Aftershock & Others Read online

  It will be fun. Harmless fun to kill them off one by one in my dreams.

  I’m beginning to truly enjoy the dreams. It’s so wonderful to be powerful and not recognize any limits. It’s such an invigorating release.

  I can’t wait to sleep again.

  “THE NOVEMBER GAME”

  In September I was banging away on Nightworld when dat ol’ debil Marty Greenberg pulled me away with an offer I couldn’t refuse: He and Bill Nolan were editing The Bradbury Chronicles, an anthology of stories in tribute to Ray Bradbury—would I like to contribute? Like, duh.

  I knew immediately that I’d have to write a sequel to Ray’s “The October Game.” It’s a masterpiece of subtly growing menace, and one of the most perfectly focused short stories ever written, as effective today as it was when it appeared in Weird Tales.

  I discovered it on a summer night in 1959 in Hitchcock’s 13 More Stories They Wouldn’t Let Me Do on TV. I consider reading “The October Game” one of the pivotal moments in my life. Just thirteen at the time, I found the last line (“Then…some idiot turned on the lights.”) confusing. I sat there, book in hand, puzzled, wondering at that crazy closing sentence. Why on earth—?

  BLAM!

  It hit me. I got it. And it blew me away, utterly and completely. Left me gasping. Lowered the temperature of the room by twenty degrees. And made me decide that someday, some way, I would write a story that would do unto others what this one had done unto me. I’m still trying.

  Ray seems ambivalent about “The October Game.” I’ll bet he still appreciates the finesse of his younger self’s technique, but I think the subject matter appalls the older Ray. But the lesson this story pounds home is how less can be so much more. The oblique descriptions in the dark throughout the “game” are never visually realized by the author. The reader is left to construct them after the lights come on.

  “The November Game” picks up shortly after Ray’s story. It’s lurid where Ray’s is subtle, but over the years I’d been unable to let go of the need to balance the scales. What goes around, comes around. And now…it’s Daddy’s turn.

  I was so psyched I knocked out the first draft in one day.

  The November Game

  Two human eyeballs nestle amid the white grapes on my dinner tray. I spot them even as the tray slides under the bars of my cell.

  “Dinner, creep,” says the guard as he kicks the tray forward with his shoe.

  “The name is Mich, Hugo,” I say evenly, refusing to react to the sight of those eyes.

  “That translates into creep around here.”

  Hugo leaves. I listen to the squeaky wheels of the dinner cart echo away down the corridor. Then I look at the bowl of grapes again.

  The eyes are still there, pale blue, little-girl blue, staring back at me so mournfully. They think they can break me this way, make me pay for what I did. But after all those years of marriage to Louise, I don’t break so easily.

  When I’m sure Hugo’s gone I inspect the rest of the food—beef patty, string beans, French fries, Jell-O. They all look okay—no surprises in among the fries like last night.

  So I take the wooden spoon, the only utensil they’ll let me have here, and go to the loose floor tile I found in the right rear corner. I pry it loose. A whiff of putrefaction wafts up from the empty space below. Dark down there, a dark that seems to go on forever. If I were a bit smaller I could fit through. I figure the last occupant of this cell must have been a little guy, must have tried to dig his way out. Probably got transferred to another cell before he finished his tunnel, because I’ve never heard of anyone breaking out of here.

  But I’m going to be a little guy before long. And then I’ll be out.

  I upend the bowl of grapes and eyeballs over the hole first, then let the rest of the food follow. Somewhere below I hear it all plop onto the other things I’ve been dumping down there. I could flush the eyes and the rest down the stained white toilet squatting in the other corner, but they’re probably listening for that. If they hear a flush during the dinner hour they’ll guess what I’m doing and think they’re winning the game. So I go them one better. As long as they don’t know about the hole, I’ll stay ahead in their rotten little game.

