Horror library volume 6, p.2
Horror Library, Volume 6, page 2
“Really? God, I feel bad for you. I was a nobody.”
Con climbs the stairs to the first landing. A miasma of flies circles his head. “Back then?” he says. “I was thirteen. You were everybody to me.”
Frankie stops, her hand clutching the rusted rail, and Con thinks maybe she’s upset, maybe she’s offended. Then she doubles forward and laughs, the noise so loud in the stairwell that he worries anyone still inside the building will hear them, will come swarming like bugs to light. She looks up, her right hand propped on her thigh. “You don’t still—do you?”
He opens his mouth to answer, but stops. He wants to think about it, wants to be sure. He swats at the flies. “No,” he says, finally.
“Geez. Buzzkill.” Then, coolly, she says, “What a place to fuck.”
Con shakes his head, moves up the stairs. The idea repulses him, not because of her, not even because of the building, but because of the memories. He moves up to the second story. “I want you to take this seriously.”
“I am.” She places her hand on her chest, apologetically. “It was only a joke.”
Con forces a smile, wonders if he should have brought her at all. He swings the beam up to the third story. At the dim edge of the beam, he thinks he sees his mother, her wild hair.
***
CON STAYED AWAKE the next night, searching for the knocking.
This was worse than waiting for his mother’s voice, the constant tension of being at attention. When the sky turned orange the next morning, his nerves were shot, numb. And when he left his room, he felt like an interloper in his own home, like it was dangerous, unfamiliar, each dark corner hiding something sinister. By the time he’d gone two nights without sleep, he stopped taking the pills. Three nights—he was nauseous, delirious. His father asked him what was wrong. Nothing, Con had muttered, not feeling well. Then he went to the bathroom, stared at himself in the mirror. He touched the puffy black circles under his eyes. His skin was wet, pale, his lips colorless.
On the fourth night, he woke in the early morning gasping, reaching toward the ceiling. He couldn’t remember falling asleep. White noise hummed from the radio, so constant and droning that it seemed to fill his bedroom, to blur the corners, the walls. He sat up, leaned against the headboard. A dim green halo circled the CB on the floor. His bedroom door was cracked open, revealing a sliver of inky black.
From far away, echoing through the white noise, he heard a series of beeps. He rolled off his bed, played with the tuner until they came in clear. His heart skipped, thumped—Morse Code. He grabbed his notepad, jotted the frequency: 9.9, and then the message in code: . . . E-R. With the heels of his palms, he rubbed his eyes. The message came through again, and as he copied the first letter, he knew what it would say: A-N-G-E-R. The beeps repeated again, and again, and again, like a tape looping back on itself. Con could feel his blood hot beneath his skin. He leaned forward and thumbed the radio off. The room filled with ringing silence.
Earlier that day, his counselor had held up the Stages of Grief chart, pointed to it with his pen, had said, This is all about learning how to live with the ones we’ve lost. Con had stared at it, became so frustrated he had to excuse himself, lock himself in the bathroom and control his breathing. Why shouldn’t he be mad at her? Con had asked his counselor this before several times, but the counselor always seemed to have an answer for him, to respond in that soft-spoken voice, and he always talked about it that way—we, us—as if he had any idea what it was like to have your mom practically kill herself.
He dialed the radio to a different frequency, turned it back on. A woman’s voice listed off something that sounded like locations, longitudes, latitudes. He wondered if he would recognize his mother’s voice through the radio, all tinny and muffled.
Frankie’s light flickered, catching his attention. L-E-A-R-N-E-D, pause, M-O-R-E.
Con went to his light switch. H-U-H. The sudden presence of light burned his eyes.
D-E-A-D, long pause, W-I-F-E. Behind her silhouette, he could see the empty bedroom, her bedroom door, closed. Her light flickered, went out, came back on. F-O-U-N-D, pause, H-E-R, pause, W-A-L-K-I-E, pause, I-N, pause, A-T-T-I-C.
Con deciphered the words. Before he could stop himself, he looked up. There was a storage unit above him, he knew. The radio buzzed, and Con heard the beeps again. He translated: . . . R-W-A-L-K-I-E-I-N-A-T-T-I-C.
