“She’s just going to play some games on one of the computers,” he told Mrs. Raylin.
“That’s just fine, Mr. Forshey,” she said with something like a pitying smile. “We’ll look after her.”
Eric always got a little choked up. No matter how many times they went through this, it never stopped feeling as though it might be the last time he’d see Audra.
“Be good,” he told her.
“I will.”
“And mind your mother.”
“Sure.”
“And—”
“And eat everything on my plate. Even the green things. I know.”
“Sure, you do,” he said, kissing her wisp of bangs. “Love you, pumpkin.”
“I love you, too, Daddy.”
-8-
Open confessionals at St. Michael’s started at 3:00. Eric hadn’t been to confession in ages but felt he ought to now. There had to be something he was doing wrong with Audra, something he was missing. Maybe talking it over with someone would help him sort it out.
He pulled to the curb and headed for the slab of stairs. Inside, the church was empty and dark. No candles were lit.
Crossing himself, Eric thought, Spectacles, testicles, wallet and watch. Never had it seemed so irreverent as now, and his footfalls were incredibly loud from vestibule to vaulted ceiling.
He entered one side of the confessional and crossed himself again while staring at the wicker grating. It took only a moment before the tiny wooden partition slid open. Next came the shallow, nasally breathing of the priest.
“I am ready,” the priest said. It was Father Hogan, if Eric wasn’t mistaken.
“Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned.”
“How long has it been since your last confession, my son?”
“I’m not sure, Father. A year ago?”
“Please go on.” Another nasally breath of air.
Eric wanted to move forward with his admission, but he wasn’t sure what sin he’d even committed, if any. Thinking maybe it would be better just to let the priest figure it out, he heard himself blurt, “Is it a sin, Father, to be passive toward your child?”
“I’m not sure I take your meaning, my son.”
“Sorry, Father. I love my daughter, but sometimes I think maybe I don’t spend enough time with her.”
Nasally air in. Whistling air out. “I wouldn’t say that it is a sin. Of course if it gets to the point of neglect, you would be in the wrong. Unformed minds need an adult presence for direction. But that is a matter of parenting. If you’d like to make a counseling appointment—”
“No, no, Father. I’d prefer to be heard out now, if you’re agreeable.”
Though he couldn’t see the priest, Eric imagined he must be nodding and considering a discussion on ethics preferable to doing nothing, which exactly was what he’d be doing otherwise.
“All right.” Air in. Wheezy breath out.
Eric also smelled minty aftershave wafting through wicker grating. “My daughter,” he said, “just turned eight, and she’s complaining of being afraid at night. Lots of children are afraid of the boogeyman, one thing or another, but with my daughter, I think it’s...different. I believe she’s acting this way for attention.”
A breath in. Whistling exhalation out. “That’s possible. May I ask, do you spend time with your daughter, and by that, I mean do things with her that are meaningful to her?”
Eric thought of the time he’d spent the night before playing cards with Audra, watching television, and said, “Yes.” Then he realized last night was the exception and not the rule. “No.” A pause. “Maybe.”
The tiny bellows of the priest’s nose took in air then blew it out. “Then it sounds as though you’ve already identified the problem. You need only to decide what you mean to do about it.”
Eric sighed. The realization that he didn’t know what made Audra happy was staggering, and more often than not it was Meredith or Mrs. Mayhew who fixed Audra’s meals and looked after her. It was a frightening thing to try to be a father with no roadmap to go by.
He stared at the confessional floor, wishing an easy answer would come, and yet knowing none would.
“You are waiting for some words of comfort?” the priest asked with a wheeze. “Sadly, I haven’t any to give.” His voice had taken on a strange quality. Tinny. Hollow. “The real sin, my son, is when death occurs as a result of inaction. You do know what I mean by ‘inaction’?”
“What?” Eric took his face out of his hands and scrutinized the blackness beyond the wicker screen.
“Wouldn’t you agree it would be unfortunate if a child should come to harm because of their parent’s absence?”
“I’m not sure I understand—”
Gone was the minty aftershave smell. It had morphed into something else altogether; something pungent and growing stronger by the second.
“How very sad it would be for a child to go hungry or dirty because their parent was too self-involved, too busy to care for them.”
“Dirty?”
The smell seeping through the partition was somehow familiar. Like dead fish and rotting vegetables just discovered at the bottom of a bin.
“Un-bathed, unwashed. No one wants their brat stinking like a sow in the high summer sun, do they, Mr. Forshey?”
The smell. The incredible foulness. What the hell was it?
“You have been drinking again, haven’t you, Mr. Forshey? On the sly? Partaking of the Devil’s broth? Tell me, Eric—” (How did the priest know his name?) “—is the coffee you take to work in your thermos each day laced with more than cream? Can you make it through twelve hours without a nip? How long can you go without partaking, anyway? Just between us...six hours? Less?”
The odor was the stink of death. Decay.
“Sin wears many faces, Mr. Forshey.”
“Stop...”
“So many, many faces.”
“Please...”
“Do you remember the face of your sin, Mr. Forshey?”
“Don’t...”