  I replace the tile and return to my cot. I tap my wooden spoon on the Melmac plates and clatter them against the tray while I smack my lips and make appropriate eating noises. I only drink the milk and water. That’s all I’ve allowed myself since they put me in here. And the diet’s working. I’m losing weight. Pretty soon I’ll be able to slip through the opening under that tile, and then they’ll have to admit I’ve beaten them at their own rotten game.

  Soon I hear the squeak of the wheels again. I arrange my tray and slip it out under the bars and into the corridor.

  “An excellent dinner,” I say as Hugo picks up the tray.

  He says nothing.

  “Especially the grapes. The grapes were delicious—utterly delicious.”

  “Up yours, creep.”

  Hugo squeaks away.

  I miss my pipe.

  They won’t let me have it in here. No flame, no sharps, no shoelaces, even. As if I’d actually garrote myself with string.

  Suicide watch, they call it. But I’ve come to realize they’ve got something else in mind by isolating me. They’ve declared psychological war.

  They must think I’m stupid, telling me I’m in a solitary cell for my own protection, saying the other prisoners might want to hurt me because I’m considered a “short eyes.”

  But I’m not a child molester—that’s what “short eyes” means in prison lingo. I never molested a child in my life, never even thought of doing such a thing. Especially not Marion, not little eight-year-old Marion.

  I only killed her. Nothing more.

  I made her part of the game. The October game. I handed out the parts of her dismembered body to the twenty children and twelve adults seated in a circle in my cellar and let them pass the pieces around in the Halloween darkness. I can still hear their laughter as their fingers touched what they thought were chicken innards and grapes and sausages. They thought it was a lark. They had a ball until some idiot turned on the lights.

  But I never molested little Marion.

  And I never meant her any harm, either. Not personally. Marion was an innocent bystander caught in the crossfire between her mother and father. Louise was to blame. Because it was Louise I wanted to hurt. Louise of the bleached-out eyes and hair, Louise the ice princess who gave birth to a bleached-out clone of herself and then made her body incapable of bearing any more children. So where was my son—my dark-eyed, dark-haired counterpoint to Marion?

  Eight years of Louise’s mocking looks, of using the child who appeared to be all of her and none of me as a symbol of my failures—in business, in marriage, in fatherhood, in life. When autumn came I knew it had to stop. I couldn’t stand the thought of another winter sealed in that house with Louise and her miniature clone. I wanted to leave, but not without hurting Louise. Not without an eight-year payback.

  And the way to hurt Louise most was to take Marion from her.

  And I did. Forever. In a way she’ll never forget.

  We’re even, Louise.

  (suck…puff)

  “And you think your wife is behind these horrific pranks?” Dr. Hurst says, leaning back in his chair and chewing on his pipe stem.

  I envy that pipe. But I’m the supposedly suicidal prisoner and he’s the prison shrink, so he gets to draw warm, aromatic smoke from the stem and I get pieces of Marion on my food tray.

  “Of course she is. Louise was always a vindictive sort. Somehow she’s gotten to the kitchen help and the guards and convinced them to do a Gaslight number on me. She hates me. She wants to push me over the edge.”

  (suck…puff )

  “Let’s think about this,” he says. “Your wife certainly has reason to hate you, to want to hurt you, to want to get even with you. But this conspiracy you’ve cooked up is rather farfet
ched, don’t you think? Focus on what you’re saying: Your wife has arranged with members of the prison staff to place pieces of your dismembered daughter in the food they serve you. Would she do something like that with her daughter’s remains?”

  “Yes. She’d do anything to get back at me. She probably thinks it’s poetic justice or some such nonsense.”

  (suck…puff )

  “Mmmmm. Tell me again what, um, parts of Marion you’ve found in your food.”

  I think back, mentally cataloging the nastiness I’ve been subjected to.

  “It started with the baked potatoes. They almost fooled me with the first one. They’d taken some of Marion’s skin and molded it into an oblong hollow shape, then filled it with baked potato. I’ve got to hand it to them—it looked quite realistic. I almost ate it.”

  Across his desk from me, Dr. Hurst coughs.

  (suck…puff )

  “How did you feel about that?”

