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1. Cadavers
Halloween. Paul’s shift ends at midnight. He’ll see my car in the driveway and know I’m here, but the house will be in total darkness. I’ll have made everything ready, loosened every light bulb in its socket, placed rolled-up towels under the quilt to approximate my sleeping form, turned the heat way down so a deathly chill permeates the house. He’ll find a single candle burning on the living room coffee table and under it a short note: Lights not working. Lit a candle for you. Come up to bed. And I’ll have prepared my costume.
I have a taste for macabre costumes. I once went to a Halloween party as an executioner carrying a bloody axe and my date carried her head. This year I’ll undress up as one of the displays from the exhibition on the human body we saw at the science museum some weeks ago. Not models – real cadavers dissected and plasticened; detached body parts to study separately: hands, feet, organs and tissue; full systems exposed: skeletal, muscular, circulatory, digestive, nervous, lymphatic, reproductive; whole men and women in living postures, layers of muscle peeled back, gymnasts and other athletes, dancers, runners, workers, thinkers, sleepers, jokesters, the active and the idle, the obese and the emaciated, ensouled by the tasks they were engaged in. For weeks Paul would only eat roast beef in pre-made sandwiches. If you exposed the slices he lost his appetite.
I’ve bought glow-in-the-dark body paints – white, pale pink, dull beige and lurid chartreuse. Paul unwittingly prepped my masquerade when he shaved my crotch last weekend. (That was fun too.) I undress and carefully daub my naked body standing before the full-length mirror, his bed reflected behind me. Yes, the lump below the quilts could pass for me in a pinch.
First my skeleton. A line of white along my collar bone and tracing every rib, from under my arms across to the sternum. Big mistake, wrong place to start. Now I must hold my elbows out to the side while I work on the rest of me or my rib cage will smear. Leg bones next, with just a few lines on top of my feet to represent the digits. The hips and pelvis are tricky, the arms as easy as the legs.
Now for the muscles, shreds of pink shadowed in beige hanging from my limbs. Beige for my throat too. My sex comes next. I lavish care on that part, my centerpiece: white testicles weighing down a beige scrotum, beige lightened with white for the shaft, pink mixed with white for the tip, tendon streaks of chartreused beige across the pelvic bone connect it to the empty cavity of my stomach. The cold will keep it flaccid, like the specimen we saw at the museum. No extraneous organs will distract from the smirking glory of my dick – no liver, no spleen, no red heart, no green guts. I use the chartreuse sparingly, light touches for highlights and shadow.
The skull. I mustn’t overdo this and overpower all the all-together with too much white. The broad smear of my forehead stops at the eyebrows, and just a daub across my cheek bones. A single thumb print of chartreuse on each eyelid to gleam in the deep emptiness of my sockets, short vertical lines the width of my pinky across my lips represent my teeth (I check in the mirror and extend the lines beyond where my lips end), a thicker line tracing the edge of the maxillary bone from ears to chin, drawn with the pads of my index and middle fingers.
Finished. Washing the smudges from my hands is a problem I did not anticipate. I use a moistened rag; I cannot rinse. The whole process took a lot longer than I expected.
Now I wait. Two, three hours, maybe three and a half. I’ll freeze to death in this chilly house. I can throw a blanket over my shoulders. I had no reason to decorate myself in back, even if I could. Nothing counts but his first sight of me when I pop out at him.
From where? He always showers before bed. If I hid in the bathroom, behind the shower curtain... very Hitchcockian. But then he might first kiss my dummy form in the bed and know something’s up. He’ll come through the front door into the small entrance nook in the corner of the living room, catty-corner from the kitchen. I could stand in the kitchen doorway, but that would be too soon, before he took the creepy candle to light his way through the darkened house. The steep, narrow stairwell to the upstairs is to the right of the kitchen. I could follow him up the stairs or appear at the head of the staircase as he climbed them. No, he might startle backwards and fall.
At the top of the stairs a small, unused, closed-off bedroom awaits a new occupant. To reach his room Paul must turn around and walk down the hall alongside the stairwell. I could creep out behind him and follow him down the hall. The door usually creaks; he’d turn and I’ll be there. If not, he’ll turn and see me standing in the doorway of his room after he finds out that the motionless mound on the right side of his bed is not me. That’s perfect – I can bring a space heater into the small room. I unscrew the last light bulb and check my makeup by candlelight. Eerie, sexy, deliciously clown-like.
