OUR LAST NIGHT: an edge of your seat ghost story thriller (15 page)

His cottage-cheese voice: “It’s got all the time in the world. You
don’t
, Dan.”

His face was a concave, blown-out shell, as if a firework had gone off behind his sinuses. His scalp was peeled like the blossoming of an awful, meaty flower. No eye sockets, no forehead, maybe a hint of a nose, but crushed off to the side in a chunky-salsa-tangle of cartilage. No upper jaw remained. But his lower jaw was intact, his white teeth and chin protruding to form a Neanderthal underbite because there was no face to compare it with. I saw a pink tongue nestled in his half-ruined mouth, and recognized the slapping noises we’d heard. Another chunk dropped to the grate, and I realized—

Ben Dyson.

Ben “SO COLD IN HERE” Dyson. The rifle’s second American victim after it had been imported stateside. The WordPress-blogging gunsmith from Georgia who, without warning, stuck the Mosin Nagant under his chin and blew his face all over his workshop on that scorching August afternoon.

The Deer Cap Dude was Ben Dyson. Or maybe Ben Dyson was the Deer Cap Dude. Time was a hairball. Had I seen a blood-soaked hunting hat on the floor in one of those fuzzy photos? When had the narrative even begun? The sheer weight of it came down on me like a rockslide.

It’s listening.

“Dan,” Addie urged above me. “Keep climbing—”

But I froze there, clinging to the rungs. Guts heaving. It made no sense at all.

It’s in your mind.

CLANG. CLANG—

“
Dan
. The Gasman’s coming—”

Somehow I forced myself to keep going. Up, up, up. One warty rung after another, so frigidly cold they felt searing hot. My hands froze to the metal, suctioning free of every bar with a dry, tearing Velcro sound. Like licking a frozen pole. I flinched at a flare of hot pain on my left palm, and then a sticky snap. I’d left a postage stamp of bloodied skin on that one. No time to stop.

It knows what I know.

My mind was racing. I don’t think I really grasped the true malevolence of this
thing
— attached to this bolt-action rifle that came to me in an oily skin of plastic, reeking of centipede musk and yeast — until I personally witnessed what it had done to Ben Dyson’s face. That made it real, somehow. No censor pixels here. Evil is just a word. But faces are personal. And this gun destroys them.

And it would be mine next. For maybe the first time since I’d lost Adelaide, I experienced true existential terror. I was utterly screwed. I was trapped in the orbit of a gangrenous evil that existed outside of time; it was already rooted in my past and future. I was already dead, and it would keep killing, passing from corpse to corpse on the American gun market like an invisible predator. An unstoppable cycle of violence.

Unless I could decode the riddle of Ben Dyson’s secret message.

A goddamn cat turd.

Last rung. Addie grabbed my wrist and tugged. I kneed up onto the lighthouse roof, groping blindly in the freezing darkness. I expected rough tile, or coned roofing, or whatever the hell the Disappointment Bay Lighthouse roof was built of. Because I didn’t know what this little crow’s nest looked like, and neither did the Head-Scratching Rifle, and that meant we weren’t on top of the lighthouse at all.

As we slipped into the next memory, the Deer Cap Dude’s wormy voice rattled up from below: “Leave your imaginary Adelaide behind, Dan. Let her go, or
the Gasman will use her against you—”

“Dan,” she breathed, gripping my arm. “It worked.”

Sent:
3/19 6:09PM

Sender:
LJ@haunted

Subject:
OMFG!

Hey Dan-O,

Holden tells me you found the ancient Soviet Head-Scratching Rifle of Infinite Sadness or whatever it’s called. Nice detective work, man. So drop by Ferguson and we’ll chat about maybe doing a segment on that haunted gun, maybe a B-story to run with the Old Briar Mine. Or just come by the office. Seriously.

Production isn’t the same without you. I’m really worried about you. I’m so sorry for your loss. Take care, friend.

-LJ

PS: But seriously let me know if you’re dropping by with that cursed gun. Too f’ing cool!!!

LJ Baxter

Unit Production Manager

Haunted (Sundays at 11pm and Wednesdays at 2am, only on KSPM)

2 Hours, 40 Minutes

I watched Adelaide closely after what Ben Dyson’s corpse said to me. For some reason I was fine with being already doomed — I pretty much deserved it — but the idea of Addie being imaginary? That terrified me.

So I studied the way she moved as we hitchhiked through our past: her small hands fidgeting at her sides, her New Year’s Eve dress gliding over her legs. The little things she did — the birdlike way she bobbed her head to throw her bangs from her eyes, the way her British accent intensified under stress and relaxed when she did, and always, that cautious flash of a smile. New or remembered? Real or imagined?

