Whispers in the Night Page 5

  He turned his head and watched as the two small shadows crept from his shower stall, forming the tiny teenaged bodies of the two girls who’d tormented him since grade school. They hadn’t changed in almost twenty years. Kelly still wore her ruffled shirts with the Izod sweater and tight Gloria Vanderbilt jeans. Her hair was permed and straightened and hung down to her hips. Jennifer was dressed almost identically except her hair was Jeri Curled and she wore a denim jacket with Prince and Michael Jackson buttons pinned all over it and one lace glove. They both were carrying knives.

  “We’re going to cut that disgusting bitch’s heart out.”

  They kept fading in and out of the night. One second they were featureless silhouettes, shadows moving within the darkness, and the next their features were sharp and clear, knives glinting in the moonlight.

  “You can’t be here,” he said. “This isn’t possible!”

  Malik groped for his medication, shattering the mirror on the medicine cabinet as he ripped the door open and fumbled inside for the little prescription bottle.

  “Are you okay in there?” Danika asked.

  “We’re going to kill that bitch. She shouldn’t have touched you. You’ve contaminated her now with your filthy black African hands. You were probably just a mercy fuck anyway. She just felt sorry for you. You were her good deed for the day. A charity fuck.”

  “Ewwww! That’s so nasty! How could she do that with you?”

  “She said I was handsome.”

  “You’re not handsome!”

  “She said you were handsome! Ewwww!”

  Malik found the bottle of antipsychotics and struggled with the childproof cap. He removed the cap just as Kelly stepped forward and slashed his wrist with the knife, fading back into the night after delivering the blow. Malik screamed as Jennifer lashed out and slashed the other wrist.

  “We should just kill you. You’re the one always bringing these whores here and forcing them to have sex with you, making them stoop to your level.”

  “Malik? Are you okay in there?”

  Danika knocked lightly on the bathroom door.

  “No, let’s kill her. She makes us look bad. She makes this filthy black nigger think he’s good enough to be with us. He’s so black he sweats oil.”

  “Yeah, let’s kill that high-yellow bitch!”

  Jennifer reached for the doorknob and began to open it. Malik rammed into it, slamming it shut, and the two girls turned on him and began slashing at him, cutting up his forearms as he struggled to defend himself. He struck at them with his fists, but his arms passed harmlessly through the darkness as the two girls faded in and out of the shadows.

  On the other side of the door Danika had heard enough. Something was wrong. Fear gripped her as she heard Malik in the bathroom arguing and fighting with someone who shouldn’t be there, arguing about killing her. Just minutes ago she had been lying in his arms, thinking to herself how easy it would be to fall in love with this man. Now she was afraid that he was some type of psycho.

  Danika hit 911 on her cell phone and left the line open as she rushed to gather her clothes. Whatever was going on in the bathroom was growing more and more violent. It sounded as if Malik was in pain. She was just about to run out of the house when something in Malik’s voice made her stop. Maybe someone or something was really in there with him?

  “Run, Danika! Get out of here!”

  “Filthy black ape, black scab. You shit-colored African jungle bunny!”

  Malik was covered in cuts and slashes when he came staggering out of the bathroom carrying a knife in each hand.

  Danika watched him slash at the air and then slice his own forehead. Blood rained down his face and dripped from the wounds in his neck, chest, and forearms. Danika screamed as she watched Malik’s face twist and contort, morphing between rage and terror as whatever demons he was struggling with made war within him . . . and he was heading right toward her . . . swinging the knives.

  Danika ran. She didn’t know where she was going. The house was big and she could not find her way to the front door in the dark, so she opened the first door she came to and ducked inside. It was the garage.

  There were big metal canisters that looked like oil drums scattered here and there inside the garage, and Danika tried to tell herself that she had just seen too many horror films when she started to speculate on what might be inside. She began feeling along the wall for the switch to open the garage door, afraid to turn on the light for fear that Malik might find her again. There was no switch. She’d have to open the door manually.

