The Year's Best Horror Stories 21

by Karl Edward Wagner (Ed. )

  The bed had been lifted and propped up vertically, perpendicular to the wall, with the mattress and several pieces of luggage used as counterweights to hold it in place. A tricky balancing act—he must have rigged it all with me strapped on the bed frame in order for it to work. And that meant that this psychotic, Charlie Brown-looking freak was very strong.

  I closed my eyes and tried to regain balance ... and sanity.

  He prodded my eyelids with a finger, forcing them open. “Listen, Mr. Bus Driver. You will not go to sleep, do you hear me? It is very important that you stay awake for the change. The adjustment must be precise.”

  I heard my voice reply, as if someone else was doing the talking: “What change? What the hell do you mean?”

  “The change. Turning back the clocks.” He lit a cigarette—I thanked God that he hadn’t prodded my eyes open with that—and continued. “You cannot get your extra hour of sleep. It will ruin everything.”

  “I see ...” I tried to stay calm as I searched for the clock in the room. It was 1:46. Fourteen minutes till the change he was talking about. And what else?

  “Since we have a few minutes, let’s talk.” I yanked on the looped belts, trying to pull myself free. He just watched, as if curious, head cocked like a dog’s. “Save your energy, Mr. Bus Driver.”

  Panic was exchanged with anger. I knew I was in trouble. “Just what is this all about, asshole?”

  “This,” he said, drawing on his cigarette and puffing out a smoke ring, “Is about what it’s ALL about. Time. And space.” He paced as he spoke, wrapped up in his world. “We all have a biological clock, as it were—a life that ticks away as we age. Basic biology tells us this.” He checked one of his watches before continuing. “But society ... people like you ... tries to change that biological clock. You all think that it’s fine and dandy to tamper with me, with my insides, my inner timepiece!”

  I just stared at him, trying to follow. The circulation in my hands and feet was weak, numb as my mind.

  “You see, Mr. Bus Driver, I am not going to be a victim of that. I won’t have my batteries run out just for Daylight Savings Time. No, my body and mind are very delicate instruments, not to be tampered with by the likes of you. I will not gain an hour of sleep—I will not lose an hour of sleep—I WILL NOT alter my metabolism for ANYONE!” His left hand was fiddling with something on his belt. A sheath. A rounded nub of plastic with a compass—or perhaps a watch face—on its tip. A survival knife.

  I suppose that at this point, I should have been scared witless. But I wasn’t. I felt amazingly calm. I thought of Julie, of the few moments of pleasure I was lucky enough to have had in my life.

  The Watcher rushed up into my face, staring at me through the springs of the bed frame. He looked, oddly enough, as if he were imprisoned, not me. “Do you understand, Mr. Bus Driver, why I must do this?”

  Because you’re a psycho? I almost replied. Instead, I tried to think logically, to, perhaps, convince him that he had made some sort of mistake in his reasoning. “Wait a minute,” I said, my voice surprisingly strong. “What’s the difference to your biological clock or whatever, if you turn the clock back to where it was each year? It all evens out in the end. You don’t really lose or gain sleep either way.”

  The muscles in his face loosened, and for a second, I thought I had him. But he just shook his head and “tsk”-ed, as if disappointed with my ignorance. “You just don’t understand the laws of space and time, do you? When time is displaced—like it is each and every year by the change of the clocks—the body’s metabolism, too, is displaced. For half a year! But not me, not my metabolism. I make sure of that.” He put out his cigarette. “Wait there,” he said, as if I was going anywhere. “I’ll prove it to you.”

  He left, apparently, to get something from the bathroom.

  The clock read 1:53. Time was running out. I tried pulling back forcefully on the bindings on my feet. The bed frame rocked in the air with a rusty creak, and for a second, I thought I might fall flat on my back, crushed beneath the frame’s heavy metal weight. It was a worthless attempt—even though my legs were fairly strong from years of working bus pedals, I couldn’t budge free.

