The Complete Short Fiction of Charles L. Grant, Volume IV: The Black Carousel (22 page)

He’d leave a note.

All he wanted was to offer an apology.

Oh lord, he thought as he reached for the knob;
oh lord.

The door was locked.

He tried it again, shaded his eyes and peered
in, but all he could see were the stairs leading up, blending into
dark before they reached the landing. There was no note, no
explanation. He stepped back to the curb and looked up at her
window, hoping to find a clue. And in finding none slapped his
hands uselessly against his legs and walked off, away from Centre
Street, not wanting to think and unable to stop it — Estelle and
Ronnie, the day the office had let him go because they were cutting
back and he wasn’t a senior man in spite of all his time, the day
he had sold his first piece of furniture — a small foyer table in
the style of Queen Anne, the way people began leaving him once he
started getting old.

“They do that, you know,” Brenda said, falling
in step beside him.

He knew.

“They figure you’ve done your time.”

He knew that too.

Reach a certain time, the mind and the body and
the will must go.
Must
go. As if it were a law. It didn’t
matter the age, either; when they didn’t want you, didn’t believe
they needed you, it didn’t matter.

Grey hair.

Liver spots.

A slight stoop at the shoulders when gravity
suggested you’d been born too damn tall.

Twinge in the joints even when the weather’s
good.

Here’s your hat, Kayman, what’s your hurry.

He glanced across the street, to a house tucked
beneath large maples. Something was there, on the lawn. As the
drizzle became a light shower, hissing carefully through the
leaves, something was there.

Someone.

“What the hell is thatr” he demanded when he
stopped.

No answer.

Brenda was gone.

But it was there, and there was one on the
sidewalk, near the last comer. Shimmering as the rain passed
through it and, at the same time, giving it vague shape.

A dark figure, but not black; transparent enough
to see the people hurrying now down Centre Street, but substantial
enough to make its presence known.

He backed away, turned, and saw another one on
the corner across the road.

Standing there.

Just . . . standing.

they came

Short quick breaths then as he tried to decide
how much of it was real, how much simple distortions in the
air.

Another one, behind a low hedge.

Standing.

He hurried, wanted to run, felt his legs crying
for a speed they were unable to deliver.

Another one, on a porch.

It walked down the stairs.

Shimmers.

Not quite shadows.

Trying to see all of them at once forced him to
slow down before he collided with a tree; his left hand waved at
them, shooing them weakly. At the intersection he crossed over
without looking, and a car had to swerve around him, horn
screaming, driver cursing, and he stumbled after it for several
steps, lips moving in an apology and unable to find the words.

By a mailbox, a small one.

Standing.

The light rain rolling off it, almost but not
quite giving it a face.

He stubbed his toe on the curb, nearly fell, ran
a few paces before slowing to a limp, a hand tight against his
stomach. Blood hissed in his ears as the rain hissed and tires
hissed and his breath hissed between his teeth.

He was supposed to be somewhere.

Blinking away the raindrops didn’t help. Wiping
a hand across his matted hair didn’t help. Moaning aloud didn’t
help.

One sat on a tire swing — it didn’t have a face,
and the swing didn’t move.

Where was he supposed to be?

The guy in the bar — what the hell was his name?
— he might help, but Kayman didn’t know where he lived; and even if
he did, he wasn’t sure he could find it. The houses all looked
alike, all of them old, all of them darkening as the shower
increased, all of them without light as the afternoon lost its sun,
all of them sitting back there like animals waiting in the high
grass for something to come along to feed them for the night.

Behind him there were four, walking hand in
hand, the rain drawing them, clothing still too blurry to have
lines.

One stood in the middle of the street.

When he turned away, one stood not three feet
away.

He screamed softly and ran.

It had no face, but he had seen lips moving.

He could see right through it, but it wasn’t a
ghost.

He slid sharply on a wet leaf, right leg jerking
out, something pulling in his groin as he skipped to catch up and
keep from falling. He whimpered. His shirt molded itself to his
chest and back, pulling him down at the shoulders, running water
over his pants that added a hundred pounds to the weight he
carried. Water sloshed in his shoes.

