All Too Surreal Read online

  “You’re a good boy for visiting your mother,” she said. “You take care, now.”

  Kevin mumbled for her to do the same and then she shut the door and was gone.

  He stood on the porch for a moment longer before heading back out to the yard and Mr. McNabb.

  The old man didn’t look up from his raking. “You and the Missus have a good talk?”

  “Yeah,” was all Kevin could think to say.

  Mr. McNabb nodded. The white-faced figure came out from behind the oak tree and leaned against it. Kevin had to force himself not to look at it.

  “Tell me, son,” Mr. McNabb said, his attention still on his work, “why did you really come back here?”

  Kevin opened his mouth to answer and then he realized he didn’t know. He’d just gotten up this morning in the crappy one-room apartment that he laughingly called home, took a shower, dressed, and got in his car and started driving. He had no destination in mind, just felt the need for motion. And after a couple of hours he had ended up in Ash Creek.

  “No idea?” Mr. McNabb said. “Then let me clue you in, Kevvy.” He looked up then, a strange light dancing in his eyes. “Kevvy,” he repeated, saying it slowly this time, as if tasting both syllables and finding each delicious. “I always loved calling you that. Of course, I only said it down in the basement. With you.”

  Something large and dark shifted beneath the surface of Kevin’s thoughts, something that had been sleeping for quite some time and was now threatening to wake.

  “You’re here because I called you,” Mr. McNabb said.

  Kevin glanced sideways at the figure with the white face. It had left the oak tree and was slowly sidling across the grass toward them, its long, thin limbs bending in ways arms and legs weren’t supposed to, its grin a hideous black gash in all that white. Suddenly feeling dizzy, Kevin turned back to Mr. McNabb.

  “I don’t —”

  Musty air, hard hands, stale hot breath on the back of his neck as a thick voice rasped out a single word.

  “Kevvy …”

  The memory was echoed by a different voice, this one coming from just behind his right ear. Its breath was cold, the cold of dying earth, of coming winter, and he knew it came from the thing with the white face. He felt hands on his shoulders, the fingers long and twisted like twigs.

  Mr. McNabb bent down and picked up a handful of leaves from the pile at his feet and held them before Kevin.

  “Each of these is a child, Kevvy-boy. A child caught at its most beautiful, in that brief time between childhood and adolescence, between innocence and knowing.”

  He took a leaf, this one yellow with streaks of red. “Michael Goodell. He made the most delightful whimpering sounds.” He placed the leaf on his tongue — a tongue which was bone white — and closed his mouth, chewed and swallowed.

  He took another, this one caramel brown. “Bradley Jonson. His tears were so salty.” Chew, swallow.

  The third leaf was a deep, dark red. “You, Kevvy-boy. Of all my children, you were my favorite. Do you know why?”

  The skin around the edges of Mr. McNabb’s face began to flake.

  “Do you?” the old man insisted and the twig-hands on Kevin’s shoulders tightened.

  “No,” Kevin’s whispered reply came in a little boy’s voice.

  Mr. McNabb grinned, the smile stretching so far that the corners of his mouth split open. He stroked Kevin’s chin with the dark red leaf. “Because you liked it, Kevvy. Because you always wanted more.”

  “No.” A denial this time.

  The skin on Mr. McNabb’s forehead began to peel away. Beneath it was ivory white. McNabb gripped Kevin’s face and squeezed until his mouth opened, and then the old man placed the dark red leaf on Kevin’s tongue. Reflexively, Kevin chewed.

  There was a salty-sour taste, and when he swallowed, what went down was slick.

  “Oh, yes.” McNabb released the remaining leaves; they drifted slowly to the ground, as if falling through water. The old man reached up, took hold of the flap of forehead, and pulled the rest of his face away. Beneath it was the leering white face of a clown. The leering white face of the thing that was no longer behind him.

  “Remember me?”

  Kevin did remember now, the one detail that he had forgotten earlier, how every fall when Mr. McNabb raked leaves, he always wore a clown mask, a cheap plastic thing he had picked up at the drugstore one Halloween to amuse the kids. His kids.

