John Dies at the End (57 page)

And that’s true, Arnie. I believe you. But that isn’t the whole truth, is it? Why do you keep stopping short of the whole story?

I said, “There’s more, isn’t there?”

He looked over at the open grave in the floor and said, “You say John helped you move the body?”

“Sure. I couldn’t have done it alone. It’s hard enough hauling my own fat ass around without having to double the load.”

“So after he knew about, you know. After he knew the truth, you’re saying he stuck around?”

I shrugged. “Well—”

“Because you guys killed a cop when you found out he was one of these things. Why would it be different?”

“Well, that was only after he actually turned into the monster—”

“And what about Amy? Can I talk to her?”

“Uh, no.”

“Is she still—”

alive

“—around?”

I didn’t answer. Arnie sat up straight, energized to be back in reporter mode, ready to dig again. “There’s more, isn’t there? What is it? Does it have to do with the girl? With Amy? What happened to her?”

I rubbed my eyes and said . . .

IF YOU HAD
asked me then, as I sat there in the snow and biting cold of my backyard, I would have said it was the worst moment of my life. And that would have been a ridiculous thing to say, since technically my “life” had only been a couple of days long at that point.

I don’t know how long I sat there looking at my bare foot and the symbol on my toe, with Amy standing a few feet away in a horrified paralysis. I saw John sit on a tree stump and pull out his cigarette-rolling kit, watched him carefully roll one before patting around his pockets for a lighter and realizing he had left it in another universe. He threw the cigarette aside with a curse. That’s when Amy began crying, like a switch had been thrown. Softly at first, her head in her hand, her fingers clawing handfuls of copper hair. She leaned against the toolshed and then she was crying hard, a wretched, coughing sound as her body convulsed with sobs. Little kid–type crying. Jerking, unrestrained and terrible, terrible, terrible.

“Let’s, uh, all go inside . . .” John began, weakly. “Amy, come on.”

She didn’t hear him, her whole body spasming with sobs, a sound like her lungs were having a fistfight. It was truly awful. I closed my eyes and would have plugged my ears, too, but not even that would block it because the very air stank from the sheer awfulness of it all.

John looked long at Amy, then at me. Finally he nodded to himself as if coming to some conclusion and said, “Okay.” He stabbed a finger at Amy.

“Amy,” he said in a voice that was strong and abrupt. “Stand up straight.” She didn’t.

“
Hey
. Amy.” He strode over and grabbed the shoulder of her jacket, shaking her. “Man up. The night’s work ain’t done. You ready to man up?”

She wiped her face and looked at him.

“Okay,” John said, “you still got the gold cross? The one Dave gave you?”

She nodded. I noticed a snowflake landed on the lashes of one of her eyes.

“Okay,” John said. “Take the cross and touch Monster Dave with it. If he’s evil, he’ll explode.”

I pulled on my sock and shoe and said, almost too quiet to hear, “Leave her alone, John.”

“Human Dave wouldn’t have said that!” John shouted, loud enough for my neighbors to hear. “Now sit still while she touches you with the cross.” He turned to Amy and pulled on her arm. “Come on. Man up.”

He pulled her to her feet—roughly, I thought—and she mumbled something to him so I couldn’t hear. John answered with, “Don’t worry. I’ll take care of it.” She pulled her arm from him and he said, “Amy, I’m not asking you. This needs to be done.”

She dug into her shirt for the cross necklace and wrapped the thin chain around her fist. She glanced doubtfully at John, who urged her on with a gesture.

Holding the cross between thumb and finger like a key, she took a few cautious steps toward me, her face showing caution bordering on naked fear. I heard myself say, “Amy . . .”

“SHUT UP!” John screamed. “Don’t listen to his lies, Amy, for that is a crafty one there.”

She drew closer, holding the cross at arm’s length. I looked down at the powdering of snow on my pants. I looked up suddenly, the cross an inch away from my face. This movement seemed to startle Amy and she lunged forward with the necklace. The cross jabbed me right in the eye.

“OH, SON OF A BITCH!” I threw myself to my feet, clasping my stinging eye. “You jabbed that thing right in my—”

“I KNEW IT!” screamed John, his face a picture of indignant monstralization. “AMY, BACK AWAY.”

