THE LATE SHIFT
They were driving back from a midnight screening of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (“Who will survive and what will be left of them?”) when one of them decided they should make the Stop ’N Start Market on the way home. Macklin couldn’t be sure later who said it first, and it didn’t really matter, for there was the all-night logo, its bright colors cutting through the fog before they had reached 26th Street, and as soon as he saw it Macklin moved over close to the curb and began coasting toward the only sign of life anywhere in town at a quarter to two in the morning.
They passed through the electric eye at the door, rubbing their faces in the sudden cold light. Macklin peeled off toward the news rack, feeling like a newborn before the LeBoyer Method. He reached into a row of well-thumbed magazines, but they were all chopper, custom car, detective and stroke books, as far as he could see.
“Please, please, sorry, thank you,” the night clerk was saying.
“No, no,” said a woman’s voice, “can’t you hear? I want that box, that one.”
“Please, please,” said the night man again.
Macklin glanced up.
A couple of guys were waiting in line behind her, next to the styrofoam ice chests. One of them cleared his throat and moved his feet.
The woman was a trying to give back a small, oblong carton, but the clerk didn’t seem to understand. He picked up the box, turned to the shelf, back to her again.
Then Macklin saw what it was: a package of one dozen prophylactics from behind the counter, back where they kept the cough syrup and airplane glue and film. That was all she wanted—a pack of Polaroid SX-70 Land Film.
Macklin wandered to the back of the store.
“How’s it coming, Whitey?”
“I got the Beer Nuts,” said Whitey, “and the Jiffy Pop, but I can’t find any Olde English 800.” He rummaged through the refrigerated case.
“Then get Schlitz Malt Liquor,” said Macklin. “That ought to do the job.” He jerked his head at the counter. “Hey, did you catch that action up there?”
“What’s that?”
Two more guys hurried in, heading for the wine display. “Never mind. Look, why don’t you just take this stuff up there and get a place in line? I’ll find us some Schlitz or something. Go on, they won’t sell it to us after two o’clock.”
He finally found a six-pack hidden behind some bottles, then picked up a quart of milk and a half-dozen eggs. When he got to the counter, the woman had already given up and gone home. The next man in line asked for cigarettes and beef jerky. Somehow the clerk managed to ring it up; the electronic register and UPC Code lines helped him a lot.
“Did you get a load of that one?” said Whitey. “Well, I’ll be gonged. Old Juano’s sure hit the skids, huh? The pits. They should have stood him in an aquarium.”
“Who?”
“Juano. It is him, right? Take another look.” Whitey pretended to study the ceiling.
Macklin stared at the clerk. Slicked-back hair, dyed and greasy and parted in the middle, a phony Hitler moustache, thrift-shop clothes that didn’t fit. And his skin didn’t look right somehow, like he was wearing makeup over a face that hadn’t seen the light of day in ages. But Whitey was right. It was Juano. He had waited on Macklin too many times at that little Mexican restaurant over in East L.A., Mama Something’s. Yes, that was it, Mama Carnita’s on Whittier Boulevard. Macklin and his friends, including Whitey, had eaten there maybe fifty or a hundred times, back when they were taking classes at Cal State. It was Juano for sure.
Whitey set his things on the counter. “How’s it going, man?” he said.
“Thank you,” said Juano.
Macklin laid out the rest and reached for his money. The milk made a lumpy sound when he let go of it. He gave the carton a shake. “Forget this,” he said. “It’s gone sour.” Then, “Haven’t seen you around, old buddy. Juano, wasn’t it?”
“Sorry. Sorry,” said Juano. He sounded dazed, like a sleep-walker.
Whitey wouldn’t give up. “Hey, they still make that good menudo over there?” He dug in his jeans for change. “God, I could eat about a gallon of it right now, I bet.”
They were both waiting. The seconds ticked by. A radio in the store was playing an old 60s song. Light My Fire, Macklin thought. The Doors. “You remember me, don’t you? Jim Macklin.” He held out his hand. “And my trusted Indian companion, Whitey? He used to come in there with me on Tuesdays and Thursdays.”
The clerk dragged his feet to the register, then turned back, turned again. His eyes were half-closed. “Sorry,” he said. “Sorry. Please.”
