Night Freight

by Pronzini, Bill

  "Well," I said. Then I said, "A gun's a good way to do it, I guess."

  "The best way," Jerry said. "All the other ways, they're too uncertain or too bloody. A pistol really is the best."

  "Well, I ought to be getting on home."

  "I wonder if I should call the police."

  "I wouldn't do that if I were you, Jerry."

  "No?"

  "Wouldn't be a good idea."

  "Hot day like this, maybe I—"

  "Jerry!" Verna's voice, from inside the house. Loud and demanding, but with a whiny note underneath. "How many times do I have to ask you to come in here and help me with supper? The potatoes need peeling."

  "Damn," Jerry said.

  Sweat had begun to run on me; I mopped my face with my handkerchief. "If you feel like it," I said, "we can have that beer later on."

  "Sure, okay."

  "I'll be in the yard after supper. Come over anytime."

  His head wobbled again, up and down this time. Then he stood, wincing on account of his back, and shuffled into his house, and I walked back across and into mine. Mary Ellen was in the kitchen, cutting up something small and green by the sink. Cilantro, from the smell of it.

  "I saw you through the window," she said. "What were you talking to Jerry about?"

  "Three guesses."

  "Oh, Lord. I suppose he killed Verna again."

  "Yep."

  "Where and how this time?"

  "In the kitchen. With his service pistol."

  "That man. Three times now, or is it four?"

  "Four."

  "Other people have nice normal neighbors. We have to have a crazy person living next door."

  "Jerry's harmless, you know that. He was as normal as anybody before he fell off that roof."

  "Harmless," Mary Ellen said. "Famous last words."

  I went over and kissed her neck. Damp, but it still tasted pretty good. "What're you making there?"

  "Ceviche."

  "What's ceviche?"

  "Cold fish soup. Mexican style."

  "Sounds awful."

  "It isn't. You've had it before."

  "Did I like it?"

  "You loved it."

  "Sounds wonderful, then. I'm going to have a beer. You want one?"

  "I don't think so." Pretty soon she said, "He really ought to see somebody."

  "Who?"

  "Jerry."

  "See who? You mean a head doctor?"

  "Yes. Before he really does do something to Verna."

  "Come on, honey. Jerry can't even bring himself to step on a bug. And Verna's enough to drive any man a little crazy. Either she's mired in one of her funks or on a rampage about something or other. And she's always telling him how worthless and lazy she thinks he is."

  "She has a point," Mary Ellen said. "All he does all day is sit around drinking beer and staring at the tube."

  "Well, with his back the way it is—"

  "His back doesn't seem to bother him when he decides to work in his garden."

  "Hey, I thought you liked Jerry."

  "I do like Jerry. It's just that I can see Verna's side, the woman's side. He was no ball of fire before the accident, and he's never let her have children—"

  "That's her story. He says he's sterile."

  "Well, whatever. I still say she has some justification for being moody and short-tempered, especially in this heat."

  "I suppose."

  "Anyhow," Mary Ellen said, "her moods don't give Jerry the right to keep pretending he's killed her. And I don't care how harmless he seems to be, he could snap someday. People who have violent fantasies often do. Every day you read about something like that in the papers or see it on the TV news."

  "'Violent fantasies' is too strong a term in Jerry's case."

  "What else would you call them?"

  "He doesn't sit around all day thinking about killing Verna. I got that much out of him after he scared the hell out of me the first time. They have a fight and he goes out on the porch and sulks and that's when he imagines her dead. And only once in a while. It's more like . . . wishful thinking."

  "Even so, it's not healthy and it's potentially dangerous. I wonder if Verna knows."

  "Probably not, or she'd be making his life even more miserable. We can hear most of what she yells at him all the way over here as it is."

  "Somebody ought to tell her."

  "You're not thinking of doing it? You don't even like the woman." Which was true. Jerry and I were friendly enough, to the point of going fishing together a few times, but the four of us had never done couples things. Verna wasn't interested.

