“Ooh,” the sisters echoed with fascination. “It sounds dangerous. I’m certain you acted very bravely.”
“Blast it, Elsie. You twit. I was going to tell him that he was brave!” Matilda shouted.
“I’m sorry, Matilda. I can’t help that you’ve got potato mush between your ears…”
“Ladies, please stop. Just when I think you’ve finally managed to behave civilly, you charge at one another like badgers. You’re as bad as children.” Gilroy slid off the stone. He rubbed his upset stomach. “If you’ll excuse me, I’ll be off now. I’ve got to find a suitable rubbish bin for my clothing.” He had taken a few steps before curiosity again got the better of him.
“I’m sorry, but I’ve got to know, what in bloody hell are you two doing out here in the cemetery at this hour?” When he turned back, however, the sisters had vanished. No ether-worldly premonition prompted Gilroy to inspect the names on the rather large grave marker, so he did not. Instead, he bit his lip, shrugged, and continued to walk.
“Sorry, Gilroy,” said Matilda in a throaty hiss. The two sisters waited directly in his path, though the only defining features that now set them apart was their height. Two shambling skeletons in faded and rotting dresses stood before Gilroy. Their skulls were empty-eyed, locked forever in the fleshless, exposed rictus of the dead. Dirty, twisted ropes of frayed hangman’s nooses swung from the neck of each. They both stepped forward.
“Ever since we lost our poor Tobias, we’ve really only had each other,” said Elsie. A spider skittered out from where her ear should have been and disappeared in a tangle of raggedy gray hair. “It’s dreadfully boring here. And now that we’ve been lucky enough to find you…well, I think we could learn to share your affections. After all, it was one man who tore us apart. Would it not be poetic that another should bring us together?”
Gilroy’s mouth hung slack as he stared at the pair.
“I’m afraid it would be foolish for us to let you leave,” Matilda agreed.
“But, I’ve…got to go. There’s wash on the line,” Gilroy said. He suddenly felt the cold breeze of the evening as it pressed against his face and fluttered his hair. He knew he should have already been running, but his feet were rooted to the spot, as if his shoes had been cast in lead.
“Nevermind that. Besides, look at you. You’re still alive and your clothes are in worse shape than ours.”
“We don’t want to hurt you, Gilroy,” Matilda offered, a slug falling from what remained of her nose. “Well, I wouldn’t hurt you. I’m afraid my sister doesn’t have the best record.”
“You just won’t let it go, will you?” Elsie threw her hands up into the air. A few fingers flew off into the distance. “For heaven’s sake, I ran him through with the kitchen blade. It was me! It was entirely my fault! I killed poor Tobias. Is that what you wanted to hear? I already told the jury once. Isn’t that enough? Do you feel better about—”
“Where’s he gone?”
Gilroy was not much of a runner, to say the least. He moved with all the grace and agility of a newborn horse, and twice fell over ancient and crumbling headstones. The countless pints of ale were certainly not of help. Despite this, thoughts of the two ghoulish apparitions awaiting his company helped Gilroy to muster up the will to run for all his worth.
He heard no trace of being pursued, which he supposed was a good thing, and saw the southern gate of the graveyard just a few hundred paces ahead. He laughed and charged forward.
From the darkness beside him, the skeletal forms of the long-dead sisters plowed into him, knocking Gilroy to the ground. He wailed and struggled.
“Oh, hold still, won’t you?” Elsie urged. Her jaw hung at a crooked angle and rattled when she spoke. “It’s not as if you’re making this any easier. Don’t just stand there, Matilda. Grab his arms.”
Gilroy’s eyes widened as Elsie withdrew an enormous, rusted butcher knife from the folds of her rotten gown. Deciding he’d be much better suited taking no part in the rest of their evening plans, Gilroy kicked wildly. The relatively weightless Elsie was thrown aside. He kicked again, sending Matilda’s howling head careening into the bushes. He scrambled to his feet and ran, arms and legs flopping wildly like a madman as he made his way to the gate.
Only when he had run well past the batwing iron bars and across the street did Gilroy dare to cast a glance behind him. He could have sworn he heard angry howls of broken hearts coming from within the dank cemetery. But, perhaps it was just the breeze.