I force myself not to anticipate. I want his reaction to surprise me as much as my apparition surprises him. But I imagine falling onto the bed on top of him, kissing him, pressing against him, and the body paint rubbing off on his face and chest and legs and belly to turn us into two writhing, moaning, howling smudges glowing as we make love on stained and rumpled sheets beside the flickering candle.
2. The Eye
He hadn’t seen David in nearly two weeks. His change of clothes hung in the closet, his toothbrush and razor sat unused on a shelf in the bathroom, his pajamas lay folded under the pillow, his dirty underwear rolled up and shoved into a corner.
He didn’t notice his absence immediately. They didn’t live together, after all, but they’d been lovers for over a year, and he’d come to spend the night a couple of times a week, and often stayed the weekend. Maybe he was sick. He tried calling; his cellphone had been turned off. He stopped by his apartment building. The doorman hadn’t seen him, but promised to ask the other tenants and get back to him that evening. No one had any idea where he was. David had simply disappeared, vanished without a trace.
It was then he started to worry. David had a taste for anonymous sex. He’d cruise the bars or the park, pick someone up, and take him home for a quickie. It didn’t mean anything, he assured him, there was no emotional attachment involved; he just liked the excitement. He shrugged off the recent spate of gay bashings. He was careful whom he cruised; he could take care of himself.
He went to the police to report him missing. They were unimpressed. So his occasional boyfriend hadn’t stopped by for a while. No big deal. They couldn’t do much more than he had done anyway. Wait and see.
It was then that it arrived, a small box wrapped in brown paper and addressed to him, and inside it a human eyeball ripped from its socket, the optic nerve and tendons hanging from it. He called the police, and they sent a detective to his apartment.
“Have you touched it?”
“Lord, no.”
“Is it your boyfriend’s?”
He couldn’t tell. The color of the iris was right – hazel streaked with gold – but it was dead, lifeless, expressionless, anonymous. “Can’t you run some DNA tests on it to see whose it is?”
“To compare with what?”
He gave him the toothbrush and the unwashed pair of boxers. “Could you get anything off these?”
“Maybe. We can comb the boxers for dead skin cells, but the toothbrush is our best bet. It’ll take a few days. I’ll get back to you.”
“And what am I supposed to do in the meantime? I mean, even if it isn’t David’s, why did they send it to me? How did whoever sent it know my address? Is it some kind of threat? Do you think I’m in danger?”
“Do you recognize the handwriting?”
“No.”
“We can check the wrapping for fingerprints. Are you aware of having been stalked?”
“No, but I haven’t been looking. Why should I?”
“Well, keep your eye peeled.”
He shuddered. The detective gave a sheepish grin which he immediately tried to conceal behind a serious look. “Sorry about that. I wasn’t thinking. Just give us a call if you notice anything. Right now we have nothing to go on. Are you frightened?’
“I’m scared shitless.”
“Good. That means you’ll be extra careful.”
After the detective left he locked all his doors and windows, sat down at the kitchen table and tried not to think about it. He was shivering. Suddenly his gorge rose. He rushed to the bathroom and threw up in the toilet. Then he went to his room, threw himself on the bed and wept.
The eyeball was David’s. They’d found no fingerprints on the box.
What would the police do? They’d open an investigation, but for the time being they could do nothing besides make a few inquiries, check out the hospitals. There’d been foul play, that was clear enough, but an eyeball isn’t proof of homicide. There was no body. His friend might still be alive. Did he have a recent photo he could give them?
“Contact us immediately if anything makes you suspicious. If you get another package bring it down to the station right away. Don’t open it. Don’t go out alone at night unless you absolutely have to.”
For two months he heard nothing. David’s disappearance was low priority in that crime-ridden city. He’d received no threats; he didn’t think he was being followed. He decided to look into the matter himself.
He took a photo of David and made the rounds of the gay bars asking if anyone knew where he was. A few men recognized him, but hadn’t seen him in weeks. “Yeah, I remember him,” one bartender said, “but he doesn’t cruise here much.”
“Do you know where he does?”
The bartender held up the photo. “Hey, anyone know where this guy likes to hang?” he called out.
“I used to see him down by the piers a lot,” someone said.
A dangerous area. He didn’t relish going there alone at night, but it was his only lead.
The streets were poorly lit. Silent, tough-looking men with hungry eyes leaned against the walls, most of them wearing leather. He hesitated to approach them. He cast his gaze down the line of hustlers to pick out the least intimidating of them.