  Some people marked the beginning of fall by a date on the calendar, some by when school began. In Ash Creek, the people marked it by when they first saw Mr. McNabb out in his yard, wearing his clown mask and raking leaves.

  Only it turned out the clown face hadn’t been the real mask, Kevin realized.

  The clown dropped the sagging bit of flesh that had been Mr. McNabb’s face on the ground next to the pile of leaves.

  “I called you here, Kevvy-boy,” the clown said in its jolly voice, “because the Missus and I never had any children of our own. And of all my boys, you were my favorite. The closest thing I had to a son.

  “I can’t leave this world yet. There are so many children left for me to know. And you’re going to help me, Kevvy. You see, I know your secret.” The clown leered and winked broadly. “I know why your wife left you, why she took your son away.”

  Kevin shook his head.

  “Seems she didn’t like the little games you played with her boy. Such fun games, too, far more inventive than mine ever were. You have a real flare for this sort of thing, Kevvy.”

  “I didn’t … I would never …”

  “Come now, Kevvy. Let there be no lies between us. We’re about to become very close, you and I.”

  The dark thing inside Kevin came free and he remembered skin softer than cotton, softer than a cloud, remembered the dizzying, intoxicating scent of girl child.

  “Welcome home, Kevvy.” The clown reached its twig fingers out to him and Kevin screamed.

  When the clown was gone, Kevin stood for a moment as a cold wind blew through the yard, sending leaves swirling into the air. Looked like it was going to be an early winter this year.

  He bent down and picked up the fleshy mask Mr. McNabb had discarded, a mask whose features were now of a much younger man, and sealed it against the ivory white flesh of his true face. He then turned and started down the street, leaves falling all around him, each one a child he hadn’t met yet.

  He couldn’t wait.

  Anubis Has Left the Building

  Anpu thought he saw a hand free itself from the stone relief and reach toward him, fingers becoming claws, sandy flesh sprouting short, coarse, pale-gold fur.

  He closed his eyes shut and denied the vision’s reality. Seconds passed — he felt no claws sink into his soft gut, no fangs tear at his throat. Encouraged, he opened his eyes. The relief hanging on the wall was as it had been, the dog-headed figure it portrayed standing awkwardly in its two-dimensional stance next to a table upon which rested the crudely rendered figure of a man in the process of mummification.

  Anpu wasn’t certain whether what he had experienced was real. After all, the placard on the wall beneath the exhibit said it was but a reproduction of a stone relief from the Mortuary Temple of Hatshepsut. Still, very often the image of a thing, its shape, had a reality all its own. In the end, weren’t symbols the most powerful magic of all?

  “Excuse me, are you all right?”

  Anpu turned, startled, half expecting to see the fearsome figure from his vision lunging toward him with blazing yellow eyes and foam-flecked jaws. Instead, he beheld a man in his mid-twenties, perhaps a bit younger. His brown hair was cropped close to the skull, almost a buzz cut, but not quite. The youth wore faded jeans with tattered cuffs, scuffed and scraped tennis shoes, and an un-tucked flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled up to the elbows. His face was pale and somewhat plain, though his kindly smile made up for it somewhat.

  On the young man’s left forearm was a small tattoo, a circle of yellow,
two dots for eyes, a cheerfully curved line for a mouth. A mocking, insincere counterpoint to the youth’s more genuine smile. A banal phrase whispered through Anpu’s mind — Have a nice day — though he wasn’t certain where he’d heard it before.

  “I’m … fine.” Anpu touched his brow with trembling fingers, found his skin slick with sweat.

  The smiley face tattoo winked saucily at him, or at least seemed to. Anpu closed his eyes, willed the illusion away. When he opened his eyes again, the tattoo was once more nothing but still ink pooled in needle-violated flesh.

  “Nothing personal, but you don’t look fine to me. Are you feeling sick or something?”

  Anpu knew that by something the boy meant drunk or drugged. He supposed he probably looked the part of an addict: long matted blonde hair badly in need of washing, hollow red-rimmed eyes, sallow complexion, several days’ growth of patchy beard. Face so weather-beaten it could belong to man aged anywhere from forty to seventy. T-shirt and jeans mottled with unidentifiable stains, clothes and body … aromatic, to be polite about it.

