Robert R. McCammon: The Collected Stories Part 12

A whole bunch of 'em wandered past the cafe: half-naked Egyptians brown as berries, women in gaudy dance-hall duds, a pair of fellas in those tall caps with fur on 'em, and ghosts in rags. And then the ghost of a boy about twelve, Ben Junior's age, came over and peered in the cafe's window, and he was joined by the ghost of a woman with long white hair and no teeth. A man in a striped prison suit looked in another window, and peerin' in over his shoulder was the ghost of a tall, skinny fella in clown makeup. In a few minutes more they were all around the cafe, starin' in through the windows at us, and Lord knows our appet.i.tes fled. Fifty or sixty ghosts were out there, lookin' in and maybe longin' to join us. Grace Tarpley, the head waitress, started closin' all the blinds, then Mitch Brenner and Tommy Shawcross got up from their tables and helped her. But as soon as all the blinds were down and the windows sealed up, the ghosts outside took to moanin' and catterwaulin' and that was the end of our dinner. Some folks-live folks, I mean-started cryin' and wailin' too, specially some of the children. h.e.l.l, I even saw a couple of men break down and start bawlin'. This wasn't no fun, that's for sure. Anyway, the noise comin' out of the Concordia Cafe must've scared the ghosts off, because their voices started gettin' fainter and fainter until finally it was just the live people moanin'. Then Gracie let out a scream that almost lifted the roof, because the old farmer sittin' by himself at a booth in the back, an untouched cup of coffee on the table before him, suddenly stood up and faded away. n.o.body had known him, but I guess we all figured he was from the next county. It was gettin' so you couldn't tell the livin' from the dead anymore. The night moved on. It seemed like n.o.body wanted to go home to their haunted houses. Jack and Sarah Kelton came by our table for a few minutes and said the power was still out their way and they'd heard the lines were all fouled up. Which didn't sound so good, since the Keltons lived about two miles closer to town than us. The lights flickered off and on a few times in the cafe, which made everybody scream to high heaven, but Gracie said the men were workin' on the wires down the road and not to worry because there were plenty of flashlights and candles. As Jack talked on about seein' a ghost he swore was Abraham Lincoln strollin' along Highway 211, I looked out the blinds and watched the blue lightnin' cracklin' across the sky. It was a bad night here. h.e.l.l, it was a bad night everywhere.

I don't know how many cups of coffee Vera and I had. Ben Junior got stuffed on potato chips, and gettin' his belly full is a true miracle. Anyway, the crowd started thinnin' out, folks decidin' to go home to sleep-if they could sleep, that is. It was almost time for the Johnny Carson show, and I paid the bill and took Vera and Ben Junior to Clyde's barbershop down the street.

The regulars were there, and the cast-iron stove was stoked up warm and ruddy. The TV was on, the show about ten minutes away from startin'. We found chairs and sat down next to Phil and Gloria Laney. Luke McGuire was there with his wife Missy and their two kids, the Trumans were there and so was Sammy and Beth Kane. Clyde had a few sixpacks of Bud ready, but none of us felt like a beer.

The show started, Johnny Carson came out-all serious this time, didn't even crack a funny-and he showed a few old pictures of Thomas Edison. The first guest was a fella who'd written a biography of Edison, then Mickey Rooney came on because he played Young Edison in a movie a long time ago. The next guest was a man who talked about the ghosts appearin' all over the world, and he said ghosts had been seen from the Sahara desert to the South Pole. He was an expert, I guess, but exactly what at I don't know. While the talkin' was goin' on, buildin' up to Edison appearin', I was thinkin' about the scratched table. What had made that mark? The edge of that Vikin's battle-ax? No, that couldn't be! The ghosts were just pictures hangin' in the air. They weren't real. But I thought about that station wagon we'd seen in the ditch on the way to town, and the sound of Indians war-whoopin' in the woods.

I remembered Clyde saying, "What do you think would happen if everybody who ever died in the whole world came back?"

