Glimpses: The Best Short Stories of Rick Hautala (31 page)

“You okay there?” Bob asked, but through the glass, the face that formed the question belonged to a huge, bloated toad. Its eyes were golden with flecks of black that popped out of its face. The toad’s mouth was split by an impossibly large grin. The creature’s skin was like a pile of dry, lumpy leather, mottled with black and brown.

“Wha—? Oh … Yeah … Nothing … nothing,” Jeremy said, fighting to keep his composure. He was surprised he didn’t drop the glass when he placed it back on the workbench. Closing his eyes for a moment, he tried to wipe the image of the toad from his mind. Then he smiled at Bob and raised the beer bottle to his mouth. The coldness in the pit of his stomach only got worse.

For the next fifteen or twenty minutes, he and Bob hung around making small talk about the weather (mostly crappy), the Red Sox (mostly losing), the fishing season (mostly just getting the hooks wet), and what a pain in the ass their wives could be (mostly no comment from Jeremy). All the while, Jeremy couldn’t stop fidgeting. He was still nauseated by what he had seen, but he was anxious to get back to work. The whole time he and Bob were talking, he couldn’t stop thinking that he really was talking to a huge toad.

That’s when it hit him.

What would he see if he looked through the glass at himself in a mirror?

“Well, best be getting on back before Cheryl calls the cops and reports me missing,” Bob finally said, to Jeremy’s immense relief. He placed his empty beer bottle on the cabinet beside him. “You can keep the five cent deposit.”

“Ten cents,” Jeremy said, raising the bottle he was holding.

“That’s right. Well, at that rate, you’ll be able to retire in a year or two,” Bob said with a laugh as he turned and trudged back up the stairs.

Jeremy couldn’t help but imagine what it would look like if he looked at him through a piece of the magic glass. The thought of seeing Bob’s huge toad body, hopping clumsily up the steps made him feel ill. As soon as Bob closed the door at the top of the stairs behind himself, Jeremy turned back to the stack of broken glass on his workbench. He jumped when, seconds later, Lisa opened the cellar door and called down, “You coming up, or you gonna be down there a while?”

“Be up in a bit,” Jeremy replied.

He wondered if she could hear the tension in his voice. Maybe a cat would sense it. He’d have to be more careful around her. He was still tense, and he couldn’t get rid of the image of the bloated toad that was his neighbor. It suited Bob so perfectly he wondered why he hadn’t seen what Bob really was before, even without the glass.

He listened as Lisa walked back into the living room. He heard the creak of her chair as she sat back down. And all the while, he was imagining that it wasn’t his wife he was listening to up there. It was a huge, gray cat.

This is sick … This is really dangerous
, he thought as he covered his face with his hands and took a deep breath.

How was he ever going to be able to trust anyone ever again if all he could think about was not the people they were on the outside, but the animals they were on the inside?

Maybe making these eyeglasses wasn’t such a good idea.

Maybe—right now—he should take the remaining shards back out to the trash and be rid of them. He should forget all about the glass.

But first … No, first he at least had to see what he looked like through the glass.

A cold constriction gripped his throat as he picked up a piece of glass and started up the stairs to the kitchen. He tried to convince himself he was being foolish, that all of this was his imagination gone wild. As he walked softly into the kitchen, he couldn’t help feeling like a thief, about to get caught committing a crime.

And the truth was, seeing what he saw through the glass probably
was
wrong. The most reasonable explanation was that it was all in his imagination, anyway. He was having a mental breakdown and was hallucinating all of it. That was the most likely explanation.

“Gotta take a leak,” he said to Lisa as he tiptoed past the living room doorway and went down the hall to the bathroom. He glanced at her as he went by, surprised that he didn’t see a cat curled up in her chair. By the time he got to the bathroom, he was shaking all over. His stomach was churning with sour acid as he closed and locked the door. For a long moment, he stood, breathing heavily and staring at his reflection in the mirror.

