From Darkness Comes: The Horror Box Set (173 page)

“Anyway,
I thought I had put most of the war behind me. Got a job at the mill and was
bringing home enough coin to get the family going. Me and the wife had a few
little ones running around and bought into a new housing plan. They built the
two-bedroom places on the ridge above the mills. You had to drive now, instead
of walking. Gave a man like me the feeling that I was somehow removed from the
dirty, hot, deadly blast furnace that I stood next to every day. Sure, the
smoke and smog rolled up to the ridge with the winds. Dropped so much shit on
us that she couldn’t hang clothes out to dry. We had an above-ground pool
installed, and I had to sweep that fucker daily or the bottom would be covered
with the black filth that US Steel blasted out the chimneys.

“Must’ve
been ’49 or ’50 when I spoke to Gaki again. I had hosted a poker game with the
boys and things got a bit rowdy. A few jokers from the Navy joined us. If you
sit at a card table and see an anchor tattooed on a forearm, get the hell out
of there. Those boys spend weeks, months, floating in the middle of the godforsaken
ocean. They get damned good at poker.

“The game
ended and I grabbed a fistful of poker chips and three fingers of Jack before
the table cleared and everyone left. I think it was midsummer. Shit was hot,
heavy. I wonder if Gaki found me that night ‘cause he felt at home, like he was
back prowling the jungles looking for shit to eat.”

Drew turned and
sweat broke out on his forehead. He felt the pace of the dream quickening and,
like before, was powerless to stop it or to wake up.

“I heard the
moaning and thought it had woken me up, but it hadn’t. It was happening in my
dream. I know that now, but didn’t realize it back then. I was lying on my back
with the wife in her twin bed, our bedside table between us. Man had to get
damn creative to make babies in those days, what with separate beds and all. I
looked up towards the doorway and saw a shadow pass by. It wasn’t one of those
tricks your mind plays on you in the middle of the night. Wasn’t one of those
noises that convince you a monster is prowling the house. No, this was real.

“I
saw it come back the other way and knew Gaki wanted to talk, but for some
reason, he wanted to do it on his terms. Figuring I had no reason to invite the
eater of shit into the room where the mother of my children slept, I got up. I
pulled a robe around my waist and hitched my boxers up before walking out of
the bedroom. I caught glimpses of the shadow as it turned the corner of the
landing towards the main floor. I got to the bottom of the steps. The house
shook and the floorboards creaked like there was a whole bunch of folks walking
around in there.

“‘Sit.’

“That one
word tasted like spoiled, sour milk in my mouth. Hearing it made my stomach
turn and I gagged as if trying to expel the sound of his voice from my body. I
did as he commanded and sat in a wooden rocking chair that belonged to my
granddaddy. The arms of the chair had blond streaks where the stain had been
worn away by him. He loved that rocker.

“‘Why are
you back?’ I asked.

“Gaki said
nothing. I could not see him yet, but I sensed him in the room. He poisoned the
air with a foul stench that knocked me back, even in a dream.

“‘The greed.
Now it’s yours. Now you Gaki.’

“‘No. No
fucking way. I left the war, and you, and all of that horrific shit on a beach
in the Pacific. I’m done.’

“‘Yours,
yours.’

“‘This is
just a dream,’ I said. Gaki’s words rocked me. I struggled to think, to speak.

“‘It will
consume you. No release.’

“‘Why are
you back?’ I asked again, knowing I would never get an explanation.

“He
pointed to the gold coin hanging around my neck.

“‘Now you are
eater of shit.’

“That was
the last line that sonovabitch ever said to me. Can you believe that? I’m now ‘eater
of shit.’ What did that mean?

“As the
months and years moved on, I started to understand Gaki. The greed came in
waves, pounding the shores of my sanity into submission.”

He
would have to drink coffee without Sage. Ravna scanned the counter and cramped
kitchen behind it before accepting the idea that his goth princess was not on
shift today. His mind floated away, imagining her in nothing but black panties,
wrapped between white, satin sheets in a room full of candles.

“Sign?”
The fellow behind the counter snapped Ravna back to reality. He held the torn,
curled paper spit out by the credit-card-authorization device along with a pen.
A tether held the end of the pen to the countertop with a braided, hemp string.
Ravna looked into the face of disenfranchised youth. A black teardrop tattoo
sat underneath the boy’s right eye while coal-black bangs swung down over the
left. The plugs in his lobes stretched the opening to the size of a quarter,
and his mascara ran a bit at the corners. The Bullet for My Valentine shirt
clung to the boy’s thin frame, and a white apron covered his hips.