“Why did you and your wife divorce? You do remember the last night you were part of a family, don’t you?”
Something bubbled to the surface of Eric’s consciousness. The priest’s words triggered a memory he’d long been suppressing. A memory he didn’t want to face because if he did, his mind might snap, might turn on him and slam him down, face to the cold, hard floor of reality, and once there, there would never be any going back.
-9-
He remembers. Oh, sweet Jesus, he does. All too clearly, it comes washing over him. A reality he has oh-so-carefully erected comes crashing down like a rain of ice-picks.
He is there all over again. It is a night when he was still married to a beautiful woman with whom he’s only grown distant. Meredith is to work late. She asks him to stop and get something for Audra and him to eat.
He picks up cheeseburgers and Cokes at a drive-thru, and when Audra and he finish, she begins her homework.
Becoming restless, he decides to go down to the Langtree Tavern for a couple of frosty ones. Meredith will be home soon. She has some project she’s working on at the office but has promised to be home by eight. It will be okay for him to slip off down to the tavern. No problem in that. Audra promises to keep the door locked and the chain in place like she’s been taught. Such a good girl, such a bright girl. She will go far, not like her father who never made it beyond the eleventh grade.
He listens to the ceiling-mounted TV as he shoots six games of pool, nurses four beers. He does well, winning all but two games, and after what he considers enough unwind time, he heads home.
When he turns onto his street, however, he sees the ambulances. One is parked in the driveway, the other on the street.
What the hell? he thinks. Ambulances can mean only one thing: trouble.
But there can’t be any trouble at his house. There just can’t be.
Swirling strobes bathe him in red, and the world becomes a foreign, disorient
ing place.
He pushes past men with medical patches on their jackets. Meredith sits on the coffee table, clutching fistfuls of hair and wailing.
He thunders up the stairs.
Two of the men—the word “paramedics” momentarily escapes him—have his daughter arranged on the linoleum floor. Audra, flat on her back, is not moving. Her lips are blue. One man works feverishly, kneeling in a quarter inch of water, alternately compressing her chest and blowing air into her mouth.
Eric understands. He doesn’t want to face facts, but in his mind’s eye, he can almost see Audra getting ready for bed.
She steps into the tub.
She slips.
She falls.
Her head makes a sickening crack as it connects with the chromed faucet, the impact of which knocks her unconscious.
Meredith arrives and, seeing Eric’s car is missing, lets herself in through the carport side.
Then she makes her discovery, calls 911 before she even shuts off the water.
Yes. He remembers this all.
Now Meredith, back from her perch on the coffee table downstairs, comes up behind him, asking the question which begs asking: “Where were you, Eric? Goddamn it, where were you? WHERE WERE YOU!”
He is too numb to feel the fists pummeling his neck, his arm, his back. Pain does not register to a mind closing off the world, blotting out the shrill and piercing screams. He believes denial will make it somehow less true.
Later, charges of neglect are pressed against him, initiated by Meredith. The charges are summarily dismissed. The court feels the guilt he endures is punishment enough. They are correct.
He and Meredith part bitterly and she relocates out of state.
There is no custody battle because it is never an issue.
His breath hitches deep inside him now, his lungs, near to bursting, seek air.
He stumbles from the confessional, gasping.
As suspected, a jerk on the door on the priest’s side reveals there is no one there.
The drive home is a collection of jumbled images. The bottle of Scope sliding on the passenger-side floorboard is what he uses to cover up his breath each morning. He doesn’t have to remove the cap to recall it smells exactly like the priest’s minty aftershave. And the whistle intake and then exhale of the priest’s breathing sounds a good deal like the Dodge’s asthmatic AC.
The reality he has known is slipping away quickly now. Like a greased rope in a game of tug of war.
On the porch of the duplex, he makes another observation. Mrs. Mayhew has never watched Audra. He knows her name only, because MAYHEW is what is printed on the mailbox just outside her door. He doubts he has spoken two words to her in the time he’s lived here.
And upstairs the water is running. Running, and in a distinct way calling for him.
He walks up the stairs, his footfalls leaden.
Then he opens the door to Audra’s room—which isn’t really Audra’s room since she’s never actually lived here, has never even seen the inside of this place. He looks around at the furniture and toys he’s bought secondhand to replicate her old room. He’s done a good job, even if he doesn’t remember much of it.
The sun is going down, sinking beyond the toothy foothills beyond Chapel Landing. He lies in a fetal position on the bed Audra has never slept in, waiting for nightfall, and when the room is as black as the inside of a confessional, he hears the closet door creak open.
He doesn’t need to see to know something with eyes like the slimy whites of raw eggs has entered the room, and when it walks it is with the sound of sludge and sloshing water.
“Sin wears many faces, Mr. Forshey. So many, many faces.”
The bed is remarkably hard now. The pillow is as resistant as the cold enamel of a claw-foot bathtub. And the rushing of blood in his ears sounds a good deal like running water.
“Step in here with me, Mr. Forshey,” he can almost hear it say. “This will all be over very soon.”
Eric feels himself being immersed in water, which tightens like a cold band about his chest.
