Suspended In Dusk

by Ramsey Campbell

  She leaned in and bit his throat with tenderness. The reasons no longer mattered once the act was done. It was irreversible, irreparable: her unliving life, halved and shared with him.

  Esther bit him, and laid his head gently down among the corpses, sitting cross-legged in her bullet-pocked jacket to watch as he died, and woke from death. He cried, panicked, ranted. His fear was oddly soothing, because it gave her both time and reason to talk.

  For the first time in so long, she poured out words. She told him her tale—her life, her death, and the undying, unliving existence that had followed—and for the first time the words didn’t weigh heavy on her tongue.

  He asked why, of course, just as she once had. She told him she didn’t know.

  She never had. There were no easy answers, no simple explanations. What was she? What was this body that bent itself around nightmares and became the horror of untold tales? All she could tell him was that it didn’t matter. The words made up to match the monsters were fantasies, fairytales… they were inaccurate, untrue. Who knew how many monsters were out there, or how far they each differed from the other?

  The boy—he said his name was Michele, and he was surprisingly cordial for someone in his current circumstances—glanced at the torn body of the man with whom he’d arrived. He rubbed at the bloodstained bullet hole on his T-shirt, and said something about how monsters all wore different faces.

  Esther smiled. Perhaps she had been selfish. What did she think she had done here? Created herself a friend, a mate? Perhaps it was simply another form of the drive to feed that swelled within her in the night, or perhaps it was something unseen within him, something that had called to her and reached out a dark tendril of shadow, begging to be roused and made anew. Perhaps he was as terrible a creature as she was; perhaps worse. Only time would tell.

  They talked out the long hours, furnishing them with questions he wanted to ask, and answers he was ill equipped to receive. Esther talked until the second night she had spent in that house fell, and Michele began to calm.

  “Where do we go from here?” he asked her, as they sat among the stiff, ripe bodies, the smell of blood and copper still rich and sickly in the air.

  Esther shrugged. There were no rules, no precedents. For all she knew, she had made a terrible mistake and, between them, they would either burn the world down and piss it all to ashes, or tear each other to pieces trying. Or, perhaps she had done him a favour, and bought herself the first slice of peace she had ever known. Perhaps, together, they would found a new world, a refuge for the beasts and the outcasts.

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  Michele nodded slowly, as if he hadn’t expected anything else.

  Outside, the dusk swelled into darkness, and Esther knew that—as it did—he would find his own beast blossoming. The seed that had been there all along would start to grow, and she would nurture it. After all, everyone has something monstrous inside them… and perhaps their kind were not destined to hide away, but to live alongside the world. In every shadow, in every corner, unafraid of the reflections of themselves they found in the eyes of their prey.

  Esther looked up, and stared into the dizzying spin of a thousand stars, each one bright against the sky, an untamed jewel in the night.

  At Dusk They Come

  Armand Rosamilia

  They came at dusk the first night, silently from the woods surrounding the trailer park, half a dozen black shapes with glowing yellow eyes and sharp claws, like little dark children. They weren’t trying to be stealthy. It was just natural for them. They’d been doing it for centuries, it seemed.

  They came to me as I smoked from my old pipe, sitting in my rocking chair that no longer rocked. I leaned onto the side with the brick tucked underneath when I noticed the shadows parting from the other shadows, and they swarmed at me like bees that’d lost their buzz.

  They talked to me that first night without moving their mouths, if they even had any. They were kinda in my head, if that makes any sense. It still doesn’t to me.

  They wanted to take someone back into the woods with them… they needed someone each night at dusk, and (just my bad luck) they found me first. Only, they didn’t attack me…

  They swore they would let me and my family live as long as I could offer up alternatives in the trailer park. I remember thinking about Becky Palmer at that moment, the bitch two trailers down who let her damn kids run wild while she watched her stories on the boob tube.

  They nodded and walked off down the road, leaving me and my pipe to the silence of the night as darkness began to fall.

  They never made a sound.

  * * *

  “Heard about Heffer Palmer?” Chuck Gill asked me the next morning before I’d even sat down in my usual spot at the counter. Boyette’s Diner was only a short drive from the trailer park overlooking the drying river.

  “How about a ‘Hello, how’s it going? Where ya been? How’s the family?’ once in a while? If I want to hear the local news I’ll buy a fancy television box,” I said. I waved for Mabel to bring me my coffee but she’d seen me traipsing through the parking lot and was already pouring it.

  Chuck waved his hand at me with a smirk. “Man, you are so cranky before coffee. I just wanted to know if you heard anything.”

  “If you thought I did you would have come to me last night,” I said.

  Chuck was the sheriff, inheriting the job from his old man and his old man before. He was a smart guy and nothing got past him. “Last night? Who said anything about last night?”

  I shrugged and sipped my coffee. “I saw the ambulance and one of your cars out there when I rolled out of bed at five. I imagine something happened over night. Am I right?”

  “Yep.”

  I fixed him with the evilest eye I could muster before a full cup of coffee. “Then get off my back with this stuff so early. If you got something let me know and be done with it.”

  “You’re even more ornery than usual this morning.” He scooped up some of his runny eggs with a piece of dry toast and shoved it into his mouth.