Ghosts of everybody who'd ever died was one thing. But what if-I liked to choke thinkin' about this... what if everybody who'd ever died in the whole world did come back? Maybe as ghosts first, yes, but... maybe they weren't always gonna stay ghosts. Maybe death had reversed itself. Maybe some of 'em were already turnin' solid, a little piece at a time. As solid as the sharp edge of an ax blade. As solid as Indians, who'd pulled somebody out of their station wagon and- I shook those thoughts out of my head. Ghosts were ghosts. Weren't they?

Shirley MacLaine came on next, carryin' a crystal ball. She said Thomas Edison was a good friend of hers. And then it was time.

They lowered the lights in the studio, I guess so Edison wouldn't get spooked. Then all the guests started callin'

his name and Johnny Carson asked the audience to be real quiet. They guests kept on callin' Thomas Edison's name and askin' him to join them, but the seat next to Johnny's desk stayed empty. It went on awhile, and pretty soon Johnny got that look on his face like when he has a talkin' dog on the show and it won't pip a squeak. I mean, the whole thing was almost ridiculous. "I need a beer," Luke said, and he reached for one. His hand never got there. Because suddenly we all gasped. There was a shape just beginnin' to take form in that empty chair next to Johnny's desk. Some of the audience started talkin', but Johnny hushed them up. The shape was becomin' the body of a man: a white-haired, sad-faced man, dressed in a wrinkled white suit that looked as if it had been slept in for quite some time. The figure got clearer and clearer, and d.a.m.ned if it wasn't the man who was in those old yellowed photographs.

"Got on clothes," Luke rasped. "How can a ghost wear clothes?"

"Shush!" Phil told him, and he leaned closer to the TV.

Clyde turned up the volume. Thomas Edison his own self was sittin' in that chair on the Carson show, and even though the lights were dim he blinked as he looked around as if they stung his eyes. He was tremblin'. So was Johnny, and 'most everybody else. Thomas Edison looked like somebody's frail, scared old grandpap.

"h.e.l.lo, Mr. Edison," Johnny finally said. He sounded like he had a chicken bone caught in his throat. "Can I... call you Tom?"

Edison didn't answer. He just shook and gasped, plain terrified. "Stage fright," Burt said. "Happened to me once when I gave a speech to the Civitan Club."

"Tom?" Johnny Carson went on. "Do you know who I am?"

Edison shook his head, his eyes wet and gla.s.sy.

"Mr. Edison," Shirley said, "we're all your friends here."

Edison gave a soft moan, and Shirley recoiled from him a little bit. "Tom?" Johnny tried again. "Where did you come from?"

"I... don't..." Edison started to speak, but his voice was wispy. "I... don't..." He looked around, gasping for words.

"I... don't... belong here." He squinted at the audience. "I don't... like this place."

"We all love you," Shirley told him. "Tell us about your journey, and what you've seen on the other si-" If ever h.e.l.l broke loose on earth, it was the next instant.

Somebody in the audience took a picture. You could see the quick pop and glare of the flashbulb, right in Tom Edison's eyeb.a.l.l.s. Another flash went off, and a third. Johnny Carson jumped up and shouted, "No pictures! I said no pictures! Somebody get those cameras!" The studio lights came on, real sudden. Tom Edison almost jumped out of his chair. People in the audience were rushin' the stage, and Johnny Carson was yellin' for everybody to stay back, but you could hardly hear him over the noise. More flashbulbs were poppin', and I guess somehow the reporters had gotten into the studio when they weren't supposed to be there. Lights flashed in Tom Edison's face, and all of a sudden he reached out and plucked that crystal ball off Shirley's lap, and he threw it straight into the TV camera that was trained on him. The camera smashed, zigzag lines goin' all over the screen. Another TV camera trained on Edison and caught him as he stood up, screamed at the top of his lungs, and vanished in a whirl of blue mist.