Macklin tossed down the bills, and Whitey counted his coins and slapped them onto the countertop. “Thanks,” said Whitey, his upper lip curling back. He hooked a thumb in the direction of the door. “Come on. This place gives me the creeps.”
As he left, Macklin caught a whiff of Juano or whoever he was. The scent was sickeningly sweet, like a gilded lily. His hair? Macklin felt a cold draft blow through his chest, and shuddered; the air conditioning, he thought.
At the door, Whitey spun around and glared.
“So what,” said Macklin. “Let’s go.”
“What time does Tube City here close?”
“Never. Forget it.” He touched his friend’s arm.
“The hell I will,” said Whitey. “I’m coming back when they change f*cking shifts. About six o’clock, right? I’m going to be standing right there in the parking lot when he walks out. That son of a bitch still owes me twenty bucks.”
“Please,” muttered the man behind the counter, his eyes fixed on nothing. “Please. Sorry. Thank you.”
The call came around ten. At first he thought it was a gag; he propped his eyelids up and peeked around the apartment, half-expecting to find Whitey still there, curled up asleep among the loaded ashtrays and pinched beer cans. But it was no joke.
“Okay, okay, I’ll be right there,” he grumbled, not yet comprehending, and hung up the phone.
St. John’s Hospital on 14th. In the lobby, families milled about, dressed as if on their way to church, watching the elevators and waiting obediently for the clock to signal the start of visiting hours. Business hours, thought Macklin. He got the room number from the desk and went on up.
A police officer stood stiffly in the hall, taking notes on an accident report form. Macklin got the story from him and from an irritatingly healthy-looking doctor—the official story—and found himself, against his will, believing in it. In some of it.
His friend had been in an accident, sometime after dawn. His friend’s car, the old VW, had gone over an embankment, not far from the Arroyo Seco. His friend had been found near the wreckage, covered with blood and reeking of alcohol. His friend had been drunk.
“Let’s see here now. Any living relatives?” asked the officer. “All we could get out of him was your name. He was in a pretty bad state of shock, they tell me.”
“No relatives,” said Macklin. “Maybe back on the reservation. I don’t know. I’m not even sure where the—”
A long, angry rumble of thunder sounded outside the windows. A steely light reflected off the clouds and filtered into the corridor. It mixed with the fluorescents in the ceiling, rendering the hospital interior a hard-edged, silvery gray. The faces of the policeman and the passing nurses took on a shaded, unnatural cast.
It made no sense. Whitey couldn’t have been that drunk when he left Macklin’s apartment. Of course he did not actually remember his friend leaving. But Whitey was going to the Stop ’N Start if he was going anywhere, not halfway across the county to—where? Arroyo Seco? It was crazy.
“Did you say there was liquor in the car?”
“Afraid so. We found an empty fifth of Jack Daniel’s wedged between the seats.”
But Macklin knew he didn’t keep anything hard at his place, and neither did Whitey, he was sure. Where was he supposed to have gotten it, with every liquor counter in the state shut down for the night?
And then it hit him. Whitey never, but never drank sour mash whiskey. In fact, Whitey never drank anything stronger than beer, anytime, anyplace. Because he couldn’t. It was supposed to have something to do with his liver, as it did with other Amerinds. He just didn’t have the right enzymes.
Macklin waited for the uniforms and coats to move away, then ducked inside.
“Whitey,” he said slowly.
For there he was, set up against firm pillows, the upper torso and most of the hand bandaged. The arms were bare, except for an ID bracelet and an odd pattern of zigzag lines from wrist to shoulder. The lines seemed to have been painted by an unsteady hand, using a pale gray dye of some kind.
“Call me by my name,” said Whitey groggily. “It’s White Feather.”
He was probably shot full of painkillers. But at least he was okay. Wasn’t he? “So what’s with the war paint, old buddy?”
“I saw the Death Angel last night.”
Macklin faltered. “I—I hear you’re getting out of here real soon,” he tried. “You know, you almost had me worried there. But I reckon you’re just not ready for the bone orchard yet.”
“Did you hear what I said?”
“What? Uh, yeah. Yes.” What had they shot him up with? Macklin cleared his throat and met his friend’s eyes, which were focused beyond him. “What was it, a dream?”
“A dream,” said Whitey. The eyes were glazed, burned out.
What happened? Whitey, he thought. Whitey. “You put that war paint on yourself?” he said gently.