  “Disgusted, of course. And angry too. I’m willing to pay for what I did. I’ve never denied doing it. But I don’t think I should be subjected to mental torture. Since that first dinner it’s been a continual stream of body parts. Potato after potato encased in Marion’s skin, her fingers and toes amid the French fries, a thick slice of calf’s liver that didn’t come from any calf, baby back ribs that were never near a pig, loops of intestine supposed to pass at breakfast as link sausage, a chunk of Jell-O with one of her vertebrae inside. And just last night, her eyes in a bowl of grapes. The list goes on and on. I want it stopped.”

  (suck…puff )

  “Yes…” he says after a pause. “Yes, of course you do. And I’ll see to it that it is stopped. Immediately. I’ll have the warden launch a full investigation of the kitchen staff.”

  “Thank you. It’s good to know there’s at least one person here I can count on.”

  (suck…puff )

  “But tell me, Mich. What have you done with all these parts of Marion’s body you’ve been getting in your food? Where have you put them?”

  A chill comes over me. Have I been wrong to think I could trust Dr. Hurst? Has he been toying with me, leading me down the garden path to this bear trap of a question? Or is it a trap? Isn’t it a perfectly natural question? Wouldn’t anyone want to know what I’ve been doing with little Marion’s parts?

  As much as I want to be open and honest with him, I can’t tell him the truth. I can’t let anyone know about the loose tile and the tunnel beneath it. As a prison official he’ll be obligated to report it to the warden and then I’ll be moved to another cell and lose my only hope of escape. I can’t risk that. I’ll have to lie.

  I smile at him.

  “Why, I’ve been eating them, of course.”

  (suck… )

  Dr. Hurst’s pipe has gone out.

  I’m ready for the tunnel.

  My cell’s dark. The corridor has only a single bulb burning at the far end. It’s got to be tonight.

  Dr. Hurst lied. He said he’d stop the body parts on my trays but he didn’t. More and more of them, a couple with every meal lately. But they all get dumped down the hole along with the rest of my food. Hard to believe a little eight-year-old body like Marion’s could have so many pieces. So many I’ve lost track. But in a way that’s good. I can’t see how there can be much more of her left to torment me with.

  But tomorrow is Thanksgiving and God knows what they’ll place before me then.

  It’s got to be tonight.

  At least the diet’s working.

  Amazing what starvation will do to you. I’ve been getting thinner every day. My fat’s long gone, my muscles have withered and atrophied. I think I’m now small enough to slip through that opening.

  Only one way to find out.

  I go to the loose tile and fit my fingers around its edges. I pried it up with the spoon earlier and left it canted in its space. It comes up easily now. The putrid odor is worse than ever. I look down into the opening. It’s dark in my cell but even darker in that hole.

  A sense of waiting wafts up with the odor.

  How odd. Why should the tunnel be waiting for me?

  I shake off the gnawing apprehension—I’ve heard hunger can play tricks with your mind—and position myself for the moment of truth. I sit on the edge and slide my bony legs into the opening. They slip through easily. As I raise my buttocks off the floor to slide my hips through, I pause.

  Was that a sound? From below?

  I hold still, listening. For an instant there I could have sworn I heard the faintest rustle directly below my dangling feet. But throughout my frozen, breathless silence, I hear nothing.

  Rats. The realization strikes me like a blow. Of course! I’ve been throwing food down there for weeks. I’d be surprised if there weren’t a rat or two about.

  I don’t like the idea but I’m not put off. Not for a minute. I’m wearing sturdy prison shoes and stiff, tough prison pants. And I’m bigger than they are.

  Just like I was bigger than Marion…

  I slip my hips through the opening, lower my waist through, but my chest and shoulders won’t go, at least not both shoulders at once. And there’s no way to slip an arm through ahead of me.

  I can see only one solution. I’m not comfortable with it but there’s no way around it: I’m going to have to go down headfirst.

