American Supernatural Tales Part 26

"Some fire," Kelly said.

"Do you think he came all the way from New York, like he said?" Joan asked.

"I don't know." I couldn't see that it mattered anyway. He had been behind the wheel of a big Lincoln when we found him, semi-conscious and raving. His head was bloated to the size of a football and his neck looked like a sausage. He had Captain Trips and not far to go, either. So we took him up to the Point that overlooks the beach and burned him. He said his name was Alvin Sackheim. He kept calling for his grandmother. He thought Susie was his grandmother. This struck her funny, G.o.d knows why. The strangest things strike Susie funny.

It was Corey's idea to burn him up, but it started off as a joke. He had read all those books about witchcraft and black magic at college, and he kept leering at us in the dark beside Alvin Sackheim's Lincoln and telling us that if we made a sacrifice to the dark G.o.ds, maybe the spirits would keep protecting us against A6.

Of course none of us really believed that bulls.h.i.+t, but the talk got more and more serious. It was a new thing to do, and finally we went ahead and did it. We tied him to the observation gadget up there-you put a dime in it and on a clear day you can see all the way to Portland Headlight. We tied him with our belts, and then we went rooting around for dry brush and hunks of driftwood like kids playing a new kind of hide-and-seek. All the time we were doing it Alvin Sackheim just sort of leaned there and mumbled to his grandmother. Susie's eyes got very bright and she was breathing fast. It was really turning her on. When we were down in the ravine on the other side of the outcrop she leaned against me and kissed me. She was wearing too much lipstick and it was like kissing a greasy plate.

I pushed her away and that was when she started pouting.

We went back up, all of us, and piled dead branches and twigs up to Alvin Sackheim's waist. Needles lit the pyre with his Zippo, and it went up fast. At the end, just before his hair caught on fire, the guy began to scream. There was a smell just like sweet Chinese pork.

"Got a cigarette, Bernie?" Needles asked.

"There's about fifty cartons right behind you."

He grinned and slapped a mosquito that was probing his arm. "Don't want to move."

I gave him a smoke and sat down. Susie and I met Needles in Portland. He was sitting on the curb in front of the State Theater, playing Leadbelly tunes on a big old Gibson guitar he had looted someplace. The sound had echoed up and down Congress Street as if he were playing in a concert hall.

Susie stopped in front of us, still out of breath. "You're rotten, Bernie."

"Come on, Sue. Turn the record over. That side stinks."

"b.a.s.t.a.r.d. Stupid, unfeeling son of a b.i.t.c.h. Creep Creep!"

"Go away," I said, "or I'll black your eye, Susie. See if I don't."

She started to cry again. She was really good at it. Corey came up and tried to put an arm around her. She elbowed him in the crotch and he spit in her face.

"I'll kill kill you!" She came at him, screaming and weeping, making propellers with her hands. Corey backed off, almost fell, then turned tail and ran. Susie followed him, hurling hysterical obscenities. Needles put back his head and laughed. The sound of Corey's radio came back to us faintly over the surf. you!" She came at him, screaming and weeping, making propellers with her hands. Corey backed off, almost fell, then turned tail and ran. Susie followed him, hurling hysterical obscenities. Needles put back his head and laughed. The sound of Corey's radio came back to us faintly over the surf.

Kelly and Joan had wandered off. I could see them down by the edge of the water, walking with their arms around each other's waist. They looked like an ad in a travel agent's window-Fly to Beautiful St. Lorca. It was all right. They had a good thing. It was all right. They had a good thing.

"Bernie?"

"What?" I sat and smoked and thought about Needles flipping back the top of his Zippo, spinning the wheel, making fire with flint and steel like a caveman.

"I've got it," Needles said.

"Yeah?" I looked at him. "Are you sure?"

"Sure I am. My head aches. My stomach aches. Hurts to p.i.s.s."

"May it's just Hong Kong flu. Susie had Hong Kong flu. She wanted a Bible." I laughed. That had been while we were still at the University, about a week before they closed it down for good, a month before they started carrying bodies away in dump trucks and burying them in ma.s.s graves with payloaders.

"Look." He lit a match and held it under the angle of his jaw. I could see the first triangular smudges, the first swelling. It was A6, all right.

"Okay," I said.

"I don't feel so bad," he said. "In my mind, I mean. You, though. You think about it a lot. I can tell."

"No I don't." A lie.

"Sure you do. Like that guy tonight. You're thinking about that, too. We probably did him a favor, when you get right down to it. I don't think he even knew it was happening."

"He knew."

He shrugged and turned on his side. "It doesn't matter."

