CHAPTER 12
Hell’s messenger arrived in broad daylight in a clown suit, carrying a pocketful of raisins. And the day shook.
Pulling open the heavy-wood door of the flower shop and stepping out to the brightened cement stretching along Main Street, Garrett fought mounting nausea. The little bell above the doorway jingled as the door banged shut. Five minutes ago he’d been smiling and joking with the woman at the counter while she helped him prepare the note that would accompany a dozen Champagne-colored roses to Farren’s apartment.
A tang of fresh flowers, so pleasant moments ago, was souring in his mouth. Garrett held a hand to his dysfunctional gut and another against the cool, rough brick façade of In Bloom and leaned into it. His eyes watered—from the radiance of a day burning with all the promise of a kiss from Farren, or from the throes of his retching. He tried to work at the problem with breathing, taking long, steady drags. Pedestrians milled along tidy downtown sidewalks, not seeming to notice his distress. Or care. Ten minutes ago he’d been out here with them, one among the sun-warmed, shiny happy people.
Thirty minutes ago he’d enjoyed lunch at Sand Run Metro Park. There had been nothing eaten before or since that would have given the contents of his stomach the notion to revolt. Swiftly and unexpectedly things felt so wrong. Not just with his stomach. In his head there swirled a symphony of buzz and beat that defied ordered thinking. When the calamity inside became too much to bear, some merciful pressure valve released, blowing thoughts out of his mind and into the tepid air.
Get away, Garrett.
On the sidewalk, foot traffic congested his path of escape. The sun seared sticky flat against the back of his neck and over his exposed forearms. Garrett folded over, caught his tensed, sallow face in the shop’s plate-glass window on his way down. A low groan concussing up from the sidewalk overlapped his moaning. He righted himself, cursing his faltering coordination, and tried to find dignity in his reflection. Then a louder groan drew his attention over his shoulder, to a tractor-trailer rumbling toward this end of the block.
His SUV in the parking lot around the corner would be the place to collect himself. Garrett made that his goal, heading there with renewed determination. He actually sensed he was fleeing. Running as something zeroed in. Behind him in the street, the tractor-trailer grew noisier, puffing and squealing through downtown Akron. Garrett felt it in his teeth.
Garrett, get away, he warned.
Three steps more down the sidewalk and his stomach continued its campaign of misery. He locked his hands behind his head and pressed his chin to his chest. I’m not going to make it, he thought. I’m trapped. Looking up, he’d expected to see pedestrians gawking at the man who looked like he was about to again have his lunch spread out before him. Instead, the crowd, the shiny happies, did a peculiar thing. Garrett’s mind accepted it as oddball timing, and not conspiracy, the way people on the sidewalk parted to clear a path for him.
All but one.
At the other end of the path stood a man with his back to Garrett. Four shops down, near the south end of the block. The dark man on the street corner last night.
Get away, Garrett.
The man had slouched height. His black hair had been shorn to his skull. From here he looked eerily thin, or his clothes were dreadfully oversized. He wore a tacky, long blue coat and striped pants. He looked ridiculous from this view, like a clown, and Garrett couldn’t imagine the guy looking any less so from the front.
Stay away from this guy.
The man stood arms at his side, legs slightly apart, like he was expecting a spotlight and introduction. Instead the man started walking away from Garrett in a curious, out-of-sync motion that suggested Garrett’s wobbling eyes were victims of an optical illusion. For a moment Garrett felt relief. But as the clown man walked away, it seemed he somehow was coming nearer, getting larger.
Larger. Closer.
Backward, Garrett realized with laden dread. He’s headed this way walking backward.
The tractor-trailer rolled to a stop along the curb in front of the shops, blocking out the street to Garrett’s left and casting a shadow along forty-eight feet of sidewalk, soaking the light out of the concrete. The rig let out a wind-stirring sigh, its machinegun pistons shattering the calm. Garrett could see its sectioned length reflected in the windows of three shops along the block. Its idle vibrated the cement.
The backward man’s stride was the strangest thing of all. It seemed well-maintained, as if there were eyes in the back of that black cropped hair; he stepped as assuredly as if he’d been walking forward.
Garrett’s head was beating like a heart.
