The Year's Best Horror Stories 15 Part 6

I learned in time that Ann's bright reddish mane of frizz darkened slightly and went tame when it got wet. A year later it was plastered against her head from the spray in my apartment shower. Her hair ran in waves down the sides of her head as she stood with her soapy face tilted up at me, blinking against the water coming at her eyes from over my shoulder.

"I'm finished," she said loudly, over the sound of the water. Her voice reverberated among the tiles. "Lemme get in the water."

I moved around and let her stand under the spray. Her freckles were sun-darkened, but she was literally white in the places never open to the sun. I had a p.r.o.nounced swimsuit line myself, but the effect was less noticeable. She was incredibly sensuous, but also looked kind of funny. I started soaping myself to quit thinking about it.

"You got soap in your eyes, dummy." She grabbed the shower nozzle and hosed off my face with it. Then she moved it down to get the rest of me.

"Yow! Watch it."

"Oop-sorry. Is that better?"

"Yeah."

"Hey, you've still got soap caught next to your eyes." She reached up to brush her finger at the outside corner of one eye. "It's caught in this little foldy-slanty place."

"Yeah, that happens."

"I got it."

She cleared the other one, too, and finished rinsing us both.

"You're not bad for a half-nerd," she yelled in my ear. Then she turned off the water and grabbed me, not by the throat, with one hand. Then she got out and I followed, dripping and quivering, hitching forward to minimize the likelihood of ripped flesh. She tossed a towel over my head with her other hand and took me into the other room for a careful re-examination.

Ann and I stayed together for most of several years. I was never in the military and we didn't discuss getting married, but: when white women like, et cetera, die.

I stood beneath the tower of a tiny airport, one neither cleared for jets nor sprayed for roaches. The searchlight circled the sky in silent unending swings, a beacon for flight 1203. Inside the low terminal building, a handful of small-town folks sat waiting in overalls, raincoats, plastic windbreakers, and dirty work clothes. I stared into the sky for Ann for an hour and a half, into a darkness more deadly than the vainest- My thoughts were interrupted by an airline guy who came around to tell us all. Somewhere off in the distance, a storm had arisen quickly. Blue Eyes and her red hair and her grabbing hand would not be coming in for a landing, anywhere.

Death Angel, can you see me?

This time was no better, but it was different. I was older and meaner and I had gone through this before. Instead of getting sick, I got angry. I had really wanted Ann, most of the time.

I want my baby back.

I stayed angry long enough to kick out the windows of my apartment, chase all the cats out of the alley, and lose all of my sensitive, fainthearted friends. The only ones left were the dense, unfeeling brutes. We had a good time there for a while.

Ann. Just another pretty redhead with brains and integrity.

Even after a few years had pa.s.sed, and I was as much back to normal as I was going to get, I had lost my interest in romance.

I looked into the muddy water.

I looked into the muddy water.

I looked- Actually, I'm still not sure whose face I saw. I didn't think I looked that lonely.

Alice did.

Alice just kind of showed up. I was prowling the winter night spots that week, with little money and less interest. I did it for something to do. Alice was a seven-year-old in an adult's body, an expatriate New Yorker by her accent, with curly brown hair. Two-thirds of her weight was below her waist. She tried to balance it by swelling her head.

"I have an I.Q. of 147," she told me at a bar.

I was sitting on a stool leaning over a Seven-Up and staring into the mirror behind the rows of bottles against the far wall. "Huh?" I said.

"You look smart. Are you an engineer? But I'm smarter." She smiled condescendingly and turned on her stool to survey the crowd behind us. "I like the bridge of your nose-it's so little."

I went back to staring at myself in the mirror. The gla.s.s was cheap and flawed; if I raised myself up and down slightly on the stool, the image stretched and flowed and compressed like the reflections in fun-house mirrors. I was having a good time.

"I'm only interested in monogamous, long-term relations.h.i.+ps," she said. "I'm trying to meet a good man. I'm Alice."

"Huh?" I said, for the sake of consistency.

"I've played enough games. Basically, I'm ready to settle down now, so I try to get out and meet people."

"You come to bars to meet serious people?" I sneaked a glance at her.

She smiled viciously. "I met you, didn't I?"

"Hardly," I said. I started admiring myself in the mirror some more.

After a while I heard voices next to me and sneaked another look. Some guy from the back had come up to speak to her. The longer I listened, the weirder she sounded. I had heard that pleading tone and seen the searching look on other occasions, but only when small children were lost and seeking their parents. I was glad her attention had been drawn off.

I paid for the Seven-Up and left the place. As I pa.s.sed the bar, Alice was saying to the other guy, "He's just a friend. I've played enough games. Basically, I'm ..."

