The Year's Best Horror Stories 16

by Karl Edward Wagner (Ed. )

  Ranto caught me that morning.

  A few minutes later, wham!—suspension, no appeal.

  I walked for over an hour, I think, through parts of town I never knew existed. Houses that looked like they were painted every month, with big cars in the driveway, green lawns a mile long, porches big enough to hold the whole junior class. And down below the shopping district, houses just the opposite—brown no matter what color they were, hardly any grass, hardly a window that didn’t have a shade that wasn’t crooked or a curtain that wasn’t torn. They looked the way I felt.

  And when I passed Muldane’s place, I saw it in a way I never had before—a place to get away from for the rest of your life, not a place to go home to when you’ve had a rotten day.

  Jesus, I thought, and remembered what I’d said—when the hell’re you gonna grow up? I hated myself because I sounded just like my father—grow up, boy, but don’t forget to act your age.

  I turned around right away and ran back to the school, thinking maybe Mike was still there so I could talk to him and make a joke about my sudden vacation.

  He was gone.

  The field was deserted, and so was the school.

  And there isn’t anything quite so empty as a school that doesn’t have anyone in it. Then it looks just like a small factory. It doesn’t make any difference how new it is, how fancy—it’s worse than a prison, it’s a graveyard hidden by brick and tinted glass.

  Thinking all that, and wondering where it was coming from, I was beginning to spook myself, so I headed home and thanked all my good luck charms that Dad was still at work and Mother and Peggy were at the store. It gave me a chance to work on my story, to look for the right buttons to push so I wouldn’t get killed when they heard my big news.

  And just as it was getting dark, I looked out the kitchen door, down to the shed. It was a black hole in the twilight, the window not even reflecting the lights from the house.

  What the hell, I thought; I can’t get into worse trouble than I am. Besides, Dad had been going out there a lot lately, and I was getting curious as to what he really did there at night.

  I went outside, and suddenly felt as if a spotlight were going to pin me to the ground the minute I took another step. It was stupid, but I couldn’t help it, and I almost turned around and went back. I didn’t. I walked across the wet grass, went to the door, and turned the knob; it was locked. I cupped my hands around my eyes and peered through the window.

  I knew my father had some kind of workbench in there, but whenever I’d snuck looks before, it was always covered. There was also an armchair, a side table, and shelves on the walls.

  And something else.

  Something I thought I saw in the far corner when, before I could move, headlights slashed up the driveway and washed the lawn a dull white.

  I wasn’t sure, but I thought it looked like a crate.

  I ran back before I was caught, went around the house to the front to wait for dear old Dad to get out of his fancy car. But he didn’t. He just sat there, his head all dark like an executioner’s mask, and I could only stare back at him until he rolled down his window and told me to get in.

  He didn’t look happy.

  Oh shit, I thought; and walked over. It wouldn’t do me any good to make him madder than he was.

  “A little trouble, huh?” he said as soon as I got in.

  I shrugged.

  “You don’t like chemistry or something?”

  “It’s okay.”

  “You don’t like Mr. Ranto, then? What?”

  I tried to explain. How they kept pushing me, kept coming at me, kept giving me all this load of crap about how good I was and how clever I was and how I ought to make my family proud because I was the smartest person in it for a hundred generations. They wouldn’t let me alone, so I left them alone instead.

  He didn’t interrupt me once.

  And when I was done, feeling shivery and stiff and wishing he would at least look at me when I was talking, he tapped a finger on the steering wheel and stared at the silver ornament at the end of the hood.

  It was darker now, the moon lifting over the house, and the headlights made the glass in the garage door grow glaring white eyes.

  “You’re a jackass, you know,” he said very calmly.

  “Wonderful,” I muttered, and reached for the handle.

  That’s when he grabbed me.

  That’s when he took my arm and yanked me back so that I was lying half on my side and staring up into his face.

  “Listen, you shit,” he said, still calmly, “I will think of a way to explain this to your mother so you don’t get killed and she doesn’t get hysterical. But you’d damned well better swear to me right now—and I mean right now, boy—that you won’t pull a stunt like this again for as long as you live or I’ll swear to you that you won’t live long enough to see it happen a third time.”

  “Let go of me,” I said, but he only tightened his grip and I felt as if my arm were coming out at the shoulder.

  “Swear,” he said, sweat suddenly lining his forehead.

  “All right, all right!”

  He smiled.

  He actually smiled at me when he let me up; and as he slid out, he said, “Hey, I heard on the radio some kid killed himself this afternoon. Hung himself in the backyard, I think. You know him? Name’s Falkenberg, I think.”

  I did—not like a friend, just someone you saw around in the halls. But it chilled me just the same. A boy, my age, taking his own life. Something, it said on the news that night, about pressures, grades, maybe drugs and liquor. Mother said it was a shame; Dad only looked at me as if I should be grateful she had something else to think about instead of me, for a change.

  I didn’t say anything. I didn’t even object when, the next morning, he took me to school and we had a long session with the principal. When it was over, I was reinstated, my name practically in blood that I would go to every class, do every bit of homework, and respect my teachers for the betters they were.

  I almost threw up.

