Shivers 7 (11 page)

She paused again, motioning for the wine, which had remained idle in his hand as he listened to her story, though he’d already guessed its end. Perhaps seeing this in his face, she decided to quit with the fluff and build-up and proceed straight there, drinking directly from the wine bottle as she did so.

“That’s right, Hunter. The Devil’s Triangle for the whole goddamn crew. Clerks, supervisors, miners, everyone. Poof. Gone. The only ones saved were those sick, or on their off-day, or on a later shift—security guards, evening bookkeepers, etcetera. At best, ten percent of the work force. The other ninety simply vanished without a trace. And I mean
no
trace. Multiple investigations turned up nada. Absolutely zero.”

Thirsty suddenly, Hunter reached over for the bottle and followed her example by partaking directly from the bottle. It felt good going down his throat. Cool, wet. His preference was white wine, chilled, but right now this seemed similar. Had his throat gone dry because of the story, or was it the flickers of movement he’d detected in the trees outside the windows while she spoke? As though the two could be separated.

“It’s the breeze,” Von said.

“What?”

“I remember the movement in the trees too. If I were the dramatic type, I’d tell you yes, the tales have it right, their ghosts linger.”

“But?”

“But nothing. I’m not the dramatic type.”

No, you spin your threads more delicately
, he thought.

They were quiet for a while, letting their thoughts drift as they finished off the slices of bread and cheese he’d cut, waving off the rest in favor of the wine. As he emptied the first bottle, she opened the second. The glasses sat forgotten, lonely in their emptiness. The breeze off the water now had a perceptible nip to it. It felt good to Hunter. A sort of counterpoint to the warm embrace of the wine.

“So what about your parents?” he finally said. The words seeming as much an affront to the peaceful quiet as the voice that uttered them.

She sat near the corner of the platform, farthest from the door. The window across from her was the natural place for the eyes to stray, which they did as she spoke, seeming to look through the trees into that not-so-distant place that is less a refuge than a reference point for the drifty soul. “It makes me lonely thinking about them. Because that’s how it was living with them. Can you imagine existing as an outsider within your own family? Knowing their entire focus is elsewhere? On something that is not even tangible?”

“Actually I can,” he said in a softer voice than he’d intended.

When she looked at him, lines of inquiry, of attempted comprehension, creasing her brow, he felt the urge to look away, or to explain himself, or to simply vanish as the miners had. But he owed her more than that, as fate had predicated when it brought their like souls together. “Go on,” he said, in an even softer voice.

“My parents’ is a short chapter really. Shorter than the miners’. There were no spouses to miss them, only a lonely child. And she left nothing for their ghosts to cling to, to find purchase in. Even the wind can’t remember them. I hiked up that mountain three times after the first time looking for glimmers, but there simply are none. And yet my parents haunt me still. In my sleep. In my daydreams. Funny I never see the act. The act of their bodies being shredded. They are always whole, as whole as was possible for them. They’re poring over books, notes, oblivious to the moth that has flittered into the room until its shadow disturbs one of the pages. Then they’re fierce, especially him. This is when he’s most whole. The fury brings him there. It ignites in his eyes, eyes grown almost totally black from the layers and layers of text imprinted on them. The fire itself is black, and the moth wonders if he, if both of them, aren’t the very embodiment of the force that holds Chi Bay in its clutch. Not in the same way as the ones that went mad, the ones that turned on their loved ones, on themselves. Nor like the lost ones, the ones who retained only the most basic outline of their former selves. I’m talking about the
very
embodiment, the thing itself as they hurled their fury at this moth that would dare flitter its shadow across their work. And my mother, somehow it was even more terrible in her because it was less formed. Her flames fed off the central fire, which was his, only his, and came from the furnace of his heart and his bowels. He wanted to be in touch and oh was he, Hunter. Oh, was he…”

A fire of her own seemed to die in her eyes as she let her words taper away, shivering suddenly though the nip on the breeze remained slight, certainly no match for the wine’s warmth. As Hunter removed his jacket, placing it over her shoulders, her gaze seemed to remain halfway in, halfway out of that place of reference, the ghosts among the trees reflected in them. But only momentarily as Hunter faced her, holding her shoulders and searching her face for answers that he had never been able to find. Then she was looking at him, focusing in on him. Her hand came up to touch his hand on her shoulder. Her trembling lips found his mouth, and they were lost in the desperateness of it for a few moments before one of them managed to pull away from the other.

