The Weird Part 62

Besides she's ill. And we have a son. There's him to consider too.'

'How old is your son?'

'Nearly sixteen.'

'What colour are his hair and eyes?'

'Really, I'm not sure. No particular colour. He's not a baby, you know.'

'Are his hands still soft?'

'I shouldn't think so.'

'Do you love your son, then?'

'In his own way, yes, of course.'

'I should love him, were he mine, and my wife too.' It seemed to Maybury that Bannard said it with real sentiment. What was more, he looked at least twice as sad as when Maybury had first seen him: twice as old, and twice as sad. It was all ludicrous, and Maybury at last felt really tired, despite the lump of Bannard looming over him, and looking different.

'Time's up for me,' said Maybury. 'I'm sorry. Do you mind if we go to sleep again?'

Bannard rose at once to his feet, turned his back on Maybury's corner, and went to his bed without a word, thus causing further embarra.s.sment.

It was again left to Maybury to turn out the light, and to shove his way back to bed through the blackness.

Bannard had left more than a waft of the perfume behind him; which perhaps helped Maybury to sleep once more almost immediately, despite all things.

Could the absurd conversation with Bannard have been a dream? Certainly what happened next was a dream: for there was Angela in her night-dress with her hands on her poor head, crying out 'Wake up! Wake up! Wake up!' Maybury could not but comply, and in Angela's place, there was the boy, Vincent, with early morning tea for him. Perforce the light was on once more: but that was not a matter to be gone into.

'Good morning, Mr Maybury.'

'Good morning, Vincent.'

Bannard already had his tea.

Each of them had a pot, a cup, jugs of milk and hot water, and a plate of bread and b.u.t.ter, all set on a tray. There were eight large triangular slices each.

'No sugar,' cried out Bannard genially. 'Sugar kills appet.i.te.'

Perfect rubbish, Maybury reflected; and squinted across at Bannard, recollecting his last rubbishy conversation. By the light of morning, even if it were but the same electric light, Bannard looked much more himself, fluffy red aureole and all. He looked quite rested. He munched away at his bread and b.u.t.ter. Maybury thought it best to go through the motions of following suit. From over there Bannard could hardly see the details.

'Race you to the bathroom, old man,' Bannard cried out.

'Please go first,' responded Maybury soberly. As he had no means of conveying the bread and b.u.t.ter off the premises, he hoped, with the aid of the towel, to conceal it in his skimpy pyjamas jacket, and push it down the water closet. Even Bannard would probably not attempt to throw his arms round him and so uncover the offence.

Down in the lounge, there they all were, with Falkner presiding indefinably but genially. Wan though authentic sunlight trickled in from the outer world, but Maybury observed that the front door was still bolted and chained. It was the first thing he looked for. Universal expectation was detectable: of breakfast, Maybury a.s.sumed. Bannard, at all times shrimpish, was simply lost in the throng. Cecile he could not see, but he made a point of not looking very hard. In any case, several of the people looked new, or at least different. Possibly it was a further example of the phenomenon Maybury had encountered with Bannard.

Falkner crossed to him at once: the recalcitrant but still privileged outsider. 'I can promise you a good breakfast, Mr Maybury,' he said confidentially. 'Lentils. Fresh fish. Rump steak. Apple pie made by ourselves, with lots and lots of cream.'

'I mustn't stay for it,' said Maybury. 'I simply mustn't. I have my living to earn. I must go at once.'

He was quite prepared to walk a couple of miles; indeed, all set for it. The automobile organisation, which had given him the route from which he should never have diverged, could recover his car. They had done it for him before, several times.

A faint shadow pa.s.sed over Falkner's face, but he merely said in a low voice, 'If you really insist, Mr Maybury'

'I'm afraid I have to,' said Maybury.

'Then I'll have a word with you in a moment.'

None of the others seemed to concern themselves. Soon they all filed off, talking quietly among themselves, or, in many cases, saying nothing.

'Mr Maybury,' said Falkner, 'you can respect a confidence?'

'Yes,' said Maybury steadily.

'There was an incident here last night. A death. We do not talk about such things. Our guests do not expect it.'

'I am sorry,' said Maybury.

'Such things still upset me,' said Falkner. 'None the less I must not think about that. My immediate task is to dispose of the body. While the guests are preoccupied. To spare them all knowledge, all pain.'

