Ghosts of Eden (7 page)

Garty stood on the side of the park where he sometimes met up with friends, by the street and the standing sign with the map of the park, defaced with what appeared to be a spray-painted penis, the words
call me for a BIG time
, and a phone number. He lived nearby so he’d walked. He was late.

“Garty! Over here, man.”

He turned and, at first, had trouble locating the source of the voice. “Over here. Over here.” Then he saw his friend. Hector was waving to him from the window of his old dented Honda Civic parked at an angle across the street. Garty crossed the street and came up to the car’s window. Hector thrust his fist out to him and Garty met it with his own.

“What are you doing?” Garty asked.

“I know. I know. I thought we’d drive around for a bit. You hungry?”

“I guess so.”

Hector leaned and glanced around Garty’s shoulder. “Then get in. Let’s go. You mind McDonalds? It’s just up the street.”

“That’ll work.” Garty walked around the car and opened the passenger’s side door.

“Just throw that stuff in the back.” Garty removed a stack of pornographic magazines and some balled up shirts. He watched Hector dart his eyes over the scene around them, and then the car was gunning forward. “It’s great to see you,” Hector went on. “It’s been a while. So you’re living with your grandma now? How’s that?”

“It’s alright. Peaceful.”

Hector was nodding his head. “I bet. I bet. You still have that girlfriend? What was her name? Carrie? Caroline?”

“Melissa.”

“Right. Melissa. How’s she doing?”

“Fine, I guess. Fucking some other guy.”

“That sucks, man.” Hector was talking like a man possessed. “How’s your grandmother’s house though? Is it nice? I’m sure it’s a lot better than that shithole apartment you used to live in.” The car jostled over a pothole in the road. “Of course, this whole fucking town is a shithole. Don’t you think? Full of cheaters and weirdos. My dad used to call them ‘characters.’” He cackled. “That’s what he used to say, when I was a kid, he’d say: ‘Albuquerque is full of characters,’ but what he really meant was that it’s full of low-life fuck-ups. That’s what he really meant to say. Don’t you think?” Garty looked at his friend carefully; he looked older than Garty remembered—dark greasy hair falling in his face, driving the car like it was a ponderous machine, sweat beading his face. “Whatever, though. Screw this place. There are so many other cities. So many. Alright, we’re here.”

Hector thumped the car into the curb and had his door open in an instant. Garty hurried after his friend, up the sidewalk and into the restaurant. Hector ordered four double cheeseburgers, large fries, and a super-sized Coke. Garty ordered a chicken sandwich and a drink. “What do you say we eat outside?” Hector said, standing by the counter, already shoveling fries into his mouth. “Fine,” Garty replied.

The tables outside overlooked Central Avenue, with the university—where Garty used to go to school—just across the street.

Hector gulped Coke through his straw; bit a cheeseburger in half with a single chomp. “Man, remember high school? What crazy times those were? We knew everyone back then. That’s important, knowing everyone. That’s how you get ahead in this world. Now, well, I have something cooking. Don’t count me out yet. There’s a deal I’m working on. A big deal. You’ll see. Hey, what are you looking for anyway? You still into Oxys? I got Oxys.” He sipped his Coke empty, shaking it furiously, rattling the ice. “You done?”

“I guess so.”

“Let’s go somewhere. Take care of this deal and I wanted to show you something. I think it’s important for you to know what’s going on. This city. Man! This crazy-ass city!”

Hector crumpled the last cheeseburger wrapper, tossed it to the tray, bolted from the restaurant. Garty chased after his friend. Outside, Hector stopped before his car, turned, and leaned in close to Garty. “These guys I’ve been talking to are real oddballs, you know? Real odd. See, I met this guy in rehab, this real quiet dude, but one day he talks to me, says he knows some people. Big money. He says that: ‘big money.’ They just needed someone like me to act as a sort of go-between. You know what I mean?”

Garty felt a little uncomfortable the way Hector was acting. “Sure,” he said. Hector burped and Garty could smell sour meat.

