by Shining in the Dark- Celebrating 20 Years of Lilja's Library (retail) (epub)
Furious at this interference, Sophus Demdarita unleashed an incoherent yell, and with it the fire she’d intended for Pidgin and Theresa. It struck poor Pocock in his lawless groin—whether by chance or felicity nobody would ever know—and there began its devouring work. Raymond threw back his head and let out a sob that was in part agony and in part thankfulness, then, before the Angel could detach herself, reached up and drove his fingers deep into her eyes.
Angels are beyond physical suffering; it is one of their tragedies. But Raymond’s fingers, turning to excrement in that very moment, found their way into Sophus Demdarita’s cranium. Blinded by shit, the divine blaze staggered away from her victim, and met a wave of firemen and police officers as they entered the church behind her, axes and hoses at the ready. She threw her arms above her head, and ascended on a beam of flickering power, removing herself from the earthly plane before her presence grazed undeserving human flesh, and began a new game of consequences.
The seed of rot she had sown in Raymond’s flesh did not cease to spread on her passing. He was withering into shit, and nothing could stop the process. By the time Pidgin and Theresa reached him he was little more than a head in a spreading pool of excrement. But he seemed happy enough. ‘Well, well…’ he said to the pair, ‘…what a day it’s been.’ He coughed up a wormy turd. ‘I wonder … did I maybe dream it all?’ ‘No,’ Theresa said, brushing a stray hair from his eye. ‘No, you didn’t dream it.’ ‘Will she come again?’ Pidgin wanted to know. ‘Very possibly,’ Raymond replied. ‘But the world’s wide, and she’ll have my shit in her eyes to keep her from seeing you clearly. No need to live in fear. I did enough of that for all three of us.’ ‘Did they not want you in Heaven?’ Theresa asked him. ‘I’m afraid not,’ he said. ‘But having seen it, I’m not much bothered. One thing though…’ His face was dissolving now, his eyes snaking away into his sockets. ‘Yes?’ said Pidgin. ‘A kiss?’ Theresa leaned down and laid her lips on his. The firemen and officers looked away in disgust. ‘And you, my pet?’ Pocock said to Pidgin. He was just a mouth now, puckered up on a pool of shit. Pidgin hesitated. ‘I’m not your pet,’ he said. The mouth had no time to apologize. Before it could form another syllable, it was unmade. ‘I don’t regret not having kissed him,’ Pidgin remarked to Theresa as they wandered down the hill an hour or so later. ‘You can be cold, parrot,’ Theresa replied. Then, after a moment, she said: ‘I wonder what the choristers will say, when they speak of this?’ ‘Oh, they’ll invent explanations,’ Pidgin replied. ‘The truth won’t come out.’ ‘Unless we tell it.’ Theresa said. ‘No,’ Pidgin replied. ‘We must keep it to ourselves.’ ‘Why?’ ‘Theresa, my love, isn’t it obvious? We’re human now. That means there’s things we should avoid.’ ‘Angels?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Excrement.’ ‘Yes.’
‘And—?’
‘The truth.’
‘Ah,’ said Theresa. ‘The Truth.’ She laughed lightly. ‘From now, let’s ban it from all conversation. Agreed?’ ‘Agreed,’ he said, laying a little peck upon her scaly cheek. ‘Shall I begin? Theresa said. ‘By all means.’
‘I loathe you, love. And the thought of making children with you disgusts me.’ Pidgin brushed the swelling mound at the front of his trousers. ‘And this,’ he said, ‘is a liquorice stick. And I can think of no fouler time to use it than now.’
So saying, they embraced with no little passion, and like countless couples wandering the city tonight, started in search of a place to entwine their limbs, telling fond lies to one another as they went.
AN END TO ALL THINGS
BY BRIAN KEENE
TODAY, LIKE EVERY other day, I got up and made some coffee. While it brewed, I changed from my bedroom slippers to my shoes. When the coffee was finished, I poured a mug, carried it outside, and walked down to the river. I made sure the belt on my bathrobe was cinched up tight, so it didn’t drag in the goose shit that’s all over the yard. But even with the belt tightened up, my robe hung loose. Probably from all the weight
I’ve lost.
I stood there at the water’s edge and waited for the world to end.
This morning I wished for global warming. That seems appropriate, given the weather. Seventy degrees in central Pennsylvania a few days before Christmas? If that’s not a sign that global warming is a real thing, then I don’t know what is. But the problem with global warming is that it’s not fast enough. It’s a creeping death. I needed something quick. I want the world to end today, not decades from now.
So I waited, steam rising from my mug, bathrobe blowing in the wind, and just like always, the world didn’t end.
They say that magic is nothing more than physics—the art of bending the world around you to your will. If that is true, then I’m a terrible magician.
Far out across the water, a goose reared up, flapping its wings and chasing another. The other geese squawked in response, their angry honks echoing across the yard. Until we bought this house, I always assumed that geese flew south for the winter. And who knows? Maybe they still do. Maybe these particular geese just decided “Fuck it. You know what? It’s seventy degrees here. Why bother flying any further south?”
Maybe the geese know something I don’t. Maybe their magic is stronger.