  “That half-white bitch shouldn’t have been slummin’ around with your big gorilla-lookin’ ass. Ya black spook! You so black I can’t see you at night until you smile.”

  “He’s so black he could hide in a coal bin.”

  The voices coming from the house were sounding less and less like Malik and more and more like someone else. Like children’s voices in stereo. It sounded as if he was possessed. There were more sounds of struggle as glass shattered and something heavy fell over with a thud. She heard Malik scream again and wondered if whatever was inside his head had slashed one of those knives across his throat and ended his suffering. But then she heard the voices again.

  “We know that nasty redbone bitch is still here. We’re going to find her. We’ll kill her and then we’ll finish you off too.”

  “Nooooo!”

  Malik screamed again and Danika stopped halfway to the garage door when she heard him sob and whimper. He was in pain. Those evil voices were torturing him.

  “Leave him alone!” Danika yelled.

  The garage door rose and Malik was standing there in the driveway, a knife in one hand, and the moonlight behind him, silhouetting his form.

  “I said, leave him alone.”

  She didn’t know what she was doing. She didn’t know what she was saying. All she knew was that she had to help. It might be the only way to save her own life as well as Malik’s.

  “You filthy slut! You’ll fuck anything if you’ll fuck this filthy black scab.”

  “He looks like he’s been dipped in shit.”

  The voices no longer sounded anything like Malik. His lips didn’t even move when they spoke. They were the voices of spiteful children. Conceited little girls who thought it was fun to ridicule anyone they believed to be less than them.

  “You’re wrong,” Danika said. “He’s beautiful.”

  “He’s a nasty black ape!”

  “He’s a beautiful black man! You girls are behind the times. Black is beautiful now. Those light-skinned pretty boys are so eighties. Women want real men these days, and the bigger and blacker the better.”

  “She’s lying! Nobody wants you. You’re just a big ugly black African!”

  Malik was still standing there on the driveway holding the knife. His mouth still did not appear to be moving even as insults poured out of him. There were shadows hovering around him. As Danika looked she thought she could almost make out the silhouettes of two young girls. She even imagined she could see their faces twisted into smirks of superiority.

  “They’re wrong,” she said. “I wouldn’t have come home with you tonight if that was true. I—I thought I was falling in love with you. We might have fallen in love together if these little bitches hadn’t gotten in the way.”

  Malik turned and looked right at the two shadows standing by his side. He had raised his knife to slash into them when the two police officers tackled him, knocking him into the garage right into the barrels. Three of them fell over and one of the lids came off. Danika screamed as a woman’s torso tumbled out of the barrel followed by its head. The disembodied head spun as it tumbled across the garage floor, turning toward her. Even though the woman was dead, Danika could tell that she had been very beautiful, with long curly brown hair, light cappuccino-colored skin, and hazel eyes just like her own.

  Danika turned to the other barrels and began knocking them over. One after another, curly-haired, tan-skinned he
ads tumbled out onto the garage floor. Danika looked from one face to the next as more police officers crowded into the garage.

  “Are you okay, ma’am? Jesus Christ! Are those real? We need a coroner over here. Somebody call CSU! It’s a fucking bloodbath in here! We’ve got bodies everywhere!”

  Danika pried her eyes away from the lifeless faces lying on the garage floor and back up to the garage entrance where the two shadows were still standing there, smirking in superiority, unnoticed by everyone except her and Malik. She looked back down at Malik as what looked like half a dozen cops piled on top of him, twisting his arms behind his back and handcuffing him, their fear making them use more force than necessary as they tried to restrain him. Malik stopped struggling and looked up into her eyes even as her vision started to fade and everything began to go black.

  “Why?” she asked him. “How could you do this?”

  “I’m sorry, Danika. I didn’t want to hurt you. Some wounds don’t heal. Some wounds never heal.”

  Danika fainted, thinking about scabs that continued to rip open and bleed decades after the wounds that caused them. The girls had called Malik a black scab. In a way, they had been right.