  Mabel put a plate of grits and scrambled eggs in front of me. I’d been getting the same thing for breakfast in this diner for over twenty years and had stopped actually looking at a menu or even telling them an order in half that time. Even though I retired two years ago from the paper mill I still came here and eat. Boyette’s Diner is the center of our universe, it would seem. Nothing ever happens without the news starting here. Especially with the big mouth of Chuck.

  “Craziest thing I ever did see,” he was saying through a mouthful of egg. “She was opened up.”

  “Huh?” I asked, my bent fork dangling over my food. “Did you say opened up?”

  “Yep.” Chuck grinned but it wasn’t happy. The man was unnerved and trying to make light of it for his own sake. He’d said it loud enough most everyone in the place had heard him. There was the old adage if you wanted the world to know a secret tell it to a Gill with a badge, because every one of them through the years had been itching to tell everything they could find out. Now that something real was happening Chuck was about bursting at the seams. “She’d been gutted like a fish. From her eyeballs to her privates.”

  “Chuck, people are trying to eat,” Mabel admonished.

  “Sorry. Anyway, there wasn’t much left of her except some broken bones and a few scraps of clothing. Looked like a pack of wild coyotes had taken her apart.”

  “In her trailer?” I asked. “Or in the woods?”

  “Right in her living room whiles the Carson show was on.”

  “What about her brats?” I didn’t need to mince words because everyone in town and the trailer park knew what monsters they were and they’d all end up in juvie and then jail before long. “Didn’t they see anything, or are they dead, too?”

  Chuck shook his head and sat up on the counter now that he had everyone’s attention. He was still smiling but his hands were shaking. “Her kids swear they didn’t hear a thing.
The littlest one, the girl, woke early to pee and saw Heffer on the couch. Or what was left of her. Since they didn’t have a phone she ran next door to the Colby’s and used their phone to call me.”

  Mabel shook her head. “You mean to tell me a pack of coyotes waltzed into a trailer, ate her but didn’t eat her kids? Was the trailer ripped apart? Any animal hair or droppings? Cabinets emptied and food on the floor?”

  Chuck pushed his sheriff hat further up his forehead and squinted his eyes. “Nope. The kids said the door was closed but unlocked and only she had been touched.”

  “Coyotes don’t close the door once they leave,” Mabel said and several patrons nodded in agreement. “If it was coyotes or wild animals they would have stayed and tore up the place and definitely eaten them kids.”

  “I saw a coyote on my way over,” I blurted without thinking. I guess because I knew who killed Heffer Becky. Maybe Chuck could arrest me for being an accomplice. I was the one who gave her up, after all. I didn’t care for her but it was still no excuse.

  As everyone peppered Chuck with questions and made him feel important I finished my breakfast and hurried home.

  * * *

  Winter was still a few weeks away but there was a chill in the air as the sun began to drop. I told my wife and son to stay inside because of the coyote attack. I fumbled with my pipe, my hands and nerves fighting to keep it steady, and scanned the woods with my bad eyes.

  I’d spent the day tinkering around the old John Deere, taking the engine apart and cleaning it up. I wouldn’t need to use it but maybe once or twice all season now but it was good to have it in tiptop shape. Besides, I needed something to keep my mind off of what had happened last night. Maybe it was a dream. Maybe I had fallen asleep on my rocking chair and heard the sirens and pieced it together in my subconscious? The Heffer’s trailer wasn’t too far away and definitely in earshot, even for these bad ears of mine. That made more sense than monsters coming out of the woods and asking for a sacrifice. It did to me right now as I stuffed my pipe.

  But there they were, just as plain as day: a slew of them hanging at the edge of the trees. Two of them approached, one I kinda recognized from the night before and the other one fatter than the rest. They were so black it was painful to look at them.

  “You are real,” I mumbled and almost dropped my pipe from my mouth. “I want no part in this.”

  His voice came to me inside my head, only it wasn’t really a voice… it was just there again. I still didn’t like it, but I could understand him well enough. It was either pick another person or it was my turn. Simple as that.

  “The two brats of Heffer. They’ll be raised by wolves at this point. Ain’t no one wants them.”

  I felt awful for saying it, especially out loud, but it was not a lie. The kids had been left alone all day, running around the trailer park without a care in the world. My wife wanted to take them in but I told her in no uncertain terms them brats would never set foot on my property. I wanted no part of them, and she should feel the same way. They were nothing but trouble, and if Chuck and his Keystone Cop buddies weren’t so busy gossiping they’d have called Child Services to come collect ‘em.

  “Who you talking to, old man?” my wife, Sandra, asked me. I hadn’t noticed her join me outside the trailer.

  I nearly jumped out of my skin at her words. “You scared the Dickens outta me,” I yelled, looking around at the woods. If those creatures were still here… but the trees were quiet.

  She laughed and patted my back as I sat back down gingerly on the broken rocker. “What’s gotten into you today? You’ve been keeping to yourself and nearly missed dinner. Your boy called to talk with you but you were in a daze today. You barely ate your dinner and now I hear you talking to yourself. You alright?” She put a hand on my forehead. “No fever.”