Gilroy Fleming would never set foot within a hundred paces of that (nor any other) cemetery again. And not long after, he moved to a better town in search of work. But on the thirty-first night of every October, convinced that the scorned sisters might still be in pursuit of eternal love, Gilroy Fleming never left the security of his home.
“That wasn’t very scary, Grandpa,” said the littlest girl, whose face was painted like a tiger.
“Lemme tell you that it bloody well was when it was happening,” replied Grandfather Roy.
“But it wasn’t bloody at all,” said the boy missing his front teeth.
Gilroy’s son laughed and regained the attention of the children. “Well, I wouldn’t say it was all that bad. After all, kiddos, Grandpa’s memory isn’t quite what it used to be.” He winked at his father and grinned. “Nice try, though.”
Gilroy smiled in return and put his attention back to his bowl of caramel corn. He crunched a few puffs and gazed out the window into the quiet night. Nothing looked to be out of the ordinary.
It had been another uneventful Halloween, and that suited Gilroy just fine.
Hell of a Deal
“That should suit ya just fine, sonny,” Archie said to the young man standing in the doorway of his new apartment, though it was hardly new. “Here’s yer key. Rent’s due at the first of every week.”
Jim nodded his head solemnly in understanding.
“Now, listen here, partner,” the old man explained. “I seen that look on half a dozen other faces over the years, and I know a broken heart when I see one. But just because this here’s the cheapest motel this side of Alamosa don’t give you the right to make me the proud finder of one fresh swingin’ corpse. You get me? This might be a fleabag dump, but it’s my fleabag dump.”
“I gotcha,” Jim said with a wave of his hand and closed the door of room 66a behind him. The place looked like an oversized metropolitan toilet stall, which matched Jim’s mood perfectly. Within the last week, he’d lost both his personal business and his wife, the former having been taken over by the latter in the last battle of an ugly divorce.
Sunlight entered the room reluctantly through the crooked and cracked mini-blinds of the lone window. Jim dropped his bag to the floor of the single-room apartment and gave a big yawn. He’d been sleeping like hell.
The old man had been right about the broken heart business. Jim, however, had given up most thoughts of suicide the previous day, when whatever remaining emotional connection he had with his now ex-wife seemed to have just snapped and drifted away into the ether. Now, he mostly just felt numb. Pissed off, but numb.
The sign in front of the dump had promised free cable. Jim snorted when he spotted the boxy six-inch television sitting on a tilted TV tray in the corner, next to what presumably doubled as the bed and the couch. A stale, sweaty smell permeated the entirety of the room. Jim stretched his arms and made his way for the bathroom, which was attached to the main room opposite the bed. He was surprised to find that the toilet was actually cleaner than the rest of the apartment. Though lacking a shower, which was in the community restroom, the bathroom contained a toilet, a sink, and a linen closet. Jim dropped his drawers, took a seat on the pot and ruffled through his pants pockets, pulling out a battered pack of cigarettes. It had been seven years since he’d sworn off smoking, but at some point during the events of the past few months he’d somehow unconsciously managed to drift back into the habit. He slid one of the Marlboro Reds from the pack and tried to
straighten its creased midsection before placing in his mouth. Was this unit non-smoking? Jim scoffed. Did it even matter? He highly doubted that old Archie would give a shit if Jim smoked in the process of taking one. Smoke damage was the least of the place’s problems.
He fumbled in his pockets for a book of matches. It seemed that while he’d gotten back into the haphazard routine of carrying smokes, he hadn’t yet regained the swing of keeping a lighter with him.
“Damn,” he said. “Shit out of luck.” He gave a laugh and was just about to forget the cigarette and get back to business when a series of quick raps sounded on the door to the linen closet. They came from the inside. It was fortunate for Jim that he had been sitting on the pot, because the unexpected knocking caught him completely off guard. He didn’t make a sound, but sat there frozen, with his eyes fixed on the closet door. In his vulnerable position he cringed away from the door when another series of knocks followed the first.
