The Year's Best Horror Stories 9 (18 page)

The other almost snatched it from him and stood turning the pages over with wrapt attention. He paused some time over the final entry, scribbled in pencil—

Erubescant impii, et deducantur in infernum: multa fiant labia dolosa quae loquuntur adversus justum iniquitatem.

“That looks like Propert’s hand,” commented a voice over his shoulder. It was Courtleigh, pale but eager, who had hobbled down unnoticed to join them.

“So you had to be in at the kill!” remonstrated Sir Leslie, as he and Sanderton turned in surprise upon the professor. Then, reverting to the book, he scowled at the pencilling again. “What’s this mean?” he demanded. “My Latin’s a bit rusty.”

“A quotation from Psalm 31, I think,” answered the rector slowly. “ ‘Let the ungodly be put to confusion, and be put to silence in the grave. Let the lying lips be put to silence which cruelly, disdainfully and despitefully speak against the righteous.’ ”

“That man had a grim sense of poetic justice,” muttered the baronet gravely, handing the Propert bequest to the now-thoughtful Courtleigh.

One of those lovable stupid questions that fantasy writers are forever being asked is, “Where do you get your ideas?” A trade secret, of course. Occasionally, however, an author will experience some particularly vivid dream (or, if you will, nightmare) and will incorporate this into a story. Such is the case with Dennis Etchison’s disturbing Kafkaesque nightmare, “On Call.”

Born March 30, 1943 in Stockton, California, Etchison currently lives in Los Angeles—a congenial location for a writer with an avid interest in movies and television. Although he has been writing professionally since 1961, Etchison has only recently begun to receive the recognition he deserves. This is primarily due to the fact that Etchison works almost exclusively in the short story field, and that most of his work is published outside the few science-fiction and fantasy magazines with which the majority of fandom is familiar. “On Call” appeared in a monthly fanzine devoted to news of the fantasy genre,
Fantasy Newsletter;
others of his stories from 1980 appeared in
Mike Shayne’s Mystery Magazine
,
Adelina
,
Dark Forces
, and
New Terrors 1.
In addition, Etchison has written the novelization of the film
The Fog
, as well as several as-yet-unproduced screenplays. His horror novel,
The Shudder
, is awaiting publication, and a collection of his short fiction would be most welcome. While his downbeat, intensely introspective style is not to every taste (for some it succeeds
too
well), Dennis Etchison may well be the finest writer of psychological horror this genre has seen.

“
Read it now,
” called the blind newspaper vendor. “
Many are dying and many are dead!
”

Wintner geared down and rounded the corner, trying to spot an opening. He glided past a photo shop, a dry cleaners and laundromat, a stationers, a multi-leveled parking structure that covered half the block and, at the next corner, the florist’s stall. He felt a fleeting regret that from this lane he was unable to catch even a glimpse of the young woman who worked there; most days he noticed her on his way back from the freeway, her face moving in among the flowers there, and the cheerfulness of the sight, the very rightness of it, seemed to shorten the distance of his commuting and make his burden somehow easier to bear. But today was Saturday, anyway, he remembered. He kept going.

He would have to drive round again.

He could, of course, find a parking place easily enough in the municipal structure—but then Laurie never liked having to walk all that way from the clinic entrance.

How long would his wife be this time? Ten minutes? More like twenty, he thought, if she’s running true to form. Or thirty.
I only have to find out about the x rays,
she had said.
It won’t take long
.

God, he hoped so. He knew what happened to time when her mind got hold of it.

He circled the block once more, just as a black Mustang slid into a vacant space in front of the clinic office. He groaned and set his teeth. He had lost track of how many times he had gone around. He turned his wrist to check his watch, but couldn’t remember how long it was since he had dropped her off.

He neared the corner.

Already it was turning late in the day. He noticed now that the buildings had begun to resemble oblong boxes, row upon row of them set on end, as shadows filled the doorways and slanted down from the rooftops. He slowed to a crawl and saw that his car was actually pacing one of the pedestrians, a stoop-shouldered old man who was stepping laboriously along the sidewalk that fronted the clinic. Wintner shuddered without yet understanding why and eased up on the block.