  Didn't seem to want much to do with Mary Ellen or me. Or anyone else, for that matter, except a couple of old woman friends.

  "I might go over and talk to her," Mary Ellen said. "Express concern about Jerry's behavior, if nothing more."

  "I think it'd be a mistake."

  "Do you? Well, you're probably right."

  "So you're going to do it anyway."

  "Not necessarily. I'll have to think about it."

  Mary Ellen went over to talk to Verna two days later. It was a Saturday and Jerry'd gone off somewhere in their car. I was on the front porch fixing a loose shutter when she left, and still there and still fixing when she came back less than ten minutes later.

  "That was fast," I said.

  "She didn't want to talk to me." Mary Ellen looked and sounded miffed. "She was barely even civil."

  "Did you tell her about Jerry's wishful thinking?"

  "No. I didn't have a chance."

  "What did you say to her?"

  "Hardly anything except that we were concerned about Jerry."

  "We," I said. "As in me too."

  "Yes, we. She shut me off right there. As much as told me to mind my own business."

  "Well?" I said gently.

  "Oh, all right, maybe we should. It's her life, after all. And it'll be as much her fault as Jerry's if he suddenly decides to make his wish come true."

  Jerry killed Verna three more times in July. Kitchen again, their bedroom, the backyard. Tenderizing mallet, clock radio, manual strangulation—so I guess he'd decided a gun wasn't the best way after all. He seemed to grow more and more morose as the summer wore on, while Verna grew more and more sullen and contentious. The heat wave we were suffering through didn't help matters any. The temperatures were up around one hundred degrees half the days that month and everybody was bothered in one way or another.

  Jerry came over one evening in early August while Mary Ellen and I were having fruit salad under the big elm in our yard. He had a six-pack under one arm and a look on his face that was half hunted, half depressed.

  "Verna's on another rampage," he said. "I had to get out of there. Okay if I sit with you folks for a while?"

  "Pull up a chair," I said. At least he wasn't going to tell us he'd killed her again.

  Mary Ellen asked him if he'd like some fruit salad, and he said no, he guessed fruit and yogurt wouldn't mix with beer. He opened a can and drank half of it at a gulp. It wasn't his first of the day by any means.

  "I don't know how much more of that woman I can take," he said.

  "That bad, huh?"

  "That bad. Morning, noon, and night—she never gives me a minute's peace anymore."

  Mary Ellen said, "Well, there's a simple solution, Jerry."

  "Divorce? She won't give me one. Says she'll fight it if I file, take me for everything she can if it goes through."

  "Some women hate the idea of living alone."

  Jerry's head waggled on its neck-stalk. "It isn't that," he said. "Verna doesn't believe in divorce. Never has, never will. Till death do us part—that's what she believes in."

  "So what're you going to do?" I asked him.

  "Man, I just don't know. I'm at my wits' end." He drank the rest of his beer in broody silence. Then he unfolded, wincing, to his feet. "Think I'll go back home now. Have a look in the attic."

  "The attic?"

&
nbsp; "See if I can find my old service pistol. A gun really is the best way to do it, you know."

  After he was gone Mary Ellen said, "I don't like this, Frank. He's getting crazier all the time."

  "Oh, come on."

  "He'll go through with it one of these days. You mark my words."

  "If that's the way you feel," I said, "why don't you try talking to Verna again? Warn her."

  "I would if I thought she'd listen. But I know she won't."

  "What else is there to do, then?"

  "You could try talking to Jerry. Try to convince him to see a doctor."

  "It wouldn't do any good. He doesn't think he needs help, any more than Verna does."

  "At least try. Please, Frank."

  "All right, I'll try. Tomorrow night, after work."

  When I came home the next sweltering evening, one of the Macklins was sitting slumped on the front porch. But it wasn't Jerry, it was Verna. Head down, hands hanging between her knees. It surprised me so much I nearly swerved the car off onto our lawn. Verna almost never sat out on their front porch, alone or otherwise. She preferred the glassed-in back porch because it was air-conditioned.