“Hello?” Jim almost whispered. The door swung wide and a very dapper looking tiny man stepped into the bathroom. He was dressed head-to-toe in a red velvet suit with a matching top hat. A sharp little goatee framed his face handsomely.
“Good afternoon, my friend. Forgive the intrusion, but I’m just stopping by to extend a welcome to your new home.”
“In my bathroom?” Jim said. “Who the hell are you? And how’d you get in here? What are you, some kind of pervert?” Jim reached for the toilet paper, no longer surprised, but angry.
“No, no. Please sit down. I don’t mean to be a bother. I just wanted to give a neighborly hello and perhaps see if there is anything I might be able to do to make your transition any smoother. Maybe a light, for the moment?” The tiny man held out a lighter and flicked the wheel.
Jim looked down the barrel of his unlit cigarette toward the little intruder.
“Thanks, but I think that’ll be a no. Now get outta here before I call the cops.”
“Very well. Very well. Sorry to intrude.” With a sharp grin and tip of his hat the man turned back into the closet, closing the door behind him.
Jim sprung from his porcelain seat and shuffled to the door, pants wrapped around his ankles. When he opened it, however, there was nothing there. He looked over his shoulder to make sure that nobody had been watching him with a hidden camera before backing away from the door. He lifted his trousers and scanned the room erratically, finally returning to the closet, which still sat completely bare. Immediately worried for his sanity, Jim straightened himself, closed the door and returned to the living room. He dug through his bag for a matchbook.
Could he have actually had a hallucination? Was his sanity stretching that thin? It was the stress, it had to be. He had been near the breaking point for some time now, and the recent finality of his separation had somehow driven the reality home. Could he be having a breakdown? It would be fitting, he thought humorlessly, that he would wind up locked away in a mental asylum on top of everything else.
His hands were shaking so badly that he couldn’t get the match lit. Instead, he sat both match and cigarette on the floor and made his way to the door, sliding the cheesy lock chain into place.
“Happy horseshit,” Jim muttered. “You see any more leprechauns and they’re gonna be throwing you into the funny farm.” God, wouldn’t Sheryl get a kick out of that. He could hear her now: Yeah, did you hear about Jim? Yup, locked him up tight in Arbor West. The docs say he’s loonier than a fucking cartoon. Hearing her voice in his head, he felt like punching a hole in the wall. Had he actually done it, there was a very real possibility that the entire ratty building would have collapsed in on itself.
Jim gritted his teeth and softly reassured himself that he was not, in fact, losing his marbles. He made his way over to the bed—which was not sophisticated enough to be called a futon, nor retained enough of its pillows to still qualify as a couch—and flopped into it heavily. He grumbled to himself until he fell into a napping doze.
He woke with a start sometime later, though how much later he knew not. It was dark outside the window, which, combined with his new surroundings, was further disorienting. Squinting his eyes, Jim felt his way to the light switch and flicked it on. The room actually looked more dismal without natural light.
He had bent down to retry his overdue cigarette when someone cleared their throat behind him. Jim stumbled forward, tripped, and landed on his knees.
“I apologize again for the sudden appearance, but I thought I heard you up and about,” said the little man dressed in red. “The name is Martin.” He held out a small, gloved hand toward Jim, who stood once again, brushed himself off, and plopped into his couch.
“You’re not here,” Jim insisted flatly. “You’re not here…you’re in my head. Just go away, now. Go on.”
The little man called Martin laughed. “Oh, I assure you that I am very real, my friend. You’re not hallucinating. Of that you can rest assured. I’m your neighbor.”
“Neighbor,” Jim repeated.
“That’s right, your neighbor. It was in the contract you signed. You did read the contract, didn’t you?”
“What contract?” Jim said in a blank confusion. “I didn’t sign any contract. This is a motel.”
“Quite the contrary, sir. I just so happen to have a copy of it right here. Just allow me to—”
Martin pulled a folded letter from the breast pocket of his coat while Jim sat with his mouth slack, still unsure whether or not to accept what his eyes were relaying to his brain. He handed Jim the letter and smiled with a nod. Jim looked down at it and wrinkled his brow.