Con stared down at the radio, as if he expected it to move, to do anything other than emit noise. Quickly, he signaled back, S-T-O-P, short pause, S-O-M-E-O-N-E, pause, L-I-S-T-E-N-I-N-G.
He moved to his bedroom door, peered out into the darkness. The front door was framed in light from the hallway, and he waited for the knocking, expected it, because—he knew—this is how it would happen: he saw himself on the news, a childhood picture, one where he was smiling, one taken before the accident. He saw his father, sobbing, muttering things he was supposed to say into a microphone. Across the street, Frankie’s window went black. Then it came on, went out, came on, went out again, stayed out. Con realized he was holding his breath. His chest burned. Her light came on. Behind her, over her shoulder, the bedroom door was open. Her light went out. Con ran to his window, opened it, leaned out. Hot wind ruffled his hair.
“Frankie!” he screamed into the night. The beeps came through the radio, spelled out his name. Her light came on.
He covered his mouth, fell back. Behind Frankie, slouched in the corner, was his mother. His name came through the radio again, fast, barely discernible. His mother looked just as he imagined she would. Her hair was oily, wild. Her skin was translucent, so much so that her face looked like a skull. The radio screamed white noise, screamed his name, and her lips peeled back in a too-wide smile.
***
“WHAT DID YOU think when I showed up at your door that night?” Frankie says.
Con steps into the fourth floor hallway, his shoulder burning from the dead weight of the hammer. He aims the light into the corridor. It seems longer than he remembered. “I was thankful for your company, your safety,” he says. “A bit nervous.” Con aims the light toward an open door, peers into the black gap.
“I’d thought it was all a ploy,” she says. He feels her hand against his back, thinks maybe she’s scared, too. “But when we were together, when she came, crawled out of the vent—fucking Christ.”
Con moves forward, notices the silence, the lack of city sounds, like they’d entered a vacuum. She keeps her hand against his back, but it doesn’t comfort him as it would’ve back then. As he passes each open doorway, he holds his breath, shines the light inside, readies the sledgehammer. There are mattresses. There are hypodermic needles, spoons, old rags or t-shirts twisted and knotted. Beady eyes of rats glint in the light, stare back at him, unafraid. In one apartment, there’s nothing but a stool resting upright in the center of the floor. He pauses, aims the light up, finds the handles of kitchen knives pointing down like jagged teeth. Frankie balls his shirt into her fist. Quickly, he pulls the beam away, tries to keep it steady as he shivers. “I wasn’t sure if she was real before you saw her,” he says.
“Maybe she wasn’t—isn’t. Maybe she’s the reason I’m still so fucked up.”
Con thinks the she Frankie is referring to is he, being himself. He stops in front of his old door, looks at the rusted brass numbers. Someone had removed the seven, but the faded image of it remains. He grasps the doorknob. “What do you mean?”
“I’m twenty-three,” Frankie says, and Con can tell she’s about to say more, about to pour everything out, as if she planned it all, has been waiting to say it for years. “I’m twenty-three, a college dropout, unemployed. I’m covered in tattoos guilt-paid for by my mother. I have no dreams. I have no aspirations. I’m back near my old place, walking around a burnt-out apartment building with the only boy who ever paid any attention to me.”
He releases the doorknob, turns. She looks so strikingly similar to her thirteen-year-old self—pixie cut, round face, painted-black lips—that he checks his own hands, wonders if, somehow, he is still thirteen also. “Goes for me, too,” he says. Then, not because he wants to, but because he thinks it has to happen, like he’s completing some ritual, closing some circle, he leans forward and kisses her. He can taste the clove, that summer night air.
He turns back before she can speak. The door opens easily, as if it had been waiting for him to come back all along. The inside of the living room is empty, gutted. He steps through the threshold and closes the door behind Frankie, and he is thirteen again, his anger raw, all the memories of his mother—alive, in the casket, dead—still vivid, unfiltered by everything between then and now. It comes to him, bluntly, stupidly: he would do anything to bring her back.