  The Watcher returned with a paper grocery bag. He held it up for me to see—it was wet, stained like a sack lunch left in a locker for several days. And it stank, too. A strong fishy odor. “This,” he said proudly presenting the bag to my eyes like a gift, “you will see when the time comes. Then, perhaps, you will understand.” He ceremoniously set the bag down next to the clock radio on the bedside table. “Hey,” I interrupted. He faced me, curious. “Why don’t you just let me go, huh? I’m not gonna stop you from changing the clocks, or anything. There’s no reason in the world that you have to tie me up like this ...”

  He acted as if he were seriously contemplating my request, but then looked coolly in my eyes. “There is all the reason in the world for this, Mr. Bus Driver. You see, because time is displaced, space must be displaced, as well.” He raised his eyebrows, as if he had no choice in the matter. “For every hour I lose, I must take an hour from someone else, to make up for it. To make the change in not only time, but space—life itself—too. There is no alternative.

  “An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, Mr. Bus Driver. I must take an hour of your life—your final hour.” He rechecked his watches. “And I will have to do so slowly, precisely ... so that not a second is gained or lost. It is no easy task; but I have done so before.”

  He moved behind me. I could hear the knife being slid free of its sheath—slowly, purposefully, the jagged serrations on the back of the blade rhythmically plunking against the leather. My eyes roamed the room involuntarily, looking for impossible escape. I scanned the room: a blank wall faced me, an insanely mellow pattern in the wallpaper; the clock on the bedside table had red digits that warbled and mutated in my mind like red coals, unreal; and that ugly paper bag sat on the bedside table like something in another room altogether ...

  The tip of the knife was against my back. No pain—it just tickled, cool like ice on my spine.

  His voice whispered into my ears, carried on a hot cloud of stench that crept over my shoulder: “As I said, there is no such thing as luck—just perfect timing. Being in the right place at the right time. And you—yes, you, Mr. Bus Driver—were lucky enough to have brought me here to St. Louis. After all ... it was you, wasn’t it, that brought me to Denver last April? It was you, was it not, who carried me from Central to Mountain Time, so that I could make my last adjustment?”

  I frowned, looking at the clock. “I have no idea what the hell you’re talking about.”

  “No matter. It happened. In time you would probably remember that you had seen me before. I cannot afford to have that happen.” He ran the blade from shoulder to shoulder across my back, then down, as if enscribing a rectangle, a door on my back. My skin made a sound like shredding fabric, its pierce faint, numb ... it was not a deep cut. He was playing with me, warming up his sickness, lubricating his blade.

  “It is almost time to begin the adjustment.” I could hear the spit in his cheeks crinkle as he smiled. I could only imagine the look in his eyes—a hungry, eager look. “As I have discovered over the past few years, it must be done accurately, with the utmost precision. It will be slow, Mr. Bus Driver. Slow ... and painless. For exactly one hour.” He wetly licked his lips. “No turning back now!”

  I swallowed a mouthful of spit. My muscles were shaking with a fear that had not yet registered in my mind.

  “And the beauty of it all, Mr. Bus Driver, is that I will get your job! I will create a vacancy in your fleet of bus drivers ... and, naturally, I will apply for the job just when they need me! They will think I am lucky, but I alone will know that it was just perfect timing! Ah, to be in control of time itself! To travel where I need to go—without anyone, anyone like you, to know the difference! No longer will I depend on society; society will come to depend on me!” He laughed aloud, horribly. “Now do you unde
rstand? Now do you see why there is no such thing as luck? Why we must manipulate time and space, in order to survive?”

  1:59.

  He brought the blade to the base of my neck. “Let us begin ...”

  My mind was racing. For the first time, I realized that I was about to die, despite his sermon, despite the fact that he had just told me over and over that he was going to take my life slowly, draining me over the course of an hour in some twisted idea of turning back the clocks in order to maintain his balance.

  And then I remembered what he had said about time zones.

  “I, THE KEEPER OF TIME, WILL NOW COMMENCE THE ADJUSTMENT, THE BALANCE ON WHICH LIFE ITSELF DEPENDS! I, WHO ONCE DENIED THE SPRING AHEAD, WILL NOW DENY THE FALL BACK!” Unmercifully, he pressed down on the blade.