We smoked and I watched the surf come in and go out. Needles had Captain Trips. That made everything real all over again. It was late August already, and in a couple of weeks the first chill of fall would be creeping in. Time to move inside someplace. Winter. Dead by Christmas, maybe, all of us. In somebody's front room with Corey's expensive radio/tape-player on top of a bookcase full of Reader's Digest Condensed Books and the weak winter sun lying on the rug in meaningless window-pane patterns.

The vision was clear enough to make me shudder. n.o.body should think about winter in August. It's like a goose walking over your grave.

Needles laughed. "See? You do do think about it." think about it."

What could I say? I stood up. "Going to look for Susie."

"Maybe we're the last people on earth, Bernie. Did you ever think of that?" In the faint moonlight he already looked half dead, with circles under his eyes and pallid, unmoving fingers like pencils.

I walked down to the water and looked out across it. There was nothing to see but the restless, moving humps of the waves, topped by delicate curls of foam. The thunder of the breakers was tremendous down here, bigger than the world. Like standing inside a thunderstorm. I closed my eyes and rocked on my bare feet. The sand was cold and damp and packed. And if we were the last people on earth, so what? This would go on as long as there was a moon to pull the water.

Susie and Corey were up the beach. Susie was riding him as if he were a bucking bronc, pounding his head into the running boil of the water. Corey was flailing and splas.h.i.+ng. They were both soaked. I walked down and pushed her off with my foot. Corey splashed away on all fours, spluttering and whoofing.

"I hate you! hate you!" Susie screamed at me. Her mouth was a dark grinning crescent. It looked like the entrance to a fun house. When I was a kid my mother used to take us kids to Harrison State Park and there was a fun house with a big clown face on the front, and you walked in through the mouth.

"Come on, Susie. Up, Fido." I held out my hand. She took it doubtfully and stood up. There was damp sand clotted on her blouse and skin.

"You didn't have to push me, Bernie. You don't ever-"

"Come on." She wasn't like a jukebox; you never had to put in a dime and she never came unplugged.

We walked up the beach toward the main concession. The man who ran the place had had a small overhead apartment. There was a bed. She didn't really deserve a bed, but Needles was right about that. It didn't matter. No one was really scoring the game anymore.

The stairs went up the side of the building, but I paused for just a minute to look in the broken window at the dusty wares inside that no one had cared enough about to loot-stacks of sweats.h.i.+rts ("Anson Beach" and a picture of sky and waves printed on the front), glittering bracelets that would green the wrist on the second day, bright junk earrings, beachb.a.l.l.s, dirty greeting cards, badly painted ceramic madonnas, plastic vomit (So realistic! Try it on your wife!), Fourth of July sparklers for a Fourth that never was, beach towels with a voluptuous girl in a bikini standing amid the names of a hundred famous resort areas, pennants (Souvenir of Anson Beach and Park), balloons, bathing suits. There was a snack bar up front with a big sign saying TRY OUR CLAM CAKE SPECIAL.

I used to come to Anson Beach a lot when I was still in high school. That was seven years before A6, and I was going with a girl named Maureen. She was a big girl. She had a pink checked bathing suit. I used to tell her it looked like a tablecloth. We had walked along the boardwalk in front of this place, barefoot, the boards hot and sandy beneath our heels. We had never tried the clam cake special.

"What are you looking at?"

"Nothing. Come on."

I had sweaty, ugly dreams about Alvin Sackheim. He was propped behind the wheel of his s.h.i.+ny yellow Lincoln, talking about his grandmother. He was nothing but a bloated, blackened head and a charred skeleton. He smelled burnt. He talked on and on, and after a while I couldn't make out a single word. I woke up breathing hard.

Susie was sprawled across my thighs, pale and bloated. My watch said 3:50, but it had stopped. It was still dark out. The surf pounded and smashed. High tide. Make it 4:15. Light soon. I got out of bed and went to the doorway. The sea breeze felt fine against my hot body. In spite of it all I didn't want to die.

I went over in the corner and grabbed a beer. There were three or four cases of Bud stacked against the wall. It was warm, because there was no electricity. I don't mind warm beer like some people do, though. It just foams a little more. Beer is beer. I went back out on the landing and sat down and pulled the ring tab and drank up.

So here we were, with the whole human race wiped out, not by atomic weapons or bio-warfare or pollution or anything grand grand like that. like that. Just the flu. Just the flu. I'd like to put down a huge plaque somewhere, in the Bonneville Salt Flats, maybe. Bronze Square. Three miles on a side. And in big raised letters it would say, for the benefit of any landing aliens: JUST THE FLU. I'd like to put down a huge plaque somewhere, in the Bonneville Salt Flats, maybe. Bronze Square. Three miles on a side. And in big raised letters it would say, for the benefit of any landing aliens: JUST THE FLU.