“It’s pHisoHex,” said Whitey, “mixed with lead pencil. I put it on, the nurse washes it off, I put it on again.”
“I see.” He didn’t, but went on. “So tell me what happened, partner. I couldn’t get much out of the doctor.”
The mouth smiled humorlessly, the lips cracking back from the teeth. “It was Juano,” said Whitey. He started to laugh bitterly. He touched his ribs and stopped himself.
Macklin nodded, trying to get the drift. “Did you tell that to the cop out there?”
“Sure. Cops always believe a drunken Indian. Didn’t you know that?”
“Look. I’ll take care of Juano. Don’t worry.”
Whitey laughed suddenly in a high voice that Macklin had never heard before. “He-he-he! What are you going to do, kill him?”
“I don’t know,” he said, trying to think in spite of the clattering in the hall.
“They make a living from death, you know,” said Whitey.
Just then a nurse swept into the room, pulling a cart behind her.
“How did you get in here?” she demanded.
“I’m just having a conversation with my friend here.”
“Well, you’ll have to leave. He’s scheduled for surgery this afternoon.”
“Do you know about the Trial of the Dead?” asked Whitey.
“Shh, now,” said the nurse. “You can talk to your friend as long as you want to, later.”
“I want to know,” said Whitey, as she prepared a syringe.
“What is it we want to know, now?” she said, preoccupied. “What dead? Where?”
“Where?” repeated Whitey. “Why, here, of course. The dead are here. Aren’t they.” It was a statement. “Tell me something. What do you do with them?”
“Now what nonsense . . . ?” The nurse swabbed his arm, clucking at the ritual lines on the skin.
“I’m asking you a question,” said Whitey.
“Look, I’ll be outside,” said Macklin, “okay?”
“This is for you, too,” said Whitey. “I want you to hear. Now if you’ll just tell us, Miss Nurse. What do you do with the people who die in here?”
“Would you please—”
“I can’t hear you.” Whitey drew his arm away from her.
She sighed. “We take them downstairs. Really, this is most . . .” But Whitey kept looking at her, nailing her with those expressionless eyes.
“Oh, the remains are tagged and kept in cold storage,” she said, humoring him. “Until arrangements can be made with the family for services. There now, can we—?”
“But what happens? Between the time they become ‘remains’ and the services? How long is that? A couple of days? Three?”
She lost patience and plunged the needle into the arm.
“Listen,” said Macklin, “I’ll be around if you need me. And hey, buddy,” he added, “we’re going to have everything all set up for you when this is over. You’ll see. A party, I swear. I can go and get them to send up a TV right now, at least.”
“Like a bicycle for a fish,” said Whitey.
Macklin attempted a laugh. “You take it easy, now.”
And then he heard it again, that high, strange voice. “He-he-he! ta munka sni kun.”
Macklin needed suddenly to be out of there.
“Jim?”
“What?”
“I was wrong about something last night.”
“Yeah?”
“Sure was. That place wasn’t Tube City. This is. He-he-he!”
That’s funny, thought Macklin, like an open grave. He walked out. The last thing he saw was the nurse bending over Whitey, drawing her syringe of blood like an old-fashioned phlebotomist.
All he could find out that afternoon was that the operation wasn’t critical, and there would be additional X-rays, tests and a period of “observation,” though when pressed for details the hospital remained predictably vague no matter how he put the questions.
Instead of killing time, he made for the Stop ’N Start.
He stood around until the store was more or less empty, then approached the counter. The manager, whom Macklin knew slightly, was working the register himself.
Raphael stonewalled Macklin at the first mention of Juano; his beady eyes receded into glacial ignorance. No, the night man was named Dom or Don; he mumbled so that Macklin couldn’t be sure. No, Don (or Dom) had been working here for six, seven months; no, no, no.
Until Macklin came up with the magic word: police.
After a few minutes of bobbing and weaving, it started to come out. Raphe sounded almost scared, yet relieved to be able to talk about it to someone, even to Macklin.
“They bring me these guys, my friend,” whispered Raphe. “I don’t got nothing to do with it, believe me.
“The way it seems to me, it’s company policy for all the stores, not just me. Sometimes they call and say to lay off my regular boy, you know, on the graveyard shift. ’Specially when there’s been a lot of holdups. Hell, that’s right by me. I don’t want Dom shot up. He’s my best man!