***
“YOU KNOW, I MADE up the whole thing about the walkie-talkies,” Frankie said, sitting at the foot of his bed, her knees knocking rhythmically together.
Con stared up at her from the floor. “What . . . ” he said, still struggling to put together sentences, still in disbelief by her, here, in his bedroom. He had talked to her at school, while walking home, at the gas station, but never somewhere so intimate. “ . . . do you mean?” he finished.
The bedsprings groaned as she stood, moved to his cabinet. “I mean I made the whole thing up. There is no dead wife, no walkie-talkies. No one’s ever told me anything so interesting.” She opened his drawer, sifted through his underwear as if looking through a stack of albums. “I only wanted to scare you.”
“No—I saw her there, behind you in your room. Are you sure you didn’t see something, sense something, anything?” he said, trying to picture his mother again, pale and slouched.
“Nada,” Frankie muttered. She held up his underwear, twirled it on her pointer. “Nice.”
Con blushed. “Why?”
She shrugged, looked out the window. “I guess I’m sorry.”
He stared at her back, wanted to stand up, to yell, to hit her. He closed his eyes, breathed in through his nose, out, the air whistling. He turned on the CB. “She’ll come back,” he said. He tuned it low, to 3.1, the station where he’d heard something that sounded like muffled breathing. There was nothing but white noise. He spun the knob, waited to hear the traffic announcements—nothing. There was no knocking, no beeps. He couldn’t even find the truckers again, or the traffic alerts. “Stupid thing,” he said. He lifted up the transmitter, unmuted it for the first time ever. “Hello? I’m here.”
Frankie sat in front of him. “I didn’t know you’d get this way about it,” she said, suddenly serious.
“I’m not getting any way about it.” Con pressed the mic against his lips. “Hello?”
She grabbed the coiled wire, yanking the transmitter from his mouth. “Listen to me. I only said it because I wanted you to talk to me, to want to hear more.”
This is what breaking up feels like, Con thought. “Fuck you.”
He stood, stepped out of his bedroom, closed the door. He was alone in the darkness of the living room. He’d never said that to anyone before, only toward his mother after she was gone, his voice shouting inside his head. He stared at the door, willed for someone to knock. He turned in circles, gazing into the blackness, as if the whole world was around him and he was completely alone. He imagined his mother somewhere similar, surrounded by white noise. He imagined her hurting, wanted her to be hurting just as much as he was, wanted to hear her say it, to tell him.
“Con?” Frankie called out. He opened the door, looked back in. She was staring at the ceiling, bathed in the glow of the radio. “I think there’s something up there,” she said, pointing.
From the ceiling came a long squeak, like his palm against his counselor’s leather chair.
“What is it?” Frankie whispered, fast.
Con followed the sound to the wall. There was a thump, the squeal of metal bending. Static hissed from the radio, pierced his ears. Then, on its own, the radio spun through frequencies. Con moved to it, looked down, saw the needle sliding back and forth. He smelled electricity. Voices came through sporadically, pieces of conversation, faster and faster until it was nothing but garbled sounds. The front panel cracked, spider-webbed. Then the lights went out, and Frankie screamed.
Con held his arms out, found his bed. He shouted, “Frankie!”
Blood rang in his ears. He became lightheaded. The world spun, and he fell, his chin meeting the carpet. His teeth clacked together, seemed to crack, vibrate his skull, and he could taste blood. From somewhere, he heard Frankie’s voice.
But his eyes were focused on the radio, the green haze, and beyond, the heating vent screwed into the wall, the black spaces between the slats. At first he saw nothing but the whites of eyes glinting in the moonlight. Then he saw the cheekbones, the grin. He tried to scream, but only a gurgle came out. His crotch was warm, hot, and he smelled urine.
Finally, he heard her voice—or something like it—above the buzzing radio, above Frankie’s shrieking—in his head, maybe . . .
“I’ve found you.” The voice was husky and rattling, what comes from a life of smoking, from a death of fire and rending metal. Her fingers slid through the slats, scratched at the carpet. “I’ve finally found you.”