Hector’s voice became a rasping whisper. “They’re into some real weird shit, though. This guy shows me some things.” He whistled softly. “Real weird. These guys have a lot of weird beliefs. I don’t pretend to understand it all, man. But it’s weird.”

Garty didn’t know what to say.

Hector laughed. “How many times can you say ‘weird,’ right? But you get the point.” He pushed away from Garty and fumbled with his keys to get the car open. “Let’s head back to the park and finish this deal.” He started the car, revved the engine, and peeled out of the parking lot. “It’s really good to be out and about, you know? It’s good to hang out.” Hector turned hard down a side street, slowing only slightly at the stop sign. “You’ve been a good friend, Garty. I’ve never told you that. We should hang out more.”

“Yeah, we should. If you want.”

Hector slammed the brakes, skidding the car to stop in front of Roosevelt Park, near where they’d met up. He put the car in park and let the engine idle. His hands were trembling. He stared straight ahead out the windshield while he continued to talk. “They can make you see things, man. Things that aren’t there. They’re travellers, I guess. Go all over the place. They can disguise themselves and make you do things. I don’t know…”

“Hector? Are you on uppers?”

“Oh, no. No way. I’m fine. But you know what’s crazy? That guy, the one I met in rehab, well, he was my roommate, and, one time, in the middle of the night, I woke up, and he was sleeping, and…he was floating, man. He really was! He was like a foot above his bed, fast asleep and fucking floating there, in mid-air! What the fuck, right?”

Garty stared at his friend. “Uh. Yeah. That’s pretty crazy.”

“And you know what else? You know what’s really crazy? This one time…” His face sunk into itself. His eyes twitched and he bit his lip convulsively. “You see a cat over there?”

Garty looked out over Roosevelt Park: a woman wrapped in a colorful quilt shuffled by on the sidewalk; the trees rustled like a whispering crowd.

“Never mind. Let’s get out of here.” He put the car in drive.

“Wait. Where are we going?” Garty asked.

“I feel like driving. Don’t you? I’ll take you wherever you want to go. What do you think?”

“Just take me home.”

“Don’t you want to go and get a drink or something first?” He licked blood from his lip. “How about Two Fools for a beer? Come on, man. Just a beer.”

Garty shook his head. “I really need to…check on my grandmother, you know?”

“Yeah, okay. I just thought…no, never mind.”

For the first time, there was silence as Hector floored the car through the neighborhood. When he pulled in front of Garty’s grandmother’s house, he killed the engine and turned to Garty. His eyes were watery and serious. “We had a good time, didn’t we? Keep your eyes open. I’ll call you as soon as I can. Take these, don’t worry about the money.” He pushed a small baggy of pills into Garty’s hands.

“Wow, uh, thanks,” Garty said, stepping out of the car.

“Eyes open,” Hector said and the car roared away.

Garty stood watching the battered little car grind around the corner and out of sight, leaving a hanging cloud of exhaust at the end of the street. Garty shook his head. His friend was losing it. Whatever Hector had intended to show him, Garty thought, probably didn’t exist. He sighed and turned toward his grandmother’s house. To his right, the bushes were overgrown, spilling over and around the crumbling cinderblock wall. The cat jumped up, appearing at the top of wall, and sat staring at him. He remembered Hector asking him if he’d seen a cat as his face twitched and his lip bled. He walked up to the front door, slipped the key into the lock, and turned the knob. He looked behind him and the cat had swiveled to track his progress, its eyes intelligent, its mouth half-open as if panting, showing him its pointed teeth.

For a moment, he could smell the earthy wheat and the ancient waters of the lake, then he was inside, and the door clicked firmly into place.

THREE

Last night, he’d caught himself standing at the end of the hallway in the dark again, staring at the door to the spare bedroom.