"Everybody sit down!" Johnny was shoutin'. People were still tryin' to get closer, and now you could see folks grapplin' with each other like a backwoods wrestlin' match. "Everybody please sit-" The screen went dark. "Somebody stepped on a cord," Burt said. Static jumped and jittered across the screen, and then a message came on: NETWORK DIFFICULTY. PLEASE STAND BY.

We stood by, but the Carson show didn't come back on. "He picked it up," Luke said quietly. "Did you see that?

He picked it up."

"Picked what up?" Clyde asked. "What're you babblin' about?"

"Thomas Edison picked up the crystal ball and flung it," Luke told him, and looked around at the rest of us. "A ghost picked up somethin' solid. How can a ghost pick up somethin' solid?"

n.o.body answered. I almost did, but I kept my mouth shut. I didn't want what I was thinkin' to be true. Maybe I should have said somethin', but the time slipped past.

Lightnin' flared and crackled over Concordia. About three seconds later, the barbershop's lights flickered once, twice, and went out. All of Concordia lay in darkness. Vera grasped my hand so hard I thought my knuckles were about to bust.

"Well, that's that," Clyde said. He stood up in the dark, and Luke lit a match. In its pale glow we all looked like ghosts. Clyde turned off the dead TV. "I don't know about everybody else," he said, "but I'm goin' home and get a good night's sleep, ghosts or not."

The group started breakin' up, and Clyde locked the doors. "We ought to go to the Holiday Inn over near Grangeville," I told Vera and Ben Junior as we were walkin' back to the pickup. "Maybe they'll have the power on over there. All right?"

Vera wouldn't let go of my hand. "No," she said. "I can't sleep in a strange bed. Lord knows all I want to do is get in my bed and pull the covers over my head and hope I wake up from this nightmare in the mornin'.

"Holiday Inn might be safer," I said. Instantly I regretted it, because Vera stiffened up. "Safer?" she asked. "Safer?

What's that mean?"

If I told her what I was thinkin', that would be all she wrote. You'd have to peel Vera off a wall. Ben Junior was listenin' too, and I knew he knew, but still and all, home was where we belonged. "All right, hon," I said, and put my arm around her. "We'll sleep in our own bed tonight." Vera relaxed, and I was mighty glad I hadn't steered her into dark, deep water.

We started off. The pickup's headlights were a comfort. Maybe we should sleep in the truck tonight, I thought. No, we'd all have cricked backs in the mornin'. Best to get on home and pull the covers over our heads just like Vera wanted to. I found myself thinkin' about the rifle down in the bas.e.m.e.nt. I ought to get that out and loaded. Wouldn't hurt to have it beside the bed if I needed- "Look out, Ben!" Vera shouted, and I went for the brake, but too late.

The caveman was standin' in the road. He snarled and lifted that club studded with sharp-edged rocks, and as he swung it I could see the muscles ripple in his ape-like shoulders.

I expected the club to turn to mist. I wanted it to. I prayed for it, in that long instant as it came at the fender in a powerful blur. Oh, G.o.d, I prayed for it.

The club smashed into the front of our pickup truck with a shock that lifted us all off the seat. Vera screamed and so did Ben Junior, and I think Ben Senior let out a scream too. One of the headlights shattered and went out. I felt and heard somethin' boom and clatter in the engine, behind the crushed radiator. The truck lurched, and steam bellowed out around the crumpled hood. The caveman jumped back as the truck pa.s.sed him, but I think he was scared just as witless as we were. I looked into the rearview mirror and saw him standin' there in the glare of the red taillights. Lightnin' flared behind him, over dark Concordia. I think he was grinnin'. He swung his club, and he started lumberin' along the road in the direction we were goin'.

The truck was laborin'. "Come on, come on!" I said, and I kept my foot to the gas. Vera's scream had broken; she was a shakin' moan, pressed up against my ribs. "He hit us, Dad!" Ben Junior said. "That sumb.i.t.c.h hit us!"

