Night Conjurings: Tales of Terror Read online

  I set off down the road, and even though I knew I was safe I could still feel the fear racing behind me, racing to catch me, and I pedaled as fast as I could, thinking after another quarter mile I’d feel safe. I pumped and pumped, but the fear was still racing behind me, and I went faster and faster, thinking that sometime the fear would be gone, but now it’s forty-five years later and the fear is still there, still just a foot behind me and always racing closer.

  Secret Places

  Carey’s apartment wasn’t in a nice part of town, and Denise was glad Greg was in the car watching her as she climbed the steps. She knocked because the doorbell didn’t work, and after a minute she started banging with her fist.

  “All right, you don’t have to knock the whole damn building down,” Carey said when he finally opened the door. He sniffled and wiped his nose with a blue bandanna. “Come in.”

  “I don’t want to come in,” she said.

  “Then you better go wait in your car.” He glanced at the wristwatch she had given him five years ago as an anniversary present and said, “It’s only 8:45, and Tommy’s mine until 9:00.”

  Denise gritted her teeth and went in. The living room looked tidy and bare as always—Carey had never liked to own a lot of things. Some quiet piano music was playing on the stereo upstairs, a tune she thought she recognized but couldn’t place.

  “Where’s Tommy?” she asked.

  “Upstairs playing with my keyboard,” Carey said. “Can’t you hear him?”

  Denise felt a sharp pang of resentment. She had never known that Tommy could play a note. Maybe he wasn’t really her son any longer.

  Carey grinned and wiped his nose again. “I’ve been teaching him a few licks,” he said. “He’s catching on pretty well, don’t you think? Sit down and get comfortable.”

  “I don’t want to sit down, I don’t have all night.”

  “Well, he’s mine for twelve more minutes, so you may as well get comfortable. I’d offer you a drink, but all I have is that sugary soda pop he likes.”

  Denise sat down and said, “Bullshit. You always have an extra bottle of bourbon stashed away somewhere. You’re just saving it to guzzle after he leaves.”

  “No bottles up my sleeve and no track marks either,” he said. “I told you, I quit all that junk twelve months ago.”

  “Sure you did. You told me you quit snorting coke too, but every time I see you you’re wiping your nose.”

  “I’ve got a sinus infection,” he said. “I’ve been clean for a year now.” He sat down and stared at her with that sweet annoying smile.

  She tried to find something else to look at, but there wasn’t much in the small living room—a futon, the two chairs they were sitting on, a coffee table, and on the walls half a dozen paintings that Carey had painted himself. She stared at her watch for a while and then glanced at his face.

  It didn’t look healthy, and she felt something stirring that she didn’t want to feel. Eighteen years ago, when she met him, he had looked like a blue-eyed golden-haired angel. Three years ago, when she left him, he had looked like a sunken-eyed fallen angel, his golden hair greasy and his face ravaged by drugs. Now he looked like someone who just needed a good deep grave and a mound of dirt to cover him.

  “Listen, I’ve got to get up and go to work tomorrow,” she said. “I’m sure you don’t remember what that’s like.”

  “I remember a lot of things,” he said. “I remember that night in the old house when we ate psilocybin mushrooms and made love all night long with the tape recorder recording our moans and sighs, and the next day we ran them through my synthesizer to make a symphony of love. Remember that one, babe? That’s probably the night Tommy was conceived. He was our greatest creation, but I’m sure we could still make some nice music together.”

  Denise stood up and brushed her skirt down past her knees. “Get real,” she said. “You haven’t made anything like music since you turned your brains into jelly. You’re a drug addict, and you’re killing yourself a little faster every week. You don’t deserve any custody rights.”

  She was beginning to shout, and the music upstairs stopped. Carey grabbed her arm and pulled her outside onto the little front porch.

  “Tommy heard you,” Carey said. “I don’t want you talking like that around my son, do you hear? I told you I’ve given up drugs, and even if I hadn’t you know damn well I’d never use them around Tommy. He loves me, he thinks I’m the greatest dad in the world. That’s the only thing you can’t steal from me.”