Con tried to move, to crawl, to lift himself up, but couldn’t. His mother’s fingers worked at one screw, then the other, then the grate fell to the carpet. Her translucent face leered in the opening. He heard footsteps pattering and turned his head, caught Frankie’s shape at the front door fumbling awkwardly with the deadbolt—only the first line of defense. His mother had worked her head through the opening, was pinching her shoulder blades together, grasping at the carpet. She was naked, thin, emaciated, her skin bloodless, a dull gray, as it had been at the wake when he had to stare at her face and pretend he still loved her.
She laughed, a high-pitched cackle. “I’ve been looking,” she said, her voice leaking from her throat. Con saw what was left of her teeth since the accident, all cracked and bloodied from where they met the wheel.
She opened her mouth wider, as if trying to turn herself inside out. Her jaw popped. The corners of her lips stretched, tore. Her teeth worked over the top of the CB radio, pulling it back into the black hole of her mouth. She sucked the transmitter in, and when her lips closed, Con could still see the soft glow behind her cheeks, behind her bloodshot eyes. He could still hear the voices, garbled and muffled and wet.
***
CON IS ALONE in his bedroom, remembering everything. He’d told Frankie to wait outside. She’d half-heartedly objected, but Con knows she understands. This part of his life is his own.
In the center of the empty room is a ribcage, cream white in the moonlight, and in the center of the ribcage, hugged by the bones, is his old CB.
“Jesus,” he mutters.
He kneels in front of it, lays the sledgehammer on the carpet. Back then, that night, when the bedroom light came back on, when Con finally pushed himself up from the floor, the radio was gone. Later, when his father asked, Con told him he had thrown it away, and his father placed his hand on Con’s shoulder, told him he was proud of him. Denial, his counselor had said, as a statement rather than a question. Whatever you want it to be, Con had answered.
He reaches through the ribs, rubs dust from the CB’s front panel. He turns it on. It hums to life, warms beneath his fingers, just as he remembers. He plays with the volume, the tuner, focuses on the white noise. There’s a voice, high-pitched and frantic.
Mom, he thinks. Then he says it, to try it out, to see how the word feels in his mouth. “Mom.”
“Hello?” The voice crackles through the speakers. But it isn’t her, he realizes. It’s him—younger, as back then. Again: “Hello?”
Through the radio, he can hear breathing, huffing, as if he’d been running. Then, “Help.”
Con reaches for the transmitter, wants to guide himself to safety.
“Help,” again. As if he’s lost in the static, trapped in the other world he created in his mind.
He stands up, reaches for the hammer. He lifts it over his head, brings it down, crashing through the ribcage, filling the air with powder, crashing through the plastic, through the electronics, the speakers, silences the white noise, his voice.
* * *
GARRETT QUINN lives in North Carolina. “I’ve Finally Found You” is his first published horror story.
CARTAGENA HOTEL
by Jackson Kuhl
* * *
JACKSON KUHL MAY not be the most prolific of writers, but what he puts out is smart, quirky, and always unique. Author of the novel, Samuel Smedley, Connecticut Privateer, Jackson sets his tales in the adventures of history, and writes most often in this following world of the Weird West.
For there are horrors among us, if only we know where to look or, perhaps, avoid, though little can be done if such horror lies just beneath the ground and comes slithering for us in the dead of night. School girls, Eudora and Poppy, set out to uncover the mystery of Ophir’s missing townspeople, though even their imaginations may not help them to victory or to what awaits in the Cartagena Hotel . . .
—EDITORIAL NOTES, ERIC J. GUIGNARD
* * *
A NEWSPAPER ONCE WROTE ABOUT a burglar who, after entering a home and making his selections, would rearrange the furnishings to disguise the absences. If there were two candlesticks at opposite ends of the mantle, the robber would seize one and place the other at the center. Dishes left behind on the plate shelf would be evenly spaced to mask a swiped platter. The emptiness formerly occupied by a place setting nabbed from the silver drawer would be filled by the remaining utensils. In this way, the occupants were long to realize the thefts and, when they finally did, could never say for sure when they might have occurred. Had the lonely candlestick leapt to the middle of the mantle yesterday or had it been there for weeks? At what time the disappearances happened was impossible to pinpoint.