The crowd lingered for a moment, watching him, watching the stranger, as if it knew something worth seeing was about to occur. Indeed, the man seemed to be headed in Garrett’s direction. Garrett stepped from the center of the sidewalk, to give the coming stranger room to pass; the stranger adjusted as well, realigning himself with Garrett, still coming backward.
Exhaust from the rig spoiled the air around him. Now there were spoiled flowers and grease in the back of his throat.
The crowd seemed to decide it didn’t want to be around for whatever was about to go down and dispersed in the same random-but-almost-intentional way it had originally parted. Some shiny happies entered the nearest shops, two stepped off the curb and vanished ahead of the semi, a couple deciding on its own diversion, wrapped each other up, kissing like it was preserving their lives and fell against a building in a greedy grope. A woman walked past Garrett toward the flower shop. For a moment when she passed, he thought he might have caught a smirk on her face.
Now he inched along a wall of windows. Past the flower shop was a thrift store. Its dimly lit interior permitted his ghostly reflection to accompany him down the block. Twenty feet away, the backward man kept up his insane pace. His motion or wind briefly kicked up the tail of his clown coat; beneath it, for a second, Garrett saw some form of dark stain on the striped pants. Everything was cooling down in the shadowed alley formed by the 18-wheeler and the brick-and-glass storefronts.
The bell above the shop door jingled.
You’re running out of time.
Each step along this sidewalk was a step to overreacting idiocy. A silly fear turned in Garrett’s head, one that assured him of his lunacy: Garrett feared not seeing the approaching man’s reflection in the heavy glass. The turned-around stranger passed the door to the corner pharmacy, a newspaper rack and crossed in front of the streaked window display. He indeed possessed a reflection, which should have been a relief, but in the glass the shimmering man faced forward.
Every hair Garrett owned rose up from his skin, electrified, and his courage failed him. Here was a sense of reckoning that the end was closed. Jesus Christ, seven hours ago he’d awakened with thoughts of enjoying the rest of his life.
Farren: I’ll just keep being me, you keep being you and we’ll sort of find our way, said the card tucked into the flowers.
At thirty-two he’d seized elusive love; he hadn’t expected to greet death at the same age. Death? Was that what he was sensing? Was it sickening him? Exploding his mind? His heart was a cold muscle twisting in his center.
Garrett shot his glance to the walking man, still facing the wrong way, then to the reflection, which still faced him. Another surge of nausea. The details of the man’s face were warped and virtually transparent in the reflection. But he was a swarthy man, a black man. Garrett looked within himself to find the means to move. A length of tractor-trailer prevented him from crossing the street, so he turned and headed back to In Bloom.
As he went, the stranger spoke. Back facing back, the voice drifted away as the 18-wheeler’s hydraulics pissed and groaned.
“Rush!” Garrett thought he heard the man say. “Rush!”
Another pedestrian stepped aside, not wanting to hinder the communication.
Reaching the entrance to the flower shop, Garrett took the handle with some modicum of relief, and glanced over to see the stranger was upon him—the back of that head within a handshake’s distance.
Garrett froze. Even the slush of lunch rising up in him seemed to solidify in a breath-stealing instant.
The stranger, back slouched, stood still.
The engine of the tractor-trailer died.
The day was noiseless.
Don’t look at him.
Frozen: Garrett between the door and the stranger’s back.
Close your eyes.
The man was turning.
Don’t look.
Turning around to face him.
He’s not going to have eyes, Garrett thought.
A second more and the man would complete his spin, and the face of Garrett’s sudden tormentor would give him deep, eyeless sockets. Each filled with chipped, yellowed teeth. Overflowing. Tiny teeth cascading out of the holes in the man’s head and down his cheeks like petrified tears.
Don’t—
The first thing Garrett actually saw as the man’s face came about was teeth—a ridiculously large white smile. Eating up the bottom half of his face. A sloppy-wet smile. Then Garrett made out dirty details of the long blue coat and striped pants. Then he saw that the man’s hands were in his coat pockets. Then he could smell the stench the clown brought with him. Then something familiar about the man.
“Russ!” the stranger said.
The word slapped his brain against the curve of his skull. Just as unnerving was the voice, a deep-down crackle that seemed displaced from it source. Like it might not have been his voice at all, but someone else’s word thrown into this man’s mouth—a lifelike dummy belonging to some sadistic ventriloquist.
“Do I know you? I don’t know you,” Garrett told him.
