The Year's Best Horror Stories 21

by Karl Edward Wagner (Ed. )

  “Do you know where you are?” I ask. Dad looks up at me, says, “I’m here wichoo.” He doesn’t know where he is. He doesn’t know that, as a nine year old, he’s been dead for thirty-eight years. He doesn’t know his adult self is about ten miles away, dreaming in a bed I’ve never seen in a house I couldn’t find because I’ve never been there, and that the man dreams of a boy from Georgia who’s lost yet content here at my side. “Are we s’posed to be someplace else?” “Not really,” I say. “This is as good a place as any, I guess.” He’s not really listening. He jumps up on the fountain’s edge and runs around it until he’s at my other side. Then he plops down and rests his chin in his palms.

  “I think we should get going,” I say. I reach out and take dad’s hand. He slides off the fountain and skips beside me. I look down at him because I feel his tenure coming to a close. I ask: “Anything else you want to do before you leave?” “I ain’t going anywhere,” he says, then looks straight ahead; he knows something is not right about his being here. His little mind can’t encompass the idea of the haunt. He belongs somewhere else. He belongs in a Georgia existing only in my father’s dream. The others, when they come to me older than the nine-year-old, are more dangerous. They skirt an understanding of what they are about, as they seep into my awareness and stay with me until I can’t stand them any longer. But like the others, dad won’t face his fleeting moment in the present, where he doesn’t belong.

  Dad’s seen enough, I think, because he’s moved away from logical questions about getting ice cream, and now asks silly, disturbing things like: “Have you ever seen how bad a bunch of white boys are to a black lady?” As with the ice cream, I say no. I know he’ll persist. He’s a wandering Jew; he’ll press his point all the way to the root. “I’ve seen what they can do,” he presses. “It’s like in a National Geographic, when you see tigers walking in circles around a dead moose.”

  “I’ve never seen a moose,” I say. I’m walking faster. His little hand is tight in mine, slippery, but that’s because my palms are slick. His chin dips a little; he’s disappointed in me. It’s typical of us to head each other off at the crossroads: me, peeling away on fumes of shame because I’m not the son he wanted; he, broaching embarrassing subjects and then withdrawing behind motor-powered windows, eternally cool, tinted glass.

  Dad stops dead. He’s small, bony, but he’s an anchor. I’m holding his hand so tightly I stumble backward and almost fall on him. He yanks his hand free. His chin starts to quiver. With a breathy timbre, he says, “I don’t wanna be wichoo anymore. Where’s ma?”

  He’s a little big man now. He’d like me to believe he can handle anything. I know better. Children are pretty good at absorbing trauma, but if there’s one thing that’ll break them down every time, it’s the notion, the oppression, of being lost. I’ve seen it before, like a hint of madness. Lost kids ... unravel.

  “Where’s ma?” He’s real tough. I could tell him his mother was raped and killed twenty years ago by a group of black teenagers. But I’m not like that. I want only for him to go away, leave me alone. I want to unravel this little boy, but only because I can’t touch the man.

  “You’re lost,” I say.

  I have no tears left for these personal exorcisms. I do them all the time. I learn what I can from the loved ones who haunt me, yet still live, then I let them go. Giving up ghosts, and all that.

  Anger. “I can’t be lost—I know you.”

  My chin dips a little; I’m disappointed. In me. “No, dad,” I whisper. “You don’t know me at all.” I can see the first thread in dad’s round face. His eyes are big, tearless like mine, but behind them there’s not much of anything. It’s an emptiness I know very well. The thread is smoke, empty in its own way. It rises from his face, curls around his ears, his throat. I turn away before my belly turns to steel and I really start to hurt.

  Dad’s more difficult than some of the others: Mom at ages fourteen and twenty-five; little Joey, who used to take baths with me before we knew “pee-pees” were more than stubs of flesh to be fondled playfully; Father Maddox, a surprisingly free young rebel compared to the puritan who starred in my adolescent nightmares; and Paulette, who still calls me once in a while, although she doesn’t know I’ve met her in almost every stage of her life. And have hated her for it.