  “Afraid not,” I said, my voice so matter-of-fact that I thought I’d crack.

  He sighed. “It is truly sad that you are too ignorant to truly understand ...” With a free hand he rubbed the top of my head. “Maybe during this next hour, you will.”

  “No, YOU don’t understand.” I grinned, though I knew he couldn’t see it. “You’re an hour late. You’ve missed the adjustment.”

  “Huh?” Now even his voice sounded cartoonish. He cautiously lifted his knife.

  I shook my right arm, rattling my watch against the metal bed frame ... the watch that I had forgotten to move ahead an hour for the change from Mountain to Central time. “According to my watch, you missed it. That’s what you get for talking so goddamned much.”

  He raced around the bed frame to look at my watch.

  And I rocked forward with all my weight.

  The bed hit the floor with a thunderous thud. The Watcher was pinned beneath me, his face directly beneath mine ensnared by the metal springs, his face trapped in a look of terrified shock. His eyes clocked like fast pendulums, searching for escape through the metal mesh. His fingers strained in an attempt to reach the survival knife that had spilled out of them, but his arms were locked in place by the heavy weight of the bed—he could not reach the knife.

  I could.

  Two a.m. announced itself on the clock radio with an audible click.

  I pass the brown wooden sign that reads WELCOME TO COLORADO—a square shape in mockery of the state’s real boundaries—and sigh in relief.

  It is good to be back in Mountain Time. Real time. Even if I’ve lost two hours of sleep—more, if you count how long it took the cops to investigate my hotel room, asking me more questions than The Watcher himself ever had.

  I’m not quite sure I want to sleep again, anyway. Sleep brings dreams, and dreams—because they try to make sense out of a nonsensical world—bring nightmares.

  I’ve had a great deal of time to think about what The Watcher was really up to, what was really going on in his sick mind. And after ten hours of driving, watching the white lines of the road bead off moments of transient time, I still can’t make sense of it. He had his own logic—a ceremony, of sorts—true, but his way of carrying out his insane scheme still doesn’t quite add up, no matter how I figure it. It’s too irrational—like time and space itself, I suppose—abstract and senseless. One could go crazy just thinking about it all. And that, no doubt, is exactly what The Watcher did, long before he ever met me.

  But he did say one thing that makes a great deal of sense, one phrase that I keep repeating over and over in my mind.

  Spring ahead, fall back.

  He muttered it over and over, chanting it as I freed myself from the belts, cutting the leather with his knife. His voice had drowned down into a whisper by the time the cops arrived ... but still I could see the words quivering on his lips, a silent prayer: spring ahead, fall back, spring ahead, fall back, spring ahead ...

  Over and over.

  My back still stings, the salty sweat that pools there from so many hours of driving a sweet torture all its own. But I am thankful for the pain, the reminder.

  And I am lucky ... so lucky ... that it was—still is—Autumn, Fall. The woman whose head was in that paper bag, his Spring victim, long lifeless and rotten, was not lucky at all.

  Spring, a head. Fall, back.

  I pull into Denver late, and the passengers complain, one by one as they exit the bus. But as far as I’m concerned, it’s perfect timing.

  APOTHEOSIS by Carrie Richerson

  I paused with my hand on the door of the tavern and took a deep breath. It didn’t help; it just bypassed my lungs and settled in with the icy knot that used to be my gut. This night had been a long time coming and everything, everything rode on what waited for me inside. Don’t you dare screw up, I warned myself. I tugged the zipper on my jacket up tight under my chin and opened the door.

  I spared the interior a quick glance as I sauntered toward the bar. The bartender/owner watched my approach with a blank face and alert eyes—and one hand out of sight under the counter. I’d staked the place out long enough to know that he liked to run a well-behaved establishment. In my leather jacket, dark jeans and sneaks I looked like some biker moll wannabe: trouble on the hoof. I disarmed him with a tired smile and put a bill of a respectable denomination on the bar as I asked for my draft. My politeness and my money did the trick. As he moved to the tap to pull my beer, I wondered what his protection-of-choice under the counter might be. A scattergun? Or perhaps something more intimate—a baseball bat? He looked like the no-nonsense type. Probably a riot gun. And you could be sure it was properly licensed.