He ran.

As best he could, he ran.

Help me, Estelle, Jesus God, help me.

Ran.

Shapes and shadows and indistinct outlines
walked on.

Estelle?

Electricity traveled along a wire inside his
arm, sped across the top of his chest, and vanished somewhere in
the vicinity of his heart.

He cried out.

And ran on.

You’re killing yourself, Kayman, Jesus, you’re
killing yourself

A boy in a baseball cap rode past him on a bike,
whistling.

The thump of windshield wipers on a car idling
at the corner before pulling away.

He smiled and showed his teeth. He had liked the
rain at one time in his life, liked to walk in it, get wet with it,
take a good long hot shower after it and cuddle with Estelle on the
couch and listen to it beat helplessly against the roof, glide in
trails and ladders down the panes, fill the gutters and roll the
acorns away.

One stood in a puddle near a storm drain.

Faceless.

Darker, indefinite form filling in drop by
drop.

Another line of electric fire finally slowed him
down while he searched the rain for someone he knew, someplace he
knew, arms hanging at his sides. Shambling zigzag across the
sidewalk, unable anymore to pick his feet up.

Car horns.

A pickup swinging around a corner as he reached
it, splashing him, the passenger in the cab waving a quick
hey,
we’re sorry, old man
before it vanished into the rain.

Into the twilight that arrived several hours too
soon.

He nearly fell off the curb, nearly tripped up
the other side, staring straight ahead, mouth open, water dripping
from his lower lip, his eyebrows, his earlobes, the tips of his
fingers twitching by his sides.

Electric fire.

I’m going to die.

Falling at last against a slick telephone pole
and laying his cheek against the wood, sobbing harshly, swallowing,
praying someone would find him and stop, take his hand, lead him
home, Jesus God, he was an old man, he didn’t deserve to die like
this, he wanted to go home, wanted his bed, wanted to go home,
Estelle, for god’s sake, please come and take me home.

One stood in front of him. Watching.

He tried to wave it away, but he couldn’t lift
his arm.

Watching.

Without a face.

He tried to ask it who it was, what it was, but
there were only stutters and moans and a slow shake of his head
that seemed to free him from the pole, and he stumbled on, knees
bent, shoulders sagging forward, turning slowly like a poorly
hanged figure spinning slowly in the wind, turning until he
recognized a lawn ornament just ahead. A brown deer, lying in the
grass, facing the street.

“Oh god,” he whispered. “Oh god, please let it
be.”

When he came abreast of it, he stopped, swayed,
stared at the familiar Cape Cod with the plaster dwarf beside the
porch steps and waited for something to take it away, blow it out
of reach, tell him it was only a rain mirage.

It remained.

He grinned.

He pushed at the air with both hands to get him
moving again, two more houses down; all he had to do was get two
more houses down.

He knew he had made it when he saw Ronnie
standing in the middle of the street, untouched by the rain,
defined by the rain, hands clasped at her belly, staring straight
ahead.

“Go away,” he said, wheezing, falling into a fit
of coughing that propelled him up the drive to the steps he managed
to trip on only once, to the porch where he fell into the nearest
chair and closed his eyes, hands over his face, smelling the rain
and his sweat and the sour stench of his fear.

Not stirring when the screen door opened, or
when he heard footsteps on the floor,

“Where the hell have you been.?”

He couldn’t answer Norma, and didn’t want to. He
was home. He was safe. Nothing could touch him now.

“Damn, are you okay?”

The cold made him rigid save for the movement of
his palms over his face, up and down, only an inch either way, up
and down, drying himself off, hiding the rain shadows, hiding
Ronnie.

“Jesus.”

She went back inside. Voices. Footsteps. The
screen door — goddamn, he’d fix that damn thing first thing in the
damn morning — and a dry towel being worked over his hair.

“I was scared,” Estelle said, though her hands
were firm. “I didn’t know where you’d gone.”

