I’ve been roaming the streets all afternoon, and now ribbons of orange taffy stretch across the sky.  Night is closing in, quietly, hoping to lay low until it’s too late for protest, like a rapist creeping up behind you, all shallow breaths and quick heart beats, waiting for the split second your senses drift so he can pounce on you.

It was a routine eye exam.  I just needed new reading glasses.  “It’s still a few years off,” my doctor had said, “but it’s inevitable, and you need to make the appropriate preparations.”  The look on his face was a look I’d seen a thousand times on the faces of television doctors as they slinked into waiting rooms, their surgical masks pulled down past their chins. My body became the glowing end of a match while my eyes still throbbed from the bright green light of my doctor’s headset.

I pass an ice cream shop.  Gelato spans the length of a glass display case.  Colors of every persuasion spill from large metal tubs.  I’m reminded of the time Carol and I vacationed in Florence.  We sat side-by-side in metal chairs on the sidewalk eating strawberry gelato and waffle biscuits.  Wisps of her black hair brushed against my lips and returned to her shoulders all sticky and sweet.  Before long we witnessed a Vespa collide with a small car in front of the café. Carol had pressed her wet face into my shirt.  Trickles of people wandered over to the accident, tending to the young man, his busted limbs reconfigured in some unnatural fashion.  His blood collected in a small hole in the street where a stone had been dislodged.  The sun ripped through its shroud of charcoal clouds and cast a spray of brilliant light onto the blood.  The wind forced ripples through the swelling pool.  I don’t know if the young man lived, but I remembered the subtleties of his sun-splashed juices, and mixed up a few gallons of matching paint from memory when I redecorated my office later that year.

I sit on a bench next to a mailbox and stare at the park across the street.  I think of Carol.  I slam my eyes shut and run through every detail of her face, her naked body.  I need to be sure I’ll remember. Just like I remembered the color of that young man’s spent fluids. I’ll need to stockpile images to marry with tastes and textures, sounds and smells.  Maybe I’ll become one of those guys who gains some Pollyanna perspective on life once the switch behind my eyes is flicked off forever.  I could volunteer, give motivational speeches. Maybe I’ll get a dog.  A nice dog to fetch me beers and help me dress once Carol packs her belongings and steals away in the dead of night, leaving a hand-written note behind on a single sheet of flower-scented paper, explaining how she hates herself for what she’s doing and that I’ll be better off without her.  I’ll get someone to read it to me.

A blanket of stars snuffs the last of the sunlight.  I’m still on the bench.  My ass is numb.  I don’t want to go home.  Home is bright colors, sharp angles.  A study in modern design and taste.  Carol and I have made our house a museum.  Now one of its curators will have to resign.

The hours pass.  Everything looks ugly under the dull orange streetlights.  A boy stumbles past, staggering into the street.  He tips his baseball cap to me and slurs a few words.  His eyes are shimmering orbs of tears and moonlight.  He returns to the sidewalk and looks like half a gimp as his legs struggle to work in tandem with his brain.

I rise from the bench and follow the boy.  His shadow moves along the brick facades of the old buildings.  He passes the ice cream shop.  I stop walking and watch him enter the mouth of an alleyway.  He falls against a wall and slides slowly, almost gracefully to the dusty concrete.  He removes a bottle of something from the kangaroo pouch of his sweatshirt and takes a sip.  I walk into the ice cream shop and ask if they have strawberry gelato.  “Yeah,” the ice cream girl says, chewing on her nail polish.  I’ll have a small, I say.  She scoops the gelato into a plastic cup and spears it with a tiny red spoon.  I step outside and eat slowly, letting the gelato melt on my tongue and crawl down my throat.  The boy continues to take pulls from his bottle and eventually retreats deeper into the brown darkness of the alley.

An hour later and I’m sitting on the steps of my doctor’s office.  I’m so excited!  I’m just going to wait here all night.  Carol will understand.  She’ll be so thrilled when this is all over that she’ll wrap her arms around me, all weepy and pink-faced, happy that we dodged a nasty bullet.  I’ll greet the doctor when he gets in tomorrow morning.  I’ll explain what I did, and he’ll fix everything.  Then I’ll be on my way.  It’s still a while before he’ll be here, but that shouldn’t be a problem.  I didn’t eat all of my gelato, and what’s left should be enough to keep the boy’s beautiful brown eyes cool until the doctor can make the switch.

—
©2009 Paul Edmonds

I came to the end of the pavement and slowed the car, the headlights showed the ruts and potholes in the gravel ahead.  I could see Theresa’s house three hundred yards off, the porchlight on, shining across strange streamers and shapes in the yard.  I edged the accelerator down, driving a little faster than I normally would on this part of their road.

When I’d called earlier Sarah had sounded so odd, and couldn’t say where Theresa was.  ‘Mommy’s in Maisy-Sue,’ she’d said after I’d asked for Theresa twice.  ‘She says Emmett’s coming back so I gotta make more wards ‘cos he’ll find me.’  And she’d hung up.  And she wouldn’t pick up when I rang back.

It was a three hour drive to Allister, another twenty minutes up Goller Road to my sister’s house.  Mommy’s in Maisy-Sue?  What the hell did that mean?  I’d bought Sarah her Maisy-Sue doll when she was born.  And who was Emmett?  Another low-life boyfriend?

