Twisted.2014.12.16.2014 FOR REVIEW Read online

  "Almost there!" he shouted. Because it was a different phrase. And then he realized that wasn't much better, so he just shut up.

  He opened the door.

  He had expected a courier, and that was what he got. The office often used them rather than rely on the post office, especially if they had to send documents that needed to be somewhere in under a day, or if they were particularly fragile. And even though this was his last job, even though the business was hemorrhaging money every day, Blake was giving everything he had to this last job. Because maybe if he did, something would come of it.

  That was the hope.

  Hope. Stupid hope.

  Blake looked the courier up and down. He thought he knew most of the folks at Runners, Inc., the service his office used. But this guy was unknown to him.

  No, not a guy. He was a kid. The R.I. cap was pulled down low over his forehead, but not far enough to completely cover the acne on his face. Nor did it do much to restrain the nimbus of red hair that seemed caught in a perpetual nova around the edge of the hat.

  The kid, though he couldn't have been older than nineteen, already had a wealth of faded tattoos. That wasn't unusual for couriers, who tended to be the type of people who reveled in being "edgy." Which was a word that, as far as Blake could tell, meant "working hard at being unemployable after thirty-five."

  Unlike every other courier he'd ever seen, though, this kid's tattoos weren't Maori tats or skulls or barbed wire, angels or devils or moons or stars.

  His were hearts. Teddy bears. A few My Little Ponies. And they all had the word "Mom" written somewhere on them. "Moms Rule," "Love Ya Momma," "Mom Be Three" (which Blake didn't understand), and "Moms are TOTES Awesome."

  It was enough that he was glad the kid had his gaze glued to an electronic tablet. If it hadn't been he would have seen Blake gaping at him – openly and rudely.

  The kid yanked a shipping tube from his pack. "I've got a parcel for Blake Douglas?" he said, the last words lilting up into a question. His voice was as young and unfinished as the rest of him. High, breaking slightly in the middle of the sentence.

  "That's me."

  The kid handed over the tube, still not looking up. He pulled a stylus off his belt, where it hung from a Velcro attachment. Used it to check something off on his tablet. "All right," he said. "Many thanks."

  "Want a water or anything before you go?" said Blake.

  "Sure," said the kid. He shoved his tablet in his pack. "That'd be…." He finally actually looked up, his body releasing him from the confines of automatic movement.

  His acne was red, almost blazing. And more so as the rest of his face seemed to drain of all its color.

  "No," he said. "No, thanks." He was looking past Blake.

  "Sure?" said Blake. He had an urge to look behind him, like in a monster movie where the baddie is about to get the jump on the hero. But he was scared to look away from the kid – he looked like he was going to pass out. "You look like you could use –"

  "No!" the kid practically shouted. Then he turned and walked away without another word. He broke into a run halfway to the bike that waited at the curb.

  Blake finally turned, his nape prickling and sweat dripping down the small of his back. What if there was something behind him?

  There wasn't. Just the hall, the open doorway to the kitchen.

  And Alyssa, standing on the stairs, leaning on the banister. "What was that about?" she said.

  Blake turned back. Looked out the door.

  The kid was still there. Sitting on his bike, staring at him.

  "Beats me."

  Blake realized the kid wasn't looking at him. The angle of his face was wrong. No, he was looking at something else.

  At the house.

  Again, the base of Blake's skull tickled. Again, he turned.

  Again, other than Alyssa there was nothing. He was alone with his wife.

  He turned back.

  The courier was gone.

  Blake closed the door.

  OUTRUNNING THE DEAD

  "Ralph? You're name is Ralph? That ain't the name of a messenger. A posenger, maybe. Maybe even a fakenger. But not, never, no-how, a messenger."

  That was the beginning and end of the interview questions Ralph Hickey got from Ali when he walked into Runners, Inc., and asked for a job.

  He knew there was no way in Hell he was getting a job – or even a second interview question. Not with his red hair, his weird tattoos, his lack of body piercings or general toughness-vibe that seemed to be required for all bike messengers.

  But he needed the job.

  More important, he wanted it.

  So when Ali stood and told Ralph to get out of his office – adding a flurry of inaccurate racial slurs and three instructions that were so biologically impossible that Ralph decided he really liked this guy – he whipped around, dodged under Ali's stringy arms, and stole his would-be boss's lunch.

  The lunch itself was nothing big. A tuna sandwich with a small bag of Fritos. But it sat in a genuine vintage Buck Rogers lunch box, with Gil Gerard at his manliest and Erin Gray looking super-hot even with her head half-covered by the dorky space helmet.

  Ali saw the lunchbox disappearing through his office door. He roared.

  Everyone onsite at Runners, Inc., came (appropriately) running.

  And the chase was on.

  Half an hour later, Ralph called Ali from a public phone at the train station across the city. Reports from the other couriers were already coming in: they had failed to keep up with the kid, the nobody. Not lost him. He hadn't turned, hadn't twisted. He'd just ridden hard and fast, and no one could keep pace.

  Ali was apoplectic. He demanded the return of his lunchbox. He demanded a full apology. He demanded that Ralph start work at R.I. immediately.