He mumbled something into his hands.

“We tried everywhere, even the Ring, but you
weren’t there.”

His legs began to shake, and he couldn’t control
them.

“Norma said you’d just gone for a walk, we could
wait for you here.”

Hair pulled; she wasn’t happy. He winced and
lowered his hands, gripped the armrests tightly, and when his head
was yanked back, looked into her eyes. They were red, puffy; she’d
been crying.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean . . . I’m
sorry.”

She dropped a second towel into his lap, and he
used it to dry his hands and wipe ineffectually at his shirt.

“She’s dead,” Norma said, and fresh tears wet
her cheeks.

“Huh?”

She tossed the towel away and grabbed a handful
of hair. “Damn you, she’s
dead!
And where the hell were
you?” She snapped his head back, forward, back again, until he
grabbed her wrists, but he couldn’t stop her.

“Dead!”

His head hit the wall.

“Dead! Where the hell were you?”

His head hit the wall.

He couldn’t stop her.

“Bastard, where the hell were you?”

He couldn’t stop her, he couldn’t talk, he
couldn’t bring himself to try to hit her, so his head struck the
wall again and there were lights that danced in the falling rain,
music that full with the water from the eaves, electric fire in his
wrists and chest until Norma pulled her away and held her close,
rubbing her back, almost rocking her in place.

“What . . . ?” Kayman closed his eyes, but the
lights were only worse.

“That doctor friend of yours, Sholcroft?”

He nodded, and winced, and couldn’t move his
arms.

“Not an hour ago, they found her car out on
Chancellor, near the college.”

Oh god, he thought, and felt his own tears.

“A boulder.”

Oh Jesus.

Estelle broke away from Norma’s embrace and ran
into the house, wailing, cursing him, cursing God, incongruously
cursing each of her children by name.

Norma wouldn’t meet his gaze; he was surprised
to see she was embarrassed. “She wanted you here. Estelle, that is.
The cops called because your name was on that emergency card in her
wallet.”

“Oh Jesus.”

“Instant, they said.”

It’s never instant, he wanted to tell her. It
doesn’t make any difference how it is, it’s never instant.

“You okay?” Gruff again, protecting Estelle.

He dared not nod, could not shrug.

“So where the hell were you?” she asked quietly,
without accusation.

“Lost,” was what he said when he could finally
speak without sobbing.

She didn’t respond.

He didn’t explain.

The rain in pale drops from the gutters.

“You better get out of those clothes, Kayman.
Estelle doesn’t need you sick on top of everything else.”

His fault, he thought; he had driven her away
with his madness, and she had driven into a rock. And now Estelle,
terrified and needing him, and he hadn’t been there either, too
busy fleeing from demons that didn’t exist for anyone but him.

He leaned forward and stared blindly at the
street, at the storm.

When finally he stood, Norma was gone. No
matter. It was Estelle he had to see, talk to, explain things
to.

The door made no sound when he opened it and
went inside, the stairs didn’t creak when he climbed them and
hurried down the hall to their bedroom. “Better change,” he said as
he walked in. “Gonna catch my d — pneumonia, if I’m not careful.”
He walked straight to his closet and reached in for a clean shirt,
his free hand lightly rubbing his chest, and freezing him when he
realized the shirt he wore was dry. “Well,” he said, looking over
his shoulder, “guess I was out there longer than —”

She was gone. “Estelle?”

Not anywhere in the room, or the bathroom, the
spare room never used once her children had stopped their visits a
hundred years ago.

“Estelle?”

Not in the living room, the dining room, the
kitchen, the basement. Not her, not her smell, not a sound of her
moving ahead of him, keeping just out of sight.

“Estelle?”

She wasn’t on the porch.

Norma was gone as well, and he figured the two
of them must have gone to the teacher’s house, nothing to worry
about. Estelle was upset — angered and grieving and without the
comfort he should have given her. It was all right. He’d just walk
over there and hold her and sooner or later the rain would end and
it would all be all right.