“See, I put the hours down on Dom’s pay so it comes out right with the taxes, but he has to kick it back. It don’t even go on his check. Then the district office, they got to pay the outfit that supplies these guys, only they don’t give ’em the regular wage. I don’t know if they’re wetbacks or what. I hear they only get maybe $1.25 an hour, or at least the outfit that brings ’em in does, so the office is making money. You know how many stores, how many shifts that adds up to?
“Myself, I’m damn glad they only use ’em after dark, late, when things can get hairy for an all-night man. It’s the way they look. But you already seen one, this Juano-Whatever. So you know. Right? You know something else, my friend? They all look messed up.”
Macklin noticed goose bumps forming on Raphe’s arms.
“But I don’t personally know nothing about it.”
They, thought Macklin, poised outside the Stop ’N Start. Sure enough, like clockwork They had brought Juano to work at midnight. Right on schedule. With raw, burning eyes he had watched Them do something to Juano’s shirt front and then point him at the door and let go. What did They do, wind him up? But They would be back. Macklin was sure of that. They, whoever They were. The Paranoid They.
Well, he was sure as hell going to find out who They were now.
He popped another Dexamyl and swallowed dry until it stayed down.
Threats didn’t work any better than questions with Juano himself. Macklin had had to learn that the hard way. The guy was so sublimely creepy it was all he could do to swivel back and forth between register and counter, slithering a hyaline hand over the change machine in the face of the most outraged customers, like Macklin, giving out with only the same pathetic, wheezing please, please, sorry, thank you, like a stretched cassette tape on its last loop.
Which had sent Macklin back to the car with exactly no options, nothing to do that might jar the nightmare loose except to pound the steering wheel and curse and dream redder and redder dreams of revenge. He had burned rubber between the parking lot and Sweeney Todd’s Pub, turning over two pints of John Courage and a shot of Irish whiskey before he could think clearly enough to waste another dime calling the hospital, or even to look at his watch.
At six o’clock They would be back for Juano. And then. He would. Find out.
Two or three hours in the all-night movie theatre downtown, merging with the shadows on the tattered screen. The popcorn girl wiping stains off her uniform. The ticket girl staring through him, and again when he left. Something about her. He tried to think. Something about the people who work night owl shifts anywhere. He remembered faces down the years. It didn’t matter what they looked like. The nightwalkers, insomniacs, addicts, those without the money for a cheap hotel, they would always come back to the only game in town. They had no choice. It didn’t matter that the ticket girl was messed up. It didn’t matter that Juano was messed up. Why should it?
A blue van glided into the lot.
The Stop ’N Start sign dimmed, paling against the coming morning. The van braked. A man in rumpled clothes climbed out. There was a second figure in the front seat. The driver unlocked the back doors, silencing the birds that were gathering in the trees. The he entered the store.
Macklin watched. Juano was led out. The a.m. relief man stood by shaking his head.
Macklin hesitated. He wanted Juano, but what could he do now? What the hell had he been waiting for, exactly? There was still something else, something else . . . It was like the glimpse of a shape under a sheet in a busy corridor. You didn’t know what it was at first, but it was there; you knew what it might be, but you couldn’t be sure, not until you got close and stayed next to it long enough to be able to read its true form.
The driver helped Juano into the van. He locked the doors, started the engine and drove away.
Macklin, his lights out, followed.
He stayed with the van as it snaked a path across the city, nearer and nearer the foothills. The sides were unmarked, but he figured it must operate like one of those minibus porta-maid services he had seen leaving Malibu and Bel-Air late in the afternoon, or like the loads of kids trucked in to push magazine subscriptions and phony charities in the neighborhoods near where he lived.
The sky was still black, beginning to turn slate close to the horizon. Once they passed a garbage collector already on his rounds. Macklin kept his distance.
They led him finally to a street that dead-ended at a construction site. Macklin idled by the corner, then saw the van turn back.
He let them pass, cruised to the end and made a slow turn.
Then he saw the van returning.
He pretended to park. He looked up.
They had stopped the van crosswise in front of him, blocking his passage.
The man in rumpled clothes jumped out and opened Macklin’s door.
Macklin started to get out but was pushed back.
“You think you’re a big enough man to be trailing people around?”
Macklin tried to penetrate the beam of the flashlight. “I saw my old friend Juano get into your truck,” he began. “Didn’t get a chance to talk to him. Thought I might as well follow him home and see what he’s been up to.”