"Yeah," I told him. Wheezed it, really. "Yeah, I know he did." The truck kept goin'. Chevy builds 'em strong. But I watched the gauges and I listened to the engine racketin', and I knew the eight miles home was askin' way too much.

Finally, with a groan and a shudder, the engine quit. I let the truck coast as far as she'd go, and I prayed again, this time for a slope to take us home, but I knew the road was flat as a flounder all the way to our front porch. We rolled to a stop, and we sat there.

"We've stopped, Dad," Ben Junior said.

I nodded. One part of me wanted to wring his neck. One part of me wanted to wring my own neck. Vera was sobbin', and I put my arm around her tight. "Don't cry," I said. "We're all right. We're gonna be fine. Don't cry, now." She kept cryin'. Words were cheap.

We sat for a while longer. Out in the night we could hear the freight-train roar of a tornado movin' through the hills. "Dad?" Ben Junior said at last, "I don't think we ought to stay here all night." I hadn't raised a dummy, that was for sure; I was the dumb one, for not insistin' we go to the Holiday Inn.

I hesitated at openin' the door. Vera was clingin' to me, and I'm not sure whose heart was poundin' harder. I was thinkin' about the caveman, with his club that must've weighed seventy or eighty pounds. He was between us and Concordia, and every second we wasted brought him closer. I got out of the truck real quick, pulled Vera out, and Ben Junior scram bled out the other side. Lightnin' crackled overhead, and you could hear tornadoes moanin' in the night.

"We've got to get home," I said, maybe just to steady up my own nerves. Once I had my hands on that rifle and we were shut up in our bedroom with our backs to the wall, we'd be just fine. "Sooner we start, the sooner we'll get there."

"It's dark," Vera whispered, her voice shakin'. "Oh, Lord, it's so dark." I knew she was talkin' about the road that lay ahead. I knew every curve and b.u.mp in it, but tonight it was a road that led through the haunted world. Out in the woods were Indians, Roman soldiers, n.a.z.is, Chinese karate kickers, at least one Vikin' with a battle-ax, and G.o.d only knew what else. And behind us, maybe stalkin' somethin'

good to eat, was a caveman with an eighty-pound club.

And all of 'em, all the ghosts, maybe gettin' more solid by the hour. What was gonna happen, I wondered, when all the billions and billions of people who'd ever died in the world were back on earth again, hungry and thirsty, some of 'em peaceful folks for sure, but others ready to chop your head off or bust your skull with a club? One rifle suddenly seemed an awful puny thing. I had a thought: If we got killed, we wouldn't stay dead very long, would we?

The tornadoes sounded closer, whirlin' more ghosts into the woods. I said, "Come on," in the calmest voice I could manage, and I pulled Vera along with me. Ben Junior walked close to me on the other side, his hands clenched into fists. We had a long way to go. Maybe a car would come along. Maybe. This wasn't a night fit for travelin'. The road ahead was dark, so very dark. We had no choice but to walk it.

Copyright 1989 by Robert R. McCammon. All rights reserved. This story originally appeared in the anthology Post Mortem, edited by Paul F. Olson and David B. Silva and first published in March 1989. Reprinted with permission of the author.

EAT ME.

Winner of the 1989 Bram Stoker Award for Best Short Story A question gnawed, day and night, at Jim Crisp. He pondered it as he walked the streets, while a dark rain fell and rats chattered at his feet; he mulled over it as he sat in his apartment, staring at the static on the television screen hour after hour. The question haunted him as he sat in the cemetery on Fourteenth Street, surrounded by empty graves. And this burning question was: when did love die?