“Sorry.
Lost my train of thought.”

The
boy waited, unmoved. Ravna signed the slip and carried the tray to his favorite
table, the one in the corner that looked out to the main thoroughfare. Pedestrians
shuffled past the window, blowing plumes of breath into the frigid air.

He
set the laptop on the table and sighed. Ravna looked up at the faux-coffee-bag
banners strung from the pipes in the ceiling, contemplating what he might do
when the log-on screen appeared. There was the
He Knows You’re Dead
review with a Friday deadline, and the interview spread with Roc Salta, a hot,
new horror-flick director that Ravna had chased for months before Salta’s agent
granted his interview request. As his fingers caressed the keyboard with the
familiar pattern of his username, Ravna knew both of those pieces would have to
wait. He smelled Gaki in this town, and that could be a once-in-a-lifetime
opportunity.

The
bell on the glass double doors jingled. Ravna looked up in time to see Sage’s
braided hair. She wore pink sweats and a fluffy, Eskimo winter coat, which
immediately tarnished his vampire-chick fantasy. She walked to the counter
where Bullet for My Valentine boy handed her an envelope.

Payday
, thought Ravna, turning his attention back
to his research.

Ravna
logged on to the laptop and shuffled through his messenger bag until he found
the book. The ancient text felt heavy in his hands, an obligation more
cumbersome than its physical weight. He placed it on the table.

The
web browser appeared and Ravna went directly to the Channel 7 website. He
scanned the headlines for the most recent one on the Crooked Tail River murder.
With a click of the mouse, the story filled the screen. An image accompanying
the story stole Ravna’s attention. On the screen appeared a vivacious woman
enjoying a drink. Her dark hair looked youthful but on the cusp of turning
lighter, toward the beginnings of gray. She smiled at the camera with a
sensuality far deeper than the shallow supermodels in glossy magazines. The
woman was sexy because of what she hid, not what she revealed.

Victim
Vivian Cabmel
, read the
caption underneath.

Ravna
skimmed the article, which could have been written about the murder of any
attractive, single woman. It was filled with the usual comments from neighbors,
acquaintances, and detectives.

A
new e-mail envelope appeared in the bottom, right corner of the screen, which
drew Ravna’s attention from the story. He opened it and immediately began a
reply, forcing the murder of Vivian Cabmel a notch down on his priority list.

***

Although he
could not see the daylight struggling to break through the dying night, he felt
it. The dream kept his mind occupied while his body tossed and turned in the
bed. The messenger would not release him until it was time.

“Televisions,
cars, even women. Mostly electronics. I could not help myself when it came to
electronics. I paid thirteen hundred dollars for one of the first VCRs that hit
the market. Mighta been Betamax. Ain’t that the shit? It never ended with the
first or even the best. I had to have it all. If TI came out with a new
calculator, I bought the whole line. Shit, I had no more use for a calculator
than a dildo, but I couldn’t stop myself.

“It didn’t
happen all at once. I remember the wife asking me why the account was
overdrawn. We had two or three checks come back. In those days, bouncing a
check was like wearing a scarlet letter. Everyone in town knew you were a
deadbeat or a cheat, even the priest and the nuns of the parish. You see, greed
doesn’t swoop in like you hit the lottery. It creeps underneath your door and
slowly steals your sanity until you’re consumed by it. It was so clear when I
think about it now. The connection between Gaki, the greed, and what he said to
me was crystal. I think I didn’t want to believe it. I can sense you already
don’t. You’re trying to convince yourself that I’m telling you this story
because it’s entertaining or because it’s some kind of wicked family genealogy.
Well, it’s all of that, too, I guess.

“But I’m
getting ahead of myself. As I was saying, the greed had me by the balls. It’s
one thing if you’re lusting after VCRs and televisions, but it’s another if
you’re chasing other men’s wives. I fucked my way through the entire
neighborhood. I dipped my pecker into every lonely housewife on the block, most
of them more than once, and several let me put it anywhere I damn well pleased.
Yeah, she knew. But what could she do about it? Men worked and brought home the
paycheck, and the women tended house and kids. There wasn’t no other option. Wasn’t
like she was going to head out on her own, find a job with nothing but an
eighth-grade education and three runts tugging on her skirt. She knew and she
had to deal with it. I had my greed and she had my greed. You share it all,
good stuff and bad, in marriage.