The other man got out of the front seat of the van. He was younger, delicate-boned. He stood on one side, listening.
“I saw him get in,” said Macklin, “back at the Stop ’N Start on Pico?” He groped under the seat for the tire iron. “I was driving by and—”
“Get out.”
“What?”
“We saw you. Out of the car.”
He shrugged and swung his legs around, lifting the iron behind him as he stood.
The younger man motioned with his head and the driver yanked Macklin forward by the shirt, kicking the door closed on Macklin’s arm at the same time. He let out a yell as the tire iron clanged to the pavement.
“Another accident?” suggested the younger man.
“Too messy, after the one yesterday. Come on, pal, you’re going to get to see your friend.”
Macklin hunched over in pain. One of them jerked his bad arm up and he screamed. Over it all he felt a needle jab him high, in the armpit, and then he was falling.
The van was bumping along on the freeway when he came out of it. With his good hand he pawed his face, trying to clear his vision. His other arm didn’t hurt, but it wouldn’t move when he wanted it to.
He was sprawled on his back. He felt a wheel humming under him, below the tirewell. And there were the others. They were sitting up. One was Juano.
He was aware of a stink, sickeningly sweet, with an overlay he remembered from his high school lab days but couldn’t quite place. It sliced into his nostrils.
He didn’t recognize the others. Pasty faces. Heads thrown forward, arms distended strangely with the wrists jutting out from the coat sleeves.
“Give me a hand,” he said, not really expecting it.
He strained to sit up. He could make out the backs of two heads in the cab, on the other side of the grid.
He dropped his voice to a whisper. “Hey. Can you guys understand me?”
“Let us rest,” someone said weakly.
He rose too quickly and his equilibrium failed. He had been shot up with something strong enough to knock him out, but it was probably the Dexamyl that had kept his mind from leaving his body completely. The van yawed, descending an off ramp, and he began to drift. He heard voices. They slipped in and out of his consciousness like fish in darkness, moving between his ears in blurred levels he could not always identify.
“There’s still room at the cross.” That was the younger, small-boned man, he was almost sure.
“Oh, I’ve been interested in Jesus for a long time, but I never could get a handle on him . . .”
“Well, beware the wrath to come. You really should, you know.”
He put his head back and became one with a dark dream. There was something he wanted to remember. He did not want to remember it. He turned his mind to doggerel, to the old song. The time to hesitate is through, he thought. No time to wallow in the mire. Try now we can only lose / And our love become a funeral pyre. The van bumped to a halt. His head bounced off steel.
The door opened. He watched it. It seemed to take forever.
Through slitted eyes: a man in a uniform that barely fit, hobbling his way to the back of the van, supported by the two of them. A line of gasoline pumps and a sign that read WE NEVER CLOSE—NEVER UNDERSOLD. The letters breathed. Before they let go of him, the one with rumpled clothes unbuttoned the attendant’s shirt and stabbed a hypodermic into the chest, close to the heart and next to a strap that ran under the arms. The needle darted and flashed dully in the wan morning light.
“This one needs a booster,” said the driver, or maybe it was the other one. Their voices ran together. “Just make sure you don’t give him the same stuff you gave old Juano’s sweetheart there. I want them to walk in on their own hind legs.” “You think I want to carry ’em?” “We’ve done it before, brother. Yesterday, for instance.” At that Macklin let his eyelids down the rest of the way, and then he was drifting again.
The wheels drummed under him.
“How much longer?” “Soon now. Soon.”
These voices weak, like a folding and unfolding of paper.
Brakes grabbed. The doors opened again. A thin light played over Macklin’s lids, forcing them up.
He had another moment of clarity; they were becoming more frequent now. He blinked and felt pain. This time the van was parked between low hills. Two men in Western costumes passed by, one of them leading a horse. The driver stopped a group of figures in togas. He seemed to be asking for directions.
Behind them, a castle lay in ruins. Part of a castle. And over to the side Macklin identified a church steeple, the corner of a turn-of-the-century street, a mock-up of a rocket launching pad and an old brick schoolhouse. Under the flat sky they receded into intersections of angles and vistas which teetered almost imperceptibly, ready to topple.
