Borderlands Read online

  "Listen, I don't see anything out of the ordinary in there. No more or no less of the little bastards than anyone else has. Now I don't know why all of a sudden you became aware of them, but—"

  "Patterns," Randy said. "They're coming in patterns."

  "They often do. In lines and curves and all sorts of shapes. But they break up, reform, break up again. It's a constant process, and the patterns change constantly."

  "My ass they do. . ."

  "What?"

  "The light," said Randy, grabbing at straws. "Why can't I see them in that bright light?"

  "Put gray on gray against a bright background, and you're not going to see much."

  "Then you can't do anything for me?" He knew he sounded panicked but couldn't help it.

  "Not really. We could take some more tests, see if there's something I've missed. But if they're just our friendly little flies, there's nothing to do about them." Levy turned on the lights.

  Randy hopped off the chair and began to blink again. "Fuck your tests," he said, and walked blindly toward the door.

  "Mr. Fralich, I'm sorry," Levy called after him.

  Randy stormed out of the office, shouting "Bill me!" to the receptionist. He was lucky enough to immediately catch a passing cab, and barked his address to the driver, opening his eyes long enough to glance at his watch and learn that it was nearly noon. Despite his terror, he felt hungry. He had had no breakfast, and knew that a good lunch was what he needed. He would go home, and Cathy would make him an omelet, and then he would think about all of this. He would sit down and close his eyes and block that son of a bitch Alan out of his thoughts and make him go away and leave him alone.

  The thought felt so good that he opened his eyes and looked out at the gray haze over the river. Alan was still there. Randy squeezed his eyes shut.

  It was near Seventh and Thirty-fifth that it happened. Traffic stopped. Horns honked. Cabbies, chauffeurs, bus drivers, citizens spewed obscenities out of open windows as they craned their necks to see what it was this time.

  "What's the holdup?" asked Randy, opening his eyes and thinking that rapid blinking was becoming as natural as sweating.

  The driver shrugged, muttered a low "goddamn," and started laying on the horn again. Randy sat there five minutes, then ten, opening his eyes at intervals to confirm the fact that they had not moved. Finally he handed the driver a five, stepped out of the cab, blinked his way to the sidewalk, and started uptown on Seventh.

  By the time he got to Fortieth Street, something was changing. Slowly he realized that the clouds were flying away from over the city on the brisk wind that had just sprung up. It was brightening.

  He passed the bottleneck of Forty-third (a delivery truck toppled on its side, though he couldn't figure out how it had happened), and suddenly the traffic was running freely again. He tried to hail a cab, but they were filled with passengers going to or coming from hundreds of lunches, so he kept walking uptown.

  Randy finally saw the sun on the corner of Forty-seventh and Seventh. He had just started crossing the street when he stepped into the intensely bright, direct light that the passing of the clouds had bestowed on the city. Directly overhead, it hung like an antiseptic globe in an operating room that sent down its warm fire to purge and cleanse and heal. He turned his face toward it, his blinking ended, and stared full into the steaming eye.

  The particles that had formed Alan's image had become invisible, eradicated by the golden beams that streamed like liquid wires through his cornea, into his retina, penetrating the optic nerve and sending the gloriously welcome message of light, light, light into Randy Fralich's desperate brain.

  The image was gone, washed away by the orb at which Randy stared with all the concentration and rapture of the Hindu fakirs who burn away the lies of human vision with the sun's truth. He never heard the horn or the brakes. He never saw the car.

  And though no one would ever know it, he never even felt the blow that lifted him and threw him spine first against the punishing iron of the fire hydrant.

  Ten hours later two interns sat in a snack bar at Roosevelt Hospital, talking about the Mets. A third intern entered, heated a container of spaghetti and a double burger in the microwave, and sat beside the others. "Well?" said one.

  "A mess," muttered the newcomer, biting into his burger and talking as he chewed. "But McReady got him through, with a little help from Feinstein."

  "You're kidding."