Suddenly one shadowy figure turned away, walked quickly down the street and turned into a doorway. He had the feeling he’d been recognized and the man was trying to avoid him. He followed.
A man who could be David stood squeezed into a corner, his hand hiding his face. He took hold of the hand and forced it down. It was him, a patch covering his right eye. Above it a livid scar ran up to his scalp, and below halfway down his cheek.
“God, David! What’d they do to you?”
“What the fuck does it look like?” he answered.
3. Voices
Voices. I hear them all the time now, not only at night, but at night they’re louder. Voices, whispering voices, breathy, deafening whispers. I can’t make out what they say; they’re all talking at once. No one else hears them. They’re speaking to me, warning, menacing.
He heard them too, long before I did. I rolled to face him one night, meaning to snuggle up against him, to lay my arm across his chest, to smell his odor, to feel his warmth, and, if he was awake, to make love. He wasn’t lying next to me. He was sitting up in bed, tense, listening.
“You hear them too. They woke you up.”
“Hear what? Who?”
“The voices. Can you understand their words? Are they words? Or are they just hisses and wails? I heard them last night too.”
“Where? Outside? Maybe it was some drunk walking by in the street.”
“No, here, in this room, all around us.”
“You’re having a bad dream. Lie down and go to sleep.”
“Does it look like I’m asleep? I’m awake, dammit! How can I be dreaming?”
“I don’t know, you just are. If someone were in the room with us making noise I’d hear him, wouldn’t I?”
“Not him, them. Lots of ’em. Listen!”
But everything was quiet.
And so on, night after night. He insisted on leaving the hall light on. He’d have turned on the lights in the room if I let him. I’d find him in the morning at the kitchen table, sipping a cup of coffee, exhausted, bags under his eyes. “They won’t let up,” he said. “They torture me.”
“You can’t go to work like this,” I told him. “Call in sick.”
The first few days he’d doze on the sofa. So as not to wake him I’d let myself in quietly when I came home in the evening and tiptoe around the apartment. It didn’t last long. One day I came home to find him sitting in the living room, the radio and television blaring. “To drown them out,” he explained.
He lost weight, started wasting away, became too weak to work and had to call in sick, but I couldn’t get him to see a doctor. “He’ll think I’m crazy,” he said. “That’s what you think, isn’t it? – that I’ve gone off my rocker?”
Then one day he wasn’t there. I called the police. He’d been found staggering down the street, talking wildly to himself, waving his hands back and forth beside his ears. They’d taken him to the hospital for observation.
I went to see him. “You have to get me out of here,” he said.
“You’re safer here. There are guards and nurses to watch you 24/7.”
“No. I know who they are now.”
“Who?”
“The voices. It’s the people in here. They’re talking. I recognized them right away.”
I looked around. The other patients shuffled heavily about the room looking dazed, lips shut tight. None of them said a word.
On my second visit he was too doped up to recognize me. The third time I came it was too late. He’d seemed calmer, and they’d taken him to another part of the hospital for evaluation. When the nurse came to get him he’d left the waiting room. Nobody had seen him leave.
They found his crumpled body in an empty section of the parking lot. He’d found his way to the roof six stories up and hurled himself off.
* * *
We sat in the funeral home facing his open casket. He’d broken almost every bone in his body and his skull had split open in back, but the embalmer had managed to make him look presentable.
“He looks so peaceful,” one of the mourners said.
To me he didn’t; he looked haunted, even in death. Of course I didn’t say so. It would have been cruel. His friends and family were upset enough.
That’s when I first heard them, a few low chuckles mingled with his mother’s sobs. I looked around, and they stopped. Everyone looked serious, sorrowful, grim. I went home, went to bed, and had a good cry, but I thought I could hear other voices faintly winding around my sobs and sniffles. I covered my ears, but they wouldn’t go away. I took a sleeping pill and managed to get a little rest.
I went to have my hearing checked. The technician had me sit in a soundproof room, put headphones on me, and asked me to raise my hand whenever I heard a noise. Then the voices started up again, incessant, louder than ever. I stood up, ripped off the headphones, and started to scream. The doctor came running in and gave me a sedative.
I don’t want to go where they put him, so when people are around I pretend not to hear anything. But I do, constantly, voices, incomprehensible, human voices, voices in pain.