Outside, I trudged through the snow, staring at the packed footprints. I wandered aimlessly down the smalltown street and eventually plunged my hands into my pockets. Puzzled, I brought one of them out again holding a strange glove.

It was a gray woman's glove, for the left hand, with a note in it: "Meet me at the old oak tree in two hours. This guy's just a friend. Love, Alice."

I threw away the note and kept the glove. The next establishment I came to was a games parlor, where I sank all of my quarters into video machines. I sideswiped s.p.a.ces.h.i.+ps, gunned down hockey players, strafed racing cars, and torpedoed small children. As usual, I beat all but one of them; the World War I biplanes sank my sled. When my change was gone, I stood and watched other people destroy the silent, fluid images-never mind the background noises. The magical screen is silent.

After an hour and fifty minutes, I asked somebody where the old oak tree was. Without taking his eyes off the screen or his hands off the controls, the guy inclined his head quickly in a discernible direction. I thanked him and started walking. Snow was falling lightly outside.

This side of town was fairly old. It was the only area that had not been recently built up and furnished with saplings. However, a large public park out this way was the only place for a landmark called the old oak tree. I remembered that a large, fast river flowed through the center of it. Then, in the distance, down in a sort of hollow, I could see one huge old black tree with dead brown leaves standing out against the snow, with its back to the running river.

As long as I was walking along the edge of town, I remained among the light and sounds of all the places open to customers, among all the people out for a Sat.u.r.day night fling. Once I started down the slope toward the river bank, I found myself alone in a desolate white expanse broken only by the bare black branches of trees and the one great oak straight ahead. It was surrounded by footprints in the snow.

The river ran deep and murky here. A small whitecap churned over one wide root of the big oak that extended into the muddy water. The white snow reflected so much light from the town that I could see all the way across the river to the other bank. It only held more snow, though, and more young naked trees.

The old oak tree seemed to be a common meeting place, judging by the footprints. Then I noticed a small glove lying at the base of the tree. I picked it up. It was the mate of the one I had with me. A piece of paper crackled inside and I pulled it part way out.

The note was written in ink that had been smeared, apparently by someone who had arrived earlier and contributed to the footsteps around me. The first part of it was illegible, but the end was clear: "I just couldn't tell you that guy was just a friend. He wasn't. Goodbye forever. Love, Alice."

I dropped the glove on the snow in disgust. It was a stupid joke and I didn't like being suckered. Then I wondered. I glanced once more at the little glove with the paper sticking out of it. Then I stepped carefully around the big wide trunk of the old oak, with the river wind whipping tears into my eyes.

Two shapes looked back from the swirling murky depths. One was a frowning lonely face with tears in his eyes and lank hair tossed in the wind. Underneath it lay a calm sleeping face with closed eyelids, bobbing stiffly from under the root of the old oak.

When white women like slanted ...

I glanced up quickly, as though trying to catch a grinning Death Angel by surprise. Are you somewhere up there?

I swallowed and stepped back. Alice had been sick long before I had met her, but she hadn't drowned herself until now. I wondered if I had been some sort of last straw, but of course I would never really know. Anyhow, logic meant nothing to someone like her.

I want my ... No, I don't.

I looked around. No one was watching. I hurried back up the slope, out of the park.

Where oh where can my-never mind. I knew where; they were all dead and planted. Sometimes, though, I still wondered where I might find romance.

I found romance ten years after Cyn got herself smeared across the railroad tracks. I ran into Gail early one summer when we were both back in town visiting our parents-I had known her in high school, and had been interested, but she had been seeing someone else. She was very pretty, with deep-set hazel eyes and short light brown hair. Her build was stocky yet very appealing. She mentioned that she was married but getting divorced. I asked her out to dinner.

The evening grew weird from the moment I got into my daddy's car-his current one, that is. Since I had flown into town, I had had to borrow it for the night. As I drove quietly through the old familiar residential streets, breathing the humid air and smelling the lush lawns that I knew so well, I realized that I was back in a situation like dating in high school. I grinned to myself. It had been a long time.

I pulled up in front of Gail's parents' house. The sun, behind a layer of clouds, was just starting down below the treetops. A summer storm was gathering over the prairie country here. I got out and walked across the bluegra.s.s on the lawn.

I stood on the porch smelling the rain to come, and knocked on the screen door. It rattled. Gail's mother came to the door, also stocky and rather appealing. The was carrying a copy of The Big Knockover by Das.h.i.+ell Hammett, with one finger in the book to mark her place.

Gail's mother smiled nicely. "Come in." She pushed the screen door open.

"Thanks." I followed her into a small living room, where she put the book down open-faced on an end-table.

"Sit down, John. Gail will be down in a few minutes. She's late, of course. How have you been?"