  I pull myself out and swivel. I slip my left arm and shoulder through, then it’s time for my head. I’m tempted to hold my breath but why bother? I’m going to have to get used to that stench. I squeeze my head through the opening.

  The air is warm and moist and the odor presses against my face like a shroud freshly torn from a moldering corpse. I try to mouth-breathe but the odor worms its way into my nose anyway.

  And then I hear that sound again, a rustle of movement directly below—a wet rustle. The odor grows stronger, rising like a dark cloud, gagging me. Something has to be behind that movement of stinking air, propelling it. Something larger than a rat!

  I try to back up out of the opening but I’m stuck. Wedged! The side of my head won’t clear the edge. And the odor’s stronger, oh god, it’s sucking the breath right out of me. Something’s near! I can’t see it but I can hear it, sense it! And it wants me, it hungers for me! It’s so close now, it’s—

  Something wet and indescribably foul slides across my cheek and lips. The taste makes me retch. If there were anything in my stomach it would be spewing in all directions. But the retching spasms force my head back out of the hole. I tear my arm and shoulder free of the opening and roll away toward the bars, toward the corridor. Who would have thought the air of a prison cell could smell so sweet, or a single sixty-watt bulb a hundred feet away be so bright.

  I begin to scream. Unashamed, unabashed, I lay on my belly, reach through the bars and claw the concrete floor as wails of abject terror rip from my throat. I let them go on in a continuous stream until somebody comes, and even then I keep it up. I plead, sob, beg them to let me out of this cell. Finally they do. And only when I feel the corridor floor against my knees and hear the barred door clang shut behind me does the terror begin to leach away.

  “Doctor Hurst!” I tell them. “Get Doctor Hurst!”

  “He ain’t here, creep.”

  I look up and see Hugo hovering over me with two other guards from the third shift. A circle of faces completely devoid of pity or compassion.

  “Call him! Get him!”

  “We ain’t disturbin’ him for the likes o’ you. But we got his resident on the way. Now what’s this all—?”

  “In there!” I say, pointing to the rear of the cell. “In that hole in the back! Something’s down there!”

  Hugo jerks his head toward the cell. “See what he’s yapping about.”

  A young blond guard steps into my cell and searches around with his flash-light.

  “In the back!” I tell him. “The right rear corner!”

  The guard returns, shaking his head. “No hole in there.”

  “It
must have pulled the tile back into place! Please! Listen to me!”

  “The kid killer’s doing a crazy act,” Hugo says with a snarl. “Trying to get off on a Section Eight.”

  “No-no!” I pull at his trousers as I look up at him. “Back there, under one of the tiles—”

  Hugo looks away, down the corridor. “Hey, Doc! Can you do something to shut this creep up?”

  A man in a white coat appears, a syringe in his hand.

  “Got just the thing here. Doctor Hurst left a standing order in the event he started acting up.”

  Despite my screams of protest, my desperate, violent struggles, they hold me down while the resident jabs a needle into my right buttock. There’s burning pain, then the needle is withdrawn and they loosen their grip.

  I’m weak from lack of food, and spent from the night’s exertions. The drug acts quickly, sapping what little strength remains in my limbs. I go with it. There’s no more fight left in me.

  The guards lift me off the floor and begin to carry me. I close my eyes. At least I won’t have to spend the night in the cell. I’ll be safe in the infirmary.

  Abruptly I’m dropped onto a cot. My eyes snap open as I hear my cell door clang shut, hear the lock snap closed.

  No! They’ve put me back in the cell!

  I open my lips to scream but the inside of my mouth is dry and sticky. My howl emerges as a whimper. Footsteps echo away down the corridor and the overheads go out.

  I’m alone…for a while.

  And then I hear the sound I knew would come. The tile moves. A gentle rattle at first, then a long slow sliding rasp of tile upon tile. The stinking miasma from below insinuates its way into my cell, permeating my air, making it its own.

  Then a soft scraping sound, like a molting snake sliding between two rocks. Followed by another sound, a hesitant, crippled shuffle, edging closer.