John tore off his coat and flung it into the snow. Then he pulled his shirt over his head and stood there, bare-chested, snow landing on his naked shoulders like dandruff. I blinked my injured eye and was relieved to see I wasn’t blinded. I said, “John, don’t be a—”

“SHUT UP. I hope you likes Chinese, Monster Dave.” John threw up his fists. “Because today the menu is Kung Fu Chicken. And it’s ALL YOU CAN EAT, BABY.”

John flung himself into a pseudo-karate stance, one hand poised behind him and one in front, posed like a cartoon cactus. I thought for an odd moment he had moved his limbs so fast they had made that
whoosh
sound through the air but then I realized John was making that sound with his mouth.

“WAIT!” This was Amy. She ran over between us. “I got him in the eye with it! Don’t. John, don’t. Calm down.”

John let her stop him, of course. He reached around her and jabbed a finger at me.

“She just saved your life, my friend. I’d have been wearin’ you like a pair of pants.”

I sighed and said, “I’m going inside.”

I turned and walked toward my door. After a moment, John dropped his hands by his sides and said, “Yeah.” He picked his jacket and shirt from the snow and bundled them up in his hand. We strode in casually, like we were coming in after a tiring game of basketball. Amy stayed behind, standing there in the angry swarm of snowflakes. John turned to her, said, “Come in where it’s warm, Amy. We’ll hammer this out over a nice can of Leinenkugel’s.”

She looked at him and then at me, not quite sure what had just transpired. John went back to her and leaned down, whispering harshly but out of my hearing. Almost like he was scolding her. She said something back, casting nervous glances at me. They continued this covert argument for a few minutes, with me already inside and watching from my kitchen. I wasn’t completely sure what it was about and I still don’t know. Finally John stomped away from her, toward the house. He turned back to her one last time and said, just loud enough for me to hear, “You know fucking well what I mean. I mean you literally never knew him. When we showed up at your house that was Monster Dave and it was Monster Dave thereafter. And I’ll tell you what, whatever you think, he’s a lot nicer now than he was before. But you wouldn’t know.”

He stormed away from her, looking pissed, and brushed past me as he entered the kitchen. I said to his back, “John, we gotta move that body.”

“It can wait. You’ll still be dead tomorrow.”

I took one last look at Amy outside, snow gathering on her like a lawn ornament. I said, “You coming?”

She made no move and I waited at the door for a bit before finally turning and heading inside. I went to the living room and sat in my leather recliner. I stared into the cold, dead fireplace on the far wall. It was one of those gas fireplaces that would burn real logs so that it looked authentic, a modern heating source dressed up to look like an old-fashioned one. It was an idea I had always found ridiculous, wondering if in the future they wouldn’t have some kind of laser fireplace dressed up to look like a mere gas fireplace, with fake gas lines running from it.

I heard the kitchen door click open and I knew Amy had decided to come in. That shouldn’t have surprised me. Where else could she have gone? I thought for a moment and glanced at the notepad next to my phone, the one I used to leave myself messages (“GET MILK” it said in my hurried scrawl); I wondered if I drew up a quick Last Will and Testament would it be legally binding. John is a notary. I could write it up in a few sentences, leaving the house to Amy so she would have somewhere to live, sign it and then shoot myself in the temple. But then I felt my pockets and once more remembered I had lost the Smith hours ago. I ditched the plan for the time being.

John popped out of the bathroom, fully clothed now, and turned to intercept Amy in the kitchen. They talked some more in those same low, rough tones before both of them entered the living room. Amy sat stiffly on the couch, her arms wrapped around her midsection as I had seen her do so often before. It suddenly occurred to me that when she sat that way the stump of her left wrist was hidden behind her right upper arm. To a passerby, it wouldn’t immediately be apparent she was missing a hand so there would be no reason to do the double take that Amy had grown to dread. Seeing her like that, they’d just think she was cold. John took a spot on the floor between us, sitting cross-legged. “Okay,” he said, as if he were the moderator of this panel. “How much do you remember, Monster Dave? What memories did they give you?”

I shrugged and said, “Everything, I guess. There’s that missing bit from when I first showed up here—”

“When you came here and shot the real Dave?”

“Yeah. It happened out in the yard, I guess. There were tracks all over. But otherwise it’s the same as before. Or, you know. As far as I know.”