Disturbingly, I began to wonder: what’s the difference, anymore?

“Aw, crap.” Addie recognized the next memory. “The lobster disaster.”

I grinned. “I like this one.”

Yes, lobsters.

Twenty-six lobsters. The warty brown ones that sold for $12.99 a pound and skittered around the floor of a hundred-gallon aquarium. All knuckles, claws, and rubber-banded pincers. This was in a grocery store in Astoria, under the flamingo struts of a mile-long bridge joining Washington and Oregon over the mouth of the Columbia River. September or October, I think it was, when we’d driven out to help my parents move out of my childhood house. With an icepick-jab of fear, I realized — we’d already dropped from 2014 to 2013. Was the train of thoughts accelerating?

I’m going to save you
, Addie had whispered with her nose squished to the glass.
I’m going to save every last one of you
.

I remember glancing up at the whiteboard and wishing we’d done this on Sunday, when the lobsters were $11.95 a pound. But it was her money, not mine.

The entire tank,
she told the clerk.
I wish to purchase the entire tank.

The tank isn’t for sale.

No, not literally the tank. The lobsters in it. All of them.

Four hundred and fifty-one dollars. The cashier had to call in a fussy little manager to swipe a red override card. Normally, I guess they box them up for you, but we just bought a Rubbermaid bin and stuffed them in a writhing heap with six inches of tank water. From the grocery store it was a four-minute drive west, past a mothballed arcade and boarded-up VHS rental place, to a coastline of slippery black rocks.

In the rearview mirror I glimpsed the Gasman, stepping out into the road to follow us at a walking pace. We left him behind.

Addie was giggling in the passenger seat.
Is this crazy?

I sighed.
Not by our standards
.

We reached the coastline with time to spare. From growing up in this seaside town, I’d learned there were basically two kinds of weather in Astoria: ‘raining’ and ‘almost raining.’ Cold drizzle pinpricked the air.

We carried the sloshing bin to the cliff’s edge and Addie winced, rubbing a shiny sore on her palm. Mine ached too; a paradoxical blister from climbing the subzero rungs of the Disappointment Bay Lighthouse, where we’d learned that I was dead, the Gasman was un-killable, and that Addie didn’t exist. Shitty revelations, all-around. But she didn’t want to talk about it, and neither did I, so we just let this lobster memory play for a few minutes, like a television in a darkened room that we were too exhausted to switch off. This time and that one tangled together, like ribbons of mixing paint.

Twenty-six lobsters
, I’d said.
I thought we’d just save one or two.

What would the other twenty-four think?

Probably nothing. They’re lobsters.

I knew I’d regret it
, she told me atop that rock berm, looking out into the choppy water with her hair clumping and her cheeks rash-red.
I’d have an Oskar Schindler breakdown. I’d go home and look at the MacBook Air, and the pretentious bullshit on the walls, and I’d wonder how many lobsters I could’ve saved. The little glass fruit bowl on the table is, like, ten lobsters. I could’ve saved ten more.

She’d just signed her soul over to the tech startup Cubek. Any chance of vet school was, of course, years in the rearview mirror, but this had been the point-of-no-return for her. The event horizon of her career. Who doesn’t feel the pain of letting go of their dreams? I’d always wanted to be a screenwriter or film director, and instead I walked around on TV with a flashlight and a restaurant-issue thermometer gun. Life twists your dreams, but in subtle and painless ways, until one morning you wake up and you’re out of time.

She picked up the first lobster. It blew furious bubbles and whipped its antennae, clicking in her fingers.
You’re free
, she whispered.
You were going to be dropped into boiling water, cooked alive, but you’re free now.

This contrasted nicely with each clumsy splash. I held back laughter. Something about the way the little critters flailed in confused panic; it must’ve been like being liberated from a prison camp via circus canon.

Addie’s frost-burnt hand had started to bleed and she rubbed a smear of red on her dress, her hair windswept, her eyes bloodshot.
I know, Dan. I know how stupid and pointless this is—

It’s fine
, I said.

I just needed this—

It’s fine, Addie.

She turned away. She had always been ashamed of these little outbursts. She never knew how to be vulnerable around me. I made it difficult, I think. Even after her savannah monitor had disintegrated in her arms, she’d been embarrassed to cry in front of me back at BullsEye’s, like I would judge her or mock her for it.

She chewed her lip.
I know . . . I know this is stupid.

Yeah, I thought so, too. And I didn’t have the energy to pretend to disagree.