Thinking took effort. It made his brain hurt, but it seemed to Jim that thinking was his last link with life. He used to be an accountant, a long time ago. He'd worked with a firm downtown for over twenty years, had never been married, hadn't dated much either. Numbers, logic, the rituals of mathematics had been the center of his life; now logic itself had gone insane, and no one kept records anymore. He had a terrible sensation of not belonging in this world, of being suspended in a nightmare that would stretch to the boundaries of eternity. He had no need for sleep any longer; something inside him had burst a while back, and he'd lost the ten or twelve pounds of fat that had gathered around his middle over the years. His body was lean now, so light sometimes a strong wind knocked him off his feet. The smell came and went, but Jim had a caseload of English Leather in his apartment and he took baths in the stuff.

The open maw of time frightened him. Days without number lay ahead. What was there to do, when there was nothing to be done? No one called the roll, no one punched the time-clock, no one set the deadlines. This warped freedom gave a sense of power to others; to Jim it was the most confining of prisons, because all the symbols of order-stoplights, calendars, clocks-were still there, still working, yet they had no purpose or sense, and they reminded him too much of what had been before.

As he walked, aimlessly, through the city's streets he saw others moving past, some as peaceful as sleepwalkers, some raging in the grip of private tortures. Jim came to a corner and stopped, instinctively obeying the DON'T WALK sign; a high squealing noise caught his attention, and he looked to his left. Rats were scurrying wildly over one of the lowest forms of humanity, a half-decayed corpse that had recently awakened and pulled itself from the grave. The thing crawled on the wet pavement, struggling on one thin arm and two sticklike legs. The rats were chewing it to pieces, and as the thing reached Jim, its skeletal face lifted and the single dim coal of an eye found him. From its mouth came a rattling noise, stifled when several rats squeezed themselves between the gray lips in search of softer flesh. Jim hurried on, not waiting for the light to change. He thought the thing had said Whhhyyy? and for that question he had no answer. He felt shame in the coil of his entrails. When did love die? Had it perished at the same time as this living death of human flesh had begun, or had it already died and decayed long before? He went on, through the somber streets where the buildings brooded like tombstones, and he felt crushed beneath the weight of loneliness. Jim remembered beauty; a yellow flower, the scent of a woman's perfume, the warm sheen of a woman's hair. Remembering was another bar in the prison of bones; the power of memory taunted him unmercifully. He remembered walking on his lunch hour, sighting a pretty girl and following her for a block or two, enraptured by fantasies. He had always been searching for love, for someone to be joined with, and had never realized it so vitally before now, when the gray city was full of rats and the restless dead.

Someone with a cavity where its face had been stumbled past, arms waving blindly. What once had been a child ran by him, and left the scent of rot in its wake, Jim lowered his head, and when a gust of hot wind hit him he lost his balance and would have slammed into a concrete wall if he hadn't grabbed hold of a bolted-down mailbox. He kept going, deeper into the city, on pavement he'd never walked when he was alive. At the intersection of two unfamiliar streets he thought he heard music: the crackle of a guitar, the low grunting of a drumbeat. He turned against the wind, fighting the gusts that threatened to hurl him into the air, and followed the sound. Two blocks ahead a strobe light flashed in a cavernous entrance. A sign that read THE COURTYARD had been broken out, and across the front of the building was scrawled BONEYARD in black spray paint. Figures moved within the entrance: dancers, gyrating in the flash of the strobes.

The thunder of the music repulsed him-the soft grace of Brahms remained his lullaby, not the raucous crudity of Grave Rock-but the activity, the movement, the heat of energy drew him closer. He scratched a maddening itch on the dry flesh at the back of his neck and stood on the threshold while the music and the glare blew around him. The Courtyard, he thought, glancing at the old sign. It was the name of a place that might once have served white wine and polite jazz music-a singles bar, maybe, where the lonely went to meet the lonely. The Boneyard it was now, all right: a realm of dancing skeletons. This was not his kind of place, but still... the noise, lights, and gyrations spoke of another kind of loneliness. It was a singles bar for the living dead, and it beckoned him in. Jim crossed the threshold, and with one desiccated hand he smoothed down his remaining bits of black hair. And now he knew what h.e.l.l must be like: a smoky, rot-smelling pandemonium. Some of the things writhing on the dance floor were missing arms and legs, and one thin figure in the midst of a whirl lost its hand; the withered flesh skidded across the linoleum, was crushed underfoot as its owner scrabbled after it, and then its owner was likewise pummeled down into a twitching ma.s.s. On the bandstand were two guitar players, a drummer, and a legless thing hammering at an electric organ. Jim avoided the dance floor, moving through the crowd toward the blue neon bar. The drum's pounding offended him, in an obscene way; it reminded him too much of how his heartbeat used to feel before it clenched and ceased.