The stranger pulled a hand from his coat pocket.
Garrett was abruptly sorrowful, thinking he hadn’t lived enough life. Hadn’t told Farren he loved her. He squirmed, walled in, twisting up his spine. A brick corner of the flower shop bit into his back.
He shouted.
The stranger-clown-dummy tossed the contents of his hand at Garrett with the aloofness of a man rolling dice across a Monopoly board.
Garrett’s hands went defensive.
“Man, what—”
Things by the handful pinged against his face and neck and chest and rained to the ground. Like black balls.
Raisins.
They spun down to the man-made ground. Raisins baking on the hard cement like shriveled black rose petals.
“Pick that up, now!” the black man said, giggling. Though he wasn’t black. Clearly now, Garrett could see the man’s face was smudged, dirty, darkened. But he wasn’t black. “Pick that up, now!” he repeated, as he did a quick buck and wing. Happy. Extremely happy. Too happy.
“What—what the hell is up with you?” Garrett screamed. His heart was a jackrabbit in his chest. “You out of your ever-loving mind?”
He brushed some straggler raisins from his jacket lapel. “Get away from me.”
“Dreams are real,” the stranger said. That voice was hideous. “It’s the waking up that’s the sham.”
“You don’t know me.”
The face was familiar.
“Don’t remember me? Hyre Junior High School. Class of ’83? Had blond hair back then.”
Garrett had not been a student at the junior high.
“My name … used to be Ryan Hutchinson. My name was Hutch.”
Garrett’s heart quickened once more. The man edged closer to him. Garrett leaned back.
“My name is Garrett. I do not know you.”
“I got stabbed in my neck by my junkie girlfriend,” Hutch the Clown said. “Head pressed against asphalt. Watching my thick, dark filling pool around my face, run into my eyes. I tell you, Russ, I never believed in God. Now I believe in God. Not that I ever seen Him. You only need to know one or the other to believe.”
Oh, the stench. And the voice.
Garrett looked down. The raisins baked on the cement.
“Guess where I’ve been to and back?” the man said. He was laughing, or his face was contorted beyond practical expression. This guy has too many teeth, Garrett thought. They’re not all fitting in his mouth. He couldn’t close his mouth—that’s why the ridiculous smile. And despite his smile, the man looked upon Garrett with somber, jaundiced eyes, almost pitiful.
“Brought a message to you, Rusty.”
“My name’s Garrett, asshole!”
“Don’t blame you, brother,” he replied. “The grass is always blonder on the other thigh!”
“I don’t know you.” Garrett was looking for a way around him. He still thought of retreating into the flower shop. His slick palm was still pressed to the door handle.
A silver strand of saliva escaped the bum’s crowded mouth and dribbled down his chin, onto his ratty clown coat, where it joined the party of stains. “You’ll have to excuse the smiling. Frowning’s really not an option,” he said. “Have you checked your topcoat lately?”
Garrett looked down at a hand. Dry skin. Wind-cracked skin. It was flaking around his palm and knuckles. The small of his back burned; his spine ached from the jolt he’d given it. “Just get away from me,” he said.
“There’s a book,” said the man claiming to be named Hutch. “Your signature’s printed in that book, Russ. Next to it is a date. Wanna know that date?”
Garrett couldn’t seem to get around him. It’s back into the shop, where he might be trapped, or he’d have to go through this guy. The man was wiry, held together by bones and shitty clothes. A good push might send him off the sidewalk.
“Russ, you wanna know that date?”
“Who is Russell? I don’t know who I’m talking to,” Garrett shouted, letting loose some of his own spittle. “You’re confusing me with … you’re thinking I’m … I don’t know you. Don’t call me … I’m Garrett …”
“You know what we call hell in hell, Russ?”
Garrett found the means to move. He gave the freak a two-handed shove. Don’t hesitate to see where he landed. He ran, his pace quickening exponentially. He charged down the sidewalk, hoping to get out of earshot. Needing to get away from the voice, the rattling undercurrent. He sliced through wind, trying to outrun the blinking images of those cluttered teeth. As he moved, patches of skin itched beneath his shirt. His armpits were sweaty.
Get away, Garrett.
Garrett collected enough distance to put the man’s words at the level of a whisper, but he heard them.
“We call it dreaming.”
Copyright © 2001 by Marvin Brown