  “I’m fine. Just a little quiet today. A man in my advanced age can be silent for a time if he wants. I earned it.”

  “Don’t you go raising your voice with me or I’ll slap it outta you. Mind your manners,” my wife said but she said it sweetly like she’s been doing since I’ve known her. Sandra always had a way with words.

  “I’m forgettin’ who I married, dear. My fault, surely.” I held my pipe against my side because my hand was still shaky. “We got any coffee?”

  “We got plenty of coffee but you ain’t getting’ any. Not this late in the evening. You’ll be up all night.”

  I watched her go back inside. I figured I was going to be up all night anyway.

  * * *

  “We got another murder,” Chuck said with more than a hint of fear in his voice. “Both of Becky’s kids last night.” His excitement from yesterday was firmly replaced now that another murder had occurred.

  Mabel made the Sign of the Cross. “That is just god-awful. Those poor little babies.”

  I looked at her cross-eyed but didn’t say a word. Them brats were anything but poor little babies. Good riddance. But both of them dead was troubling. “They both got ripped apart?” I asked.

  Chuck stared at me. “Who said anything about being ripped apart?”

  I shrugged and turned back to my coffee, trying to remain calm and act casual. “I just assumed.”

  Chuck smiled crookedly and leaned across the counter and into my line of sight. “You know what happens when you assume?” I hated when Chuck thought he had me and I knew he was going to pounce and make me look foolish in front of everyone in the diner this morning.

  “I’m sure you’ll tell us all the details of why those two small children were left unattended all night in the trailer their mama had just been killed in,” I said and took another sip, satisfied it would shut him up. It did the trick.

  “Hey, yeah… why didn’t you take them to a relative or drop them off with a neighbor? I only live seven double-wides down from them. I woulda taken them for the night,” Mabel said. “Any of us would have.”

  I knew that was a lie. I didn’t need to look at anyone else in the place to know they were glancing away from Mabel now. And she was one to talk. She’d be the first to come up with an excuse not to take them brats in. OK, maybe the second here to do it.

  Chuck scooped his scrambled eggs into his mouth and shrugged before walking out. We all watched him as he sped away in the police cruiser, lights and sirens blazing as if he had just gotten a call.

  But I knew there would be hell to pay soon enough. Chuck was going to hold a grudge like his daddy and his daddy before had, and I decided I might skip the diner tomorrow morning.

  * * *

  I decided to stay inside tonight and maybe they’d find someone else to do their dirty work. I was done and frankly I was exhausted. After the altercation with Chuck I got nothing done all day except kick around the trailer and watch the woods.

  The missus didn’t never miss a thing with me and she glanced at the screen door and frowned. “You feeling alright?”

  “Yep.” I sat in my worn armchair in the living room and stared out the window. “I’m fine. You?”

  “Why ain’t you on the porch? Your hand is shaking. You forgot to buy tobacco? I can go next door to Clint’s and see if he has a pinch for ya.”

  “That won’t be necessary. I’m just not really in the mood tonight is all.” I wasn’t, true enough. I’d barely eaten my supper and she’d made pork chops, which is my favorite. Besides, about two hours ago, I’d already gone over to Clint and bummed some from his stash. Clint and I rarely talked but we did share the common love of pipes.

  “Suit yourself. If you’re not going outside to smoke, you can help me with the dishes.”

  “Ahh, woman, can’t you see I’m not up to anything tonight?” I asked a bit forcefully, even for me. I knew immediately I’d hurt her feelings. “Now, now, don’t go tearing up on me. I’m sorry. I don’t know what’s gotten into me.”

  I stood on my shaky legs and went to her as fast as my old body would take me.

  “I was joshing, you know,” Sandra said quietly. I
hugged her. Even after all these years I can still manage to say something boneheaded and asinine to my wife. I guess some things will never change. “You going to call your boy?”

  “I will when I get time,” I told Sandra. I was trying to keep Junior out of my thoughts as much as possible. I didn’t want to accidentally have a loved one in my head in case them things went looking inside my skull for a name.

  “What’s the matter?” she asked, feeling me stiffen as I had my arms wrapped around her.

  “Nothing,” I mumbled and pushed away from her. “I… nothing…”

  They were right on the porch now. I could feel them. There were at least four of them in my head, asking me for names, asking me to give up my neighbors so they could go about their business.

  “No,” I whispered. “I can’t.”

  “Are you alright?” my wife asked me, putting a hand on my face.

  I couldn’t put her into my head like I’d done them kids or their mama. I wouldn’t let them take her in the night. “Clint,” I said loudly.

  “What about him?”

  I know my eyes got wide then. “He’s next. He’s going to die tonight.”

  But they weren’t done. No. They demanded more.

  Last night I’d inadvertently given them those two brats. Now that was the new deal. Now they were expecting two.

  “What are you talking about?” my wife asked. “Clint?”

  I nodded. “And his wife Susie.”

  * * *

  “You need to go talk to the sheriff,” she said to me. She’d wanted to warn Clint and Susie but I told her it was too late. These creatures don’t mess around. I knew she didn’t believe me.