65 Proof (47 page)

I took a spotty glass from the sink and poured myself three fingers and sat down at my cheap dinette set and drank.

I had to admire the lady. She had guts, and her plan looked like it would work.

At 11:45pm I arrive at her house on Christiana off of Addison. Park in the K-Mart lot across the street. Access her place from the alley; she’ll leave her gate and her back door unlocked. The house will look like it had been robbed — drawers pulled out and pictures yanked off the walls. She’ll be in the bedroom, hand me the gun. A quick blam-blam in the brain pan, and I can leave with the diamonds and the cash. No witnesses, no muss, no fuss.

I got to pouring another drink when the screech of tires raped my ears and made me drop the bottle.

There was a room-shaking, sickening crunch of motor vehicle meeting flesh, followed by the thump-thump of a skull cracking under the front and rear tires.

“Leave me alone, you little bitch!”

She came out of the wall and hovered before me. Her glow was soft and yellow, a flashlight bulb going dead.

I avoided looking at her face, even as she moved closer.

“You’re a bad man, Mr. Arkin.”

I bit the inside of my cheek, refusing to be baited.

“A very baaaaaaad man.”

She touched my arm, and I jerked back, slopping my drink all over the table. Being touched by a ghost was like getting snow rubbed into your bare skin — so cold it was hot.

“Go away!”

I turned to get up, but she already stood in front of me. No more than five feet tall, her head a crushed pumpkin leaking brains instead of stringy seeds. One eye was popped out and dangling around her misshapen ear by the optic nerve. The other one stared, accusing.

“You can still turn yourself in.”

I stumbled away, heading for the bedroom, bottle in hand.

“Call the police, Mr. Arkin. Confess…confess…”

I pulled the door open and screamed. My bedroom had become a winding stretch of suburban highway. Speeding at me at fifty MPH, a swerving, drunken maniac unscrewed his bottle cap rather than paid attention to the road.

Me. It was me driving.

The car hit like a slap from God, knocking me backwards, smearing my face and body against the phantom asphalt in a fifteen foot streak.

I lay there, in agony, as I watched myself get out of the car, look in my direction and vomit, and then get right back into the car and drive off.

The image faded, and I found myself lying on my stained carpet.

“Confess, Mr. Arkin.”

I sought my dropped bottle, the worst of the nightly terror over for the time being.

“Confess?” I spat. “Why should I? Haven’t you tortured me enough for the last two years? I ran you over once. You’ve done this to me how many times? Two hundred? Three?”

She stood next to me now, the loops of intestines hanging out of her belly giving me cold, wet slaps in the face.

“Go to the police and confess.”

“Go to hell, or heaven, or wherever you’re supposed to go.”

I rolled away and struggled to my feet.

“I can’t go away until my business here is done.”

I drank straight from the bottle now, trying to tune her out. Confess? My ass. Going to the cops meant going to prison. And that just can’t happen. I couldn’t survive in prison.

They don’t let you drink.

“You can’t die without resolution, Mr. Arkin. If you do…”

“I know! You’ve said it a thousand times!”

“Your soul will be mine if you don’t atone.”

She cracked a bloody smile, all missing teeth and swollen tongue.

“I don’t think you’ll like eternity with me in charge.”

I spun on her, jabbing a finger into her spongy head.

“I’ll have money soon! Lots of money! I’ll hire someone to exorcize your preachy little ass!”

She laughed, a full, rich, deep sound that made the hair on my arms vibrate.

“I’ll be seeing you, Mr. Arkin. Soon.”

And then she faded away, like a puff of cigar smoke.

I drank until I started to puke blood.

Then I drank some more.

My hands perspired in the latex gloves Ms. Springfield had provided. The alley behind her house was deserted, except for a rat scurrying into an old Pepsi box.

I walked up to her gate — it was the only one that was unlocked — and let myself into her modest backyard.

Dark ,silent, porch light off. Her back door opened with a whisper.

“Ms. Springfield?”

The door led into her kitchen. Drawers had been pulled out and silverware scattered along the floor. I avoided stepping on anything sharp, and made my way through the kitchen and into a hallway.

“Ms. Springfield? It’s me.”

Silence.

I took a pull from my flask, to calm my nerves. Then another, for luck.

“Ms. Springfield?”

She said to meet her in the bedroom. There were stairs to the right.

I ascended slowly, cautiously. The higher I climbed, the more this seemed like a very bad idea. Even if I could bring myself to murder her — and get away with it — who was to say she wouldn’t haunt me too? One ghost was bad enough. Having two…

“Mr. Arkin?”

Her voice came as such a shock that I almost lost my balance on the steps.

“Ms. Springfield?”

“Second door on the right.”

Her voice was terribly relaxed.

I took a deep breath, blew it out. Reflexively, my hand went to my hip holster, and I haven’t worn a hip holster in years.

“I’ll be right there,” I said, more for myself than for her.

She was sitting on her bed, dressed in a white night gown. Her blonde hair hung over her shoulders. In her hand was a .38 police special.

I had a momentary flash of panic, but she turned the revolver around and handed it to me, butt first.

“I was worried you wouldn’t come.”

“Money makes a man do strange things.”

I looked on the nightstand, next to the bed. Stacked in a neat pile, so many twenties I’d need a bag to carry them out.

So much money.

“It’s almost midnight.” Ms. Springfield’s voice had a pleasant, almost cheerful lilt. “I want you to shoot me in the heart.”

I shuffled from one foot to the other, uncomfortable.

“The head would be better.”

“I don’t intend joining my husband without a head to kiss him with.”

Good point.

“The heart it is.”

I moved closer, my gaze flickering between her and the money. Part of me wanted to just take the cash and run. I could make it to Mexico before the cops got on me.