At this point, circa 2013, we kind of hated each other. The drive from Farwell to Astoria had been deeply tedious — you can only have the same argument so many times, in so many forms, before it turns into a recital, and then what? Hell, skip the recital. Silence is easier. The drive back was looking like six more hours of eggshell quiet, so Addie had decided to skim off the top of her embarrassingly disposable bank account and do something ‘productive.’ Not donating to a homeless shelter, or leukemia research, or paying it forward and picking up a stranger’s grocery bill — nope. Twenty-six lobsters.

I hurled another one like a football, giving it backspin. He splashed down a hundred feet out, barely missing a red buoy.

Wait, Dan
. She grabbed my elbow, her voice pitching with alarm.
These are Pacific lobsters, right?

Yeah
, I said.
Of course.

You’re sure?

Nope. That whiteboard had definitely said Maine lobsters. I’m not even sure lobsters are native to the Pacific at all — if they had been, they probably wouldn’t have been so damn expensive. But I’d lied, because back then, I was sick of her stunts and hadn’t wanted to drag this farce out any longer. There were just a few stragglers left, and then we could get back on the road. The horizon had darkened with clouds.

In silence, we threw the rest. But she studied the final one and turned it over, like there might be a product code on its belly.
Are you . . . are you really sure, Dan? Or are you just saying that?

Addie. They’re sea spiders—

She looked heartbroken.
You don’t care.

I threw the last one extra hard, and we listened to the distant splash.
I’m just saying, we can save twenty-six lobsters here in Oregon, and that’s nice, but on the drive back home we’ll straight-up murder four hundred bugs with our windshield.

She winced.
You don’t need to have a comeback to everything, Dan.

But I always did, I guess.

For a moment we just stared out to sea together as salt water lapped barnacled rocks. The rain came in indecisive spurts, pattering the rocks and soaking our hair. We were going back to my Celica, crossing the crest of gravel and dandelions, when she sucked in a sharp breath, slapping a hand to her mouth.

I stopped.
What?

She sat down on the shoulder, shaking her head. Disbelief.

What, Addie?

She pulled something from her pocket — a pair of yellow scissors — and let them drop. She looked up at me with big eyes.
The rubber bands,
she said.
We . . . we forgot to cut off the rubber bands.

That’s right. The blue rubber bands the grocery store had bundled the lobsters’ pincers with, to keep them from attacking each other in captivity. Or injuring the cook. Or, you know, catching food.

I shouldn’t have laughed, but I did.

Oh my God.
She buried her face in her hands.
They’re . . . . they’re defenseless down there, handcuffed in the wild. They can’t even pick up food—

I sat beside her.
Yeah, they weren’t Pacific lobsters, either.

For a moment I thought she’d cry, but she laughed instead; one of those miserable barks that cuts your throat on the way up. Pitch-black chuckles. The wind blew in handfuls of gritty rain, stinging our eyes and forcing our faces down, and I realized she was pressing her head on my shoulder. Her jaw shivered with pained giggles, and I joined her, as natural as sneezing. It felt good to laugh together. For a few minutes, we could just be two people laughing together, and we could forget about the growing fault lines in our relationship, the cracks in the supports, all the stupid little things we couldn’t fix that might someday doom us. We’d just accidentally murdered twenty-six lobsters, and it was hilarious. That was it.

The EMF meter beeped.

I looked at her now — in
this
now. “Tell me something I don’t know.”

“What?”

“Tell me something I don’t already know. So I know you’re not imaginary.”

She shrugged. “I . . . I don’t know—”

“Anything, Addie. The capital of Guam?”

“I don’t know.”

“The
location
of Guam?”

“Well, that’s the problem.” She shrugged bleakly, brushing damp hair from her eyes. “I could tell you anything, and it could just be your imagination making facts up. The real challenge is: how do you
prove
something I say is true?”

Since we were trapped within the finite horizons of my own memories, I guess that was the real problem. It was an awful feeling. A mix of claustrophobia and loneliness. Who knows — maybe Laika had imaginary friends, too, in her cramped aluminum tomb miles above the stratosphere.

“For what it’s worth,” she said with a small, sad smile, “I
think
I’m real.”

I wish that was enough. It wasn’t.

The EMF meter beeped again, so we took in one last glimpse of the gray ocean, now twenty-six Atlantic lobsters richer, and I helped her to her feet. We got the hell out of there, before the raindrops started to freeze in the air, the sun began to dim red, and the Gasman came to claim more of my soul.

“Wait,” she said as we raced further back in time. “Do you seriously not know where
Guam
is?”