  "Nope. You owe me a buck." With his free hand he pocketed the dollar the other handed him.

  "Thought I had a sure thing. His spine looked like a pretzel."

  "Then McReady's a pretzel bender." The intern swallowed a red lump of spaghetti. "Might've been better for the guy if he wasn't."

  "Why?"

  "Paralysis. Total."

  "Rough."

  "Mmm. Wife took it hard."

  "Well," said the youngest of the three interns, "it's better than dying."

  The intern who was eating snorted. "Tell that to a guy who's gonna spend his life looking at a gray hospital wall and see what he says. If he could talk."

  The intern poised his fork over the bowl of spaghetti and noticed how the loops and whorls of the noodles and the globs of sauce sometimes made little pictures. There, he thought. That one could almost be a face.

  THE MAN IN THE LONG BLACK SEDAN

  Ed Gorman

  Although I’ve never met Ed Gorman in person, I feel like I know him very well. In addition to writing many fine novels in the mystery and suspense genres (such as Murder Straight Up and Rough Cut), Ed also is the publisher of Mystery Scene—a huge magazine dedicated to all the strange and wonderful genres. I met Ed by phone when he called late one night inviting me to write my infamous column (“The Mothers And Fathers Italian Association”) for his magazine. In the process of agreeing to a deal, I realized this guy Gorman and I had a lot in common. The usual stuff—we liked the same writers, saw all the same great movies, etc. But he lives in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and doesn’t travel much. So now we carry on an erratic correspondence, burn some big time on our MCI bills, and still we’ve never met face-to-face.

  The following story deals with, among other things, the number one fear with which all parents live. Gorman ‘s writing falls somewhere between hard-boiled and steam-cleaned. He knows how to hurt you, and he doesn’t hesitate.

  At first light, the crickets still unceasing and the neighborhood dogs joining in, I eased from bed so as to not wake Ellen, and walked along the hardwood of the hallway to Christopher’s room. It was August and humid, and the floor was almost sticky against my bare feet.

  Two of them lay in bed, my eight-year-old Christopher and his classmate Donny. They’d spent all day yesterday taking full advantage of hot blue summer and slept now in sweet exhaustion. Donny was his best friend, Christopher had confided recently. Donny liked to rent Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom just as often as Christopher did and his favorite Stooge was Shemp. You couldn’t ask for a better friend than that.

  In the downstairs bathroom I gave myself what my mother always calls a sponge bath, afraid a full-force shower would wake Ellen. Ellen would have questions for which I would have no answers.

  I dressed in a clean white button-down shirt and newly dry-cleaned blue slacks. Add a tie and you have the uniform I wear every day to the computer store I manage. Just before I left the bathroom, I stared with disbelief at the thirty-nine-year-old face fixed forlornly in the mirror. I’ve always felt a tiny shock of betrayal when I look on my mirror image, as if my real face had been stolen and an imposter put in my place. What I feel seems to bear no relation to the wry, even smug face I’ve been given.

  In the basement, in a cabinet that locks with an ancient antique key, I found the Smith and Wesson .38 that had belonged to my father. Taking it to a cobwebbed window, holding it up to the dust and dawn, I turned it over and over in my slender hands, as if by doing so it would reveal some sublime secret about its purpose.

 
; But of course I knew its purpose, didn’t I?

  Harcourt is a Midwestern town of forty-two thousand. It wakes early. White milk trucks crisscross the wide streets and avenues, and paperboys and papergirls on quick new bikes toss their papers with reasonable accuracy on silent front porches still silver with dew. After college, I did not want to go back east. I wanted the furious rolling green of heartland summer and the vast cool shadows of its nights.

  The motel I sought sits half a mile from the westernmost part of town. A one-floor, twelve-room complex with the office in the center, it is the sort of place I often stayed in as a boy, when my angry father and defeated mother spent their vacations driving across country in search of a peace neither of them would ever find.