4. The Gates of Hell
I don’t know what got into me. Anything could’ve happened; something almost did. I’d have followed him to the Gates of Hell, followed him through them if he went in, he was so beautiful.
Ours is a small town. No gay bar, but there’s one where we can cruise if we’re discreet about it, where we can quietly chat each other up, then leave together, or one of us go outside and meet in the street a few minutes later. We know who we are. As I said, it’s a small town. The owner and bartender also know, I’m sure, but they pretend not to notice. We don’t call attention to ourselves.
I’d never seen him there before; none of us had. A stranger, someone from out of town, just passing through on his way somewhere. I don’t know how he found us. Maybe a friend told him about the bar, maybe it was instinct, or else he’d stumbled on it by blind luck. He kept to himself, but you could see he was watching. His gay-dar picked us out from among the others immediately, and ours recognized him as one of us.
The straights must also have spotted him as gay and looking for sex, by the way he was dressed. Tight jeans molding his thighs, butt and bulging package, silk shirt unbuttoned halfway down his chest, the large cross hanging on a gold chain around his neck, the thick gold bracelet, his perfect grooming.
It would be risky to go off with him; the straight crowd would easily guess why, and our anonymity would be shot to pieces. But who could resist a man that gorgeous? Mid to late twenties, blond, tall, slim, fit, regular features, perfect teeth, flashing gray eyes, and clearly very well endowed. I thought he had his eye on me, but couldn’t be sure. Was that smile directed at me? Had he singled me out?
I went into the men’s room. Not as an invitation; I had to pee. Someone came in while I was emptying my bladder. He stood at the urinal next to mine, pulled out his dick and flicked it around as if to stimulate the flow of urine. But he wasn’t hiding it from me – far from it. “Not here,” I whispered. “Never here.”
I washed my hands and went back to the others. He stayed behind a few minutes more, longer than it takes to have a piss, probably waiting to see if anyone followed him in.
He was watching me from the bar; I was almost certain of it now. He’d followed me into the john, hadn’t he? Finally, he gave me an imperceptible nod, finished his beer and went out. I waited about ten minutes, told my friends I had to get home, and left earlier than usual. They took it in stride. I don’t think they’d seen his signal. If it was a signal – he might not be waiting for me.
He was. I saw him standing across the street from the bar. He gave another nod, turned, and headed down the street. I followed, imagining he was parked somewhere nearby and we’d go off in his car and have sex somewhere, but he just kept walking. He wouldn’t have parked so far away; there were plenty of spots right there on the street. Every so often he looked back to see if I was still following him.
Maybe he had a room at the motel about half a mile away. He was headed in the right direction. I wouldn’t risk being seen going in with him, but I could watch what unit he went in, and he could let me in when I saw the coast was clear.
He walked straight on by the motel. Where was he leading me? Was it really sex he was after? I couldn’t turn back, though. For one, I was committed; plus I was horny. It wasn’t a comfortable walk, half-hard in my pant leg, my boxers rubbing against it. Lord, I wanted him so bad!
He turned into the park. Did he think we’d do something in the bushes? No way, not there! Should I run to catch up with him? We couldn’t go to my place – I rented the basement in a private home – but I knew of others we could drive to.
He headed off into the bushes. I hesitated, then followed. He’d be leaning against a tree somewhere in the shadows. I’d tell him there were better, safer places. We could take my car. But he went straight through to the other side and continued walking, further and further, till we’d almost reached the town limits. Still I followed, my anxiety nearly as overpowering as my desire, and growing stronger by the minute. Every time he turned a corner he’d look back and check if I was behind him.
Now we were out in the country, on an unlit two-lane road between open fields. Did he know of an abandoned shack somewhere, something he’d seen from the road and where he’d dumped his stuff? Or did he mean to rob me, or worse? What was I letting myself in for?
Then he stepped into the trees and disappeared. I looked for him; I called out. Nothing. I started my long walk back to town.
I’d reached the first houses when a car drove up and stopped beside me. He got out and came up to me, angry, threatening.
“What’s your game? Why’re you following me?”
I couldn’t have been wrong; I knew for a fact he’d been cruising me. Still...
“I wasn’t,” I stammered. “I was just out for a walk.”
“Like hell you were, faggot! I saw you staring at me in the bar.”
He gave me a powerful shove and I fell backwards, scraping my shoulder on the pavement.
“Try that again and I’ll break every bone in your body!” he snarled, and got back in his car and drove off.
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Six Short Tales of Terror