He isn’t afraid of Mr. Many Faces, or of the frigid water he brings.
Because if there’s one thing Eric Forshey knows, it’s that he is ready to accept his contrition.
S. Clayton Rhodes is the author of many short stories and is presently working on two novels. His work can be found in such anthologies and periodicals as Dark Tales of Terror, Startling Stories (Fall 2008 and Winter 2010), New Blood, The Blackness Within, Appalachian Winter Hauntings, and Legends of the Mountain State 4, among others. He currently resides with his wife, Erin, and two daughters, Gabriella and Rachael, in Marietta, Ohio—a town which bears a striking resemblance to the fictional town of Chapel Landing, in which many of his tales are set.
More information can be found at www.sclaytonrhodes.com.
HOWLING THROUGH THE KEYHOLE
The stories behind the stories
“Bop Kabala and Communist Jazz”
Partially, this story is based on a visit to my Aunt Sharon's church—one of those charismatic Christian deals—and I found the whole experience surreal. The pastor was wearing Chinese robes and quoting George Carlin's "Stuff" monologue in his sermon. There was a print showing Jesus looking like Dave McKean's version of the Joker holding the world in his hands like a basketball. Another print depicted a nail presumably piercing Jesus' hand—well it was piercing a hand. Everyone was very nice and a few congregants were showing off their Christian tattoos.
However, the main thrust of this story concerns the existential tensions between faith and secularism. As an Orthodox Jew who attends science fiction conventions, I feel just a little out of place in both groups. I am too strange for most of my Jewish friends and among my non-Jewish friends, I am too religious. I've been to science fiction conventions where I've been asked if the yarmulke is a costume. I've been to Shabbos meals where everyone is discussing their camp experiences and their business plans and their jobs and why does there have to be all this sex and violence in the media? Remember that episode of Seinfeld where they end up at a Long Island party and Elaine expresses her boredom by throwing "maybe the dingo ate your baby" lines into conversation? Sometimes it's like that. Ed K. deals with these tensions in one way.
–Tim Lieder
“The Meat Forest”
I often don’t know where my story ideas come from—they seem to just appear out of space. This one, though, has a couple of identifiable sources. A few years ago, I saw a documentary on the Gulag, the Russian prison system—the camps, the criminals, and their remarkably intricate and symbolic tattoos. The idea of an escape from a remote prison camp felt like a really compelling germ of a plot, but I couldn’t get much past the idea of some guys wandering around the taiga, which didn’t seem to make for much drama.
Then, sometime later, a Buddhist monk told me that, while he was staying at a monastery in Thailand, one of their daily chants was, “Everything eats.” The reason they did this, he said, was to remind themselves of an inescapable aspect of our existence—that eating, consumption, the sacrifice of other beings for our own welfare, is an inherent part of life, that it is impossible to live without causing harm to other beings. I was struck by this image of the universe as a great realm of insatiable hunger, one preying on another, and then in turn being consumed as well. This combined in the bad neighborhoods of my subconscious with the Gulag story, and the meat forest was born.
One of my intentions in writing this (aside from, I hope, entertaining everyone) was to pose this question: In the world of the meat forest, is a life of integrity and compassion possible? Neither the narrator’s shallow idealism nor Dmitri’s nihilism seem to offer much hope on that front. The Buddhists, I think, would answer yes, but to do so requires us to choose a radically different way of relating to the world. And that is another story entirely.
–John Haggerty
“Drift”
In the fall of 2009, I changed jobs and moved from Pittsburgh
to the middle of the state. My new house—a rental, with high Victorian ceilings and “quirks,” like ungrounded electrical outlets—was beautiful and much too big for me. And it was cold. So very cold.
Eventually, I realized I couldn’t write off the chill as a cold snap, or my unfamiliarity with baseboard electric heaters, or my ridiculous decision to put my desk in the coldest corner of the house. There was no warmest corner; the electric heaters just could not keep up with the falling winter. The cold was inescapable, and it was not going away. I spent my evenings huddled under fleece, drinking gallons of hot tea, whining about the temperature on Twitter, often in verse: I’m so very cold / So cold in this house / My fingers are freezing / Right to the mouse. In our most trying circumstances, I think it is important to fight back with doggerel.
So there I was, freezing and thawing regularly, and spending a lot of time writing because once you get nestled into your igloo of a computer chair it’s not easy to get up and go ice fishing. Or load the dishwasher. I’d been tossing around different themes and elements lately, trying new things. I wanted to write something about parenthood, something about the shock of realizing an entire generation exists beneath yours, about how strange it is to interact with five-year-olds when you can still remember being five yourself but they have no concept of being thirty. And since I like horror, I wanted to come up with a new and interesting monster.
Monsters, I thought. Parenthood, I thought. And then, because it was a thing I had been thinking for months in a continual, underlying kind of way: Cold.
I put on another scarf, got me some tea, and that’s how “Drift” happened.
–Amanda C. Davis
“Worm Central Tonite!”
Squiggly existential carrion-eater stories are a dime a dozen, I know. But far be it from me to resist the latest trend!
Shock Totem 3: Curious Tales of the Macabre and Twisted Page 17