  But the youth hadn’t shied away from Anpu when he’d turned around, hadn’t wrinkled his nose in disgust. There was no derision or pity in his gaze — only concern.

  Anpu stood straighter, tried to project an image of a man who at least had it partially together. “I’m fine. Lunch didn’t agree with me, that’s all.” The least he could do to repay the boy’s kindness was to attempt to dispel his concern, give him an out so he could gracefully take his leave.

  The young man’s smile grew broader and a touch cynical. “Nice try, but it looks to me like you haven’t eaten in a while.”

  Anpu couldn’t recall his last meal. His memory was uncertain at best these days. He wasn’t even sure how he’d come to be in this place, whatever it was. He glanced around, saw Plexiglas cases containing religious and funerary items, saw people wandering past the antiquities, barely pausing to give them a look, blind to the wonder and majesty on display before them. It appeared this was a museum of some sort. Fitting. A museum was where he belonged, after all, wasn’t it? The only place he belonged.

  “C’mon, admit it, you could use a good meal.” The boy touched Anpu’s elbow gently, the gesture companionable but not forceful. “And maybe somebody to talk to. Or just listen.”

  It was Anpu’s turn for a wry smile. “I hope you don’t intend to try converting me to your religion.”

  The youth laughed loud and hard, as if this were one of the funniest things he had ever heard. “No, nothing like that,” he said, still chuckling. “I’m finishing up my degree in social work.”

  “And you hope to get some extra credit by taking me to lunch?” Anpu asked.

  “Something like that. So what do you say?”

  Anpu had a memory flash then, of crawling in a dumpster and rooting through the refuse with his nose, sniffing wildly, deeply, searching for something deliciously and delightfully rotten. His stomach gurgled, though from hunger or nausea he wasn’t sure.

  “Aha! Your stomach has betrayed you!” the boy said. “Now you can’t say no.”

  But say no was exactly what Anpu intended to do. He opened his mouth, set his tongue and lips to form the first letter, when he heard a soft growling. He turned back to the relief and saw that where there had been only empty space before, the dog-headed figure was now flanked by a pair of jackals. The animals’ narrow foxlike heads pointed at Anpu; muzzles moist, nostrils flared, eyes hungry. And they looked decidedly more three dimensional than two.

  The growling grew louder.

  It was a vision, an illusion, nothing more. It had to be. Still, Anpu said, “Very well. As long as it’s in the interests of education.” He was surprised at how steady his voice was.

  The young man laughed again, and together they walked away from the relief. Anpu tried to shut out the jackals’ growling, but without success. He gave up when he realized the sound came not from outside his skull, but rather within.

  As they left, Anpu saw a sign that told him they’d been in the Art Museum of the University of Memphis, Free and Open to the Public. Outside the Communication and Fine Arts Building where the museum was housed, Anpu turned to his young benefactor and asked, “This place is called Memphis?”

  The boy looked as if he were going to make a sarcastic comment, but instead he said, “Yes, that’s the name of this city.”

  Anpu nodded. From the appearance of the people around them, he doubted this was the Memphis he remembered — the glorious Egyptian city of gold. The climate, the architecture, the race of the pedestrians, all were wrong. He scented the wind. He detected the smell of a river, but it was a flat, bland smell, not the rich aroma of the mother Nile. Another city, then, one perhaps named for the other.

  “Most fitting,” he said to himself.

  “Excuse me?”

  He was almost startled by the question. He’d momentarily forgotten about his newfound companion; he was too used to being alone. “I merely meant that it seems proper for a collection of treasures such as we witnessed to be kept in a place called Memphis.”

  The youth nodded once but said nothing, and Anpu decided his words meant nothing to the boy, were likely little more than the addled mumbling of a crazy old man. And perhaps they were.

  “There’s a coffee shop not too far from here. We’ll be able to get some sandwiches there. Nothing fancy, but filling. Sound okay?”