There was a taxi zone at the traffic light. He slipped into neutral and rolled in close to the curb. He cut the ignition, adjusted the rear-view mirror so that he could see her when she came out, and sat listening to the ticking down of the engine as it tried to cool.

A meter maid cruised past his open window. She shook her helmet and motioned for him to move on. He nodded. When she came by a second time—forty minutes later—he started the car and crossed the intersection and drove until he found a place to park on the next block.

“I’m sorry,” said the nurse, “but I can’t find a Mrs.
Winter
—is that the name? I don’t see her down here in the book.”

“She only stopped in to find out about her tests.” He offered a smile, got a good look at the nurse and withdrew it “It must have been about an hour ago.”

“Well, just a sec. I’ll ask the other girl.”

Girl, he repeated to himself in wonderment. Only the very young—and the middle-aged, like these—call themselves that. How many more years will they be able to get away with it? Until their faces crack and turn to dust?

Wintner scanned the waiting room. Even, monotonous walls, a reading rack haphazardly stocked with plastic-bound magazines, a planter stuck full of dingy artificial flowers. An endless dose of taped music issued forth from a concealed speaker; reflexively he identified the selection as the theme from the movie
Doctor Zhivago
.

A second nurse appeared from behind the frosted partition.

“Sir?” she said in a precise, controlled tone. Like a librarian, he thought.

She waited for him to approach her.

“Your wife’s probably with one of the doctors. He may have wanted to go over the results with her. Why don’t you find a seat for a little while longer? I’m sure she’ll be out any minute.”

There was a cool authority to her voice. It must come with the territory, he thought. Or maybe she had been a librarian once, a long time ago. He could have pressed her, but why bother? She was undoubtedly right. Besides, he was hot and tired and—he let it pass.

He faced the waiting room. No. He shook his head. He certainly did not need to rub shoulders with a roomful of poor, sick bastards, not right now. He avoided looking at them. A permanent rain check on that one, he thought, sighed, and headed back out, past a rosy woman and her two apple-faced children.

There was a hofbrau on the other side of the street, barely identifiable by a fringe of old-world lettering. He took a seat at the bar, keeping an eye on the front of the clinic building.

He ordered a schooner of Lowenbrau Dark and stared past the beef jerky and pickled eggs until the stein was empty.

Still no sign of Laurie.

He started on another Lowenbrau and, surprisingly, began to feel the effects. It hit him then: he hadn’t taken time yet to eat today. It seemed that he had spent every minute on the run, placing calls, shuffling his schedule so that he would get her here before the clinic closed . . .

As he reapproached the office, he couldn’t help noticing how dirty it really was. The paint appeared to peel off the door even as he reached for it; the stucco was beginning to crumble from around the foundation, falling away into piles of pulverized dust like insect droppings. There was an official-looking notice tacked to the door, something about National Suicide Week. He didn’t take time to read it.

A new, younger nurse glanced up. He spread his hands on the counter.

“And how are you feeling today?” she asked. Her eyes flicked over him, reading his features as she reached for a form.

“I feel fine,” he began. “It’s my wife. I know this sounds crazy but—”

He told her what had happened. When he finished she said, “I’ll see.”

He watched as another white figure materialized behind the opaque glass. He heard the first nurse recapping the story.

She concluded, “I thought maybe he should see Dr. . . .” He didn’t catch the name.

The other nurse, the fourth one he had seen today, looked him up and down. He was beginning to feel like a man caught without papers in a nudist camp.

She moved her head briskly from side to side. He could almost hear a mental
click
as she came to a decision.

“No,” she said, “I don’t quite think so.” Then, to him: “Maybe she’s incognito.”

“What?”

“I say, she may be incognito, do you think so?”

“That’s what I’d say,” said the other nurse. “Try that.”