  But it was too close to the end of the year for me to really screw up, so I smiled like a jerk, nodded, promised the moon, and spent the rest of the day explaining to the others how I’d beaten the rap.

  To everyone, that is, except Mike, who didn’t come to school.

  Jeanne wouldn’t talk to me, either, and I couldn’t figure that out. She acted like she was really mad at me, but she wouldn’t tell me why, and no one else could, either.

  At the time, I didn’t push it. Girls had never been my strongest subject. I knew, sort of, what I was supposed to do with them, but there was something that always held me back whenever I tried to talk to them. They seemed so much smarter than me, so much older, that they only made me confused, and that made me angry.

  When I called Muldane that night, his father told me he didn’t want to talk to anyone. He sounded drunk. I wasn’t surprised.

  Mike wasn’t in school the next day, or the day after, he wouldn’t answer my calls, and when I went over there once he wouldn’t come to the door.

  I didn’t cut a single class.

  That’s important. I was trying. I was really trying. I smiled at the teachers, I didn’t argue with my mother, I even helped my little sister with her homework one night.

  I was trying. Honest to god, I was trying.

  And I think it was because of Mike. We were a lot alike, and always had been. Our folks didn’t understand us, not really, and they didn’t seem to want to try. My father just disappeared into his workshop and shut me out with a key; Mike’s old man shut him out with a slap to the jaw and a bottle. We were both counting on college to get us away, but the more we worked, the harder it was to please anyone, much less those we had to.

  It was like Pelletti, in a way—running around and around on that stupid red-cinder track and not getting anywhere at all except back where you started, back in the kitchen where they told you you were no good.

  On Wednesday night, late, D
ad had a phone call, kissed my mother good-night, and told me to go to bed.

  “Something wrong?” I asked.

  “No,” he said, pulling on a worn leather jacket. “I just have to do some work, that’s all. You gotta do things yourself, you know, if you want to get them right. Go to bed.”

  I did.

  And Thursday, at dinner, he finished the apple pie my mother had made especially for him, and said, “It’s getting to be an epidemic, a real damned shame.”

  “What, dear?” Mother said.

  “Another kid killed himself today.”

  Mother poured another cup of coffee.

  Dad turned to me. “His name was Muldoon, or something like that. Did you know him, Craig?”

  I went right to my room. I went right to my bed. I laid down and I stared at the ceiling until I couldn’t see it anymore; then I stared at the dark until I fell asleep and dreamed about Mike Muldane hiding in the shed.

  I went to school on Friday, but I didn’t go to classes. I didn’t give a damn. They could hang me for all I care; I just didn’t go.

  I found a place near the track to sit in the sun. It was cool, still April, and I was beginning to wish I’d worn something else besides my denim jacket. The gym classes were out, though, and those who saw me either nodded or looked away—the word was still around that I had copped a plea to stay in, and I had a feeling that maybe only Pelletti cared about my reasons.

  At lunch, just when I was growing tired of sitting alone and trying to figure out what kind of idiot Muldane was to take himself like that, Jeanne walked up. She was dressed in black, her red hair pulled tight into a ponytail that make her face look a hundred years older. She had been crying. She still was, but there weren’t any tears left.

  I started to get up, feeling worse than I had when my father dropped the bomb, but she waved me down again. And stared. Tilting her head from one side to the other until I couldn’t take it anymore.

  “What’s the matter? Did I grow another head or something?”

  “What did you say to him, Craig?” she asked. “What did you say to him?”

  “What?”

  I did get up then, but she backed away quickly.

  “He was fine until he talked to you. He was—”

  “Jesus Christ, Jeanne!” I said, practically yelling. “Are you trying to tell me I made him kill himself?”

  She didn’t answer, not in words. She only stared a minute longer, turned, and ran away. I started after her, but she buried herself in a group of her girlfriends and, with looks back that would have fried me if wishes were real, they hustled her inside.

  I got so excited, so upset, so angry, I could feel the blood in my face, bulging my eyeballs and making my temples pound. I took another step toward the school, then spun around and started running, found myself on the track going around and around and around until I was sweating so much I was freezing. My legs locked on me, the green started to blur, and I dropped and leaned against a bench where the team sat during breaks in practice.

  By then I figured she was just crazy with grief. She’d been going with Mike since seventh grade just about, and she was just crazy, that’s all.

  The bench jumped, then, as someone sat hard on the other end. I looked up, and it was Tony. He was cleaning his glasses with a fold of his gray sweatshirt, and with his long nose and long chin, his straight-back hair, and squinty eyes, he looked like a heron surveying the swamp for a lost meal.

  “Bad news, huh?” he said.

  “Tell me about it.”

  “He ... he ever say anything to you?”

  I scrambled up from the ground to sit beside him. “Tony, I swear to God, he never said a word! The last time ...” I cleared my throat. I cleared it again. “The last time I saw him was at tryouts on Tuesday.”

  “You talked to him, though.”

  “On Tuesday, sure. But he wouldn’t talk to me after. He was pissed because—”

  I stopped. Tony didn’t believe me, I could see it when he put on his glasses and examined me, head to toe and back again. He didn’t believe me.

