Hitchers (10 page)

“
Come here, ya monkey, ya
, ” my unwanted voice opined. Jesus, that was vintage Grandpa. I could picture him saying that as he
chased a six-year-old Kayleigh around the yard with hedge clippers, pretending he was going to cut off her toes while she giggled and screeched.

There was no mention of the blurting illness on the news. If my neurologist had seen five cases, there must be thousands, but it would be hard for another story to break through when there was the anthrax story to cover 24/7.

As I pulled onto West Marietta I turned off the news. Enough of this dreariness. I should pick up something cheerful for lunch and eat it while watching last night's episode of
The Big Bang Theory
on DVR.

Then I remembered that I'd agreed to visit Grandma this afternoon. I let my head slump until my forehead bumped the steering wheel. “Damn it. Damn it.” I needed time to acclimate to the idea of a visit to Grandma's, and by forgetting, I'd missed my acclimation period.

Moaning in pointless protest I took a left on Howell Mill and headed for Grandma's house.

It wasn't that I didn't like Grandma, she was just hard to talk to. Sitting on her couch, time crawled in super slow-mo. There were so many things she didn't talk about: politics, religion, relatives' private business, her childhood, sports, feelings, failures, anything bad. The list bordered on infinite. What she liked to discuss was the gruesome but impersonal goings-on depicted on the TV news. She liked to shake her head and tisk. She also liked to talk about how there was nothing on television any more, and about delicious meals from days gone by. I braced myself for two hours of pain.

I'd warned her about the problem I was having with my voice. She suggested I might be coming down with the flu. It hadn't happened while I was on the phone with her, and there was no way anyone could grasp how utterly freaky it was unless they heard it. And Grandma would hear it. The outbursts were getting worse—I was up to thirty since I'd waked that morning. So that was another concern—I didn't want to give her a heart attack.

I was even doing it in my sleep now. I'd wake up four or five times a night, jolted from sleep by that voice. I worried they would keep getting worse until my speech was one long nonsensical rant comprised of things my grandfather might say. I'd be forced to communicate like a deaf mute, writing down what I wanted to say, or using sign language while I blathered on about
Toy Shop'
s superiority over
Beetle Bailey
.

Corinne suspected that the root of the problem was guilt. More guilt, like I didn't have enough. I had defied the patriarch, and now the child in me was waiting on wobbly knees to be punished. Forgive me Grandfather, for I have sinned. Only I didn't
feel
guilty. Not about that, anyway. Grandpa dragged
Toy Shop
into the grave with him out of spite; why should I feel bad for digging it up and breathing life back into it? Who did it harm? In a way he owed it to me after all the verbal abuse he'd piled on me when I was a kid. He owed me something; if not an apology,
Toy Shop
would do.

Besides all that, this was happening to other people, including Mick. It wasn't about my relationship with Grandpa, it was something in the air I'd inhaled. Or something else.

Grandma greeted me in her singsong Irish warble, entreating me to come in, come in, as she led me into the living room of her spacious but unpretentious home, favoring her bad hip so severely it looked like her right leg was three inches shorter than her left.

She wanted to hear about my accident again, and held her breath through much of my description of drowning as if to share some of my suffering, slapping her cheeks in horror until they were a ruddy pink.

I left out the part about being in a woman's body while I was dead.

“Oh, Finn, that's just terrible!” she said when I'd finished. “This whole business is just awful. All those bodies.” She shook her head in dismay as she related some of the more gruesome things she'd witnessed on the news.

To change the subject I asked what she thought of this week's
check, her share of
Toy Shop
's meteoric rise.

“I wish we hadn't waited so long,” she half-joked.

The new
Toy Shop
kept getting more popular. Fan sites were springing up on the web; Steve was working out some new licensing agreements. People loved Wolfie. I guess it was no more surprising than the popularity of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles in their time.

“So you really don't mind the changes to the strip?” I asked, for maybe the tenth time.

Grandma threw her hands up. “What's to mind? The point is to make money.”

“Yes it is,” I said, though that wasn't at all the point to me. “So, Grandma, what have you been up to?”

“Oh, this and that.” She waved at the air as if her activities were nothing but a bad smell that needed to be dispersed. “Staying out of trouble.” She laughed her nervous laugh—a tight-lipped, high-pitched giggle.

“You finding anything good to watch on TV?” I asked. “All I can find worth watching are reruns of
Lost
.”

“There's nothing on,” she said, sinking her teeth into the topic. “Half the time I watch the Weather Channel—”

“
I wasn't there. Do you understand?
” I blurted.

Grandma started, the cheery smile melting. She pulled her feet under her as if something had just run by on the carpet.

“I'm sorry. I didn't mean to startle you,” I said.

She stared at me, her eyes big and round. Her jaw was trembling. I wasn't sure what to do. I wanted to comfort her in some way, but I was afraid she'd recoil from me. Everyone was shocked when they first heard it, but no one had reacted like this. She was pale and shaking, like she had a terrible fever.

I felt like a freak, like I'd pulled open my shirt and exposed a secret twin jutting from my chest. I hated this. I wanted it gone.

“It's me first drink today, Frenchie, ”I
blurted.

“Why are you trying to scare me?” Grandma cried out.

“I'm not,” I said, holding out my hands in supplication. “I swear to you, I can't help it. It just comes out.”

“Things your Grandfather said just come out of you? You expect me to believe that?”