  The long black sedan sat in the last parking slot on the northern wing of the building. It was this year’s model but dulled by the dust of gravel roads. A red, white, and blue bumper sticker said STAND UP FOR AMERICA.

  Oh, he was some ironic bastard, he was.

  I pulled in next to him, took the .38 from the glove compartment, went up to his door.

  Despite the noisy country-western music coming from the next room, I could hear his shower running.

  He was making it damned easy for me.

  I took out my credit card and went to work, looking around to see if anybody was watching. It’s never as easy as it looks on TV shows, opening doors this way, but most of the time it does work.

  He had clothes laid out on the bed, a blue summer-weight suit, a short-sleeved blue shirt, a red regimental-striped tie, white Jockey shorts, and black socks. Beneath the clothes, the bed lay unmade and you could see black hairs on the pink pillow where he’d slept. The air smelled of steam from the shower and aftershave and cigarettes.

  I sat down in a patterned armchair next to a nightstand with a phone and a copy of Penthouse that was probably his. He was very good. Very, very good. All these little bits of business to disguise who and what he really was. The magazine was a nice touch.

  When I heard the bathroom door open, I got the .38 ready.

  He was a short, chunky man of perhaps fifty, balding, jowly, and cross-looking, like the crabby neighbor on TV sitcoms. He had a wide white towel wrapped around his fat belly and green rubber shower thongs that went thwack against his heels when he walked. On his right bicep was a tattoo of a panther. That was another nice touch, the tattoo.

  He had his head down so he didn’t see me at first, but when he came into the room and raised his eyes, his first reaction was to get angry. Most people would be afraid—startled—to see somebody with a .38 sitting in their motel room chair. But not him.

  “Who the hell are you,” he said, nodding to the gun, “and just what the hell are you doing in my room?”

  “I know who you are. I know what you are.”

  “What the hell are you talking about, pal?” He shook his head in disgust. “You want my money, right? And my wallet, too, I suppose. For the credit cards.” He scowled. “Nice little town like this, you don’t expect this kind of thing.” Keeping the towel modestly about him, he went over to the nightstand, his thongs thwacking against his heels again, and picked up his wallet and tossed it to me. “There you go, pal. Now put the gun away and get the hell out of here.” He didn’t sound so angry now. More disappointed in his luck.

  I just let his wallet lie at my feet where it had landed. “I know who you are.”

  “Who I am? What the hell’s the big deal about that? I’m Larry Washburn and I work for Calico Chemical Company and I’m in this burg for a week to sell my herbicide to farmers. So what?”

  I smiled. “You’re good. I’ll say that for you.”

  For the first time, his voice softened. “Are you all right, pal?”

  “You’ve chosen my son, haven’t you?”

  “Your son?”

  “What’ll it be? A car accident? Drowning?” I shook my head, repelled at the sight of him. “No, it’ll more like be a disease, won’t it? Cancer, I suppose, or cerebral palsy. Something that will make him suffer a long time.” When I thought of how poor little Christopher would suffer with cancer, I raised the .38 so that it was square at the center of his chest. “You like them to suffer, don’t you? And for their parents to suffer, too, right? Accidents are over too quickly. They’re not nearly as much fun as disease.”

  For the first time, he started glancing around the room and looking afraid. “Pal, you’ve got me confused with somebody else.”

  “You drive around from town to town and you pick them out, don’t you? One by one. A boy here, a girl there. They’re so innocent and loving and trusting and you don’t care at all how much you make them suffer, do you? Do you know what it’s like to hold your little child in your arms and know that this child is going to die from a horrible disease? Do you know how heartbreaking that is? But you feed on it, don’t you? And nobody ever recognizes you for what you are. Nobody ever realizes you’ve got the power. But I know. Because I’ve got the power, too. But I use my power to help people.” I thought of Dr. Russo at the state university where I ultimately went when no other kind of doctor could help assuage my headaches. “They’re not headaches,” Dr. Russo had told me. “They’re visions. You’re seeing things other people can’t see. And it’s terrifying you.” I said, “You know how I knew you were here?”