I watched the river flow past, watched the rising sun reflect across the waves and eddies. I watched the windmills on the far shore, turning sluggishly, supplying electricity for Lancaster County. I watched a bass boat, far off in the distance, and the lone fisherman standing up inside of it. Eventually, once my coffee was finished, I turned around, walked back across the yard, and came inside.
It was only now, while writing this, that I realized something. While I was down at the river this morning, I managed not to look at that spot near the dock. That doesn’t always happen. But today, it did.
I count that as a little victory.
* * *
Today, like every other day, I repeated my morning ritual: coffee, shoes, and then the riverbank. It is one day closer to Christmas and even warmer than it was yesterday. Global warming continues to disappoint me, so I wished for something else.
This morning, I choose the zombie apocalypse. Not the most realistic end of the world scenario, I know, but there was a show on television last night about zombies. I’ve never been much of a horror fan, but I watched the show all the same. I watched it the same way I watch all the other programs—because it’s something to do while I wait. The people on the show had a lot of lines about how much it sucked to be them, and how their world was ending, and how unfair that was. I envied them. They have everything that I want.
No, zombies might not be the most realistic way for the world to end, but I wished for them anyway, because nothing else seems to work.
When I was done, I turned around to head back to the house.
But today…today I slipped up. Today, as I turned, I looked at that spot near the dock.
And there was Braylon—there was my little boy—drowning again.
* * *
Today, I wished for an asteroid strike. Nothing fancy, mind you. Just a giant chunk of space rock—something the size of Texas, maybe—hurtling out of the sky and smashing into Central Pennsylvania with enough impact to vaporize this fucking river and pummel the house into dust. But just like global warming and zombies, space let me down. I stood there a while, watching the sky, but the only thing I saw were airplanes, having departed from Harrisburg or Baltimore-Washington, carrying people somewhere else. I want to go somewhere else, too, but no airplane is going to take me there. I want to go wherever Braylon and Caroline are, but there are no direct flights. Train, buses, and airplanes don’t go there, unless they crash. And even then, I might get unlucky and walk away.
There’s only one other way to get there, and I am still too afraid to follow.
I kept staring up at the clouds, watching the airplanes. A new one seemed to cross the sky every five minutes or so. But there were no asteroids. No comets. No peace for me. I stared so long that I got a
kink in my neck.
When I finally looked down again, there was Braylon, still wearing the same sweat pants (“comfy pants” were what he always called them) and the same Minecraft t-shirt he’d been wearing the last time I saw him there, and still clutching that orange butterfly net Caroline had bought him. Still pointing at the minnows clustered around the dock. I balled my hands into fists and closed my eyes, but that didn’t stop me from hearing him.
Look, Dad! See all the baby fish? I bet I can catch some
of them.
The first time he’d said that to me, as he’d crouched on the edge of the dock, dipping his net into the river, I’d opened my mouth to tell him to be careful. This time, when I opened my mouth, all that came out was a deep moan. My anguish almost drowned out the surprised—not frightened, but surprised—little yelp he made as he fell over the side; the yelp that was cut short a second later when his head hit the concrete edge.
I knew I’d see his blood there, slowly spreading in the water again, so I waited until I turned around before I opened my eyes.
I wept the whole way back to the house. My robe came unfastened and the belt hung down into the goose shit, but I didn’t notice until later. Distraught, I collapsed onto the couch and cried myself back to sleep. It took a long time to accomplish that, but that was okay. The couch cushions still held my imprint from the night before.
I haven’t slept in the bed—or even spent more than five minutes in the bedroom—since Caroline killed herself in it. All of her clothes, her shoes, her make-up and skin care products, and those little scented candles that she used to like, and everything else, is still in there. My clothes are in a laundry basket sitting on the floor in the living room. That’s where they stay, except when I’m wearing them or washing them.
And Braylon’s room?
I’ve been in there only once since he drowned. The day after it happened. Two days before the funeral. Three days before Caroline went to search for him, leaving me behind and alone in this place.
I haven’t been back inside his room since, but I can picture it clearly. If I opened the door, I know what I would find inside, and exactly where everything would be. His bed would be rumpled and unmade, the circus animal patterned sheets and pillowcase still smelling like him. The floor would be covered with different action figures: Marvel and DC superheroes, Ben 10, Imaginext, Ninja Turtles, and Star Wars galore. The train table, left behind long after Braylon sold off his Thomas the Tank Engine toys at our yard sale because “they were for little kids and he was eight now” will still be covered with Legos, including the half-finished house we’d been building together. A house that will never be finished. A house that is incomplete. A house that is haunted.
Just like this house.
* * *
Today I wished for a terrorist attack.
* * *
Today it was raining, so I stayed inside and wished the world would flood and the river would rise and the water would wash it all away—me and the house and the bedroom and Braylon’s room and all the stuff and all the ghosts.
* * *
Today I wished for a pandemic. Not something like the flu, which takes a long time to spread effectively. No, I wished for something like Ebola on crack. Something that would spread like wildfire, engulfing the world. Engulfing me
I took my temperature when I came inside, but it was normal.