  Dad’s at my heels. Although he’s dissolving, he tugs the back of my shirt. His voice is a beggar’s. “Don’t leave me. I—I don’t want ma. I want you, ’cause you’re the only one I know, ’cause I don’t got ’ny friends, just the white kids who walk by and say I should carry a candle at night or I might get stepped on. Nobody says hello.”

  I’m not a cruel person, but I pull away from him. It’s not difficult to do so; he’s losing form. Only his bleating remains, powerful and girlish. The world is cold as I rush up the avenue, but it can’t freeze the nagging. He’ll hang on until there’s nothing left to voice. His puny cry will mature. In fifteen years, it will accuse and hone in on vulnerable patches of another small boy’s failures. For now, though, because there’s a living man he’s too intangible to replace, the boy from 1950 will die, again.

  Not that that should bother me. Dad’s still a phone call away, dreaming in a bed I’ve never seen, next to a woman who’s not ray mother.

  Haunting me.

  SPRING AHEAD, FALL BACK by Michael A. Arnzen

  I could see the Arch on the horizon—the lights of St. Louis appeared to be captured by its thin silhouette, a black rainbow that loomed over the night. The curving architecture was comforting—like the welcoming hips of a woman after a nonstop coast-to-coast route. My feet hurt—the patent leather shoes that were part-and-parcel with the silly bus drivers’ uniform cut into the soft tissues around my ankles—but I managed to give the gas pedal a little extra weight to push us closer to the city, closer to the “Gateway to the West.” Checking my watch, I realized that we’d make it with plenty of time to spare.

  I looked up into the long rear-view, to check out the passengers. Most were snoozing, some were looking blandly at the approaching city. And The Watcher was there, too, as alert as ever, and meeting my gaze in the mirror.

  I call him The Watcher because that’s all he did: watched. He watched the way I jiggled in neutral while shifting the gears, the way I used two hands to steer—even just to change lanes. He watched the way I tipped my hat up before turning up the A/C when it was getting hot in the bus. And he watched me, too—studying not only my work, but my face. As if he recognized me. As if I were parent and teacher all wrapped up into one man.

  And those red eyes of his—glaring, staring, burning into my own whenever I looked in the mirror. Trying to get my attention for some reason or another. He was like one of those kids who stared at construction workers or firetrucks, though he was much older than any child. In his forties, I’d guess. White, pale white, with blue eyes and dark wrinkles across his forehead like something from a cartoon. His hair was one big squiggle of black-turning-gray, a twisting greasy tuft that stuck out in the center of his bald, shining head. He looked, again, like a cartoon—like that Charlie Brown character—except less innocent and childlike. Almost evil. Ol’ Chuck ... with some serious mental problems.

  I looked down at the white lines of the road, like tiny beads of time, clicking off each second as the bus crawled nearer to its final destination. To St. Louis. And for me: to sleep.

  Thirteen continuous hours from Denver, stopping only once for grub at the usual fast food joint at the Kansas border. It had been a hellish journey—the usual crying babies and complaining old folks—and The Watcher was like a demon on my shoulder the whole way, his eyes a weight I could feel behind my head like a shadow. I was eager to get to the depot.

  “You look tired,” he said from the seat directly behind me. It was the first time he spoke during the whole trip, though to me it had been like we’d been having an ongoing psychic conversation the whole way, with me saying, “What the hell are you looking at?” without actuall
y mouthing the words.

  “Yup,” I replied, not bothering to look up at him in the rear-view. “Long trip.”

  “You must get sick of driving so much, right? I mean ...” his voice rose as he sat forward in his seat, leaning close to my ear. I could smell his breath, a cloud of dead fish stench wafting over my shoulder. “I mean, don’t you ever get tired of it all? Always on the road, never at home, never having the time to stop and take in the sights?”

  “Sure,” I said. “But it’s a living.” I rolled an eye up to mirror. He was grinning. I grinned back, blatantly humoring him. “And I see plenty of sights, believe me.”

  “You must see a lot of people, too, right? I mean, heck, lotsa people ride the bus. Lots, right?”

  “Uh-huh.” Lotsa psychos like you, I thought.