  He also demanded that Ralph never tell any of the other messengers his name. "You're just The Runner from now on, kid," said Ali.

  That lasted until Ralph's first run, when he walked into R.I. and someone started screaming that there was "hot work all over the desk" – meaning a red-hot item that needed to be delivered yesterday.

  He ran to the desk, scooped the package into his bag, and said, "Tell 'em to rest easy. Ralph Hickey is on the job."

  Ali nearly had an embolism, an aneurysm, and terminal diarrhea all at once.

  But Ralph got the package where it needed to go. And no one questioned that he got it there faster than anyone else could have.

  Ralph was Ralph after that. He had a place at R.I. A job that he loved. A boss who tolerated him.

  More than he'd ever enjoyed before.

  Enough.

  And the best part: the more he rode, the faster he drove, the harder he pushed, the fewer dead he saw.

  Even driving in cars, he could never be sure of looking over and seeing an empty seat. The time he saw a guy in the back seat, calmly looking out the side window and fingering the hatchet buried in his throat, that was the last time Ralph ever drove a car.

  The hatchet had gone in so deep that the dead guy's head hung by a string. It wobbled around constantly, making the world's most horrific bobblehead. And it happened on his first – and only – date with Elizabeth Deetz. She got out pretty quick at the first red light after he screamed.

  He'd only worked on getting that damn date for all of high school. But it only took one scream to scare her away.

  The dead guy stayed in the car, which was not very classy, in Ralph's opinion.

  The dead rarely bothered him much. Even the occasional unwanted passengers generally didn't do much… just rode along. One of them told him they were simply "catching a ride." Ralphie didn't know if that meant they wanted to actually get somewhere, or if they were just bored and wanted to do something. He thought it was the second one. Because he knew that the dead didn't need cars to get around.

  But there was no room for a ghost to go all Douglas Adams on the back of a bicycle. No room for hitchhikers, no room for tagalongs, no room for no one bu
t Ralph Hickey, deliverer extraordinaire.

  The dead were just occasional blurs as he rode.

  A body lying in the road next to a red smear that trailed into a nothing that was not quite normal, and whom none of the passers-by seemed to notice.

  A woman standing stark naked in the middle of the sidewalk, firing a shotgun at random pedestrians. None of them falling.

  A man in a nice suit who fell down in a pile of French fries, lay there choking, then went still. Then got up and did it again like he was rehearsing a performance.

  On and on. But just blurs as long as Ralph pedaled his hardest.

  That was why he was so fast. Because though most of the dead didn't bother him, and some were actually friendly, a few of them surprised him – i.e., The Headless Cockblocker.

  And a few were… bad.

  Ralph didn't understand many of the rules. If there were any. But he knew that some of the things he glimpsed over the years had nothing but ill will for the people and the world around them. He didn't want to talk to them, didn't want them "catching a ride," didn't even want to see them.

  He especially didn't want to see a particular one of them. One he had left unfortunately buried under a million tons of water, and whom he hoped would never come to him.

  But he feared she would. Feared it every day.

  So he rode. Rode hard, rode fast, rode as much as he could.

  He only stopped for deliveries. To check off the finished job on his tablet so HQ would know it was done. And he kept his head down when he was doing it.

  But he let his guard down delivering the tube to the Douglas guy. He sounded so nice, and it was a hot day, and Ralph had forgotten his water bottle back at HQ.

  He looked up.

  A man, standing in front of him. Holding the package.

  A woman, standing on the stairs. She looked crappy. Pretty, in a wholesome way, but crappy nonetheless. Like she'd been through a meat grinder.

  Neither of them saw the third person in the house.

  Ralph had to keep from screaming. He liked his job at R.I., and acting like a kook would get you fired.

  But he hauled ass outta there.

  Got to his bike. Ready to ride.

  Wondering why he was so scared. He'd seen the dead his whole life. Ever since his mom died. He had his suspicions about that. But just suspicions.

  One thing that wasn't a suspicion: the dead never looked at him. They talked to him occasionally, but always while looking away. Never a direct stare. Never even a glance in his direction. Like they were the scared ones. Like he was the monster under their beds.

  The one in this house, though…. That was why he ran.

  And when he got outside, that was when he made the next mistake.

  He looked up again.

  He looked at the second floor this time.

  There was a boy at the second floor. Ralph almost peed himself, thinking it might be him… the one he had seen.

  But no. It was just a normal kid. Cute one. Crazed hair, the kind of smile that made you think of Calvin and Hobbes cartoons.

  The kid waved.

  Ralph waved back.

  Then froze.

  Because behind the boy… he appeared.

  The other boy.

  The dead boy.

  The boy who had shown up behind the man, just below the woman where she stood on the stairs.

  He was dressed all Olde Tyme. Gray shoes. A tweed-ish outfit that was shredded and bloody. White face.

  A slit throat.

  And now as before, the dead boy stared right at Ralph.

  No expression. Just staring.

  Ralph looked away. Fast.

  He got on his bike. Road away, wobbling.

  "I don't want to see. I don't want to see."

  Ralph Hickey rode. Fast. Faster. Fastest.

  He tried not to look up.