“So what
am
I?” he whispered as he leaned over the sink, close to the mirror.

He looked at the single piece of glass in his trembling hand. It was shaped roughly like a knife blade, and the thought flashed through his mind that as soon as he looked at his reflection and saw the animal he
really
was, he could use the piece of glass to slash his throat, if he had to.

The light in the bathroom seemed unusually bright. It stung his eyes as he gazed steadily at his reflection. He wondered if that had anything to do with the truth he was about to reveal about himself. In spite of the beer he’d just had, his throat was parched. Other than the bathroom fan, the only sound was the high, fast thumping of his pulse in his ears. When he finally could stand it no longer, he raised the glass slowly in front of his eyes and looked.

The figure he saw in the mirror stared back at him with a cold, unblinking gaze.

The moment froze as Jeremy stared at himself, and the horror of what he saw … of what he really was … filled him. A low, strangled cry came from deep inside his chest as he lurched away from the mirror. When the backs of his knees bumped into the toilet, he dropped the glass. It shattered on the tile floor, but Jeremy barely noticed it. All he could think about was the monstrosity he had seen in the mirror.

“Hon …? You all right in there?”

Lisa’s voice echoed as if it came from deep within a canyon. Jeremy opened his mouth and tried to answer her, but he couldn’t imagine how the mouth he had seen in the mirror could make even the faintest human sound. He could see his human form reflected in the mirror now, and he watched in stunned amazement as he raised both hands to his face and sank his fingertips into his skin.

He had to fight the impulse to claw at his skin, tearing it away to reveal the hideous thing he knew he was beneath the surface. Tears filled his eyes, blurring his vision.

“Jeremy …? It sounded like something broke in there. Are you all right?”

“No, I—Yeah … Just …. just a—”

He stopped himself, unable to believe that the mouth he had seen reflected in the mirror could actually make any sound at all. The last thing he wanted was for Lisa to come in here and see him like this … see him for what he really was.

How could he live with himself if she ever found out?

How could he live with himself now, knowing what he knew?

It would probably be best if he killed himself here and now, and saved Lisa and everyone else in his life the pain of discovering his true nature. He was numbed with shock, and his brain was barely working as he stared at the broken glass on the bathroom floor.

“I have to get rid of it,” he whispered. “I have to get rid of
all
of it!”

His body was so stiff his knees felt like they would snap as he knelt down on the tile floor and scooped up the slivers of broken glass. A razor edge nicked the inside of his thumb, but he didn’t feel any pain as his skin split open, and beads of blood formed along the inch-long gash.

Then a sudden rage swept through him. Once he had collected all the glass, he closed his fist on it and began to squeeze it as tightly as he could. The glass snapped and crackled in his tightening fist. Blood started to seep out from between his fingers. Gritting his teeth and moaning softly, he flexed his hand until the veins in his forearm stood out in sharp relief. He still didn’t feel even the slightest twinge of pain although he knew he should. When he loosened his grip after almost a full minute, he watched with detached amazement as the blood flowed freely from his hand and dropped in large, red splashes onto the tile floor.

“Are you ‘bout done in there?” Lisa called out.

The suddenness of her voice just outside the door startled Jeremy. He turned and stared wide-eyed at the door, waiting for her to open it and see him bleeding like this.

“No, I—umm … Could you use the upstairs bathroom? I think I’m gonna be a while.” He was surprised that he could speak at all.

“Sure,” Lisa said, and a wave of relief flowed through Jeremy when he heard her footsteps sound on the stairs.

He knew he had to act quickly.

Grabbing one of the hand towels, he wet it at the faucet and wiped up the blood as best he could. Every swipe left a damp a pink streak on the floor, but soon enough he had most of it cleaned up.