  “I didn’t steal anything,” she said.

  “You stole my house,” he said. “You stole my dreams. You steal my paycheck every month, but you’re not gonna steal my son.”

  “I paid for that house,” she said. “As far as child support goes, the kind of money you pay isn’t even worth taking to the bank.”

  Carey smiled his sweet smile, and his ruined angel-face told her she was lying. In fact he had paid a sizable down payment and several years of mortgage for the house and the ten acres of land she lived on. That was back when his arty rock band had made a couple of albums on a major label. Then the bass player had died of a heroin overdose, the guitar player had become a born-again Christian, and now the drummer was selling insurance in an office on High Street. The only band member still playing music was Carey, and the music he played now was the kind he hated most, light piano jazz four nights a week at a pretentious cocktail lounge. The money he made didn’t add up to much child-support.

  His smile faded when he glanced at her car. “Did you have to bring him?” he asked. “Does he have to follow you everywhere? Does he follow you into the bathroom?”

  “We’re probably going to get married,” she said. “Get used to it.”

  “He’s living in my house. He doesn’t need to come here and gawk at my crummy little apartment too.”

  “Greg doesn’t live with me,” Denise said. “Not yet.”

  “No, he just sleeps there seven nights a week. Tommy tells me everything. He can even hear you fucking—you better be more careful with the grunts and moans.”

  “I think your time’s up,” she said.

  Carey looked at his watch and said, “No, I’ve got three more minutes. Three more minutes to look at that bastard sitting in your car. You know what he is? He’s a big square box with nothing inside.”

  “You don’t even know him,” she said.

  “Yeah I do. He eats Cheerios every morning and his favorite dinner is hamburgers with Velveeta cheese. He thinks sushi’s for sissies and David Lynch movies are for lunatics. Mr. Squarebox. Tommy hates him, you know.”

  “Tommy hates him because you tell him to,” she said. “Now Tommy’s starting to hate me too.”

  “Tommy hates him because he knows there’s only one man for him and there’s only one man for you, and you know that too. Someday we’re going to be together again, babe, just the three of us.”

  “Don’t hold your breath,” she said.

  “You know we’re joined at the hip,” he said. “We got the link, babe. All those acid trips we did together, we learned to read each other’s minds. Tell me something, can Mr. Squarebox read your mind and know what you really want? I’ll bet he can’t even read a book unless it has a lot of pictures.”

  “Your time’s up,” Denise said. She opened the door and yelled, “Come on, Tommy, we’re leaving.”

  Carey grabbed her arm and pulled her close. “You know I’m right, babe,” he whispered in her ear. “We’re like twins. We’ve got our special memories and we’ve got our secret places. We’ve got the link.”

  Greg started honking, and Tommy came down the stairs saying, “All right, all right, I’m coming,” but Denise could see that he didn’t want to.

  ***

  Tommy sulked in the back seat without speaking, and when they got home he ran up to his room. The next evening he played with his food without eating it. When he started putting his French fries in his milk glass, Denise yelled, “Stop that!”
But he kept doing it, and the milk overflowed onto the table.

  “If you’re not going to eat, go to your room,” she said, and he did.

  The next night he was hungry enough to behave at the table, though he wouldn’t speak except to grunt whenever Denise asked him a question. After dinner she and Greg sat on the sofa watching his favorite show, a stupid sitcom. He wanted to cuddle and kiss, but she wasn’t in the mood. She was disentangling herself from his embrace when she saw Tommy standing there staring at them with a hateful expression.

  “What are you doing?” she said. “Why are you making that ugly face?”

  “Cause this show sucks,” he said. It was probably the first full sentence he’d said to her since leaving his father’s apartment.

  “Okay, put something else on,” she said.

  Tommy aimed the remote control at her and Greg and started pushing the buttons. “The same stupid show’s on every channel,” he said. He threw the control on the floor and ran up to his room.

  Denise felt like crying but didn’t. Greg held her and said, “It’s okay, Denny. He’s a good kid, he just acts weird after he sees his father. We’ll get this worked out.”