  He paused to peer through the windshield. “Ever had someone ride twice? Like ... someone who rode the bus two years ago, and then rides back two years later? Ever seen that? Ever recognized that sort of person?” He returned his eyes to mine in the mirror.

  It was as if every sentence he uttered was a question. I couldn’t tell if he had let all these dumb questions build up during the whole ride, or if he was just naturally inquisitive in his shy, slightly-paranoid way. Whichever, it was definitely irritating. “Nope,” I said apathetically. “Never happened.” It was a lie, and not a very tactful one, but I didn’t feel like getting into a conversation with The Watcher—an answer would no doubt only lead to more stupid questions. I’m a bus driver, not a friggin’ tour guide.

  He leaned back in his seat—the red vinyl squeaked beneath his chubby weight. Before I took my eyes away from the mirror, I saw him cross his arms and pout and look down at the floor of the bus. And he was nodding, a large disbelieving smirk on his face. He knew I had lied.

  I stepped down harder on the pedal. The guy was giving me the creeps. I did not look in the mirror again, not even when I pulled into the depot. I just parked, opened the door and exited, happy to be on my way to a bed and a drink and to not have some weirdo looking over my shoulder. But I knew he was still watching me, even as I quickly walked away from the bus. I could still feel his eyes on my back, like a heavy wet rucksack.

  We’d arrived in St. Louis early, with plenty of time to spare. I had a ten a.m. trip the next morning (back to good old Denver), and while I’d normally just crash in the Holiday Inn right away, I decided to take my time about getting the room and taking a shower. And instead of hitting the sack, I hit the bar.

  It was midnight—a Sunday night—which meant that the place was crowded with tourists and even locals who were there because the liquor stores were all closed for the weekend. I managed to get a table, one of those candlelit two-seaters that are meant for lovers and not lonely old bus drivers like myself. The waitress rushed me three beers, and I chugged the first one down in mere seconds. The second beer was for slurping. The third for nursing.

  I was fairly tipsy by the time I noticed him. The Watcher. He was sitting at the bar with his back to me, right in front of the neon beer-bottle clock above the dangling bar glasses. At first it looked like he was giving the barkeep the same routine that he gave me on the bus—watching his every move like a curious child—but then I realized that he was actually staring at me in the mirrored wall behind the bar. Unfortunately, we made eye contact. I nodded and smiled at him—to merely affirm our acquaintance—and then diverted my attention.

  And the next thing I knew, he was sitting down in the chair opposite mine. He cocked his head to one side, and just stared at me, as if expecting me to start a conversation. I pulled on my beer instead.

  After a minute, he set fire to the end of a thick cigarette, and asked: “Do bus drivers often drink alcohol?”

  Weird question. “I wouldn’t know. I don’t drink and drive, if that’s what you mean ...” The liquor, I realized, had loosened my tongue. I was now trapped in yet another conversation with The Watcher.

  The Watcher nodded, then smiled. “Did you know that it’s the end of Daylight Savings Time today? That we set the clocks back an hour tonight at precisely two a.m.?”

  “Sure ...” I lied—I had forgotten. “Of course I know. It’s part of my job.”

  He wrinkled his face. “Since last call is at two, do you think that the bar will stay open an extra hour?”

  I rolled my eyes. “Hell if I know,” I said, finishing off a beer. “Doubt it.”

  “Me, too. And how would I know anyway? As always, I’ll be much too busy setting my clocks.”

  This, I thought, is a very strange man. It was my turn to ask a few questions. To give him a taste of his own habit. “Why wait till two? Why not just set them before you go to sleep?”

  His face turned serious, too serious for such lighthearted small talk: “Because, Mr. Bus Driver. Time is of the essence.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “I see,” I replied awkwardly, making a mental note not to ask this weirdo any more questions.

  The waitress—thank God—appeared then, and I ordered three more beers. I would have just gone to my room and had them room serviced, but that would cost too much. And what the hell? Since it was time to change the clocks back, I was due an extra hour of sleep. At least I had learned something talking with the bastard.

  The Watcher ordered a tequila sunrise. He sipped it; I slammed my beer.