“But you don’t know anything of the real stuff? Like where you came from or why you’re here?”

I said, “Did you remember those things at the time of your birth?”

“But you remember your—I mean Dave’s—childhood and all that. School and your parents and friends?”

I waved a dismissive hand. “Yeah, yeah. You and I met in computer class. Mr. Gertz. You did the ASCII vagina, got kicked out, and so on.”

“And you know you got to be at work tomorrow? And you know where?”

“Video store. Wally’s. Sucks. Coworkers are retarded. Yeah, yeah.”

“And the five hundred dollars you borrowed from me last month.”

“Fuck you.”

John nodded in satisfaction. “Okay, then. I’m goin’ home. I gotta sleep in my own bed tonight because I got work tomorrow. And if I don’t leave right now, I’m gonna get snowed in here. Amy is going to stay here tonight.”

He raised a hand to silence my objection.

“I don’t wanna hear it,” he said. “She’s gonna stay here and watch you. Now we don’t know what exactly you morph into, but if it’s like those things we saw before, we know one weakness is fire. Amy, if you see Dave turn into any kind of monster, set him on fire. Dave, show Amy where the flammables are in this house. Get her a lighter and one of those huge cans of hairspray that old ladies use, if you have any. Got it?”

John climbed to his feet, Amy looking at him with an incredulous, squinted look, like he had broken some new bounds of human idiocy that she previously had not thought possible. John said to her, “Remember what we talked about.” And with that, he pulled open the front door and vanished into the white swirl of the storm.

On the David Wong Social Awkwardness Scale, with “1” being going to the “Pickup” instead of “Order” counter at a restaurant and “10” being a guy getting caught on national TV having sex with a dead baboon, I’d have to say that the following minutes alone with Amy rated about a 9.6. A while into this wordless meeting, ten minutes or an hour, I don’t know, the phone rang. We both jumped out of our skin. I picked up, glancing out of my window to see sheets of ice bits raining down in the night.

“Hello?”

“It’s me. I made it home. Slick as hell, did a three-sixty going around a corner at Lex and Main. Have you turned into a monster yet?”

“No, John.”

“Get this. Molly is here.”

“At your place? John, how does she even know where you live?”

“It’s even better than that. She wasn’t standing outside the building when I got here. She was
in my apartment
.”

“She
broke in
?”

“Don’t know. She’s eating a package of hot dogs right now.”

I sensed Amy walking past behind me and a moment later my bathroom door closed. I said, “You gave her the whole pack?”

“Yeah, they’re expired. She’ll stop eating when she gets full, won’t she? Hey, is your power out?”

“No, lights are still on.”

And with that, the lights went out.

“Fuck. They’re out now, John.”

“Yeah, mine were off when I got in. I thought it was the bad guys maybe, making their move. But I turned on the radio and it’s down in several parts of town. I guess they’re working on it. They got the storm on every station, talking like it’s a natural disaster. The ice is knocking down trees and power lines and they said at the state prison the snow drifted up against the fences so high that inmates were able to just walk over it. The guards couldn’t shoot ’em because they were afraid of the ACLU.”

It hadn’t occurred to me that the winter storm had been a huge event for practically every person in town except for the three of us, who had bigger fish to fry. I got off the phone with John, blinked as my eyes adjusted to the darkness and then dug around my cabinets for candles. Amy emerged from the bathroom, her purse slung over her shoulder, and she pawed around the wall to find her way. She put her glasses on, as if they would help her see in the dark. She asked, “Will your heat go off with the power out?”

“Oh, I’m sure it won’t.”

I wasn’t sure, though. Can people really just freeze to death in their homes in times like this? I hunted around for a book of matches, found none in the kitchen and tried the bathroom as the only other likely place. I pulled open the drawer on the vanity and found my matches. I opened the medicine cabinet—

Someone had been here. I normally have three prescription bottles of medication and all of it was gone. Hell, even the aspirin was gone. All of it had been here after we came home to find the house ransacked. I had checked.

I shuffled around in the drawers to see if anything else was missing and I saw my scissors were gone, too. I could have just misplaced them, though. I suddenly flashed on Amy leaving the bathroom, her purse with her, and figured out what a smarter person would have figured out the minute John told Amy to stay with me.