The driver and the other one set a stretcher on the tailgate. On the litter was a long, crumpled shape, sheeted and encased in a plastic bag. They sloughed it inside and started to secure the doors.
“You got the pacemaker back, I hope.” “Stunt director said it’s in the body bag.” “It better be. Or it’s our ass in a sling. Your ass. How’d he get so racked up, anyway?” “Ran him over a cliff in a sports car. Or no, maybe this one was the head-on they staged for, you know, that new cop series. That’s what they want now, realism. Good thing he’s a cremation—ain’t no way Kelly or Dee’s gonna get this one pretty again by tomorrow.” “That’s why, man. That’s why they picked him. Ashes don’t need makeup.”
The van started up.
“Going home,” someone said weakly.
“Yes . . .”
Macklin was awake now. Crouching by the bag, he scanned the faces, Juano’s and the others’. The eyes were staring, fixed on a point as untouchable as the thinnest of plasma membranes, and quite unreadable.
He crawled over next to the one from the self-service gas station. The shirt hung open like folds of skin. He saw the silver box strapped to the flabby chest, directly over the heart. Pacemaker? he thought wildly.
He knelt and put his ear to the box.
He heard a humming, like an electric wristwatch.
What for? To keep the blood pumping just enough so the tissues don’t rigor mortis and decay? For God’s sake, for how much longer?
He remembered Whitey and the nurse. “What happens? Between the time they become ‘remains’ and the services? How long is that? A couple of days? Three?”
A wave of nausea broke inside him. When he gazed at them again the faces were wavering, because his eyes were filled with tears.
“Where are we?” he asked.
“I wish you could be here,” said the gas station attendant.
“And where is that?”
“We have all been here before,” said another voice.
“Going home,” said another.
Yes, he thought, understanding. Soon you will have your rest; soon you will no longer be objects, commodities. You will be honored and grieved for and your personhood given back, and then you will at last rest in peace. It is not for nothing that you have labored so long and so patiently. You will see, all of you. Soon.
He wanted to tell them, but he couldn’t. He hoped they already knew.
The van lurched and slowed. The hand brake ratcheted.
He lay down and closed his eyes.
He heard the door creak back.
“Let’s go.”
The driver began to herd the bodies out. There was the sound of heavy, dragging feet, and from outside the smell of fresh-cut grass and roses.
“What about this one?” said the driver, kicking Macklin’s shoe.
“Oh, he’ll do his forty-eight-hours’ service, don’t worry. It’s called utilizing your resources.”
“Tell me about it. When do we get the Indian?”
“Soon as St. John’s certificates him. He’s overdue. The crash was sloppy.”
“This one won’t be. But first Dee’ll want him to talk, what he knows and who he told. Two doggers in two days is too much. Then we’ll probably run him back to his car and do it. And phone it in, so St. John’s gets him. Even if it’s DOA. Clean as hammered shit. Grab the other end.”
He felt the body bag sliding against his leg. Grunting, they hauled it out and hefted it toward—where?
He opened his eyes. He hesitated only a second, to take a deep breath.
Then he was out of the van and running.
Gravel kicked up under his feet. He heard curses and metal slamming. He just kept his head down and his legs pumping. Once he twisted around and saw a man scurrying after him. The driver paused by the mortuary building and shouted. But Macklin kept moving.
He stayed on the path as long as he dared. It led him past mossy trees and bird-stained statues. Then he jumped and cut across a carpet of matted leaves and into a glade. He passed a gate that spelled DRY LAWN CEMETERY in old iron, kept running until he spotted a break in the fence where it sloped by the edge of the grounds. He tore through huge, dusty ivy and skidded down, down. And then he was on a sidewalk.
Cars revved at a wide intersection, impatient to get to work. He heard coughing and footsteps, but it was only a bus stop at the middle of the block. The air brakes of a commuter special hissed and squealed. A clutch of grim people rose from the bench and filed aboard like sleepwalkers.
He ran for it, but the doors flapped shut and the bus roared on.
More people at the corner, stepping blindly between each other. He hurried and merged with them.
Dry cleaners, laundromat, hamburger stand, parking lot, gas station, all closed. But there was a telephone at the gas station.
He ran against the light. He sealed the booth behind him and nearly collapsed against the glass.
He rattled money into the phone, dialed Operator and called for the police.
The air was close in the booth. He smelled hair tonic. Sweat swelled out of his pores and glazed his skin. Somewhere a radio was playing.