As they separated, Hunter saw that tears had formed in her eyes. She let them fall as he watched, saying, “They were ripped to shreds, Hunter. Beaten,
torn
to death. Though the authorities never found the weapon used, they thought it must have been a hooked instrument, an instrument that could be used with a pulling action as well as for bludgeoning. A fireplace poker—just like the family that died up there years before them. Only this time there was no evidence to show who had done the deed. No body in the lake outside the cabin. No father and husband to blame for killing his child and wife before walking out on the frozen surface of Harrow Lake and chopping open a hole in the ice with the murder weapon and then dropping the tool and himself into the crack for the police to find later. But what difference would the details make? My father killed his wife as surely as if he’d wielded the poker. He killed his child in much the same way, with swings and thrusts and yanks; he just took a little more time at it, stretching the deed out over the years of her shadowy little life. And you know what a year is to a child, Hunter? It’s an eon. But fuck, where’s the wine? Hunter, you drink, and then kiss me. Let me taste it on your lips. It’s warm. It’s life. I came back down the mountain that first time, but that’s not life. I came back down, but even blood, that’s not life—”

He kissed her, the wine spilling from his mouth and trickling down their chins. “I know,” he said around their hunger, their need. “I had a sister…Hannah…I helped her. I loved her and I helped her do it. Our parents, they had forgotten her. They had forgotten both of us. Hannah was strong. I tried to be strong with her. We did it with Demerol. My mother’s opiate of choice. Demerol and tequila. Three shots for Hannah, three shots for me, one pill for Hannah. Three shots for Hannah, three shots for me,
two
pills for Hannah. I lost myself for a while after. There was this piece of property in Florida. An expanding company wanted it and I sold it to them for a cool two million dollars. Thing is, it wasn’t mine to sell. It was my father’s. Hunter senior. A poor replacement for a fireplace poker, yeah, but it made things easier on me…the forgetting. The endless forgetting.”

He was speaking in her ear now, and she was kissing his neck, clinging to him, digging her fingernails into his back. “I live for places now, Von. Landscapes. Scenery. Open spaces. Places that sing rather than suffocate, that broaden rather than constrict, that are apathetic in a pleasing rather than a crushing way. Sure, it’s still props, but there’s less poison in it. I admit I laugh at myself sometimes for this church I’ve found, but I attend anyway. While there is an Alaska Highway out there, Alaskas and Canadas and places of sweeping, unpolluted beauty, I attend. Did I tell you I was on my way to Canada? Do you want to join me, Von? Where else is there to go really?”

“Nowhere,” she said, releasing him finally. “Nowhere.”

She drank more wine, passed the half-empty bottle to him, and then suddenly seized his arm. “Did you see me, Hunter? When I told you about it, did you see me coming—”

But her attention was drawn to something beyond him, through the door of the building. He turned and saw what she saw, the swan making its slow, awkward way up the beach in their direction.

“It’s only the swan,” she said, eyes lingering there for a moment.

“Did I see what, Von?” Hunter had to know.

“Don’t you know?” she said, letting the bird go. Looking into his eyes.

“What, Von? What should I have seen?”

“Me coming down the mountain that first time. Fireplace poker resting on my shoulder. I put it in my pack before I reached the trailhead, but it hung out so I wrapped the end in a rag. The rag I brought to clean myself with. No matter, our house was the third one you came to as you walked along the road from the trailhead. It was dark by then anyway, and no car passed. I remember thinking that meant something. Nothing to do with justice; it was more like I was being told I had a calling. A light, that’s what it was. A warm light a little moth could fly to. But it didn’t last. The light gradually flickered out as I sat naked by the fireplace and watched all traces of the thing disappear, knowing no one would remember the smoke, not in the late fall, not in the season for such things. Watching my clothes turn to ash and the caked blood on the poker burn away, I lost the connection with the force that has driven so many of us, us Chi-ites. I don’t know if I bored it or if maybe it understood that my pain would be worse if I were simply left alone. In any case I—”

Again her attention was diverted. This time her eyes catching fire.

