Smog - Baggage of Enternal Night (21 page)

As it was, I nearly collapsed
anyway. But Gail came to me straight away, wrapping an arm around my shoulder,
bearing my sagging weight, and guiding me to her car.

“Is that it? The record
player?” she asked.

I had to look around for a
moment before I realized I held what she was referring to.

My breaths were shallow, and I
startled to hear how hoarse and slow my voice sounded. “Yes…”

“So what now?”

“The river,” I said. “Detroit
River. Take us over Ambassador Bridge.”

My hands convulsed and fingers
spasmed so that they turned into claws, but I would not let go of the suitcase.
I sat down in the car seat, and my entire being screamed in relief. I wanted to
close my eyes and let go, but I had to wait; this wasn’t over yet. Gail drove
us away.

It was about a ten-minute drive
to Ambassador Bridge but, like everything, time seemed to skew, shrugging off
the normal laws it should have abided by. Of all the moments it had sped past
while I wasn’t paying attention, this instance was the opposite; time threw me
for a loop and slowed to a crawling second-by-second pace in which we drove as
if the brakes were on. I could have relived my life twice over by the time we
were a block down Sanford Street.

Come in, come
in
,
the voice still whispered in my thoughts. Then:
Let me in, let me in…

It took me a moment to realize
that the voice was still speaking in Russian, yet I understood the words as if
they were my native tongue.

“
Vkhodite
,” I said.

And I don’t remember anything
else about that drive or what happened afterwards on the bridge.

Chapter
8

Almost
half a century has passed since that night, and time and I never really
reconciled. In the same way that it’s betrayed me so often by skipping ahead at
the most inopportune moments, time has somehow now perpetrated the most
reprehensible disservice of all. I find myself old and nostalgic, wondering at
its tricks, and how so many years could have slipped by so quickly.

I’m told that time is a relative concept and
everyone interprets it differently. I suppose that holds true because my
interpretation of time on that drive to Ambassador Bridge really
was
skewed. Gail said I didn’t start speaking Russian until we were already pulling
onto the Bridge. The last thing I remember was that I had spoken Russian all my
life.

Gail ended up being the real hero of this account.
I may have found that proverbial cork to stick back into the genie’s bottle,
but she was the one who actually popped it in. Without Gail, I’d be nothing but
a specter in Rasputin’s forest, chanting for eternity alongside Joey and Ray
and the others.

She said I frightened her like nobody’s business
once I started chanting. She drove for about a quarter mile across the river
while I looked right at her and spoke a steady stream of Russian, as if I were
trying to convince her of something. I popped the latches of the suitcase open,
and she saw the gramophone moving inside, struggling like a dog locked in a
cage that’s too small.

That’s when she pulled over.

The way Gail tells it, I put up a good fight. But
like I said before, I hit like a pansy, and she beat the stuffing out of me,
tearing that suitcase from my cold, curled fingers. I’ve even got a thin scar
on my lip where she punched me with the small diamond ring I’d given her. To
this day, I don’t know how she knew to throw it in the river, and Gail still doesn’t
know either. Plain ol’ woman’s intuition, I guess. She closed the suitcase’s
latches again, just as the needle fell against a record and began to play. She
took that case and heaved it with the strength of a dozen lumberjacks far over
the railing and into the dark water below. It sank like an anchor and a puff of
steam billowed up.

One night a long time ago—but also a long time
after that affair on the bridge—Gail woke from a bad dream and urgently
confessed something that since then she’s never repeated. While the record
player was sailing through the air, before it drowned in the river, she heard
voices singing: Terrible, chanting voices, overlaying music that sounded like
out-of-tune instruments filled with rattling teeth. She said she heard Joey’s
voice on that record. Never mind that the words were Russian, or that they were
muffled through the leather case, or that she was frantic and near
screaming…she knew Joey’s voice, and she
knew
it was him.

Anyway, once the suitcase went underwater, it was
all over. That was Rasputin’s weakness—drowning—and it translated to the record
player. Gail said I then fell asleep, and I slept for three days straight. She
brought me back to her house and nursed me until I woke. After I regained
consciousness, she offered to take me home to Les Deux Oies, but I declined. I
figured there was nothing of value left there, and I have no idea whatever
became of the items in my apartment.