  And Death Rode with Him

  Anthony Beal

  An ass-kicking in a glass. That’s what you got on any night Browder was pouring drinks at Paradise Pub. To my thinking, that’s a mighty fanciful name for a dark little shit-kicker’s alehouse out in the Baja Desert, but that’s what they call the place. Browder could make a weapons-grade cocktail out of fucking amaretto and grenadine. And one sip would knock you to your goddamned knees. Don’t know how he done it. Ain’t sure I wants to know.

  The stool at the north end of the bar near the toilets belonged to Zadora, the seer. Brown, handsome lady of fifty, maybe fifty-five years breathing, always draped in silk rainbows. She had these salt-n’-pepper braids down the middle of her back look like creeping vines. I ain’t ever seen a night when she wasn’t sitting over there shuffling her damn tarot cards in between sips of Stout. Sometimes, they got drunk enough, rummies would ask her to tell their fortunes. Sometimes, if her glass was empty or she’d done run out of Swisher Sweets, she’d accept a donation of smokes or hooch, and be their patron saint for a spell. Most nights found her doing the same as the rest of Paradise’s regulars: chasing their demons to the bottoms of pint glasses and ale bottles, and demanding quick refills, hoping to drown the fuckers for good.

  At the room’s south end, two stools down from the seat belonging to me, you could walk in here any night and find Old Man Solomon—“Old Man,” Browder calls him, and the guy ain’t seen three summers more’n I have—suckin’ on fistfuls of stale peanuts and watching for visions in the cups of black coffee he always ordered. Black coffee. S’all he ever ordered anymore. Ain’t seen that poor bastard touch a drop of whiskey since the night he claimed he seen his dead wife’s face smile up at him from a steaming cup of joe. He ordered it while sitting in this very same pub on that very same stool. Think he makes it his business to occupy that same seat and order the same thing night after night hoping for a second vision. And night after night, I’ve sat here sucking down bad beer like unwanted medicine and watched Old Man Solomon hobble home disappointed. I feel for the guy, but how you gon’ console someone so hell-bent on grieving?

  The room’s only television had been mounted from the ceiling behind the bar. Only thing ever played on it was some regional news broadcast I ain’t never seen before. I don’t watch a lot of TV, and I’m not sure whether my TV gets channel sixty-six, but that’s the channel the TV’s always set on here. You can always recognize folks who ain’t never been in here before, ’cause the first thing they ask for after a drink is whether Browder can turn the channel to whatever boxing match or soccer game they know is on. Browder always claims channel sixty-six’s the only station the thing can pick up way out here in the desert. First-timers don’t always look prepared to believe him when he say that, but Browder’s a seven-foot-tall, shaved-headed, Aryan-lookin’ motherfucker with a goatee and a faceful of tattoos. He got arms on him look about as thick as a circus strongman’s thighs, too, so I ain’t never seen nobody even think about arguin’ with the dude. He say that’s the only channel it pick up, folks just let it go.

  Tonight, I’d only been here for about an hour or so before in walked my man, Carter. I didn’t know whether Carter was his first name or his last. All I know is from the night we first met each other here, he stuck his hand in mine and told me to call him “Carter,” so that’s what I call him. Tonight, he looked strange when he come in, though. Had the look of a man who done just stepped out onto a tree limb and heard a crack.

  I gave him a nod when he looked up and seen me sitting where I always do, but I noticed he ain’t come over to me right away. He just stood there blocking the doorway and staring at me real frightened like; look like he was scared he was gon’ catch something contagious if he came too close to me, or like I was on fire and he had done soaked his clothes in gasoline ’fore he come in. Felt like a full five minutes before he worked up the nerve to come over and see about having a drink. Some folks might say I shoulda gone over to see what had set him jittering, but instead I stayed on my stool sipping black-labeled salvation the whole time he spent making up his mind whether to piss or go blind. The way I figured it, I hadn’t never brought none of my troubles in here and laid ’em at his feet, so I fucking well wasn’t volunteering to sort out whatever pile of shit he’d stepped in that was responsible for the look in his eyes. Nice guy, sure, but ask Carter for the time, he’d tell you how to build a fucking clock.