Nothing to compare to the eyes of the swan though as it descended through the door, throwing its wings wide, casting shadow over the whole room in spite of the moonlight from above. Eyes black as the pit of the soul as they devoured these homecomers then spat them back out again, blazed then disappeared in the madness of the beast’s retreating wings. The shock of it leaving them breathless, holes of themselves, until Von, in a moth’s whisper, uttered, “Can you see me now, Hunter? Can you see me fluttering down that mountain?”

Zombie Dreams

Tim Waggoner

Jared ran.

Sweat pouring off his body, heart pounding in his chest, lungs heaving, each breath a sharp knife in his side. Branches whipped his face, hands, and chest, scratching, cutting, bruising. He’d left the trail behind and the ground was uneven here, covered with underbrush that snagged his pants legs and threatened to trip him. But he couldn’t let himself stumble, couldn’t allow himself to fall. For if he did,
they
would get him for sure. And once
they
got him, it would be all over.

Something hit a tree to his right, splitting off a chunk of bark and spinning it away. A second later Jared heard the crack of a rifle. He knew he shouldn’t turn, couldn’t afford to slow down for even a second, but he couldn’t help himself. Instinct forced his head around even though he knew damn well who—or what—pursued him. The movement threw him off balance, his legs twisted, and he crashed to the ground, flattening underbrush and knocking the wind out of him. His mouth gaped like a fish out of water as he tried to suck in air and re-inflate his lungs. He attempted to get up, but sharp pain lanced through his left ankle, and he feared it was twisted, or worse, broken. Still gasping for breath, he put his weight on his right foot, hoping that it wouldn’t betray him too, and pushed himself up. His right ankle held, and he managed to stand once more. His lungs ached and felt heavy as lead, but they had enough air in them now that he thought he could start moving again. But before he could take a step, another chunk of bark was blasted from a tree, and another rifle shot echoed through the woods. It was too late; they’d caught up with him.

There were three of them, all male, all wearing dirty jeans, soiled flannel shirts, and ball caps mottled with old sweat stains. John Deere, Nascar, and Cincinnati Reds. Two of them carried guns—a double-barreled shotgun and a rifle, respectively—while the third held an axe, the rusty head covered with dried blood and bits of hair. They shared one more horrid similarity: they were all dead. Their flesh was grayish-green tinged with black where it had begun to rot. Dry yellowed eyes were wide and bulging, black mucus running from the corners as if fluid were building up behind the eyes, threatening to pop them out of their sockets any moment. Their lips were cracked and leathery, stretched into grins far wider than they could’ve managed in life, teeth brown, tongues nothing but lifeless lumps of gray meat.

Jared didn’t know how it was possible for these things to chase him, let alone catch him. They took in no oxygen, their hearts pumped no blood, their muscles were dry and tight as jerky. They shouldn’t be able to move at all, let alone keep up with a living man. Jared might not have been the fittest forty-one-year-old man in the world, and he carried twenty pounds too much around his middle, but he was
alive
, goddamnit, while these fucking things weren’t. They should’ve been shuffling, jerking, stiff-limbed marionettes manipulated by a puppeteer with severe arthritis. But the hunters moved with a swiftness equal to, if not greater, than his own.

A German phrase whispered through his mind, one that he’d heard or read before, though he couldn’t recall where.

Die Toten reiten schnell.

The Dead travel fast.

The gray-skinned hunters just stood looking at him with their bulging eyes and too-wide grins for several moments. And then finally the one with the John Deere cap raised his shotgun and aimed it at Jared’s forehead. A rotting finger tightened on the trigger, and Jared tensed for the impact to come, knowing there was no way even a dead man could miss at this range.

Thunder crashed and Jared screamed.

* * *

“God, hon, you look like death warmed over.”

“Not funny,” Jared mumbled. He pulled out a chair and flopped into it. He leaned his elbows on the dining table and propped up his chin with his hands. Peter and Heather were too busy shoveling Kix into their mouths to pay their dad any attention. He glanced at the grandfather clock in the corner and saw that it was 7:20. No wonder the kids were eating so fast; the bus would be here any minute. Michelle came in from the kitchen carrying a mug of steaming coffee. As she set it on a coaster in front of Jared, he said, “I knew there was a reason I married you.”

His wife grinned. “You mean beside the fact that I’m a total hottie?”