  He could have no idea just how dangerous I was. If he had known, he would have emptied the pump gun into me when I opened the door. But then again, he didn’t know the greater danger that was already inside. If his luck held, he’d never find out.

  He set a foaming mug and my change down before me. I left the bills on the bar as I moved to a small booth by the front window. By the time I had settled into the seat the money had disappeared and the bartender was wiping glasses again.

  I dawdled over the beer and pretended to watch the winter darkness outside the window. The neon advertising attached to the inside of the glass pulsed in a tasteful and reassuring pink/blue double beat, but none of the few passersby were seduced. They trudged heads down and collars up through the cold, dodging scattered slush piles. No doubt thinking of warmth, of home. Well, so would we all, if we could.

  This tavern was warm enough, cozy and dimly lit, all dark wood and old, heavy furnishings. It had a muted, untrendy class. Only a handful of people were in residence this early on a weekday night. The background music was an eclectic mix of light classical, progressive jazz, and meditative electronics, not quite frothy enough to be libeled as New Age. There was no TV, praise the powers, and the place was too far off the beaten path to be a hangout of Homo singleus. Two couples carried on self-absorbed conversations in the other booths, and a loner hunched over something potent at a small table at the back. The loner was my guy.

  Giddiness welled up in me, and my hand trembled as I set my beer down on its coaster. To have my quarry, the man I had been tracking for so very long, so close was far more intoxicating than any liquor could be.

  He’d half turned his chair to put his back to the room, telegraphing inaccessibility. From my angle I could see a burly longshoreman’s body and the profile of a sullen face: bristling eyebrows, a pugnacious nose, and an in-your-face chin. Coarse salt-and-pepper hair curled from under the edges of a greasy dockworker’s cap. The same gray-touched hair matted the muscular forearms, but couldn’t completely conceal the traceries of faded blue tattoos. An old knife scar notched the back of one massive hand. His isolationist gesture seemed unnecessary; only a fool would approach a man like that uninvited.

  I smiled, admiring the appearance he had chosen. The scar was an especially nice touch. He looked like an habitual drunk and an experienced brawler. I knew he was neither.

  An antique mirror hung on the wall over his table. From time to time he glanced up and used it as I was using the glare-mirrored window beside me: to study the refle
ctions of the other patrons in the bar. Once his eyes almost pinned mine as I stole a look around, but I let my gaze wander on. I wondered if he had guessed who I was, why I was there. It didn’t matter. Now that I had made it this far I knew he would let me make my play. He would be curious, if nothing else.

  He lifted a finger to the bartender. I rose and drifted toward the bar with my empty mug. The barman was pouring a double Irish as I laid a hundred dollar bill on the polished wood. “Make it two.” My voice was pitched for his ears alone.

  His gaze moved from the bill to my face and back to the bill as he thought it over. When he reached under the bar I braced myself for the riot gun, but he came up with another glass. I let go a silent breath and added another hundred atop the first. The bartender nodded imperceptibly and palmed the cash as I picked up the filled glasses. Whatever happened now, he would stay out of it.

  My man didn’t bother to look surprised as I set a glass down in front of him and settled into the chair beside his. Perhaps my transactions at the bar had been reflected in the mirror. This time my hand was rock steady as I lifted my glass. I took a long swallow of the pale amber whiskey and felt Irish courage melt some of the ice in my belly. Careful.

  He spoke as I lowered my glass. His tone was as flat and bored as his gray eyes. “I prefer to drink alone.” There was no menace in his voice. There was no need.

  I shook my head. “I know who you are,” I said, watching for a reaction.

  All I got was a raised eyebrow. The triteness of my words hung in the air between us like smoke. I flushed with anger as he reached for his whiskey.

  I pinned his wrist to the table. He didn’t try to pull away. The knife I drew from the pocket of my jacket opened with an almost inaudible click. My back shielded us from view as I stroked the razor-sharp blade across his callused palm. The flesh parted widely, bloodlessly.