Aftershock & Others (34 page)

Finally, a year with a short story—two, in fact.

I finished
Gateways
in mid-January—late again. Luckily David Hartwell wanted no significant changes.

I immediately began outlining Repairman Jack number eight—I had no title yet.

In March I was approached by Tom and Elizabeth Monteleone about doing special, limited, uniform editions of my six Adversary Cycle novels. I thought it was a great idea. We started with
The Keep
. They sent me the scans and I began to proof the pages. I was pleased to see how well the novel held up after more than two decades—much better than
The Tomb
. But I couldn’t help tweaking the prose.

Out in Hollywood they were looking for a guy to play Repairman Jack—a name who could “open” the film. They weren’t finding any. Hugh Jackman was everyone’s pick, but between
Van Helsing
and then his upcoming Broadway show, he was unavailable. Some folks talked about the Rock, others Vin Diesel. I damn near had a heart attack. Here’s this character who so average looking he can slip through a crowd completely unnoticed, and they wanted the Rock or Diesel? Come on!

The months passed and still no actor for Jack.

Sims
the novel was published in April and went back to press for two more printings. The last two novellas still hadn’t appeared from Cemetery Dance.

Touchstone and Beacon appeared to be at an impasse. Touchstone wouldn’t go ahead with the big budget without an opener star and they couldn’t get one to fit the part. So Beacon decided to downsize the huge finish of the script and bring it closer to the book; this way they’d be able to lower the budget to where Touchstone would let them choose the right actor for Jack.

Meanwhile I was chugging away on the as-yet-untitled Repairman Jack number eight and loving it. But synching up the timelines of two parallel plots was turning out to be a more complex process than I’d anticipated. Finally I printed out the plotlines and cut them into discrete scenes. Then I laid them out on the floor side by side and mixed and matched scenes until they crisscrossed in a smooth flow.

Hey…crisscross.

I had my title.

I finished in October and immediately started in on a relatively gentle medical mystery—almost a cozy—starring a young female internist in a small town.
Crisscross
had been so unrelentingly grim and dark that I needed a change of pace, something light and fluffy to clear the gloom.

November saw the almost simultaneous publication of
The Fifth Harmonic
and
Gateways
.

Three new novels published in a single calendar year. A new record for me.

Kealan Patrick Burke contacted me in the spring about
Quietly Now
, a tribute anthology to Charles L. Grant. I was long out of the short story groove and told him so. But because this was for Charlie, a master of quiet horror and a good guy I’ve known forever, I said I’d give it a shot.

It took me six weeks of off-and-on writing to get it to where I felt it worthy of Charlie. I tried my best to keep it quiet and think I succeeded. Okay, the truck accident, the falling safe, and the drive-by shooting with machine pistols weren’t so quiet, but the horror was quiet, and that’s what counts.

This one’s for you, Charlie, wherever you are.

“Yergundye am’row.”

The sound, a small, high voice, jars me from sleep. I roll over and lift my head. A pale wash of light from the streetlamp outside reveals a short, slim form standing close to my bed.

My son.

“Jason?” I shake the cobwebs from my brain and glance at the glowing numbers on the clock. “What’re you doing up at this hour? Is something wrong?”

“You’re going to die tomorrow.”

Now I’m awake. Believe me—fully awake.

“What?” I lever up to sitting and swing my legs from under the sheet. I grab his thin, knobby, seven-year-old shoulders. “What did you say?”

“You’re going to die tomorrow.”

Those words, spoken by my boy, my darling little boy, twist my gut. I fumble for the bedside lamp, find the switch, turn it on.

Jason stands stiff and straight; with his buzz-cut dark hair he looks like a soldier at attention; his brown eyes are wide and staring through me. I shake him. Gently.

“Jason! Jason, wake up! You’re having a dream!”

Jason doesn’t blink, doesn’t say a word. He simply turns and begins walking away.

“Jason?”

I say it softly this time because I realize he’s sleepwalking and I heard somewhere once that you shouldn’t wake a sleepwalker.

I follow. I’m scared for him, don’t want him falling down the cellar stairs. But he heads straight to his room. I’m close behind, turning on the light so neither of us will trip. I watch him slip under the covers. I stand over him as he closes his eyes…a few heartbeats later I can tell by his soft, even breathing that he’s back into normal sleep.

I stare down at my son.

You’re going to die tomorrow.

Christ, what a terrible thing for anyone to hear, but when it comes from your own little boy…

Then again, maybe not from Jason. Maybe from his grandmother.

Yeah. That would explain it.

Ralda hates me. Always
has, always will. She never said so when Maria was alive. She didn’t have to. If actions speak louder than words, then Ralda’s body is the PA system at Dodger Stadium.

It all comes down to this: Ralda—her real name is Esmeralda but no one calls her that—has never forgiven me for stealing her daughter. If falling in love and getting married is stealing, then here—put on the cuffs and lock me up. I’m guilty.