“She
confronted me on the cheating once. Once. After I let’er have her say, I
knocked two teeth from her mouth and pushed her nose so crooked the doc had to
fix it. Told ’em she fell down the stairs with a look that said he would too if
he questioned it. Different times.

“Never had
recurring dreams of a bayonet slicing through a man’s gut, or of arms blown off
at the shoulder and lying in the dirt, or raping them gook women until they
bled. I lived those things and they never came back to me like they did for
other GIs. I was free and clear of those sins, like they was committed by
someone else in some other time, like some bad Saturday matinee starring John
Wayne and his cigarette. Nope, never had flashbacks or crazy nightmares about
the war. My pain was much worse as my greed consumed my every living moment.

“As my body
started breaking down and her mind starting going, the pull of the greed
lessened. No, it didn’t lessen. My ability to slake its thirst did. After
retirement, I couldn’t keep up with the newest electronics. Think I had one of
the first cellular phones, but never went past that. No computers or laptops. Couldn’t
get the women no more, neither. Right before I retired I managed to find enough
in our savings to splurge on three call girls. That was some night, although my
parts ain’t what they used to be and I spent most of the time watching them
enjoy each other. Either way, it was money well spent and the last of the
sexual urges I could satisfy with my old bones.

“I didn’t
stop with the cars. Got a new one every other year, each one bigger and more
loaded than the last. Had me a Caddy, Lincoln, a couple of Oldsmobiles. The
cars they used to call tanks meant something. Not every skirt in town had an
SUV. If you had power windows, you were somebody. Then again, I’m not sure how
much it all mattered. Greed had me by the balls so tight that for the last few
years of my life the car sat in the garage six days a week. Sundays I took it
to church along with a sister and a sister-in-law. Greed had me collect gas
money from them. How’s that, son? How’s that for being a dickheaded cheapskate?

“Your
grandma had lost it by then. Her mind flew the coop long ago, and the family
pretended there was still some essence of her left in that broken body. They’d
say things like, ‘Nana seems better today. She called me by name.’ Guess when
you can’t remember the names of your kids no more, getting one right out of
sheer luck is a ‘good day.’ Point is, I was free of her scrutiny, her fucking
judgment. She knew better than to confront me on my consumption, so she bundled
it up in neat little packages, dispensing it at times that would make it
impossible for me to smack her in the mouth. By the end, she lost that too. I
got tired of cleaning her shit off the walls, forcing her to change her fucking
underwear, or helping her get in the bathtub. Ain’t nothing loving about a loss
of dignity.

“I
thought on many a night about the handgun I kept under the floorboards in the
bedroom. Thought I could arrange it to be a suicide. Shit, I’ll bet I coulda
put it in her hand and told her to do it and she would have. Your ma is the
only thing that stopped me. That was my oasis, my one place of refuge from the
curse Gaki laid on me. My only daughter was my light. I could see the pain in her
eyes when she saw your grandmother, drool running down her face, passing the
most violent gas you could possibly smell. Yep, your ma still loved her ma, and
for that reason alone I couldn’t release my wife from the disease that ate away
at her brain. Your mother had hope, and that would outrun the greed by just a
bit.

“Of
course, even hope dies. We were both in the home by then. It took me all of two
weeks to realize what a shithole that place was. Didn’t matter that it was run
by the church or that it got state funds. Nothing but skin, bones, and death
walked those halls, and the assholes in the blue garbs knew it. They knew they
would outlast every motherfucker in the joint, could punch ’em, kick ’em,
starve ’em. Whatever. I think it was worse for me because my brain was still
straight. Your grandma was long gone, lying in a grave that happened to be
covered with a soiled sheet. I remember the time, towards the end, when your
mother brought you and the other grandkids in to see us. She couldn’t even talk
at that point, just stared at the ceiling waiting for death. But you guys
stayed in her room a helluva lot longer than you did mine. I wasn’t bitter
about it. I knew my days was numbered, too, but it sure told me what my greed
had done. You showed her rotted brain more love than mine.