The Complete Short Fiction of Charles L. Grant, Volume IV: The Black Carousel (14 page)

At Devon Street, he turned north and crossed the
Pike, and stopped as soon as he had stepped over the curb.

Weak moonlight on the blacktop, on the concrete,
but nothing else. Two houses up there should have been a light, an
amber bulb over his front door. It was never out after dark. Never.
His mother kept half a dozen spares on a shelf over the cellar
stairs, and changed it regularly, once every six weeks whether it
needed it or not. She switched it off only when she left for work
in the morning or when she got up on weekends.

Now his house was as dark as the rest of the
town, and he couldn’t help feeling he’d made the wrong turn
somewhere, right instead of left when he left Anita’s house, or
left instead of straight ahead after he’d rescued the young cat.
This wasn’t his street. It couldn’t be. There was no light.

No light at all.

And when the feeling passed, he pinched his
cheek, hard, to drive off the confusion. Not only was he spooking
himself again, he was behaving like a jerk. He knew this was his
block because, when he finally moved again, he could see the milk
can planters on Mrs. Loodeck’s porch, the redwood glider on Mr.
Tarman’s porch across the street, and his own house with its turret
on the left rear corner where his mother did her sewing, where his
father had once tried to write the novel that would make them all
wealthy. The three rosebushes in the front yard Mr. Bethune had
planted for them two summers ago. The sagging second porch step.
The unholy squeal of the screen door.

It was his block, his house.

Of course it was.

As he opened the inner door, he reached up and
snapped a finger against the clear beveled glass that encased the
amber bulb. Nothing happened. He snapped it again, harder, and the
light flared on.

Sure it was.

And if he still doubted, which some timorous
part of him did despite all evidence to the contrary, such doubts
were thankfully erased when he paused in the front hall to let his
vision adjust to the dark, heard a buzzing in the living room,
looked in, and smiled. His mother was asleep on the couch, light
blanket pulled to her chin, feet still in her slippers, the
television on, sound low, picture nothing but rolling static. He
switched it off, winked at the woman who had raised him alone since
he was nine, and uttered a quick prayer of guilty gratitude that
the inevitable inquisition would be postponed until morning. A can
of soda snuck from the refrigerator. A stealthy climb up the
staircase that expertly avoided all the ones that would creak
betrayal. He undressed in the dark, went into the bathroom and
closed the door, turned on the light.

“Oh swell,” he muttered sourly when he saw the
three red tracks on his neck. “A sloppy vampire.”

What little blood there was had already dried to
dark beads. He debated the use of medication for possible
infection, decided against it, and went to bed, disdaining a sheet,
burying his face in the pillow. A few minutes later, his mother
came upstairs, and he sensed her out there, standing in his
doorway, watching him, probably arguing with herself about waking
him so she could find out what he had found out, then suggest a
dozen ways how to do it better the next time he was asked.

Please, he thought.

She left him alone.

Shifting, then — first one leg, then the other,
one arm, the other, flopping onto his back, arms out, palms up, the
night breeze that had stalked him earlier working its way through
the window screen and gliding over his stomach. A mosquito he
killed with one rapid swipe.

Funny, sometimes, his mother was. Staying up as
late as it took until he came home, then falling into bed,
complaining about how tired she always was; never going out on
dates, yet accepting an invitation to the Travelers just the other
night, right out of the clear blue; questioning him about his own
dates, and always forgetting their names; able to sell insurance
with the best of them, yet never able to haggle with a shopkeeper
or clerk.

The breeze tickled him.

Funny too about Jill; where the hell had she
been?

But she could have been there. He’d spent most
of his time standing around one of the long refreshment tables,
noting faces, testing names against his memory, sipping, nibbling
on sandwiches scarcely bigger than his palm, trying and unable to
remember how Anita’s father made his living. She could have been
there and he simply hadn’t seen her.

Did he care?

How much did he care?

He allowed his lungs a slow deep breath, a
slower exhalation.