  The day had been another hundred-plus scorcher, and I was tired and soggy and I wanted a shower and a beer in the worst way. But I'd promised Mary Ellen I'd talk to Jerry—and it puzzled me about Verna sitting on the porch that way. So I went straight over there from the garage.

  Verna looked up when I said hello. Her round, plain face was red with prickly heat and her colorless hair hung limp and sweat-plastered to her skin. There was a funny look in her eyes and around her mouth, a look that made me feel uneasy.

  "Frank," she said. "Lord, it's hot, isn't it?"

  "And no relief in sight. Where's Jerry?"

  "In the house."

  "Busy? I'd like to talk to him."

  "You can't."

  "No? How come?"

  "He's dead."

  "What?"

  "Dead," she said. "I killed him."

  I wasn't hot anymore; it was as if I'd been doused with ice water. "Killed him? Jesus, Verna—"

  "We had a fight and I went and got his service pistol and shot him in the back of the head while he was watching TV."

  "When?" It was all I could think of to say.

  "Little while ago."

  "The police . . . have you called the police?"

  "No.

  "Then I'd better—"

  The screen door popped open with a sudden creaking sound. I jerked my gaze that way, and Jerry was standing there big as life. "Hey, Frank," he said.

  I gaped at him with my mouth hanging open.

  "Look like you could use a cold one. You too, Verna."

  Neither of us said anything.

  Jerry said, "I'll get one for each of us," and the screen door banged shut.

  I looked at Verna again. She was still sitting in the same posture, head down, staring at the steps with that funny look on her face.

  "I know about him killing me all the time," she said. "Did you think I didn't know, didn't hear him saying it?"

  There were no words in my head. I closed my mouth.

  "I wanted to see how it felt to kill him the same way," Verna said. "And you know what? It felt good."

  I backed down the steps, started to turn away. But I was still looking at her and I saw her head come up, I saw the odd little smile that changed the shape of her mouth.

  "Good," she said, "but not good enough."

  I went home. Mary Ellen was upstairs, taking a shower. When she came out I told her what had just happened.

  "My God, Frank. The heat's made her as crazy as he is. They're two of a kind."

  "No," I said, "they're not. They're not the same at all."

  "What do you mean?"

  I didn't tell her what I meant. I didn't have to, because just then in the hot, dead stillness we both heard the crack of the pistol shot from next door.

  I've always been fascinated by the werewolf legend. In the late seventies I edited an anthology of quality stories built around the theme, Werewolf!, but it wasn't until 1991 that I was able to work up a satisfactory plot for a lycanthropic tale of my own. The impetus was an invitation to contribute to an anthology called The Ultimate Werewolf, edited by Byron Preiss; "Ancient Evil" was the result of that and a considerable amount of head-scratching and brain-cudgeling.

  Ancient Evil

  Listen to me. You'd better listen.

  You fools, you think you know so much. Spaceflight, computer technology, genetic engineering . . . you take them all for granted now. But once your kind scoffed at them, refused to believe in the possibility of their existence. You were proven wrong.

  You no longer believe in Us. We will prove you wrong.

  We exist. We have existed as long as you. We are not superstition, We are not folklore, We are not an imaginary terror. We are the real terror, the true terror. We are all your nightmares come true.

  Believe it. Believe me. I am the proof.

  We look like men. We walk and talk like men, in your presence. We act like men. But We are not men. Believe that too.

  We are the ancient evil. . . .

  They might never have found him if Hixon hadn't gone off to take a leak.

  For three days they'd been searching the wooded mountain country above the valley where their sheep grazed. Tramping through heavy timber and muggy late-summer heat laden with stinging flies and mosquitoes; following the few man-made and animal trails, cutting new trails of their own. They'd flushed several deer, come across the rotting carcass of a young elk, spotted a brown bear and followed its spoor until they lost it at one of the network of streams. But that was all. No wolf or mountain lion sign. Hixon and DeVries kept saying it had to be a wolf or a mountain cat that had been killing the sheep; Larrabee wasn't so sure. And yet, what the hell else could it be?