His hand was another matter. Holding his fist over the sink, he slowly uncurled his fingers and studied the damage. Fragments of glass fell into the sink, making faint tinkling sounds, like tiny bells. His fingers and the palm of his hand bristled with tiny shards of glass and were sliced open in dozens of places. Some of the cuts looked fairly deep, but he still felt no pain … just a faint stinging sensation.

He ran the water again and put his hand under the cold flow, wincing and wanting to cry out as the pain intensified so much that his wrist and forearm went numb.

He glanced at the bathroom door, knowing he didn’t have much time. He had to get the rest of the glass that was downstairs in the workshop and whatever was in the box out by the curb. He had to pulverize it all. He had to destroy it so no one …
no one
could
ever
see what he had seen through it.

Taking another hand towel, he wrapped his bleeding hand and opened the bathroom door. Thankfully, Lisa was still upstairs, so he knew he could make it back down to the cellar without being seen.

Once he was safely down in his workshop, he collected all of the glass and laid it out on the concrete floor. Taking a hammer from the pegboard, he began smashing it and
smashing
it until it was dust. He worked awkwardly because he had to use his left hand instead of his right, but it wasn’t long before there wasn’t a piece of glass larger than a pinhead remaining.

“What’s all that pounding down there?” Lisa called from upstairs.

“Sorry. I’m just about done,” Jeremy shouted back with a tremor in his voice. He waited until he heard her walk back into the living room.

He quickly swept up the glass powder and dumped it into the trashcan. Then, without a word to Lisa, he went upstairs and out to the curb where he got the cardboard box with the rest of the broken glass and carried it down into the basement. After laying all the glass on the floor, he set to work, pounding it until it, too, was nothing but gray dust.

As he worked, all he could think about was the hideous creature he had seen in the mirror—the creature that he was.

He was down on his hands and knees, tears flowing from his eyes and blood oozing from dozens of cuts on his face and hands as he wailed away with the hammer, when Lisa came down into the basement and saw him.

Jeremy didn’t realize she was there until he heard her scream.

Then he looked up at her, his face drenched with sweat and streaked with blood as he panted heavily.

“I can’t let you see me like this,” he said, his voice low and barely holding back the high, hysterical screech he knew was just below the surface.

After a lengthening moment in which they stared at each other, Jeremy sat back on his heels and let out a long, shuddering sigh. When he wiped his face with the flat of his hand, he left a long, bloody streak on his chin and cheek. His eyes widened, and a cold, jolting shock went through him when he recalled the horror of what he had seen in the mirror. Then with an aching sob, he leaned forward and once again started smashing the powdered glass on the cellar floor. The hammer blows rang out loudly in the close confines of the workshop.

“I can never let you see me like this! … Never let you see what I really am …
Never!
”

Lisa’s eyes were wide with shock as she started backing up until she got to the cellar steps. Then she turned quickly and ran up the flight of stairs. Jeremy heard her close and lock the cellar door behind her. Crouching on the cement floor, he shivered as he gripped the bloody hammer in his left hand and strained to listen to what she was doing upstairs.

He didn’t have the strength to react when she made a telephone call. He knew she was calling either for the police or an ambulance.

Exhausted, he slumped forward and lowered his head. He sat there and watched as blood dripped from his face and hands onto the cement floor and mingled with his tears and the powdered glass on the floor as he kept whispering, his voice growing fainter and fainter.

“Never … never … never … never …”

A
HELLBOY
story written with Jim Connolly

Just after dark, the rainstorm swept across the mountains to the west and blew eastward, heading toward the cold, gray
Atlantic Ocean. The small town of West Buxton, Maine, was just one of many small New England towns in its path.

It was late October and already past peak foliage season this far north. The storm’s powerful winds blew sheets of cold rain that shined like silver strings in the few streetlights that lined the all but deserted
Main Street. Fast-running water, dead leaves, and blown-down branches choked the rapidly overflowing gutters. Nearly every resident of the town, at some point or another that evening, had muttered some variation of: “Good thing this ain’t snow, or else we’d be buried alive.”