  He didn’t say anything. He just kept looking around the room. Especially at the door.

  “Little Cindy Brisbane. Her mother brought her over to my son’s birthday party and I saw inside Cindy’s head. I saw what was growing there. A tumor. And six days later, they rushed her to a hospital after she kept fainting. And you know what they found? They found that tumor I’d seen.” I was starting to get angry again. “Why the hell did you put that tumor in Cindy? She’s had a hard enough life as it is being adopted and all.” I gripped the .38 tighter. “You’re not going to get my son.”

  “You got a ring.”

  “What?”

  “Wedding ring.”

  I looked at the gold band on my finger. “You know all about me. You’ve been checking me and my family out for the past several days. You know I’m married. And you know about my son.”

  “Why don’t we call your wife?”

  “What?”

  “Call your wife. Have her come over.”

  “So you can give her an aneurysm? Or rheumatoid arthritis? Or some kind of spinal disease? You’d just love to have my wife come over, wouldn’t you?”

  “Pal, please, look, you’ve got me confused with somebody else. I’m from Traer, Iowa, born and raised there. I’m a door pounder. A goddamn salesman, can’t you see that? I don’t even know what this power is you’re talking about.”

  He had a lot of wiry gray hair on his chest and little breasts like a thirteen-year-old girl. I put the bullet right there, right between his breasts.

  He went over backwards on the bed. The funny thing was that the towel kept him covered very well.

  His arms went out as if he were falling helplessly into a swimming pool. Blood made his chest hair the color of copper wire even before he hit the bed.

  I’d struck him directly in the heart.

  Far away on the other side of the motel room walls, I could hear shouts and curses. The gunshot had awakened people, of course.

  I had to hurry now.

  I went over to him and stood over him. If you didn’t know who and what he was, you’d think he was dead. His eyes had rolled back and his tongue was angled out of his mouth and his fingers were already getting rigid.

  But because I knew exactly what I was dealing with, I knew that in no time he would be up and coming for Christopher.

  He will never die.

  Not him.

  Shouts grew louder; distantly, I heard a siren.

  I needed to get out of the motel room and I did.

  On the drive back home, I could sense him stirring back in the room. When you’re able to see things the way I can—identifying Cindy’s tumor, for example—yo
u’re sometimes able to tell what people are doing even at great distances.

  I could see him sitting up now, holding his hand to the pumping wound in his chest, cursing me.

  Then I saw what he had planned for Christopher…

  I hurried.

  “Hi, hon,” Ellen said when I got home. She was in red shorts and a white T-shirt and standing over the stove where she was fixing bacon and eggs. “You sure got up early this morning. You run down to the store?”

  “No,” I said.

  How could I possibly explain to her what I had to do?

  She smiled. “Our son and his friend are getting used to summer hours. I’ll bet they won’t be up before afternoon.”

  “He’s coming,” I said.

  “What?”

  “He’s coming.”

  “Who’s coming?”

  “He wants to hurt Christopher. A disease. Maybe Donny will be lucky and get off with an accident. But Christopher will get a terrible disease.”

  I could see she was scared now. She put down the spatula and came over to me. “Honey, what are you talking about?”

  Up in the room, they were still sleeping. Christopher and Donny.

  My head was throbbing. He was very angry back there in his motel room. Very angry.

  In Christopher’s body I see, I hear, I feel the cancer cells already beginning to grow.

  I think of the photos I’ve seen of youngsters with cancer after chemotherapy. Those round, hairless little faces. Those sad and yearning eyes. And the parents standing by so brave, so brave.

  She wanted to stop me, Ellen did, and that’s why I had to kill her.

  She just didn’t understand why I need to help Christopher before he can get to him….

  But then, it’s not possible to understand unless you have the power.

  I raise the gun.

  Christopher stirs.

  Begins to look up.

  Blond hair mussed.

  Face smudged with sleep.