  Then, on the morning of the fourth day, while they were climbing among deadfall pine along the shoulder of a ridge, Hixon went to take his leak. And came back after a few minutes all red-faced and excited, with his fly still half-unzipped.

  "I seen something back in there," he said. "God-damnedest thing, down a ravine."

  "What'd you see?" Larrabee asked him. He'd made himself the leader; he had lost the most sheep and he was the angriest.

  "Well, I think it was a man."

  "You think?"

  "He was gone before I could use the glasses."

  "Hunter, maybe," DeVries said.

  Hixon wagged his head. "Wasn't no hunter. No ordinary man, either."

  "The hell you say. What was he then?"

  "I don't know," Hixon said. "I never seen the like."

  "Dressed how?"

  "Wasn't dressed, not in clothes. I swear he was wearing some kind of animal skins. And he had hair all over his head and face, long shaggy hair."

  "Bigfoot," DeVries said and laughed.

  "Damn it, Hank, I ain't kidding. He was your size, mine."

  "Sun and shadows playing tricks."

  "No, by God. I know what I saw."

  Larrabee asked impatiently, "Where'd he go?"

  "Down the ravine. There's a creek down there."

  "He see or hear you?"

  "Don't think so. I was quiet?"

  DeVries laughed again. "Quiet pisser, that's you."

  Larrabee adjusted the pack that rode his shoulders; ran one hand back and forth along the stock of his .300 Savage rifle. His mouth was set tight. "All right," he said, "we'll go have a look."

  "Hell, Ben," DeVries said, "you don't reckon it's some man been killing our sheep?"

  "Possible, isn't it? I never did agree with you and Chancy. No wolf or cat takes sheep down that way, tears them apart. And don't leave any sign coming or going."

  "No man does either."

  "No ordinary man. No sane man."

  "Jesus, Ben . . ."

  "Come on," Larrabee said. "We're wasting time."

  ". . . How many of Us are there? Not many. A few hun
dred . . . we have never been more than a few hundred. Scattered across continents. In cities and small towns, in wildernesses. Hot climes and cold. Moving, always moving, never too long in one place. Hiding among you, the bold and clever ones. Hiding alone, the ones like me.

  This is our legacy:

  Hiding.

  Hunting.

  Hungering.

  You think you've been hungry but you haven't. You don't know what it means to be hungry all the time, to have the blood-taste in your mouth and the blood-craving in your brain and the blood-heat in your loins.

  But some of you will find out. Many of you, someday. Unless you listen and believe.

  Each new generation of Us is bolder than the last.

  And hungrier. . .

  The ravine was several hundred yards long, narrow, crowded with trees and brush. The stream was little more than a trickle among sparkly mica rocks. They followed it without cutting any sign of the man Hixon had seen, if a man was what he'd seen; without hearing anything except for the incessant hum of insects, the yammering cries of jays and magpies.

  The banks of the ravine shortened, sloped gradually upward into level ground: a small ragged meadow ringed by pine and spruce, strewn with brush and clumps of summer-browned ferns. They stopped there to rest, to wipe sweat-slick off their faces.

  "No damned sign," Hixon said. "How could he come through there without leaving any sign?" DeVries said, "He doesn't exist, that's how."

  "I tell you I saw him. I know what I saw."

  Larrabee paid no attention to them. He had been scanning with his naked eye; now he lifted the binoculars that hung around his neck and scanned with those. He saw nothing anywhere. Not even a breeze stirred the branches of the trees.

  "Which way now?" Hixon asked him.

  Larrabee pointed to the west, where the terrain rose to a bare knob. "Up there. High ground."

  "You ask me," DeVries said, "we're on a snipe hunt."

  "You got any better suggestions?"

  "No. But even if there is somebody around here, even if we find him . . . I still don't believe it's a man we're after. All those sheep with their throats ripped out, hunks of the carcasses torn off and carried away . . . a man wouldn't do that."

  "Not even a lunatic?"