A sergeant punched onto the line. Macklin yelled for them to come and get him. Where was he? He looked around frantically, but there were no street signs. Only a newspaper rack chained to a post. NONE OF THE DEAD HAS BEEN IDENTIFIED, read the headline.
His throat tightened, his voice racing. “None of the dead has been identified,” he said, practically babbling.
Silence.
So he went ahead, pouring it out about a van and a hospital and a man in rumpled clothes who shot guys up with some kind of super-adrenaline and electric pacemakers and night-clerks and crash tests. He struggled to get it all out before it was too late. A part of him heard what he was saying and wondered if he had lost his mind.
“Who will bury them?” he cried. “What kind of monsters—”
The line clicked off.
He hung onto the phone. His eyes were swimming with sweat. He was aware of his heart and counted the beats, while the moisture from his breath condensed on the glass.
He dropped another coin into the box.
“Good morning, St. John’s, may I help you?”
He couldn’t remember the room number. He described the man, the accident, the date. Sixth floor, yes, that was right. He kept talking until she got it.
There was a pause. Hold.
He waited.
“Sir?”
He didn’t say anything. It was as if he had no words left.
“I’m terribly sorry . . .”
He felt the blood drain from him. His fingers were cold and numb.
“. . . But I’m afraid the surgery wasn’t successful. The party did not recover. If you wish I’ll connect you with—”
“The party’s name was White Feather,” he said mechanically. The receiver fell and dangled, swinging like the pendulum of a clock.
He braced his legs against the sides of the booth. After what seemed like a very long time he found himself reaching reflexively for his cigarettes. He took one from the crushed pack, straightened it and hung it on his lips.
On the other side of the frosted glass, featureless shapes lumbered by on the boulevard. He watched them for a while.
He picked up a book of matches from the floor, lit two together and held them close to the glass. The flame burned a clear spot through the moisture.
Try to set the night on fire, he thought stupidly, repeating the words until they and any others he could think of lost meaning.
The fire started to burn his fingers. He hardly felt it. He ignited the matchbook cover, too, turning it over and over. He wondered if there was anything else that would burn, anything and everything. He squeezed his eyelids together. When he opened them, he was looking down at his own clothing.
He peered out through the clear spot in the glass.
Outside, the outline fuzzy and distorted but quite unmistakable, was a blue van. It was waiting at the curb.
THOMAS LIGOTTI
Thomas Ligotti was born in Detroit in 1953. While working for Gale Research Company, he began publishing his short fiction in small-press magazines such as Nyctalops, Eldritch Tales, and Fantasy Tales, and his first volume, Songs of a Dead Dreamer, was published in 1986 with little fanfare by Silver Scarab Press, although it contained an enthusiastic introduction by British supernaturalist Ramsey Campbell. But Ligotti’s reputation slowly grew by word-of-mouth, and in 1989 his first volume was republished in an expanded edition in England. Since then, Ligotti has issued further volumes of short stories, including Grimscribe: His Lives and Works (1991), Noctuary (1994), and My Work Is Not Yet Done (2002). The Nightmare Factory (1996) is an omnibus of his first three collections.
Ligotti, although influenced by Edgar Allan Poe, H. P. Lovecraft, and other writers of the American supernatural tradition, has developed a highly original and distinctive approach to the field, fusing psychological and supernatural tropes to create a nightmarish world of terror in which almost anything can occur. His subject matter is bolstered by an idiosyncratic and occasionally difficult and obscure style that seeks to destroy the distinction between the real and the imaginary. Ligotti has professed that he cannot write horror novels and that the supernatural is in fact incapable of being cogently expressed in the novel form; accordingly, in spite of the fact that the title story of My Work Is Not Yet Done is a novella of more than thirty thousand words, Ligotti has adhered to short fiction, passing up the possibility of broader popular recognition and seemingly content with the admiration of a small band of cognoscenti. Ligotti has also written provocatively about the horror story, both in interviews and in such essays as “The Consolations of Horror” (1989). He now lives in Florida.
“Vastarien” (first published in Crypt of Cthulhu, St. John’s Eve 1987, and included in Songs of a Dead Dreamer, 1989) is representative of Ligotti’s eccentric work in its elaboration of H. P. Lovecraft’s concept of the “forbidden book” that can lead to death or madness.