I tossed the beer can over the side. It landed with a hollow clank on the cement walk that went around the building. The lean-to was a dark triangle on the sand. I wondered if Needles was awake. I wondered if I would be.

"Bernie?"

She was standing in the doorway wearing one of my s.h.i.+rts. I hate that. She sweats like a pig.

"You don't like me much anymore, do you, Bernie?"

I didn't say anything. There were times when I could still feel sorry for everything. She didn't deserve me any more than I deserved her.

"Can I sit down with you?"

"I doubt if it would be wide enough for both of us."

She made a choked hiccupping noise and started to go back inside.

"Needles has got A6," I said.

She stopped and looked at me. Her face was very still. "Don't joke, Bernie."

I lit a cigarette.

"He can't! He had-"

"Yes, he had A2. Hong Kong flu. Just like you and me and Corey and Kelly and Joan."

"But that would mean he isn't-"

"Immune."

"Yes. Then we could get it."

"Maybe he lied when he said he had A2. So we'd take him along with us that time," I said.

Relief spilled across her face. "Sure, that's it. I would have lied if it had been me. n.o.body likes to be alone, do they?" She hesitated. "Coming back to bed?"

"Not just now."

She went inside. I didn't have to tell her that A2 was no guarantee against A6. She knew that. She had just blocked it out. I sat and watched the surf. It was really up. Years ago, Anson had been the only halfway decent surfing spot in the state. The Point was a dark, jutting hump against the sky. I thought I could see the upright that was the observation post, but it probably was just imagination. Sometimes Kelly took Joan up to the point. I didn't think they were up there tonight.

I put my face in my hands and clutched it, feeling the skin, its grain and texture. It was all narrowing so swiftly, and it was all so mean-there was no dignity in it.

The surf coming in, coming in, coming in. Limitless. Clean and deep. We had come here in the summer, Maureen and I, the summer after high school, the summer before college and reality and A6 coming out of Southeast Asia and covering the world like a pall, July, we had eaten pizza and listened to her radio, I had put oil on her back, she had put oil on mine, the air had been hot, the sand bright, the sun like a burning gla.s.s.

DENNIS ETCHISON.

Dennis William Etchison was born in Stockton, California, in 1943, and has spent all of his life in his native state. Etchison made his first professional sale while still in high school, and during the time he attended Los Angeles State College and UCLA he continued to sell short stories in the horror and science fiction fields. After two pseudonymous novels in the 1960s, his first official books were novelizations of the films The Fog The Fog (1980), (1980), Halloween II Halloween II (1981), (1981), Halloween III Halloween III (1982), and (1982), and Videodrome Videodrome (1983), the last three published under the pseudonym Jack Martin. In 1982 his first short story collection, (1983), the last three published under the pseudonym Jack Martin. In 1982 his first short story collection, The Dark Country, The Dark Country, appeared, establis.h.i.+ng Etchison as one of the leading literary figures in the realm of supernatural horror. Other collections, including appeared, establis.h.i.+ng Etchison as one of the leading literary figures in the realm of supernatural horror. Other collections, including Red Dreams Red Dreams (1986), (1986), The Blood Kiss The Blood Kiss (1988), (1988), The Death Artist The Death Artist (2000), and (2000), and Talking in the Dark Talking in the Dark (2001), have followed, revealing Etchison's skill at mingling tropes from horror, fantasy, and science fiction; in particular, such tales as "The Dead Line," "It Only Comes Out at Night," and "The Last Reel" exhibit Etchison's deftness in such supernatural motifs as the vampire and the zombie and in the depiction of the California milieu that renders him a local color writer of note. (2001), have followed, revealing Etchison's skill at mingling tropes from horror, fantasy, and science fiction; in particular, such tales as "The Dead Line," "It Only Comes Out at Night," and "The Last Reel" exhibit Etchison's deftness in such supernatural motifs as the vampire and the zombie and in the depiction of the California milieu that renders him a local color writer of note.

Etchison has been less successful in the novel form. His first novel, Darkside Darkside (1986), is an able treatment of the nihilism of modern teenage culture, but (1986), is an able treatment of the nihilism of modern teenage culture, but Shadowman Shadowman (1993), (1993), California Gothic California Gothic (1995), and (1995), and Double Edge Double Edge (1997) are only occasionally effective. Etchison is also an accomplished editor, having a.s.sembled the three-volume series (1997) are only occasionally effective. Etchison is also an accomplished editor, having a.s.sembled the three-volume series Masters of Darkness Masters of Darkness (1986-91), in which leading contemporary horror writers have chosen their own favorite stories, as well as (1986-91), in which leading contemporary horror writers have chosen their own favorite stories, as well as Cutting Edge Cutting Edge (1986), (1986), MetaHorror MetaHorror (1992), and (1992), and The Museum of Horrors The Museum of Horrors (2001). Several of these volumes contain introductions featuring Etchison's pungent comments on the current state of the horror and science fiction fields. (2001). Several of these volumes contain introductions featuring Etchison's pungent comments on the current state of the horror and science fiction fields.