Not much, he admitted. She was fun to be around,
but there was something about her, something tilted, that made him
nervous. A sweet malice that he suspected was more than a little
calculated.

His head rolled left so he could look out the
window. A tree outlined by the moon, nothing more.

The breeze once more, a long strip of silk
across his narrow chest that made him tremble.

He thought of the cat.

He remembered the lightless houses.

He turned away from the moon and stared at the
wall until he fell asleep.

Something screamed in anguish.

Drake sat up, panting, wiped the sweat from his
face with the corner of a sheet.

No sound.

He had been dreaming.

It couldn’t have been the little cat.

Damp sheets in the morning, the floor sticky
where it was bare. He could barely move, legs stiff from walking,
bleary-eyed, head feeling as if he’d drunk wine instead of that god
awful tepid punch. His jacket lay on the floor where he’d dropped
it the night before, a long rip in the lining where the cat had
thrashed its way clear. He rolled his eyes and hoped he could get
it to the tailor’s before his mother saw it. If not, there’d be a
lecture on waste, carelessness, and the need to save money for the
more important things in life. He loved his mother, but, lord,
sometimes she acted more like a professor than someone who sold
insurance.

The shower wasn’t much better. No matter how
hard he tried, he couldn’t dry off. The day was too muggy, and
morning hadn’t even ended. He finally gave up and went downstairs
in nothing but a pair of shorts, rehearsing what he’d tell her when
the interrogation began. But she had already left for work, a
scrawled note on the kitchen table telling him that she might not
be home until late, her boss in the Harley office had decided it
was time to catch up on the paperwork before they all smothered, be
a dear and straighten up, Aunt Sheri and Uncle Wendall are coming
to visit tonight, all the way from Pennsylvania, and she didn’t
want them to think she ran a slum here, be another dear and don’t
go far in case I don’t get home in time to greet them.

Which meant, he thought glumly as he tossed the
note away, his cousins would be here too. Private school brats on
their way to the Ivy League and not afraid to let everyone know it.
He would probably have to baby-sit for them, show them around, be
their pal, introduce them to his friends, who would never let him
forget it. Luckily, the Travelers was still around and he could
kill at least one evening taking them over. After that, who the
hell knew? Maybe he could mount an expedition into the cemetery at
the end of the street. Preferably at midnight. Preferably ending
with them falling into an open grave and breaking their necks.

“Right,” he said to the empty house. “Sure.”

On the other hand, who the hell was he kidding?
He wouldn’t do anything to them, and he wouldn’t say anything no
matter what the provocation. Visits like this were too important to
his mother — a chance to prove to her family, for the millionth
time, that she had indeed survived the desertion of her husband,
and had done it well. Very well. She needed no one, wanted no one,
and did not require the assistance of anyone, no matter how
well-intentioned or how well meant.

Sometimes he hated those people for what they
did to her. He hated them more because he knew they blamed her. She
had ambitions his father hadn’t been able to handle. He wanted the
kind of wife they used to have in the movies; she wanted a life
outside the house. Even now, especially on days when everything
went wrong and he wanted to bury himself in the cellar until his
luck changed, he could hear echoes of the arguments, the fights,
that had kept him awake at night, that erupted during meals, that
finally became one long campaign of marital warfare.

She wouldn’t leave; he wouldn’t leave.

Drake spent a lot of time with his friends,
eating there, sleeping over, avoiding the Devon Street house until,
at last, something broke. He never knew what happened, but one
night he came home, and his father was gone.

He had wept.

So had his mother, and two days later got her
first job.

He cleaned, then, and mowed the lawn, took
another shower and swept the porch. When he was finished, he
checked the refrigerator for something to drink, closed the door,
opened it again and groaned. His mother had forgotten to do the
shopping the day before; there was nothing for supper.

“You’re fired, Mom,” he muttered, and since she
would be late, he knew she wouldn’t have time to pick something up
on the way home. Which meant that he would have to turn himself
into Drake Saxton, Fearless Shopper, and go down to Bueller’s
Market. She hated it when he did, he knew it, and loved it. More
often than not, he blew the weekly meal budget out of the water in
one gluttonous trip, lugging home his favorite foods, healthy or
not, and a dozen things that had looked good at the time but would
seldom be eaten by either one of them.