We sat down on opposite ends of a couch. "Okay," I said. We had met a few times ten or eleven years ago. I looked around. Gail was making noises upstairs, but no one else seemed to be home.

"I'm not funny any more," I said.

"You what?"

"I used to be snide and clever. Sarcastic and sardonic. Dry wit and disgusting metaphors. Snappy comebacks."

"I, um, don't think I knew that."

"Well, I am no longer capable of this. My life has been a nearly-endless succession of tragedies. I'm jaded and bitter."

"Oh, I see." She smiled and stood up. "Excuse me, won't you?"

"Sure."

She walked out of sight to the foot of the stairs I had seen near the door and screamed fiercely in a hoa.r.s.e stage whisper. "Gail you G.o.dd.a.m.n inconsiderate b.i.t.c.h! Get down here!" Then she came back, smiled pleasantly, and sat down again. "Well, really, John. What are you bitter about?"

"Dead women."

"What?"

"Dead white women. Every time I meet a new woman, she croaks on me."

"Oh. Well ..." She smiled again, but her voice was hesitant. "I certainly hope that, uh, won't happen to Gail. Of course, you've known her for years."

"Of course."

Still smiling, she looked her lap. Then she started using one of her thumbnails to clean the other one.

In the silence, I looked out the big picture window at the darkening sky. A random thought crossed my mind: Death Angel, sing me a song.

Gail hurried down the stairs, still fastening one earring. She looked gorgeous.

"Sorry I'm late." She giggled. "I've always been late; I can't help it. Shall we go?"

"Let's go," I said. "Goodbye."

"Goodbye," said Gail's mother. "Drive carefully, all right?"

"All right," I said.

We crossed the lawn toward the car. The wind was chilly and I could feel a very faint drizzle beginning. The cool of the evening was going to take all the moisture from the summer air.

We got into the car just in time. The rain wasn't too heavy, but it was rain and not drizzle. "It's going to be wet all night," said Gail. "Well, I don't mind. Are we still going to be on time for the reservation?"

"Yeah. I made it for plenty of time after I was going to pick you up." I started the car and turned on the wipers. "Remember, I've known you a long time."

She laughed. "Oh!" She punched the side of my arm.

"Whoa! That's my drivin' arm." I pulled on the headlights and got us underway.

"Oops, sorry."

I drove through the darkness, watching the rain slant through the white beams of the headlights. The inside of the car felt warm and oozy. I slowed down for a red light. "It's wonderful to see you again."

"Well, thank you. It feels sort of funny, you know, after being married for so long-or maybe I shouldn't talk about that."

I laughed as I accelerated from the intersection. "I don't mind. If something comes up in the conversation, go 'head and say it."

"Oh, okay. Anyhow, it's been a long time since I went out with a man who wasn't my husband."

I could tell she was smiling, so I glanced over and smiled back. "It's been a long time for me since I was out with anyone."

I rounded a sharp curve and then slammed on the brakes. There in the road, straight ahead, a car was stalled. My car began to skid on the wet pavement. I couldn't stop, so I yanked the wheel to the right.

White women and slanted eyes.

At the last second, I saw the big white side of a building in my headlights. Then the tires cried, the metal shrieked, and gla.s.s shattered. Gail screamed- I woke up watching a downpour against the winds.h.i.+eld. With something warm and sticky in my eyes, I was lying on a front seat that was sharply tilted to the left. I could feel the weight of Gail against me. People were standing all around, at some distance, and I could see police cars in the rearview mirror, parked to block traffic. I could not have been out long. A tow truck pulled up as I wiped blood out of my eyes. Police officers came running toward us.

I could see people shouting and tugging at the doors, but I could not hear them. Gail's eyelids were moving slightly, so I maneuvered around to where I could raise her head. Beyond the winds.h.i.+eld, an ambulance came floating into view, the image rippling through the rain on the winds.h.i.+eld. Paramedics jumped out and ran toward us, leaving the big red light on the van swinging, throwing its beams at us in a deadly, silent rhythm.

Gail was trying to speak, but I couldn't understand her. I held her close instead, watching the swinging light from the ambulance cross us. Her injuries were not visible. The only blood on her face was mine, but the face was not hers.

In the shadows, her features were hard to see, but every time the red light of the ambulance swung our way, she changed, in a constant steady rhythm, still beating; Cyn's brown hair, Ann's red curls, Alice's frizz, Gail's deepset hazel eyes, Cyn and Ann and Alice and Gail, faces changing every time. Cyn now Ann now Alice now Gail. One and two and beating, beating.

Gail died in my arms. I could feel it. As crowbars began prying open her door, I tilted my head up toward the sky, trying to see through the rain on the winds.h.i.+eld. My real lover had been with me all along.