* * *
I said before that I don’t watch a lot of horror movies. That’s because most of them are stupid. Take ghost movies, for example. The house is haunted and terrible things are happening, but do the people in those movies ever do the logical thing and just fucking leave? No. They stay in the house. They refuse to move.
I never understood that until after Braylon and Caroline were gone. After they were buried, and everyone had offered their condolences, and I was here, alone. After the house had been professionally cleaned and the police had finished their investigation and all of Caroline’s blood had been scrubbed off the walls and the carpet. And even then, sitting here on that first night, biting through my bottom lip so I wouldn’t scream, wondering what to do with the rest of my life, wondering how to even have a rest of my life, I still didn’t understand why the people in those movies never moved. It wasn’t until I thought about selling the house and found out exactly how little chance of that I had in this economy, and how much I still owed the bank, that I began to understand. It wasn’t until a friend, one of the last friends I spoke to before everyone stopped coming around, told me I should get away for a while, take a vacation or buy an RV and just go, somewhere far away from here and start over—that those movies started to make sense to me. It wasn’t until I started seeing Braylon over and over again down by the river, and hearing his laughter—and hearing the sound his head made as it struck the dock—that I understood completely. It wasn’t until I started sleeping on the couch, waking up every morning disheveled and feeling hopeless and aching from my knees up to my neck while the echo of that gunshot rang in my head again and again and again, that I empathized with the people in those films.
It’s not that those people don’t want to leave the haunted house. It’s that they can’t.
And neither can I.
* * *
Today I went down to the river and I wished for suicide by cop. Or, to be more accurate, I wished that I could figure out a way to make suicide by cop happen. I was never a sportsman, so it’s not like I have a lot of guns in the house. The only one we had was the .45 that Caroline used, and that’s sitting in an evidence room at the State Police barracks. They said I could pick it up when the investigation was done, but I haven’t bothered. If I did, I’d have to go down there and listen to them tell me how sorry they all were, and if I wanted that, I’d still have friends.
Even if I had a gun, I don’t know who I’d shoot. I’m not mad enough at anybody to go on a shooting spree. I mean, I’m mad at the world. I’m mad at the universe. I want it all to end. But I don’t hold anything against the other people still here. It would be one thing if a comet or an earthquake killed them all, but I don’t have the courage to kill myself, let alone anyone else.
I could jump off a building, but knowing my luck, I’d end up paralyzed and stuck here, haunted day in and day out. I could take pills, but I don’t know what to take, and again, there’s no guarantee that an overdose would do the trick. I tried to look it up online, but it’s not as easy to find that kind of information as they make it look on television.
* * *
Today is Christmas Eve. A year ago today Braylon and Caroline were here. We spent the day together. We let Braylon open one present before going to bed, with the promise that he could open all of the others—along with all the ones Santa Claus would bring—the next morning. He was still seven then, and still believed in Santa Claus. Four months later he asked me for the truth and I asked him what he thought, and he wasn’t sure.
He’s gone now. He’s gone and I never got to find out if he’d figured it out or not.
This morning, I wished that the super-volcano beneath Yellowstone would explode, covering the United States in molten ash, and making the sky as grey as I feel.
The geese are finally gone. Headed south, I suppose, even though the temperatures are still in the low Seventies. It’s funny. I kind of miss seeing them, and hearing them. Now it’s just me, again. Me and the memories of my wife and son.
Their ghosts are getting louder.
* * *
Today, is Christmas, but it’s really just like every other day. I got up and made some coffee. While it brewed, I changed from my bedroom slippers to my shoes. When the coffee was finished, I poured a mug, carried it outside, and walked down to the river. My bathrobe hangs looser than ever.
I’m sitting here at the water’s edge and waiting for the world to end.
This morning I wished for Three Mile Island to go into meltdown. It’s only six miles up the river. But just like always, it didn’t happen.
I
t’s even warmer today than it was yesterday. Much too warm for Christmas in Pennsylvania. The perfect weather for swimming.
I’m sitting here writing this, and looking over at the spot where Braylon fell in, and I know his blood isn’t there anymore, splashed all over the corner of the dock, but I see it anyway. I see the ghost.
I’m going to finish this, and then I’m going to sit down on the edge of the dock, and put my feet in the water for a while. And who knows? As warm as it is, maybe I’ll go swimming. I don’t have the balls to kill myself, but maybe I can just swim until I’m tired. God knows it shouldn’t take too long. I’m always tired these days.
I wonder if I’ll see his ghost down there, under the water? I wonder if they’ll be waiting for me, in wherever it is we go after this world ends?
CEMETERY DANCE
BY RICHARD CHIZMAR
ELLIOTT FOSSE, AGE thirty-three, small-town accountant. Waiting alone. Dead of winter. After midnight. The deserted gravel parking lot outside of Winchester County Cemetery.
Elliott stared out the truck window at the frozen darkness. His thoughts raced back to the handwritten note in his pants pocket. He reached down and squeezed the denim. The pants were new—bought for work not a week ago and still stiff to the touch—but Elliott could feel the reassuring crinkle of paper inside the pocket.