“This is my credit card bill for the room. How’d you get this?”
“Precisely,” Martin replied. “I suggest you keep reading.” The bill was noticeably longer than he remembered seeing before, with blocks of fine-print filling the base of the page. Jim mumbled parts of his reading as he proceeded.
“Tenant agrees to accept conditions concerning obligation to pre-established agreement set forth by fellow resident M. Lucey Furr.” Jim stopped and looked up at Martin. “Lucey Furr. Lucifer. You’re kidding me, right?” The little man gave a grin that was wider than ought to have been possible for his teeny face. “What does this mean?”
Martin cleared his throat and smiled. “Well, simply put, when you signed that contract, you were subsequently accepting obligation to this pre-established agreement here.” He held up another piece of paper that was rolled and looked to be much older. “Allow me,” he said, unrolling the parchment. “By knowingly signing concurrent rent agreement, the sole occupant of room 66a hereby agrees to pay the adjoining tenant in the form of one complete soul.”
“You’re kidding me, right? Get out of my head!” Jim began to paw at his forehead and pull his hair.
“Despite current appearances, I’m happy to say that you are not in any way mentally impaired, my friend. You are one Mr. Jim T. Christiansen, are you not?” He winced at saying the last name. Jim nodded. “Very well then. I will take it that you understand the nature of the situation. I’ll not trouble you any more tonight, unless of course you need something.” With a tip of the hat, Martin scampered from the room and into the bathroom.
Jim sat still, bewildered. He looked down at the signed piece of paper in his grasp and shot a look toward the bathroom. Pulling with both hands, he was unable to shred the contract or damage it in any way. For being nothing more than a flimsy piece of paper, it wouldn’t give at all. Finally, he stood and crept toward the bathroom. He clicked on the light and carefully opened the linen closet. At first, it again appeared to be completely empty, but a shimmer of light caught Jim’s eye from beneath the bottom-most shelf.
Down on all fours, Jim sat speechless in front of a miniature doorway, complete with a knob and knocker. The letters posted on the door below the knocker read 66b.
“Sixty-six b?” Without second thought, Jim reached out and touched the knocker on the door. It swung inward before he even had the chance to work the fixture. In the fr
ame stood the little man that had proclaimed to be Jim’s neighbor and rightful owner of his soul.
“I must admit, that was quick, Mr. Christiansen. Not many of this room’s previous tenants have so immediately decided to outright forfeit themselves. Admirable, sir. If you’ll please just crawl this way—”
“No,” Jim croaked. “I’m not forfeiting anything.”
“Beg your pardon?”
“No. I…er, just came to say hello. That’s all. Well, good night.” He slid back from the door and hurried out of the bathroom. Jim sat hunched in the corner for a few minutes with a wary eye on the door to make sure that he hadn’t been followed out.
“Sixty-six b,” he whispered. “Preposterous.” A cubby in the bathroom closet that actually housed a tenant claiming to be the devil himself? Now he certainly must be losing his mind. There was no other explanation. What was he going to do? Surely not try to wait it out here in this rat-infested latrine that had miraculously passed health regulation standards in order to stay rentable. Jim had to get out, and fast.
He gathered up his pack and made for the door, slipping the locks and turning the handle. But when he opened it, he gasped. What he saw was nothingness: a deep void of endless pitch that extended from the edge of the doorway into a sprawling abyss. Jim’s lips formed a horrified ‘o’ of surprise. He stepped back and the door slammed closed without assistance. He rifled through his bag and found his cell phone. Not only did he have no service, but the thing wouldn’t even turn on. It was nothing more than an electronic paperweight. Similarly, the television would not switch on either.
Spying the awkward-shaped bed in the corner, Jim had a thought. He pulled it as quietly as he could over to the threshold of the toilet room and pressed it against the doorframe. With nowhere else to go, he sat cautiously on the single squishy cushion and curled into a ball. He lay in that position for the better part of the night. Well, he supposed it was nighttime. No light made its way in through the blinds, now and he was too afraid to look through them, for fear that the entirety of the room might be surrounded by the same midnight depths of empty space.
Chasing the Sandman Page 21