“It’s almost midnight, Mr. Arkin.”

Her face — calm, so sure.

“This is what you really want, isn’t it?”

For the first time since I’d met her, she smiled. “This is all I want.”

She tilted her chin upward, thrust out her chest.

I extended the gun.

“This might hurt.”

“Just keep firing until it’s done. I want messy, remember?”

I chewed my lower lip. The gun shook in my grasp.

A drink. I needed a drink.

My free hand reached back for my flask, and Ms. Springfield’s features erupted in pure anger.

“Shoot me, you worthless drunk!”

I fired.

The bullet took her in the center of the left breast, her white nightgown exploding in red fireworks. She pitched to the side, gasping like a landed fish.

I shot her in the back.

Twice.

Three times.

Still twitching. And a high-pitched, whistling wheeze from the sucking wounds in her chest.

“Aw, screw it.”

I put the last two slugs in the back of her head.

She stopped moving.

Shoving the gun deep in my jacket, I went for the money. I took a bloody pillow case and began stuffing it full of stacks. The diamonds lay there too, and the papers. I grabbed them and turned to get the hell out of there, but the bedroom suddenly transformed into a highway, and for the second time today I ran myself over.

I tried to brace for the impact, but you can never brace for that kind of thing.

Even knowing it wasn’t real, I screamed at the very real feeling of the impact sluicing through every nerve and fiber of my being. Spectral or not, it hurt like hell.

When I was able to move again, the pumpkin head ghost floated above my head, staring down with her one good eye.

But this time she had company.

“I believe you’ve met my daughter,” said the ghost of Ms. Springfield. Her nightgown glowed white, peppered with ugly red starbursts. Bits of brain and bone floated above her hair like a halo.

She held a glowing .38.

The ghostly gun fired, and I felt the bullets rip into my body, gasping in pain and shock.

“It’s not real,” I told myself.

I lay there, listening to the slurping, keening sound of my lungs leaking air through the holes in my chest. Even though I wanted to move, I couldn’t.

Even when I heard the approaching sirens.

Killing me? It would have been too easy.

Ms. Springfield knew I was the one who ran down her daughter. Her daughter told her.

The only thing stronger than the woman’s grief had been her lust for revenge.

She truly did want to die, so she could join her child on the other side.

So they could be together.

So they could haunt me together.

I sat on the cold floor of my cell, hugging my knees.

I’ve been dry for over a month now, and it’s been as bad as I thought. Shaking, vomiting, delirium tremens, pure hell.

But none of it’s as bad as the ghosts.

Every day I am treated to an agonizing smearing across the highway, or having large holes blown out of my chest and head.

On some days, I get both.

And without the booze to deaden the pain…

In hindsight, I should have turned myself in after I hit that little girl.

I try to explain that to them. Try to get them to understand that I was just a scared drunk.

They show no mercy.

“And this is just a taste,” Ms. Springfield repeatedly tells me. “When you die, your soul belongs to us. We have plans for you, Mr. Arkin.”

They have shown me their plans.

Sometimes I cry so hard the prison doctor has to medicate me.

Life now centers on diet and exercise. I watch what I eat. I work out three times a day.

I’m in the best shape of my life.

Which is a good thing.

Because as horrifying as my life is, I want to live as long as I can.

The ghosts can run me over and gun me down a thousand times a day, and that is nothing compared to what they have in store for me after I die.

I don’t want to die.

Please, God, don’t let me ever die.

I wrote this for the zombie anthology Cold Flesh. It began as a writing exercise, where someone hands your protagonist a paper bag and says don’t open it until midnight. I tried to think of the absolute worst thing a paper bag could contain…

“N
o thanks.”

The bum thrust the bag at me again. Brown paper, bearing the name of a local grocery store, crumpled and filthy and dripping something brown.

“Take it.”

I tried to shove him away using my elbows; he was even dirtier than the bag. Strange how these people are invisible until one is in your face, reeking of garbage and body odor and piss. This is what I get for forgoing a cab and deciding to get a little exercise on the way home from work.

“Take the bag, Jimmy.”

I’d pushed him an arm’s-length away, but his use of my first name was like a slap.

“How did you…?”

“The answer is in the bag. Take it.”

I grinned. Someone I knew must have put this poor sap up to this. Maybe Marky, from Accounting, or my cousin Ernie, who was the only forty-year-old in all of Chicago who still thought joy buzzers were funny.

“Fine. You win. Give me the bag.”

The street person smiled, giving me a blast of brown teeth and fortified wine. I took the brown bag, which had surprising heft to it, and reached into my pocket for some change.

“Don’t open it until the sun goes down.”

“Excuse me?”

He walked away, blending into the rush hour sidewalk crowd, before I could give him his dollar.

My first impulse was to open it right then and there. But there were people all over, and if this was from Cousin Ernie, it was probably offensive or even illegal. Good old Ernie once sent a sixty-eight-year-old stripper to my office, one whose pasties hung at belly button level and whose grand finale included popping out her dentures. If this drippy, heavy thing in the bag was from Ernie, it would be best to open it when I got home.

Home was on the Lake Shore, a high rise condo with a killer view and a 24-hour doorman and mirrors in the elevator. Not too shabby for a South Side kid who used to pitch pennies in back alleys for lunch money. Money had always been the primary motivator of my life, and the stock market was a natural evolution from teenage poker games and fantasy football pools.

I did okay. Better than okay. Enough to keep me in Armani and Cristal. I was on the short list for five star restaurants, and got to bed women of fine social standing, and twice a year I’d fly my mom to Tuscany so she could visit relatives who all worshipped me as a god.