It was a good thing I was seeing a psychiatrist—I was truly messed up.

“What was that first thing you said? Where did you hear that?” Grandma asked.

“Nowhere. Grandma, I know something is wrong with me, but I'm not in control of it. Do you hear how strange my voice is? Do you think I could make it sound like that even if I wanted to?”

Grandma covered her eyes, struggled to stand. “I have a terrible headache. I have to go lie down.” She staggered from the couch to the bedroom while I stood, weaving.

I'd warned her about how strange the voice was. I should have warned her about the content. “Goodbye Grandma,” I called tentatively. “I'm sorry. I hope you feel better.” No answer.

I let myself out, stunned by my last blurt. I'd said
“Me
first drink today,” not
“My
first drink today.” That's how an Irishman would say it. And I'd swear there was a hint of accent in that croak. I was starting to talk like him.

I
thought that might make a good recurring joke, to have Dave repeatedly sell Wolfie, who has to go through all sorts of effort to get back to the toy shop.

As I put the finishing touches on it I wished there was someone there to share it with. Comic strip fans were mostly a faceless abstraction that couldn't replace having someone to turn to and say, “What do you think?”

I'd never thought of myself as a recluse, or someone who has a hard time making friends, but the paltry list of contacts in my cell phone was hard to ignore.

I decided to call it a day. The vocalizations were driving me nuts; they'd been coming fast and furious for the past half hour. Despite them I'd finished two strips; if I kept up that pace I could work four days a week and take long weekends. It was getting easier to draw the strip again. The characters didn't seem like strangers the way they had a few weeks ago. Part of that may have been my confidence growing because of how people were reacting to
Toy Shop
. The Cartoon Network was talking about an animated series, for God's sake.

I flipped on the news and fixed myself a turkey sandwich.

The financial markets were nearly back where they'd been before the attacks. As soon as it became clear the attack wasn't connected to a foreign country or some specific terrorist group, the financial world had begun to relax. Life was returning to normal, at least as normal as it could after six hundred thousand people die in the course of three weeks.

“
whiskey! Whiskey!”

I couldn't hear the TV over the rants that were coming out of me, and missed the beginning of the next report. It was about an unexplained malady that was cropping up around the city. Even before they cut to a young woman blurting something in a pitch with which I was horribly familiar, I knew what it was. I put down my sandwich, set the DVR to record. I didn't want to miss a word,
and I was having trouble hearing because the damned vocalizations kept coming.

I wiped my forehead with my sleeve; I was sweating like I was in a sauna.

Not sure I could even carry on a conversation between my vocalizations, I looked around for my phone to call Mick.

“
Did it occur to you that I might want some hot water too?”

They just kept coming; I struggled to catch my breath between the outbursts, praying it was going to let up, terrified that this was it, the moment when the voices got so dense they stole my ability to speak.

My hands were trembling like a palsied old man's. I stared at them, mesmerized, as an awful ripple passed under my skin. It was subtle at first, but grew until it felt as if snakes were writhing through my muscles. I wanted to dig into my skin with my fingernails and pull whatever it was out. I spotted my phone, half-sunk between the couch cushions, and decided I should call 911 instead of Mick. But I couldn't get my hand to reach for it; my whole arm was clenched, my whole body.

The writhing gave way to a tingling, as if my whole body was falling asleep the way a foot can. I expected to drop to the ground, but, miraculously, I stayed on my feet while the tingling turned to a thick numbness. I thought I might be having a stroke. I was falling away, losing all sensation.

A sound passed between my lips, a guttural “
Uh
. ”My lips moved, but I wasn't moving them. It was like I was wearing a mask. I tried to touch my face to see what was wrong, but my hand didn't come up, it stayed there, trembling.

It was just like the experience I'd had when I was dead, only I was in my own body instead of Lyndsay's.

I felt myself rise from the couch, then look down at my legs. My hand touched one leg, then the other. The hand was quavering so
violently it was a blur.

I tried to cry out, to scream in terror, but couldn't.

I heard myself laugh. It was a loose, blubbery laugh, and it was the last sound I wanted to make. I watched myself step away from the couch, put my hands on my hips, and start kicking my legs. They kicked and sprung in a spastic, rubbery parody of dance, the movements utterly unfamiliar to me.

“Diddle de diddle de dee,” I sang, my chest hitching, my voice a dead croak.

Just as it began to dawn on me that the dance I was doing was a jig—an Irish jig—I turned my face to the ceiling, spread my arms and croaked, “I got me legs.”

Me legs. I wanted to run screaming from the room, to escape this twisted marionette show.

Me legs.

My body stopped dancing. “And now.” Even through the thick guttural zombie belch there was no mistaking Grandpa's accent.

I was taken upstairs to my studio, to the drafting table, to the strip I'd just finished.

“You little shit,” my mouth said. I watched my grandfather yank a pair of scissors out of a drawer with my hand. “Thieving little shit.” He stabbed the strip, hit Wolfie in the face, driving the scissors into the wooden table. “I'll fix you.” He pulled the scissors out, brought them down again, and again, stabbing and cursing, until the images were obliterated. When he was finished he retrieved a thumb tack and tried to pin the ruined strip to the wall, but his hands were shaking too badly and he dropped the tack.

The tips of my fingers began to tingle. It was subtle at first, then it ran up my arms. I was feeling something again. It got stronger, until it felt like electric eels in my blood. I balled my hands into spastic fists.