They walked outside, and for the first time that morning, she touched him, taking his hand. Her fingers were soft, the pressure of her palm gentle, and he was suddenly glad he’d decided to stay.
They went up the street, past one dark house after another. Someone somewhere must have been up because he smelled brewing coffee. From the next street over came the sound of a car starting.
It was a typical suburban neighborhood, not unlike the one in which he’d grown up, not unlike the one in which he lived, but there seemed something odd about it now, something decidedly off key. It could have been that he was seeing everything through the filter of what he’d just been through, but he thought not.
It was the neighborhood itself that seemed off.
He realized that he never walked at this time of morning. He’d driven to work, he’d peeked out his windows, he’d seen occasional jogging fanatics and newspaper carriers, but he’d been an observer not a participant. He’d never been out in it.
Perhaps that was what he was reacting to.
They walked along, and for the first time Ron noticed that Joanne appeared to be on the lookout, that she seemed to be searching for something. She walked slowly, peering into side yards, staring intently at bushes and porches and patios. He didn’t know what she hoped to find, and he didn’t want to know, so he didn’t ask.
They continued on in silence.
At the corner, they turned right. Two houses in, Joanne stopped, her hand squeezing his in an icy grip.
“There he is,” she said, and he heard the fear in her voice.
“There who—?”
And he saw the hunchback.
He was lying on someone’s lawn, next to a row of bushes that separated the yard from the next door neighbors. Only...
Only he wasn’t a he. He wasn’t even human. He was a blob of what looked like blackened mulch and decaying vegetable matter. The rotting materials had been shaped into a human form, the form of a hunchback, and there was a foul stench coming from the unmoving figure that smelled like sewage and human waste.
Joanne swallowed hard. “Pick him up,” she said.
“I—”
“Or help me pick him up.” She looked around, looked east. “Hurry up. It’s almost light.”
Ron was not even sure that they could pick up the thing on the lawn. Unlike the animate and very real hunchback he had seen rooting around in his car, this figure appeared only loosely put together and ready at any second to fall apart.
But when they put their hands under it and lifted, the figure proved to be surprisingly solid. It was also quite heavy, and even with Joanne gripping the front half by the arms, he had to struggle to carry the bottom portion of the body.
It didn’t help that he was trying to hold his breath, and inhale only when he turned his head away.
They moved back onto the sidewalk and Ron started to walk back the way they’d come, but he felt Joanne pulling in the opposite direction.
“We have to go around the block,” she said.
He looked away from the body, breathed heavily through his mouth. “What the hell are we doing?”
“You know!”
No he didn’t. He had no clue. He could not even hazard a guess. But for some reason he had the feeling that he should know, that maybe, deep down, a part of him did know. And that frightened him.
A jogger ran by, nodding to them. “Morning.”
“Good morning,” Joanne told him.
The jogger made no mention of the body they were carrying, did not even seem fazed.
They waddled awkwardly down the sidewalk, the decaying form between them. Joanne was on the street side, he was on the house side, and two yards ahead, he thought he saw movement.
They drew closer. A woman was crawling naked on the lawn, head down, and appeared to be searching for worms.
There was a whole world out here about which he knew nothing, an early-morning universe that existed alongside the regular one, that overlapped it perhaps but was strange and fundamentally different.
At the next house over, an old man was taking down a small cross on which he’d crucified a rat.
Huffing and puffing, unmindful of the smell by now, their straining arms sore, the two of them finally returned to Joanne’s place.
She had become increasingly agitated along the way, and now she was backing up as fast as she could, maneuvering the hunchback’s body into a different position in the driveway.
“Hurry!” she said frantically. “The sun’s almost up!”
“What are we supposed to do?”
“Put him in the car!” There was an unspoken “of course” in her voice, as though he’d asked a stupid question to which everyone knew the answer. “Set him down and open the door.”
The last thing he wanted was that reeking decaying thing in his vehicle—he’d never get the smell out, no matter how many deodorizers he hung from the rearview mirror—and here he almost balked. After everything he’d done and gone along with, this was over the line, this was the last straw.
But he didn’t have time to object. Joanne, grown increasingly desperate, let go of the arms, opened the car door, and tried to lift the body up again and fit the head and upper torso into the car.
“Push!” she ordered.
Dumbly, Ron pushed. The hunchback’s head snapped under the body, and the entire figure flopped over the hump between the bucket seats and landed half in the driver’s chair.
“Shouldn’t he be in the back?” Ron asked.
“Doesn’t matter.” Joanne looked quickly over her shoulder at the lightening sky in the east and slammed the door.
All of a sudden, there was movement in the car. From behind the closed windows, Ron heard a muffled cry, a word that sounded like “Detente,” and then the sun rose, a single ray of light beaming cinematically onto the passenger window as though programmed to do so by a Hollywood special effects shop.
There was a whirlwind in the vehicle, a small black tornado that plastered rotting leaves and what looked like a blackened chili pepper with a human eye to the windshield and side windows.
And then it was gone.
Joanne opened the car door.
All that remained was a netted bag of oranges.
“Thank God!” she breathed, and he heard real relief in her voice. She kissed him on the lips, quickly, gratefully, and he smelled cinnamon, tasted sugar.
“What—” He cleared his throat. “What do we do now?”
She put her hand on his, and her touch was soft, smooth. “We can go,” she said. “If we hurry, we can be in Big Bear by lunchtime.”
He thought about what had just happened, then thought about how hard it was to meet someone, even through a personal ad, and he looked into her eyes in the orange light of the rising sun.
He took a deep breath. “All right,” he said. “Let’s go.”
Jack Ketchum
ICHARD LAYMON WAS born to be a horror writer. Just take a look at a photo of the guy. Hell, it’s written all over his face. Just look at that goofy wicked grin. Reminds you of the Great Pumpkin, doesn’t it?
Though Richard had more teeth.
But what can I say here? What can I say about Laymon that I’m not on record as having said already? It’s a problem.
That his violence was overstressed, his sense of humor underappreciated?
Nah, said that.
That he was basically just a great big grown-up kid at heart who had a gift for remembering raging teenage hormones better than anybody I can think of and in doing so, helped you back to finding your own?
Unh-unh. Been said.
That he was a great storyteller with a wild absurdist bent who flung you into a yarn and double-dared you to find your way out again?
Damn! Said something along those lines too.
What then?
I know. That he’s already been gone too long and I miss him. The good handshake, the firm hug.