  He finally come over and pulled hisself up onto the stool my foot shoved toward him. I ain’t ever knowed Carter to throw back anything harder than Stout, but tonight he ordered up a double shot of gin as chaser to a whiskey on the rocks. After that, he just sat there staring down at his size twelves like somebody’d done clued him in on the exact date and time of his death and had told him he was gon’ win the lottery the day before it went down.

  I asked him how things are going, speaking more out of courtesy than any desire to know what ailed him tonight. I asked this after letting maybe a full minute stretch between us without conversation. When he finally spoke, something in his voice set me questioning whether or not I was a religious man.

  “Can I count on you?” he asked me, his eyes still enamored with them gum-soled gunboats hugging his feet. By this point in the evening, I’d poured enough whiskey down my throat to have drowned at least three of my five senses, so it was his turn to sit there with a drunk and gawking old man for a spell.

  Browder come along about that time and set Carter’s drinks on the bar. By the time he left us, I’d remembered where I kept my tongue.

  “Depends on what you want to count on me for,” I told Carter. I ain’t never heard nothing resembling good news follow a question the likes of what he was asking me. I knew I damn well better hear his whole tale before pledging him my allegiance.

  “I want to know if I can count on you to listen to something I ain’t repeated out loud to nobody for fear of the rubber room they’d sling my ass in if I did. I need to know you ain’t gon’ chalk what I tell you up to my being a drunk in a place that lends itself to all kinds of local legendry.”

  I knowed more than a few of the tales people told about this place. In these parts, you couldn’t swing a dead cat without hitting somebody whose cousin’s brother’s roommate’s fuckin’ proctologist had a story ’bout something happening to them in this very room. Everything from haunted urinals in the shitter to folks having shared drinks with the Devil in the wee hours of the morning.

  The oldest story I know ’bout the Paradise Pub says it’s a cursed place, and that that’s why Indian Road 7734 what leads out to it don’t appear on no map you’ll ever lay eyes on. Lot of folks say you can’t go looking for the pub, that it don’t take nobody inside it that it don’t want, but that it reveals itself every once in a blue moon to folks who dese
rve to be here. They say the ground beneath it was hexed generations ago by Indians living here who was angry over the white man putting so many of their men in early graves and their women in brothels. Don’t know if I buy the whole curse bit, but I can see how them Indians would be pissed at having their entire way of life kicked down around their ears. At any rate, Carter seemed to think I was likely to dismiss whatever he was gon’ tell me for another such story.

  “Well, I’m listening, so go ahead and talk if you need to talk,” I said.

  “In a minute,” Carter told me, making his chaser disappear. “First, you see the dude behind me having his fortune read at the other end of the bar?”

  I looked past Carter, toward the opposite end of the bar where Zadora sat lighting up another cigarette and turning over tarot cards. The mountain sitting beside her in the army jacket didn’t look as old as the socks I had on, but from where I sat, he looked ’bout as wide as Carter and me laid together head to foot.

  “I see him. He ain’t altogether hard to miss. What about him?”

  “Not here. Outside,” Carter said, hinting toward the door.

  I didn’t relish giving up my stool, but curiosity had a hold of me. I found myself polishing off my glass of melted ice cubes and following him through the pub’s only door.

  He brought me outside into an airless night so quiet you could hear a rat piss on cotton. I followed him around the back of the building to the shadows, where folks liked to park their cars and fire up doobies in the dark.

  “All right,” I said, once we’d backed as far as we could into the blackness. “Everything about you tonight has me figuring you’re in some kind of trouble. Am I wrong?”

  “You ain’t wrong,” he told me, “and I ain’t in it by myself. Can’t say I’m sorry about that last part, neither.”

  “Well, you gon’ tell me what it’s all about, or not?” I already missed the presence of a sweaty, on-the-rocks tumbler in my palm. My patience was a candle burning at both ends.