl, knowing when the screen door shut behind her she was shutting it on all of them.
She dressed and strained to hear, but the dog didn’t make a sound as far as she could tell. Laticia climbed into her mother’s old bed and began to outline the next day’s possible scenarios, tracing their paths in the ceiling tiles.
The clock on the nightstand read 5 a.m. when she threw off the covers and padded through the house, through the smea
red blood, and peered out the door. On the quilt, under the half-moon light, the beast slept.
***
Dawn crept up grey and foggy; she added the smells of Pine-sol and coffee to the stink of cigarette smoke when she put on a pot and mopped the dried blood off the kitchen floor with a dishrag. Sun picked at the gold flecks in the pink Formica table, drew a bright line on the glass Las Vegas ashtray, too full to reveal its Flamingo bottom. She scrubbed her hands and lit another cigarette, poured another cup of coffee, flicked through the phonebook’s marked pages one more time. At seven on the dot she called Ben Miller, three houses down, catching him before he left for work. When he walked over it was in uniform.
“No, no, I got coffee on, don’t stand out there.” Coffee on, but no bra under her tank top. Baby blue terry cloth shorts and long legs in the doorway, she flipped her robe wide open before closing and tying it in a prim bow. Every little bit helped.
“Will in there?” Ben took off his hat like a good boy, and took two steps forward.
“No, and not likely to be, ever again,” she sniffed at the air, turning, and Deputy Miller made the kitchen before gravity caught the door.
“Something bad happen? That why you called?”
Laticia clattered a clean mug from the dish rack, her back to him. “Yes and no. No—not with Will—I—that’s just done. Sugar? And sit down. Please.”
“Okay. And yes, yes to sugar. Laticia, are you okay? You never called—”
“It’s fine—just keep your voice down,” she looked sideways, but heard no movement. She was beginning to think it was dead. “Just sit with me for a minute. It’s been a long night.” Dropping into the chair opposite him, she pushed the mug to him across the table with the tips of her fingers. “Long night,” she repeated, and was back on her feet. She dumped the ashtray, lit a cigarette, pushed up the kitchen window and stood with her hip bones against the counter, looking out over the sink, over the town.
“I haven’t been inside since your mom passed,” Ben said, too lightly, too carefully. “What’s it been, five years? You haven’t changed much, around the house I mean. Or you—you don’t look any different, either, I just meant—well, all the pink. I remember the . . . but you took the pictures all down, didn’t you?”