After the People Lights Have Gone Off (32 page)

“Sweetie?” she says past him, into the Black Hallway. Through the Dark Curtain. To the distinct scrape of a little girl’s shoes on concrete.

He looks with her, and when he doesn’t see, could never see, she reaches up with her right hand. No: she sees her right hand reaching up.

The soggy tape tears away, trails behind.

He goes solid, his eyes alive in a new way—she’s messing it all up, she knows—but when her right hand gets to him, it just climbs his chest finger by finger. To his shirt pocket. For the red pen.

She takes it, clicks it open.

He offers her the pad, his face awash with wonder.

“Thank you,” she says, and he sets it on her lap, the thin cardboard backing already sticking to the tops of her thighs.

“Forty four,” she says, and, point by drilled-in point, as if she’s taking divine dictation, she starts to plot a line that must have been nestled inside her, her whole life.

All it needed was the right person to cut it out.

She draws like this through the night, or what she thinks must be the night, and when sleep starts to insist upon itself, she pulls one eyelid out as tight as it will go, reminds him about the utility knife, and at the precise moment of incision she remembers her daughter’s name, her beautiful, beautiful name, and has to suck her breath in through her teeth.

“Again,” she says, guiding his wrist, “deeper, please,” and she’s in the right room after all, it turns out. She was the right person all along.

Thirteen

I told Paula Guran I would write a Halloween story for her, but every time I tried to think “Halloween,” I always ended up at some Neil Gaiman story I never can remember the title of, that for some reason reminded me of Harlan Ellison’s “‘Repent, Harlequin!’ said the Ticktockman.” So I did what I always do: fell back on the horror stories I heard growing up. This one was of some bad stuff that happened in the bathroom of the Big Chief movie theater in Midland, Texas, bad stuff that made us all so scared to go there that it finally just shut down. Then I called it “Thirteen” because there was a movie just out with that title, that everybody kept telling me I had to see, but I was scared to see it, and still haven’t. So that title was scary for me.

Brushdogs

Richard Thomas and I had hammered out the story order for this collection, but there was a big gaping hole in position two. So I told him I’d write something, probably with an angel in it—a story I’ve still got swimming in my head. But then Ross Lockhart and Justin Steele hit me up for a story for a Laird Barron mythos kind of story, and I was just days back from hunting, where, eating dinner one night, one of my cousins had said how when he was a kid he’d always been a brushdog for one of my great uncles, and that was a word I hadn’t heard. And, that cairn: I saw it on top of a hill, and walked back there—took like an hour, was a lot farther than it looked through my rifle scope—climbed it, and hadn’t brought nearly enough jackets. It was super windy up there. I can’t remember if I left a rock on top or not. I know I didn’t mess it up, though. And I didn’t walk between it and the drop-off it was close to, either. Because I wanted to live.

Welcome to the Reptile House

T.E. Grau had just started editing fiction at
Strange Aeons
, and he asked if I had anything for him to consider. I think I said no, but give me a few days. And I wrote this. But it wasn’t working. I was talking to Zack Wentz about something at the time, so I got him to help me with it, and he made it work. Bauhaus, or whatever that band is? No clue. That’s all Zack. And any other music or punk culture stuff. I listen mostly to country and hair metal, I mean. I can plug John Conlee or Kix into any piece of fiction at any hour of the day, but with punk, all I know starts and ends with Adrien Brody’s character from
Summer of Sam
. At the same time, if I got those details wrong, the story would feel fake. It’s good to have smart friends. They save me all the time.