  “Yes.” People walked past them, mostly young men and women, students like his new friend. Anpu’s nose wrinkled at the smell of decay which emanated from their bodies. He squinted his eyes against the black necrosis which blazed darkly forth from their cells. And from all around them came the distant impatient growls of jackals on the hunt.

  “I just realized that I never introduced myself. My name’s Todd Jacoba.” The youth reached across the table and offered his hand to Anpu.

  Anpu looked at it for a moment, trying to recall what was expected of him. Then he clasped Todd’s hand briefly, expecting to feel the aging of the boy’s flesh, hear the mournful soft song of slow death ringing in his ears. But he felt and heard nothing. He released the youth’s hand.

  “I am called Anpu.” He thought the boy might comment on what to him must seem an odd name, but he didn’t. Perhaps this Memphis was more cosmopolitan than Anpu first thought.

  The serving girl, who was barely more than a child, brought them two mugs of what Todd called coffee. The strong, pleasing smell was familiar to Anpu, even if the beverage’s name wasn’t. The girl said their sandwiches would be ready in a few minutes, then she left to tend to other customers. Anpu’s gaze tracked her.

  “She’s cute, huh?” Todd said.

  “I hadn’t noticed.” Anpu wrapped his fingers around his coffee mug, the heat doing nothing to warm the ever-present cold that dwelled within his flesh. “I was thinking something else. You wouldn’t understand.”

  “Try me.” Todd lifted his mug to his lips and gingerly sipped the hot liquid.

  Anpu was about to change the subject, when he decided it didn’t matter much. Why not tell the boy what he was thinking? It would be all the same in the end.

  “I was thinking about what blend of spices I would use to anoint her corpse.”

  Todd had been in the process of setting his mug down. Now he paused, coffee halfway between his mouth and the table. “You were right; I don’t understand.” He lowered the mug to the table, forced a smile. “Don’t tell me I’ve offered to buy lunch for a serial killer.”

  Anpu inhaled. Despite the boy’s words, he could smell no fear on him. Could smell nothing, in fact. Strange. Were his senses now beginning to fail him along with his patchwork memory? “I would never lift a hand to harm that child.”

  “Then why did you say … what you said?”

  “Fifteen days from now she’s going to be in an accident, a —” he struggled to recall the term — “a car accident. Her boyfriend will be driving, he’ll be intoxicated. Their car will hit another vehicle, a
larger one carrying a family of four. Everyone but the boyfriend will perish. He won’t even be injured seriously.”

  Todd looked like he was trying to decide if Anpu was joking. Finally, he grinned. “What are you, a psychic or something?”

  “Or something,” Anpu agreed. He looked around the cramped coffee shop, at the young men and women — students like Todd, no doubt — at the scattering of older people, graduate students perhaps, maybe even faculty. All leaning forward in their seats, talking earnestly, listening with equal intensity, or at least pretending to. The rise and fall of conversation should have been the sound of life. But to Anpu, it was the sound of flies buzzing around decaying meat.

  He turned to his young benefactor. “Tell me, why were you there, at the exhibit?”

  Todd shrugged. “I had a few hours to kill between classes, and I’d never visited the Art Museum before. Thought I’d check it out.”

  “Did you happen to notice the relief I was looking at?”

  “Yeah, I guess. Why, is there something special about it?”

  “Special? No, I suppose not. The relief portrays Anubis, a god who was once sacred to the Egyptians.”

  Todd smiled. “A dog-headed man? Kind of a silly idea for a god.”

  Anpu wanted to tell Todd that the image was far more than a simple melding of man and beast, that it reflected the connection of humans to the wild fearful beauty of the unknown and unguessable. To Mystery in its truest and most profound form. But instead he sighed and said, “Yes, I suppose it is.”

  The serving girl brought their sandwiches and departed. Todd tore into his with gusto, but Anpu only stared at his — bread, shaved meat of some sort — trying not to breathe in the nauseatingly fresh smell.

  Todd spoke around a mouthful of food. “So what did Fido do?”

  “He had several different aspects. He was responsible for overseeing burial rites, for guarding tombs, and for ushering lost souls to the other side. Perhaps most important, he aided in the judging of souls to determine their destination in the afterlife.”