We’re married and live in Manhattan now. I’ve
never attended a baggage auction since the last one with Ray, in which I blew
twenty bucks just because I had to bid on something. I guess that’s a symptom
of gambling addiction and a sign to call it quits. Of course I knew I wouldn’t
attend another auction anyway, because I wouldn’t be able to stomach living
through the memories, standing before an auctioneer and imagining Joey next to
me waving his crippled hand up in the air.

I still watch the pony races from time-to-time,
and I still collect, but only one thing, and Gail keeps a tight rein on that. I
maintain a collection of postcards from Detroit. Old postcards, nothing newer
than 1970, and only those showing scenic locations of the city. Another
stipulation of the collection is that the cards must have been postmarked and
sent. Unused postcards that never served their purpose—never traveled as they
should—just wouldn’t do.

I used to visit antique stores, perusing for these
old cards, but the first time I saw a gramophone for sale I walked out and
haven’t set foot in any such place again. It’s easier now with the internet,
and I can search online for them. I’ve not returned to Motor City, and all my
own photographs are gone, left behind in the apartment, so each old postcard I
collect is meaningful.

A new millennium is coming, but the passage of
decades does nothing to diminish the pain and sorrow of what occurred that
long-ago summer. I suppose that’s why I collect old Detroit postcards. Although
my last week there was spent in the shadows of a nightmare, the cards harken
back to all the other good years. They feature landmarks I was familiar with
and often bring rise to fond memories, like the Penobscot Building, Belle Isle
Park, and Tiger Stadium. I’ve got countless cards showing Ambassador Bridge,
and I even have one featuring a front view of Les Deux Oies. Imagine my
astonishment when I read the script at the bottom of that card’s backside,
sharing well wishes to his grandchildren: it was signed from George R.
Landis…the oldest tenant of the building.

There might even be another reason I collect old
postcards. It reminds me of the views of peoples’ lives I once stored in trunks
and chests, glimpses into their existence. I once collected their trappings and
memories in my room, keeping them alive simply by my acknowledgement and my
possession. If I’d destroyed those items, it would have been as if they never
existed. But I kept them around, and their stories persevered.

And isn’t perseverance what immortality is all
about?

I’m keeping alive my memories of Detroit through
these postcards, and maybe someone will keep alive my memories after I pass.

And that gets me wondering if there might even be
another
reason I collect…was there an underlying motive I kept sent postcards? Why was
I compelled to continue to save people’s voices? Postcards, like photographs,
like albums, are recordings of people’s existence. During the time Rasputin had
a hold on me, how much of my soul did he carry away? Are there bits and flakes
missing, screaming somewhere for me to resurrect them through a few magic words?
Does a little part of me still reside in that nightmare land and, when I die,
will it return to me, or I to it?

Perhaps saving voices is a means of
self-preservation.

Or, perhaps, I’m wasting too much thought worrying
about it. I’m an old man without many years left. I won’t let time take those
while I’m not paying attention to what really matters in life.

Gail’s in the next room, and I might just go in
there and kiss her with my scarred lip. I might just tell her something that
I’ve said a hundred times before, though I don’t think she ever tires of
hearing it…

She’s the best bid I ever won.

The
End

Eric
J. Guignard
writes and edits dark fiction from his office in Los Angeles. He has over fifty
publishing credits for stories and articles in magazines, journals, and
anthologies. Although his passion is for fiction, he’s also a technical writer
and a published essayist including such diverse topics as genealogy,
woodworking, banking, and ecology.

Eric is also an anthology editor, including:
Dark
Tales of Lost Civilizations
(2012, Dark Moon Books), which was nominated
for a Bram Stoker Award®, and this year’s critically acclaimed release,
After
Death…
(2013, Dark Moon Books).

He’s a member of the Horror Writer’s Association, the
Greater Los Angeles Writer’s Society, and is also the Horror Genre
Correspondent for
Men’s Confidence Magazine
. When not writing, Eric
designs and builds custom furniture and is an amateur entomologist.

Most importantly, Eric is married to his high
school sweetheart, Jeannette, and father to an adventuresome toddler son,
Julian James.

Visit Eric at:

www.ericjguignard.com

or at his blog:

www.ericjguignard.blogspot.com

or on Twitter:

 
https://twitter.com/ericjguignard