That got the kids’ attention. They both looked up, but while Peter smirked, Heather—who was two years younger and had just started fourth grade—scrunched up her face.

“Mom, that’s gross!” she said.

Michelle laughed. “Since when did we start raising the world’s youngest prude?”

“Mo-om!”

Jared doubted Heather knew what a
prude
was, but she sounded mortally offended just the same.

Normally Jared would’ve been amused by the domestic banter, but not this morning, not after the night he’d had. He ran his fingers through sweat, sleep-matted hair. “Didn’t the alarm go off?”

Michelle sat down next to him. She didn’t have any food or coffee in front of her, but then she was both an early riser and a light eater, especially in the morning. She’d doubtless already nibbled on something before he’d gotten up.

“It did, and it kept buzzing for five minutes before I turned it off. From what I could tell, you hadn’t moved a muscle. Bad dreams again?”

“You could say that.” Though the coffee was still way too hot for him, he took a sip anyway, instantly regretting it when he scalded his tongue. Though everyone else was dressed and ready for the day, he still wore the briefs and T-shirt he’d slept in, he needed a shave, and his mouth tasted sour and sticky, as if a small rodent had crawled inside sometime during the night and died in there. Usually, he was ready to go to work by this time. Of all the days to be late…

He took another scorching sip of coffee. “I gotta hit the shower.”

As he started to get up, Michelle said, “Aren’t you going to eat something?” She worked as a dietitian for a nursing home, and though she was good about not nagging him too much about his eating habits, she didn’t ignore them entirely.

“I’ll grab something on my way out the door.” He picked up his coffee and started shuffling away from the dining table. “I’ve got that presentation today.”

Michelle started to say something more, but a loud horn sounded outside.

“There’s the bus! C’mon guys!”

Jared waved to his children as they jumped up from the dining table and hurried into the living room to grab their backpacks. They didn’t wave back. He trudged down the hallway toward the master bedroom, hearing the front door open, Michelle saying goodbye to the kids, the door closing again. By the time he’d gotten a towel and washcloth out of the linen closet in their bathroom, Michelle had joined him.

“Want to tell me about it?” She leaned back against the bathroom counter, arms folded, gazing at him with slightly narrowed eyes. She might’ve been a dietitian, but she’d always been interested in psychology and fancied herself something of an amateur psychoanalyst. As far as Jared was concerned, it was one of her less-endearing qualities.

“Not much to tell, really.” He turned on the water in the shower, leaving it colder than he usually liked in the hope it would help him wake up faster. He then took off his clothes, stepped into the shower stall, and slid the door closed. He hoped Michelle might take the hint and leave, but she remained leaning against the counter.

“You haven’t slept well all week.”

Jared picked up the soap and began lathering up. “Don’t make it out to be a bigger deal than it is, Shell. I’ve been working on these budget cuts for the last several weeks, and while I think I’ve done a good job, I don’t know how the rest of the department is going to react to them. Especially Ned.” Ned was his immediate supervisor and the man who’d first tasked Jared with coming up with budget cuts. Almost certainly so Ned wouldn’t have to do them himself. “We’re going to have to eliminate some personnel, and Ned hates that.”

“You mean he hates looking responsible for it,” Michelle countered.

“Yeah.” Jared rinsed the soap off his body, then reached for his shampoo. “One way or another, he’ll make sure I’m the bad guy.” He began working thick blue goo into his wet hair. “I’m really not looking forward to today.”

“Look at it this way: by the time you get home tonight, it’ll all be over. Maybe then you’ll be able to get a decent night’s sleep.”

As Jared scrubbed his scalp, he thought of the three dead hunters grinning at him, heard the sound of a rifle blast cutting through the woods.

“I sure hope so.”

* * *

Michelle had already left for the nursing home by the time Jared pulled his Nissan Maxima out of the garage. It was late July, and the interior of the car was stuffy, the air thick and humid. Breathing it made him think of how he’d had the wind knocked out of him when he’d fallen in his dream, and he turned the AC to high. He reached for the remote attached to the visor and thumbed the button to close the garage door. He then backed into the cul-de-sac, braked, put his car in drive, and started forward. He glanced at his house as he drove away—a large Tudor with perfect landscaping and a neatly trimmed and edged lawn. On days like today, it helped to remind himself why he worked, and this house, along with the picturesque strand of woods it sat next to, was a big part of the reason. Michelle had been right. Today might not be a whole lot of fun, but he’d have his family, this house, and their woods to come home to. It was a good life he had, and today he was going to earn it all over again.