This was a place his mother-G.o.d rest her soul-would have warned him to avoid. He had never been one for nightlife, and looking into the decayed faces of some of these people was a preview of torments that lay ahead-but he didn't want to leave. The drumbeat was so loud it destroyed all thinking, and for a while he could pretend it was indeed his own heart returned to scarlet life; and that, he realized, was why the Boneyard was full from wall to wall. This was a mockery of life, yes, but it was the best to be had.

The bar's neon lit up the rotting faces like blue-shadowed Halloween masks. One of them, down to shreds of flesh clinging to yellow bone, shouted something unintelligible and drank from a bottle of beer; the liquid streamed through the fissure in his throat and down over his violet shirt and gold chains. Flies swarmed around the bar, drawn to the reek, and Jim watched as the customers pressed forward. They reached into their pockets and changepurses and offered freshly-killed rats, roaches, spiders, and centipedes to the bartender, who placed the objects in a large gla.s.s jar that had replaced the cash register. Such was the currency of the Dead World, and a particularly juicy rat bought two bottles of Miller Lite. Other people were laughing and hollering-gasping, brittle sounds that held no semblance of humanity. A fight broke out near the dance floor, and a twisted arm thunked to the linoleum to the delighted roar of the onlookers.

"I know you!" A woman's face thrust forward into Jim's. She had tatters of gray hair, and she wore heavy makeup over sunken cheeks, her forehead swollen and cracked by some horrible inner pressure. Her glittery dress danced with light, but smelled of grave dirt. "Buy me a drink!" she said, grasping his arm. A flap of flesh at her throat fluttered, and Jim realized her throat had been slashed. "Buy me a drink!" she insisted, "No," Jim said, trying to break free. "No, I'm sorry."

"You're the one who killed me!" she screamed. Her grip tightened, about to snap Jim's forearm. "Yes you are! You killed me, didn't you?" And she picked up an empty beer bottle off the bar, her face contorted with rage, and started to smash it against his skull.

But before the blow could fall a man lifted her off her feet and pulled her away from Jim; her fingernails flayed to the bones of Jim's arm. She was still screaming, fighting to pull away, and the man, who wore a T-shirt with Boneyard painted across it, said, "She's a fresh one. Sorry, mac," before he hauled her toward the entrance. The woman's scream got shriller, and Jim saw her forehead burst open and ooze like a stomped snail. He shuddered, backing into a dark corner-and there he b.u.mped into another body.

"Excuse me," he said. Started to move away. Glanced at whom he'd collided with. And saw her.

She was trembling, her skinny arms wrapped around her chest. She still had most of her long brown hair, but in places it had diminished to the texture of spiderwebs and her scalp showed. Still, it was lovely hair. It looked almost healthy. Her pale blue eyes were liquid and terrified, and her face might have been pretty once. She had lost most of her nose, and gray-rimmed craters pitted her right cheek. She was wearing sensible clothes: a skirt and blouse and a sweater b.u.t.toned to the throat. Her clothes were dirty, but they matched. She looked like a librarian, he decided. She didn't belong in the Boneyard-but, then, where did anyone belong anymore?

He was about to move away when he noticed something else that caught a glint of frenzied light. Around her neck, just peeking over the collar of her sweater, was a silver chain, and on that chain hung a tiny cloisonne heart.

It was a fragile thing, like a bit of bone china, but it held the power to freeze Jim before he took another step.