"The Late s.h.i.+ft" (first published in Kirby McCauley's ground-breaking anthology, Dark Forces Dark Forces [1980], and collected in [1980], and collected in The Dark Country The Dark Country) demonstrates Etchison's skill at evoking horror from the most mundane elements of daily life, by the utilization of a subtle and evocative prose style reminiscent of such other California writers as James M. Cain or Raymond Chandler.

THE LATE s.h.i.+FT.

They were driving back from a midnight screening of The Texas Chainsaw Ma.s.sacre The Texas Chainsaw Ma.s.sacre ("Who will survive and what will be left of them?") when one of them decided they should make the Stop 'N Start Market on the way home. Macklin couldn't be sure later who said it first, and it didn't really matter, for there was the all-night logo, its bright colors cutting through the fog before they had reached 26th Street, and as soon as he saw it Macklin moved over close to the curb and began coasting toward the only sign of life anywhere in town at a quarter to two in the morning. ("Who will survive and what will be left of them?") when one of them decided they should make the Stop 'N Start Market on the way home. Macklin couldn't be sure later who said it first, and it didn't really matter, for there was the all-night logo, its bright colors cutting through the fog before they had reached 26th Street, and as soon as he saw it Macklin moved over close to the curb and began coasting toward the only sign of life anywhere in town at a quarter to two in the morning.

They pa.s.sed through the electric eye at the door, rubbing their faces in the sudden cold light. Macklin peeled off toward the news rack, feeling like a newborn before the LeBoyer Method. He reached into a row of well-thumbed magazines, but they were all chopper, custom car, detective and stroke books, as far as he could see.

"Please, please, sorry, thank you," the night clerk was saying.

"No, no," said a woman's voice, "can't you hear? I want that box, that that one." one."

"Please, please," said the night man again.

Macklin glanced up.

A couple of guys were waiting in line behind her, next to the styrofoam ice chests. One of them cleared his throat and moved his feet.

The woman was a trying to give back a small, oblong carton, but the clerk didn't seem to understand. He picked up the box, turned to the shelf, back to her again.

Then Macklin saw what it was: a package of one dozen prophylactics from behind the counter, back where they kept the cough syrup and airplane glue and film. That was all she wanted-a pack of Polaroid SX-70 Land Film.

Macklin wandered to the back of the store.

"How's it coming, Whitey?"

"I got the Beer Nuts," said Whitey, "and the Jiffy Pop, but I can't find any Olde English 800." He rummaged through the refrigerated case.

"Then get Schlitz Malt Liquor," said Macklin. "That ought to do the job." He jerked his head at the counter. "Hey, did you catch that action up there?"

"What's that?"

Two more guys hurried in, heading for the wine display. "Never mind. Look, why don't you just take this stuff up there and get a place in line? I'll find us some Schlitz or something. Go on, they won't sell it to us after two o'clock."

He finally found a six-pack hidden behind some bottles, then picked up a quart of milk and a half-dozen eggs. When he got to the counter, the woman had already given up and gone home. The next man in line asked for cigarettes and beef jerky. Somehow the clerk managed to ring it up; the electronic register and UPC Code lines helped him a lot.

"Did you get a load of that one?" said Whitey. "Well, I'll be gonged. Old Juano's sure hit the skids, huh? The pits. They should have stood him in an aquarium."

"Who?"

"Juano. It is is him, right? Take another look." Whitey pretended to study the ceiling. him, right? Take another look." Whitey pretended to study the ceiling.

Macklin stared at the clerk. Slicked-back hair, dyed and greasy and parted in the middle, a phony Hitler moustache, thrift-shop clothes that didn't fit. And his skin didn't look right somehow, like he was wearing makeup over a face that hadn't seen the light of day in ages. But Whitey was right. It was Juano. He had waited on Macklin too many times at that little Mexican restaurant over in East L.A., Mama Something's. Yes, that was it, Mama Carnita's on Whittier Boulevard. Macklin and his friends, including Whitey, had eaten there maybe fifty or a hundred times, back when they were taking cla.s.ses at Cal State. It was Juano for sure.

Whitey set his things on the counter. "How's it going, man?" he said.