  He tried not to think of what the dead boy wanted with this family. With little "Calvin."

  He failed at both.

  He saw the dead all the way back to HQ. None of them looked at him. Not like the dead boy had.

  But they knew he was here. Knew he was near.

  And, he felt, they all hated him.

  He rode even faster. And wondered if he would outrun them, or if his heart would burst and he would find himself among them.

  SCREAMS AND DARK

  Mommy said once that there was good and bad hiding in everything. She said that right after one of Mal's Transformers pinched the heck out of his thumb while he was turning it from robot to dinosaur. He guessed that meant that good and bad were all mixed up together.

  That was for sure the way it was at bedtime.

  Mommy always put him to bed. Always. Sometimes Daddy was there, standing in the doorway with arms folded and looking at him like Mal was the best thing – even better than Transformers. But even when he was there, he let Mommy do the actual work of tucking him in.

  Mal loved that feeling. Her hands shoving deep under him, pushing the blankets down until he was a wiggle-worm made of blankets and little kid.

  Then she would sing a song. Then she would kiss him.

  Tonight she had already tucked him in. The blankets were extra-tight. So tight he could barely move. Usually that was the best feeling ever. But this time he knew that he would wriggle out of the covers as soon as Mommy left. It felt like he was in a soft prison. He couldn't move, and he felt that was a bad idea.

  Gotta be able to move.

  To run.

  Those thoughts scared him. He told his brain to shut up. It didn't work.

  Gotta be ready to run.

  To run.

  Run.

  Run run run….

  Mommy didn't sing the song. She seemed like she was somewhere else. Maybe she was worried about Ruthie. She was worried about that a lot. Mal understood. He was worried about her, too. She was his sister, and he had to protect her. That meant he worried, too.

  And if that meant that he didn't get his song, that was fine. At least once in a while.

  Mommy bent down and kissed him. The light from the window fell all over her face. It was bright outside, with so many streetlights that normally he would have worried about being able to sleep. Here, in a new place –

  (in this place)

  – he knew he would leave the shade up. That the lights were the only thing that made it so he could possibly get to sleep without having Mommy sit in the room with him all night.

  She kissed him again. Her lips were cool and just the right amount of wet. Some people didn't know how to kiss and it either felt like sandpaper or a snail crawling on your face. Mommy did it perfect every time.

  "You've been great," she said. A whisper, just for him. "Thanks for all your help today."

  He smiled and whispered back, "You've been good, too."

  She smiled, a smile as quiet and secret as her whisper had been. She walked to the doorway of the bedroom. Her hand went to the door. "Open?" she said.

  Mal nodded.

  Mommy left.

  He waited until he heard her dress go swish swish swish down the hall. Then the door of the bedroom she and Daddy were using closed.

  He wiggled out of the covers. Not all the way. He just got himself un-trapped. He pushed one leg out from under the blankets, too, because it felt really hot all of a sudden.

  He pushed out the leg that was close to the wall. If he had flipped the covers off the other one, that would mean his ankle would have been only about a foot away from the dark place under the bed. And Mal was brave, but he wasn't a coo-coo bird.

  He lay there for a second. Then he flipped around completely so he could see the cross on the wall.

  Jesus was still screaming. But Mal wanted to see the image. It wasn't happy, but it helped him feel better. Like there was still a normal world, where Mrs. De Marco taught school and there weren't giant bugs under beds.

  He felt better. The only problem now was that the open door let in the sound of that big clock downs
tairs. Tick-tock, tick-tock.

  So loud.

  His heart started beating in time.

  Tick-

  (lub-)

  -tock,

  (-dub,)

  tick-

  (lub-)

  -tock.

  (-dub.)

  His eyes kept closing, too. He pulled them open each time. Didn't want to sleep. Well… he did. But every time he closed his eyes, he worried about what might crawl out from under the bed.

  Just check, dopey.

  No way. You check.

  His thoughts were getting stupid. Getting tired.

  Tick-

  (lub-)

  -tock.

  (-dub.)

  And then he realized that the clock sound was gone.

  He blinked, his eyes fluttering open and closed like moth wings banging against a window.

  What was going on?

  Did I fall asleep?

  He looked over. Realized why the clock was quiet.

  The door was shut.

  Did Mommy close it? Did I fall asleep and she closed it?

  No. No way. There was no way Mommy would have done something like that. When she left the door open, it stayed open.

  He turned again, looking for comfort.

  Jesus was still screaming. Only now he was screaming at the floor. The cross had swung upside-down.

  A cold feeling ran up and down Mal's back. A claw dipped in ice tickled him, then the tickles turned to stabs as he heard noise. Not the clock. Not the creepy tick-tock. But something that made him wish for it.

  It was a scraping. A scratching.

  He looked around. Looking for the sound. For where it came from.

  (Get out.)

  He didn't know if the thought was his or not. It sounded like something he should be saying, but at the same time… it wasn't his voice.

  The scratch/scrape got louder.

  It was coming from below his bed.

  And now Mal was thinking it. For sure it was his mind thinking it: Get out, he thought. Get out, Mal, get OUT.

  But he couldn't. Because if he jumped off the bed… that meant he could be grabbed by whatever was under it.