As a kid, the spare bedroom had been the one he’d slept in—why did it scare him now? He’d gone in there yesterday, on impulse, after the strange meet up with Hector, just to look around. A pair of plainly made beds was pushed against the wall. The room had only a single greasy window and cardboard boxes brimming with various things piled in every corner. Above the beds, on the wall, hung a hand-painted portrait of one of his great uncles, encased in glass in an ornate gold-gilded frame, about whom his grandmother had rarely spoken, eyes that followed, lips slightly curled.

He sat on one of the beds, pulled the baggie from the pocket of his hoodie and crunched some more pills while he stared at the closet door with the old-fashioned doorknob. He stood, crossed the room, and, with a jerking motion, flung the closet door wide: a massive vacuum cleaner—that looked as if it hadn’t been used since the Second World War—a few wire hangers, swirling dust, and nothing more.

He’d been almost disappointed and spent the rest of the day getting completely shitfaced with a bottle of brandy he’d found, that used to be his grandfather’s, and more pills.

* * *

“I had that dream again last night,” he told his grandmother.

“That’s nice,” she mumbled from the couch.

He paced the living room erratically—his head spinning, vision doubling—one end to the other and back again. “The door creaks open and…there’s something inside…” He sniffed, rubbed his nose with the back of his hand. “I don’t know what it is. I’m terrified. I can’t see a thing.” He clenched and unclenched his hands before him.

His grandmother’s head began to nod forward; she began to breathe shallowly, a slow series of snorts. “I am sleeping in the spare bedroom at the end of the hall and…it’s dark and the shadows slither and pool amongst the crevasses and corners like swamp water…”

His grandmother snored, obviously disinterested.

“Like most nightmares, I’m completely petrified, unable to do anything other than watch the vine-tentacle-thing emerge from the dark…creeping towards me…and I can’t move…something glistens…I’m feverish…closer and closer…”

Another snort, and his grandmother began to make a strange choking sound, full of phlegm, that Garty began to understand, only slowly, as laughter.

* * *

When he opened his eyes next, he came face to face with another painting. Similar to the one hanging in the hallway, it featured the goat people dressed as king and queen standing with their backs to a grandiose window of colored glass, depicting a glowing crescent moon. The goat people appeared to be grinning at him.

Why do you keep all these creepy paintings hanging all over the house, Grandma?

So our family doesn’t forget its enemies. So we never forget how we got here and the struggles we’ve been through.

He rolled over in bed and groaned. His eyes were bleary and unfocused. His head felt stuffed with dirty, balled-up socks. He’d had that dream again: running through the wheat fields, the little girl’s mouth twisted, open in a silent scream. A sick shiver ran through his body. He rolled onto his back and stared up at the ceiling, at a jagged crack that ran the length of the room. What had happened last night? Images flashed in his mind. His grandmother yelling, her dentures coming loose in her mouth, flapping as she berated him. She’d screamed at him, she’d screamed: “Filthy cheater!” while saliva slopped down her chin.

For a moment, Garty stared at the crack in the ceiling and felt completely miserable. He could imagine bubbling muck beginning to fill the crack, dripping on him. With a sigh, and a grimace, he forced himself to a sitting position. His head throbbed as sluggish blood pumped to fill it. The inside of his mouth felt like cracked and peeling paint. He was in a strange bed. He…

He was in the spare bedroom at the end of the hall.

He jumped to his feet and shuffled to the middle of the room. He spun in place, looking around. What had happened yesterday? Why was he here? He tried to think, to remember. Why was he scared? He stared at the closet door, firmly closed. He could almost remember…he’d been a child…in this room…

A scraping sound behind him—he whirled and saw the painting of his great uncle crash to the floor, glass cracking with an audible
snick
. He heard, somewhere distantly, on the other side of the house, the front door being opened, then closed. He heard voices, a muffled exchange—his grandmother and someone else, deep and masculine, thrumming through the house.

“Something squirms in the darkness,” he’d told his grandmother. “There’s something in there, in the closet. My heart is racing…it’s wet, glinting in the moonlight…”

The masculine voice was his stepfather—his stepfather was yelling.