'How is that to be done?' enquired Maybury.

'In the usual manner, Mr Maybury. The hea.r.s.e is drawing up outside the door even as we speak. Where you are concerned, the point is this. If you wish for what in other circ.u.mstances I could call a lift, I could arrange for you to join the vehicle. It is travelling quite a distance. We find that best.' Falkner was progressively unfastening the front door. 'It seems the best solution, don't you think, Mr Maybury? At least it is the best I can offer. Though you will not be able to thank Mr Bannard, of course.'

A coffin was already coming down the stairs, borne on the shoulders of four men in black, with Vincent, in his white jacket, coming first, in order to leave no doubt of the way and to prevent any loss of time.

'I agree,' said Maybury. 'I accept. Perhaps you would let me know my bill for dinner?'

'I shall waive that too, Mr Maybury,' replied Falkner, 'in the present circ.u.mstances. We have a duty to hasten. We have others to think of. I shall simply say how glad we have all been to have you with us.' He held out his hand. 'Good-bye, Mr Maybury.'

Maybury was compelled to travel with the coffin itself, because there simply was not room for him on the front seat, where a director of the firm, a corpulent man, had to be accommodated with the driver. The nearness of death compelled a respectful silence among the company in the rear compartment, especially when a living stranger was in the midst; and Maybury alighted un.o.btrusively when a bus stop was reached. One of the undertaker's men said that he should not have to wait long.

It Only Comes Out at Night.

Dennis Etchison.

Dennis Etchison (1943) is an American writer and editor of fantasy and horror fiction. His novels include Darkside (1986), Shadowman (1994), and California Gothic (1995). Etchison's stunning short stories have been especially well-regarded by critics and genre fans, receiving the World Fantasy Award and the British Fantasy Award. Stories like 'It Only Comes Out at Night' (1976) demonstrate the effectiveness of Etchison's minimalist approach naturalistic but still undeniably strange, unease becoming horrific sometimes in the span of a single paragraph. Etchison helped influence and shape the US horror boom of the early 1990s, while remaining sui generis.

If you leave L.A. by way of San Bernardino, headed for Route 66 and points east you must cross the Mojave Desert.

Even after Needles and the border, however, there is no relief; the dry air only thins further as the long, relentless climb continues in earnest. Flagstaff is still almost two hundred miles, and Winslow, Gallup and Albuquerque are too many hours away to think of making without food, rest and, mercifully, sleep.

It is like this: the car runs hot, hotter than it ever has before, the plies of the tires expand and contract until the sidewalls begin to shimmy slightly as they spin on over the miserable Arizona roads, giving up a faint odor like burning hair from between the treads, as the windshield colors over with essence of honeybee, wasp, dragonfly, mayfly, June bug, ladybug, and the like, and the radiator, clotted with the bodies of countless kamikaze insects, hisses like a moribund lizard in the sun...

All of which means, of course, that if you are traveling that way between May and September, you move by night.

Only by night.

For there are, after all, dawn check-in motels, Do Not Disturb signs for bungalow doork.n.o.bs; there are diners for mid-afternoon breakfasts, coffee by the carton; there are twenty-four-hour filling stations bright as dreams Whiting Brothers, Conoco, Terrible Herbst their flags are unfamiliar as their names, with ice machines, soda machines, candy machines; and there are the sudden, unexpected Rest Areas, just off the highway, with brick bathrooms and showers and electrical outlets, constructed especially for those who are weary, out of money, behind schedule...

So McClay had had to learn, the hard way.

He slid his hands to the bottom of the steering wheel and peered ahead into the darkness, trying to relax. But the wheel stuck to his fingers like warm candy. Off somewhere to his left, the horizon flickered with pearly luminescence, then faded again to black. This time he did not bother to look. Sometimes, though, he wondered just how far way the lightning was striking; not once during the night had the sound of its thunder reached him here in the car.

In the back seat, his wife moaned.

The trip out had turned all but unbearable for her. Four days it had taken, instead of the expected two-and-a-half; he made a great effort not to think of it, but the memory hung over the car like a thunderhead.

It had been a blur, a fever dream. Once, on the second day, he had been pa.s.sed by a churning bus, its silver sides blinding him until he noticed a Mexican woman in one of the window seats. She was not looking at him. She was holding a swooning infant to the gla.s.s, squeezing water onto its head from a plastic baby bottle to keep it from pa.s.sing out.