It drove her crazy.

The last time she complained, he said, “Mom, I’m
just a kid, what do I know about nutrition? Maybe you should get a
husband.”

She threw a loaf of bread at him.

He ran out of the house ahead of her laughing
curses, came home an hour later with a gallon of her favorite ice
cream.

A T-shirt fished out of a dresser drawer, tennis
shoes without socks, and he walked down to the market, thinking he
ought to get nothing but peanut butter and jelly, it would serve
them right. Unfortunately, it had better be steaks, potatoes in the
microwave quick and easy, with a big salad to keep things cool.

Heavens,
Aunt Sheri would say,
what a
sumptuous meal. You must be doing well, dear, selling all that
insurance. How wonderful for you. Has Wendall told you about that
office building he designed for those Mormon people in Memphis? You
wouldn’t believe all the trouble they gave him. Tell her all about
it, Wendall.

Uncle Wendall would eat and say nothing; it
would all be in his eyes.

Barbi would say,
Aunt Rene, it looks
terrific, but I’m still on that silly diet, can I just have the
salad, would you mind?

Yeah,
Deena would echo,
can I just
have the salad? Mother, the Mormons are not terrible people.
They’re just fussy, that’s all.

And Chuck would mimic his father, eating the
meat and not caring if it had been cooked.

I wonder, Drake thought, if there’s a train out
of here this afternoon. Preferably to Cheyenne.

The market wasn’t much better when he got there.
It wasn’t a large place, and the already narrow aisles were crowded
with haphazard displays as well as shoppers, most of whom seemed to
have come in just to take advantage of the air-conditioning. By the
time he reached the meat counter, his ribs had taken a beating, the
food basket he held was damn near breaking his arm, and the smells
of everything from freshly ground coffee to the ammonia cleaner
used on the floor had begun to give him a headache. It didn’t help
to see a roast pig’s head staring at him from a bed of crushed ice
and parsley.

“You ever eat one of them things?” a rasping
voice said beside him.

The butcher, apron begrimed and straw hair
straggling damply from under a crushed white cap, took his order
with a flat grunt, and a swipe of a thick, tattooed forearm over
his mouth.

“Not on a bet,” Drake answered. He turned his
head and grinned at Kayman Kalb,

Kalb grinned back from under a backward-turned
baseball cap. “Looks like my first wife.” His plaid shirt was open,
abundant chest hairs white, the chest itself still muscular
though.

Drake knew the man had to be at least
sixty-five. “Never could keep her mouth shut. You ever gonna get
married?”

“I have to graduate first.”

“Oh. Right.” A thick finger poked his arm. “You
ever want to write a feature story about me, just give me a holler.
Financial wizard makes a fortune making chairs. Hell of a story.
Give me a call, boy. Always glad to help the press.”

Drake nodded, grabbed his package from the
counter when the butcher slapped it down — another grunt, another
swipe-and made his way to the register, set by the entrance. The
clerk took her time, chatting gaily, exclaiming over a squealing
baby in a backpack, commiserating over food prices, finally asking
Drake if he was expecting company or just stuffing himself
tonight.

“Relatives, Roxy,” he said to the buxom redhead,
who more than once figured in his summer dreams.

“Too bad.”

“You’re telling me.”

“Have them for stew,” Kalb called from somewhere
down the line. “Lots of salt. They always need lots of salt.”

Laughter clung to him as he stepped back outside
and sighed at the weight the sun dropped on his shoulders. The
glare off the sidewalk made him squint, and he stayed close to the
curb, trying to keep in the shade, where it wasn’t all that much
cooler.

Alaska, he thought; tomorrow, I’m getting Mom to
take us right to Alaska to live in an igloo and the hell with
Wendall Firth and all his little Firths even if Aunt Sheri was his
mother’s sister.