"That's... that's very pretty," he said. He nodded at the heart.

Instantly her hand covered it. Parts of her fingers had rotted off, like his own.

He looked into her eyes; she stared-or at least pretended to-right past him. She shook like a frightened deer. Jim paused, waiting for a break in the thunder, nervously casting his gaze to the floor. He caught a whiff of decay, and whether it was from himself or her he didn't know; what did it matter? He shivered too, not knowing what else to say but wanting to say something, anything, to make a connection. He sensed that at any moment the girl-whose age might be anywhere from twenty to forty, since Death both tightened and wrinkled at the same time -might bolt past him and be lost in the crowd. He thrust his hands into his pockets, not wanting her to see the exposed fingerbones. "This is the first time I've been here," he said. "I don't go out much." She didn't answer. Maybe her tongue is gone, he thought. Or her throat. Maybe she was insane, which could be a real possibility. She pressed back against the wall, and Jim saw how very thin she was, skin stretched over frail bones. Dried up on the inside, he thought. Just like me.

"My name is Jim," he told her. "What's yours?"

Again, no reply. I'm no good at this! he agonized. Singles bars had never been his "scene", as the saying went. No, his world had always been his books, his job, his cla.s.sical records, his cramped little apartment that now seemed like a four-walled crypt. There was no use in standing here, trying to make conversation with a dead girl. He had dared to eat the peach, as Eliot's Prufrock lamented, and found it rotten, "Brenda," she said, so suddenly it almost startled him. She kept her hand over the heart, her other arm across her sagging b.r.e.a.s.t.s. Her head was lowered, her hair hanging over the cratered cheek.

"Brenda," Jim repeated; he heard his voice tremble. "That's a nice name." She shrugged, still pressed into the corner as if trying to squeeze through a c.h.i.n.k in the bricks. Another moment of decision presented itself. It was a moment in which Jim could turn and walk three paces away, into the howling ma.s.s at the bar, and release Brenda from her corner; or a moment in which Brenda could tell him to go away, or curse him to his face, or scream with haunted dementia and that would be the end of it. The moment pa.s.sed, and none of those things happened. There was just the drumbeat, pounding across the club, pounding like a counterfeit heart, and the roaches ran their race on the bar and the dancers continued to fling bits of flesh off their bodies like autumn leaves.

He felt he had to say something. "I was just walking. I didn't mean to come here." Maybe she nodded. Maybe; he couldn't tell for sure, and the light played tricks. "I didn't have anywhere else to go," he added. She spoke, in a whispery voice that he had to strain to hear: "Me neither." Jim shifted his weight-what weight he had left. "Would you... like to dance?" he asked, for want of anything better.

"Oh, no!" She looked up quickly. "No, I can't dance! I mean... I used to dance, sometimes, but... I can't dance anymore."

Jim understood what she meant; her bones were brittle, just as his own were. They were both as fragile as husks, and to get out on that dance floor would tear them both to pieces. "Good," he said. "I can't dance either." She nodded, with an expression of relief. There was an instant in which Jim saw how pretty she must have been before all this happened-not pretty in a flashy way, but pretty as homespun lace-and it made his brain ache. "This is a loud place," he said. "Too loud."

"I've... never been here before." Brenda removed her hand from the necklace, and again both arms protected her chest. "I knew this place was here, but..." She shrugged her thin shoulders. "I don't know."

"You're..." lonely, he almost said. As lonely as I am. "... alone?" he asked.

"I have friends," she answered, too fast.

"I don't," he said, and her gaze lingered on his face for a few seconds before she looked away. "I mean, not in this place," he amended. "I don't know anybody here, except you." He paused, and then he had to ask the question: "Why did you come here tonight?"

She almost spoke, but she closed her mouth before the words got out. I know why, Jim thought. Because you're searching. Just like I am. You went out walking, and maybe you came in here because you couldn't stand to be alone another second. I can look at you, and hear you screaming. "Would you like to go out?" he asked. "Walking, I mean. Right now, so we can talk?"