  “Tony, what’s—”

  “I gotta go, man,” he said. “I can’t afford to cut classes like you.” He was a couple of steps away before he looked back at me and frowned. “And look,” he warned, “stop calling the house, huh? I feel bad enough. You’re just making it worse.”

  And he was gone before I could stop him. Just like Jeanne. An accusation, an exit, and I was alone on the track, staring at the school and wondering what was going on. Two people had practically accused me of murder to my face. Two friends. Two of the only friends I had left in the world.

  I didn’t care about the deal; I left the school grounds and went for a walk. A long walk. That took me in and out of places I had grown up in, played ball in, smoked secret cigarettes in all my life.

  I didn’t go home for supper, and I didn’t call to tell them where I was.

  At nine I found myself on Jeanne’s porch, knocking on the door.

  She almost slammed it in my face when she saw who it was, but there must have been something there that made her change her mind. She signaled me to wait, closed it partway, and returned a few minutes later with a sweater over her shoulders. Inside, I could hear the television blaring and her two sisters arguing about somebody’s boyfriend.

  “Walk?” I said, though my legs were starting to turn to rubber.

  “Sure.”

  So we did. Our shoes loud on the sidewalk, our shadows vanishing under the trees that were just getting their new leaves. We didn’t say anything for a long time, until we started our second turn around the block and I took her arm and stopped her.

  “Jeanne, he was my best friend.”

  The fingers of one hand lay across her cheek, spread over to her mouth while she swallowed and looked away.

  “He was. And I swear to God, the last thing I said to him was that we should find you and get some burgers. That’s all.” I was almost crying. I almost dropped to my knees. “Jesus, that’s all, I swear.”

  She didn’t look at me, but she took my arm and we started walking again. Around the corner. Up the street. Houses lighted and houses dark, and cats running in the alleys.

  “He called me the night ... before,” she said, her voice high and hoarse. “He said ... he told me—Denton says I should take the big one because it ain’t worth it anymore.” A shudder nearly took the sweater from her shoulders. “Those were his exact words, Craig. His very same words.”

  I looked at her, stunned, and shook my head. “Jeanne, it wasn’t me. You think I’d tell him to do ... to do what he did? You think I could do that to my best friend?” When she didn’t answer right away, I almost hit her. “And even if I did, which I didn’t, he wouldn’t do it. You know him. You know him as long as I have. He wouldn’t do it, Jeanne, he wouldn’t!”

  “He did,” she whispered. “But he did, Craig.”

  The third time we got to her house I knew she believed me even though I hadn’t said another word. She held my hands tight and she looked hard into my face, and suddenly she looked as frightened as I suddenly felt.

  When she ran inside, I didn’t try to stop her.

  I only ran home, just in time to meet my father coming out the front door.

  “I was going to look for you,” he said.

  “I was walking,” I told him, pushing inside to hang up my coat. “I had to think, that’s all. About Mike. Stuff.”

  “Your mother was worried. She wanted me to call the police. Thank God, Peggy doesn’t pull stunts like this.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Tell her yourself. She’s in the kitchen.”

  Which she was, and which I did; and though I told her I saw Jeanne, I didn’t tell her what she said.

  “Michael Muldane was a very sick boy,” was all she said as she put cookies in the jar and plates in the dishwasher. “I think his little girlfriend isn’t well, either. I accept your apology, and I don’t want you to see he
r again.”

  “What?”

  Father came to the doorway. “Don’t argue, Craig. Just go to bed, please. You’re upset, your mother’s upset. We’ll talk about it in the morning.”

  I didn’t want to talk about it in the morning; I wanted to talk about it now. Right now. But there’s no justice for a kid my age, no justice at all. You have to stand there, that’s all, and take it like a man, and hope that tomorrow they’ll forget all about it and leave you alone.

  I was lucky that time. They did, until the next weekend, when Jeanne called me, in tears, nearly hysterical.

  Dad, who had just come in from the shed, his briefcase under his arm, answered the phone, listened a minute, and handed me the receiver with a scowl. “Don’t be long,” he ordered. “She sounds drunk or something.”

  She wasn’t drunk. She was terrified.

  Tony was dead.

  He had gone out for a drive in his father’s new car and had plowed it head-on into a bus on the far side of town. The police weren’t sure it was an accident at all.

  Mike’s funeral had been private, family only. Not Tony’s. A bunch of us left school early on Tuesday and went to the cemetery to say good-bye. Jeanne was with me, holding on to my arm so tight it almost cramped. The girls were kind of crying, the guys trying to be like they were supposed to—brave and cool and only looking sad.

  When a tear got away from me, Jeanne wiped it away and smiled.

  While the priest was talking, I started thinking—not about that shiny coffin with all the flowers on it that was supposed to hold Tony but how could it because he was probably right now running around the track; not about that, about me. How all of a sudden it seemed that every time I picked up the phone it was bad news. Somebody dead. A kid. And I thought about Jeanne and how scared she was, scared like me because kids aren’t supposed to die like this. I know it happens, sure. I read the papers, I see the news, but not in this town. Not here. Not to people we know.

  An epidemic, my father said.