“Incognito?” he repeated. He seemed to have missed something. He replayed the word several times in his mind until it lost meaning.

“You could at least check,” said the first nurse, returning to her chair, as the senior nurse disappeared behind the partition.

He felt like laughing. He held out his hands helplessly, turning around to share the joke with anyone who might have been listening.

But no one paid any attention. Actually, he thought, maybe I should have waited here from the very beginning. Maybe I missed her, after all. Who knows?

Shaking his head, he returned to the door. He passed the same woman with the two children. What kind of place is this? he wondered. Those kids don’t look like there’s anything the matter with them. Plenty of color in their cheeks. What in hell are they doing here?

She was not at the car.

The sky was darkening rapidly. The street took on a grim, vaguely menacing facade as shadows lengthened over the dim, slick edge of curbing below the disturbing asymmetry of the architecture. Old cornices and abutments and rainpipes jutted like broken teeth too close to the glass panes, rendering the buildings awkward, topheavy, ready to topple; each step he took seemed to threaten to pull everything down around him.

He stopped by the hofbrau, trying to get his bearings. He felt like someone waiting for a train, one that might not even stop at this station.

He saw only a few scattered pedestrians out on the pavement. Even the traffic here had thinned until it was nearly invisible, though he was aware of an almost physical wall of sound from another part of the city. He turned toward the windows of the restaurant and squinted inside.

The faces grouped at the bar were old. All of them. It might have been an illusion caused by the unwashed glass, but he didn’t think so.

One face in particular was oddly familiar.

Suddenly he was sure. Yes, he had seen the same man in the waiting room, seated calmly with the others, reading a magazine or—no. He had been staring at the floor. Wintner remembered. The people in the room. They had all been staring at the floor. Waiting.

Only it was not quite the same man. Wintner seemed to remember him as younger, healthier.

He caught his own reflection in the coated glass. And took a breath. He was oddly relieved.

His own face, at least, was more or less as he remembered it.

As he crossed the street to the clinic he checked the shops on either side. They were seedy, rundown. Most of them were already closed for the night. Not one was the kind Laurie would have gone into, anyway.

He thought he saw a figure shuffling away from his line of sight. It was the only movement on the sidewalk now. He could not make out who it was. It could have been one of the shopkeepers locking up and heading home, but for a second he almost recognized the gait.

The doorknob practically came off in his hand.

An elderly couple brushed past him on their way out, smelling of lilac and formaldehyde. He could see two new nurses, both younger than the others he had spoken to. As he neared the counter they stopped talking. He almost heard what they were saying.

“Did you have an appointment?” said the first one. She glanced worriedly at the clock which hummed high and white on the wall. “Most of the doctors have gone, I’m afraid.”

“Listen,” he said, and he began. He told her. Then he said, “I want to talk to whoever’s in charge. Then I want her, or you, or someone to check the examination rooms, the offices, the bathrooms, for God’s sake. I want to know if my wife’s still in this building, and I want to know now.”

“Just a moment, sir.”

His fingers tapped the sterile counter.

As he stood there, a door to an inner office swung open and the woman with the two children came out. A nurse held the door for them. They needed it. The woman moved so slowly she seemed at death’s door; the children were pale as ghosts.

He nodded automatically as they passed. The old woman raised her tired eyes, noted his face and muttered something unintelligible.

“This way, please.”

At first he didn’t know the nurse was talking to him. Then he saw that the white door was being held open like a protective wing. For him.

“You found her,” he said, his muscles relaxing.

The nurse cleared her throat but said nothing.

He followed her. The hallway was as immaculate as her starched uniform. He heard the swishing of her white stockings as she led him to a room at the end of the corridor.

“The doctor on call will help you,” she said.

“Just a—”

She shut the door behind him.

The office was comfortably appointed in leathers and dark woods. There was another door on the other side. He tried an overstuffed chair, but only got up again to pace the carpet. Books were everywhere, and entombed among them within the walls were various artifacts that appeared to be the taxidermied remains of small animals of unknown species.