Of course, eloping only made matters worse, but we didn’t see that we had much choice. No way we could have had a traditional wedding with both families in the same room. Maria was
rom
, a gypsy, and that translated to the uptight Brits who comprised most of my kin as thieves, whores, and ne’er-do wells. To Maria’s side I was
gadje
, a non-gypsy, and a rom marrying a gadje was unthinkable.

So we hopped a flight to Vegas and got married. When we returned and Maria told her mother, well, it was something to see. Ralda put on a day-long display of screaming and cursing, tearing her own clothes and throwing Maria’s out the front door. After that came the silent treatment, which was okay with me but damn near broke Maria’s heart. Over the years she had to endure a passel of silent treatments. Ralda has an advance degree in creative silence and a triathelete’s stamina.

She couldn’t spew all her anger at her only child—despite Ralda’s many faults, she truly loved Maria—and she couldn’t rail at her own husband who’d been dead (gratefully, I’ll bet) half a dozen years, so I became the target, the
numero uno
focus of her rage. Fine. Like I cared. It made for some uncomfortable meals at holidays, but I handled it.

I may not be the brightest bulb in the chandelier, but I was a good provider. I got through high school and made it halfway through year one at a community college before deciding I had a brighter future in the workforce than in the classroom. I was right. By the time Maria and I tied the knot I was bringing home decent money from my own little heavy equipment transport and specialty moving business. We began building a life together, and when Maria learned she was pregnant, I didn’t think life could get no better.

Ralda softened somewhat after Jason was born. Even though he was half
gadje,
she adored her grandson and lavished him with attention. It was almost scary the way she fixated on him when we came to visit. Like Maria and I weren’t there.

Life was good. My business was growing, Maria and I were talking about another baby, and then some rich eighteen-year-old fuck tooling around in his daddy’s Mercedes sport coupe plowed into the driver’s side of our minivan at ninety miles an hour. Maria and Jason were inside. J—that was what we’d started calling him—was strapped into his baby seat in the rear passenger side and, thank God, not even scratched. Maria didn’t last twenty-four hours.

At the funeral Ralda jabbed a bony finger at my heart and screamed, “
You! You
should have been driving!”

I couldn’t argue. I wished that too. Still wish it.

My brain and my life put themselves on hold for a while. I did a lot of couch time, remote in hand, switching channels like a robot, not watching nothing. I felt like I was coming apart. I kept thinking, What’s the use?

But I held it together for J’s sake, and we’re doing all right now. Not great. I mean, how good can a kid’s life be without his mother? How good can his dad’s life be without the love of his life? But we’re hanging in there.

The only problem has been Ralda. She’d like a recurring speed bump. Lately she’s been filling Jason’s head with her gypsy garbage—about how, even though he’s not a pure-blood rom, he’s still special, still has certain “gifts.” I’ve been doing my best to act like a counterweight, to drag him back to the real world, and I thought I’d been doing a decent job.

Obviously I’ve been fooling myself.

Jason awakens the next
morning with his usual cheeriness. I quiz him gently as I pour his orange juice and nuke his frozen waffles—he likes them drowning in syrup and melted butter—but he don’t remember nothing about what he said or did last night.

So, after dropping him off at school, I pay a visit to Ralda’s little bungalow in Lomita.

As she opens the front door I get in her face, jabbing a finger right at her nose. “You’ve gone too far this time, lady!”

I’ve been thinking about last night all the way down here and by now I’m pissed. I mean
really
pissed.

She gives me her usual why-do-I-have-to-share-the-planet-with-this-gadje look. She’s wearing a pink housedress and fuzzy white slippers, her graying black hair is pulled back tight from her face. God, she’s ugly. She looks like that puppet Madame that used to be on
Hollywood Squares
. How Maria ever sprang from her has always been beyond me. Way, way, way beyond.

“What are you talking about?” She has this thin accent that ever so slightly rolls the r.

“What’d you do, hypnotize him?”

She squints at me. “You’re drinking again, aren’t you.”

I had a little problem after Maria’s death, but I’m well over that now. And I’m sure as hell not going to let her change this from being about her to being about me.

“Not a drop. But what about you? What’ve you been pouring into my boy? I know you’ve been filling his head with all your Gypsy bullshit, which is bad enough, but after what you made him do last night, your ass is cooked.”

“What?” She spreads her hands, palms up, like the whole world is turning against her and she don’t know why. “What did my little Jason do that was so terrible?”

“You know. You know damn well. And he’s not your little Jason. He’s
mine
. And that custody deal you worked out with the judge? That’s gonna be history when I tell him the games you’ve been playing with a little boy’s head!”

“Vincent, what are you talking about? What did he do?”

Her using my first name hangs me up for a second or two. She never uses my name. I’ve always been “him” or “that man.” Like she couldn’t get my name to pass her lips. But it passes today.

“He said just what you wanted him to say.” I turn and start stomping back to my pickup. “I never thought much of you, Ralda, but I never dreamed you’d use your own grandson to try to work a number on my head!”

“What did he say? Tell me what he said!”

Oh, she’s good, she’s really, really good. I didn’t know her better, I’d think she really and truly didn’t know.