  And then I noticed his arms—The Watcher, aptly, was wearing two watches, identical wristbands, one on each arm. At first I thought he was some sort of mooch on the make, a sidewalk salesman. The typical bus station con man. But he was too inquisitive for that—he asked too many questions. Most cons dominate a discussion; the only questions they might ask are, “Ya interested?” or, “How much you got?” Not this guy.

  “Staying at the hotel here?” he asked, waving an arm at the surrounding bar.

  I nodded, noticing that the watches he wore were set at different times. He couldn’t be that hung up on the time change, could he? No ... he was probably wearing them because of the interstate travel, so he could know what time it was in both places. He had a weird way of keeping track of it, but that was surely the reason, I thought.

  “Me, too,” he grinned. “I was lucky. This hotel had only one vacancy, and I got it. Pretty lucky, right?”

  “I guess.”

  “But I think it was much more than luck,” he said, sipping on his sunrise. “It was more a matter of perfect timing. I’m very punctual, you see.”

  I smirked, repeating myself: “I guess.”

  “In fact,” he continued, wrapped up in his own little world, “I think I would make a good bus driver, don’t you? I time everything, with the utmost precision. Just as you must, I’m sure. It wouldn’t do to be late, now would it? No ... a bus must reach its destination precisely on time. Society depends on it.”

  I shrugged.

  “And society depends on you. Your job is very important. Certainly.” He sipped. “I envy you.”

  I was beginning to feel uncomfortable. Now that he was actually beginning to use sentences instead of questions, his tone had changed. He sounded almost like a college professor, throwing around his notions about society and precision. Perhaps he was a scientist on vacation.

  “So tell me,” he said, his eyes squinting at me. “How do you become a bus driver?”

  “Well, you apply just like any other job. But you have to be lucky, too—it’s an easy job, so lots of people apply. I just happened to apply,” I said, wincing at my own words, “at the right time.”

  He grinned. “Naturally. So there was a vacancy and you filled it. Perfect! Time and space, working together.” He nodded his head, and then quickly checked both of his watches. Then he glanced back at the beer bottle clock, to check its accuracy. “Well, it’s time—ha ha!—for me to run. I’ll be seeing you.”

  He left, rolls of fat jiggling over his belt as he walked away. He had a bouncy spring in his step, purposeful, rushed, as if he had a mission to accomplish.

  What an oddball, I
thought, and returned to yet another beer. In a way, he reminded me of the man Julie had left me for two years ago. “Till death do us part” was the biggest joke of our marriage ... it had only lasted two months, and Julie had already begun the affair some time before that. She blamed my job for it all—the way I was never home, always on a route—as if it were my fault. But she was a liar; she just fell into the arms of another man, I knew, because there had been a “vacancy” in her life. Too much free time on her own, I guess. She filled my absence with the body of some fat slob, and blamed me for it all. Bitch.

  I was getting groggy—the drive had been a killer, and the booze wasn’t helping matters—so I downed the rest of my final beer, and went to up my room.

  I unlocked the door and flipped on the lights.

  And then—suddenly, violently—the lights went out.

  Consciousness returned in a whirlwind of blurred vision, the room spinning clockwise. At first I thought I had downed a few more beers than I should have ... and then I saw him, The Watcher, a solid figure in the background of my swirling mind, like a dark shadow on a psychedelic painting. “You’ve awakened just in time,” he said, his face without a grin, without any emotion.

  I heard music—I couldn’t be sure if it was real or imagined. It was an old song, one I couldn’t quite place until I heard its familiar chorus: “To everything, turn, turn, turn ...”

  “What the hell?” I shouted, and tried to sit up. I couldn’t move—not only was I too dizzy and weak, but I was being held down by something, as well ... belts, tied around my wrists and ankles.

  My chest hurt. I looked down, and realized that I had been tied facedown on the bed—and even worse, the mattress had been removed. My chest was scratched from the raw, exposed coiled springs of the bed’s frame. I wondered how the hell I could see these things—looking down at my chest, sighting The Watcher in my mental whirlwind—if I was strapped down on my stomach, when I made the connection.