The car thumped in a deeper pothole and I slowed again.  I heard a sound, like a hushed voice nearby, just outside the car, but really too quiet to hear over the gravel.  I saw a light in the trees, like someone moving with a flashlight.  ‘Is that …?’ the voice said, trailing a little.  Perhaps not a voice, perhaps just the crunch of stones under the tires.  The flashlight shone right at me, then was gone.

The car bumped again.  The road was in a worse state than when I’d been up here a couple of months back.  Allister Works only came up this way every few years to re-grade.

I turned into the driveway.  There were cloth stars fluttering on the gate.  The size of my palm, black marks scrawled on them, nailed into the posts.  Sarah’s latest creative project.

‘There,’ someone said.  ‘I’m Emmett … you seem …’  I jerked around and saw the flashlight again, moving towards me.  I got out of the car.  ‘Hey,’ I called.

‘No stars, no stars,’ again more like a whisper.  ‘Can’t find my way … distracting.’

‘What?’

‘… dis … dis … d … ing.’  The light went out.  Moments later another light flared on a hundred yards away, flickered on the trees, went out.  I got back in and was moving up the long drive before the door was even closed.

There were more cloth shapes along the drive and in the yard.  Some on sticks, some under stones.  I stopped and got out at the porch.  There was another light in the fields, dancing over sleeping animals.

Under a rock at my feet there was a cloth star.  I bent down and pulled it out, looking at it in the porchlight.  The marks were words in black permanent marker.  “Away, away, no one here, look away. ”

‘Put it back.’  Another voice, different.  Vague and distant, but less harsh.  I couldn’t blame imagining voices in the crunch of gravel now.

‘Theresa?’ I said.  I dropped the cloth and climbed up the steps.

‘Closer,’ the voice said.  ‘He’s closer again.’

I knocked on the door and noticed the Maisy-Sue doll sitting against the frame, facing out into the yard.  ‘Theresa?’ I called, knocking again.  ‘Theresa.’

‘Away,’ the first voice said.  ‘Far away, but looking.’

I glanced over my shoulder, still knocking.

The door opened and there she was, eight-year-old eyes blinking up at me from under birdsnest hair.  ‘Uncle Andrew?’

‘Sarah.’  She was in grubby pyjamas and ragged bunny slippers.  ‘Where’s your Mommy?’

‘Mommy?’  Sarah rubbed an eye with a tiny fist.  ‘Mommy’s in Maisy-Sue.’

‘Get inside,’ the second voice said, so distant, so fragile.

‘Why?’ Sarah asked, looking at the doll.

‘Come on Sarah,’ I said.  ‘Let’s get you cleaned up.’

‘Okay.’
She took my hand and we went into the house.

‘Far away,’ a whisper came.

Then the second voice, ‘Inside.’

What was going on?  This was more than just mis-hearing gravel or the wind.  ‘Theresa?’ I called.

‘I said, Mommy’s in Maisy-Sue.  She says Emmett’s still mad.  He’s got no Maisy-Sue to go to so he’s looking for me.’

‘Inside Maisy-Sue?’  I glanced back at the doll as I began to close the door.  Staring out into the fields.  And there in the fields the flashlight again.  Stronger, closer, flickering into my eyes.  The door clicked shut.

‘Inside,’ Sarah said.  ‘Pretty clever, huh?  She came back to protect me from Emmett.  She told me to make the stars and shapes and do the writing to confuse him.’

‘Confuse?’

‘He’s still mad, still looking for Mommy.’  We walked along the hallway towards the downstairs bathroom.  ‘He still thinks he can get her good, but Mommy’s scared for me.  She’s in Maisy-Sue.’

‘Yeah, you said.’  I reached for the bathroom door and Sarah shrieked.  I jumped at the sound and she pulled back from me.  ‘What?’ I said.

‘Maisy-Sue says I’m not allowed in there.’

‘It’s all right,’ I said.  ‘I’m here now.  We’ll get you cleaned up.’  I grabbed the handle.

Sarah screamed and ran along the passage.  I opened the bathroom door and saw Theresa, lying near the door, grey and bloodied, track marks on the tiles where she’d dragged herself in her last moments.  I sucked in my breath, crouched to her.  A heavy hunting knife in her hand.  And there, bent over the bath, as grey and bloodied himself, another body.  Emmett, I realised.  The stink of their decay rolled over me.

I looked at Sarah, standing at the open front door, clutching Maisy-Sue and screaming.  The light was right behind her blazing.  He’d found her.

‘Here,’ the lost voice said.  ‘Here at last.’

I sprinted and scoooped her up in my arms, grabbing the door and turning.

‘Me,’ Theresa’s whisper rushed from Maisy-Sue.  Sarah hurled Maisy-Sue into the light.

I slammed the door and we collasped onto the floorboards.  There was howling outside, and the light faded.  Sarah and I leant against the wall breathing.

‘No more whispers,’ She said.

—
©2009 Sean Monaghan

Sean Monaghan works in a busy public library and teaches creative writing.  Sean has recent stories in MicroHorror and PowderBurnFlash.  More details at his website www.venusvulture.com