"I don't know you," she said, uneasily.

"I don't know you, either. But I'd like to."

"I'm..." Her hand fluttered up to the cavity where her nose had been. "Ugly," she finished.

"You're not ugly. Anyway, I'm no handsome prince." He smiled, which stretched the flesh on his face. Brenda might have smiled, a little bit; again, it was hard to tell. "I'm not a crazy," Jim rea.s.sured her. "I'm not on drugs, and I'm not looking for somebody to hurt. I just thought... you might like to have some company." Brenda didn't answer for a moment. Her fingers played with the cloisonne heart. "All right," she said finally. "But not too far. Just around the block."

"Just around the block," he agreed, trying to keep his excitement from showing too much. He took her arm-she didn't seem to mind his fleshless fingers-and carefully guided her through the crowd. She felt light, like a dry-rotted stick, and he thought that even he, with his shrunken muscles, might be able to lift her over his head. Outside, they walked away from the blast of the Boneyard. The wind was getting stronger, and they soon were holding to each other to keep from being swept away. "A storm's coming," Brenda said, and Jim nodded. The storms were fast and ferocious, and their winds made the buildings shake. But Jim and Brenda kept walking, first around the block and then, at Brenda's direction, southward. Their bodies were bent like question marks; overhead, clouds masked the moon and blue streaks of electricity began to lance across the sky.

Brenda was not a talker, but she was a good listener. Jim told her about himself, about the job he used to have, about how he'd always dreamed that someday he'd have his own firm. He told her about a trip he once took, as a young man, to Lake Michigan, and how cold he recalled the water to be. He told her about a park he visited once, and how he remembered the sound of happy laughter and the smell of flowers. "I miss how it used to be," he said, before he could stop himself, because in the Dead World voicing such regrets was a punishable crime. "I miss beauty," he went on. "I miss... love."

She took his hand, bone against bone, and said, "This is where I live."

It was a plain brownstone building, many of the windows broken out by the windstorms. Jim didn't ask to go to Brenda's apartment; he expected to be turned away on the front steps. But Brenda still had hold of his hand, and now she was leading him up those steps and through the gla.s.sless door.

Her apartment, on the fourth floor, was even smaller than Jim's. The walls were a somber gray, but the lights revealed a treasure-pots of flowers set around the room and out on the fire escape. "They're silk," Brenda explained, before he could ask. "But they look real, don't they?"

"They look... wonderful." He saw a stereo and speakers on a table, and near the equipment was a collection of records. He bent down, his knees creaking, and began to examine her taste in music. Another shock greeted him: Beethoven... Chopin... Mozart... Vivaldi... Strauss. And, yes, even Brahms. "Oh!" he said, and that was all he could say.

"I found most of those," she said. "Would you like to listen to them?"

"Yes. Please."

She put on the Chopin, and as the piano chords swelled, so did the wind, whistling in the hall and making the windows tremble.

And then she began to talk about herself: She had been a secretary, in a refrigeration plant across the river. Had never married, though she'd been engaged once. Her hobby was making silk flowers, when she could find the material. She missed ice cream most of all, she said. And summer-what had happened to summer, like it used to be? All the days and nights seemed to bleed together now, and nothing made any of them different. Except the storms, of course, and those could be dangerous.

By the end of the third record, they were sitting side by side on her sofa. The wind had gotten very strong outside; the rain came and went, but the wind and lightning remained.

"I like talking to you," she told him. "I feel like... I've known you for a long, long time."

"I do too. I'm glad I came into that place tonight." He watched the storm and heard the wind shriek. "I don't know how I'm going to get home."

"You... don't have to go," Brenda said, very quietly. "I'd like for you to stay." He stared at her, unbelieving. The back of his neck itched fiercely, and the itch was spreading to his shoulders and arms, but he couldn't move.