  Greg was a nice man even if he was a square box, and pretty soon his soft words and hard muscles made her feel better. He led her upstairs, but when they got in bed she rolled away from him and clutched her pillow.

  “What’s wrong?” Greg asked.

  “Tommy can hear us when we have sex,” she said. “That’s what Carey told me. He’s probably in his room listening right now.”

  The week went downhill from there, Tommy growing more sullen each day and Greg acting hurt because Denise wouldn’t have sex with him. Saturday he was sitting in the dining room staring at his laptop, and she knew he was either reading sports news or gawking at photos of hot cheerleaders in skimpy outfits, since that’s what he did every Saturday morning. Maybe Carey’s right, she thought—maybe Greg really is a square box with nothing inside.

  “Where are those keys to the cabin?” she asked. “I can’t find them in the kitchen drawer.”

  “I moved them to that drawer in the bookcase,” he said without looking up, and she felt another stab of annoyance. It was her house—what right did he have moving things without telling her?

  “What do you want with them?” he asked. “Are we going to the lake today?”

  “Carey is. He called and said he lost his key.”

  Greg looked up from his screen and frowned. “I don’t like him using our cabin,” he said. “He probably takes drugs there.”

  “What do you mean our cabin? If it belonged to me it wouldn’t be ours, it would be mine, but in fact it isn’t mine, it’s Carey’s. It’s one of the few things he got in the settlement. He just lets us use it as a courtesy. I’m sure I’ve told you that.”

  “Oh.” Greg sipped his coffee and frowned some more. “Well then, I think we should buy our own cabin. I don’t like having Carey in our lives like this, all the time Carey wanting this and Carey wanting that.”

  “I have a great idea,” she said. “You’re paying money for a nice apartment, but you never use it. Why don’t you go spend your day there and leave me the fuck alone. You can gawk at your bimbo cheerleaders there just as well as here.”

  Greg’s frown crumpled into something more painful, but he shut his laptop without speaking and went to the bathroom to collect his shaving gear. Denise stood with her arms crossed, already regretting her temper tantrum, but at the same time looking forward to some time to herself. But not really to herself, since Tommy would still be around.

  As soon as Greg’s car pulled out of the driveway, she called Carey. “Are you planning to take drugs at the cabin?” she asked.

  “I told you, I’m clean. I’ve been clean for twelve months now.”

  “Do you swear that on a Bible or whatever else you happen to believe in?”

  “Yes.”

  “Would you like to take Tommy with you?”

  His yes was quiet, but she could hear joy ringing in it like faint bells. According to the custody agreement he was allowed to have Tommy only one weekend per month, and this was the first time she’d given him an extra weekend.

  “I’ll swing by in an hour,” he said. “Make sure he packs his fishing gear, a warm blanket, a flashlight, and a good book. We’ll read it together around the fireplace tonight.”

  As she helped Tommy pack, his excitement was almost more painful to her than his usual resentment. Why didn’t he love her the way he loved his father? Every day he looked more like Carey, same angel-blue eyes, same delicate face, same long golden hair, and every day he seemed less like her own child.

  He was looking through his Harry Potter collection, trying to decide which volume to pack, when she heard Carey’s old red Volkswagen chugging into the driveway. She hurried downstairs and met him in the yard, not wanting him to come in.

  He stood there staring at the house. “I always hated that vinyl siding, I wanted wood,” he said. “But I like the color. The slate blue was your idea, remember? I wanted something darker.”

  He stepped past the corner of the attached garage and stared at the woods behind it. The old farmhouse was half-hidden back there in the autumn trees, its siding black with rot and the collapsing slate roof bowed in the center like the back of a crippled nag. It was already falling into ruin when they bought the land and built the new house, but Carey had turned it into his music and painting studio. He always liked ruins.

  “I see my old friend still stands,” he said. “I’m surprised Mr. Squarebox hasn’t torn it down yet.”

  “It’s not his to tear down.”