But I ain’t gonna play her game. I give her an I’m-outta-here wave and hop in behind the wheel. I don’t have to crank up the truck because I never turned her off. As I put her in gear I hear Ralda’s voice calling to me.

“Whatever he said, Vincent, listen to him! He has the gift! Do you hear me? The gift!”

And I’m thinking, He ain’t got no gift, lady. He’s got a curse: you.

I’m not a crazy
hothead. Really, I’m not. It’s just that this has been simmering for years and now I’m at the boiling point.

When Maria died, J was four and in preschool. Just the morning session. She hadn’t wanted to let him go, even for those few hours, but figured it would help with his socialization. Yeah, she used that word. She was always reading books on raising kids.

After Maria’s death, when I was lower-lip deep in my funk, J was the only thing that kept me from going under. I kept him in the morning session just so he could keep something of his old daily rhythm. But after I pulled my act together and got back to work, I had to add on the afternoon.

That worked out most of the time. But not all.

I had no trouble getting him there in the morning, but afternoons tended to be a problem. We live in a nice little two-bedroom ranch—the kind the real estate folk like to call “cozy”—in an okay neighborhood in Gardena. But sometimes me and my crew have jobs in places like Sylmar or Costa Mesa, which may not be all that far in miles, but in time…let me tell you, take anything bad you’ve heard about L.A. traffic and multiply it by ten for the reality. I just couldn’t guarantee that I’d make it back in time every day. So I arranged for aftercare, which is new speak for after-school daycare.

That was when Ralda played her hand.

Old bitch took me to court. Can you believe it? To family court! Petitioned the judge for some strange kind of joint custody where she could take care of Jason after school until I got home from the job. Let me tell you, she made a real heartstring yanker of a case for herself: Lived alone, J was her only grandchild, all that was left of her beloved daughter. Wasn’t it better that he spend his after-school hours with a loving grandparent than in the company of strangers?

Sounded good to the judge—who I think was a grandmother herself—and Ralda was awarded after-school custody. I had to hire a lawyer to try and get it undone but he was useless. Money down the sewer.

I wound up feeling more like a divorcé than a widower. I mean, my mother-in-law had joint custody of my kid.

Ralda loves J, I know that, and to be honest, for a while there it looked to be working out. J seemed happy with the arrangement and I have to admit I felt better knowing he was staying with someone who’d die rather than let anything happen to him.

But then J started coming home with Gypsy words and expressions and talking about having “gifts”—you know, second sight, clairvoyance, talking to animals, crazy stuff like that. I went right to Ralda and told her—no, wait, I
asked
her, real polite-like, to stop putting ideas like that into his head. People would think he was crazy.

Know what she said? She told me that into every third generation of her family is born a child with a “gift,” that J is that one, that there are many gifts and she is only trying to find out which one he has.

I asked her to stop. (See? I was still asking.) She said she couldn’t, that it would be a terrible sin to let his gift go undetected, undeveloped, that he’s been neglected too long already.

Neglected? I blew my stack at that and told her if she didn’t cease and desist—yeah, I said that; heard it on
Law & Order
or someplace—if she didn’t stop filling my little boy’s head with her garbage, I’d have her joint custody thing tossed out on its ear.

She gave me this hard look and said that I’d never have sole custody again. Then she slammed the door in my face.

Things were kind of at a stalemate for a while. J stopped using Gypsy talk around me, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t getting an earful from his grandmother and being told not to use or mention it at home.

But last night changes everything. I don’t care if the judge is a grandmother ten times over, no one can get away with teaching a child to say something like that to his own father.

So all this crapola is on my mind as I drive to today’s job in downtown. Yeah, there really is a downtown L.A. That’s where the city’s skyscrapers cluster in the basin. That’s where you find the convention center and city hall, that big tapering building everyone knows from
Dragnet
. The whole rotten situation’s on my mind when I park in a municipal lot, and I’m still steaming about it as I step off the curb to cross Figueroa.

I hear a voice behind me yell, “Oh, shit!” and I hear a horn blaring, and I look up to see this Ford F-150 pickup running the red light and making a beeline for me. I see the guy behind the wheel and he’s got one hand holding a cell phone against his ear and the other wrapped around a Starbucks cup, leaving his left pinky for steering; he’s looking down and I know, I just know he’s spilled some coffee in his lap. He ain’t got a clue as to what’s happening and I realize I’m a goner and somewhere in my head J’s voice is saying,
You’re going to die tomorrow.

All this takes place during a single heartbeat and just as I start into a much-too-late dive back toward the curb this eighteen-wheeler tools into the intersection from the left, cruising with the green, and knocks the shit out of the pickup, knocks it into next week, leaving me in the middle of the lane shaking and sweating and sick and hoping I haven’t peed my pants.

I stagger to the other side and lower myself to the curb. I sit bent forward, holding my floating head in my shaking hands. Nobody notices me, which is fine. I’m not keen on having people watching as I hurl breakfast. Everybody’s gravitating toward the wreckage in the intersection. Everybody except this bent old black guy with a cane and a Fred Sanford beard.