This is Love

I wrote this story for Vince Liaguno’s
Unspeakable Horrors II: Abominations of Desire
, where it might still show up, but when Steve Berman asked if I had something for
Icarus
a couple of years later: yep. And then when he selected it for
Best Gay Fiction
, man, wow, an honor. Anyway—seen
Retroactive
?
Triangle
? I crawled inside that whole genre years ago, such that it’s hard for each story I write not to be shaped like that. Like this one, I mean. And I think I’m halfway ripping off Gene Wolf’s “A Fish Story.” Or, there’s a key scary thing that happens in there that I couldn’t get out of my head while writing this one. Also, I wrote it right after driving from Montana to somewhere way far away, and there were a lot of rest stops involved, and each one I went to seemed more primed for something bloody than the last. And, years before that trip, I’d once walked into a rest-stop bathroom of nothing but blood, so, you know: of course I’m going to set a horror story at a rest-stop.

The Spindly Man

Thanks to Ellen Datlow for allowing me to sneak this one into this collection. It’s showing up a little bit close to its appearance in her
Fearful Symmetries
. I should dedicate it to Ann and Jeff VanderMeer, though. I mean, I knew King’s “The Man in the Black Suit,” of course, but hadn’t read it for a while, until their
The Weird
. And then it hit me that King was kind of doing something really elegant there. Something about the tone or voice or distance in that story, I realized I could step into it for a few pages, maybe. I mean, I realized I was going to the next time I wrote something, so it seemed kind of fair to go ahead and reel that story into this one, so as not to pretend I was coming up with it all alone.

The Black Sleeve of Destiny

I wrote this right after I’d done a reading in Orlando, Florida, for Toni Jensen. When she asked what I wanted to do with some free hours I had, I said “Goodwill,” of course. It’s my favorite place. I never need historical sites or museums or fancy restaurants. Take me to a thrift store and I’ll be the happiest dude of all. Anyway, skulking around there, carrying all my treasures, I started watching people more than usual. And this black sweatjacket, I nearly bought it, until I realized it was a factory reject, had one sleeve too long. Also, that word, “hoodie,” I don’t handle it so well. I’d already tried to get okay with it by naming a character “Kid Hoodie” in one book, but, I don’t know. It’s still not a term I feel remotely comfortable using. It’s terrifying to me. To use it would be to trade in a piece of my soul. So, since it was already scary, I figured I’d see if I could spook it up for others as well.

The Spider Box

This is one of those rare times where I had the title before the story. I just sat down one afternoon, knew I had two or three hours for writing that I wasn’t going to waste, so I put this title up-top, to see what would happen. What I completely figured was that spiders were going to take over the world. Except spiders are startling, they’re not really scary. Or, they’re harbingers for the real horror, like. At least to me. At least here. And, as for the dump: my grandad used to take me and my brother there some Sundays, let us play. It was the best place ever. Every single item was more magic than the last, but we were always under orders never to lock ourselves in the old refrigerators. So they became these magical portals to other places, in my head. And, portals can work both ways, of course.

Snow Monsters

My wife was working at the mall one winter, and would always get off way late, and since I didn’t like her walking in the parking lot alone, I’d always try to be there waiting. But, I’d always be waiting among all these giant dirty snow mounds. And I got to watching them in my mirrors, and wondering who was living in them, and what they might say to me if they came to talk. Also, I’d run into a dude who wore one of those, like, small-brimmed, straw, not-really-a-fedora hats, and that whole night I was in the room with him, I just kept watching him. Because I’d never seen anybody wear a hat like that. So, because he was so hard to explain for me, I figured he maybe lived in a snow mound in the parking lot. This story kind of terrifies me, too. Because it’s a trade we’d all make in a heartbeat. It’s a trade that might be happening all around us all the time. A trade we might have benefitted from, even.