McClay sighed and fingered the b.u.t.tons on the car radio.

He knew he would get nothing from the AM or FM bands, not out here, but he clicked it on anyway. He left the volume and tone controls down, so as not to wake Evvie. Then he punched the seldom-used middle b.u.t.ton, the shortwave band, and raised the gain carefully until he could barely hear the radio over the hum of the tires.

Static.

Slowly he swept the tuner across the bandwidth, but there was only white noise. It reminded him a little of the summer rain yesterday, starting back, the way it had sounded bouncing off the windows.

He was about to give up when he caught a voice, crackling, drifting in and out. He worked the k.n.o.b like a safecracker, zeroing in on the signal.

A few bars of music. A tone, then the voice again. '...Greenwich Mean Time.' Then the station ID.

It was the Voice of America overseas broadcast.

He grunted disconsolately and killed it.

His wife stirred.

'Why'd you turn it off?' she murmured. 'I was listening to that. Good. Program.'

'Take it easy,' he said, 'easy, you're still asleep. We'll be stopping soon.'

'...Only comes out at night,' he heard her say, and then she was lost again in the blankets.

He pressed the glove compartment, took out one of the Automobile Club guides. It was already clipped open. McClay flipped on the overhead light and drove with one hand, reading over for the hundredth time? the list of motels that lay ahead. He knew the list by heart, but seeing the names again rea.s.sured him somehow. Besides, it helped to break the monotony.

It was the kind of place you never expect to find in the middle of a long night, a bright place with buildings (a building, at least) and cars, other cars drawn off the highway to be together in the protective circle of light.

A Rest Area.

He would have spotted it without the sign. Elevated sodium vapor lighting bathed the scene in an almost peach-colored glow, strikingly different from the cold blue-white sentinels of the interstate highway. He had seen other Rest Area signs on the way out, probably even this one. But in daylight the signs had meant nothing more to him than 'Frontage Road' or 'Business District Next Right.' He wondered if it were the peculiar warmth of light that made the small island of blacktop appear so inviting.

McClay decelerated, downshifted, and left Interstate 40.

The car dipped and b.u.mped, and he was aware of the new level of sound from the engine as it geared down for the first time in hours.

He eased in next to a Pontiac Firebird, toed the emergency brake, and cut the ignition.

He allowed his eyes to close and his head to sink back into the headrest. At last.

The first thing he noticed was the quiet.

It was deafening. His ears literally began to ring, with the high-pitched whine of a late-night TV test pattern.

The second thing he noticed was a tingling at the tip of his tongue.

It brought to mind a picture of a snake's tongue. Picking up electricity from the air, he thought.

The third was the rustling awake of his wife, in back.

She pulled herself up. 'Are we sleeping now? Why are the lights...?'

He saw the outline of her head in the mirror. 'It's just a rest stop, hon. I the car needs a break.' Well, it was true, wasn't it? 'You want a rest room? There's one back there, see it?'

'Oh my G.o.d.'

'What's the matter now?'

'Leg's asleep. Listen, are we or are we not going to get a'

'There's a motel coming up.' He didn't say that they wouldn't hit the one he had marked in the book for another couple of hours; he didn't want to argue. He knew she needed the rest; he needed it too, didn't he? 'Think I'll have some more of that coffee, though,' he said.

'Isn't any more,' she yawned.

The door slammed.

Now he was able to recognize the ringing in his ears for what it was: the sound of his own blood. It almost succeeded in replacing the steady drone of the car.

He twisted around, fishing over the back of the seat for the ice chest.

There should be a couple of c.o.kes left, at least.

His fingers brushed the basket next to the chest, riffling the edges of maps and tour books, by now reshuffled haphazardly over the first-aid kit he had packed himself (tourniquet, forceps, scissors, ammonia inhalants, Merthiolate, triangular bandage, compress, adhesive bandages, tannic acid) and the fire extinguisher, the extra carton of cigarettes, the remainder of a half-gallon of drinking water, the thermos (which Evvie said was empty, and why would she lie?).

He popped the top of a can.

Through the side window he saw Evvie disappearing around the corner of the building. She was wrapped to the gills in her blanket.

He opened the door and slid out, his back aching.

He stood there blankly, the unnatural light washing over him.