As he drove down his street, he saw Dale Baxter out watering his front lawn, ever-faithful border collie Zoe sitting next to him. Dale was a retiree and a widower, and roamed about the neighborhood always looking for someone to talk to and ease his loneliness. Jared felt sorry for the old guy, but not so sorry that he didn’t run inside whenever he saw Dale walking down the sidewalk with Zoe. Jared had learned from experience that if Dale caught you, he’d bend your ear for the better part of an hour, if not longer.

Dale waved as Jared drove by, and though Jared wanted to ignore him—for he was certain Dale was outside right now only to wave at whoever was leaving for work or school—he waved anyway. As if she recognized his car, Zoe barked once and wagged her tail. Jared had always liked dogs, though since Michelle was allergic they’d never had any pets. He smiled as he continued driving. Maybe Zoe’s greeting was a good omen and today wouldn’t turn out to be so bad after all.

* * *

Jared was stopped at an intersection, waiting for the light to change, when the smooth jazz station he’d been listening to cut out. Not particularly a patient man, he began pushing pre-set channel-select buttons, searching for another station. But they were silent as well, and he’d begun to fear the radio was broken when he pushed the last button. At first there was nothing, but then he heard soft moaning punctuated with occasional grunting. What the hell was this? Some kind of rock song with simulated sex noises, like those Donna Summers disco hits when he’d been a kid? But there wasn’t a sensual quality to these sounds. They were mournful, bestial, mindless… Then a new noise was added to the mix, a wet tearing followed by what sounded like chewing. Jared imagined someone sinking teeth into raw meat, ripping away ragged crimson mouthfuls, jaws working rhythmically as blood trickled over the lips. The image was nauseating, and yet on some level, it was appetizing as well. His stomach gurgled, but whether in discomfort or hunger, he couldn’t tell. Michelle had been right. He should’ve eaten breakfast.

A car horn blared, startling him. Jared looked up and saw the light was green, and the car ahead of him was already through the intersection. He glanced at the rearview mirror, at the same time raising his hand in an apologetic wave to the person behind him. A woman at the wheel of a dark blue BMW was shouting at him, her face contorted with anger, and he was glad he couldn’t hear what she was saying. He started to take his foot off the brake, intending to stomp on the accelerator and get through the intersection before the light changed. But in the rearview mirror, he saw the face of the woman begin to transform. Her skin took on a grayish cast, and her blond hair became waxy and coarse as straw. Her left eye deflated like a balloon losing air and subsided into the socket. A flap of skin peeled away from her right cheek all the way down to her jaw, revealing bone and teeth.

Jared gripped his steering wheel tighter as he stared at the thing reflected in his mirror. It looked just like the undead hunters in his dream, same ghastly pallor, same dead eyes…er,
eye
. The woman was still yelling, the motion jiggling her flap of cheek-skin. Bloody spittle flew from her mouth, stippling the inside of her windshield. She flipped him the bird with a skeletal finger, and jammed her other hand into the center of her steering wheel and let out a long blast on her car horn. When the horn’s noise died away, the woman was normal again, left eye restored, cheek unmarred and intact, skin pink and healthy.

Jared looked at the light and saw it was yellow. He stepped on the gas, his tires squealed, and he fishtailed through the intersection. The light turned red before he was halfway through, leaving the woman in the BMW stuck behind him. She honked once more, but Jared refused to look in his rearview mirror this time. The radio was playing smooth jazz again—a David Sanborn tune, he thought—but he stabbed his finger at the power button and turned the radio off anyway. He drove the rest of the way to work in silence, telling himself that there was no need to be stressed, it would all be over soon.

* * *

“Today’s the big day, eh?”

Jared had been running through his PowerPoint presentation for the fifth time that morning, tweaking a little here and there. He made one last change before looking over the top of his monitor and seeing Malcolm Posner standing at the entrance to his cubical. Malcolm was nine years Jared’s junior, though sometimes he acted much younger than that.

“Guess so,” Jared said.

“Nervous?”

Malcolm was a good enough guy, but he was one of the prime distributors of office gossip, and Jared knew he was fishing for information.