Doc’s Story

Jesse Bullington had invited me to submit a story to his
Letters to HP Lovecraft
anthology, where we all respond to some passage from
“Supernatural in Horror Literature,”
which is a long essay that synopsizes a lot better than it actually reads. But, I knew it already, of course, and had it dialed up a moment or two after Jesse’s invite. And what I searched for in there, it was “werewolves.” Bingo. I wrote back, told him I could write a werewolf story, sure, one skirting the boundaries of Gaiman’s werewolf issue of
Sandman
but also somehow involving a “grandam” (HPL’s word) telling a story to a youngster (which is the context for the werewolf passage I chose to ramp off). Except, a hundred and twenty pages later, I hadn’t found the end of that one. And I still haven’t. So, one day before this was due, I ate a whole jar of chocolate-covered sunflower seeds, studied hard on a werewolf action figure I’d bought at a toy store in Baltimore with Matthew Hobson, and wrote this. In under two hours, I think. And now it’s the first chapter of a novel I just finished. And, the core of it, that dad with the ball-peen hammer, that’s from my great-granddad Pop. It was a story he used to always tell. It was hilarious, the way he would tell it, trying to hold that dog’s collar with one hand and whap it with the hammer at the same time, the dog kicking and yowling and biting the whole time. It’s the main story I remember from him, growing up.

The Dead Are Not

It’s really hard for all of my stories not to be about aliens. Whitley Strieber fried my brain at an early age. Whenever I wake up sore, my knee-jerk thought is always that it’s because the aliens just re-assembled me. Of
course
there’s going to be some stiffness. Get over it, dude. Be happy they got everything back where it’s supposed to be. But, this story in particular, I think it comes from how alien we all feel at funerals. Or, me, anyway, I’m always trying so hard not to think about what’s actually happening that I halfway study the people I don’t recognize, and wonder what’s their story. And this is usually where I land: they’re tourists, studying this unusual phenomenon. Because it is so, so unusual, yes? I don’t quite understand it yet. And I guess I hope I never do.

Xebico

Another one stemming from
The Weird
. I so loved and will forever be a fool for H.F. Arnold’s “The Nightwire.” Whoever “H.F. Arnold” was, or wasn’t. And it’s not because of the possibility of Xebico so much, but because of that guy who can type different stuff with both hands simultaneously. I still get shivery, just thinking about that. Freaks me completely the heck out. I researched it as much as I could, too, but this is the only place I find it. Which makes it more real for me. It’s just a throwaway detail, something to make this station real in the story. But it’s also the center of the story, for me. The beating heart. I didn’t want it to be over just yet, or ever, so I tried to make Xebico more real. Just to touch the magic, I guess. Or fool myself that I was. I had to use both hands at the same time, though. I’m not like that guy in the story. And I don’t guess I want to be. But I can’t stop watching him, either.

Second Chances

Until “Brushdogs,” this was the newest story in the collection. And all I had going in was this idea that each animal on Earth might be Noah’s Ark. It just needs to be artificially sustained in order to exhibit its true potential. Which is a science fiction story, of course, not horror. Not until the end, which surprised me. I mean, I went into this one for the wonder, but then that wonder turned itself inside-out in just a single line. And, the pared-down diction of this one, that’s always so fun for me. My two favorite styles to adopt are just-the-facts and “ridiculously ornate” (see Dalimpere’s letters in
Ledfeather
, or the narrator for “Captain’s Lament”—each of those are my natural voice, pretty much). But this scientist, she wasn’t going to be indulgent with her prose, of course. She’s indulging herself in other ways.

After the People Lights Have Gone Off

I was doing an independent study with Nick Kimbro on the haunted house and reading all his papers and responses, and talking through all the books with him, I realized that I’d never written a straight haunted house story. So how then could I actually pretend to speak with any authority on it, right? This is also why I wrote
Not for Nothing
: because somebody asked me how a detective novel worked. It was a question I could answer like a critic, like a lifetime reader, like a fan, but to really understand, I had to get my hands dirty. So, with this one, I did. I just stirred in a new house, a perfect couple, and let things cook for a few pages. And, her rolling off the loft like that—I should cite my sources: that happened to my teacher in eighth grade. And I’ve always felt bad because I got in a fight in her classroom once, and there were desks scattering around everywhere—me and this dude were really going at it—until the History teacher had to come from next door, lift us apart. And I remember looking up to my English teacher on the way out, and the way she was looking at us, I could see she wasn’t mad, she was just worried we were hurt, and that was the worst part. That’s the part I still can’t shake.