  “No, it will always be ours, won’t it? That’s one of our special places, the place where our son was conceived.” He smiled his sweet smile and said, “Maybe we’ll be there again someday, making love with our tape recorder on.”

  “Maybe in your dreams.”

  “Why don’t you leave Mr. Squarebox to his Cheerios and come camping with us?” he said. “Just Tommy and me and babe makes three.”

  She started to say, “You’re such an asshole,” but Tommy came running out of the house with his fishing rod and duffle bag, and Carey yelled, “There’s my boy!”

  ***

  She had gotten so used to having Greg and Tommy around that she wasn’t sure what to do by herself. She mopped the kitchen, stared at her computer for a while, watched some TV and ate a sandwich. She regretted snapping at Greg. He was a kind man, even if he was square. She wanted to marry him so she could forget about Carey’s ruined smile, but there was an angry boy standing between them.

  The sun was going down when she called her friend Ginger. “Got any plans tonight?” she asked.

  “Nope. Let’s go out and boogie. If you get too fucked up to drive you can spend the night here.”

  Ginger’s house was just ten miles away, but it was in a foreign world because it was in the city. Buying land in the country had been Carey’s idea, and at first Denise had hated the isolation. Then the silence started to sound good, and she gave up a better job in town to keep accounts for a tractor dealership not far from the house. Now country silence was in her blood, and she couldn’t imagine living in the city again. She wondered how Carey could stand it.

  He hates cities even more than I do, she thought as she parked in front of Ginger’s little two-story house. He lives in a place he hates and makes his living playing the kind of music he hates. It’s like he’s punishing himself.

  No, it’s like I’m punishing him. I took it all away from him.

  As she rang Ginger’s doorbell, she glimpsed Carey’s pale face for a moment in the porch light and saw the sadness in his smile. A sharp damp breeze blew up her coat and made her shiver.

  “You look all ragged,” Ginger said. “What’s wrong, you and Greg been fighting?”

  “No, it’s more like me and Tommy,” Denise said. “He’s been a real pain in the butt. He doesn’t like Greg very much.”

&n
bsp; “Kids,” Ginger said. “Only time I have a life is when mine are with their dad. Want some reefer?”

  The marijuana was powerful, and after a couple hits Denise began to feel paranoid. She thought she heard Carey’s voice, but it was just a thin ambulance siren receding in the distance. Then she heard his voice again. “We’ve got our secret places,” he seemed to be saying. “We’ve got the link.”

  “What’s wrong, Denny?” Ginger asked.

  “Nothing. This dope’s too strong for me.”

  “Yeah, it’s some righteous shit okay. Wanna do a couple lines to clear your head?”

  Denise snorted some coke through a straw, and her head rang like a tuning fork. She heard the siren again, somewhere in the distance but coming closer.

  “My nerves are shot,” she said. “I let Tommy go camping with Carey, and now I’m not sure it was a good idea.”

  “Nothing involving that asshole is a good idea in my opinion,” Ginger said. “Madam Alex says he’s going to cause some bad trouble pretty soon.” She relit the joint and took a deep hit.

  “Who’s Madam Alex?”

  “You know, that spiritualist medium I’ve been seeing. She’s the real thing, Denny, you have to meet her.”

  “She said something about Carey?”

  “She said I know some drug addict sicko who’s going to cause some bad trouble pretty soon, and Carey’s the only drug addict sicko I know.”

  “He says he’s quit.”

  “Yep, and the bear says he quit shitting in the woods. He’s not straight and sober like you and me.” Ginger choked on her marijuana and began to giggle.

  The siren kept coming closer. The ambulance seemed to be prowling all the streets around the house, looking for some sort of misery. The thin wail reminded Denise of one of Carey’s old songs, but she couldn’t remember the words—something about hate and death.

  “You remember one of Carey’s songs that goes, ‘They say you can’t take it with you, but I’m gonna try’?” she asked. “I think it’s on his first album.”

  “I never could stand his music,” Ginger said. “Too morbid. His songs all sound like suicide notes to me.”